《Monster Paradise》 1 What’s the Use of Looking Good! Prologue: Would You Like To Be A Dimensional-Traveler? "I have finally gotten the nickname of the Ultimate African Chieftain! The only SSR card that I got was a Two-faced Buddha that accumulated from card pieces, I have never once gotten a Bird Sister or a Goldfinger before I dont want to play this game anymore!" Lin Huang was expressionless. He had been playing Master XX for half a year, after obtaining tens of thousands of amulets, he had never gotten an SSR card; not even an SR card Bird Sister or a Goldfinger. He only managed to get those by accumulating card pieces so he did not have any hope for the 10 card draw. He had completely given up on the game since he got the nickname and began losing in battles. He placed his finger on the game, took a deep breath and deleted the game. Just when he was about to keep his phone in his pocket, he felt a vibration. He then looked at the screen. It was completely black with a gold-colored sentence in the middle. "Would you like to travel through dimensions?" There was only one option at the bottom. "Yes!" It seemed like an online game commercial. "Yes, my a*s!" Since he had just deleted the Master XX game, Lin Huang did not have the mood to download any new games. He tapped on the home button on his phone. Just as he attempted to keep his phone in his pocket, his phone vibrated again. He took a look at his phone, it was the same page. "Stop it! This mobile game is like some online game with endless pop-up commercials, who would want to play such game?" He frowned and closed the page. Just as he wanted to keep his phone, the same page popped up again. "Could this be a virus?" Lin Huang frowned. He was in love with his iFruit7 smartphone that he just bought. He spent one entire month''s salary to get it after all. He restarted his phone and looked at the screen for a while. The page did not pop up again, he was relieved. When he picked up his phone, his phone vibrated and the page popped up again. "Would you like to travel through dimensions?" There was only one option at the bottom. "Yes!" "F*ck, this is not going away!" Lin Huang was furious. "Since Im getting it fixed later, I shall see this what kind of stupid game this is and I will report you!" After some hesitation, Lin Huang pressed yes on the screen. As he tapped ''yes'', the screen began changing. "Dear respectable dimensional-travel candidate, thank you for accepting our request. Please read the terms and conditions carefully. If you agree, please click accept and you will officially be a dimensional-traveler. After obtaining your travel code, we''ll send you a Goldfinger and transfer you to another world. Enjoy!" The words appeared for about 20 seconds before the terms and conditions appeared. "1. The current death rate of travelers are as high as 73%, please prepare yourself before your travel. Causes of deaths are as below: Suicide - Death rate: 48%" Death through battle - Death rate: 33%" Natural death - Death rate: 10%" Assassinated - Death rate: 6%" Failed to activate Goldfinger - Death rate: 2%" Bad luck - Death rate: 1%" Lin Huang only glanced at the first few pages as there were 118 pages to the terms and conditions. He was too lazy to read the entire thing so he scrolled to the bottom and clicked on the accept button. "Respectable candidate, you are now officially a dimensional-traveler. Your traveler code would be 142857. Entering Goldfinger page" The screen changed again, there was a spinner of 36 columns on the screen. Each column was the same size and there was a golden question mark on each of them with a pointer pointing in the 12 oclock direction. There were two buttons at the bottom of the spinner, one was start while the other was stop. There was also a description of the rules beneath the buttons. "Press start and the pointer will start to spin, press stop to stop the pointer. The item that the pointer stops at will be your Goldfinger. If you did not press the stop button, the pointer will stop automatically one minute after the spin had begun. "Until now, they have yet to show me the name of the game. Let me know what game is this!" Lin Huang pressed start and the spinner started spinning fast. A few moments, he pressed the stop button. After gliding for a while, the pointer stopped at one of the question marks. It then became a black card and the spinner disappeared. The card was enlarged and occupied the entire screen. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow, the card was nicely designed with metallic black and gold patterns on the edges. "Not a bad card design" Lin Huang complimented. However, as he thought of the Master XX game that he spent half a year playing, he became upset again as it was also a card game. While he was immersed in his thoughts, a black glow shot out of his phone into his forehead. Lin Huang did not notice it at all as he looked at the screen of his phone that began changing. "Goldfinger has been sent, now randomly picking an initial world for this travel" "Am I finally getting into the game?" Lin Huang smirked. "As soon as I see the name of the game, I''ll take a screenshot and report this stupid game!" Soon, the screen on his phone changed again. "The initial world that was randomly picked is Monster Paradise." "Traveller 142857, enjoy your trip!" "Pop!" His gold iFruit7 phone dropped on the floor. The screen was destroyed, Lin Huang disappeared from where he was ... "Travellers Serial Number: 142857" "Name: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age Before Traveling: 25 years old" "Age After Travelling: 15 years old" "Initial World: Monster Paradise" "Travelling Identity Setting: Lin Huang, Male, 15. His 13-year-old sister is the only family member he has left in the world. Born with a broken Life Wheel, his lifespan is 10 times shorter than ordinary people." "Remaining Lifespan: 91 days." "Memory Integration: 98%" "Number of Travels: 1" "Goldfinger Status: Deactivated" Looking at the semi-transparent page, Lin Huang was slightly startled. He could not recall how many times he had looked at that very page this week. It had been a week since Lin Huang traveled to this world and became a 15-year-old juvenile. He was outstanding, bagging first place among the fresh graduates at the Hunter Reserve College where he obtained a full score for almost all his papers. However, he had one fatal setback - his broken Life Wheel. There was a crack in the Life Wheel which looked like a gray stone in his body. It was almost broken in half. Among the 360 Life Light columns, only three were lit and the third one was quite dim. To ordinary people, these columns would represent three years of life but as his lifespan loss was 10 times faster, Lin Huang was left with only three months to live. "I look better now, perhaps the only thing I can be happy about." Lin Huang threw his head back as he laughed at himself in front of the mirror. He had black, puffy short hair with eyes that were dark and intense. Lin Huang had nice features. Despite that, within a split second, he tightened his fists and frowned. "Whats the use of looking good? Although the Goldfinger that you promised to give me before I began to travel is with me, at least send me a manual on how to use it. It has already been a week and I still have absolutely no idea on how I can activate Xiao Hei..." Xiao Hei was the Goldfinger that Lin Huang randomly selected before he time traveled. It was a black card and he had tried every possible way he could to activate it but failed. He had no idea what the function of that card was. "Im back, brother!" Just as Lin Huang pointed the mirror, playing the blame game, he heard the voice of a girl from behind the door. The door closed shortly after and he figured that the girl must have entered the password and entered the house. He then shut the semi-transparent page before him and took stock of his emotions before walking down the stairs. He lived in a small double-story penthouse where both bedrooms were on the second floor. He arrived at the ground floor and smiled at the girl who was changing her shoes. The girl seemed like a 13-year-old with short, black hair with a length slightly below her earlobes. Her bangs covered her eyebrows entirely and her eyes were bright and naive. She wore a printed white t-shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans and white sneakers. In all honesty, her clothing made her resemble a boy. "Xin Er, youre back! Wash your hands, were having dinner soon." They sat across each other at the table. While they were eating, Lin Huangs left pinky started to tingle. Soon, a semi-transparent video was projected in front of him. The same thing happened to Lin Xin! Her eyes popped when she saw her ring projecting a video. The ring was given to everyone after they received their birth certificate. It contained information that included a personal identity account, and a small space for storage. It was also the only tool connected to the Heart Network. Projections like these were rare and if something like this ever happened, it usually meant something big had happened. "Hmm?" Lin Huang stopped eating and stared at the projection. Lin Xin found it strange as well. There was a middle-aged man with a serious expression in the video. Lin Huang recognized him, he was the news reporter from No.7 Safety Zone, quite the popular dude. "Breaking news! Somebody found a new Virtual Eye 310 kilometers southeast from No.7D101. Theres a high possibility of a monster invasion. Those who reside in that area, please be aware. Do not leave the foothold, stay indoors tonight." After watching the video, Lin Huang frowned as the area number, No.7D101 was the official code of Wulin Town, his home! Based on the area size, Wulin Town was categorized into four grades A, B, C and D which respectively represented an area size that was large, medium, small and a core size, which was the smallest. The number 7 before the letter D was the safety code while number 101 at the back was the footholds code. The Virtual Eye mentioned in the video was the portal that the monsters opened to invade the human world. It was named the Virtual Eye because it looked like a semi-transparent giant pupil that protruded towards the sky. "Brother, the virtual eye is so near to our home, would monsters come to the foothold?" Lin Xin asked worriedly. "Dont worry about it. Now that the news is out, the Monster Hunters wouldve received the news as well. In fact, theyd get the news earlier than when we did. Theres also a defensive shield at the foothold which cannot be broken so easily." Lin Huang assured both him and Lin Xin and then exclaimed joyously, "Lets eat!" After dinner, Lin Xin went back to her room to get started on her homework while Lin Huang washed the dishes. The sky was getting darker. Lin Huang returned to his room and looked at the Heart Networks page to check for updates regarding the Virtual Eye. On the Heart Network, ongoing news about the Virtual Eye was being broadcasted continuously after they received the alarming notification during their meals. "The Hunters have arrived at foothold No.7D101, close to the Virtual Eye to hunt down the monsters." "Silver Hunter Li Lang appeared near foothold No.7D101!" "Silver Hunter Li Lang led 18 hunters to hunt down the monsters." "After more than an hour of hunting and killing, all monsters iron-level and above within 100 kilometers of No.7D101 were destroyed. More hunters joined the hunter troop to continue with the mission within that area." Lin Huang was relieved when he read the news. He sounded so sure when he was comforting Lin Xin but in reality, he was not sure at all. After all, he had just arrived into this world for a month and it was his very first time encountering a Virtual Eye. But from what he read on the Heart Network, there were no threatening monsters from that Virtual Eye. The time and location a Virtual Eye would open were completely random. The number and level of monsters cannot be predetermined. If the number or the level of monsters were too high, they would definitely be able to kill more than 10 hunters, including the Gold Hunters. The defensive shield in a small foothold like Wulin Town would be insignificant, like paper glue when faced with a massive crowd of monsters. It would be hopeless and useless to try stopping those monsters then. During Lin Huangs first week since his arrival in this world, although he did not figure out how to activate his Goldfinger, he somehow figured out what kind of world he was in. There were many history channels that spoke of monster attacks on the Heart Network. Lin Huang was taken aback the first time he saw it. What he thought was unforgettable was the ruins of a huge foothold. He remembered each and every detail of the video recording. A giant bloody pupil was opened in the void and countless monsters charged out of it. Within seconds, they broke through the defensive shield of the big foothold. That day, almost a billion people were killed by millions of monsters within a few hours. The foothold was covered in blood with dead bodies floating on the sea of blood while monsters feasted on their remains The foothold that Lin Huang was located in was just a D-grade foothold. This small town had a small population of fewer than 100,000 people. Such a foothold was the least secured within the safety zone. If this foothold was attacked by a strong monster, everyone would perish even before any hunter could even arrive to rescue them. Fortunately, the opening of this Virtual Eye only released small monsters and hunters were able to kill them. Lin Huang fell into deep thought after closing the Heart Network. "From the speed of lifespan lost earlier, Im only left with 91 days to live. The most important question right now was... How do I get the Life Crystals to replenish my Life Light? I have no idea how to activate Goldfinger so I best leave it aside. Life Crystals are up for purchase on the Heart Network but its too expensive. The minimum purchase, a years worth of Life Crystals costs 100,000 credit points. I don''t even have 30,000 in savings!" Life Crystals were a unique item that barely dropped from hunting monsters. There is a massive amount of Life Light in each crystal. It must be chewed in the mouths and the Life Light in the crystals will then enter the Life Wheel. "The fastest way to get Life Crystals is by hunting monsters and selling the materials on the monsters bodies. Its certainty that there would be Life Crystals achievable from the hunt. However, with my ability now which isnt even at iron-level, the kind of monsters Im able to fight are worthless Worry not for I shall try my luck outside the foothold. Perhaps there would be at least one Life Crystal. I shall get ready tomorrow and head out the day after!" It was late at night; Lin Huang stared at the dark sky from his window. After a short while, he emptied his mind and went to bed. In the middle of the night, a noise that sounded like glass breaking woke him up. "Ahh!!" Just as Lin Huang woke up, he heard a girl scream in his blurred state. The scream came from close by and he could tell; it was his sister, Lin Xins voice. He jumped down of his bed and dashed to Lin Xins room. He did not even have the time to change; he was still in his pajamas. He flung the door open. 2 Vampire Lin Huang felt his heart beat faster and faster as he entered Lin Xins room. The light in her room was switched on and he saw a young, muscular man halfway into her room. He must have crept in from the broken window. He held Lin Xins foot and a blurred sound echoed from his mouth. Lin Xin quickly hid behind the head of her bed, her feet was just a few centimeters from that scary being. She was horrified! She cried and her body was shivering. She was too frightened to even think of running away. Lin Huang then looked up to the man. He had red hair, his chin and clothes were covered in blood. What caught Lin Huangs attention was his eyes, it was bloody red. Lin Huang was numb, for a second, he thought that the man could just be a vampire. He looked around Lin Xins room and noticed her school bag at the left side of the door. Fearful, he flung the school bag at the mans direction. The vampires senses were quick to act, he immediately grabbed it, tore it apart. In that short distraction, Lin Huang ran to the bed, carried Lin Xin and sprinted out of the room. Just when they thought they were safe, Lin Xin screamed to the top of her lungs. Lin Huang turned around to see the vampires vein-bulging arm on Lin Xins left foot. "Close your eyes!", Lin Huang instructed. Lin Xin immediately did as she was told. Lin Huang saw a lamp near the bed, picked it up and smashed the vampires arm with full force. The light bulb of the lamp was made of white light stone which will release high temperature light if broken. It was a cheap but extremely dangerous. The rich would never trust such a lamp but now, it was indeed a life-saver. The light bulb of the lamp broke once it hit the vampires arm and a strong white light filled the room. The broken white light stone released an unbearable heat that caused the vampire to groan and let go of Lin Xins foot. Lin Huang closed his eyes as he took his last few steps and when he opened his eyes, he was already at the door. He did not waste any time, worried that the vampires vision would recover, Lin Huang ran down the stairs, panting. As he ran, he remembered reading from a fairy tale book that vampys hated lights because it burned their eyes. Vampires are nocturnal creatures, born to hunt in the dark and avoided places with lights and this was precisely why the vampire refrained from entering Lin Xins room earlier. From the ground floor, sounds of glass breaking came from upstairs. It was almost as if the hanging lights in Lin Xins room fell. "Hide in the bathroom and lock the door!" Lin Huang ordered Lin Xin at once. "Wh-what how about you?" Lin Xin asked her brother, her tone shaky. "I can handle him, have you forgotten that I graduated on top of my class from Hunter Reserve College? It would be a distraction if you stayed here with me." Lin Huang explained lovingly to his sister. Lin Xin nodded and did as she was told. She had faith in her brother. Lin Huang had an action plan. He first sent out a distress signal to the Heart Network and then he ran to the kitchen to grab a knife. The lowest level of a vampire was at least an iron-level. Besides possessing 10 times the strength of an adult, with their blood power, they were much stronger than an iron-level monster. Anyone who encountered iron-level monsters may not walk away alive, hunters from Hunter Reserve College included. Therefore, what Lin Huang had told his sister was merely to comfort her as he knew that there was a probability he could lose to this vampire. He thought, however, that it was strange that his head was clear when he was faced with the monster earlier although he was in so much fear and anxiety. In that moment, whatever he had read about vampires flashed in his mind. Vampires were human-like monsters C they blend in with the human lifestyles during the day but their desire for blood arose at nights. Their food - human blood and the blood of young girls blood were especially delicious, their favorite. They smell blood up to a few hundred kilometers away. Even for an iron-level vampire, as soon their blood power is activated, their strength, speed, and defense would amplify themselves. Their bodies would be covered with an energy layer that formed from the gathered blood power. The energy layer could even turn into wings, tails, claws and other weapons which multiplied their effectiveness. Vampires may hate the exposure of bright lights but it does not weaken them. Their one weakness was a substance called septic divisor that could only be extracted from a rare plant. In reality, the septic divisor was poisonous to most organisms with flesh, included us humans. As soon as it contaminated a wound, it would penetrate into the organisms blood circulatory system and kill red blood cells. It was sold at pharmacies and some hunters used them to soak their weapons. The septic divisor had the perfect repression effect on vampires as it would cut open the blood layer on their body if they touched a weapon soaked in septic divisor. The would cause the vampires body to rot and without an antidote, it would melt to the ground within three hours. However, the septic divisor was not cheap. Even a licensed hunter would think twice before using it generously C only in times of emergency. Lin Huangs savings was not enough for him to buy one. While he was struggling with his thoughts, his ring began vibrating again. "I am hunter Li Lang, I assume you asked for help to be sent. What happened?" A matured but young voice sounded from the rescue line across him. "My home is being attacked by a vampire" just as Lin Huang finished his sentence, he heard a loud thud. Then, a shadow leaped from the second floor and appeared not far away from him. "Ive set the location on my ring, please hurry!" With that, he hung up the phone. He needed to focus on defeating a 10-time-stronger enemy standing in front of his face. "Bang Bang Bang" Heavy footsteps walked towards him and he could barely make out the being in front of him due to the dust in the air. When it disappeared, he starred right into the vampires red eyes which was also targeting him. Lin Huang felt a rush of goosebumps. In a split second, the vampires focus shifted to the direction of the bathroom. He could smell the odor of the prey that he was hunting. The prey was just behind the door, it was a delicious and irresistible fragrant to him. He was drooling, all the way from his chin to the floor. The vampire immediately ran in the direction of the bathroom, ignoring Lin Huang. Lin Huang mustered his courage and yelled "Hey, did you forget something?" at the vampire while he tossed the knife onto the vampires body! 3 Goldfinger Has Been Activated This vampire''s senses were amazing. He could sense the knife flying in his direction and so dodged it in time. Almost instantaneously, the knife pierced into the wall, its blade still vibrating. The vampire stopped walking and stared at Lin Huang. While Lin Huang was relieved that the vampire did not charge at him, he gulped while mumbling to himself, "Let''s get this over and done with!" He tossed out the second knife he had with him at the vampire because he was worried that the vampire would ignore him but attack Lin Xin. Therefore, he chose the classic tactic to infuriate and distract the enemy. As expected, it worked. The vampire was furious, he smacked the knife away again. Blood was dripping from the crown of his head to his feet and soon completely covered his body. Lin Huang was breathing heavily. It was his first time encountering a vampire that used Blood Power and he was under intense stress. A vampire that used Blood Power was completely beyond human; it was considered a real monster. What Lin Huang saw later made his heart skip a beat There was a pair of blood-colored energy supply that looked like wings growing out of his back. They were around two meters long each. "Oh no! This monster is not iron-leveled, but bronze-leveled!" Lin Huang remembered clearly that an iron-level vampire could only have one energy supply while those on bronze-level could grow two energy supplies. Lin Huang''s face turned pale; he did not know that it was a bronze-level vampire that invaded his home. As compared to a bronze-level, he was more than 100 times weaker than the vampire. "That''s not right. If this vampire is bronze-level, he wouldn''t be harmed by the broken white light stone to the extent he would let his prey go." Lin Huang recalled when he hit the vampire with the lamp earlier; the vampire lets go of Lin Xin due to the burning heat. He took a closer look at the vampire, and soon he noticed there were two obvious wounds on him. One was on his right shoulder where it was so deep that his bone was exposed while another one was on his left chest where the knife pierced through, almost two centimeters away from his heart. The wounds started to rot; it seemed that the cut happened earlier than an hour ago. The wounds were not initially noticeable because the vampire''s body was out of the window and he was filled with blood. Now that he saw them clearly, he understood why this bronze-level vampire had the strength that was weaker than an iron-level. "He looks extremely weak now and it looks like even his heart was contaminated with septic divisor and he might not live for more than three hours. No wonder his strength regressed. As long as I stay a distance away from him and try my best to avoid the attack from his Blood Power, I should be safe!" Now that he was clear about how severely hurt the vampire was, Lin Huang''s fear was gone. He had one thought on his mind - to drag the vampire to his death! The vampire gave Lin Huang a deadly stare, the wings on his back got longer and turned into two sharp cones charging his way. Lin Huang had expected that to happen. He took a few steps to his right and dived onto the dining table, few meters away. The first hit was a miss. His wings became long canes and he turned towards Lin Huang. The cupboard and chairs in the way were crushed. If the hit were to fall on Lin Huang, even if he did not die, his boned would have been crushed too. Lin Huang jumped and with one hand supported on the second floor, he managed to cross the railings and onto the second floor. The vampire''s second hit smashed the dining table and the pieces were spread onto the ground. Lin Huang stood, frozen on the second floor as he was worried that the vampire would go for Lin Xin instead. He picked up a porcelain vase and threw at the vampire. He heard a "Bang". The vase crushed the vampire''s wings and the vampire roared in pain in Lin Huang''s direction. There was a limit to the strength and extension of his wings. The vampire noticed that he could not reach Lin Huang anymore, so he jumped to the second floor where Lin Huang was standing. Lin Huang immediately fled and hid under his bed. There, he found a wooden box that was one foot long. He opened the box and took out a silver pistol. It was a Gray Eagle17, the latest pistol from the Eagle Company. Its power was impeccable; it was nothing less than an iron-level firearm. With Lin Huang''s financial situation, it was impossible that he could afford such weapon. It was a reward for getting number one in his college education. Lin Huang took out the pistol and put the two remaining cartridges into his left pocket. He then opened the safety catch. Just when he aimed his pistol at the door, the vampire barged in. "Bang!" A fire was shot from under the bed and the vampire groaned with anger. The shot may not have hurt him but as he was caught off guard but that gunshot did dim the Blood Power layer on the vampire. "Bang! Bang!" Another two shots were fired. The vampire''s Blood Power layer dimmed even more. He flipped his giant wings in anger and plunged towards the bed. Lin Huang was prepared for that. He kicked the wall hard and got out under the bed. He then ran to the balcony and jumped over the railing. The vampire was furious. He chased after Lin Huang. Street101 was under his balcony, one of the main streets at the foothold. There were street lights with moonlight stones shining on the ground. The vampire could not find Lin Huang as the streetlights were not that bright. Lin Huang outsmarted the vampire! He had only pretended to jump but did not do so. He used his fingers to hang himself on the balcony floor and when the vampire had jumped off the balcony, he climbed back up. Lin Huang stared at the vampire and aimed his pistol at the vampire''s head. "Bang! Bang! Bang" In the midst of the shots and the roars of the vampire, the lights in the houses on the streets went off. There was pin drop silence. Only the noise from the gunshots and the vampire''s roars echoed on the streets. He could see the vampire with the street lights and he could also see the Blood Power layer thinning and the vampire''s wings contracted back in. The vampire finally stumbled away in excruciating pain. Lin Huang did not bother running after the vampire but instead opened fire and shot 20 times. Seeing as the vampire was not far off, about approximately 200 meters away and so he reloaded a new cartridge, jumped to the ground floor and ran after the vampire. It started off as a quiet night but sounds of gunshots and vampire groans soon filled that silence. The vampire''s Blood Power layer got thinner when the bullets penetrated through his outer-defense layer and straight to his inner body. Lin Huang was cautious to keep his distance from the vampire. With every trigger pulled, Lin Huang felt like a trained hunter. Bullets were hitting on the vampire''s Blood Power layer and soon, it became semi-transparent. At the 18th bullet fired, the vampire''s Blood Power layer disappeared entirely. Lin Huang grinned. He fired his last two bullets at the vampire''s wound, targeting at its left chest. He then reloaded the last cartridge and when he was ready to shoot, the vampire fell to the ground. The vampire attempted to get up but he seemed out of breath and badly injured. He crawled forward. Lin Huang did not open fire but he sprinted to the vampire and stopped 15 meters away as he had calculated before, the vampire could only stretch his wings for less than 10 meters and therefore, 15 meters would be a safe distance. Lin Huang carefully pointed his pistol at the back of the vampire''s head and fired two shots. He was relieved when the vampire''s head cracked and brain juice oozed onto the road. "Ding!" A notification came into Lin Huang''s ears. Soon, a semi-transparent page appeared before him with messages: "Goldfinger has been activated!" "Host completed his first kill; one Monster Card is rewarded!" "Host completed rank-crossing kill; one Advance Card is rewarded!" "Host completed double rank-crossing kill, one Random Card draw is rewarded!" "Setting of Host''s Exclusive Card" "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15." "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit) "Skill: None (Mastered basic skills - beyond range of assessment)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1." "Remark: Youre so weak!" Lin Huang had a strange expression on his face, "The Goldfinger has been activated, but what do these remarks mean?!" 4 It All Depends on The Look Lin Huang took a closer look at his body. He could see three additional crystal cards besides his default black card in his Life Wheel. His new exclusive card was beside the black card. The card was the white-crystal color with his photo on the front. It looked exactly like him; even the attire was the same. On the back of the card were the messages. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15." "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill: None (Mastered basic skills - beyond range of assessment)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1." "Remark: Youre so weak!" The second card was also a white-crystal color; there were three metal stars at the right bottom of the card. The image on the card was a vampire with red eyes; it looked like it was the same age as Lin Huang. After that, he turned the card over and read what was written behind the card. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Normal" "Type of Monster: Vampire" "Combat Level: Iron 3-Star (Bronze 3-Star)" "Skill 1: Blood Power (Level 2)" "Skill 2: Regeneration (Basic)" "Status: Available to be summoned." "Card Remarks: This is useless!" "Xiao Hei, based on this rarity, how many levels are there?" Lin Huang figured out that the ranking should be similar with the game Master XX'' people played on earth which were categorized into ''N'', R'', SR'' and SSR''. "The rarities of Monsters Cards are categorized from low to high, Normal (white-crystal card), Rare (green-crystal card), Epic (blue-crystal card), Legendary (purple-crystal card), and Mythical (orange-crystal card). Lin Huang was speechless. "In the Master XX'', the game gave out an SR'' card in the beginning. It was worse in this world because I was given the lowest ranking ''N'' card to start with Since their rarity differed, is there a big difference between their power?" "For Monster Cards of the same combat level, the Rare ones would be three to five times stronger than the Normal ones." "How about the Epic and Legendary ones?" "The host has limited access! Unable to retrieve!" "If I were to draw a Monster Card from you, what percentage would I have to get something that is above Rare?" From what Xiao Hei described and because he had one chance to draw a card, Lin Huang was excited. "It''s based on one''s look." "What, based on my look? There''s no estimated percentage?" Lin Huang thought that was ridiculous. As a person who was always gloomy, he was not a single bit pleased with the answer. "No, it all depends on your look." "That''s it" Lin Huang placed his palm on his forehead, "I finished first place in the card game that I used to play. But in this world, the percentage of drawing a rare card was based on my look" Lin Huang calmed down and looked further into the page. Soon he found something he was doubtful of. "Why is there a bracket behind the Monster Card''s combat level?" "When the host''s ability is not sufficient, the card''s ranking will drop automatically. The level in the bracket was the original ranking." "The status of the card says Available for summoning''. So, does that mean I could summon the vampire to the real world?" Lin Huang was excited and wanted to give it a try. Suddenly, he saw there was a monitor bird that was filled with white feathers and it sat on the roof of a house not far away. He could not tell when the bird appeared so he put his thought to summon the vampire on hold. The monitor bird was initially called a three-eyed bird as it was a bird monster with three eyes. They had 360-degree vision without blind spots. They could look for as far as 30 kilometers away. The third eye on their foreheads functions as a projector and projected the things it saw with precision and clarity. With those characteristics, many capable humans would capture them, tame them, and place them in the safety zone for monitoring. Lin Huang did not want anyone to know about his Goldfinger. He squatted down and checked if there was anything valuable on the vampire. While he was at it, he asked softly, "Xiao Hei, who was the one who gave the remark on the card?" "It was me!" "Alright then" Lin Huang was speechless for a moment after heading that response. He was already gloomy enough; things could be worse if he were to offend Goldfinger. It was a gold-crystal card; there was a golden staircase on the front while the description on the back was simple. "Advance Card" "Function: One upgrade for Monster Cards, Tool Cards, and Skill Cards respectively!" "Remarks: Can be used as an overlay. If the card has reached its highest level, the upgrade will be redundant." "Xiao Hei, am I able to use this Advance Card to upgrade the vampire Monster Card that I have from Normal to Mythical?" Lin Huang asked after reading the description. "That''s right." Lin Huang thought for a while glancing over at the vampire Monster Card. However, he decided to put his idea of using the Advance Card on hold. Lin Huang did not find anything from the vampire even after searching for quite some time. He stood up and was ready to leave when a white shadow appeared before him. It was a young, good-looking man who looked like he was in his early 20s. He was wearing a full white suit; his hair nicely combed. "What a narcissist!" Lin Huang labeled that person in his heart. Usually, most people would not groom themselves in an informal setting. People usually opted for anything comfortable and he thought that those who dressed up were usually narcissists. Soon, Lin Huang gave the person another label - pretentious! The man was wearing an attractive red tie. The tie was so detailed that there was a gold ring pattern on it, the rings looked like they were made of small, golden bits. While Lin Huang was checking the man out, the man was returning the judgment. "Nice to meet you, I am Li Lang. Did you kill this vampire?", he said while his eyes glancing back and forth at the pistol in Lin Huang''s hand and the wound on the vampire''s head. "I guess so. He was already contaminated with the septic divisor earlier. My luck was good." What Lin Huang said was the truth. He did not dare to lie as he did not know how much the monitor bird had recorded. "It was you who sent out the distress signal?" Li Lang could recognize his voice. "Yes, Mr Li Lang." Lin Huang smiled awkwardly and nodded; he did not expect Li Lang to recognize him. "Since you''re not a practicing hunter, I will get rid of this dead body for you. You killed this vampire so I''ll report this accordingly to the Hunter Association. Youll receive your reward." Li Huang was not afraid that Li Lang would steal his reward as the monitor bird was there and it did not seem like Li Lang wanted the monetary reward. After getting Lin Huang''s approval, Li Lang took out a leather bag, two meters long made of a shiny monster''s skin. Li Lang put gloves on and positioned the dead body into the bag. He then zipped the bag and kept it in the designated equipment space. "So Since you''re done, I''m going to find my sister so she won''t be worried about my safety." "Let me go with you; I could look at the damage and prepare a damage report. Did the monster make a huge mess?" A damage report was a small matter which was not within the job scope of a professional hunter. Li Lang just wanted to know how Lin Huang managed to kill the vampire and scrutinizing the battleground was the best way to figure that out. "I don''t want to bother you. Tomorrow I''ll spend some time recording a video and send it to the division of the Zone 7 Union Government and they''ll send their people to inspect our home." Lin Huang knew the procedure for damage reports. It was odd for a Silver Hunter to volunteer his home for the damage report; with that, he knew Li Lang was up to something. "I prefer to get things done once and for all. Since Im already here, Id feel uncomfortable if I didnt help with the damage report. You don''t have to do an application for the damage report; I will record the inspection and send it to the Union Government. Did you forget that the Hunter Association is part of the Human Union Government? We should not waste time by sending somebody here. This way you can also get your insurance claims earlier." Li Lang said in a serious tone. Lin Huang hesitated for a while but since Li Lang did not seem that he would compromise, he agreed. "Let''s go!" Li Lang said when he saw Lin Huang nodded. He then brought him to the house not far away where the lights were on. "It''s not that way; it''s this direction." Lin Huang helplessly pointed to the other direction. 5 Gold-Rank Equipmen Lin Huang brought Li Lang to his home and Lin Huang ran straight into the bathroom on ground floor. He knocked on the bathroom door, "Xin Er, it''s safe now, you can come out." Li Lang was observing the traces of damage. The more he looked, the more surprised he was. From the traces, he could tell the ways that the vampire attacked but he could not imagine how Lin Huang avoided such deadly attacks. Awhile later, the bathroom door opened and Lin Xin ran into Lin Huang''s embrace. Seeing her teary eyes, Lin Huang did not say much. He ran his fingers through her hair and said, "There, there, everything''s okay now." Lin Xin then quietly wiped her tears off Lin Huang''s chest and let go. She looked at him and asked, "Brother, where is the monster?" "Its settled." Lin Huang smiled. Li Lang walked towards them and said, "Your brother killed a bronze-level, rank-3 vampire on his own." Lin Xin looked at Lin Huang in admiration. Although she knew that there were rankings of monsters but she did not have the exact idea of the different abilities each ranking had. All she knew was that a bronze-level rank-3 vampire was powerful, but that her brother was even more powerful! "Brother, who is this uncle?" Lin Xin just noticed that there was someone else with Lin Huang. "Uncle" Li Lang was stunned by how Lin Xin addressed him, "I''m only 18" Lin Huang was surprised that Li Lang was as young as he looked mature for his age. He looked at least 25. What surprised him, even more, was that Li Lang was already a Silver Hunter at the age of 18. He was the genius of the No.7 Safety Zone. Lin Xin had a doubtful expression. "He could be telling the truth; you should call him brother." Lin Huang nodded to Lin Xin. "Oh." Lin Xin then turned around and said loudly, "Nice to meet you, brother!" "Alright" It was awkward for Li Lang. After some hesitation, he took out a Life Crystal from his storage space and passed it to Lin Xin, "Since you''re calling me brother, here''s a gift for you." "Brother" Lin Xin looked at Lin Huang helplessly. She knew very well about Life Crystals; it was one years worth of Life Crystals. If they were to redeem the credit points from the Emperor''s Heart, they would need 100,000 points. It was too expensive for her to take it. "This is too much. We can''t take it." Although Lin Huang was eyeing on it, he thought Li Lang was up to something for his absurd kindness. "These Life Crystals are the most invaluable things that I have. Take it; nobody ever gives me back the things that I give away." Li Lang insisted. "This guy seems like a tycoon, 99 points for putting up a good show." Lin Huang secretly gave Li Lang another label and nodded to Lin Xin, "Take it then." He was getting more and more suspicious of Li Lang''s intention. There was no way that he could be this kind to them without any ulterior motive! After seeing Lin Huang''s approval, Lin Xin took the Life Crystals and passed it to Lin Huang, "Brother, you keep it." Lin Huang then kept the Life Crystals in his storage space. He turned around and saw Li Lang was checking Lin Xin out, he then pulled Li Lang away from his sister. "Don''t even think about dating my sister, all you gave were just Life Crystals, even if" Before he could even finish talking, Li Lang interrupted him, "Don''t think too much, I''m not interested in the little girl. It''s just that she''s quite pretty, that''s why I looked at her. Li Huang got scared and took a few steps back after he realized he was being scrutinized and exclaimed, "Hey, I''m not interested in men! I''m telling you, not only in this life; I''d only be interested in women even in my next life!" Seeing that Lin Huang got his guard up, Li Lang decided to tell him the truth, "Actually I''m here to understand how you managed to kill that vampire. No matter how weak the vampire was, it was still a bronze-level monster while you''re not even an iron-level. So I guess if you have any special skills or equipment, if you''re willing to, I would love to purchase them for a high price." "I''m just a poor kid, how would I have any skills or equipment. Let me show you the attack trails of the vampire and tell you the complete battle story." Lin Huang realized that he misunderstood Li Lang. He then brought Li Lang to Lin Xin''s bedroom on the second floor. In the chaotic bedroom, Lin Huang explained. While listening, Li Lang was observing the damages in the room. The more he looked, the more he was amused. Li Lang started to admire Lin Huang. He knew that if such were to have happened to him, his survival would be uncertain as killing the vampire was almost impossible for him. "I didn''t expect you to kill the vampire all by yourself. I have underestimated you." Li Lang patted Lin Huang''s shoulder in admiration. He proceeded to say, "There''s no way to fix your broken Life Wheel. If you could find a way to make it up to your Life Wheel, I believe you would be a fearless hunter!" "Unfortunately, I don''t have much time left" Lin Huang shook his head and smile. He did not want to talk about his personal life with Li Lang. "Are you done with the damage report?" "Yes, I''m done. Let me just take a photo of the house." Li Lang then took out a gold coin with complicated patterns from his storage space. He tossed the gold coin into the air, the coin started to spin and soon, it became a thumb-size ball floating in the air. Lin Huang stared at the golden ball. Suddenly, the gold ball cracked open in the center into two hemispheres of the same size while there was a white crystal appeared in the middle. The white crystal was glowing; the white light spread across the house. Soon, the golden ball returned to its gold coin form and fell from the air. Li Lang grabbed it and kept it in his storage space. "It''s that a gold-rank equipment?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "Yes, that''s a toy that I got by accident at a medium-sized foothold." Li Lang was proud of himself that Lin Huang was curious. As they were talking, they got closer to each other. His true self of loving to flaunt was showing. "This should belong to some investigative equipment, am I right?" It was the first time for Lin Huang to see an equipment of the gold-rank. "Yes. In the non-combat equipment, this is considered a valuable! But all I needed was to trade with one year worth of Life Crystals. The guy at the market thought it was just an ordinary antique gold coin; he was afraid that I might come back for him, so he left right after we traded." Li Lang laughed. "That''s such a steal." Although he was not sure how much was a gold-rank equipment, he knew a few pieces of Life Crystals could only get him an ordinary iron-rank equipment. As they were chatting, Lin Huang saw Lin Xin yawning. She seemed sleepy, so he decided to send Li Lang away. "Mr. Li Lang, since the damage report is done, I''ll have to send you off. You have already seen it for yourself; we don''t even have a need right now, I and my sister would have to sleep on the floor tonight." "Alright then, I won''t bother you. I will submit the damage control report; you should receive a reply within 24 hours. If it''s approved by the government, there will be people coming to repair within three days. You will have a temporary home while they do the repairing work. You will have to bite the bullet for a few days now." Li Lang explained the process to Lin Huang. After Li Lang left, Lin Huang stared blankly at the house. His sister''s and his bedrooms were destroyed. Their beds were left with broken pieces. On the ground floor, there was a big pothole in the living room. They could not even sleep in there. In the kitchen, the cupboards occupied most of the space where only one person could sleep in there. "Brother, erm Where will we sleep tonight?" Lin Xin looked helplessly at Lin Huang. "Let me clear my room. My room is less damaged than yours." After an hour, they had finally made their temporary beds. Lin Xin was exhausted; she fell asleep immediately while Lin Huang continued looking at the damaged room. Lin Xin was in a deep sleep. Lin Huang smiled at the sight of her drooling and thought "This carefree girl" He then thought about his uncertain future that could affect this cute little girl, Lin Huang sighed, "It seems like it''s not an easy task to be a responsible brother!" 6 New Card It was a sunny morning the next day. Lin Xin woke up bright and early, a renewed excitement to her behavior. She seemed exuberant and unphased by the incident with the vampire. However, Lin Huang did not sleep a wink. His mind was preoccupied with the card he had yet to draw. After all that happened, their dining table and most of the furniture was destroyed by the vampire. They did not put much effort into preparing breakfast with the ruckus all around. While they ate, Lin Huang watched the news he projected from his ring. The news reporter was the same middle-aged man he saw on the news the day before. "Yesterday afternoon, the Virtual Eye that was opened near foothold No.7D101, closed automatically, one hour after the incident. Currently, more than 30 Monster Hunters are hunting down the monsters within a 300-kilometer radius around the Virtual Eye. More than 3,000 monsters, bronze-leveled and above were killed as of late. Based on reports, monsters that are Iron-levelled in the area will be killed soon enough. It is safe for residents who stay near the foothold to head out now" The Hunter Association were at the top of their game that day. They had managed to kill all the monsters that came out of the Virtual Eye in less than 24 hours. Although they had yet to kill the Iron-level monsters in the area, they were not worried. They were confident that such creatures were not a hazard to such a small foothold. Many residents too had taken the matter of killing the monsters into their own hands. They formed teams of six armed adults so that killing an iron-level monster would be a breeze. "Brother, Im going to school!" Lin Xin shouted. "Alright, be careful when youre on the road, Xin Er," he replied. Lin Xin headed off to school right after breakfast. After following her to the door, Lin Huang finished his breakfast and got ready for the day ahead. "Xiao Hei, since I still have a chance to draw a card, let me do it now!" Lin Huang said to the black card within his body. He could not wait to draw the card. "Are you sure you would like you to draw your card now?" Goldfinger inquired. "Im sure!" Lin Huang confirmed the request and nodded hard. He was excited to see what kind of card he would get. "12 cards have been randomly chosen. Please draw one from the 12 cards as your reward card for being the host." "Warning: You only have one chance. Once chosen, no changes are allowed!" After the sentences were explained to Lin Huang, 12 black cards appeared floating in front of him. They were arranged in a circle, like the numbers on the face of a clock. Lin Huang scanned through the cards carefully. They all looked exactly the same to him. Each card was black with a single gold question mark in the middle which looked like a golden flame in contrast to the dark background. Xiao Hei did not rush him. Not getting any hints, Lin Huang shook his head and mumbled, "It seems like I will have to randomly choose one then" He raised his hand and pointed at the card that sat at the 12 o''clock mark on the circle. "I want that one!" he said confidently. Just as he finished his sentence, the card he chose burst into flames and a new card rose from the ashes. "Congratulations, you got a Mission Card!" Xiao Hei announced. He ignored Xiao Heis notification and looked closer at the card. It was a golden card with a blonde lady in a black, maid''s costume illustration. She had a voluptuous figure and the costume looked incredibly seductive on her body, especially her cleavage. Although the dress was not revealing, a third of her fair breasts were showing. It was hard to not look at. "Congratulation, youve gotten yourself a Mission Card!" The lady in the card started talking and winked at him. Lin Huang was shocked, but soon he was again distracted by her bouncing boobs. "Now, let me read you your mission!" "The Mission: Become a Reserve Hunter in a month''s time!" "Mission Reward: Flawless Card x1" "If the mission is not completed within the time limit, you will be punished: You will lose Goldfinger!" "The mission announcement is conveyed, please read the back of the card for more information." The lady then returned to her original form, motionless on the card. Lin Huang did not even bother as to what a Flawless Card was. To him, he had to complete the mission or else he would lose Goldfinger! If that happened, there was no hope for him to survive the world alone. He then turned to the back of the card. The description was exactly the same as what the blonde lady had said to him. He then tapped on the card and it became golden dust that was absorbed into his body. "To become a Reserve Hunter, I must be at least Iron-level to be eligible for the application. Although Im not capable yet, I will apply as an Imperial Censor for now and see what happens," Lin Huang thought. He had surveyed into the eligibility of becoming a Reserve Hunter before. He knew there were several occupations that offered exceptions and being an Imperial Censor was one of them. An Imperial Censor could influence monsters to obey him. Not many people had the talent, therefore, an Imperial Censor was a niche and respectable occupation. Lin Huang had a Monster Card that he could summon to disguise himself as an Imperial Censor. "The Iron-level rank-3 vampire was considered the strongest one among all those who applied for the Reserve Hunter position, but its weakness was too obvious. If someone was to use weapons that were contaminated with a septic divisor, the vampire would be at great risk in a battle" After some analysis, Lin Huang looked at his second card - the cross-ranking card. "This cross-ranking card would be wasted if I was to use it on an ordinary card. But theres no other way. I have limited time to collect all the materials to maximize my chances to be a Reserve Hunter! After the rarity of the vampire was upgraded, its ability should be on par with a bronze-level entity. It would definitely strengthen my chances of passing." With a Cross-Ranking card, the higher the rarity of the card, the higher the value. A normal card can be upgraded to a Rare Card with the use of a cross-ranking card. Likewise, if it was used on a Rare Card, that same card would be upgraded to an Epic Card. If it was used on an Epic Card, it would be upgraded to a Legendary Card of an extraordinarily high value. Initially, Lin Huang planned to use it when he achieved a better card but it seemed like he had to utilize it now. "Xiao Hei, how do I summon the monster out of the Monster Card?" Lin Huang asked. "Focus your attention and the card you want would appear on your hand. Smash the card and the summoning would be complete!" the instructions appeared slowly on the black card just as he inquired. "Would people see if I summon the card?" Lin Huang questioned Xiao Hei. "Only the host can see the cards, nobody else would be able to see or sense the existence of your cards." "Thats great!" Lin Huang was relieved. He was worried that Goldfinger would be seen by someone with bad intentions if they could see his cards. After clearing his doubts, Lin Huang focused his attention on the task at hand. He imagined the Monster Card he wanted from his Life Wheel and willed it to appear on his outstretched hand. Soon, a white-crystal card that was the size of half of his palm appeared on his right hand. The card was exactly the same as the one he pictured on his Life Wheel. Now that it became physically present on his palm, he could feel the cooling sensation that was flowing from the card. If Xiao Hei did not assure him that nobody else could sense his cards, he would have asked anyone else around him to confirm this, if they could see what happened. However, he knew what Xiao Hei had said was true. Following Xiao Heis instructions, Lin Huang crushed the card as hard as he could. He was worried that he did not squeeze hard enough but with just a slight amount of effort, the card shattered into a thousand pieces and soon, it started to put itself back together again. In less than a second, a young man, about his age, appeared before him. Lin Huang was skeptical at first. It seemed like he had summoned another human being instead of the monster he imagined. "Your Monster Card has been activated. Do you want to randomly extract the monsters skills?" 7 You Are Still So Weak! "I can extract a skill?" Lin Huang asked, surprised when he looked at the box in front of him. He then continued, saying, "Can I extract the skill after he has been upgraded?" "Would you like to extract a skill next time?" The box replied. "Lets do it next time then," Lin Huang nodded. He started to examine the vampire that he had summoned. The vampire seemed to be the same age as Lin Huang. He looked like he was about 15-years-old. His features were sharp and neat. If he was in a crowd of people, nobody would be able to tell that he was a vampire. That was the scariest part of a vampire. The humans in the tiny footholds had been a growing population for more than 800 years but with the vampires disguised as human beings, it was impossible to kill all the vampires that were hidden amongst them, like wolves in sheep''s clothing. As long as they did not reveal themselves, nobody could tell the difference. "Show me your complete form," Lin Huang instructed the vampire. Hearing the order, the vampires eyes turned blood red and veins bulged around his eye sockets. His muscles flexed and he grew a few centimeters taller. Sensing the terrifying vibe, Lin Huang finally knew how lucky he was the night before. "This iron-level rank-3 vampire is so powerful. Although the vampire last night was a bronze-level rank-3, its vibe was much weaker than this one. Maybe it had been weakened by the injuries it suffered earlier. If it was at full strength, killing me would be as easy as squashing an ant" he thought, as a chill ran down his spine. "Activate, Blood Power!" Lin Huang ordered, his second instruction to the beast before him. He wanted to see the vampires true form. Following a deep groan, a crimson layer and a strong stench of blood spread all over the vampires body. Soon his body was covered with Blood Power, which made him grow a few times bigger than he was. Lin Huang had forgotten that activating the Blood Power would trigger the vampire, and hence, the groans. He was worried that it might wake the neighbors and they would surely notify the Monster Hunters. However, what he worried about slipped clear from his mind. There were two bloody wings forming at the vampires back, like a flower blossoming large, dripping red petals. He stared at them for a long time. They were so stunning that he was awestruck, rooted to the floor, motionless. The vampire stood quietly while it waited for Lin Huang to give him his next instruction. A while later, Lin Huang snapped out of his trance and said, "Alright, go back to your disguised form!" As soon as the vampire heard his instruction, the Blood Power faded and his eyes returned to normal. He looked like a human again. If Lin Huang did not see the transformation himself, he would not have figured that the guy standing before him was a vampire. "Im using the Cross-Ranking card on you. Hopefully, you wont disappoint me in the coming Reserve Hunter assessment." The vampire remained expressionless. Lin Huang was not sure if he understood what he had just said. "Xiao Hei, Im using the Cross-Ranking Card!" "The Cross-Ranking Card is a consumable. You can only use it once. Are you sure you want to use it?" The black card read the warning. "Yes!" "Follow the instructions to select your target Your target is the vampire Monster Card. Agree for confirmation," Xiao Hei continued. "Confirmed!" Just when Lin Huang said the word, a bright golden light covered the vampire. The vampire then became a giant golden sphere as rays of gold shot everywhere. Lin Huang closed his eyes against the glare. Three minutes later, he sensed the light was not as piercing anymore, he opened his eyes. The golden sphere that covered the vampire had faded away. The evolved vampire slowly appeared to him. The vampires appearance did not portray much of a difference. His hair was black before, but now, it was silver. His hairstyle remained the same, slicked back and neat, maintaining the boyish look he had before. However, his student attire was now a black cape which covered his entire body. "Your silver hair makes you look like a character from an anime. If I call you Kaneki, that would be copyright infringement. I shall call you Bai!" Lin Huang decided swiftly. He then walked to Bai and tapped a finger in between its eyebrows. The vampires body then broke into pieces and formed a crystal card on his palm. Lin Huang was excited to see that the color of the card had changed from white to green with Bais latest look. He turned the card around and noticed that there were changes to the cards information too: "Monster Card" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Monster: Vampire" "Combat Level: Iron 3 Star (Bronze 3 Star)" "Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Skill 2: Regeneration (Basic)" "Skill 3 (New addition): Boiling Blood (Basic)" "Status: Available to be summoned" "Card remarks: This is still useless!" As expected, the normal card was upgraded to a Rare card. There was a new skill added in the description. Just when Lin Huang was getting excited, he saw the remark at the bottom and asked, "Xiao Hei, can you give it some better remarks?" he asked, annoyed at what he saw. "No!" There was a giant exclamation mark next to the No on the black card. Goldfinger was serious. "Xiao Hei, your attitude will not get you any friends." "I dont need friends!" "Fine." Lin Huang gave up. "Lets see what this Boiling Blood does" "Boiling Blood (Basic): The vampires strength would be multiplied for 10 minutes. After Boiling Blood runs out, the vampire will become weak and will be unable to battle for an hour. "The skill is great but the after-effect is troublesome," Lin Huang thought. He scratched his head with worry and said," Ill try not to use it then, or else Id only have myself in jeopardy for the following hour." "Oh right, I still have one skill to be extracted!" Lin Huang suddenly recalled. "Xiao Hei, if I extract the skill now, would it disappear from the Monster Card?" "Skill extraction is just a way to gain skill from the Monster Card. It does not affect any attributes of the Monster Card itself." "Thats great," Lin Huang said, renewed hope in his voice. Lin Huang studied the three skills carefully. "The Blood Power is good, but with my short lifespan, it''s not encouraged. The function of Regeneration isnt too great but its better than nothing while Boiling Blood would just be a temporary help. Now that my basic combat strength is low, even if my strength is multiplied, it wouldnt help that much. Moreover, I would be exhausted for an hour, and that way I would die even faster," he said as analyzed his options thoroughly. "Xiao Hei, I would like to extract a skill." After some consideration, Lin Huang did not want to hesitate any further. "Skill extraction activated Randomly select a skill Random selection is done Congratulations, you received Blood Power (Level-2)" Xiao Hei announced. As he read the note, Lin Huang could sense something had been added to his body. He launched his Exclusive Card immediately: "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1" "Remark: You are still weak!" Lin Huang ignored the last remark and focused on the Blood Power (Level-2) on his skill. He was stunned to find out that he had achieved the vampires skill. "Now that the vampire is ready, its time to equip myself." 8 Stable Residence "Good morning! Delivery! Please sign for the parcels!" Somebody shouted at the door early in the morning. Lin Huang opened the door to a yellow bird that was about the size of his palm, standing at his feet. The yellow bird was called the Silvertongue Bird as they could learn up to a thousand languages. Although, their understanding of the languages were similar to the thought capacity of a six-year-old. After they learned a language, they could carry out logical conversation with humans for simple purposes. People trained the birds not only for deliveries but for their memory abilities too. In each of their feathers was a hidden storage space where it could contain an item that was as big as an ice cube. The bird saw the house door swing open and turned to face its tenant. It looked up at Lin Huang and said, "Good morning, Mr. Lin Huang. Your parcels are here, please sign your name here!" The bird then flapped its wings, and a few parcels fell from its body. A few of them were a few times bigger than the bird itself. It then shook its head, and a receipt popped out of its mouth. It flew to Lin Huangs shoulder and passed the receipt to him. The receipt listed all the details of the items in the parcel. After a quick glance, Lin Huang signed his name and passed the receipt back to the bird. As he returned the receipt, he grabbed a few candies from a bowl inside the house, next to the door. "For you," he said as he passed it to the bird. In the world he lived in, desserts were loved by many monsters and candy was the Silvertongue Bird''s favorite. Many families would prepare a few types of candy for them to thank them for safely delivering their parcels. Since he knew that he would have deliveries within the next few days, Lin Huang had prepared the candies much earlier. "Thank you!" The bird swept its wing over Lin Huangs palm, and the receipt and candies disappeared. It nodded to him and left. Lin Huang then moved the items into the house, closed the door and started examining them. "Iron-level sword x1" "Basic military survival sword x1" "Basic military water bottle x1" "Armored bullet (for GrayEagle17) x10" "500 bullets in 10 boxes" "Waterproof rain gear x1" "Night-vision glasses x1" "Binoculars x1" "Hemostatic agent x2" "Bandage x1" He spent 80% of his savings to purchase all the items. The sword alone cost him 10,000 credit points. The water bottle was made from a monster called a space gerbil. To be exact, it was made from its stomach as it had a space compression feature like no other. It could contain up to one ton of liquid and cost 8,000 credit points. The armor-piercing bullets cost 1,000 credit points every two bullets, a box of them cost him 5,000 credit points. The rest was a total of 2,000 credit points. It was the first time Lin Huang had ever spent so many credit points in one go. He thought they were worth it as the items might prove useful during the Reserve Hunter assessment. The syllabus of the assessment varied each time but the last one would always be a survival test in the wilderness. The items were meant for that task. "I''m impressed! The service was so quick. I just ordered them yesterday and theyve arrived today. I was just thinking if I should change the delivery address as we might be staying somewhere else during the renovations to repair the damage, but thats not necessary anymore," he said. After that, Lin Huang kept everything in his space storage unit. The application for the assessment could be done on the Hunter Association website via the Heart Network. While preparing for the assessment, he would have to participate at a medium foothold. There would be one assessment at each medium foothold every month. The nearest medium foothold would be foothold No.7C87, where the actual assessment would take place a week later. It would only take him two hours to arrive at the foothold if he flew with an eagle. That way, he would have ample time to prepare himself for the challenges ahead. Just when Lin Huang was thinking about what else he should prepare, someone knocked at the door. He was surprised! Who could it be this early, he thought. He opened the door and there stood a middle-aged man in a suit and a troop of men in their uniforms were in formation behind him. The man in the suit shook Lin Huangs hand with a smile, and said, "Mr. Lin Huang, we have received a renovation notice from the Union Government yesterday so were here to renovate your house. Let me know if there are any comments you would like to add to the renovation order, and we''ll start immediately." "I have no comments to add to the order. Just as long as the cracks and marks on the floor and walls are all sealed and covered properly, I''ll be content," Lin Huang replied, still a little taken back at the events that were transpiring. He did not expect them to operate at such a high rate of efficiency. He had just received a notification from the Union that the review was passed that morning and the very same day, their people were here. "If thats the case, we''ll do our best!" The man smiled and nodded while he gave Lin Huang a card. It was a hotel room keycard. He then continued, "The renovations will take around five days. It would not be more than five days, I assure you, so we have booked you into a hotel for the next five nights." "Thank you." Lin Huang took the keycard and was stunned when he saw the name of the hotel. The word Stable was written on the keycard, it was a keycard to the Stable Residence, the most prestigious hotel in the foothold! A standard room cost more than 1,000 credit points per night, which was almost the price of a room at bigger hotels in the larger footholds. He thought it was an unusual arrangement by the Union Government, but he did not think too much about it. "We will be operating out of your house for the next few days. If there are deliveries, we will forward them to the hotel. If theres anything valuable, you can take your time and bring them with you now. Let me know when you are ready." The man in suit informed him. "Valuable? Theres nothing really," Lin Huang said and shook his head. "Ill just grab some toiletries for myself and my sister, and you can come in," he continued, as he stepped aside to allow the men in. "No its alright, we will come in when youre done." The man in the suit insisted and stood by the door. Since the man insisted, Lin Huang shrugged and went upstairs to get their toiletries. After making sure there was nothing left behind, he went down to the ground floor and proceeded to the door. "Alright, its all yours now, Ill be leaving to the hotel then," Lin Huang said. He then passed a note to the man in the suit, and whispered, "This is the password for the main door. The room doors are all opened. The room keys are in the medicine box in the second floors bathroom, help yourself if you need them." He trusted the man in the suit but did not want his troop going about the place unattended. The man in the suit took the note, nodded, and assured him, "Dont worry, we will get things done to the best of our abilities." Wulin Town was a small town, with only four main streets. Lin Huang and his sister lived on Street 101. When the foothold was first built, people were hoping that the foothold would be expanded to more than 100 streets and became a B-grade large foothold, hence the reason they optimistically started their numbering at 101. After walking for 10 minutes, Lin Huang arrived at the Stable Residence. He was glad to see the open yard at the entrance that was embellished with oriental charm. He stood at the entrance and took a picture of the hotel. He then sent it to Lin Xin with a text, "The renovations on our house has started. We will be staying here for the next five days. Im in Room 302. Come here after school." "Brother, is this a prank?" Lin Xin replied immediately. Lin Xin was familiar with the hotels location as her route to school was not far away from the hotel. Sometimes she even came to the hotel gardens just to take photos of the flowers. She had always wanted to see how the rooms in the Stable Residence looked like, so she thought it was a prank by Lin Huang when he texted her. Lin Huang did not explain anything. Instead, he sent her an image of the keycards front and back to prove his statement. What Lin Huang did not notice was, as he was stepped into the hotel, there was someone watching him with a twinkle in his eye. "Hehe, here comes an interesting fella" 9 Luxurious Life Looking at the open yard at the Stable Residence, Lin Huang knew that the owner of the hotel was a man of style, just like Li Lang. When he met the owner, he then realized that the owner was far from what he imagined. The owner was an ordinary middle-aged man, who was short and plump. He was bald and look like a simpleton. It was hard to guess his age as he looked like he could have been in his 40''s or even his 60''s. He had fair skin that was marked with very few wrinkles from stress and age. He dressed very casually, with a bright, yellow short sleeve shirt that was one size too big for his body. He looked like he was wearing a short gown and beneath it was a large pair of blue pants that dangled a little below his knees. It looked like it too was one size too big. "Hello there, are you the guest who is checking into Room 302 today?" The bald man who stood behind the counter said with a pleasant smile. His teeth were slightly showing, and they were clean and neat. "Yes, you must be the owner of this hotel, are you?" Lin Huang took out the keycard for his registration and complimented, "Your yard is magnificent!" "Thanks. Its just a hobby of mine. I just fool around with the designs," the owner humbly said. Lin Huang was surprised to hear that. He thought they hired a designer to decorate the yard, but instead, it was done by this man who looked messy, at best. "Dear sir, your room is on the right-hand side, on the third floor. Walk all the way straight and you would arrive at your room." The man returned the keycard to Lin Huang and pointed to the stairs on the right side of the lobby. "Oh yeah, the guest in Room 301, across your room has a bad habit. He trains with his sword in the yard at dawn. I would like to apologize if he makes too much noise." "Alright, noted." Lin Huang did not think about it any further and walked upstairs. The stairs were made of mahogany. It was a spiral staircase where the right handle and railings were carved with very detailed patterns. The patterns were mainly rattan with leaves and flowers of a variety of sizes. They seemed very real from afar. There were slight creaks when Lin Huang stepped onto the stairs. He went all the way up to the third floor, following the directions the owner had given him. He turned right and walked all the way straight to his room. Shortly after, he arrived outside Room 302. He could not help but look at Room 301 as he was curious as to what kind of person stayed in there. Awhile later, he smiled to himself and shook his head, "Why would I care what others are doing. My priority should be preparing for the Reserve Hunter assessment!" He then slotted the keycard into the door of Room 302 and opened the door. He was stunned when he saw his room. "The Union Government surely provides great welfare," he thought. It was a luxurious suite. The living room alone was about 100 square meters large. There was a chandelier in the middle of the living room. Apart from the light bulbs, the rest of the feature was made of pure gold. It was gorgeous, and it looked really expensive. The style of the room was luxurious but low-key. Apart from the chandelier, the rest of the decorations were not flamboyantly constructed. Even the carpet was sewn with gold thread at the edges. If one did not look closely, they might think it was just a pattern made of solid golden strings. "This owner is so rich, even the carpet has gold edges" Lin Huang exclaimed as he squatted down to take a closer look. "Damn, thats real gold!" he said upon closer examination. In the world today, gold was also a rare metal mainly used for luxury decorations. It was expensive and cost 300 credit points per gram. The carpet was made of some unknown monsters skin and the gold edges of the carpet alone might have cost 100,000 credit points. Lin Huang then looked at the chandelier above him, "Is this lamp made of genuine gold too? If it is, it might cost more than 10 million credit points." he concluded. He took a good look at the entire room and sighed in awe. He could now indulge in this luxury hotel. "No wonder it cost more than 1,000 credit points to stay a night in the cheapest room in this hotel," he thought. The suite consisted of two rooms and one living room. Not only was the living room spacious, the size of the other rooms were not small either. There were two bathrooms in each room. Lin Huang chose to sleep in the bigger room on the left which had the amazing view of the yard right under the balcony outside. He pulled the curtain aside and pushed open the windows. There was a set of tables and chairs made of rattan with a hanging rattan bed on the side. Lin Huang walked to the corner of the balcony and looked beyond the railing. He could see the entire yard. From this angle, the garden was even more stunning. "When Im rich, Im getting a house with a yard and am surely going to get the owner to design it for me," Lin Huang smiled and thought to himself. While Lin Huang rested on the hanging bed in the afternoon, Lin Xin who had just finished school, ran straight to the Stable Residence. She could not wait to see how the hotel room looked like. But, when she reached, she did not dare step into the hotel when she arrived at the entrance. She then used her Emperors Heart ring to call Lin Huang. He picked up immediately and said, "Are you done with school?" "Yes, Im at the hotels entrance" Lin Xin said softly. "Come in, Room 302." Lin Huang got off the hanging bed, stood on the balcony and waved to Lin Xin. Seeing Lin Huang wave at her, Lin Xin finally believed that it was not a prank that Lin Huang was trying to pull on her. She waved at him and stepped in through the hotel gates. Passing through the yard, she arrived at the hotels reception. Seeing the owner looking at her, she explained immediately,"Im here with my brother. His name is Lin Huang." "Oh, the boy that I met just now. Hes in Room 302, its on the right-hand side of the third floor," The hotel owner nodded to her. "Thank you," Lin Xin said, stuck out her tongue and went up the stairs. When she arrived at the room, and the door was opened. Lin Xin looked at the room number so that she did not mistake it for another room. "302, this should be it." After confirming it, she walked into the room. "Wow!" She was impressed by the rooms decoration. "Isnt it beautiful?" Lin Huang walked to her with a glass of juice. "Yes!" Lin Xin nodded her head hard and looked at the juice in doubt. "Do we have to pay for the juice?" she questioned. "No, everything is included. Even the food and drinks in the room are free, Ive confirmed the fact with the hotel owner just now," Lin Huang smiled while he explained. Lin Xin then took the juice in relief. Her eyes brighten up after she took a sip. She then finished the juice in a few gulps and said, "Its delicious, brother, what is this?" "I dont know, the hotel owner said he made these drinks on his own. Its called calming tea. The main ingredient was from the juice of a monster plants root. I think its really nice too." Lin Huang had had a couple a glasses just that day. He was never a fan of sweet stuff but that drink was irresistible. "The food here is delicious too. Are you hungry? If you are, lets go for dinner now." Lin Huang had his lunch at the hotel earlier, that was how he knew that their food was so delicious. Lin Xin was not hungry before Lin Huang asked but now, she was so excited when she heard Lin Huang describe the scrumptious meals they served. They then went to the restaurant on the second floor. There were already a couple of guests at the restaurant when they arrived. Most of them seemed like hunters. They must have been part of the team that joined the hunt for the monsters the day before. It was a buffet dinner. All the dishes were served on small plates. The both of them were not really sure what most of the utensils and dishes were, but they were delighted as the dishes were warm like they had just come out of the oven. The both of them got themselves a small table and took plates of dishes to the table. Then they started to dig in. There were not many people in the restaurant. Most of them were chatting among themselves, while Lin Xin and Lin Huang were engrossed in the food. Suddenly, all the chatter stopped and the restaurant went completely quiet. Seeing everybody looking at the door, Lin Huang and Lin Xiang looked towards the same direction too. 10 Skill Card Pieces There was a tall man in black armor, standing in the doorway. He looked like he was about two meters tall. He was also bald like the owner of the hotel. His face was littered with stubble, and there was a long scar that stretched from the left side of his forehead all the way across the middle of his left eye to his chin. There was no white in his left eye too. It was a scar from a cut and his left eye was blinded. The scar and eye added ferocity to his face. With his height and his face, he gave the people around him a chill down their spines. When the tall man entered the restaurant, he stared at everyone. The people put their heads down immediately to avoid his gaze. Even Lin Huang avoided making eye contact with him. Lin Huang then patted Lin Xins back to get her to finish her food a little faster. Surprisingly, after getting himself a meal from the buffet, the man walked towards Lin Huang and Lin Xin. He then sat down alone at the table behind them. The seat that he sat on was directly across from Lin Huang. Lin Huang looked up and they accidentally locked eyes. But, neither of them looked away. Instead, they were checking each other out. Lin Huang then thought the man was very strange to have chosen him. Among the 10 people in the restaurant, Lin Xin excluded, he was sure that he was the weakest and the poorest one. There was no reason for the man to even notice him. "Perhaps Im the new face here that he has never seen before," Lin Huang concluded. Just when they both stood up after they finished their dinner, the man behind Lin Xin put down his cutlery and walked towards them. Lin Huang pretended he did not see him and pulled Lin Xin along while they quickly walked out of the restaurant. When they arrived on the third floor, the man was there too. When they turned right, the man followed. "Why are you following us?" Lin Huang frowned and turned around to question the man while Lin Xin was at his back. "Its the way to my room," the man said and glared at Lin Huang. He then walked passed them and continued on to the end of the corridor. He then stopped in front of Room 301 and went in. Lin Huang was embarrassed. He went back to their room together with Lin Xin. "Brother, that uncle looked so scary," Lin Xin said after the door was closed. "When I saw him running towards us just now, I thought he was a bad guy." "Dont worry. In broad daylight, even if he was a bad guy, we dont have to be scared. Besides, there are so many hunters in this hotel, what is there to be afraid of?" he said, hoping to calm her down. Lin Huang recalled the owner had told him that the guest in Room 301 was a strange man who did sword training in the garden in the middle of the night. "Hes really strange!" Lin Huang thought to himself. After dinner, Lin Huang stayed up watching old clips of the previous Reserve Hunter assessments. The Hunter Association would never release any complete assessment videos, only some outstanding takes. It was meant to be an advertisement to attract more people to apply for the assessment. Of course, Lin Huang was not there to look at the action. All he wanted was the related content linked to the assessment or the head examiners way of thinking which might be helpful for the assessment. He watched more than 20 videos and read some documents. Soon, it was midnight. Lin Xin went to bed after brushing her teeth. Lin Huang stood up and stretched his body, shut down the Heart Network and went to shower before bed. Minutes after he went to bed, Lin Huang heard someone closing a door in the corridor. He looked at the clock projected from his ring. It was 12 a.m. Lin Huang hesitated. He then sat up and pushed open the door to the balcony. He went to the balcony with his pajamas and looked to the garden beneath him. There were two lamps near the entrance of the garden which lit up the entire garden. Noises of bugs chirping came out of the bushes all around. Soon, the scar-faced man walked out of the hotel door. He walked to the grassy area on the left side of the garden with a black sword in his hand. Lin Huang had no idea of the price range of a sword like that. Oddly enough, his concern was for the grass that the man stepped on. "Does the fella destroy the grass every day, leaving the owner to fix it?" The man closed his eyes and stood where he was. Suddenly, he raised the sword in his right hand and swung it in a slanted way. Lin Huang was stunned. What he lacked right now was a powerful attack skill. He then kept his eyes locked on every move the man made. There were 18 styles to his technique. From what he performed, the technique seemed incredibly vicious. He did not notice that Lin Huang was watching in secret. He practiced three sets of the same technique, sheathed his sword, and then returned to the hotel. After memorizing the technique, Lin Huang practiced it with his bare hand. It was very unsatisfying. He then brought up his sword from the storage space and practiced for real. He had a really good memory and managed to repeat the 18 styles that were practiced by the man earlier perfectly. As he focused all his attention on practicing, he did not notice that the grass the man stepped on did not leave any trails at all. When Lin Huang was on the fifth set of training, he heard a notification jingle and a semitransparent box appeared in front of him. "Congratulations, you have gained a Skill Card The Great Sword Scripture piece x1" Lin Huang was excited when he saw the notification. It motivated him to practice even more. "I''m not sure how many pieces I have to collect to combine them into a Skill Card. But, I dont care, I will practice a few hundred times tonight. Im sure by then I will have a complete Skill Card!" However, nothing was rewarded after he practiced three more times. "Maybe I''ll be rewarded once every five practice sets?" He then practiced another two times, but still, there was nothing. "Whats happening?" Lin Huang thought it was strange. "Could this have nothing to do with the amount of practice? Then what could it be?" he wondered. With the doubt in mind, Lin Huang proceeded to practice until it was his eighth time. Suddenly, the notification box popped up again. "Congratulations, you have gained a Skill Card The Great Sword Scripture pieces x1" "I got another one. Could this be random?" Lin Huang could not help but ask Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, do the skill pieces come randomly?" "No, only when the effect of the skill exceeds 80% of the skill itself, that would be considered an effective practice set. For effective practice sets, you would be awarded skill pieces each time. Repetition would not get you more skill pieces unless the effect is 100%. Then you would get the skill pieces with proper repetition. The reply given by Xiao Hei was a great help to Lin Huang. "Thats it! That means the times when I did not get the skill pieces were due to my performance being less than the basic standard of 80% and I achieved the standard on the fifth practice. However, I did not get anything later on as I repeated the same standard for the next five times," he concluded. Now that he understood, Lin Huang became serious about his practices. He practiced all he could while recalling what he saw the man do in the garden. He wanted to get as many skill pieces as he could until he achieved the 100% skill effectiveness. He practiced over and over again. When dawn broke the next morning, Lin Huang had practiced for more than 100 times. He then went back to his room, exhausted. However, his chances of achieving the pieces were only at 20% and he only managed to get 21 pieces by the end of the day. 11 The Great Sword Scripture Part 1 The next morning, Lin Huang slept off most of the day in his room. He did not even notice Lin Xin leaving in the morning. He only woke up when Lin Xin came back from school. He then went for lunch with her on the second floor. At the restaurant, they bumped into the scar-faced man who stayed in Room 301. Lin Huang gave him a big smile while the scar-faced man nodded at him, expressionless. At night, Lin Xin went to bed and Lin Huang started to practice his sword skills on the balcony without waiting for the scar-faced man to appear. Just when he was on his third set, he saw the man practicing in the garden on ground floor. This time, Lin Huang did not blink his eyes while he watched the man practice his three sets. He got a clearer look at each of the step to perfect his technique. After the man went back to the hotel, Lin Huang started to practice according to what he just saw. That night, he practiced for more than 100 times and obtained 36 Skill Card pieces. Added to the Skill Card pieces he had gotten from the night before, he had a total of 57 of them. Unfortunately, that was still insufficient to form one Skill Card. On the third day, Lin Huang slept until the time Lin Xin came back from school in the afternoon. "Brother, are you suffering from insomnia these past few nights?" Lin Xin asked in concern. "Yea, a little bit," Lin Huang agreed to what Lin Xin said so that he did not have to explain the real reason to her. "Then you should sleep more during the day, I will bring dinner to you later," Lin Xin seemed happy she could do something for her brother. "Its alright, Ive had enough sleep, lets go eat together," he said. It was heartwarming to hear Lin Xins offer, but he did not want to trouble her. "Oh yea, brother, the hotel owner told me that there was a delivery from our house. I have brought it here," Lin Xin said while taking out the delivered box from her space storage. "Delivery? I didnt buy anything recently.." Lin Huang said while he looked at the box. It was a package from Division7 of the Hunter Association. He suddenly recalled that it might be the reward for killing the vampire the other day. "I wonder what reward the Hunter Association gives to people for killing a bronze-level vampire?" Lin Huang thought as he opened the box in anticipation. It was a black suitcase with an envelope attached to it. A four-digit code was required to open the suitcase. He tore open the envelope and took out the letter inside it. As he suspected, it was a thank-you note from the Hunter Association for killing the vampire. At the end of the note, it listed down the reward as well as the code to open the suitcase. Lin Huang exclaimed, "The Hunter Association is so generous!" The code was 7101, and Lin Huang inserted the code immediately. An identity verification page popped up. Lin Huang scanned his Emperors Heart ring to verify access. The suitcase then clicked open, and the items in it were overwhelming to him. "Is that a gun?" Lin Xin asked. "Yes. Its a BlackEagle33, the latest Iron-level gun from the Eagle Company. It can be converted into a pistol or sniper. Its the best iron-level gun on the market. The price is even higher than some of the Bronze-level firearms," Lin Huang said as he took a good look at the black gun. The rugged look of this gun was nothing less of a marvel, and it was much better than the Gray Eagle17 that he owned. The entire gun was made of black metal with silver stripes. It looked really cool. After a good look at it, Lin Huang put it back into the suitcase. A firearm needed Life Power to be effective, especially guns. Sufficient Life Power had to be inserted into the bore of the gun to create energy bullets. He had to put the BlackEagle33 aside as he did not have enough Life Power until he was a Bronze-level. "When Im a Bronze-level, with this BlackEagle33 for long-distance attacks and Blood Power for close-ranged attacks, my power would be increased," Lin Huang said. He was imagining the thought in his head. Although he was not ambitious, he knew his tactics very well. "But now, my priority would be combining the Skill Card pieces into a Great Sword Scripture Skill Card before the Reserve Hunter assessment. At least I can fight for myself instead of completely relying on the vampire." After dinner with Lin Xin, Lin Huang had a cup of calming tea in his room. He then moved the carpet, table, and chairs aside and started to practice with his sword bare-footed Although the balcony where he used to practice was more than two meters wide, it was still too small for him. Thus, he chose to practice in the living room instead. He moved the furniture aside so that he would not damage any of them as he knew he could not afford to replace them. Lin Xin was curious as to what he was doing but seeing him in the zone like that, she did not bother him and went back to her room to do her homework. Perhaps the living room was more spacious as Lin Huang felt the practice was smoother than before and the chances of him obtaining the Skill Card pieces were rising. He practiced until dawn for more than 100 times. His performance had greatly improved, and each practice was 60% better and he obtained 68 pieces in one night. He thought it was strange as the increased probability was unusual. On the first day, he did not even hit 20%. What was even stranger was he was not tired at all from practicing all night. At the condition his body was in for the past two days, he should be sleepy and exhausted after practice. He would fall right into a deep sleep on his bed. Yet, not only was he not tired, he did not feel like sleeping at all. "It feels like I took ecstasy pills" he mumbled to himself. He then thought about his diet as compared to the first day he arrived. He found the difference almost instantly. "Can it be the calming tea?" But I had it a few days ago, there was no effect of excitement and I slept very well that night" he wondered. Just then, he poured himself another cup of calming tea. While the sweet tea was flowing down his throat, he felt energized again,"I think its really the effect of this tea!" he concluded. Suddenly, he heard the door across his hotel room close. He then went to the balcony immediately to peek at the the scar-faced mans practice. This time, he memorized everything the old man did. After the man was done with his three sets of practice, Lin Huang practiced again in the living room by reenacting what he saw. Until 7 a.m., Lin Huang had again practiced for more than 100 times. There was an increase in his probability of more than 80%. He had obtained 88 pieces that night. Lin Xin woke up and saw him practicing in the living room. She thought he had just woke up, so without thinking much, she headed out to school. After breakfast, Lin Huang was still not sleepy. He felt refreshed and his body was not tired at all. He had another calming tea and continued practicing again. He wanted to know if he could increase his probability even more. From 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., Lin Huang had practiced for more than 100 times. When he obtained his 87th piece, he heard a notification. "You have accumulated a total of 300 Great Sword Scripture pieces. You can integrate them into a rare skill Great Sword Scripture Part 1. Do you want to carry out the integration?" 12 Boss Yu and Gu Yi "Its a Rare skill! Integrate it now!" Lin Huang agreed immediately after he received the notification. Soon, a green crystal card appeared on his Life Wheel. He retrieved the card just by visualizing it. The card was completely green. There was a strong man, standing against a harsh barren land, with a sword in his hand on the top of the card. It gave off the image that he was fighting to overcome a horrible beast in the desert on his own. Lin Huang stared at the image for a while before flipping it over to look at the description. "Skill Card" "Name of Skill: Great Sword Scripture (Broken)" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Skill: Sword" "Skill Level: Gold-rank" "Status: Available" "Remarks: This skill belongs to special skill without a rank limit, the power changes according to its host." "Card remarks: Passable" "Xiao Hei, it says here that the Great Sword Scripture is Rare. Does it mean that this is the complete Great Sword Scripture or do I have an incomplete one now?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "There are two parts to the Great Sword Scripture. The complete Skill Card is an Epic ranked card. Now that you only have part 1 of the card, the Skill Card remains broken, thats why it is Rare." Lin Huang was stunned at Xiao Heis explanation. He did not expect the Great Sword Scripture that he had secretly learned to be an Epic skill! He then crushed the card in his hand and it turned into a green energy that flowed into his body. There were changes to his Exclusive Card. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Skill 2: Great Sword Scripture (Sword skill) "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1" "Remark: You are still so weak!" "Although this Great Sword Scripture skill is so precious, the scar-faced man did not stop me from learning it. With his abilities, it is impossible he did not notice that I was learning it in my room," Lin Huang thought. There were two possibilities. Maybe he did not think the boy was able to grasp the skill, or he did it on purpose so that he could teach the skill to more people and share the knowledge with an interested ''spy''. "No matter what, I have to thank him in person. Maybe I can even ask him politely if he could teach me the second part. Hehe" While Lin Huang was dreaming about how impressive he would be at the Reserve Hunter assessment when he got the complete Great Sword Scripture, Lin Xin came back from school. "Brother, are you thinking about food? Youre drooling." Lin Xin said as soon as she saw his day-dreaming face when she entered the room. "Yes! When were rich, I will hire a cook from the Stable Residence to make good food for us every day!" Lin Huang said. "Please do!" Lin Xin was excited to hear Lin Huangs nonsense as she had really grown to love the food at the hotel. Lin Huang was relieved that Lin Xin believed his nonsense. After dinner, Lin Huang asked Lin Xin to go back to the room without him while he rang Room301s doorbell. the scar-faced man had a regular schedule for his meals and he was always at the restaurant at 6 p.m., finishing around 6.15 p.m. While for Lin Huang and Lin Xin, their timing was not fixed, so sometimes they ate earlier and sometimes, later. When they just arrived at the restaurant, the scar-faced man had finished eating so he should be back in his room right now. Soon, the door swung open. the scar-faced man looked at Lin Huang without expression, and said, "Can I help you?" "Thank you so much for teaching me the sword skill!" Lin Huang said sincerely while looking into his eyes. He then bowed low with respect to him. the scar-faced man remained expressionless. "I knew you were secretly learning. I did not teach you anything, whatever you have mastered, thats your own effort. Its none of my business," the scar-faced man answered, with what seemed like a chuckle. "No matter what, I want to thank you," Lin Huang insisted and stood in the doorway with a sincere smile on his face. To him, it did not matter if the man accepted his gratitude as long as he said what he had to say. However, looking at the mans cold reaction, Lin Huang gave up his thought of asking him about part 2 of the Great Sword Scripture and went back to his room. "I should ask him about part 2 after I have completed the Reserve Hunter assessment." Not long after he got back to his room, Lin Huangs ring vibrated. A stranger was asking to talk to him. In doubt, Lin Huang picked up the call. It was someone familiar. "Mr. Lin Huang, we have finished the renovations on your house. You can come back anytime you want to take a look. If theres anything youre not satisfied with, please contact me, and we will sort it out for you," the voice on the phone said. Lin Huang recognized the voice to be the leader in the suit that he met a few days back. "Sure, I will be back tomorrow at noon. I will return the room keycard to the hotel owner," Lin Huang agreed and nodded. After he hung up, Lin Xin walked out of her room,"Brother, do we have to leave tomorrow?" she asked with a look of disappointment on her face. "Yes, our home is done so theres no need to stay at the hotel anymore," Lin Huang answered. "Okay" Lin Xin sounded reluctant. She loved the food and drinks at the Stable Residence. Lin Huang noticed her reaction and said, "If you dont want to, then we shall stay for another day since we do have five days here. We can still stay here tomorrow and go back home the day after tomorrow." "Im not reluctant, but" Lin Xin did not want to admit her reluctance. "Its me who is reluctant then." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled,"Its set, we shall leave at noon the day after tomorrow." The days passed so quickly. Lin Huang continued to watch the scar-faced man when he practiced but no matter how much he practiced, he did not get any more Skill Card pieces. Therefore, he did not spend too much time practicing. Instead, he decided to get more rest before the assessment. On the morning of the sixth day, after breakfast, Lin Huang and Lin Xin returned to their hotel room and rearranged the carpet and furniture to where they had been before. They then bid farewell to the hotel owner. Boss Yu smiled while watching them leave. Suddenly, the scar-faced man appeared behind him. "Sir, I still dont understand what you see in that kid. He was just lucky that he killed the vampire. Moreover, looking at his broken Life Wheel, he looks like he only has two months left," he grumbled. "Gu Yi, you have known me for so long. Since when did I, Yu Qin misjudge a result?" "You never," he admitted. the scar-faced man was stunned and shook his head. He seemed unsettled, "But sir, you are a unique person. You''d never bother about anything thats from this world. Why would you want me to teach him the sword skill?" "Dont worry, I have my plans. You have spoken to him, what do you think?" Boss Yu asked. "His attitude isnt bad, but hes not a genius. Hes far from the Li Lang we met a few days back," Gu Yi said and shook his head while giving his comment. "Really? Let me ask you, how long did you take to learn part 1 of the Great Sword Scripture?" "Great Sword Scripture seems easy but in reality, it contains a massive amount of meaning to a swordsman. I practice more than 18 hours every day and I took 103 days to learn part 1," Gu Yi answered, a serious look on his face when he thought of the topic. "As talented as you are, it took you 103 days to learn part 1. How long do you think he would need to learn that?" Boss Yu looked at Gu Yi with raised eyebrows. "I think he would need at least two to three years," he mumbled. It was obvious that Gu Yi did not have faith in Lin Huang. "Ive told you that youre underestimating him. He only took three days to learn part 1 of the Great Sword Scripture," Boss Yu said and pointed three fingers in the air as Gu Yi''s mouth fell open in disbelief. A video of Lin Huang practicing in his room for the past few days appeared in front of them. Gu Yi was shocked when he saw the footage, and said, "How is that possible?" "Nothing is impossible," Yu Qin answered and waved his hand to dismiss the video. "Take two days, and clean up. We should leave soon." Gu Yi nodded without asking any further questions. He just sighed and said, "Alright" 13 I Have Not Registered Yet… Lin Huang did not know what happened at the Stable Residence after they left. With the luxury hotel experience behind them, the two of them did not know what to expect when they got home. However, as soon as they walked up to the entrance of their house, they were stunned speechless at the sight they saw. "Brother, is this our house?" Lin Xin said as she pulled Lin Huangs sleeve unsure of the reality that stood before them. Lin Huang too, was dumbfounded by the house that greeted them as it was completely different compared to their original home. From it being a small, double-story bungalow, it was now a three-story luxury villa. There was even a half covered, open-air garden on the top floor now, with a variety of flowers that cascaded over the balcony. Looking at the house number which was still the No.23, Lin Huang confirmed that the new house was in fact, their home. They could not recognize their own house after the major renovations. They keyed in their password at the door and entered the house. Most of the original structure in the house remained the same, but the rest of the place was completely different. The original terrazzo floor now had a wooden finish which seemed very expensive. The hanging lamp on the ceiling was now a luxurious chandelier. The cabinets in the kitchen were brand new, with new sets of matching utensils already arranged systematically, in each drawer. There was a carpet that seemed to be made of monster leather that they had never seen before. Even the couch, chairs and dining table were new. The toilet bowls in the bathrooms had been changed too. Furthermore, the surprises continued as they ascended to the second floor. Their room which was meant for two people was now a single room. It was more than twice the original size and the balcony was three times bigger. The third floor that was added had been designed as a bedroom, with a huge bed and a bathroom. Above the third floor was the half covered open-air garden they had seen from the entrance. Not only were there flowers, there was also a complete set of outdoor furniture which consisted of a patio umbrella, a rattan table, and chairs, as well as a hammock. Lin Huang knew very well that such renovations would have cost more than the price of two or even three houses combined. Now that he thought about it, it was really strange. He then called the middle-aged man on the phone to get to the bottom of this. Soon the man picked up his call and laughed, "Mr. Lin, are you happy with the renovations?" "In this foothold, we were not the only ones that had a monster invade and destroy our property and possessions. Ive seen the renovations on the other houses and none of them were as privileged as our house. Not only were we given new sets of furniture, we even have an extra floor! This is ridiculous. Who are you really? What is your intention?" Lin Huang asked, his mind buzzing with the thought that this case was not that simple. "Of course, you are Sir Lis friend, we would have to do our best for you," the middle-aged man answered, not at all minding and revealing the fact that he knew about Li Lang. "Sir Li? Lin Huang was stunned. "By that, do you mean Li Lang?" He continued. "Yes, thats Sir Li. He was the one who submitted your damage report. It was important to our superior, which is why when we were told to complete this task properly, we spared no effort and expense," the man explained. "What kind of status does Li Lang hold exactly?" "You didnt know? His father is one of the vice presidents of Division7 of the Hunter Association, while his mother is the councilwoman of the Union Government of Division7," the mans said, another shocking revelation to Lin Huang that day. The mans superior thought that Lin Huang was Li Langs friend and through this ''act of kindness'', they wanted to bridge the gap between them for the benefit of their relationship. What they did not know was, Lin Huang and Li Lang had just met once before, and there was no friendship between the two of them. Of course, Lin Huang did not tell him that or else he might have to pay for the renovations which he most definitely could not afford. He hung up the phone and cleared his mind of all thoughts about the renovations. After settling into their new house, he started to prepare for the Reserve Hunter assessment. That day was a school holiday for Lin Xin. After having lunch together, Lin Huang dropped by the Credit Bureau and traded the Life Crystals given to him by Li Lang earlier for 100,000 credit points. He then credited 20,000 credit points to Lin Xin and said, "The Reserve Hunter assessment will take about 10 to 15 days. Please take good care of yourself and spend the money if you need to. When I become a hunter, there will be more opportunities for me to make more than enough money for the both of us." "Yes, brother. You will surely pass the assessment!" Lin Xin cheered. She had a lot of faith in Lin Huang. Next, they arrived at the Eagle Station. Lin Huang patted Lin Xins head as they said their goodbyes. He then paid for and rode off on an eagle that he picked from the station stables. Lin Xin watched Lin Huang take off and stayed until he was high up in the clouds. She then turned around and left the station. On the eagle, Lin Huang was amazed at the variety of monsters in the world he lived in. This eagle had four limbs from the feline family, where its claws could extend as it wished. Its ability to jump and run was stunning too. Apart from its limbs, the rest of its body was the same as a raptor. It had the face of an eagle and a pair of wings that were eight meters wide. Such a creature did not only have the advantages of a superior body structure, it also had full control of the wind, which made it one the fastest moving monsters among the rest. A few centuries ago, they were major headaches to humans in the lower monster class. Whenever they headed out, they traveled in large packs. With their agility and powerful attacks, they easily destroyed some of the footholds. Fortunately, humans adapted to the eagles combat style and the tables were turned on the monsters. Once that happened, ever since a few hundred years back, the eagles were captured and tamed by humans and had become one of the most common forms of transportation in the world these days. The eagle that Lin Huang rode on was not the largest one but it had the best feathers. The feathers on its abdomen were of a slight golden colored tone. In comparison to the other birds, it was unusually good-looking and also seemed like it was well fed. The normal flying speed of an eagle was 700 kilometers per hour. At full speed, its agility would multiply! However, it would only fly at full speed when it was running for its life. Under such flying speeds and conditions, it would have been torture for the eagle to withstand that speed along with a human on it''s back. Therefore, there was special defense equipment installed on the saddle pad which would become a transparent defense shield which protected the rider in case of an emergency. The eagle took less than two hours to fly from No.7D101 to No.7C87. Lin Huang got out of the Eagle Station, opened the map in his ring and walked towards the Hunter Association division. Not long after, he arrived at the division. There were already so many people waiting around, it looked a massive crowd waiting for a rock concert to start at the entrance of the building! C-grade footholds belonged to the medium foothold category where the population was a few million people. Perhaps there were tens of thousands of hunters around. Placing the hunters from the smaller footholds nearby, who were there to submit their missions, along with the ordinary people hustling about their day, the traffic in the area would have naturally been hectic. After quite a struggle, Lin Huang walked into the entrance of the division. Just when he entered, a young lady approached him. The lady looked like she was in her 20s. She was dressed in the Hunter Association uniform. She greeted him with a wide smile, and said, "Hi sir, how may I help you today?" "Im here for the Reserve Hunter assessment," Lin Huang answered. "Alright, please follow me," The lady smiled at Lin Huang again, and brought him to a meeting room. She then gestured, "You may go in." "Thank you." Lin Huang nodded and pushed open the door. He was stunned as there were more than 100 people in the meeting room. "So many people have registered today? Looking at the amount of people in attendance, it looks like there might be more than a thousand people by tomorrow," Lin Huang wondered while he found himself a seat at the back. Soon there were more people coming into the room. A fatty sat on his left with a vacant seat between them. The fatty was very friendly. He then whispered to Lin Huang with a smile,"Its awesome that you could pass the preliminary round when youre not even iron-level, bro. Did you take a shortcut somewhere to get here?" "Passed the preliminary round? Do you mean all of you have already registered?" Lin Huang looked at the fatty in disbelief. "Of course, or else how would we know that we have to be here today at 4 p.m. for the assessment content and rules from the examiner?" The fatty thought the question Lin Huang asked was strange. He then looked at him with suspicion in his eyes. "Dont tell me youre here without a registration?" he asked. "Erm" Before Lin Huang could even answer him, a lady in her heels walked up to the podium. The noisy meeting room suddenly fell silent as everyone''s attention was stolen by the woman on the stage. It was a lady with a strong aura about her. She had a ponytail with a short skirt that showed her long legs beautifully. She wore a pair of black stilettos that was nearly 20 centimeters high. She was tall herself, at at least 1.7 meters, and with that pair of heels, she was almost two meters tall, and everyone in the meeting room was beneath her in comparison. Although, what was most attractive about her was not her height, but her breasts that were hidden in her buttoned-up white shirt. Her breasts were not showing at all, but the jiggling they had when she walked was sufficient to seduce all the men in the meeting room. This lady could have been described as a bombshell. "Witch Yi Yeyu lives up to her reputation" The fatty said, slurping up drool as he spoke. Looking at his behavior, Lin Huang sat quietly, inching more to his right to avoid any spit-fire from the fatty. The lady looked over the crowd and stopped when her eyes landed on Lin Huang as he was the only one in the room who was not even an iron-level applicant. She did not say anything, but instead, went on to introduce herself. "Hi, I am Yi Yeyu, the main examiner of your assessment. In this assessment, there are 133 people who have passed the preliminary rounds. Now, the time that I had set, which was 4 p.m. in the afternoon has arrived, there are now 127 people here. The six people who are not here have been eliminated from the assessment," she said in a loud, stern voice. "I will be telling you the rules of the assessment tomorrow. I will only say it once so please pay attention. Also, when Im speaking, please keep quiet. If you have any questions, you can ask after I have finished speaking," she said. "Tomorrow at 8 a.m., all of you will gather here in this meeting room. Those who are late will be eliminated. You are not allowed to bring any equipment that is more than iron-level, no drugs and no other prohibited items in your storage space. Before the assessment starts, all the prohibited items will be temporarily confiscated by my authorities. If theres anything valuable which you do not trust us to keep an eye on, please keep them with someone else until you leave later on," she continued. "The concrete content of the assessment wont be revealed at this moment. After everyone is gathered tomorrow, I will reveal that," she said to the anxious hall of eyes that stared at her. The messages from Yi Yeyu was short and sweet. After she was done, she looked at the crowd again and asked, "If you have any doubts, you can ask now." Everyone in the room looked around at each other. None of them dared to say anything. At the back of the meeting room, a hand rose up slowly and It was Lin Huang. "What questions do you have? Do tell me," Yi Yeyu asked Lin Huang with her chin up ready for his question. "Erm I havent registered myself yet. Is it too late to register now?" Lin Huang asked from the back of the room. Over 100 people who were present in the room frowned when they heard what Lin Huang said. 14 The Beginning of the Assessmen As it happened, the registration for the assessment was not an obstacle to Lin Huang at all. It was just a preliminary screening of sorts to avoid too many participants in the Assessment stage. Since Lin Huang was already in the meeting room, to Yi Yeyu, his presence did not make a difference to the assessment. From the way he looked, she thought he would definitely be eliminated during the assessment anyway for his abilities were not going to save him. So, to avoid embarrassing him, she let his registration mess-up slide. Lin Huang did not even have the opportunity to show Yi Yeyu that he was an Imperial Censor and before he knew it, the registration was completed. "Bro, youre so lucky! When you raised up your hand and said you havent registered, I thought the f*cking witch would throw you out," the fatty laughed and got even friendlier than before as he shook Lin Huangs hand. He then said, "Lets get to know each other. Im Yin Hangyi, what about you?" "Lin Huang, pleased to meet you," Lin Huang replied, as he could not avoid the guys friendliness and he did not seem skeptical to it anyhow, so he shook his hand. "Youre not even iron-level and youre here for the assessment. Such audacity!" Yin Hangyi patted Lin Huangs shoulder. "Just trying my luck. Maybe I''ll pass, you never know," Lin Huang answered with asmiled. He had no plans of revealing his identity as an Imperial Censor to the guy, of all people, so he kept quiet about it. After chatting for awhile, Lin Huang said goodbye to Yin Hangyi. If he did not leave, he might have had to talk to the fatty forever. After dinner, Lin Huang took a stroll at the night market to calm his thoughts. Then he went back to the hotel and slept early in preparation for the day to come. The next morning, he went to the meeting room right after breakfast. The head examiner Yi Yeyu seemed to despise people who were late, so he did not want to lose his eligibility to the assessment because of tardiness. As it turned out, the strict warning had everyone else on edge too. Nobody was late on the second day. The 127 people who joined the meeting on the first day were all there before 7:50 a.m. At exactly 8 a.m., the Head Examiner Yi Yeyu arrived. This time, she wore apair of long, black pants and a short sleeve white shirt. Her style was a little different from the first day but no matter how hard she tried to cover up her voluptuous body, her curves could still be seen. All the male members present were young and horny at the sight of her. Most of their eyes followed her movements, but they did not focus on her face. Instead, their stares were centered on her breasts. Yi Yeyu walked to the podium, looked at the crowd and started to speak. "Everybody is here. Thats great! Now I will talk about the syllabus of the assessment today," she started. "The theme of the assessment is - Survival. As a professional hunter, we will always encounter horrible environments and powerful monsters. Thus, survival is a topic that all professional hunters should master. One who does not master this will surely die tragically in the end," she warned. "The location of assessment is a wilderness 330 kilometers away from the foothold No.7C87 - Pure Gold Desert. The objective of the assessment is simple. All you guys have to do is enter Door A to the Pure Gold Desert, walk across the desert that is 1,500 kilometers long and within 15 days, you must arrive at foothold No.7D121 or be eliminated," she said. As Yi Yeyu spoke, she projected a 3D map showing the location of the starting and ending points. "You are not allowed to bring food and water during this assessment. You would have to obtain them in the desert," she continued. Everyone was stunned at what she said at the end. Even Lin Huang was upset. He had prepared a ton of water and snacks yesterday for the assessment. "Later, each and every one of you will be given an emergency communication device once we have inspected your storage spaces. If any of you cannot handle the challenge, press the rescue button to give up the assessment and you will be saved, and subsequently eliminated. Of course, if youre not able to arrive at your destination foothold No.7D121 within 15 days, that will be considered as failing the assessment," she explained. "That''s all for the assessment briefing. If you have any questions, please ask now." Yi Yeyu asked with a sinister grin on her lips. "Miss examiner, looking at the terrain of the 3D map that you showed us, our destination No.7D121 isnt connected directly to the Pure Gold Desert. Instead, its blocked. That means, the area of the assessment isnt only a desert, but it will also include climbing the mountain. Am I right?" A man in glasses asked. "Youre very observant, yes, climbing the mountain is part of the challenge and you have to do it with your bare hands. The equipment for climbing in your storage space will be confiscated later," Yi Yeyu said, as her smile widened at the thought. The crowd groaned again. Yin Hangyi who sat next to Lin Huang was getting more and more upset. "Do they plan to fail each and every one of us?" The fatty mumbled. "Are there any more questions?" Yi Yeyu asked. She seemed to be satisfied with the briefing of the assessment that she had presented. "Miss examiner, I''ve done some research on the mountains. Its called the Snowy Goddess Mountain, located right behind foothold No.7D121. Its a level-2 wild zone. Based on records of the area, bronze-level monsters have been sighted there. In such a wild zone, isn''t it unsafe to carry out the assessment... there?" A voice at the back of the room asked. As it turned out, it was Lin Huang who asked the question. Everyone was shocked when they heard the fact. Yi Yeyu was stunned. She frowned and said, "The entire zone of the mountain is in fact, a level-2 wild zone. However, theres one mountain around there thats without bronze-level monsters. So that place is considered a level-1 wild zone. All of you should climb that mountain instead. I''ll get someone to mark it down on the trail," she answered. As it seemed, she had intentionally left out the information to increase the difficulty of the assessment and decrease the passing rate. She did not expect Lin Huang to point it out, but now she had to mark the safer trail for everyone to use. If she did not do that and insisted everyone to take the assessment as it was, the results of the assessment would be invalid if an incident was brought up to the management of the Hunter Association. A level-2 wild zone was prohibited as an assessment field. "Are there any more questions? Please do not hesitate to ask. If not, were ready to go." Just when Yi Yeyu was done speaking, a few of them raised their hands but their questions were irrelevant. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was scratching his head thinking about the difficult situations within the assessment. "The lack of food and water would be the biggest issue. As we go, we still have look for a source of water. Moreover, in the desert, there are many deadly monsters that we should be aware of. Above all, people are the most dangerous beings that we should watch out for. There will be many of them who will try to steal our food and water. By my calculations, the 1,500-kilometer desert trail can be completed in 13 days. Climbing with your bare hands would take more than a day, I might need to reserve two days for that" Lin Huang said, in discussion with Yin Hangyi. "Its now 8:20 a.m. Let me bring you to the assessment point," Yi Yeyu said and waved into the air. Suddenly, a green wooden door appeared. She then pushed open the door. "Please queue up. After you passed through the door, please wait and dont move around the place!" she warned. "Ooo! A Dimensional Relic!" the fatty Yin Hangyi exclaimed when he saw the door. "Whats a relic?" "Youre so ignorant. A relic is an extremely rare treasure that surpasses gold-ranked equipment. If one has killed a transcendant monster, there''s a possibility that they would get it. A Dimensional Relic''s rarity is even more valuable than some weapon relics. It seems like this witch isnt just a hot simpleton after all," Yin Hangyi explained in all seriousness. Lin Huang became even more curious about the world he knew. The rank after gold-ranked equipment is transcendant? He was impressed at the thought of it. How powerful can the strongest combat rank be? More and more people passed through the door. Soon the queue got shorter and it was finally Lin Huang and the fattys turn to enter. As he stepped into the door, he felt a slight dizziness and in the blink of an eye, he was in a desert. "Thats amazing!" Lin Huang exclaimed. 15 Sand Monster There were staff members from the Hunter Association already waiting at the entrance to the desert. When all the members who joined the assessment arrived, the head examiner, Yi Yeyu followed through behind them all. "Now please conform to the checking of your space storage facilities with our staff," Yi Yeyu said and then nodded to the 12 staff who were there waiting for her instructions. The 12 staff started to check each and every storage compartments. "All weapons, combat, defense and other assistance equipment that are above iron-level are prohibited. Aside from healing-related medication, all medicines including septic divisor that have poisonous effects on the human body are prohibited as well. Equipment that has been poisoned must be cleaned. Those who refused to clean them will have your equipment confiscated," she continued. "Also, all food and water are prohibited. Climbing equipment is prohibited too" Yi Yequ announced loudly while walking back and forth in front of everyone. Soon, the 12 staff members had done their job. Most of the things that were confiscated were food and water. Some of them brought bronze-level equipment and some of the weapons were soaked in septic divisor. They were asked to clean their weapons on the spot. The same happened to Lin Huang when they checked his storage space. His food and water were confiscated. The military water bottle that he bought was almost taken away too but he poured out all the water in front of the staff before they did. They found Lin Huangs armored bullets too. The staff confirmed the item with Yi Yeyu before returning the bullets to him. Yi Yeyu thought it would not make a difference if he had them or not since the bullets were meant for normal guns. Even at a short-distance, the impact would hardly be of any significance against bronze-level weapons. Moreover, there were only 10 bullets, so the bullets were returned to him. When the staff returned the bullets, Lin Huang was relieved as it was one of the few ways he had to protect himself. When the inspection was completed, it was already past 9 a.m. After all the staff had confirmed that nothing had been missed out, a communication device was given to every one of them. Yi Yeyu then spoke again, "The stuff that was confiscated will be kept safely with our authorities. When the assessment is over, we will return them to you." "The time is now 9:23 a.m., Im giving you guys an extra seven minutes. Those of you who arrive at the destination within 15 days before 9:30 a.m. will pass the assessment." "Before the assessment officially begins, I have some bad news for the lot of you. During the assessment, the internet connection, communication and map positioning guidance functions on your Emperors Heart Ring will not be available. The only thing that you can use will be the storage system," Yi Yeyu said, with a hearty laugh once she finished. Her breasts jiggled vigorously, distracting the participants for a few moments, before drawing them back to the harsh truth she had revealed. What Yi Yeyu said caused the crowd to groan again. Even Lin Huang did not expect her to be that sneaky. On the other hand, Yi Yeyu as the head examiner seemed to enjoy the torture she inflicted. With a grin, she said, "Now, let the assessment, BEGIN!" she shouted. Just when she was finished speaking, some of them ran well ahead of the rest. Those who were groaning followed too. Lin Huang who was the weakest among them all was the slowest. Instead of running like everybody else, he walked at his normal pace. The fatty greeted him and sprinted away following the people ahead. Soon, Lin Huang was left behind. However, he did not accelerate. He continued walking at his own pace, studying his surroundings as he went. Watching Lin Huang getting further and further away, the head examiner Yi Yeyu shook her head and said, "I thought there was something special about that kid. It seems like hes just an ordinary person. At this speed, it would be amazing if he could walk 40 kilometers in a day. I dont think he can even finish half of the journey within the given 15 days." In truth, it was not that he did not want to follow the others pace as they ran off in the wilderness. The fact was that he was not able to keep up anyway. He was just an ordinary person. His physique and body structure were completely different from those who were at an iron-level. If he was to run like those fellas who were iron-level, he would collapse within half a day. The environment in the desert was so harsh, that if he pushed himself too hard, he would have to give up the assessment if he even planned on surviving it. Lin Huang had been researching the Pure Gold Desert on his Heart Network since the head examiner Yi Yeyu gave out the assessment area and content that morning. He had a plan in mind to survive the desert. Within the 15 days, he needed at least two days to climb the alps so he had 13 days to cross the 1,500 kilometers desert. That said, he needed to walk more than 115 kilometers per day. That did not include the time he spent searching for food and a source of water. Lin Huang knew very well that the desert was not a simple flatland. When he was on earth, he had traveled to a desert before. The fastest an ordinary person could walk in the desert would be four kilometers per hour. A few well trained others could walk five kilometers per hour. Moreover, he would need to rest at night. He would be pushing his limits if he was to walk 50 kilometers per day. Within 15 days, no matter how he pushed himself, he could only finish half the journey. An iron-level person had a body that was a few times stronger than ordinary people. Their strength and tolerance were better than ordinary people and they could even run up to a 100 kilometers per day. That would be impossible for Lin Huang. Therefore, he had a plan that involved monsters in the desert. Especially those that moved fast which he could use as a vehicle. With his ability to obtain Skill Card pieces and his skill of summoning monsters, he had memorized the locations of the footholds where the monsters he needed would reside. Although the accumulation of Skill Card pieces would take time, the native creatures that resided in the desert could move much faster than humans. The time that he spent on accumulating Skill Card pieces would be made up by the monsters high-speed movements through the desert. Lin Huangs headed in a very different direction from those who were ahead of him. His goal was not the destination, but the foothold with a Sand Monster that he had seen on the map. The Sand Monster belonged to a branch of human giants. They were huge, very fat and they consumed a diet consisting of a variety of flesh and meat very regularly. They looked similar to humans as they walked with two legs. They were more like a deformed human with some of them having two or three heads and some with only one head with additional mouths or eyes. Iron-level Sand Monsters were at least five meters tall and the tallest one could be up to 10 meters. They were easily a few times stronger than iron-level humans. Lin Huang had his eye on an iron-level Sand Monster, and as they lived in groups, the monstrosity of that sort would not be hard to find. What he needed to do at the moment was accumulate a complete Monster Card from killing many monsters at once. Another reason that aided his plan was that the Sand Monster''s foothold was very near the A-entrance of the Pure Gold Desert. Lin Huang followed the planned route for half a day without water. Finally, when the sky was dark, he arrived at the foothold where the Sand Monsters lurked. Lin Huang knew earlier that there was a source of water at the location, but didn''t see it upon his arrival. Soon after, he thanked his lucky star when he saw a freshwater lake not far from the foothold. 16 Changes In The Life Wheel Lin Huang secretly got a bottle of water from the lake. He took a few sips and closed the bottle, feeling energized while waiting for the night to come. The Sand Monsters had terrible vision. Their body structure allowed them to resist heat and cold so they were not afraid of the sun as well as sandstorms. Because of this, they usually hunt during the day. However, the range of their vision dropped to the extent that they could not see past 100 meters at night. Unless they were hungry, they would prefer not to hunt during the night. The sky was dark not long after Lin Huang went into hiding. It was an eerie night and there were barely any stars in the sky. It was perfect for hunting. Lin Huang ran towards the foothold where the Sand Monsters were moving at full speed. He had observed the foothold for awhile, noticing more than 30 Sand Monsters here. None of them were taller than 10 meters and they were all iron-level. The Sand Monsters intelligence was not high but perhaps they had seen the humans foothold, there were fences that surrounded it. Mimicking it, they built simple shacks for the place where they slept. With more than 30 shacks put together, the area looked like a miniature human village. Lin Huang walked around the fence, some of the Sand Monsters were sleeping and loud snores could be heard. He locked his target on one Sand Monster that was five meters tall. From the size of the Sand Monster, it seemed to be iron-level. It was playing with its toes in its own shed. It then licked its fingers after playing with its toes, Lin Huang was disgusted. He started to think that it might be a mistake to summon such an idiotic monster with his Monster Card. Time was running out, soon he forgot about what he was thinking. He picked up a stone from the ground and tossed it towards the disgusting monster through the fence. The Sand Monster was hit by the stone, it then picked up the stone in confusion and looked at the direction where the stone was tossed. He saw there was something behind the fence. Although the distance was not far, it could not see clearly through the fence. It then stood up with his three meters long bat and walked towards the fence. The Sand Monsters appetite was huge. They could usually eat a lot so they would never let go of food that was sent their way. Looking at the Sand Monster approaching him, Lin Huang let out a grin behind the fence. Soon the Sand Monster arrived at the fence, it looked down and locked eyes with Lin Huang. It was shocked and immediately, it swung its bat at Lin Huang. Lin Huang instantly ran towards the dune that was not far away. The Sand Monster destroyed the fence with its bat and chased after Lin Huang. To the Sand Monsters, human flesh was tender and delicious. It almost drooled the moment it saw Lin Huang. eeing its food run away, it did not want to let go. Just when Lin Huang passed through the dune, the Sand Monster approached and it swung its bat towards Lin Huang. Suddenly, blood was spilled. The monster stopped moving, its head fell from its neck. Blood gushed out all over the place, the headless body fell straight behind the dune. A shadow appeared next to the Sand Monsters dead body. It was a young man with white hair, his eyes which turned red were now black. "Thats amazing, Bai!" Lin Huang gave the young man a thumbs up. Bai who was on iron-level rank-3 was near to bronze-level since his evolution the last time. Under the Blood Power boost, chopping off the monsters head was a piece of cake. "Ding!" A notification came from Xiao Hei, a semi-transparent notification box popped out upon Lin Huang. "Congratulations, you obtained a Monster Card - Sand Monster piece x1" At the same time, a huge amount of white Life Light spread out from the Sand Monsters dead body into Bai. "I almost forgot, Life Light would be given when monsters kill each other." Although Lin Huang knew about this earlier, it was his first time witnessing it. In this world, the Life Light among monsters could be seized mutually where the remained Life Light of the dead monster would be transferred automatically into the monster that killed it. As the human body was unique, it would only absorb a part of Life Light from monsters automatically during the upgrade of ability. Such process was called a Life Light Baptism. Under other circumstances, unless one possessed some technique to absorb Life Light, the Life Light would fade away while nobody could obtain it. As Bai absorbed the Life Light from the dead Sand Monster, there were changes inside Lin Huangs body. The third column on the Life Wheel in his body that was dim started to shine. Soon the third column was fully lit up and the fourth one started to light up as well. The fifth one followed, and then the sixth Until the 26th column was lightened up, the Life Light that was spreading out of the dead Sand Monster stopped. The Life Light on Bais body faded as well and the changes in Lin Huangs body stopped soon after. "What just happened?" Lin Huang was shocked. He did not expect the Life Light in his body to increase out of nowhere. Within seconds, his Life Wheel increased from three columns to 28 columns. One column in Life Wheel usually represented one year of life. Since Lin Huang was born with a broken Life Wheel, the rate at which his life decays was 10 times faster than ordinary people. He was only left with three columns on his Life Wheel and the third column was already dim. He only had slightly more than two months more to live. But now, he suddenly had 28 columns on his Life Wheel. He was relieved from the fear of death. However, the good news was strange to him. "Xiao Hei, does the addition of my Life Light had anything to do with Bai killing the Sand Monster?" Lin Huang took his guess. "When you summon a monster from your Monster Card, your Life Wheel is synchronized with your monster. 50% of the Life Light would be absorbed into your Life Wheel when the monster is killed. If the Life Wheel of the monster you summoned is full, 100% of the Life Light would be given to you." Lin Huang was relieved after he heard Xiao Heis explanation as now he knew that there was no problem with his body. "I could get more than 20 columns of Life Light from killing one Sand Monster. So if I were to kill a few more, my Life Wheel would overflow!" Lin Huang was excited as he thought to himself. He then went to the back of the dune and walked towards the foothold where the Sand Monsters were 17 Multiple Kills After passing through the dune, Lin Huang saw two of the Sand Monsters standing at the destroyed fence from afar. One of them was seven meters tall while the other was eight. The shorter one seemed to be an iron-level rank-2 while the taller one was most probably an iron-level rank-3. Lin Huang hesitated for a moment but he sprinted towards the direction of the two Sand Monsters. The duo who was about to fix the fence under the night sky could not see Lin Huang clearly, all they could see was that something was approaching them from afar. They opened their eyes in an attempt to try to get a better look at what was coming for them. When Lin Huang was in between the dune and the foothold, the duo could finally see him. Seeing that it was a human, they imagined how delicious he would be and they ran through the fence to chase after Lin Huang. Lin Huang turned around and ran immediately. Just when he ran through the dune, the duo was near him. They did not bring any weapons and they were trying to grab Lin Huang with their bare hands. Lin Huang got down and rolled down the dune. Blood splashed through the air. The head of the shorter Sand Monster was chopped off, its body fell straight to the ground. Bai attacked the second monster without missing. His height was the same as the Sand Monster. His Blood Power wings were his weapon, which he swung towards the taller Sand Monster. The death of the shorter monster served as a warning for the taller monster. It saw a red stroke flashing in the air so it used its hand to block the attack although he could not see what was attacking it. Usually, such a block would work seeing how tough and thick with high defense the Sand Monsters skin was but now that Bais power was similar to a bronze-level, with the help of his Blood Power wings that were comparable to a bronze-level weapon, the Sand Monsters hands were chopped off. The attack was not as effective as Bai wanted it to be as the monsters head was still there. In immense pain, the Sand Monster let out a loud groan. Lin Huang attempted to stop Bai but it was too late. The distance between the dune and the foothold where the Sand Monsters resided was less than 10 meters. If the monster were to scream, it would definitely attract the rest of the Sand Monsters. By then, not only would the hunt fail, he might even lose his life. Suddenly, another slash flashed through the air, slicing through the Sand Monster''s mouth directly to the back of its head. The pupils of the giant Sand Monsters dilated as the Blood Power saber was removed from its mouth. Without any support, its body fell onto the floor. Bai kept his Blood Power saber, the redness in his eyes faded and he returned to his innocent young look. Lin Huang was relieved, it was so close. If Bai had been a second slower, they might be dead by now. If they were to be surrounded by more than 10 iron-level Sand Monsters in such an environment, a bronze-level hunter might not be able to make it. Xiao Heis notification popped up. "Congratulations, you have obtained Monster Cards - Sand Monster pieces x 2" As the notification popped up, white Life Light spread out from the two dead bodies of the Sand Monsters into Bais body. Lin Huang looked at the Life Wheel in his body. The columns started to light up again. This time, it increased from 28 to 85 columns straight away. Even with his accelerated decay in his lifespan which was 10 times faster than ordinary people, Lin Huang could now live for more than eight years. He calmed himself down and started to plan things out. From his experience earlier, he did not want to risk his life any further. Bai performance was beyond Lin Huangs wildest expectations. In every fight, he managed to kill every Sand Monster in a single shot before they could even make a single noise. Just like this, with Bais help, Lin Huang killed three Sand Monsters. All the 137 white columns on his Life Wheel were now filled up, the only remaining columns being the gray ones. In this world, everyone had a Life Wheel within their bodies that had 360 light columns. However, there were two categories to the columns. The white ones were refillable with Life Light while the gray columns could not be filled with Life Light. Most people have 100 to 150 white columns which were full of Life Light when they were born. The white columns decided how long one would live. As time passed, the Life Light in the Life Wheel would disappear and every year, one column of Life Light would be taken away. The columns of Life Light that were taken away would turn into gray columns which were not refillable. That was how human lifespan decreased every year. If one was ill or born with issues in their Life Wheel, the loss of Life Light would accelerate. However, the speed of change of the column would forever be constant at one column per year. Lin Huang was one of the unlucky ones. He was born with only 152 white columns on his Life Wheel. Now that 15 years had passed, his Life Wheel should have only had 137 white columns remaining. However, since his lifespan decay was 10 times faster than ordinary people, within the 15 years, 150 columns were gone, leaving him with only two columns. It was also not feasible to convert the gray columns into white columns as the price to pay was too high. Each gray column would need 10 years of Life Light to be activated, turning them into white columns. To top it off, each gray column could only be activated once. To be able to reach iron-level, it required all the gray columns to be activated, filling up the entire life wheel with 360 white columns. The rich would need to pay an astronomical amount of money, making it impossible for the poor. One year worth of Life Crystals required 100,000 credit points and 10 years worth of Life Crystals would require one million credit points to activate a single gray column. For most people, they were born with more than 200 gray columns and the activation of those columns would require more than 200 million credit points, an astronomical amount. That was the reason why anyone who held the title of a hunter in this world was respected. Even an iron-level Reserve Hunter would be held in high respect by everyone. With all his white columns lit up, Lin Huang saw hope to achieve iron-level as he had the advantage that most people did not have - absorbing Life Light through Bai. Witnessing the shortcut to iron-level, Lin Huangs hunger to kill grew more intense. 18 Kill Them All! Using the method he used earlier, Lin Huang lured more Sand Monsters out of their shacks and got Bai to kill them. Over an hour later, aside from the leader, the rest of the Sand Monsters were all killed. The back of the dune that was less than 100 meters from the foothold was filled with dead bodies, most of them with their heads separated from their bodies. On Lin Huangs Life Wheel, 52 gray columns had been turned into white columns and they were all lit up. He had also obtained 33 Sand Monster card pieces. He could actually integrate 30 card pieces into one iron-level rank-1 Sand Monster but he chose to put it aside. Standing outside of the foothold, Lin Huang looked at the last Sand Monster from afar. It was the biggest one in the entire foothold and it was almost 10 meters tall. From its size, Lin Huang guessed that it was near the bronze-level. It should be the leader of the foothold, it was in a deep sleep and was snoring loudly. It had no idea that the rest of its mates had all been killed. Lin Huang took out the GrayEagle17 in his space storage and put the 10 armored bullets into the bore of the gun and approached the last Sand Monster quietly. In the low growl of the wind in the desert, a stench emanated of the shacks. It was disgusting. The Sand Monsters seemed to be quite unhygienic. Lin Huang bent over and walked in small steps so he would not make any noises as he approached the leader of the Sand Monsters slowly. 30 meters, 20 meters, 10 meters, 5 meters Suddenly, the Sand Monsters nose twitched. It seemed to have picked up the scent of something and opened its eyes. Lin Huang did not have the time to run away, he was seen by the leader of the Sand Monsters leader. The Sand Monster was stunned, it thought it was dreaming. Lin Huang was shocked as well but he pointed his gun at the monster as it tried to grab his gun. Suddenly, two slashes flashed through in a split second. They were like ribbons tying the Sand Monsters arms. Lin Huang saw the flashes and did not run away. Instead, he took a step towards the Sand Monster and pulled the trigger at the monsters eyes. In the dark, flares were seen as two bullets were shot into the monsters eyes. The Sand Monster let out a loud roar from the pain. When Lin Huang attacked, it managed to close its eyes but the impact of the armored bullets was too powerful at point blank. Although it did not make the Sand Monsters head explode, both its eyes were completely destroyed. The Sand Monster was badly injured from the hit, it became furious and somehow managed to break away from Bai within seconds. Lin Huang then rolled towards the left and hid in the side. The Sand Monster stood up, starting to smash everything around it as it roared. Its roar could be heard more than 10 kilometers away. The members who joined the assessment ahead of Lin Huang were just settling down, getting ready for dinner. They were terrified by the Sand Monsters roar. "Its the Sand Monsters roar, it sounded angry" "In the desert, the only creature that dared to invade into the Sand Monsters'' foothold was the megalodon wolf pack which also belonged to the giant family. If the megalodon wolf was not famished, they would not attack the Sand Monsters on a whim. There must be some unusual fight happening in the foothold tonight!" A man in glasses who also joined the assessment explained. He seemed to know the monsters in the desert better. However, he misjudged the situation as the sound of gun faded too fast and he could not hear that as he was too far away. Within the 10 kilometer radius of the foothold, the Sand Monster seemed to be in complete madness. It swung its hands everywhere, destroying the surroundings. Meanwhile, Bai was in combat mode as his eyes turned completely red and the Blood Power on his back turned into two bloody sabers. As he avoided from being hit by the Sand Monster, he was slashing the monster with his sabers at the same time. The number of wounds on the Sand Monster increased and Bai did not even suffer a single hit. Lin Huang hid in the opposite direction, somewhere not far from them. He removed the armored bullets and reloaded his gun with regular bullets. He then went into shooting mode and he shot the Sand Monster every time he had a chance. He focused on the Sand Monsters face, including its destroyed eyes, nose, mouth, and even its ears. Although he missed most of the time, it managed to make the monster even more furious. Lin Huang did not shoot from the same direction. Every time he took a shot, he would change his position. This 10-meter-tall Sand Monster had superior abilities if it was compared to the rest. Bai managed to chop off the arms of the other monsters easily but he failed to cut through this monsters body as its bones prevented him from doing so. Time passed by, Lin Huang and Bai were getting tired as the Sand Monster got weaker, losing blood as the fight continued. Lin Huang was amazed at how terrifying the monsters in this world were. He had fired more than 100 bullets from his GrayEagle17 at the monsters face and though he only missed a few shots, the monster was still alive. It was shocking as the GrayEagle17 was comparable to an iron-level gun. It was even more powerful than an AK47 on earth. After losing so much blood, the Sand Monster became slow. Though Bai was tired, he did not slow down but instead, he got more aggressive. However, the monster still managed to defend itself. Lin Huang was exhausted. His actions became slower but he was still opening fire at the monsters face. Under continuous attack, the monster finally fell to its injuries and though it was still alive, Lin Huang and Bai both knew that it could not last much longer. Lin Huang became more courageous and he stood in front of the Sand Monster to open fire because he could aim better at such an angle. However, just as he positioned himself and fired a few shots, the Sand Monster who was on the ground stood up and let out a roar as it ran towards Lin Huangs direction. Lin Huang did not move at all, instead, he grinned. He took out the regular bullets and reloaded his gun with armored bullets. He then aimed at the monsters wide opened mouth and shot. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Three shots were fired and three armored bullets exploded in the Sand Monsters mouth. Blood started to flow out of the monster and the monster who was initially running towards Lin Huang fell hard onto the ground. "Congratulations, you obtained a complete Sand Monster Card x1!" "Host completed cross-ranking kill, an Advanced Card is rewarded!" "I have been waiting for this for way too long!" Lin Huang blew at the muzzle in satisfaction before he put the GrayEagle17 into storage. 19 Repeat Important Matters Three Times Lin Huang had expected the sudden outburst of the Sand Monster. The 30 Sand Monsters who were killed did not always die in one hit from Bai''s attack and they had a similar reaction. The last Sand Monster remaining who happened to be their leader was killed the way Lin Huang had wanted it to happen. After the Sand Monsters leader was dead, a notification was sent by Xiao Hei. As the last monster was killed by Lin Huang himself, he was rewarded with an Advanced Card for the cross-ranking kill. Besides, he also obtained a complete Monster Card. The probability of obtaining a Monster Card right away for killing a monster was not high. Lin Huang had done his survey earlier so he was only aiming to collect all of the card pieces. He did not expect to get this lucky. However, there was a downside as well. Since the Sand Monster was killed by Lin Huang, its Life Light could not be absorbed by Bai so Lin Huang''s Life Wheel did not manage to get any additional Life Light. Lin Huang then called out the Monster Card onto his hand. He was stunned, it was a green card. He looked at it closely. There was a giant Sand Monster on the front of the card. Its look was considered normal, the only thing was that it had an extra head. It did not have extra eyes and it had four limbs just like ordinary people did. It looked like an enlarged human with more fats and hair. It looked ferocious and did not have reproductive organs. He turned the card around to look at the detailed description. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Monster: Giant (Branch)" "Combat Level: Iron-level 3-star" "Skill 1: Immense Strength (Beginner)" "Skill 2: Robust (Beginner)" "Skill 3: Iron Bones (Beginner)" "Summoning Limit: Activated" "Card Remarks: This is useless too!" Lin Huang then looked at the detailed description. "Immense Strength (Beginner): Passive skill, strength would gain three times more." "Robust (Beginner): Passive skill - Body physique improved two-fold. (Body physique includes tolerance to poison, strength, tolerance, and adaptation.)" "Iron Bones (Beginner): Passive skill - Defense is improved three-fold." After reading the detailed description, Lin Huang finally understood why it was so hard to kill the last Sand Monster. "No wonder Bais attack could not hurt it, this fella is a rare species like Bai. Although it did not have any active skills, its passive skills are stunning enough." Lin Huang was familiar with the Advanced Card. Now that he had two rare Monster Cards, he was not sure if he should use the Advanced Card on Bai or the Sand Monster. Since he was undecided, he put the card aside for the future when it was needed. "Xiao Hei, please extract the skill." The three passive skills were all great. No matter which one he got, it would be helpful for Lin Huang so he did not have any preference. "Skill extraction has been activated Choosing a skill for the host Random selection is done... Congratulations, you have obtained - Robust (Beginner)." When the skill extraction was done, Lin Huang opened up his Exclusive Card. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Skill 2: Great Sword Scriptures (Sword skill) "Skill 3: Robust (Beginner) "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1" "Remark: So weak! So weak! So weak!" He was initially happy but he got slightly pissed at the last remark, "Was it really necessary to repeat yourself three times? Xiao Hei, I feel that youre becoming meaner now." "Its necessary to repeat important stuff three times, isnt that a rule on earth?" "" Lin Huang did not know what to respond. "The available number of summons is still one, does that mean I cant summon both my Monster Cards at the same time?" Lin Huang questioned as he noticed that the quantity of summons remained unchanged. "Yes, no matter how many Monster Cards you have, you can only summon one at a time." Lin Huang wanted to try anyway. Without recalling Bai, he squeezed the Sand Monster Card on his hand. The card broke into pieces and was transferred into his body. Immediately, a semi-transparent box appeared. "You have reached the summoning limit, the action is denied!" He then recalled Bai and summoned the Sand Monster card. He squeezed the card again and a gigantic Sand Monster appeared in front of him. He took a good look at the 10-meter-tall Sand Monster. He thought to himself for awhile and said, "Im going to call you Tyrant." Hearing what Lin Huang said, the Sand Monster raised its hands up high and let out a loud roar. It seemed to like the name given by Lin Huang very much. "Alright, Tyrant, lets hunt for a mini monster nearby." Lin Had had breakfast before coming to the assessment. Now that it was late, after an entire day of walking and fighting, he was hungry and tired. Tyrant who got the instruction turned around and left immediately. Soon, it came back with a monster that looked like a wild boar. Lin Huang recognized it, it was an Armored Pig. It was double the size of a wild boar on earth, it had black, metal scales on its back. Although it was quite large in size, it did not belong to the giants. It was a mutated beast, the difference was one could tell what it was by looking at its size. No matter which rank the Armored Pig had evolved into, its size did not seem to change even when it became an adult. Lin Huangs eyes lit up when he saw the Armored Pig. He tried that when he stayed at the Stable Residence. It was delicious. Lin Huangs cooking skill was nothing fantastic. He started a fire, sliced a few pieces of meat and started to cook it. He had thought of this before coming here so he had brought condiments for barbecue along with him. Although he did not handle the fire well which caused the meat to be slightly burnt, the taste was not bad at all. He saw Tyrant who was drooling as it sat aside, Lin Huang got a few slices for it. After it was done eating, it wanted more. It looked at Lin Huang in anticipation, Lin Huang shook his head and smiled at him. "Its for you to taste. If I were to feed you until you were full, I think I might have to stay up all night to cook for you. The smell of barbecue would attract other monsters nearby. They might come soon, we need to leave now." Lin Huang then stood up. Tyrant seemed to understand what he said, it stood up as well. "Bring me to the East. At the speed you can move at, we should be able to cover quite a distance within two hours. With your speed, we should be able to leave this area far away in two hours. We will rest later." Lin Huang said to Tyrant. Tyrant extended its hand, Lin Huang hopped onto its palm and he was placed on its shoulder. Just as he sat down, he had a strange expression. Tyrants shoulders were filled with long, coarse hair that felt like wild boar fur, "Damn it, its hair is so hard, it''s poking my butt" 20 Encountering Obstructions After sitting on Tyrant for two hours, Lin Huang finally understood what it meant to have to ride the mount through to the end even if it brought him to tears because it was his. After running for two hours, Tyrant stopped after they ran more than 100 kilometers away. Lin Huang found a nearby dune and pitched a tent. Tyrant sat not too far away from the entrance of the to-be tent, watching Lin Huang with a curious eye as he built the tent. 20 minutes later, Lin Huang sat inside the tent he had just put up as he planned out how they would keep watch at night. The Pure Gold Desert was so much worse than any desert on earth. There might be an invasion anytime, so someone who kept an eye on the tent during the night was necessary. Lin Huang needed Tyrant as his mode of transport so it could not watch over the tent. Bai would be suitable but with the strength he had, Lin Huang did not want him to waste his strength on something like this. He soon recalled that he still had card pieces he could integrate into a single monster card. Getting out of the tent, he recalled Tyrant and called out to Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, I''d like to integrate these pieces into a monster card." "You have 33 pieces of Sand Monster Cards, integrating an iron-level Sand Monster Card would require 30 pieces. Confirm integration?" "Integrate!" "30 Sand Monster Card pieces have been integrated into one monster card!" Lin Huang summoned the new card to his hand. It was a pure-white card and the Sand Monster on the front of the card was 80% similar to Tyrant. It looked like a smaller version of Tyrant and the description of the card on the back was different. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Normal" "Type of Monster: Giant (Branch)" "Combat Level: Iron 1-Star" "Skill 1: Immense Strength (Beginner)" "Skill 2: Robust (Beginner)" "Summoning Limit: Activated" "Card Remarks: Useless" Another notification was sent by Xiao Hei. Just as Lin Huang wondered what it was about, a box popped up upon him: "There are two monster cards of the same type, would you like to carry out Card Engulf?" "Xiao Hei, what is Card Engulf?" "If there are two monster cards of the same kind, the one with the rarer card can engulf the one that is a lower rarity and you''ll get a random skill upgrade." "Does that mean I can use Tyrants card to engulf this monster card and get a skill upgrade?" Lin Huang finally understood the reason why the notification came up. "Yes. This is the first time you obtained a monster card of the same kind so a reminder popped up. Would you like to continue with Card Engulf?" "Not at the moment, I would need him to keep watch over the tent at night for a few days." Lin Huang decided not to go ahead with the Card Engulf. Lin Huang did not even bother to give this new Sand Monster a new name as he would use it for the Card Engulf a few days later, a name seemed unnecessary. The new Sand Monster was much smaller than Tyrant as it was just five meters tall. "You will be keeping watch outside the tent tonight. If you notice any monsters or humans, scream as loud as you can and wake me up." Lin Huang instructed. The Sand Monster nodded and sat outside the tent while Lin Huang went into the tent. He was exhausted and fell asleep straight away. The next day, he woke up from sleep and realized that it was morning. It was a peaceful night. He stood up and kept the tent. After washing up, he recalled the Sand Monster that was watching over the tent all night and summoned Tyrant. He sat on Tyrants shoulder and frowned. He recalled the two-hour-long torture that he had yesterday and the fact that his poor butt he would have to suffer another 10 hours today. He got down from Tyrants shoulder and got it to lie on the ground before the sand got too hot from the scorching sun. He took his sword and began shaving the hair on Tyrants shoulders. At first, it lied down quietly as it did not know what Lin Huang was up to. Once Lin Huang began shaving it, it''s expression changed. Lin Huang thought its expression was dumb but it seemed really adorable. The hair on its body was a sign of masculinity for Tyrant so naturally, it was quite unwilling when Lin Huang wanted to shave it all of. However, he could not disobey Lin Huang so all it could do was to show a sad face. After the left side of its shoulder was shaved, Lin Huang who was ready to sit on it looked at the right side of Tyrants shoulder, "It would look better if theyre symmetrical." He then shaved the right side. After half an hour, he finally took a seat on Tyrants shoulder to start their journey. "This is much better!" Without the hair poking on his butt, Lin Huang felt infinitely more comfortable. Not long after they began their journey, Lin Huang saw traces of people who passed by the place. Just when he was about to get Tyrant to avoid the area to prevent conflicts, Tyrants gigantic body attracted five people who promptly surrounded it. Seeing others approaching it, Tyrant was enraged at the people. "Tyrant, let me down." After Lin Huangs instructed it, Tyrant put him down on the ground in front of it. The five people who approached them realized that Lin Huang was sitting on Tyrants shoulder. "How can I help you?" Lin Huang looked at the five of them with his guard up. "So, youre an Imperial Censor. It''s no wonder you even dared to join this assessment even though you''re not at iron-level." A tall, skinny guy who looked like he was 20 said with a cunning smile. "Just say what you want. If you''ve nothing to say, get out of my way." Lin Huang did not bother talking to him any further. "I seem to recall your name being Lin Huang, right?" A young man who looked like he was Lin Huangs age said with a smile. He dressed well and when he talked, the rest held their tongue. Although he was young, he seemed like the leader of the group. "My name is George Kang. Dont be afraid, Im harmless." "The difficulty of this assessment is high. Itll be quite hard for you pass the assessment if youre alone so we''ve teamed up. You are an Imperial Censor and although youre not bad at summoning monsters, you''re quite lacking in the strength department. Especially the last part of the assessment where we''re required to climb the Alps. With your strength, it would be quite impossible that you could make it. Although this Sand Monster is strong, it isnt that good at climbing. If youre willing to join us, we can help you to climb the Alps." George Kang smiled as he suggested to Lin Huang. "Thanks for the offer but Im a lone wolf. Now, will you step aside?" Lin Huang could see that this seemingly kind George Kang was actually very sly. None of them had any good intentions. "Bro, you should think about it." George Kang said with a smile, he did not plan to step aside at all. "No. Now please, step aside!" Lin Huang insisted. "Hey, how dare you! Do you really think that we care about you? All we really wanted is to use this Sand Monster to help us get to the alps. If you get what I''m talking about, do as we say and just maybe, you''ll reach the alps alive with us. It''s either that or we''ll make you do what we say." The tall, skinny guy revealed their real intentions. "So, youre sure that youre not stepping aside?" Lin Huang did not even look at the tall, skinny guy. Instead, he shot a deadly glare at George Kang. 21 Lin Huang Flipping Ou George Kang saw the way Lin Huang was staring at him and felt a chill going down his spine, immediately planning his retreat. "What are you staring at? You think youre better than us just because youre an imperial censor? Georges family is royalty, you cant afford to offend him!" The tall, skinny guy raised his voice at Lin Huang as he was ignored by him. Lin Huang frowned when he heard the guy mentioned royalty. In this world, only families that were higher than the gold-rank could be approved as royalty by the Union Government. Now he understood why this guy spoke for George Kang willingly. Meanwhile, George Kang who thought Lin Huang was strange began getting jealous of Lin Huang. "What did he do to deserve to be an Imperial Censor? Hes 15 and he isnt even iron-level, its obvious that hes a poor kid without good background. Whats so great about being an imperial censor, Im going to show you what I''ve got today!" George Kang thought to himself. "Bro, we would not force you to do something that you dont want to do, but your attitude is humiliating. Since my bros dont like you, theres nothing that I can do." George Kang was smart as he sensed Lin Huang was not the person that he should mess with so he tried to get away from him. Although the reason that he argued was irrelevant, at least it was not awkward. That was one of the things that he learned from his family. A normal 15-year-old would really reflect on what he just said but Lin Huang was not a kid. He knew what this guy was up to where he attempted to avoid conflicts. If a fight was to happen, no matter which side won, it would be none of his business. However, it was not a good news to Lin Huang as they were a gang. Although he was fearless, he did not want to offend the royalty for no reason. The tall and skill guy did not understand what George Kang really meant. He thought he did not want to fight Lin Huang himself and he wanted the rest of them to do it instead. He was willing to do anything for the young master of royalty. Regardless of how the results of the assessment turned out, as long as he managed to build a good relationship with royalty, he could always ask for job opportunities and work on their properties. The four of them were thinking about the same thing. George Kang took a few steps back while the four of them looked at each other. The three of them plunged towards the Sand Monster while the tall and skinny guy attacked Lin Huang. The easiest way to kill an Imperial Censor was to kill him before he summoned his monsters. Now that Lin Huang had already summoned his monster, they thought of holding down the monster and killing Lin Huang as soon as they could. Lin Huang was not iron-level so he could not see their abilities. However, seeing the tall and skinny guy leading the charge, that meant his ability should be the most powerful, possible an iron-level rank-3. Lin Huang did not hesitate, as he was stepping away fast, he held the GrayEagle17 on his hand and reloaded his remaining five armored bullets. Looking at the GrayEagle17 on Lin Huangs hand, the tall and skill guy grinned, "A GrayEagle17, this weapon that isn''t even considered to be an iron-level weapon could probably be a threat to people on iron-level rank-1 or 2, but I, Xue Jie am at iron-level rank-3, such a garbage of a gun can do nothing to me." Seeing Xue Jie approaching him without fear, Lin Huang aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger. "Bang!" The explosive bang scared everyone. Xue Jie attempted to avoid the shot but it was too late, the bullet hit his right shoulder. A hole that was a size of a fist was blown into his right shoulder, so deep that his bone could be seen. Xue Jie pressed his palm against the wound, blood was flowing out. He glared at Lin Huang and poured medication on the wound. Lin Huang looked at him from far away, he did not continue to attack. Without Tyrant or Bais help, it was difficult for him to kill Xue Jie. Xue Jies ability was much more powerful than the weakened vampire he killed earlier. His mind was not controlled by hunger. Moreover, Lin Huang was only left with four armored bullets, they were for emergency use only and he did not want to waste the bullets. It was just a minor fight between them, they had not reached the point where they had to kill each other. Seeing Lin Huangs attack, George Kangs expression changed. He thought his hunch was right, "This guy is dangerous!" He could also see that Lin Huang showed mercy. If he was to aim his gun at Xue Jies head instead of chest, he would have been dead by now. Just when George Kang gave all his attention on Lin Huang, he heard a devastating groan not far away. The three guys who attempted to attack Tyrant were punched by it. Nobody knew if they were still alive. After settling the three of them, Tyrant ran towards Lin Huang and attempted to grab Xue Jie. Xue Jie saw what was happening and was terrified as he attempted to escape with his injured shoulder. As he ran, he screamed for help, "George, help me!" George Kang was in a pickle. Although he did not want to be involved in this, he could not let Xue Jie die here. If Xue Jie was dead, he would be alone and who knew if Lin Huang would kill him as well. He used his right hand and waved in the air, the black ring on his middle finger became a giant shield in front of Xue Jie. "Bang!" Tyrants giant claw landed on the giant shield and a spiderweb crack appeared on the shield. George Kang was shocked. He did not expect the Sand Monsters hit to create such cracks on his iron-level equipment. He did not know that this Sand Monsters strength was near a bronze-level monster. George Kang then called out to Lin Huang, "Lin Huang bro, please stop the violence, we can talk this out!" "Tyrant!" Lin Huang then stopped Tyrant from attacking Xue Jie. Tyrant was getting in the zone, it then stopped and looked at Lin Huang in confusion. "Stop for now." After Lin Huang gave out his instruction, he looked at George Kang and Xue Jie, "I need a proper explanation." The duo was relieved when they saw Lin Huang asking Tyrant to stop. George Kang said loudly to Lin Huang from far away, "Lin Huang bro, its our fault. We should not put you in trouble, we would like to apologize." "George, this kid would not dare to kill us. Killing is prohibited in the assessment. If we were to die in the assessment, not only he would lose his eligibility, he would also be blacklisted by the Hunter Association and prohibited from all forms of hunter assessment. You are a member of royalty. If you die in the assessment, the Hunter Association would definitely investigate the matter. Killing a member of royalty is considered a very serious matter to the Union Government" "Shut up!" George Kang stopped Xue Jie from talking. He could not believe that Xue Jie was still picking a fight with Lin Huang, "Lin Huang bro, all my weapons that were over iron-level were taken away. The most valuable thing I have with me is this black armor." George Kang then took off the black ring on his left ring finger and tossed on the ground in front of Tyrant, "Please take this as our apology, I hope we can forget about what happen today and be friends." Lin Huang kept quiet for a moment and said, "I accept your apology. You can take the three guys who are lying there" "But he''s not allowed to leave." Lin Huang pointed at Xue Jie who was behind George Kang. 22 A Kill To Warn Seeing Lin Huang pointing his finger at him, Xue Jie turned pale. He thought that would be the end of the incident since George Kang had apologized and gave Lin Huang a gift. He did not expect Lin Huang to come after him. "Lin Huang, what do you want from me?" Xue Jie did not think that he could defeat Tyrant. Moreover, Lin Huang was good in attacking from a distance. If they were to fight, he would definitely lose. "What do I want?" Lin Huang squinted while he looked at Xue Jie, "It was you who picked a fight with me and it was you who attacked me! Do you really think that I''d let you go just like?" "Xue Jie, it was our fault. You should apologize. Lin Huang bro, please let us know how we could remedy you, lets not fight." George Kang did not leave without Xue Jie, instead, he turned around and looked at Lin Huang. "Lin Huang bro, I know youre mad. It makes sense that you are angry as Xue Jie is a loudmouth. Let us know what kind of compensation we can give!" Lin Huang was amazed at how smart this George Kang as he seemed like a prudent person. He would become someone remarkable in the future. "Since you have offered, I shall not embarrass you. I only have two requests. Firstly, I want a sincere apology from Xue Jie! Secondly, I want every equipment that he has on him as well as all the things that''s in his storage!" "Lin Huang, dont you dare push it!" Xue Jie was furious. "Shut up, Xue Jie!" George Kang yelled at Xue Jie. "George Kang, now I finally understand why your family isnt fond of you, youre a bastard! Not only did you not help me but you''re helping an outsider? I wouldn''t want to have a cousin like you!" What Xue Jie said upset George Kang. Lin Huang finally understood why George Kang did not choose to leave earlier and helped Xue Jie instead. "Youre such an idiot, Im helping you to get out of the situation!" George Kang yelled back at Xue Jie. "I dont need you, go away!" Xue Jie spat on the ground. "Lin Huang bro, I could give you all the iron-level equipment that I have with me, as well as the things that I have in my storage. I will bring him away and guarantee that we will not give you trouble anymore!" George Kang suggested. "George, this has nothing to do with you. This is my business with him, I''ll settle with him! If you cant stand to watch, please leave." Lin Huang rejected George Kangs offer. "Tyrant, attack!" Hearing Lin Huangs instruction, Tyrant who was giddy stood up and ran towards Xue Jie. George Kang did not leave but he took a few steps back away from Tyrant and Xue Jie while he watched quietly. The GrayEagle17 remained on Lin Huangs hand, it was pointing at George Kang. Meanwhile, although Xue Jies ability was not that weak, his right shoulder was injured, leaving him with only his left arm. His speed seemed to be affected by the pain. With his fear of Tyrant after he saw his attack earlier, he was not even able to use 70% of his strength. Soon, Tyrant was near him. It then punched the iron-level long knife that Xue Jie had on his arm and a crack was heard. There was blood on Tyrants fist but a strong impact was felt on Xue Jies left hand. He was pushed back from the bunch and the long knife fell from his grip. That hit fractured Xue Jies left hand. George Kang, who was watching from afar, was terrified. He did not have any hope left in Xue Jie in this battle. Xue Jie was an expert in using knives and now that both his hands were useless, he did not have any moves anymore. Standing before a Sand Monster who was near a bronze-level, he was like a helpless toy to it. Seeing that he had lost his power, Tyrant got even more excited, it then humiliated him like a cat toying with a mouse. After clumsy attempts of trying to dodge Tyrants attacks, Xue Jie was tired. Noticing that its prey was exhausted, Tyrant grinned and grabbed his arm. Xue Jie struggled hard, but it was useless. He felt like his body was going to be crushed. Watching that, George Kang hesitated and said," Lin Huang bro, please spare his life for me. Take this instead. You can ask for three favors from our family in the future." George Kang then took out a token from his space storage. Lin Huang looked at him, although he did not know what that token was about, he got Tyrant to stop, "Tyrant, put him down." Xue Jie was on the brink of death as he lay on the ground motionless. In Tyrants arm, all the bones in his body were destroyed. Lin Huang walked towards him, "Apologize or die!" "Lin Huang, I know that you don''t have the guts to kill me." Xue Jie smiled. "I dont know where you get that confidence." Lin Huang bent down and shook his head with a smile, "To the Hunter Association, youre just an ordinary person who is not even a Reserve Hunter while Im an imperial censor. Do you think the Hunter Association would disqualify me just because I killed you? Even if I did kill you and Im disqualified, with my status of being an Imperial Censor, its not difficult to join other organizations." "Regarding your relationship with royalty, youre not even an important family member. If youre dead, do you really think Georges family would avenge you? An Imperial Censor is protected by many, do you really think Georges family would offend the Hunter Association for your sake?" "Let me tell you a secret" Lin Huang leaned in close to Xue Jies ear, "Although Im not even an iron-level, I''m able to summon not one monster, but three. There''ll be more in the future." Xue Jies pupils shrunk. Although he did not know much about an Imperial Censor, he knew that most of them would only blossom after they became an iron-level. Those who could summon monsters before reaching iron-level were considered to be geniuses. Those who could summon three monsters before reaching iron-level on the other hand, would be considered god-like. Even without the assessment, this fella would be a catch for all. If he and George Kang were to be killed, the Hunter Association might have buried the incident. "Alright, now that you know my secret, bring it along when you leave this world." After whispering into Xue Jies ear, Lin Huang stood up and pointed his GrayEagle17 at Xue Jies forehead and slid it toward his left eye. "The bullet would pass from your eyeball to your brain and explode, it wont be painful." "Wait, please dont kill me! Im begging you!" Xue Jie felt the threat of death, something he had never felt before and begged for mercy. George Kang was amazed. He did not know what Lin Huang said to Xue Jie to terrify him like that. "Now that you know my secret, I cant let you live." Lin Huang grinned while he placed his finger on the trigger. "I swear I will not reveal your secret to anyone! If I do, I curse that I will be stuck on iron-level forever!" Xue Jie said immediately, "...And Im sorry for what happened earlier. It was my fault, I will give you anything!" Lin Huang seemed like he was hesitating but he was enjoying it. Although Xue Jie had a bad mouth, Lin Huang never planned to kill him. He just wanted to show this to George Kang as a warning since the rich were scared of those who do not care to lose their lives. Lin Huang intentionally showed him his crazy side so George Kang would give up trying to take revenge on him. He knew very well that people from royalty would definitely seek revenge. "I have four iron-level equipment that I can give to you! As for the stuff in my storage, please help yourself!" Xue Jie gave up, Lin Huang could finally end his drama. "Lin Huang bro, if you think that the stuff that my cousin offered is insufficient, please take mine as well." George Kang walked towards him and said. He was terrified by Lin Huangs actions and was afraid that he might really kill his cousin. "Alright. George, since he had already apologized, I shall not embarrass you." Lin Huang then took his gun away from Xue Jie''s head and stood up. After taking a few of his iron-level equipment, Lin Huang searched through his storage. Apart from the iron-level armor that was given by George Kang, he did not take any of his stuff. He even rejected the token that he offered., George Kang pressed the emergency button for Xue Jie and the rest of his team. He then left, alone. Lin Huang grinned while he watched him leave, "I didnt expect Xue Jie to conform to me. This kill to warn technique was a success. Looking at George Kang who couldn''t wait to leave me alone, I dont think he''d ever look for trouble with me ever again. It seems that I''ve avoided the aftermath." 23 Meeting Fatty Again Five iron-level equipment, two pieces of armor and a battle sword. The remaining two were diving and investigation equipment. Lin Huang did not exactly know what they were. The five equipment were deactivated and he could not activate them at the current level of his abilities. Apart from the equipment, Lin Huang took all the Life Crystals in Xue Jies storage. There was a total of 30 years worth of Life Crystals which could be traded for more than three million credit points. It was a fortune for Lin Huang. The rest of Xue Jies properties seemed useless so Lin Huang did not bother to take them with him. His storage was not that big anyway, it was only the size of one square. He planned to spend some of his credit points to expand the storage in his Emperors Heart Ring after the assessment ended. He then sat on Tyrants shoulder and instructed it to go on a route that was slightly different from George Kang. They both headed to the east. Though he was not afraid to fight someone, it would be quite troublesome for him. The incident with George Kang took more than half an hour. If he was to encounter a few similar incidents in a day, he would be spending most of his time on battles instead of proceeding with his journey. Less than 20 minutes after they ran towards the east, there was a sandstorm in the desert. Although it was not intense, Lin Huang had to get Tyrant to go at a slower pace while he used his shirt to cover his mouth and nose. Within a few minutes, Lin Huang saw someone in the sandstorm not far away. The person seemed plump, he was having difficulty walking with his short legs. "Why does this person look so familiar?" Lin Huang felt he had seen this person before. Tyrant ran towards the person in excitement. It was its instinct to go after a prey which could be its food. "Tyrant, dont bother him. Lets just pass him by." Lin Huang instructed. Tyrant, who was excited was calm again and gave up on running after the person. Yin Hangyi who was struggling in the desert heard something coming up behind him. He turned around and saw a Sand Monster coming for him, he also saw a person sitting on top of the Sand Monsters left shoulder. Just when he was wondering what he was seeing, the Sand Monster walked past him and proceeded to run ahead. Yin Hangyi was not shocked. Instead, he thought the guy who sat on the Sand Monsters shoulder looked familiar. The guy covered his mouth and nose. The only thing he could see on his face was his eyes. He tried to recall where he had seen the person before. Awhile later, he mumbled to himself, "That pair of eyes looked like Lin Huang''s. Could it really be Lin Huang?" He then waved to the Sand Monster that had yet to run too far away and yelled, "Lin Huang, wait for me! Lin Huang, I am Yin Hangyi." Hearing someone calling his name behind him, Lin Huang turned around to look. He could tell indistinctly who the person was. Lin Huang frowned as the fatty was over-friendly and talkative. If he was to walk with him, he would have to listen to him talking all day. But the fatty was deviating from the correct route. If the sandstorm did not stop, his direction would deviate even more and cause him to fail. He shook his head and smiled. Lin Huang decided to get the Sand Monster to stop. Yin Hangyi saw that the Sand Monster stopped, he ran fast to it. Lin Huang slid down from the Sand Monsters arm and Yin Hangyi let out an awkward smile as he said in relief, "Ahh, bro, finally I bump into my family! I thought I''d really die in this desert if I didn''t bump into you." "Didnt you follow the rest? How did you deviate from the route?" Lin Huang ignored his friendliness and asked in curiosity. "Lets not talk about it. There was a sandstorm not long after we fell asleep in our tents. All of them ran away. I was lucky to find somewhere to hide for the night, I couldnt tell which direction I was at when I woke up in the morning." Looking at the fattys face, Lin Huang felt he was telling the truth. "Bro, I didnt know youre an Imperial Censor. Its so cool that you have this Sand Monster as your vehicle!" The fatty gave a pitiful look, "Could you bring me along? You wouldnt want your bro to die in this shitty place right?" "You wont die, you can always press the emergency button." Lin Huang responded seriously. "I cant do that. If I did, doesnt that mean I gave up on the assessment?" "Is the assessment more important than your life?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "Of course the assessment is more important!" The fatty said confidently. Seeing that the fatty insisted, there was nothing that Lin Huang could do. "I can bring you, but I have a request." Lin Huang raised his finger in all seriousness. "Sure! I will do anything, as long as it isn''t having sex with you! Im still a virgin, I must save my virginity for my future wife!" The fatty said seriously. "Damn you! Look at the fats on you, its disgusting!" Lin Huang gave him a kick. "What do you know? Im voluptuous, girls love me, Im very huggable!" The fatty avoided Lin Huangs kick while explaining. "Alright, I wont be messing with you anymore. Im short of time. My condition is simple, when I ask you to shut up, shut up." Lin Huang could not stand the fattys exuberance. If he did not set this condition as a ground rule, he might be annoyed to death. "Whats wrong with you, what gives you the right not to let me talk?" The fatty was annoyed. Even with the Sand Monster, the journey would take at least three days. He would die if he was not allowed to talk. "Nevermind then." Lin Huang turned around and left but the fatty grabbed his arm, "Alright, I give up. Ill promise you that okay?" "So, from now onwards" Lin Huang turned around and gestured to zip his mouth. The fatty was confused, "What does that mean?" "That means shut up!" Lin Huang forgot that this was not Earth, it was normal for the fatty not to know what the gesture meant. The fatty covered his mouth and waved at Lin Huang. "Okay Tyrant, put him on your right shoulder." Tyrant was not as gentle as it was with Lin Huang when it comes to the fatty. It picked the fatty up by holding the fattys belt from the back. Meanwhile, it was much gentle to Lin Huang where it placed its palm on the ground, allowing him to step on its palm and placed him on its shoulder. Looking at the different treatment, the fatty yelled at Lin Huang, "I would like to protest the difference in treatment, I deserve equality" Lin Huang gestured to get him to shut up again. The fatty realized that he asked for a favor. He then covered his mouth and sat down quietly. After Lin Huang sat down, he patted the Sand Monster, "Lets go!" The Sand Monster stood up and walked toward the east in big steps 24 I Want To Be A Food Hunter Sand Monsters lived in the desert since young. They could survive even longer than camels could on Earth in the desert. When there was a lot of food, they would eat everything they could to store a massive amount of fat in their bodies. Without food and water, they could break down their bodily fats for energy and water. Sand Monsters that had sufficient fats could live at least half a year without water. Without food, they could live at least three years. Their skin was thick and tough enough to defend themselves from sandstorms, even their eyes and faces had a unique structure of three layers so that they would not be affected by a sandstorm. Due to their unique body structure, they became the top predators in the desert. The Sand Monsters had big feet that were more than two times the size of human feet. That made them move faster and have more agility than the rest of the giants. Tyrants body size was more than five times bigger than a human but his speed was not five times the speed of a human. Instead, it was 20 times faster than a human. For a human that was an iron-level rank-3, the most one could travel in the desert was 20 kilometers per hour on average. While for Tyrant, at its normal running speed, it could travel more than 80 kilometers per hour and at full speed, it could travel more than 100 kilometers per hour. As Lin Huang was sitting on Tyrants shoulder, he controlled its speed to the normal 80 kilometers to avoid himself from falling down. On the first night, they managed to use only two hours to travel a distance that usually took a full day for ordinary people. With the Sand Monsters strength, the additional burden, who was the fatty sitting on its shoulder made no difference. Its speed was not slowed down at all. Looking at the fatty feeling nauseous from the ride, Lin Huang was laughing inside. He was no different from the fatty yesterday aside from adapting himself to the feeling of riding on Tyrant. Recalling himself getting poked on his butt by Tyrants rough hair, Lin Huang mumbled to himself, "Shouldnt have shaved the other side of its hair" The Sand Monster ran for more than four hours before the fatty started to complain. "Can we rest for a while!? Oh my god, I feel like my buttcheeks are cracking!" Lin Huangs butt was numb too. Seeing the fatty no longer able to take it anymore, he got Tyrant to stop. Tyrant then placed the both of them on the ground. The fatty walked towards Lin Huang while rubbing his butt, "Lets get some rest, eat something and drink some water before we go again." Lin Huang nodded, lets rest, Ill get Tyrant to hunt for food." "Theres no need for that, I have food with me!" Fatty took a few big sips of water from his bottle and said. After keeping his bottle back to his storage, the fatty took a set of tableware out and a slice of square meat that was the size of a basketball. "Where did you get the food, didnt they confiscate your food yesterday?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "What are you thinking about? I didnt smuggle them in, I cut this from the Armored Pig that the team killed yesterday. Its the back of its leg, good stuff! I planned to keep this for myself but I treat you as my own brother, else I wouldnt share this with you." The fatty then started to slice the meat. Awhile later, the slab of meat was sliced. "So youre a chef." Seeing the fattys good knife skills, Lin Huang figured out his occupation. "What? A chef? I want to be a Food Hunter!" The fatty looked up and refuted. There were many categories in the Hunter Association. Besides many Monster Hunters who mainly hunted monsters, there were Food Hunters who cooked, Treasure Hunters who looked for treasures and Guardian Hunters that protected rare species The Hunter Association was an organization that offered freedom. They did not only cultivate talents but provide talents of all kind to other organizations too. The Reserve Hunter assessment was not restricted to any category. To be a Food Hunter that was recognized by the Hunter Association, fatty first had to be a Reserve Hunter. And he would be required to choose a category when he was going for the Bronze Hunter assessment. Through the Food Hunter assessment, he would become a real hunter which recognized by the Hunter Association. In less than 20 minutes, fatty had roasted all the meat. Lin Huang tasted a piece and his eyes lit up as he said, "Fatty, you dont look like you could cook." Fatty was a good cook, the roast meat was much better than the one Lin Huang cooked on the first day. Although it was not comparable to the one he tasted at the Stable Residence, it was the second best roast meat he had ever had. Suddenly, they heard a rumbling sound around them. They then noticed that Tyrant was drooling while staring at the roast meat. "Fatty, cook a big slab for it later." Lin Huang suggested after seeing Tyrant looking pitiful. "If we were to feed it, we would be hungry at night." Fatty was unwilling to cook the meat for Tyrant. "Just give him a slice for him to taste some." Of course, Lin Huang knew that it was impossible to satisfy Tyrants appetite. With its size, it would need a ton of meat for it to turn them into fats. Although the fatty was unwilling, thinking that he would need to ride it later, he took out a big slab and started roasting it while he ate his food. Just as they were done eating, the meat was roasted. The fatty used a tong to pass Tyrant the roast meat and said, "Big guy, this is for you." Tyrant looked at Lin Huang while it drooled. "Go ahead." After Lin Huang nodded, it took the roast meat and tossed it into its mouth. It swallowed the meat together with the bones. "Damn, why didnt it spit out the bones?" It was the first time that fatty saw a Sand Monster eat and he was shocked. "The giant''s stomach acid corrosion is more than 100 times more powerful than that of a human. They can digest bones completely. Whoever told you that giants spit out the bones when they eat?" Lin Huang educated fatty on some scientific facts. "Right, the giants that I saw in videos also swallowed the bones." Fatty recalled the time when he watched some educational videos. "Alright, since we''ve eaten, lets clean up and go on the road. If we are fast enough we can reach the Alps tomorrow night. Then, we''ll rest for a night and we can start climbing the day after tomorrow in the morning." Lin Huang had done his planning earlier. It would take them two days to reach the alps if Tyrant was to travel for 10 hours per day. "Yay!" Fatty was excited when he heard that they could finish the journey in two days while ordinary people would take more than 10 days. The assessment could not get any easier than this. After cleaning up, they rode on Tyrants shoulders and begun their journey 25 Danger Was Close After traveling for more than six hours on Tyrant, it was getting dark as stars lit up in the sky. The journey was smooth-sailing. Lin Huang and fatty were not attacked by any people. Perhaps Tyrant was the reason why. Pure Gold Desert was a Grade-1 wild zone and there would not be any monsters that were over iron-level. Tyrant was an iron-level rank-3, it was a creature on top of the food chain and other predators would try their best to avoid it. It was hot during the day and most of the predators would choose to hibernate or rest. When the sun sets, the temperature would drop and they would go out to hunt. It would be a dumb move if Lin Huang was to travel at night. With Tyrant, they had ample time to get to their destination so there was no need for them to travel at night. After he recalled Tyrant, Lin Huang summoned his second Sand Monster. Fatty saw that Lin Huang summoned another monster, he was stunned. "Bro, how many monsters do you really have?" "Thats a secret." Lin Huang did not even turn around when he answered fatty while he built the tent. "Why did you not buy a portable tent? Its so troublesome to build it from scratch." Fatty sat on a rock while watching Lin Huang build the tent. "Im poor, I cant afford that." What Lin Huang said was the truth. The portable tent that fatty mentioned was inspired by an armored piece of equipment. Its price was nothing less than an iron-level equipment. A few days ago, Lin Huang could not afford that at all. But it sounded ridiculous to fatty. "I would believe you if you cant afford to trade your Life Crystals to get to iron-level. But if you tell me you cant even afford a portable tent, thats nonsense! I must visit your house one day to see how poor you are. If you really cant afford a portable tent, I would spend all I have to help you to get to iron-level!" Fatty thought Lin Huang was exaggerating so he promised him that. For a normal person to get to iron-level, it would require more than 200 million credit points to activate all the gray columns in Life Wheel. 200 million credit points were a lot, that was the reason why most of the people in this world could not get to iron-level. Lin Huang laughed when he heard what fatty said, "You dont need to look at my house. When were done with the assessment, I''ll bring you to the Credit Bureau to show you my bank book. You''d definitely believe me by then." "What? You must be kidding. Are you really that poor?" Fatty panicked when he heard what Lin Huang said. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything. Fatty got even more panicked when he saw Lin Huang smiling, "I was just messing with you just now, please dont take it seriously." Lin Huang ignored him while he put all his attention on building the tent. When he was done, it was dark. Lin Huang turned around and saw the fatty sat on the rock without bringing out his tent, "Where is your portable tent?" "About that It was blown away by the wind last night" Fatty scratched his head and avoided eye contact with Lin Huang. "Oh, then lets prepare dinner." Lin Huang seemed to ignore fatty who did not have a tent. He stretched his body and mumbled, "Ill sleep after dinner, it had been a long day, Im exhausted." "That wouldnt be a problem for you but what about me?" Fatty looked at Lin Huang who just built the tent, he seemed troubled, "How about we share a tent tonight?" "Thats not happening. Settle your problem yourself." Lin Huang responded without even thinking. "Its usually cold at night. Look at my delicate body, if I was to sleep outside tonight, I would be frozen to death. Do you really want that to happen to me?" Fatty gave him puppy dog eyes. "It wouldnt be a problem. If youre cold, you can cuddle with the Sand Monster." Lin Huang gave him a creative suggestion. "He has more fats than you do, thats even sexier, just your cup of tea." "Then I''d rather die" Fatty looked at Sand Monster while it gave him a smile. Fatty shook his head and rejected the suggestion. "Dont goof around, make dinner now!" Lin Huang changed the topic. "I''ve lost my appetite, I cant eat anymore. Im not cooking." Fatty turned his head around, he seemed to be throwing a tantrum. "Cook first, Ill think of something for you after dinner." "No! You give me the solution now or I''ll not cook tonight." Fatty sat on the rock crossing his arms while waiting for Lin Huang to give him a solution. "The solution is I have a backup tent." Lin Huang laughed. "Are you messing with me?" Fatty was afraid that Lin Huang was not being serious. Lin Huang did not say anything as he took out a tent pole from his storage. "Why didnt you tell me earlier!" Fatty yelled at him while laughing. "Unlike some people, I did my planning properly and brought a backup tent." Lin Huang said while he placed all the parts of the backup tent on the ground, "You fix it yourself after dinner, Im going to sleep now." Fatty then quietly took out his tableware and started to prepare dinner. After dinner, the sky was completely dark with stars. It looked like the ocean, sparkling above him. The heat on the sand faded and the wind was chillier. Lin Huang got the Sand Monster to watch over the night while he went into his tent. Fatty was fixing the tent clumsily. Half an hour later, fatty built a distorted tent and there were still parts on the floor. He lost his tolerance and went into the incomplete tent anyway while he tried really hard to close the tent. Due to the sandstorm the night before, he did not get a good rest. Soon he fell asleep. Hearing fattys snore from not far away, Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. This fatty was such a naive guy, letting his guard down when he was with Lin Huang. He fell asleep immediately. "This fella must be exhausted" As Lin Huang had a good rest last night, he was not sleepy even though he was tired. Sleepiness only kicked in in the middle of the night. As the night went on, the desert became colder. Before dawn, there was a layer of frost on the ground. Under two full purple moons, the desert was calm. Suddenly, the Sand Monster who was sitting in front of the tent seemed to smell something. It started to sniff its surrounding and looked to the direction where it identified the source of the smell. Although it could not see clearly what it was because it was far away, it could see that something was approaching them at an alarming pace. It stood up immediately and screamed into the tent. "Ahh woo! Ahh woo! Ahh woo!" Lin Huang managed to fall asleep for only two hours before hearing the Sand Monsters scream outside. He sat up immediately. He did not even remove his clothes and shoes as he was worried that there would be such incidents. He opened the tent and looked, shocked when he looked at the direction the Sand Monster was pointing at. He then walked to the fattys tent. After several failed attempts to open his tent, he took out his sword from storage and cut the tent open. He slapped the fatty on his face, "Wake up fatty, we''ll be dead if you continue sleeping!" 26 The Terrifying Crows Fatty woke up after he was slapped. He abruptly sat up in bed and subconsciously covered his body with a quilt as he saw his fat upper body. He was alert and asked Lin Huang, "What are you doing?!" "Just follow me! I don''t have time to explain to you now." Lin Huang tossed off his quilt, and Fatty was seen to be wearing red boxers only. "I need to put my clothes on. Please leave my room now." Fatty immediately covered his chest. "We''re dying, and you still care about putting on your clothes!" Lin Huang grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the tent. Although Fatty was reluctant to leave, still, he followed Lin Huang and walked out of the tent since Lin Huang did not sound like he was joking. He was startled as soon as he got out of the tent. The sky far away from him was completely dark. Half of the blue sky had turned black, and it was expanding quickly as if it was stained with black ink. The entire sky was now separated into two distinct colors, which was dark blue and black. "It''s the crows! We''re doomed" Fatty''s face turned pale. "Keep your big mouth shut and get up!" Lin Huang re-summoned his Tyrant and sat above him. Tyrant pulled Fatty over and placed him on his shoulder. He glanced at the crows behind him and ran very quickly. This time, he was running at full speed, and his speed had exceeded 120 kilometers per hour. Lin Huang was still fine as he sat stably, holding Tyrant''s beard tightly to prevent falls. On the other hand, Fatty did not sit properly from the beginning in addition to he was holding his clothes. He fell after Tyrant began running. Lin Huang was taken aback as he saw him fall. Fortunately, Tyrant was able to hold him before he fell. However, Tyrant did not place him back to his shoulder but held Fatty in his arms instead and continued running. His arms would swing way more than his shoulder when he started running madly. Fatty felt like he was on a roller coaster that was at least ten times faster. After a short while, he started to feel dizzy and eventually fainted. Lin Huang who was initially laughing at Fatty did not feel well then. Tyrant ran madly at full speed, and he swung at least one time faster. He felt like something moving across his stomach. Consequently, he vomited as he could not bear the feeling of uneasiness any longer. Tyrant''s speed had exceeded 120 kilometers per hour. However, the distance between Lin Huang and the crows did grow further. Instead, they were getting closer to each other. These monsters were the undead. They were spirits without solid bodies and usually hunt spirits of the creatures. They flew in the sky, floated like clouds, but their speed was not slow at all. The crows were small and weak. Their abilities were merely at the iron-level. Since they were souls without bodies, they could easily be destroyed. Therefore, through prolonged evolution, they had found a way around this which was to hunt for prey in groups. When a large group of crows appeared, even the gold-rank hunters had to avoid them. They resembled ants that were weak alone but thousands of them could even threaten an elephant. This explained why the crows were so strong and powerful. There was a course called the Fundamental of Monster Guide offered by the Hunter Reserve College. A detailed explanation of the crows was provided. Lin Huang remembered there was a paragraph stated this, "One must avoid any location where corpses without injuries can be found. It can either be in the desert or forests and is a remote and inaccessible place. This was usually a sign where flocks of crows would appear. They would only hunt for souls and would not harm their bodies." Lin Huang was sitting on Tyrant''s shoulder but he looked back at the crows from time to time, estimating the distance between them. As time passed, they grew closer to each other, and Lin Huang''s face turned pale. He quickly pondered on these thoughts, "These crows were creatures with no physical form. There''s nowhere we could hide as they could directly pass through any objects including ground and mountains. Therefore, finding a place to hide would not work" "The Life Power was capable of threatening the crows. However, even the gold-rank hunters would not trigger them as their efforts to kill would be in vain. I had not mastered the Life Power yet, and Fatty''s ability was merely iron-level. Despite having specific skills to stop spirits or supernatural powers, it would be rendered useless as he was too weak." "Based on the distance between us, it was estimated that within half an hour they would be ahead of us. The only choice we had now was to ask for help from the examiner. If we had the examiner''s Dimensional Relic, we definitely could survive" Lin Huang thought of it repeatedly, and this was the only way he could figure out. However, he hesitated. Pressing on the help button and they would be disqualified from the assessment. This was the rule mentioned by the main examiner in the first place. Even if they had reasonable reasons to request for help, but rules were rules. Lin Huang would usually not struggle like this, and he would give up the assessment without hesitation since if he were disqualified as a candidate, there would be a second chance for the assessment. However, the reason he applied to become a Reserve Hunter was to fulfill the requirement of the mission related to the Goldfinger. Punishment for failing this mission was quite harsh. It stated that if Lin Huang could not complete the mission within a month, he would lose his Goldfinger and the items rewarded during the activation of Goldfinger. This indicated that he would not only lose his Goldfinger, Xiao Hei but also the Monster Cards, Skill Cards as well as the Life Light gained from the kills. He would return to the condition he was in before his travels or probably even worse. Lin Huang was upset. He was not sure if he could still look for another foothold to apply for the assessment and complete the assessment within the limited time if he were disqualified this round. He was so confident that he could pass the assessment, so he did not survey about the information of the assessment at another foothold. He had no access to the internet now to check these details. This gave Lin Huang a headache as he looked at Tyrant''s right hand which held the fainted Fatt. If Fatty did not faint, he would convince him to give up the assessment and in turn, compensate him with a few types of equipment. Unfortunately, Fatty had fainted, and his emergency communicator was at the locker, irretrievable at the moment. After struggling for a long time, he looked at the crows behind him and realized they were getting nearer and nearer. Lin Huang finally decided and thought, "It was of the utmost importance to survive under such circumstances! I will think about the mission later." He had finally made up his mind and took out his emergency communicator. He then pressed the help button. 27 Escape From Danger The destination of the assessment was foothold No.7D121. It was around 800 kilometers away from Lin Huang. In the imperial suite of a grand hotel, a woman was sound asleep in the spacious master bedroom. She was wearing a loose, white silk pajamas that covered her body only until her hip and exposed her long, slender legs. When the moonlight shone on it, ravishing colors were seen reflected, shimmering on the surface. All of a sudden, the woman''s Emperor''s Heart Ring on her left index finger vibrated and a sound akin to a siren filled the atmosphere. She groaned modestly as she woke up to sit on the edge of her bed. She fluffed her hair and in an annoying tone said, "Its so late now and my sleep is disturbed!" Yi Yeyu was one of those who got irritated easily if they were sleep-deprived. She pressed the connect button on the communicator. She looked ferocious even with a straight face. She said, "Let''s see who dares disturb me at this hour while I''m sleeping!" A three-dimensional map was suddenly projected from the ring. It was a complete map that showed the regions of assessment. A red, bright dot on the map constantly blinked while sounds of siren continued to echo her bedroom. This red dot was obviously the cry for help sent by Lin Huang. "What the hell is this person doing? He did not stay there to be rescued after sending out a signal for help but ran so quickly!" Yi Yeyu was angry as her eyes tried to catch the flickering red dot that was constantly moving and changing its position on the map. After a while, her facial expression slightly changed. She noticed that it was strange and thought, "There''s something wrong with the speed. Even those on bronze-level could not travel at such speeds in the desert." Yi Yeyu spent some time and changed her clothes into a black suit. She was pissed and calculated the speed of motion of the red dot. She relocated the coordinates for delivering and summoned the relic. A green wooden door with the height of about two meters appeared abruptly in the hotel room. Yi Yeyu pushed the door and strode out of the room. Yi Yeyu then appeared in the assessment area through the green wooden door. She then crossed her hands in front of her chest. She looked toward the direction where the red dot appeared, unhappy. As the red dot got closer to her, she smiled coldly as she wanted to teach him a lesson. However, her face suddenly changed. She looked at the sky; it was covered by a dark shadow. The huge shadow was moving rapidly towards her. Her vision was clear, she was able to see a huge flock of crows. She recalled the terrifying speed of the red dot that appeared on the map and suddenly understood what was happening. She could not help but laugh and thought, "Who was the unfortunate, poor soul who got chased by the crows? It was not easy to survive this mishap" After a short while, she saw something was running madly, stirring up the sandy dust. She identified a gigantic Sand Monster running insanely. "A Sand Monster?" The crows would probably be ahead of it very soon. Where''s the fellow who requested for help? Could it be that hes just behind the Sand Monster?" Yi Yeyu then looked behind the Sand Monster but saw nothing because the skies were dusty. At this moment, she heard a sound coming from far away, "Dear examiner, please help us to get out of this place!" It was then that Yi Yeyu realized a young man sitting on the shoulder of the Sand Monster, waving at her. Lin Huang did not notice Yi Yeyu at the first instance. It was only when he saw the green wooden door that he noticed her standing beside it. "How could this fellow be the Imperial Censor?!" Yi Yeyu was surprised. She could remember this young man who almost missed the deadline for his application as he was the only candidate that was not an iron-level. The crows were now so close to Lin Huang, they were not even a kilometer apart. It was visible to the naked eye that the distance between them reduced as time passed. He kept looking back and asked Tyrant to run faster. Tyrant ran recklessly toward Yi Yeyu. He knew how scary the crows were. Yi Yeyu felt a sense of urgency. She then quickly wove arcane symbols with both of her hands. The gold Life Power formed a strange insignia in the space in front of her. The insignia formed a shape after it was complete and was automatically imprinted on the green wooden door. The green wooden door which was initially around two meters tall expanded rapidly to about 10 meters within about two seconds. "Escape through the door!" Lin Huang commanded once the expansion was done. The distance between him and the crows was less than 300 meters now. Everyone including the examiner would die if Tyrant stopped for a second or two. This was an urgent matter and Yi Yeyu knew it. Otherwise, she would not have expended her Life Power to trigger the change in form of the door. Tyrant did not stop at all. The moment right before he reached the door, he took a big leap and jumped over the door. The crows were surrounding them but Yi Yeyu did not bother to look back at the crows. She followed after Tyrant and leaped through the door. Just when the crows were about to catch up to them, the green wooden door closed abruptly. They disappeared from the desert as if they had never appeared before. At the same time, a black torrent swept through the region, filling every nook and cranny with gloom as countless crows began to converge. ... Yi Yeyu''s bedroom was a mess. There was a big hole which penetrated through a few rooms on the ceiling of her room when Tyrant advanced to the hotel through the green wooden door. It was already too late when Lin Huang reacted to recall Tyrant. Yi Yeyu was upset, she took a seat on her bed while Fatty was lying on the ground, in a state of unconsciousness. "Your name is Lin Huang?" Yi Yeyu could remember his name as she was the one who did the registration for him when he applied for the assessment. "Tell me the whole course of this incident." Lin Huang was slightly relieved to hear that she was at least interested to hear his side of the story. He was worried about having to compensate for the damages and loss of the hotel. He then calmed himself down and said, "Yesterday when Fatty and I were sleeping at around two o''clock in the morning, the night watcher woke me up. After I got out of the tent, I discovered the crows. I woke Fatty up at once. We sat on the Sand Monster''s shoulder and fled. After running for some time, we then realized that we could not get rid of them. I had no choice but to request for help." In turn, Yi Yeyu frowned and said, "It was approximately half an hour ago when you sent out the distress signal. Werent the crows already chasing you at the time?" "Yes, otherwise, I would not have pressed the help button." Lin Huang looked puzzled. "Tyrant was capable of escaping for half an hour, yet the crows did not overtake him? This speed could not be easily achieved by iron-level Sand Monsters. Was it a mutated Sand Monster?" Earlier in the desert, Yi Yeyu could vaguely sense that Tyrant exuded a strange aura. After listening to Lin Huang, she was sure about it. Mutated monsters were rare. Once they became mutants, their attributes would be significantly altered. They could produce new skills, and their skills could be further enhanced. Indeed, Tyrant did not use any Advance Cards to become a mutant. He was born like that. He had a green-crystal card when Lin Huang found him. Lin Huang had no intention to hide it from Yi Yeyu so that he might be allowed for the assessment once he reveals its strength. "Yes, it''s a mutated monster." Lin Huang said underneath his breath. "Alright, I know now." There was no expression on Yi Yeyu''s face. "Regarding the crow incident, I''ll report to the person in charge. This issue will probably be settled before daybreak. I''ll then send both of you back to continue with your assessment." "You''re saying that I''m not disqualified from the assessment?" Lin Huangs tone lightened. "Do you prefer to be disqualified from the exam?" Yi Yeyu said over her shoulder as she walked away from Lin Huang. "No, I never wanted to press the help button. Something was wrong with the emergency communicator, and it had nothing to do with me." Lin Huang said shamelessly, waving his hand. "We only have a few Imperial Censors. An Imperial Censor is always welcome to join the Hunter Association. An Imperial Censor like you who possess the exceptional ability to summon mutants would be qualified to be recruited. However, I''ve used up three of my quota for special recruitments this month. The only thing you can do now is to pass the assessment and become a Reserve Hunter yourself." Yi Yeyu explained in detail. "If you fail the assessment, youll have to wait until next month to be recruited through the special recruitment. By the end of the month, you can register yourself at foothold 7C87." Lin Huang never thought for a second that he could get valuable benefits from the identity of an imperial censor. Overall, he was happy to not be disqualified after all. The good news only lasted 3 seconds before he was bombarded with the inevitable bad news. "I''ll pay the damages and loss of the hotel for you. Repay the money back to me when you have it." Yi Yeyu added. "The hotel damage costs" "Alright. You can now leave my room along with Fatty. We''ll meet in the hotel''s lobby at nine o''clock tomorrow morning. The crow''s incident should be settled by then, and I''ll send both of you back to continue your assessment." Lin Huang carried Fatty on his back as he struggled to walk out of her room. As soon as the door closed, Yi Yeyu thought with a grin, "I guess I''m too lucky. I''ve recruited an Imperial Censor with the ability to summon mutated monsters. Let''s see who dare say that the newbie I''ve recruited is weak!" However, she did not know that the comments they always had about Lin Huang were that he was extremely weak! 28 Chemistry It was eight o''clock in the morning. Lin Huang was awake from his sleep. He was escaping from danger throughout the night and he was very exhausted. However, he did not sleep well in the hotel. He felt insecure as he had nightmares about crows in the sky. Fatty never woke up but was still snoring loudly. Lin Huang originally requested a room with twin beds but because he could not stand the snoring, he requested to be switched to another room of his own. He woke Fatty up and roughly told him what happened last night when they were having their breakfast. At nine o''clock sharp, Yi Yeyu came dressed in a purple ladies suit, wearing a pair of black stilettos that were 20 centimeters high. Her appearance caught many people''s attention. To the men, she was attractive. "Have you settled the crows?" Lin Huang could not help but ask as he saw Yi Yeyu walking towards him. "Yes, I have. I informed the Association last night after you left. According to the Association, they sent a transcendant hunter to kill the crows in less than one minute." Yi Yeyu said proudly. "That person killed such a huge group of crows within a minute?!" Lin Huang could not believe it. Until now, he had no idea what the strongest man in the could do. From what he heard, the transcendants had abilities beyond the existing human''s abilities. "You can hardly imagine how powerful a transcendant hunter is. Don''t aim too high. What you should do now is to think of how you can pass the assessment and upgrade to iron-level." She then added, "You should also think of how you can return me my money" As he heard the last sentence, Lin Huang kept quiet so that she would not be reminded about this too often. "The crows have been killed, and the area where the exam takes place should be safe now. Follow me, and I''ll send you back to where you were yesterday to proceed with the assessment." Yi Yeyu said and pointed both of them to her room. When they were in front of the door, Lin Huang took a glance at the room''s number. He had a strange expression and asked, "Didn''t you change your room?" "The boss of the hotel did not allow me to change. He was afraid that I might cause more damage to his room " Yi Yeyu answered. Three of them entered the room. Fatty looked at the large hole in the ceiling and said, "Damn! Sister, what have you done here and why did you blow up the ceiling!" "You have to ask him about this." Yi Yeyu pointed at Lin Huang. Lin Huang looked uncomfortable yet apologetic. "How could it be? Last night both of you were together in the room?" Fatty immediately grasped the meaning of their conversation and smiled wryly. "Is there chemistry between the both of you?" "This is bullshit. You were here last night." Lin Huang knew that Fatty was trying to insinuate something dirty. "I was here too?! Did you do something to me that I was not aware of? I''m still a virgin!" "Shut up!" Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu shouted unanimously. "Both of you may leave now if you don''t have anything else to ask." Yi Yeyu asked, looking at both of them and they shook their heads. Yi Yeyu summoned the big wooden door and pushed against it. Lin Huang and Fatty strode out the door. The other side of the big wooden door was the location Tyrant entered the door to escape at midnight. "Where is this place?" Fatty looked lost because when they were escaping from the crows at midnight, he fainted. He was clueless as to what had taken place. Lin Huang looked around him. However, nothing was familiar to him. Tyrant carried both of them and ran very quickly at midnight. Lin Huang was not aware of the surrounding at all as he was busy estimating the distance between them and the crows. He somehow made a quick guess and said, "The crows were coming from the south region yesterday, and we escaped for half an hour towards the north. We should be now around 60 kilometers away from our tent." "Then where should we go now? Should we proceed towards the north?" asked Fatty. "Let''s get back our tent first. Otherwise, we won''t have a place to sleep tonight." Lin Huang wisely remarked. "Alright. Thanks to Tyrant''s speed, we would only need to spend half an hour to go back. If we had to walk, it would take at least half a day to reach." Fatty reasoned. They summoned Tyrant, and both of them sat on his shoulder once again. They then departed. After half an hour, Tyrant brought them back to the station where they set up camp yesterday. Fattys tent was more eye-catching. It was not because of its color, but because of its funky shape. Thank God the tent was still in good shape. The crows only hunt for souls and were not interested in inanimate objects. "You made such a long cut on my tent, can I still use it?" Fatty asked, visibly displeased. "Where else will you sleep tonight?" Lin Huang did not want to share a tent with Fatty and began folding his tent. Fatty knew that Lin Huang did not want to stay in the same tent with him. He was forced to take down his tent, and he mumbled, "I should have woken up earlier just now to buy a new tent before meeting the lady" "What have you done with her? Why can''t you tell me? Why did the room become like that? Also, why did she say you owed her money?" Fatty asked in one breath. Lin Huang did not bother to answer him and continued folding his tent. He was not in a good mood because he was in debt for no reason. He thought in his heart that he would never summon Tyrant in the hotel ever again. "Eh, say something!" Fatty threw a screw at him to break the silence. "Dont you have anything better to do?" Lin Huang asked impatiently. After a while, Fatty threw another screw at him, "You look upset. Did you lose your virginity to her?" "Don''t bother me. Do your own thing!" Lin Huang was beginning to get annoyed. After a moment of silence, he started talking again, "I somehow feel that Yi Yeyu''s attitude toward you was sort of weird" "You''re thinking too much." Still, Lin Huangs back faced Fatty. Fatty found Lin Huang''s reaction uninteresting. He then focused on taking down his tent. Lin Huang felt a wave a peace and he was thankful for that 29 Monster from the Sandy Bottom After folding their tents, both of them sat on Tyrant''s shoulder and headed toward the east. They were attacked by several monsters while on their journey to the east. Thankfully, Tyrant''s powerful abilities killed those monsters in an instant so there was no delay in their journey. Monsters would usually avoid Tyrant by hiding. This time around, in only a matter of few hours; they were attacked by four monsters. These monsters were much weaker than Tyrant and because of that, all the monsters perished. Logically, the monsters would never place themselves in danger because monsters are equipped with instinctive responses to avoid danger. It was indeed unusual to see them charging at the face of death, Tyrant. At one o''clock in the afternoon, the desert temperature peaked. Lin Huang and Fatty found an abandoned house where they stopped so that Tyrant could rest. This house was used as a supply depot and utilized by the Hunter Association. Tyrant moved towards the supply depot. By the looks of the houses structure, it must have existed for a long time. The supply depot was not specifically built for the assessment. The Hunter Association would always build all types of supply depots for passerbys convenience. "Looking at the weathered house, this supply depot must have been around for at least 30 years. It doesnt look abandoned," said Fatty. "Even if it was an abandoned supply depot, theres a high probability it of being utilized as a part of the assessment since its on the way to our final destination. The strategic location of the supply depot caused the weak to be eliminated and those who managed to reach the supply depot wouldve already passed the assessment by completing the first half of the journey." Lin Huang was 80% sure that there would be supplies in it. "Let''s go in and have a look." Indeed, it was a storehouse with barrels of water and some high energy snacks. Fatty was happy and quickly walked towards the food. He took a packet of food and began to eat. Lin Huang took a barrel of water from the storage space and walked toward Fatty asking, "Are you hungry?" "Yes, and this brand of the potato chips are my favorite." Fatty sucked his thumb in a gesture to disgust Lin Huang. "If you''re hungry, you can cook up a meal but you can only eat one packet. You know the rules right." Lin Huang referred to the unwritten rule which every hunter should know - items from the supply depot should be taken in moderation. The items provided by supply depot were actually for the needy. Sometimes, a glass of water or even leftover food could be a lifesaver. Therefore, those who could do without the water and food should not be greedy. Fatty was nonetheless shameless, he couldnt care less about these unspoken rules. After finishing that initial pack of chips, he took another packet and kept it in his storage space. He then took another barrel of water and walked out of the house. Lin Huang was drinking some water as he sat in the shaded corridor. He reminded Fatty, "Before you cook, make sure your hands are clean!" In all honesty, Fatty cooked very well. The only complaint Lin Huang had was that he had poor personal hygiene. Fatty grilled some meat and after he was done, both of them sat at the shaded corridor, eating. "I brought some Pilsner over. I thought I could enjoy some drinks during the journey. Unfortunately, it was confiscated before the assessment even started." Fatty grumbled. "It''s an assessment. Did you think that you were here for a holiday?" Lin Huang was sarcastic. "It''s a must to have some alcohol at a barbecue. Plain water at a barbeque is just not right" Fatty responded, so sure of himself. Lin Huang agreed that it was indeed weird to drink plain water at a barbecue. "Alright, stop grumbling. We have to continue with our journey after having our meals. We must try our best to reach the foot of the Snowy Mountains before dark." Lin Huang said as he thought about the schedule he planned for the journey. Based on the speed of Tyrant, he estimated the remaining journey to be seven hours. Fatty cleaned the cooking utensils and both of them resumed their journey. Tyrant ran under the scorching sun. However, the sand reflected a golden gleam. Lin Huang and Fatty wore sunglasses and they looked like they were on vacation. After a short while, Lin Huang felt something stirring up from beneath the sand. He took off his sunglasses for a better view and stared at the sand but there was nothing there. Lin Huang seemed confused. He then pointed at the direction of the sand and shouted, "Hey, did you see something move underneath the sand just now?" "No, I didn''t. It is not windy now and so it will be easy to notice if anything moved either on or under the desert sand." Fatty replied while waving his hand. The sand began to roll again and this time, in the direction of the Sand Monster. "There''s something there!" Lin Huang yelled. The Sand Monster smelled something strange and started to be uncomfortable. Lin Huang was more sensitive to Tyrant and he noticed its unusual reaction. This indicated that something frightening was about to happen. Lin Huang prepared for the worst as he held Tyrant''s beard tightly with one hand and in his other hand, he took out his GrayEagle17. "Tyrant, stop!" Lin Huang commanded because he noticed that the unknown object was moving way faster than Tyrant. They would not escape in time. They waited instead for the unknown creature to charge at them. "Fatty, get ready. It may not be an easy feat this time." Lin Huang shouted. Tyrant stopped. Lin Huang could feel his heart pounding. He aimed at the sand with his GrayEagle17 and in a split second, pulled the trigger. They did not have with them many explosive shells so Lin Huang used bullets specially made for GrayEagle17. However, the bullets had no impact. It did nothing to the creature because the unknown object kept moving forward and when the shot was fired, a sharp metal plate sound rang instead of a painful groan. The GrayEagle17 was not unfamiliar to Fatty. His face turned pale as he witnessed the bullets deflecting into various directions. Tyrant roared profusely 30 The Undead Worm After Tyrant stopped running, the sands rolled to him in just a few breaths. A strong sandstorm stirred up the sand and dust and the monster from beneath attempted to kill Tyrant. Tyrant bounced on the ground and retreated about 10 meters away, dodging the attack. Lin Huang and the rest of them could see the unknown object now. It was a gigantic creature that looked like a python. It had blood red scales and scales on its body its body that was around 20 meters long. It was a lot taller than Tyrant when it erected its body upright. There was merely a mouth on its head. It did not even have eyes! Looking at Tyrant, it opened its mouth slightly. It was visible to Lin Huang and the rest of them that there were many sharp teeth that resembled barbs wriggling in its mouth. Both of their facial expression changed when they saw the monster''s features. "What should we do?! This is an Undead Worm!" Fatty cried. The Undead Worm was identified as a type of demon. They were the scariest predators on the desert. They were rare and the worst part is that they do not have natural enemies here. They preyed on all the creatures in the desert. All demons are vicious when they hunt for food; an Undead Worm was no different. Once the prey was in its mouth, the barbs inside its mouth would wriggle, crushing and slicing the victim. It resembled a meat grinder. It was a known myth that they had a smaller mouth inside their big mouth. It would pierce the ground to the creature''s skull and absorb its brain. The Undead Worm in front of them was around 20 meters long. Similar to Tyrant, they were on iron-level. However, these monsters were the Sand Monster''s enemy. It would have a much higher probability of defeating Tyrant. This was also the monster that Lin Huang wished not to encounter the most. However, he was forced to conquer his fears now. "We can''t escape this anymore, just f*ck it!" Lin Huang knew exactly what the situation was now. He shouted back at Fatty, but his gaze never left the Undead Worm. The Undead Worm erected upright but it had not launched an attack. It kept its huge mouth open, looking like a freak that was sizing up Lin Huang and the rest of them. It was how predators looked down on their prey. The Sand Monster obeyed Lin Huang''s command to not be reckless. Lin Huang and Fatty did not react; they were stunned. Looking at the Undead Worm that had yet to trigger an attack, Lin Huang made a guess and asked, "Could it be that this monster only attacks moving objects?" "You asked the wrong person. I have not mastered the monster guide. I was able to recognize this monster because I''ve seen it before on the news." Fatty swallowed a mouthful of saliva and continued, "The news was about a Reserve Hunter team that encountered the Undead Worm in the desert. A team of five were killed by this monster in less than 10 minutes. When the rescue team for the monster hunters arrived, the Undead Worm had bitten off the top half of the last Reserve Hunter." "You don''t need to tell me the content of the news" Their conversation lasted for a while and the Undead Worm was still ignorant to their existence. "Why is it still moving now? Did we encounter a fake Undead Worm instead?" Fatty asked, hoping that the answer to that was positive. "Is there anything in your storage that you''re not going to use?" "Let me see." Fatty knew what Lin Huang was thinking. At that moment, the Undead Worm moved and pounced on Fatty. "Damn! It''s coming at me!" Fatty shouted, his voice shaky. Tyrant''s body was short and he used that advantage to roll away, avoiding the kill. Fatty was not aware of his surroundings and was caught in between the heated battle. He was flung across the air and fell beside the Undead Worm, about 2 meters from each other. It seemed like he felt a stir around, the Undead Worm''s mouth immediately turned to Fattys position and slowly walked towards him. Its mouth was getting closer to him, his heart felt like protruding out of his body. His mind repeatedly told him to run, but his conscious warned him to stand his ground because if he ran, he would most certainly die. "Fatty, don''t move. I''ll distract the Undead Worm!" Lin Huang said, looking at the Undead Worm''s mouth gradually moving toward Fatty. They were less than three meters apart. Lin Huang knew that Fatty would be killed if he did not move to distract it. "Tyrant, run!" Lin Huang ordered. As Tyrant heard this, he made off and ran away from the Undead Worm like an arrow leaving the bow. The Undead Worm immediately turned his head back as it noticed Tyrant was trying to escape from it. It seemed like it was targeting Tyrant''s direction. He then chased after him at a faster speed. Fatty was relieved when he saw the Undead Worm changing its target. There was a moment where he actually thought that he would die. His legs trembled as he sat on the surface of the sand. Fatty then realized that he was sweating and his body was all wet. It was not because of the hot weather, but it was due to anxiety and fear. He rested for a while but hesitated. He then stood up and ran in the direction of Tyrant and the Undead Worm. He mumbled as he ran, "Lin Huang, please don''t die! If you sacrifice your life to save me, there''s no way for me to return the favor to you in my entire life" On the golden sand, the giant Sand Monster did not stop running, and a trail of sand could be seen behind him as they got closer to each other. Just when the Undead Worm wriggled through the sand and was about to pounce on the Sand Monster, it disappeared from the ground. At the dunes far away from them, Lin Huang smiled. He had another green monster card with him right now. A few minutes ago, before the Undead Worm was able to catch up with Tyrant, he left Lin Huang at the dunes nearby. He then left Tyrant to distract the Undead Worm while he observed the distance between them at the dunes. When the Undead Worm tried catching up to Tyrant, Lin Huang turned Tyrant back into a monster card which ruined the Undead Worm''s plan. It stood still and kept looking around for Tyrant. Lin Huang crashed the green monster card and re-summoned Tyrant. He then said, "Let''s go. Weve to go back and look for Fatty!" 31 White Little Monster He sat back on Tyrants shoulder and they retreated. Lin Huang noticed that Fatty was missing. "What the hell is Fatty doing? Please dont tell me that he was looking for me." The footprints on the ground were covered by sand. It was almost impossible to trace where Fatty had disappeared to. Lin Huang turned his head toward the direction of the Undead Worm. Lin Huang recalled the Sand Monster when they reached the sand dunes. He then climbed to the dunes crest with his head jutting outward, looking in the direction of the Undead Worm but it was no longer there and Fatty was nowhere in sight too. "The Undead Worm disappeared" Lin Huang frowned. He did not know what happened. "It would be impossible for Fatty to reach here in 10 minutes. Perhaps he escaped somewhere else." Lin Huang summoned Tyrant again and they looked around. However, he still could not find Fatty and eventually, he gave up. Tyrant and Lin Huang ran towards the north. Lin Huang was heavy-hearted, worried that Fatty might have died and his body may never be found. In the following hours, they encountered a few monsters during their journey to the north. However, Tyrant was able to defeat all of them and they finally arrived at the foot of the Snowy Mountains before sunset. Lin Huang set his tent up and proceeded to sit quietly on the sandy ground. He leaned against a large rock and took out some dried meat to eat from his storage space. Fatty cooked the smoked meat during the barbecue they had a couple of nights before and insisted that Lin Huang took some with him for the journey since it would be inconvenient to cook near the iceberg once they began their climb. Lin Huang then ate the dried meat and drank plain water for dinner. At night, the sky turned dark. The sky was full of stars. Suddenly, Lin Huang saw meteors shooting across the sky. He thought of a common saying, "Everyone has a star that represents their life. When it falls, they die. Theyll become a meteor and shine one last time." "Fatty, if youre no longer with us, when Im stronger, Ill take my revenge on all the monsters in this desert for killing you." As soon as Lin Huang finished his sentence, he poured libations of plain water from the jug on the ground in front of him. "Lets drink plain water first. Ill buy you some liquor after the assessment ends." Lin Huang then took a look at the sky and saw another meteor passing through the sky. As the meteor faded into the clouds, Lin Huang summoned Tyrant to keep watch beside his tent. Finally, he entered the tent to go to bed. "I need a good rest tonight to energize myself. Ill start my climb tomorrow morning." Lin Huang slept without taking off his clothes and shoes. It was a peaceful night. When Lin Huang woke up, it was only seven oclock in the morning. He washed up and prepared himself for the journey ahead of him. At the foot of the Snowy Mountains, the slopes were gentle. It was not covered in a thick layer of snow. Tyrant carried Lin Huang and this allowed him to conserve his physical strength. "Dont worry, take your time." Tyrants body size was not suitable for climbing mountains. Lin Huang could only take a ride on flat terrains. When the hill got steeper with regions that were covered by snow, Tyrants weight caused the mountain to crack. Tyrant carried Lin Huang and walked for less than an hour before reaching a height of 3000 meters above sea level. If they climbed any further upwards, they would reach the regions covered in snow. Lin Hung then summoned Bai and Tyrant was recalled. Bai had silver hair. It had been waiting patiently for instructions. "Lets climb together. When I get stuck, help me a little through the hard parts." Lin Huang knew that climbing the Snowy Mountains was the toughest task in this assessment. The Snowy Mountains were elevated 6,000 meters above sea level at its lowest point. At the mountain peak, it was 12,000 meters above sea level. The route set by the Hunter Association was one that led to one of the main peaks of the Snowy Mountain. It was around 8,000 meters above sea level. Lin Huang had never climbed the Snowy Mountains before. This was a huge challenge for him and to make it worse, he was the only candidate that had not achieved iron-level. Whichever it was, either physical capabilities or stamina, he was definitely weaker than the rest of the candidates. If he had not acquired the Robust passive skill that allowed a two-time increment in his physique, Lin Huang would absolutely have no confidence to pass this stage. Lin Huang was considering transforming Bai by wrapping its Blood Power around him so it could pull him up. In the end, he reasoned with himself that perhaps the challenge might be good for him. Upon receiving Lin Huangs instruction, Bai nodded its head. Bai turned its body and headed toward the rock wall that was covered by snow and used its bare hands to climb it. At the start of the journey, it seemed doable as it was only a height of just two meters. Lin Huang put on his gloves and followed behind Bai. Bai was a quick climber but Lin Huang was not and so, Bai had to constantly wait for Lin Huang every two meters. Lin Huang thought that it was easier to climb behind Bai as he would leave movement trails on its pathway for Lin Huang to follow. Both of them were almost similar body size so anywhere Bai could climb to, Lin Huang could do so as well. In the afternoon, Lin Huang and Bai only managed to climb around 600 meters before stopping. If it were a distance on flat land, they would have reached their location in less than 10 minutes with a consistent walking speed but unfortunately, both of them spent more than five hours to reach this height. Lin Huang was exhausted and suggested, "Lets find a resting place to energize ourselves." Bai nodded its head and quickly transformed. Its Blood-powered wings were transformed into blades, cutting through the rock walls as it grazed the surface. It cut out rocks that were two meters long and two meters wide. The blood-powered blades continued to pierce through and in the process, it dug out a rock wall with a layer of ice on it before both of them slid into the hole. The hold was deep, its depth around 10 meters. The wind outside the hole howled and grew louder. Fortunately, it was still warm inside the hole. Lin Huang leaned against the wall and sat down. He then ate the dried meat for lunch once again. He was about to share with Bai but then remembered that it only drank blood. He ate another fist-sized piece of dried meat and drank some water. After getting enough rest, he gave Bai a signal, waving to it that it was time for the both of them to set off again. Bai led the way and together, they climbed 700 meters within five hours. This time, they had arrived at a safer place compared to the first phase of their climbing journey. He looked at the sky. Even though the sun had not set yet, Lin Huang refused to continue the journey. They set up camp on the mountain, preparing for a good rest so they were able to continue their journey early the next morning. He was now at around 4800 meters above sea level. After the tents were set up, he started a fire to cook dinner. The sky got darker and the flames were burning bright. Lin Huang could not help but miss Fattys cooking skills as he smelled the smell of raw meat. There was soup boiling in the pot. After a few hours, a meaty fragrance filled their surroundings and that was the signal for Lin Huang to have dinner. He used a ladle to scoop the meat from the pot and onto his plate. After a few bites of the juicy meat, Bai moved abruptly and returned with a furry, little white monster in its palm 32 Snow Gian The little white monster was as small as a basketball and its body looked like a fuzzy ball. It had a pair of bright, black eyes and a huge mouth that took up almost half of its face. That was all there was to its body. Lin Huang could recognize that it was a Snowball Monster. The Snowball Monster was a mutated species. To most humans, it was harmless. Though they had sharp teeth, they were cowards. They would prefer to flee when faced with creatures bigger than they were. They hated fights. They looked cute and many girls loved them. People then took advantage of its adorable traits and turned it into a business opportunity. The price of a Snowball Monster was even higher than bronze-level firearms. They were kept as ornamental pets or sold to rich ladies as companions wherever they traveled. Slowly, this became a trend. They were omnivores but were not choosy with their meals. Therefore, it was rather easy to keep a Snowball Monster fed. They were a rare species that oftentimes hid in cold places. Lin Huang took a thorough look at it. It must have been attracted by the fragrance of the meat. Even as Bai held onto the Snow Monster, it did not seem to move or struggle to escape. It was staring at the pot of soup for a long time and eventually, its tongue began to show! It was such a glutton. Lin Huang tempted it by waving a piece of meat it in front of it. Its eyes immediately lit up and its gaze was locked onto that slab of meat in front of him, following the movement of Lin Huangs arm that was swinging the meat. After a short while, it noticed that Lin Huang did not put the meat into its mouth. It attempted to snatch the food but Bai was quick to hold on to it tighter. Knowing that its efforts to break free were in vain, it raised its head and looked at Lin Huang with pain in its eyes as Lin Huang chewed on the meat. "No wonder the girls would like them, they give pitiful looks to seek for attention and sympathy." Lin Huang was taken aback at the Snowball Monsters sad expression. He then fed the Snowball Monster some meat. It gobbled up the meat within seconds. It then went back to showing him a sad look. This time, Lin Huang did not entertain it and continued eating his dinner. After a long time of staring at him, the Snowball Monster began to cry when it realized it was being ignored. "Youre a good actor." Lin Huang chuckled, continued ignoring the monster. The Snowball Monster started its acting with only a few tears but the moment it realized that Lin Huang could not care less, it began sobbing to catch Lin Huangs attention. "This fellow is so dramatic" Lin Huang said, not turning to even look at the monster. Lin Huang ladled out the leftovers into a bowl and placed it on the floor. He then grabbed the monster from Bai and sat it down beside that bowl. Without wasting time, the Snowball Monster tilted the bowl upwards and swallowed the leftovers. It then licked its lips and raised its head at Lin Huang. "You wont get anything by staring at me. Theres no more food left." Lin Huang said, shaking his palm. The Snowball Monster knew that the food had finished. It then hugged Lin Huangs leg and rubbed its head against his pants. It looked like an expression of gratitude. Lin Huang lifted it up and reciprocated, "It feels like a stuffed plush toy. It feels even better to touch because of its warmth." The Snowball Monster seemed to enjoy it as Lin Huang saw it smiling with its eyes shut. "Youre enjoying the good life" Lin Huang said as he shook his head and laughed. As the skies became darker, Lin Huang signaled that he wanted to sleep by pulling his leg from its hug. He needed sufficient rest as their journey to climb the Snowy Mountains would continue tomorrow morning. When he was about to call for Bai and summon the Sand Monster to keep watch outside his tent, he saw the Snowball Monster rushing to the edge of his pants and began nibbling at it, pulling him toward a specific direction. "You small little thing, where are you taking me?" Lin Huang gasped. The Snowball Monster nodded its head and hopped a few steps in the opposite direction. When it turned back, Lin Huang waved his hand and began following it. The Snowball Monster hopped along a gentle slope with Lin Huang and Bai following closely after it. It stood still when it reached an ice wall and waited for the both of them to arrive. It then leaped over the ice wall. It was peculiar that the Snowball Monster disappeared once they reached the ice wall. "Could this be a cover-up?" Lin Huang said while taking a look at the ice wall. Unfortunately, there was nothing there; it was a completely empty space. He went deeper and as he moved a step forward It was a huge snow valley. It was like a hidden world within the Snowy Mountains. He was so stunned to the extent that he lost support and lost his balance. As soon as he regained his senses, he realized that Bai did not follow after him. "You dont have to wait anymore. Only humans that I approve of can enter. Any other monsters are not allowed to enter." A deep, thick voice echoed. "Who are you?" Lin Huang looked around but he did not see the Snowball Monster. "Its me!" He heard the voice once again, but it really was coming from the Snowball Monster. "You can speak!" Lin Huang was shocked as he could not believe that a Snowball Monster could speak and better yet, it could speak in a human language! The voice was obviously the voice of a man. "Yes, youre right." As soon as the Snowball Monster finished its sentence, it expanded like a balloon with hands and legs. In just a few seconds, the once cute monster that was only the size of a basketball now was a giant. That was a Yeti, with a height close to a hundred meters. It was covered in a thick white fur. He had a face structure that resembled humans. The only difference was that he grew a beard as white as snow! A Yeti was a type of snow monster. They were naturally born to be extremely strong and were extraordinary. The abilities of an adult Yeti far exceeded normal monsters that were of the same rank. Lin Huang could imagine exactly how strong the Yeti really was. "Young boy, I have no bad intention in bringing you here. I need your help 33 Protoss "What do you want me to do?" Lin Huang asked after seeing the desperation in the Yetis eyes. It would not be an exaggeration to think that a Yeti with that body size could kill him with just the touch of a finger. "Follow me." The Yeti extended his arm. A gush of wind pushed Lin Huang forward and he fell into the Yetis palm. After Lin Huang was able to find his balance, the Yeti led Lin Huang to the inner part of the valley. There seemed to be an invisible protective layer surrounding the Yetis as any snow that touched its skin would automatically disappear. Lin Huang realized that this world was indeed mysterious. The snow valley had a windy path. The Yeti spoke stories about his past while they walked. "I could still clearly remember 700 years ago, I met a beautiful lady on a snowy day. I became her favorite monster. I was a Snowball Monster that knew nothing and had a muddled memory. I could only remember that she was a very gentle lady and she treated me well" "Since Ive become a mutated Snowball Monster, I slowly regained my memory. At that moment, I knew that she was not human but a monster like me. She was powerful to the point where she could not be identified by human knowledge and experience. She yearned to live as a human. Therefore, she tried to live amongst the humans in their world for a long time. One day, she told me that she fell in love with a man I could still remember how happy she was and from that day onwards, she barely visited me" "However, one day when she returned, she was covered with blood stains all over her body. She confided in me. She told me that the human, her lover had discovered her identity. They fell out of love and he betrayed her. He led a group of hunters to kill her but because she was powerful, she killed them all in anger except for that man." "Ever since then, she stayed in the valley and never left. Sometimes, she would carve the mans face on the ice. There were big and small ice sculptures with different facial expressions. She oftentimes stared blankly at them the whole day, reminiscing everything. She had also carved sculptures that gave her happy thoughts and had placed her favorite ice sculptures beside the lakes while she danced by the lake. It made her happy as she recalled that the man loved to see her dance" "Soon after, the man arrived at the valley, alone. She thought that the man had returned to look for her. As the man entered, he told her, "I know who you are. Youre the most precious protoss in the monster world. That was why you had a perfect human figure. Each protoss has a divine fire in their body. Now, if you truly love me, give it to me." "..and do you know what her response was?" The Yeti asked. Lin Huang shook his head. It was either a love story with either a happy or tragic ending. She said, "I will give it to you for I am not trying to prove anything." "She tore her body apart and crumbled her own heart. She took the ice-blue ember out from within and threw it to the ground in front of the mans feet. He did not even bother to look at her or thank her. He instantly picked it up and left. He knew that without the ember of divinity, she was bound to die soon." "Her body got weaker by each passing day. In less than a month, she could not get out of bed. After she died, she was buried in front of a small house by the lake. Her death caused the entire valley to turn into frozen, snow-covered land. If the love of her life dripped his or her blood onto the lake, the ice and snow covering the valley would melt and she would come back to life." "She sank to the bottom of the lake. Her blood spread throughout the lake and entered my body. I mutated for the second time and I became a Yeti ever since. After the mutation was complete, I regained my consciousness and saw that the whole valley had turned into this..." Lin Huang saw a small house covered in snow at the end of the valley. "So you wanted to use my blood to see if I could bring her back to life?" Lin Huang finally guessed the reason he was brought there. "Yes, youre right." "Why did you choose me?" Lin Huang hesitated. "Its because you have a good character. Not many people make it past the ice walls. You are the third person in seven hundred years." The Yeti answered. "How much of my blood do you need?" "One drop would suffice." The Yeti said before adding, "Once the process is complete, I will let you go and if your blood is able to break the curse, Ill erase your memories of ever meeting me." "Lets begin." Lin Huang was certain that probability of success was almost zero. "Thank you." The Yeti thanked him and led him toward the direction of the ice lake. Once at the lake, the Yeti stretched out his hand and Lin Huang stood onto it. The Yeti then placed him in the middle of the lake. Lin Huang took out a pocket knife and made a slight cut on his left index finger and a drop of blood oozed out. Nothing happened after the drop of blood fell into the lake. He then looked up at the Yeti and gave an apologetic head shake, "Im sorry, Im not the man of destiny that youre looking for" Soon, the Yeti looked worried. There was a cracking sound beneath his feet and within a split second, the ice layer began to crack. It immediately took Lin Huang into its palm and retreated a few steps backward. The speed at which the ice cracked became faster. The ice began to melt and within a minute or so, the lake returned to its initial state with blue water from left to right. Soon, the snow covering the whole valley subsided and the thick clouds dispersed themselves, revealing the crescent moons that had not appeared for a long time. There were plants and flowers that began to grow! The snowy white world now turned into the rich greenery. "Was my blood so nutritious?" Lin Huang sucked his wounded finger. In less than 10 minutes, the glacier valley regained its liveliness. The plants were flourishing and the scent of flowers was breathtaking. After observing the valley, Lin Huang noticed a crystal clear coffin floating to the surface of the lake from the bottom. Once it was at the surface, the coffin began to melt and a beautiful lady in a white dress emerged. Her face was still as if she was sleeping on the surface of the water. Slowly, her eyes opened and she slowly stood up on the lake. From afar, she saw Lin Huang and the Yeti. She smiled and walked towards them, her eyes assuring and her lips smiling. 34 Xue Luo As she walked over to them, she nodded at the Yeti and said, "Xiao Bing, thank you." "Madam, protecting you is my responsibility." The Yeti said excitedly. "Let us first take care of the guest we have." She then shifted her gaze to Lin Huang. "Hi, my man of destiny." "Hi?" Lin Huang said awkwardly. She was beautiful, like a fairy from a painting, demure and pure looking. Lin Huang was obviously nervous, fidgeting with his fingers and shirt. "My birth name is Xue Ling-er but now, she is dead and as the man of destiny, you may call me Xue Luo." "I forgot to introduce myself, my name is Bing Wang." The Yeti quickly interrupted. "Im Lin Huang." Lin Huang said for formality sake. "Mr. Lin Huang, thank you for resurrecting me and transforming the valley to its beautiful, original state." She was frowning though. She lowered her eyes to Lin Huangs lower abdomen and asked, "Is there something wrong with your Life Wheel?" "Yes, I was born with a broken Life Wheel. The speed of lifespan I lose is 10 times faster than most people." Lin Huang admitted. "Show me." Xue Ling-er demanded. Lin Huang stepped forward and Xue Luo pressed against his lower abdomen with her smooth, soft hands. Lin Huang felt hot inside. Xue Luo was healing his broken Life Wheel! In a matter of minutes, when he looked again, there were no wounds to be seen and the speed of his lifespan loss returned to normal. Xue Luo then withdrew her hand. "This" Lin Huang was in disbelief. His lifes struggle was now solved. It was a miracle! "Thank you, Ms. Xue Luo!" "Its just a small matter. I should be the one thanking you." Xue Luo smiled. "Xiao Bing, please go ahead and prepare some drinks. Ill chat with Lin Huang for awhile." Xue Luo told Bing Wang. As soon as Bing Wang left, Xue Luo said to Lin Huang, "Lets go to the snow house." Both of them headed towards the small bamboo hut where the snow house was situated in. Both of them sat in the hall, facing each other, separated by a tea table made of bamboo. Lin Huang could smell an exquisite floral scent coming from somewhere near the door. "This is my house. I designed it and Xiao Bing built it accordingly. What do you think?" Xue Luo asked since she noticed Lin Huang looking at every corner of the house. "Its lovely. I am actually even more envious by the fact that your garden is the entire valley!" Lin Huang admitted finally while giggling. Xue Luo covered her mouth as she laughed, "I wasnt told that you were a humorous man." It was the first time Lin Huang received such a compliment, he was shy. Bing Wang then appeared with some boiling water and a tea set but he was not holding them. There seemed to be an invisible force that lifted the items and they were placed gently in the middle of the tea table. Xue Luo began to brew tea. He had seen tea art before on Earth but this was different; there was something about her poise and elegance. She was very meticulous with each and every step of the brewing process. He could not shift his gaze elsewhere. Lin Huang was so attracted by Xue Luo that he ignored Xiao Heis messages. "Host watched Virtual God Tales, entering the state of being an epiphany." "You have gained a Skill Card The Great Sword Scripture pieces x1" "You have gained a Skill Card The Great Sword Scripture pieces x1" "You have gained a Skill Card The Great Sword Scripture pieces x1" Once Xue Luo served Lin Huang with some tea, he finally escaped from his fantasy and realized the numerous notifications from Xiao Hei. "You have gained an Epic Skill Card "The Great Sword Scripture" pieces x700. It can be integrated into the Rare Monster Card of "The Great Sword Scripture Part 1". You have gained the complete set of "The Great Sword Scripture". Are you sure you would like to integrate the cards?" Lin Huang never knew that he could gain so many "The Great Sword Scripture" pieces by just watching Xue Luo brew tea. It was enough for him to have a complete set of "The Great Sword Scripture". Lin Huang chose to integrate them at once! After a short while, the same notifications from Xiao Hei sounded once again. "Congratulations, integration of cards is now complete. You have gained an Epic Skill Card C "The Great Sword Scripture." Lin Huang looked closely at the Life Wheel in his body and checked the Skill card. The Skill card of "The Great Sword Scripture" had become blue. The picture at the front remained the same but the message behind the card changed. "Skill Card" "Name of Skill: Great Sword Scripture" "Rarity: Epic" "Type of Skill: Sword" "Skill Level: Unavailable" "Status: Available" "Remarks: This skill is a special skill and there is no rank limit. The power changes according to the user." "Card Remarks: Passable" "Ive not brewed tea for many years. Im unfamiliar with it now." Luo Xue said sheepishly. "Ms. Xue Luo, your brewing tea skills are excellent. I have learned a lot from you." Lin Huang was able to gain Skill Card pieces by simply watching her make tea. This woman was amazing! Xue Luo instinctively poured Lin Huang another cup once he was done with the first. "The glacier valley must have been formed used spatial manipulation?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, its nothing." Xue Luo nodded. Lin Huang was actually quite curious about the protoss but he felt that it would be too soon to ask and decided to keep it for another time. Xue Luo sensed that Lin Huang was doubtful. She then said, "Mister, if theres anything you would like to ask, you can. Ill try my best to answer." "I heard that youre the protoss. According to historical records, there was a monster that opened 3000 Virtual Eyes 800 years ago and everyone called him a protoss too. Can you tell me more about this?" Lin Huang referred to an incident that happened 800 years ago. "Oh him. He was strong but was not considered a protoss. At most, he was a servant of God bestowed with the blood of the protoss." Xue Luo snorted. "We protoss were the true future generation of Gods. The protoss were born with perfect human figures and had the blood of God flowing in their veins. The fellow claimed himself to be the protoss but he did not have a perfect human figure." "I cant reveal much about the protoss though. Do you have any other questions besides this?" Lin Huang then began asking random questions about the past and Xue Luo did her best to assist with every one of his questions. Soon, Lin Huang had nothing more to ask. The living room became quiet. Xue Luo then took the initiative to start a new conversation. "Mister, please dont stay in the mountains for too long because I fear monsters may attack you." "I do realize that monsters here are quite furious. Is there a specific reason for this?" Lin Huang asked. "I just discovered that there was a transcendant monster in the underground desert. It seemed to be able to possess the mind of other monsters to hunt food for itself." Xue Luo explained. "Oh, I see. Its okay. Ill reach my destination after passing through the mountain." Lin Huang said with relief. "After you leave, well also be returning back to our world." Xue Luo sighed, her eyes seemed sad. Bing Wang added, "Yes, theres no need to stay in the human world anymore." Lin Huang was disappointed as they might never see each other again. "Ill dance for you as a gift before you leave." Xue Luo suggested. "Mister, please follow me." She led Lin Huang and Bing Wang, levitating them in the sky. She slowly landed them beside the lake while she went to stand alone in the middle of the lake. Under the moonlight, her white dress was impossibly clean and pure. She looked like a fairy descended from heaven. It began to snow, ripples began forming on the lake. A thin layer of ice condensed beneath her feet and it looked like she stood on a white ring. It was indeed a breathtaking scene as she began moving her body in perfect harmony to the sounds of the wind hauling. "Perhaps this was true, she was the goddess of the Alps" Lin Huang thought. It was no secret that he had a deep affection for her. Lin Huang had learned a lot from the dance. Her love, hatred, and all sorts of emotions she felt, the coldness and cruelty of death, as well as the hidden feeling of loneliness Xue Luo took slow steps towards Lin Huang when she finished her final scene. She looked pitiful. He did not see her as a protoss but instead, as an ordinary woman with a burst of emotions. He could not stop himself from saying, "I believe that one day, youll find your own happiness." "Thank you." Xue Luos eyes brightened. After saying goodbye to Xue Luo, Bing Wang sent Lin Huang out of the valley. It was now late at night. Lin Huang recalled Bai and summoned the Sand Monster. He then went back to his tent to rest. 35 Blocked by a Flock of Geese Lin Huang was tossing and turning the night before. Perhaps it was the tea that kept him awake. The next day, it was nine o''clock in the morning when he woke up. Lin Huang tidied up his things and ate breakfast. He then summoned Bai and continued with their journey. Xue Luo healed the broken Life Wheel. Lin Huang could feel the speed of lifespan loss significantly reduced and there was also a certain degree of improvement in his physique as well. Taking into account the improvement from his Robust skill, Lin Huang felt that his physique was no longer weaker than other Reserve Hunters on iron-level. He was able to move a much faster speed than before. Within four hours, he had reached the height of 700 meters, which was 5,500 meters above sea level. Just before Lin Huang was able to take a rest, a flock of white big birds flew in their direction. Lin Huang could recognize them from far away; they were the White Feathered Goose. They were also a type of mutant. They would hunt for fishes as their main sources of food and would never provoke creatures bigger in size. However, they were not afraid of humans. Under normal circumstances, Lin Huang would have brushed their presence aside but because Xue Luo had told them to be careful, his guard was up. The White Feathered Goose was huge. It was around five meters wide when they expanded their wings. They were strong enough to snatch humans with their claws. They were probably controlled by the transcendant monster Xue Luo talked about, the monster that manipulated their minds to hunt for food. "Bai! Quickly, dig a hole!" Lin Huang shouted. The flock of geese approaching them looked furious. He had to get himself a safe shelter. They were at a height around 5,000 meters above sea level but Lin Huang did not have wings to jump anywhere and if he lost balance and fell, he would most certainly die. As soon as Bai dug out a cave, Lin Huang stretched out his left hand to hang over the cliff while he held his GrayEagle17 in his right hand. He turned his body to attack the geese when they came close to him. Most of the White Feathered Goose were iron-level monsters. The specially made bullets for the GrayEagle17 only had an impact on their feathers. It failed to penetrate through to their bodies. After several shots, some of the White Feathered Goose groaned in pain but realized that the bullets could not injure them and so, they pounced on Lin Huang again. Bai already went into the hole but it was still a few meters away from Lin Huang. The hole was not deep and Bai could not dig any further. A few from the flock of White Feathered Goose fluttered their wings, getting into a position to catch Lin Huang. Lin Huang had nowhere to dodge and he watched helplessly as the claws emerged from their feet as they grabbed him. At that moment, blood splashed in the air. The White Feathered Goose that grabbed him had its head chopped in half, rolling over the cliff. Lin Huang felt something grabbing onto his waist tightly. As he looked down, he saw Bais Blood Power layer pulling him toward the hole. Lin Huang tried to free himself but chose to trust Bai instead. He released his left hand which he used to hang from the cliff when he shot at the geese. As soon as he released his hand, he felt a strong force dragging him back into the cave. Lin Huang felt safe as soon as his body touched the ground of the cave. "Thanks." He said while he stood up in the cave and thanked Bai, nodding his head. He then walked out of the cave. The flock of White Feathered Goose had not left yet. They were all trying to squeeze into the cave as they saw Lin Huang when they saw Lin Huangs head pop out into the entrance of the cave. Lin Huang retreated a few steps back as it was not safe. Bai dug two meters wide and two meters long in the cave. It would be impossible for them to enter in with their huge body. However, the White Feathered Goose seemed to enjoy the torture because the more they pushed themselves in, the more they were injured by the sharp cave edges. The geese were persistent. Even after two to three hours, they remained outside the cave and as time passed by, the number of geese increased. "Damn! Are they blocking my way out?!" Lin Huang was suddenly struck by the thought. There were incidents about humans being bullied by geese. There were many videos uploaded online and though they were funny at the time, he had never expected this to happen to him on a cliff in a dire situation, instead of a funny one. Lin Huang had a slight headache. The GrayEagle17 was ineffective against the flock of White Feathered Goose and to make matters worse, he was down to his last four bullets. It was not enough to kill the geese. Though Bai was capable of upgrading itself to use its Blood Power to kill them, its Blood Power could only reach a distance of fewer than 20 meters which was not far enough to reach the outside of the cave. They waited for another three hours and as the skies outside became darker; Lin Huang took a glance outside the cave to check on the flock of White Feathered Goose. Unfortunately, his initial predictions were right, they were still there. "It seemed like they were not going anywhere. If they are blocking my way, how am I going to complete my assessment?" Lin Huang pondered. All of a sudden, he shifted his gaze to the inner parts of the cave. "Foothold No.7D121 is located at the other side at the foot of the Alps. Does this mean that if we dig deeper to the other side of the Alps, we could eventually reach the foothold using the pathway through this cave?!" A growling sound came from the direction of the flock of White Feathered Goose, interrupting Lin Huangs thoughts. Lin Huang popped his head silently out of the cave to catch of glimpse of what was happening. Over hundreds of geese escaped once a black giant bird flying began approaching them. Lin Huang recognized it, it was a giant known as the Black Cliff Sparrow. Its body was around 30 meters long and its wings were 50 meters wide fully open. It was a gigantic monster that was much bigger than Tyrant. Based on its size alone, it almost reached bronze-level. The flock of White Feathered Goose was no longer in sight. The Black Cliff Sparrow did not attack but instead used its sharp claws, to hold onto the upper part of the cave entrance before taking a peek into the cave. Lin Huang and the Black Cliff Sparrow came face to face 36 Atop The Snowy Mountains A screeching bird cry scared many birds in the Snowy Mountains region and they began to fly away. This Black Cliff Sparrow was considered the top predator in this Grade-1 wild zone. It opened its mouth and attempted to peck at Lin Huang''s eyes as they locked eyes earlier. Lin Huang retreated immediately to the center of the cave and immediately reloaded armored bullets into his GrayEagle17. He pointed the gun at the cave entrance, waiting to open fire. The Black Cliff Sparrow''s tough beak hit hard on top of the cliff and a small part of the cliff collapsed causing the top of the cave entrance to be exposed. Lin Huang could feel the entire cave shaking. "Bai, when the sparrow approaches, lock onto on its head and aim at its eyes!" Lin Huang had a plan. Its eyes were the weakest part of its body but it was covered in feathers and so, it was difficult to hit its eyes accurately. The possibility of killing it with only one armored bullet was slim but Lin Huang wanted to shoot at its eyes with his remaining four bullets at one go for maximum impact. The Black Cliff Sparrow realized that the cave was not so tough as it managed to crack a hole with one hit and so it started to peck at it continuously. After several pecks at the top of the cave, almost half of the wall collapsed. Although Lin Huang and Bai had retreated into the cave, the Black Cliff Sparrow could see them from where it stood and began to peck even faster. Suddenly, just when it got a chance to move closer, two strings Blood Power shot out from the cave. They resembled two ropes strangling the sparrow''s neck while bashing its head into the wall. The Black Cliff Sparrow struggled and Lin Huang took that opportunity to quickly step forward before it could run away. Lin Huang aimed his gun at its left eye and fired four shots continuously. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" The Black Cliff Sparrow''s left eye exploded, it stopped fighting back and collapsed. The strings of Blood Power were then released from its neck and the Black Cliff Sparrow slowly fell from the cliff. Xiao Hei''s notification popped up in front of Lin Huang. "Congratulations, you have received Black Cliff Sparrow Monster Card pieces x1" "You have completed a cross-ranking kill, you are rewarded with a Double Card!" "There''s no Advance Card for the cross-ranking kill this time?" Lin Huang recalled that he was rewarded Advance Card for the previous two cross-ranking kills. "Reward cards are usually randomly given. It was rather peculiar that you received Advance Cards twice in a row." "It would be great if I could get a few more Advance Cards to upgrade both Bai and Tyrant into mythical brings. Bing Wang only mutated twice and he was so powerful! Bai and Tyrant would be invincible if they were to be upgraded four times!" "The ability of Summon Cards are limited by the host. If the hosts ability remained the same, no matter how rare the card is, the upgraded monster''s ability would be limited as well." What Xiao Hei indirectly meant was the weakness of Lin Huangs monsters were actually caused by him. Lin Huang ignored Xiao Hei and looked at the Double Card that he just received. Images of two piles of gold coins were at the top of the card. Lin Huang frowned and flipped the card over. "Double Card: Within an hour this cards activation, the reward for killing monsters will double." "Nothing great about this card but perhaps I could use this card to collect more card pieces when I meet some monster that I like." Lin Huang mumbled to himself. He then took out the clip from his GrayEagle17, it was empty, "Ahh, I should''ve bought more bullets." After he reloaded the gun with regular bullets, he then kept the gun in his space storage. The sky was getting dark. Bai began to dig deeper into the cave so that they could stay the night. As the cave was too small, Lin Huang could not summon the Sand Monster, and Bai would have to watch the night. Lin Huang had a good night sleep and woke up around seven o''clock in the morning. Their journey was delayed due to their encounter with the flock of White Feathered Goose yesterday afternoon. He had dried meat and some water in the morning before starting the journey with Bai. Lin Huang was had good stamina this morning and managed to climb 800 meters within five hours. After a short rest, he continued his journey before noon. Six hours later, he managed to climb more than 900 meters. He had already traveled 7,200 meters, and now, he was only 1,000 meters away from the top. Lin Huang rested for a night before his last push. Finally, after eight hours, he arrived at the top, which was 8,800 meters above sea level. "Ahh! I''m finally here on top!" Lin Huang shouted on top of the Snowy Mountains. Just when he was at the peak of his excitement, he was greeted by a voice that came from behind him, "It''s just the Snowy Mountains, do you need to shout?" Lin Huang turned around and saw a young man with short hair in trench coat stood behind him. He looked the same age as Lin Huang, but taller "Who are you?" Lin Huang wondered before he asked, "Are you from the Hunter Association?" "I joined the assessment just like you." The short-haired man answered, expressionless. "Were you the one who opened fire down there two days ago?" "Yes, it''s me." Lin Huang admitted and curiously asked, "How is it possible that you''re faster than me? How did you get here?" "I arrived here on the first day by riding the Black Cliff Sparrow; it only took two hours." The short-hair man looked at Lin Huang and said, "If I''m not mistaken, you killed the Black Cliff Sparrow. Is that true?" "You''re an Imperial Censor as well? Why do you want to attack me?" Lin Huang grew anxious. "It''s simple; I don''t want anyone else to pass this assessment apart from myself. That''s why I have been waiting here to get the Black Cliff Sparrow to attack everyone who attempted to climb the Snowy Mountains so that you guys would give up but since you''re already up here, it doesn''t make sense for me to wait here anymore." The man then turned around and walked to a tent that was not too far away. He proceeded to say solemnly, "I will take revenge for the Black Cliff Sparrow, but now is not the time. You have cultivated a great vampire, but you''re too weak, you don''t deserve to be attacked by me yet." The man then kept his tent, waved his hand and a blood color giant bird appeared out of thin air. Lin Huang was envious. It was a Crimson Eagle, a bronze-level mutated monster. The short-haired man leaped onto the back of the Crimson Eagle. It flapped its wings and dove towards the bottom of the cliff 37 First To Complete The Assessmen Seeing the short-haired man leave, Lin Huang did not stay too long on top of the Snowy Mountains. Climbing to the top may have been difficult but going down was much easier. Although Bai''s Blood Power wings could not fly, he most certainly could glide. Now that his Blood Power was at level-2, his wings were five meters long on each side and they would expend to a maximum of 20 meters in combat mode. They were not heavy, both of them were slightly over 100 kilograms put together. Lin Huang spent some time to fold his tent into a strip of cloth and strapped himself in front of Bai. He then activated Bais combat mode, walked towards the cliff and leaned forward, falling off the cliff. The Blood Power wings on Bai''s spread open. Lin Huang felt the pull of gravity but within a few moments, they began to glide. As he looked down, all he saw were layers of clouds. Soon they passed through the clouds and Lin Huang could see the Snowy Mountains from beyond the horizon. The mountains and rivers beneath him seemed so much smaller from the top. Even the foothold was the size of his palm. "This is what I''m talking about! Woohoo!" Although he looked ridiculous as a passenger strapped onto Bai, Lin Huang screamed at the top of his lungs because he was extremely excited. He had always wanted to try extreme sports like parachuting when he was on earth but he never got the opportunity to do so. He finally got the chance to experience it in this world instead. As they got closer to the ground, he could feel his adrenaline skyrocket. "Now, I finally understand why people love flying in the air, this feels amazing!" They did not glide for too long. Within 10 minutes, both of them arrived in the vicinity of foothold No.7D121. Bai wrapped his wings above them to form an umbrella and they slowed down as they gently landed. Pedestrians were frightened by the Blood Power wings on Bai''s back because they could recognize he was a vampire. "You can leave now, I''ll report to the Hunter Association." Lin Huang did not want to upset people so he recalled Bai. The cloth that strapped him to Bai was automatically removed. He then picked the piece of cloth up and threw it into the dustbin beside him. He then activated his Emperor''s Heart Ring. The ring''s function was restored as promised. Lin Huang opened the map and found the hotel where Yi Yeyu was at and proceeded to walk in the direction of the hotel. 10 minutes later, Lin Huang arrived at the entrance of the hotel and walked to the reception. The receptionist was a tall and beautiful lady. Seeing Lin Huang walk in, she professionally asked, "Hi sir, how may I help you?" "I''m looking for Miss Yi Yeyu, could you get her for me please?" "Sure, please give me a minute." The lady receptionist tried to reach Yi Yeyu''s Emperor''s Heart Ring at once. he then informed Lin Huang, "You can look for her in Room 308." "Alright, thank you." Lin Huang thought it was strange that she was in Room 308, it was the same room Tyrant destroyed. He went directly to Room 308 and saw that the door was already opened. Lin Huang closed the door after himself and noticed the same big hole in the room''s ceiling. He asked, "Why didnt you change to another room?" "That''s too much trouble; I''m leaving in a few days anyway." The hole in the ceiling did not bother Yi Yeyu at all. Instead, she was looking at Lin Huang, "I didn''t expect you to be the first one to complete the assessment. Although it took you a good seven days with your physique, Im impressed. I thought youd take more than a week to climb the Snowy Mountains." "I''m the first one who completed the assessment?" Lin Huang asked in confusion, "Wasnt there another guy who passed the assessment before I did? He hasnt reported to you?" "No, you''re the first one." Yi Yeyu shook her head. "That can''t be, that guy got down from the Snowy Mountains before I did. The guy wore a red trench coat, had short hair and was very arrogant. Oh, he''s also an Imperial Censor just like me. The monster he summoned was a bronze-level Crimson Eagle." Lin Huang described the guy for Yeyu. "Oh, I know who you are talking about." Yi Yeyu nodded and explained, "The guy you''re talking about is Bai Yan. He''s special, he does not have to participate in the assessment but instead, he chose to. He would be a Copper Hunter after he registers with Hunter Association." "Has Bai Yan arrived at this foothold? Did you see him just now?" Yi Yeyu asked Lin Huang. "I met him on top of the Snowy Mountains, he rode on the monster he summoned down the Snowy Mountains." "Then I have no idea where he is, he didn''t report to me. You''re the first one." Yi Yeyu shook her head. "Oh yea, miss head-examiner, do you know what happened to Fatty, the other guy who was with me the other day?" Lin Huang was worried when he asked the question. He was worried that the answer what not what he wanted to hear. "Oh, Fatty quit." Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes and told Lin Huang what happened. "I received a rescue alert on that day and saw him crying on the ground when I followed the signal to his location. I asked him what happened. He said you were eaten by an Undead Worm for saving his life and he begged me to kill the Undead Worm to avenge you. After I brought him back to the foothold, he rode an eagle and left on that day itself." Lin Huang was relieved after hearing that Fatty was still alive, "That''s great, I thought he was dead." "We have his contact information, if youd like to contact him, you can have his contact details." Yi Yeyu was searching for Fattys contact details as she spoke. "Oh his name is Yin Hangyi, I kept calling him Fatty and forgot his real name" Lin Huang tapped open his detailed information and added his contact number to his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "There''s still one more week until the assessment ends. You can leave if you''re occupied; just remember to register yourself at the Hunter Association at foothold No.7C87. Youll have to register by this year or else youll have to get reassessed next year. If you dont have urgent matters to attend to, you can stay in this foothold temporarily. When the assessment ends, Ill bring you to foothold No.7C87 to register. Your stay and food will be covered by the Hunter Association." "I''ll stay." He decided to stay because he had told Lin Xin that the assessment would take half a month and everything at home had been arranged. He also wanted to kill more monsters in the wild zone to accumulate more Monster Card pieces and Life Light. 38 Weird Old Zhang Lin Huang went back to his hotel room after dinner as the sky was getting dark. He spent some time listing down the items he wanted to purchase the next day. He then started to read about the Grade-1 wild zone that was near foothold No.7D121 on the Heart Network. Foothold No.7D121 was known as the Snowy Mountain Town by locals. The entire foothold was located in the west with a gigantic pathway to the snowy mountain at the back that looked like a bowl broken in half which surrounded the bottom of the foothold. The east side was filled with huge canyons and they were semi-circular. The widest one faced the north-south and was a few hundred kilometers long. East of these canyons were vast grasslands surrounded by mountains and 3,000 meters below sea level was a grade-1 wild zone. This was a people-prone area and therefore there were very few monsters for fear that they will be killed by humans. Lin Huang looked at the categories of monsters in each area one by one. "The wild zone further away from the Snowy Mountain housed bird monsters. There were fewer flatlands there though which were not suitable for me to train to prepare for real battles." "Meanwhile, the monsters in the canyons came from the grassland and Snowy Mountains but were killed by people passing by and because of that, I cant collect more Monster Card pieces." "It seems like the grassland on the east side is most suitable for me." "Warrior Wolf would be a great prey; I could obtain Monster Card pieces faster from monsters that live in a pack. It would look so much cooler and comfortable if I rode on it instead of the Sand Monster. The Lion-Headed Troll too! It was such a majestic monster. The Ox Devil isn''t too bad; it''s muscular and huge enough that its appearance alone was sufficient to scare people away" "Skill-wise, the Warrior Wolf''s Blood Battle, the Lion-Headed Troll''s Magic Eye Deterrence and Ox Devil''s Champion Strength are all good" After some analysis, Lin Huang had decided which area was most suitable for him. The next morning, Lin Huang went to the Credit Bureau; it belonged to the government. It only opened at nine o''clock in the morning so there was no need for him to rush. He took a stroll in the garden at the bureau''s entrance since it was not time yet. When it did open, Lin Huang walked right in and traded all his Life Crystals into credit points. Now he had more than 3.5 million credit points. The Life Crystals were taken from Xue Jie earlier. After that, Lin Huang headed to the flea market. The flea market in the Snowy Mountain Town was located at the center of the foothold. It was not big but there were many shops, up to 1,000 of them. They had almost everything there including food ingredients, daily necessities, guns and ammunition and swords. Perhaps the area was surrounded by a wild zone; there were more than 30 shops here that were selling battle equipment while the foothold that Lin Huang stayed only had three of them. Ling Huang''s purpose here was mainly to look for the exclusive bullets for his GrayEagle17, armored bullets, and equipment to survive the wilderness since he planned to stay in the wild zone for a week. After asking around, he was told that none of the seven to eight shops were selling exclusive bullets and armored bullets for his GrayEagle17. This new royalty'' gun was not used by many ordinary people, so this small foothold would not have the right stock of bullets for such a gun. Especially the armored bullets, they were expensive and so it did not make sense for the shops to keep stocks. "We don''t have the bullets that you''re looking for. In a small area like this, we don''t see anyone who carries GrayEagle17 in a year. You can try Old Zhang''s grocery store at the west side of the city. That fella collects strange things. If there''s none at his store, then you won''t be able to find it anywhere else. But be careful, that fella is sly and he would double or triple the original price." A shop owner reminded Lin Huang. He gave Lin Huang valuable advice because he thought Lin Huang was rich as he could afford a GrayEagle17. After purchasing everything he needed at the flea market, Lin Huang asked around a few more times for the bullets and finally, he gave up. He hesitated for a while and headed to the west of the city. Old Zhang''s store was located in an alley where nobody visited. Theoretically, even a shop in the flea market could not make much money in this small foothold and yet, Old Zhang opened his shop in such a secluded area, he must be weird. After asking a couple of people, Lin Huang finally found the exact location of the store. The plaque with a bright neon light on the outside of the door had the words ''Cloud''s End'' written on it, Lin Huang laughed. This weird old man must be full of himself. He stepped into the shop, it was not as messy as he imagined. On the contrary, it was very organized. All the items were placed accordingly on the shelves, even the decorations were tasteful. Lin Huang was stunned. "Is the owner in?" Lin Huang did not call the owner''s name as that seen as rude. He considered himself a good, respectful kid to never call an elder by their first name. "If you need anything, look on the shelves yourselves. When you are done, bring it over here and call me." Lin Huang heard someone talking, but he did not see anyone. The voice sounded more like a middle-aged man than an old man''s voice. "This feels like markets on earth" Lin Huang mumbled. Sensing that Old Zhang did not want to be bothered, Lin Huang did not ask further and walked to the shelf where the firearms were placed. He frowned while he glanced through the guns on the shelf. There was equipment from iron-level to gold-level, and all of them were pricey and limited edition stuff. "It seems to me that this Old Zhang is rich!" After glancing through, Lin Huang did not waste any more time. He looked towards the bullets placed under the guns and found the exclusive bullets and armored bullets for his GrayEagle17. There was only a sample box. Lin Huang took one box each for both bullets and went to the counter at the entrance. "Boss, Ive taken what I wanted but it''s not enough." "Let''s me take a look." A middle-aged bald man with a beard walked in. He was tan, and he looked like he was in his 40s, but he may look much younger if he shaved his beard. Lin Huang did not doubt that he was the shop owner. Although he looked ordinary, his vibe matched the shop very well. What Lin Huang did not understand was why people would call him old'' when he was not old. Old Zhang glanced at Lin Huang and looked at the bullets that he selected, his eyes lighten up, "Oh you''re from a rich family, how much do you want?" "I''m not rich; this gun is a gift." Lin Huang did not wish to be ripped off by him, so he explained, "How much are these bullets?" "The same prices as you see on the Heart Network." Old Zhang smiled. Lin Huang was confused. He heard that Old Zhang was a rip-off because he doubled or even tripled the original price. Now that he offered the original price, he started to think that the bullets might be pirated. "These bullets are original right?" "Why, did you hear somebody saying that I am a rip-off where I double or triple the original price?" Old Zhang smiled and looked at Lin Huang. Lin Huang was stunned but he did not want to hide, "Someone did say that." "No matter who told you that, it''s true. I love doing that but it depends on my mood. I like you, so I''m selling them to you at the original price, it''s that simple." After that, Old Zhang added, "The bullets are original. It''s up to you if you want to buy them." Lin Huang looked into Old Zhang eyes. They locked eyes for a moment. He could sense that the old man was not lying so he nodded and said, "Okay, I trust you. I want 3000 exclusive bullets for my GrayEagle17 and 300 armored bullets." "Are you planning a massacre?" Old Zhang was shocked and he gave him a price, "That''ll be a total of 650,000 credit points." "Do you have enough stock here?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "Don''t worry, I have plenty! No matter what you want and how much you want, I have them. As long as you have the money, I can get you whatever relics you want." Old Zhang grinned. If that came from someone else, Lin Huang would not believe. But after browsing through Old Zhang''s collection, he believed that Old Zhang could get whatever he wanted although he sounded boastful. "Sure, if I need any relics in the future, Ill look for you!" Lin Huang returned the grin. 39 What’s Being Kind to Women? Lin Huang walked out of Old Zhang''s shop; he had everything he needed on the list. It was nearing noon so he had a bowl of ramen at a noodle store nearby and headed to the wild zone. Just when he was near the exit of the foothold, his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated, someone was calling him. It was a number that he did not recognize, he hesitated before picking up. "Is this Lin Huang? I am Yi Yeyu, where are you now?" Yi Yeyu''s voice came from the communication page. "I''m still in the foothold and ready to head off to the grassland for some battle training." Lin Huang was in doubt, why would Yi Yeyu call him, "Is there anything that I could help you?" "Please stay in the foothold for these few days. According to some hunters who just came back to the foothold, the monsters outside of the foothold were oddly furious. The same thing happened to the monsters in the desert, many people who participated in the assessment were attacked by the monsters. I have been receiving more and more rescue alerts. If the situation gets worse, we might need to end the assessment early." Hearing what Yi Yeyu said, Lin Huang recalled what Xue Luo said earlier. There was a new transcendent monster that was an expert in the wilderness. He could not tell Yi Yeyu that as he could not reveal the source. After some thought, he said, "Actually I encountered similar attacks before I climbed the Snowy Mountains a few days back. You know that my monster is an iron-level rank-3 and a Sand Monster that''s at the edge of a breakthrough. Most of the monsters in the desert would stay far away from us. However, the day before I climbed the Snowy Mountains, there were monsters that plunged towards me and my Sand Monster along the journey, they were angry and restless. We encountered the situation a couple of times, I think the monsters were either hypnotized or bewildered" Although he could not tell the truth directly, Lin Huang attempted to guide Yi Yeyu to get the gist of it. "You''re saying that there''s a high-level monster which is the mastermind behind all this?" Yi Yeyu thought what Lin Huang said made sense, but she was puzzled, "It''s possible if one area of the wild zone is affected, but the desert the assessment was conducted in was more than 1,000 kilometers away from the grassland on the east side. Even if it was a gold-rank charm-class monster, it''s impossible that it could be able to cover such distance." "What if it was a charm-class monster that''s more than gold-rank?" Lin Huang told the truth. Yi Yeyu was stunned when she heard what Lin Huang, she took a while and said, "Do you mean transcendent?" "That could be possible." Lin Huang said. Yi Yeyu kept quiet for some time and said, "Alright, I believe you this time! I will report to the management and see what they say." After Lin Huang hung up the phone, he decided to go back to the hotel to wait for a response. If the management of Hunter Association did not take this seriously, the transcendent monster would do whatever it wanted to and there would be more and more prey falling into its trap. By then, there would be unimaginable damage to the footholds nearby. He then headed back to the hotel. Just when he was at the hotel''s entrance, Yi Yeyu called again. "I''m at the hotel''s entrance, we''ll talk soon." Lin Huang hung up the phone and went straight to Yi Yeyu''s room. Yi Yeyu stood at the living room, she looked upset. She was slightly relieved when she saw Lin Huang. "I have reported the situation to the management, they said there is a high possibility that it was done by a transcendent charm-class monster. However, the transcendent who was guarding foothold No.7C87 was not there at the moment. The association would need at least three days to transfer another transcendent here." "I have informed all the members that the assessment is temporarily suspended and got all of them to activate their location while waiting for support whenever they are. The problem is that we are lacking assistance now." "What do you need me to do?" Lin Huang asked instantly. "I will need you to stay in the hotel lobby. When we bring people over, Ill need your help to arrange for their accommodation and make sure things are okay. Don''t let them leave the foothold; even riding the Eagle might not be safe right now. If they have any questions, don''t tell them the truth as we want to avoid an uproar. Ill talk to them when I''m back." Yi Yeyu could not find anyone else to help, so she asked Lin Huang. "Sure, I will make sure everything is well." Lin Huang answered straight away. "Is there anything else?" "Not at the moment. I''ll look for you again if I need further assistance." Yi Yeyu said and summoned the green wooden door, "I''m going to bring the people back, please go to the lobby." Looking at Yi Yeyu entering the green wooden door, Lin Huang turned around and left. Not long later, Yi Yeyu was already with a tall lady at the lobby. She entered the green wooden door and disappeared without saying anything. The lady was slightly taller than Lin Huang, she looked to be 16 or 17 and was quite matured. She dressed like a hippy; wearing a white t-shirt with a short denim skirt and a pair of white sneakers. "Hi, my name is Lin Huang. I''m the temporary receptionist." Lin Huang said to the lady. "I recognize you, you''re the fella who joined the assessment, and you''re not even an iron-level!" The tall lady could recognize Lin Huang. "I''ll bring you to register your room." Lin Huang changed the topic; he did not expect her to recognize him. "I''m not staying. Since the assessment has been suspended, I should not waste my time here. I''m going to foothold No.7C65 to join the next assessment." The lady was on her way to the hotel exit. Lin Huang blocked her way using his hand, "You cannot leave." "What''s wrong with you? I''m leaving, what can you do about it?" The lady placed her hands on her hips and stared at Lin Huang. "No, you can''t." Lin Huang stood where he was. "What''s wrong with you? Who do you think you are?" The lady raised her voice. Many people in the lobby looked at the both of them. "Say whatever you want to say, you''re not allowed to leave." Lin Huang did not move at all. "Wow, you''re saying like you can stop me from leaving!" The lady was mad, "Scoot! If you don''t, don''t blame me for being rude." "You can try." Lin Huang had GrayEagle17 on his hand. "Do you think having a gun is everything?" The lady scoffed and attempted to grab his gun. Lin Huang was faster than her so he pointed the muzzle at her head. "You dare shoot me?" The human body was incomparable with the monster. The lady was only an iron-level rank-2, if she were to be shot by his GrayEagle17 at such a short distance, her head would explode. However, she remained stubborn. Lin Huang shifted his target slightly to the right and pulled the trigger. The bullet flew by her ear and hit the vase in the hotel lobby. The case exploded. Before the lady could respond, he shifted aim back at the lady''s head. The lady turned pale and dared not say a word. 40 Meeting Bai Yan Again In the hotel lobby, many were shocked to see what happened - A young man pointing his gun at a young lady''s head. People started to talk about what they were seeing, but none of them dared to step up. It was awkward, soon a young man walked out of the crowd. "Hey man, it''s rude to treat a girl like that." Lin Huang did not look at him. "Hey! I''m talking to you!" The man saw that Lin Huang ignored him and started to get mad. "This is none of your business." Lin Huang stared at the young man, he looked irritated. He then realized that the man was not a real hero, but he wanted to impress the pretty lady that Lin Huang had his gun pointed at. If it were an ugly lady, he would not pretend to be a hero. "You''re committing a crime in public, that''s my business." The young man said as he meant it. The crowd that was watching nodded and agreed with what the young man said. "Look at you sugar-coating your act just because she''s pretty. If she was ugly, I bet you wouldn''t step up to me." Lin Huang revealed what the man was really up to. Busted, the man''s cheeks were flushing. He denied, "I''m doing this for justice. I would step up no matter who it is!" "You can stand whenever you want to stand, as long as you''re not bothering me." Lin Huang ignored him. "Wow, you sure are arrogant" Suddenly, a person walked out of the crowd. He was handsome with distinct features; he wore a red trench coat. Hearing that voice, Lin Huang turned around and looked at the person. He was the guy, Bai Yan that he met on top of the Snowy Mountains. Lin Huang did not have a good impression of him. They locked eyes, he did not want to give up, "What, do you have something to say?" "You don''t deserve a fight from me." Bai Yan grinned. He waved his hand, five meters tall Lion-Headed Troll was summoned. It looked majestic where the male lion''s head almost touched the hotel hall''s ceiling. The golden mane on its neck was shining in the yellow light. It was extraordinary. It held a giant blade in its right hand; its body was releasing a bloody smell. "Lion Head, toss him out." Bai Yan instructed while pointing at Lin Huang. Lin Huang was admiring the troll but he responded immediately. He summoned Bai and commanded, "Bai, chop off his hands!" Bai activated his combat mode and the Blood Power wings grew from his back. That moment, people realized that the silver-haired man that appeared was a monster. They were impressed as it was not easy to see an Imperial Censor on regular days. Now that there were two of them and they were fighting, it was a rare situation. Some of them even launched the video recording function on their Emperor''s Heart Ring to record the battle and upload to the Heart Network. Before Bai moved, a female voice was heard coming from the crowd, "What are you guys doing?" Yi Yeyu came out of the crowd to the center of the battlefield and pushed the Lion-Headed Troll and Bai apart. "Whats happening here?" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang. He kept the GrayEagle17 that he was holding. Just when he wanted to speak, the lady accused him," Miss head examiner, he bullied me when you were not around. Fortunately, this Imperial Censor came to my aid." The lady only brought up Bai Yan, she did not even look at the man that attempted to help her earlier. "Talk to me, Lin Huang." Yi Yeyu was doubtful, but she did not believe what the lady said. "She insisted that she wanted to leave but she didn''t want to listen to me so I had to use my weapon to keep her here. Bai Yan arrived later and wanted to attack me out of nowhere so I''m just defending myself." Lin Huang explained the situation simply. "Is that so?" Yi Yeyu looked at the lady in all seriousness. Compared to her, she believed what Lin Huang said more. The lady saw Yi Yeyu''s expression and she dared not lie anymore. "There should be a surveillance camera in the hotel. If you don''t believe what Ive said, you can take a look at the camera." Lin Huang added. The lady turned pale, "It''s my fault, I should''ve waited patiently" "Bai Yan, you attacked before you figured out what was happening. You are at fault too, apologize!" Yi Yeyu looked at Bai Yan. "I refuse to. The weak don''t deserve to be respected. I''ll wait until the day he''s stronger than me." Bai Yan said and glared at Lin Huang, he turned around and left. Yi Yeyu was unhappy, but she did not flip. She then turned around and said to the lady and a young man that she just brought back, "It''s dangerous outside of this foothold within these few days, both of you listen to Lin Huang, assist him in managing the rest, don''t let anyone leave this foothold. I will explain the details of the situation when everyone is here." The both of them nodded immediately. "You did great. If you encounter any obstacles again, you have my authorization to use violence. You can beat them up, as long as you don''t kill them!" Yi Yeyu said to Lin Huang and stared at the duo before she left via the green wooden door. After Yi Yeyu left, the duo remained quiet. Lin Huang waved to recall Bai and said to the duo, "Ill bring the both of you to register your rooms. Then youll both go to your rooms on your own; I have to stay here to wait for the rest." After the three of them completed registration, the lady went to her room while the young man stayed. "You are Lin Huang, am I right? I didn''t know that you''re an Imperial Censor." The young man introduced himself, "My name is Shen Qiang, I''m also one of the members who joined the Reserve Hunter assessment." "Hi." Lin Huang nodded. "From what I know, it''s rare that the assessment would be suspended. Since you came back earlier, you should know something. Why was the assessment suspended out of nowhere?" Shen Qiang asked curiously." "I don''t know, all I heard was there was something strange happening to the monsters near the foothold. We would have to wait for the head examiner to explain the details to us." Lin Huang did not tell the truth. "Oh, is that so. I see that the head examiner got you to help her, I thought you would have some insider news." "No, they''re lacking helpers so since I got back early, here I am." Lin Huang explained. "Can I help?" Shen Qian''s offer was not genuine. Instead, he thought the head examiner would give him extra marks for the assessment if she saw him helping. "Not at the moment, as long as you don''t leave this foothold, that would be a great help." Lin Huang felt helpless; he knew that there would be more people who would act like that lady earlier. "We can''t even go to the grade-1 wild zone at the border?" "You can''t." Lin Huang shook his head, "If you have too much time during these next two days, you can shop at the flea market or have fun activities in the foothold." "Nothing is restricted as long as I stay in this foothold?" Shen Qiang tried his luck. "As long as you don''t leave the foothold, no matter what you do, I won''t stop you." Lin Huang said with absolute confidence. 41 You Did Such A Great Job! Lin Huang was swamped with work for the next two days. All the people that were sent to him by Yi Yeyu had not been disqualified. They were at least iron-level rank-2, some of them were even iron-level rank-3. To make matters worse, they were unhappy when they found out that they had to listen to Lin Huangs orders for the next two days. It seemed ridiculous to them because Lin Huang was not even iron-level. Not knowing what else to do, Lin Huang summoned Tyrant to beat some of them up when they disobeyed him. Only then would they listen to him. Although Lin Huang did not have powerful abilities, his identity as an Imperial Censor was a rare enough occupation for others to fear him as soon as they found out. When some of them heard that he had two monsters and he was a genius by Imperial Censor standards, they had to bite the bullet and listen to him regardless of the what they thought. Meanwhile, Yi Yeyu was even busier. There was a limit to the summoning of her green wooden door, and she could only use it 10 times per day. There were 70 to 80 people who were not disqualified since the assessment started and they were scattered in different locations on the map. She had to get the staff to gather the members who were close to each other and bring them all back within three days. Yi Yeyu rented the meeting room on the hotels first floor and gathered all the participants there. Seeing that some of them were badly beaten, she knew it was Lin Huang''s doing to get them to listen to him. As everyone showed up, Yi Yeyu now had a better impression of Lin Huang and his methods. After quick glances to ensure everyone in the room was in fact not hurt too severely, she started to speak. "I bet you all have many questions with regards to what has happened the past few days, about why I have gathered all of you here and why you are not allowed you to leave. Let me explain the reason now. Please do not be worried." "This is what happened. We noticed that the monsters from the desert area to the grassland on the east of Snowy Mountains Town which covers a few thousand kilometers have been acting strangely for the past few days. They have been savagely attacking humans, and are unafraid to fight to the death. After some investigation, we think there is a possibility that a transcendent monster from a with abilities to charm other monsters has appeared nearby," she said calmly. Everyone was shocked when they heard what Yi Yeyu said. A transcendent monster was no joke. The reason why a C-grade medium foothold needed a transcendent to guard the foothold was the existence of other transcendent monsters. A transcendent monster could lead an army monsters and destroy a medium foothold with a population of millions of people, within a night. "However... Dont worry. The association has sent us a transcendent human. He should be here sometime today. He will investigate the situation in the areas nearby and look for the cause of this unusual occurrence. When the problem is solved, I will talk to the management authorities to get the assessment going or perhaps pass everyone who was halfway through the assessment. That said, please be patient and wait inside the foothold," she said. By the instant ease of tension in the room, Yi Yeyus words had comforted the people. Everyone was here with the goal of becoming a Reserve Hunter. It would be like striking ajackpot win for them if the management was to pass all of them straight away. In reality, the Hunter Association was not very strict with the Reserve Hunters assessment. It was the head examiner who set the assessment content and standard. The passing rate made no difference to the association. But with the situation very different to the way protocol dictated, Yi Yeyu filed a report with the management. Everyone calmed down after what Yi Yeyu had said. However, there were a few people who raised their hands with questions. "If this foothold is not safe, cant we just ride eagles and get to other footholds?" "It might not be safe to ride on the eagles now," Yi Yeyu explained. "I was attacked by a flock of White Feathered Goose when I was climbing the mountains. Although an Eagle is most definitely faster than the geese, if it was surrounded by a flock of those geese, the possibility of escape would be nearly impossible," Lin Huang said, on behalf of Yi Yeyu. Hearing what Lin Huang said, everyone gave up on their plan to escape on eagles. After the meeting was adjourned, everyone left with an explanation that they were satisfied with and stayed in the foothold as they were told. As Yi Yeyu and the rest of her staff were back, Lin Huang was finally freed of his duties. It was pretty late at night when he left the hotel. While Lin Huang was practicing with his sword in his room, Yi Yeyu called him and asked him to meet her in her room. Lin Huang was skeptical at first, but he went anyway. When he entered her room, there was another man in Yi Yeyus room. The man looked very ordinary and may have been in his 30s. He was slightly tan, slender, and stood at about 180 centimeters tall. Yi Yeyu introduced the man to Lin Huang immediately. "This is Master Zhang Bo. He was sent by the association to look into the situation," she explained. "Nice to meet you, Master Zhang." Lin Huang could not tell that this man who looked ordinary was in fact, a transcendent, partly because of the fact that he was the first transcendent that he had ever seen. He could not help but stare at him. However, he looked like he was no different from any normal person and Lin Huang could not sense any extraordinary abilities from him. "Master Zhang, this young man is Lin Huang, the one I mentioned to you earlier," Yi Yeyu continued as she introduced Lin Huang to Zhang Bo. Zhang Bo patted Lin Huangs shoulder with a warm smile. He seemed friendly. "Young man, please tell me about the monster attack you encountered during your assessment. Recount the incident as carefully as you can, do not spare a single detail," he asked. Lin Huang nodded and told him everything. As Yi Yeyu did not know all the details of the encounter, listening to Lin Huang talking about the dangers that he had gone through, she was even more impressed by this young man abilities. Lin Huang took 20 minutes to tell his story. Once he finished, Zhang Bo again, patted him on his shoulder, much harder this time. "You did great, young man! I believe you will be an extraordinary hunter in the future!" he said. Lin Huang was shy to hear the compliment. He just blushed and scratched his head in response. "From what you said, theres a high possibility that there is, in fact, a charm-class transcendent monster," Zhang Bo said casually with a smile. "Let me hunt it down. I will try my best to find it and kill it before daybreak!" he continued. "Isnt it better to do it in the morning?" Yi Yeyu asked. Yi Yeyu asked out of concern as monsters were known to be more energized at night so they would be more powerful. Of course, Zhang Bo knew that but he did not care. "Theres no need to wait, the earlier we solve this, the earlier we will be relieved of the threat," he replied. Apparently, Zhang Bo was a resolute person. He then opened the window in Yi Yeyus room and leaped forward. He flew out of the window and disappeared in a blink of an eye. Looking at Zhang Bo''s ability to fly, Lin Huang became envious of him. Yi Yeyu seemed to see through what Lin Huang was thinking and laughed. "Keep training, young man. You''ll be able to fly too when you became a transcendent." Lin Huang was embarrassed, so he changed the subject. "Who is this Master Zhang?" he asked Yi Yeyu. "Zhang Bo the Air Gun is a powerful gunman. He was upgraded to a transcendent two years ago. Before he became a transcendent, he was on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard and he was the 33rd best in Division7." Yi Yeyu explained. "Is being the 33rd best considered an achievement?" Lin Huang asked as he did not find that impressive. "You know nothing. Do you know how many hunters there are in Division7? There are more than 100,000 Gold Hunters alone. Those who are in the top 1000th are the best in the entire industry!" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Lin Huang and gave him a lesson on the leaderboard. "So what is your rank?" "Im No.998," Yi Yeyu said proudly. "Okay, its great that you are among the top 1000 people then," Lin Huang said and gave her a perfunctory compliment. "Why does it sound like you think I suck for being no.998?" Yi Yeyu glared at Lin Huang. "Thats not what I meant! Let me tell you again," he said. Lin Huang then used a sarcastic voice and shouted, "Wow, its so amazing that youre among the top 1000 people! You did such a great job!" "Go back to your room now," Yi Yeyu growled, extremely irritated. 42 The Transcendent Is Dead?! It was five oclock in the morning, and the sky was still dark. Lin Huang woke up with a start from his slumber. He heard a rumbling noise from far away. It sounded like thunder or continuous bombing. Even the hotels glass windows were vibrating. "Is that thunder?" Lin Huang thought. It seemed really strange as the noise sounded more like it came from some heavy artillery fire. Putting his doubts aside, Lin Huang walked to the window and looked at the sky. It was dark and with a few stars in the distance. it did not look like it was going to rain at all. "Could it be the two transcendents fighting?" he thought. Just as Lin Huang imagined the idea in his mind, the noise suddenly got far away and within minutes, it disappeared. Lin Huang then emptied his mind. Since it was still dark outside, he went back to sleep. Before seven oclock in the morning, the Emperors Heart Ring on Lin Huangs finger vibrated and woke him up a second time that morning. It was Yi Yeyu who called. "Whats wrong with her, calling me so early" He looked at the time. It was only 6:40. Lin Huang mumbled to himself and picked up the call. "Lin Huang, come to my room. I have something important to tell you!" Yi Yeyu shouted over the phone, sounding deadly serious. "So early?" Lin Huang said, still annoyed. "Stop dawdling. Come now!" Yi Yeyu hung up the phone. Lin Huang washed his face. He did not even brush his teeth, he just gargled water and left. When he arrived at Yi Yeyus room, she was pacing up and down in her room, an intensely concerned look on her face. She did not even notice that Lin Huang was already in her room. "What happened?" Lin Huang said as he closed the door. It was unusual to see Yi Yeyu like that. "Zhang Bo is dead!" Yi Yeyu said as she turned around to face Lin Huang. "Whaa..ttt?!" Lin Huang stuttered. He was in shocked. "You mean the transcendent that we met last night?" "I was woken up by a rumbling noise at four in the morning so I guessed they were fighting. I used a Scouting Relic to look in at their battle. At first, they were fighting not far from the mountains. Then, they got further away and more than two hours later, he was killed by the monster, and his dead body was eaten. The monster was badly injured and escaped underground," Yi Yeyu said. "Did you inform the Hunter Association yet?" Lin Huang asked, surprisingly calm. "I informed them at around six in the morning. It was the first thing I did when I knew he was killed. I have also sent the recording of their battle from my relic," Yi Yeyu replied with a nod. "What did the Hunter Association say?" Lin Huang asked. "They said the next transcendent will take at least two days to arrive" Yi Yeyu responded, a helpless look on her face. "However, now that the transcendent monster is badly injured, it will lead the other monsters to kill humans around the footholds to engulf their Life Light to heal itself before the next transcendent comes." "Why cant you bring the transcendent here with your green wooden door? Wouldnt that be much faster?" Lin Huang said, as the thought suddenly crossed her mind. "The green wooden door is just a regular Dimensional Relic. Its not as magical as you think it is. There are many limitations to it. It can only go to places that I have been, as well as locations of which I have the coordinates for. There are limitations to the distance too, where it can only transport people that are within a 3000-kilometer radius. It will not just send you wherever you want to go," Yi Yeyu shook her head. "Then how about the quantity? Is there a limitation to that as well? How many people can you send through in a day?" Lin Huang asked. "The maximum capacity would be 300 people at once and five trips back and forth per day. Which means I could send and bring 1500 people in a day. But there are more than 200,000 people in this foothold" Yi Yeyu shook her head as she had thought of the plan before but it would not work. "There are too few eagles here as well, less than 50 of them" Lin Huang said. He thought they could use the eagles and leave the foothold, but soon he figured that plan would not work. "Forget about it, lets not think of it anymore. I will gather everyone here at eight oclock. I will send all of you away," Yi Yeyu said. Knowing that she could that send all of the residents, Yi Yeyu hesitated no more and decided the best course of action herself. But if we leave, 200,000 people will be killed by the monsters," Lin Huang stared intensely at Yi Yeyu. He did not agree with her plan to leave all the residents to certain doom. They were talking about human lives after all. "I will stay," Yi Yeyu said calmly. Lin Huang was quiet after what Yi Yeyu said. He was thinking if he should get Xue Luo and Bing Wang to help, but after some thought, he decided not to. Although he had saved Xue Luos life, Xue Luo had restored his Life Wheel and even gave him an epiphany. That said, they did not owe each other anything. Moreover, Xue Luo was one of the monsters. It would be too much to ask if Lin Huang was to get her to kill a transcendent monster that had done nothing to her. After much thought, Lin Huang asked, "You said the transcendent monster was badly injured, which would mean that the possibility of it fighting would hardly be a worry, but it can still lead all the monsters here. There are level-1 and level-2 wild zones nearby where the strongest monsters are not more than bronze-level monsters. If we stay to fight them, we might win!" "Although the monsters levels arent high, there will be so many of them. Even a gold-level hunter like me would die from exhaustion if the monster crowd was to attack. Im one of the members of the Hunter Association. I have to stay to protect the residents. You guys have yet to register yourself with the association so you guys are not hunters yet so theres no need for all of you to stay. I know youre young and full of justice, but this is not the time to be heroic. Stay alive now so that you can avenge those who died when youre stronger in the future," Yi Yeyu said and shook her head as she disagreed with Lin Huangs plan. It seemed like she was already prepared to die. Looking at her, Lin Huang did not say a word. It was eight oclock in the morning two hours later. Everyone gathered in the meeting room on the hotels first floor after receiving Yi Yeyus emergency alert. Lin Huang sat quietly in the last row of the meeting room. Everyone included Bai Yan were there. After a moment of silence, Yi Yeyu started to speak. "The reason why I called all of you here is because I have bad news," Yi Yeyu said. She then took a deep breath and told them the truth. "The transcendent that was sent by the association found the transcendent monster which caused the uproar last night. However, at six in the morning earlier today, he was killed by the monster," she said. The crowd went completely silent after hearing what Yi Yeyu said, but soon, an uproar erupted among them. "If a human transcendent can be killed by the monster, this foothold isnt safe at all," someone said. "We shouldve left yesterday. Now, this foothold has been marked by the transcendent monster," another person shouted. "Miss head examiner, you should be able to send us away right?" "Miss head examiner, it was you who made us stay, you should be responsible for our safety!" more people said, yelling over each other. Overwhelmed by the accusations, Yi Yeyu was upset but she did not say a word. "Everyone please be quiet! Let the head examiner finish what she was saying," Lin Huang who sat at the last row stood up and said. "Lin Huang, youre responsible for this too. If you didnt stop us, many of us would have left a few days ago," another crowd member cried. As it turned out, Lin Huangs heroic act too attracted some accusation. "Do you have a death wish?!" Lin Huang roared and summoned Bai. The vampire appeared and stood quietly by Lin Huang''s side, staring at everyone in the room. Looking at Lin Huangs expression, some of them were silenced immediately. They recalled getting beaten up by Lin Huangs monster for disobeying him and shuddered in silence. "Lin Huang, dont exploit your power," Bai Yan said as he stood up across Lin Huang and summoned his Lion-Headed Troll, ready to fight him. "Both of you this stop right now!" Yi Yeyu shouted. She could not take it anymore! Seeing Yi Yeyu so mad, the whole crowd was on edge as to what would happen. "I''m not done yet," Yi Yeyu continued. She suppressed her anger and said, "I have already informed the management of the association. They are going to send other transcendents here. The thing is, they will need two days to arrive so Im thinking of sending all of you away from here before that." Hearing what Yi Yeyu said, the crowd calmed slightly. Nobody had any objections. After a moment of silence, a young voice spoke up from the last row, "Miss head examiner, you can send everybody away. I will not leave!" 43 A Reason To Stay It was Lin Huang who said the words from his seat in the last row and everyone turned around to look at him. "Lin Huang, dont mess around. You would die if you stayed. Itll be no help at all!" Yi Yeyu scolded. She had always thought that he was a good person. The more they connected, the more good sides to him she found. She did not want him to stay with the risk that it might destroy his future. "Miss head examiner, please listen to what I have to say," Lin Huang insisted and looked Yi Yeyu in the eyes. However, Yi Yeyu was stubborn. The situation was really awkward. Suddenly, the meeting rooms door swung open. A young man in a white robe, with his hands in his pockets, walked slowly into the meeting room. "Yeyu, why don''t you listen to what this kid has to say," the man said loudly to Yi Yeyu from the back of the room. From his tone of voice, Yi Yeyu and this man seemed to be close. Yi Yeyu was stunned at the mans appearance. "Brother, why are you here?" she asked. "I was running errands nearby, and I heard that you were working as an examiner here. So, I thought I would drop by after I was done with my task. Before I got here, I noticed that the official website of Division7 has gone viral with a video of a transcendents death," he said. To the surprise of all in their state of mourning, the man in white robe laughed. "You shouldnt be here," Yi Yeyu said, a solemn tone to her reply. "If I didn''t come, knowing the way you''d react, you''d be dead in two days," he said with a stern look in his eyes. The man knew his sister very well. Yi Yeyu did not say a word. The man in white robe then turned around and looked at Lin Huang who sat at the last row of the meeting room. "Young man, my name is Yi Zheng. I am Yeyus brother. I heard from outside that you have a plan. Lets hear it then." Hearing the name, many people in the crowd gasped, especially Bai Yan. With his mouth wide open, he looked like he really admired Yi Zheng. He knew very well that this man was no.11 on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard in Division7. He was terrifyingly powerful. Lin Huang did not know anything about him. He nodded and said what he had in mind. "This is my plan. There are more than 200,000 people in this foothold. Its impossible to escape with every single person. To survive, the only way is to fight! Although the human transcendent would take two days to be here, we should act now as the transcendent monster is badly injured. In such a short period of time, it would unlikely be able to fight again. So what we should be watchful for there''s a horde of monsters out there!" "To tackle the monster horde with the current number of hunters we have in this foothold would be a bad idea. We have insufficient manpower, but we can ask for help. We can get the Hunter Association to announce an emergency mission and increase the mission reward. People would be lining up to help. Till then, Miss Yi Yeyu would have to use her relic to get to foothold No.7C87 and bring over a few thousand professional hunters. Of course, this is only one of the viable options, for now." "The areas around the Snowy Mountain Town are basically level-1 and level-2 wild zones with very few wild-3 wild zones we need to be worried about. If we have sufficient hunters, we can start the fight before the monster horde makes their move. One Silver Hunter could easily conquer a level-2 wild zone within minutes." "Moreover, we have the geological advantage on our side as the foothold backs up to the mountains. As soon as we kill all the monsters on the mountains, we can hold back the monsters that are in the desert across the mountains for at least two days. Ive climbed the mountains before. Although we are human, without any tools, even an iron-level rank-3 Reserve Hunter would need two days to climb those mountains. All we need is to do is guard the foothold for two days until the human transcendent arrives to kill the transcendent monster." "About the canyons on the east of Snowy Mountain Town, there are not many monsters there. We can get the staff to clean up the place, block the mouth of the canyon with a giant rock and leave a small path for us to walk through. Then we guard the entrance and kill all the monsters that come in. By my calculations, that will severely thin out the monster horde!" "The only thing that we cannot defend ourselves from are the birds in the sky. So, we will need a team to specifically tackle the birds." Everyone was stunned when they heard what Lin Huang said. Yi Yeyu was stunned too, she did not know that Lin Huang would have so many ideas. Even Yi Zheng was surprised, he clapped his hands immediately after Lin Huang finished and said, "Thats amazing! Your mind is clear and your proposal is very feasible." "I will inform the management now and get them to spread the mission word around while Yeyu will bring the hunters over. We will discuss the details when everyone is gathered," Yi Zheng said and looked at all the people in the meeting room. "All of you dont have to be a part of this. You guys can follow Yeyu when shes going back to the medium foothold. Ill get her to talk to the management to give all of you a pass in your assessment," he continued. After he gave his instructions, Yi Zheng then contacted the Hunter Association. Soon, the proposal was approved. "Its been arranged. They will announce the mission now. Please bring these kids with you and go," Yi Zheng said and nodded towards Yi Yeyu. "Alright, please come here. I will send you all to the medium foothold," Yi Yeyu said. She then summoned her green wooden door while waving to the people to join her. Lin Huang remained seated. "Lin Huang, come here now!" Yi Yeyu shouted at him. "Ive told you that I will not leave," Lin Huang insisted. "Young man, you will be of no help even if you stayed. It was your idea. If we manage to win the battle, you will have half the reward to yourself," Yi Zheng explained as he worried that Lin Huang thought they wanted to take all the glory. "I would stay even without any rewards," Lin Huang continually insisted. "What do you want, Lin Huang?!" Yi Yeyu was mad and shouted at Lin Huang. "I will only leave when I see all 200,000 people survive!" Lin Huang replied, looking straight into Yi Yeyus eyes. Yi Yeyu who was staring at him looked away. She was quiet. It was awkward for Yi Zheng as he thought Lin Huang wanted to stay for benefits. The rest were quiet too, some of them were embarrassed. "Im staying too!" Suddenly, someone in the crowd shouted. "Mee too!" "Im staying to kill those monsters!" They volunteered one by one since one of them had taken the lead. However, Bai Yan was the coward in the crowd. He mumbled to himself, "All these idiots giving their lives away" "Alright, stop acting like a hero. You guys are not children playing house," Yi Yeyu had tears in her eyes when she yelled at them. "Lin Huang will stay, those who are iron-level rank-3 can stay too. The rest who cant even fight an iron-level monster, why would you want to stay?! Go back to medium foothold and train!" She shouted. 44 Cleaning Up Yi Yeyu brought more than 50 people, Bai Yan included, when she left the place. Including Lin Huang, there were 12 of them that stayed. Apart from Lin Huang, everyone was iron-level rank-3. "Since you guys have decided to stay, you have to listen to us!" Yi Zheng said to them. "This is now a battlefield. Your personal safety in secondary to the priority today. Today isnt all about you. The lives of your comrades matter too. Therefore, you will have to follow my instructions and move as a unit. Understood!?" "Yes, sir!" The squad of young men stood at attention and shouted. "Whats your name?" Yi Zheng turned around and looked at Lin Huang. "Lin Huang." "Good. You said you want to see 200,000 people survive. Now Im going to pass these 10 fellas to you. Your mission is simple. Keep them alive. Do you accept this mission?" Yi Zheng asked and smiled at Lin Huang. The reason why he gave him this mission was to prevent him from going to battle. He knew Lin Huang was smart, and with these 10 men, he will not do anything that would put them in harm''s way. "Mission accepted, Sir," Lin Huang replied. Lin Huang nodded and agreed. He knew what Yi Zheng was up to, but he had a plan of his own. If these young men were to be with the other hunters, they might have weighed them down too. Professional hunters would never rely on a bunch of young men who were not even registered as Reserve Hunters. Meanwhile, leading 10 iron-level rank-3 men to clear a level-1 foothold would not be a problem for Lin Huang. The young men had witness what Lin Huang was capable of as two of them had suffered severe beatings by Tyrant before. The wounds on their faces were still recovering so they obeyed him without question. Although Yi Zheng did not know that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor, seeing that nobody objected him being their leader, Yi Zheng knew Lin Huang must either be powerful or a young man with an interesting background. Just when they agreed on the proposed arrangement, Yi Yeyu brought 300 professional hunters back with her. Most of them were Silver Hunters. There were 30 Copper Hunters and five Gold Hunters. Most of them knew who Yi Zheng was. They all showed him a great deal of respect, even the other Gold Hunters too. Yi Yeyu left right after she sent the hunters through while Yi Zheng started to make other strategies and arrangements. All 300 hunters spread out quickly to their assigned post. The 20 Copper Hunters were sent to clear the canyon. The Silver Hunters were clearing the foothold on the alps while the Gold Hunters were responsible for cutting the giant rock at the bottom of the alps. Yi Yeyu made four trips from the medium foothold and brought back 1,200 professional hunters in total. Almost a thousand of them were Silver Hunters, with 20 Gold Hunters while the rest were either Copper Hunters or hunters with terrifying powers or unique abilities. Before the monster outbreak, Yi Zheng followed the plan suggested by Lin Huang and sent the 1,000 hunters out to clear the mountains and canyons. In the meantime, the giant rocks there are cut by the Gold Hunters while the smaller boulders were moved by 10 thousand able-bodied adult residents of the foothold to block the mouth of the canyon. Lin Huang and the rest were sent into the canyon to clear up the monsters. There were two or three of them in a team of Bronze Hunters but there were 11 of them altogether. There were not many monsters in the canyon. With the involvement of the other professional hunters, the team led by Lin Huang did not even encounter a complete monster in the first hour. "These professional hunters are so competitive. We have been searching for so long and have changed a couple of routes. All we could find were some monster body parts and trails of blood on the ground," a tall and strong man in the team complained. His name was Zhou Le. He was one of the guys who picked a fight with Lin Huang a few days back. The scars that he got from Tyrant were still fresh on his face. "Theyre efficient, and thats a good thing. It would be perfect if we did not even have to fight during the monster outbreak. That would mean the foothold is completely safe," Lin Huang replied after much thought. "Lin Huang, do you really think we can save the foothold?" Zhou Le asked. "If we manage to cordon off the canyon mouth, guarding it for two days shouldnt be a problem. The only thing is" Lin Huang trailed off with a frown on his face. "What is that?" Zhou Le asked. "The canyon mouth is too big. Im worried that before they can barricade and protect it, the outbreak would happen before we''re ready," Lin Huang voiced out his concern. "Lin Huang, dont you jinx it! I still want to leave in one piece and become a transcendent one day!" A short guy named Yu Guang said. He was also one of the guys who picked a fight with Lin Huang and he too had scars on his face to prove it. "Dont worry, as long as I am alive, I will bring you all out of here in one piece!" Lin Huang gave them his word. "There were people here before us moving in this direction. The monsters ahead must already be dead. Lets take another route,"Zhou Le said as he bent down and studied the tracks on the ground. He had investigative skills. Although his level was not that high, coming up with such detailed estimations was not a problem to him. "Sure, which direction should we go?" Lin Huang asked as he trusted Zhou Les observations. "Let''s head in a two oclock direction from this point," Zhou Le said to Lin Huang after some thought." "Damn it! Zhou Le, can we really trust you? We have been following your route for more than an hour, we haven''t even seen a single monsters hair." Yu Guang teased. "Can you really blame me? We have more hunters than monsters now," Zhou Le shouted back. He felt helpless that his skills did not bring them any action this whole time. "You are no help, Lin Huang, please take the lead," Yu Guang suggested. "Im not good at investigating. Lets follow Zhou Les route. If any of you think that your investigative abilities are stronger than Zhou Le, please go ahead and lead the way," Lin Huang turned and said to the group. Lin Huang rejected Yu Guangs suggestion as he knew himself very well. Although he learned a lot about the basics of investigation, when it came to practical use, he was far from being able to compete with Zhou Le''s capabilities. He thought there was no need for him to lead in something that he was not good at. If something went wrong, he would just embarrass himself. Hearing what Lin Huang said, nobody dared step up. They then followed Zhou Les route in silence. After walking for almost 20 minutes, Lin Huang and the gang finally saw a horde of monsters. They then moved away and hid. It was a group of Ox Devils. There were more than 20 of them. The tallest one stood at a height of five meters and the shortest one was about three meters tall. Compared to a human, they were considered giants. However, they did not belong to the giant family but were part of the mutated monster family. Being different from the giants, their body sizes did not reflect their abilities. They were similar to humans as they walked on two feet, grabbed things with their hands, and used weapons to attack and protect themselves. What differentiated them from the humans was that their ox-like heads as well as their hooves and tail. The Ox Devils were much smarter than iron-level monsters. They even had their own religion and they could make their own totems to strengthen their abilities. Lin Huang and the gang saw the five-meter tall totem that was guarded by an Ox Devil. "There are 26 of them and a religious totem. If I''m not mistaken, that totem gives them 10% extra strength. How do we fight that?" Zhou Le asked softly. "Go set some traps now. Ill destroy the totem later to attract their attention, and they will definitely come rushing at me like the bulls they are. We will wait here for them to fall into our traps," Lin Huang said. He then took out his GrayEagle17 and loaded them with armored bullets 45 Monster Outbreak! After more than 10 traps were set, Lin Huang aimed his gun at the totem and opened fire. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Three shots were fired and the totem that was as thick as a pail crumbled as splinters and dust flew around. The five-meter tall totem broke through the middle, and the top half of it fell hard on the ground. Sand and dust rose in a thick cloud around it. The group of Ox Devils was stunned at first, but soon they snapped out of it. More than 20 of them roared with rage and ran towards the direction they had heard the gunshots come from. Lin Huang holstered his gun and took out his iron sword that he had not yet had the chance to use in battles. At the same time, he summoned Bai. Lin Huang could gain Life Light if he got Bai to kill the monsters but he would not obtain the rewards for cross-rank killing. On the other hand, if Lin Huang was to kill the monsters himself, he could not receive the Life Lights. Both had benefits of their own, so Lin Huang chose to try to get the best of both worlds. Soon, the charging Ox Devils fell into the traps that were set by Lin Huang and gang. More than 10 Ox Devils who had their Life Power strengthened, had their hooves trapped tight. They could not move at all and howled at the trap''s teeth dug deeper into their limbs the more they struggled. The rest of the Ox Devils ran towards Lin Huang and gang with burning fury. It was not their first time fighting with monsters. Seeing the Ox Devils advancing upon them, instead of panicking, each of them picked one to fight straight on. Lin Huang picked one that was of a smaller size, not because he thought it was weak, but because he knew that his ability to jump was far less superior as compared to the rest who were iron-level rank-3. It would have been hard for him to attack the crucial parts of the taller Ox Devils. Looking at the other Ox Devils, Lin Huang thought of a sentence that had been popular for a period of time. "Do you believe that I can jump and break your patella with my fist?" He shouted. The sentence was applicable to many monsters in the world. Lin Huang was only 15. His height was considered normal to people of the same age which was about 1.65 meters (dont worry about his height, he would grow taller later) but he did not even reach the waist of the Ox Devil that stood across from him. However, he was not afraid to face such an enemy. Instead, he was excited. He held the iron sword in his hand, the black blade was shining brightly under the sun. Lin Huang stood where he was and stared at the Ox Devil that broke into a run towards him. The gigantic Ox Devil stomped hard with its iron hooves and the ground beneath it shook violently. Its eyes were bloodshot red. It only took a second for it to come within meters of Lin Huang. It swung the huge stone hammer in its hand at him, and there was intense whistling sound from the power of the swing. In Lin Huangs eyes, the Ox Devils movement seemed much slower than his. He took one sidestep away from the Ox Devil and the beast''s attack missed him by millimeters. He then swung his iron sword, and blood splashed on the ground. The Ox Devil groaned while it held the left side of its waist. It stared at Lin Huang in hatred. Lin Huangs sword made a one meter long cut on the Ox Devils waist, it had almost sliced through its organs. "The Great Sword Scriptures are so powerful. With my strength and a normal battle sword, it injured this Ox Devil so badly" Lin Huang thought, impressed with himself. He thought it would have been good enough if he could just break the Ox Devils defense, but he did not expect the slash would have such an impact. Since the epiphany, Lin Huangs Great Sword Scriptures had reached a Blue Epic-level and from the original 18 styles, he now had 36 styles. The 36 styles did not have a name to each. After it was integrated into his body, it felt like an instinct that he was born with. The skills were carved deep in his mind. Furthermore, his regular styles could be adjusted just by his thoughts. Lin Huang felt a unique feeling within himself. Previously when he was in training, he could feel that after he had mastered the skills, a transformation would occur in his swordplay. Now that he was finally using his sword in battle, he was sure that he could reach a new level of experience with his swordplay. The Ox Devil that was injured by Lin Huangs sword slash stared at him in anger. With the look, Lin Huang felt a very real fear build up within him. While he hesitated, deciding if he should run away or to continue to attack, he noticed that the Ox Devil was not paying attention to him. He took the opportunity and attacked the beast. It swung its two-meter-long stone hammer again and it pierced through the sound barrier. If he was hit, Lin Huang would have died on the spot. Hearing the whistle from the stone hammer, Lin Huang ducked down, dashed towards the Ox Devil and slashed his sword down on the monster, from the top to bottom. The Ox Devil let out a loud groan again. Its arm was chopped clean off its shoulder, spouting blood all over the place. Lin Huang did not stop attacking the animal. He then stepped on the Ox Devils knee, leaped up and swung his sword. The Ox Devil held its throat in one hand and did not make any noise. A thick vein of its neck started shooting blood up in the air with a hissing noise. Its bloody eyes stared deadly at Lin Huang. It seemed to not reconcile to the fact that it was at Death''s door. Soon enough, it fell dead on the ground. "Congratulations, you have obtained an Ox Devil Monster Card piece x1" "You have completed a cross-ranking kill. You have obtained a Provisional Transformation Card" "Whats a Provisional Transformation Card?" Seeing the word transformation reminded Lin Huang of a web novel that he had read on a novel website called Qidian. It was a story about a man that transformed into a woman. He felt goosebumps rising on his neck and arms when he thought about that. He then looked at the new card that he got. There was a human and a monster on the top of the card. There was an arrow pointing from the human to the monster. Lin Huang then turned the card around to read the description. "Transformation Card: After using this card, the host can transform into any of the monsters that he owns and he will possess all the skills that the monster had. The transformation will last for 24 hours. "Remarks: This card is a consumable. You can only use this card once." After reading the description, Lin Huang was relieved. He was excited to see the effects of the card. He thought transforming himself into a monster would be an interesting experience. He was ready to use it when he had the time and opportunity. Suddenly, with Lin Huang deep in his zone, he felt a warm liquid splash on his face. When he got out of his zone, it was Bai who stood in front of him. His Blood Power wings turned into a sharp blade and pierced through an Ox Devils mouth right to the back of its head. The Ox Devils head was right above his own head, its brain juices and blood showered down on Lin Huangs head. "Such a thing shouldnt have happened on a battlefield. That was incredibly absent-minded. If not for Bai, I would have been smashed by the Ox Devil into a pile of dead flesh," Lin Huang reflected. Soon, all the 26 Ox Devils were dead. Bai had killed most of them, and he had killed six of them. Just then, Lin Huang noticed that he had 17 white columns added to his Life Wheel. Before they started their journey again then cleaned off all the Ox Devil blood they were drenched in. The battle had energized everyone, and they could not wait to kill more monsters! However, when they just started their journey, Lin Huangs Emperors Heart Ring vibrated. The same happened to the rest of them. Lin Huang saw a message that was sent by Yi Yeyu when he opened the communication page. It was just a simple sentence, "The monster outbreak is happening, go to the canyon mouth right now!" 46 The Fourth Line of Defense After he turned off his communication page, Lin Huang turned pale with fear. What he predicted would happen had finally happened He then led the young men towards the canyon mouth. On the way, everyone was quiet and held their heads as they walked. They arrived at the canyon mouth about half an hour later. Lin Huang could see from afar that the 10-kilometer long canyon mouth was blocked off by giant stones but there was still two to three kilometers left unprotected. His heart dropped when he saw that the gap was much bigger than he expected. What he estimated was that they could block the gap until it was only a few hundred meters wide. He plan was to minimize the possibility of the monsters coming in, as well as funnel them to a single point of which they would focus their attacks to slaughter the monsters. However, they did not have enough time. Before they could finish their line of defense, the outbreak of monsters had happened. The gap that was three kilometers long was attacked by countless ferocious monsters. The residents who were moving the giant rocks retreated under the cover of the hunters. The war has started. Residents would be targeted by the monsters if they stayed. Aside from the hunters that were brought by Yi Yeyu, all the hunters who did not leave the foothold joined in the battle. However, the number of hunters were far too few as compared to the number of monsters. The 1,000 or so hunters would die of exhaustion if they continued. Under Yi Zhengs orders, they formed several defensive formations. The first line would consist of the 20 Gold Hunters. They were dressed in armor which were at least gold-level and some even used relics. As long as their Life Power was not drained,iron-level and bronze-level monsters would not stand a chance against them. The 20 of them stood around 100 meters apart from each other. They were positioned at the location which was supposed to be blocked by the giant rocks and killed every monster that came at them. Many of the monsters were bewildered while some of them were alert to the danger of the experienced hunters. Sensing the powerful group of people, the monsters rushed to make it through the gaps between the hunters. The 20 Gold Hunters could not care less as all they could do was to kill as many monsters as they could while leaving the rest that went through the gaps to the Silver Hunters who were not far behind them. There were 1000 Silver Hunters stood less than 10 meters behind the Gold Hunters. They formed an arc, which put them at about three meters apart from each other. They wore armor too and killed the monsters that passed through the first line of defense mercilessly. The remaining Copper Hunters were ready as the last line of defense at around 100 meters behind the Silver Hunters. There were only 100 of them and they were 30 meters apart from each other. Fortunately, there were fewer monsters that broke through the third line of defense so they were not under a lot of pressure as compared to the others. The few monsters that broke in to face their lines were either already injured or weak, and they made easy work of killing them. Behind the Copper Hunters was the fourth line of defense that was guarded by more than 20 old men. They used to be hunters but due to injuries and other reasons which had caused their abilities to weaken, they had been living in solitude in this small foothold. Each of them held heavy firearms. Although they could not use their Life Power anymore, they still had their gun skills. Yi Yeyu saw Lin Huang and the gang walking towards her from the top of the giant rock in the distance. She did not say a word but pointed at the Emperors Heart Ring on her finger and Lin Huang knew what she meant. Under such condition, the noise of monsters roaring and killing filled the area so Yi Yeyu used her Emperors Heart Ring to send him text messages. Soon, Lin Huangs Emperors Heart Ring vibrated. He opened the communication page and saw a message from Yi Yeyu which said, "There is no more space in the third line of defense, you guys will have to go to the last line. Those old-timers have guns in their hands but they might not be able to fight the monsters. Be alert." "Copy that," Lin Huang replied to Yi Yeyu and turned around to pass the message to the rest of his troop. The group of young men was unhappy. "Clearly she despises us. Shes worried that we will slow them down so she puts us at the back," Zhou Le grumbled. He was pissed. "Thats right. When we arrived, the rest had already started fighting. Its obvious that they took their time inform us on purpose, they dont trust us at all! If I knew this all along, why would I stay? I shouldve left with Bai Yan and the rest!" Yu Guang said in anger. "We shouldnt be saying all this right now. All of you promised Yi Zheng that you would listen to his instructions," Lin Huang shouted at all of them. "The head examiner must be putting our safety into consideration, thats why she came up with the arrangement. Or perhaps shes concerned that we are not able to take the pressure. After all, we are not professional hunters. We are not even comparable to a Bronze Hunter!" he continued. "Think about it. If she does not trust us, would she have left the last line of defense to us? The last line might seem far away from the action, but its the most important one of them all. If it is broken, the lives of the 200,000 residents will be at risk. If the first three lines of defense cannot handle the monsters, they could always leave it to the hunters behind them but not us. So our responsibility is the most crucial!" Hearing what Lin Huang said, the young men thought it made sense and they were ready to fight yet again. However, Lin Huang was laughing on the inside. "These dummies are so easily manipulated," he thought. He knew what Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng were thinking. They did not care if there was a fourth line of defense at all. What they really wanted was all the monsters dead by the time they reached the third line of defense. Lin Huang and the gang were just there for show. For such a major battle like this crowd of monsters, it was better to have fewer humans in the picture. Therefore, there would have to be accurate rotations for each line. If one went wrong, the entire defense system would collapse. Although, Yi Yeyu obviously would not put Lin Huang and the rest of his team into the lines. If something went wrong, they would put everybodys lives at risk. Lin Huang knew very well what the problem was on his team. His teams ability was unstable. Their discipline was weak and conformity was much worse as compared to the professional hunters. Their mentality and ability to handle pressure were uncertain too. Even if Lin Huang was to lead the battle, he would not have put his team in a major role against an enemy like the monsters that were attacking. So he was at peace with the arrangement. To him, it was best that the third line of defense handle all the monster attacks so that he did not have to do anything within the next two days. Then when the human transcendent arrived, he would kill the transcendent monster and the incident would be over. Lin Huang was optimistic but things did not go the way he had hoped. In less than an hour, as Lin Huang and the gang stood a few hundred meters from the north of the third defense line, an uproar broke out. A couple of monsters broke through the third defense line and stampeded towards the foothold 47 Bloody Scarred Hyena There was a gap broken in the third line of defense. It was out of everyones expectation, after all, the monster outbreak had just started for an hour. Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng who were standing on top of the giant rock was shocked to see the monsters broke through the defense line. Just when they wanted to fight, they saw Lin Huang who was a few hundred meters away summoning Tyrant to chase after the monsters. The gang behind him saw and chased after the monsters too. The monsters that broke through were five Demonic Hyenas, they belonged to the disease-class. Although they were also called hyenas, they were far different from the hyenas on earth. Their fur was grayish-black and they were three meters long. Their limbs were long and their bodies were light. There were two deformed horns on their heads, there were a ferocious, white, sharp bones on their back, extended from their neck to their thigh. The rest of their bodies were filled with red pustules. Some were bulging and some were popped and rankled. Their bodies were exuding a disgusting stench. Lin Huang knew this monster very well as he had read about them before. As there were not many monsters that were categorized in the disease-class, these Demonic Hyenas were the most common one. According to the record, they carried more than 300 viruses on their bodies and more than 10 of those viruses were life-threatening to humans. If proper treatment was not administered in time, it would cause serious infections and even death. If one was bitten or scratched by them, the consequences would be very serious. Lin Huang sat on Tyrants shoulders and took out his GrayEagle17, aiming at the Demonic Hyenas that ran past. "Bang, bang, bang" Shots were fired. The Demonic Hyenas were caught off guard. They were hit and howled in agony. A few of them were bewildered and became furious when they saw they injured companion. The pack then changed their course and set their sights on killing Lin Huang. They started running at him with murderous intent. The armored bullets did not hit the Demonic Hyenas weak spots and the damage done was minimal. However, the same couldn''t be said for the pain it had caused. The gunshots did not scare them away, instead, the shots triggered their vicious rage. Looking at the Demonic Hyenas running at him, Lin Huang was not surprised. He was actually getting excited. He slid off Tyrants shoulders, recalled the beast and summoned Bai. In terms of combat strength, Tyrant and Bai were almost the same, but in terms of killing, Bai was one level stronger than Tyrant. He possessed level-2 Blood Power which gave him a pair of sharp blades so the area of attack he had was bigger than what Tyrant had. A few hundred meters was a short distance, and the five Demonic Hyenas were closing in on Lin Huang. He just noticed half of the pustules on one of them were torn away and had turned into stripes of scary bloody scars. Bai stood in front of Lin Huang with his red eyes, the pair of Blood Power wings were out and at full span, blocking the path of the five Demonic Hyenas. Lin Huang slowly holstered his GrayEagle17 and took out his iron sword. He locked his eyes on a mutated Demonic Hyena and said to Bai, "Bai, save the one on the left for me." Bai had got his orders and was ready to execute. He bent his left wing and stabbed it at the closest mutated monster that rushed at him. The Demonic Hyena that was filled with bloody scars stared at Lin Huang with its grayish-white eyes. It then lunged at him and opened its mouth that was filled with sticky drool in an attempt to bite Lin Huangs head. However, Lin Huang just stood there with his sword in hand, poised and ready. He then swung his sword, and black blood was splashed to the side as he nearly split the attacking beast in half. The bloody hyena let out a loud groan and fell to the floor. Its abdomen that was now exposed to Lin Huang had a one-meter long cut running through. Its intestines could be seen, spilling out on the ground. "Such amazing skill!" Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng exclaimed in unison as they watched from afar on the giant rock they stood on. Especially Yi Yeyu. Her eyes sparkled with admiration. She thought since Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor, he might be able to use a gun but she had never seen him using his sword. She was stunned when she saw Lin Huang swing his sword for the very first time. "This Great Sword Scripture skill is amazing! If I had the same strength as that monster, I might have killed it in one slash," Lin Huang thought, surprised at the extent of damage he had inflicted. As its bewilderment faded, the bloody hyena was woken up by Lin Huangs attack. Now that it noticed the human upon it was dangerous, it was going to turn around to run away in the other direction. In its panicked state, it did not notice that it was heading to the foothold where the humans were. Seeing its attempt to run, Lin Huang took a few steps towards it with his sword in hand. He ran at it with bloodlust in his eye. The bloody hyena saw him attacking and when it tried to duck, Lin Huang launched himself at it and stabbed his sword into its neck. The iron sword pierced through the bloody hyenas neck like he was slicing tofu. The sword went all the way into its body until only the handle was showing. It was not that the sword was sharp, but because the Great Sword Scripture was terrifyingly powerful. But it was not the end. Lin Huang held the sword firmly and pierced it further into the dying beast. The sword was completely buried in the hyenas throat. The cut was one meter long and almost 80 centimeters deep. A big part of its throat was cut open, and its head was crooked to a side. Black blood flowed out of its wound like a waterfall on the ground. The ferocious bloody hyena was dead. A notification came from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you have obtained a Bloody Scarred Hyena Monster Card piece x1" "You have completed a cross-ranking kill. You have obtained a random Skill Card (Rare) x1" This time Lin Huang did not even look at the cards that he had obtained as he had just killed the bloody hyena. Just then, Zhou Le and the rest caught up to him. Bai had killed two Demonic Hyenas on his own, while the remaining two were chased away by the group of young men. Soon, the remaining two were killed. Lin Huang brought the young men to the gap that broke earlier and ran at it, his sword held tight in his hands. A Copper Hunters face was pale and he looked like he was about to give up. He was fighting so many monsters alone. Lin Huang and the rest went to help and killed the monsters. They then asked the cause of the breakthrough of the line of defense. They found out that when this Copper Hunter was fighting with the hyenas, one of them had mutated out of nowhere. With the massive gain of speed, the mutated bloody hyena bit the hunters left hand while the other hyenas ran onwards. "You should treat your wound right away. If you dont treat the virus immediately, there will be consequences," Lin Huang advised him after hearing what happened. "But what about the battle" The Copper Hunter said, torn between fighting on or saving himself from an infection. If he retreated, there would be another gap in the line of defense, in his place. "We will fill the gap for you," Lin Huang assured him, in all seriousness. "It would be okay if the monsters were smaller. There are many of them, can you guys handle it?" The hunter asked. He was worried about the group of boys before him. "Sir, please do not underestimate us, especially this fella. He killed that bloody hyena on his own just now with only two slashes," Zhou Le said proudly. He had stood aside earlier as he was afraid that the hunter would not let them pass. He knew that if he told the hunter what Lin Huang had done earlier, he would not think so little of them. Yi Yeyus then spoke to them, "Lu Yang, please go back to the foothold to treat yourself. Please let Lin Huang and the gang handle this." Lu Yang, the Copper Hunter handed over his responsibilities to them with regret in his eyes. He then left with Zhou Le. 48 New Skill Zhou Le and the rest were excited to replace Lu Yang to be part of the third line of defense. But soon, their excitement was replaced with a sense of pressure for the task ahead. Lin Huang knew very well that it was real this time, and that he was part of this war. He felt like a puzzle piece in a game of kill or be killed. This battle was a complete jigsaw puzzle, and the whole troop made up the pieces. If any part of the puzzle was missing, the puzzle would not be complete and they would be defeated. Lin Huang did not care if the rest were flawed as it was not a factor within his control. However, knowing that he had been placed in this position with the trust of Yi Yeyu and Yi Zhang, he had to guarantee that he did not cause any mistakes of his own. Before the next monster wave attacked, Lin Huang rallied his troops and repeated to each of them how important it was to obey his orders in battle. Zhou Le and the rest nodded immediately. They knew how serious it was and did not hesitate for a moment. After telling them, Lin Huang looked at the Rare Skill Card that he obtained for the cross-ranking kill earlier. It was a green card with a big question mark on the front, there was nothing else besides the question mark. There was a description on the back of the card that he studied. "Random Skill Card (Rare): You will receive one random Rare Skill Card." "Remarks: This card is a consumable card, you can only use it once." "Perfect timing for me to gain another skill, what kind of skill would I get this time" Lin Huang thought. He only had three skills so far. One was his sword skill Great Sword Scriptures, another was Robust that he obtained from Tyrant and the third was Blood Power that he got from Bai. In reality, Robust was a passive skill while Lin Huang could not even summon Blood Power yet. The only skill that he could use was the Great Sword Scriptures. Fortunately, the skill was useful which allowed him to unleash an immense amount of strength if he ever needed to. Now that he had an opportunity to get an additional skill, Lin Huang was overjoyed. Although he did not know what kind of skill he would get, Lin Huang communicated with Xiao Hei with hesitation in his mind and said, "Xiao Hei, I want to use this random Skill Card." "Are you sure that you want to use this random Skill Card (Rare)?" Xiao Hei asked. "Confirmed!" he replied. Many different images flashed on the front of the card replacing the question mark. The images changed so fast that it made Lin Huang dizzy for a moment looking at them. About 10 seconds later, the images stopped flashing and the card started shining in a bright white. Soon the white light faded, and a new card appeared. "Congratulations, you have received a Body Movement Skill - Spectral Snowsteps." Lin Huang was excited to hear that he received a Body Movement Skill. He was planning to pick a better Body Movement Skill to train himself if he made it out of the war alive. His mind was set on training to be even better at using his sword. He did not expect that he would randomly have picked the card. He took a good look at the new Skill Card immediately. The top of the card was a pair of feet stepping on snow, however, there was no trail of the feet on the snow. Lin Huang then turned the card around and read the detailed description. "Skill Card" "Skill Name: Spectral Snowsteps" "Rarity: Rare" "Skill Category: Body Movement" "Skill Level: Gold-rank" "Status: Available" "Remarks: This is a unique body movement skill. There is no rank limitation, it''s effect changes with the host''s ability." Card Remarks: Mediocre" "That is a good skill!" Lin Huang was over the moon after he read the description. There was no level limitation to utilize this card, he was concerned that it could only be summoned with Life Power. He then looked at his Exclusive Card, and as expected, there was an additional skill. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Skill 2: Great Sword Scriptures (Sword Skill)" "Skill 3: Robust (Beginner)" "Skill 4: Spectral Snowsteps (Body Movement)" "Summon authority: Activated" "Available number of summons: 1" "Remark: You still suck" He glared at the last remark given by Xiao Hei and ignored the remark once again. He was happy that he gained a Body Movement skill, and he then put his attention to the battle. As everyone was focused on the battle, nobody noticed what he was doing. Soon, the monsters broke through the second line of defense and ran towards the third line ferociously. It was a group of Ox Devils, but there were not many of them. Lin Huang and his troop did not have to put much effort into killing them all. Almost four hours into the morning, the third line of defense where Lin Huang and his troop were guarding had encountered 11 attacks. However, they managed to kill the monsters easily. Until the afternoon, which was six hours later, the third line was attacked 22 times. Lin Huang could feel that the intensity of the attacks rising. Not only Lin Huang, but Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng noticed it as well. They started to worry as it was not a good sign. When the sky turned dark, the monster became even more furious. They did not know if it was caused by the sun setting or the Transcendent monster was hypnotizing them to attack with a greater vengeance. From six oclock in the evening to midnight, the pressure rose for Lin Huang and the gang within the six hours as they had encountered 46 attacks. They were attacked almost every seven minutes. Although they were stressed, none of them complained as they knew that the Gold and Silver Hunters in front of them had it even harder than they did. Yi Yeyu had been directing her attention at Lin Huangs location. She was worried that they could not take the assault. However, Lin Huang and the gang proved themselves again and again with each attack wave that came their way. They showed the other hunters that their small team was no weaker than any Copper Hunter when they banded together. A couple of Copper Hunters who had doubted their abilities in the beginning were worried that this group of young men would slow them down but soon, they were impressed by this bunch of young men that stood with them defending the region. Under Lin Huangs leadership and instruction, the young men were very cooperative. Although they panicked occasionally, the situation was handled by Lin Huang and Bai. Lin Huangs performance had gotten the attention of many hunters in the area. Although he was not even iron-level, he had shown his strength and abilities that surpassed any iron-level hunter. Even some of the iron-level rank-3 monsters were killed in no more than five slashes of his sword. Bais performance was impressive too. Apart from some of the monsters that had extraordinarily strong defensive abilities, he basically killed the monsters in single attacks. Because of the both of them, the 12 men team managed to stand strong. Soon, it was the wee hours of the morning. Although it was so late in the night, it was not as silent as usual. The ruckus and roars of the men and monsters could be heard from all around. It could have been the noisiest day Lin Huang ever experienced ever since he knew. Noises of angry monsters and humans shouting were deafening, and gunshots could be heard from the heart of the battlefield. When it got late, the monsters got even more bloodthirsty! The third line of defense was broken a couple of times as the monsters got stronger. Fortunately, Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng managed to arrive on time and handle the situation. However, the people were getting worried. From the outlook of the situation, it was certain that the third line of defense would collapse. It was just amatter of time... 49 A Piece of Bad News Most of them started to get tired of the intense attacks they were being pummeled with. At four oclock, right before dawn, the duration of attack was then almost 20 hours. Lin Huang felt drained from all the fighting. If not for his passive skill Robust that was supporting him, he would not even have the strength to lift his sword. The young mens condition was slightly better than Lin Huang but they were not in any form to continue holding the line. Lin Huang did not know how many monsters he and Bai killed. The Life Wheel in his body had been filled with Life Light and it was almost overflowing. There were 357 columns that were filled with white light, and there were only three gray columns left in his Life Wheel. "Xiao Hei, cut off the Life Light transfer between me and Bai now!" Lin Huang instructed Xiao Hei immediately when he noticed what was happening to his Life Wheel. "You have requested to cut off the transfer of Life Light with Bai. Disconnection is complete!" Xiao Hei fulfilled Lin Huangs request immediately. The disconnection was to allow the Life Light to be transferred to Bai as the Life Light in Lin Huangs Life Wheel was almost full. Once the 360 columns were full, Lin Huang could get a Life Light Baptism if he was to kill an Iron-level monster and he would be upgraded to iron-level. However, the upgrade to Iron-level would come together with a Life Seed. The Life Seed was used to strengthen talents that one was born with or had the potential to wield so it was crucial to choose wisely. Life Seeds were categorized into five which were the Elemental System, Strengthening System, Psychic System, Special System and Compound System. Lin Huang knew which Life Seed he wanted since the beginning. He wanted the Sword Strengthening System, which could only be obtained by killing monsters with his sword. However, no monster that fit the criteria existed in the monster horde so Lin Huang chose not to upgrade to iron-level at the moment. It was six in the morning. The sun rose from the horizon shedding light on the battlefield. Lin Huang just chopped off a monsters head, panting as he did. He looked up to the direction of sunrise. "The sun is finally out" he thought. The past two hours was hell as every minute and every second was a torment to them. He chose not to upgrade to iron-level. Although he had his passive skill Robust to support him, his strength was not comparable to the young men of iron-level rank-3. Every swing of the sword was getting harder for him. "Lin Huang, are you okay?" Zhou Le and the rest noticed that Lin Huang was slowing down. "Shouldnt be a problem over a short period of time. But if the situation persists, I think I wont be able to take this anymore," Lin Huang honestly voiced out his concern. He estimated that he could stand for a maximum of two hours. "Why not you take a rest. We can handle it," Zhou Le suggested although he knew that without Lin Huang, the task would be much more difficult. "Its no use even if I rest, the most I could take would be a couple more hours. Furthermore, it''s not only me, everyone is exhausted. The line will collapse if we give in, its just the matter of time," Lin Huang shook his head while looking at the gap at the canyon mouth. "We need to solve the root of the problem!" he concluded. "What is the root of the problem?" Zhou Le asked immediately. "The breakthrough of the defensive line is caused by the amount of monsters which is far too many. Our people are limited, our strength is depleted too. The solution is easy to say, but very hard to do. We have to minimize the size of the entrance and funnel down the monsters. We have to make the gap at the canyon mouth smaller," Lin Huang said. "However, looking at the situation now, we cant move the giant rocks to the canyon mouth. Each giant rock is the size of a small mountain, none of our storage spaces are big enough to contain it. All we can do is rely on the residents in the foothold. Even with tools, we would need a few hundred people to move the giant rocks to the canyon mouth. Now that the battle is this intense, the residents cant be moving the giant rocks as they would be the targeted by the monsters once they enter the battlefield," he said. Although Lin Huang found the root of the problem, he could not think of a suitable solution. "Its not necessary that we use giant rocks to block the canyon mouth, am I right? Why not we just pile up the dead bodies to block the canyon mouth? Since most of the monsters have strong solid bodies, the corpses would work great. If not, we can pile even more together to further strengthen the wall," Zhou Le said casually. Hearing what Zhou Le said, Lin Huang was stunned and let out a laugh, "I didnt think of that. It''s brilliant!" Lin Huang then proposed the idea to Yi Yeyu. Yi Yeyu checked the message that was sent by Lin Huang. She was stunned at first, but soon she showed her excitement and forwarded the message to Yi Zheng. Yi Zheng was happy too. He then spread the proposal to some of the Gold Hunters and they started to collect dead bodies. Soon, the dead bodies were piled up into a small hill which became a line of defense by itself. Yi Zheng spilled oil on the dead bodies to avoid the monsters from climbing over them. With the piling corpses, the canyon mouth became smaller and smaller. When it was near noon, the canyon mouth was only about 300 meters wide, which was what Lin Huang had hoped for at the beginning of the attack. The peoples fear was finally reduced. The monsters which attacked Lin Huangs third line decreased from every few minutes to every half an hour. Even the second line of defense was much relaxed now. Yi Zheng stood on top of the giant rock and gave Lin Huang a thumbs up. Lin Huang then pointed at Zhou Le who was next to him and sent a message to Yi Yeyu to explain that it was Zhou Les idea. The next afternoon, everyone was more relaxed. They even had time to eat and rest. Seeing that the sun setting behind the mountains, Yi Yeyu prayed that nothing would go wrong that night and that the human transcendent would arrive on time to kill the transcendent monster to end this once and for all. It was six in the evening, and the sky was getting dark. The monstrous roars were getting more intense. Yi Zheng stood on top of the giant rock and looked into the distance. He saw a pack of what looked like 100,000 monsters approaching the foothold. He was about to say something when his Emperors Heart Ring vibrated. Lin Huang and the rests ring vibrated at the same time. Since he had a moment to respond, Lin Huang opened his Emperors Heart Ring. A news alert popped up on the page. "Since eight in the morning yesterday, a monster outbreak happened on the east side of Division7. The density and coverage of the attack this time was at the small footholds No.7D120, No.7D122 and No.7D123. A wide area was destroyed by the beasts. There were no survivors. The death toll has reached 670,000 people. The same has happened to the small foothold No.7D121, but the condition there is unclear. There are transcendent humans making their way there. We will give you a full update when we receive more details." Seeing the news, most of them who were relaxed became tense. "Thats not good" Lin Huang frowned. The footholds nearby had been destroyed by monsters. The only one standing was Snowy Mountain Town. The transcendent monster must be targeting Snowy Mountain Town next. Since it was hurt by the human transcendent around that area, it would not stop until it has killed all the people around the foothold!" 50 Monsters Coming at Full Force Yi Yeyu, Yi Zheng and the rest had gloomy looks on their faces. After a relaxed afternoon, they did not expect to receive bad news like that. Now that the massacre of people in the three footholds had happened, that meant Snowy Mountain Town would be attacked by all the monsters that attacked the three footholds. The amount of monsters would be four times more than the original number! The other hunters knew that too, the atmosphere on the battlefield turned ice cold. "Lin Huang, do you have any plans?" Zhou Le said in a weak voice and took a deep breath to calm himself down while anticipating what Lin Huang would suggest. Lin Huang shook his head. "Theres nothing else we can do but fight. Lets just pray that the human transcendent arrives soon." Soon it was night time again. Although everyone was less enthusiastic from the bad news, the battle had to go on. None of the 1000 hunters were slacking. They were defending their own line of defense. When it was nine at night, Yi Zheng heard a subtle sound coming from afar. It was approaching the canyon at the speed of light. He looked far in the distance, but his vision was clear even at night. He saw a massive group of monsters coming. He could not see clearly what kind of monsters they were due to the dust that surrounded them, but he could feel the ground shake beneath his feet. Many hunters felt the tremors too. Lin Huang knew monsters that could cause this must be really big and there were many of them. Without confirming what kind of monsters they were, Yi Zheng shouted to the people from his perch on top of the giant rock. At such a time, he should have been more enthusiastic to motivate the people or else the defense lines would be easily broken if the low moral persisted. "Everybody, the monsters from the few areas are here. I believe everyone can feel the ground trembling and you should know very well that there will be more monsters coming our way. This is the last foothold in the area. The transcendent monster will not give up until it destroys this foothold too. The only choice we have right now is to fight! Besides that, theres no other solution." "Its 9:23 p.m. right now. The Hunter Association said the transcendent human will be here within 48 hours. There are another nine hours to that 48-hour mark. This means, we have to fight for another nine hours and we will be saved." "I believe everyone has heard about the transcendent human the association has sent. He is Yu Chanli, he was no.4 on the Division7 Gold Hunter Leaderboard. Hes a strong Imperial Censor as well. Now that the transcendent monster is badly injured, as soon as Yu Chanli is here, it will definitely be killed, without a doubt. With that, the monster horde will retreat immediately," he assured them. "Now that the other footholds have been destroyed, that''s over now. We need to put this behind us. Lets do this together! From now onwards, we only have one goal which is to guard this place for nine hours! We fight for this one and only goal! Because as long as we fulfill this goal, all of us here and the 200,000 residents in Snowy Mountain Town will survive!" What Yi Zheng said was extremely effective. It was unclear if it was Yu Chanlis name which they had heard before or the fact that they only had nine hours left to fight, all of them were energized. Even Lin Huang repeated to himself, "This is the last nine hours, we must hold on!" After the motivational speech, Yi Zheng turned around and looked at the monsters in the distance. They were Giant Armored Elephants. Although they belonged to a species of mutated monsters, they were like no other, mainly because they were huge! All of them were at least 10 meters tall. They were considered giants among all monsters. Even Tyrant who was iron-level rank-3 was considered petite when it stood among these monsters. From its trunk, the Giant Armored Elephant had metal armor all the way to its hip. The same metal was fitted on its head too. Its entire head was covered in metal armor, and only its eyes and flapping ears were showing. The metal parts were not fixed, they were born with it. Such monster had bones made partially of metal. This gave them a terrifying defense that no other monster possessed. Yi Zheng frowned while he looked at this group of Giant Armored Elephants. Their existence presented a very real danger to the lines of defense as their body weight and impact could easily destroy the giant rock wall. Once the wall was destroyed, the rest of the monsters would rush in. "Yeyu, you stay here, Ill handle the damn elephants!" Yi Zheng told Yi Yeyu while holding a fine sword in his hand. His white robe fluttered in the wind. He then hopped towards the giant rocks below. He stepped on the monsters backs and heads and ran towards the Giant Armored Elephants. Looking on as her brother left, Yi Yeyu was not concerned for Yi Zhengs safety. With his ability, as long as the transcendent monster did not show, he was invincible. Although the Giant Armored Elephants were big, most of them were only iron-level or bronze-level. Only some of them were silver-level. They could not threaten Yi Zheng at all. Soon, Yi Zheng was among the Giant Armored Elephants. Every swing he took with his fine sword, a gold flash could be seen. He pierced through a Giant Armored Elephants head. Not long later, he managed to kill a few hundred Giant Armored Elephants. Yi Zheng returned right after he killed all the Giant Armored Elephants. He did not delay his actions as he knew that the Giant Armored Elephants were just the first horde of monsters who came. There would be more coming their way. He came back to the giant rock and stood on top with his hands folded like nothing had happened. Yi Yeyu who was standing across him gave him a thumbs up. He looked the other way. He wanted to look cool but could not help but smile at his sister. Soon, there was a new horde of monsters along the horizon. However, Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng remained where they stood as those monsters did not possess the ability to break through the wall. The both of them allowed them to forward so they would be behind other monsters that were closing in. Then, there were more monsters coming from far away. The monsters were filling up the grassland outside of the canyon. Just when Yi Zheng was ready to kill all the monsters beneath the giant rock, he heard a rustling sound behind him. He turned around and saw black dots on the top of the mountains behind the Snowy Mountain Town. The black dots stood out even more against the white mountains as they dashed downwards. As she noticed where Yi Zheng was looking, Yi Yeyu looked at the mountains behind her as well. She screamed. "Aren''t those Sand Spiders? I hate spiders!" she squealed. Yi Zhengs lips were twitching when he heard what Yi Yeyu said. "Now, pull yourself together, this is not about you hating spiders. The spiders are so far away from us. How do we attack them?" 51 The Poor Sand Spiders Sand Spiders were a species of bugs that lived in the desert. Mature Sand Spiders had six pairs of legs; they were thick and long. Four pairs of them were more than three meters long to help them move while two pairs of forelegs were as sharp as blades. They were meant for hunting. They had a carapace of hollow spikes on their rear section and there was an opening in the midsection for laying eggs. During their spawning season, they would lure their prey into a cave before injecting all their eggs into the preys body. They would then wrap the prey in a spider web. After the eggs hatch inside the preys body, the baby spiders would consume the organs of the living prey and rupture the preys abdomen to join their family. In reality, these spiders possessed a unique characteristic in that all of them were hermaphrodites [1]. Oftentimes, two Sand Spiders would spar and the winner would then impregnate the loser. Occasionally, two or more Sand Spiders would get embroiled in the fight and sometimes, the situation would develop in a much more complicated manner where all of the spiders involved in the fight might end up pregnant. The most bizarre thing about this was that the baby spiders would then be unable to identify their father The Sand Spiders that filled the top of the snowy mountains were crawling towards the bottom. They were fast, and by estimation, they would reach the bottom of the Snowy Mountains in an hour, more than 30 kilometers from the mouth of the canyon where Lin Huang and the rest were located. With Lin Huangs ability to see, he could only spot black dots on top of the Snowy Mountains and he could not tell what they were. Thankfully, Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng who were at gold-level managed to recognize the Sand Spiders and estimated their numbers. There were about 100,000 of them. If the Sand Spiders were to break through the line of defense, it would take them less than an hour to massacre the population of 200,000. Yi Zheng panicked. They did not have enough people here and there was a horde of Sand Spiders coming. "Are there any heavy gunmasters here?!" Yi Zheng bellowed from the top. Heavy gunmasters were a branch profession of the gunmen class and were experts in powerful and destructive long-distance attacks. Lin Huang wanted to be a gunman as his second profession but not the heavy gunmaster. He was planning to take the light gunmaster or even the sniper route. Gunmasters belonged to the battlefield, which Lin Huang was not keen of. In reality, most of the hunters would not consider this profession. As expected, nobody responded to Yi Zheng. He was hoping for a miracle when he asked, but when he received silence in return, his heart sank. Apart from a medium gunmaster, there was no one else who could attack from more than 30 kilometers away. "Brother, what is there to worry about?" someone asked. Yi Yeyu glanced at Yi Zheng in disdain. While everyone was watching, she then attached an eight-meters-long cannon on her left hand within seconds. Yi Zheng was taken aback and asked her carefully, "I remembered that you didnt even pass your beginner gunmaster assessment? Without the license, how did you manage to purchase this?" "Is there anything that you cant buy in the black market?" Yi Yeyu said. "Arent the Firearm Relics that are being sold on the black market expensive Did you borrow money just to buy this?" Yi Zheng suddenly recalled Yi Yeyu borrowing money from him earlier. He found it strange too as Yi Yeyu should have enough pocket money for her daily expenditure but he lent some money to her anyway. "So, youre not dumb after all," said Yi Yeyu while slotting in a few Life Crystals into the cannons energy tank. Yi Zheng felt the pain when he saw her actions because the smallest Life Crystal contained 100 years of Life Light. Each of such Life Crystals cost at least 10 million credit points. For such Firearm Relics, each attack would consume one Life Crystal. "Yi Yeyu, youre not a gunmaster, why would you buy this Firearm Relic? Which man would marry you if you spend like that?" Yi Zheng wanted to teach her a lesson. "Mind your own business, arent you single as well?!" Yi Yeyu snapped. "In the future, dont borrow money from me to buy such nonsense like this!" Yi Zheng was mad. "I wont! So petty!" Yi Yeyu scoffed and aimed the cannon at the Snowy Mountains. Seeing that, Yi Zheng stopped talking and leaped to the giant rock that she was standing on. He stood behind her and looked at the direction where the cannon was pointed towards, he then lifted the canyon slightly. "What are you doing, I will miss the shot if we fire at this angle!" Yi Yeyu stared at him. "Ive told you that you dont have the talent to be a gunmaster yet you never heeded my advice." Yi Zheng shook his head and explained, "A gunmaster would need to take the environment into consideration as well as the estimation of the attacks effect. In such situations, if you attack the location where the Sand Spiders are traversing, the effect would be limited. But if you attack the top of the Snowy Mountains, you could cause an avalanche that could potentially bury all of the spiders." Yi Yeyu knew what he said was right so she did not argue any longer but she shot him a dissatisfied look. "If you lean your body forward like that, although Firearm Relics can absorb the recoil, a cannon of such size would have much stronger recoils." Yi Zheng patted her back. He then stood behind Yi Yeyu once again to reassess the angle of the cannon and nodded, "Fire now!" After Yi Zhengs confirmation, Yi Yeyu launched the cannon. A radiant sphere was created at the mouth of the cannon and in a split second, it turned into a white glow and fired towards the snowy mountains. Yi Yeyus body shook from the recoil, but she was held steady by a hand behind her. "Bang!" The white glow hit the top of the snowy mountain, and every part of it began to tremble. Soon, the snow at the peak collapsed. They were like ocean waves, gradually growing in size and speed. It then buried the black dots on top of the snowy mountains. Looking at the results, Yi Yeyu was over the moon. She was happy that she managed to kill more than 100,000 Sand Spiders in just one shot. She did not anticipate that to happen since she assumed she would need at least 20 shots to kill all of the spiders. "Nice!" Yi Zheng gave her a thumb up. Yi Yeyu blushed. If not for Yi Zhengs mentoring, she would not have achieved such success. "I will leave these mountains to you. If there are any monsters approaching from that direction, use the same method as you did just now," Yi Zheng instructed Yi Yeyu and leaped back to the giant rock that he was standing on before. The Sand Spiders were all buried beneath the snow close to Snowy Mountain Town. They were rolling towards the foot of the snowy mountains. The snow was cascading towards the Snowy Mountain Town in waves. However, nothing could be seen outside of Snowy Mountain Town as it was covered by their line of defense. The crisis was solved just like that. Lin Huang was watching the entire thing from the beginning till the end. Watching the snow as it engulfed the sand spiders, he sighed, "No matter which world it is, the power of nature is always mesmerizing" 52 The Last Three Hours… The Last Three Hours In the middle of the night, there were millions of monsters outside the mouth of the canyon of Snowy Mountain Town. Many of them started to trample on the other monsters back to surge through the defense line. Many monsters died from the weight they had to bear while some were stomped to death as they fell from the monsters backs. Although many died, there were still many more that marched forward, fearless. Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng were forced to join the defense line to kill the monsters that successfully breached the giant rock. Yi Zhengs fine sword changed forms into a three-meter-long giant sword. He leaped and started killing the monsters. With every slash, he beheaded tens of monsters. On the other side, Yi Yeyu reloaded Life Crystals inside her treasure tool and continued shooting at monsters beneath where she stood. Although her aim was inaccurate, since there were monsters everywhere, no matter which direction she shot at, there were bound to be monsters dying. The 20 Gold Hunters taking refuge beneath the giant rock were exhausted from the battle that spanned two days and one night but they persevered. They were replenishing their Life Power with Life Crystals in between killings. However, no matter how many monsters they killed, there were others that managed to avoid their attacks and slip through into the second defense line. There were just too many monsters; they could only handle those that were within their reach while the rest had to be handled by the Silver Hunters to their rear. Silver Hunters who were on the second defense line consisted of the most people. There were more than 1000 of them, yet all of them were overburdened with the bulk of the monster horde which penetrated past the first line of defense. The pressure on them was similar to the Gold Hunters in front and none of them could spare a moment to rest, not even for a minute. The monsters were getting too close and there was not much space between them. 90% of the monsters that got to the second line of defense was killed by the Silver Hunters as they knew that the Copper Hunters in the third defense line were few in number. If too many monsters broke into the third line of defense, it would be spell calamity for the Copper Hunters. Therefore, they tried their best not to let any monsters succeed. Lin Huang and the gang were on the third line of defense, which was the most relaxed one as the burden was eased by the Gold and Silver Hunters in front of them. The monsters that managed to break into the third defense line were less than a tenth of the monsters that were in the mouth of the canyon. But as time went by, Lin Huang and the gang began to feel the pressure again because the monsters increased their attack frequency to an interval of six minutes per wave instead of the thirty in the past. Thankfully, Bais attack rate did not lower for he was a killing machine. He massacred as many monsters as Lin Huang did. His Blood Power wings morphed into a variety of forms during battle and depending on each form, he could either chop off a head or pierce through a heart. He was highly efficient, so much so that Lin Huang was both amazed and ashamed. Of course, Lin Huangs performance was not too bad. With his iron sword, he transformed into a fine soldier. With the help of the Great Sword Scripture, almost nothing could dodge his sword. As he obtained more experience in an actual battle, he now only needed three slashes to kill a monster instead of the usual five slashes. As long as the monster was not an iron-level rank-3, he could kill them in only one slash. He was also getting used to the Spectral Snowsteps movement technique where he moved like a ghost on the battlefield. Zhou Le and the rest assumed that Lin Huang was of royalty. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to possess such incredible abilities and terrifying combat strength. They were already iron-level rank-3 but they were far behind Lin Huang when it came to killing monsters. Lin Huang did not care about the number of cross-ranking kills he had done, how many card pieces he had accumulated or how many reward cards he had obtained. He even reduced drinking water and only took a sip when he absolutely needed to because there was no time for other distractions. Xiao Hei knew that he was in his combat mode and did not send any notifications to prevent Lin Huang from becoming distracted. Time passed by on the battlefield. Each passing minute and second felt like torture. Everyone was anticipating for the sun to rise and for dawn to arrive. As long as they held on until dawn, the human transcendent Yu Chanli would be here to kill that transcendent monster and everything would be over. Lin Huang surpassed his limit again and again. Compared to the rest, he was the only ordinary person on the battlefield. The physique he was born with could not be remedied by his combat strength. Even Zhou Le and the other young men who were iron-level rank-3 were extremely exhausted. Imagine Lin Huang who was not even iron-level. Many people noticed Lin Huangs performance; not only Zhou Le and the gang, but even the Copper Hunters around him were impressed by his skills. They clearly understood that Lin Huang was pushing himself beyond his capacity. Lin Huang knew his body condition very well. He did not stop swinging his sword because if he did, his body would collapse. He might not even be able to stand later. He told himself countless times, "I cant stop! I cant stop! As long as I hold on for a couple more hours, it will be time!" The monsters attacks on the battlefield became increasingly intense. Monsters roared throughout the battle. At approximately 3 o clock in the wee hours of the morning, a terrifying monster roar echoed from a distance. The roar originated from beyond the Snowy Mountains but the shockwaves propagated through the people and dissipated in the grasslands outside the canyon. Everyones heart pounded when they heard the roar. Even Lin Huangs heart started racing fast, he felt like they were being watched by something terrifying. It gave him goosebumps. The roar bolstered the monsters morale and many of them began to ram against the giant rocks even though Lin Huang could tell that it would be painful. Many of them even started to stack onto each other to get through the defense lines. Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu frowned upon watching the monsters attempts to climb through the giant rocks. They did not expect this to happen during the last three hours. Just when Yi Zheng was thinking of what to do, he heard some noise coming from the Snowy Mountains. He turned around and saw something black covering the sky heading right towards his direction at an alarming pace. He took a closer look and gasped. "Oh no, the crows are back" 53 Small Destruction Card The crows blanketed the western sky of the Snowy Mountains like dark clouds. They were heading towards the direction of the foothold at full speed. The crows were just as numerous or probably more than what Lin Huang saw the other day when he previously encountered them. Millions of crows in a flock together looked like a massive horde and it seems like there would be none that would be able to defeat them besides a Transcendent. Even Yi Zheng who was no.11 on the Division7 Gold Hunter Leaderboard avoided the crows. It was a nightmare. They could easily occupy a medium foothold if the transcendent was absent. The hunters who were ready to stand their ground felt despair the moment they noticed the horde of crows. Millions of monsters were streaming in from the grasslands and innumerable crows were darting in from the back. They did not have enough manpower to protect the foothold after all Yi Yeyu looked like she was in doubt on the giant rocks, she regretted that she chose this foothold to be the location for the assessment. If Yi Zheng was not here, she was ready to die in battle. However, now that Yi Zheng was here, he would certainly not leave her behind. If she were to stay, she would lose her brother to the monsters. She was in dire straits Yi Zheng knew his sister very well. She was competitive and resilient, and though she may be hot tempered at times, she was a kind person. It was impossible for her to leave 200,000 people behind. Even if she were to pass by a foothold invaded by monsters, she would choose to fight no matter what. "Yeyu, use your green wooden door to send the kids away!" Although Yi Zheng knew that Yi Yeyu would not agree to leave, he instructed her anyway. "Im not leaving!" Yi Yeyu stared at Yi Zheng. "Even if you dont care for yourself, you have to consider this for the sake of our family. Our generation only has the both of us, we cant die here!" Yi Zheng tried to talk her out of it, "And those young men, especially Lin Huang, do you really want him to perish here? As long as we give him sufficient time, he could develop into a transcendent. We cannot lose him as well!" After a moment of silence, she shouted at Yi Zheng,"Brother, Ill pass you the green wooden door. Please bring Lin Huang and the rest with you, I will remain behind!" "What foolishness are you spouting? You must leave. You''re my sister, listen to me!" Yi Zheng exclaimed loudly. "We must think about the future of our generation. Since you are gifted with stronger abilities, if you live, our familys generation would grow stronger. Therefore, it would be better if I stay." Yi Zheng could not counter argue Yi Yeyu. The situation turned awkward for them. The crows were approaching. Some of the hunters in the lines of defense had lost their will to live; they were just preparing for what might eventually happen. The third line of defense did not have enough manpower as a couple of Silver Hunters on the second defense line were caught off guard. Everyone felt disheartened. oon, the remaining defenses collapsed. Lin Huang and the rest were surrounded. Without the lines of defense in front of them, the ten young men were completely besieged by monsters. "Dont panic guys. Lets form a line, do not let the monsters break through!" Lin Huang yelled to the young men. After cooperating with Lin Huang, Zhou Le and the rest trusted Lin Huang more than anyone else. Lin Huang had not let them down. They quickly formed a defensive line even though they knew that it was very unlikely that they could survive the moment the crows arrived. However, under Lin Huangs leadership, they persevered. Lin Huangs heart was racing from the intense attacks. His body was much frailer compared to the rest and thus, any attack from the monsters could severely injure him or even kill him. The situation was vastly different now as they previously had a line of defense to shield their vanguard, significantly limiting the number of monsters which passed through to them. Now, however, there were monsters everywhere and they were besieged on all sides. He finally experienced the saying, dancing on the head of a pin which meant that if he loses focus or gets distracted by something else, he could die at any given moment. "Warning! You are now in an extremely dangerous environment. Your death rate would be 100% within half an hour. Would you like to execute emergency measures?!" A warning was sent to Lin Huangs ears, it was the first time in a long while since he had heard Xiao Heis voice. "Yes! What kind of solutions do you have?!" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Browsing cards that could solve the situation There are no cards that could help you right now" Lin Huang was troubled but moments later, Xiao Hei spoke again "Based on the current situation, the most suitable card would be the Small Destruction Card." "You have three Monster Cards, nine Function Cards, 3657 iron-level Monster Card pieces If you were to dissolve all the complete cards and piece them together, you would obtain 22557 Normal Card pieces. To redeem your first Small Destruction Card, you would need one million Normal Card pieces. The card pieces you have are insufficient to redeem a Small Destruction Card" "Wait, why do I only have nine Function Cards? Bais kills aside, I have done at least 500 cross-ranking kills these two days; shouldnt I receive cross-ranking cards?!" "When youre stuck on a level, the maximum cross-ranking kill reward you can obtain will be capped at 10 times. You will not get any rewards for cross-ranking kills after that." Lin Huang did not know there was such an arrangement. He thought with Bais help, it was not difficult for him to do cross-ranking kills where he could collect a massive amount of reward cards. It seemed like Xiao Hei noticed that people would take advantage of the situation and therefore limited this method to gain reward cards. "So, are there any other solutions for me?" Lin Huang asked for an alternative. "You were given some protection when you were setting up your Goldfinger. You can only utilize the protection once. When you activate the protection, you will receive a card to solve the crisis you are encountering at that moment. Would you like to activate your one and only protection?" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without thinking twice. He did not have the time to consider the repercussions as well as other alternatives seeing as there were none. If he did not utilize the protection right now, he might never be able to use it again. "Protection has been activated Integrating with your situation, you are given a Small Destruction Card!" "Congratulations, you have received a Small Destruction Card!" "Detecting solution - Small Destruction Card! Are you sure you want to use this card?" "How can this card solve this crisis? What are its functions?" Lin Huang did not have the time to look at the card in his body. "Small Destruction Card: It could annihilate every creature below transcendent. The maximum coverage would be 10,000 square kilometers." "I would like to use this card to destroy all creatures besides humans and Bai." Lin Huang instructed. "Creatures have been targeted, please choose your coverage." A map appeared on Lin Huangs mind and he had to choose his targets. The map revealed that the monsters were scattered everywhere. Lin Huang tagged all the monsters on the map, "I have decided." "Coverage selection completed. Please confirm the Small Destruction Cards activation." "Yes, kill them all!" Lin Huang nodded his head firmly. In the next second, a grain-sized lighted spot appeared on Lin Huangs forehead. The spot looked like a miniature sun at three oclock. It then tore away from his forehead and floated into the sky, shining on the land. Everyone was shocked. Soon, a white glow dispersed from the light spot, creating a wave in the air. All the monsters except for Bai were carbonized due to the high temperature. They turned into dust and disappeared into the air. It was like snow meeting the scorching sun. The glow then dispersed far away. "Is that magic?!" Yi Yeyu stood on the giant rocks and saw what Lin Huang did, she was stunned. In a heartbeat, all the monsters were no more. As soon as the glow began to fade away, everyone cheered. 54 Black Python "Lin Huang, Lin Huang, Lin Huang" As Zhou Le and the gang chanted Lin Huangs name, the rest cheered, including the Copper Hunter and Silver Hunters. Initially, the 20 Gold Hunters did not cheer but when Yi Zheng cheered along the people, so did the 20 Gold Hunters. Yi Yeyu stood on top of the giant rocks and rolled her eyes at her brother. Lin Huang was shy at first, but when the people did a crowd surf for him, he started to enjoy being celebrated. "Hey, I think this kid is good but hes a little too young for you." Yi Zheng winked at Yi Yeyu. "He hasn''t reached puberty yet, hes not my type." Yi Yeyu said with a sassy tone. "Well, there is no need to rush. He will hit puberty in a few years time. Boys love girls who are older." Yi Zheng chuckled. "Go away!" Yi Yeyu said angrily. All of a sudden, in the midst of all the cheering, everyone heard a strange laugh. "Hehe" The sound was near yet far and it felt like as if the laugh was echoing from different directions, all together at once! It gave everyone goosebumps, it was like a cool breeze brushing into their bones. "Who is that?!" Yi Zheng shouted while hanging onto his thin sword. Everyone clutched their weapons too. "Could it be the transcendent monster" Lin Huang frowned because there were no other possibilities he could think of. Everyone did not expect the transcendent monster, the mastermind of all monsters to appear after all monsters have perished. The threat of one transcendent was definitely more frightening than all monsters'' put together. Everything below the transcendent were ants. This saying had become the truth. With a flick of a finger, the transcendent could kill a thousand of hunters. "Master, I am taking a wild guess that you started the monster attack?" Yi Zheng placed both of his hands in front of his chest and asked politely in the direction of the Snowy Mountains." He was trying to buy more time to figure out where this beast was. It was near four oclock, right before dawn which was two hours before Yu Chanli was supposed to appear. "Human fella, do you think I would let you go just because you speak to me politely?" A spooky voice replied. "Hehe I didnt expect to meet a descendant of God here" A black python wrapped its body around the Snowy Mountains. Its purple eyes stared deadly at Lin Huang with greed. "Im going to eat you!" "Descendant of God?!" The people whispered among one another. The people finally understood how Lin Huang manage to use such magic to kill millions of monsters just now. "So youre here for me?" Lin Huang pointed to himself, confused. "Of course, human fella. If not for you, why would I let my clone attack the human transcendent who is making his way here?!" Although the black python had no expression, Lin Huang could see in its eyes that it was playing with Lin Huang''s mind. "I know you guys are buying time for the transcendent to save you but what you did not know was that he is being attacked by my clone. The transcendent hasn''t got a clue that it is a clone and it will not be here in two hours to rescue all of you." There were loud sighs and some screams from those who were afraid. "What, are you disappointed to hear such news?" The black python was enjoying the mind game it was playing. Lin Huang quietly communicated with Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, is there any way to kill this monster?" "With your condition, your death rate would be 100%. You are not strong enough, theres no solution to that." Suddenly, Yi Yeyu started to speak. She bowed to the Snowy Mountains, "Master, I haven''t known Lin Huang for a very long time, but during the time that I did, I found him to be admirable. I would like to make a confession to him. Since you are going to kill us all, could master allow me a couple of minutes to fulfill my last wish? I will also need my brother as my witness." Yi Zheng did not know what she was doing, he thought to himself, "Did she really like Lin Huang all along?" "Human are such irritating creatures. Why do you confess before you die, what have you been doing on days where you are alive and well? Alright, Ill give you three minutes but I warn you human lady, dont mess with me. Or else Ill show you what death feels like!" "Youre overthinking, master. I do not dare mess with you. I only have a few words to say." Yi Yeyu said while she waved at Yi Zheng. She then leaped downwards and walked towards Lin Huang. Although Yi Zheng did not know what Yi Yeyu was up to, he followed her anyway. Almost everyone was confused. They could not figure out Yi Yeyu''s plan. Yi Yeyu was popular in the Division7 hunter community. After all, she was one of the Gold Hunters who made it among the 1000 Gold Hunters and she was a woman. Alongside her powerful brother, many hunters admired her. But now, it looks like this incredible woman was about to confess her love to a young man who was not even an iron-level. It was absolutely shocking to many bachelors in the crowd. They walked to Lin Huang, Yi Yeyu held his hand and smiled sweetly. Lin Huang was just as confused but he could sense that Yi Yeyu was not here to confess to him. Yi Yeyu put her the other hand on Yi Zhengs arm and smiled,"Brother, please be my witness today" Before she even finished talking, she pushed the both of them down. The green wooden door sprung open behind them and they fell into the door. Suddenly, a dark glow was shot and the green wooden door was destroyed. "Lady, how dare you lie to me?!" The black python hissed from the Snowy Mountains. 55 Xue Luo Appeared Again The green wooden door was smashed by a dark beam. Yi Yeyu was beginning to spit blood because she was hurt by the attack. The black python hissed loudly from the top of the Snowy Mountains. The voice sounded like it was a spiritual attack. Lin Huang and the rest who were 10 kilometers away felt a headache after hearing the roar. Suddenly, the dark beam was shot again. While the rest were panicking, the beam shot through Yi Yeyus back and pierced through her belly. A hole that was the size of an adults fist appeared on Yi Yeyus belly, it was see-through. Yi Yeyu spat blood again and fell to the floor. Lin Huang rush to carry her. Yi Zheng was in disbelief as he saw it all. He did not know how to react but to hold her hand. "Yeyu! Looking at his dying sister, Yi Zhengs hands were shaking." "Im sorry This is all my fault" Yi Yeyu did not have the strength to talk anymore but she managed to say, "If it was not for me All of you wouldnt be here" "Stupid girl, youre my sister. Until you are married, I will follow you wherever you may go. This is a brothers responsibility. I am sorry for not being able to protect you" Yi Zheng said through his tears. Lin Huangs eyes were watery too. "I have not seen you cry since I was five years old. Yi Yeyu lifted a finger and wiped the tears off Yi Zhengs face, "Do you still remember That time when I was bullied by a bunch of older kids, you stood up to them and when they punched and kicked you, you neither said anything nor did you fight back and after I asked you why didnt you cry, you said, youre a man and that even if you died, you would never cry in front of your sister. You were only seven at the time." "Im sorry, I broke my promise" Yi Zheng tried to chuckle. Yi Yeyu then turned her head slowly to Lin Huang, "I want you to know that you are the most extraordinary man I have ever met and I dont want you to die here If you live, you could be a man as good as my brother." Lin Huang nodded without saying a word. "You want to see him grow?" Said a spooky voice. The black python said cunningly, "I will make sure that never happens!" A bunch of black strings appeared out of thin air and tied a knot around Lin Huangs waist. Lin Huang was pulled in the direction of the black pythons mouth. "Oh no, Im going to die. Its true that a travelers chances of death were quite likely"Lin Huangs thought was cut short by a feeling of release. He was confused and realized that he was floating in front of the black pythons mouth and the black strings around his waist were gone. Yi Zheng and the rest were watching as Lin Huangs body froze in the air and there was fear and panic in the black pythons eyes. "Die!" A giant crystal fell from the sky and a giant palm smashed it onto the black python. The black pythons body seemed as small as an ant under the giant palm. Before the giant crystal landed on the ground, its body was completely flat on the ground, its eyes were hopeless. The gigantic Snowy Mountains were shaking from the attack. It felt as if God was punishing the Earth. Lin Huang stared blankly as the giant palm that looked like the hand of Buddha landed one meter in front of him. The Snowy Mountains collapsed into flatland after the attack. The black python was buried by the Snowy Mountains with its head smashed. "That was scary" Lin Huang exclaimed not because he witnessed how the black python was killed, but because he was standing very close to black python, but felt no impact at all. Even the Snowy Mountain Town was not damaged and the people not harmed by the collapse of the mountain. It was obvious that the person who saved Lin Huang was far more powerful than the black python. "How are you, sir?" A stern yet warm voice came from not far away. Lin Huang looked towards the horizon; Xue Luo was walking towards him on air with her bare feet. There was an old man with a white beard behind her. "Lady Xue Luo?!" Lin Huang was surprised; he thought he would never see her again. He looked at the old man with confusion, "May I know who this is?" "Mister Lin, I am Bing Wang. I dont blame you for not recognizing me because I know I look different." The old man laughed. "Its Sir Bing Wang" "Was it Xue Luo who had saved me?" Lin Huang tried to connect the dots. "It wasnt me." Xue Luo smiled and shook her head. "Mister Lin, it has been more than 700 years that I last made an appearance. It was me who saved you." Bing Wang explained. "Oh, thank you so much Sir Bing Wang and you too lady Xue Luo." Lin Huang did not know that Bing Wang was so powerful that he could kill a transcendent monster with only one hand. "Let me take out its soul for you. When you became a transcendent, you can train it into your battle soul." Xue Luo then disappeared. Bing Wang and Lin Huang remained. "This snake is stupid. It saw Mister Lins act just now and thought it was magic. It thought you were the descendant of a god." Bing Wang shook his head and laughed, "If he did not target you, lady Xue Luo wouldnt have allowed me to intrude." Lin Huang did not pay attention to what Bing Wang said and instead asked, "Sir Bing Wang, could you help my friend?" Bing Wang looked at Yi Yeyu and knew that she was dying. He shook his head, "The ladys Life Wheel has collapsed and her Life Light is almost gone, theres nothing I can do." Lin Huang was upset, but Bing Wang spoke again, "However, if my master is willing to try, there might be hope." "Lady Xue Luo!" Lin Huangs eyes brightened up. He just recalled that Xue Luo belonged to the gods. Perhaps she could save Yi Yeyu. Hearing Lin Huangs cry, Xue Luo walked towards them with a small, black snake on her hand. The snake was semi-transparent, it looked magical. She then passed the snake to Lin Huang, "I have taken away this black python''s consciousness. Now you can keep it in your Life Wheel and cultivate it. You can train it when you have reached the level of a transcendent, it will be your strong battle soul. Although it has mutated once, theres a small amount of dragon blood in this black python. If you cultivate it properly, theres a possibility for it to mutate a second time and its ability will then transform." Lin Huang brushed what Xue Luo said aside and as soon as she finished talking, he asked, "Lady Xue Luo, I know that you havent been involved in whats happening in this world for more than 700 years but I need to ask a favor of you." "Do you want me to help the lady over there?" Xue Luo looked at Yi Yeyus direction and looked at the snake on her hand, "To piece her Life Wheel together, we would need a transcendent soul. Are you willing to give up this monsters soul containing the blood of dragon in exchange for her life?" "Of course, thats more important!" Lin Huang raised his voice. "Alright then" Xue Luo passed the snake to Lin Huang, "Keep this." "I thought you need this to save her?" Lin Huang pushed the snake away. "I was messing around with you; I have other monster souls with me to fix her Life Wheel." Xue Luo smiled playfully. "Now, if you dont keep this, I will not save her." Lin Huang snatched the snake from her. Xue Luo brought the both of them and descended from the sky in front of everybody''s presence. Although they had seen the giant palm earlier, they insisted to stand in front of Yi Yeyu to protect her. "Lin Huang, who are these people?" A person asked Lin Huang. "I dont have the time to explain, this lady could save Yi Yeyu, please step aside." The rest moved without asking further. Xue Luo walked to Yi Yeyu and carried her; she was breathing her last breath. Yi Zheng heard what Lin Huang said and looked at Xue Luo with hope. "Put her on the ground laying upwards, the rest of you please step aside." Xue Luo wanted some personal space. After placing Yi Yeyu on the ground, Yi Zheng stepped aside quietly. Xue Luo placed her palm on Yi Yeyus chest and there was a layer of ice flowing into Yi Yeyus body. A moment later, Xue Luo smiled and mumbled to herself, "Interesting body physique, I have just the monster soul for you." A semi-transparent crimson bird appeared on Xue Luos palm. She tapped the crimson bird and it bird flew in between Yi Yeyus eyebrows. A thin layer of ice spread across her body and soon her entire body was covered in ice. It was visibly seen that Yi Yeyus belly was healing very quickly. Everyone started whispering among themselves. A new Life Wheel was being pieced together. It was different from an ordinary Life Wheel. Now, there was a strange red pattern in the middle of the Life Wheel which looked like a big, crimson bird with wide wings "Am I dead?" Yi Yeyu felt she was placed in the dark. She recalled a description about death written by an author she liked, Death is the loneliness of human consciousness in the dark. It cannot be seen, nothing can be heard and nothing can be touched. There is nothing in death. That is the ultimate place where all humans belong "Now that I think about it, the description is similar to what Im feeling right now"Yi Yeyu snorted. She was not sure how long had passed, centuries or perhaps just seconds. In the darkness, Yi Yeyu had lost her grasp of time. A light dawned upon her. It felt like a black veil was torn and a crystal-carved hand was extending to her in the midst of the darkness. "What a beautiful hand"Yi Yeyu held it, it was cold. The hand pulled her out of the darkness with such force. She felt a shake and when she opened her eyes, she saw a bunch of people surrounding her. Just then, there were cheers exclaiming, "Shes alive!" 56 Bye, Xue Luo Yi Zheng immediately went over to Yi Yeyu when he saw her awake, sitting up in her bed. "Are you okay?" he asked. "I dreamt of a giant python that stabbed through my stomach, and I died" She said with a look of bewilderment and fear on her face. As she said the words, she looked down at her abdomen which had been wounded before. However, the injury had healed. There was nothing unusual as she touched it gently and there was no scar on the wound to show it anymore. However, the attack had clearly happened as there was a large tear on her shirt and blood stains around it, the indication that it was not just an illusion, and that she was attacked by the black python not long ago. "You have her to thank. Miss Xue Luo saved your life!" As soon as Yi Zheng finished his sentence, he turned to Xue Luo and immediately expressed his gratitude. "Miss Xue Luo?" Yi Yeyu was stunned. She could not recall her name as a member of the hunting party. Gazing at Xue Luo, she immediately noticed her right hand. That moment, she remembered the incident as she stared at Xue Luos right hand. She then said, "I remember your hand. Youre the one who pulled me out of the dark. Thank you!" "Youre welcome. Mister Lin Huang saved my life, and he asked for my help to save you, so I did him a favor," Xue Luo smiled as she said. Xue Luo treated her in a much friendlier manner than others. "Thank you, Lin Huang!" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang and said. "Im glad that youre fine," Lin Huang nodded his head as he said. "Mister, may I speak with you privately?" Xue Luo turned towards Lin Huang and said in a low voice. "Excuse me for a moment," Lin Huang said Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng. He then left together with Xue Luo. Xue Luo waved her hand. She brought Lin Huang and Bing Wang along and they stepped up on a giant rock. She walked straight to the side of the rock, sat down and patted the rock surface and said, "Mister, please have a seat." He did not seem to hesitate and sat beside her. Bing Wang then stood behind the both of them. There were two moons, a red and a purple moon, lighting up the night sky. The ground looked like it was covered by spun yarns of different colors, creating a mysterious shade of light. "Miss Xue Luo, are you leaving?" Lin Huang asked as he saw Xue Luo was silently looking at the moonlight. "Yes, its time for me to leave," Xue Luo said and nodded her head. "I have seen the moons of this world for too long," she continued. Lin Huang paused for a moment in thought and asked, "When do you plan to depart? Well see you off then." "Were leaving shortly," Xue Luos answered. Her response took Lin Huang by surprise. Lin Huang then composed himself and nodded his head. He had no idea how to keep the conversation going. After a moment of silence, Xue Luo suddenly raised her head and looked at Lin Huang, looking serious, "Mister, I dont know if I should ask you about this, but..." She trailed off. "Just ask me whatever you would like to know. Ill try my best to answer," he said, trying to calm her nervousness. Lin Huang turned to face her and their eyes met. He then quickly shifted his gaze away from her after a brief awkward moment. "Mister, do you think its right or wrong for a protoss and a human to fall in love with each other?" She asked softly. Xue Luo was being very honest as this question had been a problem troubling her for more than 700 years. "Theres no right or wrong when it comes to love. When you fall for someone and it ends up being a bad relationship, that does not mean all relationships are bad. It only indicates that you met the wrong person. If a protoss and a human truly loved each other, I dont think its wrong," he replied. He was actually taken aback by her forwardness but spoke his mind regardless. Lin Huang felt that this was a serious topic. To ease the tenseness, he then switched the topic and told her a story. "Ive read a story quite like that before. There was a man named Bei Feng. He fell in love with many women of different races who gave birth to many children of different races" Xue Luo was stunned as she heard this. "Did nobody stand against his polygamous ways?" "Well, if you think that its right and youre determined to do it, why do you care about what other people think?" Lin Huang said and laughed at her response. "Of course, Bei Feng was just a character in the story. No person like that exist in reality," he continued to reassure her. "Ive thought it through..." Xue Luo said after falling into deep thought. Her eyes brightened. "Mister, whats your plan, after this?" Xue Luo suddenly asked. "Ill register as a hunter and will try my best to achieve iron-level. Ill be very busy with these tasks when I return. Plans for the future would be first and foremost, working towards the goal of being a transcendent," he said proudly. Lin Huang had no idea how long it would take for him to be a transcendent. However, it would be meaningless to talk about the future since he did not have a complete understanding of this world. He could only act when the time came. One could only go further if they progressed with certainty in mind. Both of them chatted for quite some time, sitting on the giant rock. However, Yi Zheng who was watching from below looked upset. "I thought Lin Huang was an honest man but now, I dont think so. I feel worried, asking him to take care of my sister," he confessed to Yi Yeyu. "What are you talking about?!" she shouted and pinched his arm hard. "Im just telling the truth. Why did you pinch me?Miss Xue Luo is so beautiful and she''s younger than you. She is so powerful, probably a transcendent human too. If you don''t make some moves and work for him, perhaps Lin Huang will be snatched away from you," he said with a chuckle. Obviously, they did not realize Xue Luo and Bing Wang were not human. They thought they were transcendent beings. "Damn!" Yi Yeyu squealed. She freaked out at the thought of losing Lin Huang. On the giant rock, Lin Huang and Xue Luo were about to end their conversation. "Well leave after getting our things done," Xue Luo said and stood up. "Is there anything that you still have to do?" Lin Huang stood up and asked out of curiosity. "I have to erase the memory of me and Xiao Bing from the human brains we''ve come in contact with. Also, I''ll have to patch up the battleground," Xue Luo said, looking at Lin Huang. "In addition to that, the people witnessed the scenes of you killing hundreds of monsters. That has to be erased from their memory as well, for your safety. Others must not know about this," she warned him. "Although I dont know what you did to master the power of such curses. with this kind of strength, even a God of the human race would be keen on having such a gift," she said. At first, Lin Huang thought she was joking, but as Xue Luo said those words, she had a deadly serious look in her eyes. "Yes, I know," he replied. Lin Huang never expected a hidden power to exist in the Small Destruction Card that even a God was seeking for it. "Ill begin to erase their memory and replace them up with new memories," she said. As soon as Xue Luo finished her sentence, it began to snow. At that moment, everyone in the foothold felt odd about the occurrence. Suddenly, the hunters and the residents started to faint one by one. Bing Wang left as well. After a short while, he came back, carrying a young man. "I''ve created a new memory for them. A transcendent human arrived at the battleground and had an intense battle with the black python. He saved everyone and the crowd of monsters retreated after the snake was killed," Xue Luo said to Bing Wang. She then continued with instructions him, saying, "Xiao Bing, you''ve fought with this man before. You may fake evidence of a fight at this place based on his combat style. Regarding the traces of monsters, I will erase it with the snow," she said. It was now midsummer, but there was heavy snowfall. In the entire ravine, only Lin Huang, Xue Luo, and Bing Wang stood in silence. Very quickly, Bing Wang had finished fixing up the battleground. However, the snow did not stop and the whole world turned white. Under two full moons, the night sky was exceptionally beautiful. "Mister, we will be leaving now," Xue Luo said. She was less than two meters away from Lin Huang, standing on the giant rock. She tilted her head slightly and smiled at him. On such a snowy night, she stood barefoot on the giant rock like a snow fairy. She was very pretty. Lin Huang nodded. He waved his hand and said, "Bye, Xue Luo." "Bye, Mister," she replied. Xue Luo waved at Lin Huang. Then, Bing Wang and Xue Luo both rose up into the air. As both of them were hundreds of meters above the ground, Xue Luo waved her hands in the air and a Virtual Eye gradually formed in front of them. After a short while, the Virtual Eye was opened. There were icy white eyes inside the Virtual Eye, resembling a giant spiritual eye looking down from the sky. Xue Luo and Bing Wang stepped into the Virtual Eye and it closed gradually around them. Both of them completely disappeared. Until the moment when the Virtual Eye had also disappeared, Lin Huang slowly shifted his gaze away from the sight. He sighed and thought in his heart, "Bye, Xue Luo" 57 Return "Brother, youre finally home!" Xin Er squealed. At No.7D101, as Lin Huang pushed against the door of his house, a pink figure ran into him. It was 11 oclock at night and Lin Huang thought that Lin Xin would have fallen asleep at that hour. He never expected to see her as soon as he opened the door. She was wearing pink pajamas with pictures of cartoon puppies printed all over it. "Why havent you slept yet? Its getting late." Lin Huang asked with a stern face, pinching her cheeks. "You told me through the communication device that youre coming back late at night. I wanted to sleep and check if youre back when Im awake but I was too excited to sleep" Lin Xin said as she hugged Lin Huang tightly, afraid that he would leave her again. "Did you know that you scared me to death when I heard the news of the monster horde? I used the Emperors Heart ring to call you but I couldnt reach you," she scolded, pouting as she did. "The signal might have been interrupted due to the monsters," Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. He switched the topic and asked, "Oh right, I got you a gift," he said. He then took out a video stone from the storage space and passed it to Lin Xin. "Whats this?" Lin Xin asked curiously. "Yi Zheng recorded it for me. Theres his signature behind it," Lin Huang said as he turned over the video stone. Yi Zhengs name was written on it as well as a date. "Yi Zheng, the guy who is on the Gold Hunter Board?" Lin Xins eyes brightened as she heard his name. "Yes, youre right," Lin Huang replied and nodded his head. Lin Xin immediately grabbed the video stone from Lin Huang and ran towards the stairs. "Sleep early after youve finished watching it. You have school tomorrow!" Lin Huang immediately shouted after her. "Yes, I know!" she answered. "This girl" he mumbled under his breath. Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. He knew the girls who were still studying in the Hunter Reserve College admired the young and good-looking guys who were listed on the boards. It was the same as girls who admired handsome actors and singers on Earth. Yi Zheng was a Gold Hunter in Division7 who ranked at the eleventh position on the board. He was handsome and very protective of his sister. Many girls admired him and he was even proclaimed as The Nations Brother. This was why Lin Huang requested a signature and the video stone for Lin Xin. It had been one day since the incident of the monster attack at the Snowy Mountain Town. Due to the fact that Yi Yeyus green wooden door was destroyed, Lin Huang took half a day to arrive at the No.7C87 foothold by means of an eagle. As soon as he arrived, it took him quite a long time to settle his registration the Hunter Association. After he was done with work, the sky was dark. Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng then treated the young people to dinner. Yi Yeyus memory regarding the damaged green wooden door had been altered. According to her, it turned out that the green wooden door was destroyed by the combat power of the two transcendents. It then left her body on its own into the air. After having dinner, Lin Huang did not stay any longer at the foothold and straight away headed back home on an eagle. After Lin Xin left, Lin Huang then took a shower and went back to his room. He could not fall asleep. He just stared at the ceiling as he lay in bed. It was as if he had something to do but just could not remember what it was. "Xiao Hei, please rearrange the card pieces I have and combine those that can be integrated," he instructed the card. "You have 3657 card pieces. They will now be rearranged and integrated," it replied. "Integration of card pieces is complete," it responded after a mere few seconds. "You obtained a Monster Card - Lion-Headed Troll (Normal) x3" "You obtained a Monster Card C Ox Devil (Normal) x3" "600 card pieces deducted from your collection. The remaining card pieces are insufficient to integrate into a complete Monster Card," it said after completing the processes. "Duplicate cards are found. Do you want to perform Card Engulfs to get a skill upgrade?" Xiao Hei inquired. "Engulf them," he ordered. Lin Huang decided without hesitation. Skills could not be extracted repeatedly from duplicate cards and he could only summon one monster at a time due to his summoning authority. Therefore, it was not important to keep duplicate cards. He chose to carry out the Card Engulf process to get a skill upgrade. Therefore, skills that he extracted would be skills that had been previously upgraded. "Card Engulf completed. Lion-Headed Troll obtained a skill upgrade. Ox Devil obtained a skill upgrade," Xiao Hei said. Lin Huang launched both cards. Both of the cards were a white-crystal color with the photo of the monster on the front. He turned the card around and checked the cards information. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Normal" "Name of Monster: Lion-Headed Troll" "Type of Monster: Demon" "Combat Level: Iron-level 3-star" "Skill 1: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Skill 2: Horizontal Slash (Level-3)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Useless" ... "Monster Card" "Rarity: Normal" "Name of Monster: Ox Devil" "Type of Monster: Mutant" "Combat Level: Iron-level 3-star" "Skill 1: Champion Strength (Intermediate)" "Skill 2: Brutal Dash (Level-3)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Useless" ... "Xiao Hei, I would like to extract a skill," Lin Huang gave a new order after reading the stats. "Skill extraction completed. You have gained two new skills, "Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" and "Champion Strength (Intermediate)," Xiao Hei replied. "You have one more Monster Card (Sand Monster) to be engulfed. Would you like to carry out a Card Engulf sequence?" Xiao Hei continued. "Engulf it," Lin Huang said and nodded his head. He only kept the Sand Monster in the first place as he needed him to watch the night. Since he had other Monster Cards now, it would be useless to keep a monster of the same type as Tyrant. "Card Engulf is completed. Sand Monster (Tyrant) obtained a skill upgrade," Xiao Hei said. Lin Huang looked at the message describing the Sand Monster. Immense Strength had been upgraded from a beginner level to an intermediate level. After the integration of cards and the card engulfment processes, he launched his Exclusive Card to check on his personal status. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Skill 2: Great Sword Scriptures (Sword skill) "Skill 3: Robust (Intermediate)" "Skill 4: Spectral SnowstepsBody Movement Skill" "Skill 5: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Skill 6: Immense Strength (Intermediate)" "Summon authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1" "Remark: No matter how many skills you have, it could not change the fact that youre weak." He ignored Xiao Heis last remark and looked at the two additional skills. "Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate): The pupil of its eye exudes a threatening vibe. It has a probability of 80% that it would deter the target when exchanging gazes with each other, causing the target to go into a trance. (Such an effect would be rendered useless if it were applied to creatures that were two levels above or are stronger than the user." "Immense Strength (Beginner): Passive skill. Strength gain increased four times." These two skills were the new skills extracted from the Lion-Headed Troll Card and Ox Devil Card. On the other hand, Lin Huang discovered that his passive skill Robust had been upgraded to an intermediate level. He asked, "Xiao Hei, could getting a skill upgrade for the Monster Card lead to an upgrade of personal skills?" "Yes, once the Monster Card is upgraded, the hosts skill extracted from the Monster Card will be upgraded as well. If the Monster Card disappears, the extracted skills would disappear as well." "The Monster Card would disappear?!" Lin Huang was stunned. "Yes, if the monster died, the Monster Card would disappear and the skills extracted from the Monster Card will be removed," Xiao Hei explained. This was not what Lin Huang expected. He thought that it was just a card game. If the summoned monster died in a battle, it would be recalled back to its card and he would be unable to summon it for a short period of time. He had never thought that the Monster Card and the extracted skill would disappear if the monster died. He realized that he was not playing a card game and he was in the real world instead. Just like what happened on Earth, you would be forgotten as soon as you were dead "Check the remaining Function Cards," Lin Huang inquired of Xiao Hei, as he remembered the other the nine cards he was rewarded for the rank-crossing kill. He had been rewarded a Flawless Card upon the completion of his mission to become a Reserve Hunter. "You have Advance Card x1, Double Card x3, Provisional Transformation Card x3, Mission Card x1, Treasure Card x1, Flawless Card x1." Lin Huang ignored the Mission Card and launched the two unfamiliar cards. "Treasure Card: After using this card, it would lead the user to the nearest location of a piece of treasure. It includes mineral ores, burial grounds, virtual caves and more. It is only valid for one month after activation of the card." "Flawless Card: Using this card could replenish his body for once. All of the hidden problems in his body could be healed, including Life Columns, Life Wheel, and blood vessels. " "There is a time limit for the Treasure Card. Im quite busy now so I should just put it on hold first. The Flawless Card is a very useful card. My Life Wheel has been repaired and there shouldnt be any problems with my body. However, theres something wrong with Bais blood vessels. He is easily affected by the septic divisor. If Bai used it, he would not be easily affected by the septic divisor anymore," Lin Huang thought and summoned Bai. Bai sat quietly at the edge of the bed, looking at Lin Huang. Lin Huang got up and took out the Flawless Card. He crushed the card and a layer of golden pieces surrounded his fingertips. He tapped his finger in between Bais eyebrows. Bais body was then shrouded in a golden aura as if he was being wrapped in a golden cocoon. After a while, the glow faded. Bais wings extended automatically, turning a copper color. Lin Huang checked the messages, and it showed no changes. However, he knew that Bais Blood Power could have healed. Otherwise, the color of the Blood-powered Wings would not have changed. "We should try it with septic divisor when we are free," Lin Huang said to Bai. Lin Huang then recalled Bai and he jumped back in bed. He started to feel sleepy after a short while and could finally satisfy the tiredness and fatigue he felt. He fell asleep almost immediately. 58 Choosing The Life Seed The next morning, Lin Xin got out of bed and found Lin Huang was still fast asleep. She was afraid to wake him up, so she silently crept back to her room, and got ready. She did not even eat breakfast, afraid that any noise in the kitchen might wake him. She tiptoed quietly and after washing up, she left for school. It was 12 oclock in the afternoon when Lin Huang finally woke up. He stretched his arms, feeling that the tiredness from the night before all gone. He jumped out of bed to start the day. After changing his clothes and washing up, he rushed to the kitchen on the first floor. There was sufficient food and drinks in the refrigerator for him to have a hearty meal. Obviously, Lin Xin had bought them not long ago. Lin Huang felt odd when he saw the refrigerator in this world as it did not use electricity as a source of power but it used a frozen spinel instead. Also, it used a special type of skeleton-like material as a substitute for the insulating material. Its appearance looked like a single cabinet fridge on Earth. He took out two eggs from the fridge and leftovers from the day before. He then cooked some fried rice with eggs for himself. There were many types of homebred birds in this world, more than on Earth. Considering only those that were sold and available in the markets, there were more than 20 types. If wild monsters were considered, there were around 280 types of birds that were included in human recipes. After finishing the plate of fried rice, Lin Huang washed the pots and went back to his room. He started to carefully read messages that were with regards to Life Seeds. As a Reserve Hunter, Lin Huang was provided with only level-1 authority by the Hunter Association. Regarding the information of the Life Seed, he merely had access to the most basic version. Yi Zheng as a Gold Hunter, and he was granted Level-4 authority. Therefore, Lin Huang asked for a copy of the information on Life Seeds. He recommended several Life Seed notes to Lin Huang as he knew that he was looking for one more suited for himself. Regarding his recommendation, Lin Huang looked at it on the spot. He was not satisfied with it so he decided to look through the information and choose the right one. He opened the "Life Seed Book" that Yi Zheng sent to him and filtered the qualities for selection again. "Strengthening System, Sword, Iron-level." In just a short while, the results, after applying the filters, were shown. There were only around 10 remaining Life Seeds A sword type Life Seed was quite ordinary. Lin Huang went through the information listed one by one. "Name of Life Seed: Sword Swiftness Mastery" "Talent effects: Beginner level, 20% increment in attack speed. There would be 20% attack speed increment for every upgrade in level. On the third upgrade, there will be an 80% increment in attack speed." "Method to Obtain: It can be obtained by killing a Rapid Sword Mantis." "Name of Life Seed: Sword Power Mastery" "Talent effects: Beginner level, 50% increment in strength. There would be 50% attack power increment for every level upgrade. On the third upgrade, there will be a 200% increment in attack power." "Method to Obtain: It can be obtained by killing a Powerful Combat Puppet." ... "Name of Life Seed: Sword Skill Mastery" "Talent effects: Beginner level, 5% increment in sword skills. There will be a 5% increase in sword skill for every level upgrade. On the third upgrade, there will be a 20% increment in sword skills." "Method to Obtain: It can be obtained by killing a Single Armed Sword Slave." ... Lin Huang continued reading as he walked around. Soon, he finished reading about all of the 13 types of Life Seeds. Aside from than Sword Skill Mastery, he was not at all satisfied with the rest of them. However, he was actually not that pleased with the Sword Skill Mastery too since it did not have any significant improvement on his personal combat skills. Besides, after three upgrades to achieve gold-rank, the sword mastery skills would have merely increased by 20%. It was still far behind the effects of specialty medicines. "There does not seem to be any satisfying sword type Life Seeds on iron-level" Lin Huang thought to himself and frowned. He initially thought that since he had obtained a sword skill of an Epic level, which was "The Great Sword Scripture," if he chose another sword type Life Seed, he could train his sword mastery to perfection. His enemies would barely be a threat him when they had almost similar combat capabilities. However, the fact was there was not a single iron-level Life Seed that fulfilled his requirements. "Lets take a look at the Compound Life Seed. If there were no suitable Life Seeds, then I had to choose one of the Firearm Life Seeds." Lin Huang mumbled in a low voice and changed his filtering criteria on the "Life Seed Book". "Compound Life Seeds, Iron-level." Soon, the results were shown once again. However, the results available were even fewer than the previous one. There were only two types of Life Seeds. Although, Lin Huang was not surprised. The Compound Life Seeds and Special Life Seeds usually had the least amount of Life Seeds. Since there were two results available, he took a closer look at the two types. "Name of Life Seed: Flower Fairy" "Talent effects: Beginner level, 10% increment in self-healing ability, healing effects increased by 10%, monster affinity increased by 10%. There would be 10% increase in the three abilities for every upgrade in level. On the third upgrade, there will be a 40% increase in all three abilities." "Method to Obtain: It can be obtained by killing White Fairy Vine." Lin Huang ignored the Life Seed as soon as he finished reading the description because the abilities were useless and a White Fairy Vine was an extraordinary plant. It was rare and no one knew if it existed in this world, which would make his task rather tedious. Lin Huang looked at the second result. "Name of Life Seed: Sly Hands" "Talent effects: Beginner level, 10% increment in finger agility. Attack speed of both arms increased by 10%, the flexibility of both arms increased by 10%. There would be 10% increase of the three abilities for every upgrade in level. On the third upgrade, there will be a 40% increment in all three abilities." "Method to Obtain: It can be obtained by killing Six Armed Demon." Lin Huang was intrigued by the Sly Hand. Despite not directly increasing his combat prowess, this could be effective in assisting him in using swords and firearms. He was not worried, though. He jotted down notes on a few of the Life Seed descriptions and started to check if there were any better Life Seed of for firearms. It took him a few minutes to skim through the Firearm Life Seeds and soon, he had made up his mind. "It''s going to be the Sly Hand Life Seed. There was no other Life Seed of an iron-level that is more appropriate than this. Now I should have a look at what the Six-Armed Demon is and where I can find this monster," he thought to himself. Lin Huang checked the Heart Network page to find information on the Six-Armed Demon. "Name of Monster: Six-Armed Demon" "Type of Monster: Undead" "Combat Level: Iron-level rank-3" "Common skill: Heart Seizure, Spirit Catcher" "District distribution: Wangyou Forest, Demon Burial Ground" "Remark: This is one of the most dangerous iron-level monsters. Not recommended to be chosen as Life Seed prey." Lin Huang found the image of the monster after reading the description about it. It was a creature in a red dress, floating in the sky. She had no legs and only six weird-looking arms. Each of her arms was around two meters long with two joints. She had a terribly pale grimaced mask on her face that seemed to also have been doodled on intentionally. Her face was then framed with long, black hair that fell down to her waist. There was no sense of beauty to her at all, only savagery. She was a ferocious ghost with six long arms. Lin Huang was speechless at the sight. "If this monster happened to exist on Earth, Ive no idea how many people would have been frightened to death" He said aloud, the thought running a chill down his spine. 59 Everything Has Changed Lin Huang started to prepare for the battle once he chose the Six-Armed Demon as his Life Seed prey. He had looked up all the information he could get regarding the Six-Armed Demon on the network, including battle videos. He watched the videos repeatedly and he felt a mixture of thrill and terror. One of the videos that Lin Huang remembered clearly was a team of five Reserve Hunters accidentally bumping into a Six-Armed Demon in the Wangyou Forest. As soon as the Six-Armed Demon discovered the team of Reserve Hunter, she immediately attacked. In less than a minute, all five of them were slaughtered. "She moves like a ghost and she was incredibly fast. Each of her arms was a dreadful killing machine" the commentary played as he watched. Lin Huang immediately frowned as he saw the action. He had to admit that the Six-Armed Demon was a powerful monster. After he finished gathering all the data about the Six-Armed Demon, Lin Huang did some research about the two districts C Wangyou Forest and the Demon Burial Ground. In this world, people who went into places that were named burial grounds would normally be dead, but here he was planning his hunt, alive and kicking. Similarly, the Demon Burial Ground was a place worse than that. All these years, none of the non-transcendent humans who entered this place ever survived. He briefly looked through the information on the Demon Burial Ground and immediately excluded it from his schedule. He did not want to go into such a creepy place as he planned to have a fighting chance at a longer life. As he closed the information page on the Demon Burial Ground, Lin Huang then checked the information on the Wangyou Forest. Wangyou Forest was a very spacious level-4 wilderness. It was said that the transcendent monster had appeared in this place before but it was killed. The strongest monster in the forest was a gold-level monster. There was more than one gold-level monster in the forest while silver-level monsters were scattered everywhere in the forest. "The level-4 wilderness is a bit troublesome" Lin Huang frowned again as he finished reading the information regarding the Wangyou Forest. To Lin Huang, the level-4 wilderness was a place with an extremely high death rate. With his abilities, it would be stressful for him even in a level-2 wilderness. Bronze-level monsters were a lot stronger than iron-level monsters. Although Lin Huang could easily kill iron-level rank-3 monsters, it was still unknown to him if he could defeat bronze-level monsters, let alone defeat silver-level and gold-level monsters. "This wilderness is too far from me. It''s within the jurisdiction of another medium sized foothold, around 20,000 kilometers away from me. To reach that place is a problem as well" It was the first time Lin Huang realized that the world was so big and it was beyond what one could imagine. Between each of the medium-sized footholds, the distance that separated them was at least 3,000 kilometers. Some of them were even 5,000 kilometers apart. For the larger footholds, they were at least 20,000 kilometers apart given that the length of Earths equator was only 40,000 kilometers. There were no teleportation facilities in the small-sized footholds. For the medium-sized footholds, the distance one could teleport between two portals was limited. Basically, one could only travel to nearby medium-sized footholds.If Lin Huang were to go to the Wangyou Forest, he would have to experience a portal change six times over. The opening of a portal cost a lot. Also, the number of times for the portal can open as well as the number of people that could be transported was restricted as well. When the foothold was crowded and no prior bookings were made, he might have to wait for more than three days. It was possible to travel there by riding an eagle. However, its ability to sustain prolonged flight was questionable and its physical strength was limited. He would have to transfer at each station at the medium-sized footholds and take a rest at the hotels since he would be spending a lot of time on the road. Another method was to ride on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. There were suites in the spaceship and its traveling speed was almost the same as the eagle. However, it was more comfortable and it stayed for only five minutes between each medium-sized footholds. One of the weaknesses of this spaceship was that the tickets for the spaceships were very expensive. It had limited cabin seats and only one spaceship would carry passengers each week. The ticket prices were very expensive but the supply was often falling short of demand. Inconvenience had caused Lin Huang to feel like summoning a monster that could fly. Of course, he had thought of making Dimensional Relics like the green wooden door, but apparently, it would be more difficult. After comparing a few methods, Lin Huang decided to take a ride on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. He had never seen it before and wondered how the Demonic Crystal Spaceship looked like in this world. Lin Huang was lucky as he successfully booked a ticket via the Heart Network. The spaceship would depart from foothold No.7C87 and three days later, arrive at foothold No.7C82. The distance of the journey was around 20,000 kilometers, so the ticket cost him 20,000 credit points. After booking the spaceship ticket, it was already four oclock in the afternoon. Lin Huang headed to the Stable Residence before dinner. He visited the boss of the hotel and the guest of the hotel who taught him the sword skill he treasured He then noticed that the boss of the hotel was not the same person and the guest was not an ordinary hunter as well. It took him 10 minutes to arrive at the Stable Residence. The yard was no longer the same. The small garden had become an outdoor restaurant with some tables and chairs there. There were a few young customers enjoying their drinks, sitting on the chairs in front of the small tables. A waitress came to Lin Huang and asked as he stopped in front of the door, "Mister, can I help you?" "Is this place owned by a new boss?" Lin Huang asked as he felt that it was impossible for Boss Yu to make so many changes to his beloved garden. "Yes, it has been 10 days now. However, these days frequent guests like you have come and they complimented our dishes and drinks, saying they''re better than before. You could give it a try and I believe youll be satisfied with it." The waitress recommended a few new menu specialties as she knew that Lin Huang was a frequent guest of the hotel under its previous management. "Thank you. Im actually looking for Boss Yu. It''s an urgent matter" Lin Huang asked as he waved his hand at the waitress. When he was about to leave, he thought of Scarface too. He then asked, "Excuse me. There was a tall man with a scar on his face who lived here last time. May I know if he is still here?" he asked the waitress again. "Scarface? No, I have never met such a person before. Ill remember if theres a person like that," the waitress said and shook her head. "Alright, thank you," Lin Huang nodded, turned away and left. He never thought that Boss Yu and Scarface would leave the foothold so suddenly. Looking at the Stable Residence, he felt a sense of disappointment. When he got home, he read some news. Nothing special had happened. He was getting ready for dinner. Dinner had been prepared and Lin Xin was back from school. Both of them sat face to face while they ate. Lin Huang then asked Lin Xin about the Stable Residence. "Xin Er, when did the new boss take over at the Stable Residence?" "The second day after you left. Boss Yu and the fierce uncle left as well," Lin Xin replied. She knew it as she was at the foothold all the time. "It was such a big hotel. Why did the boss sell it out in a short period of time? It was still fine when we stayed there," Lin Huang asked, as he felt the transition was very strange. "It was said that he had some family issues and needed money urgently. He sold his hotel at a very cheap price and rushed back to his hometown. The fierce uncle was hired as his bodyguard and they left together," Lin Xin told him the rumors she had heard. "Oh" Lin Huang felt that it was unusual. Now as he recalled, Boss Yu and Scarface must have known each other before that time they were there. Perhaps he intentionally asked Lin Huang to pay attention to the sword skills Scarface practiced in the garden. Both of them had disappeared and it would be difficult to further investigate the issue now. "Whatever. Im not going to think about it any further. Life has been so hectic recently," he said with a sigh. He shook his head and emptied his mind. 60 The Fatty Called For the next two days, Lin Huang prepared himself to hunt down the Six-Armed Demon. He even spent 100,000 credit points to expand the capacity of his storage space into 100 cubic meters. After riding on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship, he arrived at foothold No.7C87 within a few hours. He looked for a hotel and stayed there. Foothold No.7C87 was the top-tier foothold in the No.7D101 Wulin Town region which was the town Lin Huang was in. The locals called it Baqi City as the term sounded almost like the number 87. This was not its original name, though. People had forgotten its original name as they were so used to calling it Baqi City. Baqi City was a regular C-grade foothold. A medium-sized foothold was a lot bigger than the average small sized foothold. In comparison, the area of a small-sized foothold was almost the same as the area of a town on Earth. On the other hand, a medium-sized foothold would be the area of three cities on Earth, having a population greater than one million people. Baqi City was livelier than Wulin Town and Snowy Mountain Town. In Wulin Town, it seemed that there were no activities held at night. It was slightly livelier at the Snowy Mountain Town as more visitors visited that place but compared to Baqi City, Snowy Mountain Town was still far from it. Lin Huang felt that he had returned to modern civilization when he arrived at Baqi City. There were skyscrapers and even buildings with special architectural designs. Lin Huangs hotel was one of the skyscrapers. The hotel had a total of 39 floors and Lin Huangs room was on the 21st. He wondered how the people would get to the top floor as he entered the hotel since he had never seen a lift in this world. He realized that he had been worrying for nothing as there was a floating staircase in the hotel that somehow looked like a lift. Lin Huang had no idea about the theories and mechanism behind the operation of the floating staircase. He felt curious but he did not ask about it. After checking in, he went to his room. Lin Huang sent Lin Xin a message to tell her that he was safe. He continued watching the battle videos of the Six-Armed Demon that Yi Zheng had sent him. When he told Yi Zheng that he had chosen the Six-Armed Demon as his Life Seed prey, Yi Zheng advised him to change it but he insisted on his choice. Since the Six-Armed Demon was a very dangerous monster, Lin Huang dared not take it too lightly. The past few days, Lin Huang had been watching the videos repeatedly as he was trying to observe and learn her attack moves, figuring out the patterns of her attack. However, he was not making any progress. In laymen terms, the attacks of the Six-Armed Demon could be described as being creepy, fast, and cruel. She did not seem to have any specific skill. Her attacks were irregular and every hit would cause instant death to her enemies. Lin Huang had a headache when he noticed this, and could not figure a way past her attacks. Under normal circumstances, he concluded that the best way to defeat it in combat was to attack from afar. Unfortunately, Lin Huang could not use his weapon as the effect of his GrayEagle17 on the Six-Armed Demon was very limited. She did not seem to have any weak spots. Even bombs would hardly have any effect on her. Therefore, Lin Huang would be forced to perform a close combat maneuver. A human who killed a monster would carry out Life Light Baptisms, obtain Life Seeds and get upgrades. The entire process was restricted by two conditions. First of all, the monster must be killed by the Life Light Baptist. It would not work if it was killed by the others. Secondly, the Baptist can bring along his companion. However, the combat level of the human companion must be lower than the level of the monster. Otherwise, the Life Light would be spread out of the monsters dead body and Life Seed would collapse. Lin Huang began to feel worried about the second condition. If he had to complete the hunting process all by himself and he was not allowed to summon any monsters for help, the rate of success would be close to zero. He might even be killed by the Six-Armed Demon. However, he felt slightly relieved as he watched some of the videos in which an Imperial Censor had completed the baptism. The monsters summoned by the Imperial Censor were not human. Their combat levels would not cause the Life Light and Life Species to spread out. Therefore, Lin Huang could summon Bai or his Sand Monster to assist him in the battle. Since he was being restricted by the first condition, the killer must be Lin Huang himself. The summoned monsters could not kill the Six-Armed Demon. Otherwise, Lin Huang would be unable to perform the Life Light Baptism. "Ive watched these videos so many times and there weren''t any flaws in her defenses. Perhaps I could only let Bai lock her up with his Blood Power and Ill kill her," Lin Huang thought. He could only hope such an idiotic way would allow him to kill her. He closed the page that showed the information and got ready to go out for dinner. He wanted to walk around the foothold and relax as he felt a tenseness build up inside him. Opening up the page of contact, the first person who called him was the fatty, Yin Hangyi. Lin Huang frowned and answered the call. "Lin Huang, youre still alive!" The fattys oily face appeared on the projected screen. "I should say the same about you. I asked you to wait for me there but when I went back, you had disappeared," Lin Huang said. "I wanted to help you. You don''t appreciate me!" The fatty laughed a little and said. "If the witch did not tell me you were still alive, Ill not know it even until now. She told me that youve asked for my contact number from her. Why didnt you contact me?" "There are two reasons. The first one is because Im busy and another reason is that Ive forgotten about it" What Lin Huang said was indeed the fact. He wanted to contact the fatty after he had completed the assessment. However, he had forgotten about it when he encountered the massive monster in the crowd incident. "That was bitterly disappointing. I miss you every day and even raised a memorial in your honor. I burned incense to you whenever I missed you" "Damn!" Lin Huang interrupted the fatty before he finished his sentence. "Alright, alright. Lets talk about something else," Fatty said as he suddenly remembered that he had something serious to tell him. "Err I heard from the witch that youve chosen the Six-Armed Demon as your Life Seed prey. Are you going to Wangyou Forest in the two days?" "Yes, I am. Why?" Lin Huang asked. "Are you sure that you want to hunt the Six-Armed Demon? It is a top-tier iron-level monster. Even Copper Hunters would not provoke the monster," he answered. Apparently, the fatty had heard of the monster before. "I knew that. Ive watched her battle videos so many times. Its indeed difficult to handle but Ive got my ways," he replied. Lin Huang had fixed his battle strategy and was confident he had a chance. "Oh. Since you think so, that fine. Its alright now." "Fatty, youre acting strangely. Whats happening?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "The witch asked me to advise you not to go. Since youre confident that you can do it, then its alright," The fatty told him the truth. "She has my contact number. Why didnt she call me?" Lin Huang felt weird. "She told me that her brother had advised you but you didnt listen to him. She guessed that shell not be able to influence you as well and she asked me to convince you," The fatty said. He then asked, "Both of you are moving so fast in your relationship. Have you met each others parents?" "Stop bullshitting me. Im going to hang up now." "Wait, dont hang up! Tell me who her brother is" the fatty asked amid laughter. Lin Huang did not want to continue with a topic like that and hung up the phone. 61 It’s An Open Minded World It was eight oclock in the morning. Lin Huang rushed over to the Baqis City central plaza. He bought some snacks and drinks at a dessert shop nearby and sat in the shade under an umbrella while eating his breakfast. The pre-booked Demonic Crystal Spaceship would appear at the central plaza at nine o''clock sharp.It would stay there for five minutes for passengers to get on board and off the ship. He would not be able to board if he was late and he would have to wait another week for the next spaceship. Lin Huang did not wish to have any delays. Therefore, he arrived early at the central plaza. It was only 8.30 a.m. after he finished his breakfast. He logged on to the network page and checked for any updates on the news. Looking at the Heart Network, there was a headline that reported a massive monster crowd that appeared in Alps Town. The Transcendent Yu Chanli was being bombarded with questions at an interviewed with a journalist because of the incident. However, there were media representatives that shifted their focus to the weakest group C Zhou Le and Yu Guang. They were the same as Lin Huang. They had just registered for the Reserve Hunter assessment and then joined the team to defend the town against the monster crowd. They were truly a weak team of people. During the interview, the young people looked overwhelmed. Reporters inquired about the monster crowd and the team discussed Lin Huang unconsciously. Especially Zhou Le, he admired Lin Huang a lot and told the reporter not to forget to interview Lin Huang. Other than the name ''Lin Huang'' being mentioned, another issue had been revealed by Yu Guang. Bai Yan who was the strongest man in the Reserve Hunter Assessment did not stay to fight against the monster crowd. It was being reported that he insulted them instead, saying that those who stayed to fight were a group of idiots. Soon, the media was reporting about this too. They found a video extracted from a video surveillance system in the Alps Towns hotels meeting room and uploaded the video to the network. In the video, despite Bai Yans voice being rather soft, his voice was eventually amplified after some modifications. His expression of contempt in addition to his amplified voice had attracted a lot of attention. All of a sudden, the network was full of comments criticizing Bai Yan. "Hes such an irresponsible person!" "Its fine if he did not help but hes being too sarcastic!" "Hes truly an idiot!" ... Some of them even scolded Bai Yans family. They did research on Bai Yan''s background. Even Lin Huang was astonished as he saw the information they had found. Bai Yan was of an Imperial Censor family and he was the eldest son of the 16th generation, possessing astonishing Imperial Censor talent. Bais family was also a royal family. Their family members had terrifying capabilities in which they had a transcendent and were guarded by summoned transcendent monsters. "No wonder the guy behaved so arrogantly," Lin Huang thought and understood the reason why he looked down on the others. After browsing through the network for awhile, it was almost nine oclock. The giant Demonic Crystal Spaceship descended gradually, landing slowly onto the ground. Lin Huang stood up and looked at it while he was headed towards the boarding area. The big ship had luxurious designs which looked similar to a luxury cruise on Earth. However, the size of the ship was much bigger and had very colorful designs. It was a big ship with 11 floors. Many people were standing on the balcony and looking around. Also, some of them were looking down from the ship as they leaned against the deck beside of the ship. A few of them were standing on the 11th floor and looking down. There were not many people boarding at Baqi City. There were only 10 of them, including Lin Huang and there were around eight people getting off the ship. Lin Huang adjusted the Emperors Heart Ring for the projection of the ticket. It was being scanned at the boarding place and the door automatically opened. Lin Huang felt that it was similar to taking the train on Earth. After entering the ship, he looked for his room according to the room number that was shown on the ticket. The code of his ticket was 080298. That indicated that his room was on the 8th floor and room No.298. With the floating staircase, he went up to the 8th floor and found his room. He scanned his ticket before entering the room and pushed against the door. The condition of the room was better than what Lin Huang had expected. It was almost the same as an Earths hotel deluxe suite. It had a big living room, a fully equipped kitchen, sparkling toilets, and a very comfortable bedroom. "No wonder the price of the ticket was so expensive. The room is very satisfying. Aside from some pocket money, all other expenses are included," Lin Huang thought. He was content with the service provided in this world. He was satisfied with most of the services provided to him so far. Besides, they hired top-quality employees who were always warm and friendly. He walked around the room and familiarized himself with his surroundings. He could see from the balcony that the spaceship had taken off. Standing on the balcony, Lin Huang felt it was very different from being on an airplane. The Demonic Crystal Spaceship was very stable. It left the ground and gradually flew towards the sky.A large air bubble formed around the spaceship and it was shrouded in like a forcefield. Inside the air bubble, Lin Huang could vaguely feel slightly weighted down when the spaceship ascended. However, the feeling lasted for less than one minute and disappeared completely. Subsequently, the spaceship accelerated. However, Lin Huang did not feel anything odd during the whole process and there was no difference between that and standing on the ground. He would not have known the spaceship had taken off if he did not see the objects moving below him. After a short while, Lin Huang went to his bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, preparing to read the detailed information of Bai Yans family. Suddenly, he received a message. He opened the message and realized it was an official advertisement given by the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. A pretty lady in red dress popped up on the screen. In the video, she talked about the contents of the advertisement with a smile. "Dear valued customers, you may click on the special service button on our spaceships main web page if you need special services," she said sweetly. "You may choose a man or woman from ages 16 to 360 years old. There are many types of age group and gender available. You may choose based on your preferences and we will satisfy your needs." "If you have any special request such as human-like monsters or non-human monsters, a pre-order is available. Please press the pre-order button and we will place the order for you." "Our services will maintain our customers privacy and confidentiality at all times and it will not be revealed to anyone or any organization!" "Last but not least, customers are pleased to be informed that additional charges will be incurred for special services and its not included in the room rate," she said and smiled wide as her commentary ended. The advertisement page automatically closed as soon as the advertisement ended. "I knew that this world is pretty open-minded about sex, but I didnt know that it was to this extent" Lin Huang frowned. He knew that sex services were opened to the public in this world and it was legal as long as the juveniles were not involved. However, he did not expect to watch that kind of advertisement on the spaceship, even consisting of contents about the non-humans 62 Spaceship Attack The Demonic Crystal Spaceship was crowded at the time. Fortunately, the room was soundproofed and Lin Huang was not disturbed. He led a life of order. He took his lunch when it was time for meals, and planned his day accordingly. After having his lunch, he walked around the deck. The first floor of the spaceship was for entertainment. There were restaurants, bars, a cinema, a casino and a swimming pool. Basic entertainment facilities were provided too. Lin Huang took a look at these facilities and left as he was not interested in any of them at the time. The 11th floor of the spaceship was reserved for VIPs. The rooms on this floor were never opened for bookings as they were used to serve the royal families. A special induction lock was installed at the entrance of the 11th floor. People like Lin Huang who had bought a normal flight ticket were not given access to the 11th floor. Therefore, Lin Huang and the rest of the passengers had no idea how the 11th floor looked like. It had been said that there were only 100 rooms on the 11th floor and the floor space of each of the rooms was many times bigger than a normal room. The remaining space was used to build high-end entertainment facilities. However, no one knew exactly what they had up there. In addition to all that, there was also an open-air balcony on the 11th floor. Similarly, it was only opened to the guests who stayed there. Lin Huang could see that there were people walking around on the 11th-floor balcony deck. However, it did not seem like a special event and it was less crowded than any other deck. After dinner, Lin Huang went to the bar. He was not a lively person. He seldom went to bars when he was on Earth and if he did, he would only go when he was persuaded by his friends and classmates. It was the first time for him in a bar in this world as he wanted to experience something new. The environment was good and they played relaxing music. He felt relaxed while listening to the music. However, he was utterly unfamiliar with the name of the drinks as he saw them in front of the bar counter. "What the hell is an Old Hunter Raising Gun? What about the Fragrant Tongue of the Gorgeous? There was even this Very Stiff Why can''t there be some normal names for the drinks?!" Lin Huang was speechless. He took a glance at it and all of the names consisted of words that made people have distorted thoughts. There was an old man standing behind the bar counter. He was shorter than Lin Huang and looked lascivious with his small eyes. "Young man, what would you like to order?" he asked. It was still early and there were not many customers in the bar. The old man was wiping a wine goblet while he asked. "Are there any lighter bodied drinks?" Lin Huang hesitated and asked. He wanted to leave as he saw the names of the drinks. However, it would be rude for him to leave now since the old man had asked him for his order. "Lighter bodied drinks?" The old man frowned, seemingly not satisfied with Lin Huang''s question. "Yes, we have greenleaf juice here." Greenleaf juice was a very common drink that could be found in almost every bar and restaurant. It was somehow similar to the beers the people used to drink on Earth. The alcohol content of greenleaf juice was almost the same as beers but it tasted a lot better. There was a fragrance of malt with a softly perceptible sweetness. If it were to sell on Earth, perhaps beer factories would close down soon after. "Alright. Then I would like to order a glass of greenleaf juice," he said. Lin Huang was afraid that if he were drunk, he would be delayed when he was disembarking the ship. Looking at the names of the drinks, he was worried that the uncle''s drinks had some strong effects. Soon, the glass of greenleaf juice was served. Lin Huang took a sip and it tasted almost the same as the others. He was then assured and downed the glass of juice immediately. Perhaps it was because Lin Huang only ordered a glass of greenleaf juice, the old man did not bother to serve him after that. He was still wiping the wine cups and did not speak to Lin Huang. Oddly enough though, Lin Huang was happy with that. In the bar, there were two muscular men chatting and drinking at a seat not far away from him. Lin Huang unintentionally overheard their conversation. It was about the 11th floor of the spaceship. They were discussing a beautiful lady who stayed on the 11th floor. From their conversation, Lin Huang knew that there were five members of a royal family on board. The name of the beautiful lady was Leng Yuexin and she was the only child of the Leng''s royal family. She was only 18 years old but ranked 13th on the Division7 Gold Hunter Board. Lin Huang was surprised too as he heard of her achievement. Yi Yeyu was 19 years old but she ranked 997th on the board. Although Yi Zheng was ranked 11th on the board, he was already 21 years old. Besides Leng Yuexin, there were four other royal members. They were all young man and one of them ranked fifth on the Division7 Gold Hunter Board. His name was Li Yanxing. Lin Huang had heard of his name despite him not paying much attention to the Gold Hunter Board. This was mainly because of he was a high-profile person. He was a legend. It was being said that he was orphaned as a child. Without any resources, he worked hard for himself until he was adopted by the Li''s royal family and given the name Li Yanxing. He worked hard until he achieved what he had now. However, he was already 27 years old. According to them, Lin Yanxing was chasing Leng Yuexin while he invited the other three royal members to accompany him. "Li Yanxing sounded like a high-handed person" Although Lin Huang did not have much knowledge of who Li Yanxing was, he somehow felt that it would not be easy for him to achieve what he had now. Of course, he had to be a hardworking person but not everything could be achieved with just hard work. It was still a mystery why the Li''s royal family would put so much effort into educating an outsider since they had descendants of their own. However, Lin Huang did not bother to know more about it since it was about someone else and it had nothing to do with him. Lin Huang left when the two muscular men switched to discussing the special services provided. The sky was getting darker as he went back to his room. A sound of a siren was heard coming from the spaceship as he was about to practice his No Trail Snow-Stepping technique. In a short while, a loud and noisy sound was heard. "There''s a flock of birds coming towards us! For the sake of safety, passengers please leave the deck and go back to your own rooms as soon as possible. Please make sure that the door and windows are closed and put your seatbelts on! It''s normal if you feel the spaceship tremble when the birds attack. Don''t worry as we''ll settle this as soon as possible. I hereby apologize for the inconvenience caused," and the voice trailed off. After the announcement was made, Lin Huang quickly closed the doors. He put on his seatbelt and sat near a window. He was curious to how the spaceship would stand against the birds'' attack. Soon, the birds were getting closer to the spaceship. Lin Huang could see clearly from the window that they were millions of Blast Sparrows. Under normal circumstances, most of the Blast Sparrows were bronze-level to silver-level. Apparently, the only Blast Sparrow with a gold crown on its head was a gold-level sparrow. Lin Huang could not see from his angle whether the spaceship had taken any countermeasures to defend against the sparrows. However, he could clearly see that the flock of sparrows was flying towards the spaceship. Soon, the spaceship was surrounded by them 63 Blast Sparrow : The Brain Eating Maniac A Blast Sparrow''s black wings were about two meters long and there was a yellow patch on its belly. Their head was black in color and only those that had upgraded to gold-level would have a gold crown appear on their head. However, even being upgraded to a gold-level, there would not be any changes in its shape. It would be difficult to distinguish them apart if one did not observe them carefully. After a moment, Lin Huang caught a glimpse of the gold-level Blast Sparrow. However, the gold-level sparrow hid amongst the crowd and disappeared from view very quickly. Blast Sparrows did not look fierce. Despite the fact that they had very sharp claws, they looked weak. Besides, although they had sharp beaks, their beaks were short. But, it would be a big mistake if one underestimated their combat strength based on their appearance. Despite having claws that looked rather weak, the Blast Sparrows had claws that were as strong as steel talons. They would have no difficulty at all hunting down prey weighing more than 300 kilograms. Their short beaks had terrifying attack power and their attack speed was far beyond that of a pile-driver machine. In just a few seconds, they could easily stab a hole through the skull of a monster like the Sand Monster and chomp down on its brain. Brains were the Blast Sparrow''s favorite. If brains could not satisfy their hunger, only then will they tear the prey''s body apart and start eating their fats and organs. In short, they loved eating foods that were sticky, soft and moist. Right this moment, it was very dangerous as the spaceship was surrounded by a flock of Blast Sparrows. This was because of the Blast Sparrow had a fearsome attack speed. Looking at the spaceship being completely surrounded by the flock of sparrows, Lin Huang began to feel worried. He did not want his brain to end up in their beaks. Before purchasing the flight ticket, he had checked up on the safety of the Demonic Crystal Spaceship and their safety index was as high as 99.8% with relatively low accident rates. However, coming up against such a flock with a hidden gold-level sparrow king, Lin Huang could not help but worry about it. They launched consecutive attacks after surrounding the spaceship. Some of them grabbed the layer of the air bubble in which the spaceship was surrounded in with their claws while the others used their beaks to attack. The spaceship began to shake when the attack was launched. Followed by the Blast Sparrow''s attack, the layer of air bubble emitted beams of purple rays from its exterior. Many of the Blast Sparrows were blown away. Witnessing the scene through the window, Lin Huang was relieved. The air bubble was made of unknown materials as there was a power grid-like defensive shield in the layer of the air bubble. The Blast Sparrows were blown away or fell directly down to the ground as the electric current shocked them. The number of Blast Sparrows in the sky was greatly reduced by the countermeasures. However, they had not get rid of the crisis that then presented itself as the Gold Crowned Sparrow King appeared. It pecked the air bubble repeatedly and its attack speed was unbelievable. The continuous flow of electric current that struck its body had no effect, whatsoever. Its attack speed did not diminish. The protective layer was being attacked by the Gold Crowned Sparrow King violently, causing the trembling of the spaceship to get even stronger. The windows in Lin Huang''s room would not stop shaking. Looking through the window, he could see the Gold Crowned Sparrow King''s attack. He felt like the protective layer of the spaceship would be broken anytime. He could not stop thinking about the protective barrier popping and countless Blast Sparrows would come rushing through the windows, followed by a scene of Blast Sparrows feasting on their brains. "I hope the brain feast does not happen here" Lin Huang said with a shiver as he tried hard to forget about it. In the pilot''s cockpit, an old man wanted to fight back as he saw the Gold Crowned Sparrow King attack the defensive shield. Before the old man could react to it, a figure appeared from the top of the spaceship and flew up into the sky. The old man immediately stopped, laughed and shook his head, "That young man nowadays is indeed an impetuous fellow." "There''s a transcendent on the spaceship?!" Lin Hung was stunned as he saw the sudden appearance of the figure. He fixed his gaze and realized that it was a young man carrying a pair of golden wings on his back. "It''s a flying gold-level weapon," he thought, awestruck by the sight. Flying weapons were extremely rare, so their prices were at least 10 times higher than weapons of the same level. The gold-level flying weapon was the most powerful weapon with the strongest maneuver capabilities and its price was almost the same as a relic. The user of such relics must, of course, have an equally strong background. Lin Huang felt that the young man who carried the golden wings looked familiar. Soon, he recalled that he was the man that he had heard about at the bar, Li Yanxing, the one who ranked 5th on the Gold Hunter Board. He had been the center of many public media headlines and Lin Huang had seen him appearing on the news many times before. Therefore, he recognized him instantly. Although Lin Yanxing was already 27 years old, he looked like he was only 20 years old. He was tall, handsome and charming as he flew with his big golden wings. Many of the married and single women on the spaceship showed their affections by screaming love confessions towards him when they saw him fly up in the sky. Lin Huang had to admit that he appeared more attractive to women with his abilities in addition to his body and looks. "Damn, beast!" Li Yanxing shouted. His body seemed to have transformed into a beam of golden electric current and struck the Gold Crowned Sparrow King. The moment when he penetrated through the air bubble, Lin Huang noticed that the token hanging around his waist brightened. Lin Huang guessed that it was a special token owned by royal families. If it was not, then it must have been given to him by the captain. Regardless of which reason it was, there must have been something special about the token as he could pass through the air bubble at will. Li Yanxing was holding a long black sword in his hand and attacked the Gold Crowned Sparrow King with a Slanted Slash. Despite the handle of the sword being black in color, it was apparent that it was not an iron-level sword. Instead, it was a genuine relic. Lin Huang opened his eyes wide as he saw Li Yanxing execute the attack. The Slanted Slash generated a beam of golden Life Power in the air, resembling a crescent moon slashing towards the Gold Crowned Sparrow King. With a mere hit, he cut through the Sparrow King''s neck. In a moment, the head of the Gold Crowned Sparrow King and its neck were torn apart and a large amount of blood oozed out of the wound. As the corpse was falling towards the ground, Li Yanxing grabbed it midair and kept it in his storage space. He did not bother to look at the rest of the Blast Sparrows. The remaining Blast Sparrows started to flee as their leader was killed before their beady eyes and they knew that they had provoked a dangerous foe. Li Yanxing turned away, flying back towards the top of the spaceship. Lin Huang noticed that as he passed through the air bubble, the token around his waist brightened again. This assured him of the fact that he might be right. The flight returned to normal as soon as they got rid of the blast sparrows. Soon, the all clear was sounded by the staff of the spaceship. The crowds got out of their room once again and the liveliness of the spaceship was restored. Lin Huang did not join them. He started to ponder about Li Yanxing''s attack. Despite it being just one hit, Lin Huang was sure that if the sword skill was converted into a Skill Card, its ranking must have been at least a Rare Card. He tidied up his room, and started to practice the technique he had witnessed just a while ago 64 Arriving At The Destination As soon as they had got rid of the crisis with the Blast Sparrows, the sky darkened and the spaceship was brightly-lit. During this hour, most of the passengers were having fun on the deck or on the entertainment floor. In the bar, the people discussed the incident in which Li Yanxing had attacked the monsters just now. Those who did not know his identity knew his name very well now. It was very noisy outside on each deck but Lin Huang had never left his room. In the living room, he was practicing the sword technique he witnessed Li Yanxing performing against the Black Sparrow earlier. In fact, it took him more than an hour to imitate Li Yanxing''s skill. However, he was not rewarded with any skill pieces. It was not because of the level of Li Yanxing''s technique was higher than that of Great Sword Scripture. It was due to the fact that he had only performed the technique once and Lin Huang had only watched it once as well. Unlike the Great Sword Scripture part 1, Scarface had practiced the same technique three times at each practice session and Lin Huang secretly watched it for a few days. He was given a very good reference standard with old Scarface. In addition, with the help of the calming tea, he could easily master the essence of the sword technique. Besides, from his previous experience of obtaining The Great Sword Scripture pieces, he understood that being rewarded skill pieces did not depend on the similarity of movement. The most important part was he had to master the essence of the sword technique. As long as he could master the essence of the technique, he would have a higher probability of being rewarded the skill pieces. Lin Huang had brandished his sword for the 1,000th time. However, still, he could not imitate the technique. He did not give up. He practiced again and again by recalling the scene when Li Yanxing slashed his sword. The sky got darker as time passed. The liveliness of the spaceship remained the same. Despite there being few people on deck, they all joined the entertainment events on the first floor. The bar was no longer as quiet as before and it played rock music into the night. It was so crowded and the people were dancing all around. After dancing for a while, some of the men had boners in their pants and immediately pulled the women with them to small rooms behind the bar. The moaning sounds of the woman and the heavy breathing sound of the man coming from the small rooms could be heard but the sounds were covered by the music played in the bar. If Lin Huang were here, his doubts regarding the odd wine names would probably start making sense. At midnight, the spaceship was still as lively as it was. However, Lin Huang had been practicing the technique for more than five hours in his room. Still, nothing was rewarded. He was drenched in sweat. He stopped, exhausted. "It''s already 12 o''clock. I should sleep earlier tonight and wake up early tomorrow to practice," Lin Huang thought as he looked at the clock and kept his sword back in his storage space. The level of the set of sword technique was Rare or even higher. If he were rewarded the complete set of skill pieces, he would gain another powerful sword combat skill. Even if the Rare sword skill had only one technique, which was the one that he saw, it would still be a great benefit to him. He went to the toilet and had a bath. It was 12.40am and Lin Huang was lying in bed. In just a short while, he fell asleep. At seven o''clock the next morning, Lin Huang woke up and went to the first floor for breakfast. After having his breakfast, he went back to his room and continued practicing the technique. The Demonic Crystal Spaceship would normally take 28 hours to travel from foothold No.7C87 to foothold No.7C82. However, considering the time taken in which the spaceship stopped between footholds, it took approximately 29 hours to arrive. Lin Huang got on board the spaceship the day before at nine o''clock in the morning. He estimated that the spaceship would arrive around one o''clock in the afternoon. He had approximately six hours to practice the sword technique. The middle part of Lin Huang''s living room had been emptied. All of the tables, chairs and other furniture were pushed against the wall or to the edge of the living room. He began to practice with his sword. He did the same movement repeatedly barefooted in the middle of the living room, not feeling tired at all. "This is wrong. Let''s do it again! No, it''s still wrong. Try again" From around eight o''clock in the morning until 11 o''clock, Lin Huang could not recall how many times he had practiced. However, each time when he brandished with his sword, he would imagine a scene where he would compare his technique with the one performed by Li Yanxing, figuring out what he had missed out. All of a sudden, his technique of wielding the sword shadowed Li Yanxing''s movement as he had imagined. Lin Huang was shocked and soon, he heard a notification jingle coming from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you have gained a Skill Card "Thunder Sword" pieces x1" Lin Huang was stunned as he saw the notification. He asked, "Xiao Hei, if I was to collect and combine the "Thunder Sword" pieces into a Skill Card, will I be rewarded with only one skill or a whole set of skill technique?" "You''ll be rewarded a whole set of skill technique if you have collected a complete set of skill pieces," Xiao Hei replied. Xiao Hei''s answer was beyond Lin Huang''s expectation. "Are you sure? If so, why couldn''t I obtain more skill pieces after I was rewarded with "The Great Sword Scripture part 1" Skill Card? According to what you said, I should be able to obtain pieces of "The Great Sword Scripture part 2" with part 1 skill that I have obtained." Lin Huang asked in doubt. "This was because of "The Great Sword Scripture" had two different rarities for part 1 and part 2. You would not be able to master part 2 technique since its rarity is relatively higher. If they had the same rarity, you would be able to master it with ''The Great Sword Scripture part 1''. Conversely, if you were rewarded with a technique of higher rarity such as "The Great Sword Scripture part 2", similarly, you would be able to derive ''The Great Sword Scripture Part 1''. In short, one could derive a new technique with an existing technique of higher rarity or the same level of rarity. However, one would not be able to derive a new technique if its existing technique had a lower rarity," Xiao Hei explained. After listening to Xiao Hei''s detailed explanation, Lin Huang then realized that there was a rule like that with such skills. However, Lin Huang felt happy as his doubts were cleared. This indicated that in most of the combat skills, he would only need to memorize a small part of the technique and practice it repeatedly. Eventually, he would be able to collect a complete set of Skill Card after he could grasp the essence of the technique, as long as the skill did not have skills of different rarities. Lin Huang practiced even harder as he knew about this. However, after an hour, he did not feel what he felt just now. He had yet to obtain the second skill piece. Lin Huang did not feel anxious about it, though. It was 12 o''clock in the afternoon now. In less than an hour, they would be getting off the spaceship. He kept his sword and placed the furniture in its initial position. He took a bath and changed his clothes. He tidied up the room, checked and made sure that he did not leave any belongings there and left the room. Going down the floating stairs, he headed towards the deck beside the ship''s entrance. He could see that the spaceship was landing. In just a few minutes, the spaceship landed at foothold No.7C82. Lin Huang scanned his ticket at the exit and the door automatically opened. Lin Huang stepped out of the spaceship 65 An Adventurers Paradise Foothold No.7C82 was known as the Carefree City. It was given such a name as the foothold had encountered monster hordes so many times and the residents were severely injured. In order to show that they hope for a better future, the human had named the foothold a Carefree City. One odd thing that happened was, ever since it was given such a name, fortune had particularly favored the foothold and monster hordes have never invaded them for over hundreds of years. The city had a slow pace of life. The residents were living and working in peace. Indeed, it was a carefree place. It was one o''clock in the afternoon when Lin Huang arrived at Carefree City. He did not depart immediately but he headed towards the Adventurer Paradise. Adventurer Paradise was a subdivision of the Hunter Association''s so-called Adventurer Association. It was specially established to recruit the adventurers going on exploration missions. However, as soon as the Hunter Association slowly transferred the explorer jobs out from the Adventurer Association, it was separated and became an independent organization, eventually changing its name to the Adventurer Paradise. The Hunter Association used to be a loosely organized organization. It was actually a training organization that cultivated talents. However, they could not control these talented people, causing the loss of top-class talent. The initial objective of establishing the Adventurer Association was to retain the talented individuals. However, the Adventurer Paradise imposed strict obligations whereby they had a totally different set of rules and regulations compared to that of the Hunter Association. The members of the Adventurer Association had to accept a mission within a specific period of time. Compared to the Hunter Association, it had better management. Despite Adventurer Paradise becoming an independent organization, both organizations in many ways were still interrelated. Lin Huang was seeking for a station at the Adventurer Paradise as he could not enter Wangyou Forest on his own. Wangyou Forest was located in the southwest of the Carefree City, approximately 3,000 kilometers away from the city. Towards this direction, not even a small sized foothold was found. In fact, small sized footholds had been built before but they had been repeatedly destroyed by monster hordes, causing injuries and casualties. Eventually, the authorities had decided to cease building them. Without the foothold, there would not be any stopping points for eagle rides, let alone traveling from one portal to another. It was an uninhabited area. The regions within 3,000 kilometers were wilderness that ranged from level-1 wild zones to level-3 wild zones. It would not be safe on the road even if Lin Huang rode on his iron-level rank-3 Sand Monster. Therefore, he was looking for a silver-level adventurer as a companion to enter Wangyou Forest. oon, he found the Adventurer Paradise''s station at a foothold. The entrance was crowded. As he entered the station, Lin Huang looked around. It was somehow similar to the Hunter Association''s station as the design of the buildings were alike. The only difference was the atmosphere. Similarly, it was a square-shaped office that had a transparent polygonal dome at a height of around 10 meters. The wall was painted with light, warm, yellow paint. It felt totally different from the grayish-white colored wall of the Hunter Association. Besides, the color of the floor was different as well. The color of the floor was also light yellow here whereas the Hunter Association''s floor was a dark gray color. As Lin Huang was looking around, a young female staff came up to him and asked, "Mister, can I help you?" "I''m looking for an adventurer team to go to the Wangyou Forest," Lin Huang asked her. "I''ll help you to check on it," the female staff nodded her head and smiled. She led Lin Huang to the customer service counter. In just a short while, she had gotten the results. "There is a team going to Wangyou Forest four days from now. You''re considered lucky as the leader of the team is of a Gold-level. She had a mission with her and had to stay at Wangyou Forest for a week. The next team heading towards Wangyou Forest would have been 12 days from now," she said. "Of course, you may consider hiring an adventure team to escort you. After getting things done, they''ll escort you back here. However, the expenses would be a lot higher," she continued. Lin Huang had inquired about this before through the network. He knew that there were two ways that he could follow the adventurer team. The first one was the adventurer team had to go on a mission and lead him to his destination while the other method was to directly hire an adventurer, the latter of which being more expensive. The credit points one needed to pay for were equal to the Life Crystals he consumed each day. However, the former cost only two credit points for a round trip. As he heard that he''d be having a Gold-level adventurer as the team leader, Lin Huang made up his mind. "There''s no need of hiring an adventurer, I''ll just wait for a few days," he told the staff member. "Alright, the full cost will be 20,000 credit points. Before making any payments, here''s one special requirement for those who are heading towards Wangyou Forest." As soon as the female staff finished her sentence, a web page popped up in front of her. "Please read carefully before you agree to accept the terms and conditions." Lin Huang took a look at it and realized that it was a disclaimer. It was briefly about the safety of the visitors heading towards Wangyou Forest. Upon arriving at Wangyou Forest, it was no longer the team''s responsibility to protect the visitor. The team was only responsible for the visitor''s safety during the journey. If the visitor died in Wangyou Forest, the team would not bear any responsibility and the fees once paid would not be refunded. Lin Huang nodded his head after he read. "If they had completed their task in Wangyou Forest after a week, but I''m not done, for how many days will day wait for me?" "At most, three days. Three days later, be it you''re alive or dead, they''ll be coming back. According to our rules, if you did not show up at the gathering point after three days, you''re considered dead," she said. "Of course, if there are some valid reasons that caused the delay, you may apply it through our network. However, additional charges will be incurred according to the expenses of employing an adventurer. Approval for deferment is subjected to the team''s willingness." The staff explained the details. "If the team declines your application for deferment, you may apply to hire an adventurer team. However, the cost of the new team would be double the fee," she continued. "I understand and accept the terms," Lin Huang nodded his head and scanned his Emperor''s Heart Ring on the lower right corner of the disclaimer, which was an empty space. Soon, his personal identity information was printed on it. "Please check the contract. If there''s no other problem, please scan to confirm your payment by scanning the payment streaks at the end of the contract," the staff continued. A new page popped up. It was a simple employment contract. Lin Huang briefly looked through the contract and flipped to the last page of the contract. Using his Emperor''s Heart Ring, he scanned the payment streaks. It was somehow similar to the payment barcode that existed on Earth. However, the payment streaks looked nicer in color with a picture. In just a short while, a notification message to confirm transaction was completed and received. Also, the staff showed that payment was accepted. "Employer-employee relationship is established. The adventurer team will contact you soon. Please remember to record the venue and time to meet up," the female staff reminded him. "Yes, I know. Thank you," Lin Huang nodded his head and walked towards the exit of the station. Leaving the Adventurer Paradise, Lin Huang looked for a hotel. Since the adventurer team would depart four days later, he would have some extra time to practice his sword technique with the hope of collecting a complete set of skill pieces before his departure. Lin Huang checked the information of the hotel on the network. Suddenly, a notification message popped up. The content was short and simple, "Depart three days later. Gather at the south door of the foothold at nine o''clock in the morning." Looking at the message, Lin Huang grinned. "The message was clear and concise. He seems to be a guy who did not talk much. That''s great. I can enjoy the silence on the trip," he thought. 66 Mission Card Has Been Activated Lin Huang checked in into a nice hotel in Carefree City and he had specifically asked for a suite with a bigger living room. It was for sword training. He had four days before he exploring the Wangyou Forest and so Lin Huang wanted to accumulate skill card pieces. It would be perfect if he got a complete skill card before he left for Wangyou Forest. However, things did not go the way he imagined them to. Lin Huang checked into the hotel around two oclock in the afternoon. Apart from the 20 minutes he spent having dinner, he practiced until 12 midnight. He had lost the momentum he had before. Even after 10 hours of practice, he did not obtain even one card piece. For the next three days, apart from eating and sleeping, Lin Huang had spent all his time on practice. He started at eight in the morning and practiced all the way to 12 midnight. In total, he practiced more than 15 hours every day. However, what he obtained within the three days were not up to his expectations. He only got hold of the rhythm of the sword twice and obtained two skill card pieces in three days. On the third night, he laid on his bed, exhausted. He was upset, "Its not easy to mimic the rhythm after watching the demonstration once. If Li Yanxing was to show me more of his thunder sword or even a couple more times of the same technique, I would have more reference to practice and probably not seem as pathetic as I do now with the few card pieces I have." He then went to bed, tired. The next morning, he washed up and then had a buffet breakfast on the second floor of the hotel. He then ordered a monster car and headed straight to the south door. A monster car was a transport similar to a carriage. In this world, it was only used for traveling within the city as the distance between one foothold to another would be too time-consuming as they were really far apart. The monster used for the monster car would usually be a creature that lived in the snow. It was a tamed hoofed creature with white hair, it looked like a horse but it was much bigger than a horse. Its body length was usually around three meters long and it had silver sharp teeth with a tremendously strong bite. It was an omnivore that loved meat. Lin Huang chose to ride on a monster car as it would attract too much attention if he rode on his Sand Monster or Ox Devil. Also, his monsters walked on two legs, they were not meant to be ridden on and it was uncomfortable to ride on them. It was cheap to ride on a monster car as it would only cost him one credit point for one kilometer. It cost Lin Huang 12 credit points to ride from the hotel to the southern door of the foothold. It was 8:50 a.m. when he arrived at the south door of the foothold. Just as he got off the monster car, he saw a familiar tall young man. "Li Yanxing? Why is he here?" Lin Huang found it strange, he thought about it and realized that since he was a VIP, he should have used the exclusive path for VIPs. That was perhaps why he did not see Li Yanxing when they got off the spaceship. There were three other young men with him. Lin Huang hardly left his room when he was on the spaceship. He had only seen Li Yanxing. He figured that the other three men could be royalty just like Li Yanxing was. As Lin Huang was checking them out, Li Yanxing looked at him and waved out of a sudden. Lin Huang thought that was odd. He looked around himself and realized that there was nobody else there and in response, Lin Huang pointed at himself. Li Yanxing nodded and gestured at him to go over. "Dont tell me hes the one leading the team" Lin Huang mumbled while walking towards the four of them. "Hi, my name is Li Yanxing. You must be the Lin Huang who is following our team, am I right?" Li Yanxing smiled to Lin Huang while he walked closer to them. "Hi there, Ive seen you on the news." Lin Huang smiled and nodded, "Im the one who is joining your team to Wangyou Forest, nice to meet you." "Bro Lin Huang, as we have a mission in Wangyou Forest, our schedule is pretty tight. We usually never have anyone else follow our team. We made a mistake by accidentally picking someone from the application form and now youre on our team" Li Yanxing seemed troubled. "Its our mistake. We can give compensate you sufficiently so that you can hire an adventurer team. We do suggest that you withdraw from our team because we really do not wish to bring an outsider with us." Though Li Yanxing sounded sincere, Lin Huang hesitated. He thought he could secretly learn Li Yanxings sword skill during the trip. But now that Li Yanxing insisted him to withdraw from his team and was willing to compensate him, it was hard for him to reject Li Yanxings offer. Seeing that Lin Huang was not quite happy, Li Yanxing added, "Actually the highest wild zone in Wangyou Forest is only a grade-3 and therefore, a silver-level adventurer would be sufficient. There would be less risk if Bro Lin Huang hired a silver adventurer. If you follow us, we will have to part ways when we arrive in Wangyou Forest. If you hire a team, you could get them to bring you into the forest and they might even hunt for you." The more Li Yanxing explained his position, the more convinced Lin Huang was. He did not choose to hire a team earlier as he did not have that kind of money. To hire an adventurer team, he would need 100,000 credit points for a day. The journey into Wangyou Forest would cost him 100,000 credit points and upon return, another 100,000 more. If there was a delay in the forest, he would be broke. Just when he was going to reply Li Yanxing, a notification came up and a communication box popped up in front of him. "Mission card activated due to special circumstances." A mission card then popped up. The blonde lady dressed in a black maid attire on top of the card started to speak. "Congratulations, your mission card has been activated due to special circumstances!" "Now, let me announce your mission!" "Your mission is as follows: Follow Leng Yuexin into Wangyou Forest. After you have leveled-up to iron-level, follow Leng Yuexin back into Carefree City! Mission time limit: 15 days." "Mission Award: One Advance Card." "If you failed to complete the mission within given time, you will be punished: One of your monster cards will be randomly removed!" "Mission announcement has been completed; you can read the description of the card." After the mission announcement was done, the blonde lady became stood still again. Lin Huang was doubtful as he did not see Leng Yuexin here at all. Why would his mission include following Leng Yuexin into Wangyou Forest if they were not there? As Lin Huang was thinking, a ladys voice spoke from behind him. "You must be Lin Huang who is following the team, is that right?" Lin Huang turned around; it was a poised woman standing behind him. She had black, short hair that covered half of her neck. She seemed very cold. "My name is Leng Yuexin, I am the team leader of the mission," she said. "Hi, Im Lin Huang who is following the team." After confirming her name, Lin Huang finally understood the reason why the mission card was activated. As the mission was confirmed, Lin Huang was not thinking of withdrawing himself from the team anymore. Seeing Lin Huang talking to Leng Yuexin, Li Yanxing frowned. The other royalty young man spoke too, "Bro Lin Huang, I thought you mentioned that something came up and that you wont be following us anymore?" Lin Huang looked at the young man and pretended not to know what he was talking about, "Did I say that? Oh, I dont remember." Lin Huang said shamelessly. No matter what, he would not leave the team or else he would lose a monster card if he failed the mission. It would be a great loss if he were to lose Bai or Tyrant. Leng Yuexin noticed that there was something transpiring between the both of them. She interrupted the young man who was attempting to speak again and said "Since hes here, lets go together. You can always handle your stuff when youre back, Lin Huang" "Theres nothing else I have to do apart from this mission." Lin Huang mumbled innocently. Although his voice was soft, the rest heard him loud and clear. "Then it must be my mistake" The young man let out an awkward smile and did not speak again. 67 A Man Should Have the Audacity to Be a Third Wheel Since Leng Yuexin asked him to stay, Lin Huang did not excuse himself though the others wanted him to. Li Yanxing was expressionless and it was obvious that the other young men were unhappy yet they did not say a word. It was awkward but Lin Huang decided to join the team anyway. He was also the only outsider who followed. "I guess you dont have a mount, am I right?" Leng Yuexin asked Lin Huang. "No, I cant afford that" Lin Huang was honest. The young men from royalty judged Lin Huang when they heard what he said. "You''ll ride with me then, I didnt bring extra mounts." Leng Yuexin offered but her expression remained cold, it was obvious that she was just offering so that she could complete the mission. "Bro Lin, why dont you ride with me instead? Miss Leng is a lady and it may not be convenient." Li Yanxing saw and offered Lin Huang a ride with him. Leng Yuexin looked at Lin Huang to wait for his decision. Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei, "The mission card requested me to enter Wangyou Forest with Leng Yuexin, must I ride with her or can we go our separate ways?" "You can be separated from her as long as the both of you enter Wangyou Forest together." After hearing the response, Lin Huang said, "Im good with anything as long as I get a ride." Lin Huang noticed that it was because of Leng Yuexin that made Li Yanxing insist on him withdrawing from the mission. Now that he shamelessly joined the team, if he were to ride with Leng Yuexin, it would cause rifts between him and Li Yanxing. He did not want to complicate things as his goal was to complete his mission. In reality, he never wanted to be a third wheel. He did not expect to bump into Li Yanxing and the rest. If the mission card was not activated, he would definitely accept Li Yanxings suggestion to hire an adventurer team to bring him into the forest. It would have been a better option as the team could get him to the area where the Six-Armed Demon was. Seeing that Lin Huang did not have any qualms, Leng Yuexin nodded without saying a word. They walked outside the south door foothold and took out their monster taming token. They then released the mounts from their tokens. The monster taming token was a unique tool that would create a contract with a tamed monster and seal the monster in the token. They can release the monster temporarily whenever they needed it. The token was comparable to relics as ordinary people could not afford to use it. Those who could afford it would only use it for mounts or to create a contract with rare mutated monsters. If one were to seal an ordinary monster in it, its value would drop lower than the price of the token. Moreover, not just anybody could tame a monster, only Imperial Censors could do that but it would cost a bomb. The five of them owned a mount each. Lin Huang was stunned at their spending power. Leng Yuexins mount was a bird with blue feathers. Lin Huang could recognize it was a gold-level Blue Snow Eagle. It was a real raptor in the monster world. What got Lin Huangs attention was the Sky Dragon that Li Yanxing was riding. A Sky Dragon was a gold-level monster; it was a distant relative of a transcendent monster, the Flying Dragon. It looked approximately 80% like a Flying Dragon but its size was much smaller than 10 meters. The real Flying Dragon was a few hundred meters long and it was born a transcendent. It was hard to capture a flying dragon for transportation even for a transcendent human. Li Yanxings Sky Dragon had almost reached its matured size; its scales were bloody red. It was considered a great Sky Dragon. The rest were riding an ordinary gold-level bird, incomparable with a Sky Dragon and a Blue Snow Eagle. They rode on their own monsters. When Lin Huang followed Li Yanxing to ride on the Sky Dragon, it glared and scoffed at Lim Huang. Li Yanxing ignored what it did and pretended that he did not see that. Lin Huang ignored it too and sat behind Li Yanxing. The unexpected appearance of five mounts at the entrance of foothold attracted many people. While the young men were proud of themselves, Li Yanxing was cool and calmed. Leng Yuexin did not care about the people. She patted the back of her blue snow eagle and departed from the foothold into the sky. Seeing that Leng Yuexin had departed, Li Yanxing and the others followed suit. The five of them headed to the southwest and soon disappeared among the people who gathered around to watch. The 3,000 kilometers journey only needed one and a half hours with the gold-level mounts. They were flying at 2,000 kilometers per hour; it was the same speed as a supersonic aircraft on earth. It was just an ordinary monsters flying speed; they had yet to reach their maximum speed. Sitting on the Sky Dragon, Lin Huang could not feel the air pressure at all. It was strange for Lin Huang and he did not understand the theory. Just when he wanted to ask, he recalled Li Yanxing not being that interested to make small talk with him so he dodged the thought. Unsure if the gold-level seats were too powerful or for some other reasons, they were not attacked by any birds during the past one and a half hours. It was a bummer as Lin Huang was planning to watch Li Yanxing sword technique if they were attacked. Soon one and a half hours had passed and they landed outside of Wangyou Forest. They got down from their seats and sealed their monsters into the monster taming token. Li Yanxing and the rest planned to part ways with Lin Huang immediately except for Leng Yuexin. She asked Lin Huang, "What are you trying to hunt for? If were on the same path, we can bring you along. Were familiar with where the monsters are scattered in this forest." Li Yanxing and the rest who were standing 10 meters away glared impatiently at Lin Huang. "Im here to get to iron-level, the Life Seed prey that Im looking for is a Six-Armed Demon." Lin Huang told her his intention. "Six-Armed Demon? Why would you choose this monster?" Leng Yuexin found it strange, "Although the Six-Armed Demon is considered the top monster in iron-level, I would advise you to get another Life Seed prey for I fear you might lose your life anytime." Although what Leng Yuexin said was unpleasant to his ears, Lin Huang knew that she had said that for his own good. "Its alright, if I really cant manage to kill it, I will consider other Life Seed prey. Let me give it a try first." Lin Huang declined her suggestion tactfully. "You guys go ahead, dont worry about me." "Let us bring you there since were on the same path. I will tell you when we have reached and then we can part ways." Leng Yuexin did not say much since Lin Huang was adamant with his decision, but she insisted to bring him along anyway. "Since were on the same path, then Ill follow you again." Lin Huang did not expect Leng Xueyin to be so helpful. Ill continue to be the third wheel then." Li Yanxing and the rest were obviously annoyed. 68 Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon Seeing that Lin Huang attempted to follow the team, Li Yanxing hinted to the young men. One of them said to Leng Yuexin immediately, "Miss Leng, we have already fulfilled our mission to send him here, theres no need to bring him along into the forest." "Although were heading on the same path where the Six-Armed Demon is, with this kids speed, he would definitely slow us down. I dont think its a good idea to bring him along with us" "I think so too, we cant be carrying this kid on our back" the other two young men added on. "Since we need three to five days to arrive there, it doesnt really make a difference even if he slows us down." Leng Yuexin insisted to bring Lin Huang into the forest. "Since Miss Leng wants to bring Bro Lin along, well do so then. It wouldnt make a difference with an extra person as we can take a slow walk and enjoy the scenery." Instead of rejecting, Li Yanxing agreed to what Leng Yuexin said. "Bro Lin, you can follow us but just be careful for your own safety on the road." The young men did not say a word since Li Yanxing spoke. Lin Huang looked at him with a bewildered expression. He thought Li Yanxing would oppose the idea of him following them. He started to think that Li Yanxing was up to something. "Then Ill be bothering you guys for a little longer, I apologize." Lin Huang smiled and said. He behaved himself during the journey by not being talkative. Lin Huang was nothing in Li Yanxing and the gangs eyes since he was not even an iron-level. They did not realize that Lin Huang knew what they were up to. "Use your Emperors Heart Ring to mark down the route, you can follow the route when you return and wait for us here. Our mission would take five to seven days, it would not take more than 10 days. I will send you a message when we are done with our mission. If you are not here when we return, we will wait for you for another three days. We would leave three days later if you did not show up. By then, you will have to hire another team to assist you." Leng Yuexin told Lin Huang before they departed. "I understand." Lin Huang nodded. The rest did not say a word and headed into the forest. Lin Huang followed behind them. The six of them walked into the forest. Besides Lin Huang, the rest of them looked like they were on a vacation, they did not seem nervous at all. Lin Huang was slightly nervous as if it was a grade-4 wild zone. It was not an amusement park as any monsters that were over iron-level were life-threatening to him. Soon, they faced monsters attacks. The young men killed all the monsters easily and their dead bodies were scattered everywhere. Lin Huang was tempted to keep the dead monsters but was shy. The dead bodies could be sold to the Hunter Association. A complete iron-level monster could be sold up to 10,000 credit points. A bronze-level could be sold up to 100,000 credit points. As they ventured further into the jungle, the monsters that attacked them were upgraded from iron-level to bronze-level. Lin Huang noticed that they did not even look at the monster after they killed them; he picked up the bronze-level monsters along the way and kept them with him. Fortunately, the sizes of monsters were not too big. Lin Huangs space storage was almost full after picking up more than 10 monsters. It seemed like 100 cubic meters was not enough and he had spent one million credit points to upgrade his storage space to 1,000 cubic meters. Looking at him picking up the dead bodies, the young men scoffed because the money was insignificant to them. Lin Huang, on the other hand, did not care what they thought about him since they would not be seeing each other after the mission completed. It was their business how they wanted to think of Lin Huang. The money that he could obtain by selling the dead bodies was his priority. Following these princes, Lin Huang collected more than 100 bronze-level monster bodies within three hours. The space storage that he had just upgraded was full again with dead bodies that were worth more than 10 million credit points. He then upgraded his space storage to 3,000 cubic meters with two million credit points. He was only left with 100,000 credit points now. After another seven hours, Lin Huang collected much more dead monsters. His only regret was not being able to see Li Yanxing fight. Along the way, all the monsters were killed by the three young men and Li Yanxing did not have to move at all. Same with Leng Yuexin, Lin Huang did not even have any idea what kind of weapons did Leng Yuexin possessed. It was six in the evening and the sky was dark in the forest. Lin Huang estimated he was near his destination. If he did not follow the team, he would need at least two or three days to get into the forest carefully. A monster roar came from not too far away distracting Lin Huangs thoughts. Many bird-like monsters flew away from the fear of the roar. Lin Huang could tell that the monster was powerful that it could be at least silver-level. However, that did not bother Leng Yuexin and the rest at all. They proceeded straight into the area without hesitating for a second. Soon, a gigantic Sky Dragon covered in crimson gold scales appeared before them. It was devouring a giant dead monster with its back facing them. The Sky Dragon was 30 meters long and more than 10 meters tall, it looked like a T. Rex that was at one time, bigger. Lin Huang recognized it as a Sky Dragon but he did not know its actual name. He then asked Leng Yuexin softly, "Miss Leng, what is this monster? Why does it look like a Gold-Armored Dragon but the size of its scales and the sharpness of its claws and teeth seemed different?" "This is a Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon, it was a Gold Armored Aragon that went through one round of mutation. Among the gold-level monsters, it is considered to be the strongest amongst creatures of its level." Leng Yuexin explained calmly. "It seems like were lucky to be able to bump into a mutated monster in such good condition. Its a bummer that were not with Imperial Censors, or else we could tame and deal it." A prince in a hat said. "You call this a good condition? This is a masterpiece! Dont be pretentious, Ge Ping. Im sure that you would run away if you were to fight this Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon on your own!" One of them teased. "A gold-level rank-3 Crimson Gold-Armored Dragons ability is comparable with a hunter that is on the top 100 in the Gold Hunters Leaderboard. Myself aside; the both of you would be dead if you fought it yourselves!" Ge Ping said angrily. "Only Miss Leng and Bro Li could handle such a monster." The skinny young man said and looked at Li Yanxing. "This monster would be a great help if we can tame it. Too bad we have a mission with us. Even with the presence of an Imperial Censor, taming would take time. Seems like the only way is to kill it" Li Yanxing said while looking at the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon. Although the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon was eating earlier, it noticed them staring but it did not care. Lin Huang was stiff when he saw it staring at them, he could feel that death was near, his breath became heavier 69 Dragonkin Besides Li Yanxing and Leng Yuexin who were not affected by the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon, Lin Huang and the other three royalty men had their feet planted on the ground. They did not dare to move as the slight movement would trigger the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon to attack. "Should I kill it or do you want to kill it?" Leng Yuexin looked at Li Yanxing. "Of course Ill do it, how could I let a lady do this." Li Yanxing smiled and held his right hand in the air. A black sword appeared slowly in his hand. The Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon was not happy that it was disturbed from eating, now that it was irritated by them, it became furious. It turned around and stared a deadly stare at Li Yanxing with its tail moving left to right. It seemed to be thinking, it could tell the man in front of him was the most powerful one among the rest. It could even feel the threat of death from him. As one of the top monsters in the area, it did not allow itself to run away. To it, only the weak would run away when facing a powerful enemy. After a slight hesitation, the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon attacked Li Yanxing. They were only a few hundred meters away from each other, it only took the dragon a few steps to arrive in front of them. Lin Huang wanted to dodge it but he saw Li Yanxing move. He leaped when the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon approached him with its mouth wide open. Just when he was falling into the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragons mouth, he leaped and appeared behind the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon. Before Lin Huang could figure out what happened, the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon groaned and fell on the ground. Li Yanxing landed on the ground. There was blood dripping from his black sword, he then kept his sword into the scabbard and frowned. "Its not dead yet?" The young man in hat asked. "I underestimated it and did not give my all in that slash. However, it won''t live for long." Li Yanxing said calmly, he did not seem like he was going to give it another hit. Lin Huang saw that the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragons neck was cut open, blood was bursting out from the wound. Although its will to live was strong, it would not live for long. However, as long as the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon was not dead, Lin Huang could not keep it in his storage space. He was thinking if he should follow Leng Yuexin and the gang to the foothold where the Six-Armed Demon was or to stay and wait for the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon to die. The latter was much riskier as he had to walk alone later on and the blood of the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon would attract other powerful monsters to him. However, the temptation to keep this monster was huge because it costs at least a billion credit points. Of course, Lin Huang knew that it would not be a smart move for him to stay. With his ability, it was hard for him to survive if monsters were to swamp him. Just when he was deciding, Li Yanxing spoke, "Lets continue our journey. Bro Lin, you will arrive at your destination in less than an hour." He smiled at Lin Huang, Lin Huang could see through the grin that he was hiding. He then realized that Li Yanxing did not kill the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon on purpose so that Lin Huang would leave the team alone. He knew very well that Lin Huang could not resist such a valuable carcass. Lin Huang felt a chill in his body. Just when he wanted to leave the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon behind and follow the team, Xiao Hei spoke. "A dying dragonkin mutated monster is detected, it is suitable to integrate with the dragonkin mutated monster soul you have in your body. Would you like to integrate the monster soul for a new dragonkin Monster Card?" Lin Huangs eyes lit up when he heard what Xiao Hei said. He then turned around and said loudly to Li Yanxing and the rest," You guys go ahead. I need to pee, Ill catch up later." Leng Yuexin frowned and did not say a word. Li Yanxing smirked. He said to Lin Huang, "Alright then, we will make a move first." After they left, Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei immediately, "Xiao Hei, how do I integrate them?" "You need to place your hand on the dying dragonkin monster to integrate the dragonkin-monster''s soul. During the integration, you can choose to consume your card pieces." "The higher the level of card pieces and the more the amount, the rarer the quality of the integrated card. However, no matter how many card pieces are there, the rarity of the integrated card would not be lower than the rarity of the monster soul and the dragonkin monster." Lin Huang was over the moon when he heard what Xiao Hei said. It meant he would definitely obtain a rare Monster Card of a dragonkin monster and its rarity might be even higher. He then walked to the back of the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon. It was losing its breath and would die any minute. Lin Huang placed his hand on its back and instructed Xiao Hei to begin the integration, "Consume all remaining card pieces for monster soul integration." "This integration will consume the black python in your body and 3,057 card pieces. Confirm integration?" "Confirmed! Delay no more and do it immediately!" Lin Huang could not wait any longer. Just when he was done talking, a black glow shot out from the middle of his palm and went into the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragons body. He knew that was the black python''s soul. Soon, the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragons body became a dot of white light and slowly faded into a card on Lin Huangs palm. The card was still covered in white glow on his palm and he could not see the color or the image on the card. It was only when the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragons body completely turned into a white dot that the card became material on his palm. After the white glow faded, the card appeared. Lin Huang was overjoyed when he saw the color of the card, "Blue Epic! Its a real blue Epic Card!" It was the first time for Lin Huang to get a blue Epic Monster Card, it was much happier than getting a SSR card in the game Master XX! After celebrating for a while, Lin Huang noticed that there was a black dragon with wings on the surface of the card but its size seemed small. He then turned the card around to read the detailed description. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Undying Baby Dragon" "Type of Monster: Dragonkin (Beginner)" "Combat Level: Iron-level 3-star" "Skill 1: Black Dragon Flame (Beginner)" "Skill 2: Dragon Power (Beginner)" "Skill 3: Enhanced Regeneration (Beginner)" "Skill 4: Elemental Immunity (Beginner)" "Skill 5: Absolute Defense(Beginner)" "Summoning Limit: Activated" "Remarks: The monster will evolve into an adult Undying Black Dragon when it is upgraded to transcendent." "Card remarks: Trainable" Looking at those cool skill names, Lin Huang could not help but swear, "F*ck, this is too good to be true!" Noticing that the beginner behind the type of monster, Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei,"Xiao Hei, what does Dragonkin (Beginner) mean?" "This is categorized by the dragonkin''s level. The lowest one would be Sky Dragons. A dragonkin that was higher level than a sky dragon would be the actual dragonkin. Dragonkin are powerful creatures. The blood of a dragonkin is graded in the following levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Pureblood. The rarity of the card could be Epic, Legendary, Mythical or Godlike." "Theres a Godlike card rarity level?!" Lin Huangs eyes widened when he heard Xiao Heis explanation. It was his first time hearing about a Godlike rarity level. However, he knew that getting a dragonkin on his side was good enough. Without dwelling in too much, he turned the card around to read more about the skills. "Black Dragon Flame (Beginner): A unique skill exclusively for dragonkin creature. The black Dragon Flame contains a corrosive substance that can burn almost anything." "Dragon Power (Beginner): A unique skill exclusively for dragonkin creatures. It could deter most of the monsters that are within one level above the host, ineffective for monsters that have high intelligence." "Enhanced Regeneration (Beginner): Passive skill, the host would have strong regenerative abilities which include limb regeneration. Limitation: The Head and heart cannot be regenerated." "Element Immunity (Beginner): Passive skill, effective for elemental attacks, 80% immunity." "Absolute Defense (Beginner): Passive skill, effective for physical attacks, 50% immunity." Almost every skill was attractive to Lin Huang. He gave his instruction right after reading, "Xiao Hei, extract skill card." "Skill card extraction activated Selecting a skill for host Random selection completely Congratulations, you have received - Absolute Defense (Beginner)." After receiving the new skill, Lin Huang looked at his Exclusive Card immediately. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: None (Exceeded assessment limit)" "Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Skill 2: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Skill 3: Robust (Intermediate)" "Skill 4: Spectral Snowsteps (Body Movement)" "Skill 5: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Skill 6: Immense Strength (Intermediate)" "Skill 7: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 1" "Remark: Hmm, you have quite a lot of skills. What more can I say?" He ignored Xiao Heis tease in the remark, he was happy. Although the skill that he really wanted was Enhanced Regeneration, Absolute Defence was suitable for short distance attacks as well. Considering that Li Yanxing and the rest was not far away, Lin Huang stopped fantasizing and summoned the Undying Baby Dragon. He did not want them to find out about the dragonkin monster. He kept the card and calmed himself. He sprinted towards the direction where Li Yanxing and the rest were headed toward. 70 Arriving at the Destination Within a few minutes, Lin Huang caught up with Li Yanxing and the rest. Seeing that Lin Huang was back, Li Yanxing saw a shadow at the corner of his eye. Leng Yuexin sensed something odd too but none of them said a thing. The young man in a hat then said while laughing, "I thought you sacrificed your life for the dead body of the monster." "The Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon wasnt dead yet and its blood would attract other monsters. Its not worth it if I traded my life for money. I just needed to pee really badly." Lin Huang responded innocently. Hearing his explanation, they did not say anything since Lin Huang was approaching his destination and they would soon part ways. Not long later, Lin Huang asked Leng Yuexin, "Miss Leng, is the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon part of the dragonkin?" Lin Huang knew the answer to his question but he asked anyway so that he could know more about the dragonkin from the royalty. He figured there must be more information on the Heart Network available for the royalty. The young men scoffed when they heard Lin Huangs question but Leng Yuexin thought that such a question was not silly at all! She shook her head and explained, "No, the Gold-Armored Dragons belong to a sub-species that are below the Sky Dragons since the very beginning. Even if it mutated into a Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon, the dragon blood in its body would never reach the concentration of a Sky Dragons blood." "If the concentration of the dragon blood in its body is near the concentration of a Sky Dragons blood since birth when it evolves to a transcendent, a certain transformation would happen to its blood and it would upgrade to a Sky Dragon. If the dragon blood concentration is insufficient, even if it evolved into a transcendent, it would just be a mutated transcendent monster, nothing like a Sky Dragon." "The dragonkin are monsters that have at least 30% dragon blood concentration. These monsters were born with supernatural powers from the dragon family such as Dragon Flame, Dragon Power and more. We wont be able to see the power of a real dragonkin." "Monsters that have 10% to 30% of dragon blood concentration could only be a Sky Dragon species no matter how powerful they are as they dont possess the power of a true dragonkin. Most of the Sky Dragons are powerful as they are born with combat strength that surpassed a transcendent. They are a dream flying creature of many hunters." "For those with a dragon blood concentration less than 10%, they are nothing like a Sky Dragon. They are just slightly more powerful than ordinary monsters that are on the same level as them and this Gold-Armored Dragon belongs to this category. The Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon that we saw earlier was mutated from a Gold-Armored Dragon, its dragon blood concentration must have been upgraded, that was why it was more powerful." "Since it did not die from the single hit by Bro Li earlier, the dragon blood concentration of the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon should be more than 8%. With such a concentration, it could experience a second mutation if trained properly and increase its dragon blood to 10% and above to a Sky Dragon." Leng Yuexin was worried that Lin Huang would not understand so she explained all the details. She was born in royalty with a silver spoon. Though she met many extraordinary young people in the past few years, she did not communicate much with civilians including Lin Huang. Lin Huang was a few years younger than her and he was out in the wild on his own without any companion to hunt Life Seed monsters with him. He was even collecting all the bronze-level monster bodies that were worthless to her just to get credit points. She pitied him. Lin Huang did not know what Leng Yuexin thought of him, he saw her as genuine. Although she seemed cold upfront, she was a kind person within. After hearing Leng Yuexins explanation, he further asked, "Has there ever been any real dragonkin in Division7 before?" He asked the question as he wanted to know if the dragonkin was the ultimate combat strength in this world. "Theres no such record in the history of Division7, but there was one dragonkin that appeared in Division3 600 years ago. It was huge and many transcendents were killed but the Heart Network had made this case inaccessible. Im not sure what exactly happened. Ive asked the older generation in my family but they did not want to tell me." Leng Yuexin shook her head. "I know something about this case." Li Yanxing interrupted, "I heard the death of many transcendent alarmed a demigod and the dragonkin was killed. All the information about the case was sealed by the Union Government because it involved a demigod!" Lin Huang knew how rare the Undying Baby Dragon that he had was. He got the answers to his questions and he kept quiet thereafter as there was really nothing much to speak about with these royal brats. Within an hour, they arrived at Lin Huangs destination. "Alright, Bro Lin Huang, just walk in the direction heading towards the west and you will arrive at the area with the Six-Armed Demons." Li Yanxing said while the rest took rest under a tree. "Dont force yourself if you cannot do it. Yes, a Life Seed monster is important but also remembers that youre just upgrading to iron-level. In fact, you can choose other more powerful Life Seeds when you have upgraded. You still have other choices if youre not able to kill the Six-Armed Demon" Leng Yuexin advised him again. "Yes, I know. Ill get another one if I cannot handle the monster. Although I have no idea what your mission is, all the best to all of you." Lin Huang nodded and smiled at Leng Yuexin. "We hope so too." Leng Yuexin returned the smile. It was the first time Lin Huang saw her smiling. Li Yanxing and the rest did not say anything, they then left with Leng Yuexin. Lin Huang then summoned Bai and left for the west. Bai walked in front of Lin Huang. In this level-4 wild zone, although most of the monsters at the border were iron-level and bronze-level, there could be silver-level and gold-level monsters too. Just like the Crimson Gold-Armored Dragon which was hunting for food at the border of the area, it was unfortunate that it bumped into Li Yanxing. Even with Bai, Lin Huang was not completely safe at the border. Now that Bai was just iron-level rank-3, they could handle those that were on bronze-level rank-1 but not those that were bronze-level rank-2 and rank-3. Lin Huang tried not to use his GrayEagle17 here as this world was different from earth. The sound of a gunshot would not chase monsters away but it would attract them instead. The monsters knew that there was a human behind every gunshot. To most of the monsters, human flesh was much more delicious than the flesh of other monsters. It was a rare delicacy. Lin Huang and Bai took their time and walked slowly. Although the two-kilometer journey to the Six-Armed Demons was not long, they spent an hour before arriving at the much-awaited destination. 71 Six Armed Demon In A Purple Dress The Six-Armed Demon belonged to the undying species. Legend says that the undying were a new species that was born from drinking the water at the Fountain of Youth. They were called the undying not because they could not be killed but they had a long life. In this world, most of the human below transcendent had 360 columns on their Life Wheel and each column of Life Light represented one year of life. Even if all of the gray columns were activated at once, the most one could live was less than 720 years. Even gold-level creatures were not exceptions to this unless they upgraded to a transcendent. Besides humans, most of the monsters below transcendent could not live more than 1,000 years. On the other hand, it was a different story for the undying. If they were not killed, they could easily live up to thousands of years, sometimes 10,000 years. They lived longer than most monsters did. The Union Governments species research institute had captured more than 100 different types of undying creatures for research purposes. They found out that as long as the undying was not triggered by the outside world, it could wander in a room which was less than 10 square meters for a few hundred years. It did not need food or a drop of water to live. It seemed like their purpose of life was to wander aimlessly until their long lives finally came to an end. Six-Armed Demons were alike the other undying. They wandered around the small area in Wangyou Forest all year round. They were like souls that could not rest in peace on the lands. The area where Six-Armed Demons usually gathered had lands that were barren and black. There were no flowers or any plants, only dried rotten wood but the trees were actually dead. That area was obviously distinguishable from the rest of the forest. The area was the undyings hub because their presence there slowly absorbs the lives of things around them. If they remained in the same area for a longer time, plants would stop growing and trees would eventually die. It was 7:30 at night and the sky was dark. Lin Huang hid behind the tree outside the border. Half of his head was showing, he was peeking at the barren land. Within sight, he saw three Six-Armed Demons in red dressed wandering, they seemed to be guarding their territory. Lin Huang chose to wait patiently as it was not a smart move to trigger three of these monsters at the same time. The Six-Armed Demons combat strength was the same as Bais strength. If three of them were to attack him at once, he would die there if he failed to away in time. The three Six-Armed Demons dresses were less than 20 centimeters above the ground. They wandered eerily on the burnt land, slow like a person taking a stroll in the park. Lin Huang was a little scared as it was the first time for him to see a monster like this. It looked so much like the ghost that he saw in the movies when he was young. After waiting for 10 minutes, finally, two of the Six-Armed Demons disappeared. It was coming towards his direction. "Xiao Hei, connect my Life Wheel with Bais!" Lin Huang said to Xiao Hei immediately. Only three columns in his Life Wheel were gray columns, he had to get Bai to kill a monster so that the Life Light in his Life Wheel would be completely full. "Life Wheel has been connected!" After hearing Xiao Heis voice, Lin Huang said softly to Bai, "I will go out later and once the Six-Armed Demon has noticed me, you will kill it that instance. Remember, you have to break the mask on her face!" Lin Huang jumped towards the right side of the tree and waved at the Six-Armed Demon, "Come get me, beauty. Come catch me Hehehe" The Six-Armed Demon immediately began running towards Lin Huang. "What the, why is it moving so fast!" The six crystal jade arms came towards Lin Huang like sharp knives. If he was hit, his body would be sliced into pieces. "Bai, quick!" Lin Huang managed to dodge the collision. At the same time, a golden glow shone in the dark. A crimson gold sharp thorn stabbed between the Six-Armed Demons mouth and nose on its mask, it pierced through the back of its head. The other side of the thorn was connected to Bais back. Ever since Bai used the Flawless Card the last time, his Blood Power turned from red to gold and it was a few times sharper than it used to be. The Six-Armed Demon stood still but there was no blood at all. The mask on its face broke, its body in the red dress and six arms started to disintegrate. Soon, it was left with its black hair on the ground. Seeing that the Six-Armed Demon had died, Lin Huang got up from the ground and patted the soil away from his body. There was something going on with his Life Wheel. The last three gray columns in his Life Wheel were filled with white Life Light. The 360 columns in Lin Huangs Life Wheel were completely filled with white Life Lights! "My Life Lights are finally full! As soon as I kill one more Six-Armed Demon myself, I would complete a Life Light Baptism and obtain a Life Seed to be upgraded to iron-level!" Lin Huang was getting excited. "Lets go, we will search along the border to look for lonely Six-Armed Demons!" Lin Huang said to Bai and left the place. As Lin Huang and Bai walked along the barren area, they did not see any other monsters at all. They walked for five to six kilometers and finally, they saw a couple Six-Armed Demons gathering around. There were more than five of them in a group; there was no way for Lin Huang to attack. A couple of hours later after they were halfway through the burnt area, Lin Huang finally saw two Six-Armed Demons under a dead tree. However, one of them had a different colored dress. Instead of bright red color, it was a pale purple dress. "Could this be a mutated monster?" Lin Huang looked at the Six-Armed Demon in a purple dress for quite some time hesitant to attack it just yet. The Six-Armed Demon in purple dress was staring into space under the tree while the one in the red dress was wandering less than 10 meters behind it, it seemed to be protecting the one in a purple dress. Lin Huang finally came up a risky decision after observing the Six-Armed Demons habits and characteristics, "I dont care, lets kill the one protecting and then the one thats staring into space." They did not have a vocal cord and therefore, they cannot alert their companions when they were in danger. Also, whenever they noticed there was an enemy around, they would move alone and not in a herd. What Lin Huang wanted was to use the gap of time before the mutated Six-Armed Demon could react to kill the one that was protecting the other one. By that, he could avoid fighting the both of them at the same time. Lin Huang whispered to Bai, "Ill distract the one guarding and you must be quick to break its mask. Then use your Blood Power to lock down the one in the purple dress but leave that for me to kill." Lin Huang then went into the forest and waved to the Six-Armed Demon that was guarding. It saw Lin Huang immediately and plunged towards him. At the same time, the one in purple dress turned 180 degrees. It had a strange white mask and a pair of bloody eyes that opened suddenly, staring deadly at Lin Huang. Lin Huang had goosebumps that very moment 72 Transforming Into A Vampire "Oh no!" Being stared at, Lin Huang felt in his bones that something was going to happen. The Six-Armed Demon was mutated and much more dangerous than a vampire. Its ability in that purple dress was definitely no weaker than Bai. What scared Lin Huang was that the other Six-Armed Demon would plunge towards him. By then, it was definitely impossible to escape. These demons moved at the speed of light and if they stood still, they would die. "Bai, kill the one in the front first!" Lin Huang yelled at Bai. He thrust his iron sword forward, his body like an arrow shooting towards the Six-Armed Demon. Lin Huang knew that every second mattered in this battle. He and Bai must kill the Six-Armed Demon in front before the demon in the purple dress attacked them. The Six-Armed Demon shot its six arms like six guns towards Lin Huang. Its arms seemed smooth but they were actually as tough as metal. It was nothing less than an iron-level armor, powerful. Its nails were like sharp knives, they glowed underneath the moonlight. Its six arms could transform into various killing weapons anytime it wanted. The six arms shot at him like lightning. Lin Huang did not retreat but moved even closer. He knew very well that if he did not handle this demon''s six arms, Bai will not be able to kill it with one shot. Lin Huang glanced at that demon in the purple dress which stood behind him. Lin Huang was slightly relieved as it hadn''t moved, yet. Lin Huang quickly started a short distance combat with the Six-Armed Demon. The iron sword in his hand slashed at it again and again. He was weaker than the iron-level rank-3 Six-Armed Demon. Lin Huang would be asking for death if they made a frontal collision and playing defensively was the only strategy that might work. However, the six arms deviated from its original attack plan and began attacking like a tarsal bone maggot. Lin Huangs pupil shrunk, his no trail snow-stepping power had reached its ultimate level. He swung his sword again to defend himself from attacks. "Bai!" Lin Huang cried to Bai. Bai sprang from the forest. It ran fast and a pair of crimson gold wings on top of his back emerged, turning into a spear. It shot the mask of the Six-Armed Demon. Just then, a ghostlike purple shadow appeared beside Lin Huang, a white glow was moving towards Lin Huangs heart silently. "F*ck!" Lin Huang was sweating, he did not expect the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress to sneakily dodge his attack. Lin Huang could not avoid it. "Warning! You are being attacked. Within 0.3 seconds, your death rate would be 100%. An emergency plan is automatically activated!" "Looking for available cards to solve the crisis Looking for emergency plan You can use your Provisional Transformation Card to transform yourself into a vampire to block the current attack." "Would you like to utilize your Provisional Transformation Card?" Suddenly, Xiao Heis notifications popped out in his mind. When he heard the last sentence, he yelled "Yes!" Just when he said that Lin Huang felt like the world was slowing down and his body was transforming at a rapid pace. He could not see what happened to his appearance, but he could feel that his body was different. A warm force was rising in his heart, there was a strange feeling on his back. He felt something springing out from his back. All at once, the world appeared red in his eyes. In the bloody world, he saw what exactly happened in the battle that he was in. Bais Blood Power wings were turned into a spear and almost priced through the Six-Armed Demons mask while the demon in purple dress was about to attack him from a meter away. The other side of Bais Blood Power wings turned into another spear and attempted to attack the demon in the purple dress but it was blocked by its five arms. An arm of the Six-Armed Demon in purple dress transformed into a long needle that looked like a poisonous scorpion and it was less than three centimeters from Lin Huangs chest "Block this!" Lin Huang had that thought immediately. His heart was racing, he felt his back turn warm. Within seconds, a pair of red gold wings shielded his chest and collided with the sharp arm. Bai, on the other hand, used his wings as a spear and pierced through the Six-Armed Demons mask. After killing the first demon, Bai continued to slash the mask of the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. Lin Huang did not care if the transformation to kill the Six-Armed Demon in purple dress may have prevented him from upgrading to iron-level. His Blood Power wings combined with Bais attack turned them into two crimson gold swords. The swords pierced through the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. It did not panic at all. Its three arms on the left held Bai''s left Blood Power wing while the remaining three arms were defending against the attacks. Lin Huang retreated when the attack did not work because short distance combat was not his strongest trait. However, the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress seemed to know Lin Huangs intention. Its ghostly body followed him. Its six arms were turned into sharp knives and attacked Lin Huang like thunderstorms, again and again. Thankfully, Lin Huangs crimson gold Blood Power wings managed to block all the attacks. Noticing that its attacks were redundant, the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress was forced to retreat. Bai did not look anywhere else but stared deadly at the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. It stared back but upon realizing that it might lose the battle, it vanished. "What, youre running away?! You have wasted my Transformation Card and now youre running away? I will not let that happen!" Lin Huang shouted and chased after the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. Bai followed behind him. 73 Leveling Up To Iron-Level After he was transformed into a vampire, Lin Huangs body was a complete copy of Bais characteristics. His movements were as fast as Bai, they were chasing after the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress but it was still faster than they were. Initially, when the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress gave up on attacking Lin Huang, it was already out of the attack zone of his Blood Power. Now that the both of them were chasing it, the distance was getting farther. Lin Huang could not get over the fact that the demon was getting away. He was almost killed by the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress and he was forced to use his provisional transformation card. If he did not kill this Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress, he would never forgive himself. Furious, he was utilizing his Spectral Snowsteps without even realizing. His speed was a few times faster and soon, he was near the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. "Wait, can I still use my own skills while in transformation mode?!" Lin Huang thought he could not use his own skills after he was transformed. His eyes brightened up, "That means I can also use my Great Sword Scripture!" He caught up to the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress soon and turned his right Blood Power wing into a sword and swung at it. It was the 19th style in the Great Sword Scripture. The red gold sword was like an arrow plunging towards the back of the demons head under the moonlight. The demon had senses in its back and tried to dodge Lin Huang''s attack. Just when it attempted to escape, it realized that one of its arms on its left was tied by a crimson gold object. Lin Huang had secretly turned his left Blood Power wing into a long rattan to tie one of its arms up while he attacked earlier. The demon turned his head 180 degrees and stared a deadly stare at Lin Huang with its bloody eyes under the pale mask. It then plunged towards Lin Huang. Just when Lin Huang was plunging forward, it lunged at him as well. Their distance was so close. Its six arms were turned into six different weapons and attacked Lin Huang like a thunderstorm. If Lin Huang was in his regular combat mode, he would definitely die under these attacks. However, now that he was transformed into a vampire that was the same with Bai, a mutated vampire, his combat level was also on iron-level rank-3, which was the same with this Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. He was not afraid at all, his Blood Power wings were turned into a pair of sharp knives and collided with the demons arms. Seeing that Bai was getting closer to Lin Huang, the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress seemed to give its all so that it could kill Lin Huang before Bai arrived. It then used its ultimate skill, the Thousand-Handed Soul-Reaper at Lin Huang. Its six arms were so fast that they seemed to turn into more than 10,000 arms attacking him. Lin Huang stopped attacking and started defending immediately and blocked all the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dresss attacks. Within seconds, they collided more than 100 times. Bai finally arrived, his Blood Power wings were extended when he was 10 meters away and attacked towards the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress. It knew that it could not fight the both of them, it attempted to escape again. Just when the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress turned around, a crimson gold blade shone. It pierced through the back of its head and broke its mask. The Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress was motionless, its mask was breaking down and its body was fading away fast. Withdrawing his crimson gold blade, Lin Huang smirked, "Try to escape from me?! I''ve been defensive not because I couldnt kill you, but I was familiarizing the use of these Blood Power wings so that I could use my Great Sword Scripture accurately." Just when Lin Huang was done talking, a white glow flowed out of the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress head that was covered by its mask. Lin Huang was completely covered in the glow. "You are experiencing a Life Light Baptism, abort from transformation by force!" Xiao Heis voice was heard and before Lin Huang could respond, he was withdrawn from his vampire transformation and turned into a human again. His body was showered in the white glow, there were changes to his Life Wheel. His Life Wheel that was made of gray stone was changing to a black metal one. Lin Huang knew that his Life Wheel was transforming into an iron-level Life Wheel. After it was turned into a black metal material, it shrunk into 1/3 of its original size and three circles of white columns were created. Each circle was the same with the Life Light columns, having 360 columns in each circle. However, it was not Life Light columns, but Life Power columns. If the inner circle was filled with Life Power, that would mean iron-level rank-1, the second circle would be iron-level rank-2 and the third circle would be iron-level rank-3. When all 1080 Life Power columns were filled, another round of Life Light Baptism would take place and he would be leveled-up to bronze-level. Lin Huang had researched about this countless times on the Heart Network. When the transformation of Life Wheel was done, the Life Light Baptism would end as well. Just when the Life Light Baptism was almost over, a black-gray colored bead that was the size of a thumb came out of the Six-Armed Demons body and went into Lin Huangs body. It absorbed into his new iron-level Life Wheel. Lin Huang looked into his Life Wheel. Among the Life Wheel that was covered in a white glow and more than 10 cards, there was an additional black-gray colored bead in it. "Life Seed has been detected, do you want to turn it into a card?" Xiao Hei said. "I can turn the Life Seed into a card?!" Lin Huang asked. "You can directly turn it into a card without needing to add any materials." "If I turn it into a card and you escape from my body, does that mean that my Life Seed gifts would be gone?" Lin Huang was obviously concerned. "No, Life Seeds are not really cards but they''re an object instead. If I were to escape from your body, the Life Seed would turn back into its regular form." Lin Huang was relieved after Xiao Heis explanation, "Alright, turn it into a card!" Soon, Xiao Hei spoke again. "It has been done. A new card is added, Life Seed Card!" Lin Huang immediately looked at the Life Seed Card that he had just obtained. There was a fluffy gray-black ball on top of the card. He then turned the card around to read the detailed description. "Life Seed Card" "Life Seed Name: Sly Hands" "Rarity: Rare" "Type: Synthetic" "Talent Effect 1: Finger agility +20% (Beginner)" "Talent Effect 2: Attack speed of both arms +20% (Beginner)" "Talent Effect 3: Flexibility of both arms +20% (Beginner)" "Level-up Effect: With every upgrade, the three gifted effects would gain an additional 20% each" "Card Remarks: Passable" Lin Huang was shocked to see the gift card. He remembered clearly that the Sly Hands Life Seed would give an addition 10% only for beginner stage and each upgrade would also be an additional 10%. But now he was given a 20%. He thought about it and figured probably the Six-Armed Demon in the purple dress that he killed had a higher rarity. Therefore, the 20% talent effect was nothing out of the ordinary. However, he was still surprised at what he got. "Beginner would get an additional 20% and if I am upgraded to gold-level, I would gain an additional 80% which means my speed would be twice as fast. This talent effect isnt bad at all!" Lin Huang had finally achieved his mission to be leveled-up to iron-level. It was a bonus that he obtained a better Life Seed! He let out a gentle sigh, "I am finally an iron-level!" Thinking of his characteristic changes, he tapped open his exclusive card to take a good look. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat strength: Iron-level rank-1" "Life Seed: Sly Hands (Rare) "Combat Skill 1: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 2: Spectral Snowsteps (Body Movement)" "Monster Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Monster Skill 2: Robust (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 3: Powerful Strength (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 4: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 5: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 2" "Remark: Wow, you have finally been leveled-up to iron-level." "Finally, my combat strength is no longer none like it used to be" Lin Huang took a closer look, "Theres Life Seed added, combat skills and monster skills were separated. Now I can summon two monsters at once!" He had got used to ignoring Xiao Heis mean remarks. In conclusion, the journey into Wangyou Forest exceeded his expectation. Not only he was leveled-up to iron-level, the gift of the addition of his Life Seed was a pleasant surprise. Besides, he had also obtained an epic dragonkin summon card. "Now Im wondering when Miss Leng and the rest will complete their mission. I shall try my best to fill up the Life Power in my iron-level Life Wheel in the next few days!" 74 Glorious Return Lin Huang left the Six-Armed Demons territory immediately after he leveled-up to iron-level. Although he obtained a card piece for killing the Six-Armed Demon in purple dress earlier, he could not bear the sight of that monster. If he were to summon the monster on the street, people would be terrified. After a fairly decent distance from the Six-Armed Demons territory, Lin Huang found an empty space in the forest and summoned the Undying Baby Dragon. It was a three-meter-long baby dragon and was pitch black. Its wings were about five meters wide when they were fully spread and there were horns on its head that were about 10 centimeters long. Its face was flat and round, looking nothing like the ferocious monster it was from the dragon family, more like an ugly monster that was quite adorable. It rubbed its head against Lin Huang when it saw him, almost causing Lin Huang to fall from its playful act. "I did not expect you to have such great strength." Lin Huang smiled, shaking his head. He patted the baby dragons head, "Since youre black, I''ll name you Charcoal." "With one more upgrade, Charcoals rarity would be upgraded from Epic to Legendary. The concentration of dragon blood in its body would also be upgraded from beginner to intermediate." He then said, "Xiao Hei, I would like to use an Advance Card on Charcoal." "You do not have enough Advance Cards." "How is that possible? I remember that I have one Advance Card." Lin Huang knew he had kept an Advance Card and had been waiting for the perfect time to utilize it. "To upgrade Normal Cards to Rare Cards, one Advance Card would suffice but from a Rare Card to an Epic Card, you require two Advance Cards. From an Epic Card to a Legendary Card, you would need three advance cards and from a Legendary Card to a Mythical Card, you would need five Advanced Cards. Lastly, to upgrade Mythical Cards to Godlike Cards, you would need 10 Advance Cards!" Xiao Hei finally explained the rules of upgrading. Lin Huang was bummed. He only had one Advance Card at the moment and that card not enough, not even for Bai and the Sand Monster. He would be rewarded one Advance Card if he completed the mission and from then, he would still only have two Advance Cards! "Even if you have accumulated enough Advance Cards, I dont suggest you upgrade your Undying Baby Dragon." Xiao Hei seemed to know what Lin Huang was thinking about. "Why?" Lin Huang asked, confused. "You do not meet the required qualification. The Monster Cards that you''re able to master at the moment are limited to cards that are Epic and below. Monster cards that are Epic and above are temporarily sealed and can only be unsealed when you are a transcendent." Hearing Xiao Heis explanation, Lin Huang had to give up on his wishes of upgrading Charcoal. In reality, Lin Huang knew very well that even if Charcoal was not upgraded, its ability combined with Bai was sufficient for him to handle the risks at the borders of Wangyou Forest. If Charcoal was not restricted by Lin Huangs combat level, such dragonkin types were usually stronger than a common transcendent at birth. Bai, on the other hand, was a mutated vampire at bronze-level rank-3 since the very beginning. Since Lin Huang was leveled-up to iron-level, Bai and Charcoals combat strength was automatically upgraded to bronze-level rank-1. Lin Huang was fearless for what danger may lurk the border of Wangyou Forest because he felt safe with Bai and Charcoal. He trusted their strengths. In the two days since he leveled-up to iron-level, Lin Huang has killed plenty of iron-level monsters with Bai and Charcoal''s help. When the first 360 columns in the first layer of his Life Power circle for his Life Wheel was almost full, he got Xiao Hei to disconnect his Life Wheel. He did that because he was concerned that Li Yanxing and the rest would figure out what he was able to do. After all, he was in Wangyou Forest to level to iron-level. If they found out that he managed to level-up from an ordinary person to iron-level rank-3, Li Yanxing and the rest would know that he had the ability to accumulate Life Power quickly. Under normal circumstances, earning Life Power required the practice of Life Skill. By absorbing Life Crystals using Life Skill or the Life Light in Life Crystals and to convert them into Life Power. There were different grades of Life Skill depending on the conversion rate of Life Power. A Life Power conversion rate between 30% to 40% would be considered as a Beginner Life Skill. A Life Power conversion rate between 40% to 50% would be considered as an Intermediate Life Skill. A Life Power conversion rate between 50% to 60% would be considered as an Expert Life Skill. A Life Power conversion rate between 60% to 70% would be considered as the Ultimate Life Skill. A Life Power conversion rate that surpassed 70% would be considered as Holy Life Skill. Lin Huang had never heard about any that surpassed 80%. An iron-levels Life Power was 10 times concentrated than Life Power. A hundred years worth of Life Crystal could only fill 10 columns of Life Power even though the conversion rate was 100%. Aside from the Ultimate and Holy Life Skill, most of the Life Skills had a conversion rate of 30% to 60%. That said, a Life Crystal that was worth a hundred years could only fill three to six columns of Life Power. However, even with sufficient Life Crystals, the level-up from iron-level rank-1 to iron-level rank-2 could not be done within a couple of days as it would take a large amount of time for Life Skill to convert Life Light into Life Power. With sufficient Life Crystals, it would usually take around two hours to convert one Life Power. Time spent on eating and sleeping aside, it would be good if a person could convert seven or eight Life Power a day. 360 columns of Life Power would take at least more than a month for the conversion to complete itself. Of course, some people with unique body physiques would have a faster conversion rate which would result in a shorter conversion time. As for Lin Huang, the cycle was shorter. Whenever Bai and Charcoal killed monsters, they would absorb Life Light which would be converted into Life Power immediately and sent to Lin Huangs Life Wheel. As long as Bai and Charcoal killed sufficient monsters, Lin Huang could easily level up to iron-level rank-3 without needing to do anything. Considering that he would need to be with Li Yanxing and the rest during the return trip, Lin Huang had to maintain his level at iron-level rank-1 so that they wouldn''t find out. After disconnecting his Life Wheel, Lin Huang brought Charcoal and Bai to the borders of the forest to fight bronze-level monsters. Since Lin Huang was leveled-up to iron-level, he could use his Life Power and had more combat skills now. Aside from the Blood Power wings, he had a couple of weapon rings on his fingers. A black armor, a sword, and a BlackEagle33 gun. The BlackEagle33 gun was especially useful - it can morph between a rifle and a pistol. It was no less powerful than a bronze equipment. It could easily kill a bronze-level monster when it was in the form of a rifle. He used to be very careful wherever he was because of abrupt monster attacks but now, he feared nothing in the forests. He had only one goal at the border of Wangyou Forest - accumulate as many card pieces as he could. 75 Leng Yuexin is Missing! At the border of Wangyou Forest, a three-meter-long dragon attacked a group of bronze-level Viridian Wolves. A smirking young man who looked to be 15 or 16 rode on the back of the Dragon. He looked at the pack of Viridian Wolves that was running for their lives, seemingly unable to defend themselves in any way. Running on the ground was a young man with a pair of crimson wings in the shape of blades chasing after the wolves as well. The dragon in the air was the Undying Baby Dragon, Charcoal that Lin Huang had just obtained not too long ago. It was Lin Huang who was riding on the back of the dragon and the young man on the ground was his partner, Bai. They were chasing after this group of Viridian Wolves as Lin Huang wanted a cool ride. Their bodies were muscular and they had fantastic muscles. Such monsters were in high demand. Within 20 minutes, more than 30 Viridian Wolves were killed by Bai and Charcoal. Lin Huang combined the 30 card pieces into a complete Monster Card and took a look at it. ?"Monster Card" "Rarity: Normal" "Monster Name: Viridian Wolf" "Type of Monster: Mutated monster" "Combat Level: Bronze-level 1 Star" "Skill 1: Robust (Intermediate)" "Skill 2: Blood Hunt (Beginner)" "Summoning Limit: Activated" "Card Remarks: Useless" "Blood hunt? This seems like a tracking skill." Lin Huangs eyes lit up, he then read the skill description. "Blood hunt (Beginner): After the skill is activated, the monster will obtain an enhanced ability to smell, allowing it to differentiate different odors within a 10-kilometer range. The monster will be extra sensitive to blood. In the presence of blood, the range of its ability would be enhanced and cover a distance of up to 30 kilometers." "Xiao Hei, extract card skill!" Lin Huang was excited about the extraction. A single monster could only go through one extraction. If he extracted Robust,? his existing skill would be upgraded and if he extracted Blood Hunt, he would obtain a tracking skill. He wanted either one of those skills. "Skill extraction activated Randomly selecting one skill Random selection completed Congratulations, you have obtained - Blood Hunt (Beginner)." "Cool, I finally got a tracking skill!" Lin Huang knew that after hunting monsters in the wild for such a long time that it would help him in battle. It would also help him in surviving in the wild in the future. Lin Huang kept the card and brought Charcoal and Bai to his next destination. Time passed and Lin Huang had been in Wangyou Forest for seven days but had yet to receive a message from Leng Yuexin. If he did not know her himself, he would think that Li Yanxing and the rest ditched him here on purpose. Fortunately, Lin Huang was different from who he was a few days ago. With Bai and Charcoal, he was unstoppable. Within the few days since he leveled-up to iron-level, he got busy killing various monsters at the border of Wangyou Forest. Within five days, he had already managed to collect more than 3,000 bronze-level card pieces and combined three Monster Cards. He even obtained a complete Rare Monster Card from killing a monster. During this time, he used three Double Cards during crucial times and obtained double rewards from 10 cross-ranking kills, giving him 20 Function Cards. The only bummer was that the Rare Monster Card only dropped after he finished all his Double Cards. It was the seventh day Lin Huang had stayed in the forest. Seeing that the sun was setting, he set up a tent in an empty plot. After that, he started a fire nearby and took out the meat slices that he prepared a few days back for a barbecue. He sat next to the fire with his legs crossed and he watched as the meat slices cooked on the grill as he relaxed with a drink in his hand. He had just bought the grill a few days back. Ever since he saw Fattys complete set of kitchen tools, Lin Huang began thinking about taking good care of himself, even in the wild. It was ridiculous if he had to survive on snacks every single day so he got himself simple kitchen equipment and the grill was one of them. The sky was getting dark as the meat slices on the grill turned a golden brown, smelling incredible. While he flipped the meat slices over on the other side on the grill, Lin Huang said to Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, please do an inventory of all the cards I have now." "You have Function Card x25, Concrete Cards - Advance Card x3, Provisional Transformation Card x5, Mission Card x3, Treasure Card x3, Life Power Storage Card x2, Prop Card x3, Limitless Card x1, Flawless Card x2, Healing Card x3." "Monster Card x9 - Charcoal (Epic), Bai (Rare), Tyrant (Rare), Alexandrian Eagle (Rare), Ox Demon, Lion-Headed Troll, Viridian Wolf, Demonic One-Eyed Ape, Spectre" "Card pieces - Iron-level pieces x1027, Bronze-level pieces x3051" "Take a look at my Exclusive Card." Lin Huang instructed. His Exclusive Card popped up immediately. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: Iron-level rank-1" "Life Seed: Sly Hands (Rare) "Combat Skill 1: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 2: Spectral Snowsteps (Body Movement)" "Monster Skill 1: Blood Power (Level-2)" "Monster Skill 2: Robust (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 3: Immense Strength (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 4: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 5: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 6: Blood Hunt (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 7: Boundless Vision (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 8: Third Eye (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 9: Supreme Breath (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 2" "Remark: Still wandering in iron-level?" The additional four skills were extracted within these few days. Blood Hunt was obtained from the Viridian Wolves, Boundless Vision was obtained from the Alexandrian Eagle, Third Eye from the Demonic One-Eyed Ape and Supreme Breath from Spectre. Lin Huang was familiar with the new skills but he did not use them often. He kept his Exclusive Card and was ready to gobble up the meat slices. Just when he was enjoying the food, a warning came from Xiao Hei. "Warning: Theres a situation, the content of your Mission Card has been changed!" "New Mission: Enter deep into Wangyou Forest to look for Leng Yuexin who''s currently missing. Return her back to Carefree City! Mission time limit: 20 days." "Mission Completion Reward: Prop Card (Relic Level) x1, Advance Card x1" "Punishment If Mission Is Incomplete: Two Monster Cards will be randomly removed." 77 Tracking Footsteps It was a peaceful morning in the Wangyou Forest. The sun was shining through to the leaves on the ground and the drops of morning dew could be seen on the leaves, colorful from the refraction of light. Whiffs of a fresh green fragrance were sent by the wind into Lin Huangs tent. He was awake early that day and he had a good night sleep all through the night. Although he had Leng Yuexins news on his mind, he did not worry about it as that would have been unnecessary. He had breakfast and departed after dismantling his tent and packed it away. He chose Bai and the Viridian Wolf as his companions this time. If he summoned Charcoal, monsters that were below silver-level would run away from him but gold-level monsters might consider it a challenge. Moreover, there was a possibility that there was a transcendent monster in the forest. Lin Huang was mistaken as gods descendant the last time and that had attracted a transcendent monster. If Charcoal, his dragonkin monster was discovered by the transcendent, he could not imagine what kind of trouble that would bring him. Moreover, flying above the Wangyou Forest would make him an easy target for an attack by powerful monsters as there would be no trees around. Although it would have been a different story with the Viridian Wolf. Its keen nose gave it a useful advantage against any lurking dangers as it could detect enemies from a distance. With its speed, the 300 kilometers to the coordinates where Leng Yuexin was last seen would only take the beast a mere two hours run. Lin Huang and Bai rode on the back of Viridian Wolf. They made stops in between to rest up so in case a monster attacked them midway, they''d all still have the energy to fight even after the long journey. Whenever the Viridian Wolf caught the scent of a nearby strong monster, it would deviate to another route and continue. When it was close to noon, they finally arrived at the first coordinate where Leng Yuexin was last seen. Lin Huang then activated Blood Hunt and caught the scent of Leng Yuexin and Li Yanxing. He followed the odor and arrived in front of a giant rock. It was a black rock that was 10 meters high, and a small part of it was buried in the ground while the top was showing. The smell was strongest near the giant rock so Lin Huang was sure that they made a stop at the giant rock or at least touched it as they traveled. He walked around the rock but he could not find anything. However, it was absurd for such a huge rock to be lying there in the middle of Wangyou Forest. If it was a meteorite, there should have been craters around it, but the terrain was flat and undisturbed. With a few doubts in mind, Lin Huang browsed through the Heart Network for anything that mentioned a giant rock in the forest. Surprisingly, there was quite a lot of information about it and it was once a hot topic in Division7. How the topic of this black giant rock became popular was peculiar as it all started when many claimed that no one could move the rock. People saw the thread on the network and tried to move the rock but even a Gold Hunter who was among the top 10 on the leaderboard tried his best to no avail. The rock remained firmly planted in its position. That was why it became one of the hot topics for quite some time in Division7 as many were guessing the origins of the rock itself. Many of them thought it was a meteorite while others thought it was moved there by a transcendent out of boredom. There were even some that said it was a seal for the back luck of the city buried beneath it... After browsing through the many speculated theories of the topic, he realized that it was totally unrelated to the transcendent monster. He turned off the network and looked around the place again. He could not find anything and left. 10 minutes later, Lin Huang and Bai found the second spot where Leng Yuexin was last seen. He activated Blood Hunt again and found the exact location where Leng Yuexin and the rest had been. It was scorched ground - dead earth with cracks that looked like spiderwebs that spread as far as 10 kilometers. The burnt soil bulged around the cracks, seemingly cracking from the inside out. Lin Huang found a crack that was as wide as a palm and tossed a stone in to find out how deep it was. He did not hear any sound to confirm if the stone had touched the ground so he was not able to tell how deep it was. He browsed the Heart Network again but there was nothing about it. "It seems like these cracks just appeared recently" Lin Huang took a couple of photos of the cracks, looked around the area and left. Within half an hour, he found the third and fourth coordinates where Leng Yuexin and the rest were last seen and both had the similar strange cracks like the second location. Aside from that, he did not discover anything else. He took some photos once again and left. This time, he headed to the last location Leng Yuexin was seen at before she went missing. Within 20 minutes, the Viridian Wolf brought Lin Huang and Bai to the final destination. They got off the Viridian Wolfs back and Lin Huang activated Blood Hunt again. Following the scent he was familiar with, he found the exact coordinates where Leng Yuexin had last been. The Mission Card showed that the coordinates were 300 kilometers to the north and Lin Huang found the location easily. It was a giant waterfall with a giant pool beneath the waterfall. Leng Yuexin and Li Yanxings scent completely disappeared around the waterfall. "There must be something here. Perhaps theres a cave behind this waterfall?" Lin Huang thought and frowned as he looked around the waterfall but there did not seem to be anything unusual. He then recalled the Viridian Wolf and summoned the Specter. As it was a spirit, it was similar like the crows he saw previously, lacking a physical form so it was able to pass through objects. "Specter, see whats behind the waterfall," Lin Huang instructed the Specter. The black phantom floated on top of the lake and disappeared into the waterfall. Soon, it came out from the waterfall. "Is there a cave or cavern that connects to another location?" Lin Huang asked. The Specter shook its head. "No cave?" Lin Huang was skeptical. "It doesnt look like there''s anything else nearby" Lin Huang then looked at the quiet pool and thought, "Could it be under this pool?" "Specter, go underwater to see if theres an underground cave beneath the pool!" Lin Huang gave his instruction immediately. The Specter dived into the water without making a single ripple on the surface. Lin Huang sat by the pool and anxiously waited for the results. If there was no clue under the pool, he would have no idea how he would find Leng Yuexin at all. It took more than half an hour this time. If it was not for Xiao Hei who would notify him if the Specter was dead, he would have thought that it had been killed by an underwater beast. 40 minutes in, the Specter finally emerged from the pool. "Is there an underwater cave?" Lin Huang asked immediately. The Specter nodded. "Thats it!" Lin Huang concluded that Leng Yuexin and the rest had dove down under the pool and prepared himself for the descent. 78 Encountering A Transcendent Monster Again! Looking at the quiet pool before him, Lin Huang frowned. Since the Specter needed more than 40 minutes to get to the bottom of the pool, that meant the pool was deep. Although he got a diving suit from Xue Jie during the Reserve Hunter assessment, he was not sure if he could dive that deep even with the suit. Furthermore, there was no way for him to breathe underwater. With his iron-level rank-1 body, the air pressure at such great depths could be an issue for him. After much thought, Lin Huang came up with a plan. He would use a Provisional Transformation Card to transform himself into the Specter. As long as he was in spirit form, he could pass through things and even dive deep into the water without a worry. "I still have five Provisional Transformation Cards, each card will allow me the ability to transform for an entire day. Even if this takes more than a day, the most I''d use up would only be two cards," he thought. After figuring out how many Provisional Transformation cards he needed, he took out one of them. "Transform into the Specter," Lin Huang confirmed the monster that he was transforming into and crushed the card. After the card was crushed, it turned into a white glow that enveloped his body. Soon there were changes to his body. Within seconds, he became grayish black, translucent cloud. He looked exactly the same as the Specter. He recalled Bai and instructed the Specter, "Lead the way, I''ll follow you into the water." the Specter floated slowly to the middle of the pool and dove in the water. Lin Huang hesitated for a moment, but then followed suit. Although he knew that the form he was currently transformed into would not be affected by water, it was still uncomfortable for him. After successfully diving into the water, Lin Huang did not feel any pressure at all. He could only sense that the temperature around him was dropping. As he followed the Specter into the pool, there were no obstacles before them. It felt the same as when he was floating into the air. He also realized that in this form, breathing was unnecessary and he had no heartbeat. As he dove deeper, he began getting the hang of his new body. More than 10 minutes later, Lin Huang arrived at the bottom of the pool with the guidance of the Specter. He noticed that the size of the pool was much bigger than the one he saw from above. the Specter then pointed in a direction and led the way for Lin Huang. Following the Specter, Lin Huang saw a slope towards an underground cave after about six minutes. Undercurrents were flowing into the cave. "Lets take a look." Lin Huang instructed the Specter. It dived into the cave and Lin Huang followed. The underground cave was long and narrow. Lin Huang followed the Specter for almost half an hour before they arrived at the other side of the cave. Coming out on the other side, he realized that they were at an underground river. He got out at the water and into an underground world. There was dry land next to the river with countless stalactites above, hanging almost 10 meters from the ground. There were so many caves around the place and Lin Huang had no idea which way he should go. Lin Huang got out of the water. He then recalled the Specter and summoned Bai. Bai could attack at the longest distance and he was the second strongest among Lin Huangs monsters right after Charcoal. Moreover, his size was perfect for the mission. Although he knew that the river water had washed away most of the scent for Leng Yuexin and the rest, Lin Huang decided to activate anyway. He wanted to see if he could find even the slightest clue with it, which was better than nothing. Lin Huang did not catch their scent after was activated, but he caught a whiff on the intense iron-like scent of blood in the air. Aside from blood, he caught the scent of an unfamiliar odor that was similar to a plant but was very unpleasant. Although his expression could not be seen as he was transformed into the Specter, Lin Huang was frowning. The pungent smell made him uncomfortable. He hesitated for a while and decided to look for the source of the bloody smell to get to the bottom of the mystery. That was the one and only clue that might lead him to Leng Yuexin. "Here" Lin Huang pointed towards the direction of the smell. Bai nodded and led the way while Lin Huang followed behind him. In the complicated underground cave, Lin Huang and Bai made many turns as they followed the scent. Almost an hour later, they finally arrived near their destination. "Slow down, be careful," Lin Huang said to Bai. Bai then slowed down after he heard Lin Huangs instructions. 10 minutes later, he saw a light after a turning. He peered around at the light source. It was a massive cave that was nearly 100 meters high. In the middle of the cave, there was a light blue semi-transparent monster that floated in the air. The light was coming from the monsters body. This monster looked like a deep-sea jellyfish from Earth. To be exact, it was more like a deformed deep-sea jellyfish. Not only was it many times bigger, there were countless eyeballs of different color on its body. Some were closed while some were opened. Those that were closed were filled with spots of various colors. Its tentacles were swaying in the air like the flowing dress of a lady during the summer festival. Lin Huang recognized it as the transcendent monster immediately as the aura coming off the monster was even stronger than the black python that he encountered earlier. The unpleasant scent that he caught from Blood Hunt was coming from this monster together with the smell of blood. Lin Huang then activated Boundless Vision and looked around the transcendent monster. Aside from blood on the ground, he did not see Leng Yuexin and the rest. "Could they have been eaten by the monster?" Just when Lin Huang was thinking, the transcendent monster seemed to sense a disturbance. Its light blue tentacles darted towards the cave entrance where Lin Huang was located at the speed of light. Lin Huang recalled Bai immediately and flattened himself against the wall. The light blue tentacles seemed to detect Lin Huang even though he went through the cave walls. It looked around the cave and retracted its tentacles. Since it did not find anything at all, the transcendent monster thought it was being too sensitive to its surroundings. Lin Huang was drenched in cold sweat. If he was a second too late, he would have been crushed to death by the monster. The attack of transcendent monsters worked on spirit-type monsters. He did not dare look in the monsters direction anymore. "Leng Yuexin and the rest should still be alive, if they were dead, Xiao Hei would definitely notify me that I failed the mission. The blood on the ground could possibly be theirs as they might have been hurt as they entered the underwater cavern. There were only two possibilities, they might be hidden by the monster somewhere else or they may have already escaped" he thought. "But if they''ve managed to escape, the description on the mission card would not ask me to look for Leng Yuexin and bring her back to Carefree City. The description was clear - Leng Yuexin was in some kind of trouble, so the first possibility was more likely. However, theres another possibility where they may have managed to escape the battle but were badly injured so they were unable to leave Wangyou Forest" Lin Huang analyzed the situation and came up with the two most likely scenarios. 79 Li Yanxing’s True Colors In the massive underground cave, a light blue deep-sea transcendent monster floated in the air. Its body occupied a third the space within the cave and its long tentacles swayed mid-air, looking relaxed, waving gently to no apparent breeze. The blue light emited from its body lit up the entire cave. Behind the wall, at a corner of the cave, Lin Huang was hiding in his spectral form, planning his next move. "Now, the only clue I have is the blood on the ground. Although I cant confirm if it belongs to Leng Yuexin and the rest, there are no other options left," Lin Huang thought to himself before investigating the only clue he had. He passed through several layers of granite through the wall to a corridor. He then activated Blood Hunt to look for any traces of the scent of blood that remained in the air. Before this investigation, he was worried that he would not get any results at all as hunters would usually take care of their wounds whenever they were injured to prevent monsters from tracking them down. Many monsters were sensitive to the smell of blood. If Leng Yuexin and the rest had already taken care of their wounds, then the scent should have been weak. However, Lin Huang was lucky as he managed to catch a whiff of the remaining scent of blood in the air. The scent was far from where the transcendent monster was at. Lin Huang was relieved when he found out and headed towards the direction immediately. Along the way, he noticed that there were bloodstains on the ground. It seemed like the person was clumsy when they ran, not having enough time to cover up their trails. Following the scent, Lin Huang walked along the corridors for more than an hour. He then found a dead body. The dead body was leaning on the wall of the corridor, completely burnt to a crisp. Lin Huang recognized that the corpse as the young man in the hat that was with Leng Yuexin. From his dead body, it seemed like he was burned with a hot flame but Lin Huang could not detect any burnt odor. The smell coming from the corpse was the pungent, unpleasant smell of poison. There was a wound on his waist which seemed like he was slashed with something sharp. "There''s a high possibility that the wound was caused by the transcendent monsters tentacles which released poison powerful enough to burn him to a crisp. If Leng Yuexin and the rest were injured, they may be poisoned in a similar way..." he thought. Seeing the dead body, Lin Huang knew that if Leng Yuexin was poisoned, she would not have long to live. He had to find her as soon as possible or his mission would fail once she was dead. Time passed quickly. Half an hour later, Lin Huang finally found Leng Yuexin lying by the underground river. He panicked when he saw her but since there was no notification from Xiao Hei, he was relieved as that meant Leng Yuexin was still alive. Lin Huang then walked to the riverside and saw Leng Yuexins face. Her face and most of the skin on her hands were black. Only half of her fingers remained unharmed. She was unconscious when Lin Huang approached her. If she remained in this condition, she would die very soon. "She made it to the underground river. As long as she followed the river against the flow, she would have been able to make it to the entrance. It shouldnt have been a problem for her to swim her way out of this place," Lin Huang concluded. However, Lin Huang did not see Li Yanxing and the rest. He guessed that they were either eaten by the monster or they had escaped. "Xiao Hei, can my Healing Card act as the antidote to this poison?" Lin Huang looked at the cards that he had and hoped the Healing Card might help. "The Healing Card can cure all diseases, including poison victims," Xiao Hei replied. "Thats great, use one Healing Card on her," he instructed. Although it was a waste that Lin Huang had to use his card on her, he had to. If he did not do that, he would lose two Monster Cards. "Are you sure you want to use your Healing Card on somebody else?" "Confirmed!" Lin Huang nodded. "Please identify the user." "Leng Yuexin," Lin Huang pointed at Leng Yuexin. "One Healing Card has been used, healing in progress" As Xiao Heis notification popped up, a white glow shot out of Lin Huang into Leng Yuexins body. Soon, there was a dim white glow enveloping her body. Lin Huang stood aside and mumbled to himself, "It wasn''t easy to find you here and now I''ve to use my Healing Card on you. You dont need to repay me but I would appreciate it if you bring me back to Carefree City and help me complete my mission." Seeing the black fade from Leng Yuexins face, Lin Huang did not want to stay at his present location. He hid behind the wall not far away while he waited for Leng Yuexin to wake up from her knocked-out state. Soon, the poison in Leng Yuexins body was completely cleared and she woke up, dazed from the sights around her. "Eh?" Leng Yuexin opened her eyes and sat up in confusion. She looked at her arms that were not black anymore and looked at her reflection in the water, her face was normal again. "What happened? I thought I was poisoned?" Leng Yuexin frowned, she seemed to be contemplating on ways the poison in her body could have faded on its own. Lin Huang who was hiding was worried. Fortunately, Leng Yuexin did not dwell upon it. She quickly stood up and patted the soil from her body away and ran against the river''s flow. Lin Huang held his breath while he followed behind her, passing through wall after wall. When they were near the entrance, Leng Yuexin suddenly stopped. Lin Huang saw there was a person lying on the ground not far away, and from the attire, it seemed like Li Yanxing. "Brother Li!" Leng Yuexin shouted and ran towards him. Lin Huang frowned as he did not like Li Yanxing. He left the monster''s carcass for him earlier and attempted to kill him. To him, this guy was someone that was always up to no good. However, since Li Yanxing managed to make it here, he was not as heavily poisoned as Leng Yuexin was. As expected, Li Yanxing was still conscious. Seeing Leng Yuexin coming towards him, he shouted to her immediately, "Save me" Although his voice was weak, he still managed to stay awake. "Brother Li, I will carry you out of this place!" Leng Yuexin attempted to carry him. "I dont have much time I need the antidote" Noticing that the poison in Leng Yuexins body had faded, Li Yanxing thought she had the antidote so he asked her for it. "I dont have the antidote, I have no idea how I was cured," Leng Yuexin told him. She did not know how to explain. "Then Help me replace my blood In my current condition, I''d never make it to the ground above" Li Yanxing begged. "Blood replacement" Leng Yuexin hesitated. She did not want Li Yanxing to die here so she agreed to do it. Lin Huang who was watching from a distance was frowning. He knew what a blood replacement was. It meant Li Yanxing would release the poisonous blood in his body and needed somebody else to replace a part of the lost blood. This would usually happen between family and close friends but not others. For Li Yanxing to ask for such favor, he was totally crossing the line. Li Yanxing knew Leng Yuexin very well and knew well that she would not say no, that was why he dared to request such a favor. "Please help me" Li Yanxing said to Leng Yuexin. "Okay," Leng Yuexin nodded. A dagger appeared on her palm and she cut open the artery along his wrist. The black, poisonous blood flowed out fast along with an unpleasant stench. Leng Yuexin then cut open the artery in her wrist and fresh blood spouted out of the wound. She then performed a hand seal and a moment later, her blood was like a thick thread connected to the wound on Li Yanxings wrist. Leng Yuexins blood was being transferred into him and his black blood stopped flowing. "Why would Li Yanxing request something like this? This is just a temporary solution, the poison in his body would only be diluted but not completely cleared. Even if he manages to get out of this cave, he would only live for another couple of hours. Theres no way that he would be able to get to Carefree City in time, unless" Lin Huang knew the reason for the blood replacement. "Unless he cleared out all the poisonous blood in his body but... That would mean he would need all the blood of another person in exchange" He sensed that something was wrong. As time passed, Leng Yuexin started to look pale, she had replaced a third of her blood to Li Yanxing. "Brother Li, I need to stop now." "Okay, thats enough," Li Yanxing nodded. Just as Leng Yuexin was going to perform the hand seal to disconnect the blood transfer, Li Yanxing glared straight at her and pierced through her chest with a short knife he had in his wounded right hand that came out of nowhere. Lin Huang who was watching from the back did not even have the time to react as it happened so fast. It was worse for Leng Yuexin. She looked at Li Yanxing in shock, "Brother Li" "Silly girl, if you dont transfer all your blood to me, how would I clear the poison in my body? If I only get to dilute a third of the poison, I would never make it to Carefree City. So, youll need to sacrifice yourself" Li Yanxing smiled, devilishly. 80 Killing Li Yanxing Everything happened so fast. Although Lin Huang figured Li Yanxing was up to no good, he did not expect him to take Leng Yuexins life right away. "You Bastard" Leng Yuexins chest was pierced straight through by Li Yanxings knife. She said that as she spat blood, not expecting Li Yanxing to be such a horrible person. Lin Huang panicked as he watched the scene transpire from a distance. If Leng Yuexin died, that would mean his mission had failed. Not only would he not obtain the two mission reward cards but he would also lose two of his Monster Cards. He would be at a great loss if Leng Yuexin died. "Bai, Charcoal, lets kill him!" Lin Huang shouted and summoned both his monsters. Although Li Yanxing was poisoned and his body was weak, he was a Gold Hunter and almost a transcendent after all. Lin Huang knew he was not to be underestimated so he summoned his strongest monsters. Lin Huang then returned to his own body from his spectral form and took out his BlackEagle33. He morphed his gun to a sniper and aimed at Li Yanxing''s left eye. Fortunately, the underground river was spacious and allowed Charcoals full form to show. It flapped its wing and flew to the top of the cave and spat black fire at Li Yanxing. The Black Dragon Flame did not cover much ground, it was more like a focused jet of water directed towards Li Yanxing. At the same time, Bai attacked from 10 meters away. His crimson gold Blood Power wings turned into a pair of sharp blades that plunged towards Li Yanxing. Lin Huang who was standing 10 meters away channeled all his Iron Life Power. A Life Power bullet was formed in his gun chamber and he then pulled the trigger. The Iron Life Power bullet shot forward. It was a laser beam that shot at Li Yanxings left eye, creating sparks in the air. Facing various attacks that were coming for him, Li Yanxing was stunned. He did not expect Lin Huang to appear out of nowhere with his two bronze-level monsters. Even if that had happened on a normal day, he knew he was in trouble as Lin Huang was also an Imperial Censor, Lin Huang and his two bronze-level monsters were nothing to him at full health and power. However, he was poisoned and had exhausted all the Life Power in his body to kill Leng Yuexin. As a Gold Hunter, his physique was strong, but without Life Power, he could not use any of his defensive skills at all. No matter how powerful he was, he could not defend against attacks from the two bronze-level monsters. Furthermore, he was also targeted and shot at with a BlackEagle33 that was almost a bronze-level weapon. Many Gold Hunters from the Hunter Association were killed by higher level monster hordes each year. Usually, there would only be iron-level and bronze-levels monsters as there were hardly any silver-level monsters. Those Gold Hunters who died were usually killed because they exhausted their Life Power, preventing them from being able to defend themselves against monster attacks with their physical body. The triple attacks from Lin Huang were almost upon him and he was helpless. To save himself, he had to let go of Leng Yuexin. Although his Life Power was exhausted, his body was still agile. He took a step back and he was already a few meters away, enough for him to get out of the attack area of Charcoals dragon flame. Bais blades were coming at him like tarsal bone maggots, but Li Yanxing did a backflip and avoided that fatal attack. Just then, the Life Power bullet grew close. He slammed his palm against the ground to somersault up in the air and avoided the bullet. The blood replacement was interrupted. After he avoided the attacks from Lin Huang and his monsters, he stood firmly on the ground and stared a deathly stare, shouting, "Hey! Do you want to die!?" "Its you who''s asking for it!" Lin Huang shouted back, "Bai, dont let him escape!" Bai knew what Lin Huang wanted. His Blood Power blades transformed into long whips and he attempted to strangle Li Yanxing. Even though his Life Power was exhausted, with his strong body, he was surprisingly agile. Lin Huang could not do anything to him. Lin Huang knew very well that the most effective way to tackle people like him was to tie them up so that he would not be able to escape from his attacks. Seeing the long whips coming for him, Li Yanxing was shocked. If he was to be tied up by the vampire, it would take mere seconds for Lin Huang and his monsters to kill him. The reason he did not run away in the first place was because he was unwilling to give up the blood replacement from Leng Yuexin. However, now that he saw the vampire activating his combat mode, he needed to escape. On the other hand, Leng Yuexin had passed out due to major blood loss and there was nothing more he could get from her. Ling Huang frowned and morphed his BlackEagle33 to a black pistol while he walked towards Leng Yuexin. Seeing Lin Huang getting close to Leng Yuexin and himself, Li Yanxing who was attempting to run, grinned. If Lin Huang was close to him, he could strike a fatal attack. If an Imperial Censor was dead, his monsters would automatically lose control and possibly fight each other. During the chaos, he could run away together with Leng Yuexin and finish the process elsewhere. So he gave up on his plan to run and waited patiently for Lin Huang to approach him. With his gun, Lin Huang moved closer to Leng Yuexin and Li Yanxing. Just when he arrived next to Leng Yuexin and attempted to carry her, Li Yanxing made his move and attacked. He took a few steps towards Lin Huang, his body became strange, like a slithering. A deep crevasse was created between Charcoal and Bai. Soon, he stood in front of Lin Huang. He did not hesitate for a moment as he transformed his hand into a blade and aimed it at the back of Lin Huangs neck. Even without Life Power, his gold-level ability would make that attack a fatal strike. Just when the blade reached Lin Huangs neck, a pair of crimson gold wings grew out of Lin Huangs back. Li Yanxing froze with shock, and one of Lin Huang''s wings transformed into a blade and pierced through Li Yanxings chest. When Lin Huang looked up, Li Yanxing saw a vampire with red eyes and silver hair stare up at him. "Do you really think I am here to save her? Seems like youre not as smart as you thought," Lin Huang said, his bloodshot eyes wide open. "I knew you would attempt to run so I used myself as a bait for you to come closer," he continued. "You are a vampire" Li Yanxing said as he spat blood. He did not expect things to be like this. He totally underestimated this little guy. "Sorry, youre wrong. Im human," Lin Huang said with a sinister smile. "Now, you can rest in peace" The other wing on Lin Huangs back transformed into a lively crimson gold giant python. It strangled Li Yanxings body and made its way all the way up to his head. When it reached his eyes, the snakeds head transformed into a sharp prick and pierced through his left eyeball through to the back of his head. Instantly, Li Yanxing was dead. "Ding!" "You have performed a cross-ranking kill by killing a gold-level human. You''ve obtained the rare skill cards Thunder Sword and Cloud Steps," Xiao Hei informed him. "I can get skills from killing people?!" Lin Huang was stunned when he heard the notification. The two cards were turned into light spheres that moved from Li Yanxings dead body and dissolved into Lin Huangs chest. Lin Huang searched Li Yanxing corpse but he could not find anything. He guessed that all his equipment would probably be stored in his ring but since he was dead, his ring was sealed. Lin Huang then chopped off his finger to retrieve his ring and kept it in his storage space. The reason he wanted the ring was to prevent anyone from activating the ring to find any evidence should his dead body ever be found. After using Charcoals dragon flame to incinerate Li Yanxings dead body, Lin Huang dumped his body in the underground river and went to check up on Leng Yuexin. 81 Leaving Wangyou Fores Leng Yuexin lay pale on the ground, a black knife pierced through her body. Fresh blood soaked her shirt, and the artery on her right wrist had not stopped its bleeding. She was drenched in a pool of her own blood. "Xiao Hei, should I remove the knife first or do I use the Healing Card directly?" Lin Huang asked. He was worried that removing the knife would cause even more bleeding. In Leng Yuexins current state, if that happened, she would die within seconds. She could not take the torture any longer. "You can use the Healing Card directly. During the process of healing, the object that caused the injury would be removed from her body automatically," Xiao Hei explained. Hearing what Xiao Hei said, Lin Huang was slightly relieved. "Then use a Healing Card on her." A white glow came out of Lin Huangs body into Leng Yuexins body. Soon, her wound stopped bleeding. The black knife that was stabbed into her chest was removed slowly by an invisible force. "Girl, I have spent two Transformation Cards and two Healing Cards on you Please dont create more trouble for me" Lin Huang muttered aloud and transformed to his original form from his vampire mode and looked on at Leng Yuexin healing anxiously. If he did not manage to kill Li Yanxing with the two cards that he pulled out at the last minute, the mission would have been a waste of his resources. Lin Huang did not know that something bigger was waiting for him. When he summoned Charcoal, the eyes on top of the jellyfish-like transcendent monster in the cave were opening one by one Near the entrance of the underground river, Leng Yuexin was healing fast with the help of the Healing Card. The life-threatening wound was healing in front of Lin Huangs eyes, her pale face became rosy as well. "The effects of the Healing Card is so amazing!" Lin Huang exclaimed as he saw the changes on Leng Yuexin body. Unfortunately, he had three Healing Cards but now, two of them were used on her. This time, he did not stay hidden anymore since Leng Yuexin had seen him fighting and summoning Bai and Charcoal earlier. However, she did not see him transforming into Bai as she passed out. He did not bother to think of an explanation he would tell her, all he wanted was for her to wake up as soon as possible and leave this place. Soon, as her wounds were almost healed, Leng Yuexin woke up. She opened her eyes and saw Lin Huang, Charcoal and Bai who were not far away. "You saved me?" Leng Yuexin said quietly, almost in a whisper as she looked at her chest and noticed that her wound had disappeared. Same on her wrist, just that the blood stains reassured her that she was not dreaming. "Yes," Lin Huang said. He was not going to deny it. "Was it you who removed the poison from my body too?" Leng Yuexin asked as she noticed that her condition was similar to the previous time she woke up from being poisoned as she noticed back then that the poison had completely cleared from her body too. Even the wound that was left by the transcendent monster disappeared as well. "Yes, if you have any more questions, we can talk about it on our way out of here," Lin Huang said as he knew the underground cave was not safe after the battle and he wanted to leave as soon as possible. "Wait, let me change my clothes," she said. Seeing herself in a mess, Leng Yuexin blushed. "You can change when youre outside, its not safe here" Just when Lin Huang said that, the ground started to shake. They were shocked, they both instantly knew that it was the transcendent monster. It must be coming for Charcoal who was a dragonkin with dragon blood flowing through its veins. "Lets go, Bai will get you out of here!" Lin Huang shouted. "Then what about you?" Leng Yuexin asked, surprised to hear his instructions. "Im just an avatar, my real body is up there," Lin Huang lied to her. He knew the made-up the excuse would speed things up and Leng Yuexin would not worry about him. He then called Bai who came forth with his Blood Power wings transformed into a pair of fins. Bai then carried Leng Yuexin, dived into the water and swam swiftly towards the entrance of the cave. The light blue tentacles were coming for him and Charcoal. He recalled Charcoal immediately and transformed himself into Specter. He then leaped and hid behind the wall. The light blue tentacles seemed to sense Lin Huang had gone through the wall and they swept all over the location where Lin Huang and Charcoal were. Lin Huang did not turn to look behind him as he ran for his life from wall to wall. He heard loud thuds that sounded like an earthquake followed by the roar of the monster. Deep in the cave, the light blue jellyfish monster turned a bloody red and shined a bright red glow all around the cave. Its countless tentacles were going towards the direction where Lin Huang and Charcoal had disappeared. As a transcendent monster, it knew very well about the importance of bloodlines. If it was to swallow a pure dragonkin, it would not become a dragonkin itself, but it would at least transform into something similar to the level of a Sky Dragon. By then, its ability would increase immensely. Losing the scent of the dragonkin made it furious but soon it became calm as it caught a whiff of a human with hints of dragon blood. After locking its target on the human, countless deadly light-blue tentacles headed out for Lin Huang. Sensing the vibrations behind him getting more and more intense, Lin Huang started to run upwards. In less than three minutes, he was on the ground. Noticing that the transcendent monster was not giving up, Lin Huang used his Provisional Transformation Card and turned himself into an Alexandrian Eagle. He flapped his wings and his gigantic body went all the way to the clouds within seconds. However, he did not leave the place immediately. He observed the area from the sky. He saw clearly that the red tentacles had pierced through the ground and caused cracks to appear all over the place. However, it was only a few centimeters out of the ground. Suddenly, the ground started to burn. The transcendent monster let out a devastating groan and retracted all its tentacles. Seeing the strange phenomenon, Lin Huang guessed the monster must be sealed underground by some strange force which caused its body to burn once it left the ground. Now he knew where the cracks on the ground came from. Knowing that the monster was no longer a threat, he waited patiently for Leng Yuexin. The pool and waterfall that connected to the underground caves entrance was close by. They had to come out of that entrance as there was only one way. Flapping his wings, Lin Huang landed on a giant rock next to the pool. He turned back into a human and waited patiently. Soon, Bai brought Leng Yuexin who was wrapped in a diving suit out of the water. After removing the diving equipment, Leng Yuexin and Bai swam towards Lin Huang. "I think I heard the monster again!" Leng Yuexin shouted at Lin Huang once she got ashore. "Yes, we need to leave here quickly," Lin Huang nodded and summoned Viridian Wolf immediately. "Wait, Ill only take a minute to change. Dont worry about the monster, its sealed underground by the black rock, theres no way it can escape," Leng Yuexin said. She was soaking wet. It was summer, and she was uncovered. Her clothes were so wet that they were stuck on her body, shaped to each and every curve of her body. Lin Huang looked the other way. Leng Yuexin leaped towards the waterfall and changed behind a giant rock. Lin Huang recalled Bai and waited patiently. Soon, Leng Yuexin was done changing. She wore a pair of jeans with a white shirt. It was casual and pleasing. She was pretty and had nice features. She used to give off the vibe that she was rich and obnoxious. Now as she was dressed in casual attire, she looked really down to earth. "Thank you for saving me twice, I owe my life to you and I will never forget that," Leng Yuexin said as she leaped from the waterfall and landed not far from Lin Huang. "If you could send me back to Carefree City, that would make us even then," Lin Huang replied. He just wanted to complete his mission. "Even if you didnt mention it, I will send you back in one piece. Since I have already accepted the mission, I will have to complete it. It has nothing to do with repaying you," Leng Yuexin answered his request and shook her head. "However, before that, please give me two to three days, I need to kill that bastard Li Yanxing with my own hands!" "Erm Li Yanxing is dead," Lin Huang said while rubbing his nose and averting his eyes. "Hes dead?" Leng Yuexin looked at him confused as she did not think Lin Huang could have managed to kill Li Yanxing. Although he killed him in a bad way, she thought Lin Huang was just chasing Li Yanxing away instead of killing him. "Thats right, I killed him," Lin Huang said and then took out Li Yanxings ring. Leng Yuexin recognized Li Yanxings ring immediately, "Hes really dead!" "He was poisoned and almost exhausted all his Life Power when he attacked you. I killed him together with my monsters, burnt his body and tossed it into the underground river," Lin Huang lied. Of course, he could not tell her about killing Li Yanxing by transforming himself into a vampire. "Although he was strong, he was strangled by a vampire, and there was no way he could run," he continued. "Alright then. There will be trouble if you keep his ring. Give it to me, I will tell his family that he attempted to kill me so I defended myself and ended him. About this ring too, I will get someone to activate it. I will send all the stuff in his storage space to you, just give me your address," Leng Yuexin said to Lin Huang. "Thats what I thought too when I retrieved his ring. I was worried if his family found out about me from this ring, it would mean a great load of trouble for me," Lin Huang said and nodded. He then tossed the ring to Leng Yuexin. Leng Yuexin caught the ring and kept it in her storage space. "Since Li Yanxing is dead, do you have anything else you have to do?" Lin Huang asked. "No. Li Yanxing is dead, two of the guys were eaten by the monster and another one was poisoned. Theres no reason for me to stay. Let me send you back to the city," Leng Yuexin said and shook her head recounting all the events of the day. She then took out her monster taming token and summoned her gold-level Frostwolf. She rode on it while Lin Huang rode on his Viridian Wolf and headed on their way... 82 Uncle’s Relationship Advice Carefree City was a peaceful little city. The streets were crowded with people at the many restaurants that lit up at night. As time passed, it became a major attraction of this foothold which beckoned many tourists. It was late in the evening when Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin arrived in Carefree City. All the restaurants were opened for business, many tables and chairs were arranged in the alfresco area. Looking at the crowds in the restaurants on both sides and the smell of food in the air, Lin Huang started to get hungry. He just realized that he only had breakfast that day before his mission. Leng Yuexin was a little panicked in the crowd as she hardly went to places that were crowded. "I bet youre hungry. Its my treat," Lin Huang offered. He was hungry himself but he did not want Leng Yuexin to feel left out so he suggested a meal together. "Huh?" Leng Yuexin hesitated as she had never eaten at places like this before. "What would you like to eat?" Lin Huang asked. "Anything is fine with me" Leng Yuexin did not want to reject Lin Huang as he saved her life. Even if the food was terrible, she would force herself to eat. "Ill order then. Can you take spicy food?" Lin Huang asked. "Im okay with that," Leng Yuexin nodded. Lin Huang was not familiar with the food in this world as there were so much more varieties here than on Earth. He would usually eat something that he was familiar with but there were many dishes he had never tried in this place. However, Lin Huang was experienced when it came to finding good food. He used to travel a lot, and aside from browsing food recommendations on the Internet, he would come up with useful food guides that were about the crowd a place had, the number of people eating at a restaurant, which location had better tasting food and so on, trying to make the experience of finding the best meal much simpler for his readers. Although most of the dishes were unfamiliar to him, it was not difficult to tell which restaurants had good business based on his guide. "Lets go to that one!" Lin Huang strolled around and found a restaurant with quite a long queue. He then pulled Leng Yuexin into the queue. Leng Yuexins appearance attracted many wandering eyes. Although she did not dress up, her beauty could not be hidden. 10 minutes later, it was finally Lin Huang and Leng Yuexins turn to enter the restaurant. The restaurant owner was a middle-aged man. He stood behind the counter and looked at the both of them. He smiled at Lin Huang and commented, "Little man, your girlfriend is so pretty!" Leng Yuexin blushed as Lin Huang waved his hand, "Uncle, that''s a misunderstanding, were just friends." Lin Huang explained. The restaurant owner smiled and did not dwell on the topic, "What would the both of you like to order?" he asked. "Please recommend your specials, good sir," Lin Huang asked politely. He knew that the owner would always recommend their specialties to convert people into regular customers at their establishments. "Our food portions are pretty big, two dishes and a soup would be sufficient for the both of you. If you order more, the extra food might go to waste," the restaurant owner said with a hearty laugh. "We have two specialties here. One of them would be the Roasted Iceberg Pig Tenderloin while the second would be the Grilled Steak which is made from the Ox Devils Ribs. For the soup dish, lets get you guys the Twin Vine Flower Soup. Its light and healthy," he said. "Sure, we''ll get everything you recommended," Lin Huang nodded with satisfaction. "Can the both of you take spicy food?" the restaurant owner asked. "Just slightly," Lin Huang replied. "Sure, take a seat. Your food will be sent to you soon," the owner said. Seeing there was an empty table at the al fresco area, Lin Huang lead Leng Yuexin to take a seat. When he was in the university, Lin Huang would usually go to the beach with his roommates for a barbecue and a few beers during the summer. Later on, although he needed to eat out with his customers a lot, he hardly ate street food anymore. Al-fresco street food places like this made him reminisce about his simple life back on Earth. Leng Yuexin sat across from Lin Huang. Seeing him staring into space, it was quite awkward for her. She broke the ice by asking, "Do you usually come to places like this?" "No, this is my first time," Lin Huang was stunned, he shook his head and said, "There used to be street food like this in my hometown but it has been a long time since I''ve eaten there." "Oh" Leng Yuexin nodded and did not know how to continue the topic. "Have you not been to places like this?" Lin Huang asked as he noticed that Leng Yuexin seemed uneasy. "No," Leng Yuexin shook her head and said, "My family wouldn''t allow me to eat at places like this." Just then, Lin Huang recalled that she was royalty. Although he did not know much about the royalty here, he concluded that they should be similar to the knights in the olden days that lived by certain principles such as having good manners and strict rules both at home and in public. It was normal that they were not allowed to eat by the streets. Since that topic involved Leng Yuexins family, Lin Huang did not want to pry any further so he changed the subject and asked, "What''s that monster that lived underground?" He asked. "That was a Floating Orchid, an undead species from the abyss. A transcendent from our family sealed it in Wangyou Forest more than 100 years ago so that generations to come could kill it to level up into a transcendent. My purpose here this time was to kill it so that I could level up. I didnt know that it had mutated twice since then. Although its combat strength remained the same, its ability was more than 10 times stronger than it was 100 years ago. If you were not there, I would have surely died," Leng Yuexin told Lin Huang the story of the monster that lived underground in the Wangyou Forest. "Did you hire Li Yanxing as your assistant?" Lin Huang asked. "No, I was alone when I departed but I bumped into them. Our families had a good relationship and he knew that I was there to kill the monster so he decided to help. I knew that he was up to something but I did not want to reject him so we decided to go on the mission together. No matter how strong a companion is, we always have to be cautious. Thankfully you were there so that he could not carry out his evil plan. I am so grateful we met you," Leng Yuexin finally told him about the real reason why they were together. After listening to Leng Yuexins explanation, Lin Huang thought how Li Yanxing bumped into her was quite strange. Just as they were talking, the waiter came with their food so their conversation was interrupted. Lin Huang had tried many delicious delicacies but the specialties the restaurant owner had recommended was incredible! The spices and seasoning alone were better than the food he would die for on earth. The restaurant owner was brilliant in the kitchen. Not only did Lin Huang feel that way, Leng Yuexin did not stop eating too. She did not like street food but the food they were having was irresistible. The both of them cleared all the food. Leng Yuexin wiped her mouth and said, "I''ve never tried street food. I didnt know it was so good! Thank you!" "If we''ve another chance, I''ll bring you to other places too," Lin Huang said with a smile. "Ill have to leave in a while, my family sent someone to pick me up. You will leave soon too, right?" Leng Yuexin asked. "Ill leave tomorrow morning. If I stay here any longer, my sister will be worried," Lin Huang told her and smiled awkwardly in embarrassment. "Oh" Leng Yuexin kept quiet for a while and asked, "I have been wanting to ask you this but I dont know if I should." "Please do. Don''t worry Ill answer your questions the way I know how to," Lin Huang said as he nodded. He had made up answers to all the possible questions she could ask in his mind. "I want to know why you saved me?" Leng Yuexin asked. Out of all the questions he had prepared himself for, this was the one question that Lin Huang had not expect. She actually had many questions for him, among them were the reasons why went underground? What kind of healing magic did he possess to have saved her twice? She could tell clearly that the guy in the cave was not his avatar, how did he manage to get out of the cave? However, she chose to ask why he had saved her instead. "Maybe...I like you," Lin Huang answered, just making up the first thing that came to mind. He could not tell her that he was on a mission and that saving her was mandatory. "Thats it?" Leng Yuexin asked. She did not seem to accept his answer. "Thats it. I like you, so I saved you," Lin Huang nodded and answered in all seriousness. "Alright, I shall accept your answer," Leng Yuexin knew that Lin Huang was not telling the truth but she did not want to dwell on it. She then looked at the time on her ring and stood up, "Its almost time, I need to go now," she said. "Alright, we shall meet for food if theres another chance in the future," Lin Huang stood up as well. "I will send you the stuff that I''ve promised. Goodbye!" Leng Yuexin said politely. She then turned around and left. Seeing her walking away, Lin Huang then waved at the restaurant owner, "Boss! Bill, please!" The restaurant owner walked to him with a smile, "Whats wrong, didn''t it go as you expected? I don''t mean to nag, but men should always cling to girls they like. You''ll understand this when you''re my age. Girls that pretty are hard to come by even if you''ve lived an entire lifetime. How could you give up just like that? Go chase after her, maybe theres still a chance to turn things around. You should treat her better, go somewhere nicer" He advised Lin Huang with a sincere look in his eyes. "Uncle, we are really, just friends" Lin Huang replied. He paid immediately and left soon after. The owner was confused because the young man looked like he was running for his life. "Sigh... Such a nice lady. Why did they break up just like that? Young people nowadays... How strange" The middle-aged man sighed as he watched Lin Huang leave. 83 Can’t Afford A Thing… After dinner, Lin Huang checked into a hotel in Carefree City. He got into the room and sat on the living room couch. He then got Xiao Hei to arrange his cards. "You have received a total of nine new cards." "New Monster Card x5 - Charcoal (Epic), Alexandrian Eagle (Rare), Viridian Wolf, Demonic One-Eyed Ape, Specter" "New Skill Cards: Thunder Sword (Rare), Cloud steps (Rare)" "New Function Cards: Advance Card x1" "New Item Card (Relic) x1" Lin Huang was satisfied when he heard the list. The two cards he obtained for completing the mission were an Advance Card and a Relic Item Card. He had received both of them when he stepped into Carefree City. However, there was another notification that came from Xiao Hei later on. "You have used a total of six cards" "Cards that you have used: Provisional Transformation Cards x5, Healing cards x2, Double Reward Cards x3, Mission Cards x2" "I have used all my Provisional Transformation Cards?" Lin Huang asked, stunned at the announcement. He mumbled and calculated, "I used one when I killed the Six-Armed Demon in the Purple Dress, one for going underground, another to kill Li Yanxing, one more to get out of the cave and I used the last one to transform into the Alexandrian Eagle to fly into the air I really did use all of them!" He exclaimed. "Two Healing Cards were used on Leng Yuexin, three Double Reward Cards got me 20 cross-ranking Reward Cards" Lin Huang thought. He then frowned and asked, "Xiao Hei, please calculate all the remaining cards that I have." "You have a total of 17 non-Monster Cards: Advance Card x4, Mission Card x1, Treasure Card x3, Life Power Storage Card x2, Item Card x4, Limitless Card x1, Flawless Card x2, Healing Card x1." "Four Advance Cards would mean I can upgrade both Bai and Tyrant" At the very beginning when he got his first two monsters, he always wondered which he should advance first. Now, he no longer had to think and upgraded the both of them. "Xiao Hei, if I were to upgrade both Bai and Sand Monster to Epic-levels, that wouldnt affect me right?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei before he upgraded both of them. "No. But upgrading twice would mean one Life Transformation. They will evolve into another species and during the evolution, they will need a large amount of Life Power. I dont suggest you do it in the foothold or the areas near the foothold. An unusual wave of life force could attract the attention of a transcendent as well as the monitoring bureau of the Union Government. Furthermore, I dont suggest you do it in the wild zone as there are transcendent monsters there too, just to be safe," Xiao Hei explained. "Alright then" Lin Huang had to put his plan on hold. He was lucky that he got out of Wangyou Forest alive but he was not going to back there just to upgrade his monsters. "Ill have to wait for the next time I go to a wild zone then, since I can do it anytime," he thought. He then continued, "From the four Item Cards, three of them should be able to get me some Item. And the random Relic Item Card that I retrieved from the mission, lets activate all of them!" Four Item Cards with a question mark on top appeared in Lin Huangs hand. Three of them were pure white while another was silver in color. "Activate Item Card x4" "Congratulations, you have received bronze-level armor x1, bronze-level battle sword x1, bronze-level water bottle x1." "Congratulations, you have received a Scouting Relic - Waxed Dragoneye (pirated)!" "Scouting Relic" Lin Huang was speechless. Although such a relic was very useful, it required a lot of money. A single use would use up Life Crystal which was worth a hundred years. The one he wanted the most was actually a Sword Relic. Not only he did not need his Life Power to use it, the sharpness of Sword Relic would never decrease. He then tapped on the treasure tool card to read the detailed description. "Item Card (Relic)" "Level: Four-star relic" "Relic Name: Waxed Dragoneye (pirated)" "Relic Type: Scouting Relic" "Description of Relic: This pirated holy relic can identify and detect everything that is going on within a coverage area of 1,000 kilometers." "Usage Limit: Maximum three times per day!" "Looks like an astonishing relic with such strict limitations. I can only use it three times per day!" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. All the other equipment were transformed into rings after they were activated but this relic remained a card. To activate relics, he would have to be at least gold-level so that he can have sufficient Life Power. Lin Huang was very far from that so he had to keep it in its card form. After keeping his new equipment, he looked at the two skill cards that he obtained from killing Li Yanxing. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Thunder Sword" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Skill: Sword" "Skill Level: Gold-level" "Status: Available" "Description: This skill required speed and force to be effective." "Remarks: This skill requires Life Power." "Card remarks: Passable" "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Cloud Steps" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Skill: Body movement" "Skill Level: Gold-level" "Status: Available" "Description: This skill is suitable for short-distance teleportation." "Remarks: This skill is a unique movement skill. Not limited to level, the effect changes with the users ability." "Card remarks: Passable" "No bad," Lin Huang thought. He was satisfied with the two skills that he obtained. He practiced his Thunder Sword for many days before and only got a few card pieces. He did not expect to get the card from killing Li Yanxing. As for Cloud Steps, he witnessed it in one of Li Yanxings battles, it was a pretty amazing teleportation skill. "Activate both skill cards!" he said. "Activation has been completed!" Both skill cards on Lin Huangs hand disappeared. He then looked at his Exclusive Card and saw two skills added to his list of skills. He then looked at the cards that Xiao Hei listed on the notification board. "What is this Life Power Storage Card and Limitless Card?" Lin Huang asked. He had obtained the two cards when he performed a cross-ranking kill on the transcendent monster in Wangyou Forest. It was one of the 20 reward cards that he obtained but did not have the time to look at them. He viewed the Life Power Storage Card and was stunned after reading its description. "Life Power Storage Card: After it is activated, it can clone the users Life Wheel and store the same amount of Life Power as the users original Life Wheel. "Remarks: This card can only increase the storage of Life Power but not clone the other functions that a Life Wheel comes with." Even with that disappointing remark, Lin Huang thought this card was the best thing ever. Once it was activated, he would have an extra Life Wheel. Moreover, he had two Life Power Storage Cards. "Each iron-level rank-3 Life Wheel has 1080 columns of Life Power. If I activate both cards, I would have three Life Wheels of Life Power stored in my body, which is equivalent to 3240 columns of Life Power!" Lin Huang was over the moon when he read the cards function and instructed Xiao Hei immediately, "Xiao Hei, activate both of the Life Power Storage Cards!" "Life Power Storage Card x2, activated!" Both of the Life Power Storage Cards started to glow and the glow enveloped his body. He inspected his body afterward and there really were two additional Life Wheels that looked exactly the same. However, all the other columns were blank. Unlike his original Life Wheel, the Life Power only filled the first circle. He then looked at the Limitless Card, "So what''s this Limitless card?" Limitless Card: After using it, you can permanently upgrade one thing of your choice for an unlimtied amount of time." "Remarks: It will disappear after one use." "An unlimited upgrade?!" The first thing Lin Huang thought of when he saw the cards function was Xiao Hei. "Xiao Hei, is this card effective on you?" "Yes," Xiao Hei replied firmly. "Thats great, then Ill use the card on you, which also means I get to upgrade my usage of you without limitations!" Lin Huang said and smiled at the thought. "Are you sure about the target user?" "Confirmed!" "Limitless card has been usage You have received an upgrade" "Activated new function - Card Pieces Mall!" "Random card reward, card selection has been increased from 12 pieces to 18 pieces!" "Card Pieces Mall?!" Lin Huangs eyes brightened up. He was just thinking of trading off his card pieces for something useful. "You only have iron-level and bronze-level card pieces, you cant browse pages that are of a higher card level." "Sure, let me take a look at iron-level and bronze-level card pieces." Lin Huang nodded. Many cards were presented to him. After he glanced through them, he felt cheated by Xiao Hei. "I have to use two card pieces to trade one card piece of the same level One normal iron-level monster would only need 30 card pieces to combine a but here, I would have to use 60 card pieces!" "As your card pieces are not the monsters you want, theres a price to pay if you want certain monsters," Xiao Hei explained. He then looked at the rare monster cards. Every single one of them would need at least 10,000 card pieces and there were many that required millions of card pieces. "Seems like Im still a poor boy that cant afford anything here" Lin Huang shook his head. Normal Monster Cards would not help him much but the Rare Monster Cards required ridiculous amounts of card pieces which were way more the card pieces he owned. 84 Over A Hundred Million In Savings Carefree City was fresh with an earthy smell after the drizzle. It was almost eight in the morning and the sun was breaking in the dawn. The city was waking up from its nightly slumber. However, Lin Huang was bummed as he did not manage to book the Demonic Crystal Spaceship tickets the night before and would have to wait for the next scheduled flight which would the following Monday. He called Lin Xin and unsurprisingly, she picked up even before her phone started to ring. A video was projected before him. "Brother, was it successful?!" Lin Xin looked at Lin Huang in excitement. "Yes, Im now an Iron-level hunter!" Lin Huang nodded in matched enthusiasm. "Ever since you left, Ive browsed through some information about the Six-Armed Demon on the network. It seemed powerful but brother, youre even more powerful than the demon!" She shouted. Lin Xin always thought her brother was invincible, and moments like those proved her right, for her own sake. "Of course!" Lin Huang smiled. "Brother, when are you coming back?" Lin Xin asked. "Theres supposed to be a spaceship that departs to Baqi City today but I just got my settled down after sorting out my stuff from yesterday and didnt manage to get the ticket. I''ll have to come back next week" Lin Huang explained. "However, I have some things to settle when Im back in Baqi City so that''ll take one or two days. I''ll get that done in Carefree City since I''m already here," he continued. "Oh" Lin Xin said, sounding upset. "Carefree City is a food heaven, Ill bring you good food when Im back. What would you like to eat?" Lin Huang smiled and asked. "I want everything!" Lin Xin said playfully. "Alright, Ill get one each for you." Lin Huang nodded. "No, I want two of each dish!" Lin Xin said. "Can you finish so much food, you little glutton?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. "Of course! We''ll share it. I want you to eat with me!" Lin Xin''s tone remained playful. "Alright then, Ill get two of each" Lin Huang shook his head. "Brother, can you stay longer this time when youre back?" Lin Xin asked after a moment of hesitation. "That shouldnt be a problem, why?" Lin Huang replied, curious at her request. "Its summer break next week. I will be so bored without you at home" Lin Xin explained, rolling her eyes and pouting at the thought. There were four seasons in Division7 as well. Everyone, no matter a child in school or an adult at work would have four long holidays every year. Spring break was a long holiday during the rainy season which was usually 15 to 20 days. However, it would not be raining in all the areas and the holiday did not apply to certain areas as well. Summer break was similar to the experience back on Earth, it was the warmest season of the year. The break would usually be one and a half months and if it was too warm, the break could go on for two months. Autumn break would be the anniversary of the establishment of the Union Government. The break lasted for 10 days. Lastly, the winter break which was similar to the one on Earth. This coldest holiday would last for one to two months. Some areas that were colder would get a holiday that was longer than two months. Lin Huang was shocked when he learned about the four long holidays in this world. The first thing that came to his mind was, "We get five months of holidays in this world? These people are so pampered!" He later found out that to ordinary people, it was not really a holiday for those who were working during the summer and winter. It was more like a work from home situation. "Ahh, I almost forgot about the summer break" Lin Huang scratched his head, "It would be boring to stay at home for one to two months. Why not you pick a destination and we''ll travel there?" "A vacation? Yes please!" Lin Xin screamed. She had never left Wulin Town since she was little. She was so excited when Lin Huang suggested the vacation. "You pick the destination within the next few days. After I get back, I''ll rest for two or three days before we depart," Lin Huang told her. He was relieved when he managed to coax her out of her solemn mood. "Okay," Lin Xin nodded her head hard. After he hung up the phone, he had breakfast downstairs. He then went to the reception and booked his room for another one week and left to the Hunter Association. There was a division of the Hunter Association in the middle of each foothold. Lin Huang planned to trade the dead monster carcasses to get credit points when he got back to Baqi City but now that he could not leave just yet, he figured he would do it that here instead since it was the same. In reality, the price of dead monster carcasses was fixed so it would not matter which city he went to. The Hunter Association divisions were built in the central area of each city. It was not far from the hotel that Lin Huang stayed in. It only took him a 10-minute walk to get there. It was 8:30 in the morning when he got there and it was already crowded. Lin Huang followed the crowd to the main hall and made his way to the reception desk on the left of the entrance. There were many people at the counter, and after waiting for quite a while, he was finally at the counter. "Hi, I would like to know where to trade in monster carcasses," he asked. "Its at the Monster Carcass Warehouse behind the hall, Ill get someone to bring you there." The receptionist in a red dress called a number and immediately hung up after a short exchange of words. "Someone will come get you, please give them a moment," she told him. One or two minutes later, a strong, young man approached Lin Huang when he saw him standing next to the receptionist. "Are you the guest who would like to trade in monster carcasses?" "Yes, that''s me," Lin Huang nodded. "How many are there?" "I think there are 300 to 400 of them, I didnt count," Lin Huang really had no idea of the exact amount as he collected so many himself while he was following Li Yanxing. Bai and Charcoal killed quite a lot of monsters as well. The storage in his ring was full to the extent they were not able to bring back the carcasses of the monsters they killed later on. "Alright, please follow me," the young man said. He brought Lin Huang to the back of the hall. It was a large backyard. The young man led Lin Huang across the backyard to the far end. There was a massive house that looked like a warehouse. The young man stopped at the entrance of the warehouse, turned around and said to Lin Huang, "You can put all the monster carcasses here, Ill get my master to count them." The young man then walked into the warehouse. Lin Huang took out all the monster carcasses from his storage ring, and soon the carcasses were piled into a small hill at the entrance of the warehouse. A moment later, a short and stout old man walked out slowly. The young man walked behind him without saying a word. The old man looked at Lin Huang, nodded, and walked around the pile of monster carcasses. He then said to Lin Huang,"There are a total of 421 of them, 187 are bronze-level rank-3 and 234 are bronze-level rank-2. Is that correct?" "I didnt count them myself, so I have no idea how many are there." Lin Huang replied, stunned at what had just happened. He thought it was strange that the old man just walked around the monster carcasses and he managed to get such an accurate figure. However, what he was certain of was there were only monsters of bronze-level rank-2 and bronze-level rank-3 as he cleared out all the bronze-level rank-1 in his storage to store more valuable monster carcasses. "Hercules, help him count them," the old man ordered and waved to the young man casually. He then walked back into the warehouse. "Its impossible that my master would have miscalculated. I''ll count them for you again then," the strong, young man said then lifted a monsters thigh and tossed it aside. Lin Huang was shocked. The young man had just lifted a Trihorn Rhino. Although it was not a gigantic monster, it weighed at least five tons but the young man managed to lift it with just one hand. What shocked Lin Huang even more was, there were no signs of Life Power on the young mans body. "Was he born strong or is there some other reason?" Lin Huang looked at him skeptically while he counted the carcasses. The figure was exactly what the old man said. "Are you done counting?" The old man came back and smiled at Lin Huang while he stood at the warehouse entrance. "The price of a bronze-level rank-2 monster carcass is usually within 300,000 to 500,000 credit points while bronze-level rank-3 would be within 500,000 to 800,000 credit points. The accurate price for all these carcasses would be 215.15 million credit points. Ill round it up to 215.2 million credit points for you," he said. "Sure, thank you old man," Lin Huang replied. He thought it would have been great if he could get at least one hundred million credit points out of the carcasses but it was so much more than he expected. "Hercules, please do the transfer for him," The old man then passed a note that was the size of his palm with ''215,200,000 written on it. Lin Huang was surprised but he took the note. "Lets go, we need to go to the finance department near the hall," Hercules said, and he ushered Lin Huang out of the warehouse and into the hall. While they were walking, Lin Huang could not help but ask, "What does the Hunter Association do with so many monster carcasses?" "Most of them will become food in the market while rare ones will be sent for research," Hercules explained. "The Hunter Association collaborates with the House of Food and many other organizations so there are many orders for the carcasses," he continued. "Ahh, so they collaborate with the House of Food" Lin Huang finally understood why the Hunter Association needed massive supplies of monster carcasses. The House of Food was an organization that many Food Hunters joined. The organization only recruited Food Hunters so they need to collaborate with other organizations for other resources. For the safety of food ingredients, they did not purchase ingredients from the market. The selection of food ingredients was done by the Hunter Association and Adventurer Paradise, which saved the House of Food a lot of time. Hercules brought Lin Huang to the finance office, Lin Huang then passed the note to the middle-aged woman behind the counter. The woman looked at the note and looked at Hercules and Lin Huang, "215.2 million, is that right?" she confirmed. "Thats correct." Lin Huang nodded. A white interface then popped up before him. "Please scan at the bottom right corner. The transfer will be done within three minutes," the woman said. Lin Huang scanned the barcode at the bottom right corner with his Emperors Heart Ring immediately. Just as he retracted his hand, he received a transfer notification. It was a message from the credit bureau. "Dear Mr. Lin Huang, you have received a transfer of 215.2 million credit points." Looking at the number, Lin Huang was over the moon, "Who cares what kind of currency this is, I finally have more than a hundred million in my savings" 85 Gun Master After trading the monster bodies for credit points, Lin Huang walked out of the Hunter Association and saw a commercial projection at the entrance. It advertised two BlackEagle33''s, one was on its pistol form while another was on its sniper form. He then realized that it was a commercial for the game Gun Master. The game was a collaboration between Eagle Company and Hacker Company. Lin Huang was familiar with the game. From what he remembered, the game was popular when he was still in school. Within the past two years, as the game was upgraded, the player population increased significantly. It was initially played by the general public out of boredom but now there were many hunters who were playing it religiously. However, the hunters did not see it as a game but more as a form of training. Many gunmasters and hunters who played Gun Master as a hobby used the game to train themselves. The guns in the game were a 100% match to a real gun. Even the bullet trajectory was exactly the same as an actual gun. The game was never cheap, even on its launch in the past. A game ring sold at 3,000 credit points. After the recent game upgrades, the game ring now cost more than 10,000 credit points. The commercial was almost three minutes long. Lin Huang stayed on and watched the commercial until the end, realizing that the game had come up with servers in exclusive areas for the hunters. Besides catering to gunmasters, the game had now extended its range of weapons to many other long-distance attack weapons including conventional bows, crossbows, flying knives and more. There was also a battle arena which without weapon limitations. "No wonder. This is why they''re showing the commercial outside the Hunter Association, they''re planning to promote the game to the hunter community," Lin Huang thought as he looked at the price of the latest game ring. It was a whopping 13,000 credit points. The price used to be unacceptable to Lin Huang but it was nothing to him now as he had just received a huge amount of credit points. "I have never played this version before. I''ll just buy one game ring to try it out and see if I have the talent needed to become a gunmaster," he thought. Lin Huang did exactly what he planned. He then scanned the barcode at the bottom corner of the commercial board and entered the shopping page. After confirming the delivery address which was his home in Wulin Town, he proceeded to pay for it. A message was sent to him immediately, "You have ordered Gun Master Edition V''. We will send it to you as soon as possible. If you would like to cancel your order, please log in to our official website to do so within three hours," the notification read. After reading the message, he closed the shopping page. He then looked at the time and it was 9:18 in the morning. He walked to a cafe nearby. There were a larger variety of coffee beans here as compared to Earth. There were 390 types of coffee beans and most of the cafes served more than 100 types of coffee beverages and at least 20 to 30 types of coffee beans. Lin Huang ordered a black coffee and sat by the window. He always loved the smell of coffee in the morning. When he was on earth, he had coffee very often as he had early mornings that was followed with hard work until late at night. That was the reason why he always ordered black coffee as the bitterness helped him focus and think. While he waited for his coffee, Lin Huang took a look at the map of the wild zones that were around Carefree City. He planned to accumulate the Life Power in his body to upgrade himself to an iron-level rank-3 within the next couple of days. Carefree City was surrounded by mostly level-1 wild zone while level-2 wild zones were 200 kilometers away. As he looked at the map, a pretty waitress came to him with his coffee. "Sir, would you like sugar with your coffee?" "No, thank you," he replied. Lin Huang then sniffed the aroma of the coffee softly. The coffee smelled was much stronger than the kind he had on earth. He took a sip. Almost instantly, he frowned deeply, but not because it tasted bad. It was too bitter! It was comparable to berberine tea, which was the most bitter tasting thought that came to mind. "The coffee beans are so different from types of coffee on earth," Lin Huang mumbled to himself but he insisted not to add sugar to it. He then proceeded to look at the map and soon he found the place he wanted to go. "Grimace Valley looks good. A level-2 wild zone and it is big enough. The mountains on both sides are also level-2 wild zones. There should be at least 10,000 bronze-level monsters over there. Its more than 200 kilometers from Carefree City. It would only take 10 minutes by riding the Alexandrian Eagle. I can come back to the hotel to rest whenever Im tired and thats so much better than sleeping in a tent in the wild" After he finished his coffee, he paid for it and summoned the Viridian Wolf. He then rode to the foothold in the west. The waitress who brought Lin Huang coffee was cleaning the table when she saw Lin Huang summoning the Viridian Wolf. She screamed! "Whats wrong?" Another service crew member turned around and asked. "That customer is an Imperial Censor!" "Are you sure thats what you saw?" he asked, as he looked around and saw nothing. Lin Huang had left too quickly, by the time the other staff members had gathered, they did not see him so they laughed and shook their heads. "Its true! I saw him riding a gigantic green wolf when he left," she stuttered between gasps. "Xiao Liu, you should really stop reading those web novels," the cafe owner said, shaking his head. "You guys need to stop accusing Xiao Liu," an old man said as he stood up with his stick, "I saw the young man too. He really summoned a bronze-level rank-1 Viridian Wolf without a monster taming token. He was obviously an Imperial Censor. He looked like he was only 15 or 16 and that was my first time seeing such a young Imperial Censor," he continued. The old man was a regular customer at the cafe. The staff did not dare say another word when they heard the old man talking about Lin Huang. "Since Old Jia saw it too, then it must be true," the cafe owner said, relenting on his previous statement. Lin Huang did not know what had happened at the cafe. He rode on his huge emerald Viridian Wolf, and those who saw him on the road were envious of him. When he got out of the West Gate, he recalled the Viridian Wolf, summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and flew towards Grimace Valley. "An Alexandrian Eagle!" A hunter of a group exclaimed as they passed by and saw Lin Huang summon the Alexandrian Eagle. Some of them recognized it as a mutated monster and were immediately struck with fear in their eyes. They then jumped aside to hide from the danger. It was only when Lin Huang was completely out of sight did a hunter come out of hiding said, "Such a young Imperial Censor... I''m not sure which royal family he''s from. I guess its all fated that way. Some people have better lives than others" he said with a heavy sigh. The journey from West Gate to Grimace Valley took less than 15 minutes. As the Alexandrian Eagle landed, Lin Huang recalled it immediately and summoned Bai and Charcoal. He rode on Charcoals back the rest of the way. Bai and Charcoal then started their parade of merciless killing in the valley 86 Keep Ones Word In the following days, Lin Huang left the hotel at eight o''clock in the morning and went back at around 12 o''clock at night. Charcoal and Bai slaughtered the monsters in the valley, giving Lin Huang''s Life Power a boost. There were no barriers in upgrading from iron-level rank-1 to iron-level rank-3. As long as he had adequate Life Power, his combat level would be upgraded directly. Under normal conditions an ordinary person would require at least two months to complete the entire advancement process despite having adequate Life Crystals when they undergo Life Skill training. Bai''s and Black Charcoal''s Life Wheel were in sync, enabling all of the Life Power from killing a monster to be transferred to Lin Huang''s body because Bai and Black Charcoals Life Power was full. Although Lin Huang could only get around three columns of Life Power every time a monster was killed, he could fill a total of 1080 columns of Life Power within half a day. Thanks to the advancement in Lin Huang''s combat level to iron-level rank-3, Bai and Charcoal were also upgraded to bronze-level. In Lin Huang''s body, there was a duplicate Life Wheel from the Life Power Storage Card he used. The duplicate Life Wheel began to store Life Power once Lin Huang''s Life Power in his original Life Wheel was full. On the afternoon of the sixth day, the Life Power columns of both Life Wheels were finally full. Eventually, Lin Huang stopped the slaughter and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle to fly back to Carefree City. Within those few days, he had managed to store at least 1,300 bronze-level carcasses. He paid 17 million credit points to expand the capacity of his storage space to 20,000 cubic meters so he could store more carcasses. However, he was not going to the Hunter Association at Carefree City to sell these carcasses. A few days ago, he was only an iron-level rank-1 hunter and he was now iron-level rank-3. If he were to sell the carcasses at the same place, people would be suspicious of his unusually drastic upgrade. However, as they landed at the west entrance to the foothold, they bumped into the hunter team they met a few days ago. He did not notice them but the group of hunters remembered him. Lin Huang entered the foothold as he recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and summoned the Viridian Wolf instead. The hunters gazed at each other when they saw this. "Is he the imperial censor we met the other day? He''s able to summon two monsters at such a young age!" "Brother, this is not the point. Look at his combat ability. He was only iron-level rank-1 a few days ago. He''s capable enough to upgrade himself to iron-level rank-3 within a few days!" The bearded leader said in fear, "The Alexandrian Eagle''s ability has also been upgraded to its original level which is bronze-level rank-3." "Damn! He levels up extremely fast!" The rest of them said. "Perhaps only royalty possess Life Skills with such terrifying effects" The bearded leader said with a sigh. Lin Huang did not know he had met those people before. He went back to the hotel by riding the Viridian Wolf. After taking his bath and lunch, he went out to look for some delicious food for Lin Xin. He was looking for famous food at Carefree City these few nights and he had jotted down the locations of the shops he found. He planned to come back earlier in the afternoon as he wanted to buy Lin Xin some food. However, the Life Power was absorbed faster than he had expected. He was half a day ahead of his schedule. Therefore, he could spend more time doing his own things. Riding the Viridian Wolf, Lin Huang visited more than 30 shops. He ordered two takeaway sets from each of the famous foodstalls. As soon as he finished visiting all of the shoplots, the sky became darker. Lin Huang remembered that there was a roadside foodstall he visited with Leng Yuexin before. There were two specialty dishes. It was so crowded there. When he got there, the boss recognized him and waived at Lin Huang. Lin Huang walked towards him with a puzzled expression. The boss asked cheekily, "Did you get back with your girlfriend?" "Uncle, the girl who came together with me that day was not my girlfriend" Lin Huang could not believe that the uncle remembered them. "Ah alright, I''m not going to talk about it then. What''re you going to order today? I''ll offer you 20% discount on all dishes." The boss said generously. "A set of steak to dine in and two sets of tenderloin and steak, takeaway please." Lin Huang ordered. "Damn! You even ordered takeaway. I should have said 10% discount" The boss was generous but he did not think Lin Huang would buy so much from his shop! "It''s okay. I''ll pay the full amount. I know its not easy to gain profit in a business." Lin Huang offered. "A man must keep his word. I promised to offer you a 20% discount and I keep my promises." He then continued, "If your friends happened to visit Carefree City, do recommend them my humble stall." "I''ll recommend you to them for sure." Lin Huang nodded his head and smiled. While Lin Huang was enjoying his juicy steak, he was reminded of his dinner here with Leng Yuexin from the last time they visited this uncles stall. "I wonder how she''s doing now" Lin Huang paid for his takeaways after finishing his dinner. He realized that it was almost nine o''clock at night when he got back to his hotel room. Lin Huang was indeed tired but felt a sense of fulfilment with his growth and achievement in the past few hectic days. He verified the confirmation message that he received upon booking the flight ticket of the Demonic Crystal Spaceship while lying on the sofa. The flight would depart on 8.40 a.m. After reading some news, it was 10 o''clock at night. He washed up and went to bed. The next morning, Lin Huang was awake at around 7.40 a.m. After taking his bath, he packed his stuff and left. He checked out after having his breakfast and he went to an outdoor caf nearby. He ordered a cup of coffee while he waited for the spaceship to arrive. The spaceship arrived on time at 8.40 a.m. and he boarded. Lin Huang sighed and said, "It''s finally time to leave" 87 Life Skill Choices The next day, the Demonic Crystal Spaceship arrived at Baqi City in the afternoon. After getting off the spaceship, Lin Huang went to the Hunter Association along with the carcasses he had with him to redeem credit points. He redeemed a total of 500 million credit points from 1,300 bronze-level monsters. These carcasses were ranked from bronze-level rank-1 to bronze-level rank-3. Lin Huang did not stay any longer at Baqi City and left the city from the south gate of the foothold once he had redeemed his points. He summoned his Alexandrian Eagle and flew towards Wulin Town. Lin Huang finally arrived at Wulin Town at around 2.30 p.m. Upon arriving at Street No.101, Lin Huang saw the house but he was not used to the newly furnished house. He scanned the Emperor''s Heart Ring before entering his house. Lin Xin''s shoes were not there as she was at school. Lin Huang put on his slippers and entered the house. He realized that his house was quite clean, which means Lin Xin did the house chores while she stayed alone at home. He took a bottle of green leave juice from the fridge and returned to rest on the couch in the living room. He had been extremely busy for the past 20 days. He did not have sufficient rest for the past 10 days as he was preparing for the Reserve Hunter assessment. After returning home for around three days, he went to the level-4 wild zone of Wangyou Forest so that he can level up to iron-level. Furthermore, he spent six and a half days at Grimace Valley to polish his Life Power. He would leave early and come home late every day like a machine. Now that he finally got home, he decided to take a good break before leveling himself to bronze-level. The Life Power in his iron Life Wheel overflowed and it was not completely stable yet and so he considered upgrading to bronze-level after a few months of rest so that things could settle down. Upgrading to the next level when the Life Power in his body was unstable would cause a leak in Life Power. Even a mild leakage could cause failure in the upgrade, leading to substantial reduction in Life Power. For serious cases, it could range from a violent rage to an explosion increasing the chances of death. Of course, there must be a way to reduce the settlement period of the Life Power. It could be done by practicing Life Skills. Higher leveled Life Skills will accumulate Life Power quicker shortening the settlement period of Life Power. "It seemed like it''s the right time to choose a set of Life Skills now." He placed the green leaves juice back on the tea table looked for information on various Life Skills. There were only three types of Life Skills available in the markets which were low, medium and high level. The low-level Life Skills were so expensive that one would have to buy it with at least a few million credit points. The price for a mid-level Life Skill was around 30 million and above and high-level Life Skill would cost between 300 to 500 million credit points. If there were attributes associated with the Life Skill, the price would be 10 times higher or even more. There was a piece of news he heard about an auction on one of the web pages. It was a high-level Life Skill: Ice Tactics. An anonymous person bought it for 880 million credit points. As reported by the news, the Life Skill was described as a high-leveled Life Skill imbued with the element of ice. Practicing Life Power with this kind of Life Skill would allow one to use the elemental power with one''s Life Power. Once it reaches a certain level, the Life Power would turn enemies into ice., one would carry its ice feature in his Life power. When it reached a certain level, the Life Power would turn enemies into ice. This description reminded Lin Huang about Xue Luo. However, he was sure that even if Ice Tactics was trained to its ultimate level, it would never be on par with Xue Luo''s abilities. Life Skill that beyond these high-level Life Skills would be the ultimate Life Skill. Life Skills of this level would not be available on the market. It was an item that the members of the royal family would usually fight for. Lin Huang had no clue about its price. It should be at least 10 times the price of a high-level Life Skill or possibly even more. Lin Huang did not find a suitable Life Skill even after browsing the net for more than an hour. Lin Huang hesitated for a while and called Yi Zheng as he was best qualified to speak on this issue. The notification rang twice and a video feed of Yi Zhengs appeared. "Hey man, are you calling the wrong number? Aren''t you supposed to call my sister?" Yi Zheng was wearing a white robe and looked like he just woke up. "There''s something that makes you seem better looking." Lin Huang said. "Yeah, I like this. I didn''t know that you''re such a good flatterer!" Yi Zheng looked pleased and said, "You can ask me whatever now." "I want to know how I should choose a Life Skill and you''re the best person to ask for advice about these kinds of things," Lin Huang pleaded. "I have forgotten that you''re iron-level now. Did you kill the Six-Armed Demon or the other monster?" Yi Zhen asked. "It is the Six-Armed Demon" Lin Huang replied. In fact, the monster that Lin Huang killed was the mutated demon that wore a purple dress. "I didn''t know you were capable of that. You''re quite the skillful man!" Yi Zheng sounded surprised. "Okay, back to the topic. It''s actually not difficult to choose a Life Skill. First of all, you have to test the Life Power on your body to check what element it leans towards. Then, choose a Life Skill compatible with the element of your Life Power. However, most people have Life Power without any elemental attributes and will only obtain it later by practicing with Life Skills. In some cases, choosing a Life Skill with similar attributes would be an advantage. "You must have read the news about the Life Skill Ice Tactics yesterday. For instance, both of them were training for Ice Tactics. If one was born with the Life Power without an elemental attribute, his casting speed for Ice Tactics would be one. Similarly, the speed of Life Power accumulation and the power of Ice Tactics would also be one. However, if another person was born with Life Power imbued with the element of ice which would allow it to sync with Ice Tactics, the cast speed for Ice Tactics would be increased by three-fold or even more by three-fold or more. The same goes for the Life Power accumulation and the activation. Therefore, compatible elemental attributes and Life Skills are pretty important." "If your Life Power naturally does not have any elemental attributes, I would recommend you choose Army Attack Tactics. Though it is only a high-level Life Skill, if you''re able to reach the sixth level, its power would be on par with that of an ultimate Life Skill." Yi Zhengs explanation was very detailed. "How much would this Army Attack Tactics cost?" "Why are you asking about the price? Isn''t it there''s an "Army Attack Tactics" training crystal in the reward given to you earlier? Did you not receive the parcel?" Yi Zheng was curious. "Which parcel are you referring to?" Lin Huang asked, confused. "It''s the reward for the monster horde incident given by the Hunter Association and the government. It''s rewarded to everyone who stayed there to help. Yeyu and I intentionally reported that you''re the one who helped out the most in the incident. The leader heard that you''re going to upgrade to the iron-level and rewarded you with an Army Attack Tactics training crystal." Yi Zheng explained patiently. "It was sent out a week ago and I just received mine last week. I''ll ask for you if you havent received it yet." "It''s okay. I''ll ask my sister about it later because I just got home today. She might have kept it for me. If she didn''t, I''ll check the location of the parcel via the courier service database." Lin Huang responded and then further added, "Oh yea, you mentioned about the innate attribute of Life Power just now. How do I test it?" "You''re a Reserve Hunter now. It can be tested for free at any of the footholds of the Hunter Association or you could purchase a tester from the net. It''s user-friendly and cheap. It only costs tens of thousands credit points. However, I would recommend you take your test at the Hunter Association''s foothold because you''ll get a detailed report after you do. At the same time, your abilities will be updated as well. Since you''ve upgraded to the iron-level, you might as well update your personal information." Yi Zheng adviced. "Alright. I''ll spare some time to test the attribute of my Life Power and then decide if I should choose Army Attack Tactics. I''ll call you again if there''s any other problem." Lin Huang hung up the phone and immediately bought a Life Power tester from the net because he did not want to update his combat abilities at the Hunter Association. He had been upgraded to iron-level rank-3 without any Life Skills. It would be a big problem to him if the others found out about this. After placing his order, Lin Xin arrived home from school. She was so happy when she saw Lin Huang as she entered the house. "Brother, when did you come back?" "I arrived here at around 2.30 p.m." Lin Huang closed the web page of the news, stood up and walked towards the kitchen." What would you like to eat for dinner? I bought you only the most delicious dishes. Come, have a look and choose which you like." Lin Xin changed her slippers and saw 10 takeaway boxes as she entered the kitchen. "What''s that?" She pointed at one of the boxes and asked. "It''s fried snake. Its main ingredient is the snake flesh cut into pieces. Its fried and spicy." "How about that?" Lin Xin pointed at another box and asked. "Weird tasting Takoyaki. Its main ingredient is squid tentacle with seasonings and are ball-shaped. It''s baked and not fried, though." "How about this?" "Ghostwhisper. It''s ghostwhisper''s tongue, cut into thin slices before being fried." ... After asking about each dishs ingredients, she picked her top three favorites. Lin Huang cooked some rice and heated up the dishes for dinner. After having their dinner, Lin Huang asked, "Xin Er, have you received any parcels lately?" "Yes, three of them. One of them is from the Hunter Association while one is the Gun Master game ring. I''ve unwrapped it. The third parcel only came in yesterday and the sender is a girl. Her name is Leng" "Where''re the parcels then?" Lin Huang was excited to hear her name. "The Gun Master game ring is in my room. I''ve been playing with it these days. I didn''t unwrap the other two. Its on your bedside cabinet." "Oh, I''ll have a look at it then." Lin Huang sprung to his room at once. 88 A Great Reward Lin Huang took out two parcels from the bedside cabinet. The parcel that Leng Yuexin sent him was packaged properly. There was a storage ring inside the parcel. It was not the one that Li Yanxing had. There was a small note with a fragrant smell inside the parcel and there were eight numbers written on it. It was probably the password that Leng Yuexin gave him to unlock the ring. Lin Huang entered the password according to the numbers on the small note on the login page. Upon verifying the password, an authentication to prove his identity was needed. Lin Huang figured that Yuexin had intentionally set it that way just in case the parcel was stolen or got lost. Lin Huang scanned his Emperor''s Heart Ring and verified his identity. Lin Huang''s identity was automatically bound to the system and the storage ring she gave him became his exclusive storage ring. He immediately checked on the storage ring''s internal information. The storage ring had a very large storage capacity of 100,000 cubic meters. If he were to expand the storage capacity of the Emperor''s Heart Ring to this level, he had to spend 100 million credit points for the expansion. The Emperor''s Heart Ring that Lin Huang was wearing now was only at 20,000 cubic meters. Nonetheless, he noticed that only a few things were stored inside. There were hundreds of complete Life Crystals and thousands of Life Crystal pieces. Along with those were hundreds of weapon rings inside the storage ring. The last few items in the ring made Lin Huang''s breath quicken as these items were placed separately within the storage ring. There was a black sword that Lin Huang had seen Li Yanxing used before. It was a relic. Aside from the sword, there was a silver armor and a pair of black leather boots. Lin Huang could neither activate these three relics with his current Life Power nor could it be kept in his body as well but he could use this sword to kill monsters in the future. Though he would not be able to use it to its full potential with his Life Power, its sharpness alone was enough. A Golden Card was placed not far away from the three relics. "Is it a Credit Point Storage Card?" Lin Huang looked at the card and immediately recognized what it was. "Non-binding Credit Point Storage Card detected. Would you like to bind it?" A page suddenly popped up from the Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Bind it." After a short while, the Emperor''s Heart Ring released a beam of light that shone on the Golden Card. "Scanning of card''s information is now complete. Binding Binding is complete. Would you like to integrate the card into your personal account? After integration, your credit point account will be upgraded to a VIP account and you will be eligible to enjoy discounts on certain merchandise." "Integrate it then." Lin Huang nodded his head. He trusted items from Leng Yuexin. "Integration is complete. Your personal account has been upgraded to a VIP account. Your account balance is 38.155 billion credit points." "38.155 billion?!" Lin Huangs eyes popped. He could only redeem one billion credit points after collecting carcasses for a few days. Lin Huang was shocked to see Li Yanxings credit point balance. Lin Huang thought of it again, even billions of credit points and a few relics meant nothing to him. How terrifying was the power of the Leng''s family? The Leng family would definitely know that Leng Yuexin had Li Yanxing''s storage ring with her. Otherwise, they would not negotiate with the Li family to unlock the Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was impossible that the Leng family did not know that she gave all of the items in Li Yanxing''s storage ring to him. Since Leng''s family agreed to give him these treasures, it probably meant nothing to Leng''s family or perhaps they were a sign of an apology. After integrating the golden Credit Point Storage Card and the Emperor''s Heart Ring, it vaporized and disappeared. He had no idea what was it was made of. He stored the Credit Point Storage Card and wore the delicate storage ring on his left pinky. He then proceeded to unwrap the second parcel. The second parcel was sent by the Hunter Association. Inside, there was a black stone, the size of a fist. It contained a thumb-sized crystal chip and a bronze token that was half the size of half his palm. Lin Huang could recognize that the bronze token was a decree that allowed them to have access to Bronze Hunter related activities. When the token was issued, it would be processed by the Hunter Association and there would be no follow-up procedures. When Lin Huang received this, he knew that he had been upgraded to bronze-level in the Hunter Association. It was the level of a regular hunter and he was no longer just a Reserve Hunter. He could access all information a Bronze Hunter could. However, the upgrade did not mean that Lin Huang had become a true Bronze Hunter. Tasks that other Bronze Hunters could take on, he could only see the information and could not accept. He also could not enjoy the benefits given to Bronze Hunters as well. Aside from the bronze token, the black stone was probably the cultivated crystal for Army Attack Tactics. Lin Huang was not sure of the elemental attributes of his Life Power. Therefore, he dared not practice it yet. He then looked at the thumb-sized crystal chip. He only knew that it was a message chip recognized by the Emperor''s Heart Ring. Lin Huang had no clue what the inside of the chip contained. He scanned it with his Emperor''s Heart Ring and an image was projected onto Lin Huang''s room. There was a muscular, middle-aged man practicing a set of techniques in the projected image. It was giving off a deadly aura. Lin Huang noticed that each of the attacks were fatal. It seemed to be a military technique. It took him 20 minutes to complete practicing the technique. In the projected image, the middle-aged man then began to speak. "The name of this close combat technique is called Fatal Tactic and it''s meant to be used with Army Attack Tactic until one reaches gold-level" "This combat technique is quite good, though." Actually, without listening to the man''s description, Lin Huang already knew that it was a rare combat technique. With the assistance of the teaching projection, he would be able to master the technique and accumulate the necessary cards. Although he majored in sword techniques, it would be great if he could master this combat skill. He kept all his stuff in the storage space. Lin Huang got up and walked towards Lin Xin''s room on the third floor. "Lin Xin, could you please lend me the ''Gun Master'' game ring? I want to assess the current level of my skills." 89 Gun Master Assessmen A maximum of 10 accounts can be registered in Gun Master using a game ring unless it was bound to the Emperor''s Heart Ring. Lin Huang did not know that Lin Xin was interested in the game or he would have bought more rings! After taking the game ring from Lin Xin, Lin Huang went back to his room and summoned the game cabin. The Gun Master game was expensive because of the game cabin. The game cabin was only around 10 meters squared. There was a small room with a height of 2.5 meters. In fact, it employed spatial compression technology to make the room look small on the outside even if it had a significantly larger interior. It had an area of more than 10,000 meter squared and its height was about 100 meters or so. Spatial compression technology was also known as temporary spatial compression. This was still considered new technology and was still not widely known or used by commoners. The so called temporary spatial compression method was actually a temporary compression of spatial dimension within n a specific period of time and should it exceed that time period, it would expand back to its original size. The game cabin was only had a floor space of 10 meters squared and once the game was activated, the game cabin would utilize temporary spatial compression to increase the play-space but it was limited to only 12 hours per day. Therefore, a game cabin was not suitable for item storage. Lin Huang brought the game ring along with him into the game cabin and the virtual game world appeared before him. Lin Huang peeped into Lin Xin''s temporary account which was still logged in. Lin Huang was stunned because Lin Xin''s had a really good stats in her account. It did not matter if it was a fixed, moving or multiple targets before her, she did very well in all categories, even shooting at targets that would appear in random locations. Lin Huang clicked a few buttons to look for records of actual combat she did in-game and was astonished by what he saw. Though the accumulated points were not too high in the first few rounds, she did a lot better after that. She won the title of best player in most of the battles. "With her physique, it was kind of unbelievable that she could achieve such a standard. She was born to become a gunmaster!" Lin Huang never knew that his sister was so talented. After watching Lin Xin''s performance, he logged out of her account and registered for a new account. The game ring began to scan Lin Huang''s body and recorded the information to create the new character. After the registration was completed, the game user interface appeared once again. Lin Huang noticed that there were no records found in the new account and it was not linked to Lin Xin''s previous account. When he was choosing the gun model, he chose the BlackEagle33 because he was good at it. He held the gun in his hand. It was as if there were no differences between the one he was holding and the real thing. Lin Huang then entered the training mode. It began with fixed target shooting. His surroundings had automatically morphed into a shooting range and a target appeared before him, at a distance of 200 meters. Lin Huang fired 10 consecutive shots and all of the shots hit the bullseye. The next target appeared. Lin Huang lifted his gun and shot at it Lin Huang felt as if he was using a real gun. Even the bullet''s trajectory and recoil force felt exactly like an actual Black Eagle33. He began to gain interest in this game. After practicing his shooting for 20 minutes, Lin Huang morphed the BlackEagle33 into its sniper form. When a different gun was used, the shooting range would change accordingly. The target was now located further, at a distance of 500 meters. Lin Huang aimed at the target and activated the Life Power in his body causing a bullet to fire. The bullet penetrated through the virtual target in the center, forming a hole. The second target immediately appeared. Lin Huang took aim at the second target and shot at it Lin Huang was done warming up after practicing his sniping for 20 minutes. He switched his firearm back into a pistol and started the next assessment. The shooting range morphed once again. A moving target appeared at a distance of 200 meters. Lin Huang pulled the trigger the moment the target appeared. The second target was no longer moving at a constant speed. Still, Lin Huang fired. ... After the shooting practice, Lin Huang went on with his sniper again. After half an hour, he began the next round of training. The number of targets in the shooting range increased and had different movements assigned to each of them. Some of them were faster while some of them were slower. There were even targets that were not moving in a straight line However, all these did not scare Lin Huang. Shots were continuously fired and he hit all of the targets. Soon, he entered a more difficult level. Fourth round C random shooting. All the targets would randomly appear for mere seconds before Lin Huang''s 180-degree view. The level of difficulty of this assessment was quite high. When Lin Huang graduated from the Hunter Reserve College, he did not get full marks for his gun assessment because he had lost one mark in this category. However, Lin Huang was confident that he could easily pass this assessment. His physique was not only stronger but the speed of his hands had also improved after he gotten his Life Seed Skill. The 10-minute random shooting assessment ended very quickly. Lin Huang scored full marks and passed the assessment. Lin Huang aced all four assessments perfectly. Lin Huang felt that it was reasonable for him to score full marks because of his strength and physique. Upon completing this assessment, Lin Huang selected actual combat and chose a random battle to join. The virtual environment in the game cabin quickly shifted to an actual combat map. There were a variety of buildings, different modes of transportation, and even the virtual passer-bys. The opponents were randomly matched for several rounds and Lin Huang scored the highest in each round. He was undefeated throughout the rounds. After playing for a few rounds, Lin Huang finally discovered that the physique level of regular people was different from his. Since he was in a room filled with ordinary opponents, he was able to attack without so much as a single worry. The battle quickly became meaningless and unfulfilling for him. "It seems like I have to enter the hunter rooms where I can battle with actual hunters as my opponents. I can only become stronger if my opponents are stronger than I am." Lin Huang looked at the time and it was nine o''clock at night. It was still early. He immediately logged out of the normal room and logged into the hunters room 90 Encountering A Pro "Authenticating hunter''s identity, logging into the hunter room" "System''s automatic detection shows player''s combat level is iron-level rank-3. Iron battleground can be activated." "Would you like to activate it?" "Activate." Lin Huang nodded his head to confirm. "Iron battleground activated!" "Please enter your account ID." "God of Gun." Lin Huang wanted an arrogant name. "The ID has been used. Please choose another ID" "God of Firearm." "The ID has been used. Please choose another ID " "Blast Master." "The ID has been used. Please choose another ID " "Simply a Newbie." Lin Huang finally decided to be modest since all the cool names are in use. "Please confirm ID?" "Confirm." He was sure. "The iron battleground is segregated into the firearm zone and mixed battle zone. Please select your zone to begin combat." "I choose the firearm zone." Lin Huang saw the advertisements for the mixed battle zone. There were a variety of weapons there but Lin Huang wanted to battle against stronger opponents instead. A virtual map then popped up onto the projected game interface, showing eight maps that were available for selection. Lin Huang noticed that one of the maps had a combination of Chinese and western buildings. He found it interesting and chose that map. "Confirm selection of Lijiang Tower" "There will be two teams in the Lijiang Tower combat mode. Six players will be assigned to each team and players are distinguishable based on the color labels on top of the players heads. Team members are white while opponents are colored red. The entire battle will take place over half an hour an the side with the highest amount of kills will win." "You may auto-match with random players or invite online friends to play." "Random matching." It was the first time Lin Huang played this game. He did not have any friends yet. "Random matching completed. Please choose your weapon." As usual, Lin Huang chose the BlackEagle33. "Weapon selection completed. The map is now being generated." Within a short while, the virtual environment before Lin Huang changed. The spacious game cabin was transformed into a night-time city environment. "Welcome to Lijiang Tower!" His team members appeared one after the other. "Are there any first-time players?" A tall man glanced around and his gaze landed on Lin Huang''s ID which was placed above his head. The rest of them shook their heads. Lin Huang was the only one who raised his hand. "I just bought my game ring today." Everyone suddenly seemed displeased. A new player could easily become a burden to the team in this game, an easy target for the opponents. "Follow me then and morph your weapon to its rifle form and use automatic-fire." The tall man frowned when he saw Lin Huang holding a BlackEagle33. "I''m not going to change anything. I''m used to attacking with the BlackEagle33." Lin Huang shook his head. "Kid, just change it for the sake of the team. Don''t be selfish. The speed and the shooting distance of that pistol is no match for a rifle. You''re a newbie and you''re not used to this game yet. Please dont be a burden to the team." The 40-year-old man was rude indeed. The ID above his head said, "Man in his forties is a flower in bloom". "I''ll try a few shots first. If I can''t manage it, I''ll change my weapon to a rifle." Lin Huang insisted. "It''s fine, stop talking about it. You''re given two chances. If you die without a kill, you''re changing your weapon." "Okay." Lin Huang compromised. He was confident with his technique. Although he might not be able to defeat all the players in the iron zone, he at least believed that he would not be killed twice and would at least get a kill! "I''ll bring him to the night market. The four of you please go to the courtyard." The tall man gave his instructions. None of them disagreed with him because truthfully, no one was willing to bring Lin Huang to the night market. Lin Huang kept quiet. It was fine if no one was going to accompany him. He preferred wandering around on his own so he could familiarize himself with the map. Of all the people there, he did not think that it would be the tall man who would lead him there instead, especially after the heated debate about them wanting him to change weapons. The player ID of the tall man was ''I''m the tall and mighty man''. Walking behind the tall man, Lin Huang looked at his player ID and he furrowed his brows. "It''s true that he''s tall, but... Mighty? Was the word ''Mighty'' referring to his performance in the game or something else?" Brother Mighty did not know that Lin Huang was laughing at his player ID. He explained to Lin Huang as he walked, "Based Lijiang Tower''s map, it seems that there are not many buildings here. The battleground is separated into two main areas. One is the courtyard, the area where the four of them are headed to now and the second area is the night market, where we''re headed towards now. The courtyard has a better field of view with a bridge there while the night market has more shelters. With the way the night market is designed, the best weapon to use here would be a sniper rifle..." Since Lin Huang was using a BlackEagle33, Brother Mighty told him to attack using its sniper form so he does not get killed so easily. It was night-time and the virtual map was brightly lit. Lin Huang observed his surroundings as he listened to Brother Mightys explanation. Although he knew that it was just a virtual scene in the game, he was hungry because of the many food stalls in the market. He casually took a grilled squid from one of the stalls. The squid was still hot and it had a burnt aroma to it, it felt so real! He was astounded at how advanced this game was. Lin Huang walked with Brother Mighty and together, they passed by several restaurants. He attempted to familiarize himself with the dynamics here. Just as he was walking out of a shop selling steamed buns, a gunshot from a sniper went off. Brother Mightys s head exploded and his body collapsed to the ground. Lin Huang did not run away. Instead, he rushed out of the shop and activated Cloud Steps, moving around a short distance. He lifted his pistol and shot upwards, towards the high ground of the night market that Brother Mighty mentioned just now. There was a woman wearing a tight, black leather outfit on the high grounds of the night market, using a skill similar to his. Lin Huang saw that she was using the same type of weapon he had C a BlackEagle33. After a few consecutive shots, Lin Huang''s expression changed. He would never have thought he would meet a pro in his very first battle and of all the zones, he had to meet her in the iron zone 91 A Fateful Battle - Two Fish In A Moa The mysterious lady stared at Lin Huang. After the BlackEagle33 in her hand morphed into a pistol, she made a few consecutive attacks at Lin Huang instead. Lin Huang easily dodged her shots. When Lin Huang shot back, the woman moved as swift as a ghost. She was on par with Lin Huang''s Cloud Steps or if Lin Huang would admit it, she was probably even better than he was. The few shots he fired did not even graze her leather armor. Both of their attacks were fired lighting fast and they instantly realized that they had encountered strong opponents - each other. None of them were willing to retreat and within a few seconds, their attacks became more intense. Lin Huang used this opportunity to train himself. The woman in leather clothing seemed happy, perhaps due to the fact that it was rare to encounter a similarly strong opponent in the iron zone. A grin formed on her fair face and her waist-length black hair followed her curves. She was so graceful even when she dodged his attacks. Lin Huang, on the other hand, looked serious and was worried all the time but he seemed to do it all effortlessly, his skill light and graceful. Both of them continued to attack each other at a distance of around 100 meters and yet none of them were hit by their opponent''s attack. The people who watched were amazed at their movement speed. The reason why they could avoid the bullets was because they had astonishing predictive abilities. Both of their eyes had never once left each other''s body. They were able to capture the subtle changes in their opponents muscles just before they attacked. Under such circumstances, they were able to predict each other''s moment of attack and dodge in the nick of time. If they were a tenth of a second slower, they would be hit. The fight lasted for only a few minutes before it ended; not because either of them was hit by a bullet but because there were other players who had now entered the battle. The first player who entered was the woman''s companion. He was short and fat. Before he was able to react, a bullet penetrated his head between his eyebrows and he collapsed instantly. Of course, it was Lin Huang who fired that shot. His speed was terribly fast. The second player who joined the fight was Brother Mighty. He was Lin Huang''s partner. As soon as Brother Mighty respawned, he hurried to the place where he died. He had no clue about what had just happened. After watching the video on playback, he found out that he had been shot by a lady aged between 16 or 17. He went back to the battleground to help Lin Huang. He was still far away and could only hear the sound of shots fired every few seconds. He excitedly muttered, "The guy had not died yet?!" He recognized the gun that was being used - the BlackEagle33. He rushed in the direction of the sound using a different route. This way, he could see the high ground of the night market with better clarity and protect his back from being shot again. "How dare this fellow get me with a sneak attack? I''ll let you know how it feels like, getting shot in the head!" Brother Mighty grinned as he exited yet another restaurant. He popped his head from behind the wall and he could see the woman in leather armor from afar. As soon as he was about to pull his trigger, he blacked out, again. Lin Huang noticed Brother Mighty popping his head from behind the wall and once again, he witnessed the lady in leather shooting him. She did it in the same way Lin Huang shot down the fat guy, between his eyebrows. Lin Huang shook his head as he knew that she was determined to compete with him. However, Lin Huang and the woman had never expected that something peculiar was going to happen on that battlefield After Brother Mighty was shot and had watched the video on playback, he realized that the woman was powerful. However, Lin Huang had yet to be sent back to the respawn point. Instead, it was the backbone of his companions, the middle-aged man with the player ID of ''Man in his forties is a flower in bloom'' who appeared at the respawn point. Brother Mighty immediately told the middle-aged man that there was a woman who could very well be a gunmaster at the night market. They then proceeded to the night market together. At the opponent''s respawn point, when the short and fat guy respawned, there were two other people there. He then told them that there was a young man in the opposing team. Three of them rushed to the night market, planning to kill Lin Huang. Soon, the night market that initially began with only two of them was now crowded. As soon as the three of them appeared, including the short and fat guy, Lin Huang made three consecutive shots and immediately, they were sent back to the respawn point. On the other side, Brother Mighty and the middle-aged man were shot by the woman right after they appeared. They were sent back to the respawn point as well. "What just happened?" Everyone was curious. On playback, they saw the scene when Lin Huang made three consecutive shots and all three shots fired hit them right in the middle, between their eyebrows. At the respawn point, Brother Mighty and the middle-aged man were watching the same replay and they exhaled loudly. They were amazed by how powerful the woman was and at the same time, they had finally witnessed Lin Huang''s ability. "We might have met a true gunmaster!" They exclaimed at the same time. Indeed, many hunters were obsessed with firearms but not all of them can be a gunmaster. The main purpose of the Gun Master Assessment was to evaluate how they used a firearm. It was not really related to the candidate''s ability. Though it was a beginner-level assessment, many of today''s Gold Hunters were not able to pass the assessment at some point in the past. Yi Yeyu was one of them. With the hunter zone opening in Gun Master, many gun-obsessed-hunters were motivated to join. They hoped to brush up on their firearm skills through virtual combat instead of dying in actual battle. Besides, they may just have a chance of meeting an actual gunmaster which would be a good learning experience for them. They suspected that this was a battle between two gunmasters. "Hey guys, there might be two gunmasters fighting at the night market. Stop fighting and let''s watch the battle between them!" Brother Mighty and his team shouted at the video. At the opposing camp, the short, fat guy and his teammate invited more people to witness the memorable fight as well. Two guys who were fighting in the courtyard forfeited their battle and ran towards the night market 92 Best Player Award Mu Zimos game ID was ''Female Gunslinger 1''. The account was created not long ago, less than a month. Within one month, aside from battles where she was paired with weak teammates, she had never lost a battle. System statistics show that she has a 99% win rate and was awarded as the best player of the game in most battles than the battles which she had weak teammates, she had never lost before. During this period of time, she had met other gunmasters in-game. However, she did not participate much in battles as her opponents would usually choose to avoid her and attack her teammates instead. It was the first time Mu Zimo met an opponent like Lin Huang, who would fight till the end and was reluctant to retreat. She was so excited and did not bother about the outcome of the battle. She wanted to be better than Lin Huang. Lin Huang entered the game for the first time with a simple purpose. He was looking for an opponent who was stronger than him so he could practice his skills. He was not concerned about winning. Their team members arrived at the battleground to see the both of them engaged in a fierce battle. All of them kept their guns and raised their hands, a sign that they were here to watch instead of joining in the fight. They watched quietly. As time passed, both of them became familiar with each other''s combat movements. Soon, they bonded through battle. Lin Huang knew that she was the real deal, a true gunmaster. She had strong fundamentals and it showed in her skills. She was as good as he was. He could not figure out her weaknesses at all. Mu Zimo felt differently about Lin Huang. He had good basics unlike the other players but she could predict his next moves they were just as good as one another. He must be new to Gun Master by the looks of it but he must have come from an academy. She fired even more shots at him and when Lin Huang tried to dodge her attacks, another BlackEagle33 appeared in her left hand. Just then, he could not relax anymore, he knew she meant business this time. Mu Zimo was confident that she could certainly send Lin Huang back to the respawn point. Lin Huang however, had no intentions of retreating. At the high ground, Mu Zimo held guns in both her hands, attacking consecutively. Her attack speed was at least 50% faster now. "It''s a gunfighting technique!" Lin Huang''s pupils dilated as they watched Mu Zimo''s every movement. "I''ve been practicing this skill for a year C the Twin Flower. I don''t think that you can dodge my bullets anymore!" Mu Zimo finally spoke to Lin Huang. The bullet''s trajectory of her BlackEagle33''s began changing abruptly. It was supposed to be traveling in a straight line. However, following Mu Zimo''s wrist movements, it began to travel in a curved path. She then launched her combo with both guns. Bullets were flying all around her towards Lin Huang, filling the entire area, causing those who were watching the fight to cheer in astonishment. At almost the same time, Lin Huang''s movements changed. He touched the ground with his toe and Spectral Snowsteps was activated. His body rose swiftly into the air, resembling a soaring eagle. He did a somersault in mid-air and landed on the roof of another house. Thanks to Spectral Snowsteps, he managed escaped to escape the area of effect of the gunfighting technique - Twin Flower. "Eh?!" Mu Zimo had never expected that Lin Huang would have different movement skills. It was as fast as the first skill he activated. Lin Huangs weakness was revealed when she realized that his gun skills were weakened if his opponents used gunfighting techniques. After getting up to the rooftop, he activated Boundless Vision without hesitation. The innate ability of Sly Hand was activated as well. He raised the gun once again and fired multiple shots at Mu Zimo with the fastest attack-speed ever. Thanks to the physique enhancement from Robust, the recoil force had minimal effect on Lin Huang''s body. His regular attack speed was then 10% faster than Mu Zimo''s attack speed. He was terribly fast now. The activation of Boundless Vision allowed Lin Huang to better notice Mu Zimo''s subtle movements. Mu Zimo had almost used up her Life Power when she activated the gunfighting technique. She was caught off-guard when Lin Huang counterattacked with a fearsome attack-speed and she panicked. Brother Mighty and the rest of them were struck by terror. Nobody could avoid such an attack regardless of how good their skills were. They would definitely be sent back to the respawn point. The battle between gunmasters was not about movement skills. It was about eyesight and their abilities to predict their opponent''s movements to give them great advantage in their ranged attacks, especially for gunmasters and bowmasters. Lin Huang grinned when Mu Zimo began messing up her movements. Just then, he held the BlackEagle33 in his left hand. He had never practiced using a gun with his left hand so he had no idea how it would turn out but this did not hamper the firing rate of his left hand. The intensity of the Life Power bullets doubled immediately. Mu Zimo was shocked to see Lin Huang holding another gun on his left hand. However, it shocked her that his accuracy was so awful. Since Lin Huang shot randomly, it was rather difficult for Mu Zimo to predict the trajectory of the bullets fired out from the gun in his left hand. Lin Huang''s shooting speed was extremely fast to the point that it made her clumsy. She found it difficult to dodge the attacks, causing her defense to become weaker. "I used up most of my Life Power when I used the gunfighting technique. This fellow is now attacking me at lightning speed and this will probably deplete his Life Power. I''ll only need to avoid his attacks for now because movement skills require less Life Power. When his Life Power is exhausted, the victory of this battle will still belong to me!" Mu Zimo planned in her mind. The colorful signboards of the night market made the night in Lijiang Tower much more mysterious. At the night market, the sounds of shooting guns continued and began to sound a lot more like a rifle because Lin Huang kept shooting at her. It had been 10 minutes and Lin Huang''s was still attacking at an extremely high speed. On the other hand, Mu Zimo seemed to have used up most of her Life Power. All of them were comparing Mu Zimo''s gunfighting technique which lasted for only a few seconds but Lin Huang did not seem to have the intention to stop at all. "How could it be? Even if the skill that he''s did not consume a large amount of Life Power, each bullet fired will require Life Power, especially with such a fast attack speed. How is it possible for him to sustain his attacks for such a long period of time?!" Mu Zimo doubted. Her Life Power could only last her six minutes if she shot her bullets at her fastest speed. It had been more than 10 minutes and Mu Zimo had used up most of her Life Power avoiding the attacks while counterattacking. "It has ended," Lin Huang said in a deep voice. He fired out of his left gun to block Mu Zimo''s movements while his other hand shot a bullet at her head. "This guy... He sure knows how to use a gun with his left hand!" Mu Zimo was terrified. The next moment, a bullet penetrated her head and her body collapsed in an instant. Brother Mighty gave Lin Huang a thumbs up and said, "Brilliant! Pretending that you have not trained using your left hand to trick the woman into believing you." Lin Huang shook his head and said, "I''ve indeed never practiced with my left hand to shoot guns before this. When I was in the midst of shooting, I familiarized myself with shooting from my left hand. Though my accuracy has improved, my right hand still handles a gun better." "It seems that one needs to be talented to become a gunmaster. He was able to familiarize himself with shooting from his left hand in just 10 minutes" Brother Mighty and the rest of them looked embarrassed. In the midst of the conversation, a notification sound rang. "Counting down 10, 9, 8" Just as Lin Huang was about to quit the game, he received a friend request. It was from "Female Gunslinger 1". Lin Huang hesitated for a moment but decided to accept her friend request anyway. Now, he had one new friend on his friends list which was initially empty. "I hope we''ll have a chance for a rematch soon!" ''Female Gunslinger 1'' sent him a message. "Sure!" Lin Huang replied. The countdown timer ended as soon as they ended their conversation. Lin Huang saw Lijiang Tower fading from his view. Lin Huang then returned to the empty game cabin with the results of his battle. "Player: Simply a Newbie" "Kill Points Gained: 4" "Death count: 0" "Congratulations! You''ve won the best player award!" 93 Special Life Columns After quitting the game, Mu Zimo changed into her purple silk pajamas. She clicked on the recorded battle between Lin Huang and her at her desk and watched it again. After a short while, a girl in pink pajamas walked into the room. She looked exactly like Mu Zimo. "Sister, what are you watching?" asked the girl in pink pajamas. "I''m watching the recording of the game battle." Mu Zimo did not turn her head around, her gaze never leaving the projected video. The girl in pink pajamas watched the video together with her from behind. She frowned when she saw how intense Lin Huangs attack was. After she finished watching the video, Mu Zimo turned back and asked her twin sister, "Zixi, what do you think?" "There is something strange about the columns in his Life Wheel. The number of Life Wheels that he has is different from that of any other person. Based on the frequency of his high-speed attacks, he would need at least three Life Wheels or more in his body to supply such a large amount of Life Power for an attack that lasted this long." Mu Zixi explained. "I feel the same way!" Mu Zimo felt assured. "It doesn''t matter if he was born with the Six Existential Realm Life Columns with six Life Wheels or the Octadragus Skydragon Life Columns with eight Life Wheels, he is definitely no ordinary person. I wonder which family he''s from, he''s so young..." Mu Zixi said with a smile. "Hey, are you making fun of me because I''m not as good as he is?" Mu Zimo rolled her eyes. "Well, firearms have always been your weakness and you''re fighting with a guy with these special Life Columns while your power is restricted to iron-level rank-1. Dont feel bad for losing the game." Mu Zixi tried to make her sister feel better. "My power can only be restricted to iron-level rank-1 since I have the power and speed of a rank-3 hunter even though I''m just a rank-1 hunter. If I were to fight with the combat abilities of a rank-2 or rank-3 hunter, that would be bullying. Besides, the fact that I lost to someone that had the same combat abilities with me proves that my firearm skills can still be improved." Mu Zimo shook her head as she tried to console herself. "Why do you waste your time practicing with a gun? You already have the ability to use bows and throwing knives as your ranged attack. You should strive to become a transcendent!" Mu Zixi suggested. "You do know that there''s no news regarding the transcendent monster that I''ve chosen? Since I have nothing to do now, I might as well practice my gun skills. Youve been quite free lately, why don''t we play Gun Master together?" Mu Zimo asked. "I''m not going to play that game!" Mu Zixi said with a pout. "I''m going to bed." Mu Zimo turned off the video and slept under the covers with Mu Zixi. After a short while, the sound of Mu Zixi yelling at her was heard, "Don''t touch me whenever and wherever you please! Go to sleep!" It was 10 o''clock at night when Lin Huang left the game cabin. He was quite satisfied with the experience he gained in the game cabin; he even beat an actual gunmaster. However, he noticed that there was still a huge gap between an actual gunmaster and himself. The techniques and skills of an actual gunmaster would be different from him, at least. They would not only have a single attack skill like he did and instead, would have immense power from a variety of gunfighting techniques. "I''ll look for some tutorials on gun techniques and learn from actual combat videos between gunmasters. If I''m able to brush up on my gun skills, it will not be difficult to beat the Gun Master Assessment." Lin Huang was aware of his weaknesses. "I''ll pick up a gunfighting technique after receiving the gunfighting certificate." He heard sounds from Lin Xin who stayed upstairs and was not asleep yet. Lin Huang took the game ring and returned it to Lin Xin so that he could buy a new one for himself. "Brother, you''ve played for so long." She knew that he had just come out from the game cabin. He was still sweating. "Yes, I tried the basic mode and played another round in the hunter zone." Lin Huang nodded. "Did you win?" Lin Xin was curious to know. "Of course I did. Don''t you know who I am?" Lin Huang boasted. "You''re amazing!" There were stars in Lin Xin''s eyes. If her brother could win the game, it was an indicator that her brother was a really good player. "It is 10 o''clock now, get to bed early." Lin Huang rubbed her head softly. He saw the tourist website that Lin Xin was checking out so he asked with a smile, "Are you going on a trip soon? Have you decided where you''re going to head to?" "I''ve chosen a few places but I haven''t made my final decision" There were so many places she wanted to visit. "Which few places have you chosen? Show me." Lin Huang insisted. "I want to go to Qiantang City, the A-grade foothold the most. The photos and videos uploaded on the network are decent. However, it''s quite a distance. It''ll take at least a month to reach if I take the Demonic Crystal Spaceship" She was being optimistic even though she knew very well that she couldnt go there. "It''s indeed nice... However, you don''t have enough time since it''s your final year in this coming September. It takes more than three months to travel to and fro. You can consider this destination next year after your graduation." Lin Huang advised. The super big foothold was indeed beautiful. "The second choice would be Cold Mountain City, a B-grade foothold. It is said that the entire foothold was built on the cold mountains. The foothold is covered in snow during all four seasons. It is summer now and this place is a summer resort." Lin Xin loved cold, snowy weather. "How long does it take to get there if you travel on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship?" Lin Huang was certain she had all the details. "It takes only one month and we can still stay there for half a month." She still preferred to go to Cold Mountain City. "The amount of time spent traveling on the ship is quite long Are there any other choices?" Lin Huang was uneasy as the time taken to go to Cold Mountain City was longer than their actual vacation time. "There''s also Bamboo City at a B-grade foothold and it takes only a week on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. There is also Xiagong City, located at a B-grade foothold as well and it takes only eight days to travel there. Also, Baqi City is in a C-grade foothold" "Since we''re going on a trip, we should just ignore C-grade footholds. Let''s go to the big-sized footholds, the B-grade footholds. There''re only two choices left which are Bamboo City and Xiagong City who happen to be close to one another. There is a place called Black Water City but it is not a touristy place. Choose one location between Bamboo City and Xiagong City. After you''ve graduated, we can travel to places further from us when we have sufficient time for traveling." Lin Huang said. "Alright." Lin Xin agreed with her brother. "Sleep early. I''ll take a bath before I sleep because I''m sweating." Lin Huang went back to his room. "Good night, brother!" Lin Xin immediately shouted as Lin Huang left. "Good night!" 94 Attribute of Lin Huangs Life Power "Your delivery is here. Please pick your parcel up!" Early in the morning, as Lin Xin was preparing for school and Lin Huang was cleaning up after their meal, they heard the sound of the Silvertongue Bird. Upon opening the door, the fist-sized Silvertongue Bird was stood in front of the door. It looked up at Lin Huang. "Good morning, Mr. Lin Huang. Here is your parcel." It then flapped its wings and left a big box, half the size of a regular human, by the doorstep. The yellow feathered Silvertongue Bird jumped up on the box and a receipt appeared from its mouth. Lin Huang took the receipt and scanned the signature code at the bottom right corner with his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He then walked into his house, grabbed some sweets and gave it to the bird. The Silvertongue Bird extended its wings and flew off after taking all the sweets. It was flattered, "Thank you for your generosity. I wish you a happy life." He moved the box back to his house and opened it with a small knife. It was an instrument wrapped in a layer of thick, vibration-proof material. The height of the box was around 80 centimeters but the actual height of the instrument was less than 50 centimeters. He took out the instrument from the box and there was a Hunter Association logo printed on the bottom left corner. Lin Huang intentionally chose this Life Power detector because it was manufactured by the Hunter Association. The result of the test would, therefore, be more reliable than the others. There was a white crystal stone bulging at the top, in the center of the instrument. It was the shape of a hemisphere and was about 20 centimeters in diameter. Lin Huang knew that this was the crystal stone detector. The crystal stone detector lit up as he pressed on the reddish-orange switch at the bottom of the detector. The semi-transparent white crystal stone lit up like a white light lamp. Lin Huang pressed his right hand against it and the Life Power in his body was transferred to the crystal stone detector and it began to glow in a rainbow of colors. The colorful light glimmered for about two minutes and stopped. Three different colors appeared on the stone detector which was initially white in color. Gold color occupied the most among them while there was a little black and red color at the edges. "Detection is completed. The user has polymorphic Life Power. The user has multiple elemental attributes to his Life Power. Three types of attributes have been detected. The dragonfire and blood element occupied most of the Life Power while a small fraction of it is taken up by the strength element. There may be some other attributes that have not been detected. Would you like to contact the Hunter Association for a more detailed test?" "Reject contact!" After listening to the results of the test, he roughly knew why he had multiple elemental attributes in his Life Power. He absorbed most of the Life Power from Charcoal and Bai which was why there was a higher amount of blood and dragonfire element to his Life Power while he only used Tyrant occasionally, which explains why the strength element was a little lacking. He erased the data stored in the detector and turned it off. He then opened the network and started looking for information regarding polymorphic Life Power. There was very little information regarding polymorphic Life Power on the network. He found nothing useful after surfing the net for almost half a day. "It''s unavailable on the Heart Network. Perhaps I''ll have to ask Yi Yeyu again?" Lin Huang frowned. However, he recalled something after a short while. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I am now given access to the exclusive section for Bronze Hunters." He logged into the Hunter Association information network and looked for more information. After reading around eight irrelevant posts, he had finally found one thread discussing Life Skill training for people with polymorphic Life Power. It was posted by an anon around 20 years ago, stating that the person had polymorphic Life Power and was interviewed. Many comments insulted the owner of the post. This was because not many of them possessed more than one attribute. Those who possessed dual attributes were even rarer and there were only a few of them in the entire Division7. People had mentioned polymorphic attributes as a theory but no one had actually proven its existence. Aside from royalty, no commoner had ever heard of this before. The post was initially pushed down the thread list after it was posted for a few days until one day; an anonymous person gave a lengthy reply, rekindling interest in this issue. The anonymous person explained in detail and he or she seemed to have done their research. Lin Huang read the reply carefully and was in deep thought. The entire reply could be concluded in the final sentence, "It is more appropriate for those with polymorphic Life Power to practice Life Skills with a neutral elemental attribute." However, he was pondering this matter deeply. "Based on the reply, it mentioned that Life Power was actually a kind of energy that was relatively stable. However, when Life Power is imbued with different elemental attributes, the instability index of Life Power will increase. A person who possessed polymorphic Life Power has an innate self-balancing system within their body. If they were to train with a Life Skill that was imbued with an elemental attribute, it would disrupt this self-balancing system and cause the unstable Life Power to erupt from one''s body. In order to maintain the balance of Life Power in one''s body, people with polymorphic life power can only train with Life Skills with a neutral element." "The theory made sense but the ratio of the elemental attributes in my Life Power is constantly changing and it seems to be fine. Could it be because I''m still at a low level and have a low quantity of Life Power?" Lin Huang doubted. However, he decided to follow what was suggested and train the Army Attack Tactics that he had on hand. Army Attack Tactics was a set of Life Skills with a neutral attribute that focused on fighting skills. Many experts would practice this Life Skill as it was more valuable than any other There were nine levels in this set of Life Skills. Most people would cap out at level four or five. Only those who were stronger could reach level six. Level six was an important stage in this set of Life Skills. If one was able to break through this stage, the strength and the speed using the Life Skills would be on par with that of an ultimate Life Skill. With Xiao Hei on hand, it could be level six or even level nine for the Army Attack Tactics, he was confident that he could achieve it. Time was the only issue. Since he had determined the attribute of his Life Power, he did not want to delay the training of his Life Skill any longer. He kept the Life Power detector away and went back to his room. He took out a black crystal the size of his fist and transferred his Life Power into it. A middle-aged man appeared in front of Lin Huang and Lin Huang could vaguely sense that he was giving off a murderous vibe. "The Life Skill - Army Attack Tactics was derived from an ancient skill from the ancients known as Devastating Heavens. Despite being a high-level Life Skill that people used in current times, it was in sync with the knowledge and wisdom of the old masters. This set of Life Skills were created by someone who had disobeyed the law of nature. He had said in the past that whoever was capable of achieving level nine in this set of Life Skills would stand aloof from Ultimate Life Skills and would achieve the power of Holy Life Skills..." 95 A Life Skill Card Aside from special Life Skills, the common Life Skills were not so difficult to learn. Rather, the difficult part was upgrading them to the next level. Similarly, Army Attack Tactics was not that difficult to learn as well. Most iron-level hunters were able to complete the first level within three days. Lin Huang was taught by a specially appointed person that specialized in the Army Attack Tactics practicing crystal. Lin Huang could now gradually divide his Life Power into parts. The Life Power which initially resembled a clear stream started to divide into two streams, the two streams then divided into three streams, three streams began dividing into four and eventually, his Life Power was divided into 12 streams after he completed refining his Life Power. It was akin to a large military unit that was broken into 12 smaller units. Lin Huang was puzzled as he wondered what the purpose of refining his Life Power into 12 streams was for. However, after watching the demonstration by the middle-aged man, he finally understood the purpose of doing so. This was because he saw the 12 streams of Life Power tangling among one another, forming a rope which rotated at lightning speed until it resembled an electric drill. "Ah, no wonder so many people are confident with Army Attack Tactics, this set of skill changes the form of one''s Life Power." Lin Huang''s eyes brightened up at the thought of this. Lin Huang could now attack his opponents with different forms of Life Power. After watching the video tutorial, Lin Huang now had a broader understanding of the use of Life Power. He could finally understand why the Life Skill was named Army Attack Tactics. Life Power could be divided into smaller groups like how armies were divided into divisions of troops to carry out different attack tactics be it offensive or defensive; the commander would only have to instruct them and they would carry out his will. This was the core principle of Army Attack Tactics. Lin Huang spent about nine hours managed to master forming his Life Power into the shape of an electric drill and completed the first level of Army Attack Tactics. His progress was quite good and he performed almost as well as a genius! However, he still could not compare to the true geniuses. According to the information Lin Huang retrieved from the network, An Luoyu was the fastest person to master Army Attack Tactics and this was about 20 years ago. He spent about half an hour to complete the first level. He was a true genius. Upon completing the first level of Army Attack Tactics, he received a pop-up notification from Xiao Hei. "Life Skill detected. Do you want to turn it into a card? "Does it require card pieces?" Lin Huang asked. "No, as it is a self-learned and self-mastered Life Skill, you do not have to give anything in order to turn it into a card." "Alright, turn it into a card." Lin Huang nodded. "It''s done. You obtained a Rare Life Skill Card." Lin Huang immediately looked at the card that he had just obtained. "Life Skill Card" "Life Skill Name: Army Attack Tactics" "Rarity: Rare" "Mastery Level: Level 1" "Effect: 12% increment in the rotation speed of Life Power. Increases attack power and defense power by 12% respectively." "Remarks: For the first five levels, with every upgrade, each of the Life Skill effects will be increased by 12%." "Card Remarks: Usable" "With every upgrade, there will be 12% increment. Five levels will mean a 60% increase. When one reaches the sixth level, each of the Life Skill effects will be increased to at least 72%. It is indeed similar to the power of an Ultimate Life Skill." Lin Huang had previously checked out the effects of different levels of Life Skill. For low-level Life Skills, the speed, attack power and defense power of Life Power increased by less than 30% while mid-level Life Skills increased the effects from anywhere between 30% to 50%. On the other hand, high-level Life Skills would increase the effects on Life Power between 50% to 70% while Ultimate Life Skill increases the effect on Life Power between 70% to 100%. "Xiao Hei, after turning it into Life Skill card, will I be rewarded with card pieces when I practice?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, you will obtain card pieces." "What are the rules for leveling this skill?" "It will be upgraded to the second level with 200 card pieces. After upgrading to the second level, it will require 400 card pieces to upgrade to the third level. Then, 800 card pieces are needed to be upgraded to the fourth level. After leveling to the fourth level, 1,600 card pieces are required to upgrade to the fifth level." "Starting from the sixth level, there are some changes to the rules of leveling the skill. In order to upgrade from level five to level six, it requires 10,000 Life Skill card pieces. From level six to level seven, 30,000 Life Skill card pieces are needed and to upgrade from level seven to level eight, you will need 90,000 Life Skill card pieces. " "Upgrading from level eight to level nine is a whole different set of rules. It will require 810,000 Life Skill card pieces." "810,000" Lin Huang was speechless but he muttered, "Lucky for me, it isn''t too difficult to reach level six.." In just a short while after the Life Skill card was made, Lin Xin came back from school and he unlocked his door when he heard the front door open. "Brother, I''m home!" Lin Xin shouted. "What do you want to eat? Take your pick from the kitchen." Lin Huang said as he walked down the stairs and towards the kitchen. He took out the leftovers. After changing her shoes, Lin Xin went to the kitchen chose three dishes. Lin Huang was steaming the rice and said, "I forgot to steam rice. You might need to wait for a while. It was a busy day today." "It''s okay. I am not hungry yet." Lin Xin pulled Lin Huang to the living hall and sat on the sofa. She opened the photos saved in her Emperor''s Heart Ring and pictures of sceneries popped up in front of them. "Brother, I''ve made up my mind! Let''s go to Xiagong City!" Xiagong City was a popular vacation site because of the palace ruins. The palace ruins were 80 kilometers west of Xiagong City. People have said that they were remnants of the old times and was evidence that the Protoss had once descended upon this world. The ruins had now become a popular tourist spot and had around 10,000 visitors per day! "There are tickets available for Xiagong City next Monday. If you''ve made up your mind, I''ll book the tickets now." Lin Huang shared her joy. "Let''s go to Xiagong City!" Lin Xin nodded her head. "Alright!" Lin Huang opened the ticket booking webpage and checked. There were a few tickets available for next Monday and the two rooms they wanted were next to each other. He immediately purchased the tickets. "You still have classes tomorrow. We will go to Baqi City on Saturday. We can have some fun there for two days before we board at Baqi City early the following morning." Lin Huang suggested. 96 Lin Xins Cooking Skill On Saturday morning, Lin Huang was awakened by Lin Xin because of her knocking. "Brother, get up. It''s time for breakfast!" Obviously, she sounded happy and excited. "Yes, I know. I''m coming." Lin Huang looked at the clock and it was only 6.30 a.m. After taking his bath, he changed his clothes and headed downstairs. There were a few slightly weird-shaped, over-fried eggs on the dining table and a plate of refreshing looking salad. Lin Huang walked behind the dining table and looked at the bowl of porridge. The girl had learned from the messed-up eggs. At least, the color looked fine and she did not simply add ingredients in the porridge. "Brother, hurry up. After breakfast, we have to rush to get on the first eagle ride!" Lin Xin demanded. "Take your time. We are not riding on an eagle to get there." Lin Huang understood why she was rushing. "How are we going to go to Baqi City then? We are departing today, aren''t we?" "You will know later when we depart." Lin Huang slowly put a spoonful of porridge into his mouth. His facial expression changed immediately, forcing the porridge down his throat. He raised his head and looked at Lin Xin. "Does it taste good?" "Theres too much salt. It is unhealthy to take in so much salt." Lin Huang tried to be gentle with his criticism. "Since I didn''t add any salt in the fried egg and salad, I added slightly more salt to the porridge." Lin Huang glanced at the spice rack while Lin Xin was talking. Before this, there was at least three-quarters of salt left in the container placed on the semi-transparent spice rack. However, there was none left. "You can sprinkle some salt or pour soy sauce on the fried egg and salad if you want more taste in your meal." Lin Huang explained patiently. To reduce the saltiness, Lin Huang took a spoonful of green salad. As he ate the spoonful of salad, Lin Huang felt like his skull was about to crack. He forced himself to swallow and took a serviette to wipe away his tears. "Xin Er, how much mustard did you add to the salad?" Lin Huangs tongue was numb. "I remember you telling me that some of the vegetables must be soaked to taste good. I added the whole bottle of mustard oil into the bowl and soaked the vegetables. I coat the vegetables and mustard oil well from top to bottom by wearing gloves. I spent a lot of time preparing this!" Lin Xin said proudly. "No wonder the color of the vegetables looks so appealing. It has been coated with mustard" Lin Huang thought. "Xin Er, I am stuffed. Enjoy your breakfast. I will wash the plates later." Lin Huang walked towards the sofa. "Brother, you have not touched the fried egg." Lin Xin was upset. "You can eat it." Lin Huang sat on the sofa and read the news. Lin Xin ate all the dishes C the salty porridge, the mustard-soaked salad and even the fried-egg. She gobbled them all! "Was it possible that she was born with a weird sense of taste?" Lin Huang thought as he glanced at her. In just a short while, Lin Xin finished all the food on the dining table. Lin Huang closed the news website and cleaned up the table. "Brother, how are we going to Baqi City?" Lin Xin asked. "Why are you being so impatient? You''ll know later." Lin Huang was agitated. "Have you packed?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, last night!" "I''ll check my room once again to make sure that I did not miss anything. Please check that the windows are closed and the lights are switched off and oh... Lock the door on your way down." Lin Xin followed after him and went to check on the things Lin Huang mentioned. Lin Huang had gone to his room. He closed the windows in his room and folded his quilts. He took one last glance at his room and locked the door. Lin Xin was coming down the stairs. "Ive done everything you asked me to do. Can we depart now?" Lin Xin was clearly excited. Both of them changed their shoes and walked out of their house. Lin Huang walked two steps forward and summoned the Viridian Wolf at Street No.101. It was a majestic-looking Viridian Wolf. She paused for a long time and finally said, "Brother, are you an Imperial Censor?!" "Yes, I am. I discovered it when I registered for the Reserve Hunter Assessment." Lin Huang did not tell her the truth because it would be hard for him to explain why he did not tell Lin Xin about this earlier. "It''s going to take a long time to reach Baqi City by riding on your Viridian Wolf" Lin Xin was curious. "We''ll ride on the Viridian Wolf until we get out of this foothold. We''ll ride on other monsters later." He extended his hand and pulled Lin Xin up to sit on the wolfs back. The Viridian Wolf stood up and ran towards the east gate of the foothold. They met a few acquaintances in the town who were filled with astonishment because of Lin Huangs fancy ride! After about three minutes, they arrived outside the east gate of the foothold. Lin Huang then recalled the Viridian Wolf and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. "It''s so beautiful!" Lin Xin was staring at the white eagles pure, frosty appearance. "The Alexandrian Eagle''s speed is faster than an ordinary eagle." "Brother, you''re so amazing. You''re capable of summoning two monsters!" Lin Xin complimented Lin Huang. "Get up. You can sit on this weather-resistant cushion so you can get a better view of the scenery." Lin Huang helped Lin Xin get up on the Alexandrian Eagle and he followed after her. "Onto Baqi City." Lin Huang instructed the Alexandrian Eagle. The Alexandrian Eagle roared, fluttered its wings and flew up to the sky with both of them behind it 97 Leng Yuexin Leveled Up - Transcenden During the two days in Baqi City, Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to places with good food and fun in the foothold. On Monday morning, Lin Xin woke up at 6 oclock again causing Lin Huang to wake up early too because she was noisy when she was getting ready in the living room. He showered, changed and then brought Lin Xin to have breakfast downstairs. Whenever Lin Huang stayed in a hotel, he always thought of the food back at Stable Residence. The buffet breakfast in this hotel was not bad at all but it was nothing compared to the food at Stable Residence. Lin Huang then headed to the reception to check out once they were done. After they left the hotel, he brought Lin Xin to the open air cafe that he went before. He was welcomed by the refreshing fragrance of coffee which made him feel wide awake. He then asked a staff, "May I know what time you open?" "Sir, we are open 24 hours. You can come in anytime you want." The lady staff replied gracefully. "Oh, thats great Get me a cup of black coffee then." Lin Huang raised his eyebrow, turned around and asked Lin Xin, "What would you like to drink?" "Coffee must be bitter, are there any other beverages?" Lin Xin looked at the menu and noticed that there were no decaffeinated beverages available. "We just launched honey coffee a few months back. Its a sweet beverage." The lady staff recommended. "I''ll have that then." Lin Xin nodded. "Is there anything else? We have desserts too." "None for me, how about you?" Lin Huang looked at Lin Xin. "Im good. Were still full from breakfast." Lin Xin shook her head. "Alright then. One black coffee and one honey coffee." The lady staff repeated. After the bill was paid, Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to sit under the umbrella under the open air. The morning sun hurt their eyes. It was the first time Lin Huang could enjoy the beautiful side of the world without any pressure. Baqi City was quiet in the morning, there were very little people walking at the plaza. Nonetheless, the city was indeed beautiful. If there were fewer monsters in this world, people would be able live in peace like heaven on earth. He was staring at the sun for a long time and was distracted when the staff brought his coffee to him. He took a sip but frowned. Lin Xin noticed that and asked, "Is it bad?" "Its a little bitter." Lin Huang assured his sister. "You can have mine then, give me yours." Lin Xin pushed her drink to him. "Its okay I prefer my coffee bitter." Lin Huang politely declined her offer. "Oh" Lin Xin immediately took a sip of her drink and Lin Huang watch as her eyes brightened up," It tastes so good!" "Thats great, but dont drink too much or else you''ll have trouble sleeping at night." Lin Huang reminded her. Lin Xin was indulging in her drink that she did not hear what Lin Huang said. Three minutes later, Lin Xin finished the drink. She let go of the straw and with her puppy eyes she asked, "Brother, can I please have another one?" "I suppose, please try to get some rest tonight though." "Youre the best!" Lin Xin rushed into the cafe soon returned to Lin Huangs side with a larger coffee cup. Lin Huang glared at her. She stuck out her tongue and said to Lin Huang playfully, "You did not say that Im not allowed to order an extra-large one." "Dont come looking for me if you cant sleep tonight." Lin Huang was stern. "I will play my games if I cant fall asleep tonight." Lin Xin nodded and said. After he finished his coffee, Lin Huang read the news on the network. A news article caught his attention. The title of the news was Daughter of the Leng Family became a transcendent at the age of 18. He clicked on the news, it was Leng Yuexin. Lin Huang read the news article and got to know more about Leng Yuexins family background. She was from the most powerful family among the six royal families in Division7. The news read that their family was powerful ever since the new era, about 800 years ago. "No wonder relics did not mean anything to her" Lin Huang had heard about the six royal families before but he did not know that Leng Yuexins family was one of them. "No wonder the Li family would even consider apologizing to her family." "Brother, is this Leng Yuexin the one who sent you the parcels?" Lin Xin peeped at the news her brother was reading. "Only 18 and shes already a transcendent, wow! How do you know her?" "I followed her team when I journeyed into Wangyou Forest." Lin Huang simply said. "Then why did she send you stuff?" Lin Xin was curious. "I bought some stuff from her but she did not bring it along with her at the time, so she sent them over when she got home." Lin Huang thought of a quick lie. "What did you buy from her?" Lin Xin asked further. "Why are you asking so many questions? Drink your coffee." Lin Huang was afraid that the more he engaged in the conversation, the more she''ll want to know. "Did you at least get her signature?" Lin Xin asked again. "No, I forgot to ask." "Please ask for her signature the next time!" "Sure, Ill ask her that if we ever meet again." After settling Lin Xin, Lin Huang hesitated and sent Leng Yuexin a message. The message was short, Congratulations on leveling up to a transcendent! Leng Yuexin did not reply and moments later, Lin Huang switched off his communication device. He was bummed. They were drinking coffee while waiting for the spaceship. Just then, there was a notification from his ring. He opened it and it was a message from Leng Yuexin. "Thank you. I was in the shower just now so I could not check my message. What''ve been up to?" "My sister is on a long break so I''m bringing her to Xiagong City." Lin Huang immediately replied. "You had a hard time before so its good to relax a little. Im going for a vacation myself in the next few days. Im going to Division3." Leng Yuexin told Lin Huang. "Its not easy to become a transcendent, you deserve a treat. Enjoy yourself!" Lin Huang replied. "You enjoy yourself too." Lin Huang turned off the device and couldnt help but smile. Just when Lin Huang had the time to travel, he visited a B-grade foothold while Leng Yuexin who belonged to royalty could go anywhere, anytime she wanted. "One day I will become a transcendent and travel to other divisions!" Lin Huang promised himself. 98 Lin Xin Had Insomnia It was 8:40 a.m. and the Demonic Crystal Spaceship arrived on time at the central plaza of Baqi City. Lin Huang and Lin Xin scanned their barcodes and boarded the spaceship. They watched as the spaceship ascended into the air and saw Baqi City become smaller and smaller as they got higher. Lin Huang had spent his whole morning familiarizing himself with the spaceship. Lin Xins excitement wore out after lunch and she followed Lin Huang back to their rooms. The room numbers were printed on the Demonic Crystal Spaceships ticket. Each ticket was printed with a different room number depending on where you were staying and was only meant for the person whose name was on the ticket. Everyone had to have a ticket, even infants! Their rooms were both on the 7th floor, Room 156 and Room 157 respectively. There was a wall partitioning their rooms but Lin Xin did not want to stay alone. There was only one bedroom in his room and so he let Lin Xin have the bedroom while he slept on the couch in the living room. Lin Huang wanted to train in the morning undisturbed so hoped Lin Xin would be in her own room during the day. After lunch, Lin Xin was playing Gun Master in her room. Lin Huang locked his room door and began his practice of Army Attack Tactics. During his days in Baqi City, he spent all his time accompanying Lin Xin to the point where he neglected training. As his journey in the air would take seven and a half days, he had planned to level Army Attack Tactics at least one or two levels. Although he had mastered level one, he was still unfamiliar with the skill rotation. He needed half an hour to go through the skill cycle to obtain one card piece. He did his calculations, if he got one card piece every half an hour, he would need 200 card pieces to be able to level-up to level two - it would take him 100 hours. Even if he trained 15 hours a day, he would still need seven days to get to level two. He sat with his legs crossed in the living room and soon, he activated his Life Power to train for Army Attack Tactics. He trained from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., five hours passed by in a blink of an eye. He obtained 11 card pieces and successfully shortened the cycle from 30 minutes to only 25 minutes. After dinner with Lin Xin, she went back to her own room. She did not ask to go to his room this time which surprised Lin Huang. He arrived in his room and locked the door. Four hours later, it was 10:30 p.m., Lin Xin knocked on his door. The skill rotation improved as Lin Huang trained his body, it was now 22 minutes per skill cycle. Within four hours, he managed to obtain 10 card pieces. He opened his door and saw a giddy Lin Xin. He asked, "Where did you go? You seem happy." "I didnt go anywhere, I was playing Gun Master in my room all day. I didnt lose at all today and I even got a new high score!" Lin Xin was clearly proud of her small victory. "Brother, I think I''m gifted. I''m destined to be a gunmaster." "I think so too. When the summer break ends and youre back to school, tell your teacher about it and get them to assess your skill. However, whether you can become an actual gunmaster one day will depend wholly on yourself." Lin Huang encouraged her. In a world like this, it was impossible to avoid monsters completely. For a profession that focused on long-distance attacks like the gunmaster, it would be relatively safer compared to other professions. Although there were very few female gunmasters, Lin Huang hoped Lin Xin would plan her future towards that goal. "I''ll talk to my teacher then." Lin Xin nodded. She would be back in school this September and would be in the graduating class. It was time for her to think about her future. There are three options after she graduated from the Hunter Reserve College. One was to enter a more prestigious school such as the military academy which was under the wing of the Union Government, the Hunter Association or other academies that were established by organizations to further her studies. If she was bronze-level, she would be an official member of one of the organizations. Each organization has vast resources to cultivate talents in the field they specialize in and would train outstanding students to achieve either iron-level or bronze-level. The second alternative would be to participate in the assessment by the Hunter Association or other organizations to become a reserve member before slowly climbing her way to the position of an official member. It would be harder because she would have to bear all the cost on her own before she was bronze-level. These were usually students that were rejected by prestigious schools. The last one would be giving up on getting to bronze-level, be an ordinary person and live an ordinary life. Of course, that would require her to reside in an area that was not prone to attacks by monster hordes. Lin Huang was wanted by many organizations because of his great score in school. However, when they discovered that he had a broken Life Wheel during a routing body check-up, he was rejected. That was the reason why he went for the second alternative which was to join the reserve hunter assessment. Lin Huang hoped she could get into one of the prestigious schools to receive professional training so that she would not have to suffer like he did. If her talent of being a gunmaster was scouted, she would have a higher chance of entering these academies in the future. However, Lin Huang was happy with his current condition as it would only be a matter of time before he reached bronze-level. If he entered one of the prestigious schools, he might not have been able to level-up to iron-level as quick as he did because he would not have had any flexibility in his daily schedule as he would be bound to the arrangements made by the school. "I managed to upgrade to iron-level rank-3 from an ordinary person within a month, thats kind of ridiculous." Lin Huang said while patting Lin Xins head. He smiled and said, "Enjoy yourself these two months, dont think about school. After all, you only have one year of fun until your graduation." "Brother, why did you not choose to enter one of the prestigious schools?" Lin Xin finally asked the question that had been bothering her. She was under the impression that Lin Huang gave up on his studies and she did not know about his broken Life Wheel. Lin Huang had kept the result of body check-up confidential. "Its not that I did not want to study, it was because they didn''t want me." Lin Huang shook his head. "How is that possible, you bagged first place in your graduation. The people who were in the top 10 went to good schools. Could there have been a mistake somewhere?" "No, I had some health conditions. They found out that I would not be able to get to iron-level during the body check-up so I was rejected." Lin Huang told the truth. "What happened to you? Is it serious?" Lin Xin asked. "Im all good now." Lin Huang waved his hand, he did not want to talk about it anymore. Lin Xin insisted on her question so he had to stop her, "Ill tell you more when youre at iron-level, you wouldnt understand me even if-if I told you now." Lin Xin did not push any further. The conversation went on until Lin Huang forced himself to go to bed at 11 p.m. at night. Lin Xin showered too but she could not sleep. She was not sure if it was the coffee that she had during the day or something else. She rolled around in bed until 1 a.m. but she was not sleepy at all. Instead of trying to sleep, she decided to play Gun Master again... 99 Lin Xin Is Missing! Five days passed. Lin Huang sighed loudly when he heard a notification from Xiao Hei. "You have accumulated Life Skill card - Army Attack Tactics pieces x200, would you like to proceed with a card upgrade?" "Yes!" "Combining Army Attack Tactics pieces x200, Life Skill card Army Attack Tactics mastery level has been upgraded." Lin Huang then tapped on the card and saw a notification box. "Life Skill Card" "Life Skill Name: Army Attack Tactics" "Rarity: Rare" "Mastery Level: Level 2" "Effect: 24% increment in the rotation speed of Life Power. Increases attack power and defense power by 24% respectively." "Remarks: For the first five levels, with every upgrade, each of the Life Skill effects will be increased by 12%." "Card Remarks: Usable" "That was faster than I expected" Although Lin Huang said that, he was not relaxed at all. He managed to shorten the skill rotation from half an hour to almost 10 minutes within five days. With every upgrade, the skill rotation cycle after each upgrade became more complicated. The time he took to complete a single rotation went back to half an hour. This meant that he was now back at where he initially started, requiring about 30 minutes for a single card piece. It was 5:40 in the evening and he noticed Lin Xin coming to his room at six oclock sharp every day to have dinner together. Since he had some spare time, Lin Huang read the news. A news article caught his attention immediately as it was a foothold code that he was familiar with - No.7B61. No.7B61 was the official foothold name of the Union Government in Xiagong City. He started reading the news. "Before daybreak yesterday, there were 16 murders in foothold No.7B61. From preliminary investigations, those 16 murders were committed humans and there was not a single trace of a monster invasion. Investigations are still ongoing, please do not panic" "Xiagong City is such a large foothold. Why is the security here so poor?" Lin Huang frowned. Had he known about this few days back, he would not have chosen Xiagong City as their destination. He was worried for Lin Xin. He tried to look for more news related to the incident but there were none. This was the latest case and the media was careful with their words. It would be huge if there was a monster invasion in a large foothold such as this. There would likely be an uproar. It was 6:05 p.m. when he was done with the news. Lin Huang looked at the time and raised his eyebrow, he sent Lin Xin a message, "Its time for dinner." Three minutes passed but Lin Xin was nowhere to be found. Lin Huang felt that something was wrong, he then video-called Lin Xin. Her phone rang twice and then the call was cut off. "The person you are calling is currently unavailable, please leave a message after the tone" "Oh no!" Lin Xin never declines his calls. Lin Huang rushed to Lin Xins room and continuously rang her doorbell. He rang for more than 10 times but nobody opened the door. He then rushed to the balcony and broke through the sliding door with his foot. Many people noticed Lin Huang and someone reported his actions to the staff but he could not care less. He looked around Lin Xins room but she was nowhere to be found. Her room was the way she left it, there were no signs of a fight. He wanted to find whatever clues he could so he tried thinking like Lin Xin for a moment. He knew that she spent most of her time on the couch in the living room, probably where she played Gun Master. Lin Huang followed her scent which brought him to the floating elevator just outside her room. Just as he arrived at the entrance of the elevator, the door automatically opened and many staff members in uniform surrounded him. "Sir, are you the guest from Room 156? Somebody reported to us that you broke into Room 157. For the safety of other passengers, please follow us." The chief of staff was definitely unfriendly. "Im staying in Room 156, the person staying here is my sister. I can show you the ticket as proof of my booking." Lin Huang searched for the receipt, "Let me know how much the damage will cost, I''ll pay for it. My sister is missing from this spaceship. I must look for her, please do not get in my way." The chief of staff saw that his ticket was authentic and asked, "Are you sure she''s missing?" "Yes! Please check the surveillance camera for me and notify me if you see anything, Ill take a look downstairs." Lin Huang could not afford to waste any more time. "Where and when was the last time you saw her?" The leader asked. "After lunch, it was about 12:30. We went back to our respective rooms. "Both of you please follow him while I go to the monitor room with the rest." The leader instructed his men at once. Lin Huang was grateful for their help. He followed Lin Xins scent to the bar on the first floor, and all of a sudden, her scent disappeared. Lin Huang noticed that there was a green, air purifier block that was the size of a washbasin behind the bar counter. The block was absorbing the odor from the air. "Boss, did you see this girl?" Lin Huang showed the bar owner a photo of Lin Xin at the counter. "She was here an hour ago but she left in less than a minute." The bar owner waved his hand. "She asked if we served honey coffee. Why would she even think we would serve that in a bar?!" "Did she speak to anyone here?" Lin Huang became more worried. "No, we hardly have customers before nine. The girl left after she asked her question." "You have surveillance cameras here right? Let me take a look." Lin Huang then placed a Life Crystal that was worth a year of Life Light on the counter. "I would love to accept this but the surveillance camera I have here is quite old. It has been here for 20 years. I only turn it on at night when there are more people; I dont usually turn it on during the day." The bar owner said, "If you dont believe me, you can take a look for yourself." Lin Huang believed what the bar owner said but shoved the Life Crystal in the bar owners hand anyway. He went behind the counter and randomly picked some of the recorded videos only to be disappointed that they were all night recordings. "I told you, I dont need this Life Crystal." The bar owner declined. "Take it." Lin Huang insisted. Lin Huang frowned as he walked out from the counter, he had lost his one clue. Suddenly, the communication device of the security personnel beeped. After some whispering, he rushed to Lin Huang, "Our leader found something in one of the video clips, please follow us." "Lets go!" Lin Huang left the bar with the duo 100 Strange Missing Person Inciden The monitor room of the Demonic Crystal Spaceship was about 100 square meters, it was occupied by a semi-circle shaped workstation. Aside from a couple of buttons, there were hundreds of projection crystals connected to the surveillance devices on the workstation. It was showing a video of a corridor. Lin Huang walked as fast as he could to the station, Chen Wei then pressed the play button. The video played; Lin Huang recognized the corridor on the seventh floor. He recognized it from the different pictures that were hung on the wall. About half a minute after the video was played, everyone saw Lin Xins open her room door. She walked towards the floating elevator and the surveillance camera lost track of her for awhile. "This is the video showing your sister leaving her room at 5:03 p.m.." Chen Wei said and showed Lin Huang the second video. The second video began from the moment Lin Xin walked into the floating elevator. He played the video. Lin Xin pressed the button, leading her to the first floor and throughout the entire journey, nobody else entered the elevator. "The time here shows 5:04 p.m.." Chen Wei said. "Since she went to the first floor, we looked at the surveillance cameras on the first floor and we found her in a couple of surveillance videos. Chen Wei played another video which showed Lin Xin exiting the floating elevator. There were a few people waiting at the entrance. One of them was a middle-aged man in a white shirt, he glanced at Lin Xin as she walked out. Lin Huang frowned and asked Chen Wei, "Which room is that man in white shirt staying in?" "Hes staying on the ninth floor, from what we know, hes harmless." Chen Wei assured Lin Huang. Lin Huang did not want to overthink things and proceeded to ask them about the next video. "The third surveillance camera is located outside the bar on the first floor." Chen Wei played another video. In the video, Lin Xin contemplated a few times outside the premises, unsure if she should enter the bar or not. She finally walked in but left after a very short while. "Seems like the bar owner did not lie, she left the bar in less than a minute." One of the security personnel who followed Lin Huang to the bar made a remark. "So where did she go after she left the bar?" Lin Huang asked anxiously. "We saw from the camera that she walked around the hall on the first floor. She brought some snacks but she disappeared after she walked into a blind spot which the surveillance camera could not capture at about 5:40 p.m." That was the last video, it was taken at the cutoff point between the two stores. Lin Huang stared at the video for a couple of minutes, there was no sign of Lin Xin at all. A few people went to the same direction with rubbish in their hands and left without it afterward. "Theres a rubbish bin at the blind spot. We didnt think anybody would want to steal a rubbish bin so we did not install a surveillance camera there. Thats our mistake" Chen Wei explained. "Wait, there was a girl who would look in that direction occasionally. Did she see something?" Lin Huang pointed at the location opposite the camera to a girl who looked the same age as Lin Xin. She sat on the bench and she had ponytails. The girl had a drink in her hands. Lin Huang continued to play the video. 10 minutes later, the girl went to the rubbish bin to throw the empty can away and left immediately after. "Please bring me to this location." Lin Huang proceeded to say, "Also, please get the girl in the video for me. I need to talk to her." "Sure, we will get her for you, since there arent many clues left." Chen Wei agreed with Lin Huang. A few minutes later, the two security personnel brought Lin Huang to the location where Lin Xin was last seen before she went missing. This time, Lin Huang did not only activate Blood Hunt, maximizing his ability to smell while activating Boundless Vision at the same time. His iris turned into an amber color like a falcon''s eyes. There were two full, green leather rubbish bins that were half the size of a human at the blind spot. Lin Xins scent disappeared next to the rubbish bin. It was different from the scent back in the bar where it was fading because her scent disappeared abruptly right here. Lin Huang frowned and looked around, he pushed Boundless Vision to its peak but he could not find a thing. Just when he was trying to figure out what he missed, a fat lady came along with a bag of rubbish. She seemed to be a merchant nearby. She was upset because the bins were full. She shouted at the security personnel, "I thought you would''ve added one more rubbish bin here today, why are there only two left? These rubbish bins are overflowing with rubbish. They arent pleasing to the eyes?" "Sister, we are just security personnel. What can we do with that" One of them said. "So who should I talk to then?" She didnt let him finish. Lin Huang heard the conversation and turned around to ask, "Sister, you said there were three rubbish bins here?" "I think it was 5:40 p.m., I had just finished eating my take-out and came here to throw the food container away. It''s only been half an hour and its gone now. Thats strange, was there someone who stole the rubbing bin?" The time she stated matched the time when Lin Xin went missing. "Sister, did you see a girl who was 13 or 14-years-old here?" Lin Huang asked. "I see so many girls every day, how can I remember?" The fat lady rolled her eyes. Just as she was getting ready to leave, she turned around, "I know about the girl you''re talking about I recall a girl in ponytails sitting there with a drink in the afternoon." The lady pointed to the direction where the girl in the video sat at. "Thank you sister." 101 The Rubbish Bin that Disappeared Lin Huang thought the only clue he had now was the rubbish bin that disappeared. "The third rubbish bin must have disappeared together with Lin Xin. If we find the rubbish bin, we should be able to find Lin Xin." Lin Huang got the security personnel to contact their leader, Chen Wei. "Mr. Lin, we''ve received the room number of the girl in ponytails. Shes staying in Room 321 on the ninth floor. I have contacted the girls father and got them to wait in their room. We can go over now." Chen Wei brought them this piece of news when he picked up the call. "We can put that on hold first. I got another clue; a lady who managed a store around the area said there were three rubbish bins when it was around 5:40 p.m. but now, there are only two. The time the rubbish bin disappeared matched the time my sister went missing too. Im suspecting the person who that rubbish bin also took my sister." Lin Huang presented his theory to Chen Wei. "Ill come to you now to look at the video taken around 5:40 p.m.." "Sure, Ill get my two colleagues to stay in the area for further clues." Chen Wei nodded. After they hung up the call, Lin Huang rushed to the monitor room. Chen Wei had paused the video of the time which Lin Huang requested. He then played the video. The video began from the time Lin Xin threw the rubbish until the time when Lin Huang and the other two arrived at the location. There were all confused after watching the video, including Lin Huang. "Nobody removed the rubbish bin?!" Lin Huang frowned, that was strange. If Lin Xin disappeared with the rubbish bin, she would be taken away while she was still in the rubbish bin. Aside from the monster taming token, theres no other storage item that could contain a living being and the monster taming token doesn''t even work on humans." Lin Huang shook his head. "Furthermore, who would want to purposely steal a rubbish bin full of rubbish?" "What should we do now?" Chen Wei was as helpless as Lin Huang was. "There are only two possibilities. One, the lady we met earlier could be lying to distract us. The other possibility would be there really was a third rubbish bin in the cameras blind spot." "Please get your two colleagues to ask the other merchants if they noticed the third rubbish bin. There were a couple of people throwing rubbish at the location during the time your sister disappeared, please contact them." "What kind of business does the fat lady do?" Lin Huang queried. "The fat lady has been with us for 26 years. She sells cigarette and alcohol, she was here before I joined the company, she has no reason to lie." Chen Wei knew the fat lady very well. "She may, however, be wrong about the number of rubbish bins, thats all." "Lets ask the rest then." Lin Huang understood the complication. Soon the two security personnel had finished asking all the merchants around that area. Besides the fat lady, another shop owner said she saw the third rubbish bin too. Chen Wei contacted the six guests who appeared on the video. Three of them said they saw the third rubbish bin while the other two could not recall and one of them only saw two rubbish bins. The girl in ponytails was one of the six people, she could not remember how many rubbish bins there were. "From the information gathered, there really was a third rubbish bin in the blind spot." Lin Huang concluded. One of the guests said he saw two rubbish bins at 5:58 p.m. The guest seemed certain of his answer, he said, "Of course I remember there were only two rubbish bins. The rubbish was leaking out from both bins and it took me awhile to get my empty can in, how can I forget that?! " "Now the only certain clue is that the rubbish bin disappeared between 5:40 p.m. and 5:58 p.m. However, your sisters disappearance was between 5:42 p.m. to the time when you guys arrived which was 6:23 p.m. During that period, nobody got rid of the rubbish bin." Chen Wei sat at the workstation in the monitoring room. "That means the person who took my sister must have used some technique that we dont know of. He must have taken both the third rubbish bin and my sister." Lin Huang was triggered by all sorts of theories now. "We are out of clues" Chen Wei shook his head and sighed. "Lets talk to the girl in ponytails on the ninth floor then." Lin Huang refused to give up. Chen Wei called the girls father to confirm the visit time and brought Lin Huang together with his personnel to the ninth floor of the spaceship. They rang the doorbell and the girl in ponytails opened the door. "Daddy, we have guests." The girl said loudly to the man sitting on the couch. The man stood up and smiled at them, "Please come in." Lin Huang realized that the man was the one who glanced at Lin Xin at the floating elevator entrance, the man in the white shirt. Knowing that the man had a daughter who was the same age as Lin Xin, he let his guard down because as a parent himself, it was normal to look at other kids who were the same age as his daughter. "Lily, please get us some tea." The man said to the girl. "Okay, daddy." The girl skipped to the kitchen. "Please have a seat. Ill try my best to help." The man smiled. "Theres no need for tea, Mr. Wei. Were here to talk to your daughter, it wont take too long." As Chen Wei was chatting with the man, Lin Huang observed him. This Mr. Wei seemed to be in his 40s. He was about 1.85 meters, had fair skin and a good fashion sense. He was still wearing the white shirt with black slacks. He wore a gold frame glasses, he was a man with style. "No offense but may I know what do you do for a living, Mr. Wei?" Lin Huang asked. "I was a teacher, now I have my own business." Mr. Wei replied Lin Huang. "Why the career change?" Chen Wei was curious. "Unfortunately, the salary was low." Mr. Wei laughed. "Thats true, its especially hard when you have a wife and a kid." Chen Wei understood him as he was almost the same age as Mr. Wei. "Mr. Wei, youre here with your daughter? Didnt your wife come along?" Lin Huang asked. "My wife passed away many years ago, I only have a daughter now." Mr. Wei shook his head and said. "Im sorry to hear that." Lin Huang did not expect that answer. "Dont worry about it, it has been so long." Mr. Wei waved his hand. Lin Huang noticed a green gem on the ring on his left ring finger but he did not ask further. Soon, the girl in ponytails came to them with tea. "Daddy, I brought tea." "Please serve the guests." Mr. Wei nodded. The girl placed the tray on the coffee table and served the tea to everyone. Later on, she went to the man. "Sit down, Lily." Mr. Wei got her to sit on his lap. Lily was obedient; she did not say a word but sat quietly. "Thats a good girl. My daughter is almost the same age as yours." Chen Wei admitted. "I used to be a teacher and so I trained her too. You are most welcome to send your daughter here too; I could train her as well." Mr. Wei seemed passionate. "Thats too much trouble." Chen Wei was embarrassed. "No trouble at all, I have too much time on my hands right now. I study with her and teach her manners." Mr. Wei said and sensed that he was getting off topic, "I almost forgot why you guys came here for. Please, do talk to Lily." "Daddy" Lily seemed shy. Now that she knew they were here for her, she hid in Mr. Weis embrace. "Dont worry, we only need to ask you a couple of questions." Mr. Wei patted Lilys shoulder. "Little girl, dont be afraid. We are the security team on this spaceship and we''re here to make sure that everybody is safe." Chen Wei said. " Shes just a little shy." Mr. Wei nodded to Chen Wei. Chen Wei then showed him Lin Xins photo, "Have you seen this little girl before?" Lily shook her head without an expression. Mr. Wei who was sitting behind her hesitated and asked, "I saw this girl at the floating elevator entrance. That was more than an hour ago, what happened?" "Shes missing. We hoped that your daughter might have seen something." Chen Wei explained. "Missing? Shouldnt there be surveillance camera on the spaceship?" Mr. Wei raised his eyebrow. "There are a couple of blind spots, the girl disappeared at one of the blind spots." Chen Wei was embarrassed when he said that. "Is that so, hopefully you could find her as soon as possible." Mr. Wei did not ask further. "Little girl, do you remember drinking on a bench at 5:40 p.m.?" Chen Wei asked Lily. Lily nodded. "Do you remember how many rubbish bins there were?" Lily shook her head, "I dont remember. Two, or maybe three" After a couple of questions later, it was obvious that Lily did not seem to know anything about the incident. Lin Huang and the rest left Mr. Weis room in desperation 102 Who is the Culprit?! After leaving Mr. Weis room, they walked towards the floating elevator. They entered the staircase; Chen Wei could not help but looked at Lin Huang. "We dont have anymore clues now, what do we do?" "Please send me the video clips. I need some time to think. If I help, Ill contact you again." Lin Huang pressed the seventh floor in the elevator. Soon the floating elevator arrived at the seventh floor and Lin Huang stepped out of the elevator while the rest stayed within the elevator. Chen Wei hesitated for awhile and told the security personnels behind him, "You guys head to the room and send the video clips to Mr. Lin. Ill see the captain. "Leader, is it really necessary to alert the captain?" The security personnels looked concerned. "If people found out about a missing person on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship, our reputation will burn and if we do not catch the culprit, the security team is at fault. Not only would we lose our job, we might have to pay the compensation. If we did not inform the captain now, we will be in serious mess if the issue worsens." Chen Wei knew how serious the incident was so he dared not delay any minute. "We understand now." The security personnels nodded while heading to the monitoring room. There was a lady in her 30s in a high-slit black dress in the cockpit. Her half covered dress made her even sexier. Although the door was opened, Chen Wei knocked anyway. The lady turned around and gave him a sweet smile, "Team Leader Chen, its been awhile since you visited." "Captain, something happened on the spaceship." Chen Wei was staring at her pair of fair, long legs instead of her eyes. He was embarrassed and looked at the ground instead. "Please come in and tell me more." The lady remained poised. Chen Wei walked into the cockpit with his head down. He only took two steps forward; the lady in black dress stood less than one meter away from him. Her pair of fair, long legs were showing between the slit. Chen Wei then looked up and his eyes stopped at her cleavage. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes instead. "Leader Chen, your heart is beating so fast." The lady placed her hand on Chen Weis chest. He felt warmth on his chest and had a boner. He then opened his eyes and took a step back. "Captain, we have an emergency." "Look at you getting all worked up. Tell me, what happened?" The lady peeked at his boner and smirked. Chen Wei tried to maintain his cool by not reacting to the sexual tension. "Theres a missing girl on this spaceship. We have been looking for her for the past one hour." "What time did she go missing?" The lady asked. "Around 5:40 p.m." "It is only less than an hour. How would you know shes missing?" The lady asked curiously. "The sisters brother reported at six and we have checked the surveillance camera, the girl disappeared from the blind spot" Chen Wei told her the story. The lady frowned, "If shes really missing and we do not catch the culprit, we will be fully responsible. Not only would we have to pay a huge amount of compensation to the brother, the spaceship will be suspended from flying. It would take a couple of months for investigation, we can only get it up and running after confirming that the spaceship is fine. Moreover, all of the staff, myself as the captain, the security team will be investigate for a long time. Things will be so troublesome. Lets not waste anymore time, we must find the culprit!" "The spaceship docks at Dong Xuan City at 9:20 tomorrow morning. Its a company rule that our flight schedule cannot be delayed for even a minute so we must find the culprit by then. We cannot let any skeptical person slip away, including the brother of the girl who is missing!" "The girls brother?" Chen Wei looked at the captain in doubt. "He might be the mastermind behind all this, it is possible to he killed his sister so that he could get the compensation. Moreover, we arent even sure if the girl is really his sister." The lady included Lin Huang in the suspect list. "Understood, we will do our best to find the culprit." The lady made sense so he included Lin Huang into his list of suspects. Of course, Lin Huang would not know what happened in the cockpit. After he got back to his room, he received the video clips that were sent by the security personnels and played them immediately. The first one showed Lin Xin disappearing. Lin Huang launched his boundless eyes, and looked far behind from the moment when Lin Xin walked towards the rubbish bin. He kept thinking that he must have missed something, it was impossible for Lin Xin to disappear together with the rubbish bin just like that. He repeated the video clips three times and finally noticed one tiny unusual part. The girl in ponytails had an Emperors Heart Ring on her left middle finger when she was throwing the rubbish while there was no ring on her right hand. But after she threw the rubbish, Lin Huang noticed that she flicked her right hand in the blink spot, a ring appeared on her right hand. After watching that part repetitively, Lin Huang confirmed that there was an additional green ring on the girls right hand. However, as her hand was moving and the paused screen was blur, Lin Huang could not get a clear look on the ring. He only managed to see that the ring was green. He contacted Chen Wei immediately. Chen Wei was just looking for Lin Huang, seeing that he called, he picked up immediately. Before he could even say a word, Lin Huang spoke nervously. "Leader Chen, Ive found something. Take a look at the last video clip. When the girl, Lily was throwing the rubbish, there was no ring on her right hand. But when she left, there was a ring on her right middle finger. You should have people who could get a better look of the ring, right?" Chen Wei played the video clip immediately after he heard what Lin Huang said and fast forwarded to the part where Lily threw rubbish. It was just like what Lin Huang said. "Xiao Wang, please get a better image of this ring!" Chen Wei paused the video and got a long haired young man to get this done. The long haired man nodded. He then projected the image with his Emperors Heart Ring, downloaded the image and started editing. In less than a minute, he produced a clearer image. It was a ring with green precious stone. "Why does this ring look so familiar?" Chen Wei tried to recall where he saw this ring before. "Is it done?" The communication device was still on, Lin Huang spoke again. "I will send it over to you now." Chen Wei took a photo of the image and sent it to Lin Huang. Lin Huang squinted when he saw the image. He recognized at an instant that the ring with green precious stone was the one on Mr. Weis finger. He didnt know how but he was sure that he was the culprit. "Mr. Wei" Lin Huang called out his name, he was ready to kill. 103 Rescuing Lin Xin On the ninth floor of Demonic Crystal Spaceship, room No.321. Mr. Wei sent Lin Huang and the rest of them away, smiling. After shutting the door, he turned back and looked at Lily. He seemed angry. Lily knelt on the ground, her body trembling. "Daddy" "You are an idiot. You messed up!" Mr. Wei kicked her and she fell. Lily immediately got up and tried groveling, "Daddy, please don''t be mad at me. I know it''s my fault" "You have been with me for so long. You should know how to handle something so simple!" Mr. Wei kept his hands behind his back. "Daddy, please don''t sell me away" Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pleaded, "Lily wants to be with daddy forever. Lily wants to serve you" "Lily, you are the best among all of my daughters. You''re the only one I keep by my side. But today, you have disappointed me" Mr. Wei''s eyes were still cold. "I know it''s my fault. Daddy, please punish me. Please don''t sell me away" Lily''s face was full of tears and she quickly took off her clothes. She was so skinny and there were visible scars from her collar-bone to her ankle. These were lash marks, scalds, and scars formed when the skin was cut with a sharp object. There were injuries all over her body Mr. Wei gave off a scoff and swung his left hand. The emerald ring on his ring finger released a beam of green light and a green-skinned monster that was two meters long appeared. The monster looked like a giant green worm and the diameter of its mouth was around one meter. When the giant green worm opened its mouth, it spat out of a girl. "Please bathe her and send her to my room." Mr. Wei said while taking off his glasses and unbuttoning his shirts. "Daddy, let me serve you" Lily looked nervous. "Lily, do you want me to repeat myself again?" Mr. Wei stopped unbuttoning his shirts and stared at Lily. Lily lowered his head while carrying Lin Xin and walked towards the bathroom. Mr. Wei was already naked. He walked to the bedroom after folding his shirts and placed them on the tea table. In the bathroom, Lily immediately took off Lin Xin''s clothes and threw her into the bathtub. She let the cold shower water splash onto Lin Xin''s head and Lin Xin regained consciousness at once. When she saw her naked body in the bathtub and a young naked girl with wounds all over her body, she screamed. "Who are you? What is happening?!" She reacted immediately. "My name is Lily. I am my daddy''s daughter. My daddy wants you to be his daughter too. That''s why you are here." Lily answered. "Are you crazy? You sound forced." Lin Xin realized that the young girl was rehearsing lines. "Contact my brother, he will save us!" Just as when Lin Xin was opening the communication page, Lily grabbed her wrist. "Daddy said that you are not allowed to contact anyone!" "I don''t know who your daddy is. Judging by the wounds on your body, He does not seem like a good father. Why is he controlling your life?!" Lin Xin shook the girls shoulders. "I want to be with daddy forever. I don''t want to leave my daddy!" Lily shouted back. She was completely brainwashed. Lin Xin wont be able to convince her for now so she tried her best to quickly call Lin Huang but Lily pulled her hair and her head fell back. "You are not allowed to call anyone!" Lily knocked Lin Xin''s head against the edge of the bathtub. Lin Xin fainted. At that moment, the door creaked open. Lin Huang pulled up his feet and walked into the room. When he saw the green worm monster in the room, he finally understood everything. The worm-like monster, also known as the Formless Worm, could transform into a variety of shapes and sizes. The monster must have transformed into a dustbin and swallowed Lin Xin. Then, it was transformed into a ring and Lily took it away. Lin Huang frowned. He could not kill the Formless Worm as he would hurt Lin Xin if she was in the worm''s body. "Wei! Show yourself!" Lin Huang yelled, his voice echoed across the room. Mr. Wei walked out of the room with the bedcovers wrapped around his body. Lin Huang rushed into the room but Lin Xin was not there. He turned back and looked at Mr. Wei, "Where is my sister." "Bro, I don''t know what youre talking about." Mr. Wei denied. "Ask this Formless worm to spit my sister out!" Mr. Wei''s facial expression changed. "I have no idea where your sister is. You''re mistaken." Mr. Wei panicked. At normal times, he would definitely choose to report to the security guard and they would come to stop Lin Huang. However, Lin Xin was in the bathroom now. If he were to report to the security guard, they would discover that. He had no choice but to play it cool. The iron weapon on Lin Huang''s hand immediately turned into a saber and Lin Huang grabbed it. "Stop it. It''s the Demonic Crystal Spaceship here." Mr. Wei did not even achieve iron-level rank-1. He knew that he would not be able to defeat Lin Huang. Lin Huang lifted the saber and Mr. Wei retreated a few steps. He stumbled over the Formless Worm and fell. Before he could get up, Lin Huang pointed the sword at his neck. "I said, give me my sister!" Lin Huang was ready to kill. "I really have no idea what are you talking about." Mr. Wei insisted. Lin Huang made a cut and a large amount of blood oozed out from the wound. Mr. Wei yelled in pain. Lin Huang chopped off his left arm. "My patience is limited. I repeat once again, where is my sister!" Mr. Wei did not expect Lin Huang to be this brutal. However, he knew that if he were to reveal where Lin Xin was, he would probably die. "I really don''t know where your sister is" Lin Huang slashed again, chopping Mr. Wei''s right arm off. "I am no fool. I guess there aren''t many things left for me to chop off from your body" Lin Huang cut through the bedcovers covering Mr. Wei''s lower body and the tip of his saber moved up along his leg and stopped at the position between his inner thighs. Mr. Wei felt a chill shooting upwards from his lower body. "I''ll give you three more minutes. Otherwise, this is the next part I will chop off from your body" His saber''s tip pressed slightly and cut the part between his hip, a streak of blood to ooze out from his wound. "Stop it. She is not in the Formless Worm. She''s in the bathroom!" Mr. Wei gave up. "For your sake, you better be right!" Lin Huang immediately summoned Bai and commanded, "Bai, please check the bathroom." It was only then that, Mr. Wei knew that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor. Bai quickly went to the bathroom. He saw Lily sitting next to the bathtub. Bai directly carried Lin Xin out of the bathtub. Bai wrapped her up in the cloth that was beside her and walked out of the bathroom. Lin Huang stared fiercely at Mr. Wei when he saw her come out of the bathroom. "She is fine. Lily brought her to the bathroom to bathe her. We haven''t done that yet" Mr. Wei tried to cook up a lie. "Whether you have done it or not, you won''t be using this anymore!" Lin Huang''s blade sliced across his lower body. Mr. Wei yelled in pain, blood oozing out between his legs. "Go to hell!" Mr. Wei cursed. "If you are looking for death, I''ll help you!" Lin Huang''s saber turned into a long, black shadow and he was about to cut through his neck. A black shadow appeared abruptly at the moment and blocked Lin Huang''s fatal attack. "Mister, why are you so angry? Since you have rescued your sister and he has learned his lesson, what is the point of killing him?" A woman in black dressed held Lin Huang''s saber in between her fingers. She was polite. "Who are you?" "Mr. Lin, she is our captain." Chen Wei walked into the room as well. He was relieved when he saw Lin Xin in Bai''s arms. "Mr. Lin, you should know that we have our rules. You can''t kill anyone on this spaceship. He is severely injured now. Let us handle him. We have checked his background and he is involved in many crimes. He did not even achieve iron-level. The government will keep him behind bars for at least 300 years, enough to keep him until his death." Lin Huang kept quiet for a moment. He then raised his leg and stepped on the piece of meat that he had just cut off from Mr. Wei''s body, instantly turning it into minced meat. He lifted his saber once again and killed the Formless Worm in front of everyone. He ignored Xiao Hei''s notification regarding the complete set of monster card that he had obtained. He turned back and asked Chen Wei, "How about the girl with him?" "The girl is a victim. We will send her for professional psychotherapy to erase her memories and help her start living a normal life again." Chen Wei explained. Lin Huang did not say anything and walked towards the door, "Bai, let''s go." 104 Killing Wei Shan The female captain licked her lips as she saw Lin Huang leave the room, "He is quite the character. I like it. Chen Wei could not sympathize with Lin Huang for what has happened to his sister and him. He felt pity for Mr. Wei instead, as he was rolling on the ground, groaning in pain. He thought in his heart, "Mr. Lin is young but he''s a ruthless man." "Where''s Lily?" Chen Wei asked Mr. Wei. "In the bathroom." The female captain answered. Chen Wei hurried up to the bathroom. After a short while, Lily came out with a robe on. "Daddy!" Just as Lily got out of the bathroom, she wanted to pounce on Mr. Wei but Chen Wei stopped her. "Lily, he is not your dad. His name is Wei Shan. He is a human trafficker who sells and kidnaps underage girls." "You have been brainwashed by this rubbish. You don''t know his actual identity. You need help." The female captain spoke gently to Lily. "Pull this guy away. He is an eyesore to me. I''m afraid that I''ll accidentally kill him on purpose ." The female captain saw the wounds on Lily''s leg and gave a murderous stare at Wei Shan. Chen Wei immediately instructed two people to carry Wei Shan to the clinic. He would definitely die if he lost any more blood. The female captain then called a number and said, "Cleaner, please clean up room No.321 on the ninth floor." Lin Huang held Lin Xin in his arms and they went back to their room. He put her to bed and slowly, she regained her consciousness. She felt dizzy as she opened her eyes and held her head tight. She was so happy to see her brother that she pounced on him. "Brother!" "Everything is fine. It''s fine" Lin Huang rhythmically patted her back. Hearing her brothers voice, Lin Xin burst into tears. Lin Huang did not say anything. He let her cry, her tears and mucus on his clothes. After some time, Lin Xin was emotionally stable once again. Her face reddened, she pulled back and said, "I''m sorry, brother. I shouldn''t have walked away from you." "It''s not your fault. Dont apologize." Lin Huang rubbed Lin Xin''s head "I''ll look for a doctor to check up on you." After a short while, the clinic appointed a female doctor to diagnose her. "She is fine, she is just frightened. Although she hit her head, there are no signs of a concussion. You can apply a cold pack from time to time and you should be alright in no time." "Thank you, doctor." Lin Huang was relieved. After sending away the doctor, Lin Xin sat up and said, "Brother, I''ll take a bath and change my clothes." "Alright. Be careful, the floor is wet." Lin Huang nodded his head. Lin Huang walked to the balcony and called Chen Wei. "Mr. Lin, is there anything I can do to help?" Chen Wei answered the call very quickly. "What time is that fellow getting off the ship?" Lin Huang asked directly. Chen Wei kept quiet. "After getting off the ship, what happens to him has nothing to do with you. Are you protecting him?" Lin Huang''s sentence was powerful enough. "Alright. He deserves it. He is getting off at Dongxuan City tomorrow morning at 9.20 a.m. There will be officers from the coalition government waiting for him at the get off point. It won''t be easy for you to finish him off." Chen Wei told him the exact time. "I just need to know the time. Ill plan the rest." Lin Huang was about to hang up when Chen Wei shouted at him. "Don''t hang up yet. Regarding Wei Shan, he has a notorious background. He has gotten away with so many crimes. He has connections with members of the royal family. He is a human trafficker. Many of the girls have become slaves and he has trained them to serve people with special fetishes. If you kill him, many people would lose their supply of women and they will come after you" Chen Wei said. "It is important that he dies! His survival will ruin the lives of many young, innocent girls." Lin Huang never wanted to let Wei Shan go. He only left the room because he clearly knew that the female captain who looked like a transcendent was not going to allow him to kill Wei Shan. After hanging up, the urge to kill grew stronger. Lin Xin ate her breakfast and played Gun Master in her room. This was around 9 in the morning. Lin Huang arrived at the deck. He was standing somewhere near the spaceship''s exit, leaning against the shipboard staring blankly at the clouds below. When it was about 9.15 a.m., the spaceship began its descent. Wei Shan was escorted by Chen Wei and another security guard. His arms had been stitched up. Wei Shan grinned as he saw Lin Huang at the exit. "There is no use standing here. You will not be able to kill me on the spaceship or even after. Sending me to the coalition government is useless too. I''ll be out on bail after three days. The only thing you could do is seeing me remain at large" Lin Huang kept quiet and took a quick glance at him. He continued looking at Dongxuan City that was getting closer and closer. Soon, the spaceship landed on one of the plazas in Dongxuan City. Wei Shan was sent away. Lin Huang did not follow because he gave up on thinking of ways to kill him. At the end of the spaceship''s exit, by the stairs, both of them handed Wei Shan to officers from the Union Government. Chen Wei''s expression was incredulous. "You little brat, I''ve told you before, you can''t do anything to me!" Wei Shen turned back and smiled at Lin Huang. "You must remember there is deep enmity between us. One day, I''ll sleep with your sister and send you the video" "That day will never come!" Lin Huang grinned. A white-haired young man suddenly appeared behind Wei Shan like a ghost. There were two golden wings extending from his spine, turning into two sharp blades. One of the blades penetrated through Wei Shan''s heart and a gigantic golden hook protruded from his back. He was hanging in the mid-air. The floor was bloody. Wei Shan had not died yet. He was terrified, lowering his head to look at his chest and bloodied shirt. The next moment, another golden blade that resembled a long sword penetrated his head from the back of his head, leaving a huge hole in his head. "Daddy!" Somewhere near the shipboard, someone gave a shrill scream. Lin Huang saw it was Lily. Lin Huang was not aware that there was a man in the crowd, dressed in a black suit taking photos of Lin Huang using the Emperor''s Heart Ring. After a few shots, he walked out of the crowd and called a number, "Wei Shan has died. The one who killed him was a young man. I''ve sent you the photos. Check his background and if there is nothing special about him, kill him." 105 Arriving at Xiagong City Wei Shan''s death was too sudden and the two personnel were not prepared to react in time. They witnessed Wei Shans death by a vampire and the vampire vanishing after it completed the kill. Both of them shifted their gaze towards Lin Huang because of the rift between them. However, there was no evidence showing that Lin Huang was the murderer. While both of them still hesitated, the Demonic Crystal Spaceship took off. They looked at the spaceship helplessly and called their superior. "What? He killed him right on the street? Why would Lin Huang do that?" Yi Yeyu received a call from Yi Zheng in the middle of the night. She was furious! "He was a human trafficker. He threatened Lin Huang''s sister on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship" Yi Zheng told her the whole story. "He deserves it. Lin Huang did the right thing!" Yi Yeyu would definitely stand by Lin Huang''s side. "The main problem is that there were forces pressuring them, requesting to arrest Lin Huang as soon as the spaceship lands at Xiagong City." Yi Zheng said. "I guess only those human traffickers were affected." Yi Yeyu immediately understood what was happening then. "Yes, these people indeed fueled the situation. However, it''s a serious crime to kill someone in the foothold. There is evidence now and the situation has become a lot more complicated." Yi Zheng was having a headache. "What worried me the most is if he were convicted, he might not be imprisoned in the coalition governments but their personal prison? If that happens, it would be better if he was sentenced to death" "Brother, if they catch Lin Huang, everything will be ruined!" Yi Yeyu nervously said. "I have asked some of my friends about this. The issue wont be solved anytime soon." Yi Zheng shook his head. "I''ll seek help from daddy!" Yi Yeyu immediately decided to do so. "That''s the only way if you want to save Lin Huang but the relationship between them and our family would be even worse." Yi Zheng sighed. "Our relationship was never good. They are hypocrites. Why do we have to maintain a good relationship with them?" Yi Yeyu was obviously upset. "The Yi family used to live with dignity; we don''t need them as our allies!" "But I''m not sure if daddy is willing to help out." Yi Zheng was being realistic. "I''ll ask daddy now." "It is 12" Before Yi Zheng could say 12.30, she hung up the call. At Division3, Leng Yuexin received a message while she was on her way back to the hotel to rest. She immediately called back. A middle-aged man dressed in a blue striped suit appeared in the video call. "Uncle Li, what happened to Lin Huang?" Leng Yuexin asked nervously. "You asked me to pay more attention to Lin Huang before you left. I have been following his whereabouts. Yesterday afternoon he killed a person in Dongxuan City on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. He killed a human trafficker" Uncle Li, the housekeeper told her. "Miss Yi, do you want to save him?" "Yes, of course. Lin Huang has saved my life. Be it right or wrong, I can''t just allow this to happen. He''s in grave danger. To me, he''s done nothing wrong!" Leng Yuexin explained. "But if you''re going to be involved in this matter, your dad will definitely find out." Uncle Li reminded her. "Let him, I''ll explain to him." Leng Yuexin said without hesitation. "There is something that I have to tell you. We can meddle in such matters but for matters that they''re doing the dark, it''ll be" Uncle Li reminded again. "Even that is not allowed! Ask Uncle Feng to go there and whoever dares stand in our way, kill them all!" Leng Yuexin interrupted Uncle Li. "Yes, I understand. I''ll do it now." Uncle Li hung up the call. Soon, the families who were trying to fuel the situation noticed that the events surrounding what had happened were quite strange. "Didn''t you say that there was no one supporting him? Why did the head of the armed forces from the Yi and Leng families, some of the most powerful families among the six royal families be involved in this issue?" "It seems like we can''t kill him. Otherwise, our relationship with the Yi and Leng families will worsen. We can only kill him quietly" ... After Wei Shan had been killed, Lin Huang was in a good mood. What he did not realize was that his small act of killing a human trafficker left the royal families in an absolute mess. Because of this, Lin Huang asked Lin Xin to move into his room. During daytime, she would play games while Lin Huang practiced his skills in the living room. Lin Xin tried not to disturb her brother after she left the game cabin. Lily was sent to one of the psychotherapy agencies nearby the foothold on the second day of Wei Shans death. Three days had passed and everything was peaceful. The female captain and Chen Wei did not ask Lin Huang to pay for the damage he caused on the ship. Lin Huang had accumulated about 110 card pieces of Army Attack Tactics. The time needed to complete one cycle had been shortened from half an hour to 15 minutes. On the eighth afternoon on board the spaceship, Lin Huang and Lin Xin arrived at Xiagong City. The female captain had a rather complicated expression when Lin Huang got off the spaceship. She mumbled, "This fellow was not supposed to have anyone protecting him. Why on earth would the most powerful among the six royal families, the Leng family and the head of the armed forces from the Li family help him?" Lin Huang knew nothing about this. He checked into their hotel. It was a suite with two rooms. Since the incident, Lin Huang was not going to let Lin Xin out of his sight. "It is 4.32 p.m. now and it was still too early for dinner. Show me your itinerary for this trip!" Lin Huang said. Lin Xin showed him the itinerary she planned for their trip and explained the details to Lin Huang. "Today is the day one at Xiagong City. I estimated that we would arrive at the hotel at 4.30 p.m. Since it''s already quite late, we are not going to visit any places today. We are going to look for some good food at a night market, somewhere near the hotel. Its called Xia Street. Some traditional shops sell snacks there" 106 The Attack at Xia Stree Xia Street was actually not the name of a street. It was the name for the night market which was located at the center of Xiagong City. The night market was set in the middle of many crossroads, with more than 10 lanes branching out from it. The lanes were not too wide and they were very crowded at night. The shops usually opened at five o''clock in the evening and would get livelier after dark. Lin Huang and Lin Xin were walking from the hotel and they reached the night market at around 6.30 p.m. The sky was getting darker by then. The hanging red street lanterns were lit up in an impressive Chinese design. "The lanterns are so pretty!" Lin Xin squealed. It was the first time she saw such a scene and it was something new for her. "Let''s look for some food first and walk around after eating," Lin Huang suggested. Both of them had not had their dinner yet since they were waiting to try the food here. Lin Huang and Lin Xin were enticed by many of the peculiar things that were there as soon as they arrived at Xia Street. Other than food, there were many interesting toys and gadgets to fiddle with, and there was even a roadshow performance. There were a few people in the crowd who shifted their focus to Lin Huang as he walked around. Suddenly, they turned and started walking slowly towards him. Lin Huang could vaguely sense that something strange was happening. He felt a sinister vibe coming from the people that were surrounding him. However, he could not identify from which direction it was coming from. He then noticed that there was an apparel store located not far away from them. He pulled Lin Xin in that direction and they ducked into the shop. Almost at the same time as they entered the apparel store, he summoned Bai. "Brother, what happened?" Lin Xin asked. She was familiar with Bai and she knew when he appeared it meant that Lin Huang was preparing for a fight. "Nothing happened. Just choosing a shirt for Bai," Lin Huang answered. He then chose a cloak with a cape in the apparel store and put it on Bai''s body. It fit Bai very well and his eye-catching white hair was covered by the cape as well. "Boss, I''ll buy this," Lin Huang said to the shop owner, pointing at the cloak that Bai was wearing. He then paid for it and headed for the exit. Bai did not take off the cloak after wearing it. He was completely covered by the cloak and followed Lin Huang and Lin Xin as they walked out of the apparel store. Despite it being summer time now, there were still many people who dressed oddly in this world. No one noticed Bai wearing a cloak in the heat. As soon as Lin Huang walked out of the shop, the group of men immediately approached him. However, there was a beam of green light that flashed in front of them and they all disappeared. The speed of the green light was so fast that the people around them did not even realize something strange had happened, nor did any of then notice the men had disappeared as well. "Hmmm? Was it an illusion?" a passerby muttered in confusion from the green lights. Walking out of the apparel store, Lin Huang felt uncomfortable. The murderous vibe that he sensed earlier had disappeared. "This guy is quite alert. Although he is only an Iron Hunter, he is capable of sensing the deadly aura exuded by a silver-level assassin," a middle-aged man thought to himself and grinned, standing in front of a stall nearby. He had waist-length hair and wore a green robe. He was good-looking with an eccentric personality that set him apart from the people around him. Even stranger though, nobody seemed to notice his existence despite him standing there the whole time. Lin Huang did not let his guard down although the murderous aura that he felt earlier had disappeared. He had been on Lin Xin''s left side while Bai escorted her on her right side. Lin Xin walked between them. "Brother, let''s go to that shop!" Lin Xin chirped cheerfully and pointed at a barbeque shop. "Alright," he said. Many people were already waiting in queue although the shop had just opened. "I have reviewed this shop''s site before and it was said that its signature recipes have been passed down for more than three generations over a span of more than 50 years," Lin Xin told Lin Huang. "I guess the shop has quite a good reputation as the queue is so long despite it having just opened," Lin Huang replied and nodded his head as he joined the queue with Lin Xin. Suddenly, Lin Huang frowned right after he joined the queue. He could sense the murderous aura once again. It was so crowded and still, Lin Huang could not determine which direction the person was coming from. He could only feel the person somewhere very close to him. He tensed up in preparation for an incoming attack. All of a sudden, the deadly aura disappeared again. "It is impossible that it is an illusion this time!" Lin Huang thought to himself. He was sure that the murderous aura was really there. However, he had no idea why they suddenly vanished. He had a feeling that that the people who intended to kill him were quietly being taken out one at a time. At a corner of a building not far away from Lin Huang, a man in a suit dialed a number. "Boss, the second team had been killed. Up to this moment, I have not discovered who the killer is yet" As soon as the man in suit finished his sentence, a man who was in a green robe appeared in front of him, with a wide grin on his face. "You are" the man in suit exclaimed, stunned. Obviously, he could recognize the man in the robe. "I would like to speak to your boss. You are not qualified enough for me to pay attention yet," the man in green robe said with a wry smile. "Who is that?" A person with a deep voice asked over the communication device. "He is" the man in the suit stopped talking immediately as a semi-transparent small green wolf appeared out of nowhere and clutched at his throat. "Let''s meet up and you''ll know who I am," the green-robed man said calmly once he knew the man on the line was listening. "Sure. I would like to know who you are, troublemaker." The boss answered after a brief pause. "Alright. Let''s meet at the clock tower. See you," the green-robed vigilante said. Upon hanging up the call, the semi-transparent small wolf suddenly grew bigger, opening its mouth and it swallowed the man in the suit. However, people that were about two meters away from them did not notice what had happened and it seemed as if the man in the suit and the green-robed man were hollowmen. The green-robed man pointed his toe on the ground and transformed into a beam of green light. Soon, he arrived at the clock tower which was located beside Xia Street. He raised his head, seeing that a man in a black robe was standing at the top of the clock tower. The brim of his hat shadowed his face and he could not be seen clearly. "Oh, it''s you, Feng Zhuoran," the black-robed man greeted him as he recognized him instantly, and sounded frightened. "Don''t you feel hot wearing that on a summer''s day?" Feng Zhuoran asked and smiled cunningly. "Is the Leng family going to protect this little brat?" The man in black robe ignored his question and asked. "I''m already here. What do you think?" Feng Zhuoran shrugged his shoulders. "What''s the relationship between him and Leng family?" The black-robed man asked. "I wanted to ask you too. The ones who have died were just unimportant people. Although, why would a transcendent be appointed to kill an iron-level brat? Does he have a hidden identity?" Feng Zhuoran asked, scratching his chin, confused. "So, the Leng family would meddle in this issue no matter what?" The black-robed man ignored Feng Zhuoran''s question again and asked. "I have been instructed to kill any assassins!" He immediately activated his skill right as he finished his sentence. He waved his sleeves and a large pack of green giant wolves appeared out of nowhere and sprang towards the black-robed man. "Feng Zhuoran, are you trying to start a fight?" The black-robed man yelled at him. A bloody long sword streaked across the sky, making its way through the giant wolves. It then transformed into a beam of crimson light and sped off. "He fled quickly," Feng Zhuoran mumbled, sounding disappointed. He then waved his sleeves again and the horde of green giant wolves disappeared. He then walked slowly towards Xia Street. 107 The True Identity It was almost 10 o''clock at night when Lin Huang and Lin Xin went back to the hotel. Feng Zhuoran was staying at the same hotel too and his room was just next to theirs. However, Lin Huang did not notice him there at all. When they got back to their room, Lin Xin fell asleep almost immediately. On the other hand, Lin Huang tossed and turned the whole night. "I felt people are coming at me, twice. It is not an illusion but how could the feeling just disappear? Did someone actually kill them?" Lin Huang could not figure out what had happened. However, he did not know that he was so close to the truth. He would never have thought that it was related to Leng Yuexin who was at Division3 though. He emptied his mind and still, he could not fall asleep. He opened the Heart Network, surfing the news updates on the web. One of the recommended local news headlines published on the Heart Network caught Lin Huang''s attention. "Recently, the number of cases involving murder committed in foothold No.7B61, Xiagong City has increased. A series of murders have happened in the last four days alone. The death toll stands at 16 on the first day and the total number of deaths until today is 121. Those who had been killed are ordinary people and those who are of an Iron-level. None of the bronze-levels have been killed yet. This incident attracted a great deal of the Union Government''s attention" it read. "It has been four days but the murderer has not been arrested yet" Lin Huang thought. He had doubted the security system of Xiagong City for quite a while now. Lin Huang started to feel sleepy when it was almost 12 o''clock. He then closed the Heart Network and fell asleep. In the next room, Feng Zhuoran was sitting on the sofa and dialed a number. After a short while, a video popped up in front of him as soon as the call was answered. The person who appeared in the video call was Uncle Li and he was the one talking on the phone with Leng Yuexin the other day. "Dear housekeeper, good evening!" Feng Zhuoran greeted. "How''s it going?" Housekeeper Li asked. "It''s going quite well, I guess. I have been wearing a mask these days, there shouldn''t be any problems," Feng Zhuoran said as he straightened his body, folding both arms across his chest. "You sound uncertain. Did anything happening?" Li asked as he could read Feng Zhuoran''s mind by his body language. "Yes, something did really happen. They appointed a transcendent to kill him. However, I scared him off," Feng Zhuoran replied. "They asked a transcendent to kill Lin Huang?" Housekeeper Li said and then frowned. "Did this problem really stem from the guy who died or does Lin Huang have some other secrets that we don''t know about?" Housekeeper Li questioned. "We have checked Lin Huang''s background many times now. There shouldn''t be any problems. I''m guessing something was wrong with the guy who died," Feng Zhuoran guessed. "I asked the transcendent before but he did not say anything. Seems like he was trying to hide something. The problem is more apparent now," he said. "I''ll try to see if I can get any more information. Thanks for your hard work," Li said and hung up the phone immediately, catching Feng Zhuoran by surprise. "Housekeeper Li always hangs up the phone so unexpectedly" Feng Zhuoran said as he looked at the screen turning black all of a sudden. He dismissed the communication page and started chatting with his friends in his chat groups. It was not necessary for a transcendent to sleep every day. Therefore, he had plenty of time. At around 1 a.m., Housekeeper Li sent him a message. "Something is wrong with the guy that Lin Huang killed. His dead body disappeared and all clues linked to this were destroyed," the message read. Feng Zhuoran frowned as he read the message. He shook his head and sighed, "Lin Huang...Ah, Lin Huang, who you are messing with" A few hours earlier, a crimson light shone into the forest. A black-robed man looked back at the sky behind him and sighed in relief. "Fortunately he didn''t come after me!" He muttered. He took off his hat, activated the communication page of the Heart Network and dialed a number. "How''s it going?" A voice came from the communication device. "Failed. Feng Zhuoran from the Leng family was there to protect him. He said that Leng family will intervene in this issue no matter what," the black-robed man said. "The Leng family" The guy paused for a moment and said, "Fine, ask them to withdraw the hitmen. It would not benefit us if things get messy." "But how are we going to tell Mr. Huang about this?" The black-robed man asked. "I''ll explain to him. Since the one who died was his distant relative, I think our business is more important. He asked for our help since he wanted revenge but we have tried our best. We would pay dearly if things go south" Zheng Yuan said and hung up the phone. The Zheng family was just a middle-class royal family in Division7. They were incomparable to the Leng family. However, he could not offend the other party as well. Things were difficult for him. After having a video conference with a few other royal families for more than an hour, eventually they had decided to give up on their operations. As the initiator of this operation, he had no choice but to report to Mr. Huang regarding the matter. In his room, he called his number after he closed all the windows. The call was answered after it rang several times. "Tell me.." a voice asked over the line. It was the sound of a man, but his age could not be identified. "Mr. Huang, our operation to kill Lin Huang was obstructed by the Leng family" Zheng Yuan said, and then told him everything that happened. He kept quiet for a long while and said, "Alright. There is no need for you and the rest of them to do business in Division7 anymore." He hung up the phone after finishing his sentence. Zheng Yuan was really puzzled. "What is happening?" Zheng Yuan called back once again but his number had been barred. At Division2, in a castle that was beautiful beyond imagination, a 30-year-old woman in a purple dress was patting a skull. "Shan Er, why didn''t you listen to Mummy. You said that you like the little girls and I asked Lao Huang to build such a business for you at Division7. You would have only been in charge of the things that happened behind the scenes and Lao Huang would''ve taken care of everything else. Then, you wanted to be involved in the business and I asked Lao Huang to create a fake identity for you, saying that you were a distant relative of the royalty in Division7. With them looking after you, you could''ve been a supplier," the old woman said calmly. "It''s fine that you wanted to be a supplier. You were born with a broken Life Wheel and you can''t use your Life Power. You know that you can''t use defensive equipment and relics. You need Lao Huang to protect you all the time. However, you always look for girls when he''s not with you and that was what caused this to happen today!" She shouted, suddenly bursting into a rage. The eyes of the skull glowed with a blue light. Its jaw moved up and down and the voice of a man was heard. If Lin Huang was there, it would definitely have sounded familiar to him. This was because it was Wei Shan''s voice, the one he had killed. "Mum, please help me take my revenge on him! After Lin Huang is killed, cage his spirit and make it into a Corpse Slave!" The skull shouted. "Shan Er...calm yourself. Of course, we must take revenge but you have to be patient. The Leng family is very influential in Division7 and they are somehow related to Division3. I will attract the attention of Division3 if I get too involved in this issue. I will plan your revenge. You have to stay in this spirit fostering bottle for the next three years. Three years from now, when your spirit has become stable, I will look for the body of an undead species. You can then live on as an undead creature," his mother explained. "Mum, what''s your plan?" The skull asked. "Bring her in," the woman in the purple dress said and clapped her hands. A girl with pigtails was brought over by a maid. She looked at the purple-dressed woman in fear. "Lily!" The skull shouted happily. "Daddy!" Lily immediately pounced on the skull without fear. "Lily, your daddy will come back to life in three years, alright? Do you want to help your daddy take revenge on the one who killed him?" The purple-dressed woman smiled, looking at Lily. "Yes!" Lily nodded his head. "If you want to, be strong, it will be very difficult. You might even die. Are you afraid of that?" The purple-dressed woman asked the girl, with a smile. "I''m not afraid at all!" Lily shouted and shook her head. "Alright, I''ll send you to the Phoenix Island for one-year of training. If you are able to survive that, I''ll send you to Division7. Then, you''ll have to kill Lin Huang within one month," the lady said. After finishing her sentence, the purple-dressed woman looked at the maid and nodded her head. The maid left together with Lily. The purple-dressed woman patted the skull again and said, "I guess you''ll be happy to have your daughter execute your revenge." "Mum, you''re the one who understands me the most" The skull said happily and his voice trembled, "Lily, please don''t disappoint Daddy" 108 Unknown Item It was late at night, and the streets were bare under the moonlight. In a quiet alley in Xiagong City, a man in a black robe stabbed a drunk middle-aged man in his chest. The man did not even manage to say anything as he fell straight onto the ground. The man in the black robe pulled out his knife and pressed his hand on the dead bodys wound. His clean hand seemed to be covered by a layer of asphalt as a black liquid flowed into the wound. Awhile later, the man in black robe removed his hand and stood up. He took off his hat and removed the skin from his face that looked like tree bark. His face then transformed to reveal a layer of human skin. "Ahh!" A lady screamed when she saw the man in the alley. The man in black robe chased after her. "Help! A monster is killing people!" The lady kept screaming. After a few moments of chasing the lady, the man in black robe saw somebody approaching so he ran away. A couple of security guards who were doing their rounds blocked his way. In the morning, Lin Huang was sitting at the dining table, reading the news on the Heart Network after breakfast. He saw a featured local article so he clicked on it and read it. "Before dawn today, a security guard of Xiagong City caught a murderer. From the dead body at the location, the murderer seems to be one of the culprits of the recent murder cases in the city. The murderers identity and the reason for the murder are still unknown and is still under investigation" "Brother, what are you reading?" Lin Xin who sat across him asked when she saw him frowning at the news. "They caught a murderer who committed a recent murder," Lin Huang looked at Lin Xin, and then noticed that her plate was empty. "Are you full? If you aren''t, you can have more," he said to her. "Ill get some fruits," Lin Xin said and got up to get a plate of fruits. "Brother, why did you frown at the news just now? Isnt it a good thing that they have caught the murderer?" Lin Xin asked curiously while eating the fruits she got. "Nothing, I just feel that the murderer is not human but from what the news reported, the culprit they caught was a human," Lin Huang closed the news page. Although he thought the news was strange, he didn''t want to dwell on it. "Maybe they got the wrong guy," Lin Xin mumbled. She trusted her brothers instincts. "Lets not talk about this anymore, it has nothing to do with us," Lin Huang said and tossed a red berry into his mouth. "It seems like the safety of Xiagong City is still unstable. We''ll explore the city during the day and come back before dark. We''ll try to end our trip around four or five oclock and come back for dinner. Maybe we should stay in at night," he said to Lin Xin. "Then we would have to change our schedule" Lin Xin said in disappointment. "We can spread out the activities. It''ll be okay if we take our time to explore the city. You have almost two months of summer break. Excluding our travel time, you''ll have at least one and a half months of holiday. There are not that many attractions in the city center. We can finish them even if we extend our trip for just another week. Before the murder cases are solved, its better that we stay in the hotel at night," Lin Huang explained. "Alright then" Lin Xin said, with a pout. Although she was reluctant, she accepted Lin Huangs suggestion as she knew that it was not safe to be out in Xiagong City at night. The both of them left the hotel after breakfast. Under Lin Xins guidance, they rode on the Viridian Wolf and arrived at the first attraction in the city center - the Xiagong Museum. "The Xiagong Museum mainly features items that were excavated from the ruins. Most of them were from the ancient city back in the olden days. A couple of collections came from the Xiagong Ruins and they''re currently the centerpiece of the hall" Lin Xin explained to Lin Huang. Lin Huang knew about all the information she was saying as he had read them all up on the Heart Network. Since his sister seemed to enjoy being a tour guide, he listened without interrupting her. He had little interest in museums. When he was on earth, he only had one thought of museums - The items in there cost a bomb! That was why he hardly visited any museums whenever he traveled. However, it was different in this world as there were many interesting things to see. He could learn more about this world by studying the historical items in the museum. The Xiagong Museum had free entrance admission but identity verification was mandatory. After completing their verification at the entrance, they entered the museum and realized that there were many visitors. "Hi, are the both of you together?" A young lady in white uniform asked as she approached them. They both nodded in unison. "If that''s the case, I can be your tour guide," she continued. Lin Huang knew that the tour guides here were a complimentary service but some people preferred to be on their own instead of following a tour guide. He turned to Lin Xin and asked, "Do you want a tour guide?" "That would be nice" Lin Xin replied as she looked around at the collections of artifacts. There were many of them and some of them were not featured on the network. "We''ll have you join us then," Lin Huang said as he nodded at the tour guide. "Please follow me" The lady led both of them along to the exhibitions. Lin Huang had learned a lot from the tour guide. Lin Xin was curious too. She asked a lot of questions and the tour guide managed to give her detailed explanations to each and every one of them. An hour later, they finally made it to the hall. The hall was not that big and was just a little less than 300 square meters. Lin Huang saw the collection that was presented as the centerpiece once he stepped into the hall. The one in the middle caught his eye but made him squint to confirm what he saw. He walked hurriedly to the center and as he approached, his eyes widened in surprise. The both of them saw him and followed. "Whats wrong, brother?" Lin Xin asked Lin Huang curiously. "Nothing, Im just curious about these items," Lin Huang suppressed how stunned he really was. He stared at the item in the middle for a very long time. It was a laptop. It was laid open and placed inside a transparent case. The computer screen was completely shattered and there was a hole in the middle of the keyboard that was the size of a fist. It was burnt on the sides but the keyboard buttons were still intact. He was stunned as he had never seen a computer or a laptop ever since he came to this world. "What is this?" Lin Huang could not help but ask the tour guide. It was his first question since he entered the museum. "These items were excavated from the Xiagong Ruins. Both items on the sides are decorations. As for the one in the middle, the archaeologists have been trying to figure out what it was but none of them know what is it for. Since nobody knows what it is, they called it the unknown item," the tour guide explained, embarrassed that she had no answer to the first question he had asked that day. "The unknown item" he mumbled. Hearing the tour guides answer, Lin Huang could almost confirm that this laptop was brought by another traveler that came into this world. "It seems like I have to make a trip to the Xiagong Ruins then!" He thought to himself. 109 The Ruins of the Ancients Lin Huang had his mind occupied with the Xiagong ruins ever since he saw the laptop at the museum. There were not many changes to their schedule during the trip. He would visit tourist attractions with Lin Xin in the foothold during the day and return to the hotel around four to five oclock for dinner. After dinner, he would practice Army Attack Tactics until 10 at night. He would then look for information about the Xiagong ruins on the Heart Network before he slept at 12. Five days had passed without incident. His Army Attack Tactics skill rotation was now only 10 minutes per cycle and he had obtained 228 card pieces. He was close to obtaining 400 card pieces to upgrade to level three. There was not much information about the Xiagong Ruins on the Heart Network and the Hunter Network. All he found out was that the ruins were found more than 300 years ago when Division7 was built. Many experts had conducted some form of research on the ruins and found out that there were many things in the ruins of the palace that were not present in other places. The discoveries include decorations which were different from those that were excavated from other ruins and because of this there were various speculations about these ruins on the Heart Network. Some even speculated that the palace was built by the Gods. Seeing that they had almost visited all the attractions in the city center, he would finally have the chance to visit the Xiagong Ruins. Lin Huang felt obliged at first but he called Yi Zheng anyway in order to get more information about the ruins. However, after the call was connected, it was cut off after two rings. Soon, Lin Huang received a message. "Im in the middle of something, lets talk tomorrow." Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. He did not want to bother Yi Zheng, so he called Yi Yeyu instead. On the second ring, his call was picked up. Yi Yeyu was wearing a black dress with expensive jewelry on her neck. Hearing the noise in the background, Lin Huang asked, "Where are you and why are you dressed so formally?" "Nothing much, its just a gathering," Yi Yeyu shook her head and teased. "So tell me, what kind of trouble did you get yourself into again?" She continued, rolling her eyes mockingly. "Nothing! Do I look like a troublemaker?" Lin Huang asked. "You dont look like it, you ARE a troublemaker!" Yi Yeyu shouted as she remembered what Lin Huang had done a few days ago. Lin Huang did not say anything in response... Yi Yeyu was a member of royalty. It was normal if she had found out what he had done on the spaceship. As he thought about it, he realized that it must have been Yi Yeyu who covered for him as the Union Government did not pursue him after he killed someone. "Theyre calling for me. If you have something urgent, say it now," Yi Yeyu muttered firmly. She thought what she had said earlier was rude so she changed the topic to move on. "I wanted to ask for your help to find out more about the Xiagong Ruins. I couldnt get anything informative with my search restrictions," Lin Huang said, finally telling her his intentions. "Xiagong Ruins? Many people have excavated the ruins before, why would you want to know more about it?" Yi Yeyu asked as she thought Lin Huangs request was ridiculous. "I just wanted to know more about it. I will be going there two days from now. The information would be helpful as I''m acting as a guide for my sister," Lin Huang said, cooking up an excuse. "There are professional tour guides there, I dont understand whats with you wanting to be a know-it-all to your sister. Alright then, I will do what I can for you after the dinner. It might come late at night," Yi Yeyu promised him. After the phone was disconnected, Lin Huang realized that it was 12. He did not wait for Yi Yeyus reply and went straight to bed. The next morning, before he got up, he saw a couple of messages on his phone. They were all from Yi Yeyu. She had sent all the information about the Xiagong ruins to him. There were many pages with pictures, so much more than what he managed to find the past few days. "The Xiagong ruins existed in the ancient epoch, even before the old epoch? The old epoch was 30,000 years ago which meant the time the traveler with the laptop arrived was about 30,000 years ago or possibly even earlier..." Lin Huang frowned at that piece of information. "Humans below the level of transcendents cannot live for more than 720 years. The longest a transcendent can live is 1,800 years. Although I have no idea how long a demigod can live, its not really possible that one could live up to 30,000 years," Lin Huang thought, basically confirming that the transcendent had died many years ago. "About the laptop, the traveler wouldnt bring something that was useless here, that could have been his Goldfinger. Since his Goldfinger was destroyed, his chance of survival would have been really slim" He concluded. Lin Huang was disappointed. He always wanted to meet someone who was like him. Although they might not be able to teach him anything, a simple chat would have sufficed to warm his heart to the life he was living in a different world. He then continued to read and found another helpful piece of information. An expert suggested that Xiagong was related to a person called Xia Hao in the Ancient Epoch. There were historical records mentioning a man named Xia Hao that appeared in the Ancient Epoch and he managed to level-up from an ordinary person to a Demigod within a couple of years. He was called the No.1 Genius during the epoch. However, he disappeared all of a sudden. Some said he was dead while others speculated that he traveled to another world. After reading that, Lin Huang was sure that if this Xia Hao really existed in the Ancient Epoch, he was the traveler that he was looking for. Only travelers with Goldfingers could level-up to become Demigods within a couple of years. Yi Yeyu left a message at the end. "I have tried to look for more information about Xia Hao for you but there isnt much to go on. There is very limited information about the Ancient Epoch, and the restrictions are even tighter. Ive sent you all that I''ve found," she said. "Thank you, I''ve received them!" Lin Huang replied Yi Yeyu''s messages right after he read them. "Brother, wake up!" Lin Xin shouted and knocked on his door. "Alright, Ill be right there," Lin Huang yelled back and then got up from his bed. They arrived at the hotel restaurant 10 minutes later. After getting food from the buffet, they sat by the window. "How many attractions have we yet to visit within the city center?" Lin Huang asked as he ate. "Were only left with one more. It can be done before noon," Lin Xin said and asked Lin Huang right away, "Will we be staying in the city center for another few days or do we go straight to the Xiagong Ruins?" "We will go to Xiagong Ruins tomorrow morning," Lin Huang replied as he was in anticipation of what the ruins had to offer too. 110 The Truth about the Murder After they were done with the last attraction in Xiagong City, they decided to make their way back to the hotel. It was already one oclock in the afternoon when Lin Huang and Lin Xin reached the hotel. Just when they got into their room, Lin Huangs Emperors Heart Ring vibrated. It was Yi Zheng who requested a video call with him. Lin Huang accepted the call. "Were you looking for me last night?" Yi Zheng asked. He immediately cut to the chase once the call was connected. "I needed your help to check something but it has been settled now," Lin Huang replied and nodded. "Oh, I was in the middle of something last night," Yi Zheng explained. "I heard youre in Xiagong City now?" He continued. "Yea, Ill be visiting the Xiagong Ruins tomorrow," Lin Huang said. "Xiagong City has been chaotic recently. I''d advise you not to stay there for too long," Yi Zheng warned him. "Youre talking about the murders, right? I''ll take note of that," Lin Huang replied. He knew Yi Zheng said that out of sincere concern. "You dont seem to have a sense of danger. Nevermind, I shall tell you this then," Yi Zheng said and shook his head. "The result of the murder case that you were talking about was out this morning but the Union Government has been keeping quiet about it. Seven people who were involved in the murder have been caught in the past few days. They were humans infected by a species of parasites," he said. Lin Huang frowned and asked, "How is it possible that the parasites passed through the security systems at the city gate undetected?! It would have been possible in a small foothold but Xiagong City is a B-grade large foothold, the security system should be better than that." "I heard its a new type of parasite which had never been seen before. Not only that, its parasitic form is different from the rest which cannot be detected by the security systems. Fortunately, such a parasite does not seem to be contagious as the host could not spread the parasite to others just through touch or airborne means so it wont spread all over the place," Yi Zheng explained. "However, the biggest issue now is that Xiagong City has hired many magicians to remove the parasites, but all have failed. This is the reason why the Union Government refused to announce the truth about the case so that an uproar can be avoided," Yi Zheng told Lin Huang the truth. Lin Huang did not expect that to be the case. "All failed?" he thought. "Although it will not spread, if the security system still doesnt work, it will cause more parasites to invade Xiagong City" Lin Huang frowned as he said. He knew how severe the issue was. "Has the Union Government came up with a plan yet?" he asked. "There are three strategies that they are implementing right now. One is to strengthen the security system by monitoring the people who enter the city. Secondly, they will be strengthening the security in the city and lastly, they will accelerate research on the new species of parasites to develop an identification method," Yi Zheng said while he shrugged his shoulder. "That doesnt solve the root problem" Lin Huang shook his head. "Theres nothing more they can do. Would you want them to tell all the citizens that theres a problem with the city gates security system and unknown parasites have invaded the city and that theres no way to remove them?" Yi Zheng asked and raised his eyebrows. "It might work for small footholds, but now that it has happened in a B-grade large foothold, if the news were to spread, who would still trust the Union Government? Perhaps the people would only feel safe if they move to an A-grade foothold," Lin Huang said. Lin Huang shook his head. He knew that there were no other viable strategies that could be executed right now. The issue would be worse if there was an uproar among the citizens. Emotions were contagious and fear would spread like wildfire. Lin Huang recalled the days when he was on earth. Whenever people heard news about water pollution, many would rush to the supermarket to get clean water. If people heard that there were deaths caused by flu, many would stock up medication such as Radix Isatidis at the pharmacies. That was the effect spreading fear. "Dont stay there for too long, it would mean trouble if you were infected by the new species of parasites," Yi Zheng reminded him again. "I know, thank you for telling me all these. I have something in mind, but I will leave in two days after I have settled it," Lin Huang said and nodded. Hearing such unusual news from Yi Zheng did not prompt him to leave immediately. He saw the laptop left by Xia Hao and he would not leave until he got to the bottom of it. After the phone was disconnected, Lin Huang had his mind occupied with everything about parasites. Parasites were one of the most hated species by people in this world as most of them could infect humans. Moreover, it would be very unpredictable once they invaded the foothold. According to the information they had on different species of parasites, they were categorized into five types. The first one was an invasive species of parasites. The parasite would enter the host body and take control of everything. Those who were highly evolved would even pick up human knowledge as they had amazing intelligence. The second one would be leech parasites. The parasite would release a massive amount of leech pods and those who were infected would become a host for the parasite. Such parasites could control up to tens of thousands of hosts at once. It was destructive and were usually done by plant-based parasites. The third one would be through eggs-laying parasites. The parasite species would lay eggs into the host and use the host as food and shelter for baby parasites to allow the continuation of their offspring. Most insect parasites would usually use this method to propagate their species. The fourth one would be soul parasites. It was rare as the parasites used a unique way to attach themselves to the hosts soul and wipe away his or her consciousness to take over their body. It could even completely inherit the hosts memories and continue to live like the host. It was almost impossible to detect. The fifth type was an uncategorized mutated parasite. Similar to the soul parasite, it was extremely rare. From what Yi Zheng said, this case was possibly caused by invasive parasites or leech parasites. Lin Huang was not afraid of these parasites as invasive parasites could be spotted with the naked eye. As long as he was aware of it, it would not difficult to get rid of them. As for the leech parasites, they could be avoided by putting on some armor. As long as the armor prevented the host from touching the leech pods, the host would be safe. Lin Huang did not think he would be affected but he frowned when he thought of Lin Xin, "Xiagong City isnt safe now, it would be worse at the ruins. It seems like I shouldnt bring Lin Xin along then," he thought. After some hesitation, he knocked on Lin Xins door and told her the news that Yi Zheng told him. Lin Xin was shocked. "Brother, lets leave Xiagong City tomorrow morning then," she mumbled. "I still have to drop by the ruins to settle some stuff," Lin Huang told her. He had come up with an arrangement for Lin Xin, "Bai will stay here to protect you. Try not to head out when Im not here. Order room service if youre hungry and get Bai to open the door for you," he instructed. "This is for you, didnt you always want this?" Lin Huang said while he handed her the GrayEagle17 with a couple boxes of ammunition. He did not need that gun anymore. "What about you?" Lin Xin asked. "I have a BlackEagle33 and a monster that can fly, if I encounter any danger, I will run away, don''t worry," Lin Huang smiled and explained. "Must you go?" Lin Xin was still worried that something might happen to Lin Huang. "Its quite important, I have to," Lin Huang nodded in all seriousness. 111 Arriving In Xiaoxia City The weather was good in Xiagong City the next morning. Lin Huang had just got up, he received a notification from the Union Government. "The murder cases that happened in foothold No.7B61 has recently have been identified. The culprits were offenders with mental illnesses who escaped from Xiagong Prison. There were 15 of them who escaped. We have managed to capture 12 of them and we are still hunting down the remaining three. Please stay calm, thank you." "To prevent the offenders from escaping from the city, we''re tightening the security at the four gates in the city. Please do comply. We will be increasing the patrol rounds in the city and you are prohibited to stay out after eight at night. If you must head out at night, please apply for a permit with the local government before five in the afternoon" "They''ve really covered up the truth!" Lin Huang thought with his eyebrows raised in surprise. The notification from the Union Government showed how severe the issue was. After breakfast with Lin Xin, Lin Huang rode on his Viridian Wolf to the west gate. Lin Xin sent him off and went back to the hotel room with Bai. When he arrived at the west gate, there was a long queue for both entry and exit due to the screening processes done by the city soldiers. Lin Huang felt obliged but there was nothing he could do. He recalled the Viridian Wolf and queued along with everyone else. He had left the hotel right after breakfast and it was almost 10 when he got out of the gate. He did not have any time to waste for this gross cover-up of an inspection by the government. He then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and arrived at Xiaoxia City in less than 10 minutes. Xiaoxia City was a D-grade small foothold. Theoretically, there should not be any footholds between a B-grade foothold like Xiagong City which was merely 80 kilometers away as building a foothold required massive resources. Having a foothold at such a short distance was a waste of resources. However, due to the existence of the Xiagong Ruins, the Union Government decided to build an exclusive foothold just for the ruins. The main reason for the foothold was not merely for developing tourism but also for archaeological purposes. Before Xiaoxia City was built, the Xiagong Ruins were surrounded by a wild zone. The archeologists who stayed there long-term would be regularly attacked by monsters. It was inconvenient for them to get supplies as they had to travel 80 kilometers away whenever they needed them. That was the reason why the Union Government decided to spend money on building a small foothold surrounding the Xiagong ruins, which was now known as Xiaoxia City. Later on, more and more archeologists left as most of the items in the ruins were already excavated. The Union Government thought it would be a waste to let the foothold be left abandoned so it was developed into a tourist spot. The Xiagong ruins had a mysterious aura on its own. Together with the tourism publicity, it was now a hot tourist attraction. As more people were visiting the ruins and due to its geological advances being so close to Xiagong City, many moved to the city permanently. With the supportive strategies the Union Government had come up with, the small foothold continued to strive. Entering Xiaoxia City, Lin Huang thought he was in the wrong place as the people in this D-grade foothold was similar to those in the C-grade Baqi City. He was not sure if it were the attractions that brought the tourists or was it its vicinity with Xiagong City. Once he was in Xiaoxia City, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and entered the coordinates into his ring. They arrived at the Xiagong Ruins in a blink of an eye. The hotel that he booked for the first night was less than one kilometer from the south gate of Xiagong Ruins. Following the map, Lin Huang found the location of the hotel. He realized that Xiaoxia City was not small at all. It was almost five times the size of Wulin Town and one-third the size of Baqi City. It was not even 10:30 a.m. when he arrived at the hotel. He thought he was too early to check it out but he then found that he was allowed to check in early at the reception itself. The hotel was a small antique building with five floors and it had no elevator. After checking in, Lin Huang walked up the wooden stairs to his room. The stairs were old and they creaked loudly but it was clean. Lin Huangs room was on the fifth floor in Room 505. He noticed that there were only five rooms on each floor. Excluding the first floor, there were only 20 rooms in this hotel. "Is this an off-season period?" Lin Huang thought. It seemed strange to him as it was summer break, he assumed there would be many tourists. It was odd that this hotel which was in such great location and such limited rooms was not fully booked. He entered the room and looked around. It was quiet and pleasant considering its age. He was satisfied with his room. It had a city view and the Xiagong Ruins could be seen from the balcony. The ruins were underground and there were no tall buildings around it. Lin Huang could see a portion of the ruins that were not covered when he stood on the balcony. After taking the moment in, Lin Huang headed out and bumped into a young couple who was staying next to his room. He headed to the first floor and saw a plump middle-aged man who was the hotel owner at the reception. He greeted the man, "Boss, is it the offpeak season now?" "Its summer break now and people who visit here would usually visit Xiagong City for a few days before coming here, so business is slow. You are here early so there are still rooms available. It would be hard to get any rooms if you come three to five days from now," the hotel owner smiled as he explained. "Is that so" Lin Huang thought there was some other reason that this hotel had slow business, but after the owner explained, he thought it made sense. "Boss, I see that this hotel has been here for long. You must have been in Xiaoxia City for a long time now?" Lin Huang asked. "I have been here for more than 20 years and this hotel has been up and running for 18 of those years," the hotel owner said proudly and nodded. "Do you have any tales about the Xiagong Ruins that we outsiders havent heard of?" Lin Huang asked, "I would like to hear about them if you know any," he continued, politely. "The Xiagong Ruins have always been a mysterious place and there are not many tales about it. However, since Ive been here for so long, I have heard of one that you might like. If youre interested, you can treat it as a story, but dont take it too seriously, young man," the owner said. Lin Huang nodded as the hotel owner began to tell him the story. "During ancient times, there was a powerful man named Xia Huang. He built an empire and the ruins were his palace. He ruled over billions of people and he was loved. One day, a disaster struck. Nobody knew what had happened and the entire empire disappeared overnight like it never existed However, no one knew if the Xiagong Ruins were really the legendary palace that disappeared," the owner said in a low voice. Lin Huang was quiet as he heard the story from the owner. He nodded in satisfaction and said, "Ive never heard of this story before, do you have more?" "Thats all I know. The rest were just rumors on the Heart Network," the hotel owner waved his hands while shaking his head. "Alright then, Im heading to the ruins now. Thank you, boss!" Lin Huang said and left the hotel. He then headed to the south gate of the ruins which was not far away. 112 Xiao Hei’s Discovery Although the Xiagong ruins were a popular attraction in Division7, the admission was free. There was only one entrance to the ruins which was through the south gate. There, visitors would have to scan their identity at the entrance before entering. He was told by the hotel owner that it was the off-peak season but there were many people queuing at the entrance. It took Lin Huang more than half an hour to through it. A lady in red uniform approached him once he entered the ruins, "Sir, do you need a tour guide?" "Im sorry, Im just looking around." Lin Huang waved his hand as he declined. He was not here as a tourist but instead, he was looking for clues left by Xia Hao so naturally, he did not need a tour guide for that. He followed the crowd, walked 100 meters down the stairs and arrived at the ruins. It was a building that was similar to the ancient city gates with three doors in the middle. Lin Huang was listening to a tour guide talking to the visitors, "Do not be fooled by these three doors, there are actually two hidden doors on the sides. This is the first palace that has such a structure. The experts who joined the excavations said that Xiagong could be the only one" The building was a complete replica of the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City on earth but bigger. There was a sign on the entrance that said Heavens Gate. Lin Huang was sure that this Xiagong was related to Xia Hao. After passing through the entrance, there was a drain not far away with five small bridges on top. There was a huge palace door that looked like the main passage taken by the ministers in those Qing dynasty dramas. On top of the palace door, the sign read Earths Gate. Ahead, there was a glorious hall with a sign that said Xia Hall. Lin Huang knew the majestic hall should be the main hall and proceeded to go in. Once he entered the hall, the cracks in the ground caught his attention. The tour guide explained the cracks. "The cracks on the ground were the result of something powerful stomping on it because it was made of sea rocks, something even a transcendent would not be able to crack" "Now, look at the roof. There was a hole; about a meter wide but archeologists restored it. Now, it looked no different from the original roof. This was the only damage throughout the entire ruin while the rest was in good condition "It seemed like something may have dropped from the roof or maybe he sensed an attack coming his way so he escaped this way" Lin Huang looked up as he thought of the possible scenarios. Suddenly, he heard a notification from Xiao Hei. "Unusual energy wave detected underground. You can collect the energy to obtain new functions!" "Are you sure?" It was Lin Huangs first time hearing Xiao Hei asking him to obtain something. "Confirmed! According to the detection, the unusual energy was the remaining energy from a destroyed Goldfinger belonging to someone else. You can absorb the energy to strengthen your Goldfinger." "Is it below where Im standing?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, its about 3,000 meters below where you are standing." "Alright, I''ll need to plan this properly, Im heading back now." Since he had identified what he wanted, he did not want to stay any longer. He needed to plan how he was going to get it from the ground below him. It was one oclock in the afternoon after he got back to the hotel from Xiagong ruins. Lin Huang got back to his room and locked his door. He talked to Xiao Hei again. "Xiao Hei, aside from the unusual energy you spoke about, what else is there underground?" "From the waves detected, there''s a mutated monster that went through two mutations as it upgraded to silver-level." "What kind of monster is that?" Lin Huang asked. "Unidentifiable." "Mutated twice? The only monster I have that could fight it would be Charcoal" Lin Huang frowned. "How is the environment down there? Is it big enough for Charcoal to perform?" "Sufficient, its spacious down there." "Ill try to get Charcoal to fight it then." Lin Huang was confident with Charcoals ability since it also went through mutation twice. No matter what, Charcoal was a true dragonkin. He then checked the cards that he had and realized that he did not have any Transformation Cards anymore. "I almost forgot that I''ve used all of my Transformation Cards last time. I dont have any more to transform myself into the Specter and dive underground. Lin Huang did not know what to do. "Xiao Hei, think of a plan!" "You can trade for a Specific Transformation Card at the card pieces mall." "A Specific Transformation Card?" Lin Huang was stunned, "Do I have enough card pieces?" "The card pieces required are the same as when you''re trading for a particular monster card. The Specter that you own is a common bronze-level rank-1 card so you will need 60 bronze-level card pieces." "Special notification: The effective duration of the Specific Transformation Card is only one hour." "To be safe, Ill get five of them!" Two transformation cards would be sufficient for the two-way trip but Lin Huang was concerned so he got more than he needed. "Consuming bronze-level card pieces x300, you have received Specter Specific Transformation Card x5." "There are too many people at the Xiagong ruins. I''ll do it when its later at night." Lin Huang did not want to be discovered when he transformed himself into the Specter or he may be captured for research. The ruins were open until 10 at night, Lin Huang planned to go around 9:30 and stay there until everyone left before he carried out his plan. He decided to take a nap. He woke up at six oclock, had dinner and stayed in his room while waiting for the night to come. When it was almost 8:30, he heard a squeaking sound from the bed next door and screams from a woman followed. The soundproofing of rooms was poor. He shook his head and proceeded to read the news. When it was nine oclock, the squeaking bed stopped but the lady screamed again. Lin Huang wanted to check it out but he thought he might be overthinking. He thought for awhile and sat down again. There was complete silence next door. Soon, he heard footsteps in the corridor approaching his room. He was staying in Room 505, the last room on the left. People should not be walking to his room. He took out his BlackEagle33 and aimed at the door 113 Attack By The Parasites The sound of footsteps stopped right in front of Lin Huang''s door. Lin Huang frowned. He pointed his gun at the door and prepared himself for a battle. After a moment of silence, a loud knock at the door was heard. "Who are you?" Lin Huang asked. "Hello, it''s me," said the voice of the boss of the hotel. Lin Huang was relieved. Soon, he asked, still a little doubtful, "Boss, what''s up?" "You asked me about the story of the Xiagong Ruins this afternoon. I recalled something and I guess you might not have heard before," the boss said. Lin Huang frowned. It was almost nine o''clock at night. It felt peculiar and he wondered why the boss would come to his room and talk about this at this hour. "Let''s talk about it tomorrow. I''m heading off to bed now," Lin Huang simply answered but he did not let his guard down. There was complete silence outside the door. No response from the boss was heard and the sound of footsteps were not present as well. Just as he wondered what was happening, a sound was heard from the balcony. Lin Huang turned his head and he saw the man in the room next door climbing into his room. He was naked, holding a short knife stained with blood. He kicked the glass door in and pounced on Lin Huang. Lin Huang pointed his gun at the head of the young man and pulled the trigger without a moments hesitation. The Life Power bullet was fired out of the gun, penetrating through the head of the man who was holding the knife. Blood splattered out of his head and the dead body collapsed instantly. Lin Huang then heard someone unlocking the door with a key. He kept quiet and again, he pointed his gun at the door. After a short while, the door was opened and the hotel boss entered the room. He was shocked when he saw a dead body inside the room. "Freeze. Otherwise, I will just shoot you. In my defence, I will say you are the host of the parasites!" Lin Huang shouted and stared coldly at the hotel owner. "Now, answer whatever I''m asked, or you''re dead. What brings you here at this hour?" The hotel boss then shifted his gaze from the dead body to Lin Huang, a wry smile on his face and said, "Master told me that he could sense something in your body and he wants it. He asked us to kill you and bring your dead body to him..." After finishing his sentence, about 10 people hiding at the corridor rushed into Lin Huang''s room, and attempted to pounce on him. Lin Huang turned back and ran towards the balcony. He took a leap and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. The Alexandrian Eagle fluttered its wings, grabbed Lin Huang mid-flight and flew off into the sky. Lin Huang frowned as he looked below. "Why are there so many parasite hosts here?!" He thought in a panic. As he looked down and more than 10 of them were on the balcony of his room. They were staring at him, emmiting inhumanly loud roars. He then looked further and saw that there were more than 100 of them outside the hotel running towards him. Despite knowing that they would not be able to catch him in the air, they still chased after him, extending their hands towards the sky and screaming. Lin Huang suddenly thought of what the hotel boss told him just now. The master that he mentioned should be the master parasite. "The parasites control the hosts and used them to attack me because I have something in my body that it wants" He thought. "Xiao Hei, when you sensed the unusual energy in the ruins, could it be possible that the source of the unusual energy sensed your existence too?" Lin Huang recalled what happened in the Xiagong Ruins. "It is indeed possible that it could sense my existence," Xiao Hei replied. "That being said, if you wanted to seize its energy, it would probably want to grab yours too?" Lin Huang suddenly felt that the fight Goldfinger encountered was quite intense too. "It can''t seize my energy. However, my Will can be replaced and I''d become a new Goldfinger provided that it''s strong enough," Xiao Hei explained. "Yes, I understand. Basically, it can be said that the underground monster that possesses the unusual energy is a parasite. The parasites were probably triggered by the unusual energy and that was why it would order hosts under its control to attack me," Lin Huang concluded as he finally knew what was happening. Lin Huang immediately called the Hunter Association, seeing hundreds of people were roaring after him as he looked down below. "Hi, may I help you?" the operator''s voice was heard. "Listen carefully. Somewhere near the south gate of Xiaoxia City, there are hundreds of infected humans enslaved to the parasites. Please send some backup to round them up immediately to prevent more serious problems from happening. You can track my location and I''ll be right here waiting for you," he told the operator. Lin Huang did not want to kill them. If the hosts did not carry the parasites within them longer than a certain period of time, the parasites inside the human body could still be killed. Basically, they were still human but were just being controlled. It would be best if they were passed to the Hunter Association as they would handle it without casualties. Lin Huang did not recall the Alexandrian Eagle as well. He knew that once he left the place, the hosts would lose their target and disappear. Then, it would be difficult to catch them. Aside from the hosts, some of the people noticed Lin Huang hovering mid-air and started approaching him. Lin Huang frowned and shouted at them, "Are there any hunters there? Please help control the crowd. Don''t let ordinary people come over here! Some of the hunters noticed that the number of infected was abnormally large. They dared not go near them too, but they could carry out the order, ensuring that the ordinary people did not go near them. Despite Lin Huang being the primary target of the infected, ordinary people would become their targets as well if they were too close to them. After less than 10 minutes, the hunters of Xiaoxia City arrived. The crowd dispersed quickly and the hunters began to catch the infected. Including the boss of the hotel, they caught hundreds of the infected within five minutes. Lin Huang ran into the crowd when the hunters were busy and entered the Xiagong Ruins once again. The first thing he did as soon as he entered the ruins was to use the Form Changer to change the look of his face Form Changer was the skill he obtained when he killed the Formless Worm. It was also the 10th monster skill that he obtained. He decided to change the look of his face because he was not sure that if there were any other hosts in the ruins. The previous hosts had seen his face. Therefore, he could be easily recognized if he entered the ruins as himself. "You have troubled me and now, it''s my turn to bring the trouble to you!" Lin Huang grinned, heading deep into the ruins 114 The Terrifying Parasite Species It was 9.20 p.m. Lin Huang arrived at the Xia Temple in the Xia Palace ruins earlier than he expected. Looking at the monitoring system which did not have a blind spot on either side and the huge crowd, he could not attack. He looked around, waited patiently for a chance. When it was almost 9.50 p.m., a sound was heard from the speakers at each of the exhibition halls at the same time. "Attention visitors... The Xia Palace ruins operates from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. We''ll be closing in just a moment. You may now leave the exhibition hall in an orderly fashion. Please don''t stay after the exhibition hall closes. We''ll have our cleaning staff to clean up the hall later We hope you visit us again soon! Thank you for your cooperation, and we hope you have a good evening," the announcer said. Visitors were not allowed to enter the Xia Palace ruins after 9.30 p.m. Despite saying that the operating hours were only until 10 p.m., it was usually closed after 10.30 p.m. They would usually inform the visitors to leave 40 minutes in advance. Listening to the announcement, Lin Huang immediately hid in the toilet. Slightly after 10 p.m., there was almost no one at the Xia Temple ruins and the security staff began to sweep the venue for any hiding stragglers. Although, it was strange that the security staff did not check any of the other places. Instead, they headed directly towards the toilet where Lin Huang was hiding. Their footsteps became more audible in the empty exhibition hall. Lin Huang could hear it when they were still quite a distance from where he was. He immediately used the Specific Transformation Card, transforming into a ghostly form and passed through the wall next to him. "You don''t have to hide anymore. Your transformation might fool our eyes but our master can still sense you!" A bearded man said; he was the leader of the crowd. The crowd had now stationed itself in front of the cubicle nearest to the toilet. Suddenly, there was a loud bang! They kicked down the door of the cubicle. They were all stunned as nobody was inside the cubicle. The security staff exchanged glances with each other and asked, "Why is no one here?" "Check the other cubicles now!" the bearded man bellowed the order loudly. They kicked down the rest of the doors and still, there were no traces of Lin Huang anywhere. "Could it be possible that our Master...made a mistake?" They looked for Lin Huang again in the small toilet and left helplessly. "I can''t believe that Form Changer didn''t work. Luckily I have the Specific Transformation Cards with me," Lin Huang said with a nervous smile. He slowly emerged from the wall and patted his chest in relief. He stole a glance and realized that the people had left. Then, he came down to the ground with his ghostly form and headed towards the direction of the parasites. After about five minutes, Lin Huang finally arrived at the entrance of an underground cave. The underground cave did not look much like a karst [1] cave. It looked like a fault space that was formed due to movements in the fault-blocks instead. The area was in pitch black darkness. Thanks to Lin Huang''s Boundless Vision, he was able to see without difficulty even under such circumstances. Since he was now at the base of the toilet, he could not determine which direction to proceed. He then asked Xiao Hei for help. "Xiao Hei, which direction is the unusual energy coming from?" "It''s coming from the two o''clock direction," Xiao Hei responded. "Wait, I guess it will not be able to sense my existence in this form. But it should be able to sense yours, right?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s only residual energy so the strength of its Will and abilities are limited. I''ve shielded my energy waves so it would not notice me beyond a distance of 100 meters," Xiao Hei said. "Clever!" Lin Huang said and gave it a thumbs-up. "Thank you for your compliment but I think you''re not qualified to use that term yourself, yet." Xiao Hei replied coldly. "Damn! I rarely compliment you and you''re saying that I have low intellect? Do you believe that I''ll be stupid enough to turn back to Xiagong City now?" Lin Huang questioned Goldfinger. "Do you believe that I''ll now activate all the remaining mission cards that you have?" Xiao Hei threatened in response. " Just great." Lin Huang said in defeat. He had no choice but to agree with it. He could still remember those days when he had to accomplish tasks from mission cards. He had said earlier that he wanted to activate the last mission card that he had. However, he had been busy practicing his Life Skills and had forgotten about it. "When I return to Wulin Town, I''ll use the mission card immediately!" Lin Huang said confidently. He was determined this time. However, he would always get difficult tasks when he activated mission cards at the last minute. He was afraid of mission cards now, and Xiao Hei knew his weakness. Following Xiao Hei''s direction, Lin Huang discovered the unusual energy that Xiao Hei mentioned after a few turns. There was a giant net of vines surrounding the unusual energy. The energy source was a big, spherical, energy-based object with a diameter of about 10 meters and released a dazzling white light like a mini sun. The light shone on Lin Huang''s body and made him feel like his Life Power rotations became smoother. Apparently, such an energy had positive effects on human as well as the monsters. Otherwise, the vine-like monster would not entangle itself with the glowing sphere. Lin Huang had never seen the vine-like monster in his monster guide before. It had a blood-colored surface and each vine was roughly the circumference of an adults'' arm. However, Lin Huang could not estimate how long its length was. It looked like a bloody giant python had tangled itself around the glowing object as if it was guarding it and the treasure belonged to itself. Lin Huang noticed that there was a purple bloom on vines every 10 centimeters. They looked like dandelions which were a little fuzzy. However, they were even smaller and purple in color. The flowers were beautiful but Lin Huang frowned as he saw them. He recognized the flowers. It was actually a cluster of parasites. Each flower contained at least a hundred leech pods and he could now see that there were more than a hundred purple flowers here. "Only a bronze-level and it could take over tens of thousands of people, turning them into hosts for parasites. If it were upgraded to a transcendent, a B-grade foothold like Xiagong City would be destroyed" Lin Huang thought, and shuddered. Looking at the leech pods that were floating around in the air, he noticed them gradually float up towards a crack high up in the cavern. Lin Huang finally knew how the monster transported the parasites to the surface, infecting the people of Xiaoxia City with parasites. Despite Xiaoxia City being only a D-grade foothold, there was still a detection system at the entrance of the foothold. The parasites could hardly enter the foothold. Furthermore, this species was living underneath the Xiagong Ruins. Since it was at the center of Xiaoxia City, the dispersal of the leech pods was way too easy. These seeds could be transported to the ground at the Xiagong Ruins through the cracks. Despite the opening being tiny, the leech pods were completely made of Life Power and under the control of their master, changing their form and path would not be a problem. The leech pods could be spread no matter how small the crack was. The Xiagong Ruins was so crowded during the daytime. It was a piece of cake for the parasites to live inside a host of its choice. Moreover, this species of parasites had never appeared before and it was a new species of parasites. It could not be detected with the devices they had now. Even if the leech pods were to leave the ruins of Xiagong together with the host, it would not stop at the exits. Also, it could be dispersed out of the Xiagong Ruins along with the winds Lin Huang was terrified as he thought of all the possibilities and consequences. If these parasites were given sufficient time, perhaps all the citizens in Xiagong City would be infected. "We definitely can''t have these parasites control the city!" Lin Huang said to Xiao Hei. Upon closer observation of the surroundings, Lin Huang did not waste any more time and summoned Charcoal. Charcoal immediately pounced on the giant python-like vine. 115 The Parasite Species Has Gone Insane Charcoal flapped its wings, propelling its huge body up to the upper spaces of the cave. Charcoal then darted down on the blood-colored vine with claws extended and a deafening roar. As soon as the roar was heard, the blood-colored vine trembled a little in what seemed like fear. Soon, it entered a defensive state. It resembled a lair infested with giant pythons. It was unwilling to let go of the energy sphere at all cost. "Both of them are bronze-level rank-3''s and have mutated twice but, Charcoal as a dragonkin will probably be a lot stronger than the parasites!" Lin Huang thought. He was confident of Charcoal''s abilities. As Charcoal flapped its wings and stopped mid-air upon its descent, it spat its Black Dragon Flames towards the vines. Right when the vine was tainted by dragonflame, the body of the blood-colored vine turned black. It then growled from the pain it suffered and began rolling on the ground. "Did the dragonflame just work?!" Lin Huang''s eyes brightened as the parasite seemed to be pinned down by Charcoal. Fire element monsters were the natural enemies of most plant-based monsters, let alone a dragonkin who could spit dragon flames. Soon, he noticed that the burned, black patches on the blood-colored vine were slowly recovering on its own. It had completely recovered at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Lin Huang frowned. "This monster has an abnormally fast ability to heal" He thought. The parasite species was completely pinned down by Charcoal at first as the dragonflame hurt it quite significantly, causing it great pain. Moreover, black scars were left on the surface of the monster even after it healed. The vine was afraid of Charcoal but was not actually injured by it. However, as soon as the wounds had recovered, it seemed to have realized that Charcoal could do it no harm and it had become more courageous. Charcoal had been attacking it all the while and now it was about to counterattack. Its attack pattern was the same, as he expected. It was trying to use its vines to hit and trap Charcoal in any way it could. Charcoal easily dodged its attacks and it was not a threat at all. Both of them entered a stalemate; Charcoal could not cause any significant damage and the defense of the blood-colored vine rendered Charcoal''s attacks useless as well. However, it had no means of retreating at all. "If this continues, I wonder how long they would have to fight to know the results of this battle," Lin Huang thought. He frowned, looking at the battle between them. However, he did not help to attack. The reason why Lin Huang did not attack the vine was simple. Since Charcoal''s ability was not able to hurt the parasite at all, Lin Huang''s attack would not have any effect on it as well. He clearly knew that once he was involved in the fight, he would instantly become the target of the parasite. If this many leech pods were released in such an enclosed space, he would have nowhere to hide. The attack would definitely hit and infect him. Fortunately, it seemed that the parasite species did not notice the presence of Lin Huang. It did not care so much as it had to defend itself against Charcoal. Despite Charcoal attacking the vine nonstop, the parasite did not seem to intend on leaving the place at all and insisted on guarding the spherical energy object. Soon, half an hour had passed. Lin Huang had reached the time limit set for the transformation. His body appeared on the ground in human form. At that moment, Xiao Hei''s voice was heard. "We have been discovered," it said. "How could it be? Didn''t you say that we will not be discovered as long as we are 100 meters away from them?" Lin Huang asked as he felt it was strange that Xiao Hei could have been mistaken. "It''s not my problem. Your aura is dissipating," Goldfinger said to him. Lin Huang then realized that when he appeared in his Specter form earlier, he would exude a different kind of aura. However, the effect of the Specific Transformation Card could only last for an hour. After that, his body would automatically give off his aura. The blood-colored vine that was fighting with Charcoal seemed to have sensed Lin Huang''s existence too. It became ferocious and its counterattack became more intense. At the same time, the purple flowers began to leave its body, hundreds of leech pods were dispersed in all directions. Seeing this to happen, Lin Huang crushed the Specific Transformation Card immediately, transforming himself into the Specter and hid behind one of the giant rocks. He was not sure if transforming into the Specter would have any effect on the leech pods but he was not going to push his luck. The entire space was covered with leech pods in less than a minute and they did not leave any corners empty. Lin Huang was not worried about Charcoal as the dragonkin had various types of immunities on its own. Even if it were to become a host, it could be recalled, turning it back into a card. He could figure out ways to resolve it later. Indeed, Charcoal was not distracted by the leech pods at all. Despite many of them getting attached to its body, they could not penetrate through its scales. Lin Huang''s aura disappeared instantly causing the blood-colored vine to be even more furious. The leech pods were like its eyes. They covered almost the entire area and still, they found no trace of Lin Huang. The blood-colored vine could vaguely sense the Will given off by the spherical energy object, knowing that the energy sphere wanted to own something on Lin Huang''s body with great eagerness. The blood-colored vine had always been grateful to the glowing orb and wanted to satisfy it. It was originally a vine seed that was as small as a sesame seed and it flew into this place unintentionally. It fell on the ground somewhere near the energy orb. In less than a month, it grew into a monster with self-conscious awareness in addition to becoming a monster that had mutated twice. All these were thanks to the energy sphere. Not only did it treat the energy sphere as a precious treasure, the blood-colored vine treated it like family, something it could count on. This was the reason why despite encountering Charcoal - a strong opponent, it did not retreat and insisted on fighting tooth and nail until the end. However, the human that the energy sphere needed had disappeared making it very angry. The blood-colored vine had only one target now. However, the target''s ability was way stronger than the blood-colored vine. It would be impossible for the vine to win the battle. This had triggered its urge to become even stronger. Once the blood-colored vine thought of this, the leech pods instantly reacted to its thoughts. The leeche pods that had completed their infection in the outside world started to absorb the Life Light of the body of the host. This Life Light was then transfused into the blood-colored vine body through the air. Slowly, it was getting stronger. The people at Xiaoxia City had no idea what was happening underground. The infected people, including the hosts that were caught by the hunters began to faint due to the drastic drain on their Life Light. Soon, Charcoal who was in the battle with blood-colored vine noticed the changes. The aura of the blood-colored vine that was originally bronze-level rank-3 was rising quickly and it was very close to silver-level. Charcoal knew that it had to speed up the frequency of its attacks urgently. It tried to interrupt the blood-colored vine''s upgrade to silver-level. However, the blood-colored vine had gone berserk! It still felt that the power it had was still insufficient. "It''s not enough! I want to be stronger!" A thought suddenly resonated throughout the underground cavern. That thought stirred up the atmosphere. What seemed like thousands of leech pods in the air drifted upwards, gushing towards the direction of the crack. That aside, all the remaining purple flowers on the vines suddenly matured, turning into leech pods and left the body of the blood-colored vine, moving towards the crack high up in the space 116 Charcoal VS The Parasite There were countless parasites emerging from underneath the Xia Temple as they moved along. They then headed towards the south gate of the Xia Temples ruins and drifted away towards Xiaoxia City. Leech pods dispersed in the air resembled purple clouds beneath the sunlight. Those at the Xia Palace Ruins did not find this phenomenon peculiar. Instead, they opened the camera page on the Heart Network to capture this breathtaking scene but strange things began to happen. The leech pods began targeting the crowd as their hosts. Only a small number of people noticed this and started running away. The Life Light in the host bodies were quickly consumed and they fainted. However, this was just the beginning. More and more leech pods drifted away from the Xia Palace Ruins towards Xiaoxia City and spread to larger areas Beneath the Xia Palace Ruins, the battle between Charcoal and blood-colored vine had intensified. Charcoal eventually gave up the ranged attack using dragonflames and moved closer to the blood-colored vine after noticing the increasingly powerful aura of the blood-colored vine. Soon, they became tangled with one another. Charcoal had a very sharp mouth claw enabling it to directly tear off a section of the blood-colored vine. It was even more powerful when it used its dragonflame within such a short distance. Charcoal launched consecutive attacks and caused the blood-colored vine to growl in pain; all counterattacks were useless because of Charcoal''s strong defense. Charcoal was finally showing the immense power of the dragonkin in battle. Its sharp claws looked like pliers made of steel. Each time Charcoal stabbed the blood-colored vine using its claws, deep gashes would be formed. Its teeth were so terrifying that whenever Charcoal bit it, the blood-colored vines body felt like it was being ripped into pieces. Charcoal was a natural combat machine. It had wicked wings on its back that could cut and kill in a flash. The blood-colored vine almost collapsed when Charcoal engaged in close combat with it. It tried to tie Charcoal with its vines but Charcoal was too powerful and broke free. It indeed had amazing healing abilities as it healed each and every wound on its own almost instantly. As its aura grew stronger, its body gradually gave off a faint silver glow. "We''re in trouble now. It has upgraded to silver-level" Lin Huang panicked when the blood-colored vine upgraded to silver-level because its abilities would become significantly stronger and Lin Huang had no idea if Charcoal could stop it. "Xiao Hei, any idea how we can kill this parasite?" Lin Huang was worried because unless his combat ability was stronger than Charcoals, there would be no way to kill it. "The cards you have now cannot solve this problem." "What about in the card pieces mall?" Lin Huang asked. "The most effective card right now would be the Primary Kill Card. It can kill any creature with combat abilities below that of a transcendent." "Redeeming one for the first time will require one million card pieces. You do not have enough card pieces." "Other than that, are there any other solutions?" "The Primary Kill Card would be your best choice. The rest would require even more card pieces and you can''t use them anyway." Lin Huang frowned after listening to Xiao Heis explanation. "Perhaps we should retreat and come back when Charcoal and I are stronger?" Xiao Hei heard Lin Huang mumbling and gave him a new reminder. "This would be the best time to kill the parasites or else, you may not have a chance to kill it again." "How could it be? I''ve been upgrading very quickly and perhaps I can upgrade to a transcendent in a year. Charcoal could probably upgrade once too" Before Lin Huang could finish his sentence, Xiao Hei interrupted... "The growth of a parasite is faster than other creatures because it feeds off of the energy of the host. Based on a research on the life cycle of a parasite, it takes them less than 20 days to grow to its current form and it needs at most two months to upgrade to a transcendent. Even after that, there''s a chance of a third of mutation." "It has achieved bronze-level rank-3 in less than 20 days and had been mutated twice" Lin Huang never thought the parasite would grow this rapidly since they lived underground. "The residual energy of the mutated species is magnificently powerful. Could it be because Xia Hao''s Goldfinger is stronger than Xiao Hei?" Lin Huang could not understand how because Xiao Hei was a complete Goldfinger and should be stronger than the residual energy from Xia Hao''s Goldfinger. "The functions of all Goldfingers are strictly limited by rules and the host has to obey the rules as well. However, this residual energy has left its Goldfinger and existed on its own. It is no longer restricted by any rules and therefore, it had no qualms about supporting the growth of the parasite." Lin Huang sighed. He was a little envious. "If its power growth is unfettered, it would eventually self-destruct. This was the first message I got when I first became independent ." Xiao Hei sighed with emotion and Lin Huang was stunned. He then recovered from his miserable thoughts and started thinking of ways to overcome this. "The most troublesome part about this parasite was that it has great healing abilities." Lin Huang had changed his way of thinking and asked, "Xiao Hei, are there any cards that could suppress its healing powers?" "No. The recovery ability did not come from its own. It gets its energy from the energy sphere. If you want to cut off its recovery ability, let me first complete engulfing the energy from the energy sphere." "How does it work? How long does it take?" "I need you to push against the energy sphere for at least three minutes." "If I go near the energy sphere, it would kill me several times over in those three minutes" Lin Huang lowered his head and looked at his body. He was in the form of a ghost and his physical defense power was weaker than Lin Huangs. He would die if his Life Power was attacked. Lin Huang eyes brightened when he glanced at it. The base of the energy sphere was in contact with the ground. "Can the energy sphere move?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei. "No, there are only two ways to move it. The first way would be when its attacked by something with immense power and the second way would be if a new Goldfinger absorbs it and brings it away." Lin Huang was happy and quickly shared, "I have an idea. I''ll hide under the energy sphere so that I am able to touch its base from the bottom." Lin Huang did what he said by melding into the ground and moved towards the direction of the energy sphere. As he got closer to the energy sphere when Xiao Hei said "It''s too near, he caught me." Lin Huang did not bother and continued moving forward. The blood-colored vine was getting agitated and angry because it sensed Lin Huang and Xiao Hei below it. It began hitting the ground. Lin Huang could feel the ground trembling but continued to move towards the base of the energy sphere. The collapse of the underground soil would not harm it because as long as his Life Power was not attacked, he would not be injured in ghost form. Lin Huang reached the bottom of the energy sphere and gradually moved up, having his hands touch the energy sphere above of him. Just as he touched a warm object with his palm, Xiao Hei''s shouted, "You may need to touch it for at least three minutes." "Alright." Lin Huang was focused. On the ground, the blood-colored vine predicted Lin Huang''s intentions and began attacking the ground instead of Charcoal. Thankfully, Lin Huang was hiding directly below the energy sphere and it was unable to attack Lin Huang because of the way he was hiding and also because the ground above him was incredibly thick. The situation got worst. The silver glow on the blood-colored vine''s body spread out all of a sudden and it was triggered, increasing its speed of upgrading to silver-level because it knew Lin Huang wanted to take the energy sphere from it. Its abilities were enhanced and the ground collapsed due to its attack. It was now able to launch a frontal attack on Charcoal. The number of purple flowers on its body increased after the upgrade. It seemed to have noticed that it was about to lose the energy sphere and it released all the newly grown flowers on its body so that it could increase the rate it absorbed Life Light. At Xiaoxia City, more than 10,000 hosts were infected. The parasites absorbed their Life Light. One after another were infected, causing fear and panic in the entire foothold. At the same time, the ground below the Xia Palace Ruins saw the upgraded blood-colored vine hoarding the Life Light, unwilling to let it go. Lin Huang''s field of view was blocked by the energy sphere since he was beneath it. He could not see what was happening out there. Charcoal was pressured as well it sensed its opponent growing stronger 117 Demonic Dandelion Vine As time passed, the people infected in Xiaoxia City also increased. In less than two minutes after it had leveled up to silver-level, a shockwave came from its body and it upgraded to silver-level rank-2 and with that, its body color brightened. Charcoal continuously attacked it but the blood-colored vine retaliated forcefully. A loud bang echoed and this time, Charcoal was blown away by the hit, smashing its head on the rock wall. Lin Huang could hear Charcoal''s growl of anger though he was unable to witness what was happening. "Xiao Hei, how long more do you need?" Lin Huang was panicked but Xiao Hei did not answer him. After blowing Charcoal away, the blood-colored vine went back to attacking the ground and Lin Huang underneath it. Soon, the ground collapsed. The energy sphere protected Lin Huang who was hiding right at the bottom of it. Lin Huang was extremely nervous because he was afraid that the ground would collapse any moment. Fortunately, the blood-colored vine stopped attacking after a short while because Charcoal attacked it after recovering from its previous attack. Knowing that his power was reduced to absolute inferiority, Charcoal decided not to launch a frontal attack but to wrestle it instead. Flapping his wings, Charcoal spewed fire at the blood-colored vine continuously while dodging its attacks. The dragon flames had no effect on the blood-colored vine but the burning sensation in its body annoyed it even more. It swung its vines to stop the flames but missed. Seemingly, the blood-colored vine had noticed that Charcoal was there to distract it from attacking the ground. It decided not to bother with Charcoal and turned the tip of its vine into a drill bit to drill into the ground. Underground, Lin Huang was still in his Specter form. There were changes to his vision that he experienced; he was able to see through the soil as if it was semi-transparent. He was initially in an upright direction and now he was lying down, with his body adhered firmly to the base of the energy sphere. The tip of the drill was less than one meter away from him. Lin Huang''s back was drenched in sweat. It would certainly wound him badly if he was struck by the blood-colored vine since its combat abilities were now silver-level rank-2. Charcoal needed to get the blood-colored vine''s attention. Charcoal pounced on the blood-colored vine once again with a close attack. Although the combat abilities of the blood-colored vine had become stronger in addition to a substantial increase in its defensive power, Charcoal''s attack was no longer as effective as it used to be. However, wounds still appeared on its body right after it was attacked by Charcoal''s sharp claws and mouth claw. Charcoal had triggered the blood-colored vine again and it was angry. It gave up attacking Lin Huang and fought Charcoal instead. The blood-colored vine wrapped its vines around Charcoal''s neck. Its force was now beyond what Charcoal could handle. Charcoal could not get rid of it at all and struggled using its mouth and claws at the same time. "Warning: Charcoal encountered a fatal attack. Please recall it immediately!" A notification suddenly popped up in front of Lin Huang. "Recall Charcoal!" Lin Huang instructed because if Charcoal died, its monster card would disappear as well. It was not easy to obtain an Epic dragonkin. Once the instruction to recall it was given, Charcoal instantly turned into a card and returned to Lin Huang''s body. The vines with the circumference of an adult arm transformed into a drill bit and penetrated the ground repeatedly. "Xiao Hei, how long more do you still need? Please answer me!" Lin Huang felt that he could not withstand the force anymore. The vine''s attack had swept away most of the ground close to him. The closest attack it made was less than 20 centimeters away from the back of his head. If the vines twisted upward a little more, it would have drilled a hole in Lin Huang''s head. "Done!" Lin Huang could sense the warmth on his palm vanish. The blood-colored vine growled loudly. One of its vines fell right on Lin Huang''s head. It was so fast that Lin Huang could not avoid it. At this moment, Charcoal was summoned once again and it covered Lin Huang as he ran. The blood-colored vine''s fatal attack struck Charcoal''s on its left wing and dragon blood splattered all over the place. Lin Huang turned back and saw the scene. "Summon Bai!" Lin Huang ordered. The next moment, Bai appeared in the underground cavern too. "Upgrade him the second time!" Lin Huang instructed again. The reason why he summoned and upgraded Bai was so that they could attack the parasite together. "Are you sure you would like to use two Advance Cards to upgrade Bai?" "I''m sure!" Two beams of golden light filled the air, enveloping Bai. Soon, it had completely morphed into a big golden cocoon with Bai wrapped inside. The strange aura Bai exuded caught the blood-colored vine''s attention. As it saw a big golden cocoon on the ground, it sensed something alarming and immediately attacked the cocoon, stopping the mutation of the monster that appeared all of a sudden. If this was an ordinary monster mutation, perhaps its attack could hinder the mutation. However, with the Advancement Card, the process would not be interrupted. Even if it was attacked by a demigod, the outcome could not be altered. The blood-colored vine''s attack was useless. In less than one minute, the golden cocoon disappeared. A young man with white hair appeared again in front of Lin Huang, his aura was even more deadly and dangerous. However, there was a mask on his face that covered half of his face. "Congratulations! You have gained an Epic Monster Card C Four-Winged Blood Baron (God''s Servant)." At this moment, the blood-colored vine launched an attack again. All of a sudden, Bai''s eyes turned bloody and he extended four of his crimson-colored wings, turning into a stream of blood and disappeared from the ground. He acted so fast that Lin Huang could not capture it at all. "Charcoal, you will assist Bai to kill the parasite!" Lin Huang ordered. The wound on Charcoal''s wing was recovering. He was born with extremely fast healing abilities. He fluttered his wings again and spat dragon flames on the blood-colored vine repeatedly and it no longer had the recovery ability from the energy sphere. On the other hand, four of the crimson-colored wings behind Bai had turned into four bloody, sharp blades that cut the blood-colored vine at a terribly fast speed. His body resembled a beam of bloody light, shuttling back and forth underground, cutting up multiple parts of the parasite''s body. Although the blood-colored vine defense was astonishing, Bai''s sharp wings were more powerful than gold-rank equipment. There were too many wounds on the vine''s body because of Bais wings and Charcoal attacked it from the other side. Soon, it was exhausted. Lin Huang then noticed that the aura of the blood-colored vine rising again. He did not know that there were more than 100,000 people infected in Xiaoxia City. Furthermore, many of them were bronze-level hunters and some were even silver-hunters. The silver glow was constantly gushing out of the blood-colored vine''s body. This was a sign that it was going to breakthrough once again to silver-level rank-3. When he was underneath the blood-colored vine, he emerged from the ground and transformed back into himself. He grabbed a Sword Relic and used Thunder Sword on the wound caused by Bai earlier. Lin Huang''s lightning-fast action caught the blood-colored vine off guard. Its gigantic body was cut in half by the sharp relic but it did not die. A vine that was transformed into a drill bit fiercely penetrated Lin Huang''s stomach and came out from his waist. This strike had blown his body away causing him to hang in mid-air, making him look like bacon hanging on a hook. Lin Huang spat out a mouthful of blood. Before he lost his consciousness, he was able to say, "Use the Healing Card..." As soon as Lin Huang regained his consciousness, he saw that Bai and Charcoal were beside him. "Where is the parasite?" He saw that the blood-colored vine was no longer moving. "Its dead?!" Lin Huang could not believe his eyes. "Congratulations. You have gained an Epic Parasite Species Card. The parasite belongs to a new species of monster. It does not have a name. You may name it." "Then I''ll name it the Demonic Dandelion Vine." Lin Huang recalled the demonic dandelion tree that he read from a novel. It was a parasitic monster too. He chose this name. 118 Reward Lin Huang killed the Demonic Dandelion Vine underground. As the parasite body was dying, the leech pods collapsed automatically. Ten of thousands of people and visitors of Xiaoxia City who were previously contaminated are now safe. Lin Huang recalled Bai and Charcoal then summoned Tyrant. Since he upgraded Bai here, he thought he might as well upgrade Tyrant before the transcendents arrived. "Upgrade Tyrant twice!" Lin Huang took out the last two Advance Cards that he had and used them. The two cards transformed into a golden glow and enveloped Tyrant. Tyrants gigantic body was covered by the glow like a giant cocoon. Soon the cocoon broke, revealing a naked Sand Monster. The fats in its body cracked and fell off its body, it was now a muscular man. He was handsome and he was covered by a layer of gold armor attached to its body. "Congratulations, you have received an Epic Monster Card - Gold Armored Genie." Lin Huang read its description and nodded with satisfaction. He recalled Tyrant and used a Specific Transformation Card headed to the border of southern gate underneath the ruins. He arrived at a quiet alley and transformed himself back to his original. He walked out of the alley, it was crowded on the street. He found it odd. After asking around, he found out that the Demonic Dandelion Vine contaminated tens of thousands of people and created an uproar. Lin Huang had figured that the leech pods were absorbing Life Power when it had a tremendous increase of combat strength easier but he did not expect its parasitic ability to be as terrifying as this considered that it was only silver-level. After walking around and listening to some rumors, Lin Huang checked into a hotel nearby. Although the battle was tough, it did not consume too much of his time. The total time that he spent underground was less than 20 minutes while the battle only lasted for 10 minutes. It was past 11 at night when he checked into the hotel, the transcendents of Xiagong City had finally arrived. There were six of them, they did not know about the parasites but they came as soon as they could when they sensed Bai and Tyrants presence. When they arrived in Xiaoxia City, they were shocked to hear about the parasites. After failed attempts at searching for the two monsters, the transcendents did not leave but stayed in the city to investigate. Of course, Lin Huang was unaware of that. After he checked into the hotel, he was checking out Bai, Tyrant and the new Demonic Dandelion Vine card that he just obtained. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Four-Winged Blood Baron (Gods Servant) "Type of Monster: Blood Demon" "Combat Level: Bronze-level rank-3" "Skill 1: Blood Spirit" "Skill 2: Holy Power (Beginner)" "Skill 3: Blood Sacrifice" "Skill 4: Enhanced Regeneration (Beginner) "Skill 5: Ultimate Speed (Beginner) "Summon Authority: Activated" "Remarks: When this monster is upgraded to a transcendent, the holy blood in its body will be activated and its abilities will increase tremendously" "Card Remarks: Trainable" "What does the gods servant in the bracket of its name mean?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei. "Theres trace amounts of holy blood in the monsters body which explains why he has holy power in his skill." After hearing Xiao Heis explanation, Lin Huang looked at the new skills once again. Blood Spirit was the ultimate upgrade of Blood Power for higher attack ability, the holy power came from the holy blood in Bais body. As for Blood Sacrifice, it would sacrifice its blood to increase its abilities temporarily. Lastly, Ultimate Speed would allow it to move at a transcendent''s speed. After reading Bais card, Lin Huang then looked at Tyrants card. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Gold Armored Genie" "Type of Monster: Genie" "Combat Level: Bronze-level rank-3" "Skill 1: Golden Armor" "Skill 2: Super Robust" "Skill 3: Super Regeneration (Beginner)" "Skill 4: Ultimate Explosion (Beginner)" "Skill 5: Ultimate Strength (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Trainable" Lin Huang looked at the new skills. Similar to Charcoals Absolute Defense, Golden Armor was a passive skill with a defensive ability was even stronger. For Ultimate Explosion, it was a passive skill that allowed its body to utilize the ultimate explosive force while Ultimate Strength was the ultimate form of Immense Strength, also a passive skill. Lin Huang then looked at the last card for the Demonic Dandelion Vine. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Demonic Dandelion Vine" "Type of Monster: Parasite" "Combat Level: Bronze-level Rank-3" "Skill 1: Leech Pod" "Skill 2: Total Control" "Remarks: Monster skill has yet to be fully discovered, three more skills on the way" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Xiao Hei, there are only two skills. Whats with the three skills that are on the way?" Lin Huang could not understand that as an Epic Monster Card usually came with five skills. "The Demonic Dandelion Vine is a new species, as it is the first generation; it only has basic skills now and would gain more skills from learning them in the future." Lin Huang then looked at the two skills. Leech Pod would allow the Demonic Dandelion Vine to create leech pods that it could then control and target hosts. Following that, Absolute Control gave it the ability to control the host completely. He then looked at his Exclusive Card, there were changes on it. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: Iron-level rank-3" "Life Seed: Sly Hands (Rare) "Combat Skill 1: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 2: Thunder Sword (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 3: Spectral Snowsteps (Body Movement)" "Combat Skill 4: Cloud Steps (Body Movement)" "Monster Skill 1: Blood Spirit" "Monster Skill 2: Form Changer" "Monster Skill 3: Super Robust (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 4: Supreme Breath (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 5: Immense Strength" "Monster Skill 6: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 7: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 8: Blood Hunt (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 9: Boundless Vision (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 10: Third Eye (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of Summons: 2" "Remark: Passable" Blood Power was replaced by Blood Spirit while Robust was replaced by Super Robust. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow and said, "Extract Demonic Dandelion Vines skill." "It cannot be extracted; your storage for monster skills is full. To obtain more monster skills, you would have to combine Skill Cards or delete the existing monster skills." "I thought I could get hundreds of skills if I accumulated hundreds of Monster Cards, I should have known there was a limit!" Lin Huang had always guessed that there was a limit but he did not know what it was. Well, he knew now. He kept his Exclusive Card while showing off the three Epic Monster Cards he had in his hands. He was over the moon with his achievements. However, he did not forget that he owed Xiao Hei this time. He kept the three Monster Cards and smirked as he contacted Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, what did you get from engulfing the energy sphere?" "Resurrection functions for cards." "What does this resurrection do?" "If a Monster Card of a higher rarity dies, it can be replaced by another Monster Card of a similar or lower rarity. Rare Monster Card get two chances at resurrection. The first resurrection could replace it with a Normal Card while the second resurrection will definitely replace it with a Rare Card." "Epic Monster Card gets three resurrections. The first resurrection could replace it with a Normal Card while the second resurrection will definitely replace it with a Rare Card and the third resurrection, with another Epic Card." "Legendary card and higher would have more chances to be resurrected with the same order as the above." "All the replacement cards must have the same combat strength as the replaced card." "If the required eligibility is not met, the card will automatically disappear." "This sounds great!" Lin Huang was excited. He had four Epic Monster Cards now, this new function could solve some of his concerns. Soon he recalled something important. He smirked again and asked, "Xiao Hei, I helped you get the energy sphere. Do I get anything as a reward?" "I shall reward you 10 card draws but the kind of cards you get depends wholly on your luck, pal." "10 cards!" It was the first time Xiao Hei was so generous. "Delay no more!" 119 10 Card Draw "You have completed a special mission; you get 10 card draws as a reward!" "There are 180 cards in the card pool so you can get 10 of the 180 cards as your reward." "Warning: You can only select ten cards from the pool only once. Once selected, no changes are allowed!" The cards then came to life and arranged themselves neatly in the air in front of Lin Huang. There were 10 columns and 18 rows which added up to a total of 180 cards. They were all identical; completely black with a golden question mark in the middle that looked more like a golden burning flame. Lin Huang initially thought he could pick 10 cards from a pool of 18 cards. If that was the case, the probability of getting better cards would be higher. Now, his options were more and so, the probabilities of getting good cards were no better than a regular card draw. "Bibbidi-Buddhadi-Boo [1], please give me some good cards! No mission cards please, I beg you!" Lin Huang pressed his palms together and said a short little prayer with his eyes closed. He then opened his eyes, took a deep breath and picked 10 rewards cards. "This, and this" The remaining cards disappeared after he was done. The cards that he picked were arranged into two rows of five columns in front of him. One by one, the cards revealed themselves. "Congratulations, you have received Epiphany Card x1, Advance Card x1, Small Destruction Card x1, Healing Card x2, Double Card x2, Provisional Transformation Card x3." "I got one Small Destruction Card and two Healing Cards?!" Lin Huang was over the moon, for the very first time, he actually had good luck. He remembered clearly how powerful the Small Destruction Card worked on the Sand Monsters. As for the Healing Cards, he had seen how useful it was several times. He had just used his last Healing Card earlier and now he has replenished them. "Too bad theres only one Advance Card. If I had two of them, I could upgrade the Alexandrian Eagle into an Epic Card." The four Advance Cards he obtained earlier were used on Bai and Tyrant. He was familiar with some cards, but not all of them. He took a look at them. The Epiphany Card was completely gold with a blue brain amidst a boundless starry night at the front of the card. He turned the card around to read its description. "Epiphany Card: Gives the user a chance for an epiphany." "Remarks: Consumable, it can only be used once. The effect depends on the users credentials and talents." "Good stuff!" Lin Huang was satisfied with the cards he selected. He got cards that could be used in practical situations and none of the mission card that was useless. "My luck has finally changed for the better!" He happily kept all his cards and headed to the shower. Maybe he was in a good mood, he had a good nights sleep and it was after eight in the morning when he woke up. After checking out from the hotel, Lin Huang ran out of the foothold and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle to head to Xiagong City. If not for the city curfew, he would not have stayed in Xiaoxia City. However, he was not so concerned about Lin Xin. Ever since the parasites were eliminated, even if a transcendent monster were to invade a B-grade large foothold like Xiagong City, he would be able to stop it. Lin Huang arrived at the hotel in Xiagong City at 8:30 in the morning. He opened the room door with the keycard. Lin Xin was standing at the door with a gun pointed at him. What are you doing?" Lin Huang raised his voice. Lin Xin then put down the gun, "I thought its a bad guy at the door Why didnt you inform me beforehand that youre coming back?" "I came back right after I woke up, I just realized I hadn''t told you when I was already walking over." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "Have you settled your stuff yet?" Lin Xin kept the GrayEagle17 back into storage. "Yes, its been done." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. "Lets book the tickets back home." "You havent been to Xiaoxia City yet, dont you want to visit the Xiagong Ruins?" It was odd for Lin Xin to change her mind. "I dont want to go anymore." Lin Xin shook her head. "Whats wrong?" Lin Huang could sense that she was upset. "I want to go home earlier so that I could spend more time to train my gun skill." Lin Xin explained. "Lets go to Xiaoxia City to see the Xiagong Ruins, it wont take too long." "I still prefer to go home now." Lin Xin shook her head. "Alright then. Since you insist, lets go home then." Lin Xin was persistent. "Have you had breakfast yet?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, I have." "Ill have my breakfast downstairs first and we''ll book the return tickets when I''m back." Lin Huang patted her head and left. After he left, Lin Xin resumed the video that she was watching. There was a lady on the paused screen with a sentence at the bottom. If you don''t want to be a burden, you must be strong yourself. Lin Xin pushed the play button and proceeded to watch the entire video. If Lin Huang was there, he would definitely recognize the lady in the video. She was a celebrity gunmaster whose videos went viral online - Ou-yang Bingli. Ou-yang Bingli was an 18-year-old who ranked 14th on the Division7 Gold Hunter Leaderboard. She was also the highest ranked female gunmaster. She had fans who loved guns, most of them were teenage fangirls below 18. As Lin Huang was having a buffet breakfast on the second floor, he received a notification from the Union Government. "Last night at about 10:30, a serious parasite contamination happened in Xiaoxia City causing up to 130,000 people to get contaminated with parasitic pods. An anonymous transcendent managed to kill the parasites in time and saved everyone before leaving. On behalf of the Union Government, we would like to apologize for the unforeseen circumstance. We will prevent it from ever happening again. At the same time, we would like to thank the anonymous transcendent. Although we dont know who you are, what you did has earned our respect and we shall learn from you" "It seems like they have no idea what happened beneath the Xiagong Ruins. They just assumed that the parasite was a transcendent based on the contamination figures and assumed that I was a transcendent as well" Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. Theoretically, the most a gold-level parasite could infect would not be more than 10,000 people. The Demonic Dandelion Vine was just silver-level but it managed to infect more than 100,000 people. Perhaps it was because it had mutated twice or other unusual circumstance. It managed to mislead the Union Government to think that it was a transcendent monster. Of course, the main reason for their misinformation was because they did not see the battle between Lin Huang and the Demonic Dandelion Vine. Else, they could tell from the remaining aura in the cave that the Demonic Dandelion Vine was merely a silver-level. After that, the Union Government sent another message. "Around 11 oclock last night, all of the 15 offenders who escaped prison were captured in foothold No.7B61. The security regulations and curfew have been lifted" "They havent been telling the truth since the beginning" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow as he read the news. After breakfast, he went back to his hotel room. Lin Xin looked at him, eyes wide opened. "Brother, it was you, wasnt it?" "What is it that I did?" Lin Huang riddled back. "The transcendent monster in Xiaoxia City, did you kill it?" Lin Xin waited for his reply. "Youre overthinking, do I look like a transcendent to you?" Lin Huang lied because he was afraid that Lin Xin might tell her schoolmates if she knew the truth. "But the time Bai disappeared matched the time the transcendent appeared. I dont think it was a coincidence, brother." Lin Xin became factual. "I just happened to encounter some trouble at the time. It was a mere coincidence that the timing matched!" Lin Huang attempted to cover up the truth so he pinched Lin Xins cheeks, "Look at you, why are you thinking of such ridiculous things at this hour of the day. Im just iron-level, if I really did bump into a transcendent monster, I would run away real fast. How can I fight it?" "Oh" Lin Xins face dropped almost immediately. "I was looking at the spaceship schedule, theres one tomorrow and the tickets are available." Lin Huang then looked at Lin Xin, "Are you sure you want to be a recluse?" "I have thought about it. Since I will be going to graduation class in September, I can always have fun after I graduate next year. I should spend time studying and training in order to get good grades next year." Lin Xin thought of a reason to convince Lin Huang. "You''ve grown up; its great that you are managing your time well." Lin Huang patted her head, "I''ll go book the tickets now." 120 Order Take-Out for Me It took the same amount of time - eight days - to return back to Baqi City via the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. The trip was smooth-sailing. On the third day, Lin Huang managed to upgrade Army Attack Tactics to level three. For the next five days, he trained in his room and accumulated more than 300 card pieces. On the other hand, Lin Xin had been staying in her room to play Gun Master during the eight days. She was engrossed in the game. The spaceship arrived in Baqi City at three in the afternoon. After they got off the spaceship, they did not stay in the city and left for Wulin Town on the Alexandrian Eagle. They had been away from home for more than 20 days. Once they got home, Lin Huang convinced Lin Xin to clean the house with him. After spending more than two hours cleaning, it was six oclock and time for dinner. Again, after dinner, Lin Xin stayed in her room to play Gun Master while Lin Huang watched the news in the living room after he did the dishes. The news of the parasite incident in Xiaoxia City finally came to an end. It had been more than a week since the incident happened. The truth of what really happened in Xiagong City was never discovered. Nobody knew what exactly happened beneath the Xiagong Ruins. During this period, there was nothing particularly interesting on the news in Division7 aside from the parasite incident in Xiaoxia City. However, just as he opened the news page, he noticed one of the latest hot topics. "Jiang You who ranked second on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard had recently leveled-up to transcendent!" The headline read. Lin Huang had heard about Jiang You but he did not know much about him. All he knew was that he had a nickname on the network, which was Eternal No.2. There were 1,000 people on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard, most of them were on gold-level rank-3. Basically, everyone who was listed on the leaderboard had high chances of becoming a transcendent, especially those who were within the first 100. Most of them would not stay too long in their level when they reached gold-level rank-3 with most of them staying only one or two years. As it was easy to accumulate Life Power, as long as they found a suitable transcendent monster and killed it, they would be upgraded. However, Jiang Yous story was slightly different. He had stayed in the second place on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard for seven years. There were four replacements to the champion throughout the years but he remained second. That was how he got his nickname. Many were curious, wondering why he remained at gold-level rank-3. Perhaps, Jiang You was the only one who could answer that question himself. Now that he had finally leveled up seven years later, it was a hot topic in Division7. The media had nothing to write about for the past few days so it was the perfect opportunity for them to cook something up from this topic. "So I guess this news today had become an issue people would be interested in?" Lin Huang said in his head. After switching off the news page, he suddenly recalled having a Mission Card he had yet to activate. He had planned to activate it once he got back home. Since he had nothing much throughout the coming month, he decided to take out the Mission Card. There same blonde lady in black maid attire on the card was still there. "Activate Mission Card." Lin Huang instructed. The blonde lady stretched her body and looked at Lin Huang. "So we meet again." The blonde lady winked at Lin Huang. He smiled back. "Now, let me tell you what your mission is." "This is your mission! Upgrade Army Attack Tactics to level six within 30 days!" Mission Completion Reward: Healing Card x1" "If you fail to complete the mission within the given time, you will lose one functional card as punishment!" "Mission announcement done. You can read more about the mission at the back of the card." After the blonde lady finished talking, she winked at Lin Huang again, "All the best!" "Upgrade Army Attack Tactics to level six within a month" Lin Huang felt tricked by the Mission Card again. "How is that possible?!" He had only managed to get to level three. From level three to level four, he will need 800 card pieces. He only had more than 300 card pieces on hand, which meant he would need more than 400 card pieces. That was not the worst news. He would need 1,600 card pieces from level four to level five and 10,000 card pieces from level five to level six! In total, he would need to obtain a grand total of 12,000 card pieces within a month. Accumulating 12,000 card pieces within a month seem impossible! "I dont care, since the mission has been activated, its too late to complain now." Lin Huang stood up and walked upstairs. He sent Lin Xin a message, "I''ll have to train Army Attack Tactics for quite awhile, we''ll be having take-out for a month" He then closed his door and started training Army Attack Tactics. He was on level three now and it takes 15 minutes to complete one skill cycle. Training until midnight, he only managed to obtain more than 20 card pieces. The next morning, Lin Huang woke up at six to train and Lin Xin brought him breakfast at eight. "From today onwards, I will make myself some oats for breakfast. You dont have to order food for me in the afternoon but please get me take-out for dinner." Lin Huang wanted to focus on training. "No problem, I can do that for you but... Wont you be hungry if you skip lunch?" Lin Xin was concerned. "Dont worry, I wont." Lin Huang assured her. "Alright then" After breakfast, Lin Huang returned to his room and trained again all the way to bedtime. He only managed to accumulate 80 card pieces that day. For the next couple of days, Lin Huang repeated the routine of waking up at six with a bowl of oat and fruits before his training. He would spend around 10 minutes for dinner at six in the evening and train until 12 before he went to bed. He spent almost 18 hours on his training each day. On the fifth afternoon, he finally accumulated 800 card pieces and upgraded Army Attack Tactics to level four. Since then, the skill rotation became even more complicated. The time he took per rotation slowed down again. Five days passed and he saw the rotation shorten to 10 minutes per cycle instead of 30 minutes. He managed to accumulate more than 100 card pieces every day. As the days passed and time shortened, the amount of card pieces he was able to obtain increased respectively. Finally, on the 20th day, Lin Huang upgraded Army Attack Tactics to level five."I will use the Epiphany Card as a hail mary during the last 10 days!" Lin Huang had planned this since the beginning. He took out the Epiphany Card, took a deep breath and squeezed the card, hard. He proceeded with his training. Indulged in the effects of the Epiphany Car, the first skill rotation took the same amount of time, which was half an hour. However, on the second cycle, it was reduced to 20 minutes while the third cycle took only 10 minutes. On the fourth cycle, it was reduced to three minutes and the fifth cycle was only one minute The time he needed was reduced with each round. When it came to the 10th round, he managed to complete a rotation within a single second. In less than four hours, he had accumulated 10,000 card pieces and upgraded to level six. However, the Army Attack Tactics rotation did not stop evolving. The level six skill cycle was a few times more complicated than level five. It took Lin Huang a full three hours to complete one cycle, two hours for the second one Seven hours later, he managed to complete a single cycle within one second once more. Eight hours later, he had finally accumulated 30,000 card pieces and upgraded Army Attack Tactics to level seven. By then, Lin Huang had been training for more than 20 hours but the effects of the Epiphany Card went on The skill cycles went on automatically. After 30 hours, he had accumulated 90,000 card pieces and broke through to level eight! The effects of the Epiphany Card finally left Lin Huang. He had no rest. Feeling satisfied, he got himself a cup of water immediately then went to bed. When he woke up, he saw Lin Xin sitting by his bedside. "What happened?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "Brother, I was so scared! Lin Xin told him what happened. Lin Xin had been knocking on his door to get him to eat his dinner for the past two days but he did not respond at all. On the third day, he did not respond again so Lin Xin went into his room and found out that he was in a deep sleep. She thought there might be something wrong with his body so she called 911. "Luckily the doctor said everything is normal with your body but you went into hibernation and promised that you would wake up soon." She was teary as she explained. "Dont worry, Im alright. I was just exhausted from my training so I rested." Lin Huang patted her head. "Some rest? You slept for a week!" Lin Xin stared at him. "One week? No wonder Im starving Xin Er, please order take-out for me, Ill go wash up now." "Sure!" Lin Xin walked into the living room to order his meal. 121 Life Species Monster "Life Skill Card" "Life Skill Name: Army Attack Tactics" "Rarity: Rare" "Mastery Level: Level 8" "Effect: 96% increment in the Life Power rotation speed. Increases attack power and defense power by 96% respectively." "Remarks: With every upgrade, each of the Life Skill effects will be increased by 12%." "Card Remarks: Usable" Lin Huang looked at the description of his Life Skill Card and was stunned. He did not expect the effect of the Epiphany Card to be tremendous, allowing him to upgrade Army Attack Tactics to level eight. The increment of 96% of all effects his Life Power was the peak if it was an Ultimate Life Skill. Some people who had high-level Life Skills spent all their lives in training and the best they could do was level five. Only one in a million made it to level six. There was barely anyone who could make it to level seven and eight. Lin Huang had proven himself because he was able to upgrade to level eight in Epiphany mode in just one sitting! He then checked the cards in his body, there was an addition Healing Card which was his reward for completing the mission. "To activate or not to activate... A mission card is just a pain in the ass!" Lin Huang exclaimed. If not for the Epiphany Card, he knew very well that he would never complete the mission no matter what. Fortunately, the effect of the Epiphany Card was incredible. Not only did he complete his mission on time, he even exceeded the expectation for the given task. After 20 days of training, not only had he managed to upgrade Army Attack Tactics to level eight, he also stabilized his Life Power. He began to think about leveling up to bronze-level. Lin Xin was only left with 10 days of summer break and he planned to head out to kill and hunt monsters once Lin Xin started schooling again. He wanted to focus on choosing his Life Seed in the next few days. In the Life Seed encyclopedia, there were much more bronze-level monsters compared to iron-level monsters. Lin Huang was spoilt for choice. He finally picked 11 Life Seeds but he still could not make up his mind as to which one he wanted. Initially, he planned to consult Yi Zheng but then he remembered that he had only broken through iron-level rank-2 after obtaining Army Attack Tactics just a month ago. It might make Yi Zheng skeptical if he consulted him about upgrading to bronze-level. He took a pass on that idea. After some hesitation, Lin Huang sent Leng Yuexin a message. "Ms. Leng, are you still traveling in Division3?" "Yes, Im still in Division3 right now but Im going back within these few days. Is there anything you need?" Leng Yuexin replied promptly. "I wanted to get your advice about which bronze-level Life Seed to pick. I still cant make up my mind." Lin Huang hoped Leng Yuexin would help him but there was no guarantee there. "Send them over and Ill take a look." Leng Yuexin offered. Lin Huang sent the 11 Life Seed pictures. Leng Yuexin had always kept his secrets and she never once questioned his intentions. Similarly now, she did not ask him for the reason he was looking for bronze-leveled Life Seeds so soon. Soon, Leng Yuexin initiated a video-call with him. Leng Yuexin was wearing a white maxi dress, it matched her chilly aura while still maintaining her elegance. "Ive looked at the Life Seed you picked. Most of them belong to speed and defense categories, focusing mainly on upgrading your physique, which is unnecessary." Leng Yuexin did not even greet him when the call was connected. "Its unnecessary?" Lin Huang frowned, what Leng Yuexin said had crushed the plan that he had in mind. "Your physique can be trained before you become a transcendent. There are movement skills to strengthen your power, to increase your defensive abilities and even more movement skills to increase your speed" "Moreover, before you level-up to a transcendent, your body will transform, causing your physical traits to deteriorate to the bare minimum, taking with it all your physique-based skills. That was why a lot of people who had an amazing physique would have to spend time and resources to cultivate their Life Seed after they become a transcendent." "So it doesnt matter even there are improvements in my physique increased now? Then wouldnt my Sly Hands be useless by then?" "Sly Hands would still be useful. After leveling up to a transcendent, Sly Hands would transform into a secret skill called Demonic Hands." Leng Yuexin explained patiently, "Demonic Hands is quite a useful secret skill." "So, I do need to consider the things that would happen to my physique after I level up to transcendent in order to pick a suitable Life Seed?" Lin Huang had a new idea in his mind. "Thats right, the best ones would be those with effects to protect your life or to help you in scoring critical hits in your battles. These two types of secret skills are the most useful ones when you become a transcendent." Leng Yuexin nodded. "But I wouldnt know which Life Seed will be the ones that will evolve into these secret skills. Is it possible to purchase such information from the Hunter Association?" Lin Huang was bummed. "Ill send you a copy later and you can take a look at the Life Seed encyclopedia." After Leng Yuexin said this, she hesitated and continued, "Actually, since youre talking about bronze-level Life Seeds, I thought of a bronze-level monster that you could kill to get a special secret skill after you became a transcendent. I''m unsure if its suitable for you." "Do tell!" That got Lin Huang excited. "This monster is called a Vile Marionette. Its not exactly powerful but it sure is tough as it has the ability to substitute its body with a faux body. After it is killed, you would get a Life Seed called Substitute, it belongs to the psychic element. Its powers are limited and can only be used three times a day to divert non-fatal attacks. It is less powerful than Life Seeds that come with recovery effects which is why most people shy away from choosing this Life Seed. However, once you have leveled up to a transcendent, it can be upgraded Scapegoat, a secret skill, which could help you escape death. It can be used nine times per day." "Sounds great, I shall put this on my list." Lin Huang did not lack skills. Substitute was a great secret skill once he arrived at transcendent. "I will send over information regarding secret skills, you can take a look at the rest and think about it." Leng Yuexin sent over information on secret skills not long after she hung up the phone. Lin Huang sent her a thank you message and started reading. There were not much bronze-level Life Seeds that could evolve when he leveled up to transcendent. There were only 20 of them. Lin Huang flipped through the pages but he did not seem to find one he was satisfied with. In the end, Scapegoat caught his attention. "Secret Skill Name: Scapegoat" "Secret Skill Effect: Substitute your body with a faux body to divert fatal attacks. Limited to nine uses per day." "Obtaining Secret Skill: From evolving the Substitute Life Seed." He compared the secret skill with the information he found in the Life Seed encyclopedia. "Life Seed Name: Substitute" "Skill Effect: Substitute your body with a faux body to divert fatal attacks. Limited to three uses per day."? "Obtaining Life Seed: By killing the Vile Marionette." "This seems suitable. I''ll pick this." Lin Huang decided on the Life Seed Leng Yuexin recommended. After he closed the Life Seed encyclopedia and the information about secret skills, he began to read more about the Vile Marionette on the network. "Vile Marionette, undead species, bronze-level rank-3, monsters living in groups" He found the information shortly after, "Scattered in Fog Canyon, Forgotten Land, the first level of the Undying Black Abyss Lin Huang had heard of the Undying Black Abyss long time ago. It was forbidden land. Only transcendents dared to enter the first level and made it back after that. He had never heard of Fog Canyon and Forgotten Land and so, he did some research. He found out that Forgotten Land was a prohibited area in Division7. Many who discovered the area, transcendents included, would go missing. Those who made it back said there was nothing special about the place except the fact that it was a desert. As for Fog Canyon, it was a level-4 wild zone. Lin Huang picked Fog Canyon as his destination without thinking twice. He did not want to lose his life and he did not know much about this world. Even with the Goldfinger, he still needed a long time to learn and grow. After picking his destination, Lin Huang was completely relaxed for the coming days. He planned to leave after Lin Xin went back to school. A week passed, it was a couple more days before Lin Xins school would reopen. Lin Huangs communication device rang, it was Fatty, Yin Hangyi who requested a video-call. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow and picked up the call. "Bro, whats up?" Fattys big face occupied the entire screen. "Same old, same old, but I think you have gained weight." Lin Huang had no idea where he picked up the habit of sticking his face so close to the screen even when he knew he had a big face. "Would it kill you not to tell the truth?" Fatty snapped. "Yes, I would suffer" "Damn it, cant you talk properly. Alright then, I will cut to the chase then. Im in need of help." "Tell me, what is it?" Lin Huang was slightly concerned. "Im leveling up to bronze-level, I need your help! You should be iron-level now, am I right?" "When?" Lin Huang was surprised that Fatty was planning to level up the same time as him. "Within the next three to five days, I need a couple of days to prepare myself." Lin Huang frowned and Fatty noticed Lin Huangs facial expression, "If you have something going on, Ill get someone else to help me. Dont worry about it." "It''s nothing, I can postpone my stuff. Which Life Seed did you pick, where is it located?" Lin Huang assured Fatty. "The location is a level-4 wild zone called Fog Canyon. The Life Seed monster that I picked is the Vile Marionette. I bet you have never heard of it before right?" Lin Huang did not expect Fatty to pick the same Life Seed monster as he was going to. 122 Reunion With Fatty "Dont tell anyone that I told you this. Although the Substitute Life Seed of the Vile Marionette doesnt seem that powerful, once Im level up to a transcendent, this skill from this Life Seed will evolve into a secret skill that can save your life. I suggest you choose the same Life Seed as I do when you are leveling up to bronze-level in the future. I heard this from my bro who comes from royalty; its a solid piece of information!" Fatty intentionally lowered his voice as he said this to Lin Huang. Lin Huang figured if he went to Fog Canyon with Fatty and leveled to bronze-level, Fatty would definitely feel weird because he could not hide his tremendous level-up speed. "Nevermind, Ill wait for him to level up and convince him to leave me while I stay in Fog Canyon to level up" Lin Huang thought. "This piece of information did not come by easily, Im telling you because youre my bro. Arent I the best?" Fatty boasted. "Alright, Ill help you to finish your task. Once its completed, you can leave while I stay on to settle some stuff." Lin Huang suggested. "That sounds like a plan! Send me your contact details. Ill book the spaceship ticket to Baqi City for you. We will meet in Baqi City a day before." Fatty paid for Lin Huangs ticket since he asked for his help. "Its alright, Ill book the ticket on my own, even if Im not helping you, I would have to go there in a couple of days anyway." Lin Huang declined Fattys generosity. "Ill take you to a good meal once were there then." Fatty wanted to repay Lin Huangs kindness. "Sure, Ill see you next week." Lin Huang hung up the call. "Brother, who is that whom you were talking to just now?" Lin Xin was picking up a parcel downstairs and saw Lin Huang on a video-call. "Hes a friend, hes asking me to join him in Fog Canyon next week." "Is it far?" Lin Xin had never heard of the place before. "It would take more than 20 days. Hes leveling up to bronze-level and needs my help. I have something to settle in the same area as well so I agreed." "Oh" Lin Xin seemed upset. "Ill send you the money for food and daily necessities; I will be back end of September. Whatever you need to buy, dont worry about the money." Lin Huang then transferred a million credit points to her. "One million?!" Lin Xin shrieked, "Thats too much!" "Not at all. Im a hunter now, an iron-level monster carcass is selling for more than 10,000 credits and I can get at least 100,000 credits for a bronze-level monster carcass. I can make one million within minutes strolling through the wild zone." Credit points were no longer a concern to Lin Huang ever since he became a hunter. His concern was now Life Crystals, one million credit points were equivalent to 10 years worth of Life Crystals. "Is it a lucrative job to be a hunter?!" Although Lin Xin knew hunters made good money, she was not too clear about the occupation itself. Now, she finally understood why all hunters were so rich. "I want to be a hunter too when I grow up!" "Why are you so competitive? You should focus on your studies for now. If you graduate from a prestigious school, you could have a better life than me." Lin Huang patted her head. "Im going back to my room to train my gun skills!" "Go then. Rest up when you need to. Do everything in moderation for the best efficiency." Lin Huang reminded her. "Okay!" Lin Xin shouted while she made her way upstairs. Three days passed and Lin Xins summer break came to an end. She had officially joined the graduation class of Hunter Reserve College. As planned, Lin Huang headed to Baqi City a day earlier before venturing into Fog Canyon. He checked into a hotel near the central plaza and called Yin Hangyi. "Im here, where are you?" He called Fatty. "Ive arrived since yesterday!" Fatty sounded lazy, "I just woke up from a nap. Was just thinking of calling to check and see when you''ll be arriving. Come to my hotel, I still have an empty room in my suite." "I just checked into a hotel." Lin Huang did not want to sleep in the same room with the chatterbox. "So fast? Which hotel are you staying in?" Fatty asked. "Im at Yun Man Hotel, what about you?" "Oh thats such a coincidence; Im staying at Yun Man Hotel too!" Fatty was excited. "There are only three hotels around the central plaza that hunters would usually opt for." Lin Huang was not surprised at all. "Which floor are you on?" Fatty asked. "I''m o the 17th floor, what are you trying to do?" "Im going to visit you of course! Im still on the 29th floor. Wait for me, Im coming to you!" Fatty then asked, "Which room number?" "Room 1721" Lin Huang knew very well that if he did not tell him his room number, Fatty would definitely knock on each room to look for him. Fatty rang his doorbell not long after he hung up. He tried to hug Lin Huang but Lin Huang dodged him. "Wow! Great movement skill! Which level exactly are you on now?" "Iron-level rank-2." Lin Huang lied. "So fast?!" Fatty thought Lin Huang had just entered iron-level not long ago and would need some time to get to iron-level rank-2. "I''ve got great qualities, theres nothing you can do about it." Lin Huang boasted. "Which Life Skill are you training now?" Fatty was curious. "Army Attack Tactics." Lin Huang admitted. "Thats expensive; didnt you tell me that youre poor?" Fatty remembered that Lin Huang could not even afford a portable tent. "I got it from the Union Government as a reward during the last monster horde invasion." Lin Huang smiled. "Damn, what a steal!" Fatty thought about it and shook his head, "It would be useless if I got that Life Skill. I''m not as qualified as you and the effect of me training Army Attack Tactics would be worse than other Life Skills. For you, its different. If you trained until level six, you would be comparable to an ultimate Life Skill." "The possibilities of it being comparable to an Ultimate Life Skill is the reason Im training Army Attack Tactics." Lin Huang did not want to tell Fatty that he had trained Army Attack Tactics to level eight. After chatting for awhile, Fatty said, "I shall head back to my room now, Ill drop by your room around five. Lets go to dinner together! My treat!" It was two oclock in the afternoon after Fatty left. Lin Huang read some news about the monsters in Fog Canyon. Soon, it was five and Fatty arrived for dinner. "What would you like to eat? "Anything will do, as long as its delicious." Lin Huang was not fussy. "Since youre not expecting something like fine-dining, I shall bring you to this one then." Fatty waved his hand, "Come with me!" After walking for 10 minutes, they arrived at a hotel called Guest Hotel. Lin Huang had heard about this hotel chain before. They were huge and were headquartered in Baqi City. As Lin Huang followed behind Fatty as they entered the hotel, the staff greeted Fatty. Lin Huang figured he was probably a regular customer. They headed to a private room. Lin Huang drank tea while Fatty ordered the dishes. A while later, Lin Huang asked to be excused to the restroom. On the way to the restroom, Lin Huang saw a man in a chef uniform walk out of the restroom. He looked so much like Fatty but was much bigger and taller. He looked like he was in his 40s, Lin Huang found that strange. When he returned, Lin Huang could not help but ask, "Fatty, is the hotel chef your relative?" "Whats wrong?" Fatty lifted his head and asked. Lin Huang then told him about the middle-aged chef that he saw earlier. "So you saw my dad? I thought he was not around today, its your lucky day!" Fatty blurted. "Your dad is the chef?" Lin Huang knew nothing about Fattys family. "He''s also the hotel owner." Fatty explained. "Ahh is that so." Lin Huang thought that no matter how much a chef earned, it would still not be enough to upgrade to iron-level but since his dad was the chain hotels owner, everything made sense. "Have a seat, Ill go to the kitchen and ask my dad to make his best dishes. You''ll love them!" Lin Huang had tried Fattys cooking before, it was good. He must have learned it from his dad. Lin Huang was excited to try the food Fatty''s dad was going to prepare. Fatty left to the kitchen and came back 10 minutes later. He smiled while saying to Lin Huang, "My dad has something to settle in Baqi City today, thats why he dropped by the hotel. He saw that the hotel was crowded so he decided to help. Youre lucky to have bumped into him." "Although my dad owns this place, I have to pay whenever I eat here. Theres no discount for me, its a rule my dad set. But since youre here today, he made this meal complimentary." Lin Huang was embarrassed to hear that, "Its not good that I broke the rules" "No you didnt, he put the bill on his own tab. I know him very well." Fatty explained. The food was served after awhile. The food portion was simple and small. There were three dishes and a bowl of soup but Lin Huang could tell that his dad put a lot of effort to prepare them. Every bite was unforgettable, Lin Huang had only tasted food this good back at the Stable Residence. Lin Huang was impressed with his cooking skills! After dinner, Fattys dad met with them. Lin Huang knew that his dad had given them the best. It was a thank you dinner for taking care of Fatty. "Dont worry, I will bring Fatty back in one piece." Lin Huang thought. 123 Lin Huang’s Ambition It was a sunny day on the 2nd of September in Baqi City. The Demonic Crystal Spaceship landed on the central plaza at 10 in the morning. Other Demonic Crystal Spaceships that took different routes docked at the same place too. After scanning their tickets, Lin Huang and Yin Hangyi boarded the spaceship. They were staying on different floors, Lin Huang on the sixth floor while Yin Hangyi was on the eighth floor. However, Fatty loved Lin Huangs company. Besides sleeping, he spent most of the time in Lin Huangs room. "Hey Fatty, have you ever thought of inheriting your dads hotel one day?" Lin Huang was annoyed. "The food ordinary chefs are allowed to handle is limited. If I become a Food Hunter, I''ll make even more delicious food. Thats my desire in the food industry." Fatty explained, "Besides, I hope that I could do even better than my dad which is why he supports me fully in becoming a Food Hunter." "What about you, why do you want to be a hunter?" Fatty asked him back. "Im not a fan of placing my fate in someone elses hands. Its not 100% safe in the foothold, even C-grade ones that have a transcendent as their guardian. After all, transcendent are still human beings, they too make mistakes, they too could die in battles. Instead of putting my life in a transcendents hand, I would rather take control of my own life. Thats why I aspire to be stronger so that I could protect myself as well as the people around me." Lin Huang spoke with passion and then thought again. There was a deeper reason why he desired to be strong. "Its not all about insecurity. I would love to see how big this world is. Before I become a transcendent, I am confined to explore the world within the safety zone. Not only I would like to discover other safe zones, I would also like to see the world outside those safety zones, those areas yet to be explored by humans since the new epoch" "Whats wrong with you, Id rather spend all my life in the safety zone than to go anywhere chaotic. About exploring the yet to be discovered, I would let someone else do it." Fatty crossed his hands. Lin Huang laughed and thought that what he said made him look ambitious. It took them 11 days to travel in the Demonic Crystal Spaceship and finally, they arrived at their destination - foothold No.7C29, Fog City. Fog City was 1,200 kilometers from the Fog Canyon, which was the nearest foothold with people from the canyon. It was September 13th at four oclock in the afternoon when the Demonic Crystal Spaceship in Fog City. Lin Huang and Yin Hangyi got off the spaceship and checked into a hotel together. "Theres a level-3 wild zone along the way to the Fog Canyon. It would be dangerous if just the both of us went, I will get a team from Adventurer Paradise." Fatty said this after completing the hotel registration but Lin Huang did not say anything. He could just get the Alexandrian Eagle to bring the both of them there but he did not want to reveal his true ability. The reason the silver-level and gold-level adventurers in Adventurer Paradise were willing to bring people along with them was not because of money. It was a service provided by the Adventurer Paradise that every now and then they could bring other hunters of lower level along on their missions to give them good exposure as part of their recruitment drive, hoping that they will consider joining the club in future. 10 minutes later, Fatty called Lin Huang on his communication device. Lin Huang picked up thinking it was strange, "Whats wrong?" "I have found a team, they are departing now. They are in a rush, come and meet us at the east gate!" Fatty hung up the phone without waiting for Lin Huang to respond. He thought it was strange as there was no need for Fatty to rush since there were a couple of adventurers who would team up with other people into the Fog Canyon every day. The sun was setting, if they were to depart now, the both of them would have to stay a night in Fog Canyon on their own. Lin Huang got out of the hotel right away and rode on the Viridian Wolf to the east gate. When he arrived, he saw fatty and three other silver-level adventurers from afar riding on their mounts while Fatty was standing. He did not look too good. "What is this about, Fatty?" Lin Huang frowned and asked. Hearing Lin Huangs voice, all of them turned around and looked at him. "You sure are slow, can we leave now?" The leader was dark and skinny. He glared at Lin Huang then pulled the rope on his monster and left. The other two adventurers followed him. The one in the was slightly bald while the last adventurer looked younger. He had a goatee, he then yelled at Fatty, "Since your friend has a mount, you dont have to share with us anymore." Lin Huang pulled Fatty onto the Viridian Wolf and asked while frowning, "What exactly happened?" "Stop asking, lets go." Fatty sat behind Lin Huang, he shook his head helplessly. Lin Huang then patted Viridian Wolf and chased after the adventurers. Three of them were silver-level adventurers riding on ground rhino, a bronze-level monster. It was a common mount, it was not too fast but it was quite resilient. The three adventurers were riding a cheap mount as the price of a Ground Rhino was much cheaper than a Viridian Wolf. They were probably jealous and left right after they saw Lin Huang on a Viridian Wolf. "You said you were poor, then how did you afford a Viridian Wolf as your mount! The price of this mount is comparable with silver-level equipment." Fatty finally got over being mad at Lin Huang. Lin Huang did not tell him that it was his summoned monster so he pulled a fast one, "I was lucky that day, bought it at a cheap price." "How much?" Fatty was genuinely asking. "Cost one bronze-level equipment." Lin Huang lied again. Not only did Fatty buy what he said, the three silver-level adventurers as well. They did not look too happy as they traded in two bronze-level equipment to get their rhino. A Viridian Wolf cost at least one silver-level equipment but Lin Huang got it at a much cheaper price. "Young man, I will buy your Viridian Wolf for two bronze-level equipment." The man with goatee shouted. "Im not selling it." Lin Huang declined without even thinking. The man with goatee glared at Lin Huang. Although Lin Huang did not know what exactly happened before he came, he did notice Fatty was silent during the entire journey. He figured something must have happened involving these three men, probably Fatty was threatened. They could have arrived at Fog Canyon in an hour but now Fatty had found a team that did not have a flying mount like Lin Huang did, causing a delay in the journey for about eight hours. Lin Huang was upset. Fortunately, the three adventurers did what they were supposed to do. They killed all the monsters in their way. However, they left no dead bodies behind and kept all of them in their storage space. They must be really broke. Fatty seemed to be more and more uncomfortable. The strongest one among the three was the dark and skinny man. He was a silver-level rank-2 while the other two were silver-level rank-1. Lin Huang just had to summon Charcoal, Bai or Tyrant, and killing them would be a piece of cake. After traveling for more than six hours, the dark, skinny leader suddenly slowed down. "Its the level-3 wild zone ahead; we''ll have to walk across without our mounts to avoid catching the attention of the monsters in the wild zone." Lin Huang was shocked that they wanted to be careful in the level-3 wild zone. silver-level adventurers should have no fear of monsters in level-3 wild zones. Since the three of them kept their mounts, fatty patted Lin Huangs back, "Lets keep it." Lin Huang then kept his Viridian Wolf into his storage space. There was really no difference whether he keeps the Viridian Wolf or not because its footsteps were lighter than that of humans. On the other hand, the rhinos were loud on the road. But he figured that it would be rude if he rode on Viridian Wolf while the rest walked. "It is more than 300 kilometers, do we have to walk?" Even if they ran, Lin Huang and Fattys speed of iron-level coupled with the distance would take them at least seven more hours. "You guys can ride on your Viridian Wolf, dont ask for help if monsters attack the both of you." The dark and skinny man glared at Lin Huang. "Lin Huang, its okay, we will run over there. Its too dangerous to be here and alone." Fatty advised. Since it was Fatty who asked for help from the team, Lin Huang did not want to embarrass him so he agreed but he was definitely irritated, "Lets go then." The three adventurers together with Lin Huang and Fatty ran at 50 kilometers per hour. Fatty was panting heavily after running for two hours. "Fatty, if you cant take it, you can ride on Viridian Wolf." Lin Huang suggested. "Im okay" Fatty waved his hand. Three hours later, Fatty was slowing down. Lin Huang got him to ride on the Viridian Wolfs back while he ran with the other three. Soon another three hours passed, they had finally passed the level-3 will zone and arrived at the canyon. They were covered by the thin fog at the mouth of the canyon. Fatty got down from the Viridian Wolf and thanked the other three adventurers. "Why are you thanking us? You havent paid us yet, three Life Crystals please." The dark and skinny man grinned at Lin Huang and Fatty while the other two adventurers stood behind them, blocking their way. 124 Attack Three standard Life Crystal units were equivalent to 300 years worth of Life Crystal pieces. The absurd request from the dark and skinny man stunned Fatty. He did not expect the three adventurers to do such a thing. Lin Huang asked calmly, "So are you robbing us now?" "How is this robbing? You are paying us wages for bringing you to the Fog Canyon where you can find the Life Seed monster you desired. This is a fair trade!" The bald man who blocked their way from the back said. "Would you let us go if we say we dont need your help anymore?" Lin Huang knew this was extortion! There was nothing that they could do even if they filed their complaint to Adventurer Paradise. "If you insist to do that, I will call to complain." Fatty threatened. "Fatty, theres a reason why we''re blocking your way." The man with goatee laughed at Fattys useless threat. The three adventurers did not stop Fatty from calling. As Fatty opened the communication page, there was no signal at all. "The both of you have two choices. The first one, both of you give three Life Crystals each and we''ll bring you into Fog Canyon to find your Life Seed monster and then, send you guys back to Fog City in one piece. The both of you will have to swear that you wont tell anyone about this and we shall forget about what happened here. Its good for all of us." The dark and skinny man was confident that they would be obedient, he raised his price from three Life Crystals in total to three Life Crystals each. "If we promised you, would you believe us?" Lin Huang knew he would not let them go just like that. "Of course not, you will have to chant after me." The dark and skinny man then showed his tongue and black inscriptions appeared on his tongue. "You have humiliated all the wordmasters." Lin Huang could recognize the patterns were the sigils of a wordmaster. A wordmaster was a rare profession. They draw their strength from language and they could use languages to curse or to control peoples action. Some could even change the course of fate or cause death. A wordmaster usually made good money. This dark and skinny man must be a lousy wordmaster or else he would not need to resort to robbing them. "Ive multiplied the price to six Life Crystals now." "Whats the second option?" Lin Huang ignored him and asked with his eyebrow raised. "The second option would be to kill the both of you and leave your dead bodies in this canyon for the monsters to feast on so we leave no traces behind. We will go back three days later and tell the Adventurer Paradise that the both of you did not meet us at the promised time." He explained coldly. Fatty was scared, he shrieked, "Okay, we pick the first one!" "Wait." Lin Huang stopped Fatty looked at the three of them straight into their eyes, "These two options are not good enough, give me a third one." "Stupid kid, I will just finish you off right now!" The bald man shouted. "Its alright, let him talk." The dark and skinny man stopped the bald man. "The third option would be that all three of you leave right now and we will forget this ever happened. You never saw us, we never knew you." Lin Huang continued, "This is the best option I can and will offer. If you dont accept it, you will regret it very soon." "Are you a member of royalty?" The three of them frowned, they figured only someone that came from royalty would dare to speak like that. "Thats not right. His name is Lin Huang, your family name is Lin!" The dark and skinny man shook his head, "Theres no royal family with the family name of Lin in the entire Division7! Are you trying to trick us?!" "Ive never once said that Im a member of royalty and I am not tricking you. Im just a person that you can''t afford to offend. Im suggesting that you consider the third option." Lin Huang stood his ground. "Boss, why are you still hesitating? This kid is tricking us! If he really is powerful, he would have attacked us since the beginning instead of being disrespectful to us after we helped them!" The bald man complained. Hearing what the bald man said, the dark and skinny man thought he made sense and shouted "How dare you tried to trick us, lets kill them!" The three of them then dashed towards Lin Huang and Fatty with their weapons thrusting forward. "Sigh" Lin Huang sighed helplessly. Bai appeared before Lin Huang with silver hair and a black mask on. His four Blood Power wings transformed into three sharp knives and plunged towards the three men. He was so fast that Lin Huang could not catch up. Three red strokes flashed in the air. The man with the goatee and the bald mans silver-level weapons broke in half. They were sliced into half from their waists and were dead in one hit. The gold-level weapon that the leader was holding was stuck to Bais wing and was tossed into the air. He saw his two brothers cut into halves while he was flying midair, he had goosebumps. He rolled over and ran into the Foggy Canyon. "I hate to say I told you so." Lin Huang shook his head. He did not even bother to look at the dead bodies. Since the both of them were so poor, they would not have anything valuable on them. Fatty was stunned, he did not move as he watched. It took him awhile to snap out of it. He looked at Bai, "Is this a vampire?" "I think so." Lin Huang did not plan to explain to him that Bai had evolved into a blood demon. The less he knew the better. "A four-winged vampire, isnt this a gold-level monster? How did you manage to master such a monster?" Fatty saw the four Blood Power wings on Bais back so he asked. "It''s not gold-level, its mutated." Lin Huang shook his head. "He managed to kill silver-level within seconds, how is he not gold-level?" Fatty was starting to doubt Lin Huangs combat strength. "Stop asking, lets go in." Lin Huang interrupted him. "Will that other guy be waiting to attack us at the canyon mouth?" Fatty was worried. It was foggy everywhere, they could not see anything ahead. "Dont worry, Im sure he is afraid of us now and will keep a distance from us." Lin Huang shook his head. "I''m not sure if they have anything useful on them. They are silver-level after all." Fatty asked. "You can go and take a look first. Take whatever you want." Lin Huang was not interested. "Remember! You''re the one who said that!" Fatty was over the moon and ran towards the dead bodies. However, he did not find anything valuable on them. Awhile later, he stood up and looked at Lin Huang, "It seems like you knew there was nothing useful on them all this time." "They were collecting each and every iron-level monster carcass, why would you think they would have anything valuable on them?" "That makes sense." Fatty just recalled them collecting the monster bodies earlier. "Its almost dawn now, lets look for a place to rest our feet." Lin Huang did not recall Bai but got him to lead the way while he and Fatty followed behind. Fog surrounded the canyon and anything 10 meters away was not visible. People would usually be terrified in situations like these but with Bai, Lin Huang was not worried if something attacked from the fog. In a level-4 wild zone like this, only monsters that were gold-level would threaten Bai. As long as they did not go deep into the canyon, they would most probably not encounter gold-level monsters. "Fatty, why did you follow them at such a last minute and in a rush? Did they threaten you?" Lin Huang needed to know what happened earlier. "Yea, I went to the reception at Adventurer Paradise and told the receptionist that I was looking for a team. They approached me, saying that they needed someone to follow them to their mission, it was urgent and they needed to leave immediately. Of course, I rejected them because we had just arrived in Fog City awhile ago, I needed time to rest and spend some time to find a team who owned flying mounts." "They then told me that as long as they were around, other teams would not dare take us along. It could take months! So I went back to the receptionist and she assured that the three are old timers. They told me that their abilities were only mediocre but whenever they were in charge, even adventurers that were gold-level would not dare offend them. I can wait for another one month but I didnt want to waste your time, so I agreed to join their team." "I thought of tolerating them until we arrived at the destination because we would be free... I didnt expect them to lie about their abilities or attempt to rob and even trying to kill us!" "If I knew you had such a powerful summoning monster, I wouldnt have looked for a team in the first place." Fatty said and peeked at Bai, he was envious of Lin Huang. "I wouldn''t want anyone to know about my abilities unless if it were life or death." Lin Huang explained. "Dont worry, Im just talkative but I can keep secrets." Fatty zipped his lips. "I would be crazy to believe you" Lin Huang thought to himself. Suddenly, Bai stopped walking and pointed at a wall. Lin Huang nodded, "Alright, we will get some rest here. Please dig us a hole." Soon, Bai dug a cave. Bai had purposely dug the cave to be narrow at the entrance and spacious on the inside. They bent down as they entered the cave. They were satisfied with the cave. Fatty took out his portable tent and set it up. Lin Huang then recalled Bai and summoned the Demonic Dandelion Vine. He got it to seal the cave with its vines. Both of them entered their tents to rest after a long day. 125 Fog Canyon Lin Huang slept from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m., he managed to catch up with some rest from their long journey last night. When he got out of his tent, he could still hear Fatty was still snoring loudly in his tent. Lin Huang then patted his tent, "Fatty, wake up. If we dont move now, we will be wasting yet another day." Fatty continued snoring. "Fatty, wake up. Monsters are attacking the cave! Quick!" Lin Huang shook Fattys tent hard. Fatty sat up and went to get dressed instantly, then got out of the tent. He asked Lin Huang in shock, "The cave entrance is blocked! How are we going to escape?!" "Escape what? Theres no monster at all, I just needed to wake you up." Lin Huang said casually. "Damn you!" Fatty then took off his clothes and put them on properly. He was mad. "Dont you wear clothes when you sleep in a wild zone like this?" "I cant sleep when Im fully clothed." Lin Huang did not bother to say anything. He then kept his tent and went to clean up. The portable tent could be shrunk to the size of a broad bean. There was a tiny button in the middle and when it was pressed it would expand into a tent with a sleeping bag, pillow, and eye shade. As soon as the tent expanded to its normal size, one could scan their identity to enter it. The same applied when keeping the tent. As long as there were living beings in the tent, including a mosquito, the tent cannot be shrunk. Because of that, some portable tents were much more expensive than the others as it came with automatic cleaning functions. As long as the tent is activated, it would automatically kill all the insects in the tent. The entire process would only take a maximum of three minutes. The tent that Lin Huang bought was a high-end tent, its price was comparable with a piece of bronze-level equipment. After he sorted out his tent, Fatty approached him with a packet of snacks and a milk-based drink. "Its not safe to cook in a level-4 wild zone, we have to survive on snacks now." Lin Huang nodded and took the food from him. He brought snacks that he ordered from the network before the trip but he was sure that it would not taste better than the snacks Fatty had prepared. He ripped open the packet of snack; besides dried meat, there was also dried vegetable. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow, "I didnt know that having a balanced diet was important to you." "I cooked the dried meat and my dad prepared the dried vegetable. He insisted that I bring it along. If you like it, you can have mine too." "Ive never seen you eat vegetable during the assessment." Lin Huang thought Fatty was a carnivore. "A man once said a man who doesnt like meat is not a real man." Fatty got himself the perfect excuse for not eating any vegetables. Fatty did not make that up. Lin Huang had actually seen the quote on the network before and thought it was ridiculous. It was said by a transcendent in the past to mock another transcendent that he despised. He then became a demigod and that was how the quote went viral. "Loving meat and not eating vegetable are two separate matters. In your case, its called being picky." Lin Huang corrected him. He tasted the dried vegetable, it was good. Lin Huang was done with breakfast and Fatty had finished cleaning himself. "What milk is this? Its nice." Lin Huang asked after drinking the last drop of milk-based drink. "This is the milk of five-flower cow on the Snowy Mountains, it tastes amazing. I got it from my dad and I brought 10 bottles along with me. If I dont treat you like my bro, I wouldnt share this good stuff with you." Lin Huang had heard of the five-flower cow on the Snowy Mountains. They were one of the best cows in Division7. Although the monster was just iron-level, its milk quality was high that it was comparable to the price of a relic. It barely produces any milk though. It can only produce two to three liters of milk per day and each liter can only be sold up to a price of a bronze-level equipment. That cup of milk that Lin Huang drank earlier was almost the price of two pieces of iron-level equipment. He initially planned to buy the milk as a thirst-quencher during the summer which was why he asked Fatty about it. However, after he was told that it was the five-flower cow, Lin Huang decided otherwise. "I should have known that only rich brats could afford this" After breakfast, Lin Huang recalled the Demonic Dandelion Vine and the both of them got out of the cave. He then summoned Bai again, "How many summoning monsters do you have?" Fatty asked. "Three to four I guess." Lin Huang said as he recalled Fatty had only seen four of his summoning monsters. "The vampire should be the most powerful among all, am I right?" Fatty remembered the scene when Bai killed the duo earlier. "Hmm." "Im envious of you Imperial Censors, you dont even have to fight on your own. Powerful monsters and cool flying mounts" Fatty was envious of Lin Huangs gift as an Imperial Censor. "Everyone has gifts of their own, thus, the different development goals. Its great that youre going to be a Food Hunter, you could own your restaurant, many hunters would dine at your place and Life Crystals would come your way. Thats so much better than us who have to be out there fighting and sweating. Your work is much more relaxed and safe." Lin Huang thought Fattys dream was desirable too. "Thats true; I prefer living a stable life. I would be exhausted if Ill have to fight every day." Fatty thought what Lin Huang said made sense and he should be contented with what he was gifted with. They left the cave that Bai dug and ventured into the Fog Canyon. If there was no fog, the structure of the canyon was complicated like a circular maze from an aerial view. There were monsters of different strengths and species that were spread out in different areas of the maze. The closer they got to the middle of the maze, the higher the combat level the monsters were. The Vile Marionette that Lin Huang and Fatty were looking for was located at the border of the maze. However, they did not have the exact coordinates, only the rough direction. The area was covered in a fog all year long, making it hard for people to identify the direction they were headed in. There was no connection or signal on the communication device, they could not locate anything in the maze, including themselves. Bai was leading the way so they wouldnt get lost. Their journey was smooth-sailing because Bai would kill any monster they encountered with brevity. "Turn left at the 12th fork It should be this one." The duo had been walking for more than three hours. Lin Huang did not say much when they were on the way and allowed Fatty to lead. After all, he was here to help him level up to bronze-level. It would be strange if Lin Huang knew the way better than Fatty did. Although Fatty noticed Bais unusual combat strength, he thought Lin Huang had some special way to train his monsters but little did he know... how powerful Lin Huang actually was. "If what I read was correct, there should be a foothold with a Vile Marionette not far from this left turn." Fatty lowered his voice as he said to Lin Huang, "Be quiet, these monsters live in groups. All we have to do it to lure one or two of them out." They slowed down their pace and walked towards the fork on the left. After 20 minutes of walking, they arrived at a dead end but they did not see any monsters. They then went back to a spacious area and realized there were traces of battle before they came. It seemed to have happened not long ago. "The Vile Marionette foothold should be here but all the monsters have been killed by someone else, we are too late." Lin Huang concluded. "Since theres none here, lets go to the other foothold." Fatty did not dwell on this too much. Two hours later, they found the sign near the second foothold. "A two-meter gigantic rock of the shape of a sphere, it should be this one!" Fatty pointed at the sphere-shaped gigantic rock at the crossing. "If we turn right from here and walk for another 10 minutes, we will arrive at the second Vile Marionette foothold." "Lets go." Lin Huang nodded and proceeded to let Bai lead the way. 10 minutes later, they arrived at yet another empty area. There were no monsters. Similar to the first foothold, there were no traces of battle that happened not long ago. "Someone killed all the monsters here as well?!" Fatty groaned, "Who are these people, why did they target the same monsters that we''re looking for?" "Fatty, did you tell the three adventurers about the Life Seed monster that you picked?" Lin Huang sensed it could be the dark and skinny man who did this. Fatty was stunned and nodded his head, "They asked me so I thought it would be no harm if I told them. Are you saying they did this?!" "Its very possible." Lin Huang nodded. "We have encountered attacks of other monsters along the way but none of them were completely killed. The person who took the same route as us did not kill all the other monsters along the way, which shows his target was not to collect dead monster bodies but he killed all the Life Seed monsters that you wanted too. It seems like he did it on purpose." "That makes sense." Fatty nodded at Lin Huangs analysis. "So what do we do now? What if he killed all the Vile Marionettes in the foothold" "I dont think so. His speed is only slightly faster than us. From the traces, I think he was here just about an hour ago. Lets skip the third foothold and go straight to the fourth foothold instead. Maybe we can catch up with him!" There were only four footholds with Vile Marionettes in the entire canyon. If they did not make it there before dark and the other man did, Fatty would not be the only one who would have to change his choice of Life Seed monster. Lin Huang would be dragged into this matter as well. "Alright, lets go straight to the fourth foothold!" 126 Purple Crow Song Nan had spent more than 30 years of his life in Fog City. He had seen many things in his time, and he had not an ounce of fear for anyone he encountered. Even gold-level hunters in Fog City did not want to offend him as he was well known for executing revenge plots on his enemies. Although he was not exceptionally powerful, he surely was a sly man. However, Lin Huang managed to tackle him and kill two of his men. He was sure to not let him off the hook without a painful reminder of his actions. "Im going to kill all the Vile Marionettes in the canyon, see how those two damn kids going to get their Life Seed! So what if they have a vampire? Ill get some supplies to fight the vampire once I get back to the city. Your vampire will be useless against me then!" he plotted aloud. Song Nan shuddered a little when he recalled the moment he saw his two men getting killed by Bai. He was afraid of Bai but to him, if he wanted to conquer his fear, he would have to face it. As long as he killed the vampire, he would rid himself of this fear completely. Before he did that, he wanted to kill all the Vile Marionettes in the four footholds. There were only four footholds with Vile Marionettes in Fog Canyon. Song Nan had already cleared two footholds and he left no bodies behind. Just when he was on his way to the third foothold, two shadows passed by his head and appeared before him. It was a man and a lady. The man was 2.2 meters tall while the lady stood at an average height and built. They dressed strangely, both wearing black capes with a black hat on their heads. "Who are you?" Song Nan looked at the duo with a posture ready for an attack. They appeared out of nowhere and he could not sense their auras at all. "Were on the same team. Lets walk together," the lady said as she licked her red lips seductively. "Did the kid send you?" Song Nan asked firmly. He thought it was a trap and the duo was sent by Lin Huang to fight him. "What kid?" the tall man questioned him as a frown formed on his face. "Stop talking nonsense with him, lets just get him," the lady said and leapt up high off the ground. Song Nan was shocked. His face turned pale when he saw the logo on the ladys cape as she spun around mid-air. The black cape was flowing with the wind, and there was a white circle in the middle with a purple crow standing on a branch. Song Nan recognized that they were members of the Purple Crow organization. All hunters and adventurers would definitely have heard of the Purple Crows as they were the top criminal organization in the Underworld. There was a saying on the network about the organization that went, ''Blood will be shed when the purple crow cries. In the Underworld, the Purple Crow was considered an elite organization. They did not have many members, but all of them were transcendents and all of them possessed terrifying abilities in their areas of expertise. If Song Nan was just a bully in the smaller footholds, the Purple Crow was an enhanced version of the Mafia. Each and every official member was a world-ranked professional killer. As he stood facing the tall man, Song Nan was like a child being picked on by the grown man. He did not have the ability to defend himself at all. The tall man grabbed him by the collar and the duo flew Song Nan all the way to the middle of Fog Canyon. They then landed next to a crystal clear lake. "You sure its here?" the tall man asked as he tossed Song Nan on the ground like a rag doll and looked at the lady. "Of course, how would I not know everything I planned for?" The lady said mockingly and rolled her eyes at him. "Scoot aside, you big oaf", she continued. The man kicked Song Nan hard and he flew backwards. He then took a few steps back himself and stood still. Song Nan was immobilised with a spell the man had casted earlier and he could not move a muscle. He could not do anything when the man kicked him. The lady with red lips stood by the lake, squatted down and placed her palm on top of the lake. Soon, the lake started boiling. The lady retracted her hand, took a few steps back and watched the lake as it changed. The clear lake became red while it boiled. As time went by, it became a darker shade of red and soon, it was a bloody crimson red. Song Nan was getting uncomfortable looking at the lake as it changed. "How is it?" the man said as he walked next to the lady with red lips. "I have been preparing this Netherworldly Water for 12 years. From the color, it looks like its ready," the lady replied with a nod and shifted her gaze to Song Nan. "Didnt we bring a guinea pig to test it out? We shall know after we toss him in," she said, a menacing tone to her voice. Song Nan heard them loud and clear. However, all he could do was to look at them helplessly. The man picked him up by the scruff of his neck. "Unseal him before throwing him in or else we wont be able to see if the experiment shows its results," the lady reminded her partner. Seconds later, the spell on Song Nan was lifted. He begged with the duo immediately, "Please don''t throw me in, I can get other guinea pigs for you. I know there are two kids in this canyon that''ll work really well" Seeing the boiling bloody water alone was terrifying enough for him. He knew he''d be screwed if he ended up in the lake. "I only need one guinea pig," the lady said coldly as she looked at Song Nan with an expressionless face, like he was already dead. "Toss him in!" she shouted. The man tossed Song Nan into the lake without hesitation. The duo stood by the lake and observed. The gold-level equipment on him glowed a bright gold and seemed to get absorbed into his body. The duo was stunned by that. In the boiling water, there were strange changes to Song Nans body. His skin turned green, his skinny body became muscular, his hands and legs were growing Around three minutes later, the changes to his body stopped. Waves of bloody water pushed him to the side of the lake. The two transcendents were excited as they looked at the figure that was once Song Nan, completely transformed on the bank. "Im surprised that he actually combined with his equipment and transformed into a Mutated Sword Thrall!" the man said. The idea was unbelievable. "Thats something new. Lets search for some guinea pigs to experiment with along with the combinations of equipment when we get back," the lady squealed. She was excited too. "Should we bring him back?" The man asked. "Its okay, let him die here. We just needed to experiment. Well come back a year from now and see if hes still alive. If he is, we''ll study his survival in the wild," the lady said. The man shook his head and said, "It seems like the effect of the Netherworldly Water was not exactly what I expected. We can accept it for now," he said. The man nodded and took out a box that was a sixth of his palm. He then tossed the box in the air. The opening of the box faced the middle of the lake, and the boiling bloody water was swallowed by the box. Within two minutes, the entire lake was sucked into the red box with no water left behind. The box then flew back to the mans hand. He closed the box and kept it in his storage face. "Its done, can we leave now?" The man asked as he looked at the lady. "Wait, I found something interesting" the lady smirked while she looked at something far away. 127 Encountering Purple Crow To be able to reach the fourth Vile Marionettes foothold before the dark and skinny man did, Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. They arrived at their destination within minutes. "It should be somewhere around here, lets look for it." Lin Huang recalled Alexandrian Eagle and said to Fatty. "How would you know the fourth foothold is around here?" Fatty asked. He then saw a tall fir tree not too far away and recognized that as a landmark for the fourth foothold. "I was afraid that we might be lost here so before the trip, I checked out all the locations of the footholds," Lin Huang said to him, which was actually just an excuse. "If I knew you had checked out the locations, I wouldnt have had to lead the way" Fatty whined. Doing extra work was always a burden to him and he did not deny how lazy he was. However, since he encountered Lin Huang who was as responsible a person could be, he knew could trust him with his life. That was the reason he slept soundly in a wild zone like this. If he was not looking for the Life Seeds himself, he would not have looked at the map at all and Lin Huang would have lead the way. "Theres a fork on the left of the fir tree, if we walk along it for another two or three minutes, there should be a fork to the right. We should see the fourth foothold once we turn right," Lin Huang said as he pointed at the fir tree. "Thats the same route I saw on the map," Fatty replied and nodded in response. Lin Huang activated Boundless Vision and saw a couple Vile Marionettes gathered not far from where they were. All of them had rectangular heads while everything below their heads was similar to a human. However, their limbs were longer than humans and they were two meters tall. They walked on both legs. Their bodies seemed to be made of wood. If they were many times smaller, they would look exactly like dolls. Lin Huang finally knew why would they were called Vile Marionettes when he saw their faces. Their eyes, nose, and lips were all messed up like toy parts which were displaced. What was even weirder was the placement of their eyes, nose, and lips. Each one puppet''s face arranged differently. They each had different characteristics to their own vile features. "If they were shrunk and sold at toy stores, I dont think anybody would want to buy them. They look scary," Lin Huang thought to himself. "Fatty, you wait here. Ill get Bai to catch one of them from over here," Lin Huang said to Fatty as he led Bai into the fog. In the fog, the Vile Marionettes did not sense that danger was closing in as they wandered around. Suddenly, a couple of red beams flashed by and one of the Vile Marionettes disappeared. Soon, Lin Huang was back with Bai with a Vile Marionette that was locked in a pair of Blood Power wings. "Fatty, I have brought this back for you. You can just stab it to death," Lin Huang provided Fatty with a full-service treatment. Fatty smirked when he saw a Vile Marionette tied up like a dumpling, "This could be the easiest upgrade in history!" He said. The level-4 equipment in his hand transformed into a battle sword and he slashed the Vile Marionettes neck. The puppets head fell to the ground. However, the body turned into a pice of wood and appeared from the Blood Power wings. Lin Huang and Fatty were stunned. The Blood Power back extended again and captured the body. Fatty did the same thing and slashed at the piece of wood but it turned into another piece of wood again and began to run away. No matter how fast it was, it could not beat Bai. It was then captured by Bai again while Fatty repeated the same thing he did Five attempts later, the Vile Marionettes''s body no longer transformed into a piece of wood. After that, Bai let go of its body and white Life Light splashed out of the Vile Marionette towards Fatty. The Life Light Baptism took three minutes, and then Fatty was finally bronze-level. "So how is your Life Seed?" Lin Huang walked towards him and asked. "Its all good. Exactly the same as what I read on the network," Fatty nodded. "I have done what I came to do, we can head back to Fog City now. We''ll head back to Baqi City once you have settled your stuff," he continued. "You dont have to wait for me. I''ll be needing quite a few days here," Lin Huang said. He did not expect Fatty to stay with him. "Its okay. Since I have already upgraded to bronze level, theres no need for me to leave immediately. If thats not convenient for you, I will stay in the hotel to train my Life Skills. Let me know once you have settled your stuff and we will leave Fog City together," Fatty said. He did that out of kindness. He thought since Lin Huang had helped him so it would be bad if he left him alone. "I think you should head back to Baqi City on your own. Honestly, Im not sure how long would I take," Lin Huang explained. Lin Huang did not want to head back to Baqi City with Fatty as he only managed to partially hide his abilities. Once he got to bronze-level, Fatty who was now also bronze-level would definitely sense the changes in his combat strength. By then, he would not able to hide his secret anymore. Fatty was a nice person but Lin Huang did not think that he could keep a secret. He tried not to let him know too much about himself. "Then Ill wait for a month, since I don''t have much going on," Fatty insisted. "If you take longer than a month, then Ill leave on my own," he said. "Alright then" Lin Huang obliged and nodded. "So do we go back to the city now?" Fatty asked. "Ill get Alexandrian Eagle to send you back. I have something to do here. I wont be going back just yet," Lin Huang said as he summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. Fatty had many questions but thinking he might intrude on Lin Huangs privacy, he decided not to ask. Lin Huang instructed Alexandrian Eagle after Fatty got on its back. It flapped its wings and headed to Fog City with Fatty. Lin Huang turned around into the fog again. He got Bai to look for another mutated Vile Marionette but there was not a single one around. He decided to capture a regular Vile Marionette and killed it after six attempts. The white Life Light was transferred from the puppet to Lin Huang. Enveloped in a white glow, there were changes to his Life Wheel. His iron Life Wheel turned to bronze. It was a Life Wheel transformation that follows with every level up. After the Iron Life Wheel was replaced by a bronze Life Wheel, another three rounds of white columns appeared. It was the same as before, 360 columns on each circle. As his Life Wheel changed, the two Life Wheels that he got from the Life Power storage cards started changing too. Soon, all three bronze Life Wheels in his body were fully formed. As his Life Wheels formed, the Life Light Baptism ended. A greyish black bead the size of a thumb dropped from the Vile Marionettes dead body and went into Lin Huangs body and then into his newly formed Life Wheel. "New Life Seed has been detected, would you like to turn it into a card?" Xiao Hei said. "Yes please," Lin Huang answered and nodded. A moment later, Xiao Hei spoke again. "I have turned it into a card." Lin Huang looked at the new Life Seed Card that he just acquired. The card looked the same as Sly Hands with a Black Furry Ball. He turned the card around to read the description. "Life Species Card" "Life Species Name: Substitute" "Rarity: Normal" "Type: Psychic " "Skill Effects: Substitute your body with a faux body to divert fatal attacks. Limited to three uses per day." "Card Remarks: Rubbish" Lin Huang was speechless at the card remark that Xiao Hei gave it. It had been awhile since Xiao Hei had given such a horrible card remark. He then kept the card and mumbled to himself, "I cant be meeting Fatty now or else he would find out how powerful I am. I''ll stay in this canyon and accumulate my life Power to bronze-level rank-3." He then looked at Bai beside him. The vampire was now a silver-level rank-1. Under normal circumstance, monsters that went through two mutations would have basic combat strengths that were higher than transcendents. Just like the Demonic Dandelion Vine, it was one example that completed two mutations before it achieved transcendence. Aside from the Demonic Dandelion Vine, all the epic monster cards that Lin Huang possessed would be upgraded automatically before Lin Huang leveled up to transcendent. Before Lin Huang arrived at gold-level, their combat strength would only be one rank higher than his Now that Bai was a silver-level rank-1, his ability might be more powerful than most gold-level rank-1 monsters. In level-4 wildzones like this, he could kill most of the monsters in the area on his own. Lin Huang was anticipating the upgrade of his combat strengths too. Just when Lin Huang was thinking about it, a man and lady appeared out of the fog. The man was 2.2 meters tall while the lady was 1.7 meters tall. Standing next to the man, she looked small. Both of them were wearing black coats with black hats. They were walking briskly in Lin Huangs direction. He had his guard up as he could not sense the aura from their beings at all. "Hi, little kid." The lady greeted Lin Huang as they approached him. "Anything I can help you with?" Lin Huang asked. He had a feeling they were both transcendents. "Nothing, I just thought your vampire seemed cool, so Im here to take a look." The lady replied with a smile. "Two mutations?" The man mumbled under his breath to the lady and he felt it was rather strange. "It really is mutated twice!" the lady with red lips confirmed as she walked around Bai. "This is my first time seeing a vampire with a double mutation," she continued. Just then, Lin Huang noticed the Purple Crow logo on her coat. His heart sank, "Its the Purple Crow" 128 Hong Zhuang A black coat and black hat, that was the attire of an official Purple Crow member. A reserve member was not entitled to dress like that. The duo appeared before Lin Huang and their outfits showed him that they were official members of the Purple Crow organization and also, transcendents. Lin Huangs mind was spinning, but he could not think of a way to escape. Although, the Small Destruction Card was powerful, it would only be effective for people below transcendents. It could not do anything to hunters who were transcendents and above. "If there''s nothing I can help you with, Ill get going now," Lin Huang said as he pretended he did not know who they were. "Little kid, let me introduce myself. My name is Hong Zhuang and Im an official member of the Purple Crow," the lady with red lips said. She knew that Lin Huang was attempting an escape. She then smirked and said, "This is my partner, Xu Qiang. He is also an official member of the Purple Crow." Lin Huang frowned. Since the duo had revealed who they were, it was impossible for him to walk away now without offending them. "May I know why are you looking for me?" Lin Huang asked, politely. "I think youre outstanding, I would like to invite you to join the Purple Crows. I could be your referral for you to be a reserve member," Hong Zhuang said as she walked slowly towards Lin Huang and stopped less than 50 centimeters from him. "You have to know that usually a reserve member has to be at least gold-level. So, what do you think?" She continued. "I havent thought of which organization to join yet. Your invitation is too sudden for me to make a decision. Please give me some time to think about it," Lin Huang replied. Truthfully, he was relieved. He did not expect them to invite him to join the Purple Crows. However, he was also not interested in joining them too, so he decided to postpone his decision. "Youre smart to not reject us directly," Hong Zhuang whispered and then laughed hard at what Lin Huang said. "A bronze-level young man mastering a vampire that has gone through mutation Twice for that matter is really impressive. If such a talent joined some other organization when hes older, he might be the Purple Crows biggest enemy," she said menacingly. "Youre kidding, Im just lucky. It was by accident that my vampire mutated twice. Honestly, I didnt know it myself," Lin Huang said as he created an excuse carefully without revealing himself. "Accident or not, its a fact that your vampire has mutated twice now. We Purple Crows appreciate talents. We will treat Imperial Censors who owned summoning monsters with two mutations very well, in fact, much better than any other organization. When you become a transcendent, you will definitely be one of our official members. By then, I can satisfy all the needs you have, even if it crosses certain lines," Hong Zhuang said and winked at Lin Huang. Xu Qiang could not take it anymore, "Hong Zhuang, why would you talk such nonsense to a child like him? Isnt it easier if we just take him away?" He said, angrily. "What do you know? Convincing him is much better than forcing him," Hong Zhuang scolded the man in response. "Kid, Im giving you two options now. Either we kill you or you follow us. Im giving you 10 seconds to think about it," Xu Qiang said to Lin Huang, ignoring Hong Zhuang. "Alright, I will follow you," Lin Huang replied. He knew very well that their conversation would be heading down that path anyway even if Hong Zhuang did not flirt with him. He could only conform and look for an opportunity to escape later. "See, my way is much more effective," Xu Qiang laughed. Hong Zhuang rolled her eyes at him and looked at Lin Huang. "Recall your vampire," she ordered. Lin Huang nodded and recalled Bai. When encountering two transcendents, Bai was nothing to them. Even without Bai by his side, it would not have made much of a difference. Xu Qiang walked towards Lin Huang and tapped his left shoulder. Instantly, the Life Power in Lin Huangs body was sealed and he could not move anymore. Xu Qiang then bundled him on his shoulder in a fireman''s carry and asked Hong Zhuang, "Can we leave now?" Hong Zhuang ignored him while performing complicated hand seals. Out of thin air, a black metal door appeared before them. She led the way by opening the door and walked into it. Xu Qiang followed behind her while carrying Lin Huang. A quaint room was behind the metal door. After stepping in, Hong Zhuang recalled the door. A middle-aged man who was also wearing a Purple Crow coat got up hastily from a couch at the corner and said, "You are back, masters. Was it successful?" "Yes it was, thank you very much," Hong Zhuang said as she nodded at him. Xu Qiang then unsealed Lin Huang and put him down. "Who is this?" The middle-aged man asked as he looked curiously at Lin Huang. "We found him on the road. A kid from Division7. Id like to recommend him as a reserve member to the organization," Hong Zhuang explained. "But we need to go back to the headquarters to submit our mission now. It won''t be convenient to bring him along so I plan to leave him here with you. Train him for me but dont kill him. Ill come back for him in three months," she instructed. "Sure, no problem. Its definitely an honor for me to care for masters recommendation," the middle-aged man said respecfully. Lin Huang was confused. The man was exceptionally respectful to them when they were all official members of the Purple Crow and transcendents. Hong Zhuang then looked at Lin Huang, "We have a special mission that we need to get to the headquarters to attend. You havent had your assessment and registration so you cant follow us to the headquarters at the moment. I will leave you at the branch in Division7 and come back for you in three months time," she said. "Within these three months, theyll send you to a training camp with the other new recruits. Aside from not being killed, there will not be any special treatment for you. It depends on how you plan to survive." Lin Huang nodded. He was relieved that he was brought to Division7. If he was to go to other division, even if he managed to escape, it would be hard for him to leave the division and make his way to Division7. "I believe this little kid should not be too bad since he was spotted by you, Master," the middle-aged transcendent said and smiled at Lin Huang. "Well get going now. Please take care of him," Hong Zhuang said, ignoring the flattery. She then summoned the black door again. Xu Qiang and herself then stepped in and soon the door closed and disappeared. The middle-aged transcendent checked out Lin Huang and smiled, "Youre lucky the master spotted you." Lin Huang asked what he was curious about before. "Sir, you are also a transcendent wearing the Purple Crow attire, why would you call the both of them masters?" "Transcendent is just a default name for people who are higher than gold-level. It does not represent ones combat level. Transcendents can drastically differ in their combat ability. You will come to understand that in the future. I call them masters because their abilities are stronger than mine. Another reason is because their rank is higher than mine in the organization," he explained. As Lin Huang was brought back by Hong Zhuang, the middle-aged transcendent did not treat Lin Huang as an outsider and spoke to him casually. "Do you see the logo on our collars?" The middle-aged transcendent said as he pointed at the collar of his coat. There was a black metal piece the size of a thumb. It looked like a Purple Crow. "Yours is black. I remember theirs were red," Lin Huang said as he nodded. "Thats right. The black logo means Im an official member of the organization. Most of the official members belong to the divisions. Red logo are a rank above us, and they are the elites. They work at the headquarters. The highest one would be a purple logo. They are the core members of the organization. All the plans introduced in the organization are based on their decisions," the middle-aged transcendent continued. "Is that so" Lin Huang had just found out about the internal structure of the organization. He figured since Hong Zhuang and Xu Qiang were both elite members, their abilities must be much stronger than the common transcendents. "Its late now, I will get you a place to sleep. I will bring you to the training camp tomorrow morning. They will take care of you. However, dont expect a relaxing life at the training camp. I can only guarantee that they dont kill you. The rest depends on how you behave," he warned. The middle-aged transcendent was very respectful of what Hong Zhuang had instructed. "Thank you sir, I understand that," Lin Huang said and nodded, all the while thinking of ways to escape. 129 Xiao Mo Lin Huang was arranged to stay in a guest house that night. He found out the middle-aged Transcendents name was Lu Xuan. He was thinking of escaping but now since the room that he was staying was less than 500 meters away from Lu Xuans, he gave up on his plan. Even if he was to transform into Ghost Shadow and escaped underground, Lu Xuan would sense that his vibe disappeared as he transformed. It was impossible to escape from him. Although Lu Xuan was friendly, he seemed to be aware that Lin Huang was attempting to escape. Not only was he not allowed to leave the area outside the house, he was not allowed to use the network and communication devices too. To make matters worst, he had no idea which foothold he was in. After dinner, he went straight to bed. The next morning, Lu Xuan sent someone to the room that the both of them met on the first day when they arrived. "Where is the training camp? How do we get there? Lin Huang asked. He wanted to get him to tell him their location so that he could factor it into his escape. "Theres no rush, Ill bring you there," Lu Xuan said calmly while summoning a red door. It was a space treasure tool. In reality, space treasure tools like those were rare and were priced at more than 10 times a normal treasure tool of the same level. However, Lin Huang had gotten used to these treasure tool within the days he was there, he was not impressed by them anymore. Lu Xuan performed hand seals and the red door opened. He then nodded to Lin Huang and said, "Lets go." They stepped into the door. A plaza was before them as they stepped through the door. Lin Huang looked around. To him, the place looked like a small foothold. "Stop standing around, follow me," Lu Xuan scolded as he kept away the red door and waved Lin Huang onwards. Lin Huang followed him and they walked to the bottom of a gigantic tower in the middle of the small foothold. They entered the gigantic tower and went all the way to the top in the elevator. There was a big room located at the top floor. At the huge meeting table, a man with a scar on his face placed both his feet on the table. He was puffing away at a cigar. "Yo, you''re free today?" the man said as he greeted Lu Xuan. "Sending a kid here," Lu Xuan replied and nodded. The man looked at Lin Huang and smiled. "Who is this?" he asked Lu Xuan. "At Master Hong Zhuangs recommendation, she wants to refer him to join the reserve recruits," Lu Xuan said. "Hes only a Bronze-level? What happens if he dies here?" the man asked. "Master Hong Zhuang said you can do anything to him as long as you dont kill him," Lu Xuan said and laughed at the thought. "Sigh" the man shook his head. "You should know that there are things that I cant control. This kid is too weak. I cant kill him and Ill have to babysit him. Im like his nanny now," the man said nd slapped his forehead. He was not happy with the arrangement. "There was nothing we could do. It was the instructions from Master Hong Zhuang herself. If she comes back three months from now and this kid is gone, that would be bad for us," Lu Xuan said. He was helpless too. "Alright then, Ill try my best," the man replied. "I will leave him to you, and you do your best. Ill get going now," Lu Xuan said and patted Lin Huangs shoulder. He then summoned the red door and left. Seeing him leave, the man sucked hard on his cigar and put down his feet. He placed his cigar aside and placed his hands on the desk. He then looked at Lin Huang and finally spoke. "Listen, kid. I dont care who is supporting you behind the scenes, theres no special treatment here. Master Hong Zhuang said we have to keep you alive, but if you break the rules here, I have many ways to make you feel pain much worse than dying," he threatened. Lin Huang nodded expressionless. The man then looked away and made a call. "Theres a kid here, bring him to the dorm," he said to the person over the phone. After he hung up the call, the man stared at Lin Huang again until a man in a black uniform took Lin Huang away. Following the man down the elevator, they headed north from the tower and walked into a courtyard behind a big metal door. After registration, they passed a large courtyard and entered into a building. They arrived in a small room on the first floor and the man in uniform tossed two army green shirt at him. "Change now," he ordered. He remained standing without an expression. He did not seem to be walking away. Lin Huang did not bother to say anything. He removed his clothes to his underwear and put on the army green shirt. It was fitting but ugly. He then kept his clothes into his space storage. The man in uniform then said, "You can only wear this green uniform here. Youre not allowed to wear any other clothes. This is a rule among others and there will be no tolerating rule breakers." He brought Lin Huang to the 11th floor. Lin Huang frowned as he walked seeing the rooms were designed to resemble a prison. The room door was an anti-explosion door. One could look into the room from the metals bars. The room was 10 square meters with a double decker bed. The basin and toilet bowl were placed inside the room. Seeing Lin Huangs arrival, many stood by their doors and watched him. The man in uniform suddenly stopped walking. "1121, this is your room. We have sent all the rules and regulations to your Emperors Heart Ring. Memorize them," he bellowed. There was a boy sitting by the bed looking at him in fear. The boy looked like he was 15 or 16. He was dark and skinny. "Go in now," the man in uniform ordered as he pushed the door open. After Lin Huang stepped in, the man closed the door and left. Lin Huang looked at his roommate and smiled. "Hi, my name is Lin Huang," he greeted him. The boy hesitated and nodded to Lin Huang, saying, "Xiao Mo." Just when Lin Huang wanted to sit down, a bell went off. The bell ring sounded like a school bell when he was on Earth but it was much louder and clearer. "What is happening?" Lin Huang thought. This was ridiculous. "Breakfast," Xiao Mo mumbled and got down off his bed. Soon, the doors automatically opened. Xiao Mo waved at Lin Huang and ran right out. Lin Huang followed too. Many of them were running downstairs. When they arrived at the canteen, it was almost full. He then picked up a metal plate and queued at the back. When it was his turn, there was nothing much left. The staff got him a bowl of sticky stuff that looked like porridge but the color and texture looked more like vomit. Lin Huang lost his appetite. Just when he was going to put down his plate and leave, he saw Xiao Mo waving at him. He then walked to him with his plate. When he was sitting down, a young man with buzz cut hair walked towards them with his plate. "Kid, youre fast today. You even got meat," the buzz cut man stabbed at a piece of meat using his fork and ate it. Lin Huang frowned as he watched. "How can one piece of meat satisfy me?" the buzz cut man continued mockingly and swallowed the meat. "Since Im not satisfied, you shall not eat yours," the man said and flipped Xiao Mos plate over spilling his food all over him. The people around them were enjoying the show. None of them stood up for Xiao Mo. "Hey, arent you too much?" Lin Huang put down his plate and said to the man. "What kid.. This is none of your business," the buzz cut man ignored Lin Huang. "Pick up the plate and apologize to him," Lin Huang said menacingly and stared deadly at him. Lin Huang standing up to him got the people excited. They were smiling and waiting for a climax to the show. "Who do you think you are!" the buzz cut man shouted and glared at Lin Huang. "Let me repeat myself. Pick up the plate and apologize to him!" Lin Huang said firmly. He did not want to give in. "Its okay" Xiao Mo said softly as he stood up and shook Lin Huangs arm. "Kid, Im warning you. Before you step into my business, you should consider if you have the" Before the man could finish what he said, Lin Huang wrapped his hand around the man''s neck and slammed his head against the table. His fork was in his hand, and he was holding it at less than one centimeter from his eyeball. "This is the last time Im going to say this. Apologize!" Lin Huang looked deadly. He was not going to give up until the man apologized. "Im Sorry" the buzz cut man squealed. He was scared and startled while apologizing. The bell rang, and it was the end of breakfast. The rest stood up and left to put their plates back. Lin Huang then let go of the man and shouted at Xiao Mo asking him to leave. The buzz cut man left silently. Many of the others were making fun of him. After putting their plates back, Xiao Mo followed Lin Huang as he was leaving the canteen. After some hesitation, he said, "Thank you." "Theres no need to thank me. How did you get on his bad side?" Lin Huang asked casually. "Once I accidentally stepped on his foot when I was walking down the stairs" Xiao Mo told him. "I apologized immediately but he just didnt want to let go and keep coming back for me" "This kind of people are sick. The more you let him, the more absurd he will behave. You should not allow him to treat you like this!" Lin Huang said. He thought the way Xiao Mo behaved was weak. "But I can never fight him" Xiao Mo mumbled softly. He was clearly upset. "Then try your best to make yourself stronger. One day you will fight him," Lin Huang said. He suddenly recalled he still had the dried vegetable from Fatty in his space storage. He patted Xiao Mos shoulder and said, "Lets go back to the room. I have some good stuff in my space storage" 130 Public Execution Lin Huang was adapting to the life in the training camp; it was similar to being held as a prisoner against his will. All communication and network signals were blocked, and they were completely disconnected from the outside world. There were surveillance cameras in every corner of the small foothold, and there were no blind spots at all. There was no privacy at all given; they were watched 24-hours a day, when they used the toilet, bathroom, and even while they slept. Their daily routine was to wake up for breakfast from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., and following that, they would be free to do as they please for the next hour. From 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., they would be killing monsters in the training tower for the entire length of eight hours. 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. was dinner time and again, they were free to do as they pleased. After that, it was back to killing monsters in the training tower for three hours, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. They only got to rest after 11 oclock at night. Soon, two days had passed. It was free and easy time after breakfast, and suddenly, a tune that sounded like a ringtone was played on the loudspeaker. Half a minute later, the music stopped and a man began to speak. "Everyone gather round the execution point in 10 minutes!" Lin Huang thought that was odd. "Whats going on?" he asked Xiao Mo. "Its public execution day today" Xiao Mo explained softly. "Everyone has to be there to watch it." "You mean executions for the three people who are ranked the lowest?" Lin Huang asked him again. He knew the rule himself but it was his first time he was going to witness an actual execution. "Are they really going to carry out the execution in front of everyone?!" He almost yelled. Lin Huang had read about this rule in the beginning when the training camp made them take a ranking test. They could collect points by killing monsters in the training tower. Iron-level Rank-1 = 1 point Rank-2 = 2 points Rank-3 = 4 points Bronze-level Rank-1 = 10 points Rank-2 = 20 points Rank-3 = 40 points Silver-level Rank-1 = 100 points, Rank-2 = 200 points Rank-3 = 400 points Gold level Rank-1 = 1,000 points Rank-2 = 2,000 points Rank-3 = 4,000 points By accumulating points, they could redeem things that they wanted which included combat skills, Life Skills, equipment, food and a lot more. The ranking was refreshed daily and was sent to everyones Emperors Heart Ring through the local network. It was mentioned that those who ranked top-3 for 100 consecutive trials or broke through to gold-level during these trainings would officially become a reserve member of the Purple Crow. Meanwhile, those who ranked the in on the lowest three for 10 consecutive days would be executed in public. "The public execution serves as a reminder to all of us," Xiao Mo explained. Looking at everyone leaving, he urged Lin Huang, "Lets leave now. There will be punishments for the latecomers." Both of them followed the crowd to the other building in the small foothold, they arrived at an enormous ring-shaped arena. There was an empty space the size of a football field in the middle of the arena. It was surrounded by chairs, and within a glance, it could probably accommodate more than 10,000 people. Lin Huang and Xiao Mo found themselves a seat. Soon the empty seats in the arena were almost full. It was only then that Lin Huang realized there were so many people in the training camp, more than he expected. "So many people" "This isnt considered many. There are 13 training camps in Division7. Ours is only the 11th when it comes to the number of participants," Xiao Mo explained immediately when he heard Lin Huangs exclamation. "There are 13 training camps?!" Lin Huang gasped. He had thought this was the only training camp in Division7. He had definitely underestimated the organization. "Shh" Suddenly, Xiao Mo gestured at Lin Huang to stop talking and said quietly, "The public execution is starting, were not allowed to talk." Lin Huang nodded and kept quiet while looking at the people at the arena. The arena was completely silent. It seemed like everybody was aware of this rule. Three young men in green uniforms were shoved in from the entrance of the arena. They looked like death row inmates with dead eyes and expressionless faces. There were three executioners in black behind them. The three young men in green uniforms walked slowly to the middle of the area. One of the man in black who was wearing sunglasses walked towards them with a sealed box. "What is happening?" Lin Huang asked quietly. "Theyre asking the young men to choose how they would die by drawing ballots," Xiao Mo explained. Lin Huang was solemn as he watched the events transpire. The three young men extended shaking hands into the sealed box. They then pulled out a wooden piece each. "Say your name, ranking and the style of execution," the man in sunglasses said into a loudspeaker receiver the size of a palm. He then passed the loudspeaker to the first man. The receiver was turned on and a long antenna came out from it and stopped by the man''s mouth. As it turned out, it was the mouthpiece for the loudspeaker. The young man stuttered, "My name is Han Yang I''m ranked last in the point rankings... for the past 10 days. My death would be by beheading" He cried as he said those words out loud. He was terrified! Lin Huang could tell that this person was only iron-level rank-2, a rank which was considered to be the weakest in this training camp, so it was not out of the ordinary that he ranked last. After the young man''s report, the man in sunglasses took the loudspeaker receiver from him and nodded to the executioner who was standing behind him and he took a few steps back. The golden ring on the executioners hand transformed into a sword and he held the young man on the ground by force. Soon, the sword came down on the young man and a head shot up into the air as blood gushed everywhere. Lin Huang frowned as he watched. Although he had killed people before, it was the first time he watched an actual execution happen. He thought it was gruesome and unethical. However, the man in sunglasses did not seem to be affected at all. He then walked across the pool of blood in his pair of black leather boots and handed the loudspeaker receiver to the second man with an expressionless face. "My name is Lu Shen, I ranked second last in the past 10 days. My death will be execution by gunshot," the second young man said with a gloomy expression. The man in sunglasses nodded to the executioner again. The golden ring transformed into a pistol and he pointed it at the left side of Lu Shens head. The executioner pulled the trigger without a moment''s notice. "Bang!" A bullet was shot, and the young mans head exploded. It was Lin Huangs first time witnessing the power of a gold-level gun. The man in sunglasses then walked to the last person and handed him the loudspeaker receiver. "My name is Zou He, Im ranked the third last in the past 10 days. My death will be through... Dismemberment..." Suddenly, an uproar broke among the crowd as the young man mentioned how his execution would be carried out. Many were discussing the execution as it seemed like it had been awhile since the last time someone was executed by dismemberment. The man in sunglasses was stunned as well but his surprise slowly turned to anger as he frowned at the noisy crowd. "Silence!" The man in sunglasses shouted into the loudspeaker receiver and the arena went silent. Once the man made sure that the people were calm, he took a few steps back and nodded to the executioner. The executioner then sealed Zou Hes movement from the back of his neck. His clothes were removed and he was tied with a metal rope before he was hung on a metal shelf. He looked like a beast waiting for slaughter. Soon blades appeared in the executioners hands and he began performing his knife skills on Zou He. His skills were refined from years of experience as he slowly sliced the flesh off Zou Hes body. Once his clothes were completely removed, each of the wounds were clear before everybodys eyes. Zou He was groaning in pain, and the sounds were transmitted, loud and clear through the loudspeaker. Lin Huang had heard of such executions before had never imagined it to be this gory and cruel. It lasted for more than three hours. Zou He was finally dead with thousands of slices of his flesh were carved from his body. The execution was carved into everyones mind and they were in fearful awe of the executioner. Zou Hes groan echoed in Lin Huangs head as he walked back to his room. "It seems like the Purple Crow is a cult" he thought. It was the first time he had seen something so gruesome since he joined the training camp. Xiao Mo had been quiet ever since they got back to their room and he has not spoken a single word since the incident. Lin Huang soon noticed his odd behaviour and asked, "Xiao Mo, whats wrong? Were you traumatised by the execution we saw earlier?" "I will die 10 days from now" Xiao Mo said after being quiet for awhile. "What do you mean?" Lin Huang wondered as he thought what he said was ridiculous. "Im one of those who will be executed in the next batch," Xiao Mo mumbled as he did not want to explain any further. Lin Huang then realized what Xiao Mo was trying to say. As he was only an iron-level rank-3 hunter and his combat strength was limited. He had ranked at the bottom for a while After the three young men were executed, Xiao Mo was the next one who was ranked last on the leaderboard. "Dont worry, there''s still another 10 days to go. There must be a way." Lin Huang said as he tried to improve the morale between them. He did not know what else to say. "Try to stay longer in the training tower for the next few days." Each room in the training tower could only accommodate one person and each mission had to be done alone. There was no way for Lin Huang to help Xiao Mo. "Oh, yeah... How far are you from filling up your Life Power?" Lin Huang asked. "My Life Power is full but I dont dare to level-up because once I arrive at bronze-level, I wont be able to enter the iron-level training room any further. Id accumulate points at an even slower rate..." Xiao Mo was in a vicious cycle. He could accumulate points by killing iron-level monsters but the points were much lower compared to bronze-level monsters. On the other hand, if he chose to level-up, his abilities were still insufficient to kill bronze-level monsters and this would slow him down even more. Lin Huang was at a loss as there was nothing he could do to help in this situation. 131 Unspoken Rules Of The Training Camp After the first day of familiarization, Lin Huang headed straight to the training tower right after breakfast the next morning. To him, the accumulation of points nothing as he was not lacking equipment or combat skills. At most, he would need a minimal amount of points to get some food but most importantly, he only had one goal when he entered the training tower - obtaining more Life Power. The training tower was a giant tower located in the middle of a small foothold. Aside from Scarface''s office on the top floor, there was a total of 12 floors with training areas beneath it. The first to third floor contained monsters from iron-level rank-1 to rank-3. The fourth to sixth floor contained monsters from bronze-level rank-1 to rank-3. The seventh to ninth floor contained monsters from silver-level rank-1 to rank-3 while the 10th to 12th floor contained monsters from gold-level rank-1 to rank-3. Lin Huang got up to the sixth floor using the stairs and looked for a room that was unoccupied. He chose the sixth floor because accumulating Life Power by killing bronze-level monsters was not much different from killing silver-level monsters. At the same time, Lin Huang could focus on his training as well. With Bais ability, he could totally go straight to the ninth or tenth floor but to Lin Huang, the monsters on the ninth and tenth floor would be too strong for him to handle alone and all he would be able to do was watch Bai do all the killing. There were 300 doors on each floor, each of them leading to a training room. If the training room was occupied, there would be a red light above the entrance. If it was vacant, there would be a green light above the entrance. They would have to scan their identity tags before entering. It took Lin Huang awhile to find a door with a green light and he entered it immediately after scanning his identity code. Once he stepped in through the door, he was teleported into the wild. In his field of vision, there were groups of bronze-level rank-3 monsters of all forms. He was stunned. "Is this real life or virtual reality?" Lin Huang thought but he could not tell at that moment. He had never seen so many monsters at once in any of the wild zones in the safe zones. As he summoned Bai, the Blood Spirit wings sliced the first monsters head and Life Light was transferred from the monster to his Life Wheel, he realized that this was real life. "Where is this place?" he wondered. Without a moment''s hesitation, Lin Huang and Bai began killing. Participants would usually stay in the training room for two to three hours as their Life Power would be drained from such intense battles. However, since Lin Huangs Life Wheel was connected to Bais, his Life Power was replenished continuously so he would be able to stay there for extended periods of time - easily up to eight hours. Lin Huang got out of the training space at five in the evening. Within eight hours, Bai and himself managed to kill up approximately 1,000 monsters. He leveled up from bronze-level rank-1 to rank-3 and the Life Power had filled up the sixth circle in his Life Wheel. He was close to filling up his Life Wheels. For the next couple of days, he spent most of his time in the training tower. Three days later, the three Life Wheels in his body were all filled up. Lin Huang and Bai managed to kill almost 4,000 bronze-level rank-3 monsters, allowing him to accumulate more than 160,000 points within three days. The accumulated points would reset every 100 days. With the points he had accumulated, he would be able to rank top 10 on the leaderboard. However, he only managed to make it to No.297 on the leaderboard. He had garnered attention from many for the number of points he managed to accumulate in such short period of time. Ever since he completely filled up his Life Wheels, he stopped going to the training tower. He stayed in his room to practice his Life Skills as well as stabilize his Life Power. He hardly left his room after that. His ranking had been dropping during the next couple of days but he did not care at all. On the third day he stopped going to the training tower, he had planned to take a breather outside after breakfast before practicing his Life Skills. However, just when he stepped out of the residential area, he was stopped by a young man with blonde hair. "Are you Lin Huang?" "Can I help you?" Lin Huang had no idea who he was. "I want to challenge you!" the man shouted. Lin Huang thought the man was being absurd. "Not interested," Lin Huang said and turned away. He could tell that the man was bronze-level rank-2 and fighting him would be a waste of time. "I think you meant you dont have the guts to challenge me?" The man instigated. "Whatever," Lin Huang replied. He did not bother and walked towards the residential area. "If thats the case, I shall start a deathmatch then," the man yelled at Lin Huang. A notification box popped up before Lin Huang from his Emperors Heart Ring. "Li Zihao has requested to carry out a deathmatch with you." "Deathmatch will start in 10, 9, 8" "What the hell?" Lin Huang thought. Could the man be really that ridiculous? "You forced me to do this. If you accepted my challenge, the most I would get was half of your points. Now that you have forced me to initiate a deathmatch, the only thing I can do is to kill you and take all your points," the man shouted at Lin Huang while transforming two equipment rings into two short blades. Lin Huang finally understood what was happening. He was quiet as he took out his bronze-level battle sword. A crowd had surrounded them to watch the show. Once the countdown was over, the man ran towards Lin Huang. He moved amazingly fast and he was before Lin Huang in an instant. His blades were aimed at Lin Huang''s throat and his heart. Many cheered for his tactics. However, with a slight evasive move, the man missed his hit. Nobody saw Lin Huangs attack but there was a cut that was more than 40 centimeters long on the mans chest, extending from the side left of his waist to his upper chest. "You lose," Lin Huang said as he now stood two steps behind the man. The man fell on the ground, blood pouring out of the wound on his chest. It was too late when he realized that his abilities were far beneath Lin Huang''s. Lin Huang did not care and attempted to leave. A boy who looked 13 or 14 came to him and said, "Hey, you must kill him to end the battle. Thats the rule of the battle." "Rules are made by people, and I will not conform to this barbaric behaviour," Lin Huang glared at him and walked away. The boy walked pass Lin Huang and stood next to the blond haired man. He then grabbed his head and snapped his neck. The young man fell to the ground, in his own blood and guts. "I''ve killed him for you, you dont need to thank me. Since youre new here, I will forgive you for not knowing the rule. However, I hate people who don''t follow the rules. I won''t let you go next time!" The boy shouted at Lin Huang. A notification popped out after the battle ended, Lin Huang obtained 43,000 points. He turned around to glare at the boy and left with the crowd. "How dare he offend Gong Sunning!" People exclaimed around him. The crowd discussed the incident among themselves. Lin Huang had no idea who that boy was. He walked straight to his room to continue with his practice. Xiao Mo saw Lin Huang was back, and he asked nervously, "Did you offend Gong Sunying?" "That guy is Gong Sunying?" Lin Huang was surprised. He had heard of the name before but he had never met the guy. Now he knew who the guy was after Xiao Mo mentioned it. Gong Sunying was ranked second on the leaderboard. He was silver-level rank-3 - one of the strongest in the training camp. "Hes not a boy. His growth was stunted for some reason. He is actually 21 years old," Xiao Mo explained. "How did you offend him?" He continued. "Nothing, I just bumped into him but, the news travelled so fast that even you already heard about it," Lin Huang said. He was speechless and how fast gossip traveled around here. "I saw it on the forums," Xiao Mo said. Although the network connection on the Heart Network was blocked, there was a forum on the division network for discussions. The latest gossip was usually posted there. Gong Sunying was one of the strongest in the training camp. Anything that was related to him would naturally be posted on the forum as soon as possible. The news about Lin Huang offending him was posted too. "Whats with the deathmatch? Why didn''t I find this in the rule book?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Mo. "The deathmatch was not created by the training camp. It was started by participants in the training camp. Initially it was a bet where the management staff would be the judges. The one who won would take all the points in the bet while the one who lost would lose their points. It created a gambling trend so it had to stop," Xiao Mo explained. "Later on it became a battle where the one who won could take the losers points right away, but only up to 50% of his points. After that, it became a deathmatch where the winner would have to kill the loser to end the battle. The winner could take all of the loser''s points. It was not in the rules because it is an unspoken rule. The management realized that this would benefit them in finding superior participants so it was allowed," Xiao Mo concluded. Lin Huang finally understood why such things existed in the training camp after Xiao Mos explanation. "How many points have you accumulated now?" Lin Huang asked. "Better than before but its still not good enough," Xiao Mo replied with an awkward smile. "From what you said, I should have killed monsters until all my Life Power got drained before getting to a safe place where I can replenish my Life Power with Life Crystals. If I could stay for eight hours in the training room within these couple of days, I''d take exactly two and a half hours to kill the monsters," he continued. "Take it one step at a time. With your pace, its very possible to be out of the last three places on the leaderboard. Do you still have Life Crystals?" Lin Huang asked. "I still have enough for tomorrow," Xiao Mo nodded. "Thank you for all your help. I will return these Life Crystals three times over... No, 10 times over to you!" "We will talk about money when we are out of here. Just focus on killing monsters now," Lin Huang said and patted his shoulder. 132 I Want To Challenge You! Soon, four days had passed. Xiao Mo was upset, although he had been killing monsters with Lin Huangs help for the past few days, he only managed to move up from being the last ranked recruit to being the third from the bottom. In less than half an hour, the final score was to be announced. He was 2,000 points away from the forth last person, it was impossible to make up the difference in points. Lin Huang redeemed food from the staff members with his points. Since he saw food that looked like vomit on the first day, he never stepped foot in the canteen again. Xiao Mo was lucky that he did not have to get food with the others in the canteen. "Eat something," Lin Huang passed him a bento box. Xiao Mo took the bento box and put it aside. "I will be executed tomorrow I thought I''d at least make a name for myself if I joined the Purple Crows. I couldn''t even pass the first hurdle" Xiao Mo mumbled. "Why would you want to join the Purple Crows? Youre already an iron-level, you could totally join the Hunter Association and become a reserve hunter. Although theres no benefit over there, you could take it one step at a time by killing monsters and make a name for yourself later on," Lin Huang told him, but he knew that Xiao Mo would not divert from his goal. "If I could, of course, join the Hunter Association but I dont get to choose where to go" Xiao Mo then took off his t-shirt showed Lin Huang his skinny body. He pointed at his left side of his chest where there was a black, complicated sigil. "This is why I must join the Purple Crow," he said. "Descendants of the Sin" Lin Huang said aloud and frowned. In the beginning of the new era, some of the humanoid monsters would capture ladies for procreation. Many were killed while some were rescued. Many of the rescued ladies were pregnant with the seed of the monsters. Those children were called sinners. Most of the first generation sinners were killed by humans when they were born while some of them were saved by the Union Governments amendment policy. However, they were marked with the sinners logo and it would be passed on to every generation. Everybody that had this logo was labeled as the Descendants of the Sin. Although the Union Government stopped people from killing the descendants, they were prohibited from joining the government sector as the government was worried that they might grow up to be monsters and harm humans again. Xiao Mo wanted to be stronger, he had no choice but to join the dark side, the underworld. Only underworld organizations could groom him to make him stronger. Lin Huang finally understood why Xiao Mo would always avoid the others whenever he was in the bathroom. He was afraid to reveal that he was one of the Descendants of the Sin. Now that he was going to be executed the next morning, he decided to tell his closest companion, his secret. "The sinners have been victims since the beginning, same goes to their descendants like you" Lin Huang said. He then let out a sigh and patted Xiao Mos shoulder, "Come eat something." He realized that the topic was too heavy, and he did not say a word anymore as he ate his food. Xiao Mo was solemn for awhile, but then he started eating too. It was almost six in the evening when Xiao Mo finished his food. He looked at the time and said to Lin Huang, "Three minutes to go Thank you so much for taking care of me, unfortunately, I cant return to you the Life Crystals that you have lent me" Lin Huang took his empty bento box from him and said with a smile, "You should challenge me. As long as I surrender, you would get a portion of my points." "No, surrendering in challenges on purpose would be breaking the rules. Gong Sunying and the rest would come after you," Xiao Mo said and shook his head. "Rules are set by people. He could have made that up, and I can break it too like I did the last time," Lin Huang smirked. "If he comes after me, I will welcome him with open arms. Troubles are my favorite past time," he said proudly, and laughed. "Gong Sunying would level up to gold-level anytime now since he is already silver-level rank-3. I know you''re powerful, but you wont be able to beat him," Xiao Mo said softly, still shaking his head. "I know someone in the management. He cannot do anything to me," Lin Huang said. Although he did not know what to say anymore, he thought revealing this fact might be what Xiao Mo needed for a little motivation. "The person who sent me to this training camp was a lady called Hong Zhuang. She is an elite member of Purple Crow. She is coming back for me in three months. By then, I will be a reserve member of the Purple Crow," Lin Huang said. "I didnt want to tell anyone about this, so now, can you please challenge me?" Lin Huang said as he placed his hand on Xiao Mos shoulder. "Really?" Xiao Mos eyes lit up. "Of course its the truth. We dont have much time, stop hesitating!" Lin Huang nodded. Xiao Mo then challenged Lin Huang. A notification box popped up before Lin Huang. "Xiao Mo is challenging you, do you want to accept the challenge?" "Challenge accepted!" Lin Huang pushed the button immediately once he saw the notification box. Once the countdown ended, Lin Huang shouted, "I surrender!" The system announced Xiao Mos win in the challenge. Soon, Lin Huang was notified that 5,000 of his accumulated points were taken by Xiao Mo. "Why dont you take more and make your ranking higher?" Lin Huang said. He knew that Xiao Mo had always been very careful and being so close to the edge was still not a comfortable place for him. "5,000 points is enough, thank you. The one before me was 2,000 points ahead of me. Moreover, if my points are too high, people would start challenging me. If my points are low, nobody would want to challenge me. This amount is enough for me," Xiao Mo said, gratefulness clear in his eyes. He did not reveal that he did not want to take too much of Lin Huangs points so that his friend would not despise him. He did not know that Lin Huang had never cared about the points. It was six oclock soon after the challenge ended and Xiao Mos ranking improved. The new execution list was out and Xiao Mo had managed to escape the execution. Although, the sudden 5,000 points that Xiao Mo gained got the attention of many other recruits. Soon, someone found out the source of the 5,000 points. Since Lin Huangs points did not change for the past week and his ranking had been dropping, aside from the points that he used to redeem food, it basically remained unchanged. However, the 5,000 points drop gave away the fact that he cheated in the challenge so that Xiao Mo would win. Within minutes, the news got to Gong Sunying. "Lin Huang! I have warned you not to ignore our rules! Now youre just asking for it, dont blame me for not showing mercy! I shall kill you before the 10,000 people here!" Gong Sunying roared. He was furious when he heard the news and went straight to the courtyard a floor beneath the dorm. Minutes later, he stood in the middle of the courtyard where Lin Huangs room was and shouted, "Lin Huang, come here right now. I challenge you to a deathmatch!" 133 Almighty Imperial Censor Gong Sunyings voice could be heard all around from two blocks away. Lin Huang and Xiao Mo heard it too. "Its Gong Sunying" Xiao Mo whispered with a shiver. He was terrified. "Its okay," Lin Huang said. He then stood up and walked to the corridor outside his room. He stood in the corridor and looked down. Gong Sunying was standing at the courtyard downstairs, furious. He shouted at Lin Huang again, "I warned you not to break our rules. How dare you break the rules of battle openly and surrendered on purpose just to let Xiao Mo win. Since you want to save him from getting executed, I''ll take your life as a replacement!" The balconies of both dormitories were filled with people. The same happened in the courtyard, the crowd surrounded them to watch their fight. After hearing what Gong Sunying said, they knew exactly what had happened. The crowd did not scare Lin Huang at all, he looked at Gong Sunying and said, "Your so-called rules are just unspoken rules of this place. You set it up to benefit yourself. It was never the rules of this training camp, and theres no need for me to obey them." "If you would like to challenge me, Im here for you. However, I advise you to think twice or you might regret the consequences. You have finally ranked second on the leaderboard, and the most you''d have to wait for would be two months before you can join the Purple Crows as an official member. Its not wise if you were to do something stupid such as getting yourself killed," Lin Huang said calmly. What Lin Huang said shocked the people who were watching. "This new kid has balls!" "How dare he speak to Gong Sunying like that? He must be crazy?!" "Hes only bronze-level, how dare he say something like this?" "Does he want to die?" The people discussed among themselves, and they thought Lin Huang was asking for it. "How dare you talk to me like that when youre only bronze-level. If I dont kill you today, I swear Im not called Gong Sunying!" Gong Sunying bellowed at the top of his lungs. While everyone was waiting for the show to start, a shadow shot down from the sky. "Whats with this crowd?" Scarface landed in his black coat. Everyone was quiet as they knew that the man was the manager of the camp. He would only appear when serious incidents happened or he would never have shown himself. All matters would pass through him before they reached the guys in black uniforms. However, Scarface appeared before Lin Huang and Gong Sunying. Many found that odd. "It seems like this Lin Huang has strong support... Even the manager is here" "Master, this kid called Lin Huang is deliberately breaking our rules," Gong Sunying said respectfully. He was not stupid as he could tell that the man was here to help Lin Huang, so he spoke first to get his word in. "Lin Huang, I told you on the first day when you arrived. You will have no special treatment here, and you must obey the rules. Did you not take me seriously?" What the man said made everyone realize one thing - Lin Huang knew the manager personally. Most of the people here had not even seen the manager in months but Lin Huang managed to meet him as soon as he arrived. He even got to speak to the manager, and it was obvious that the manager was siding Lin Huang. Hearing what the manager said, Gong Sunyings heart dropped. He could tell that the manager was telling everyone here that Lin Huang had someone behind him. Gong Sunying was mad that Lin Huang was going to get away with this. "Master, I have always been obeying your rules, I have never once disobeyed you. I believe that you know that yourself. However, this is a rule that was set by them personally, so theres no need for me to obey those as well. Am I right?" Lin Huang said politely. He knew very well that the man was here to get him out of the trouble. From the outside, he knew that his ability was far from Gong Sunying''s. The man was afraid that Lin Huang would be killed by Gong Sunying and that would put him trouble with Hong Zhuang. "Setting up their own rules?" The man turned around and looked at Gong Sunying. "Gong Sunying, is it true that you''ve done such a thing here?" "Master, theres no such thing. Lin Huang must have misunderstood us, how would we dare to do such thing in this training camp?" Gong Sunying said and waved his hands in bewilderment. "I believe youve heard that, Lin Huang. Since its a misunderstanding, stop messing around. Go back to your room," the manager said firmly. However, Lin Huang started speaking. "No, this is not over. Gong Sunying, didnt you say you wanted to challenge me?" The man was shocked at what Lin Huang said. "Lin Huang, didnt he say this is a misunderstanding? Why are you still messing around?!" Gong Sunying was furious but as the man was around, he did not dare to say anything. None of the people around expected Lin Huang to dwell on it since the manager had spoken. "Is this kid stupid? Perhaps he wants the manager to punish Gong Sunying? This is too much!" "Master, although the misunderstanding has been solved, we have yet to solve our personal issues," Lin Huang turned the incident into a personal grudge so that the man would not step in. "Lin Huang, what are you trying to do?!" The man did not expect Lin Huang to get rid of him after he managed to get him out of trouble with Gong Sunying. "Since this is regarding our personal issue, then we shall do it our way," Lin Huang looked at Gong Sunying, "Gong Sunying, do you accept this deathmatch with me?" Gong Sunying was in a pickle. He looked at Scarface. The man did not expect Lin Huang to step back into square one, making all his efforts go to waste. He did not know what to do. "Theres no need for a deathmatch. Since its something personal, a normal battle would suffice," the man said as he made the decision. "Master, since this is personal, the solution has to be life or death. It would be unfair if you continue to side with him," Lin Huang said, which the manager thought was uncalled for. "Whats wrong with this kid? Why would he think that the manager is siding Gong Sunying?" "He must be joking. How could he not know that the manager is obviously siding him?" "The manager must be in a bad position now?" The man was furious at what Lin Huang said. It was obvious that he was siding Lin Huang but he managed to turn it around, saying that he was siding Gong Sunying instead. Since Lin Huang said that, there was nothing that the man could do. He thought to himself, "I have tried my best. Since you are so eager to be killed, theres nothing I can do." He took a deep breath with his eyes closed and said, "Since you insist on a deathmatch, deathmatch it is then." Gong Sunying was glad to hear that, and he shot a deadly stare at Lin Huang. Lin Huang then made his way down the stairs and arrived in the middle of the courtyard minutes later. He stood less than 10 meters away from Lin Huang. 10 meters was the furthest distance for an effective attack. Any further and the attack would be pointless for a normal battles or a deathmatch. "I, Lin Huang, would like to have a deathmatch with Gong Sunying," Lin Huang requested. Seconds later, a deathmatch began. "You have requested a deathmatch with Gong Sunying." "Deathmatch will start in 10, 9, 8" When it was the last three seconds, Lin Huang waved his hand suddenly and a man in a black mask and silver hair appeared beside him. The crowd was shocked to see a vampire there. At the very last second, Lin Huang lifted his right hand and pointed at Gong Sunying who stood across from him. He uttered three words, "Kill him now!" Bais eyes turned red and his Blood Power wings grew larger. Next, there was a red glow that flashed through the air. Bai appeared behind Gong Sunying and he did not even see it coming. Before he could even lift his blade, Bai had completed his attack. It was so fast that nobody could have seen anything with the naked eye. The crowd was stunned at what they saw. Soon, Gong Sunyings head fell from his neck to the floor. There was no blood coming out of the cut on his neck. His headless body stood still on the ground. What happened was out of Scarface''s expectation. He thought Gong Sunying would kill Lin Huang but it was the other way round instead. In reality, he had seen Lin Huang fight in the training room and had noticed that Lin Huang had a vampire as his monster. As he was killing bronze-level rank-3 monsters, Bai did not show the speed and strength he had just exhibited. He thought Bai was just a mutated vampire. Now that he had seen Bais strength at a close range, he confirmed that Bai had gone through mutations, twice. "No wonder Master Hong Zhuang recommended him to join the organization" Scarface finally understood the true reason behind Lin Huangs recruitment. "Congratulations, you have obtained a Skill Card - Mountain Blade." "Congratulations, you have obtained a Talent Card - Superhuman Strength." Lin Huang was stunned at the notification. He did not only contain a Skill Card from killing Gong Sunying but also a Talent Card. He thought that was strange. "Alright, go back to your rooms!" Scarface shouted at the crowd. He then turned around and looked at Lin Huang with a complicated facial expression, "Lin Huang, go back to your room. Stop causing trouble." "I will be back in a short while," Lin Huang said and he did not leave immediately. He walked to Gong Sunying and searched his dead body right in front of Scarface 134 Modified Gun As Lin Huang walked back to his room on the 11th floor from the courtyard, everyone shot respectful glances in his direction. What happened earlier was shocking to all as Lin Huang killed Gong Sunying who ranked second on the leaderboard within seconds. Everyone knew although Gong Sunying was a silver-level rank-3, his ability was comparable with a gold-level rank-1. He might be not have been able to fight gold-level rank-2 hunters but not to the point that he would be dead in an instant. Even Fang Wen who ranked the first on the leaderboard was just slightly stronger than Gong Sunying. It was not possible for Fang Wen to kill him, let alone instantly. It was not Gong Sunying who was weak but Bai was too powerful for him. His ability now was powerful enough to handle all the participants in the training camp. Lin Huang wanted to keep a low profile in the camp as he gathered insider information before running away. If Gong Sunying did not insist on a battle, he would not have revealed his strength, which was only the tip of the iceberg. When he returned to his room, Xiao Mo came to him in excitement. He saw everything from the balcony, and he was in admiration of Lin Huang. He had always thought that Lin Huang was just slightly more powerful than himself and would never have any significant rank on the leaderboard. Now he knew that Lin Huang was something like the ultimate boss in a video game. Moreover, it was proved that Lin Huang had someone supporting him since Scarface sided with him earlier. Lin Huang had the ability with a strong background, anyone would have wanted to ride on his coattails. However, as Xiao Mo had low self-esteem issues, he realized that he was no use to Lin Huang anymore. He could explain to Lin Huang about the rules of this training camp but now that he was popular, many people would want to be his apprentice. Just when he was thinking, he heard Lin Huang was speaking to him. "Xiao Mo, find a Life Seed monster that you want within these few days and level-up to bronze-level. By then, you should be able to kill monsters on the fourth floor of the training tower. Its okay if it takes longer to accumulate points, you can take the points from me. After your point collections are stable on the fourth floor, even if Im not around anymore, you won''t be the few people on the bottom of the leaderboard anymore," Lin Huang said. He thought that such an arrangement with Xiao Mo would not only benefit the skinny boy but also motivate him to do better. Hong Zhuang said she would come for Lin Huang in three months, that meant Lin Huang would have to leave this place within three months or else he might not be able to escape once he was taken away from Division7. Moreover, he was still not interested in joining the Purple Crows. "I will do my best," Xiao Mo nodded. He did not think too deeply about what Lin Huang had said. He thought Lin Huang meant he would leave the camp within three months to join the Purple Crows as their reserve member. Lin Huang pitied Xiao Mo from the beginning, and he saved him as he too needed guidance as well as information about this place. In the process of doing that, Lin Huang found out that Xiao Mo also had a good personality. He was much better than most of the people in the training camp. He did not want to see him die in an execution, therefore he decided to break the rule which allowed him to escape the execution at the expense of his own anonymity. "I will protect you whenever Im here, but I cant be doing that anymore when I leave. In a nutshell, you''ll still have to make yourself stronger," Lin Huang said. He did not want Xiao Mo to get into trouble after he left. "I understand, I''ll definitely become stronger," Xiao Mo nodded hard. "One day I will follow in your footsteps and become a reserve member of the Purple Crow." Lin Huang did not respond to what Xiao Mo said. He laid on his bed and looked at the two cards that he just obtained. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Mountain Blade" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Skill: Sword" "Skill Level: Gold-level" "Status: Available" "Remarks: Suitable for use with heavy weapons. The more powerful the users strength, the more powerful that skill is." "Card Remarks: Passable" "This is an exclusive combat skill for heavy weapons. Its suitable for large groups of monsters. The skill is not unique but under certain circumstances, its power could possibly surpass Thunder Sword," he thought. Lin Huang squeezed the card immediately so that he could get the new combat skill. He had 10 monster skills - the maximum he could have already but that did not affect his personal combat skills. Soon, the new combat skill was added to his exclusive card. Then, he looked at the Talent Card that he had just obtained. "Talent Card" "Name: Superhuman Strength (Beginner)" "Rarity: Rare" "Type: Intensification" "Talent Effect: Strength will be multiplied 10 times (Passive)" "Level-up Effect: With every upgrade, the effect will be multiplied by tenfold" "Card Remarks: Passable" Lin Huang was doubtful when he saw the card, and he contacted Xiao Hei in his mind. "Xiao Hei, whats with this Talent Card? I thought I could only obtain talents from killing Life Seed monsters?" he asked. "The talent from the Talent Card does not come from a Life Seed. It was inherited by a human or for some other reason which caused one to have the talent when they were born," Xiao Hei explained in response. "So if I were to use this card to obtain a new talent, does that mean I would have one less opportunity to obtain a Life Seed talent?" he asked again. "No, the talent from a Talent Card does not clash with talents from Life Seed kills. You can obtain four Life Seed talents in total," Xiao Hei replied. "Does that mean this Talent Card allows me to obtain a free talent?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "You can say so." Without hesitation, Lin Huang squeezed the card, adding it to his exclusive card. He then looked at his exclusive card. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 15" "Combat Strength: Bronze-level rank-3" "Talent 1: Superhuman Strength" "Life Seed 1: Sly Hands (Rare)" "Life Seed 2: Substitute (Normal)" "Combat Skill 1: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 2: Thunder Sword (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 3: Mountain Blade (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 4: Spectral Snowsteps (Movement Skill)" "Combat Skill 5: Cloud Steps (Movement Skill)" "Monster Skill 1: Blood Spirit" "Monster Skill 2: Form Changer" "Monster Skill 3: Super Robust (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 4: Supreme Breath (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 5: Immense Strength" "Monster Skill 6: Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 7: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 8: Blood Hunt (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 9: Boundless Vision (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 10: Third Eye (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of summons: 3" "Remark: Passable" Not only did he get an additional talent, skill and managed to upgrade his combat strength, he also had an upgrade in his number of summons available too. It was upgraded from two to three summons. Lin Huang could not help but smirk when he thought about how he could summon Charcoal, Bai, and Tyrant at the same time in the future. He then looked at the stuff that he took from Gong Sunying. As he could not retrieve the items from Gong Sunyings storage space, he still managed to find a couple of gold-level equipment from his body. Among them were heavy and light armor, an explorer class armor and a blade. There were all in the form of rings which Lin Huang could not activate with his current Life Power. He kept them in his storage space after admiring them. The next morning, Lin Huang walked to the redemption counter after breakfast. He accumulated 2.2 million points from killing Gong Sunying. His main purpose here was to redeem his breakfast and check if there was anything else that he wanted. The lowest redemption was one point which bought a piece of bread or a bowl of white rice. The more dishes you ordered, the more points it would cost. That was the reason why Xiao Mo would rather starve himself than use his points to redeem food as he would spend quite a bit on food if he did that every day. In reality, besides food, the price of the other items was quite ridiculous as well. They could only redeem Iron-level equipment with 1,000 points while killing an iron-level rank-3 monster would only get them four points. They would need to kill 250 iron-level rank-3 monsters to redeem any piece of iron-level equipment. They could have gotten other iron-level equipment with just three to five Iron-level rank-3 monsters when they were outside the camp walls. Iron-level equipment aside, bronze-level equipment would require 10,000 credit points, 100,000 credit points for a single silver-level piece of equipment and one million credit points for gold-level equipment. For relics, they would need one billion credit points and they were limited to one relic. Lin Huang was speechless when he saw the price. However, the points would go to waste if he kept them. After redeeming breakfast, Lin Huang picked up a bronze-level gun. It was a CopperSparrow23, a product from the Eagle Company. However, he frowned at the price of the gun. "Isnt 10,000 credit points enough for a bronze-level piece of equipment? Even if you raised the price here, its alright if youre selling it at 20,000 credit points. How dare you sell it at 80,000 credit points?" He asked, furiously. "You can get a normal one at 10,000 credit points but this has been modified. It is at least three times more powerful than the original version. Thats why its priced at 80,000," the staff at the redemption point explained. "Three times or more" Lin Huang never expected to find a modified gun. Although a modified gun was less stable than the original version, its power would be significantly higher. Since he would not be staying on each level for too long, this modified gun would be great for short periods of time. "Give me two!" Lin Huang did not hesitate for even a moment. He then asked, "Do you have any modified silver-level SilverPhoenix16s?" "Yes. That''ll be 980,000 credit points, its power is at least three times or more as well," the staff member said with a nod. "Great, give me two of that," Lin Huang confirmed his order. "The total would be 2.12 million points," the staff looked at him with a puzzled look as he recalled Lin Huang only having 100,000 points when he came to redeem his food yesterday. Lin Huang nodded and scanned his identity code. The staff was shocked when he saw the payment was successful, he then packed the four guns for Lin Huang immediately. Although Lin Huang lost 2.2 million points in just one transaction, he was not upset at all. A modified gun was not easy to find on the market and the only place one could go was the black market. The prices there would be sky-high and its quality was not guaranteed. The items that were sold at the Purple Crow Facility were surely not faulty and that was the reason why Lin Huang bought the guns without hesitation. After getting the guns and breakfast, Lin Huang left the redemption counter happily. However, he was shocked when he arrived at this room 135 Wildfire Sword People flooded the entrance of Room 1121. Lin Huang who just got back from redeeming breakfast was soon noticed by the crowd. "Boss Lin Huang is here, make way for him!" A person shouted. Heads were turned, seeing Lin Huang blocked by the crowd, a path was cleared for him. "Boss Lin Huang. Were you headed out for breakfast?" "" Lin Huang was speechless. After passing through the crowd to his room, he finally found out what the hype was about. Fang Wen who ranked first on the leaderboard and Li Li who ranked third was in his room. Those who ranked fourth to 10th were all outside his room. Xiao Mo was sitting with both Fang Wen and Li Li, and upon seeing Lin Huang arrive, the three of them stood up immediately. "Bro Lin Huang, my name is Fang Wen," he said. The boy looked like he was only 17 or 18, and soft-spoken. He shook Lin Huangs hand. "My name is Li Li," the boy next to him said. He seemed like he was over 20. He was more matured and much taller, as he stood at 1.8 meters. The top-ranked recruits were here to worship him after seeing what he did yesterday. "Bro Lin Huang, we are here to get to know each other better. It was fate that we are sent to the same training camp, and perhaps we have the opportunity to collaborate after we join the Purple Crows. Please accept my humble gift," Fang Wen said and placed a space storage ring in Lin Huangs hand. "Thank you, Fang Wen," Lin Huang smirked and accepted the gift without hesitation. After he killed Gong Sunying, Lin Huang searched his dead body for stuff on purpose so that people would have an idea that he was greedy and they would send him gifts. It would be perfect if he could get something from the people in the training camp before he left the place. "I heard that Bro Lin Huang loves sword skills. I obtained a great one earlier, and it would be a waste if I use it. I feel it''s better if you have it," Li Li said as he gave Lin Huang a combat skill crystal. Hearing that it was a sword skill, Lin Huang kept the gift immediately. The both of them then left after a short chat. The people outside his room left their gifts too. Lin Huang did not reject any of them. The crowd left half an hour later. "My breakfast is cold now" Lin Huang muttered to himself. After sending everyone off, Lin Huang shook his head and sighed. "Ill get a new one for you," Xiao Mo said immediately. He wanted to get Lin Huang a gift as well but he had nothing valuable to offer him. "Its alright, lets eat," Lin Huang passed the bun that he bought to Xiao Mo. After accepting the bun, Xiao Mo hesitated and said, "Let me get you breakfast and dinner from today onwards." "Sure, you can take some of my points later," Lin Huang nodded. He thought that he could save his time by getting Xiao Mo to run those simple chores for him. "Its not necessary, food doesnt cost much," Xiao Mo waved his hand. "I refused to buy the last time as I was at the bottom in the leaderboard, its alright now," he continued. "The points are useful for you, but not me. Im not at a lack of combat skills or equipment, and I dont care about my ranking. Besides, with the points that I accumulated, I could even consume tens of thousands a day. Its a different story for you, each point is important to you. You should use it to get a blade," Lin Huang explained. "You use my points for food. If you are embarrassed, you could treat me a good meal when we get out," Lin Huang said to him and patted him on the back. "Sure!" Xiao Mo did not reject the offer anymore since Lin Huang had said so. Just when they were eating, the loudspeaker shell announced about the public execution. Both of them left their room immediately and followed the crowd to the arena. The three people were then pushed to the middle of the arena. The last one was staring at Xiao Mo. He never shifted his eyes away from Xiao Mo. He was the person who ranked the last fourth on the leaderboard. As Lin Huang cheated for Xiao Mo, he became the person who would be executed. He held a grudge for Xiao Mo now. Lin Huang noticed that the person was staring at Xiao Mo so he put his hand on his shoulder and asked, "Are you alright?" Xiao Mo shook his head and looked away from the person. Soon the execution started, after the first two people were killed, it was time for the third person to be executed. The man in sunglasses placed the loudspeaker shell next to his mouth, and he was supposed to say his name and way of execution. Instead, he smiled, "Xiao Mo, dont ever forget that you owe me my life!" The man in sunglasses frowned and nodded at the executioner. The executioner covered his mouth and sliced his throat so that he could not speak anymore. Blood shot out from his neck, and he was breathing like a wind box being pulled. Everyone could feel the suffocation from the sound that was amplified through the loudspeaker shell. The person stared at Xiao Mos direction until he died. After the execution ended, Xiao Mo was quiet all the way back to his room. "The guy is dead now, dont mind what he said," Lin Huang said. "Hes right, I should be dead. I owe him his life," Xiao Mo shook his head. "You were just lucky that you escaped, you dont owe him anything," Lin Huang said firmly as he tried to console him. "If you hold this in your heart, your life would be affected by it. Now that hes dead, no matter how sorry you feel, he will still be dead. So I suggest that you put this behind you. When you leave and became a reserve member of the Purple Crows, you can check out who that person was to see if theres anything you can do for him then," Lin Huang continued. Xiao Mo was quiet for a while before he nodded. "Also, keep yourself busy so that you will not be thinking of such nonsense. Lets battle in the training tower. It''ll be good for you to release those pent-up emotions," Lin Huang said. "I shall head to the training tower then," Xiao Mo said as he stood up. He then waved goodbye to Lin Huang and left. Lin Huang sat by his bed to look at the gift from Fang Wen and the rest. The space storage ring was not big, it was just about 1,000 square cubic meters but there were 3,000 Life Crystals within it. One Life Crystal was equivalent to 100 years while the 3,000 Life Crystals could be traded for three billion credit points! "Wow! That was so generous of Fang Wen! Perhaps hes royalty, and surely not from a small royal family either" It was not easy for him to just guess Fang Wens family background as only royalty could have been this generous. After keeping Fang Wens ring, Lin Huang looked at the sword skill given to him by Li Li. He then looked at the details of the skill crystals. Wildfire Sword was created by a sword master 300 years ago from combining a variety of sword skills over a span of seven years "Xiao Hei, hows this sword skill?" Lin Huang knew that there would be nothing good about what Xiao Hei was going to say as he had yet to start training with it. "Are you messing around with me?" Xiao Hei replied. Lin Huang did not expect to hear that. He sat up straight in an instant. The only combat skill that was on an Epic level was his Great Sword Scripture, he could not believe it when he heard Xiao Hei say that this new sword skill could be upgraded to an Epic soon. "I have never lied to you. This sword skill has yet to be completed, but it has great potential. I suggest you train with it immediately," Xiao Hei said. It was the first time Lin Huang heard Xiao Hei giving such a positive comment about a combat skill. "If this became Epic, and compared to the Great Sword Scripture, which is more powerful?" "I cant compare it before you obtained the skill card," Xiao Hei said, almost mockingly. After some thought, Lin Huang figured that this sword skill would need card pieces and he would not be able to accumulate them in such a short period of time. He would need massive amounts of energy and time once he got into the flow of training. However, what was more important now was to find a way to escape within the remaining two and a half months. He then kept the combat skill crystal and looked at other gifts one by one. With the amazing sword skill, none of the gifts excited him anymore. After a rough look, Lin Huang laid on his bed and started thinking about ways to escape. Although his life at the training camp was good and people of the Purple Crow organization liked him, Lin Huang did not like the way they operate. It was impossible for him to be a part of such an organization. "Scarface must be watching me now. As soon as I use the transformation card, he will notice that my vibe disappeared. Theres no way that I can escape" "Also, there are no blind spots in the entire foothold since there are cameras all around. We dont even have the privacy when we use the toilets and when we shower. Were being watched 24 hours a day. They were even monitor birds in the training space" "It seems like there are only two ways to escape. One is to become a reserve member of the Purple Crow and be taken away by the staff. Another way is with my dead body being sent out of the foothold" "Which means, to escape this place, the only possible way is to fake my death!" Lin Huang concluded. "However, I must know where they will send my dead body to and how they will handle my corpse. If something goes wrong, I might then be dead, for real" After some thought, Lin Huang started to plan his escape. He walked out of his room and looked at the courtyard from the balcony. Gong Sunyings dead body was no longer there. He smirked and walked into the room next door. He knocked on the metal door, "Do you know which room is Fang Wen staying in?" he asked his neighbor. 136 Fang Wens Information Fang Wen stayed in Room 1801 in the building across. Lin Huang got to his room number easily. Although they were supposed to be training now, as long as they did not enter the training tower, they were allowed to move around within the residential area but they were not allowed to leave. Although the dormitory did not have an elevator, it was still a breeze for Lin Huang to get up to the 18th floor. As he walked on the corridor, he noticed that Fang Wens door was opened. "Luckily hes here." Just when Lin Huang was making his way to his room, he hears a woman''s voice. Not one, but two voices. Lin Huang did not expect that Fang Wen would do something so inappropriate. "Who is that?!" Somebody shouted from the room. Fang Wen walked out with a white robe. It was awkward but Lin Huang turned around and waved at him, "Oh, good morning" "Lin Huang?" Fang Wen did not expect him to come but he wanted to talk to him so he said, "Give me a minute, let me clean up." "Its alright, you seem busy. I''ll come by tomorrow." Lin Huang knew he was interrupting the fun. "Its alright, I can have that anytime I want. Youre more important, just give me two to three minutes." Fang Wen then returned to his room. A moment later, two tall ladies sprinted out from his room with their pajamas and left. Fang Wen dressed up appropriately and nodded to Lin Huang, "You can come in now." Lin Huang was stunned by the size and decor of the room, "Your room is so big and luxurious!" "I renovated it myself. If you wanted it, I believe the manager would do the same for you." Fang Wen knew very well that Lin Huang must have even someone even stronger supporting him from the shadows. "That wont be necessary; I wont be staying here for long you see." Lin Huang shook his head and followed Fang Wen into his room. There was a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom and a kitchen in Fang Wens room. The four partitions took up the space of ten regular sized rooms. It was at least ten times bigger than Lin Huangs room and there was still a feminine scent lingering in the living room. However, it was really clean. At least Lin Huang could not see anything that was messy or dirty. "Come, come, have a seat." Fang Wen said, pointing at the couch. Lin Huang hesitated as he was not sure if the couch was where Fang Wen had intercourse earlier. "Dont worry, I didnt do it on the couch today. I have done that before but I would always get someone to clean the covers." Fang Wen explained. Lin Huang shook his head while he got himself a chair. Fang Wen did not say anything as proceeded to sit on the couch. He smiled at Lin Huang, "Bro Lin Huang, is there anything that I could do to help you?" "This is what happened. I realized that I have lost one of my storage rings this morning. I couldnt find it anywhere in my room. I thought about it and figured I must have lost it in Gong Sunyings clothes when I was searching his dead body yesterday. However, his dead body is gone now. I know you must know more than I do, so I''d like to know how they handled his corpse? Is there any way that I could get my ring back?" "I think its a difficult task. Is there anything valuable in the ring?" Fang Wen bought Lin Huangs lie. "Theres nothing valuable, just some equipment and Life Crystals. However, it was a gift from a girl. This would upset her." What Lin Huang said was not a complete lie because the ring was indeed given by Leng Yuexin. "Ahh... Its a gift of love" Fang Wen teased. "Is there any way to get it back?" Lin Huang continued to ask. He did not want to give too much information. "I dont think so, I bet you have no idea how they handle dead bodies here." Fang Wen then explained the process to Lin Huang patiently. "If someone died in the training camp, a truck would pick up the dead body on the day itself and toss it from the cliff outside the camp and monsters will feed on it. This area is practically a graveyard. Since Gong Sunyings body was collected yesterday, your ring was either taken by the staff or its already in the monsters stomach, bro. Either way, its impossible to retrieve it." "If the girl who gave you the ring is really important, I have an idea for you. Once you get out, get a ring that looks exactly the same, possibly with the same amount of storage space. She wont know the difference." Fang Wen said to Lin Huang. "Thats a great idea." Lin Huang nodded. Fang Wen knew so much more than the rest, he even knew the exact location of the training camp. He had gotten the most important information from Fang Wen, which was how the camp handled corpses. "Its a pity that Gong Sunying doesnt have a proper grave." Fang Wen sighed, "If he had the same background as we did, at least his body would not be thrown away like a piece of trash." Lin Huang was stunned, he then asked, "Would the treatment be different if the background is different?" "Of course. Those who come with a good background would have their dead body kept for their family to collect. The camp doesnt want to offend anyone, keeping the dead body is for the family or person-in-charge to do as they wish, probably an autopsy to find out the real reason of death if thats what they want." Lin Huang was concerned after hearing Fang Wens explanation. "Whats wrong, you dont look too good." Fang Wen noticed Lin Huangs became fidgety. "I ate something cold this morning, my stomach doesnt feel too well. I need to go back now." Lin Huang lied. "If you cannot hold it, you can use my bathroom here." Fang Wen was generous. "Its alright, I will go back to my room." Lin Huang bid him farewell. Lin Huang was frowning all the way back from Fang Wens room. If he faked his death, he could successfully leave the camp. However, Scarface would definitely keep his dead body and inform Hong Zhuang. Even if he managed to escape before Hong Zhuangs return, she would know that he faked his death if there was no body. By then, the trouble would be even more serious. That was not what he wanted, he wanted to disappear and leave no trace behind. "What should I do?" Lin Huang squatted on the toilet bowl and mumbled to himself. Since he told Fang Wen that his stomach was not well, he had to continue his act or Scarface man might find out that he was up to something. After half an hour, Lin Huang could not think of anything. However, he recalled that he had yet to accumulate the 10 cross-ranking rewards. "I shall get the 10 bronze-level cross-ranking reward cards and hopefully I can get something that could help me escape" After cleaning himself, he then pressed the flush button and put his pants on. He headed to the training tower. He entered a vacant door on the sixth floor. This time, he did not summon Bai. Instead, he took out his bronze-level battle sword and started killing the monsters. An hour later, two circles of Life Power were consumed. He then left the training room and proceeded to the seventh floor. There were silver-level rank-1 monsters on the seventh floor, it was his first time on this floor. He chose a vacant room and summoned Bai. "Xiao Hei, disconnect my Life Wheel from Bais temporarily." "Life Wheel has been disconnected." When his Life Wheel was disconnected, Lin Huang could not obtain Life Power from Bai. It was what he wanted. He consumed his Life Power on the sixth floor on purpose to prevent himself from having his Life Power getting filled and the Life Light Baptism from happening. After all, he had just broken through bronze-level rank-3 not long ago and the Life Power in his body was not stable yet. If he were to receive the Life Light Baptism under such conditions, his Life Power might go haywire and possibly break his Life Wheel or cause death. "Bai, block the other monsters. Give me two at once." Lin Huang instructed Bai. Since he was a bronze-level rank-3, he could handle silver-level rank-1 monsters. However, there were too many monsters here. If they were to attack all at once, he would have to run away. That was why he had Bai control the number of monsters he would fight. Bai nodded and extended his Blood Power wings. Standing right in front of Lin Huang, a pair of wings were transformed into an arena that measured 50 meters by 50 meters while the other wings were transformed into two long vines to tie up two monsters. He then tossed the two monsters into the arena that Lin Huang was in. "Great job!" Lin Huang did not expect Bai to create an arena just for him, he gave Bai a thumbs up. The ring on this right middle finger was then transformed into a bronze-level battle sword. He lifted the sword and plunged towards the two monsters 137 Obtaining Cross-Ranking Rewards Again! A sword glow flashed in the air, there was a stream of blood beneath the silver-level rank-1 Giant Horned Rhino''s neck. At first, the flowing blood was as thin as a strand of hair but soon, it gushed out like a waterfall when the wound tore open. The Giant Horned Rhino fell to the ground and dust filled the air. "10th monster" Lin Huang sheathed his sword in the scabbard and stood nearby the monster. "You have completed a cross-ranking kill, you are rewarded with a Deception Card x1!" "You have completed a cross-ranking kill, you are rewarded with a Mission Card x1! "10 cross-ranking rewards and 20 reward cards" Lin Huang spent less than five minutes to complete 10 cross-ranking kills. With the Double Card, he had received 20 reward cards. After obtaining all the reward cards, he did not leave the training room immediately. Instead, he got Bai to kill the silver-level rank-1 monsters with him until the effects of the Double Card ran out after one hour. He managed to accumulate more than 600 silver-level monster card pieces. It was 11 a.m. when he left the training tower. As it was the training period, there was nowhere else that he could go so he headed back to his room. Lying on the bed, Lin Huang took out the modified CopperSparrow23 from his storage. While checking out the gun, he secretly contacted Xiao Hei. "Xiao Hei, take a look at the 20 cross-ranking reward cards that I just got." "You have obtained cross-ranking reward cards as follows: Skill Combination Card x1, Seal Card x1, Deception Card x1, Advance Card x2, Life Power Storage Card x2, Double Card x2, Healing Card x2, Provisional Transformation Card x2, Mission Card x3, Item Card x4." Lin Huang took a look at the new cards that he had never seen before. "Skill Combination Card" "Function: User can combine skills of the same type with a chance of upgrading it to a higher level." "Remarks: Consumable, each card can only be used once." "I can use this since my monster skills are full. By combining my skills, I''ll have empty slots for other skills." Lin Huang had his monster skill slots filled for quite some time now, the only way to obtain more monster skills was to either combine them or delete them. He had been hoping to get this Skill Combination Card for a long time now. "Seal Card" "Function: User can seal a monster within the user''s mastery level and transform it into a Monster Card." "Remarks: The sealed monster has to be within the users field of vision. Monsters with a rarity beyond the users mastery cant be sealed. Consumable, each card can only be used once." "Xiao Hei, I can seal a monster into a monster card directly?" Lin Huang wanted to be sure. "Yes." "I should be able to seal an epic-level monster, am I right? Does that mean I can seal any epic-level monsters with no limit to its combat strength?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "What if I encounter a demigod?" "Theres no limit to the monsters combat strength, theres only limit to its rarity. As long as its rarity is within the users mastery, a demigod-level could be sealed as well. However, the combat strength of the sealed monster depends on the combat strength of the user." Lin Huang smirked as Xiao Hei explained. This card was too good to be true. He put the card down and looked at the last card that he was unfamiliar with. "Deception Card" "Function: After this card has been activated, the user can create a fake incident trick everyone into believing the user." "Warning: The success rate is not 100%, it depends on the credibility of the fake incident." "Tips: Increase the credibility of the fake incident by linking it to a real-life event." "Remarks: The user can set the activation time and affected area for this card." Lin Huang thought he could totally use this card to escape from the camp but he was not sure of the exact effect it could cause. He proceeded to ask many questions regarding the card. A few moments later, Xiao Hei concluded in two sentences. "Put simply, this card allows you to become a temporary film director and you get to direct whatever it is that''s on your mind that you want people to believe as the truth. The quality and credibility of the film depend on you." Xiao Hei''s conclusion gave Lin Huang a solid idea of the function of the card. "It seems like Ill have to plan how I want my film to be" After checking out the three cards he was unfamiliar with, he looked at the remaining cards and the three extra mission cards. He frowned. "Activated two Life Power Storage Cards." Lin Huang activated the Life Power Storage Cards without hesitation. "Life Power Storage Cards activated." Soon, there were two additional Life Wheels added to Lin Huangs body. However, the columns were empty, without any Life Power in them. Later on, he looked at the Skill Combination Cards that he had never seen before. After some thought, he instructed Xiao Hei again. "Activate Skill Combination Card!" "Skill Combination Card activated" "Choose from the below four combinations." "1. Combine Sword Skills: Great Sword Scripture, Thunder Sword, Mountain Blade" "2. Combine Movement Skills: Spectral Snowsteps, Cloud Steps" "3. Combine Vision Skills: Magic Eye Deterrence, Boundless Vision, Third Eye" "4. Combine Disguise Skills: Supreme Breath, Form Changer" "Please choose one." "Combine Supreme Breath and Form Changer." What Lin Huang needed the most now was disguising skills, he chose the fourth one without hesitation. "Skill Combination Card activated. Monster skills Supreme Breath and Form Changer have been combined. New skill card is progress" "Congratulations! You have obtained new skill card - Advanced Disguise" "Advanced Disguise: By using this skill, you can alter your features, body and even aura. You could even deceive a transcendent within a certain distance." "Remarks: You can''t disguise yourself as anything that is not in human form." "This is exactly what I need." Lin Huang was satisfied with what he had obtained. Although he could not alter his human form, altering his aura was what he needed. "Take a look at all my other cards that are not Monster Cards." Lin Huang instructed Xiao Hei again. "You have a total of 30 cards: Seal Card x1, Deception Card x1, Small Destruction Card x1, Flawless Card x2, Treasure Card x3, Advance Card x3, Double Card x3, Mission Card x3, Healing Card x4, Item Card x4, Provisional Transformation Card x5." Lin Huang stared at the Advance Card. "Xiao Hei, can I use the Advance Card to upgrade my Substitute Life Seed into the secret skill, Scapegoat?" "No, you can only upgrade to a higher level Life Seed." "What is the effect of the upgrade?" "The first upgrade will be an enhanced Substitute Life Seed and it would increase the number of times you can use the skill each day from three to nine times." "The second upgrade will be Cheating Death Life Seed, it allows you to cheat death one time." "Upgrade my Substitute Life Seed twice!" Lin Huang did not hesitate at all. "Consuming three Advance Cards." "Upgrading Substitute Life Seed twice Congratulations, you have received a new Life Seed card - Cheating Death Life Seed." "Life Seed Name: Cheating Death." "Talent Effect: You can cheat death one time in the form of a faux body (Effects you can be saved from includes but is not limited to curses, mind-control, and death). You can only use it once a year." "Acquisition Method: Unknown" "This card is too good to be true. Not only can it cheat death from a physical attack, it can also save him from other unfortunate events" Lin Huangs jaw dropped when he saw the new Life Seed that he had just obtained. "The only downside is that I can only use it once a year" Although he was not happy with the frequency he can use Cheating Death, he was satisfied with the card. "Since I have the ability to fake my own death now, its time to rewrite the script. What story do I tell to make it more credible?" Lin Huang thought to himself. 138 Chain Mission Lin Huang was in his room for the entire day to plan his escape. When it was five in the evening, Xiao Mo returned with dinner. Although was wounded, he looked happy. "Boss Lin, heres your dinner." He said loudly once he got into the room. Lin Huang did not know if Xiao Mo was younger or older than him. However, according to his age on earth, it was inappropriate for Xiao Mo to address him as uncle. He did not want to correct Xiao Mo. Lin Huang got up from his bed and had his dinner. He then asked, "Do you know which room Li Li stays in?" "Hes staying on the 18th floor, Room 1803." Xiao Mo nodded, "Are you looking for him?" "He has good sword skills, I thought of dropping by for a chat with him after dinner." Lin Huang nodded, "How have you been today?" "I chose my Life Seed and submitted it to the management. They said they would send my Life Seed monster in a couple of days and they also told me to prepare myself." No wonder Xiao Mo was in a good mood, he was ready for his breakthrough. "Thats great, which Life Seed did you choose?" Lin Huang was curious. "Since I dont have enough strength, I chose the robust Life Seed." Xiao Mo scratched his head. "Its good to choose what suits you the best. Do not care about what others say." Lin Huang nodded. With Xiao Mos ability, it was not easy for him to kill the Life Seed monster so it was not practical for him to get a Life Seed that was beyond his control. After dinner, Lin Huang headed to the 18th floor. Li Lis room was 1803 but 1801 and 1802 were vacant. Li Li was having dinner when Lin Huang arrived at his door, he was alone in the room. He was stunned to see Lin Huang, he then waved at him, "Come in." "Why did you decide to skip two rooms and stay in 1803 instead?" Lin Huang smiled and asked as he walked into his room." "I was the third one who moved into this floor when the other two left, I was too lazy to move." Li Li explained in all seriousness. "Is that so" "Is there anything that I can help you with?" Li Li put down his chopsticks. "Nothing important, we can talk after you are done eating." Lin Huang shook his head. "I can eat anytime, do tell." Li Li kept his bento box. "I checked out the sword skill you gave me this afternoon and I have to admit its pretty good. I would like some advice as to how you obtained it?" "I am glad to hear that. I was worried that you may not like it." Li Li then began to tell the story of how he obtained the sword skill. "I love this sword very much and I had trained with it for two to three years. Wildfire Sword was a gift from my father when I was 14. He said that if I could master the skill in half a year, I would be able to master all the sword skills. If I failed, it would mean that I am mediocre in my sword skills and I should not waste my time trying. Half a year later, I failed to master the skill. Knowing that Im not gifted enough, I listened to what my father said and started to train in the gun skills of my family and that was the last time I ever used a sword" Lin Huang was shocked because it was obvious that Li Li was cheated by his father. After some research, Lin Huang noticed that Wildfire Sword was as difficult than the first chapter of the Great Sword Scripture. Even if a person was gifted with the sword, it was quite impossible to master it within half a year. Li Lis father must have known that but Li Li was too young to understand so he thought he really was not gifted with swords. However, Lin Huang did not want to interfere in their family affairs so he kept quiet. "I see that the sword skill was created by a sword master 300 years ago by combining a variety of sword skills. Do you happen to know who the master is? I thought maybe I could speak to him on the techniques." Lin Huang revealed why he asked the question. "I have no idea but I could ask my father once I get out, he might know." Li Li shook his head, he had no idea who was the founder of the sword skill as well. "Its okay if we cant find out, Ill just spend more time to master the skill." Lin Huang laughed, "Oh yeah, how long until you get to the 100th day?" "63 days more and I should rank on first three." Li Li was confident with himself. He had accumulated more than 500,000 points than the person who ranked fourth. It would not be easy for the person to catch up. "I still have more than 70 days before someone comes for me" Lin Huang revealed his situation. "You have a good background so you dont have to worry about your ranking. Its a different story for us because we have to follow the rule." Li Li laughed. "Im just thinking that the person who is coming for me would take a couple of days to arrive here from the headquarters so I might need to wait another 80 days" Lin Huang silently thought to himself. "That wont happen. They have a designated person in each division, they will arrive within seconds. Even if theres a delay from the division to the training camp, it would only take a couple of minutes." Li Li smiled as he explained. Lin Huang smirked, this was what he wanted to hear from Li Li. He beat around the bush just to find out how long Hong Zhuang would take to arrive at the training camp from the headquarters. Now that he got what he wanted, he proceeded to make some small talk with Li Li before leaving. He felt his plan was getting more and more concrete. "If I fake my death, Scarface would definitely inform Hong Zhuang. If Hong Zhuang was not busy at the moment, she would be here within minutes. Since the traffic isnt too bad from the headquarter to Division7, she would still take a couple of minutes to come here. So, the possibility of her picking up my dead body on the day itself is pretty high If that came true, I would not have to worry about the time limit of the Deception Card." Lin Huang had checked with Xiao Hei earlier and found out that the time limit for the Deception Card was one month. That was the reason why he visited Li Li to ask how long it would take from the headquarter to the training camp. If the journey took one month, when Hong Zhuang arrives, the effect of the Deception CArd would disappear. After he got a rough idea of the escape plan, Lin Huang planned to make it more concrete by adding more details to his ultimate plan. He spent most of his time sleeping. However, his behavior upset Scarface. Finally, one fine afternoon, the man spoke from the loudspeaker. "Lin Huang, come to my office now!" Lin Huang thought that it was ridiculous that the man requested to see him. Everyone in the training camp thought it was strange too, it was the first time the manager requested for someone to see him. "He really does have an outstanding background" Many of the participants thought. Lin Huang then headed to the training tower, a man in black uniform had been waiting for him at the bottom of the tower. "Follow me." Lin Huang followed him into the elevator and arrived at the top floor of the training tower. Arriving at the huge office, the man had his feet on the table with a cigar in his mouth. Lin Huang walked towards him. "Master, are you looking for me?" "You slept for the entire day? Your ranking dropped to third, you are now behind Li Li." The man put down his cigar and stared at Lin Huang with crossed arms. "The points are useless, I would rather let someone rank higher." Lin Huang said. "Why cant you change your mindset to get to the top instead? Hong Zhuang would be proud of you if that happens." The man advised him. Just when Lin Huang wanted to say Hong Zhuang would not mind the ranking, a notification box popped up before him. "Chain Mission activated due to special circumstances." "Chain Mission 1: Rank #1 on the Purple Crow training camp leaderboard and maintain for three days. Mission Time Limit: 7 days." "Chain Mission 2: After the first mission is completed, escape the training camp without anyone noticing. Mission Time Limit: 3 days." "Mission Reward: Advance Card x2" "If you fail the mission, one Skill Card and one Monster Card will be taken away." "The mission will fail if you only manage to complete one mission. There would not be a reward but a punishment instead." "Alright then, I shall get to the top." "Thats right, young people should have that attitude! You know that you have the ability but you dont do it, wouldnt it be a shame to let your talent go to waste?" The man was happy to hear what Lin Huang said. "Is there anything else, master?" Lin Huang asked. "That would be all, you can leave now. Its just that you have been sleeping these few days, I didnt want you to get left behind, thats why I called you here. Now that you understand what I want for you, you can leave." The man continued smoking his cigar as he gestured for Lin Huang to leave. "I shall make a move then." Lin Huang then turned around and headed to the elevator 139 Deception Card - Activated! The first chain mission was to rank first on the leaderboard within seven days and to maintain the ranking for three days. That being said, Lin Huang was only left with four days to achieve that. Lin Huang frowned when he realized that he was 1.3 million points away from Fang Wen who ranked the first and more than 500,000 points away from Li Li who ranked the third. After he arrived on the first floor by elevator, he then walked all the way up to the 10th floor of the training tower. There were gold-level rank-1 monsters on the 10th floor. Scarface noticed that Lin Huang was getting serious about his ranking. Most of the doors on this floor were vacant and so Lin Huang randomly picked one and entered. After summoning Bai, Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei to disconnect his Life Wheel with Bai immediately. As Bais four Blood Power wings were opened, he entered his battle mode. Every slash would decapitate a monster''s head. Although he was only white silver-level rank-3, the gold-level rank-1 monsters were nothing to him. After five hours in the tower, it was already five in the evening. Lin Huang had obtained almost one million points. He had surpassed Li Li and was only 400,000 points away from Fang Wen. He then left the tower, had dinner and entered the tower again when it was seven at night. He stayed until 10 p.m. and managed to obtain 600,000 points within three hours and surpassed Fang Wen. He was now top-ranked on the leaderboard. However, his points were merely 100,000 more than Fang Wen. Nevertheless, the news soon caught the peoples attention. Lin Huangs points were stagnant for many days but now, because it had skyrocketed, people guessed it was due to the manager. "Maybe the manager gave Lin Huang something in return so that he would do what he asked?" There were many speculations among the people. Even Fang Wen was skeptical as he knew from Lin Huang that he did not care about his ranking. However, he started to think that it was related to the manager who asked for him in the afternoon. When Lin Huang arrived in his room, Xiao Mo looked at him in admiration, "Boss Lin, youre now No.1." "Yup," Lin Huang nodded, "I will have to head to the training tower again tomorrow to maintain my ranking." Lin Huang slept early that night. The next morning, he headed straight to the training tower right after breakfast. He bumped into Fang Wen while he was on his way, Fang Wen called out his name from far. "Lin Huang, you have been extra hardworking these two days." "Yea, same goes for you." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. "Did the manager say something to you?" Fang Wen walked closer and lowered his voice. "I think so." Lin Huang nodded. Since everyone was speculating, that would be the most reasonable excuse he had. Fang Wen did not ask further. Now that Lin Huang wanted to be the first, he would have to give in as nobody could beat him in the training camp. On the next day, Lin Huang spent all his time at the training tower. He spent 11 hours and gained 2.2 million points, he was now far away from Fang Wen; about two million points ahead of Fang Wen who was ranked second. He had now gotten himself a new nickname in the training camp - Point Accumulation Maniac. On the third day, he managed to obtain another two million points. On the fourth afternoon, a notification from the first accomplished mission popped up. "Chain Mission 1: Rank first on the Purple Crow training camp leaderboard and maintain the rank for three days. (Completed)" "Chain Mission 2: After the first mission is completed, escape the training camp without anyone noticing. Mission Time Limit: 3 days. The countdown has begun" Lin Huang did not stop killing monsters. He stayed in the training tower until 5:30 p.m. and obtained another 1.6 million points. He then left the training tower. After dinner, Lin Huang headed to the point redemption counter and redeemed a modified gold-level equipment called the GoldEagle11 for 7.2 million points with his 7.5 million points. He then went back to the training tower after that. This time, he went to the sixth floor instead of the 10th floor. On the sixth floor, he began training Wildfire Sword. Whenever monsters approached him, he would use his other sword skills to kill them before he continued training Wildfire Sword and because of the occasional monster attacks, he noticed that he obtained skills card pieces much quicker. Lin Huang was quite gifted in the sword department and had managed to master quite a few styles. He could even kill one or two monsters with Wildfire Sword. After three hours, it was already 10 at night. Lin Huang managed to accumulate 11 skill card pieces. As the training period had ended, Lin Huang headed back to the residential area, took a shower and headed to his room. He lay on his bed and thought to himself, "Two and a half days more" On the next morning, he headed to the sixth floor of the training tower to train Wildfire Sword. Although he still did not manage to master it, after a day of practice, he was close to mastering Wildfire Sword. At night, he chatted with Xiao Mo. "Xiao Mo, have you ever thought of what to do when you became a transcendent one day?" "I Have never thought of that It should be difficult to become a transcendent" Xiao Mo was stunned at Lin Huangs question, "Boss Lin, how about you? I think there wouldn''t be a problem for you to become one!" "Being a transcendent isnt my ultimate goal, my goal is to become a demigod. First Ill be a demigod... I''m not sure if I can become a real god one day." Lin Huang revealed his ambitious goal and said immediately, "However, its a difficult path. Perhaps I would die halfway through my journey If I really do die, I dont want my dead body to be left in public for people to gawk at. The best scenario would be burning into ashes, its clean-cut and nothing would be left behind" "Boss Lin please dont say that. You are a good person, you will live long." Xiao Mo said immediately. They chatted until 1 a.m. before heading to bed. On the third day, Lin Huang smirked as he headed out. "Xiao Hei, activate the Deception Card." "Once the Deception is activated, you will have to complete the fake incident within a day. Are you sure you want to activate the card?" Xiao Hei said. "Confirm activation." Lin Huang did not hesitate at all, he was only left with one and a half day before the mission ended. He did not have much time. "Deception Card activated; please complete the fake incident as soon as possible." "Please set the starting point of the fake incident at my moment of death." Lin Huang set the starting point. "Starting point has been set" Lin Huang headed to the training tower. This time, he headed to the seventh floor. There were silver-level rank-1 monsters on the seventh floor. Lin Huang entered a vacant room. This time, he did not summon Bai but instead, killed all the monsters on his own. To Lin Huang who was already bronze-level rank-3, silver-level rank-1 monsters were quite manageable but it was not as relaxed as the sixth floor. No matter speed or strength, silver-level monsters were incomparable with bronze-level rank-3 monsters. However, with Lin Huangs amazing movement, he managed to kill many monsters but it was less efficient. As he stayed in the training room, different varieties of monsters appeared more and more often. Lin Huang leaped and landed on the back of a Giant Horned Rhino and stabbed his sword into its neck. The Giant Horned Rhino fell to the ground in an instant. Suddenly, a grayish-black shadow plunged from his back. It was a Ruinshade Wolf, a monster that was an expert in sneak attacks. Lin Huang did not see it coming, he fell to the ground and it bit the back of his neck. A crack was heard, he knew that his neck was broken. He used his backhand and sliced the Ruinshade Wolf into half as he attempted to stand up. At that moment, the Giant Horned Rhino stomped at him with its front hoofs. Lin Huangs spine and ribs were broken from the stomp, even his organs were mushed up. With one hit, Lin Huang fell to the ground. He was dead A notification came from Xiao Hei. "You are dead, initiating fake incident now" 140 Faking Death It felt like the time stopped in the training room. The Giant Horned Rhino who was stepping on Lin Huangs body froze. Other monsters that were coming to Lin Huang froze too. The monitor bite that was not far away paused in the air. The entire room was frozen. It felt as if someone pushed a pause button. A body appeared nearby Lin Huangs corpse, it was the body would be used to fake Lin Huangs death. "The Ruinshade Wolf came just in time. I thought Id need to lure more monsters to attack me later on, but that one wolf surprised me. It had saved much of my time." Lin Huang did not expect the Ruinshade Wolf to attack him. If he did not fake his death, he could have summoned Bai to save him when his neck was bitten and things would not go this way. However, since he was faking his death, Lin Huang just allowed things to happen. Seconds later, he was dead under the Giant Horned Rhino hoof. "Please create the fake incident." "Now I need to create a fake corpse to replace my corpse and Ill use the Deception Card to make everyone believe that it was my real corpse. I want everyone to know that I died in the training room and never regained consciousness." The replacement corpse will disappear within seconds so Lin Huang needed a prop for his corpse. The Deception Card would follow the story he created and come out with a variety of deceptive items. "The corpse needs be an exact replica of mine. It must also have the same rings I have such as the Emperors Heart ring. The color and size must also be the same. If the Giant Horned Rhino proceeds to attack, let it attack me even more to cause even more damage to my body." "All the items created by the Deception Card would be exactly the same as the real thing until the time limit is exceeded and everything disappears." "Its okay, in one months time, they will lose my equipment rings. With the way Scarface''s is, he will not allow other people to touch my stuff and Hong Zhuang would not want my stuff anyway. I emphasized this just to make sure everything goes well." Lin Huang nodded. "Please select the target to deceive." "That would be all the creatures that saw my corpse. The monitor bird, surveillance cameras, videos taken from the Emperors Heart Ring, mirrors and everything that has a trace of my corpse." "Faking death isnt complicated; all I need is to let people think that Im dead." Lin Huang smirked, "As long as the Purple Crow things that Im dead, they won''t look for me anymore." "Is there anything else?" "I need to cover my tracks from the time I fake my death so that nobody can sense my presence; Hong Zhuang and other hunters included." Lin Huang added. "Items and effects in progress" "Items have been created" Lin Huang used a Provisional Transformation Card and transformed himself into the Specter. He dove underground. Now that his aura was wiped away, nobody would know that he was hiding under the corpse in the form of Specter. Soon, a notification popped up. "Deception Card will be effective for one month. "Time will resume, inserting fake incident now" Frozen time returned to normal in the training room. The monitor bird flapped its wings and captured Lin Huangs death. Soon, Scarface saw the video clip. He was shocked because he had been watching Lin Huang these days and felt puzzled when he did not summon Bai on the seventh floor. He did not expect this to happen at all. The Ruinshade Wolf came out of nowhere and plunged onto Lin Huang. Lin Huang fell to the ground and it seemed like he broke his neck. Although he managed to kill the Ruinshade Wolf, a Giant Horned Rhino came and stomped on him. Lin Huang did not die on the first stomp but he stopped moving completely after a few stomps and in the end, his body was deformed. The man rushed to the seventh floor and found the training room Lin Huang was in. He forced the door to open and found Lin Huangs corpse in an instant. He clapped once and all the monsters that were present died on the spot. Lin Huang saw him and immediately entered the corpse in his spectral form. He needed to follow the fake corpse or the room would still show that there were people in the training room. The man flipped Lin Huang around. His body was deformed by the stomping of the Giant Horned Rhino. All of his bones were crushed and his organs were destroyed. "How did this happen?!" The man could not believe what he was seeing although Lin Huangs body was right in front of him and he saw what exactly happened in the video clip. After some investigating, the man figured out how Lin Huang died. After some thought, he picked up Lin Huangs body and ran out of the training room. He headed back to his office and placed Lin Huangs body on the ground as he called someone. Lin Huang left the body and dove into the ground while watching the story unfold. "Get me a coffin and send it to my office." The man said directly after the phone was picked up. "Do you mean a coffin for a corpse?" The person who picked up the phone thought it was a mistake. "If a coffin is not for a corpse, what would it be used for?!" The man was already angry and upon hearing the person asking something stupid, he shouted at the person. "I I understand, Ill send it right away!" The staff dared not ask further. The man took a deep breath and looked at Lin Huangs corpse, he was frowning. Six minutes later, the man in sunglasses who was responsible for public executions came into the office. He was shocked to see Lin Huangs corpse. "Put him in the coffin." The man said. The man in sunglasses did not ask any further as he put Lin Huangs corpse into the coffin carefully. Just as he was attempting to cover the coffin, he was stopped by the man. "Its alright, you can leave now." The man in sunglasses nodded and left. The man then called another number. After two rings, the video call was connected. "Why are you calling me? Did something happen?" It was the middle-aged transcendent Lu Xuan in the video call. "Something happened to the kid that you sent." The man looked at Lu Xuan in all seriousness. "Its alright if its something small as long as you dont kill him." Lu Xuan waved his hand. He thought Lin Huang broke the rules in the training camp. "The kid is dead" The man said helplessly. "What?!" Lu Xuans eyes were opened wide, "What happened?" The man then told him the story, "Theres nothing that I can do, everything happened too fast. When I went to him after seeing the video clip, he was already dead" "I already told you that you need to watch after him and now hes dead under your watch Its not that you dont know about Master Hong Zhuangs temper, were in big trouble now." Lu Xuan did not know what to do. "What should we do, we cant cheat our way out." The man was in a pickle. "We cant hide this from her, we must let her know immediately. If she found out that we hid the truth from her, the consequences would be worse." Lu Xuan said, "I''ll inform her now. You try to get someone who is more powerful than Lin Huang from the camp and recommend it to Master Hong Zhuang." "More powerful than Lin Huang? I dont think theres anyone in the entire Division7 training camp that could be more powerful than him." The man said, "You didn''t know that the kid was an Imperial Censor, am I right? He even had a vampire that went through two mutations" "No wonder Master Hong Zhuang recommended him" Lu Xuan finally got some context. "Stop talking nonsense, what should we do now!" The man did not know what to do. "We can only tell her the truth. I''ll inform her and get her to see the corpse. You get the video clip from the camera so that you can show her when she comes by." Lu Xuan thought that was the only way. "Its our fault, after all... We''ll have to bear her temper" 141 Handling The Corpse Hong Zhuang did not believe that Lin Huang was dead when she first heard the news from Lu Xuan. She thought that Lin Huang would escape the training camp instead of dying. She soon realized that Lu Xuan was not joking. "Are you sure that Lin Huang is dead?" Hong Zhuang frowned. "I confirmed this with Scarface." Lu Xuan explained. "Im coming over now." Hong Zhuang hung up the phone. Soon, a black metal door appeared in Lu Xuans room. It was opened and a lady in black coat walked in, there was a red Purple Crow logo on the left side of her collar. Hong Zhuang kept the door and said to Lu Xuan, "Bring me there." Lu Xuan nodded and summoned a red wooden door. The duo stepped in and entered Scarfaces office. The first thing they saw was the coffin that made of gold velvet wood. Hong Zhuang she did not even look at Scarface and asked directly, "How did he die?" Scarface told her the story and showed her the video clip in the training room. Hong Zhuang frowned and kept quiet after she saw the video clip. She then looked at Lu Xuan, "Bring out the dead body." "Put it there." Hong Zhuang pointed at Scarfaces desk. Scarface did not dare to disagree and nodded, "Yes, put it here. The table is big." Lu Xuan placed Lin Huangs body on the table. Hong Zhuang then walked over and said, "Flip him over so that his back is facing upwards." Lu Xuan then flipped Lin Huangs body. Hong Zhuang took a good look. "Theres a bite wound by a Ruinshade Wolf. His neck is broken, probably from the wolfs attack. What caused his death, however, was the Giant Horned Rhino''s stomps, his organs are all destroyed. From the corpse, it seems to match what the video showed us" She mumbled to herself as she analyzed his body. Hong Zhuang was still frowning after she checked Lin Huangs dead body. Although everything matched the video clip, her instincts told her that whatever event had transpired was not as simple as this. "Have you done a DNA test?" Hong Zhuang asked Scarface. "A DNA test? No." Scarface shook his head, "I was the one who brought him here and theres video proof as well so there shouldn''t be any mistakes?" "Get someone to run a DNA test now." Lu Xuan was clearly annoyed when she patted Scarfaces shoulder. He called a staff immediately to run a blood test. Minutes later, a lady in doctor attire came in." "Run a DNA test for the corpse and compare it with Lin Huangs DNA." Hong Zhuang said to the doctor without even looking at Scarface. "Do it right now!" Scarface shouted. The doctor then took a sample from Lin Huangs dead body. Five to six minutes later, the result showed that the dead bodys DNA matched Lin Huangs DNA. "Its the same person." Scarface and Lu Xuan then looked at Hong Zhuang in disbelief, "How could this happen" "You can leave now." Scarface lowered his voice as he spoke. "Master Hong Zhuang, Lin Huang had great potential but since he was fated to die, there was nothing that he could do to escape." Lu Xuan spoke. "He had the opportunity to summon his monster. He wouldnt die if he summoned the vampire. Why didnt he?" Hong Zhuang shook her head. She still thought that there was a missing piece somewhere in this puzzle. "Under normal circumstance, the first thing people do when theyre attacked is either to avoid or to attack back. He probably didnt see that coming. He probably reacted based on instinct. With his limited battle experience, he wouldnt have thought of what we would have done instead." Lu Xuan explained. "Perhaps after he attacked the Ruinshade Wolf, he wanted to summon the vampire to protect him but the Giant Horned Rhino was too fast. That was why he did not have the time to summon the vampire." Scarface speculated. Hong Zhuang opened up after they both spoke their minds, "Thats true, I cannot expect a 15-year-old kid to have the same experience that I do I overestimated him Too bad, he had such great potential. Such a waste for the vampire that went through two mutations too" Summons for an Imperial Censor existed in a separate dimension when they''re not summoned. When an Imperial Censor dies, the separate dimension would collapse and all their summons would die. If the monster was summoned, it would be freed as a wild monster upon the Imperial Censor''s death. That was the reason why Hong Zhuang thought it was such a waste; she had her eyes on the vampire since they first met. "Master Hong Zhuang, would you like to bring his corpse with you or " Scarface asked. " Hes dead now, why would I want his corpse?" Hong Zhuang glared deadly at Scarface and Lu Xuan, "All I asked was that the both of you to look after this kid for three months, was that too much to ask? Now that hes dead, how dare you ask me whether I intend on bringing him along with me?!" "Master Hong Zhuang, its our fault that this happened. We did not complete the mission that you requested. It''s your right to punish us." Lu Xuan and Scarface had planned to apologize to Hong Zhuang. "Stop that, dont you think I have no idea what the both of you are up to." Hong Zhuang was cold as she replied in anger, "Its impossible that I would let this incident go just like that!" "However, there is a way you two can redeem yourselves." Hong Zhuang said as she licked her lips. "We''ll do our best!" Although the both of them knew that Hong Zhuangs request would not be easy, they did not want to owe this lady anything. "Find an Imperial Censor who owns a monster that has mutated twice within a year; the person cannot be above 18-years-old and if you do manage to find one, I''ll pretend this incident never happened. However, if you fail again, you know very well that I hold grudges." Hong Zhuang grinned. The both of them were in trouble. There were very few Imperial Censors in the first place and it was almost impossible to find an Imperial Censor who owns a monster that mutated twice and was below 18 years of age. Both of them had lived for 100 years and they have only encountered a person like Lin Huang this one time. To top it off, the mission had to be completed within a year. It was mission impossible. However, they did not reject her request but nodded in agreement, "We''ll try our best to complete the mission!" After sending Hong Zhuang off, the both of them looked at each other. "What should we do? Where can we find an Imperial Censor who is like Lin Huang within a year?" Scarface looked helplessly at Lu Xuan. "Whats the rush, at least we have a buffer period of one year. She''ll leave us alone for now." "What can one year do? Do you think you can be upgraded to an elite member within a year or do you plan to hide somewhere?" Scarface said sarcastically to Lu Xuan. "If I could become an elite member, I wouldn''t be scared of her. Dont even think about escape. The consequences would be far worse if she found me." Lu Xuan shook his head. "At least we get to think of a way within the one year. If you have someone good here, you can send him over to her. Maybe she wont be mad anymore but it does not necessarily have to be someone like Lin Huang. "Thats true, maybe I should loosen the recruitment criteria for the training camp." Scarface nodded. Lu Xuan left soon after that. Scarface then looked at Lin Huangs body on his table. He walked towards him and stared at his dead body, "Lin Huang oh Lin Huang, please rest in peace. According to the law, we usually tossed corpses down the cliff to feed the monsters. It would be a shame if I treat you like everybody else. Since we know each other, I shall listen to what your roommate asked of me, which is to burn you into ashes so that nobody would see you like this." Scarface heard what Lin Huang said to Xiao Mo the other night. After spending some time to cremate Lin Huangs dead body, he placed his Emperors Heart Ring and equipment rings into the urn. He then delivered the urn to the address in Wulin Town. Later, he spread the news of Lin Huangs death. Everyone in the training camp was shocked by the news 142 Accidental Encounter The conversation between Hong Zhuang, Scarface, and Lu Xuan, what Scarface did to his dead body, Lin Huang heard and saw everything. He did not expect Scarface to be so kind to cremate Lin Huangs dead body like what Xiao Mo asked. He even sent his ashes back to his home in Wulin Town. However, Lin Huang sensed danger because the Purple Crow now had his personal details. Although the Purple Crow had announced his death, there were still records of his personal details. He could still be discovered. In the training camp, most of the people were happy when they heard about Lin Huangs death. Lin Huang was too powerful and because of that, he took most of the attention and enjoyed the limelight. Most of the people who feared him actually despised him. Lin Huangs ability made them look mediocre. However, there were people who thought it was a shame too. Li Li had always treated Lin Huang a source of motivation. Although he was much older than Lin Huang, he thought that as long as he could catch up to Lin Huang, he would be stronger. The saddest person had to be Xiao Mo, he had been staring into space in his room. Lin Huang was the only person who helped him in the training camp, he even saved his life. Xiao Mo had always been grateful to Lin Huang, he wanted to return the favor when he got out of the camp. However, he could not do that anymore now that Lin Huang is gone. Without Lin Huang as his support, many people who were jealous of Xiao Mo created trouble for him. Many bullies crowded outside of Room 1121. "Xiao Mo, you were having the best time of your time a few days back. Lin Huang is dead, why do you look like your father just died?" "I heard Lin Huang gave you some of his points. I suggest you give us the points so that we leave you alone!" "Xiao Mo, you should accept our challenge, dont force us to start a deathmatch with you!" "What are you guys doing!" Li Li knew Xiao Mo would have a difficult time since Lin Huang left so he dropped by to visit him. He did not expect to see that. The bullies left once they saw Li Li. "Are you alright?" Li Li walked to Xiao Mo and asked. "Im okay." Xiao Mo shook his head and looked at Li Li, "Is Lin Huang really dead?" He still could not believe Lin Huang was gone forever. "Thank you for helping me earlier." Xiao Mo held his head down again as he caressed the bronze-level equipment ring on his left middle finger. Lin Huang gave him a sword equipment ring last night. "How about you stay with me?" Li Li suggested. Xiao Mo looked at him and forced a smile but shook his head, "Thank you, that won''t be necessary." "How about I move in with you." Li Li countered. "Thats not it." Xiao Mo shook his head and smiled, "I''ve promised Boss Lin Huang that I would be stronger once he leaves. Although hes no longer living, I still have to keep my promise." Li Li nodded, patted Xiao Mos shoulder and left. Lin Huang had been wandering around the training camp the entire day, he saw everything. He was touched. Although Purple Crow was an evil organization, not all of the people here were evil. At least Scarface, Li Li, and Xiao Mo were good-hearted. Since the mission time limit was almost over, Lin Huang dove underground and left the camp in his Specter form. "Congratulations, you have completed the chain missions. You''ve been awarded Advance Card x2" Just when Lin Huang was almost out of the training camps coverage, Xiao Hei sent him a notification. "Im finally free!" Lin Huang stretched his back. After leaving the camp hundreds of kilometers behind him, Lin Huang checkout out his coordinates on his Emperors Heart Ring. He realized that he was located in the far west of Division7, it was far away from Baqi City and Wulin Town. "How should I go back now, I shall get to a foothold as a human." Lin Huang left his Specter form and transformed back into a human. He then altered his features, height and changed his clothes, wearing a cloak behind him. He then set his destination, heading to a C-grade mid-sized foothold and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. It was already nighttime when he arrived at foothold No.7C357. After he entered the city, he was thinking of his accommodation as he would have to scan his identity if he was to stay in a hotel. He registered with the Purple Crow before so it might notify the Purple Crow, he did not want to reveal himself like that. "Seems like its time to fake an identity or else there would be many restrictions." Lin Huang frowned. After strolling around in the area, Lin Huang noticed that the foothold was one that was under the Purple Crows jurisdiction. This was not the only foothold as there were more than 10 footholds that the Purple Crow controlled. There was a Hunter Association here but there must be people who were connected to the Purple Crow. With his grayish-black cloak, Lin Huang walked into the Hunter Association, he took out a Life Crystal when he got to the reception. "I need a fake identity." Lin Huang spoke in a deep voice. "Sure, please follow me." The receptionist was a short, middle-aged man who was quite friendly after receiving the Life Crystal. Lin Huang was brought to a cellar which was connected to the bar next door. It was crowded with many drunken men and women. The short, middle-aged man brought Lin Huang into a room. There was a skinny man who looked like he was in his 20s kissing a blonde lady on the couch. "You got a customer!" The short middle-aged man shouted. The man glared at the short, middle-aged man and Lin Huang while he put on his pants. He then lifted the ladys chin, "Hey baby, I have some business to deal with. Ill get back to you." The lady was half naked on the couch, and even though Lin Huang was in the room, she did not cover herself at all. She winked at the man and said, "Dont take too long." "Dont worry, itll be quick." The man spanked the ladys naked butt. After he put on his clothes, the skinny man walked towards the short middle-aged man, "What does he want?" "He needs a black card." The short middle-aged man said, "Deal with him, I need to make a move." The short, middle-aged man then left. "What kind do you need?" The skinny man looked at Lin Huang. "What are the choices?" Lin Huang asked. "The cheapest one will only get you into a hotel. The slightly more expensive ones can get you a ride in the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. The ones which are even more expensive can get through the Hunter Association and Union Government; you can even use it to get a hunter''s license. The most expensive kind can turn you into royalty with all the perks that come along with it. As long as you can afford them, I can get anything for you." The skinny man laughed, "Im using the identity of the member of a royal family, it got me many perks." "I want the one that can get me a hunter''s license." Lin Huang decided after hearing all the available options, "You''re sure you can do it?" "Dont worry, some of the Purple Crow elite members even got their fake identities made here." The obnoxious face the skinny man had made him look like he was not lying. "How much would it cost?" Lin Huang nodded in agreement. "100 pieces of Life Crystals. I accept Life Crystals only, not Life Crystals pieces, not credit points either. Also, no negotiation." The skinny man revealed his price. 100 pieces of Life Crystals were equivalent to 10,000 years of Life Crystal pieces and 10billion credit points. The price was sky-high. "Sure." Lin Huang said without hesitating. "However, I have a question." "Do tell." The skinny man was stunned at how easily Lin Huang agreed to the price. "If a fake identity that allows me to pass through the Union Government cost me100 Life Crystals, then how much would the identity of a member of a royal family cost?" Lin Huang asked. "It depends on which level of royalty you''re talking about. No matter which level, it would cost at least a complete transcendent monster''s carcass." The skinny man laughed. Lin Huang was quiet. "Please take off your cloak. Stand here, I will take a picture of you." The skinny man laid down a white cloth and waved to Lin Huang. Lin Huang took off his cloak and revealed his 25-year-old face. It was his face when he was on earth. The blonde lady on the couch saw Lin Huang and winked at him, "Handsome, join our fun later?" Lin Huang looked at the skinny man in shock. "Im open-minded, if youre willing to, I dont mind." The skinny man shrugged his shoulders. After the photoshoot was done, the skinny man took awhile before getting to Lin Huang. "Create a name for yourself, I will get the machine to generate the other details for you. Only you can see your personal details, I wont be able to see it. That will protect your privacy." "Ye Xiu." Lin Huang gave the name. It was the MC''s name in a web novel that he read once. He loved the novel very much which was why he could remember the name. "Ye Xiu, that''s a good name." The skinny man laughed. After the name was inserted, the details were registered. Within three minutes, a new Emperors Heart Ring was sent to the skinny man via a device. "Its done, take a look." The skinny man passed the ring to Lin Huang. Lin Huang then put on the ring on his left middle finger. After the identity scan was done, Lin Huang took a look at his new identity. He then placed 100 pieces of Life Crystals on the table. "Thanks." Just when he was putting on his cloak, Lin Huang saw a ball under a bench nearby. He was stunned, he used his foot to get the ball out, it looked like a football. "What is this?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "This is called football in my hometown, its considered a toy. I made this myself in memory of my hometown." The skinny man was not surprised at Lin Huangs question. Lin Huang could almost tell who the skinny man really was but he suppressed his excitement and said, "Give me your contact details if I need you again in the future." "Sure!" The skinny man agreed immediately. 143 Daxi City Lin Huang smirked as walked out of the bar where the skinny man was. "Yang Ling" Of course, he knew it was a fake name. Lin Huang traded one billion credit points to his new account with 10 Life Crystals. After getting to know the landing point of the Demonic Crystal Spaceship, Lin Huang then left the plaza where the spaceship was. He arrived at the plaza around 10 at night. He looked around the hotels nearby and found one with a vacant room. He checked himself in immediately. The new Emperors Heart Ring was successfully used, there was no issue in Lin Huangs hotel check-in at all. As he had no idea how to return to Baqi City yet, he booked two nights at the hotel. After entering the hotel room, Lin Huang started to move the things that he used most frequently from the old Emperors Heart Ring to the new one as well as the storage ring that was given by Leng Yuexin. He also copied his contacts into the new ring and kept the old ring. He did not plan to use the hundreds of billions of credit points in his old ring as he was not sure if that would notify the Purple Crow of his whereabouts. He wanted to be careful. It was 1 a.m. when he was done with his stuff, he then went to bed in exhaustion. He woke up after eight the next morning. After breakfast, he returned to his room and started to look at the route back to Baqi City. Foothold No.7C357 was called Daxi City by the locals, it was at the far west of Division7. Meanwhile, Baqi City was located in the middle of Division7 facing the south. To be able to get to Baqi City from Daxi City, he would have to cross half of Division7. "So far away" Lin Huang let out a sigh. As the distance was too far away, the network showed no Demonic Crystal Spaceships that departed from Daxi City to Baqi City. If he were to ride on the spaceship, he would have to change stations twice. The first journey would take more than four months while the second and third would take more than three months each. The entire journey would take at least 11 months. "I cant be doing that. By the time I get back, Lin Xin would have already graduated from school." Lin Huang gave up the plan to ride on the spaceship. After browsing the network for a long time, he finally found a workable route. He would get to foothold No.7A28, a huge foothold which was the closest to foothold No.7C357. From there, he could get to No.7A12, a foothold that was closest to Baqi City through the long-distance intra-dimensional portal. Then from No.7A12, he could get back to Baqi City through the long-distance intra-dimensional portal. It did not matter if the distance was long or short, both could be completed within seconds. The only issue was whether he would be able to use the intra-dimensional portal as one would need to book it one month prior to the travel date. For the long-distance intra-dimensional portal from a C-grade, small-sized foothold to an A-grade, large foothold, it would require him to pre-book his travels anytime from 10 days to half a month prior to the travel date. He then took a look at the long-distance intra-dimensional portal from Daxi City to foothold No.7A28 and the earliest date he could travel was 12 days later and the earliest date he could book the super-long-distance intra-dimensional portal was 33 days later. Lin Huang raised an eyebrow when he saw the price of the tickets. He knew that dimensional portals within C-grade footholds would require at least 10,000 credit points but the price for long-distance intra-dimensional portals was 10 times the price compared to the regular tickets for dimensional portals; costing 680,000 credit points. The tickets for the use of the super-long-distance intra-dimensional portal was even more ridiculous as it was tens of thousands times more than the price of a regular ticket. From foothold No.7A28 to foothold No.7A12, it would cost him 1.6 billion credit points. Lin Huang did not book the ticket because he did not have sufficient credit points in his new Emperors Heart Ring. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang went to the credit bureau and traded 100 Life Crystals for 10 billion credit points. He then headed back to the hotel. He spent 1.6 billion credit points to book all three tickets from Daxi City to foothold No.7A28, from foothold No.7A28 to foothold No.7A12 before the final trip to Baqi City. He finally had a concrete plan. "I will have to stay 12 days in Daxi City, 21 days in foothold No.7A28 and one to two days in foothold No.7A12 before I arrive in Baqi City." Lin Huang looked at the route and thought that was the fastest he could get back to Baqi City but it would still take him more than a month. Daxi City was under Purple Crows jurisdiction, it was an open city with a very flavorful nightlife scene. However, that had nothing to do with Lin Huang. The more powerful the human and monsters he encountered in this world, the more stressed he was. He had always felt like he was too weak in this world, where even the slightest thing could kill him. He did not want to risk his life at all. "Theres a level-2 wild zone nearby, I''ll train my Wildfire Sword skill over there. Although I might not be able to accumulate the complete sword skill in 12 days, thats sufficient for me to accumulate quite a few card pieces." Lin Huang soon made arrangements for what he was going to do for the next 12 days. The level-2 wild zone was less than 20 kilometers to the west of Daxi City. After lunch, Lin Huang headed to the wild zone riding on the Viridian Wolf. After arriving deep in the wild zone and into the area of bronze-level monsters, Lin Huang recalled his Viridian Wolf and started to train his Wildfire Sword skill and whenever monsters saw him, they would plunge towards him but Lin Huang would end them. Within an hour, there were monster carcasses everywhere. However, he did not stop training until it was 10 at night. He collected all the monster carcasses and returned to the city. For the following week, Lin Huang left the city early in the morning and returned late at night to train in his sword skill. He had accumulated more than 400 card pieces but he had yet to combine them into a complete skill card. Whenever Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei, Xiao Hei would tell him that the card pieces were insufficient. Although he had yet to obtain the skill, Lin Huang was familiar with the skill now. It was almost as powerful as Thunder Sword. Since the card pieces were not enough, Lin Huang would have to accumulate the card pieces one by one. He had been killing monsters for a few days and by accumulating card pieces in the training tower, he now had seven monster card pieces that could be combined into complete cards. However, he chose not to combine them. The seven monsters were nothing out of the ordinary and he would rather redeem some other Monster Card or FunctionCard that could be of more use in the future. If he was to combine them into a complete card, there would be 10% damage to the card pieces. On the eighth day, the sky was dark as Lin Huang left the hotel room. It looked like it was going to drizzle. However, he decided to head to the wild zone anyway and return when it rained. The weather remained the same until noon; rain had yet to pour. Lin Huang found a tree and planned to rest atop the tree. Just as he was eating his snack, he heard something strange from above him. He looked up at the sky and exclaimed, "What the f*ck?!" 144 Virtual Eye A strange noise came from the sky as a black sigil appeared in the air. The sigil looked like there was a black, ferocious scar that caused a crack in the sky. It extended both ways and stopped when it was more than 10 meters long. After it had stopped growing horizontally, it began to grow downwards and soon, a gigantic black eye opened. It looked like it was Gods eye looking down on the world. "A Virtual Eye has opened" Although Lin Huang had never seen an actual Virtual Eye before, he knew immediately that it was a Virtual Eye when he witnessed it firsthand. The first ever Virtual Eye was opened 800 years ago and ever since then, it became something frequent that happened almost everyday almost everywhere. It could happen outside the safety zone, within the safety zone, places that are less populated or even those that are more densely populated. This time, it happened less than 20 kilometers from Daxi City, it was considered a dangerous distance as it would take 10 minutes for the monsters that traveled on land to arrive in the city. There would be a bigger problem if there were many flying monsters. However, when the Virtual Eye appeared, the siren in the city went off and defensive shields of footholds went up. Lin Huang would not know about all these as he was outside the foothold. Now that the Virtual Eye was opened, he did not have the time to run away. He used a Specific Transformation Card instead and hid in the tree in his specter form. Many monsters were coming out of the Virtual Eye on invisible parachutes. Lin Huangs jaw dropped as he watched helplessly. It almost looked like monsters were raining out of the sky. "There are so many silver-level and gold-level monsters" Lin Huang frowned, "At least the monster horde mostly consisted of nightmare-level and even disaster-level monsters Hopefully, there wont be many transcendent monsters.." The monster horde grade was categorized into violent-grade, nightmare-grade, and disaster-grade The violent-grade monsters were mostly made up of iron-level and bronze-level monsters with a minimum of silver-level monsters. Most of the transcendent monsters would not be involved in a violent-grade horde. On the other hand, nightmare-grade hordes would see more silver-level and gold-level monsters with some of the transcendent monsters participating. As for disaster-grade, most of the horde would be made up of gold-level monsters and there would be at least one transcendent monster. From the amount of gold-level monsters, Lin Huang could tell that it was a disaster-grade monster horde. The only thing that he was not sure was how many transcendent monsters there would be. "Please dont do this to me, Im only four days away from leaving this place through the dimensional portal." Lin Huang was upset. A disaster-grade monster horde would be difficult even for a B-grade, huge foothold. It was impossible for Daxi City which was a C-grade, mid-sized foothold to handle such a monster horde. Lin Huang could predict that the entire Daxi City would be completely destroyed in less than a day. There would usually be one transcendent guarding the city in a C-grade foothold but there would be at least three transcendent monsters when it came to a disaster-grade monster horde. There were not many gold-level hunters residing in a C-grade foothold. The number of Gold Hunters were much lesser than the gold-level monsters that were descending from the sky. It was a sure-lose battle. As soon as the city was attacked by monsters, the dimensional portal would remain closed and Lin Huang would not be able to leave the foothold like he planned to. He could use a Small Destruction Card to wipe out all monsters below transcendent-level but that would not stop the transcendent monsters from destroying the city. The fate of the city would remain the same but his fate would change; he would be targeted by transcendent monsters. There was nothing he could do to help. It was chaotic in Daxi City. Ever since the warning for the Virtual Eye was broadcasted, everyone rushed home to seek refuge. Ordinary people could not join the battle with monsters and they were fearful of the monster horde. It was unfortunate because as soon as a person was diagnosed with a fear of monsters, they would be forced to go for a psychotherapy session to overcome their fears afterward. Staff from the Purple Crow did their best to calm the situation down and within minutes, the streets were empty. Most of the Purple Crow staff headed to the west of the foothold while a small part of them guarded the east gate. Fortunately, there were only two gates in the foothold so the hunters could gather and focus on these two gates instead of being scattered everywhere. Xie Yu was the guardian of Daxi City, he was an old man with white hair. He chose a secluded location because he wanted to enjoy his life in peace. He never expected for such things to happen within two years from the time he took up this position. With his vision, he could see the monsters coming out of the Virtual Eye clearly. He knew very well that it was a disaster-grade horde. It was impossible for him to fight the transcendent monsters on his own. "Should I fight or should I run?" Xie Yu hesitated and finally made his decision. "Gah, since I am only left with few years of Life Light, Id rather die here with dignity instead of dying shame in a couple of years to come." After he made up his mind, he flew towards the sky and headed to the west gate. Two men and a lady were enjoying their drinks at a restaurant without a roof. "The guardian from the Purple Crow has headed out. I have always thought that members of the Purple Crow would run away to save themselves in such situations." It was the lady who spoke. Her hair was red with two braids and she wore a short denim skirt that revealed her legs. From the length of her legs, anyone could tell that she was tall. It was just that she happened to be sitting down so nobody could tell exactly how tall she was. "Purple Crow has their own law. If he ran away like that, I dont think they''ll just let him go like that." The man in sunglasses said. He wore a chinese suit with neatly combed hair. "Boss, this is Purple Crows territory. Dont you think they would handle this?" The lady with red hair said to the middle-aged man on her right. "Although this is Purple Crows territory, the people are innocent. If we dont do anything about this disaster-grade horde, millions of people will die because none of them would dare leave." The man in sunglasses disagreed with what the lady said. "But if we intervene, our identities will be revealed and we''ll fail our mission. Liang Song, dont forget what we''re here for." The lady with red hair looked at the man in sunglasses. "If the city gets destroyed, our mission would fail as well. If we''re going to fail our mission anyway, we might as well save the people." Liang Song pushed his sunglasses up as he spoke calmly. "Alright, stop arguing. The safety of the people is our priority." The middle-aged man who sat at one corner finally spoke. He then looked at the lady with long legs, "Zhou Qian, when you get back, I want you to write down the Hunter Code a hundred times!" "Boss, please dont be ruthless" "200 times!" The middle-aged man stared at her. He had big eyes and thick eyebrows with a four centimeters scar on his lip. His kind face turned ferocious. "Leader, should we fight now or should we start fighting only when the guardian is dead?" Liang Song asked. "The transcendent monsters have not arrived yet, lets wait." The middle-aged man waved his hand. Meanwhile, Xie Yu arrived at the west gate. Before the monsters landed on the ground, he started killing them. A purple sword appeared, he pointed his sword in the air, countless aero blades were formed and sliced towards the monsters. Countless monsters were cut in half by the aero blades, they were like pieces of papers. Lin Huang was watching from far. "A sword skill combined with the wind element. The area of attack is amazing!" Lin Huang was not the only one looking, the three people at the roofless restaurant saw him in action as well. "The area of attack isn''t that bad but the strength of a sword skill such as this is nothing to shout about." Zhou Qian comment negatively. "If you compare your advantage to someone elses disadvantage, nobody would ever be better than you." Liang Song criticized her, "Why didnt you say that his area of attack is much wider than yours, which is more suitable to handle such a monster attack?" "Liang Song, why are you finding fault with me?" Zhou Qian stared at him. "Im just telling the truth." Liang Song said in all seriousness. "Alright, shut up the both of you. Before we participate in the battle, nobody talks! Whoever speaks first will have to write down the Hunter Code a hundred times. The second time you speak will get you two hundred times!" Once the middle-aged man said that, the both of them no longer dared to speak a word. In mid-air, Xie Yu had been killing the monsters on his own for more than an hour. He had no idea how many monsters he had already killed. It was Lin Huangs first time seeing a transcendent fight at such a close distance, he looked like a weapon that would never run out of ammo. Suddenly, the monsters that were coming out of the Virtual Eye slowed down. Lin Huang could hear a strange roar from within the Virtual Eye. Soon, gigantic claws with scales were seen on the edge of the Virtual Eye. Lin Huang knew that the transcendent monster was coming 145 The Transcendent Monster Arrives Countless monsters were coming out of the Virtual Eye. Xie Yu killed more than half of them while they were still descending mid-air but there were still many on the ground. Xie Yu did not have the time to care about those that were on the ground. Meanwhile, the Purple Crow staff rushed from the west gate to join the battle. Since they had a transcendent as their guardian, most of the monsters were taken out by the transcendent alone which was comforting to the people. It was just a matter of time before Daxi City was destroyed by monsters. Every time a Virtual Eye opened, a transcendent monster would come with it and it would be at least a nightmare-grade monster horde. The Virtual Eye that was opened near Daxi City was definitely brought with it a horde that was a higher leveled than a nightmare-grade horde judging from the amount of gold-level monsters that came with it. A disaster-grade monster horde would have at least three transcendent monsters. "That looks huge" The leader Zhu Nian frowned. The lady with red hair, Zhou Qian pointed at her lips, indicating to the leader that she wanted to speak. Zhu Nian sighed and nodded, "You may speak." "From its size, it should be a giant. However, looking at the claws, it seems to be more like a demon or a sky dragon. If it was a sky dragon, it would wipe us all out except for the leader but if it was a demon, the old man would not be able to handle it on his own." Zhou Qian spoke her mind about what she observed. "Hopefully, it''s not a sky dragon. A sky dragon doesn''t get along with other monsters. A monster horde of this grade would have at least three of them if it was a sky dragon. By then, aside from our leader, the rest of us must flee." Liang Song said. Gigantic claws came out of the Virtual Eye in the middle and a loud roar echoed in the air. Aside from Xie Yu, there were many Purple Crow reserve members that were looking into the sky. Based on how its head looked, it appeared to be a dragon but since none of them had ever seen such a monster before, nobody could tell what it really was. The gigantic dragon climbed down slowly from the Virtual Eye. Its gigantic stature filled everyone''s eyes, causing the people immense stress. Even Lin Huang had never seen a creature of this size. Its head alone was almost 1,000 meters long and was filled with thorns. It certainly did not look friendly. It was more than 20,000 meters long with grayish-black scales covering its body. A deadly aura lingered all over its body. Its three gigantic eyes were grayish-white, there were no pupils. From the top of its head all the way to its tail, there were countless white thorns that were hundreds of meters long. After it got out of the Virtual Eye, it extended its black wing and roared at the city. The entire city was like a toy town to it. "Is this a sky dragon?" Zhou Qian was uncertain. "The aura it gives of doesnt feel like that of a sky dragon. It feels more like a spiritual monster." Liang Song shook his head. "Both of you are wrong. Its an undead monster." The leader Zhu Nian finally spoke. He was frowning, "Undead dragons are more difficult to deal with compared to sky dragons The worse thing is that there will be more undead transcendent monsters arriving" Many hunters would never want to encounter undead monsters because they possess a unique skill to keep themselves alive. Just like the Six-Armed Demon, to kill it, one had to attack its mask to kill it. Attacking any other part of its body would prove futile. As for the Vile Marionette, it had the Robust ability and can only be killed after many repetitive attacks Those were the conclusions of the people who had encountered those monsters before. Now, they were faced with a monster nobody had faced before, its skills and powers were a mystery. "The undead monster is going to cause problems." Zhou Qian frowned. Xie Yu who was fighting mid-air outside of the west gate of Daxi City frowned as well. Since he was closest to the monster, he could sense that it was slightly more powerful than himself. If it indeed had a unique skill to keep itself alive, Xie Yu could confirm that he would lose in this battle. However, he was determined to fight anyway. The gigantic dragon took aim at the city but soon, it noticed that there was an obstacle not far away from it. It locked its eyes on the human that was blocking its way. "Human, die!" After a sudden roar, the dragon monster attacked Xie Yu with its gigantic claws. Although it was huge, it was still as fast as lightning. Xie Yu remained focused as he knew he had to fight with every fiber in him this time. He took out his sword and leaped forward, disappearing from where stood earlier. He then appeared on top of the dragon''s head and pointed his sword at the dragon beneath him as he screamed, "Lightning Sword!" Just then, there were golden tendrils of lightning that sparkled around the purple sword. It then transformed into a golden bolt of lightning heading towards the dragon''s eye. "That was quick!" Zhou Qian, who stood at quite a distance exclaimed. The dragon did not have the time to escape when the lightning pierced through its eye. "Did it hit the dragon?" Liang Song was uncertain. "No, it had some kind of unique ability." Zhu Nian frowned as he shook his head. Xie Yu, who was in the battle was overjoyed when he saw the attack hit the dragon. However, his smile disappeared once he realized that his attack missed the monster. Just as Xie Yu was about to escape, a gigantic dragon tail slapped him and he fell hard towards the ground far away 146 Ghastly Clown At a roofless restaurant in Daxi City, Zhou Qian was shocked at what she just saw. "I saw the attack hit it, what happened? How did the monster disappear?" Zhou Qian and another two men were watching Xie Yu fighting the transcendent monster outside the west gate. Liang Song was frowning too, he could not figure out what just happened. "The dragon was not its real body, it was an illusion." Zhu Nian explained. "Illusion, how could it be?" Zhou Qian could not believe it. "It was an illusion ever since it appeared, am I right?" Liang Song seemed to notice something. Zhu Nian nodded, "This is one incredible monster. It casted an illusion that covered such a wide area that even we were deceived." "No wonder. When the first transcendent monster appeared, it seemed like nothing was happening at the Virtual Eye. It appears that all the transcendent monsters used the illusion as cover to come out at once." Liang Song finally figured it out. "They came out when the dragon created the illusion of it coming out of the Virtual Eye." Zhu Nian nodded his head. Suddenly, the defensive shield on top of the city was continuous attacked. The entire foothold was shaking. "Its attacking the defensive shield!" Zhu Nian spoke the obvious. The strength of a C-grade foothold was limited. There were cracks appearing in three different locations because of continuous blows by the transcendent monsters. Everyone in the city was scared. Many ordinary people were shivering, some were even crying. "Leader, should we fight now?" Liang Song could not wait anymore. "Can you see the monsters?" Zhu Nian asked him back. "No, I cant." Liang Song shook his head. "So what are you going to fight then?" Zhu Nian asked again. "But... Once the defensive shields are broken, they would attack the citizens." Liang Song tried to reason with him. "Its about being strategic." Zhu Nian shook his head. Liang Song was influenced by the adrenaline rush. "Whats the rush, the old man is still alive." Zhou Qian pointed towards Xie Yus direction. The two heard a loud crash and looked in the direction the sound was coming from. Xie Yu was hit and came crashing down to the ground. A white glow emerged and countless white droplets were seen 10 kilometers away. Lin Huang dove underground immediately. Just when he found a hiding place, countless white droplets similar to raindrops shot up the sky. It looked like white raindrops that defied gravity, returning to the sky. Xie Yu had combined elemental power with his sword skill, Lin Huang watched in admiration. Xie Yu noticed that the dragon was not the actual body of the transcendent monster so he began attacking in a wide area to figure out exactly where the transcendent monsters were. Under such pressure, the bodies of the transcendent monsters were marked by the white droplets. Although they did not reveal their true selves, it was good enough to locate them. There were a total of four transcendent monsters. Just as Xie Yu was getting ready to attack, there was a fiery explosion that came from Daxi City. The flame almost shot through one of the transcendents body and the transcendent monster fell to the ground as it groaned. Soon, a gigantic carcass appeared on the ground. It was a Spectral Three-Headed Boa that was almost 1,000 meters long. It was the mastermind behind the illusion. Once the Spectral Three-Headed Boa was dead, the illusion was broken. The three remaining transcendents revealed themselves before everyone. There was a Lava Giant, a Four-Winged Swordfiend and a Ghastly Clown that looked like a human but nobody could make out what monster that was. The sudden death of the Spectral Three-Headed Boa stunned the three transcendent monsters. The transcendent monsters were not the only ones who were shocked; Xie Yu who just got up from the ground was stunned as well. He did not realize that there were other transcendent humans in the city. At first, he thought they were his partners from the Purple Crow. However, he was surprised when he saw them descending from the air. The three of them were not dressed in the Purple Crows coat. "Boss youre brilliant to have recognized that it was a Spectral Three-Headed Boa." Zhou Qian looked at Zhu Nian in admiration. She finally showed how tall she was when she stood up. Although she was wearing a pair of flats, she was over 1.9 meters in height. Hearing Zhou Qian groveling, Zhu Nian rubbed his nose, "I actually had no idea which of them casted the illusion. I just attacked one of them. It was just a coincidence" Liang Song and Zhou Qian looked at each other. Zhu Nian pretended like he did not see their expression as he recalled the golden spear he used to kill the Spectral Three-Headed Boa. "I didnt expect that there would be three more transcendent humans in this small area that Im in charge of." Xie Yu knew that the three of them concealed their aura when they entered the city, it was obvious that they did not want him to know about their existence. Now that they revealed themselves to help, they could be from the Hunter Association or Adventurer Paradise. "Guardian, if you have anything to say, we shall talk about it after we have killed these transcendent monsters and the rest beneath them." Zhu Nian pointed to the direction of the three transcendent monsters. Xie Yu hesitated before he nodded, he did not want Daxi City to be destroyed by the monsters. Since there were people who were willing to help, he should welcome them with open arms. "Sly humans... How dare they hide four holy fire-level humans in such a small C-grade foothold. However, it will be useless because all of you will die, today! Hehehe" The Ghastly Clown did not seem to fear them as it laughed eerily. "Hey ugly! Dont you know how to count? There are four of us here and only three of you there." Zhou Qian shouted at the Ghastly Clown. "Lady, you have such a pretty face" Just after it said those words, a mask appeared in the hand of the Ghastly Clown. It then placed the mask on its face and transformed its face to look exactly like Zhou Qian. "From now on, this face belongs to me" Zhou Qian was shocked. Suddenly, she spoke the exact words that were coming out of the Ghastly Clown''s mouth, "It was three against four, isnt it four against three now? Hehehe" Just as Zhou Qian uttered those words, she attacked Zhu Nian who was standing next to her At the same time, the other two transcendent monsters rushed towards Xie Yu and Liang Song. 147 The Scary Clown 700 years ago, during the new epoch, a transcendent had said this before, "Don''t ever underestimate an unknown monster, especially an unknown transcendent monster!" Without a doubt, what he said came true here, today. Nobody knew what the Ghastly Clown actually was and the special abilities it possessed. This caused Zhou Qian, who was one of the transcendent to become its puppet. Everyone including Zhu Nian had never expected Zhou Qian to fall under the Ghastly Clown''s control. Zhu Nian noticed it because of Zhou Qian''s abnormal behavior. When Zhou Qian was about to strike a heavy blow on Zhu Nian, Zhu Nian lifted his spear and the shaft of his spear blocked the blow. However, Zhou Qian''s attack caused Zhu Nian to retreat about 30 meters away. "Oh, a little girl that''s good in close combat. I love it! Hehehe" Zhou Qian said something strange. "Zhou Qian, fight it! Get it out of your body. Don''t be controlled by it!" Zhu Nian yelled at Zhou Qian. "It''s useless. As long as I have my mask on, she will not be able to get rid of me. Hehehe" The Ghastly Clown smiled wryly and said. Zhu Nian stepped one step forward in the air and pounced on the Ghastly Clown. The Ghastly Clown immediately transformed its face into Zhou Qian''s face and smiled at Zhu Nian without moving. The next moment, Zhou Qian flashed through the air and appeared in front of Zhu Nian, blocking his way. Zhu Nian wanted to bypass her but he was hit by her consecutive attacks. He did not want to hurt her so he could only dodge her attacks passively. On the other hand, Xie Yu and Liang Song were having a tough time too. The Lava Giant had been attacking Xie Yu non-stop. It seemed like it was not afraid of any kind of attack. When Xie Yu stabbed its his body with a longsword relic, the effect was similar to cutting into an armor relic of a higher rank. However, the Lava Giant had a terrifying amount of strength. Xie Yu could only defend against its attacks. On the other hand, Liang Song was in a tangle with the Four-Winged Swordfiend. The Four-Winged Swordfiend''s lightning-fast attacks were scary. The sharpness of six of its forelimbs was on par with a sword relic. It could easily chop off anyone who was not prepared for its attack. Liang Song could not keep up with its speed at all. He was just trying to avoid the attack as the number of wounds on his body increased. Lin Huang was nervous, seeing three transcendent totally incapacitated, unable to fight back at all. On the ground, the Purple Crow staff and other influential members were all involved in the fight with the monster horde. If this continued, the monsters would probably wipe out Daxi City. "Eh, settle the woman first! Stop dodging her attacks." Xie Yu saw that Zhu Nian was not giving his all against Zhou Qian so he yelled at him as he could not stand it anymore. Zhu Nian frowned. He knew that what Xie Yu said was right. If he could not get rid of Zhou Qian, it would turn the battle into a four versus one when both of them were killed. Regardless of his abilities, it would be difficult to fight back. "Zhou Qian, please forgive me." Zhu Nian decided not to avoid her attacks anymore. He pointed his gold spear at Zhou Qian. Zhou Qian leaped towards Zhu Nian again. Zhu Nian took one step forward, as if the whole world was within his control. He brushed across Zhou Qian instantly. His spear then pierced through Zhou Qian''s chest, coming out from her back. Zhou Qian''s body was limp. Zhu Nian immediately reached out and held her in his arms. At that moment, Zhou Qian did not care about her wounds and struck a blow to Zhu Nian''s chest. Zhu Nian frowned. He pulled his spear out and chopped off both her arms. Zhou Qian then gradually regained her consciousness. Looking at Zhu Nian who was holding her, she burst into tears and whispered, "I am sorry" "It''s okay. It''s not your fault." Zhu Nian patted her shoulder and carried her to the ground. "Get some rest." "Tsk tsk tsk You are being so cruel to your female subordinate. Didn''t it hurt to hurt her?" He heard the voice of the Ghastly Clown again. Zhou Qian''s mask had disappeared and it had returned to its original look. "I havent felt anger like this for years. You really are getting on my nerves." Zhu Nian turned back to face the clown and lifted his spear again, pointing at the Ghastly Clown who was floating mid-air. "Aww, I''m so scared Hehehe" A mask appeared in the Ghastly Clown''s hand again. "Who should I transform into? Give me some suggestion." "I would suggest that you die now." Zhu Nian''s spear thrust through the air and his body appeared in front of the Ghastly Clown in an instant. Zhu Nian stabbed the spear that resembled a dragon into its face. "You''re so... Rude" The Ghastly Clown''s body began blurring into the background, making it look like an illusion or a shadow. Even its voice sounded like a featherweight voice. Zhu Nian was stunned and his face turned grave when he failed to kill the Ghastly Clown. Soon, a sound was heard coming behind him, "Guess who I''ve transformed into?" Zhu Nian did not turn his head around but threw his spear backward. However, he missed it. The next moment, a shadow pounced on him suddenly. He made a wrong move and avoided the shadow. He took a look and realized that he was Liang Song, dressed in a Chinese tunic. "Here is a multiple choice question. Do you prefer a female subordinate or a male subordinate? Hehehehe" Apparently, it was the Ghastly Clown who said these words. "Is this the only trick you have up your sleeve? You dare not fight me face to face and only rely on dirty tricks like these." Zhu Nian roared. When he looked around, there were no traces of the Ghastly Clown. "Hehehehe...You won''t get to me in this manner. It only works on human like you with low intelligence. It''s not going to work on me. Perhaps... I''ll give you a chance to fight me face to face when I''m in a good mood." The next time the Ghastly Clown appeared, it was standing behind Liang Song. It looked exactly the same as Liang Song. "Since you want to play a game, let''s get it on!" Zhu Nian shouted in a deep voice. He dashed forward once again. This time, he was running towards Liang Song. Bullets rained from the gun in Liang Song''s hand. However, none of the fired bullets touched Zhu Nian''s body. He then threw his spear and it penetrated Liang Song''s chest but just as it penetrated Liang Song''s body, the gold spear changed direction and flew towards the back of the Ghastly Clown''s head. Just as he was about to kill the Ghastly Clown, he could vaguely sense an unusual wave coming out its body. He immediately stopped his attack. "It''s such a waste. Three centimeters more and your male subordinate would have burst into pieces." Liang Song was originally standing on the left. Unexpectedly, they had switched positions. The one who was standing there was now the Ghastly Clown. The position where the Ghastly Clown initially stood at had was now where Liang Song was. Zhu Nian broke into a cold sweat because he almost smashed Liang Song''s head into pieces. "Hehehehe I''ve already said this earlier. Play by my rules and such things won''t happen. Of course, if you enjoy the excitement, I don''t mind playing this game with you." The Ghastly Clown seemed to have full control over the battle. When Zhu Nian was staring at the Ghastly Clown with fear, the results of the battle his comrades were fighting became clear. Being attacked by the Lava Giant and the Four-Winged Swordfiend, Xie Yu was unable to defend himself. His defensive relic was broken. His brain was sliced in half by the Four-Winged Swordfiend while his body was crushed into minced meat. The Four-Winged Swordfiend then threw his crushed body into its mouth. Liang Song had basically lost his combat abilities and Zhu Nian faced an undesirable situation he did not expect. What was initially a four versus three battle had become a one versus three battle 148 Zhu Nian Has Gone Insane The transcendent monsters had usually experienced once mutation and after a brain transformation, their intelligence was beyond human intelligence. Of course, there were some exceptions. Very few of the transcendent monsters had never experienced mutation and these monsters would normally possess incredible combat abilities. There were also some of them that had gone through two or even three mutations. These monsters were even scarier. Aside from having abilities that were on par with human geniuses, they could also evolve to possess a higher degree of intelligence. During the fight, Zhu Nian could confirm that the Ghastly Clown was a monster that had gone through at least two mutations. In the beginning, it already had full control over the battle, causing everyone to follow it. Zhu Nian was facing an undesirable situation. Not only that it one versus three, the opponent had Liang Song as a hostage. "Tell me what your rules are." Zhu Nian observed the situation and calmed himself down. He knew he was at the losing end and had to find a way to be at an advantage. "Hehehehe A holy fire-level, it is difficult to find food tastier than you. I''ll give you a chance. If you can win both of the transcendent monsters, I''ll give you an opportunity to fight me in person but if you lose to them, not only will I kill both your teammates but everyone in this C-grade foothold as well." The voice of the Ghastly Clown filled the air. Everyone could clearly hear it including all of the residents of the foothold. Many of them stole glances at Zhu Nian. They prayed that he could reverse the situation. Zhu Nian looked serious and nodded his head, "Okay, I accept." "Hehehehe Very good! Let the game begins!" The Ghastly Clown announced happily in the mid-air. At almost the same time as he finished his words, the Lava Giant and Four-Winged Swordfiend ran towards Zhu Nian. The speed of the Four-Winged Swordfiend was extremely fast. In just a blink of an eye, it appeared in front of Zhu Nian. Six forelimbs were coming towards Zhu Nian at a terrifying speed and they were in the form of sharp blades. It resembled six swordmasters attacking him with a sword relic. Six beams of black light appeared and moved extremely fast causing the air to crackle and crack. Zhu Nian remained calm. He then lifted his hand with as little movement as he could and the gold spear in his hand had transformed into a thunderbolt that fought against the beams of light. Only the sound of colliding metal could be heard. "Go away!" With a loud growl, the gold thunderbolt suddenly transformed into a shadow of a whip-like weapon, hitting the stomach and waist of the Four-Winged Swordfiend. Its body was blown away as the attacks struck and cracks appeared all over its hard armor. The next moment, the Lava Giant was about to strike a heavy blow to Zhu Nian''s body from the left. The blow was accompanied by an immense power and a terribly high temperature. Zhu Nian who was hanging in mid-air immediately reclaimed his spear. He had no means of retreating and he had to defend against the heavy blow. The spear had transformed into a golden lightning dragon that slammed into the Lava Giant. "Bang!" A loud thud was heard which sounded very much like an explosion. The ground began to vigorously shake. Zhu Nian looked smaller in size compared to the Lava Giant; he was like an ant. However, his ant-like body remained stationary. He was firmly rooted in mid-air, at the position where he was standing. After a short while, something shocking happened. Spider webs-like cracks began to appear on the Lava Giant''s right arm where the spear hit it. The Lava Giant that was always proud of its strength and defensive power began to roar in anger. Red flames gushed out from its eyes and mouth. The red lava began to flow from his body and seemed like a tattoo that ran through his body that eventually covered its entire body. Zhu Nian knew that the Lava Giant had gone on a rampage. Its rampage had multiplied the strength, speed, and defensive power of the Lava Giant. "Roar!" After a thunderous, angry roar, the Lava Giant took another blow at Zhu Nian again. "It is useless to go on a rampage. There is a big gap between our combat abilities." Zhu Nian said calmly. He was not afraid of the Lava Giant at all. He then took out his spear again. However, he did not attack it like he did earlier. Soon, the Lava Giant''s attack hit his spear but no sound was heard. It was just a simple attack and the Lava Giant''s arm collided with his spear. However, the body of the Lava Giant became stiff and its arm became distorted; changing shape as it hit the spear. Within a short while, its distorted arm had reached its peak and the arm began to collapse. It was silence. No sound was heard and the Lava Giant''s right arm broke into a pile of crushed rock. The Lava Giant roared in a fit of rage. Just as it was about to attack again with its left arm, the spear in Zhu Nian''s hand transformed into a gold whip abruptly and was being thrown towards its left arm. Within the next few moments, Zhu Nian chopped off the Lava Giant''s left arm causing it to quickly flee. At that moment, Zhu Nian grabbed his spear and holding onto the shaft of the spear, he took aim at the Lava Giant''s forehead and the golden spear shot like an arrow towards the Lava Giant. Just as the Lava Giant was about to dodge the attack with its broken arm, the spear became faster mid-air all of a sudden. It resembled a gold thunderbolt that embedded a hole right through its blazing left eye and the back of its head. The Lava Giant growled from the excruciating pain it suffered. The lava and flames in its body slowly went out. Eventually, it had completely turned into a pile of rocks scattered all over the ground. Then, the Four-Winged Swordfiend quietly appeared behind Zhu Nian. Six beams of light from the six blades shone on Zhu Nian''s six vital parts. The beams of light were about to cut through Zhu Nian''s body. However, at the very next moment, a golden spear penetrated through the Four-Winged Swordfiend''s head from the top and half of the spear appeared from its lower jaw. "I''ve been waiting for you" Zhu Nian smiled wryly and twisted the spear. An immense power was released from the spear and the head of the Four-Winged Swordfiend exploded in an instant. Blood splattered all around. Then, the remaining light beam that shone on Zhu Nian''s body instantly became dim. After killing two transcendent monsters, Zhu Nian kept his spear away and looked at the Ghastly Clown, "I think it''s time you fulfilled your promise?" 149 Defeated by Just One Skill "Clap clap clap" The Ghastly Clown clapped and a wry smile was plastered on its face. "Hehehehe well done. You did not disappoint me. I''ll give you this little brat back." As soon as the Ghastly Clown finished speaking, Liang Song''s mask automatically disappeared, revealing the Ghastly Clowns face. Liang Song became limp and fainted. Zhu Nian rushed to him, held his arms and gave him a tube of medicine. He then left him at the entrance of the city. He gradually floated into the sky as he looking at the Ghastly Clown. "Why do you look so serious? Are you worried that I''ll use my control skill to take over your body?" The Ghastly Clown laughed, his big red mouth widening when Zhu Nian did not fight back. It had a white mask on with red lips and black eyes. It looked like an overly exaggerated creature. Especially its red lips that occupied half of its face, terrorizing everyone when it smiled. "Don''t worry. I won''t use that skill on you." The Ghastly Clown waved its hand. "For some reason, I dont think you can anyway!" Zhu Nian was slightly relieved as he heard this. "Have you ever played Shogi? Once the general is caught, the entire game ends regardless of what pieces you have remaining. You''re now the general. If you are controlled, the game would be too boring." "Moreover, you have proven yourself to bring me more joy. That was why I gave you a chance to challenge me." The Ghastly Clown had absolute confidence in itself and everyone seemed like pieces on a chessboard to it. "Are you sure? Aren''t you afraid that the joy that I''m bringing you can cause you death?" Zhu Nian''s aura grew stronger. "Let''s see if you''re capable of doing so! Hehehehe" "Our leader seems to be getting serious" Liang Song had regained his consciousness. He turned his head and looked at Zhou Qian. Zhou Qian nodded her head and smiled a little, "When he gets serious, something bad is going to happen to someone." "Yes, his combat ability is about to achieve immortal-level. No ordinary commander-level monster can handle that." Liang Song agreed with Zhou Qian. Lin Huang was hiding underground and even he could feel Zhu Nian''s aura. The powerful aura he gave off was beyond what all the transcendent monsters Lin Huang had ever met could ever give off. It seemed like he had taken it to another level. "How could a transcendent be so powerful? He can trigger astronomical change solely with his aura" Lin Huang noticed that under Zhu Nian''s aura, the haze that the Virtual Eye caused had disappeared. Even the sun appeared. Zhu Nian was hanging mid-air with a golden spear in his hand. Soon, his aura had reached its peak and at that moment, he disappeared abruptly from the ground. Many of the transcendent-level and gold-level hunters witnessed that amazing scene. Even Liang Song and Zhou Qian who were holy fire-level could not get a hold of Zhu Nian''s movement. "It seems like we have to train harder and be stronger. It doesn''t feel good to be a hindrance." Liang Song sighed and nodded his head. After Zhu Nian''s disappearance from mid-air, a beam of golden light suddenly came towards the Ghastly Clown. The golden light appeared suddenly at a terribly fast speed. Nevertheless, the Ghastly Clown was not showing any signs of nervousness and in fact, it was smiling. It moved its body slightly to dodge the oncoming golden light. Zhu Nian did not stop attacking. As soon as the first beam of golden light disappeared, the second beam of golden light attacked it from another direction. Similarly, it appeared without notice and reaching its maximum speed Close behind the second beam was the third beam of golden light, the fourth beam, the fifth beam About 3000 beams of golden light shot towards the Ghastly Clown but missed. It was unbelievable. Not a single beam of light hit him. Lin Huang and the rest of them had no idea what skill Zhu Nian used. "How it could be" Zhou Qian had an unbelievable expression on her face. "Did he just dodge our leader''s 3000 Strands of Worry?!" Liang Song was frightened. Zhu Nian was hanging in mid-air but disappeared for quite a while. He then suddenly appeared, his face red as he looked at the Ghastly Clown, "You have been fooling us all the while. You are actually a chief-level monster and yet you pretend to be a commander-level monster." "I never said that I''m commander-level, you assumed I was." The Ghastly Clown spread his hands. The combat ability of a commander-level monster was comparable to that of a human holy fire transcendent. The Lava Giant and the Four-Winged Swordfiend that Zhu Nian killed earlier were both commander-level. The Ghastly Clown was a chief-level monster. Its combat ability was on par with that of a human immortal-level transcendent. The monster world had a strict hierarchy. A chief-level monster could cause severe damage. If it had sufficient time, it could gather at least 10 commander-level monsters and ten of millions of monster in a horde, triggering a destruction-grade monster horde. The effect by such a monster horde was beyond what a disaster-grade monster horde could do. Destroying the Grade-B big-sized foothold would be a breeze. The combat ability of the chief-level monster alone would be powerful enough. In the Hunter Association, only the immortal-level transcendent hunters are able to fight against such monsters. Zhu Nian had never expected to meet such a powerful opponent. "Just because I am chief-level youre going to retreat?" The Ghastly Clown laughed at Zhu Nian''s expression. "If you''re going to escape, I won''t stop you. However, your subordinates and everyone in this city will become my food. I think it''ll take me less than five minutes to devour everyone here." Everyone who was watching the battle heard this. Although many of them could not understand the true extent of a chief-level monster''s power, they knew that Zhu Nian was incapable of defeating the Ghastly Clown. "A chief-level monster" Liang Song''s and Zhou Qian''s facial expression had changed. Of course, they fully understood what a chief-level monster could do. "A chief-level monster? It seems like its stronger than the uncle" Lin Huang was not sure how the combat ability of a chief-level monster would be like. However, he knew that Zhu Nian was very powerful. He was stronger than most of the transcendents that he had met. "I wonder if I can use the Seal Card on him" When Lin Huang was still hesitating, Zhu Nian had already made up his mind. "I am a member of the Hunter Association. Regardless of the type of monster and number of monsters that I encounter, protecting the residents is my responsibility. If you want to wipe out the city behind me, you''ll have to do it over my dead body." "About 60 years ago, the first thing that my teacher taught me was that a foothold will never die if hunters were present! 60 years have passed and I have forgotten many of the things he had taught me. However, I won''t ever forget this one fact until the day I die!" Zhu Nian explained his decision. While he was talking, his body gradually gave off a gold aura that resembled a layer of fading golden flames. As time passed, the flames burned more vigorously and the gold color turned brighter. He looked like a burning sun in the form of a human. "You should know that even if you overdraw your Life Fire, you won''t be able to defeat me. The difference between a holy fire and an immortal-level transcendent could not be compensated by overdrawing one''s Life Fire. If you were a genius, I might be afraid of you. However, you aren''t. Otherwise, it wouldn''t have taken you 60 years and you''re still not at immortal-level yet." The Ghastly Clown no longer smile. Although his opponent was a lot weaker than him, The Ghastly Clown respected him. "Yes, I''m not a genius. I can barely be called talented. I know that I won''t be able to defeat you even by overdrawing my Life Fire. However, I''ll never change my mind. I live by these four words C Fight to the death!" After uttering the last word, he had completely transformed into a human-like flame that looked like a comet, rushing towards the Ghastly Clown. The beam of golden light streaked across the sky in an instant and appeared in front of the Ghastly Clown. "Hehehehe" The Ghastly Clown smiled again. He gradually extended his hand that was wearing a white glove. The beam of golden flame was blocked by his palm at a distance of fewer than three centimeters away. He could not move any further. Zhu Nian attempted to release himself and retrieve his spear. However, he realized that the spear seemed to be attracted by a strong force, like gravity causing it to remain stationary. "I''ve told you before. There is a huge difference between our combat abilities. Now I''ll teach you the meaning of the difference in our power." As he finished saying those words, the Ghastly Clown squeezed its fingers. Cracks began to appear on the spear relic tool that was floating in mid-air. "How can this be?!" Zhu Nian was stunned when he saw this. He was holding a 3-star relic. The relic was unbreakable but the Ghastly Clown broke it with a snap of his finger. Before Zhu Nian could respond to this, the parts of the spear closest to the cracks began to disintegrate The Ghastly Clown smiled, with another palm pressing against Zhu Nian''s chest through the flames. The next moment, Zhu Nian''s body was smashed onto the ground. He was defeated by just one skill "Shit, he''s too powerful!" Lin Huang stared at the Ghastly Clown floating in the air, "Xiao Hei, use the Seal Card on this clown!" 150 The New Monster Card Lin Huang would only use the Seal Card when he encountered a strong monster. He didnt know how a chief-level monster looked like but since this monster defeated Zhu Nian, Lin Huang was certain that this monster was stronger than the ordinary transcendent monsters. In addition, if he did not seal the monster now, all the Daxi City residents would perish and if that happened, he would have to change his return route to Baqi City. Taking all these into consideration, Lin Huang had finally decided to use the Seal Card. "The Seal Card can only be used one time. Once it''s used, you cannot reverse the action. Are you sure you would like to use it?" "Yes." "Please select the target that you would like to seal." Lin Huang pointed at the Ghastly Clown hanging in the mid-air. Then, a gold arrow appeared on top of the Ghastly Clown''s head. "Seal him." Lin Huang nodded his head. "Sealing target is a monster that has gone through twice mutation. It meets the sealing requirement" "Sealing target is a chief-level monster. After being sealed, the target''s combat abilities will be restricted by the host. It can only exceed the host by one level." "Are you confirmed you would like to seal the target?" "Confirm!" Lin Huang nodded his head without hesitation. "Sealing" Right when the notification from Xiao Hei arrived, the Ghastly Clown in the air was not moving at all. After a while, the Ghastly Clown''s body turned into a blue flare and vanished from the sky. "Sealing is completed!" "Congratulations, you have gained an Epic level monster card C Ghastly Clown." Lin Huang immediately tapped open the new monster card that he had just obtained. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Ghastly Clown" "Type of Monster: Undying species" "Combat Level: White Silver 3 Star" "Skill 1: Mask - Control" "Skill 2: Mask - Position Swap" "Skill 3: Life Mask" "Skill 4: Deception Magic" "Skill 5: Fatal Trap" "Skill 6: Telekinesis" "Summoning Limit: Activated" "Cark Remarks: Trainable" "It has six skills?!" Charcoal the dragonkin and Bai only possessed five skills even though they were also Epic level. Perhaps the Ghastly Clown had higher-leveled combat abilities previously. Lin Huang read through all of the skills to familiarize himself with them. "Mask - Control: Replicate any of the faces within one''s field of vision. By wearing the mask, one can have complete control over the owner of the face." "Remark 1: The level of the one being controlled cannot exceed the controller by one level or more." "Remark 2: There must be at least a three minutes interval before replicating the next mask." "Remark 3: Replicated mask can be saved. However, the effect will only work when the mask is worn." "Remark 4: The controlling effects will only work if the mask was replicated from an actual real face." "Remark 5: Upon completion of the mask replication, if there are changes in the user''s face such as serious disfigurements or plastic surgery, the effects of the mask would be rendered useless." "Mask - Position Swap: The user and the one being controlled could change their position at any time." "Life Mask: The one being controlled could bear adversity faced by the controller for one time. (Including, but not limited to, cursing, controlling and death effect)." "Deception Magic: It is a magic that allows the user to switch between the reality and illusions. It has an incredible deception effect." "Remark: It will only work on creatures that do not exceed the level of the user by one or above." "Fatal Trap: Create countless unexpected traps to hunt or kill prey." "Remark: The ability of the trap is limited. It will only work on creatures that do not exceed the level of the user by one level or more." "Telekinesis: Telekinetic powers that allow the user to distort or move any object." "The skills are indeed powerful. However, there are many restrictions." Lin Huang was amazed after looking at six of the skills. "Would you like to extract the skills?" He received a notification from Xiao Hei. "Oh yeah, I have an empty slot." Lin Huang just remembered that after the integration of skill that he had done earlier, he could still extract skills another time. He immediately nodded his head and said, "Extract the skill." "Congratulations, you have gained a skill; Mask - Control." Although there were many restrictions in using Mask - Control, it was undoubtedly a very powerful ability. Keeping the Monster Card that he had just obtained, Lin Huang looked towards the monster crowd that had just ended. "I could settle this using a Small Destruction Card but it would reveal my current location" All of a sudden, Zhu Nian emerged from the underground. The golden flames surrounding his body had disappeared and there were cracks in his green armor relic. It was a 3-star defensive relic. Though it was not yet broken, it seemed to have lost its defensive powers due to the damages caused. Despite having the armor as protection, it was not easy to withstand the Ghastly Clowns attacks but he knew he had to get off of the ground and endure the pain because if he didnt, a massacre would have happened. As he flew mid-air, he looked around and there were no traces of the Ghastly Clown. This made Zhu Nian wonder. "Where is he?" "Leader!" At the entrance of the foothold, Liang Song''s voice was heard. He struggled to stand up. When Zhu Nian saw this, he flashed and appeared in front of him. He then held his arm and asked, "What happened to you?" "I''m fine. The clown turned into a blue flame and disappeared just now." Liang Song explained. Zhu Nian could not believe this as he had never seen this happen before. How could a chief-level monster disappear just like that? This would probably only happen in stories. "Bro, I saw it too, its true. It turned into a blue flame and disappeared." Zhou Qian nodded her head too. "If you don''t believe us, you can ask the others. Many of them saw this." Zhu Nian saw the rest of them nodding their heads. He had no choice but to believe them. "It''s okay. We''ll talk about this later. Let''s settle the monster horde first." Zhu Nian shook his head. He might as well not to think about this. Then, he looked at the monster horde. Thanks to the armor relic that had defended against the attack, he was not seriously injured. Although he did not have his long spear with him, it would not affect his ability to kill monsters that were below transcendent level. He extended both of his hands and opened his palm. Beams of glowing light that resembled a storm were created, gushing out into the air. The glowing beams seemed to have eyes. They went around the humans and showed no mercy when they encountered monsters, penetrating through their bodies. Millions of monsters were slaughtered in an instant. There were monster carcasses everywhere in Daxi City. The Virtual Eye that hung in the air gradually disappeared after a short while. Ensuring that he had cleared all of the monsters, Zhu Nian stored the two transcendent monster carcasses as well as Xie Yu''s dead body. He then summoned the dimensional portal and left with Zhou Qian and Liang Song. 151 Three Levels Of The Transcendents After the Virtual Eye closed, life for Daxi City citizens slowly returned to normal. In the past few days, most of the monsters had been killed by Zhu Nian. Not even iron-level monsters were able to survive. Lin Huang was lazy to go out so he had been training his sword skill every day in the hotel room. There has been some discussion about this incident on the Heart Network and people now knew about Zhu Nian because of this incident. Also, many of them had asked about the meaning of holy fire-level, immortal-level and the commander-level and chief-level monsters. An anonymous user gave a detailed explanation about these combat abilities on the network. Lin Huang then realized the true extent of the combat ability of the Ghastly Clown that he had sealed earlier after reading through the post. A transcendent was actually a general term used for the three levels ranked below demigod-level beings to indicate that one was beyond the levels of an ordinary human. These three levels were the holy fire-level, immortal-level, and imperial-level respectively. The levels of the transcendent monster corresponding to these were commander-level, chief-level, and king-level. Holy fire-level can be achieved when one''s Life Power reached a certain level. One could then obtain tinder from killing commander-level monsters. Then, by igniting their Life Power, one could condense it into Life Fire. When this happens, as long as their Life Fire did not go out, there would be a constant supply of Life Power to their body. Due to the changes in their Life Power, their lifespan would be increased five times beyond the limits of the lifespan of an ordinary person, up to 1800 years. The condensation of Life Fire was actually a dangerous process. If the body was unable to withstand the Life Fire during the transformation, their Life Power would be burnt by the Life Fire and they would either lose all their combat abilities or be burned to death. The death rate of the advancement process was extremely high. 80% of people attempting to advance would die during this process and for the remaining 20%, half of them would lose their combat abilities and be turned into an ordinary person. Less than 10% would succeed in their advancement. Upon upgrading to holy fire-level, the Life Fire had five colors which ranged from white, red, blue, purple, and gold. Based on the colors of their Life Fire, the holy fire-level can be divided into five levels. Zhu Nian was a rank-5 transcendent. That was why Lin Huang felt that his aura was stronger than all the other transcendents he had met. Above the holy fire-level was immortal-level. On this level, one would have to kill a chief-level monster and extract the monster''s soul. Its soul would then be used as fuel that when condensed, would create a Life Lamp. Only nine lamps could be made at most. Each of the Life Lamps represented 360 years of life. Adding nine Life Lamps could extend one''s lifespan to a maximum of about 3,000 years. That was why it was known as the immortal-level. Beyond that, would be the imperial-level. To achieve this, one would have to kill king-level monsters and seize their Life Base to build a Life Palace After achieving these transcendent levels, one can then take it a level further and upgrade oneself to become a demigod. Lin Huang could hardly imagine the abilities of the immortal-level and the imperial-level transcendents. Zhu Nian, who was only on the holy fire-level could kill millions of monsters with ease. "Holy fire, immortal, imperial I will achieve all these one by one and finally become a demigod!" Lin Huang was still focused on his goal. Four days had passed. The time had come for Lin Huang to leave through the dimensional portal that he had booked earlier. Early in the morning, Lin Huang hurried to the portal and joined the queue. There were already three people waiting in line. The number of times that the dimensional portal could be used was limited, especially for long-distance trips. The destination had to be readjusted every time it was used. Lin Huang had to book it 12 days in advance. If anyone did not arrive on time, their ticket would be burned. Just as Lin Huang arrived, a middle-aged man who was slightly bald welcomed him. "Hello, did you book your ticket for today?" Lin Huang nodded his head. However, the man did not look like he was a staff here. "Would you mind selling me the ticket? I have something urgent to deal with and I''m willing to pay five times the price." The middle-aged man looked anxious as if he really had something urgent to do. "Sorry, I''m in a rush too." Lin Huang shook his head. He could not help as he wanted to return to foothold No.7A28 as soon as possible to avoid any further delays in his plans. "I''m sorry for disturbing." The middle-aged man then turned back and sat on the chair that he was sitting on earlier. Within a short while, another person came by and the middle-aged man immediately went up to him before returning again in disappointment. Lin Huang saw what happened and knew that the man had something urgent to attend to. However, he could not offer the man any help. He then looked for a place to sit and waited patiently as the staff would begin work at 9 am. Nine of them who had pre-booked a ticket for the dimensional portal had arrived. When the 10th person arrived, a few of the people who wanted to buy tickets went up to him. "There''s still another 10 minutes before the dimensional portal opens. Those who are looking for a ticket can look for me. However, as for the price" A short and skinny man said, staring at few of the people who stood in front of him. "The base price of my ticket is 530,000 credit points. The price starts at 10 times higher than the original price and each markup has to be at least five times higher, I will sell the ticket to the anyone who can offer the highest price." "Scavengers like him did really exist in this world" Lin Huang was speechless. The original price was 530,000 credit points but that man now managed to sell it for about 16,000,000 credit points. This was actually not allowed at the portal. The portal had established rules to restrict this. One could only resell their ticket at most three times a year. Once they had exceeded the limit, they would be blacklisted and not be allowed to buy any portal tickets for three years. Once the ticket was sold, the ticket scalper immediately left. Soon, the staff arrived and the middle-aged man who had bought the ticket immediately changed its destination. He had to spend an additional 100,000 credit points for the change. At 9 a.m., the dimensional portal was finally open. The staff did a roll call at the portal and each time the destination changed, the dimensional portal will close temporarily. Lin Huang was the sixth person to be called, right after the middle-aged man who was holding the resale ticket left. "Ye Xiu!" Lin Huang did not respond. It was only when the staff called his fake name a second time that he remembered that he booked the ticket under a fake name. He then stood up. Upon verifying the ticket and his identity, the staff reset the destination and pushed the door. Lin Huang then walked over and 152 The Little sBeggars At foothold No.7A28, also known as Peaceful City. Grade-A super-sized footholds usually had populations that ranged in the hundreds of millions. Similarly, Peaceful City had a population of 280 million people and there were approximately 400 million of people if people who passed through the foothold was included. Apparently, Peaceful City was able to accommodate a large number of people. Before Lin Huang arrived at the A-grade foothold, he imagined how it would look like but when he arrived, he realized that it was vastly different from what he imagined. He thought that there would be various skyscrapers and modern buildings but most of them were ancient buildings instead. On the contrary, there were only a small number of modern buildings there. There was an ancient tower, an ancient pagoda, and an ancient rampart. Most of the buildings retained their historical charm. Even the houses of most ordinary residents had a historical feel to it. The houses sported red bricks and green tiles. It was a prosperous historic city. Lin Huang had booked a hotel located in a high-rise building at the center of the foothold. He then checked into the hotel and went to his room on the 81st floor. He went up the staircase to his room which was No.081029. The room was spacious. The walls were completely made of transparent tiles. It was a special kind of artificial tiling with a crystal-like transparency which was both strong and ductile. Lin Huang could clearly see cities which were 10 kilometers away from him. "It seems like it is good to stay on the upper floors, though." Looking down at the scenery, Lin Huang no longer thought of changing to another hotel. There was also a big balcony facing south equipped with a set of balcony chairs and a table. He sat for a while on the balcony, feeling the wind blow against him. "The overall impression of the hotel is good." Lin Huang was satisfied with the hotel. He then went to the living room and began planning his schedule for the next few days. The portal ticket he booked earlier could be used after 33 days. 12 days had passed and he planned to stay at Peaceful City for another 21 days. Lin Huang was not going to stay idle during the 21 days. Ever since he found out that there were three transcendent levels ranked above gold-level, his resolve was more focused than ever. After cleaning the living room, he began to practice Wildfire Sword skill from eight o''clock in the morning until 11 o''clock at night for several days. Putting aside time taken for his meals, he practiced for about 14.5 hours each day. The number of sword skill pieces accumulated increased. On the sixth day, he had accumulated 1000 Wildfire Sword pieces. A notification from Xiao Hei finally came. "You have accumulated Wildfire Sword sword skill pieces x1,000. It can be integrated into a Rare sword Skill Card. Would you like to integrate this card?" "Integrate." Lin Huang immediately nodded his head. Under normal circumstances, only 300 pieces were required to complete the integration of a Rare level sword Skill Card. However, for the Wildfire Sword skill, the notification to integrate was received only when 1,000 sword skill pieces were accumulated. "Integrating Wildfire Sword skill pieces x1,000" "Congratulations, you have gained a Rare skill - Wildfire Sword." Lin Huang immediately tapped open the Skill Card. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Wildfire Sword" "Rarity: Rare" "Skill Type: Sword" "Skill Level: Unavailable" "Status: Available" "Card Remarks: Passable" "What Xiao Hei meant by ''skill level is unavailable'' was that this skills is beyond gold-rank sword skills and is usable even when one is at the level of a transcendent." Lin Huang had familiarized himself with Xiao Hei''s ambiguous descriptions after a period of time. "Xiao Hei, I remember you telling me that as long as sufficient skill pieces were collected, Wildfire Sword can be upgraded to Epic level without the need for an Advancement Card. Now that I have a complete set of Skill Cards, does it mean that I''ll obtain one skill piece each time I practice this skill?" Lin Huang was not sure how it worked. "You won''t obtain a new skill piece by directly using the Wildfire Sword skill. You must create your own moves based on Wildfire Sword''s moves. If the newly created moves can pass the evaluation, you will then be given a new skill piece. "What is the evaluation criterion?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "It depends on whether it meets the Dao of the Sword. If it does, it''ll pass the evaluation. Otherwise, it''ll fail the evaluation." "Dao of the Sword" That term sounded mysterious. He opened the Heart Network and started looking for information on this term. There was no exact description of this term found on the network. He stopped right before he called Yi Zheng because his second identity would be revealed. He changed his mind and started practicing with his sword again. He had spent the whole afternoon practicing with his sword. He was puzzled that he had not gotten even a single skill piece yet. "What the hell is the Dao of the Sword?" Lin Huang was in deep thought, stroking his chin. A thought suddenly flashed through Lin Huang''s mind, "Dao of the Sword is required in order to upgrade a sword skill from Rare level to Epic level. The Epic level Great Sword Scripture that I possess should contain the Dao of the Sword" Lin Huang continued practicing the Great Sword Scripture instead of Wildfire Sword. As he practiced the Great Sword Scripture, he felt a mysterious aura lingering around him. The feeling was unique, allowing him to feel every single detail when he practiced this skill. When he was practicing with this skill, even the dust in the air could be cut in half if he wanted to do so. After practicing Great Sword Scripture three times, Lin Huang roughly knew what to do. He then proceeded to practice Wildfire Sword repeatedly and carefully figured out every detail of the skill. After practicing for a few hours, it was just over 12 a.m. before Lin Huang regained his senses. Unexpectedly, he had accumulated about 10 Wildfire Sword skill pieces. He knew that he was on the right track. He realized that it was already late at night and his stomach was growling. He only had one meal throughout the day, which was his breakfast at 7 a.m. - it had been 17 hours since his last meal. "It''s so late now. I''m so hungry I wonder if there''s anything to eat out there." Lin Huang lowered his head and looking down through the transparent tiles, he noticed that the street lights were turned off but he spotted a small area not far away from him with lights that were still lit. The place was crowded and it seemed like a night market. He took a shower, changed his clothes and went down. After leaving the hotel, he hurried to the night market. "It seems like most people here like to hunt for food at midnight" Lin Huang followed the smell of the food and found himself at a barbeque stall. The owner of the stall was a short and fat 60-year-old man. His face was a smoky black and nobody could tell if he was born like that or if it was from being covered by the smoke from the coal. On the barbeque rack, there were a few fist-sized steaks that were giving off a sizzling sound. Lin Huang swallowed a mouthful of saliva as he caught a whiff of the steak. "Boss, what type of meat is this?" One of the customers beside him asked. The rest of them including Lin Huang immediately strained their ears to listen to the bosss answer. "This is a fragrant swine. It''s a new breed between a swine beast and a fragrant hog. It only became available in the market two years ago and is considered to be a new ingredient. That''s why it costs relatively higher. Please bear with me" The boss explained in details. Peaceful City was an A-grade foothold that saw many hunters congregating there and many of them would look for food during midnight as they were probably busy the entire day and could only eat after nightfall. Of course, they would not care about how much credit points they were going to spend since credit points were merely a number to them. At the barbeque rack, the smell of the steak grew stronger and the sizzling sound increased everyone''s appetite. The fat boss began to flip the meat with a pair of tongs. All of a sudden, a black shadow flashed and the next moment, one of the steaks on the barbeque rack disappeared. Lin Huang realized that the one who had stolen the steak was a child. He did not stop the child as he believed that the child would only do this from being too hungry. However, one of the hunters beside him could not stand this and pulled on the childs collar. He fell down and looked at the hunter who pulled at his collar with fear. He was holding the steak tightly, not willing to let go as he was afraid that others would snatch his steak away. "Little beggar, you stole the steak in front of us. Do you actually think we were blind?" The hunter was about to punish the child but Lin Huang stopped him. "He must be hungry." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled, "Boss, I''ll pay for the steak that he took." After paying with his credit points, Lin Huang squat in front of the child and told him, "Stealing is wrong. Where are your parents? Are you lost?" The child did not look like a beggar. Despite his face and clothing being dirty, they looked like they were stained recently. Listening to Lin Huang''s words, he hesitated for a moment before nodding his head. "Alright. After you finish your food, I''ll bring you to the exit of the night market and wait for them there. They will surely pass by there when they go home." Lin Huang pulled him up and said as he looked at the steak that was already dirty, "Don''t eat the one you''re holding. I''ll ask the boss to cook you another piece of steak." He then turned to the boss and said, "Boss, two steaks, takeaway please." 153 327 After buying two sets of steaks, Lin Huang gave one to the boy. "The one you''re holding is already are holding is already dirty when it touched the floor earlier during your fall. Throw it away." The boy was holding the steak, hesitating for a moment. "Come, give it to me." Lin Huang extended his hand. The boy hesitated a little but still, he gave it to Lin Huang. Lin Huang took it from him and threw it into the rubbish bin. The boy stared at the rubbish bin and seemed like he was reluctant to throw it away. "Alright, don''t look at it anymore. You will get sick if you eat something dirty." Lin Huang patted the boy''s shoulder. "If you''re still hungry, I''ll buy you more food." He shifted his gaze as soon as he heard that, devouring the steak with pure bliss in his eyes. The boy finished the steak after only two or three bites. He then lifted his head to look at Lin Huang''s steak. "Damn, so fast?" Lin Huang was shocked that he ate really fast. He tore off part of his steak and gave the remaining half to the boy. The boy started gobbling the steak down his throat. Both of them walked for just a short while and the boy finished the second piece of steak. He raised his head and looked at Lin Huang again. "Youre not full yet?" Lin Huang was surprised. The boy nodded his head. "Alright. I''m not feeling that full as well, let''s go look for some more food." Lin Huang did not feel full because he ate less than one-third of his steak. Then, they wandered around in the night market. After walking for a while, the boy stood still in front of a stall. Lin Huang took a look at it and realized that it was another barbeque stall. "Does this little brat like grilled meat so much?" Lin Huang was kind of speechless. Still, he ordered two steaks for the boy and bought himself a few kebabs. Both of them headed towards the exit of the night market as they ate. Within a short while, the boy finished both his steaks. He looked like he was still hungry as he raised his head to look at Lin Huang once again. Lin Huang had no choice but to give him two of his remaining meat skewers. "You''re like a bottomless pit." Lin Huang could only eat two of the fist-sized steaks that he ate earlier and yet, the boy did not feel full even after eating four of them. As they walked along the street, the boy suddenly stopped in front of a room. Lin Huang thought that he saw some food in the room. However, when he looked at it, he realized that it was the kitchen of a barbeque shop. They were slaughtering a swine beast in the kitchen. The boy stared at the beast. Lin Huang frowned, "Don''t tell me you want to eat the raw meat." He brought the boy along with him and bought him more grilled meat. Then, they walked towards the exit of the night market. Lin Huang was already felt full as he had eaten so much junk food. However, the boy hadnt stopped eating since they met. Lin Huang counted and realized that he had already eaten 16 steaks, not including the junk food that he had eaten. His appetite was abnormally good. However, he ate only meat and did not eat vegetables or fruits at all. Lin Huang thought about the way he looked at the swine beast earlier. A thought suddenly crossed his mind, "Could it be? Is it possible that the adults only gave him raw meat at home?" "What''s your name?" Lin Huang suddenly thought of asking the boy''s name. The boy raised his head, looking at Lin Huang and spoke for the first time, "327." "I''m asking you your name. What''s the meaning of those numbers?" Lin Huang could not understand what he was talking about. The boy then pointed himself with his finger and said, "327." "Your name is 327?" Lin Huang frowned because somehow, it sounded like a code for something. The boy nodded his head. Lin Huang kept quiet for a moment. Normal parents would definitely not give their children a code name. He felt like prisoners were the only people who would usually be given a code name. This was an indication that the boy came from a troubled family. The boy was about nine or ten years old. Lin Huang was worried to let him go home. He hesitated for a moment, thinking about the fact that he would be leaving this place after 20 days. He worried about bringing the boy away from this place as well so he decided to stay there and wait patiently. After waiting until slightly after 2 a.m., the night market gradually became quiet after most of the people had left. They waited until the last street lamp switched off which was at about 3 a.m. However, nobody came to claim the boy. Lin Huang looked at the boy helplessly and said, "I think you might have to follow me to the hotel for one night. We will go to the Union Government office tomorrow morning and see if we can retrieve your identity." The boy nodded his head. Lin Huang brought him back to the hotel room. "You can go to bed after taking your bath." Lin Huang went to the bathroom and prepared the water for him to take his bath. He then took kid-sized pajamas from the hotel and placed it in front of the bathroom. "Put on these pajamas after bathing. I''ll wash your clothes later and it should be dry by tomorrow." The boy then took off his shirt and went to the bathroom. Lin Huang took his clothes and threw it into the washing machine. "That is your room. I have put on some sheets on your bed. You can go to bed now." Lin Huang pointed at the bedroom. The boy nodded his head and turned around to go to the bedroom. Lin Huang hung the clothes up. Then, he went back to his room and slept. The next morning, Lin Huang woke up at 8 am. He was shocked the moment when he opened his eyes. The boy had changed back into his own clothes and stood at the head of the bed. Lin Huang had no idea how long he had been standing there. "Little brat, you should not stand there next time. You can play in your room or the living room after waking up." Lin Huang sat up in bed and said. Lin Huang knew why he was standing there now that he saw the boy was unwilling to leave. "Are you hungry?" Lin Huang asked. The boy nodded his head. "Wait for me. Let me wash up first and we''ll go downstairs for breakfast." After about 10 minutes, Lin Huang was washing up and changed his clothes. He brought the boy to a buffet restaurant. "Take whatever that you want to eat. Don''t take too much. It''ll be wasted if you can''t finish it" Once he finished the sentence, Lin Huang began feeling like what he said was totally and utterly unnecessary. Lin Huang took an empty plate and took some food before he looked for a place for them to sit down. The boy took an empty plate as well. After walking around at the restaurant, the boy finally took an entire plate of fried eggs and sat in front of Lin Huang. Lin Huang was amazed that the boy could build a stable stack of fried eggs that stood at a height of 20 centimeters. Many of the people in the restaurant looked at him, expressing their dissatisfaction with the boy. Some of them even complained to the staff. Within a short while, a waitress came. "Mister, your child is going to waste food. We may have to give you a fine if he does." "Don''t worry. He''s not going to waste your food." Lin Huang smiled and said, "Hey, show them." The boy nodded his head and started to eat the fried eggs quickly. He had no idea how many eggs were there on the plate but he ate all of them in less than two minutes. The waitress and the guests were all stunned. "Are you full now?" Lin Huang asked as he was eating his fruits. The boy shook his head. "Do you want another plate?" Lin Huang asked. The boy nodded his head. "The fried eggs are not enough. Please serve us another plate of fried eggs." Lin Huang requested. "Sorry" The waitress took a while to respond and left immediately. Lin Huang noticed the boy''s eating habits. It seemed like he was only interested in eating meat and eggs. He was pickier than the Fatty, Yin Hangyi. Lin Huang brought him along to get some more food. The boy managed to eat all of the meat they had there. Lin Huang then left the restaurant together with him in satisfaction. "All these years, I''ve never managed to eat enough food to justify the price I pay. Today, I finally did it!" After having their breakfast, it was already 9.30 a.m. Lin Huang and the boy rode the Viridian Wolf and hurried to the Union Government''s office. Soon, they found the relevant department after one of the service staffs led them there. The one who was in charge of registration was a middle-aged woman. "What''s your name?" The boy hesitated for a moment and looked at Lin Huang. "She is asking for your name." Lin Huang nodded his head. "327." "What?" The woman was puzzled. "327." The boy repeated. "I''m asking for your name." The woman frowned slightly. "He''s saying that his name is 327. I''ve asked him before yesterday. Aside from these numbers, he doesn''t know how to speak." Lin Huang who was standing beside him explained. The woman glanced at the boy and turned her head towards Lin Huang. "Then tell me, when and where did you find him." "Yesterday at midnight, slightly after 12 a.m" Lin Huang explained everything that happened in detail. "I brought him along and waited at the exit of the night market until 3 a.m. but nobody came for him and I had to bring him to my hotel to stay the night. We came here after having our breakfast." "Where is his Emperor''s Heart Ring?" The woman asked. "No, he didn''t have it with him when I found him." Lin Huang noticed this on the first night when he saw him. "He has to go for facial recognition then. However, I have to inform you that facial recognition might not be able to accurately identify him. If his identity cannot be determined, you will have to register with us and bring the child with you. We''ll contact you if his parents or guardian comes for the child." The woman explained. "But I''m leaving this foothold in 20 days." Lin Huang frowned. "Can''t the child stay here?" "There are more than hundreds of children like him sent to our place each day. We don''t have a proper place for him. I believe that you''re a kind-hearted person. We have confidence in your abilities to take care of him if he were to follow you. If you are facing any financial problems, we''ll financial compensate you" The woman explained patiently. "Alright. Let him go through facial recognition first." Lin Huang agreed. Soon, a staff took the child away. After about 10 minutes, the staff and the child came out. "Sorry, the boy''s identity could not be identified by facial recognition." The staff told him the result of the test. "Then the child has to follow you. Please register your name." The woman gave Lin Huang some documents to fill up. "Alright" Lin Huang was trapped because he could not just leave the boy alone and stranded. 154 Sword Genius?! He brought the boy back to the hotel. Lin Huang wondered how he was going to settle this problem. The main problem was not the boy''s huge appetite. It was that Lin Huang had no idea how he would explain this to Lin Xin. He thought for a while and turned his head to look at the boy, "I shouldn''t be calling you little brat all the time and its also impolite to call you with a number. I should give you a new name." The boy nodded his head. "Alright. Your new name will be Lin Xuan." After confirming the name, Lin Huang looked at the boy again, "I give you this name in hopes that you can become a dignified man in future." The boy nodded his head, pointed at himself with his finger and said, "Lin Xuan." "Yes, you are right. From today onward, your name is Lin Xuan." Lin Huang in turn, pointed at himself and said, "I am Lin Huang. From today onward, I''m your brother." Lin Xuan nodded his head and pointed at Lin Huang, "Brother." "I have a sister. Her name is Lin Xin. She is 13 years old. She is your sister." Lin Huang continued. "In 20 days, Ill bring you home and introduce her to you." Lin Xuan nodded his head again. "Lin Xuan, I will practice with my sword in the living room every day. Don''t come near me because I''m afraid I might hurt you if Im not aware that you are close by. If youre hungry, let me know and well go out and look for food." Lin Huang said. Lin Xuan nodded his head. He seemed like he had thought of something. He hesitated for a while, looked at Lin Huang and said, "Hungry" "You''re hungry already?" Lin Huang looked at the time. It was only slightly after 11 a.m. and it was indeed already time for lunch. He immediately brought Lin Xuan to the buffet restaurant downstairs. A huge variety of food was available during lunch compared to breakfast. There were various types of meat. Lin Xuan took more than half an hour to eat his fill to satisfy his hunger, having already eaten almost all the meat in the buffet restaurant. He brought Lin Xuan back to his room and Lin Huang began practicing with his sword in the living room. Lin Xuan was initially resting at his room but after a while, Lin Xuan went to the living room and looked at Lin Huang who was practicing with his sword. As he looked at Lin Huang, he began to follow Lin Huang''s movements. Lin Huang laughed at him. He did not bother, allowing him to learn. It took Lin Huang for exactly one month to learn the Wildfire Sword skill. It was only then that he could gather a sufficient number of skill pieces to integrate them into a Rare Skill Card. If it was any other talented person, it would take them at least half a year to actually learn this skill so he was not too worried about Lin Xuan being able to master it. However, after practicing his technique several times, he noticed that Lin Xuan began to use his hand as a sword, performing the complete Wildfire Sword stances. To top it off, there seemed to be a lingering charm in the way he practiced. "Could it be? Is it possible that hes a sword genius?" Lin Huang sheathed his sword and stared at Lin Xuan''s movement. He was assured that he was a sword genius as he looked at Lin Xuan''s movement. Lin Xuan had already mastered the Dao of the Sword. The sword skill that he was performing was not the Rare Wildfire Sword Skill that Lin Huang had been practicing. Instead, it was the Epic Wildfire Sword Skill. Some of the movements that Lin Xuan did were different from the ones that Lin Huang practiced. Lin Huang confirmed that Lin Xuan did not blindly follow what he did but instead, derived completely different Epic Sword Skill stances. After he finished practicing the whole set of sword skill, Lin Xuan stopped. He then returned to his senses. When he saw Lin Huang looking at his direction, he looked back at Lin Huang with doubt. "Lin Xuan, the stances you were practicing earlier Have you learned it in the past before?" Lin Huang asked. Lin Xuan was confused so he shook his head. "It''s true! I have found a sword genius!" Lin Huang was excited. Lin Xuan only watched him practice Wildfire Sword several times and he could already perform the complete stance for an Epic Sword Skill. He passed the wooden sword to Lin Xuan and said, "Come, show me one more time using this sword." Lin Huang purposely bought the wooden sword so that he would not damage anything in the hotel''s living room. Lin Xuan took the wooden sword and started practice with the sword. Lin Xuan moved aside when he saw Lin Huang resuming his practice which was actually stances he got from watching Lin Xuan earlier. After watching that for a while, he went back into his room, seemingly uninterested in it. However, Lin Huang was inspired by Lin Xuan and the speed he accumulated skill card pieces had become faster. He would usually get about 20 skill card pieces in a day. However, he had gotten more than 20 skill card pieces during the afternoon alone. During dinner time, Lin Xuan walked out of his room and saw that Lin Huang was still practicing with his sword. He hesitated a little and still, he said, "Brother, hungry" "Alright. Well go for dinner." Lin Huang looked at the time. It was about 5 p.m. now. He immediately put his sword away and washed his face. Then, he brought Lin Xuan to the buffet restaurant again. Similar to the previous visit, Lin Xuan spent half an hour for dinner and finished all the meat in the restaurant. They were about to leave when the hotel manager approached them, his face obviously sour. "Mr. Ye, our restaurant is going to lose money if your child continues to eat like this. There are many other buffet restaurants out there and you need not visit this restaurant only. Maybe trying other restaurant''s dishes will be good for the both of you." It was apparent that the manager was being selfish and said, "If you''re not satisfied with our service, well compensate you." "It''s okay. I won''t make things difficult. I''ll look for some other buffet restaurant." Lin Huang felt that the hotel was quite uncomfortable and did not want to put the hotel staff through too much hassle. "Thank you. I''m sorry for the inconveniences caused." The hotel manager apologized. Again, he brought Lin Xuan back to his room and continued practicing with his sword. It was 10 p.m. now. Lin Xuan did not mention anything about being hungry and had already fallen asleep. Lin Huang practiced until 12 a.m. He then took a bath and went to bed. The next day morning at around 8 am, Lin Huang opened his eyes and saw Lin Xuan standing in front of his room. He did not stand at the headboard anymore. The first thing Lin Xuan said as soon as Lin Huang woke up was, "Brother, hungry" "Let me wash up first. Well go for breakfast." Lin Huang and Lin Xuan went downstairs and headed to another buffet restaurant nearby. Once again, many people were amazed by Lin Xuan''s appetite. Lin Huang and Lin Xuan tried almost all the buffet restaurants nearby in the following days. Most of the buffet restaurants owners knew that there was a child with very big appetite as he could eat more food than the restaurant''s daily sales within a day. Lin Huang and Lin Xuan had been blacklisted by many of the buffet restaurants. "We just got blacklisted by the 17th buffet restaurant." Lin Huang was not embarrassed. Instead, he was actually proud of his new brothers achievements. The speed Lin Huang''s could accumulate skill pieces grew faster and faster. The reason for this was because he began practicing his sword with Lin Xuan. On his 19th day staying in Peaceful City, Lin Huang had finally accumulated 3,000 Wildfire Sword skill card pieces. A notification from Xiao Hei finally arrived. "You have accumulated Wildfire Sword skill pieces x3,000. They can be integrated into a Wildfire Sword Skill Card. Upon completing the integration process, your Wildfire Sword Skill Card can be upgraded from Rare to Epic. Would you like to integrate this card?" "Yes!" Lin Huang was thrilled! "Integrating Wildfire Sword skill pieces x3,000. Integrating Rare Wildfire Sword Skill Card." "Congratulations, you have gained Epic Sword Skill - Wildfire Sword." Lin Huang immediately tapped on the Skill Card to see the description. "Skill Card" "Skill Name: Wildfire Sword" "Rarity: Epic" "Type of Skill: Sword" "Skill Level: Unavailable" "Status: Available" "Card Remarks: Passable" Lin Huang was excited for the entire afternoon after he obtained his second Epic Skill Card. "It''s great. I have completed advancing my sword skill before returning to Baqi City." Lin Huang was quite satisfied with his progress. He had been practicing with his sword for many days before he finally got his second Epic Skill Card. He wanted to rest in the coming days. On his 20th day staying in Peaceful City, Lin Huang and Lin Xuan went out to look for food. They began eating from morning until 10 o''clock at night. Then, they returned to the hotel. The next morning on the 21st day, they checked out of the hotel. They then proceed to ride on the Viridian Wolf to the portal. At about 8.30 a.m., both of them arrived at the portal. It was undeniable that an A-Grade foothold was huge as there were already hundreds of people waiting there when they arrived. At 9 a.m., there were about 1,000 people waiting at the portal. The staff at the portal started to get busy. They went to the counter and Lin Huang bought him a portal ticket. Although he had bought a single ticket earlier, he was allowed to bring along other people as long as he bought another ticket for them with the same destination he was going to. Maybe it was stricter at A-Grade footholds, possibly it was also because of the ticket prices which were expensive but Lin Huang did not see any ticket scalpers here. It was slightly after 10 a.m. before Lin Huang finally heard the staff calling his name. He brought Lin Xuan along and walked towards the dimensional portal. As soon as the staffs had set their destination, both of them quickly walked through. The golden dimensional portal gradually closed behind them 155 Back Home Foothold No.7A12, also known as Qiantang City was the most popular attraction at Division7. The beautiful scenery constantly changed according to the four seasons. With blooming blossoms come forth spring, Autumn dances in the moonlight beam, Summer calls with whispering winds, Of snow and frost, winter sings. It was a poem written by a strong man to extol Qiantang City almost 700 years ago. Lin Huang arrived at Qiantang City for the first time and this city gave him a good first impression. Though he did not stay there for long, if Lin Huang was to settle down someday, Qiantang City would be his first choice. "Let''s see if I can apply for permanent residency in this city. If I could, it''d be good to stay here together with Xin Er." Lin Huang thought of this in his heart when he left. The price of a house was no longer a problem to Lin Huang. However, it was not easy to get approval for permanent residency in an A-grade foothold. Together with Lin Xuan, the both of them stayed at Qiantang City for two days. Then, they went back to Baqi City through the dimensional portal. Upon their arrival at Baqi City, Lin Huang immediately removed the disguise that he had been wearing and reverted to his original look. Lin Huang was worried that Lin Xuan could not recognize him after he had removed his disguise but Lin Xuan could not tell the difference. This made it quite convenient for Lin Huang as he could save his breath on the lengthy explanation he had prepared earlier. Both of them rode on the Alexandrian Eagle and returned to Wulin Town. Lin Huang had left for about two months. He initially planned to come back once he had upgraded to bronze-level. One month was enough for him but he had never expected so many things to happen. He knew that Lin Xin must be very worried about him. His suspicions were correct as he could hear that Lin Xin running down the stairs the moment he opened the door. "Brother!" She immediately pounced on Lin Huang the moment she saw him. She hugged Lin Huang tightly, unwilling to let go of him. She was trying to hold back the tears she had in her eyes. "I''m fine. Some incidents happened and that''s why I''m late for a month." Lin Huang stroked Lin Xin''s head, explaining what happened to her with a smile. "I''ve been calling your number every day but I couldn''t get through. I thought something bad had happened to you" Lin Xin burst into tears. "My Emperor''s Heart Ring is not functioning well. I''ll repair it soon." Lin Huang could only explain it this way. His use of the Emperor''s Heart Ring had been restricted when he encountered the Purple Crow. When the Purple Crow left, he created a fake identity for himself and the original Emperor''s Heart Ring was kept in storage. To avoid attracting the Purple Crow''s attention, he dared not contact Lin Xin using his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Alright, stop crying." Lin Huang tried to comfort her. It was only after a long while that Lin Xin released her hands and finally noticed the little boy who was standing beside Lin Huang. "The child is" Looking at the boy who was less than nine years old, Lin Xin asked doubtfully. Lin Huang then explained everything to her. "He is so pitiful. Brother, can we adopt him?" Lin Xin sympathize with the boy. "If nobody comes looking for him, he has to stay here." Lin Huang explained. "Alright, before his parents come, you can''t ask him to leave the house." Lin Xin immediately switched sides. "Hey, when did I ask him to leave?" Lin Huang pinched Lin Xin''s cheeks and said, "I have given him a new name, Lin Xuan. Introduce yourself to him." "Hello, my name is Lin Xin. I am your brother''s sister." Lin Xin introduced herself to Lin Xuan, "I''m turning 14 soon. I''m older than you and you should address me as your sister. If anyone dares to bully you around here, I''ll help you straighten them out!" Lin Xin was very happy and said, "I finally have a little brother!" "Brother, where''s Lin Xuan going to sleep tonight?" Lin Xin suddenly thought of this. "I''ll put a small bed in my room. He can sleep in my room." Lin Huang just thought of this and realized that he should settle this problem first. "I''ll go to Furniture City and buy him a bed as well as some food. Can you play with him first? If he gets hungry, give him some meat to eat. We''ll eat some good food later during lunch." "Alright, come home earlier. It''s already 11 o''clock." Lin Xin looked at the time and said. Right after Lin Huang left, Lin Xin played with Lin Xuan for a while. "You will be full later if you eat meat now. I''ll get you some sweets." Lin Xin walked to the kitchen and took out some sweets from the snack cabinet and placed them on the table. "Choose whichever ones you like." Lin Xuan looked at the sweets and kept quiet. "How about trying this? It tastes good." Lin Huang chose one of the colorful sweets and gave it to him. That was her favorite flavor. Lin Xuan shook his head. He did not take the sweets but he turned his head towards the refrigerator instead. "Are you sure you want to eat meat?" Lin Xin frowned. Lin Xuan nodded his head. "Alright, I''ll get you some meat then." Lin Xin then took out a completely frozen steak from the fridge and placed it on the plate. Then, she stared at the steak awkwardly, "I didn''t defrost the meat. If I put it in the oven directly it can''t be fully cooked What should I do?" While she was still thinking about what she should do, Lin Xuan suddenly extended his hand and grabbed the frozen steak. Before Lin Xin could respond, he had bitten off a mouthful of meat. Lin Xin was shocked, looking at Lin Xuan as he bit the frozen steak. After a long moment, she finally reacted and said, "This is still raw, you can''t eat it! You''ll get sick." Before she could snatch the frozen steak away from him, Lin Xuan devoured the steak with just a few bites. After he had finished eating the raw steak, he looked at the fridge again with a pitiful look. "No, you can''t eat raw food!" Lin Xin blocked the refrigerator and said, "If you want to eat, wait for brother to come back. He''ll cook for you." He stopped asking for food as he heard this. After about 20 minutes, Lin Huang came home. "I have ordered takeout. Lin Xin, please open the door later when the food is here. I''ll set up the bed first." Lin Huang told her and went upstairs. Lin Xin hesitated for a moment and she decided to go after Lin Huang. Lin Huang went to his room and moved his bed. Then, he placed the small bed that he had just bought. As soon as he set up the bed, he saw Lin Xin was walking into his room. "What happened? It looks like you have something to tell me." Lin Huang knew that she was a bit hesitant as he took a glance at Lin Xin. "Brother When Lin Xuan was with you, did he eat raw meat?" Lin Xin asked. "No, he didn''t. Why" Lin Huang was stunned. When he heard this he frowned and asked, "Did he just eat raw meat?" Lin Xin then told him what happened earlier. After listening to this, Lin Huang suddenly recalled that he seemed like he was looking at food when he saw the swine beast that night. Be it his abnormally huge appetite or his unusual code name, his talent at handling the sword or the fact that he ate raw meat, this little brat was indeed weird. Lin Huang had no idea what kind of person he actually adopted but it seemed like Lin Xuan was not harmful and at the very least, he has not caused any harm to humans. "I understand, I''ll look after him." Lin Huang nodded his head and said, "Go downstairs and wait for the takeout delivery. I''ll go down right after I fix this up." After putting sheets on the bed, he heard Lin Xin shouting at him. "Brother, the delivery man is here. You ordered so much!" "Got it, I''m coming down." Lin Huang immediately went downstairs. Two of the delivery staffs took turns bringing the meals from their car into the house. "Are there any special guests coming to your house? You ordered so many dishes!" One of the delivery staff asked with a smile. "Yes, I did order too much." Lin Huang immediately answered before Lin Xin could react. Lin Xin took a glance at him and kept quiet. Right until the moment the delivery staff left their house after bringing in all the food, she asked, "Brother, do we have guests coming later? Why did you order so much food?" "You will see later." Lin Huang said while he asked Lin Xin to open the covers of the containers. Three of them were sitting in front of the table, enjoying their meal. After a short while, Lin Xin finally knew why Lin Huang ordered so much food. She was terrified at the rate Lin Xuan was eating. "Eat slowly, nobody is going to snatch your food away." Lin Huang smiled. Soon, Lin Huang and Lin Xin had finished eating. Lin Xuan then ate all of the leftovers. Lin Xin was stunned looking at his appetite. "He has a big appetite" Lin Xin told Lin Huang softly. Lin Huang laughed and told her that Lin Xuan was blacklisted by 18 buffet restaurants. After lunch, Lin Huang led Lin Xuan to his room. He pointed at the small bed and said, "That''s your bed." He then pointed at his own bed, "I''ll be sleeping over there. Just tell me if anything happens." Lin Xuan nodded his head. Lin Huang then went downstairs and cleaned the kitchen. He sat on the sofa and searched for information on the Hunter Assessment. He wanted to go for the Hunter Assessment before he was upgraded to the silver-level so he could get the license to become a real hunter. It had been more than four months since he last registered himself at the Hunter Association. In fact, it was quite fast for an ordinary person to achieve bronze-level within four months. However, with sufficient Life Crystals, the speed he advanced was still quite ordinary. If he were to attend the assessment after he upgraded to silver-level, Lin Huang''s leveling speed would be revealed during the combat test which is why he had to get his license before he upgraded to silver-level. 156 Yang Lings Reminder The assessment for Regular Hunters was held twice a year in June and December. It was previously held only once a year in June. However, in the last hundred years, the number of candidates who registered for the assessment increased rapidly so they increased the number of assessments to twice a year. One could register for the assessment directly via the network. However, they had to attend the assessment at a B-grade big-sized foothold. It was now early November. Lin Huang planned to take a break since the assessment was one month away. He arrived in this world back in June and had been very busy throughout the last five months. He had encountered transcendent monsters many times where other people would have probably been lucky to have only met them once in a lifetime. He was living quite an interesting life. Despite the fact that the content of the Regular Hunter Assessment varied each year, with his bronze-level rank-3 combat ability, Lin Huang was confident that it would not be difficult for him to pass the assessment without disclosing his identity as an Imperial Censor. Therefore, he did not need to put in much effort into the assessment. After some thought, the only thing he could do now was to stabilize his Life Power by using his Life Skills. After completing the Regular Hunter Assessment, he would be upgraded to silver-level immediately. However, before this, he had one task to do. Staring at the Emperor''s Heart Ring on his left index finger, he hesitated for a moment. He then decided to call Yang Ling. Yang Ling was the skinny man who made Lin Huang a fake Emperor''s Heart Ring at Daxi City. The moment he saw the football, Lin Huang knew that he was also a traveler. It rang for about 10 seconds and the communication device connected. "What''s up? Do you have any business for me?" Yang Ling''s voice was heard from the communication device. "How did you know that it''s not because something is wrong with the Emperor''s Heart Ring? How did you know that I called you to ask for help?" Lin Huang asked seriously. "I''m confident with my skills," Yang Ling paused for a moment and said, "Tell me whatever you want. If not, I have something else I need to deal with." "Emm" Lin Huang wanted to get closer to him since both of them were travelers from Earth. He wanted to know more about his travels. However, it was apparent that he had something more "important" to deal with so Lin Huang had to immediately tell him the purpose of the call. "I actually wanted to ask, could you replicate an Emperor''s Heart Ring? For example, my Emperor''s Heart Ring can''t be used for some complicated reasons and I need to replicate a new one with similar personal information but" Yang Ling interrupted before Lin Huang could finish his sentence, "Alright, I get it. You''re looking for a Parallel Space Ring." "Are you sure that''s what I want? I haven''t finished saying what I needed," Lin Huang was not sure if he understood what he meant. "Alright, stop talking. I don''t know which organization are you going to leave and I''m really not interested. You''re looking for a new Emperor''s Heart Ring that does not contain any information about the organization, except your own identity," Yang Ling concluded. What he said was exactly what Lin Huang was asking for. "Yes, that''s the one," Lin Huang nodded his head. "I can do it for you. However, two prices are available for this ring - 100 Life Crystal and 200 Life Crystal," Yang Ling said. "What''s the difference?" Lin Huang frowned and asked. "The ring that costs 100 Life Crystal contains only your personal information. However, you will lose the information registered at the Credit Bureau, Hunter Association, and other organizations. Also, you can no longer withdraw your credit points from your savings account at the Credit Bureau. Regarding the registration information, it will not be troublesome to register again at some of the organizations. However, if the organization is strict in verifying and examining the applicant''s information, they will debug their database and remove the original information. This will cause your original information to be modified. At the same time, it might notify other registered organizations regarding the change of information." "For the ring that costs 200 Life Crystal, I will completely replicate the Emperor''s Heart Ring and remove the information that you do not want completely. All of your registered information will still be there and you can withdraw your credit points from your savings account. If you have large amounts of savings, I would recommend you to take this option," Yang Ling explained the details. "Alright, I will take the one that costs 200 Life Crystal then," Lin Huang decided quickly. If he were to choose the former, he had to register at the Hunter Association again before attending the Regular Hunter Assessment. This might notify the Purple Crows. "You only need to make a copy of your personal information and send me the information via an encrypted email," he said, and before Yang Ling finished his sentence, he added, "You should know that I will only accept Life Crystal. Don''t convert it to credit points when you make your payment." "I know. Don''t worry," Lin Huang nodded his head. "Send me your information now and I''ll do it for you tonight. I''ll send it to you right after I''m done. Since you are a regular customer, you won''t need to pay for the postage," Yang Ling said. "Please delete my personal information after you''re done," Lin Huang reminded him before sending out the email. "Don''t worry. I have been doing this for years and I have never disclosed any of my customer''s information. I will make sure that the information is permanently deleted without leaving any traces. I assure confidentiality with the hopes that I will have more returning business from all my customers," Yang Ling said to comfort his doubts. "Alright," Lin Huang said and then sent him a copy of his personal information via the encrypted email. After a moment, Yang Ling''s voice was heard from the communication device again. "Which information do you wish to remove?" "The information about the Purple Crows," he said, referring to the complete set of information that had been sent to Yang Ling. There was nothing Lin Huang could hide. Yang Ling kept quiet for a moment and said, "Alright, I can do it for you. However, I have to remind you that the Purple Crow is not a simple organization. It will be better if you could destroy the original Emperor''s Heart Ring at a place that you are unfamiliar with." "Can''t I keep it in my storage space?" Lin Huang asked. "Even if you kept it in the storage space, they can still track your location through certain methods," Yang Ling explained. Lin Huang broke out in cold sweat as he heard this. He kept his Emperor''s Heart Ring in his storage space all the time and he thought his whereabouts could not be tracked. However, he was now sure that his location could in fact, still be tracked. "Anyway... They won''t track you if you are not an important person. I just wanted to remind you so that you are aware of it. Don''t be too worried," Yang Ling added as he seemed to know that Lin Huang was worried about it. "I know. I''ll settle it soon," Lin Huang said. He was not going to keep the Emperor''s Heart Ring with him after what Yang Ling had said. "Oh yeah, is the delivery address the same as the address provided with your information?" Yang Ling asked. "Yes," Lin Huang said and nodded his head. "I will send it to you at that address then. Are you in a hurry? If you could wait for two to three months, I will choose a cheaper postage method and save some money," Yang Ling asked. "I need it by December. I can actually pay for the postage, no worries," Lin Huang did not know that Yang Ling wanted to save some money. He needed it by then. "It''s fine. I said postage was included. Since you are in a hurry, I will use the fastest method. You will receive it within a week," Yang Ling said as he insisted on paying the postage fee. "Thank you then," Lin Huang replied and smiled. "As a final reminder, you should move from your location as soon as possible. Although I don''t know how you escaped from the Purple Crows, your address has been disclosed. If they find out you''re still alive, your family members will be in danger," Yang Ling warned before hanging up. 157 New Emperor’s Heart Ring After hanging up the call with Yang Ling, Lin Huang was thinking about the reminder asking him to move away from where he lived for his family and his own safety. Although he faked his death and successfully escaped from the Purple Crows, he had left traces of his personal details with them. There would not be a problem if nobody knew that he was still alive, however, if it was discovered, the Purple Crows would definitely come after him. The Purple Crow staff could enter small areas such as Wulin Town as they wished without restrictions or resistance from the government. "I must get the residential permit to stay in a grade-A foothold or else Lin Xin wouldnt be able to transfer schools. If Im not able to do that, it would be good to get the permit to temporarily stay in a grade-B foothold. At least there are quite a few transcendents thar resided in grade-B foothold. The people of the Purple Crow would be more cautious and will not intervene haphazardly," Lin Huang thought. He also considered asking Yi Zheng about the residential permission as soon as he got his new Emperors Heart Ring. As he was a royal member, he would surely know more about the matter than Lin Huang did. "Xin Er, I need to run some errands. I will be back soon," he called out. Lin Huang left the house right after that. He changed his face before heading to the Credit Bureau.There was quite a queue at the bureau, and it took awhile until it was his turn. There was a woman who looked a little older than 50 years old behind the counter. She looked at Lin Huang and asked, "What kind of service would you like?" "A bank transfer, please," Lin Huang answered. He then looked for Yang Lings account number on his communication device. The woman frowned and reminded him as per bank policy, saying, "There are many frauds on the network nowadays. You young people shouldnt be transferring money to strangers, you should be more alert." "Thanks for your reminder, I understand that," Lin Huang nodded. "What is your relationship with the person that you are transferring the money to?" the woman asked. "We are friends, I guess," Lin Huang answered. "You should not trust those friends that you get to know from the network. They could be frauds," the woman reminded him again. "We have met before," Lin Huang explained, quite annoyed with her constant prodding. "Alright, thats better. What is the reason of the transaction?" the woman continued. She then followed the question with another piece of advice, and said, "If its lending your friend money, try not to send too much or else you might not get it back in the future." "Oh its not lending money, its a proper business," Lin Huang said, helplessly fending of the woman''s interrogation. The woman was too passionate about matters not concerning her, he thought. "Alright then, how much is it?" the woman finally asked. "200 Life Crystals. Please do not send credit points, he only wants Life Crystals," Lin Huang said. He then took out all 200 Life Crystals and piled them on the counter. It was rare for ordinary people to even see a Life Crystal piece. Now that there were so many complete Life Crystals lying on top of the counter, everyone was stunned. It took the woman behind the counter a moment to snap out of her daze. "Would you like to send all of these Life Crystals out?" she asked immediately. "Yes, there are a total of 200 of them. Please do not send out credit points, just transfer all these Life Crystals to his account," Lin Huang said again while he projected Yang Lings account details before the woman. "Give me a moment, I will have to count." The woman nodded and started counting the Life Crystals. Soon she was done counting. "200 pieces of standard Life Crystals. The system shows that all of them are complete, the woman said. The woman then nodded and said, "Kid, are you sure you want to send so many Life Crystals to your friend?" "Yes. He is sending me my requested items while I send him the money. This is a business transaction,"" Lin Huang said and nodded. "Alright, so you would like to send Life Crystals, not Life Crystals pieces or credit points right?" The woman confirmed again. "Yes, he only accepts Life Crystals," Lin Huang nodded. "Sure, Ill do that for you now," she replied. Awhile later, the woman nodded at Lin Huang and said, "The transaction is complete." Just when the woman informed Lin Huang, he received a message from Yang Ling, "I have received the money, I will send out your stuff tonight." "Thank you, Aunty," Lin Huang said and left. When he got home from the Credit Bureau, he saw that Lin Xin was teaching Lin Xuan how to play the Gun Master. He then started to practice Army Attack Tactics in the living room. Ever since he levelled-up to a Bronze-level. He had never trained his Army Attack Tactics anymore. However, the sword skill had been up to it''s own rotation plans. The Life Power in his body was now pretty stable. If he was to properly train for 10 days to half a month, he would definitely master the skill. Lin Huang stopped his training when it was dinner time, and he ordered some takeaway again. Lin Xuan had a big appetite, and what Lin Huang cooked would not have been enough for Lin Xuan. Soon, the food was delivered. After dinner, Lin Xin helped Lin Huang clean up the kitchen. "Its not good that we order takeaway everyday. I must think of a way to solve the problem of Lin Xuans big appetite" Lin Huang mumbled to himself while he cleaned up. Lin Xin who was next to him heard him suddenly stopped washing the dishes. She seemed to have recalled something and said, "Brother, there was this barbecue machine that was very popular on the network. My friend has one at home. It can contain a lot of food and its easy to use. You can even put an entire pig monster in and the machine would peel its skin and cut it into pieces before the barbecue began, automatically. All you have to do is put the seasoning in one hour later and it would be ready 10 minutes after that." "Is there really such thing?" Lin Huangs eyes lit up. "Yes! Ive tried it at her place, and it tasted really good," Lin Xin nodded. "Lets get one then." Lin Huang decided immediately. Two days later, the outdoor waterproof barbecue machine arrived. It was big, so Lin Huang placed it in the garden on the fourth floor. He had many monster bodies in his space storage ring, all he would have to do was put one monster in the machine. The issue about Lin Xuans food was solved. For the entire week, Lin Huang spent most of his time in training his Army Attack Tactics. The Life Power in his body was stabilized sooner than expectation. He was ready to breakthrough to a White Silver-level at any moment, so to prevent that, he finally gave himself a break. On the eighth day, he received the new Emperors Heart Ring Yang Ling sent him. He put it on immediately. He then found out that all of his personal details, including his 300 billion credit points were still in his account with the Credit Bureau. The only change was that his registration with the Purple Crows was no longer there. He was much relieved. However, he soon found out that he had many missed calls and messages when he opened the contact page. Most of them came from Lin Xin, she had called him more than 30 times and sent many messages. Fatty had called him thrice, two missed calls from Yi Yeyu and one from Yi Zheng. For messages, Fatty had sent him quite a few, two were from Yi Yeyu and one from Leng Yuexin. Lin Huang then read the messages one by one. Fatty informed Lin Huang that he had to leave to Baqi City as he had something to settle at home, and he could not wait for Lin Huang anymore. Yi Yeyu sent two messages, one which read So youve spread your wings now and you''re not picking up my calls anymore? while the other one was Havent heard from you for a month now, are you dead?. But, the message from Leng Yuexin was simple, and it read, ''I am back in Division7. The first message Lin Huang replied to was to Leng Yuexin, "Thats great. I was staying in Fog Canyon, and there was no signal. I have just gotten back today." He replied Yi Yeyu next, "I wouldnt die so easily. I was in Fog Canyon, there was no signal in there. Is there anything I can do for you?" He replied Fatty next, "Alright then, go settle your stuff. I have just came back from Fog Canyon today." Yi Yeyu requested to do a video-call with Lin Huang immediately, and he picked up the call after sitting down on the couch. "So youre really alive, I thought you were dead," Yi Yeyu said as she checked Lin Huang out through the video. "Such a genius like me wouldnt die so easily," Lin Huang laughed, "Anything?" "Cant I call for nothing?" Yi Yeyu glared at Lin Huang. "Of course you can, anytime anywhere," Lin Huang nodded. "I heard youve been to Fog Canyon. Something happened there earlier so I wanted to confirm if you were really alive," Yi Yeyu told Lin Huang the real reason she was calling. "What happened in Fog Canyon?" Lin Huang asked, doubtful. "Many people died there recently, and they said it was done by a mutated sword slave. There were a groups of White Silver-level hunters attempting to kill the monster but they were all killed. Later on, many Gold-level hunters went in but none found the monster," Yi Yeyu explained. "I didnt know about that, neither did I see such a monster," Lin Huang said with raised eyebrows. "Its great that youre doing good," she said, with a concerned look on her face. Just when she was going to hang up the call, she recalled something, "Oh yea, something happened to the Fatty, the guy who was close to you. Since you just came back today, I guess you havent heard about it." "What happened?" Lin Huang was stunned. Although Fatty said he had something to do at home, he did not tell Lin Huang what exactly happened. "His father was sick, and he passed away. As a friend of his, give him a call. Thats all, Im hanging up," Yi Yeyu said and hung up the phone right away. "Fattys father passed away?" Lin Huang frowned. He forgot about the residence permit in grade-A and grade-B footholds matter than he wanted to ask. After hesitating, Lin Huang called Fatty. Fatty only picked up awhile later, and he looked exhausted in the video. "Are you okay, Fatty? I heard about what happened from Yi Yeyu," Lin Huang asked immediately. "Im good," Fatty forced a smiled and shook his head. "Where are you now? Baqi City?" "No Im at my hometown. We just buried my dads body a few days back" Fatty shook his head. "I recalled uncle looked good the last time we saw him, how did he" Lin Huang thought it was strange. "He was exhausted. He didnt know when to rest, and he abused his body with work. His lost of Life Light was tens of times faster than ordinary people, but he didnt tell us about that. It was too late when we found out," Fatty said softly and he had tears in his eyes as he spoke. "I have nothing on hand these few days, I will come and pay my respects," Lin Huang suggested. "Its alright, the Regular Hunter assessment is starting soon in December. Since you have stayed in Fog Canyon for so long, you must have levelled-up to a Bronze-level by now. You should prepare yourself. Too bad I cant be joining anymore. All the best to you. Do try to pass during the first assessment" Fatty said as he knew that Lin Huang was joining the assessment. "Alright then, dont think too much. Rest," Lin Huang said. He did not really know how to comfort Fatty, but tried what he knew to ease the pain. After he hung up, Lin Huang let out a sigh. Fattys rather was just an ordinary person but he sacrificed most of his life to food just because of his passion. Although it was not right that he abused his body, his passion for food was admirable. "Hopefully fatty would get back on his feet soon. If he inherited the passion and persistence with food from his father, he will definitely be an outstanding Food Hunter in the future" 158 Did the Head Examiner Slip His Tongue? The first thing Lin Huang did after receiving the new Emperors Heart Ring was register himself so he could participate in the Regular Hunter assessment. Time passed quickly and before he knew it, a week went by with Lin Huang spending most of his time resting. Besides that, he also practiced Army Attack Tactics for a couple of hours every day to keep his skills sharp. The training was not to upgrade his abilities but rather to avoid his body from getting lazy so he practiced every day to keep up his momentum. It was half a month before the assessment would start and was almost time to depart. Lin Huang spoke to Lin Xin and Lin Xuan that night at dinner. "I will head to foothold No.7B24 in two days to join the Regular Hunter Assessment. The assessment itself will take about one month and the journey back and forth would take more than 20 days. So, it looks like I''ll be away for almost two months," he explained. "Brother, will you be able to come back before the year end?" Lin Xin asked. She seemed really upset. "That shouldnt be a problem. The Hunter Association would take that into consideration that as well. As soon as the assessment ends, I should have sufficient time to get back home," Lin Huang nodded. "Lin Xuan, listen to your sister, tell her when youre hungry. Dont leave the house on your own. If you need to head out, follow your sister," Lin Huang said to Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan nodded. "Xin Er, I have many monster carcasses with me, I''ll transfer them to your storage space. Dont just eat meat like Lin Xuan does, get some vegetables and fruits as well. Ill transfer you some credit points" Lin Huang then transferred the monster carcasses and credit points to Lin Xin as he said. "Dont worry about spending the money, buy all the things that you need to buy" he continued. Lin Xin did not say a word and all she did was to nod. She knew that the Regular Hunter Assessment only happened twice a year. If Lin Huang missed this round, he would have to wait until June of next year. On the next day, Lin Huang headed to Baqi City after lunch and bid farewell to Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. He checked into a hotel at the central plaza of Baqi City. He stayed there to wait for the Demonic Crystal Spaceship which would depart the next morning. After a nights rest in Baqi City, Lin Huang took the spaceship to foothold No.7B24 the next morning. The journey to the foothold would take 11 days and thankfully it was a smooth one. However, there were many passengers on the spaceship. Most of them look like they were hunters too, perhaps also participating in the assessment. On the 11th day at noon, the spaceship arrived at foothold No.7B24 in the north of Baqi City. Foothold No.7B24 was also called Beixuan City. There were more than 180 B-grade footholds in Division7, and foothold No.7B24 was one of the earliest ones to be established. It was huge, covering an area of more than 11,000 square kilometers. The permanent residents numbered at 16 million people with a five million strong population of people who came in and out of the city. It was considered a crowded foothold compared to other B-grade footholds. After he disembarked the spaceship, Lin Huang arrived at a hotel that was located nearby the Hunter Association. He had booked the hotel room before he departed. He then registered himself at the reception. It was three days before the assessment, and Lin Huang planned to adapt himself to the environment for the next couple of days. After a short rest in the hotel room, he started practicing Fatal Tactics. It was a Rare close combat skill, utilizing most of the muscles and bones in his body. With every hit, Lin Huang could clearly feel like he was familiarizing himself with his own body. Now that his Army Attack Tactics was level-8, combining that with Fatal Tactics would heighten its strength. He had been practicing the skill for almost 20 days now... It was not clear if it was the effects of Army Attack Tactics or something else. Although he had only been practicing for a couple of hours every day, the rate he accumulated skill card pieces did not decrease. On the next day, Lin Huang had accumulated 600 Fatal Tactics skill card pieces by the afternoon. A notification from Xiao Hei popped up. "600 Fatal Tactics skill card pieces have been detected, would you like to combine them into a Rare Skill Card - Fatal Tactics?" "Yes," Lin Huang replied. He did not expect he would be able to obtain a complete skill card before the assessment even started. "Consuming Fatal Tactics skill card pieces x600" "Congratulations, you have obtained a Rare Skill Card - Fatal Tactics" Lin Huang looked at the new skill card immediately. "Skill Card" "Skill Name: Fatal Tactics" "Rarity: Rare (Epic)" "Type of Skill: Close combat skill" "Skill Level: Unknown" "Status: Available" "Remarks: With the upgrade in strength from Army Attack Tactics being more than level-6, this skill is comparable with an Epic combat skill." "Card Remarks: Not bad" He could not help but to laugh when he saw the remarks. He did not expect his limited training to give him a close combat skill card that was comparable to an Epic card. Initially, he practiced the close combat skills without any expectations since he excelled in sword skills. He did not train to accumulate skill card pieces but to adapt and prepare himself for the assessment. That was why he only trained for a couple of hours and rested for the remainder of the day. It was a great surprise that he managed to obtain a new skill card before the assessment started. As long as Army Attack Tactics was at level-6 or more, one could draw strength that was comparable with an Epic-level combat skill. Now that his Army Attack Tactics was already at level-8, his combat strength would be much more powerful. It was as if he had obtained an Epic combat skill out of the blue. "Thats great, I can just fight with my bare hands if I encounter any small monsters in the future. Theres no need for me to bring out my sword all the time," Lin Huang laughed to himself. On the third day in Beixuan City, Lin Huang woke up before seven in the morning. After breakfast, he headed straight to the Hunter Association. The official opening hours was 8 a.m. but it was not even 7:15 a.m. when Lin Huang arrived. Still, there were many people already waiting at the entrance. There were many scammers among the crowd, and they were selling assessment booklets. There were quite a number of people getting scammed by these crooks. One scammer came to Lin Huang and pointed at the project page in front of him and said, "Young man, we have the latest assessment booklet, it has the latest content of the assessment. Would you like to get one?" "Its okay," Lin Huang shook his head. He had heard about such booklets before but it was his first time seeing them. However, he knew that the booklet had information from the past assessments that the scammers had put together. It was not related to the current assessment at all. The Regular Hunter Assessment had different content every year, and it was impossible for the contents of the assessment to be leaked before the assessment started. The scammers were there to scam participants who did not know the rules. Seeing Lin Huang being so sure of himself, the scammer knew that Lin Huang had seen the assessment rules before this so he stopped bugging him. The scammer then left and began looking for other participants. Many were scammed, and Lin Huang stood speechless as he watched. However, those who purchased the booklet must have had a lack of confidence in their own abilities and were not sure if they would pass the assessment. Some of them were just trying their luck so they bought the booklets anyway knowing that it would not help them in the assessment. There were more and more people at the entrance, and more people were scammed. Lin Huang had no idea how much the booklet was sold for but looking at the number of people who purchased them, he could tell that the scammers had made quite a large sum of credit points. There were at least 10,000 people at the entrance of the Hunter Association at 8 a.m. Suddenly, the door opened and a tanned middle-aged man walked out. Everyone was silent as he walked out. "My name is Xu Jinpeng, I am the head examiner for the preliminary assessment," the tanned man introduced himself. After a brief pause, he continued, "I would like to announce that the preliminary assessment has ended!" Everyone was stunned by what he had just said, including Lin Huang. "Did the head examiner slip his tongue, maybe he meant started instead of ended?" Some people muttered in panic. Almost everyone present had the same thought rush through their minds. "Now I''ll announce the participants that have been disqualified" The head examiner Xu Jinpeng began to read out names one by one, "Wang Xiaopeng, Zou He, Ye Haoxuan" "This is ridiculous!" A few of them voiced out after the first few names were called out. Xu Jinpeng looked up and proceeded to read off his list. "Im not buying this! If youre disqualifying me, you must give a reason that makes sense!" A guy from the back shouted. One of the scammers who was selling booklets suddenly appeared next to the tanned man and said in a loud voice, "From today onwards, the names that were read out loud are blacklisted from the Hunter Association, and you wont be able to join any association within the next three years!" The man then waved to the other two scammers and left. Many were confused at first but soon, they began to understand what was happening. "They are Hunter Association staff who pretended to be scammers That would mean that... The preliminary assessment was meant to disqualify the participants who purchased the booklets," Lin Huang concluded as he finally understood what had happened. Almost half an hour, the head examiner Xu Jinpeng finally finished reading off the disqualification list. There were more than 1,100 people that were disqualified. Xu Jinpeng looked up and looked around. He then said, "I believe some of you know why these people were disqualified. The scammers who were selling the assessment booklets are our staff. Those who were disqualified were the ones who purchased the booklets." "Firstly, we find that not reading the assessment rules before coming to the assessment is a grave negligence to the programme. Such people lack responsibility and dont care about the consequences since theyre not even willing to perform the most basic due diligence. We, at the Hunter Association, are the complete opposite of that. No matter what the consequences may be, we''ll do our best to complete the task at hand." "Second, they knew that the information in the booklet is fake but yet they purchased it anyway. This is equivalent to knowing that a piece of news is fake but yet they still try their luck and convince themselves to believe that it is real. Such people lack will, and are easily manipulated. We dont need people like this. "These two reasons are the foundations of the preliminary assessment. If anyone disagrees with it, you are welcome to file your complaints," the man said casually with a nod. What Xu Jinpeng said made everyone speechless. "Aside from those who were on the list, those who arrived after 8 a.m... Congratulations, you have been disqualified as well. He added, "I dont think you need me to tell you the reason." "The rest made it into the first round of the assessment. You can now pass through the door behind me into the Hunter Association and join us for the the next round." 159 Tip: Weed The preliminary round of the assessment started silently and ended in silence with direct result announcements. Lin Huang now knew that the Hunter Association was quite unpredictable. "It seems like I must treat this seriously or else I might be disqualified as well" Lin Huang was finally getting serious about the assessment. Due to the assessment, the Hunter Association was not opened for business. Lin Huang and the rest walked into the hall from the entrance, and it was empty. There was a short man standing at the information counter in the middle of the hall. The man was less than 1.7 meters, and he had a mustache. He was also wearing a black suit and tall hat with a black walking stick. "My name is Zhuo Lin, the head examiner for the second round of assessment. First, I would like to congratulate all of you who got through this on the first try," he said to them. Zhuo Lin then looked at the people and raised an eyebrow, "I cant believe that there are still 10,000 people, Old Xu disappointed me It seems like Ill have to decrease that number below 50% in this round" Although he said the last sentence in a whisper, all the participants heard him loud and clear. Everyone was getting anxious. "Dont worry about what I said," Zhuo Lin stroked his mustache with a sinister look on his face. "Compared to the other head examiners, Im considered quite gentle. I''ve never liked violence." "Isnt that even scarier" Lin Huang thought to himself. Many had puzzled looks on their faces. Apparently, they had the same thoughts as Lin Huang. However, some innocent participants were relieved because they believed what the head examiner said. "The content of assessment that I have prepared is very gentle," Zhuo Lin proceeded. After a quick look around, he said, "Its very simple. Were doing a treasure hunt." "Hunting for treasures is a basic skill hunters should possess, and it is not limited to Treasure Hunters only. Normal hunters should possess detective and searching skills for items and people. Through this process, many of your abilities will be upgraded and strengthened. This is why we are doing a treasure hunt." Everyone opened their eyes wide so that they did not miss anything important. "This is what I want all of you to find," Zhuo Lin said loudly. He then took out a black crystal from his storage space and held it up high. It was a black crystal size of a thumb and it seemed muddy. It also did not look like a valuable crystal. However, many frowned at its size. An item that was the size of a thumb would be hard to find even if it was placed in a common home. It would take a lot of time to look for it. "Since we have too many people here and we have limited time, I wont be passing this around. Come closer to look, do not touch it with your hands. Youre only allowed to look with your eyes." As Zhuo Lin instructed the participants, he took out a jewelry stand and placed it on the stand. He then stood aside. Many rushed to the stand to observe it immediately. Lin Huang did not move forward. From where he stood, he activated Boundless Vision to observe from a distance. He could see clearly as if it were in front of his face. The black crystal did not look like a mineral crystal, and it did not have the structure of a crystal as well. It seemed more like an amber resin or plastic. Of course, Lin Huang could not be sure about the information as nobody was allowed to touch it. Half an hour later, all the people had seen it at a close distance. When they were not many people around, Lin Huang stood closer and observed the crystal with Boundless Vision. He did not see anything new. "Alright, since you guys have observed it, you should know what it is by now," Zhuo Lin kept the item. "Now, Im to tell you what the mission objective is." The crowded hall suddenly became silent as everyone was afraid that they would miss an important bit of information. They stared at Zhuo Lin without blinking. After all, many of the head examiners in the Hunter Association had the bad habit of not repeating anything they said. If they missed anything, they might not get actual information without risk of being sabotaged if they were to ask other participants. "The mission is simple. Find the black crystal that I showed you," Zhuo Lin smirked while he looked at the anxious faces of the participants. He seemed to be enjoying himself. "The test field includes the entire area of Beixuan City. The item is located inside the city, and dont waste your time looking for it outside the city. I have placed 5,000 pieces of this crystal within the city. As there are more than 11,000 of you who passed the first round of assessment, more than half of you here will be disqualified." "The assessment time will be 48 hours. Within 48 hours, you will pass the assessment if you come to me with the black crystal that is exactly the same as the one I showed you." "I will be waiting in this hall for the next 48 hours. As soon as you find the item, you can pass it to me at any time you want. Even if it is in the middle of the night, just come to me. Dont worry about my sleep," he explained. Zhuo Lin finally told them all the details of the second round of assessment. Many of them were frowning when they heard this. To find a crystal that was the size of a thumb in a B-grade foothold was like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was more difficult as they would now have to complete it within 48 hours. "Theres something that I must emphasize. The 5,000 pieces of black crystals have my personal markings etched on them. So if you would like to replicate your own, Im advising you not to do it. If I find out that any of the crystals do not belong to me, you will be blacklisted and will not be able to join any hunter assessments for the next three years," Zhuo Lin warned. "Sir, cant you give us a tip? Otherwise, wouldnt this all be based on our luck?" A female participant asked. Many of them wanted to ask the same question but none of them had the courage to ask. All of them then looked at Zhuo Lin. "Of course theres a tip, and its simple - Weed," Zhuo Lin said cheerfully. He then looked at the time and said, "Its 8:51 a.m. now, lets round it up at 9 a.m. Within 48 hours, which is before 9 a.m. the day after tomorrow, those who manage to get the crystal into my hand will pass this round of assessment." "I have given you all the information you need. If you have other questions, solve it yourself. Now, I shall announce the official start of the second assessment!" All 11,000 participants rushed out of the Hunter Association as Zhuo Lin spoke. After everyone had left, the head examiner of the first assessment walked into the hall. "Thats quite a crowd, what kind of mission did you give them? They seemed to be rushing," Xu Jinpeng asked while smiling. "Weed," Zhuo Lin laughed as he said. "Oh no, why did you do that. What if none of them passed the assessment?" Xu Jinpeng asked. He was shocked and sympathetic to the candidates because knew what Zhuo Lin meant by weed. "We won''t have any new members this year then," Zhuo Lin laughed again. 160 Weed Technology? The tip for the second assessment was ''Weed''. Many of them rushed to the areas with weeds after they headed out of the Hunter Association. After all, they were only given 48 hours and based on their numbers, slots in the next round of the assessment were limited to whoever found a black crystal. The mission was simple, whichever candidate managed to find a crystal they would pass the assessment. For the past couple of hours, many residents saw peculiar scenes of people looking for stuff in the weeds. Many young people were engrossed in the hunt for the crystals in the weeds. They did not only look for it in public areas, but many invaded private properties too. Usually, digging up the weeds would be a good thing but once they found out that the black crystal was not where they were looking, they would leave a mess behind. Many of the government cleaning staff were angered by their behavior. Some people took videos and uploaded them to the network with the rumors that there were treasures in Beixuan City and some unknown organization was looking for the treasures. Many saw and believed in the rumor and joined the treasure hunt as well. The city was suddenly crowded with people. However, some of the participants did not dig out the weeds around them. Once the mission was out, Lin Huang knew that it would not be that simple. The tip, ''Weed'' was definitely the weeds growing on the land around them but if that was the case, there would be no meaning to the assessment. There were 5,000 pieces of black crystals around, as long as they head out and searched the area, the probability of finding it was quite high. However, such digging did not require any detective skills. As he watched the rest running around the place, Lin Huang browsed through the Heart Network searching for any information with the keyword Weed. He wanted to know if there was another meaning to this word. However, he did not find any unique definition of the word after browsing through a couple of pages. He frowned and entered the keywords Beixuan City and Weed as he wanted to see if there was any relation between the two keywords. To his dismay, all he saw were rumors about treasure in the city that were uploaded by the people. Lin Huang shook his head. As he proceeded to browse through the network, one bit of news caught his attention. "Weed Technology in Beixuan City, a company specializing in the development of cleaning utensils" "Weed Technology?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow as he looked up the company. He did not find much information about the company after doing some searching. It was a small company with less than 20 people. It developed a variety of cleaning agents and tools, and they did not even have their own factory. That was all that he managed to find on the network. "Seems like Ill have to do a site inspection," Lin Huang smirked. It was 9:40 a.m. when Lin Huang appeared at the entrance of the Weed Technology site with his features hidden so he would not raise any suspicions. He now looked like a middle-aged man in his 40s, and he looked serious with an 80% similarity to Xu Jinpeng, the head examiner of the preliminary assessment. With his clean black suit, he looked intimidating. The security guard of the company was an old uncle, and he did not hesitate when he saw Lin Huang. The old man got up and said, "May I know who you are?" "Im from the Reviews Board, and I would like to see your boss." The Reviews Board in this world was similar to Audit Board on Earth. However, the jurisdiction of the Reviews Board was wider. Aside from accounts, they also looked into product safety, waste pollution and so on. Most of the companies were very respectful to people like the staff of the Review Board. "Hold on please," the security guard said as he dialed a number to the reception. After the call was hung up, the door opened. Lin Huang walked in with confidence. Since he was on the Review Board, the security guard did not dare to check his ID as he did not want to offend Lin Huang. Just when he stepped into a door, he was welcomed by a lady in his 30s. "Hi, I am Bai. I am the boss secretary. May I know how I should address you?" "By my surname, Xu," Lin Huang used the head examiners surname as well. "Mr. Xu, our company has undergone a review two months ago. Since you are here, was there a problem with the first review?" Secretary Bai asked doubtfully. "Its the end of the year and we do spot checks. We randomly decided to review your company. Dont worry, just bring me to your boss," Lin Huang replied firmly with a short answer, as a Review Board member would. "As our company hasnt been busy these past few days, my boss is usually late to the office. Please take a seat in the meeting room, I will get him here as soon as possible." Secretary Bai escorted Lin Huang to the meeting room and left after serving him some tea. While he relaxed in the meeting room with the tea, Lin Huang thought about what he would do when the boss was here. 10 minutes later, a plump middle-aged man opened the door to the meeting room, sweating profusely. "Im sorry to keep you waiting, please follow me to my office." Lin Huang nodded and followed the man to his office on the second floor. He sat on the couch before the man, without so much as a request. Secretary Bai placed a cup of tea on the table and left, closing the door behind her. "Erm, Mr. Xu, may I know what this review is about?" The plump boss looked at Lin Huang while wiping away his sweat. Lin Huang smirked as a mask was being made on his hand with Mask - Control. He then placed the mask on his face, and he now had the boss face over his own. The man was in shock. "Tell me your name," Lin Huang asked his first question. "Zhang Peng," The boss answered without hesitating. "Whats your family like?" Lin Huang asked. "Im divorced with two kids. My son is 11 and my daughter is eight," Zhang Peng did not stutter or put up a fight. "Whats your relationship with Mrs. Bai, your secretary?" "We are secretly a couple, and she has a husband," Zhang Peng answered honestly. After asking two personal questions, Lin Huang confirmed that he had full control of Zhang Peng. He then asked what he really wanted to ask. "Where can I find the black crystal in your company?" Lin Huang showed him the image that he took of the crystal earlier. Zhang Peng looked at the image and shook his head, "Ive never seen such thing." Lin Huang frowned as he heard Zhang Pengs answer. "Hes the boss but he doesnt know about it, maybe he''s not related to the ''Weed'' that the head examiner was talking about?" Lin Huang thought. He then proceeded to ask a couple of questions that were related to the crystal but Zhang Peng could not answer him. It seemed like he completely had no idea what that black crystal was. "If he has no idea, could it be related to his staff?" Lin Huang questioned himself but he refused to give in. After some thinking, he summoned the Demonic Dandelion Vine. The shrunken Demonic Dandelion Vine looked like a bloody baby snake wrapped around Lin Huangs left arm. "lnfect all the staff in this company with parasites and get them to bring me the black crystal," Lin Huang instructed the Demonic Dandelion Vine. Soon, a purple flower grew out of the vine and more than 10 leech pods were spread onto the targets bodies. Lin Huang then noticed that all of them standing up from their seats and wandered around aimlessly. The hosts had lost their purpose. If any of them knew about the black crystal, they would not look like that. "Alright, release the hosts." After observing the scene, Lin Huang was sure that this company had nothing to do with his assessment. The word Weed in the company name could have just been a coincidence. He walked to the window, and while he was considering whether he should remove the mask before leaving, Secretary Bai knocked on the door. "Boss, theres somebody here for you. He said hes from the Review Board as well" As she said the words, she looked at Lin Huang curiously. All she could see was the back of his head. Through the window, Lin Huang could see the person who was stopped by the security guard. It was a familiar face. "Bai Yan?" Didn''t he become a Copper Hunter straightaway with his special pass? Why did he join the assessment again?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow with his lips slightly parted. Meanwhile, Zhang Peng who was sitting at the table spoke, "Tell him that Im busy today, I dont have the time to see him. Ask him to come some other day." Secretary Bai was stunned but she left anyway. Soon, Bai Yan left unwillingly after the security guard told him to. Lin Huang then walked to Zhang Peng and said, "You''ll feel sleepy now and you''ll want to fall asleep. You''ll fall into a deep sleep in 10 seconds. When you wake up, you''ll only remember that the people from the Review Board had completed the review and you will forget the rest" Awhile later, Zhang Peng fell asleep on the table. It was the first time Lin Huang found out how powerful the mask was. Not only could it control ones behavior, it could even alter ones memory and the alteration was non-reversible even if the user lost control. After removing the mask, Lin Huang left Zhang Pengs office. When he got to the first floor, Secretary Bai approached him immediately, "How was it, Mr. Xu?" "The review has been done. Theres no issue, I shall be making a move now," Lin Huang nodded. "The man earlier said he was from the Review Board as well, is he your colleague?" Secretary Bai could not help but ask. "How is it possible that a Reviews Board staff member is less than 20 years old? Its obvious, didnt you notice?" Lin Huang asked her back, "Next time if you see anyone who says they are from the Review Board, dont forget to check their ID. If its fake, call us and report it." Lin Huang left as soon as he finished speaking. Secretary Bai was confused. She then recalled that she did not check Lin Huangs ID 161 A Complimentary Piece of Information While most people were still digging in the weeds, some of them figured out the existence of the Weed Technology company. Lin Huang had done the investigation and confirmed that the company had nothing to do with the assessment. "Weed, what does that mean?" Lin Huang was back at square one, trying to figure out the clue as he left the company. He then browsed through the Hunter Forum with his Copper Hunter permit. He used the keywords weed, Beixuan City and Foothold No.7B24. After browsing for awhile, he could not find anything useful. "Theres nothing on the Hunter Forum" Lin Huang frowned as he felt that he arrived at a dead end. "If I was a real hunter, what would I do if I wasn''t able to find the information that Im looking for on the Hunter Forum and network" Lin Huang mumbled to himself as he attempted to change his point of view, hoping that he would figure out something from a different perspective. Just as he said that, he stopped walking all of a sudden. He lifted his head and said to himself, "Im sure there are other ways to look for some information, and perhaps through ways that are illegal!" Lin Huang opened up a complete map of Beixuan City with his Emperors Heart Ring immediately and got the location of the black market. He walked into an alley without surveillance cameras and altered his features to become Scarface. He wore his black suit with a gray coat on top before he walked out of the alley. He got himself a car and headed to the black market. An hour later, he arrived at the area. After paying an entrance fee, he walked straight onto a street. Lin Huang had learned ways of identifying the location of a black market, who he should look for when he needed certain items and how should he should behave in a black market from his time at the Purple Crow training camp. He placed his hands in his pockets and walked the street without an expression. The street was quiet, and he attracted quite some attention with his presence. However, nobody wanted to mess with him as he had Scarface''s features on his face. Soon, Lin Huang found a bar and as he walked in, he noticed everyone''s gazes fall on him as he attracted attention in the bar with his attire. He ignored them and walked to the bench in front of the bar and took a seat. He knocked three times with his index finger on the bar counter and said to the bartender, "Give me a glass of Black Letter." The bartender was a tall, skinny young man. He looked at Lin Huang and gave him a pitch black drink awhile later. Lin Huang smirked as he lifted up the glass. He looked at the numbers that were engraved at the bottom of the glass. B-012. Lin Huang left to the cellar with his glass. Arriving at the entrance of Room B-012, Lin Huang noticed that the light inside was green. He walked straight into the room and it looked like an office - spotless. Behind the mahogany table was a middle-aged man with black framed glasses who then said to him, "Sit." Lin Huang took off his coat and hung it on the stand by the door and took a seat at the table. He placed the glass on the table and faced the room number engraved at the bottom of the glasses at the man. The man looked at the glass and smiled, "What would you like to know?" "Simple. Weed." Lin Huang said what he was here for. "Weed?" The man seemed surprised when he heard the word but soon he composed himself and continued, "What would you like to know about weed?" "Everything," Lin Huang said and added. "Especially its relation to Beixuan City." "I understand, give me a moment." The man projected a couple of pages before himself. However, the pages were opaque and the side facing Lin Huang was black. Lin Huang could not see a thing. Awhile later, the man nodded to Lin Huang, "It will cost 18 billion credit points." "Thats not cheap, are you sure that the information is worth this much?" Lin Huang looked at the man without an expression. "Dont worry, it is definitely worth the price you''re paying," the man replied with a smile. "Sure," Lin Huang nodded. "Please transfer your credit points to the trading chip," the man then handed him a green chip that was the size of a thumb. The purpose of the trading chip was to avoid personal details of either party from being leaked elsewhere. The buyer would transfer his credit points to the trading chip and the seller would retrieve the credit points to his own account. With that, nobody would know the account details of the opposite party. Moreover, such trading chips could not save personal details because once the scan was complete and the credit points were transferred, account details would be automatically be deleted. There would not be an issue like personal information being leaked. Compared to the anonymous transactions with Emperors Heart Rings, such trading chips were much safer. Lin Huang took the chip, transferred 18 billion credit points into it and handed it back to the man. The man placed the chip aside and brought out a black chip. He then scanned his Emperors Heart Ring on the black chip and transferred it the information that Lin Huang asked for. Soon, the transfer was complete. All the pages were closed, the man then passed Lin Huang the black chip. "Everything you want is on this chip." Lin Huang nodded and took the black chip from the man. He stood up and attempted to leave after putting on his coat. Suddenly, the man spoke again, "I''ll give you a complimentary piece of information." Lin Huang stopped in his step. "Somebody came here about an hour before you did, the person asked about something similar. The person did not look too friendly, you might want to be careful," he warned. "Thanks!" Lin Huang said but did not turn around. He walked out right after he thanked the man. He left the bar and left of the black market with a heavy heart. "I arrived here at around 11 a.m., the person was an hour earlier than me, which means he was here at around 10 a.m. The assessment started at 9 a.m., it would take an hour riding on the car from the Hunter Association. This would mean that the person came here directly after leaving the Hunter Association. The person did not even go to the Weed Technology company." "Someone who would come to a black market in search of information might be someone from the underground" Lin Huang thought. It was not the first time the underground placed spies in the Hunter Association. Of course, Lin Huang was not 100% sure of that. The person could have just been really smart and looked passed the details that Lin Huang did not see and came straight to the black market without going to the Weed Technology company. 162 Ponytail After leaving the black market, Lin Huang took out the black chip he had bought when he was sure he was at a safe place. He then scanned the information with his Emperors Heart Ring. With that, he finally knew what weed meant. Weed was an advanced drug named ZC. People in the industry would call it ''weed'' and outsiders were unaware of such a name. The drug was in the form of a black crystal and had no unique smell to it. However, those available to be purchased on the market were processed and was in the form of a powder instead of a crystal. The main contents of the drug were unknown. However, it caused intense hallucinogenic effects which reciprocated with one''s Life Power, making it more powerful than usual drugs. It was called an advanced drug as it was only consumed by people who had full control of their Life Power. For common people, they would die if they consumed even one gram of the drug. Even those who had full control of their Life Power would need to be careful with the addictive nature of the drug as it would cause severe damage to their brain and organs. If people on iron-level were to take the drug more than three times, the damage caused to the body would be irreversible. There would be a high possibility of organ failure which would then lead to death or severe brain damage. Even for those who had higher combat strength or defensive abilities would be addicted as soon as they took it more than twice and there would be no way for them to quit the drug. Left unattended, these people would eventually die. Lin Huang looked at an image of the complete crystal. It looked exactly the same as the one that the head examiner showed them earlier. "So the head examiner was talking about this drug" He suddenly realized that the assessment was not as simple as he expected. He then proceeded to read about ''weed''. Aside from the introduction to the drug, there were many cases of deaths that were caused by the drug which included the deaths of some gold-level members. Their deaths were devastating. Lin Huang frowned as he finished reading all the cases. He was not frowning because of the disgusting images and videos of the cases. Instead, he felt that the value of the information was not worth the price he had paid. However, he found the information that he wanted when he reached the end of the list of cases. The creator of weed was a pharmaceutical lecturer at a hunter college. After resigning from the college, he managed to create an empire of his own within a couple of years. His empire was called Hiesen Castle, and one of its division was located in Beixian City. The information that Lin Huang bought from the black market had complete details about the castle and the personal information of the pharmacist, the information of his empire seemed to be complete. "No wonder this piece of information is so expensive, there were three transcendents who endorsed this Hiesen Castle. It was comparable to the more common royal families. The division alone had two gold-level guardians and more than 30 silver-level people in it" Lin Huang finally realized how valuable this information was. "The weed available on the market is in powder form, it seems like the only place I will be able to get the crystal form of the drug is from Heisen Castle. That would mean, to be able to pass the assessment, the only way is to steal it from Heisen Castle. However, looking at the number of guardians they have, its not easy." Looking at the difficulty of the assessment, Lin Huang thought in his mind that he would be able to count the number of participants who would be able to pass the assessment. "As expected, we were being tested on our ability to source for information but obtaining the drug is an odd requirement as the task itself is way too complex," Lin Huang frowned, "This is quite impossible to be achieved alone by most of the bronze-level participants unless its a group effort Could this assessment be testing our ability to work together?" Lin Huang suddenly thought of a possibility. After spending some time thinking and considering the possible intentions of the examiners, Lin Huang shook his head and put the idea aside. He summoned his Alexandrian Eagle and headed to Heisen Castle. There were many people who owned flying mounts in B-grade footholds. Although an Alexandrian Eagle was rare, it did not attract much attention. Within a couple of minutes, Lin Huang arrived near Heisen Castle. He landed on the branch of a big tree and recalled the Alexandrian Eagle. He then leaped into the air and his body shot down to the ground like an arrow. As he got closer to the ground, he diverted his drop to the branches close by. To reduce his momentum, he caught hold of a branch and started swinging from branch to branch. Around 10 minutes later, he stopped swinging and leaped onto a branch as he realized that he was at a dead end. Before him was an ancient castle and it looked like it had been around for a long time. There was a huge red metal door in the middle of the castle walls, with two security towers on each side. Lin Huang could see there were guards walking around the security towers. Upon closer observation, he saw a Warning Bug sitting on top of each tower. A Warning Bug was an insect that was very sensitive to the environment surrounding it. It had incredible vision and as soon as it noticed unfamiliar creatures entering the area it was protecting, the insect would emit a loud chirp that sounded like a siren. After a certain amount of training, an insect like this could be used as a perimeter alarm. If Lin Huang had not used Boundless Vision before sneaking in, he might not have noticed the presence of the two warning bugs. The rock wall surrounding the castle was more than 30 meters high. It would not have been easy to leap over that height, even for a gold-level hunter. Lin Huang ducked low on a branch and hid behind a thicket of leaves. He watched the castle through the gaps. It would not have been difficult for him to sneak into the castle as soon as he transformed himself into Specter. However, it would have been more dangerous to reveal himself during the day so he decided to carry out his mission at night. Just when Lin Huang was planning to get some rest, he felt someone was watching him. He quickly turned around and shouted, "Who''s there?" Suddenly, a girl dropped from a tree not far away from him. She looked like she was about 15 or 16. Her hair had gold highlights which she tied up in a ponytail. She wore a pink long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of jeans. She smiled and sighed. She then raised her arms in submission and said, "Alright, you found me." She looked like one of the participants of the assessment. Although she seemed harmless, Lin Huang did not let his guard down. Since she was here before him, it meant she was the person who was at the black market an hour earlier than he was. She could be one of the members of the underworld. "Who are you?" Lin Huang asked to confirm what he already knew. "I am just like you, of course, just one of the participants in this assessment. Who else would you think I am?" The girl in the ponytail said as she approached Lin Huang as she stepped over a few branches to close the gap between them. She stopped when she was on a branch right across him. "How did you find out about this place?" Lin Huang asked. "From the black market of course. Arent you here for the same reason? How else would anyone know what Weed meant?" The girl in ponytail rolled her eyes and continued, "Since you got the information from the black market, then you should know that there are two gold-level guardians and more than 30 silver-level guardians in this castle. It wont work if we just barge in. Would you like to work together?" "You arrived 40 minutes after me. Although youre obviously dumber than me, I''ll say that you''re not as bad, compared to those idiots who are digging in the weeds. It would be a wise choice that''ll work in your favor if you teamed up with me," the girl in ponytail said as she looked at Lin Huang. He did not say a word in reply her suggestion which annoyed her. Frustrated, she said again, "Hey, this is the first time I''ve taken the initiative to invite someone to join my team, what does your silence mean?" "How do we work together?" Lin Huang was not interested in working together as he already had the ability to sneak out the item on his own. However, if the girl proceeded to pester him, it might affect his plan later that night. "Its simple, I will sneak in and get the item while you distract them. As soon as Im out with the item, we will meet again. You will get 30% while I get 70% for the weeds." The girl in a ponytail was out of her own mind, he thought. "70% of 5,000 pieces of crystals would be 3,500 pieces. I keep one to myself and sell the rest at 100 Life Crystals each, I would make 350,000 Life Crystals from that" "Have fun." Lin Huang said and turned around in an attempt to leave. "Hey! then what do you have in mind?" The girl in ponytail shouted at him. "Change it up. I''ll go in while you distract them, you get 30% and Ill get 70%." Lin Huang turned around and countered her offer with a smile. "I''m a girl, and youre using me to distract them? Do I get only 30%? If you were in my position, would you really want that?" The girl in ponytail said in anger. "Of course I wont mind if I''m in your position," Lin Huang smirked. "You bully!" The girl in ponytail stomped her feet. Leaves rained down as the tree shook wildly. Lin Huang checked to see if their cover was blown. The sentries on the towers seem unphased by the disturbance. "To each, his and her own then. Bye!" Lin Huang said and leaped up high, away from the girl. "Damn, you''ll pay for this!" The girl shouted after him, furiously. After getting rid of the girl in the ponytail, Lin Huang sat down on a branch while waiting for the night to come. What he did not know was after he left, the girl in ponytail summoned a white wolf with a Monster Taming Token and headed to the Hunter Association... 163 Trouble is Here A crowd gathered at the entrance of the Hunter Association looking at a piece of white paper on the right side of the door. A girl in ponytail stood outside the crowd and smirked. "Lin Huang, it took me quite awhile to find your name on the list. How dare you decline my offer to work together. Now, you''ll have to pay the price!" The piece of white paper on the right side of the door had a bunch of words written in a graceful handwriting. The handwriting wrote, "The weed that was mentioned in the assessment tip is an advanced drug called ZC. All of you can find a portion of the information about the drug on the Heart Network. Such a drug is only available in a powder form on the market and only the manufacturer has the black crystal, its crystal form. The empire that manufactures the drug is called Heisen Castle, a strong empire endorsed by three transcendents. Theres a division of in Beixian City. The division is located in a jungle in the south of the city. It''s in a castle and you can find the exact location on the map. However, Heisen Castle was invaded by one of the participants. His name is Lin Huang, he had stolen all the drugs. He told me that if any of you wants to pass the assessment, you would have to purchase the drug from him at 1,000 Life Crystals each" A picture of Lin Huang taken during the registration was attached at the bottom of the handwriting, it was enlarged to the size of the paper. "How dare he ask for 1,000 Life Crystals from each of us! There are a total of 5,000 weed crystals, wouldnt he be making five million from that?!" "This is too much!" "We can still considering paying him if the price is reasonable, but the price he is asking is just ridiculous!" Many were furious when they read what had been written on the piece of paper. Some of them began to browse the Heart Network to see if the news was true. Soon, they found an image of the ZC crystal and confirmed that it was exactly the same one that was shown to them by the head examiner earlier. They also found some information about Heisen Castle and confirmed that they were the manufacturer of the drug. Since the information shown on the network was true, many began to believe that Lin Huang really did steal the drugs. An uproar broke out within the crowd and they asked to see Lin Huang. Since the writing on the paper revealed Lin Huangs location - a jungle south of the city, many headed to the jungle via the monster car. They wanted to get Lin Huang to give them the weed crystals. "Lin Huang? Isnt that the kid who was not even iron-level? If that''s really him, I''ll teach him a lesson!" Bai Yan who was wearing a red coat frowned as he read the messages on the paper. He remembered seeing Lin Huang a couple of months ago, the Imperial Censor who was finding fault with him. Because of Lin Huang, he was accused of being a coward on the Heart Network. After mumbling to himself, Bai Yan summoned a Crimson Eagle and headed to the jungle in the south while the rest was admiring him. The girl in ponytail disappeared too. Lin Huang who was in the jungle in the south of Beixuan City was not aware of the events that had happened at the Hunter Association. It was almost noon, he was relaxing while eating snacks that he bought online while waiting for the night to come patiently. Suddenly, he heard flapping above his head. Lin Huang then activated Boundless Vision as he looked up. "A Crimson Eagle?!" Lin Huang recognized the Crimson Eagle immediately as the one he saw when he bumped into Bai Yan, the eagle was now a silver-level. "Bai Yan had found this place too?" Lin Huang found it strange, he did not expect Bai Yan to find this place that quick as he had only been here for less than half an hour. Theoretically, it should take quite some time for Bai Yan to get information on the drug. "Come out, Lin Huang!" Bai Yan shouted from the sky. Fortunately, there was quite a distance between him and the ancient castle. Lin Huang was worried that the girl in the ponytail would look for him again, which was why he went two to three kilometers into the jungle. Otherwise, the people in the ancient castle would definitely hear Bai Yan. "Hes here for me?" Lin Huang frowned. He did not expect Bai Yan to come for him instead of the castle. "Bai Yan, are you crazy?!" Lin Huang stood up from the branch and glared at Bai Yan who was flying in the air. Bai Yan patted his Crimson Eagle as it landed slowly on the ground. He then recalled the Crimson Eagle and looked at Lin Huang who was on a branch, "Lin Huang, I cant believe its really you. Because of you, I was criticized by the netizens that called me a coward for running away. I will teach you a lesson today and take a video of this. I shall show everyone who is the real coward!" "Youre crazy! Maybe youre just a lunatic." Lin Huang stared at Bai Yan from above, "So you''re here for me just because people are calling you a coward? Did I accept any interview requests from the media and badmouth you?" "You" Bai Yan did not know how to react to Lin Huang''s reply. He then recalled that it was two other people who revealed what had happened to the media and not Lin Huang. Lin Huang did not participate in any interviews by any media, nor did he badmouth Bai Yan. He had no comeback for Lin Huang''s reply. "However, I think what they said was right because you really are a coward!" Lin Huang proceeded to reply when he saw Bai Yan unable to reply. "Damn it!" Bai Yan hated being called a coward. "Since you dont have a comeback for me. Would you like to fight me instead?" Lin Huang laughed, "Now that I think about it, why did you choose to run away the other day? Were you really scared that you would die? Arent they right to call you a coward?" Veins were bulging on Bai Yans forehead because he did not have anything to rebut Lin Huang with. "Also, the time you ran away was not the only proof of you being a coward." Lin Huang smirked. "What do you mean by that?! Lin Huang, if we dont talk things out today, I''ll kill you. I dont care if Im blacklisted by the Hunter Association, I''ll kill you!!!" Bai Yan was so furious that he was shaking. "Alright then. Since you want to know, I''ll tell you." Lin Huang was proud. "Half a year ago, you were given the priority to join the association as a hunter, there was no need for you to join the Reserve Hunter assessment like everybody else did. However, you decided to join anyway. As for the reason you joined? Perhaps it was really like what you said. You wanted to test where your ability stands. Thats not it! You just wanted to show off that you were more powerful than the rest of us. "Right now, you''ve joined the Regular Hunter assessment with the same purpose - to show off that you''re more powerful than all of us." "Whats wrong with that?! I really am more powerful than all of you. What gives you the right to call me a coward?" Bai Yan still had no idea what Lin Huang really wanted to say. "Have you realized that you''ve been comparing yourself to people who are weaker than you? You enjoy showing off your strength before the weak to make yourself feel content. That''s the reason why you''ve been participating in assessments unnecessarily." "If I were you, I would spend the time you took to participate in assessments in my training so I can strengthen myself instead of wasting my time on unnecessary assessments." "Real power comes when one is brave enough to face the risk before them. They are those who dare to challenge someone who is more powerful than them to break through their personal barriers Unlike you, who have already placed yourself in your comfort zone while you show off to people who are weaker so you feel superior." "Youre afraid to challenge people who are more powerful than you. This is why you''ve been joining unnecessary assessments again and again instead of challenging those who''re on the same level with you or those who''re stronger such as Copper Hunters. You''re afraid that you will lose so you put all your attention in winning your fights with the weak." "Tell me, are you not a coward for your fear of a real challenge?!" What Lin Huang said made Bai Yan speechless. Bai Yan did not realize that he had such issue himself, all he knew was that he loved surprising the weak. He had never looked at this issue on a deeper level. What Lin Huang said had made him realize his real fear - avoiding real challenges. He had nothing to say. Bai Yan was furious. Although what Lin Huang said was right, his pride could not take it. He did not want to admit that Lin Huang was right. The bronze-level ring on his hand transformed into a spear. He pointed the spear at Lin Huang who stood on the branch, "Lin Huang, we shall forget about everything that has happened between us after this battle. I won''t be looking for trouble with you anymore. To prevent you from a humiliating defeat, I won''t summon any of my monsters. Please try to Withstand my attacks without losing too fast since the difference of ability between your mouth and your actual combat abilities is like the distance between heaven and earth." Lin Huang smirked when he heard what Bai Yan said. The bronze-level ring on his hand transformed into a sword. He then leaped from the branch and dove towards Bai Yan like an eagle attacking a rabbit. A red flash flashed through the air like a meteor in the night sky, so fast that Bai Yan was shocked. He managed to avoid the slash just as Lin Huang dove towards him. "Such speed" Bai Yan exclaimed. The spear on his hand was sliced into half by the slash and there was a light stain of blood on his neck. Feeling pain from his wound, he touched his neck and saw the blood on his finger, realizing that he was wounded. He was in total shock, "How did this happen? Why are you so powerful?" It finally dawned upon Bai Yan that Lin Huang could kill him with that slash. Another centimeter deeper and his neck would have definitely got cut off. "This is what I''ve achieved during the past six months. While you wasted your time on useless things like this, I have been strengthening myself." Lin Huang explained. "It was you who said that we will forget whatever things that had happened between us once this battle ended. I hope you''ll keep your promise and stop bugging me." Lin Huang said and walked away. "Wait!" Bai Yan shouted and stopped Lin Huang from leaving. 164 Lin Huang The Actor Lin Huang frowned as he heard Bai Yan speaking behind him. The reason he did not kill Bai Yan was that nobody was allowed to kill any of the participants during the assessment or else they would be blacklisted. However, if Bai Yan disturbed him again, he thought about killing Bai Yan in an untraceable way. "Is there anything else that you''d like to say?" Lin Huang stopped walking and asked in an unfriendly manner. "I just want to warn you that the news of you stealing all the drugs from the Heisen Castle has been leaked. Many of the participants are on their way here to get the drugs from you." Bai Yan reminded him. "I stole the drugs from the castle?" Where did you hear this from?" Lin Huang was speechless. "Somebody posted a note on the entrance of the Hunter Association, I heard it was done by a girl." Looking at Lin Huangs reaction, Bai Yan began doubting the news that he read. "That b*tch!" Lin Huang knew what happened when he heard it was done by a girl. The only person he knew that he had met was the blond girl with a ponytail. He then asked Bai Yan, "How many people knew about this?" "Everyone should know about this." Bai Yan said and could not help but to ask, "Is this not true?" "Of course it isn''t! I havent even stolen them yet!" Lin Huang shouted. After Bai Yan left, Lin Huang knew that it was not the end. He did not expect the girl would do something like this. "Crazy b*itch, what was she thinking? We only have a total of 48 hours, if she misled everyone like that, they would waste most of their time on me. Although she could get in my way, theres no benefit for her if she did something like this. Moreover, if more people were in this jungle, it would be difficult for me to obtain the drug if the people in castle noticed the crowd." Lin Huang could not understand why the girl would do this. If it was merely because he rejected her offer to team up with him, it would be quite childish. About 20 minutes later, a crowd rushed into the jungle south of Beixuan City. They have been deceived by the girl in the ponytail, having come here for Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang had used a Specific Transformation Card and transformed himself into the Specter and went underground to head to the castle. As there would be an uproar when the crowd arrived, Lin Huang was forced to start his mission earlier than he had planned. Lin Huang passed through the entrance unground the castle. There was a roofless courtyard inside the castle and the main hall was further in. When he arrived on the first floor, Lin Huang went into the wall and strolled around the entire floor. Aside from a couple of silver-level humans on watch duty, there was nothing else. Then, he went to the second floor by going through the ceiling and found nothing as well. The same happened for the third and fourth floor, there was no sight of weed at all. When he arrived on the fifth floor, Lin Huang finally found something. There were many staff members in white uniform working on something and there was a massive amount of chemicals as well as a complete production line. Pieces of black crystals were made on the production line and were put into a box. Lin Huang watched from the wall, the box was quite small, seemingly only being able to fit 100 pieces of weed in each box. The boxes were wrapped up later on. After watching the entire production process, Lin Huang noticed that aside from the staff in white uniform, the number of guards were most concentrated on this floor. Aside from one gold-level rank-3 human, there were also 10 silver-level rank-3 humans. Before he got his hand on the weed, Lin Huang did not want to attract any attention. He proceeded to the sixth floor and a stroll, Lin Huang found a warehouse that was filled with hundreds of boxes of the weed crystals. It was what Lin Huang had been looking for. However, there was a gold-level rank-3 human at the entrance as well as two silver-level humans. There were also five to six silver-level humans walking around the floor. The gold-level rank-3 human seemed to be watching some sort of video on the Heart Network, he was laughing occasionally. As the network page was semitransparent, he was facing the direction where the boxers were placed. "From this angle, he would definitely notice me stealing the boxes." Lin Huang frowned as he looked at the surveillance cameras around the room, "This is an issue as well. If the cameras detect my presence, the alarm would go off and people would know there is a break in. By then, they may keep the boxes in their storage rings and my mission would fail." Since Lin Huang had yet to find the control room, he left the warehouse and proceeded to the seventh floor and finally found the control room. There were three silver-level guards in there. After observing them for a while, he decided on what his actions would be and summoned Bai behind the three silver-level guards. Before they could even react, their heads were chopped off by Bais Blood Spirit wings which transformed into a blade. Seeing the headless bodies on the chairs, Lin Huang then recalled Bai and went back to the sixth floor. Fearless, Lin Huang stored all hundreds of boxes of weeds in the warehouse into his storage space while he was in his Specter Form. Just as Lin Huang was storing the boxes, the gold-level human noticed something was wrong. He then stopped watching the video immediately and noticed that the weed had disappeared. Just as he was figuring out what happened, Bai appeared behind him but was too late for him to reach for anything. Bai covered his mouth with a hand that was transformed from his Blood Spirit wing while his other wings transformed into a sharp spike that pierced his heart from his back. He died a while later, the two silver-level humans did not notice anything at all. Lin Huang then transformed back into his human form. He walked out from the room with Bai with his two Blood Spirit wings transformed into spikes, piercing through the temples of the two guards at the door. Bai then transformed his other two Blood Spirit wings into vines and sliced through their waist. Although Bai was also silver-level rank 3, he was a monster that had mutated twice. He was similar to a human genius with abilities that were a level higher than most people. A common silver-level rank-3 human was nothing to him. After the sixth floor was cleared, Lin Huang followed closely behind Bai to the fifth floor. Since nobody knew what they had done earlier, many were shocked when they saw the both of them. It was only then that they realized that the castle had been invaded. Lin Huang then summoned Charcoal and the Ghastly Clown. He did not summon Tyrant as it was too big, there was no space for it to unleash its power. Just when the gold-level human got ready to attack, he fell into the Ghastly Clown''s trap and could not move. In the midst of all that, Charcoal released its dragonflame and killed all the uniformed staff members, including the silver-level humans while Bai took their lives like the grim reaper. In the 10 seconds that the gold-level human was trapped, the people on the entire floor had been slaughtered by the three monsters. The gold-level human looked at Lin Huang and knew Lin Huang was the mastermind behind all this. "Kid, do you know what you are doing? We have three transcendents in Heisen Castle, if you destroy the division, the headquarter would definitely get the transcendents to kill you!" "They wouldnt know that this was done by me." Lin Huang smiled and instructed the three monsters, "Kill him!" Although the gold-level rank-3 human was powerful, Bai was no less powerful than him. Within a minute, he was killed by the three monsters. After the fifth floor was cleared, Lin Huang did not destroy the manufacturing machine because he wanted the people from the Union Government to take it. After some hesitation, Lin Huang placed 50 boxes of the weed crystals next to the production line. With his three monsters, he proceeded to kill everyone on the fourth floor. Even the security guards on the security towers killed themselves under the Ghastly Clown''s control. After everyone was killed, Lin Huang went back to the seventh floor and got Charcoal to destroy the control room with its dragonflame. He proceeded to get Charcoal to destroy all the surveillance cameras in the castle. When Lin Huang recalled the three monsters and walked out of the hall on the first floor, the two Warning Bugs sounded the alarm almost at the same time. The volume was more than 10 times louder than the alarms on earth. Lin Huang ignored the alarms and used a Specific Transformation Card and went underground when he arrived at the door. He transformed back into his human form when he found a place without any people in the jungle. Many started running to the castle as smoke was coming out of it. Lin Huang followed them as well. Many were hesitating, considering if they should hide in the jungle but they started running after Lin Huang as they recognized his face from the notice posted on the door of the Hunter Association. Lin Huang ran along like the rest and entered the castle with its wide-open doors. Seeing the dead bodies on the ground, many were in shock and forgot about their purpose here which was Lin Huang. "What happened?" Someone asked. "I think there was a massacre here." Lin Huang said while glaring at the girl in the ponytail who got him into trouble. "Lets look around, they should have the weed crystals that we are looking for." "Didnt you steal all the weed crystal?" Somebody asked. "Im only a bronze-level rank-3, do you think I could be able to steal under the watch of two gold-level humans and a bunch of silver-level humans?" Lin Huang said while glaring at the person who asked the question. He then pointed at the girl in the ponytail, "All of you were cheated by this girl. We had some misunderstanding earlier so she set me up by releasing fake news." Many looked at the girl in the ponytail. She did not say anything but rushed into the main hall of the castle instead. Lin Huang followed suit and pretended to look for the weed crystals like everybody else. Looking at the bloody dead bodies, many exclaimed. "Who did this... That person must be powerful?" Soon Lin Huang followed the girl in the ponytail and a couple of other people to the fifth floor. When they saw the boxes next to the production line, they rushed towards them almost at the same time. It was chaotic. Many of the others who heard the noise upstairs and went up. Seeing the boxes, they started fighting. The fifth floor was crowded. Lin Huang spilled a couple of boxes on purpose to allow the black crystals to roll out of the boxes. Seeing the crystals, the people in a frenzy. After some fighting, Lin Huang managed to get more than 10 boxes while the rest got their own share. Before the rest made it to the fifth floor, all the weed crystals had been taken away. Many who were downstairs regretted not coming upstairs sooner. Some of them even started to negotiate with Lin Huang to see if they could purchase the black crystals from him 165 The Truth About The Second Assessmen The 50 boxes of weed crystals that were placed by Lin Huang next to the production line as well as a couple of boxes on the product line were taken away by Lin Huang and the other six people. Lin Huang got the most while the girl in ponytail got the second most. Lin Huang finally got her name from the rest. Her name was Xia Yu. Recalling that Xia Yu wanted to sell a single weed crystal for 100 Life Crystals, Lin Huang thought it was completely ridiculous. One Life Crystal was sufficient to purchase two to three silver-level pieces of equipment. Even if she was the only one who possessed the weed crystal, nobody would buy it from her for 100 Life Crystals unless it was a recruitment assessment for Copper Hunters. However, it was only the second round of assessment and even if they passed through the second round, the possibility of them passing the following rounds were still an unknown. Moreover, there were seven of them who possessed the weed crystal and people would definitely compare prices. Therefore, they could not sell the crystal weeds at a high price and could only probably sell each for one for two Life Crystals. However, Lin Huang was satisfied with what he got. He had earned himself some Life Crystals and nobody knew he was the one behind the massacre. The head examiner, Zhuo Lin was surprised when more than 5,000 of the participants showed up at the Hunter Association with a weed crystal in their hands. Soon, he heard about the massacre in Heisen Castle from some of the participants. He then reported to the management and got them to follow up with the incident. 48 hours had passed, the head examiner Zhuo Lin looked at the 5,600 people and started to speak. "Aside from the tip that I gave in the second round of assessment, the rest of the information was fake. That includes the 5,000 black crystals that had inscriptions on it from yours truly. It was to prevent all of you from cheating. I believe a few of you had figured out the true purpose of this mission." "The first one would your ability to manage information. An outstanding hunter should have the ability to differentiate if a piece of information was real or fake instead of blindly believing in whatever people said, even if the person was your head examiner." "The second would be your ability to retrieve information. There are many ways to retrieve information. The Heart Network and Hunter Forum would be the mainstream platform many used to obtain information. However, there are times where a hunter would need to rely on other ways to obtain certain information. In this assessment, there are only two people who retrieved the correct information. They are Lin Huang and Xia Yu while the rest of you failed." "Third was the ability to work together. I chose a mission that was impossible to be done alone, it was not meant to get you killed but instead, for you to obtain the item by working together. However, due to this incident, the goal was not achieved." "However, luck is considered to play a part in all of this. Therefore, all of you who managed to obtain a black crystal will pass the assessment" Many who were worried were relieved when they heard that. Many of them thought that the result of the assessment would be invalid due to the incident. "However, its too early for all of you to relax. This is only the second round of assessment, nobody knew how many of you would pass the following rounds." Zhuo Lin smirked. What he said was like splashing cold water on those who were excited. Since the second round of assessment was already so difficult, many of them began to worry if they could handle the following rounds. "I would like to inform you on behalf of the head examiner of the third round of assessment that all of you must gather at the Hunter Association at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Someone will bring all of you to the assessment point. Dont be late, you would be disqualified if you are late." After informing them about the third assessment, Zhuo Lin then knocked on the table with his walking stick, "Alright, thats all I have. You can leave now." The 5,600 participants then left the Hunter Association. After they left, the head examiner of the first round of assessment, Xu Jinpeng appeared again. "I thought you would only pass the two kids who retrieved the correct information." Xu Jinpeng laughed. "I gave them 48 hours but these two kids managed to retrieve the information within two hours. They are really something. However, that doesnt mean that the rest could not retrieve the information within 48 hours." Zhuo Lin laughed as he explained. "However, if the incident didnt happen, the passing rate would be close to zero. Its too risky that you set the mission like this." Xu Jinpeng shook his head, he disagreed with the way Zhuo Lin carried out the assessment. "Lao Xu, it seems like you dont know me at all." Zhuo Lin laughed, "This assessment would end once the participant walked out of the black market. Its not important if they managed to find the weed. Did you really believe what I said about working together? I was once a spy, I had never worked with anyone on any missions." "You sly fox, you are always lying." Xu Jinpeng did not expect he was cheated by Zhuo Lin. "Alright, lets talk business. Whats the situation now at Heisen Castle?" Zhuo Lin asked. Xu Jinpeng was the one who was responsible for following up on the incident. Xu Jinpeng frowned, "We cant track who did this. All of the surveillance cameras were destroyed, it was a clean cut job and the culprit can''t be determined. There could be one, two or three people who did this. It could also be done by a powerful Imperial Censor who owned many summoning monsters." "There were three possible scenarios that killed the staff. They were either sliced by a blade, burnt by flames or they probably committed suicide." "We could only speculate that the person have mastered the sword, the fire element, and even some illusion or mind control skills." "Could it be done by one of the participants? The time that the incident happened seems to match the hunter assessment that''s going on. This is skeptical." Zhuo Lin suggested. "Youre thinking too much. Looking at the trails, the murdered killed all the silver-level humans in one hit. Even one of the gold-level rank-3 guards was killed in one hit. This means the murdered was at least gold-level rank-3. None of the participants is silver-level, how could they manage to do that? Even if any of them is an Imperial Censor, the most powerful summoning monster they could summon would be a silver-level rank-3. Both of us are gold-level rank-3, why would we be afraid of a silver-level rank-3 monster?" Xu Jinpeng shook his head and smiled. "If I encounter a double mutated monster, I would be afraid." Zhuo Lin was silent before he responded. "A double mutated monster? Do you think these bronze-level kids could manage to control a monster like that?" Xu Jinpeng insisted that Zhuo Lin was thinking too much. "Alright. You didnt see how clean cut the murder scene was. The murderer must be someone who some terrifying combat skills. Even I couldnt do that." "I must be thinking too much then" Zhuo Lin shook his head and left the thought behind. Lin Huang did not hear the conversation between Zhuo Lin and Xu Jinpeng. If he heard them conversing, he would be concerned because Zhuo Lins estimation was very close to what exactly happened. Once the second round of assessment ended, Lin Huang thought that the difficulty of assessment was much harder than he could ever have imagined. He thought the assessment would just inspect their abilities and they would be given a pass. He did not expect there to be unpredictable traps everywhere. Almost all of the head examiners set the assessment contents according to their own personalities, which made the assessment unpredictable. Nobody could tell how ridiculous the head examiner could be. "Hopefully the head examiners of the following assessments would not be too eccentric. If they were the same as the head examiner in the second assessment who even lied to us, the passing rate would be rather worrying" Lin Huang said worriedly. 166 Mr. Fu On the next day, Lin Huang checked out of the hotel early in the morning. From what the head examiner said earlier, he could guess that the location of the third assessment would not be in Beixuan City. After breakfast, Lin Huang arrived at the Hunter Association near the plaza at around 7:40 a.m. Lin Huang looked around but he did not see Bai Yan. Lin Huang was sure that Bai Yan had dismissed himself from the assessment. However, he saw Xia Y and she saw him too, but she turned her head to the other side and pretended not to see him. Lin Huang smirked, "Do you think I''d let you go just like that?" Soon, it was 8 a.m. Nobody was late this time, all the participants who passed the second assessment had arrived. A Demonic Crystal Spaceship landed from the sky which was puzzling because the plaza in front of the Hunter Association was not the official docking point for the spaceship. Seeing the spaceship arrive, it was clear that the spaceship was being chartered exclusively by the Hunter Association for transportation. "The Hunter Association is so generous to the point that they would get a Demonic Crystal Spaceship to pick us up." "This is not a common Demonic Crystal Spaceship, but the latest Red Devil from the MEA Group. Each division is only limited to 100 of these and the price of each of them is equivalent to the price of three five-star relics. There are attack and defense systems on it that are on the same level as relics. I heard that even if the spaceship encountered transcendent monsters, it would be able to defeat them." A young man who was quite knowledgeable about the Demonic Crystal Spaceship said in excitement. A gigantic red spaceship landed on the plaza at the entrance of the Hunter Association. A short, old man with white beard walked down from the spaceship. The two head examiners, Xu Jinpeng and Zhuo Lin rushed to greet the old man, they said respectfully, "Mr. Fu." The old man laughed and nodded. "Why are you here, Mr. Fu?" Xu Jinpeng asked. Mr. Fu was a transcendent with many other apprentices who were also transcendents. He was a highly respected person here in Division7. "I just bought this Red Devil, is it wrong for me to show it off a little?" Mr. Fu laughed and Xu Jinpeng did not know what to say. Zhuo Lin jumped in and said, "Seems like you took good care of your spaceship, Mr. Fu." "Of course, it arrived just yesterday." What Mr. Fu said made them speechless again. The both of them did not say anything but laugh along with the old man. "Alright, I shall stop fooling around with you guys. I just bought this spaceship but l need to use it in order for me to test it out. I heard you guys needed a spaceship so this is my chance to try it out." Mr. Fu said and looked at the participants, his gaze stopping at the direction of Lin Huang and a few other participants. "There is some great potential here." Xu Jinpeng and Zhuo Lin were glad to hear that, they knew that Mr. Fu had a unique observation skill which was why all his apprentices were terrifyingly powerful. Since he saw great potential here, there was bound to be some participants who were worth training by the Hunter Association. "Alright kids, scan your identity? You should board the spaceship now!" After chatting with the two head examiners, Mr. Fu then waved to the participants. A bunch of them rushed to board the spaceship. Once all of them boarded the spaceship, Mr. Fu waved at both head examiners and returned to the spaceship. "Please find yourselves a room, we''ll only arrive at our destination tomorrow morning." Mr. Fu said to the participants and headed to the cockpit. The participants were wondering who he was. "Who is this Mr. Fu?" "How can he afford this Demonic Crystal Spaceship on his own? He must be a transcendent." Aside from the speculation of Mr. Fu being a transcendent, none of them knew who Mr. Fu really was. Even a couple of young men from royal families had no idea. Lin Huang stood on the deck and watched the spaceship depart. He saw Xia Yu from the corner of his eye. She was standing at the side of the spaceship, looking down at the Beixuan City beneath them with a frown. She seemed to be troubled. Noticing that Lin Huang was watching her, she looked at his direction but Lin Huang had looked away. She then proceeded to look outside once again. Lin Huang did not care what she was thinking about as he walked towards the residential area. Many of them were trying to get into the VIP area on the top floor but Lin Huang randomly picked a room on the second floor. The reason why he chose the second floor was simple; he did not want to share the elevator with the others. It was convenient for him to get downstairs and more importantly, it was quiet. The spaceship had outstanding soundproofing but the sound of people walking in the corridor could still be heard in the rooms. Although the spaceship was luxurious, it was empty as there were no other crew members on board. There were no kitchenware, plates, or alcohol in the restaurant on the first floor except the equipment. The only entertainment on the spaceship was the swimming pool on the top floor which could only be used with Mr. Fus permission. As the sun began to set, the spaceship began descending as well and startled quite a few people. "Please do not panic, I wanted to try out the sailing function of the spaceship at night. Just rest on the spaceship as usual. I''ll send all of you to the assessment location tomorrow morning." Mr. Fus voice was heard on the loudspeaker. The red Demonic Crystal Spaceship landed on the ocean. Usually, most Demonic Crystal Spaceships came with the ability to sail float on water or even dive. As it began to slowly sail on the ocean, Mr. Fu grabbed a fishing rod and walked out of the cocktail and headed to the side of the spaceship with a smile. Many were concerned if they could make it to the assessment location on time because the spaceship was moving slowly. They approached Mr. Fu to confirm if they would make it and Mr. Fu waved his hand, "Dont worry, if I dont make it on time, I''ll get the Hunter Association to give you your licenses immediately." What he said reassured the participants. Mr. Fu then walked to the side of the spaceship and took up a tall chair from his storage space. There was no bait on his hook but he sat on the chair and tossed the hook into the sea. He proceeded to smoke a pipe but seemed like he was falling asleep. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was watching the sunset on the balcony. He saw Mr. Fu fishing and used his Emperors Heart Ring to take photos of the scenery. The pictures came out good. An old man sitting by the spaceship, fishing with an orange sun next to him. The view was quite breathtaking. Lin Huang then returned to his room and ate some snacks. When the sun was beginning to set, he walked to the balcony again. Mr. Fu did not catch any fish but he did seem relaxed. Lin Huang thought to himself that since he had nothing to do, he might as well accompany the old man. Perhaps he could even grill the fish if the old man managed to catch one. Lin Huang headed directly to Mr. Fu after he got to the first floor. He stopped beside Mr. Fu and asked, "Mr. Fu, do you have any more fishing rods?" Mr. Fu looked at him in doubt and asked, "Do you know how to fish?" "I have tried fishing before but it was a long time ago." What Lin Huang said was the truth. When he was on earth, he had a customer who loved fishing. He learned many things about fishing from him as he would occasionally fish with the customer. That was how he learned how to fish. Mr. Fu did not say anything but passed Lin Huang a fishing rod and a tall chair like the one he was sitting on. Lin Huang took the fishing rod and noticed that there was no bait so he put his snack on the hook. He then sat on the chair and tossed the hook into the sea. Mr. Fu could see that Lin Huang really did know how to fish so he gave him a nod and continued smoking. Soon, the bait hooked a fish! "Not bad." Mr. Fu complimented and passed Lin Huang a net. After Lin Huang got the fish on board, he used the net to capture the fish while he took out a pail he brought from his storage space. He cut open the top of the pail and tossed the fish in. The fish was quite small at only one catty but this was definitely a good start! After the first fish, Lin Huang was getting luckier. Within half an hour, he managed to catch more than 10 fishes and the biggest one was almost 10 catties. Meanwhile, Mr. Fu still hasnt caught one. However, he did not appear to be worried. Lin Huang, on the other hand, felt awkward. "Mr. Fu, why dont you try using my snack as bait." Lin Huang suggested. "Dont worry, its about time." Mr. Fu looked at the sky, it was getting dark. Lin Huang did not understand but did not ask further either. As the sky got darker, he noticed that was something under the water. There seemed to be a small, glowing red snake under Mr. Fus fishing rod. Lin Huang then activated Boundless Vision to look and he realized that it was a red snake formed completely from Life Power. It was moving beneath the waters and could not be seen clearly during the day but now that it was dark, its red glow became obvious. "Thats a terrifying mastery of Life Power He is able to use his Life Power to create a lifeform that can move." Lin Huang suddenly realized that fishing was part of training for Mr. Fu. Suddenly, a gigantic shadow approached his bait at lightning speed. Mr. Fu smirked and a strong power pulled on his fishing rod halfway into the ocean. "Up!" Mr. Fu smirked and shouted, his right hand pulling up a gigantic black fish that was almost 100 meters long. The fish landed hard on the deck behind the both of them. The entire spaceship shook and many who saw what had happened were shocked. "This is... A sea queen! A gold-level Goldenink Grouper!" Some of the people watching exclaimed in excitement. 167 Food Hunter The sea king were the real kings of the ocean. Most of them resided in the deep sea with bodies longer than 10,000 meters. They were gigantic and a small population of the sea kings possessed abilities comparable to the dragonkin. The sea queens were also comparable to the sea kings. They possessed the blood of the sea kings but because their blood contained a lesser form of power, they were called sea queens instead. In the ocean, a sea queen was almost comparable to an overlord-level creature. Aside from the sea kings, they feared no one... Nothing! They possessed abilities that were superior to monsters of a similar level. The Goldenink Grouper that Mr. Fu captured was a sea queen. Its body was at least 90 meters and it was hooked by Mr. Fus fishing rod which was as thick as a thumb. It died after they docked at the deck of the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. Mr. Fu kept his fishing rod and exclaimed to the people, "Im in luck today. This is my treat!" Lin Huang put his fishing rod away and leaped down from the chair. He was attracted to the gigantic Goldenink Grouper. The fish was as black as ink, it was as if its body was covered with a layer of black metal armor. A couple of its scales were white and judging by its length, Lin Huang could tell that it was gold-level rank-3. Although Lin Huang had seen many transcendents, he could not help but to secretly look at Mr. Fu. He was only 1.5 meters tall and always smiling. However, now that he had shown off how powerful he was, nobody would look down on him anymore. "Boy, why dont we use the fishes that you caught as side dishes?" Mr. Fu suddenly looked at Lin Huang. "Sure!" Lin Huang nodded immediately. "Lets feast, please step aside." Mr. Fus got down and dirty with his hands. One of his hands transformed into a knife, as red Life Power shot through his arm. The knife turned into a 20-meter giant knife and he began to remove the scales from the Goldenink Grouper 10 seconds later, the fish was completely sliced into pieces. Not only were its organs and scales removed, it was also sliced into 100 pieces. After putting away the fish slices and fish head, Mr. Fu turned on the automatic cleaning system to clean the area surrounding the spaceship. He then tossed the pail with fishes Lin Huang caught into the air. As he threw the pail, five of his fingers transformed into red knives that glowed and just as the fishes fell back into the pail, it seemed like they were completely clean with their scales and organs removed. Many people cheered and only Lin Huang and a few others who have mastered the sword could see that Mr. Fu had used a high-level sword skill. "This must be at least an Epic sword skill." Lin Huang was sure. Mr. Fu then grabbed a normal-sized wok from the air and began to season the meal with chives and ginger. Fragrance soon filled the air and Mr. Fu tossed all the fish slices into the wok after taking it out from his storage space. The fish cubes shrunk in midair as they landed in the wok. Mr. Fu proceeded to add the 10 fishes Lin Huang caught into the wok. As he cooked, a delicious fragrance of fish lingered in the air and he poured a special sauce that he specially made into the mixture and stirred. Lin Huang and the rest were drooling. Mr. Fu ended the show with some seasoning and it had taken him a total of half an hour to cook the fishes. Washbasins that were used as plates were brought out. Although they were huge, each washbasin was only sufficient to contain one fish. Soon, the 100 washbasins were arranged in a row on the spaceship deck. "I call this Big Sauced Fish Slices!" Mr. Fu then distributed the fish slices to everyone. After that, he got himself one as well. The color was a bright red and the fish slices were covered in a flavorful sauce. With the salivating fragrance coming off the fish, many of the participants began to dig in. Lin Huang took a bite as well and almost bit his own tongue off because there were no bones and the meat was as soft as tofu. It was so delicious that it tasted like the food he once had at Stable Residence. "Mr. Fu must be a Food Hunter!" Many began to think. With only one bite, Lin Huang could feel changes happening to his Life Power. If his Life Power was not full, that one single bite of the fish would fill up his Life Power. A couple of participants in the crowd experienced an upgrade in their combat strength after eating the fish. Three of them leveled-up from bronze-level rank-1 to bronze-level rank-2 and two people leveled-up from bronze-level rank-2 to bronze-level rank-3. It was such a treat. As Mr. Fu watched, he smiled but he did not say anything while he ate the fish silently. They finally finished eating in the middle of the night. Lin Huangs stomach was filled to the brim from eating seven to eight pieces. The rest were full as well with many of them holding their stomach while they lay down on the deck. Some even fell asleep on the deck. Lin Huang slept in his room and when he woke up, it was already 7:30 a.m. He got up from his bed immediately and looked out the window to see if the spaceship had landed. "Kids, its already 7:30 a.m. You better start cleaning yourselves and get off the spaceship. Weve arrived at the location of your assessment. If you dont leave by 8 a.m., dont blame me if you fail the assessment" Mr. Fus deep voice was heard through the loudspeaker and woke many participants up. Many of them did not even wash their face or brush their teeth as they rushed out of the spaceship. Lin Huang looked at the time and it was only 7:30 a.m. so he took his time cleaning himself. When he arrived at the deck, there was nobody left on the spaceship. Mr. Fu was standing next to the entrance. Lin Huang walked towards him and when he heard Lin Huang''s footsteps, Mr. Fu turned around and said, "All the best, young man!" "Okay." Lin Huang nodded, he recalled something as he was near the entrance. He stopped walking and took out the photo he took of Mr. Fu when he was fishing. "I took a photo of you yesterday. Take it as a gift from me to you." "Thats not bad!" Mr. Fu seemed happy to see the photo, "Let me add you to my contacts." After adding each other to their respective contact lists, Lin Huang sent the photo to Mr. Fu and left the spaceship. 168 The Third Assessment Has Started Just as Lin Huang stepped out of the spaceship, he saw a row of gigantic fences, up to 100 hundred of them. A tall and big sized man stood before the fence. He had bulky muscles and was covered in a beard. He wore army pants, a black singlet and a pair of sunglasses. He looked serious because he stood there crossing his arms. He looked like the type of guy that nobody would want to mess with. There were two staff members that wore hunter uniforms standing next to him. Lin Huang could tell that the bald man was probably the head examiner of the assessment. After Lin Huang left the spaceship, the last few people remaining got down from the spaceship after him. The spaceship then flew away and disappeared. When it was 8 a.m., the bald man finally spoke. "My name is Jiang Sen, I am the head examiner of the third assessment." The bald man introduced himself, "I dont appreciate bullsh*t and I also dont think of myself as the brightest man in comparison to other examiners. Therefore, this assessment will be simple." "I believe all of you noticed the metal fence behind me. Behind the fences are long corridors which connect three monster cages. Each cage contains one silver-level rank-3 monster. Those who gets through the corridor, manages to get past the three monster cages and leave the corridor from the other end will pass this round. " "The rules are simple. Before going into the fence, you will have to give me your Emperors Heart Ring and storage rings. You are only allowed to keep three pieces of equipment with you and the equipment has to be iron-level or bronze-level. Nothing higher than bronze-level." Silver-level rank-3 monsters had an advantage over bronze-level humans. A bronze-level defensive weapon would not have an impact if it was used on silver-level rank-3 monsters. Meanwhile, bronze-level weapons had little to no effect on silver-level rank-3 monsters. If they encountered monsters with a high defense, there was nothing that they could do to attack them. The head examiner continued speaking. "The assessment limit will be an hour per person. If you do not pass through the exit within an hour, you fail the assessment!" "If you spend more than half an hour in any monster cage, you fail as well!" "Also, in this assessment, you''re only allowed to go forward. There is no going back or retreating. Once you''ve entered the monster cafe, you''re not allowed to back out from the corridor. If you step back into the corridor after entering the monster case, you will fail!" "Lastly, I would like to remind you that there will not be any safety measures taken during this assessment. If you die in the hands of the monsters, we''ve been instructed to only collect your corpses." The participants looked even more upset with each passing rule that they were told. After Jiang Sen finished his briefing, he turned to all of them. "Its not too late to withdraw from the assessment now. Im giving you 10 seconds to think about it. The assessment officially starts after 10 seconds!" "10, 9, 8" Some of them hesitated because they could lose their lives in this assessment. As he counted down, one person raised his hand in surrender and shouted, "I give up!" After the first person gave up, more people were having second thoughts. "I give up too!" A second person raised his hand up. More and more people began to leave the assessment and many of them were bronze-level rank-1 and rank-2. When he counted down to one, there were already more than 120 participants who chose to give up. "Alright, those who have given up, please follow the staff to the resting room." Jiang Sen nodded to the staff next to him. The staff then waved at the participants, "Those who had given up please follow me, let us not delay the assessment for the rest." There was a group that followed her. As the people left, Jiang Sen continued to say "The silver-level rank-3 monsters are stronger than most of you. Its normal to face a monster stronger than you but an outstanding hunter won''t be afraid. Instead, they''ll be able to convert their fear into courage and find a way to survive in times of crisis." "What Im looking isnt ability alone but bravery as well. This is why I''m giving you guys a time limit for this assessment. You''re only allowed to move forward. No backing out!" "There are a total of 100 corridor entrances with the code 001 to 100. Now, you can proceed to draw from the ballot to see which corridor you get to start from." Jiang Sen said and nodded to the staff next to him. A couple of staff brought the ballot box over and placed it on the ground. It was a black, sealed box with a hole in the middle. "Come forward and draw the ballot." Jiang Sen nodded. Many of them rushed forward and took out a round card that was the size of a mug. After the rest were done, Lin Huang walked slowly forward and picked a card for himself. There was a red 066 printed on the white card and a black 23 was printed on the back of the card. Lin Huang raised an eyebrow, he wanted to ask why were there two numbers but somebody else beat him to it, "Why are there two numbers? One red while the other black?" "The red number is the corridor number that you will need to enter from. The black number at the back refers to the order of your entry." Hearing Jiang Sens explanation, some of them who got the number 1 turned pale. None of them knew what to expect and what kind of monsters lurked behind those corridors. "What is there to hesitate about? There''s no difference whether or not you are the first or the 50th to enter. If you fail, our staff will escort you out and you won''t be able to watch other participants perform." He added, "I would like to remind you that none of you should exchange the number that you get. If you do, I''ll make sure the both of you are blacklisted and you won''t be able to join any hunter assessments for three years." "Alright, those who got the black number 1, please choose the three pieces of equipment that you would like to bring along with you. Also, do pass your Emperors Heart Ring and storage rings over to our staff. Once you''ve done that, you can proceed to enter the corridor. Half an hour later, the one who has the black number 2 will enter and it''s best if we maintain a few minutes gap in between participants." 169 Monster Shed No.66 At the 100 numbered fences, the 100 participants who picked the number ''1'' on the black side of the card quickly gave their Emperors Heart Ring and storage rings to the staff. Each of them brought three bronze-level pieces of equipment with themselves. Most of the participants brought along one piece of armor and two weapons. A couple of them brought two pieces of armor and one weapon. Those who were at the back saw someone putting on two layers of armor and thought it would be a good idea since the defensive prowess of a piece of bronze-level armor was limited and would not be able to defend against the attacks of silver-level rank-3 monsters. It would work better if they had two layers of armor on or at least, that was what most of them thought. However, when Lin Huang and some of them saw this, they shook their heads as they knew it would not work. When an equipment was in its ring form, it would not weight a thing. However, as soon as the ring was activated, the weight of the equipment would return to normal. Although the armor was made of a special material that was lighter than regular armor, putting on two pieces at the same time would decrease both speed and agility. What this round of assessment required were speed and agility. It was impossible for most participants to defeat silver-level rank-3 monsters. In a space so small, the only thing they could do was to avoid themselves from getting attacked and leap to the side of the corridor. Such a tactic would not work if they were even one second late. Therefore, putting on two layers of armor was actually pretty stupid, though it may seem like a wise move in their perspective. Moreover, one or two bronze-level pieces of armor would not make much difference when they encountered the monster. Their armor would be like one or two pieces of paper that could be easily pierced with a knife. Once the first batch of participants entered, the area behind the fence became crowded. Although they could not see what was happening behind the fence, they could hear the monsters roar from the outside. Within a minute, an announcement was heard from the loudspeaker, "The participant No.1 in monster shed No.62 has been disqualified! Participant No.2 can now enter." Many of them who were already nervous got even more nervous when they heard the participant getting disqualified within a minute. About two minutes later, another announcement came from the loudspeaker. "Participant No.1in monster shed No.13 has been disqualified! Participant No.2 can enter now." As time passed, there would be announcements coming from the loudspeaker every now and then. "Participant No.1 in monster shed No.18 has been disqualified! Participant No.2 can enter now." "Participant No.1 in monster shed No.97 has been disqualified!" "Participant No.1 in monster shed No.55 has been disqualified!" "Participant No.1 in monster shed No.43 has been disqualified!" Many of them lost faith when they heard the announcements coming one after the other. "Participant No.1 in monster shed No.66 is dead! Participant No.2 can enter now." Lin Huang raised his eyebrows because the number he picked was also No.66. Many of them were in a panic as someone actually died during the assessment! Many of them thought that the head examiner was kidding when he said there were no safety measures in this assessment. Now that somebody had actually died, they finally took what the head examiner said seriously. After the death of a participant was announced, a staff ran out and whispered into Jiang Sens ear. Jiang Sen nodded and looked at participant No.2 for monster shed No.66. "What are you looking at, the assessment goes on!" As participant No.2 walked into monster shed No.66, Jiang Sen frowned. He did not expect the monster in No.66 to go through a mutation out of nowhere. Since the difficulty of the assessment had been raised, he hesitated for a moment and wondered if he should notify the participants who had picked monster shed No.66 or if he should sweep the matter under the rug. Just as he was hesitating, an announcement came from the loudspeaker again. "Participant No.2 in monster shed No.66 is dead! Participant No.3 can enter now." Many started to find it odd that there were two consecutive deaths in monster shed No.66. The monster in that particular shed was probably much stronger than the rest. As the participant No.3 walked in, Jiang Sen shouted at him, "Alright, dont go in." The participant stopped walking and stayed where he was. Jiang Sen then took out a loudspeaker and explained, "Those who picked No.66, the first monster that we placed in the shed had just gone through a mutation which caused major upgrade in its intelligence and ability. Due to special circumstance, we shall break the rules for this time only. Those of who would like to change your number, please register with our staff here. Those who do not want to change their number, you can proceed with the assessment." Most of the participants left the queue and rushed to the staff to change their drawn numbers, only a few which included Lin Huang remained in the queue. Lin Huang was initially No.23 but because most of them left to change their number, there were only two participants before he was scheduled to enter. He was happy because he would only need to wait for an hour to enter. The rest of them who left the queue looked at them like they were idiots. "You think what youre doing will make you a hero?" "You''ll pay the price for being proud. It''ll too late for regret if you die in there." "Even if you manage to pass through monster shed No.66, how does that make you any different than the ones who manage to pass through other monster sheds? Is it necessary to be so persistent?" Some of the participants who bought the weed crystal from Lin Huang shouted at him, "Lin Huang, get another number! It won''t benefit you if you remain with No.66." "Of course theres an advantage!" Lin Huang smiled at that person, "Now that the queue is shorter, I can pass the assessment at a shorter time." What he said made them speechless. Once most of the participants left the queue for shed No.66, the queue was shortened from 55 people to five people. There were two people in front and behind Lin Huang. Those who left the queue had to queue at the back again. Soon the assessment for monster shed No.66 began. The participant who was the first in queue walked in confidently with two weapons and a piece of armor. Lin Huang had high hopes in that participant. He was a muscular young man who seemed quite mature. Although he was also a bronze-level rank-3, he was going to break through to silver-level anytime. As the announcements from the loudspeaker continued, the first good news was finally announced. "Congratulations! Participant No.1 in monster shed No.37, Xia Yu had passed the third assessment!" "That girl? Not bad, the assessment has only started for less than 20 minutes and she has already passed." Lin Huang raised an eyebrow, he decided to finish the assessment faster than Xia Yu did. Just as everyone was cheering for the good news, they looked at Lin Huang as another announcement came from the loudspeaker. "Participant No.11 in monster shed No.66 is dead!" Even Jiang Sen was frowning, "Nevermind, those of you who got No.66 please re-register and get another number. Stop wasting your time in the queue!" Since the head examiner had spoken, the other four participants walked towards the staff members to draw another number but Lin Huang remained there, standing still. "Sir, I would like to give it a try." Lin Huang said to Jiang Sen. "Arent you afraid that three people who went in there had all died?" Jiang Sen turned around and looked at Lin Huang. "Silver-level monsters are not worth being afraid of." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. "Kid, if you''re very capable and proud, it''s what I''d call confident. However, if you''re proud but you''re not capable, that''s what I''d call idiotic." Jiang Sen shot Lin Huang a deadly glare." "I''ll prove with my actions that I''m the former." Without waiting for Jiang Sen to say anything, Lin Huang took out two modified CopperSparrow23s and a bronze-level battle sword from his Emperors Heart Ring. He then placed all his rings into his Emperors Heart Ring and gave it to the staff. What he did seemed like he was digging his own grave to the others. However, some were anticipating what would happen to him. "Can you open the door now?" Lin Huang looked at Jiang Sen. Jiang Sen glared at Lin Huang and said to the staff, "Open the door for him!" The door opened and Lin Huang walked in without a moment of hesitation 170 Canst Keep A Low Profile Any Longer After going into the passage to the monster shed, Lin Huang walked along the dark corridor. The walls and ceiling were cast in a silver metal. The floor was made of black metal boards and it was not hard to tell that the corridor was made for temporary use. After walking for around 100 meters, Lin Huang had finally reached the end. He finally saw the monster cage. It was a gigantic metal cage that was similar to a birdcage, with metal bars that were as thick as an adult thumb hanging from the top, made from a material unknown to Lin Huang. The metal bars were embedded into the black metal floor with a gap of only 20 centimeters between them so adults could not enter. The monster cage was surrounded with green plants and seemed to be in a dense jungle. He could even see the other monster cages on both sides. It was a circular area that was 100 meters in diameter and the ground was covered in blood. However, Lin Huang did not see any dead bodies so he thought that the staff may have removed them. After observing the environment around him, Lin Huang then looked at the monster across from him. It was a big, red bird with purple feathers on its tail and the bottom of its wings. There were a couple of golden crests on the top of its head and the bird looked rather colorful. Lin Huang could recognize that it was a bird that was similar to a parrot on earth but this was known as a Fenixplume Peacock in this world. It was an intelligent fighting bird. Most talking peacocks could mimic sounds of other creatures but the Fenixplume Peacock was a mutated monster. It was a master in mimicking voices, being able to mimic a sound after only hearing it once. This ability was not only used for mimicking voices as it also used it to hunt for prey. For instance, it would mimic the sound of a mother beast to lure the baby beast to it or it could mimic a mating call to attract male beasts After spending more than three months with humans, a Fenixplume Peacock could even master a human language and understand what the words meant. To be exact, it was even smarter than most humans when it came to learning new languages. However, a Fenixplume Peacock only fed on meat. Its attacking prowess was unparalleled as its beak and claws were comparable to weapons. The defensive abilities of its feathers were also comparable to armor and it could take short-distance flights at the speed of light. Looking at the gigantic bird, Lin Huang frowned as he knew it would not be easy for him to handle such a beast. "Damn, boy. Are you here to dig your own grave?" The Fenixplume Peacock spoke. Its voice was husky, unfriendly and unpleasant to the ear. "You can speak human language? It seems like you''ve spent some time with humans so why would you want to kill humans?" Lin Huang asked because the Fenixplume Peacock had spent some time with humans so it technically should not harbor any ill will towards humans. "It''s because human are bastards!! They deserve to die!" The Fenixplume Peacock shouted. "Seems like you had a bad owner. It''s no wonder you''re hot-tempered." Lin Huang thought in his mind that perhaps the peacock must have been tortured by its human owner, which explained why it would say such things. "Nonsense! My master is the best human in the whole wide world. He would kill humans every day to feed me the freshest human organs while waiting for me to go through a mutation. Unfortunately, I mutated today but he was not able to see it happen because he was killed by a human like you!" The Fenixplume Peacock shouted even louder this time. "So your master was a Dark Imperial Censor. If that''s the case, he deserves to die." Lin Huang knew finally knew what the backstory was when he heard what the Fenixplume Peacock had said. There was an evil sect among the Imperial Censors called the Foulblood Imperial Censors. The Foulblood Imperial Censors would keep many human slaves and cast spells on the slaves using their own blood. They would then feed the slaves that had died from the spells to the monsters that they reared. The spell would continue to fester in the monster and after a certain level had been achieved, the monster would undergo a mutation due to the spell. If the monster was fed enough human slaves, it could even go through two mutations. That was the reason why the Union Government and Hunter Association killed them on sight because they did not want a cursed monster that had undergone two mutations to become a transcendent that could harm the world. "How dare you!" The Fenixplume Peacock heard Lin Huang saying that its master deserved to die, it shouted again. "Such a hot temper. It''s got to be the curse" Lin Huang thought it was a normal mutated monster and he was considering if he should keep it. Once he found out that it was owned by a Foulblood Imperial Censor, there was no need for such consideration. "Since you''re cursed, you''d do no good to the world." Lin Huang extended his hand and called out, "Come out, Tyrant." The gigantic Tyrant appeared before Lin Huang. Its body was so muscular that it looked like it was covered with a golden armor. There was no fat on its body and it had a perfect body that would make any woman go crazy. Tyrant''s golden eyes glared at the Fenixplume Peacock. Its feathers stood up as Tyrant glared at it as it had never felt a fear like this. It was like it had been chosen as prey by a high-level predator, it would become food on its plate at any time. "Kill it." Lin Huang pointed at the Fenixplume Peacock. Tyrant plunged towards the Fenixplume Peacock at the speed of light to the extent that even Lin Huang could not see it moving. The Fenixplume Peacock attempted to fly to the top of the cage immediately but it was too late. Tyrant was already there with its hand on the Fenixplume Peacocks neck. Flapping its 10-meter-wide wings, the Fenixplume Peacock was like a helpless chick before Tyrant. It struggled but the tips of its wings were pinched together by Tyrant. Then, Tyrant broke its neck with its hand and pulled off the Fenixplume Peacocks head. Purple blood splashed out from its neck all over the place. The Fenixplume Peacock began to struggle and only stopped 10 minutes later. Looking at the purple blood on the ground, Lin Huang frowned and thought, "Looking at the color of the blood, it was definitely cursed." Although the Fenixplume Peacock had accumulated enough curses to make it go through a mutation, it did not mutate until today for some reason. Lin Huang then recalled Tyrant and walked to the second part of the corridor across from him. An announcement came from the loudspeaker. "The first monster in monster shed No.66 is dead! Please get the monster cage changed as soon as possible." Hearing the announcement being made, the people outside the monster shed were shocked. "He killed the monster?!" "A mutated silver-level rank-3 monster! How did that kid manage to kill it!? Who is he!?!" "Hes only bronze-level rank-3, how could he kill a mutated monster above his rank. Could he be the genius of the legends?" Even the head examiner Jiang Sen could not stay calm any longer. He looked at the surveillance camera immediately to see what exactly happened. He was shocked to see Tyrant killing the Fenixplume Peacock within seconds. "What kind of summoning monster is that? It looks a giant but its not the same. It kinda looks like a new mutated species. It managed to kill a mutated monster on the same level as it was. Thats ridiculous!" Jiang Sen did not know that Tyrant was a monster that had gone through two mutations as it was almost impossible for that to happen if a monster was below transcendent. He thought that Tyrant was a powerful mutated monster. However, it was because Tyrant did not show how fast and strong it really was. If they were fighting gold-level rank-3 monsters, almost anybody would be ablt to tell that it had undergone two mutations. Lin Huang was not worried that Tyrant would reveal his ability as Tyrant was not involved in the Heisen Castle massacre earlier. Even if the Hunter Association knew that he had a mutated monster, they would not think that he was the murderer. An Imperial Censor would have to have great luck if they were able to own a monster that had undergone two mutations before they reached transcendent. It was almost impossible for them to own two or more double mutated monsters. Lin Huang decided to reveal his abilities for the assessment because he knew he could not defeat the Fenixplume Peacock. Besides, he did that in the hopes that he would be able to gain access to more resources from the Hunter Association. As one of the largest organizations in this world, the Hunter Association owned vast amounts of information that other organizations and individuals were not privy to. No matter how powerful an ordinary person was, they would have limited access to information. Many rare materials were unavailable to trade for outsiders no matter how many Life Crystals one owned. Among all the organizations, the Hunter Association had the least amount of restrictions on their members while owning the most resources after the Union Government. So far, the hunters that Lin Huang have met were good so joining the Hunter Association was a wise choice. After entering the second corridor, an announcement came from the loudspeaker again. Lin Huang heard it loud and clear. He smiled and shook his head, knowing that there was no way for him to keep a low profile any longer. "Since I cant keep a low profile any longer, then I''ll show them how powerful I really am. It''ll be great if they''ll grant me a Silver Hunter position after the assessment ended. It would be even better if I can get a residential permit to stay in an A-grade foothold!" 171 Right In The Assh*le Passing through the corridor, Lin Huang arrived at the second monster cage. It was a One-Armed Ape in the cage. The One-Armed Ape was a giant. It was not called the One-Armed Ape because it only had one arm, but because one of its arms were regular sized while the other was as big as its entire body. The gigantic arm had terrifying power and monsters on the same level would die with just a single hit. However, there was a downside to the gigantic arm - it moved at a slow speed. It was the price it had to pay to obtain such power. Most people would be scared if they saw this monster because a simple rub with its arm would spell certain death. However, Lin Huang smirked as he held the CopperSparrow23 in both of his hands and walked into the corridor. He then started to shoot at the One-Armed Ape. The ape roared in pain as it rushed towards Lin Huang with its giant arm covering its face. Lin Huang then activated Cloud Steps without much effort and avoided the apes attack. He turned around and shot at the apes face while it used its giant arm to defend itself. Lin Huang smirked again and said, "Goodbye, big guy!" Lin Huang then leaped to the entrance of the third corridor with the Spectral Snowsteps movement skill. He then disappeared into the third corridor. The One-Armed Ape groaned in anger. The weakest part of the monster was its head. As soon as it was attacked on its head, its first reaction would be to defend itself with its giant arm. However, that would mean that it would block its own vision. Lin Huang used the opportunity to run away and the entire fight took less than 10 seconds. Soon, Lin Huang arrived at the final monster cage after passing through the third corridor. It was a Silverscale Pangolin. This monsters attack power and speed were mediocre but it was born with terrifying defensive abilities. When a silver-level rank-3 Silverscale Pangolin goes into its defensive form, it would transform into a silver ball. Even gold-level rank-1 or rank-2 monsters could do nothing to it. The CopperSparrow23 in Lin Huangs hands fired again, he was attempting to lure the monster away from the exit. However, he did not expect the Silverscale Pangolin to not attack him but roll into a ball instead. It even rolled itself over to the exit on purpose and blocked the exit entirely. "Are you kidding me?" Lin Huang was speechless. He frowned and walked closer to the Silverscale Pangolin before he opened fire. It remained in its defensive mode and seemed like it intended to stay that way until Lin Huang gave up. Standing next to the Silverscale Pangolin, Lin Huang gave it a kick but it did not respond at all. "Alright then, you''re the one who forced me to do this." Lin Huang then stored the two modified guns and took out his bronze-level battle sword. He activated Boundless Vision and walked around the Silverscale Pangolin. He stopped and grinned. The bronze-level battle sword stabbed into a gap between its scales. The Silverscale Pangolin let out a cry and rolled to the side. As planned, Lin Huang entered the exit of the third corridor. The Silverscale Pangolin gave Lin Huang a deadly stare so he put his arms up and tossed the sword away. "You''re the one who forced me to do this. If you didn''t get in my way, I wouldnt have had to stab your assh*le. I dont want this sword anymore, keep it as a souvenir." Lin Huang then walked towards the exit. Recalling the expression on the Silverscale Pangolin''s face, Lin Huang laughed. The defensive ability of a Silverscale Pangolin was stunning but it had a critical weakness. When it was rolled into its defensive form, there would be a tiny gap between its tail and body. It was hard to see with the naked eye but with the help of Boundless Vision, the gaps between the scales were magnified. With the right angle, it was not difficult to force a sharp blade into the gap. It was the Silverscale Pangolins assh*le, a soft and delicate part of its body. The hole Lin Huang stabbed into earlier was its assh*le Going through the last corridor, Lin Huang was close to the end. Just as he was walking out of the exit, he heard a distinctive voice coming out of the loudspeaker. "Congratulations participant No.23, Lin Huang who passed through monster shed No.66 and passed the third assessment!" Within two minutes after the announcement of the first monster was killed, Lin Huang managed to finish the entire journey. "Thats quick!" Many of the participants exclaimed. Even the head examiner Jiang Sen could not help but to look at Lin Huangs performance in the second and third monster cages. He could feel the Silverscale Pangolins pain when he saw Lin Huangs stab its assh*le. "This is isn''t just a powerful Imperial Censor. He actually has a good understanding of all monsters habits and weaknesses! His mentality and ability are considered to be close to that of a genius. I must recommend him to the management." Jiang Sen nodded in satisfaction. After downloading the complete video clip of Lin Huangs performance, Jiang Sen wrote a short report and sent it to the Hunter Association of the Division7s headquarter together with the video clips. In reality, not many people knew that aside from the recruitment of Copper Hunters through the annual assessment of the Hunter Association, there was a secret evaluation. All head examiners could recommend participants that they deemed fit individually to the headquarter. Each head examiner would a quota of three recommendations in each assessment. If any of the recommended participants were selected, the particular head examiner would be given a luxurious reward. Aside from managing the assessment, the responsibility of a head examiner was also to source for talents for the Hunter Association. However, not many participants could pass the evaluation. There were around 180 assessment points in the entire Division7 with five head examiners each. With two assessment annually and three recommendation from each head examiner, the Hunter Association would receive more than 5,000 recommendations in Division7 alone. However, there would be less than 10 people who could pass and it was usually only four to five people who would pass the evaluation. When the list arrived at the headquarter, the respective managers would go through the list for a preliminary review. After that, the documents would be given to the other managers for a review. After the review was over, the managers would conduct a meeting with each other for a final review. Once the final review was over, an application for intensive training would be carried out. Once a participant arrived at this stage, they were considered to be a member of the intensive training group. As long as the participant was not involved in the underworld, they would remain eligible for the intensive training group. After Lin Huangs name was sent, he passed the preliminary review and review. As the managers were all transcendents, they could tell that Tyrant was a double mutated monster with one glance. Theoretically, an Imperial Censor who owned a double mutated monster would worth the resources that went into intensive training. Soon they arrived at the final review. The manager who was responsible for the review gathered the 12 managers of the Division7. Besides Xu Tianyu, the rest who presented at the meeting were all holograms. "Lao Xu, we have been busy with the assessment these past few days. Do you have a recommendation for anyone who had passed your review?" A lady whose age could not be estimated chuckled. "I think so. That could be the only reason." A hunk nodded in all seriousness. Xu Tianyu sat on the president''s seat and smiled at everyone, "Thats right, we have a recommendation here. I cant decide for myself, so I thought I''d ask for your opinions." Xu Tianyu then played the video clip of Lin Huang during the assessment. Everyone was silent after watching the video. "Is this it? Are there more videos?" An old man with a white beard and hair bun asked. "Theres none at the moment, the kid only revealed his ability as an Imperial Censor this one time." Xu Tianyu shook his head. "The summoning monster looked like a giant but its obviously a new type of monster that had gone through two mutations. Aside from its immense strength, it hasn''t shown any other abilities that are more powerful." "How about the Imperial Censor himself? Are there any videos of him in the combat?" Somebody asked. Xu Tianyu nodded and played the two video clips of Lin Huang that were taken in the following monster cages. "His mentality isnt bad, movement skills as well. From his sword skill, I can see that he has the standard of a beginner gunmaster. He seems to know monsters well. However, thats one quality that all Imperial Censors should have. As a whole, he is considered a common genius, theres nothing else to shout about." The old man in hairpin commented. "I wouldnt agree to list him into the intensive training group based on this double mutated monster that has no room for improvement." "Although this double mutated monster is a new type of monster, what it had shown was merely its strength. Its not difficult to tell that its just a strength-based monster, something similar to a giant. Even if such a monster manages to become a transcendent, its intelligence would be stunted. Among all the transcendent monsters, this belongs to the weakest kind. If its similar a double mutated monster who possessed the ability to control people like what we read in the earlier report, I''d definitely agree to put him into intensive training. However, from what we can see from this monster alone, it wouldnt be worth training him in the long run. Its no different from a special monster that went through one mutation. I dont agree about putting him into intensive training." "With this monster alone, I dont see a future in him. I disagree." The lady who spoke earlier shook her head. "I disagree!" "I disagree!" "I disagree!" Lin Huang was rejected by everyone in the final review. Xu Tianyu nodded, "I understand, I shall turn him down then." 172 I’m Not Interested In A Flat-Chested Girl Lin Huang had no idea that he was being recommended to be included in the intensive training list. He had no idea that he was rejected in the final review. Walking out of the monster shed of the third assessment, a staff from the Hunter Association approached him with his Emperors Heart Ring. "Hi there, this is your Emperors Heart Ring." Lin Huang put on the Emperors Heart Ring and turned it on to confirm if it was really his. "Thank you, may I know when will the fourth assessment commence?" "Based on our estimation, this assessment should take more than fifty hours so a two-day break will be given to you. The exact timing of the fourth assessment has yet to be confirmed." The staff explained. "What is this place? Are there any hotels around here?" Since there were still two days from the next round of assessment, Lin Huang thought he would check into a hotel. "Im sorry, this is a level-4 wild zone, Little Devil Island. There are no hotels here, all of the participants will have to settle their own accommodation and food during these two days." The staff explained. "This is Little Devil Island?!" Lin Huangs eyes were wide opened, his voice a pitch higher than before. The staff did not understand what was the matter with him as he nodded in confusion Lin Huang was being dramatic as he had chosen his Life Seed monster to level-up to silver-level before joining the assessment. Coincidentally, the Life Seed monster that he wanted was on this island. The island was scattered with demon, undead and spiritual monsters. The Life Seed monster that Lin Huang picked was an undead monster called the Silverblade Swordfiend. The reason why he chose this monster was because the monster could obtain a skill that could evolve into a secret skill (Total Domination) after it becomes a transcendent. Before it evolves, it had a talent called Sense Circle. With Sense Circle, the user will be able to see what was happening clearly as it allowed the user to stand in a circle which would act as a sensing area. After the talent evolves into Total Domination, the user would be able to dominate a part of the area as his own, allowing his attack to reach any part of the territory. It was a powerful attack-based secret skill. Lin Huang picked that particular monster from more than twenty silver-level Life Seed monsters, it was the secret skill that he desired the most. "Little Devil Island" Lin Huangs excitement only lasted for a short while, as he began to think of the practicality of the matter, "Its a little too fast for me to level-up from iron-level to silver-level within half a year. However, since the existence of Tyrant had been revealed, people would think that obtaining a double mutated monster was just my luck since I did not show what I really have and they wouldnt think that Im worth being trained. It doesnt matter if they knew how fast I could level-up since no one in history could break through to silver-level in half a year. Even if the Hunter Association found out, they might keep the secret for me as they would not want other organizations to take me away" Lin Huang had made his decision. Instead of waiting, he has decided to level-up to silver-level on the island before completing the assessment. "Is the two-day break confirmed?" Lin Huang asked the staff immediately. "I was thinking about killing some monsters during these two days before I come back for the assessment two days later." "It''s been confirmed. Don''t worry, you can train. However, I''d suggest that you get a good rest before the assessment instead of wasting too much strength and energy so you can perform your best in the assessment." The staff nodded but he did not forget to remind him. "I know what to do, thanks." Lin Huang said and walked hastily into the jungle. Seeing Lin Huang walk away, Xia Yu hesitated but followed him anyway. Soon, Lin Huang found out that somebody was following him. When he landed on a branch, he turned around and activated his CopperSparrow23 as he pointed at a tree, "Show yourself, stop hiding." "Youre quite alert, arent you?" Xia Yu walked out from the back of the tree giggling. "Why''re you following me?" Lin Huang asked in an unfriendly manner with his gun was still pointing at her. Although she seemed harmless, Lin Huang has never underestimated her. Up to this point, Lin Huang had yet to figure out what her purpose of joining the assessment was. From her performance, she did not seem to care about the result of the assessment. Moreover, her ability was quite outstanding. He noticed it when they were fighting for the Weed Crystal earlier. Although she did not give it her all, it was not difficult to tell that bronze-level hunters could not defeat her. "Nothing, I have nothing going on for the next two days so I thought I''d join you." Xia Yu smiled at Lin Huang. "You should go find someone else. I dont have time for this." Lin Huang rejected her straight away. He did not want to be tailed by someone that he was not familiar with. "Hey, at least Im a beauty, you should be proud that Im following you." Xia Yu crossed her arms. "I dont need that. Also, Im not interested in flat-chested girls. Stop following me." Lin Huang kept his gun and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. He disappeared from Xia Yus field of vision quick. "Flat-chested How dare he said Im flat-chested" Xia Yu was stunned by what Lin Huang said. She was furious and punched the tree next to her. The tree cracked into half. After freeing himself from Xia Yu, Lin Huang rode on the Alexandrian Eagle and found the coordinates of the Silverblade Swordfiend. The monster only existed in two footholds on the island and there were limited numbers of them. He landed and recalled the Alexandrian Eagle. With Boundless Vision, he ran towards the foothold that had the Silverblade Swordfiend in it. He wanted to find a mutated Silverblade Swordfiend as killing it would result in a higher chance to obtain a Life Seed. The Silverblade Swordfiend was a humanoid monster with silver armor. The inside of the armor was covered with black fog and there were two flaming eyes showing from within its helmet. Its eyes were its only weakness. Hiding 100 meters away, Lin Huang did not see any mutated ones after walking around its territory. After hesitating for a moment, he summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and headed to the second foothold. When he arrived in the second foothold, Lin Huang stayed hundreds of meters away while browsing his selections. The Silverblade Swordfiend had a sensing area of its own, if one stepped into the area, it would start attacking. After taking a stroll, Lin Huang was disappointed that he did not see any mutated ones. However, it was at that moment that a Silverblade Swordfiend turned around and looked directly at him. He had been discovered! Lin Huang was shocked at first, but soon he grew excited as the Silverblade Swordfiend had only one eye, a sign that it was mutated. He stood 200 meters away from the monster - 100 meters outside the Silverblade Swordfiends sensing area. However, he was detected by the Silverblade Swordfiend. Lin Huang was sure this was the one-eyed monster that he had been looking for! 173 One-Eyed Swordfiend Lin Huang did not move when he realized that the One-Eyed Swordfiend had discovered his existence. However, the other Silverblade Swordfiends nearby seemed to have sensed him approaching as well and they all looked at Lin Huangs direction. He knew that the Silverblade Swordfiend had telepathic abilities, as soon as one of them discovered enemies within the sensing circle, the information would be shared with all of their comrades nearby. Lin Huangs excitement faded as he noticed that more than 10 Silverblade Swordfiend looking at him in unison. There were more than 80 Silverblade Swordfiends in the entire foothold, all of them should know where Lin Huangs location was by now. As the One-Eyed Swordfiend made its first move, the other Silverblade Swordfiends seemed to receive an instruction to attack Lin Huang all at once. All of them ran towards the location where Lin Huang was hiding. "I thought I could get the Ghastly Clown to lure it out. Now, it seems like the only solution is to use violence" Lin Huang shook his head. "Come out, Tyrant!" Tyrant appeared before Lin Huang immediately. "Beat up those with two eyed ones and capture the one with one eye." Lin Huang instructed. Tyrant then plunged towards the bunch of Silverblade Swordfiends surrounding them. Lin Huang was like a helpless sheep with the Silverblade Swordfiendss surrounding him; it was hard to break away from them. Tyrant punched at them with his firsts and with every punch, several Silverblade Swordfiends would be defeated, none were able to defeat Tyrant. More than 10 Silverblade Swordfiends were defeated quickly. Although they were still alive, the armor they had on had become deformed and it would take some time for them to recover. Tyrant then aimed his attacks at the One-Eyed Swordfiend. The One-Eyed Swordfiend seemed to know that Tyrants mutation level was higher than its own but it attacked Tyrant without fear. A long sword stabbed at Tyrants throat. The speed was terrifying, Lin Huang could only see its shadow as it attacked. However, the attack merely left a crack that was less than one centimeter with the thickness of a hair and Tyrant recovered from the injury in no time. When the One-Eyed Swordfiend planned to attack again, it was choked by Tyrant and was immobilized. After the One-Eyed Swordfiend was captured, Tyrant walked to Lin Huang and presented the One-Eyed Swordfiend to Lin Huang, bowing down before him. It did not let go of the One-Eyed Swordfiend, but instead, showed its head to him. Lin Huang was surprised at its gesture, he held his head up and asked Tyrant, "You knew that its weakness was its eyes?" Tyrant nodded. "Do you also know that Im killing it for my Life Seed upgrade?" Lin Huang asked again. Tyrant nodded again. Lin Huang realized that he had underestimated Tyrants intelligence. He had always thought that there was no improvement in Tyrants intelligence even after it mutated twice. However, it seemed like its intelligence was similar to Bai''s. If the managers of the Hunter Association were watching this, they would be shocked. The giants and monsters that were similar to the giants were never appreciated because even when they mutated twice, it would not affect their intelligence much. Even if they became transcendent, they would have to fight with their instincts. The most they could do were to attack with explosive strength, the growth rate of their intelligence was too low. "Tyrant, you surprised me today!" Lin hung complimented. Tyrant smiled so wide that its teeth were showing, Lin Huang did not know it was able to smile. "Alright, hold it still. Im going to kill it." Lin Huang took out the black relic battle sword from his storage space. A glow from his sword flashed in the air and the tip of the sword stabbed right into the One-Eyed Swordfiends eye. Soon, a notification popped up. "Congratulations, you have received a rare Monster Card - One-Eyed Swordfiend!" Before Lin Huang could even look at the details of the card, he was covered in a white Life Light. His body was transforming. Under the bright Life Light, the color of the Life Wheels in his body was changing. It was now an extravagant silver color. From the six circles of columns, three more were added to his Life Wheel, making it nine circles now. The columns on every circle were the same as before, 360 columns. The newly added columns were empty and had no Life Power. Within the Life Wheels, the initial six circles were filled with Life Power. The color was changing too, it was now a silver color from its original turquoise color. The four Life Wheels that were duplicated using the Life Power Storage Cards were transforming too. Once the transformation completed, a grayish black bead that was the size of a thumb dropped from the One-Eyed Swordfiends body and drilled itself into the new silver Life Wheel in Lin Huangs body. "New Life Seed has been identified, would you like to turn it into a card?" Xiao Hei asked. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. Soon, Xiao Hei spoke again. "Life Seed has been made into a card." Lin Huang then took a look at the new Life Seed card. "Life Seed Card" "Life Seed Name: Sensing Circle" "Rarity: Rare" "Type: Psychic" "Talent effect: It could allow the user to stand in the circle which became the sensing area. Within the area, the user could sense what is happening crystal clear within the radius of 300 meters." "Card Remarks: Nothing special" Now that his Life Wheels had transformed and the new Life Seed was in hand, the entire Life Light Baptism was completed. Lin Huang looked at the Rare Monster Card that he had just obtained. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Rare" "Monster Name: One-Eyed Swordfiend" "Type of Monster: Undead Monster" "Combat Level: Silver-level rank-3" "Skill 1: Killer Sword (Advance)" "Skill 2: Dark Sword" "Skill 3: Sensing Circle" "Summoning Limit: Activated" "Card Remarks: Nothing special" Noticing two skills he had never seen before, Lin Huang read the details of the skills. "Killer Sword (Advance): An exclusive skill of swordfiends. Great killer attack skill." "Dark Sword: Contaminated sword. Though it would still be able to retain its original powers and speed, the contamination would enhance the sword to improve its power." "These three skills are basically useless to me. I''m not sure what''ll become of them when they''re upgraded to epic-level." Lin Huang was left with two Advance Cards which was perfect to upgrade the One-Eyed Swordfiend. Just when he planned to use the advance cards, he sensed something going on within the 300 meters sensing circle. A small-sized girl was walking towards his direction. Lin Huang frowned as he knew who it was. He kept the card in his hands immediately while recalling Tyrant. He managed to keep the One-Eyed Swordfiends body into his storage space. Soon, the girl stopped and hid behind a tree when she was 100 meters away from him. "You really have nothing better to do, Xia Yu." Lin Huang looked at the location that she was hiding. "How did you find out when Im so far away!" Xia Yu showed herself, she could sense the change to Lin Huangs aura. "You have leveled-up to silver-level? How did you complete the Life Seed monster kill within such a short period of time?" Lin Huang did not want to bother himself with her. Since his purpose here was complete, there was no need for him to stay. He turned around and attempted to leave. "Hey! Although I didnt see the battle, I heard the roar of the beast from afar. If Im not mistaken, it was your summoning monster." Xia Yu tried asking again. "Thats none of your business." Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. Just as he was about to ride it, Xia Yu spoke again. "Many organizations are recruiting Imperial Censor, why would you choose to join the Hunter Association?" Hearing what she asked, Lin Huang turned around, "So, which organization do you represent?" "What are you talking about? I dont understand." Xia Yu pretended to not know what Lin Huang was asking. "I have no idea about your intention of participating in the assessment. However, I know very well that its not to become a hunter. If you''d like to recruit me, arent you supposed to let me know the name of your organization at least?" Lin Huang did not want to play games with her anymore. "I really don''t know what are you talking about. What organization name? My intention of joining the assessment is to become a hunter! What else could it be?" Xia Yu looked innocent. "Alright then. No matter what you''re here for, stop trying to pull me in. Im not interested in joining any other organization. I dont care even if youre one of the people from the underworld or anywhere else for that matter. If you bug me again, I will not go easy on you! This is the last warning, stop following me." Lin Huang gave her a deadly stare. Sensing that Lin Huang had the intention to kill her, Xia Yu replied, "I wont follow you then, is it necessary to be rude?" Lin Huang rode on the Alexandrian Eagle and left. Seeing Lin Huang leaving far away, Xia Yus innocent face turned cold. She smirked, "Interesting guy, seems like I cant play with him at the moment. I really need to get my thing going within these couple of days" 174 Fourth Assessmen When Lin Huang returned from the third assessment after resting for two days, his combat level had already upgraded to silver-level rank-3. In those two days, he brought Tyrant along to kill silver-level monsters. His Life Power constantly increased, having nine of Life Power columns in all four duplicate Life Wheels overflow. However, he had only accumulated 200 columns in the ninth column of his actual Life Wheel. Lin Huang intentionally left it at this amount of Life Power, so that he would not accidentally get a Life Light Baptism from killing gold-level monsters. The upgrade in Lin Huang''s combat level resulted in the ability to summon four monsters. The Epic level cards - Bai, Tyrant, Charcoal and the clown had been automatically upgraded to gold-level rank-3 as well. Although the Demonic Dandelion Vine was an Epic level card, its combat level still remained at silver-level rank-3. The reason why it was not upgraded was probably because it had undergone mutation in a different way in the past. Lin Huang would attempt to train the Demonic Dandelion Vine after he had completed the assessment. Parasites that had gone through two mutations were rare and useful. For the One-Eyed Swordfiend, Lin Huang did not upgrade him after he was attacked by Xia Yu. Lin Huang was focused on killing monsters to increase the Life Power in his body and had completely forgotten about it. Lin Huang saw hundreds of colorful tents as soon as he returned to the third assessment location. The tents were probably set up by the candidates. A few of the staff were startled when they saw Lin Huang. Since they were also Silver Hunters, they could sense that Lin Huang had upgraded to silver-level. "You''ve leveled up?" A man wearing a uniform asked. He was the staff that explained the details to Lin Huang two days ago. Lin Huang smiled and nodded his head, "The Life Seed that I''m looking for is at the Little Devil Island. That''s why I asked you about it that day." "Congratulations! At silver-level, it''s quite easy to pass the assessment." The man in uniform congratulated him. "Thank you." Lin Huang smiled. He then asked, "The third assessment had not ended yet?" "There are still few of them in the monster cages. I guess that the result will be released after half an hour." "How many of them had passed the third assessment?" Lin Huang asked again. "There are currently 481 of them." The staff told him as it was not a secret. "There are more than 5000 candidates who joined the third assessment. Only about 480 of them passed. The passing rate is low as there were less than one-tenth of them that passed the assessment." Lin Huang sighed, shaking his head. However, the third assessment was indeed tougher. The first two rounds did not actually evaluate the candidate''s'' abilities. In the third assessment, candidates had to possess actual abilities in order to pass the assessment. Although it was not a must, it would still be difficult for the bronze-level hunters to pass the assessment as the monsters in the monster cage were all silver-level rank-3. oon after Lin Huang had returned, people began coming out from the monster cage. Half an hour passed and eight participants came out from the corridors. One of the staffs immediately received instruction and announced the results of the assessment. "5541 candidates participated in the third assessment and 489 of them passed. I''ll now announce the official end of the third assessment!" "The head examiner of the fourth assessment is on her way, you can keep your tents first. Please clean up the rubbish so it won''t cause pollution" After listening to the reminder from the staff, they immediately kept their tent and cleaned the rubbish on the floor. Lin Huang was surprised to see that the people in this world had environmental awareness?! At about nine o''clock in the morning, the head examiner finally arrived at the examination site, riding on a Four-Winged Dragon Condor. Looking at the unusually good-looking Four-Winged Dragon Condor, many of the candidates were envious of him. The Four-Winged Dragon Condor was not considered to be a sky dragon. It was only considered to be a gold-level mutated monster with a low density of dragonkin blood. If the monster was upgraded to transcendent and went through two rounds of mutation, it was possible that it could evolve and become a sky dragon. However, to many of the participants that were not even an Imperial Censor, they felt envious of the head examiner that had this monster to ride on. Lin Huang smiled. If his Alexandrian Eagle was upgraded to gold-level, it would be as good-looking as the Four-Winged Dragon Condor. As soon as the Four-Winged Dragon Condor landed safely on the ground, the head examiner then got off the dragon condor and quickly recalled it. She did not use a monster taming token. Obviously, she was also an Imperial Censor. The head examiner was a woman who looked tough and was dressed in a blue suit. Her hair was cut just below ear level. Although she tried her best to look mature, one could still see that she was only 20 or even less. However, she was tall and clocked in at a height of about 1.8 meters when she was on her heels. "My name is Mu Lan. I am the head examiner of the fourth assessment" Everyone was shocked when they heard her name. "Is she the girl who ranked fourth on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard?!" "I think it''s her. I heard that Mu Lan has short hair and likes to dress in a simple uniform. She doesn''t like to wear dresses." "Aside from majoring in the sword, I''ve also heard that Mu Lan is an Imperial Censor." ... When she heard everyone talking about her, Mu Lan maintained a neutral facial expression and said, "I know that many of you might have heard of my name. However, the assessment is about to start. Please don''t waste your time on this. I''m the head examiner of this examination site. If anyone of you interrupts me, you''ll be disqualified." As soon as she finished her sentence, everyone became silent. "I''ll now talk about the rules for the next round of the assessment. We are now on Little Devil Island. There are demonic, undead and spiritual monsters around the level-4 wild zone. There are many gold-level monsters at the center of the island. Please try to avoid them." "The rules are simple. You''re given 15 days to kill five different silver-level monsters and bring their carcasses back. If you do that, you would have passed the assessment." Many of them were stunned as they listened to the rules of the assessment. It was difficult enough when they had to pass the monster cage during the previous assessment. They had to hunt down the monsters in this round?! "Hunting down monsters was possible as long as one was at silver-level rank-1 to silver-level rank-3. There''s no restriction on how you kill the monsters. You can use whatever you have in your storage space. You can even buy whatever you need from our staff. However, we don''t provide powerful weapons" At that moment, one of the candidates raised his hand. Mu Lan then looked at him, nodding her head, "Please say." "What''s the price?" The candidate asked. "It''s the same as the market price. We don''t earn extra credit points." Mu Lan explained. After answering his question, another candidate raised his hand. "Can we form a team to kill the monsters?" "Yes, you can." Mu Lan nodded her head. Lin Huang then raised his hand too. Similarly, Mu Lan looked at him and nodded her head, "Please ask." "Can we steal the carcasses from the others?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. Many of the candidates shifted their gazes towards him as he asked. By asking this question, Lin Huang''s intention was not to snatch their carcasses away but to sell them at a higher price. "Yes, you can. However, you''re not allowed to kill people. A murderer will be blacklisted forever." Mu Lan frowned and answered. After answering these few questions, they did not ask any other question. Mu Lan then said, "This assessment allows you to kill monsters based on your own creativity. I gave all of you 15 days to complete this assessment by hunting down five different monsters. That being said, you''ll have three days prepare yourselves before killing each of the required monsters. It can actually be killed instantly. However, you''ll be given three days to collect more information about the monster like its living habits and weaknesses before you decide on a strategy to kill it. Please don''t waste your time on nonsense and plan your strategy properly. It''s not difficult to pass the assessment." When she uttered that last sentence, she glanced at Lin Huang. After explaining the rules of the assessment, Mu Lan lowered her head and looked at the time, "It is now 9.40 a.m. 15 days later, candidates that come back to me with the carcass of five different silver-level monsters before 10 a.m. will pass the assessment. Also, the carcasses have to be monsters on Little Devil Island. Using other monsters to meet the monster count will cause you to fail the assessment." She gazed upon the crowd and since nobody raised any more questions, Mu Lan announced, "The fourth assessment starts now!" 175 Not A Peaceful Nigh Right after the head examiner had made her announcement, many of them began looking for teammates on the spot. Killing monsters in a team would, of course, be much easier than hunting them alone. Some of them asked Lin Huang to team up. However, Lin Huang just smiled and refused. He went into the forest alone. After walking for a short while, he then jumped into a tree. The tree was located east of the examination site and was also the spot where most of the monsters gathered so many people would pass by this place. Lin Huang sat leisurely on one of the tree branches, patiently waiting for the rest of them to team up. It would be too obvious if he sold monster carcasses in front of the head examiner. If selling monster carcasses was prohibited, he would not be able to earn some extra credit points. Lin Huang then went to a place that was out of the range of her vision. Soon, the first team came. One of the members of the team had bought some weed from Lin Huang before. He could recognize Lin Huang. Seeing him sitting leisurely on the tree, he invited Lin Huang to join them. "Lin Huang, it seems like you''re not worried about the assessment at all. You can actually join us." "I have killed enough monsters in the past two days. I have extra, you can look for me if you want to buy any." Lin Huang smiled proudly, "You can choose any monster that you want that''s from silver-level rank-1 to silver-level rank-3." "Is that true? All of them are monsters from Little Devil Island?" They were interested in buying some. "Yes, of course. After the third assessment, I went hunting for monsters as I have nothing to do. I didn''t know that the task to be completed in this round of the assessment would be this." As soon as Lin Huang finished his sentence, he jumped down from the tree, taking out three monster carcasses, "Here they are. I have carcasses of monsters ranked silver-level rank-1 to silver-level rank-3." "They were indeed monsters from Little Devil Island!" They had done some research on the monster that would appear on this island. They could recognize that the carcasses were the monsters living on this island. "How much does it cost?! How much does it cost!?" They immediately surrounded him. "It''s not that expensive. Three Life Crystals for the silver-level rank-1 carcasses, six Life Crystals for those on silver-level rank-2, and nine Life Crystals for the silver-level rank-3 carcasses." Lin Huang then told them the price. "The price is 10 times higher than what''s on the market. It''s almost the same as the price of a gold-level carcass" They immediately expressed their dissatisfaction with the prices. "When something is scarce, it is valuable. Can you find another seller? Think about it, if you were to kill them on your own, it''s a waste of time and strength and they might even hurt you. If you''re unlucky, you might even encounter mutated monsters and get killed by them. It might be slightly more expensive to buy the carcasses from me. However, it saves you time and strength and it''s convenient. If you were to buy the silver-level rank-1 carcasses, it''ll only cost 15 Life Crystals to buy five of them. With just 15 Life Crystals, you''re guaranteed to pass the fourth assessment. Why not go ahead with it?" As Lin Huang saw that they were still hesitating, he added, "Well, there are five of you here. If all of you are going to buy the silver-level rank-1 carcasses, it''ll cost 75 Life Crystals in total. Since you''re my first customers, I''ll give them to you at 80% of the price. You''ll only need to pay 60 Life Crystals which means you''ll each have to fork out 12 Life Crystals. That''s the best price that I can offer. Hurry up if you want to buy them. Perhaps after today, you won''t get it at this price anymore." Few of them hesitated for a moment and the one who had bought the crystalized weed from Lin Huang in the past said, "I''ll buy them from you! It''s the fourth assessment. If we can pass this, there''s only one more round to go. We should conserve our physical strength so that we can be more relaxed during the next round. Also, if we can become a Regular Hunter, it''ll be easy to earn back the credit points." After making his payment, Lin Huang took out various types of silver-level rank-1 carcasses while the rest of them were still hesitating. There were 17 different types. "Here are 17 types of silver-level rank-1 carcasses. Choose any five that you like. Not many of these are left." When the rest of them saw the carcasses and heard that not many of them left, they finally said, "I''ll buy some!" The first deal was done. Five of them left with their carcasses. Of course, they did not complete the mission immediately or the head examiner might suspect something. People behind them saw the five of them buying carcasses from Lin Huang so they went after him. Lin Huang''s business was growing quickly. Many of them left when they heard that the price was 10 times higher than the market price, but many of them still chose to accept the offer. Lin Huang sold thousands of silver-level rank-1 carcasses in just one day, earning more than 3000 Life Crystal. The market was eventually tapped out by Lin Huang after selling so many of the monster carcasses. There were less than 500 candidates and more than 200 of them had bought the carcasses. The rest of them had either refused to buy any or had gone to some other places. Lin Huang was getting too lazy to try and profit from them. It''s late. Lin Huang then set-up his tent. "I''ve earned quite a satisfying amount today. I should claim the cross-ranking kill reward tomorrow. Then, it''ll be time to complete the mission." After having his dinner, he went back to his tent and read some news before he slept. However, it was not a peaceful night. Lin Ziluo was one of the candidates. It was not easy for him to pass the first three rounds. Since they had all bought five carcasses from Lin Huang during the fourth round, the team they formed earlier had disbanded. Exploring the forest alone, he found an area where monsters were less likely to appear and set-up his tent. "I''ll rest here for the next few days in my tent. After passing the carcasses to the head examiner, I''ll pass the assessment" Lin Ziluo ate some snacks before going into the tent. After lying in the tent for a short while, Lin Ziluo could hear a tiny squeak coming from outside the tent. "Who are you?!" He got up, turning the weapon ring on his hand into a sword. A long sword suddenly pierced through the tent with the tip aimed at his neck. "Come out!" The voice of a young man was heard from outside. Lin Ziluo slowly walked out of the tent. He then realized that he was one of the candidates. "Eh, you''re also a candidate. Why are you trying to kill me? The head examiner said we shouldn''t waste time on nonsense. You should focus on hunting monsters." Lin Ziluo raised both of his hands. However, he had a gut feeling that the candidate wouldn''t have the guts to kill him. "Who''s a candidate? I was never interested in joining the Hunter Association." The young man waved his left hand, letting the blade glide across Lin Ziluo''s neck causing him to instantly faint. The young man then took out a fist-sized cage and opened the top of the cage. He then put Lin Ziluo who had fainted into the cage. There were already a few people in the cage and they had all fainted. Shrinking it down and wearing it cage around his waist, the young man left quickly. When Lin Ziluo regained his senses, the sky had brightened. He was shocked as he quickly checked his surroundings. He was in a big cage. There were about 30 of them. Some of them had woken up while some of them were still in a coma. They looked familiar as most of them seemed to be the candidates of the assessment. "Anyone knows whats happening? Where''s this place? Is this the fifth assessment?" Lin Ziluo asked one of the young men beside him. "I just woke up too. I don''t know what''s happening." The young man shook his head. "I think we were caught by the heretics" One of the women explained, "There was a symbol of the heretics tattooed on the neck of the person that caught me last night." "Tattoo... I saw it too" Lin Ziluo then recalled it as he heard what the woman said. "There were three crosses. One of them was bigger while the other two were smaller. They were tattooed on the left side of his neck! It''s definitely the symbol of the heretics" "We''re doomed. The Heretic Organization is one of the strongest forces in the underworld. If we''re caught alive, we might be killed and turned into human steamed buns or dumplings" Lin Ziluo began to think of nonsense once as he knew that he was caught by the heretics. "Eh, stop saying that. I have a strong urge to pee. I can''t stand it anymore" Another young man beside him immediately said. "We have to inform the others to rescue us." Lin Ziluo then thought rationally and immediately opened the communication web page using his Emperors Heart Ring. "It''s useless. This is probably a prison-like relic. The Emperor''s Heart Ring has no signal here at all. We''re not capable of breaking through this cage as well." The woman said again. "We can only hope that they''d notice us missing and come rescue us. The one who catches us is capable of activating this relic. That being said, he''s also at least gold-level. Only the head examiner can defeat him" "The head examiner gave us 15 days to complete the assessment. Since they''ve already caught us, I believe that they''d have their ways to escape this island in a short period of time. We''d have probably left Little Devil Island before the head examiner even notices this. Then, no matter how powerful Mu Lan is, there''s no way we can be rescued." Lin Ziluo analyzed the situation and said. After listening to what Lin Ziluo said, everyone kept quiet, looking forward for the worst 176 Encountering The Heretics It was a sunny morning on Little Devil Island. Although the name of the island was unpleasant, there were many monsters wandering around and it was lush with plants. The air in the morning was filled with the fresh fragrance of flowers. Lin Huang woke up at seven, stretched his body as he walked out of the tent and as he took a deep breath, he exclaimed, "The air is so fresh!" After cleaning himself and snacks as his breakfast, Lin Huang kept his tent and summoned the Viridian Wolf. Riding on the Viridian Wolf, Lin Huang headed to the center of the island. He did not summon the Alexandrian Eagle as the island was not that big anyway. With the Viridian Wolfs speed, he could arrive at his destination in half an hour. Since he had just woke up, he wanted to warm himself up by killing some monsters along the way. After riding more than 20 kilometers in the jungle, all the monsters that he encountered along the way were easily killed using his sword. The Viridian Wolf did not even need to decrease its speed at all. Suddenly, he patted the Viridian Wolfs back and it stopped running immediately. The silver ring on Lin Huangs right middle finger was transformed into a modified SilverPhoenix16 and he held the gun in his right hand; it was the gun that he traded from the Purple Crows using his accumulated points in the past. He recalled the Viridian Wolf, turned around and shouted at the tree behind him, "Who is that?!" With the sensing circle, nothing within the radius of 300 meters could escape Lin Huang. He could sense that there was someone following him since a while ago. Although the sensing circle did not allow him to see the persons face, he could sense the persons height and body size. Lin Huang was sure that it was not Xia Yu. "You are the only one who could tell that Im following you." A muscular young man revealed himself. Lin Huang could tell that he was one of the participants who passed the third round of assessment. However, the man did not conceal his aura. Lin Huang could sense that the man was much stronger than he was. After checking him out, Lin Huang noticed that there were three cross tattoos on the left side of his neck. "Are you one of the heretics?" "Thats right." The strong young man nodded. "I know your name, Lin Huang. You are the most outstanding one in the assessment. You managed to kill a mutated silver-level rank-3 monster when you were only a bronze-level rank-3. You probably have a powerful summoning monster. Am I right?" "Since you already know that I do, arent you afraid that I''ll summon my monster and kill you? Im already silver-level now." Lin Huang smiled. "Of course I am not afraid. Although you have concealed your aura, you are only a silver-level rank-1. You must have only leveled-up during the past two or three days. No matter how much Life Crystals you have, you won''t be able to go to silver-level rank-2 in such a short period of time. Which probably means that the strongest summoning monster that you have would only be a gold-level rank-3. I am already gold-level rank-3." Although the muscular man seemed confident, he did not attack Lin Huang. He seemed to be afraid of Lin Huangs summoning monster. "So? Are you here to kill me or recruit me?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course I''m here for the latter. We heretics are always the peacemakers." The muscular man laughed. "If I reject your recruitment offer, you would definitely kill me. Isnt that what the underworld organizations always do? Do you think thats a peaceful solution?" Lin Huang said in a sarcastic tone. "No, we dont do that. We like to capture those who reject us and work on their minds until they become one of us." The man shook his head and laughed. "So you mean brainwashing? Youre really different from the rest" Lin Huang was speechless. "Why me?" "It''s not only you. All the kids who passed the third assessment in this area are our targets. You''re the 36th person. From the progress, I believe me and my partner can capture all the targets before noon so that the Hunter Association would get nothing!" The man laughed. "So you let the Hunter Association do the grunt work while you reap the harvest?" Lin Huang finally understood what the man was thinking, "However, there are less than 500 people who passed the third assessment. Even if you captured all of us, that would do little to your organization. Unless" The man''s tone suddenly became serious, "Boy, you''re asking too many questions." Suddenly, he launched his attack by attempting to catch Lin Huang with his hands that had claws on them. "Tyrant!" Tyrant then appeared before Lin Huang and punched the man. "Go away!" The man shouted, his held his fist tight and punched hard in Tyrants fist. Both of their fists collided and an intense wave was generated from their fists colliding, causing dust to fly everywhere. Even Lin Huang who was standing behind Tyrant covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. Then, a bang was heard and the man flew 10 trees away and fell to the ground while Tyrant remained standing. Lin Huang was stunned at how powerful Tyrants punch was. He knew very well that if he was punched like that, he would have died after crashing into the trees. However, since the man was higher leveled than Lin Huang, perhaps he would not die so easily. "Tyrant, see if hes dead. If hes isn''t, dont kill him, I need to talk to him." Lin Huang said to Tyrant. Tyrant nodded and walked towards the man. A few moments later, Tyrant came back with the man and placed the man on the ground. He was dying, the golden armor on him was destroyed by Tyrants punch. If it was not for the layer of protection, he would have died instantly. However, he might not be able to live long anyway. "You''re not silver-level rank-1" The man looked at Lin Huang in hatred. "I never said that I was. It was you who assumed it." Lin Huang shook his head. "An Imperial Censor who has a double mutated summoning monster and also happens to be a genius You are worth dying to" The man said and vomited blood. It was obvious that his organs were damaged from Tyrants punch earlier. He would not live any longer. "I have a question for you." Lin Huang squat down. "I won''t tell you anything, dont waste your time." The man looked away instead of looking at Lin Huang." "You have no say in that." Lin Huang said as he summoned the Ghastly Clown. "Isnt this clown the one who appeared in Daxi City earlier?" The man knew about the appearance of the Ghastly Clown clown in Daxi City, he was shocked to see it with Lin Huang, "Who are you?!" "Clown, control him." Lin Huang frowned, he did not expect the man to recognize the clown. A mask was formed in the clowns hand. After putting the mask on, the clowns face was transformed into the mans face. "Are there more assessment locations that have been invaded? How many of them have been invaded?" Lin Huang asked the questions in his mind. "Among the 180 locations in Division7, we have invaded 63 of them." "What is your intention? Is it really to take away all the talents?" Lin Huang asked again. "Yes, to cultivate them into members of our organization." "How did you guys get into the assessment?" Lin Huang could guess the answer to this question but he was not sure. "We have spies in the Hunter Association who helped us with our IDs in the assessment location. Our aura was sealed by an immortal-level human and there are also experts who helped us cover our organization tattoo and other marks that might reveal our identity." "How many of you are here in this location, what are their abilities?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. "There are a total of 11 of us, one holy fire-level transcendent and 10 gold-level rank-3 hunters. Lin Huang was shocked at the answer, he did not expect a holy fire-level transcendent to participate in this. The head examiners of the assessment were only gold-level, even Mu Lan who ranked No.4 on the Gold Hunter leaderboard might not be able to fight a holy fire-level transcendent. "Does the same apply to the other locations?" "Yes, it''s always led by one holy fire-level manager with a team of 10 to 12 gold-level rank-3 hunters. After hearing what he had to say, Lin Huang was sure that the Hunter Association was at a loss. "Where do you guys keep the participants that you manage to capture?" Lin Huang was wondering about that. "In the dark pseudo-prison. The dark pseudo-prison is a one-time relic that imitates the five-star relic, the dark prison. It can capture creatures who had lost their consciousness but once the creatures were released, it would disappear. All of us have one of them with us when we go on this mission." From what the man explained, Lin Huang could tell that the man would make someone unconscious and place them into the dark pseudo-prison. He then noticed that there was a black cage on the mans waist, he thought it was an odd accessory. Picking up the cage, Lin Huang asked, "Is this the dark pseudo-prison that you''re talking about? How do I release the people in there?" "Yes, theres a spiral Life Pattern on the cage. All youll need to do is to insert your Life Power and follow the pattern three times." "When you''ve completed your mission, how do you leave the assessment location?" Lin Huang could guess the answer as well but he wanted to know more. "The leader would use a one-time dimensional portal and meet us at." The man vomited blood again and started to cough. Lin Huang looked at the Ghastly Clown next to him, the clown shook its head. Lin Huang knew that there was no way that he could ask further. After coughing vigorously, the man spat out a mouthful of blood and died. The mask on the Ghastly Clown''s face disappeared. "Sigh, I almost got their meeting point and time" Lin Huang shook his head and sighed. 177 Reporting To The Managemen Lin Huang did not expect that he would encounter such a thing when he participated in the assessment. The heretics were one of the most powerful organizations in the underworld. For this mission, they have sent out more than 60 transcendents and more than 600 gold-level rank-3 hunters. It was crazy. Since the establishment of the Hunter Association hundreds of years ago, they had never encountered anything like this. What the heretics were doing was completely out of anybody''s expectation. "Seems like I need to inform the head examiner so she can contact the management and send transcendents here as soon as possible!" Lin Huang kept the corpse of the muscular young man as he summoned the Alexandrian Eagle to head to the assessment location. A couple of minutes later, Lin Huang arrived at the assessment location. The head examiner Mu Lan frowned as she saw him. Lin Huang leaped from the Alexandrian Eagle and walked towards Mu Lan after recalling his monster. "Only participants who had completed the assessment can be here. You''re breaking the rules." One staff said to Lin Huang. Lin Huang took out the muscular young mans corpse out and looked at the head examiner Mu Lan, "My name is Lin Huang and I''m one of the participants in the assessment. This man is a spy for the heretics. There is a holy fire-level heretic transcendent hunter and 10 gold-level rank-3 hunters that have infiltrated the assessment. We''re not the only ones. There are 63 assessment locations in Division7 are invaded." Everyone was shocked when they heard what Lin Huang said. "How did you know about this?" Mu Lan asked in doubt. "I managed to ask this man before he died." Lin Huang said and took out the dark pseudo-prison. "This is their purpose, they''re here to bring the participants back to brainwash them. The participants are kept in this relic." Mu Lan took a step and next, she appeared next to Lin Huang, "Dark pseudo-prison?! This belongs to the heretics." She recognized the relic at first glance. "You can have it. I dont have enough Life Power to release the people." Lin Huang then passed the fist-sized black cage to Mu Lan. "Follow the pattern and use your Life Power to trace the inscription three times." Mu Lan took the dark pseudo-prison and looked at Lin Huang, "How do I know that what you''ve said is the truth? From what I know, the heretics would never reveal anything about their mission." "I have my ways and Im sure that the information that I got is the truth." Lin Huang explained to her vaguely. Mu Lan did not ask further as everybody had their own secret so it was normal for Lin Huang to keep his. Following Lin Huangs instruction, Mu Lan managed to open the dark pseudo-prison and released all the captured participants. The one-time relic then disappeared. Seeing Mu Lan appear before them, a bunch of participants approached her and talked at the same time. "Please send one person to explain what had happened. As for the rest of you, do not interrupt!" Mu Lan frowned. The participants were silent. Lin Ziluo was pushed out from the crowd and he gave the complete account of what had happened to them which matched what Lin Huang said. "Alright, noted. The assessment is going to be put on hold for now, please report to the staff. After you''re done, stay with the staff and dont walk around." Mu Lan said and briefed the staff. "Please report to the management as soon as you can. They have transcendent leaders, we cant fight them. Also, the mission will end by noon and they will leave using a dimensional relic. If we want to save all the participants, we have to move fast!" Lin Huang said immediately after the information was confirmed. Mu Lan looked at him with a complex expression before she contacted someone. After reporting everything that Lin Huang said, she hung up the phone. She looked worried, "The transcendent will take half an hour to arrive here while the other assessment locations would start their own investigations. That being said, there''s bad news from the headquarters They told me that members of the heretics would usually inform their leaders about their progress every half an hour. Now that you had killed the man when the leader did not get any response from him, he would know that something had happened to the man." Lin Huang frowned, if the leader knew that their mission was compromised, he would possibly leave with the rest earlier. It would be difficult for them to get the participants back if that happened. After some silence, Lin Huang spoke again, "If thats the case, we have to move even faster! If we can''t fight the transcendent leader, we can kill the rest first and rescue all the participants." "Could you really fight those gold-level rank-3 hunters?" Mu Lan asked. If Lin Huang had shown his true ability, Mu Lan would not have to ask that. "Shouldnt be a problem to fight those hunters who are below transcendent." Lin Huang nodded. "Alright then, lets split up." Mu Lan nodded and turned around to order one of the staff, "Please get all the coordinates of the participants on the island." "Do you think the heretics should have changed their Emperors Heart Rings before the assessment? Can we still locate them?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s doable. Within the assessment period, the head examiner had the ability to triangulate their coordinates. As long as they did not throw their Emperors Heart Rings away, we can track their locations even if their rings were placed in their storage space." Mu Lan explained. The staff got all the participant coordinates quickly. On the maps, there were only more than 100 yellow dots left. These were the coordinates of the participants that they managed to locate. Mu Lan frowned and scanned her identity code to access the coordinates. Then, the map was refreshed. There were a couple of red dots that appeared on the map. The red dots were the locations of the Emperors Heart Rings that were kept in the storage space. Lin Huang frowned as he had yet to get rid of his old Emperors Heart Ring, it seemed like keeping it with him would be unsafe. It would mean trouble if the Purple Crow managed to locate him using the same method. "Lin Huang, please add his contact details to your ring. He''ll send you a map." Mu Lan said and briefed a couple of the staff members, "Please keep your map activated at all times. If you close it after I leave, you''ll need my authorization again and Lin Huang would not be able to see the red dots on the map anymore." The staff nodded. Lin Huang added his contact number to their rings and got the map from them. "I will start from the east. You take the west." Mu Lan said to Lin Huang and left with her Four-Winged Dragon Condor. Lin Huang summoned Alexandrian Eagle and headed to the west. 178 Yousve Got Beautiful Eyes Lin Huang had finally located the first coordinate of the red dots on the map in the forest west of the assessment location. Although the red dot was moving quickly, it was impossible for it to move faster than the Alexandrian Eagle. The Alexandrian Eagle quickly flew towards the man. Lin Huang then recalled his eagle and blocked the man''s way. "Haha, a little brat that comes to me all by himself" The man looked at Lin Huang and teased. Lin Huang sized up the man. He was not tall and was rather skinny with pale skin and he looked around 20 years old. "Are you one of the heretics?" The young man squinted his eyes as he heard this. "Who are you?" "I think so." Despite avoiding the question, Lin Huang could still confirm his identity. He extended his hand and summoned Tyrant before commanding, "Kill him!" The young man immediately became alert when he saw Tyrant. Two of the gold weapon rings were instantly transformed into two short blades. Right after Tyrant had received his orders, he thrust forward and struck a blow at the young man. The next moment, Tyrant''s quickly sped up his blow and a loud sound was heard from the sky. The young man failed to avoid the attack. He lifted his hand and placed both of the short blades in front of his chest. "Bang!" There was a loud explosion and the young man was blown away. Both of the short blades he was holding onto flew away. The young man died after crashing into several huge trees. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a Rare Skill Card - Hundred Flowing Blades''." Once the notification window popped up, Lin Huang could confirm that the man had died without even going near him. He did not check the information of the new Skill Card that he had just obtained. Lin Huang instructed Tyrant to collect the corpse and he took both gold-level short blades that had flown away just now. The blades were still functioning well. After keeping the corpse and the short blades in storage, Lin Huang took out his Emperor''s Heart Ring and after staring at the ring for a moment, Lin Huang then threw it at Tyrant''s feet and commanded, "Crush it." Tyrant then stepped on the ring and it was instantly broken into pieces. Lin Huang recalled Tyrant and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle once again and headed towards the second red dot closest to their location on the map. Division7, Hunter Association Headquarters. Mu Lan''s information had spread quickly to Xu Tianyu who was the executive officer of the assessment. He then gathered the other executive officers. In the meeting room, 11 holograms of the executives appeared. "Old Xu, why are you calling for an urgent meeting? Are you going to talk about the locations for the intensive training again?" One of the executives teased. "No, it has nothing to do with the locations for the intensive training. One of the head examiners informed me that her examination site was being attacked by the heretics. She said that through a trial, they''ve discovered that the heretics have sneaked into 63 examination sites in Division7. They''re looking for candidates that have passed our assessment. They will then brainwash them and train them as new members of the Heretic Organization. Among the 63 examination sites, each of them now has a holy fire-level heretic as the leader of the team and 10 Gold-level hunters." Xu Tianyu then reported the information he had to the others. "I guess it is just a rumor. The heretics have been keeping a low profile all these years. Why would they suddenly do this? Moreover, there are more than 180 examination sites in Division7. If they sneaked into 63 of them, that would mean that we''ve heretics sneaking into a third of our assessment sites. Do you really think this could happen?!" The executive that teased Xu Tianyu earlier immediately shook his head and refuted in disapproval. "Tianyu, are you sure she mentioned the heretics?" The old man frowned and asked. "Yes." Xu Tianyu nodded his head, "Li Lao, why do you ask?" "A few days ago, Mr. Fu called me. We discussed the assessment. He then reminded me to be aware of the heretics or any other forces. I thought it was just a gentle reminder and did not bother so much." The old man then told him what happened a few days ago. "Li Lao, is it Mr. Fu from the Union Government?" Xu Tianyu immediately asked while the rest of them shifted their gazes towards Li Lao. "Other than him, are there any other Mr. Fu''s in Division7?" Li Lao glanced at Xu Tianyu. "If Mr. Fu was the one who reminded you, could it be true? Who told you about this?" A middle-aged woman immediately asked. "A female head examiner told me about this. I''m not sure who she was. I''ll ask them regarding this matter." "Let''s listen to the recording of the call when she informed you about this." Li Lao suggested. Xu Tianyu nodded his head and played the recording. After listening to the recording, a woman said, "If I''m not mistaken, that should be Mu Lan''s voice. I''ve met her twice. She''s quite good and wouldn''t report to you without evidence." "Is Mu Lan the girl who''s ranked fourth on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard?" Many of the executive officers had heard her name before. "Yes, it must be her. Old Xu, please confirm again." The woman told Xu Tianyu. After a moment, Xu Tianyu nodded his head, "It''s confirmed that the information was provided by Mu Lan." "It seems that there''s indeed something wrong with the assessment." Li Lao and the other executive officers had a serious expression on their faces. "We can''t set up an interdimensional blockade now. Otherwise, the heretics would notice it. They''ll escape the interdimensional blockade and leave through the dimensional portal before the holy fire rescuers arrive." "We can''t make an official announcement to inform the candidates either as there are heretics among them. We can only inform the head examiners so that they can figure out ways to delay them. It would be best to rescue them without notifying the holy fire heretics." "We can''t stop the assessment. We have to carry on with it. Otherwise, the heretics might notice our actions" "Now, we''re going to ask our holy fire-level transcendent hunters to go to the nearest assessment site to them. Upon their arrival, only then will we ask them to stop the assessment and set up an interdimensional blockade!" 12 of the executive officers quickly came up with a solution and informed the other assessment sites about it In less than half an hour, Lin Huang killed three heretics continuously. Just as Lin Huang was getting closer to the fourth red dot, Lin Huang could sense that the opponent was a girl. He activated Boundless Vision and looked through the gaps between the branches and leaves. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw her from the side. "She''s with the heretics!" Lin Huang saw Xia Yu. While Lin Huang was startled from his discovery, she seemed to have sensed Lin Huang looking at her and she looked in his direction. She grinned and suddenly disappeared. "Are you looking for me?" A voice was heard behind Lin Huang. Lin Huang was taken aback as Xia Yu appeared without him noticing. She was less than 10 meters away from him. However, Lin Huang''s sensing circle did not respond to her. This indicated that Xia Yu''s had the combat ability of a holy fire transcendent. She must be the transcendent leader of the heretics'' operation. "Oh, I just passed by and I sensed that there was a person moving over there. I didn''t know that it was you." Lin Huang''s heart sank but he did not show it on his face. "I''m going to continue with my monster hunt. You can continue playing." "Lin Huang, do you really like the Hunter Association so much? Privileges are only given to the geniuses involved in intensive training while other organizations treat everyone equally. Training resources should only be able to be obtained by hunting down monsters or completing a task with their own two hands." "Although you are talented, don''t ever think about getting a place in intensive training from the Hunter Association. Each year, there are limited slots for intensive training in Division7. Spots are usually given to the geniuses that are capable of killing enemies that are one level above them." Apparently, Xia Yu did not know that Lin Huang himself had killed a silver-level rank-3 monster during the third assessment. Otherwise, she would not have mentioned this. "I''ve told you that I''m not interested in joining you regardless of what organization you''re from. You don''t need to waste your time on me. I believe there are many other talented people out there. You can look other people." Lin Huang then turned his back to her when he was about to leave. "We have found many of them and most of them had agreed to join us." Xia Yu laughed as he heard what Lin Huang said. "Oh, congratulations." Lin Huang then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. "You have asked me before which organization I''m from right? Don''t you want to know now?" Xia Yu asked with a smile. "It is best to avoid trouble whenever possible. I''m not interested any longer." Lin Huang shook his head and rode off on the Alexandrian Eagle. "What if I insisted on you joining our organization?" Xia Yu tilted her head and asked. "Bye." Lin Huang patted the Alexandrian Eagle. Fluttering its wings, it flew up to the sky in an instant. Lin Huang was relieved after he acted stupidly just now. Just as he thought that he had managed to escape, a hand suddenly patted his shoulder. Lin Huang was frightened. When he turned back, he saw Xia Yu stabilizing herself, standing on the Alexandrian Eagle'' back. "Eh, do you really hate me so much?" Xia Yu crossed her arms in front of her chest. "When did you come on?!" Lin Huang was startled. "I followed after you when you took off." Xia Yu said proudly. "What do you want from me?" Lin Huang was helpless. "As long as you promise to join us, I''ll not bother you anymore." Xia Yu was not giving up. "What do you like about me? Can I change it to something else?" "You''ve got beautiful eyes. If you can give it to me, I''d consider giving up." Xia Yu was simply being unreasonable and Lin Huang was speechless. At that moment, the communication page of Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring suddenly popped up and rang. It was an unknown number. "Eh, your Emperor''s Heart Ring rang. Aren''t you going to answer the call?" Xia Yu asked. "No. It must be those direct sale calls." Lin Huang shook his head because it was likely Mu Lan''s number. Xia Yu was right behind him. If he answered the call, she would have found out. He directly ended the call. Lin Huang was trying to figure out a way to settle this matter. However, after a short while, the communication page popped up again. "It''s the same number. You should just answer the call." Xia Yu suggested. "No." Just as Lin Huang was about to end the call, Xia Yu moved a tad bit faster than him and answered the video call. Mu Lan''s face was instantly projected before them. She then said, "Lin Huang, why are your coordinates on the same location as the red dot? Both of you are heading towards the same direction at a fast speed" 179 Mu Lan vs Xia Yu Once Mu Lan finished speaking, she noticed that there was a girl behind Lin Huang, bending down her body, staring at the projection suspiciously. "Damn! I''m doomed!" Lin Huang''s facial expression changed abruptly and he quickly closed the communication page. He then communicated with the Alexandrian Eagle telepathically. Flapping hard, it turned a few rounds in the air and attempted to get rid of Xia Yu. However, Xia Yu''s legs seemed to have deeply rooted itself in the eagle''s back as she was standing firmly on it even when it struggled. Even if the Alexandrian Eagle was to hang upside down in the air, Xia Yu''s legs would never leave the eagle''s body. Lin Huang was the one who had to bend his body down a hug the eagle tightly. He grabbed its feather tightly as he almost fell. "So all this while, you actually know my identity but you acted ignorantly?" Xia Yu stared at Lin Huang expressionlessly. "No, I just found out." Lin Huang told her the truth since he knew he could not get rid of her. "I went after the red dot on the map which showed where members of the Heretic Organization was located and you were there." "How much do you know about us?" Xia Yu''s face was very serious. "Almost everything." Lin Hung felt that there was nothing he could hide anymore. "Has the woman informed Hunter Association about this?" Xia Yu continued asking. Although Lin Huang had immediately closed the communication page, he knew who she was referring to. "Yes, you''re right. The operation was uncovered. The Hunter Association would send transcendents to get this settled." Lin Huang nodded his head and said, "You should stop now!" "In this case, I''ll bring you back with me." Xia Yu extended her arms, about to catch him after she finished her sentence. However, Lin Huang quickly recalled the Alexandrian Eagle before she had even finished her sentence. They both fell in mid-air and Xia Yu''s attack missed him. Just as he was about to reach the ground, he summoned the Alexandrian Eagle again and flew up into the sky. The Alexandrian Eagle flew up into to the sky but Xia Yu began chasing after them again shortly after. Xia Yu had a cold, stony expression on her face as she grinned at them. Her voice was clearly heard by Lin Huang, "Do you know that the more you try to fight against me, the more determined I am to bring you back to the heretics?" "You''re such a crazy woman!" Lin Huang scolded her, instructing the Alexandrian Eagle, "Go down!" The Alexandrian Eagle tucked in its wings and landed on the ground. "There''s no way you can escape!" Xia Yu''s voice was heard again. She did not give up the chase, seemingly holding a grudge against Lin Huang. Before he landed on the ground, the Alexandrian Eagle flapped its wings again and glided through the air. "Slow down!" Lin Huang saw a big tree not far away. He leaped towards the tree and used both legs to step on the branches. He then bounced from branch to branch and fled. "Do you think that you''ll manage to escape just by going into the forest?" Again, Xia Yu''s voice was suddenly heard behind him. When he saw the open space in front of him, he sped up, jumping down from tree branches to land in the open space. He then stopped. "Why aren''t you escaping anymore?" Xia Yu was still floating in mid-air, not touching the ground because she was worried that there were traps on the ground. "The Alexandrian Eagle can''t fly faster than you and I can''t run away from you in the forest. Trying to escape is a waste of strength." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulder. "So are you going to give up and leave with me?" Xia Yu grinned. She was even more interested in Lin Huang after chasing after him. "Of course not. I won''t be influenced so easily." Lin Huang shook his head, "Since I can''t run away from you, let''s fight!" "You want to fight me?" Xia Yu laughed when she heard what Lin Huang said. "Do you know my combat level?" "I know you''re a holy fire transcendent." Lin Huang nodded his head. "Yes, you''re right about that. However, I''m not holy fire-level rank-1. I''m a holy fire-level rank-2 instead and I''m about to achieve holy fire-level rank-3. Even if you could summon a gold-level rank-3 mutated monster, you wouldn''t be able to defend yourself against me." Xia Yu grinned when she revealed her actual combat level to him. Lin Huang had heard about the five colors in the holy fire-level before. After the Life Fire was ignited, each change in the Life Fire color would result in significant improvements in combat level. Those who were on holy fire-level rank-3 could instantly kill creatures on holy fire-level rank-1. Even those who were on holy fire-level rank-2 were much stronger than those on holy fire-level rank-1. It was indeed not exaggerating to say that Xia Yu could kill the gold-level rank-3 mutated monster in an instant. Lin Huang wanted to summon Tyrant so that he could delay her a little. However, listening to what Xia Yu told him, he hesitated for a while. At that moment, a screeching sound was heard and a large bird flew towards them. "Mu Lan?!" Lin Huang could immediately recognize the Four-Winged Dragon Condor. Xia Yu raised her head as well and looked at the Four-Winged Dragon Condor. She definitely knew who the monster belonged to. The Four-Winged Dragon Condor flapped its wings and landed on the ground, stirring up a gust of dust. Mu Lan jumped down from the Four-Winged Dragon Condor and recalled it. She then looked at Lin Huang and asked, "Are you okay?" "You nearly killed me" What Lin Huang said was the truth. He might still be hanging in mid-air, attempting to delay her a little while longer if it was not because of her. He would not have had to escape so clumsily. "I''m sorry. She was right behind you and I didn''t notice her at first. I only knew that there was a person behind you right after she bent down her body " Mu Lan immediately apologized. "Hi, head examiner. How are you?" Xia Yu looked at Mu Lan with a smile. "You''re the leader of the heretics?" Mu Lan frowned and looked at Xia Yu as she could not really remember seeing her. "You''re right." Xia Yu smiled as she looked at Mu Lan. "Mu Lan is the daughter of the Mu royal family. You''re 17 years old with gold-level rank-3 combat level. You major in the sword and you''re an Imperial Censor. You are currently ranked fourth on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard. I can''t believe that you came to me by yourself. If I can capture you, this operation won''t be considered a failure." "Then let''s see if you''re capable of doing so!" Despite facing a transcendent opponent, she showed no fear on her face. She was holding a blue sword relic in her hand. "You''re holding a 5-Star Sea Chasm Sword relic. The Mu family is investing a lot in you. No wonder you''re not even afraid of me even though you know fair well that I''m a transcendent." Xia Yu could immediately identify the long sword in Mu Lan''s hand. "I''ve killed three holy fire transcendents using this sword." Mu Lan said coldly. "It''s a good sword. However, you can''t change the fact that you''re gold-level rank-3. Regardless of how powerful your relic is, you won''t be able to fully utilize it." Xia Yu grinned as she said this and a huge black sickle appeared in her hand. "So big" Lin Huang sighed as he saw the weapon that looked like Death''s Sickle. The size of the sickle did not match Xia Yu''s body size. Xia Yu''s was about 1.6 meters tall in height but the length of her sickle was approximately two meters. "I''ll show you the true force of a relic when a holy fire transcendent wields it." As soon as she finished her sentence, she turned the large sickle around and grabbed the end of the sword. She seemed to use the sickle with ease. Her sickle released a beam of black light that caused a stir, distorting the air around it as it flew by. Although the beam of black light seemed to be moving slowly, Lin Huang could tell that it was not the case because it appeared in front of Mu Lan in an instant. Xia Yu had apparently excluded Lin Huang from the battle as she believed that Lin Huang would definitely die if her attack hit him as he was only a silver-level hunter. In addition, she was not afraid that Lin Huang would run away as she needed only about two minutes to defeat the daughter of the Mu family. She could catch Lin Huang after that. Of course, Mu Lan was not going to let this happen. She did not avoid her attacks at all, unsheathing the sword relic in her hand without a moment''s hesitation. A beam of blue light streaked across the sky that resembled a blue comet racing across the sky. Soon, the tip of her blue sword hit Xia Yu''s black sickle. A loud bang was heard when both weapons touched one another. It was not the sound you would usually hear when weapons collided. It sounded more like two immensely powerful forces crashing together. After a short while, the glow from the black sickle disappeared. Mu Lan''s body then swayed a little and the blue glow appeared again, like a fiery beam that moved towards Xia Yu. Xia Yu''s pupils rapidly dilated, as she put on a serious expression. She brandished her large sickle again and part of her blades disappeared. The moment it reappeared, it was already touching the tip of Mu Lan''s sword. A loud explosive noise was then heard. Mu Lan who was hanging in mid-air was blown away and retreated about 10 meters away. "No wonder you dared to challenge me. It''s unbelievable that the Mu family had taught you The Sword Immortal''s Path!" Xia Yu retreated a few meters away too. "I didn''t expect this from you too. As far as I know, Trials of Death is a combat skill that the heretics would only teach the saints. No wonder you''re already holy fire-level rank-2 although you''re still so young. If you didn''t use this skill, I would still think that you''re a old woman that behaves like an underage girl." Mu Lan could confirm her identity after the fight. "Humph, you''re not qualified to call me an old aunty. I should be the one addressing you in that way!" Xia Yu was angry. "So you''re admitting that you have stunted growth?" Mu Lan purposely said that with her head held high. "Damn, old woman!" Xia Yu seemed to be particularly sensitive to this topic. She then waved the sickle in her hand and the blade disappeared again. Mu Lan stabbed her sword into the ground abruptly and a loud clang was heard. Mu Lan then leaped up in the air, retreating back to a tree not far away. She stepped on the tree trunk and her body disappeared in an instant. The next moment when she appeared, the tip of the blade and Xia Yu''s sickle hit against each other. "No wonder you could defend against my attacks easily. You''re wearing the Revolution Armor which is a 4-Star defensive relic!" Xia Yu finally noticed that as her attacks could do no harm to Mu Lan. "It''s not too late for you to retreat now. Weve killed your companion. If you insist on fighting me, you won''t be able to escape later when the transcendent team arrives!" Mu Lan knew that her opponent had no way to defeat her and the attacks had no effect on Xia Yu as well. "Humph! If I can''t catch you, I will catch him!" Xia Yu then extended her arms towards Lin Huang 180 Please Give Me Some Respec Lin Huang was alert when both of them were fighting to avoid any unexpected incidents. As expected, since Xia Yu''s attacks were rendered useless, she then shifted her aim back at Lin Huang. When Xia Yu was coming for him, before she could even launch an attack, Lin Huang commanded, "Tyrant!" The next moment, Tyrant appeared out of nowhere and stood before Lin Huang. He was completely blocked by Tyrant''s large body. Xia Yu could not see a thing! "Humph!" Xia Yu scoffed as she saw Tyrant appear. She turned the claws on her hands that were about to reach Lin Huang into her palm and slammed them against Tyrant''s chest. She thought that it would be impossible for gold-level rank-3 monsters, even those that had mutated to survive such an attack. Tyrant retreated a few steps backward as her palm hit him. However, only cracks that looked like spider webs appeared on his chest. A strong shockwave came off Tyrant''s body and hit her, causing her to retreat a few steps back too. Xia Yu was startled and she took a look at Tyrant. The spider web-like cracks that appeared on his chest had healed quickly on its own while she was looking at it. After a few moments, the cracks had completely healed. "He''s a monster double mutated monster with impressive defensive and self-recovery abilities!" Xia Yu''s eyes immediately brightened up. Even Mu Lan who was standing right next to her was surprised, seeing Tyrant alive despite being struck by Xia Yu''s attack. Mu Lan knew how powerful Xia Yu was as she had just fought her. Although she did not attack using her sickle and just used the claws on her hands, a gold-level rank-3 monster would be incapable of defending itself against such an attack. However, aside than retreating a few steps back, the injuries to Tyrant''s body had already healed itself. She instantly knew that Tyrant was a monster that had gone through two mutations. "His defensive and self-healing abilities are indeed terrifying." Even Mu Lan was amazed by his abilities. "Lin Huang, you really surprised me!" Xia Yu grinned and said, "Let me test and see the extent of this large creature''s defensive abilities." As soon as she finished her sentence, Xia Yu brandished her large sickle again. At that moment, there was a beam of blue light that streaked across the sky, flying rapidly towards Xia Yu. Xia Yu frowned and she had to defend against the attack. The black sickle tore through the air and was about to slash at Mu Lan''s body. The large black sickle and the blue longsword then collided once again. A sizzling sound was heard when the gold and black Life Power crashed into one another. The sound was similar to the sound of flowing electric current. After a short while, the impact of their Life Power had reached its peak, causing an explosion. Mu Lan retreated and landed on the ground, directing all of the forces acting on her body into the ground through her armor. "Daughter of the Mu Family, are you sure that you''re not going to give up?" Xia Yu stared at Mu Lan coldly. "Lin Huang is a member of the Hunter Association. I won''t allow you to bring him back. Furthermore, you''re a transcendent. How capable are you if you''re trying to bully someone who''s only silver-level?" Mu Lan stood before Tyrant, having no intention whatsoever to retreat. "Am I bullying him? I feel that Hunter Association can''t provide him with the best training. Therefore, I''ve decided to bring him to the heretics so that he can be properly trained. I believe that he can shine with the heretics. Also, he hasn''t passed the assessment yet so technically, he isn''t considered to be a regular member of the Hunter Association yet." Xia Yu looked towards Tyrant''s direction. "He is indeed not a regular member yet. However, he''s one of the candidates under my supervision. As the head examiner, I won''t let you bring him back. In addition, the Hunter Association would definitely train talented hunters. You don''t have to worry about that. I believe that Lin Huang can do well in the Hunter Association." Mu Lan then said. "So you insist on getting in my way?" Xia Yu had a stone cold expression on her face. "Yes, you''re right." Mu Lan had no intention of retreating as she shot back a gaze at Xia Yu. "That''s good. There are some abilities that I''ve held back on but you''ve forced my hand." Xia Yu said as she put her weapon away and weaved an intricate sigil in the air. Mu Lan''s facial expression immediately changed as she turned her head around to yell at Lin Huang, "Leave! Quickly!" "It''s too late" Lin Huang lifted his head and stared at the sky with fear. A powerful aura spread in the air before something seemed to appear, filling the air of Little Devil Island with a terrifying aura. Countless monsters crawled around in fear, bodies trembling as if they were before a king, worshipping him. Although Tyrant did not prostrate on the ground, his body began to shake slightly too. While both of them looked at the monsters, a large sickle made of pure gold appeared before Xia Yu. "Regal Relic C Godslayer Sickle" Mu Lan''s face immediately turned pale as she spat out the words. "This is the ultimate relic C Godslayer Sickle. In Heretics, only the three Saints and president were allowed to activate this relic. Xia Yu said with a smile, looking down at Mu Lan. "About the abilities this sickle gives me... You should''ve heard about it, right?" "It cuts through everything" Mu Lan frowned. "Yes, it cuts through everything. Be it the 5-Star Sea Chasm Sword in your hand, the 4-Star Relic - Revolution Armor or that huge creature with its impressive defensive abilities With just one cut, everything can be cut in half!" Xia Yu lifted the large golden sickle that was even bigger than the previous one and pointed it towards Mu Lan. Lin Huang''s expression changed after listening to what Xia Yu had said. He never knew that a weapon with such horrifying powers existed in this world. She brandished the gold sickle in her hand after she finished her sentence. A golden glow appeared before of Mu Lan. Mu Lan was not able to dodge the attack and had no time to defend against it. The golden blade then slashed her body. "Am I dead?" Mu Lan lowered her head and looked at her wounds. She then noticed her armor beginning to crack but she was not injured at all. "Don''t worry. I''ve just removed that annoying Revolution Armor that you''re wearing. It''s better to capture you alive than killing you. You are a hunter that is ranked fourth on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard and you''re also the focus of the Hunter Association. It would be a waste to kill you. Perhaps the heretics would need you. If you upgrade to a holy fire transcendent, your abilities wouldn''t be weak at all." Xia Yu''s voice was heard coming from above. Lin Huang frowned as he attempted to think of ways to solve this situation. The opponent''s weapon was terrifying. She could slaughter any of the monsters he could summon with just one hit. If he were to summon Charcoal and Bai, they would definitely die and they would still be in danger. On the other hand, Mu Lan was nervous as the Godslayer Sickle was a very dangerous weapon. It does not only cut through everything but it has invisible attacks as well. Even if she wanted to flee, she would have no way to escape under such circumstances. "Daughter of the Mu Family, you can now bid farewell to your Sea Chasm Sword." Xia Yu grinned and attempted to cut it in half. A golden glow appeared out of nowhere and slashed at the Sea Chasm Sword in Mu Lan''s hand. A purple laser beam appeared abruptly at just the right moment and collided with the golden glow of the sickle. Unexpectedly, the impact had caused the golden glow to dissipate. A large shadow then appeared beside Mu Lan. It was a middle-aged man with thick brows that had a scar on the left side of his lips. Lin Huang could recognize him immediately. He was the transcendent that fought the Ghastly Clown in Daxi City. "Uncle Zhu Nian!" Mu Lan was surprised the moment when she saw him. "You''re Zhu Nian?" Apparently, Xia Yu had heard his name before. "I''m surprised that you know me too." Zhu Nian looked at the girl floating in mid-air with a smile. "Of course, how can I not remember the name of the nominated candidate for the position of executive officer in Division7." Xia Yu said with fear, knowing full well that her opponent was a transcendent that was about to achieve immortal-level. Once he was upgraded to immortal-level, he would become the executive officer of Hunter Association. With such authority, the powers that came with his position would be incomparable. "Miss Saint, please don''t put them through too much trouble." He said while looking at Xia Yu with a smile. Actually, it was his way of giving both parties a way to step down and save face. The people respected Xia Yu. If she caught them, she would probably trigger a battle between the heretics and the Hunter Association. The entire region from Division1 to Division12 would then fall into chaos. Xia Yu knew that she would not be able to catch anyone as Zhu Nian was there. Knowing that her opponent was trying not to embarrass her, she also understood that he was actually hinting at her, saying in his mind, "You should stop and leave now." Her mission had failed and it was useless to continue any farther. "Mr. Zhu Nian, since you''ve offered, then I''ll let it go." Xia Yu shifted her gaze towards Lin Huang and Mu Lan and grinned. "We still have time. I''ll let them stay at the Hunter Association first. I''ll look for a chance and bring them back to the heretics." Obviously, she was trying to provoke them. Zhu Nian laughed after listening to what she had said and held his tongue. Putting away the gold sickle, Xia Yu summoned a dimensional portal before the three of them and went in. Before the portal closed, she waved at them. Right after Xia Yu left, Lin Huang finally recalled Tyrant. Zhu Nian looked at Lin Huang as if he was in deep thought. He then told both of them, "Let''s go back to the assessment location first. Tell me what happened." After bringing the both of them back to the assessment location, the candidates were released from the pseudo-prison. Zhu Nian then began to ask about the incident. Lin Huang and Mu Lan told him everything. Zhu Nian nodded his head after listening to them. "I will report this to the superiors. The assessment may need to be paused. We''ll have to wait for the official announcement to determine if the assessment will continue. You may stay on the island during this period of time." Zhu Nian quickly came out with a solution. Mu Lan and the rest of the candidates had no objections. They then set up their own tents. 181 The Assessment Ends After some arrangements, Zhu Nian brought the 10 dead bodies of the heretic members that Lin Huang and Mu Lan killed to the headquarter. Since the incident, everyone built their tents accordingly and rested inside, including Mu Lan. However, Lin Huang headed to the middle of the Little Devil Island on the next morning. After activating one Double Card, he started killing gold-level monsters with Tyrant''s help. An hour later, he did not only obtain 20 Cross-Ranking Reward Cards but he even managed to accumulate two complete gold-level Monster Cards. They were the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion which was an enchanted monster and a Gold-Armored Skeleton of the undead species. He decided to combine the card pieces into cards as he wanted to keep them to replace his epic cards during emergencies. Before heading back to the assessment location, Lin Huang got Xiao Hei to list all his cards: "You have 14 Monster Cards as below." "Epic Monster Cards: Charcoal, Bai, Tyrant, Ghastly (Ghastly Clown), Bloody (Demonic Dandelion Vine)" "Rare Monster Cards: One-Eyed Swordfiend, Alexandrian Eagle." "Normal Monster Cards: Gold-Armored Skeleton, Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion, Ox Devil, Lion-Headed Troll, Viridian Wolf, Demonic One-Eyed Ape, Spectre." "You have 21 Skill Cards as below." "Talent Card: Superhuman Strength (Rare)" "Life Seed Card: Sly Hands (Rare), Life Replacement (Rare), Sensing Circle (Rare)" "Combat Skill Card: Great Sword Scripture (Epic), Wildfire Sword (Epic), Fatal Tactics (Rare), Thunder Sword (Rare), Mountain Blade (Rare), Hundred Flowing Blades (Rare), Spectral Snowsteps (Rare), Cloud Steps (Rare)" "Monster Skill: Blood Spirit, Immense Strength (Intermediate), Advance Disguise, Super Robust, Magic Eye Deterrence (Intermediate), Absolute Defence (Beginner), Blood Hunt (Beginner), Boundless Vision (Beginner), Third Eye (Beginner), Mask - Control" "These are the 20 cards for your cross-ranking reward:" "Advance Card x3, One-Time Skill Card x3, Double Card x2, Item Card x3, Provisional Transformation Card x2, Provisional Summoning Card x1, Healing Card x1, Skill Combination Card x1, Treasure Card x1, Mission Card x1, Challenge Card x1, Transportation Card x1" "You have 40 Functional Cards as below:" "Provisional Transformation Card x7, Advance Card x5, Healing Card x5, Treasure Card x4, Double Card x4, Prop Card x3, One-time Skill Card x3, Mission Card x2, Flawless Card x2, Skill Combination Card x1, Provisional Summoning Card x1, Transportation Card x1, Challenge Card x1, Small Destruction Card x1" Seeing a couple of Functional Cards that he had never seen before, Lin Huang read the detailed description. "One-Time Skill Card: It can seal the skill that is being used before you (monster and human combat skills) and release the skill upon reactivation of the card." "Remark 1: Your ability is restricted, the highest skill that you can seal at the moment would be holy fire-level skills." "Remark 2: This card is limited to one use only. Once the skill is activated, the card will disappear." "Provisional Summoning Card: One monster can be randomly summoned upon activation. Summon limited to one hour only." "Remark 1: The combat strength of the random monster will be one level higher than the highest level of monster the user owns." "Remark 2: A monster that is related to the monster that the user owns will also have the highest chance of being summoned." "Remark 3: Consumable upon activation, each card can be used once." "Transportation Card (3): You will be sent to the location you specified for one time upon activation." "Remark 1: 10 seconds waiting time upon card activation." "Remark 2: Can not be used when you are moving." "Remark 3: The location has to be somewhere you have been before." "Consumable, each card could be activated for three times. The card will disappear after three uses." "Challenge Card: You will be transported into a challenge dimension upon activation. There would be a random monster in the challenge space. Once the user kills the monster, the user will obtain a Monster Card of the monster that he killed." "Remark 1: The monster that will appear in the challenge dimension would be exactly the same combat strength as the user. The monster species and rarity would be randomly chosen." "Remark 2: The user would have to fight using his own strength in the challenge dimension, no Monster Card or other Functional Cards are allowed." "Remark 3: Each Challenge Card will disappear when the user defeats the monster. The maximum number of challenges is three times. If the user fails three of the challenges, the Challenge Card will disappear." "If the user dies in the challenge dimension, the user will actually die. Therefore, if the user encounters an invincible monster. It is recommended that the user backs out from the challenge dimension." After looking through the new cards, Lin Huang was in a good mood as the cards had strong practicality. As usual, Lin Huang activated three Item Cards. Whenever he received Item Cards, he would activate them without hesitation. However, there was nothing useful as he only got weapons. This time, he obtained two weapons and a bottle of elixir. He then took a look at the green elixir. "Insanity Elixir (For monster use only): After the summoning beast is injected with the elixir, it will go insane. Its strength, defensive abilities, and speed will be increased tenfold. Effective Time: One hour." "Remark 1: After the elixir is injected, the summoning beast will completely lose its mind. It will attack everything it sees, including its master." "Remark 2: After the effect wears off, the summoning monster will be exhausted for 100 hours. It will fall into deep sleep." "I got a bottle of elixir!" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows while looking at the remaining cards. "Oh, I have a Skill Combination Card!" "Activate Skill Combination Card!" Lin Huang instructed. "Skill Combination Card has been activated" "Choose from the packages below." "1. Combine Sword Skills: Great Sword Scripture, Wildfire Sword, Thunder Sword, Mountain Blade, Hundred Flowing Blades" "2. Combine Movement Skills: Spectral Snowsteps, Cloud Steps" "3. Combine Vision Skills: Magic Eye Deterrence, Boundless Vision, Third Eye" "Please choose one." "I would like to choose the third one." Lin Huang decided without hesitation as the monster skills that he could manage were limited to 10. Combining the monster skills could give him empty slots to obtain more monster skills. "Skill Combination Card has been consumed. Monster skills Magic Eye Deterrence, Boundless Vision and Third Eye has been consumed. The new Skill Card is on the way" "Congratulations, you have received a new vision card: Kaleidoscope" "Kaleidoscope: With the combination of many vision skills, it will combine more vision skills automatically with increasing vision strength." "Remarks: The basic functions at the moment would be Magic Eye Deterrence, Boundless Vision, Third Eye and Illusion." "Besides the three original skills, there was one extra skill - Illusion after the skills were combined. Besides, the skill could improve as time goes by." Lin Huang smirked while looking at the new skill. He then took a look at his monster skills which had reduced to eight skills from the original 10 skills so he had two empty slots. However, he was not in a rush to extract the skills. He then rode on the Alexandrian Eagle and headed back to the assessment location. Mu Lan did not ask Lin Huang where he went as she knew that he was safe with Tyrant. As long as he did not encounter any transcendents, he would be safe. For the following days, Lin Huang followed the rest and set up a tent on Little Devil Island while waiting for the upgrade. On the fourth day, the news finally came. As Mu Lan reported on time, it had lessened the damages of the Hunter Association. There were 63 assessment locations that were invaded but only participants from 11 footholds were completely captured. A part of the participants from 37 assessment locations was captured while the participants from the remaining 15 assessment locations were all rescued. There were more than 12,800 participants that were captured which were close to 30% of the total number of the 63 assessment locations. All of the 63 assessment locations that were invaded had been suspended. The Hunter Association headquarter announced that all of the remaining participants in the 63 assessment locations would not have to go for the next assessment and they would officially be Regular Hunters. When Mu Lan announced the news to the participants, the participants of the assessment location where Lin Huang was in were cheering. However, Lin Huang did not care about that. To him, there was no difference if the assessment was suspended or not. The only thing to be happy about was that he would be able to head home to celebrate the new year. As the assessment was over, the Hunter Association sent a Demonic Crystal Spaceship and brought all participants back to foothold No.7B24, Beixuan City. Many in the Hunter Association division in Beixuan City were watching as Mu Lan brought 489 participants to the registration. "Is the passing rate so high this year? It''s usually less than 300 people." Someone was skeptical. "Yeah, I think there were 12,000 participants this round. The passing rate is 4% this time around. It''s usually only 2%." "Perhaps the assessment was easier this time?" As the Hunter Association had yet to disseminate the news that the assessment was invaded, many were discussing the high passing rate. Although there were many of them, the registration did not take too long as they were all Reserve Hunter, the Hunter Association had a record of their personal details. All they needed to do was to update their personal information and re-test their combat strength. Each registration would take less than 10 seconds. There were three registration counters which made it quite fast. Lin Huang waited in the queue for less than 10 minutes. Just as he was leaving, he was called by the person who registered him. "When you registered in June, you were not even iron-level. Its December now and your combat strength is already silver-level rank-1? This means you only took six months to level-up to silver-level?" The person was in disbelief. What she did not know was, Lin Huang was holding back his strength during the test. What the person said was heard by all of them in the hall, they looked at Lin Huang. It was terrifying for an ordinary person to level-up to silver-level in six months. Even if a talented person who was trained in a high-level Life Skill, filling up iron-level Life Power would take at least one month per circle and three months for three circles. It would then take at least two months to stabilize the Life Power. Leveling-up to bronze-level rank-1 would take almost six months. When one reached bronze-level, the speed they filled their Life Power would be slower, approximately three times slower than it was before they got to iron-level. It would take at least nine months to fill three circles of their Life Power while the stabilization would take at least another two months. In total, that would take them at least 16 months to be able to reach bronze-level. This was someone who was trained in a high-level Life Skill. In reality, most of the people would take more than two years while those who were talented would take around one year and six months. However, the fact that Lin Huang only took six months stunned everyone. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded in certainty. "Then I shall report your puzzling training speed to the management. Somebody will be evaluating your performance." The person said to Lin Huang. She was concerned that Lin Huang was cheating. If that was so, the punishment would be terrible. "Sure." Lin Huang nodded, he knew what did the person mean. "Its theres nothing else, I''ll make a move." "That will be all." The person waved her hand, "Next!" 182 Going Through Another Review Just as Lin Huang walked out to the hall of the Hunter Association, he was stopped by Mu Lan. "Head examiner Mu, is there anything wrong?" Lin Huang thought it was odd. "Is what the person at the registration said true? That you managed to level-up up to silver-level from an ordinary person in six months?" Mu Lan asked directly. "Its true." Lin Huang thought there was nothing to hide as it would be revealed anyway since he registered himself at the association. "What kind of Life Skill did you train? How is it possible that you leveled-up in such a short period of time? Its impossible to do such a thing even if what you trained was an Ultimate Life Skill. I think I''m quite talented and I took almost a year to achieve silver-level." Mu Lan revealed her training speed. "I trained Army Attack Tactics." Lin Huang looked at Mu Lan with a smile. "The early stages of training Army Attack Tactics is not even comparable to a high-level Life Skill. What level are you on now?" Mu Lan frowned. "Level-6." Lin Huang lied. "You managed to train Army Attack Tactics to level-6 within six months?! You really are a talented genius!" Mu Lan thought it was unbelievable that Lin Huang got to level-6 in Army Attack Tactics within six months as it was difficult. Some people were stuck on level-5 for more than ten years. Lin Huang smiled without saying a word. Mu Lan then said to him, "I''ll recommend you for intensive training." "Intensive training? Is that something similar to the exclusive pass?" It was the first time Lin Huang heard of such a thing. "Of course not. The exclusive pass is just for those who had yet to join the Reserve Hunter assessment to become a Regular Hunter. There are many of them. However, intensive training is a special pass that the Hunter Association gives out to geniuses. All of the people who obtain the pass were all geniuses. Not only they would be given access to a massive amount of resources, the information that they can obtain is similar to holy fire-level executive officers" Mu Lan explained in detail. "How is it that I''ve never heard of this?" Lin Huang did not think that Mu Lan was lying to him, he was just curious that he had never heard of that before. "Thats normal. In the Hunter Association, only Gold Hunter and above will have the access to this, let alone outsiders." Mu Lan smiled. "If thats true, the slots should be quite limited. If you were to recommend me, I may not necessarily get it. Am I right?" Lin Huang had no idea that he was already recommended earlier but he was declined during the final review. "It truly is limited. There are less than four people in Division7 who can pass the review in the entire year. Even if there were exceptions, it would not be more than six people. The recommendations that we submit would go through three rounds of review. The first two rounds are easy, but not the final review as it has to go through 12 executive officers. As long as one of them disagree, the review would be declined. However, I''m confident that you''ll pass the review!" Mu Lan had full confidence in Lin Huang. "Alright then, I shall thank you in advance. To show my appreciation, I shall treat you to dinner tonight." Lin Huang said. Although he did not think that he would pass the review, he did not want to reject Mu Lans kindness. "I''ll take a rain check. I''ve some errands to run at home, I''ll have to head home right after I am done with the registration." Mu Lan smiled, "However, I''ll submit the registration for you by today. Dont worry about it." "Its alright, you can do that anytime you want." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders, "We''ll postpone our dinner then." "Sure, we''ll talk about it the next time we meet." Mu Lan nodded. She asked again, "Oh right. When are you heading home?" "I havent booked the ticket yet. I''m not sure if I can manage to book the ticket for the day after tomorrow. If thats not possible, I''ll have to wait until next week." Lin Huang did not think that he could get a ticket as the date was too close. "You can check now. If you cant manage to book one, Ill help." Mu Lan took the initiative to help Lin Huang. "Its okay. Since the assessment ended earlier and its still days before the new year, I can leave one week later." Lin Huang rejected. "Ill check it out." Mu Lan then looked for the ticket page of the Demonic Crystal Spaceship. As she had Lin Huangs personal details in the assessment registration, she found the spaceship schedule that he was looking for within seconds. However, the spaceship was fully booked. Lin Huang saw it from the side. "Ill get the tickets for next week then." "Its alright, there are still available seats in the VIP cabin." Mu Lan then booked the ticket. In less than three seconds, the ticket was sent to Lin Huangs Emperors Heart Ring. Lin Huang was speechless, "Ill transfer you the money, please send me your account details." "Theres no need for that, consider this my apology for almost getting you killed by Xia Yu earlier." Mu Lan still had the incident in her mind. She then turned around and headed to the hall of the Hunter Association. Lin Huang was stunned and remained wherever he was standing. He knew that Mu Lan would not take his money even if he chased after hear. He shook his head and headed to the hotel. The hotel that Lin Huang booked located near Beiming Plaza where the Demonic Crystal Spaceship would depart. In the hotel room, he sat on the couch in the living room and stared blankly at the two cards on his hand. There were two Rare Monster Cards, one was the One-Eyed Swordfiend while another was the Alexandrian Eagle. He had five Advance Cards, which were sufficient to get him two Epic Monster Cards. Lin Huang was determined to level-up One-Eyed Swordfiend as it would grow extraordinarily powerful when it was upgraded to Epic. However, Lin Huang was not sure if he should upgrade the Alexandrian Eagle which was also a mutated monster as he only had one flying monster. If it was upgraded, he could not reveal it as often anymore. Each double mutation would cause a big scene, that was the reason why he was delaying the upgrade. Since the heretic invasion just passed on Little Devil Island, it would be too much if Lin Huang upgraded it right away. He then kept both cards and took out an Epic Monster Card. It was the Demonic Dandelion Vine that he named Bloody. Although it was an Epic Monster Card, it only possessed two skills right now which were Leech Pods and Absolute Control. Meanwhile, there were three skills that had yet to be developed. Although it was silver-level rank-3, Lin Huang had no idea what would happen if he was to upgrade it. Lin Huang had to extract two monster skills as he was waiting for One-Eyed Swordfiend and Demonic Dandelion Vine to become epic-level monsters so that he could extract the skills at once. No matter what, the skills of an epic-level monster would be much more powerful than other monsters. After some thoughts, Lin Huang kept the cards and opened the calendar in his Emperors Heart Ring. It was December 21st, it was one month before the new year. He could spend the time with Lin Xin and Lin Xuan during the month as well as stabilize his Life Power. Lin Huang did not do much during the two days in Beixuan City where he spent most of his time strolling around, shopping for souvenirs during the day and practiced Army Attack Tactics for three to four hours during the night. What he did not know was that someone was cracking his head for Lin Huang during these two days. It was dinner time when the executive officer Xu Tianyu received the second recommendation. He planned to ignore the message, but since it was sent by Mu Lan, he took a look at the message after some hesitation. In the message, Lin Huang was described in all sorts of manners. Mu Lan did not only mention his terrifying speed and his double mutated summoning monster but she even explained how Lin Huang helped in the heretic invasion. Xu Tianyu was stunned after reading the message. He had always thought it was Mu Lan who discovered what the heretics were up to. He did not know that it was Lin Huang who found out. "It seems like this kid is very trainable. I''ve underestimated him!" Xu Tianyu frowned as he said this, "However, its hard to pass the review since all of the executive officers are old-timers with a huge ego. They won''t accept someone that they''ve rejected, especially Old Li" "Dad, I have been calling you for dinner!" A tanned middle-aged man knocked on Xu Tianyus door. "Oh, Ill be there soon." Xu Tianyu nodded. The man at the door saw Lin Huangs photo and asked, "Dad, why does this kid look so familiar?" "Hes the one at your assessment." Xu Tianyu nodded. "Now I remember, I think his name is Lin Huang. He and another girl were the only two persons who managed to get the information about the crystallized weed during the second assessment." The middle-aged man was the head examiner of the first round of assessment, Xu Jinpeng. "Oh, really?" Xu Tianyu raised his eyebrow, "What do you think about him?" "I dont know much about him. I heard about him from Zhuo Lin, he looked up to this kid. However, we did not test them on their abilities during the two assessments so we have no idea of the extent of his abilities. If you''d like to know, youll have to check with the two head examiners who were responsible for the remaining assessments." Xu Jinpeng answered honestly. "I have the comments of both head examiners" Xu Tianyu smiled awkwardly. "Whats wrong with this kid? Did he cause any troubles?" Now Xu Jinpeng was curious. "He did not cause any trouble. Both the head examiners recommended him for intensive training. Seems like this kid is really something, thats too bad" "Isnt that a good thing, whats too bad about it. Dad, if you think he can make it, pass him into the final review." Xu Jinpeng thought it was an easy task. "The thing is, I''ve already recommended him once but he was rejected at the final review" Xu Tianyu shook his head. "So you are worried that the executive officers would think that you are trying to find fault with them if you recommend him for a second time?" Xu Jinpeng figured out what was his fathers concern. "Can I take a look at his documents?" "Sure." Xu Tianyu nodded and brought out all the documents sent by the two head examiners. After reading the documents, Xu Jinpeng became serious, "Dad, we cant let such talents slip away. If other organizations took him, its our loss." "I know, but now the problem is that he would not pass the final review!" Xu Tianyu nodded but he felt helpless. "I bet you must be worried about Old Li?" Xu Jinpeng knew what the problem was. Xu Tianyu did not say a word. "If thats your concern, theres a solution." Xu Jinpeng smiled. "What is that?" Xu Tianyu raised his eyebrow. "The family of the head examiner Mu Lan, is close with Mr. Fu. Get her to send the documents to Mr. Fu. As long as Mr. Fu talks to Old Li, the problem will be solved." Xu Jinpeng suggested. "But what if Mr. Fu wants Lin Huang for himself?" Xu Tianyu was not sure if that was a good solution. "Mr. Fu has already retired from the Union Government for more than 30 years. During the 30 years, there were many geniuses in Division7, did you see him wanting anybody?" Xu Jinpeng thought Xu Tianyus concern was unnecessary. "Alright then, I shall write to the Mu family then" Just when he was walking to the desk, a lady walked in. "I have been waiting for you for dinner, what are the both of you chatting about? The dishes are cold now" "Ill go right there" Xu Tianyu nodded continuously while Xu Jinpeng laughed at him 183 Peculiar Mentality Mu Lan found it strange to see Xu Tianyus reply letter. Although she had no idea why he insisted on her sending Lin Huangs documents to Mr. Fu so that he could say something good about Lin Huang to Old Li. However, she obliged and wrote a proper letter, sending it to Mr. Fu together with the documents later. When Mr. Fu received the letter, he was fishing on the sea smiling while smoking his pipe. The sun was setting with the red sun right above the horizon. When he finished going through Mu Lans letter and documents as well as the video of Lin Huang that was included, Mr. Fu held his head up. It was hard to tell if he was glad or upset, he proceeded to smoke while looking far into the horizon. Awhile later, he looked at the photo of him fishing which was taken by Lin Huang earlier. He then looked at the red sun that was the same color appeared in the photo, he took a long breath. "Is this fate" He sat on the high chair while he zoned out into the horizon. He seemed to be thinking and just when the sun was setting on the horizon, the fishing rod on his hand became heavy. "Hmm?" Mr. Fu snapped out of it and realized that the fishing rod was pulled down. He raised his eyebrow, pulled up the fishing rod and saw a golden fish appear from the water. It then fell hard on the deck of the spaceship. Looking at the half-dead Goldenink Grouper, it was a similar size to the one that he caught a few days back. He was stunned at first but soon, he let out a big smile. He proceeded to send a message to Old Li of the Hunter Association with Lin Huangs details. It was a short message that read, "I want this kid!" Old Li thought it was ridiculous when he received Mr. Fus message. After he looked at the documents that were attached together with the message and Lin Huangs details, he looked doubtful. He remembered Lin Huang as the young man that he rejected from the intensive training list a few days ago. "A young man that''s wanted by Mr. Fu Seems like my judgment was wrong" After staring at Lin Huangs documents for a long time, he let out a sigh, knowing that there was no return. Meanwhile, Mr. Fu had found Lin Huangs contact details on his communication device. He then called Lin Huang immediately When Lin Huang saw Mr. Fus call request, Lin Huang thought it was odd. He was eating grilled fish at a barbecue stall when Mr. Fu called, he picked up the call anyway. In the video, Mr. Fu was smiling warmly as usual. "Good evening, Mr. Fu." Lin Huang greeted him with a smile. "Boy, are you eating grilled fish?" Mr. Fu saw the half-eaten grilled fish on the table in front of Lin Huang. "Yeah. Have you eaten, Mr. Fu?" Lin Huang not sure what was the purpose of the call but he smiled and answered politely anyway. "Im just about to, look at what I got!" Mr. Fu showed Lin Huang what was behind him, it was a Goldenink Grouper. Mr. Fu then rotated the screen back to himself and smiled, "Seeing the grilled fish that youre eating, I shall do that today as well!" Lin Huang gulped as he remembered how good Mr. Fus cooking was. It was the cooking of a real Food Hunter, unforgettable. "Hehe" Mr. Fu saw that from the video. "Would you like to try my cooking again, boy?" "Of course I do, I could never forget how good your cooking is. However, it will have to wait as I have errands to run tomorrow morning. I''ll meet you one day for a good feast." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled as he had to make it to the spaceship tomorrow. Mr. Fu did not expect Lin Huang to reject his invitation. Initially, he wanted to lure him in with food and talk to him when Lin Huang was on his spaceship. However, that plan would not work now. After some hesitation, he decided to ask directly, "Boy What do you think about being my apprentice?" Lin Huang was stunned, although he was not sure who exactly Mr. Fu was, however, he thought they were fated. Moreover, he was impressed by Mr. Fus ability to capture the Goldenink Grouper with only his Life Power the other day. Seeing Lin Huang was stunned, Mr. Fu added, "Think about it, let me know as soon as possible" "Would you teach to fish like you did as well?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course I''ll teach you. However, to be able to perform detachment and objectification with your Life Power, you''ll need to be at least at the holy-fire level. If you''d like to disguise yourself as some other creature to escape monsters, you''d need to be on an even higher level" Mr. Fu explained. "I agree!" Lin Huang agreed to be Mr. Fus apprentice immediately. Mr. Fu was stunned this time, he did not expect Lin Huang to accept his request so fast. "Just like that?" "Is there something wrong?" Lin Huang asked him back. "Alright then. From today onwards, you, Lin Huang shall be Fu Qingshans apprentice!" Mr. Fu was scared that Lin Huang would regret his decision so he announced it hurriedly. "Shouldnt there be a proper ceremony?" Lin Huang read from novels that apprenticeships must go through some kind of official ceremony. "Theres no need for that, its just for a show." Mr. Fu seemed to despise the so-called ceremony. "Ive seen the Army Attack Tactics that you were training, I could tell you that youre at least on level-7 or even level-8." Mr. Fu said to Lin Huang, "Which level are you really on?" "Level-8" Lin Huang did not expect Mr. Fu to see through him. "Whats your combat level now? Which rank of silver-level?" Mr. Fu asked again. "White silver-level rank-3." Lin Huang replied honestly. "Your speed is rather terrifying. Please stabilize your Life Power properly, don''t be lazy. Its a good thing that you level-up fast but its important to have a stable foundation." Mr. Fu was impressed as he recalled Lin Huang was only a bronze-level rank-3 few days ago when they met on the spaceship. "Alright." Lin Huang nodded. "Ive seen your documents that were sent by the Hunter Association, I know you have a summoning monster that went through a double mutation. Although youre an Imperial Censor, you should not be relying on your summoning monsters while ignoring your ability. A truly powerful Imperial Censor should have abilities that are no less than his summoning monsters or even stronger. Dont ever forget that your own ability is the root of success. You can treat your summoning monster as your partner. However, their strength is not yours at the end of the day." Mr. Fu advised. "I understand, master." Lin Huang had noticed this problem recently. Ever since he possessed powerful summoning monsters, he became weak himself. Just like the battle with Xia Yu earlier, he did not have the strength to fight back at all, all he did was relying on Tyrant to cover him. He wanted to be stronger himself as well instead of relying on his summoning monsters. Through the video call, Mr. Fu managed to know a little bit more about Lin Huang as well as giving him a simple guidance. Before seeing Lin Huangs performance in a real battle, he did not plan to guide Lin Huang in his direction at all. Now that Mr. Fu had already found out some details about Lin Huang, he said to him after some consideration, "The year is ending, I shall give you a mission." "Please. Do tell, master." Lin Huang nodded. "You are a Regular Hunter now, so youre eligible to battle in the Hunter Arena. My mission to you will be for you to enter the Division7 Hunter Arena within two months and rank up to top 10 in the Silver Hunter Leaderboard without using any of your summoning monsters! Remember to record the battle in a video. Lin Huang was surprised at the request, his expression showed it all. The mission was not exactly easy. Lin Huang had never been to the Hunter Arena, however, he knew there were many powerful hunters in there. Most of the Regular Hunters would have their own accounts at the arena. Like the Gold Hunter Leaderboard, a portion of the statistic on their personal ability came from the results at the Hunter Arena. Although he knew that it would be a challenge, Lin Huang accepted anyway, "I''ll give my best no matter what." "I mean the two months when the Hunter Arena is open. It doesn''t include the New Year holidays as it''ll be closed during that period. You should spend time with your family during the holidays." Mr. Fu added. Oh right, theres something that Ill need to tell you. The Hunter Association wanted to list you into intensive training but because of me, you will not pass the review as I am not one of the members of the Hunter Association. Those who are listed in intensive training must be apprentices to those who are members of the association." Mr. Fu did not forget to tell Lin Huang about that matter. "Its alright, I heard of the review process from head examiner Mu, I knew I might not pass the final review." Lin Huang did not mind at all. After some advice, Mr. Fu hung up the call. Lin Huang boarded the Demonic Crystal Spaceship the next morning. As Mu Lan bought him a ticket in the VIP cabin, many people looked at him as he pressed 11th floor in the elevator, they thought he was a member of royalty. When he arrived on the 11th floor, he was the only one left in the elevator. It was the first time he came to this floor in the spaceship. He found his room number which was Room 1108, he scanned the key card and went it. Lin Huang raised his eyebrows when he saw how big the room was, it was not thousands of meters but it was at least 800 square meters. There was almost everything in the room. After taking a thorough look in the room, Lin Huang found out there was a mini swimming pool in a single room. The bedroom was not only spacious because the bathroom was 50 or 60 square meters, sufficient to accommodate a group of people. After looking at the room, Lin Huang came to the living room. As he was planning to take a look at the Hunter Arena, a news video popped up. It was a video of the Hunter Association opening up about the invasion of heretics at the assessment. After the Hunter Association condemned the heretics, they declared war upon the heretics in Division7. The heretics were asked to publicly apologize and release all the captured hunters or else their members in this division would be badly affected. A couple of minutes into the video, the heretics responded. The presiding judge was wearing a black robe with a white, scary mask on his face. "I would like to apologize on behalf of the organization for the troubles caused to the Hunter Association. We will release all of the 12,800 people within a month after the evaluation. We would also pay for the damages caused to the Hunter Association so that we are at peace. We never meant to start a war with the Hunter Association and the Union Government. We hope the public would understand that we are not some terrorist, we have just a normal organization that practices freedom. If you are interested, you may call the number at the bottom right of the screen to join our assessment" "What the hell is that? How does an open apology become a TV commercial?" Lin Huang thought the mentality of these heretics was quite puzzling. "They''ll be released within a month? Would the Hunter Association still want them?" 184 Hunter Arena Not many people knew what exactly the heretics were about. All they knew was that the Heretic Organization was one of the most powerful organizations in the underworld. However, the Hunter Association knew very well that although the heretics belonged to the underworld, they were on a whole other level. It was unlikely that they would create trouble and unlike other organizations where human lives were nothing. However, their members were untameable where they did whatever they wanted without thinking of the consequences. After seeing the apology of the Heretic Organization''s presiding judge, the executive officers of Division7 were upset. He managed to apologize within three minutes after the Hunter Association released the video, it was obvious that he came prepared. The apology was proper; he did not only apologize but he even wanted to pay for the damages and release the victims. However, could it be possible that he would dare use the people he captured? Who would know if the victims were not brainwashed? It was a play well-done by the heretics as they knew the Hunter Association did not want that batch of people anymore but they decided to release them anyway. Even if they were not brainwashed, the Hunter Association would not be the only one who would not accept the 12,800 victims, but the other organizations as well. The only solution the victims had now was to join the heretics or they would remain an ordinary person for the rest of their lives. However, it was nice that the heretics were willing to apologize so openly. There was nothing else the Division7 Hunter Association could do. Soon, they announced a cease-fire since there would be no good that could come was no good that would come out of the war. They would rather ask for more compensation. The incident had captured the attention of many other organizations. "The heretics are so smart. They let the Hunter Association go through the trouble of putting the participants through all the preliminary evaluation before they scooped the talents away. Wouldnt the apology and compensation that come later be like buying people off with money? They even conveniently promote themselves on the video which was aired in 12 divisions. Tsk tsk, these people" "Thats right. I wonder which genius came up with this idea! Why don''t we suggest this to our boss? We can do the same in June next year?" A person laughed. "Dont even think about it. We, the Purple Crow, would be dead to the Hunter Association if we did that. Division7 wouldn''t be the only one to declare war on us, the other 12 divisions might do the same and band up with the Hunter Association. You should know that we''re considered as a terrorist group within the Hunter Association. The heretics would only be labeled as mentally ill among the other organizations if we did that. The Purple Crow were not the only ones. Other underworld organizations were tempted to do the same as well but they gave up copying the heretics when they thought about the uniqueness of what they did. The Hunter Association went easy on the first attempt. If there was a second time, the consequences would be dire. If the Hunter Association did not show what they would do to people who would dare repeat such an invasion, people would think that the Hunter Association was a pushover and there would be more attempts in the future. Taking these factors into consideration, the other underworld organizations decided not to follow them. ince the incident happened, the Hunter Association was already up and running again. Xu Tianyu brought up the matter of including Lin Huang in the intensive training list again. When Xu Tianyu projected new documents of Lin Huang before the executives during the meeting, many thought it was strange. Old Li did not say a word but later proceeded to mention, "Old Xu, I know hes your favorite. However, no matter how much we like this kid, theres nothing that we can do anymore." "What do you mean by that?" Xu Tianyu was confused. Theoretically, Mr. Fu should have spoken to Old Li, why would Old Li intervene now? "The kid has been taken in by Mr. Fu." Old Li shook his head, "It seems like we''ve lost a talent Sigh" "Mr. Fu took him in?!" Everyone was shocked. "Old Li, maybe you misunderstood. What did Mr. Fu tell you?" Xu Tianyu thought that Mr. Fu was making the matter of including Lin Huang in intensive training too complicated, giving Old Li the impression that Mr. Fu wanted Lin Huang. "He sent me a message that says I want this kid!, before sending Lin Huangs documents over. It seems like he has taken him as his apprentice. The message was served to us to inform us of this so that we won''t enlist him in intensive training." Old Li explained. "Mr. Fu has many apprentices, included Old Li too. I think its still possible that we insist to enlist Lin Huang in intensive training." Xu Tianyu said. "Thats true. Moreover, we have been taking his advice throughout the years, he had taught us a lot. We respect him deeply and treat him as our master. However, he only had one real apprentice, the one he found 300 years ago. Since the death of that apprentice, he has never taken in any real apprentices anymore. Those who came later would address him as sir instead of master. Thats why we call him Mr. Fu; something everyone addresses him as right now. If it was not something out of the ordinary, Mr. Fus would not have sent me that message with his character." Everyone went silent after hearing what Old Li said. "We cant enlist Lin Huang into intensive training anymore, however, he''ll still remain as a member of the Hunter Association. His performance was good in the assessment, lets make him a Gold Hunter. It should be sufficient for him." Old Li suggested. Xu Tianyu had to accept the cold hard truth, he thought to himself that he should not have sent Lin Huangs documents to Mr. Fu. Meanwhile, Lin Huang turned off the apology video of the heretics. The lives of the victims that were captured by the heretics had completely changed. Even if they were released, they would be accepted by the Hunter Association anymore. No other organizations would accept them besides the heretics. Lin Huang shook his head and looked at the Hunter Associations page. On the main page, there was a war declaration was posted on top, one in the middle and one on the right. Lin Huang saw the posts but he did not click on them while he was looking at the eligibility of his account. It had a copper logo, he had been given the authority of a Regular Hunter. He found Hunter Arena on the download page and proceeded to download the game. Two to three minutes later, the game was downloaded and a plug-in page popped up. The plug-in download was fast, soon Lin Huang was on the login page with the background of an ancient hall. Lin Huang scanned his ID and the log-in was done within seconds. "Please register a nickname for yourself. This nickname will be used in battles." A lady in a pink dress said as she smiled. "Sword Overlord!" Lin Huang thought of a nickname for himself. "Im sorry, this nickname has been taken." Lin Huang raised his eyebrow, he did not expect this to happen in this world. "Heaven''s Sword!" "Im sorry, this nickname has been taken." "This too?" Lin Huang frowned, he then thought of another nickname, "Sword Genius!" The nickname Sword Genius is available, are you should you want this as your nickname." "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "Hi, player Sword Genius, the game will be controlled by your consciousness. We''ll scan your body and create a body for you in the game following the data we extract from your body. All the bleeding, pain and death in the game would simulate 100% of whats happening in real life" "If you''re ready, please press ''Enter Game''. After the 10-second countdown, your consciousness will be pulled into the game. Lin Huang nodded and entered the game. The lady in pink disappeared was replaced with golden three-dimensional numbers. It spun as it counted down from 10. A final beam of red light was shot out of the number to scan Lin Huangs body. After the countdown ended, Lin Huang was led into darkness and appeared in a building that he had never been in before. He looked at his body, it was the same as before. He then looked at the cards in his body, they were all there. "Xiao Hei are you there?" Lin Huang contacted Xiao Hei with his mind. "Yes." "Are you in the game too?" "This is an incomplete virtual reality, its normal that I''m able to enter." After chatting with Xiao Hei, Lin Huang began to look around. The enormous building was crowded with people. There were many commercial boards with a variety of elixir and weapons. However, the most obvious one was the huge three-dimensional screen in the middle. It was an introduction of the Hunter Arena. Selected battle scenes were being played in the video, Lin Huang became exuberant after watching the video. Finally, there was a guide at the end of the video. All of the information was connected to the Emperors Heart Ring. As long as the ring was active, the guide would appear. Lin Huang opened his Emperors Heart Ring, the function was different than usual. A ladys voice was heard together with a golden arrow on the interface. "Theres an image of crossed swords on the left. Thats the challenge button. When you press the challenge button, the system will randomly choose an opponent for you following your level and ranking in the game. The image of an eye on the left was the watch button. It allows you to watch all the live battles available within your authority level. The third button which was an image of a person would be your personal details. You can look at your personal details which include your ranking in the game" "The points system in the arena is set as below:" "Win: 1 point." "Killing opponents with one hit will get you double point, which is 2 points." "Tie: 0 points." "Achieving ties for 10 battles will get you 1 point" "Lose: -1 point" "Getting killed by your opponent in one hit will deduct double points, which is -2 points." "Additional Rules: Win for 10 consecutive battles, 20 battles, 30 battles will double accumulated points. Lose for five to 10 battles, point deduction will be doubled. Lose for more than 10 battles, point deduction will be multiplied by three. If theres a tie between a consecutive win or lose, the streak would be suspended." After spending a couple of minutes listening to the introduction, Lin Huang knew how the game was basically run. He then tapped on the ranking board and looked at one of the silver-level players. Looking at the points of those who ranked in the top 10, Lin Huang frowned as the points were above 10,000. "Without the double points from winning streaks, I would have to win 10,000 battles to get into the top 10. To accomplish this within two months isnt easy" 185 Killed in One Hit! Lin Huang calculated the possible scores, following the point system. Winning ten battles would mean 10 x 2 = 20 points. Winning 20 battles would mean (20 + 10) x 2 = 60 points. Winning 30 battles would mean (60 + 10) x 2 = 140 points. With his calculation of the double points, he would have to win 90 consecutive battles to accumulate more than 10,000 points. A single draw would not be allowed as it would stop the double points and he would have to start all over again. The mode of battle was chosen randomly and the more winning streaks he got, the more points he accumulated. It also meant opponents were more powerful as time went on. Towards the end, the winning streak would be a lot harder to keep. After looking at the rules for one last time and making sure that he did not miss anything, Lin Huang proceeded to press the challenge button. "Player Sword Genius has successfully applied to the challenge. According to your level, which is silver-level rank-3. You will be sent to the sixth floor" Within seconds, Lin Huang was sent to the sixth floor of the arena. There were fewer people on this floor but it was still crowded. "Player Sword Genius, you currently have zero points. Please wait while the system randomly matches you to your opponent Opponent found!" "Players can choose not to reveal their real face with a mask challenge. You can also choose to battle without a mask. Please make your selection now!" Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to reveal his own face. "Mask battle then." "Player is being sent to ring No.188 of the arena, on the sixth floor." Not long after being sent to the sixth floor, Lin Huang was matched with an opponent and sent to the ring. As he entered, a silver mask was attached to his face. The mask was a perfect fit leaving just enough space to move, with no discomfort at all. All the others could see was his pair of eyes. Looking around, Lin Huang noticed he was alone, with no audience around the ring either. He had arrived earlier than his opponent. Two to three seconds later, a topless hunk appeared. Golden numbers appeared on top of the ring and the countdown started: 10, 9, 8 "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 0" "Accumulated Points: 0" "Winning Percentage: 0%" Looking at Lin Huangs score, the hunk laughed. "It seems like Im a lucky guy today, encountered a rookie in my first battle of the day." Hearing what the hunk said, Lin Huang then looked at the score of his opponent. "Nickname: Overlord Golden Gun" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 251" "Accumulated Points: -19" "Winning Percentage: 46%" Lin Huang was surprised when he saw the persons score, which was negative. He then recalled that it would happen when one lost a battle, especially when the person lost more than they won. "Overlord Golden Gun, is he using a gun?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. Once the countdown ended, Lin Huang plunged towards the hunk. No matter the person was using a weapon gun or a spear, Lin Huang figured things would not go wrong as long as he got closer to him. Seeing Lin Huang plunging towards him, the hunk grinned. "Ah, another kid who fell into my trap. The Overlord Golden Gun isnt a real gun, nor a spear, but the gun in my pants! What Im expecting is close-quarter combat!" Lin Huang had no idea what the hunk had in mind. Even if he did, he would not mind at all, the hunks winning percentage was only 46%, which showed that his ability was just mediocre at best. All he wanted to do, was to kill him as soon as possible and obtain the points. The rings on the fourth to sixth floors of the Hunter Area were 20 meters wide. It seemed spacious but for the people of silver-level, it only took two to three steps to walk 20 meters away. Using Spectral Snowsteps, Lin Huang appeared in front of the hunk like a ghost. Although Lin Huang was fast, the hunk still managed to see him. Noticing that he was coming, the hunk punched towards Lin Huangs shadow with his muscular arm. "I have been waiting for this!" Lin Huang smirked. Looking at the trajectory of the hunks fist, Lin Huang moved slightly and avoided the hunks seemingly deadly hit. He then got closer to the hunk and fully unleashed his level-8 Army Attack Tactics. The 96 circles of Life Power worked like a drill on the hunks tummy. "Bang!" An intense burst was created, even Lin Huang was shocked and retreated. While he retreated, he noticed there was a hole the size of a bowl in the hunks tummy. Through the hole, he could see the seats that were empty behind him. The now dead hunk fell to the ground. His dead body fading into pieces, the blood that was spilled on Lin Huangs hands and body as well as on the ring disappeared too. Lin Huang remained shocked, he did not expect his punch to be that terrifying. Although the hunk was not wearing any armor, he was still a silver-level but Lin Huang had killed him in one hit. "The combination of Army Attack Tactics and Fatal Tactics was that powerful?" Lin Huang thought it was unbelievable. "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" Hearing the notification, Lin Huang looked at his personal score. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 1" "Accumulated Points: 2" "Winning Percentage: 100%" "If I managed to kill my opponent for 10 consecutive battles in one hit, I would not only get 20 points, but 40 points!" The first battle gave Lin Huang confidence. It was normal that he was given weaker opponent in the beginning as he did not have any points yet, which made getting a winning streak easier. He started to aim higher, which was to kill his opponents in one hit. "I shall try my best to kill all of them in one hit then." Lin Huang decided. "Would you like to continue to battle?" A notification box popped up before Lin Huang. "Yes!" Lin Huang selected immediately. "The system is matching you with an opponent please wait Matching has been completed!" Soon, an opponent was sent across the ring. It was a tall lady in revealing attire. She wore black stilettos that were 30 centimeters high with black stockings pulled up to her thighs. She wore black leather panties and above that was a black leather corset which covered most of her breasts, leaving her cleavage just showing with her back, shoulders and arms revealed. She wore a black metal mask, not supplied with the system, she brought that mask along with her. Holding a black whip in her hand, she looked at Lin Huang in a snobbish manner. Lin Huang then looked at the score. "Nickname: Master Queen" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 27" "Accumulated Points: 19" "Winning Percentage: 85%" "This girl has a high winning percentage She must be powerful. Shes using a whip which is good for long-distance attacks, Ill need to get closer to her." Lin Huang was analyzing the girl from far. The lady was calm after looking at Lin Huangs score. Just when the countdown ended, when Lin Huang was making his move, the lady had her whip out. "Surrender, kid. As long as you surrender, Im sure to give you. something good" There was a charm in her voice. "Mind skills?" Lin Huang squinted his eyes and figured the lady was using some mind skills. However, as Lin Huang possessed Kaleidoscope, he was immune to the skill and he was not affected at all. Using Cloud Steps, he managed to avoid the ladys whip easily while approaching her at a lightning speed. "As long as you say I surrender, I will be sure to love you" The ladys voice was echoing in Lin Huangs ears. "You sure you want to do this?" Lin Huangs eyes became swirly as he used Kaleidoscope "Will you really love me?" The young man was always just across from the lady wherever he was. "Of course, I love such boys like you" The lady grinned, "Come, listen to me, say I surrender." "I" Just when the young man started to speak, the lady felt an intense danger was coming towards her. She planned to escape but the young mans voice came into her ear. "Your sweet dream should end now." The lady felt an immense pain in her tummy. She looked, there was a hole that was size of a bowl through her tummy. She held her head up, the young man in the silver mask was stood three meters away from her, while looking at her without an expression. Soon, the ladys body was breaking down and the blood on the ring disappeared. Lin Huang stood where he was and smirked, "I didnt know I could use other abilities here. It seems like I could use all monster skills in the battles, including sword skills and combat skills." "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" "Would you like to continue to battle?" "Yes!" Lin Huang selected immediately. "The system is matching an opponent for you Matching has been completed!" Lin Huangs third opponent was then sent to the ring 186 Level-up to Gold Hunter With the Magic Eye Deterrence, the Evil Eel stood at where it was. Its head exploded with Lin Huangs punch. Seeing the blood and brain juice that spilled all over, Lin Huang took a step back as he watched the headless body fall to the ground before it disappeared. "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" "Congratulations for 30 consecutive wins!" Lin Huang managed to win all 30 battles with only one hit each, the name Sword Genius was now known by many. Since his 20th consecutive win, people started coming to watch. On the 30th battle, they were more than 500 people surrounding ring No.188. "Would you like to continue to battle?" Lin Huang looked at the time when he saw the notification, it was 9:30 p.m. He chose to leave. His body disappeared from the ring. "Its only 9:30 p.m., why did he leave so early? Maybe he has something else to do?" "Maybe hes tired, he had been fighting for 30 battles, its normal to take a rest." "Its strange that his name is Sword Genius but I have never once seen him using a sword. All the 10 battles that I watched were close-distance attacks." "Maybe it was a random nickname, nobody says he must use a sword if his name is Sword Genius." Seeing that Lin Huang has left, the audience started discussing among themselves. After leaving the ring, Lin Huang appeared in the hall on the sixth floor of the arena. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 30" "Accumulated Points: 280" "Winning Percentage: 100%" Lin Huang took a look at his score before logging out of the game. When his conscious has returned to his body, Lin Huang closed the game page and started watching the battle videos that he had recorded. Lin Huang did not have many battle opportunities with humans before. The 30 battles allowed him to improve tremendously. He grew with each battle. However, he knew that there was still room for improvements. He watched each and every battle video and noticed that his improvements were significant. However, he also found a couple of mistakes. After watching all the videos, he watched some of the detailed parts repeatedly before concluding on his performance. "The good thing about me is that my body physique is so much more powerful than the other silver-level rank-3. My strength alone increase ten times with my superhuman strength, along with the increase of the intermediate immense strength by four times, my strength overall is 14 times more than those of the same level. It even surpassed most of the gold-level rank-3." "With the Super Robust which boosted my body physique by ten times more. My resistance and adaptation abilities are comparable with those of gold-level rank-3. Although my Absolute Defense is only at a beginner level, it could give me immunity to 50% of the attacks. Besides, Kaleidoscope enhanced my vision beyond that of regular people" "To me, these are all the biological advantages that I have.The only thing that I cannot compare with a gold-level rank-3 would be my speed. My movement, attack speed and reaction speed. My movement speed can be compensated with my body movement combat skill while my attack speed can be compensated with my Sly Hands and sword skills. My reaction speed can be increased as I battle more. My speed level is just of a normal silver-level rank-3." "In conclusion, my ability ranked the top in silver-level rank-3. Although I cant fight gold-level rank-3 players yet, I might be able to defeat gold-level rank-2 players. However, as compared to the silver-level rank-3 old timers in the arena, I lack battle experience. Looking back at the videos, I was not calm enough whenever the frequency of attacks increased. My dodging speed was not fast enough, there were also a lot of extra movements. I exposed my flaws easily and did not react timely which wasted many good opportunities to attack first. I am much weaker when it comes to mastering the battle rhythm, I was even taken advantage of during some of the battles" After analyzing his own strengths and weaknesses, Lin Huang listed them down one by one and recorded in his file on the Emperors Heart Ring while writing down the improvement plan behind it. "From tomorrow onwards, I will only do 10 battles while trying my best to improve my weaknesses! After completing the battles, I will come up with a conclusion of what I lack and improve again the next day!" Lin Huang has made his decision. It was almost 12 a.m. by the time he was done. He washed up and went to bed. Lin Huang woke up after eight the next morning. He had his breakfast after taking a shower, it was almost nine when he was done. Just when Lin Huang was ready to go into the arena, he received a message. He was stunned as he read the message. "Mr. Lin Huang, due to your outstanding performance in the assessment, you have passed through the evaluation and leveled-up to a Gold Hunter. Congratulations!" "Im a Gold Hunter now? Lin Huang just recalled Mr. Fu mentioned earlier that the Hunter Association could not enlist him in focus training anymore so it was replaced by the Gold Hunter upgrade. "Thats not bad, at least I am entitled to all the information transcendent could access" However, Lin Huang thought of another matter immediately, "Since Im now a Gold Hunter, that means I should have an upgrade in my authority in the Hunter Arena. I should be able to watch gold-level battles live now!" Lin Huang launched the Hunter Arena immediately. His logo was now gold in color. With his authority as a Gold Hunter, he could now move around from the first to the ninth floor of the Hunter Arena and watch all live battles with vacant seats. He could even watch the replay of battles of specific individuals from the seventh floor and below for free. As a Gold Hunter, he could watch all the replays of battles that were on the seventh floor and below for free. However, he would need to pay if he would like to watch the live battles gold-level from the seventh floor to the ninth floor. For the Silver Hunters, they were only entitled to watch live battles from the fourth floor and below for free. To be able to watch replay battles of the silver-level, they would need to pay as well. Lin Huang was a Copper Hunter, he could only watch the replay of battles on the first to the third floor by paying, he was not entitled to watch the battles from the fourth to the sixth floor even if he paid. However, with this upgrade, he could watch the battle replays that he wanted while absorbing the skills. He opened the silver-level leaderboard on the sixth floor and downloaded all the battle videos of the top 10 hunters. The one ranked No.10 was a young man called the Unbelievable Fate Changer, he had accumulated more than 11,000 points with a winning percentage of 68%. He had battled for more than 4,000 times and more than 1,000 of the battles were on the silver-level rank-3 floor. For the following days, Lin Huang did not battle in the arena. Instead, he watched the battle replays of the top 10 hunters. Besides watching the videos, he was taking notes. He learned quite a number of things in each battle. 11 days passed fast on the spaceship, besides eating and sleeping, Lin Huang spent all of his time researching the videos. Within the next 10 days, he only managed to watch all the battle videos of the individuals who ranked 10, Unbelievable Fate Changer and 9 Salt36. It was after four in the afternoon when the Demonic Crystal Spaceship landed in Baqi City. Lin Xin had finished school when Lin Huang arrived on the Alexandrian Eagle in Wulin Town. Lin Xin ran towards him as he returned home while shy Lin Xuan watched the both of them from the side. Lin Huang patted both their heads and brought them into the living room. He took out all of the souvenirs that he got from Baqi City. There were food and toys. After giving out the souvenirs, he then kept the food in the fridge. "Brother, why did you come back so early? I thought you said youll leave for two months? It has only been a month" Lin Xin recalled and asked. "Something happened and our assessment was suspended. Everyone got their Regular Hunter license." Lin Huang smiled. "Was it the invasion by the heretics invasion?" Lin Xin saw the news too. However, she was not sure which assessment location Lin Huang went to. Lin Huang was stunned, he nodded. "I hope you werent attacked by them?" Lin Xin was concerned. "Of course not, am I not standing in front of you?" Lin Huang smiled, he did not plan to tell Lin Xin that he had escaped death. "Those victims are so pitiful" Lin Xin was still upset. "Alright, dont think too much." Lin Huang did not want to continue with the topic. "Winter holidays will start in half a month, am I right?" "Yes, two weeks to go." Lin Xin was happy again. All the students were the same, they would forget about all their worries once school holidays were brought up. "Lets go to the Snow Ridge City after New Year, its not too far away." Lin Huang suggested. Lin Xin did not seem too keen on the idea. She wanted to go but she hesitated as she thought about the invasion. Lin Huang saw through her and patted her head, "Dont worry about it, nothing would happen this time. Im an official hunter now, I am much more powerful than before!" Lin Xin nodded. Lin Huang then looked at Lin Xuan, "Xiao Xuan, did you listen to your sister during those days when I was away?" Lin Xuan nodded immediately. "Xiao Xuan has been good. He had been eating, playing games and sleeping every day. Hes an expert in Gun Master now, he never lost once!" Lin Xin said. "Really?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. Recalling the advanced version of sword skill that Lin Xuan performed after watching Lin Huang, could he be talented with guns too?! "Did you record any videos? Show me." Lin Huang asked Lin Xin. Lin Xin nodded and sent more than 10 videos for Lin Huang. Lin Huang randomly played one of the videos. It was taken from the perspective of the gamer where he could see the entire process of Lin Xuan battling the opponents. Lin Huang was shocked as he finished the first video. Lin Xuans performance was perfect. There were no flaws in the gun skill or battle awareness, Lin Huang could not even perform some of the things that Lin Xuan managed to. After watching a couple more videos, Lin Huang was sure of one thing. Not only Lin Xuan was talented with the sword, he was also unbelievably talented with guns. "Is this kid a genius?!" 187 He’s Even More Dangerous Than Who He Was 10 Days Ago "Come here, Xiao Xuan." Lin Huang shouted waving at Lin Xuan, who then quietly walked over to Lin Huang. "Give me your hand." Lin Huang said as he extended his hand, "Let me know whenever you dont feel comfortable then I will stop." Lin Xuan nodded and placed his small hand on Lin Huangs palm. As there hands touched, there was a silver glow coming out of Lin Huangs palm, it then entered Lin Xuans body through his palm. Lin Huangs Life Power took a stroll in Lin Xuans body, there was nothing unusual and Lin Xuan did not feel any discomfort or pain. "Lin Huang watched as no reaction came from the Life Power in his body. That means hes just an ordinary person" Lin Huang could not figure out where Lin Xuans talents came from. He noticed that there was a slight exhaustion of Life Power later on. However, he did not dwell into that as he thought it was normal. "Do you feel any discomfort?" Lin Huang asked after checking his body. Lin Xuan shook his head. "Thats great, I will buy two more Gun Master rings within these two days. You will not have to take turns to play with your sister." Lin Huang patted Lin Xuans head and placed the order. Lin Xin was curious, "Brother, Xiao Xuan doesnt have an Emperors Heart Ring, he can not register an account in Gun Master. Could you get him one?" "Its okay, I will come out with something." Lin Huang nodded. He was thinking of bringing Lin Xuan to the Union Government to get him an identity. However, the process was troublesome. Moreover, he would not be able to receive his Emperors Heart Ring in such a short period of time. After ordering the Gun Master, Lin Huang called Yang Ling. Yang Ling accepted the video call immediately, he still looked as relaxed as he always was. "Hehe, do you need a second identity now?" "This time not for me, its for somebody else. I need it to be able to register with the Hunter Association, is that possible?" Lin Huang did not bother to carry out small talk with him so he asked directly. "Of course thats possible. Would you like to apply for Reserve Hunter or Regular Hunter?" Yang Ling asked. "You could even get the Regular Hunter one?" Lin Huang was surprised. "Of course, dont you know who I am." Yang Ling was proud of himself. "No matter if its Copper, Silver or Gold, I can get all of them for you." "Even focus training?" Lin Huang asked. "Thats possible, but Im not doing it." Yang Ling raised his eyebrow. "Why not? Its money." replied Lin Huang. "There are only a few candidates chosen for focus training in each division, it would be too obvious if I do that. The chance of being exposed is too high, I wouldnt want such trouble." Yang Ling said. "If you need the authority to get into the Hunter Association, I can get you an identity of an executive officer. However, the price is high." "I understand. How much would the price of Copper, Silver and Gold Hunter be?" As a traveller, Lin Huang was skeptical if Yang Lings Goldfinger was an original or not. "500 for Copper, 1,000 for Silver and 1,500 for Gold! You know very well of which currency Im talking about." Yang Ling replied while shaking his leg. Lin Huang thought about it, "Get me a Gold Hunter one." Lin Xuans situation was unique, Lin Huang planned to bring him along to the Hunter Arena to see how much he could learn from there. "Send me the name, age and photo. You could also send me a backstory that you made up as long as its not too ridiculous. If you dont send me any back stories, I will create one on my own." Yang Ling reminded, "Also, please use the usual currency of transaction." "I understand, I will send it over tomorrow as the Credit Bureau is closed now." Lin Huang nodded. "I can get it done later, which address are you staying right now?" Yang Ling asked. "The same address as before, just send it to me." Lin Huang knew Yang Ling had his address. "Oh." Yang Ling nodded, he hesitated but asked anyway, "I know this is none of my business but have you destroyed your original Emperors Heart Ring?" "Yes I have." Lin Huang nodded. "Thats great, however, I would advise you to move away from where you are staying as soon as possible." Yang Ling reminded. "I would like to but I cant get the permission to stay in B-grade and A-grade footholds" Lin Huang said casually. "I could help you with the accommodation entitlement but it isnt cheap." Yang Ling looked proud again. "Dont fool me, are you serious? They will need my identification when I purchase a house!" Lin Huang did not expect Yang Ling could even get that done. "Let me ask you, did the Emperors Heart Ring that you got from me ever fail?" Yang Ling asked him back. "Dont worry, I guarantee you that it works. I have done it at least 800 times, none of them failed." "How much is it?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "A-grade foothold ranges from hundred thousand to one million while B-grade foothold would range from ten thousand to thirty thousand. The exact price depends on which foothold you want. This doesnt even require delivery, I can get it done right now, all I need is three minutes." Yang Ling was confident in the business. "A-grade foothold is so expensive" Lin Huang was surprised at the price as the currency Yang Ling was talking about was Life Crystals. "B-grade foothold isnt cheap either" Lin Huang only had 8,000 Life Crystals at the moment. Deducting the 1,500 for the new Emperors Heart Ring for Lin Xuan, he could not even afford the accommodation in the B-grade foothold. Yang Ling seemed to notice Lin Huangs hesitation, "Since youre a regular customer, if you dont have sufficient Life Crystals now, you could pay by instalment. There would not be any interest." Lin Huang smiled in an embarrassed manner, "Thank you so much." "Which foothold are you looking at, I can get it done for you now." Yang Ling wasnt worried that Lin Huang couldnt pay right now. "I havent decided yet, the most ideal one would be the Qiantang City in the A-grade foothold. But looking at the price, I will have to put it aside." Lin Huang smiled awkwardly. "I havent decided on a property in the B-grade foothold, I shall contact you when I have decided then." "You have high standards, do you know how much the accommodation is right now for Qiantang City?" Yang Ling smirked, "800,000!" Lin Huang was shocked when he heard the price. He could only get a couple of Life Crystals for a gold-level monster from the Hunter Association. To be able to obtain 800,000, he would need to kill hundreds of thousands of gold-level monsters. "Alright then, let me know when you have decided. I shall get the Emperors Heart Ring done first. Quickly send me the details." Yang Ling hung up the phone right after he said that. Lin Huang sent Lin Xuans basic details and a photo to Yang Ling immediately. It was past six oclock in the evening when Lin Huang was done. Lin Xin had made grilled meat for Lin Xuan and the take-away had arrived. The grilled meat was cooked by the barbecue machine that Lin Huang had bought earlier, Lin Xuans meals depended on the machine as he would only eat meat. There was nothing that Lin Huang could do. Meanwhile, the take-away food was for Lin Xin and Lin Huang as they could not eat grilled meat everyday. Although delicious, it would be sickening if they were to eat that everyday. After dinner, Lin Huang returned to his room and entered the Hunter Arena. After 10 days of analyzing and learning from watching the battle replay videos, he could not wait to perform what he had learnt. He pressed the challenge button after entering the sixth floor of the arena. Soon, Lin Huang was sent onto an empty ring. Just as he was adapting to his surroundings, there were people entering the audience seats. Not only one, there were more than a hundred people. Lin Huang recognized some of them, they were the same bunch of people who watched him 10 days ago. However, the sound from the audience was isolated from the ring with the purpose that the fighters on the ring would not be affected. Lin Huang saw a couple of them were yelling at him, before he could figure out what it was they were shouting, his opponent was sent onto the ring. From the persons size, he should be a young man like Lin Huang. He was also wearing a silver mask with a silver gun on his hand. He was wearing all white, he looked like a professional. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow and checked out the opponents score. "Nickname: White Gun" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 128" "Accumulated Points: 299" "Winning Percentage: 91%" Although the number of battles was not high, his winning percentage was high. He should have outstanding abilities available. When Lin Huang was checking out his score, it was obvious that he was checking Lin Huangs too. He grinned and said to Lin Huang, "30 consecutive wins werent easy, however, its unfortunate that you encountered me today. Your winning streaks will end now." "Im afraid you will be disappointed. I dont plan to stop before winning 90 consecutive battles." Lin Huang told him his goal. "Wow, you sure are arrogant!" White Gun scoffed when he heard about Lin Huangs ridiculous goal. The countdown ended together with the end of their conversation. White Gun took the first move. Instead of moving forward like he usually did, Lin Huang remained standing wherever he was while waiting for White Gun to come to him. Seeing that he got the advantage, White Gun grinned while pointed his gun at Lin Huang. It was an outstanding gun, it was fast and stable, it aimed directly at Lin Huangs heart. His silver Life Power covered the entire gun, especially the mouth of the gun, where there was a whistling sound as the gun moved through the air. Lin Huang was impressed. The gun was above standard, this alone showed him that this opponent was stronger than the 30 opponents he had encountered before this. If this happened 10 days ago, Lin Huang would have chosen to avoid him while planning his move if he was taken advantage of. However, he was different from what he was 10 days ago. He leaped with the tip of his toe and avoided the attack. The back of his left hand collided casually on the gun. White Gun felt an intense force coming towards him, the gun on his hand almost fell. He was shocked, he held his gun tight at an instant. However, as Lin Huang approached him, he felt an immense pain on his chest. He looked down, Lin Huang was pressing two fingers on his heart. White Gun then fell on the ground and his body faded away. The audience noticed Lin Huang changed his way of battle, his vibe was completely different from 10 days ago. "Hes even more dangerous than who he was before" A young man in a golden robe commented. 188 The Keeper Of The 50th Battle After squeezing the opponents neck with three fingers, a gigantic body fell on the ground. "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" "Congratulations for 40 consecutive wins!" As he completed the 40th win, many people came to the room to watch him after hearing the notification that was announced on the sixth floor. However, all they could see was Lin Huang disappearing from the ring. Not many people managed to win 30 battles consecutively, let alone 40 battles. Those who have won 40 battles consecutively were all professionals. If someone did manage to win 50 battles consecutively, the announcement would not only be posted to the entire sixth floor but would also be played from the first to the ninth floor. In the whole of Division7. From the first floor all the way to the ninth. The number of people who have managed to win 50 battles consecutively was only in the single digits. With his mask, Lin Huang stood in the arena hall on the sixth floor to check his score. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 40" "Accumulated Points: 600" "Winning Percentage: 100%" "600 points, theres still a long way to go" Lin Huang frowned, he decided to leave the game anyway. Little did he know, that many in the audience of the ring, were still talking about him. "This Sword Genius used to fight ruthlessly, but now he completely changed. Not only was he stable, but his strategy was flawless, even his combat spirit was different than before" "Thats true, he had some flaws in his strategy before, as well as issues in his combat rhythm. Now he did not even give a chance to his opponents, he was like a lifeless killing machine." The young man in golden robe gave a short comment. "He is a changed man!" If a players account with Hunter Arena could be logged in by someone else. Many people would have thought Lin Huangs, Sword Genius account was being played by someone else instead. Having no idea that he was being discussed by many in the arena, and turning off the game. Lin Huang sat and watched the last ten battles he had fought. Although he was a couple of times better than before, he still managed to find points that he could improve on. "The blocking point was not the best angle to apply force, the effect would be better if I stepped two centimeters back The landing point from avoiding the attack was slightly too far, if I could be ten centimeters closer it would improve the precision of the counter-attack Theres some problem with the angle of this punch" Lin Huang was harsh on his own battle analysis. He wanted himself to be cleaner, more precise and faster. So that each attack would reach its maximum impact. After he was done with the analysis, Lin Huang took a look at the battle videos of the person who ranked No.1 South Palace Laugh. He only went to bed after midnight, in the early hours of the morning. The Gun Master ring arrived the next day at noon. Lin Huang gave one to Lin Xuan and kept another one for himself. However, Lin Xuan still had to use Lin Xins ring as he could not create an account yet. The Emperors Heart Ring that Lin Huang bought for him would only arrive at least a week later. For the following days, Lin Huang had been researching on the South Palace Laughs videos before entering the game again. As he pressed the challenge button, he was soon sent to a ring that was surrounded by people. Although Lin Huang could not hear the voice, he could see that there were more people than the last round. There were at least 2,000 people in the crowd and the number was increasing. However, he did not think that the people were here for him, more like the fans of his opponent. He then started to check out his opponent. He was a tanned man of 2.5 meters tall. He was half naked showing his tanned upper body with terrifying muscles. He was not considered handsome, however, he gave out a ferocious vibe. Especially his eyes, they looked crazy and dangerous. "This is a dangerous man" That was the first impression Lin Huang got when he saw his opponent, then he took a look at his score. "Nickname: Mad Tiger" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 989" "Accumulated Points: 711" "Winning Percentage: 83%" Since he had fought almost 1,000 battles, he should be an old-timer. Moreover, he managed to maintain his winning percentage at 83%, it showed that this person, was a professional. "40 consecutive wins, all were killed in one hit" Mad Tiger licked his lips after checking out Lin Huangs score. Although Lin Huang did not fight many battles, however, it was not easy that he managed to win 40 battles consecutively. Furthermore, from his score, it was not hard to tell that he managed to kill all his opponents under one hit. It had piqued Mad Tigers interest. There were more and more people in the audience, looking at both scores, they were excited about the battle. One was a powerful old-timer while another was a rookie who had never lost a battle before. Who would win?! As the countdown started, seeing Lin Huang not using his sword, Mad Tiger yelled at Lin Huang, "Since you call yourself Sword Genius, you must be an expert in sword skills then? If you dont pull out your sword now, you wouldnt have the time later." "Its alright, thanks for your reminder." Lin Huang replied. He had never denied the truth that he was an expert in sword skills, however, many were curious. "Since he said that, is he really an expert in sword skills?" "I think he has never once used any sword skills throughout the 40 battles?" "Could he be too arrogant to use his sword here?" Mad Tiger looked upset on the ring. Not only Lin Huang did not deny his sword skills, he refused to use his sword. Mad Tiger perceived that he was not worthwhile for Lin Huang to bother to use his sword on him. "Kid, your arrogance will kill you!" Lin Huang figured out why was he mad, however, he did not want to explain. He could see that although his opponent was strong if he really used his sword, it would be a sure kill for Mad Tiger. Lin Huang thought that, when encountering an opponent such as Mad Tiger, showing how much he respected him would be to fight at a close distance. Not from afar. The countdown soon ended. Leaving Mad Tiger really mad. Just as the countdown ended, he plunged towards Lin Huang like a tank. "His speed is okay, however, running in a straight line would give out his trajectory too easily. As he runs, he charges his punch. The power should be there. Maybe hes too tall, the bottom part of his body doesnt seem too stable" Lin Huang managed to see many flaws from Mad Tiger. If it was another person in the ring, they would have been scared just by his vibe, which was like a tank. His force was terrifying, he plunged right in front of Lin Huang. Fists charged aiming right at him, but at the last moment, Lin Huang avoided his attack by slightly moving his body. Mad Tiger tripped falling to the ground. Just when he wanted to get up he felt a cold wind blowing behind him. His head was pressed by an immense force, his face was crashed into the ground and crushed by the force. "Bang!" The ground of the ring cracked with gravel flying everywhere. There was a hole in the ground. Meanwhile, Mad Tigers head which was crushed to the ground was destroyed. Lin Huang then let go of his hand on Mad Tigers head. The audience''s jaws dropped when they saw Sword Genius wins! on the notice board. All they saw was Mad Tiger plunging towards Sword Genius then a quick blur as Sword Genius avoided the attack. Then again a with such speed he leaped, smashing the head of Mad Tiger into the ground. All happening within three seconds. The audience sat in silence amazed, followed by cheering and clapping. "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" Lin Huang was expressionless when he heard the announcement. The opponent was not weak at all he underestimated Lin Huang. Although the result would be similar if they do it all over again, at least the opponent would not lose in an ugly manner like he did. "This Sword Genius is getting unpredictable" The young man in the golden robe who had been watching Lin Huangs battles looked very serious. For the following battles, Lin Huang won easily. Up until the 49th battle, there was no opponent that was as powerful as Mad Tiger and after killing all his opponents in one hit, Lin Huang welcomed his 50th opponent. The 50 winning streaks was a great honor in the Hunter Arena, not many people would obtain that every year. There were less than 10 people, even combining the fighters from the first to the ninth floor. The 50 winning streaks were difficult and as the 49th battle came to an end, the system would no longer follow the usual way of matching a player, instead, it would ask the winning fighter to choose a powerful opponent as the keeper. The keeper would be chosen from those who ranked top 100 on the leaderboard. However, usually, the fighters chosen would be ranked lower than 50th. It was rare that those who were within the top 50 would be chosen as the keeper. As the system was matching the 50th opponent for Lin Huang, the audience stared at the ring without blinking. Soon, the matching was done, and a person was sent into the ring. The audience was stunned by the appearance of his opponent 189 The Appearance Of Sword Genius Across from Lin Huang, was a young man in white. He looked older than Lin Huang, about 16 or 17. He was not that tall and looked like he was 1.7 meters. His hair touched his chin, he had a small braid at the back of his head while the front was messy. However, Lin Huang had to admit that he was handsome. If he was to be placed on earth, girls would totally go after him. The most unique part about him was his small, long eyes that looked mysterious. Lin Huang noticed there was a thin, long sword on his waist. From the size of the scabbard, the sword seemed to be different from a regular sword. It could be custom made. After checking him out, Lin Huangs conclusion was this man was powerful as he could sense a dangerous vibe from this young man. It was the first time he had such feeling in the ring. He had no idea who that young man was, however, the audience seemed to know. After the young man was sent to the ring, within three seconds, the seats were all full with 10,000 people. "Who is that kid in the mask? Why would he challenge Master White?" Somebody asked. "Its not that he challenged Master White, he was chosen by the system to be the keeper of his 50th battle." Someone explained. "How is that possible?! The keeper would usually be chosen from top 50 to top 100. It would only happen two or three times, where the top 30 would be chosen, but Master White is 18th! How could he be chosen as the keeper?" Somebody found that unbelievable. "Its true, perhaps this Sword Genius is too powerful. However, the system is cruel to send Master White to be his keeper, the winning streak might end now" After checking him out, Lin Huang took a look at his score. "Nickname: Master White" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 1273" "Accumulated Points: 8761" "Winning Percentage: 98%" He had battled more than a 1,000 times with outstanding points and winning percentage. Although Lin Huang had no idea who this person was, with the number of people who were watching this match, he could tell that this person was popular on the pitch floor. "So the system is challenging me?" Lin Huang smirked as he knew at the 50th battle and above, he would be given a powerful keeper. Looking at the sword on his waist, Lin Huang did not want to risk his life. He then took out his silver-level battle sword. "The Sword Genius finally took out his sword!" Someone exclaimed, that person must have been watching Lin Huangs matches and knew that Lin Huang had never once used a sword in the battles. There were a couple of Lin Huangs past opponents among the audience. They had been watching his battles since they were defeated, including Mad Tiger and White Gun. They were upset when they saw Lin Huang pulling out his sword as that meant Lin Huang did not show them his sword skills he had in early battles. "Interesting" Seeing that Lin Huang took out his sword, Master White was not surprised. Instead, he was excited. He squinted while checking out Lin Huang. Meanwhile, Lin Huang stood wherever he was like a piece of rock without an expression. The countdown ended, Master White launched his attack. Drawing his sword out of the scabbard in a flash, within a breath, he leaped tens of meters forward and arrived right before Lin Huang. His sword was even faster than his feet, it was then pointed at Lin Huangs throat. "Thats fast!" Many in the audience thought as they watched. Some of them were concerned looking at where the sword was pointing at as they knew they would be dead if it was them in the ring instead of Lin Huang. However, the man in golden robe did not think that Lin Huang would die under that attack. The speed of attack was fast, probably faster than Lin Huang could comprehend. Master White had a gift in speed, combining this skill which grew and improved as time passed by, speed was definitely his advantage. Moreover, to increase its speed, Master White even modified the shape of his sword. It was longer, even the arc of the blade was modified to lessen the air pressure to reach its optimum speed. If this happened in the past, Lin Huangs rhythm would be affected by his speed and he might fight back with speed as well, but Lin Huang who had a disadvantage in speed would definitely be defeated. However, he was a changed man. Seeing the lightning sword coming his way, he was calm and firmly stood his ground. Just when the sword was reaching his throat, he avoided the attack with the help of cloud steps. At the same time, he swiped his battle sword at Master White and sliced him across the waist with Great Sword Scripture. He waited for that moment as he knew there was no way that Master White could avoid his attack. Even if he attacked one second earlier, Master White could change his way of attack at any time. Lin Huangs goal was to create an illusion where he did not have time to escape from Master Whites lightning speed and just when he almost got him, only he would launch his attack. Master White was shocked as he saw Lin Huang managed to avoid. He did not expect Lin Huang to escape when the tip of his sword had left a slight cut on Lin Huangs neck. However, it was too late. He was defeated by his own speed. If he was slower, he could have retreated from what Lin Huang was going to do to him. As Lin Huang avoided Master Whites sword, the silver-level battle sword sliced across his waist. He was stunned. Soon, blood was splashing with the top half of his body falling onto the ground. The audience was shocked at what they were seeing. The Master White who ranked 18th on the leaderboard was sliced in half! It was shocking to all of them. When they saw Sword Genius won! on the noticeboard, only then they realized that they were not dreaming. What they saw on the ring was real! Master White was defeated in one hit! "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" Lin Huang remained expressionless when he saw the notice. Soon, a different announcement came from the system. "Congratulations player Sword Genius defeated keeper Master White on the sixth floor of the arena and won 50 consecutive battles!" "Congratulations player Sword Genius defeated keeper Master White on the sixth floor of the arena and won 50 consecutive battles!" "Congratulations player Sword Genius defeated keeper Master White on the sixth floor of the arena and won 50 consecutive battles!" The voice sounded like an old person, it was different from the ladys voice from previous announcements. It only stopped after repeating for three times. 50 winning streaks were different from other winning streaks as the announcement could be heard not only on the sixth floor but from the first to the ninth floor as well. All the players in Division7 could hear it. Hearing the different announcement, Lin Huang frowned while touching the wound on his neck. He then left the ring and returned to the hall on the sixth floor. Watching the screen playing the scene where he sliced Master Whites waist, he was speechless. He knew that Master White would hate him if he was to see this. He shook his head and looked at his score. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 50" "Accumulated Points: 1240" "Winning Percentage: 100%" "Honor: 50 consecutive wins!" There was an honor added to his scoreboard and it was glowing in gold. It was sparkling and caught manys attention. Lin Huang turned off the projection and left the arena. After leaving the arena, he downloaded his own battle videos. After watching from the beginning to the end, he watched the match between him and Master white repetitively. The more he watched, the more he frowned. He was not satisfied with his own performance. "It seems like I took a risky move, it was not the best move that I have. If the person had the skill to speed up or extend the length of his sword, I would be dead in the battle. I did not think it through, there are other better ways of confronting him" After concluding his mistakes, Lin Huang wrote down the strategies that he would have taken. Later, he switched on the arena and found Master White on the leaderboard. "18th!" Lin Huang only just found out that Master White who he had just killed ranked so high on the leaderboard. However, he did not dwell on it while downloading all the battle videos of Master White on the silver-level rank-3 arena. He wanted to see how did the others defeated him, perhaps he could find other strategies that he had never thought before. Even if he did not explore more strategies, watching the videos could benefit him where he could apply strategies when encountering opponents who had lightning speed. 190 Two Packages It was past 12, midnight when Lin Huang turned off the videos. As he was ready to take a shower, he noticed the bed not far away from him. There was a light silver glow flowing on Lin Xuans body. The glow was insignificant, and it could not be seen when there was light. If Lin Huang did not look correctly, he would have missed it. "Is that Life Power?" Lin Huang thought it was unbelievable as he had just checked on Lin Xuan during the day, which he found out that there was no Life Power in Lin Xuans body. However, the Life Power was growing on the surface of his body when he was sleeping. In fact, it was the silver Life Power of a silver-level player. Lin Huang could even sense that the Life Power was similar to his. He then recalled that the exhausted feeling he got from his Life Power when he was checking on Lin Xuan was a little odd. "Perhaps this kid absorbed a portion of my Life Power and is cultivating his own?" Lin Huang guessed. If he were not a traveler, he would not have imagined such possibility. After washing himself, Lin Huang didnt head straight to bed. Instead, he was looking at some videos while watching Lin Xuan occasionally. Lin Xuan was in a deep sleep that night, the Life Power on his body was growing stronger. It finally stopped building when it was on the same level as the silver-level. It then faded away as if it had never appeared before. On the next morning, Lin Xuan saw that Lin Huang was up when he got out of bed. He did not know that Lin Huang had not slept at all that night. Seeing that Lin Xuan had woken up, Lin Huang immediately asked: "Did you feel any discomfort last night?". Lin Xuan shook his head in doubt. He did not understand why did Lin Huang had asked such a question. "Come here, give me your hand." Lin Huang waved to him. Although he was doubtful, Lin Xuan walked to Lin Huang in his pajamas. He then put his hand on Lin Huangs palm. Soon, Lin Huangs Life Power flowed into Lin Xuans body. This time, once the Life Power entered, Lin Huang could sense that Lin Xuan was now a silver-level rank-3 with a mighty Life Power. His Life Power was neither weaker nor stronger than Lin Huangs. "I knew it!" After releasing Lin Xuans hand, Lin Huang confirmed that Lin Xuan had cloned his Life Power and cultivated it on his own. Lin Xuan was gifted; if a travelers Goldfinger was a conduit in this world, then Lin Xuans body itself would be a powerful conduit. "If he could clone my Life Power, he might be able to clone the Life Power of a gold-level person. Not sure if he had any skills in cloning, if he did, he could level-up to transcendent or even demigod from an ordinary person" Lin Xuans origin was getting more and more mysterious, and Lin Huang was concerned. "We must move away as soon as possible!" It was the weekend, and Lin Huang went to the Credit Bureau early in the morning to transfer 1,500 Life Crystals to Yang Ling. When he got home, he called out to Lin Xin. "Xin Er, shall we move to a B-grade foothold?" Lin Huang asked while smiling. "But the accommodation rights of a B-grade foothold" Lin Xin knew without the right permissions. She would not be able to continue her studies. "I have my way to obtain the accommodation. We will leave during the winter holiday. Lets decide on which B-grade foothold we would like to live in. The safety is much higher than D-grade footholds such as Wulin Town. I wont be as worried whenever I need to leave home." Lin Huang kept quiet about the real reason he wanted to move. "Then Ill do the school application with my headmaster in a couple of days." Lin Xin did not ask further. The sudden request surprised her but she knew Lin Huang had his reasons and she decided to trust him. She looked around the house, "Brother if we move away, must we sell the house?" "Were not selling the house since we wont be able to sell it off in such a short period, we dont need the money anyway. The house will stay, it could be our holiday resort." Lin Huang never planned to sell the house. "Sure!" Lin Xin felt better again when she heard they were not selling the house. "However, you wont be able to see your friends at school anymore." Lin Huang empathized with her. "Its alright. Its not like we are never coming back to this town." Lin Xin had an open mind, "Besides, even if we didnt move away. After I graduated in half a year, everyone would leave anyway. We wouldnt be able to see each other often, so it really doesnt matter." "Alright then. Lets settle your school application within these few days before the winter holiday. I will book the ticket, and we shall leave during the holiday. Lets not go to Snow Ridge City, lets go to Winter City in the B-grade foothold. If we like it, we shall stay there. If not, we could see other B-grade footholds after watching the snow." Lin Huang had done up the preliminary arrangement. Lin Xin nodded immediately; she was a girl who loved snow. Winter was her favorite season, and she was excited when she heard they might be staying in Snow City. For the following days, Lin Huang gave Lin Xuan his Gun Masters account. Lin Xuan did not have any opponents anymore in the normal zone, many of his battle videos were uploaded to the network as learning material. Now that he had Life Power, he could enter the exclusive zone for a hunter. That was why Lin Huang gave him his personal account. Meanwhile, he proceeded to evaluate Master Whites battle videos to come up with a strategy to combat opponents who were expert in speed like him. Through the videos, he had learned many battle experiences and concluded some strategies that were suitable for him. Five days soon passed by, with the Silvertongue Bird arriving at their doorstep in the morning. "There are packages for you, Mr. Lin Huang!" After feeding the bird a bunch of sweets, the bird dropped two packages from its feather. There was a package that was the size of a fist; Lin Huang figured that must be the Emperors Heart Ring that was sent by Yang Ling. Meanwhile, the other box was 30 centimeters tall and wide. After moving two boxes into the room, Lin Huang opened the box that was the size of a fist first. It was covered with layers of shockproof materials. It was a silver-colored Emperors Heart Ring. He called out to Lin Xuan immediately and passed the ring to him. He then taught Lin Xuan how to activate the ring as well as creating an account for him in the Gun Master. After Lin Xuan went back upstairs, Lin Huang looked at the unfamiliar box. Skeptical, he opened the top of the box. He was surprised to see what was inside. It was a black jar, the pattern on the jar was simple. Lin Huang recognized it was the jar which Scarface used to contain his ashes when he was watching as the Specter in the Purple Crow. He opened the cover of the jar; it was empty. The deceiving effect from the card had worn off. Lin Huang frowned and broke the jar. He then carried the box out and tossed them into the rubbish in together with the jar pieces. 191 Danger Is Coming After the 50-win-streak, Lin Huang had not been to the Hunter Arena for a couple of days. During that few days, the Hunter Arena was crowded. It was close to the New Year, and Lin Huang was the fourth person who managed to win 50 consecutive battles this year. Not only that, he had completed all 50 fights in one hit. The name Sword Genius had spread around. In the Hunter Arena, there were only a couple of them who managed to achieve 50 consecutive wins every year. However, the last person who managed to kill all 50 opponents in one hit was 11 years ago. The person was now a transcendent as well as the executive office of a major organization. Another unique point was that it was the first time the Hunter Arena had someone in top 20 to be the keeper of the 50th battle. The most powerful keeper they had from the first floor all the way to the ninth was the person ranked 33rd, none of them were before No.30. What Lin Huang had encountered was a first time even for other players. The name Sword Genius was now a hot topic. Many were trying to guess who Sword Genius really was. Many of them speculated that Lin Huang was a member of the military in the Union Government as most of them could tell that he was using Fatal Tactics. The combination of Fatal Tactics and Army Attack Tactics was a movement skill often used by the military. It was common for people from the Union Government''s military to battle in the Hunter Arena as many of them held a hunter license. Some of them figured Lin Huang could be a member of royalty and he used Fatal Tactics to cover his real identity. For his sword skill, as he had only used it once, the people could not tell which sword skill he was using. All they knew was, his sword skill was ridiculously good. They could not get any clues from that one attack. However, not everyone was happy to see Lin Huangs fame, including Master White who was defeated by Lin Huang a couple of days ago. Many in the Hunter Arena knew who Master White was, he was the third son of a royal family. He was also one of the heirs of the throne. Master White had lost more than once in battle before. However, he was oddly unhappy to be defeated by Lin Huang. Master White was not only defeated, but the scene of him being killed was repeatedly played on the big screen on the sixth floor. Although he managed to get the video to stop playing on the days he was around, but many had seen the video as well as spent money to download the video. There were a couple million downloads so far. "Show me who this kid is." Master White had found an information trafficker on the arena hall. Soon, the trafficker came back, "His personal details were locked by the Hunter Association management. All I know is that he is a Gold Hunter." "Gold Hunter?" Master White thought it was strange. Of course, he knew that Lin Huang was not a gold-level as he could sense his aura. Besides, everyone here entered the arena with their conscious, where there was no way that they could cover their abilities. Nobody could escape the system scanning you, and since Lin Huang was sent to the sixth floor, that meant he was only a silver-level rank-3. To be able to get a Gold Hunter license with silver-level rank-3 ability, it meant the Hunter Association had confirmed that he had the ability to kill gold-level monsters. The Hunter Association had a basic standard for evaluating hunters. They would not give out a license just like that. "Theres no way at all? I could pay you more." Master White said to the trafficker. "Theres no way, even an executive officer could not see his personal details, we cant even get his real name." The trafficker shook his head, "It would be the same even if you look for someone else, his identity has been covered on purpose." "Does that mean this Sword Genius knows the executive officers of the Hunter Association?" Master White frowned. Lin Huang did not know what happened in the arena. He had no idea that Mr. Fu got Old Li to lock Lin Huangs details. Old Li did what he said, which made it impossible for Master White to find out who Lin Huang was. However, Master Whites appearance as a keeper kept Lin Huang alert. "They sent No.18 as the keeper on the 50th battle, that means the keeper in the future would rank even higher. If the system wanted to, it could even give me a keeper in the top 10" Lin Huang had decided to watch all battle videos of the top 10 battles before going into the fights again. He did not want his winning streak to end, as once it ended, everything had to start from scratch again. He was only given two months to finish his mission, he did not have much time. For the following days, besides eating and sleeping, Lin Huang spent his time evaluating the videos. What he did not know was that danger was coming to him. Two young men in gray coats left the spaceship at the central plaza of Baqi City. "Hong Ming, this is our first mission ever, since we left the training camp. If we had any misunderstandings in the training camp, we have to let it go. Focus on completing the mission together. We shall talk about that in the future!" The shorter man said to the taller man. "What could happen? Were just here to get a girl that was not even an iron-level, how could we fail?" The tall man who was named Hong Ming glared at the shorty. "Ren Yan, werent you all heroic in the training camp? Why are you such a sissy now?" "What sissy, its called being cautious!" Ren Yan shouted at him. "How is that necessary, were both gold-level reserve members of the Purple Crow. The girl, Lin Xin is only 14 this year, she hasnt even graduated Hunter Reserve College. She couldn''t even be an iron-level. Do you think it would be difficult to get her?" The mission was nothing to Hong Ming. "If we complete the mission quick, we would have one week to relax around this foothold. The girl is the perfect age to" Hong Ming licked his lips. "Please dont mess around if you dont want to die, the seniors want the girl. If something goes wrong, its you who will take the blame, dont involve me." Ren Yan frowned while looking at Hong Ming. "Behave yourself, or else I would chop off your dick!" "Why are you angry? Oh yeah, what is the name of the town, the girl is staying again?" Hong Ming asked. "Wulin Town." Ren Yan had stopped a passing monster car. Hong Ming followed too. "Where are the both of you heading to?" The old man driving the monster car asked. "The Eagle Station!" Ren Yan said. "Sure!" The old man could tell that they were both unfriendly. He did not talk further, instead drove straight to the Eagle Station in silence. After they were dropped off, Ren Yan and Hong Ming rented an eagle each and headed to Wulin Town 192 Reason For The Purple Crows Presence While Lin Huang was taking down notes from the videos on the couch, someone knocked on the door. "Who could it be?" Lin Huang frowned. As he and Lin Xin were orphans, nobody had ever visited their home during the six months they had arrived in this world. He had only seen his neighbors, but they had never visited each other before. Lin Xins friends had visited once or twice. However, Lin Xin was at school, and it was impossible that it was her friends. With much doubt, Lin Huang opened the door. Seeing the two men in gray coats, Lin Huang had his guard up. They were obviously not Lin Xins friends. He could smell the blood from their bodies, a smell people had when they killed many others. Lin Huang had officially joined the Purple Crow. He could tell that both of them were reserve members in an instant. However, all the gold-level staff were wearing this uniform in the training camp, that was why he could not tell who the two men were. "Who are you looking for?" Lin Huang asked. Both of them were stunned, as they were expecting a girl but a young man opened the door. They could even sense that Lin Huang was silver-level. Ren Yan snapped out of it at an instant and asked, "May I know if Lin Xin stays here?" Lin Huang heart sank when he heard they were coming for Lin Xin. "I think you guys are at the wrong house. She stays in the house at the next unit." Lin Huang pointed at a block that was not far away. "Isnt this the address? Could I have mistaken the address?" Ren Yan searched for the address in the note that he jotted down in his Emperors Heart Ring. Just when the both of them looked down, Bai appeared behind them. When they found out, Bais wings transformed into two blades strangling their necks. Lin Huang smirked, "Lets talk inside my home." "Hey, you must know that were from the Purple Crow. We dont know who you are, but if you offend the Purple Crow, you would be in great trouble!" Hong Ming yelled. Ren Yan gave a deadly stare in Hong Ming''s direction. They should not be revealing who they were. "Purple Crow?" Lin Huang frowned, he did not expect the Purple Crow to come here for him. He thought he had covered everything up, nobody from the Purple Crow should know that he was still alive. It was strange that the both of them were here for Lin Xin. "Come in. I have some questions for you." Lin Huang opened his door. As they were held hostage by Bai, they had to obey what Lin Huang said. Lin Huang shut his door, sat on the couch while looking at both of them, who stood in front of the coffee table. Bai was standing behind them, as soon as he used even the slightest of force, both of their heads would be chopped off in an instant. "Dont waste your time. We will not tell you anything." As Lin Huang was checking them out, Ren Yan took the lead and said that. He did not want Hong Ming to reveal anything more about them. "Really? I''ll show you how I make people tell me things then." Lin Huang smirked. Suddenly, the Ghastly Clown appeared next to him. "This clown" The both of them were shocked when they saw the Ghastly Clown. The Ghastly Clown appeared in Daxi City earlier. It was the same territory of the Purple Crow. The regular members were not the only people who knew but many reserve members knew about this incident and what the clown looked like as well. Although the gold-level Ghastly Clown seemed slightly different now, they could still recognize it. "Ghastly Clown, lets ask this big guy first." Lin Huang said. The Ghastly Clown grinned while nodding. A mask of Hong Mings face formed in its hand. As it placed the mask on its face, Hong Mings eyes went blank. "Your name, age?" "Hong Ming, 21 years old," answering without any expression. "Which organization are you from? Whats your identity?" "Im from the Purple Crow. I just graduated from the training camp a month ago. Im a Purple Crow reserve member." Ren Yan was shocked, "Hong Ming, what are you doing? Wake up!" Bais wing transformed into a hand and covered Ren Yan''s mouth to stop him from talking. "Theres no use if you yell. Even if we killed him, he wouldn''t wake up." Lin Huang glared at Ren Yan. Lin Huang then looked at Hong Ming again, "Tell me a secret that nobody knows." "When my sister was 13, I raped and killed her. After I dismembered her dead body, I buried her body parts in my neighbors yard. Nobody knew I did it. After the body parts were found, my neighbor was sentenced to death by the Union Government" Lin Huang frowned as he heard the dark story. Hong Ming was obviously not someone good. Ren Yan found that unbelievable. Not the fact that Hong Ming killed his sister, but that Lin Huang managed to ask something like that. That would mean Lin Huang could be able to get everything and anything he wanted to know from Hong Ming. "What is your mission this time?" After confirming that the Grimace Clown had absolute control over them, Lin Huang asked what he wanted to ask. "To bring back a girl named Lin Xin from Wulin Town." Hong Ming answered expressionlessly. "Why is that so?" Lin Huang could not understand. "It was said that Lin Xins brother is a powerful Imperial Censor who has a double mutated monster. He used to be one of us. However, he died in an accident. As Imperial Censor genes were inherited, the Purple Crow suspected that Lin Xin had the genes of an Imperial Censor as well so they wanted us to bring her back to train her." Lin Huang did not know that Hong Zhuang asked Lu Xuan and Scarface to find another Imperial Censor within a year. They could not find any while Scarface recalled Lin Huang having a sister. So both the men were sent here to bring Lin Xin back. "What do you guys know about Lin Xins brother?" Lin Huang asked. "We dont know much, we only know that the management loves him and hes a genius who can control a double mutated monster. However, he was killed in an accident." It was obvious that Hong Ming did not know about Lin Huang. "What do you know about Lin Xin?" Lin Huang was concerned. "Shes just an ordinary person, shes means almost nothing to the organization." Lin Huang frowned at Hong Mings answer. After a couple more questions, Lin Huang nodded to Bai. A red glow flashed and Hong Mings head was chopped off. However, no blood came out of the wound at all and it seemed like it was being absorbed by something. Meanwhile, the wings glowed. Ren Yan was shocked at what he just saw. Seeing that Hong Mings dead body fell on the ground, Lin Huang then looked at Ren Yan. Bai let go of his wing that was covering his mouth. "You You are Lin Xins brother You didn''t die!" Ren Yan could tell that Lin Huangs identity from the conversation he had with Hong Ming. "You are right, but theres no reward for you." Lin Huang nodded at the Ghastly Clown. A new mask appeared on the Ghastly Clowns hand, and it was the face of Ren Yan. "Its the one that invaded Daxi City" Ren Yan looked at Lin Huang in fear, "How is this possible, who are you?" The Ghastly Clown put the new mask on its face, Ren Yans eyes became blank. "Your name and age?" "Ren Yan, 19." "Which organization are you from? What is your identity?" "Purple Crow, reserve member" "How many family members do you have?" Lin Huang would always ask something private to make sure that he had the full control of the person. "Mother and brother" Lin Huang asked the questions that he asked Hong Ming and got the same answers from Ren Yan. However, he added a couple more questions. "You believe you have a due date for this mission, when is the due date?" "We arrived much earlier than expected, and we still have a week left. We have to capture Lin Xin within a week and contact our senior that we have captured Lin Xin." Ren Yan explained. "What happened if you do not report after the due date? What will Purple Crow do to you?" Lin Huang asked. "That''ll mean the mission has failed. If our senior cannot get in touch with us, it would mean that we''re dead and the mission difficulty has been upgraded. The organization would then send more reserve members to join the mission in order to figure out what had happened. They would then know when they should send the official members." Lin Huang frowned. Soon, the mask on the clown faded. Just when Ren Yan was gaining conscious, there was another mask appeared on Lin Huangs hand. He then placed the mask on his face. Ren Yan was only a gold-level rank-1, Lin Huang could still control him with the mask. After the mask faded from the clown, Lin Huang took over. "Call your senior!" Lin Huang instructed immediately. Ren Yan did what he asked. After the phone was connected, Lin Huang heard a voice that he was familiar with. It was Scarface. "Ren Yan, has the mission been completed?" "Yes, its been completed and I''ve booked a ticket back next week." Lin Huang got Ren Yan to reply exactly the way he wanted. "You managed to complete your mission a week ahead of schedule. Thats great!" "You trained me well, master." Ren Yan said. "Alright then. Come back immediately, dont waste any of your time!" Scarface seemed to be impatient. "Yes!" After the phone hung up, Lin Huang was still upset although the phone call gave him one more month. He then nodded to Bai and the red blade chopped off Ren Yan''s head. His head separated from his neck without so much as a single drop of blood. Lin Huang then summoned the Viridian Wolf to eat both of the corpses. Once the Viridian Wolf finished eating, Lin Huang quickly recalled it 193 Leaving Wulin Town After settling the two dead bodies of the Purple Crow members, Lin Huang frowned. Lin Xin could not use her identity anymore or else the Purple Crow would come to look for her again if the both of them did not return after a month. No matter which foothold they were going to, Lin Xin couldn''t use her identity to book tickets. If she did, the Purple Crow could easily discover her. Lin Huang then called Yang Ling. Yang Ling picked up his call while yawning. He looked tired. "So have you decided on which foothold you''re going to stay at?" "No, I''d like to order a new Emperors Heart Ring from you." Lin Huang wanted to get Lin Xin a new identity. "Helping your friend again?" Yang Ling did not find that odd. "I guess you can say that." Lin Huang nodded. "No problem, which one would you like?" "The one that costs 100 Life Crystal will be alright." Lin Xin would still have to study at the Hunter Reserve College for half a year and take the graduation assessment before furthering her studies in the prestige school. There was no need for her to use a hunter identity, she only needed the one suitable for an ordinary person. Yang Ling nodded, "Same thing. Send me the name, age, and photo." "Do I send it to the usual address?" "No, please send it to Snow City, I''ll pick it up myself." Lin Huang had his own arrangement. "I will send you the details later, after five oclock." "Sure." Yang Ling did not ask further. "Oh yeah, can you make fake school transfer applications as well?" Lin Huang asked. "Hardly, but its a simple process. Let me know which school you want to transfer to and I''ll make one for you for free since its cheap." Yang Ling was generous. "Thank you then. I will send both sets of information to you t around five oclock." After some hesitation, Lin Huang decided to ask Yang Ling about something that was on his mind, "Theres something that I''d like to ask you" "Do tell." Yang Ling frowned before nodded. "I escaped from the Purple Crow by faking my death. If they found out that Im still alive, will they have ways to find me?" Lin Huang decided to tell Yang Ling the truth. "Theoretically, Im not supposed to intervene in the personal problems of my customers. Im just the one creating fake identities for them. However, since your question is within my field of professionalism and youre my regular customer, I''ll answer you this one time. As long as you do not guard the privacy of your personal details, they can find you in many ways. There are only two ways to prevent that. One is to avoid from appearing in places that require you to scan your identity. Another would be to tighten the security settings for the privacy of your personal details. Lin Huang frowned as he listened but decided to ask, "Which level of privacy is safe enough?" "You''ll need at least a senior executive officers rank or be on the intensive training list with the Hunter Association because the privacy setting is the same setting that senior executive officers use." "Can you do that from your side?" Lin Huang asked while he frowned. "I cant do it" Yang Ling shook his head. "There''s only a limited number of ways to get into intensive training or become a senior executive officer in any division. The Hunter Associations system would conduct spot checks every year. You''ll be exposed easily. I suggest you use your fake identity after you''ve moved away." "Is there no other way?" Lin Huang did not want to give up. "From my experience, theres no other way." Yang Ling shook his head while he opened a page in front of Lin Huang, "Let me show you. Your identity is ranked under the regular rank in the Hunter Association. I could easily hack into the system or the Union Governments system to get your personal details" Just when Yang Ling was ready to show Lin Huang, he realized that he could not find anything about him, "Eh, what happened?" "Whats wrong?" Lin Huang did not understand what Yang Ling wanted to show him with the blank page. "Hold on" After a couple of attempts, Yang Ling still could not find anything about Lin Huang. Later on, he finally found Lin Huangs details after using a unique technique. He then looked at Lin Huang, "Hey, were you listed in the intensive training list?" "No." Lin Huang shook his head, "Im just a Gold Hunter, I did not pass the final review for intensive training." "That means somebody did something to your privacy settings." Yang Ling was sure, "Your privacy has been upgraded to that of a senior executive officer''s rank. People below that rank will not be able to access your details. It has been done officially as well and the person who applied this setting for you was Li Mingzheng. I didnt know that you had such a powerful background." "Who is this Li Mingzheng? Why did he upgrade my privacy rank?" Lin Huang thought it was strange, but soon, he thought of his master Mr. Fu, "Perhaps master got somebody to do it?" Lin Huang thought about it again, that was the only possibility. Although Mr. Fu was not a member of the Hunter Association, from the assessment, it was apparent that he was close to the Hunter Association. To protect Lin Huang, he got the association to protect his privacy. He was the only one who would do that. "That means I dont have to be worried that the Purple Crow could find me?" Lin Huang asked. "That right. With your privacy rank now, theres no need to worry. In the Hunter Association, only senior executive officers or people who''re ranked higher than them could gain access to your details. Outsiders, Union Government included, cannot get access unless they get an approval from Li Mingzheng." Yang Ling nodded. "You got through, are you sure others will not be able to get access?" Lin Huang was skeptical. "Heh. It''s different for me, my case is unique. Dont worry, outsiders won''t be able to access your personal details unless the Purple Crow has a spy who''s ranked at the senior executive level or higher. Else, they''d never find you." Yang Ling gave Lin Huang a firm answer. Lin Huang had no idea that his privacy ranking was so high. "Alright then, I''ll trust you. Thanks!" "If thats all, I''ll hang up now. Send over the details of the new identity and school transfer application as soon as you can." "That will be all. I''ll send both to you later." Replied Yang Ling. Lin Huang felt a deep sense of relief after the phone call ended. It was after five oclock in the evening when Lin Xin came back from school. "Xin Er, bring your stuff. We''re leaving Wulin Town tonight." Lin Huang said to Lin Xin just as she entered. "I thought we''d only leave a week later? I didnt even have a chance to speak to my teacher yet" Lin Xin was shocked. "I have gotten my friend to apply for the school transfer for you. We need to leave today." After some hesitation, Lin Huang told Lin Xin, "I offended the Purple Crow earlier. They sent somebody here looking for us, and I killed them. If we dont leave now, there''ll be more people coming for us" "Purple Crow... From the underworld?" Lin Xin was shocked when she heard what Lin Huang said. Lin Huang nodded, "Thats the real reason why we need to move away, I didnt expect them to come so soon." "Ill go upstairs to pack my stuff then." Lin Xin sensed the urgency and went upstairs. Lin Huang headed to his room as well. After briefing Lin Xuan, he began to pack his belongings up. He spent half an hour to get things done and managed to bring along Lin Xuans stuff as well. Lin Xuan didn''t have a lot of things to pack. It was mainly clothes and shoes as well as toys and gifts given to him by Lin Huang and Lin Xin. Lin Huang then went to the balcony on the fourth floor and took the barbecue machine with him. As he walked down, he shut all the doors and windows. When he arrived on the first floor, he grabbed everything he needed. 10 minutes later, Lin Xin had finally finished. Seeing Lin Xin coming down, Lin Huang said, "Xin Er, transfer all your stuff into my Emperors Heart Ring. You cant use your ring anymore or the Purple Crow will be able to track you." "But there are so many credit points I could spend" Lin Xin didn''t want to waste any of the credit points she had. "Thats nothing, silly. The Purple Crow will find out know if you do a transfer, I can make that small amount of credits in your account in just one day." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. Lin Xin then placed the stuff on the couch and coffee table and Lin Huang put them away into his storage space. After everything was stored, Lin Xin took off her Emperors Heart Ring with a heavy heart and gave it to Lin Huang. After all, she had been wearing it since the day she came to this world. Lin Huang, on the other hand, did not have any feelings towards the ring. He tossed it on the floor and crushed it. After throwing the pieces away into the rubbish bin, the three of them left the house. Lin Xin took a good last look at their home while Lin Huang closed the door, shaking his head. He then threw a couple of trash bags into the rubbish bin at the entrance. Lin Huang turned around to look at the luxurious four-story house. He then summoned the Viridian Wolf, and the three of them headed to the east gate. "Brother, where are we going?" Lin Xin just realized that she had no idea where they were heading. "Lets head to Li City in foothold No.7C88." After contacting Yang Ling, Lin Huang had made all the arrangements. "Li City? I know its not safe in Baqi City, but this foothold is even further away from foothold No.7C86 and No.7C89!" Lin Xin could not understand. "Yes, its further but safer. It''ll take us three days to fly there so we''ll have to stay in the wild for two days." Lin Huang explained briefly. Minutes later, they arrived outside the east gate. Lin Huang unloaded their belongings and recalled the Viridian Wolf and summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. He placed two seats on the eagles back and got Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to ride on it. They headed Li City''s direction... 194 Arriving In Snow City After spending three nights in the wild zone, Lin Huang finally brought Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to foothold No.7C88 - Li City. Lin Huang used Lin Xuan, Ye Xiu and his own identity to purchase the tickets. He even chose rooms on different floors. The Purple Crow did not know about the existence of Lin Xuan and Ye Xiu was still unknown to anyone. Meanwhile, outsiders could not even identify Lin Huang. Even if the Demonic Crystal Spaceship''s network got hacked, they could not gain access to Lin Huangs identity and purchase history. They wouldn''t be able to find Lin Huangs name. Their spaceship would depart three days later, the three of them could take a good rest during that period. It was torture for Lin Xin to stay in the wild zone earlier. After picking a hotel near the plaza where the spaceship docked, Lin Huang used Ye Xius identity to register the room. He then brought the both of them in. It was a suite with three bedrooms where each of them could get one bedroom of their own. Lin Huang was relieved. While staying in the hotel, he finally got the time to reevaluate the battle videos. Meanwhile, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan tried not to head outside and they would only order takeaway food. During the three days in Li City, they only went out with Lin Huang twice. On the fourth morning, the spaceship landed on the plaza. After breakfast; Lin Huang brought the both of them to board the spacecraft. He passed Ye Xius Emperors Heart Ring to Lin Xin, the three of them boarded the spaceship successfully. The non-VIP rooms in the spaceship only had one living room and one bedroom. Lin Xin slept in the bedroom on her own while Lin Huang moved the small bed for children out for Lin Xuan; Lin Huang slept on the couch in the living room. It would take 16 days to arrive in Snow City from Li City, and it would be New Years Eve when they finally got there. During the 16 days on the spaceship, Lin Huang immersed himself in the battle videos. However, he didn''t enter the arena. Concerned about Lin Xin and Lin Xuan; he couldn''t get into the mood for a battle. Meanwhile, Lin Xuan did not know what was happening while he immersed himself in Gun Master. Ever since he gotten his account access into the exclusive zone for hunters; he was even more enthusiastic in playing the game as he would always encounter a professional that he could learn from. Besides eating and sleeping, he spent all his time in the game. Although Lin Xin was aware that trouble was coming to them, she chose to trust Lin Huang. She spent most of the time on her homework as she knew the learning standard in a B-grade foothold would be higher than a D-grade foothold. Her result in the Hunter Reserve College was outstanding, but it would not be easy to attain the same results at a school in a B-grade foothold. During the 16 days; Lin Huang managed to watch all the battle videos of players ranked from 6th to 3rd. He could have observed and learned more, but the spaceship landed safely in Snow City as expected even when it was snowing outside. After getting off the ship; Lin Huang brought the both of them to the delivery company to pick up the package from Yang Ling before checking into the hotel. Lin Xins new identity was Ling Xue; she gave herself that name. Coming up with the backstory of being an aboriginal from Snow City. Lin Xin was cheerful wearing her new Emperors Heart Ring while watching the snow falling from the sky. Lin Xuan looked just as happy watching the snowflakes fall to the window. It seemed like it was his first time seeing snow. "Alright, stop blocking the way you two. If we stay here, there will still be many chances in the future for both of you to look at snow." Lin Huang got them to walk faster to the hotel. When they entered the hotel room, the both of them ran straight to the balcony and refused to go back in. "You guys can stay here to watch the snow, just dont catch a cold." Lin Huang then placed a sweater on both of them and returned to the living room. Looking at the falling snow from the transparent window, Lin Huang was stunned. It had been years since Lin Huang had last seen snow like this. He studied at the Northeastern University; had never returned to the place since he graduated. The sound of boiling water woke him up from his nap. "Are you guys done? Come inside and drink some hot tea!" he told the two kids. He took three cups from the side along with the tea leaves; making three cups of tea. The two of them ignored Lin Huang and remained on the balcony; gazing at the snow. "If the both of you refuse to come in, Ill have to make you! Three, two" Lin Xin and Lin Xuan returned to the living room almost immediately, taking the tea from Lin Huang and sitting on the couch warming their hands with the hot drink. Moments later, Lin Xin took a sip of the tea when it was not so hot anymore. "Brother, I like it here. Lets stay in Snow City!" Lin Huang smiled, he did not expect Lin Xin to have such a great impression on the city and decide so quickly. "Xiao Xuan, your sister likes it here. What about you?" Lin Huang then looked at Lin Xuan. "Its good." Lin Xuan nodded immediately. He seemed to be mesmerized by the snow. "Alright then, so this is it. We shall stay in Snow City!" Lin Huang nodded. Seeing that Lin Xin and Lin Xuan ran to the balcony again after sipping their tea, Lin Huang went into the room and called Yang Ling. He was the same man who looked like he had not slept for days with bed hair and clothes that resembled a homeless person. "So have you received the stuff that I sent you?" Yang Ling asked while yawning. "Yes, I just got it thanks!" Lin Huang nodded. Although Yang Ling looked clumsy, he was trustworthy. "What else do you need from me? Have you decided on which foothold you''d like to stay at?" Yang Ling asked. "I''ve decided yes, Snow City it is." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "How much would that be?" "Snow City is good. Its considered one of the hottest tourists spots during the winter season. It''ll be 16,000 but if you can pay me the full amount, I can give it to you at 15,000. If you''d like to pay by installment, you''ll need to pay the full amount but there won''t be any interest." Yang Ling told Lin Huang directly without beating around the bush. "I''ll pay for it by installment then since I dont have much on hand." Lin Huang felt helpless as he had never bought anything by installments before. Even when he had a credit card on earth, he would always pay whatever he''d spent at once without any delay. However, he had no choice this time. "Sure, Ill send it to you once I get it later. Since the sum is quite significant, try to pay me every month and I''ll give you 12 months to pay it off." Yang Ling did not even bother to come up with a contract with Lin Huang and hung up the phone. Three to five minutes later, Lin Huang received a message without any words but only an attachment. Lin Huang downloaded the attachment immediately. It was a three-dimensional white token. It was the residential token which represented ones right to claim residence in Snow City. He tapped on the token, Ye Xius identity was displayed along with the residential area Snow City. "It''ll be New Years Eve two days later. I''ll pick a house today and purchase it tomorrow then move in straight away for New Year." After making the arrangement, Lin Huang called out to Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. "It''ll be New Year''s the day after tomorrow. The both of you have a mission today - which is to choose a couple of houses from the network. You''ll have to get it done by today as we''ll be looking at the houses tomorrow. If any of them are suitable, we''ll buy it and live there. We cant be staying in a hotel on New Years Eve. We should be staying at our house!" Lin Huang said to the both of them. They nodded and started browsing the Heart Network. Lin Huang was browsing too; he told the both of them that their mission was to see what kind of houses they liked. A couple of hours passed and all three of them were still looking at houses on the couch. Lin Huang had picked a couple of them that he liked, he then asked the both of them, "So have you guys found anything yet?" "Theyre all so expensive" Lin Xin was upset. She saw some that she liked but she did not pick them as they were too expensive. "Dont look at the price, just show me those that you like." The cost of houses in a B-grade foothold was considered expensive to ordinary people. However, it was nothing to hunters. Lin Huang then looked at Lin Xuan, "Xiao Xuan, show me those that you picked." Lin Xuan nodded and showed Lin Huang the houses that he picked. He didn''t consider factors such as price; he only chose those that he liked. While Lin Huang looked at the pictures, Lin Xin join too. She was stunned to see that all of the houses Lin Xuan picked were all above 100 million credit points. Lin Huang nodded as he was satisfied with the houses that Lin Xuan picked, two of them were to his liking. "Xin Er, is there any that you like from what Lin Xuan picked?" Lin Huang asked Lin Xin and added, "Dont worry about the price." "They all seem so good, but these two houses are my favorite!" Lin Xin pointed at the two that she liked, Lin Huang picked one of them as well. The other was similar to the house that they stayed in Wulin Town. It was a three-story single resort which was much larger with an extra courtyard. "Sure, we''ll take a look at these three houses tomorrow!" Lin Huang picked the house that looked like a resort and another two that he liked. 195 Buying A House After picking three houses, Lin Huang brought Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to the real estates riding on the Alexandrian Eagle. It was one of the houses that all three of them had chosen, located in the far north of Snow City. As they rode on the eagle, Lin Huang frowned; he thought the location was too remote. He noticed on the map that the house was away from the city center, but he did not expect it to be so far away. It was at least 20 kilometers away from the city. The further they traveled north the fewer buildings there were. There were not many houses in the area as there were less than 40 units. The eagle landed at the entrance of the sales building. "Brother, this location is a little too far away" Lin Xin said to him. "I think so too but since were here, lets take a look anyway." Lin Huang smiled. A man in a suit approached them as they talked. Seeing the Alexandrian Eagle, the man had a big smile plastered on his face. "I believe you guys are here to see the house?" The man said, "We dont have many of them here, there are a total of 36 houses of nine different styles with different decorations" The man did not stop talking and he managed to convince Lin Xin with his flamboyant words. Meanwhile, Lin Huang listened quietly. He had to admit that the man was good at persuading. After the man was done talking, Lin Huang said, "Bring us to the one with the best environment then." "Sure please give me a minute, Ill get a couple of camel monsters here." The man said. "No need for that, we have our own." Lin Huang then summoned the Viridian Wolf. The man noticed that Lin Huang did not use a monster taming token when he recalled the Alexandrian Eagle. When Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf without a taming token, the man was sure that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor. The three of them rode on the Viridian Wolf while the man took out a monster taming token and summoned a Camel Monster. The Camel Monster was a common monster which was not even iron-level. It looked like a camel but was more prominent in size without a hump. This beast was slow but it was strong. Usually, people would use them as transport. The Camel Monster had golden hair and was quite glorious but when it saw the Viridian Wolf, it was shaking in its knees. The Viridian Wolf glared at the Camel Monster. Lin Huang noticed that too and said to the man, "You can lead the way, we''ll follow behind." The man apologized and led the Camel Monster to walk in front of them. Only when the Camel Monster lost sight of the wolf did it return to normal. The man then got on the Camel Monster and Lin Huang followed the man on the Viridian Wolf with his family. The Viridian Wolf was playful, so it started to chase after the Camel Monster. Seven to eight minutes later, the man attempted to stop the beast from running but the Camel Monster refused to listen. Instead, it started running even faster. "Stop! Stop right now!" Seeing that shouting did not work, the man turned around and said to Lin Huang, "You guys should stop here. This is the unit you''re looking for; please give me a minute and I''ll be back soon!" Lin Huang then patted the Viridian Wolf to get it to stop running. The three of them got down from the wolf and looked at the villa. From the outside, it looked quite unique. A short while later, the man came back to the villa with his clothes in a mess. "Im so sorry for the delay. My Camel Monster can be easily frightened sometimes" "Dont worry about it, lets take a look at the house." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. The man tucked in his shirt and brought the three of them into the villa. "This unit located in the middle of all the villas is among our four best units that we have, which also happens to have the best environment. Theres a garden in front and behind the environment. The main building was a triple-story building attached to a double-story building on the other side. There was an open-air garden on the third floor..." After a simple introduction, the man opened the door with his ID card and brought the three of them into the house. "It''s such a big living room!" Lin Xin exclaimed as she walked in. The living room was not spacious, it had a porch with an overhang that was more than 10 meters high. "We have taken the solidity of the building into consideration, so we designed the porch to be 15-meters high. There are two parts to the living room which includes the front portion, and when you walk further in you''ll see the main living room. The height of the living room will be 3.5 meters" The man explained as they looked at the villa. When they arrived at the balcony on the third floor, they were amazed by the glacial mountains facing the balcony. "There are two balconies in this house. As we are located in the north, we can see the north glacial wall directly" The north glacial wall referred to the glacial mountains that they were looking at. The mountains were divided the north and south zones of Division7. At the north side of the glacial wall, winter would last at six months while the south had the usual four season. Although the glacial wall was tens of thousands of kilometers long, it only occupied a small part of the east side of Division7. The weather on the northeast side was different from other areas which meant that the glacial walls were unique to this area, making it a unique view. Standing on the balcony, Lin Xin seemed to be convinced. However, Lin Huang was being realistic when he said, "I guess this is more like a holiday villa. If we were to stay here permanently, it would not be ideal." "We have thought of that as well, which is why the amenities are complete. However, as a whole, this is indeed, more like a holiday villa. Of course, it''d perfect for those who enjoy peace and quiet." The man said. "The environment outside, the style and design inside including the view of the glacial mountains are perfect but Its just a little too remote." Lin Huang voiced his concern. He was satisfied with the house, but it was too far from the city. Lin Huang did not enjoy noise but living in solitary was not ideal as well. After all, humans were social animals; it would not be healthy for them to avoid social contact for extended periods of time. Lin Huang had no problem with that as he would not be staying at home most of the time but he was concerned about Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. They then left the place on the Alexandrian Eagle to the second location. The second house was chosen by Lin Huang and Lin Xuan. Located in the middle of the foothold, it was front and center in the busiest area in the city. However, it was not a villa but a high-rise condominium instead. The unit was huge; measuring about 1,200 square meters and it came fully furnished with a variety of amenities. Lin Huang and Lin Xuan were satisfied with the house, but not Lin Xin. "This is good but something seems to be lacking... It doesn''t feel like a home It feels more like a hotel room." Lin Xin commented. Lin Huang thought about it and agreed with Lin Xin. "Lets take a look at the last one then!" They left the second house and headed to the third location. It was a villa located in the east of Snow City. There were more than 80 villas in the area but the size of this unit was much smaller than the one they saw in the first location. Arriving at the sales building, they were treated warmly by the sales person was a lady in her late teenage years. She seemed to be a sweet lady. "This area is considered to be the second most popular location in the city. There are many other luxurious areas around and the area is quite safe. That aside, we have everything close by which includes the Credit Bureau, hospitals, a garden, supermarkets, delivery companies and street food. They''re all within two kilometers and you''ll be able to get there by feet..." "Its pretty busy here, have many people purchased the units already?" Lin Huang smiled and asked. "Yes, we''ve just started selling the units a few days back. We''ve already sold more than 60 units so there aren''t many left available." The salesperson smiled. "However, the price for the units isnt cheap at all. Are most of the buyers... Hunters?" Lin Huang asked. "Some of them are hunters and some of them are businessmen. Since there are hunters here, it would be safer, thats one of the reasons why more businessmen are willing to pay a premium to stay here." The sales person said. "I understand now. Please bring us to your best unit." Lin Huang did not want to look for more houses anymore. Since this place was complete with amenities, he planned to purchase it on the spot if it was suitable. Soon they arrived at the villa, it was a triple-story villa with a courtyard. There were balconies on the second and third floor. There was nothing to shout about as it was much smaller than the first villa they saw. However, Lin Xin seemed to like it a lot. They entered the villa and saw the living room which was at least three times bigger than the house they used to stay in Wulin Town. It gave Lin Huang a good impression. "The floor, wardrobes, cabinets, dining tables and chairs were made from Pandora trees while the rest of the furniture was designed by a celebrity designer" "There are three floors in this villa. It''s 180 square meters on the first floor. The most spacious floor would be the second floor which is 230 square meters as theres a huge balcony and the third floor has two mini balconies, measuring the entire floor at about 200 square meters" Soon they had seen the entire villa. Lin Huang realized that the house was not as small as he thought, just that it wasnt as glamorous as the first villa that they saw. It was much more homey than the second condominium. "What do you think?" Lin Huang looked at Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. "I love it!" Lin Xin nodded and smiled, she would prefer a house that was smaller like the one they used to stay in. Lin Xuan nodded too. "Alright then, this is it!" Lin Huang made up his mind. 196 New Year’s Eve Someone on Earth once said that a mans ultimate goal would be to live in a big house, drive big cars and marry a beautiful woman! Holding the key to his new house, Lin Huang had achieved one of them, which was to live in a big house! The house was 510-meter square and it cost 110 million credit points, which was almost 220,000 credit points per square meter. It was considered a luxurious house and even a rich man would have to think twice about it. However, such a price was nothing for a hunter. 100 million credit points were equivalent to 1,000 years of Life Crystal pieces, which were only 10 complete Life Crystals. A hunter such as Lin Huang could make that money back anytime he wanted. He was worried that the residential permit would not be approved when he purchased the house but it was. He registered the house under Lin Xins new identity - Ling Xue. They moved into the house right away after the payment was done. They did not even return to the hotel as Lin Huang checked-out from the hotel online. He booked the hotel room for three days but they only stayed for a day, the hotel refunded him immediately. On the first floor of the house was a living room, an open kitchen, and two bathrooms. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second floor. One of the bedrooms was bigger, it was for Lin Huang while the two bedrooms were of the same size. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan each got a room. Lin Xuan finally had a room to himself. The balcony on the second floor was spacious, it was connected to the three bedrooms. It was Lin Xins favorite. On the third floor was a huge study room and two guest rooms with mini balconies. There were also a small storeroom and a bathroom. The floor was empty at the moment. After moving all the stuff out from his storage space, it officially became their new home. "It''ll be New Years Eve in two days, lets clean up the house today and buy the stuff tomorrow morning! Give me a list of what you guys would like to eat and buy or you might forget by tomorrow." Lin Huang said to the both of them. New Years Eve was the biggest festival in this world. There were two calendars in the world, one was the Gregorian calendar which was commonly used, while the other one is the ancient perpetual calendar. The Gregorian calendar was the calendar that was modified after the new era while the perpetual calendar was inherited since the ancient era. Since the new era, many things were changed in this world. Even the cultivation system was different than before. However, festivities such as the New Years Eve remained. The festival was similar to the New Year that was celebrated on Earth. The families would prepare snacks such as dried fruits, candies, as well as meat, fish and other foods. The kids were allowed to not eat vegetables during the festival and they would not be punished by their parents. Besides that, there would be all sorts of red items sold on the streets including lanterns and knitted goods. The color red represented a brand new year and hoping for new breakthroughs in life. During the New Years Eve, the elders would buy gifts for the kids while adults would buy gifts for the elders. It was not a friendly gesture but rather as a form of appreciation. Kids were the happiest during this festival. However, the adults would have to spend It was the first New Years Eve that Lin Huang would be celebrating ever since he arrived in this world. Although he had fond memories of the festival, it was not the same in this world. At night, after churning out a list of his own and receiving Lin Xin and Lin Xuans list, he went to bed. In the morning, Lin Huang brought them both out shopping. The streets were filled with the ambiance of the festivity where red lanterns were hung on the doorways of shops as well as calligraphy. The calligraphy was similar to the couplets on Earth. However, in this world the calligraphy functions as a decoration with no symbolic meaning It was the first time for Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to do New Years shopping, they were excited. Although it was Lin Huangs first time shopping in this world too, he was calm since he had done it numerous times on Earth. "Brother, that lantern is so pretty!" "Lets buy that!" "Brother, that calligraphy is so pretty!" "Lets buy that!" "Brother, that doll is so pretty!" "Lets buy that!" For the things that she wanted, Lin Xin would say, "That is so pretty," whereas Lin Xuan would hint to Lin Huang the things that he wanted, by standing in front of the shops. After shopping for the entire morning, Lin Huang only managed to buy presents for the two. Not much on the list was crossed off. The good thing was, everything could be kept inside the storage space, which made shopping easier. After lunch, the two were excited and wanted to shop again. Lin Huang shook his head. "We should buy everything on the list first before we start buying the other stuff. New Years Eve would be the day after tomorrow, we have other stuff to do tomorrow." The two nodded, they knew they could always come back to do more shopping as the shopping streets were just a kilometer away from home. In the afternoon, Lin Huang spent a couple of hours purchasing all the items on the list. After dinner, Lin Huang accompanied the both of them to shop. They returned home at night after 10. Lin Huang went straight to bed after his shower, he thought shopping for the entire day was even more tiring than fighting monsters in the tower during the Purple Crow training camp. The next day, Lin Huang woke them both up early in the morning. It was a day before New Years Eve. After breakfast, Lin Huang took out all the decorations that they bought yesterday and started decorating their rooms. They managed to finish by noon. Lin Huang placed some snacks and fruits on the living rooms coffee table. They went shopping again in the afternoon. Lin Huang did not want to go initially but he did not want them to go on their own. A day passed just like that. It was New Years Eve. In the morning, Lin Huang made a dinner reservation at a highly recommended hotel nearby. He then placed the gifts for Lin Xin and Lin Xuan at a side in the living room. When they woke up, they neither brush their teeth nor washed their faces. They began opening their presents. These were all the stuff that they had wanted from shopping, there were 50 to 60 items. Meanwhile, Lin Huang sat on the couch and watched them open the presents. He did not have any siblings on Earth, it was pure bliss for him to be able to do this. With his maturity, they could even be his own children. He was not worried that he might spoil them as he could be strict with them when necessary. It started snowing as they were opening their presents. Lin Huang got up and lit up the black rock in the furnace. He bought that two days ago, it was similar to charcoal on Earth. As it was pure mineral, it would burn slowly in the fire to release heat and emit a red glow. Seeing that the furnace was fired up, both of them moved their presents in front of the furnace and continued unwrapping. When they were done, they were asked to wash up before breakfast. As they were brushing their teeth, they noticed that the snow was getting stronger. After breakfast, the both of them played with the snow in the courtyard. As Lin Huang leaned on the door with his cup of tea, Lin Xin threw a snowball at him. Lin Huang smiled and dodged it, Lin Xuan followed Lin Xin as well. They started a snowball fight where Lin Xin and Lin Xuan threw snowballs at him while Lin Huang dodged all of them. Soon, Lin Huang noticed that the snowballs that were tossed by Lin Xuan were getting faster and faster. He seemed to apply the skill he obtained from Gun Master onto the snowballs. Half an hour later, Lin Xuans snowball managed to hit Lin Huang. "Alright, I surrender. You guys should go in now." Lin Huang raised his hands and got them both back into the house. The both of them sat on the floor before the furnace while eating snacks. Lin Xuan did not want to eat any nuts or fruits, he did not even want to eat candies. Lin Huang prepared dried meat for him. At night, dinner was served. The three of them sat together on the dining table with a delicious meal to celebrate the end of the year. Snow was falling, the fire was bright in the house. The shiny rock reflected onto the ceiling like a starry night "This New Years Eve isnt that bad at all" Lin Huang smiled as he watched the both of them enjoying their dinner. 197 Yu Moli After finishing up some minor errands, Lin Huang could finally focus on the mission that was set by Mr. Fu. A month had passed and Lin Huang did not have much time left as he was supposed to complete the mission in two months. Everything would go as planned if he managed to maintain his winning streak, but if he were to lose one battle or meet a draw, he would have to start from square one. He was only left with battle videos from two individuals. One was the person who ranked No.1, Yu Moli and the other was ranked No.2, Ebonella. As Lin Huang played the video, he found out that Ebonella was a lady. She was not only a lady, but a gorgeous young lady. She looked like she was only 16 or 17, but she was at least 1.7 meters tall. She had a unique weapon, it was a black umbrella. After watching a couple of her battles, Lin Huang noticed that it was a special weapon which could morph into different things including a defensive item, a firearm, a spear, a sword and even a short blade. It was the most versatile weapon which could morph interchangeably into different forms that Lin Huang had ever seen. The lady was outstanding as she professionally mastered all the five forms. The change from one form to another was flawless. "This lady really is something!" Lin Huang spent a couple of days watching all of her videos, he could not find any flaws in them. It was not because it was flawless but was because she managed to cover up her flaws as she switches between the different forms of the umbrella. She could trick her opponents with her flaws and lures them into her traps. However, with Lin Huangs vision skills, he could not tell if those were her actual flaws or traps that she had set up. "Shes only No.2, what could No.1 be?" From the videos, Lin Huang knew very well that he might not be able to win if he encountered an opponent like this lady. However, Yu Moli who ranked No.1 had accumulated more than 160,000 points, five times more than No.2. This made Lin Huang curious, wanting to find out more about this person. "Why does this nickname sounds like a real name?" Lin Huang activated the arena and looked for the person. He then found out that the guy was using his actual name in the game. Yu Moli was royalty from the Yu family. He was the most outstanding one among the younger generation in his family and possessed the abilities of a genius. Although he was only silver-level rank-3, his abilities were even more powerful than someone who was gold-level rank-3. He did not even bother to use a nickname in the game. "He looks like an obnoxious person. Everybody calls him a genius, he must be really powerful." Lin Huang proceeded to watch the first video of Yu Moli. Lin Huang was stunned as Yu Moli launched his first attack. There was a purple flame coming out from his hand and it looked like a real flame. To be able to create such a realistic flame with Life Power meant that one would have to at least be holy fire-level. No matter how powerful ones Life Power was, people on holy fire-level would not be able to do such a thing. "How does he do that?" Lin Huang watched curiously. His opponent was immediately killed with the flame. Lin Huang was shocked at what he just saw. "How is that even possible! Although Life Power contained elemental attributes, it''ll still be limited by the nature of Life Power if one is only at holy fire-level. Its impossible to manifest the full elemental attribute. Fire element Life Power should only give out heat and its impossible to kill someone with flame like that!" Still in doubt, Lin Huang logged onto the Hunter Info Network to look for information about Yu Moli. It was much more detailed than the one he saw on Hunter Arena. After reading everything, Lin Huang finally understood how Yu Moli manage to do something like that. When he was killing a monster, he obtained an additional Life Seed monster which granted him the monsters purple flame ability. Under usual circumstances, the possibility of such an occurrence was low as the Life Seed would usually go into ones body together with Life Light when one leveled up. When a monster was killed, the Life Seed in the monster would fade away together with its Life Light instead of entering the human body. However, there were people with unique body types which could absorb the Life Seed from certain monsters. After killing the monster, the Life Seed would be absorbed into the human body. Such Life Seeds would not transform into ones talent and instead, the person would obtain a random monster skill. It was similar to Lin Huangs skill extraction but it was rare, as only 1% of the people would have this ability. Yu Moli was one of the few lucky ones who could obtain a monster skill from a Life Seed. Lin Huang did not know that others could obtain monster skills as well. He would always avoid letting others know about his skill and he did not even dare to use Blood Spirit as he did not want them to think that he was a monster. After reading about Yu Moli, Lin Huang knew that he did not have to hide any longer. He would only be labeled as a lucky person by everybody else. "Seems like I can use my Blood Spirit wings since others would think its Blood Power anyway." Lin Huang inherited the Blood Spirit wings from Bai, a powerful ability. With the help of the wings, he was even thinking of attempting to challenge someone on gold-level rank-3. Lin Huang spent the following days watching all of Yu Molis battle videos. After evaluating his own, Lin Huang realized that Yu Molis battle strategies were the least useful ones among the top 10. He only relied on his flames to kill his opponents and did not display any other abilities at all. The flame could be activated with just a slight amount of Life Power, which was about the same amount as what Lin Huangs Blood Spirit wings would need. This was the benefit of a monster skill; it drained only minimal amounts of Life Power. That was the reason why Yu Moli was able to use his flame like it was nobodys business. He mastered the ability and was able to bring the flames up to high temperatures which allowed him to kill his opponents easily no matter who they were. "It''s no wonder he managed to accumulate so many points. With such an ability, no ordinary person could even think of defeating him." Lin Huang finally knew how Yu Moli accumulated the points - He never lost! Lin Huang spent another two days to conclude and digest all the information that he managed to get. Later, Lin Huang logged onto Hunter Arena again 198 The Second Keeper Since his 50 winning streaks, Lin Huang did not log into the Hunter Arena for almost a month. Many noticed that he signed in again. There was a [Follow] button in the arena which would notify you if the person you''re following came online. The same thing would happen if the person you were following entered the arena, you would receive a notification and you could choose to watch the battle immediately. Ever since his win-streak, his followers had increased from less than 500 to more than 300,000 people. Most of them were the people of silver-level rank-3 on the sixth floor. Besides those who were in battles at the moment, the 100,000 followers who were online received the same notification. "The person Sword Genius that you are following is online now!" It started a discussion. "Sword Genius is online?! I thought he would quit after his 50-win streak!" "Finally! Hes making a comeback after so long!" "I knew he wouldnt stop at his 50-win streak. Even if he didnt manage to #1, hed at least want to be top 10!" "He must be here to challenge further. I must watch him live this time!" Standing in the sixth floor in the arena, Lin Huang was stunned at the number of his fans. He knew that came from his 50 winning streaks. "330,000 fans, seems like Im not that far away from getting a blue tick" Lin Huang teased himself and pressed the challenge button. Soon, he was send onto an empty arena. The moment he entered the arena, tens of thousands of people entered the room within seconds and ithin three seconds, the room was filled with 50,000 people. Lin Huang just noticed that the room was much bigger than the previous one. The challenge room Lin Huang was sent before he achieved his 50-win streak could only contain 10,000 people, it was the standard arena. After the 50-win streak, the arena got an upgrade. Fortunately, the size of the ring remained the same or Lin Huang might not be able to adapt in such a short period of time. His opponent was sent at an instant, it was a young man who dressed like an ancient scholar with an ink-painted fan in his hand. "Is this cosplay" Lin Huang was speechless when he saw his opponents attire. Meanwhile, the opponent was shocked at the amount of people who were watching. He was so shocked that he dropped his fan. Soon he noticed that he was unfortunate that he was randomly sent to fight a powerful opponent. He then looked at Lin Huangs scoreboard. "Sword Genius?!" The man finally knew who he was encountering. The name had been a hot topic since a month ago. "I never expected to be sent to the genius who managed to achieve a 50-win streak, this is his first battle after disappearing for a month" The man was in great pressure. Lin Huang was stunned when he looked at his scoreboard. "Nickname: Great Pressure From A Mountain of Books" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 1502" "Accumulated Points: 1321" "Winning Percentage: 71%" "Whats with your nickname?" Lin Huang asked. "I wanted to call myself Scholar but it was already taken. So I changed it to Scholar In Great Pressure but the system mistaken it as Mountain of Books. I pressed the confirm button too fast and thats how my name came about." The man seemed upset. "Ahh okay" Lin Huang thought he met another traveler. As they finished talking, the countdown ended. "You go first." Lin Huang said to him as he knew the opponent would not have a chance to attack him if Lin Huang was to attack first. "I surrender!" The man raised his hand and surrendered. It was the first time Lin Huang encountered someone who surrendered at the first moment, he did not expect him to do that. Soon, the mans body disintegrated and disappeared from the ring. Lin Huangs second opponent was sent onto the wrong arena; his name was Sword In-Training. Even after he was picked to fight Lin Huang, he was not afraid. Instead, he was excited. However, he was killed within the first three seconds and was sent out from the ring. The crowd was quite chaotic as most of them watching Lin Huang fight live for the first time, which proved the rumors they to be true. Many of them imagined themselves as Lin Huangs opponents and figured they would have died too. After revealing his ability in the second battle, most of the people no longer doubted his abilities any longer. As the third and fourth opponents were killed with one hit, nobody dared to doubt Lin Huang. "Hes so powerful!" "Hes killing people like hes cutting vegetables" "Marry me, master!" A hunk with beard shouted. "You sure about that?" A bunch of people glared at him. Nine battles in, Lin Huang had won all of them without even breaking a sweat. Aside from the first battle where his opponent surrendered, he managed to kill the other eight opponents with just one hit. He was already at a 59-win streak. Who could be the keeper of the 60th battle?! Many were anticipating that answer. Although the arena did not reveal information regarding the 60th keeper, everybody knew that the keeper after the 50th win-streak would get increasingly more powerful. It was an unspoken rule. When Lin Huang was on his 50th battle, his opponent was Master White who ranked No.18. Now that it was the 60th battle, it was likely that he would face someone who was ranked even higher than Master White. "Who would it be?" Everyone had the same question. After the 59th challengers body disintegrated from the ring, the crowd went silent. There was not even cheering for Lin Huangs win. Everyone stared at the ring without blinking, waiting for the appearance of the keeper. Meanwhile, Lin Huang remained standing, without any expression on his face. He knew very well that the keeper would be much more powerful than Master White and soon, a person was sent onto the ring. The person was covered in an intense white glow which made him look like the main focus of the ring. That was the usual entrance gimmick of the keeper. The crowd could only tell that it was a man. Nobody could see his face clearly due to the intense white glow. Soon, as the glow faded away, the features of the keeper were finally showing "Its Feng Wu!" Someone among the crowd recognized him in an instant. 199 Feng Wu Feng Wu ranked No.11 on the sixth floor of the arena and was a sword expert like Lin Huang. It was unsure if it was arranged by the system on purpose but the battle was between two sword experts. Before Feng Wu appeared, many in the crowd knew that the keeper of the battle would not be anyone from the top 10. Instead, it would be someone from No. 11 to No.17. Many of them had guessed that it would be Feng Wu. If Lin Huang achieved a 60-win streak, the keeper would have to be one of the people in the top 10. The appearance of Feng Wu implied that if Lin Huang managed to defeat him, it would be more difficult for Lin Huang to win in the future. Lin Huang looked at Feng Wus scoreboard. "Nickname: Feng Wu" "Combat Strength: White Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 4208" "Accumulated Points: 10569" "Winning Percentage: 93%" Lin Huang did not know Feng Wu. However, there were only 12 people who managed to obtain more than 10,000 points on the leaderboard. He saw Feng Wus name ranked at No.11. However, Lin Huang neither knew what weapon Feng Wu nor did he know his combat style but he was not afraid of him. In reality, when Lin Huang saw Feng Wu''s name, what crossed his mind was not his name, but the fact that his nickname actually sounded like an actual name. As expected, Feng Wu was his real name. The reason why he decided to use his actual name was different from the obnoxious Yu Moli. He tried using four to five nicknames unsuccessfully when he was registering. After several tries, he did not bother to come up with a nickname anymore so he decided to use his real name instead. Feng Wu had battled with Master White at least once. Although he had never lost, he knew Master White''s ability very well. Knowing that Master White was killed by Lin Huang in one hit during his time as a keeper, he downloaded the battle video immediately. He was surprised to see how Lin Huang used his sword. As a sword expert himself, Feng Wu could see that Lin Huang was a true sword master. That was what Feng Wu had been dreaming of before he leveled up to transcendent. A normal sword expert could usually master a sword skill after he was at holy fire-level. One who managed to master it before getting to transcendent would be a great talent while those who manage to master it before even getting to gold-level like Lin Huang would be considered to be a genius. In the name of researching Lin Huangs sword skills, Feng Wu downloaded all Lin Huangs battle videos. He then realized that Lin Huang did not use his sword at all before his encounter with Master White. He wasted his points downloading those videos. However, Feng Wu did not give up. He had been following Sword Genius in the arena so that he would be able to watch him live as soon as he started a battle. Nobody knew Lin Huang would not even log into the arena for a month. He was excited to see Sword Genius not only sign-in but start a battle as well. However, he failed to enter the ring as there were no seats remaining Just when he was thinking of ways to get himself in, Feng Wu was sent into the ring as the keeper of Lin Huangs 60-win streak. He was over the moon. Lin Huang had chills going down his spine when he saw Feng Wu looking at him passionately, "Hes not gay, is he." "Erm Sword Genius, could we please be best friends?" Feng Wu asked before the countdown ended. Lin Huang had his guard up and declined, "I dont swing that way." Although people in the ring could not hear the sound outside, everything that happened in the ring could be heard loud and clear outside. The crowd heard everything that they were saying in the ring and most of them were puzzled. "Feng Wu humbled himself to show kindness, this Sword Genius is arrogant!" "Who does he think he is? How dare he said that to Feng Wu?!" "He could totally do that. Its not like Feng Wu had never battled with Master White in the past but has he ever killed Master White in one hit like Sword Genius did?! Feng Wu probably knew that he could not defeat Sword Genius so he wanted Sword Genius to show him mercy." "True powerful men are all weird. Perhaps Sword Genius has poor social skills because he only focused on training his swords. Its normal that he rejected Feng Wu." Many thought Lin Huang was arrogant for rejecting Feng Wu offer to be best friends with him. However, some of them supported Lin Huang. Feng Wu was stunned at the rejection. He thought about it and it was truly an absurd move. It was normal that Lin Huang had his guard up and rejected him. He smiled awkwardly and shook his head, the silver-level weapon ring on his hand transforming itself into a battle sword. Seeing the battle sword, Lin Huang recalled that he had seen Feng Wus battle with Master White before. He noticed that Feng Wus sword was unique as the sword''s body was long and thin. From that, Lin Huang could tell that he was a sword expert that focused on speed. However, when Lin Huang was watching the video, he did not notice the name of the person nor his appearance. He only managed to connect the dots when he saw the sword. "This is the guy" Lin Huang was impressed by Feng Wus sword skill because he was one among the few people who actually managed to defeat Master White. Master White had the advantage in speed which allowed him to launch his attack before his opponents in most battles. However, Feng Wus speed was not much slower than his. Master White''s speed did not affect Feng Wu much. Rather, it was the other way round as Master White was affected by Feng Wu''s attack rhythm, causing him to lose. "Stunning sword skills, lightning speed, amazing rhythm." That was Lin Huangs comments for Feng Wu when he watched the video. However, now that he was standing in the same arena as Feng Wu, he had the confidence to win. He smirked as he transformed the silver weapon ring on his middle finger into a silver-level battle sword. The sword seemed ordinary, like it was something readily available on the market. The countdown ended. Feng Wu leaped and plunged towards Lin Huang at a terrifying speed 200 Sword Genius Versus Feng Wu Feng Wu launched his attack like a lion attacking a rabbit. Feng Wu was taught since young never to underestimate his opponents. Not only that, Lin Huang regarded him as a ferocious beast instead of a helpless little lamb. Lin Huang was ready as he was more alert than ever. What was happening in the ring was nothing like what the crowd had expected. Feng Wu was the keeper that was supposed to stop Lin Huangs progress. Theoretically, Lin Huang should be attacking. However, it was the other way around. As the countdown ended, Feng Wu seized the opportunity to attack first. It looked like Feng Wu was the fighter while Lin Huang was the keeper It was nothing out of the ordinary for the both of them in the ring. Feng Wus attack was quick; it was comparable with Master White''s who Lin Huang encountered a month ago. As the silver sword ripped out, it created a wave in the air. It looked like something that was flying on the water''s surface. A deadly aura that felt like the grim reapers scythe was heading for Lin Huangs neck. Lin Huang stood at where he was while waiting for Feng Wu to come to him, his eyes looking fearless. He suddenly raised his sword. There were shadows in the air moving in slow-motion. However, the tip of the sword managed to meet Feng Wus sword that was coming to him at lightning speed. Feng Wu felt such an intense force that he almost dropped his sword onto the ground, causing his initial attack to miss. Lin Huang smiled as plunged his sword towards Feng Wus right arm. Feng Wu moved his body aside and dodged Lin Huangs sword. He leaped away from Lin Huang. Feng Wu finally realized how powerful Lin Huang was and began to sweat. The attack from Lin Huang felt like he had activated a spiritual creature that could identify Feng Wus flaws. "Is this what one is capable of when he had mastered the sword? Im still far away from achieving that level." Feng Wu Knew how much he lacked when it came to his sword skills compared to Lin Huang because he was still limited by his fighting style. However, Lin Huang was at another level. Seeing that Feng Wu was getting away from him, Lin Huang did not go after him. Instead, he stood at where he was like nothing happened while looking at Feng Wu. "Your skill isnt that bad." Lin Huang said after looking at Feng Wu for a while. He had seen his skills before in the video where Feng Wu was fighting Master Bai. He could see that his sword skill was epic-level. However, he did not use much of the styles during the battle. Lin Huang was not in a rush to kill Feng Wu as he wanted to see more of his sword styles so that he could learn. "Thank you for the compliment, yours isnt that bad as well." Feng Wu complemented Lin Huang in return. What he meant was not Lin Huangs sword skill but his own. The attack earlier was not a sword skill, but was a tactic that he came up by himself. However, that was sufficient to know that Lin Huangs mastery of sword was much better than himself. Feng Wu was not afraid at all to face a powerful opponent like Lin Huang. Instead, he was exhilarated. He knew that no matter what the result of the battle would be, his would learn something about swords from Lin Huang. "Come, let me see how much you have mastered your sword skill." Lin Huang waved at Feng Wu; he looked like a senior who was coaching a junior. Most of the audience in the crowd were shocked to see this. "Is the Sword Genius provoking Feng Wu?" "Why does it look like a master instructing his apprentice." "Sword Genius is the real keeper here!" People were discussing among themselves outside the ring. However, Feng Wu was not offended at all. Lin Huang was more skillful than he was, it was normal that he wanted to see what he has so that he could point out his mistakes. Furthermore, he was there to learn from Lin Huang. "The sword skill that Im practicing is called Thunder Touch, its a transcendent level combat skill. Unfortunately, Im not qualified, yet so Ive yet to master this sword skill" Feng Wu raised his sword again and looked at Lin Huang intensely," Here goes nothing!" Feng Wu dashed towards Lin Huang again. This time he was faster than before. He was so fast that he cracked the ground of the ring. They were initially more than 10 meters apart from each other but now they were then less than a meter apart . This time, Feng Wu had his sword pointing straight at Lin Huangs heart. The tip of the sword looked like it was distorted from a high temperature which also caused the air around the tip to be distorted. It was silent. Lin Huang stood motionlessly as Feng Wu attacked. He raised his sword again with slow-motion shadows in the air, pointing towards Feng Wus sword that was heading towards him. Suddenly, Feng Wus became twice as fast as he was. The rhythm of the air around him was messed up as he aimed at Lin Huangs heart at lightning speed. A strange pattern appeared in Lin Huangs eyes. Soon, his sword became two times faster as well. A silver glow flashed in the air; his sword clashed with Feng Wus sword again. Feng Wu was shocked and took a few steps back immediately while Lin Huang remained standing. It was obvious that who was more powerful among them, even a person who has no clues about sword would be able to come up with a conclusion easily. "The Sword Genius is just too powerful. From the beginning, he had never moved a step while Feng Wu had already stepped back twice." "Thats right; Sword Genius is like an unmovable mountain compared to Feng Wu." "Thats skill right there. With Feng Wus terrifying speed, Lin Huang still managed to defend himself effortlessly." "You are attempting to use speed to cover up your flaws but what you dont know is, no matter how fast you are, your flaws would still be there." Lin Huang gave his opinion on Feng Wu''s attack. "It wouldnt be a problem if your opponent is slow. However, for a person who is fast like me, no matter how fast you are, your flaws will always remain." Feng Wu flushed as Lin Huang revealed his flaws. He hesitated and asked, "So what should I do?" "Your flaws have nothing to do with your sword skill; its about you. You have yet to master the skill, your attack seemed powerful but you become exhausted when you are using the skill. It feels like youre riding on a monster that you have yet to tame. It would be alright if youre using it just for a stroll but if it were to run at full speed, it would definitely escape your grasp." Lin Huang pointed out Feng Wus problem. "There are two solutions. One is to spend some time to master your sword skills and another is to train in another sword skill thats not as powerful." Feng Wu smiled awkwardly and shook his head as he listened to the solutions that were given by Lin Huan, "Im not gifted, even if I spend my time training, the results would be minimal. Forget about switching to another sword skill. If I gave up on a powerful sword skill and go for a lower level skill instead, Im afraid Id become weaker in the future" Seeing that Feng Wu did not want to take his advice, Lin Huang did not bother to continue to say any further. As their conversation ended, Feng Wu attacked Lin Huang again while he remained standing in the same spot. The more he attacked, the less powerful his attack was but more of his flaws were showing through. After displaying all of his skills, Lin Huang decided that it was unnecessary for him to waste his time any further. Instead of standing where he was, he ran towards Feng Wu. Although he was not as fast as Feng Wu, Feng Wu knew he could never escape from his attack. The sword emitted a purple glow. Feng Wu was shocked by what he saw, Lin Huang passed by, and the purple glow slashed through his neck. A trail of blood appeared along Feng Wus neck; his head fell to the ground followed by his body. Lin Huang stood behind Feng Wu while transforming his silver-level battle sword into a ring, "The best thing has to be something that suits you most, it has nothing to do with what its worth." "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" A notification appeared before him. Soon, an announcement came from the sound system in the arena. "Congratulations! Sword Genius defeated keeper Feng Wu on the sixth floor of the arena, winning 60 battles consecutively!" "Congratulations! Sword Genius defeated keeper Feng Wu on the sixth floor of the arena, winning 60 battles consecutively!" "Congratulations! Sword Genius defeated keeper Feng Wu on the sixth floor of the arena, winning 60 battles consecutively!" Lin Huang remained in the ring and checked his scoreboard as Feng Wus body disappeared. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 60" "Accumulated Points: 2516" "Winning Percentage: 100%" "Honor: 60-win streaks!" Many players who were online heard about Sword Genius 60th winning streak. Many of them remembered that he managed to get his 50-win streak a month ago. Now that he got his 60-win streak, some of them who underestimated him were shocked. There were a couple of them who managed to get 50-win streak annually. However, there were only one or two players who would achieve 60-win streaks yearly and sometimes even none. As the keeper would become increasingly stronger each time, the one that was sent during the 50-win streak was considered to be the weakest while the keeper for the 60-win streak would be much more powerful. That was the reason why some of them did not expect Lin Huang to win. However, the 60-win streak had shocked many as they had expected Lin Huang to disappear for a while after this round. Lin Huang was still standing in the ring "Would you like to continue to battle?" Just as the notification popped up, Lin Huang pressed the button on the left. "Yes!" 201 The Consequences Would Be Dire If You Offend Me! Many did not expect the Sword Genius to make a glorious comeback with a 60-win streak after disappearing from the arena for a month. Besides, the players on the sixth floor and those from the other floors who did not follow Lin Huangs news thought he did not manage to win 60 consecutive battles. Many were surprised when they learned that Sword Genius had defeated Feng Wu on his 60th winning streak. The 50,000 people who were watching him live in the room were the most surprised. Not only did they witnessed Sword Genius 60-win streak, but they were also witnessing a miracle as Lin Huang chose to continue to battle. Soon, his 61st opponent was sent into the ring. It was a girl who looked 16 or 17. She was bespectacled with a round face, but she was not fat. She was excited as to be sent into the ring but got a shock when she saw Lin Huangs scoreboard. "Are you really Sword Genius?" "What do you think?" Lin Huang smiled. However, he just put on a face so the girl could not read his true emotion. "Even if the name is similar, the score will not lie. I think youre the real Sword Genius." The girl said after thinking about it. "I have been following you since a month ago; I saw the notification when you logged in earlier. However, I could not watch you live as the room was already full. The moment I got to know you were on your 60-win streak, I regretted that I was unable to watch you in battle. Its rare for someone to win 60 battles consecutively but I''ve missed the live match" The girl continued talking even after the countdown ended. Lin Huang stood at the same spot without interrupting her. The crowd was speechless. The girl was a blur as she just realized that the countdown had ended after she was done talking. However, she did not attempt to attack but said to Lin Huang, "Erm Can I have your autograph?" "I can do that, but you cant bring it out from the game even if I did gave it to you." Lin Huang did not reject her. However, he was unsure how he was supposed to give her his autograph. "Let me add you as a friend. After we leave the game, you could write something for me or send me some pictures." The girl suggested. "Maybe you could write something like Sword Genius wishes I Eat Tomato will always be happy''." Lin Huang was stunned at her nickname; he looked at her scoreboard immediately. Her nickname was actually I Eat Tomato.'' "If only Tomato is a cute girl like this " Tomato was an author that Lin Huang admired on earth, he could not accept the fact that author who he liked looked like this in this world After he had cleared his mind, Lin Huang accepted the girls friend request. "Sure, I will send you a photo after I sign my name on it." A majority of them in the audience thought he would reject a friend request like before; they did not expect him to say yes. "Wow, what happened to your principle? Didnt you tell Feng Wu that you will never add any friends?!" "This is the advantage of being a girl! Even a person like Sword Genius could not resist." "This is sexist! We demand equality!" Lin Huang could not hear what was happening outside; he had forgotten that he rejected Feng Wus friend request earlier. A lot of them who were outside the room were shocked when they watch the replay of Lin Huang rejecting Feng Wus friend request. After Lin Huang and the girl added each other as friends, she surrendered. Before she disappeared, she waved at Lin Huang and shouted, "Remember to send me your autograph!" The 61st battle ended like a movie. For the next 62nd to 69th battles, Lin Huang managed to finish them within two minutes as five of them surrendered while three of them were killed with just one hit. The crowd was not interested in the battles as they were all waiting for the exciting match of Lin Huangs 70-win streak. After he completed his 69th battle, a notification popped up. "Would you like to continue to battle?" He selected Yes without hesitation. After he made his decision, two other notifications popped up. "There is a match in progress in this venue; the venue will change to venue No.1 on the sixth floor" "Matching a keeper, please wait " After the appearance of the two notifications, Lin Huang was teleported from the ring and to venue No.1 which was bigger than the previous room. The 50,000 audience were puzzled by Lin Huangs disappearance. They soon received the same notification. "Sword Genius will be fighting the 70th battle keeper at venue No.1 on the sixth floor!" Many of them clicked on the selected venue and picked venue No.1 immediately. Venue No.1 on each floor would only be opened for the big match. The venue is huge and could hold up to 300,000 people. In less than 30 seconds, Lin Huang was sent into the venue; it was fully occupied. All of the players who were online in the arena received the same notification. It had been years since the last person won 70 battles consecutively. Therefore, not only did the people on the sixth floor came, many other players at gold-level from the seventh to the ninth floor came to watch as well. The last person who had their 70-win streak was 16 years ago. Many geniuses had appeared in Divison7 within that 16 years. However, none of them could win 70 battles consecutively The 300,000 people in the venue stared at the ring without blinking. They were eager to know who would be the keeper. Outside the arena, a beautiful lady with waist length hair with sunglasses and clad in a bikini was suntanning on the beach. Suddenly, she received a notification. "Congratulations! You are selected as the keeper of the 70-win streak of Sword Genius on the sixth floor." "Please enter the arena within three minutes, failure to do so will result in you forfeiting your position as a keep ." "Players who fail to accept the position of a keeper will be penalized. Your account will be suspended, your accumulated points would go back to zero, and you will not be able to enter the Hunter Arena for ten years!" "Damn it; I must find out who interrupted my holiday!" The young lady shouted. 202 Explosive Female Demon In the arena, there was a girl in a black bikini. The shape of her body was vague. Within an audience of 300,000, most of the male spectators had their eyes wide open. Her height barefooted was about 1.8meters. She was in a black bikini which exposed her fair and long legs and her legs were perhaps about 1.3 meters in length. As they continued looking up, her black bra top covered less than two-thirds of her bosoms. Most of the men who had their eyes on her found her attractive. Even Lin Huang was surprised when he saw the way she dressed. However, he recognized her as he had watched more than hundred of her battle videos. "She''s Explosive Female Demon! She''s the one who ranked fifth on the leaderboard, the Explosive Female Demon!" "Sword Genius you''re in trouble. It is better to encounter the one who ranked third or even fourth compared to her!" "Yeah. Sword Genius'' attack speed has no advantage over his opponent at all. He''s unlucky to encounter a gunmaster. It''ll be difficult for him to win the battle." In the arena, many of the people on the sixth floor could recognize the woman straight away. They were familiar with with the top 10 on the leaderboard. Some of the audience from the seventh to the ninth floor only recognized the woman after listening to those comments. In the arena, Explosive Female Demon looked like she did not pay much attention to the audience. She took off her sunglasses and took out a piece of white string to tie up her hair. She tilted her head slightly while staring at Lin Huang. "Hey kiddo, are you Sword Genius who just got a 50-win streak last month? It''s not easy to come up to the 70th battle. However, you should just stop here as I won''t let you win!" The Explosive Female Demon immediately gave off a murderous vibe. "You look very angry. May I know why? If I''m not mistaken, this is the first time that we''re meeting." Although Lin Huang could recognize her, he could not remember when he offended her. He knew that the deadly aura that his opponent was giving off was real. "Just now You just disturbed my holiday that I''ve been waiting to enjoy for ages. I''m furious, so I want to get my revenge on you!" The Explosive Female Demon told him the reason she was angry. "Alright I''m sorry for disturbing your holiday." Lin Huang apologized and remained calm. It wasn''t his fault. She was chosen by the system to be the keeper. "You''re so young, but yet you are such a gentleman." The Explosive Female Demon laughed as Lin Huang apologized to her. "However, I''ll not accept your apology. If I accept it, I can''t kill you." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders and kept quiet. Many of them who were watching the battle between the both of them knew that the Sword Genius was unlucky as soon as they heard what the woman said. Right after she had finished her sentence, two of the silver rings on Explosive Female Demon''s fingers abruptly transformed into two modified SilverPhoenix16s. He had to admit that she looked rather heroic, clad in her bikini while wielding two guns. Lin Huang then quickly transformed the silver ring on his finger into a battle sword, getting ready for the battle.He did not choose a gun as a weapon as she was an actual gunmaster. She was at least a mid-level gunmaster. He would definitely lose if he chose to use a gun. Soon, the countdown in the arena ended. She lifted her guns without a moment of hesitation just as the countdown ended. Pointing both of her guns towards Lin Huang, she pulled the trigger. The silver bullets were fired endlessly at Lin Huang. The audience shifted their gaze to Lin Huang.However, in the arena, Lin Huang''s eyes never left her hands. He then activated Cloud Steps and avoided the bullets without even breaking a sweat. Lin Huang''s steps resembled the flowing motions of clouds and water had caught many people''s attention. His movement was so smooth it was as if he was dancing. On top of that, Cloud Steps was extremely efficient in dodging enemy attacks. It was unbelievable that he had avoided the hail of bullets in the arena. "Sword Genius has a weak attack speed? He avoided all the bullets!" "What movement skill is Sword Genius using? It''s so effective in avoiding bullets." Many of them started to discuss what they just saw, and they were envious of his skills when it comes to movement skills. "What do you think?" The young man in gold robe had noticed Lin Huang from the beginning. He asked the man in black robe beside him. "His speed is normal. There''s nothing special about his movement skill as well. The reason why he could dodge multiple attacks is because he''s is good in predicting his opponents next move." The man in black robe knew what was happening. "The modified SilverPhoenix16 is firing bullets at about Mach 4, and he was able to avoid them easily. Is he a genius?" The gold-robed man asked and laughed. "The main focus is to observe the hand movement of the gunmaster during the fight. Then, he would be able to make a judgment based on the gunmaster''s movement and avoid the attacks. By just staring at the bullets, even a transcendent wouldn''t be able to avoid the attacks. It solely depends on one''s ability to predict and to dodge the bullets. It has nothing to do with the speed of the gun." The black robed man explained. "You sound like you don''t think he will win?" The gold-robed man frowned and asked. "He has a high possibility of losing the battle if this is all he has up his sleeves. Up until now, the opponent has only used part of her basic gun skills. There are still many powerful gun techniques and gunfighting techniques that she has yet to utilize. Moreover, he did not reduce the distance between them. He put himself in a passive position of having to receive attacks all the time." "If he does not consider fighting back, he is attempting to win by avoiding his opponents attack, in the hopes that she''ll use up her Life Power. Without a doubt, he''ll lose." The black robed man gave his judgment. "I have been watching his matches since his 20th match and never missed a single one of them. He''s never failed to surprise me. I believe that he''ll be the winner." Apparently, the gold-robed man had confidence in Lin Huang. "Let''s not argue. Instead, let''s make a bet." "What do you want to bet on?" The black robed man looked at him. "Don''t bet too much on it; to avoid conflicts. We should just bet with 3-star relics!" The gold-robed man said with a smile. "Not a problem." The man in black robe nodded his head without hesitation. "Deal. I bet that Sword Genius will win the match!" The gold-robed man then took out a golden dagger. The black robed man quickly took out a short black blade and said, "I bet he is going to lose!" 203 Sword Genius vs Explosive Female Demon In the arena, two of the guns that Explosive Female Demon was holding had never stopped firing bullets at Lin Huang. Not only were the bullets of the modified SilverPhoenix16 fired with a speed of Mach 4, its shooting speed was incredibly fast as well. In her hands, about 50 shots were fired from both guns per second. Its speed was on par with the that of an automatic rifle. Despite having to dodge 50 bullets per second, Lin Huang managed to do it with ease. His Boundless Vision was activated all the time; he was staring at his opponent''s hand. Lin Huang did not shift his gaze from her hands as he makes notes of even the slightest change in their movement. He could then predict the trajectory path of the bullets and dodge the attacks in advance. Many of them had their mouth wide opened when they saw what was going on. "The shooting speed is incredibly fast. If I am him, I''d be shot through like a sieve." "Most people would''ve relied on their defensive weapons against such a powerful attack. It''s the first time I''m seeing a player like Sword Genius who dodges the attacks by only using his movement skill." "It''s unlikely that he''s going to win! The bullets fired by the modified SilverPhoenix16 are traveling at Mach 4. Even if Sword Genius is struck by the bullet only once, he''ll be severely injured. His performance will be affected, and he''ll be defeated." "Sword Genius is not trying to reduce the distance between them at all. Under such a powerful attack, he''ll be exhausted just from avoiding the attacks. If this continues, it''s less likely that he''ll win the battle. The best he can do is to end the battle with a draw." They doubted his abilities, by just looking at her powerful attacks. Sword Genius was completely pinned down by his opponent. Those who had been watching Sword Genius battles all along hoped that a miracle would happen and he could achieve his 70-win streak. However, as they watched his performance in the arena, many of them instantly lost their confidence in Sword Genius. The Explosive Female Demon was too powerful. Despite the fact that she ranked fifth on the leaderboard, the battle between her and Ebonella who ranked second ended in a draw. Her abilities were evident. Most of them on the sixth floor knew that even though Exploding Female Demon ranked fifth on the leaderboard but she was stronger than the player who ranked fourth. It was not exaggerating to say that her abilities were on par with the player who ranked third. She was indeed too powerful to be the keeper of the 70th battle. In the arena, Lin Huang was cornered by her attacks. He had been standing in his original position to dodge the attacks, not once trying to shorten the distance between them. It was not because Lin Huang was incapable of doing so, but it was because he was trying to adapt to his opponent''s combat style. In other words, he was just warming up. Lin Huang had never encountered such a powerful enemy in the previous battles. Aside from the abilities she possessed, her attack speed was incredible as well. Her attack speed was the most powerful one among all the opponents he had encountered. The opponent''s attack speed was a furious storm. Since it was his first time encountering such an enemy, Lin Huang had to spend some time in getting used to his opponent''s combat style so that he could reset his bodily responses towards her attacks. It was like a warm-up session that one has to carry out before an intense workout to prevent injuries. Lin Huang had been drifting between her attacks so that he could quickly adapt to her combat frequency. His body was stiff at first but soon, it improved. After about five minutes, his body had completely adapted to the frequency and all the uneasiness had rapidly subsided. He grinned and dodged another bullet again. All of a sudden, he moved one step forward and lunged at her. The audience broke into loud cheers as Lin Huang was no longer playing on the defensive, but was lunging towards her instead. Lin Huang had been defending himself against her attack all this while. Many of them thought that Lin Huang was giving up on the battle and he wanted to end the fight in a draw. However, after about five minutes, Lin Huang finally attacked. She was surprised. She thought that Lin Huang wanted to end the fight in a draw as he had defended himself against her attacks. She did not expect him to strike and attack. "Do you think that it''s easy to reduce the distance between us?" She was grinning. Under her control, there seemed to be some changes in the properties of the bullets. As soon as Lin Huang moved a step forward, she quickly turned her gun, pointing them towards Lin Huang again. Lin Huang could vaguely sense that something was wrong immediately when the bullet was shot. He dodged the bullets. However, after the bullets passed by, there was an explosive sound, causing a powerful blast of wind. His movements were affected. The audience had their eyes wide opened the moment when they saw the explosion that in the arena. Her bullets had exploded and it was not just one bullet that exploded. In fact, more than hundred of the ones she fired had instantly exploded. The flame had enveloped half of the arena in front of her Though none of the bullets struck Lin Huang''s body, she found no trace of him as his body was completely covered by the flames and smoke. "This might not have happened if you were honest with me." As soon as she finished speaking, the two modified SilverPhoenix16 that she was holding was transformed into two automatic rifles. Two of the rifles pointed towards the area that was filled with smoke, a muzzle flash was seen. Countless silver bullets were fired and they were flying everywhere forwards. After switching to a rifle, the speed was faster than that of the SilverPhoenix16. The audience was stunned. They had never expected her combat style to have such a tough appeal. She was like a man! "Firing at such speed, perhaps Sword Genius is dead?" "His front view is blocked by a pall of smoke. If Sword Genius can''t see her hand movement, he will not be able to avoid those bullets as well." "Shes indeed is a female demon. The name suits her." Many of the men who were drooling over her were shocked when they saw this. "Is she a man that had undergone gender reassignment surgery?" Those men were suspicious about her real gender. After firing for about three minutes with her automatic rifle, she finally stopped. However, she had a weird expression on her face. She was not happy. Instead, she was doubtful. "Didn''t he die? Why haven''t I received the notification from the system" "I didn''t expect this from you. I''ve nearly died" A voice that came from the area filled with smoke replied as she mumbled. 204 70-Win Streak Right after the voice was heard, a shadow slowly appeared out of the smoky area. He was a teenage boy wearing a T-shirt and a silver face mask. He looked perfectly fine, without even a hint of awkwardness. Again, she switched two of her weapons to guns, aiming them at Lin Huang. Without a moment of hesitation, she raised her gun and shot. However, it was strange that Lin Huang did not avoid the bullets at all. He walked slowly towards Explosive Female Demon. The audience was startled, seeing the scene in the arena. Sword Genius was walking slowly towards Explosive Female Demon. She kept shooting him, but not a single shot hit. Sword Genius did not dodge the bullets at all. "How could it be?!" Lin Huang''s body passed through the bullets. However, no trace of bullets was found on his clothes. She was shocked and felt puzzled. "Why did she keep shooting towards the other side? Did she do it on purpose?" "A keeper can''t deliberately lose a game. If she does, it would mean that she has admitted defeat and she''ll be severely punished. Her account in the arena will be banned for at least three years!" "She seems to be acting weird" "It seems like you''re going to lose." The gold-robed man laughed, looking at the black-robed man. "Illusion This indeed is out of my expectation." Although the black-robed man was saying in this way, he sounded calm. Then, he passed the black short blade to the young man. "Haha" The gold-robed man took the short blade and immediately stored it in his storage space as if he was afraid that the black-robed man would go back to what he had said. "Do you want to place another bet?" The black robed man asked as he saw that he had kept the relic. "What do you want to bet on?" The gold-robed man asked and smiled. "The battle between Sword Genius and Yu Moli. I bet Yu Moli will win." The black robed man suggested. "Alright, deal. Even if I lose, I will just give the short blade back to you." The gold-robed man decided to stand by Lin Huang''s side. "No. This round, if you lose, you''ll have to give me two, 3-star relics." The black robed man doubled the bet. The gold-robed man hesitated when he heard the terms of the bet. "Aren''t you''re confident in the little brat?" The black robed man sounded insulting. "Fine, two relics then!" Still, the gold-robed man had decided to trust Lin Huang. In the arena, his opponent soon noticed something was wrong. "Illusion?" "Yes, you''re right." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. "When did you activate it?" She remained calm. "I activated it within the first few minutes of the battle." Lin Huang was being honest with her. "Even if you''ve used an illusion and my senses have been affected. I don''t rely on my senses to attack, I randomly fired the bullets. Also, you can''t even see my hands and you can''t judge the trajectory based on my movement. How did you dodge the attacks?" She could not understand. "That''s simply because I''ve used certain defensive skills." Lin Huang was forced to use his Blood Spirit wings earlier when the air was filled with smoke so he could defend against her attacks. Otherwise, he would have been shot through and look like a sieve. "I knew it!" Right after she had finished her sentence, she then picked up her gun. Following a peculiar trajectory path, silver bullets were fired out of her SilverPhoenix16. The silver bullets then formed a big net, flying towards Luo Yuan''s direction. Many of them could recognize that it was her unique gunfighting technique C Sky Net. Since her sensory organs were severely distracted by Lin Huang''s illusion, she could not estimate her enemy''s position. Therefore, Sky Net was undoubtedly the best gun fighting technique to use. She had been chatting with Lin Huang. It was not because she gave up defending herself against him but because she needed some time to figure out ways to counterattack. Then, she thought of this skill and resisted desperately. However, the audience was puzzled. During the conversation, the Sword Genius was walking around a semi-circle path and he was now behind her. However, her Sky Net was attacking the region in front of her and Sword Genius was not even within the sky net attack range. "His illusion skill is amazing" "I have to admit that although she is shooting at air, still, she still seems heroic!" "What? She''s too manly!" "Don''t get cheated by her appearance. Though she looks like a woman, she can''t hide the fact that she''s a man! If you don''t trust me, marry her and you''ll know." "I''m sorry. I can''t stop winning." Lin Huang was standing behind her, placing his long sword around her neck. "Admit defeat." Lin Huang removed his illusion, only then did she find out that there was a sword pointed at her neck. "Hmph, I''ll admit defeat!" She scoffed. Eventually, she admitted defeat. "Congratulations! Player Sword Genius has won the battle!" As soon as the pop-up notification appeared, Lin Huang kept his sword. As her body began to disintegrate, she stared at Lin Huang and said, "I''ll remember you, Sword Genius. I''ll get my revenge on you!" "Feel free to challenge me anytime." Lin Huang nodded his head and smiled. Soon, the system announcement lingered in the arena again. "Congratulations player Sword Genius defeated keeper Explosive Female Demon on the sixth floor of the arena, winning 70 consecutive battles!" "Congratulations player Sword Genius defeated keeper Explosive Female Demon on the sixth floor of the arena, winning 70 consecutive battles!" "Congratulations player Sword Genius defeated keeper Explosive Female Demon on the sixth floor of the arena, winning 70 consecutive battles!" When the system notification rang, it amazed all of the online players. Nobody had achieved 70-win streak in the past 16 years. This time, the announcement of the 60 winning streaks and 70-win streak were made in less than 15 minutes and it was completed by the same player. Many of them noticed that he was the newborn genius of the Hunter Association. The announcement of the 70-win streak was sent to not only the online players and even the offline players had received the notification. It was sent to 12 of the executive officers of the Hunter Association as well. This had instantly alerted the Hunter Association at Division7. The Hunter Arena was originally a virtual arena designed by the Hunter Association to look for geniuses. Knowing that there was a person that had achieved 70-win streak, the executive officers could no longer sit still as nobody could accomplish this in the past 16 years. With their authorities, soon, the executive officers knew the actual identity of Sword Genius. Their facial expression suddenly changed. "He is Lin Huang! Ah" Xu Tianyu sighed and shook his head as he thought of the fact that Lin Huang had missed intensive training. "I knew that Mr. Fu will not be wrong. But" Old Li sighed as well. Few of the executive officers had previously thought that Mr. Fu was wrong. However, the moment they received the notice, they knew that they were the ones that were wrong. On the other hand, other players of the Hunter Arena were going through the network searching for the information of Sword Genius. However, they seemed to have found nothing 205 79-Win Streak "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 70" "Accumulated Points: 5058" "Winning Percentage: 100%" "Honor: 70 consecutive wins!" Lin Huang looked at his score. The points accumulated had exceeded 5000. As long as he could win another 10 battles, the accumulated points would exceed 10,000. Then, he would be ranked in the top 10 on the leaderboard after collecting an additional 1000 points. In order to accomplish the mission given by Mr. Fu, achieving an 80-win streak was the bare minimum. If he could not do this, it would probably be difficult for him to complete the rest of the missions in the following 20 days. It would be best if he managed to make it to a 90-win streak. Then, he would have about 20,000 accumulated points, completing the task in one-shot. He could then save some time. Lin Huang took less than half an hour to win 20 consecutive battles to get from a 50-win streak to a 70-win streak. Though he has already broken a record that no one could break for the past 16 years, he still remained in the arena. "Would you like to continue the battle?" When this option popped up in front of him, Lin Huang chose "Yes!" without hesitation. Many of them did not expect this. Even after achieving a 70-win streak, Sword Genius did not choose to rest but instead, continued accepting challenges. The reason why Lin Huang chose to continue was simple. The past 20 battles did not consume much of his energy. Also, he had watched more than thousands of battle videos of those who were ranked top-10 on the leaderboard. He had conducted a complete analysis of each of their strengths and weaknesses. He was not going to waste his time for additional preparation. Since the keeper of the 70th battle was Explosive Female Demon who ranked fifth on the leaderboard, the keeper in the following battles would probably be those who are ranked even higher than her. Therefore, they would probably choose players that are among the top four players. The one who ranked fourth was Handsome Imperial Censor. He was an Imperial Censor and could summon a Gold-Level Rank-3 mutated monster. The points that he had accumulated were basically earned by the monster he summoned. Although he was not strong, he still managed to enter the top 100 on the leaderboard with his own abilities. The player who ranked third was The Final Fortress. He had terribly strong defensive power. He was the same as Yu Moli; having never lost a single battle on the sixth floor of the arena. Also, he was often chosen as the keeper by the system. Of course, the one who ranked first would be Yu Moli. The second-ranked player was Ebonella and the fifth-ranked player was Explosive Female Demon who had almost achieved her 70-win streak. However, The Final Fortress had somehow, always been chosen as the keeper of the 70th battle to end their winning streaks. Be it the Explosive Female Demon with amazing attack speed, Ebonella with her various combat techniques, or Yu Moli who was the invincible player on the sixth floor, they were unable to break through and achieve their 70-win streak because of The Final Fortress'' defense which usually caused the battle to end in a draw. Lin Huang actually did not want to bump into this opponent as well because he was not confident that he could break through the opponent''s defense. Compared to him, he would rather encounter Ebonella or even Yu Moli as the keeper of the 80th battle. He shook his head, snapping himself out of his deep thought and his 71st opponent was sent to the arena. His opponent was a young gunmaster. The moment he saw Lin Huang in the arena, he immediately activated his SilverPhoenix16. Many of the audience found it uninteresting when they saw this. Sword Genius had completed his 70-win streak. Although the opponent had accumulated 5000 points and it was not considered low, he was still too weak compared to the previous two keepers. The audience did not have any hope in his opponent. "Sword Genius, I didn''t know that I''d randomly bump into you. The gods are being too kind!" The young man was excited. Lin Huang glanced at his ID and it read, "Please give me your signature." "I can give you my signature. After I go offline, I''ll send you some photos when I''m free." Lin Huang explained. "Who wants your signature?!" The man immediately said, "I created the ID for my goddess!" "Oh" Lin Huang replied insincerely. He waited patiently as the countdown timer had not ended. "Do you know who my goddess is? She''s Explosive Female Demon! The one you bullied earlier!" The signature guy asked and answered his own question. "Oh" Lin Huang sighed as the countdown timer had not ended yet. "I want to take my revenge on you!" The signature guy finally told him the reason why he was happy. "Oh" Lin Huang answered politely as usual and still, his eyes were staring at the timer above him. "You bullied my goddess. I must defeat you. I want to take it out on you" "Have you finished talking?" Lin Huang suddenly asked. "No, I" Lin Huang suddenly extended her hand, pointing at the timer that had reached zero. He then lunged towards him and said, "Sorry, I''m in a hurry." The next moment, Lin Huang moved one step forward, passing by his body. Before the man even managed to fire a single shot, a sword cut through his waist. "Congratulations! Player Sword Genius has won the battle!" "You''ve killed the opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" The audience started discussing the man who just appeared. "Tsk tsk, the guy has unusual taste. How could he like her." "Perhaps he was an innocent teenager who was cheated by her appearance" "Probably he likes her act of violence?" The man who appeared just now meant nothing to Lin Huang. After the 71st battle had ended, the challengers were sent to the arena one after another. The moment they found out that their opponent was Sword Genius, eight of the fighters who were sent to the arena decided to give up the battle. To them, they knew that they would have no possibility of winning when they encountered Sword Genius who had completed his 70-win streak. Giving up the battle would be better compared to getting killed by just one hit in front of more than hundreds of thousands of people. With that, Lin Huang successfully completed his 79-win streaks and welcomed his 80th battle Who would be the keeper this round? 300,000 audiences stared at the arena, patiently waiting for the keeper to appear. Even Lin Huang started to feel nervous as this battle would decide whether he could get 10,000 points or otherwise. If he wins this battle, he could be more relaxed in the following days. However, if he lost the battle, he would have to achieve another 70-win streak to collect more than 10,000 points. He would then require more time to complete the mission. After about one minute, a shadow appeared on the other side of the arena 206 Arrival of the Ultimate Keeper Sometimes, sh*t happens. The moment he saw a skinny shadow appear in the arena, Lin Huang could immediately confirm his identity C it was the third-ranked person on the leaderboard, The Final Fortress. The Final Fortress was shorter than 1.4 meters, and he was very skinny. He might even weigh less than 60 catties and looked like a 10-year-old boy. However, he was actually already 17 years old and looked like this because he had stunted growth. It was because of his body size that allowed Lin Huang and the rest to recognize him before the light was even shone on the keeper. Although he looked like a harmless kid, The Final Fortress was the one opponent most players on the sixth floor did not wish to encounter. He was recognized as the ''Final Keeper'' on the sixth floor. Even Yu Moli who ranked first on the leaderboard had never defeated him in the arena after several battles. Lin Huang did not want to bump into him as he had no confidence that he could break through the opponent''s defense. When the audience saw the appearance of The Final Fortress, they observed a moment of silence for Lin Huang. "It seems like Sword Genius'' winning streak will end here." "The system did really send the final keeper here" "Yu Moli had said this before. None of the Silver Hunters could break through his defense. Only a gold-level, attack type relic could do it." "Although I feel like seeing Sword Genius create another miracle, it seems like it''ll remain a wish" Most of the players on the sixth floor knew The Final Fortress from watching his previous battles. The moment he appeared in front of Lin Huang, they lost all hope for Lin Huang in this battle. Regardless of how strong Sword Genius was, his combat strength was only Silver-Level Rank-3. The strength of his Life Power could not activate a gold relic. Even if he used a gold-level battle sword to attack, it was still impossible to break through his opponent''s defense. Countless hunters had tried but failed. Lin Huang clearly understood that. He had been watching his battle videos repeatedly. He was afraid that he might encounter an opponent with such a powerful defense. The results of his analysis showed that when one''s defensive skills were enhanced to a certain level, that person would be unbeatable. Unleashing a stronger power was the only way to break his defense. Other than that, nothing could help him. Lin Huang did an analysis of the weaknesses of the top 10 players on the leaderboard. He thought of ways to kill them as well. However, he had no idea how he could defeat The Final Fortress. In fact, it was not his abilities that were unbeatable. If his defensive skills were not taken into consideration, he would only manage to achieve top 30 on the leaderboard. However, he was invincible because of his incredible defensive skills. While Lin Huang was sizing up The Final Fortress, his opponent did the same thing on Lin Huang too. "It has been 16 years since the last player achieved a 70-win streak. Congratulations." The Final Fortress smiled at Lin Huang. "Thank you." Lin Huang nodded his head. "I''ve watched your battle videos, you''re so strong." Fortress admitted that Lin Huang was strong, "Therefore, I chose to defend the arena in this battle. As long as you can break through my defense in half an hour and leaving a wound on my body, I''ll concede. As long as it''s allowed, you can use any skills." Apparently, he knew that Lin Huang had heard of him before. He was lazy to banter on with him. He then explained to him the rules that he had set. "Alright." Lin Huang agreed with him. "Then let''s begin!" The Final Fortress took a look at the countdown timer, a complicated pattern was formed by both his hands when the countdown was about to end. Right after the pattern was formed, a layer of a shell-shaped object made of a material that looked like metal and stone was formed in the air in before his body. The object gradually became thicker, extending towards The Final Fortress and in less than three seconds, he was completely covered by it. A grey, ball-shaped object instantly appeared in the arena as well. It had a diameter of about two meters and it had a stone and metal texture to it. The ability was unique to the extent that even Lin Huang could not confirm if the layer he formed was a skill, a blood inheritance or a monster skill. Looking at the countdown timer above him end, Lin Huang did not attack immediately. He activated Boundless Vision and walked around the ball-shaped object. He carefully observed it. The audience did not urge Lin Huang to hasten his attack as they waited patiently for his next move. "It seems like Sword Genious is going to end his winning streak here." The black-robed man laughed as he looked at the gold-robed young. "He''s got bad luck to bump into this little brat that has a blood inheritance. He''s even inherited such powerful defensive abilities." Unexpectedly, the gold-robed man did not give him a reply. "Do you want to add on to the bet. Another relic perhaps?" The black-robed man grinned. "If the one he met was Yu Moli, he might not lose." The gold-robed young man changed the topic. "Those who possess a blood inheritance will inherit abilities developed by a transcendent. Their combat strength is restricted and they are not allowed to fully unleash the power of their blood inheritance. However, this brat possesses a blood inheritance skill that cannot be broken by those who are below the transcendent level. He can only be defeated by those who also have a blood inheritance. Despite the fact that Yu Moli has obtained numerous monster skills, it would still not be enough. Regardless of how strong the skill is, it would still a silver-level mutated monster skill. It is not comparable to a blood inheritance." The black-robed man explained with a smile. "Regardless of whether Sword Genius can win Yu Moli or not, he''ll definitely lose this battle! Unless he has a blood inheritance as well" "Stop talking nonsense. Let''s watch the battle quietly." The gold-robed man was getting lazy to listen to him and interrupted him. The black-robed man laughed arrogantly, he then kept quiet. Lin Huang walked slowly around the ball-shaped object in the arena. He tried to touch the object''s body but made no attempts of an attack. The audience started to feel impatient. "Sword Genius! Are you a man? Why are you looking and touching the ball instead of doing what you''re supposed to do?! Do you even dare to pick up a gun and fire?!" Some of them even shouted at him. "What do you know? This is foreplay!" Another man responded from afar. "The foreplay is too long. I''m going limp already!" Another man yelled at him as well. Everyone burst out laughing as they listened to their conversation. After carefully observing the ball-shaped object in the arena, he finally stood still 207 I Canst Accept A Draw! Lin Huang walked about 10 rounds around the ball-shaped object, observing each and every detail with Boundless Vision repeatedly. The ball-shaped object looked like a grey colored stone. However, when he touched it, it felt cold like it was metal. There were no cracks on the ball-shaped object and it looked like its entire body was painted in some light silver colored patterns. Lin Huang did not discover any flaws. He retreated 10 meters away and remained still. Lin Huang took out a gold ring from his storage space. He then held the ring between his right thumb and index finger, inserting Life Power into the ring. Soon, the gold-level weapon ring transformed into a gold-level gun. Despite the fact that silver hunters could activate gold-level weapons, most players would use a silver-level weapon by default during the battle on the fourth floor to the sixth floor in the arena. Normally, a gold-level weapon could be activated by using Gold Life Power. Gold Life Power was a lot denser than silver Life Power. If the user was a silver Hunter, Life Power consumption would be increased in order to activate gold-level weapons and one would not feel comfortable using it. During the battle, such details would actually affect the result of the game when encountering an opponent with combat abilities that are almost similar. Therefore, it was not appropriate for silver hunters to use gold-level weapons during the fight. Furthermore, the players of this game were not in need of money. Everyone could afford gold-level weapons. If one of the players changed their weapons the other players could change their weapons as well. Therefore, the effect of combining weapons was not significant. They would just use silver-level weapons because winning the battle was based on one''s ability. However, the audience did not raise any objections when Lin Huang took out the gold-level weapon ring. This was because the defensive skill of The Final Fortress was considered cheating. Most of the hunters that encountered The Final Fortress had used a gold-level weapon to attack him as well. However, after the weapon ring was activated, everyone was stunned as they saw that he was holding a gun instead of a sword. They had never seen Lin Huang use a gun before. "Sword Genius is holding a GoldEagle11. Why does it look a bit different?" "It is a modified gun. If Sword Genius can modify a gun, hes a qualified gunmaster without a doubt." "Perhaps it can generate a powerful attack. However, Explosive Female Demon has used modified GoldEagle11 to attack The Final Fortress in the past and she wasnt able to break through his defense." "There is a big difference between modified guns. Some players modify its shooting speed while others will increase its attack power. She mustve increased the speed of both of her guns. Its sufficient to maintain the original attack power of the GoldEagle11. However, if Sword Genius increases the attack power of the gun, its attack will be two to three times stronger, possibly even more. Furthermore, the Life Power of different gunmaster varies, resulting in different type of bullets. Therefore, the effect caused by the attack will be different as well" Many of them started discussing as Lin Huang, a master in wielding his sword had suddenly become a gunmaster. Staring at the big, ball-shaped object, he raised his gun and aimed at one of the points. After accumulating his Life Power, he pulled the trigger. Beams of muzzle flares appeared and soon, more than 10 bullets were fired, striking at the same position on the ball-shaped object. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Many of them were surprised as he fired consecutive shots. "From his movement, I know that Sword Genius is a true gun master. Looking at the way he holds the gun, I can know if he is truly a gun user." "A gunmaster is indeed an attractive profession to the women. All his movements are so charming!" Many of the young girls were screaming in excitement the moment Lin Huang fired the bullets. Lin Huang had taken about 50 to 60 shots. This was the maximum number of shots that he could fire at the same point. If he continued shooting, the bullet''s path would be shifted. A normal person would be unable to withstand the recoil from a GoldEagle11. Beginner gunmasters could normally take about 30 consecutive shots. There were some of them who could fire 40 consecutive shots. Firing 50 to 60 shots was the standard benchmark for an intermediate gun master. The audience was counting the number of shots fired. After listening to the sound of shooting, most of them could basically confirm Lin Huang''s identity as a gunmaster. In the arena, Lin Huang had a serious expression on his face. Right after he stopped shooting, his Boundless Vision could clearly see that nothing had happened to the location on the ball-shaped object that he shot with the bullets. Only several slight cracks appeared in the area which was less than 10 square centimeters like a small spider web. However, within one minute, it had returned to its original state. "Such an attack can only destroy its outer surface. The depth of the cracks were less than one millimeter. The thickness of the defensive layer is more than 20 centimeters. Furthermore, it has an extremely powerful self-healing ability" Lin Huang frowned. He began feeling like it was less likely he can break through his opponent''s defense. Soon, the GoldEagle11 in his hand transformed into a fully automated rifle. Lin Huang inserted his Life Power into it and placed the rifle on his shoulder. He started shooting towards the same position and about 80 consecutive shots were fired. The attack launched had destroyed the defense layer to quite some extent. 80 consecutive shots had resulted in a thumb-sized hole on the surface of the defense layer, reaching a depth of about one centimeter. However, the thumb-sized hole disappeared in less than five seconds. The audience all witnessed this, sending a glance of sympathy to Lin Huang. "It is not easy to strike a hole on The Final Fortress defensive layer." "The attack power of the modified GoldEagle11 is at least three times stronger than that of a regular GoldEagle11. Unfortunately, it still cant break through the defensive layer." "His defensive layer is incredible. It seems like Sword Genius is going to end his winning streak here" In the arena, Lin Huang remained stationary as if had fallen into deep thoughts. Firing 87 shots at the same point using a rifle was the best he could do. If he continued shooting, the bullet''s trajectory would deviate from the muzzle making his shots useless. In order to break through his defense, he had to keep attacking the same position. Otherwise, it would be a waste of Life Power. "With such an attack, the resulting impact is only about one centimeter deep" Lin Huang frowned, he basically had confirmed that his opponent''s defense layer was even stronger than he expected after several attempts. "It''s a bit troublesome" An 80-win streak was the key. If he could not win this battle, he would be unable to double the 5,000 points he had right now. He would have to achieve another 70-win streak in order to collect 10,000 points. The time and strength required would be doubled as well. Furthermore, it was likely that the system would send The Final Fortress as the keeper of the 60th battle or even the 70th battle. He would have to start everything again. This was also the reason why The Final Fortress was the opponent that Lin Huang did not wish to encounter the most. "No! I can''t accept a draw!" Lin Huang clenched his fist in determination. 208 Wildfire Sword - Worldly Purification Despite the modified GoldEagle11 having immense power, the consecutive shots fired by the weapon were still incapable of breaking through The Final Fortress defense. Lin Huang stayed at his original position and remained silent for a moment, transforming his BlackEagle11 back into a weapon ring. He then put it back in his storage space. The audience was quietly watching the battle. If Lin Huang was not wearing a face mask, the audience would have seen the frustration on his face at this very moment. Right after he morphed his GoldEagle11 into a weapon ring, Lin Huang took out another gold-level weapon ring. Upon activating the ring, it transformed into a gold-level sword. Many of the audience shook their head as they saw this as they felt that the effects of the sword would be inferior to that of the gun he was using previously. A majority of the sword techniques could slash through objects. However, against such a large, ball-shaped object, having bullets fired at one point would definitely be better than an attempt to cut through it. Of course, Lin Huang knew this but he insisted on trying it out as his epic-level sword skills could complement the sword in his hand so that he could transfer the power to achieve more powerful slashes. Furthermore, among all the sword skills that he had learned, not all of them were slashing skills. Some of them were piercing skills instead. Two out of 36 forms in Great Sword Scripture were piercing skills. One of the forms in Wildfire Sword was a piercing skill as well. Lin Huang held a sword in both hands as his Life Power flowed through the sword''s handle. Soon, the surface of the gold-level sword was shrouded in a silver glow, causing the sword to look like it had grown a centimeter longer. He bent his body and stomped on the ground hard with his feet. The arena beneath his feet instantly collapsed, creating a crevasse. He then lunged towards the defensive layer. In just a blink of an eye, he was right in front of the defensive layer. "Sword23!" Lin Huang shouted. The gold-level sword in his hand streaked past the air, creating the illusion of multiple swords attempting to pierce the defensive layer. However, the attack did not cut through the defensive layer. Instead, it pierced through the ball-shaped object. In an instant, the blade of the sword had penetrated through the defensive layer. However, it was stuck at the depth of about two to three centimeters in. Lin Huang could obviously feel that within the defensive layer, a tremendously terrifying repulsive force was being transferred to the tip of the sword. Lin Huang stayed at his original position for less than one second and the repulsive force was then transferred to Lin Huang''s arm. Lin Huang had no choice but to retract his sword and retreat. He was only able to balance himself when he reached the edge of the arena which was less than two meters from the defensive layer. "His defensive layer does not only have a heavy physical structure, it possesses a strong repulsive force as well. The deeper it is, the stronger the repulsive force becomes. That being said, the interior structure of the defensive layer is even stronger. Its no wonder nobody was capable of breaking through his defense" Lin Huang estimated the basic structure of his defensive layer based on its counterattack. However, understanding the structure of the defensive layer did not mean that he could get rid of it. He felt even more helpless instead. "It might be easier if there was only a physical defensive layer. However, there is a repulsive force within the defensive layer itself" Lin Huang sighed and took a few steps backwards until he was less than 10 meters away. He stood still, grabbing his sword with one hand and taking a deep breath. Again, he stepped the ground hard and lunged towards the defensive layer. "Sword23!" In mid-air, the gold-level sword in Lin Huang''s hand seemed like it had torn through the layers of air in its way. It did not only create the illusion of multiple swords but it created a vacuum in its wake as it penetrated the defensive layer without hindrance. The tip of the sword had pierced through a depth of five to six centimeters. Witnessing the power of his sword, the audience was astonished as they saw such a powerful penetrative force. However, they felt sorry for Lin Huang. "Sword Genius is unlucky to encounter him in battle. Otherwise, with such power, he could even pierce through gold-level defense equipment!" "It seems for someone with his abilities, even when faced with Ebonella who was ranked second on the leaderboard, hed be able to achieve an 80-win streak. However, he was unlucky enough to bump into The Final Fortress" Although Lin Huang had been trying again and again, with each time yielding improved results, a majority of people in the crowd did not have faith in Lin Huang. In the arena, Lin Huang had never stopped trying to break through the defensive layer. He failed during his second attack and retreated to the edge of the arena again. Behind his mask, he looked rather stressed. Although the 36 forms of Great Sword Scripture were comprised of various skills, its attack power was somehow weaker than Wildfire Sword. Lin Huang turned his body, walking towards the edge of the arena. His back approached the transparent defensive layer, leaning against it. He slowly closed his eyes, controlling his breath. Outside the arena, there was no sound of distractions. Everyone was quietly watching the battle. Lin Huang tried repeatedly and he never gave up. He had triggered the audience. Some of them who just came for fun began to cheer for Lin Huang. Although they knew that it was unlikely that Lin Huang would win, everyone was still hoping for a miracle. As he slowly closed his eyes and controlled his breath, he calmed himself down. Lin Huang then opened his eyes and stared at the ball-shaped object. He grabbed the long sword in his hand tightly, bending his body before stepping on the defensive layer. He suddenly jumped into the air. A golden glow could be seen on his blade, ignited by the friction in the air, causing golden flames to appear. Everyone opened their eyes widely when they saw this. "Worldly Purification!" It was the strongest form in the arsenal of his sword skill, Wildfire Sword C Worldly Purification! In order to purge one''s sins, the easiest way was to unleash the ultimate power, destroying everything before rebuilding them from the ground up. It was like a Worldly Purification. There was no way of turning back and there would be no regret. With all his strength, he struck an attack that destroyed everything in his way. This attack had completely emptied the Life Power in all the Life Wheels in Lin Huang''s body, allowing Lin Huang to strike with an attack that was stronger than ever. A beam of fire streaked across the sky. The air did not only burn from the sheer heat into nothingness, even the area around them began to vibrate slightly. In just a blink of an eye, a golden star crashed into the defensive, ball-shaped object that resembled an indestructible wall 209 Can He Grow Swords From His Body? "Bang!" A bright, golden glow that was as bright as sunlight shone as the golden spark of Worldly Purification collided with the invincible ball. The entire arena was covered in the golden glow, causing almost everyone in the audience to squint their eyes. The Worldly Purification that Lin Huang performed stunned many in the audience. Nobody expected Sword Genius sword skills to be as terrifying as this. Even some of the gold-level people were shocked as they could tell from his performance that Lin Huang had mastered the skill. The Worldly Purification that he had just performed was almost perfect. Such skill could usually only be performed by transcendents but Lin Huang managed to unleash it almost perfectly. Though his combat strength that was not on par, his understanding of sword skills were comparable to transcendents who have mastered the Dao of the sword. "Can he break it through?" Many of them who were not rooting for Lin Huang were now undecided. Theoretically, such a stunning hit should destroy everything that was on the same level. However, Sword Genius opponent had the strongest defense in history. Nobody could tell what would happen next, not even Lin Huang himself Under the golden glow, a small portion of Lin Huangs battle sword was pierced into the invincible defensive layer. An intense force was stopping his sword from piercing it. However, Lin Huang was far from exhausting his strength. The golden glow seemed to have a melting effect to the defensive layer, his sword was piercing into the ball slowly. 10 centimeters, 20 centimeters, 25 centimeters Suddenly, the tip of the sword touched a layer that was even tougher. "Pierce through it!" Lin Huang shouted. He transferred all his remaining strength onto his sword, attempting to break through the tough layer. However, just as he was doing that, an immense force flowed right back at his sword. "Bang!" Another bang was heard, however, Lin Huang did not step back at all. Veins were bulging all over his arms as all his Life Power filled his sword, hoping to break through the defensive. Suddenly, he heard an indistinct cracking sound. "Did I break it through?" Lin Huang was happy inside. On the contrary, he looked at his sword and he was speechless. His sword was cracking from the intense collision. The surface was not the only thing cracking as the internal structure of the sword began cracking as well. The Life Power transfer was almost complete but the force from within the defensive layer was getting increasingly stronger. Finally, the force was fully released from the gap where the sword pierced through. Under the force, the battle sword in Lin Huangs hand completed broke. "F*ck!" Lin Huang did not even have the time to show his distress as the force hit him, hard. If not for his stunning body physique, he would have been badly injured from this force. He fell hard against the wall of the arena, the impact making him puke blood on the ground. The golden glow disappeared when his body was struck against the defensive wall where the audience was sitting. "What happened?" "Sword Genius is only left with the hilt of the sword. Whats happening?" "Hes really left with the swords hilt. There are golden sword pieces on the ground" "How could it be? His sword is completed broken and yet he failed to break through the ball?!" "No matter how powerful he is, this ends here. Relics are prohibited on the first to the ninth floor. if he cant win it with a gold-level weapon, theres nothing else he can do." Lin Huang fell slowly from the defensive wall of the arena. He was slightly injured but he did not care at all. He stood right up on the ground and looked at the hilt in his hand, letting out an awkward smile. He tossed the hilt away and looked at the ball. The crack that the sword pierced through earlier was now completely healed. There was no trace of the crack at all. "This is some really powerful defense. Aside from a relic, theres nothing else that can break through it However, relics are prohibited here and even if theyre not, I cant activate them with my Life Power" Lin Huang stood there as he attempted to come up with a plan. "Should I use that now?" The only thing that Lin Huang could come up with was Blood Spirit - a skill he got from Bai. He remembered clearly back when Bai was still silver-level, the power of his Blood Spirit wings surpassed all the gold-level weapons they encountered. Its strength was close to a relic. Since Bai was gold-level rank-3 now, his Blood Spirit wings were as powerful as a relic. Although Lin Huang was only silver-level rank-3 now, but his Blood Spirit wings should not be any weaker than Bai when he was silver-level rank-3. He looked up at the time, 18 minutes had passed. He was left with 12 minutes before the match would be considered a draw. He knew that he did not have much time left. "Even a gold-level weapon could not do it. It seems like theres nothing else that I can use to break through this defensive layer besides my Blood Spirit wings" Lin Huang had always put the Blood Spirit wings as his trump card, his final move to use against Yu Moli. However, it seemed like if he did not use his Blood Spirit wings now, there was no way he could win this battle. After standing still for a moment, Lin Huang had finally made up his mind. The audience had lost faith in him ever since his sword broke. Without a relic, there was no way that Sword Genius could win this battle. However, Lin Huang stood up straight, the frown under his mask turning to an expression of relief. Seeing that, the audience became excited. "Could he have something even more powerful up his sleeves?!" "It cant be! What he performed just now was already so powerful. How is it possible that he has something even better?!" "Why do I have the feeling that Sword Genius might turn it around?" "This must be an illusion. His gold-level weapon is broken now, what else can he use? Perhaps he can grow swords from his body" Lin Huangs eyes turned a shade of red. At the same time, Blood Spirit spread out of his pores and enveloped his body. A pair of gigantic Blood Spirit wings grew out of his back. 210 The Most Powerful Spear Versus The Toughest Shield What just happened in the ring shocked everyone around the audience. "Is that vampires blood power?!" "Could Sword Geniuss real identity be a vampire?" "Thats a dumb thing to say, how is it possible that the Hunter Arena could not recognize a monster?! Sword Genius must be a human with monster skills!" "This is interesting." The young man in the golden robe who had been sat quietly chuckled to himself. "The four Blood Spirit wings are a monster skill of a gold-level. However, no matter how strong it is, it would be the same with a gold-level weapon. It is quite impossible that this could break through the defensive layer which was from a blood inheritance," said a man in a black robe. "The blood power of a gold-level vampire is the same as a gold-level weapon but if it is a mutated vampire, the strength of the blood power should be much more powerful than a gold-level weapon. If Sword Genius obtained his Blood Spirit wings from a mutated monster, it''s quite possible to break through the defense when it''s used together with the sword attack earlier." The man in golden robe replied. "A vampire is a human type of monster with high intelligence. The mutated ones would have even higher intelligence and ability. Do you think Sword Genius, who is only a silver-level rank-3, would be able to kill a gold-level mutated vampire?" The man in black robe asked. The man in golden robe went into silence. Lin Huang unleashed his four Blood Spirit wings in the ring. The bloody color camouflaged his Blood Spirit wings which now looked the same as blood power wings. It meant he did not have to do anything to conceal them. Now that his eyes were red, everything he was seeing was red too. What surprised him was the ball across from him changed color as well. It was not a grayish-white ball anymore but was now a flaming red. It seemed like it was made of lava that was rotating in circles. "The rotation must be the internal force of the defensive layer" Lin Huang smirked as he did not expect himself to be able to see how the balls internal force worked when he activated Blood Spirit. "The light color must be the weak point of the defensive layer. As it rotates, the weak point changes its location. That''s why the defensive layer seems to be flawless from the outside." Lin Huang could see that where ever the color was darker, the force that was protecting that particular point would be stronger while the lighter the color, the less force would be protecting it which meant it had lower defense. His vision now allowed him to see the flaws in a seemingly flawless defensive layer. "I shall use Worldly Purification again; I dont believe that it can''t break your tortoise-shell!" Underneath the mask, Lin Huang looked confident. The Blood Spirit wing on the top right transformed into a long sword with Life Power flowing through it. This time, the Blood Spirit wing drained three circles of his Life Power. The surface of the sword was burning in a golden flame. "Hes using that again!" Seeing the sword on fire, everyone in the audience became excited. Lin Huang stepped on the defensive wall behind him and leaped towards the ball at lightning speed. His speed was even faster than the last time, like a shooting star in space. Once again, even the air was retreating from its existence, and in an instance, Lin Huang had leaped 20 meters away and arrived right before the ball. The Blood Spirit wing covered in golden flames was like a star destroyer when colliding with the invincible wall. "Bang!" A spark that was brighter than before lighted up the ring. It was as bright as the sun at noon. This time, all of the people in the audience closed their eyes as they could not look into the blazing sun. The gigantic blood spirit wing released boundless sparks right at the weak points of the ball. Lin Huang did not feel any force coming against his wing while it transformed into a sword and pierced through the ball landing on the wall across from them. Although the people could not see what was happening in the ring due to the intense golden flame, most of them heard a cracking sound. "Is the defensive layer broken?!" They were shocked as they tried to open their eyes to look. However, it was impossible for them to do so as it was too bright so nobody could tell what happened in the ring. What they did not know was that the cracking sound came from the wall in the ring, not the defense layer of The Final Fortress. It was the first time the defensive wall on the sixth floor arena had cracked The ball blocked Lin Huangs vision, so he did not know what had happened to the defensive wall. He thought the cracking sound was the breaking of the ball. He looked at his wing, most of it was inside the defensive ball. He was relieved as from what he was seeing; he had won the battle. Above all, The Final Fortress who was sitting inside the ball was the one who got the biggest shock. Although nobody could see through the ball, he could see everything from the inside. From the inside, the ball was the same as a pane of transparent glass. He saw everything Lin Huang had been doing for the last 20 minutes. He was shocked the first time when Lin Huang used the Worldly Purification form as his sword had penetrated almost 30 centimeters into the ball. It touched the last layer of defense before he withdrew it. What shocked him the most was Lin Huangs last attack which seemed like it was not even affected at all. Instead, it pierced straight into the ball, through his chest and back. What was more terrifying was that the sword even pierced through the defensive layer behind his back It was the first time that The Final Fortress lost a battle on the sixth floor of the arena. He always thought that he was invincible. "I didnt know a silver-level rank-3 could be this powerful" The Final Fortress spat blood while in shock, he could clearly feel that the wing had pierced through his body and was absorbing his will to live. Within seconds, he was dead. His body then disappeared altogether with the grayish-white ball. "Congratulations. You have won the battle!" Before the golden flame faded, Lin Huang received the notification of him winning. In the next second, an announcement from the system echoed through the entire arena. "Congratulations! Player Sword Genius defeated keeper The Final Fortress on the sixth floor of the arena and has won 80 consecutive battles!" 211 80-Win Streak! "Congratulations! Player Sword Genius defeated keeper The Final Fortress on the sixth floor of the arena and won 80 consecutive battles!" The online players were not the only ones to receive the notification, but all registered players who were offline also received a notification too. The last person who managed to achieve 80 consecutive wins in Division7 Hunter Arena was 118 years ago. Without a doubt, Lin Huang had broken the ice that formed more than 100 years ago! The 12 senior executive officers in the Hunter Association were shocked. When they saw the notification, they looked for the shared video of the battle. All of them shook their heads after they watched the video without saying a word. However, Old Li and Xu Tianyu were in distress. Old Li blamed himself for underestimating and excluding Lin Huang from the focus training list by judging him too fast. Meanwhile, Xu Tianyu blamed himself for asking for Mr. Fus help. If not for Mr. Fu, Lin Huang would be on the list of Hunter Associations focus training and be trained as a candidate for the senior executive officer role. Unfortunately, everything was too late now The news of Lin Huangs 80 consecutive wins caught the dark organizations attention. They were trying to find out who this Sword Genius was. They knew very well that if Lin Huang were found and trained by the Hunter Association, he would be a transcendent one day and become a nightmare to the dark organization. Therefore, they were eager to find out Sword Geniuss identity so that they could get Lin Huang into their organization before it was too late. Many of the registered players who had yet to enter the arena were shocked when they saw the notification. All of them knew that the last person who got 80 consecutive wins was more than 100 years ago. Many players logged into the game on purpose just to see who this Sword Genius was. He became a hot topic in the arena as he managed to get 60, 70 and 80 consecutive wins within a single day. With all the time taken added up, he had taken less than one hour to achieve that. The sixth floor of the arena was the most crowded place inside of the Hunter arena as all of the players were discussing Lin Huang with each other. It was a miracle that that had happened on the sixth floor. Moreover, everyone was familiar with the keepers who fought Lin Huang. "Has Sword Genius really won 80 battles back to back?" "Not only that he even defeated The Final Fortress, even Yu Moli had never defeated that fella before." "The ability of Sword Genius is too terrifying. Since he defeated The Final Fortress, does that mean hes even more powerful than Yu Moli?" "Lets see if he can achieve a miracle and continue to 90 consecutive wins" It was very crowded outside venue No.1 on the sixth floor of the arena. However, there was nothing but complete silence in the venue as everyone was shocked at the announcement. They had no idea what just happened. The golden flame in the ring faded after the announcement came over the system. After The Final Fortress had disappeared, it was only then Lin Huang realized that he had broken the wall in the ring. Before the golden glow had entirely faded away, Lin Huang retracted his blood spirit wings, immediately concealing them from the crowd but soon after he started to feel the exhaustion in his body from the battle. Using the Worldly Purification form twice had drained four circles of his Life Power with more than half of his last Life Wheel exhausted. The Hunter Arena was a simulation of what happened in real life; therefore, any Life Power exhaustion in the arena was real, preventing players from refilling their Life Power after every battle. Even if a player died in the ring, their bodies would be rebuilt by the system on the same day but their Life Power would remain the same without being refilled. The setting was to prevent players from getting too addicted to the game and reduce the risk of people dying in cyber cafes in the real world. If a player had drained too much Life Power in a day, they could only come back on the next day to refill their Life Power. If they logged-in on the very same day, their Life Power would not be refreshed. It was evident that Lin Huangs body was not ideal to continue to battle. He was not worried about the opponents from the 81st to the 89th fight. However, even if the keeper of the 90th battle might be easier to defeat than The Final Fortress, he would be anything but weak. With his condition, he thought it would be disrespectful to his opponents. "Would you like to continue to battle?" After staring at the notification with some thought, Lin Huang chose to leave the battle. As his body was breaking into pieces and disappeared, the audience just managed to open their eyes from the golden glow that had faded away as he left. "Hes not fighting anymore?" Many of them were disappointed. "Perhaps the last battle was too much for his body and he must rest now. After all, The Final Fortress was not an easy fight." "Guys look! There are cracks in the arena''s defensive wall" Someone shouted. A guy who was sitting very close to the wall looked at the wall and realized there were cracks. He stood up and pressed against the wall. A cracking sound was heard as the guy touched it and the wall broke into pieces. Everyone was shocked at the scene. "Its not me! There were cracks before I went there, all I did was give it a light push" The guy explained. Of course, the rest knew it was not the guys fault. They knew it must be Sword Genius who did that as The Final Fortress stayed in his defensive mode throughout the entire battle without attacking. As the ball completely blocked the previous attack of Sword Genius, the only thing that could happen was the sword that pierced through the ball and penetrated straight into the wall. Everyone thought it was terrifying, all of them knew that the arena wall was unbreakable even with a gold-level weapon from a gold-level rank-3 hunter. When the man in a black robe, who hadn''t been rooting for Lin Huang saw the broken wall, he said, "I underestimated him, this Sword Genius really is something." "Hehe The best of him and Yu Moli" The young man in golden robe smirked. "I believe he would be fighting Yu Moli the next time he logs into the game." The man in a black robe nodded. Standing outside the ring on the sixth floor, the silver mask on Lin Huangs face faded away. Seeing the battle clips of his battle with The Final Fortress, made Lin Huang smirk. He then looked at his scoreboard. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 80" "Accumulated Points: 10138" "Winning Percentage: 100%." "Honor: 80th winning streak!" "I have finally accumulated more than 10,000 points! After I finish the keeper tomorrow, I will have completed the mission that master gave!" Lin Huang was confident. He smirked as he heard everyone around him discussing Sword Genius. Soon after he logged out of the game to let his Life Power regenerate. 212 Level-2 Sword Power Realm After exiting the Hunter Arena, Lin Huang saw that the top news on the games page was about him - Player Sword Genius has broken the ice that lasted a hundred years and achieved 80 consecutive wins! Posted just a couple of minutes before; there were more than a million views on the news with more than 50,000 comments. Lin Huang turned off the page after taking a look. It was past 10 in the morning, he dropped by the wet market and bought some food to take home and it was past 11 when he got back. After cooking grilled meat for Lin Xuan on the third floor, he got down to the kitchen to make lunch for himself and Lin Xin. Although ordering takeaway food would save a lot of time, nothing could beat a good home cooked meal. Since he was not busy, he chose to prepare lunch himself. It was almost noon when he finally finished the cooking. After placing the food he cooked and the grilled meat on the dining table, Lin Huang got both kids to come to the dining table. After lunch, he got back to his room and downloaded his battle videos. He played all the videos of him fighting the keepers while writing notes to look for ways to improve himself. All of the videos taken were from Lin Huangs point of view, the audience could not see everything that had happened, but the official videos were clear to him. He was surprised as he watched the battle with The Final Fortress where he used the Worldly Purification form twice. He managed to upgrade the sword skill to its ultimate form. The feeling was completely different than before. However, Lin Huang could not tell what exactly was different. He almost got it after repeating the video a couple of times, but he did not manage to grasp what it was. With doubt, he called Mr. Fu. "Whats wrong? You''ve accomplished the mission already?" Mr. Fu was surprised that Lin Huang called. Lin Huang last consulted Mr. Fu during New Years Eve, when he was only at his 50th winning streak. It had just been four days since New Years Eve and also the first time the Hunter Arena had reopened since the new year, and this surprised Mr. Fu. "Not yet, Im on No.13 now. I''ve exhausted my Life Power and needed to log out of the game. I have something to ask you, master." Lin Huang told the reason why he called. "Sure, do tell." Mr. Fu nodded and put down his stuff in his hand. Lin Huang told Mr. Fu his struggle while Mr. Fu listened carefully. As he finished, Mr. Fu laughed and said, "If Im not wrong, your power realm should be nuance now, am I right?" "Nuance?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "The first level of the sword power realm is called nuance. Once you enter that level, you''ll have full mastery of your sword where all forms will be under your control. You''ll have full control of everything you can see with your naked eyes." "The unique sense that you mentioned earlier should be the second level of the sword power realm. The second level of the sword power realm is called consonance. It is the resonance you have with your sword. When you reach this level, the sword is no longer a tool but a partner or friend. You can even sense the emotion of your sword." "The feeling that you mentioned about the two sword attacks that you performed earlier could have meant that you''ve arrived at the nuance level. With the trigger from the outside world as well as your heightened focus, it caused you to enter the consonance stage temporarily. However, you could take this opportunity to enter the second level of the realm. Dont go back to the arena for a couple of days. Take this time to train and see if you can break through." Mr. Fu suggested after listening to Lin Huangs problem. "This is what I thought of as well. If I could grab the feeling properly, my skill would be a level higher than before." Lin Huang wanted to study the feeling before it disappeared to see if he could level-up his sword skill. "I will send you a few videos about the consonance stage. Maybe they could inspire you." Mr. Fu hung up the phone later on. Soon after, he sent more than ten videos to Lin Huang, who downloaded the videos and watched them one by one. After watching the videos, Lin Huang watched his battle videos repeatedly. He had a clear picture in his mind now. Taking out a wooden sword, he leaped from the balcony of the second floor and started training the different forms of Wildfire Sword at the courtyard on the first floor. One Two Three times... He trained until five in the evening before he finally managed to grasp the unique feeling that he felt in the arena. Just like what Mr. Fu said, he could feel it in the sword. It seemed to be different than before and it felt like he was not holding a weapon as it felt more and more like a part of his body. The sword also felt like an individual creature. It was a contradictory condition. "Is this the consonance state?" After grasping the feeling, Lin Huang immersed himself into it and started training without stopping. He trained until past ten at night without noticing. When Lin Huang finally snapped out of the zone, he realized that it was late - 10:28 p.m. He went back into the house immediately thinking that the two kids had yet to have dinner. "Brother, are you done with your training?" Lin Xin was in the living room. "Yes, I bet you guys haven''t eaten?" Lin Huang asked. "I saw you training when it was past six in the evening, so I made Lin Xuan grilled meat and heated up the leftover lunch. Theres some in the oven, go eat it." Lin Xin smiled at Lin Huang. Lin Huang went into the kitchen and ate the leftovers. "Is there any news today?" Lin Huang asked while eating as he had not read the news since noon. "Theres a big one. It said that theres a person who accumulated 80 consecutive wins in the Hunter Arena in Division7. Everyone on the network is talking about this." Lin Xin nodded and said, "They say the last person who managed to get 80 wins was more than 100 years ago" Lin Huang nodded without saying anything. He knew that the winning streak would make big news in Division7. Now the news had circulated in the hunter community as well as the Heart Network. It was almost 11 at night when Lin Huang finished eating, he got Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to go to bed. After cleaning the cutleries and bowl, he showered and went to bed alone. In the following days, Lin Huang would start training at seven in the morning right after his breakfast until it was after 11 at night, training for more than 16 hours each day. Since he managed to grasp the feeling of the consonance stage on the first day, he now had to train with the feeling to perfect the form in the following days. He could clearly feel that he was mastering the consonance stage as time passed. Soon, five days had passed. At midday, Lin Huang stood in the middle of the courtyard and kept a firm grasp on his sword while smirking. "I have finally mastered the second stage of the sword power realm. Tomorrow I shall continue to battle in the arena. I wonder who my keeper will be, could it be Yu Moli or Ebonella?" 213 Unbelievable Fate Changer On the next morning, Lin Huang went to the Hunter Arena page in his room after having breakfast. The top news on the main page was still the news of his 80 consecutive wins where the views were up to 100 million with 800,000 comments. If Hunter Arena was opened to Regular Hunters that were below bronze-level, perhaps the views would be 10 times more. After reading the next page and failing to find anything worth his time reading, Lin Huang logged into the game. He noticed that he had more than five million followers now and still counting. "Im an influencer now" Lin Huang was shocked when he saw the number of followers that he had. He only had 300,000 followers five days ago and it had been less than a week and his followers were now 17 to 18 times more. Just as he logged into the game, a notification was sent to everyone who followed him. Many of them logged into the game early in the morning as they wanted to wait for Lin Huangs entrance. They wanted to see Sword Genius live in action. Just like what happened on earth where people would buy a plane ticket to fly to another country just to watch a football or basketball match. It was different watching a live battle than one on the television and people hoped to see Sword Genius creating more miracles. Lin Huang checked his body condition, it was good as new with full Life Power. After confirming, he pressed the challenge button. Soon, he was sent to the No.1 ring on the sixth floor. Theoretically, the No.1 ring was meant for players who ranked top 10. It was the first time the system allowed this to happen as Lin Huang defeated Explosive Female Demon who ranked 5th in his 70th battle. Now that he was sent to the No.1 ring, it was clear that the system did some restructuring and gave Lin Huang the privilege like other players in the top 10. Lin Huang was familiar with this ring, but this time when he entered the room there was nobody inside. "Did I come too early?" Lin Huang thought it was strange. "Please hold on, the system is expanding the venue" Seeing the notification, Lin Huang realized that the venue was expanding. When Lin Huang pressed the challenge button earlier, all of his followers who were online received the same notification. "Player Sword Genius has entered the ring No.1!" Many of them wanted to enter the venue but they then received another notification that said the venue is under maintenance, please enter later. The seats available in the venue were increasing from 300,000 to one million within one minute. "The expansion is completed, the audience can now enter venue No.1." Seeing the notification, many clicked to enter the venue. Within half a minute, the one million seats were taken. Most of the audience was watching Lin Huangs battle live for the first time. Seeing Lin Huang with a silver mask on, many of them were curious about what he really looked like. "Please wait while the system matches your opponent" A notification appeared on top of the ring. Lin Huang did not think it was odd that the system had yet to match him an opponent as he had accumulated more than 10,000 points now, there were not many people who were eligible to fight him. What he did not know was, a sleepy young man received a message from the arena. He looked at the message and thought it was a mistake. "I havent even logged into the game, why did they give me a match!" He did not even bother to read the full message. Just when he was attempting to delete the message, the arena called. It was the voice of a robot. "Were sorry to interrupt you, Unbelievable Fate Changer, you have been matched to fight Sword Genius. This is a special mission from the arena, if you defeat Sword Genius, you''ll be rewarded with 10 times more for whatever points you accumulate during the match. If you''d like to accept the challenge, please log in within three minutes." "Failure to log in within three minutes results as the player surrendering and losing the match. Declining the challenge will not result in any punishment, you have the freedom to choose if you''ll battle or not." "10 times more?! Doesnt that mean I could get to rank No.2 straightaway!" Unbelievable Fate Changer sat up immediately. "But my opponent is the one who defeated Explosive Female Demon and The Final Fortress five days ago" "Damn it, I shall give it a try! Since I wont lose anything even if I do get defeated." Unbelievable Fate Changer put on his slippers and entered the arena. After waiting for more than two minutes, Lin Huangs opponent finally appeared. It was Unbelievable Fate Changer in his pajamas and slippers, the audience was speechless at his attire. He seemed to have just got out of bed as there was still gunk at the corner of his eyes. It was obvious that he entered the arena before he got the time to clean himself. However, Lin Huang was not surprised at the random opponent he''d been given. Unbelievable Fate Changer ranked No.10 on the sixth-floor leaderboard with more than 12,000 points. Encountering such powerful opponent in his 81st battle, Lin Huang could foresee who was going to be his next opponent. "That means Ill have to fight those who ranked No.10 to No.1 during my 81st to 90th battles then? If I defeat Yu Moli, who would be my opponent after my 90th battle?" Lin Huang was thinking of that, the audience was thinking the same thing too. Unbelievable Fate Changer stood across from Lin Huang and tossed his slippers aside while digging his ears. "You must be thinking who will your opponents be after me, am I right?" "Yeah, I was guessing." Lin Huang nodded. "However, looking at your condition, I supposed you were not online before you were sent here, am I right? What did the arena offer you that you are willing to give up your sleep to fight me?" "The arena is generous" Unbelievable Fate Changer laughed when he heard what Lin Huang asked. "They said I would get 10 times more of my current accumulated points if I defeat you, I dont think anybody could reject such a sweet temptation." "Oh really, thanks." Lin Huang was surprised. The audience finally understood that the arena treated Sword Genius as the ultimate boss in the game so they came up with a matching reward. It was normal that many would be willing to try their luck since they would not lose anything anyway. The countdown was ending, the fight between Sword Genius and Unbelievable Fate Changer would start in a nick of time! 214 All The Best to You Unbelievable Fate Changer was ranked No.10 on the sixth floor of the arena. He was also the first player that Lin Huang studied as his battle method was unique. Lin Huang had researched his family too. His name was Ji Qingyang, a member of royalty. The Ji family was a special family who was an expert in predicting the future, including Ji Qingyang himself. He could always predict what his opponent was going to do next and he would react before his opponent could attack. Such predictions were even more powerful than the times when Lin Huang encountered the gunmasters. It was like mind-reading. However, Unbelievable Fate Changer had an obvious flaw in his body physique because it was just slightly stronger than an ordinary silver-level rank-3 player. He was much weaker than Lin Huang and Yu Moli. If his opponent was fast, even with his prediction, he would not have enough time to react. The easiest way to fight him was to be so fast that he couldnt avoid the attacks. As the countdown ended, Lin Huang took out his silver-level battle sword. He was like lightning when he lunged towards Unbelievable Fate Changer who was 15 meters away within seconds. It was so fast that the audience could not catch him. In reality, Unbelievable Fate Changer had predicted that, but before he could react, Lin Huang had already passed by him. "Im sorry, I needed to do this quick." Lin Huang kept his sword. Blood spilled from Unbelievable Fate Changers waist, his body had been sliced into half. "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" Seeing the body of Unbelievable Fate Changer disappear and the notification from the system, left the audience shocked. "How could Sword Genius have managed to kill Unbelievable Fate Changer who ranked No.10 in one hit?!" "I thought this match would take a while, it ended so quickly." "Sword Geniuss attack was too fast, so fast that Unbelievable Fate Changer had no time to react at all." "This Sword Genius is even more terrifying than before" The man in black robe said. "Its just the Thunder Sword form but it seems like he was in a state where his speed and attack power was multiplied. This kid is really something!" The man in golden robe exclaimed. Lin Huang who stood in the ring was stunned as a notification popped up after he killed Unbelievable Fate Changer. "You have learned a new form of Thunder Sword by yourself. Would you like to upgrade Thunder Sword?" "Will it exhaust an Advance Card if I upgrade it?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei in his mind. "There''s no need for an Advance Card since you learned it yourself, there wont be any need for cards." "Upgrade it then!" After hearing what Xiao Hei said, Lin Huang upgraded his Rare Skill Card - Thunder Sword immediately. "Are you sure you would like to upgrade your skill card Thunder Sword?" "Affirmative!" "Upgrading Upgrade has been completed!" "Congratulations, you have received an Epic Skill Card - Thunder Sting." Lin Huang looked at his new skill card immediately. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Thunder Sting" "Rarity: Epic" "Type of Skill: Sword skill" "Skill Level: Unknown" "Status: Available" "Description: This is a sword skill that gives ultimate speed before ending with an explosion." "Remarks: Life Power is needed for the skills activation." "Card Remarks: Not bad" When he was done checking the card, Lin Huang realized that he was sent back to the original spot in the ring and his second opponent was there across him. It was Salt36 who ranked 9th! Seeing his appearance, Lin Huang was now sure that the system had arranged for him to fight the players ranked from 11th to1st! He was familiar with Salt36 as well. His real name was Yan Xuan. Coming from a big royal family, there were 36 of them in his generation with himself being the youngest. He gave himself that nickname from the sound of his family name Yan. "Salt36 has great ability, hes an expert in close-quarter combat and fire combat skill. Hes known as a mini Yu Moli in the arena as he always gave people the impression that hes the weaker version of Yu Moli but hes not weak at all. Hes actually considered very powerful or else he wouldnt be ranked No.10 on the leaderboard. However, hes definitely weaker than Yu Moli in all aspects. Since Yu Moli is also an expert in fire combat, that was the reason why he gave people such an impression to begin with." Encountering Salt36, Lin Huang thought he wouldnt be difficult to defeat as long as he did not use his sword. "Are you here to have your accumulated points multiplied ten times as well?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "Of course. Maybe I''ll get lucky today." Salt36 grinned. "Thats true" Lin Huang had nothing to say to his comeback. As the countdown ended, Salt36 lunged towards Lin Huang with silver Life Power burning in both his palms. Within seconds, he appeared before Lin Huang. Lin Huang did not seem to move at all and a thunder-like silver glow flashed in the air right before his silver battle sword pierced into Salt36s chest in the blink of an eye. Salt36 was shocked as he looked at his chest, he had no idea how Lin Huang did it. All he saw was darkness in his eyes. "Congratulations. You have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" As Salt36 fell to the ground, his body disintegrated into pieces and disappeared. After the consecutive wins, South Palace Laugh who ranked 8th failed to appear in the third battle so Lin Huang won that match automatically. On the fourth battle, Lin Huang encountered Hunter Killer who was ranked 7th. Hunter Killer was a killer who was an expert in camouflage. However, with Lin Huangs sense circle, he managed to kill Hunter Killer in one hit. On the fifth battle, Lin Huang was matched with Lord of Falling Petals who was ranked 6th. He was a young man who was an expert in illusions. However, with Lin Huangs Kaleidoscope skill which was very resilient against illusion skills, he managed to kill Lord of Falling Petals in one hit as well. Finally, Lin Huang had arrived at his sixth battle to fight Explosive Female Demon, the same one that he had encountered before. Many of them in the audience whistled when they saw Explosive Female Demon, who had appeared in a black uniform. However, the both of them could not hear anything that was coming from the audience. "So we meet again" Lin Huang recalled her saying that she had wanted to get her revenge after the last time. "Yes, I didnt expect us to meet again so soon." Explosive Female Demon grinned. "Do you remember what I said the last time?" "You said you surrender." Lin Huang pretended that he did not remember. "Not that! The last thing that I said!" Explosive Female Demon stomped her foot. "Oh, I dont remember." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "You" Explosive Female Demon knew for sure that Lin Huang had not forgotten what she said as it had just happened five days ago "I said I would get my revenge on you!" "Oh, that, now I remember." Lin Huang nodded. Explosive Female Demon was furious at Lin Huangs attitude, "Sword Genius, your illusion will not work on me anymore. What I said to you five days ago shall become a reality! I shall take my revenge on you!" "Oh, all the best to you then." Lin Huang encouraged her in a calm tone. "I" Explosive Female Demon had nothing to say to Lin Huangs comeback. 215 Besides Her Face and Body, Which Part of Her Looks Like A Lady? Soon, the countdown ended. Explosive Female Demon activated the two modified Silver Phoenix16 on her hands to the automatic rifle mode and aimed at Lin Huang and pulled the triggers at the same time. Fires were shot, silver bullets were raining towards Lin Huangs direction. Seeing what was happening in the ring, the first impression the audience had of her was, "This lady is violent!" Meanwhile, Lin Huang decided to change his plan. Instead, he activated Blood Spirit immediately. The four bloody wings extended from his back where the bottom two wings became a two-hemisphere defense layer, blocking all the bullets. The other two wings on top were transformed into whips striking towards Explosive Female Demon. The power of his Blood Spirit wings were much stronger than a gold-level weapon. The defense ability of his shield was no weaker than The Final Fortress'', it managed to block all the bullets that were coming from the rifles of Explosive Female Demon. Under the attack of the whips, Explosive Female Demon had to hide instead of attacking Lin Huang. He then transformed his shield into whips and proceeded to attack. The match was turned around in an instant. Initially, it was Explosive Female Demon who attacked Sword Genius without mercy but now that Sword Genius was attacking Explosive Female Demon with four whips it was Lin Huang who showed no mercy. "Sword Genius is definitely more powerful in this match!" "Four whips, this Sword Genius must have some fetish" "How could he bully a lady like this?" "Besides her face and body, which part of Explosive Female Demon looks like a lady?" Although Explosive Female Demon was trying her best to avoid the rapid attack of the four Blood Spirit wings, it was tough for her. Soon her left leg was caught by one of the Blood Spirit wings. As she struggled, another three Blood Spirit wings were transformed into sharp blades that pierced through her chest. Explosive Female Demon didn''t have much to say about her loss this time as she knew that she was far behind Sword Genius. As she was dying, she gave Lin Huang a deathly stare without saying a word. Seeing that the body of Explosive Female Demon was fading away, Lin Huang recalled his Blood Spirit wings as her bloody eyes returned to normal. "Congratulations. You have won the battle!" The audience cheered as they heard the notification. Lin Huang had managed to win 86 battles consecutively, nobody doubted his ability now. Even some of them who criticized him for beating Explosive Female Demon with illusion forms earlier now agreed that Lin Huang was powerful. Soon, his opponent for the 87th battle was sent to the ring. As expected, it was Handsome Imperial Censor who was ranked 4th on the leaderboard. Handsome Imperial Censor wore a white suit with his hair properly combed, he looked like he was on a date. Although he was quite good looking, giving himself such a nickname and dressing like this had backfired. Many of them gave him another nickname, Narcissistic Imperial Censor. Lin Huang did not think that he was a tough competitor as he had killed more monsters than humans and monsters usually had flaws that were usually more obvious than a humans flaws. Besides, new types of monster weaknesses could be found in the monster encyclopedia. Lin Huang was familiar with Handsome Imperial Censors summoning monster. After checking out Lin Huang, Handsome Imperial Censor said, "Sword Genius, youre in bad luck today as I just obtained my second mutated gold-level rank-3 summoning monster a few days back. I didnt expect to receive a notification from the arena where I would receive 10 times the amount of my accumulated points. I would like to apologize and thank you. Sorry, your winning streak will end here and thank you for the multiplied points, I shall be No.1 on the leaderboard!" The audience was irked by Handsome Imperial Censors attitude. "Its too early to tell that he will win." "Hes just waiting to be killed." "A gold-level rank-3 mutated monster is powerful, but why do I have a feeling that its just an appetizer for Sword Genius?" "You''re not the only one, I have the same feeling too" Although Handsome Imperial Censors summoning monster was powerful, none of the people in the audience thought that he would win. Lin Huang was speechless at his arrogance. As the countdown ended, Handsome Imperial Censor summoned both his monsters. Lin Huang knew both of the monsters, one of them was the Gold-Armored Ape that Handsome Imperial Censor had been using, while the other was the newly obtained monster, a Crimsonhorn Python. The Gold-Armored Ape was a monster with immense strength, speed, and explosive force. Besides its slightly weak agility, it was flawless. In the eye of an Imperial Censor, such a monster was not worth training as there was nothing too outstanding about it. Meanwhile, the Crimsonhorn Python was also a monster with great strength. However, it was just a mediocre monster that was even weaker than the Gold-Armored Ape. Putting them both together would not be any help. Lin Huang frowned as he saw both of the monsters. It was not because they were powerful, but because of the messy combination. Seeing the gold-level rank-3 mutated monster punting to him, Lin Huang stepped out and avoided the Gold-Armored Ape''s punch and landed on the head of the Crimsonhorn Python. He leaped and landed before Handsome Imperial Censor before he took out his sword and slicing through his neck. It only took a single second and the battle had ended. "Im sorry that you cannot realize your dream of being No.1 on the leaderboard" Lin Huang then kept his sword into the scabbard. As Handsome Imperial Censor died, the two summoning monsters that were coming towards Lin Huang disappeared too. It was the rule in the arena when the Imperial Censor was killed, the battle would end and the summoning monsters would disappear together with the dead Imperial Censor. "Congratulations, you have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" Since the death of Handsome Imperial Censor, many were anticipating the 88th battle as most of them did not see the battle between Sword Genius and The Final Fortress the first time. The battle between the most powerful spear and the toughest shield would definitely be exciting. Moreover, since his loss five days ago, The Final Fortress should be wanting to challenge Lin Huang again to win his pride back. That was what the audience thought. However, a notification was heard. "The opponent matched by the system The Final Fortress has rejected the challenge, Sword Genius has won the battle!" Nobody saw that coming although the audience had expected something like that to happen as the most powerful strength The Final Fortress had was his defense and since Sword Genius managed to break it once, that meant he would be able to break it again. Without strengthening his defense or coming up with another new tactic, he would probably lose the second battle so choosing not to fight was wise. With The Final Fortresss decline to challenge, Lin Huang managed to win the 88th battle with the 89th battle about to start. Soon, the matching was done and as expected the opponent was a tall, gorgeous lady 216 Ebonella "So youre Sword Genius? You dont look like you''re anything special." The young lady commented as she checked Lin Huang out. "Im just an ordinary person, theres nothing special about me." Lin Huang nodded. "Can you take off your mask?" The young lady asked. "Sorry, I cant do that." Lin Huang rejected directly. "Why not?" The young lady did not give up. "Because Im ugly, I dont want to scare people away." Lin Huang came up with an excuse. "Nevermind then!" The young lady knew that it was just an excuse to mess with her. Although it was the first time meeting Ebonella, Lin Huang knew her well. She had a variety of combat styles so Lin Huang spent more time studying her videos. "Are you here for the points as well?" Lin Huang was curious as she did not look like a greedy person. Ever since she entered the top 10, she hardly challenged anymore and most of the time, she was invited to battles by the system instead. "Of course not, Im not interested in points or rankings," Ebonella said. Just when Lin Huang wanted to ask her the actual reason she accepted the challenge, she spoke again. "Im interested in you." It was chaos among the audience as she said those words. "The beauty is confessing her love in public!" "Sword Genius is so lucky!" "Is this love at first sight?" Ebonella seemed to realize that what she said might be misleading so she added, "Im just curious about the person who managed to break The Final Fortress'' defense." "His defense was powerful but there was an obvious flaw. Since long as my attack was stronger than his defense, it was not difficult to break through it. There was no skill needed." Lin Huang said. "Tell me what are my flaws then." Ebonella smiled at Lin Huang. "Do you really want to know? What Im going to say might not be something you want to hear." Lin Huang smiled. "As long as its reasonable, theres nothing that I cant accept." Ebonella crossed her arms. As they spoke, the countdown ended. However, they did not have the plan to attack anytime soon. "Alright, I shall tell you then." Lin Huang nodded. "You are similar to the Gold-Armored Ape that the Imperial Censor summoned earlier." "You" Ebonella became furious as she listened to what Lin Huang described her. However, she wanted to let him finish so she tolerated, "I''ll kill you if you dont give me a reasonable explanation!" The audience gasped as Lin Huang compared Ebonella with the Gold-Armored Ape. "The Gold-Armored Ape isnt weak at all, no matter how you slice it. Its strength, explosive power, and speed were immensely powerful. However, among all the summoning monsters, it''s hard for it to climb to the top. Since it was good in all aspects, it caused the ape to not reach its peak." "Just like you, you have strong strength, speed and explosive power with rich combat experiences as well as the mastery of the battle rhythm. You have many combat styles so nobody can foresee which weapons you''re going to use. There seems to be no flaw. However, thats your biggest problem. You can never peak." "Unlike the defensive ability of The Final Fortress, the attack ability of Yu Moli and the speed of Explosive Female Demon, their combat style was structured by their biggest advantage. You have no advantage in your combat style so you''re easily affected by those who have superior combat strength during battles. As soon as your rhythm is affected, the only thing you can rely on is to change your weapons to adjust your rhythm. When you encounter opponents who can adapt to the battle rhythm quickly, you''d have to change weapons many times to defeat your opponent. A simple battle would then become difficult and drain all your energy" Lin Huangs analysis made many in the audience realize that the Ebonella would always change her weapons rapidly in battles. Although Ebonella knew Lin Huang was right, she did not want to admit it. "Hmph, I dont accept your explanation. How dare you say Im similar to a Gold-Armored Ape You are the one who''s like a Gold-Armored Ape. Your and your entire family are Gold-Armored Apes as well!" A white paper umbrella appeared on in Ebonella''s hand. She pointed the umbrella at Lin Huang and opened fire. Her attack speed was much weaker than Explosive Female Demon. Lin Huang did not even activate his Blood Spirit wings as he walked towards her with Cloud Steps. Seeing Lin Huang approaching her, Ebonella attempted to change the form of her weapon. The umbrella rotated and transformed into a spear. The spear was long and seemed like a dragon lunging towards Lin Huang. She attempted to get Lin Huang away from her with the length of her spear. However, it was a naive thought. Lin Huang avoided her attack easily and walked towards her again. Ebonella was shocked, she pulled out a short sword from the middle of the umbrella and stabbed it towards Lin Huangs chest. Suddenly, a sword appeared in Lin Huangs hand and before the short sword managed to reach him, a purple glow flashed in the air. Ebonella stopped moving. As she looked at her waist, blood continuously came out of it. "How did this happen" "Your sword is slower than mine." Lin Huang put his sword away and explained. Ebonella was sliced in half and disappeared from the ring. "Congratulations. You have won the battle!" "You managed to kill your opponent in one hit, you have obtained 2 points!" Many of them did not expect the battle to end so fast, including Lin Huang himself. If this happened five days ago, the battle between him and the Ebonella would be dreadful. However, since Thunder Sword was upgraded to Thunder Sting, his speed was more than three times faster than before which allowed him to kill her in one hit. "Its the 89th battle now, my next opponent should be Yu Moli!" Lin Huang was excited as Yu Moli was a powerful opponent. Moreover, as long as he managed to defeat him, the multiple of points from the 90-win streak would allow him to accomplish the mission that Mr. Fu assigned him. Everyone in the audience was anticipating the last match. After the body of Ebonella disappeared, Lin Huang was sent back to the original point in the arena. His opponent, Yu Moli appeared as expected 217 Lin Huang Versus Yu Moli As expected, the keeper of the 90th battle was Yu Moli who was ranked first on the sixth-floor leaderboard. The crowd became excited when Yu Moli was sent onto the arena. It was the match that everyone had been waiting for. As the glow on Yu Molis body faded, the ladies in the audience screamed. "Nickname: Yu Moli" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 3618" "Accumulated Points: 153926" "Winning Percentage: 99%" "Honor: 60-win streak!" After checking Yu Molis scoreboard, Lin Huang began to check him out in person. It was the first time he encountered Yu Moli in the arena. Although he had seen many of Yu Moli''s battle videos, Lin Huang was still impressed as he stood before Yu Moli who seemed like he was only 16 or 17 of age. However, he looked much more mature than people his age. He was not only almost 1.8 meters tall but his face looked like that of a grown-up as well and he gave off a royal aura. If he was on earth, he would be labeled as the tall, rich, and handsome as he had was tall, had a rich family and had good features. No matter where he was, people would be attracted to him. He would always stand out from the crowd. Yu Moli was known as a genius by the Hunter Association and was enlisted in intensive training during the first half of the year. Within half a year, he managed to level-up from bronze-level to silver-level rank-3. He did not only have a strong family background but even managed to own a powerful monster skill, which was Violetflame. As Lin Huang was checking him out, Yu Moli did the same to him as well. "Ive seen your battle with The Final Fortress. Since I couldnt see that last attack of yours from the official video, I''ve asked from The Final Fortress for the video that was taken from his point of view. That was a terrifying attack, I admit that I wouldn''t be able to perform something like that." Yu Moli said calmly to Lin Huang with a voice that did not sound like that of a teenager. He sounded more like a 20-year-old, matured man. "Although you are powerful, that does not mean that you''ll be able to defeat me." Yu Moli did not sound friendly when he said that. Many of the people in the audience began to compare the both of them since Lin Huang defeated The Final Fortress during his 80th battle. Some of them said Sword Genius managed to achieve an 80-win streak but Yu Moli was not even able to achieve a 70-win streak. It was the first piece of evidence that showed how Yu Moli was weaker than Lin Huang. Some even said that Sword Genius could kill The Final Fortress but Yu Moli was not even able to break through The Final Fortress'' defensive layer. That was the second piece of evidence that showed how Yu Moli was weaker than Sword Genius. Aside from that, the people even made up stories to belittle Yu Moli. This made Yu Moli furious. Although he knew that those rumors were not spread by Sword Genius, he was a hot-blooded young man after all. It was only normal that he was angered as he was belittled and compared to another. Lin Huang did not know about this because he did not even look at the comments in the news, let alone gossip on the network. Since he logged out of the arena, he had been occupied with his training and did not have the time to read all those gossips. However, Lin Huang could sense that Yu Moli was unhappy but he could not care less. "Ive seen most of your battles, I know you didnt give it your all when you were fighting The Final Fortress. Thats why Im eager to know what your real ability is." What Lin Huang said was a hot topic in the arena. Most of the people from the audience had seen Yu Molis battles but it was the first time they heard something like that. They had always thought that Yu Moli had given his all during the few battles he had with The Final Fortress. "Dont worry, as long as youre strong enough, I will give my all." Yu Moli did not deny what Lin Huang said. "Lets fight then!" The silver-level ring on Lin Huangs finger transformed into a battle sword. Yu Moli put on his silver-level glove as well. Soon, the countdown ended and both of them charged towards each other. To compensate for his lack of speed, Lin Huang used Thunder Sting this time around. A purple glow came out of his silver sword as he activated Thunder Sting. It looked like lightning was streaking through the air. Meanwhile, Yu Moli who was across him punched into the air and along with his silver Life Power was also a purple glow. The air was distorted from his punch, causing a strange visual effect. "Bang!" The sword and fist collided in the air. The glow from Lin Huang''s sword did not manage to hurt the punch at all. It was a draw! Lin Huang was shocked as he watched, Yu Molis combat skill was obviously on epic-level. A ripple was created as their attacks collided. The both of them were shaking and was forced to step back. As they stood still, they charged towards one another again and the sword collided with the punch once more, shaking the entire arena Every time they launched their attacks, there would be a tremendous bang in the arena. Even the wall was shaking. The audience did not dare to breathe as they watched. The both of them have not even unleashed their full power. Lin Huang did not use his Blood Spirit wings while Yu Moli did not use his Violetflame. The battle that was easy on the both of them was exciting to the crowd. "Is Yu Molis combat skill is so terrifying? How is it possible that its comparable to Sword Genius?" "I have seen many of Yu Molis battles, he used Violetflame most of the times. Its the first time I''m seeing him fight like this!" "I haven''t seen him fight like that either. I''ve always thought that hes not so good at close-distance battles. It seems like the past opponents were not worth him fighting them in close-combat." "They''ve yet to unleash their true power and its already so intense, I cant even see what theyre doing clearly" "I agree with you This battle has exceeded the standard of a silver-level" Lin Huang and Yu Moli could not hear the discussions going on outside the arena. The collisions were getting more and more vigorous with the both of them continuously upgrading their attacks to test their opponents. Before they revealed their true power, they wanted to determine the limits of their opponents . After hundreds of collisions, Yu Moli stepped out of the battle circle. He shot a deadly stare at Lin Huang and said, "Lets end our warm-up now." "Lets start then!" Lin Huang looked at the time and realized it had been two minutes since the battle started. If there was no win or lose within half an hour, the battle would be considered a draw. That was not what he wanted. "The real fight is finally starting!" The audience held their breath while staring at the arena, they did not want to miss a thing. 218 Destruction Pursues The Grea On the ring, Lin Huang and Yu Moli stood at opposite sides across each other. Lin Huang activated Blood Spirit. His eyes turned a bloody red while four Blood Spirit wings extended from his back like they were struggling out of a cage. Meanwhile, purple flames came out of Yu Molis palms and were about one foot tall. The crowd became excited as they finally saw them using their true power. After activating their monster skills, they glared at each other and attacked right away. Since Lin Huang activated Blood Spirit, the force within his body changed. His speed was affected by Bai as well, making him fast. Without the help of Thunder Sting, he would not be any slower than Yu Moli. As he charged towards Yu Moli, his Blood Spirit wings transferred into four ferocious blades, leaving a trail of white flame in the air. Yu Molis flame was then transformed into two gigantic fire snakes slithering in the air, distorting the air around them. The swords and fire snakes collided in the middle of the arena. "Bang! Bang!" Lin Huang reacted by thrusting two of his blades towards Yu Molis chest. With the power of his Blood Spirit wings that could pierce through The Final Fortress'' defense, it would not matter how powerful Yu Molis defense was as it would be impossible for him to stop the power of Lin Huangs Blood Spirit blades. The two Blood Spirit blades were like snakes approaching Yu Molis chest at lightning speed. Suddenly, two gigantic purple arms grew out of Yu Molis waist and collided with the blades. "Bang! Bang!" A shockwave was created from the collision, causing the ground and the walls to shake. The audience who were watching could feel the tremors as well. After a couple of failed attempts, Lin Huang turned his gold-level ring into a gold-level sword. His Blood Spirit wings expanded and he charged towards Yu Moli with Thunder Sting. He aimed at Yu Molis throat, causing his opponent to be shocked as he saw Lin Huang''s sword closing in on him in an instant. He opened his mouth and retaliated with a purple flame that collided with Lin Huangs sword, foiling Lin Huangs attempt again. After the collision, the both of them stepped back to the sides of the ring. The audience excited from watching the battle. A hit from the attacks they performed earlier could easily kill 90% of the people in the audience. As they went to their corners, two gigantic flame arms grew out of Yu Molis waist, adding to the existing two. Yu Moli smiled at Lin Huang, "Its four versus four now. A fair fight!" Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders without saying anything. It was obvious that Yu Moli was imitating his combat style. Perhaps he did not have any solutions go against four of Lin Huang''s Blood Spirit wings. However, Lin Huang managed to confirm that Yu Molis monster skill came from a double mutated monster as well or else Violetflame would not be able to go against his Blood Spirit wings. "I have a question." Lin Huang said to Yu Moli after they clashed. "If you want to know how I obtained Violetflame, dont bother your time because I''ll never tell you." Yu Moli did not want anyone else to obtain the same monster skill he possessed so he stopped Lin Huang right in his tracks. "Thats not what I want to know. Why did you lose to The Final Fortress on purpose?" The reason Lin Huang asked this was because he was almost certain that Yu Moli could definitely break through The Final Fortress'' defensive layer. "From what I can tell, it''d be easy for you to break through his defenses." The crowd was shocked at what Lin Huang asked. However, many of them believed what he was saying. He definitely had the right to say something like that especially since he had defeated The Final Fortress himself. "The reason was simple. I dont want a 70-win streak." Yu Moli said with his arms open. "Why?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "Someone told me that during ancient times, there was an idiom - Destruction pursues the great. Nothing good will come to the person who went after fame without first obtaining true power." Yu Moli explained. "I''d advise you not to continue with your battles after you defeat me. If you manage to achieve a 100-win streak, there''ll be more people watching you and they won''t only be from Division7" "Thanks for the reminder." Lin Huang heard about something similar in the past. As long as someone in the arena achieved a 100-win streak, the Hunter Association division would report to the headquarters and in turn, the headquarter would notify other divisions. By then, everyone would know that such genius existed and he''d be targeted by all the underworld organizations Although the Hunter Association would keep his identity a secret, it was still possible that there would be an identity leak. Moreover, there were many brainwashing techniques in the underworld organizations. If he was captured, the consequences would be unimaginable. Since Yu Moli reminded him, Lin Huang gave up his intentions of continuing further. He was curious about the kind of opponents the system would assign to him if he defeated Yu Moli. However, it seemed like he had to give up on that thought and keep his life in one piece. "However, I think its a little too late now. I think you''ve already been targeted by the underworld organizations. Although your identity is sealed, some of them will always be able to find ways to get to you. Its just a matter of time." Yu Moli looked at him with pity. "The methods that the underworld organization uses are unimaginable" "I''ll worry about that later. The battle between us hasn''t ended yet." Lin Huang did not want to talk further. "Lets fight!" Lin Huang charged towards Yu Moli and Yu Moli did the same. Soon, the Blood Spirit blades and fire snakes collided in the middle of the arena 219 Flame King In the arena, Lin Huang and Yu Moli clashed again and again. Each time they clashed, an immense tremor would be spread through the arena and the walls. The tremors began to spread to the seats as their battle grew more intense. Both their shadows flashed through the arena and most people in the audience could not even see their movements clearly. Only several gold-level rank-3 hunters managed to keep track of their attacks. The hunters were shocked as their abilities were comparable with the standard of gold-level rank-3. No matter their speed or strength, combat experiences or techniques, they were no less powerful than an actual gold-level rank-3 hunter. "Those are real geniuses" Some of the gold-level rank-3 hunters exclaimed. Yu Moli was not familiar with Lin Huang''s combat style in the beginning and Lin Huang managed to suppress him most of the time because his defense was quite clumsy. However, he adapted over time and before long, he grew less passive as he adapted to Lin Huang''s combat style and began to attack before Lin Huang did. Lin Huangs Blood Spirit wings were flexible but compared to Yu Moli, the latter had more powerful attacks. However, Yu Moli was not as agile as Lin Huang but he could always turn it around with his battle experience. After they have been fighting for almost 20 minutes, Lin Huang''s attacks were getting more intense because he had to defeat Yu Moli within 30 minutes or the battle would be considered a draw, an end to his 90-win streak. He was now ranked No.13 and in order to be in the top 10, he would have to go through another 60-win streak just to achieve that if this battle ended up in a tie. As the blades that transformed from the Blood Spirit wings collided with the fire snakes, an intense spark was created. Seeing that Yu Moli had slowed down, Lin Huang transformed one of his wings into a whip and slithered it up the fire snake to Yu Molis chest. Yu Moli shouted and spat purple flames from his mouth in order to stop Lin Huang and backed off immediately. Seeing Yu Moli panting from his Life Power that was seemingly growing more unstable, Lin Huang could tell that he had the advantage in terms of physique. With the help of his immense strength, Lin Huang physique was comparable to a gold-level rank-3 person. His tolerance and physique was much stronger than Yu Moli''s. Although he had almost exhausted the first of his five Life Wheels in his body, he still had four Life Wheels to back him up. The monster skills did not drain much Life Power but under such intense conditions, the exhaustion of Life Power was multipled several times compared to when they used their monster skills under regular circumstances. Lin Huang was left with less than one-tenth of his first Life Wheel. He could tell that Yu Moli did not have much Life Power left. Noticing that Lin Huang was checking him out, he said, "You''ve such a monstrous body If Im not mistaken, you do not only have superior physique and tolerance but you also must have at least two Life Wheels in your body, right?" Many of the audience were puzzled at Lin Huang when they heard what Yu Moli had said. They realized that Sword Genius was still exuberant, seemingly unfazed by the battle while Yu Moli was panting hard. The audience could not see the amount of Life Wheels they possessed as they moved too fast in the arena, making it impossible for them to observe them in detail. Only a couple of people in the audience who were on gold-level rank-3 realized that the Sword Genius Blood Spirit blades were stable from the start of the battle till the current stage. Meanwhile, Yu Molis Violetflame was not as strong as it started. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything and did not answer Yu Molis question. However, nobody could see him smiling as he was wearing a mask. They could only see him holding his tongue. Lin Huang then looked at the time and noticed that they were only left with 10 minutes. Lin Huang knew he should not delay this any further. Without waiting for Yu Moli to attack, Lin Huang charged towards him. Yu Moli frowned and extended his four gigantic Violetflame arms towards him. They clashed again and Lin Huang pulled out his sword to charge towards Yu Moli using Great Sword Scripture. Within seconds, Yu Moli felt like he was drowning in the sword that was coming in his direction like waves in an ocean. Soon, a bang was heard as Yu Moli took countless punches with his Violetflame arms and managed to make Lin Huang take a step back. Lin Huang stepped back until he reached the edge of the arena. This time, he did not take the initiative to attack but watched Yu Moli instead. The four Violetflame arms went back into his body and even the flame on his palms disappeared. He performed a complex hand seal immediately and his body burned in purple flames. The flames was so high that it was more than 10 meters tall. As he changed his hand seals, the flame formed itself into a giant torso that covered Yu Moli''s entire body. Everyone was shocked at what they were seeing. "A Life Power construct? Am I seeing this right?" Someone in the crowd said. Under normal circumstance, such a complicated construct would only be possible for transcendents. Although Yu Moli was only mastering a monster skill; it was much simpler for him than controlling Life Power as such a complicated objectification would be difficult. Even Lin Huang could not control his Blood Power to unleash something like that. A giant torso made of purple flames appeared before Lin Huang. It looked like a hunk with hard muscles and it had realistic features which included its eyes, beard, eyebrows as well as other details. It looked like a sculpture that was sculpted by a master. However, it only took two to three seconds for Yu Moli to come up with this. As the giant torso formed, Yu Moli stopped his hand seals and looked at Lin Huang. "I dont have much Life Power left, I believe you can see that. This will be the last card I have up my sleeve, its called... Flame King. It''s my ultimate shield and is almost my ultimate skill. If you can defeat this giant, you will be able to defeat me in this battle. Im exhausting my Life Power, I dont have the strength to fight anymore." Yu Moli admitted. Just as he was done talking, the Flame King seemed activate. Its eyes opened and without missing a beat, it shot a deadly stare at Lin Huang 220 90-Win Streak! Lin Huang was stunned with Yu Molis ability to summon a giant torso with his Life Power. This level of Life Power mastery was not the most impressive. What surprised Lin Huang the most was the giant torso that was looking at him like an actual human. Theoretically, the giant torso was an undead creature that was constructed using Violetflame and should not have been able to exhibit humanlike qualities. However, Lin Huang could feel that the giant was staring at him with anger but soon, the feeling faded away. "Perhaps its just an illusion" Lin Huang did not dwell on it. As the giant torso shot a deadly stare at Lin Huang, it punched him all of a sudden. The air surrounding the punch was pressurized under the high temperature and formed a vacuum. In the absence of air pressure, it resulted in a silent punch that was headed towards Lin Huangs direction. Lin Huang then transformed one of his Blood Spirit wings into a giant hand, and it collided with the punch from the giant. After the collision, the giant torso remained motionless while Lin Huang stepped further away, only stopping once he reached the edge of the arena. Fortunately, his Blood Spirit had isolated the high temperature of Yu Moli''s punch; if it was not for that, Lin Huang would have turned into a pile of ashes. "The force in that punch has surpassed gold-level rank-3. Even though isnt on the level of a transcendent, its not too far away. Ill be in trouble if the flames touch my body" Lin Huang frowned as he looked at the giant torso. It was a tough fight. Without giving Lin Huang a chance to catch his breath, the giant punched him again. Lin Huang did not avoid the punch. Instead, he extended the arm that was transformed using Blood Spirit. The giant''s punch sent Lin Huang smashing into the wall and breaking the wall in the process. However, the giant''s punch that collided with the Blood Spirit wing shot into the air, forming a giant web that covered the entire giant arm that was made from Violetflame. Since one of its arms was locked, the giant waved its other arm at Lin Huang. Lin Huang used his second Blood Spirit wing to tackle the punch. Similarly, the punch got caught in the giant web above. Both of its gigantic arms were struggling in the web like fishes trapped in a net. Lin Huang was pulled right up into the air as the intense shaking made it difficult for him to stand still. However, Lin Huang did not panic as he transformed his last two Blood Spirit wings into two blades and aimed it at the giant''s head with the help of Thunder Sting. Since the giants arms were trapped, it prevented it from retaliating. Frustrated, it opened its mouth and spat out purple flames at Lin Huang that did not only block off his blade but also headed in his direction like waves in an ocean. Helpless, Lin Huang recalled his two blades and transformed them into half-spheres as a defensive layer to block the Violetflame that was headed his way. Under the spitting flame, the entire arena looked like a purple sea of fire. Many of them had their vision blocked by the Violetflame, they were concerned that the Sword Genius would be defeated facing such a wide area of attack. However, after the flames died down, Lin Huang remained standing in the arena. "Lets try attacking it from behind then!" With the help of the pull, Lin Huang leaped into the air and landed behind the giant. He transformed his two wings into blades and aimed them at the back of the giants head. Suddenly, the giants turned its head 180 degrees and spat Violetflame at Lin Huang. Everyone was speechless with what they saw. Only undead monsters and spiritual monsters could make a 180-degree head turn. However, it made sense as the giant was not alive but a structure that was formed by force. Lin Huang frowned, "Since the usual attack could not break it, it seems like I must use this then" As Lin Huang was coming up with a plan, the giant roared as the flames on its body burned more intensely. Yu Moli who was in the giant felt odd; his Life Power was leaving his body and moving into the giants body. Suddenly, he fell to the ground and looked like he had completely lost his strength. Then giant grew a couple of meters taller and its hands broke free from the Blood Spirit web. "Life Seed Engulf" Lin Huang frowned. Many of them in the audience could tell what was happening as well. Life Seed Engulf was a situation whereby the monsters consciousness takes over the human body before its able to completely purge. Under normal circumstances, the Life Seed would be absorbed into the human body as the human leveled up while the monsters consciousness would clear up without any side effects. However, when a player does not level up the Life Seed in their bodies, it will result in a Life Seed Engulf. The host would not notice what had happened because once the monsters consciousness enters the human body; it will hide from its host. The monsters consciousness would grow as time passed and eventually, it would wipe out the hosts consciousness before taking over the body once the host became weak. It was the Life Seed Take Over. It was a soul parasite, but it would be harder to track as the parasite does not exist physically. "It mustve taken advantage of Yu Molis weak body" Lin Huang spent days studying the scenarios when a human obtains a Life Seed under normal circumstances so he was familiar with what Yu Moli was experiencing at that moment. "I must get rid of the monster right now before it takes over his body" Although Lin Huang did not know Yu Moli very well, he was a good opponent after all. Lin Huang did not want to see such a genius taken over by a monster. A golden glow sparked on the Blood Spirit sword. Everyone was excited again, and they knew Lin Huang was going to unleash something powerful. As the giant torso grew bigger, it released a purple flame from its mouth once again. The flames covered the entire arena and Lin Huang. Lin Huang immediately transformed three of his wings into a sphere and covered himself with it. Meanwhile, Lin Huang transferred all his Life Power from the four Life Wheels into his Blood Spirit Sword. He would lose if the attack failed! The giant continued attacking even after the flames fade. Its two gigantic fists were heading towards Lin Huang. Lin Huang recalled three of his wings and dodged the giants punch. He landed in front of the giant and leaped high up with his golden glowing Blood Spirit sword. After it saw what just happened, the giant spat Violetflame again in an attempt to push Lin Huang back. This time, Lin Huangs blade was like a meteorite hitting the ground. The force was invincible; it broke the flames that were coming out of the giants mouth. Things that came into contact with the blade flew away. A bright golden glow shot everywhere and many in the audience had to close their eyes from the bright glow. "Bang!" It made a loud thud. The entire arena collapsed along with its walls. Many of them who were in the front row were affected but Lin Huang ignored what was happening around the arena. He looked up and saw the blade had pierced through the giants open mouth and went through the back of its head. Its head began cracking with a spiderweb pattern and eventually the crack spread through its entire body. Before long, the Violetflame body broke into atoms. As the giant disappeared, Yu Moli who was in the giant was faded away as well. "Thank you" Yu Moli managed to thank Lin Huang before completely disappearing from the arena. "Congratulations. Youve won the battle!" As Yu Molis body disappeared, Lin Huang saw the battle notification. In just a second, a notification came through the sound system and echoed in the arena. "Congratulations! Sword Genius has defeated keeper Yu Moli on the sixth floor of the arena and has won 90 consecutive battles!" The notification could be heard in every corner of the arena before the golden glow in the arena even managed to fade away, and the audience had yet to see what had happened. "Would you like to continue to battle?" Lin Huang hesitated when he saw the notification, he was thinking about Yu Molis advice. He looked at the leaderboard; he was now ranked No.3 with 20,308 points. After confirming that he had accomplished the mission, he pressed No on the notification. His body faded from the ring. As the golden glow faded, the audience only managed to see Lin Huang disappearing from the ring... 221 A Man’s Secre "Congratulations! Sword Genius has defeated keeper Yu Moli on the sixth floor of the arena and won 90 battles consecutively!" The announcement of the results turned the arena chaotic, especially on the sixth floor. Many of them checked Sword Genius scoreboard and found it unbelievable that he currently ranks No.3 on the leaderboard with 20308 points; they found it unbelievable. "He is the uncrowned king even though he''s only at No.3!" "Sword Genius is too powerful! He even defeated Yu Moli!" "Ive told you that Yu Moli hasn''t got a chance in defeating the Sword Genius, it came true!" "Sigh, I thought Yu Moli would win this time, I didnt know that Sword Genius is that powerful" It was not only the sixth floor, but everybody else on the other floors were also discussing about Sword Genius. He was now a legend as he managed to go from a 60 to an 80-win streak within a day. Now that he had achieved a 90-win streak, he was the third person who had managed to come this far since the establishment of Division7. The last time a player got a 90-win streak in Division7 was 186 years ago. Many of the transcendents who were playing from the ninth floor and above started to talk about Sword Genius as well. The 12 senior executive officers were silent when they read the news. After leaving the arena, Lin Huang was sent back to the main hall. He was not wearing a mask so nobody could tell who he was. He looked at his scoreboard before signing out. "Nickname: Sword Genius" "Combat Strength: Silver-Level Rank-3" "Battle Count: 90" "Accumulated Points: 20308" "Winning Percentage: 100%" "Honor: 90-win streak!" Lin Huang then signed out from the game. Upon regaining his consciousness, he saw that the top news on the main page of the Hunter Arena had changed but most of the news was still about him. "The Uncrowned King, Sword Genius Has Completed A 90-Win Streak!" "I wonder how Yu Molis doing now Ive only wiped away a portion of the monsters consciousness; will he able to clear the remaining monster consciousness that was left in his body? Hopefully, his body wont be taken over by the monster" Yu Moli was a genius, Lin Huang did not want him to become the puppet of a monster. In the arena, the system would usually be able to detect the difference in consciousness but what happened to Yu Moli was rare. As part of his consciousness was absorbed into the game, the system must have mistaken the monsters consciousness for his, which caused the monster to take over his body during the battle. If Lin Huang did not kill the monster, Yu Molis consciousness would not be able to return to his body as he had lost control of it during battle. Instead, the remaining monster''s consciousness would have taken over his body. That was the reason why Yu Moli thanked Lin Huang before he left the game. After getting rid of Yu Moli from his mind, Lin Huang checked the time. From the 81st to 90th battle, it took him less than half an hour. It was not even 9:30 in the morning, Lin Huang watched all the videos that were recorded during the battles. He watched the one of him and Yu Moli fighting repeatedly while he took notes. After that, he sent all the videos to Mr. Fu with a short message Master, Ive completed the mission!. Soon, Mr. Fu replied his message, "Ive received your message, Ill get back to you after Ive watched the videos." It was past 11 in the morning when he was done. Lin Huang then made grilled meat for Lin Xuan before heading out to buy some ingredients for lunch. He cooked in the kitchen while Lin Xin and Lin Xuan enjoyed the meal. Later on, Lin Huang started a conversation with the both of them while he did the dishes. "Hows your gun training?" "I hardly lose in the regular arena anymore. Ive been watching the videos that were recorded by Xiao Xuan and have learned a lot from there. Xiao Xuan is even more powerful now, hes fighting with some Gold Hunters in the Hunter''s Exclusive zone. Initially, he would''ve been defeated but not anymore. He was given a nickname by some of the other players, The Game Terminator" Lin Xin complimented Lin Xuans skill. "Really?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. He knew Lin Xuan was a fast learner but he did not expect him to be able to fight with gold-level gunmasters when he was only at silver-level. Those gunmasters had powerful gunfighting techniques. "Xiao Xuan has knowledge of gunfighting techniques as well?" Lin Huang asked. Lin Xuan nodded. "How many of them do you know?" "126 types." Lin Xuans answer left Lin Huang speechless. His learning speed was simply terrifying. "Brother, I know some too. Xiao Xuan taught me three types and Ive mastered two of them. Too bad I dont have any Life Seed to unleash its power" Lin Xin said. "You know some too?!" Lin Huang did not expect Lin Xin to have surpassed him in terms of gun skill by now. After hesitating for a while, Lin Huang said to Lin Xuan, "Xiao Xuan, could you teach me some gunfighting techniques in the coming days?" Lin Xuan stared at him with a puzzled expression. He seemed to be wondering if Lin Huang really did not know of any gunfighting techniques. Lin Xins eyes were wide opened, "Brother, arent you skilled with guns?" "I havent got the time to learn gunfighting techniques" Lin Huang blushed as he spoke the truth. "Ill teach you then!" Lin Xin was excited. She treated Lin Huang as her lab rat to experiment with her teaching methods. "Ill get Xiao Xuan to teach me instead since youve only mastered two techniques." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. He did not think that Lin Xin could teach him anything when it came to gunfighting techniques. Lin Xin went to the living room to watch the news. She then asked, "Brother, since youve playing in the arena these couple of days, have you heard of this person called Sword Genius?" "Yes, I have. Whats the matter?" Lin Huang smiled and asked. He did not have the time to watch the news but news of him achieving a 90-win streak must have spread like wildfire. "This person is so powerful. He had a 90-win streak" Lin Xin said as she watched the battle video between Lin Huang and Yu Moli. Lin Xuan recognized that this person who was called Sword Genius in the mask was Lin Huang. He said, "Brother" Lin Xin was surprised, "Do you mean Sword Genius is our brother?" Lin Xuan nodded. Lin Xin looked at Lin Huang in disbelief and asked, "Brother, are you really Sword Genius?" "What do you think?" Lin Huang did not want to give an answer straight away; he did not want to lie but at the same time, he could not admit the truth. "I dont think so Although youre powerful, this bloke is crazy" Lin Xin shook her head. Lin Xuan tried to speak but he was stopped by Lin Huang, "Xiao Xuan, come here. I need to talk to you." Lin Xuan walked to Lin Huang immediately. Lin Huang whispered into his ear, "Dont tell anyone that Im Sword Genius. You cant even tell your sister. This is a secret between us, okay!" Lin Xuan nodded immediately, "A mans secret!" "Come, give me a brofist!" Lin Huang pointed his fist at Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan made a fist in confusion, Lin Huang then bumped his fist with his and smiled, "Since weve bumped our fists, this means you must keep the secret." "Okay!" Lin Xuan nodded hard. Lin Huang then rubbed Lin Xuans head, "Lets play Gun Master together and you can teach me some gunfighting techniques" "Me too!" Lin Xin heard and joined in the conversation, "I want to see how you learn gunfighting techniques from him!" "Sure, come with us." Lin Huang did not mind Lin Xin being there. 222 Gun Fighting Technique In training ground No.02879 of Gun Master, Lin Huang prepared himself with a SilverPhoenix16. In the game, most of the guns were complimentary; only rare and modified guns required credit points to purchase. Lin Huang was only there for training so purchasing a gun would be unnecessary. A modified SilverPhoenix16 and an ordinary SilverPhoenix16 had an insignificant difference. Lin Xuan was using a SilverPhoenix16 too; since he was silver-level rank-3 like Lin Huang, using a SilverPhoenix16 would be appropriate. Lin Xin who was watching from the side was envious of the both of them. Since she was not even at iron-level so she could not even use an iron-level gun, let alone the silver-level SilverPhoenix16. She could only watch. "Which ones do you want to learn first?" Lin Xuan asked Lin Huang when he saw that he was ready. "Lets start with the easiest one since I dont have the basics down yet." Lin Huang was not ambitious. Since he does not have the basics, he wanted to learn from the bottom up so that he would not be discouraged. "I can teach you!" Lin Xin raised her hand. Lin Huang did not want to reject her after seeing her enthusiasm. He waved at her, "Alright then, come here and show me." Lin Xin ran towards Lin Huang and smirked. She took out both of her GrayEagle17s, turned them around and held them in the right position. Facing the 36 moving targets, Lin Xin opened fire without looking at them. Her hands would move a little from the recoil after every shot. Although she seemed clumsy, she managed to shoot the moving targets. Within seconds, she shot all the 36 targets on the floor. Lin Huang was shocked with her skill as he thought Lin Xin only knew the basics but it seemed like she had mastered the first basic gun technique. It was amazing that she managed to do that considering that she was not even at iron-level. Lin Huang kept silent and gave her a thumbs up and Lin Xin blushed. "I''ve checked on the network, the easiest gunfighting technique is called Potshot. The thing about Potshot is to not to try and overpower the recoil but using it to our advantage to save our strength as well as time to adjust our aim. Although it might look clumsy in reality, the aim of the muzzle will always be within our control" Lin Xin explained to Lin Huang confidently. Lin Xuan did not say a word. Lin Huang patted him on his shoulder, "Xiao Xuan, why dont you show me." Lin Xuan nodded and stood before the red line with one of his SilverPhoenix16s. He pulled the trigger, sending bullets filled with Life Power speeding towards the targets at a terrifyingly rapid speed. Within a second, all 36 moving targets fell onto the ground. Lin Huang''s jaws almost dropped as he watched Lin Xuans speed; it was even faster than Explosive Female Demon. It was a terrifying mastery of the gun. Meanwhile, Lin Xin watched unhappily as she had finally had the chance to perform in front of her brother and was complimented but the limelight was stolen by Lin Xuan once again. "Xiao Xuan, do it again." Lin Huang was unable to capture the full image earlier as Boundless Vision was deactivated. Lin Xuan nodded and opened fire with his SilverPhoenix16 again and before long, all 36 targets were shot down within a second. With Boundless Vision and Third Eye, Lin Huang managed to capture the entire thing. "Brother, you can get Xiao Xuan to slow down so that you can see all the details." Lin Xin reminded. Its alright, I can see it crystal clear now." Lin Huang shook his head and walked to the red line. "Let me try." Facing the 36 moving targets, Lin Huang opened fire continuously and shot all of them down within three seconds. He frowned as he was not satisfied with the result. Lin Xuan and Lin Xin did not say a word as they watched. Lin Xin could see that Lin Huang did not take advantage of the recoil. Instead, he was affected by the recoil. To be able to control his shots, he habitually tried to control the recoil. Although he managed to shoot down all the targets, it was not the true essence of the gunfighting technique, Potshot. "Im not used to such a shooting technique, I shall practice more then" Lin Huang shook his head as he proceeded to practice. After three to four attempts, Lin Xin was concerned and Lin Xuan finally spoke. "Brother You have to forget about the target" Upon hearing that, Lin Huang finally realized his problem. He was worried about missing the targets so much that he focused on them and controlled the recoil to try and hit them accurately. "That''s right, I focused too much on hitting the targets. Its okay not to hit the targets in a practice, I shouldnt use the shooting style that Im used to as well. I should consider myself as a beginner and start from square one!" After realizing his mistake, Lin Huang lets go of his concerns and shot randomly. This time, he only managed to shoot two targets, however, he received a notification. "Congratulations, you have received a gunfighting technique skill card piece x1 - Potshot" The notification assured him that he was in the right direction. However, he did not expect to receive skill card pieces during practices in the game. He was improving fast, his accuracy increased with every shot. After 30 practices, he finally shot down all 36 targets. A notification came from Xiao Hei. "Potshot skill card pieces x30 has been detected. Combine the cards to receive a gunfighting technique - Potshot. Would you like to combine them?" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided to combine the skill card pieces without hesitation. Soon, a skill card appeared in his hand. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Potshot" "Rarity: Normal" "Type of Skill: Gunfighting Technique" "Skill Level: Iron-level Gun Technique" "Status: Available" "Remarks: No level limit" "Card Remarks: Useless" After taking the skill into his body, Lin Huang held up the gun and shot randomly. All the 36 targets fell to the ground, it took him less than two seconds. Lin Xin was clapping her hands while Lin Xuan was indifferent as he thought it was normal for Lin Huang to manage that. "Now that I have mastered the first technique, you can teach me the second one now. Teach me from the basics, Im planning to put the fun, and my combat habits aside so that I could start from zero." Lin Huang said to Lin Xuan. "Okay!" Lin Xuan nodded and started using the second gunfighting technique 223 Gold-Level Life Seed Monster Lin Huang had learned 28 introductory-level gunfighting techniques from Lin Xuan after spending more than 10 hours in the afternoon. The introduction to gunfighting was also called iron-level gunfighting technique. This technique did not require Life Power so that iron-level hunters and above would be able to use it. However, it was rather difficult to learn. At Lin Xins level, she would need two to three days to master one technique and the reason Lin Huang managed to learn them so fast was because he only needed 30 skill card pieces to obtain one skill card. If he learned at the speed of regular people, he would not learn the skills any faster than Lin Xin. However, Lin Xin had always thought that her brother was talented so it was normal for him to learn much faster. On the other hand, Lin Xuan was not surprised as he learned all the techniques by looking at them once. He did not think that Lin Huang was talented. If outsiders knew that Lin Huang managed to learn 28 techniques in 10 hours, they would find it impressive even though it was an introductory-level skill. It was 10:30 p.m. when they logged out of the game. To reward the both of them, Lin Huang made supper. The three of them then went to bed after taking a shower and Lin Huang received a video call from Mr. Fu when he was having his breakfast the next morning. "Boy, are you having breakfast right now?" Mr. Fu saw something that looked like oats in the bowl in front of Lin Huang. "Yes. Have you had your breakfast, master?" Lin Huang smiled as he asked politely. "It has been years since I last had breakfast" Mr. Fu shook his head. He seemed distracted as he thought of his past. "Have you finished watching the videos that I sent you?" Lin Huang put down his spoon. "Yes, I have. Dont worry, please carry on with your breakfast." Mr. Fu waved his hand. Lin Huang did not pick up his spoon, "Please, master." "Alright then" Mr. Fu saw that Lin Huang did not plan to continue eating and he continued to speak. "Ive watched all the videos from the beginning until the end. Youve surprised me!" "I have always thought that youre a powerful Imperial Censor. You may have a great potential but your combat strength isn''t strong enough. Ive assigned you a mission that required you to get into the top 10 without using any summoning monsters; simply as a target but I didn''t expect you to achieve it. I wanted to see how youd perform in the arena and observe your true ability as well as how youd fare during practice battles." "The only way to complete the mission within two months was through winning. I estimated that you could achieve a 50-win streak at most and you would lose to the keeper of the 60th battle and that youd achieve 50-win streaks repeatedly until you manage to collect the targeted points. As the battle continues; youd be paired with stronger opponents and I didn''t think you were capable of winning." "However, you managed to defeat all the keepers and achieved a 90-win streak. That was totally out of my expectation" Lin Huang felt embarrassed as Mr. Fu complimented him. He had never thought that failing the mission was an option. He wanted to give his best to the mission that was assigned by Mr. Fu. "Im curious. Your performance was not that outstanding from the 1st to 50th battles. There were many flaws but within a month''s time, you looked like a totally changed man from the 51st battle. Youve never failed to surprise me since then. What did you do in that one month ?" Mr. Fu asked. "I downloaded all the videos of the top 10 players and studied them one by one. I even made notes and practiced them in my room Anyways, I just studied each and every one of the combat styles to see if there was anything that I could learn and adapt into a style of my own so that I can use them in the battles." Lin Huang explained. "You sure are outstanding." Mr. Fu smiled and nodded. "Ive watched all of the videos. Although I can find some flaws, I dont see the need to for you to change. I''ll only advice you." "Yes please, master" Lin Huang sat right up and listened carefully. "As a whole, the most outstanding part about you would be your sword skill. You have mastered a great sword skill so I wont be teaching you other sword skills at the moment. You have a great physique as well, the only flaw that you have would be your speed. Although your speed is slightly faster than a normal silver-level rank-3, you were much weaker when you encountered those who had the advantage in speed. You can overcome that with your movement skills but the two movement skills that you possess are not that special. I''ll make a video of a movement skill for you to train on later." "Sure!" Lin Huang was over the moon; since Mr. Fu was going to teach him a movement skill, it had to be at least epic-level. "However, to be able to strengthen yourself to gold-level and fight a holy fire transcendent, relying solely on movement skills arent enough. Youd have to improve on your speed as well. Therefore, Ill suggest you choose a speed type Life Seed when you level-up to gold-level" "Master, it doesnt make sense to improve my speed and physique before I become transcendent, does it?" Lin Huang voiced his doubts; he was taking his the condition he would be in when he leveled-up to holy fire-level into consideration. "Thats true. Youll experience a flesh transformation when you reach the holy fire-level. This is why people are called transcendents when they achieve the holy fire-level. The body of a transcendent is much stronger than those below that stage." Mr. Fu nodded. "However, the speed type Life Seed that I suggested isnt an ordinary speed type Life Seed, but one that would be able to transform into a secret skill thatll enable you to move in a flash." Lin Huang was excited upon hearing this. "This Life Seed monster is called a Starlight Beast. Its very rare and hard to catch. Ill send you more details and videos about this monster, take your time to learn about it and see if it suits you." Mr. Fu said. "If youve chosen your gold-level Life Seed, please share it with me." "Ive been busy for the past few days so I didnt have the time to look at it yet. However, the Starlight Beast that you mentioned sounds interesting." Although Lin Huang had read the Monster Encyclopedia, it was the first time he heard about the Starlight Beast. He planned to decide only after he finds out what it was exactly. "Ill send you the details later so you can decide for yourself." Mr. Fu added, "Is there anything else that youd like to ask pertaining to your training?" "Not at the moment. Im focusing on stabilizing my Life Power before upgrading to gold-level." Lin Huang shook his head. "However, since you know that Im an Imperial Censor, I have a question regarding summoning the monster." Lin Huang added. "Please do ask. Although Im not an Imperial Censor, I have many Imperial Censor friends. If I cant answer your question, I could always ask my friends." Mr. Fu nodded. "I have obtained a parasitic summoning monster earlier but it comes with several parasitic skills. Im not sure how Im going to train this summoning monster and what kind of skills it would get." Lin Huang had been wanting to ask someone who was expert in monster training regarding his Demonic Dandelion Vine. "I have killed many parasites before and aside from some other parasitic skills, there arent many other attack skills it can obtain. They basically rely on defensive skills, regeneration skills and camouflaging skills to increase their chance of survival. Some can even master learning type of skill." "The best way to train monsters would be by looking at their nature. Since youre an Imperial Censor who can control more than one summoning monster, theres no need for you to train all of your summoning monsters to their peak. I suggest you follow its nature and look for skills that of a defensive, regenerative or camouflage nature. If it is a double mutated monster with a higher intelligence, you can look for learning-type skills." "I understand now," Lin Huang replied after Mr. Fu gave Lin Huang a clear direction. "Do you have any other questions?" Mr. Fu raised an eyebrow. "Not at the moment. Thank you, master!" Lin Huang said. "I shall not interrupt your breakfast then." Mr. Fu ended the call. Lin Huang hung up the phone and continued with breakfast. "Who were you talking to?" Lin Xin and Lin Xuan just got downstairs after a shower. "My teacher." Lin Huang smiled. "Your teacher He must be powerful?" Lin Xin found it odd. "I think so, I''ll introduce you to him in the future." Lin Huang waved at the both of them. "Come here and eat your breakfast!" The two of them went to the dining table. Soon, he received a couple of messages from Mr. Fu. He browsed through them, one of them was about a movement skill called Thunder Steps, the other was a complete set of details on the Starlight Beast while the final message was some information regarding parasites. He did not read them but sent Mr. Fu a thank you message. He switched off his phone and carried on with breakfast. Later on, he checked the messages again. 224 Starlight Beas The Starlight Beast was an extremely rare monster that could only be found in the Meteorite Desert. It looked like a robot, walked on two legs, and most of its body parts were orange in color which produced unique metal-like reflection when it came in contact with light. It has a turquoise face that looked like it was wearing a mask. Besides that, there was nothing else on its face. It had four antenna-like hands that were in blue and green colors and beneath its neck was a purple crystal that was the size of a fist. The purple crystal was a meteor piece that could absorb energy at night. It was the only energy source of the Starlight Beast. Due to their characteristic, this monster was a star spirit type. The Starlight Beast had three major skills. The first one would enable it to transform its antennas into weapons which were similar to a vampires Blood Power. Second, would be its explosive movement and attack speed while the last one would be flicker which allowed it to teleport within a small area. Its last two skills made it hard to kill the monster. Besides, it had a high intelligence which made it easy for it to avoid humans. Unlike many other monsters, they would not wander out of their territory as they waited to be killed by a human. The Starlight Beast would usually avoid conflicts with humans by hiding. The hunter who kills a Starlight Beast would obtain a speed type Life Seed which will give the user a powerful movement and attack speed skill. As one leveled up to transcendent, the gift would be upgraded to a secret skill called Flash which would allow the user to use the short-distance teleportation. "This Life Seed monster seems great. Its talent would cancel out my only flaw, giving me speed thats quite frankly, over the top. After I hit transcendent, this speed type secret skill seems powerful too. Since master recommended this to me, he mustve considered the effects of the secret skill after I become a transcendent. It seems like this is the best Life Seed that I can get for a gold-level." After reading the documents on the Starlight Beast, Lin Huang decided on the Life Seed monster that he wanted. He logged onto the network immediately and searched for the monsters whereabouts. "Meteorite Desert" A map was projected before him, Lin Huang frowned as he looked at the location of Meteorite Desert that was marked in yellow. It was located in the far to the northwest of Division7 from Winter City where Lin Huang was located. He would have to cross half of Division7 to reach the desert. It was more than 50% further than his trip from the Purple Crow training camp to Wulin Town. "Thats extremely far!" The distance was out of his expectations. He would need to book the ticket to the long-distance dimensional portal at least a month in advance. With the transfers in between, it would take up at least three months for the return trip. Lin Huang was upset as he thought about the travels. This world was too big, without a dimensional vehicle, traveling was inconvenient. "It would be great if master could send me there on some dimensional transfer equipment. Although I might have to think about Id make it back, at least Ill be able to save more than a month of time." Lin Huang planned to ask Mr. Fu if he had some relic like the Dimensional Portal before he headed out. After deciding on the Life Seed monster than he wanted, Lin Huang started reading the other two messages. The documents on parasites that Mr. Fu sent was much more complete than the Monster Encyclopedia that Lin Huang read in the past. It did not only have a wider the variety of monsters but the descriptions that came with it were also more detailed. It was obvious that the documents were higher ranked than the ones that he got from Yi Zheng. He spent his entire morning reading it and he even picked some parasites that possessed survival skills and other unique skills but he was only halfway through. He ordered takeaway for lunch before making grilled meat for Lin Xuan. Later on, he returned to the living room to look through the documents again. When the takeaway arrived, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan had just logged out of the Gun Master game. Lin Huangs performance in the Gun Master the day before had triggered Lin Xin to improve her skills. After breakfast, she asked Lin Xuan to join her in the game to train her in gunfighting techniques until noon. "Brother, are you practicing your gun skills this afternoon?" Lin Xin asked after putting a spoonful of rice into her mouth. "Not today, I have something else that I need to do." Lin Huang shook his head. He planned to read all the documents by today to find three suitable skills for his Demonic Dandelion Vine. "You guys go ahead and do your own stuff, dont worry about me." "Oh." Lin Xin was secretly happy that Lin Huang stopped practicing his gun skills. It meant that she might just be able to catch up with him. After lunch, Lin Xin urged Lin Xuan to return to the game as she did not want to waste a single minute. Lin Huang knew what she was up to when he saw her rushing upstairs. He smiled and shook his head. After cleaning the dining table, he returned to the living room and continued reading the documents on the couch. Under normal circumstances, a monster would need to kill another monster of the same type to inherit its monster skill. Therefore, a parasite could only kill a parasite, it was impossible for a parasite to kill other types of monsters for their skills. It would be decided by the Life Seed in the monsters body; there were rare exceptions of course. For instance, a monster called the Takeru Hunter could obtain most monsters skills and even kill humans to obtain their skills However, it was rare. Lin Huang considered the Demonic Dandelion Vine as a common monster, he would need to find another parasite monster. "Skin Hardening could strengthen its defense, but it''s too common" "Enhanced Regeneration isnt bad, plus its suitable with Demonic Dandelion Vines characteristic since its a plant" "Plant Camouflage allows it to disguise into any other plants. That seems suitable too" Lin Huang looked through all the documents thoroughly. When it was four in the afternoon, he finally found a skill that impressed him. "Enhanced Intelligence This skill is very brilliant" What Lin Huang saw was a parasite called Brain Eater. As the parasite entered the host, it would devour the hosts brain and take over the brain to control the hosts body. The nutrients in the body will be sufficient for the growth of the parasite; its intelligence would grow with Enhanced Intelligence and learn everything from the host. The skill allowed the parasite to learn at a speed of a human genius where it could learn a gold-level combat skill within a couple of days. Such a speed was comparable with Lin Huangs Goldfinger. However, this parasite had one flaw - it had to consume a fresh brain once a month. If it did not eat on time; it will die of exhaustion within 48 hours. "I have no idea where to find this parasite. If it has Enhanced Intelligence no one would be able to find out that it''s controlling a person." Lin Huang recalled the people that were affected in Xiaoxia City. He noticed that the hosts would lose their minds. If the Demonic Dandelion Vine had a higher intelligence than that, the incident in Xiaoxia City would not happen. After choosing Enhanced Intelligence as the skill that he desired, Lin Huang picked another two skills which were Enhanced Regeneration and Plant Camouflage. He did not find any skill with a good defense so he decided on a disguise skill. It was 10 p.m. when he was done. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan ordered takeaway for dinner at six in the evening. They left his food in the oven and he finished his late dinner by 11 before he went upstairs and urged the two kids to go to bed before going to bed himself 225 Thunder Steps The next morning, Lin Huang woke up at seven to prepare breakfast. Lin Xin woke up at 7:10 a.m. on her own and woke Lin Xuan up as well. "Brother, are you not practicing your gun skills today?" Lin Xin asked at the dining table while talking into the milk bottle. "Not today, Ill have to practice the movement skill that my master sent. We''ll see." Lin Huang nodded and smirked. "Have you learned the third gunfighting technique yet?" "I have learned that last night, I''ll be learning the fourth one today." Lin Xin nodded. She does not seem interested to discuss further with him. After gulping down the milk, she went upstairs and brought Lin Xuan with her. Meanwhile, Lin Huang took his time to finish his breakfast. After cleaning the kitchen, he went into the living room and started studying the movement skill that Mr. Fu sent him on the couch. It was a video that Mr. Fu recorded himself. In the beginning of the video, Mr. Fu introduced the movement skill "This movement skill is called Thunder Steps. Just like its name, its speed is as fast as thunder. Another origin of its name is the thunder-like noise that it makes" As Mr. Fu spoke, he moved at lightning speed; followed by a loud thud. Lin Huang was stunned. He thought something exploded but he soon realized that the thud came from the movement skill itself. Soon, another thud was heard. Mr. Fu returned to his initial position. "Did you see that? Thats the effect of the movement skill. The sound could be heard even before you arrived at the second point from your initial position! A powerful person should be able to make his entrance " "Can I get a quiet movement skill instead" Lin Huang was speechless as he felt that the movement skill was attention seeking. Since the video was pre-recorded, Mr. Fu could not hear what Lin Huang was saying; he proceeded to explain the movement skill. The video was one and a half hour long. Since Mr. Fu put in a great amount effort to explain and demonstrate the movement skill, Lin Huang felt bad for requesting another movement skill. He continued to watch the video anyway. The tutorial was very detailed as Mr. Fu had answered all the questions and doubts that Lin Huang had in detail; nothing was left out. Lin Huang continued watching the video until the end even though he realized that there were two to three minutes left before the video ended. Mr. Fu demonstrated Thunder Steps on the deck of his spaceship several times before returning to speak to Lin Huang in the video recording. "Oh right, theres something that I must say. The thud that came with the movement skill was initially a flaw when it was invented. Nobody could find a solution to it for hundreds of years. This movement skill relies on Life Power to create such a speed so it''s normal to have the explosive noise. However, a genius modified the release of Life Power for this movement skill, creating a silent version. Now, I''m going to teach you how to do that" Lin Huang only realized that the last two minutes of the video was crucial after finishing the video. If he was to ignore the last two minutes, he would have practiced the version with the noisy thud. "I almost got tricked by him" Lin Huang did not expect Mr. Fu to be so playful. He turned off the video and went to the courtyard. To prevent himself from destroying his shoes from the lack of Life Power control, he removed them. As long as he could master the force of Life Power under his feet, he would have mastered 80% of Thunder Steps. The remaining parts would be the mastery of smaller details. However, controlling Life Power was not an easy task. He lost control and dove head first into the trashcan at the entrance on his first attempt. "It seems like I need a bigger space for this" Lin Huang showered, got changed and bid farewell to Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. He rode on the Alexandrian Eagle and headed to a wild zone outside the foothold. Upon landing in an empty wild zone, Lin Huang recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and started practicing Thunder Steps. His mastery of Life Power was much stronger than a common silver-level rank-3 as he had mastered level-8 of Army Attack Tactics which gave him a 96% increment in the rotational speed of his Life Power. It was four in the afternoon; after seven to eight hours of practice, he had finally stopped tripping over the ground. However, he was far from mastering the skill as he had only obtained slightly more than 10 skill card pieces of Thunder Steps. Since it was almost dinner time, Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and rode it home. When he got home, he saw Lin Xin pouring herself a cup of water in the kitchen. "Whats wrong with you?" Lin Xin was puzzled as she looked at Lin Huangs messy clothes. She wondered if he was beaten up as he looked like he had been rolling on the ground. "Nothing, I fell down when I was practicing the movement skill Ill go shower now." Lin Huang waved his hand and went straight to the bathroom on the second floor. In the shower, the water washed away the black soot that covered his body. It took him some time to clean up. Later, he threw the dirty clothes away after he changed. "Brother, what kind of movement skill are you practicing now?" Lin Xin was curious but she did not have the opportunity to ask Lin Huang since he went straight into the shower after he got home. "Thats the movement skill that my master sent me. You cant learn it now; it requires Life Power and a high mastery of it I''ve been training since morning and Im finally not tripping over anymore." Lin Huang explained. "Oh" Lin Xin was relieved that he was not beaten up. Lin Huang was not in the mood to cook so he ordered takeaway instead while he looked for ways to better control his Life Power by watching the video. After dinner, Lin Huang joined Lin Xin and Lin Xuan in Gun Master instead. He was thinking of learning gunfighting techniques to relax. In four hours, Lin Huang managed to learn another nine introductory-level gunfighting techniques. He had finally learned all of the introductory-level techniques. It was 10 at night, he went to bed exhausted 226 School Transfer For the next 10 days, Lin Huang practiced Thunder Steps in the morning while he learned gunfighting techniques from Lin Xuan at night. He was beginning to master Thunder Steps as he had been obtaining more and more skill card pieces every day. Within two weeks, he had accumulated more than 30 card pieces. During that same period of time, he had also managed to learn all 29 of the beginner-level gunfighting techniques. It was finally the day for Lin Xin''s enrolment to her new school. There were four hunter colleges in Winter City in the four zones. Since Lin Huang stayed on the east side, they were less than two kilometers away from the college. Lin Huang rode on the Viridian Wolf with Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to the college. When they arrived, there was a crowd at the entrance with at least 10,000 people. Lin Huang managed to locate the information counter and got directions to the admission office and brought the both of them in with him. The school was much nicer than the one in Wulin Town. It was not only bigger but had an astonishing building architecture as well. The lush greenery reminded Lin Huang of the university that he went to on Earth. Lin Xin was excited, the school was much more majestic than the one in Wulin Town. As they stepped into the admission office on the eighth floor, there were five to six people queuing up. Soon, it was Lin Xins turn. Lin Huang got Lin Xuan to wait at the door while he brought Lin Xin in. "Have a seat." The teacher responsible for school transfer did not bother to make small talk with them and got the both of them to sit down before asking all the necessary questions. "Your name." "Ling Xue." "Age." "14." Lin Xin had memorized her new identity, she managed to answer all the questions. The teacher scanned Lin Xins identity, school transfer application, and Lin Huangs residential token before giving her the school ID. "You will be going to the second graduating class which commences three days later. Report to the form teacher before 8:30 a.m.." The teacher briefed. "If you have any special skills, do let your form teacher know so that you would be arranged to attend special courses. If you passed the course, you would have to go through an additional assessment before graduation, which is good for your school application." The teacher added. "Understood. Thank you, teacher!" Lin Xin smile and nodded. They left the admission office. When they stepped out, both of them saw Lin Xuan was looking at the students in combat class. He was envious. "Brother, why not enroll Lin Xuan as well?" Lin Xin suggested. Lin Xuan looked at Lin Huang in anticipation. "His condition is special; If he were to learn like the rest, his superb learning speed would be revealed which may cause trouble. Many would want to experiment with him, even the Hunter Association." Lin Huang turned down the suggestion. "Xiao Xuan, if youd like to learn, I could find some other ways to help. You really cant be learning at a school." Lin Huang patted his head. "I understand." Lin Xuan nodded. As they were heading home, Lin Huang noticed that Lin Xuan was upset. "Come here, Xiao Xuan. If you would like to learn combat skills, Ill teach you a Life Skill." Lin Huang got Lin Xuan to come to him. "This Life Skill is called Army Attack Tactics, practice this for a few days and see where you stand." Lin Huang passed the Army Attack Tactics crystal to Lin Xuan. His eyes lit up and he immediately returned to his room with the crystals. After settling Lin Xuan while Lin Xin was playing Gun Master in her room, Lin Huang headed straight into the wild zone. When he returned in the afternoon, Lin Xuan was sitting in the living room looking upset. "Whats wrong? Is there any problem with your training?" Lin Huang asked. "Im stuck" Lin Xuan said. "Stuck?" Lin Huang thought it was strange as he managed to get to level 1 within a couple of hours and he did not encounter any issue when he was training level 2. "Show me." Lin Xuan nodded and performed the skill rotation. Lin Huang''s jaw almost dropped; he finally understood what Lin Xuan meant. He was stuck on level 6 instead of level 2. Within eight hours, he managed to train from level 1 to level 5. It was always an obstacle when one arrived at level 6 as it requires one to transform their Life Power. Since Lin Xuan took such a short time to master up to level 5, his body had yet to adapt to the Life Power rotation which prevented him from moving up to level 6. "You need to practice a couple more times and you''ll reach level6 soon." Lin Huang explained, Lin Xuan understood what was the problem. After dinner, Lin Huang got Lin Xuan to teach him gunfighting techniques. Three days had passed and finally, it was the first day of school for Lin Xin. Within three days, Lin Xuan managed to train Army Attack Tactics up to level-8, which was the same as Lin Huang. Seeing that Lin Xuan had already mastered Army Attack Tactics, Lin Huang downloaded a selection of battle videos from the first to the ninth floor of the Hunter Arena for Lin Xuan to watch. There were more than 30,000 videos with the longest one was half an hour while the shortest one was only a couple of seconds. Those videos would keep Lin Xuan occupied for a while. Meanwhile, Lin Huang focused on mastering Thunder Steps. He wanted to master that before leaving to hunt for the Life Seed monster. He bought two more barbecue machines and he would prepare three sets of grilled meat for Lin Xuan and order dinner for Lin Xuan every morning before leaving. All he had to himself were snacks. Every day, he would train from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Apart from the time he spent to eat for lunch and dinner, which was only 20 minutes, he spent 14 hours training. As he slowly mastered Thunder Steps, the number of skill card pieces he obtained increased as the day pass. Finally, on the 28th day since Lin Xin started school, he had obtained 3,000 card pieces. He received a notification from Xiao Hei. "3,000 Thunder Steps card pieces detected. Combine the cards for an Epic Movement Skill Card - Thunder Steps. Would you like to combine your card?" "Yes!" Lin Huang replied without hesitation. "Combining 3,000 skill card pieces" "Congratulations! You have obtained an epic movement skill card, Thunder Steps." Lin Huang checked the card immediately. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Thunder Steps" "Rarity: Epic" "Type of Skill: Movement skill" "Skill Level: Unknown" "Status: Available" "Card Remarks: Not bad" "Finally!" Lin Huang let out a long breath. It was dark, Lin Huang just realized that it was 10 p.m. He did not want to stay in the wild zone any longer. He then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and flew back home 227 Brain Eater After Lin Huang mastered Thunder Steps, he started preparing for his trip to hunt for the Life Seed monster. He prepared breakfast early in the morning, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan were coming down the stairs. Since Lin Xin started school, she woke up at the same time as Lin Huang and she was also responsible to wake Lin Xuan up daily. The three of them sat at the dining table and had their breakfast. "You''ve been in school for a month now. How do you find it so far?" Lin Huang asked as he ate his oats. "It has been good. I''ve signed up for the gunmaster course. There will be a test two days time but I believe I''ll pass with flying colors." Lin Xin was confident. Even though she was even at iron-level, her performance was outstanding as she had mastered eight introductory-level gunfighting techniques by now. She might even pass the beginner level of the gunmaster assessment. "With your capability at hand, you should be able to pass gun-related assessments in military schools." Lin Huang smiled and nodded as he was aware of Lin Xins progress. "How about the rest? Is there anything that you can''t adapt to?" "The courses are similar to those in Wulin Town, they are not as difficult as before so theres nothing that I have yet to adapt. However, there are more top students now but competition isnt a bad thing. I could use it as an encouragement to improve." Lin Xin was not afraid of challenges. She was the top student back in Wulin Town, competing with the rest of the students in her new school was a form of encouragement to her. Lin Huang felt relieved when he found out that she was doing well in school. "Brother, when do you plan to leave?" Lin Xin knew Lin Huang was hunting for a Life Seed monster. "Within a couple of days. I havent decided on the time yet, I will inform you when its confirmed." Lin Huang had some preparation to do. After breakfast, Lin Xin headed to school while Lin Xuan watched the battle videos upstairs. Lin Huang returned to the living room and called Mr. Fu after he had finished cleaning up the kitchen. Before he was able to make the call he received a notification from the Hunter''s Association; it read - Suspected Brain Eater in Foothold No.7C193. Since he read about the skills that he wanted for the Demonic Dandelion Vine, Lin Huang had selected Brain Eater and parasite as the keywords in the Hunter Associations news. Whenever there was news related to those keywords, Lin Huang would be notified. He looked at the message. It was an article with pictures. The sewage in a small area in foothold No.7C193 was clogged this morning. When maintenance was carried out the staff found a few corpses in the sewage. Post-mortem results showed that the four bodies belong to young men who had their brains removed. Preliminary check showed that it could be the work of a Brain Eater Finally, there was something about the Brain Eater, Lin Huang did not want to miss a thing. He started to look for articles about foothold No.7C193. Also known as Luoxi City, it was a normal grade-C foothold. Its economy was not as good as Baqi City but it was ranked far behind among other grade-C footholds. It was not a tourist destination since it was secluded on the northeast side of Division7. Lin Huangs eyes lit up when he saw the footholds coordinate on the map. "This foothold is so close to Meteorite Desert!" He checked the distance between the foothold and Meteorite Desert, it was less than 2,000 kilometers apart. "Its just along the way. I shall kill that Brain Eater as I take the time to stabilize my Life Power before leveling up to gold-level." Lin Huang made up his mind. After closing the page and the map, Lin Huang called Mr. Fu. Mr. Fu picked up immediately. "Whats wrong? Have you stabilized your Life Power and are you ready to hunt for the gold-level Life Seed?" Mr. Fu laughed. "Not yet, but Im almost there." Lin Huang had not been using his Life Skill in the past two months. However, it was still rotating automatically. The Life Power in his body should have stabilized soon since it had been two months. "Im calling to ask if you have any dimensional transfer equipment as Im too far away from the Meteorite Desert. If you have, I would like to borrow it since it could save me a lot of time on the road." "Sure, I should have one that is set to go to that place. When are you departing?" Mr. Fu agreed to help Lin Huang immediately. "Within the next few days, I''d like to go to Luoxi City." Lin Huang did not hide his intention. "Why Luoxi City? The city that is closest to Meteorite Desert would be Meteorite City." Mr. Fu thought Lin Huang had made a mistake. "I heard theres a Brain Eater in Luoxi City, I want to try my luck to catch it to train my parasite." Lin Huang answered honestly. "You want to obtain Supreme Intelligence for your parasite?" Mr. Fu understood immediately. "Thats a great idea. If its a mutated parasite, it would be easier to mutate it the second time when you become a transcendent if you manage to get Supreme Intelligence." "Yes." Lin Huang nodded without saying much. Although Mr. Fu was his master, there were still things that he needed to keep to himself. "Sure, I will send you to Luoxi City then. Is it okay if you depart the day after tomorrow?" Mr. Fu asked. "No problem." Lin Huang nodded. "Send me your address later, I''ll come to you early in the morning in two days." Mr. Fu hung up the phone. Lin Huang sent his address in Winter City immediately. He was relieved that Mr. Fu agreed to help him as it would save him at least a month and a half of time. "Now how do I find that Brain Eater?" Lin Huang thought. The Brain Eater had a high intelligence. Since it had invaded into a human foothold, it would definitely go into hiding. There were at least millions of people in a grade-C foothold, looking for the Brain Eater that was disguised as a human was like finding a needle in a haystack. "The only way is to look is to start at the location where the incident happened. Since it discarded all the corpses at the same place, it would mean that it had been residing in the area for quite some time. Perhaps I could find some clues on the corpses. To see the corpses and retrieve the post-mortem reports, I''d have to get to the Hunter''s Association division. That could be a problem" Lin Huang realized that looking for the Brain Eater was not a simple task at all. He put his concerns aside and started reading up on previous cases where the Hunter''s Association handled a Brain Eater 228 Mr. Fus Visi A scrumptious dinner was served on the dining table, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan drooled over the food. "Brother, whats the occasion?" Lin Xin asked. "Ill tell you later." Lin Huang smiled. Half an hour later, Lin Xin slumped into the chair with a food coma. "Im too full, I cant eat anymore" Lin Huang was speechless. "Can you tell me now?" Lin Xin did not forget about the question that she asked him. "I''ll be leaving in two days." Lin Huang told her the truth. Lin Xuan stopped eating and looked at Lin Huang. "So soon?" Lin Xin had her eyes wide open as she looked at Lin Huang. She knew that Lin Huang was leaving but she did not expect him to leave so soon. "I didnt plan to leave that soon but something came up. Its something thats along the way so I thought I might as well leave earlier." Lin Huang explained. "How long would you be gone for?" Lin Xin hesitated but asked anyway. "It''ll take at least two months." Lin Huang factored in the time he needed to hunt the Brain Eater which would be impossible to accomplish in a matter of two days. "Oh" Lin Xin stared blankly at the table. "Xiao Xuan, protect your sister while Im gone, alright?" Lin Huang smiled at Lin Xuan. "Okay!" Lin Xuan nodded hard. "Xin Er, prepare two portions of grilled meat in the morning before you go to school. One is for breakfast while another one is kept warm for Lin Xuan''s lunch." Lin Huang told Lin Xin. "Actually Xiao Xuan knows how to use the barbecue machine." Lin Xin stuck her tongue out. She taught Lin Xuan to use the barbecue machine because she was lazy to cook for him. "You silly girl" Lin Huang shook his head. "Alright then, Xiao Xuan, you can cook for yourself whenever you are hungry. I still have many monster carcasses with me, I will transfer them to you later." Lin Huang added. "Okay." Lin Xuan nodded. After giving it some thought, Lin Huang decided to give his modified SilverPhoenix16 to Lin Xin. "Pass this gun to Lin Xuan if you encounter any trouble." Although they had moved to a different home and changed their names, Lin Huang was worried that the Purple Crow would come for them. Prevention was always better than cure. Two days passed in just a blink of an eye, someone knocked on the door when Lin Huang was preparing breakfast. Mr. Fu stood at the door in a green attire, surprising Lin Huang since it was only a little past seven in the morning. "Good morning, I hope I''m not bothering you." Mr. Fu seemed to have trimmed his white beard, it looked much neater now. His smile was warm as always. "No, you are not bothering me. Please, come in. Im just preparing breakfast." Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. "Sure." Mr. Fu looked around as he entered Lin Huangs house. "Nice house. Moderate size, its homely. It doesnt look like the style that you''d like" "You are right, master. My sister chose this house." Lin Huang smiled and got a cup of tea for Mr. Fu. "Please take a seat, Ill continue making breakfast." Mr. Fu then sat on the couch in the living room and sipped the tea. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan followed the smell of the food downstairs. "Brother, do we have a guest?" Lin Xin heard Lin Huang talking to someone when she was upstairs. "My master is here." Lin Huang walked out from the kitchen and introduced the both of them to Mr. Fu. "These are my brother and sister." "Brother and sister?" Mr. Fu raised his eyebrow. He looked at Lin Xin and smiled. He was stunned when he looked at Lin Xuan. "Whats wrong, master?" Lin Huang noticed the odd expression on Mr. Fu''s. "Oh nothing, I was just thinking what should I give them since were meeting for the first time."Mr. Fu smiled and explained. "Let me see what do I have in my storage space." Soon, Mr. Fu took out a some food and toys. He seemed to have a storage ring exclusively for gifts for kids. "Take whatever you like." Mr. Fu smiled at the both of them. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan looked at Lin Huang. "Pick whatever you like. Master isnt a stranger." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. The both of them went forward to picked out the things that they liked. Mr. Fu picked a lollipop that was the size of a head and gave it to Lin Xuan. "A lollipop for you." However, Lin Xuan did not take it. "Xiao Xuan doesnt like candy, he only eats meat." Lin Xin explained immediately. "Oh, is that so" Mr. Fu was surprised. He kept the lollipop and looked at Lin Xuan again. As they picked out their gifts, Lin Huang was done preparing breakfast. "Lets have breakfast together!" The both of them kept the gifts in their storage space and ran to the dining table. "Master, please eat with us." Lin Huang walked into the living room and smiled at Mr. Fu. "I havent had breakfast in a long time, perhaps I shall taste your cooking." Mr. Fu nodded and walked to the dining table. The breakfast Lin Huang prepared was simple. Besides Lin Xuan, everyone else got a piece of toast, grilled sausage, two fried eggs, some fruits and a glass of milk. Meanwhile, there were only grilled sausages, fried eggs and big pieces of grilled meat on Lin Xuans plate. Lin Huang was not a great chef when it comes to cooking. However, such a simple breakfast would not require any skill. Mr. Fu was happy with his breakfast. He finished the food but not the milk. Instead, he drank alcohol from his flask. Lin Xin went to school after breakfast while Lin Huang cleaned the kitchen. Lin Huang then called Lin Xuan over, "You are the only man in the house when Im away, take care of your sister." Lin Huang held up his fist. "I will." Lin Xuan nodded and fist bumped Lin Huang. "Call me if you need anything. Let me know once you are done watching all the videos. When its raining, close all the windows if your sister is not around, dont let the water flow in" Lin Huang added while Lin Xuan nodded. Mr. Fu summoned a black dimensional door, Lin Huang stepped into the door with him and disappeared from their location 229 Luoxi City Stepping into the black dimensional relic, Lin Huang arrived at a hotel room with Mr. Fu following behind him. A lady in a pink bathrobe was walking out of the bathroom as they appeared and she started screaming, "Help! There are perverts in my room!" Mr. Fu giggled while he kept the black dimensional relic and pulled Lin Huang out of the window together with him. The lady was so shocked that the supposed perverts had jumped out of the window. "But this is the 99th floor" She ran to the balcony and looked down towards the direction the duo had dived but they were nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, the both of them landed in an alley opposite the hotel. "Hehe, Im sorry. That was the old location that I set the last time. I didnt know that theres someone staying in there now," Mr. Fu patted Lin Huangs collar that he had pulled earlier. "Is this Luoxi City?" Lin Huang was more concerned about that. "Of course, it is. I wanted to send you straight to Meteorite City, but I thought you were hunting for the Brain Eater in Luoxi City?" Mr. Fu knew where Lin Huangs doubts were coming from. "Thats great. Thank you, Master, for saving much of my time." Lin Huang was embarrassed that Mr. Fu had brought him here personally. "Im your Master and youre my apprentice, theres no need for such formalities." Mr Fu waved his hand nonchalantly while reaching for the black dimensional relic. "I have never gotten you anything since you became my apprentice, so here, this is yours." Mr. Fu then disabled the authorization of the relic and a black token the size of a palm fell into his hand. He gave the token to Lin Huang. "Master, I cant be using this. Maybe you should give me something else." A relic alone costed a bomb, what more a dimensional relic whereby its price was 10 times more than a normal relic! The dimensional relic that Mr. Fu was giving him could travel across Division 7 to Luoxi City; there was little doubt that this was a unique relic. "Take it, Black Ink is a four-star dimensional relic which is used for long-distance dimensional travel. Not only can it be activated using Life Power, you can also use Life Crystal to activate it. It will make it convenient for you to travel. I have many dimensional equipment, so this is nothing," Mr. Fu insisted. "Moreover, I would never take back what I give away. If you dont want it, Ill throw it away." Since Mr. Fu insisted, Lin Huang accepted the Black Ink and kept it in his storage space. "Let me know when you have levelled up to Gold Level. I will arrange a training session for you." Mr. Fu patted Lin Huangs shoulder confidently. "Sure," Lin Huang assured his Master as he wanted to level up as soon as possible. Mr. Fu proceeded to summon a gold dimensional relic. Before he left, he seemed to recall something. He turned around to Lin Huang. "Oh, I suppose your brother is not your real brother. Am I right?" "No, he isnt. Whats wrong?" Lin Huang did not deny the truth. "Nothing, just asking." Mr. Fu did not say much, just waving his hand and stepping into the relic. After sending Mr. Fu off, Lin Huang looked at the map and realized that he was not far away from the location where the dead bodies had been found, which was less than two kilometers away. He changed his features to the face that he had on Earth and checked into a hotel nearby using Ye Xius identity. The reason why he did not want to stay at the luxury hotel next to the alley was just in case he bumped into the lady in bathrobe that they had seen earlier. How awkward would that be?! Although he had a new face now, it was best that that did not happen at all. The hotel that Lin Huang booked was even closer to the location where the dead bodies had been found. He reserved a room for three days online. After he checked into his room, he started reading the local news but there was nothing about the dead bodies found in the sewer. He proceeded to scroll to the online news a few days ago but there was nothing about the case at all. "It seems like the news has been sealed off by the Union Government. I''m not sure if the Brain Eater knows that its identity has been revealed" Lin Huang looked at the Hunter Info Network and read a piece of news about the Brain Eater that was available for those ranked Silver Hunter and above. He had confirmed that the news was real. However, there was a mission at the bottom of the news. "Mission: Who is the culprit responsible for the dead bodies in the sewer of Luoxi City? "Condition: Find, capture or kill the culprit." "Reward: 3000 Life Crystals" "Mission Due: 1 week" "There will not be any punishment if the mission is not accomplished." "Mission Eligibility: Only for Silver and Gold Hunters." "Oh, theres an investigation mission available!" Just as Lin Huang was about to accept the mission, he recalled that he was in the city using Ye Xius identity. "I can only accept this mission as Ye Xiu but Ye Xiu doesnt have a Hunter license" After some thought, Lin Huang called Yang Ling. It took Yang Ling almost one minute for pick up the call. He looked the same as usual with his dark eye circles and exhausted face. "Its not even 8:30 in the morning, cant you just let me sleep?" "I think you should really take a shower, I can smell your sweaty body from the screen." Seeing his messy appearance, Lin Huang could not help but to tease him. Yang Ling lifted his hands and sniffed his armpits. He frowned and mumbled to himself, "When was the last time I took a shower again?" "Why did you call? Quick, I need to get back to sleep." Yang Ling soon forgot about Lin Huangs teasing. "Can you upgrade the authorization of an Emperors Heart Ring that was made?" Lin Huang asked. "Sure, would you like an identity with the Hunter Association or something else?" Yang Ling asked while yawning. "I want a Gold Hunter''s identity," Lin Huang answered without hesitation. "Which one would you like to upgrade?" Yang Ling asked. "Ye Xiu." "Sure, it would usually cost 1500 Life Crystals but since you did your identity with me, 1400 will do." Yang Ling agreed to do it for Lin Huang immediately. "Is there anything else?" "No, just upgrade it to a Gold Hunter authorization." Lin Huang shook his head. "Ill send you a message once its done. It will take two minutes at most. If thats all, we''re done here." Yang Ling hung up the call straight away. In less than a minute, Lin Huang received a message from the Hunter Association. "Congratulations, Mr. Ye Xiu. You are now a Gold Hunter of the Hunter Association." Once he received the message, Lin Huang logged on to the exclusive site of the Hunter Info Network using Ye Xius identity and found out that he had really been upgraded to a Gold Hunter. He took a look at the post titled Brain Eater Suspected in Foothold No.7C193 immediately and accepted the mission at the bottom. 230 Investigation Since he had accepted the mission under Ye Xius identity, Lin Huang applied with the local government to look at the dead bodies and the post-mortem reports as well as the contact details of the forensic scientist and the workers who had discovered the dead bodies. Before he even got any reply from the Union Government, he left the hotel and headed to the sewer. The hotel that Lin Huang who staying at was almost 1.5 kilometers from the location where the dead bodies had been discovered. On the way to the sewer, he observed the area and the hotels around. When he arrived at the manhole cover that was shown in the document, he noticed that it was now covered properly. Without attempting to open it, Lin Huang looked around. "There are three small inns and a hotel within a one-kilometer radiusIts very likely that the Brain Eater stayed around here. Since four of the dead bodies were all tossed under the cover, it shows that this must be the most convenient location for it to get rid of the dead bodies" Lin Huang noticed that there were no surveillance cameras around which could be the main reason why the Brain Eater chose to get rid of the dead bodies there. It could have kept the dead bodies in its storage space ring as it made its way there but the dead bodies had to be taken out when it wanted to dispose of them. With surveillance cameras, it could be easily noticed. "There are many people walking around during the day, so it must have done that in the middle of the night. Although there are no surveillance cameras here, there must be some of them around the streets. The night life in Luoxi City isnt busy and not many people would be walking around in the middle of the night. I could take a look at the surveillance cameras" Just when Lin Huang was done with his preliminary analysis, a message came from his Emperors Heart Ring. It was an investigation ID assigned by the local government. There was a message that came with it: "Hi, Mr. Ye Xiu, to prevent the information from documents from leaking out, we are not able to send you the post-mortem report. Kindly visit the forensic scientist." Lin Huang was fine with that. After reading the message, he headed to a sundry shop nearby. It was located facing the direction where the manhole cover was located. The shop owner was a middle-aged man with a buzz cut. He was plump and he looked honest. Lin Huang started chatting with the shop owner as he purchased a bottle of water and some snacks. "Boss, its a small area next to your shop, I bet your business is good." "Its alright, I guess, enough to get by." The shop owner smiled and shook his head. "Is it safe to run business here since I dont see any surveillance cameras around?" Lin Huang asked. The shop owner laughed at Lin Huangs question. "Young man, you must be a foreigner." "The economy is bad in Luoxi City and theres nothing much to see here. However, our people are honest, so theres not much crime here, let alone thieves. Therefore, theres no need for surveillance cameras. Look, there are no cameras in my shop as well. It''s not just me, most of the shops dont have that as its not necessary." The shop owners answer was out of Lin Huangs expectations; he did not expect that the residents in this foothold had such faith in their safety. "Boss, I passed by two days back and noticed that the sewer was blocked, so I walked the other way. Does that happen often? If it does, it must be inconvenient then." Lin Huang attempted to get the shop owner to talk. "That doesnt happen often. I have been here for almost 10 years and it was the first time it happened a few days back. It was just your luck. Young man, although Luoxi City is small, not everything here is not as good as those large foothold," the shop owner explained. "Is that so? But why was it blocked though? Did the workers explain?" Lin Huang asked. "They did, they said the pipes underground were old. They built a shed above it and took many hours to fix it," he elaborated. "Oh, really?" Lin Huang just confirmed that the Union Government managed to cover the truth up. He was relieved since the shop owners around did not know about the dead bodies in the sewer, let alone the residents. Sewage maintenance was a small matter which was not worth the publicity, therefore, the Brain Eater might not realize that what it did had been discovered. Since he had confirmed that part, Lin Huang did not plan to waste any more time there. After bidding farewell to the shop owner, Lin Huang took a look at the address of the sewer workers that the Union Government had sent earlier. The workers who discovered the dead bodies were resting at home temporarily. The Union Government paid them a high compensation sum which amounted to years of their salary. The reason for the compensation was to avoid them from revealing the truth as well as to cooperate with the investigation of the Union Government. Following the address, Lin Huang found the first person on the list. Brother Zhao was a tanned, skinny man. When Lin Huang arrived at his house, he was playing cards with his friends. Hearing that it was someone from the Hunter Association, Brother Zhaos wife whispered into his ear. Brother Zhao then got his friends to leave. After they left, Brother Zhao asked Lin Huang to come into his room while his wife hid herself in the kitchen. "Hi Brother Zhao, my name is Ye Xiu. I am the investigator that was sent by the Hunter Association on the case," Lin Huang said while projecting his investigation ID. Brother Zhao nodded immediately. "The Union Government asked me to be cooperative. Just ask whatever you have to, I will not hide anything." "Alright, lets start then." Lin Huang nodded and got into finding out the details. "What time was it when you guys discovered the dead bodies?" "Early in the morning two days ago, it was about 8:30 a.m...It was our first task of the day. We received complaints from the residents once we arrived at work, saying that the sewer was blocked. Water was leaking and the stench was unbearable. We headed there right after we changed into our uniforms" "Could you elaborate more about how you guys discovered the dead bodies?" Lin Huang asked. "We removed the manhole covered when we arrived. After clearing all the water, we went underground to investigate. We noticed that the silt was thick, so we went down to clean it. To our surprise, just when we started to dig, we were shocked to find a human hand. Our colleague, Little Wang, was young and brave. He pulled the entire body out of the silt. We reported it to the Union Government immediately" "Did you see how they die?" Lin Huang asked. "No, it was dark down there. Moreover, the dead bodies were covered in silt. Had the Union Government not ask us to stay there till their staff came, we would''ve ran away immediately. We didnt dare to look." "So, you guys only discovered one body while the rest were dug out by the staff from the Union Government?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. "Thats right. When we called, they asked us to stay there and stop digging so that the crime scene would not be ruined. We stayed there until the staff arrived, then they proceeded to dig out the rest of the body. As we were recording our confessions while they dug, only did we realize that there was more than one dead body" Lin Huang nodded and asked a couple more questions until he got the answers he wanted. "Thank you for your cooperation, we will investigate this as soon as we can." Lin Huang stood up and shook his hand after he was done with his questions. "Mr. Ye, there were a man and a woman who came to investigate this case as well. They were not as friendly as you," Brother Zhao laughed. "The mission was published on the Hunter Info Network by your government, so any Silver Hunter and Gold Hunter could be on it. Perhaps its natural for some hunters to be unfriendly, please forgive us," Lin Huang explained with a smile. "I understand that, I will do whatever I can to help. I hope you guys can catch the culprit soon." Brother Zhao nodded. "I shall talk to your colleagues then, Ill get going." "Do you want me to bring you there? I have nothing to do anyway," Brother Zhao offered enthusiastically. "Its alright, I have their address here. You enjoy your holiday." Lin Huang patted his shoulder. After leaving his house, Lin Huang took a look at the map. After confirming the address, Lin Huang summoned Viridian Wolf and headed to the address of the second person. 231 Forensic Lady Lin Huang spent the entire morning visiting the four sewer workers and got the same answers from all of them. They did not know much as the sewer was dark, hence they could not identify the genders of the deceased, let alone see the dead bodies clearly. The only thing they knew was that the first body was that of a man. They knew nothing about the rest. However, Lin Huang was glad that the four of them kept the secret pretty well, not even spilling a word to their wives, so it was unlikely that the news would leak to the public. It was almost 12 noon when Lin Huang left Little Wangs house. He was the last sewer worker that he visited. After lunch at a random store, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed to the Union Government division. He was brought to the forensic department after the staff checked his license and investigation ID. When the door opened, there was a lady in black-framed glasses watching videos while eating snacks at her desk. The lady seemed young, about 17 or 18 years of age. Her face was small with sharp features. However, the glasses, which occupied half of her face, covered most of her features. She was indulging in a battle video that seemed like the Hunter Arena. As she watched, she was grabbing a box of food that was covered in red chili oil with her gloves. Lin Huang knocked on the door. The lady looked at him uninterestedly. "Youre at the wrong place, this is the forensic department." "Im looking for the forensic department." Lin Huang smiled and walked over to the ladys desk. "Hi, my name is Ye Xiu. Im an investigator sent by the Hunter Association." "Give me a second, let me finish this video." The lady waved her hand at him. As the background of her video was set to be semi-transparent, as he walked closer, Lin Huang could clearly see that it was the battle of himself defeating Yu Moli. It was his 90th battle. Lin Huang frowned as he watched the screenplay. Since the battle was ending soon, Lin Huang pulled a chair and sat across the lady while waiting for her to finish the video. Two to three minutes later, a golden glow flashed across the video. Soon, the arena announced Sword Geniuss victory. "My prince charming is the best!" the lady screamed and paused the scene where Sword Genius was disappearing. She then kissed the screen with her oily lips. Lin Huang could not bear to see her disturbing actions. After turning off the video, the lady looked at Lin Huang who sat across her. "Youre from the Hunter Association? Show me your ID." Lin Huang projected his hunter license and the investigation ID from the Union Government. "Following the protocol, I should check your work ID as well." "Go ahead then." The lady projected her work ID from her left hand in an apathetic manner. Her name was Liang Yin and she was 17. It showed that she graduated from the advanced medical school of the Union Government majoring in forensic science. She was not wearing glasses on her working ID and she looked much prettier in her picture. "Alright." Lin Huang nodded after checking thoroughly. Liang Yin then turned off the projected and said while eating, "Just ask whatever questions you have. If youd like to see the dead bodies, we can do that after I finish eating this bowl of red chili lung slices." "Whats the investigation result of the four bodies? Was it done by Brain Eater?" Lin Huang asked directly. "99% was done by the Brain Eater," Liang Yin replied while eating. "How about the remaining 1%?" Lin Huang asked. "The remaining 1% would probably be a lunatic who mimics brain eating cases. If thats so, the person must have drilled a hole on top of the head and sucked the brain out using a straw." Liang Yin proceeded to eat while she explained, her appetite not at all affected by the gruesomeness of what she was saying. "Were all of the victims men? Besides that, are there any similarities among them?" Lin Huang asked. "All of them were strong men and there were a couple of similarities. First of all, all of them were naked when they were found. Secondly, all of them werehavingintense sex before they died. Thirdly, all of them were well trained. Two of them were at bronze Level while another two were at silver level. The Hunter Association has confirmed that the four of them held Regular Hunter licenses." Liang Yin was checking out Lin Huang as she spoke. As she was also a silver level, she could sense that Lin Huang was on the same level too. From the sewer workers, Lin Huang already knew that they were all naked and Liang Yin had just confirmed it. After listening to her explanation, Lin Huang could confirm that the flesh of the Brain Eater was at least a silver level. "Is it possible to determine which rank both the silver level victims were?" Lin Huang asked. "One was silver level rank-1. while another was rank-2. We could tell that they did not struggle before they were killed. They should have been attacked when they were having sex," Liang Yin explained. "Since it could pierce through a silver level rank-2s skull, the Brain Eater should at least be a silver level rank-3 or even higher," Liang Yin added. What she said at the end implied that Lin Huang would not be able to fight such a monster. "Were there any wounds on the bodies?" Lin Huang ignored her insinuation and continued to ask. "There were light wounds including scratches and whipping. Those should have been caused by the sex since they were just light surface injuries which were not fatal." Liang Yin explained with her eyebrow raised. "The only fatal injury was the hit on the head which pierced through the skull into the brain." "What was the time of death?" Lin Huang asked. "The earliest one was four months ago while the latest one was a month ago. Thats about one body per month. Looking at the Brain Eaters hunting habit, it would be doing it again within these couple of days." Liang Yin answered. Lin Huang noticed that she had finished her food so he said, "I guess you could bring me to the dead bodies now." "Sure, give me a second." Liang Yin then threw the box filled with red chili oil into the trash can together with her gloves. Lin Huang thought she was ready to go. However, she walked to the refrigerator and took out a few boxes. After a pause, she decided on one and kept the rest in the refrigerator again. With the box in hand, she then waved to Lin Huang. "Lets go!" "Thats food, isnt it?" Lin Huang was speechless. "Its intestine gravy, would you like some? Its delicious, you may try, but you can only have a piece," Liang Yin said. "Its okay, thanks," Lin Huang rejected her right away. 232 My Prince Charming Is The Hottest! Lin Huang followed Liang Yin to the morgue and she pulled out the cold chambers containing the four bodies for him before she opened the cover of the bowl of intestine gravy on an empty bed. "You can take a look for yourself. Let me know if you have any questions." Putting on a surgical glove, Liang Yin used her fingers to pick up a slice of intestine into her mouth. She was humming happily with her legs swinging. Ignoring her, Lin Huang took a look at the first body. It was the body of a young man. Since he was soaked in the silt for a long time, his body was well preserved; it looked as it did when he was alive. The body was clean, just like what Liang Yin said earlier, and completely naked. He was a good-looking man in his early 20s. He was about 1.8 meters tall with a nice, muscular body. He was not the bulky type, a closet hunk. "I think this man has the best body among the four of them. Although hes not the tallest, but he has a nice body. Just look at his legs. He has the perfect ratio with a girthy penis. I bet the girls must have gone crazy for him when he was alive," Liang Yin commented casually as she ate. Lin Huang did not say a word. It was odd for a 17 year old to talk about a mans penis with another man that she had just met. Lin Huang could not imagine what kind of things she would say if they became friends. However, Lin Huang could tell that the disturbing comment had nothing to do with sex but was simply a biological observation. He thought that it was inappropriate to carry on with the topic anyway. After some observation, Lin Huang noticed that there really were not many wounds on the mans body. There were light scratches on his chest and back that seemed like the work of fingernails. The only fatal injury was the hole the size of a thumb on top of his head. Though the hole, Lin Huang could even see the structure of the hollow skull. There was no brain left. "I bet you guys cleaned the inside of the head as well?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course we did, or else how are we supposed to see what happened in there?" Liang Yin replied. "I have kept the silt inside their skulls and did an extraction. There was no brain tissue left at all." "How about their internal organs?" Lin Huang noticed that the chests and the abdomens of the bodies had been cut opened and stitched back. "Nothing odd. We have extracted the residue inside their stomachs, it was just normal food." Liang Yin shrugged while putting another piece of intestine into her mouth. Such a topic did not seem to affect her appetite at all. "How about their blood? Is there any trace of poisoning?" Lin Huang asked. "We have done that too, but they were not poisoned. Can you stop doubting our professionalism? Do you think I wouldnt think of the possibility of poisoning? Im much more experienced than you. Whatever you can think of, I have already covered that." Liang Yin was unhappy with Lin Huans probing. "I managed to graduate from the advanced medical school with Honors. I have also been authorized to work in the forensic field even before I graduated. This must be done by Brain Eater, I have no doubt about that." "Im not suspecting you, I just wanted to confirm with you all the possibilities." Lin Huang did not mean to judge her. He was merely voicing out all the likelihoods that he had in his head. Liang Yin did not say a word. She thought about it and realized that Lin Huang was just asking questions like a normal person would and that he did not have a suspicious tone. She was being too sensitive. "I have checked the organs, blood, and even the spinal cord. Theres no residue of poison that we know of, neither is there any trail of Ecstasy," Liang Yin added after giving it some thought. "Hmm, there seems to be nothing wrong with this body. Let me take a look at the rest." Lin Huang walked towards the second body. It was a hunk of 1.9 meters with tanned skin and he looked like he was 27 or 28. As Lin Huang was observing, Liang Yin spoke up, "This man was the oldest among all of them and he has the highest rank. Although his Life Wheel was broken, we could detect from the remaining force wave that he was a silver level rank-2. He was the tallest and the strongest one with the largest penis. From the color of his penis, we could tell that he had the most sex among all of them" Once again, Lin Huang was speechless by her casual comment about the mans penis. He decided to focus on the body instead. Soon, he noticed that there were many scars on the back of this body. "Whats with the scars on his back?" "Nothing, those are scars of whipping. If you look closely, he has quite a lot of similar scars all over his body. Most of them were healed, but those that we saw were new. Looking at the severity of the marks, they dont look like punishment, they seem more like a fetish," Liang Yin explained. Although she was young, she seemed to know a lot about the non-vanilla aspects of the bedroom. Lin Huang did not ask further after hearing her explanation as it was just skin surface, which was unrelated to how this man died. Just like the previous man, there was a hole in his head. "Was this man of silver level rank-2 killed in one hit as well? How could you tell that he did not fight back?" Lin Huang asked. "You can tell from his facial expression. If he struggled or fought back before he died, his facial expression would be ferocious. After the body stiffened, the facial expression would stay. Look at him, he looked happy. This means he was killed without knowing that it was coming since he was relaxed," Liang Yin said while putting another slice of intestine into her mouth and chewing it hard. "You know what I meant when I said he was relaxed" After keeping the second body, Lin Huang proceeded to check the remaining two bodies. Liang Yin answered all his questions. They then left the morgue and headed to Liang Yins office. "Do you have any more questions?" Liang Yin finished the bowl of intestine gravy as they arrived at her office. She then threw it away and looked at Lin Huang with her eyes eagerly wide. "I would like to look at the complete post-mortem report," Lin Huang requested. Liang Yin then projected the post-mortem report to him. After flipping on the screen, she showed it to Lin Huang. "You can take a look at it yourself." Lin Huang then spent more than 40 minutes to finish the report and he had no suspicion on the cause of death anymore. Turning off the report page, Lin Huang looked at Liang Yin. "What do you think about this case?" "Im just a forensic scientist, what kind of thoughts am I supposed to have?" Liang Yin had her arms wide open. "From my professional observation, it was done by a Brain Eater monster or a Brain Eater that was disguised as a woman." "How much do you know about a Brain Eater?" Lin Huang asked. "I studied forensic science, not monsters or monster biology," Liang Yin replied curtly. "Alright then. No matter what, thanks for your help." Lin Huang left. Just when Lin Huang arrived at the entrance, he was stopped by Liang Yin. "Wait, I thought of a senior who is a monster expert. I could give you his contact details. However, whether he would be willing to help you is a different matter." "Sure, give me his number. I will try contacting him." Lin Huang nodded. After adding him as a friend and forwarding him the contact details, Lin Huang left while Liang Yin proceeded to watch other Sword Genius battle videos in her office. As she watched, she mumbled, "No matter what, my Prince Charming is the hottest. No man can compare to him" Although she could not see Lin Huangs face under the silver mask, that did not stop her from idolizing him 233 Awkward Encounter It was past four in the afternoon when Lin Huang left the Union Government building. He did not expect time to past so fast as he was focused on investigating the dead bodies. He rode the Viridian Wolf back to the hotel. As he entered the hotel, he ran towards the elevator which was closing and held the doors open using his hand. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the couple in the elevator. The lady was one in the pink bathrobe in the room of the other hotel where he and Mr. Fu were transported to that morning. Now that they were standing closer to each other, Lin Huang was surprised to find that the lady was a gold level rank-3. The tall man beside him was of the same level too. After hesitating for a heartbeat, Lin Huang decided to enter the elevator anyway. He realized that the lady did not recognize him as he had changed his features earlier. There were three of them in the elevator and coincidentally, they were going to the same floor, level 76. Lin Huang thought it was awkward but fortunately, his back was facing them so he could not see their facial expressions. Soon they arrived at level 76. As Lin Huang walked out, the couple followed too. Lin Huang was staying in Room 28 while the duo was in Room 26 and Room 27 respectively, just next to him. Lin Huang figured that the lady had probably transferred to this hotel instead due to the morning''s incident. Although it was awkward, Lin Huang did not plan to change his stay in this hotel as it was unnecessary. Since the lady did not recognize him anyway, he could just pretend that it never happened. He then called Liang Yins senior to whom she had given the contact details earlier. Within two rings, the phone was picked up. "Hello, who are you looking for?" It was the voice of a young man. "Hi, are you Liang Yins senior, Han Ji?" "Who are you?" the man asked guardedly. "My name is Ye Xiu, I am an investigator from the Hunter Association. I have been investigating on a case that involves the Brain Eater and I got your contact details from Liang Yin. She told me that you are a major in monsters, a professional in this field," Lin Huang explained. The man was silent for a moment before he started speaking, "I am Han Ji, is Xiao Yin...alright?" Hearing his tone of voice, Lin Huang could tell that there was something between them. "Ermfrom the way she ate her snacks, she seemed great. Were not close, it was our first time meeting this afternoon." Lin Huang did not know how to answer that question, so he answered honestly. "She must still be a huge fan of heavy food, am I right?" Han Ji asked. "I suppose red chili lung slices and intestine gravy are considered heavy." Lin Huang nodded in certainty. "Oh, I see that she has been eating much lighter food compared to two years ago" Han Ji chuckled to himself. What he said puzzled Lin Huang. "If this is considered light, what kind of food did she use to eat?!" "I still remember she used to love raw heart slices. I enjoyed watching her eating until her face was all bloody. She looked cute like that" Han Ji indulged himself in the beautiful memory of Liang Yin. "Raw heart slicesBloody faceWhich part of that is cute?! Can you guys eat something normal and have some normal judgment of beauty!?" Lin Huang screamed in his heart. "Im sorry, I was distracted. I hope I didnt scare you," Han Ji said softly. "Its alright, lets talk business." Lin Huang attempted to get Han Ji back on track. "You want documents about Brain Eater, am I right? I will send you a copy of my research document later. However, its confidential. If not for Xiao Yin, I would not send it to you. Therefore, please do not forward it to anyone else. After you are done with it, delete it right away, dont keep it anywhere," Han Ji warned Lin Huang. "I understand. Im only using it for the case and I will destroy it after using it. Dont worry," Lin Huang promised. "Oh yeah, would you know what is Xiao Yins current favorite thing?" Han Ji deviated from the topic again. "Im not sure, how would I know that? I just met her this afternoon" Lin Huang said and then he recalled something. "Wait, I think she likes Sword Genius. I saw her watching videos of him when I entered her office." "What is this Sword Genius?" Han Ji was puzzled. "Hes a participant in the Hunter Arena." Lin Huang understood that researchers like Han Ji did not keep himself updated with the Hunter Arena. "Alright then, Ill look into it on the network later." Han Ji seemed to be satisfied with the answer Lin Huang gave. "If you have any doubts, you can always ask me. As long as Im not working in the lab, I will try my best to answer you." "Thanks in advance then. I shall contact you if I have any questions then." Lin Huang did not expect that naming a random hobby of Liang Yin''s would earn Han Jis promise easily. After they hung up, Han Ji sent the documents over almost immediately. Lin Huang looked at it right away The documents were detailed whereby most of the experiments came with many photos and complete lab videos. Lin Huang thought Han Ji was kidding when he said the documents were confidential and that he would only send some ordinary research documents. After flipping through the documents, he was shocked to find that it was indeed some confidential information from the Union Government which was not to revealed to the public. As there were many experiments that included human testing, such experiments were prohibited for the Union Government on the surface as it was inhumane. If the documents were exposed, the Union Governments name would be affected and it might irk the public. It was past six in the evening after Lin Huang was done with his preliminary read. He turned his screen off and got ready for dinner downstairs. Just when he opened the door, the lady staying next door came out of the room as well. Lin Huang pretended not to see her and headed straight to the elevator. The lady knocked on the door of Room 26 and called out, "Im ready, lets go." The door of Room 26 opened and the tall man walked out of the room. After closing the door, the duo headed to the elevator. Lin Huang had been waiting for the elevator to come and before it did, the duo was standing behind him. As they entered the elevator, the couple ignored him completely while starting to talk to each other. "What did you from your end?" the lady asked. "The association has gotten the location of the four mens Emperors Heart Rings when they disappeared as well as their whereabouts during the last few days. They will send it to me soon. How about you?" the man asked. "I have gotten the history of the phones from the association, but I didnt find anything odd." The lady shook her head helplessly. From their conversation, Lin Huang could tell that they were investigating the same case as he was. Unfortunately, the elevator soon arrived on level one and the duo walked out of the elevator. Lin Huang hesitated and decided not to follow them in the end. "I shall have dinner first. After that, Ill get the Hunter Association to get me information about the four mens Emperors Heart Rings and see if there are any clues," He thought to himself. It seemed like there was only one Brain Eater in this city. If the duo managed to kill it, Lin Huang would have to find another way to obtain the Supreme Intelligence skill for his Demonic Dandelion Vine. Now that there were competitors, Lin Huang could no longer stay calm. 234 Chilly Nigh After dinner, the first thing Lin Huang did when he got back to the hotel room was to look at the Hunter Associations official website. He then submitted the app to look at the locations of the four mens Emperors Heart Rings as well as the history and the messages on their phones. Later on, he started reading the documents of Brain Eater that Han Ji had sent him earlier. The documents about the Brain Eater were detailed. In fact, they were even more detailed than the monster encyclopedia that Mr. Fu had sent him. The difference between them was a Ph.D. holders thesis and a primary school kids homework. The information alone was 1,000 times more complete than the monster encyclopedia. Before Lin Huang had the chance to look at the video of the first experiment, he received a couple of messages from the Hunter Association. "Location request app for Emperors Heart Rings has been approved, please see attachment for details." "Phone history app has been approved, please see attachment for details." "Message request app for Emperors Heart Rings has been approved, please see attachment for details." He turned off the Brain Eaters documents and started reading the attachments in the messages. The first attachment was the images of the four mens last seen location before they died. As Lin Huang opened the images, he opened Luoxi Citys map as well to compare the locations. "They were all in underground hotels" Lin Huang frowned. The last location that appeared on the four mens Emperors Heart Rings were in four different underground hotels. An underground hotel was not really beneath the ground or a filthy motel; it was a special hotel that exclusively catered to one night stands. Such hotels were usually well-decorated with ample equipment and the rack rate was expensive too. Many were willing to pay for such hotels as there would be no surveillance cameras around. There was no registration needed either, as all they had to do was to transfer credit points onto a trading chip and get a room that they wanted. There was a back door in each room so people could leave from the back anytime they wanted. Such hotels were usually occupied before 11 and at night, business was booming. The owner of such hotels usually had a powerful background. If something bad happened, it was hard to get them to speak. That was why Lin Huang frowned when he saw that the four men had last appeared in underground hotels. "This is tough" Lin Huang was in a pickle as he knew that the hotel owners would not assist him in the investigation. Even if they did, there were no records of clues that he could investigate further. Glancing at the whereabouts on the day that they were killed in fast forward mode, Lin Huang could not find any similarities. The only similarity was that the locations of the four of them were close to this area. Two of them had been staying in the same hotel before they died, which was the hotel where Mr. Fu had brought Lin Huang to earlier. Meanwhile, the other one stayed at the hotel that Lin Huang was currently in while the last one stayed in a luxurious hotel nearby. Without a clue, Lin Huang opened the second attachment. It was the records of their calls and messages. All of the messages looked normal without anything about any one-night stands. No lusty messages could be found and this puzzled Lin Huang. "How did they contact the murderer then? Could the four of them have had a different Emperors Heart Ring?" Putting that thought aside, Lin Huang opened the last attachment. It was the browsing history of their Emperors Heart Ring including the time of whichever network they logged onto when they did any credit points transfer and the number of times the app was opened. However, there was no concrete information. All he could see was the main page of the network that they logged onto and he could not see what kind of information they were looking at. As for the credit points transfer, he could only see the transaction time but not the amount transferred. Meanwhile, for the app, he could only see the name of the app but not any other details including the amount of time spent on the particular app or the activities. However, Lin Huang noticed that all of them had used the same app before they died. "What is this Chilly Night? Theres this same app on all their Emperors Heart Rings and two hours before their death, the app was either opened all the time or sporadically" Lin Huang then looked at the app. "So, its an app for one-night stands" After reading the description of the app, Lin Huang finally understand what it was for. "That means the murderer must have used this app to lure all of them. No wonder theres nothing on their phones as they never contacted each other using their phones." Lin Huang was in yet another predicament as the attachment provided by the Hunter Association did not include the conversation on the app, so he could not find out who was talking to them. Helpless, Lin Huang replied to the Hunter Association, "Is it possible to provide more details on the app utilization?" This time, he received a reply in a blink of an eye. "Im sorry, Mr. Ye. We are unable to go further into the users privacy to provide you with more details." Although he had seen it coming, Lin Huang felt helpless when he saw the reply. After closing the attachments, Lin Huang gathered his thoughts. "The messages on the phone were not helpful. Although I have identified their locations of death, the chances of obtaining information about the murderer from the underground hotels are slim. The only way to identify the murderers identity is by looking at the conversation history on the Chilly Night app" Lin Huang thought that Yang Ling was the only person he knew who might be able to provide him with that information, so he called Yang Ling straight away. After two rings, his phone was picked up. For the first time, Yang Ling did not look tired. He looked like he was full of energy this time and he was even dressed in new clothes with neat hair. "Good evening, my regular customer." Yang Ling seemed to be in a good mood as he waved at Lin Huang with a smile. "You look great today." Lin Huang smiled back at him. "Thats because you always call me in the morning. Im a night owl, Im usually energized after eight at night." Yang Ling rolled his eyes. Lin Huang then looked at the time, it was almost 8:30 p.m. "Are you making a fake identity for your friend again?" Yang Ling knew that Lin Huang would not call for anything but business. "Its something else this time, I need your help." Lin Huang was aware of Yang Lings response as he spoke and he was worried that Yang Ling might reject him. "Whats that?" To his joy, Yang Ling did not reject him straightaway. "Im sure you know about the app called Chilly Night," Lin Huang started. "Of course, I do, Im always using it. Do you use it too? Do you need me to recommend some chicks for you?" Hearing the name of the app, Yang Ling smirked at Lin Huang. "I need you to get me a conversation history from the app." Lin Huang ignored Yang Ling and told his purpose of the call. "You have such a fetish of looking at others conversation on the one-night stand app? Tsk tsk" Yang Ling smirked again. "Im investigating a case whereby the four victims were on this app before they died. Im suspecting that the murderer was the lady who asked them out," Lin Huang told the truth. "Oh...I know which case that is! Its the one in Luoxi City. Are you really that far away?" Yang Ling knew what was happening; it was clear that he read the news on the Hunter Info Network. "Could you help me?" Lin Huang asked. "Sure, I can, but my assistance isnt freeI want half of the 3,000 Life Crystals reward!" Yang Ling demanded greedily. "Sure. However, I have a condition. From the beginning to the end of the case, you are not allowed to reject my request, you are not allowed to add any conditions or ask for more Life Crystals," Lin Huang stated. "You''ve got my word!" Yang Ling agreed immediately. 235 Asexual Reproduction After he hung up, Lin Huang sent the codes of the four mens Emperors Heart Ring to Yang Ling. Within minutes, Yang Ling sent him the images of the four mens conversations. However, the four of them were talking with four different accounts. All of them were females without profile pictures. The conversations were explicit with the exchanging of images. However, the images that were sent by the ladies were deleted, so Lin Huang could not tell who they were. Just when Lin Huang was planning to call Yang Ling to ask about the deleted photos, Yang Ling called. "I have investigated the four female accounts and although their addresses were all in Luoxi City, they were in different locations. However, all of the accounts were temporary ones whereby they would stop using the account after two to three days. Besides the first account, the other three accounts were created 25 to 26 days after the first account was created. Therefore, it was normal that the locations were different. Its highly likely that the four accounts belong to the same person." Yang Ling started talking since Lin Huang picked up his call. "Is it possible to retrieve the deleted photos?" Although Lin Huang knew it was not possible, he wanted to try his luck anyway. "Thats not possible as the applications programming is very simple. Its good that it can keep the messages but its impossible to retrieve deleted photos. Moreover, the creator of the application made it for fun without the intention to make the application big, so its not connected to the cloud network of the Emperors Heart Ring. Theres no backup of messages in the application," Yang Ling said with his arms open. "Are you the creator?" Lin Huang had the assumption when he heard Yang Ling said that the application had been created just for fun. "OhYou got me." Yang Ling shrugged his shoulders. "Is there nothing that you can do?" Lin Huang asked. "Theres really nothing that I can do as the programming itself is flawed. I never wanted it to be perfect. All I wanted was a smooth conversation in the application, so I didnt put in many functions on the application. I used less than two hours to create it and launched it right away" Yang Ling explained. "Send me all the four addressed of the ladies then." Lin Huang thought the only clue that he might get was from the addresses. Yang Ling sent the addresses immediately. Lin Huang projected the map and located the coordinates of the four underground hotels. He then connected all the coordinates to the manhole where the dead bodies were found. "Please check for me all the surveillance cameras on the route to the manhole on the same night when the four men died. See if theres anyone who appeared repetitively. If that person appeared several times when the bodies were getting rid of, the person could be the murderer that we are looking for," Lin Huang said to Yang Ling. "I''ll do that. Besides on the day itself, I will also look at the days after the incident happened." "If theres anything else that you need my help with, tell me now. I have things to do after 10 at night, you know," Yang Ling added. "Not at the moment, Ill let you know tomorrow. Is it possible to send me the surveillance footages by today?" Lin Huang asked. "I need time for that, Ill send them to you before 10." Yang Ling hung up the phone right away. It was almost nine oclock when the conversation ended. Lin Huang proceeded to read about the Brain Eater. However, the more he read, the more difficult he realized it was for him to handle the monster. The Brain Eater was a monster who relied on asexual reproduction. They usually lived up to 300 years and then would they start reproducing when they knew they were almost at their end. Their reproductive method was unique as a ball-shaped baby Brain Eater would grow on its head. The baby would absorb all the nutrients that it needed from its mother and grow. Once the mother was dead, it would detach from its mother. Within 48 hours of detachment, it needed to find a host or else it would die. A Brain Eater that was just detached from its mother was only a size of a thumb, so it was hard to discover. It would usually go into another creatures body and head to the brain. Once it arrived at the brain, it would attach its bottom on the hosts brain and release a massive amount of neurotoxins. The brain would lose its nerve function without feeling any pain. The Brain Eater would then devour the brain as the host was in deep sleep and take over the hosts body. Han Ji had done many experiments on dead criminals by getting the Brain Eater to take over the dead criminal''s body to see what would happen. According to the research, the Brain Eater would most probably inherit the hosts character on its first attempt. For instance, if the host loved smoking, he would still be smoking after his body was taken over. The same applied to those who loved drinking and eating spicy food. Such inheritance proved that the Brain Eater would take over most of the memory of the host. The Brain Eater would not have its own consciousness during its first attempt of inhabiting a hosts body just to survive. Therefore, the first attempt would affect its own consciousness as it would mostly be affected by the hosts memories. Its consciousness was basically built on the hosts memories. For the following infections, the Brain Eater would acquire the memories of the following hosts as well especially after it has experienced the memory from its first host. However, the memories of the following hosts would do little to affect the Brain Eater. Once the first takeover was done, the Brain Eater considered as an adult. It could absorb all the information from the memories that it wanted and learn from them to adapt to the environment as soon as possible. If the Brain Eater took over a human body, its learning speed would be terrifying because it could learn to use most of the tools within a couple of days. The most it needed was two to three days to perform exactly the same as the host without exposing itself to others. Although the reproduction ability of a Brain Eater was weak, it was the most difficult one to handle among many parasites. As Lin Huang was indulged in the documents of Brain Eater that Han Ji sent, a message snapped him out of his focus. It was a short, single-sentence message from Yang Ling. "Ive found the culprit but I cant see the face" 236 The Cautious Brain Eater "I''ve found the culprit but I couldnt see the face" There were four attachments in the message that Yang Ling sent and they were all videos. Lin Huang downloaded the attachments immediately. Once they were downloaded, he looked at the first video that was less than 20 seconds long. It was an empty crossroad and on the top right of the screen, the timestamp showed that it was taken at 1:28 a.m. Although it was late, under the lights along the street, the crossroad was brightly lit. The crossroad remained empty for five to six seconds, then suddenly, a person in black robes appeared on the screen. The black robes were oversized and it was hard to ascertain the persons gender, let alone the persons face. Lin Huang could tell that it was a lady from the black heels that occasionally flashed from under the robe. The persons strides were short but fast, and within seconds, the person walked out of the area monitored by the surveillance camera. Lin Huang proceeded to look at the second video. It was also around 20 seconds but this time, it was at a T-junction. The same thing happened. A person in black robes walked by quickly. Although the person was covered in the robes, judging from the gait and the speed of the steps, it was the same person who had appeared in the first video. Lin Huang proceeded to look at the third and fourth videos, all of them featuring the same person in black robes. The date stamp shown on the video showed that it was on the second day that the fourth man died. All of them had happened between 1:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. Lin Huang could confirm that all of them were the same person, that that was the Brain Eater that he was looking for. However, without being able to recognize the face, Lin Huang was clueless. It was past 10 o''clock at night when Lin Huang checked the videos and he did not want to bother Yang Ling, so he continued to read about the Brain Eater. He finished all the documents until it was past 7 a.m. He did not sleep at all. He took a cold shower and had breakfast downstairs with a cup of coffee. Later on, he sent Yang Ling a message: "Please get me the surveillance camera footages from around the four underground hotels to see if we can find the person who was with the four victims on the night that they were killed. Also, take a look at the camera footage of the four users of the Chilly Night app who appeared on that night. The Brain Eater should''ve headed home after it got rid of the dead bodies around 1:30 a.m. If she headed home without her black robes, we can see her face on the camera." After sending Yang Ling the two messages, Lin Huang left the hotel and headed to the first registered address of the first Chilly Night users account on the Viridian Wolf. It was an old, small area without any surveillance cameras around. Yang Ling managed to find the room, which was Room 401 in Block 4. Using a Specific Transformation Card, Lin Huang transformed himself into Spectre and went into the room. It was a unit with two bedrooms and a living room. It was around 60 square meters large with a kitchen and a bathroom. There was nobody but it was clear that someone was living in there as it was clean. The master bedroom was neat with the bed made and the blanket folded. There were two pillows on the bed and there was a photo frame near the bed head, facing the corner. It was a photo of a young couple. It was obvious that the new occupiers were a young couple. Lin Huang looked around the room but he found nothing. Although there must be clues that the Brain Eater had left a couple months ago before it left, now that there were new people moving in, those clues must have been wiped clean. Lin Huang had expected to not find any clues here. He then left the room, transformed back to himself and walked to the security office downstairs. The security guard was an uncle in his 50s. Seeing that he was the only one in the office, Lin Huang had a silver glow in his eyes as he spoke to the man. "Uncle, are there no surveillance cameras in the security office as well?" "No, Luoxi City has always been safe so theres no need for that. Moreover, I am here. We dont need surveillance cameras." The man patted his own chest confidently. "I would like to ask, was there a beautiful lady staying in Room 401 of Block 4 four months ago?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, shes really pretty with a banging body too." The man nodded immediately. "What does she really look like? Do you have any photos or videos of her?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course not, why would I have any of that?" The man waved his hands. "You can only get a photo of her from herself, even the house owner does not have it. She signed her unit contract with me. There were some issues with her Emperors Heart Ring that day, so she could not retrieve any of her personal details. She stayed here for only a month, so the house owner did not even register the house rental with her." Lin Huang realized that it was a tactic of the Brain Eater so that her face would not be exposed. She figured that if any hunters were to come for her, it''s likely that the places that she stayed at would be exposed. After obtaining the information, Lin Huang left the security office. After he left, the illusion that he cast on the man disappeared. "Eh, I thought I was talking to Aunty Zhang? Where did she go?" The man looked around trying to find where Aunty Zhang went. As Lin Huang walked out of the area, he bumped into the two hunters who were staying next to him in the hotel. They must have followed the clue that they got from the Chilly Night app. Noticing Lin Huang, they finally figured that he was in the same case as they were. They both glanced at Lin Huang without saying a word and passed by him. It was normal for different hunters to be on the same mission. Clearly, the duo was calm as it was not the first time they had encountered something like this. After the duo entered the area, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed to the second address. It was 11 in the morning when Lin Huang managed to visit the third house. The three houses were all located in an old, small area without any surveillance cameras and had new tenants. All traces of the Brain Eaters were all gone. Lin Huang did not find anything the entire morning. Helpless, he summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed to the fourth address. It was the address of the account user who had registered more than 20 days ago. It was also an old, remote area without any surveillance cameras. As Lin Huang arrived at the entrance of Room 502 in Block 3, he realized that he had used all of his Specific Transformation Cards. He then redeemed a couple of Spectre Transformation Cards using his card pieces and entered the room after transforming himself into the Spectre 237 A Fingerprin The fourth house was a small apartment with a bedroom and a living room. It was about 50 square meters large. The floor and the coffee table in the living room were covered with a thin layer of dust. It was obvious that it had been vacant for a while. After looking around the living room, Lin Huang headed to the bedroom. The bedroom was simple with a bed and a cabinet behind the bed. Across the bed was a walk-in wardrobe with a one-meter wide space in the middle. There were neither bedsheets nor blankets on the bed; it was just an empty wooden bed frame with a mattress that was 20 meters thick. Besides an empty facial cream container, there was only dust on the cabinet with three drawers behind the bed. There was half a packet of tissue paper and an opened packet of half-eaten candy in the drawer. After packing both of the items for analysis, Lin Huang proceeded to open the second and third drawers but realized that they were both empty. Under the bed was a thick layer of dust. After looking around and confirming that he did not miss anything, Lin Huang turned around and headed for the wardrobe. It was a big wardrobe with sliding doors. He opened the left side of the wardrobe, which was empty, save a couple of hangers. However, Lin Huang smirked as there was an unmistakable clue in the wardrobe. As he opened the wardrobe, a perfume scent wafted out of it. The scent was different from the facial cream that he had smelt earlier. Neither was it any scent nor detergent; it was definitely perfume. Lin Huang recalled a female colleague back on Earth. The colleague did not like the detergent scent on her clothes, so she would do something luxurious after she hung her clothes in the wardrobe. She would spritz perfume into the wardrobe. The perfume that she used was not cheap. A small bottle costs a couple thousand of dollars. Because of that, she would spend more than $10,000 per year on perfume alone. Whenever he visited her house, he could smell perfume, which came from the wardrobe, as he stepped into her room. Clearly, the Brain Eater had the same habit which might have been inherited from the host. The perfume in this world cost even more than on Earth, so the host of this Brain Eater was clearly a silver level or even higher. To a silver or gold level person, spending 100 million credit points on perfume alone per year was nothing. Lin Huang shook his head to clear his mind from the fog of perfume. After looking around in the room, he did not find anything else. He walked out of the area after transforming himself back. It was past 12 noon. He was not sure if Yang Ling was still sleeping or some other reason because he had yet to reply Lin Huangs messages. He then found a random restaurant and had a bowl of ramen. After lunch, he summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed to the Union Government. As he arrived, Liang Yin was having lunch in her office. Lin Huang knocked on her door and asked, "What''re you eating?" "Intestine cup rice!" Liang Yin looked at Lin Huang. "Why are you here again?" "I brought clues this time." Lin Huang took out the items that he had obtained from the Brain Eaters house. "What''s this?" Liang Yin blabbered while eating. "I found the last house that the Brain Eater was staying at and these are the items that she left behind before she moved away. Please see if you could retrieve anything such as fingerprints." Lin Huang dangled the plastic bags in front of her. "Put them on my desk, Ill do it for you after I am done eating," Liang Yin said with her mouth full. Lin Huang placed the three plastic bags on her desk and sat on the chair behind while waiting for her to finish her lunch. About five to six minutes later, Liang Yin finished her food and wiped her mouth with tissue paper, then she walked to the test station with the three plastic bags. "How did you find the Brain Eaters house?" Liang Yin chatted with Lin Huang while testing the items. Lin Huang smiled as he explained, "As I was investigating their similarities, I found out that they were using the same app on their Emperors Heart Ring to talk to the culprit. I got a friend to find the coordinates of the account user." "You have such a friend?" Liang Yin looked at Lin Huang in wonder. "Then, could you ask your friend to get me Sword Geniuss identity and contact details?!" "No, that would be violating the privacy of others," Lin Huang rejected without even thinking. "Arent you violating the privacy of others right now?" Liang Yin argued, clearly upset. "Im doing it for the case, theres nothing else that I can do. Moreover, Im investigating a Brain Eater. Shes a monster that is not eligible for the primary of a Union Government citizen. "Hmph, I give up then!" Liang Yin did not speak anymore. Around 10 minutes later, Liang Yin started eating the candy that Lin Huang had brought from the Brain Eaters house. "Hey, thats evidence" Lin Huang was speechless by her behavior. "Moreover, have you considered if thats even edible?" "It is, I have checked. Its just a piece of normal candy," Liang Yin said while shaking the packet of candy at Lin Huang. Lin Huang rejected her kind offer, "I dont want any, you can have it." "When will I get the results of the test?" Seeing her relaxed, Lin Huang could not help but ask. "Its out," Liang Yin declared while shaking a semi-transparent film the size of her palm in front of Lin Huang. There was a clear, black fingerprint on it. Lin Huang got closer and took the film. "Im not responsible for the matching of fingerprints, so you will have to go to the information department," Liang Yin said. "If shes a Luoxi Citys resident, it will take less than 30 minutes to find out her identity. If shes a foreigner, it will take longer, perhaps two to three days," Liang Yin added. "I understand, thanks!" Lin Huang took the film and left. Instead of heading to the information department, Lin Huang took a picture of the film and sent it to Yang Ling. After the image was sent, he called Yang Ling, who picked up almost instantly. "What did you send me?" Yang Ling seemed like he had just woken up. He was wearing a red sleeping robe. He was puzzled by what Lin Huang sent him. "Did you get the stuff that I asked for this morning?" Lin Huang asked. "I overslept, I just saw your messages half an hour ago. Im still on it, I need a while." Yang Ling admitted, embarrassed. "Alright then, help me check whose fingerprint does this belong to. I have just gotten this from the forensic department. If Im not mistaken, this fingerprint belongs to the host of the Brain Eater," Lin Huang explained. "Sure, I will do the identification. I will start with Luoxi City. If the person is a resident there, I will get the result soon." Yang Ling nodded and hung up as he had work to do. As Lin Huang walked out of the Union Government, he received a message from Yang Ling. "Its a ladys fingerprint." Lin Huang was excited as he opened the attachment 238 Wild Beauty Lin Huang frowned when he saw the image that Yang Ling had sent him. He did not think that the lady in the photo was the murderer that he was looking for. It was a middle-aged woman who looked like she was at least 47 years old. She was fat, and although it was a photo of her upper body, Lin Huang could tell that she was not tall. She did not look like she had any combat strength. No matter what, Lin Huang thought her body was too different from the lady in black robes that he saw in the surveillance camera footages. Although her body had been covered by the big robes, Lin Huang could see the shapeliness of her body. If this middle-aged woman was to put on the same robes, she would look completely different. Moreover, among the four hunters that had died, the oldest one would be in his 30s while the youngest one was not even 20. If they were really met the woman in the photo, they would have probably run away instead of following her to an underground hotel. Besides, Lin Huang had asked the security guards in the apartments that the Brain Eater used to stay in with the help of illusion, and all of them had said that the lady was beautiful with a nice body. Perhaps the victims and the security guards like this type of women. Just as Lin Huang was puzzled over this, Yang Ling called. Lin Huang picked up immediately. "Is that a mistake? Are you messing with me?" "No, its not a mistake. The fingerprint belongs to this aunty," Yang Ling said. "However, shes not the culprit, but the owner of the house. She must have touched the stuff that you retrieved after the Brain Eater left. I was shocked when I found the identity of the woman and realized that shes not the one that were looking for after I checked the registration of her Emperors Heart Ring," Yang Ling explained. Lin Huang was relieved after he heard Yang Lings explanation. It would be hard to accept if the culprit was that aunty. "Im still looking for the information that you asked for this morning. I will contact you again once its done." After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed to the hotel. Awhile after he got into the hotel room, Yang Ling called again. He picked up immediately. "I have looked at all the surveillance cameras. All the four victims went to the underground hotel alone on the day they died without any companion. Also, I have also looked at the surveillance cameras around the area the culprit was staying in the day the bodies were dumped. Until past five in the morning, nobody appeared. It seems like the culprit never returned home after she got rid of the bodies," Yang Ling told Lin Huang the result of his investigation in all seriousness. "That means that before the Brain Eater carried out the murder, it was ready to move away" Lin Huang frowned as the investigation came to a dead end again. "HoweverI followed the way you think and investigated the four underground hotels. I found something" Yang Ling smirked. "What did you find out?" Lin Huang asked. "I found out that the hotel owner of one of the underground hotels had surveillance cameras secretly installed in every room. The stuff that I saw was interesting. Even a professional like me learned a couple of new positions." Yang Ling smirked again. "You saw the face of the murderer?!" Lin Huangs eyes flew wide open. "Hehe, not only her face, I saw the entire process of the murder. Unfortunately, a great porn video turned into a horror movie abruptly. I couldn''t take it." Yang Ling patted his chest as a gesture of fear. "Send it over right now!" "Look at youWould you want videos of other rooms as well? They are all high-definition, its complimentary for you." Yang Ling winked at Lin Huang. "I''ll tell you what, if I were to upload all these videos to the network and make them available for download for 10 credit points, I would make big money from that" Lin Huang stared at him without saying a word. "Alright then, its no fun to talk to you! I will send it over now." Seeing Lin Huang ignored him, Yang Ling stopped his nonsense. A moment later, Yang Ling sent a couple of photos, a video and some personal details to Lin Huang. "The Brain Eater went to the black market a few months back and got her location system on her Emperors Heart Ring removed. Even if we got her identity and her Emperors Heart Rings code, as long as she doesnt launch the Chilly Night app, we cant locate her at all. "However, Im trying to get into Luoxi Citys surveillance system to look at the areas that she had appeared in before. Hopefully, I can get the location of her current accommodation. Ill contact you once theres news." After they hung up, Lin Huang looked at the photos immediately. In the first photo, a naked lady was walking out of the bathroom. Her hair was wet and she seemed to have just showered. There was a naked man on the bed. He was the fourth victim who had died more than 20 days ago. He was the one with the nicest body according to Liang Yin. In the second photo was a naked lady closing the curtain at the window. As she was very close to the camera, Lin Huang could even see the pores on her face. He finally understood why Yang Ling said that the videos were of high-definition. From the quality of the photo, the owner of the hotel had spent big money on the surveillance equipment. The lady had long, dark brown hair that reached her waist and she was pretty but she was not the type with sharp features. Her eyes were big and she had a high nose bridge. Although her lips were not small, after she put on red lipstick, she seemed extra sexy. She had a healthy tan on her body with long, toned legs. The killer feature on her body were her boobs; perhaps 99% of the ladies in Luoxi City would have low self-esteem when they saw her boobs. She exuded a wild kind of beauty, and even Lin Huang was drooling when he looked at the photo. After looking at the photos, Lin Huang started watching the videos. In the video, the lady got out of the shower. She used a hairband to tie up her hair and got onto the bed to kiss the man Their bodies got closer together and the man was breathing heavily as he indulged in the ladys multiple kisses. Suddenly, the lady opened her eyes. There was a silver antenna-like thing the size of a thumb extending from the top of her head and it made its way to the back of the mans head. After staying mid-air for a moment, the antenna plunged and pierced into the mans head. The man experienced a sudden death before he could even react. As the antenna pierced into the mans head, it was like a snake slithering deeper into his head. There was no blood coming out of the wound. Around 10 seconds later, the silver antenna came out of the mans head. In the video, Lin Huang could clearly see that the antenna was slick with blood and brain juice. After the antenna returned to her head, the lady let go of the man softly, let down her hair and showered in the bathroom. Later on, she slowly cleaned up the scene in her naked body. She kept the mans body in her storage space while looking around to see if there were any blood stains. After cleaning the room and keeping the mans shoes and socks in her storage space, she put on her clothes. She then put on a big, black robe and looked into the mirror. Confirming that nobody could see her face, she left via the hotel back door After finishing the complete video that was 20 minutes long, Lin Huang opened the last document that Yang Ling sent. It was the ladys identity 239 The Disappearance of Zheng Yihan Name: Zheng Yihan Age: 20 Combat Strength: Silver level rank-3 Hunter Association Authorization: Silver Hunter Remarks: Expert in hidden weapons and close-quarter combat After looking at Brain Eater hosts basic information, Lin Huang felt relieved that it had confirmed the identity of the murderer. Finally, after two days of no sleep there was a breakthrough in the development of the case, but knowing the identity wouldnt be enough on its own as nobody knew where she was right now or if she was even in Luoxi City. Zheng Yihan was a silver level rank-3, with authorization to log into the Hunter Info Network. Using this she must have found out that the Hunter Association was after her but with Brain Eaters intelligence how would she react? would she choose to mess around with the hunters who were after her, would she change to another host so that she could stay in Luoxi City or would she escape the city? Those were all unknown. Lin Huang did not plan to do anything before obtaining more information. Since he had not slept for a night, he took a nap while waiting for any news from Yang Ling. Finally, after two hours of napping, Yang Ling called. Lin Huang was only resting and wasnt in a deep sleep. As his Emperors Heart Ring beeped, he sat right up immediately and picked up the call. "So what? Did you see her appear anywhere?" Lin Huang asked. Yang Ling opened his arms wide in the video call. "I didn''t see her anywhere. After she got rid of the bodies, she seems to have disappeared completely from Luoxi City. I watched all of the 8,000 surveillance cameras around the city three times since the day she got rid of the body, I havent seen her face once." "Do you mean she has left Luoxi City?" Lin Huang frowned. "Maybe she has left, maybe shes hiding or maybe she has a new face. Those are all possible." Yang Ling gave three different answers. "If shes hiding, isnt it impossible that she doesnt appear anywhere on the surveillance cameras for more than 20 days?" Lin Huang figured since the Hunter Association had launched the mission many days before; the host, Zheng Yihan might have been disposed of. Yang Ling disagreed with Lin Huang. "Thats not impossible, I could do that." "There are not that many surveillance cameras in Luoxi City. If she chose to stay in an old, small area without any surveillance, she could wander around without getting captured as long as she does not enter any areas with surveillance." "I have been watching her Emperors Heart Ring and looked at the user record. It has been more than 20 days since she last used the Chilly Night application. Judging by her behavior, its not possible that she had found her new target for face-changing." Yang Ling suspected. Lin Huang agreed and nodded. "Thats right. Shes now in the body of a silver level rank-3 with outstanding combat strength and an attractive appearance. Such a host is like a beautiful flower exuding an amazing scent that attracts bees around her, providing her with good food. Without finding a better host, its not possible that shed give up on the current host." Yang Ling thought and voiced his suspicion. "Its not possible that shed leave Luoxi City unless shes forced to. Although I have no idea how shes managed to get into the city, looking at the Union Governments security system its hard for her to pass through the other footholds." "Do you mean among the three possibilities, the possibility that shes hiding is the highest?" Lin Huang asked. "This is what I thought. However, my analysis is just for reference. Exactly what happens depends on what this Brain Eater is up to." Yang Ling shrugged his shoulders with the attitude that Lin Huang was on his own now. "Alright then The Brain Eater would need to eat at least once a month. It has been 25 days since shed last eaten. If shes still in the city, shed be eating again within these next few days. I think shell use the Chilly Night app again, watch it for me." Lin Huang planned to wait for another few days. If the Brain Eater had left the foothold, hed have to abort the mission and think of other ways to get the skill for the Demonic Dandelion Vine as he didnt want to spend too much time here. "Dont worry, Ill do that. Ill receive a notification as soon as she logs into the app." Yang Ling was confident. It was five in the evening after hed hung up the phone. Lin Huang had dinner downstairs and returned to his hotel room. It seemed like all he could do now was wait for Brain Eater to log into the app. It had been 25 days since the Brain Eater had last eaten. If she was still in Luoxi City, she would definitely kill someone again within two to three days as shed die if she didnt eat for more than a month. It was past six in the evening. After reading the news for a while, Lin Huang started playing Gun Master in the living room. Since he had nothing to do, he wanted to get Lin Xuan to train with him. Before entering the game, he connected the game with his Emperors Heart Rings notification so that he could be notified even when he was playing the game. As he entered the game, he realized that Lin Xin and Lin Xuan were online too. He pulled the both of them into the virtual training ground that hed built inside the game. Although theyre in different game consoles, as long as the virtual training grounds number was the same, theyd be on the same battle map. Seeing Lin Huang in the game, Lin Xin ran towards him. "Have you guys had dinner?" Lin Huang patted her head. "Yes, we have. Brother, why are you so free today?" Lin Xin smiled and asked. "My task here is stuck at the moment. Im waiting for news from a friend and since I have nothing to do, I thought Id train here." Lin Huang explained. "How long will you stay there?" Lin Xin asked. "I would be in Luoxi City for four to five days at most. If it cant be done, I will abort my mission. I dont have time to waste here, I have more important things to do." Lin Huang had not been training his Life Skill recently as his Life Power was being stabilized. It would take less than a week for it to completely stabilize naturally. If he didnt manage to kill Brain Eater this time, he could always train his Demonic Dandelion Vine once he became a Gold Hunter. It was unnecessary for him to waste too much time in Luoxi City. After a quick chat, Lin Huang started training his gunfighting techniques with Lin Xuan 240 The Professional Got C*ckblocked! For the following two days, Lin Huang spent most of his time inside the Gun Master game. After two days hed only managed to learn three intermediate gunfighting techniques. He was training past 10 at night when his phone started ringing. Seeing that it was Yang Ling, Lin Huang exited the game and picked up the call. "Is there any news?!" Lin Huang was worried. "The lady has just logged into the Chilly Night app" "Whats her location, send it to me right now and Ill go over!" Lin Huang asked for the address before Yang Ling could finish talking. "Erm This is the reason why I called. I cant locate her" Yang Ling looked embarrassed. "Didnt you tell me you could locate her as long as she uses the application?" Lin Huang was suspicious. "Thats because I thought she only had the programming removed from the location service and it wouldnt affect the location of the app. I didnt know that she got the entire location receiver in her Emperors Heart Ring removed." Yang Ling said helplessly, "To crack the ring open and work on the chip isnt easy. I dont think anyone in Luoxi City would be able to do it, thats why I thought she had only gotten the code for the location system removed. Now that the location receiver has been destroyed, even my personal code for the location services couldnt locate where she is" He was embarrassed as he had told Lin Huang that he could do it. "Cant locate her" Lin Huang frowned as he listened. He had faith in Yang Ling to get it done, he did not expect to hear this. After thinking for a while Lin Huang thought of an idea. "Im thinking to download the app myself and register an account. Since we cant locate her, I''ll ask her out. "Thats a great idea!" Yang Ling agreed with Lin Huang but not completely. "However, its too suspicious to register a new account now; as she could see the date and time of registration. She knows that shes being hunted down by the Hunter Association, so she will be wary of accounts that are new. Let me give you the testing account that I used, it was registered three years ago. Upload a picture of yourself and key in your own profile. She wont suspect a thing. Dont expose yourself when you talk to her Never mind, Ill help you with the talking. Youre such a serious guy that shed never fall for you. Ill be monitoring your conversation with her, you can copy whatever I send you and send it to her." "Sure!" Lin Huang agreed immediately. Although hed used a similar phone application when he was on earth, he couldnt bring himself to flirt with a stranger. Using Yang Lings method, he was just being a middleman where Yang Ling was the one actually talking to the lady. All he had to do was forward the messages. Immediately after the phone hung up, Yang Ling sent the password to his account. Lin Huang logged into the application after hed downloaded it using the username Super Hunk, Lin Huang was tempted to change the username, but he couldnt find the settings button. He then started to amend his profile. Now that he looked like himself on earth, he was sure of his own body and in less than a minute, the new profile was done. He changed into something more casual and took some photos from different angles, uploading the photos to his own page. "I didnt expect you be so skilled with selfies. Are you sure that you''ve never used any one-nights stand apps?" Yang Ling teased him. "Thanks for the compliment. Now, how do I change the username?" Lin Huang ignored Yang Ling "You can''t change that. I created the username on purpose, why would you want to change it?" Yang Ling replied. "Alright then, send her account to me." Lin Huang did not want to waste his time on small talk and got straight into business. Yang Ling sent a voice message this time, "Her new account username is Waist Length Hair. Dont talk to her first, just look at her profile. Although theres nothing much to see, shell see that youve visited her profile. If shes not talking to anyone else, shed probably look at your profile. Since you have photos and clear biography, if shes interested, she''ll definitely talk to you. If she doesnt talk to you, but she looks at your profile several times then shes letting you know that shes interested in you and by then, you should be halfway there." Lin Huang didnt know that there were so many rules on a one-night stand app. "Alright then, Ill do as you say." Soon, Lin Huang found Waist Length Hair''s account. He looked at her profile carefully. It was simple - only listing her weight and height; she didnt even fill in her age. There was only one picture on her profile and it was a picture of her upper back. Her hair touched her waist and her back was naked all the way to her bum cheeks. Anyone could see that she wasnt wearing anything in the picture. The picture of her back wasnt enough, Lin Huang couldnt tell if it was Zheng Yihan herself. The hair color didnt look like hers. However, the body and skin color were similar. Realizing that there was nothing useful, Lin Huang left her profile. A moment later, Lin Huang realized that she was looking at his profile and within a minute, she sent him a message. "Hi, handsome." Just when Lin Huang was ready to reply Hi, Yang Ling sent him a message. "Hey, beautiful." There was a smiley face at the back of the message. Lin Huang smiled as he thought he was too innocent. He copied Yang Lings reply and sent it back. Waist Length Hair replied in an instant. "How do you know that Im beautiful? What if I only have a beautiful back?" As Lin Huang was thinking how to reply the message, Yang Ling sent him the reply. "My instinct told me." Lin Huang forwarded the message. "Instinct? Tell me, what other things are your instincts telling you." She replied immediately. "Hehe, shes hooked." Yang Ling sent a disturbing voice message. Soon, Yang Ling sent his reply. "My instinct told me that not only youre a beauty but you have a nice body too." Lin Huang forwarded the message again. "What if I told you that this is not my photo, would you still think the same?" She replied again. "Of course. Its my instinct, it has nothing to do with the photo that you have." Yang Ling replied. "If your instinct is on point, can you sense what kind of person that I am?" She replied. "My instinct is telling me that youre a dangerous woman." Seeing that reply, Lin Huang thought it was not right and sent Yang Ling a voice message. "I dont think thats appropriate, she might have her guard up." "Dont worry just forward that. I know what to do." Yang Ling replied. Helpless, Lin Huang forwarded the message anyway. This time Waist Length Hair was silent. She hadnt replied 10 seconds later either. "This is bad" Lin Huang frowned. Just as Lin Huang had mumbled to himself, he received another message. "Please tell me, how am I dangerous?" It was still Waist Length Hair. "Hehe, what did I tell you" Yang Ling sent another voice message. "My mother once told me that the more beautiful a woman is, the more dangerous she is. My instinct doesnt tell me what kind of danger you are; all its telling me is that youre more dangerous than 99% of the women in this city." There was a smirk emoji at the end of the sentence. Lin Huang secretly complimented Yang Ling in his mind, he had to admit that Yang Ling was really good at flirting. "Such a sweet talker, I''ll take that compliment then." She replied immediately. As they chatted, the conversation became more and more explicit. Although Lin Huang did not want to forward the messages but for the sake of hunting down Brain Eater, he did it anyway. After chatting for 10 minutes, Lin Huang could not take it anymore. "Stop messing around, ask her out now." Lin Huang sent Yang Ling a voice message. "Whats the rush, cant you see that Im waiting for the perfect timing?" Yang Ling seemed to be indulging in the conversation However, two to three minutes later Waist Length Hair sent a message abruptly. "Lets talk next time. Its late and Im going to sleep." She went offline right after she sent the message. "What happened?" Lin Huang was stunned. He did not expect her to go offline suddenly before he could even ask her out. Soon, Yang Ling called. "I thought it was going well, whyd she go offline?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "She set me up! F*ck!" Yang Ling cursed. "Somebody else got her?" Lin Huang finally understood what was happening. "Do you think she really went to bed?" Yang Ling rolled his eyes. "I knew shes talking to other guys as she was talking to me. I was too indulged in the conversation; I didnt see what they were talking about." Yang Ling uploaded the chat history of the man who managed to ask Waist Length Hair out. "Although we didnt get to ask her out, at least we could locate the man who had managed to and find out where they are meeting." Yang Ling was pissed but he did not forget about what was important. "Wait, do you have a picture of this man? Why does he look so familiar? 241 Fight! Lin Huang was speechless when he saw the photo of the man Yang Ling sent. He was the partner of the female hunter who was staying in the hotel room next to Lin Huang. The same tall man that he had bumped into in the elevator. Lin Huang was staying in Room 28 and the female hunter was staying in Room 27 while the man who asked Brain Eater out was staying in Room 26. "Does he know that Waist Length Hair is Brain Eater or is it a coincidence that hes having a one night stand with her?" If it was the former the man would kill it immediately but it was the latter, not only would the man become Brain Eaters food but probably its host too. He was a gold level rank-3, who was more outstanding than Zheng Yihan in any way. Moreover, now that Brain Eater knew it was being hunted down, it would not let go of such an outstanding host that came its way. No matter what it was, Lin Huang could not let any of that happen. Seeing that Lin Huang was silent, Yang Ling asked. "Did you recognize him? Who is that guy?" Clearly, he was unhappy that he got c*ckblocked. "Hes a hunter who lived next to me at the hotel, Ive met him before in the elevator." Lin Huang explained. "I''m not sure if it was a coincidence or he knew that shes Brain Eater." "Its quite impossible that he knew as her accounts fresh, it had been less than half an hour since shed created the account. I dont think anyone couldve found her as fast as I could!" Yang Ling was confident in his ability. "Moreover, I''ve hacked into the mans account, hes been asking other women out during these last couple of days." Lin Huang was speechless. "I dont think you should violate his privacy" "Its he who c*ckblocked me! Ive shown him mercy by not informing his fiancee!" Yang Ling was pissed. Lin Huang was sure that Yang Ling researched the man. "Alright, please focus on whats important here. Get the mans location and Ill follow him." Lin Huang reminded Yang Ling that he could have asked Brain Eater out but Yang Ling was talking too much and she got away. Yang Ling shared the location with Lin Huang while he proceeded to mumble to himself. The man was moving, he had left the hotel and was headed far away. Lin Huang left the hotel immediately and chased after him. Lin Huang was worried that hed be exposed so he didnt follow too close. He walked hundreds of meters away from him. 15 to 16 minutes later the signal on the map suddenly stopped. Lin Huang slowed down but soon the mans signal had disappeared. "What happened?" Lin Huang asked while Yang Ling ran to the signals location. When he arrived, the tall man had disappeared. "The lady might have a signal isolator with her. Besides, the area were currently in has no surveillance within a couple of kilometers I have always heard people saying that monsters are smarter than humans but I didnt believe it, now I have to believe it. This Brain Eater is much scarier than I imagined." Yang Ling sounded disappointed. "Then you have never encountered a Ghastly Clown then" Lin Huang thought to himself. "Since theyre meeting here it''s definitely not to chat with each other. Go and check to see if therere any underground hotels around." Lin Huang said. "Theres one 300 meters on your left and another one just 400 meters on your right. I have marked them both on the map for you although there are more than 600 rooms in total. Do you plan to look one by one?" Yang Ling was doubtful. "Theres nothing else I can do, Ill have to search the rooms one by one." After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang walked to an empty alley and transformed himself into the Spectre. He then dived underground and headed to the underground hotel on his left. When he arrived, he hid within the walls and started looking one by one. 20 minutes later hed managed to look at more than 300 rooms but they were nowhere to be seen. Lin Huang headed to the other underground hotel just up on the right. After searching half of the hotel, Lin Huang found his target. It was no good he was too late. Lin Huang didnt see Zheng Yihan but you could smell her perfume scent in the room. The tall man was adjusting his clothes in front of the mirror. Clearly, Brain Eater had completed the change of host and must have kept Zheng Yihans body in its storage space. Lin Huang headed to the room entrance and transformed back to himself. He summoned Bai and took out the modified GoldEagle11. He kicked open the room door and started shooting at the man. As the door crashed open Brain Eater knew that it was exposed. It then tried to get away towards the back door of the room. Before he could escape, Bai had transformed his Blood Spirit wing into a curtain to block the backdoor while the other wing transformed into a whip, tying the mans left arm. As the mans movement was restricted, Lin Huang seized the opportunity and used the intermediate gun-fighting technique Tidal Wave and opened fire at the man. Silver bullets flew out of the gun like a silver tidal wave devouring the man. As the shots were fired people in the hotel started screaming. Some of the people in the rooms nearby thought they were being attacked and left through the back door, naked. Although the mans movement was restricted, he managed to avoid all the bullets coming his way. Some of the bullets hit his body but they were blocked by his gold-level armor. After attempts at trying to break away from Bai, he activated the gold-level battle sword on his finger and slashed at Bais Blood Spirit whip. There was golden sparkle that flashed out from the collision. Now that he was sure that he could not break away from Bai, the man chopped off his arm. Blood was all over the floor. Staring deadly at Lin Huang and Bai, the man plunged towards the window and escaped. Lin Huang did not expect him to come up with such sudden decision to get rid of his arm. As Lin Huang got to the window, the man ran into the crowd. After recalling Bai, Lin Huang hopped out of the broken window, summoned his Viridian Wolf and chased after the man 242 Killing The Brain Eater It was past 11 at night with very few people out on the streets as there was not much of a nightlife in Luoxi City. Lin Huangs Viridian Wolfs chase was smooth; it had managed to catch up with the man in a nick of time. Seeing that it was an area without surveillance like Yang Ling said earlier, Lin Huang summoned Bai again. "Beat him up but dont kill him." Lin Huang instructed. Standing on the back of the Viridian Wolf, Bai nodded while transforming one of his Blood Spirit wings to a spear, piercing through the middle of the mans chest from his back He stopped running. Bai lifted him up with his spear and while staring coldly at him Bai turned him around. The man was like a piece of meat hanging on a hook, he panicked as he looked at Lin Huang and Bai beneath him. The people around who saw started screaming and running away. They thought it was a vampire invading the foothold; some of them even called the Hunter Association for rescue. Lin Huang did not bother to explain as his target was to kill the Brain Eater. The man lost his ability to fight as he was badly injured, Lin Huang then summoned his Demonic Dandelion Vine. "Bloody, take the Brain Eaters Supreme Intelligence." Lin Huang instructed. The appearance of a Demonic Dandelion Vine scared the man even more. As a parasite itself, a double mutated Demonic Dandelion Vine would naturally be a threat to the Brain Eater. The vine on Bloody bent like it was nodding. Suddenly, Bloody extended a couple of vines and lunged towards the mans brain. Just when the vines were reaching the mans head, a golden glow flashed in the air. Bloodys vines were broken and a person stood before the man, it was his female partner, a gold-level sword in her hand and equipped with gold-level armor staring deadly at Lin Huang. "How dare you kill someone in this foothold?!" Lin Huang gave a deathly stare back at her too. "His body has been taken over by a Brain Eater, hes not human anymore." The lady was confused, she turned around and looked at the man behind her. "Qin Wei, dont listen to him. Im a gold level rank-3, hows it possible that the Brain Eater could take me over? Think about it, the victims before were not even a gold level rank-1. This guy is the one who has been taken over by the Brain Eater. I knew something was wrong with him so I followed him today and found out that he was killing again. I tried to stop him but it was too late the lady was dead." "I wanted to kill him but hes an Imperial Censor, he has a powerful summoning beast. I couldnt fight him so I took the dead body with me and ran here. If you dont believe me, I can show you the dead body in my storage space!" Qin Wei believed in him. "How could he turn the whole situation around" Lin Huang shook his head. He hadnt expected Brain Eater to be this intelligent and manage to point its fingers at him instead. "The lady is called Zheng Yihan, shes your previous host. Since you killed her and changed into another body, its natural that you cant leave the dead body aside." Lin Huang said. "Before I agreed to get on board with this mission at the Hunter Info Network, a friend of mine had created an elixir that could identify parasites, I brought some with me." "This elixir is transparent, its similar to water. Nothing would happen if it touches people but if it touches a human with a parasite, the persons skin would turn yellow that looks like it was smeared with a yellow powder. Im not sure about the theory behind this but I have seen the videos that he sent me. This elixir works on a human who has been taken over by a Brain Eater too." Lin Huang added. He then took out a half bottle of mineral water from his storage space. He slowly opened the bottle cap and smiled at the both of them. "Since you said Im the Brain Eater, lets test it." Lin Huang poured the water on his palm, nothing happened seconds later. He closed the bottle cap and tossed the bottle at Qin Wei. She was stunned but she opened the bottle anyway and poured some water on her hand. Nothing happened as well. "Why not you ask your partner if hes up for this test?" Lin Huang smirked while he looked at the man. "Wu Hao, lets try this" Qin Wei hesitated and walked towards the man with the bottle. "You would rather believe in a person that you dont know than me?" The man attempted to distract her. "Why bother talking to him" Lin Huang walked to Qin Wei and took the bottle out of her hands and splashed the water on him. "Noooo!" Wu Hao used his hands to block the water. "Did you see that?" Lin Huang looked at Qin Wei. Qin Wei looked at Wu Hao with a complicated expression. Seeing that the both of them were looking at him, Wu Hao looked at his body to see if there were any changes however, everything was normal. "You dont have to look around, its just normal drinking water although your response had said everything." Lin Huang explained. Qin Wei took a step closer. "Could you let me kill this Brain Eater? I would like to use its body to commemorate Wu Hao." "Im sorry, you can take the body with you but I must kill him. I have been waiting for many days for its monster skill." Lin Huang did not plan to give in. "Alright" Qin Wei hesitated but she decided to give in. Since the Brain Eater was discovered by Lin Huang, she shouldnt steal his thunder. "Bloody, take his Supreme Intelligence!" Lin Huang instructed again. A couple of vines lunged again from Bloody and pierced through Wu Haos head. Suddenly, black shadows were escaping from his head and attempted to run away. "Reproductive Fission?!" Lin Huang frowned. Reproductive Fission was the second reproduction method of a Brain Eater. When facing fatal attacks, it would split its body into tens of pieces to reproduce separately. That was the main reason why the Brain Eater tribe had yet to become extinct. As long as one of them managed to find a host, their genes would live on. Without waiting for Lin Huang and Qin Weis reaction, Bloody plunged its vines again and transformed them into spears, killing all of the divisions. Soon, Bloody recalled all its vines and transformed back into a card placing itself into Lin Huangs body. Since Qin Wei was around, Lin Huang didnt look at the card immediately. "Bai put down the body." After placing Wu Haos body on the ground, Bai removed his Blood Spirit wing from his chest. Lin Huang then recalled Bai. "You can have the body, Im done here. I shall make a move." "Wait, I will go back to the hotel with you. Wu Hao is dead, I need to submit a report to the organization. Ill need some information from you, I hope you can cooperate." Qin Wei stopped Lin Huang. Lin Huang thought and agreed to Qin Weis request. "Sure, Ill try my best. I apologized for not being able to reveal some parts of my doing." Qin Wei kept the body and the both of them returned to the hotel 243 Extracting A New Skill On the way back to the hotel, Qin Wei started asking Lin Huang about what happened. As Lin Huang told him the brief background of what was happening, they arrived at the hotel. It was 11:30 p.m. when Lin Huang checked the time. Qin Wei looked at the time as well and said, "Its too late now, Ill not bother you. I might need some of your time tomorrow though to talk further." "Sure, what time?" Lin Huang nodded. "Lets meet at the restaurant at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow and after breakfast, lets go to the Union Government division together to submit the mission. Since you killed the Brain Eater, the reward belongs to you but Ill have the body. Well talk more after that." Qin Wei said. "Will I be bothering you? If its not convenient for you, we can reschedule." Qin Wei thought and added. Lin Huang nodded. "8:30 a.m. is fine." "Since I have settled the Brain Eater, Ill take a few days rest in Luoxi City." Lin Huang had been stressed for the past few days and occupied with the massive amount of information about the Brain Eater so he hadnt managed to rest well. Besides, he planned to stay in the city for a week. Since he needed two to three days for his Life Power to stabilize and he wasnt in a rush to leave to Meteorite Desert. He decided to stay in Luoxi City for a few days to rest and to adjust himself before departing. The both of them took the elevator to level 76 and headed back to their own rooms. As he arrived in his room, he immediately looked at the Demonic Dandelion Vine monster card. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Bloody (Demonic Dandelion Vine)" "Type of Monster: Parasite Species" "Combat Level: Silver Level Rank-3" "Skill 1: Leech Pods" "Skill 2: Absolute Control" "Skill 3: Supreme Intelligence" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Remarks: Monster skill has yet to be fully discovered, two more skills on the way" "Card Remarks: Trainable" Lin Huang then looked at the detailed description of Supreme Intelligence. "Supreme Intelligence: Passive skill that can immensely increase ones intelligence." "Remarks: The higher foundation in intelligence will result in an increase in intelligence." Lin Huang was tempted when he saw the skill. "Xiao Hei, extract the skill for Demonic Dandelion Vine." If Lin Huang was to extract the skill now, the probability of obtaining Supreme Intelligence was only 1/3. Moreover, he did not need to add any other survival skill for it in the future so he decided to extract the skill now. "Skill is being extracted Randomly choosing a skill Skill has been chosen Congratulations, you have received a new skill - Leech Pods." Lin Huang was speechless at what he got. "Can I use Leech Pods?" Lin Huang was skeptical. "Im not a plant like Demonic Dandelion Vine with the gift. Even if I could transform my Life Power into pods, before I arrive at transcendent, theres no way that my Life Power could leave my body so itd be useless." Lin Huang attempted to activate the skill. There were silver dandelion pods growing on his palm, however, they disappeared automatically. "Just as I expected, Leech Pods will only work on parasites but no other creatures" What just happened proved Lin Huangs speculation right but soon, he thought for something else. "What if I transfer the pods into a host, would my Life Power disappear as well?" He thought of an experiment he could try and quickly summoned his Viridian Wolf and activated Leech Pods on his palm. He placed his palm on the Viridian Wolfs abdomen. Soon, the pods seemed to grow to Viridian Wolfs body. A warning came from Xiao Hei. "Warning: Something is wrong with your summoning card Viridian Wolf! A parasite has been detected inside it, would you like to recall the card?" "No." Lin Huang shook his head and rejected to recall the card. "I want to see if the pods that I''ve made would disappear." Lin Huang noticed something strange as the pods went inside of Viridian Wolf. He seemed to have the same sensory ability that it had, where he could look from its point of view and even smell better. However, he could get out of that zone whenever he wanted. He could also control Viridian Wolfs movement including getting it to roll over, shake hands and greet with both hands "I shall go to bed and see if the pods disappear tomorrow." Seeing that it was near 12 a.m., Lin Huang didnt plan to recall Viridian Wolf as he was afraid that the parasite would be removed if he did. After a quick shower, Lin Huang went to bed in the bedroom while his Viridian Wolf stayed in the living room. Lin Huang woke up at seven the next morning. As he brushed his teeth, he was observing his Viridian Wolf. The Viridian Wolf found it strange that Lin Huang was looking at it. The pods in it hadnt disappeared while his control over it had not decreased either. "Could it be the same as Bloodys parasite where as long as I dont recall the parasite, it would stay forever?" Lin Huang thought as the pods remained inside Viridian Wolf after a nights sleep. "Ill be heading out later. Stay in the room and dont run around." Lin Huang patted Viridian Wolfs head, he didnt plan to end the experiment just yet. Viridian Wolf looked unwilling as it laid on the floor but it didnt dare to disobey Lin Huang. After showering, Lin Huang left without Viridian Wolf to breakfast. It was almost eight when he finished his breakfast at level 3. He started reading the news while waiting for Qin Wei. Qin Wei soon walked into the restaurant and got herself some food before sitting across Lin Huang. "Youre done eating?" Qin Wei was not sure as she saw the table was clean. Lin Huang nodded. "Yes, Im done. The service crew cleared the table." "Are you just in Luoxi City for the mission alone?" Qin Wei asked while eating. "Its mainly to kill a gold level Life Seed monster." Lin Huang didnt hide his intentions but he hadnt revealed what he was hunting. "Oh, I see" They chatted for a while, as Qin Wei finished her breakfast, it was almost 8:20 a.m... Qin Wei looked at the time, stood up and said to Lin Huang. "Im done! Were 10 minutes ahead of time, lets go!" "Lets go." Lin Huang stood up and followed behind her to the elevator. They got a monster car at the hotel entrance and headed to the Union Government division. 244 Truth or Lie? The Ground Rhino pulled the black monster car to the entrance of Union Government in less than 10 minutes. Lin Huang got off the car first and as he held the door open, he extended his hand. Qin Wei hesitated before she decided to let Lin Huang hold her. "Thanks." Qin Wei said softly after she got off the car. Liang Yin who was rushing to work saw what happened and smirked as she asked, "Is this your girlfriend?" "No, shes a friend." Lin Huang knew Liang Yin would not let him off so easily so he attempted to distract her. "Have you just arrived at work? Have you had breakfast?" "Is she really not your girlfriend?" Liang Yin knew what kind of trick Lin Huang was trying to pull on her so she asked again. "Shes really isnt." Lin Huang nodded as he knew there was nothing that he could do about her quirk. "This is no fun at all" Liang Yin was unsatisfied. "Are you here for me?" She asked. "No, the Brain Eater has been killed. Were here to submit the mission." Lin Huang said. "I really must thank you for helping me this time." Lin Huang added. "If you really want to thank me, how about you give me the carcass after youve submitted your mission? I have never dissected a Brain Eater" Liang Yin was excited. "I dont think I can give it to you because it belongs to Qin Wei." Lin Huang said. "Her partner who was on the mission with her was killed by the Brain Eater. She must bring the body back." Liang Yin then looked at Wei Qin but decided to let it go. "Nevermind then, treat me to a good meal when youre free. I wont bother you anymore, Im leaving for my office." Liang Yin left, waving her hand to Lin Huang who was standing behind her. "Your friend is interesting." Qin Wei commented as Liang Yin left. "The food that she eats is even more interesting" Hearing that comment, Lin Huang could not help but laugh. "What does she eat?" Qin Wei did not understand what Lin Huang meant. "Nothing." Lin Huang did not think that it was a topic that he should continue. "Lets get down to business." The submission of the mission was simple. All he had to do was to show the carcass and describe how he managed to accomplish the mission. In less than 10 minutes, Lin Huang had submitted the mission and received the reward of 3,000 Life Crystals. Later on, he passed the body to Qin Wei and they left the Union Government office together. "Let me get you a drink, we can talk about the Brain Eater as well." Qin Wei took the initiative to invite Lin Huang out. "Sure." Lin Huang did not reject her. "I know a nice cafe here. A friend recommended it, Ive been there a couple of times in the past few days." Qin Wei suggested. "Its not far from here, just five to six minutes away." "Lets go there then, I havent had coffee for a while." Lin Huang nodded. Luoxi City was not a developed foothold. However, it was crowded on the streets when it was nine in the morning. Many were looking at them as they walked on the streets as Lin Huang was handsome while Qin Wei was pretty. They looked like an old couple when they walked together. After five to six minutes of walking, they found a cafe in an alley. It was not really big but it looked rather exquisite. The entire building was made of bamboo, including the floor and furniture. The owner of the cafe was a middle-aged man with a mustache. He was almost 1.8 or 1.9 meters tall. Her footsteps were loud when he walked on the bamboo floor. Although he did not look friendly, he was passionate. "You brought a friend today?" The cafe owner smiled while looking at Lin Huang as he greeted Qin Wei. "Yes. Same old same old." Qin Wei said. "Which flavor would you like? He could get you anything here." Qin Wei asked Lin Huang. "I would like a black coffee please." Lin Huang decided without even thinking. "Black coffee is bitter, are you sure you want that?" Qin Wei did not understand Lin Huangs odd preference. "Would you like milk and sugar?" The cafe owner was calm. "No, just a regular black coffee will do." Lin Huang shook his head. "Please take a seat and wait a moment." The cafe owner gestured them to sit. Qin Wei brought Lin Huang to the rooftop balcony on the third floor like it was her second home. They then got themselves a table. "It seems like youve been here many times." Lin Huang laughed. "I come here almost every day in the past few days." Qin Wei nodded and smiled. "When you taste their coffee later, youll understand why I come here every day." "Youve got me excited now." Lin Huang smiled. "Ive quite a few questions to ask you regarding the mission. Before I slept last night, I came up with a list." Qin Wei said while she projected the list. Lin Huang took a quick glance and saw 20 to 30 items on the list. "Ill start with the question that Ive been dying to ask." Qin Wei moved the projection to the table in front of her. After some browsing, she looked up at Lin Huang. "First question, how did you know Wu Hao was meeting the Brain Eater? Also, why were they together?" "Would you like the truth or a lie? Wu Hao was your partner, if theres something that you dont want to know about, I can make up a story. If youre just writing a report to your management, theres no need for them to know the truth." Lin Huang did not answer Qin Wei directly as he looked at her in all seriousness. Qin Wei hesitated and said, "Id like to know the truth." "Alright then. The truth is, Wu Hao coincidentally asked the host of the Brain Eater out when he was using the application Chilly Night. Thats how they met, you know what happened next I know about this as the application was created by a friend of mine. He had the authorization to look at their conversation." Lin Huang told the truth. Qin Wei was silent when she heard what Lin Huang said. A while later, she asked, "How about a lie? How would you come up with a lie?" "Wu Hao figured out who the Brain Eaters host was but he was killed while he was hunting it down. I happened to pass by and saw what happened, thats how I know he was the Brain Eater." Lin Huang spoke the story that he made up. "Alright then, second question" Qin Wei went silent after that and asked her second question. 245 Bloody Is Now A Genius As Lin Huang finished his coffee at the rooftop balcony of the cafe, Qin Wei had not even touched hers at all. After she was done with her 20 over questions, she turned off her notepad and started drinking her now cold coffee. She then slowly put her cup down. "Thank you for giving me all the answers. Without you, Id have had no idea how Im supposed to write the report." Qin Wei let out an awkward smile. "How long have you been partnering with him?" Lin Huang asked. "Not long, only nine months" Qin Wei shook her head. "However, hes my fianc" Qin Wei added after keeping silent for a while. Now it was Lin Huang who didnt know what to say. Hed heard from Yang Ling that Wu Hao had a fiance but he hadnt known the fiance was Qin Wei who was also his partner. "Hes gone now, my condolences." Lin Huang tried to console her. "Its alright, Im not exactly sad. It was an arranged marriage by our family. Before partnering with him Id never seen him before. Both of us were unhappy with the marriage." "I know he had a girlfriend that hed known for more than 10 years, she came from an ordinary family background. His father killed the girlfriend in front of him and chopped her into pieces while forcing Wu Hao to watch while he fed the pieces to the pigs. The father told him that if he doesnt accept the arrangement, even if he killed himself, all of the girls family members would have faced the same consequence." "Since then hed lost himself, he would go out with different women every day. He had been like that for the past two years. He was frustrated. It was his familys idea for us to partner up, hoping that I might be able to control him. However, he was still the same doing whatever he wanted to do. I hadnt expected such things to happen Although, death was probably a release to him." While Qin Wei didnt have strong feelings for Wu Hao, he was her fianc after all. Now that he was dead, not only did she have to report to Adventure Paradise, she also had to speak to Wu Haos family. "Thats why you suspected him when he tried to tell you that he was not the Brain Eater yesterday?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, because I knew he always wanted to die. However, I was still not sure that time as it was an instinct for humans to ask to live in a crisis. When I saw his reaction as you splashed the water on him, I knew you were telling the truth." Qin Wei explained. "So are you writing two copies of the report for the Adventurer Organization and the Wu family?" Lin Huang finally understood why shed asked for two answers earlier. "The Adventurer Organization doesnt have to know the truth as it would bring shame to the Wu family. However, the Wu family must know the truth. I should thank you for giving me two answers to some of my questions." Qin Wei smiled and nodded. After chatting for a while, they bid farewell to the caf owner and left the cafe. "When do you plan to leave Luoxi City?" Qin Wei asked as she stepped out of the cafe. "In the next two to three days, how about you?" Lin Huang asked. "Ill leave in the afternoon since Im done with my task, theres no reason for me to stay." Qin Wei said. "If you dont mind, please send me your contact details." She added. "Sure." Lin Huang gave her Ye Xius number. After adding each other as friends, they went back to the hotel together. When Lin Huang arrived in his room, his Viridian Wolf that was laying on the floor stood up and rubbed its head against him. Lin Huang patted its head and noticed the Leech Pods still growing inside. Thinking about the Leech Pods, Lin Huang summoned Demonic Dandelion Vine. Bloody was like a red baby snake that was less than two meters long and was as thick as a thumb. "Lets see how smart you are; Ill get you to learn a human language these next few days." Lin Huang then downloaded the Union Governments learning materials on words from the network. He placed his Emperors Heart Ring on the coffee table and projected the materials, allowing Bloody to read them for itself. Just like a baby snake, Bloody lifted its upper body to read all the documents that Lin Huang downloaded while Lin Huang was using Ye Xius Emperors Heart Ring to read the news on the couch. When it was almost 11:30 a.m., Lin Huang told Bloody and Viridian Wolf to behave themselves before heading out. Instead of lunch, he went to the Credit Bureau to transfer the 1,500 Life Crystals to Yang Ling. Lin Huang sent Yang Ling a message. "Ive transferred you 50% of the reward make sure you check later." He then found a nearby food store and had lunch before heading back. What he didnt know was, while he was out, Qin Wei who stayed next to his room was ringing at his doorbell. Bloody made its way to the door and peeped at Qin Wei stood outside. It had seen her last night so she wasnt a stranger to it. It hesitated for a second but decided to open the door for her. Qin Wei found it odd that it was Bloody that opened the door. "Ye Xiu?" She shouted at the door but there wasnt any response. Just when she wanted to leave, she saw Bloody was using the tea in the cup to write something on the floor. "Master is out for lunch." "A summoning monster that could write?" Qin Wei was shocked. She then realized that this vine monster must have taken the Brain Eaters Supreme Intelligence earlier. "Sure, I know that now. Thank you." Qin Wei patted Bloodys head. "I thought he would be here so I wanted to say goodbye. Since hes out, let him know that Im grateful for his help for the past two days and I hope he had a good time in Luoxi City." Bloody nodded, "Thank you for opening the door for me, bye!" "You''re welcome, goodbye." Bloody written on the floor again. Qin Wei smiled and left. When Lin Huang returned to the hotel after lunch, Qin Wei had already left a long time before. Just when he arrived in his room, Bloody tangled his arm and pulled him to the couch. "Whats wrong?" Lin Huang thought it was absurd. Bloody used the water in the cup and started writing on the transparent coffee table. "The girl next door came earlier; she was here to say goodbye to master. She asked me to tell you that she is grateful for your help the past few days and she hopes youve had a great time in Luoxi City." Lin Huang was shocked when he saw. "Damn, youve learned how to write so fast?! You must be a genius now." 246 The Saints It was six in the morning, Lin Huang sat on the rattan chair in the balcony while watching the sunrise. Since Qin Wei left, it was his third day staying in Luoxi City. For the past few days, he did not slack at all. Besides eating and sleeping, he was learning a gun-fighting technique from Lin Xuan in Gun Master. He had mastered one more intermediate gun-fighting technique, the Life Power in his body had finally stabilized. "Its almost time to leave, Ill leave tomorrow morning after my last task today." After admiring the beautiful sunrise, Lin Huang returned to the room. The Viridian Wolf was still sleeping in the room while Bloody had been up for a couple of days reading the documents and learning the humans language. "Bloody rest if youre tired. Theres no need to read them all at once." Lin Huang advised. "Its alright, I''m not tired. Unlike humans, I dont really need to sleep." Bloody wrote on the coffee table using the tea in the cup. "Alright then, Ill go for breakfast now. Ill be out the entire morning and afternoon and will only be back in the evening. Both of you stay in the room and dont run around." He planned to buy some souvenirs and food on his last day in the city so that he could bring something back for Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. "Go, Ill look after the Viridian Wolf." Bloody wrote on the coffee table. Lin Huang nodded and headed out. After breakfast downstairs, Lin Huang called Liang Yin. "Whats up? Speak quick, Im a bit busy right now." Liang Yin picked up the video call, Lin Huang could see that she was dissecting a male body. The chest of the man was opened up and his heart could be seen. "Oh" Lin Huang was stunned at what he was seeing. "Why are you working so early today? Isnt it only 7:30 a.m. now?" "Something happened in the city in the middle of the night. 33 people in the Luo family were killed. The forensic team for the city went there before 5 a.m., I was lucky that I managed to get a couple of bodies." Liang Yin explained as she proceeded to dissect the body. "Killing so many people in the foothold? I guess only people from the underworld would do something like that." Lin Huang frowned. "I heard they offended the Saints but I''m not sure what exactly happened. Im busy right now, speak quickly please if you have anything to say." Liang Yin said. "Oh, Im leaving Luoxi City tomorrow morning. Didnt you ask me to treat you to a meal a few days back? Let me know if youre free today." Lin Huang finally said telling Liang Yin why he was calling. "Youre leaving tomorrow?" Liang Yin stopped what she was doing and looked into the screen. "Unfortunately, Im really busy today. Ill try my best to find the time, however, I think Id only be free at night and Im not sure if I can spare some time right now, Ill contact you again when its eight at night." "Sure!" Lin Huang agreed immediately. "I won''t bother you then. I''ll talk to you tonight." After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang left the hotel restaurant and shopped at the stores that he saw on the map buying many souvenirs and food. It was past seven at night when he returned to the hotel. As he arrived in his room, he took out a roasted pig. The size of the roasted pig was comparable with the one he made at home. The Viridian Wolf stood up immediately, starred at the roasted pig while drooling. "Dont eat all of it, put away some for Bloody." Lin Huang patted the Viridian Wolfs head. Since it had gotten Lin Huangs approval, it started feasting on the roasted pig. Meanwhile, Bloody just looked in their direction and proceeded to read. Lin Huang sat on the couch while reading the news, the top local news read - Murder of 33 People from the Luo Family. Lin Huang frowned as he read the news. The Luo Family was a family known by many in Luoxi City. Although there were no transcendents or royalty in the family, they had a very successful business and well known throughout the city. The family home was in the middle of the foothold, which was the most crowded place in the city. Many people had seen two people in white robes kill their guards, invade into the house and leave in less than 10 minutes. With the description from the witnesses, the duo should be members of one of the underworld organizations, the Saints. The Saints were easy to recognize, they wore a white robe with a cross on their faces. Nobody would dress as one of the members because if someone did, he or she would be hunted down by the organization and savagely killed. "The Saints" Ever since he arrived in this world in the past year, Lin Huang had encountered the Purple Crow and the Heretics. His impression of the underworld was not good. The Saints had a bad reputation, which was almost the same as the Purple Crow. "I shouldnt spend any more time here; the other hunters can handle this." Lin Huang didnt want to have anything to do with such an organization as hed be bringing trouble to himself. It was almost eight as he read the news, Liang Yin called as she promised. Lin Huang picked up the call immediately. "Ive finally finished with my work, where are we meeting?" Liang Yin asked right away as the call was connected. "Lets meet at the Union Government entrance, Ill pick you up." "Sure, Ill wait for you." Liang Yin nodded. Lin Huang then patted the Viridian Wolf who was still eating, "Buddy, we need to head out for a while." The Viridian Wolf was unhappy as it transformed into a card. Through the three-day-long experiment, Lin Huang confirmed that his pods had the same effect as Bloodys. As long as it wasnt recalled, the parasite would remain there forever. However, compared to Bloody, his version of Leech Pods was the weaker version where he had to touch the hosts body to make it work. Moreover, he could only put in one seed at a time. "Bloody stay here and dont forget to eat when youre hungry." Lin Huang pointed at the remaining one-third of the roasted pig on the floor. Bloody nodded and Lin Huang left. When he got out of the hotel, Lin Huang immediately summoned the Viridian Wolf. Seeing that there was still a parasite in it, Lin Huang frowned. He rode on its back and headed to the Union Government. Lin Huang then spoke to Xiao Hei. "Would the parasite stay even if Ive recalled the card and summoned it again?" "Yes, some of the parasites can only be removed by a Cleansing Card. Returning it to its card form will not change anything." Lin Huang just realized that his experiment did not require him to summon the Viridian Wolf all the time. However, since he could not remove the parasite himself, that also meant that other people could use parasites to take over his monster. He didnt like that. 10 minutes later, Lin Huang arrived at the Union Governments entrance. Liang Yin was already waiting. Riding on the Viridian Wolf, she asked. "Where are we having dinner?" "I know of a place that makes good offal dishes, you should have been there before, its not far from here." Lin Huang knew Liang Yin loved such food thats why he picked the restaurant. "Do you mean Tang Sanzhang?" Liang Yin asked. "Yes, thats the one." Lin Huang nodded. "But its expensive, are you sure you want to treat me there?" Liang Yin was unsure. "Dont worry about it. Although its a little bit pricey, I can afford it." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. Lin Huang had researched the place before; it was pricey because all the food was fresh from iron level to gold level monsters. Silver level hunters like Lin Huang would need at least tens or hundreds of Life Crystal for a meal there. It was not for the ordinary people. "Since you insist, I won''t decline." Liang Yin said. After riding on the Viridian Wolf for another four to five minutes, they stopped at a cross junction. Lin Huang recalled the Viridian Wolf and headed to the luxurious restaurant. It wasnt even 8:30 p.m. yet and it was already crowded inside. However, Lin Huang had made reservations earlier after speaking to Liang Yin on the phone. After confirming his identity, a tall female service crew brought them to a table for two. As they sat down, Lin Huang started ordering. Most of them were intestines of different monsters which were Liang Yins favorite. Besides that, they ordered a plate of meat, vegetables, and fruits. "See if theres anything else that you want." Lin Huang passed the menu to Liang Ying after ordering. "Its okay, its enough, I dont think I can finish all of it." Liang Yin didnt take the menu Lin Huang passed her. "What would you guys like to drink?" The service crew asked while smiling. "I would like a cup of passion fruit juice. How about you?" Lin Huang looked at Liang Yin. "Ill have the same, I like passionfruit too." As the service crew left, Lin Huang laughed. "I thought you would have some exquisite drink preference as well." "Youre overthinking things. Girls usually love drinks that are sweet and sour, I''m like that as well. What about you, why don''t you drink any alcohol?" Liang Yin asked him. "I''ve something to do tomorrow morning once I have left Luoxi City, I must maintain my peak performance." Lin Huang didnt dislike alcohol but he disliked the hazy feeling he got after drinking. Especially in this world where anything could kill him, he did not want to let his guard down. "Why not you stay for a couple days more? Although the city isnt bustling, it isnt bad at all." Liang Yin asked. "Maybe in the future. Its true that this city has an odd sense of peace that I dont feel in many of the footholds." Lin Huang nodded as he said what he felt. "I thought so too. Unfortunately, the peace was broken this morning." Liang Yin smiled awkwardly. "You mean the Saints? The Hunter Association will send someone to handle the situation. Dont worry about it, the Union Government would do something to get them too." Lin Huang comforted her. "These underworld organizations are too much! I heard that the family was killed just because one of the sons published a post called Cult Religion on the Heart Network. There were only two sentences about the Saints in the post which read - The so-called Saints are just a bunch of lunatics who show off about their religion. What they are doing is the total opposite of what moral and decent religions have. They are just a bunch of lunatics who do whatever they want. Just because of that, the two Saints members killed his entire family." Liang Yin knew the entire incident. Lin Huang frowned as he listened. "We can never understand what such people are thinking, the way they think is different from ordinary people." "Youre speaking as if you are related to many people from the underworld organizations." Liang Yin looked at him. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything. Soon, the food was served and out of the many different intestine dishes, Lin Huang only tasted a few pieces. Two of the dishes were good and he could not tell that those were intestines. It was almost 10 at night when they were finally done with dinner. As they walked out of the restaurant, Lin Huang asked her. "Where do you stay, do you need a ride?" "Its alright. If my mom sees you, she might bring me to try on wedding gowns tomorrow. Shes afraid that I might not marry anyone." Liang Yin rejected. "Alright then" Lin Huang hailed a monster car for Liang Yin. Hopping on the monster car, Liang Yin turned around and smiled widely at Lin Huang before she even sat down. "Safe journey!" "Okay, thanks." The monster car left leaving Lin Huang waving goodbye to her. After sending her off, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed back to the hotel. It was past 10 when they arrived at the hotel. As he went into his room, Bloody wrapped itself around his arm and pulled him towards the couch. "Whats wrong?" Bloody used some water in the cup and wrote on the coffee table again. "I have learned all 120,000 words; the human language is really profound. I would need a couple more days to be able to use all of them. "Im envious of such a learning ability" The main reason why Lin Huang wanted the Supreme Intelligence skill was because he wanted the learning ability of a transcendent. There were 120,000 words in this worlds most common language. So far Lin Huang had only mastered 8,000 words. However, Bloody had managed to learn 120,000 words within three days. "We''ll be leaving Luoxi City tomorrow morning. I''ll have to put you away and let you out when we arrive at the Meteorite Desert. I''ll need your help then." Lin Huang said. Bloody nodded and wrote on the coffee table again. "Sure, let me know if you need anything." After recalling Bloody, Lin Huang cleared up the mess in the living room that the Viridian Wolf had made. It was almost 11 when he was done, he took a shower and went to bed 247 Meteorite Deser Dawn in Luoxi City was extremely peaceful. Lin Huang woke up at seven in the morning and walked to the balcony to stretch his body. The sun had just risen as a red ball but it did not hurt the eyes. Instead, it shone down on him with warmth. Looking into the distance, half of the city was within his field of vision. There was a tall clock tower far away and houses close to him as well as people on the streetsPerhaps, the lack of bustle made the city oddly peaceful. "Its time to leave" Lin Huang sighed. After washing up, he returned to his room and looked around, making sure that he did not leave anything behind before heading out. Taking the elevator to level 3, he spent around 10 minutes at the breakfast buffet line before checking out of the hotel. As he stepped out of the hotel, he summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and headed in the direction of the Meteorite Desert. The Meteorite Desert was located around 1,800 kilometers from the west-north of Luoxi City. With the speed of the Alexandrian Eagle, Lin Huang arrived at the destination in less than three hours. The gold level Life Seed monster than he picked was the Starlight Beast that Mr. Fu had recommended. The Starlight Beast was rare whereby it was only spotted in the Meteorite Desert in the entire Division 7. The Meteorite Desert was 12 million square kilometers and if it was placed on Earth, it was bigger than most countries. Even here, it was much bigger than an A-grade foothold. Though barren, many powerful monsters existed in this wide land. In reality, the Meteorite Desert surpassed the level of the wild zone; it belonged to the danger zone that most hunters would not step into. In this world, there were no Transcendent monsters in the wild zones, so there were only four levels where the most powerful one would be at gold-level. Those areas with Transcendent monsters were labeled as danger zones. There were three grades of danger zones. The mild danger zone would usually have one to four commander-level monsters. One commander-level monster was comparable to the combat strength of a human holy fire-level. The moderate danger zone would usually have more than five commander-level monsters or one chief-level monster. The chief-level monsters combat strength was comparable to a human immortal-level. Meanwhile, the severe danger zone would usually have more than 10 commander-level monsters or more than three chief-level monsters. Such a place was considered an extremely dangerous zone and only the top hunters would dare to enter. A danger zone that was even higher would be considered forbidden land which was terrorized by a king-level monster. It was comparable to an imperial-level transcendent. Only the general of the Union Government or the elder of the Hunter Association would be able to fight such a monster. The Meteorite Desert belonged to the moderate danger zone. While there were only seven Transcendent monsters that were identified, there could be more. With Lin Huangs ability, he had to be careful as he entered the zone. Although Bai and Charcoal were powerful, they were not powerful enough to fight a Transcendent monster. Under his instructions, the Alexandrian Eagle landed in the southeast zone of the desert, not venturing any deeper. The reason why they decided to land based on the document that Lin Huang had shown was because someone had witnessed a Starlight Beast near the coordinates. Recalling the Alexandrian Eagle, Lin Huang looked into the distance. There was nothing, not even weed or a dead tree; it was just endless sand all the way to the horizon. "This is such a huge area. Im not sure when can I find the monsters that are secretive" Lin Huang mumbled to himself and summoned Bloody. Bloody curled around his arm and looked around curiously. This was its first time coming to a desert, so this was something new. "Master, is this the desert?" Bloody extended an antenna and wrote on the ground. "Yes, this is the desert. Its called Meteorite Desert, a danger zone with many transcendent monsters," Lin Huang nodded as he explained. "Its even more beautiful than it was described in the books. Although it looks barren, its majestic," Bloody wrote. "It seems beautiful but danger is everywhere." Lin Huang smiled sagely. "Master, what do you need me to do this time?" Bloody wrote. "My purpose of coming to this desert is to kill a gold-level Life Seed monster called the Starlight Beast. However, its very rare and elusive. It was last seen 17 years ago right where I''m standing. So, I need your help to find this monster," Lin Huang explained. "So, Master, do you need me to release my parasites onto the monsters here and get them to look around?" Bloody knew what Lin Huang was thinking immediately. "Yes! This desert is too big, so thats the only way," Lin Huang affirmed. Without Bloodys help, it would take too much of his time and strength. "Sure, can I take a look at its picture?" Bloody agreed. Lin Huang projected the photo of Starlight Beast immediately. Starlight Beast looked like a robot. Most of its body was orange in color and had a unique metal reflection under the light. Its face was turquoise and it looked like it was wearing a mask. Besides its eyes, there was nothing else on its face. There was a purple crystal the size of a fist under its neck. On both sides of its chest were four antenna-like arms in blue and green. It had a long torso and its waist was so tiny that it could be completely held by both adult hands. Both its legs were long like two thick antennas with no soles, so it had to balance on its pointy limbs. After some observation, Bloody asked, "Are all of these monsters the same color?" "Yes, the majority of them." "So far, I''ve never heard of any other color." "Alright, I shall look for them with this reference," Bloody confirmed. It glided from Lin Huangs arm, its body enlarging. Soon, it grew to the thickness of an adult thigh and unraveled to become up to 1000 meters long, looking like a giant boa. Bloody coiled around on the ground and there were buds growing out of its body. At a speed that could be captured by the naked eye, purple flowers that looked like dandelions grew out of the buds. Within seconds, the purple flowers bloomed and flew far away, carried on the wind. "Bloody, try to be low-key. There are many Transcendent monsters in this desert, so lets not get their attention," Lin Huang reminded, looking at the purple flowers flying in the air. "I understand!" Bloody responded and slowed down the speed of the purple flowers. The density of the leech pods was more than 10 times less than before. Looking at the seeds that were numbered to be at least 100,000, Lin Huang stood where he was and exclaimed, "What an amazing ability that Bloody is born with!" 248 Free Man It was a cloudless sky. The azure blue was like a painting so beautiful that it was unreal. The sun that was hanging high up in the sky was shining its best golden glow across the land. While the temperature in the Meteorite Desert was not high, the sun at 10 in the morning hurt his eyes. Lin Huang put on his sunglasses while waiting next to the portable tent to build itself. Bloody spent more than half an hour spreading out all the 100,000 leech pods far away. If Lin Huang had not asked it to remain low-key, it could have done that within two minutes. Later on, Bloody shrunk to its original length of two meters and plunged into the tent while tangling itself on Lin Huangs left arm. "How long does it take for all the pods to complete its parasitizing?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "The desert is huge and the monsters dont gather together. Without getting the transcendents attention, I slowed down their speed of flight to make them look like they were just wandering in the wind. Looking at the current situation, it''ll take at least two to three days to be complete," Bloody wrote on the ground with its vine. "Two to three days...I''ll need more time to find the Starlight Beast" Lin Huang planned in his own head. "It seems like well have to stay here then." With the help of many parasites, Lin Huang decided to stay and wait patiently. After some deliberating, Lin Huang summoned the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion to guard the tent outside. The Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion and the Golden Armored Skeleton were two gold-level cards that Lin Huang had accumulated on the Little Devil Island. The reason why he picked the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion was that because of the fact that Tyrant side, it was the only monster that best suited the desert. There was no desert in this area, so there were passers-by sometimes. On some level, Tyrant had evolved into a new species so any passer-by might take photos or videos if they saw Tyrant. As the last few summoning monsters that he owned, Lin Huang did not want it to be exposed. Furthermore, at the border of the desert, there were hardly any monsters of silver-level. Therefore, the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion that was gold-level rank-2 would be the best to defend them if monsters were to invade. Therefore, there was no need for Tyrant to guard the tent. "If anyone comes, dont attack. Inform me or Bloody first. If there are monsters, you may kill them without informing us," Lin Huang instructed Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion. In reality, most of the monsters would not understand human language, especially the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion which did not have high intelligence. The reason why it could understand Lin Huang was not because it could understand the human language, but it was owing to his summoning card which could read Lin Huangs instruction on the surface. However, it was a different story for Bloody. Ever since it had gotten the Supreme Intelligence skill, it could understand the human language. No matter if it was Lin Huang or other humans, it could understand them. The reason why it could not speak was either because its biological structure did not allow it to, or because there was no need for it to since it could write whenever it needed to communicate with Lin Huang. After getting the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion to guard the outside of the tent, Lin Huang took out his Emperors Heart Ring and projected the monster encyclopedia that Yi Zheng had given to him. He took it off and passed it to Bloody. After an Emperors Heart Ring was removed from the human finger, even with the authorization from the host, it could only work in offline mode. Communication, network, storage space, and other functions would be shut down with the basic function remaining. Such a restriction was for the safety of the user. If there was no such restriction, Lin Huang was more than happy to let Bloody learn by itself. "If you are bored, you can look at the monster encyclopedia. This monster encyclopedia is so much more complicated than the basic one that I used to learn with. After you are done with this, I have another one thats more detailed on parasites. You can take a look at that as well and think about which are the two skills that you desire the most." Lin Huang lined out the learning mission for Bloody. "However, I have a suggestion. The best skills that you look for would be survival and defense. You could consider that yourself." "Sure, I will consider after I am done reading all the documents," Bloody responded. "In the following days, I will be training my gunfighting technique in the gaming pod. My Emperors Heart Ring will be offline with the communication systems shut down, so you won''t be able to contact me from the outside. If something happens, you can press the emergency stop button on the gaming pod," Lin Huang said and he activated the game outside the tent. A gaming pod that was three meters long appeared less than two meters away from the tent. Lin Huang walked out of the tent and pointed at the red button that was covered with a transparent cap on the right side of the pod door. "Theres a red button thats covered with a transparent cap. Thats the emergency stop button. If something happens when Im inside the gaming pod, open the cap or smash the cap and press the red button. I will get out of the game right away." "I understand!" Bloody nodded and wrote. "If you have any news on the Starlight Beast, thatll be considered an emergency as well. By then, you should also press the emergency stop button," Lin Huang added. As the Starlight Beast was secretive about its whereabouts, Lin Huang hoped that him training his gunfighting technique would cause him to miss the monster. He could always train any time he wanted but if the Starlight Beast ran away, he would have to wait for days for its next appearance. He hoped to complete that as soon as possible so that he could go home. "Sure," Bloody responded. "If you need to eat, settle that yourself. Dont bother me, I have my own snacks. If I feel like eating meat one day, I can always hunt myself," Lin Huang said that as Bloody was a summoning card which was different from a real summoning monster. They barely needed food or water to survive. As long as Lin Huang was alive and Xiao Heis card system stayed, it was basically immortal. It would not feel hungry or thirsty. Even if it needed to eat, it did so to satisfy its craving before it became a card. "Please help me watch the Starlight Beast, thats your top priority. Look at the monster encyclopedia when you have the time. If you dont, you can always look at it in the future. Anyway, I am putting you in charge here while I train in the gunfighting technique." Lin Huang became a free man after he put Bloody in charge. He then opened the door to the gaming pod and entered. Seeing that Lin Huang was already in the gaming pod, Bloody returned to the tent and started studying the monster encyclopedia 249 A Small Incident In The Deser On an early morning, the sun had risen in the sky and it shone on the Meteorite Desert, reflecting a red radiance like it was the Red Sea itself. In the red ocean, there were six Megalodon Wolves lined up in order, resembling six boats slowly crossing the ocean. Upon closer inspection, on each of the six Megalodon Wolves'' back was a person. There were five young men and a young woman. They were led by a man that was about the age of 25, with a muscular body and short hair. "Brother Du, we are at the periphery of the Meteorite Desert. You don''t have to be on alert and let the Megalodon Wolf run so slowly. We left the desert at five o''clock. It has been three hours and we''ve traveled less than 200 kilometers" said a skinny, young man in his early twenties as he rode the Megalodon Wolf closest beside him. "You know nothing!" Du Feng immediately turned his head back and scolded, "Do you know how dangerous the Meteorite Desert is? It is not an ordinary wild zone! It is a moderate danger zone." "When I was still a Silver Hunter, I followed the gold Hunter team here. I witnessed a team of 20 gold-level rank-3 members being engulfed by a Transcendent monster. This incident remains clearly engraved on my mind. I can''t forget it." "Little brats, you have just leveled up to gold-level rank-1 and you think that you''re indestructible. I brought you to the Meteorite Desert so that you know how powerful the monsters in this world are. They are beyond imagination. Of course, there must be a reason for the danger zone to be regarded as one. Don''t fool around here" "Brother Du, there" The skinny young man suddenly pointed towards a direction that was not far off. The rest of them were startled, looking towards the direction as well. "What''s it? Don''t interrupt while the leader is talking!" Du Feng scolded again. "It seems like there is a Gun Master game cabin over there," said the only female member of the team to the young man next to her. "Yes, you''re right. It''s a game cabin. From its appearance, it must be an outdoor deluxe edition," answered the young man next to her softly. As the team members started whispering to each other, Du Feng finally glanced towards the direction they were looking at and he was shocked. What''s happening? Playing Gun Master in the Meteorite Desert! Was the person crazy?! Lin Huang had woken up just after eight o''clock in the morning. After washing up, he immediately activated the game cabin. He did not enter the game cabin right after that though. He ate his breakfast instead. He never expected that a hunter team would pass by right after the second day he entered the Meteorite Desert. Seeing the six of them riding on the Megalodon Wolf, Lin Huang did not pay much attention to them. After taking out the oven, he started to reheat his breakfast. He ate snacks in the afternoon and at night during the first day. He then decided to make some changes in his diet. At that moment, the fragrance of the food was wafting out of the oven. "How fragrant!" the six of them exclaimed at the same time. "It smells like cake!" "It''s a special local product from Luoxi City, quick-frozen cake. I''ve tried this before and I can still remember its taste," reminisced a young man immediately, "The cake is quickly frozen right after it is baked. You can either eat it cold or after it has defrosted in the oven. Its delicious both ways." "Hes living the good life. Why do we only have snacks?" the woman complained. "What ifwe take some from him? The smallest of this cake is 10 inches. He won''t be able to finish it alone. We don''t have to eat until we feel full. It''s good enough to eat it for breakfast," the young man who recalled the taste of the quick-frozen cake suggested. "It''s not that good..." She turned shy upon hearing his suggestion and her face reddened a little. "There''s nothing to feel bad about. We can even pay him 10 times the credit points since the cake is relatively cheap. It costs less than 500 credit points. 10 times of that is only 5,000 credit points," the man beside her suggested. "What if he only has one cake and he doesn''t want to sell it?" The woman was still hesitant. "If he doesn''t want to sell it, we can''t force him. Well eat our snacks then," the skinny man said with his palms up in mock surrender. "Alright then" "Eh, do you know that your leader is standing right here?" Du Feng never expected that they would have completely ignored him because of food. "Brother Du" The few of them suddenly realized that their leader had not raised his opinion at all. "I''ve told you that you have to be alert all the time while you''re outside. The guy there looks strange. He''s only a silver-level but he''s eating cake leisurely in the moderate danger zone. He''s even playing games as if he''s on a holiday. He has no sense of danger at all. There must be something wrong with him" As Du Feng was talking, Lin Huang cut a piece of cake and blew a whistle. An Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion drilled out from the sand and Lin Huang passed him a big slice of cake. He took out a lounge chair from the storage space, then he enjoyed the cake and drank his beverage. He indeed looked like he was on a holiday. "I thought that it was a sand dune but it''s a scorpion instead! One can hardly notice it if it had not come out on its own," one of them remarked in surprise. "It is a gold-level rank-2 Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion. He is an Imperial Censor" Du Feng said in fear. An Imperial Censor could summon a monster of a higher level. Despite the fact that the young man was only a silver-level hunter, he could control gold-level rank-3 monsters. Furthermore, the number of monsters that he could summon was more than one, putting Du Feng on alert. Du Feng then understood why he looked like he was on a vacation in the desert. "It is such a waste to give the slice of cake to the scorpion." The woman was staring hungrily at the cake in Lin Huang''s hand. "Do you really want to eat that?" Du Feng frowned as he asked. They immediately nodded their heads. "Alright. Wait over here. I''ll ask and see," Du Feng compromised. He then rode on the Megalodon Wolf and headed towards Lin Huang. The rest of them waited at their original position. Lin Huang leaned back in the lounge chair, feeling cautious as he saw that a man was approaching him. Right when the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion saw this, it raised its tail, preparing to fight. "Relax. He has no bad intentions." As Lin Huang saw that he was coming alone, he guessed that he was harmless. The Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion then retreated. Du Feng got off the Megalodon Wolf as he approached him and slowly walked towards him. "What''s up?" Lin Huang had no idea why he was coming to him. "ErrBro, do you still have the cake that you were eating just now?" Du Feng''s aged face blushed as he asked. "Oh, yes, I do. Haven''t you had your breakfast yet?" Lin Huang then knew that they must have smelled the aroma of the cake. He then nodded his head with a smile. Du Feng told him the truth, "We actually have some snacks but the cake smells so appetizing. So" "It''s alright. I have a lot with me. Otherwise, I wouldn''t have given it to the scorpion." Lin Huang nodded and took out two cakes. "There are six of you there. Two should be enough." "One is actually enough," Du Feng immediately said. "There are two ways to eat the cake. You can either defrost it or eat it directly. Try it both ways so that you''ll have no regrets," Lin Huang explained with a smile. Du Feng did not reject his offer. Lin Huang took out a table, placing one of the cakes into the oven and putting the other on the table. He then simply cut the cake that had yet to defrost into six equal pieces. His cake-cutting technique was amazing. Du Feng was also good in swordsmanship. When he saw Lin Huang''s cutting skills, his eyes brightened. "Bro, are you trained in swordsmanship?" Du Feng immediately asked. "Yes, I majored in swords." Lin Huang nodded with a smile. When Du Feng got off the Megalodon Wolf, Lin Huang already knew that he majored in swords as well. "So, you''re not an Imperial Censor? Did you not summon the monster?" Du Feng kept asking. "I majored in swords and I''m also an Imperial Censor," Lin Huang explained with a smile. "Oh, I almost forgot that many of the Imperial Censors have other occupations as well." A sound from the oven signaled that the cake had been defrosted. Lin Huang immediately took out the defrosted cake and placed it on the table. He then cut them into six equal pieces as well. "You can bring this to them or ask them to come." Lin Huang knew that he had purposely come here on his own out of caution. He turned back, waving his hand at them. They immediately rushed over, riding on the Megalodon Wolf. Lin Huang took out a few chairs and placed them in front of the table. He sat back on the lounge chair and continued to drink his beverage. Once they arrived, the area near the tent became lively. "Brother Du, he is such a kind-hearted person. You''re overthinking," a young man said, smiling at Du Feng. Du Feng stared at him and said, "Just eat your cake!" "Brother Du, are you the one who cut the cake? They are cut neatly and all six pieces have exactly the same size as if they were measured," flattered the young man said. "No, I didn''t." Du Feng stared at him again. The young man immediately shut up, knowing that he had flattered the wrong person. They then shifted their gaze to Lin Huang, feeling curious. Du Feng did not eat the cake. He moved the chair t nearer to Lin Huang and ate his snacks. Lin Huang took a glance at the snacks that he was eating, smiled and remained silent. "Don''t misunderstand me. I''m not used to eating dessert," Du Feng immediately explained. "I don''t actually like dessert too. I can only eat a piece of the cake. I''ll feel grossed out if I ate too many." Lin Huang nodded as if he could understand him. In fact, he did not actually care whether he liked dessert or not. Soon, both of them kept quiet. After a moment, Du Feng asked, "Why are you playing the Gun Master here? Is this a performance art?" "No, of course not." Lin Huang shook his head with a smile. He then explained, "I''ve been waiting for a monster to appear. I''ll be here for a period of time and it''s too boring to stay here alone, hence the game." "Oh, I see" Du Feng did not continue asking as he felt that it would be invading his privacy. "Why did you come here? For training?" Lin Huang knew that other than Du Feng who was at gold-level rank-3, the five of them had just upgraded to gold-level rank-1. "Yes, so that they can walk around the Meteorite Desert and gain some knowledge as well." Both of them chatted for a while. Five of the youngsters had finished their portion of the cake. There were two remaining pieces for Du Feng. "Leader, we left two pieces of cake for you. Come over and have a try!" the female member turned back, shouting to Du Feng. "Didn''t you know that I don''t like dessert? You have it." Du Feng waved his hand. They shook their heads and smiled, keeping the cakes in a fresh food bag. "Oh yeah, we''ve been chatting for so long but I don''t know what''s your name." As they had finished eating, he stood up, putting his snacks away. "My name is Ye Xiu." Lin Huang stood up too. "Thank you for serving us. My name is Du Feng." Du Feng extended his hand. Lin Huang shook hands with him. Then, Du Feng took out a Life Crystal and gave it to Lin Huang. "I''ll pay you for the cake." "It''s okay. I''ll treat you and your team members. The cake is cheap. If you pay me one Life Crystal, I don''t have any change for you," Lin Huang rejected, pushing Du Feng''s hand away gently. "If there''s a chance, treat me back." "Alright. I''ll add your contact number, let''s keep in contact." Of course, Du Feng knew that the hunters would not actually care about the credit points that he had spent to buy the cakes. Nevertheless, he did not want to owe him, so he could only treat him next time. "Sure." After adding each other as friends, Du Feng asked the youngsters to clean up the space and they left. To Lin Huang, the appearance of Du Feng and the rest of them were simply a small incident that had happened during the journey. After they had left, Lin Huang quickly entered the game cabin of the Gun Master and started practicing his gunfighting technique 250 Arrival Of The Saints The six of the Megalodon Wolves had been traveling in the golden desert for a few days. Led by Du Feng, the Megalodon Wolves'' active period was only about 10 hours. The rest of the time, they were recalled back to the monster taming token so that they could rest. It was almost sunset by now and Du Feng instructed them to take a break again. "There''s a sand dune there. Let''s set up our tent behind the dune." Du Feng pointed at the sand dune not far away from him. He then led the Megalodon Wolf towards the sand dune. The youngsters immediately followed after him. "Brother Du, we''re too slow. We''re only walking for 10 hours each day and the Megalodon Wolf can maintain a speed of about 70 kilometers. We didn''t encounter any dangers all the way here. If the Megalodon Wolf were to lope at its full speed, we must have reached our training ground yesterday," grumbled Ai Peng, the skinny man. He was an impetuous man as he used to feel that Du Feng was being too cautious. "Stop talking nonsense. Have a good rest tonight. We will reach our destination tomorrow afternoon if we maintain at this speed." Du Feng was lazy to explain his rationale. "We have delayed the journey for at least two days because we''re going at such a slow speed" Ai Peng mumbled in a low voice. "Get back to your own tent and rest!" Du Feng''s facial expression changed. Liang Qian, who was standing beside Ai Peng, immediately pulled him away, not allowing him to continue talking. As the only female member of the team, she had been regulating everyone''s relationship. "Leader, I''ve always wanted to ask you why did you name our team Dian Feng? Is it because there''s a Feng in your name?" Liang Qian asked and changed the topic after Ai Peng had left. "No, of course not. It''s because the previous team that I joined is called Dian Feng as well. I hope that I can continue using this name" Du Feng explained with a smile. "Your previous team?" When the rest of them heard of their leaders history, they immediately came over. "Brother Du, why was the former team disbanded? Were there any conflicts between team members?" Duan Yang immediately asked. "It was not because of conflicts, of course. We have a close relationship with each other like brothers." Du Feng smiled kindly. However, his face suddenly turned grave and he said, "The reason why the team got disbanded is that I''m the only one who survived" "What?!" They were all shocked, gaping at Du Feng. They had joined Team Dian Feng for a few months and it was the first time they heard about this from Du Feng. "Do you still remember the incident in Meteorite Desert that I told you about?" Du Feng glanced at the five of them. They immediately nodded their heads. "Our mission was to help a member of royalty kill a Transcendent monster so that he could be upgraded to the holy fire-level. There were a total of 53 gold-level hunters who joined the mission. I was the only hunter who was on silver-level. The rest of my team members had upgraded to the gold-level. But I hadn''t made up my mind on which Life Seed monster to choose, therefore, I was not upgraded. I was only a handyman during the mission. I''ve told you that I joined the battle with the Transcendent monster. In fact, I didn''t. I was standing at a few kilometers away, witnessing everything that happened" Everyone was quietly listening to Du Feng''s story. None of them interrupted. "The moment when they saw the monster, everyone pounced towards the monster. The leader told me to stay in my original position and not get involved in the battle because I couldn''t use any relic yet and I could do no harm to the Transcendent monster. I understood that and agreed with him, so I witnessed the battle on the sand dune from a few kilometers away. "I thought that it was not difficult to kill a commander-level monster as there were more than 50 Gold Hunters. I never expected that it was a Transcendent monster that had gone through a double mutation. Also, it was neither a white flame-level nor crimson flame-level Transcendent monster as recorded. It was of a higher level, the blue flame-level "At the beginning of the battle, the gold-level members had worn their defensive relics. However, with just one hit, they died. They had no chance of fighting back at all. The incident was a mass slaughter. "The battle lasted for less than half a minute. As soon as the monster opened its mouth, half of the Gold Hunters were engulfed. Even those who found out that something was wrong and wanted to flee did not survive. They all became its food "Do you know what I did? I was a coward. As soon as I saw that, I immediately crept into the ground, hiding my head in the sand dune. Behind the sand dune, I maintained the same position for about three hours, only then did I dare to raise my head to see whether the Transcendent monster had left!" "I''m a damn coward!" After he had finished telling his story, he scolded himself. "Brother Du, you can''t blame yourself. Everyone will, of course, strive for survival" Before Ai Peng could finish his sentence, Liang Qiang slapped him on the back. "Leader, you didn''t do anything wrong. I think that your decision is right. Staying alive is the only way to take revenge!" Liang Qian said to comfort him. "I think what Qian Qian said is right!" Ai Peng immediately agreed with her while the rest of them nodded their heads too. "The reason why I named the new team Dian Feng is because I hope that I could pass on Dian Fengs legacy. The revenge is my affair. I''ll seek revenge on the monster after I''ve upgraded to Transcendent." Obviously, Du Feng did not want his team members to get involved in this. "The main reason why I brought all of you to the Meteorite Desert is to meet my old mates. They must be happy to see all of you here if they find out that Dian Feng has new team members to carry on the legacy." Du Feng''s mood turned better. "So, we''re not here for training?" Ai Peng frowned. "You wish! Since we''re here, of course, we have to train. We have to at least kill some monsters and earn some money," Du Feng said. After dinner, they rested. The next morning, Du Feng woke everybody up. After having some snacks for breakfast, the six of them rode on the Megalodon Wolf and headed towards their destination before 8 a.m. After listening to Du Feng''s story last night, even Ai Peng, who was the most impetuous ma, did not complain that he was slow anymore and the team became less lively than before. They were upset after listening to the story behind Du Fengs past. It was slightly after noon when Du Feng saw a withered tree and was agitated. Getting off the Megalodon Wolf, he quickly ran towards the withered tree and stood still. A few of them quickly followed after Du Feng on the Megalodon Wolf and arrived somewhere near the withered tree. Five of them then got off their Wolf and put it back into their monster taming token. "Leader, are the elders buried here?" Liang Qian asked. "Yes, they are buried under this tree. However, their dead bodies are all gone. Only the graves remain here" Du Feng slightly nodded his head. As he finished his words, he took out a bottle of wine, pouring the liquid in front of the withered tree and announcing, "Bros, Xiao Du came back to visit all of you!" The rest of them kept quiet, looking at Du Feng until he had poured the wine and bowed. "Guys, introduce yourself so that you will know each other." Du Feng waved his hand at them. Ai Peng was the first one who walked forward. While he bowed, he said seriously, "Hi, my name is Ai Peng. I have low emotional quotient and I''m a straight-talking person. Well grow stronger together with our leader. The next time when we return, well kill the Transcendent monster and take our revenge!" This was the first time that everybody agreed with him. "Hi, my name is Liang Qian. I''m the new member of the Dian Feng team. Brother Du has taken good care of all of us. We''ll try our best to take care of him in future. Don''t worry" After Liang Qian had finished, she bowed. The rest of them came forward and introduced themselves as well. After they had bowed, they stood aside. After everyone was done, Du Feng waved his hand and said, "Five of you may wander around here. Don''t go too far. I have something to talk to my old mates about." After listening to him, they left. Only Liang Qian did not leave, his gaze upon Du Feng. "Dear old mates, I''m sorry that I didn''t visit you during the past two years. I''ll bring along the youngsters and come here more oftenWe now have the new teammates to join Dian Feng hunter team. The legacy will be passed down from one generation to the next" Du Feng sat with his legs crossed in front of the withered tree and muttered as if he felt that his teammates who had passed away could still listen to what he had said. "Brother Du, something bad has happened!" Ai Peng suddenly ran quickly towards him and shouted. "Ai Peng, what are you doing?!" Liang Qian immediately stopped him. Du Feng frowned, staring at Ai Peng. "Whats happened? Why are you shouting?" "I saw two men dressed in white robes walking towards our direction. Judging from their attire, they look like they are the members of the Saints" 251 We Have to Figh "Members of the Saints?" Du Feng immediately frowned. Du Feng remained silent for a moment, he then instructed, "Ai Peng, ask the others to come back." Ai Peng immediately left. Liang Qian looked extremely worried. "Leader, should we leave?" Du Feng shook his head. "No, members of the Saints have a peculiar way of thinking. Since they have discovered us, they will feel like they are being discriminated against if we try to avoid them. Then, they will trouble you. We shall just treat them as the normal passersby." Soon, Ai Peng came back with three of his teammates. "The two of them should be the ones who triggered the massacre in Luoxi City. They''ll slaughter your whole family simply because of one comment on the network. There are people who have said that the members of the Saints are a group of madmen," Duan Yang scolded as he had heard from Ai Peng that the members of the Saints were coming towards their direction. "Brother Du, you asked us to come over. Are we going to kill the murderers together?" "I''ve watched the live video of the incident that you mentioned. Both of them are at gold-level, so we are incapable of beating them. Therefore, don''t act rashly. Otherwise, we will probably die here," Du Feng said with a serious expression and warned them, "From now onwards, the five of you, act like you''re dumb and like you''re not allowed to talk. I''ll answer any of their questions. Do you understand?" "Yes, Leader!" Ai Peng answered while the rest of them nodded their heads. "Ai Peng!" Du Feng stared at him. Ai Peng then covered his mouth and nodded his head. "Alright, let''s set up the tent now and treat them as the normal passersby. Try to act naturally," Du Feng instructed five of them. Right after each of them had set up their tent, two of the Saint members arrived, riding the Holy Light Lion. The Holy Light Lion was a white, lion-like gold-level monster. It was a lot bigger than the lions on Earth. Its shoulder height was more than three meters and it had claws the size of the average face. The biggest difference between the Holy Light Lion and the normal lion was not the size of their bodies but the former had a huge pair of white wings attached on its back. They would usually hide their wings, expanding them only when they were flying. The flying speed of the monster was very impressive. However, the monster was weak at traveling over a long distance and for a long period of time. It symbolized the reserve members of the Saints as almost each of the reserve members would have one on hand. Although the two of the Saint members were dressed in white robes, one could still see that the both of them were skinny. However, they were tall, above 1.85 meters. There was a black cross on their face and the crossing point of the marking was exactly on their nose tips. Although the cross had covered half of their face, their age could still be estimated. The young man was about 20 years old and he had a fair, clean-shaven face. The older man looked like he was at the age of 25, with a short beard and yellow skin. "Is this the place?" asked the short-bearded man, turning his head to his companion. The fair-skinned man glanced at the map and nodded. "The coordinates show that the energy reaction occurred here." He then raised his head, seeing Du Feng and the rest of them in the tent. He said, "There are some other people here" The short-bearded man frowned. "Ask them to leave, otherwise, kill them all!" The fair-skinned man then got off his Holy Light Lion and recalled it. He stood in the sand and shouted at Du Feng and his teammates, "Everyone who''s in the tent, you have three minutes to leave. If you''re still here after three minutes, then all of you shall just stay here forever!" When they heard what the fair-skinned man said, their expressions turned grave. However, Du Feng still forced a smile and walked out of the tent. "Relax, we''ll leave immediately!" As soon as he finished his sentence, Du Feng and his teammates immediately put away their tent, preparing to leave. Although they were unwilling to do so, Du Feng hinted that they had to leave. They summoned the Megalodon Wolf to depart. "Wait!" shouted the short-bearded man suddenly. "Let''s go!" Du Feng acted as if he did not hear anything. "I asked you to wait, didn''t you hear me?" The short-bearded man suddenly leapt from his Holy Light Lion and appeared in front of them, blocking their way forward. The fair-skinned man blocked behind them as well. "I''m sorry, it''s noisy here. I didn''t hear you. How can I help you?" Du Feng''s heart immediately sank but he asked with a smile. "The men can leave but the woman has to stay. We want to bring her back as an oblation." The short-bearded man then shifted his gaze to Liang Qian. "No, you can''t do that. You have to choose other people as your oblivion," rejected Du Feng with a heavy heart. "Saint members, I think you''re looking for a virgin as an oblation. However, I''m a married woman. He is my husband," Liang Qian said, pointing at Du Feng who was standing beside her. Ai Peng and the rest of them were shocked when they heard what Liang Qian said. Even Du Feng was startled. "Woman, you''re quite clever. But you''re wrong." The short-bearded man smiled after listening to what she said. "Whether you''re a virgin or not, we''ve identified the facts from the aura released by your body just now. Are you a married woman? Is the junk at the bottom half of your husband useless?" "Whether it is useless or not, it''s none of your business, Mr. Saint. She''s married and she''s my woman. Perhaps your god wouldn''t want a married woman," Du Feng was helpless and could only emphasize the fact that she was married. While the short-bearded man was still hesitating, the fair-skinned man who was standing behind said, "Cao Yang, if she''s really married, regardless of whether she''s a virgin or not, she can''t be an oblation." "Mu Ping, they are probably lying. The woman doesn''t want to become an oblation, that''s why she lied." "Do you think that I''m lying?" Liang Qian smiled when she heard that. She then jumped to Du Feng''s Megalodon Wolf. "Hubby, give me a front hug." Liang Qian blushed as she spoke lovingly to Du Feng. Du Feng was stunned. He did not know what Liang Qian wanted to do but still, he turned back and did what she asked. Right after Liang Qian was sitting straddled in front of Du Feng, she kissed him. Du Feng was shocked. He then knew what she wanted to do. He closed his eyes and kissed her. After a few moments, she put her slippery tongue into his mouth. Du Feng hesitated for a moment but still, he acquiesced. Both of them kissed for a long time before they stopped. Everyone was stunned and even Du Feng was blushing. "How''s that? Is it enough to prove our marriage? Or do you want more?" Liang Qian turned her head back, glancing at Cao Yang. "Cao Yang, for the sake of safety, it''ll be better if we look for other oblation." Mu Ping who had watched from behind believed them. Cao Yang sized up the rest of them, nodding his head after he had remained silent for a moment. "Alright, you may leave now." "Let''s go!" Du Feng immediately asked his group to leave. After walking for a while, Mu Ping shouted in joy, "Cao Yang, I''ve found it. It''s here!" Du Feng and the rest of them turned their heads back. They saw that Mu Ping was walking towards the withered tree. "What are they going to do?" Du Feng frowned. Under the withered tree, Mu Ping and Cao Yang quickly took out a tool and started digging. Du Feng could no longer stay calm as he saw this blasphemous scene in front of him. "Leader, bear with them. I think they are looking for something. We can bury them again right after they leave," Liang Qian advised him. "I can bear anything but those are my old mates'' graves! I was a coward two years ago, seeing them die in front of me. I can''t bear to see them digging their graves and do nothing" Du Feng''s eyes turned watery. "You all should leave as soon as possible. Don''t get involved in this!" Du Feng had a cold expression on his face. He was determined to stop them. "Brother Du, if you''re not leaving, we aren''t going to leave too! Let''s fight them!" Ai Peng shouted. They did not want to helplessly see Du Feng get killed. "No, you have to go! Even if I die, all of you must pass down the legacy of Dian Feng!" Du Feng did not want to disband the team so soon. "It''ll not end as long as one of us survives. Let Liang Qian stay here and we''ll accompany you to fight!" Ai Peng shouted and the rest of them nodded, agreeing with him. Liang Qian immediately shook her head. "Brother Du, don''t leave me alone. I want to go together with all of you" Du Feng suddenly raised his hand and hit Liang Qian''s neck. Her body instantly turned limp. "I''m sorry, Qian QianI know that I''m selfish and it''s unfair to you but I have to do this." He then placed Liang Qian''s body on the Megalodon Wolf and put his monster taming token into her pocket. Du Feng then kicked the Megalodon Wolf''s butt and jumped onto the Megalodon Wolf that Liang Qian rode previously. The Megalodon Wolf that was in pain immediately fled while Du Feng turned around on Liang Qian''s Megalodon Wolf. The other four of them turned back as well. "Bros, thanks for the company!" Du Feng shouted, embracing the wolf''s body and loping towards the intruders. Under the scorching sun, the five of them rode on the Megalodon Wolf in the golden desert, pouncing towards the withered tree 252 GoldEagle11’s Third Form As time passed, Lin Huang had been in the Meteorite Desert for a week. He had bumped into a hunter team on the morning of the second day. However, he did not meet anyone after that. Lin Huang knew from Bloody that there were two other teams that passed through the desert. They did not stay there or approach him. Other than sleeping and eating, Lin Huang spent most of his time in the game cabin. Therefore, he did not meet the other two teams. However, there were monster attacks in the last three days. During the daytime, there were only a few monsters that appeared. However, the monster attacks became more frequent at night. Ever since Lin Huang had set up his tent, he had not moved. The smell of the blood from the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion''s slaughter had spread throughout the entire region. The higher the number of kills, the stronger the scent of blood, attracting more monsters to come over. Such a situation lasted until the third night. Although the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion was present and it could instantly kill all the monsters that appeared every night, Lin Huang would still be awakened by the attacks several times a night. In order for Lin Huang to have a good night''s sleep, Bloody had to control all the bronze-level monsters around him. Initially, Bloody wanted to track the trail of the Starlight Beast and had collected all the silver-level monsters as parasites. In fact, Lin Huang could actually sleep in the game cabin as it was well soundproofed. Furthermore, the game ring that Lin Huang had bought was the deluxe edition and it was designed to be water- and shock-resistant. Also, it had an automated gas scavenging system. When the game cabin was being designed, the factor of it being an accommodation facility was considered by the designer as well. It was not a problem at all to treat the game cabin as a field camp. Lin Huang could somehow feel that sleeping in the game cabin was strange. He had chosen to keep the game cabin while he was sleeping and he slept in the tent. Seven days had passed and Lin Huang had learned four types of middle-rank gunfighting technique. Bloody had finished reading the monster guide and had even gone through the detailed information on the parasite species that was sent by Mr. Fu on the third day. Lin Huang then downloaded the battle videos between the various types of parasite species and humans from the Heart Network as well as the Hunter Info Network. Bloody had also been watching these videos for the past two days and did some research on the parasite species'' combat techniques. Bloody''s parasite species had completed the parasitism process on the third day. There were more than 100,000 of parasite species that had been looking for traces of the Starlight Beast. However, they could find nothing. The result was as expected by Lin Huang because the last time the Starlight Beast had been discovered by humans was 17 years ago. The monster''s whereabouts were too difficult to track in a short period of time. What he could do now was to wait patiently. On the morning of the eighth day, the game was stopped after Lin Huang entered it for a while. He knew that Bloody was the one who had pressed the "stop" button outside the game cabin. He then exited the game cabin, pushing against the door. "What happened?" Right after Lin Huang asked the question, he saw a Giant Armored Elephant carrying a woman and walking towards him. After the Giant Armored Elephant tossed her off its back, it left. Lin Huang could only recognize her when her hair flipped away from her face in the toss. "You''re the female member of Du Feng''s team. What happened?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "One of my parasites discovered her in a burrow last night. She''s lost her consciousness. I instructed the Giant Armored Elephant to bring her over," Bloody wrote on the sandy ground. "She''s severely injured. I think she''s dehydrated, that''s why shes in such a state of unconsciousness" Lin Huang was not a doctor. However, he had studied the fundamentals of outdoor medical sciences at the Hunter Reserve College before. There was some simple medical knowledge taught in this course and most of them included outdoor survival skills and medical treatment for companions. Lin Huang took two tubes of dextrose out from his storage space and injected them into Liang Qian''s arm. As she slowly regained consciousness, he then took out a tube of nutrients elixir and injected it into her other arm. After a few moments, Liang Qian slowly opened her eyes. As she saw Lin Huang, she was apparently shocked. She looked around the surroundings on high alert. "Don''t worry, you''re safe here." Lin Huang noticed that Liang Qian''s emotions fluctuated drastically between fear and confusion. "Why am I here? I remember that I was hiding in a hole." Liang Qian sat up and stared at Lin Huang, remaining alert. "One of the monsters that I''ve summoned discovered you when it was hunting for prey and brought you back," Lin Huang explained with a smile. He then asked, "What happened? Why are you alone? Where are your leader and your teammates?" "They''ve all died" Drawing both knees to her chest, Liang Qian hugged herself and she was clearly shaken. "Died? How did they die?" Lin Huang frowned. "They were killed by two of the Saint members!" Liang Qian was having an emotional breakdown, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Saint members? Are they the ones who triggered several massacres in Luoxi City?" When Lin Huang heard about the Saint members, he could only relate to those two fellows. Liang Qian nodded. She was crying and she could not speak at all. Lin Huang wanted to ask her what had actually happened. However, looking at her condition, he could not ask about it any further. He then took out a pack of tissue from the storage space, tore it open and passed it to Liang Qian. "It''s good if you can vent your emotions. I''ll get you some food." Lin Huang then took out an oven and a quick-frozen cake. After defrosting the cake in the oven, he took out a small snack table and placed it on the sandy ground. After three minutes, the oven chimed. Lin Huang immediately took out the quick-frozen cake and placed it on the table. He cut the cake into four slices and placed one of them on a plate which he passed to Liang Qian. "Although I''ve injected the nutrients elixir into your body, you still have to eat something." "Thank you" Liang Qian did not stop crying. However, she still took the plate and fork from him. She was really hungry these days. Although Lin Huang just had his breakfast half an hour ago, he cut the slice of cake in half and ate it together with Liang Qian. Otherwise, it would be awkward to watch her eating alone. "What''s your name?" Lin Huang ate two mouthfuls of cake and asked. "Liang Qian." Liang Qian raised her head, glancing at Lin Huang. "I remember your name. You''re Ye Xiu." "Yes, you have a good memory." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. He had no idea if Liang Qian was really hungry or if she originally had a big appetite. Other than the one-eighth of the cake that Lin Huang had eaten, she devoured the rest of them. Lin Huang tried to make her feel more relaxed as they chatted about other topics. He avoided asking her what had actually happened. Right after she had finished eating the cake, Liang Qian seemed to have realized that she could not avoid the problem anymore. After remaining silent for a moment, she told him everything that had happened "I didn''t know that my leader would actually hit me. When I regained my consciousness, it was already late at night. I immediately went back on the Megalodon Wolf to where they had last been as I wanted to know if they were still alive...The next morning, I saw a scene that I''d never be able to forget for the rest of lifeFive of their skulls were beheaded and placed on the ground, forming a toy-like circle. Their reproductive organs had been cut off as well and inserted into their mouths. There were wounds all over the headless corpses as they were tortured. They were naked and pierced through from the lower half of their bodies to their necks with a sharp spike like roast pigs" Lin Huang clenched his fist as he heard this. "What I didn''t expect to happen was for the two of them to have been waiting for me over thereHowever, they never expected that Id have a flying relic with me. Brother Du and the rest of them saved up for a few months and bought it for me. As soon as I saw the both of them, I immediately activated the relic and fled. Both of them chased after me for three hours on the Holy Light Lion. Fortunately, the Holy Light Lion was exhausted, only then did they stop pursuing me. However, my Life Crystals have almost been depleted. After escaping for a certain distance, I hid in a hole. I sealed off the exit of the hole and dared not get out of the hole at all. I didn''t have any water or food in my storage space as Brother Du has always kept it for meI was staying in the hole for one day one night, then I found out that I''m here as soon as I regained my consciousness." Lin Huang suggested, "You have some wounds on your body but you''ll be fine. I''ll send you back to the Meteorite Desert first. Meteorite Desert is a B-grade foothold. Saint members can be easily identified and as they have committed serious crimes, they will not go to the Meteorite Desert. I''ll report this to the Hunter Association and theyll send the hunters to kill them." In fact, Lin Huang actually wanted to send Liang Qian away to come back to kill the both of them. "Alright." Liang Qian nodded her head and agreed with him. She had no faith in Lin Huang that he was capable of killing both of them. However, she wanted to return to the city so that she would be safe. "Wait for a while. I''ll have to pack my things first. Let''s go back to the city together." After that, he walked into the tent and said in a low voice, "I''ll keep you in your card form first. Will it affect your parasites search for the monsters?" Lin Huang then passed Bloody a bottle of purified water. Bloody soaked up a drop of the water and wrote on the sleeping bag, "No, it won''t. However, in the card form, I''ll not be able to receive the search results." "Then, you shall hide in my sleeve." Lin Huang extended his hand. Bloody then got into Lin Huang''s left sleeve and it wrapped itself around Ling Huang''s arm, making him feel chilly. After the conversation with Bloody, he walked out of the tent. After putting the portable tent and the game cabin away, he finally recalled the Enchanted Poisontail Scorpion. As he was about to summon the Alexandrian Eagle and leave, two shadows abruptly appeared in mid-air. Lin Huang activated his Boundless Vision and he could clearly see that they were the Saint members who were riding the Holy Light Lion, moving quickly towards his direction. "They are coming again. Let''s run!" Liang Qian immediately exclaimed. "Get up first!" Lin Huang then helped Liang Qian to climb onto the Alexandrian Eagle and patted it. "Send her back to the Meteorite City!" Liang Qian panicked, then she shouted, "You quickly get up too!" However, the Alexandrian Eagle had flapped its wings and quickly flew away. When the Saint members saw this, they wanted to ignore Lin Huang and chase after her. However, they saw that the gold ring that Lin Huang was wearing had transformed into a huge shoulder gun barrel. The length of the gun barrel was more than two meters with a diameter of at least 20 centimeters. It was the third form of the GoldEagle11 C Artillery. "Eh, the both of you have ignored me. Youll have to pay for it!" Lin Huang shouted while taking aim at them in the sky. After a few moments, a silver flame fired into the air 253 Killing Saints Members Lin Huang took aim at one of the Holy Light Lions and the muzzle of his gun emitted a silver flame into the sky. After a few moments, a loud thud was heard followed by an explosion that spread throughout the bloody desert. Holy Light Lion roared in pain and it soon fell onto the ground. Lin Huang did not even look at the shadow that was falling and immediately shifted his aim at the second Holy Light Lion. "Damn!" Cao Yang did not expect that Lin Huang would attack them. As the Holy Light Lion that Mu Ping was riding fell after being shot by Lin Huang, Cao Yang noticed that Lin Huang had taken aim at him. He immediately shifted his direction to dodge the attack. Lin Huang grinned and soon, two beams of silver from the muzzle of the shoulder gun barrel flashed into the air one after another. In mid-air, despite the Holy Light Lion managing to dodge the first beam of glow, it was then struck by the second beam. In an instant, half of its head exploded and died. The carcass then slumped hard onto the ground. After killing two of the Holy Light Lions, Lin Huang instructed, "Bao, Ghastly, show up!" Two of the epic monsters, Bai and Ghastly were instantly being summoned. Lin Huang knew that although two of the Saint''s members had fallen to the ground, they would definitely not die. Despite the fact that they had no defensive relics with them, they had the gold-level equipment at the very least. Since it was just a short fall, their bodies would only experience a mild shock instead of death. "Control the bearded man and kill the other one," Lin Huang quickly instructed. Thanks to Ghastly''s ability to control, the battle became much easier. The three of them ran towards the direction where Cao Yang had fallen. As soon as they saw Cao Yang, a face mask appeared in the Ghastly Clown''s hand. Before Cao Yang could even react to them, the face mask was put on him. The next moment, the three versus two battle had immediately become a one-sided four versus one battle. Just as when Lin Huang was about to lead the monsters to kill Mu Ping, the Ghastly Clown blocked his way, expressing a wry smile. Lin Huang was startled and at the same time, Cao Yang ran towards Mu Ping. "Mu Ping, are you okay?" Mu Ping did not realize that Cao Yang was acting strangely. He struggled to move the Holy Light Lion away as it was pressing on his leg. Cao Yang then extended his hand and pulled him up. Mu Ping extended his hand as well. At that very moment, Cao Yang''s hand suddenly shifted aside and a sharp blade appeared in his hand. While Mu Ping was still trying to comprehend what was happening, the sharp blade that was about 10 centimeters long pierced through the left side of his chest and went straight through his heart and out his back. "Cao Yang, you" Soon, Mu Ping''s eyes grieved. Even after he died, he still would not know why Cao Yang had killed him. Removing the sharp blade from Mu Ping''s body, Cao Yang wiped it with his hand. The weapon immediately returned to the state before it had been activated which was in the form of a gold ring. Even Lin Huang felt that the Ghastly Clown''s killing rate was unbelievable. Of course, even without the Super Intelligence, the Ghastly Clown''s intelligence could not be underestimated. He was stunned for a short while. As soon as Lin Huang recovered from his thoughts, he said, "Bring him over, I have something to ask him." Controlled by the Ghastly Clown, Cao Yang slowly walked towards him. Lin Huang took out a lounge chair from the storage space and started questioning him. "What''s your name?" "Cao Yang." "Which organization are you from?" "Saint." "What''s your identity in Saint?" "I''m becoming a reserve member soon. Ill be upgraded to Transcendent after killing a holy fire-level monster," Cao Yang explained in detail. "After joining Saint, have you ever violated the Saint''s principles?" Lin Huang would always ask questions about privacy to make sure that he was telling the truth. "I''ve eaten meat three times" Meat was prohibited in the Saint''s principles as they believed that one was unable to be spiritually pure if they consumed meat. Therefore, all the Saint''s members were vegetarian. They would be severely punished if they were found out. The punishment would be to cut off the same amount of meat that they had eaten from their body. The meat that was removed from their body would then be fed to the swine beast. If they had eaten meat that weighed more than one-third of their body weight, they would be put to death. Other than the equal weight of meat which would be used to feed the swine beast, the remaining parts would be used as an oblation to serve their god. To them, they would be able to cleanse themselves from impurities by removing the same amount of body part so that the remaining body would be pure. Obviously, he was not lying as he had told him about this. Lin Huang continued questioning. "Did you kill the Luo family in Luoxi City?" "Yes." "Why did you kill them?" "They deserve it as they insulted the Saint!" Lin Huang frowned when he heard the answer. "What''s the purpose of coming to Meteorite Desert?" "Three years ago, one of the Saint''s reserve members stole the ruin key and betrayed the organization. We have found his whereabouts last month, knowing that he last appeared in the Meteorite Desert. We came to the Meteorite Desert as we wanted to kill the traitor and take back the ruin key." Lin Huang''s eyes brightened as he heard about the ruin key. After the Virtual Eye was opened, due to human interference or some other reason, the Virtual Eye was not completely closed. It continued to exist in some special way, creating an independent small space. It was called the ruins or the dimensional ruins. In the small space, there were monsters everywhere. Moreover, if the number of monsters fell below a certain percentage, new monsters would be sent to the ruins. Therefore, many of the strong adventurers would train there. As for the ruin key, it was the only item that could open the dimensional ruins. Each of the dimensions would have one key. Lin Huang had no idea how the key was formed. However, owning the ruin key would be the equivalent to possessing the resources of the entire dimensional ruins. "So, have you found the traitor and taken away the key?" Lin Huang asked about as he felt that they would not be chasing after Liang Qian for a few days if they had not completed their task. "The traitor has died. His dead body and the ruin key have been buried. Fortunately, he would have no way to store the ruin key in any storage space and we have dug it out a few days ago." What Cao Yang said matched what Liang Qian had told him previously. The traitor must have been one of the guys who had joined Du Fengs team to kill the Transcendent monster two years ago. Therefore, what he left behind had been kept by Du Feng, buried together with the bodies in the grave. This was also the reason why they dug up the burial site. Lin Huang gave a new instruction "Take out the ruin key and everything valuable you have in your storage space.". Cao Yang then gave him everything he had in the storage space. Lin Huang quickly looked through each item. He then stored the valuable items in his storage space, including the 3,000 Life Crystals he received. Lastly, he finally found the ruin key. It looked like a conical magic cube and it was black in color. If Cao Yang did not mention the ruin key, he would have treated it as rubbish and thrown it away. Perhaps this was the reason why Du Feng did not retrieve it and buried it instead. Keeping the key in his pocket, Lin Huang checked again to make sure that there was nothing valuable left. He then gave the rest back to Cao Yang. He continued asking, "Why did you want to torture and kill the hunters a few days ago?" As Lin Huang asked this, he had a cold, stony expression on his face. "We have no intention of killing them. However, the skinny guy insulted us when he saw that we killed one of his companions. He said things like how the Saint''s members are mad dogs that are not even comparable to the swine beasts. That''s why we killed the other teammates in front of him. However, the guy did not stop insulting us. I''ve tried all sorts of ways, torturing him from the afternoon until the next morning. He was stubborn. He only stopped insulting us right after he died," Cao Yang explained in detail. After asking another few questions, Lin Huang gave a new instruction after he confirmed that he had nothing else to ask, "Take me to the place where you killed the hunters." After recalling Bai, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf. He rode on the Viridian Wolf with Cao Yang and the Ghastly Clown, heading north. They were led by Cao Yang and three days later, the Viridian Wolf finally arrived at the withered tree where the graves were buried. Lin Huang frowned as he saw the dead bodies. However, he noticed that although the dead bodies had been there for several days, they had not been engulfed by the monsters. Getting off the Viridian Wolf, Lin Huang asked, "Why didn''t the monsters eat the dead bodies?" "We''ve sprayed drugs to banish all monsters as we wanted to stop them from eating or dragging away the dead bodies. We are waiting for the runaway girl to witness this," Cao Yang said. Lin Huang did not say anything. He then took out an empty storage ring and stored all the dead bodies in it. The corpses were emitting a foul odor as they had been exposed to the sun for many days. However, Lin Huang did not mind. Du Feng''s skull was the last skull that he put away. After taking out his reproductive organ from his mouth, Lin Huang sighed emotionally. He had never expected the person that he met a few days ago would die so distressingly. "In this world, humans are sometimes scarier than monstersIf there''s such a thing as reincarnation, I hope that all of you can live in a peaceful world when you start a new life. Live where there are no battles and no fights. Everyone can live a peaceful life there" After storing the corpses, Lin Huang turned back and looked at Cao Yang. However, the next instruction was directed at the Ghastly Clown, "Ghastly, make him commit suicide." The Ghastly Clown nodded. In an instant, the gold ring that Cao Yang was wearing had transformed into a sharp blade. He held the handle of the blade tightly and made it penetrate hard through his own chin. In an instant, the cold, sharp blade pierced through his chin and part of the blade had gone through the back of his head. The blade was stained with sticky white fluid as well as some blood After recalling Ghastly Clown and the Viridian Wolf, Lin Huang then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. The Alexandrian Eagle had transformed back into its card form a few days ago after sending Liang Qian back to Meteorite City. "Let''s go to Meteorite City." 254 Passing On A Legacy After killing two of the Saint members, Lin Huang went back to the Meteorite Desert on the Alexandrian Eagle. He did not even bother with the two dead bodies as he knew that the monsters in the desert would settle them for him. Although Cao Yang''s dead body was within the area where they had sprayed a drug to banish all monsters, the drug was only effective for a maximum of three days. In the desert, with the strong winds and sand violently blowing around, the period of effectiveness of the drug would be shortened. Arriving at the Meteorite Desert''s entrance, Lin Huang recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and Bloody at the same time. If Bloody was not transformed back into its card form, it would not be able to pass the entrance gate of the foothold. As soon as Lin Huang had passed the verification and entered the Meteorite Desert, he immediately summoned Bloody again. Bloody wrapped itself around Lin Huang''s arm and hid in his sleeve. It had been recalled for less than 10 seconds and was summoned again because Lin Huang was afraid that the investigation of the Starlight Beast would be delayed. After entering the city, Lin Huang went to the Hunter Association first and asked about Liang Qian. Normally, the Hunter Association would not reveal any hunter''s information to another hunter. However, after Liang Qian had returned, she had mentioned Ye Xiu in the description report before. Furthermore, Lin Huang knew the name and contact number of Liang Qian''s hunter team leader. In addition to that, they would not usually add an anonymous contact number through the Emperor''s Heart Ring. Therefore, the division of Hunter Association at Meteorite Desert gave Liang Qian''s hotel information and room number to Lin Huang. "083021" After a short while, Lin Huang found the hotel that Liang Qian was staying. By going up the floating stairs, Lin Huang had arrived on the 83rd floor and soon, he found room No.21. Standing outside the door, he pressed the doorbell. As the bell rang, Liang Qian felt weird as she had no friends in Meteorite Desert and she had not asked for any room service as well. "Is there any news from the Hunter Association? Why didn''t they contact me via the Emperor''s Heart Ring?" Liang Qian wondered. She then activated the gold ring that she was wearing and a long sword appeared in her hand. She peered through the sight glass to see who was at the door. Liang Qian was startled the moment when she saw that Lin Huang was standing at the door. She immediately opened the door. "You''re still alive?!" She thought that Lin Huang would have been killed by the Saint members since he had helped her to block their way. "Yes, I have my way to escape from them. Plus, the Hunter Association''s backup team arrived on time and we killed the both of them," Lin Huang lied. "Is that true?!" Liang Qian was in disbelief. "Of course, I''ve stored Du Feng''s and your teammates'' dead bodies for you." Lin Huang nodded, then asked, "May I go in?" "Yes, I''m sorry" Liang Qian then realized that she had been blocking Lin Huang from entering. She immediately opened the door. After entering the house, he took a glance at the living room floor and asked, "Can I put the corpses on the floor? But theyve started to smell" Liang Qian was stunned for a while and said, "Please hold on for a minute." She then cleared out everything from the living room by putting the chairs and tables aside and flipping over the carpet. Lin Huang then took out five of the dead bodies. He first took out their body parts, followed by their skulls and the remaining parts. The dead bodies had decomposed, giving off a foul odor. However, the both of them did not avoid that. Liang Qian''s eyes teared as she saw the five corpses. "I''ve no idea what should I do next" Liang Qian''s mind was blank. She actually knew the procedure but she could not remember it at all. "You''ll have to look for a forensic pathologist to have their heads reattached first. Then, look for an appropriate place to bury them," Lin Huang reminded. "Yes, I should first reattach the dead bodies'' decapitated heads and bury them" "The Hunter Association has a forensic pathologist that specializes in this. I''ll go with you." Lin Huang knew that Liang Qian was confused and traumatized. He shook his head and said, "I''ll put these away first." Lin Huang stored the dead bodies again and wanted to pass them to Liang Qian. However, Liang Qian was about to have an emotional breakdown and she could not keep them with her now. "I''m sorry. These corpses have reminded me of the scene when I first saw their dead bodies." Liang Qian trembled and burst into uncontrollable tears. Lin Huang did not say anything. He walked towards her and carried her to the sofa. After sitting with her for a while until she had calmed herself down, he stood up and walked to the kitchen. He found some tea and made her a cup. Liang Qian took the cup of tea gratefully. However, she did not drink it as she was still crying. Lin Huang waited patiently beside her After about 20 minutes, Liang Qian finally calmed herself down. She put down the cup of tea that she was holding and Lin Huang passed her a piece of tissue. Liang Qian''s eyes were red and she apologized to Lin Huang, "I''m sorry. I''ve wasted so much of your time." Taking the tissue, she wiped her tears. "It''s okay. If I were you, I would have collapsed too. It''s better to vent your emotions than to suppress them," Lin Huang comforted her. "Take a good rest and we''ll meet the forensic pathologist tomorrow." "It''s better if we go today. I know that you have something to deal with." Liang Qian''s emotions seemed to have completely returned to normal. "Are you sure you''re fine?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, I''m running out of tears," Liang Qian joked. "Alright, let''s go." Lin Huang then stood up. After leaving the hotel, the both of them quickly went back to the Hunter Association by riding on the Viridian Wolf. Lin Huang and Liang Qian then went to the forensic room. The person who was in charge of reattaching the decapitated heads was a man in sunglasses. He wore a white coat and a face mask. He was completely different from Liang Yin whom Lin Huang had met previously. "This is the place where the dead bodies are fixed up. Autopsy and medical examination will be carried out in the room next to this," said a man in glasses who was preparing a report when he saw that there were shadows outside the room without even looking up at them. "We came here to reattach the dead bodies," Lin Huang explained. The man in glasses then raised his head and took a glance at both of them. "Come in." "Wait a minute. I need five more minutes to complete this report," said the man in glasses, continuing with his work and not caring about them at all. After about five minutes, the man in glasses seemed to have completed his work. He then stood up and said, "How many corpses do you have?" "Five." "Take them out." The man in glasses then took out four morgues and placed them together with the morgue that he had brought out earlier. Lin Huang placed the corpses on the morgues. The bespectacled man frowned the moment he saw the dead bodies."Who did this? How could they be so cruel?" "The Saint members," Lin Huang answered. "You may wait outside. I''ll need some time to get this done." The man turned to glance at them. "Alright." When Lin Huang was about to leave with Liang Qian, he asked, "Erm It''s not difficult to distinguish their heads. But how do you make sure that you''ll not attach them wrongly?" "I have my ways. Don''t worry, I won''t make any mistakes," answered the man, with no intention to explain. Since he did not want to answer his question, Lin Huang then left together with Liang Qian. Both of them sat outside the forensic room for more than half an hour and soon, a voice called from the room, "You may come in now." After entering the room, they could see that the five bodies looked completely fine. The man had used a transparent thread which could only be seen when they went closer to the corpses. The parts of the body that had decomposed had been fixed as well. Liang Qian''s face blushed slightly when she saw that the lower part of their bodies was perfectly fine. She immediately shifted her gaze. "Amazing" Lin Huang was impressed by the man in glasses. "How did you handle the decomposed part? Why aren''t there any marks at all?" "I extracted their skin cells. Then, bacteria is used so that they can regenerate another layer of skin to cover the wounds. I''ve removed the decomposed part and filled it with the skin that has been thickened," he explained. At least, Liang Qian''s emotions were no longer affected as the dead bodies were complete now. "I''ve passed the fee slip to the counter. If there are no other problems, you may pay over there and collect the bodies here. If you have any other requests, go ahead and suggest them. I''ll do it for you." The man still had a poker face. "I''ll pay now. Wait for me here." Of course, Liang Qian knew that she could not let Lin Huang pay for her and she immediately left the forensic room. After a short while, Liang Qian came back with her face red. "It''s done so quickly?" Lin Huang asked. "I don''t have enough money. Could you please lend me some Life Crystals? I''ve used up all my Life Crystals when I activated the relic." Liang Qian dared not look at Lin Huang. "I''ll return it to you as soon as possible after hunting down some monsters!" "How many Life Crystals do you need?" Lin Huang asked. "Five." Lin Huang immediately took out five Life Crystals and passed it to Liang Qian. "Anyway, you don''t have to return me the money." "I have to. Thank you!" Liang Qian took the Life Crystals and immediately left. After a few minutes, she finally came back. She then asked the man in glasses, "I''ve made the payment. May I take the corpses now?" "Yes, go ahead ." The main in glasses nodded in his own seat without looking at them. Liang Qian then carefully put away the bodies. It seemed like the complete corpses did not remind her of the scene that she had witnessed, so she was calm. "Where are you going to bury them?" Lin Huang asked after she had stored the bodies. "The leader told me before that he wished that he could settle down at foothold A-grade, living a peaceful life. I''ll bury them as well as the items left by the other members in the grave there," Liang Qian said with a wistful smile. "What''s your plan after this?" Lin Huang asked again. "I will re-establish Team Dian Feng and pass on the legacy. Brother Du will be happy if he could see this" Liang Qin eventually figured out what she had to do after this. "All the best to you!" Lin Huang raised his fist. "Same goes to you!" Liang Qian raised her fist as well. At that moment, Bloody who was in Lin Huang''s sleeve suddenly twisted slightly. "Have you found the Starlight Beast?!" Lin Huang communicated with Bloody through his mind. Although he had no idea what Bloody was saying, Lin Huang could briefly understand that it was a confirmation reply. 255 Suspicious Identity "Liang Qian, my summoning monster has detected the monster that Im hunting down. I need to make a move. Im sorry!" Sensing Bloodys notification, Lin Huang had to leave right away. Of course, Liang Qian knew that Lin Huang had been waiting in the desert for many days just for the monster. Although she had no idea what he was after, she smiled and nodded anyway. "Go ahead then. Your matter is more important and you''ve been waiting for many days now. Theres nothing urgent on my side. I can handle myself." "Okay, lets get each other''s contact number. I''ll contact you after Im done with my task. I''ll try to make it to Du Fengs and the rests funeral." After exchanging contacts, Lin Huang left. As he exited the Hunter Associations entrance, Lin Huang projected the map of Meteorite Desert immediately and asked Bloody, "Where did you detect the Starlight Beast?" Bloody extended its twine and pointed at the map, then Lin Huang marked the coordinates immediately. He then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and patted its back. "Head northeast." The Alexandrian Eagle flapped its wings and headed northeast. Four hours later, it landed at the destination. Lin Huang leaped off the Alexandrian Eagle''s back and recalled it. "Bloody, is the Starlight Beast still here?" Lin Huang looked around. Aside from sand, he did not see anything else. "Its gone. It was killing another gold-level monster that appeared nearby four hours ago, according to one of my parasite hosts. After the killing was done, it left with the body. It was too fast, so my parasite''s host did not manage to catch up with it," Bloody scrawled on the ground. "If the hunting was done here, its nest should be nearby and not too far away," Lin Huang figured. "Bloody, spread some of your pods here. We shall camp out here for a couple of days. Hopefully, we should be able to find something." "Theres no need to do that. Lets see if theres an oasis around; it should be hiding there," Bloody wrote. "In the oasis? Why would you say so? From what I remember, the monster encyclopedia never mentioned that the monster likes areas that are rich with plants," Lin Huang questioned. "The monster encyclopedia had never mentioned that but the open desert isnt suitable for it to hide in. Such a monster has pride and it wouldnt want to hide in places such as caves. The only place that it could be possibly hiding would be an oasis," Bloody explained. "That makes sense." After hearing Bloodys explanation, Lin Huang projected again, enlarging the areas nearby looking for an oasis. Soon Lin Huang found out that there were three oases nearby. There was one in the north, one in the west and one in the northeast. "Looking at the distance, the one in the west is nearest to the location we are currently standing in. However, the one in the north looks like its the biggest. Theres even a huge lake in the middle," Lin Huang observed the three locations he had found on the map. "Lets go to the north and see," Bloody suggested. "Sure, lets go to the north then," Lin Huang accepted Bloodys suggestion. He summoned the Alexandrian Eagle again and headed north. It was around 280 kilometers from the location that Lin Huang was standing at previously. In 20 minutes, the Alexandrian Eagle arrived at the destination and landed at the border of the oasis. It was big with lush greenery and it felt like there was a primitive jungle that had appeared in the desert out of nowhere. After recalling the Alexandrian Eagle, Lin Huang explored the jungle while looking at the map. Purple parasite pods were sprayed out from his sleeve into the jungle air. Following the directions, Lin Huang arrived at the lake after 10 minutes. He walked to the side of the lake and cupped the lake water with both his palms. He took a sip of the water after sniffing it. "Theres nothing wrong with the water, its drinking water. This lake should be the water source of many monsters nearby," Lin Huang observed. "Lets stay here for awhile, Im afraid we might catch the Starlight Beasts attention if we go further in. Such a monster doesnt like seeing humans. If it noticed me, it might run away. You might reveal yourself if you do mass parasitizing, so lets spread your pods around here and get them to watch. If the Starlight Beast is really in this oasis, it''ll definitely drink from this lake. We will get it then," Lin Huang said to Bloody. Bloody nodded. It had not stopped spreading its pods ever since they entered the jungle. Lin Huang returned into the jungle and climbed up a big tree and sat on a branch. The tree was filled with overlapping leaves. From the bottom, nobody could see Lin Huang on top of the tree. As long as he did not make any noise, he would basically be undetectable. Just when he had settled down on the tree, he received a message. He looked at it immediately. It was a message from Liang Qian. "Brother Ye, thank you for taking care of me for the past few days. If not for you, I would have been dead. Thank you for bringing back the bodies of Brother Du and the rest as well as bringing me to the forensic. As soon as my father knew about the attack, he came to get me. Im at their graves retrieving their belongings and I will head back to Sakura City with my father. The funeral will be held in Sakura City as well. I dont have the exact time yet, but I will contact you again once the time is confirmed." "Sure, safe journey," Lin Huang gave her a simple reply. In the Meteorite Dessert, a young, short-haired man was digging the grave next to the withered tree while a serious middle-aged man stood beside Liang Qian. She received a reply from Lin Huang shortly after she sent the message. She looked at the message immediately. "Who is that?" The middle-aged man next to her frowned. "Brother Ye," Liang Qian replied without even lifting her head up. "Oh, is he the one who saved you a few days back?" The man''s frown deepened even more. "Try not to contact him anymore," he added. "Why not?" Liang Qian was puzzled and looked at her father. "I suspect his identity is fake. He told you that he killed the two Saint members with the assistance of the Hunter Association. From what I know, although the Hunter Association was hunting down the two members, none of them encountered the both of them." "The most skeptical thing is the way the two members died. Their bodies were found and the post-mortem report showed that the younger member was killed by the bearded Saint member." "I think this Ye Xiu guy is trying to approach you with bad intentions." The man looked at Liang Qian with all seriousness. "I dont think so. Even if hes using a fake identity, I believe he has his own reasons. Im also using a fake identity, so according to your logic, Im a bad person as well. As for the cause of death, the two members might have been killed with spells. There''re many people who could do that, so what makes you think that Brother Ye is capable of doing that?" Liang Qian insisted to speak from Lin Huangs perspective. "You" The man was upset. "Dad, stop fighting over this with her. If they start dating, I''ll watch them," the short hair man who was digging shouted. "This girl is spoilt rotten by you!" yelled the middle-aged man and he stopped arguing with Liang Qian. Liang Qian did not say anything about her brothers suggestion. She knew that her father and brother were concerned for her. Soon, all the belongings in the sand were dug out and stored properly. "Is there anything left behind?" Liang Qian was worried. "I have checked three times, dont worry about it," replied the short hair man. "Alright then" Liang Qian nodded. Seeing that the man was drenched in sweat, she did not want him to continue digging. "Lets go home then," said the middle-aged man and he summoned a blue dimensional relic. The three of them entered it and after the door was closed, they disappeared 256 Bloody’s Discovery The sun rose in the morning and the air in the lush jungle was extraordinarily fresh. Lin Huang stretched his body in the hammock that was strung between two branches, then with sleepy eyes, he sat up. He looked around him, the lush leaves reminding him that he was in the desert oasis. After confirming the direction of the lake, Lin Huang hopped down from the hammock and walked to the nearby lake barefooted. There were a couple of tiny monsters drinking water at the lake. Seeing Lin Huang, they looked at him with their guards up. They seemed to be zoned out, looking like stupid but adorable monsters. Lin Huang waved at the monsters. "Good morning! Are you here to drink? Do you mind if I take a shower here?" Not understanding what he was talking about, Lin Huangs hand that was lifted up scared them. They ran away immediately, two of them even running into each other and before falling. They got up immediately and disappeared. "Oh, theyre so timid" Although different monsters had different characters, it was the first time Lin Huang saw such timid ones. The monsters that he encountered would always attack humans. Monsters would only run away when they saw powerful summoning beasts with Lin Huang. He shook his head and laughed. He then took off all his clothes and put everything in his storage space before leaping into the lake. It was spring and although the temperature in the desert was slightly high, the lake water was cool. As Lin Huangs physique was comparable to a gold-level rank-3, he did not think it was cold; it felt cool against his skin. Entering the lake, Bloody returned to its normal size with its 1,000 meter-long vine, swimming in the water. Although it was a parasite, it was still a plant that loved water. Seeing it having fun in the water, Lin Huang did not want to stop it. "Have fun in the lake, Im going back to the hammock after Im done bathing." Bloody nodded as it heard Lin Huang and headed deeper into the water. Lin Huang swam for a little while after he bathed so that he could stretch his body before leaving. The body that he used for Ye Xius identity was exactly the same as his old one on Earth; even his body ratio was the same. He looked like a closet hunk about 1.83 meters tall in his mid-twenties. Now that he had arrived in this world, his six packs had developed into eight and his abs were even more defined on his body. He walked to the shore naked, wiped himself with a dry towel and put on his clothes. The lake was quiet. Bloody was nowhere to be seen and Lin Huang had no idea where did it go. However, he was not concerned about its safety. Even if it encountered a gold-level rank-3 monster, Bloody which was a double mutated silver-level rank-3 might not be able to fight it but it would be easy for it to escape. As long as it did not encounter any Transcendent monster, then it would be alright. Bloodys intelligence was terrifyingly high now, so it was impossible that it would find fault with any Transcendent monster. Lin Huang returned to his hammock and sat down. He read the news while eating some snacks for breakfast. "Wow, Zhu Nian has been promoted to a senior executive officer..." Seeing the picture of the middle-aged man in the top news, Lin Huang was stunned. He remembered the man was the Transcendent who had been defeated by the Ghastly Clown outside of Daxi City. "No wonder hes so much more powerful than the other people of holy fire-level. Only immortal-level people could be a senior executive officer. Now that he is promoted in the Division7 Hunter Association, that means hes now an immortal-level. Although he was not immortal-level yet when he fought the Ghastly Clown last year, he should have been close by then." Lin Huang did not expect that the Zhu Nian that he saved using a seal card earlier could achieve such an impressive accomplishment. Apart from the first to the third safety zones, all of the Hunter Association divisions in the safety zones would have less than 20 senior executive officers in each division. In Division7, there were only 12 of them before Zhu Nian was promoted. They now had 13 senior executive officers in Division7. Lin Huang then read his personal biography. "He graduated from basic military college when he was 28 with only a passHe was not accepted into any privilege military schoolWith his own abilities, he managed to get to holy fire-level when he was 58 and immortal-level when he was 75This guy''s a late bloomer!" Lin Huang exclaimed after reading Zhu Nians biography. In reality, his being such a genius was not terrifying but many of them could not accomplish anything as they had not put in enough effort. Lin Huang had heard similar stories when he was on Earth. However, it was even crueler in this world. Not only would geniuses be lacking if not enough effort was made, they might even be assassinated by the dark world. Moreover, the younger one achieved fame, the more arrogant one would usually be. Once he encountered any failures, he would not be able to get up and that would be the end of his glory. However, people such as Zhu Nian was scary as he had stood up many times from countless failures. Through the struggles and many lessons in life, with enough experience, he grabbed his opportunity to achieve what he had today. Zhu Nian was the classic example of such a case. Many people thought that famous people were born geniuses and that that was how they achieved what they had today. Many did not know that most of them were the same as the rest; they were just ordinary people. Most of the mythical stories about the powerful people when they were young were either exaggerated or made up. The truth was that the effort they put in as they grew were much more than the others, hence contributing to their accomplishments. Hard work was much more important than talent! Because of that, Lin Huang had never stopped training himself although he had a powerful Goldfinger. After reading the news about Zhu Nian, Lin Huang glanced at other news. Just when he was done with breakfast, a red glow plunged towards him like lightning, twisting around his arm. Lin Huang knew that it was Bloody. However, it seemed to be in a rush. "Whats wrong?" Seeing that Bloody was pulling him down, Lin Huang leaped onto the ground immediately. Bloody then detached from his arm and gestured to Lin Huang to follow it before hurrying away. Lin Huang followed it immediately. As they arrived at the edge of the lake, Bloody wrote on the ground beside the lake, "I found the Starlight Beasts lair. Its at the bottom of the lake!" 257 The Starlight Beast’s Lair "At the bottom of the lake? Are you sure?" Although Lin Huang trusted Bloody, from what he remembered Starlight Beast wasnt a monster that lived in water. Bloody understood Lin Huangs doubt immediately and wrote on the ground again. "Theres an isolated water-less area at the bottom of the lake with many Starlight Beasts living inside there." "Isolated area? With a lot of Starlight Beasts?" Lin Huangs eyes lit up as he listened. "Wait, let me transform myself then you can bring me there!" Lin Huang transformed himself into Spectre with a Specific Transformation Card and dived into the lake following Bloody. Bloody took the lead while Lin Huang followed behind it in the form of Spectre. The lake water was clear and Lin Huang could see many schools of silver fish as well as water monsters. However, they were running away when they saw Bloody, none of them dared to come close. Although the monsters were all different kinds, once they were within a close distance they could sense that Bloody was double mutated. Such a vibe became fear for them, which then became a convenience for Lin Huang. After swimming down for half an hour, Bloody finally stopped and pointed ahead. Lin Huang swam for some distance and noticed there was a strange area not far in front. If you didnt look closely it would have been hard to tell that the area was strange. It was like a thin round glass floating in the water. Without Bloody telling him he might have missed this place. After observing from the outside, Lin Huang poked one finger into the area. Since nothing happened he entered the area followed by Bloody. Lin Huang was shocked at what he was seeing as he thought it was connected to an underground location or even a cave. However, it was a wide area with a sky and even a sun. There was lush green on the ground, it was like a wide-open meadow, he couldnt see where the end of the meadow was. Just when Lin Huang thought the area was unreal the fragrance of grass and flowers came to his nose which assured him that what he was looking at wasnt an illusion. "Bloody, how did you find the Starlight Beasts here?" Lin Huang could not help but ask as until now, he hadnt seen any. Of course, it could be due to the area being too big. Bloody took out a writing board from the storage ring and wrote with its vine. "Yes, I saw many of them and informed you immediately." Lin Huang had prepared the writing board in the storage ring specifically for Bloody when they were in Meteorite City as there were environments that would not be convenient for writing. The customized storage ring could be activated using Life Power and could even be used by monsters. "Where are they? Bring me there!" Lin Huang wanted to see them for himself before planning his next step. Once on the meadow, Bloody shrank himself to the size of a thumb which was hard to be noticed, while Lin Huang dived underground and followed behind it to the area where the Starlight Beasts had gathered. In less than 10 minutes Bloody had brought Lin Huang to their destination. Lin Huang who was hiding underground was shocked at what he saw on the ground as there were at least 300 Starlight Beasts in this area. There were more than 10 of them whose color and size were different from the usual Starlight Beasts; clearly they were mutated once. Besides the Starlight Beasts, there was another thing that caught his attention. There was a black gigantic rock that was 10 meters long and equally tall. Its shape was out of the ordinary that didnt seem like a natural product from the area instead it looked like an item from somewhere else. Lin Huang sensed that the appearance of the Starlight Beasts was related to the black rock. "I need to leave now. There are too many Starlight Beasts here if I were to do anything I would definitely die. These Starlight Beasts are all gold-level rank-3 moreover, therere more than 10 mutated ones. With their attack speed, even Bai wouldnt be able to handle them and perhaps summoning all my monsters still wouldnt be enough to fight them" Thinking of the issues, Lin Huang decided to recall Bloody into its card form and left the nest quietly. When they arrived on top of the lake, Lin Huang summoned Bloody again. "There are too many of them, I cant attack and besides, even if any of them left the group, we couldnt attack in that nest as its too quiet inside. There isnt any other force in the nest at all so if we attack, the shockwave from our attack would definitely alert them and by then, wed be killed by the monsters." Lin Huang said. "It seems like we could only wait for them to come out and look for food, we could then kill them outside." "We could lure them." Bloody took out the writing board again and wrote. "Lure them?" Lin Huang was stunned at the suggestion. "Thats a great idea, its so much better than waiting for them." "We could get the Ghastly Clown to get them out." Bloody wrote again after erasing what it wrote earlier. "Yes, thats a great idea! The Ghastly Clown can control a mutated Starlight Beast and get it to leave the nest. We could then kill it and obtain the muted Life Seed gift!" Lin Huang thought it was totally doable. After confirming the plan, Lin Huang discussed the details with Bloody. Later on, he was ready to carry out the plan. To avoid affecting the forces in the nest, Lin Huang summoned the Ghastly Clown before jumping into the lake. After briefing it, he transformed himself into the Spectre again and dived into the water with Bloody and the Ghastly Clown. Soon, they made it to the bottom of the lake and entered the isolated area. Once they entered the area, the Ghastly Clown shrunk to the size of a palm. They had arrived at the area where the Starlight Beasts gathered in an instant. However, Lin Huang was shocked again as they arrived at the area. All of the Starlight Beasts were on all fours standing on the ground, even the 10 mutated ones. They seemed to be worshipping. Looking in the direction where all of them were looking, Lin Huang noticed that there was another monster standing on top of the black gigantic rock. This monster was different from the other Starlight Beasts with a different look and size. She looked like a human lady with silver armor, there was a metal helmet which covered her entire hair. On her face, there was a two-colored mask with red on the left and blue on the right. Her face had nothing on it, not even eyes and her body was long; she was around 2.5 meters tall. She didnt look overwhelming with her body size in perfect ratio with her height. At the back of her armor were six wings that looked like golden knives. Clearly, the wings could be weapons as well. Besides the wings, she was holding a purple spear on her right hand which seemed to be her main weapon. "This Starlight Beast should be the double mutated one" Lin Huang was guessing in his heart. 258 A Powerful Silver-Armored Monster Although Lin Huang had some idea of what the monster standing on top of the black rock was, he wasnt completely sure. The Starlight Monster was rare and their numbers limited. Throughout hundreds of years, theyd only been seen less than 10 times in the entire Division7. Before Lin Huang, nobody in the whole of Division7 had even seen a mutated Starlight Beast. Regarding the double mutated ones, they were nowhere to be found in any of the monster encyclopedias. There were no documents about double mutated Starlight Beasts at all. Therefore, Lin Huang couldn''t determine if the silver-armored monster was a double mutated Starlight Beast or another type of monster that was living with the Starlight Beasts. In the monster world, there were monsters that lived together in peace. Besides monsters of the same type, there were also different monsters living together. They could benefit from each other or their preys were completely different which had no conflict Under such circumstances, it was normal for monsters to live together. Although many of the Starlight Beasts were worshipping this monster, it wasnt sufficient enough to determine whether this was a double mutated Starlight Beast or not. It could be another powerful creature with a unique ability that could get all the Starlight Beasts to obey it. If Bloody was a gold-level rank-3, it could easily do the same as long as it spread the parasites into the Starlight Beasts bodies. Unsure, Lin Huang decided to risk it anyway. It would be his lucky day if the creature was a double mutated Starlight Beast and if not this monster seemed to be much more powerful than the rest, the Life Seed gift that hed obtain from the kill would be a powerful addition. After putting in some thought, Lin Huang had made up his mind and without saying a word, he poked the Ghastly Clown who was in the form of a palm-sized doll with his finger and pointed at the silver-armored monster that was standing on top of the rock. Ghastly Clown understood what Lin Huang meant and within the next second, a small mask appeared on its hand which it then put in on its face. Suddenly, the wings on the back of the silver-armored monster shook and flew up into the sky. It lunged out of the doorway with a silver glow around it. The Starlight Beasts that were worshipping panicked but none of them dared to chase after it. Lin Huang quickly followed bringing Bloody and Ghastly Clown to the exit of the dimensional ruin. They soon arrived at the top of the lake after leaving the dimensional ruin and swam to the shore. The silver-armored monster stayed in the air, looking down at Lin Huang and his two summoning beasts. Once Lin Huang arrived at the shore he turned himself back to a human while Ghastly Clown changed to its original form with Bloody hiding inside Lin Huangs left sleeve. "Ghastly, bring the monster down." As Lin Huang spoke, a gold-level sword activated in his hand. Under the Ghastly Clowns control, the silver-armored monster descended slowly and stood at the side of the lake less than five meters away from Lin Huang. It was his first time seeing the monster close-up. Roughly 2.5 meters tall with silver armor covering its body. Besides its joints, there were no gaps at all. The armor seemed to be sticking to its skin covering every corner of its body. The mask on its face was half red and half blue. Although there was nothing on its face, Lin Huang could sense that it was watching him. After observing closely, Lin Huang frowned as he could not find any gaps that he could attack. The armor was perfect, it felt like it was a creature whose body was made of armor. Even Lin Huang was doubtful of his own ability now. "Seems like I have to try using Wildfire Sword now" Lin Huang kept his sword and stepped back 10 meters. Soon, his eyes were blood red and four red Blood Spirit wings grew out of his back. After inserting one full wheel of Life Power into the red Blood Spirit wings, a golden spark on a wing began burning and transformed into a blade. Seconds later, Lin Huang leaped in front of the monster and with the help of the level-2 sword realm, he lunged towards the monster''s heart with Worldly Purification, all the while looking like a shooting star. Just when the blade arrived at the monsters chest, a purple light shone. "Ding!", it collided with the blade leaving Lin Huang stunned, without having any time to figure out what had happened, the golden spark from Worldly Purification shot out from the blade. However, a stronger force came from the tip of the blade. After the golden spark exploded, Lin Huang was tossed back by the force, smashing into more than ten big trees. Lin Huang puked blood. He wasn''t badly injured but his organs were affected. However, with his strong body physique, such injury wouldn''t affect his combat strength. He stood up slowly and looked in the direction of the silver-armored monster with a frown. When he attacked using Worldly Purification, the monster did not move at all. It remained on the ground like nothing happened. Although everything had happened too fast, Lin Huang knew that the monster had used a spear to defend itself as it was still there. It remained in the same position where Lin Huangs Blood Spirit wing had collided with it. "It managed to break free from the Ghastly Clowns control?!" Lin Huang was upset, that was not good news. Bloody seemed to have sensed that something was wrong and came out of Lin Huangs sleeve showing Lin Huang what it had written on the writing board. "It didn''t break free from the Ghastly Clown, its just that its strong will to live allowed her to break free from Ghastly Clown temporarily. However, the more it manages to break free, the more immune it will be to Ghastly Clown''s control. Master, youll have to use your most powerful attack on her or else it will break free from the Ghastly Clown soon." As Bloody was explaining to Lin Huang, the Ghastly Clown managed to get the silver-armored monster to withdraw its purple spear and kick it aside. It seemed to miss the earlier moment when it managed to break free from the Ghastly Clown. "This monster is too powerful. As long as the person or monster is not one level higher, the Ghastly Clown could totally control it. However, this monster was the same with Ghastly Clown which is gold-level rank-3 and it had managed to break free" Lin Huang looked at the monster with burning desire as he knew that the more powerful the monster was, the more powerful the Life Seed he would get after killing it. "Worldly Purification is already my strongest ability but it managed to defend against that just now. Without the spear, it could still defend with both its arms. I''ll insert two wheels of Life Power this time, I dont believe I cant kill it with that!" 259 Silver-Armored Monster VS The Ghastly Clown After deciding on the plan, Lin Huang didn''t execute right away but instead, contacted Xiao Hei in his mind. "Xiao Hei, is there any way that I can increase the chances of me getting a complete card?" After fighting with the silver-armored monster, Lin Huang was sure that it was definitely a double mutated monster. Whether it was a double mutated Starlight Beast or not, this monster had a powerful ability so while he was hunting a Life Seed monster, he hoped to obtain a complete monster card as well. "With your authorization level and the number of card pieces that you have, the only way to do that is to redeem a Probability Enhancing Card." "Each Probability Enhancing Card can increase the chances of obtaining a specific complete card by 1% of, the maximum enhancement is at 50%" "You''d need 10,000 card pieces to redeem one Probability Enhancing Card if your level is under transcendent. You''ve got a total of 42,813 card pieces right now, the most you can redeem will be four cards." "More than 40,000. Isnt that the total amount of card pieces from iron-level to gold-level? Can I use all of them to redeem Probability Enhancing Cards?" Lin Huang didn''t expect himself to be able to redeem four cards. "Yes, from iron-level to gold-level. As a whole, all of them are under the same category. Besides redeeming Monster Cards of the same level, redeeming Function Cards and Special Cards would also fall under the same category. However, if you obtain the card pieces by killing monsters that are lower than your combat strength, they won''t work as you can only redeem Monster Cards of the same combat strength." "This restriction must be to prevent any people from obtaining lower level card pieces which is easier than obtaining higher level card pieces when they leveled up" Lin Huang understood the reason for the restrictions immediately. "If I can only redeem four cards, that means I can only enhance the probability to 4% Its still too low." After giving it some thoughts, Lin Huang asked again. "Oh yeah, can I use this Probability Enhancing Card together with a Double Reward Card?" "Yes, but you could only use the Double Reward Card on the Probability Enhancing Card once. You cannot use more than one." "If thats the case, the 4% can only increase to 8%" Although the probability was still low, Lin Huang decided anyway. "Alright, then I shall redeem four Probability Enhancing Cards!" "Are you sure you want to consume 40,000 card pieces to redeem four Probability Enhancing Cards?" "Yes!" "Deducting 40,000 card pieces, you have obtained Probability Enhancing Card x4" "Probability Enhancing Card: Within one-hour of activation, the probability of obtaining complete cards from killing monsters will increase by 1%" "Remarks: Can be used in mass quantities with a maximum probability enhancement of 50%" "Use all four Probability Enhancing Cards!" After checking out the cards for awhile, Lin Huang used them immediately. "Probability Enhancing Card x4 had been consumed. Your probability of obtaining complete cards increased by 4%. The time limit is one hour." "Use a Double Reward Card!" Lin Huang used a Double Reward Card without thinking twice. "Double Reward Card x1 has been consumed. Your probability of obtaining a complete card has increased to 8%. The time limit is one hour." "Although 8% is still very low, thats better than nothing" Lin Huang looked at the silver-armored monster. Two wheels of Life Power were released into the blade that was transformed from one of his Blood Spirit wings. Lin Huang plunged towards the silver-armored monster with his strongest sword skill, Worldly Purification. A golden spark was going after the silver-armored monster at the speed of light. The air where the blade passed by cracked into patterns like a spider''s web. The attack was quick, it was two to three times faster than his previous attack. The blade with a golden spark arrived at the silver-armored monsters chest in an instant. However, the silver-armored monster managed to break free from the Ghastly Clowns control once again. The six golden wings on its back that looked like countless blades combined into a golden hemisphere. Lin Huangs fatal attack collided with the golden defense. The golden glow spread like an explosion, it was so bright that one couldn''t look at it directly. Standing in the middle of the spark, Lin Huang was not affected at all. He saw his attack pierce through the golden defense, but it hadn''t pierced deep enough. There was something hard blocking the tip his Blood Spirit wings. It felt like there was another defensive layer within its defenses. "Break it!" Lin Huang shouted and released the remaining two Life Wheels of Life Power into his Blood Spirit wing. The golden spark was getting more and more intense while the blade that had transformed from the Blood Spirit wing pierced further in. Suddenly, the Ghastly Clown grabbed the back of Lin Huangs collar and tossed him behind. It then plunged towards the silver-armored monster. At the same time, the silver-armored monsters wings opened wide, a clear palm appeared from thin air and collided with the Ghastly Clown. The both of them backed up stopping when they were 10 meters away. When Lin Huang managed to see what happened, he saw the both of them back up and understood what was happening. "The monster had completely broken free from the Ghastly Clown!" Lin Huang thought it was unbelievable, he didn''t expect it could have developed to this level. He thought he would have obtained the Life Seed easily with the help of the Ghastly Clown. He stared at the silver-armored monster solemnly, he wanted to know what the second defensive layer was that he had encountered just now. Soon, he saw something shocking. Besides a hole on the silver-armored monsters wings, there was also a hole on the left side of its chest near its heart. Lin Huang could see there was purple light flowing inside the hole. "Seems like I almost killed it just now but she managed to escape" After glancing at Lin Huang, the silver-armored monster looked at the direction of the Ghastly Clown. It knew very well that the monster in the mask was far more dangerous than Lin Huang. As long as it killed the Ghastly Clown, it would be able to kill Lin Huang easily. Although it had some fatal injuries, the silver-armored monster didn''t seem to have a plan to escape at all. It was unclear this was because its lair had been discovered and it was afraid that its secret would leak or perhaps it was fighting because it was furious from almost getting killed. The purple spear that was kicked away by the Ghastly Clown disappeared as it performed the clear palm attack earlier and appeared in its hand again. With its spear, it pointed downwards towards the Ghastly Clowns direction. Its golden wings shook in the air and appeared less than one meter in front of the Ghastly Clown in an instant 260 The Terrifying Double Mutated Monster Lin Huangs personal ability was powerful where he could easily perform cross-ranking monster kills of gold-level rank-3. However, a double mutated monster was more powerful than a human genius with the ability of a level higher than it was. This gold-level rank-3 double mutated silver-armored monster had abilities comparable to Bai and Tyrant. If Lin Huang was a gold-level rank-3 hunter, he might be able to fight it. However, he was only a silver-level rank-3 right now and his abilities were too far behind the silver-armored monster. Not only had this silver-armored monster managed to break free from the Ghastly Clowns control, its speed was so fast that Lin Huang couldn''t capture it anymore. Lin Huang didn''t even see how it had managed to appear in front of the Ghastly Clown. Out of nowhere, as the silver-armored monster arrived less than one meter in front of the Ghastly Clown, it thrust its spear towards the Ghastly Clowns mask on its face. Suddenly, the color of the Ghastly Clowns eyes changed and the silver-armored monsters movement was restricted. The Ghastly Clown then tightened its fist in the air holding the silver-armored monster with an invisible giant hand. Lin Huang figured that the silver-armored monster had to have been controlled by the Ghastly Clowns illusion when it stopped moving with the invisible hand created by the Ghastly Clowns psychic abilities. The silver-armored monster seemed to have no vocal chords. Even as its wings were distorted and its armor crushed by the gigantic invisible hand, it still did not make a sound. Suddenly, golden electrical tendrils came off the silver-armored monster and enveloped its entire body. The silver-armored monster disappeared, escaping from the invisible hand by transforming itself into lightning. Lin Huangs jaw dropped when he saw what had happened. "Elemental Transformation?!" After escaping from the giant hand, the silver-armored monster didn''t return to its original form instead it transformed into a human-shaped lightning bolt and dashed towards the Ghastly Clown. The silver-armored monster that had transformed into lightning was even more terrifying in speed. The purple spear in its hand was now a lightning spear. Holding the spear high up, lightning shot into the sky creating a vapor cone. A loud explosion followed. It was a sonic boom, the sound made when an objects speed exceeded the speed of sound! Just when Lin Huang witnessed the vapor cone, the monster that had transformed into lightning appeared before the Ghastly Clown. The Ghastly Clown created an invisible psychic wall to block it with its gloved hand. However, the lightning spear in the lightning monsters hand did not hold back when it collided with the invisible wall. As they collided, the psychic wall cracked like a spider''s web but it was not broken. The lightning monster then twisted the spear in its hand like a screw before an intense glow shot out from the lightning spear and broke the psychic wall completely. The invisible psychic wall broke like glass into pieces. The Ghastly Clown backed off immediately attempting to gain some distance between them. However, the lightning monster dashed towards it again and arrived in front of the Ghastly Clown in an instant once again. The spear on its hand became a giant golden boa that went at the Ghastly Clowns face. The Ghastly Clown blocked the hit with its hand, its white glove colliding with the golden spear. The 10-centimeter space between the glove and the spear was like an unbreakable wall. The golden lightning couldn''t get any closer and both attacks were stuck. Suddenly, the lightning monster looked at the sky with its mouth wide-open, roaring loudly like thunder and a golden lightning ball shot from its mouth into the sky. Soon, the sky got dark and began to rumble above the two monsters. Within the clouds, the thunder growled like monsters and suddenly, golden lightning shot across the sky, lighting up the place. It looked as though it was two giant lightning snakes connected in the sky and dashed towards the lightning monster. The flashes of lightning were swallowed by the lightning monster and it grew a few times in size. Soon, the second, then third Lightning kept coming down and entering the lightning monsters body. As its body grew, the spear in its hand penetrated deeper and deeper into the invisible wall, closing the distance between the Ghastly Clown and the lightning monster. Soon, the lightning monster seemed to arrive at its peak. As it roared, the lightning in its body gushed into its spear. The spear in its right hand twisted intensely again with endless lightning tendrils shooting out. "Crack" As the light cracking sound was heard, a layer of the defensive wall completely shattered. The golden spear collided directly with the Ghastly Clowns glove. Under the immense collision, there were cracks visible on the Ghastly Clowns glove. However, the lightning monster didn''t stop there. It attacked using its spear again, attempting to pierce through the Ghastly Clowns palm and kill it. After two impacts from the spear, the Ghastly Clowns glove broke completely, revealing its hand that was made of a black light. Lin Huang was stunned as he watched from afar, he had never seen the Ghastly Clowns hands without the gloves before. Suddenly, a warning came from Xiao Hei. "Warning: The Ghastly Clown is evolving by itself! As your authority isnt sufficient, if your monster card is upgraded from epic to legendary automatically, there is a chance that it could detach itself from the control system and return to freedom" "Warning: Holy fire and immortal-level monsters detected in the areas nearby. There is a 99% chance that the Ghastly Clowns evolution would attract transcendent monsters! By then, you''d be in a great crisis." "Would you like to stop the Ghastly Clown from evolving by force?!" Lin Huang frowned as he heard the two warnings. However, he made his decision in an instant. "Dont stop him!" "Ghastly, leave this to me. Go to the isolated area and kill the Starlight Beasts to complete your evolution!" Lin Huang shouted at the Ghastly Clown from far away. The Ghastly Clown looked in the direction where Lin Huang was. Suddenly, an intense force shot from its black misty-like hands. The spear in the lightning monsters hand fell under the intense force. Noticing the Ghastly Clowns odd action, the wings on its back shook as it attempted to run away. However, the Ghastly Clowns black palms broke through the space between them and landed on its cheek. Under the attack, its body that went through the Elemental Transformation returned back to its silver armor form and fell to the ground. The Ghastly Clown relented its attacks. Instead, it dove into the lake nearby and disappeared 261 Lin Huang Leveled-Up To Gold-level The sudden third mutation of the Ghastly Clown came unexpectedly to Lin Huang. However, he suspected the sudden mutation could have been caused by the intense battle it had with the silver-armored monster. The Ghastly Clown belonged to the psychic type and wasn''t exactly good in a battle, especially close-quarter combat. On the other hand, the silver-armored creature was obviously a monster that was fast and an expert in close-quarter combat. Perhaps the immense stress from the silver-armored monster had triggered the Ghastly Clown to breakthrough. As the Ghastly Clown left, the silver-armored monster was slammed into the ground with Lin Huangs immediate reaction. "Bai!" After summoning Bai, Lin Huang followed behind him as they walked closer to the place where the silver-armored monster had fallen. It was a big, deep spherical hole that was at least 20 meters in diameter. Lin Huang looked from far away, the silver-armored monster had returned to its usual form, clad in silver armor. There was no lightning sparking on its body and it was lying at the bottom of the hole quietly. Its chest was almost completely destroyed but as there was no notification from Xiao Hei informing him that he had obtained any monster card pieces or a complete monster card, he was curious if the silver-armored monster had been killed by the Ghastly Clowns earlier slam. "Bai, go take a look." Before confirming the silver-armored monster was dead, Lin Huang remained aware. Bai immediately jumped into the hole and glided down to the monster at the bottom of the hole. After observing the monster for a while, he nodded to Lin Huang, signaling that the coast was clear. Lin Huang then jumped into the hole and started to observe the silver-armored monster. He noticed that its chest was severely injured and it should have died from that hit. Although he had confirmed that the monster was not moving, Lin Huang was still worried as the monster just seemed too strong. "Bai, tie up its wings and hands." Four Blood Spirit wings grew on Bais back and instantly transformed into four whips, tying the silver-armored monsters wings and hands. Meanwhile, Lin Huang took out a Provisional Transformation Card as he looked at the remaining Life Power in his body. "I didnt want to waste a transformation card but I need this now as I dont have sufficient Life Power to kill it." As Bai watched, Lin Huang crushed the transformation card and transformed into Bai. He did not only have white hair but similar features as well. After Lin Huang transformed himself into Bai, he could feel that his Life Power was finally full again. While in his transformed body, he could still kill monsters to obtain their Life Seed. He had confirmed this when he killed the Purple Dressed Demon half a year ago. He was unwilling to use a transformation card this time as he was sure that he was able to kill the silver-armored monster with his own strength, there was no need to waste one transformation card at all. However, he had inserted a total of four wheels of Life Power into Worldly Purification in order to break through the defense and since he had used up all of his Life Power, he had no more left to kill the silver-armored monster even though it was just lying there. After he transformed, Lin Huangs combat strength was upgraded to gold-level rank-3 like Bai. He could feel that he was much stronger than he was before and the gold-level rank-3 Life Power in his body was full. After taking a while to adapt to his body, Lin Huangs eyes soon turned red with the four Blood Spirit wings growing on his back while the Life Power was continuously inserted into the top right wing. Later on, the Blood Spirit wing transformed into blades and went at the silver-armored monsters badly injured chest with lightning speed. Before Lin Huang arrived in front of it, it seemed to sense the danger and woke up. It started struggling in an attempt to escape from Bai. However, it was too late and the blade pierced into its chest and through its back. The silver-armored monster stopped struggling and Lin Huang then heard two notifications from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you have obtained an Epic Monster Card - Nephilic Judge!" "You are currently in a unique mode; the transformation will be lifted automatically." Before Lin Huang got to look at his new card, white Life Power came out of the Nephilic Judges body into Lin Huangs body. The Life Wheel in his body changed rapidly, the color was changing from a silver color to a majestic gold color. Rings were added to the nine Life Wheels that he had in his body. 10 circles, 11 circles It finally stopped when 12 columns of circles were formed and the silver Life Power had become golden. As the changes took place with his Life Wheels, Lin Huang could feel that his ability was also upgrading. As more Life Light was inserted, a golden seed fell from the Nephilic Judges body and into Lin Huangs Life Wheel. "New Life Seed detected. Would you like to transform the Life Seed into a card?" "Yes!" Lin Huang replied without hesitation. A few minutes later, the Life Light had stopped transferring into Lin Huangs body and the changes were finally stabilizing. He could feel he was more powerful now with the silver Life Power now completely golden. The 12 circles of Life Wheels in his body were shining with columns of gold. They were a symbol that he had achieved gold-level. As he snapped out of it, Lin Huang looked at the new epic Monster Card that he had just obtained. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Nephilic Judge" "Type of Monster: Half-angel" "Combat Level: Gold-Level Rank-3 (Complete)" "Skill 1: Spearheart" "Skill 2: Seraphic Speed" "Skill 3: Seraphic Wings" "Skill 4: Judgement Spear" "Skill 5: Lightning Control (Advance)" "Skill 6: Elemental Transformation (Lightning)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Remarks: Monster skills have yet to be fully discovered, two more skills are on the way" "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Spearheart: Enhance the understanding of spears; allowing one to achieve Spear Dao from within." "Seraphic Speed: Once activated the movement and attack speeds will have an explosive increase and the neural responses will be immensely increased." "Remarks: The skill is the result of a double upgrade of Rapid Speed." "Seraphic Wings: The passive six wings can be used for flying and as a weapon as well as a defensive shield." "Remarks: The wings can change modes up to a certain level." "Judgement Spear: An epic-level spear skill, a complete set of spear skills in fighting and defense." "Remarks: Two spear combat forms will be obtained in the next upgrade." "Lightning Control (Advance): Can use this skill to control the elemental force of lightning." "Elemental Transformation (Lightning): Can be used to transform the body into lightning." "Remark 1: After the transformation, the body will be immune to basic physical attacks." "Remark 2: If the physical attack contains any energy of a different kind; the two energies would collide, resulting in injuries." Lin Huang was doubtful after reading the description of the card, he turned around and looked at Bai next to him and asked Xiao Hei. "Xiao Hei, since Im now a gold-level, why didnt my epic-level cards also upgrade to holy fire-level following the upgrade of my combat strength? This seems to be the case for both the new gold-level rank-3 Nephilic Judge complete card that I just obtained along with Bai. Bloody aside, I thought that all the other cards with epic-level combat strength would be upgraded to at least the holy-fire level? "The usual combat strength of epic-level cards are holy fire-level or above. However, the upgrade of a level won''t automatically upgrade your Monster Cards as you would need to unseal those cards first. Since you''re now gold-level, you can look at the unsealing conditions on the back of your cards." Lin Huang immediately turned the card around and saw a golden lock in the middle of the card. He thought it was just decorative so he did not bothered to look any further. Now that Xiao Hei reminded him, he tapped on the golden lock. "This card is currently sealed, you''ll have to unseal the card to be able to upgrade it to the holy fire-level." "Unsealing Condition: Get the Nephilic Judge to complete one judgment!" "Description: Get the Nephilic Judge to kill a dark creature that is holy fire-level or above." "Remark 1: You can lead other summoning monsters to help with the kill but no other parties are allowed to help." "Remark 2: The assistants have to be lower than holy fire-level." "Itll have to kill a transcendent dark creature?" Lin Huang frowned as he read the terms. "Do these dark creatures mean demons, undead, and spirit type monsters?" "Demons, undead, and spirit type monsters All of them are dark creatures with negative energies." Xiao Hei explained. "Each monster has different unsealing conditions them, right?" Lin Huang asked directly without looking at Bai and the other monster cards. "Yes, the unsealing conditions for the cards are related to the monster itself." Xiao Hei answered with certainty. "Alright then, I''ll extract the skill first." Lin Huang wanted to settle this and then check on the Ghastly Clown as soon as he could. "Skill extraction activated Randomly picking a skill Skill has been chosen Congratulations, you''ve obtained - Lightning Control (Advance)." "Err, a skill to control the elements?" Lin Huang did not expect that he would obtain such a skill randomly. What he actually desired the most was Seraphic Speed. However, recalling the scene of the Nephilic Judge summoning the lightning, he had to admit that having the ability to control the elements was rather powerful. "Im not sure what I got for my Life Seed card" Lin Huang then looked at his Life Seed card. "Life Seed Card" "Life Seed Name: Seraphic Speed" "Rarity: Epic" "Type: Intensification" "Talent Effects: Once activated, the user''s movement and attack speed will have an explosive increase along with an immense improvement in neural responses." "Card Remarks: Not bad" Lin Huang was relieved as the Seraphic Speed Life Seed was the upgrade of Rapid Speed that he had wanted earlier. After confirming that there was no problem in the Life Seed that he obtained, he looked towards the lake. "I''m not sure how the Ghastly Clown is doing, lets go and check it out together." 262 The Ultimate Mutation After staring at the lake for a moment, Lin Huang said to Bloody that was hiding in his sleeve. "Bloody, I''ll recall you for now. If the Ghastly Clown really does break free and starts to attack me, I''ll need Tyrant and the rest to fight with me." Bloody came out of Lin Huangs sleeve and wrote on the writing board. "Try your best not to fight it if you can. Master, you can''t even begin to imagine the power of a triple mutated monster. the Ghastly Clown is very intelligent. If it evolves again, its intelligence would be even higher. Master, If it really did break free, perhaps you could try talking to it instead." "Sure, I understand." Lin Huang recalled it after patting its head. Lin Huang was slightly relieved after hearing what Bloody said. He thought if the Ghastly Clown really really did break free from the system, it might possibly kill him. Once a summoning monster breaks free from its Imperial Censor, its suppressed beastly instincts would usually take over and it would kill its Imperial Censor in an instant. However, what Bloody said reminded him that he was not a true Imperial Censor. The way he communicated with his summoning monsters were different from how Imperial Censors usually do. Moreover, since the Ghastly Clown itself had a high intelligence, he would try communicating with it instead of killing it. "Bai, follow me." Lin Huang turned around and said to Bai. He then jumped into the lake while Bai followed closely behind him. Soon, they arrived at the bottom of the lake. With doubts in his mind, Lin Huang entered the isolated area. Bai had been following behind him for safety purposes but Lin Huang decided to summon Tyrant, Charcoal and the Nephilic Judge he had just obtained to aid him as well. As he leveled to gold-level, the amount of monsters he could summon had been upgraded from four to five summoning monsters. Aside from the Ghastly Clown that had entered the area before them, all four of Lin Huang''s epic summoning monsters have been summoned with the exception of Bloody. Bloodys combat strength remained at silver-level rank-3 so he would not be able to join in the fight. In the space where aura was surpressed, Lin Huang was not worried that the dragonkin monster that he had would attract transcendent monsters. He summoned Charcoal which he had not summoned for a long time. Aside from his four epic summoning monsters, Lin Huang could sense there was a terrifying aura far away. "Its over there!" Lin Huang looked at the direction far away. "Charcoal, bring us there!" Lin Huang hopped onto the back of Charcoal and got Bai as well as Nephilic Judge to ride together with him. Although Charcoal was unwilling to do so, it swallowed its pride for Lin Huang. It flapped its wings and held onto Tyrant using its claws and flew ahead in the direction Lin Huang pointed at. Two to three minutes later, Charcoal landed next to a black sphere of energy. There was a terrifying aura that was coming out of the sphere. Lin Huang and his four summoning monsters knew that the Ghastly Clown was inside the sphere. However, he had no idea how this ball was formed. It could possibly be a cocoon that was formed automatically from evolution or it could be created by the Ghastly Clown using its psychic ability as a way to defend itself. The layer of darkness had blocked any way they had to take a peek. The cocoon-like sphere even blocked all methods of detections, nobody knew what was happening inside. Since Lin Huang and the rest could not break the cocoon, all they were able to do was to wait patiently. Time passed by in the isolated area. Lin Huang was anxious as he waited, every second was a struggle for him. On one hand, he was afraid that the Ghastly Clown might fail in its mutation and it would die if that happened. On the other hand, he was worried that it managed to level-up and break free from him. There was always a possibility that he could possibly lose the Ghastly Clown card. Soon, three days had passed. Lin Huang had never thought the mutation process could take this long as all the upgrades to his monsters were done using Advance Cards where the process was completed instantly, there was no need to go through this long and torturing process. On the third afternoon, Lin Huang could not take it anymore so he asked Xiao Hei. "Xiao Hei, it''s been three days. Are you sure the Ghastly Clown hasn''t failed its mutation and died inside?" "No, if its dead, the card would disappear automatically." "You keep asking questions that can be answered with common sense. I''m really starting to doubt your intelligence.." Lin Huang was speechless with Xiao Heis criticism. "Im just asking because I''m getting impatient from all this waiting. Why in the world are you so mean to me?" Lin Huang was unhappy as he did not put much thought when he asked that question. However, he had been looking at the unsealing conditions of his epic-level monsters while waiting these days. Bais unsealing condition was to find a Transcendent monster that was at least double mutated and suck its blood to the last drop. Tyrants unsealing condition was to find sufficient spiritual power in underground lava and soak in it for 12 days. Meanwhile, Charcoals unsealing condition was to eat nine pieces of dracaena. For Bloody, as its combat strength had not reached this level, its unsealing conditions was unavailable. As the sun was setting in the isolated area, Lin Huang heard a crack, the sound of something breaking. If the area was not extremely silent like it was, Lin Huang might not have been able to hear the crack. He was not the only one as Bai and the rest heard it too. All of them looked at the direction of the black cocoon. "The mutation must have completed!" Lin Huang looked at the black cocoon in anticipation. Monsters that went through three mutations were referred by humans as monsters who have gone through the ultimate mutation. The name was derived from the most powerful monsters that have appeared throughout the last 800 years which were at most a triple mutated monster. Nobody had yet to witness a mythical monster that has been through a quadruple mutation In reality, there were not many documentation about triple mutated monsters by humans. This applies to even Transcendent monsters as very few of them managed to complete the ultimate mutation. A long time ago, there was something called the Life Potential Theory where human scientists hypothesized that with each mutation, monsters exhausted a significant amount of life potential. It was something innate, given at birth and was difficult to obtain later on in their lives. Most monsters, Transcendent ones included, only managed to complete two mutations while many could not complete their third mutations as their life potential had been exhausted after the second mutation. Since the Ghastly Clown did not die from the mutation, it meant it had completed the ultimate mutation. As the black cocoon cracked, a hand came out of it. What surprised Lin Huang was, it was a humans palm that was crystal clear. It looked like it was a sculpture made of a unique material. Once the first hand appeared, the second followed. Two crystal clear palms pressed on the sides of the cocoon and tore it open. A huge hole was tore opened from the crack and a shadow came out of the black cocoon 263 The Supreme Overlord A young man that looked like a human walked out of the black cocoon. The man had a slender physique and was wearing a luxurious golden robe with a tall golden crown on his head. He had waist-length purple hair with beautiful eyes and a grin on his face that looked sinister. The only difference he had with a human was the golden mask he had on the left side of his face. Lin Huang was not sure if he was the Ghastly Clown because he looked completely different from it. "Ghastly?" Lin Huang called out to see if that was the Ghastly Clown. The man in golden robe lifted his head and looked at Lin Huang. He smirked as he looked at Lin Huang. "Ahh, arent you my old master?" What the man said proved that he was the Ghastly Clown. "You can speak now?" Lin Huang was surprised. "Of course, I''ve already completed the ultimate mutation. I can speak the human language." The man walked towards Lin Huang after he said that. "I must thank you for this. If you stopped me while my evolution was taking place earlier, I wouldn''t have completed the mutation." "Ghastly, since you''ve already completed your evolution, lets leave together." Lin Huang took Bloodys suggestion and tried to talk to the Ghastly Clown. "Leave with all of you? Master, arent you naive? Im not the clown you know from before. Please call me Supreme Overlord or Master Overlord!" The man in golden robe looked down on Lin Huang. "So are you saying that youre leaving Xiao Hei?" Lin Huang frowned as the mans attitude said it all. "Master, dont forget. You were the one who turned me into a card earlier. I''ve never wanted to be your summoning monster in the first place." The man in golden robe moved and arrived in front of Lin Huang. Bai and the rest attempted to come to Lin Huangs rescue but they were stopped by Lin Huang. The man smiled at them and stood less than 10 centimeters from Lin Huang while looking into his eyes. "Of course, there were many benefits to sealing me into a card as it allowed me to regain my life potential. That was how I managed to complete the ultimate mutation easily. Looking at my remaining life potential, I might possibly go through my fourth mutation in the future. If not for that, I would''ve killed you by now" "Its true that you could complete your fourth mutation in the future but have you thought if you follow me, I''d definitely give you the opportunity to go through your fourth or even fifth mutation?" Lin Huang attempted to lure him. The man was in a pickle as he listened to Lin Huangs suggestion. However, his expression returned to normal later on. "I admit that I desire more powerful abilities but the chance of completing the fourth mutation is just too slim. The relic that you have might be able to help me achieve a quintuple mutation and it could definitely suppress the triple mutated me. Theres a high possibility that I could complete the quadruple mutation on my own, why would I rely on a relic? Moreover, that would mean losing my freedom! No matter what, Im at a loss." "Xiao Heis ability would be stronger and stronger. Just because it can''t do certain things now, doesn''t mean that it won''t be able to do them in the future." Lin Huang frowned as the man was determined to leave. "Alright, stop wasting your time. You turning me into a card had brought me many disadvantages, but I''ll forgive you. The relic that you used to tie me down no longer works now!" As he spoke, the aura in his body was increasing at an alarming rate. Bai pulled Lin Huang away immediately while the rest of the monsters stood in front of Lin Huang. As the golden Life Power enveloped the mans body, black chains appeared on his body. "Break them all!" The man shouted and the black chains broke one by one. In less than one minute, the black chains on his body broke while the Ghastly Clown card in Lin Huangs body disappeared. "Since Im in a good mood, you better get lost with your pets." After breaking free from Xiao Hei, the mans attitude was getting more arrogant. Lin Huang was nothing to him now. Lin Huang frowned he did not want this to happen. However, even though this had happened and he did not want to fight the Supreme Overlord, there was no way that he could leave as he knew too much about Lin Huangs secrets. Moreover, a monster that had completed the ultimate mutation would have even more terrifying abilities once it got to the holy fire-level. If he did not kill the monster when it was still at gold-level rank-3, it would get even more difficult to kill it in the future. Once Lin Huang had decided what to do, a notification came from Xiao Hei. "You''ve encountered an incident, a Mission Card has been activated." "The mission as follows - Kill the Supreme Overlord to prevent the existence of the system being leaked. "Mission Time Limit: 24 hours" "Completion Reward: Legendary Supreme Overlord Card x1" "Remarks: No restrictions applied to the killing method." "I''ll get a complete Supreme Overlord card if I kill him?" Lin Huang was surprised when he saw the mission award. "You''ll receive a complete Monster Card. However, as the Supreme Overlord belongs to legendary-level beings which are out of your reach, it''ll be sealed at the moment and will be unsealed in the future automatically." Although the card would be sealed, it was better than nothing. Lin Huang did not own any legendary-level Monster Cards at the moment and did not expect Xiao Hei to give him such a mission. Perhaps Xiao Hei was afraid that Lin Huang would release the Supreme Overlord so it gave him a mission that he could never resist. "No restrictions to the killing method? Are you sure I can use any method as long as I kill him?" Lin Huang asked when he saw the last remark. "As the incident is unique this time, you''re allowed to use any method. As long as the kill is complete, the mission will be completed." Xiao Heis reply had confirmed that it wanted Lin Huang to kill the Supreme Overlord no matter what. "Alright, I understand now." Lin Huang did not plan to let it leave alive anyway. The conversation with Xiao Hei was completed in an instant. Lin Huang looked up at the Supreme Overlord and said, "Im sorry. Since you''ve made this decision, you''ve left me only one choice, which is to kill you!" "Oh? What with? With your pets?" The Supreme Overlord teased. "Thats right, I''d like to see how powerful an ultimate mutated monster is!" Lin Huang said and shouted. "Take him down!" His four epic-level monsters dashed towards Supreme Overlords direction in unison 264 Terrifying Ultimate Mutated Monster Although Bai, Tyrant and the rest of Lin Huang''s epic monsters did not level-up to the holy fire-level after he leveled-up to gold-level rank-1, their strength at gold-level rank-3s was now complete. One could achieve complete strength in gold when one fulfills the upgrade criteria in gold-level rank-3. Once that happens, the Life Power in the body would be compressed and pushed to its full potential, until the Life Power was the densest the body could withstand. Basically, after the Life Power of a gold-level rank-3 human was full, Life Power compression would take place. Most people would see their Life Power increase at least one-fold after the compression takes place. However, some people with unique physiques or those who practiced unique Life Skills could compress their Life Power even further. Some could even compress and gain three to four times more Life Power. As the density of Life Power was different, those with complete gold-level Life Power was much more powerful than an ordinary gold-level rank-3 hunter. On the Gold Hunter leaderboard, those who ranked on the top such as Yi Zheng were all people with complete gold-level Life Power. Although Bai, Tyrant and the rest had yet to arrive at holy fire-level, their abilities were much more powerful than before. As for the Supreme Overlord, it was affected by Lin Huangs level-up before it completed its evolution which caused it to have complete gold-level Life Power now. Bai, Tyrant and the rest did not have any advantages on combat strength against him. Theoretically, the four epic-level monsters with complete gold-level Life Power were considered to be quite powerful among transcendents as they could defeat their opponents easily. However, the opponent this time was a legendary monster that had completed its ultimate mutation. Bai, Tyrant, Charcoal and the Nephilic Judge that was yet to be named by Lin Huang dashed towards the Supreme Overlord. Surrounded by four monsters, the Supreme Overlord who was wearing a golden robe did not panic at all. Instead, it grinned as it wandered through the four monsters, chatting with Lin Huang as it did so. "My dear ex-master, I''ve got to say... You''ve made a bad decision. Im not the Ghastly Clown you know from before. All of you will die here if you fight me" "I''ve no idea how much your powers have upgraded from the ultimate mutation but one thing is for sure, your mouth has certainly gone through an immense upgrade." Lin Huang teased. "Dont worry, I''ll show you how much my ability had improved right this moment!" The Supreme Overlord shouted and clapped his hands in the air. The space distorted from the clap. Suddenly, the silver armor on the Nephilic Judge appeared as her purple spear collided with the Supreme Overlords palm. Not only was the spear unable to pierce through but she could feel a terrifying force coming through to her from the tip of her spear. The spear almost fell from her hand and she was pushed by a force that made her back off tens of meters backward like a speeding bullet. The Supreme Overlord did not show any expression as he pushed the Nephilic Judge away with his palm, looking like what he had done was nothing significant. He did not stop there, he clapped again and an invisible giant hand went towards Bai like a mountain falling from the sky. Seeing that, Bai used his four wings to defend immediately. His wings were transformed into a hemisphere-like shield, blocking the attack before him. Soon, the invisible hand landed on Bai''s giant shield. However, the wings merely shook a little from the attack. Just like the Nephilic Judge, Bai backed off faster than before and slammed into a mountain far away. After getting rid of Bai and the Nephilic Judge, the Supreme Overlord dashed and arrived before Tyrant at an instant. Tyrant landed a punch immediately but the Supreme Overlord did not even attempt to avoid the attack at all. Instead, it swung a punch like Tyrant did and his fist that was the size of an ordinary human fist collided with Tyrant. It felt like he tore the air apart. "Bang!" A loud thud exploded shaking the ground. The collision this time was like an explosion. Not only was the ground shaking, the sky shook too. The aftershock of the force brought forward a vigorous wind and Lin Huang who nearby blocked the wind with his hands in an attempt to stabilize his footing. However, the wind pushed him backward and he dragged his feet on the ground, creating long trails in the ground. The aftershock blew him 30 meters away before he finally managed to stabilize his footing. When he managed to look at the both of them, Tyrant was hundreds of meters away. Its right arm was out of shape from the punch by the Supreme Overlord. Meanwhile, the Supreme Overlord stood where he was, rubbing his right first with his left hand. "This guy has amazing strength and thick skin." It was unclear if the Supreme Overlord was complimenting or being sarcastic about Tyrant. After commenting, he neither looked nor chased after Tyrant. Instead, he looked at Charcoal who was in the air. He observed Charcoal for a moment before speaking. "Tsk tsk, dragonkin. I didnt expect you to obtain such a summoning monster. However, a young dragonkin means nothing to other monsters. Its just a supplement to them. Since I''ve completed my ultimate mutation, eating this double mutated monster won''t help much." As the Supreme Overlord spoke, he extended his hand and dashed towards Charcoal. Charcoal flapped its wings immediately in an attempt to escape but it was too late. Its throat was strangled by an invisible giant hand. It struggled but could not escape, and it seemed like it was being pinned down by a metal giant hand. It shot black dragonflame at the Supreme Overlord''s direction but it did not even hurt him in the least. It was blocked by a psychic shield layer he had put up. While holding onto Charcoal, the Supreme Overlord ignored the fact that it was still struggling and looked at Lin Huang. "See that? I have eight skills now but by using my psychic skill as well as my powerful close-quarter skills alone, I''ve managed to defeat your pets easily. This is the difference between an ultimate mutation and a second mutation! Your four pets are like ants that I could pinch to death easily." After recalling Charcoal, Lin Huang looked at the Supreme Overlord with a solemn expression. His immense strength had exceeded Lin Huangs imagination. Although it only had the combat strength of a complete gold-level, the Supreme Overlords ability could now kill a weak holy fire-level person. "What else do you have, use it now or you wont have a chance soon," The Supreme Overlord retracted his hand as he said this, his grin showing on the half of his face that was not covered by a mask. "Remember that you were the one who said those words. I won''t show you any mercy then!" Lin Huang recalled Bai, Tyrant and the Nephilic Judge before he took out... A golden card 265 Killing The Supreme Overlord Before fighting the Supreme Overlord, Lin Huang had confirmed with Xiao Hei that he could use any methods to kill. As long as he managed to kill, the mission would be considered to be accomplished and he would receive a complete Supreme Overlord card. Lin Huang had a couple of cards that would be able to kill the monster. He had one Small Destruction Card, Provisional Summoning Card and three One-Time Skill Cards. Once the Small Destruction Card was activated, all monsters that were below transcendent would be killed. Although the Supreme Overlord was an ultimate mutated monster, it was even more powerful than some transcendent monsters. However, using the Small Destruction Card, there was no way that it could not be killed. Meanwhile, the Provisional Summoning Card could summon a monster that was one level higher than the strongest summoning monster that he owned. All of his Monster Cards are now complete gold-level monsters which meant that he could summon monsters that were at most on the highest holy fire-level - the golden flame-level which was the same level Zhu Nian was at when Lin Huang met him last year. Once a monster of that level was summoned, the Supreme Overlord that was not even holy fire-level would definitely be killed. The last card would be One-Time Skill Card which allowed Lin Huang to copy any combat skill he witnessed. However, with his restricted authority, he could at most only copy skills that were holy fire-level. The golden card that Lin Huang was holding as a One-Time Skill Card. The skill that he copied was the 3,000 Strands of Worry skill that he got from the time when Zhu Nian was fighting the Ghastly Clown. Just when Lin Huang was ready to activate the card, the Supreme Overlord grinned as a palm-sized doll appeared in his hand. The dolls face and clothes looked exactly like Lin Huang and he realized that he could not move anymore. The Supreme Overlord held up the doll in his hand and showed Lin Huang. "This skill is Puppet - Control, this is not a new skill but a skill that evolved from Mask - Control. I can control nine dolls at the same time as long as the combat strength of the person isnt more than one level beyond mine. Its much more useful than Mask - Control." "Moreover, Puppet - Control doesnt only take over the body of the person, it can also wipe away ones memory. Unlike the old interrogation skill, this can remove the memory of the person and place it anywhere I desire, including my brain" "Im sorry, my ex-master. I wanted to let you go, but since Ive seen your dragonkin monster and many other double mutated pets, Im curious about your secrets. The relic that you used to seal me seems to be much more powerful than I expected. Let us find out more about you" Suddenly, a golden light came out of nowhere and pierced through the Supreme Overlords chest. It was followed by second, third and fourth Countless strands of golden light pierced the Supreme Overlords body. He tried very hard to avoid the attack but it was no use. The golden strands of light were like maggots that attacked him, so fast he could not escape. After 10 attacks, his body began to collapse. Just as he was losing his consciousness, he finally saw the source of the golden light. It was a semitransparent shadow of a middle-aged man. "Zhu Nian?!" The Supreme Overlord remembered the name clearly as he fought with the man in Daxi City when he was still the Ghastly Clown. However, the man was defeated by him in one hit. Lin Huang regained his freedom as the doll in his hand disappeared. "You have made a huge mistake. Youve only taken control of my body but not my consciousness. I only need my consciousness to communicate with Xiao Hei." Lin Huangs body was controlled by the Supreme Overlord earlier so he could not activate the card in his hand. However, he contacted Xiao Hei immediately and got it to activate the card while releasing the 3,000 Strands of Worry skill. The Supreme Overlords consciousness completely collapsed after Lin Huang spoke. The attack did not stop after he died, golden strands continued to penetrate his body. After his body disappeared, the attack finally ended. "Congratulations! Youve completed your mission and obtained a Legendary Monster Card - Supreme Overlord x1" "As your authority is currently restricted, the card is sealed temporarily and cant be used. Itll be unsealed when youve sufficient authority to use it." "Sigh, my first purple card just became grey" Looking at the purple card turning into a grey, stone-like color, Lin Huang could not even bother to look at the description of the card at the back. He then put away the card. However, he thought of something else. "Does that mean I dont have the monster skill Mask - Control anymore? Or is it now Puppet - Control?" "When the Supreme Overlord broke away from your control, all the monster skills related to it had disappeared. To retrieve the skills, youd have to unseal the card." Listening to Xiao Heis explanation, Lin Huang looked at his card immediately. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 16" "Combat strength: Gold-Level Rank-1" Talent: Superhuman Strength" "Life Seed 1: Sly Hands (Rare)" "Life Seed 2: Substitute (Epic)" "Life Seed 3: Sensing Circle (Rare)" "Life Seed 4: Seraphic Speed (Epic)" "Combat Skill 1: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 2: Wildfire Sword (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 3: Thunder Sting (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 4: Hundred Flowing Blades (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 5: Mountain Blade (Heavy Weapon Skill)" "Combat Skill 6: Fatal Tactics (Close Combat Skill)" "Combat Skill 7: Spectral Snowsteps (Body Movement)" "Combat Skill 8: Cloud Steps (Body Movement)" "Combat Skill 9: Thunder Steps (Body Movement)" "Monster Skill 1: Blood Spirit" "Monster Skill 2: Super Robust (Intermediate)" "Monster Skill 3: Kaleidoscope" "Monster Skill 4: Advanced Disguise" "Monster Skill 5: Immense Strength" "Monster Skill 6: Leech Pod" "Monster Skill 7: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 8: Blood Hunt (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 9: Thunder Control (Advance)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of summons: 5" "Remark: Passable" "Mask - Control is really gone now" Lin Huang frowned after looking at his card. "I dont really need Blood Hunt and Super Robust anymore, Ill either delete them when I have the time or to combine them with other skills. I even have one vacant spot for monster skill now" "Ghastly Clowns ultimate mutations aura did not leak out at all from this isolated area, this is the perfect place for the One-Eyed Sword Demon to carry out its second mutation. After the mutation is done, Ill extract a monster skill." Lin Huang took out the One-Eyed Sword Demon Monster Card and two Advance Cards immediately. "Xiao Hei, upgrade the One-Eyed Sword Demon with Advance Cards!" "The One-Eyed Sword Demon is a Rare Monster Card. A double upgrade to an epic card would require two Advance Cards. Are you sure youd like to complete the upgrade using two Advance Cards?" "Yes!" "Consuming Advance Cards x2, upgrading rare-level Monster Card One-Eyed Sword Demon Upgrade complete." "Congratulations, youve obtained an Epic Monster Card - Ruthless Sword Master" Lin Huang looked at the new epic-level Monster Card that he had just obtained. There was a monster in black armor on the card holding a black sword with black mist surrounding it. It looked like a human covered in metal armor, its only was like a red laser. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Ruthless Sword Master" "Combat Level: Gold-Level Rank-3 (Complete)" "Skill 1: Absolute Life" "Skill 2: Sword Steps" "Skill 3: Ruthless Sword" "Skill 4: Dark Sword Spirit" "Skill 5: Dark Shield" "Skill 6: Death Zone (Beginner)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Absolute Life: Powerful one-hit combat skill, exhaust all Life Power for one fatal hit. Monster will return to its card form after using this and won''t be available for summoning within the following 24 hours." "Sword Steps: An exclusive sword movement skill." "Ruthless Sword: Evolved from Killer Sword once it reached its maximum capabilities. Has high attack power." "Dark Sword Spirit: The contaminated sword spirit will regain its original ability and speed up all learning of sword skills and techniques extracted from all the killing and bloodshed." "Dark Shield: A defensive skill allowing the user to turn the area around its body into a dark protective zone, isolating attacks from the outside. As long as the attack strength of opponent is not more than 10 times of the users, the defensive layer would not break." "Death Zone (Beginner): Evolved from Sensing Circle, turning an area with a hundred meter radius into ones exclusive territory. The user does not have to move to attack a specific location. " "Extract skill." Lin Huang read and realized that most of the skills of this monster were sword skills. He was thinking if he would continue to train with his swords in the future if he was to obtain a sword skill. "Skill extraction activated Randomly choosing a skill Random selection completed Congratulations! You''ve received the Dark Shield skill." "A defensive ability? Although the one I wanted the most was Absolute Life, Im not lacking any attack skills. I guess its good that I now have a powerful defensive skill." Lin Huang was satisfied with Dark Shield and was relieved that he did not get the sword skill. Since he had yet to master all the gunfighting techniques, he did not have the time to train his sword skills yet. After upgrading the Ruthless Sword Master, Lin Huang was left with three Advance Cards but he did not plan to upgrade any other of his monsters. Now he was only left with the Alexandrian Eagle that was still rare-level. If he upgraded the Alexandrian Eagle as well, it would attract too much attention when he summoned it for transportation in the future. As for his other normal cards, they were not worth training so Lin Huang decided to put the Advance Cards aside. After putting away the Ruthless Sword Master card, Lin Huang summoned the Nephilic Judge again. She stood quietly in front of Lin Huang while waiting for his instructions. "You are more familiar with this area, bring me around" Lin Huang instructed. 266 The Divine Rock Just when Lin Huang was ready to make a move, he got a notification from Xiao Hei. "A Monster Card evolution that is related to a Life Seed has been detected, would you link to link the Life Seed Card to the related Monster Card?" "Whats the benefit of linking?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "After the linking is done, if rarity of the Monster Card is upgraded, the rarity of the related Life Seed would be upgraded automatically as well." Lin Huang thought about it. Within the four Life Seeds that he owned, only Sensing Circle was related to the One-Eyed Sword Demon as well as Seraphic Speed which he just obtained that was linked to the Nephilic Judge. The card evolution that Xiao Hei detected must be the Ruthless Sword Master that was evolved from One-eyed Sword Demon. "Are there any side-effects from linking?" Lin Huang asked as he was afraid that Xiao Hei would pull a prank on him. He was extremely careful when it comes to new functions. "There arent any side-effects. After the linking is done, the rarity of the Monster Card and Life Seed Card would remain the same and will be unaffected. If you want to, you can remove the link anytime." "Alright, link the Ruthless Sword Master and Nephilic Judge then." Lin Huang was relieved. "Linking of Monster Card - Nephilic Judge and Life Seed Card - Seraphic Seed complete!" "Linking of Monster Card - Ruthless Sword Master and Life Seed Card - Sensing Circle complete!" "Rarity of Life Seed Card - Sensing Circle and Monster Card - Ruthless Sword Master doesnt match, upgrading Life Seed Card - Sensing Circle" "Congratulations, your Life Seed - Sensing Circle (Rare) is now Micro Territory (Epic)" "Micro Territory (Epic): Turns an area with a hundred meter radius into ones exclusive territory. The user does not have to move to attack a specific location. Lin Huang was overjoyed when he saw the Life Seed talent that was evolved from Sensing Circle. "A territorial talent?!" Even to a transcendent, a territorial secret skill was extremely rare. It was a definitely something to celebrate when one obtained a territorial talent before arriving at transcendent. Lin Huang took out the blue Life Seed card and put it away after he took a thorough look. Meanwhile, the Nephilic Judge stood by his side waiting patiently. Although she was Lin Huangs summoning monster, she could not see the card that Lin Huang was holding. Seeing that Lin Huang was standing there, she waited patiently where she stood. Once Lin Huang snapped out of his thoughts, he nodded to the Nephilic Judge who was standing next to him. "Lets go!" Lin Huang had only looked around the isolated area at the bottom of the lake with Bloody earlier. With the Nephilic Judge, Lin Huang was not worried that his search of the Starlight Beast would be interrupted. He could finally explore the area. The first thing the Nephilic Judge did was to bring Lin Huang to the location where the giant black rock was. As the Starlight Beasts noticed Lin Huang, they prepared themselves to fight him but with just one instruction from the Nephilic Judge, all the Starlight Beasts backed off. Lin Huang began to observe the giant black rock closely. The giant black rock was more than 10 meters long the part that was visible above ground was more than 10 meters high. The bottom of the rock was buried deep in the ground and nobody knew how deep it was. Lin Huang wanted to take this rock away with him for research but he failed to put it away into his storage space. He attempted to lift it but it did not even budge. The rock felt odd to the touch, not feeling how a rock usually felt like. Instead, it felt like metal. After a couple of failed attempts, Lin Huang summoned his strongest monster Tyrant for help. Tyrants injured arm from his earlier battle was now completely healed. "Tyrant! See if you can get this rock out!" Lin Huang instructed Tyrant while pointing at the giant black rock. Tyrant wrapped both its arms around the rock and began to attempt to lift it. It used all the muscles that it had as veins bulged on its neck and forehead but the rock barely budged. Watching that, Lin Huang knew something was off about this rock. After recalling Tyrant, Lin Huang asked the Nephilic Judge. "Did you use this rock to complete your second mutation?" The Nephilic Judge nodded. "Does this rock only benefit the Starlight Beasts only or does it have the same effect on other monsters as well?" Lin Huang asked again. The Nephilic Judge shook her head. "Do you mean theres no effect or you dont know?" Lin Huang did not understand what she meant so he summoned Bloody to interpret. After communicating for a short while, Bloody began writing on the board. "This rock is the Divine Rock for spirit type monsters. The radiation is the source of energy that allows them to evolve. However, the evolution process is extremely slow as she took more than 100 years to complete her second mutation." "Thats really slow." Lin Huang frowned as he listened but soon, he thought of another question. "If she stays longer, would she manage to complete her third mutation?" Bloody communicated with the Nephilic Judge once more before writing on the board. "Yes she could but itll take more than 200 years. Only one Starlight Beast has managed to complete its third mutation decades ago and left, it had been staying in this space for more than 360 years. "If thats true, this rock is kind of useless It only works on spirit type monsters and itll take more than 300 years to cultivate a triple mutated monster" 300 years was not too long for spirit type monsters to evolve. However, for an Imperial Censor like Lin Huang, it was too long. "Xiao Hei, what do you think of this rock?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei after some thought. "This rock contains an unknown psychic energy force. Im restricted by your authority level right now so theres nothing I can do about the rock at the moment." "I cant bring this rock away with me for research and now even Xiao Hei cant do anything about it" Hearing what Xiao Hei said, Lin Huang could only leave the rock where it was at the moment. "Show me some other place then." As he instructed the Nephilic Judge, Bloody began to communicate with her and before long, it started writing on the board again. "This area is extremely vast. Shes been living here for hundreds of years and explored the entire area many times. Plants aside, there isnt anything special about this place." "If thats the case, never mind." Lin Huang did not doubt what the Nephilic Judge said at all. "I shall use this place as a location for my card upgrades temporarily then. If there are cards that need to go through a second mutation, Ill come here. As for this rock, Ill get Xiao Hei to help me as soon as my authority level is upgraded in the future. Since this area hasnt been discovered by anyone for hundreds of years, nobody will probably find out about this place within the foreseeable future..." Lin Huang thought to himself. He thought of what to do with the isolated area and the Divine Rock but since the entrance of the space was not restricted and there was no way to move the Divine Rock, he had to put his thoughts aside. "Lets go then." After recalling Bloody, Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and followed closely behind the Nephilic Judge. 267 The Three Elite Divisions After a series of ups and downs, Lin Huang had finally achieved his goal of his trip to Meteorite Desert. Not only he was leveled-up to gold-level, he had also obtained the Epic Monster Cards Nephilic Judge and Ruthless Sword Master as well as a sealed Legendary Monster Card - Supreme Overlord. Besides, he had also gotten the ruin key from the Saint members. He did not do anything with the key yet as once it was activated, he would be sent to the dimensional ruins directly. Be it the level of monsters in the ruins, the type of monsters or the location, all these information were unavailable to him. If he was sent to one that was filled with transcendent monsters or one that was outside Division7, he would be in great trouble. He planned to take some time to do his research and be well prepared before going for it. He gave up on the thought of leveling-up straight to gold-level rank-3 as he recalled Mr. Fu asking him to contact him as soon as he was done with his level-up so that he could arrange a training session for him. It had been less than 20 days since he arrived in Luoxi City. Although he had the excuse of having a unique physique that allowed him to train Army Attack Tactics to level-8, it was still unbelievable that he leveled up within 20 days. Moreover, Mr. Fu did not know that Lin Huang stayed in Luoxi City for a short while he had limited time to train his Life Skills. Lin Huang last registered with the Hunter Association six months ago. He had managed to level-up from someone who was not even iron-level to someone who was silver-level rank-1 which was a leap that spanned seven ranks. On average, he managed to level-up one rank every month. It was a terrifying speed. To regular people, the higher they went up in rank, the slower Life Power would fill up as the quality of Life Power would change every time one leveled-up as Life Power became denser. Filling up the columns would take more Life Crystals and subsequently more time would be taken as well. After some thoughts, Lin Huang decided not to increase his combat strength for now. He called Mr. Fu after removing his disguise. On the second ring, Mr. Fu picked up the call. It was noon and Mr. Fu was lying on a deck chair waving at Lin Huang. "My dear apprentice, have you leveled-up to gold-level?" "Ive already leveled-up for a few days now but Ive been settling some other things during these days." Lin Huang pushed forward the day he leveled-up on purpose so that he had a reasonable excuse for leveling to gold-level rank-2. "Was it successful?" Mr. Fu sat up and smiled. "You could call it successful I guess. There were some bumps on the way but I managed to solve them." Lin Huang nodded. "Thats great!" Sitting on the deck chair, Mr. Fu smiled as he looked at Lin Huang. "Are you calling me to ask about the training?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "What kind of training have you prepared for me?" Lin Huang was curious. "Have you heard of the ruins?" Mr. Fu asked. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard the question. He had just received a ruin key and now Mr. Fu was asking him about the ruins. Soon, he snapped out of this thought and nodded. "Yes Ive heard of it, the dimensional ruin is an isolated dimension created when a virtual eye is opened but is not completely closed by humans or possibly some other reasons. There are monsters and materials in the dimension and many major organizations use this place to train their members. Are you sending me to the dimensional ruins?" "About 10 days later, the Demon Slayer Legion of the Union Government military department would carry out a training for their reserve members. The location Division7 is going to is set in a grade-2 dimensional that had been discovered before. Im thinking of enrolling you in the training!" Mr. Fu proceeded to tell Lin Huang more about the training. "One of the elite divisions of the Union Government, the Demon Slayer Legion?!" Lin Huang had heard of the division before. Demon Slayers, Dragon Slayers, and Immortals were the three elite divisions of the Union Government. In the troops, the combat strength of the reserve members was at least gold-level rank-3 and there were many complete gold-level members as well. To be a regular member, one had to be at least holy fire-level. The three elite divisions were also the main guardians of the human safety zones. Throughout the hundreds of years they had existed, many had complained that the Union Government was not doing anything and all they did was to invest in the Hunter Association and Adventurer Paradise. However, many did not know that the Union Government spent most of their effort on keeping the place safe. The three elite divisions and other divisions of the army spent most of their days fighting monsters that attempt to invade humankind almost every day. Meanwhile, the management of the safety zones was handled by the Hunter Association, Adventurer Paradise and other organizations that fall under the Union Government. Not many people know that the Union Government carried major responsibilities in the safety zones. Lin Huang respected the three elite troops. Without them, the safety zones would not be able to be built one after the other and the human footholds we know of would not be as prosperous as they were today. "Isnt it weird if I just enroll like that?" Lin Huang was eager to join the training but he did not like the way that he was getting enrolled. "Dont worry about it, not only you are joining the training alone, many elite members of other organizations would be joining as well. This training is one of the ways members of different organizations get to know each other. Many of them wanted to show off the newbies that they have taken under their wing and trained" Mr. Fu smiled and explained. "If thats the case, the organizations that took part in the training would not be the only ones meeting the newbies but others, including underworld organizations as well?" Lin Huang asked in concern. "That is right. Back in the day, if some of the participants were too outstanding, they might get assassinated by the underworld organizations. However, it hardly happen anymore as Division7 has been developing at an amazing speed, they wont even have the time to concern themselves with such matters." Mr. Fu thought Lin Huang s concern was unnecessary. Lin Huang frowned as he listened, he was hesitating if he should tell Mr. Fu about the Purple Crow. Mr. Fu soon noticed Lin Huangs hesitation. "You can tell me if theres anything that you want to say. Dont bother holding back. Its alright with me if you dont want to go." "Its not that I dont want to go. Its that if I do, I might be marked for death by the Purple Crow" Lin Huang then told Mr. Fu the story between him and the Purple Crow. Mr. Fu felt like the story was an unbelievable one. "You really are something, how did you manage to escape the Purple Crow training camp!" "Although I have wiped away all trails leading to my identity, if the Purple Crow sees my face, its quite likely that they would recognize me. By then, the Purple Crow would think of me as a deserter and it might affect my family as well." Lin Huang knew about the rules of the Purple Crows. "Dont worry about it, just join the training. Ill handle the Purple Crow and make sure they dont look for you anymore." Mr. Fu chuckled at Lin Huangs concern. "Really?!" Lin Huang did not expect Mr. Fu to make such a promise. "Dont worry, Ill keep my word once I give it to you." Mr. Fu nodded and smiled. 268 Sent Home After getting off the call with Mr. Fu, Lin Huang knew that he had 12 days before the training would officially begin. Mr. Fu was unsure of the contents of the training programme as it varied from year to year. However, most of the the training revolved around improving combat strength. "Since the training will only start 12 days later, with the additional half month that I spent in Luoxi City, nobody would suspect me if I level-up to gold-level rank-2." After making sure that it would not seem dodgy, Lin Huang went back on his earlier decision and decided to level-up to gold-level rank-2 before leaving Luoxi City. Summoning his fastest monster, the Nephilic Judge, Lin Huang spent two and a half days killing more than 60 gold-level monsters and finally, he was now a gold-level rank-2. He had filled the 11th circle of columns in all his gold-level Life Wheels. As the sun was setting on the third day, the Nephilic Judge killed the last monster. Lin Huang then took out the black dimensional relic that Mr. Fu gave him. After setting the location to his home, he walked through the relic. As he stepped in, Lin Huang was sent to the living room in his home in Winter City. It was the place where him and Mr. Fu left earlier. "Xin Er, Xiao Xuan, Im home!" As he arrived home, Lin Huang shouted upstairs. Before he could put on his house slippers, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan dashed downstairs. "Brother!" Lin Xin ran into Lin Huangs embrace. Although she was already in her graduating class, Lin Xin behaved like a kid. Meanwhile, Lin Xuan was shy as usual as he stood to a corner. After Lin Huang let Lin Xin go, he patted Lin Xuans head. "Brother, youre home early this time. Including today, youve only been gone for 20 days." Lin Xin giggled. "I thought youd be gone for more than a month." "I spent most of the time on transportation the last time, the actual business Im dealing would usually only take a couple of days." Lin Huang told the truth. "I came back early this time as master gave me a dimensional relic." "Then why did you only take 20 days this time?" Lin Xin raised an eyebrow. "I spent some time looking for a Life Seed monster." Lin Huang explained to her as he smiled. "Hmph, you werent actually looking since you still had time to play Gun Master with Lin Xuan." Lin Xin said while she sulked. Lin Huang smiled awkwardly, he did not bother to explain to her that he had asked Bloody to find the Life Seed monster for him. Bloodys parasitic abilities were too powerful and he did not want Lin Xin and Lin Xuan to know about this as it would give them no benefits. They might spill too much if they meet bad people. "I will be staying home for more than a week before I leave again." Lin Huang said helplessly. "You just got home and youre leaving after a week?" Lin Xin stared at Lin Huang. "Didnt you just kill the Life Seed monster?" "Master arranged a training session for me thatll start in nine days time." Lin Huang explained. "Cant you go after getting more rest?" "I cant do that Im not the only one wholl go through this training, there are many people joining me as well." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. Lin Xin gave in once Lin Huang explained. "Enough about me! Howve you guys been doing at home?" Lin Huang asked. "Xin Er, hows your homework going?" "Nothing special happened while you were gone." Lin Xin shook her head. "Everything is good at school. Its just that I cant adapt to them calling me by a different name. Im now in the top 10 of my class and Im aiming to get into the top 3 as my next goal!" "Keep going and get into a prestigious school!" Lin Huang patted Lin Xins head and looked at Lin Xuan. "How about you Xiao Xuan? Do you listen to your sister when I was away?" Lin Xuan nodded immediately. "Oh yeah. Although Lin Xuan cant really speak yet, he can already write." Lin Xin thought of that and told Lin Huang. "You can write now?" Lin Huang just recalled that he asked him to read more before leaving earlier. "Yeah, Ive no idea when he learned to write." Lin Xin stuck out her tongue. Lin Xuan took out a writing board and wrote on it with his finger. "I learnt it myself by looking at some documents on the Heart Network." Lin Huang was silently shocked at how fast Lin Xuan learned new things. "Have you watched all the Hunter Arena videos that I sent you?" "Yes, Ive also watched many live battles of Gold Hunters." Lin Xuan wrote on the writing board. "I thought all of them looked weak though... So I didnt join any of the battles." "Just watch, you dont have to join the battles as you might bring trouble to yourself." Lin Huang patted Lin Xuans shoulder. "If you need to train by fighting, you can always look for me. We can get a private room for training or I can even bring you to the wild zones to fight monsters." "Okay." Lin Xuan nodded. Lin Huang felt hungry after chatting with the both of them. He recalled that he had yet to have dinner. "Have you guys had your dinner?" "Yes we have, brother. Have you not?" Lin Xin asked immediately. "Theres nothing to eat at home, Ill order some take-away for you." "Its alright, I brought home some local specialties." Lin Huang took out all the local specialities and presents like the toys he bought from Luoxi City. He kept all the food in the refrigerator and some in his storage space when the refrigerator was full. The two kids were busy opening their presents and forgot about Lin Huangs dinner. He then took out a frozen cake and put half of it on the dining table while the other half went into the oven. Three minutes later, Lin Huang took out the cake from the oven and cut the two cakes into six servings. "I have cakes!" Lin Huang shouted for the two of them. "Theres cake?!" Lin Xin and Lin Xuan put down the presents and ran straight to the dining table. Lin Xin had loved cakes since she was a young girl while Lin Xuan only used to eat meat and eggs. Perhaps Since there were eggs in the cakes so he liked them as well. "This is the frozen cake that I brought back from Luoxi City. There are two ways to eat this cake! One is to eat it while its frozen while the other is to eat it hot from the oven. Lets try them out." After Lin Huang talked, he ate the cakes for dinner while Lin Xin and Lin Xuan ate them as dessert. "Its delicious!" As they put the cake into their mouths, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan commented at the same time. "Glad that you guys love it. Ive bought 30 cakes but Ive already ate five to six of them." Lin Huang knew that they would love the cake. He was not a dessert kind of guy and even he loved the cake. The both of them would definitely love it. After dinner, Lin Huang entered the Gun Master game with Lin Xuan to train his gunfighting techniques with him after cleaning his room 269 Lin Xuan Running Away From Home Since Lin Huang came home, he spent most of his time training his gunfighting techniques. However, he figured that since he would be joining the training soon, he would skip the intermediate techniques and get Lin Xuan to teach him the advanced techniques. One of them was Thunderstorm, a skill that was on the same level as other epic combat skills, requiring 3,000 skill card pieces. Lin Huang only managed to accumulate the complete set of card pieces after training for eight days. Aside from training his gunfighting techniques, Lin Huang also logged onto Hunter Arena and battled Lin Xuan twice in a private training ground which did not require a password. His sudden log-in after a long hiatus created much discussion. Although he did not enter the ring for a battle, it still became the most discussed news on the Hunter Arena. However, he had been so busy he did not even have the time to concern himself with all these things. Lin Xuan had improved leaps and bounds in the training ring. That being said, he had only mastered the basics of battle but had yet to learn the intricacies of actual combat. He was killed by Lin Huang in a single hit in the beginning but after two or three battles, it had become more difficult to kill him in the arena. The first training lasted less than two hours and he managed to stay alive in the ring with Lin Huang. Although he was still clumsy at times, he did not perform too bad for a rookie. The second training similarly lasted less than two hours and he managed to end the battle in a tie. Lin Xuan was only silver-level rank-3 while Lin Huang was gold-level rank-2. With Lin Huangs current ability, he could take on people who were below transcendent but Lin Xuan managed to end the battle in a tie against him. Lin Huang had only one comment on Lin Xuans performance - He fights like a monster that has went through the ultimate mutation. Apart from battling Lin Xuan in the arena, Lin Huang had been gathering more information about dracaena and the spiritual underground lava on the Heart Network and Hunter Info Network in preparation of upgrading Charcoal, Tyrant and the rest of his summoning monsters to the transcendent level. Comparing with the rest, the unsealing conditions terms of Bai and the Nephilic Judge were much easier because double mutated dark type transcendent monsters were not that hard to come across. The hardest unsealing condition would be the one for the Ruthless Sword Master as he would have to kill nine different sword-type transcendent monsters to be able to unseal the card. Most of the sword-type transcendent monsters had a high human-like intelligence coupled with powerful attacks. Even human transcendents would generally avoid conflict with such monsters. Lin Huang spent the past eight days productively. At 7 a.m. on the ninth day, his doorbell rang as he was making breakfast. Lin Huang opened the door and it was Mr. Fu. He looked at Lin Huang, stunned. "I must say... The speed you level-up at is terrifying." Mr. Fu said to Lin Huang in shock. "Not really, I took almost a month to level-up to gold-level." Lin Huang smiled as he explained. Mr. Fu raised an eyebrow without saying anything and walked into the house. "Where are the kids? I bought them presents." Mr. Fu said while bringing out the presents one by one. "Theyre upstairs, theyll be here in a while. Please take a seat, breakfast will be ready soon." Lin Huang got Mr. Fu a glass of juice and returned to the kitchen. Soon, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan came downstairs. They were overjoyed when they saw Mr. Fu as they remembered this old man that had brought them many gifts the last time he visited. Their eyes lit up when they saw the presents on the floor. "Brother, we have a guest." Lin Xin shouted. "I know, please entertain him for me, Ill be done soon." Lin Huang replied. "Ive bought these presents for you guys, take whatever you like." Mr. Fu chuckled and said to the both of them. Knowing that Mr. Fu was Lin Huangs master and that they had previously accepted presents from him before, they went into a frenzy and began picking out presents they liked. As they were picking out their presents, Mr. Fu kept his eyes on Lin Xuan. He squinted as he watched Lin Xuan pick out a black metal box from the pile of presents "Breakfast is ready. Come get some!" Lin Huang shouted from the kitchen. The both of them stopped picking out presents and washed their hands in the kitchen to get ready for breakfast. Meanwhile, Mr. Fu walked slowly to join them for breakfast. It was a simple breakfast with wholemeal bread, a turkey ham, two fried eggs, a glass of milk and some fruits. Lin Huang got the wholemeal bread from the same bakery in Luoxi City where he got the frozen cake. It was the second-best seller at the bakery, the texture and the taste were amazing. However, Lin Xuan did not eat the ham. Instead, he had a huge piece of grilled meat on his plate. After breakfast, Mr. Fu said to the both of them. "Grandpa is bringing your brother out for some time." The both of them nodded. Although they were unhappy that Lin Huang had to leave, they knew it was necessary for Lin Huang to finish his task. "Take good care of yourselves, please contact me on the Emperors Heart Ring if theres anything urgent. Dont panic if you cant reach me as I might be at a place without signal. You can always drop me a message and Ill call you guys when I see the message." Lin Huang patted both of their shoulders and briefed them. Mr. Fu took out a golden dimensional relic in the living room. Lin Huang followed closely behind him and stepped through the relic before waving goodbye at the both of them. Soon, the door closed and turned into a golden dust before fading away. Seeing Lin Huang leave, Lin Xin went to school unhappily. Meanwhile, Lin Xuan took out the palm-sized black box from his storage space after confirming that Lin Xin had left. It was the black metal box that Mr. Fu brought over. He did not know what it was but he could feel that there was something inside that attracted him. That was why he picked that box as his present. As he opened the box, there was a gold bead in it. It was the size of an adult thumb, With curiosity, Lin Xuan touched it with his hand. As his finger touched the bead, it started to melt into a ball of golden liquid. It looked like something dead had been resurrected. The golden liquid left the black box slowly and floated before Lin Xuan. After surrounding him in lightning speed, it entered his forehead at the speed of light. Lin Xuan stood where he was. Eventually, his eyes turned completely gold, covering even his iris. A golden glow shot out of his eyes like the sun as his feet left the ground slowly and floated in the air. He seemed to have surpassed the limits of gravity as he floated in the middle of the living room with his arms and legs stretched out. He seemed to fall into a trance. If not for his eyes that were shooting out golden beams of light, he would look like he had fallen asleep. The strange occurrence lasted for a couple of hours. It was only at around 12 noon that the golden glow faded after his body landed on the ground. "What happened to my body" Lin Xuan stood where he was and surprised as he looked at his hands. He ran to the mirror in the bathroom immediately. He was confused as he stared at the face of a child in the mirror. After observing for a moment, suddenly he thought of something. "Serial number 327 Lin Xuan Lin Huang Lin Xin" While scratching his head, Lin Xuan sat down on the couch in the living room. After being in silence for a while, he took out the writing board from his storage space and started writing. He placed the writing board on the coffee table, took off his Emperors Heart Ring and placed it next to the writing board. He then went to his wardrobe on the second floor and changed into a loose, gray robe. He walked downstairs slowly. As he arrived at the entrance, he turned around to look at the living room and dining hall. He smiled as he looked. "Lin Huang, Lin Xin, thank you for taking care of me. Unfortunately, I dont belong here" As he spoke, Lin Xuan left the house and flew into the sky like a bird. He disappeared into the sky in an instant 270 Yi Donglai At foothold No.7A1 was the White Capital. There was a gigantic building that was like a giant pillar stood tall into the sky. It was not only the tallest building in the White Capital, but the tallest building in Division7 as well. It was more than 3,800 meters tall. Almost everyone who visited White Capital for the first time would look at it whenever they were nearby, wanting to see just how tall the building was. However, nobody could get an answer to the question they were all wondering about - Where was the top of the building? Lin Huang stood at the plaza under the giant building and looked up to the sky. "The Union Governments headquarter is so cool!" Lin Huang could not help himself and exclaimed. His vision was almost covered by the clouds, he could not even see the top portion of the building. "Such a big office building... The Union Government sure is generous!" "They are, its a demigod-level relic after all." Mr. Fu smiled as he spoke. "Master, are you saying this office building is a" Lin Huang looked at Mr. Fu with his eyes wide opened. "Of course, who would spend so much effort building a gigantic ordinary building. If the underworld organizations were to invade this place, any holy fire-level Transcendent could destroy it easily. Would anyone want to rebuild it again and again?" Mr. Fu said like it was no big deal. Lin Huang thought about it and agreed. If it was a normal building, it would be destroyed easily. It would be troublesome if they had to rebuild it again and again after it was destroyed. "Division7 is not the only division that has this. The Union Government headquarters in Division4 to Division12 have similar demigod relics that are functional defensive relics. The same goes for other major organizations as everyone is afraid that outsiders would invade their home turf." Mr. Fu added. "If Division4 to Division12 have demigod relics... What about Division1 to Division3?" Lin Huang asked with an answer in his mind but he wanted to confirm with Mr. Fu. "They have god-level relics of course. Division1 to Division3 are the core zones of the human race. Those guys are richer than us." Mr. Fu sounded a little off when he said that. "Are Division1 to Division3 busy?" Lin Huang asked further. "Of course they are!" Mr. Fu nodded. "Do you see how busy the White Capital is?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "The White Capital is the busiest foothold with the biggest area in Division7, its 15 million square kilometers. However, any A-grade foothold in Division3 is at least 12 million square kilometers and many of them are probably around 18 million square kilometers. Division3 is the biggest A-grade foothold and is 28 million square kilometers. It''s almost twice the size of the White Capital." "On the matter of how busy it is, any A-grade foothold in Division3 is comparable to the White Capital or is probably even busier. You''ll find out when you get to Division3. Even a C-grade foothold there is more crowded than many of our B-grade footholds here. Their economic standard is on the next level." "Division3 has the weakest ability as a whole amongst the three core zones. Division1 and Division2 are way beyond Division3''s level. They''re simply too far apart." Mr. Fu said while sipping from his wine bottle. "Are the core zones really as crowded as this" Lin Huang could not imagine that. "The more crowded a place is, the more filthy it is. Dont ever assume that crowded place is better. Since were on the topic, I''m going to warn you not to trust people easily when you go to the core zones in the future." "Oh" Lin Huang did not understand why Mr. Fu gave him such warning but he nodded anyway. As they were chatting, there were more and more people on the plaza. Most of them came under different organizations with each group having 10 to 20 members while others even have hundreds of members. They were basically all gold-level rank-3 or a complete gold-level. Mr. Fu was the only one who brought one person and it seemed like Lin Huang was the only one there who was gold-level rank-2, making him stand out from the rest. It was clear that Mr. Fu had a high reputation as many transcendent leaders would come to him to chat but the conversations were very formal. Some of them asked about Lin Huang but Mr. Fu would always give them the same answer with a chuckle. "Hes my apprentice." Most of them were surprised when they heard this and they would look at Lin Huang. When it was past eight in the morning, a big group of people was sent to the plaza. The leader was an old man with a white hair bun. Beside him was Zhu Nian who Lin Huang already knew. As the old man and Zhu Nian arrived, many transcendent approached them. The old man seemed to have a high reputation as well and Zhu Nian had just been promoted to a senior executive officer of the Hunter Association so many came to greet him along with the old man he was with. "Is the old man a senior executive officer of the Hunter Association?" Lin Huang did not know Old Li but he knew about Zhu Nian after reading the news of him being promoted to a senior executive officer. However, it was the old man who led the team instead of Zhu Nian. "Yes, his name is Li Yunlong. Hes the most senior among all the executive officers in Division7''s Hunter Association. Some of the elders even have to give way to him." "If he''s Li Yunlong Im Chu Yunfei" Lin Huang felt speechless when he heard the name. "Is he more powerful than Zhu Nian?" Lin Huang snapped out of this thoughts and asked. He had seen Zhu Nians ability before he achieved immortal-level so he had a direct understanding. "Much more powerful!" Mr. Fu glared at Lin Huang when he heard the question. "The level above holy fire-level would be immortal-level. Immortals would need monster souls to light up their Life Lamp. Every Life Lamp signifies one upgrade. Zhu Nian had only lit up his first Life Lamp while Li Yunlong had nine Life Lamps lit up. He''s close to his breakthrough anytime soon! Why do you think he has the highest authority among all? Dont look at how skinny he is. If all the senior executive officers in Division7 were to fight him all at once, they might actually lose." "Oh really? He''s so powerful" Lin Huang did not expect this skinny old man to be so powerful. Just as they were talking about Li Yunlong, he looked at Mr. Fus direction. He excused himself from the rest and walked to Mr. Fu and Lin Huang immediately. Seeing that, Zhu Nian briefed the young men behind him and followed closely behind him. "Mr. Fu." The both of them greeted Mr. Fu. "Xiao Li, you seem to have improved. It seems like youre not far away from your breakthrough." Mr. Fu said to Li Yunlong. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard Mr. Fu calling him Xiao Li. "Thank you Mr. Fu, I''m working towards it." Li Yunlong did not seem to be angry when Mr. Fu calling him Xiao Li. Lin Huang looked at his own master in shock as he did not know that Mr. Fu was so respectable. "Youre not bad too, boy. I''ve read about you a few days back. You''re are now a senior executive officer." Mr. Fu patted Zhu Nians arm. With his height, it was difficult for him to reach Zhu Nians shoulder. "Im honored. Im quite slow so I must thank you for your advice. It helped me achieve what I have today." Zhu Nian was humble. While the three of them were talking, Lin Huang listened without interrupting. However, Li Yunlong kept looking at Lin Huang as they spoke. He could not help himself any longer, so he asked, "Mr. Fu, this Lin Huang caused a scene at the Hunter Association. I was shocked when I found out that he was Sword Genius in the Hunter Arena." "This kid is Sword Genius?" Zhu Nian raised an eyebrow while checking Lin Huang out. He seemed like he was trying to figure out what was so special about him. As a member of the Hunter Association, although he had been busy before he was promoted to a senior executive officer, he did not miss the news of someone achieving a 90-win streak in the Hunter Arena. "Heh. Dont even think about it. Hes my apprentice." Mr. Fu admitted to Lin Huangs identity. "You are officially taking in an apprentice?" Zhu Nian was shocked. "Its me who did not take a good look. I passed him over during the first review" Old Li said and looked at Lin Huang. "Its your fault that you didnt show us your true ability" "If you didnt underestimate him, how would I get him? The unnoticed talent didnt go unnoticed after all." Mr. Fu laughed. Lin Huang finally understand that before Mr. Fu accepted him as his apprentice, his intensive training review was declined by Old Li who was standing in front of him. As they chatted, the people from the Union Government finally arrived. The most attractive team was the one wearing a dark-green, military uniform with 1,000 members. There was a black logo on the left side of their uniform - a demons head that looked like it just got chopped off. There was a sword with a pool of black blood at the bottom of the head, making the gory image look realistic. Lin Huang recognized in an instant that it was the logo of the Demon Slayer Legion. He looked at them and noticed someone familiar. "Yi Yeyu?! She''s in the Demon Slayer Legion?" Lin Huang did not say it out loud but Mr. Fu noticed his shocked expression. "Whats wrong?" "Nothing, I saw a friend." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. Seeing the people of the Union Government arrive, Old Li and Zhu Nian excused themselves and returned to their team. There were three leaders and an old man with white hair led them on. He looked exuberant with a straight posture. He wore a white suit with a white cloak on top that had Demon Slayer written on it. The two people beside him wore black uniforms with a red Demon Slayer logo on the left. They wore the same white cloak that had Demon Slayer written on it as well. "Why does this old man in white look so familiar?" Lin Huang frowned. Soon, he figured that the old man looked a little bit like Yi Zheng. Meanwhile, the old man in white walked to the stage in front of the Union Government headquarters alone and looked at the people on the plaza. "Hello, everyone. I see many old faces here but I guess not many young people know my identity. I shall introduce myself then. My name is Yi Donglai, the founder of the Demon Slayer Legion in Division7. I''m also the first general of this army"Chu Yunfei is the name of a Chinese acto 271 Training Rewards If this were to happen in the past, Lin Huang would not know who Yi Donglai was. However, knowing that the Demon Slayer Legion would be leading the training, he had done his research on the three elite divisions and got to know about Yi Donglai. The Demon Slayer Legion was the first elite division that was founded in Division7 by Yi Donglai himself. Although the other divisions, the Dragon Slayer Legion and Immortal Legion were not founded all by him, he was still one of the co-founders. He was considered a legend and was now the leader of Division7s army. Once Lin Huang did his research on Yi Donglai, he found out who Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu really were. He finally understood how Yi Yeyu appeared in the Demon Slayer Legion''s ranks. Looking at their family''s ranks, Yi Donglai was Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyus great grandfather. "That means Yi Yeyu is a Gold Hunter and is also a member of the Union Governments Demon Slayer Legion" Lin Huang finally knew about Yi Yeyus double identities. Many members of the Union Government, Adventurer Organization and other organizations who had a close relationship with the Hunter Association would have hunter licenses from the association. They would basically receive the license once they passed the assessment. Aside from being strict to their core members, the Hunter Association did not prohibit other organizations from obtaining their hunter license from them. However, the most they could get would be a Gold Hunter license as any license authorization beyond that would not be available to the public. While Lin Huang was deep in thought, Yi Donglai had finished his introduction and got down to business. "This training is similar to what we in the Demon Slayer Legion endure yearly. The only difference this training has with the one a few years back is that this time, it''ll be an open training with other young members from organizations invited. I hope everyone can encourage each other and fight together in a fair manner to progress further as one unit" "The assessment will take 30 days. I won''t be revealing the content of assessment now but the location it''ll be held at will be at a grade-2 dimensional ruin, the Volcanic Hell." Yi Donglai stopped speaking and looked at the people who were present. Many of the leaders were stunned. "My dear apprentices, it seems like this is a hard one." Mr. Fu said to Lin Huang after hearing the name of the dimensional ruin chosen. Before Lin Huang could ask Mr. Fu why he said that, Yi Donglai began speaking again. "I hope everyone understands what a grade-2 dimensional ruin would entail. The dimensional ruin will be infested with holy fire-level monsters. Perhaps not many people know about this Volcanic Hell." "The Volcanic Hell is a dimensional ruin with many volcanoes. The environment is harsh, barren and has no resources what-so-ever. The temperature of this particular dimensional ruin goes above 60 degree Celsius all year long. At times, it''ll go above 80 degree Celsius at its peak and ordinary people won''t be able to survive there. Moreover, the volcanoes around the ruins would go off at any moment. Your feet will be on volcanic rocks that contain molten lava beneath. If you happen to step on soft ground, you may just fall into the lava." "Fire monsters aside, there are many undead and spirit type monsters. They''ve adapted to these environments much better than we humans have. Once there''s a conflict, they''ll have the geological advantage" As Lin Huang listened to Yi Donglai speak, he began researching on the Volcanic Hell dimensional ruin on the Hunter Info Network. Soon, he found the map, the monster distribution graphs and documents containing the types of monster. He downloaded all of them as the Emperors Heart Ring and Heart Network could not be used once he entered the dimensional ruin. He did not seem to be the only one as many started researching on the Volcanic Hell as well. "This training will be using the point accumulation system. I wont be revealing how the system works but those who are ranked in the top 10 from whatever organization would receive a reward. Those ranked from No.4 to No.10 will receive a Life Power compression elixir. Those who are ranked No.2 and No.3 will receive a grade-3 defensive or weapon relic. For the top-ranked participant, he or she would receive a pet monster egg that contains a phoenix-type monster" Their eyes lit up when they heard the rewards for the top 10 participants. The Life Power compression elixir was a unique elixir that could help compress Life Power in order to accelerate the speed of getting from gold-level rank-3 to complete gold-level. One bottle of elixir could shave off the compression time taken by one month. Such an elixir would cost over 1,000 Life Crystals and nobody would usually spend this kind of money just to compress their Life Power as most would rather spend their time instead. Meanwhile, a grade-3 relic would cost at least 4,000 Life Crystals and it could be activated after one became transcendent. It was a very practical reward. The phoenix-type pet monster egg was the reward every participant was eyeing. The pet monster egg alone was something rare, let alone one that contained a pheonix-type monster. Not many monsters laid eggs at the moment of death. There were at least 200,000 different monsters in the monster encyclopedia but only around 100 of them could lay eggs. That was less than 0.1% as the probability was extremely low. Aside from Imperial Censors, most people would have to use monster taming tokens if they wanted to control their summoning monster. Not many people owned a pet monster. Compared to monsters that require a monster taming token, a pet monster was similar to an Imperial Censor''s monster. They could come to terms with humans and stay in the human world for longer periods of time. Meanwhile, summoning monsters that require monster summoning tokens are restricted by time and distance. If the monster exceeds the summoning time and distance limit, the monster must be recalled immediately or it would break free from the tokens control. Of course, there are disadvantages to owning a pet monster as well. Compared to an Imperial Censor''s summoning monster, every pet monster will be born as a larva when they emerge from the pet monster egg. They required a significant amount of time to reach adulthood and if they were left to grow on their own, they would need anywhere from a couple of years to even hundreds of years to reach adulthood. One way to accelerate their growth was by using massive amounts of resources. However, the thousands of participants here came from rich family and have great abilities. Growing a pet monster larva would not be a problem to them at all. That was the reason why many people were eyeing the pet monster egg. Lin Huang was not interested in regular pet monster eggs. However, the one that contained a phoenix-type monster was a whole different story. "Xiao Hei, if I was to come to terms with the pet monster larva, could I turn it into a Monster Card?" "As long as you have an agreement with it. It can be turned into a Monster Card." "That means if I do manage to obtain this phoenix-type pet monster, I''d be able to use Advance Cards on it." After clearing his doubts, Lin Huang was determined to get to No.1. "I''ve said everything I need to say. There''ll be someone to explain the exact rules of the training when you arrive at the dimensional ruins. I''ll open the entrance now, please enter in order" Yi Donghai took out a palm-sized ruin key and inserted Life Power into it. Soon, the ruin key shot out and transformed itself into a dimensional portal that looked like a black whirlpool. "Mr. Fu, since youre the most senior one here, your apprentice will go first." Yi Donglai looked at Mr. Fu and Lin Huang. "Me?" Lin Huang was shocked. "Go on then." Mr. Fu patted Lin Huangs shoulder and nodded. Under the gaze of thousands of people, Lin Huang walked fast into the black whirlpool 272 An Old Friend As Lin Huang walked out from the crowd, many of them began to check him out. The man that everyone was gawking at was a young man not more than 16 years of age who was about 1.7 meters tall. He had black, fluffy hair and bright eyes. His features were pleasant and he looked harmless. "Is this Mr. Fus apprentice? He doesnt look like anyone special and hes only gold-level rank-2" People began to discuss among themselves and a group of men was especially puzzled. Most of them came from powerful families and they knew that Mr. Fu used to work for the Union Government - after all, they have heard of his legendary stories. In the crowd, there were two people who had the biggest surprise of their lives. One of them was the head examiner of the Reserve Hunter assessment, Yi Yeyu who Lin Huang had met 10 months ago. The other was Li Lang who had earlier went to Lin Huang to investigate damages to his house when a vampire invaded his house 11 months ago. Lin Huang was not even iron-level when the both of them had first met him. Within the span of one year, Lin Huang managed to emerge as a gold-level rank-2. His speed shocked the both of them, especially Yi Yeyu because she had practically watched him grow up and she even knew about him killing iron-level and bronze-level Life Seed monsters. She did not expect to see him again at such a place. However, Lin Huang did not know about all these. While he noticed Yi Yeyu in the Demon Slayer Legion, he was oblivious to Li Lang in the Hunter Association''s team. As everyone watched, Lin Huang calmed himself down while walking into the black whirlpool The image before him changed as he stepped in. Soon, he was sent to another place. There was a pungent sulfuric stench surrounding the air. He looked at the burnt ground with a couple of volcanoes, smoke twisting out above them. "Welcome to the Volcanic Hell, young man," a voice nearby greeted him. Lin Huang lifted his head to look at the sky. It was a man in a black Demon Slayer Legion uniform floating in the air who had uttered those words. The man had short golden hair with a pair of gold-framed glasses. His long, narrow eyes looked like they were closed. Although he seemed like a nice man, Lin Huang could sense a dangerous aura coming from him. He put his guard up instinctively. The man descended from the air and smiled oddly at Lin Huang. "Dont worry, young man. I am your examiner for the first round of training." "Your ability to sense is extraordinary." "Thanks for your compliment." Lin Huang did not intend to explain any further. Just as he claimed, the man standing in front of Lin Huang was the examiner for the training. As the Union Government owned the ruin keys, that meant trespassers were forbidden here. This also meant that the unique aura that emanated from the Demon Slayer Legion uniform could not be fake. Seeing that the man could float in the air, it was clear that he was a Transcendent. Judging from his combat strength, it made sense that he was the examiner. After coming out with this analysis, Lin Huang was slightly relieved. He did not ask about the rules of the training as all the participants had yet to arrive and the examiner would not bother explaining the rules to him one-on-one. He stepped aside while waiting for the rest to arrive patiently. Seeing that Lin Huang did not bother to talk to him, the examiner with the golden hair rubbed his nose. Soon, the participants started coming in, alleviating the awkward situation. The second batch of participants that were sent in were members of the Hunter Association. There were a total of 300 of them. As they arrived, the quiet ruins suddenly became crowded. Many of them had not dared to speak when they were at the plaza as there were many seniors there. Without the supervision of seniors now, they started talking to each other. Seeing everyone chatting with each other, someone approached Lin Huang as if he was getting a closer look at someone he recognized. "Li Lang?!" Lin Huang recognized him immediately as he had not changed one bit. "Are you really Lin Huang?!" Li Lang was unsure earlier but upon hearing Lin Huang call out his name, he was quite certain now. "I didnt expect to see you here." Lin Huang smiled. If not for Li Lang giving him the Life Crystals earlier, he might not have been able to pass the Reserve Member assessment. "I should be the one saying that. You werent even an iron-level when I met you the last time. You''ve grown so much in less than a year!" Li Lang exclaimed. He managed to level-up from silver-level rank-3 to complete gold-level in 11 months. His progress considered fast but Lin Huangs speed was even more impressive. "Thats true" Lin Huang was speechless. It was June when he had arrived in this world and it was now May in his second year; it had not even been a year since his arrival. His improvement was unbelievable. "We havent seen each other for almost a year now and youve grown taller!" Li Lang laughed. He remembered Lin Huang being only 1.6 meters when they last met, a whole head shorter than him. Li Lang had only grown two to three centimeters taller within a year but Lin Huang was now 1.73 meters. Lin Huang smiled helplessly when he heard such a comment that was usually made by the old folks. However, he was not concerned about his height because he had just turned 16. His body would hit puberty in a couple of years and with the nutrients in the food provided in this year, it should be an easy feat for him to grow 10 centimeters within two years. "Although youve made some terrifying improvements, you are only a gold-level rank-2 after all. Your combat strength must be at the bottom of the food chain with these thousands of people here. Let me know if you need help with the training." Li Lang patted his shoulder as though he was speaking to his junior. "Oh, sure," Lin Huang replied immediately but he was actually speechless. He did not think that Li Lang could even defeat him if they were to fight. As they chatted, more and more participants entered the ruins. After 10 minutes, the Demon Slayer Legion arrived at the dimensional ruins as the grand finale. All of the participants that had joined the training were in the ruins now. Seeing that the entrance to the dimensional ruin had closed, the examiner with the golden hair floated into the air again, attracting everyones attention. "Alright, kids, please be quiet and listen to me," the examiners voice echoed in the ruins. All of the participants turned silent. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Si Kongjian and I''ll be your examiner for the first round of training" 273 The Beginning - Training After a short self-introduction, Si Kongjian started talking about the content of the training. "The objective of the first round of training is to train your stamina and tolerance. Its simple. All I need you to do is to run a couple of rounds with me." Everybody looked at each other as nobody believed that the training was as simple as what Si Kongjian had just said. "Dont look at me with such doubt. Its really just running. However, the result of the first round will determine if you can enter the second round of training" Si Kongjian added when he saw the disbelief on their faces. Everyone present listened carefully as Si Kongjian was speaking. "The final destination will be the location of the second round of the training. If you cant catch up with me, then youll be sent away before the second round starts. Let you give you a friendly reminder that the ground in this ruins isnt solid, so its possible to fall into the lava if the ground breaks" Many of them were alert when they heard what Si Kongjian said. "The rule is simple and theres only one rule. Youre not allowed to use any sort of transportation including summoning monsters, flight weapons and relics, dimensional equipment and relics as well as all sorts of transportation. Those who cheat will be disqualified and blacklisted. Youll never be able to participate in any activities in the Union Government!" Some of them who intended to cheat gave up their tricks when they heard the severity of the punishment. "In a nutshell, all you have to do is to follow behind me until I say the training is done." Si Kongjian looked seriously at the people there. "Is everyone clear?" All of them nodded and replied, "Yes!" "Please ask any questions you may have now." Si Kongjian looked at them again. Lin Huang was the first one who raised his hand. "Go ahead." Si Kongjian nodded at Lin Huang. "I would like to know how many rounds of training are there. How long round of training is and after the training is done, are we allowed to stay in the ruins?" Lin Huang asked all three questions at once. "I can only answer a portion of your questions," Si Kongjian said, "There are a total of three rounds in the training. The first round will take three days while the other two will depend on the examiners. About staying in the ruins, I cant answer that question." Lin Huang nodded. He was not satisfied with the answer but Si Kongjian had already done his best. "How does the point system work? We heard Mr. Yi saying that this training goes by a point system earlier," somebody asked. "I thought I would only tell you about that when the assessment started, but since you asked, I shall tell you now then." Si Kongjian started to explain, "As the assessment ends, those who are late for less than 3 minutes after me will obtain 1000 points. "Those who are late for 3 to 10 minutes will obtain 500 points. "After 10 to 30 minutes, youll obtain 300 points. "After 30 minutes to an hour, youll get 200 points. "Those who are late for one to three hours will obtain 100 points. "If youre late for three to five hours, youll obtain 50 points. "Those who are late for five to 24 hours will not get any points but will still pass this rounds assessment. "And those who are late for more than 24 hours will be considered as having no result and therefore, disqualified." Hearing the how the point system worked, many of them realized that the points were difficult to get. Otherwise, the highest points for the first round of training would not be merely 1000 points. Some of them asked a couple of questions on the point system while Si Kongjian gave vague answers which made it impossible to determine what the accumulated points could be used for in the next two rounds. Seeing that nobody was raising their hands anymore, Si Kongjian was ready to start the training. Suddenly, he thought of something else. "Oh yeah, you guys should already know about this but just in case anybody isnt aware, I shall remind you. The communication and network functions on the Emperors Heart Ring wont be available in the ruins. Same goes for the maps and coordinates, they are not usable here. The only use of the ring is for you to store things and look at the time. "Thats all I have to say, there should be nothing else. Do any of you have any more questions?" Si Kongjian checked the time on his Emperors Heart Ring. Everybody shook their heads as they had basically asked everything that they wanted. "Alright then, its 9:12 a.m. now. The cut-off time for the first round of training will be at 9 a.m. three days later." Switching off the time, Si Kongjian descended from the sky. "The first round of training has officially started!" After he said that, Si Kongjian turned around and dashed away. Many of them followed him in an instant. "Quick, dont be left out!" Li Lang waved at Lin Huang. "You go first, dont bother about me." Lin Huang waved back. Li Lang thought about it and figured that Lin Huang might have his own strategy of preserving his strength as his combat strength was the lowest among everyone in the training. His body physique was not comparable to gold-level rank-3 and a complete gold-level. He nodded and left without him. Lin Huang sprinted and headed to where Yi Yeyu was. "Please excuse me, I would like to talk to my friend. You guys go ahead," Yi Yeyu said to the men and slowed down while waiting for Lin Huang to come to her. The men did not want to risk anything, so they ran quickly behind Si Kongjian immediately. "Not bad, you managed to level-up to gold-level in such short period of time. Youre now a gold-level rank-2" she checked him out as he ran towards her. "My luck was good." Lin Huang smiled. "Bullsh*t, save it for yourself." Although a portion of Yi Yeyus memories had been wiped away, she figured that there was something Lin Huang did that he did not tell anyone. As he managed to level-up from barely an iron-level to his current gold-level rank-2 within 11 months, that was 11 ranks that he surpassed, taking less than a month on average for every rank. Such speed was unusual. However, as his friend, Yi Yeyu knew that she should not ask him about his secret. "Has Bro Yi Zheng leveled up to Transcendent?" Lin Huang asked since Yi Zheng was already a complete gold-level 10 months ago. It was impossible and unnecessary that he still remained at gold-level. "He was already a Transcendent half a year ago," Yi Yeyu replied. "How about you? You should be a complete gold-level as well. Why havent you leveled up?" Lin Huang thought it was strange as Yi Yeyu was already a gold-level rank-3 10 months ago. No matter how much time the Life Power compression took, three to four months would be sufficient. Even for the less talented, it would not take them more than half a year. "I have been a complete gold-level since eight months ago. I have been dragging it as theres something wrong with my body. The Transcendent monster that my family wanted me to get doesnt suit me, so they have been looking for a monster that suits me. I heard that theres a Fire Phoenix in this ruins so I decided to join this training," Yi Yeyu explained. "So, that means we are free to roam around when the training ends?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, but my great-grandfather did not tell me the exact content of the training. He only told me to find a partner to kill the Fire Phoenix together whenever theres an opportunity." "So, the general of Union Government, Yi Donglai, is really your great-grandfather?" Lin Huangs eyes flew wide open. "Yes, but he''s retired a long time ago with the designation of a general. If not for me, he wouldn''t have shown himself this time." Yi Yeyu did not hide the fact as she knew that it would be useless to do so. "Ive got so much respect for you." Lin Huang gave her a thumbs up. "Oh yeah, do you need my help to kill the Fire Phoenix?" "You? Although your speed of leveling up is fast, forget about helping me. The Fire Phoenix is a double mutated Transcendent monster and it''s a phoenix-type monster. Its ability is similar to a sky dragon of the same level. My great-grandfather has arranged a couple of Demon Slayer Legion reserve members to help me, but Im not sure if we''d be 100% successful. Youd better not mess around with such things," Yi Yeyu shook her head and rejected Lin Huangs offer. She honestly thought that Lin Huang might be a burden to her. It would be already troublesome if she were to bring Lin Huang just for exposure but she did not even have the confidence to complete the task. It was a double mutated monster after all. Moreover, it was a phoenix-type Transcendent monster. "Alright then" Lin Huang knew he was being underestimated again. "Enough about me, lets talk about you. I only knew about you leveling up to bronze-level with Fatty a few months back and I forgot everything else that happened after that. You seemed busy so I didnt contact you." Yi Yeyu was curious about what Lin Huang had been doing for the past couple of months. "I was captured by the Purple Crow, but itd be ridiculous if you knew that!" Lin Huang thought to himself. "Nothing much, Im training mostly. I spent my time training my Life Skill and killing Life Seed monsters," Lin Huang lied. "I remember you were trained in Army Attack Tactics until level-6, am I right? You should be level-7 now, I guess?" Yi Yeyu remembered that he asked her about the Army Attack Tactics earlier and that he was already on level-6. "Im on level-8 now," Lin Huang told the truth this time. The card pieces for level-9 were too much; he needed 810,000 card pieces. Throughout the six months, Lin Huang allowed his Life Power to rotate by itself and he was hardly working on it at all. Until now, he had only accumulated 150,000 Army Attack Tactics card pieces and he was still far from his target of 810,000 card pieces. "Level-8?! You have such terrifying abilities!" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang in obvious envy. "No wonder you could level-up so fast" Lin Huang did not explain much about this as Yi Yeyus misunderstanding would save him the time and effort to. The both of them were the last two people in the training to leave and time passed by as they chatted 274 All Squinty Eyed People Are Monsters Si Kongjian looked like he was taking a stroll because every stride he took was more than 10 meters apart. The people behind him trailed him closely. Even Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu who were the last among everyone were less than 500 meters away from Si Kongjian. It was soon time for lunch. However, the examiner Si Kongjian did not seem like he was going to stop anytime soon, so many of them proceeded to follow him. Most of them had decided not to eat and have something good at night instead when they got to rest while some of them took out snacks from their storage space and started eating as they ran. Lin Huang was one of them who was snacking on the move. He opened a packet of dried meat and passed one to Yi Yeyu. She then waved her hand at him. "I shall eat at night. It feels weird to eat while I run." "Whats wrong with that? Nobody is going to watch anyway. What if he doesnt stop at night? Are you not going to eat as well?" Lin Huang asked with his eyebrows raised. "Even if he doesnt stop for dinner, wouldnt he stop for sleep at least? I''ll eat something before we sleep since its just going to be three days on the move," Yi Yeyu said, insisting on not eating. "What if he doesnt stop for sleep?" Lin Huang mumbled as he stuffed a piece of dried meat into his mouth. "He wouldnt be this ridiculous... I hope!" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang with her eyes wide open. Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders and passed her the packet of dried meat again. "You sure you dont want any?" "No, maybe I will eat some at night." Yi Yeyu turned her head away. "There wont be anything left later, let alone at night. Dont you know I''m hitting puberty now? I eat a lot," Lin Huang said in all seriousness. "Why would I want your snacks? I have my own." Yi Yeyu huffed. "Alright, then. Its up to you, its not I who is hungry anyway." Lin Huang put another slice of dried meat into his mouth. "Go away, I dont need your sympathy!" Yi Yeyu was not mad at what Lin Huang said but at the irritating expression on his face. Time passed by. Soon, it was past six in the evening and it was almost time for dinner. Finally, some of them realized that something was amiss as the examiner Si Kongjian did not seem to be stopping. The person who was running in front decided to ask, "Examiner, are we not stopping for a while to rest or to eat something?" "You can rest whenever you want, Im not forcing you to follow me," Si Kongjian replied. The person was shocked when he heard Si Kongjians reply while people nearby started to mumble among themselves. "Will he do the same to us at night when were supposed to sleep?" "Examiner, do we get to sleep at night?" "As I said, you can rest whenever you want as long as you manage to keep up with me. However, I will not rest," Si Kongjian replied. Shock rippled through the crowd when they heard what he said and they finally realized how tough the training was. Soon, the news was passed to the back and Yi Yeyus jaw dropped when she heard his reply. he then turned around and said in a deadly tone to Lin Huang, "Look at your big mouth has done!" "What does that have to do with me? I said theres such a possibility. Its the examiner who decided that." Lin Huangs arms were spread wide open as he feigned innocence. "Of course, I would want to sleep at night." "Three days and two nightsIt seems like well have to put up with two torturous nights," Yi Yeyu said helplessly. "Would you like to eat now?" Lin Huang took out another packet of dried meat. "I have my own." Yi Yeyu looked away again. Seeing Yi Yeyu take out her own snacks, Lin Huang put away the packet in his hand. "I think the first round of training wouldnt be as simple as not getting to sleep" Lin Huang mumbled which eating some dried vegetables. "What do you mean?" Yi Yeyu looked at him. "We are all at gold-level. Looking at the speed of the squinty-eyed examiner, it doesnt really exhaust much of our strength and Life Power. Even if we dont rest for three days and two nights, our bodies should be able to take it. If thats the only criteria of the training, the passing rate will be 100%. Therefore, I think therell be some other unknown challenges in this round of training," Lin Huang explained confidently as he munched on the dried vegetables. "Can you stop saying stuff like that!" Yi Yeyu glared angrily at Lin Huang. "Its not I who wants to jinx it. Squinty-eyed people are usually difficult." Lin Huang recalled a famous saying in an anime on Earth that went - All squinty-eyed people are monsters, which was the reason he had his guard up when he met the examiner. "Nonsense!" Yi Yeyu scoffed and did not care about Lin Huang while eating her snacks. The sun set in the ruins and night finally arrived. Seeing that the sky was dark, Si Kongjian who was leading the participants smirked and turned in another direction out of nowhere. Those who followed behind him turned with him without thinking twice. It was not even 8 p.m. and the sky was completely dark. Although all of them were at gold-level and their visions were not affected much, they still could not see as clearly as during the day. Si Kongjian proceeded to speed up and he brought all of them to an open flatland. Suddenly, a macho man from the crowd following him stepped into the ground and got half his leg stuck. As he was attempting to pull his leg out, his leg was covered by boiling lava. If not for the gold-level armor that he was wearing with the Life Power covering him, his right leg would have been destroyed. He rolled on the ground while using some of his equipment to get rid of the lava residue on his leg. The hair on his leg was all gone, making his whole limb bald. Many of the people who knew him saw and teased him, "Wow! Such a smooth leg youve got there!" "Go away!" the macho man shouted. Although there was gold-level armor protecting him and he managed to pull it out fast enough, there was a slight burn on his leg. He applied some elixir on it and changed into a new pair of pants as well as fresh shoes before starting to run again. However, some people ran into the same lava ground that he did later on. They suffered similar injuries like him, some even falling completely into the lava, havingtheir hair and eyebrows burnt off. If not for their gold-level bodies which were stronger than regular people, coupled with the protection of their gold-level armor and Life Power, many people would have died. Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu saw what was happening from far behind, so they were extra careful. Yi Yeyu accidentally stepped into the fragile ground but she did not step into the lava as she reacted quickly. "This is all your fault!" Yi Yeyu complained as she almost injured herself. "How could you blame me? Its the squinty-eyed mans fault." Lin Huang looked innocently at her. 275 The High Heel Inciden Lin Huang activated Boundless Vision and soon, he discovered the reason that caused the ground to collapse. The surface of the flatland was thinner than the ground that they walked on during the day, it was way thinner. Because of that, some of them who were heavier would easily cause the ground to collapse as they walked on it. The reason why Yi Yeyu had crushed the ground earlier was because she was wearing a pair of high heeled lady army boots, causing the force exerted on the ground by her heels to be stronger than people who were wearing ordinary footwear. After seeing Yi Yeyu crushed the ground for twice, Lin Huang then suggested, "I think it''ll be better for you to change to another pair of shoes. The heels of your shoes could even kill a person. It''s not strange at all that you could crush the ground." Yi Yeyu then stared at Lin Huang as she felt that Lin Huang had gloated over it. "The squinty-eyed guy did this on purpose. Bringing us to this place at night where the ground is thinner than where we were walking at earlier. We can''t see clearly at night and we''ll be easily tricked. Fortunately, the lava underneath the ground does not contain any spiritual power and we''re all wearing protective armor. We''ll only get burnt if we fall into the pool of lava for extended periods of time. It''ll not threaten our lives. Perhaps itll only consume a small portion of our Life Power" Lin Huang said as he ignored Yi Yeyu who was staring at him. "So you''re trying to say that he intends to deplete our Life Power?" As Yi Yeyu heard the last sentence, she immediately understood what Lin Huang was trying to say. "Yes, of course. Their Life Power will be used up if they are tricked several times. Since the Life Power consumption for movement skills is relatively low, if he didn''t have any other ways to deplete our Life Power, do you think that any of us will be eliminated just from running the duration of three days and two nights?" Lin Huang looked like he had expected this to happen. "Get changed into another pair of shoes. I''ll wait for you and we''ll catch up with them later." After remaining silent for a moment, although Yi Yeyu did not want to agree with Lin Huang, she had chosen to compromise. She stopped walking and took out a pair of running shoes from the storage space before she threw the pair of military boots away. Lin Huang stopped as well and waited for her to get her shoes changed. "Who asked you to wait for me? Can''t I catch up with you later?" Yi Yeyu scoffed. Lin Huang shrugged his shoulder and kept quiet. Soon, after Yi Yeyu had changed her shoes, a woman who wore a pair of high heels crashed into the ground as she ran ahead of them. As soon as she found out that something was wrong, she immediately stomped down hard on the ground with her other leg in an attempt to escape. Right this moment, Si Kongjian grinned. A hidden energy underneath the ground rose up. Right after the woman stomped on the ground, the entire area collapsed. The woman and the rest of them all fell into the pool of lava. The people behind them did not manage to escape and fell into the red lava as well. There were more than 1,800 of them and one-third of them experienced the lava bath. Right when they got up from the lava, their outfits and hair were all burnt by the high-temperature Life Power, creating a "beautiful" scene. The people who followed after them then laughed at them. They quickly covered their bodies with the protective armor so they would not be showing their naked bodies. However, many of them could not stop laughing at them as all of them had bald heads. They did not even have eyebrows. As they had to treat their wounds and put on their clothes, people who had fallen into the lava had to stay there, watching helplessly as those who were initially behind them overtook them. "See, high heels are trouble." Lin Huang raised an eyebrow and told Yi Yeyu. He did not notice that the squinty-eyed guy had secretly done something. He thought that the ground was not strong enough and the woman''s high heels had crushed it. Lin Huang was not the only one who thought that way as many others thought like that as well. While the bald men were treating their injuries, many of them stared at the woman in high heels with anger in their eyes. She could only take it quietly because like the others, she thought it was her fault as well. Yi Yeyu felt fortunate that she had changed into another pair of footwear earlier. Otherwise, if she was the one who had troubled the other participants, she would have had to look for a hole to hide in. However, she acted as if she did not hear what Lin Huang had said, turning her head the other way. They then ran through the rough terrain at night. Among 1,800 of them, at least 1,200 of them were tricked as the conditions of the crushed ground was in were unavoidable. However, Lin Huang walked like Si Kongjian, seemingly taking a leisurely stroll. It seemed like he did not bother where he should step at all. Yi Yeyu was curious as she noticed that Lin Huang''s steps were light. Neither cracks nor scratches were left on the ground as he stepped on it. "What kind of movement skill are you using?" Yi Yeyu asked after observing for a long while. "Spectral Snowsteps." "The name of the skill sounded very light. That''s why the ground wasn''t affected even after you''ve stepped on it." Yi Yeyu immediately understood the characteristics of the movement skill after listening to its name. "You can also use a light-weight movement skill. Why do you want to teleport?" Lin Huang found it strange. He could see that many of them had used teleportation instead of a movement like his and a small bunch even used speed-type movement skills. That being said, the light-weight movement skill he used was not used very often by others. "Of course! I know that it''s appropriate to use a light-weight movement skill here but... I don''t know how to use the skill." Yi Yeyu then told him the truth. "Light-weight movement skills were not as practical as speed-type movement skills like teleportation. That was why I didn''t spend much time practicing the skill." Lin Huang then understood the reason why there were less people using movement skills similar to his. Perhaps the majority of them had made the same decision as Yi Yeyu. Since everyone had limited strength and time, they would naturally look for skills that were more practical and powerful. Compared to speed-type movement skills and teleportation which were both rather useful in a battle, light-weight movement skills were less useful. In addition to that, after achieving the Transcendent-level, everyone would be able to fly. The effect of light-weight movement skills would be rendered useless. However, in this place, Lin Huang had an advantage over the others as he had mastered this form of movement skill. Soon, the first night passed. After running for more than 20 hours, they were sleep deprived in addition to their depleted Life Power after falling into the pool of lava. Everyone seemed less energetic than they were on the first day. It seemed like only Lin Huang and a few others remained unaffected. Lin Huang''s Army Attack Tactics was on level-8. Even if he was to use Spectral Snowsteps throughout the run, the Life Power consumed would have been easily replenished. 20 hours had passed and not even 10 columns of his Life Power were used. The people who had fallen into the lava would have used up at least 1,000 columns of their Life Power. In fact, using gold-level armor to defend against the lava would consume a larger amount of Life Power than defending against enemies in a battle. "Although they''re tired, it seems like it''s not going to a problem for them to continue for another two days" Lin Huang noticed their conditions and also knew that the squinty-eyed man would not let them pass the assessment so easily. "I wonder what the squinty-eyed examiner will do next" 276 The Evil Squinty Eyed Guy At noon, the scorching sun was hanging high in the air, causing the temperature of Volcano Hell that was already burning hot to skyrocket even further. As the sun shone, the bald men who did not even have eyebrows became even more obvious and their heads reflected dazzling colors. What made most people speechless was when the group of people was running, their body would bob up and down, resembling waves of bald heads. The rest of them including Lin Huang could not stop laughing as they saw the bald men. However, the group of people that got their hair burnt off did not feel happy at all and they glared at them. After running through the night for more than 20 hours, a large amount of Life Power had been depleted. In addition to the influence of the high temperatures, other than Lin Huang and a few of them that remained unaffected, most of them were fatigued. "All of you are weaker than I expected. It has only been one day and all of you are already so tired?" Si Kongjian insulted with a smile and his voice rang out clearly. However, only a small group of people was triggered while most of them did not bother at all. "I''ll bring all of you to a place thatll make you feel excited." As they did not seem to be motivated by the words he uttered, Si Kongjian''s eyes turned to crescent-shaped moons. Obviously, he had some bad intentions again. Right after they heard what he said, they panicked. "Again?" Lin Huang had expected this to happen. Yi Yeyu, who was standing beside Lin Huang, then stared at him as she did not expect that what Lin Huang had said to really happen. Standing in front of the team, Si Kongjian suddenly took out a bottle of green elixir from his storage space, pouring it on himself. He suddenly turned back, heading towards two o''clock. The group of people behind him had no choice but to follow after him as they were afraid that they would be unable to catch up with him. They then ran for another half an hour. Soon, the group of people saw monsters beginning to appear from afar. They instantly knew Si Kongjian''s intentions and their faces turned grave. "Hes trying to make use of the monsters to increase the consumption of our Life Power!" The moment Lin Huang saw the monsters, he knew why Si Kongjian had brought the team to this area. "The squinty-eyed guy is indeed evil." In fact, as Lin Huang expected, Si Kongjian led the group of people to break into the area where most of the monsters gathered. Many of the monsters started to attack them when the humans entered. However, none of the monsters attacked Si Kongjian. With no obstacles, he kept running forward without even reducing his speed. The people who followed after Si Kongjian noticed that something was strange. They recalled the green elixir that he had poured on his body earlier. "Is that a monster repellent elixir?" Lin Huang noticed that as well although he could not recognize what it was previously. However, as he saw that all the monsters were ignoring Si Kongjian, he instantly knew what the green elixir was. The monster repellent elixir could not actually keep all the monsters away or completely avoid monster attacks but most monsters did not like the smell of the elixir. Therefore, when there was a group of people, the monsters would choose to avoid those who had the elixir and attack those who did not have the scent of the elixir on their body instead. However, without Lin Huang and the team, Si Kongjian would be attacked as well if he broke into the monster crowd. The situation was similar to having several dishes served on the dining table. The leftovers would probably be the food that tasted bad as no one would go for those. However, if the food that tasted bad was the only dish being served and the diners were hungry, they would still eat it regardless of its taste. When Si Kongjian led everyone to break into the area, most of the monsters were gold-level rank-3. There were only a small number of gold-level rank-2 monsters. Apparently, he had planned the route in advance. It was a group of Crimsonblood Boas that first attacked Lin Huang and the rest of them. The Crimsonblood Boa was categorized as an elemental monster according to the elemental charts. To be more accurate, it was a fire element monster based on the charts. They lived in lava and they looked like they were completely made of flames. Normally, the length of their body ranged from 10 to 30 meters and their combat abilities varied from gold-level rank-1 to rank-3. If they upgraded to Transcendent, their body would grow beyond 100 meters. Therefore, there was a different name for the Transcendent Crimsonblood Boas C the Gigantic Crimsonblood Boa. The main form of attack of the Crimsonblood Boa was control of the fire element and long-range attacks. Right after the Gigantic Crimsonblood Boa discovered Lin Huang and the rest of them, it immediately chased after them. Soon, many of the Crimsonblood Boas spat red fireballs from their mouth at the group of people. Seeing the team being attacked, they could not ignore it. As Si Kongjian did not run very quickly, they could not get rid of the Crimsonblood Boas directly. If they did not kill the monsters, the monsters would not stop chasing them. The people who were being attacked had left the main team, pouncing towards the Crimsonblood Boas. Other than Lin Huang, basically all of them who attended the special training were gold-level rank-3 or were complete gold-level. Despite the fact that the combat abilities of the Crimsonblood Boa were not that weak and that there were quite a number of them, they were still being killed one after the other. The people who killed the Crimsonblood Boas quickly returned to the team after they had killed the monsters. Although it did not take up much of their time, the consumption of their Life Power had increased. The monsters did not attack Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu. They were not involved in the slaughter as well. Yi Yeyu then understood the importance of saving her Life Power after Lin Huang reminded her to do so. She would try not to strike if it was not necessary to do so. Life Power could be used up quickly. However, a long period of time was required to replenish the Life Power. The Crimsonblood Boas were the first group of monsters that they encountered. After encountering that attack, Lin Huang and the team were attacked by six more groups of monsters in the afternoon once every hour. The people had become clever after being attacked by the monsters for several times. Before the monsters attacked them, they would not kill the monsters as they were all afraid that they would use up their Life Power. After having their dinner, the sky turned dark. Many of them were fatigued as they were supposed to rest at night. After running for more than 30 hours, of course, most of them were exhausted beyond belief. In fact, even Lin Huang started to feel sleepy. Yi Yeyu could not even stop yawning. She seldom stayed up late at night since she was young, which was why she could hardly adapt to life without rest. Even though they were sleepy and tired, they dared not let their guard down. They were worried that they would be stepping on the wrong place as well as the monsters attacking them. "Eh, why is there a forest here?" Seeing that Si Kongjian had led them to a forest, Lin Huang started to frown 277 Undying Bloodoak At night, many people felt uneasy about the shadows that appeared from afar as it was less likely that there would be plants surviving at such a place with lava underground. As usual, Si Kongjian was smirking as he approached the forest-like area at a constant speed. When the people that followed Si Kongjian approached the forest, they panicked. All the trees in the forest had withered, resembling crystals. The trees did not even have any leaves. Each of the trees looked like they had been burnt by extremely high-temperature flames and become cooked in an instant. However, the tree branches still remained in its original form. The trees looked ferocious and spooky like a haunted forest. Most of them did not know the name of the forest. Only Lin Huang and a minority of them knew Si Kongjian''s intentions. "It seems like many people will be eliminated this round. The squinty-eyed guy" Lin Huang did not expect Si Kongjian to bring them to this place. "What''s happening? What''s wrong with the forest?" Yi Yeyu asked as she heard Lin Huang mumbling. "Can''t you recognize the Undying Bloodoak?" Lin Huang asked with a strange expression. "Is that the Undying Bloodoak?!" Yi Yeyu''s eyes flew wide. Of course, she had heard about this monster before but she did not know how they actually looked like. "Is that the monster that can directly extract Life Power from bodies of various creatures?" "Not only that. The Undying Bloodoak will only live in places with an adequate supply of energy. Therefore, I think that the lava underneath the Undying Bloodoak possesses spiritual powers. If anyone happens to fall into the lava, perhaps they shouldn''t be so worried about just having burn injuries anymore." Lin Huang shifted his gaze towards the ground beneath the Undying Bloodoak. Normal lava was merely scorching hot and did not consist of Life Power. Most of the injuries caused could be isolated by the protective layer of Life Power produced by their armors. Therefore, despite having a temperature of more than thousands of Celsius, the effect it had on the gold-level hunters was limited. A burn injury might be all it could cause. However, lava with spiritual powers was different as it could attack one''s Life Power. Moreover, its temperature was even higher than that of the ordinary lava with a temperature of more than 3,000 Celsius. Under such a high temperature, only Transcendents with defensive relics would be capable of defending against it as even gold-level weapons would decay. Therefore, be it at gold-level rank-3 or at complete gold-level, one might die if they fell into the pool of lava associated with spiritual powers. The first thing that Lin Huang thought of right after he had seen the forest was not about how dangerous the place was; it was about Tyrant''s advancement instead. He had now found the lava with spiritual powers and the requirement for Tyrant to level up could be met. However, the forest was a hindrance. He had to clear it. Otherwise, if Tyrant fell into the lava, he would probably become prey in this forest. Although Tyrant was strong, there were more than ten thousand Undying Bloodoaks in the forest. Moreover, all of them were at gold-level, possessing the ability to extract Life Power, so it was dangerous to place Tyrant in such an environment. Therefore, Lin Huang''s main concern was different from the others as he did not think of how he should overcome this difficulty. He was considering how he should clear the forest instead. "The Undying Bloodoak is not afraid of flames. Other than Life Power, they can absorb most of the fire element energy. Only physical attacks will have a greater impact on themHowever, the Undying Bloodoak is an undying species. Most of the undying species and soul species are afraid of pure energy" Just as he was pondering over this, Si Kongjian disappeared into the forest. Although many of them had no idea what was wrong with the trees, when they saw that some of them had started to take out their weapons, everyone followed suit and stayed alert. Even Luo Yuan had taken out a gold saber. Yi Yeyu then took out a gold long saber that had a black saber handle. A customized weapon would usually have better functions than Lin Huang''s weapon besides fitting the user better. Since it was custom-made, the material used to forge it would be of better quality as well. Of course, the price would be at least 10 times higher. However, to Lin Huang, it was unnecessary to own a customized weapon. His speed of leveling up was too fast. He took less than a year to upgrade from iron-level to his current level. If he was to use a customized weapon, he would only use it for a few months and it would be a complete waste of effort. Unlike Yi Yeyu, since they were royalty members, they had to be conscious of their image. It was normal for them to own a customized weapon for all intents and purposes of status. "Be careful, just attack using your physical strength. Don''t attack them with your Life Power," Lin Huang reminded Yi Yeyu, "This type of monster is very sensitive to energy. They will bug you if you''re using Life Power to attack them." "I know. Though I didn''t pay much attention to the monster guide, I''ve heard about this monster before." Yi Yeyu nodded. Right after they had entered the forest, the burnt black withered trees seemed to have been awakened by the people. They could smell the aura of Life Power advancing towards them. Despite the fact that the Life Power being released during the rotation of the movement skill was weak, the Undying Bloodoaks that were sensitive to energy could still sense it. When Lin Huang saw that the Undying Bloodoaks surrounding them began to twist its branches, extending towards their legs, he immediately noticed the problem. He then told Yi Yeyu, "Stop using the movement skill" Both of them immediately stopped using their movement skill, running simply using their own strength. Only a small group of people realized that as well so that the Undying Bloodoaks would not be aware of them. However, the majority of them had no idea what the Undying Bloodoak was and they did not know the characteristics of the monster either. They wanted to get out of the forest as soon as possible, so they inserted more Life Power into their body instead. As that happened, the reaction of the Undying Bloodoaks became more intense. Initially, the tree branches were just looking for their targets. After they had confirmed their targets, they started to tangle around their legs. The people who were attacked by the Undying Bloodoaks then wielded their weapons to chop off the tree branches. Consequently, a more severe problem arose. Attacks associated with Life Power attracted more attention. Furthermore, it seemed like the Undying Bloodoaks possessed incredibly fast regenerating ability. After they were chopped off, they managed to regenerate in less than a second and soon, they twisted around the people''s legs again. Seeing so many of them being attacked, Lin Huang shook his head. He then glanced at Yi Yeyu and said, "That''s the consequence of not reading the monster guide carefully. They can actually easily pass through the forest but this is what happens to them." Yi Yeyu stared at Lin Huang. She did not refute him though as it was a fact. If all of them knew the characteristics of the Undying Bloodoak like the back of their hands, they would have definitely chosen to quietly walk through this area. She could only watch the people in front of her get entangled by the tree branches of the Undying Bloodoaks. Some of the tree branches had even penetrated through their bodies, extracting their Life Power. Yi Yeyu then asked, "Nothing will happen to them, will it?" "Yes, they''ll be fine. The speed of absorption of Life Power by the Undying Bloodoak is slow. It takes them at least one week to absorb the Life Power of creatures that are on the same level as them. There are only two days remaining until the end of the training. They will be rescued and sent out of this place when the training ends." Lin Huang shook his head and continued, "Moreover, those who joined the training are elites. There must be people looking after them here." Although they were running with just their strength, they were not that much slower than those who ran using the movement skill. In addition to the attacks that they encountered, both of them had overtaken those who got entangled by the Undying Bloodoaks. Also, they were consuming a large amount of Life Power to attack the tree branches that bugged them. He shook his head. "They just can''t stop making people worry about them" 278 The Elimination Rate Is Too Low Lin Huang would not have bothered if it happened to the others as the Union Government would rescue them after being tortured by the Undying Bloodoaks for two days. However, Li Lang was the one who was having an intense battle with the Undying Bloodoak, so Lin Huang could not remain indifferent. The Undying Bloodoak tangled Li Lang''s legs. He brandished his sword, attempting to chop off the tree branches that twisted around his legs. However, the Undying Bloodoak around him could sense his Life Power and it pounced on his arm like black snakes. He kept waving his sword around. Despite managing to chop off all the tree branches that were attacking him, they quickly regenerated right after that as if it had endless vitality. Even Li Lang who had such incredible abilities was trapped in this difficult situation. "Do you know that idiot?" Yi Yeyu asked as she heard that Lin Huang was mumbling in a low voice. She then shifted her gaze towards him and saw that Li Lang was fighting the Undying Bloodoak. "Yes" Lin Huang nodded his head helplessly. Soon, both of them appeared beside Li Lang. Lin Huang then immediately chopped off the tree branches that twisted around Li Lang''s legs, breaking them apart. Li Lang quickly broke free of the Undying Bloodoak. However, the Undying Bloodoak was intent on chasing after him. His Life Power resembled fragrant grilled meat, attracting countless carnivores to him. "Retract your Life Power!" Lin Huang frowned and shouted at Li Lang. Li Lang was stunned as he heard Lin Huang''s voice. Right at that moment, his arm got entangled by the Undying Bloodoak again. As he was about to activate his Life Power to perform another cut, Yi Yeyu helped him out and quickly chopped off the Undying Bloodoak. "Didn''t you hear that? Quickly retract your Life Power!" Yi Yeyu yelled angrily. Although he did not know why he had to do that, he quickly retracted his Life Power after listening to them. The black tree branches that were originally going after him wandered around the area less than 20 centimeters in front of him for a short moment and soon, they left right after he had retracted his Life Power. As soon as Li Lang witnessed this, he then understood why Lin Huang had asked him to do so. "The monster treewas coming after my Life Power?" "It''s the Undying Bloodoak. It can only sense creatures with Life Power." Lin Huang nodded his head helplessly. "It''s time for both of you to study the monster guide." "Please remember not to use your movement skill later." Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at LiI Lang. "This beautiful woman is" Li Lang had no idea how he had provoked her. "She''s my friend." Lin Huang knew that Yi Yeyu was angry because he had proven that one would suffer a great loss for not reading the monster guide and she was just like Li Lang. Both of them would never read the monster guide. "Oh, hi, I''m Li Lang," Li Lang then introduced himself. "Yi Yeyu," Yi Yeyu curtly told him her name in a rude manner, then she turned her head back to Lin Huang and asked, "Can we go now?" "Yes, let''s go." Three of them then ran rapidly so that they could catch up with the team. Those who got entangled by the Undying Bloodoaks saw how three of them got rid of it and followed their steps. After they had retracted their Life Power and defended themselves with physical attacks, they escaped from the Undying Bloodoaks. Lin Huang and both of them did not bother about what happened after that. They started running and overtook many of them who were running ahead of them. The majority of them got entangled by the Undying Bloodoaks, so only a few people could lead the run unfazed. The people were amazed by the three of them as the Undying Bloodoaks completely ignored them. "It''s such a shame. They might have used the monster repellent elixir too," the people guessed. Soon, a few people who were running behind them caught up with them in the same way. Everyone turned suspicious. "Why didn''t they use the movement skill?" "They dont look like they have used up their Life Power" "Those not using movement skill are ignored by the monster tree. Could it be because of our Life Power that they attacked us?" the people finally concluded. Soon, they started to retract their Life Power and the result was obvious. The Undying Bloodoaks immediately gave up the targets in front of them as they could not sense their Life Power anymore. After getting rid of the Undying Bloodoaks, they learned from Lin Huang and the rest of them, so they stopped using their movement skill. They then ran like mad. There was an increasing number of people that ran without using their Life Power. Even those who were slow to pick up noticed this. Those who had attended the training were elites but they were not foolish. As a matter of fact, other than Lin Huang who came here alone, most of them had friends and companions in the training program. Of course, they would not want to see their companions getting stuck in the first stage. The secret of the forest was soon being revealed. After being tortured for the whole night, they had used up a large portion of their Life Power. However, the majority of them still managed to follow after Si Kongjian and they left the forest as the sun rose. Only a few unlucky people had been completely captured by the Undying Bloodoaks and they had no way of escaping. Once they got caught, the tree branches would penetrate through their prey''s body, beginning to extract the Life Power from the prey''s body. Under such circumstances, it was useless to retract their Life Power because once the tree branches had penetrated through their body, they would be able to sense the existence of Life Power within the prey and no longer relied on external senses. They were not bothered to be rescued as the Undying Bloodoaks had injected poison into their bodies the very first moment when they were captured. They would not be able to regain their consciousness in a short period of time. Even after they were rescued, they could no longer continue with the training. Therefore, they would be handled by the officers of the Union Government instead. Seeing the number of people behind him increasing, Si Kongjian knew that the secret of the forest had been revealed. The next morning, when they left the forest, he frowned as he saw the number of people that followed after him. Lin Huang could clearly capture his expression as he had activated his Boundless Vision. He knew that the number of people who were eliminated was far beyond the squinty-eyed guy''s expectations. "There are so many of us here. Most likely the squinty-eyed guy will increase the difficulty level on the last day" Lin Huang knew that Si Kongjian would not let them go so easily. "Well probably have a hard day." Yi Yeyu observed as well. "Why do you say so?" Li Lang wondered and asked. "I''ve been an assessment examiner before. The elimination rate is too low. If he allows so many of us to pass the first training, hell feel ashamed. Therefore, he will definitely raise the difficulty level on the last day," Yi Yeyu confidently explained. "Yeyu is right. Therefore, we have to be extra alert on the following day," Lin Huang agreed. 279 Lin Huangs Steady Steps Out of the forest where the Undying Bloodoaks gathered, Si Kongjian suddenly turned back and looked at the people. However, he did not stop running. He continued to take the lead by walking backwards instead. Many of them felt strange about his movement. However, Lin Huang and some of the people suspected what he was going to do next. "It''s not even seven o''clock in the morning now. There are about 26 hours remaining until the end of the first round of training. Therefore, the warm-up session for the past two days is about to end. I''ve decided to let all of you show your true abilities on the last day. Let''s see how many of you can actually pass my training." Right after he finished his sentence, only a small slit could be seen where Si Kongjian''s eyes were. He then turned back and like an arrow flying from a bow, he blasted off. Everyone was stunned and soon, they quickly activated their movement skill and followed after him. Even Lin Huang had to switch from Spectral Snowsteps to Thunder Steps, running swiftly like thunder. However, he did intentionally control his speed. Thunder Step was an epic movement skill. Hunters that were below Transcendent level would rarely practice a movement skill on this level as it was time-consuming and consumed a large amount of Life Power. Because he controlled his speed, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang did not notice anything peculiar. "Youre quite good in speed-type movement skill as well. How many types of movement skills do you actually have?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Three," Lin Huang answered with a smile, "Speed, light-weight. and teleportation-type movement skills. I''ve practiced one skill for each of them." "You''re such a genius!" Yi Yeyu was speechless. However, she complimented him in such a way because she knew that Lin Huang majored in swords minored in guns. He even practiced three types of movement skills. She had to admit that Lin Huang''s learning ability was incredible. Even if she was given a year to learn all the movement, sword and gun skills without even training her Life Power, she would be unable to finish learning everything. Apparently, Lin Huang spent most of his time upgrading his combat level. However, he could still manage to learn other skills because he had an amazing ability to learn at a fast pace. "Your leveling speed is terrifying. You''re indeed a genius. Since you focus mostly on leveling up, you dont spend much time in actual battle, do you?" Li Lang felt that despite his level-up speed, his actual ability would be incomparable to him. "Yes, that''s true," Lin Huang answered with a smile. In fact, he had rarely gone through any battle training like the royalty members. He would usually go for actual combat, be it hunting monsters at the wild zones or killing opponents in the arena since these were training that could push him beyond his limits. "You''re now at gold-level rank-2. I''d like to suggest that you practice with actual combat in the arena when you return. Perhaps with your current abilities, you can''t even fight Sword Genius who''s only at silver-level," Li Lang advised him. Lin Huang nodded his head with a smile, remaining silent. Yi Yeyu then continued, "I''ve watched the battle videos of Sword Genius. He''s really strong. His actual combat abilities are incredible. Although hes only a silver-level rank-3, I think that many of the gold-level rank-3 hunters cant even go against him. Perhaps only people like us whore at complete gold-level with a greater amount of Life Power will have an advantage over him, allowing us to defeat him. However, if he upgrades to gold-level, even if he''s only at gold-level rank-1, those who are at complete gold-level would only have a 10% chance of defeating him." "Both of you who are at complete gold-level rate his achievement so highly?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows and asked. However, he was laughing on the inside. "Lin Huang, have you never watched his battle?" Li Lang was shocked. "I''ve signed up for the arena but Ive only tried it several times. I''ve spent a lot of time on practicing with my Life Power. I don''t have time to watch this." Lin Huang shook his head. "That''s right. You''re such a training maniac. You won''t have much spare time though." Yi Yeyu who was standing beside Lin Huang felt that it was normal that Lin Huang had no idea about the happenings in the arena. "However, I''d suggest that you watch his battle videos when you''re free. I''ve collected all his videos and I only managed to watch his live battle once." Yi Yeyu had watched his live battle before?! Lin Huang was speechless. However, he would not be able to tell. Ever since he had become popular, the arena was always full with more than 300,000 spectators in the arena during his every battle. Ever since he had achieved an 80-win streak, the audience had grown to a million. Nobody would know when and where Yi Yeyu was sitting at when she went to watch his battle. While they were chatting, they could obviously feel that Si Kongjian had accelerated. "It seems like the squinty-eyed guy is going to eliminate a bunch of people" Lin Huang frowned. "Who''s the squinty-eyed guy?" Right after Li Lang asked the question, he immediately knew who Lin Huang was talking about. "Eh, I know Squinty-eyed guy eh? That''s so true!" Three hours had passed. Other than Lin Huang and a few others, those who managed to follow Si Kongjian closely were those who were at complete gold-level. Many of them who were at gold-level rank-3 gave up running after him and they fell far behind him as their Life Power was almost exhausted. "There are still four of them who are not at complete-gold level. As long as I can get rid of them, it''s time to enter the next stage." Si Kongjian grinned as he thought to himself and he continued to accelerate. Each time his toe touched the ground, he could leap more than 50 meters, so the rest of them could still catch up with him. However, after half an hour, three of them who were at gold-level rank-3 could no longer follow his speed. They were more than thousands of meters away from him. As a matter of fact, there were two of them who were at complete gold-level and were left behind as well. However, Lin Huang was still running steadily and remained unaffected. It was almost time to stop. Si Kongjian then looked back and he was speechless. The young man who was only at gold-level rank-2 had managed to follow after those who were at complete gold-level. It seemed like the increase in speed did little to faze him. On the other hand, many of them who were at complete gold-level were drenched in sweat. "Is it possible that this fellow is talented in speed-type movement skills?" Si Kongjian made a guess as he saw that Lin Huang was not sweating at all. He knew that it was impossible for him to get rid of the little brat. "Fine, since I''ve managed to get rid of two-thirds of the people, I can enter the next stage." sThey did not know that they had escaped elimination unintentionally. If Si Kongjian insisted on eliminating Lin Huang and continued accelerating, he would turn out eliminating everyone else Si Kongjian stopped accelerating and ran forward at a constant speed. Most of them were relieved. 280 The Lava River Si Kongjian then ran for another few hours, maintaining his current speed. About 20 to 30 of those who were at complete gold-level were about a kilometer away from him. 1,200 of them who were at gold-level rank-3 straggled far away, not even their shadows could be seen. However, Yi Yeyu and the rest of them had left footprints on the ground, so as long as they had sufficient Life Power and strength, they would be able to catch up with them. Li Lang was running out of breath as he followed after Lin Huang, soaked in sweat. Yi Yeyu was faring slightly better than him but her back was all slick with sweat as well. Both of them then looked at Lin Huang who was running in front of them with a strange expression. Lin Huang was running leisurely. He did not feel tired at all, let alone sweat. Ahead of them, Si Kongjian had noticed something strange about Lin Huang earlier. He seemed to have confirmed that Lin Huang possessed a talent for speed-type abilities and it was a passive ability within his body. Otherwise, as a gold-level rank-2 hunter, he would not have been able to exceed the speed and stamina of those who were at complete gold-level. What he did not know was that Lin Huang did indeed possess such a talent but had never used it before. "What''s in front of us?" Li Lang breathed heavily as he shouted. As he raised his head and looked towards the front, he saw something odd. Lin Huang activated his Boundless Vision and peered out. He then glanced at Si Kongjian who had never intended to change his route. In an instant, he knew his intentions. "From its color, it looks like it''s a lava river" Yi Yeyu frowned. Not only had Lin Huang and the two of them noticed that. Even the rest of the team discovered the strange situation that appeared in front of them. "It looks like lava. Is the examiner not going to change his direction?" "Is he going to ask us to swim across the river?" "Hey, keep your big mouth shut!" A few minutes later, the team arrived in front of the lava river. The lava river was hundreds of kilometers away and it had a width of more than 10 kilometers. Si Kongjian''s eyes were so small, leaving only two small lines on his face as he squinted. However, he had no intention to stop at all. He took a leap, stepping lightly on the lava. In just a few breaths, he made it to the other shore of the river. Upon arriving at the other side of the river, Si Kongjian stopped and shouted to the team, "You can use any method to come over here. However, you''re not allowed to go against my rules. You can''t use any flying, dimensional or transportation relics. Summoning monsters are prohibited in the assessment as well." The moment he finished his sentence, Si Kongjian turned around and jogged away. Seeing that Si Kongjian was getting further away from them, everyone''s face turned grave. "The lava river is so wide. We can''t fly, so how is it possible for us to cross the river? Should we swim?" Li Lang said bitterly. Yi Yeyu frowned, thinking of how to cross the river. Part of them had chosen to walk along the riverside. Although they had to run hundreds of meters on top of the existing route, it would be better than swimming across the lava river. Also, there were some of them who had put on their defensive relics and jumped into the lava river, swimming to the other side of the river. Their defensive relic could be used directly by consuming their Life Crystal instead of using their Life Power. Of course, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang had such relics as well. However, they were unwilling to swim across the lava river. This was because even the defensive relic would not be able to completely isolate them from the high temperature. Although they would not get hurt, they could not avoid getting their hair burned off of them. "Are there any other methods?" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang hopefully. Li Lang shifted his gaze to him as well. "Yes, there is. But the main thing is, do the both of you trust me?" Lin Huang smiled. "What''s that? Tell me!" Li Lang panicked. "I can''t tell you, I can only do it." Lin Huang shook his head. "That''s why I asked if you trust me." "Yes, I do!" Li Lang ground his teeth. He did not want to walk along the riverside and he did not want to become bald either. Therefore, he could only choose to believe Lin Huang. Lin Huang then looked at Yi Yeyu. "Fine, I''ll have to believe you for once." Yi Yeyu had no idea what Lin Huang was going to do. "Give me your hand," Lin Huang told the both of them. Both of them turned suspicious but they still extended their hands. Lin Huang then grasped their wrists. "What are you going to do?" Li Lang was confused while Yi Yeyu''s face blush. "Don''t struggle. I''m not going to bother if you fall into the lava and turn bald." Then, he activated Seraphic Speed which was one of his abilities. He carried the both of them and soon, he leaped over the lava river. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang immediately shouted in fear, struggling to get rid of Lin Huangs firm hold on them. However, they realized that Lin Huang''s fingers were holding their arms tightly as if his fingers were made of steel. "Please, can you both not move?" Lin Huang said in a low voice. Both of them were speechless as Lin Huang dragged them and they were inches from falling into the lava river. Just before Lin Huang''s feet approached the lava, he activated Thunder Steps and stepped lightly on the surface of the lava before springing again like an arrow leaving a bow. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, who thought that they were going to fall into the lava river, were startled as they gaped at the lava beneath their feet. "Didnt we fall in?!" Before the both of them could react to it, Lin Huang had taken the second and third step, stepping on the surface of the lava lightly. Each stride he took was about 100 meters apart, approaching the other side of the river at a speed that was even faster than the examiner. It seemed like the lava beneath his feet was merely decoration as if lava and the regular ground was no different at all to Lin Huang. Lin Huang continued moving forward with the two of them while those who were standing at the riverside were stunned. "Damn, thats an incredible skill!" Li Lang finally reacted and whooped in astonishment. Out of the blue, a gigantic alligator suddenly emerged from the lava. Its huge body jumped up into the air to a height of about 10 meters and it opened its big jaw as it was about to attack the trio. The body of the giant alligator was blood red in color. The length of its body was about 30 meters and it was a gold-level rank-3 gigantic monster. Its humongous mouth could engulf the three of them at once. Many of them who were watching this scene from the riverside shouted in fear the moment the giant alligator appeared. However, when Li Lang and Yi Yeyu were prepared to attack it, Lin Huang stopped them, "Don''t move!" The next moment, Lin Huang accelerated in mid-air and dodged the gigantic alligators attack. He then stepped on the gigantic alligators head, jumping over it at a speed that was even faster than before. Although it was a gold-level rank-3 gigantic alligator, its head exploded abruptly and the rest of its body fell back into the lava after Lin Huang stepped on it. The other bloody gigantic alligators that were in the lava then snapped up its carcass. "There are Crimsonfire Alligators in the lava river?!" "The Crimsonfire Alligator which was a monster at gold-level rank-3 is known to have terrifying defense power. Even those who are at complete gold-level have to put in some effort to break its defense down. How could the Crimsonfire Alligator''s head get crushed after being stepped by the fellow?" Many of them who were watching at the riverside were shocked. They were afraid of the lava river and at the same time, they were terrified by Lin Huangs ability. After a short moment, three of them had crossed the lava river that was more than 10 kilometers long. They then descended steadily on the other side of the river. 281 The First Round Of Training Is Over "Your movement skills are incredible!" Li Lang exclaimed once they made it to the other side of the river. "Such speed is on par with those who were on holy-fire level. I don''t think movement skill alone can achieve such an effect. Are you a genius in speed-type abilities!?" It was apparent that Yi Yeyu could not calm herself down. However, deep down, she knew what the skill was. "I''ve indeed activated my talent, Rapid Speed. This can only be achieved by complementing different speed-type movement skill," Lin Huang replied. He did not know that Yi Yeyu would discover his secret but he admitted anyway. However, he did not tell her that his talent was actually Seraphic Speed and claimed that it was Rapid Speed instead. "You''re only at gold-level rank-2. Does that mean that after you''ve leveled up to gold-level rank-3 and even after achieving complete gold-level, your speed can still be increased?" Li Lang asked. "Theoretically, itll work that way." Lin Huang nodded his head with a smile. He did not tell them that what he displayed was not the true limit of the speed, though. Be it the gifted ability, Seraphic Speed or Thunder Steps, he had not activated them to their maximum capabilities. "At such a speed, it''s no longer a problem for you to escape when encountering any powerful enemies," Li Lang said, giving Lin Huang a wink. Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Li Lang after she heard that. Lin Huang gave them a smile. To him, nobody below Transcendent level could fight him. Even the Genius would be incapable of defeating five double-mutated monsters that were at complete gold-level. If he encountered a Transcendent that was unconquerable, even if Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps were activated to their maximum limit, the possibility of escaping would not be very high as well. "When we were about to fall into the mouth of the Crimsonfire Alligator, you sped up in mid-air and escaped its attack. Was that Rapid Speed?" Yi Yeyu suddenly recalled that he had suddenly increased his speed mid-air. It was the first time that she saw such a skill that allowed acceleration in mid-air. "Yes, by using Rapid Speed, my speed can be controlled and randomly adjusted. My speed can even be adjusted even when one is hanging in mid-air." "I''ve heard that the Crimsonfire Alligator has an incredible defense. Whats the skill used? The head of the Crimsonfire Alligator exploded after you stepped on it! How could you generate such terrifying power?" As Yi Yeyu interrogated about the acceleration, it reminded Li Lang that Lin Huang had killed the Crimsonfire Alligator in a split second. "It''s Fatal Tactics. It has to be used with Army Attack Tactics. The damage caused is still so-so. The reason the head was crushed is not that my attack is powerful. It was because I stepped on its weak point," Lin Huang explained as he wanted to hide his true abilities. In fact, there was a weak point on the Crimsonfire Alligator''s head. However, Lin Huang did not attack its weak point. He had crushed the strongest bone in the Crimsonfire Alligator''s body, causing it to die on the spot. ince the Crimsonfire Alligator had its carcass eaten by the alligators of the same species right away, Li Lang would be unable to find any evidence. Therefore, he told him that he had attacked its weak point. Yi Yeyu had heard of a weak point on the Crimsonfire Alligator''s head as well. However, she was not sure on which position it actually was. She did not pay attention to the position where Lin Huang stepped on as well. Therefore, she would have no way to verify that as well. "Let''s go. The examiner has left some footprints on the ground. He must be hoping that we can still catch up with him after crossing the river," Lin Huang changed the topic, pointing at the footprints on the ground. He was afraid that he might say something wrong if they continued asking. As a trainer, although Si Kongjian had purposely asked them to cross the river to increase the elimination rate, he would not have hoped that the passing rate was zero. If he did not leave the footprints behind, the people following him would not be able to know where he had been and this would not be his desired result. "If we are able to catch up with him so soon, will the squinty-eyed guy continue to test us?" Li Lang started to follow the way Lin Huang addressed the examiner, calling him the squinty-eyed guy. "I don''t think so. The elimination rate is high enough. After crossing the lava river, other than three of us, the majority of them already have a significant amount of their Life Power drained away. Even if he doesnt like us, its less likely that he''ll put us in another difficult situation. Not many of them can still bear the torture." Lin Huang shook his head as he knew that the squinty-eyed guy would have such a ruthless plan. It was still a training program and he could not just do whatever he liked. Li Lang was relieved as he heard what Lin Huang said. The three of them then looked at the people at the other side of the river. Li Lang looked helplessly at them, waving his hand at the people on the other side of the river. However, as he turned back, Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu could see that he was grinning. Both of them shook their heads. They then followed the direction of the footprints and ran. Li Lang immediately followed after them as well. Seeing that Lin Huang and the people were leaving, the rest of them panicked. After leaving the lava river, the three of them then followed the direction of the footprints. In less than an hour, they caught up with Si Kongjian who was leisurely strolling. Obviously, Si Kongjian was startled when he saw the three of them. However, none of the staff had reported to him that three of them had broken the rules. This indicated that three of them had passed the test based on their true abilities. He did not say anything but then led the three of them and took off running. They then followed Si Kongjian at a distance of about 10 meters away, chatting about topics that were not related to the training. "Is Yi Donglai your great-grandfather?! No wonder your surname is Yi!" Li Lang''s eyes widened as he looked at Yi Yeyu. As Li Lang shouted in surprise, Si Kongjian turned around and took a glance at Yi Yeyu. As an examiner, Si Kongjian had heard about somebody from the Yi family joining the training. However, he had no idea whether the person was male or female. He did not even know what the person''s name was. This was because of the fact that other Transcendents were not allowed to be present during the process of Yi Yeyu leveling up to become a Transcendent. Otherwise, she would be unable to ignite her Life Fire. Yi Donglai had never revealed this and the others did not dare ask about it as well; they had only heard the rumors. Si Kongjian even doubted if it was true. However, as he sized up Yi Yeyu, he could quickly confirm Yi Yeyu''s identity. As he knew Yi Yeyu''s cousin sister, he found that Yi Yeyu looked somehow similar to her cousin sister. "I didn''t know that you''re from the head of the armed forces, the Yis. After leaving this place, can you get an autograph from your great-grandfather for me?" Li Lang asked with an eyebrow raised. "No!" Yi Yeyu rejected. "Why? Aren''t we friends? I''m just asking for a signature. Why are you being so petty?" Li Lang bugged her. "Who''s your friend? Weve only known each other since yesterday." Yi Yeyu never expected Li Lang to be so shameless. "Then, let me ask you, are you friends with Lin Huang?" Li Lang suddenly asked. "ErrI think so!" Yi Yeyu took a glance at Lin Huang and replied. "You''ve admitted that you''re Lin Huang''s friend and I''m Lin Huang''s friend too." Li Lang gave a sly grin and continued to annoy her, "Friend of a friend, so we''re friends too!" "No, we aren''t!" Yi Yeyu rejected again. When it was about five o''clock in the afternoon, there were finally people catching up with them. A group of bald men was a few kilometers away from them, looking weak. Si Kongjian stopped adding trouble to their journey. He then maintained at the same constant speed that he ran at on the first day. He continued to run until the next day at nine o''clock in the morning. The first round of training had finally ended 282 Second Round of Training Has Started! After 24 hours, Si Kongjian glanced at the clock projected from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. His body gradually floated mid-air and his voice rang out across the area. "The 24-hour deadline has passed. I''ll now announce the results of the first training. "The total number of people who have passed the training is 978. There are only three of them who arrived at the destination within three minutes after I reached. They are Yi Yeyu, Lin Huang, and Li Lang. The three of them will gain 1,000 points from the first round of training. "Four people managed to reach within four to 10 minutes and they will gain 500 points. "28 people arrived within 10 minutes to half an hour and they will gain 300 points. "89 people arrived within half an hour to one hour. They will gain 200 points. "Within one to three hours, 238 people arrived and they will gain 100 points. "593 people reached within three to five hours, so they will gain 50 points. "26 people reached within five to 24 hours. No points will be given to these people. "The rest of you who failed to arrive on time are eliminated!" As soon as Si Kongjian had announced the results of the assessment, he continued, "I''ve completed my task. The second examiner will be in charge of what''s coming up next." Right after he had finished his sentence, Si Kongjian gradually descended from mid-air and a muscular man floated into the sky to take his place. He looked strict and had a height of at least two meters. Even though he was dressed in his military uniform, his muscles rippled through very obviously. He was more than double the size of Si Kongjian. "My name is Zang Bing and I''m your second examiner. I don''t care how much Life Power you''ve used up during the first round of training. I dont care where you''re from either, be it the Union Government or somewhere else. I won''t even care who is there to support you as all of that has nothing to do with me! I don''t care how many people have addressed you as a genius before this. To me, if you can''t meet the requirements of the second round of training, you''re rubbish!" Zang Bing instilled fear in everyone. When he announced that rudely, Lin Huang and the rest of them then murmured about the personality of the examiner amongst themselves. "Stop talking nonsense. I''ll talk about the rules of the second round of training." They immediately kept quiet, paying attention to what he said as they were worried that they would miss out on something important. "The objective of the assessment is simple: to kill a Transcendent monster!" When they heard that, many of them opened their mouths wide as they thought that they had heard it wrong. Although most of them were elites, requesting those who were at gold-level rank-3 or even those who were at complete gold-level to kill a Transcendent monster was impossible! Probably only a genuine genius could do it. The assessment was definitely way too difficult. Just as everyone was about to raise their objections, Zang Bing then continued with the following rules, "Of course, I wouldn''t ask you to kill a Transcendent monster alone. If I wanted to do so, none of you would pass the assessment." "During the assessment, you''re allowed to form a team of three to five to kill the Transcendent monster. The period of training is 10 days. After 10 days, the number of carcasses that each team will have to hand in will be double the number of your team members. If you form a team of three, the team will have to hand in six Transcendent carcasses. For instance, if it''s a team of five, the team will then have to hand in 10 Transcendent carcasses. If the team fails to hand in the exact number of carcasses, everyone in the team will be eliminated!" "Once you''ve chosen your team members, you can''t change it. The team members arent allowed to leave the team while you cannot dump any of your team members as well. Even if the team member has died, the team will still have to hand in two of the Transcendent carcasses from him or her. Otherwise, the team will be considered to have failed the assessment!" When they heard that it would be a team training, many of them were relieved. However, upon listening further, they realized that the assessment would not be that simple. Given limitless time and the number of monsters to be killed, everyone would definitely choose to form a team of five as the probability of getting a Transcendent monster killed would certainly be higher. However, only 10 days were given for the assessment. The greater the number of team members, the more they had to kill. If they formed a team of five, this meant that they had to kill 10 Transcendent monsters in 10 days. On average, they would have to kill a monster a day. If they were to form a team of three, they would only have to kill six Transcendent monsters in 10 days. As long as they managed to kill one monster in 1.5 days, the task would be considerably much easier. Another concern was that based on the assessment rules, once a team was formed, they were bound together regardless of their willingness. They had to complete the task given to them in order to pass the assessment together. Therefore, choosing a team member became crucial. If there was any disagreement among them or they found themselves with a teammate with relatively weak abilities, they would be in trouble. Lin Huang then wondered if he should leave the team and complete the mission alone. Since he was only at gold-level rank-2, perhaps nobody would want to be on the same team with him. As the thought flashed through his mind, Yi Yeyu exchanged glances with Li Lang. "Should the three of us form a team?" Yi Yeyu asked first. "Yeah, I think that''s fine!" Li Lang immediately agreed with her. Lin Huang raised his brows, staring at the both of them. "Aren''t you worried that I''ll slow you down?" "It''s just a training. Worst case is that we won''t qualify for the third round but we aren''t going to lose anything." Li Lang looked like he did not care at all. "He doesn''t care but aren''t you here for the Fire Phoenix?" Lin Huang turned his head, looking at Yi Yeyu. "I don''t even know where the Fire Phoenix is. Even if I manage to find it, its unlikely that I could kill it." Yi Yeyu shook her head. "I''ll look for other monsters to level-up with after I''ve left this place. Since I''ve waited for half a year, I don''t mind waiting another one to two months." Of course, Lin Huang knew that the both of them treated him as their friend. They were worried that he would be alone, which was why they suggested forming a team together. However, he hesitated if he should join them. If they were to form a team together, he would definitely have to show some of his abilities to them unless he was not going to do anything and let them complete the job on their own. Of course, he would feel bad for doing that. While Lin Huang was still hesitating, a few young men who were wearing Demon Slayer Legion uniform, walked towards Yi Yeyu. "Miss Yi, let''s form a team to figure out the location of Fire Phoenix during these 10 days," the leader said, completely ignoring Lin Huang and Li Lang. "I''ve chosen my teammates for the assessment, so I can''t form a team with you," Yi Yeyu rejected their suggestion. They were stunned. Soon, they noticed Lin Huang and Li Lang standing beside her. The leader could immediately recognize Lin Huang and could not help but notice that his combat level was only at gold-level rank-2. "Miss Yi, your friend''s combat level is only at gold-level rank-2. Even if he''s good at movement skills, that''ll be all that he has. Encountering a Transcendent monster, hell be of no help. He''ll only slow you down" "You''re not qualified to comment on my decision," Yi Yeyu interrupted while the leader was still talking. She was angry at his comment that Lin Huang would slow them down as she feared that Lin Huang would feel belittled after listening to him. "Please leave. I don''t need your help for leveling up!" "Thisit''s hard for us to explain." The man''s face turned grave. They were part of the army and members of the army was bound by duty. Before joining the training, they had received a mission to help Yi Yeyu in leveling up. However, because Yi Yeyu had said that, she was putting them in trouble. "You don''t have to explain anything. I''ll explain it to my great-grandfather. I''m the one who said that I don''t need your help." Yi Yeyu''s face turned cold. Even after she had said that, they dared not leave as they were worried that Yi Yeyu would complain about them. If that happened, it would be difficult for the Demon Slayer Legion to continue operating. Yi Donglai was the founder of the Demon Slayer Legion. The chief of the army was his disciple''s disciple as well. At that moment, Zang Bing cleared his throat and said, "You may form your groups later. If you have any questions, please raise them now." Lin Huang raised his hand again. Seeing that the one who raised his hand was a young man at gold-level rank-2, Zang Bing was startled. He then glanced at Si Kongjian and nodded his head. "Please go ahead." "May I use any skills during the assessment? Are there any restrictions?" Many of them were curious about this as well. "You may use any skills you want and there''s no restriction. Even if you have a god-level weapon in hand, you may also use it." After getting his reply, Lin Huang raised his hand again. "Is there any other question?" Zang Bing asked. "Can I not join any team during the assessment and kill the monster alone?" Lin Huang asked. Zang Bing squinted his eyes and looked at Lin Huang while the rest of them laughed at him. They felt that Lin Huang asked that question because he knew that nobody was willing to form a team with him and not because he was capable of completing the task alone. However, Si Kongjian started sizing up Lin Huang as he felt that he was confident, hence the question. "No, you can''t. It''s a team assessment. If you can''t form a team of three or more, you''ll be directly eliminated!" Zang Bing rejected. Lin Huang frowned. It was not easy for him to discover the lava that possessed sufficient spiritual power. Of course, he did not wish to be eliminated so fast. "Are you satisfied with the answer? Can you form a team with us now?" Li Lang raised his eyebrows and asked Lin Huang. "Alright." Hearing his agreement, Yi Yeyu''s mood turned slightly better. He then told the people who were from the Demon Slayer Legion, "I won''t follow you, at least not during this round of assessment. After this round of assessment has ended, I''ll contact you if it''s necessary." They saluted upon hearing her answer and left. Right after they had left, the people from the Hunter Association came over to look for Li Lang. However, Li Lang rejected them as well. A team of three had officially been formed.This is the unsealing condition for Tyrant, he needs to soak in it for 12 days. 283 Lin Huang: The Tour Guide "Lastly, I''m going to talk about the scoring. For each of the white flame-level carcasses submitted, the team will gain 100 points. Each crimson flame-level carcass contributes 200 points. Blue flame-levels give you 400 point and purples give you 800 points." "Haha, if anyone of you is capable of killing a gold flame-level monster, you''ll be rewarded with 1,600 points for each of the monsters killed. However, there are only three gold flame-level monsters in the ruins," mocked Zang Bing. It had been more than 800 years since the monsters last invaded the ruins. Even the human genius in the past only managed to kill blue flame-level monsters. Nobody had ever heard of anyone capable of defending against a purple flame-level monster, let alone a gold-flame level one. By 9.30 a.m, Zang Bing had finished explaining the rules for the second round of assessment and their queries were resolved as well. It was obvious that Zang Bing was kinder than Si Kongjian as he would usually provide them proper guidance in his answers unlike the squinty-eyed guy that always gave the participants useless answers. "Alright, if you have no other questions, I''ll now declare that the second round of assessment has begun! 10 days later, gather here before 9.30 a.m and hand over all your carcasses! Those who fail to arrive after 9.30 a.m will be considered as drop-outs and you''ll not be qualified to join the next round of training." Soon, those who had formed their teams quickly left while the rest of them still looked for their teammates. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang exchanged glances with each other. They then looked at Lin Huang. "In which direction should we go?" The both of them asked Lin Huang at almost the same time. Lin Huang was speechless and glanced at them. It was obvious that they treated Lin Huang like a tour guide. However, Lin Huang did not reject the role as guide as he actually wanted to lead the journey so he could plan things ahead. A map was projected and soon, Lin Huang was able to identify their location. "We must be somewhere around here." Lin Huang pointed at one of the points on the map. There were several labels on the map showing the location of Transcendent monsters as well. "Didn''t you say that the map could no longer be used?" Li Lang asked in doubt. "I downloaded it before entering the ruins. Therefore, it can''t determine our exact location. Its just a rough estimation," Lin Huang explained. He knew that Li Lang and Yi Yeyu had not prepared themselves before coming in. "Let''s head in this direction." Lin Huang pointed at a direction heading towards the lava river where they had passed through previously. "Why should we go over there? Doesnt the map show that there are Transcendent monsters closer to us in the other direction?" Yi Yeyu raised a question. "I''m not the only one who owns a map. There must be a lot of people hunting for monsters during these few days, so we should go further away. It won''t take us long to come back with our flying mounts," Lin Huang explained. This was only one of his reasons. Most importantly, it was because the Undying Bloodoaks were located close to the lava river. Although he had no idea how he would deal with the withered trees, Lin Huang had decided to head over there before thinking of a solution later. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang had no idea about what Lin Huang was planning but they felt that Lin Huang''s explanation was reasonable. "Alright, you plan the route then and we''ll follow." Li Lang immediately nodded in agreement. Yi Yeyu had no objections either. Lin Huang then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle while Yi Yeyu and Li Lang both summoned a flying mount using their monster taming token. Yi Yeyu''s flying mount was a Rainbow Sparrow. It was a beautiful fighting bird, featuring seven colors on the feathers of its tail and it had a pair of eyes that were as clear as sapphire. The only weakness of the monster was its small size and its limitation of only one rider. Li Lang also rode on a fighting bird, namely the Ashenquill Eagle. It was a huge fighting bird that had white feathers all over its body and it was double the size of Lin Huang''s Alexandrian Eagle. "Haha, how''s it? My flying mount looks cool, doesnt it?" Li Lang bragged after he had summoned his Ashenquill Eagle. "My Alexandrian Eagle can fight 10 monsters at once," Lin Huang teased back. Lin Huang''s Alexandrian Eagle was originally a bronze-level rank-3 mutated monster. It had now been upgraded to gold-level rank-2 together with Lin Huang. In fact, it was not a problem for the Ashenquill Eagle to kill 10 silver-level rank-3 monsters at once. There were significant differences between Lin Huang''s monster cards and the summoning monsters of an Imperial Censor. One of the differences was that the combat level of his monsters would automatically be upgraded when there was an upgrade in his combat abilities. Aside from Bloody the Demonic Dandelion Vine, the rest of his monster cards had this characteristic and apart from several cards which were already at gold-level rank-3, the rest of his monster cards were now at gold-level rank-2. Lin Huang had asked Xiao Hei about Bloody as it could not outdo himself by a level like the other epic level cards could and it could not be upgraded in accordance with his level either. The explanation given by Xiao Hei was because Bloody had gone through an abnormal mutation previously, resulting in the loss of skills. In other words, it was an incomplete monster card. Only when its skill were complete could it meet the requirement of the system. Before that, it could only depend on itself for the advancement of its combat skills. This was also the reason why it was only at silver-level rank-3 after nine months as it was a silver-level rank-2 when Lin Huang obtained it. Li Lang could not refute Lin Huang as he knew that Lin Huang''s Alexandrian Eagle was already at gold-level rank-2. Despite the fact that his Ashenquill Eagle was larger, it still could not go against the Alexandrian Eagle. However, Li Lang noticed something else. Lin Huang did not use a monster taming token. "Are you an Imperial Censor?" When Li Lang had met Lin Huang, Lin Huang only controlled Bai. He had never summoned any monsters in front of Li Lang before. Therefore, he never knew that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor. Yi Yeyu had seen Lin Huang summoning Tyrant during the Reserve Hunter Assessment so she knew that he was an Imperial Censor. Lin Huang nodded, then lied, "I only realized that I was Imperial Censor a few days after knowing you." "Wait, you knew him before me?!" Yi Yeyu asked in shock. "I''ve known him since last June and I met you in July." Li Lang was pleased as he heard that, flashing a victory peace sign arrogantly. Yi Yeyu sulked unhappily. "How can both of you fight about that? You guys behave like kids" Lin Huang was speechless and shook his head. Lin Huang then changed the topic, "Alright. Stop wasting time, we''re about to leave. We have to kill six holy fire-level monsters in 10 days. We will have 1.5 days for each monster." Both of them immediately rode on their flying mounts and headed north 284 Drop a Bomb When Theres Disagreemen Soon, the three flying mounts descended, arriving somewhere near the lava river. Lin Huang then referred to the map and looked around. He nodded and told Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, "It should be somewhere around here." The three of them then got off their flying mounts and recalled them. "The first monster that we''re going to kill is the Forsaken Skeleton. It''s a commander-level spirit-type monster and its most likely a white flame-level Transcendent. The Forsaken Skeleton possesses strong defense and it fears pure energy. Its weakness is its rather slow movement compared to other Transcendent monsters. However, if we''re unable to defeat it, we can still escape the danger using my speed," Lin Huang shared. "I''ve heard of this monster before. They have low intelligence. Even though theyre Transcendent monsters, theyd normally have gone through one mutation. It is unlikely that we''ll encounter any monsters of this species that have mutated twice," Yi Yeyu recalled, "But I can''t remember any specific skills it has, can you?" "Basically, the Forsaken Skeleton has four skills," Lin Huang continued. "The first type of skill is known as Advanced Deterrence. Its a type of Soul Deterrence skill whereby it creates fear within low-level creatures. One might even feel sluggish for a short moment in severe cases. "The second type of skill is Punishment. A chain of flames will appear in its hand and the ability of that chain is on par with a relic. Getting tangled in the chain will inhibit one''s Life Power. "The third type is Death Sentence. Its a very powerful sword skill as it enables the user to hide oneself and launch attacks without leaving any traces. "The fourth type is Lava Control. It can attack by controlling the high-temperature lava. "The skill that we must be particularly aware of is Punishment. Don''t get tangled in his chain. Otherwise, we''ll lose our combat abilities and we''ll be in trouble. The next lethal one will be Death Sentence. Since we won''t be able to see his weapon, we''ll have to stay alert." As they listened to Lin Huang''s words of caution, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang got a better idea of the monster they were about to face. Lin Huang then summoned Bloody. As soon as Bloody appeared, it twisted around Lin Huang''s left arm. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang thought that it was a crimson-colored snake when they saw it at first. Soon, they discovered that it was a vine. "The monster''s strength is only at silver-level rank-3. Why did you summon it?" Yi Yeyu asked in doubt. Li Lang looked doubtful as well, shifting his gaze to Lin Huang. "It can help us to look for the Forsaken Skeleton," Lin Huang teased Bloody, "Without a positioning system, I can only roughly estimate its position based on the map. Well have to spend some time to figure out where exactly is the Forsaken Skeleton. Fortunately for us, Bloody will save us some time." Bloody was slowly releasing dandelion-like seeds, spreading them into the air. "What''s all that?" Yi Yeyu and Li Lang asked at almost the same time. "It''s Bloody''s investigating skill. It allows Bloody to see whatever the seeds see." Lin Huang did not tell them that those seeds were parasitic in nature. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang had never seen a parasite species like Bloody before. Therefore, it did not occur to them that it was one as they thought that Bloody was either a soul or demonic plant species. "How beautiful!" Yi Yeyu grabbed a leech seed using her hand. As she looked at it, she noticed that the seed was made of Life Power but she was still unaware that it was a leech seed. Because it was being controlled by Bloody, the seed''s parasitic characteristic of invading one''s body was not revealed. After fingering around with it, she then released the seed. With Bloody''s current intelligence level, it could perfectly control more than 100,000 leech seeds. Previously, Bloody was only capable of controlling a small portion of them and had to allow most of the leech seeds to move freely about. "We''ll wait here for a moment. If the Forsaken Skeleton is somewhere around us, we''ll be able to discover it soon," Lin Huang said. Thousands of leech seeds flew everywhere and the three of them waited at their original position for about 10 minutes. Suddenly, there was a response from Bloody and it left Lin Huang''s arm, heading towards a certain direction. "Found it!" Lin Huang immediately followed it, trailed by Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. Bloody led them forward for about 20 minutes and finally, they arrived at the foot of a big volcano. As soon as it saw that three of them had caught up with it, it immediately moved towards the volcano. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were shocked. However, Lin Huang could roughly understand Bloody''s meaning. "Let''s follow it!" They immediately followed Bloody and climbed up the volcano. A few minutes later, they arrived at the top of the volcano. Bloody then wound itself around Lin Huang''s left arm again, pointing a vine down at the crater. "The monsters are in the volcano?" Lin Huang asked. Bloody then nodded with a vine. Standing on the edge of the volcano, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang frowned. Their line of sight was completely blocked by the smoke coming up from below. They could not see what was happening there. People were most afraid of the unknown. Moreover, the active volcano could erupt anytime. If it happened to be a volcano that possessed spiritual powers, an eruption would definitely kill them all. "We can''t fight in the volcano. Places with lava are the Forsaken Skeleton''s home. Furthermore, a high energy collision will most likely cause the active volcano to erupt. If it''s a volcano with spiritual powers, we''ll most probably die here. Even if it''s just an ordinary volcano, we will be in big trouble if it erupts," Lin Huang immediately analyzed the situation, "We must think of ways to lure the monsters out of the volcano!" Yi Yeyu and Li Lang agreed with him. "Do you guys have any good ideas?" Lin Huang looked at the both of them as he could not think of any way to attract the Forsaken Skeleton at that moment. While Yi Yeyu had fallen into deep thought, Li Lang rolled his eyes and said, "I might." "However, we''re not going to lure the monsters out. We''re going to force them out of the volcano!" Li Lang grinned. "How?" Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu immediately shifted their gazes to him. "Before joining the training, I bought some stuff from the night market. One of the items is called a nuclear bomb" It sounded like a nuclear weapon and Lin Huang''s eyes were twinkling with excitement. "Have you confirmed the item''s attack range and power? Don''t get us involved in this. We don''t have the defenses of the Forsaken Skeleton." Lin Huang had already heard about the power of nuclear weapons on Earth. He was on alert regardless of how powerful the nuclear bomb was. "Don''t worry, it covers a range of up to three kilometers, so it''ll be fine as long as we run for it right after we drop the bomb." Li Lang immediately summoned his Ashenquill Eagle. Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu then summoned their flying mounts as well and rode on them. Li Lang rode on the Ashenquill Eagle and took out an item that looked like a bomb with a length of more than 30 centimeters and was as thick as an adult''s thigh. When Lin Huang saw the bomb, his senses were heightened as he sensed how dangerous it was. However, Li Lang grasped it in his hand as if it was a plastic toy. "What are both of you afraid of? It''s just a bomb!" Li Lang swung the nuclear bomb around. "Stop talking nonsense. Quickly throw it," Lin Huang urged. Li Langs mouth twitched. He then flew into the sky, stopping right above the crater. He released the nuclear bomb in his hand and the bomb raced downwards. As soon as the nuclear bomb had been released, Lin Huang shouted at the both of them and told the Alexandrian Eagle to leave. "Run!" A few moments later, a red flame shot up into the sky and a loud explosion was heard. Lin Huang and the rest of them then looked at the volcano. It had collapsed in an instant. An intense flame spread quickly everywhere, resembling ripples on a water surface. In just a split second, it had exceeded the range mentioned by Li Lang earlier, spreading towards them five kilometers away. "Gee" Lin Huang''s heart sank and he immediately yelled at the both of them, "Get out fast!" 285 Forsaken Skeleton The red sparks that exploded covered the clouds in the sky. As the impact of the explosion spread out like ripples on water, it dashed towards the three of them from three kilometers away. They immediately rode on their monsters and escaped at the speed of light. The speed of the spreading of impact was nothing slower than the Alexandrian Eagle. Fortunately, they had reacted in time and the impact slowed down a couple of minutes later, finally stopping spreading completely. The heat warmed their backs because the strong wind was blowing the residual energy of the explosion towards them. They were not affected as they had donned defense relics beforehand to fight the Transcendent monsters. Meanwhile, besides Lin Huangs Alexandrian Eagle, the other two flight mounts suffered slight burn injuries. After confirming that they were far enough from the impact reach, they got their flight mounts to turn around in the air. Lin Huang looked at the volcano that had exploded into chunks tens of kilometers away as well as the mushroom cloud on top. He stared speechlessly at Li Lang. "I thought you said the range of explosion was three kilometers! Isnt this 30 kilometers?! Couldn''t you have only used the bomb after finding out the correct way to do so?! You almost got us killed!" Yi Yeyu condemned Li Lang without mercy. She was not hurt but her Rainbow Sparrows colorful tail was burnt. Li Lang knew that he was at fault, so he grimly accepted Yi Yeyus outrage without saying anything. Looking at the impact of the nuclear bomb, the Forsaken Skeleton must have been destroyed. Without being able to submit the dead body, that would mean that their mission had failed and Lin Huang would have to look for another one Just when Lin Huang opened the map to look for the second Forsaken Skeleton, he heard a roar from far away, approaching their direction. He scanned around immediately. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang looked around too. The sound came from the direction of the volcano that had exploded. "Is the Forsaken Skeleton still alive?!" Yi Yeyu asked Lin Huang in disbelief. "It cant be. How could it survive the explosion?!" Li Lang was shocked as well. The sound came from the volcano which had exploded and became a flatland. "It really sounded like the Forsaken Skeleton" Lin Huang nodded. He was shocked when he heard the roar as well because the explosion seemed to have destroyed everything around the volcano. They had no idea how the monster would have survived the explosion. "Should we go for it?" Li Lang asked in doubt. Although he had no idea what exactly the nuclear bomb did, all of them had witnessed how powerful the impact was. With such a powerful impact, the Forsaken Skeletons ability to survive was beyond their imaginations. "Why not? Even if its not dead, under the impact, it must be badly injured!" Yi Yeyu replied without thinking twice. "Yeyu is right, this is a good time to kill the Forsaken Skeleton. No matter how powerful its defense is, based on the circumstances, its impossible that the monster is completely fine," Lin Huang agreed. "That means I did the right thing to toss the bomb then?!" Li Lang was excited. "Right thing? Right, my ass!" Lin Huang glared at Li Lang. "Dumbass!" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Li Lang. Just when they came to an agreement, the Forsaken Skeleton that was covered in red lava appeared from the collapsed debris. Instead of running away, Lin Huang and the rest rode on their mounts and headed towards the gigantic Forsaken Skeleton. They managed to arrive near the Forsaken Skeleton that was 30 kilometers away in less than two minutes. When they were less than 20 meters from the ground, they hopped off from their mounts and recalled them. Areas that were high in nuclear radiation were usually life-threatening to ordinary people. However, the radiation could not enter their bodies that were protected by Life Power, which also served to isolate the heat from the explosion as well. However, the ashes and pungent sulphuric stench that was lingering in the air were unbearable. Holding his nausea in, Lin Huang looked at the both of them, frowning. Li Lang put a mask over his mouth and nose as Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at him again. Seeing that the both of them were not wearing a mask, Li Lang passed two masks to them. Lin Huang shook his head to decline while Yi Yeyu put it on after some hesitation. As the three of them were landing, the gigantic Forsaken Skeleton looked in their direction with furious eyes. Although its intelligence was low, it knew that they were the ones to blame for almost killing it with the explosion earlier since there was no one else around this area. After confirming that they were the culprits, the Forsaken Skeleton kept making its way up from the debris while roaring angrily at the three of them. The three of them held their ground while waiting for the Forsaken Skeleton to advance. They were afraid that if they were to attack then, the Forsaken Skeleton would hide in the lava which made it hard for them to kill it. As they stood where they were, they observed the monster. The monster could only be seen from its shoulder up and that part alone was over five meters tall. It was huge! Although most of its body was covered in lava, they could clearly see that the monster was a flawless white in color like a perfect porcelain piece. "Master would definitely love it if I were to make tea sets with the monsters bones" Lin Huang was thinking which part of the monsters bone should he loot. It was not a strange idea as most of the items in this world were made of creatures including high-class tea sets, plates, and decorative sculptures. Unlike Earth, this world had too many monsters, so there was no law that restricted the hunting of monsters. In fact, the Union Government actually encouraged such behavior. There was no need to worry about the damage to the ecosystem as the Virtual Eye opened every day. If nobody was killing the monsters, there would be more and more monsters in this word which could be life-threatening to human survivors. "We can submit the dead corpse but Id like to keep one of its bones!" Li Lang shouted out of nowhere. He must have had the same thought as Lin Huang. "Ill get one as well then!" Lin Huang shouted back. Yi Yeyu did not say a word. Awhile later, the Forsaken Skeleton finally got out of the hole. It was more than 30 meters tall. With its entire body covered in lava, heat spread out of its body. Golden flames roiled around in his eyes as he looked down at the three of them 286 Sanguine Skeletal Spiri "Dont look at its eyes!" Lin Huang warned the both of them when he saw the golden flames in the Forsaken Skeletons eyes dancing dangerously. Right after he said that, a spiritual force shot out of its golden eyes. Although the three of them did not stare directly into its eyes, they felt the tremor on the spiritual level. It was a unique force that was similar to desolation which directly affected the human soul. Although they managed to avoid looking at its eyes, they felt uncomfortable. Before encountering monsters with the deterrence ability, Lin Huang had never imagined that the impact would be this significant. The force of the ability even brought out fear in him; it was a feeling that he had not experienced for a long time since he had arrived in this world. "Is Advanced Deterrence really this powerful? Or is this distress caused by the difference in spiritual level?" Lin Huang frowned as he looked at Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. The both of them were clearly experiencing it worse than he was. "Dont be affected by it. Its just the effect of its Advanced Deterrence skill. Its not as invincible as you think!" Lin Huang shouted at the both of them. As Yi Yeyu and Li Lang snapped out of their feelings of oppression and despair, the Forsaken Skeleton turned its head slightly and glared at Lin Huang. The flames in its eyes were swirling in doubt as if it was thinking. Seeing its pupils shrinking, he surmised that something was about to happen. Suddenly, Lin Huang sensed that he was gripped with an intense sense of crisis. Without thinking twice, Lin Huang lifted his sword relic into a defensive pose and leaped backwards. A black scythe came out of nowhere and collided with Lin Huangs sword The scythe struck him with a strong force and Lin Huang almost fell onto the ground. "Is it attacking me first?" Lin Huang frowned. "Did it randomly pick an opponent or did it determine that Im the biggest threat to it?" he thought to himself. The intense foreboding sense swelled within him again. He lifted his sword and swung it around. His sword collided with the black scythe that appeared out of nowhere once more. As they collided, the same unyielding force came out of the scythe again. Just when Lin Huang was backing away from the scythe, he saw a flaming chain whip around the Forsaken Skeletons hand from the corner of his eye. The chain dashed towards him, breaking through the sulphuric air and arriving in front of him in an instant. He frowned as he tried to figure out the Forsaken Skeletons move. If it was randomly attacking, it would have changed its target when its first attack was blocked. However, it proceeded with its second and third attacks. Now that the Punishment Chain was whipped out, it was clearly trying to kill the biggest threat present. "This fella sure can think!" He thought. Although unwilling to believe what he was seeing, Lin Huang confirmed that this Forsaken Skeleton was at least a double mutated monster. To be exact, it was no longer just a mere Forsaken Skeleton. As he backed away from the scythe, he was unable to escape as he found himself plunged into the air. Seeing the chains heading his way, he knew very well that he could not come into contact with the chains. If he did, his Life Power would be sealed and that would be the end of the battle. Even Yi Yeyu and Li Lang could not fight such a powerful double mutated monster. It was very likely that the three of them might die there and then. After some hesitation, Lin Huang figured that there was no way he could hide anymore. "Dark Shield!" A layer of dark shield resembling a piece of cloth spread out from his body, covering his entire being. It looked a thin layer of bedsheets as it swayed in the wind like a mosquito net. It collided with the flaming chains in an instant. As opposed to common expectations, the chains did not burn through the shield. On the contrary, there was a loud thud that sounded like the chains had collided with a hard object. Upon the deafening sound, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang finally snapped out of the deterrence effect. They realized that Lin Huang was fighting the Forsaken Skeleton. "Please be careful! This thing might not even be a Forsaken Skeleton. It might be a double mutated Sanguine Skeletal Spirit!" Lin Huang shouted at the both of them. "What?!" They could not believe what they just heard. It was difficult for a Forsaken Skeleton to complete its second mutation, but once it was done, it would become a Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Not only would its ability increase immensely, so would its intelligence. The creature suddenly spoke, "Hehehebusted!" Just when they were gaping at it in shock, the golden flame in the Forsaken Skeletons eyes turned blue. The lava around its body was now sheathed in a loose bloody robe that covered it from its head to its feet and a bloody crown appeared on its head. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit had finally shown its true self. Although Lin Huang had gotten proof of his suspicions, he was discouraged to see this. The double mutated Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was much more powerful than the mutated Forsaken Skeleton. If the Forsaken Skeleton was a spirited puppet that lived by instinct, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was a witch with human intelligence. Both its abilities and its intelligence were much higher than the Forsaken Skeletons. "How should I kill the three of you? The bomb earlier almost killed me" The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit floated into the air with its bloody robe fluttering. Flying was not something that a Forsaken Skeleton could do. "If I didnt use the spiritual lava under my feet as my shield, I might not have been able to rise from the debris. The explosion earlier also destroyed all of the spiritual power in the lava which took me a long time to gather. Tell me, should I kill all of you?!" The Dark Shield surrounding Lin Huangs body faded away. Listening to the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, the three of them finally figured out how it survived the explosion earlier. However, they did not have the time to talk about the spiritual lava anymore as the situation was dire right now. They knew very well that they would not be able to escape from this Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. The only choice they had was to fight! "Take care of yourself." After Lin Huang spoke, a gigantic shadow appeared in front of him. At the same time, a silhouette of a ripped body in silver armor materialized too. They were Tyrant and the Nephilic Judge! Lin Huangs eyes turned a bloody red and two pairs of Blood Spirit wings tore open his clothes and sprouted from his back. 287 Lin Huang Versus The Sanguine Skeletal Spiri Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were stunned as they watched Lin Huang transform. "Lin Huang is Sword Genius?!" They looked at each other in shock. The both of them had seen Sword Genius fight in the Hunter Arena so when Lin Huang transformed, they could recognize him immediately. They did not expect him to be the champion of the Hunter Arena. They were embarrassed as they recalled encouraging Lin Huang to practice his skills in the Hunter Arena earlier. Lin Huang had no other choice but to reveal himself. Since the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit could fly, there was no way that they could escape. Moreover, it was a double mutated Transcendent monster. Even a white flame-level, which was the lowest in the commander-level, could surpass a crimson flame-level or even a blue flame-level. This monster had reached Lin Huangs ability limitation. He did not think that Yi Yeyu and Li Lang could handle this monster either although their combat strength was higher than his. The only way to survive was to reveal his real ability and fight! He decided to summon Tyrant for its immense strength while the Nephilic Judge was needed for her rapid speed. Not only could she mess with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits attack, she could also help Lin Huang fight the monster. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit had outstanding defensive power, so it would not be wise to summon the Ruthless Sword Master which was skillful in physical attacks. As for Charcoal, Lin Huang would only summon it as his last resort as the dragon bloods aura was too attractive and might even attract other Transcendent monsters. Lin Huang definitely did not want such trouble. "An Imperial Censor that possesses two mutated summoning beastsSeems like youre not an ordinary kid," said the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. It could tell that both of his summoning beasts were mutated. However, they were nothing in his eyes. Also, they were all double mutated but there was a big gap between a complete gold-level and the holy fire-level. "Since you destroyed my spiritual lava, I shall eat these two double mutated toys as my supplements then." "Bullshit!" Lin Huang scoffed as he instructed the Nephilic Judge secretly. The Nephilic Judge flapped its golden wings slightly and appeared behind the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. With its purple spear on hand, it dashed towards the back of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head at the speed of light. Meanwhile, Lin Huang and Tyrant ran towards the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Sensing attacks from its front and back, a gigantic black scythe appeared behind it and collided with the Nephilic Judges spear. As it was interrupted, the Nephilic Judge attacked from another direction. Just when it dashed its spear at the monster again, the black scythe appeared again and blocked its attack. The Nephilic Judge did not give up; it kept changing the positions of its attacks. Its spear came like a lightning bolt from every direction possible. However, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not move at all. As if there were eyes all over its body, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit managed to block all of the Nephilic Judges attacks. As they were fighting intensely, Tyrant and Lin Huang had arrived in front of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Floating in the air with its body that was more than 30 meters tall, it was still far away from where Lin Huang could reach it. Lin Huang hopped onto Tyrants palm and attacked with the Worldly Purification from charging two full Life Wheels of Life Power into his sword. A sparkling golden glow shone from the tip of the sword. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang could recognize the ultimate move of Sword Genius. They might have thought that Lin Huang possessed monster skills that were similar to Sword Geniuss, but now that they were witnesses to the ultimate move itself and they could confirm that Lin Huang was the real Sword Genius. All they could do was to watch Lin Huang fight the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit from afar as a double mutated Transcendent monster was out of their league. If they decided to help, they would only drag Lin Huang down. Therefore, all they could do was watch, both of them forgetting that they were complete gold-level while Lin Huang was only a gold-level rank-2. In the battle, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit looked at Lin Huang who was approaching beneath it. In its blue eyes were a sense of mockery as it then extended its white hands from its bloody robe. Suddenly, the boiling lava behind the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit spewed more than 10 meters above the ground and advanced at Tyrant and Lin Huang. Noticing that the lava was coming to them like an ocean wave which could devour the both of them within seconds, Lin Huang remained fearless. "Tyrant!" Lin Huang shouted. Tyrant tossed Lin Huang, who was in its palm, with all its strength towards the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits direction. In the air, he leaped with his four Blood Spirit wings opened and twin swords in both his hands. He headed like an arrow towards the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits face. "Hmph!" Sanguine Skeletal Spirit gasped as a couple of black scythes appeared out of nowhere and flew towards Lin Huang. Staring deadly at the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, Lin Huang zipped towards it without avoiding the attack. Suddenly, a golden lightning collided with the scythes. The scythes then faded away. It was the Nephilic Judge that had transformed herself into lightning. She was so fast that she cleared the obstacles for Lin Huang in an instant. Nine Punishment Chains shot out from the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits robe, breaking through the space and arriving before Lin Huang instantly. "Seraphic Speed!" Lin Huang smirked and flapped his wings a few inches higher. With the help of Seraphic Speed, he arrived on top of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head immediately. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not expect Lin Huang to have such an ability. It happened very quickly, so it did not see it coming. "Die!" Lin Huang shouted while piercing his sword with Worldly Purification into the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head. As the sword collided with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head, a golden spark burst everywhere like a sun with its endless glow. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were shocked as they watched from a distance. Helpless, they squinted without closing their eyes completely as they did not want to miss the show. Bang! Shortly, a loud hammer-like sound came from the sky after the golden flow erupted. An energy force shook the place and any ground that was not sturdy within hundreds of meters collapsed. Gravel turned into dust within seconds and volcanic ash filled the place as the earth trembled. 288 Terrifying Defensive Ability When Lin Huang was still a silver-level rank-3, the Worldly Purification that he performed in the Hunter Arena was comparable to the ability of a holy fire-levels. That was the reason why he had managed to defeat The Final Fortresss ultimate defense. Now that he was a gold-level rank-2, not only did he have two extra circles of Life Power, his physique was also upgraded. With his rank-3 sword, he was much more powerful than with merely his Blood Spirit wings that were not even rank-1. The attack he was performing with his sword now was tenfold more powerful than his last attack with the Worldly Purification. The multiplier of strength was only Lin Huangs personal upgrade. With Tyrants strength of tossing him out and Seraphic Speed''s talent, this attack was hundreds of times more powerful than the attack when he was a silver-level rank-3. When he was at silver-level rank-3, he was already a genius as a whole. However, his attack ability surpassed many ordinary geniuses as his attack was comparable to a holy fire-level. His attack this time was hundreds of times more powerful and he was confident that he could kill this blue flame-level Transcendent monster. His ultimate move was akin to renting a hole in the air as he plunged the sword into the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head. When his sword collided with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head, a golden spark burst out everywhere; it was too bright to look directly at it. Only Lin Huang who was performing the attack was not affected by the bright light. His pupils shrunk as he witnessed half of his sword pierce into the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head. "Argh!" A furious roar shook the sky. Although Lin Huangs attack had injured the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, he had not killed it. After all, this Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was a double mutated monster. Its physical defense was so powerful that it was beyond Lin Huangs imagination. Although it did not die, the attack definitely threatened the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. It knew that if the sword pierced more than 20 centimeters into its head, it would definitely die on the spot. There was fear in its blue eyes as it looked at Lin Huang. The nine Punishment Chains came for Lin Huang at a speed of light, appearing behind Lin Huang almost instantly. He wanted to insert Life Power into his sword but he had to give that up as once he was in contact with the chains, his Life Power would be sealed. Helpless, he tapped the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits head and leaped into the air. He then free-fell from the top, allowing his body to descend with the pull of gravity. The Punishment Chains turned around and chased after him. Lin Huang flapped his Blood Spirit wings as he descended and avoided the chains. He glided towards the ground that was free from the boiling lava far away. Seeing that Lin Huang was escaping, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not chase after him as there was a limitation to the range of attack of the Punishment Chains and Lin Huang was beyond its range. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit stared at Lin Huang with frustration as it did not understand how a gold-level rank-2 human could come up with such a terrifying attack. "If hes not a gold-level rank-2 but a complete gold-level, perhaps Im already dead from his attack" The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit started to fear Lin Huang. Meanwhile, the golden glow of the Worldly Purification had completely faded. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang saw the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit where it was and Lin Huang standing on the ground. They could tell that his powerful attack earlier did not kill the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. "Even the ultimate attack of Sword Genius didnt kill it? What a powerful double mutated Transcendent monster!" Yi Yeyu frowned as she watched, starting to be worried. She had seen all of Sword Geniuss battles and even a few of his classic battles. She knew very well that Lin Huangs Worldly Purification drained a huge chunk of his Life Power. He could probably only perform that one or two more times at most. However, this confrontation with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was different from the Final Fortress in the Hunter Arena. This was a battle of life and death; it would not stand there waiting for Lin Huang to attack it as he wanted. "The monster is hurt!" Li Lang noticed a sword gash on the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits forehead and felt optimistic. "Although hes not dead, if the attack really managed to injure it, all Lin Huang will have to do is to perform the same attack for a couple of times more!" "How could it be so simple?!" Yi Yeyu saw the wound but she remained frowning. "Lin Huang managed to injure it earlier because it underestimated him, thinking that he wont be able to do anything to it. Now that his attack managed to hurt it, it must have its guard higher now. If I was the monster, I wouldnt let Lin Huang come close to me again. Its hard for Lin Huang to win this battle!" Lin Huang, who was staring at the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, knew very well that the monster was not like The Final Fortress in the Hunter Arena. The former had allowed him to break through its defense just by standing there. It would be hard for him to get close to it now. Moreover, he had drained two circles of his Life Power for his last attack but he did not manage to kill the monster. If he was to perform the same attack, he would have to insert his last three circles of Life Power. The last bet was risky. As soon as he finished his Life Power, the defensive power of his armor would lose its efficacy of protecting his body, leaving him with the basic function of an ordinary armor. He might die if the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit fought back or if he fell into the lava. Without the protection of Life Power, with his flesh alone, it was impossible for him to survive in the lava that was up to 1000 degrees Celsius. "Must I use another One-Time Skill Card again?" Lin Huang frowned as he was only left with two One-Time Skill Cards. Unless it was the last resort, he did not want to waste the card that could help him escape death. The higher his authorization was, the more powerful skills he would manage to copy. When he arrived at holy fire-level, the skill that his One-Time Skill Card would be able to copy would be upgraded to immortal-level. "Lin Huang!" Just when he was coming up with a plan, Yi Yeyu approached Lin Huang together with Li Lang while the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was tied down by the Nephilic Judge. Lin Huang frowned when he saw that. "Its better that the both of you stay away. You guys cant handle this fella," Lin Huang advised as he did not want them to risk their lives in his battle with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. "I know youve drained your Life Power for your last attack. Ive got an idea to refill your Life Power fast but theres a risk," Yi Yeyu said. "Is it even faster than the Life Power supplement?" Lin Huang knew that the Nephilic Judge could not hold the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit down any longer. The Life Power supplement was an expensive elixir that could refill Life Power in an instant. A tube of the supplement was as expensive as a gold-level weapon. However, it could fill up an empty Life Wheel of a gold-level rank-3 person within an hour. Lin Huang would need at least five rubs of the supplement. It could not be consumed more than two tubes at once, so Lin Huang would have to take it five times which totaled the refilling process to five hours. It was even slower than the time he took to recover his Life Power by the rotation of Life Skill, so he had never consumed the supplement. Yi Yeyu nodded at Lin Huang. "Itll only take a maximum of one minute to fill up your Life Power." "What!?" Lin Huangs eyes lit up. "I can use my Life Power to fill yours up," Yi Yeyu explained. "Is that some special secret skill? Will you hurt yourself?" Lin Hung was skeptical as it was his first time hearing of such a Life Power transfer. "Its a secret skill I guess" Yi Yeyu was stunned when she heard Lin Huangs question. "It wont damage my body. On the contrary, it might burden yours. My Life Power comes with strong fire attributes, so youll have to release your Life Power as soon as I transfer mine to you. The longer my Life Power stays in your body, the more damage it will bring to your body." "Sure! Lets try that then," Lin Huang agreed to Yi Yeyus suggestion without thinking twice. 289 Forbidden Skill Revival The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit noticed the three of them gather around from a distance. Although it was far away and could not hear what they were talking about, it could guess that they were talking about it. It then extended its gigantic hands from its bloody robe and a strange force surrounded the place. Red, boiling lava flowed towards the three of them, looking like someone had spilled melted steel from the smelting pot. The three of them summoned their mounts and rode on them. However, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not give up. It waved its hands in the air and streams of fire boas made of lava came steadily towards the three of them. Although there was no more spiritual force in the lava and they could not be harmed as they were wearing defensive relics, they had to avoid the lava as they did not want to be drowned in it. Lin Huang was upset as his plan was interrupted. He attempted to escape from the battle temporarily to refill his Life Power but they were chased by the fire boas. "This irritating fella!" Lin Huang frowned. He knew very well that the expansion of lava ground was caused by the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit with the intention to avoid them from standing still. As the ground was covered with a thick layer of lava, there was no way for Lin Huang to launch his attack at all. However, Lin Huang came up with a plan. "Recall your mounts, I will get my Alexandrian Eagle to get you!" Lin Huang said to Yi Yeyu. She knew what was he planning. She nodded and recalled her Rainbow Sparrow. The Rainbow Sparrow flew towards the Alexandrian Eagle immediately. Soon, Yi Yeyu took out her monster taming token and recalled the Rainbow Sparrow and jumped. The Alexandrian Eagle that was beneath her flew up and caught her deftly. As she sat behind Lin Huang, she asked directly, "Are you ready?" "Would it be affected since were flying?" Asked Lin Huang. "No, as long as we are not interrupted." Yi Yeyu shook her head. "Thats great. You can start now." Yi Yeyu placed her hand on Lin Huangs back and a red imprint appeared between her eyebrows like a gigantic red bird flapping its wings. Lin Huang could feel a hot aura seeping from his back into his body. Not knowing what was that, he felt re-energized as his two empty Life Wheels were filled up with red Life Power. "Theres a strong force refilling your body. You have received a Life Power Refill Card x1" "Life Power Refill Card: Ability to store massive amounts of Life Power. Once activated, Life Wheels will be filled in an instant." "Remark 1: A permanent card that can be used repetitively." "Remark 2: Can only be activated once a day." "Remark 3: The level of Life Power will be the same as yours." "Remark 4: No restriction in daily refill until all the Life Wheels are filled." Lin Huang did not expect to receive a new Function Card from Yi Yeyus Life Power transfer. Moreover, it was a practical card. After glancing at the card, Lin Huang put it aside as he did not have the time to look at the exact effects of the card. eeing that Yi Yeyu had hopped onto Lin Huangs Alexandrian Eagle, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit knew they were up to something. It then gave up chasing after Li Lang and focused on the Alexandrian Eagle that the both of them were riding on. It waved its hands, then the fire boas chased after the Alexandrian Eagle with their mouths wide open. It even gave up attacking the Nephilic Judge while getting its nine Punishment Chains to go after the Alexandrian Eagle. Suddenly, the Alexandrian Eagle was surrounded. The Nephilic Judge dashed towards the chains. However, the chains were like swimming loaches and avoided her completely while chasing after the Alexandrian Eagle. Lin Huang made up his mind at that very moment. "Come out, Ruthless Sword Master!" As Lin Huang commanded it, the Ruthless Sword Master appeared before Lin Huang in black armor and stood on the back of the Alexandrian Eagle. Although she could not tell how many times Ruthless Sword Master had been mutated, Yi Yeyus instinct told her that it was also a double mutated monster as she could sense its terrifying aura. Just when the Ruthless Sword Master was summoned, the nine Punishment Chains came near them. A bloody glow twinkled in the Ruthless Sword Masters eyes while it waved the black sword in its hand. With a black glow flashing in the air, it managed to block all nine Punishment Chains. Once again, the chains turned around and headed towards the Alexandrian Eagle while a couple of black scythes appeared at the same time. However, as the Ruthless Sword Master waved its black sword around, it managed to block all the Punishment Chains and scythes easily. Yi Yeyu was watching the battle closely and was curious about the Ruthless Sword Masters skill as there was neither any change of form in its sword, nor was there any sword glow coming out of it. However, with every wave, there were stripes of black sword glow around. With this performance, she was sure that this human-form monster was also a double mutated monster. Lin Huang knew very well that it was the Ruthless Sword Masters Death Zone where it could attack any point it wished to within a 100-meter radius in the sphere-shaped space. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit that was watching from far away was shocked when it saw the Ruthless Sword Master. It could sense clearly that the Ruthless Sword Master was just like itself - it was a double mutated monster. So far, Lin Huang had summoned three double mutated monsters and its fear of Lin Huang heightened. The Ruthless Sword Masters defense was air-tight. Not only the Punishment Chains, even the black scythes as well as the fire boas could not get close to the Alexandrian Eagle. Suddenly, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits blue eyes sparkled while its bloody robe was stripped off its body, revealing its gigantic skeleton body. The bloody robe was transformed into a bloody mist entering its blue eyes at the speed of light. Lin Huang frowned as he watched, knowing very well that it was the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits real ultimate forbidden skill - Revival 290 The Ruthless Sword Master’s Ultimate Move Revival was a special forbidden skill possessed by very few soul spirit monsters. Once it was performed, it could bring a soul back to life. Not only could it recover the monsters battle strength to its peak, it could even retrieve all the skills, combat skills, and even battle experiences that it had when it was alive when Revival was activated. However, there was a price to pay for performing such a forbidden skill. Although Lin Huang had no idea what this forbidden skill could do, he knew that the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits ability would be multiplied many times. Lin Huang started to panic as he watched the bloody mist being sucked into the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits eyes; the mist soon lessened. He had an idea and communicated with the Nephilic Judge with his mind. Soon, the sky turned dark. The area within 100 meters was covered in dark clouds and it looked like night had fallen. Li Lang stared at the sky in confusion as he had no idea how the weather that was so sunny earlier could turn dark so quickly. He could see faint golden lightning within the dark clouds. Suddenly, a lightning bolt struck the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. One lightning bolt, two bolts, three boltsThe lightning bolts were raining down on Sanguine Skeletal Spirit like a freak thunderstorm. Nevertheless, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not run away or even defend itself. Instead, it just stood there. However, even under the attack of the lightning bolts, it did not stop performing the forbidden skill while the bloody mist continued to be sucked into its eyes. Meanwhile, there were no more fire boas or black scythes chasing after Lin Huang. Only the nine Punishment Chains were left but they could not threaten the Alexandrian Eagle anymore. At that moment, Lin Huangs Life Wheels were filled thanks to Yi Yeyus help. Seeing that the bloody mist was almost done being sucked into the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits eyes, Lin Huang instructed the Alexandrian Eagle without hesitation, "Go!" The Alexandrian Eagle kept its wings close to its body and dove towards the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. It descended at such a rapid speed that there was a sonic boom heard throughout the land. However, it was too late. As it was still a distance away from the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, the last cloud of mist was completely absorbed into the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Its blue eyes turned to gold in an instant and a bloody cloud surrounded its skeleton. As the three of them watched in shock, the bloody cloud then transformed into flesh and skin, covering the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits skeletonIts dominating presence was increasing tremendously and it emanated the same terrifying aura when Lin Huang encountered the Supreme Overlord or even stronger nemesis! "This is bad" Lin Huang frowned. Suddenly, a vague thought came into his mind. It was a message from the Ruthless Sword Master. Although it was not clear, Lin Huang knew that it was asking for his permission to attack. Although he had no idea why would the Ruthless Sword Master request so, he nodded anyway. The Ruthless Sword Master then hopped off the Alexandrian Eagle and dashed towards the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit that had almost completed its transformation. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit sensed that something was coming for it. The nine Punishment Chains then gave up chasing after Lin Huang and turned to the Ruthless Sword Master instead. The Ruthless Sword Master did not have wings, so it could not fly. There was no way for it to do anything in the air. Seeing that the Punishment Chains heading for the Ruthless Sword Master, the three of them was sure that it would not make it. However, just when the chains were inches away from the Ruthless Sword Master, a black sword appeared under the latters feet. It stepped on it and rushed towards another direction. The chains proceeded to chase after it. With the help of the black sword, the Ruthless Sword Master moved in zig-zag motions in the air while getting closer and closer to Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Lin Huang was stunned at how agile the Ruthless Sword Master was in the air. He knew that the black sword was created from its Death Zone but he had no idea that that skill could be used in such a way. The Ruthless Sword Master that was still in the air did not use its sword to fight the Punishment Chains. Lin Huang noticed that the brightness of its single crimson red eye became more blinding while golden patterns glowed and throbbed on the black sword that it was holding. Within a couple of breaths, the Ruthless Sword Master arrived before the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. The growing of flesh was almost complete; all that was left without flesh was its head. However, the crimson red in Ruthless Sword Masters eye had reached its peak brightness like a red star falling. The golden pattern that was surrounding its sword had faded away and the sword was now in completely bathed in a white glow. "HeheYou are in so much trouble!" The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit laughed cunningly with a black scythe in its hand. It then slashed its blade towards the Ruthless Sword Master so swiftly that Lin Huang could only catch a brief glimpse of it. He was deeply concerned. However, the Ruthless Sword Master waved its sword without hesitation and the white glow burst out of its sword like a shockwave, drowning the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit and its black scythe in it. The ground behind the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit that was filled with lava was covered by the white glow as well up to 100 kilometers away. The ground shook violently from the attack. Although nobody knew what the result was, the single swing of the sword alone showed that even if the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not die, it would definitely be injured under this hit. Lin Huang knew very well that it was the Ruthless Sword Masters ultimate move, Absolute Life. No matter what, the Ruthless Sword Master would have to go back to its card form and would not be able to be summoned within 24 hours after this hit. "Is this cyclopsa triple mutated monster?" Yi Yeyu asked in shock. "No, its just a double mutated monster. That was its ultimate move," Lin Huang explained. The three of them stared at the direction where the battle was while anticipating the result. Soon, the Ruthless Sword Master disintegrated into black dots and disappeared. The white glow that was spread more than 100 kilometers away faded. Most obviously was a gigantic hole on the ground 100 kilometers away. It was so deep that it seemed endless. Even the lava that was underground had evaporated from the attack. Meanwhile, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit revealed itself as the white glow faded away 291 Killing The Sanguine Skeletal Spiri As the white glow faded, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits body was covered in a white mist. Suddenly, the wind blew and it revealed part of its head. Lin Huang saw its head had lost the flesh that it had built earlier; what remained was its white skull. However, shrouded by the mist, he could see that there was still a golden twinkle in its eyes. The monster was still alive! Lin Huangs pupils shrunk and he made up his mind. He patted the Alexandrian Eagle immediately. "Go!" The Alexandrian Eagle flapped its wings and dashed towards the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. It was as fast as lightning and all anyone could see was a white blur. "The Ruthless Sword Masters attack mustve drained most of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits energy. We cant let it recover. We must kill it this time!" Lin Huang gripped his sword tightly as Life Power flowed into his sword. One, two, three, four, five circles! This time, besides keeping one or two columns as a reserve, Lin Huang inserted all the five Life Wheels of Life Power into his sword. The golden glow at the tip of his sword was as radiant as the sun during the noon. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit did not react to it and it did not seem to notice what Lin Huang was doing. Soon, the Alexandrian Eagle arrived in front of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Armed with his sword, Lin Huang hopped off from the back of the Alexandrian Eagle. Lin Huang then spread his wings slightly so that he could glide down smoothly to the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. His speed was even faster than the Alexandrian Eagle. "Damn this human boy!" Shouted the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, seemingly to be devoid of any strength to perform any skill. It could only lift up its hands to block Lin Huang forcefully. The flesh that had grown on its hands had disappeared from Ruthless Sword Masters hit; they were now fragile-looking, old, white bones. Without saying a word, Lin Huang did not avoid the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits hands and dashed towards it without slowing down. The tip of his sword that was a luminous gold collided with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits hands. There was no explosion as Lin Huang had expected. Perhaps, there was not much Life Power left in its hands, which broke the moment they collided with Lin Huangs sword. Within seconds of exploding through the bony hands, Lin Huangs sword collided with its head. Bright golden glow exploded like a supernova and beams of light shot everywhere. Unlike the last time when Lin Huang had only managed to pierced half of his sword into its skull, this time his sword sliced through easily like a hot knife passing through butter. Only the sword handle was left outside the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits skull. The ground around a one-kilometer radius collapsed. Not only that, a gigantic hole broke within the dark clouds that were controlled by Nephilic Judge. The intense crack from the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits skull was even louder than the thunder rumbling in the sky. The sound traveled up to 1000 kilometers away and the other participants were worried when they heard it. Soon, more and more cracking sounds followed. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, who were not far away, heard it too. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirits skull started to crack like a spider web with the golden glow coming out of the cracks. Within a matter of seconds, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits golden eyes faded away. Endless golden light shot out of the cracks in its skull, eyes, nose, and mouth. Finally, its skull exploded in a deafening blast. Its headless body fell into the collapsed ground. As the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit fell, Lin Huangs body started falling too. A silver light flitted down from the air. The Nephilic Judge lifted Lin Huang into the air. The Nephilic Judge was 2.5 meters tall, so it did not look strange for her to be carrying Lin Huang. He was unwilling to be carried but just when he wanted to get her to change positions, he heard a notification from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you have received an epic-level Monster Card - Sanguine Skeletal Spirit." Lin Huang was stunned as he did not expect the kill to earn him a complete Monster Card. He forgot about being lifted by the Nephilic Judge and looked at the card immediately. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Sanguine Skeletal Spirit" "Combat Level: White Flame-level" "Skill 1: Punishment" "Skill 2: Revival" "Skill 3: Immense Deterrence" "Skill 4: Death Sentence" "Skill 5: Lava Control" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Punishment: Ability comparable to a relic, the punishment comes in the form of flame chains. The target that is tied by the chains will have his/her Life Power sealed temporarily." "Remarks: Nine maximum chains can be utilized." "Revival: An exclusive skill for limited soul spirit monsters, allowing the monsters to transform back into living creatures. The activation of the skill will increase the monsters combat strength to its peak. It does not only retain all the skills the monster had when it was in its soul form, the skill also retrieves all the skills, battle experiences and portions of its memories when it was alive." "Remark 1: Time limit of activation will be one hour." "Remark 2: After one hour, the memory of Revival will disappear." "Remark 3: 48 hours after the activation of skill, the user will be sealed with the inability to use ones Life Power." "Immense Deterrence: A powerful soul deterrence skill which causes fear in creatures that have lower combat strength than the monster itself. It can also cause one to zone out temporarily." "Death Sentence: A powerful sword skill allowing one to hide its weapon and attack without warning." "Lava Control: Controlling lava as one desires. The more powerful the combat strength, the bigger the lava range." "Remarks: The control of lava includes the form, temperature and so on." After reading the card, Lin Huang noticed that they had landed on the ground while Li Lang and Yi Yeyu approached with their mounts. "Wow, does it feel good to be carried like a lady? How comfortable that you dont even want to get down anymore," Yi Yeyu teased. Lin Huang just realized that he was still being carried by the Nephilic Judge like a princess. He hopped down immediately and recalled the Nephilic Judge. "Sorry, I was thinking about something," Lin Huang smiled awkwardly. "Dont worry about it. Your summoning beast has a banging body and were both men, so I understand." Li Lang patted Lin Huangs shoulder and winked at him. "Understand, my ass!" Lin Huang wanted to say. It was hard to take back his words now that he had said that. Yi Yeyu stared at the both of them judgmentally. "Let me get Tyrant to pick up the dead body," Lin Huang changed the subject immediately while looking at the gigantic hole that he had made. After summoning and instructing Tyrant what to do, Tyrant hopped into the hole. "How many double mutated monsters do you really have?" Li Lang asked. Yi Yeyu stared at Lin Huang when she heard the question as she was curious too. "How many did you see? That''s how many I have." Lin Huang did not bother to clarify. Seeing that Lin Huang refused to answer the question, the both of them did not want to ask further and asked something else instead. "Why didnt you tell us that youre Sword Genius?" Yi Yeyu asked. "You didnt ask me. Moreover, even if I told you, would you believe me?" Lin Huang asked. The both of them thought what Lin Huang asked made sense. Even if he had told them he was Sword Genius, they would not have believed him anyway. Although Yi Yeyu was unwilling to compliment Lin Huang to his face, she had to admit, "You can even kill a double mutated Transcendent now, so youre a real genius." "Stop that, I dont ever want to encounter another double mutated monster again. I was lucky that I survived this time." Lin Huang could not imagine what would happen if the Ruthless Sword Master did not use its ultimate move to drain all of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits Life Power. It would have been impossible for him to kill the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. He might have died in the battle instead. After some chatter, Lin Huang could feel his Life Power was running low, so he sat down immediately and started refilling his Life Power. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang did not interrupt him while they sat aside and waited for Lin Huang to recover. 292 Credits To Mr. Fu The refilling and the cultivation of Life Power were two different processes. Under normal circumstances, cultivation of the Life Power would require a massive amount of Life Crystals to extract Life Light and turn that into Life Power, filling the empty columns with them. Even with sufficient Life Crystals, an upper-range Life Skill would take two hours to completely fill one column of Life Power. With the time spent on sleeping and eating taken away, it was considered fantastic if an ordinary person could get seven to eight columns of Life Power within a day. However, it was much simpler for Life Power to be refilled. It could be easily acquired by the rotation of Life Skill whereby the Life Power would be refilled into the Life Wheels automatically. The speed of the Life Power refill would usually take a hundred times faster than Life Power cultivation. Some people with special body physiques could achieve a speed that was hundreds of times faster than that of Life Power cultivation. Since Lin Huang had already arrived at level-8 of Army Attack Tactics, his speed of refilling Life Power was terrifyingly fast as it was comparable to an ultimate Life Skill. With his unique physique, he only took more than eight hours to fill two Life Wheels. Although he had only filled two of his five Life Wheels, it was sufficient for him to survive as long as he did not encounter any double mutated monsters. He then halted refilling his Life Power. Meanwhile, Tyrant had picked up the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits body from the hole without leaving any bones behind. However, without Lin Huangs permission, Li Lang did not touch the bones although he was tempted to do so. A double mutated Sanguine Skeletal Spirits bones could be used to make some high-end crafts. "You havent filled up all your Life Power, have you?" Yi Yeyu had been watching Lin Huang and she noticed that he had stopped. "Its enough for now." "Its almost 6 p.m. now and the sun will set soon. Eat something before you continue. Take a good rest tonight. We shall continue to kill more Transcendent monsters tomorrow," advised Yi Yeyu, knowing that Lin Huang must be exhausted from the battle. "Its only been day one of our 10 days out here and weve already completed a sixth of our mission. We dont have to rush," Li Lang agreed with Yi Yeyus arrangement. "Sure!" Lin Huang knew that the both of them were worried about him, so he agreed to the plan. As they were having snacks as their dinner, Lin Huang noticed that Li Lang had been eyeing the pile of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits bones. "I thought you wanted the bones. There are broken ones anyway, so you can take them. Just leave one or two for me. We dont have to produce the full body for the mission anyway." "I shall do just that then!" Li Lang put down his snacks and walked towards the pile of bones. "Take some for yourself. These are the bones of a double mutated Transcendent. Go and make some crafts with them. I bet your great-grandfather will love it," Lin Huang said to Yi Yeyu with a smile. Yi Yeyu shook her head. "Its okay, he can probably tell that I didnt kill it just by looking at the bones. Its unnecessary." "Alright then" Lin Huang stopped talking and he proceeded to munch on his snacks. Yi Yeyu was eating while pondering some questions in her head. Awhile later, she started speaking out of nowhere. "I keep feeling that I lost part of my memories during the monster crowd 10 months ago. Do you feel that too?" Lin Huang was shocked when he heard what Yi Yeyu said. He knew that Xue Luo wiped away everyones memories but he did not expect Yi Yeyu to recall anything. "No, its your illusion, I guess." Lin Huang did not want Yi Yeyu to recall him using the Small Destruction Card as well as the appearance of Xue Luo. "My brother said the same thing too. Perhaps its really my illusion" Yi Yeyu stopped dwelling on that thought when she got Lin Huangs opinion. "Youve managed to upgrade so much within a year. Mr. Fu must be really powerful." Yi Yeyu did not suspect anything suspicious about Lin Huangs immense upgrade in his abilities; she thought all the credit went to Mr. Fu. "Yeah, most of the credits should go to Mr. Fu as well as my good luck." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. Yi Yeyus assumption had saved him from any further explanation. "I bet Mr. Fu killed the double mutated monsters for you," said Yi Yeyu curiously. "Yeah." Lin Huang did not know how to explain that but since Yi Yeyu had come up with such an assumption, he thought it would be easier if he agreed with what she said. "My great-grandfather told me that there are a few people in Division7 that he doesnt want to offend and Mr. Fu is one of them," Yi Yeyu brought Mr. Fu up again. "Since youre his apprentice, you must know about his combat strength then." "I really dont know anything about that as I have never seen him fight before." Lin Huang shook his head. He figured that Yi Yeyu might know more about Mr. Fu than he did. Although he had always known that Mr. Fu had terrifying abilities, he was shocked that Yi Yeyu had revealed that the ex-general of Union Government, Yi Donglai, did not dare offend Mr. Fu. "Oh" Yi Yeyu knew Lin Huang was not lying as she noticed his helpless expression, so she did not ask further. They went completely silent. Soon, Li Lang picked up two bones and waved them at Lin Huang. Lin Huang nodded in approval, so Li Lang took the bones and returned to where they sat while proceeding to eat his snacks. After finishing his snacks, Lin Huang walked to the bones and asked Yi Yeyu again, "You sure you dont want any of them?" "No." Seeing Yi Yeyu shake her head without thinking twice, Lin Huang then put all the bones into his storage space. He then recalled Tyrant and summoned Bloody because the challenge for this round was too intense and he needed information from it. "Have you found the Transcendent monsters?" Lin Huang communicated with Bloody in his mind. "There are four of them," said Bloody. It was the only summoning beast that could communicate with Lin Huang in his mind. Lin Huang could only receive blurry messages from the other summoning beasts. "Did you find the Fire Phoenix?" Lin Huang asked again. "No, it shouldnt be around this area," Bloody replied. "Take your time, theres no need to rush." Lin Huang knew that they had time as it was only the first day of the second round of the training. After communicating, Bloody returned to Lin Huangs sleeve. Lin Huang then turned around to look at Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. "Bloody has already found the next Transcendent monster. Lets find a place to camp tonight and well depart tomorrow morning." "Its so convenient to have such a summoning beast. Its saved us a lot of time!" Li Lang smirked. "If we were to find the monsters ourselves, Im not sure how long we''d take." "You dont have to fight tomorrow. The both of us will do it," said Yi Yeyu. "Thats right. You can even kill a double mutated monster now, so its not fair to us if you fight again. You dont get to fight tomorrow!" Li Lang agreed with Yi Yeyu. "Alright then" Lin Huang did not expect that revealing his real ability would receive this level of sarcasm from the both of them in return. Now, he did not even get to fight. 293 The Fiendish Terraflame Lizard By the next morning, the five Life Wheels within Lin Huang were completely filled. The three of them had a light breakfast before departing to the location of the second Transcendent monster riding on their mounts with the guidance of Bloody. Twenty minutes later, they arrived near the destination where Bloody had detected the Transcendent monster, so they landed. "Is it nearby here? But there''s no volcano around here, so where''s the Transcendent monster that you were talking about?" Li Lang asked Lin Huang as he looked around. Besides a hill that was a distance away, it was flat land around them. There were neither monsters for a couple of kilometers nor were there any sinking ground nor lava river. Even if there were monsters around, there was nowhere for the monsters to hide. Yi Yeyi surveyed the area and peered at Lin Huang in suspicion. "There." Lin Huang pointed and smiled. The both of them looked at the direction where Lin Huang was pointing at in doubt. It was the direction where the hill was. "You meanbehind the hill? Why did we land so far away?" Li Lang asked. "That hill?" Yi Yeyu stared at the hill for a while before asking. "Where?" Li Lang rubbed his eyes and stared at the hill with his eyes wide open. However, he did not see anything. "Is that a rock monster? It doesn''t look like it." "It''s not a rock monster, it''s a Fiendish Terraflame Lizard. It''s camouflaged itself to blend in with the color of the ground," Lin Huang explained. The both of them were confused when they heard the name of the monster. Clearly, they had never heard of it before. "Even if the both of you don''t usually refer to the monster encyclopedia, shouldn''t you at least do your research and figure out what kind of monsters are there in the ruins before you come here?" Lin Huang shook his head at the both of them before deciding to teach them about the monster. "The Fiendish Terraflame Lizard is a demon-type monster and specializes in camouflage. It has powerful physical defense and super-regenerative abilities. Its mainly attacks with venom, mostly using a mist of venom as there''s a strong venom in its teeth and claws. If the venom enters a Transcendent of the same level''s body, he or she will experience numbness and lose control of their body. Besides venom, it can also spit fire. "Such a monster has high defenses and moves fast too. Its only weakness is that it''s afraid of any force that contains ice. Other attacks will harm it as well but the effect of an ice-based attack is the most powerful counter against it. "The rarest of them contains dragon blood and has abilities which are superior to the ordinary ones. "Although it''s just an ordinary Transcendent monster, its physical defense itself is already a major obstacle." Li Lang frowned. Yi Yeyu did not say anything as she had picked the Fire Phoenix, which was a double mutated Transcendent monster, to search for. It was even more powerful than the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit that Lin Huang had killed on the first day. If she could not even kill a Fiendish Terraflame Lizard, she should not waste her time looking for the Fire Phoenix anymore. "Li Lang, don''t fight it first. I''d like to know what I can do. If I can''t handle it, you guys can help me," Yi Yeyu said to Li Lang after some thought. Although the both of them had asked Lin Huang not to fight the day before, he did not say anything as he knew that Yi Yeyu wanted to test it for herself. "Alright, ladies first." Li Lang gestured to Yi Yeyu. Although he did not understand why would Yi Yeyu request that, he still respected her decision. Yi Yeyu nodded to the both of them and took out a green saber. It was not a gold-level weapon but a saber relic. Lin Huang recognized that the saber relic was more powerful than the one he had. With the saber, Yi Yeyu summoned the Rainbow Sparrow and flew towards the hill while Lin Huang and Li Lang decided to watch from afar. The Rainbow Sparrow flapped its wings and soon arrived above the hill. The gigantic Fiendish Terraflame Lizard sensed Yi Yeyu''s and the Rainbow Sparrow''s aura. It woke up from its nap and its eyes were wide open, spinning around and targeted at the Rainbow Sparrow that was flying in the sky. Without hesitation, it swiped its gigantic tail into the air. A loud swoosh was heard as its tail was aimed at the Rainbow Sparrow. "Go!" Yi Yeyu instructed while the Rainbow Sparrow kept its wings close to its body and descended quickly, managing to avoid the terrifying attack. Within seconds, the Rainbow Sparrow was less than 10 meters from the ground. It flapped its wings immediately and with the force of the inertia, it stopped less than three meters from the ground. Yi Yeyu hopped down from its back and arrived less than 20 meters from the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard. After recalling the Rainbow Sparrow, she dashed towards the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard. Lin Huang, who was watching from a distance, nodded in approval. Although he had never battled with Yi Yeyu, her performance was satisfying so far. Despite encountering a Transcendent monster, she did not have any fear or doubts from the beginning. She knew very well what she wanted and what result she desired. She was firm in this battle of skills and wits. With that mentality, Lin Huang was sure that she was halfway there. However, the monster that Yi Yeyu confronted was a ferocious Transcendent monster after all. It spat fire at Yi Yeyu, hoping to scare her away. As Lin Huang and Li Lang were anticipating her next move, they were shocked to see that Yi Yeyu did not avoid the spitting fire at all. She did not even swing her saber to defend herself from the fire but she plunged into the fire instead. What she did stunned even the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard. "Is this human dumb? How could she dive straight into the fire?" Thought the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard. "Is shecrazy?" Li Lang mumbled to himself. "No, she must have done that after some serious consideration." Lin Huang remembered clearly that Xue Luo had inserted a red flaming bird''s monster soul into Yi Yeyu''s body to save her 294 Killed in One Hit?! Yi Yeyu dived straight into the fire that the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard spat out but to everyone''s surprise, nothing happened to her body. She had only found out about her immunity to fire seven months ago. It was when she had leveled up to a complete gold-level not long ago. Since her combat strength had yet to stabilize, she logged into the Hunter Arena as she had nothing else to do. After a couple of battles, she encountered an opponent that possessed fire elemental attributes. She thought she would lose but after the intense battle, she realized that the fire-based attacks from her opponent could not harm her in the least. She won that particular battle. After logging out of the Hunter Arena, she attempted to burn her hand with fire. After several experimental attempts and confirming that she was immune to fire, she informed her family about her confounding discovery. Her family then ran some tests on her body and realized that her body had gone through a major change. The change did not only make her body immune to fire; it also made her body highly compatible with fire. However, Yi Yeyu never had talents or monster skills that were of the fire element, so she could not make sense of that. Hence, her family picked the Fire Phoenix as the monster to get her to level up to holy fire-level. As long as she obtained the fire seed from the Fire Phoenix, she would be able to light up her Life Fire to obtain the secret Flaming Sword of Thunder skill. By then, with the help of the fire compatibility in her body, she would be able to execute the secret skill perfectly. Consequently, she might be able to be a genius that surpassed Yi Zheng. Not many people knew about her immunity to fire. She had not wanted to swim across the lava river earlier as she did not want to reveal her secret, but not because she was afraid of emerging bald. If she had swum in the lava, none of her hair or eyebrows would be burnt off. People would be speculating if they saw that scene. However, she was not afraid to reveal her secret to Li Lang and Lin Huang since the latter had already revealed that he was Sword Genius and summoned three double mutated monsters in front of them. Although she was not close to Li Lang, judging from Lin Huang''s trust he had for Li Lang, Yi Yeyu could tell that he was a trustworthy person. That was the reason why she revealed her secret before the both of them. As the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard spat fire towards her, she went towards it without thinking twice. Nothing happened to her army green attire and her hair swayed in the air, making her look extra cool. Before the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard could do anything, Yi Yeyu''s green saber relic pierced through its body with a golden glow at the tip of the saber. Even Yi Yeyu herself was shocked as she did not expect her attack to go so smoothly. She recalled that Lin Huang had warned her of the monster''s high defenses. The Fiendish Terraflame Lizard was stunned too. Not only could the fire do nothing to Yi Yeyu, even its defense which it was extremely proud of, was completely broken through. When it snapped out of its shock, her saberhad completely pierced into its body, leaving just the saber handle outside. Yi Yeyu immediately set her thoughts aside and inserted all her Life Power into her saber. The Fiendish Terraflame Lizard groaned while fire spilled uncontrollably out of its mouth and nose. Looking at the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard struggling, it seemed to be experiencing intense pain. Li Lang gaped at the sight before him. "So, this girl was hiding her real ability all along?" Li Lang turned around and asked Lin Huang. He was not suspicious about how powerful the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard was as he could feel its aura from far away. "It''s not about her ability, it could be the characteristics of her Life Power which controlled the monster." Lin Huang knew what was happening. Theoretically, the attack should not have been able to break through the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard''s defenses, so the frenzy that the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard was experiencing was odd. As the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard roared, red flame spilled out of its mouth and nose continuously. Its body was changing colors and it seemed like its body had lost control as a result of Yi Yeyu''s attack. Meanwhile, she held tightly to her saber handle without letting go. She looked like she was taming a wild horse that had gone out of control. However, the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard''s reaction only lasted for a couple of seconds. The flames from its body soon disappeared and its body became stiff. A while later, after Yi Yeyu confirmed that the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard was dead, she then pulled out her saber while investigating the monster''s body. She actually had no idea what just happened. Seeing that the battle had ended, Lin Huang and Li Lang summoned their monsters and went to Yi Yeyu. "How did you do that? You killed this Transcendent monster in one hit!" Li Lang asked Yi Yeyu while looking stunned. "I don''t know" Yi Yeyu could tell that it had something to do with the change in her body but she had no idea what had exactly happened. Lin Huang extended his hand towards the body and inserted his Life Power into it. Later on, he retracted his hand and said to Yi Yeyu, "There''s no fire element left in itYour body can control monsters with fire attributes and your Life Power might possess a special energy that can oppress such monsters. Perhaps that was how you managed to do that with that one attack." "Lin Huang, please get me some other different monsters of the fire element. I''d like to try my abilities out." Yi Yeyu was eager to know more about her body secret. "That''s easy, most of the monsters in this ruins have the fire attribute," Lin Huang agreed immediately. Yi Yeyu put the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard''s body that was the size of a hill into her storage space and summoned the Rainbow Sparrow. Lin Huang summoned Bloody and asked, "Is there any fire-type Transcendent monster around us?" Bloody nodded and pointed towards a particular direction. The three of them headed for the determined direction of their monsters. In less than half an hour, the three of them landed with Bloody''s guidance. After recalling their monsters, Bloody got down from Lin Huang''s left hand and moved forward like a lightning bolt. They chased after it and soon, they saw the second Transcendent monster. It was a huge Volcanic Giant 295 I Hate Spiders! "The Volcanic Giant belongs to the undead. It has powerful defenses and super regeneration abilities. The only way to kill it is to break its volcanic heart in its chest. This monster has powerful strength and explosive abilities. It can invoke a burning sensation in its attack," Lin Huang explained to the both of them. "Let me try killing it, if I can''t handle, you can help." Yi Yeyu said to Li Lang. She then summoned the Rainbow Sparrow and headed for the gigantic human-form monster. After fighting the Volcanic Giant for a while, she avoided its punch several times and pierced her saber into its head. Its tough head was like a soft tofu that she pierced through easily without any effort with the green saber. The Volcanic Giant toppled onto the ground, proving that even though Yi Yeyu did not aim for its heart, her saber could extinguish the fire in its heart. It had also confirmed Lin Huang''s speculation. Even he could not kill that Volcanic Giant easily. He then walked over to investigate the Volcanic Giant''s body and the same thing that happened to the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard occurred. The fire in its body disappeared. After putting away the Volcanic Giant''s body, Yi Yeyu agreed with Lin Huang''s theory about her ability to suppress fire element monsters. "Let''s try killing non-fire element monsters. If you can do the same, that shows that your body can cause this effect to more than just fire element monsters," Lin Huang suggested. "Okay." Yi Yeyu had the same idea as Lin Huang after killing two fire element monsters consecutively. She wanted to see if she could do the same to other types of monsters that were not of the fire element. Bloody slithered out of Lin Huang''s sleeve when Lin Huang instructed it to look for a non-fire element monster. Soon, it guided the three of them towards the fourth monster. Around half an hour later, they arrived at their destination. The Transcendent monster that they had picked this time was an undying monster called the Afflicted Weaver. "I hate spiders" Seeing that her target was a spider that was as huge as a hill, Yi Yeyu had goosebumps all over her body. "Spiders are cute! Look that those eight round eyes blinking on top of its head and the sexy hair on its legs," Li Lang smirked. "Go f*ck yourself!" Yi Yeyu shouted. "This is an Afflicted Weaver. I bet you guys have heard of this monster." Lin Huang looked at the both of them questioningly. "The Afflicted Weaver that has spells on it?" Li Lang raised his eyebrow, not looking too well. "Yes, you''ll be cursed with bad luck if any of the thorns on its body cut you unless you kill it and bathe yourself in its blood. Or else, you''ll have bad luck for a month." Lin Huang confirmed. "Why not we find another one?" Li Lang wanted to back out. "Didn''t you say that this spider is cute?" Yi Yeyu glared at Li Lang. "I" Li Lang did not expect his teasing to end up like this. "We can change to another monster if you don''t want to kill this one," suggested Lin Huang upon seeing their hesitation although he did not think that this monster was a threat. "It''s okay, I''ll kill this one then!" Yi Yeyu rejected Lin Huang''s suggestion. "Didn''t you say that you hate spiders?" Li Lang looked at Yi Yeyu in confusion. "Because I hate it, I must kill it." Yi Yeyu''s answer rendered everyone speechless. Li Lang simply could not understand how a woman''s mind worked. "Since you have decided, then let''s try it out." Lin Huang recalled the time when Yi Yeyu had used a relic to kill all the spiders the last time. She really hated them! "Try not to be cut by its thorns during the battle. Besides bad luck, there''s venom in the thorns. Be aware of its spider web as well, don''t get in contact with that as it''ll make your body numb. Those are the two points you should take note of. I trust you can take care of the rest," advised Lin Huang. "Same old, same old. I''ll try to kill it but if I can''t handle, come help me," Yi Yeyu said to Li Lang. She rode on the Rainbow Sparrow and headed towards the Afflicted Weaver. Seeing that Yi Yeyu left, Lin Huang said, "Li Lang, get ready to help her." "Do you doubt that she''ll be able to kill it?" Li Lang asked. "She might not be able to kill it in one hit like she did earlier." As they chatted, Yi Yeyu had confronted the Afflicted Weaver. After managing to avoid its attacks, she dashed forward and aimed her green saber relic on the Afflicted Weaver''s abdomen. Ding! The tip of her saber collided with the Afflicted Weaver''s hard shell and a clear metal noise rang out. There was a light, white stripe left on its shell. Seeing her failure to pierce through the shell, Yi Yeyu backed off immediately as she was now sure that her body could only cause that effect to fire element monsters and could not do the same to other monsters. Noticing that Yi Yeyu could not break through its defenses, the Afflicted Weaver seemed to have its guard down and it rushed towards Yi Yeyu. Yi Yeyu panicked when she saw the giant spider chasing after her. All she could do was to block its attack clumsily. "You should go now," Lin Huang said to Li Lang. "Okay!" Li Lang then rode on his Ashenquill Eagle and headed to where Yi Yeyu was. Li Lang''s weapon was a black spear relic. Lin Huang could sense the spear''s power from afar and he could tell that it was at least a rank-3 relic. Li Lang had a nifty skill and if it were to be made into a card, it would definitely be an epic-level card. He had mastered the skill well; even Lin Huang did not expect Li Lang''s skill to reach the foundation of the realms. As soon as he had sufficient battle experiences, he could get to the level-1 realm. When Li Lang joined the battle, Yi Yeyu calmed down. She managed to perform up to more than 90% of her ability. Both of them managed to kill the Afflicted Weaver more than an hour later. Just when Lin Huang landed with Alexandrian Eagle, he heard Yi Yeyu expressing her loathing for the monster. "Ugh! How disgusting! You can keep the body." Looking at the dead Afflicted Weaver, Yi Yeyu had goosebumps rise again. Li Lang put the body in his storage space unwillingly and showed his sad face to Lin Huang. Lin Huang looked at the sun and said, "Today is only the second day and we''ve already killed four monsters out of six. Great progress. You guys must be exhausted, let''s have lunch and get some rest." "Let''s grill the spider. The leg can totally feed the three of us since we don''t have to submit the complete body anyway," Li Lang suggested and laughed. "Go f*ck yourself!" Yi Yeyu glared deadly at him while Lin Huang shook his head and munched on his snacks 296 Unsealing The Nephilic Judge It was almost 12:30 p.m. after they finished lunch. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang had drained a huge chunk of their Life Power after the battle because they had to perform their ultimate move a couple of times before managing to kill the Afflicted Weaver. Lin Huang knew very well that with their condition, they would not be able to continue any battles for the day. "You guys can rest here. Let me kill the remaining two monsters and Ill come back to meet you guys after Im done," Lin Huang suggested. Their mission of killing six Transcendent monsters was halfway completed as they had already killed four monsters. Lin Huang planned to kill the remaining two so that he could do his own stuff for the next eight days. "Although we have enough time, itd be great if we could complete it earlier." Li Lang was the kind of person who would take his own sweet time and delay until the last minute. Otherwise, he would have been more powerful than he was right now. Lin Huang could tell that his talent in spear-handling and his battle experience was excellent from the way he had fought the spider earlier. Meanwhile, Yi Yeyu knew that they would have to part ways after the mission was completed. She was upset but she did not stop Lin Huang from leaving. "We will wait for you here," Yi Yeyu said to Lin Huang. Seeing that the both of them did not stop him, Lin Huang then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and headed far away with Bloodys guidance. As Lin Huang disappeared into the sky, Li Lang mumbled to himself, "Lets finish this and part ways when Lin Huang comes back." "Its great that we are parting ways. I dont like following people around anyway," Yi Yeyu lied unwillingly. "I didnt expect Lin Huang to grow so much in less than a year. Besides his talent, he has put in unimaginable effort to get to where he is today." Li Lang smiled awkwardly. He clearly remembered seeing Lin Huangs potential 11 months ago when he had treated him as a junior that time, thinking that Lin Huang possessed a talent in gun fighting and battle experience. He never expected Lin Huang to surpass him. Yi Yeyu fell into deep thought after hearing what Li Lang said. Throughout the 10 months, she had only managed to level up from a gold-level rank-3 to a complete gold-level. However, Lin Huang had managed to level up from an ordinary person without any Life Power to a gold-level rank-2 now. What she could not accept was that Lin Huang who was only a gold-level rank-2 had managed to kill a double mutated Transcendent monster while she could not even kill a single mutated Transcendent spider. Lin Huang had no idea that he had made the both of them contemplate their lives. "Bloody, go find a dark creature." Lin Huang was certain about what he wanted. His priority was to look for a monster to kill to unseal his summoning monster. His first choice was the Nephilic Judge as it was the easiest to unseal within these ruins. All it had to do was to cleanse a Transcendent dark creature. Bloody nodded and pointed to a direction. Lin Huang then maneuvered the Alexandrian Eagle and headed towards the lead. Under the guidance of Bloody, Lin Huang arrived at the destination 40 minutes later. The Alexandrian Eagle landed outside the sensory coverage of the Transcendent monster. Lin Huang recognized the Transcendent monster from afar. "The Undead Soldier " The Undead Soldier was an undead monster that could turn itself into an undead creature from a dead body with a special kind of mutation. Such monster was difficult as it would not die even if its head was chopped off. The only way to kill it was to destroy its entire body. Of course, it had a weakness. Similar to most undead creatures, it was terrified of the purification force some creatures had in their attacks. "Im not sure if the Nephilic Judge''s lightning is considered a type of purification force" Despite Lin Huangs uncertainty, he summoned the Nephilic Judge who was excited when she saw where the Undead Soldier was. Lin Huang could sense her eagerness. "Go then. If you cant manage to finish it, Ill help you." Lin Huang assured the Nephilic Judge. The six wings behind the Nephilic Judge shook slightly while she whizzed towards the Undead Soldier far away. The Undead Soldier was wearing an old armor on it, its body similar to the Nephilic Judges. Seeing the Nephilic Judge heading its way, it attacked immediately. A terrifying force was released out of its greenish-purple hand. As it waved its hand, there was an explosion in the air. The Nephilic Judge did not run away. Instead, she took out her purple spear and aimed it at the Undead Soldier with golden lightning sparks flying out of the tip of the spear. Lin Huang watched the Undead Soldier became stiff and fall onto the floor following her attack. "Congratulations, you have received a Monster Card - Undead Soldier x1" "Killed in one hit?!" Lin Huang was shocked. The Nephilic Judge floated in the air with a white glow beaming down from the sky. It looked like a giant spot light shining on her. Golden lightning filled her body and her aura was getting more and more powerful. "Perhaps theres her lightning contains the purification force," Lin Huang thought to himself. The Nephilic Judge stayed afloat in the air for two to three minutes. Her 2.5 meter-tall body was shrinking fast under the white glow but it stopped when she reached 1.7 meters in height. As she shrunk, her body was even better formed under the silver armor. "Congratulations, you have unsealed the Nephilic Judge card!" "Congratulations, the Nephilic Judge has received a new skill - Purification Light." Lin Huang took a look at the description of the Nephilic Judge immediately. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: The Nephilic Judge" "Type of Monster: Half Angel" "Combat Level: White Flame-level" "Skill 1: Spearheart" "Skill 2: Seraphic Speed" "Skill 3: Seraphic Wings "Skill 4: Judgement Spear "Skill 5: Lightning Control (Advanced) "Skill 6: Elemental Transformation (Lightning) "Skill 7: Purification Light (Light Attribute) "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Purification Light: A holy glow with a force that can purify most evil force." "Remark 1: Major damage on dark creatures." "Remark 2: Evil force will be melted away when its used on non-dark creatures." After the unsealing was completed, the white glow shining on the Nephilic Judge faded away. The Nephilic Judge looked at Lin Huang and dashed towards him, stopping less than two meters away from him. "There was a Nephilic Judge called Kyle in a game that I used to play. I shall name you Kylie then, so youd be Kyles sister," Lin Huang christened the Nephilic Judge without her permission. She did not respond to him at all. "Your silence means that you agree to the name," Lin Huang smirked. Without waiting for her rejection, he then recalled her into her card form and put it away. "Kylies unsealing is done, its Tyrants turn now" Lin Huang rode on the Alexandrian Eagle again and patted its back. "Lets go to the jungle with the Undying Bloodoaks!" 297 Bloody’s New Skill Lin Huang arrived in the jungle where the Undying Bloodoaks were at an hour later. Many had suffered here a few days back. If not for Lin Huang, at least a third of the participants would have been disqualified during the first round of training. Initially, Lin Huang thought that he would get Tyrant to pluck out all the trees in the jungle as it was strong. It could do that easily without using its Life Power, but it would take some time. However, with Kylies Purification Light skill now, she would be able to clear the trees much faster than Tyrant could. Moreover, Kylie was a Transcendent monster now, so she was more powerful than the gold-level Undying Bloodoak. Lin Huang smirked as he looked at the eerie jungle beneath him. He then summoned the Nephilic Judge, Kylie. "Kylie, clear the jungle beneath." Kylie then looked at the jungle beneath while golden electric arcs sparkled on her body with a white mist-like glow flowing out. A golden lightning ball formed on her purple spear and a white star-shaped glow was formed in the middle of the lightning ball. Within seconds, the lightning ball grew to the size of an adult fist with its white glow spreading out like a mini star. When Kylie pointed her spear into the sky, the lightning ball pierced through the clouds and exploded. As a mellow boom was heard, the clouds started turning dark. There were golden electric arcs shining within the clouds and soon the clouds became white. The Undying Bloodoaks seemed to sense the purifying force from the sky and it started to get frustrated while swinging its branches around vigorously. Some of them even started attacking the other Undying Bloodoaks next to them with the attempt to absorb more Life Force to defend themselves from the incoming purification force. Two to three minutes later, the first lightning bolt came hurtling down. It was white in color. Within seconds, it lit up the sky and hit one of the thick Undying Bloodoaks in the jungle. The Undying Bloodoak that was struck by the lightning stopped moving. On its surface, nothing seemed to have happened. However, as the Undying Bloodoak next to it touched it by accident, the second one burst into flames and turned into ashes. "Its burnt into ashes now" Even Lin Huang was shocked when he saw what happened. Watching from afar, he could feel the purification aura that was released from the Undying Bloodoak that had been struck by the lightning. Soon, more and more lightning bolts struck and the lightning covered the entire jungle. Under Kylies control and oppression, the Undying Bloodoaks died one by one without having the ability to defend themselves. Notifications kept popping up to inform Lin Huang about the Undying Bloodoak card pieces that he had obtained. He accumulated up to a thousand card pieces within seconds. Meanwhile, his Life Power was increasing as well. Within seconds, he leveled up from gold-level rank-2 to gold-level rank-3. Even the columns in the 12th Life Wheel that had just been activated were filled up at the speed of light. It only took two to three seconds for his initial Life Wheels to become full while the remaining four Life Wheels were filling up at the same time. Ten seconds later, all five of his Life Wheels were overflowing. "Massive amount of Life Power is detected. Would you like to activate your Life Power Refill Card?" Lin Huang just recalled that he had obtained that card not long ago when he saw the notification from Xiao Hei. "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without thinking twice as his Life Wheels could not contain the extra Life Power. To move up from gold-level rank-3 to complete gold-level, he would require a repetitive rotation of Life Power compression. Before that happened, as soon as the 12 circles of gold-level rank-3 Life Power were full, the Life Wheels were unable to contain more Life Power. Although Lin Huang had no idea how much of Life Power the Life Power Refill Card could contain, he decided to use it anyway. Suddenly, a fifth golden Life Wheel appeared on the black Life Power Refill Card. It was in the same arrangement as the Life Wheels in Lin Huangs body. However, the columns on it were all blank. Soon, those columns were also being filled up. Within less than half a minute, the first 12 columns in the first Life Wheel were filled, followed by the second Life Wheel "Thats not enough. I shall get more Life Power Refill Cards then" Lin Huang thought and communicated with Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, how many card pieces do I need to redeem a Life Power Refill Card?" "You will need 10,000 level-1 Monster Card pieces to redeem one Life Power Refill Card. The restriction placed on your authorization only allows you to own three Life Power Refill Cards." "Level-1 Monster Card pieces? There are levels to the card pieces now?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, there was none as you didnt own any level-2 Monster Card pieces." "So youre saying level-1 card pieces are the Life Wheel-level Monster Card pieces? Does that mean iron-level to gold-level would be considered level-1 while holy fire-level would be considered level-2?" Lin Huang came up with the assumption as he had never received card pieces of Transcendent monsters before entering the ruins. "Your assumption is basically right, but Ill have to correct you. Most of the Monster Card pieces of the Life Wheel-level belong to level-1, excluding double mutated monsters and above. Monsters of double mutation and holy fire-level belong to level-2. Meanwhile, triple mutated and immortal-level monsters belong to level-3. You get the idea" "I understand now!" Lin Huang understood the breakdown of card pieces by level now. "You said that Im only allowed three Life Power Refill Cards. Does that include the one that I am holding now or do I get to redeem three more at the card pieces mall?" "Including the one you are holding now, you can only buy two more from the card pieces mall," Xiao Hei replied. "Alright thenI shall redeem two Life Power Refill Cards." Lin Huang figured that Xiao Hei would give him that answer but he tried his luck anyway as the card was useful. "You dont have enough card pieces now, so you can only redeem one at the moment. At the current speed of your obtaining card pieces, you can redeem the second one around three minutes later." "Alright, I shall redeem one now. Please help me redeem the second one when I have enough card pieces later." Lin Huang nodded. "Are you sure you would like to consume 10,000 card pieces to redeem one Life Power Refill Card?" "Yes!" Lin Huang instructed immediately. "10,000 level-1 card pieces have been deducted. Congratulations, you have obtained Life Power Refill Card x1." The second Life Power Refill Card appeared on his hand. Two minutes later, the five Life Wheels in his first Life Power Refill Card were full and entered his body automatically. He then took out the second Life Power Refill Card and started filling it with Life Power. Not long later, he received the third Life Power Refill Card that he had redeemed automatically while his second Life Power Refill Card was filled at the same time. He started filing his third Life Power Refill Card immediately. As the sky was raining with lightning bolts, tens of thousands of Undying Bloodoaks were killed by the purification force. A couple of minutes later, the third Life Power Refill Card was full. However, Kylie carried on with her massacre. "Its so wasteful to just let this Life Power slip away. Is there no other container that I can use?" Lin Huang thought to himself. Suddenly, Bloody came out of his sleeve and said to him in his mind, "Master, share some of the Life Power with me so that I can get to gold-level rank-3." "Sure!" Lin Huang agreed immediately. After his third Life Power Refill Card was filled, he started sharing his Life Power with Bloody from his Life Wheel. Bloody slithered out of his sleeve to the ground and returned to its original form of a thousand-meter giant bloody boa. Under the shower of Life Power, Bloody leveled up to gold-level in an instant. His size was much bigger than before now, its thickness growing from the size of an arm that of a pail. It looked like a real giant boa now. After Bloody leveled up to gold-level, it did not stop and leveled up to gold-level rank-3. However, it did not stop there. "Dont stop, I can still get more." Lin Huang was concerned that Bloody might not be able to take more Life Power. Just when he was ready to stop the Life Power transfer, Bloody requested to go on with it. Lin Huang did not reject it as it would be wasteful for the extra Life Power to just slip away like that. Since Bloody could handle it, he decided to go with it with the concern that it might overestimate its ability. Although Bloodys combat strength did not grow, it was growing fast in size. It was less than 1500 meters long when it was gold-level rank-3 with the thickness of a pail. Its length was growing rapidly to 2000 meters...3000 meters together with the increase in thickness from half a meter to a whole meterAs time passed by, it grew so big that it looked like a giant now. There were even purple flowers growing on its body and it was much denser than before with even more vibrance in its colors Lin Huang was concerned that Bloody would explode as he watched its growth. However, he noticed that the speed of its growth started to slow down "Congratulations, your epic-level Monster Card Bloody had acquired a new skill - Limitless Ingestion." "Limitless Ingestion: Ability to ingest 100 times of force that the monster possesses." "Remarks: Most of the forces including Life Power can be ingested besides limited special forces." Lin Huang was surprised when he saw the notification from Xiao Hei. He did not expect Bloody to obtain a new skill under such a condition. Since then, Bloody started to shrink although its aura was increasing. It rose rapidly within minutes! "Does that mean Bloody is a complete gold-level now?" Lin Huang did not expect Bloody to break through its combat strength once again. 298 Greatsword Fiend The lightning bolts that were raining down lasted for 20 minutes before fading away. Within that period, Kylie had turned more than 50,000 struggling Undying Bloodoaks into ashes. With Kylies help, Lin Huang did not just level up to gold-level rank-3, he had also filled up all three of his Life Power Refill Cards. Even Bloody benefitted from the battle, leveling up from silver-level rank-3 to complete gold-level as well as acquiring a new skill. After redeeming the Life Power Refill Cards with 20,000 card pieces, Lin Huang had 30,000 Undying Bloodoaks card pieces as well as more than 20 Undying Bloodoaks complete cards. He had no idea what to do with the cards yet, so he put them aside and summoned Tyrant in excitement. "Tyrant, try the spiritual lava under the ground and see if it can unseal you." Lin Huang pointed under his feet. Tyrant punched the ground hard, making it unstable all around, then it collapsed. He then reached for the spiritual lava with his hand. After a while, he retracted his hand which was completely red. Although there were no burn marks, it was clear that the spiritual lava could break through his defenses and injure him. However, Tyrant did not seem to mind at all. He smiled widely and nodded at Lin Huang. "Alright then, stay here to cultivate for a while and Ill get Kylie to guard the place. Ill recall you back 12 days later after you are done with the unsealing." Tyrant nodded and stomped hard on the ground before even waiting for Lin Huang to leave. The ground under his feet collapsed and he fell into the spiritual lava, disappearing altogether. "Kylie, stay here to look after the big guy for the time being. Dont let anybody interrupt him. If any monsters come close, kill them. If theyre human, just chase them away," Lin Huang instructed Kylie. Kylie stood there without giving any response, neither nodding nor shaking her head. Lin Huang knew that she understood him as long as his instruction was not too complicated. Even a normal summoning monster of iron-level could understand his instructions through the mind connection. A double mutated monster could grasp a basic understanding of the human language, if not the basic instructions. Lin Huang figured that Kylies coldness might be a characteristic that the Nephilic Judge was born with. He did not dwell further on it and looked at Bloody that just slithered back into his sleeve. Although Bloody was already a complete gold-level, perhaps its skills were not complete; Lin Huang had yet to see the unsealing conditions. Thus, he decided to unseal other monsters before Bloody. Among all of his summoning monsters, Kylie had completed the unsealing while Tyrant was almost there. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was already a white flame-level which did not require unsealing. The remaining ones would be Bai, Charcoal and the Ruthless Sword Master. Charcoal would need dracaena to unseal its potential but there was none in the ruins, so it had to wait. For Bai, he would need to kill a double mutated monster and suck all its blood for the unsealing to be successful. The Ruthless Sword Masters unsealing conditions were to kill nine different sword type Transcendent monsters. Both Bai and the Ruthless Sword Masters terms were not easily met but Lin Huang wanted to try anyway. "Bloody, help me find if there are any monsters for Bai and the Ruthless Sword Master. One should be a double mutated Transcendent monster with blood while the other one should be a sword type Transcendent," Lin Huang instructed Bloody. "I have done the investigation in this area. Theres one sword type Transcendent monster," Bloody replied through its mind immediately. It was past two in the afternoon and it had been more than 24 hours since the Ruthless Sword Master had performed the Absolute Life skill at 10 in the morning yesterday. "Give me the coordinates," Lin Huang said while projecting the map. Bloody marked a red dot on the map immediately, then Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and headed to the coordinates. Seeing that Lin Huang had left, Kylie turned to the spot on the ground where Tyrant had broken and sat next to it without moving. Almost one and a half hour later, Lin Huang arrived at his destination with Bloodys guidance. After the Alexandrian Eagle landed, Lin Huang then launched his Boundless Vision and saw a gigantic human-form monster far away. The monster was more than 10 meters tall and it looked like a giant human except for its face and skin that were greenish-purple like it was poisoned. Black armor covered most of its body. There was a sword in its right hand that was almost 10 meters in length, which was almost of the equivalent of its height. "This isthe Greatsword Fiend?" Lin Huang recognized it immediately. It was a demonic single mutated monster with immense explosive strength. With its sword, the fatality of its attacks was terrifying. Its armor that looked like a tortoises shell was practically impenetrable. However, its only disadvantage was its slow speed. "Itll have to use its ultimate move to kill this monster" Lin Huang thought to himself before summoning the Ruthless Sword Master. He was curious about how the Ruthless Sword Master would kill this monster if it did not use the Absolute Life skill. The Ruthless Sword Master wore black armor and held a black sword in his hand. There was a black mist surrounding it together with an aura of death. His red single-eye was like a laser beam and it was difficult to look into his eye directly. He was less than two meters away but as he appeared, the Greatsword Fiend seemed to sense his presence and looked at his direction. "I thought Im outside of its detection zone. How can it still notice us? Is this ability coming from its sword?" Lin Huang frowned as he did not expect the Greatsword Fiend to sense their presence. The Ruthless Sword Master looked at the Greatsword Fiend. Without waiting for Lin Huangs instructions, the Ruthless Sword Master dashed towards the Greatsword Fiend. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow, realizing that all of the double mutated monsters that he owned seemed to have their unique characteristics. The most obvious one would be Kylie which had just been unsealed. "If all of them have their own attitudes, this team will be hard to leadLuckily, its only Bloody who can speak for now." Lin Huang could not imagine if all of his monsters could speak one day. Meanwhile, the Ruthless Sword Master reached the Greatsword Fiend. What surprised Lin Huang was the Greatsword Fiends apparent fear. It only performed up to 50% to 60% of its maximum ability during the battle. Besides, its defense did not seem to be effective under the Ruthless Sword Masters black sword. Every swing of the Ruthless Sword Masters sword seemed to cause it injuries. The battle only lasted less than half a minute and was finished when the Ruthless Sword Master defeated the Greatsword Fiend by piercing its sword into its head. Just when Lin Huang was walking over to retrieve the monster carcass, a notification came in from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you have obtained a new Monster Card - Greatsword Fiend (Sword Servant)" 299 The Fire Phoenix Has Been Discovered! "I get a complete Monster Card straight away? Why is there Sword Servant on the back?" Lin Huang took a closer look at the card. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Rare" "Type of Monster: Greatsword Fiend (Sword Servant)" "Combat Level: White Flame-level" "Skill 1: Fiend Armor" "Skill 2: Superhuman Strength" "Skill 3: Sacrificial Fiend" "Skill 4: Edgeless Greatsword (Combat Skill)" "Summon Authority: Restricted" "Card Remarks: Passable" "Remarks: The Ruthless Sword Masters affiliated card cannot be used before the corresponding skill is activated." "The Ruthless Sword Masters affiliated cardcant be summoned?" Lin Huangs eyes were wide open as he asked Xiao Hei. "Xiao Hei, do I get a complete card right away from all the sword type monsters that Ruthless Sword Master kills?" "You will get a complete affiliated card straight away. However, you will only get a maximum of nine cards limited to sword type monsters only." Lin Huang came up with a calculated possibility in his mind and asked again, "Can I choose the card again if Im not satisfied with the one that I get?" "Once confirmed, no re-selection is allowed. If the monster of the affiliated card dies, the affiliated card slot will be emptied and be replaced by other cards." "Hmm, so it can only be replaced if the monster is deadSeems like I need to choose wisely for the next eight cards." Lin Huangs eyes were sparkling with excitement. "With the Ruthless Sword Masters character, I can get eight complete epic-level Monster Cards if I get him to kill double mutated sword type monsters!" Lin Huang looked at the Ruthless Sword Master with a burning desire. "What should I name it?" Lin Huang walked over to the Ruthless Sword Master and put away the Greatsword Fiends carcass. He turned around and looked at the Ruthless Sword Master for awhile while sinking into his own thoughts. "Since your sword is a ruthless one, I shall name you Lancelot." The Ruthless Sword Master nodded, seeming to agree with the name it was christened. "Ive completed the mission of killing six Transcendent monsters but itd be a waste to submit the double mutated Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. I shall kill another monster to replace that" Lin Huang started planning to kill another Transcendent monster so that he could keep the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. As he was mumbling to himself, Bloody communicated with him, "Master, if you have any powerful double mutated monster carcasses in the future, you can give it to me to parasitize on it." "You can do that to the carcass as well?" Lin Huang gasped in surprise. "I couldnt, but now that my parasitical ability is more powerful now, I can do that. However, the probability of inheriting the hosts memories is low. If the brain of the carcass is preserved properly, I can try to extract its memories and the probability of inheriting its memories would be much higher. However, I can only use soul monsters such as the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit without a brain as a puppet," Bloody explained. "But I remember that you could only do that on creatures that are the same level as you or lower. Can you do that to Transcendent monsters already?" Lin Huang asked. "Not yet, Ill need to unlock myself to Transcendent level before I can do that. The coverage of the Leech Pods wont be able to parasitize on creatures that are higher than my own combat level no matter what, unless mutation happens. Therefore, I need a powerful individual parasitical skill to get a cross-ranking parasitical ability. After all, survival skill isnt my priority." Not only Bloody did give him a thorough explanation, it even told Lin Huang about its plan for which skill it wanted to obtain. "Sure, we shall study it once we get out." Lin Huang agreed with Bloodys idea. "I havent found any sword type or double mutated Transcendent monsters at the moment. Master, if youre just aiming to finish your mission, we could just get any Transcendent monster that is around the area. Am I right?" Bloody asked as it heard Lin Huang mumbling about wanting to kill another Transcendent monster to replace the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. "If that is so, lets just pick the nearest one." Lin Huang nodded and projected the map. "Theres a Blazecrystal Scorpion at 11 oclock around 1,500 kilometers away." Bloody marked the spot on the map. After recalling Lancelot, Lin Huang rode on the Alexandrian Eagle and headed towards 11 oclock. Around one and a half hours later, Lin Huang arrived near the monster. The Blazecrystal Scorpion was a gigantic scorpion with a crystal red body. It barely resembled a living thing, looking more like a carving that was made of a red crystal mineral. Under the sun, its body was crystal clear like a delicate piece of art. Looking at the Blazecrystal Scorpion from far away, Lin Huang knew very well that such beauty was fatal. The Blazecrystal Scorpion was a mutated monster with a powerful attacking ability. It had explosive attacking speed, especially its tail that was terrifyingly agile. It could kill a monster that was a level higher than itself. Not only powerful, it also had strong venom in its body which was fatal to many creatures. Besides its attack prowess, its body was hard with high defense. It could also spit fire and lava to heal itself. Such a monster ranked on the list for the most dangerous single mutated Transcendent monsters. According to Lin Huangs memory, it ranked at number 18 on the list. "Doesnt seem to be easy" Although Lin Huang said that, he was actually smirking as he did not think that the monster was a real threat to him. Just when he was ready to strike, Bloody communicated with him again, "Master, I discovered a Fire Phoenix!" "What? Are you sure?!" Lin Huang did not expect Bloody to find Yi Yeyus target as he did not have high hopes for that. "Im sure its a Fire Phoenix, I remember all the monsters in the monster encyclopedia. I cant be wrong." "It killed the parasite that I discovered it with. Without the parasite monitoring it, I dont know how long itll stay there. We need to move now," Bloody advised. Lin Huang was scared that the Fire Phoenix would disappear from Bloodys probe. However, just when he wanted to leave, he noticed that the Blazecrystal Scorpions aura advancing nearer towards him. "Its too late, the Blazecrystal Scorpion has found me" 300 Killing The Blazecrystal Scorpion Lin Huang was planning to leave quietly as Bloody discovered the Fire Phoenix. However, the Blazecrystal Scorpion had noticed his presence so he could not run anymore. "We won''t waste any more time here, lets kill this fella once and for all." Lin Huang frowned while summoning Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. It was a white flame-level after all and was much more powerful than the Blazecrystal Scorpion but the Blazecrystal Scorpion had a strong defense. If they were to fight, it would take a long time. Lin Huang summoned it to help instead of fighting it. "Use the Punishment Chains to tie it up and Ill settle the rest." Lin Huang instructed. The Blazecrystal Scorpion sensed the double mutated aura of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit and suddenly, it was hesitant to get closer and as the Blazecrystal Scorpion stood hesitantly the sly Sanguine Skeletal Spirit activated its Punishment Chains. The nine flaming chains dashed towards Blazecrystal Scorpion, it was too late for it to run. The chains surrounded it and its Life Power was now sealed. Without any Life Power, no matter how much it struggled, it was futile. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had his sword relic in his hand with two wheels of Life Power inserted in. He was ready to perform his ultimate move - Worldly Purification. He leaped into the air and pierced through the Blazecrystal Scorpions head. A golden glow flashed and the Blazecrystal Scorpion collapsed straightaway. It could not escape death today with the battle taking less than half a minute. Lin Huang then stored Blazecrystal Scorpions carcass and recalled Sanguine Skeletal Spirit while summoning the Alexandrian Eagle. Lin Huang hopped onto Alexandrian Eagles back and said, "Lets go to Yi Yeyu and tell her about the Fire Phoenix, then we''ll leave together." Without the communication device, it was the only way to inform Yi Yeyu. "Bloody, help me mark down the coordinates of the Fire Phoenix." The Alexandrian Eagle flapped its wings and headed towards where Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were. While they were in the air Bloody marked down the coordinates of the Fire Phoenix. "Luckily its along the way for Yi Yeyu." Lin Huang said as he looked at the map, it was in the same direction as Yi Yeyu was located in. Although it was not a direct route, it was not too far away. After confirming that, Lin Huang got the Alexandrian Eagle to go faster while he took out a Life Power Refill Card. He had drained two wheels of Life Power earlier to kill the Blazecrystal Scorpion faster. He wanted to use the Life Power Refill Card to fill up his Life Power so that his performance would be at its peak as the battle with the Fire Phoenix might be a tough one. After all, Fire Phoenix was a double mutated transcendent monster with phoenix blood. It was the same ranking as a sky dragon. In the world of double mutated monsters, its ability was definitely on top. As compared to a double mutated Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, it could be one rank higher. As he activated the Life Power Refill Card and he could feel that the two empty Life Wheels were filling up at the speed of light. The feeling was similar to being under the sun during winter time, it was comfortable as the warmth flowed into his body. In less than two seconds, the two empty Life Wheels were full, leaving two empty wheels out of the five Life Wheels on the Life Power Refill Card. "Thats fast, its surprising that theres no unpleasant feeling nor side-effects." Lin Huang took a look at the Life Power in his body. Everything was normal. "This card is amazing!" Lin Huang was glad as he looked at the Life Power Refill Card in his hand. He started thinking of a plan to fight the Fire Phoenix after keeping the card. "If I use the Sanguine Skeletal Spirits Punishment Chains to seal the Fire Phoenixs Life Power, it would be so much easier to kill it. But having to explain how I got the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit would be a major problem." "The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit is a double mutated monster and even though were in the ruins thats suitable for the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit to live, the probability of encountering a second one would be rare. Let alone having to tell them that I got lucky" "Moreover, under normal circumstance, an Imperial Censor would have to come to terms with their summoning monster and train them slowly. It would take one to two weeks for a fast-learner and about two to three months for those who are slow. Only a powerful Imperial Censor could control a summoning monster right away." "If I appear with Sanguine Skeletal Spirit when I meet Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, they would definitely figure that it has something to do with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit that was killed earlier" "Thats not going to work. The only way is to say that Mr. Fu captured this Sanguine Skeletal Spirit for me as a summoning monster!" Lin Huang decided to push everything to Mr. Fu since it was quite impossible for them to verify with Mr. Fu on such matters. "However, no matter how much I help, the one who kills the Fire Phoenix would have to be Yi Yeyu. If not, she wouldnt be able to extract the fire seed, light up Life Fire and level-up to holy fire-level." Lin Huang then thought of another issue. "But even if its Life Power is sealed, the Fire Phoenixs body is powerful itself. If its not controlled by Yi Yeyu, she might not be able to fight it" Lin Huang was coming up with scenarios of what could happen in the battle. As he thought, he realized that it was not possible for Yi Yeyu to level-up to holy fire-level. "Nevermind, I shall stop thinking about it. Level-up or not, I must help her as her friend. The rest would depend on her luck." An hour and a half later, he finally made it to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. The both of them, who were recovering their Life Power, opened their eyes as they heard a flapping sound from the Alexandrian Eagle. "Follow me! Ive found the Fire Phoenix!" Lin Huang shouted to the both of them before the Alexandrian Eagle had landed. The duo was shocked when they heard, they stopped what they were doing and stood up immediately. "You sure its a Fire Phoenix?" Yi Yeyu found it hard to believe as Lin Huang was only away for a couple of hours and now he had come back with such news. "It wouldn''t be wrong, Ill explain to you along the way. Come with me quick!" As time was tight, Lin Huang left with the Alexandrian Eagle while Yi Yeyu and Li Lang summoned their flying mounts and followed from behind on the Alexandrian Eagle 301 The Relationship Between Monsters While on their way to hunt down the Fire Phoenix, Lin Huang told Yi Yeyu and Li Lang why he was rushing the both of them. "It''s been an hour and a half since the Fire Phoenix appeared, so we cant be sure if it''s still in the same location?" Yi Yeyu asked after hearing Lin Huangs explanation. "Thats right, the Fire Phoenix found out about Bloodys detection seed and destroyed it. Theres no way that we could detect its exact whereabouts now." Lin Huang nodded. "I came to the both of you as soon as I found out about it, the Fire Phoenix flies at over 2,000 kilometers per hour. "How long will it take for us to get there?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Its more than 1,000 kilometers away, so it should take around an hour." "How do we kill the Fire Phoenix when we get there? This is a double mutated monster thats even more powerful than the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit that we encountered the last time." Li Lang asked a practical question that nobody could overlook. "Everything will be alright if Ms. Yi can control the monster with her physique. But what if she cant, what should we do?" Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu were silent. More than an hour later, the silence was finally broken after arriving at their destination. As they landed, the three of them recalled their monsters. "When I looked around from up above there didnt seem to be any monsters in the nearby area." Li Lang said to Lin Huang. "Dont worry." Lin Huang called out to Bloody who was hiding in his sleeve. "Bloody, wheres the exact location that you discovered the Fire Phoenix?" Since the coordinates that Bloody had marked were just an estimated area instead of an exact location, they now needed Bloody to point out the exact location for them. Bloody stuck out its head from Lin Huangs sleeve and looked around. It then spread out purple flowers and as they floated around, something came into Lin Huangs mind. "Follow the flowers, be quiet, dont summon the flying mounts." Lin Huang passed Bloodys message to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang while he took the lead. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang followed behind him. As they walked around, they headed into an area with many volcanoes. There were up to 100 active volcanoes with smoke billowing out of them. There were big and small ones, high and low. It was quite a scene to behold. "Could it be hiding behind the volcanoes?" Li Lang guessed as he walked. Lin Huang gestured to get him to be quiet. "Shh!" The three of them followed behind the purple flowers quietly and got up to the tip of a volcano half an hour later. Seeing that the flower went through the tip and down, they followed the edge of the crater and walked to the other side of the volcano. What they saw on the other side shocked them. There was a huge lava lake that was blocked by all the volcanoes. Calling it a lake was not accurate as it was boundless. Its layout was out of the ordinary, hundreds of kilometers long and more like a lava sea than a lake. "A sea thats completely made of lava" The three of them were stunned when they saw what was in front of them. Suddenly, the lava started rolling, a gigantic shadow plunged out of the lava sea. It was a giant bird with a golden crest and a tail with nine colors. What caught their attention was the bloody gigantic alligator and its purplish gold claws. The alligator was 70 to 80 meters long, it was no smaller than the giant bird and was covered in a black, hard metal cast that seemed very powerful. However, its neck was clamped by the giant bird. No matter how much it struggled, it could not get away from the birds claws. "Is that a Blazing Alligator?" Li Lang asked Lin Huang in shock. "Yes." Lin Huang was concerned as he watched. Yi Yeyu was frowning too, she did not look too good. The giant bird with its nine colored tail and golden crest was their target - a Fire Phoenix. The Blazing Alligator was a mutated monster from the fire elements, it was a ruthless double mutated transcendent monster. Such a giant-sized mutated transcendent monster was captured by the Fire Phoenix easily, it did not seem to have the strength to fight back. What they were looking at gave them a direct understanding of the Fire Phoenixs ability. With the Blazing Alligator in its claws, the Fire Phoenix flew towards the volcanos where the three of them were located. They immediately bent down to avoid being seen, watching secretly with half of their heads showing at the crater. As the Blazing Alligator was tossed onto the ground, it seemed to know that it could not defeat the Fire Phoenix and instead attempted to jump into the lava sea. However, its neck was clamped by the Fire Phoenix that once again dashed from the air. It struggled by moving its tail and body but it could not escape from under the Fire Phoenixs purplish, golden metal claws. The Fire Phoenix gave a deathly glare with its blue eyes, it had no plan to eat it as it watched the Blazing Alligator struggle in its claws. Soon, it seemed to know that it could never escape. The black metal cast started to change color and its body appeared to be filled with lava. Its black cast turned dark red at first, but soon it became a flaming red. The Blazing Alligator was covered in a flaming red crystal-like cast within seconds. "Whats it doing?" Li Lang asked Lin Huang softly. "This is its Crystallize skill. With that, its defense will peak." Lin Huang explained softly. As Lin Huang said that, the Fire Phoenix used another claw to grab the Blazing Alligators back, easily breaking through its defense into its body. In its crystalized mode, the Blazing Alligator seemed to struggle for awhile due to the pain then stopped moving completely. The flaming red on its body was fading fast, returning back to its black cast within seconds. "Is it dead?" Li Lang asked. "I dont think so" Lin Huang was surprised with what he saw, he could still sense the Blazing Alligators aura. Later on, the Fire Phoenix removed its claw from the Blazing Alligators back and it shook again. The Fire Phoenix flapped its wings and flew up into the air letting go of the Blazing Alligator. The Blazing Alligator flipped its tail and dived into the lava sea not far away disappearing. "Isnt it going to eat the Blazing Alligator? Why did it let it go?" Li Lang could not understand what he saw. Lin Huang took a guess. "I think it wasnt planning on eating it, instead it was extracting the fire energy from within the Blazing Alligator" What they saw had never been documented before in the monster encyclopedia. It said on the monster encyclopedia that the only relationship between the monsters was either food or symbiosis. However, what they witnessed was nothing like that. It seemed like the relationship between monsters is more complicated than what humans could have ever imagined 302 Lin Huang’s Plan to Kill As the Blazing Alligator escaped, the Fire Phoenix that was in the air flapped its wings and dived into the lava ocean once again. "It got away?!" Yi Yeyu shouted in exasperation. They had finally found the Fire Phoenix but just witnessed it going back into the lava. "Dont worry, it shouldnt be running away." Lin Huang shook his head. "With the Fire Phoenixs characteristic, itll usually fly away if it wants to leave instead of diving into the lava. It might be capturing the other Blazing Alligators." "Now that the both of you have seen the Fire Phoenixs ability, even a double mutated Blazing Alligator can''t fight back. If we were to fight it, we might all die. Maybe we should come up with a plan." Li Langs usually playful demeanor vanished during critical times. "The location that we are standing in isnt suitable for battle. We dont have much space to land in the crater. If we fall into the volcano, normal lava aside, well definitely die if its spiritual lava. Theres no place for us to stand in the lava ocean. Although we could fight at the foot of the volcano, wed be blocked by the volcanoes at the back. Theres no way for us to escape if we can''t fight it," Li Lang voiced his concern. Before the battle started, he figured that the Fire Phoenix had the advantage of winning. "I have a double mutated white flame-level summoning monster, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. What Im thinking about is to get the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit to hide while I distract the Fire Phoenix. When its distracted, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit will use its Punishment Chains to seal its Life Power. Once thats done, Yeyu will get on her flying mount to attack," Lin Huang said and looked at Li Lang. "Stay up there. If its getting away, block its way with your flying mount. Even if you only manage to stop it for a couple of seconds, thatll be good enough." "Alright" Li Langs facial expression was completely solemn as he listened to Lin Huangs arrangement. He did not have any disagreements; he knew very well that if he were to fight the Fire Phoenix himself, he would be killed immediately. Lin Huang chose to distract the Fire Phoenix himself as he knew he had the ability to do so. If Li Lang were to follow him, he would definitely be a burden instead. Meanwhile, Lin Huang assigned that job to himself as he knew that it was unlikely for the Fire Phoenix to escape. As it encountered an attack, such a powerful monster would be triggered and respond madly towards its attacker. Yi Yeyu did not say anything as she knew why Lin Huang had come up with such an arrangement. No matter if it was Lin Huang or Li Lang, they were here for her to level up. Li Lang proved his friendship as he agreed to come along, while Yi Yeyu did not mind if he could help at all. She would grateful if he did not become a burden. The both of them did not even ask about the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit as they had their minds occupied by the plan. "Ill be down there, so the both of you hide yourselves now. When Im fighting the Fire Phoenix later, Yeyu, please be patient and only attack it when the chains of the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit are tying it down or else, our plan will go to waste," Lin Huang reminded. "Okay." Yi Yeyu nodded. Lin Huang then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and headed down to where the volcanoes were. The Alexandrian Eagle landed at the bottom of the volcanoes, a couple of meters away from the lava ocean. He then recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and summoned the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were shocked when they saw the gigantic Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. Although Lin Huang had mentioned that it was his summoning monster, the both of them thought that it looked very similar to the one that Lin Huang had killed earlier. "Don''t you think that this Sanguine Skeleton Spirit looks like a replica of the one that he killed earlier?" Li Lang asked Yi Yeyu. "Perhaps monsters of the same size look the same to us, but its probably an illusion. Just like human twins. If they look alike and have the same height, itll be difficult to tell whos who," Yi Yeyu explained. She had some doubts too but that involved Lin Huangs secrets so she did not want to pry any further. "Illusion in terms of the size?" Li Lang frowned. Although he thought that it was strange, he accepted Yi Yeyus explanation anyway. As Lin Huang summoned the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, he instructed the monster, "Hide in the lava and shield your aura to the maximum. When the Fire Phoenix attacks me, itll be distracted at some point. Then, catch the opportunity to tie it up with your Punishment Chains!" "Hehehe You mean kill the Fire Phoenix? Id be happy to help, Master." The Sanguine Skeleton Spirits bloody robe moved without any wind and excitement shone in his blue eyes. "This fella So, do all Transcendent monsters really have their own characteristics?!" Lin Huang did not expect his inference earlier to be true. This Sanguine Skeleton Spirit seemed to have retained the character it embodied before it was killed. However, Lin Huang was not sure if it still retained its old memories. Lin Huang frowned as he watched the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit dived into the lava with its aura undetectable. Although he knew that it had an instinct for faking its death, shielding its aura was an easy feat for it. However, the fact that it managed to hide its aura to the point that even Lin Huang could not detect it was terrifying. Lin Huang then sat at the foot of the volcanoes while waiting patiently for the Fire Phoenix to appear again. Time passed by. It had been half an hour since the three of them waited. It was almost six in the evening and the sky was turning dark. Yi Yeyu was getting impatient at the peak of the volcano as she was worried that the Fire Phoenix had left and would not ever appear again. However, Li Lang was relieved. Although he hoped to help Yi Yeyu with leveling up, witnessing the Fire Phoenix capture a double mutated Blazing Alligator terrified him. The calmest one among the three of them was Lin Huang. He knew very well that he could not fight the Fire Phoenix. However, the battle would not depend on the strength of his ability alone. As long as the techniques were properly executed, it was still possible for them to defeat it. Moreover, even if they could not kill it, he was confident that they could leave in one piece. He was not afraid of the Fire Phoenix. On the contrary, he was excited about the battle. Another half an hour passed. When it was almost half past six, Li Lang and Yi Yeyu both figured that the Fire Phoenix would not make its return. Just when Yi Yeyu was ready to get Lin Huang to give up, the lava ocean churned vigorously. A giant bird appeared from the surface of the lava with a Blazing Alligator that was a few times larger than the bird itself 303 Lin Huang Asking for Trouble "Chirp!" As the Fire Phoenix got out of the lava sea, it chirped in excitement. Flapping its wings as it flew to the bottom of the volcano, it noticed Lin Huang that was as small as an ant. It glared at him but after realizing that his aura was not threatening, it completely ignored him due to more important things it had in its mind. It landed less than 500 meters away from Lin Huang with the Blazing Alligator in its claws. Lin Huang was speechless about being ignored. Although he was just an ant in Fire Phoenixs eyes, he was sure that it had noticed him as most of the bird-type monsters had extraordinary vision, including the Fire Phoenix. Perhaps it ignored him as he was not a threat to it. Lin Huang even smile awkwardly as he was eager to see the Fire Phoenixs reaction when it saw him and came up with different responses. However, he did not expect himself to be ignored. Yi Yeyu who was hiding at the top of the volcano was relieved when she saw the Fire Phoenix. She could not help it but laugh when she saw that Lin Huang was being ignored by the Fire Phoenix. Li Lang who had his fists clenched tight was now relieved too. Lin Huang watched as the Fire Phoenix waited for to Blazing Alligator to turn red. He knew that the Fire Phoenix was not going to kill the Blazing Alligator, but was planning to absorb the fire energy in the Blazing Alligators body instead. As the Blazing Alligator was slowly turning red, Lin Huang knew that he could not wait any longer, he had to come up with something to catch the Fire Phoenixs attention or else they would have to wait again once it released the Blazing Alligator. He then took out his GoldEagle11 and transformed it into a cannon. Li Lang and Yi Yeyu saw what Lin Huang was doing. Yi Yeyu was speechless as she watched. "Must he ask for trouble?" Li Lang puzzled. He could guess what would happen if Lin Huang was to open fire. As Lin Huang observed the Fire Phoenix, he was inserting Life Power into his cannon. As soon as he was almost done with inserting one wheel of Life Power into the gun, the Blazing Alligator that was captured in the Fire Phoenixs claws turned completely red. "Its time!" As the Blazing Alligator turned red, a golden spark was shot out of the gun, heading towards the Fire Phoenix at a speed of light. "Bang!" A loud thud exploded, the Fire Phoenix was shot as it was not aware. It did not expect the human of ant size would attack it. The Fire Phoenix flapped its wings by instinct as it was shot, it accidentally let go of the Blazing Alligator. The Blazing Alligator turned around and dove into the lava sea that was not far away. Seeing that its prey escaped, the Fire Phoenix that was flying in the air became furious. Although the attack did not hurt it in any way, it challenged its pride. Moreover, the attack helped its prey escape. It wanted its revenge on Lin Huang now. "Chirp!" This time, the Fire Phoenix chirped furiously while glaring deadly at Lin Huang beneath it. Staring into its angry blue eyes, Lin Huang had no fear and was excited instead. He then aimed his cannon at the Fire Phoenix again. As it saw Lin Huang do that, it was triggered and opened its wings wide, flapping hard at Lin Huang. Tens of thousands of red feathers came down like a thunderstorm. In the air, its red feathers seemed like they were lit up with fire, transforming into golden feathers with sparks that went at Lin Huang. It used an attack with a large area-of-effect and it was clear that the Fire Phoenix wanted Lin Huang to die without having the opportunity to escape. Lin Huang was drowned in the shower of golden feathers like meteors. The feathers exploded as they collided with every object that they touched and loud explosions were head at the bottom of the volcanoes with sparks and dust flying everywhere. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who were on top of the volcano became worried. They looked at the bottom of the volcano that was now covered in dust with concern on their faces. Lin Huang might be able to avoid if it was a one-on-one battle. However, such a rapid attack with an area-of-effect like this made it difficult for him to escape. The both of them did not expect the Fire Phoenix to hit them with such a powerful attack in the beginning. Although such an attack was much weaker compared to attacks it would use in a one-on-one battle, this Fire Phoenix was a white flame-level, double mutated phoenix-type monster. Among the monsters with same combat level, it was on the top of the food chain in terms of abilities. The area-of-effect attack it used was comparable to ultimate abilities of monsters at the same level. The Fire Phoenix chose to use an attack like this as it wanted to prevent Lin Huang from escaping. It could sense that Lin Huangs aura was not powerful and figured that as long as he was hit, he would definitely die. However, Fire Phoenix did not leave after it launched the attack but waited patiently. It would not be satisfied if it did not see his dead body. It spent more than an hour trying to capture the Blazing Alligator but it ran away because of Lin Huangs interruption. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang watched patiently for the dust to fade away as they wanted to know the result. However, they did not look too good as they figured the outcome might be negative. Under such pressure from the Fire Phoenix, Lin Huang could possibly die. Awhile later, the Fire Phoenix seemed to lose its patience. It flapped its wings to blow away the dust and as the dust was blown away, a black shadow appeared at the bottom of the volcanoes. As the dust continued to be blown away, it revealed an untouched Lin Huang. "Such a terrifying attack. I thought I would''ve died. Luckily I have this defensive skill" Lin Huang said while smirking as he looked at the Fire Phoenix above him. The way he looked at it looked like he was throwing it a challenge. "Hey, show me everything you''ve got. I want to find out the limits of my abilities!" 304 Lin Huang Versus The Fire Phoenix The Fire Phoenix was a double mutated transcendent monster. It had encountered human before so it understood human language. It got even more furious when Lin Huang challenged it! Although it had no idea what was the black piece of cloth that he was using to defend its first attack, it was surprised that he managed to defend himself. However, that attack was not its most powerful attack. It did not think that the black shield could protect Lin Huang during its following attack. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had never wanted to use Dark Shield to fight until the end. His objective of entering this dimensional ruin was to strengthen himself by going through the training. Although the Fire Phoenix was powerful, it was not as powerful to the extent that he would want to run away. On the contrary, it benefited him when the Fire Phoenix pressured and gave him the confidence that he would survive this battle. That was the reason why he challenged the Fire Phoenix. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who were on top of the volcano could not hear what Lin Huang was saying, or else their jaws would have dropped. However, they could sense that the Fire Phoenix was angry, or to be precise, it was furious as the both of them saw that the Fire Phoenixs beautiful nine colored tail was now completely red. It was a sign that it was going crazy from anger. Lin Huang knew that as well as he looked at the Fire Phoenix As the Fire Phoenixs tail turned bloody red, it chirped loudly while shaking its tail. Nine flaming whips appeared, they were coming towards Lin Huang who was hundreds of meters away. The whips were fast, traveling at a speed that broke the sound barrier, causing explosions in the air. From the look of it, Lin Huang knew that he would not be able to defend it. If he was whipped by the whips even once, he would be badly injured if he even managed to survive the attack. He would lose his strength completely by then. Without thinking twice, Lin Huang used Seraphic Speed as well as Cloud Steps as the whips were coming at him. He even used Micro Territory as his sensing circle together with Boundless Vision. Lin Huang looked like he was dancing on the tip of swords as he was surrounded by the nine whips. The whips did not stop attacking him even for a moment. However, he was not hit once, not even the corner of his clothes was touched. The ground at the bottom of the volcanos was burnt black with marks made by the whips. Each of the marks were hundreds of meters long and couple of meters deep. Those were the traces left by the flaming whips. Fortunately, the ground around them was much thicker. If this happened in other areas of the dimensional ruins, it would have collapsed from the very beginning. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who were watching from the top were worried. They could only catch a glimpse of what was happening as the speed they were moving at was too intense. If they were the one being attacked by the whips, they would have been chopped into pieces within a second. In fact, even though Lin Huang had Boundless Vision, he could only catch the shadows of the whips. He managed to avoid the whips by using the sensing ability from Micro Territory. It was upgraded from Sensing Circle and it retained the sensing ability. He could sense anything that was within a 100 meters radius and that was how he managed to move 100 meters away before the whips hit him. With the help of Seraphic Speed, he managed to avoid the hits easily. Looking at him avoiding the whips easily, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were shocked. "How did he do that?!" Li Lang could not understand how could Lin Huang managed to do that when he had just leveled-up to gold-level rank-3. "I dont get it too. His speed and response absolutely makes him look like he''s on the standard of a holy fire-level transcendent. Also, I cant see the movement of the whips at all, I can only catch the shadows. Its obvious that he can see the attack trajectory of the whips clearly." Yi Yeyu thought it was unbelievable too. "This must be the legendary genius" Li Lang exclaimed. "A regular genius isnt as powerful as this. My brother is close to being a genius but even then, he can only fight a regular white flame-level transcendent monster when he was a complete gold-level. Even a genius could only fight a mutated, white flame-level monster. However, this Fire Phoenix isnt merely a double mutated monster, it also ranked on top of the double mutated monsters. Moreover, Lin Huang is only a gold-level rank-3 now and is not even complete gold-level. Before he levels up to transcendent, he still has room to improve his abilities" Yi Yeyu knew what a genius could do as she had seen Yi Zheng fought before. As hunters of the same level, Lin Huangs performance had already surpassed Yi Zheng. In reality, Lin Huang was much weaker than the Fire Phoenix as a whole. However, he had many skills that he could use to defend against the Fire Phoenix at the moment and he was not fighting with his own ability. What Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were looking at was actually an illusion. If they were to actually fight head-on with their attack abilities, it would be different. What Lin Huang used in the beginning was a monster defense skill. He had been avoiding the Fire Phoenixs attack, while the Fire Phoenix was not hurt by his gunshots at all. If they were to fight with his current ability head-on, Lin Huang would lose in one hit. However, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who were watching from afar did not know that. Meanwhile, the battle between Lin Huang and the Fire Phoenix continued. Noticing that its tail attack was ineffective, the Fire Phoenix was shocked. It could be luck that Lin Huang avoided its Meteor Fireplume earlier, but now it was impossible that luck was helping him anymore. Within one minute, it had attacked Lin Huang for more than thousand times but none of them hit him. "Terrifying ability and outstanding movement skills, its just that his attack ability is weak. This human fella is good as a whole!" The Fire Phoenix thought to itself. However, its recognition did not mean it would let him go. To monsters, the more powerful a human was, the more threatening they were to them. When Lin Huang, who was not even a holy fire-level could do this, it would be unimaginable when he became a transcendent one day. If the Fire Phoenix did not kill him right now, he would definitely come back for it in the future when he levels up to transcendent. The Fire Phoenix did not want that trouble for itself and the will to kill him reflected in its blue eyes got more intense! 305 Overdone... Nine fire whips streaked across the sky, creating enormous cracks that were a few hundred meters long all over the ground like a spider web. The tail whip of the Fire Phoenix was so powerful that each of the attacks launched had enough force to even break metal, forming gaping gullies on the ground. Such an attack could not even affect Lin Huang, let alone cause any injuries. Its tail whip attacks were rendered useless for the next few minutes. With a murderous aura, the Fire Phoenix let out a few roars. When it opened its mouth wide, there was a surge of red glow from its red beak. Hundreds of meters away, Lin Huang could clearly sense the immense energy fluctuating within its beak. Lin Huang was frightened as he had a good understanding of the Fire Phoenix. Of course, he knew what kind of attack he was going to encounter as soon as he saw that. In the Fire Phoenix''s beak, the ball of an energy had reached its peak. The tip of the flame spiraled into the shape of a corn, rotating towards Lin Huang like an electric drill. It was the Inferno Dragonspit Drill, a skill which was considered as the most powerful single-target attack skill that the Fire Phoenix possessed. In addition to its tail whip that restricted Lin Huang''s space where he hid, it was trying to kill Lin Huang with the combination of these skills! Realizing that its tail whip could do no harm to Lin Huang, the Fire Phoenix resorted to using such a combo skill instead. It first restricted Lin Huang''s space with its tail whip and was going to kill him in just one blow when Lin Huang had no more space to dodge. Lin Huang had already noticed that the space around him was shrinking. He then saw that the Fire Phoenix was collecting energy to unleash the Inferno Dragonspit Drill, instantly understanding the Fire Phoenix''s intention. "Never underestimate double mutated monsters." Lin Huang frowned. He clearly knew that if it was not considered as a forbidden skill, it would be the most powerful skill possessed by the Fire Phoenix. He was not sure how long his Dark Shield could still defend him against such strength. "What''s the use of shrinking my space?!" Lin Huang grinned. At the second when the Inferno Dragonspit Drill gushed out of its mouth, Lin Huang suddenly switched from Cloud Steps to Thunder Steps. He took a step forward with Thunder Steps as his Seraphic Speed reached its maximum state, unlocking the space locked in the nine tail whips. Bang! The next moment, a loud explosion was heard and the volcano instantly collapsed. Not only did the Infernal Dragonspit Drill penetrate through the huge volcano, a huge gully measuring more than 10 kilometers was also formed on the ground, striking terror into the people witnessing this horrific scene. On top of the volcano, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were aghast because they both knew that if the attack hit them, there would be nothing left of them. "Your damage is quite good but you''re still slightly slower!" Lin Huang was standing at a place that was hundreds of kilometers away from the volcano, looking calm as he shouted at the Fire Phoenix. "Do you want to shit !?" The Fire Phoenix growled. It would not usually bother to speak the human language but it was instigated by Lin Huang. Although it spoke like a drunkard, it was not easy for it to do so. "Hey, can you please straighten your tongue before you speak? You can''t even distinguish between alveolar and retroflex consonants. Do you really need me to teach you!?" Irritation filled Lin Huangs face. "Repeat after me. She sells seashells by the sea shore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So, if she sells shells on the seashore, I''m sure she sells seashore shells." "Go shit!" The Fire Phoenixs temper had gone past its limit. It opened its big mouth again and flames gushed crazily out. Enveloping the air, the red flames seemed to have been intensified with a layer of oil as it burned more intensely. In just a short while, the flames poured down the sky, shrouding the region that was halfway down the hill in flames. Boundless Flame was a type of ranged attack. Compared to the Meteor Fireplume that it had used earlier, the former could cover a larger area and Lin Huang would have no space to escape at all. "There''s nothing else that I can do but fight!" Of course, Lin Huang knew the characteristic of the Fire Phoenix''s skill. Again, he activated his Dark Shield helplessly, which turned into a ball, so it could envelop Lin Huang securely. The entire area seemed to be wrapped in flames right after Lin Huang had activated Dark Shield. However, the intense red flames were isolated by Lin Huang''s Dark Shield and had no way of entering. Not even the heat produced by the flame could penetrate through the Dark Shield. The exterior of the Dark Shield was a dark curtain that looked like an isolation layer. Nobody could see what was happening within the Dark Shield. However, Lin Huang could look through the shield as if it was completely transparent and as smooth as glass. Looking at the ocean of flames outside which was separated from him by an impenetrable layer of "glass", Lin Huang was relieved. He had no idea to what extent could the Dark Shield''s defense achieve. Even the skill description mentioned that as long as the strength of the opponents attack was not more than 10 times of the users, the shield would not break. In fact, it was just a rough estimation and there was no exact standard to follow. If Lin Huang were to extract all his Life Power contained in five of his Life Wheels to unleash Worldly Purification, the power it could potentially release would be terrifying as it could kill most of the white flame-level monsters in the world in split seconds. To think of having an attack strength that was 10 times stronger than that was bone-chilling. However, Lin Huang was not going to test the limitations of his defense power in front of his enemy because it was irrational to do so. Therefore, he had been avoiding the Fire Phoenix''s initial attack. Only after it launched its ranged attack did Lin Huang then dare to defend himself with the Dark Shield. Since the ocean of red flames had been separated from the isolation shield, Lin Huang felt relatively safe. When he raised his head, he saw that the Fire Phoenix was getting in position for its next skill. His pupils immediately dilated and his face turned grave. In mid-air, after pouring out flames from its mouth for the last time, its blue eyes flashed with a trace of fury. A golden beam of light emerged from the Fire Phoenix''s head, floating in front of its body. It resembled a small golden spark and it was shrouded in an invisible energy. "Ah, a forbidden skill C Flare" Lin Huang swallowed a mouthful of saliva in anxiety. He clearly knew what the Fire skill was about. The golden flame was the Fire Phoenix''s natal flame C the Fire Spark. Under normal circumstances, the Fire Phoenix would need to spend more than hundreds of years to produce a Fire Spark. Therefore, it was very unlikely that it would use this skill. The Fire Spark would normally stay in the Fire Phoenix''s belly and most of the time, each of the Fire Spark was only half unlocked. Once the spark was released out of its body, it would quickly absorb the surrounding heat energy when it was unsealed, creating an extremely large explosive fireball. The greater the amount of heat absorbed, the higher the energy content of the fireball. If adequate energy was absorbed, a Fire Spark that expanded to its maximum power could destroy an area that was more than 10,000 square kilometers, making it on par with Earth''s atomic bomb. "I''ve overdone it" Lin Huang''s back was drenched in sweat as he confirmed that his Dark Shield would definitely not be able to defend against such an attack.Do you want to shit (die) (ʺ()), the pronunciation for the word shit and die in Chinese is almost similar.She sells seashells by the sea shore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So, if she sells shells on the sea shore, I''m sure she sells sea shore shells. (,ʮʮ,ʮʮ,ʮʮ): A tongue twister is used as it can convey the authors idea in a better way than direct translations can.Go shit (die) (ȥʺ()). Similar to the earlier note. 306 Bloody Robe’s Ambition Very few of the double mutated monsters would possess a forbidden skill. Such a skill was different from the rest as it would normally have rather harsh conditions of using it and many of them even left side effects on the users. The Fire Phoenix''s fire skill could only be used once after having accumulated flame energy for more than a hundred years. Despite the fact that it had immense power, it was somehow restricted from using it simply by environmental factors. This was because the forbidden skill relied on the absorption of external heat energy to generate its power. It would become more powerful in places with an adequate supply of heat energy. On the contrary, in regions with extremely low temperatures, the attack would do nothing to its opponent as the effect would be even worse than an ordinary skill. However, there was an ocean of lava and hundreds of volcanoes around where Fire Phoenix was releasing its Fire. The heat energy was sufficient to activate its Fire Spark to its maximum state. Such an attack could cover up to an area of more than 10,000 square kilometers. Other than Lin Huang, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who were both on top of the volcano, others would definitely not be able to escape. Although Li Lang had never actually read the monster guide, he knew the impact that the Fire Phoenix''s forbidden skill could cause. Of course, Yi Yeyu knew everything about it since the Fire Phoenix was her target and she had done the relevant research earlier. Seeing that Fire Spark was being released, both of their minds went blank instantaneously. "The forbidden Fire Spark skillHow could this happen? According to the records, the Fire Phoenix will not simply use its forbidden skill" Yi Yeyu was stunned. "The distance is too short. Its impossible to escape. Right after the spark is unsealed, itll expand to its maximum state in less than 10 seconds. Then, the entire region around it stretching out to more than 10,000 square kilometers will be flattened," sighed Li Lang as he shook his head helplessly, "I''ve never expected to die here" Right at that moment, although Lin Huang was surrounded by flames, he could still observe the Fire Phoenix''s movement mid-air through his Dark Shield. The golden beam of light that was as small as a firefly seemed to be insignificant. However, Lin Huang''s facial expression changed the moment he saw it. "I said it too soon." He was stunned for a short while before he contacted the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit in his mind. "I don''t care if itll discover this or not. Let''s take action now!"Lin Huang instructed without any hesitation. Initially, he wanted the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit to only attack when the Fire Phoenix was not aware of it. However, the situation did not allow them to wait any longer. The Fire Phoenix extended its claws into the air and grasped the Fire Spark, tearing apart the layer of a seal to release it. At that very moment, countless Punishment Chains emerged from the lava and tore across the sky towards the Fire Phoenix. The Punishment Chains reached its maximum speed as it arrived behind the Fire Phoenix in just an instant. However, the Fire Phoenix seemed to have sensed that something was wrong. It immediately fluttered its wings and instantly rocketed hundreds of meters higher so that it could avoid getting ambushed by the Punishment Chains. "Dammit!" Lin Huang''s heart immediately sank. On top of the volcano, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang thought that there was hope the moment when they saw the appearance of Punishment Chains. However, the Fire Phoenix successfully dodged the attack and their smiles instantly turned stiff. "We''re finished, we''re doomed!" Li Lang wrung his hands as he dared not look at the outcome of the battle anymore. All of a sudden, a chain appeared without any signs and the Fire Spark got entangled in it, drawing it into the pool of lava at lightning fast speed. It was so sudden that even the Fire Phoenix could not respond, just able to watch its Fire Spark being snatched away. "Hehehehe" As maniacal laughter was heard, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit gradually emerged from the lava with the half sealed golden spark in his big palm. "Stupid bird, thank you for the gift!" The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was being mean as he teased the Fire Phoenix mercilessly. "Go f*ck yourself!" The Fire Phoenix yelled, fluttering its wings as it gave up fighting Lin Huang and pounced on the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. "Hehe, it''s too late to snatch it from me now," said the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit with a vague smile. It inserted the half-sealed spark into his blue eyes without hesitation. The very next moment, a notification from Xiao Hei came in. "Congratulations, Epic Monster Card - Sanguine Skeletal Spirit has obtained a new skill C Flare" Lin Huang was stunned as he heard that. He had never expected the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit to seize its skill this way and in such an instance. "I thought that only a monster of the same type can seize another monster''s skill?" Lin Huang mumbled in a low voice curiously. "Not necessarily. If the skill is powerful enough, it can be seized by a monster of the same element too." Soon, Bloody''s comment came into Lin Huang''s mind, reminding him that he had not recalled Bloody yet. Seeing that the Fire Phoenix and the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit had collided with each other, Lin Huang started having a headache. "Although Bloody Robe has snatched away its Fire Spark and resolved the situation, Ive completely lost the chance to seal the Fire Phoenix with the Punishment Chains, so Yi Yeyu cannot kill it as planned" he thought to himself. "If there''s no chance, we can create the opportunity. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit will be unable to defeat Fire Phoenix but you can still call on the Nephilic Judge to control and seal it," Bloody suggested. "That''s the only choice we have. It should be fine for it to leave Tyrant''s side for a short while" Lin Huang knew that among all his monster cards, only the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit and Kylie the Nephilic Judge were on white flame-level. They were capable of fighting in the air and with their abilities, they could fight the Fire Phoenix for a short period of time. In comparison, the combat strength of the other monsters was slightly weaker and most of them could not fly. They would only be dominated by the Fire Phoenix if they were to fight it, slowing Kylie and Bloody Robe down instead. Since Lin Huang could not fly or launch distance attacks on the Fire Phoenix at all and the effect from his ranged attacks would be limited, even if he joined the fight, he could only distract the Fire Phoenix and do nothing else. "It seems like Ive to learn a skill for ranged attack or get a monster skill for it. Otherwise, I''ll have to get a firearm relic and complement it with a gunfighting secret skill." Lin Huang thought determinedly. Seeing that the flames outside the Dark Shield had subsided, Lin Huang recalled Kylie the Nephilic Judge back into her card form without hesitation and soon, she was summoned again. Kylie had shrunk in her silver armor, stunning Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, who could only recognize her after a few seconds. Lin Huang''s Dark Shield had disappeared and he gave Kylie a new instruction, "Kylie, please help Bloody Robe to control the Fire Phoenix and complete the punishment seal on the Fire Phoenix." Kylie took a glance at Lin Huang. Without saying anything, she flapped her wings and disappeared 307 Purplish-Gold Lightning As soon as Kylie the Nephilic Judge entered, the battle became more intense. Three of the double mutated white flame-level monsters clashed with each other, causing the clouds in the air to disappear. The remaining energy caused the ground to tremble a little. The intense collision resulted in a strong wind pressure that resembled ripples on the water surface, spreading far and wide. The crushed rocks on the ground sprayed everywhere like bullets and waves even appeared on the ocean of lava that was initially calm. Seeing the three monsters battling each other in the sky, Lin Huang exclaimed, "A Transcendent is indeed like nothing else. Even if it''s just at holy fire-level, its power for destruction can never be achieved by a normal human!" Before becoming a Transcendent, Life Power could not be detached from one''s body. Aside from some monsters with special skills that allowed their Life Power to be separated from their body, most of the monsters were just like humans and they chose to use mainly short-range attacks as their main battle strategy. However, once they were upgraded to holy fire-level, the quality of their Life Power changed. Their Life Power could be detached from their body and this made the difference between the monster''s fighting style and that of humans whereby the damage caused would be increased as well. The same thing had happened to Lin Huang now as he could not join the fight among the three Transcendent monsters at all. One of the reasons he could not do so was because he could not fly and the other reason was that his Life Power could not be separated from his body. Despite the fact that his speed and defense strength was on par with the three Transcendent monsters, even for his close-range combat, he still could not approach them. The Fire Phoenix''s reflexes could easily keep Lin Huang away. "Under such circumstances, I can''t even go close to them" The battle in the air was so intense and Lin Huang panicked. The sky got darker and the monsters in the ruins became more active. Although many of the monsters around them were terrified by the battle between the three Transcendents, the energy fluctuation caused by the battle might trigger monsters that were even more powerful to hunt them as prey. "Don''t delay anymore. Quickly end the battle!" Lin Huang knew that it would get them into greater trouble if the battle was dragged out for too long. As soon as he contacted Kylie with his mind, she suddenly exited the battle. Along the purple long spear, a golden beam of light flowed continuously and a golden Thunder Sphere was quickly formed. The Thunder Sphere took only a few seconds to expand to the size of a human fist. Kylie then picked up the Thunder Sphere with the tip of her spear and it blasted off into the sky. In just a short moment, it penetrated through the atmosphere and exploded, turning into a dazzling, golden laser beam. oon, a loud explosive noise was heard and dark clouds were instantly formed in the air. Within the dark clouds, beams of golden electric arcs were flickering wildly. Not only did Kylie activate her Lightning Control, purple electric current flowed through Lin Huang''s body as well as he stared at the cloud layers. After a short while, beams of purple electric arcs appeared out of nowhere, enhancing the beauty of the golden electric arcs. The cloud layers were a mishmashed painting of different shades of gold and purple, making it look very mysterious. On top of the volcano, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang raised their heads and gazed at the sky. The sky was dark and the purple golden luster appeared to be rather appealing. "The golden lightning appears only on the human-like monster''s body. Where does the purple lightning on the cloud layer come from?" Li Lang felt curious. "Look at Lin Huang" Yi Yeyu mumbled. Li Lang then noticed that there were faint purple electric arcs flickering on Lin Huang''s body. "Is that a type of skill to control the elements?! The little brat sure picked up a lot of things!" Li Lang was astonished. Yi Yeyu remained silent, fixing her gaze on Lin Huang as she fell into deep thought. Lin Huang had just thought about overlaying both Thunder Control skills. By doing so, there would be a substantial increase in the frequency and density of lightning strikes, hence distracting the Fire Phoenix''s line of sight. The dark clouds had enveloped an area of more than 10 kilometers in the sky. Of course, the Fire Phoenix noticed that. However, it did not bother as the lightning element could not restrain it. If it turned out to be an ice element attack, the Fire Phoenix might be afraid of it but there was not much difference between the lightning strikes and normal Life Power attacks. At most, it would numb the Fire Phoenix. However, on top of the dark cloud layer, lightning did not strike even after a long while. Lin Huang was shocked. He then activated Boundless Vision and gazed into the sky. He then noticed that on the cloud layer, Kylie''s golden lightning and his purple lightning were intertwined together and strangely, they started to merge, forming into a purplish-gold color that differed from the two previous colors. "How can such a mutation happen? Did they merge because they are skills of the same type?" Lin Huang could not find a better explanation for that incident. His Lightning Control was extracted from Kylie''s skills. However, such a mutation was out of his expectation. As soon as the merging of the first beam of lightning had succeeded, the rest of them seemed to be infected as other purple and golden lightning branches started merging with each other rapidly. In just a short while, the purplish-gold radiance had completely disappeared and it was replaced with purplish-gold lightning throbbing vigorously between the cloud layers. On top of the volcano, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang noticed the changes too. However, only the Fire Phoenix remained oblivious. Kylie the Nephilic Judge immediately exited the battle. The Fire Phoenix did not chase after her, focusing on killing the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit instead as it wanted to get back its Fire Spark. As a fire element monster, the Fire Phoenix''s attack had a limited effect on the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Therefore, it had chosen to engage it in close combat. During the battle, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit had powerful defenses in addition to the appearance of its Punishment Chain from time to time. Although it seemed like it could not fight back at all, it would not be easily defeated in a short period of time. Purplish-gold lightning had formed in the sky, revealing its ferocious nature. At that moment, the sky was getting darker. On the cloud layer, a beam of purplish-gold lightning penetrated through the sky and attacked the Fire Phoenix at a terrifying speed. At almost the same time when the beam of lightning appeared, the Fire Phoenix seemed to have sensed that danger was coming from atop. Before it could dodge the attack, the beam of lightning had already struck its back. A screech and the rumbling of thunder were heard simultaneously. Right after the attack hit the Fire Phoenix, its body sank and a black burn mark appeared on its back. Although it was not severely injured, pain that it had never felt before seared through its body. The Fire Phoenix immediately flapped its wings and escaped from the battle with the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit, staring at the sky in fear Between the cloud layers, the second beam of purplish-gold lightning was formed, indicating the arrival of a terrifying power. The Fire Phoenix immediately flapped its wings vigorously to dodge the attack. Although the first attack did not cause any internal injuries, it obviously had broken through the Fire Phoenix''s feather defense. It was in so much pain and felt numb at the same time. It definitely did not want to be struck by the lightning again. The second beam of lightning missed the Fire Phoenix as it dodged it. However, there was the third, fourth and fifth beam that rained down crazily like a thunderstorm... 308 Fire vs Lightning Purplish-gold lightning that resembled a freak thunderstorm rained down from the sky. The Fire Phoenix who would not usually care about thunder element attacks immediately flapped its wings to dodge the attacks as it dared not fight it after being struck for the first time. The Fire Phoenix seemed to have teleported to the best of its ability. Each time it flapped its wings, it would immediately disappear, avoiding the lightning attacks. Although it seemed like it was using Flicker, it was actually because the Fire Phoenix''s teleportation ability had reached the maximum level. Its wings continued to flap and Fire Phoenix was constantly changing its position in the air to avoid the purplish-gold lightning attacks. Right after it had successfully dodged the attack, a huge black pit with a diameter of a few meters was formed on the volcanic rock. Aside from that, the purplish-gold lightning caused the volcanic rocks internal structure to melt due to the sudden release of energy with such high temperature. There were countless unique marks made by the lightning imprinted on the pit and the surrounding ground. The rock with patterns formed by high temperature lightning was known as Thunderstrike Rock in this world. It was rare and was the ultimate collector''s item for rich men. It was said that only three of the collectors in Division7 owned such an item. Of course, Lin Huang did not know much about that but Yi Yeyu and Li Lang felt avaricious just looking at them. "There are so many Thunderstrike Rocks here. If we can take any of them and sell them at art auctions, we can definitely fetch a good price. We''re going to be rich!" Li Lang''s saliva practically dripped from his mouth. "Get one for our great-grandfather. He''ll definitely like it" Yi Yeyu mumbled, stroking her chin. Both of them seemed to have forgotten their situation as they stared at the Thunderstrike Rocks and their mind went blank. Although the battle was still as intense, the Fire Phoenix did not stop dodging but it had no more energy to attack. Despite possessing the transcendent teleportation ability that gave it terrifying speed, it still could not dodge the lightning attack perfectly. It would occasionally get hit by the purplish-gold lightning. Each time the attack struck it, it would experience intense pain followed by numbness. The area where it was attacked would turn charcoal black. Even if it had strong recovery abilities, it could hardly recover in such a short period of time. After being attacked several times, the thought of retreating arose in the Fire Phoenix. Trapped in an area that was shrouded in dark clouds, it was now in the worst possible situation. It wanted to get out of the dark clouds and wait for them to disperse. Flapping its wings, it then fled towards the ocean of lava. Right at that moment, flaming chains streaked across the sky, turning into a huge net and blocking its way. Knowing that it was the Punishment Chains, the Fire Phoenix did not dare touch it at all. It quickly turned back and flew in another direction. Again, the Punishment Chains appeared abruptly to block its way. The attack speed of the Punishment Chains was actually on par with the Fire Phoenix''s speed of flying. The reason why it could not be captured was because the Punishment Chains were unable to estimate its direction and dodging angle so quickly However, knowing that the Fire Phoenix intended to flee, it would be easier to capture it with the chains as long the direction it was headed in was identified. "Hehehe The rare Fire Phoenix chooses to escape battle? How humiliating!" The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit mocked, "If you''re willing to give me the phoenix blood, I''ll let you go" "This fella" Lin Huang was speechless as he heard that. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit''s attitude was just as bad as it was before it was killed, having the guts to declare that it would let the Fire Phoenix go in front of Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang knew that despite having such an attitude, it would have no way of disobeying Lin Huang''s order as it was restricted by the rules of the monster card. Unexpectedly, the Fire Phoenix was not angry. It ignored the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit''s provocation. Meanwhile, it dodged the lightning attacks as it thought of ways to solve the problem. All of a sudden, it glanced at Kylie who was standing outside the battle. Kylie''s body was flickering in a golden electric glow, her eyes flashing with a trace of fury. "You''re the one who did that. Since I can''t get out of this area, I might as well kill you first! Once you''re dead, the lightning will probably disappear!" As the thought ran through its mind, the Fire Phoenix immediately pounced on Kylie. Seeing the Fire Phoenix pouncing on her, even to the extent of ignoring the lightning attacks, Kylie picked up her spear and was ready for the fight without an ounce of fear. The purple long spear in its hand clashed with the Fire Phoenix''s claws again. Despite having a huge difference in body size, the collision only proved that the both of them were equally powerful. Apparently, the Fire Phoenix had chosen the wrong opponent for close combat. In terms of combat abilities, Kylie the Nephilic Judge was way stronger than the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. She had even controlled the Grimace Clown that had wicked intentions previously. The Fire Phoenix was enormous in size and looked intimidating. As a matter of fact, it was a monster that was skilled in ranged elemental attack with average close combat abilities. Using its own weakness to fight Kylie''s strength, of course, it would not get its desired result. However, the Fire Phoenix noticed its mistake right after the attack. Nine of its tail feathers vibrated slightly and soon, nine flaming tail whips appeared in the air out of nowhere and attacked Kylie. Kylie was white flame-level. Once her Seraphic Speed was activated, she would be several times faster than Lin Huang''s while his Thunder Steps and Seraphic Speed ability was activated. Transforming into shadows in the sky, she could easily dodge the tail whips. She grabbed her purple spear and counterattacked. Although Lin Huang who was standing on the ground could not join the battle, he was the one who controlled the lightning that streaked across the sky together with Kylie as she fought. Kylie was engaged in a fight, so she could no longer control the lightning. Of course, Lin Huang would not let go of such a good opportunity to attack the Fire Phoenix. He controlled the descent of the purplish-gold lightning bolts and attacked the Fire Phoenix. Encountering Kylie''s counterattack, the Fire Phoenix was in dire straits as it was hit several times by the lightning bolts. The intense pain and numbness that followed affected its movements. Kylie took the opportunity while the Fire Phoenix was not paying attention to her. She unleashed her Judgement Spear at full force, tearing its neck apart. Its scorching blood resembled flames as it dripped out of its wounds. It was the first time the Fire Phoenix felt an injury. Kylie launched consecutive attacks, turning her spear into beams of light and shooting them at the Fire Phoenix. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit took a chance to launch another onslaught as well, blocking the Fire Phoenix''s way to retreat with its chains. At that moment, the Fire Phoenix''s feathers started burning and in just an instant, it completely turned into a colossal flaming bird. Kylie''s spear directly penetrated through the flame. "Elemental Transformation!" Lin Huang frowned. After going through Elemental Transformation, the Fire Phoenix''s body would no longer exhibit its usual characteristics. The effect of physical attacks would be rendered useless. Despite Kylie''s spear penetrating through its body, the physical impact of the attack would no longer work. If she were to attack it with Life Power, the effect on it would be limited as well. Furthermore, the purplish-gold lightning that appeared in the sky could only remove part of the flames within its body and would not cause a significant impact on its body any further. "The Fire Phoenix is forced to go through an Elemental Transformation. It''s difficult to keep it with us now" Yi Yeyu was slightly disappointed as she stared at them, feeling disdain as she would not be able to hunt down the Fire Phoenix. Just then, golden beams of light were released from Kylie''s body. In an instant, she turned into a golden human-like bolt of lightning. She had gone through Elemental Transformation as well 309 Completing A Capture! Golden lightning and red flames clashed with each other continuously in the sky. Each impact caused a serious stir in the surrounding space. It seemed like the area where the both of them collided with each other became distorted. The intense collision created wind pressure that resembled ripples, spreading everywhere. A growl that was even louder than the rumbling of thunder was heard, causing Yi Yeyu and Li Lang on top of the volcano to cover their ears as well. After it had gone through the Elemental Transformation, the Fire Phoenix''s speed had increased. The probability of it getting hit by lightning was reduced drastically and even the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit''s Punishment Chain could not catch up with its speed anymore. At the foot of the volcano, Lin Huang frowned. "If this continues, the concentration of the Fire Phoenix''s Life Power will stretch beyond Kylie''s Life Power. With such an impact, we won''t know who will win the fight in a short period of time. However, after a prolonged period of collision, Kylie will collapse" Lin Huang noticed the problem after the both of them had clashed with each other several times. "Since lightning can no longer affect it, it''s time to switch to wide-area attack. Kylie''s one of those who can unleash the skill. Therefore, the lightning won''t be affected." Lin Huang immediately planned what to do. He then raised his head, staring at the sky. The sky was overcast with dark clouds. The purplish-gold lightning did not stop dancing between the cloud layers and fury flashed within Lin Huang''s eyes. A few moments later, the lightning started to break away from the clouds. "Get down!" Lin Huang said in a low voice and lightning began to descend from the sky, resembling a waterfall. The Fire Phoenix was no longer the target of the lightning bolts. It hit the ground everywhere as if it was raining heavily, attacking the area shrouded in dark clouds. Fortunately, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were hundreds of meters away from the region covered by dark clouds, so they were safe from the attack. Lin Huang was not the one controlling it. When he had intentionally stacked the charges between the cloud layers, it had exceeded the load limit of the cloud layer which inevitably caused the lightning to completely break away. In an instant, thousands of lightning bolts struck the ground at almost the same time, enveloping the entire region at the foot of the volcano. Not only was the Fire Phoenix covered by the purplish-gold lightning, Kylie and Lin Huang were within the range of attack as well. However, since the both of them were the ones who triggered the lightning, they were not attacked by the lightning rods. However, the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit was not so lucky as it could only block the lightning bolts by controlling the lava to form a defensive layer on top of its head. By doing so, it had drawn all the lightning into the ocean of lava and successfully avoided the attack. There was a significant increase in the speed and density of the lightning attack as the Fire Phoenix got attacked again and again. Although the lightning did not have a significant effect on the Fire Phoenix''s body, it was somehow depleting it of its elemental flame. Moreover, as there was a great amount of lightning energy associated with the lightning strikes, each attack consumed a large amount of the Fire Phoenix''s energy. The energy consumed with each attack it took was comparable to when it collided with Kylie. On the other hand, Kylie was not affected. She did not suffer any attacks from the lightning as it was her own skill. However, she took the initiative to absorb the surrounding lightning bolts, causing her aura to grow even stronger. Then, the situation got warped. Kylie''s attack that was initially being suppressed now grew stronger and she seemed to have gone insane as if she had no more fear or inhibition. On the other hand, the Fire Phoenix began to worry that its energy would be depleted and the period of Elemental Transformation would be shortened. It then switched from being on offense to being on defense. Knowing that such a high-frequency lightning attack would not work for a long period of time, it was getting ready to counterattack right after the lightning strikes stopped. In just an instant, it was obvious that Fire Phoenix was completely pinned down by Kylie. Since the attack made no difference, in order to avoid greater consumption of energy, the Fire Phoenix had decided to use a small portion of its energy to dodge the lightning attack. Looking at the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit''s little trick in mid-air, Lin Huang grinned. After Kylie had gone through the Elemental Transformation, she had grown larger. In addition to absorbing the lightning bolts earlier, her body had expanded as well. In this state of Elemental Transformation, her height reached about 10 meters tall. When the Fire Phoenix did not pay attention to her, she hid a few Punishment Chains behind her back. Before the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit activated its Punishment skill, the Punishment Chains were only ordinary chains and would not affect Kylie. The Fire Phoenix was caught unprepared and a bolt of lightning struck it again. The next moment, Kylie took the opportunity and approached it. Two beams of golden light and red light crashed into each other again. However, just then, red glows emerged from behind the golden beam of light at a terrifying speed, heading towards the Fire Phoenix. Taking a nervous glance at it, the Fire Phoenix immediately retreated as it did not want to be locked down by the Punishment Chains. The speed of the Fire Phoenix''s retreat was alarmingly fast and it managed to get rid of the flaming chains in an instant. However, all of a sudden, it felt that its tail had sunk. As it turned back, it realized that its tail was entangled by a flaming chain that had appeared out of nowhere. It attempted to escape. However, it noticed that its Life Power was depleting quickly. Right at that moment, it was locked by eight additional chains. Despite the fact that it had gone through an Elemental Transformation, its body instantly returned to its original state. Nine of the chains quickly extended over the Fire Phoenix''s body, locking its wings, claws and even its beak. The Fire Phoenix''s huge body immediately fell to the ground as it still struggled to break free of the chains. It all happened very suddenly. Yi Yeyu was stunned for a moment, then she summoned a flying mount and rushed over. In just a few moments, she appeared in the sky above the Fire Phoenix, summoning a long green saber. "Quickly get it done. If it gets rid of the chains, it''ll be difficult to capture it again," Lin Huang urged. "Alright!" Yi Yeyu immediately gathered her Life Power to unleash the strongest saber skill she had without a moment of hesitation. "Hmph, weak human ants. Even if my Life Power is sealed, you''ll not be able to break through it!" The Fire Phoenix took a glance at Yi Yeyu and its voice boomed without even using its mouth. "Right after I break the chains, I''ll immediately activate another Fire Spark and kill you all!" "Aren''t you afraid that your Fire Spark will be snatched away again?" Lin Huang grinned as he teased him. The blade of Yi Yeyu''s green, long saber relic was rapidly enveloped by the red Life Power. The moment when the Fire Phoenix that was originally fearless saw the long saber''s blade, its pupils dilated. With just one look, it could sense that the saber was dangerous. The extent of danger it was facing was way beyond all the opponents it had ever encountered. It then began to struggle. "Damn, what''s the red Life Power for?!" Fear bubbled in the Fire Phoenix''s heart. It did not know what the red Life Power was. However, it could sense that it would definitely die if it was struck by it. Cracking sounds from the Punishment Chains were suddenly heard. The Fire Phoenix struggled, getting rid of the Punishment Chains with its wings. It quickly flailed its wings as it wanted to flee. However, the Fire Phoenix''s body was captured by the remaining chains. Flapping its wings hard, the Punishment Chains instantly broke into pieces. "Act now!" Lin Huang yelled. Yi Yeyu''s Rainbow Sparrow seemed to be frightened by the Fire Phoenix''s power and dared not move forward At that moment, a silver beam streaked across the sky and grabbed Yi Yeyu before pouncing on the Fire Phoenix that was struggling to break the last chain 310 Hunting For The Tinder Despite having its Life Power sealed, the Fire Phoenix was still powerful. The moment it noticed the impending danger, it unleashed an immense amount of strength, struggling to break free of the Punishment Chains to flee. Unfortunately, the Fire Phoenix did not manage to get rid of all the Punishment Chains. While it flapped its wings desperately to escape, it still got entangled by the Punishment Chains and its escape route was blocked. Its movements turned sluggish in mid-air. "Damn it, please break!" Since it was being blocked, the Fire Phoenix then began flailing its wings faster. The remaining Punishment Chains began to break Just before the last Punishment Chain broke and the Fire Phoenix was about to flee, Kylie, who had transformed back to her real body, attacked. She grabbed Yi Yeyu''s collar, transforming into a silver blur and quickly pounced towards the Fire Phoenix that was lingering in the air! Looking at Yi Yeyu''s red long saber that was about to attack it, the Fire Phoenix was filled with intense fear. It had never worked its wings at such a rate before in its entire life. A cracking sound was heard. It had finally broken the last Punishment Chain. The moment when Lin Huang and the rest of them heard the crack of the chain, everyone''s hearts sank. As soon as it managed to break the chain, the Fire Phoenix immediately flew up high into the sky Yi Yeyu ground her teeth and demanded, "Send me there!" Immediately, an immense power came up behind her. Yi Yeyu''s slender body accelerated in a blink of an eye as she headed towards the Fire Phoenix that was flying in mid-air The Fire Phoenix could feel its Life Power being quickly unsealed. The immense strength it used to have had returned and it felt slightly relieved. Before it left, it sneered at the people watching from below. However, it then saw a terrifying scene -- the woman, who was armed with a saber, had sped up, dashing towards it The Fire Phoenix was unable to dodge her at all. Yi Yeyu''s long green saber that was covered with bloody Life Power broke through its feather defense with ease. The blade completely punctured its stomach and only the handle of the saber could be seen outside. "Jeez I wonder what monster''s soul Xue Luo inserted into Yi Yeyu''s body. It can control fire element monsters to such an extent" Lin Huang clearly knew how powerful the Fire Phoenix''s defense was. Seeing Yi Yeyu''s long saber completely brushing off the Fire Phoenix''s defense and penetrating through its body, he knew that it was the effect of her unique physique. He had expected this outcome the moment he saw the Fire Phoenix''s strange reaction. The consequences of the attack on the Fire Phoenix had proven his prediction right. Even Kylie was shocked to see this. The Sanguine Skeletal Spirit then looked at Yi Yeyu with trepidation. Mid-air, the Fire Phoenix felt severe pain burning its wound. Soon, a peculiar energy invaded its body through the wound and it had no idea what type of energy it was as it started engulfing the flame energy from its body. In just a blink of an eye, the Fire Phoenix felt that the fire flame in its body had been extinguished together with the remaining Fire Spark After it had lost its flame energy, its body started to sink. It did not even have the energy to move its wings and soon, its huge body plummeted to the ground. Kylie dodged and carried Yi Yeyu in her arms. Boom! The Fire Phoenix instantly fell to the ground and a cloud of smoke billowed up into the air from the foot of the volcano. Even Lin Huang could sense it from afar that it was about to die. He noticed that Yi Yeyu did not strike its weak point though. Kylie then carried Yi Yeyu and soon, they reached the ground. Her face blushed when she got out of Kylie''s arms. "Stay focused. Get ready to extract its tinder, it''s collapsing really soon!" Lin Huang''s voice was heard as he came up behind Yi Yeyu. To avoid any unnecessary distractions, Lin Huang had recalled Kylie and the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. He then retreated hundreds of meters away. As a matter of fact, according to the rule of Life Fire tinder extraction, as long as there were no Transcendent humans around her, the extraction process would not be affected. Lin Huang wanted to play safe, hence he stayed away. Since everything had now been decided, Li Lang rode on the Ashenquill Eagle and descended beside Lin Huang. The huge Fire Phoenix gradually collapsed onto the ground and soon died. Yi Yeyu, who was staring at the Fire Phoenix, immediately moved forward, pressing against its huge carcass as her red-colored Life Power penetrated through the Fire Phoenix''s body like silk threads. Inside the Fire Phoenix''s body, the white Life Fire that was about to fade out turned into a white peanut-sized tinder. The tinder that was going to die out soon sensed the guidance of the red Life Power as if there was a chance for it to reignite and it attempted to absorb the red Life Power. As soon as the red Life Power was being absorbed, the tinder lit up. Apparently, it had sensed something delicious, engorging on the energy like a starving animal all the way Hunting the tinder was just like fishing; you had to use your own Life Power as bait to lead the tinder to enter your body. Therefore, the first criteria to successfully extract a tinder was to make sure that the tinder would be partial to one''s Life Power. If it was not the type of Life Power that the tinder preferred, the tinder would not be lured out. It would hide deep inside the monster carcass and disappear within an hour right after the monster had died. Of course, the prerequisite was that the tinder hunter must be the one who killed the monster. Otherwise, even if one could get to the monster carcass before the tinder disappeared, the tinder would automatically collapse the moment that Life Power was inserted into the monster carcass and there would be no way of extracting it. Nobody knew where such a theory came from. However, everyone knew that it was a rule that could not be violated as it had been verified by the people who had tried to bypass it. In a nutshell, the time limit to hunt for the tinder was one hour and the hunter had to be the murderer as well. Also, the hunter''s Life Power had to be preferred by the tinder. An hour later, if the tinder was not drawn into the hunter''s body, it would automatically collapse and one would fail in the quest for the tinder. Without a doubt, Yi Yeyu was quite successful extracting the Life Power. In less than 30 seconds, she had successfully lured the tinder into her body. As soon as the tinder entered her body, Yi Yeyu released her palm that was pressing against the Fire Phoenix''s body. "Can you really do it that quickly?!" Even Lin Huang was amazed by her. Yi Yeyu nodded her head with a smile. She did not expect things to go so smoothly. "I''ll need some time to reignite the tinder." "Alright, we''ll keep watch beside you." Lin Huang nodded. Yi Yeyu then sat down and started controlling the tinder that was inserted into her Life Wheel. It was engulfing the Life Power within her body Lin Huang and Li Lang waited patiently around Yi Yeyu. From just a short distance, they could clearly sense the Life Power within Yi Yeyu''s body being drained. In just a few breaths, the aura released by her Life Power had completely disappeared. It felt like she was engaged in an intense battle that drained her Life Power. In Yi Yeyu''s body, the peanut-sized tinder did not only engulf all the Life Power in her Life Wheel within a few minutes, it even absorbed all the Life Power within her body that had drifted away from her Life Wheel. The crust of the tinder started to crack after all her Life Power had been engulfed and the energy of the white flame was released gradually. As time passed, more cracks appeared on the tinder and the white flame started to burn vigorously. Eventually, the tinder had completely turned into a white Life Fire, releasing a significant amount of Life Power. Yi Yeyu''s empty Life Wheel and her body that was running out of Life Power had been restored 311 The Fire Phoenixs Carcass The rules for advancing from complete gold-level to holy fire-level were totally different from the norm. Upgrading from iron to gold-level would only require one to kill a Life Seed monster. After the monster was killed, one would automatically go through a Life Light Baptism. The Life Seed would be drawn into the hunter''s body as well, allowing the hunter to directly complete the transformation. Upgrading to holy fire-level, however, one would need to kill the monster and extract its Life Fire tinder. Upon the completion of the extraction of the tinder, the tinder could be reignited by Life Power after it was inserted into one''s body. A Life Fire could then be formed. However, the success rate of extracting Life Fire tinder was not guaranteed. After the holy fire-level monster had died, the tinder would exist for only one hour before self-destructing. That being said, not retrieving it within one hour would indicate that the extraction of tinder had failed. Furthermore, despite the fact that the tinder of Life Fire existed in living organisms, it somehow still had a relatively weak consciousness. It would choose its host on its own. The most likely scenario was that one would only be able to extract tinder with which their Life Power matched. Therefore, by forcefully extracting tinder from a monster that did not match one''s characteristic or element, a hunter could be rejected with a probability of at least 90% and he or she would be unable to extract the tinder. Of course, most of them would not choose to do so. Yi Yeyu was a good example. To the Fire Phoenix''s tinder, her Life Power was absolutely delicious. That was the reason why she could easily complete the extraction of its tinder. In fact, an ordinary person would need to spend more than half an hour to complete the entire process. Of course, this was what they had to pay attention to during the extraction of tinder. Hunting the monster itself was another thing altogether. The only similar thing between upgrading from iron to gold-level was that one could form a team to hunt the monster. However, the similarity ended there. While hunting for the tinder of a monster, aside from the human''s combat strength having to be lower than that of the monster by at least one level, a limit for the number of people was there - not more than 100 participants could join! The number of monsters being summoned would not be counted in this party of hunters. However, there were rules established for the monsters being summoned as well. First of all, the monsters being summoned must not exceed the monster''s combat strength. Secondly, the number of monsters being summoned could not exceed ten and lastly, the person who obtained the tinder would be the one who last killed the monster. No matter how hard they tried, even if their Life Power matched the tinder''s characteristics and regardless of how delicious it was to the tinder, it would not have any reaction. Going against any of the rules, even after the monster had been killed, the tinder would automatically collapse as soon as the monster died. It was an absolute restriction. During the past hundred years, many of them had been looking for different tricks and ways to bypass the rules. Instead, as a consequence, they had only proven that these were rules that could not be violated and there would be no exclusion. Upon obtaining the tinder, it would automatically immerse itself in the hunters body to obtain his or her Life Wheel. One would have to allow the tinder to absorb all the Life Power to ignite it. The tinder and Life Power were correlated. The higher the compatibility between the both of them, the faster the tinder would light up and the reverse was true. It would then take a longer time to transform the tinder into a Life Fire. Apparently, Yi Yeyu''s Life Power was extremely compatible with the tinder. In about three minutes, the tinder had completely engulfed her Life Power and transformed, igniting the Life Fire. After the Life Fire had been ignited, there would be some changes in the quality of Life Power released. If the concentration of Life Power from iron to gold-level was compared to that of vapor, the concentration at complete gold-level would be a denser form of vapor. At holy fire-level, the concentration of Life Power was no longer comparable to that of vapor. There would be changes in the quality of Life Power as it would be more similar to droplets of water instead. Not only was the concentration of Life Power of those on holy fire-level higher than that of those on complete gold-level by more than tenfold, there was a change in the quality of Life Power as well. The change in the quality of the Life Power would also result in a change in the strength of body and soul. Before achieving holy fire-level, other than using certain skills, the Life Power would not be able to be separated from one''s body. However, upon achieving holy fire-level, the Life Power could exist even if it had detached from the body. By achieving such a level, humans could generate impact waves like what occurred in Dragon Ball as long as they had sufficient Life Power. That was also the reason why Lin Huang was so eager to become a Transcendent. Furthermore, the existence of the Life Fire could increase the rate of recovery of the Life Power in the human body by more than tenfold. Yi Yeyu had a unique physique. It took her only about half an hour for her Life Power to be filled by the Life Fire. Even the Life Power within her body had been restored. She felt energetic and powerful to the point that she even thought that she was having an illusion. She slowly opened her eyes, looking at the both of them who kept watch beside her. "You''ve filled your Life Power so quickly?!" Although he knew that Yi Yeyu had a unique physique, still, Lin Huang was surprised. "Yes." Yi Yeyu nodded. Lin Huang hesitated for a moment and requested, "This Could you please sell the Fire Phoenix carcass to me?" "The carcass belongs to you. Without you, I wouldn''t have been able to complete the extraction of its tinder. I''ve done nothing since the beginning. What I did was just kill it at the end of the battle," Yi Yeyu laughed at herself. "I''ll take it then. The carcass is useful to me." After finishing his sentence, Lin Huang stored the Fire Phoenix''s huge carcass in his storage space. The reason why Lin Huang wanted the carcass of the Fire Phoenix was because it was a monster that had undergone two mutations and it fulfilled the requirement to unseal Bai. After drinking some fresh blood, Bai could then be unsealed. Lin Huang had asked Xiao Hei about it while Yi Yeyu was igniting her Life Fire. The monster had stronger vitality than humans. The blood of a double mutated monster like the Fire Phoenix would still remain fresh within three hours after it had died. Not only could the carcass of the Fire Phoenix unseal Bai; there was also no damage to its head, so after Bloody had leveled up, it could try to retrieve information from its brain. There was a possibility that its abilities could be recovered. "I''ve finally completed the biggest mission in the training. What''s your plan?" Yi Yeyu asked the both of them. "Of course, I''m aiming for holy fire-level as well" Seeing that Yi Yeyu had killed the powerful Fire Phoenix and had leveled up, Li Lang looked somehow disappointed. He had chosen a monster that had only mutated once and its tinder was relatively weak. "Do you need my help?" Lin Huang turned around and asked. "No, I''ve already asked a few of them from the Hunter Association to kill it. I''ve chosen a normal Life Seed monster, so it should be easy to kill. If I can''t handle it, I''ll contact you then," Li Lang rejected Lin Huang as he had promised his friends to hunt down the monster together. Furthermore, he was confident that he could kill it and he did not want to trouble Lin Huang. "Lin Huang, what about you?" asked Yi Yeyu. As soon as Lin Huang was thinking of how he should answer the question, an oppressive aura suddenly came from afar. Lin Huang''s and Yi Yeyu''s facial expression changed abruptly. The intimidating aura must have been released by monsters that were at least purple flame-level. It was even stronger than the aura emitted by the Fire Phoenix. "Run!" Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic, the Black Ink, without a moments hesitation. A black door was instantly activated and the three of them quickly ran over to it The moment the Black Ink closed and disappeared, a flame that looked like a meteorite hurtled towards the door. The flame blasted off into the sky, stirring up waves in the ocean of lava that reached hundreds of meters high. On the other side, a few of the volcanoes collapsed abruptly due to the energy generated by the shock A few moments later, a gigantic dragon-like monster that was even bigger than the Fire Phoenix spread its wings and swept past the entire region 312 Submission Of The Mission Holy fire-level was categorized into five mini levels. To rank them in ascending order, white flame-level came first, followed by crimson flame-level, blue flame-level, purple flame-level, then gold flame-level. Monsters like the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit that Lin Huang had captured earlier and Kylie the Nephilic Judge that he had unsealed as well as the Fire Phoenix that he had just killed were monsters on white flame-level. However, a white flame-level monster that had mutated a second time would have abilities that were on par with a blue flame-level that had not gone through any mutations yet. As the Fire Phoenix possessed phoenix blood, its ability was slightly stronger. Perhaps, it could even fight a blue flame-level monster that had mutated once. Although Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu had no idea what the monster that they had detected earlier from afar was, they could sense just from its aura alone that it was on at least purple flame-level. It might be a gold flame-level monster as the aura of the monster was a lot stronger than that of the Fire Phoenix even though it was still far away from them. Obviously, the monster was attracted by the aura released from the battle. A monster that dared to approach them even after it could sense that there was a battle among three double mutated white flame-level monsters must be confident that it was capable of gobbling up the three powerful double mutated monsters. Fortunately, Yi Yeyu spent only half an hour to complete the ignition of the Life Fire. If she was a few minutes slower or if the monster came a few minutes earlier, the three of them would definitely become monster food. Based on Lin Huang''s current abilities in addition to the monsters that he could summon, defeating a monster that was on a level like the Fire Phoenix was his maximum limit. Fighting a monster that was stronger than that was beyond his capabilities. That was also the reason why he had chosen to run away at the very moment when he sensed the aura. Passing through the Black Ink, they appeared at a place that was thousands of kilometers away, somewhere near the forest of the Undying Bloodoaks. The place was one of the locations that Lin Huang had set previously in the Black Ink, so that he could come over to see Tyrant''s condition at any time. Since they were in a hurry when the Black Ink was being activated, he did not manage to choose a specific place in time. Therefore, they were randomly sent to this place. "What was that?! I felt like it was way stronger than the Fire Phoenix!" The thought struck terror in Yi Yeyu. "I don''t know, but it''s at least on purple flame-level. We can''t fight it." Lin Huang was slightly relieved. Right at the moment when the door was about to close, he could vaguely see the meteorite approaching. "Was there a monster attack just now?" Li Lang could only react to it now that they mentioned it. He had been dragged into the door by Lin Huang, not having any idea about what was happening at all. Listening to their conversation, he then knew why Lin Huang had suddenly summoned a dimensional relic. Both of them were speechless and took a glance at the ignorant Li Lang. "By the way, where''s this place? It looks familiar." Yi Yeyu suddenly noticed that the surrounding environment was somehow familiar yet strange. "You feel the same way too? I thought it was an illusion. I feel that it looks like the forest of the Undying Bloodoaks that we passed through previously" Li Lang''s voiced out. As he observed around, he felt odd. "Yes, it looks like it But there aren''t any Undying Bloodoaks over there. Why have all of them have disappeared?" As soon as Li Lang reminded them of that, Yi Yeyu turned back and looked at the direction where the Undying Bloodoaks were supposed to be. She frowned. "Lin Huang, why did you set this location as our destination? You''re not the one who wiped out everything in the forest, are you?" After witnessing Lin Huang''s skills, he felt that no ordinary person could do such a thing. Perhaps, only Lin Huang was capable of doing so. "No, it''s not me. I found out that the forest was being wiped out when I passed through this place a few days ago, so I set this location as I felt that it was weird that the forest has disappeared. I wanted to try and see if I can figure out what''s happening by chance when I''m free," Lin Huang simply came up with some excuses. Both of them easily believed what Lin Huang said as the forest of the Undying Bloodoak had completely disappeared as if it had never existed before. It did not look like it could be done by an ordinary human. "Many of the unknown abilities that we can''t defeat exist in the ruins" Yi Yeyu sighed. Lin Huang was slightly relieved as the both of them trusted what he said. In fact, he had revealed many of his abilities to both of them but he did not wish for them to know more of his secrets. It was not because he could not trust them. He felt that the knowledge of his secrets brought no benefit to both parties and it might even cause them trouble. Glancing at the time projected, it was about eight o''clock at night. It had been more than 40 minutes since the Fire Phoenix had died. "Lin Huang, is there anything that you have to deal with?" Yi Yeyu asked as she noticed that Lin Huang had also glanced at the time when he had requested for the carcass of the Fire Phoenix from her. He looked at the time again after a while and she could not help but feel that he had something urgent to settle. "Get your work done first. Once you''re done, we''ll meet again." "Alright, I do have something to deal with. I''ll bring the both of you back to the place for submission of our mission. Weve collected enough Transcendent monsters. We might as well submit our assignment first. Wait for me over there and I''ll join you guys right after I''m done with my work," Lin Huang suggested. "If you''re in a hurry, you may get your work done first. We''re not in rush to submit the mission," Li Lang explained. "I still have time, let''s submit the mission first." Lin Huang was worried that the both of them were going to stay here as he was afraid that they would discover Tyrant who was unsealing itself underground and that Tyrant''s unsealing process would be interrupted. As for Bai''s unsealing, although it was only about forty minutes since the Fire Phoenix had died, the submission of the mission could be done in a few minutes, so he would still be able to make it. He summoned the Black Ink again, specifying the location of the place for submission of their assignment. They strode over to the door and the door gradually closed. When they appeared again, they arrived at the place where they had gathered during the second round of training. The examiner of the second round of training, Zang Bing, was startled the moment when he saw them arrive. Immediately, he noticed that Yi Yeyu had achieved white flame-level. "Why did the three of you come back? Have you completed the mission?!" Zang Bing felt like it was only the second day since the assessment had started. Despite the fact that they had a member who had achieved white flame-level, it was impossible for them to complete the task of killing six Transcendent monsters as looking for the right Transcendent monster alone would take them some time. "Examiner, weve completed our task and we''re here to submit it," Li Lang said with a smile, "I guess we''re the first team to complete the mission, arent we?" "You''ll only be considered to have completed the mission after passing the carcasses to me." Zang Bing stared at Li Lang as he hated glib-tongued people. "Alright" Li Lang felt bored and rubbed his nose after listening to what Zang Bing said. He then took out the Afflicted Weaver''s dead body while Yi Yeyu took out the dead body of the Fiendish Terraflame Lizard and the Volcanic Giant that she had killed. Lin Huang took out the carcasses of the Undead Soldier, the Greatsword Fiend, and the Blazecrystal Scorpion. He kept the dead body of the double mutated Sanguine Skeletal Spirit under his care. Seeing the three of them produce six dead bodies of white flame-level monsters, Zang Bing was surprised. Gazing at them, he suspected that there must be a person among them that possessed unique detection abilities. Otherwise, even if they were capable of killing the monsters, it was impossible for them to complete the mission so quickly. After scrutinizing the dead bodies, although he felt curious to know how some of the monsters had died, he just put the carcasses away and nodded at them. "The three of you have passed the assessment. Tell me your names!" "Yi Yeyu." "Li Lang." "Lin Huang." After a short while, Zang Bing found their names on the name list projected and marked a tick beside their names. "Before the third assessment begins, the three of you can do whatever you like. However, I''d suggest you guys not to be lazy and go kill some Transcendent monsters. You''ll know why during the third round of the assessment," Zang Bing issued a simple reminder and did not say anything after that. "Both of you can wait for me over there. Since its late now, you can set up the tent somewhere around here and make some food. I''ll come back right after I get my things done." Again, Lin Huang summoned the Black Ink and went through the door 313 Unsealing Bai After the second mission had been submitted, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang stayed somewhere near the examiner. Lin Huang then left by summoning the Black Ink without any worries. The first location that he was sent to was the forest of the Undying Bloodoaks as it was where Tyrant was unsealed. He summoned Kylie again and instructed her to keep watch over the place. Lin Huang then summoned the Black Ink and left again. The next location that he had chosen was a huge, extinct volcano. He had accidentally discovered this place when he had been through here while riding on the Alexandrian Eagle. He felt that the extinct volcano was a good shelter, hence, he had bookmarked the location on the Black Ink. He never knew that it would be useful for him until now. The location was set right at the entrance of the volcano. After the Black Ink was recalled, Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. Riding on its back, they descended gradually and entered the volcano. It was an extinct volcano which was quite humongous with a height of more than 5,000 meters. The diameter of its base was about 100 kilometers. There was no more lava beneath the volcano as it had now all become volcanic rock. Not even a hint of heat energy was released. After he had confirmed that the internal space of the volcano was big enough, Lin Huang then restored the Alexandrian Eagle back to its card form and took out the Fire Phoenix carcass from its storage space. At the same time, Bai was summoned. Right after Bai was summoned, upon seeing the Fire Phoenix''s carcass, he was triggered. He clearly knew that the carcass could help him to unseal himself. However, he did not act first. He looked at Lin Huang instead, waiting for him to give an instruction. "Drink it," Lin Huang ordered. He was quite satisfied with Bai''s reaction. Bai was the most obedient monster among all his monsters in the monster card collection. Upon receiving Lin Huang''s instruction, Bai''s eyes suddenly turned red and he pounced on the Fire Phoenix''s carcass. He bit into the Fire Phoenix''s wound on its neck with his fangs and began to suck the Fire Phoenix''s blood. Lin Huang sat on the ground and waited patiently. He was bored after a while, then he raised his head, gazing at the sky. Despite the wide crater of the volcano, he felt like he was gazing at the moon through a well as he looked up from the base of the volcano that was thousands of meters deep. Staring at the sky through the crater, Lin Huang fell into deep thought, "The sky that I can see from the base of the volcano is not a complete sky, just like the world that I see in Division7 is not how the whole world exactly looks like. The world is infinitely big. What I saw today, what I heard today and even what I encountered today, theyre all just a small part of the world Perhaps Ill be upgraded to holy fire-level soon, then I can then step out of Division7 to explore a bigger world" As time passed, Lin Huang still waited at the base of the volcano patiently. The Fire Phoenix''s dead body began to shrivel away as Bai was draining it of its blood. In less than an hour, it looked like a mummy that had lost a great amount of water. Seeing the changes in the Fire Phoenix''s body, Lin Huang knew that Bai was almost done. About ten minutes later, when the Fire Phoenix''s body had almost dried out completely, Bai then released the carcass reluctantly. Extending his tongue and licked the remaining blood stains on its lip, Bai''s body gradually floated up into the air. His body was completely shrouded in a beam of white glow that looked like a spotlight in the sky. His white hair was ruffled despite the fact that there was no wind. Soon, a bloody mist gradually spread through the air and surrounded him. Lin Huang could sense that it was the Blood Spirit. However, it was his first time witnessing the Blood Spirit appearing in such a strange mist form as it would usually appear in the form of wings. As soon as the Blood Spirit had appeared, Bai''s aura rapidly grew stronger. The layer of bloody mist got thicker as well and eventually enveloped his entire body. It had even formed a huge bloody spawn mid-air. As the white glow from the sky shone on it, the layer of the bloody nucleus reflected a crystal clear radiance. What had happened was beyond Lin Huang''s expectations. When Kylie was unsealed, she had not gone through this process. "It seems like it''s different from Kylie''s evolution" Lin Huang lifted his head and looked at the huge bloody spawn in shock. "He possesses the God''s blood in his body but because his combat strength was too weak previously, he couldn''t activate the God''s blood. After he''s unsealed, the God''s blood will be activated by default. Therefore, the third evolution which is the so-called ultimate mutation will happen," Xiao Hei suddenly explained. "Is Bai going through the third advancement?!" Lin Hung then recalled the description on the monster card. He had not paid much attention to it previously. However, a question suddenly came to his mind. "Will it cause a big stir?" Previously, during the second advancement, Lin Huang would always choose a place that was less crowded to avoid catching anyone''s attention during the advancement due to the fluctuation of energy. Perhaps, it would cause a bigger stir during the third advancement. There were countless Transcendent monsters in the ruins and once Bai''s aura was released, many of the powerful Transcendent monsters would hone in on Bai as their prey. This was because the probability of a double mutated monster going through the third mutation was higher as long as it could engulf a monster that had mutated three times. "Yes, he''ll definitely lure other monsters out. Therefore, after he has leveled up, he has to leave as soon as possible." Lin Huang frowned when he heard the answer. After a short while, another question came into his mind. "After Bai has completed the third advancement, incidents like the Supreme Overlord wont happen, would it?" Xiao Hei gave a detailed explanation, "No, monster cards that are obtained from killing monsters or accumulated from monster card pieces will have no way of getting rid of the restriction rules of the monster card. Only monster cards that are sealed or being controlled forcefully will have the chance to go against the rules. In addition, since your combat level and authority have improved and my abilities are being constantly enhanced as well, it isnt likely that such an incident will happen in the future. "However, due to the restrictions on your authority, you''ll not be able to use a legendary level monster card. Therefore, after Bai has leveled up, he''ll be sealed. You''ll not be able to summon Bai before you''re upgraded to white flame-level." Although Bai was not rebellious, Lin Huang would still be unable to summon Bai after the third advancement as his authority would be restricted. "Alright" Lin Huang was slightly relieved when he heard the explanation. He was somehow helpless as Bai used to be his most frequently used monster card. Although he rarely used it nowadays, he somehow felt different since he knew that Bai would be sealed. The huge bloody spawn was rotating in mid-air. As the beam of light from the sky shone on it, it looked like a beautiful work of art that was presenting itself to the people. Lin Huang then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and flew to the crater. He chose to keep watch at the crater as he was afraid that other monsters or humans would approach him, interrupting Bai''s advancement process. It had been more than three hours since the start of the process. Fortunately, no monsters came over throughout it. While Lin Huang was waiting nervously, he suddenly heard a soft crack coming from afar. He immediately activated his Boundless Vision and looked towards the direction of the sound. A small crack appeared on the huge bloody spawn that was lingering mid-air. A terrifying aura was then gradually released from the crack... 314 The Vampire Monarch Sensing the aura released from the huge bloody spawn, Lin Huang was startled. "How incredibly powerful!" The strength of the aura being released was far beyond the Fire Phoenixs. In fact, it was even stronger than that of the Supreme Overlord that had mutated three times. "The God''s blood is one of the strongest blood vessels. Although both of the monsters have mutated three times, Bai, who possesses the God''s blood, will be stronger than most of the triple mutated monsters after its evolution," Xiao Hei explained as though it could sense what Lin Huang was thinking. "However, perhaps the aura that Bai releases will attract many of the Transcendent monsters" Lin Huang frowned, expressing his worries. "Yes. In fact, many of the monsters will be attracted during the third evolution. Some of the powerful monsters can even sense the God''s blood as its the most valuable treasure to them. It might even be more attractive than a dragonkin. The ruins arent that big. Its almost the same size as an A-grade foothold. Once Bai''s aura is released, almost all the monsters in the ruins will sense it. Therefore, youll have to recall Bai back into his card form in the very first place and leave." "All the monsters can sense it?" Lin Huang did not feel relieved after listening to Xiao Hei''s explanation. He felt heavy-hearted instead. As time passed, more cracks appeared on the huge bloody spawn and the immense aura emitted got even stronger. Lin Huang frowned. At about midnight, a layer of faint bloody fog spread out from the irregular cracks. Even the white glow in the sky appeared bloody as if the huge bloody spawn was completely enveloped by a huge, bloody light column. As the bloody light column shone on it, even Lin Huang could not see what kind of mutation the huge bloody spawn was going through. All of a sudden, a colossal aura burst out from the volcano as if something powerful had awakened from a deep slumber. Meanwhile, the intensity of the aura was increasing every second. Lin Huang could vaguely sense that the aura being emitted was majestic. He guessed that it must be an effect of the God''s blood. It would be easier for the monsters to notice the difference in Bai''s aura since even a human like him could sense it as well. His facial expression changed. "I''m not sure how long it takes" As the aura was released more and more powerfully, Lin Huang panicked. The longer it took, the more likely the powerful monsters would approach him. Ten minutes later, the bloody light column that appeared in the sky gradually faded. Bai, who was previously shrouded in the huge bloody spawn, slowly revealed his body. Bai no longer looked like a teenager. He looked more like a young man that was in his early twenties. His height was about 1.8 meters tall and his appearance was 80% similar to how he looked like previously. However, he did not look as gentle as he once did. He had a craggy face and his hair was still pure white and maintained at earlobe-length. From the neck down, he was wearing a black robe Having a cold, stony facial expression in addition to his attire, people on Earth would describe him as a standard handsome guy. "Congratulations, monster card Bai has been upgraded from epic to legendary level!" "Congratulations, you have obtained a legendary monster card, Vampire Monarch." After Bai had leveled up, he lifted his head and looked at Lin Huang in the sky. Placing one of his hands on his chest, he saluted Lin Huang. The next moment, a notification from Xiao Hei popped up. "Since you do not have the authority yet, you are unable to use a legendary level monster card. The monster card will be automatically sealed. After you have leveled up to holy fire-level and your authority is upgraded, the monster card will be automatically unsealed." Several black chains appeared on Bai''s body right after the notification was received and he was sealed. He looked calm and did not resist as he was completely trapped in the black chains. Soon after that, he disappeared. The purple monster card that appeared on Lin Huang''s hand then turned into a gray stone. He had no more access to the information behind the card either. Soon, he received another notification from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, Blood Spirit has leveled up. You have obtained a new skill, Vampire Particles." "Don''t worry. I''ll unseal you really soon." Lin Huang did not bother checking the description of the skill as he fixed his gaze on the front of the card that had turned gray. Gently rubbing the sides of the card with his thumb, he then recalled the card. When he was about to leave, Lin Huang suddenly sensed a terrifying aura was approaching. With a grin on his face, he then summoned the Black Ink and entered the door. Right at the moment when the Black Ink disappeared, a loud roar was heard coming from the sky. Soon, a huge shadow appeared somewhere near the crater just where Lin Huang had stood earlier. As soon as it gave out a warning roar, the remainder of the impending aura hesitated for a moment and left. Monsters that were rushing over did not dare go closer anymore. It was a giant dragon with a completely black body. Sitting right in front of the crater, it released its threatening aura, terrifying any other monsters that were coming for the God''s blood. It then popped its head slowly into the crater. Soon, it realized that its efforts were in vain. Roar! There were growls of anger from its belly and the humongous dragon checked out the surroundings with its red eyes. Still, it got nothing. "Eh?" All of a sudden, it sensed a familiar aura. The gigantic dragon immediately lowered its head, sniffing its surroundings. Soon after, it remained still at the position where Lin Huang had stood. "It''s a human aura. It''s the aura of the people who escaped using the dimensional relic a few hours ago!" Impressively, the black dragon was the Transcendent monster that had summoned meteorites to attack Lin Huang on the shore of the lava ocean. "The monster that possesses the God''s blood has disappeared so quickly. The human that used the dimensional relic must have brought it away!" A trace of fury flashed through black dragon''s eyes. "Human, how dare you snatch away the God''s blood? F*ck!" With a low growl, the black dragon flapped its wings and flew up into the sky Lin Huang did not know that Bai''s advancement and the remaining aura released by himself had triggered such a powerful monster in the ruins. As soon as Bai had leveled up, Lin Huang activated the Black Ink and set the location to the place they submitted their mission where the examiner, Zang Bing, was at. It was about 1 a.m. However, the lights in Yi Yeyu''s and Li Lang''s tents were still lit up. Obviously, they were still awake. Despite seeing that Lin Huang had just transported back, Zang Bing did not say anything. As they heard the sound of footsteps, both of them unzipped their tents one after another. "You''re back." Yi Yeyu seemed relieved. "Both of you are still awake," Lin Huang commented. He then took out a tent and set it up. "I can''t fall asleep. Perhaps it''s because I''ve just leveled up today and I''m too excited," Yi Yeyu came up with an excuse. "What about you? You got too excited as well?" Lin Huang turned around, looking at Li Lang as he teased him. "Damn, I''m depressed, that''s why I can''t fall asleep. You''re a genius and Yeyu has leveled up to holy fire-level. I''m the only burden!" Li Lang complained. "Why are you depressed? Even before Yeyu upgraded to holy fire-level, you were still a burden," Lin Huang added. Yi Yeyu sniggered. "Damn, I''m not as mean as you!" The three of them chatted for a while. Seeing that Zang Bing had fallen asleep, they went back to their own tents as well. In the peaceful night, Lin Huang checked out the new skill that he had just obtained. He used to think that he would have no skill advancement since Bai was being sealed. It was because when the Supreme Overlord had been sealed, he did not obtain any skills. In fact, if the skill was originally possessed by him, despite the fact that the monster card had been sealed, the skill would still be upgraded in accordance with the upgrade of the monster card. "Vampire Particles: The Vampire Monarch''s exclusive skill. It is evolved from Blood Spirit. Naturally, it is a peculiar energy that exists in the form of particles. You can create any colors or forms that you prefer by using the particles including weapons, armors, wings, and more." "Remarks 1: Vampire Particles has the ability to absorb blood automatically. The more blood is absorbed, the stronger the particles would become." "Remarks 2: The number of Vampire Particles is restricted by the user''s combat level. The higher the combat level of the user, the more Vampire Particles one can control." "Remarks 3: When something is killed with Vampire Particles, its likely that the elemental attributes of the body of the one being killed will be absorbed by the particles." "Remarks 4: Due to certain special reasons, the Vampire Particles that you own possess the fire elemental attribute by default." "It''s evolved from the Blood Spirit''s wings. They can change into several forms and their strength is a lot stronger as well. I should spend some time to check out how the skill can be used" After reading the skill description, Lin Huang did not continue any further as it was quite late already. Closing the skill page and switching off the light in his tent, he quickly fell asleep 315 White Flame-Level Monsters Aren’t Scary On the next day, Lin Huang woke up early in the morning. Compared to a few days back, he was much more relieved. The unsealing of Kylie the Nephilic Judge was completed, and the same applied to Bai who had even completed his third advancement. Meanwhile, Tyrant was still in the midst of unsealing, which would probably take another ten more days. The remaining Monster Cards were all on epic-level. Bloody had leveled up to complete gold-level. However, it still had two empty skills which made it ineligible for unsealing yet. Unsealing Charcoal would require dracaena but it was impossible to make that happen in the ruins. Lancelot the Ruthless Sword Master would need to kill eight more sword servants to level up. Lin Huang did not want to kill any sword type monsters that were not double mutated but he would have to depend on his luck whether he could encounter any double mutated sword type monsters in the ruins. On the other hand, Lin Huang had leveled up from gold-level rank-2 to gold-level rank-3. He had achieved his goal in the training, so whatever he obtained next would be a bonus to him. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang woke up awhile after Lin Huang did. The both of them came from noble families with a healthy lifestyle since they were young unlike Fatty, who would not even get up until somebody woke him up. Zang Bing, who was not far away, opened his eyes. He sat at the same spot throughout the night without a tent. His eyes were closed, so nobody knew if he was really sleeping. After washing up, Lin Huang took out a frozen cake. It was not the same one that he had bought in Luoxi City a month ago. This was bought on the Heart Network before he entered the ruins. The online store he had sourced it from was not the headquarters in Luoxi City, but a branch near Winter City. Although the recipe and ingredients were the same, he thought that it did not as good as the one from the headquarters. However, it still beat eating snacks. As the weather was warm in the ruins, Lin Huang did not warm the cake up but cut them into four servings instead. He gave them to Yi Yeyu, Li Lang, and the examiner Zang Bing and left one for himself. Zang Bing looked at Lin Huang, not rejecting or accepting his treat. Lin Huang put down the cake and left without saying a word. Perhaps Zang Bing thought Lin Huang was kissing his ass, but since they had passed the training, there was no need for them to do so. After some thought, Zang Bing picked up the cake and started eating it. Just when Lin Huang turned around, Li Lang had finished the cake that was the size of his face. It had only been ten seconds since he had accepted the cake, and he looked at Lin Huang in anticipation. "Do you have more?!" "No, each of us only gets a slice." Lin Huang started munching on his cake. Li Lang looked at the frozen cake in Lin Huangs hands and was drooling. A while later, Lin Huang decided to give in. He took out another piece of cake and gave it to Li Lang, clearly disgusted by the way Li Lang was looking at him. Li Lang demolished the cake clumsily with a fork while he mumbled with his mouth full, "Where did you get this cake? Its so f*cking delicious!" Yi Yeyu looked at them as Li Lang asked that question. She seemed like she wanted to know the answer as well. "You guys can search for frozen cake on the Heart Network. If youre not in a hurry, get it from the headquarters in Luoxi City as they make the best tasting ones. I was in a rush to get it this time so I got it from a branch but its not as delicious as the one at the headquarters," Lin Huang answered with a smile. The both of them took note of what Lin Huang said as they seemed to really like the cake. It was 7:30 a.m. when they were done with breakfast. They put their tents away, said goodbye to examiner Zang Bing and left. Two men and a woman appeared from a black relic at the bottom of the volcanoes. The leader was a young man who looked 16 or 17 years old and had short, fluffy, black hair with bright, black eyes. He had clean features and looked harmless. Meanwhile, another young man who looked like he was in his twenties but was actually only 19, was over 1.8 meters tall. He had a buff body modestly covered by a white suit. His hair was well combed like a pair of polished shoes. He seemed to be a man with style. The lady wore a dark green army uniform that covered her entire body. However, it was clear that she had a slim body and long legs. She wore flat, high-cut army boots and was 1.7 meters, exuding a cool vibe. The three of them were Lin Huang, Li Lang, and Yi Yeyu who were here for their mission. "What do we have today?" Li Lang looked around and asked Lin Huang. "Hunting down monsters, of course. Theres a reason why the examiner asked us to kill more Transcendent monsters," Lin Huang reminded them of what examiner Zang Bing had said earlier. "Besides, Yeyu has just leveled up to holy fire-level, so she''ll need to stabilize and strengthen herself. Battling is the fastest way to do that." "Thats true." Yi Yeyu nodded. "Zang Bing is right. I''ll need some time to stabilize myself. Moreover, I''ll also need battle experience to adapt to my transformed body and new Life Power." "She has something to do but how about me?" Li Lang asked immediately, not wanting to be idle. "You''ll be the first to attack. If you cant beat the monsters, let Yeyu do it," Lin Huang laughed. "You want me to fight holy fire-level monsters on my own?!" Li Lang exclaimed in shock. "All the best! You can do it!" Yi Yeyu grinned. "You''re only one step away from the gun realm. Without pressure, you''ll take forever to reach there. White flame-level monsters are not as scary as you think. Theres no need to be afraid. You''ll get used to it after a few battles. Moreover, if you cant do it, you still have us," Lin Huang comforted him. "White flame-level monsters are not scary That only applies to lunatics like you," Li Lang answered. "I have already chosen the first prey for you," Lin Huang smirked. "What''s that?" Judging by Lin Huangs smirk, Li Lang could sense that his first battle would not be easy. "Its in the volcano." Lin Huang pointed at the volcano next to them. "Theres smoke coming out of it Its an active volcano! Do the both of you want me to kill myself?" Li Lang said as he looked at the volcano next to them. "Why dont you try luring the monster out?" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes. "Dont use the nuclear bomb. You wont be able to train yourself if the monster dies in the explosion." Lin Huang knew what was he thinking about by looking at Li Langs grin. "Oh, alright then" As his plan was exposed, Li Lang summoned his Ashenquill Eagle unwillingly and flew towards the crater 316 Good News From Bloody Before Li Lang took out his black crystal barrel, Lin Huang did not know that Li Lang had been a cannoneer as his part-time job. Yes, not a firearm master, but a gun master; a profession that would only be helpful when it came to battles. Yi Yeyu''s eyes lit up when she saw the relic on Li Lang''s shoulders. She was always passionate about firearms. However, she was not gifted in the profession, which was why she had always been envious of firearm masters and gun masters. Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu were waiting for the show to start as Li Lang opened fire into the volcano randomly. Soon, he triggered the Volcanic Giant in the volcano. Hearing the Volcanic Giant''s roar, Li Lang could tell that it was a big guy. He then rode on his Ashenquill Eagle and backed away from the crater. Soon, the Volcanic Giant climbed out of the crater. As the monster''s head appeared from the crater, Li Lang finally knew what he was facing. "Volcanic Giant" He was nervous as the Volcanic Giant had powerful defenses as well as strong attack and explosive abilities. The only disadvantage was that it was slow. "It''s a Volcanic Giant. Do you think he won''t be able to fight it?" Yi Yeyu asked Lin Huang. "Yes, it''s hard to break its defenses but this monster is the best for him to train himself. With the pressure on strength, he can definitely find his opportunity to attack as the monster isn''t very agile," Lin Huang explained. "Let''s not pick fire element monsters the next time. I''d like to train by myself," Yi Yeyu suggested. She could kill all fire element monsters easily, so it would not be challenging for her at all. "Sure!" Lin Huang agreed. Facing Li Lang''s challenge, the Volcanic Giant ignored Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu, who were at the bottom of the volcano, completely. Soon, it was lured by Li Lang to a flatland, then he recalled his Ashenquill Eagle. It was a tough battle. Although his marksmanship was good, he had yet to master the gun realm. Moreover, the Volcanic Giant had powerful defense among the holy fire-level monsters and he could not break through its defense. As the shots were fired at the Volcanic Giant, they only left marks that were one to two millimeters wide on its body which were healed immediately. Fortunately, the Volcanic Giant had low intelligence and slow speed, so Li Lang managed to avoid it and proceeded to attack it. As time passed by, Li Lang''s Life Power was almost drained an hour later. Seeing that he had reached his limit, Yi Yeyu rode on her Rainbow Sparrow with her saber. A red saber glow broke the speed of sound and pierced through the Volcanic Giant''s head. It then fell to the ground. Li Lang gaped in admiration and was upset when he recalled his inability to break the Volcanic Giant''s defense. Now, it had been killed by Yi Yeyu in one hit. She recalled the Rainbow Sparrow and landed slowly. Lin Huang was puzzled. "Didn''t you say you could fly when you reached white flame-level? Why do you still need to ride on your Rainbow Sparrow?" "I haven''t built my anti-gravitational Life Power force field yet. Of course I can''t fly yet" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang in confusion. "Did you really think that everyone can fly naturally once they reached white flame-level?" Li Lang looked at Lin Huang with a judging face. "Oh, isn''t that how it works?" Lin Huang had always thought so as he recalled all Transcendent humans could fly. "Of course not!" Yi Yeyu shook her head. "You''ll need to wait for your Life Power to stabilize as you reached white flame level before you could even build your Life Power force field. With the Life Power force field, a human can only break the restriction of gravity. My Life Power isn''t stable, so I can''t build the Life Power force field yet. That''s why I''m unable to fly now." "How can you not know about this? Isn''t it common sense? If it''s really like what you said, why didn''t you think about the many Transcendent monsters with wings that are unable to fly?" Li Lang laughed at Lin Huang. "Ahh is that so? That means those Transcendent monsters that are unable to fly have yet to master the way to build their Life Power force field?" Lin Huang understood immediately. "No matter monster or human, those that are below Demigod level must build their Life Power force field to break the gravity in order to fly. For humans, building the Life Power force field will need at least one to two weeks to be completely mastered. Therefore, monsters that are unintelligent won''t be able to fly while for those that are, without the guidance to build their Life Power force field from humans, they are unable to fly as well," Yi Yeyu explained. "Didn''t Mr. Fu tell you about that?" "Oh No, he didn''t. I haven''t been his apprentice for long and we spent most of the time training outside. There''s still much to learn. Whenever I have questions, I''ll ask him," Lin Huang explained helplessly. "I''m so jealous of you! Your master actually lets you out like that. My master beat me with a bat since I was young." Li Lang expressed his envy of Lin Huang. "It seems like putting you out there is a great way to learn. If I did that since I was young, I might be a white flame-level now" "You''re thinking too much." Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Li Lang. "This only works for geniuses like Lin Huang. If you did that, you might not even be a silver-level now." Li Lang wanted to argue back but he thought what Yi Yeyu said was right. He was a lazy person and without somebody guiding him every day, he could not imagine what would he turn out to be today. He decided to shut up. "Yeyu, please refill his Life Power. If we were to wait for him to fill up his Life Power at his normal speed, we can only kill two monsters a day. That''s too inefficient." Looking at Li Lang''s condition, Lin Huang figured that he would need more than 10 hours for his Life Power to recover with the rotation of his Life Skill. "Sure!" Yi Yeyu then put away the monster carcass and agreed to transfer her Life Power to Li Lang. In less than a minute, Li Lang''s Life Power was filled. "Let''s go to the next destination," Lin Huang said while summoning his dimensional relic. The three of them stepped into the relic and arrived at the location of their second target. "What is it this time?" Li Lang asked carefully. "An Undead Soldier," Lin Huang smirked. "Undead Soldier?!" Li Lang and Yi Yeyu screamed almost at the same time. "This monster can''t be killed, can it?" Li Lang thought Lin Huang was messing with him. "There are not many non-fire element monsters in this ruins. The Undead Soldier isn''t considered powerful in the holy fire-level, but it''s difficult to be killed, so it''s the best candidate for Yi Yeyu to train herself." The Undead Soldier had no pain receptors. Even if its head was chopped off, it would not die. The only way to kill it was to destroy its flesh completely or to cleanse the undead energy inside its body using purification force. "You go first!" Yi Yeyu noticed a couple of Undead Soldiers wandering around. She was excited. Li Lang agreed to fight it unwillingly. Although he knew he would not be able to kill this monster, it was better than not being able to break through its defense like the monster before. He comforted himself. Li Lang then took out his gun and dashed towards the Undead Soldier while Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu watched. The Undead Soldier was much faster than the Volcanic Giant, but luckily, it was much weaker than the Volcanic Giant. Though clumsy, Li Lang soon adapted the Undead Soldier''s rhythm and managed to defend himself. As half an hour passed by, Li Lang was improving, confirming Lin Huang'' deduction that it was the right way to train. Just when he was enjoying the battle, a message came from Bloody, "Master, I''ve found a double mutated sword type monster!" 317 Fiery Swordfiend "A double mutated sword type monster? Are you sure?!" Lin Huang asked immediately. This monster would not only be Lancelot the Ruthless Sword Master''s unsealing monster; after the monster was killed, it could be transformed into a sword servant card. That was the reason why Lin Huang was so excited. "Yes, it''s a Fiery Swordfiend," Bloody confirmed. "Fiery Swordfiend Hmm, that''s a little difficult," Lin Huang frowned when he heard what Bloody said. The Fiery Swordfiend was an undead double mutated monster that was talented in fire element swordsmanship. Its attack skills ranked on top of double mutated monsters of the same level. This monster was the same with the Fire Phoenix as they both controlled the fire element. To be honest, Lin Huang did not have full confidence that he could kill this monster. Although he had not used all his strength to manage the Fire Phoenix earlier, he did spend some effort to hold it down. It almost got away and the one who had killed it was Yi Yeyu. "Bloody, do you have any plans to handle this Fiery Swordfiend?" Lin Huang was thinking how to increase his probability of winning. "The easiest way is to ask Ms. Yi for help," Bloody suggested immediately. "Ms. Yi has the ability to control the fire element. As long as you get her to chop off the Fiery Swordfiend''s hand that it uses to hold its sword, everything else will be a piece of cake." "Ask her to help" Lin Huang was hesitant. "The unsealing conditions to unseal Lancelot only mentioned that human and summoning monsters that are of a higher level than the monster that is to be killed are prohibited, so getting Yi Yeyu''s help is allowed" If Bloody was to suggest that before Yi Yeyu leveled up to white flame-level, Lin Huang would decline the idea straight away as the Fiery Swordfiend could definitely kill her in a single hit. Although Yi Yeyu was immune to fire, she would not be able to defend herself from the physical attack of the sword. However, now that she had leveled up, although she had not peaked yet, she was ten times more powerful than she had been before. Even if she was to face an opponent like the Fiery Swordfiend, she would not be killed in one hit. Lin Huang was hesitant as he did not want to trouble anyone, especially his friends. In his opinion, he would always do things himself on his own as long as it was achievable. Bloody sensed Lin Huang hesitation and suggested immediately, "Master, the Fiery Swordfiend''s ability is no weaker than the Fire Phoenix''s. On some level, it''s even more dangerous than the Fire Phoenix as it has a more powerful attack. Without Ms. Yi''s help, the chances of us killing the Fiery Swordfiend is low." "Alright then, I shall ask her," Lin Huang agreed to Bloody''s suggestion. He thought about it himself. With his current abilities, it was not completely impossible for him to kill the Fiery Swordfiend but it would be difficult. He might have to sacrifice his summoning monsters. "Yeyu Could you help me kill a monster later?" Lin Huang was not used to asking for help. "Sure! What monster is that? Is it powerful?" Yi Yeyu agreed right away, clearly excited. She had been watching Lin Huang fight these few days. If he needed her help, that would mean that the monster must be something really powerful, which thrilled her. "Yes, it''s a Fiery Swordfiend." Lin Huang did not expect Yi Yeyu to agree to help him just like that. "A Fiery Swordfiend?!" Yi Yeyu''s eyes flew wide open. She knew what monster that was as the Fiery Swordfiend was one of the tinder monsters that her family had chosen for her. It was next to the Fire Phoenix in terms of ranking in strength, so of course, she already knew how powerful that monster was. However, despite her initial shock, she agreed to help immediately without asking any further. "Sure, what do you need me to do?" "When we find the monster later, I need you to chop off its hand that''s holding its sword whenever you have the opportunity," Lin Huang said. They then started discussing the details on confronting the Fiery Swordfiend. "Hey, what are the both of you doing? I can''t take it anymore!" Li Lang''s Life Power was draining but Yi Yeyu still did not come to his rescue. He looked at the both of them and realized that he was being ignored while they were chatting with each other. "We almost forgot about him" The both of them just recalled that Li Lang was still fighting hard not far away. Yi Yeyu then dashed towards the Undead Soldier with her saber while Li Lang escaped. "What are you guys talking about? You guys were so in the zone while I almost died!" Li Lang went to Lin Huang and gave him puppy eyes. "We''re going to kill the Fiery Swordfiend later." Lin Huang ignored Li Lang''s pathetic expression. "Didn''t Yi Yeyu complete the extraction of the tinder?" Li Lang was puzzled as nobody would challenge a sword type monster for nothing, let alone a double mutated sword type monster. "I need her help to kill this monster," Lin Huang explained. "Oh." Li Lang did not ask further as he knew Lin Huang had his reasons for killing the monster. "I''ll be watching you guys then since I can''t help you with that," Li Lang added. Meanwhile, the Undead Soldier was being oppressed by Yi Yeyu. Suddenly, she darted forward with her saber and pierced the Undead Soldier''s chest. Lin Huang frowned as he watched because he knew that such an attack would not work on it. Just when he was ready to help, a red flame flowed out of the Undead Soldier''s body. Later on, the Undead Soldier turned into a burnt figure. "What just happened?" Li Lang was shocked. "I thought she could only control fire element monsters." Lin Huang knew how she managed to kill the Undead Soldier with her saber. "There''s a purification force in her fire." "Little Li, put away the carcass!" Yi Yeyu sheathed her saber and shouted at Li Lang. "Why must I do it?" Li Lang objected. "If you keep the carcass, it''ll belong to you. It''s okay if you don''t want it." What Yi Yeyu said was irresistible. She did not even bother to turn around as she did not want to keep the burnt carcass in her storage space anyway. "You sure?" Li Lang''s eyes lit up. "It''s up to you whether you want it. I don''t want ugly carcasses anyway," Yi Yeyu said. "When do we depart?" Yi Yeyu asked Lin Huang. "Wait." Lin Huang projected the map. "Bloody, give me the coordinates." Soon, Bloody marked down the coordinates of the Fiery Swordfiend. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow when he saw the coordinates. "Luckily, it''s not too far away from the coordinates that I set earlier." Li Lang came back after he stored the Undead Soldier''s carcass. Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and the three of them stepped into it 318 Narrow-minded The location of the Fiery Swordfiend was only 300 kilometers from the Greatsword Fiend that Lin Huang had killed earlier. After killing the Greatsword Fiend, Lin Huang had marked down the coordinates. The three of them arrived at the saved coordinates through the dimensional relic. They then rode on their flying mounts and when they arrived, they spotted the Fiery Swordfiend in the air from far away. It was a huge monster taking on the human form. It was around three meters tall with a body that was cast in black rock. To be precise, it looked more like a red flame that was covered by a layer of greenish-black rock armor. Flame could be seen from the gaps between where its armor was connected. Its face looked like the sculpture of an adult man with rough lines that was similar to an aging humans. Red flame burned in its eyes and there were sparks in its nose and mouth. There was a gigantic black sword measuring about two meters on its back. As it floated half a meter from the ground, it looked majestic. "This must be the Fiery Swordfiend. Seems like its a tough guy." Li Lang knew the monster was completely out of his league. Even if he was to level up to white flame-level like Yi Yeyu had, he might not be able to fight this monster either unless he mastered the gun realm. He might be able to confront it by then, but it was impossible for him to defeat it. "You just watch from here. We shall go now." Lin Huang patted Li Langs shoulder. Li Lang nodded helplessly while watching the both of them fly to where the Fiery Swordfiend was. As the Fiery Swordfiend sensed their aura, it looked up at the sky. Soon, they arrived not far from the monster. "Humans? I didnt expect humans to dig their own grave here," the Fiery Swordfiend spoke fluently. "I wasn''t interested to do what the black dragon instructed, but since you guys came, I shall send you to the black dragon to redeem some resources." "What do you mean?" Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu were ready to fight but they were puzzled by what the Fiery Swordfiend was saying. "Seems like you guys have no idea whats happening One of The Three Overlords, the black dragon, instructed all of us to send him some humans alive and he would give us rare resources in return." The Fiery Swordfiend did not seem to be in a hurry while it conveyed the both of them the news. "Black dragon? Do you mean the Molten Dragon?" Hearing the title of The Three Overlords, Lin Huang knew which black dragon the Fiery Swordfiend was talking about. The Molten Dragon was one of the most powerful gold flame-level monsters in this ruins. As it was double mutated and also a sky dragon, it was not captured by the immortal-level human but remained in the ruins. Lin Huang could guess that the reason why the Molten Dragon had issued such an instruction as it had sensed the God''s blood in Bais body. For some reasons, it knew that Bais disappearance was related to humans. Without the knowledge that Lin Huang owned Bai now, it then targeted all humans. As soon as a double mutated sky dragon obtained the God''s blood, it would go through its third mutation or the possibility of its blood density upgrading to that of a dragonkins would increase. Regardless of what transpired, there would be a transformation in Molten Dragons ability. That was the reason why it desired the God''s blood. "It seems like humans out there know a lot about us. I heard there are many of them out there, so I must get out there if I have the chance to, then I''ll feast on them all. I must say, you humans are nothing when it comes to abilities but you sure taste good. Humans are good food" The Fiery Swordfiend was drooling at this point. "Nothing when it comes to abilities? Do you think all humans out there have weaker abilities than you do?" Lin Huang realized that there was a misunderstanding going on. "Dont all humans out there have similar abilities as the both of you? How far can the difference be?" The Fiery Swordfiend said. "Thats what you think" Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu laughed. "Should we tell him the truth?" Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang while still laughing. "What truth?" The Fiery Swordfiend asked as it saw their odd reactions. "Do tell," Lin Huang gestured to Yi Yeyu to speak. "Alright then." Yi Yeyu looked at the Fiery Swordfiend with sympathy. "The truth is, all of us that are sent here are trainees, so we aren''t the powerful ones out there. If those powerful human get here, a single person could kill all the monsters in this ruins. "This ruins is restricted to gold flame-level individuals at most. However, in our world out there, besides holy fire-level, we even have more powerful ones including immortal-level, imperial-level, and even demigods. Demigods aside, even if an imperial-level human were to come here, it wouldnt matter as a triple mutated monster or dragonkin could be easily killed using one little finger." "Youre lying! You f*cking human lady," swore the Fiery Swordfiend once it recovered from its shock when it heard what Yi Yeyu said. "What she said is the truth! Its you who doesnt want to believe it," Lin Huang, who had been silent, spoke up. "I dont believe you! Its impossible that humans are so powerful. I''ll only believe it if I saw it with my eyes! I''ve never seen any human that is immortal or imperial-level." The Fiery Swordfiend drew the sword from its back and pointed it at the both of them. "The both of you are humans. Those lies are meant to consume me." The Fiery Swordfiend could not accept the truth as what it had been believing all along crumbled. "What we said is the truth. Youre being delusional. Theres nothing that we can do if you dont believe us" Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "However, now I know why the Molten Dragon was so daring to capture us humans without even thinking about us getting revenge. Seems like hes the same as you, thinking that the humans out there are on the same level as us trainees. What a naive mindset!" "I will kill you, liars!" The Fiery Swordfiend dashed towards them with the flaming sword in its hand 319 Broken Arm The Fiery Swordfiend did not only master the sword realm; its fire attributes attack also did even more damage than most monsters with fire attributes as the temperature of its flame was comparable with the surface of the sun, which was about 6,000 degrees Celsius. Most creatures that went close to it would get burnt. Hearing the truth about how powerful humans were from Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu, the Fiery Swordfiend refused to believe what they said. It was sure that it was a lie to confuse it, so it dashed towards them with its sword. The black, dull, and ordinary-looking sword turned red as it advanced towards them. It looked like it was burning as a layer of greenish blue flame appeared on the sword. As the Fiery Swordfiend swung its sword, the air around was distorted. When Lin Huang blocked the attack with his own attack, the impact was so intense that he had to back off. Although he had an armor relic on, the burning flame that came his way was unbearably scorching. Yi Yeyu, who was on his left, covered her green saber relic with a burning red flame. She rushed forward with her saber without hesitation and it collided with the Fiery Swordfiend''s sword. As the sword and the saber collided, the greenish blue flame on the Fiery Swordfiend''s sword was oppressed by Yi Yeyu''s red flame. The red flame was devouring the greenish blue flame. "What''s that?!" Fiery Swordfiend was shocked as it was the first time he encountered somebody else''s flame that devoured his own. Yi Yeyu smirked without saying a word. She dashed towards the Fiery Swordfiend again with her saber. With her unique physique, she was not afraid of fire at all, which was why she dared to fight the Fiery Swordfiend at such a close distance. If it had been some other monster or people with fire attributes, they usually feared the high temperature of its sword. "Wait, that''s an aura of a Fire Phoenix You killed a Fire Phoenix?" The Fiery Swordfiend soon figured the source of Yi Yeyu''s flame. "What if I say I did?" Yi Yeyu smirked as she was not afraid to let the Fiery Swordfiend know where her flame came from. Aside from the fire source that came from the Fire Phoenix, her fire attributes and abilities had also been upgraded. "Although there''s the aura of a Fire Phoenix, its flame shouldn''t be able to devour other flames. This human lady is strange" Fiery Swordfiend increased its guard towards Yi Yeyu. Within seconds, Yi Yeyu had collided with the Fiery Swordfiend for more than 100 times. She was winning. Lin Huang decided to watch from far instead. Although Yi Yeyu had not been fighting much these couple of days, Lin Huang could see that she had mastered the level-1 saberrealm. The Fiery Swordfiend had also mastered the same level, so at some point, they had the same standards in swordsmanship. Yi Yeyu was leading mainly because of her oppression of the fire element which prohibited the Fiery Swordfiend to unleash all its ability. However, Lin Huang foresaw that Yi Yeyu would lose as time went by. The Fiery Swordfiend had already been a white flame-level and also a double mutated monster for a long time. No matter the strength of its Life Power, attack, defense, and speed, it was much more powerful than Yi Yeyu who had just reached white flame-level. As soon as it adapted to Yi Yeyu''s battle rhythm and sealed the fire attributes on its sword, it could focus its Life Power on physically attacking. By then, Yi Yeyu might not be able to fight it anymore. As expected, the Fiery Swordfiend soon realized that Yi Yeyu could oppress fire attributes. It was a monster of human-form with high intelligence after all. It stored the flame in its body and started transferring its Life Power to its physical attack. A few swings of her saberlater, Yi Yeyu could not take it anymore. "So, all you''ve got is a rather unique body. I thought you managed to kill the Fire Phoenix on your own. It seems like you relied on your unique body to kill it." As soon as it discovered Yi Yeyu''s secret, the Fiery Swordfiend was not afraid at all and mocked her. Yi Yeyu''s cheeks were flushing as she was criticized by the Fiery Swordfiend. Distracted, her movement turned sluggish. The Fiery Swordfiend then sent its sword towards Yi Yeyu''s heart. Her repeated sword techniques could not defend against the Fiery Swordfiend anymore and it was too late for her to run. The sword arrived just in front of her chest in an instant. Suddenly, she felt a powerful strength pull her from her back. A shadow appeared before her and blocked the attack. It was Lin Huang, who had been watching on the side. He had expected his to happen. "Take a break, I''ll handle it." There were two scratches that were two meters long under Lin Huang''s feet, created as a result of blocking the Fiery Swordfiend''s attack. He was not afraid at all. Instead, he was excited as he knew that he could unleash his close-range ability to his peak without the Fiery Swordfiend using its flame. He smirked and rushed towards the Fiery Swordfiend. His sword skill combined with Seraphic Speed and Thunder Sting broke through the sound barrier. He was like a gold lightning bolt as he headed towards the monster. At an instant, he arrived before the Fiery Swordfiend which did not have the time to react at all. Lin Huang then swung his sword relic so swiftly that there was a sonic boom in the air. He was aiming at the Fiery Swordfiend''s right arm, intending to break the biggest threat, which was its right arm that was holding its sword. The Fiery Swordfiend did not expect Lin Huang to be that fast. It did not see the attack coming at all, so it did not have the time to defend or to avoid his attack. The first swing, second swing, third As seven swings of the sword were performed consecutively, the Fiery Swordfiend''s elbow joint on its right hand was half broken. Suddenly, its left hand flew towards Lin Huang''s head at a rapid speed. Lin Huang glared viciously at its left hand without attempting to avoid the attack. Instead, he proceeded to swing his sword at Fiery Swordfiend''s right hand. The eight swing... The ninth swing Bang! A loud thud exploded less than 20 centimeters from Lin Huang''s head. A layer of his Dark Shield that looked like a piece of cloth appeared on his right side and blocked the Fiery Swordfiend''s claws. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was already at his 15th sword swing! Its elbow on the arm that was holding the sword broke and the right arm fell to the ground 320 Killing Plan Lin Huang managed to break the Fiery Swordfiends elbow, then he kicked its broken arm away. As he kicked it, the Fiery Swordfiends broken right arm created a trajectory and landed thousands of meters away. Lin Huang then leaped back far away. Flames were roaring from the Fiery Swordfiends body out of control. It looked like a cat that was burnt. In the embrace of the flames, it looked bigger than its actual size. In the place of the broken right arm was bubbling lava flowing out. Witnessing this scene, Lin Huang did not panic. Instead, he was smirking like he was implying that it was game over for the Fiery Swordfiend. Two shadows appeared beside him. It was Lancelot the Ruthless Sword Master on the left and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit on the right. The Sanguine Skeleton Spirits nine Punishment Chains shot out like arrows, catching the Fiery Swordfiend before it could even move. Meanwhile, Lancelot was ready to attack with his Absolute Life sword skill. It advanced towards the Fiery Swordfiend with the sword in hand. White glow shot out of the sword like a shockwave, covering the entire Fiery Swordfiend "Congratulations, you have received an epic-level Monster Card - Fiery Swordfiend (Sword Servant)." Seeing Lancelot fade into pieces and returning back to card form after performing Absolute Life, Lin Huang recalled the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit that was standing next to him. Winning the battle was much easier than he thought. He did not expect to break the Fiery Swordfiends arm so easily. Before the battle started, he knew that as long as he managed to chop off the Fiery Swordfiends arm, he would definitely win. The Fiery Swordfiend was powerful but it had a fatal weakness. As long as any part of its body was broken, it would need to be in silent mode as it regenerated its body parts. To the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, the Fiery Swordfiends silent mode was its best time to use its Punishment Chains. Lin Huang had planned to chop off the Fiery Swordfiends right hand which was used to hold its sword before the battle even started. As long as it lost the sword in its hand, the Fiery Swordfiends ability would be taken away. It would need to regenerate its broken arm immediately to retrieve its sword. On the other hand, if any other part of its body was injured or cut off, it was not necessary for it to carry out regeneration in an instant. In reality, since Lin Huang had made the Fiery Swordfiend his target, he had discussed the entire killing plan with Bloody. His intention of asking for Yi Yeyus help was to let her chop off the Fiery Swordfiends right arm and he would do the rest himself. Although Yi Yeyu did not manage to chop off its arm, she had made the Fiery Swordfiend mute its flame. That gave Lin Huang the opportunity to get close to the Fiery Swordfiend and carry out the rest. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, who were still in the air, were stunned as they watched Lin Huang win the battle easily. Yi Yeyu, who had fought the Fiery Swordfiend earlier, especially knew how powerful the monster was. However, it was unbelievable that Lin Huang had managed to kill the powerful monster in less than ten seconds. Yi Yeyu thought that Lin Huang was only powerful against gold-level monsters. As she leveled up to white flame-level, her overall ability should be higher than his. However, it seemed like she was too naive to have such a thought. Lin Huangs abilities were beyond her imagination. After putting away the Fiery Swordfiends carcass, broken arm and sword, Lin Huang walked towards Yi Yeyu. "Are you alright?" Yi Yeyu shook her head. She was still in shock. Meanwhile, Li Lang who was far away arrived on the Ashenquill Eagle. "Killing a double mutated white flame-level monster in less than ten seconds. Your abilities have to be No.1 on the Gold Hunter Leaderboard," Li Lang smiled and complimented. He knew Lin Huang was powerful but he had not fought the Fiery Swordfiend earlier so he was not as shocked as Yi Yeyu was. "You''ve been planning to kill this Fiery Swordfiend, am I right?" Yi Yeyu finally snapped out of her shock a while later and asked. "Yes. Actually, its not my ability that killed it. I came prepared." Lin Huang nodded while telling his entire plan. After hearing his explanation, Yi Yeyu finally understood why he had asked for her help. She looked embarrassed as she did not manage to complete Lin Huangs plan. Fortunately, Lin Huang had managed to handle it and she did not drag him down in his plan. "My great-grandfather told me that ability isn''t everything. Throughout hundreds of years in the human history, therere many successful Transcendent humans who fought those powerful monsters. What I thought was that the only way to do that is to form a large team of people. From what you said, I think a team doesnt need that many people. What we need is to come up with a plan to tackle the powerful monsters weaknesses and assign the appropriate number of people with the relevant techniques within the team." Yi Yeyu understood immediately. She put Lin Huangs teaming up with his summoning monsters together with the teaming up of humans in history. "Thats right, planning is important." Lin Huang nodded. Li Lang did not say a word as he listened. He seemed to be in deep thoughts. "Where do we go next? Do we continue to kill double mutated monsters?" Yi Yeyu was excited. "Where do we find so many double mutated monsters here for you to kill? Were lucky that Bloody even managed to find one" Lin Huang was speechless by Yi Yeyus addiction to killing now. "Thats true. Although this is a grade-2 dimensional ruin, there aren''t that many white flame-level double mutated monsters," Yi Yeyu commented. "Where do you go next?" She asked. "Let''s go back to the submission spot to inform the examiner about the Molten Dragon. If we don''t handle that on time, many people might die," Lin Huang said and summoned his dimensional relic. Soon, they arrived at the mission submission spot. "Whyre you guys here?" Zang Bing frowned as he thought that the three of them were being irresponsible. They had only been gone for less than two hours and they were already back. "We heard something that we must tell you about." Lin Huang walked over to him and told him about the Molten Dragons interaction that the Fiery Swordfiend had informed them about. "You mean a Fiery Swordfiend told you guys that a Molten Dragon is hunting humans down?" Zang Bing did not believe what he heard. "How did the three of you manage to escape from the Fiery Swordfiend?" Lin Huang then took out the Fiery Swordfiends carcass. Zang Bing was stunned when he saw the carcass, then he looked serious. His shock was not a result of knowing that there was a Fiery Swordfiend in the dimensional ruins, but that it had been killed by humans not long ago. "Tell me everything that happened in detail!" Zang Bing looked at the three of them sternly. 321 The Molten Dragon In the Volcano Hell dimensional ruins, 28 young people stood in a row near a boiling spiritual lava lake. There were six women among them while the rest were all men. They were tied up by a black chain and they shook in fear. There were more than ten monsters, all of which had a powerful aura, surrounding them. Judging by their aura, they were commander-level, white flame-level, and purple flame-level monsters and it looked like they were having a meeting. Suddenly, there were massive bubbles rising from the lava lake. A gigantic shadow appeared on the surface of the lava lake. A gargantuan black dragon flapped its wings and landed at the edge of the lake. "I sent out my instruction a day ago but you guys only managed to get more than 20 humans for me? Are you messing with me?!" The black dragon shook the lava off its body while glaring at the monsters present with its huge red eyes. Its powerful, ominous aura filled the space. The monsters held their heads low, none of them daring to look at the Molten Dragon. Meanwhile, the 28 people lay weakly on the ground, not having the strength to even stand up. After a moment of silence, a tall monster in shadow form that looked like a lady spoke. Her voice sounded like a sweet, soft-spoken lady. "Master, dont be mad. The instruction has only been disseminated for a day and the humans are scattered all over the place, so its not easy to capture them. Moreover, there must be some of them who are making their way back from far away. These are only the first batch that they have captured." The shadow-form monster was called Phantom. It was a double mutated undead monster. The shape of her body looked like she was dressed in a sophisticated manner and her shadow was stretched long. However, it was a three-dimensional shadow. As Phantom comforted the black dragon, it then suppressed its aura. "Phantom will stay. The rest of you can leave." All of the monsters left immediately. None of them wanted to stay for one more second. "Master Black Dragon" Phantom was worried as she thought what she said had triggered the leader. Seeing that other monsters had left, the black dragon said, "Dont worry, I have a favor to ask." "Please do tell if you need anything at all. I''ll try my best." Phantom was relieved. She was a double mutated monster that had just leveled up to purple flame-level a while ago. She was not good in battling and she knew very well that she could not fight the Molten Dragon. "It''s nothing too difficult. I have some questions for the humans and I need your help to do that for me," the black dragon said. "Interrogation is my expertise." Phantom smiled confidently when she heard what she needed to do. "May I know what would you like to ask, Master?" "Ask them if any of them know a person who owns a black dimensional relic," the black dragon posed his first question. Phantom floated slowly before the people who were chained up. Her black irises turned white as a strange force covered the area the 28 people were. They started to panic. However, they soon became calm and their eyes were empty. "Does any of you know a person who owns a black dimensional relic?" Phantom repeated the black dragons question. In her mind, she was guessing that it had something to do with the sudden appearance of the God''s blood on the first day. Everyone shook their heads at Phantoms question. Lin Huang had never used his dimensional relic in public places. Besides Yi Yeyu, Li Lang and a few other people, nobody knew about his dimensional relic. Phantom then looked helplessly at the black dragon and she could sense that he was unhappy. "Do any of you know if there are any Imperial Censors that entered this world?" The black dragon was silent before asking the question himself. Most of them shook their heads. Only two people spoke at the same time. "There are two Imperial Censors in the Hunter Association who joined the training" "Theres an Imperial Censor in the Union Government who joined the training" The two of them reported three names but Lin Hua was none of them. Perhaps everybody in Division7 knew about Sword Genius but not Lin Huang. Nobody knew that he was an Imperial Censor as well. "Good" Although he was not sure if the person that he was looking for was among these three Imperial Censors, at least he got three names. With Phantoms help, he managed to extract the faces of the three people. The black dragons mood got slightly better. "Where''s the foothold of you humans?" The black dragon asked his last question as he was losing his patience. A person projected a map that was downloaded earlier and marked the coordinates of the mission submission place. "This is the mission submission place of the second round of training. The second round will take ten days. Today is the third day, so were scattered everywhere. Well only gather at the mission submission place on the tenth day. Those who didnt complete their mission will be sent out of this dimensional ruins" "That means I will need to wait for a week to capture all you humans!" This piece of news was priceless to the black dragon. "Finally, a useful piece of information" The black dragon sounded delighted. It then transformed its claws into a sharp spear that was 10 meters long. Flashing through the air, the spear pierced through the abdomens of 14 people. They were lifted up like a skewer and the black dragon rolled them onto his tongue, devouring all of them. He enjoyed his meal as he munched on the 14 people Later on, he repeated what he did and ate the remaining 14 people. "The taste of humans is simply delicious. Its just that there are too little of them, its not satisfying" The black dragon licked their meat and crushed their bones with his teeth, clearly enjoying the human flesh. "Its okay, I shall have a big feast a week later!"Weve checked the raws and they do indeed mention commander-level monster here. 322 Sister Luo Li At the submission spot of the second round of training, Zang Bing frowned as he heard about the Molten Dragon from Lin Huang. With the proof of the Fiery Swordfiends carcass and no loopholes in the detailed descriptions, Zang Bing was sure that the three of them were telling the truth. There was no benefit of them lying anyway. Although he had no idea what the intention of the Molten Dragon was, Zang Bing took out a Transmission Snail and contacted the other examiners. The Transmission Snail was a timid mutated monster and was fed mainly algae, which was completely harmless to humans. Such a monster colony usually consisted of a mother and many children. All the offspring of the mother would have the same telepathic sense with each other. Armed with that characteristic, they were cultivated by humans as a communication tool when the Heart Network was unusable. It was easy to use. As the speakers voice was sent into the mother Transmission Snail, the message would be delivered to its offspring. Soon, two-dimensional relics opened at the same time. The examiner with squinty eyes from the first round of training arrived from the green dimensional relic on the left, while on the right was a girl who looked like she was thirteen or fourteen years old. The three of them were stunned to see the girl. Lin Huang and Li Lang were guessing the girls age. She looked like she was even younger than Lin Xin. She was a couple of centimeters shorter than Lin Xin and did not look like a day over fourteen. Meanwhile, Yi Yeyu was puzzled. When the girl noticed Yi Yeyu, she floated to her. "Xiao Yeyu? Is that really you?" The girl floated closer to Yi Yeyu and started studying her. "Sister Luo Li" Yi Yeyu greeted the girl while looking at Lin Huang and Li Lang as if she was asking for help. "Sister?!" Lin Huang and Li Langs eyes flew wide open when they heard how Yi Yeyu addressed the girl. The girl did not look like she was older than Yi Yeyu. "So, youve leveled up to holy fire-level now?" Luo Li got even closer to her while staring at her boobs. "You have bigger boobs now." Luo Li poked Yi Yeyus boobs and fondled them. "Whyre you here, Sister Luo Li?" Yi Yeyu asked helplessly. "Master Yi was worried about you leveling up to holy fire-level, so he asked me to look after you. Im the head examiner of the third round of training. Little did I expect that you have already leveled up before the third round even began." Luo Li still had her hands on Yi Yeyus boobs. "Master Yi? This girl" Zang Bing looked at Si Kongjian in curiosity. "Shes Master Donglais great-granddaughter," Si Kongjian smiled as he explained. "No way, I thought it was just a rumor that Master Yis great-granddaughter would join the training" Zang Bing had just found out about Yi Yeyus identity. The news that the three of them told had to be true then. "Are these two fellas your boyfriends?" Luo Li switched her topic of interest as she turned around and looked at Lin Huang and Li Lang. "No, theyre just friends." Yi Yeyu wrung her hands. Luo Li ignored her while looking at the both of them. She looked at Li Lang for a while, then stared at Lin Huang with an intimidating vibe until he felt uncomfortable. A unique force was masking Lin Huangs body to isolate him from Luo Lis detection. "This lady is dangerous. Stay away from her," Xiao Hei warned. Clearly, it was Xiao Hei who had created the layer of protection. "Eh?!" Luo Li smirked after a slight pause, then she looked away from Lin Huang. "Alright, lets talk business," Luo Li then addressed Zang Bing. "Xiao Bing Bing, was the news that you told me about Xiao Jian Jian conveyed to you by these three? Theres nobody else here anyway." "Yes." Hearing her addressing him Xiao Bing Bing, Zang Bing was unhappy but he did not say anything. Si Kongjians eyes twitched but he remained expressionless. "Xiao Yeyu, could you tell me exactly what happened?" Luo Li then smiled at Yi Yeyu. "I think Ill let Lin Huang tell you. He explains better than I do." To avoid Luo Li from messing with her, Yi Yeyu pushed the responsibility to Lin Huang. "Sure, let me tell you then." Lin Huang nodded. "This little brother will tell me, huh?" Luo Li looked at Lin Huang while smiling. The way she looked at him was overwhelming. Li Lang, who was standing next to Lin Huang, walked next to Yi Yeyu. Zang Bing, who was standing not far away, sympathized with Lin Huang while Si Kongjian looked arrogantly at Luo Li. To him, as long as Luo Li did not trouble him, she could do whatever she wanted. Despite Xiao Heis masking, the way Luo Li looked at him still felt uncomfortable. Lin Huang decided to ignore her staring and told her what happened. "You mentioned you guys killed the double mutated Fiery Swordfiend. Can I look at the carcass?" Luo Li asked with a smile. She continued to stare at Lin Huang like she was sure that the carcass was with him. Lin Huang did what she asked and took out the carcass. Si Kongjian walked closer and inspected the carcass with Luo Li. "It seems to be killed by a powerful force. Did you kill it?" Si Kongjian asked Yi Yeyu. "I dont think its Xiao Yeyu who killed it. It was probably this little brother." Luo Li looked at Lin Huang again. "Yes, it was I who killed it with some tricks," Lin Huang admitted right away. Si Kongjian was shocked. "Although I have no idea what the motive was, this carcass is real and these three kids wont lie, so the thing about the black dragon must be true too," Si Kongjian voiced out his thoughts. "Didnt you guys sense the monster with the God''s Blood aura last night?" Luo Li looked at Si Kongjian and Zang Bing with her eyebrow raised. "Monster with the God''s Blood?" Zang Bing was stunned. "Do you mean the aura that was like a double mutated monsters?" "I sensed that too. I thought the aura was too powerful but I didnt think too much about it." Si Kongjian frowned. "No wonder, you guys couldnt tell as you guys have never encountered any monsters with the God''s Blood in their bodies." Luo Li soon realized how the both of them failed to figure that out. "The black dragon showed up almost at the same time the monster with the God''s Blood appeared. Im sure that it was going for that monster. As for killing humans Perhaps, somehow, it found out that the monster had been captured by humans Or maybe this triple mutated monster with God''s blood is a summoning monster belonging to a human Imperial Censor!" 323 The Luo Sha 16 Years Ago Lin Huang was stunned when he heard Luo Lis analysis. From the very limited information that he had provided, he did not expect her to come up with a speculation that was so near the truth. Her daring speculation shocked all of them present. "But isnt it impossible for a triple mutated monster with the God''s Blood to be captured by a human?" Yi Yeyu was the first one who raised an objection to her sisters speculation. Perhaps, she was the only one present who dared to talk back to Luo Li. "Even if it leveled up from a double mutation, the monster couldve broken the contract made earlier with the help of the force of the God''s Blood and get an upgrade." "Thats true. A monster with the God''s Blood is usually arrogant and has a high level of intelligence. As it levels up, under normal circumstances, its very likely that it will break its contract and devour its own master. However, the Imperial Censor allowed his summoning monster to level up, so he mustve done all the preparation possible with a solution to prevent the monster from devouring him," Luo Li defended her speculation. "I think this could be one of the Imperial Censors who has joined the training this time," Luo Li said. Li Lang and Yi Yeyu looked towards where Lin Huang was standing. Fortunately, the examiners did not know that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor. "I dont think its necessarily an Imperial Censor. Without a sealing relic, as long as the ability is sufficient, its possible for one to control the monster. Its a triple mutated monster with the God''s Blood after all. Even a demigod would be tempted!" Yi Yeyu suggested another possibility. Luo Li laughed when she heard what Yi Yeyu said. She chuckled, "So, what Xiao Yeyu meant is, among the three of us, is any one of us the suspect?" She then scrutinized Zang Bing and Si Kongjian. After observing them for awhile, she proceeded to say, "Its not possible that Xiao Bing Bing did it. Hes too honest, so if he did it, wed be able to tell. However, its another story for Xiao Jian Jian" "Sis Luo, please stop kidding. Weve no idea what exactly happened. The existence of this so-called monster with the God''s Blood is still unknown. Even if somebody did it, its true that hes the culprit, but it wouldn''t be any help if we look for him now. Our priority is the trouble that the black dragon is causing." Si Kongjian changed the subject as he realized the finger was pointing at him. "Youre behaving suspiciously now." Luo Li squinted her eyes. "This discussion is never-ending if you guys are going to go back and forth like this. How about I take the blame for now? Just pretend that I have the monster with me. Our priority is to solve the problem. The longer we drag this out, the more people will be killed by the black dragon," declared Zang Bing, surprising Lin Huang. Luo Li glared at Zang Bing skeptically again while Si Kongjian remained relaxed. "Alright then, I shall handle the little black dragon. The management wanted to keep it alive but now that its looking for trouble by itself, we have to kill it. Its been a long time since I have eaten a sky dragon. Its a great opportunity for a feast." Luo Li did not want to dwell on it since Zang Bing wanted to take the blame. She licked her lips as she talked about the sky dragons meat. "This lady is really dangerous" Lin Huang raised his guard towards Luo Li while Yi Yeyu and the rest started to mourn for the black dragon in their hearts. "The two of you will inform all the staff to protect the kids as soon as possible. Ill make a move now," Luo Li said and summoned her dimensional relic. "Oh yeah, whatre the coordinates of the little black dragon?" She raised the question as she summoned her dimensional relic. Zang Bing walked to her helplessly and projected his map. "This black skull on the top right is where it is." He pointed the spot out. "Alright, I know it now." Luo Li looked at it and waved her hand. She then stepped into the relic after setting the coordinates. As the relic disappeared, Li Lang turned around and asked Yi Yeyu, "Whos that little girl? Can she really handle the gold flame-level Molten Dragon on her own?" "You might not have heard of the name Luo Li, but I bet you mustve heard of Luo Sha?" Si Kongjian glared at Li Lang. "You meant the Luo Sha who was named the most powerful gold-level hunter in Division7 sixteen years ago? The gold-level rank-3 who got 70 consecutive wins in Hunter Area before Sword Genius did?! What relationship does she have with that little girl?" Li Lang still did not get it. "Luo Li is Luo Sha. Luo Sha is the nickname that she uses in the Hunter Area," Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang as she said. Not only did Lin Huang obtain 70 consecutive wins, he got 90. However, it was even more difficult to bag consecutive wins at gold-level compared to silver-level. "Shes the Luo Sha from sixteen years ago?! Why does she look like shes only thirteen or fifteen?" Li Lang thought it was really strange. "When she was thirteen and hunting for her bronze-level Life Seed monsters, she got a drop of youth fountain water by accident. Since then, she stopped aging at 13," Yi Yeyu explained and looked seriously at Lin Huang and Li Lang. "Please be careful when you guys speak to her. Never bring up any topic about age and ladys figures." "Also, if you dont want to die, never call her little girl. The last person who did that was a leader of the Demon Slayer Legion. After getting beaten up by Sis Luo Li, he was bedridden for three years and eight months. Sis Luo Yi has a special Life Power that will damage ones bodys healing ability once her Life Power is inserted. It also brings immense pain to the person." "Could she be an immortal-level already?" Li Lang was terrified as he heard what Luo Li could do. "Not yet. Shes been on gold flame-level for twelve years. Its not that she cant break through that. Shes been waiting for a commander-level monster. I heard that such a monster can break the effect of the youth fountain in her body." The Yis and the Luos were close. Because Yi Yeyu always played with Luo Li when she was young, she knew quite a lot about her. Although it was Li Lang who was asking the questions, Lin Huang was paying close attention. He could understand why Luo Li wanted to wait to level up. To most people, the youth fountain was a dream come true but to Luo Li, it was more like a curse. She had always wanted to be like other girls, to grow like a normal human and date the man that she liked, even getting married and have kids. However, due to the single drop of youth fountain, it took away all that from her, giving her a face of a teenager eternally "Are you sure that with her abilities, she should be able to handle the Molten Dragon on her own?" Although Lin Huang had gotten the answer from the reactions of both the examiners, he wanted a confirmation. "Dont worry, its just a double mutated sky dragon. Sis Luo Yi has even killed a super genius commander-level monster on her own. At the same combat level, perhaps only a triple mutated monster with the God''s Blood can fight her," Yi Yeyu affirmed. 324 8000 Sword Rain A lady walked out of the white dimensional relic that opened suddenly on the surface of the lava lake. She floated steadily in the air like she was walking on the ground. As she materialized, the white dimensional relic faded away. "Not bad, theres even a lake here." Luo Li, who wore a dark green army uniform, smirked as she looked beneath her. A Blazing Alligator that was sunbathing by the lava lake opened its eyes as it sensed a wave of energy enter its space. "A human?!" It noticed Luo Li who was floating in the air immediately. "Little alligator, this must be the little black dragons territory, am I right? Tell me, where did the little black dragon go?" Luo Li questioned and disappeared from where she was, flashing less than three meters before the Blazing Alligator. Instinctively, the Blazing Alligator swung its tail hard and pounced towards Luo Li with its jaws wide open. It moved so quickly, yet it did not manage to get Luo Li. "Tsk, tsk. Youre not being a good boy." Luo Li appeared on top of the Blazing Alligator all of a sudden. The Blazing Alligator had not even seen her move at all. Without waiting for the Blazing Alligator to respond, Luo Li pointed two fingers in the air. A gigantic black sword appeared and assaulted the Blazing Alligators tail. It pierced through its tail at the speed of light like a black nail, pinning the alligators tail on the ground. With that single swing of the sword, the purple flame-level Blazing Alligator was badly injured. It struggled vigorously in immense pain, attempting to get rid of the sword on its tail. "The more you struggle, the more pain you will experience and the more blood will shed. This is just a small lesson for you." Luo Li floated down slowly. This time, she landed even closer to the Blazing Alligator. She was less than a meter away from the alligator. Her black eyes stared deeply into the Blazing Alligators red eyes. "If youre so dumb to attack me again, you might die" warned Luo Li in a deadly tone. The Blazing Alligator felt like it was placed next to a gigantic demons mouth and might be wolfed down any minute. It was so scared that it could not move anymore. Luo Li smirked as she watched the Blazing Alligator stop struggling. She knew she had managed to terrify it. "It seems like weve come to a common understanding." The Blazing Alligator nodded immediately, thinking that the lady in front of it was not human, but a high-ranking demon in human skin. Luo Li was satisfied with the Blazing Alligators reaction. "Let me ask you, where did the little black dragon go?" "Little black dragon?" The Blazing Alligator was stunned. "The Molten Dragon, isnt this its territory?" Luo Li rolled her eyes impatiently. "My boss is at the bottom of the lake," the Blazing Alligator betrayed the Molten Dragon without thinking twice. "At the bottom of the lake?" Luo Li raised an eyebrow. "I know that the fire element monster loves spiritual lava but why would it stay at the bottom of the lake? Is there anything special there?" "Theres a molten crystal at the bottom of the lake. Its the spiritual source of the lake. Only the boss and a couple of us know about this," blurted the Blazing Alligator. "The molten crystal is the main reason our boss got so powerful." "Molten crystal? Thats some good stuff!" Luo Li was excited. The molten crystal was a special fire energy crystal that was usually formed under high temperature and pressure over the span of millions of years. The crystal contained pure fire energy which was priceless to a fire element monster or human. It was worth more than a grade-5 relic. Luo Li was surprised to find out about the molten crystal existing there. "Oh yeah, I heard you guys are hunting down humans. Whys that?" Although she already had the answer, Luo Li wanted to know the truth from the Blazing Alligator. "He didnt say much about it. He only told us that a certain human has a unique relic. As soon as he gets that relic, he can accelerate his speed, level up to his third mutation, and even undergo a blood transformation to become a dragonkin monster." Although what the Blazing Alligator said did not directly bring up the God''s Blood, Luo Li was sure that her speculation was right as there were not many treasures that could accelerate mutation and increase the thickness of blood. The God''s Blood was one of them. "How many humans have you guys captured so far?" Luo Li asked again. "Not many. It has been less than ten hours since the Boss gave his instructions. Only 30 to 40 people were sent to him," the Blazing Alligator answered honestly. "Where are they?" Luo Li looked around but did not see anybody. "Boss ate all of them after getting Phantom to interrogate them." Luo Li glared deadly at the Blazing Alligator again and once more, it felt like it was going to be eaten by a supreme demon. "Seems like theres no reason to keep this idiot alive anymore" Luo Li mumbled to herself, then looked at the Blazing Alligator. "You wait here patiently. Let me kill the little black dragon first and Ill see what to do with you." Although the Blazing Alligator was unhappy, it did not dare to say anything while it waited patiently where it was. Luo Li had basically gotten everything she wanted to know from the Blazing Alligator. She flew above the lava lake. She then extended her palm facing the surface of the lake. Long, black swords appeared around her. Within seconds, thousands of swords appeared and the number was still growing. Ten seconds later, the black swords finally stopped multiplying. Luo Li started murderously at the surface of the lava and said to herself, "8000 Sword Rain!" The thousands of black swords dashed towards the lake like a storm 325 Molten Crystal The black sword rain covered the entire surface of the lake as streaks of its black glow penetrated into the red lava in every ten meters. The impact of each sword was limited to an attack that covered such a huge area. However, it was just a plan to Luo Li to lure the Molten Dragon out of the lake rather than to kill it. The gigantic black dragon was laying down at the bottom of the lake, not sleeping but absorbing the energy from the molten crystal. Lying down was the most comfortable pose for it. Suddenly, the black dragon felt an intense pain on its tail as the sound of torrential whistling was heard. It turned around and saw half a black sword sticking out of its tail. Another whistle came and another sword pierced less than a meter from the black dragons left eye, almost blinding it instantly. Roar! The black dragon was furious as it was attacked twice. As one of the Three Overlords of this world, it had been a long time since someone had challenged it. Hearing the roar echoing from the bottom of the lake, Luo Yu smirked. "It worked." Soon, huge waves undulated on the surface of the lava lake. A humongous monster appeared from the lake. Luo Li checked out the black giant creature with her head slightly tilted to the side. The Molten Dragon looked like a mammoth alligator with wings. Its abdomen was short compared to the ratio of the rest of its body and it had a heavy bottom. On its back were not dense like the scales of dragon blood monsters but like the thick skin on the back of an alligator. They were bumpy like hard tumors. "Its really ugly" Luo Li commented after checking out the Molten Dragon for a while. Soon, she recalled something and licked her lips mockingly. "But I heard from a Food Hunter that the uglier something is, the tastier it is." As Luo Li was checking out the Molten Dragon, it was studying her too. The size of her body confused it. It had never seen a human of such small stature. However, the intensity of her attack shocked it a little as the two swords had managed to break through its defense easily. Perhaps, the smaller a human was, the more powerful they were. Just when the Molten Dragon pondered upon that thought, it heard Luo Li mocking it. It was furious again. "Human kid, are you messing with me?" It was its first time hearing somebody calling it ugly and it could not take it anymore. Meanwhile, Luo Li looked serious. "Whore you calling a kid?" She was dismal to hear what the black dragon called her. Sensing Luo Lis odd reaction, the Molten Dragon decided to attack first. As its muzzle opened, flames came out of it and engulfed Luo Li instantly. Because the Molten Dragon was not a dragon blood monster, the flames it emitted were not dragon flames but molten core instead. It was tens of thousands degree Celsius like the core of a planet. The molten core came out like a waterfall, consuming the entire space that Luo Li was standing in. The black dragon was sure that Luo Li would definitely not be able to avoid its attack. Even if she did not die, she would definitely be severely injured from the high-temperature flames. "So, this is the standard of a sky dragon. Huh, you can never compare to a real dragonkin." A silhouette walked out of the flames. Not only was Luo Li not hurt, the flames had done nothing to her clothes. She smirked as she looked disdainfully at the shocked Molten Dragon. "Im sorry that I forgot to tell you that the Life Fire monster that I killed to get to holy fire-level was a dragonkin. Although it was just a basic one, it was so much more powerful than you are. At your level, youd be killed in less than ten seconds by that fella. Im even more powerful than the monster. I just need one thing to kill you." Luo Li pointed a finger as she spoke. The Molten Dragon sensed immense danger looming. Its instinct had helped it escape death many times, so it chose to trust it. It flapped its wings and backed away from Luo Li. When it was a distance away, it started to dive into the lava lake. "Its too late to run now!" Luo Li pointed in the direction where the black dragon dove in. A black glow that was as thick as her thumb shot out of her fingertip and appeared next to the black dragons head. It pierced straight through its head and came out on the other side. The body of the black dragon was like a meteorite as it flopped into the lake, creating waves hundreds of meter high. The black dragons carcass floated on the surface of the lake. Just when Luo Li went down to pick up the carcass, she noticed that its tail was broken. "Did it run away?!" Luo Li squinted. After storing the carcass, Luo Li went to the Blazing Alligator that was at the side of the lake again. It was shaking in fear. Although it did not see her killing the black dragon, its senses allowed it to feel what exactly happened. It did not attempt to struggle after knowing that she had managed to kill the Molten Dragon in one go. "What else is there at the bottom of the lava besides the molten crystal?" Luo Li asked the Blazing Alligator. "Theres a natural tunnel that connects to a huge lava river," the Blazing Alligator said immediately. Although it had no idea why Luo Li asked such a question, it answered honestly anyway. "No wonder" Luo Li finally understood why the Molten Dragon could escape from this lava lake that did not seem to have any other exit routes. "Bring me to the molten crystal and dont try to fool around!" Luo Li snapped her finger. The black sword that pinned the Blazing Alligators tail down faded away and transformed into a black mist that entered its wound. The Blazing Alligator was hesitant as it pondered if it should attempt to escape. After some thought, it decided to give up on any hope of doing so and just bring her to the molten crystal as the human was simply too terrifying. As Luo Li trailed behind the Blazing Alligator into the lava lake, her body was covered by an invisible energy layer that isolated her from the lava. The spiritual lava would usually infiltrate ones Life Power but it did not seem to affect Luo Li at all. Within a couple of minutes, they arrived at the bottom of the lake. Luo Lis eyes lit up when she saw the giant golden crystal that measured two meters wide. However, she figured that she would not be able to bring it along with her. Although the molten crystal was a relic, it was not something that was meant to be taken away. Once it was moved, there would be an explosion with a massive energy loss. Half of the molten crystal was buried in the ground, hence the Molten Dragon had to train at the bottom of the lake. "This little black dragon is stupid. Why didnt it think of digging the soil around it?" Luo Li was speechless. "Help me dig the soil around it away. Ill set you free as soon as I get this molten crystal," Luo Li said to the Blazing Alligator. "Weve no idea whats the ground made of. Its very tough and cant be dug. If we could, the black dragon wouldve taken it away from the beginning." The Blazing Alligator shook its head. Luo Li did not believe it, so she went to the crystal and knocked the ground. She then made a black blade from her finger and attempted to pierce it into the ground. However, it could not penetrate the earth at all. "Eh Thats strange!" Luo Li went further away from the crystal and observed it carefully. She noticed that the soil ten kilometers surrounding the crystal had been dug out by the black dragon. It was left with a flat, black soil. "Did you guys do this digging?" "Yes, the Boss got us to dig it. However, because the area of the black soil is too big, he gave up." "Alright then. Since I cant take it away, Ill leave it here then." Luo Li decided to empty the lake after the assessment ended to try if she could dig it out. "I shall set you free now." Luo Li waved her hand and the black energy came out of the Blazing Alligators wound, then disappeared into the spiritual lava. She rocketed upwards of the lake and disappeared from the Blazing Alligators field of vision 326 Suspended Training? After Luo Li left the submission place, Zang Bing looked at the three of them. "Dont go anywhere before Sister Luo comes back." "How long would that be?" Lin Huang did not want to waste his time there. "If everything goes as planned, she should be back in an hour. Perhaps, she might even make it within half an hour if shes fast," Zang Bing answered. Zang Bing''s answer had proven that what Yi Yeyu had said earlier was true. She was not exaggerating when she said that Luo Yi could fight a triple mutated monster of the same level with the Gods Blood. After all, Yi Yeyu was not even a holy fire-level a few days ago, so her judgment on Luo Lis ability might be subjective. On the other hand, because Zang Bing was on the same level with Luo Li, his judgment would be relatively more objective. "Lets wait for a while then, since its only one hour at the most," Lin Huang said to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. The both of them did not object to him as it was dangerous for them to be outside in these conditions. In usual circumstances, participants of the training would avoid territories of monsters that were above white flame-level. However, since the black dragons instruction had been issued, the monsters that were above white flame-level might leave their territory to hunt humans down, which made the ruins more dangerous than the night before. Zang Bing and Si Kongjian got busy with their Transmission Snails. To prevent from confusing people with multiple instructions, the Union Government had given out three types of Transmission Snails to the staff. The first one was exclusively for the three examiners of the training. They used a Transmission Snail that only connected the three of them and none of the other staff had access to that. Zang Bing and Si Kongjian informed their own group of staff about what was happening to get them to secretly protect the training participants. Just when the three of them were getting bored, a white dimensional relic appeared in the sky and Luo Li casually walked out of it. "So soon?! It hasnt even been five minutes!" Li Lang was shocked. "It hasnt even been three minutes" Lin Huang looked at the time on his Emperors Heart Ring. Luo Li had been gone for only two minutes and 16 seconds to be exact. It was stupefying that she had managed to kill the Molten Dragon with such a short period of time! "Didnt I tell you that Sister Luo Li is powerful?" Yi Yeyu beamed proudly. As the white dimensional relic disappeared, Luo Li appeared before Zang Bing and Si Kongjian. "You settled it so soon?" Zang Bings eyes were wide open. Although Si Kongjian did not say a word, the corner of his eye that was lifted slightly betrayed him. He did not expect Luo Li to be back so soon. "No, the fella escaped by shedding its outer skin" Luo Li grumbled annoyedly, "I didnt expect the sky dragon to be such a pussy. It ran away before I could even do anything." Luo Li did not bother lowering her voice, so Lin Huang and the rest heard her loud and clear. Li Lang rolled his eyes as he thought Luo Li was exaggerating. However, Lin Huang thought what Luo Li said might be true. Perhaps, the Molten Dragon sensed something dangerous from her demeanor, so it escaped. Some monsters were very alert to danger, and the Molten Dragon may possess such a supreme sensing ability. Yi Yeyu, on the other hand, trusted what Luo Li said fully as she knew how powerful she was since she had grown up with Luo Li. The other two examiners trusted Luo Li too as both of them were well-versed with her ability. "That black dragon was terribly lucky that it managed to escape from you." Si Kongjian teased, "But too bad for it that it escaped by shedding its outer skin because then, its combat level would drop a level or two lower." "It wont have such good luck next time!" Luo Li was furious. "So, what should we do now? Since the black dragon is still alive, the other monsters will be striving to fulfill its order and hunting down all the training participants. If that is the case, our training difficulty will increase as well as the death percentage. Should we suspend the training?" Zang Bing looked at the both of them worriedly. "Wow, look at you! You guys must be sick of being an examiner by now. My assessment hasnt even started yet!" Luo Li objected. "But it would be dangerous to proceed with the training now," Zang Bing insisted this time. "What do you think?" Zang Bing looked at Si Kongjian. "I have no comment. You guys can discuss. Im okay with anything." Si Kongjian opened his arms in nonchalance and backed off. He did not stand on any side as he did not want to offend anybody. "Xiao Bing Bing, its not as bad as you thought. Ive heard many things from the little black dragons follower. The instruction isn''t about killing humans, but to bring humans alive to it." Luo Li toned her temper down when she saw Zang Bing being all serious. Although she was daring, there was nothing that she could do about Zang Bings stubbornness. Once he decided on something, it was impossible for him to change his mind. He would not give in even if he was beaten up. He would only change his mind with legit reasoning. "An order is an order but the executor might not execute what it says exactly. Even though the decree is to capture humans alive, it might eat them later on. The goal of this training is to allow the young people to challenge themselves. Thats why theyre asked to kill white flame-level monsters. But now that they will be encountering monsters above crimson flame-level, blue flame-level and even purple flame-level, they might be killed instead. That would mean that there wont be any room for them to train themselves, which defeats the purpose of the training. Theres no meaning to carrying on with the training," Zang Bing elaborated. Luo Li was silent after hearing what he said. She knew that it would be too much if she insisted on carrying on with the training. She spoke again a while later, "How about this? We get all the participants to come back and tell them whats happening. They get to choose to stay or to leave. If most of them choose to suspend the training, we do just that. However, if most of them choose to leave, well send those who want to leave out of the ruins while allowing those who want to stay. "However, we have to change the mechanics of the training. Well need to discuss further on how to keep everybody safe if were carrying on with the training." Luo Li compromised in the end but she suggested the option of allowing trainees to stay as she did not want to give up the opportunity of being an examiner. Zang Bing stayed silent. "Lao Zang, lets do what Sister Luo suggested. After all, therell be some participants who dont want to lose the opportunity of this training," Si Kongjian finally spoke, sidelining Luo Li this time. Zang Bing lifted his head and looked at Lin Huang and the others. "What do you guys think?" "Id like to carry on," Lin Huang answered without thinking twice. "Id like to level up to white flame here," Li Lang answered. "Although I have already leveled up to white flame, I still want to train myself by battling more." Yi Yeyu smiled at Luo Li. "See, five over one." Si Kongjian patted Zang Bings shoulder smugly. "Alright then, lets get everybody back and decide later." Zang Bing nodded. 327 Yousll Be An Auntie To Kids The Moment You Turn 20 The next day, the three examiners managed to gather all of the participants with the help of their staff by the afternoon. It was only the fourth day of the second round of the training. The original 978 people had dwindled to 906. Zang Bing was upset as it had just been a few days and so many participants were already missing. In reality, since they were appointed as the examiners by the Union Government, they had a death quota which was broken down to less than 5% on the first round, 10% on the second round and 15% on the third round. It was only the fourth day of the second round of training for Zang Bings segment and the death rate was already at 7.2%. As everyone gathered around, Zang Bing as the examiner of the second round of training informed them about the Molten Dragon. Many of the elites had noticed the odd encounters with the monsters, some of them even managing to escape from the monsters. They finally understood what was happening. "We cant come up with a unanimous decision among the three of us. Since the training is for all of you and you guys are adults with your own opinions, the decision is up to all of you. You guys can vote to decide if we should suspend the training," Zang Bing finally revealed the objective of gathering everybody here. "Before that, I would like to emphasize that this is not part of the assessment. I hope that all of you can decide whether to suspend the training based on what you really want without worrying too much about the consequences. Just go for whatever that you think is right. "To make everyone feel safe, your name won''t be necessary for the vote. All votes will be anonymous. If you think the training should carry on, draw a tick and if you think the training should be suspended, draw a cross. We will decide after all the results are collected." A lady raised her hand in confusion. "Please speak." Zang Bing nodded to the lady. "If those who want this to end exceed those who want this to go on, does that mean all of us will have to leave even if we dont want to?" The lady asked. "Yes, we go by the majority. If most of you vote to end this rather than to stay, we will suspend the training. Even if youd like to stay, well send everyone out of this place and thatll be the end of the training," Zang Bing affirmed. "What if its the other way round? If therere more people who vote to carry on than those who vote to end this, does that mean those who would like to leave have to stay?" The lady asked. "No. If we have more who vote to carry on, those who want to stay will stay while those who want to quit will be escorted out of this place by our staff. By then, our staff will explain to your organization accordingly that you guys were not eliminated. If any of you get into trouble for leaving early, you can choose to stay instead. Well arrange for a campsite guarded by an examiner. Youll be sent out of here after the training ends. "If therere no more questions, Ill get the staff to pass out the voting cards." Zang Bing waited for a while and nodded to the staff after nobody asked any more questions. Soon, the staff gave out blank white cards the size of a palm to everyone. "Fold the card after you''ve voted and the staff will collect them from you. "Dont mess up. If you want the training to go on, draw a tick. If you want it to stop, draw a cross," Zang Bing reminded again. Lin Huang drew a tick without thinking twice when he received the card, then he folded it. Yi Yeyu drew her choice expressionlessly and folded the card. Meanwhile, Li Lang held the card without doing anything. "What are you doing?" Yi Yeyu asked. "I think the results will be close. Im thinking of using my vote as the deciding vote after the result has been announced." Li Lang looked obnoxious. "After the result is announced, your vote wont count anymore," Lin Huang said in all seriousness. "Yeah, do you want to give up your vote?" Yi Yeyu added while smiling. "Ah, does that mean Im giving up on my vote?!" Li Lang was shocked. He quickly drew a tick immediately and folded the card. As everyone had voted, the staff collected all the cards. It took a couple of minutes for the calculation of the votes and the result was soon sent to the three examiners. Zang Bing frowned when he saw the result as he stood in front of the people for the announcement. "I shall announce the voting results. There are 812 votes who want the training to carry on and 92 votes who want the training to be suspended. We have two empty votes. "It seems like the decision is clear. We shall respect your decision and carry on with the training! "For safety purposes, I''ll get the staff to follow every group. They''ll be watching the movement of the crimson flame-level monsters and above so you won''t have to fight them. All staff, please work with us. Were so sorry for the extra workload. After the training ends, we will apply for extra rewards for all of you." Zang Bing intentionally said that before everyone so that the staff would put in their best efforts. "Now, those of you who voted to carry on with the training can leave now. Those who dont want to stay, we will arrange something for you." As Zang Bing said that, many of them left one by one. "We should leave too." Li Lang looked at Lin Huang. Lin Huang was looking at Luo Li who had appeared before Yi Yeyu out of nowhere. He had not seen her move at all. "Damn, when did she come?" Li Lang asked softly. "She just did, I guess. I didnt see it as well" Lin Huang was telling the truth. "Xiao Yeyu, I remember your body had no fire element. How did the change happen?" Luo Li asked. "It happened last year. I have no idea how but something happened to my body and it now has the fire element." Yi Yeyu did not understand it herself. "But thats good. I might have a present for you soon. You''ll have to wait until after the assessment." Luo Li smiled. "Its okay." Yi Yeyu smiled and shook her head. She had a close relationship with Luo Li since she was young but it had been a couple of years since they had last met. She could not adapt to her friends new eccentric character. "Treat it as a present for leveling up to holy fire-level," Luo Li said. "I think your boyfriend on the left is good, but hes a little short. He doesnt look too old, so he might be able to grow taller. Never mind the one on the right with greasy hair. My hands feel itchy when I look at his hair," Luo Li said while looking at Lin Huang and Li Lang. "Erm, theyre not my boyfriends. Were just friends Moreover, who would date two guys at the same time?!" Yi Yeyu was speechless. "What is there to be embarrassed about when it comes to dating? Youre not young anymore and you should be thinking about getting married" Luo Li proceeded to lecture her, ignoring Yi Yeyus reaction. "Im only 20 this year" Yi Yeyus eyes were twitching. She had a really attractive body. In fact, she had hit puberty early and already had the body of a 20-year-old when she was just 15. She could not cover her body any longer and guys were always gawking at her wherever she went. "Girls can get married after their adult ceremony when they are 16. Those who are 20 years old will have kids calling them aunty" What Luo Li said made everyone speechless. As Luo Li was indulging them with her opinion, Bloody contacted Lin Huang in his mind. "Master, I have found the Molten Dragon. It seems to be in bad shape" 328 Gamblers and Shortcuts Haltharad soaked its body in the spiritual lava in the volcano, its mind was a mess. It could not remember how long had it been the overlord in this world... It had been years. There was almost nobody that could take it on in this world ever since it leveled to gold flame-level. Gold flame-level was the highest level that this world could accommodate. As a double mutated sky dragon, its ability made it the best in this little world. If the stupid Shadowflame Boa did not listen to what the cunning Golden Toad said and fought it, it would have been the ruler of this world. It did not expect there to be anyone that was the same as itself, a gold flame-level that was even more powerful to exist in this world. As a double mutated dragonkin sky dragon, it was confident that even if it encountered a triple mutated monster that was the same level, it would win as well. However, Haltharad had a taste of failure today. It was its first time it tasted defeat ever since it achieved gold flame-level. Its opponent was a human that was similar in level to itself but it could not even handle a single hit from this human. The human girl who looked rather young with a petite body was as powerful as a god, making it difficult for anyone to find it in themselves to fight her. Its body was shaking as it recalled the moment when it was almost killed by her, it was a reflection that came from fear. However, fear was not the only thing, hatred burned inside it as well. "That damned human girl forced me to shed my carapace. Now, my combat strength had dropped two levels and I have to hide in this freaking place!" Haltharad said to itself. It did not dare to say it too loud as it was afraid that others would find out about the humiliation it felt. The temporary degradation to its power was the side-effect of its shedding Life Skill, it would last for 72 hours. Not only that, its body would be weak for three days, even its defensive ability would drop two levels. Many of its skills and Life Skills that required Life Power would be deactivated. It was afraid that it might be attacked by blue flame-level monsters, that was why it was hiding. "Two days more" Haltharad stared deadly in the air. "If I cant fight you, Ill kill you with a monster crowd! Not only you, all humans will have to pay the price!" "Where is the black dragon hiding?" Lin Huang asked immediately when he heard about the black dragon from Bloody. "Its hiding in a spiritual volcano, its very weak right now. I think its badly injured, its aura had dropped to the that of a blue flame-level monster." Bloody told its observation. "A blue flame-level monster" Lin Huang was tempted. He knew very well that it was the side-effect of shedding its carapace but it would only last for three days and its combat strength would go back to normal. By then, it would be impossible to kill such a monster. "One day has passed out of its three days of weakness. I need to find it within these two days or else Ill lose the opportunity." Lin Huang squinted, he was thinking if he should look for the black dragon. Even though its power had dropped by two levels, the ability of the Molten Dragon was not to be underestimated. Lin Huangs concern was not its ability but more of what he would get if he was to kill the black dragon. "Xiao Hei, what kind of rewards will I get if I manage to achieve a double cross-ranking kill?" Lin Huang asked. "Normal cross-ranking kill - Random Reward Card x1!" "Double cross-ranking kill - Draw Reward Card x1!" "Triple cross-ranking kill - Draw Reward Card x3!" "Quadruple cross-ranking kill - Draw Reward Card x5!" "Quintuple cross-ranking kill - Draw Reward Card x10!" "So if I kill the black dragon that had dropped two levels, would that be considered as a triple or a quintuple cross-ranking kill?" Lin Huang asked. "The Molten Dragons level drop is just temporary and its real combat strength is still gold flame-level. If you manage to kill it, itll be considered a quintuple cross-ranking kill and youll receive a draw of 10 Reward Cards." Lin Huang was over the moon when he heard Xiao Heis reply. "I should be able to use a Double Reward Card, right?" Lin Huang asked again. "Yes, a Double Reward Card can be used on all cross-ranking kill." "That means, if I manage to kill it, Ill get to draw 20 cards!" Lin Huang could not resist such a temptation. "I must do this!" The Molten Dragon that was hiding in the volcano far away had no idea that it had become the ultimate boss for Lin Huang. Lin Huang was even thinking if he should get Mr. Fu to get him a gold flame-level monster with the Life Skill ability to shed its carapace after the training ended so that he could get the quintuple cross-ranking reward. Xiao Hei noticed what he was thinking. "The objective of the reward from system is to encourage you to strengthen yourself. Such behaviour of trying to cheat the reward system is not encouraged. As soon as humans find shortcuts, theyll always look for more shortcuts. This is the evil side of humans. With the time spent looking for shortcuts, some people have already arrived at the destination with their own strength. I hope that you dont become one of those people who are always looking for shortcuts. Things that you achieve through hard work are the most valuable ones." "Its just a thought, why must you give me a life lesson" Lin Huang smiled awkwardly after hearing what Xiao Hei said but soon he fell into a deep thought. He had seen many people who were always looking for shortcuts when he was on earth instead of doing what they should do. This was similar to what he saw in gamblers who lived in the casinos. They wanted to get rich by gambling but what usually happens is that they would go bankrupt and even get their family members killed. Lin Huang thought if those gamblers put the passion they had for gambling into their career, even if they did not become a millionaire, they would still definitely make enough to feed their family. Shortcuts were acceptable occasionally but if one wanted to use shortcuts in everything, that would be no different from gambling. The consequences might get ugly. "Lin Huang, what are you thinking about?" Yi Yeyu waved her hand in his face. "Nothing." Lin Huang snapped out of his thoughts and realized that Yi Yeyu had ended her conversation with Luo Li. Luo Li had returned to be with the two examiners. Aside from the 50-odd participants who decided to not proceed with the training, the rest had left. In reality, among the 90-odd people who voted to end the assessment, only slightly more than 50 of them stayed. Lin Huang looked at the remaining people and realized that most of them had leveled up to holy fire-level. It was unnecessary for them to stay as they had achieved what they wanted to from the ruins. "Lets go." Lin Huang waved to the both of them, he did not want the three of them to be misunderstood as giving up the training. 329 No Commen As they left the mission submission area, Lin Huang had been thinking of how to leave the group and get to the spiritual volcano to kill the Molten Dragon on his own. He did plan to let Li Lang and Yi Yeyu know about this as it would take them by surprise if he left so suddenly. Although the Molten Dragon had experienced a drop in its level, it was still a gold flame-level monster after all. Moreover, there would be a staff from the Union Governments Demon Slayer Legion following them and he did not want to reveal his ability in front of a stranger. As they left the mission submission area for some distance, Li Lang could not help but ask, "Where are we going?" "I found a non-fire element monster for Yeyu to train," Lin Huang said then paused. "But I have something to settle on my own, so Ill send you guys there and leave," Lin Huang added. "I suggest you dont leave the group. I cant be looking after two teams at the same time," immediately warned the poker-faced staff who was following them when he heard what Lin Huang said. "If you insist on leaving, Ill have to follow the team that has more people and your safety will be your own responsibility." "Thanks for reminding. I have the ability to take care of myself, so please take care of the two of them." Although the staffs attitude was unpleasant, Lin Huang could tell that he genuinely did not want him to be in trouble but he rejected the persons kindness anyway. Poker Face then looked at Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. Since the both of them did not stop Lin Huang, he did not say anything. Lin Huang then changed his black dimensional relic to a blue one and summoned it. "Lin Huang, how come your dimensional relic?" Seeing that Lin Huangs dimensional relic had changed, Li Lang started to ask but was pinched hard by Yi Yeyu. "Why did you pinch me?" "Because I can. Cant I do that?" Yi Yeyu gave an unreasonable excuse. "Okay then" Li Lang dared not fight back, looking at Yi Yeyus condescending expression. "Lets go." Lin Huang opened the dimensional relic. Soon, the blue dimensional relic disappeared as the four of them entered it. In reality, the regular dimensional relic did not come with any function of changing colors or modes as it was unnecessary. The material to make a dimensional relic itself was pricey and changing colors was still acceptable but to be able to change its mode, the handling of materials would be much more complicated. This also caused the cost of the making of the dimensional relic to be a few times more expensive. Therefore, a dimensional relic with mode-changing function would usually cost four to six times more than a regular one of the same level. In fact, that dimensional relic cost at least three times more than a relic of the same rank. Only people who had too much money to spare would purchase such a unique dimensional relic. Of course, the seller knew who their target market was. Mr. Fu was the perfect person for such fancy things. Besides, he had too much money. Therefore, when the nine basic colors for dimensional relic were introduced, he bought all of them without thinking twice. He had given the black one to Lin Huang as a gift. Lin Huang intentionally changed the color and mode of the dimensional relic as they were with the poker-faced staff. From Luo Lis analysis, he would have to be extra careful and not let the staff of the Union Government associate him with the monster with the God''s Blood. Luo Li and the rest would definitely report the discovery of the monster with the God''s Blood to the Union Government and there would be a thorough investigation conducted. Thus, Lin Huang had to get rid of all traces of him being related to the monster with the God''s Blood. After they stepped into the blue dimensional relic, the four of them appeared not far from a small lava lake. "What are we looking for this time?" Li Lang did not see anything as he looked around. "Smoldervenom Toad." Lin Huang pointed at the lava lake. Smoldervenom Toad was a mutated monster. Despite having the word smolder in its name, it was not a fire element monster but a venom-type monster. It could absorb heat to produce venom. The so-called fire venom was not actually made of fire energy but was made of venom instead. Such a venom was unique, because when it enters the humans body, an excruciating pain that felt like intense burning would be experienced. The dead body of the poisoned victim would be severely dehydrated. The Smoldervenom Toad had appeared several times in Division7, so it was not a stranger to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. "Its in that lake?" Li Lang was excited. "Theres no need to rush. Before I leave, Ill need to buy some stuff from you." Lin Huang told him. "What?" Li Lang thought it was such a strange request. "Nuclear bombs. How many do you have with you? I want all of them." It was definitely not a spontaneous request. As soon as Lin Huang had found out about the black dragon that was hiding in the spiritual volcano from Bloody, he thought of using the nuclear bomb to lure the black dragon out as well as destroying its geographical advantage. "Ahh, that toy! I only have two left." Seeing Lin Huang staring at him without saying a word, Li Lang felt guilty. "Okay, I have three." Lin Huang remained silent as he looked at Li Lang. He knew that he was lying. Li Lang was bad at lying. Every time he lied, he would bite his lips without noticing it. "Okay, okay, Ill give you all five of them for free since theyre not worth a lot of money anyway," Li Lang compromised. He had only spent less than 20 Life Crystals to get the nuclear bombs from the black market. "Thanks then, Ill treat you a meal when you get out." Lin Huang knew that Li Lang would not accept his money even if he was to offer it, so he gave the promise of food instead. Learning from his lesson earlier, Li Lang took out the five nuclear bombs carefully and passed them to Lin Huang. Lin Huang was nervous as he was storing the nuclear bombs. The bombs had been around since the ancient epoch and it would be terribly disastrous if they exploded. "Hey, what do you plan to hunt? Why do you need all these?" Li Lang was curious. Yi Yeyu looked at Lin Huang curiously too. She remembered how powerful the bomb was. A single one was terrifying enough. "Its a secret." Lin Huang smiled mysteriously, not wanting to reveal anything. "Lin Huang, youre not being honest right now. I gave you these bombs, so I have the right to know!" Li Lang objected. "No comment." Lin Huang grinned as he summoned a blue dimensional relic and stepped into it. "Bye!" He waved at the three of them. 330 Nuclear Bombs Again The Alexandrian Eagle stopped in the air as Lin Huang peered out at the gigantic volcano that was 10 kilometers away. From what Bloody had found out, he was sure about the exact location of the Molten Dragon. Lin Huang did not go closer to the volcano, instead, he instructed Bloody, "Bloody, get your parasites on five flying monsters. Go for those that are strong." "Master, are you thinking of?" Bloody looked out from Lin Huangs sleeve when it heard the instruction. "The previous nuclear bomb had reached a radius of 30 kilometers. If I toss the five of them together, it will be even more powerful and the impact will spread even wider. If I toss the bombs myself, even at the Alexandrian Eagles speed, we might not be able to leave the impact area in time. Itll be safer to get the parasitic hosts to do that," Lin Huang explained as he knew what Bloody was thinking about. "But before I toss the bombs in, I must make sure that the Molten Dragon is in there, or else, Ill just be wasting the five nuclear bombs." Although it was quite impossible for the Molten Dragon to leave the volcano due to its weak state, Lin Huang did not want to risk it. He wanted to be very certain before he attacked. "Alright, I will arrange for that. I should be able to get that done within half an hour," Bloody responded immediately, clear on what to do. Lin Huang patted the Alexandrian Eagle to get it to land near the crater while waiting patiently for Bloody. Around ten minutes later, a red ladybird flew around Lin Huang. "Is this the Exploding Ladybird?" Observing the ladybird, Lin Huang knew that it was one of the parasitic hosts. The Exploding Ladybird was a bug that lived around lava. They were born white in color and was at silver-level. They mainly fed on lava, spiritual lava particularly was their favorite. After consuming a sufficient amount of spiritual lava, they would enter adulthood and upgrade to gold-level while their body would turn red like an enlarged firefly. However, such a monster was much more dangerous than the average firefly as it would attack anything that invaded its territory. They did not fear death and most importantly, they possessed a terrifying ability which was to self-combust. The combustibility of each adult Exploding Ladybird was comparable with a white flame-level monsters ultimate move. "The Exploding Ladybird is small, so its hard to notice. Looking for spiritual lava is what they do every day. It wont be a problem if they get close to the Molten Dragon as the dragon wouldnt suspect a thing," Bloody explained why it had chosen the monster as its detective. "Thats a good one." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction, realizing that Bloody was now picky with its hosts. After referring to the monster encyclopedia, Bloodys knowledge on using parasite hosts had improved. Not only was it parasitizing and controlling, before it did that, it would consider the environment, the hosts behavior and even the possible reaction of the monster that they were investigating before choosing the best host. Its all-rounded analysis minimized the possibility of the host being revealed. Under Bloodys control, the Exploding Ladybird flew to the spiritual volcano far away. It was slow and took almost ten minutes to arrive at the crater. Before the Exploding Ladybird arrived at the crater anyway, five Putrescent Falcons already stood in a row at the crater not far away from Lin Huang. The Putrescent Falcon was a gold-level soul monster. It was a bird was left with bones that were very different from the clean, white bones that the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit had; their bones were bloody with bits of flesh hanging off them. They looked like rotten bones that had been chewed by the lions in Africa during summer and they emitted an unbearable stench. Theoretically, their wings that were mere bones were unable to fly. However, they inserted Life Power into their wings when they attempted to, which made flying possible. "I got these five Putrescent Falcons to fly together, so even if the black dragon senses them, it wont find anything odd," Bloody explained. "Thats smart. If different birds appear at the same time, the black dragon will definitely sense that something fishy is going on." "Thats right. Even though were attacking sneakily, its best to attack it when it has its guard down." Bloody had the same thought. Most of the monsters could sense the movement trajectory of creatures within a limited range but not inanimate objects such as nuclear bombs. As long as the Molten Dragon did not see what was being carried by the Putrescent Falcons, it was quite impossible for it to notice the nuclear bombs. Soon, the Exploding Ladybird came back with its scout report. The Molten Dragon was really at the bottom of the Spiritual Volcano. It was soaked in the spiritual lava with only its head showing and seemed to be enjoying itself. Although it noticed the existence of the Exploding Ladybird, it did not care about it at all. Lin Huang smirked when he heard what Bloody told him. "It seems like this fella isnt aware at all. Its only left with two days of recuperation before it regains its strength, so it must have thought that everything will be fine as long as its hiding in this volcano." "Should we attack now?" Bloody asked. "Lets do it," said Lin Huang as he took out the five nuclear bombs. As the five Putrescent Falcons picked up the nuclear bombs, they filled their wings with Life Power immediately. A pair of black wings formed on each of their foul-smelling bodies. "Take note of the flight speed. Dont be too aggressive. Just fly at a normal speed," Lin Huang reminded. "Understood!" Bloody controlled the five Putrescent Falcons to fly towards the spiritual volcano. As the five Putrescent Falcons flew nearer to it, the Molten Dragon that was at the bottom of the volcano sensed them. It was in a weakened form now, so it was extremely alert and cautious. It had its sensing ability covering the area within a 10-kilometer radius in his watch. "Theyre flying towards my direction?" The Molten Dragon thought. "There are five of them The unpleasant vibe seems just like those brainless Putrescent Falcons. Anyway, theyre only at gold-level. Its probably only a false alarm." Just when the Molten Dragon lowered its guard down, the five Putrescent Falcons arrived at the crater of the spiritual volcano. They let go of the five nuclear bombs from their claws almost at the same time and the bombs fell into the volcano 331 Heis Lin Huang was a traveler from Earth. He was fearful of the nuclear bomb because he knew despite its size, it was dubbed as the most powerful weapon on Earth. It was the ultimate weapon during the war and was a deadly weapon to many powerful countries. It was clear that the seller had never tested the impact of the nuclear bomb before, so they handled them as bombs from the ancient times, which was how Li Lang had managed to get them from the black market. They probably did not even know if the bombs were still working, hence they had sold them to Li Lang at a cheap price. Knowing how powerful the bombs were, Lin Huang had fled the explosion zone with the Alexandrian Eagle as the Putrescent Falcons left. He was 60 kilometers high in the air, using his Boundless Vision to watch the five Putrescent Falcons tossing the five nuclear bombs into the spiritual volcano. Soon, a bright yellow spark shot into the air. A gigantic mushroom cloud that extended up to thousands of meters high filled the air. The white glow it emitted was so bright that it lit up a couple of kilometers. The high temperature from the white glow melted everything that was a few kilometers around the volcano. Even the gigantic spiritual volcano collapsed into flatland. Outside the coverage of the white glow, the intense shockwave had shaken the earth 50 kilometers away. Everything within thousands of square kilometers was impacted and the trembling of the ground was felt far and wide. Even Lin Huang, who was riding on the Alexandrian Eagle 60 kilometers away, had to fight against the strong wind created from the shockwave. As the wind blew, Lin Huang could hear the explosion. It sounded like thunder, but it was much more intense with a fearful force. Lin Huang watched the entire explosion take place, his thoughts going everywhere. The nuclear bomb had destroyed every physical thing on Earth. However, it was not enough here. As it was a different world, the creatures in this world were much more powerful than those on Earth. Even an ordinary person could easily live up to 100 years old, some of them even living over 150 years old. Meanwhile, the monsters here were more resilient and stronger than the animals on Earth. If the scariest lions and tigers were placed on this world, they would be food for the lowest-ranking monsters, which were the iron-level monsters. "Master, you dont seem to be worried that the Molten Dragon might die from the nuclear bomb. If that happens, wouldnt you lose the opportunity to obtain the cross-ranking kill reward?" Bloody interrupted Lin Huangs thoughts. "The physical attack will do limited harm to the Life Power If anyone can use their Life Power to attack with the effect of a nuclear bomb, dont mention holy fire-level, the person can even kill an immortal-level," Lin Huang thought out loud and shook his head. He did not think that the nuclear bomb alone could kill the Molten Dragon even though its combat strength had dropped. "One of the reasons why I tossed the nuclear bomb is to destroy the spiritual volcano so that I can get rid of its geographical advantage. On the other hand, I can also drain its Life Power. Itll be even better if I manage to injure it, so that I can save some strength to fight it," Lin Huang said. "But if I kill it with the bomb, thats just my bad luck then" Lin Huang added. "Compared to it dying from the explosion, what Im more concerned about is that it will run away," Lin Huang voiced out his concern. As the Molten Dragon was weak now, it would be unwilling to fight. Following the terrifying explosion, it might escape instead. "Theres a tunnel connecting to the lava river. But with the explosion, the entire volcano has collapsed, so the tunnel to the lava river must be destroyed as well. Theres no way that it can run." Bloody was confident. Looking at the volcanic ashes that covered the air, Lin Huang waited patiently for the Molten Dragon. As his vision was affected, it would be dumb to get closer to the Molten Dragon now. Soon, a furious roar could be heard from far away. A gigantic shadow appeared from the gravelly flatland. The gargantuan Molten Dragon flapped its broken wings in the air and looked around. Its powerful vision picked out Lin Huang who was riding on the Alexandrian Eagle tens of kilometers away. "An Imperial Censor?" The Molten Dragon speculated as it saw Lin Huang. Soon it recalled that aside from the Imperial Censors, it had seen other humans summoning monsters using monster taming tokens. Seeing that the black dragon had noticed him, Lin Huang smirked and gestured to the black dragon to advance. He knew very well that it could see what he was doing. Haltharad saw Lin Huangs challenging gesture very clearly. When it first saw him, it did not think that he was the one who had orchestrated the explosion as Lin Huang was too far away from it and it doubted that Lin Huang could attack from such a distance. On the other hand, Lin Huangs aura was too weak for it to believe that he was the one who had attacked. However, his challenging gesture made it doubt its own speculation. "Is this human kid challenging me? Could he be the one who caused the explosion?" With doubt and anger, the Molten Dragon flew towards Lin Huangs direction. As the Molten Dragon was coming his way, Lin Huang patted the Alexandrian Eagle and landed at a crater nearby. He then recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and Bloody into card forms. A minute later, the black dragon arrived above Lin Huang. "Were you the one who attacked me, human kid?!" Haltharad demanded furiously. As it got closer to Lin Huang, it could sense how weak this human was. He was not even a white flame-level. As it was flying over him, it planned to attack the human directly. However, it noticed that Lin Huang did not use a token when he was recalling his monsters, which proved that he was an Imperial Censor. It then thought of the God''s Blood. Perhaps, it could get something out of Lin Huang. "What do you think?" Lin Huang playfully teased. He could clearly sense that the Molten Dragon was now a blue flame-level, making him feel very relieved now. "Are you messing with me?" Haltharad roared furiously. "You should really brush your teeth." Lin Huang fanned his face and scowled. The black dragon had incredibly stinky breath. "I heard that youve been hunting us humans down. It must be for the monster with the God''s Blood, am I right?" Lin Huang added without waiting for the black dragon to respond. "What do you know about that?!" Haltharad asked immediately. "I know you want the God''s Blood to increase the density of your dragon''s blood, to level up to a dragonkin. I also know that you need the energy from the God''s Blood to accelerate your third mutation. And what you want to know the most is where the monster with the God''s Blood is right now" Lin Huang knew the black dragon would definitely be tempted. "What do you want?" Haltharad knew that Lin Huang would not provide it with the information without anything in return. "I want all of the treasures that you have!" Lin Huang asked directly. "You are too greedy, human!" Haltharad looked solemnly at him. "The God''s Blood is priceless and its the one thing that you desire most. Moreover, Im the only one in this ruins who knew who has taken that special monster away and where the person is." "10%," Haltharad thought for a while and bargained. "80%, Im being generous to you. You still get to keep a part of your treasures," Lin Huang negotiated. "30%!" Haltharad looked displeased. "Half and thats my final price. If its unacceptable for you, I shall keep the secret with me. By then, itll be useless even if you capture me as I will not breathe a word." Lin Huang smiled as he knew that it would agree with the price. "Half then! Youd better make sure that what youre going to say is the truth, or else, you know the consequences," Haltharad compromised as the God''s Blood was too important to it. "Of course," Lin Huang said and took out an empty temporary storage ring. "You can use this storage ring by inserting your Life Power. Put the stuff in and Ill tell you the secret after checking the contents. Dont try to fool around, or else, the deal is off." Lin Huang tossed the ring to Molten Dragon. The black dragon scoffed and put the treasures that it had collected over the years into the ring. It was not afraid that Lin Huang would escape with the ring as it planned to kill this obnoxious human after it retrieved the secret and get back all its treasures. That was its revenge for destroying the spiritual volcano! Soon, the black dragon tossed the ring back to Lin Huang. "Thats half of my treasures. You can take a look at it." Lin Huang took the ring and started checking. The more he looked, the more surprised he was as the black dragon had a crazy trove of items. It seemed to be honest about the amount of treasure it had. Even if it hid some, there was plenty in Lin Huangs ring already. Seeing Lin Huang putting the ring away, the black dragon was nervous. "Can you tell me who has the monster with the God''s Blood and where is the person now?" "Come closer." Lin Huang waved to the Molten Dragon. The black dragon was shocked but it put its head closer to Lin Huang. Lin Huang walked right up to its ear from the edge of the crater. "Actually The person who took the monster with the God''s Blood is...me" Lin Huang grinned as he whispered. A couple of Punishment Chains appeared from the crater and whistled down towards the black dragons head 332 Killing the Dragon! Lin Huang had done his calculations before this The volcano beneath him was a spiritual volcano. He had gotten the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit to hide in the spiritual lava, so no matter how close the Molten Dragon got, it was impossible for it to sense the Sanguine Skeleton Spirits existence. Lin Huang had planned to fight the Molten Dragon by flying over to it and luring it closer to the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit to attack. He did not expect the Molten Dragon to come to him just by challenging it. Its desire of the God''s Blood had oppressed its anger and they had chatted instead. Lin Huangs request for treasure from the Molten Dragon was a trap. The treasure that he received was just a bonus. Humans were always driven by wealth, therefore, Lin Huang pretended to be a greedy human to lower the Molten Dragons guard. His acting was so good that the Molten Dragon trusted him and even stuck its head closer to him. Haltharad was not dumb, but its desire to obtain the God''s Blood had blinded it, causing it to ignore many things that it should be aware of. When it heard Lin Huang talking about the God''s Blood, it looked like it had been charmed by the devil and eventually, fell into his trap. As Lin Huang revealed that he had the monster with the God''s Blood, the attack came out of nowhere. The nine Punishment Chains were like hungry poisonous snakes that had been hiding for a long time. They pinned down the Molten Dragons head and neck when it was unaware. Haltharad struggled immensely while the Vampire Particles in Lin Huangs right hand transformed into a bloody Seraphic Spear that pierced into the dragons left ear. As the Blood Spirit leveled up to Vampire Particles, they were no longer in the form of wings anymore. They could turn into any form and be placed anywhere on the body instead of just the back. As the Vampire Particles pierced through the black dragons eardrum and arrived at its brain, the chains that were locking its head and neck broke. Lin Huang was flung away in the process. As the Vampire Particles had yet to leave the black dragons ear, not all the Punishment Chains were completely broken, so Lin Huang decided to transform the spear into a gigantic ball that was stuck in its ear. "Explode!" As Lin Huang shouted, the ball that was formed from the Vampire Particles in the dragons ear exploded. Without the defense from its Life Power, the left side of the black dragons head exploded. It convulsed on the ground but it did not fall. At that moment, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirits chains that were broken shackled it again while Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle to get him. He took out his sword relic and filled it with Life Power. A golden glow gleamed at the tip of the sword. The black dragon was already badly injured from the explosion earlier, feeling very dizzy. It was stunned before it started to struggle and flapped its wings to attempt to break free from the chains. It knew very well that it would definitely die if its Life Power remained sealed by the Punishment Chains! As the black dragon struggled, the Punishment Chains were losing their hold. However, Lin Huang had yet to charge his Worldly Purification. Seeing that the last chain was going to break, Lin Huang knew he had to use his trump card. "Charcoal!" Lin Huang shouted as a powerful force oppressed the space around them. The black dragon that was struggling was shocked as it sensed the aura of a dragonkin. It was impossible that it was mistaken as the presence felt really close. Haltharad forgot to struggle while it looked at the direction where it sensed the aura coming from. With it midnight black scales, Charcoal stared lethally at Haltharad. There was a young man sitting on its back. As Lin Huang summoned Charcoal, he recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and rode on Charcoal immediately as he knew that the Alexandrian Eagle was afraid of the Molten Dragon. The terrifying aura of a dragonkin was fearsome to most monsters and that fear also applied to monsters that were a level higher. The effect of deterrence worked best on monsters with a lower density of dragon blood, effectively suppressing them. Under normal circumstances, Haltharad would not be affected by Charcoals aura due to their difference in level. However, it was weak and injured now, so its defenses against Charcoals deterrence was low. Because of that, Lin Huang had decided to summon Charcoal as his trump card because he knew that Charcoal could suppress the Molten Dragon. Haltharads head was blank. Seizing the opportunity, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit engaged its Punishment Chains around the black dragon again while Lin Huang, who was riding on Charcoals back, had five Life Wheels with Life Power inserted into his sword. Sensing the chains, the black dragon finally snapped out of it and started struggling again. The appearance of the dragonkin had made it realized a bigger crisis. The human was much more terrifying than it had imagined! It had never thought that a human could get a powerful dragonkin to be his summoning monster. How could a triple mutated monster be captured by a human? All of these happened with the same human, which made it fear Lin Huang now. "I must escape, or else, Ill definitely die!" Haltharad only had one thought in its mind, which was to escape! Seeing that the chains were losing grip again, Lin Huang knew that it was his last chance to fight. "Charcoal, go!" Charcoal flapped its wings and dashed towards the black dragon. Since it had been a long time since Charcoal was let out, it was exceptionally aggressive. Although it was much smaller than the black dragon with a lower combat strength, it could feel the power of its own blood and the fear in the black dragons eyes. That allowed it to attack the black dragon without fear as it extended its claws towards the black dragons neck. The black dragon that was already restricted by the chains was now compacted on its neck. It opened its mouth wide, attempting to shake off the oppression. Seizing the opportunity, Lin Huang used Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps as he advanced towards the black dragon. A sparkly golden sword pierced into the wound on the left side of the black dragons head. The black dragons vision was blocked by Charcoal but when it saw the golden glow, it moved its head aside by instinct. However, Lin Huang, who was in the air, transformed the Vampire Particles into a pair of bloody wings on his back. It was his last bit of Life Power that he had. As the wings formed, he aimed for the black dragons wound. The black dragon wanted to run away desperately. Charcoal flapped its wings and released the black dragons neck. Charcoal knew that it was not as strong as the black dragon but it knew that it needed to help Lin Huang. Without any communication, Lin Huang noticed that Charcoal was buying him time. He rushed into the opening of the black dragons wound on its head. Without the Life Power defense, his sword that was shining brightly like the Sun plowed into the temporal bone of the black dragons head and right into its brain. The golden glow from Worldly Purification was released into its brain and the Molten Dragons brain melted "Congratulations, you have completed a quintuple cross-ranking kill. You''re rewarded with 20x card draws!" "Congratulations, you have obtained Epic Molten Dragon card pieces x2" 333 As Yet Unwitnessed After putting away the Molten Dragons carcass, Lin Huang recalled Charcoal and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit into their card forms. He used Life Crystals to activate his dimensional relic after making sure that he did not leave anything behind. He did not even draw the reward cards and left before his Life Power could recover. Because the appearance of dragonkin just now would attract many powerful monsters, it would be dangerous if he stayed even for a second more. The blue dimensional relic disappeared as he walked into it. Lin Huang did not go to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. Instead, he went to the area where Tyrant was in the midst of its unsealing. Seeing the blue dimensional relic, Kylie took out her spear and was ready to fight. As soon as she saw that it was Lin Huang, she put away her weapon. "Im sorry. Due to some reason, I needed to change the color of the dimensional relic," Lin Huang explained when he saw Kylies reaction. After keeping the dimensional relic, Lin Huang then took out a Life Power Refill Card to refill the Life Power that he had lost. Within seconds, his five empty Life Wheels were completely filled. He was relieved as he felt energized again. Looking at the blood stains on his clothes, Lin Huang said to Kylie, "Could you please look away? Im going to take a shower." Kylie heard what he said and turned around to look at him intentionally, not bothering to look away. "Never mind then, you can look if you want to. Im a man anyway, so theres nothing to lose." Lin Huang then took off his clothes. As he stripped down to his underwear, he felt shy as Kylie was still watching him intently. He did not want to take off his underwear. He then took out a large tub and filled it halfway with cold water. He then leaped into the tub with his underwear. It was a pleasure to shower with cold water under such scorching weather. Of course, he did not do that for enjoyment, but more to get rid of the smell and the blood stains on him. There was a strange fragrance from the black dragons blood. It smelled like musk. He was worried that the fragrance might attract trouble. After six tubs of water and using different brands of shower gel six times, there was still a light musk fragrance on his body, Lin Huang decided to give up. "It seems like I cant get rid of the fragrance. I shant waste water like this or else, I wont have any water to drink for a few days" He then got out of the bathtub and changed into a new pair of underwear while hiding behind the tub. He changed into new clothes and shoes as well. He then tossed his clothes into the lava and cleaned the tub before putting it into his storage space. He noticed that Kylie had been watching him. "Havent you seen a man taking a shower before?" Lin Huang teased. "A man who showers six times a day? No," a ladys voice said. "Whos that?" Lin Huang was shocked when he heard that voice and he looked around but did not see anything. He calmed himself down as he did not see Kylie taking out her weapon to defend them. "Was it you who spoke just now?" Kylie remained silent but Lin Huang knew the answer. "Its not that I want to shower six times a day but Ive got the black dragons fragrance on me" Lin Huang knew that Kylie misunderstood, so he explained immediately. "Oh yeah, why didnt you speak before this since you can talk?" "Because theres nothing to talk about." Kylie was cold towards him. "Alright then" Lin Huang accepted her response reluctantly as it was not bad that Kylie was able to express that. "Is there anything else that you would like to say to me? If not, I shall leave now. Ill come back to you guys a few days later after Tyrant is done with its unsealing," Lin Huang informed. "I have a question," Kylie spoke again after keeping quiet for a while. "Whats that?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "Why do you wear clothes when you shower?" "Erm" Lin Huang wanted to blame it on her as she had been watching him but he thought about it and gave another answer, "I usually wont wear anything but its different when theres a lady around. Its rude to be naked in front of the opposite sex." Lin Huang wanted to say "excluding special people" but he refrained from doing so as Kylie might ask him what that meant. He was a simple man who did not like to explain a lot. He thought it was unnecessary for Kylie to know about all that. "If theres nothing else, Ill make a move," Lin Huang said and summoned his dimensional relic. Seeing Kylie shake her head, he then stepped into the dimensional relic. As the blue dimensional relic disappeared, Kylie mumbled to herself, "Is it rude?" This time, Lin Huang went back to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who were hunting down the Smoldervenom Toad. Li Lang was recovering his Life Power with snacks that looked like spicy strips. The poker-faced staff saw Lin Huang walk out of the dimensional relic but did not say a thing. "Finally, youre back. Its been more than an hour. What monster were you after?" Yi Yeyu asked curiously. "Nothing much, it was just a double mutated monster that took some time." It had only taken Lin Huang less than ten minutes to kill the Molten Dragon but he had spent most of his time showering. "Whatre you eating?" "Spicy bacon strips. Its a snack thats made of marinated pork with a special spicy sauce. Its good! Its very popular on the Heart Network. Do you want to try some?" Yi Yeyu took out a packet. "Ill try one strip instead of an entire packet. I might have to throw it away if I dont like it." Lin Huang walked towards her. "Alright, then." Yi Yeyu offered a packet that was opened to him. Lin Huang took a strip from the packet, then passed it back to her. "Why do you smell so good?" As Lin Huang walked towards her, Yi Yeyu sniffed the fragrance on his body. "I had blood stains on my clothes, so I took a shower. I think its the fragrance of the shower gel," Lin Huang came up with an excuse. "This shower gel smells good," Yi Yeyu commented without thinking too much about it. Lin Huang was relieved as Yi Yeyu did not ask further. He put the spicy bacon strip into his mouth. A spicy and savory taste filled his mouth. After some chewing, he savored the fragrance of the bacon. Just like what Yi Yeyu said, it was delicious but it was a little heavy on the palate. As they chatted, Li Lang paused his Life Power recovery and opened his eyes. "Help me hunt down a Life Fire monster." Lin Huang was stunned when he heard what he said. "Sure!" He nodded and agreed immediately. 334 Demon Slayer Token Although Lin Huang agreed to help Li Lang, he looked at Yi Yeyu in confusion. He thought Li Lang must have been triggered, or else, he would not have requested to do that on his own. Lin Huang had mentioned helping Li Lang hunt down a Life Fire monster earlier but he was rejected instead. Lin Huang did not expect him to mention this matter on his own again. "Which Life Fire monster did you pick?" Lin Huang asked Li Lang. "I initially wanted a Barbed Savage but Id like a Hellish Spearfiend now," said Li Lang firmly. It was clear that he had decided. "Hellish Spearfiend" Lin Huang repeated that name softly. He could tell why Li Lang had chosen that monster. The tinder of a Life Fire came with the monsters original ability and potentially, other abilities as well just like Yi Yeyus Fire Phoenix that had bestowed her with the fire ability. Lin Huang was not sure if it came with any other abilities. Li Lang must be going for the Hellish Spearfiends Spearheart. Even without other abilities, the Spearheart alone would allow Li Lang to improve his understanding of spear fighting. Compared to the once mutated Barbed Savage, the Hellish Spearfiend was much more difficult to overcome. The Hellish Spearfiend was not only a dangerous demon but also a double mutated monster in human form. It held its weapon in its hand and usually sat on top of the pyramid among the monsters of the same level. The monster was no weaker than the Fiery Swordfiend that Yi Yeyu helped to kill for Lin Huang earlier. Perhaps, it was because of that that Li Lang did not target the Hellish Spearfiend at first as it was too far to reach. Although Lin Huang had no idea what inspired Li Lang to change his target, he decided to support Li Lang without thinking twice. He remembered clearly how Li Lang had helped him a year ago. Without him, Lin Huang would not be able to afford to buy all the materials that he needed for the Reserve Hunter assessment. He would not have reaped the success today without Li Lang. "I remember you didnt even research this ruins. Are you sure that theres such a monster here?" Lin Huang thought suddenly. "Yes, there is. Although I didnt research this ruins, I have researched about the Hellish Spearfiend. It has appeared in this ruins before, thats what I remembered. However, it was five years ago when it was discovered. The Hellish Spearfiend was at white flame-level that time, but Im not sure if it has leveled up to crimson flame-level now," Li Lang said and looked at Lin Huang. "If its now a crimson flame-level, thats bad luck for me and Ill just go for the Barbed Savage then." "Its okay if it has leveled up. Since you have picked this monster, no matter white or crimson flame-level, Ill try my best to help you to kill it. Do you remember the coordinates?" Lin Huang asked. "I only remember the rough coordinates," Li Lang admitted embarrassedly. "Mark it down." Lin Huang projected a map. Li Lang looked at the map for a while and drew a circle on the top right of the map. "It should be in this area." "Sure, lets look there." Lin Huang stared at the poker-faced staff who was far away. He did not enlist Bloodys help. "I suggest you guys stop wasting your time. Confronting a double mutated monster isnt as simple as you guys think. Dont even mention about crimson flame-level monsters, the ability of the white flame-level is not to be underestimated either. Dont think that just because you guys have me and your white flame-level friend around that you can do whatever you want." Poker Face thought they had made their decision simply because they had him and Yi Yeyu with them. "If you follow us, your tinder will disappear. You guys should not follow us tomorrow." Lin Huang glared at Poker Face and looked at Yi Yeyu. "Im okay." Yi Yeyu shrugged her shoulders. "I disagree! As your chaperone, I must follow you wherever you go. if the both of you decide to leave the group, Ill have to follow the two of you as there are more people in your group instead of following her alone!" Poker Face rejected Lin Huangs arrangement without hesitation. "We dont need you to protect us." Li Lang frowned. "Theres nothing to do with whether you need me or not. Thats the order that I received. Your willingness has nothing to do with me. Im just following the orders." Poker Face was upset. If not for the order from the management, he would not want to deal with them. Lin Huang frowned. He did not want Poker Face to follow them as he was the staff of the Union Government. If he found out that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor, Luo Li might hear about it and she might find out that he had the monster with the blood of God. After all, she had managed to come up with the speculation that was so close to the truth. If she managed to obtain more information, she would definitely find out. "Just following orders? Then, this should work." Yi Yeyu took out a black token the size of half a palm. It had a black metal mast with a ferocious demon face on top and there were two words in red at the back saying "demon slayer". "A demon slayer token?!" Poker Face was shocked when he saw the token. He stood stiffly immediately and bowed to Yi Yeyu. "Since you know what it is, that makes things simple. I order you to follow me when the both of them are hunting the Life Fire monster." "Yes, Madam!" Although Poker Face was unwilling, he did not dare to say no to her. "Its a deal!" Yi Yeyu looked smugly at Lin Huang and Li Lang. After Poker Face sat down in silence, he could not help but to ask Yi Yeyu, "Madam, may I know how did you get the demon slayer token?" "My family name is Yi. Yi Donglai is my great-grandfather," Yi Yeyu told him the truth. Poker Face was in shock, his mouth hung wide open for a while. "My great-grandfather was worried that something might happen to me in the ruins, so he gave me this. Ill have to return this to him after I get out." Yi Yeyu did not know the token would be so useful. "What does this token do?" Lin Huang asked. Although he knew about the Three Elite Divisions of the Union Government, he had no idea about the internal management of the troops. "The demon slayer token was given by the Union Government for the temporary assignment of staff. Those who hold the token can transfer all the staff below the team leader and deputy team leader to them. Its the equal to an instruction from the deputy team leader," Li Lang explained. "Its usually used when other troops need the Elite Division''s assistance in wars." "It would be incredibly powerful if a person owned tokens of the Three Elite Divisions" Lin Huang thought to himself. Lin Huang was relieved after settling Poker Face. He then discussed with Li Lang the details to hunt down the Hellish Spearfiend. "Focus on recovering your Life Power today. Well depart tomorrow morning to hunt down the monster!" Lin Huang came up with the arrangement after observing Li Langs condition. 335 One-trick Pony The next morning, Lin Huang washed up and had his breakfast. He then summoned the Dimensional Portal. Lin Huang had never been to the location where Li Lang specified. Therefore, he had never located the coordinates on Black Ink. He then chose a place that was nearest to the location specified by Li Lang so that they could be delivered safely. After saying goodbye to Yi Yeyu, the both of them entered the Dimensional Portal and appeared in another region. Upon arriving, Lin Huang took out a map and confirmed the direction to head towards. He then pointed in another direction. "We have to travel for about 2,000 kilometers by riding our flying mounts. We''ll then arrive at the area you mentioned earlier. I''ll ask Bloody to investigate the surrounding area. We''ll probably get the results in a short while." After Lin Huang finished his sentence, they summoned the Alexandrian Eagle and the Ashenquill Eagle. Soon, both of the flying mounts then advanced rapidly towards their destination following Lin Huang''s instructions. About two hours later, both of them finally arrived at their destination. As soon as they landed on the ground, Lin Huang recalled the Alexandrian Eagle and summoned Bloody again. "Bloody, please help us to look for the Hellish Spearfiend. It''s a white flame-level monster that is within 200 to 300 kilometers around us," Lin Huang immediately briefed. "Does it know how the Hellish Spearfiend looks like?" Li Lang started to feel worried when he saw Bloody pop its head out of Lin Huang''s sleeve. "Don''t worry, it''ll know how it looks like." Lin Huang was not going to explain Bloody''s intelligence. A few moments later, Bloody''s leech pods were quickly spread around while Lin Huang and Li Lang were waiting for the results at their original position. "Why did you suddenly change your mind?" Lin Huang asked. Perhaps, it was related to Yi Yeyu. He had not asked about it previously as Yi Yeyu was there. "Are you talking about the change of monster to extract the tinder?" Li Lang turned back, looking at Lin Huang. As Lin Huang nodded, he then answered, "I knew that there must be differences among monsters that have mutated once and those that have mutated twice. However, I never knew that there''s such a huge difference" "Before Yi Yeyu leveled up to holy fire-level, how big was the gap between our abilities?" Li Lang suddenly asked. "Without considering her unique physique, there''s not much difference between the both of you," Lin Huang shared his observation, "She has just mastered the saber realm and you''re halfway through mastering the spear realm. Both of you are equally good with combat skills and movement skills. You''re slightly better than her in actual combat and battle experience. Let''s ignore the equipment used as it''s not considered an actual ability. Overall, both of you are on the same level." Li Lang finally told him the reason why he had changed his mind, "I think so too. However, ever since she obtained the tinder of the Fire Phoenix, her abilities are incomparable with the earlier ones. I used to think that it''s because of her unique physique that she can hunt monsters easily. I then realized that this is not the truth. She can still easily kill monsters that are uncontrolled. I do have a friend that is on white flame-level too. His abilities were almost the same as mine previously. However, he killed a monster that had mutated once and his abilities are far beyond Yi Yeyu''s current abilities! "I wanted to upgrade to Transcendent without risking my life. Therefore, I''ve chosen the Barbed Savage as my target. However, after noticing the difference in their abilities, I found out that I can''t do that anymore. I don''t want to be an ordinary person. I want to be strong! Even if I can''t be as strong as you, I wish that I can be a true hunter or, at the very least, I can''t be weaker than Yi Yeyu is. She''s a woman and she dared to fight the Fire Phoenix. I''m a man and if I have no guts to fight the Hellish Spearfiend, am I not worse than a girl?!" "It''s good that you want to be strong. I''ll try my best to help you to complete the kill." After listening to what he said, Lin Huang grinned. He never knew that Li Lang''s target was only to achieve holy fire-level and live a peaceful life right after that. However, at least his fighting spirit had been reignited now. Lin Huang felt happy for him as well. After expressing how he felt, Li Lang remained silent. Lin Huang had no idea what he was thinking about and he kept quiet as well, patiently waiting for news from Bloody. About 20 minutes later, a notification from Bloody arrived. "Master, I found it! However, it''s not a white flame-level monster as you mentioned. It''s a crimson flame-level instead." "Where''s it?" Lin Huang immediately asked. Bloody quickly marked the location on the map. "Has Bloody found it?" Li Lang could not hear the conversation between Bloody and Lin Huang as they contacted through their minds. However, he saw that Bloody had made a mark on the map. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded and said, "It has found it but the monster has upgraded to crimson flame-level." "Crimson flame-level Can I handle it?" Li Lang panicked and he looked at Lin Huang desperately. "There''s nothing that we can''t handle. It''s just a crimson flame-level," Lin Huang said as he was the hunter that had killed the Molten Dragon on the first day after all. Of course, he would not be afraid of a crimson flame-level monster. "Let''s go." Lin Huang summoned the Alexandrian Eagle again and flew towards the sky, heading in the direction of the Hellish Spearfiend. Li Lang immediately rode on the Ashenquill Eagle and followed after him. It took only five to six minutes for both of the flying mounts to travel over a distance of more than 100 kilometers and arrive at their destination. The Alexandrian Eagle stopped at the side of the lava lake that possessed spiritual power and soon, Li Lang followed and descended. "Where''s the Hellish Spearfiend?" As soon as he reached the ground, Li Lang looked around. However, he could not find his target monster. "Don''t panic. Let''s make some arrangements." Lin Huang summoned the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit and got it to hide in the lake. "I''m a one-trick pony. I''m not sure if I can still directly kill the monster" Lin Huang mumbled in a low voice. "What''re you talking about?" "Nothing, just stay there and don''t move. I''ll then know exactly where the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit is hiding." Lin Huang asked Li Lang to stand at the side of the lake which was the position where the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit descended. He was standing less than five meters away from the lake. "Do I have to stand still?" Lin Huang had actually briefed Li Lang about his plan on the first day. However, he had just described it shortly and Li Lang had no idea how he should do it. "You can move, but not left or right. You can do anything after the monster is lured over here," Lin Huang explained. "Do you still remember when the right time for you to make an attack is?" "I''ll launch an attack right after it is completely locked in the Punishment Chains!" Li Lang nodded. "It''s highly possible that the monster will break the Punishment Chains. Therefore, its Life Power can''t be sealed for a long period of time. You have to grab the opportunity to attack. You might miss the chance if you wait for me to remind you," Lin Huang emphasized again. "Alright, I got it!" "Wait here. I''ll lure the monster!" Lin Huang rode on the Alexandrian Eagle again and moved forward 336 Lin Huang Versus The Hellish Spearfiend I It was said that the Hellish Spearfiend was discovered at Safety Zone No. 2, namely, the Dark Prison. It was located somewhere around the B-grade foothold. Therefore, it was named the Hellish Spearfiend. Lin Huang was not familiar with this type of monster. There were more than 200,000 types of monsters recorded in the monster guide. He had looked through only the monster types that he was interested in. He could actually recognize less than 30,000 types of monsters and he managed to remember the detailed information of about 10,000 types of monsters. Before last night, Lin Huang had no idea how the Hellish Spearfiend looked like at all. He then referred to the monster guide that he had downloaded previously before he slept. The Hellish Spearfiend was a human demon with high damage capabilities. Not only did it possess powerful close-range combat abilities, it could do well in ranged attacks as well. Its only weakness was that its strength was lower than the Molten Dragon and the Fire Phoenix. In a nutshell, it was a monster with great overall strength. It was definitely one of the strongest monsters among monsters of the same level. It was difficult to kill this type of monster from the front. Lin Huang mainly relied on the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit''s Punishment Chains. Once the monster was locked in the Punishment Chains, the battle would basically end. Sitting on the Alexandrian Eagle''s back, Lin Huang quickly located the coordinates specified by Bloody and he found the Hellish Spearfiend. It was a human-like monster that had a height of about 2.5 meters. Its body was covered by a thick, silver armor, including its head. There were two large horns on top of the silver armor and only its eyes could be seen. However, from afar, it looked so dark as if there was nothing inside the armor. Its long spear was special as it did not look like the human weapons that Lin Huang had seen before. It was at least 3 meters long and was all black in color. The unique part of the long spear was that it looked like a large umbrella that was closed. Other than its handle, it was shaped like a cone. These two parts occupied a third of the entire length of the long spear. Further up the long shaft, it was a cone-shaped object with screws. It looked like screws that had been magnified about 100 times. However, it was apparent that they were much sharper than regular screws. While Lin Huang was sizing up the monster in the air, it seemed like the Hellish Spearfiend could sense him as well. It suddenly lifted his head and looked towards his direction. Its dark eyes instantly lit up and turned red. He expected to be discovered. Mid-air, he exchanged glances with the Hellish Spearfiend. All of a sudden, the Hellish Spearfiend propelled forward towards Lin Huang. Without a moments hesitation, Lin Huang immediately told the Alexandrian Eagle to fly ahead, so that he could attract the monster to the targeted position. oon, the Hellish Spearfiend got closer to him. Fortunately, the lava lake was not too far away from him. In less than half a minute, the Alexandrian Eagle arrived at its destination and rapidly descended. Seeing that the Alexandrian Eagle had returned and the Hellish Spearfiend in silver armor following after them, Li Lang was alarmed. However, he still stood in his original position. The Alexandrian Eagle landed at a position that was less than 10 meters away from him and soon, Lin Huang immediately recalled it. The Hellish Spearfiend descended as well. He glanced at Li Lang and attacked Lin Huang without hesitation. Obviously, Lin Huang was rather intimidating to it. It initially landed at a position that was less than 20 meters away from Lin Huang. As it came one step forward, the long spear in its hand had already approached Lin Huang. It would penetrate through Lin Huang''s chest within just a distance of one to two meters. Lin Huang did not panic at all and extended his left palm. A Dark Shield was immediately formed, blocking the spear from moving any further. Vampire Particles immediately formed on his back, transforming into a bloody long blade. It then streaked in an arc across the sky and cut through the opponent as it bypassed the Dark Shield. The Hellish Spearfiend was shocked when it saw that its attack was blocked. As it was getting ready to increase the strength of its attack, a bloody glow struck it and it immediately retreated. To the Hellish Spearfiend, the aura of the human who was standing in front of him was not powerful. However, his body gave off a strange smell as if it was the remnant scent after killing a strong monster. It was associated with a multitude of other scents and the Hellish Spearfiend had no way to distinguish what monster he had actually killed. However, this put the Hellish Spearfiend on high alert. Therefore, the Hellish Spearfiend decided to dodge his attack instead of fighting back at the very first moment when Lin Huang struck. As the Dark Shield disappeared, the Hellish Spearfiend could then see that Lin Huang was in an unusual state. His eyes had turned blood red and a sharp blade that was created by a peculiar energy was extended from his back. He no longer looked like a human. The Hellish Spearfiend was standing more than 20 meters away from him and it started to size up Lin Huang as it could not confirm if its opponent was still a human. Lin Huang immediately grinned as he saw its reaction. On his back, three bloody wings rapidly formed. Despite his Vampire Particles being able to transform into any form, he had chosen to transform them into wings. It was mainly because he was most familiar with this mode. As soon as four of his wings were fully developed, Lin Huang summoned his sword relic. His Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps were activated simultaneously. As he stomped on the ground hard, he pounced on his opponent. Although close-range combat was not the monsters weakness, Lin Huang did not have many skills in ranged attack. Therefore, he had chosen close-range combat since he was confident in that. The Hellish Spearfiend''s abilities were on par with the Molten Dragon''s abilities. The only difference was the high temperature of the Molten Dragon''s sword that restricted Lin Huang''s close-range combat abilities to some extent while the Hellish Spearfiend did not possess such an ability. This was the reason why Lin Huang had the courage to go for close-range combat. As Lin Huang stepped forward, he rapidly appeared at a position in front of the Hellish Spearfiend which was less than two meters away from it. Li Lang, who was watching this, felt like the distance between them had been shortened drastically. As a matter of fact, it was actually an illusion since Lin Huang''s speed exceeded what his vision could capture. As soon as he stepped into the attack range, Lin Huang''s Thunder Sting was unleashed without a moment of hesitation, creating layers of sword shadows in the air. His Seraphic Speed was complemented with the fastest sword skill he possessed. Lin Huang made 58 consecutive attacks in a single second. Encountering such a strong opponent, he had managed to break through his personal best as he could only strike 46 consecutive attacks during practice sessions. It was lightning fast! The Hellish Spearfiend''s first impression of Lin Huang was that he did not intimidate it regardless of his body movement skill, sword skill, or even his explosive speed. After all, it had achieved crimson flame-level. However, this did not stop it from fighting back as its speed was on par with Lin Huang''s. The spear in its hand immediately deflected the attack. The long shaft resembled a large shield, blocking more than ten of Lin Huang''s attacks. He was not weak at all! That was the second thought that flashed through the Hellish Spearfiend''s mind. The strength of each strike launched by Lin Huang was on par with the attack strength of a white flame-level hunter. More than ten strikes rained on it and it seemed like they were all formed into one powerful strike. The Hellish Spearfiend nearly failed to avoid the attacks. Perhaps, the large spear in its hand might slip had Lin Huang made another one or two more strikes, which was the reason why he immediately retreated the next moment. "In fact, its not strong. The consecutive attacks made just now are about to break its defense. Otherwise, it would not have attempted to pull further apart." Seeing his opponent''s reaction, Lin Huang grinned again as he knew that the opponent''s defense had reached its limit. He was even more confident now although he was previously worried if he could break the opponent''s defense without using Worldly Purification. However, the answer was apparent now. "Come at me again!" Lin Huang yelled. He then leaped and plunged towards the Hellish Spearfiend once more. 337 Lin Huang Versus The Hellish Spearfiend II "Is that Lin Huang''s true ability?!" Li Lang, who was standing somewhere near the lava lake, was astounded. Not only did Lin Huang launch a frontal attack on the Hellish Spearfiend, he could even pin down his opponent, blowing Li Langs mind. The Hellish Spearfiend was not an ordinary holy fire-level monster. Its ability was on par with a crimson flame-levels and it was a double mutated monster. Perhaps it was comparable to many of the blue flame-level monsters. As a human-like monster, its intelligence was similar to humans as well. Despite such circumstances, Lin Huang still managed to launch a frontal attack, indicating that his abilities were incredibly powerful. "He must be a genius," the Hellish Spearfiend immediately concluded. His combat level did not match his abilities though. Be it his strength, speed, or even the use of sword skills, they all exceeded the standard of a gold-level hunter. Lin Huang got stronger as the battle progressed. It had been a long time since he had been engaged in a close combat like this. He launched consecutive attacks with his Thunder Sting, forcing the Hellish Spearfiend to retreat. It was incapable of fighting back at all. Nevertheless, the Hellish Spearfiend was not weak. The size of its spear was too big and therefore, was not suitable for close combat. Lin Huang noticed this weakness, so he intentionally approached it and directly rained a storm-like attack, hence his opponent would have no way to counterattack. The Hellish Spearfiend retreated several times and it wanted to stay a distance away from Lin Huang. However, it was not as fast as Lin Huang and the human managed to catch up with him.It seemed like the Hellish Spearfiend was pinned down by Lin Huang. Lin Huang clearly knew that despite his Thunder Sting taking the lead and his lightning fast speed, it had a limited effect on the Hellish Spearfiend. In addition, it was protected by an armor that did not look cheap at all. Even if his attack hit it, it was not very likely that the attack would cause any severe injuries. Once his opponent realized this and endured the attacks, he would be incapable of taking the lead like he was now doing once he was forced out of the attack range. However, Lin Huang did not feel worried about that. He was clear about what was going to happen in the later part of the battle. What he currently had to do was to fight heartily. The sword in Lin Huang''s hand was shrouded in the golden Life Power. In actual combat, he became even more familiar with Thunder Sting, which was complemented with the second level of sword realm and each of the skills was performed almost perfectly. There was no flaw that the Hellish Spearfiend could figure out to attack back. It could only choose to defend against the attack helplessly. Each onslaught performed by the Thunder Sting was extremely fast. Lin Huang continuously attacked it and his sword that was shrouded in Life Power had created layers of golden shadows in the air, enveloping the Hellish Spearfiend. When he switched skills, four of his bloody wings transformed into sharp blades at the same time. He was not giving his opponent a chance to rest at all. Despite the Hellish Spearfiend defending against his assailant, not a single attack could break through its defense. He could feel that Lin Huang''s single strike was not that strong. However, it dared not use its body to defend against the attack. The close combat lasted for about ten minutes. Still, Lin Huang was taking the lead. As Lin Huang was thoroughly focused, he started to increase the speed of his sword. It started from 58 hits within one second, to 59 hits, 60, 61... The Hellish Spearfiend was trying to adapt to Lin Huang''s blitz speed. However, as Lin Huang started to increase his attack frequency, it could no longer bear it. It seemed to notice that if this continued, it would be completely pinned down by its opponent. Then, the Hellish Spearfiend started to switch from defense mode to attack mode. It completely ignored Lin Huang''s long sword that was about to pierce through its chest. Suddenly, it loosened its grasp on the long spear in his hand. The next moment when it gripped the long spear tightly, the Hellish Spearfiend grasped the top part of the shaft where it was less than a meter away from the tip of the spear. The tip of the long spear was about to pierce through Lin Huang''s chest rapidly. Although it could not strike at full force, the hit was so sudden and extremely fast. In addition to the short distance between the both of them, Lin Huang did not manage to summon his Dark Shield in time to defend against the attack. He could only use one of his bloody wings to transform into a large shield so that he could dodge the attack. The Hellish Spearfiend then took that opportunity to stay a distance away from Lin Huang, returning to its original way of gripping the spear. Before it could even balance itself, it lowered its head and looked where Lin Huang had slashed its body. There were only 23 injury points on its body. Lin Huang had only managed to leave a scratch that was about 10 centimeters long on its armor. Without a doubt, the attack would not be able to break its defense, let alone cause any injuries. Although his opponent managed to pull their distance apart, Lin Huang did not chase after it. This was because he knew that it had already discovered that he was unable to break away its defense through close combat. It was meaningless to go after it. "Human, Ive to admit that you''re strong but that''s your limit. There''s a big gap between our combat strength. If there''s no way that you can overlay your skills, you''ll be unable to break my defense." The Hellish Spearfiend picked up his long spear and pointed at Lin Huang. As soon as it finished its sentence, it glanced at Li Lang who was standing not far away from Lin Huang. It then continued, "I can sense that your companion has not even achieved the gun realm. His combat strength should be weaker than yours. Therefore, even if both of you were to fight me together, there''s no way that both of you can defeat me." "You''re not the one who can decide the outcome of the battle." Lin Huang then pounced towards the Hellish Spearfiend, turning four of his bloody wings into sharp blades before blasting off towards its red eyes. The Hellish Spearfiend scoffed. It seemed like it was angry that Lin Huang had provoked it. Picking up the long spear in its hand, it flashed through the air and easily deflected Lin Huang''s attack. Three meters away would be the main battleground! Lin Huang could then confirm his prediction earlier. "It''s true that my attack can''t break your defenses. Your defense can''t break my mine either. If our energy consumption continues draining in such a way, I might not lose!" Lin Huang grinned as he provoked it again. "You''re overconfident, human! You managed to dodge my random attacks but that doesn''t mean that you can endure the attack that I''m going to launch at full force." The Hellish Spearfiend was quite confident in his combat strength. "I''ll show you how big the gap between us is!" As soon as it finished its words, the Hellish Spearfiend transformed into a beam of silver glow and dove towards Lin Huang. It was so swift that it looked as if a silver thread had streaked across the ground. Lin Huang felt no fear as he grabbed his sword with both of his hands and attacked from the front. Bang! Right at the moment when the screw-like spear tip crashed into the golden knife blade, the whole battleground instantly exploded. Soon, a human silhouette appeared, standing in its original position. Impressively, it was a spearman dressed in silver armor. Lin Huang spat out blood and retreated more than ten meters away, managing to balance himself. He was just one to two meters away from falling into the spiritual lava lake. "Indeed, I can''t fight the Hellish Spearfiend from the front," Lin Huang thought in his heart. As soon as the Hellish Spearfiend saw this, he took the opportunity and headed towards Lin Huang, knowing that Lin Huang''s defensive abilities would be incapable of protecting him from the corrosive nature of the spiritual lava lake. With just one hit, it would force Lin Huang to retreat and fall into the lava. Basically, the battle would then end there. Lin Huang could feel the high temperature emanating from the spiritual lava behind him. He did not turn back, fixing his gaze on the Hellish Spearfiend. He did not hesitate when he saw it heading for him and his left palm formed the Dark Shield in the air again. At almost the same moment, the Hellish Spearfiend descended on him as well. The tip of its spear crushed into the Dark Shield. Bang! As soon as an explosive noise was heard, black Life Power then gushed into the long spear. The screw-like spear tip began to rotate insanely like a high-powered electrical drill 338 Li Lang Leveled Up The changes that occurred in its long spear were out of Lin Huang''s expectations He was quite confident in his defenses as he knew how terrifying Worldly Purification was. The Dark Shield was capable of defending against an attack that was ten times stronger than the Worldly Purification. Therefore, he was not worried that it would collapse. Even if it was being attacked by a unique skill, it would not collapse in such a short while. Lin Huang grinned. On his back, four of the bloody wings transformed into sharp blades. They then bypassed the Dark Shield and plunged towards the Hellish Spearfiend. It seemed like the Hellish Spearfiend expected that Lin Huang''s attack would not be able to break its defense. It ignored his attack, inserting its Life Power at full force as it wanted to penetrate through Lin Huang''s black defensive layer. Four of the bloody blades dashed against its body several times and the sound of colliding metal could be heard. On the layer of silver armor, not even a scratch was detected. "Are you trying to tickle me?" The Hellish Spearfiend teased. It could not see that behind the Dark Shield, Lin Huang was grinning. The bloody sharp blades that were made of Vampire Particles had instantly transformed into ropes. The ropes had twisted around its arms and legs when it let its guard down. The Hellish Spearfiend was terrified. As it was about to get rid of the ropes, a few flaming chains suddenly extended from the dark. However, as soon as it managed to break away from two of the bloody ropes, its ankles were locked in the Punishment Chains. Its Life Power was completely sealed and soon, the Hellish Spearfiend was locked in nine Punishment Chains. Li Lang, who was standing not far away from them, appeared, turning the long spear in his hand into a spiritual snake. It then penetrated through the Hellish Spearfiend''s eyes. The red glow in one of the Hellish Spearfiend''s eyes dimmed Sensing the Hellish Spearfiend''s aura fading, Lin Huang then removed the Dark Shield and recalled the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. He retreated, leaving Li Lang with the Hellish Spearfiend to complete the extraction of its tinder. Li Lang pressed against the Hellish Spearfiend''s head, inserting his Life Power into it. Soon, the tinder inside its body reacted. Obviously, he was highly compatible with the tinder in the Hellish Spearfiend''s body. Watching Li Lang''s aura start to change, Lin Huang was relieved as he knew that Li Lang had successfully obtained its tinder. Lin Huang then shifted his gaze to the Hellish Spearfiend. Despite looking relaxed during the battle, it was not easy for him. Encountering such a formidable enemy like the Hellish Spearfiend, he could only manage to defeat his enemy with his best efforts. "There''s nothing wrong with my speed and sword skill but my strength is much weaker than the monster. Even if I possess supernatural powers or any passive skills that overlay my strength, its still only comparable to white flame-level humans. If I clashed with a crimson flame-level monster from the front, there''ll only be one outcome, which is an immediate collapse. "Also, there''s a gap between our Life Powers. Its Life Power is obviously stronger and more concentrated than mine. The primary reason that I can''t break its defense is that it has added its Life Power to the surface of its silver armor. It significantly reduced the effect of the addition of my Life Power. "Besides, the sword that I''m using is not a high-quality relic as it''s only a 3-star relic. If it can be upgraded to four or five stars, most probably there''ll be an increase in my attack strength" Lin Huang analyzed the results in his heart. He had discovered many of his weaknesses from the battle and he was thinking of ways to improve so that he could do better. "Before upgrading to holy fire-level, there is still room for improvement in my strength through practice. I''ve not gone through any special strength training session so far. As for my Life Power, there''ll be a substantial increase in it after I''ve leveled up to complete gold-level. Despite being incomparable to that of a holy fire-levels, there''ll be a slight improvement in my attack and defensive strength. In regard to the sword relic, I''ll look for some other swords after getting out of this place. It''ll be best to get a 5-star relic, so I can directly use it until I reach holy fire-level" At the side of the lava lake, Li Lang took more than three hours to complete the ignition of the tinder and the initial process of his body transformation. The first thing he did when he opened his eyes was to express his gratitude to Lin Huang, "Thank you. Without your help, it would be almost impossible to obtain the tinder." "You''re welcome. That''s what a friend should do." Lin Huang nodded with a smile and looked at the dead body on the ground. "The carcass is mine." "Of course!" Li Lang immediately confirmed. It was useless for him to take the carcass. At most, he could only earn some credit points. Furthermore, Lin Huang should be the one who earned the carcass as Lin Huang had left the last hit to him instead of killing it right away. After storing the carcass, Lin Huang then summoned the Black Ink that was blue in color. Both of them then strode over to the door. They returned to the place where they had said goodbye to Yi Yeyu in the morning. She had remained in her original position. The poker-faced staff was busy barbecuing a thigh of an unknown monster that was more than two meters in length. After it was grilled, the thigh turned golden brown with a shiny surface, giving off a fragrant scent. Yi Yeyu was fixated staring at the thigh. Lin Huang and Li Lang turned their gazes on the thigh as well as soon as they saw it. "Both of you are back! What took you so long?" Yi Yeyu grumbled. She knew that Li Lang had leveled up and was now on the same level as her which was white flame-level. However, she did not feel surprised at all. "Eh, I need some time to ignite the tinder." Li Lang beamed. Right after he had leveled up to white flame-level, his mood improved. "Did you guys really kill the Hellish Spearfiend?" It seemed like Poker Face could not believe that. He felt that both of them must have hunted down other monsters for Li Lang to obtain the tinder. "Of course." Li Lang nodded confidently. Poker Face glanced at Li Lang. Still, he felt that he was lying. However, he did not say it out loud and continued grilling meat. "Hurry, show me how the Hellish Spearfiend looks like!" Yi Yeyu came over and asked Lin Huang. Lin Huang then took out the carcass helplessly. Poker Face then took a look at the dead body and found out that it was really the Hellish Spearfiend that they had killed. As he looked at it carefully, he looked even more surprised. "Is this a crimson flame-level Hellish Spearfiend?!" "How is it possible? How did you know that it''s a crimson flame-level monster?" Yi Yeyu asked curiously. "Look at its arms. The crystals on both of its arms are red in color," Poker Face explained, "The color of the crystal on its arms would differ if it possessed different combat strength." The three of them then noticed that a thumb-sized red crystal on both of the Hellish Spearfiend''s arms which were garbed in silver armor. It seemed like there were two rubies inlaid on its arms. "You are now capable of killing a crimson-flame level double mutated monster?!" After confirming the monster''s combat strength, Yi Yeyu was bewildered and she stared at Lin Huang. She felt that Lin Huang was getting unpredictable. "I was just lucky." Lin Huang grinned, seeing that Poker Face was looking at him with a strange expression. He then changed the topic, "It seems like we came back at the right time. We have meat for lunch!" 339 Attack by the Monster Horde Since Lin Huang and Li Lang joined them for lunch, Poker Face did not say anything because he would not have been able to finish the thigh with Yi Yeyu anyway. After lunch, the three of them started chatting. Poker Face did not join their conversation. He sat aside and took a nap. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang''s journey to the ruins was complete since their ultimate goal was to obtain a tinder and level up to holy fire-level. They had now achieved their goals. After Tyrant''s unlocking was completed, Lin Huang could then achieve his target as well. The rest were a bonus to him. Since three of them had completed the second round of training, they were relaxed. Poker Face did not urge three of them to hunt for any more monsters as he had heard from Yi Yeyu that they had already completed their mission. "Lin Huang, both of us have achieved our goal. What''s your purpose of participating the training? Do you need our help?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Basically, I''ve achieved what I wanted to as well. However, I''m interested in the reward which is the monster egg." Lin Huang said with a smile. "The person who ranks first will get rewarded with the monster egg?" Li Lang frowned. However, when he thought carefully, it was indeed possible for Lin Huang to get the first place. "What if both of us pass the carcasses that we killed to you? You can then redeem the points with those carcasses," Yi Yeyu suggested. "Isn''t that considered cheating?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "No." Poker Face slowly opened his eyes. Obviously, he had been listening to their conversation with his eyes closed. "The three of you have completed the second round of training and the third round of training has yet to start. Therefore, you are in between the second and the third round of training now. During this period of time, its break time for trainees. You''re a free man now and you can assign any tasks to yourself. You can do whatever you like and you have the freedom to distribute the monsters killed as well. Be it the rules of the second or the third round of training, they dont apply during the break," Poker Face explained in detail. As soon as he finished his sentence, he closed his eyes again and dozed as if nothing had happened. After listening to what he had said, they came to a conclusion C the dead bodies of the monsters could be handled in whatever way they liked. "Alright, I''ll treat you guys to a meal if I can get the first place," Lin Huang promised as a way to express his gratitude. "I''ve heard from my grandfather that the monster egg was dropped by a chief-level monster when his disciple killed it previously. It was a monster that went through a triple mutation. His disciple then gave it to him as a gift. I''m not sure what kind of monster it was exactly. If you''re able to train it, it''ll be really useful to you in future," Yi Yeyu said. "Its a monster that has gone through three mutations and possesses phoenix blood in its body. Why didn''t your grandfather keep it for you?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "It was originally intended for me but we found out later that my constitution is rather special. My grandfather said that the concentration of phoenix blood inside my body is rather low and the entire family is now helping me look for an actual phoenix." Yi Yeyu did not bother hiding anything from them. "The head of armed forces is really generous!" Li Lang was envious of Yi Yeyu. Even Poker Face''s eyelids twitched as he heard that. If the people over there did not know Yi Yeyu''s family background and what they said had been heard by strangers, perhaps nobody would believe that it was true. Lin Huang smiled. He was not envious of Yi Yeyu''s family since there was nothing to envy. He was quite satisfied with his current condition. He had such a powerful Goldfinger like Xiao Hei. As long as his Goldfinger could be developed further, he could train a bunch of pure phoenixes as well as dragonkins and monsters with phoenix blood. "I''m not an Imperial Censor. I can only engage one pet monster. Therefore, I have to choose it carefully," Yi Yeyu said with a serious expression. As soon as she finished her sentence, she raised her head and looked at Li Lang, then said, "You have leveled up to holy fire-level. It''s time to consider having a pet monster." "I should really get one. I''ll ask around and see if there''s any pet monster that suits me after we leave." Li Lang nodded with a smile. There was actually no restriction on the combat strength in order to engage a pet monster, provided that one''s Life Power was capable of doing so. It was because one would have to insert a great amount of Life Power in order to hatch a monster egg. Therefore, it would be impossible for an ordinary person to hatch one. However, anyone from iron to gold-level could do it. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang considered having a pet monster only after they had leveled up to holy fire-level as they spent most of their time practicing before they achieved holy fire-level. They did not have sufficient time and energy to take care of the pet monster. Upon achieving holy fire-level, the increase in combat strength would start to slow down. They would then have extra time and energy, hence they would be free to take care of a pet monster. In fact, most of them who were confident to upgrade to holy fire-level would make such a decision. Those who had a pet monster before they could achieve holy fire-level were those that were incapable of upgrading to holy fire-level. The biggest difference between a pet monster and a summoning monster was that the latter could be an adult. However, a pet monster had to be trained during its infancy stage. Therefore, to train a pet monster was far more troublesome than a summoning monster. This was also the reason why many people were envious of the Imperial Censor. While three of them were chatting happily, Poker Face, who was taking a nap, suddenly stood up. "Three of you, quickly get ready! There are monsters approaching us!" Poker Face shouted at three of them. They immediately stood up as well and took out their weapons. "What monster is that?" Yi Yeyu asked. "It is a monster horde formed by a group of gold-level monsters. There are more than 300 of them," Poker Face answered. "Are they coming after us? Or are they just passing through?" Lin Huang then asked. "They look excited and it doesnt seem like they are just passing through." "Could the barbecues aroma have attracted them?" Li Lang stared at the charcoal fire that had not been completely extinguished. "That''s possible." Lin Huang nodded. However, he could vaguely feel that things were not that simple. Soon, four of them were surrounded by the monster horde. Lin Huang could finally see their enemy. They were Black Spiritual Serpents. Black Spiritual Serpents lived in the spiritual volcano. They looked like snakes. In fact, the Black Spiritual Serpent was a black spiritual object that had an elongated body. It was a spirit type monster that existed only in its shadow form. They liked to live in places where spiritual power gathered as they relied on the spiritual power of various elements to survive. Seeing this type of monster, Lin Huang and the rest of them immediately turned down the possibility that the monsters were coming after the grilled meat. The monsters could not taste and smell at all. Spiritual power was their only food. They were not interested in human food at all. Despite the large number of Black Spiritual Serpents that came after them, they were too weak compared to the three of them. In less than two minutes, more than 300 Black Spiritual Serpent were destroyed. Just when Lin Huang and Li Lang were busy collecting the carcasses, Poker Face shouted at the three of them again, "The monster horde is attacking us again!" The second batch of monsters was a group of Terraflame Scorpions. They were gold-level monsters as well. There were more than the previous batch of monsters - more than 1,000 of them. The monsters were rapidly slaughtered by them as well. "This is unusual" After killing the second batch of monsters, Lin Huang frowned. Right at that moment, Poker Face''s Transmission Snail vibrated abruptly 340 Incident Investigation Poker Face got up and avoided Lin Huang and the rest of them. He then connected to the Transmission Snail as he walked away. The three of them did not intend to eavesdrop anyway and continued chatting. After a short while, Poker Face put away his Transmission Snail and returned. However, he looked upset. "We have to go back to the mission submission area," he said while he approaching three of them. "Is it related to the monster attack just now?" Lin Huang could roughly guess the reason behind this. Poker Face nodded. "Zang Bing said that there''s a monster outbreak. The reason is still unknown. For the sake of the trainees safety, we have to bring all the trainees back." "I''ve just leveled up. I wanted to kill some monsters for practice" Li Lang forced a smile. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang patted Li Lang''s shoulder and summoned the Dimensional Portal. The four of them entered the Dimensional Portal and soon, they appeared where they had previously gathered. When they returned, many of the trainees were already back. Poker Face and the rest of the staff had a dimensional relic given by the Union Government. Although Lin Huang knew that as well, he did not want to trouble Poker Face and summoned the Dimensional Portal immediately. As he gazed at the crowd, Lin Huang looked towards Zang Bing''s direction. Luo Li and Si Kongjian were there as well. Zang Bing looked somewhat gloomy. Other than that, Luo Li and Si Kongjian looked like they usually did. The trainees were discussing the incident of the monster outbreak. The area was bustling with chatter. A man saw Li Lang from afar and walked toward Li Lang. "Li Lang, have you leveled up?!" The man was 20 years old and he was slightly taller than Li Lang. "Yes, Brother Zhou." Li Lang smiled. "I''ve told you that it''s not difficult to kill a Barbed Savage. If you''re willing to spend some time, perhaps you''ll be able to kill it on your own." Brother Zhou patted Li Lang''s shoulder. "My friend helped me to kill it." Li Lang did not explain that he had not obtained the tinder from a Barbed Savage. Brother Zhou then glanced at Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. When he looked at Yi Yeyu, his eyes lingered on Yi Yeyu''s slender legs and her busty boobs. Despite being dressed in a military uniform, her attractive body was not covered. Soon, Brother Zhou fixed his gaze on Lin Huang. "Is Lin Huang the one who helped you?" Brother Zhou could see that among three of them, only Lin Huang''s aura was on gold-level. He could recognize that Lin Huang was Mr. Fu''s disciple as well. He was the first one that Yi Donglai had appointed to enter the ruins. "I''m Zhou Quan, nice to meet you." "Hello," Lin Huang acknowledged politely. Since Zhou Quan knew his name, there was no need for him to repeat it. "You are" Zhou Quan then shifted his gaze toward Yi Yeyu. "She is Yi Yeyu, the eldest daughter of the Yi family," Li Lang introduced with a smile. "You''re from the Yi family? The head of the armed force?!" Zhou Quan opened his eyes wide. Among the royal families in Division7, other than the military, there was no other Yi family. Li Lang had intentionally emphasized the Yi family. Of course, he was referring to the Yi family of the armed forces. It was impossible that no one knew who they were. After he had confirmed her identity, Zhou Quan held an obvious reverence for her. The Yi family was somehow a powerful family in Division7 and was comparable to the six royal families. They were at the top of the royal family pyramid in Division7. Small potatoes like him could not afford to offend them. "Brother Zhou, you''re well-informed. Regarding the monster outbreak, can you tell me exactly what happened?" Li Lang immediately asked after introducing Zhou Quan to the both of them. "I don''t know exactly what happened. However, our team has encountered several batches of monster attacks earlier. The staff then informed us to come back to this area and gather with all of you," Zhou Quan explained briefly. What they experienced was almost the same as Lin Huang and the rest of them. "So, you guys were attacked by the monsters too." Li Lang then looked at Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu. "I''ve asked two other teams and the same thing happened to them as well. Obviously, there''s something wrong with the monsters." As he listened to what Li Lang said, Zhou Quan knew that Li Lang and his team had encountered the same thing as well. "I hope that the examiners can figure out what caused the monster outbreak as soon as possible. Otherwise, we wont be able to continue with the training." Lin Huang''s heart sank when he heard what Zhou Quan said. If the examiners were to stop the training and send all of them out, Tyrant''s unsealing would be stopped as well. The ruins belonged to an independent world. If Tyrant was left in the ruins and Lin Huang got out of the ruins, he would not be able to sense the existence of the card. Under such circumstances, the system would automatically recall the monster card. Of course, Lin Huang would not want this to happen. "Xiao Hei, will the monster card be affected if the unsealing process is terminated?" Lin Huang thought of asking Xiao Hei about it first. "If the unsealing process of the monster card is terminated, itll be considered a failure. The monster card that fails to unseal will be completely sealed at the state it was in before unsealing. It can''t be unsealed for the second time and it can''t be leveled up as well. However, the monster card can still be summoned as usual. "That being said, if the unsealing is terminated, Tyrant will remain on complete gold-level forever and it''ll be unable to upgrade to holy fire-level. It can''t evolve for the third time as well. Its combat strength and rarity will remain stagnant forever" Lin Huang''s face turned grave. Tyrant was the second monster card that he had obtained. They had overcome so many dangers together. He could not accept if he was to put the card aside. "No! Whatever the decision of the examiner is, I must stay!" About ten minutes later, the supervisors then led the trainees back to the area where they had first gathered. Zang Bing counted the number of people. Right after he had confirmed that nobody was absent, he started talking. "I guess everyone has been informed by our staff the reason why we asked every one of you to come back. Theres a monster outbreak in the whole ruins and the reason is still unknown. Many of the trainees have encountered the monster attack. For the sake of everyone''s safety, we asked all of you to come back. The examiners and our staff will investigate the reason behind the monster outbreak as soon as possible. We''ll then decide if the assessment should be continued or stopped. Please be patient. Set up your tents and stay here for two days. We''ll know the results soon" "It''s just a monster outbreak. Is there really a need to stop the training?" Li Lang felt that Zang Bing and two of the examiners had overreacted. "We''ve previously encountered gold-level monsters. What if the monster outbreak is not only on gold-level and it involves holy fire-level monsters as well?" Yi Yeyu asked LI Lang. "This area is a 2-star ruin. There are more than 10,000 holy fire-level monsters. Even people like us who are on holy fire-level can fight them, what about the crimson flame-level, blue flame-level, and purple flame-level monsters?" What Yi Yeyu had voiced out was exactly what Lin Huang was worried about. If holy fire-level monsters were involved in the outbreak, it was highly possible that they would stop the assessment. After comforting the crowd, the three examiners held a discussion. Soon, Luo Li and Si Kongjian summoned their own Dimensional Portal and left. Only Zang Bing was there to keep everyone in order 341 The Golden Toad A few hours ago In the middle of the lava sea, there was a floating golden island. It was a barren land. Not a single blade of grass grew there, let alone trees. In mid-air, a bloody giant eagle flew across the ocean. The size of the giant eagle was extremely gargantuan. If it was to extend its wings, it would measure at least hundreds of meters long. It was at least a blue flame-level monster that exuded a threatening aura. Its appearance had caused many of the monsters around the lava sea to sink further into the water as they were all afraid that they might become its prey. When the bloody giant eagle saw the golden island, it circled above the sea. As soon as it had confirmed that it was safe, it then landed on the island to get some rest. Right at that moment, a red glow burst out from the surface of the ocean. A long howl was heard and the red glow instantly penetrated through the giant eagle''s body. Soon, the golden island rapidly floated in the air and the area of the island constantly expanded. Eventually, a pair of large eyes suddenly appeared, opening its mouth wide in mid-air. The red glow that struck the giant eagle reflected, drawing the giant monster into its huge mouth. Impressively, the golden island was actually an extremely large, giant toad. At that moment, it had revealed half of its body. The people could now see how it actually looked like. The bloody giant eagle was unaware of it and had become its food. The Golden Toad was chomping on its food furiously and soon, it had swallowed the giant eagle in less than two minutes. It then sank back into the sea, revealing part of its back that was more than 10,000 square meters wide. In just a short while, a yellowish brown, calf-sized toad swam towards it. "Boss! The Molten Dragon''s assistant is here. It has an important message to deliver!" The Golden Toad floated up, revealing its green eyes and asked, "Which assistant?" "It''s the Blazing Alligator." "Bring it over." Golden Toad drifted further up in the air, showing its chin and belly. A few moments later, the yellowish brown toad swam towards the Golden Toad together with the Blazing Alligator. The yellowish brown toad then left. "Tell me, why is the lizard looking for me?" Golden Toad asked rudely, intentionally criticizing the black dragon as a lizard. "Mr. Jin, our boss has died. We''re here to take refuge in you," the giant alligator directly told the Golden Toad the terrifying news and the purpose that it was there as well. "What?!" The Golden Toad was dumbfounded. He never thought that this would happen. Could it be a trick? The Golden Toad reacted as if Blazing Alligator was lying to it in the first place. It opened the lumps on its back. There were green eyeballs inside the lumps. People who suffered from trypophobia would get goosebumps if they saw it. As soon as the eyes opened, the giant alligator began to go into a trance. "Has the Molten Dragon died?" Golden Toad asked as he wanted to make sure that it was in a state of hypnosis. "Yes!" The Golden Toad was stunned right after it heard the answer. "Is it because it failed to upgrade to a dragonkin?" It immediately recalled the dragonkin''s aura that it had sensed on the first day. At that moment, it wondered if the Molten Dragon had leveled up. It originally thought that the Molten Dragon had sent its assistant to capture them. "I don''t know how it died. However, its remaining soul fire has been completely extinguished right after the aura of the dragonkin appeared." As soon as the giant alligator finished its sentence, it told the Golden Toad about how Luo Li had forced the Molten Dragon to run away without its shell two days ago. "Are you saying that a woman nearly killed the black dragon with just one hit?!" Golden Toad was stunned. "Is she a chief-level human?" "No, from her aura, perhaps she''s the same level as Boss which was also on gold flame-level. However, she has indeed defeated Boss with just one hit." The Blazing Alligator shook its head. "They are on the same combat strength. How could she defeat a double mutated dragon? The human must be comparable to a triple mutated genius." The Golden Toad could hardly remain calm, knowing that there was such a powerful human invading their little world. "Why is she looking for trouble with your boss?" "Boss asked us to look for a human the last few days. It says that the human owns a relic that can help him to complete the third mutation. Therefore, we are catching many humans. Perhaps the woman is here for revenge." "A relic that helps it to complete the third mutation" The Golden Toad made a human-like move as it extended its claw and rubbed its chin as if it was falling into deep thought. After a short moment, it mumbled with confidence, "It must be Gods Blood! It didn''t get Gods Blood a few days ago" Of course, the Golden Toad did sense the aura of Gods Blood a few days ago. However, when it had rushed over there with the Shadowflame Boa, the Molten Dragon was already there. As the aura of Gods Blood had disappeared, both of them thought that the Molten Dragon had eaten the monster with Gods Blood. However, listening to what the giant alligator had said, perhaps the Molten Dragon did not manage to kill the monster with Gods Blood. Furthermore, according to the instruction it had issued, it must be a human that had gotten the monster that contained Gods Blood. Therefore, it had instructed its assistant to catch humans. Gathering all the clues, the Golden Toad roughly knew what had happened. "Are there any unique characteristics of the humans that you are going to catch?" The Golden Toad asked with envy as it was related to Gods Blood. "Boss said that it is looking for an Imperial Censor that owns a black Dimensional Portal," The Blazing Alligator answered honestly. "That''s all? No other details?" The Golden Toad felt that the information was too brief. "There''s nothing else. Boss said that it doesnt know how the person looks like as well. It only saw them when the black Dimensional Portal is closed. It doubted the humans identity as Imperial Censor. It is not sure of it." "Is there any other information?" The Golden Toad asked again. "I don''t think so" The giant alligator then thought for a while and shook its head. "Are you the only one who came over here? Where''s the rest of them?" "Right after I knew what happened to Boss this morning, I immediately rushed over here. Perhaps the rest of them know nothing about this." "That''s good" As soon as the Golden Toad finished its words, it immediately opened its mouth. A beam of red light shot out of its mouth and penetrated through the giant alligator''s body. The next moment, the red glow withdrew and the Golden Toad munched on the giant alligator''s dead body. "It has been a long time since I last ate the meat of a purple flame-level. It''s quite delicious." In just a few bites, the purple flame-level giant alligator had disappeared into the Golden Toad''s belly. "I must not let anyone know about Gods Blood. The Black Dragon has died, so there''s no need to keep the black flame alive either. Once it''s killed, I''ll be the only ruler of the world!" After finishing its sentence, the black eyes on its body gradually closed, returning to its lumpy form. Half an hour later At the Shadowflame Boa''s territory. "Old Jin, why?" The Golden Toad had pierced through seven inches of the gold flame-level Shadowflame Boa''s body with its tongue. It did not die immediately. "The lizard has died. There is no survival value for an earthworm just like you." The Golden Toad cackled loudly, "From today onwards, the world is mine!" An hour had passed and the Golden Toad''s announcement echoed in all the monster''s ears. "The Molten Dragon and the Shadowflame Boa have died. They were killed by humans. Not only have the two of them with incredible power died, many of our companions have been killed by humans in the past few days. They wanted to kill all the creatures in our world and possess our world. I can''t accept such a shameless action. I''ve thought about it for a long time and I''ve finally come out with a solution to overcome the danger C we have to start a monster attack! I need everyone to team up and trigger a monster attack. Lets kill all the humans! This is the only way that we can get rid of the crisis and well no longer be the humans target. Killing all the humans is the only way to create world peace!" As soon as the announcement was made, many of the monsters started to look for traces of humans. The Golden Toad stayed away from the lava sea and its body had shrunk. It hid in a spiritual volcano that was far away from the lava sea. All the eyeballs on its back were opened. Different scenes were projected in each of its eyeballs. Everything that happened in the ruins could be seen by the Golden Toad. "I don''t care who you are, I''ll find you. Gods Blood, I want you!" 342 Another Attack By The Monster Horde Lin Huang and the rest of them gathered and sat with their legs crossed, patiently waiting for the results of the investigation from two of the examiners. Some of the teams were bored and started playing card games. Zang Bing did not bother though. Of course, there were only a few of them that felt relaxed. Most of them were sitting in their original positions. All of a sudden, Lin Huang''s sleeve vibrated. He then connected to Bloody through his mind. "Master, many of the monsters are about to trigger a monster attack. They seemed to have known that the humans are all gathered over here. A large batch of monsters is rushing over here." Lin Huang''s heart sank as soon as he heard this. He was not worried about the monster horde. He was worried about the effect that the monster horde would cause instead. If it was a massive monster horde, the examiners would not take the risk of allowing the training to continue. Even if Luo Li was unwilling to end the training, her final decision would put everyone''s life at risk. "Did many of the monsters join the attack?" Lin Huang asked secretly. "Based on my observation, most of the monsters joined the attack, including all the holy fire-level monsters." Bloody''s answer was not what Lin Huang desired to hear. The truth was heavy. Lin Huang''s heart had completely sunk as it seemed like ending the training was a foregone conclusion! After a few moments, he recovered from his thoughts. "How''s it going on Kylie''s side? There''s no conflict with other monsters, is there?" "No. However, some of the monsters will pass by her place soon. I can''t guarantee that nothing will happen then." Lin Huang immediately contacted Kylie through his mind. "Kylie, can you hear me?" Kylie remained silent for a moment and said, "Go ahead and speak!" "There''s a monster outbreak in the ruins. It''s possible that a large number of monsters will pass by you soon. It''s better for you to hide in the spiritual lava. I''ll inform you once the monster horde is over." "Alright," Kylie answered. After Kylie''s issue was settled, Lin Huang was slightly relieved. However, it was obvious that he had some thoughts flashing through his mind. "Lin Huang, what happened? Are you worried about the monster horde?" Li Lang asked. He thought that Lin Huang had never experienced a monster horde before, hence he was so nervous. "There''s nothing to worry about. If the situation of the monster horde gets too severe, the examiner will definitely stop the assessment and send us out." Yi Yeyu noticed that Lin Huang was behaving abnormally as well. However, she did not think that it was because of the monster horde. Ten months ago, she had experienced a monster horde with Lin Huang before. Lin Huang had not even achieved iron-level then but he did not look as worried as he did now. "Lin Huang, are you okay?" "I''m fine. Don''t worry." Realizing that they were both concerned, Lin Huang immediately calmed himself and shook his head with a smile. He did not tell them what he was worried about since they would not be able to help him even if he told them. It would put them in trouble instead. oon, another half an hour passed. "It''s coming! There are three massive monster hordes approaching us from three different directions!" Again, Bloody''s conscious thoughts were transmitted to Lin Huang. "We''ll probably encounter the monster hordes in less than ten minutes." As soon as the message from Bloody was received, Zang Bing seemed to have sensed something as well and he leaped into the air. He looked around and his face immediately turned grave. "Everyone, please get ready to fight!" A loud voice was heard coming from mid-air. Many of them looked curiously at Zang Bing who was floating in mid-air. "Whatre you doing there? Are you waiting for the monsters to barrage this place?!" Zang Bing yelled angrily. Everyone immediately got up. The teams who were playing cards panicked. They did not even put away their cards and immediately took out their weapons. Even Yi Yeyu and Li Lang who had leveled up were nervous. Lin Huang was the only one who remained calm as he had already known that the monsters had arrived. "The monster horde is coming from three different directions. Please get ready to fight!" Zang Bing instructed again. "Perhaps. the monsters are here for a trial attack. No Transcendent monsters will appear, so I''ll not fight." "Let me tell you about the third round of training. The third round of training is related to the number of monsters killed by each of you. The more monsters killed, the higher the points accumulated. Therefore, if you want to be the one with the highest score in the third round of training, enjoy the slaughter!" Zang Bing intentionally revealed the mechanics of the third round of training to motivate the people. In fact, many of them were excited when they listened to what Zang Bing said. They wanted to get the pet monster egg that contained the phoenix. "No Transcendent monster" Lin Huang took a glance at the relic in his hand. He then stored it and took out a gold weapon ring from his storage space. The gold weapon ring was activated in the state of a battle sword. "Lin Huang, whatre you doing?" Li Lang asked as he could not understand what he was trying to do. "Isn''t it easier to kill monsters with a sword relic?" "I can save my Life Power by doing so," Lin Huang explained with a smile. "He has strong combat strength. A gold-level battle sword is enough for him to kill gold-level monsters. Relics that have to be activated by a gold-level user require Life Power that is a few times greater than the Life Power needed by a gold-level battle sword. Therefore, he is wise to make such a decision." Yi Yeyu understood the reason why Lin Huang did that. "That''s true. If you have any weapons with fewer stars, it will be best to use that. For hunting monsters below holy fire-level, a one-star weapon is adequate. It saves your Life Power," Lin Huang suggested with a smile. "I don''t have a 1-star weapon. The relic that ranks the lowest is a 4-star weapon." Yi Yeyu was not showing off but was just telling the truth. "I don''t have one too. I have weapons that are 3 and 4-stars," Li Lang said while shrugging his shoulders. "That''s fine. It''s just a suggestion." While the three of them were chatting, the crowd began to stir and one of the girls shouted as she pointed in a certain direction, "The monsters are coming!" Many of them immediately looked towards the direction that she was pointing at. It was a group of Terraflame Scorpions. Apparently, their combat strength was on gold-level. There were at least 3,000 of them. The number of monsters far surpassed the number of people there. "Please take note that the monster horde is not coming from only one direction!" Zang Bing''s voice was heard again. After finishing his sentence, the people then saw that there were monsters approaching from two other directions. One of the monster hordes consisted of Volcanic Spiders while the other batch was made up of Redtail Rodents. There were at least a total of 12,000 monsters from three batches of the monster hordes. Many of them who had never experienced such a massive monster horde panicked as they were surrounded by a large group of monsters. "Don''t panic. Although the number of monsters is more than the number of people we have here, they are only gold-level monsters. It''s not difficult to kill them. As long as we stay calm, there''s no way for the monsters to attack us. Now, quickly divide yourself into three groups. Each group is responsible for killing one batch of the monsters and fight your enemies! Each team, please remember that your responsibility is to block the monsters as the other two groups will rely on you. Even if one monster is missed, it''ll seriously affect the defense of the other two teams. A slight negligence may lead to a great disaster. The monsters may even break through the line of defense" Obviously, Lin Huang was the one who said that. As soon as the monster horde appeared, the people lost it. Many of them had no idea what they should do. He had no choice but to take the initiative by speaking up. He did not wish to see the first batch of monster attack causing any injuries since it was just a trial attack. If that happened, Zang Bing might immediately stop the training. "Act quickly, stop dragging your feet. I need 300 people over here!" Yi Yeyu was the first one who stood out in the crowd. Many of them could sense that she was on holy fire-level from the vibe she exuded and immediately joined her team. "Be quick, I need 300 people over here too!" Li Lang immediately raised his hand and shouted. Some people joined him as well. The remaining 200 people had automatically formed a group and Lin Huang joined them. However, he was not the leader as he knew that his combat level could not convince the crowd to let him lead. He then appointed one of them who was on holy fire-level instead. "You''re on holy fire-level, so you shall be the leader of the team. Since our team has the least members, we''ll choose the Terraflame Scorpions as it is the smallest group of monsters." "Alright!" The holy fire-level leader soon assumed his role, leading Lin Huang and the rest of them to kill the Terraflame Scorpions 343 Lin Huang Shows His True Power for the First Time Lin Huang was quite familiar with the Terraflame Scorpion. Not long ago, the three of them had come across the Terraflame Scorpion attack. However, the number of monsters was only a tenth of the total number that they encountered now. The Terraflame Scorpion had an incredibly fast attack speed. It was even faster than many of the monsters of the same level. This type of monster usually lived in groups. Therefore, it did not have many enemies. However, the monsters had a fatal weakness. When they encountered creatures that were even faster than them, they would lose their innate abilities and fall into chaos. It was also the reason why Lin Huang and two of them could easily kill the Terraflame Scorpion. About 200 of them built their defensive line and blocked the Terraflame Scorpions. Despite there being a large number of Terraflame Scorpions, all the humans were elites. Most of them were on gold-level rank-3 and were capable of killing seven to eight monsters while those who were on complete gold-level distracted about 20 of the Terraflame Scorpions. In addition to that, two of them were on holy fire-level and they managed to successfully defend against all the Terraflame Scorpions. Lin Huang held the gold battle sword in his hand, activating Seraphic Speed and unleashed consecutive hits. The surrounding Terraflame Scorpions heads immediately exploded. As soon as he got rid of the scorpions that tangled around his body, Lin Huang lifted his head and looked at the others. The Terraflame Scorpions were attacking at an alarming speed and there was a large number of them. The people could only manage to avoid and defend themselves against them. However, they could not fight back. Similarly, it seemed like the other two groups were at a standstill. "If this continues, I have no idea how long itll take to clear all three groups of monsters. We''ll be in trouble if another horde of monsters come over!" In just a short moment, Lin Huang decided to activate his Cloud Steps, sneaking into the monster horde. Complementing his Seraphic Speed with Cloud Steps, Lin Huang made his way through the monster horde like a ghost. It was a quick, clean attack as he killed all the Terraflame Scorpions with just one hit. There were dead bodies of the monsters wherever he passed. In mid-air, Zang Bing could soon notice that something was wrong with Lin Huang. "A gold-level rank-3 genius I''ve no idea who trained this guy. His sword skills are amazing and his body movement skill is pretty good too!" Zang Bing''s eyes brightened. The examiners and staff had entered the ruins before Lin Huang and the rest of the trainees. Therefore, Zang Bing did not know Lin Huang''s relationship with Mr. Fu. There were elites from various organizations who had joined the training. However, there was a difference between elites and a genius. It was not a big problem for elites to fight enemies that were one or two levels higher. However, a genius was capable of engaging in a battle to fight enemies that were a few levels higher. Even without the help of the summoning monsters, Lin Huang could kill a white flame-level monster on his own. He was a genuine genius with core competencies which every organization was looking for. Anyone with such core competencies was highly valued by most of the organizations. They would never release the genius if nothing serious happened. The organizations had only chosen some of the elites to participate in the joint training organized by the Union Government but none of the geniuses had joined the training. Zang Bing was clearly aware of that. That was why he was surprised the moment he saw Lin Huang. "He has joined our joint training. Could he be an undiscovered talent? I shall discuss with Si Kongjian and Sister Luo later. Let''s see if we can persuade him to join the Demon Slayer Legion," Zang Bing stroked his chin and mumbled in a low voice, staring at Lin Huang. Lin Huang was like a loach among the Terraflame Scorpions, wriggling freely. Meanwhile, there were dead bodies collapsing all over every spot that he passed. After a few minutes, the people then felt more relaxed as it was obvious that the number of monsters that attacked them had reduced. Two of his teammates, who were on white flame-level, soon noticed that Lin Huang was making his way through the monster horde. A flicker of fear flashed through their eyes right at the moment that they witnessed the terrifying speed of his assault. Both of them seemed to be motivated by Lin Huang and their frequency of attack spiked as well. In less than fifteen minutes, Lin Huang alone had killed up to 2,000 Terraflame Scorpions. The entire team then managed to clear all the rest of the Terraflame Scorpions. The number of monsters killed by Lin Huang was on par with the total number of monsters killed by 200 of them. Many of them looked at Lin Huang with respect and envy. "Now, divide yourself into two groups and back up the other two teams!" Nobody dared to doubt Lin Huangs orders anymore. As soon as they divided themselves into two teams, they immediately headed towards Li Lang and Yi Yeyu''s teams. Lin Huang joined Li Lang''s team. It was because Yi Yeyu had the ability to control fire element monsters. She managed to kill the Volcanic Spiders at a relatively fast speed and her team had killed almost half of the monsters. On Li Lang''s side, it was rather dangerous since the number of monsters killed was not even a quarter of them. Li Lang and the rest of them were relieved as soon as Lin Huang and the remaining 100 people joined them. Again, Lin Huang sneaked into the monster horde and killed the monsters like what he did previously. There was not much difference between Redtail Rodents and Terraflame Scorpions to him. Thanks to his abilities, he managed to defeat all the monsters easily. Only one hit was needed to kill the Terraflame Scorpions. Similarly, he did not require a second hit to kill the Redtail Rodents and the frequency of his attack remained unchanged. About five to six minutes had passed. Lin Huang alone had killed thousands of monsters. He resembled a slaughter machine that would not fatigue at all. Seeing Lin Huang''s performance, Li Lang teased, "This fellow is truly a monster!" "His accuracy and mental focus are scary" Zang Bing gave Lin Huang a deadly stare as he realized that Lin Huang''s attack was extremely consistent. Be it encountering the Terraflame Scorpion or Redtail Rodent, he could definitely defeat them all. Zang Bing had met some of the geniuses before. Most of them were definitely unnerving when their power was unleashed. However, Zang Bing had never met a person like Lin Huang who was capable of maintaining such powerful kills consistently. He had a constant attack speed and it never once dipped. He was stimulated by Lin Huang and was now even more determined to persuade Lin Huang to join the Demon Slayer Legion. Thanks to Lin Huang, Li Lang and his team spent about fifteen minutes to complete the slaughter. The battle between Yi Yeyu''s team and the monsters were coming to an end as they defeated all the Volcanic Spiders two minutes later. Seeing the carcasses scattered all over the ground, everyone was relieved. Unexpectedly, the fight was a success. About 60 of them were injured but nobody had died. Fortunately, they did not suffer from serious injuries. Soon, the medical staff was there to provide immediate medical treatment. Many of them secretly sized up Lin Huang as they had witnessed how Lin Huang helped in the battle. Without Lin Huang, perhaps the fight would be a difficult one. Among 12,000 of the monsters, Lin Huang had killed almost a third of the monsters on his own. The number of monsters killed by him surpassed that of those who were on white flame-level. Yi Yeyu was ranked second in killing the most monsters as she had killed thousands of them too. Many of the young men admired her. "Everybody, please take a break so that your Life Power and strength can be quickly restored. That was just the first batch of the monster horde. The monster attack will intensify later." Lin Huang''s voice was heard. He looked young but what he said was absolutely beyond dispute. Almost everyone was sitting with their legs crossed and they were replenishing their Life Power and energy. While Lin Huang was talking, Zang Bing could vaguely see that Lin Huang exhibited the characteristics of a Demon Slayer Legion leader. What he said was of doubtless, convincing, and comforting. "Regardless of which organization he is from, I have to make sure that he joins us!!!" 344 Reactivating the Ruins? The first wave of the monster attack lasted for about half an hour. Most of them had used up a large portion of their Life Power and their energy was severely drained. They needed all the rest they could get to recover. Despite the fact that Lin Huang was the one who had killed most of the monsters, only a small portion of his energy had been consumed. With the help of his Super Robust, his strength and stamina were beyond comparison. His ability to recover was abnormally fast as well. Compared to the others, a relatively small amount of Life Power had been consumed. Only his sword blade was covered by a layer of Life Power. He did not even activate his defensive relic. Only a rather small amount of Life Power was required to activate his Body Movement Skill whereas a lot more was needed to launch a defensive skill. After resting for a while, a Dimensional Portal activated abruptly out of nowhere. Si Kongjian then walked out from the Dimensional Portal. Many of them shifted their gaze towards Si Kongjian as they sensed an energy wave in the place. They hoped that he would bring them the good news. There was no expression on Si Kongjian''s face. However, they were all so eager to hear the good news that nobody noticed his somber mood. Lin Huang could sense that he was upset. Therefore, he felt that Si Kongjian was not bringing back any positive news. As soon as he descended from mid-air, Si Kongjian whispered into Zang Bing''s ear. Although they could not hear what they were talking about, many of them did notice that Zang Bing''s facial expression turned serious at once. Soon, both of them took out their Transmission Snails and Luo Li was added to the conversation. After a few moments, the three of them finally ended their conversation and Zang Bing recalled his Transmission Snail. He then gradually floated in mid-air with Si Kongjian. "Everyone, please put aside the work that you are doing. Here''s the latest news on the investigation from Si Kongjian." After uttering the last word, Zang Bing nodded at Si Kongjian. "I''ve asked few of the monsters the reason behind the sudden outbreak that happened today after I left." Si Kongjian gazed upon the crowd and continued, "The answer given to me was the Golden Toad, which is the overlord of the ruins. It alleged that humans have killed two of the overlord-rank monsters C the Molten Dragon and the Shadowflame Boa. Also, it claimed that humans are going to kill all the monsters in the ruins, so it called on all the monsters to start a monster attack. Theyre going to kill all humans with the large number of monsters they have" Lin Huang was the one who had killed the Molten Dragon. However, Lin Huang was curious after listening to what he said as he wondered who had killed the Shadowflame Boa. "I''ve walked around and noticed that there''s no safe place to go in the ruins. Most of the monsters have joined the monster attack. Based on the statistical data we have obtained previously, therere more than one million of monsters living in this 2-star ruins. About 10,000 of them are holy fire-level monsters. Therefore, there''s no way for us to defeat them. Even with the help of three examiners as well as about 300 of the holy fire-level staff, the probability of winning the fight is almost zero. "The only way is to look for the Golden Toad that instructed the whole attack. Kill it and reactivate the ruins. Otherwise, we''ll have to stop the assessment. This is what Luo Li is working on now. For the sake of everyone''s safety, three of the examiners have come to a conclusion. We will give Luo Li 24 hours to look for the Golden Toad and kill it. If she can''t complete the task, we''ll end the assessment here," Si Kongjian told them their final decision. Despite many of them not achieving their goals yet and being reluctant for the assessment to end, nobody raised their objections. "What''s the meaning of reactivating the ruins?"Lin Huang asked Yi Yeyu softly. He knew some of the information about the ruins from the network but did not have a thorough understanding. "When all the monsters with the highest combat level have died or more than 50% of the total number of monsters have died, the ruins will be reactivated. As soon as it''s reactivated, the memory of all the monsters will be reset. A virtual door will be activated in the sky and a large number of monsters will be randomly sent into the ruins to make up for the total number of monsters required. If there''s a vacancy for the monster of the highest level, it''ll be filled as well," Yi Yeyu explained in detail. "There''s such a thing?" Lin Huang muttered in disbelief. "In a nutshell, if two of the overlord-rank monsters have died, killing the Golden Toad will reactivate the memory of all the monsters. Thisll definitely put a stop to the monster attacks." Li Lang was afraid that Lin Huang could not understand it, so he explained further. "Will the reactivation of the ruins affect the humans?" Lin Huang asked. "No, resetting of the memory will only affect the local creatures. All the creatures outside the ruins including the Imperial Censor''s summoning monsters wont be affected, let alone humans. It has been verified by many of the researchers," she explained with a smile. Yi Yeyu knew what Lin Huang was worried about. "That''s good" After confirming that, Lin Huang immediately contacted Bloody in his mind. "Bloody, quickly look for the Golden Toad!" "Okay, I understand," Bloody immediately replied. The decision made by the examiners was the worst one ever. He did not want the training to end. Ending the training would cause Tyrant''s unlocking process to completely stop as well. Tyrant''s card would no longer be able to be trained and the card would end up becoming a collection. Fortunately, there was still hope. Lin Huang could only try his best to cling on to the last straw of hope. He was secretly waiting for Bloody to track the Golden Toad''s location. If Bloody managed to track its location and kill it, the entire ruins would be reactivated. It was the only way to remove the danger and Tyrants card would not just become a collection! In mid-air, Si Kongjian, who had just announced their decision, looked into the distance. Zang Bing shifted his focus as well and soon, he instructed, "Everyone, please get ready for the fight. The second monster attack is coming!" "Master, the second batch of monster attack is coming in about 12 minutes," Bloody''s voice was heard at almost the same time. "They are coming from two directions. The number of monsters is greater than before as there are about 20,000 of them." "Are there any Transcendents?" Lin Huang asked. "No, based on their current battle strategy, it seems like the first few waves of the monster attacks are just a trial." "That''s good. It won''t be a big problem to fight them since there are not many of them and there''s no Transcendent. We have about 300 people who are on holy fire-level." Instead, Lin Huang was worried if the monsters would directly attack the humans. If that happened, everyone would definitely be forced to leave the ruins in an hour, forget about the 24 hours that had been given to Luo Li. Ten minutes later, two monster hordes attacked from two different directions. Again, Lin Huang and the rest were divided into two teams to fight the monsters 345 Big Wave From The Monster Horde During the evening, the seventh wave of the monster horde came and went. There was a wave almost every 50 minutes. Every time the monster horde appeared was when the people had just sat down to rest. It felt like the monsters were intentionally interrupting their rest time. Many were frustrated as they preferred to just fight the monsters instead of having their rest interrupted. It had only been six hours but it felt like the longest six hours in their lifetime. Most of them had drained most of their Life Power and were left with limited strength. Although the monsters were below Transcendent level, many of the humans were burnt out. "This is tiring." Li Lang sat next to Lin Huang as the seventh wave of monster horde was over. "Looking at the situation, dont even talk about 24 hours. It might be a problem to even stay until the next morning." A holy fire-level physique was more than ten times stronger than a gold-level. Although Li Lang had just leveled up not long ago, his strength and tolerance, as well as his recovery speed, were more than ten times higher than most gold-levels. If he was tired, one could imagine how much more fatigued the rest were. "We try our best as God works in His way," Lin Huang said and closed his eyes to rest. He was calm when he said that but he was actually worried. Six hours had gone by but there was no news about the Golden Toad from Bloody. He did not urge Bloody for updates; as long as Bloody did not come back to him, that meant that it did not find anything. Zang Bing spoke again after they rested for less than 20 minutes. "The eighth wave is here. Let the staff settle the proceeding waves. You guys should rest for a couple of hours and fight again after youve recharged your strength." Many were relieved after hearing what Zang Bing said but some were concerned. There was no Transcendent monster sent their way so far. If the humans were to use Transcendent monsters before the horde did, would that trigger the monsters to send Transcendents as well? Lin Huang had the same concern. If that really happened, the battle would be much more difficult than before. "Perhaps Im overthinking" Lin Huang did not join the battle as he saw four Transcendent humans heading towards four different directions. The staff from the Union Government were all crimson and blue flame-levels with great abilities. Many of them could even fight a purple flame-level. Killing monsters that were below Transcendent was like eating a snack to them. In less than three minutes, the four Transcendents came back glorious. As this wave ended, Lin Huang and the rest managed to rest for more than two hours. The long wait made many of them panic. Under normal circumstances, it would take around 50 minutes for each wave to hit while the longest one lasted for less than an hour and ten minutes. However, almost two and a half hours had passed but the ninth wave had yet to come. Time passed by and soon it was night. Lin Huang was getting more and more concerned. He sensed that the monsters were brewing a plan. When it was almost 9 p.m., Bloody spoke to Lin Huang, "Master, therere many monsters coming this way. Therere more than 100,000 of them with more than 1000 holy- fire-level monsters." Lin Huang was shocked. He did not expect his largest worry to come true. The attack of the Transcendents had backfired. The intensity of monster horde was now heightened! "More than 1,000 holy fire-level monsters" Lin Huang looked at Zang Bing and Si Kongjian, full of hope. If the staff could not manage the horde, there two gold flame-level examiners could help. "More than 100,000 monsters" Lin Huang mumbled to himself. He thought it was tricky as there were just over 800 participants after all. Th difference in their numbers was huge. "Lin Huang, what did you say?" Li Lang asked as he heard Lin Huang talking to himself. "The monsters are here. Prepare to fight," Lin Huang said softly to Li Lang and Yi Yeyu. The both of them were shocked but they stopped doubting him as they recalled Lin Huang having a summoning monster with investigative abilities. "Are there any Transcendents?" Yi Yeyu thought the same thing as Lin Huang did. Lin Huang nodded. "There are more than 1000 holy fire-level monsters and more than 100,000 monsters in total," Lin Huang informed. "How about we inform the examiners to stop the training and send all of us out of here before the monsters come?" Li Lang suggested. "Its too late now" Lin Huang said and Zang Bing started to order,"Everyone, prepare to fight! Therere many monsters coming to us. At least 100,000 of them and many are holy fire-level monsters!" Hearing what Zang Bing said, many people were dumbfounded. "You guys will start formation to fight the monsters below Transcendent level while Zang Bing and I will lead the staff to kill all the Transcendent monsters as soon as we can and help the rest of you. Please hold on until our support arrives!" Si Kongjian looked serious for the first time. "Demon Slayer Legion, listen here!" Zang Bing shouted and all the staff stood in a formation. "Kill all Transcendent monsters and support the participants! Do you copy?!" "Understood!" More than 300 staff said at the same time. "I shall announce that the fight begins!" As Zang Bing shouted, more than 300 holy fire-level staff headed in every direction like arrows. They headed towards the Transcendent monsters that were coming close to them. "Lets see who kills the most monsters!" Si Kongjian squinted at Zang Bing. "Come at me, bro!" Zang Bing agreed without thinking twice. The both of them headed for different directions. Lin Huang and the rest who were below formed a gigantic circle while waiting for the monsters to come. "Later, the both of you block my spot. I''ll go into the monster horde." Lin Huang knew he was better at fighting than defending. The both of them nodded without asking questions, full of confidence in Lin Huang. As the watched the monsters coming closer, Lin Huang kept the gold sword in his hand into its ring form and put it into his storage space, then he took out a black sword. Looking at what Lin Huang was doing, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang looked at each other as they knew Lin Huang was serious! 346 Arrival of Will The ninth wave of the monster horde was different from before. Whether it was the quantity or quality of monsters, it was even more dangerous than the eight times summed up together. As Zang Bing and the rest fought the Transcendent monsters, the monsters below Transcendent stormed the front. More than 10,000 monsters of different sizes came from every direction, overwhelming all 800 participants. "This battle is a matter of defenses. Your main mission is to buy time. Ill do the killing," Lin Huang said to everyone. His obnoxious instruction was comforting to many of them who were nervous. Lin Huang then activated his Seraphic Speed with Thunder Steps and fought with his epic Thunder Sting sword skill. He was like a sharp blade with bloodlust, stabbing into the monsters abdomens endlessly. The monsters that were arranged neatly became as chaotic as a rock tossed into still water as Lin Huang got into the thick of the horde. Many of them were shocked when they saw Lin Huang fighting alone among the monsters like a tiger that was released amongst the sheep. All the monsters where the sword flashed through were cut into half, none of them needing a second slash to be slaughtered. "Is this guy really a gold-level?" Many of them were thinking the same thing as they watched him move flawlessly. Although some of the monsters went into a chaos when he attacked, that did not stop them from coming closer. Many monsters targeted the other participants and attacked them. As they watched Lin Huang, many of the participants were riled up to fight. However, they realized the truth when they engaged the monsters - they were not Lin Huang. The monsters were killed in one hit as Lin Huang was too powerful, not because the monsters were too weak! Lin Huang was like a fatal sword weaving through the monsters, killing all the monsters that he encountered. Many of them attacked him at first but when they realized that he was a killing machine, they started running away from him. Within seconds, Lin Huang had killed more than 100 monsters. However, he thought it was still too slow. "This is too slow, I need to be faster!" He stood on top of a gigantic monster carcass and looked where the people were. He realized that they were fighting a tough battle and that they did not have much time. "Bloody, do you have the strength to control the monsters here?" As Lin Huang hopped off from the monster carcass and proceeded to kill, he asked Bloody. "I have used most of my leech pods to look for the Golden Toad, so I can release 10,000 leech pods at most," Bloody said. "Release all the remaining leech pods that you have to get them to attack the other monsters," Lin Huang instructed as he summoned Lancelot the Ruthless Sword Master and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. He shrunk the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit to human size. "Lancelot, Bloody Robe, try your best to kill the monsters without getting seen!" Lin Huang had reached his limit of summoning five monsters at the same time when he summoned the both of them. He got them to help to increase his speed as well as providing him with more Life Power to prevent himself from being drained of Life Power. As Lancelot and Bloody Robe left, Bloody got out of Lin Huangs sleeve and released countless leech pods into the monster horde. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs eyes began to turn red. The Vampire Particles turned into four bloody blades on his back He could not hide anymore under such circumstances. Every second that he could save was a win. As the bloody blades opened on his back, Lin Huang held his sword and dashed into the monsters. The bloody blades that were transformed from the Vampire Particles were even harder than his Blood Spirit wings. They were comparable with a grade-2 relic together with the effect of the sword that Lin Huang was holding. With the help of Vampire Particles and the Life Power that he released, Lin Huang could cover tens of meters away, which increased his killing efficiency by more than tenfold. The Vampire Particles could actually reach out to 100 meters, but its strength would drop after 30 meters. Otherwise, the efficiency would be even higher. If Lin Huang was compared to a blade earlier, he was now a bulldozer. Everything within 30 meters that he touched would drop dead. What he did not know was that he was being watched as he summoned Lancelot and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. "Ive finally found you!" In a spiritual volcano, there was a gigantic Golden Toad soaking in the spiritual lava. An eyeball on its back was projecting the scene where Lin Huang summoned Lancelot and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. Although it did not see Lin Huang summoning his dimensional relic, the Golden Toad was sure that Lin Huang was the Imperial Censor that it was looking for as well as the one who had the monster with Gods Blood. As Lin Huangs performance was so stunning in the battle, the Golden Toad could not imagine who else would it be if Lin Huang was not the one who had captured the monster with Gods blood. "The Gods Blood is mine!" The Golden Toads green eyes turned black and so did its eye on its back. Within the dark, there was a reflection of a red toad. The red toad was less than 100 meters away from Lin Huang, its green eyes turning black as its aura and size grew. Within seconds, it transformed into a mini size of the Golden Toad while its aura was transformed from complete gold-level to white flame-level, crimson flame-level and finally stopping at blue flame-level. The growing of the aura had gotten Lin Huangs attention. He looked at the gigantic Golden Toad that was almost 10 meters tall. "The Golden Toad?" Lin Huang was skeptical but he soon noticed the toads strange aura. "Its aura is extremely unstable" "This should be the Will of the Golden Toad where it can attach its Will on any monster of its own that is two levels lower than itself," Bloody said as it was familiar with the monster encyclopedia as well as the Golden Toads skill. "However, this skill is limited by the owners strong ability and wont last for too long. This toad thats being used as a host is only a complete gold-level. With the limitation of its physique, it''ll last less than ten minutes under such a powerful possession." The toad that was possessed looked towards the crowd with its black eyes and stopped on Lin Huang. "Human kid, hand over the monster with Gods Blood!" It spoke suddenly. 347 A Setup Lin Huang thought that the Golden Toad was after him as it had sent its Will here to the battle. He did not expect that what it really wanted was the God''s Blood. "How does it know that Bai was taken away by me?" Lin Huang thought it was strange as the Molten Dragon that was searching for him up and down had not been sure who had the monster with God''s Blood but listening to the Golden Toads tone, it sounded like it was sure that Lin Huang had the monster. "Ive no idea what you are talking about." Although Lin Huang was clueless about how the Golden Toad knew about this, he declined without thinking twice. "Are you pretending? Only Imperial Censors can take the monster with God''s Blood away. Looking at your performance and the Punishment Chains on the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, its likely that you managed to capture the Transcendent monster that had just leveled up to holy fire-level," Golden Toad explained why it was after Lin Huang. "Its okay if you dont admit. As soon as I capture you, I have my ways to hand me the monster with God''s Blood." Hearing what it said, Lin Huang figured that it meant it would capture him to hand him over to the real Golden Toad. Lin Huang was tempted as he could not find where the Golden Toad was hiding. "Master, Ive found a way to locate the Golden Toad," Bloody spoke to him in his mind. "Ive located the spiritual aura sent by the Golden Toad for the arrival of Will earlier. My leech pods are as alert as a touch in the dark. As soon they get closer to the Golden Toad, theyll sense it immediately; even the force from the spiritual lava cant affect them. We should be able to locate it soon!" "Well done!" Lin Huang complimented and looked at the Golden Toad. After scanning it, Lin Huang smirked as he had an interesting idea. The Golden Toads size was perfect to clear the ground with. As he thought about it, Lin Huang turned around and headed into the monster horde. The Golden Toad was surprised to see Lin Huang doing so and chased after him right away. It stuck out its pink tongue directly at Lin Huang but he managed to avoid easily by activating Micro Territory. The tongue assault killed many monsters along the way. The Golden Toad naturally would not care about the lives of other monsters. Nothing was more important than the God''s Blood. Moreover, its Will would only last for a limited time, so it had to kill all the obstacles between it and Lin Huang. Lin Huang passed through the monsters fast, unafraid of the Golden Toads host. However, he knew very well that it would take some time for him to kill it if they were to fight face to face. He would also be very slow to kill the monsters. Therefore, he decided to get the Golden Toad to kill the monsters instead. The speed of Golden Toad killing the monsters was nothing slower than Lin Huang. It tongue could reach almost a kilometer away and each time it stuck out its tongue, many monsters were killed. Lin Huang was like a loach slithering among the monsters. All the monsters that he passed by fell dead. His killing efficiency was slightly lower than before but it was indistinct. The Golden Toad realized what Lin Huang was up to after chasing him for five to six minutes. "If you continue to run, Ill have to kill all your human friends!" The Golden Toad stopped and shouted to Lin Huang. Lin Huang had to stop running when he heard that. He turned around and grinned at it. "Whats wrong? I thought you were having fun chasing after me! How about we exchange positions? You run and Ill chase after you," Lin Huang said. Knowing that it did not have much time left, the Golden Toad did not entertain Lin Huangs mocking and darted its tongue towards him. The attack this time was no weaker than the other times. Any gold-level monsters that were attacked would die on the spot. However, it knew that Lin Huang would not be killed easily. It had already known about Lin Huangs ability before sending its Will here, so it knew that it had to give its best in order to get Lin Huang. It had high expectations on Lin Huang. As he saw the tongue coming towards him, Lin Huang managed to avoid the attack with the help of Cloud Steps and Seraphic Speed. He then activated Thunder Steps and blitzed towards the Golden Toad. It turned its tongue around and attacked Lin Huang again. As it was within the coverage of the Micro Territory, Lin Huang did not even have to turn his head around to sense the attack behind him. He activated Dark Shield to block the tongue and with the help of the force, he bounced even faster towards the Golden Toad. Seeing that Lin Huang was coming, Golden Toad extended its front claw to step on him but it missed, the ground reverberating as an effect. Lin Huang activated Seraphic Speed to its peak and dashed under the Golden Toads abdomen. Using Thunder Sting, he attempted to slash open its abdomen. His sword was so swift that he managed to stab it more than ten times within seconds. The Golden Toad was jumping in pain. Suddenly, a couple of flaming chains coming out of nowhere and tied its two legs. They pulled hard and it fell to the ground. Lin Huang was not surprised by the appearance of the Punishment Chains. He might have seemed like he was running helter-skelter, but he was actually running towards the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. It was a setup. It was too late when the Golden Toad realized that it was being used by Lin Huang as he had already stepped into the coverage of the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. If it did not find out that it was being used, Lin Huang would have gotten it to kill more monsters but it would still end up in the same situation. Lin Huang flapped the four wings on his back and flew up to the sky. The golden glow on the tip of his sword was as bright as the sun. His sword pierced into the Golden Toads abdomen easily without anything blocking. Perhaps, because it was triggered, the Golden Toads body started to expand. "Master, you must back off now. Its flesh has reached the maximum capacity of Will and its going to explode." Lin Huang pulled out his sword and stepped on the Golden Toads abdomen with Thunder Steps and darted far away with the help of his Seraphic Speed. Boom! Within two to three seconds before Lin Huang even landed, an explosion came from the back. A strong wind blew ferociously as he landed on the ground. Just when he was turning around, blood splattered on his chest from the sky. A couple of chunks of flesh fell on his feet. Lin Huang looked up at the sky but what was left was the flesh on the ground. It was clear that the Golden Toad with its strong Will was completely dead. "This damn human kid!" Someone shouted from a spiritual volcano, its voice echoing across 10 miles away. It sounded furious. Soon, Bloody spoke to Lin Huang in his mind, "Master, Ive found where the Golden Toad is hiding!" 348 The Revenge of the Golden Toad The Golden Toad did not expect that its furious roar would reveal its location. Bloodys leech pods had spent more than nine hours without finding any clue of the Golden Toad but the roar was heard by an Exploding Ladybird with a leech pod. Following the roar, the Exploding Ladybird soon found the volcano and confirmed that the Golden Toad was hiding in it. Lin Huang wondered if he should laugh or cry as he listened to Bloodys explanation. Within seconds of the Golden Toads vent, it managed to reveal its whereabouts. "Does this Golden Toad have any long-distance monitoring ability?" As soon as Lin Huang got the Golden Toads location, he asked Bloody as he continued fighting the monsters. "Yes, all Golden Toads are born with eyes on their backs. The eyes come with a variety of skills including hypnosis, monitoring, and illusion-type abilities. They can even learn new skills on their own," Bloody explained. "We must have been monitored by it since the beginning," Bloody added. "It seems like we shouldnt tell anyone about its location at the moment. Lets tell Luo Li straightaway when she gets back to avoid the Golden Toad from finding out that its location has been revealed and escaping." Lin Huang decided to keep the news to himself when he found out that they were being monitored. "I think so too," Bloody agreed. "If the news gets out, itll definitely run away and well need to spend more time to look for it." "My concern is that since the Golden Toad didnt manage to get what it wants, it might extend its Will for the second and third time. If that happens, that will affect the speed I''m killing monsters at." Lin Huang frowned. "Moreover, since it was defeated by me once, it will take more time to kill it if theres a second and third time." "Master, you dont have to worry about this as such a skill is limited. It wont be able to do it the second time in such a short period of time. Master, you can kill the monsters without worrying about it." Bloody knew very well about the secret skill of its Will. Each time it activated it, there would be a 24 hour cooldown period. "But I think it wont give it up just like that." Lin Huang thought that the Golden Toads persistence for the God''s Blood would not just end like this. "If it wants to attack for the second time, it would have to come here itself." Bloody smiled. Lin Huang shook his head to get the thoughts out of his head while focusing on killing the monsters. His efficiency had peaked again in his bulldozer mode. All the monsters within 30 meters were killed. Meanwhile, on the battlefield thousands of meters away, Si Kongjian and Zang Bing were leading many of the staff to slay more than 1,000 holy fire-level monsters. Although they were fewer humans than monsters, their strength was much more powerful than this bunch of holy fire-level monsters. Especially since Zang Bing and Si Kongjian were both gold flame-level, while there were only two purple flame-level monsters among them. The humans were winning. They managed to kill more than 1,000 Transcendent monsters around 20 minutes. More than 300 Transcendent humans were heading towards the monster horde to send help. As Zang Bing and the rest were almost done with the Transcendent monsters, Bloody reminded Lin Huang to recall Lancelot and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit into their card forms while Bloody released all the leech pods that it had cast within the 10,000 monsters. As Zang Bing and the rest arrived, they did not find anything odd. There were just glad that everybody had made it. Many of them saw the monster carcasses and Lin Huang with blood stains standing among the dead bodies. They realized that they would have lost without Lin Huang. Since Zang Bing and the rest came to help, the 10,000 monsters were killed in an instant. "Great job, Lin Huang!" As soon as the battle ended, Zang Bing walked to Lin Huang and patted his shoulder. He was satisfied with Lin Huangs performance these days. Even Si Kongjian could not help himself but tease Zang Bing to get Lin Huang to marry his daughter. "Lin Huang, are you alright?" Although Yi Yeyu was usually obnoxious, she was a girl after all and she soon noticed that Lin Huang was feeling down. "Nothing, Im just tired." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head, wanting to keep the secret. "Take a good rest then." Her sixth sense told her that Lin Huang was hiding something from her but she did not ask further. Lin Huang nodded and sat down while he closed his eyes to recover his strength. With Lancelot and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirits help, he did not lose much Life Power but his strength was drained. In a spiritual volcano 20,000 kilometers away, the Golden Toad was solemn as it watched the entire battle. "If 10,000 monsters are not enough, I shall give you a million monsters. If 1,000 holy fire-level monsters are not enough, I shall give you 10,000 of them. I dont believe that a couple of hundred of you can kill everyone in this world!" It was late at night. A lady was sitting next to a gigantic volcano crater under the bright moonlight. She seemed to be only 13 or 14 years of age and was wearing a dark green military uniform that was clearly custom made. She was upset as she mumbled to herself, "What should I do? Ive already looked everywhere I know but I just cant locate that damned toad If this persists, Ill have to stop the training" Since noon until 10 p.m., Luo Li had spent more than ten hours at many locations including the hiding place of the three overlord-rank monsters. She had searched up and down but she still could not find the Golden Toad. The only thing she had retrieved from followers of the overlord-rank monsters was that the Molten Dragon and Shadowflame Boa were really dead. However, none of the monsters knew where the Golden Toad was. She even went to all big spiritual volcanoes, lava lakes and lava rivers that were starred on the map that was provided by the Union Government but she found nothing. "Eh, whats wrong with these monsters?" Luo Li noticed that the monsters around the volcano were heading towards the same direction as she stood thousands of meters on top of the volcano. Some of the monsters that were hibernating seemed to be triggered by something and joined the horde. She leaped to her toes and flew towards the direction the monsters were heading to. Along the way, she realized that monsters of all directions were gathered at one place like countless streams coming together to join a big river. The big river was heading towards the humans. She could see more than 100,000 monsters within her field of vision. "Oh no, I must tell Zang Bing and the rest!" Luo Li took out her Transmission Snail immediately. Thousands of meters away, Lin Huang, who was resting, opened his eyes suddenly. He was concerned as he heard news from Bloody. The final monster horde was arriving! 349 An Ugly Rejection As she put her Transmission Snail away, Luo Li summoned her dimensional relic. She informed the news about the monster horde to Zang Bing and Si Kongjian as well as updating them that she could not manage to find the Golden Toad. She really had no idea of where it was. After some discussion, Zang Bing and Si Kongjian suggested stopping the training before the monster horde arrived and to send all of the participants out of the ruins. Although Luo Li was reluctant, she accepted the suggestion anyway. As the white dimensional relic appeared, Luo Li sighed and walked into the door. Soon, a white dimensional relic appeared on top of the gathering point. A petite human walked out of it. Lin Huangs eyes lit up when he saw Luo Li who landed slowly towards Zang Bing and Si Kongjian. They were relieved when they saw her as they were worried that Luo Li would disagree to stopping the training. "Lets stop the training now, dont waste any more time." Luo Li looked at the two examiners solemnly. "You do the announcement since you didnt have the chance to be an examiner." Zang Bing smiled kindly. Luo Li glared at him and agreed, floating into the air again. "Dear participants, this is Luo Li, your examiner for the third round of the assessment" Just when she was speaking, somebody interrupted, "Examiner Luo, I have something to say!" It was Lin Huang who had interrupted her by shouting with his hands up. "Let me finish my announcement!" Luo Li frowned as she looked at Lin Huang. "I need to say it now as it has something to do with your announcement." Lin Huang walked out of the crowd and locked eyes with Luo Li. Everyone was puzzled as they peered at Lin Huang. "Lin Huang, stop messing around!" Zang Bing scolded. "Im not messing around. This is something very important." Lin Huang glared at Zang Bing and looked up at Luo Li again. "Alright, then. What youre going to say better be useful, or else, Ill be furious." Luo Li descended from the sky. She would not have bothered if it was somebody else. Knowing that Lin Huang was Yi Yeyus friend, she decided to let him speak. "What is it? Tell me now." Luo Li landed next to Lin Huang and scrutinized him in an unfriendly manner. Lin Huang got closer to her, making Luo Li want to avoid him by instinct but she tolerated him. As she listened to what Lin Huang was saying, she became serious. "Dont say anything first. Listen to me, this area is being monitored by the Golden Toad" What Lin Huang said made Luo Li realize the reason for his odd behavior. "I have located the Golden Toad but Im afraid that it will escape if it realizes that we know about it. Thats the reason why I need to talk to you like that." Just when Luo Li wanted to ask where the Golden Toad was, she recalled that they were being monitored. She grabbed Lin Huangs arm, summoned her dimensional relic and brought Lin Huang along with her. Seeing Luo Li leave with Lin Huang, not only all the participants, even Zang Bing and Si Kongjian thought that it was strange. A white dimensional relic opened in a dormant volcano and Luo Li stepped out with Lin Huang. "Were definitely not being monitored here, so you can speak now." Lin Huang nodded, then projected the map while Bloody slithered out of his sleeve to mark the volcano where the Golden Toad was located at. Luo Li looked confusedly at Bloody and regarded Lin Huang. "Are you sure its here?" "Yes!" Lin Huang nodded vigorously. He had never suspected Bloodys resources. "Ill be really mad if its not here." Luo Li did not ask how had Lin Huang gotten the location. Instead, she threatened him. "It wont be wrong, Ill go with you." Lin Huang was calm. "Alright, lets go right away!" Judging from Lin Huangs seriousness, Luo Li summoned her white dimensional relic immediately. The both of them stepped into it and soon they appeared under a mid-sized spiritual volcano. "Wait here," Luo Li commanded Lin Huang and she flew to the crater within seconds. She dived into the volcano right away. The Golden Toad thought that it was strange that Lin Huang and Luo Li had disappeared. It did not expect its location to be revealed as it thought that it was hidden securely. There were at least 800 of such mid-sized spiritual volcanoes in this world. In fact, it was correct to assume that it was hidden as the mid-sized spiritual volcanoes were not marked on the map provided by the Union Government. They were only marked in white as a volcano just like the rest of the normal volcanoes. There were up to 10,000 of them in this world. Only the big spiritual volcanoes that were higher than 3000 meters would be marked in red. That was why Luo Li did not even bother looking for it in such a volcano. It was too late when the Golden Toad noticed that Luo Li and Lin Huang were there as Luo Li arrived inside the spiritual volcano within seconds. "Damned toad, Ive been looking for you!" Luo Li saw the Golden Toad that was soaked in the lava as she entered the volcano. "Human lady!" Golden Toad was shocked when it saw Luo Li. It remembered clearly when the Blazing Alligator came to it, mentioning that the Molten Dragon was killed in one hit by a petite lady. It was sure that Luo Li was the one that the Blazing Alligator was talking about. It was hiding here as it did not want to be found by this lady, so it did not expect her to come to it. The Golden Toad did not wait any longer after confirming her identity. The spiritual lava at the bottom of the volcano roiled up and assailed Luo Li, almost drowning her in it. Suddenly, the Golden Toad shrunk to the size of a palm within seconds. It leaped using its back legs together with the lava that rumbled out. "Whats the use of your powerful ability? I managed to escape anyway" Just when the Golden Toad had that thought, it suddenly realized that its body had been captured by a hand. "Do you naively think that you actually got away from me?" Luo Li said and revealed herself. The spiritual lava was isolated a few inches away from her body. The Golden Toad was shocked and attempted to grow back to its regular size so that it could get away from her. However, it felt that its body was being sealed by something, preventing it from going back to its original size. "Stop struggling. My Palm Seal can even seal a dragonkin of the same level, let alone a scabby toad like you." Luo Li rolled her eyes. The Golden Toad became furious when it heard Luo Li calling it a scabby toad. It opened its mouth wide and darted its tongue towards Luo Lis head. However, its attack was soon blocked by an invisible wall. It could not reach anywhere outside her palm. After a couple of failed attempts, fear flashed in its eyes. Now, it finally understood how she had defeated the Molten Dragon in one hit. "Master, I surrender!" Knowing that it could not escape, the Golden Toad decided to surrender in hopes that it might be released. Luo Li looked at it for a while and shook her head. "No, youre too ugly!" She said and pressed it hard, the space in her Palm Seal compressing quickly. Within two to three seconds, the Golden Toad was smashed into smithereens, croaking out its last groan Soon, Luo Li got out of the crater and spiritual lava was everywhere. Lin Huang had backed off a couple of kilometers away. She headed towards Lin Huang and tossed the monster carcass on the ground. The carcass returned to its normal size of a mini island. Seeing the carcass that was completely destroyed into a pile of flesh, Lin Huang now thought that she was even more dangerous. "Since you were the one who provided the information, you shall have the monster carcass," Luo Li declared while bending down to wash her hands with the spiritual lava. "Thank you, examiner!" Lin Huang stored the monster carcass shamelessly. "Since the toad is dead, the ruins will be reactivated and the training will go on." Luo Li announced, satisfied with the results. "Lets head back!" She then summoned the white dimensional relic. 350 The Use of Assessment Points The Golden Toad had fallen in less than three minutes. A black dimensional relic filled with black mist emerged slowly in the middle of the ruins. The black mist was like a big net that devoured all the monsters everywhere. Millions of monsters in the battle stopped suddenly. They looked around curiously as if they had no idea why they were there. They then left one by one. The dimensional relic opened slowly while a massive amount of monsters of different combat strength were sent down Lin Huang and the rest did not see this. When Luo Li and Lin Huang left, Zang Bing was in a bad mood while Si Kongjian seemed concerned. Yi Yeyu, Li Lang, and the other participants looked puzzled. They did not know what had just happened. Luckily, Luo Li and Lin Huang returned after leaving for only three minutes. "Theres no need for worry. I have killed the Golden Toad. The dimensional ruins should be reactivating now, so the last monster horde wont come. The training will go on!" Luo Li announced the outcome. Zang Bing rushed to the front to ask about the specific situation while Si Kong Jian looked deeply into Lin Huangs eyes. He figured that this matter was related to Lin Huang. The two examiners finally found out about the truth a while later. "Actually, its the same whether you tell me or Si Kongjian. That Golden Toad is only a double mutated monster. We can kill it regardless of whatever blood it has." Zang Bing smiled at Lin Huang mysteriously. "I think that examiner Luo is more powerful, so I thought it would be better for her to handle this," Lin Huang honestly told Zang Bing the reason for choosing to inform Luo Li instead of them. "Once again, Ive been underestimated" Zang Bing looked at Si Kong Jian, who was in the same boat, helplessly but Si Kong Jian looked as if he did not mind. Instead, Si Kong Jian rubbed salt into the wound. "We really are weaker than Luo Li, thats the truth." Luo Li beamed happily next to them. Zang Bing thought that he could not talk to those people in please so he left with an excuse, "Ill check if the monster horde is really gone." As Zang Bing left, Lin Huang returned to the team. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang quickly asked him what had happened. Soon, Zang Bing announced the good news that the monster horde was gone. After that, the three examiners brought the people to pitch their tents a few kilometers away. Although the staff had already cleaned up all the monster carcasses before the battle, the smell of blood still remained. Therefore, they moved the gathering point to the foot of an extinct volcano eight kilometers away towards the north. Early in the morning on the second day, Zang Bings voice rang out, "Everyone, assemble at eight later!" Lin Huang had already finished washing up. He looked at the time. It was already 7:30 a.m., so he dismantled the tent immediately and started having breakfast. All the participants gathered around at 8 a.m. The 160 participants, who had been injured yesterday, recovered under the treatment of the staff. Zang Bing glanced at them, feeling that these young people had become more matured after the monster horde yesterday. They were not as impetuous as before. "The goal of the second round of training is all about teamwork. Everyone did a great job in the battle yesterday. I would also like to praise Lin Huang who contributed very much no matter in terms of personal ability or team organization. Its all his credit that many people are still alive..." Zang Bing was very satisfied with Lin Huangs performance. He was also an honest person, so he was very direct when it came to praising. The corners of Lin Huangs mouth lifted. He did not say anything as he knew that everything he did was purely for selfish reasons. If not for Tyrant, he would have chosen to end the training. After complimenting Lin Huang, Zang Bing finally revealed the purpose of assembling everyone. "Since the purpose of the assessment is teamwork and everyone has shown great teamwork yesterday, theres no need for my part of training to proceed. I shall declare that all the participants have passed the second round of training! " "Id like to invite the examiner of the third round of training to come up to speak!" Zang Bing stepped aside after his speech. Luo Li walked to the front and went right into business without any formalities. "My name is Luo Li, your examiner for the third round of training. The third round of training starts at 9 a.m. today! "Considering the monster horde yesterday, some of you might be injured or unwilling to proceed with the training due to psychological pressure or other reasons. So, those who want to leave the training may now raise your hands and we will get the staff arranged to send you out later." Luo Lis eyes scanned the crowd after speaking. There was not a single person who raised their hand to show that they wanted to leave. "Theres no need to feel embarrassed. Its not embarrassing to leave, its just a reasonable choice," Luo Li added but there was still no one who chose to leave. "Since no one raised their hand, those who dont want to participate in the training may stay after the training starts. "I am going to talk about the instructions for the third round of training now. The instructions are very simple. Hunt individually. Theres no limit to the way of killing. Theres only one limitation -- the forming of teams is not allowed during hunting; there must be no help from the others and it must be done by yourselves individually." "Each gold-level rank-3 monster carcass submitted will earn you 1 point." "Each complete gold-level monster carcass will earn you 3 points." "The terms to gather points are the same as in the second round of training." "Each white flame-level monster carcass gets you 100 points. "Each crimson flame-level monster carcass will be awarded 200 points." "Each blue flame-level monster carcass will be awarded 400 points." "Considering that everyone is exhausted from the monster horde, the monsters killed yesterday will be added to the total scoring this time." "Everyone of you has experienced a lot yesterday, so I wont be giving you too much pressure in the third round of training. I dont mind even if you choose to be lazy. All Ill say is that except the reward according to the ranking of points, the total points accumulated in the training this time can be used to exchange resources with the Union Government. One point is almost equivalent to the purchasing power of one Life Crystal. Moreover, the military warehouse of Union Government Elite Troops will also be opened to you. If the points are enough, you can exchange anything you want from the military warehouse!" Luo Lis last sentence excited the people. Even Lin Huang was tempted as many things that were available at the Union Government military warehouse were not sold in the market. Even if something was available on the black market, it was considered cheap if the black market price was ten times more expensive than what they were sold for. This extra bit of detail about being able to exchange points allowed everyone to redeem resources in the military warehouse at the normal market price. It was a golden opportunity. "Ive said everything that I need to say. The assessment starts sharply at nine. However, those who want to leave now can do so, while those who want to unregister from the training can update us now." After Luo Li finished, she descended from mid-air. Many left without hesitation. Lin Huang looked at the time. It was not even 8:20 a.m. but obviously, everyone did not even want to waste 40 precious minutes. "Were on our own this round." Li Lang walked towards Lin Huang and greeted him, then left. "Its not a guarantee that youll be the first prize winner until the end." Yi Yeyu teased Lin Huang before she left. Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and disappeared from where he was. 351 The 20 Card Draw Lin Huang activated Boundless Vision as he rode on the Alexandrian Eagle while observing the Crimson-Eyed Elephant that was 10 kilometers away but he did not attack it. "Xiao Hei, how many Double Reward Cards do I have?" Lin Huang asked. "Two." "Including the Sanguine Skeleton, the Blazecrystal Scorpion and the Molten Dragon that I killed by myself earlier, I should have seven cross-ranking kill rewards. Is that right?" "Yes." Xiao Heis reply remained short and simple. "Two Double Reward Cards but I only have two hours to get the reward Its not enough to go to seven places" As not all the monsters were being located, some locations might need the Alexandrian Eagle to fly hundreds of kilometers away. Two hours of double reward time would only allow Lin Huang to kill four to five white flame-level monsters at the most. "Master, you could actually pin the location of the seven holy fire-level monsters with the dimensional relic. As soon as the pinning of the locations is done, you can kill them accordingly. After each kill, you can use the dimensional relic to get to the next monster. That would save a lot of time on the road," suggested Bloody that had been hiding in Lin Huangs sleeve as it heard what he was saying to Xiao Hei. "Thats a great idea!" Lin Huang realized that his thoughts had come to a dead end. He had forgotten that he could pin the locations using the dimensional relic and wanted to get to each location with the Alexandrian Eagle instead. With Bloodys reminder, he only recalled that he could bookmark the locations that he had never pinned before. He got the Alexandrian Eagle to land near a crater as he did the pinning. He looked at the Crimson-Eyed Elephant that was far away. "I shant kill you now. Ill kill all of you after I have pinned all the locations!" Lin Huang patted the Alexandrian Eagle and headed to the location of the next holy fire-level monster following the map. Three hours went by after Lin Huang was done pinning all the locations of the seven monsters. Looking at the Colossal Lizard that was far away, Lin Huang smirked as he crunched one Double Reward card. "Lets seize this Double Reward Card to kill all of them!" Lin Huang exclaimed and patted the Alexandrian Eagle, heading towards the Colossal Lizard. As Lin Huang killed the last holy fire-level monster which was the Crimson-Eyed Elephant, 53 minutes had gone by. He had used less than an hour to kill all seven holy fire-level monsters. Looking at the 14 Reward Cards that were added to his body, he stored the Crimson-Eyed Elephant carcass happily. Among the seven monsters, the most difficult one was the first one that he had encountered. The defense of the Colossal Lizard was terrifying. Although it was only a double mutated white flame-level, Lin Huang did not manage to break through its defense using his normal attack. He had to put three Life Wheels of Life Power into Worldly Purification to kill it. The first monster used up more than 15 minutes of his time. Luckily, it was smooth sailing after that or else, he would have to use his second Double Reward Card to kill all the seven monsters. Looking at the time, it was noon. Lin Huang sat at the bottom of a volcano and ate some snacks while getting Xiao Hei to arrange his cards. "Xiao Hei, arrange all the cards that Ive obtained in this ruins." "You have received 16 cross-ranking Reward Cards and 20 card draws from the quintuple cross-ranking kills that you have yet to use." "Lets talk about the card draw later. I want to see what those 16 Reward Cards are." Lin Huang knew that the number of cards was correct. As the Double Reward Card was not enough, he had not used that when he was killing the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit and the Blazecrystal Scorpion. He had only received a Reward Card from that. What he got from killing the Molten Dragon was a card draw instead of a Reward Card. So, the two cards added to his 14 cards totaled to 16 cards. "The 16 Reward Cards are as follows: Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card x3, Skill Removal Card x2, Double Reward Card x2, Life Power Storage Card x2, Advanced Card x2, Item Card x2, Provisional Transformation Card x1, Healing Card x1, Provisional Summoning Card x1." Xiao Heis calculation was quick and Lin Huang saw two new cards that he had never seen before, which were the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card and the Skill Removal Card. It was obvious from just the name of the cards but Lin Huang wanted to know the exact descriptions. "Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card" "Function: When the card is activated, it allows you or your Monster Card to upgrade one rank higher temporarily." "Remark 1: Each upgrade will be limited to one hour." "Remark 2: Multiple cards can be used at the same time. A maximum of three cards can be used at once with three ranks of the upgrade." "Remark 3: The time limit is still one hour even if multiple cards are used." "Remark 4: Consumable. Each card can only be used once." "Skill Removal Card" "Function: User can remove one skill of his own." "Remarks: Consumable. Each card can only be used once." "This Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card can temporarily upgrade you three ranks higher!" Lin Huang thought the card was useful. "Too bad there''s only three of them, thats too little." After reading the descriptions of the two cards, Lin Huang decided to do the 20-card draw to see if he could get more Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards. "Xiao Hei, I would like to activate the card draw!" "Are you sure you would like to activate the card draw?" "Yes!" "I have randomly selected 360 cards for you. You may choose 20 cards from the 360 cards as your rewards." "Warning! You only have one chance for each card. Once youve selected, youre not allowed to change!" As Xiao Hei said that, hundreds of cards were formed in the air and arranged before him. There were 20 columns and 18 rows, totaling to 360 cards. All of them looked the same. They were all black with a flaming golden question mark in the middle. Lin Huang had done card draws before and he knew that it all depended on his luck. There was neither any skill in picking cards nor any cheats. He could only choose following his gut feel. He spent ten minutes to pick all 20 cards, then the remaining 340 cards disappeared. The 20 cards that he picked were arranged into four rows with five cards each. They shed their disguise one by one and revealed what they really were. "Congratulations! You have received Life Power Storage Card x3, Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card x2, Double Reward Card x2, Advanced Card x2, Healing Card x2, Item Card x2, Mission Card x2, Provisional Transformation Card x1, One-time Skill Card x1, Flawless Card x1, Challenge Card x1, Epiphany Card x1." Lin Huang was happy with everything that he received except for the two Mission Cards. Seeing that there were no new cards that he was not familiar with, he instructed Xiao Hei again, "Xiao Hei, calculate all my cards!" "Provisional Transformation Card x8, Healing Card x8, Advanced Card x7, Item Card x7, Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card x5, Life Power Storage Card x5, Double Reward Card x5, Treasure Card x4, One-time Skill Card x3, Mission Card x3, Flawless Card x3, Skill Removal Card x2, Provisional Summoning Card x2, Epiphany Card x1, Transportation Card x1, Challenge Card x2, Small Destruction Card x1, Skill Combination Card x1." "Use Life Power Storage Card!" Lin Huang always had that card on his mind as this card allowed him to have four additional Life Wheels compared to the rest. He had obtained two Life Power Storage Cards from the 16 cards and now he had just received another three from the 20-card draw. He was over the moon to receive five of them at once as that meant he could duplicate five more Life Wheels in his body. The Life Power Storage Cards broke into pieces and entered his body as Life Wheels. He could not hold his glee in anymore. "Heh, I have 10 Life Wheels now!" As he took out the Life Power Refill Card to refill his Life Power, he was surprised to see that the image on the Life Power Refill Card had changed from five Life Wheels to ten with the five newly added Life Wheels empty. After activating the Life Power Refill Card and filling up all his 10 Life Wheels, Lin Huang then looked at his two Skill Removal Cards. "Activate the Skill Removal Cards to remove Super Robust and Blood Hunt." "Are you sure you would like to activate Skill Removal Cards to remove Super Robust and Blood Hunt?" "Warning! Once the skill is removed, it cannot be retrieved." "Yes!" Lin Huang nodded without hesitation as the two skills were no help to him. He had Superhuman Strength for the increase of strength while Blood Hunt was useless to him since he had Bloody which was more helpful now. "Consuming Skill Removal Card x2. Skills Super Robust and Blood Hunt have been removed!" His Monster Skills that were once full had two empty slots now. Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to extract the Sanguine Skeleton Spirits skill for now. With two empty slots for monster skills now, he reserved one for the Supreme Overlord while he wanted to keep the other one as he was not sure if he would encounter any monsters that were more powerful than the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. He smirked as he looked at the remaining seven Advanced Cards. He then summoned the Alexandrian Eagle. "Its your time to level up, buddy." Lin Huang patted the Alexandrian Eagles wings. It seemed to understand what Lin Huang wanted, so it then rubbed its head again his chest. "Xiao Hei, activate two Advanced Cards to upgrade the Alexandrian Eagle into an epic-level card!" Lin Huang instructed. 352 Unsealing Tyran Time passed fast and six days soon went by. After breakfast, Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and went to the place where Tyrant was carrying out his unsealing early in the morning. It was the last day of Tyrants unsealing. As he walked out of the dimensional relic, Lin Huang saw Kylie sitting at the same place. He remembered clearly that she was sitting in the exact same location a few days ago. It seemed like she had never stood up the past few days. "Good morning, have you had your breakfast?" Although Lin Huang knew that the Monster Cards did not need food to survive, he asked that anyway. Kylie looked at Lin Huangs direction but she did not respond. "Still so cold" Lin Huang thought to himself while rubbing his nose. He walked to Kylie and sat with her while waiting for Tyrant to complete its unsealing. Besides going after the double rewards on the first day, Lin Huang had been killing at least 40 holy fire-level monsters for the past few days. Ever since the Alexandrian Eagle completed its upgrade to the Viridescent Thunderhawk, Lin Huang had named it Thunder. It was now a complete gold-level with an improvement in speed which saved a lot of time for Lin Huang. He had been working hard these few days. Besides the time he spent sleeping, he spent more than 15 hours every day killing monsters. Sometimes, he would even eat while he was on Thunders back. While waiting for Tyrant to unseal, he gave himself a break. With the help of the massacre during the monster horde as well as the points that he had accumulated the past few days, he did not think that having a couple of days of rest would allow anybody to surpass his points. As time passed by slowly, Lin Huang felt the ground shaking around one oclock in the afternoon. "Thunder!" Lin Huang summoned his flying mount and rode on its back. Thunder flew high up into the sky. Kylie sensed something strange as well, so she pointed the tip of her toes and flapped her six wings. As the both of them left the ground, the ground a couple of kilometers away cracked. A loud thud was heard and a golden glow shot up into the sky while the earth collapsed. Soon, a gigantic body crawled up from the underground lava. It was a giant creature with gold armor spanning over 100 meters. Sunlight reflected off the gold armor, making it look like it was the center of the universe. Bright red lava that looked like countless streams flowed down its body and it looked like a hunk coming out of the shower. Lin Huang was shocked to see Tyrants body that was now ten times bigger. Tyrant noticed Lin Huang and Kylie in the air and a terrifying smile appeared on its face. "Master." "Finally you have completed your unsealing." Lin Huang grinned. Tyrant scratched its head and smiled. "Will you be able to shrink your body?" Lin Huang thought of the key issue as it would be inconvenient if Tyrant was this huge whenever he summoned it. "Yes, I can." Tyrant nodded. "Shrink it to a size thats slightly bigger than a normal human then." Lin Huang thought that having a bodyguard with him would be good. Of course, he would need to get it dressed. Tyrant shrunk its body to around 2.5 meters. "Is this okay?" "Thats perfect." "Ill get you a few sets of clothes so that I dont have to always keep you in card form." Tyrants eyes lit up when it heard the last sentence. "However, Ill need to keep you inside to avoid attention for these few days," Lin Huang added. Tyrant nodded in agreement. After keeping Tyrant in card form, Lin Huang held the card in his hand. Its color remained blue. The unsealing did not complete its third upgrade as well as the sealing of the system. It could still be summoned. Tyrant still looked the same on top of the card, just that its size was slightly bigger. Lin Huang turned around to look at the card description. "Monster Card: Tyrant "Rarity: Epic "Monster Name: Gold Armored Genie "Type of Monster: Genie "Combat Level: White Flame-level "Skill 1: Golden Armor "Skill 2: Super Robust "Skill 3: Enhanced Regeneration (Advanced) "Skill 4: Ultimate Explosion (Advanced) "Skill 5: Ultimate Strength (Advanced) "Skill 6: Megamorth (Beginner) "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Trainable" The Enhanced Regeneration, Ultimate Explosion, and Ultimate Strength were now advanced with an additional skill which was Megamorth. Lin Huang clicked in to read more about the skill. "Megamorth (Beginner): This allows the users size to grow ten times bigger as well as increase its strength. "Remark 1: The skill will last for a maximum of one hour. Users size will go back to normal after an hour. "Remark 2: After the skill ends or it is deactivated by the user, the user will go into weak form for as long as the skill was used and wont be able to battle." "Ten times its original size! Tyrant is already more than 100 meters now, so ten times would mean more than 1,000 meters It can totally be used as a battle machine!" Lin Huang imagined how big Tyrant would be and exclaimed to himself. He then kept the card and looked at Kylie. "Thank you for being here. I shall treat you to something good after the training ends." Kylie hesitated, then nodded. After recalling Kylie into card form, Lin Huang patted the Viridescent Thunderhawk. "Thunder, we should get back to work now!" Thunder flapped its wings and headed to the next holy fire-level monster with a white glow. Time passed by with the killing of monsters for the last four days of training. At eight in the morning, Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and got back to the meeting point after breakfast. Luo Li and the other two examiners had been waiting since 9 a.m. was the official mission submission time. There were people waiting there and it was obvious that they had submitted their missions before the deadline. The three examiners looked at Lin Huang as he appeared, curious to know how many monsters he had killed during the ten days. "Good morning, examiners, Im here to submit my mission," Lin Huang greeted them and headed towards the staff. He was stopped by Zang Bing. "Ill do the calculation for you. Im curious about how many monsters you managed to kill," Zang Bing volunteered to calculate Lin Huangs monsters killed. Such a thing had never happened before as it was usually done by the staff. "I want to know too." Luo Li came closer. Si Kongjian walked behind Luo Li without saying a word. The participants were envious to see the three examiners surrounding Lin Huang. "Alright, then" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow without rejecting the three examiners while getting the monster carcasses that were as high as a hill out from his storage space ring. Many of the participants exclaimed when they saw the monster carcasses. Not because they were so many of them but because all the monsters seemed to be at least holy fire-level. Even the three examiners were surprised. As Zang Bing started to calculate, Luo Li and Si Kongjian stood aside and watched. He took almost half an hour to finish calculating all the monster carcasses. Everyone was shocked, even Luo Li and Si Kongjian. "Therere a total of 383 monsters, all white flame-level. They were all killed using a sword and I can tell that it was done by the same person," Zang Bing concluded. "You must have some crimson flame-level monsters with you, dont you?" Luo Li asked. "A couple." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "How about blue flame-level?" Luo Li asked again. "Its a secret." Lin Huang did not want to answer that. "I will add in the 38,600 points into the system. Master Yi will announce the final points when you get out of here as well as the ranking," Zang Bing said to Lin Huang while getting a staff to collect the monster carcasses. "I understand." "Lin Huang" Just when he wanted to leave, Zang Bing called out to him. "What is it, examiner?" Zang Bing looked puzzled. "You must have heard of us, the Demon Slayer Legion?" Zang Bing asked. "Yes, I have." Lin Huang nodded. "Are you interested to join us?" Zang Bing extended his invitation directly. Luo Li was surprised when she heard what Zang Bing said. Si Kongjian frowned as well. Lin Huang was shocked and did not respond after a while. "Little brother, its a wise choice to join the Demon Slayer Legion," Luo Li advised. "You guys have no idea who he is, do you?" Si Kongjian knew he had to interrupt this time. "His identity?" Zang Bing and Luo Li looked puzzled at Si Kongjian. "Hes Mr. Fus apprentice. A real apprentice, not a nominal apprentice," Si Kongjian told the truth. He had researched about Lin Huang after finding out about his identity. "You mean this Mr. Fu?" Luo Li pointed into the sky. Si Kongjian nodded. "I didn''t know that youre so powerful." Luo Li looked even more passionately at Lin Huang. "Alright then, pretend that I didnt say anything" Zang Bing gave up on his invitation. "Whats the deal with Master that so many people are so fearful of him?" Lin Huang found it strange as he did not understand why would everyone look terribly impressed whenever they heard about Mr. Fu. 353 The Training Has Ended All participants were on time to submit their missions at nine in the morning. Li Lang noticed that Lin Huang had submitted his mission, so he greeted Lin Huang and headed to the staff. Looking at Li Lang take out the monster carcasses, Lin Huang could not help but stare. As he took out more and more carcasses, many of the participants were watching. The monster carcasses piled into a couple of hills, much higher than the rest. It looked like there were at least 10,000 monster carcasses. Seeing that many of the monster carcasses were burnt, Lin Huang could guess how he had killed the monsters. A few staff spent more than an hour to handle the staggering number of carcasses. There were a total of 14,560 carcasses including gold-level rank-3 and complete gold-level ones. After finalizing the figures, Li Lang smirked as he walked over to Lin Huang. "You kept many nuclear bombs with you, didnt you?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow when he saw Li Lang walking to him. "Seems like I cant hide it from you." Li Lang smiled weakly in embarrassment. He had told Lin Huang that he was only left with five nuclear bombs earlier. "I only kept two to myself for emergencies. I didnt expect to use them." Yi Yeyu walked to them after she submitted her mission. All of the monsters that she had killed were holy fire-level. There were only more than 30 of them and it took less than two minutes for the staff to calculate them. She glared at Li Lang who was the center of attention, then regarded Lin Huang. "What plan do you have after this ends?" "Its still a long way to go before I level up to holy fire-level. I plan to take a break while slowly leveling up to complete gold-level and to finish up some errands," Lin Huang said, then he thought of something that he wanted to ask. "Speaking of errands Do you guys know where can I get dracaena?" "Dracaena?! Why would you want that?" Li Langs eyes flew wide open. Yi Yeyu frowned as she looked at Lin Huang. She knew very well that dracaena was a herb to increase the dragonkin characteristics in a monster with dragonkin. Although what its effects were minimal, as long as it was used in massive quantities, it could upgrade a sky dragon to a dragonkin. However, there was a limited amount of dracaena around. It was so expensive that one could easily cost more than a normal grade-5 relic. Too little dracaena would show no effect; one would need tens to hundreds of dracaena to see anything. Also, as each monster had different types of bodies, the chances of increasing the density of dragonkin blood would vary. A normal rich family would not spend their money on dracaena as it was expensive and risky. "Nothing, just asking out of curiosity," Lin Huang gave an excuse. "There might be some in the troop warehouse but Im not sure how many are there." Yi Yeyu glared at Lin Huang. "There might be more at the chambers of commerce in Division7. I can hook you up if you need, but youll need to pay for it yourself as its too expensive. I cant afford to get them for you," Yi Yeyu added. "Thank you in advance." As they chatted, the calculation of the monster carcasses of all of the participants ended. Luo Li floated into the air and spoke, "All the participants have submitted their monster carcasses and our staff has finished all the calculating as well as tallying the accumulated points. Master Yi will announce the results after he gets the report! "Now everyone can leave the ruins following our staffs arrangement. Dont go too far away while waiting for the results patiently. If any of you are absent when we announce your name, the reward will be given to the next person, so I hope that doesnt happen." After the announcement, Luo Li got the staff to manage the crowd while the three examiners took out a fan-like object and connected them together to form a circle. The circle expanded and formed a round, black door that rose from the ground and opened slowly. A bunch of the participants stepped into the door following the staffs instructions. "Is that one of the keys of the ruins?" Lin Huang asked as he queued. "It should be a replica." Yi Yeyu nodded. "Shouldnt the ruin key be exclusive? Whys there a replica?" Lin Huang was surprised. "Every dimensional ruin should have an original key but it can be replicated." Yi Yeyu did not think it was strange. "Isnt it normal to get a replicated key? If theres only one, what do we do if its lost?" "So, that means if I activate the ruin key, I might encounter the Saint members in the ruins." Lin Huang touched the ruins keys in his pocket and contemplated seriously. "Luckily, I didnt activate it" Soon the three of them entered the black door and were sent to the plaza at the Union Government headquarters in the White Capital. Coming back to the White Capital made Lin Huang think that he had come back to civilization. He was not used to seeing buildings after spending 20 days in the barren Volcano Hell. As he stepped out of the door, Lin Huangs Emperor Heart Rings signal and network were activated. Before the activation could be completed, Yi Donglai appeared with the Demon Slayer Legion. Luo Li and the other examiners approached Yi Donglai and gave him a palm-sized metal plate of an unknown material. Lin Huang guessed that the metal plate was something like a computer tablet. Yi Donglai looked at the results and browsed the crowd. After his scanning stopped at Yi Yeyu and Lin Huang, he started speaking, "Congratulations for making it back safely! I shall not waste your time and announce the results now!" "First prize goes to Lin Huang with 136,317 points. "Second prize goes to Li Lang with 32,821 points. "Third prize goes to Yi Yeyu with 10,287 points. "Fourth prize goes to Shang Gong Hong with 10,133 points." The top ten participants were soon announced. Besides Lin Huang, the remaining nine people were all leveled up to holy fire-level. Li Lang had used his own way and got into top 2 while the rest had accumulated around 10,000 points each. While Yi Donglai announced the results, the activation of Lin Huangs Emperors Heart Ring was complete. It vibrated a couple of times but he did not look at it. "Lets welcome the first prize winner, Lin Huang, up here," Yi Donglai invited and nodded to a staff. The staff with the reward that was covered in red cloth stood next to Yi Donglai while Lin Huang walked towards him. "This is your reward. Reveal it!" Yi Donglai smiled at Lin Huang. Lin Huang nodded and removed the red cloth. A red monster egg was placed inside a golden box. The monster egg was slightly bigger than an adults palm. It was red in color with plum spots as well as light spiral patterns. Lin Huang knew that was the phoenix egg that Yi Donglai had promised. "Its yours now." Yi Donglai took the box from the staff and presented it to Lin Huang. Just when Lin Huang was about to leave with the monster egg, Yi Donglai spoke again, "Young man, dont you want to say anything?" Lin Huang was stunned, then he turned around. "Thank you!" He got down from the stage without turning his head after that. Because the monster egg was alive, he could not keep it in his storage space, so he covered the box and carried it with both hands. Many were envious of the box that he was holding. The prize presentation went on after Lin Huang left the stage. As he returned to the crowd, he held the box with one hand while another started checking his Emperors Heart Ring. Lin Xin had called many times. Lin Huang thought it was strange as she would not disturb him whenever he was out. She would usually call once and if nobody picked up, she would wait for him to call instead of calling him again and again. As the prize presentation was still going on, Lin Huang could not call her back, so he started checking his messages. His heart skipped a beat when he saw that many messages were sent by Lin Xin. He then started to read the messages. The first message shocked him. "Brother, Xiao Xuan is missing" 354 The Truth, Revealed "Lin Xuan is missing!" Lin Huang looked at the timestamp of the message sent. It was the day he had entered the dimensional ruins around five o clock when Lin Huang had left with Mr. Fu and Lin Xin had left to school. Lin Xin found out about the missing Lin Xuan after she came back and attempted to contact him. Lin Huang then looked at the other messages that Lin Xin had sent. Some of them were asking him to reply soon while the others were attached with photos of their home. There was one with a goodbye message that Lin Xuan had left on the writing board with his Emperors Heart Ring aside. Lin Huang could tell that the handwriting belonged to Lin Xuan as he had seen his handwriting many times. The note wrote about his reason for leaving. Lin Xuan had regained part of his memories and he wanted to leave to look for more. Besides stating the reason for leaving, he briefed about the gunfighting technique. For Lin Huang to learn the skill by himself, Lin Xuan had recorded clips of the intermediate and advanced skills that Lin Huang had yet to master from the Gun Master game in the ring. Lin Huang could project the clips if he wanted to. He ended the note with a few words of appreciation. He thanked Lin Huang and Lin Xin for taking care of him. Since he had regained his memory, there was no reason for him to stay anymore. He also asked them not to look for him. After reading the note, Lin Huang thought it was possible that Lin Xuan had left on his own. The handwriting did not seem to be rushed, so it did not look like he was forced to write the note. The message was clear and it was obvious that he had given some thought before writing the note. Although Lin Xuan had learned all the words, it was impossible for him to come out with such mature content. The only reason for that was that he had really regained his memory. The note even included the gunfighting technique that Lin Xuan had been teaching him. Only him, Lin Xin, and Lin Xuan knew about this, no other outsider did. It was impossible that the note had not been written by Lin Xuan. The Emperors Heart Ring was the key showing that he left voluntarily as besides the person who wore the ring, nobody could take it off unless the finger was chopped off and the person was dead. From the photos, there were no signs of fighting or struggling in the house. With Lin Xuans ability, he could definitely fight a person who was gold-level rank-3 and even a complete gold-level. He might not die even if he was to fight a white flame-level. With all the signs as evidence, it was possible that Lin Xuan had left by himself. Perhaps, he had really regained his memory and had decided to leave. Lin Huang calmed down as he made those speculations. However, he did not remove the possibility that Lin Xuan was taken away. There were too many people with special abilities in the world. If Lin Xuan encountered a person who knew Puppetry Skill, the person could create a scene that looked like Lin Xuan had left home on his own accord. As the prize presentation was still going on stage, Lin Huang got out of the crowd and called Lin Xin by the side of the plaza. Considering the prize presentation, Lin Huang did not video call her but a voice called instead. As soon as the call was connected, it was picked up immediately. "Brother!" "Ive just left the dimensional ruins and I saw your messages." Just when Lin Huang spoke, he heard crying coming from the other side of the phone. "Xiao Xuan" "I know, Ill get back as soon as I can today," Lin Huang comforted her. He only hung up the call after being able to lift up her mood slightly. Lin Huang called Mr. Fu after hanging up with Lin Xin. The phone rang twice and Mr. Fu picked up with a lazy drawl, "Youre so quick to come back. Has it been 19 days today?" "There was a monster horde, so the training ended early," Lin Huang explained. "Oh, is that so?" Mr. Fu did not seem to care about the results of the training and figured out the reason why Lin Huang called. "You want to go home?" "Yes, something happened at home," Lin Huang said without going any further. "Ill come get you. Lets go home together." Mr. Fu hung up the phone without waiting for Lin Huang to say anything. Soon, a green dimensional relic appeared and Mr. Fu walked out of it. His appearance had attracted the attention of Yi Donglai and the rest. "Dont bother me, go do your stuff," Mr. Fu said as he appeared next to Lin Huang. "You look serious. What happened?" Mr. Fu asked. "Xiao Xuan is missing. I need to get back soon." "Sure, lets go now." Mr. Fu did not ask further as he summoned his dimensional relic again and brought Lin Huang with him. "Is he really Mr. Fus apprentice?!" Luo Li was shocked to see the both of them leaving together. A dimensional relic opened at the living room of Lin Huangs home. Lin Huang and Mr. Fu got out of the relic. "Xin Er!" Lin Huang shouted upstairs. It was the weekend, so Lin Xin should be at home. "Brother!" Hearing Lin Huangs voice, Lin Xin knew that he was home, so she rushed downstairs quickly. Lin Huang was relieved to see Lin Xin alright. "Have you had lunch?" "Yes, I have." Lin Xin nodded and looked at Mr. Fu behind Lin Huang. "Lets talk about the thing." Lin Xin looked away from Mr. Fu. "Sure, how did you find out that Xiao Xuan was missing the other day?" Lin Huang got straight to the point. "I saw something on the coffee table when I got back from school so I took a look and realized that it was a note from Xiao Xuan," Lin Xuan said while handing the writing board to Lin Huang from her storage space. Lin Huang took the writing board. Although he had read the note from the photo, he still wanted to look again to confirm that it was Lin Xuans handwriting. "What else? Is there any sign of fighting in the house? Is there anything odd in Xiao Xuans room?" Lin Huang asked. "Theres no sign of struggling and everything looks normal at home. But I think Xiao Xuan changed his clothes before leaving. His wardrobe was opened and a gray robe is missing from his wardrobe. The clothes that he was wearing the other day are now hanging in the wardrobe." "He even had the time to change" Lin Huang was sure that Lin Xuan had left on his own. Lin Huang then shared his speculation. "Looking at all the signs, its very likely that Lin Xuan left by himself but its also possible that hes been taken away." "To be honest, besides the three auras of your family and mine, theres nobody else who came to this house within this month. Theres no remaining aura of any Puppetry Skill or parasites. I think the kid left by himself," Mr. Fu voiced his opinion. "If he was taken away, theres only one possibility. The person must be more powerful than I am. He managed to cover his aura so that I cant detect it. However, I think a person of such a level wouldnt want that kid." What Mr. Fu said cut off the possibility of Lin Xuan being taken away. "There should be transportation surveillance around your house. Get someone to show you the video. You should be able to see what happened that day," Mr. Fu reminded. Lin Huang recalled that he could indeed do that, so he contacted the local surveillance department immediately. With his Gold Hunter identity, he was granted access and the video was sent to him within minutes. Lin Huang played the video immediately. It started from the time when Lin Xin had gone to school 19 days ago until she finished school. He was sure that Lin Xuan was missing during that period of time. He fast-forwarded the video to noon and played it at regular speed when he saw Lin Xuan open the door. However, Lin Xuan disappeared as soon as he exited the door. "What happened?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "Youll be able to see it better if you play it 300 times slower," Mr. Fu reminded. Lin Huang slowed down the video immediately and replayed it. This time, he saw Lin Xuan fly towards the sky after he got out "He really left by himself" Lin Xin finally believed what Mr. Fu and Lin Huang said when she saw that. "Dont be sad. You should be happy for Xiao Xuan that he regained his memory," Lin Huang comforted her. "But why didnt he say goodbye before he left?" Lin Xin was upset. "Maybe he thought it would be awkward to see us since he has regained his memory, so he chose to leave," Lin Huang said but he had no idea why Lin Xuan would do that. "Since the truth is revealed, I shall make a move. Apprentice, rest and accompany this girl for a few days. Ill contact you again." Since everything was clear, Mr. Fu did not plan to stay and left with the dimensional relic. 355 The Dracaena Two days had passed. As the weekends had ended, Lin Xin had gone to school as usual. Although she was still feeling down, she was much better than two days ago. After all, it was Lin Xuans choice to leave instead of being forced. She felt much better after knowing that fact. Moreover, Lin Huang brought her shopping during the weekends which lifted her spirits. Watching Lin Xin leave for school, Lin Huang was not used to being alone in the house now that Lin Xuan was gone. He would usually roast some meat for Lin Xuan early in the morning but he did not have to do that anymore. He took his time to finish his breakfast and sat down on the couch after cleaning the kitchen. He put on Ye Xius Emperors Heart Ring, which started vibrating not long after it was activated. Lin Huang turned on the contact page and saw that Liang Qian had called him twice when he was in the dimensional ruins. He recalled the time when he was in the Meteorite Desert, remembering when the comrades had died and the girl who was chased by the Saints. He then looked at the two messages that she sent and read them carefully. The first one was sent on the second day when he had entered the dimensional ruins. It was an invitation to the funeral. The second message was sent on the sixth day he had entered the dimensional ruins and was a simple description of the funeral. She sounded calm but Lin Huang could feel her sorrow. He thought about it and decided to call her. After all, it was he who had promised to go to the funeral. He called after changing his facial appearance to Ye Xius identity. Soon, the phone was connected. "Brother Ye?" "Im sorry, I just got out of a dimensional ruin two days ago and just saw your messages," Lin Huang apologized. "Dimensional Ruins? No wonder I couldnt get through your phone the two times that I called." Liang Qian smiled lightly, not blaming Lin Huang for standing her up. "It was the second day I entered the dimensional ruins when you sent the first message." Lin Huang smiled back awkwardly. "Was the funeral successful?" "Quite. Come to Sakura City when you have the time. Ill bring you to see them." "Sure, Ill definitely visit you when I have the opportunity." Lin Huang nodded. The both of them then talked about reforming Dian Feng before Lin Huang hung up the phone. It had been half a month since the funeral had passed and Liang Qian seemed much better now. Lin Huang sure hoped that she would get over this very soon. Lin Huang then recalled he had yet to redeem his training points. "How do I do that?" Lin Huang thought to himself as he changed back to his own look and called Yi Yeyu in confusion. "Morning." Yi Yeyu was having breakfast when the video call was connected. "Why did you leave so early the other day?" Yi Yeyu asked after sipping some milk and swallowing the food in her mouth. "I had something urgent at home." "Is it settled now?" Yi Yeyu wiped her mouth with a serviette. "It can be considered done, I guess." Lin Huang shrugged. "Thats great. Are you calling to ask about the dracaena?" "Er Im actually calling to ask how to redeem my points Do I go to the Union Government office or how should I go it?" Lin Huang did not know exactly how the Union Government worked. "Alright then" Yi Yeyu was embarrassed that she got it wrong but soon she regained her composure again. "Its simple. Just log on to the Union Government official website and key in the serial number of your Emperors Heart Ring. Youll receive a password, then just key in the password to log onto the website. As soon as you have done that, go into the personal hub at the back to find a restricted entrance. Its exclusively for all the participants of the training. Theres an option for the military warehouse. Click on it to see the items that you can redeem. Youll be able to see your training points on top of the military warehouse. If you have redeemed any items, your points will be deducted straightaway. After youre done, click send at the bottom and key in your address." Yi Yeyu was detailed in her explanation. "I understand now!" Lin Huang was following the steps as Yi Yeyu walked him through it. "I have checked on the dracaena that you wanted, but theres no more stock in the military warehouse. I heard theres a pharmacist who redeemed all of them two months back," she added. "Not even one?" Lin Huang was speechless. "Not even one." Yi Yeyu shook her head. "If you really want it that badly, I could contact a few traders for you but I dont know how much you want. If the quantity is big enough, I might be able to get some." "Thanks! Check for me then, I only need nine." Lin Huang knew there was no other way to get dracaena besides this. Although Yi Yeyu was curious about what Lin Huang was going to do with the nine dracaenas, she did not ask any further. "Oh yes, I need to remind you about something. The military warehouse is open to outsiders for only a week. If you need to redeem anything, you need to do that within these few days or else, your points will expire. Also, no matter whether an outsider or a member of the Three Elite Divisions, the items that are redeemed from the Union Government military warehouse are not allowed to be sold. You can only use them yourself. Each item has a special serial number that can''t be seen by the naked eye. If anybody sells them, the Union Government will know who did it. If any of the items cause any trouble, the Union Government won''t let go of the seller easily," Yi Yeyu reminded again. "I understand." Lin Huang did not know that the items from the military warehouse could only be used by them themselves. However, he thought about it and realized that some weapons, especially machinery, were difficult to be sourced outside. The condition was meant to address those who needed money to resell the weapons at a higher price to criminals. After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang started looking at the items in the military warehouse. After some browsing, he noticed that there was really zero stock of dracaena. He then looked at other items instead. "A grade-5 sword relic Dragon Slayer costs 33,000 points, while a grade-5 gun relic Sky Phoenix costs 45,000 points" Lin Huang redeemed a few relics and some other items, spending all of his points. After closing the page, Lin Huang was concerned about the dracaena. "One dracaena will cost at least 30,000 Life Crystals or even higher, and nine of them will be at least 300,000 Life Crystals. Where do I get such a massive amount of money?" 356 Fundraising Lin Huang remembered clearly that he owed Yang Ling 16,000 Life Crystals when Yang Ling had applied for his residential permission in Winter City. Now that he needed more than 300,000 Life Crystals for the dracaena, he was worried about how he would get the money. "Oh right, I almost forgot that I have some good stuff from the Molten Dragon earlier." Lin Huang patted his head in an act of chastising himself as he recalled that. He took out the stuff from his storage space ring to see what was worth selling. Most of them were molten crystals that piled up to the size of a small hill. The molten crystal was a crystal mineral with fire attributes that was usually formed in spiritual lava. The more spiritual lava there was, the more of such crystals would be formed. Of course, there were different grades of the molten crystals. Those that were formed for more than 100 years would be beginner grade, ones that have been formed for more than 1,000 years would be considered intermediate grade and those that have been formed more than 10,000 years ago would be expert grade. There were also rare ones that were the mineral of the molten crystal which was the ultimate grade. There was a massive amount of fire energy in the crystals. Humans with fire attributes could absorb the energy to convert it into Life Power. However, the main function of the crystals was not that. Instead, it was to provide a variety of energy to large-scale equipment similar to petroleum and coal on Earth. Most of the demonic crystal spaceships and trains got their power force from the molten crystals. In reality, most demonic crystal equipment used the molten crystals as their energy source. Compared to other crystals, the force of the molten crystal was more powerful with a simpler conversion process. However, the usage of the molten crystals was less common than petroleum and coal on Earth as the number of such crystals was much lesser. As it was rare, not everybody could afford it. The beginner grade was affordable as one year worth of Life Crystal pieces could be exchanged for one kilogram of molten crystals while the same amount of intermediate grade molten crystals would require 10 years worth of Life Crystal pieces. For the expert grade molten crystals, one kilogram would cost 1,000 complete Life Crystals while the ultimate grade would cost ten times more. The quality of molten crystal could be seen from the color. Those with dark red spots would be beginner grade while those that were a shade of wine-red without any spots would be intermediate grade. Those that were bloody red would be expert grade. It was said that all expert grade molten crystals were bloody red but Lin Huang had no idea how to tell them apart. However, based on the color, all the molten crystals in the storage space ring should be at least an expert grade but Lin Huang was not sure if anyone them were ultimate grade. "This pile of molten crystal should be at least 70 to 80 tons. If there are all expert grade, they would be the equivalent to at least 70,000 to 80,000 Life Crystals. While the ultimate grade would be the mineral of the molten crystal, I heard its rare, so I dont think theres any here." Lin Huang struck out the possibility of the existence of ultimate grade crystals from the pile that he had. "If I manage to get 70,000 to 80,000 Life Crystals from here, I''ll need another 200,000 more" He then looked at the relics in the storage space. There were more than 100 weapons and another 100 pieces of armor, all in good condition. It was obvious that the Molten Dragon treated them as collectibles. However, those were grade-1 and grade-2 relics. There were hardly any grade-3 relics. Lin Huang calculated all of them. He could get more than 100,000 Life Crystals if he sold all of them as second-hand items. If that happened, he would have 200,000 with him. "I''ll need at least 100,000 more" Lin Huang then looked at the Emperors Heart Rings in the storage space. There were thousands of them. "It would be great if I could take out the items from these Emperors Heart Rings." "Master, dont you have a friend who makes Emperors Heart Rings? He should be able to unlock them," Bloody, who was in his sleeve, heard his mumbling and suggested. "Oh right, how could I forgot about Yang Ling?!" Whether Yang Ling could do it or not, Lin Huang decided to ask him anyway. He changed his face to Ye Xiu again and called Yang Ling. The phone was trying to connect for almost one whole minute before Yang Ling finally picked up. In the video, the skinny Yang Ling was wearing gray underwear with serious panda eyes. He looked exhausted. "I just went to bed, cant you let me sleep?" "Nobody asked you to live like this. Its eight in the morning now. Why are you still sleeping?!" Lin Huang wanted to say, "Wake up and get high with me..." but that might reveal his real identity. After all, he did not know much about the travelers in this world. He was not sure if they were friendly. Since he was still young, he might bring trouble to himself for getting in touch with other travelers out of nowhere. "Whats up? Tell me quickly, Im very sleepy." Yang Ling had to entertain Lin Huang as he was an old customer, so he could not afford to be rude. "Could you unlock Emperors Heart Rings that don''t have an owner?" Lin Huang did not want to beat around the bush so he asked directly. "You meant a dead persons Emperors Heart Ring? I can unlock them but there must be at least 100 rings," Yang Ling yawned. "Of course theres an exception where the ring owner is immortal-level or higher, then I can take the case." "How do you charge?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "You will get 70% while Ill get 30% of the items in the ring without any extra charges. If theres nothing that I want in the ring, you can pay me with Life Crystals." It was clear that Yang Ling had done that before. "30%? Can it be less?" Lin Huang thought that 30% was too much. "30% isnt too much. Without me, you get nothing out of the ring." Yang Ling looked obnoxiously at him. "Moreover, I charge the same to everyone. Not only Division7, those who are in Division1 to Division3 pay the same rate." "Alright then. How do you do it? Should I go to you?" Lin Huang agreed. "Dont trouble yourself. Just send me the serial number will do," Yang Ling said. "How many do you have? I dont accept less than 100 as itll be too much trouble," Yang Ling added. "More than 1,000, I guess. I dont have the exact number." "So many of them! Did you dig their graves?" Yang Ling teased. "What?! I didnt dig any graves, I just robbed a monster," Lin Huang said. "Oh right, send me the serial numbers and dont send me photos just because its more convenient for you," Yang Ling warned. "What difference does it make?" Lin Huang planned to arrange the rings and take a picture as that would be definitely faster than sending the serial numbers one by one. "Of course there is. Ill have to key in the serial numbers myself if you send a photo. Thats too much trouble and a waste of my time. I can copy the serial numbers directly if you send it to me by text. Thatll save a lot of my time." Yang Ling was honest. "Youre such a lazy bum." Lin Huang was speechless. "Thank you dear, for your compliment. Im going to bed now. Bye!" Yang Ling hung up straight away. 357 Unlocking The Emperor’s Heart Ring After having breakfast and cleaning the kitchen early in the morning, Lin Huang returned to his room on the second floor. There was an opened golden box next to his bed with a bright red monster egg nestled in it. Lin Huang held the monster egg and started to insert his Life Power into it. Since the first day of bringing the monster egg back, Lin Huang had to do this once every day. It was now the fifth day. On the first day, this monster egg could only absorb one Life Wheel of Life Power and did not need any more than that. On the second and third day, its need started to increase incessantly. It needed two Life Wheels of Life Power and three Life Wheels of Life Power on the second and third day respectively It was now the fifth day. Lin Huang inserted four Life Wheels of Life Power into the monster egg and found out that the monster eggs capacity for Life Power was still vacant, so he proceeded to insert more. Until the fifth Life Wheel in his body was empty, the monster egg rejected any more Life Power. Lin Huang knew that the more Life Power the monster egg absorbed, the better its innate foundation was. It mirrored the same principle of having sufficient nutrient to positively affect the fetuss congenital development during a womans pregnancy. There was only one Life Wheel in the body of a normal person. The Life Power inserted every day was limited and was not likely to satisfy the monster egg in general. However, that did not apply to Lin Huang as he had 10 Life Wheels in his body. Even if his Life Wheels were insufficient for the monster egg, he had three more Life Power Refill Cards. There were five Life Wheels on the card previously but since he had used the five Life Power Storage Card, the Life Wheels on the Life Power Refill Card had increased to 10 Life Wheels now. The hatching of the monster egg would take one Life Power insertion for an egg that was not mutated, while those with single mutation would need two to three times. Meanwhile, those with double mutation would need four to six times while triple mutated ones would need eight to ten times. The one which Lin Huang was holding was a triple mutated monster egg with phoenix blood, so it needed eight to ten days to complete the hatching. It had only been five days and he was not in a rush at all. As soon as the monster egg was saturated with Life Power, Lin Huang put it down and walked towards the balcony. He then summoned the Gun Master game pod. After entering the game pod and activating the game, Lin Huang built a personal training space directly and opened the virtual projection function while he imported the tutorials that Lin Xuan had recorded. Lin Xuans virtual projection appeared in front of Lin Huang very quickly. The projection looked exactly the same as Lin Xuan himself. The projected figure took out a SilverPhoenix16 swiftly and demonstrated the gunfighting technique. Although it was a recorded video and Lin Xuan knew that the speed of the video was adjustable, he went through it three times slowly. The first time was at the normal speed, the second time was to scrutinize the breakdown of the actions while the third was to reenact the parts which were harder to understand individually. After watching the whole tutorial set, Lin Huang started the practice of the gunfighting technique It was the second set of intermediate gunfighting technique that he had learned from Lin Xuan. He only took two days to master the first two gunfighting techniques. The intermediate level gunfighting techniques were not exactly useful to him but he wanted to build a concrete foundation. That was why he decided to learn the intermediate level ones that he had yet to master. Besides practicing gunfighting technique for the past two days, Lin Huang had been waiting for news. One of the anticipated news was about the unlocking from Yang Ling while another was about the dracaena from Yi Yeyu. He spent more than two hours to key in more than 1,300 serial numbers to Yang Ling two days ago. It had been two days but there was still no news from Yang Ling. There seemed to be no news from Yi Yeyu about the dracaena as well. Luckily, Lin Huang had found something to pass his time with, so he did not panic. The game pod was connected to the communication function of his Emperors Heart Ring, so he was not afraid that he might miss their calls while he was training the gunfighting technique. His phone rang when it was almost noon. It was Yang Ling who called. "Finally, you call." Lin Huang shut down the game and walked out of the game pod while changing his appearance to Ye Xiu before picking up Yang Lings video call. Yang Ling looked much more energized than he did two days ago. "I have actually completed it at 3 a.m. two days ago but I guess you must have been sleeping, so I didnt contact you. I slept all the way till 7 p.m. and was busy with my ladies, then I forgot about you. I was too tired last night, so I slept early. I just woke up and contacted you immediately," Yang Ling smiled as he explained. "You must be really busy." Lin Huang shook his head. "Do you need me to recommend some ladies to you? Tell you what you like, Ill definitely satisfy your needs," Yang Ling smirked as he talked about women. "So, is pimping your part-time job now?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. "Hehe Just tell me, as your bro, Ill definitely get you a good one." Yang Ling grinned. "No, thank you," Lin Huang declined straightaway. "Whats wrong? Youre not young anymore. Do you plan to be a monk?" Yang Ling observed Lin Huang who was in Ye Xius body, which was his 25-year-old look on Earth. He looked matured. "Whats wrong with being a monk? Its better than you dying from having too much sex," Lin Huang shot back. "Alright, lets talk business," Yang Ling giggled and changed the topic. "You''ve sent me a total of 1,359 serial numbers. Ive unlocked all of them and parked them under your name." "Parked them under my name? Wont the Union Government find out about this?" Lin Huang frowned, hoping that Yang Ling was messing with him. If the Union Government found out about this, his Emperors Heart Ring would definitely be sealed and Ye Xius identity might be put under investigation as well. "Dont worry, there wont be any issue within three days but youll have to transfer all the items within 72 hours. After that, all the information on the Emperors Heart Rings will be returned back to the original owners, so nobody will find out about it. About the rings, find a place to destroy them." Yang Ling was an expert in this. "So, how do I give you the 30%?" Lin Huang was relieved. "I have taken a look and theres nothing worthy in there. You can calculate the value and convert them into Life Crystals, then transfer them to me." Yang Ling did not seem to bother too much about it. "Sure." Lin Huang nodded. After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang took out one of the Emperors Heart Rings and tested it on his finger. It was activated. "Its really been unlocked!" Lin Huang was over the moon. He opened his storage space immediately and started to transfer the items 358 Mystery At first, Lin Huang was categorizing all items in the Emperors Heart Rings and getting rid of the useless items so that his storage space would not be completely occupied. However, after a few hours, he only managed to clear more than 10 Emperors Heart Rings. He looked at the time and figured that if he was to go on like that, he would not be able to clear all of them within three days. Considering that he was not being very efficient, he decided to give up on categorizing for the time being. He wanted to clear all the items in his storage space ring before continuing. That made his progress much faster but he still took one and a half days to do it. He was done at past 10 p.m. on the next day. There were many items in the 1,359 Emperors Heart Rings which occupied two of Lin Huangs Emperors Heart Rings as well as a third of the one that Leng Yuexin had given him. After putting all the Emperors Heart Rings in the storage space ring, Lin Huang looked at the time and went to shower. Just when he got out of the shower, his Emperors Heart Ring started to buzz. He looked at it and saw that it was Yi Yeyu, so he put on his pajamas immediately before picking up the video call. "What took you so long to pick up my call. Are you doing something shady?" Yi Yeyu said and when she noticed that his hair was wet, she knew why he had taken so long. "What shady business? I just got out of the shower, so I wasnt ready to pick up your call just yet," Lin Huang said while wiping his hair with a towel. "Do you have news for me?" "I have good news and bad news. Which one would you like to hear first?" Yi Yeyu smiled playfully. "I only accept good news, so you dont have to tell me the bad news." As he wiped his hair, he could tell from Yi Yeyus expression that she had news about the dracaena. "Then, I shall tell you the bad news first." Yi Yeyu grinned. Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders as he could not stop her behavior. "The bad news is that all of the dracaenas in the traders circle were sold out a month ago. I heard from the traders that they have zero stock of dracaena." That was really bad news for Lin Huang. "Then, whats the good news?" Lin Huang figured she probably had some other way to get the dracaena. "I heard they are putting up dracaena at the Mystery Auction." Yi Yeyu did not want to beat around the bush anymore. "Mystery Auction?" Lin Huang was unfamiliar with the name. "The Mystery Auction is the exclusive auction in Division7 for the noblemen where they only serve the royal families. Its an annual event in 43 days time. All the items at the auction are high-end, so there wont be any items lower than a grade-3 relic." Yi Yeyu looked strangely at him when she was explaining the auction. "Auction for the royal families? Can you bring me there?" Lin Huang frowned and looked at her. "I really cant bring you to the auction. My great-grandfather came up with a rule that none of our family members are allowed to join the auction." Yi Yeyu smiled awkwardly. "Why?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "You should know there are two families in the Division7 military department, don''t you?" Yi Yeyu asked. "What does this auction have to do with the Dongfang family?" Of course, Lin Huang knew that besides the Yi family, there was also the Dongfang family. Yi Donglai left Division3 and went to Division7 that had just opened. He had volunteered to go there for some reason and become the first person in the Division7 military team. However, just when he was succeeding, a family from Division2 saw some advantages of being in Division7, so they trained the Dongfang family and placed them into Division7 military team too. Since then, the Dongfang family rose up and soon, they became the second biggest military family in Division7. Due to the connection in Division2, the Dongfang family was interfering with Division7s military department, which the Yi family was unhappy about, especially Yi Donglai. Of course, that was not the main reason for the conflict between the two families. "The Mystery Auction wasnt built by the Dongfang family but by somebody behind the family. They have some shady business going on while the Dongfang family have been providing shady materials to the auction. My great-grandfather insisted on isolating them as the Dongfang family is shady." "Do you mean drugs?" That was the first thing Lin Huang thought of. "Shadier than that." Yi Yeyu shook her head. "Human trafficking?!" Lin Huang got it immediately. Yi Yeyu nodded in silence and spoke again after a while, "The Dongfang family has been capturing abandoned and missing kids secretly in Division7. Some of them will be sent to the auction. Of course, they wont be auctioning them off in public but underground instead. However, they will auction off a variety of sinners in public." The so-called sinners were the Descendants of the Sin. The first generation mostly came from the mating of human-form monsters and women. Many of them were killed by the Union Government but some of them had lived. That was how the bloodline remained. Speaking of the sinners, Lin Huang thought of Xiao Mo whom he had met at the Purple Crow training camp. Although the Union Government was strict about the killing of sinners, stereotyping was inevitable. That were not many organizations that would accept the sinners. Even the Hunter Association and Adventurer Paradise that were open-minded did not accept sinners, let alone other organizations. That was the reason why Xiao Mo had decided to join the Purple Crow as he did not have any other option. "Trafficking sinner slaves...isnt that prohibited by the Union Government? Doesnt anyone care?!" Lin Huang frowned as he asked. "The Union Government is busy with the battles out there. How would they have the time for this? Moreover, the people who are in this business must have some powerful background in the core zones. The Union Government has to give some face to some of the families in the core zones, so of course, theyll cover an eye when it comes to things like this. Even if anyone reported this, theyll just come up with some scapegoats. Those who are in the business will hide for 10 days to half a month and proceed with the business when the matter has blown over," Yi Yeyu explained. "These people are evil!" Lin Huang thought of Wei Shan that he had killed earlier. There were too many bastards like him in this world. "Lets not talk about this anymore since I cant bring you to the auction anyway," Yi Yeyu said. "I remember that youre close to the Leng family, so you can talk to them. Its just a matter of bringing a person to the auction. It should be a piece a cake for them," Yi Yeyu added. "Sure, thanks! Ill talk to the Leng family. I shall treat you to a meal the next time!" Lin Huang had forgotten how many meals he had owed the people who had helped him. "Bring more Life Crystals! If the demand for dracaena is high, the price should be high too." Yi Yeyu reminded him before hanging up the phone. It was almost 11 p.m. when the call ended. Lin Huang read the news in frustration until 1 a.m. and went to bed. 359 Leng Yuexin Levels Up To Crimson Flame-level It was past eight in the morning when the Silvertongue Bird visited as Lin Huang was cleaning the kitchen after dinner. "Delivery! Please get your parcel!" Lin Huang washed his hands and wiped them dry before getting the door. Seeing that the door was opened, the Silvertongue Bird looked up at Lin Huang. "Good morning, your delivery is here. Please sign!" Lin Huang grabbed a bunch of candies and glanced at the item list and the boxes that the bird was taking out before scanning his Emperors Heart Ring. The delivery system in Winter City, a B-grade foothold, was much more advanced compared to the rest as one did not have to sign using their hand. Instead, they could just scan their Emperors Heart Ring. "Thanks!" The Silvertongue Bird flew away quickly. Lin Huang picked up the boxes and put them inside his storage space ring and lay them out again when he returned to the living room. The boxes were the items that he had redeemed from the Union Governments military warehouse using his training points. He could not wait to open them all. "A grade-5 sword relic Demon Slayer, a grade-5 gun relic Sky Phoenix, a grade-5 defense relic Niello Armor" He had spent more than 130,000 points to redeem a couple of customary equipment from the elite troop. Although they were just equipment, they were all top-notch ones which were nothing less than most custom-made equipment. The examiner Zang Bing was a gold flame-level human who wore a customized Niello Armor. Without any special needs, Lin Huang could wear the armor all the way until he reached gold flame-level. After redeeming three grade-5 relics, he was left with less than 10,000 points so he redeemed some explosive equipment and the rest were used for Life Crystals until he spent all of his points. It was 8:30 a.m. when he was done going through the items. He felt frustrated as he recalled the conversation with Yi Yeyu last night as he did not want to get in touch with the Mystery Organization but that was the only way to get the dracaena. He then convinced himself to call Leng Yuexin. She picked up the video call a while later. She still looked as cold as ever with her short, black hair just like the first time they met. She did not seem to change the slightest bit since half a year ago. "Morning, have you had your breakfast?" Lin Huang did not know how to ask for the favor upfront, so he started neutrally. Although they were friends, compared to Yi Yeyu, Leng Yuexin always kept her distance. "Yes, I have." Leng Yuexin nodded and smiled after a while. "You seem busy for the last six months," Leng Yuexin said. "Yes, I''ve been busy working on my combat strength." Lin Huang smiled back and nodded awkwardly. "I heard about you being in the Demon Slayer Legion training two days ago. You got first place?" Leng Yuexin asked. "Yes, I did but its nothing. All I got was a pet monster egg, but it hasnt hatched until now." Lin Huang did not expect her to know about this. "Your speed of leveling up is fast. While its a good kind of busy, dont push yourself too hard. Stabilize your combat strength before getting to holy fire-level." Leng Yuexin did not sound like she was talking to Lin Huang as a senior but more like dishing out advice from a friend. "Yes, I understand. I wont be leveling up to holy fire-level in a short period of time." He had been occupied recently and did not have the time to think about leveling up at all. "Do you need anything from me?" Leng Yuexin knew that he did not call just to chat. "I would like to get into the Mystery Auction," Lin Huang finally revealed his purpose of calling, "Theres something that I need and only they have it." "Mystery" Leng Yuexin frowned. She knew that Lin Huang came to her as only royal families of certain levels could get into the auction. Even regular royal families could not even get into it, let alone Lin Huang who was just an ordinary person. "Is it too much trouble?" Lin Huang noticed that she looked troubled. "Its not that. Mystery does filthy business. Ive been there once with a friend and we saw something unpleasant, so it was the last time we visited the auction," Leng Yuexin explained. "Then, its alright since Im not in a hurry. I dont really want to get in touch with the people in Mystery." Lin Huang did not want to force her to do anything that she was unwilling to. He wanted to unlock all of his monsters before leveling up to holy fire-level but he could also do it after he had leveled up. Moreover, besides dracaena, he needed to unlock the Ruthless Sword Master and the Viridescent Thunderhawk. Plus, Bloody had yet to achieve its full skills. It was unnecessary for him to focus on Charcoal for now. "Its alright, I can bring you there," Leng Yuexin agreed anyway. "I havent been going out ever since I leveled up to crimson flame-level a few months ago. Its good to get some fresh air." "You dont have to be at the auction for fresh air. I could go somewhere else with you since Im quite free," Lin Huang suggested. "Lets just go to the auction. Sometimes, we have to do things that we dont like. Besides, they have many things over there. Perhaps, they have the stuff that Im looking for," Leng Yuexin insisted. "Alright then" Lin Huang knew she said that with the intention to just bring him around. "Thanks, Ill treat you to a meal when we meet No, Im troubling you this time, so Ill handle all the fees!" Lin Huang felt generous. "Its okay, you can treat me a meal as long as you bring me to somewhere with good food. Im very bad at that. I see many people giving fake reviews on the Heart Network. I went to some outlets that have high scores but they were so bad," Leng Yuexin complained. "Its not accurate to trust the scores. You have to look at the reviews but some of them are definitely fake," Lin Huang teased. "If its good, then its good. If its bad, then its bad. Whats the point of writing fake reviews?" Leng Yuexin shook her head. "Ill handle that. Im sure you will be satisfied." Lin Huang realized that his tone sounded like Yang Lings especially the last sentence, so he diverted the topic immediately. "There are still 42 days to the auction, so when do we meet?" "I have pinned the location there on my dimensional relic. I can bring both of us there. Ill pick you up three days before the auction starts. Just send me your address. Let me book you a hotel room since youre not familiar with the place. You can pay me back when the auction is over." Leng Yuexin knew Lin Huang would not let her pay for the hotel room, so she suggested it herself. "Sure, its a deal." Lin Huang nodded. "Oh yeah, I can lend you Life Crystals if you dont have enough for the items that you want," Leng Yuexin initiated. "I should have enough. Well talk about it if I really need more by then." Lin Huang thought that she was such a sweet lady. "See you then." "Yes, see you." After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang started clearing the items that he had transferred from the other Emperors Heart Rings. He was not sure if he could accumulate enough Life Crystals for the dracaena. 360 Grace Lin Huang spent the entire morning clearing most of the stuff that he did not need and placed all of them in one of the Emperors Heart Rings of the deceased. After lunch, he started categorizing the items which he was working on, starting with the Life Crystals first. There were at least dozens of Life Crystals in each ring and some of them even had thousands of Life Crystals. He did not calculate the exact figure but there were a total of at least 200,000 to 300,000 of them. Most of the rings contained a variety of weapons and relics. There were at least 4,000 to 5,000 gold-level weapons and armors. There were fewer relics but there were still at least 800 of them that were merely grade-1 and grade-2 relics. He would get at least a million Life Crystals if he sold all of the items. Besides, there were various elixirs that he was not sure about the expiry date, so he did not plan to keep them anyway. The rest were some knick-knacks that seemed useless, so he got rid of them. He kept those with functions he was not sure of and decided to sell the rest of the items that he did not plan to use the weapons and relics. It was noon on the third day when he was finally done categorizing them. It was a Saturday in the middle of May and Lin Xin would sit for her graduation exam in less than a month. After a week of adjustment, she had finally forgotten about Lin Xuan and focused on the exam. She even spent her weekends practising her battle and gunfighting technique in Gun Master. Although she was not as talented as Lin Huang, her learning ability was amazing. She had mastered all 37 beginner level gunfighting techniques that Lin Xuan thought of as well as six techniques that did not require Life Power. She was almost invincible in the normal zone, so she decided to enter the hunter exclusive zone that was left behind by Lin Xuan. Although she was defeated more than she won, her abilities were improving fast. At the professional gun exam at school, she had achieved full scores for the past two months. She was also the top three in the battle assessment and culture studies, to the point she was labeled as the top student at school. Seeing that she was busy on the second floor, Lin Huang summoned Bloody. "Stay at home while I drop by the black market to handle some stuff." Bloody nodded. Although it was not a monster that was good in fights, it was a complete gold-level double mutated monster with a high intelligence. Lin Huang would be more relieved to have it stay at home. After briefing Bloody, he changed his clothes and his features to Ye Xius. Riding on the Viridescent Thunderhawk, it took him less than ten minutes to arrive at the black market. The Viridescent Thunderhawk landed on top of a six-storey building. Lin Huang recalled it and hopped into an alley. The Winter City black market was sprawling, occupying four streets. All of the stores were doing black market business. As the streets created a special pound (#) shape, many people, especially tourists would chance upon the streets by accident, so the area was developed into a mix of businesses. Although the profits one would gain from normal business would be better, many of the shop owners treated it as a hobby. Most of the people in the streets were tourists and Lin Huang blended right in. As he browsed around the stores, he was looking out for his target. As he walked to the middle area, he saw an unique pavilion on the side of the street. "Is that the Grace Pavilion?" He had finally found his target. The Grace Pavilion was the biggest store in Winter Citys black market with a solid word-of-mouth reputation. However, there was a rule where they would not entertain any business that was less than 100,000 Life Crystals. Such a rule gave other stores the opportunity to survive. The owner of the Grace Pavilion knew very well that if he was to disrupt the business in the black market, he would definitely be boycotted. He knew that no matter how powerful he was, he could not monopolize the entire black market. That was why he came out with such a rule. Word-of-mouth was vital in the black market and that rule only increased its fame in the underworld. Not only did their business not slow down, it was even better than before. Lin Huang walked towards the pavilion. It was selling jewellery on the outside with many visitors. Lin Huang then approached a female staff. "Do you guys have campanula here?" The lady staff looked at him and asked, "May I know how much you need, sir?" "9.9 kilograms." Lin Huang smiled. "We only have 8.8 kilograms," the lady staff hinted. "Sure, I shall have 11 kilograms then," Lin Huang responded. "Please follow me, sir." Since he managed to understand her hint, the staff brought him to an elegant room on the third floor. "Thank you." Lin Huang nodded. As the staff left, a young lady who was dressed in a mandarin-collared dress that brushed her knees entered the room a while later. Lin Huangs eyes lit up when he saw her, not because of her outer appearance, but because of the aura she gave off. She was very feminine and it was his first time seeing a lady like this. "Hi sir, my name is Grace." The lady smiled sweetly. "My name is Ye Xiu," Lin Huang stood up and greeted. Judging by her name, the lady must be the owner of the store but he did not ask further. "Please have a seat," Grace invited. She sat across Lin Huang and got herself a cup of tea. She took a small sip of the tea and looked at Lin Huang, seemingly not in a rush to talk business. "Sir, youre new here. How did you come to know about the Grace Pavilion?" "I found you guys on the network." Lin Huang did not think that lying was necessary. "Do you know about our unspoken rule then?" Grace took another sip and put down the cup. "I do, you dont accept business thats less than 100,000 Life Crystals." He finally understood why had she asked such a question. She was concerned that since Lin Huang was new, he might not know about the rule. "Since you know our rule, what do you need from us or do you plan to sell us your things?" Graces smile became friendlier. "I have a bunch of gold-level equipment and relics to sell," Lin Huang finally voiced out his intention. "How much do you have?" Graces eyes lit up. "I have around 5,000 gold-level equipment 1,000 relics as well as some other items. Im planning to sell all of them." "So many of them?" Grace was surprised. "This place is too small to look at the items. Please follow me." Grace stood up and brought Lin Huang to the other room on the same floor. It was much more bigger than the previous one. It was empty like a warehouse with two men standing at the entrance like bodyguards. "Sir, you can bring out the items now." Lin Huang nodded and took out all the equipment which piled into a mountain. He then walked a few steps away and took out the relics which piled into a hill and then he put the rest of the elixir and items aside. Grace then waved to the two strong men. "Come check the items." The two men quickly calculated all the gold-level equipment. Grace took out a coffee table and a couple of chairs, inviting Lin Huang to sit while getting a lady staff to get them a pot of tea. Then then chatted while sipping tea. As they chatted, Lin Huang asked about the location where information exchanged within the black market. The two men who looked like bodyguards were conducting the stock check rapidly, spending less than five hours to complete their task. "There''s a total of 5,381 gold-level equipment, among them are 3,067 weapons and 2,314 defensive items. There are 687 grade-1 relics, 411 grade-2 relics, 1,828 elixirs and 1,074 other items" Grace soon came up with a price. "I''ve done the calculations. Theyre worth a total of 1,578,627 Life Crystals. Since its your first time with us, Ill round it up to 1.58 million for you." She then gave him a card that was half the size of a palm. "Thank you so much." Lin Huang took the Life Crystal storage card without thinking twice. He was satisfied with the amount that he was offered. He had come up with an estimation before arriving and he thought it would be around one million Life Crystals with the exception of the price of the elixirs. It was great that he received 1.58 million. "Please visit us again if theres more business in the future." "Will do." Lin Huang grinned while swiping the card onto his account. He then returned her the card after seeing the 1.58 million Life Crystals credited into his account. Lin Huang left the Grace Pavilion as soon as his business was wrapped up and headed to the information exchange store that he heard about from Grace 361 Martial Hunter College The unsealing of the Viridescent Thunderhawk was not complicated. All it needed was three drops of the ancient bird monsters blood. It was not the monsters that existed in ancient times but was actually talking about monsters that had ancient blood within them. Mythical creatures such as dragons, phoenixes, and rocs belonged to this category of monsters. Since most of the ancient monsters had blood with terrifying strength, it was only natural that they were born powerful. Even dragonkins that were not mutated would have abilities that were comparable with a triple mutated Transcendent-level monster when it was still a baby. The same applied to phoenix and roc blooded monsters. "Xiao Hei, can I use the blood of an ancient monster thats not been mutated before to unseal the Viridescent Thunderhawk?" Lin Huang asked as soon as he got out of the black market. "Yes, you can but the higher the quality, the better." "Must it be the same ancient monster? Or do I need to get three different ancient monsters?" "It has to be an ancient monster of the same type. The best would be the exact same ancient monster." "Alright," Lin Huang acknowledged. He dropped by the information exchange store in the black market to ask about the trails of double mutated sword type monsters for Lancelot the Ruthless Sword Master as well as information about ancient bird monsters. He did not get anything about the ancient monsters blood but he got some information about double mutated sword type monsters from the seller. He deposited some money to get the seller to gather more information about him. Lin Huang had actually posted the question in a form of a mission on the Hunter Forum a few days back but nobody had given him any useful feedback, so he turned to the black market. It was almost six in the evening when he got home. Lin Xin ordered take-out and was downstairs picking up the food less than three minutes ago before Lin Huang got home. "Brother, Ive ordered some food. Eat while its still hot." Lin Xin pointed at the bowl of ramen. "I was just thinking of what I should eat for dinner earlier." Lin Huang smiled and sat at the dining table. "This store has good ramen with a delicious soup base. Ive tried it a few times before." "I ordered three bowls of them. Bloody has eaten its portion." Lin Huang just noticed that there was an empty bowl on the coffee table in the living room and it looked like the bowl was being washed. Bloody looked at Lin Huang and nodded to him, seeming to be in a good mood. Lin Huang then picked up the chopsticks and tasted the ramen. He nodded in satisfaction, the noodles were al dente and the soup was flavorful. "You are 20 days away from your graduation exam. Hows the preparation?" Lin Huang asked although Lin Xins study was never too much of a concern. "Almost done now." Lin Xin beamed. "Which school do you plan to get in to?" He asked. "Im planning to get into the Martial Hunter College, majoring in martial arts and minoring in guns." Lin Xin had everything planned out. The Martial Hunter College was a higher learning institution opened by the Hunter Association. It was also the best college in the human world. If it was placed on Earth, it was similar to the standard of the Ivy League universities. Of course, as it was popular, it was difficult to get in. There were branches in every division whereby each division would accept more than 50,000 students annually. However, it was difficult to get in as the population of each division was at least 10 times more than that on Earth. There were more students participating in the graduation exam here compared to those who graduated from high school on Earth. Although Winter City was a B-grade foothold, there were only three people who were accepted into the Martial Hunter College on average annually. In Winter City, there were a total of four schools the same standard as the one that Lin Xin was going to as well as a few schools that were not as popular with the good students. The target that Lin Xin set for herself was a challenging one. "Why would you want to get into the Martial Hunter College?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "I have compared many organizations and found out that the eligibility to join the Hunter Association is the laxest. Moreover, the Martial Hunter College is different from the federal military college. They''ll teach us about the concept of the organization. On the other hand, the Martial Hunter College is the most liberal one with simple learning materials," Lin Xin reasoned. "Are you confident about it?" Lin Huang asked. Lin Xin thought about it and shook her head. "Your gun skills shouldnt be a problem, so it shouldn''t be difficult for you to score full marks in your graduation exam. I guess youre not confident in the battle assessment or culture studies?" Lin Huang asked. "I have no problem in the cultural studies but it''s the battling I''m not confident about. Therere a few of them who are more powerful than I am this year. The first round of the battle assessment doesn''t allow guns or other weapons," Lin Xin shared helplessly. "So, you have problems in melee combat?" Lin Huang understood the problem immediately. "Yes." Lin Xin looked downright upset. "I shall train your melee combat skills these few days then," Lin Huang suggested. Lin Xin nodded immediately. She knew that Lin Huang was the Sword Genius who was powerful in close-distance battles. Nobody below Transcendent level could defeat him in melee combat. Even without his sword, he was invincible. After lunch, Lin Huang cleaned the kitchen and followed Lin Xin into the Gun Master game. In reality, the Hunter Arena was more suitable but because Lin Xin was not a hunter, she could not enter it. Lin Huang had an extra ring left but the Hunter Arena was connected to ones Emperors Heart Ring and Lin Xin could not use his ring to enter the arena. Fortunately, the training ground in the Gun Master had a variety of terrains. Lin Huang had built one that was modeled after the ring in the Hunter Arena and invited Lin Xin in. As soon as she entered the virtual room, the room was locked with a password so that nobody could enter. "I improved my battle abilities by fighting again and again. I have faith that you can do the same," Lin Huang said. "Under normal circumstances, I would teach you melee combat skill like Fatal Tactics but since we dont have much time, I''ll only train you on mastering the techniques that you already know. "I will create a normal account later and form an avatar that has the same ability as yours to fight you. In the battles, I will use the techniques that you already know as well as some advanced techniques to give you sufficient pressure. I wont show mercy during the battles. I''ll even kill the avatar that you create. Therefore, I hope that you dont treat this as a game but a real battle." "Yes!" Lin Xi agreed excitedly. Soon, Lin Huang exited the game and created a new mission from his own account, then he entered the locked training ground after he was done with some settings. "Brother?" Lin Xin was surprised when she saw Lin Huang re-entering the room as he now looked like a 20-year-old arrogant, young man. He did not look anything like Lin Huang. "I internally changed my features as well as my voice so that you can focus on the battles. From today onwards, Im your enemy, not your brother," Lin Huang explained. "Get into the ring!" He did not want to waste any more time, so he walked straight into the ring and waved at Lin Xin. Lin Xin took a deep breath and followed him 362 The Monster Egg Has Hatched It was 10:30 p.m. and Lin Huang had killed Lin Xin more than 90 times in the Gun Master ring after four hours. He decided to stop the game. On average, she was defeated in less than three minutes each time and Lin Huang pointed out her weaknesses after every battle ended. "Lets stop here today. We shall proceed tomorrow after dinner." Lin Huang logged off. From the battles, he could see that Lin Xins foundation was good but the lack of battle experience caused her to perform some minor mistakes. Her biggest problem was not the mistakes itself, but not being decisive when battling. There were many times when she could definitely seize the opportunity to kill her opponent but she was not decisive which made her fall into a dilemma. Lin Huang had repetitively reminded her of the same thing -- that enemies were enemies on the battlefield, no matter human or creature. She must use the fastest way to kill them; no sympathy was allowed or else, she would be the one who died. To allow Lin Xin to understand the idea fully, Lin Huang killed her again and again without mercy. She was tough on the inside but appeared soft on the outside. Had it been another girl, she would be crying after being defeated for a few times and stop training but the more she battled, the braver she got. Lin Huang took a shower and went to bed after logging off while Lin Xin repeated what he said in the training, "Show no mercy in battles" For next few days, Lin Huang praised her gunfighting technique during the day and battled with Lin Xin after dinner at night. After the second day, he could sense her determination. She was less indecisive whenever she attacked. It was clear that his tough training had taken effect on her. After putting mercy aside, Lin Xin improved tremendously. She could fix all the weaknesses that Lin Huang pointed out quickly and her abilities were getting better day by day. As four days passed, Lin Huang could no longer kill her in one hit while Lin Xin managed to score first place in the first exam at school. Her graduation exam was getting closer, so Lin Huang stayed at home with her. The exam was the biggest one that Lin Xin ever had in her life, so he had to be a good brother to be with her. There were many things that he needed to handle but he put them aside as he wanted to focus until Lin Xin finished her graduation exam. In recent days, the Hunter Association had released news of the appearance of a double mutated sword type monster. However, there was nothing about the ancient bird monsters blood. On Friday morning, Lin Huang inserted Life Power into the golden monster egg as usual after he washed up. The aura of the monster egg was getting more and more obvious the past few days, so he knew that it was soon that the egg would hatch. "Its been 12 days. Even a triple mutated monster usually takes less than 10 days to hatch" Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. This monster egg which had the appetite of a phoenix eggs was getting bigger. Its Life Power needed an additional Life Wheel each day. It was the eleventh day yesterday and it still did not stop absorbing all the Life Power in Lin Huangs body. Noticing that something was wrong, he immediately refilled two Life Wheels of Life Power in his body using the Life Power Refill Card. The monster egg was only fully satiated after he inserted the eleventh Life Wheel of Life Power into it. This time, as he was inserting the ninth Life Wheel, he refilled another five Life Wheels of Life Power. As expected, the monster egg absorbed all twelve Life Wheels of Life Power and stopped. He was relieved, then he put the monster egg back into the box on his bed head and got ready for breakfast downstairs. Suddenly, he heard a cracking sound. He looked down and noticed that there was a fine crack in the monster egg. "Its hatching!" Lin Huang was pleasantly surprised. He cradled the monster egg in his arms. Later on, a few more cracks appeared. He knew that it was the nestling pecking from the inside. There were more and more cracks in the shell like it was glass being knocked by a heavy item. Cracks soon filled the entire surface of the shell. Just when he was imagining how would the nestling look like, the golden eggshell broke entirely and transformed into a golden dot, then entered the body of the emerged yellow nestling that was the size of a palm. Lin Huang looked at the nestling on his palm. It was as fluffy as a chick. Besides a tuft of purple feathers on its head, it was no different from a chick that had just hatched. He looked at it for a while and could not recognize what kind of bird it was. "Chirp" The nestling looked at Lin Huang curiously, leaped and landed on his shoulder. "Thats fast!" With his powerful vision, he could only see a blur that moved. He was astonished. A triple mutated monster was really different from the others! The nestling rubbed its head on his face to show its affection and leaped again. It bit his finger and blood flowed out. Just when Lin Huang attempted to retract his hand in shock, the nestling pecked on its own claws and placed its claws on his wound. He thought that it was behaving strangely when he saw a golden light going into his body, then he felt like something was added to him. A notification from came from Xiao Hei. "A legendary-level monster Seventails (nestling) has been detected. Would you like to make it into a card?" "This is a triple mutated monster, so it will be sealed if I make it into a card. Am I right?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, as your authorization isnt sufficient. Although its just a nestling, its a legendary-level monster. Once it becomes a card, it will be sealed immediately." "Then, I shall not make it into a card for the time being." Lin Huang shook his head. He was happy to have a pet and he did not want it to be sealed. Moreover, Lin Xin would be over the moon to see it. If not for her, he would not have been able to provide the Life Power that the monster egg needed, so Lin Huang planned to give her this monster egg as a gift. A triple mutated monster with phoenix blood was rare and would be the perfect pet for her. However, the level of the triple mutated monster egg was too high. The lowest hatching standard would require a gold-level Life Power, which would take forever for Lin Xin to level up to. Besides, the monster egg was a living thing that could not be kept in the Emperors Heart Rings storage space and it was inconvenient to bring along. That was why Lin Huang decided to hatch it himself and get another pet for Lin Xin in the future. "Did you say that this monster is called Seventails?" He finally found out what this little fella that looked like a chick really was. "Yes." Lin Huang then summoned Bloody to get it to tell him more about the Seventails. "Seventails is a triple mutated monster with phoenix blood. It has a high concentration of phoenix blood in its body and its ability is similar to a sky dragon. Even a nestling thats just been born is already on holy fire-level. It will evolve into a bird with nine tails if the concentration of blood increases. By then, itll be a real phoenix blooded creature - a Ninetails" Bloodys explanation was detailed. "My biggest concern is what does it eat?" Lin Huang did not have to feed summoning monsters that were in card form. However, this nestling would die if it did not eat. "Seventails is an omnivore and it eats almost everything. Meat, fruits, vegetables and even energy stones such as Life Crystals," Bloody explained. "Can I feed this nestling anything as well?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, the monsters digestion is different from humans. Dont worry about it." Bloody nodded. "Alright then, that should be easy." Lin Huang was relieved to hear that. 363 Crispy Texture Despite already knowing that the Seventails was an omnivore, the kind of food that it ate was far broader than Lin Huang could ever imagine. At first, he was feeding it human food and it gobbled all of it. Although it was just the size of a palm, the amount of rice that it ate was more than the amount Lin Huang and Lin Xin could eat combined. He did not think it was odd and fed it anyway. However, there was one day when it accidentally dropped the bowl of rice onto the floor. It then hopped off from the table and ate both the spilled food and the broken bowl. Lin Huang and Lin Xin were shocked to see that. He even asked Bloody if eating a bowl would affect a Seventails. However, Bloody assured him that it was not a problem. Since then, the little bird would intentionally peck at the bowl and eat the chipped pieces after it was done with the food. Not only bowls, it started packing away at plates and mugs Soon, it even started eating mirrors and windows It then started chomping away on the glass door on the balcony It did not seem to let go of anything that was crispy or crunchy. Clueless, Lin Huang asked Bloody for a solution for this. As soon as Bloody listened to his description, it gave its speculation after some thought, "The Seventails favorite food is energy crystals of all kinds. Perhaps, when it accidentally ate the broken bowl, it gave him the sense that it was eating energy crystals. To solve this issue, I think you can feed it with energy crystals." Doubtfully, Lin Huang tried feeding it Life Crystals. To his surprise, the Seventails preferred Life Crystals compared to any other food. It was full from merely two to three Life Crystals each day and would not break anything else after eating. It was in June a few days after settling the Seventails dietary needs that Lin Xin finally took the graduation exam. The three day-exam ended quickly and she was confident in herself. Since Lin Huangs training with her for the past few days, her battle abilities had improved tremendously. "How was your exam?" Lin Huang only asked her after the exam had ended three days later. "I got full scores for the battle and guns exam. For my cultural studies, even if I dont achieve full scores, I will get at least 97%," Lin Xin gave a firm answer. The battle and gun exams were scored on the spot but the scores would still need reviewing. Although she had attained full scores for both tests, the final score would depend on the review after the examiners watched the videos. On the other hand, the cultural studies would be marked within three days, so the results would be out soon. It would also take around three days to know if she would be qualified to enter the college. Three days passed by swiftly and Lin Xin received her final results. Her total score in the battle module was 200 which was full score. The extra score for the gun test was 100 and she had gotten full scores as well. For cultural studies, she received 391 out of 400 points. She scored 691 out of the 700 total score. She was informed that her score was tied at first place with another boy in Winter City. Lin Huang gave her a thumbs up when he saw her results as he was quite certain that she would be qualified to enter the Martial Hunter College. As expected, Lin Xin received the admission notice from the Martial Hunter College two days later. Within the same period, she had also received quite a number of invitations from other colleges. She had finally completed her graduation exam and it was 20 days before the Mystery Auction. Since they did not have enough time for a vacation, Lin Huang decided to bring her to the White Capital. Because his dimensional relic could not bring them so far away within one trip, they transited a couple of times and arrived in the White Capital at noon. They checked into a hotel suite that was next to the Martial Hunter College and had lunch before going to the college. The college was an open school where it welcomed visitors. In reality, most of the programmes were available for sitting in as long as one did not disturb the classes. The college was so huge that they did not manage to finish the entire tour in the entire afternoon. However, it was obvious that Lin Xin liked the schools atmosphere. After dinner, Lin Huang brought her shopping. He wanted to get Tyrant some clothes too. Initially, he thought it would be difficult to find suitable clothes for Tyrant. However, he found a store selling plus-sized clothes. He even got Tyrant, who was 2.5 meters tall, to try the clothes in the fitting room. Although Tyrant could not adapt to wearing clothes, he conformed anyway. His intelligence made him realize that it was obscene to be naked in public. After purchasing some clothes, Lin Huang got Tyrant to put on a black suit with a pair of sunglasses. He was now Lin Huangs bodyguard. To avoid attention, he changed Tyrants golden skin color to the usual peachy human skin color. Lin Xin was puzzled when she saw the bodyguard who had appeared out of nowhere. She only realized that Tyrant was Lin Huangs summoning monster after his explanation. She then scanned Tyrant up and down. Besides being intimidating and large, Tyrant seemed to be just like an ordinary human. For the next few days, Lin Huang got Tyrant to shop with Lin Xin instead. On one hand, Tyrant would be her bodyguard and on the other, it was for Tyrant to practice adapting to the human world while following Lin Xin. Meanwhile, Lin Huang headed to the location with the three double mutated sword type monsters before the auction started. The Ruthless Sword Master had killed all three of them while Lin Huang received three completed double mutated sword servant cards. One was a sword type ice monster called the Frigid Swordswoman. The other was the Hatted Swordsman that was good at twin and multiple-sword techniques, known for having a peculiar attack technique. The last one was the Sword Knight which was armed with a shield and a sword and had a great defence ability. The three sword servants were double mutated monsters. However, they could not be summoned before Lancelot was unlocked. Lin Huangs concern was that there was no news about the ancient bird monster blood at all. The amount of ancient monsters was rare, so there was not many of them that were captured by humans. Furthermore, even if they were captured, people would usually sell the entire monster carcass instead of just the blood. Two weeks had passed after the three sword servants were settled and it was now a few days until the auction started. Seeing that Lin Xin was enjoying herself in the White Capital, Lin Huang figured that they should stay there considering that the White Capital was the safest city in Division7. After some serious consideration, he got Kylie to be her bodyguard. With Kylies speed, it was easier for her to handle the various types of potential dangers. He wanted to get Seventails to stay as well but since it was connected to his soul, it could not leave too far away from him, so he had to bring it along. After settling his errands, Lin Huang brought Tyrant back home as it was time to meet Leng Yuexin 364 The Rules of the Mystery Auction The doorbell rang as Lin Huang finished his breakfast early in the morning. It was Tyrant who opened the door as Lin Huang was doing the dishes in the kitchen. "Erm, does Lin Huang stay here?" Leng Yuexin was confused when she saw Tyrant at the door, thinking that she had gotten the wrong house. "Yes, please come in." Tyrant took a step back, gesturing for Leng Yuexin to come in. Tyrant had heard from Lin Huang that they were expecting a guest. Looking at the human lady, he was sure that she was the visitor that Lin Huang was talking about. Leng Yuexin was stunned for a moment before she walked in. "Please give me a minute, Ill be out soon." Lin Huang was almost done with cleaning in the kitchen when he heard the both of them talking. Leng Yuexin peered into the kitchen when she heard his voice. "Are you doing the dishes?" Leng Yuexin asked as she saw Lin Huang piling the plates. "Yes, Im done. Take a seat, let me wash my hands." Lin Huang drained the water in the basin, washed his hands with soap and turned around to wipe his hands with the cloth on the dining table. "What would you like to drink? Juice or tea?" He asked with a smile when he saw Leng Yuexin standing next to the dining table. "Ill have juice," she answered without thinking twice. "Sure!" Lin Huang nodded and took out a pastel mug with cute rabbit prints from the cabinet. He then poured the freshly squeezed juice from the refrigerator and passed the mug to her. Leng Yuexin took the mug and stared at it for a while, then she gawked in puzzlement at him. "My sister bought this mug two days ago. Its a long story" Noticing the way Leng Yuexin was staring at him, Lin Huang explained helplessly. Ever since all their plates and mugs at home were eaten by the Seventails, Lin Xin initiated to buy new ones by herself but he did not expect all of the items to be in pastel colors with girly cartoon prints on them. "Its...nice," Leng Yuexin commented with a raised eyebrow, then took a sip. The both of them returned to the living room and she started staring at Tyrant again. She kept thinking that there was a peculiar aura from Tyrant. Finally, she could not help so she asked, "May I know who this is?" "His name is Tyrant. Hes my summoning monster buddy," Lin Huang beamed while introducing Tyrant. Leng Yuexin was surprised at Lin Huangs answer. She finally figured out what was with the peculiar aura. Besides being abnormally large in size, Tyrant looked no different from a human. That was why she did not realize that he was a monster. "Hi," Tyrant giggled. "Hi!" Leng Yuexin was dumbfounded for a moment before responding. "A white flame-level human-form monster that can talk, it must be at least double mutated" Leng Yuexin thought to herself. After chatting for a while, Leng Yuexin summoned her dimensional relic while Lin Huang brought Tyrant along. As they passed through the relic, the three of them arrived on top of a tall skyscraper. "So, this is Haitian City?" They were looking out at a blue ocean stretched in front of them. Haitian City was an A-grade foothold with a huge inland sea. Those who stayed by the ocean could see the beautiful sea that touched the sky. That was how the city was christened Haitian City. "Yes, the Mystery Auctions headquarters is here," Leng Yuexin confirmed. Considering that Lin Huang could not fly, Leng Yuexin gave up the thought of jumping from the building and took the elevator instead. As they got out of the building, Lin Huang turned around and realized that the building was a huge mall. "The hotel that I booked isnt far from here." Leng Yuexin walked in between the both of them after leaving the building. Around seven to eight minutes later, the three of them arrived at the entrance of a luxurious hotel. After checking themselves in, they brought Tyrant along to the room. The three of them stepped out of the elevator when they arrived on the 117th floor. They were staying in rooms 27 and 28 across each other. "Get settled in your room. Ill come to get you later," Leng Yuexin opened the door to room 27 and said to Lin Huang before shutting the door. Lin Huang scanned his keycard on the door and entered with Tyrant. It was a huge suite, even more luxurious than most of the hotels that he had ever stayed in before. "It seems like you wont have to sleep on the carpet for these few days," Lin Huang teased Tyrant with a smile when he found out that there were a few bedrooms in the suite. When Tyrant was at home, he would always sleep on the floor in the living room as its gigantic body could not fit on the couch. "This is a good carpet," Tyrant stepped on the carpet and chuckled happily. "You can sleep in the bedroom." Lin Huang pointed at the second bedroom. "Id like to sleep on the floor. Its bigger," Tyrant shook his head and declined. "Up to you then" He did not know Tyrant had such an odd preference. "Seventails loves eating mugs and Tyrant loves sleeping on the floor. Will other monsters have different peculiar preferences?" Lin Huang thought to himself. He was satisfied after bringing Tyrant to tour the suite. There were three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen. The rooms were big and totaled to almost 3,000 square meters. The biggest one was the living room which occupied 800 square meters of the suite. The master bedroom was spacious too. There was a balcony that was three meters wide in the south and was connected to the living room. There was a bathtub measuring three meters long in the bathroom. "I can soak myself in the bathtub tonight!" Lin Huangs favorite part in the entire suite was the bathtub. Soon, Leng Yuexin knocked on his door. "Its not bad here," Leng Yuexin looked around and commented as she entered. "Please take a seat." Lin Huang passed her a glass of juice. She stared at Tyrant that was sitting on the floor. "Dont mind him, he likes sitting on the floor." Lin Huang rolled his eyes. Tyrant nodded like Lin Huang was complimenting him. After tossing a bottle of green juice to Tyrant, Lin Huang got himself a bottle as well and sat on the single-seater, his back facing the balcony. Leng Yuexin took a small sip of juice and placed the glass on the coffee table. "Lets talk about the things that you should take note of at the Mystery Auction." Lin Huang took a sip of his green juice and put it down. "The Mystery Auction is an auction exclusively for the royal families. They send out invitations to prestige and mid-range royal families around two months before the auction starts. They include the items that will be auctioned in the invitation, but not those that are sold underground. Those royal families that dont receive the invitation will have to apply for an invitation by themselves. Most of the mid-range royal families will pass the application. However, the lower-range ones will need someone to help or else, they wont be able to join." "Our family is considered a prestigious family in Division7 and we receive their invitation every year. If any of us in the family need anything from the auction, we can go to the auction. Those who hold the invitation can bring three visitors with them. The both of you will be the two visitors that Im bringing this year. However, visitors are not eligible for the bidding. If you would like to bid, youll have to go through me. Ill be the one doing the bidding, paying and receiving of items. So, just tell me if you need anything." "Got it!" Lin Huang nodded. "Theres another rule that you should follow. Nobody is allowed to fight in the auction. Even if you meet the person who killed your parents at the auction, youll have to settle that outside the auction or else, youll be punished. If anybody steals the items on auction, the person will be considered dead to Mystery and will be killed on the spot. Even if the person managed to escape, the person will be tracked down and killed" 365 Kill All! Rob All! Fang Wen''s coat blew in the wind and there was a thumb-sized black metal plate on the collar. Right at the center on the back of his coat, there was a white circle. Printed within the circle was a design of a purple crow perched on a tree branch. It had been almost a month since he started wearing the Purple Crow coat. He had almost died of boredom in the past one month. "I''m so bored I can''t leave the base and I can''t look for a woman. I have to read the organization handbook repeatedly every day. I have to attend classes for ideological education" Fang Wan grumbled and yawned. "Yes, you''re right. It''ll be better if they assign some tasks to us." Li Li forced a smile and nodded in agreement. Both of them had become reserve members after joining the training camp since last October. It took them about half a year to level up to holy fire-level. They were now official Purple Crow members and they had a rather fast leveling speed. It had been almost a month since they changed into the Purple Crow coat. However, both of them were still staying at Division7''s base and not a single task had been assigned to them. "Why are both of you being so impatient? As a new official member, they''ll work on your mind for three months," a young man beside them advised, showing his crooked teeth, "Both of you have two more months to go." "Two months later? My pecker is about to burst" Fang Wen leaned forward on the table and continued to grumble, "It has been a month since I last touched a woman." "Be patient. I heard that there might be some tasks for us in the next few days," one of the men with sunglasses said. "What''s the point? Our training period has not ended. It''s not our turn yet," Fang Wen said as if he cared for nothing. "It''s not necessarily so," the man with sunglasses said with an inexplicable smile. "Lu Yuan, do you have any inside information about it?" Li Li immediately asked. "Hehe, if I''m not mistaken, you''ll know about it later." The man with sunglasses kept them guessing. Even if they continued asking, he was unwilling to reveal anything. At 8.30a.m., a man with a stern face entered. He was of average height and wore the Purple Crow coat as well. The black metal plate on his collar indicated that his identity was just like the others. He was also an official member of the Purple Crow. However, as soon as he entered, about 30 of them in the room kept quiet and sat down in their own seats. The man''s name was Xiao Ze and he was the trainer of the new members. Although they were of the same level in the organization, the people in the room were somehow afraid of him. Xiao Ze walked to the platform, clearing his throat and said, "There''s no class for today. Two of the executives from the headquarters will be giving a speech later. So, please pay attention to them, be disciplined and sit properly!" Having uttered these words, he gazed upon the people with poor sitting posture. Fang Wen and the rest noticed that and immediately sat up straight. They had to obey Xiao Ze as they had learned it the hard way. Fang Wen and the rest of them thought that Xiao Ze was the same as them since he was also a Purple Crow official member at the beginning. They had made too much noise during the first lesson and Xiao Ze had slapped them on the spot. They then knew that they were not on the same level; Xiao Ze was actually already on gold flame-level. He was halfway through to achieving immortal-level. Those who were on white flame-level would have no way to fight him. Since then, they became obedient. "There are executives coming from the headquarters? Sir, do you mean that they are on immortal-level?" One of them immediately raised his hand and asked. "Yes. Therefore, all of you have to do well later as they might assign a task to you," Xiao Ze affirmed, "No matter who is chosen by them, you have to be alert. Don''t become their burden. Otherwise, don''t blame anyone if you''re killed." The crowd that was initially excited immediately calmed down as soon as they heard the last sentence. Everybody knew very well that what kind of organization the Purple Crow was. The immortal-level elites had the right to decide the death of the regular members who were only on holy fire-level. Even if one was killed simply because they did not like you, the organization would not look into it. The murderer would be warned at most. Initially, everyone was happy when they heard that they could leave the base if there was a task assigned to them. After listening to what Xiao Ze said, they instantly felt that it was not safe to go on a mission with the immortal-level elites. "Sir, may I know what the task is?" Fang Wen raised his hand and asked as he did not want to stay on the base any longer. "I don''t know. Most of the organization''s missions are private. Only those who join the mission are qualified to know. Two of the executives will explain the details of the mission to all of you later." "During the mission, is there free time for us?" Fang Wen raised his hand and asked again. "Yes, if both of the officers agree. Otherwise, if they don''t agree with you and you leave the team on your own, it''s your fault if you''re killed." Xiao Ze stared at Fang Wen as he heard that. He was afraid that Fang Wen would put them in trouble if he happened to leave the base. The trainer had to bear the responsibility if anything happened. Fang Wen then put down his hand. Soon, a few of them asked more questions related to the content of the mission. At about 9.10a.m., two men were escorted by the staff into the room. Both of them were also dressed in black coats. However, their collars were inlaid with a red crystal. It was sufficient to show that the both of them were from the Purple Crow headquarters and that they were elite members. All the Purple Crow elite members were super strong and were on immortal-level. Both of them looked young. The one on the left was rather muscular with a height of about 1.8 meters and short hair. He had shallow dimples on both of his cheeks when he grinned. He looked like a sporty young man that was about 20 years old. The one standing on the right was thin and tall. He had a height of about 1.85 meters and fair skin. He somehow appeared like a student who had just graduated or a tutor who had just started his job. In short, both of them were a lot younger than many of them in the room. Had they not been dressed in their coats, perhaps most of them would think that they were just ordinary young men. The room was silent as soon as the both of them entered. Xiao Ze bowed slightly and moved aside. They then took over the platform. The man in short hair walked towards the platform and said, "This is a private mission. Nobody is allowed to reveal anything about this. Therefore, anyone who doesn''t want to join the mission is given one minute to leave now." The man in short hair took a glance at Xiao Ze as soon as he finished his last word. Xiao Ze and another staff immediately left the room. There was an uproar among the crowd. However, among the 30 new members, none of them decided to leave. "One minute has passed. There''s no time for you to leave now." After finishing his sentence, he briefly introduced himself, "My name is Yang Yang. The one standing next to me is my partner, Lin Jian." After introducing themselves, Yang Yang gestured to the man in the glasses. "He''ll explain the details of the mission." Lin Jian nodded and walked to the platform. He kept quiet for a moment and asked, "Do you want to kill the royal members?" Everybody was stunned. However, as soon as one of them shouted "yes", the rest of them followed. "That''s good. It''s because our mission today is to kill the royal members!" Lin Jian grinned and began to explain the exact contents of the mission, "Currently, there''s an auction for the royal members at Haitian City. The name of the auction is called Mystery Auction. Those who participate in the auction are middle-class royals or even higher class royal families Our mission is simple. The Mystery Auction is our target. Kill everyone who joins the auction and rob all the collections in the auction!" 366 A Boyfriend? There was a powerful organization from Division2 that was there to back the Mystery Auction up. After all, it was attended by all the royal members as well as the high-class royal families, so basically, nobody would dare to create trouble at the auction. Everyone knew very well that creating trouble at such an auction would be pitting oneself against the royal members. It would even offend one of the powerful organizations in Division2. Even the underworld organizations that were normally the enemies of the royal family dared not do such a thing at the auction. Also, the Mystery Auction was heavily guarded every year. There would be two guards on immortal-level. One of them would be stationed on-site while another would guard the warehouse where the items were kept. The auctioneer, the guards, and even the ceremony presenter girls were on holy fire-level. There were about 30 of them. The rest of the staff assistants were on complete gold-level. Aside from that, half of the royal members who participated in the auction were on holy fire-level. They brought along their bodyguards, so the number of people on holy fire-level was definitely in the hundreds. This was also the reason why the difficulty level of attacking such an auction would be comparable to that of infiltrating an A-grade foothold. They had no idea why Purple Crow had chosen to accept such a difficult task. Nevertheless, nobody knew about the Purple Crow''s plan. After leaving the ruins, Lin Huang had finally learned all the remaining mid-level gunfighting techniques from Lin Xuan over the past 40 days. He began learning gunfighting techniques of higher level since the last two days. In the Gun Master game, the consumption of Life Power was real since it was one of the high-grade VR games. This was unlike the Hunter arena where it required only the insertion of will for a virtual character to then be created. These days, the practicing of Lin Huang''s gunfighting techniques had drained a large amount of his Life Power. The number of times when the Army Attack Tactics was activated was almost the same as when he had practiced it alone previously. His Life Power had been subconsciously compressed during the practice. Despite one and a half month not being sufficient enough for Lin Huang to level up to complete gold-level, the concentration of his Life Power was, nevertheless, twice as higher as before. He noticed that as well. These days, the consumption of Life Power for the learning of high-level gunfighting techniques got more intense for him. He was confident that he could achieve complete gold-level within two months. A few days before the auction began, it was very crowded at the stalls around the exhibition hall. Many of the traders took the opportunity to earn a living as they knew that those who attended the auction would be the rich from the royal families. Regardless of its worthiness, as long as they displayed newfangled gadgets, they could still sell it at a good price. A minority of them had the courage to sell counterfeit products too. They immediately ran away after they had earned enough credit points. Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin walked around those stalls on the first day. They bought nothing and were not interested in the stalls after checking them out. Two days later, Leng Yuexin knocked on Lin Huang''s door during lunch hour. She asked him to look for a restaurant for her. The rest of the time would be their free time during which Lin Huang had been practicing high-level gunfighting techniques in the hotel room while Leng Yuexin attended two social events. Nobody actually knew that she was going to the auction. However, when she walked around with Lin Huang on the first day, she bumped into her friends. All the royal families then knew that she was going to attend the auction. Over hundreds of people had invited her. She felt that it was rude to reject them and managed to accept only two of her close friends invitations. Three days had passed and soon, it was the day for the auction to officially begin. Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin had their breakfast early in the morning. They then left the hotel, heading towards the auction house. The distance from the hotel to the auction house was less than 300 meters, so the both of them as well as Tyrant arrived in a few minutes on foot. The auction began at 9 a.m. sharp and the auction house would be opened at 8.30 a.m. When the three of them arrived, it was not even 8 a.m yet. Outside the hall, there were thousands of people waiting. Of course, not all of them were royalty. Aside from the royal members and guards, there were many reporters. As soon as Leng Yuexin appeared, an uproar broke among the crowd. The members of six of the royal families were unapproachable to many of the people who came from smaller royal families. The reporters were familiar with Leng Yuexin as she was one of the best hunters among the young generation in Division7. She was only 19 years old and had already achieved crimson flame-level. Also, she was the idol of many teenage girls. Not only that, many of the young men from the royal families in Division7 admired her. Many of them noticed that Lin Huang walking with her. As for Tyrant, the people ignored him despite the fact that he was a hulking, muscular guy. Be it his appearance or attire, he somehow looked like a bodyguard. Some of the reporters immediately came up to interview her. "Miss Leng, who''s the young man standing next to you?" Lin Huang originally thought that Leng Yuexin would answer, "Hes just a follower." Unexpectedly, she said, "He is my friend." The reporters then continued asking, "Is he your boyfriend?" Right at the moment when the reporters asked that question, many of the royal members shifted their gaze towards Lin Huang. "I''m just a follower," Seeing that Leng Yuexin had become the reporters focus, Lin Huang then explained and took a glance a Tyrant. Tyrant immediately made his way through the crowd, leading the both of them and they ditched the reporters. Arriving at the entrance of the auction house, the security guard scanned Leng Yuexin''s Emperor''s Heart Ring. The small door then opened and she was allowed to enter. It was a privilege granted to the six royal families. Even all other high-class royal members that were invited had to wait until 8.30 a.m sharp before they could enter. The people felt envious, seeing that Leng Yuexin had brought along the two of them into the auction house. Some started checking Lin Huang''s background. They were astonished. "He''s definitely Mr. Fus disciple. He managed to hook up with Miss Leng!" Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin did not care about their chatter. They were guided by one of the staffs and entered VIP room 3. "Miss Leng, let me know if you need anything else." The holy fire-level staff bowed respectfully and left. The VIP room was not big as it only spanned 100 square meters. There was a layer of specially-built bioglass between them and the auction room. Looking outside from the room, it was transparent, but if one was to look in from the outside, only a layer of a silver mirror surface could be seen. It stopped anyone from spying on them. The decoration in the room was fairly simple. In front of the glass window, there was a luxury sofa and a small tea table in front of it. There were some fresh fruits being served as well. In addition to that, there was a refrigerator with a variety of drinks and desserts like ice cream in it. "The auction will begin at 9 a.m. It''s still early. Tyrant, do you want to eat anything? It seems like he wasnt full during breakfast. We can order food here," Leng Yuxin told Lin Huang. "He likes dessert. Ill just get him an ice cream." As soon as Lin Huang finished his sentence, he took out a large ice cream from the refrigerator and gave it to Tyrant who accepted it happily. Other than meat, dessert was his favorite, especially ice cream. "I''ve almost forgotten that most monsters like dessert." Leng Yuexin glanced at Tyrant who was carefully eating his ice cream, feeling amused. "Please get me an ice cream too." Lin Huang passed her an ice cream. He thought for a while and decided to get one for himself as well. "It has been almost a year since I last ate an ice cream" Three of them then waited for the auction to begin while eating their ice cream 367 The Beginning - Auction At the auction house, in VIP room 3, while Tyrant was eating his eighth ice cream, everyone started to enter the hall. "He really likes ice cream" Leng Yuexin did not pay attention to the auction house. Instead, she was looking at Tyrant who was sitting on a carpet with a strange facial expression. "This is the last one. Everyone is entering the hall. Let''s get to work," Lin Huang told Tyrant. Tyrant immediately nodded, stuffing the remaining ice cream into his mouth. He then stood up with a serious face. If he was not munching on food, nobody would doubt his identity as a bodyguard. The three of them then shifted their focus to the auction house. The crowd entered the hall and soon, they looked for their seats and sat down. The auction house was very big and it could hold more than 10,000 people. There were less than 1,000 people who were actually there to join the auction. Most of them were not qualified to bring along their followers. Therefore, their bodyguards were stationed outside the hall. They were not worried about their safety since the auction was attended by royal members. The auction had been established for more than a hundred years and nobody had ever dared to create trouble. There was only one reason behind this which was because they had powerful backup. The two immortal-level guards stationed outside the auction house also scared away any trouble. About ten minutes later, all the participants had entered the hall. The number of people was not even a tenth of the total number of seats available. However, the place was not quiet at all. Obviously, many of them had known each other and struck up small talk, making the hall rather lively. Lin Huang suddenly saw a familiar figure appear among the crowd. However, since the person''s back was facing him in addition to the hat he was wearing, Lin Huang could only see the posterior above the person''s shoulder when seated. He could hardly confirm the person''s identity. Staring at the person''s black suit for a few moments, Lin Huang was still wondering who that familiar person was. "Perhaps, I met that person by chance that''s why I feel that he looks familiar." Lin Huang shook his head and he did not ponder any longer about that. "There are too many acquaintances here That''s why I don''t like to join such an event." Leng Yuexin obviously recognized many of the familiar faces. "Isn''t that good?" Lin Huang asked as he could not understand her. "Acquaintances and friends are totally different. Theyre hypocrites and many of them are double-faced. Other than saying something flattering, what they say are never true. Thats why I hate entertaining these people. It''s tiring," Leng Yuexin shook her head and told him the truth. She had always been honest and frank. Listening to what she said, Lin Huang was not surprised. In fact, Lin Huang did not know much about the royal families. When he traveled to this world, he heard about them. His first impression was that the people must not be friendly since they divided themselves into different social classes. However, after knowing Leng Yuexin, Yi Yeyu, and the rest, he realized that many of the royal members he met were friendly. They were well brought up, had a great sense of justice and were responsible as well. They were just simply good people overall. Listening to what Leng Yuexin said, Lin Huang instantly realized that he was thinking too narrowly. He did not comment anymore on this since Leng Yuexin knew more about the royal families than he did. "I like people who are simple. We can only meet when it''s necessary and its fine not to contact each other if nothing happens. There''s no need to deliberately make conversation, so we won''t feel awkward then." Lin Huang felt that Leng Yuexin was implying him. "Is there a detailed list of the items sold at auction?" He felt awkward and immediately changed the topic. "No, they just roughly mentioned what they are going to sell," Leng Yuexin answered in a serious tone. "The Mystery Auction used to be a secret. Only the people who join the auction will know exactly what they are selling." "So, there is no sequence to the items?" Lin Huang then asked. "Yes. Therefore, other than the organizer, nobody will know when they will be selling the dracaena that youve been looking for." Leng Yuexin shrugged her shoulders. Lin Huang was helpless as this meant that he had to stay there until the dracaena appeared. Soon, after all the bidders had arrived, it was already 9 a.m. At 9 a.m sharp, a middle-aged man dressed in a black suit with a red bow tie around his neck walked onto the auction stage. He was not very tall and rather skinny. He had long, brown, curly hair and a little moustache above his lips. Despite his mousy appearance, he had a loud voice when he spoke, "Good morning, everyone! I''m the auctioneer and my name is Kong Hao. Everyone''s here for the collection and I know you can''t wait for the auction to start. Therefore, I''m not going to talk anymore nonsense and let the auction now begin. Let''s welcome the first item!" Having uttered those words, each of the five ceremony presenter girls then moved a pallet that was covered with a red curtain simultaneously. Kong Hao nodded at the ceremony girls and five of them unveiled the pallet at almost the same time. When the items were displayed, the crowd could hardly stay calm. It was because there were five naked women. They looked the same as an ordinary human at the very least. The only difference was that they had rather big boobs. Even Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin frowned. "Our first collection will be the mutants C busty women. They are the first generation busty women who are very high-quality. However, we have to keep how we got the first generation busty women private. The starting price for the five of them will be 3,000 Life Crystals each. The price increment must not be less than 100 Life Crystals each raise! The five of them will be sold separately. Let''s now start from number 1 on the left" The auctioneer did a brief introduction and the auction officially began. Of course, Lin Huang knew who they were. They were unique mutants. It looked like there was not much difference between them and an ordinary woman. However, they could produce milk as soon as they grew up. Furthermore, their milk contained a certain amount of Life Power which could restore what one had consumed. Therefore, many of the royal families were eager to raise a busty woman. "It is less likely that a busty woman can survive up to 30 years old. Where did they catch the first generation busty women and how they managed to catch all five at once?" A thought actually ran through Lin Huang''s mind. However, he dared not think any further. Seeing that they were selling mutants that looked exactly the same as humans at the auction, he could confirm that the organization was certainly not a benevolent one. "Other than modifying a living body, is there any other way to do so?" Leng Yuexin clenched her fists tightly, glaring at the auctioneer. "Modifying a living body?" Lin Huang had never expected that such technology would really exist. "The genes are taken from the busty monsters and they are used in accordance with genetically modified elixir. This elixir will then be inserted into the innocent woman''s body, transforming them from humans to mutants. I thought that its just a rumor. I never knew that the brutes would really do that" Leng Yuexin''s body was giving off a murderous vibe. "Transforming humans into mutants" Lin Huang squinted while his eyes flashed with a trace of fury as well. 368 The Demigods Brain The first generation of busty women existed about 800 years ago. They were powerful human monsters created by mating a busty monster and a woman together. However, the cycle was apparently too long for Mystery Organization. Therefore, they captured those women and had their genes modified. Five of these women had to be from the first batch of mutants since it was the first time that there were such items being sold at the auction. Genetic modification was usually risky. Before the formula of the elixir had been fixed, the human experiments must have resulted in a lot of malformations and deaths. It was a tragedy of fate. However, the truth behind them was even more miserable. Apparently, most of them at the auction had no concern regarding where the busty women came from. The bidding price was increasing. Even Leng Yuexin had joined the bid with a stony expression on her face. Lin Huang, who was sitting next to her, kept quiet. He knew very well that even if Leng Yuexin was to buy all five of them, she would not be able to completely solve the problem. Furthermore, since they were being sold at the auction, the genetically modified mutants must have been brainwashed. They would never be able to live a normal life. Leng Yuexin clearly knew that as well. Still, she decided to join the bid. After bidding for about 20 minutes, Leng Yuexin successfully bought all five of them at a relatively high price. Many of the royal members then scrutinized the heavily tinted window of VIP room 3. Although they had no idea who was in the VIP room, they knew that the person must be someone they could not afford to offend. They only had the guts to glance towards the room. Although the outsiders had no idea who was in the VIP room, the staff did. They felt that she was foolish to bid so spontaneously. Leng Yuexin''s purchasing behavior only showed that she was dissatisfied with the items sold at the auction. But what could she do? As long as they could earn from the items, no matter who the buyer was, it would make no difference to them. They would not care how one would handle the items they bought. The Mystery Organization was not worried that the royal members would find out where the busty women came from since everyone would have already known. As long as there was no evidence of the genetic modification, even the Union Government would turn a blind eye to it. As soon as the auction of five busty women had ended, the auctioneer soon introduced the second item. "The second item to be sold at the auction is...the brain of the demigod, Qi Muxiong!" Unveiling the red curtain, a transparent container was placed on top of the wooden platform. Inside the container, there was a real human brain immersed in a nutrient solution. Almost everyone was stunned as soon as this item appeared. By right, a demigod-level item would not appear at such an auction. Even if there was, it would usually be demigod-level relics instead of biological materials. A demigod-level biological material was considered a priceless treasure in this world. "I guess theres no need for me to introduce the demigod Qi Muxiong, is there? The brain comes from one of the biology laboratories in Division2. A material of such a level will, of course, not be sold for Life Crystals. One will have to exchange a biological material of the same level for the demigod brain. If nobody is going to buy this at this auction, anyone who''s interested in this item may contact us for further discussion as soon as the auction ends" "Who''s Qi Muxiong?" Lin Huang was not familiar with many of the historical figures in this world. "The demigod Qi Muxiong was a super strong man who appeared more than 800 years ago. It was said that he had been granted more than 10 talents ever since he was born. He possesses more talents than a high-level protoss. In a war that happened about 800 years ago, he unleashed more than 30 types of terrifying abilities to defend against the protoss. He was one of the few people who could fight it. However, he suffered severe injuries that were incurable during the battle. Soon, he died. "During the battle, he was not the only demigod who died. Many of the dead bodies disappeared but you can probably find them in the laboratories in Division2. Selling it at the auction is not the main reason why Mystery is taking this item out. They want to let everyone know that Mystery owns the brain of Qi Muxiong. Therefore, it will definitely remain unsold. As soon as the auction ends, perhaps many buyers will secretly contact Mystery." Leng Yuexin knew Mysterys intention right away. "Does the demigod biological material serve any other purpose besides biological research?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "The effect of the remains can be maximized for biological research. However, it can be used for ones own personal intentions as well. Many of the imperial-levels might look into the secret of becoming a demigod using the remaining energy in the demigods dead body. Also, people with unique physique as well as those who contain special blood in their body can utilize the demigods dead body to strengthen themselves in certain aspects. "A complete demigod brain is even more useful. From the perspective of biological research, the memory of Qi Muxiong before his death can be completely extracted if an appropriate approach is used. Theres even a chance that his legacy can be obtained. For personal use, a minority of them with unique physique might assimilate his brainwave whereby one can directly obtain the demigod''s memory" "Assimilate his brainwave? He has died. Where would the brainwave come from?" Lin Huang felt that Leng Yuexin must have gotten it wrong. "The activity of a demigod body is incomparable to an ordinary humans. Even if he has died for 800 years, many of his body parts are still active. If he has lost his vitality and can only be used as a specimen, therell be a substantial decrease in his research value. Then, Mystery wont sell it publicly," Leng Yuexin explained. "His body is still active even though he has died for 800 years?!" Lin Huang gasped in disbelief. "800 years means nothing. About 60 years ago, a ruins was activated in Division7. More than 3,000 demigod remains were found there. Despite 3,000 years having passed, most of their body parts are still active," Leng Yuexin said. Listening to Leng Yuexin''s description, Lin Huang had to express his respect towards the creatures with such vitality in this world. "The demigod brain that they are showing to the public, is it fake? Theyre taking out such a precious asset in public. Aren''t they afraid that somebody will snatch it?" Lin Huang had his doubts about the authenticity of what was being displayed on the auction platform. "I don''t think so." Leng Yuexin shook her head confidently. "Mystery is a rather conceited organization. If its displayed in public, it must be genuine. Otherwise, if anyone doubts its authenticity, theyll be embarrassed. Furthermore, they don''t think that anyone dares to create trouble at the auction. Even if there are such people, they are confident that they can handle it." As soon as the second auction began, it ended very quickly simply because nobody placed any bids on that. In fact, such a valuable collection had turned out to be unsold as expected by Leng Yuexin. However, many of the royal members had captured photos and videos of the item. Some of them had even contacted their families to make a purchase decision. Ever since the demigod brain appeared, many of them did not pay attention to the items that followed later. The organization did not get a good price for the third and the fourth items since many of them were not really interested in them. Soon, the voice of the auctioneer was heard, "We will now begin selling the fifth item." A dozen presenter girls went up on the stage and each of them was holding a box that was delicately made. The auctioneer then nodded at the girls and the twelve red boxes were opened at almost the same time. The moment Lin Huang saw that, he was stunned at first and soon, he was ecstatic. "The fifth item is dracaena. There are 12 of them and they''ll be sold separately. The starting price for each of them will be 30,000 Life Crystals. The price increment is at least 1,000. Let''s begin from the left with dracaena number 1" 369 Bidding For The Dracaena "45,000!" "46,000!" "48,000!" The price of the first dracaena had risen to 48,000 in less than a minute. Lin Huang only managed to ask Leng Yuexin to call out a price once at 40,000. Not long after, the price soared. Obviously, dracaena was an item that was in high demand. "The bid has reached the price of 48,000. Is there anyone that will place a bid for a higher price?" Kong Hao called out. "48,000 is a relatively high price. Are you sure you want to continue?" Leng Yuexin looked at Lin Huang skeptically. "Yes, Im sure!" Lin Huang was determined and nodded vigorously. Despite the increase in price going beyond his expectations, he had no idea how long he had to wait if he missed the chance of getting the dracaena. He did not want to wait any longer to unlock Charcoal. "What is the maximum price that youll pay for a dracaena?" Leng Yuexin then asked. "100,000!" Lin Huang went mad. Leng Yuexin was stunned. She did not ask anymore and pressed they keys on the machine to bid. "55,000!" When Kong Hao shouted "48,000" twice, he originally thought that it would be the final price. Unexpectedly, someone from VIP room 3 called out a price that was 7,000 higher. The price had now risen to 55,000. "The bidder from VIP room 3 has placed a bid of 55,000!" Nobody continued to challenge the bid. The normal price for a dracaena would normally range from 35,000 to 45,000. It was rare that it would be sold at a price that was higher than 50,000. This was also the reason why when the price had reached 48,000, many of them were reluctant to place a higher bid. It was not worth it. The price had now increased to 55,000 and had completely exceeded the regular price of a dracaena. Of course, nobody would want it since there were still 11 of them, so they wanted to keep their options open. "55,000, going once!" "55,000, going twice!" "55,000! Sold!" The auctioneer repeated the price three times. Nobody interrupted him this time. The bid for the first dracaena was then won by Leng Yuexin. "Congratulations to the bidder in VIP room 3. You have successfully won the bid for the first dracaena at a price of 55,000 Life Crystals!" The auctioneer clearly knew that the person in the VIP room was the eldest daughter of Leng family, so of course, he was polite to her. "Now, let''s start bidding for dracaena number 2. The starting price is 30,000 Life Crystals as well. The price increment is 1,000 higher for each bid. The bidding now begins!" "The person in VIP room 3 places a bid for 55,000 Life Crystals!" As soon as Kong Hao announced the opening for the second dracaena, Leng Yuexin, who was in the VIP room, directly placed a bid for 55,000. The voice of a woman was immediately heard in the hall. "The way she places her bid, how can others still bid?!" It was the privilege granted to those who were in the VIP room. As soon as her voice was heard, many of the royal members were stunned. Soon after, the people who were interested in buying the dracaena started berating the bidder for spoiling the market. Even Kong Hao, who was experienced, was stunned for a moment. However, he quickly recovered from his thoughts. "It seems like its a must for the bidder in VIP room 3 to get the dracaena," Kong Hao feebly joked. He then announced, "The bidder from VIP room 3 offers 55,000 Life Crystals for the dracaena. Is there anyone who''s willing to place a higher bid?" In fact, nobody did. The price had exceeded many of the people''s expectations. Soon, Leng Yuexin won the bid for the second dracaena. In the VIP room, Lin Huang gave her a thumbs up. 55,000 was a price that was acceptable to him. As soon as the third auction started, Leng Yuexin called the price of 55,000 again without hesitation. The woman''s voice piped up again and the royal members who were interested in buying the dracaena looked upset. "It seems like she''s going to bid for all of them. However, she''s too na?ve if she wants to buy all 12 dracaenas at a price of 55,000 each," snorted an unfriendly-looking middle-aged man who was wearing a hat. "56,000!" Before Kong Hao announced the price, he immediately increased the bid. "60,000!" Leng Yuexin raised the price without a moment of hesitation. "61,000!" The middle-aged man insisted. "This fellow is creating trouble. Do you want to continue?" Leng Yuexin glanced at the person. She then turned and looked at Lin Huang. "Yes! Let''s play with him since he likes it," Lin Huang grinned. "65,000!" Leng Yuexin continued increasing the price. "66,000!" The middle-aged man smirked. "Let him keep the dracaena." Lin Huang smiled at Leng Yuexin. "That''s what I was thinking too." Leng Yuexin nodded gleefully. "The bidder from room 250 has placed a bid of 66,000! Will the bidder from VIP room 3 continue to increase the price?" Kong Hao then shifted his gaze to the direction where VIP room 3 was. However, there was no reply. Two seconds later, the man with the hat was startled as she did not continue placing her bid. Many of the people surrounding him then started to sneer at him. "66,000 for the first time!" "66,000 for the second time!" "66,000 for the third time!" "Congratulations to the bidder from room 250, you''ve successfully placed your bid for the price of 66,000 for dracaena number 3!" It was finalized as soon as Kong Hao dropped the gavel . "Now, let''s continue with dracaena number 4!" "The person in VIP room 3 has placed a bid for 55,000 Life Crystals!" As soon as that was announced, nobody dared to place a higher bid. Seeing the bidder from room 250 being teased mercilessly and having to pay 66,000 for a dracaena, nobody else dared to bid against her. Dracaena number 4 was bought by Leng Yuexin at a price of 55,000 again. Nobody bid against her for the fifth and the sixth dracaena as well. A person then placed a bid of 57,000 for dracaena number 7. However, Leng Yuexin then won the bid for it with the price of 58,000. The crowd, by then, knew that the person in VIP room 3 was determined to successfully bid for the dracaena. If they wanted to bid for a dracaena, they would have to pay for at least 60,000 or more. One might even have to pay for more than 65,000 to get it. With that knowledge, they opted to give up the bid. Soon, Leng Yuexin managed to bid the rest of the dracaena at a price of 55,000 each. "I''ve gotten nine out of 10 dracaenas. Are you sure that you don''t need the last two?" Leng Yuexin then asked Lin Huang. "Yes, I only need two. Thank you! I''ve finally got my work done. I wont be coming tomorrow. What''s your plan?" "I''m not coming as well. I don''t want to stay any longer in such a place." "You said that you wanted to relax, didnt you? I''ll walk around with you in the next two days. There must be a lot of seafood that both of us have not tried before. Let''s try all the seafood they have here before we leave." Lin Huang knew that Leng Yuexin was there for him, so of course, he would have to treat her to a meal. "Alright," Leng Yuexin hesitated for a while. However, she did not reject him. While both of them were still chatting, the people at the hall were waiting for them to place a bid. The crowd then noticed that perhaps the bidder from VIP room 3 had gotten enough dracaena, so they then started to bid. There were originally 12 dracaenas and now, there were only two dracaenas left. The auction had become more intense. The eleventh dracaena was then sold at a price of 63,000 while the last dracaena was sold at a price of 68,000. The bidder from room 250 then grinned to himself. "It seems like it''s not that expensive to buy it a price of 66,000" 370 Whats Wrong With My Cooking? From the moment when Fang Wen accepted the task to sneak into the auction, he was nervous all the way. The Fang family, which was considered an average royal family in Division7, was trained by the Purple Crow. Other than the superiors from the Purple Crow headquarters, the outsiders did not know this. As the eldest son of the Fang family, there was nothing unusual about him attending the auction since he was from a middle-level royalty family. In fact, the Fangs had been attending this kind of auction all these years. However, it would usually be attended by the landlord. Since it was an important task from the Purple Crow, Fang Wen had been assigned to join the auction. At 8.30 a.m, Fang Wen passed the identity verification test with the invitation card he had. He was a ball of anxiety. It was only until he had passed the verification with his suit on and when he entered the hall that he began to slightly calm down. The difficulty level of the mission was way easier than he thought. Observing the simple identity verification system, it seemed like the Mystery Organization was not worried that anyone would stir trouble here. His mission was simple C to confirm if they were selling the demigod brain at the auction. Fang Wen could clearly remember what had happened two days ago when two of the executives from Purple Crow headquarters had a talk with him alone. "You''re the only royal member who is responsible for this task and youre also the only one whos capable of completing the mission. We need you to investigate whether they are selling the demigod brain at the auction. To be honest, we are there for the demigod brain. There''s nothing to do with the royal families being the organizer. Robbing them of all their items and killing the royal members are our secondary goal. If the item doesnt appear at the auction, there''s no need for the mission to proceed. Although we received the information from a trusted source, we can''t take action by solely relying on the informant''s words. Therefore, we need you to further confirm it..." Fang Wen knew that he had no way of turning back right when the Purple Crow executives told him the truth. If he did not accept the mission, both of them would definitely kill him to avoid the secret from being revealed. Therefore, he made a wise decision without a moment of hesitation C to accept the mission. Soon after the auction began, Fang Wen then discovered an unexpected surprise. The second item being sold was what both of the executives had been looking for. Just when he was trying to secretly capture the photo so that he could send the evidence to the executives, he noticed that the people around him were taking photos in public anyway. Some of them had even taken some videos. None of the staff stopped them. He then recorded the entire process of the bidding and sent it to the contact number given by both of the executives. Initially, he thought that he had to carry out the mission for three days. Normally, the best item would be sold on the last day. He had never expected that a few minutes after the auction had begun, the priceless treasure would be taken out and sold as the second item. After informing both of the executives, Fang Wen then got up and headed towards the washroom. He knew that the Purple Crow members were going to launch an attack very soon. The hall was not safe. Fang Wen''s action did not catch the people''s attention and the auction continued as usual. On the top floor of one of the hotels situated near the auction house, two men who were dressed in black coats looked at the entrance of the auction house from afar. All of a sudden, the Emperor''s Heart Ring of the short hair man who was standing on the left vibrated. He immediately tapped on the communication page. As soon as he saw that the sender was Fang Wen, he was stunned. There was only one sentence in Fang Wen''s message: "Sir, they are now selling the demigod brain at the auction." Yang Yang immediately opened the video. Lin Jiang, who was standing next to him, looked over as well. They then played the video recorded from the hall. Their pupils dilated right when they saw the demigod brain. "Are they selling the demigod brain now?!" Lin Jian asked. After finishing the entire video, Yang Yang turned and looked at Lin Jiang. "Can you tell if its genuine or not?" "I think it''s real. The people from the Mystery Organization are rather conceited. I don''t think they will take out a counterfeit good just to show off." Lin Jian grinned. "That''s good. How''s the set up going over there?" Yang Yang raised his brows. "I still need some time. I didn''t know that they''ll be selling it so soon. I thought we''ll have to wait until the third day." Lin Jian adjusted his glasses slightly. "Since the item has appeared, let''s quickly finish setting up. My body is trembling with trepidation. If you''re too slow, I can''t promise that I''m able to suppress my excitement." "You get excited so easily. It sure must be hard to please a woman in bed," Lin Jian teased. "I''m not interested in women" As soon as Yang Yang uttered his last words, he realized that what he said could lead to a misunderstanding. He then added, "I''m not interested in men too. Killing and fresh blood excite me!" "It''s because you''ve never tried it. Once you have, you''ll know how amazing women are." Lin Jian then recalled he was an old virgin who had lived for more than a hundred years. "Who says that I''ve never tried them before? I''ve eaten many women and men. Raw, fried, grilled, steamed, and stir-fried, I''ve tasted them all. Overall, I do think that a woman is less delicious than a man. They don''t have much meat to munch on and they arent as lean as men. I don''t like fatty meat. However, if it''s for barbecuing, fatty meat is quite tasty" "This fellow knows nothing about sex" Lin Jian then slapped his head as he knew that the man standing next to him had understood the wrong meaning. He could not be bothered to continue with the topic, so he simply said, "I''m going to fix the set up. When you hear the roaring of monsters later, take action together with the kids. Perhaps, I''ll be able to get it done within half an hour." "Oh!" Yang Yang then recovered from his thoughts of tasty meat. Seeing Lin Jian disappear, he frowned and doubted, "Are the women really tasty? What''s wrong with my cooking?" As soon as the bidding of the dracaena ended, the sixth item was then put up for auction. In VIP room 3, Lin Huang could no longer sit still. "Let''s make our payment and leave after getting the dracaena." "The rule of the auction is that no one can collect their goods during the auction. You can only make your payment after the auction ends," Leng Yuexin laughed at his impatience and explained. "Really? Theres such a rule?" Lin Huang was speechless. "Its because not many of the audience joined the auction. If the people leave as soon as they have successfully bidded for what they like, the auction will become less lively. Furthermore, if there are people walking around, it''ll affect everyone''s experience at the auction" Bang! Bang! While both of them were chatting, a loud explosion was heard from afar. "What''s that sound?!" Lin Huang peered towards the direction of the entrance where the sound was coming from. "It seems like the auction is being attacked" Leng Yuexin looked towards the direction as well with a complicated expression on her face. 371 Fiends At the entrance of the auction, three human-form monsters suddenly descended from the sky. It seemed like two of them were men and the other was a woman. The woman was tall and dressed in black armor. Except for the red horn on the back of its head as well as the black tail behind it, there was not much difference between it and a human. One of the men was as muscular as Tyrant whereas another man was slightly shorter. Nevertheless, it was still above two meters high. Similar to the woman, there were two black horns on the back of its head. It had a pair of red eyes but no tail. Meanwhile, the monster next to it was a stout monster at the height of about two meters. There was a scaly pattern all over its arms and its brain was covered by a thin layer of blue, crystallized structure. Apparently, the three of them were fiends from the abyss. Their combat level was on par with the dragonkin. Soon after three of the monsters appeared, the security guards stationed outside the hall panicked. Just when two of them were about to inform the person in charge of the auction, they saw that the female fiend''s eyes had turned black abruptly. Outside the auction hall, more than 20 of the security guards were instantly shrouded in a black mist that appeared out of nowhere. The layer of black mist resembled a living element that slithered into their bodies through the noses and throats. After a few moments, the people''s faces turned black. About three seconds passed before their body turned stiff, falling down onto the ground. They then turned into black powder that scattered around the ground as if they had been carbonized by high temperature. The three monsters then casually walked across the dark area, heading towards the entrance of the auction house. Soon, they stopped in front of the door. They were blocked by an invisible protective shield. Two of the fiends with the horns then looked at the stout fiend standing next to them. Roar! Letting out a howl, the stout fiend''s arms grew a few times larger and instantly slammed on the door of the hall forcefully. Bang! A loud thud was then heard. Unexpectedly, a small crack appeared on the shield created by the immortal-level. However, the stout fiend obviously was not satisfied with the effect caused by his single hit. It then struck consecutively as if it would not stop until the protective layer was destroyed. Its attacks caused the whole shield as well as the entire auction hall to tremble. Hundreds of meters away, Yang Yang instructed, "Let''s go!" It leapt from the building and more than 30 of the Purple Crow members who were hiding nearby followed behind it. They then landed at the entrance of the auction hall. Lin Jian''s body gradually appeared next to Yang Yang. "The fat guy''s combat strength is quite good. In order to get rid of the protective shield set up by the immortal-level, I have to put in some effort too," Yang Yang complimented as he could see that in just a few seconds, the shield was about to collapse. "The Malachian Fiend is one of the low-level fiends. Its been genetically modified by Professor Jin so that its defense as well as its attack power has become terribly strong. Despite the fact that its only on gold flame-level, the monster''s overall abilities are on par with those who are on immortal-level rank-2. Its combat strength is close to those who are on immortal-level rank-3. Of course, itll be easy for it to destroy such a protective shield." "What about the other two monsters?" Yang Yang then looked at the monster with a horn at their side. "Monsters with a single horn are female fiends. They have rather wicked abilities. The male fiend with two horns contains the actual blood of the low-level fiend in its body. Both are low-level fiends. Professor Jin has done the necessary modifications, so although their combat level is only on gold flame-level, their overall abilities are even stronger than that of the Malachian Fiend." "It sounds useful. Why not get a few more of them?" Yang Yang asked curiously. "With the strength of my spirit, controlling three monsters is my limit. I originally thought that with my immortal-level rank-4 combat abilities as well as my unique spiritual talent, it''s not a big problem to control three immortal-level rank-2 fiends. However, I can hardly control an immortal-level rank-1. That''s why I''ve decided to change them to three gold flame-level monsters," Lin Jian explained helplessly. "How can that be? With the strength of your spirit, your limit is only three of the gold flame-level monsters?" Yang Yangs eyes flew wide open as he knew that Lin Jian had extremely strong spiritual talents. In fact, it was a few times higher than his. "I never expected this to happen too. I have to admit that the new batch of fiends created by Professor Jin is much stronger than the half-completed monsters he worked on previously." Lin Jian shook his head helplessly. While the two of them were chatting, the Malachian Fiend in front of them had been attacking the protective shield. Just when the protective layer was about to collapse, a loud voice boomed, "Who''s the troublemaker?!" At almost the same time, a middle-aged man dressed in a black vest and wearing a black hat suddenly appeared above the auction hall in the sky. The middle-aged man, Fei Yuan, was an immortal and he was the one who was responsible for looking after the auction hall. He was on immortal-level rank-5. "Are they from the Purple Crow?!" Fei Yuan could recognize the coats that the people were wearing. He then said with disdain, "How dare the people from the Purple Crow try and profit from us?" "What''s so good about Mystery Organization? Isn''t it an organization relying on the backup forces in Division2 and isnt the auction just a cover for trafficking businesses and to carry out underground human experiments?" Lin Jian replied with a smirk. His voice instantly spread throughout half of the Haitian City as he did not use a transmitter deliberately. "You''re spouting nonsense!" Fei Yuan''s face had instantly turned grave and he refuted. He never knew that Lin Jian would say this. "Nonsense? Youre the children traffickers. You also make use of the adults to carry out genetic experiments. Almost 80% of the royal families know that. The reason why nobody has ever mentioned this is because theyre afraid that they''ll offend the backup forces in Divison2. It''s true that the Purple Crow is not a good organization. However, we''re not as hypocritical, at the very least, unlike you. Your organization looks good on the outside but you''re actually doing something horrible. Even the bad people like us are disgusted," Lin Jian continued revealing the truth. "Stop spreading unfounded rumors! The Purple Crow deliberately sends people like you, who can speak well, over here to create lies and mislead the public," Fei Yuan was experienced in crisis management as he quickly refuted, "We''re a legal auction organizer. We''ve never done anything like you''ve said. Evil organizations like you arent allowed to criticize us." "Tsk tsk tsk You sure can turn black into white. Mystery has made the right decision to have you guarding the auction hall. You''re such an eloquent speaker. It''s a waste for you to stay at Mystery. Join us. You don''t have to be a two-faced person anymore. You can do whatever evil you like and you don''t have to act as if you''re a good man. Think about it how tiring it is pretending to be a good man everyday," Lin Jian persuaded. "I don''t have time for nonsense!" Having uttered his last words, he brandished his golden battle sword, tearing the space apart and plunging towards the three fiends. At that moment, Yang Yang suddenly leaped and pounced on Fei Yuan. "Hehe, you''re a sword player? Me too!" A black, giant sword then appeared in Yang Yang''s hand out of nowhere. The long sword resembled a black moon and instantly crashed into his opponent''s golden blade 372 Do You Want It? Snatch It! Bang! A deafening blast was heard and half of Haitian City began to tremble. The moment the swords collided with each other, the space within the region that was a few meters away was distorted. The remaining energy resembled waves, spreading everywhere. It was the consequence of crashing into the immortal-level guardian. It was way more threatening than engaging in any of the battles with a holy fire-level. Lin Jian immediately supported the protective shield, allowing all the Purple Crow new members behind him to be enveloped by it. If he did not do that, the new members who were only on holy fire-level would not be able to survive the encounter with such a high impact within that short a distance. However, the effect on three of the fiends was not significant. They did not retreat at all. The Malachian Fiend paused for a moment and soon, it continued attacking the protective shield of the auction house as if it had nothing to do with the fight. The layer of shield that already had cracks all over it became even more unstable right after the energy waves struck it. In addition to the Malachian Fiend''s continuous blows, it seemed like the protective layer might break at any time. Fei Yuan was worried that they might affect the auction and suggested, "We can''t do our best here. Let''s fight in the sky!" Yang Yang then glanced at Lin Jian and the rest of them. Soon, he immediately nodded in agreement. As soon as they were able to reach a consensus, the both of them immediately ascended into the sky and penetrated the cloud layers. A few moments later, growls that sounded like the rumbling of thunder were heard on top of the cloud layers. At the auction, despite the crowd not being able to see how intense the battle was, the loud roar coming from outside could be clearly heard. So could their conversation in mid-air. All of them knew that they were being attacked by the Purple Crow and that they were all on immortal-level. Many of them panicked. Even though they had never contacted one another, they had heard about what the scary Purple Crow had done before. Only a small number of them remained calm as they believed in Mysterys ability to protect them. Meanwhile, a minority of them was confident in their own abilities. "The Purple Crow is prepared for the fight. There must be more than one of them who''s on immortal-level," Leng Yuexin said confidently in VIP room 3. "If they manage to break in, they''ll definitely kill everyone here." Lin Huang had stayed at the Purple Crow training camp before and he knew the organization well. "Under normal circumstances, the regulators and the assistant of Haitian City will come over really soon. But it seems like the Purple Crow is ready for it. Otherwise, they wont be so confident to go up against Mystery," Leng Yuexin guessed, lifting her head and staring at the dome of the auction. "Do you mean that we won''t have any backup?" Lin Huang frowned. "At least for now, we won''t have any. It''s difficult to attack an A-grade foothold. However, if one''s intention is only to slow down the regulators and assistants, it wont be too difficult for the Purple Crow." "This is not good news" Lin Huang helplessly realized that the world was so dangerous. Strange things always happened no matter where he went. He simply wanted to attend an auction but he was now caught in an unexpected rare attack by the Purple Crow. He was now worried that if he happened to bump into any Purple Crow members that could recognize him, the secret of him faking his own death would be revealed. Mr. Fu had promised him that the Purple Crow would not look for trouble with him and his family anymore. Perhaps, it was only about the matter of him joining the Purple Crow training camp. If Hong Zhuang found out that he was still alive, she would most likely give him trouble. Lin Huang knew the woman very well and she would not let him go easily especially since the Purple Crow would not restrict the behavior of the elite members. Also, he was the one who had lied to Hong Zhuang, so it would now be considered their personal issue and had nothing to do with the Purple Crow. It was definitely not a good thing if the immortal-level noticed him. "Why did the Purple Crow choose to attack them this year?" Lin Huang grumbled rhetorically. "If I''m not mistaken, the Purple Crow must be here for the demigod brain. There''s no other reason for them to get into a fight." Leng Yuexin thought that Lin Huang was asking her a question. She pondered for a while and answered, "Many of the powerful organizations have considered the demigod relics as a valuable treasure. The value of a demigod material will be deemed even higher. The item is actually quite appealing to the Purple Crow. Therefore, they have instructed the people who are on immortal-level to take it away. I suspect that the people on imperial-level from the Purple Crow are there to control the entire battle" A cracking sound was heard and the huge protective shield eventually collapsed after being repeatedly attacked by the Malachian Fiend. Before the three fiends could enter the auction hall, an old man with white hair blocked their way. He was skinny and dressed in a Chinese traditional costume with black designs. He was less than 1.7 meters tall, even shorter than the female fiend. He had prominent cheekbones and skinny arms. He looked like he was malnourished. Compared to him, the low-level fiend and the Malachian Fiend resembled two small mountains. "The three of you shall stop here." Impressively, the old man was the guard of Mystery''s warehouse, Hou Xu. After finishing his sentence, Hou Xu struck a blow in the air. Without even touching them, he had rained three blows on the chest of three of the fiends at almost the same time. In the next moment, the fiends were thrown into the air as though bullets had been fired. He had well mastered his power. The fiends created a parabolic curve mid-air and fell into the sea that was more than 10 kilometers away. Clap clap clap... The sound of applause was heard. The one who clapped his hands was another immortal-level Purple Crow member, Lin Jian. "You are skilled indeed," Lin Jian complimented. "Theyre just three gold flame-level monsters. Despite the fact that theyre fiends, their combat strength is relatively weak." It meant nothing to Hou Xu. Again, he clasped his hands behind his back and studied Lin Jian. He could sense that he was on immortal-level as well. His intuition told him that it would not be easy to deal with him. "You must be the guard of the warehouse. Only now you show up? Perhaps, you''re done cleaning up the warehouse?" Lin Jian adjusted his glasses, gazing at the Emperor''s Heart Ring on Hou Xu''s left middle finger. "Whatever you want is all in here. Do you want to take it from me?" Hou Xu then flipped Lin Jian his left middle finger. He smiled while wiggling his finger. "Is the demigod in there too?" Lin Jian frowned and asked. The conversation went well and it sounded like two old friends chatting. "Of course. Do you want it?" Hou Xu wagged his middle finger again. "That''s great. I can save me some time. I''ve heard that it''s difficult to unlock Mystery''s warehouse. It''ll now be easier because...I only need to kill you" Before he could even finish his sentence, Lin Jian disappeared abruptly 373 The Fiends Have Not Died Bang! Lin Jian and Hou Xu instantly crashed into each other. Energy waves were created out of nowhere. Nevertheless, it was suppressed by the both of them as they restrained it to a radius of a few meters around them. The Purple Crow members behind Lin Jian as well as the people in the auction hall behind Hou Xu were not affected. "Yo, I didn''t know that you''re good in both ranged attack and close combat despite all your refined ways." Hou Xu raised his eyebrows, looking at Lin Jian who had taken off his glasses. His eyes were bloodshot. "I''m quite surprised though. Your body is kind of" Lin Jian said with a sly grin on his face. "Young man, it''s not right to judge a book by its cover," Hou Xu immediately chided. "Youre the one who started it first," Lin Jian answered coldly. "Alright, stop bullshitting me. It''s not easy to meet an opponent who''s so talented in ranged attack. Lets find a place to fight!" Hou Xu was excited. Listening to what Hou Xu said, Lin Jian grinned widely again. "That''s what I was thinking about too." Both of them then flew off into the sky. Soon after they had left, three figures emerged from the sea that was more than 10 kilometers away, heading towards the auction hall. Unbelievably, the three fiends did not die. Although they were severely injured, having handprints that had yet to be healed on their chests, the aura exuded by the fiends was no weaker than before. Obviously, Hou Xu had never expected this to happen. Before drawing Lin Jian away, he thought that the fiends would have been killed. Such a disaster was unexpected. "Young man, you''re evil enough. You knew that theyre still alive? That''s why you accepted my offer and drew me away!" Hou Xu soon realized that he was tricked. "They were specially created. Their overall abilities are on par with those who are on immortal-level rank-2. They won''t die even if they are attacked at full force by those who are on immortal-level rank-4. You''re also an immortal-level rank-4 but your attacks earlier arent powerful enough." Lin Jian smiled coldly. "Get out of the way!" Hou Xu did not want to bug Lin Jian anymore. His wizened hands instantly extended to about the length of a foot. His nails transformed into black-golden claws, tearing the space around Lin Jian apart with his sharp nails and five black fissures appeared. He was serious about his role. As one of the guardians of the Mystery Organization, he had to protect everyone in the auction hall. If people found out that those who joined the auction died there, perhaps nobody would dare to attend the auction anymore. If the organizer failed to protect their customers, of course, they would have no supporters. "Why are you being so impatient? The die is cast. Let''s fight for a few minutes since it takes only two to three minutes for the three fiends to kill everyone in the auction hall." Having uttered these words, Lin Jian''s eyes suddenly turned black. At almost the same time, his body split into two and soon, they were split into four and so on As soon as he was split into 16 different bodies, he took a step towards Hou Xu. "It is the ocular skill from blood inheritance It seems like I''ve underestimated you." Hou Xu''s face turned solemn. "There''s no such thing as blood inheritance. It is a pair of eyes transplanted by gene technology. However, I have to admit that I am highly compatible with these eyes. I''m satisfied with a few of the combat skills that have developed." Lin Jians 16 voices chimed at the same time. Even the movement of adjusting his glasses was the same. Not even one bit of difference could be sensed. "It''s just a small Illusion trick. Do you really think that I''ll be fooled?" Hou Xu laughed coldly. "It seems like you don''t have a thorough understanding of the ocular skill. I''ll teach you a lesson today. Perhaps, this is the last time in your life to gain some knowledge" Lin Jian sounded as polite as he used to be. However, his patronizing tone offended Hou Xu. "It''s simply an unorthodox way. I can get rid of it with just one hit!" Hou Xu scoffed. His skinny body immediately expanded as if it was filled with air all of a sudden. In just one breath, the wizened old man that was less than 1.7 meters tall had lengthened to almost three meters. He became a muscular man as he ripped off the Chinese costume that he was wearing. Not even a single piece of cloth was left on his body. The loose-fitting pants that looked like bloomers turned into extremely tight shorts, not even reaching his knees. The "old Beijing" canvas shoes that he was wearing had completely turned into powder form as well. "It seems like shits getting real" Seeing his opponent''s transformation, he was shocked. As soon as he recovered from his thoughts, he mumbled, "Perhaps, it wont be considered bullying an old man if I killed him." The protective shield at the auction house had completely collapsed. The three fiends appeared at the entrance again. As soon as the Inferior Imp extended its hand, the door of the auction hall automatically opened as if it was being controlled by someone. Everything at the auction hall was revealed. There were the holy fire-level guards standing not far away from the entrance and the bidders holed up in the area near the stage. Seeing the fiends entering the hall, the group of holy fire-level guards began to charge. A variety of colors flashed as they launched Life Power attacks at the fiends. At that moment, the Inferior Imp extended its hand. An invisible shield was formed in front of the fiend like an impenetrable wall. All the attacks were blocked. Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin who were in the VIP room witnessed this phenomenal scene. "The monsters are so powerful! They managed to block the attacks by more than 30 of the holy fire-levels." Lin Huang frowned. "They are fiends. Their abilities are on par with the dragonkin. From the aura they exude, it seems like they are on gold flame-level. Perhaps their abilities are comparable to those who are on immortal-level rank-1," Leng Yuexin said with a straight face. At this moment, the auctioneer, Kong Hao''s voice boomed, "Three of them are gold flame-level fiends. Perhaps their combat abilities are on par with the immortal-level. If we don''t fight them together, we''ll probably die here!" Many of the holy fire-level bidders knew that Kong Hao was not exaggerating, so they joined the team to fight. "I''ll help them out as well. Stay here and observe the situation. If something goes wrong, try your best to leave." Leng Yuexin then stood up. Lin Huang kept quiet. Without using his cards, he was incapable of engaging in such a battle. Even Tyrant, who had completed its unlocking, was only on white flame-level. He would be food to the fiends. In addition, the situation of the battle was not clear to all yet. Lin Huang decided to observe the situation for a while before deciding whether to use the cards or not. 374 Abnormally Modified Creatures Lin Huang was watching the battle from VIP room No.3. If the crowd managed to solve the danger, there was no need for him to use his cards. All those who were on holy fire-level at the auction hall stood up for themselves as they were convinced by Kong Hao. More than 300 of them joined the team and attacked the three fiends. Soon, the protective shield of the Imperial Imp began to shake and cracks even appeared. "It seems like the large number of people we have now is against their advantage." Lin Huang was slightly relieved. Right at that moment, a group of Purple Crow members who wore black coats entered the hall. There were about 30 of them. Seeing their presence, the people in the hall panicked. As soon as they realized that there were only a small number of them, they calmed down. "Lets split in two directions," one of the Purple Crow members said. He did not care if the people at the auction house could hear him. Soon, about 30 of the Purple Crow members divided themselves into two groups, entering the hall from the left and the right. "They''re only on holy fire-level. Form a team of 30 and block their way from the left and the right!" Apparently, it was not the first time for Kong Hao encountering a regiment attack. The bidders were then led by the auction guards in an orderly manner to form a team of about 30 each and headed towards the Purple Crow. After being struck about 300 times, fissures were formed all over the Imperial Imp''s protective shield. In about two to three seconds, the protective layer that was originally indestructible had collapsed. Seeing the protective shield destroyed, more than 300 of the holy fire-level bidders were spurred on. Their Life Power attacks became more intense. Aside from the Imperial Imp, the crowd''s attacks buried another two of the fiends as well. After ten seconds, three of the fiends, who were struck by the Life Power attacks, did not counterattack or dodge. They did not even let out a howl. "Are they dead?" In the VIP room, Lin Huang fixed his gaze upon the fiends. He vaguely felt that things would not be that simple. The reaction the fiends was strange. Despite the large number of royal members, only a few of them had achieved gold flame-level. In addition, the attacks by 300 of them were scattered. They would not be able to defeat the gold flame-level fiends in just split seconds. In fact, as soon as that thought arose in Lin Huang''s mind, the three fiends reacted. The monsters gradually walked towards the crowd. They were not injured at all and there was a faint black mist coiling off from the surface of their body. Lin Huang could clearly see that the attacks of the royal members were not rendered useless. Some of their attacks did hurt the three fiends. However, their bodies had instantly recovered on their own, transforming the Life Power into black mist and expelling it out. "Their self-recovery ability is powerful. It''s somehow similar to Super Regeneration, yet it is even more powerful than that. Theyre even capable of expelling the unusual energy from their body" Lin Huang pondered strangely, "Three of the fiends possess the same abilities. Could it be an innate ability just like the dragonkin''s dragonflame?" "Based on the results of the observation, three of the monsters are abnormally modified creatures. The modification deviates from their genes and their physique has been strengthened. They might even have been granted with new skills. Logically, such a modification shouldnt exist However, three of the monsters have been successfully modified. Indeed, that''s strange." Xiao Hei''s voice was suddenly heard. Listening to what Xiao Hei said, Lin Huang uttered, "Abnormally modified creatures? Isn''t the Advance Card a black technology that can abnormally modify creatures too? It can even modify species from one type to another." "The Advance Card operates based on the fundamental requirements of genetic evolution. Its operating principle is actually to track the origin of the monster genes, modifying them into the same type and creating a creature that is even stronger. For example, the genes of the dragonkin originate from the Ouroboros Dragon. It is a super strong monster that is beyond the protoss." "Ever since I''ve been activated, I''ve scanned through your memory. I found out that the Ouroboros Dragon is the same Ouroboros mentioned by many of the religions and myths on Earth. However, the concept of dragons didnt exist in the past. Therefore, the people thought that the Ouroboros Dragon is actually a large snake. The Ouroboros Dragon eats its own tail all the time but will never die. It isn''t even affected by time, so it will exist forever. Such a monster possesses the power to create and destroy a world at the same time. "It is said that the dragon family originates from the Ouroboros Dragon. Due to some unknown reasons, its genes were spread to the world, creating the dragon families. "Based on the origin of the genes, the dragonkin monster card can be transformed into a state close to the Ouroboros Dragon genes. That''s why I said that my Advance Card fulfills the requirements of genes evolution." "Do you mean that Charcoal is a monster that''s capable of destroying the world in future?!" Lin Huangs eyes flew wide open. "As long as the evolution continues, theoretically, that''s possible." "It sounds so comforting" Lin Huangs mouth twitched. "Why are you telling me this? Do you want me to help out?" "I''ll need you to capture at least one of the carcasses of the fiends for me as a sample. Perhaps, that''ll be useful for the research of monster evolution and modification," Xiao Hei finally requested. "Do you really want me to kill the gold flame-level fiends? You should know that even using all my cards, I can hardly kill them. Furthermore, there are three of them here. Killing any of them will attract the other two fiends," Lin Huang said. He did not want to be involved in this matter since the Purple Crow and the Mystery Organization were evil. His plan was to rescue Leng Yuexin if the situation got out of hand. Looking at the situation, the effect of the regiment attack was rendered useless. Six of them who were on gold flame-level blocked the fiends. If they were allowed to approach the crowd, perhaps nobody would have the ability to fight them. Although the battle was two versus one, the humans held no advantage over them. They were pinned down by the fiends. Despite the fact that they were all on gold flame-level, they discovered that their attacks had limited effect on the fiends. On the contrary, the attacks launched by the fiends could cause serious injury to the humans. Six of them were forced to dodge the monster attacks passively. When the rest of them knew that they were not capable of fighting the fiends, they then joined the team to take on the Purple Crow. Even though the new Purple Crow members were all on white flame-level, they were ruthless. In addition to their sufficient preparation, they were hurling all sorts of equipment at the people. Only a few of them died. They had killed many of the royal members instead. "It''s not going too well" Lin Huang saw that Leng Yuexin was in one of the teams to kill the Purple Crow members. She was more skilled than the others as she managed to kill three Purple Crow members in a few seconds. However, it was meaningless even if all the Purple Crow members were killed because the fiends were still there. "If you can help me to get the carcasses of the fiends, I''ll make an exception. Ill give you the complete set of monster cards. You''ll be given one monster card for killing one monster. Killing the three of them, you''ll get three monster cards!" Xiao Hei remained silent for a moment before offering a deal. 375 Provisional Summoning Card Lin Huang could not reject Xiao Hei''s offer. The fiends were about the same level as dragonkin since they were both one of the strongest types of monsters. A minority of them was even comparable to protoss of the same level. Furthermore, the combat level of the three monsters was originally on gold flame-level. Upon transforming into monster cards, their combat level would be no weaker. That being said, he would have another gold flame-level monster as a fighter. Lin Huang was eager to own a complete set of such monster cards. "Alright, I''ll accept it!" Lin Huang accepted without hesitation. However, as soon as he promised Xiao Hei, he started to feel worried. "The fiends will be able to get rid of the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit''s Punishment Chain by using their physical strength. Even if the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card is used on Tyrant, only three cards can be overlaid at one time. It''s only possible to upgrade his combat strength from white flame-level to purple flame-level. Perhaps, he can barely defeat one fiend with that, let alone three. I have three one-time skill cards. However, I''ve only seen the process of Zhu Nian unleashing his skill so far and he''s only a gold flame-level during that time. It''s less likely that I can kill fiends of the same level with one hit" "You have two Provisional Summoning Cards. You can summon a monster that is a level higher than the highest level monster card that you currently own." "The white flame-level monster card is the highest level card that I own. A monster that''s a level higher than that will be on immortal-level. Am I not restricted by my authority to summon a monster of this level?" Lin Huang remembered the system features. The combat level of a summoning monster used to be restrained by his own level and it could only be a level higher than the user''s combat level. "That''s for regular summoning. Provisional summoning is rather special as the monsters will be summoned randomly. The summoning monster will only exist for one hour. Therefore, it isn''t restricted by your combat level." "Even if an immortal-level monster is randomly summoned, it can hardly kill three of the fiends." Lin Huang frowned. "How''s the combat strength of the immortal-level actually differentiated?" "Upon achieving holy fire-level, they can live up to 1,800 years. It''s one of the reasons why humans are known as Transcendents as soon as they achieve holy fire-level. At the immortal level, there''ll be a substantial increase in human lifespan. In order to achieve holy fire-level, one will have to extract Life Soul from the monster body in order to kindle Life Light. There''re a total of nine Life Lights. Humans can live an additional 360 years for each Life Light lit up. Lighting up the first until the ninth Life Light helps one in approaching immortality. This is the reason why it''s known as ''immortal-level''." "Since the monster card of the highest level that you own is white flame-level, the summoning monster will only be immortal-level rank-1 when a Provisional Summoning Card is used. I don''t know what type of monster will be summoned. If it''s a dragonkin or protoss, it can possibly defeat the fiends. However, if it''s just an ordinary monster, it might be even weaker than the fiends" "I have five Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards on hand. Can they be used on the provisional summoning monster?" Lin Huang suddenly thought of the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards he had. "Yes, you can use it. The Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card is applicable to all monsters. Once the Provisional Summoning Card is activated, it''ll turn into a provisional monster card that exists for only one hour. It is effective to use the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card here." "I can overlay three cards at most, can''t I?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, you''re right. The rules will not change." "It can then be upgraded to immortal-level rank-4. Even if an ordinary monster is randomly summoned, it''s capable of killing the fiends," Lin Huang eventually came up with a solution to overcome the danger after discussing with Xiao Hei. The situation at the auction hall was unpleasant. The team of royal members had failed to defeat the Purple Crow. Three of the fiends had taken the lead as well. The Imperial Imp''s claws had penetrated through the chest of the gold flame-level. Despite not dying, he was severely injured and left the combat team as he could no longer fight. Only the auctioneer, Kong Hao was fighting the fiend. The people on gold flame-level were fighting the other two fiends. They wanted to help him out. However, the two fiends had trapped them. Despite Kong Hao''s experience, compared to the fiends, his combat strength was much weaker. When there had been two of them, they could barely fight the fiend. The situation became more dangerous as Kong Hao was fighting it alone. All of a sudden, the Imperial Imp''s bloody eyes glowed, the light devouring Kong Hao and he felt like he was in an ocean of blood. From the outside, his movement became sluggish. He was caught unprepared and the Imperial Imp''s claws pierced through his chest, pulling out a bloody red heart that was still pumping. A squelching sound was heard. The Imperial Imp''s big, black hands that were transformed into sharp claws tightly grasped the heart. It was then pulverized into minced meat. The fresh blood splattered like ten fountains everywhere up to a distance of 10 meters away. Right when this happened, everybody''s hearts skipped a beat. After defeating the second opponent, the Imperial Imp then walked towards one of the gold flame-levels that was fighting the Witch. Knowing that he had become the fiend''s next target, the gold flame-level immediately quit the battle. He headed towards the dome of the auction hall and dug a big hole. Soon, he fled. In less than one second after he escaped, a moan of death was heard in the hall. A carcass then fell from the broken vault. He was the person on gold flame-level who had just run away. A sound was then heard coming from the dome. "Don''t ever think of escaping. All of you will die here today!" Obviously, it was the voice of the man with glasses who was from the Purple Crow. "Is it true that they are going to kill us all?" Lin Huang frowned. Looking back at the auction hall, the fourth person who was on gold flame-level was killed by the Imperial Imp and the Witch. He had an extra golden card in his hand. A black virtual shadow appeared on the front of the card. On top of the shadow was a question mark which was gold in color. It was the Provisional Summoning Card that Lin Huang had never used before. Without saying a word, Lin Huang directly crushed the monster card. The monster card then turned into a golden glow, forming a new monster card in Lin Huang''s hand. Lin Huang then took a glance at it. The card was purple in color and there was a black giant dragon on the front of the card. There was a semi-transparent sandglass on the bottom right corner of the card. It started counting down the one hour he had left to utilize it. "The Provisional Summoning Card is activated. You have obtained a chief-level provisional card -- Infernal Dragon." "You''re quite lucky as it is a mid-level dragonkin that has gone through its third evolution." "Activate three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards." As usual, Lin Huang instructed without a moment''s hesitation. "Consumed Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card x3 The combat strength of Infernal Dragon is upgraded to immortal-level rank-4!" Three of the golden glows then immersed into the summoning cards. The description of their combat strength on the back of the card was immediately modified. "I''ll go now." Lin Huang crushed the monster card in his hand again 376 You Fooled Me Again! At the center of the auction hall, a golden beam resembling sunlight appeared abruptly without traces at the place where Lin Huang fixed his gaze on. It was strange and it caught everybody''s attention, including the three fiends that were killing the remaining three people that were on gold flame-level. They completely stopped moving. As soon as the dazzling golden glow appeared, the fiends could feel a strong, intimidating aura. The rest of the holy fire-level could feel the same powerful aura exuded by the golden glow as well. Nobody dared to react as they wondered if it was an enemy or a friend. Roar! A loud growl came from the golden glow and an intense sound wave was spread everywhere. The air pressure along with the sound wave instantly crushed all the chairs in the hall. The royal members that had not achieved Transcendent were blown away. They could not move at all as they were being pinned against the wall. Those who were on white flame-level and crimson flame-level retreated more than 10 meters away before they could balance themselves against the strong pressure. Those who managed to stand at their own positions and remained unaffected were the three gold flame-level fiends as well as the three gold flame-level humans. However, the six of them began to fear the glow. After sensing the vibrations from the sound waves, a black giant claw gradually extended from the ball of light. As soon as it stomped on the ground, its claw occupied about half the area of the auction hall. "It''s a giant" Many of the Mystery Organization staff knew very well that the area of the auction was more than 30,000 square meters. The people exclaimed when they saw the giant claw. After extending its first giant claw, a big skull gradually emerged from the golden glow. The crowd fixed their gaze on the terrifying scene. Despite showing less than a fifth of its head, it had already taken off the roof of the auction hall. Soon after, it continued extending its giant head and the people were terrified. "It''s a dragonkin!!!" The crowd shouted right after a third of its head could be seen. In just a short while, the Infernal Dragon''s giant head was completely revealed. "It is a real dragonkin. Not a Sky Dragon!" Looking at the form of the giant head, many of them could recognize that it was not a Sky Dragon at first glance. Some of them could even recognize what monster type it exactly was. "It is an Infernal Dragon, a mid-level dragonkin. It''s a killing machine!" There were even people who could recognize that it was actually an Infernal Dragon. The royal members panicked after listening to what they said. It sounded like it had been summoned by the Purple Crow. However, the Purple Crow was baffled at its appearance. Even four of their opponents who were on immortal-level were stunned. They could clearly sense that it was certainly an immortal-level monster. Each thought that the monster was summoned by their opponent. Roar! It let out a loud roar again and the black gigantic dragon quickly moved away from the golden glow In just a few seconds, a massive monster that was the length of more than 10,000 meters arrived on top of the auction hall. The dazzling golden glow eventually disappeared. Almost everyone at the auction hall shifted their gaze towards the giant dragon with trepidation. "Kill the three fiends," Lin Huang instructed in a low voice from the VIP room. Roar! Again, the Infernal Dragon let out a deafening roar as it heard Lin Huang''s instruction clearly. It then located the position of the three fiends, glaring at them with its flaming eyes. The fiends could instantly sense that the giant dragon was coming for them. At that moment, one of the Infernal Dragon''s giant claws approached them. As it lowered its giant claw, it was akin to a mountain that was about to collapse, covering the sky above the auction hall. Even the lights dimmed and its giant claw penetrated through layers of space as it was about to attack the fiends. They wanted to flee. However, they found out that space was limited by its claw. They could not avoid it at all. They could only activate their defensive skills to defend themselves against the giant dragon''s attack. A cracking sound was heard and the black giant claws instantly descended from mid-air, crashing into the fiends'' protective layer. The protective layer that was capable of defending against hundreds of holy fire-level attacks was like papyrus to the giant claw. The enormous claw then struck three of the fiends'' heads. Bang! A loud thud was heard. It seemed like a spell was cast by the giant claw as it could completely pin down all three fiends. About half of the ground at the auction hall sank, creating a big crater in the shape of its giant claw. The crowd was terrified, seeing the powerful fiends defeated in an instant. They could clearly see that the protective layer of the three fiends had instantly collapsed. They had no way to free themselves from the giant claw. "They haven''t died yet?!" Lin Huang squinted as he did not receive any notification from Xiao Hei yet. He then knew that three of the fiends were still alive. "Kill them. There''s no need to keep them alive," Lin Huang instructed for the second time. When the Infernal Dragon was about to kill them, a human figure suddenly descended from the sky along with a black shockwave. The human figure then descended in the auction hall and the black shockwave attacked the Infernal Dragon''s eyes. Roar! The black dragon let out a howl and immediately reacted to it. It raised its head, opened its mouth and spat out a black glow. The black glow then collided with the shockwave. Without even waiting for the outcome of the collision, it opened its mouth again and a golden dragonflame gushed out of its mouth. Half of the sky was entirely enveloped by the golden flame. Many of them lifted their heads and looked at the sky. Soon after the sky was shrouded in the dragonflame, three figures immediately retreated in three different directions. Apparently, the black dragon''s indifferent attack had totally distracted the battle of the immortal-level. Right at that moment, a notification from Xiao Hei was heard. "Mission card activated due to special circumstances. "Mission: Get the brain of the demigod. "Mission Due: 24 hours. "Reward: One Memory Card. "If you fail to accomplish the mission before the time limit, you will be punished: One of the existing Legendary level monster cards will be removed! "The mission announcement is conveyed, please read the back of the card for more information." "Xiao Hei, you fooled me again!" Lin Huang scolded angrily after a brief moment of being stunned. "It''s not my fault. The mission card was activated due to special circumstances" Xiao Hei''s voice sounded as if it had been wronged 377 Wrong Judgemen Lin Huang was about to cry as he saw the mission that arrived so suddenly. He was wondering why the people who traveled to this world had helpful Goldfingers while his Goldfinger always fooled him?! It promised him that it only wanted the carcasses of the fiends for research purposes. Now, an unexpected mission had been assigned to him to get the brain of the demigod. Lin Huang, who had no means of getting involved in this incident, was being drawn further into the matter. "Xiao Hei, I feel like killing you" Lin Huang took a deep breath, calming himself down and said to Xiao Hei. "The mission card is activated under special circumstances. Perhaps, you''ve accidentally activated that. Even after killing me, the mission card will still be activated. It''s not controlled by me." "Under special circumstances?" Lin Huang gazed at the figure that had just reached the ground and created a big crater in the ground. The mission was activated at the moment when the human figure descended to the ground. Perhaps, it was the reason why the mission had been activated. "The guy who fell from the sky might be the immortal-level who fought them in the sky. He is not wearing the Purple Crow coat. He might be one of the guardians of the Mystery Auction," Lin Huang surmised the man''s identity. He knew from Leng Yuexin that there were two immortal-level guardians at the Mystery Auction. One of them would have been stationed outside the auction hall whereas another would guard the warehouse. However, he was unsure which guardian this guy was. "It looks like the old man is about to die" Inside the big cavity, the old skinny man had blood all over him and he only had his underpants on. It seemed like he was about to die. Lin Huang hesitated while staring at the Emperor''s Heart Ring on the old man''s finger, wondering if he should kill the old man and keep his dead body. While he was hesitating, the Infernal Dragon''s claw that was stepping on the body of the three fiends suddenly moved, climbing into the hole where the old skinny man was at. "Congratulations, you have obtained a Legendary level Skill Card -- Heavens Wrath." Lin Huang was stunned as he heard a notification from Xiao Hei. He then recovered from his thoughts and knew what had happened. "Eh, the old man is dead because the Infernal Dragon accidentally stepped on him?" Before he could even check the card, Lin Huang immediately summoned Spectre. Upon receiving Lin Huang''s instruction, Spectre immediately plunged underground and reached the black dragon''s claw. It wrapped the dead body of the old skinny man and dove into the ground. A few moments later, it appeared in VIP room 3 along with the dead body without anybody being aware of that. Lin Huang then recalled Spectre while glancing at the old skinny mans dead body which had become deformed. He had a strange expression on his face. "You can''t blame me for your death since I''ve not decided whether to kill you or not. You can only blame yourself for lying in a wrong place Erm Anyway, it has nothing to do with me." Again, he glanced at the old man''s Emperor''s Heart Ring and found out that it was still completely intact. He then put the corpse into his storage space. The three immortal-levels exited the battle as they were defeated by the dragonflame. One must not underestimate the dragonflame of an immortal-level rank-4 dragonkin. Perhaps, people on immortal-level rank-7 or rank-8 would not want to be tainted by the flames as well. Despite the fact that dragonflame looked simply like a flame, it was actually a peculiar form of energy with extremely strong invasive abilities. It could release an intensely high temperature and at the same time, it could ignite the enemy''s Life Power. Aside from the magicians, basically, there was no way anyone could avoid this. The dragonflame would continue burning according to one''s will until the soul of the enemy was completely destroyed and they had died. The three immortal-level humans were on three different sides of the sky. They then looked at the Infernal Dragon fearfully. Aside from the dragonflame, a mid-level dragonkin''s ability must never be underestimated. Be it its body strength or power, the dragonkin was incomparable to all three immortal-level humans. The Infernal Dragon''s burning eyes gave a deadly stare at the man hanging in mid-air. He was the man in glasses who was dressed in the Purple Crow black coat. It could clearly sense that the black glow that had struck it was similar to the aura released by the man. "It seems like things are getting complicated" Lin Jian frowned, adjusting his glasses. He did not switch his gaze to the Infernal Dragon though. He looked around, including at the VIP rooms in the auction hall. "Based on the name list that I have, nobody who''s on immortal-level joined the auction" Theoretically, only an immortal-level Imperial Censor had the ability to summon an immortal-level rank-4 monster. It was because if there was a huge difference between the combat level of the Imperial Censor and the summoning monster, the monster might unilaterally tear up the contract. Be it holy fire-level or gold flame-level, it was impossible to control an immortal-level rank-4 monster, let alone dragonkin that was such a wild monster. It was also the reason why Lin Jian predicted that there might be an immortal-level Imperial Censor at the auction. He had bumped into some of the Imperial Censors and he knew very well that the dragonkin was not the biggest problem. It was the Imperial Censor instead. It was impossible for an immortal-level Imperial Censor to have only one summoning monster. If the Imperial Censor had the ability to summon an immortal-level rank-4 dragonkin, he would, of course, be capable of summoning other immortal-level monsters. Since the unknown Imperial Censor was on immortal-level and capable of taming a dragonkin, his abilities could not be underestimated. Lin Jian had made a wrong judgment due to his common sense. He would never have thought that the dragonkin with terrifying abilities was actually summoned by a young man that had not even achieved holy fire-level. Sizing up the surroundings, Lin Jian could not find the Imperial Censor. "Lin Jian, what should we do now? Should we kill the Imperial Censor?" Yang Yang frowned, looking at Lin Jian. He made the same judgment as well and immediately asked Lin Jian about it. "Our time is limited. The regulator''s side can''t drag on for too long. It''s not wise to kill the Imperial Censor now. Furthermore, even if we have sufficient time, the both of us might not be able to defeat him. It''s difficult for us to fight the black dragon. Both of us might probably die here if there are a few other monsters." Lin Jian analyzed the situation, "We must now grab the opportunity to take the old man''s dead body. If it''s possible, kill the man in armor as well. Although the old man in the Chinese costume admits that he stores everything in his Emperor''s Heart Ring, that might not be true. It might be kept by the man in the armor too." "What about the black dragon?" Yang Yang asked. "Just control it. Don''t fight it face to face. We might possibly offend the unknown Imperial Censor if we do so. If more summoning monsters appear, we will be in great trouble." Lin Jian directly gave up the thought of fighting it. However, things were not as simple as he thought. The dragon was an arrogant monster. It could not accept any provocation. The Infernal Dragon that was a mid-level dragonkin was arrogant as well. The attack launched by the man with glasses provoked it! Roar! It let out an angry bellow and the Infernal Dragon suddenly appeared. It opened its mouth widely and its golden dragonflame gushed towards the man with glasses. His body was completely covered by the dragonflame 378 Imprisonment Chain Lin Jian was reluctant to encounter an opponent like the dragonkin. His ocular skill was in favor of defeating souls. He would benefit from the skill in every way when battling a powerful opponent. However, the dragonkin was a unique type of monster as its soul would grow in pace with its body ever since its birth. It was common knowledge that it had a very strong body. As a matter of fact, its soul was equally powerful and was immune to many of the soul attacks as well. The dragonkin monster that Lin Huang summoned would restrain Lin Jian. This was also the reason why he was unwilling to pit himself against the dragonkin and its Imperial Censor. The three fiends that Lin Jian got from Professor Jin''s laboratory were expensive. If not for that factor, he definitely would not rescue the fiends by attacking the dragonkin. However, the black dragon could not get its mind off Lin Jians attempt to rescue the fiends. The golden dragonflame then gushed towards him, covering the entire sky. A black vortex appeared abruptly in Lin Jian''s left eye. Seemingly, the golden dragonflame was attracted by a peculiar energy as a golden tornado was drawn into his eyes. A vacuum was then formed around him and he was surrounded by the golden flames. A few moments later, the Infernal Dragon seemed to sense that something was wrong and it stopped spitting dragonflames. Soon, the golden flames in the sky were engulfed by Lin Jian''s black eye and his body was revealed. He was perfectly fine. Many of them witnessed the last dragonflame being drawn into his eyes and they were terrified. "It''s an eye that can even engulf the dragonflame! His ability is horrifying!" "Is he really a human or some kind of human monster instead?!" "It must be a Legendary level ocular skill at the very least" Lin Huang did not expect that the opponent could easily engulf the dragonflame. However, the next moment, he saw something that was even scarier. Lin Jian suddenly turned around and looked towards the man in black armor, Fei Yuan. In an instant, his right eye turned golden and the golden flames gushed out from his eyes akin to a tsunami heading towards Fei Yuan. Lin Jian''s sudden attack was unexpected. Even Fei Yuan did not expect that he could still fight him despite attacking the black dragon. Fei Yuan was caught unaware and immediately retreated. He did not have similar skills to get rid of the dragonflame. Although he was unsure if the golden flames were the actual dragonflame, he still decided to dodge. If he was tainted by the dragonflame, it was not easy to put out the flames. Yang Yang the Purple Crow member, who was wearing a black robe, suddenly appeared behind Fei Yuan when he retreated and he brandished his battle sword. A streak of black glow could be seen on his blade, resembling a crescent moon. The speed of the sword glow was extremely rapid as it tore the space apart when it passed, creating fine, black cracks. Fei Yuan''s face turned grave as soon as he felt the attack behind him. It was too late for him to dodge the attack. He waved his sword while twisting his body and the golden battle sword instantly collided with the black sword glow. In mid-air, two shadows flew away and fell into the golden flames. A wry smile was plastered on Yang Yang''s face the moment he saw that. Everything happened so quickly and the battle ended in just an instant. Lin Huang was still stunned by Lin Jian''s skill when he used the dragonflame to attack. "His ocular skill is amazing. He can seal the attack with his left eye while releasing it with his right eye. No wonder the old man will lose" Fei Yuan, who was hanging mid-air, was completely engulfed by the golden flames. He had no choice as Yang Yang''s attack was fatal and he had to avoid it. He could only retreat since he would not die if he was tainted by the golden flames for a short period of time. Right after he fell into the golden flames, Fei Yuan realized that it was an actual dragonflame. Apparently, the opponent''s ocular skill was not an illusion or imitation. In fact, it was released right after it was sealed. Fei Yuan''s Life Power was being drained a hundred times faster as he was covered by the golden flames. The flames began to penetrate through his relics and started to invade his body. Soon after he realized this, he dared not stay any longer in the dragonflame and immediately got out. At this moment, Lin Jian''s left eye changed colors again. His left eye turned all white and he had no pupil. All of a sudden, the dragonflames were shrouded in a layer of white mist and a thin, transparent film was quickly formed around it. Lin Jian grinned and spirals gradually formed in his left eyeball. The thin layer of transparent film started to rotate crazily along with the thick white mist and the golden flames. Seeing this happen, Lin Huang knew that the man from the Mystery Organization who handled the sword was doomed. Under such a torque, the swordsman who was stuck in the dragonflame would lose his sense of direction. He would not be able to escape from the dragonflame in a short period of time. If he managed to approach the film after some time, it was still impossible to easily crush it. As long as he was trapped in the dragonflame for a long period of time and his Life Power was depleted, he would be completely swallowed by the dragonflame. Even if he could free himself from the dragonflame, his remaining Life Power would be insufficient to fight the two Purple Crow members and he would be killed. "Although the swordsman is not a good person, the black dragon will have to fight two immortal-level Purple Crow members alone if he dies" Lin Huang had a clear picture of the situation. He was decisive and immediately issued a new instruction, "Attack the man who is using the ocular skill and rescue the person!" As soon as the instruction was heard in its mind, the Infernal Dragon immediately launched an attack. More than 20 ripples were formed in mid-air. Imprisonment Chains that were as thick as an adult''s legs were unleashed. It seemed like a python that twisted around Lin Jian''s body. As the Imprisonment Chains ripped out, a flicker of fear flashed through Lin Jian''s eyes. He could recognize that it was the Imprisonment Chain that sealed souls at first glance. Apparently, the black dragon knew what his plan was. He did not expect it to use such a skill in restraining him. "Yang Yang!" Lin Jian immediately shouted. Yang Yang immediately appeared in front of Lin Jian in his black robe. He smirked, "Hehe, you finally need my help." "Stop bullshitting me. It''s the Imprisonment Chains," Lin Jian said with a serious face for the first time. Since he was using soul energy as his primary skill, he clearly knew that once he got locked in the chains, not even 0.01% of his abilities could be used. Of course, he dared not underestimate it. "You''re so afraid of skills that attack souls" Yang Yang teased. "You''d better not get locked in the chains too. Perhaps, not only could it seal the souls, it might be harmful to the souls as well. It''s comparable to the Soul Destroying Needle. Once you get locked in it, you will be in extreme pain. Based on the strength of your soul, your soul will be completely destroyed if you are locked by about four to five chains," Lin Jian reminded. "I should have run far away You fooled me!" Yang Yang cursed as he heard Lin Jian''s explanation. Obviously, he did not have a thorough understanding of the Imprisonment Chain. Otherwise, he would not have helped him out without hesitation. "Back me up. We''ll be in great trouble later if we don''t kill the man in armor." Lin Jian shifted his gaze towards the transparent film again. He determination to kill was clear. 379 The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend Dragonkins had extremely high resistance against soul attacks. Some of the dragonkins were even born with soul attacking skills. The Infernal Dragon was one of them. The Imprisonment Chain possessed the effect to seal souls, rendering the effect of soul attacks on the chain useless. This was also the reason why Lin Jian was afraid of it. He could not even fight back. If the chain touched his body, it would immediately penetrate through his body and his soul would be locked. When confronted by such chains, he could do nothing but dodge it. Yang Yang was excellent in physical attack. He could use his relics to avoid the Imprisonment Chain from touching his body. However, to some extent, it would be dangerous to encounter the Imprisonment Chain for a person whose soul was not strong enough. Not only would the Imprisonment Chain seal one''s soul, it would tighten around the soul as well. Naturally, the soul was an intangible object. Its form could be simply altered. However, when it was sealed by the Imprisonment Chain, it would return to its original form, turning into a human form which had a fixed volume. As the Imprisonment Chain tightened like a noose, the soul would experience tremendous pain. If the soul was not strong enough, it would be crushed. Lin Jian was not exaggerating when he said that about four to five chains were sufficient to crush Yang Yang''s soul. The two Purple Crow elite members did not hesitate when they encountered the attacks by the Imprisonment Chain in mid-air. Yang Yang immediately slashed his sword, knocking all the chains aside. After he was warned by Lin Jian, he dared not touch the chains as well. He protected Lin Jian and Lin Jian continued maintaining the speed of the rotating transparent film. He could sense that Fei Yuan was pivoting in the layer of film. The dragonflames and the white mist began to revolve around the transparent film. Fei Yuan could not distinguish the direction at all. He had the strength but he did not know where to apply his strength to. After several attempts, he could not find the edge of the dragonflames. Sensing that his Life Power was depleting, he knew very well that the probability of dying would increase if he stayed in there longer. "It seems like there''s only one skill to use since I still have sufficient Life Power! There isn''t a single skill I can use later if my Life Power continues to drain like this." Fei Yuan eventually decided after a moment of hesitation. His body suddenly exuded a powerful aura. After a few moments, a large amount of Life Power gushed out of his body, forming a shadow in mid-air. The shadow looked like a human dressed in black armor and had a height of more than 10 meters. The man in the shadow was grabbing a long sword that was about 10 meters long. It looked like a titan and the people could feel that something was not right from the aura it exuded. It was impossible that it was human. As soon as the black armored giant was created, the cyclops eye on its head opened as if a beam of golden light was lit up. At the same time, the black giant blade in its hand began to glow. The black armored giant raised its sword with both of its hands. Just when the dazzling golden light radiated brightly, it slashed its sword. A huge column of golden light instantly left the blade of the sword, streaking across the sky. It passed through the white mist and golden flames and they were all cut into half. Bang! A loud thud was suddenly heard and the golden glow eventually crashed into the layer of thin film. The transparent film that had been rotating quickly only managed to hold for a short while and soon, it collapsed. The white mist began to disappear as well. Due to the inertia, the dragonflames began to form a huge, golden flaming tornado. Fei Yuan then followed the direction of the tornado and finally, he could successfully free himself from the dragonflames. Lin Jian was not surprised to see that Fei Yuan managed to get out of that. He slightly frowned and soon, his pair of eyes returned to normal. The golden flaming tornado that was lingering mid-air then disappeared on its own. Knowing that not much of his Life Power remained and that he would not be able to attack the souls, Fei Yuan then shouted at the Infernal Dragon, "Mr. Imperial Censor, if you''re willing to kill the two Purple Crow members, you''ll be heavily rewarded by Mystery." He noticed that the black dragon was dealing with the people from Purple Crow. Under such circumstances, he no longer cared who the Imperial Censor that controlled the black dragon was. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Therefore, he suggested fighting them together. Before the black dragon and the unknown Imperial Censor answered, Lin Jian said, "Mr. Imperial Censor, the Purple Crow has no means of pitting ourselves against you. The reason why we are here is simple. We want to kill two of Mystery''s guardians and bring back their dead bodies." "Yes, you can bring back their dead bodies but not their Emperor''s Heart Rings!" The black dragon''s voice rang out. Obviously, this was what Lin Huang had told it to say. Lin Jian and Yang Yang''s facial expressions changed. It was obvious what Lin Huang was trying to say -- leave empty-handed! "Mr. Imperial Censor, don''t you think that you''re going too far?" Lin Jian''s face turned grave when he shouted. "Alright, the brain of the demigod is mine. The rest will be yours," the black dragon said again, "Perhaps, you can exchange something of the same value for the demigod brain, then I won''t get involved in this matter." "Stop talking nonsense to him. He''s just a useless brat. He needs his summoning monster to speak for him. He shows no sincerity in the negotiation," Yang Yang scolded. "Little brat, is that the way that you were taught to speak to your elders?!" Having uttered those words, the black dragon''s giant claws extended and penetrated through space. It appeared in front of Yang Yang, pointing at his heart. Yang Yang was terrified. However, he could not dodge it anymore and he had to slash his sword to defend himself against the attack. As soon as the giant claw collided with the black battle sword, Yang Yang''s body shot like an arrow and fell from mid-air. Without Yang Yang, the black Imprisonment Chain was like tentacles that headed out for Lin Jian. Lin Jian dared not touch the Imprisonment Chain at all and avoided it clumsily. Fei Yuan then seized the opportunity by using his Combat Soul to attack Lin Jian. Lin Jian was in straitened circumstances right after he was attacked by the Imprisonment Chain. He was in great danger as soon as Fei Yuan joined the fight. While he avoided the Imprisonment Chain, the attack by the Combat Soul hit him and he spat out a mouthful of blood. Yang Yang was blown away by the hit and he could see that Lin Jian was severely injured. He could no longer care about the possible injuries caused by the black dragon''s attack. He immediately transformed into a flash of light and joined the battle. "Lin Jian, are you okay?" Yang Yang brandished his sword again to block the Imprisonment Chains attack. "I''m still alive! I''ve contacted the three fiends. I asked them to bring along the dead body of the skinny old man and leave this place. Help me to block the Imprisonment Chain. I''ll launch a skill and kill the man in armor. We''ll then bring along his dead body and leave! We don''t have much time left. Don''t bug the Imperial Censor." Lin Jian knew that the situation would not be favorable to them if the battle dragged on for too long. "You have used it once. Are you sure that you can still activate it again?" Yang Yang asked worriedly. "I barely managed to do it. The man in armor has almost used up his Life Power. I think it''s not difficult to kill him. However, I need your help to escape." Lin Jian tensed up as he knew that he did not have any other choice. 380 Trying To Advance Without First Looking Behind At the Mystery Auction, three of the severely injured fiends gradually got off the ground. However, they did not leave. They walked around the auction hall as if they were looking for something. Their movement was strange and had caught Lin Huang''s attention. "They must be looking for the old skinny man''s corpse." Lin Huang knew their intention with just one glance. The Purple Crow was after the demigod brain. However, all the items at the auction had been cleared and most likely they would be kept in the guardians'' Emperor''s Heart Rings. The three fiends must be looking for something related to the demigod brain and their target would definitely be the skinny old man that had fallen to the ground not long ago. "Black dragon, kill the fiends first!" Lin Huang instructed. As soon as the instruction was received, the Infernal Dragon glanced at the hall beneath its feet. Soon, a dark Imprisonment Chain was released at a tremendously fast speed like an ultra-swift big, black python. The big python then wriggled through the auction hall. The fiends soon noticed the threat. However, they did not stop frantically searching. "That''s weird. They sensed the threat coming from the Imprisonment Chain but still, they insist on continuing their work." Lin Huang felt that the consciousness of the fiends was being controlled. Under normal circumstances, encountering such a powerful threat, even a monster with low intelligence would choose to flee. As soon as the Imprisonment Chain confirmed its target, it struck. Its first target was the Witch as its soul was the strongest among all. Although it had no idea what the Imprisonment Chain was, the Witch could sense that the power of its soul was being restrained by the chain. Sensing that it was the chain''s first target, it dodged in the first place. However, it was too late. The Imprisonment Chain transformed into a black lightning and twisted around the Witch''s waist in an instant. As soon as its soul was sealed, the Imprisonment Chain constricted. The Witch began growling from the pain it suffered. The growl sounded like a human being thrown into boiling oil as it moaned in pain and struggled to get out of the oil. The throes of growling lasted for less than five seconds and finally stopped. The soul inside its body was completely crushed by the Imprisonment Chain. It had died. As soon as the Imprisonment Chain was released, the Witch''s body collapsed and fell to the ground. The Imprisonment Chain next target was the Inferior Imp. Right this moment, a notification from Xiao Hei was heard. "Congratulations! You have obtained a complete set of Epic level monster card C Witch!" "Spectre, bring the carcass of the fiend over," Lin Huang summoned again. Spectre then plunged underground and headed towards the dead body of the Witch The Inferior Imp knew how terrifying the Imprisonment Chain was and quickly moved aside. However, it was not fast enough and was captured in less than two seconds. It managed to struggle for less than three seconds after it got locked in the Imprisonment Chain and died. oon after, the Imprisonment Chain started to attack its last target C the Malachian Fiend. The Malachian Fiend did not dodge the attack. Instead, it struck a blow towards the Imprisonment Chain. Unfortunately, just when they made contact, it was captured. Its soul only managed to struggle for a second before it completely collapsed. The Imprisonment Chain had easily killed the three fiends. Lin Huang then obtained three complete sets of fiend monster cards. Spectre brought along three of the carcasses and appeared in VIP room 3. "Xiao Hei, do you need me to keep the carcasses for you?" Lin Huang asked. "I''ll be able to collect the carcasses if you touch them with your hands." Lin Huang nodded and followed. He pressed his hand against the dead bodies and they disappeared. Lin Huang straightened up and he could feel a powerful aura about to explode in the sky. He immediately lifted his head and gazed at the sky. There was a huge, black eyeball looking down at the ground from the sky. When Lin Huang saw that, he felt that he was looking at an illusion that was the opening of the Virtual Eye. Soon, he realized that it was not the Virtual Eye as there was a huge difference in their forms. Lin Jian, who was hanging mid-air, had taken off his glasses. The black eyeball lingered around somewhere near his head. Lin Jian eventually switched his gaze towards Fei Yuan and the black eyeball followed. As the eyeball fixed its gaze on Fei Yuan, he could feel that danger was near. He was drenched in sweat and goosebumps rose all over his body. He somehow looked like a burnt cat. Without hesitation, Fei Yuan chose to retreat. His body was like a shooting arrow as he fled far away. The Combat Soul was activated in front of him to defend him against the eyeball. Bang! An immense, black impact wave suddenly burst out of the eyeball. The black armored Combat Soul thrust its sword forward and slashed down on the black wave. The next moment, the impact wave pierced through the Combat Soul''s chest and straight towards Fei Yuan who was escaping. The Combat Soul had died and Fei Yuan spat out a mouthful of blood. A large amount of his Life Power had been drained before this. He was even worse now. Knowing that the impact wave was attacking him from behind, Fei Yuan immediately changed his flying path. Soon, he found out that the impact wave that was coming after him had shifted its direction as well. "Stop wasting your energy. Your soul is now the death eyes target. There''s no use running away," Lin Jian''s weak voice vaguely called out. Lin Huang, who was watching the battle, did not ask the Infernal Dragon to rescue Fei Yuan. It was not a bad thing if Fei Yuan died as he might have the demigod brain with him. After all, he had to die if Lin Huang wanted the demigod brain. Lin Huang also noticed that the man with the glasses who was from the Purple Crow became a lot weaker after using the skill. The swordsman next to him had to put in more effort to defend against the Imprisonment Chain. That being said, the man with the glasses had almost used up his strength. He had no more energy to dodge the Imprisonment Chain''s attack. At this moment, the Infernal Dragon summoned by Lin Huang and the Purple Crow swordsman with the most energy remained. Since he had to protect the man in the glasses, the swordsman''s abilities were restrained. Therefore, even after Fei Yuan had died, still, the Infernal Dragon would have an advantage over them. The result of the analysis was the reason why Lin Huang decided to stand aside and watch the battle. However, he instructed the Infernal Dragon through his mind, "You have to snatch away the armored man''s dead body as soon as he dies!" In mid-air, the black impact wave was approaching him swiftly. Fei Yuan''s Life Power was depleted and he could not run any faster. He hopelessly watched his body engulfed by the impact wave. A few moments later, the black impact wave disappeared and Fei Yuan''s dead body fell onto the ground. Lin Jian''s eye turned white again and a layer of thin film quickly formed around Fei Yuan''s dead body. Right at this moment, the black Imprisonment Chain appeared. It ripped off the thin film surrounding Fei Yuan''s corpse, heading right for it. Lin Jian was stunned. As soon as he could react to it, he saw the Infernal Dragon open its jaws widely and swallow Fei Yuan''s corpse 381 Imperial-Level Helping Out! Seeing the Infernal Dragon snatch away Fei Yuan''s dead body, even Lin Jian who was well educated became annoyed. "Mr. Imperial Censor, do you know that the way you eat is terribly ugly?!" The Purple Crow had spent more than half a month to come up with a plan to rob the demigod brain. Two teams were called out to deal with this. One of the teams would be responsible for stealing the demigod brain whereas the second team would stop the regulators and assistants at the foothold. Aside from more than 80 of them on holy fire-level, they had even employed four elite members as well as one of the imperial-level to control the overall situation. Under such circumstances, an Imperial Censor had suddenly appeared and diverted their attention, resulting in a significant change in the Purple Crow''s plan. Lin Jian was one of them who had suggested this mission. Of course, he was unable to accept this. "The way I eat isn''t important to me. My only concern is whether I''ll feel full or not after eating," the black dragon''s voice was heard. Of course, Lin Huang was the one who actually said that. "Aren''t you afraid that some of the food is not meant for you?" Lin Jian squinted. "Are you threatening me?" The black dragon asked again. "The Purple Crow ought to get the demigod brain. You might be able to hide your identity for now, but you can''t run forever. Stealing what belongs to the Purple Crow, even if you manage to escape from the core zones, we''ll find you. It''s better to pass it to us than to die later. We can pretend as if nothing happened and we promise that we won''t give you trouble anymore." Lin Jian was being frank as he wanted Lin Huang to pass him the demigod brain. "There are too many people who want to get me into trouble. I don''t mind if the Purple Crow does," declared the black dragon, "Since the both of you aren''t going to leave, then you can stay here forever!" After the black dragon finished its sentence, it opened its mouth wide and golden dragonflame gushed out of its mouth again. There seemed to be a layer of oil poured on top of the air. The blazing flames were akin to a tsunami as it streaked across the sky and gushed towards both of them. The black dragon was using this skill because it knew that the man who has used the ocular skill no longer had adequate strength to seal its dragonflames. As for the swordsman, despite his sword skill being capable of defending against the Imprisonment Chain''s attack, he would have no way to defend against such an attack that could pierce through almost anything. Seeing the dragonflames coming at them, Yang Yang asked Lin Jian, "Can you still seal it?" "I don''t even have the energy to run away..." Lin Jian shook his head feebly. He had never expected this to happen. He originally did not want to offend the black dragon as well as the Imperial Censor. He intended to leave after killing the two guardians of the Mystery Organization. Unexpectedly, two of the guardians were killed but they had not obtained their dead bodies. Listening to Lin Jian''s answer, Yang Yang did not hesitate. He grasped his shoulder and immediately retreated. "If we can''t do it anymore, we shall ask Master Ba-yan for help," Yang Yang suggested while retreating. "As long as he can kill the black dragon, we''ll be able to take its carcass back! When we dissect the black dragon, we will have the dead body of the armored man as well as his Emperor''s Heart Ring. At the very least, we will have 50% chance of getting the demigod brain. We won''t go back empty-handed then. If Master Ba-yan knows where the Imperial Censor is, that''ll be great. We can kill him as well!" "There are those on imperial-level at the A-grade foothold. Therefore, there''s only one chance for Master Ba-yan to kill it. As soon as he launches an attack, all those on imperial-level at Haitian City will fight him. If the battle between the imperial-level is triggered, regardless of one''s willingness, well have to end our mission. It''s great if we manage to get the demigod brain stored in the Emperor''s Heart Ring. If we dont, it will be considered a failed mission." Lin Jian was reluctant to accept Yang Yang''s suggestion. "Based on our current situation, our mission has failed anyway, so why not give it a try? There is still a 50% chance of success. Without doing so, the probability of failure will be 100%. You know that we don''t have much time left. You won''t be able to fight under such a condition. Basically, I won''t be able to kill the black dragon alone. The regulators of the foothold will probably come soon. We might not be able to run away then," Yang Yang expressed his opinion. After listening to what he said, Lin Jian hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Alright, indeed, we don''t have any better choice." As soon as he finished, Lin Jian raised his arms and activated the Purple Crow''s mark on the back of his hand. "Master Ba-yan" "I''ve seen everything that happened. Are you sure that you need my help?" A man with a deep voice was heard from the other side of the mark. "I can sense that there are three people on imperial-level at Haitian City. Three of them are keeping an eye on me. Once I launch an attack, they''ll definitely fight back. Therefore, I''m given only one chance to kill." "I understand. However, the situation can''t get any worse now" Lin Jian already knew this. "Tell me what your plan is," Ba-yan Tian remained silent for a while before asking. "We hope that you can help us to kill the black dragon. As long as it''s dead, we''ll be able to bring along its carcass and leave, which means we''ll be able to get one of the Emperor''s Heart Ring," Lin Jian then told him his plan. "If you know where the Imperial Censor is, you may kill him and catch him as well. Most likely, he will have the second Emperor''s Heart Ring with him." "I have scanned the auction hall several times with my soul. However, I can''t find an immortal-level Imperial Censor. If hes here, the only place that he could be hiding in will be the VIP rooms. That''s the only place that I won''t be able to scan," Ba-yan Tian told them the results of his investigation. "Even Master Ba-yan can''t find him?" Lin Jian was startled. "Yes, the screening effect has been enhanced by the power of the demigod. It is capable of scanning any creatures below demigod level. Considering the background of the Mystery Auction, theres nothing strange if theyre able to ask for help from the demigod. Fortunately, only its screening effect is enhanced by a demigod but its defense is relatively weak. Even people on immortal-level will be able to break through it. When I attack later, I''ll give it a try and see if the Imperial Censor is there," Ba-yan Tian suggested. "After I''ve struck, the both of you should leave as soon as possible after taking the black dragon''s carcass. Although those on imperial-level won''t kill you, both of you should know what the people think about the Purple Crow. It''s still possible that the three of them might want to kill both of you," Ba-yan Tian reminded. "Thank you for reminding us." The reason why Lin Jian had contacted him was because he wanted the fight to end as soon as possible. Of course, he would not stay after Ba-yan Tian helped them out. After their conversation ended, the Purple Crow''s mark on the back of Lin Jian''s hand disappeared on its own. The mark was given by Ba-yan Tian and it could only be used once. "Master Ba-yan promised to help us out?" Seeing the mark on Lin Jian''s hand disappear, Yang Yang then knew that their conversation had ended. "Yes, he''ll act soon. We shall wait here and collect the dead bodies later. We have to leave as soon as possible after that." In mid-air, the both of them continued avoiding the attacks by the dragonflames and the Imprisonment Chain. All of a sudden, the sky turned dark. Everyone then raised their heads, looking at the sudden change in the sky. All of them were frightened. An infinitely large hand appeared between the cloud layers. The big hand covered almost half of the sky, pressing against the ground with endless power. It pointed towards its target, the Infernal Dragon 382 Without the Demigod, the Imperials Would Be Throned! Before the big hand could be completely seen, Xiao Hei warned Lin Huang who was in the VIP room. "Warning: The aura of an imperial-level is detected. It''s targeting the Infernal Dragon and yourself, who''s in the VIP room." "Recall the Infernal Dragon!" Lin Huang immediately instructed. "Activate the Specific Transformation Card and transform Tyrant to the Spectre!" The Infernal Dragon''s body that was floating mid-air immediately collapsed. Lin Huang had recalled Tyrant, transforming it into the Spectre, causing it to pass through the walls and dive underground. When the big hand was about to attack the Infernal Dragon, the black dragon''s body disappeared and the big hand could capture nothing. The second invisible, big hand then swept through the VIP rooms from left to right. Ba-yan Tian was shocked when he saw the Infernal Dragon''s disappearance. Still, he followed his plan and swept past the VIP rooms. 15 VIPs in 12 of the VIP rooms were captured and all of them were dead. Before he could figure out who the Imperial Censor was, three different beams of lights streaked across the sky, heading towards Ba-yan Tian. Ba-yan Tian then dumped 15 of them into his Life Palace and he was ready for the attacks launched by the three imperial-level attackers. "Ba-yan Tian, is the Purple Crow trying to challenge Haitian City?!" Their voices spread through the entire Haitian City. Three of them then appeared in the sky above the Mystery Action as if they had teleported there in an instant. The imperial-level hunters were finally here! Without the demigod, the imperials would be throned! It was one of the famous idioms among the people. The imperial-level was the ultimate level that humans could achieve. A level higher than the imperial-level could only be achievable by God. Over the past 800 years, only a few of them managed to achieve that level in this world. A demigod would not easily show up if nothing serious was happening happened. One could say that the imperial-level hunters were actually the best that humans could achieve in this world. This was also the reason why the organizations would usually try not to offend those who were on imperial-level. If a battle between them were to happen, they would not give up until one party lost the fight. That was the reason why Ba-yan Tian from Purple Crow did not want to show up in the past few days. "Please don''t misunderstand me. I have no choice but to help them out. I don''t mean to set myself against Haitian City." Ba-yan Tian did not want to offend three of them. When he was attacked by three of them, he retreated as he fought back. It was impossible for him to win the fight if he was attacked by three of the imperial-level. However, it seemed like three of them could not kill him as well. He did not quit immediately as he was trying to give the Purple Crow members sufficient time to leave. Due to the battle between four of them, it was like there was an explosion in the sky. The people shivered from the remnants of Life Power given off from their battle. Lin Huang who was in underground saw that the imperial-level Purple Crow member was blocked by three of the imperial-level hunters at Haitian City. He could see that two Purple Crow elite members and the rest of the ordinary members that were in the auction hall were about to leave. "You want to leave?!" Lin Huang''s eyes flashed with a trace of fury. The Provisional Monster Card that was still counting down appeared again in the Spectre''s hand after it was transformed by Lin Huang. As soon as it crushed the card, the Infernal Dragon was released again. "Let''s go!" Seeing the Infernal Dragon reappearance, Yang Yang did not hesitate. He grasped Lin Jian''s arm and immediately left. He no longer cared about the ordinary members in the auction hall. As the black dragon and Imprisonment Chains reappeared. They created a huge net in mid-air and was about to wrap up the both of them. Seeing the huge net approaching them, Lin Jian frowned. "Yang Yang let me go. Both of us won''t be able to run away together." "No. Although I''m not a good person, I won''t leave my partner alone!" Yang Yang insisted to rescue Lin Jian. "Don''t be stupid. You''ll be able to escape without me." Lin Jian knew that he was Yang Yang''s burden. "Stop bullsh*tting me. Let''s run together or die together!" Still, Yang Yang was unwilling to release his hand. Seeing the huge net just about 10 meters away from them, Lin Jian had a steely determination in his eyes. He gathered the last bit of Life Power he had with his right hand and slashed down on his left arm. He broke his left arm that Yang Yang was holding onto and blood splattered all over Yang Yang''s body. When Yang Yang was unaware, Lin Jian pushed his back. Seeing Yang Yang moved forward quickly, Lin Jian mumbled, "My old mate, you have to live a good life!" The next moment, the huge net transformed from the Imprisonment Chains wrapped Lin Jian up and he howled in pain. Yang Yang was stunned, staring at the broken arm. He did not turn back although he heard the sound of Lin Jian moaning in pain. He sped up instead. He turned around to shoot a deathly glare and thought to himself, "I don''t care who you are. I''ll find you out one day and kill you. I''ll help Lin Jian get his revenge on you!!!" Lin Jian''s howling voice lasted for only a few seconds. He was sealed by more than 20 of the Imprisonment Chains. With the strength of his soul, he struggled for less than 10 seconds and had completely collapsed. As soon as Lin Jian''s dead body was collected, the black dragon opened its mouth wide and swallowed the dead body. However, the other elite member managed to escape. After Lin Jian died, a notification from Xiao Hei arrived. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a Legendary Card -- Omniscient Nature (Ocular skill)" Lin Huang was stunned again as he heard the notification coming from Xiao Hei. The black dragon had killed two of the immortal-level members and he obtained two Legendary Monster Cards. It was a bonus to him. Unfortunately, another immortal-level Purple Crow member managed to flee. "F*cking idiot!" Ba-yan Tian shouted loudly as he saw Lin Jian''s death. He was mad. He pointed at the Infernal Dragon and ignored the onslaught on him by the imperial-level hunters. As he pointed at Infernal Dragon, it had become his target. The space surrounding Infernal Dragon was being sealed. It could only look at the black finger penetrating through its body like a shooting arrow. It was too sudden. Even before Lin Huang and Xiao Hei could react, a beam of light released by his finger had pierced through the black dragon''s body. The Infernal Dragon''s body collapsed, transforming into black spots of light. Even both of the dead bodies engulfed byInfernal Dragon fell on the ground. Lin Huang immediately summoned the Spectre and they then pounced on two of the dead bodies that fell on the ground before diving underground with the dead bodies. Lin Huang then kept the dead bodies in his storage ring and recalled the Specter after reaching a depth of more than 10,000 meters deep. Ba-yan Tian''s line of sight was blocked by the black dragon''s collapsing body. Therefore, he did not see that the Spectre had taken the dead bodies and headed underground. However, a few of the Purple Crow members that had not left as well as many of the royalty members saw it. Leng Yuexin saw that as well. She wondered if Lin Huang was the one who did it and secretly took a glance at the VIP room. Many of the Purple Crow members had left. Aside from those who had died, only four of the Purple Crow members were caught alive. Since the battle had ended, Lin Huang then got up to the ground. He looked for a corner where nobody could see him and he removed his transformation. He then walked towards Leng Yuexin. 383 An Unexpected Acquaintance Leng Yuexin was relieved to see Lin Huang appear safe and sound. However, thinking of the shadows that covered the dead bodies before it dived underground, she looked at him again oddly. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Noticing her odd stare, Lin Huang was afraid that she might be suspecting something. "I thought you were dead." Leng Yuexin pointed at the VIP room on the second floor which was now completely destroyed. "Oh, I was using the washroom downstairs. When I got out, the VIP room was completely gone." Lin Huang opened his arms. "Isn''t there a washroom in the VIP room?" Leng Yuexin frowned, she thought he was lying. "There''s a washroom in the VIP room but the door was locked, I think it needed your invitation card to unlock it" Lin Huang looked helpless, he was telling the truth. "Oh yeah, I forgot about that." Leng Yuexin just recalled there were many restrictions in the VIP room including the washroom. "Luckily you forgot. If you didn''t, I might be dead now." Lin Huang smiled and glad that he managed to come out with that excuse. Leng Yuexin did not dwell on it. It was unnecessary for her to know if Lin Huang was the one who got the two dead bodies. The Mystery was a shady organization anyway, although she was a royal, she was happy to see that the Mystery was robbed. "Seems like the auction won''t be going on, luckily I haven''t paid for the dracaena or else I would be at a major loss." Lin Huang smiled and smiled. "It''s okay if you paid as they would return you the full amount." Leng Yuexin shook her head. "Although there are many shady businesses in the Mystery, they have impressive customer service. The underground business aside, the main reason why they managed to grow big is their great customer service. They''ll definitely pay for all the losses that they have brought to the customers." Leng Yuexin added. "That''s rich! But I supposed they''re at a great loss this time? They have lost their items and many royal guests had died, it must be a huge amount of money. Also, it seems like the place needs to be demolished and rebuilt" Lin Huang looked around and said. "To the Mystery in Division2, money meant nothing to them. Perhaps the only thing that''s worth mourning would be the demigod brain. However, the biggest issue now isn''t the items lost during the battle but the drop in trust." Leng Yuexin was thorough. "The auction was attacked, the immortal-level guardians are dead and some of the VIP guests were taken away The Mystery wouldn''t be able to go on in Division7 for some time. Some of the branches in other divisions might be affected as well." "Moreover, there are only six families who are allowed in the VIP rooms. If those who were taken away were directly related to one of the families, the matter will be even more complicated" Leng Yuexin smirked, she wanted the Mystery to stop their business. As they chatted, an old person landed from the air. It was one of the three imperial-level humans who had gotten rid of Ba Yantian earlier. "I, Xia Houlin would like to apologize on behalf of Haitian City for the shock. None of us saw this attack coming. Please give us a minute, the supervisors and assistants will be here shortly. We''ll need to investigate the matter, it''ll take some time. Please cooperate with us." Knowing that the old person was an imperial-level, most of them who were from the royal families dared to deny his request and nodded immediately. Soon, three supervisors arrived with a bunch of assistants. After comforting the people present, the three supervisors then asked questions about what happened. Xia Houlin wandered in the air while searching with the power of his soul but he did not get anything. The only clue that he managed to get was that the two dead bodies that fell on the ground were covered with a dark shadow before they disappeared into the ground. "The dark shadow could be a shadow type Secret Skill or a shadow summoning monster. Judging by the Infernal Dragon earlier, it looked more like the latter. The dead bodies must be with an Imperial Censor who was hiding something However, the aura of the immortal-level humans could not be detected within 1,000 kilometers so the Imperial Censor might be in possession of some kind of long-distance detection method to be able to be in control of what''s happening here. Theoretically, it''s impossible to summon from so far away but the person might have some demigod relic." The imperial-level old man deduced after some thought. However, he did not even consider that the Imperial Censor could be a person that was below immortal-level. To him, nobody below the immortal-level would be able to capture a monster like the Infernal Dragon. That was how Lin Huang managed to escape Xia Houlin''s speculation. It was past six in the evening when the investigation and gathering of information was finally done and people started leaving. Just when Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin were getting ready to leave, they heard a scream from the back. "Lin Huang?!" He turned around and saw Fang Wen who was in a black coat, he was one of the Purple Crow members who was captured. His hands were cuffed with a demon lock. "It''s really you, I thought you were dead?!" Fang Wen was in complete shock. Everyone started glaring at Lin Huang in an unfriendly manner. Everyone''s first reaction was that this was the Lin Huang who used to be a member of the Purple Crows! Even Leng Yuexin who was next to him was puzzled. Lin Huang was frustrated as he did not expect to bump into Fang Wen when he was almost leaving the auction. Of course, he remembered who Fang Wen was, he was ranked No.1 on the Purple Crow training camp''s leaderboard before Lin Huang appeared. "Capture him!" Xia Houlin who was flying mid-air instructed. "Wait!" Lin Huang shouted. "We know each other but I''m not a member of Purple Crow. I have proof." "Do you mean the lady from the Leng family who''s being forced to be your witness?" Xia Houlin scoffed and grabbed Leng Yuexin next to him. "What do you have to say now?" "I''m Mr. Fu''s apprentice, I can get him as my witness." Lin Huang looked at Xia Houlin who was in mid-air, he knew he had to convince Xia Houlin. "His name is Lin Huang, he really is Mr. Fu''s apprentice." Leng Yuexin reassured what Lin Huang said. "Mr. Fu? That Mr. Fu?" Xia Houlin turned around and looked at Leng Yuexin. She nodded. Lin Huang called Mr. Fu immediately and talked to him about his situation. After the call was hung up, Mr. Fu called Xia Houlin right away. Xia Houlin gave Lin Huang a deep stare before he teleported himself far away to pick up the call. He returned shortly and said, "You can leave now." Xia Houlin nodded to Lin Huang. "Lin Huang you traitor!" Fang Wen shouted. He went through a month of brainwashing which resulted in him being loyal to the Purple Crow. "Fang Wen, I have never wanted to join the Purple Crow. It was that lady Hong Zhuang who captured me and put me in the training camp. Since the first day, I had been planning on escaping. I believe you remember me asking you how dead bodies in the camp were handled before I faked my death. I was preparing to fake my death when I asked. I went a long way to trick Scarface and Hong Zhuang in order to escape the training camp. I have never been a member of the Purple Crow and I never agreed on the way they work so that''s not betrayal." Lin Huang explained in front of Fang Wen. Without bothering what kind of response he would give, Lin Huang turned around and left the auction 384 Qi Muxiong’s Secre Initially, Lin Huang wanted to bring Leng Yuexin to tour around the footholds to thank her for bringing him to the auction. However, she decided to leave after dinner. It was past eight at night, since it was boring to be in Haitian City on his own, Lin Huang decided to head back to the White Capitals. In the middle of the night, Lin Huang took out two Emperors Heart Rings in a luxurious hotel in the A-grade foothold, White Capital. They belonged to the two immortal-level guardians at the auction. "You have obtained the demigods brain, mission accomplished!" "Reward: Memory Card x1" "Thats considered as an accomplished mission?" Lin Huang was confused. "Yes, I have already extracted the demigods brain from the Emperors Heart Ring. The mission is accomplished." "You could extract items from an owner-less Emperors Heart Ring?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "Why didnt you tell me that when I gave 30% commission to Yang Ling for unlocking the Emperors Heart Ring last time?" He asked. "I cant do that. I could this time due to the mission card which allowed me to extract the mission item from the ring. I cant extract anything thats other than mission item, at least for now." "Oh" Lin Huang realized that it was his misunderstanding. "Oh, yeah. Which ring was the demigods brain in?" "In Fei Yuans ring, the man in the vest." "People in the Mystery are so sly. The skillful old man told the Purple Crow that the items were with him." Lin Huang exclaimed. Although the trip was interrupted by the attack of the Purple Crow, Lin Huang became the bigger winner of the incident. He obtained three immortal-level bodies, many auction items including the demigod brain, three gold flame-level fiend cards, and two Legendary Skill Cards. What he wanted from the auction was the dracaena but he received all those by surprise. "Whats the function of the Memory Card?" Lin Huang took out the reward card that he obtained from accomplishing the mission. It was a golden card with a golden brain image on the card. He found it peculiar. He then turned the card around to read the detailed descriptions. "Memory Card (Activated): The activation of this card allows the user to store any information that the user wants to save. It''ll then exist in the users brain, working like a separate memory for the brain." "Remark 1: The incoming data must be in good condition." "Remark 2: The incoming data must belong to either no one or the card user." "Remark 3: The incoming data would be categorized automatically." "Remark 4: The missing data from the memory would be remedied as much as it can." "Remark 5: To prevent the user from damages, the incoming data is restricted to users combat level." "Remark 6: The card exists individually, it won''t damage or interfere with the users brain." "Remark 7: Each card can only be activated once." "Remark 8: This card has been activated, part of the data came from the demigod brain of Qi Muxiong." "So that means with this card, I have an extra memory chip in my brain. Is that it?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei after reading the description. "Yes, that''s what it means if you put it that way." "Is there a limit to the number of card use?" Lin Huang asked. "No, as long as the memory space is sufficient, you can save any data into your body. It won''t do any damage to your brain. However, the Memory Card is considered to be a rare card, I suggest you not exploit it." "Of course, it would be a waste if I save any data thats below a demigod." Lin Huang knew how precious the card was. "Inheriting the demigod Qi Muxiongs brain" Lin Huangs heart was racing as he looked at the card. He took a deep breath. "I would like to use this card!" The golden card then transformed into a golden glow and shot into him between his eyebrows. Soon, the golden glow faded away. Lin Huang could feel that there was something added to his brain. However, since he was not a holy fire-level yet, he was unable to explore his brain. All he could feel was the existence of the Memory Card. As soon as his conscious mind kicked in, Lin Huang got in touch with the cards memory. It was like a dream, he started to live his life in Qi Muxiongs point-of-view. Everything started from the moment he was born. He managed to learn human language two days after he was born, he could project his spirit into the brain of others. He managed to walk when he was one-week old with the help of his self-discovered floating skill. He learned to do all sorts of house chores when he was one year old as well as reality shifting to change the real world. When he was three, his ability was comparable with a gold-level He reached imperial-level when he was seven He became a demigod when he was 15 When he was one step away from being a god, the virtual eye opened and the god creatures arrived and he joined the team to battle The battle lasted for more than two years which destroyed the world. 18 demigods died in the battle and the god was killed eventually. However, the remaining demigods were injured with broken Life Wheels. The battle seemed to change the rule of training which caused Qi Muxiong and the other demigods to be stuck, unable to break through the level barrier. He was dead from not having any Life Power left. "So Qi Muxiong is also a traveler" It was noon on the second day when Lin Huang got out of the dream. Lin Xin did not disturb his rest, she was out for lunch with Kylie. Looking at Qi Muxiongs life from his point-of-view, Lin Huang found out the biggest secret of the legendary demigod - He was a traveler. However, he was not a traveler from earth but another world. The world had an even more powerful natural laws. According to Qi Muxiongs memories, that world seemed to have actual gods Qi Muxiongs Goldfinger was an energy source the size of a fist and was the main reason how he managed to level up so fast. Realizing that he could not recover from his injuries, Qi Muxiong removed the energy force from his body and hid in a dimensional ruin. That caused his injuries to worsen and accelerated his death. However, Lin Huang did not see where the energy source was stored. He figured that piece of information must be too high that he was unable to retrieve due to his current combat level. "A dimensional ruin of a demigod isnt what I can manage now. Only when I arrive at imperial-level, only will I have the rights to look for this dimensional ruin." Lin Huang knew it himself. Just when Lin Huang was ready to explore into Qi Muxiongs training, Lin Xin knocked on his door. "Brother wake up, I brought you some lunch!" "Oh, Ill be right there after my shower!" 385 Can I Have Some of Your Baby’s Blood? During the next couple of days spent in the White Capital, Lin Huang finally finished exploring all the memories of the demigod that he could access. There was nothing that he could copy from Qi Muxiong''s training as his level-up was too smooth. He had never encountered any obstacles as long as he absorbed the energy source along the way. However, there were some realizations from the training that he could model from including some combat skills, secret skills, and skill stances. That would take some time so he was digesting them slowly. In the middle of the night, Lin Huang took out the two Legendary Skill Cards. As he was focusing on studying the demigod''s memories, he put everything aside. Now that it was completed, he finally had the time to look at the items that he got. "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Heaven''s Wrath" "Rarity: Legendary" "Type of Skill: Movement Skill" "Skill Level: Transcendent Combat Skill" "Status: Available" "Remark 1: Special combat skill with high requirement of Life Power, can only be activated when the user has at least three Life Wheels." "Remark 2: Consumes a massive amount of Life Power. The more Life Power is used, the more powerful this skill is." "Remark 3: Best to not use this skill when Life Power is insufficient or else user''s spiritual power and vitality will be consumed." "Card Remarks: Not bad" "Skill Card" "Skill Card Name: Omniscient Nature" "Rarity: Legendary" "Type of Skill: Ocular Skill" "Skill Level: Transcendent Combat Skill" "Status: Available" "Remark 1: Special combat skill with the requirement of a powerful soul. The strength of the soul must be two times more powerful than an opponent of the same level to activate the skill." "Remark 2: This skill comes with enhanced insight and learning ability without other ocular abilities. The user will have to learn other ocular skills on his own." "Card Remarks: Not bad" "Two legendary skills, a movement skill and an ocular skill, that''s not too bad." Lin Huang was much calm after studying the demigod''s memories. However, he had doubts about the skills. "Xiao Hei, why is the Omniscient Nature''s skill weakened? I''ve seen the man with glasses used before, he had the ability to engulf the dragon flame and release it again but now the description says it''s just for insight and learning. What happened?" "The skill extraction doesn''t mean the skills that others already have, but the best skills that system could come up with from the source skills. Omniscient Nature had insight and learning abilities itself while the affiliated abilities would have to acquired from training. The system had deleted the affiliated abilities when it was optimizing the skill." "Alright then I shall learn the other ocular skills myself then." Lin Huang accepted the truth unwillingly. Fortunately, there were many ocular skills in the demigod''s memories. With Omniscient Nature, he should not take too long to learn the rest. "Let''s activate both Skill Cards then." Lin Huang instructed. Under Lin Huang''s instruction, the two Skill Cards in his hand turned into two purple glows and went into his body. There were two Skill Cards appeared in his Life Wheels. He obtained the skills from the Skill Card right away, the combat skills would not occupy the slots of his Monster Skills. As the two purple glow went into his body, the information of both skills merged with his body, making him feel like he had mastered both the skills immediately. "Congratulations, you have activated Legendary-Skill Card - Heaven''s Wrath." "Congratulations, you have activated Legendary Skill Card - Omniscient Nature." "Detected! Kaleidoscope is similar to Omniscient Nature, would you like to engulf the card? Your Skill Combination Card won''t be necessary for this." "Does that mean all three ocular skill would disappear?" Lin Huang was worried that Xiao Hei was trying to set him up. "No, Omniscient Nature is a type of ocular skill. Aside from some rare ocular skills, it can engulf them to keep them as its own while its original ocular abilities would be remain the same or even strengthen." "Alright then, go on and engulf them." Lin Huang nodded after hearing what he wanted to hear from Xiao Hei. "Deleting Kaleidoscope, Omniscient Nature... Combining with Magic Eye Deterrence, Boundless Vision, Third Eye, and Illusion." Xiao Hei''s notification came soon. "Take a look at my exclusive card." Lin Huang instructed. "Host: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Age: 16" "Combat strength: Gold-Level Rank-3" "Talent: Superhuman Strength" "Life Seed 1: Sly Hands (Rare)" "Life Seed 2: Substitute (Epic)" "Life Seed 3: Micro Territory (Epic)" "Life Seed 4: Seraphic Speed (Epic)" "Combat Skill 1: Great Sword Scripture (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 2: Wildfire Sword(Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 3: Thunder Sting (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 4: Hundred Flowing Blades (Sword Skill)" "Combat Skill 5: Mountain Blade (Heavy Weapon Skill)" "Combat Skill 6: Fatal Tactics (Close Combat Skill)" "Combat Skill 7: Heaven''s Wrath (Movement Skill)" "Combat Skill 8: Omniscient Nature (Ocular Skill)" "Combat Skill 9: Spectral Snowsteps (Movement Skill)" "Combat Skill 10: Cloud Steps (Movement Skill)" "Combat Skill 11: Thunder Steps (Movement Skill)" "Monster Skill 1: Vampire Particles" "Monster Skill 2: Advanced Disguise" "Monster Skill 3: Immense Strength" "Monster Skill 4: Leech Pods" "Monster Skill 5: Absolute Defence (Beginner)" "Monster Skill 6: Thunder Control (Advance)" "Monster Skill 7: Dark Shield" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Available Number of summons: 5" "Remark: Basically, you pass." "I have two extra combat skills now and three vacant Monster Card slots, let''s just leave it this way for now." Lin Huang kept his exclusive card after reading the details. "Since I have gotten the dracaena, now all I have to do it to get Yang Ling to extract it." He then looked at the Monster Cards that he had. He was only left with Lancelot (Ruthless Sword Master) and Thunder (Viridescent Thunderhawk) to be unsealed. "Where do I get the blood of the bird type ancient monster?" Although he had Seventails which was triple mutated with phoenix blood, it was not a phoenix blood type after all. It was not an ancient monster either. Unless the concentration of its phoenix blood increased and level-up to a phoenix blood type, if that happened, he could use its blood to unseal the Viridescent Thunderhawk. The only thing that Lin Huang was clueless about now was the unlocking of Thunder. He had asked for more information on the black market and Hunter Forum for a while now but nobody responded. He shook his head and put his worries aside. It was past 11 when he looked at the time. Just when he was going to shower, his phone rang. It was Yi Yeyu who called. "Why are you calling this late, is there anything?" Yi Yeyu was excited when he picked up the phone. "Nothing, just want to share a good news with you. Can you guess what is it?" She was mysterious. "You have leveled-up to immortal-level?" He teased. "What? No! Guess again." Yi Yeyu was unhappy when Lin Huang mentioned about her combat level. "Then, it''s got to be your brother leveling up to immortal-level." He remained smiling. "Go f*ck yourself!" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes. "You''re the one who''s asking me to guess. Since it''s a good news, those are the only two good news that I could think of." Lin Huang opened his arms. "Nevermind then, with your intelligence, you might not be able to guess it correctly next year. I''ll announce it myself, wait for me!" Yi Yeyu said and disappeared from the video. "What''s this about" Lin Huang was speechless. She must have encountered something good that caused her to be so excited in the middle of the night. Soon, Yi Yeyu appeared with a red egg on her hands. "Is this the pet monster egg of a phoenix blood?!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he saw the monster egg. To him, it was not only a monster egg, but one that contained the bird type ancient monster''s blood to unseal the Viridescent Thunderhawk. "Hehe, I just got it today. My great-grandfather said it''s an intermediate-level monster egg of a phoenix blood. When it''s hatched, I will have a baby with phoenix blood!" Yi Yeyu was excited, perhaps she would not be able to sleep tonight. "Congratulation!" Lin Huang said and bit his lip. "Erm Let''s discuss something." "What is it?" Yi Yeyu thought his expression was odd. "After your baby is hatched, could you give me some of its blood?" Lin Huang came out with a shameless request. 386 Are You Interested In Being A Teacher? Lin Huang was humming while he brushed his teeth the next morning. He had finally gotten the bird type ancient monsters blood matter settled. As soon as Yi Yeyus monster egg with phoenix blood was hatched, he could finally unseal the Viridescent Thunderhawk. He was in a good mood. He talked to Yi Yeyu about the matter until past two in the midnight, she agreed to help him unwillingly. "Theres not much left to do before leveling up to holy fire level now. Basically, Ill just need to find more double mutated sword type monsters for Lancelot to unlock and fill up Bloodys skills before unlocking it. Also, Ill need to upgrade my combat level to complete gold-level" Lin Huang had arranged what he was supposed to do for the next few months. "Before that, Ill need to get Yang Ling to unlock the Emperors Heart Ring for me to extract the dracaena." After washing up, Lin Huang brought Lin Xin downstairs for buffet breakfast. Just when they were seated, his phone rang. It was Mr. Fu who was calling, he picked up his phone immediately. "Good morning master." Lin Huang greeted him with a smile. "My good apprentice, I see youre having breakfast." Mr. Fu saw the fried bun in Lin Huangs plate. "Yes, I guess you havent had yours?" Lin Huang asked. "I hardly have breakfast for years" Mr. Fu smiled and shook his head. When one arrived at transcendent, the need for food would drop. Many people would consume transcendent monsters for the Life Power that remained in the monster carcass. Some of the skilled Food Hunters could contain most of the remaining Life Power in the monsters with the handling of food ingredients. That was the reason why the Food Hunters had many friends. "My dear apprentice, are you still in Haitian City?" Mr. Fu asked out of nowhere. "No, I came back to the White Capital a few days back." Lin Huang answered honestly. "Oh, for your sisters college admission?" Mr. Fu knew Lin Xin was accepted into the Martial Hunter College. "Mainly for her to adapt to the environment. But Ill be here until she opens the school and leaves temporarily if something came up in between." Lin Huang nodded. "Since your sister is going to Martial Hunter School, are you interested to enter as well?" Mr. Fu smiled widely at Lin Huang. "Err" Lin Huang was stunned when he heard the question, he started thinking to himself. With this current combat level, there was not much meaning to enter the Martial Hunter School as most of the teachers were just complete gold-level. There were transcendents as well but they only made up less than one-tenth of the teachers. Besides, one would only need to be a silver-level rank-1 to enter this college. However, what Lin Huang really wanted was to go into the library of such college to remedy all his lack of basic knowledge. Mr. Fu seemed to know what Lin Huang was thinking about. With his character, if he really was not interested, he would reject directly instead of thinking like what he was doing right now. "Apprentice, I dont mean you going in to be a student, but as a teacher." Mr. Fu added and smiled. "Teacher? But my standard" Lin Huang was puzzled. "Whats wrong with your standard? If you''re talking about combat level, youre almost a complete gold-level at 16 when most of the people only achieve that after they''re 20 years old. In the case of your abilities, not many teachers in the college can even defeat you. If they dont like you, you can always teach them a lesson!" Mr. Fu persuaded. "But I know less than most students when it comes to basic knowledge" Lin Huang smiled awkwardly as he knew that most of the students who managed to get into the college were top students. "Thats the reason why I want to digest in the college for a while for your lack of basic knowledge. Training is like building a skyscraper, if your base is sturdy, your building will be able to go higher. If your basics are bad, no matter how high your building is, it won''t be able to withstand the weather." "I have thought about giving you some lectures for a few months before you level-up to transcendent to give you a stable base. However, I''ve given it some thought and think it''ll be better if you learn it yourself. Humans are like that, they''ll remember the things that they learn themselves more compared to if they''re forced to learn it." "Im asking you to be a teacher for the extra pressure. As you know, all of the students in Martial Hunter College are top students. If you dont want to embarrass yourself, you must learn the basic yourself." "The library in the Martial Hunter College is one of the three biggest libraries in Division7. The basic knowledge is shared among a few more colleges with massive data. A teacher could access to almost everything in the library. If you want a good base, theres nothing more suitable that this college in the entire Division7." Mr. Fu was long-winded hoping Lin Huang could accept his suggestion. Lin Huang took a deep breath and nodded hard. "Ill do it!" Although the stress was big, Lin Huang accepted the challenge anyway. "Thats more like it." Mr. Fu nodded in satisfaction when he heard Lin Huangs answer. "Give me your coordinates, Ill bring you to Xiao Liu in Martial Hunter College." "Right now?!" Lin Huang opened his eyes big. "Of course Im not asking you to start teaching now, its holiday for the college these two months. Ill bring you to Xiao Liu and get your teacher license done. Since its holiday now, you could read up in the library. I shall stay a few days in the White Capital to give you my contacts. You will be a new teacher when school opens in September." Mr. Fu smiled and explained after seeing Lin Huang being shocked. After the phone was hung up, Lin Huang wiped off the cold sweat that did not exist. He lost his appetite for breakfast. "Brother, youll be our teacher?" Lin Xin heard the conversation loud and clear, she looked at him in anticipation. "Err, Im not sure which class I''ll be sent to." Lin Huang rubbed his nose and sent his coordinates to Mr. Fu. Soon, a green dimensional relic appeared and Mr. Fu stepped out of it. Nobody thought it was odd and did not bother about his appearance while carried on with their breakfast. There were many people who owned dimensional relics in the White Capital, it was nothing odd to have their location pinned in the luxurious hotel. Mr. Fu kept his dimensional relic, he noticed Lin Huang and walked towards him. "Master, get something to eat." Lin Huang pulled a chair next to him and passed Mr. Fu his plate. "This hotel has an amazing fried bun." He then walked to the reception and got Mr. Fu a food voucher. Complimentary breakfast was only meant for in-house guests and Mr. Fu would have to pay for breakfast. After getting the food voucher, Lin Huang got a juice and returned to his seat. He then placed the juice in front of Mr. Fu. "This fried bun is really good." Mr. Fu commented. Soon, the three of them finished breakfast. "Youll stay in the hotel with Kylie while master and I will drop by your school." Lin Huang summoned Kylie and said to Lin Xin. A new summoning beast? Mr. Fu looked at Kylie with great interest. He only stopped looking when Kylie and Lin Xin left the table. "Lets go!" 387 The Supreme Relic Mr. Fu brought Lin Huang to a villa district that was less than one kilometer from the Martial Hunter College. A plump middle-aged man approached them as soon as they appeared, he was passionate and respectful towards Mr. Fu. As he was looking at Lin Huang, Lin Huang was checking him out too. The man looked like he was in his 40s and slightly chubby. He was wearing a high-end casual branded piece of clothing that seemed like he did not care and it felt like he had just put them on. He had a light shampoo fragrance on him, he must have gotten out of the shower not long ago. Although he was plump, his features were sharp. Though short, he had an aura that made people feel like he was not someone to be offended. What Lin Huang thought odd was he was way too passionate when he saw Mr. Fu. "Is this person gay" Lin Huang had his guard up considering all the signs that he noticed. "Mr. Fu, this is" The man asked after chatting with Mr. Fu for a while. "This is my apprentice Lin Huang, he''s only 16 this year." Mr. Fu patted Lin Huang''s shoulder proudly. "You have an apprentice now?!" The man was shocked at first and soon he started checking out Lin Huang. He noticed that the way the man looked at him became odd, he then walked towards Mr. Fu. "Yes, this little guy is perfect for me, there''s nothing that I don''t like about him. Others would definitely take him away if I didn''t pick him up quick." Mr. Fu laughed. "Oh yea, let me introduce you. This is the Xiao Liu that I was telling you about. His real name is Liu Ming, he''s the dean of the Martial Hunter College in Division7. He''s also an immortal-level fire-element sword master. He has nine Life Fires lit. Once he burnt a B-grade foothold of the Saints with one sword and from that one slash, the fire burnt for seven days and seven nights before it died off." "That small matter isn''t worth mentioning. Without your teaching sir, I''m afraid I might still be holy fire-level now. Don''t talk about nine Life Fires being lit, it would''ve been impossible for me to even reach immortal-level." Liu Ming shook his head and sighed. He then looked at Lin Huang. "Too bad I can''t be like brother Lin, to be able to be taught by sir all the time." "So he''s just a big fan" Lin Huang was relieved after hearing what the man said. He realized that the man was looking at him with envy instead of anything else. "Which level is master really at that an immortal-level with nine Life Fire lit respects him so much" Lin Huang had always thought that Mr. Fu was an imperial-level but now he was not sure anymore. "What are you doing, why are you not responding?" Mr. Fu slapped the back of Lin Huang''s head. "Oh. Nice meeting you, sir!" Lin Huang snapped out of his zone. "Don''t call me sir. I''m Mr. Fu''s half-apprentice, you can call me brother Liu." Liu Ming secretly looked at Mr. Fu as he said that as he was worried that Mr. Fu would deny him. Mr. Fu despised people calling themselves his apprentice, however, Mr. Fu did not respond at all. Lin Huang looked at Mr. Fu as he did not know if such address was appropriate. After all, Liu Ming was an immortal-level who had nine Life Fires lit. Mr. Fu then nodded and smiled at Lin Huang. "Nice meeting you brother Liu!" Lin Huang said. "It''s our first time meeting, I should get you a gift. But sir only informed me that he was bringing someone without saying who that is so I didn''t prepare anything. Since you''re also a sword master, I''ll get you a sword then." Liu Ming said and took out a sword from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was a thin battle sword, the body was as thin as a cicada''s wing that was half silver and half black, it was clear that the sword for perfect if one was looking to perform well in the speed department. Lin Huang used it for a while and sensed that it was a grade-5 relic or even higher. "Take it, this is a supreme relic, you know." Mr. Fu was satisfied with the gift that Liu Ming gave Lin Huang. "That''s very generous of you, Xiao Liu." Mr. Fu said. "It''s nothing, he''s family." Liu Ming smiled and looked at Lin Huang. He then passed him the sword. "This is one of the supreme swords in my collections, its name is Zenonia. This is its ancient form, you can change into three different forms following your need. Hope you like it." Lin Huang took the sword over and started playing with it carefully. Although he could not use the supreme relic with his current combat level, he was still very excited. He did not expect to receive such an expensive gift from Liu Ming. A supreme relic was relic above grade-5, it was the highest equipment that humans could manufacture as demigod relics were impossible for man to make as the strength was just slightly weaker than an ancient relic that was dropped by an imperial-level monster. Any supreme relic would cost at least 100,000 Life Crystals at the auction while the sword that Lin Huang was holding would cost at least 300,000 Life Crystals. If the demand was high, the price might even go beyond 500,000 Life Crystals. He had to admit that Liu Ming was really generous. "Keep it, let''s talk business." Mr. Fu could see how much Lin Huang loved his new sword. Lin Huang then kept the sword unwillingly while following behind Liu Ming and Mr. Fu into the house. "Sir you told me that you have found a teacher for my college, do you mean brother Lin?" Liu Ming poured tea casually for the both of them and asked. "What do you think?" Mr. Fu took a sip and asked. "That''s great, looking at his combat level and training, he''s suitable to be our teacher." Liu Ming did not have any rejections towards Lin Huang. As a sword master himself, he could sense that Lin Huang was level-2 on his Sword Dao. It was unbelievable for a 16-year-old to have such an achievement. "Don''t worry, you can tell me the truth." Mr. Fu put down the teacup and looked at Liu Ming. "Erm He''s good enough as a whole. However, there''s one problem which is his basic knowledge. Without that, our students might be unhappy." Lin Huang was only 16, Liu Ming could tell that he had never gone to college. "That''s it?" Mr. Fu asked. "Yes, he''s qualified in other prospects." Liu Ming nodded. "You heard him. For the sake of not misleading the kids, you should seize the time to learn." Mr. Fu looked at Lin Huang. "I understand. Lin Huang smiled awkwardly and nodded. "It''s a deal then, I shall hand this kid to you." Mr. Fu patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. "I''m on it." Liu Ming nodded immediately. 388 Life Level Lin Huang got his teacher qualification certificate after seeing Liu Ming. He was the first one who managed to become a college teacher at the age of 16 throughout Division1 to Division12. Let alone such reputable college such as the Martial Hunter College, even third-rate colleges in the B-grade footholds never had a 16-year-old teacher. The reason why Liu Ming let Lin Huang work as a teacher was not entirely due to Mr. Fu. The main reason was that Lin Huang was up to par. No matter his combat level or his understanding of the art of the sword, he was qualified to be a teacher. Regarding his basic knowledge, that would require him to spend some time in preparing for the classes before it was time. It was alright if some students asked difficult questions. In reality, some holy fire-level teachers could not even answer some of the more difficult questions from the students sometimes. "Lin Huang, Ill give you the system guide on the cultivation. Youll have to study on your own in the library after I left." As they got back to the hotel, Mr. Fu sat on the couch in the living room and started his lesson with Lin Huang. First of all, what is Life Power? Lin Huang, tell me what do you think Life Power is?" Lin Huang sat up straight, he was shocked by the question. He thought for a moment before giving his answer. "I think Life Power is a cultivation force." "Your answer is correct but not accurate." Mr. Fu nodded in satisfaction. "To be exact, Life Power is life force. Before the new era started, the human body did not contain Life Wheels in this world so Life Power didnt exist back then. The life force in the old times existed in the qi-blood of a human. The more powerful their qi was, the stronger their life force. Therefore, all of the practitioners were cultivating their qi and physique. The more powerful their physique was, the more powerful their qi was thus more powerful life force and abilities." "Look back at a few eras before that, humans had even figured out how to cultivate life force from their souls. During that era, everyone was cultivating their souls as that was the only way to strengthen their life force. However, its different in this era. There are Life Wheel in our bodies and the more Life Power in our body, the stronger our abilities" "Have you noticed that no matter which cultivation path one takes, theres always a similarity?" Mr. Fu smiled at Lin Huang. "Do you mean the base of cultivation is to increase life force? So no matter which form the life force, the base is still the same." Lin Huang understood immediately. From Mr. Fus guide, he finally knew the truth of cultivation. "The base of life is the combination of substance and energy. A substance can be explained as the combination of the flesh and soul while the energy is mainly formed by life force." Mr. Fu smiled and nodded. "Master, is the soul a substance?" Lin Huang raised his question. "There are many arguments whether the soul is a substance or energy but I think that the soul is a unique substance. As energy is something simple while the soul is similar to the human physique, they are detailed and complicated. From some points of view, theyre like robots of different forms. If you think that its difficult to understand, I can remove the topic of the soul and not talk about it." Mr. Fu explained. "So we''re talking about life being the combination of substance and energy No matter which cultivation system, put simply, humans are made of their physique, the soul, and life force. The stronger the life force, the stronger the physique. This is directly related to the substance of the life force. However, this relation is only within yourself as could have any effect on your life force. The flow of your life force would neither strengthen the physique of others nor will the deterioration of your life force affect others." "On the other hand, the stronger our physique, the more life force it can contain. Therefore, the cultivation of life force is a positive cycle. The life force grows together with the physique at the same time. Following that, our life level would increase as well." "Life level?" Lin Huang heard something new again. "Yes, following different life force forms and the strength, there are levels to our life strength. Just like a pyramid, level on level, from low to high." "The measurement of the pyramid base is that the life force that couldnt escape from the human physique. To humans, no matter ordinary or complete gold-level, we''re all on this level." "The second level would be the life force that could leave the human physique and exist independently in the material world. In reality, looking at the current cultivation system, no matter holy fire-level or imperial-level, all transcendent-level belongs to this level." "Meanwhile on the third layer, the life force doesn''t only exist independently but it can also adjust its frequency to various forces in the material world for resonance. Using that to adjust the force of the world, it could also alter its own substance to form any substance in the world." "We call creatures on this level a god. When one reaches this level, its easy for them to move even mountains. Creature of such level can move flames to engulf an A-grade foothold just like that. Of course, they can also move mountains to crash onto the foothold from above and even bring water from the ocean to drown the place There are many ways to make mankind disappear in the world overnight." Lin Huang was fearful as he listened, he did not know that there were such powerful creatures in the world. He had always thought it was the same in the novels where gods were only slightly more powerful than humans. He did not expect different the life levels they were on to have such a huge gap, making the godlike creature so powerful that they surpassed humans on every level. "Are there more above level-3?" Lin Huang asked carefully. "I have no idea. Maybe there is, maybe not. Nobody knows that before reaching that level." Mr. Fu smiled awkwardly and shook his head. "Ive only heard of these three levels." "Level-3 is already invincible, what kind of power is one able to handle if theres a higher level?!" Lin Huang could not imagine how powerful a person above level-3 would be. "Alright, all you need to know is the surface of the life base, life level, and life force. Let me teach you the way to use Life Power" Mr. Fu interrupted Lin Huangs wild imagination. 389 Outlining The Sword Dao "No matter Life Power or other force, its form can be altered. If we talk about its base alone, there are three forms in short which are the point, line and surface. There are higher forms beyond the three-dimensions but you wont be getting to that in a short period of time so theres no need to talk about it yet. Lets talk about point, line, and surface today." "When the force is gathered at one point, the ability to break through will be at its highest. When the force is gathered into a line, it would reach its peak cutting ability. These two forms are usually used in attacks. When force is gathered into a surface, it would form a forcefield that can be used as a shield. Of course, there are more different uses that can be formed with the use of the line and surface forms" "No matter which forbidden skills or combat skills you''re using, there are ways to change the form of the force utilized. The base of the form changes are always these three forms" Mr. Fus explanation deepened Lin Huangs understanding of the use of Life Power. "The Life Skill Army Attack Tactics that you train isnt that advanced in the beginning but it helps tremendously on the use of force. Many people know that level-9 of Army Attack Tactics is comparable with the effect of a Holy Life Skill. To be able to train to level-9, the use of force is much higher than many other Holy Life Skills. But of course, its difficult to reach level-9." "If you dont have the confidence to get to level-9 on Army Attack Tactics, I have a Holy Life Skill called the Star Tactics for you. However, if you have the confidence to get to level-9, theres no need to change your Life Skill." Mr. Fu said and looked at Lin Huang. "Its never too late to change but to be able to train Star Tactics to the level of Army Attack Tactics that you are now, it would take at least half a year." "I have the confidence to get to level-9, theres no need to change." Lin Huang gave a certain answer. Mr. Fu had no doubt when he heard Lin Huangs answer. "If thats so, follow your progress now and proceed to train in Army Attack Tactics." Mr. Fu said. "Your major is the Sword Dao and your minor are firearms, youre also an Imperial Censor. Ive seen a couple of your summoning monsters, you''ve trained them well. Im not an Imperial Censor myself, theres no way that I can guide you when it comes to this. But of course, you can always ask me whenever you have any questions, Ill get my Imperial Censor friend to help." "The firearms masters are adept in long-distance attacks so its good that its your minor profession. In reality, firearms masters are in high demand within people who are above holy fire-level. Although Life Power will be used in other occupations, the abilities of the firearm master are quite simply the best when it comes to long-distance attacks. Some of the powerful firearm masters could even go against top archery practitioners. For this, I will provide you with many gunfighting techniques. However, as this is your minor profession, you should always focus your training on the Sword Dao." "The Sword Dao is a powerful path. Not only in this era but many other eras in history, no matter the forms of life force, the Sword Dao has always been a major profession. There have been many top Sword Dao practitioners along the way." "I am a sword master but I have also trained in the Sword Dao. Im not bad at it so it should be sufficient to guide you. I have seen your sword skills and your speed, strength and defensive abilities are good. There are almost no flaws on you. You''re gifted in the Sword Dao as you''ve already arrived at level-2. From what I see, its amazing that you have already achieved so much at your age. However, there are still two things that you need to improve" What Mr. Fu said made Lin Huangs eyes lit up. He had always wondered if there was anything that he should break through before he becomes a transcendent hunter. What Mr. Fu was saying was the something that he had always been looking for. "Firstly, your Sword Dao''s base is high but not firm. I guess the Life Skill that you picked in the beginning was of a higher level which makes your foundation look good but its an illusion. Just like the frame of a house that looks good but is built with foam. To solve this issue isnt difficult but it''ll take time to train up many sword techniques." "Secondly, your sword skills are good when you use them individually but you dont have good combos. Its like having good books but they''re scattered all over the house. When you need them, you''ll realize that you have no idea where you''ve put them. So, what you need is an outline for your Sword Dao, to rearrange all the sword skills that you''ve learned along the way. Its like getting a bookshelf to categorize all your books. That way, you could just pick up the book easily whenever you need it." "I have already picked a Sword Dao outline for you. Its a sword skill that I created earlier, its called the Star Dome." Mr. Fu said and looked at Lin Huang with pride. "So? Isnt the name great? It took me a couple of days to come up with the name. Star Dome implies the inclusiveness of everything in the universe, its perfect for your sword skill." "Err Its not bad." Lin Huang smiled. What he really wanted to say was that there were many fancy names in the novels on earth, but looking at Mr. Fu being proud of himself, he did not want to break his heart. "After I leave, you can go to the Martial Hunter Colleges library during the day and train your sword at the training room at the college at night. Master the Star Dome as soon as possible and only work on other skills later on. Theres no need to activate your Life Skill intentionally as the speed of your level-up is fast enough. Let yourself get to complete gold-level naturally." Mr. Fu had come out with a plan for him. "This is the training crystal of Star Dome that I recorded. Keep it properly, destroy it after you''ve mastered the skill and dont send it to anyone." Mr. Fu said and passed him a black crystal of the size of a first. "Understand!" Lin Huang kept it immediately. "Let me think I think thats everything that I have to say." Mr. Fu rubbed his chin and thought. "Dont go to the library these two days since Im still here, lets train your sword skill in the training room. If theres anything that you dont understand, you can always call me and Ill get to them immediately to guide you on the spot. After I left two days later, you wont have that privilege anymore." "Ill learn as fast as I can." Lin Huang nodded. "Oh ya, let me know as soon as you mastered Star Dome. I will send you the tutorials for other sword skills." Mr. Fu added. The reason why he did not want to send tutorials of all the sword skills to Lin Huang was that he would put Star Dome aside and learn the other sword skills instead. That would defeat the purpose of his training. "Sure, I will." Lin Huang could guess what Mr. Fu had in mind. 390 Librarian 07003 "Congratulations, you have obtained Legendary Skill Card - Star Dome card pieces x618!" Three days passed by swiftly, Lin Huang accumulated the card pieces quick where he managed to get more than 600 card pieces within three days. When the first card piece appeared, he found out that the card was legendary-level and thought it would be good if he could get 10 card pieces per day. It would take him forever to combine the card pieces into a complete card. What he did not expect was that during his training, the images of Qi Muxiong''s sword trying appeared occasionally. Every time they appeared, there would be hundreds of card pieces appearing as well. On the first day afternoon, the memory appeared once and Lin Huang obtained more than 100 card pieces. On the second day, the memory appeared twice and he obtained more than 200 card pieces. On the third day, the memory appeared three times and he obtained more than 300 card pieces. A Legendary Skill Card would require at least 10,000 card pieces to combine into a complete card. Although Lin Huang had no idea how many card pieces exactly he would need, he had the confidence to accumulate more than 10,000 pieces within two months. Although he had yet to accumulate a complete card, he was already half-way there thanks to Mr. Fu. "You really are a sword genius! To lower the difficulty, I purposely broke down the techniques from 18 forms to 108 forms but they''re still difficult to most swordmasters. They would need at least three months of training to get a hang of it. I didn''t expect you to take only two hours on the first day to get a hang of it. Your improvement within these two days is tremendous. Looking at your progress, I think you''ll only need two months at most to master the skill." Mr. Fu complimented him. Lin Huang recalled getting a hang of the skill from the first image that he saw from Qi Muxiong''s memory. That was how he managed to get so many card pieces. Without the memory, he might have needed at least 10 days to get the same amount of card pieces and get the hang of the skill. "Seems like your training has been progressing well, there''s no meaning for me to stay here any longer. From tomorrow onwards, you''ll move to the dorm in the Martial Hunter College. You''ll go to the library in the day and train at night, you don''t have to go to the hotel back and forth. Call me if there are any questions." Mr. Fu patted his shoulder and stepped into his dimensional relic. After sending Mr. Fu off, Lin Huang had lunch with Lin Xin and checked out from the hotel. When he was given the teacher''s certificate, he was even given a teacher''s dorm. He thought since it was called a dorm, the size should be small and he would not mind cramping in the dorm with Lin Xin. However, he thought Mr. Fu might not be able to get used to it so he decided to stay in the hotel with Mr. Fu instead. Once he arrived at the dorm, he realized that he was wrong. The dorm was not just a room but instead, was a three-story villa that was similar in size to his house in Winter City. Apparently, the Martial Hunter College''s teachers had great privileges. He stepped into the house and saw that the decorations were not fancy but everything was good as new. It gave the feeling that he had just moved into a new house. "Brother, it''s good here!" Lin Xin opened the window and looked out. The Martial Hunter College itself had beautiful sceneries around it. There were mountains and rivers in the dorm area, making it a soothing environment. After touring the house and cleaning up two bedrooms, Lin Huang summoned Tyrant. "I''m going to the library, I won''t be back for lunch. You can go shopping with Tyrant." "Alright." Lin Xin nodded. After leaving the dorm, Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf and headed to the library. The Martial Hunter College was huge and now that it was school holiday where there was barely anyone there, he was not worried that riding on the Viridian Wolf would hurt anyone. Within three minutes, he arrived at the library entrance. He recalled the Viridian Wolf and projected his certificate. He then swiped the door with his card and stepped into the library. His jaw dropped as he stepped in. As there was no library in the Hunter Reserve College in small places like Wulin Town where he used to live. It was Lin Huang''s first time stepping into a library in this world. He knew the library would be different from earth but what he saw was shocking. "What is this" There was a gigantic monster on the ceiling. The monster was like a blue, giant brain that was covered in a light purple, semi-transparent jelly. At the bottom of the jelly were millions of tentacles. It looked like a semi-transparent giant, purple jellyfish with a blue brain on its belly. Besides, there were no bookshelves in this library at all. There was not even a book! There were just tables and chairs as well as more than 100 individual cubicles which seemed to require authorization to access. There was a tentacle on top of each set of table and chair. The tentacles were moving slightly so Lin Huang knew it was not dead. "Welcome to the library, first-timer. I am Librarian 07003. Don''t be scared, I''m just a harmless artificial creature. My purpose here is to save information and assistance" "Oh Okay" A sound popped into Lin Huang''s brain, he finally snapped out from zoning out. "If you would like to look for any information, you can go to any vacant ports and my tentacle will connect to your Emperor''s Heart Ring. You don''t have to worry about the leaking of your personal information as my ports can only enter data and cannot extract data. It''s a one-way data flow" Librarian 07003 explained. "What''s that room over there?" Lin Huang pointed at the cubicles. "That''s exclusively for teachers only, you would need the teacher certificate to activate it. The data authorization level is higher. If the light on the entrance is red, it means that it''s unavailable and a green light would mean it''s vacant. All you''ll have to do is to scan your teacher''s certificate to enter." Librarian 07003 explained again. "I understand now, thanks!" Lin Huang walked to the cubicles immediately and picked a cubicle. "You''ll need to set on your Emperor''s Heart Ring to authorize my entry then you''ll be able to look into the data." Librarian 07003 guided. Lin Huang followed the instructions immediately, the testable on top of the cubicle dropped slowly and connected on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He got into the library page in an instant. "If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me. Happy reading!" The librarian''s voice disappeared after it said that. "Let''s look at the content of the Year One Sword Dao''s programme and see what else could I look for in there" Although it was difficult to achieve, Lin Huang did not want to mislead the students that he was going to teach. He started going into his teacher mode without him realizing. 391 Fatty The Hunter Martial College belonged to a privileged school. The Sword Dao that Liu Ming asked Lin Huang to teach was a battle-based programme but there were theories included as well. All programmes had textbooks of their own. However, to most of the teachers, these textbooks were only part of the programme and they usually did not teach according to the textbooks. Meanwhile, Lin Huang needed the textbooks as his guide as he had zero experience in teaching. He had no idea what he would need to teach the students in the college. After spending one and a half hours, he finally finished looking at the Year One programme. He had learned many things that he did not know before. With great interest, he started looking at the Year Two programme. Suddenly, his Emperors Heart Ring vibrated. It was the fatty Yi Hangyi. He just realized that it had been a while since he caught up with the fatty. "Librarian, please activate the soundproofing system." Lin Huang looked up and said to the librarian. "Sure." Librarian 07003 activated the soundproofing layer in the cubicle. It was a function that exclusively for teachers cubicles. Seeing that the semi-transparent soundproofing layer was formed in the shape of a dome, Lin Huang then picked up the call. The video call was connected in an instant and fattys face occupied most of the screen. "Eh fatty, I think you"ve lost weight." Lin Huang teased. "Really?" Fatty was happy to hear that. "Yes you did, your face used to occupy the entire screen but now its just three-quarters of the screen." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. He could not understand why fatty always put his face at such an angle whenever he called. Sometimes there was even hair coming out of his nose which made it quite awkward. "F*ck!" Fatty just realized that Lin Huang was teasing him, he put the screen away immediately. "Whats up, do you need anything?" "Cant I just call you to catch up?!" Fatty asked. "Wait, you look different." Lin Huang just noticed that he dressed up this time. "Your clothes Are you going on a date?" "Err, just a meal with a friend." Fatty blushed. "A girl?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course its a girl! Why else why would I dress like this?" Fatty laughed. "Wow, how did you guys meet?" Lin Huang asked while smiling. "We met at the hunter assessment last month." Suddenly, fatty recalled the reason for his call. "I wanted to tell this to you but you interrupted me." "You''ve passed the assessment?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. Based on fattys ability last year, it was impossible for him to pass. "Of course I passed!" Fatty was proud. "Oh, so how did you meet the girl." Lin Huang did not want to hear fatty talking about the assessment so he changed the topic. "The assessment this time was pretty difficult for me. If she didnt help me, I really couldn''t have passed. I barely passed the first round and I knew I couldn''t pass when it came to the second round but I bumped into her halfway through. She even shared her water and snacks with me We became friends and later, I told her that my dream is to be a Food Hunter. She then told me that she loves food and encouraged me to hold on. With her help, I managed to pass." "Sounds like she''s a nice girl." Lin Huang was happy for fatty. In this world, perhaps it was due to the rich life force. Children mature early and become adults at 16. The legal age to marry was 18 but there were people who have already gotten married after they turned 16. "Shes very cute, Ill send you her photo." Fatty said and sent a couple of photos. Lin Huang looked at the photos, it was a cute little girl who looked the same age and size as Lin Xin. She had black, long hair with two ponytails on the side. "Shes a cute girl, but are you sure shes an adult already?" Lin Huang asked fatty after looking at the photos. "Yes she is, she just turned 16 two months ago. Shes already silver-level, cool right?" Fatty was proud of himself. "Silver-level at 16 Maybe shes related to some royal family or even one of the six major families" Lin Huang thought to himself but he did not say that to fatty so that he did not break his confidence. "How is it going with her? Are you guys officially together?" Lin Huang asked again. "Thats too early, its my first time asking her out today." Fatty was shy when he said that. "Please bring her somewhere nice and take note of your image. Dont just keep eating when youre at the restaurant." Lin Huang only reminded fatty about those points without telling him that the girl might be a royalty as he was afraid fatty would be self-conscious. "Oh, what else?" Fatty was eager to learn. "Be a gentleman but not too serious. Put her in the limelight but dont lose your personal opinion. Also, what youre wearing is too formal. Wear something casual but not too casual" Lin Huang suggested. "What does the girl think about you?" "She said Im fat and cute, I think she likes me." Fatty giggled. "Theres something going on, seize the moment okay. This girl seems nice." Lin Huang was happy for fatty. "Thanks for your kind words. I hope itll come true! I''ll treat you a good one then!" Fatty nodded. "Youll have to come to the White Capital." Lin Huang laughed. "What are you doing there?" Fatty was puzzled. "My sister got into the Martial Hunter School so I followed her." Lin Huang explained. "But youll have to come back when school starts?" "Not this year, Im always studying there." Lin Huang was secretly laughing, he did not dare to say that he became a teacher. "Youre sitting in?! How did you manage to get it?" Fatty was envious, it was difficult to get a pass to a top-notch college like the Martial Hunter College. "If you have nothing to do, you can come visit me. If you guys really get together, both of you can come. Ill pay for everything. But if the relationship didnt happen, youll have to pay for the trip yourself." Lin Huang smirked. "But why?!" Fatty objected. "This is to encourage you." Lin Huang gave a reason that fatty could not argue with. "Sure, its a deal. For a complimentary one-month trip in White Capital, I''ll get her!" Fatty hung up the phone without waiting for Lin Huang to respond. "One-month trip This fella sure is greedy." Lin Huang hung up the phone while smiling and proceeded with his reading. 392 A Disciplined Life Three days passed by in a blink of an eye. Lin Huang lived with utmost discipline for the past three days. Every morning, he would wake up at 6:30 a.m and would finish washing up before he had his breakfast past seven in the morning before he headed to the library. He would stay in the library until six in the evening and took snacks as his lunch. After dinner, he would train with his sword in the training room at around 6:30 p.m. until 12 midnight. Then, he would head back to the dorm, wash up and sleep. He would sleep for six hours while other activities like eating, washing up and his journey on the road would add up to an hour. He spent his remaining 17 hours studying and training. Lin Huang wanted to cut down his sleeping time to three hours and sleep on the training room''s floor. There was a small bathroom in the training room that allowed him to shower. If he did that, he could save some time as he did not need to return to the dorm so he could increase the time he could study and learn to 20 hours. With his physique now, three hours sleep per day would be enough for him since he would only have to stay this way for two months. However, the thought that Lin Xin would disagree with such a lifestyle made him give this idea up. Besides learning and training, the other matters went on as usual. The Hunter Forum and the black market had come back with some news about the double mutated, sword-type monster. Yang Ling had unlocked the three Emperor''s Heart Rings of the immortal-level hunter a while back and extracted all the items. Lin Huang put them away in his own ring, including the dracaena that he had always wanted. However, he did not want to unseal Charcoal at the moment as he knew that its unsealing would create a scene. The unsealing had to be done in an isolated area where the Starlight Beasts were. He did not have time to leave yet so he decided to unseal Lancelot and Charcoal once and for all once he obtained sufficient information about the double mutated sword-type monster. During the past few days, fatty had been texting Lin Huang on the progress between him and the cute girl, Zhang Mengmeng. She seemed to really like fatty as they had already gone on a date; eating, shopping and watching a performance at the music theatre. The girl did not reject any of his advances at all. On the fourth day, when Lin Huang was having his breakfast, he received a text from fatty that said, "I want to confess to her!" Lin Huang could not help himself but laugh. Fatty was such a straightforward person. Perhaps that was the reason why the girl liked him. However, he thought it was too fast for fatty to confess, especiall since the both of them had just spent three days together but Lin Huang did not stop him anyway. People say that women who are in love had zero intelligence. In reality, men would see their IQ drop to negative when they were in love. Lin Huang chose not to stop fatty as he knew that fatty would not listen to him. Another reason was because Lin Huang knew Zhang Mengmeng had a good background and it might not be a bad thing if fatty was rejected. It was always better to end the relationship early than dragging it on if both parties were not suitable for one another. As time went on, the emotions invested would increase and he would become even sadder if he was rejected. However, if Zhang Meng Meng really had zero intelligence and agreed to be with him, that would be the best thing that ever happened to fatty. Lin Huang thought about it and replied. "You do whatever you want, just don''t cry to me if you''re rejected." "Can''t you just say something nice to me for once?!" Fatty texted him three angry emojis at the back. "Oh, I can''t wait to see a baby from the both of you." "" Fatty was speechless. After breakfast, Lin Huang started his busy day. He had already finished reading all the programmes that the Martial Hunter College had and even came out with a basic teaching plan. His programme was quite relaxed as he would only need to teach one class for one period each week. However, the class periods here were quite different from the ones on earth as one period here could stretch as long as three hours. The students at the Martial Hunter College would only need to attend two periods each day. One was from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. while the other would be from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The three hours classes would be broken down to an hour of lecture and two hours of training. Lin Huang arranged his classes the same way. Once he finished the outline of his teaching programme, he went on to gather more materials and documents to bulk up the contents of his lesson. It was past 10 at night and Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated as he was training in the training room. It was fatty. He then put away his sword and picked up the call. "What, were you rejected? Are you here to cry to me?" Lin Huang teased. "Heh, you underestimated my charm." Fatty was proud, he soon noticed that Lin Huang was dripping with sweat. "What''re you up to? You look like you just got out of the water." "Training with my sword." Lin Huang waved the gold-level sword in his hand to fatty. "Why are you training so late? What have you been doing during the day?" Fatty was puzzled. "I was reading in the library." Lin Huang did not bother to explain too much to him. "Don''t change the topic! Tell me about you! So... Has the girl has agreed to date you?" "Of course! When I work my wonders, the world will tremble!" Fatty looked proud of himself. "That''s because you''re fat." Lin Huang teased again. "You won''t have any friends if you continue to talk like that!" "I wasn''t the one who asked you to beat around the bush." Lin Huang wanted to know what the girl saw in him. "Alright so after dinner, we were shopping near the Blue Water Lake. As we were walking on Lover''s Bridge, we saw many couples dating there so I decided to confess to her there and then. I told her that I liked her and asked her to be my girlfriend. She was stunned at first but soon she agreed." "Are you sure she wasn''t saying something else?" Lin Huang smirked. "You''re just being jealous." Fatty shot back. "Alright, I won''t mess around. Please cherish her." Lin Huang did not tell him that Zhang Mengmeng might be from royalty. "I don''t need your reminder, she''s my first love!" Fatty looked proud. "Oh, by the way, I have told Mengmeng about traveling to the White Capital and she agreed to come along with me. She also said that she''d borrow a dimensional relic from her family during the coming few days and come straight to the White Capital so we won''t need to spend too much time on the road. We haven''t gotten the exact time and date yet but it''ll probably be two days later. I''ll contact you again when we''re here. I remember you telling me that you''d pay for the trip if we visit you together" "Don''t worry. I''ve given my word so I won''t let the both of you pay." Lin Huang was being generous. "Let me know before you come, I''ll book a hotel for the both of you." "Yay!" Fatty then hung up the phone. "I can''t believe fatty really got the girl" Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. He did not think the relationship would happen since the very beginning. The girl was like a genius since she was already a silver-level at 16. Besides, her family was rich. Fatty, on the other hand, was not gifted in his cultivation and his background was nothing concrete. The gap between the both of them were too big 393 Fatty Is Here Two days passed by in a blink of an eye. As Lin Huang finished breakfast, his Emperor''s Heart Ring began to ring. It was fatty and Lin Huang could tell that he was already here with his girlfriend. He picked up the phone and saw fatty move his head to the side to so another person could sit. The person on his right was the girl in the photo, Zhang Mengmeng. "See, this is my girlfriend Zhang Mengmeng." Fatty was proud of himself. "This is my good friend Lin Huang." Fatty introduced the both of them. "Hi." Lin Huang waved and greeted. "Hi." Zhang Mengmeng seemed shy, she replied softly. Lin Huang did not mind that at all. "Please come to the north gate of the Martial Hunter College, I''ll bring you guys around. It''s still too early now. You can only check into the hotel after 12." "Sure, you''re paying anyway so we will follow what you''ve planned." It was the best thing ever that fatty had a tour guide as he was a lazy person. When he hung up the phone, Lin Xin came to him. "Who was that?" She asked curiously. "Fatty." Lin Huang had told her about fatty before so she knew who it was as soon as he mentioned his name. "He has a girlfriend now?" Lin Xin was confused she had the impression from the way Lin Huang described him that fatty was not a charming man. "Yeah, he''s got pretty good luck." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "Brother, aren''t you going to the library today?" Lin Xin asked out of the blue. "Since he''s here, I''ll have to bring him around at least on the first day." Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. He agreed to let fatty visit him as he thought fatty would need at least a few months to get into a relationship and by then, he would be done with his errands and could bring them around. He did not expect fatty to confess three days after their date and that he would even be was successful. It absolutely destroyed his plan. However, going back on his word was not something Lin Huang would do. Since he had given his word, he would have to take some time out from his busy schedule to bring them around. "I want to tag along" Lin Xin was bored these days as Tyrant was just like a bodyguard who could bring her shopping but had nothing in common to talk about. "Come with us then." Lin Huang could tell why Lin Xin requested to come along. He noticed that he recently spent less time with her and he was guilty. After getting the green light from Lin Huang, Lin Xin''s mood changed from one of anticipation to one of excitement. They cleaned the kitchen together, brought Tyrant out and headed to the north gate of the Martial Hunter College. After waiting for two to three minutes at the entrance, a monster car stopped. Fatty held Zhang Mengmeng''s hand and got off the car. With that little gesture, Lin Huang could tell that fatty really liked this girl. "Welcome!" Lin Huang approached the two of them and greeted them passionately. He kept looking at Zhang Mengmeng who was next to fatty. She looked exactly the same as her photos. "Lin Huang, this is my girlfriend Mengmeng, you''ve seen her in the video." Fatty smiled and introduced. "This is my good friend Lin Huang that I told you about, you guys saw each other in the video." "Hmm." Zhang Mengmeng nodded lightly, she seemed to be anxious when she met strangers. Lin Huang did not mind at all. "These two are" Fatty soon noticed there were another two people behind Lin Huang. One was a terrifyingly big guy while the other was a cute girl. "Xin Er, my sister." Lin Huang smiled and introduced. "This is the brother fatty that I told you about and next to him is his girlfriend Mengmeng." "Hello, brother and sister!" Lin Xin only glanced at fatty before she then stared at Zhang Mengmeng. She was more interested in the girl who was her age. "Such good genes... Both the boy and girl look so good" Fatty looked at Lin Xin then Lin Huang and mumbled to himself. Lin Huang pretended not to hear him, he smiled and did not say a thing. "How about this?" Fatty looked at Tyrant. He could not recognize Tyrant since he had already changed. Tyrant naturally remembered fatty but since Lin Huang did not say anything, Tyrant did not greet him. "He''s my bodyguard." Lin Huang did not want to tell the truth as Tyrant had a major transformation. Fatty could tell that he was double mutated if Lin Huang told him the truth. "You even have a bodyguard now. I remember you telling me how poor you were and that couldn''t even afford a tent." Fatty thought Lin Huang might have joined a royal family. To avoid him from misunderstanding, Lin Huang did not bother to explain further as he knew the more he explained, the more questions fatty would have for him. Zhang Mengmeng peeked at Tyrant, seemingly scared of him. "Let me bring you around the Martial Hunter College. Although it''s not a tourist attraction, it''s considered to be one of the more scenic places in the White Capital." Lin Huang smiled. He had yet to book the hotel room as they could only check in after 12 p.m. So, he decided to bring them around on a tour of the college in the morning. "Oh yeah, should I book one or two rooms?" Lin Huang asked fatty. "One room" "Two rooms!" The both of them replied almost at the same time. Fatty said one room while Zhang Mengmeng said two. "Two rooms then." Fatty looked at Zhang Mengmeng and said immediately. "Alright, I''ll book the rooms now." Lin Huang looked at Zhang Mengmeng without saying anything. He booked the rooms right away on the network page using his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "It''s booked! White Forest Hotel, on the 128th floor, Room33 and Room34. The rooms are connected and I''ve sent you the booking confirmations." Lin Huang said to fatty. Fatty received the message shortly. "Got it, thanks!" Fatty switched off the page without even looking at the message. "Let''s start walking then" Lin Huang bought them into the college. "The Martial Hunter College was built 283 years ago, it''s the third oldest school in Division7. In the first 50 odd years, the college did not only act as a college but also used as an adult hunter training institution. Since the official launching of Division7 was over, there was no need for so many hunters so the adult hunter training program was removed. More than 30 years later, the college was removed as well. Many colleges were popularized before that" Lin Huang brought them walking along the paths under the shade of the trees while explaining the history of the college to them. He learned all that from the library. "Lin Huang, do you really plan to sit-in here?" Fatty could not help but ask. "My brother isn''t sitting in, he''s a teacher!" Hearing what fatty said, Lin Xin corrected him. Fatty did not believe what Lin Xin said. He thought Lin Huang did not want to embarrass himself so he lied to his sister that he became the college''s teacher. He did not want to blow his cover. "A college teacher, Lin Huang you''re so great" Fatty winked at Lin Huang, implying that he knew Lin Huang was lying but he did not want to blow his cover in front of Lin Xin. Lin Huang smiled awkwardly. Fatty was full of imagination. As they walked in the college compound that was blossoming with flowers, the sound of Lin Huang''s voice could be heard along with Lin Xin''s occasional chatter. Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng was looking around along their walk and seemed to be impressed by everything here. Tyrant was the only one that was quiet, walking on the far right to protect Lin Xin. 394 Lovers Rock The morning passed by quickly and Lin Huang brought them to the hotel after lunch. As they registered themselves at the front desk, fatty and Zhang Mengmeng did not stay too long in the room. Following Lin Huang''s plan, the headed to a tourist attraction within the foothold. The White Capital was the biggest and oldest footholds in Division7. There were many historical sites that occupied large spaces with various beautiful sceneries. It would take more than a month to visit all of them. Lin Huang planned the trip from near to far so they could first visit the attractions that were closer to the hotel. If they had enough time, they could visit attractions that were further away or change their hotel if they wanted to. Later, Lin Huang brought them to a giant lake. "This lake is called the Jingyue Lake, it''s one of the most popular attractions in the White Capital. It''s extra beautiful at night. I picked the hotel that''s not far from here so you can see the night view of the lake from your balcony. There are a couple of celebrity monuments by the lake and one of the most popular ones would be the monument of Jingyue''s Home, the ruins of a demigod''s home" "So this is the lake that''s named after the demigod Jingyue?" Fatty had heard of the demigod Jingyue before so he had a serious expression plastered on his face as he looked at the lake. "Yes, the White Capital during that time was much smaller compared to what we see today. This lake was just a nameless lake in the while. The demigod Jingyue built his own house by the lake and that''s how the lake got its name." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "I know this one!" Lin Xin interrupted. "More than 200 years ago, the demigod Jingyue fell in love with a man so she stayed by the lake. She announced to the world that she would wait by the lake for that one man for 10 years. If the person came within those 10 years, she would be with the man forever and ever without questioning the world. If he didn''t come within those 10 years, she would head to the virtual world and never return 10 years later, she disappeared. Some said she went to the virtual world while some said she left with the man. However, nobody knows what the man was" Fatty gave his full attention while listening to the story while Zhang Mengmeng seemed to be distracted. She did not look interested in the story at all. "Brother, do you think that the demigod Jingyue got together with the love of her life?" Lin Xin asked Lin Huang. "I think only she would know the answer." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. "I think she did! What do you think, Mengmeng?" Fatty looked at Zhang Mengmeng, he seemed to be anticipating her reply. "I don''t know." Zhang Mengmeng waved her hands. It was past four in the afternoon after looking at a couple of attractions by the lake. "Jingyue''s Home is just there, let''s take look and have dinner after that." Lin Huang looked at the time and decided that Jingyue''s Home would be the last attraction of the day. All the attractions by the lake were complimentary and one could enter just by scanning their ID as there were no restrictions. As it was the summer holidays, the attraction was crowded. Jingyue''s Home was in a small area with a small building and a courtyard to match. However, as it was a tourist attraction, the Union Government expanded the area around it to make it more than 30 times larger than it originally was. After queuing up, they entered the attraction. There were many people but it was not too cramped. They spent more than an hour walking around the expanded area and entered Jingyue''s Home as the people left. Lin Huang noticed that the ruins were perfectly maintained as he walked into the courtyard, he could even feel that the ruins were slightly covered with a unique force. It was possibly left by the demigod Jingyue or by some other people to prevent the ruins from being destroyed. The courtyard was small, only about 200-odd square meters. There were colorful flowers in the courtyard and the soil was moist with grass that had obviously been trimmed. The ruins must be maintained all year round. People followed the cobblestones on the floor and walked to the middle of the courtyard where there was a big rock. Many couples surrounded the rock and placed their palms on it. "What are they doing?" Fatty was puzzled but soon he noticed that all of them were couples. "This is a Love Rock. They say if two people who sincerely love each other place their palms on the rock together, their palms would light up." Lin Xin explained immediately. Young girls were always extra sensitive regarding topics about love. "Let''s try!" Fatty pulled Zhang Mengmeng along. Zhang Mengmeng hesitated but soon followed anyway. The both of them queued for more than 10 minutes and before long, it was their turn. Lin Huang and Lin Xin watched by the side. As fatty and Zhang Mengmeng placed their palms on the rock, nothing happened after a while. "Eh? How come it doesn''t light up?" Lin Xin was confused as everyone would have their palms lighting up, at least a little or more but nobody experienced what the both of them did where nothing happened. Lin Huang looked at Zhang Mengmeng in doubt and then looked at fatty, he was upset. "Why is it like that?" "Don''t bother, sometimes such things aren''t accurate." Lin Huang patted fatty''s back. "It''s late, let''s see the building and have dinner." "It doesn''t work all the time?" Fatty looked at Lin Huang in all seriousness. "Even machines that are top-notch fail sometimes, let alone a rock." Lin Huang pulled fatty away. Zhang Mengmeng held her head down without saying anything, she seemed upset too. "Sister Mengmeng, don''t be sad. Such thing might not be accurate." Lin Xin consoled her immediately. "Thank you." Zhang Mengmeng forced a smile. With Lin Huang leading them, they went into the building. It was made of a unique kind of wood with light natural fragrance. Lin Huang felt refreshed as soon as he stepped into the building. "This is so neat" Fatty seemed to lighten up a little and exclaimed. "Girls are more attentive. A guy wouldn''t be able to come out with something so detailed." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. Lin Xin did not say anything as she had been here more than once. It was Lin Huang''s first time so Lin Xin took the initiative to be the tour guide and explained the things they saw to them as they visited the attraction. As it was almost 6:40 p.m., they had toured the entire attraction. Lin Huang then led the way as they left the attraction and headed to a popular restaurant that he picked for dinner 395 There’s No Such Person After dinner, Lin Huang could finally stop being a tour guide. He bid farewell to fatty and Zhang Mengmeng then left with Lin Xin and Tyrant. "Brother, I have a feeling that sister Mengmeng doesn''t really like brother fatty." Lin Xin could not help but voice her opinion while they were on their way back. Lin Huang was shocked to hear what she said as he did not expect Lin Xin to notice that as well. It seemed like fatty was the only one invested in this relationship. "The Lovers Rock has a purpose - to detect if both parties like one another. As long as there''s a tiny bit of interest, their palms would light up. However, there was nothing at all when the both of them placed their palms on the rock. We can tell that brother fatty likes sister Mengmeng very much. Since there''s nothing happening to the rock, that means sister Mengmeng doesn''t like brother fatty at all." Lin Xin told her observation. "I also noticed that sister Mengmeng would sometimes avoid looking at brother fatty." "Whether or not they like each other, that''s their business. Let''s not get involved." Lin Huang did not deny what Lin Xin said while shaking his head. Of course, he noticed that Zhang Mengmeng acted a little weird when she was with fatty since the beginning. What happened at Lovers Rock had confirmed that she was not the least bit interested in fatty at all. Just like what Lin Xin said, even if she had a tiny bit of interest in him, the rock would respond. "Shouldn''t we tell brother fatty? Is sister Mengmeng dating brother fatty for his money? I remember you saying that brother fatty''s family owns a restaurant and he''s quite rich." Lin Xin proceeded to speculate. "If I tell fatty now, he won''t listen to me and we might even argue." Lin Huang was helpless. "This Zhang Mengmeng has a powerful background so money is definitely not what she''s after. Fatty is just an ordinary person, there''s nothing he has that''s worth being taken away. She might want to use fatty to get closer to someone when she agreed to date him." Lin Huang was clear of Zhang Mengmeng''s intention but he had no idea who her target was. "Go back with Tyrant, I''ll drop by the black market to investigate this Zhang Mengmeng." After confirming that Zhang Mengmeng had something up her sleeves, he decided to check who she was so that he was mentally prepared. As Lin Xin and Tyrant left, Lin Huang summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk and headed to the black market. Two minutes later, he landed on top of a building near the black market and headed to the streets. He found the little house that he bought information the last time he was here and entered it. A staff noticed him as their guest, they hinted and brought him into the house. There was a plump old man behind an old table in the dark room. He wore a golden frame monocle as he observed a small item in his hand. Seeing Lin Huang enter the room, the old man put away his things and looked at him. "May I know what do you need?" "I need you to check out a person for me." Lin Huang sat down in front of the table and requested. "Do you have the name and photo of this person you ask of?" The old person asked while nudging his glasses. "Yes." "Then your request will be easy." The old person was relieved. "Send over the details and I''ll give you a price." The old person passed him a chip. Lin Huang took over the chip and scanned his Emperor''s Heart Ring. Zhang Mengmeng''s information was sent over. When that was done, Lin Huang passed the chip back to the old man. The old man took the chip and connected it to his Emperor''s Heart Ring and started his investigation. "You only need to pay a minimal price for this piece of information - one Life Crystal." The old man looked at Lin Huang less than two minutes later. "Why is it so cheap?" Lin Huang thought it was odd. "Maybe nothing''s wrong with this girl?" He placed one Life Crystal on the table. "This girl doesn''t exist! Her name is made up. I''ve checked the photo and checked the Union Government''s population registration data, there''s no match for her face. There are two possibilities. She has either never registered with the Union Government or her identity is faked. She has also changed her features by performing plastic surgery or through other avenues." The old man said after picking up the Life Crystal. "I know it!" Lin Huang expected the answer. He finally confirmed that his suspicions of Zhang Mengmeng being true. "Is it possible to get her real identity?" Lin Huang asked. "There''s nothing that I can do as she has changed all her personal details. Usually, people in disguise would change their fingerprints, iris and other identification details along with their features. Unless you could provide her real name or face, there''s nothing I can do." The old man smiled and shook his head. "Alright then, thanks." Since there was nothing that they could do, Lin Huang left the black market. It was 8 p.m. when he returned to the dorm. "So how did it go? Did you get anything?" Lin Xin asked as she noticed that Lin Huang looked solemn. "There''s no such person as Zhang Mengmeng." Lin Huang said without an expression. "A fake identity? How about facial recognition software?" Lin Xin was stunned and understood what he meant immediately. "No, it''s not her real face." Lin Huang shook his head. "Something''s wrong with this girl!" Lin Xin became alert. "Don''t follow us on our tour around for the coming days. We have no idea what the girl wants but approaching fatty with a fake identity... It has got to be something bad. Stay away from her, I''ll get Tyrant to protect you." Lin Huang briefed her and summoned Kylie as well as he thought it was dangerous. "Kylie you protect Lin Xin as well." "Brother, are you going to train today?" Lin Xin saw Lin Huang ready to head out. If he stayed, he did not have to summon two monsters to protect her. "Yes, I didn''t get to train today. I''m left with four hours." Lin Huang was determined. "Be careful then." Lin Xin nodded. Lin Huang left the dorm leaving Lin Xin behind, he did not bother to summon the Viridian Wolf this time and ran towards the training room. As he was arriving at the training room, he sensed a tiny object entering his Micro Territory, aiming at the back of his head. Lin Huang moved his head aside and avoided the attack. He turned around immediately at looked at the direction of attack. "Who''s that? Come out, now!" 396 Attacked In The Middle of The Nigh Lin Huang was shocked to be attacked in the middle of the night. Was it the Purple Crow, the Saints or the Mystery Organization? Maybe it was Zhang Mengmeng? A few possibilities flashed through his mind. He had offended quite a few organizations and he could not tell who was attempting an attack this time around. However, he could sense that it might either be the Purple Crows or Zhang Mengmeng. The attack came out of nowhere and was swift. If not for his Micro Territory that was activated at all times, he might have been attacked earlier. "Who''s that? Come out now!" Shouted Lin Huang as a couple of lamp posts exploded around him. Suddenly, the entire area was plunged into darkness. As soon as the lights disappeared, a few obscure attacks came at him. It was the same as before; the attacks were extremely secretive and hard to detect. It was fast and was clearly a unique assassination technique. However, nothing could escape Lin Huang''s Micro Territory that allowed him to sense the attack trajectory, allowing him to avoid it just by moving his body. As he avoided the attack, he took out his grade-5 gun relic. It was one of the collectibles from the Mystery Auction which was now his. The black pistol was a few times smaller than the GrayEagle17. As Lin Huang whipped out the gun, he inserted Life Power into it. Soon, a number of golden beams shot out of his gun as fast as his attacker, covering the entire area where his attacker was attacking from. Golden sparks lit up the dark as shot after shot was fired. The quiet night was broken, and many hunters who were around the area headed towards that direction. It was the White Capital, so not only was it an A-grade foothold, it also the top foothold in Division7. Who dared to create a scene at the Martial Hunter College in the middle of the foothold?! Gunshots were fired multiple times in less than a second in the dark. Lin Huang''s speed was at its peak, as he managed to fire more than 50 shots within a second. The golden Life Power bullets headed in the direction of his attacker like a thunderstorm, and soon the entire area was covered with bullet shells. As soon as the shots were fired, Lin Huang stomped hard, activating Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps. He dashed like a laser beam towards the direction of the attack. Pew! Pew! Shots scattered through the air. This time, his attacker did not even bother an attempt to cover up the noise. He only seemed to want to scare Lin Huang away. He then swapped Thunder Steps to Cloud Steps and avoided the attacks. He continued to fire as he headed closer towards the direction of the attack. As the shots were fired, Lin Huang could finally see the person assaulting him. It was a person covered in a loose black robe. He could not even tell the gender of the person. He also noticed that the person did not avoid his Life Power bullets at all. Instead, there was a thick cloud of black mist in front of the person, blocking his bullets. As the golden Life Power bullets passed through the black mist, they disappeared. It was evident that the shots could not harm the person at all. eeing Lin Huang was approaching, the black-robed person seemed to be unwilling to get close to him and retreated immediately. Lin Huang aimed at the person and fired even more shots. For regular gold-level hunters, using a relic was exhausting as it drained the person''s Life Power tremendously. However, for Lin Huang, the amount of Life Power he had was ten times more than a person on the same level, so using a relic was relatively relaxing to him. After finally being able to see his target, Lin Huang stopped blindly shooting and aimed for the fatal points on his assailant''s body. In the dark, the Life Power bullets were like meteorites as they were shot at his assailant. The black-robed person did not even attempt to avoid the bullets. The black mist was becoming thicker and eventually, it turned into a giant black whirlpool. The golden bullets disappeared as soon as they touched the mist. Even the bullets that reached the edge of the whirlpool broke as well. "The Life Power bullets seemed to decompose right away" Lin Huang frowned as he was puzzled by the person''s ability. As the person seemingly absorbed Lin Huang''s shots, he leaped and left. Knowing that he could not kill Lin Huang within a short period as well as the fact that people were approaching, the assailant did not dare stay any longer and decided to leave. Lin Huang was not surprised that the person attempted to flee. He already confirmed that the person was a holy fire-level when the person launched his first attack. Nobody below Transcendent-level could move so quickly. "Trying to run away? I won''t let you go so easily!" Lin Huang summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk and chased after the person. On the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s back, Lin Huang changed the gun''s form to a rifle and aimed at the black-robed person. He then activated an advanced gunfighting technique, Thunderstorm. As thunder roared, golden Life Power bullets rained down like a thunderstorm. Lin Huang used three Life Wheels for this attack, and his Life Power flooded the gun as he fired countless shots at the person. Noticing the attack from its back, the black-robed person did not even turn his head as he attempted to cover his body with a thick, black mist. Lin Huang soon noticed that the black mist behaved strangely, like the surface of water that sent out ripples as soon as the Life Power bullets touched it. Even though he used an advanced gunfighting technique, it could not harm the person. However, the speed of the Viridescent Thunderhawk was faster than the person. They were getting closer and closer to each other. The black-robed person attacked as well but Lin Huang managed to avoid them with the activation of his Dark Shield. "You can''t run!" Lin Huang shouted while his eyes turned a bloody red. The Vampire Particles formed a pair of whips on his back. The two whips headed towards the person while another two blades raced towards the person''s body. To Lin Huang''s surprise, the black-robed person did not avoid the attacks this time. As the person performed a couple of hand seals, he was strangled by the two whips and the two blades pierced through his chest. Lin Huang was shocked that he managed to kill the person so quickly. Nevertheless, the black-robed person''s body broke into black bits and disappeared. 397 Puzzling He escaped?! Lin Huang looked at the place where the black-robed person disappeared while replaying the scene of him performing the hand seals. It was probably a unique escape skill. "Lin Xin!" His crimson red eyes faded away as he contacted Tyrant with his mind. He was relieved as Lin Xin had not encountered the attack that he did. "Let''s go back to the place where the person first attacked me." Lin Huang patted the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s back. The Viridescent Thunderhawk flapped its wings and turned in an arc as it headed to the library. As soon as it landed, a shadow interrupted them. Lin Huang looked closely. It was the dean, Liu Ming. "Brother, were you the one fighting just now?" Liu Ming immediately asked when he saw Lin Huang. "A black-robed person attacked me but ran away." Lin Huang hopped from the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s back and nodded to Liu Ming. The battle had seemed intense, but it only lasted less than 20 seconds. "Is this a holy fire-level summon?" Liu Ming was shocked to see the Viridescent Thunderhawk. "Yes." Lin Huang then recalled the Viridescent Thunderhawk. "Are you alright?" Liu Ming asked immediately. As a huge fan of Mr. Fu fan, he was protective of Lin Huang. "I''m alright." Soon, several shadows arrived. They were Transcendents who were nearby. They came here as soon as they heard the gunshots and sensed the energy wave. Liu Ming approached them and explained while Lin Huang looked for the weapon that the black-robed person had used to attack him. He could sense that it was something tiny, but he had no idea what that was. A while later, he found a hole the size of a thumb in a field nearby. There was residue that was similar to the black mist on the attacker''s body. Lin Huang coated his right hand with Life Power and reached into the hole. He found a needle that was two centimeters long with the thickness of a strand of hair. It was completely black with black Life Power remaining on its surface. Although the black Life Power was insignificant, Lin Huang could sense that the Life Power on his finger was being destroyed by a unique force. However, as it was decomposing his Life Power, the black Life Power was intensifying. Before Lin Huang could store it, the black Life Power surrounding the needle disappeared within one or two seconds. "Is this the weapon that the person used to attack you?" Liu Ming appeared next to Lin Huang and looked the black needle in his hand. "Looking at the size and color as well as the ability to hide its appearance, this could definitely kill anyone without even making a sound. Such an evil weapon looks like it belongs to a professional assassin. Brother, did you offend anyone recently?" "I''ve offended quite some people" "Do you have any clue about anyone who might want to do such a thing?" Liu Ming asked. "I have a few suspects, but I can''t be sure." Lin Huang shook his head. "Do you need my help?" Liu Ming asked in all seriousness. "Not at the moment. I think I can solve it myself. If I can''t, I''ll have to trouble you." Lin Huang would usually handle things by himself instead of asking for help. He knew that he would have to repay people in some way if he asked for help. "Alright then, be careful. Usually, a professional assassin won''t give up on their target so easily. Find out the person responsible for this as soon as possible. The longer you drag this matter, the more dangerous it''ll be for you. After all, they''re in the dark while you''re in the light," Liu Ming reminded. "Yes, I understand." Lin Huang nodded. "I''ll get someone to fix this tomorrow. Don''t worry about it and get going," Liu Ming said as he looked at the lamp posts that were broken. After Liu Ming left, Lin Huang looked around nearby and headed back to the dorm as he did not find anything. "Brother, were you fighting just now? I heard gunshots," Lin Xin asked in concern when she saw Lin Huang came back. She had heard the gunshots soon after Lin Huang left the dorm, so she thought he might be fighting. It was summer holiday and no outsiders were allowed at night in the college. Besides her and Lin Huang, there was basically nobody else in the college. The gunshots clearly came from the college. Moreover, Lin Huang was a firearms master himself, so it was easy to tell that it was him who was fighting. Lin Huang did not want to tell Lin Xin about the attack but since she asked, he admitted it anyway, "Someone tried to kill me but got away." "Was it Zhang Mengmeng?" Lin Xin thought of her as well. "I''m not sure, but she''s the biggest suspect." Lin Huang shook his head. "Although the person was on the holy fire-level, I''m not excluding Zhang Mengmeng as one of the suspects as she might be hiding her true combat prowess and disguise herself as a silver-level hunter. Besides, I don''t know many people in the White Capital. Zhang Mengmeng is the only one that I don''t know from before and she knows that I''m in the White Capital. "But, there are other possibilities as well. After all, I have offended many underworld organizations." Lin Huang knew the trouble that he caused himself. He had offended all the underworld organizations that he''s encountered, so it was nothing out of the ordinary that he was being targeted. "I think it has to be that Zhang Mengmeng! How can it be such a coincidence that we met her today and that you got attacked right away? She must be coming for you, that''s why she''s dating Brother Fatty. Maybe she''s one of the Purple Crows!" Lin Xin was determined to solve the identity of the attacker. "You naughty girl, you need proof. Don''t just say whatever you want." Lin Huang patted Lin Xin''s head. "There''s no need for proof. A girl has accurate instincts. It has to be Zhang Mengmeng!" Lin Xin was persistent. "Yes, whatever you say is right. Don''t worry. I''ll handle it." Lin Huang assured helplessly. He returned to his room after finally managing to comfort Lin Xin. He stared at Zhang Mengmeng''s photos that Fatty had sent earlier and mumbled to himself, "I can definitely know if it''s her if I have her real face or her real name" Suddenly, Yang Ling''s face appeared in his mind. "I wonder if Yang Ling could retrieve her real face" Lin Huang then sent the photos to Yang Ling with a simple explanation. Yang Ling replied almost in the next second after receiving the photos. "Now I know your type. This girl looks doesn''t look that bad, but she''s too young for me" Two to three minutes later, Yang Ling called. Lin Huang picked up the video call immediately. "Who told you that the girl had plastic surgery?" Yang Ling asked directly. "Didn''t she? Her identity is fake. I''m sure you can look for her. Her face doesn''t match the population registration at the Union Government." "There really is a problem with her identity. She must be an illegal resident who has never registered herself since birth and her Emperor''s Heart ring must be fake. But I''m 100% sure that she has never done plastic surgery before!" Yang Ling insisted. "What are you basing your comments that she''s never done plastic surgery before on?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "It''s not based on anything. I can tell from her photos. She''s not the only one, I can also tell how any woman in the world really looks like. Whether they''ve make-up on, if they went for plastic surgery, or if they used a beauty app to beautify their faces. I can even see the smallest freckle on their faces. My eyes can see through those layers. When I say this girl has never went for plastic surgery, it means she hasn''t. It''s up to you to believe me or not," Yang Ling insisted. "Then, could you find her real identity for me?" Lin Huang cast his doubts aside and asked Yang Ling. "I can''t. She''s an illegal resident who has never registered on any platforms on the Heart Network. All I know is that her name is fake. There''s nothing else that I can get." Yang Ling opened his arms in surrender. "Alright then, I understand now." Hanging up the phone, Lin Huang thought the matter was even more puzzling now. "Zhang Mengmeng has never undergone plastic surgery, and she''s an illegal resident" 398 Pig Lin Huang thought all he needed was Zhang Mengmeng''s actual face or name to find out who she really was and which organization she belonged to as well as her intention to be with Fatty. However, his dream was crushed when Yang Ling told him that although her identity was fake, her face was real. She was an illegal resident, and she had just registered her fake identity last month. Before that, she never existed. Now, it was impossible to know who she was, which organization she was from, or her intentions as she did not have an identity. After hanging up the phone, Lin Huang took out the black needle that was as thin as a strand of hair. "Now, I shall take some time to drop by the black market to see if I can find out anything about this black needle." On the next morning, Lin Huang met Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng at the place and time that they had promised to meet after his dinner. "Why isn''t your sister here today?" Fatty was surprised and asked Lin Huang. "We''re hiking the Three Lifetime Mountain. She''s been there before and she''s unwilling to hike, so she''s not following today," Lin Huang smiled and explained. "So, we''re hiking" Fatty looked concerned. "The Three Lifetime Mountain is a popular attraction. There''s a pavilion on top of the mountain called the Fate Pavilion. I''m sure you''ve heard of the story about the fate of the three lifetimes. It was said that it comes from this mountain and pavilion." Lin Huang looked at Fatty and smiled. "You mean the mythical story about reincarnation that was passed down since ancient times? But there should be nobody staying in Division7 during that time, so how was it possible that the story came from here?" Fatty was skeptical. "Didn''t anyone tell you that the White Capital of Division7 was built on the ruins of ancient times? The Fate Pavilion was discovered when Division7 was opened by the Union Government more than 300 years ago. They confirmed that the pavilion is the one in the story," Lin Huang explained. "Can you tell me the story?" Zhang Mengmeng suddenly looked at Fatty. "That story" Fatty did not expect Zhang Mengmeng to ask him such a question. "It''s about this medical practitioner who was picking herbs on top of the mountain near the Fate Pavilion. He saved a snake from a beast. Many years later, the man died and was reincarnated into a rich businessman. One day, he passed by the Fate Pavilion and was robbed. He was then rescued by the snake that he had saved in his past life. Many years later, he died and was reincarnated to become a scholar while the snake advanced into a human. The both of them met at the Fate Pavilion and got married. "In ancient times, many believed in the theory of reincarnation. They think that people won''t just disappear after their death. Their souls will go to a place called the Netherworld. Human souls will be cleansed there, and their memories will be wiped away. They will be reborn as a clean slate without any memories," Lin Huang added as he could tell that Zhang Mengmeng had never heard of the story before. "Reincarnation" Zhang Mengmeng mumbled to herself and smiled at Fatty. "I love this story. Let''s go see the pavilion." Lin Huang was observing Zhang Mengmeng as she spoke. She seemed to be much better than yesterday and had more communication with Fatty today. However, he was not sure if she was pretending so that she would not blow her cover. Even the way she looked at Fatty was like a young girl who had fallen head over heels. "Sure, let''s hike that Three Lifetime Mountain!" Fatty could not reject Zhang Mengmeng''s request. The Three Lifetime Mountain was about five kilometers away towards the northwest of Jingyue Lake. The mountain covered more than 200 kilometers and was a great tourist spot in White Capital. Many locals who would jog in the mountain area during summer as there were trees which were cooling. The Three Lifetime Mountain was just one of the attractions in the area. There were many other beautiful sceneries along the way. The people in this world had much stronger physique than people on Earth. Climbing a mountain that was thousands of meters high was not as tough as it would be on Earth. Fatty was very reluctant because he was lazy although, with his bronze-level rank-3 combat strength, it was nothing for him to hike the mountain. There were a total of four trails in the mountain. Two of them consisted of stairs while another two involved rock climbing. Considering Fatty''s condition, Lin Huang decided to take the stairs. Zhang Mengmeng was excited as they were climbing. She could not wait to get to the top to look at the legendary pavilion. "Zhang Mengmeng, why not you go up first? Wait for us up there, and I''ll accompany Fatty up slowly." "That''s right, Mengmeng. You can go up first if you want to see the pavilion. We''ll catch up." Fatty said while he panted, unable to catch up with Zhang Mengmeng''. "Alright then," Zhang Mengmeng looked at Lin Huang, seeming to have something to say. She hesitated and left. "Fatty, what did you and Mengmeng do last night after dinner? Did you guys stay in the hotel for the entire night?" Lin Huang asked when he saw Zhang Mengmeng had walked further away. "We didn''t head back to the hotel directly after dinner but to the shopping plaza instead. We shopped until past 11 and went back to the hotel and slept. I bought quite a few snacks and got a few clothes for Mengmeng," Fatty chuckled. "So, you guys stuck together for the entire night?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "Yeah, from 7:30 p.m. to past 11, we were together. Why? What''s wrong?" "Nothing, I just want to know your progress." Lin Huang smiled. "Ooh It''s a secret!" Lin Huang asked him a couple more questions as they were hiking up. He confirmed that Zhang Mengmeng had been with Fatty the entire night. She did not even go to the toilet. "So, the one who attacked me last night wasn''t Zhang Mengmeng!" Lin Huang concluded. They spent more than three hours to get to the top of the mountain. Zhang Mengmeng had been waiting at the red pavilion for quite some time. There were many people at the pavilion, and Zhang Mengmeng was the center of attraction with many people looking at her. "Hangyi!" Zhang Mengmeng went to them when she saw Fatty. Many thought that Zhang Mengmeng was Lin Huang''s girlfriend and that they were the perfect match. They were shocked to see her wiping Fatty''s sweat for him. "Why would a pretty girl like this be dating such a pig?" A handsome uncle commented with tears in his eyes. It was clear that he recalled a sad moment in his early days. "Hangyi, there''s a fortune teller over there. He saw a few couples, and they said he''s very accurate. Let''s get him to look at ours." Zhang Mengmeng pulled Fatty towards the fortune teller. Lin Huang was puzzled. If Zhang Mengmeng was just pretending, her acting skills were top-notch as she seemed really genuine. He followed them anyway. The fortune teller that Zhang Mengmeng was talking about sat in the east corner of the pavilion. He was skinny and wore a robe with ''fate'' written on his chest. He looked like he was in his sixties with white hair. The unique thing about him was that his eyes that were completely white without any iris or pupils. Zhang Mengmeng brought Fatty to the old man. "Sir, please tell us our fortune." The old man looked at them, stunned. He then looked at each of their palms. Soon, he frowned and started to speak, "The numerology for the both of you is odd" He went silent for a while and looked up at Zhang Mengmeng. "You don''t have a past." The old man looked at Fatty and said, "...and you don''t have a future." "Your fate started when the both of you met the first time, but at the same time, it ended. It''s odd as theoretically, the both of you shouldn''t meet again, but your fate is bringing the both of you together in a strong way. The endpoint of this seems to be non-existent" Before the old man could finish, Zhang Mengmeng''s tears were pouring. "What''s wrong, Mengmeng? Don''t listen to his nonsense" Fatty attempted to pull Zhang Mengmeng away, but she insisted on staying. "Sir, is there any way to save this?" Zhang Mengmeng asked the old man tearfully. "I''m sorry, there''s no way." The old man shook his head, stood up and walked down the mountain. "Sir, here''s your money." Zhang Mengmeng attempted to give the old man money, but she was stopped by Fatty. "It''s okay" The old man waved his hand without turning around, then disappeared slowly from their field of vision. "This old man is just jealous of us and attempted to break us up! If he weren''t an old man, I would have definitely beat him up!" Fatty was furious. "Alright, don''t be mad." Lin Huang patted Fatty''s shoulder. "Mengmeng, don''t bother yourself with what the old man said, okay? He was just rambling. Don''t take it seriously." Zhang Mengmeng nodded while still crying. Seeing Zhang Mengmeng hugging Fatty, Lin Huang was skeptical of his judgment. 399 I’ll Wait For You In The Eastern Suburbs Zhang Mengmeng had been upset ever since the fortune teller encounter. Fatty did not have the mood to look at the attractions anymore as he was trying to cheer Zhang Mengmeng up again. Lin Huang was watching without saying a word. He had no clue after listening to the ridiculous notion that the fortune teller had said. However, Zhang Mengmeng''s sobbing seemed real, and it did not look like she was acting. Perhaps, what the fortune teller said made her realize something that she was not aware of. "Lin Huang, I think I''ll bring Mengmeng back to the hotel. Sorry to trouble you to come all the way here." Fatty looked at Lin Huang with guilt. "It''s alright. It''s almost noon now. Let''s take the elevator. I''ll bring you guys for lunch and take you back to the hotel." Lin Huang patted Fatty''s shoulder. "I''ll bring you guys around again tomorrow when the both of you feel better. You can take a few days'' rest if you want." "Thanks!" The elevator to descend the mountain was located not far from the Ladder Mountain. There was a three-kilometer long hanging bridge connecting it with the Three Life Mountain. As they crossed the bridge, they took the elevator from Ladder Mountain all the way to the bottom of the mountain. After bidding farewell to Lin Huang, Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng left with a monster car. Lin Huang then summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk and headed to the black market. In the small, dark room, the plump old man looked at Lin Huang. "You again, do you have a new clue this time?" Lin Huang took out the black needle and placed it on the table. The old man pushed his glasses higher up on his nose and looked at it. He then put on a pair of white gloves and picked up the thin needle. After some observation, he looked at Lin Huang again. "Now, I''m curious about how you managed to survive this attack?" "You know where does this weapon come from?" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up. "The information about this black needle might not be useful to you, and it''s not cheap." The old man stared at him. "Are you sure you want it?" "How much is it?" Lin Huang asked. "30,000 Life Crystals!" "Sure," Lin Huang replied without thinking twice. The old man was surprised by Lin Huang''s decision as 30,000 Life Crystals could get a solid grade-5 relic. Given that he had reminded Lin Huang that the piece of information might not be useful for him, Lin Huang still decided to accept the price that he presented. The old man did not say anything while taking out the trading chip. Lin Huang scanned it and transferred the money immediately. Soon, a notification popped up, showing that the transfer was successful, then the old man retrieved the chip from Lin Huang. "Wait!" The old man put down the black needle, removed his gloves and started working on something on the Heart Network. One to two minutes later, he took out a black information chip and downloaded the information that he gathered. He then passed the chip to Lin Huang. Lin Huang scanned and copied the information immediately. Within seconds, all the information that the old man provided was downloaded into Lin Huang''s network storage space. Lin Huang frowned as he flipped through the information. Soon, he switched off the pages on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and shook his head. "Seems like I''m in a great loss for this trade" "I did remind you." The old man smiled after taking off his single-lens glass. "I thought there might be something slightly useful Never mind." Lin Huang waved his hand and left. After leaving the black market, he ate something at a small restaurant next to the Martial Hunter College. He contacted Tyrant with his mind to ask him about Lin Xin. After making sure that Lin Xin was safe, he headed straight to the library. In the library cubicle, Lin Huang was browsing for the information that the old man had provided. The black needle appeared the first time more than 200 years ago. It was a custom-made weapon that was often used by a female assassin named Poison Sting. The assassin was an immortal-level who was popular among the dark organization with her secretive way of killing. However, around 170 years ago, Poison Sting accepted a deal to kill a particular family member. After assassinating the person, the family took revenge on her. Half a year later, Poison Sting disappeared and had never appeared for the next 170 years. Nobody knew if she had been killed or if she was hiding. Lin Huang frowned after reading all the documents. The information provided by the black market was basically about Poison Sting. However, he knew very well that it was impossible that Poison Sting had attacked him. If she was already an immortal-level 200 years ago, she could be above imperial-level now if she was still alive. "Could it be Poison Sting''s apprentice?" That was the only possibility that Lin Huang could think of. However, according to the documents, Poison Sting had never appeared for more than 170 years. It never mentioned if she had an apprentice, so that was the end of his clue. Lin Huang was overwhelmed with information as he read more. Before contacting Yang Ling, his mind was clear, and he was sure that Zhang Mengmeng had attacked him although he had no idea why she would do that. However, since Yang Ling''s explanation on Zhang Mengmeng, her odd behavior, and now this information about Poison Sting, Lin Huang felt like he was in a blur. It was impossible for him to find out the truth. Since he could not gather his thoughts, he shook his head and put his thoughts aside. "Never mind, I shall continue to read since I''ve already wasted half a day." Lin Huang started reading as soon as his Emperor''s Heart Ring was connected to the librarian''s tentacle. Hours passed, and it was soon six in the evening. Lin Huang left the library, had dinner and headed straight to the training room. After a couple of hours of training, sweat dripped from his body. The Emperor''s Heart Ring that he wore on his left middle finger rang when it was around 10.30 p.m. It was Fatty who called, and Lin Huang picked up immediately. He was shocked as soon as the video call was connected. Both Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng were in a dim room and locked up with a black chain. Although it was dark, Lin Huang could see that Fatty''s face was beaten up and there was blood flowing from the side of his lips. On the other hand, Zheng Mengmeng had a long, bloody wound on her face. "Fatty! Mengmeng!" Lin Huang shouted to the both of them as he frowned. "You''re Lin Huang, am I right? You have such a loyal friend here. If I didn''t threaten him with his girlfriend, he wouldn''t let me call you" A person in a black robe appeared from the dark. There was a black mask on its face which completely covered everything that could be recognized. Its voice was also modified, so nobody could tell its gender. "What do you want?" Lin Huang could recognize that it was the black robe person who had attacked him last night. "Would you like to save your friend?" The black robe person smirked. "I''ll wait for you in the eastern suburbs" 400 The Identity Of The Black-Robed Person "Don''t turn off the video. You must come alone. Don''t let anybody know. Also, you only have two hours" The black-robed person disappeared into the dark. It did not say more, but Lin Huang knew very clearly that Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng would die if he did not get to the location within two hours. Lin Huang managed to find the location of the video as it was still running. However, whatever he was doing, the other side was watching. He put away his sword, did a quick search on his Emperor''s Heart Ring signal and soon, he found Fatty''s Emperor''s Heart Ring''s location. "Lin Huang, don''t come" Fatty tried his best to look at the camera. He braced the pain and shook his head slightly. Tears streamed down his swollen face. Meanwhile, Zhang Mengmeng stared blankly at the ground, and she was crying. The ten-centimeter long gash on the left side of her face was still bleeding. She seemed to be in complete shock. "Don''t worry. I''m coming for you guys." Lin Huang ran out of the training room and summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk. The Martian Hunter College was located in the center zone of the White Capital while the eastern suburb was 2,000 kilometers away. Fatty''s coordinates showed a straight-line distance of 2,278 kilometers. Before the Viridescent Thunderhawk leveled-up, it was impossible for it to reach there in two hours, but it could now do it. Lin Huang was coming up with a plan as he was riding on the Viridescent Thunderhawk. Since the black-robed person had caught Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng, and now invited him over, it was clear that the person had set up a trap and was waiting for him to fall into it. The encounter earlier gave Lin Huang an idea of its ability. The person should be a white flame-level, almost a crimson flame-level but not yet a blue flame. What it was good at was sneak attacks, not close-distance combat. Under such a situation, it was possible that it had set up everything in the environment it could control. The black-robed person might set some traps in the house that contained Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng. However, Lin Huang must step into the dim room to save the both of them. Now, that was not a scheme anymore but a living graveyard. Lin Huang would have to jump into the trap himself even though he knew it was a setup. He knew very well that Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng would die if he did not do that. From what the black-robed person had done, not only would the both of them die, they would also die in agony. One and a half hours later, Lin Huang, who was riding on the Viridescent Thunderhawk, saw the building at the coordinates. It was a warehouse. The Viridescent Thunderhawk circled mid-air and landed near the entrance quickly. Standing a couple of meters at the entrance, Lin Huang recalled the Viridescent Thunderhawk. Just as he recalled it, a layer of semi-transparent white shield covered the entire warehouse and hundreds of meters around it, including Lin Huang. Lin Huang was shocked by that. He looked up, but did not feel anything odd happening to his body. "This layer of shield serves as a greeting. There''s nothing to worry about. It just serves as a seal to the space and to disable you from summoning your monsters," the black-robed person who could not be recognized said in the video. "You can choose to leave without your friends. It''s not too late" Lin Huang frowned and contacted Xiao Hei secretly. "Can I use my Monster Cards when the space is sealed?" "The sealing only applies to the summoning space. It doesn''t work on Monster Cards." Lin Huang was relieved to hear Xiao Hei''s answer. He took out his sword and opened the warehouse door. Without any confrontation, he walked into the warehouse. As it was night time, the warehouse had no lights and was dark. However, Lin Huang''s vision was not affected as he looked around. The warehouse was still in use as they were many goods stacked around on trays in various areas. Lin Huang trod slowly. Although he used his Micro Territory which covered the area, he was still careful. Despite his light footsteps, in the quiet warehouse, they echoed. As he walked hundreds of meters straight ahead, he noticed that he was close to the given coordinates, so he slowed down. Suddenly, he turned left as he arrived at a crossroads with a stack of goods. The moonlight shone through the window and onto the black chains that were binding Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng. The two black chains extended from the ceiling and clinched onto their backs. They were suspended 20 centimeters from the ground. "Fatty" Lin Huang switched off the video and attempted to hack off the chains with his sword. "I didn''t expect you to have the guts to come here." A shadow appeared from behind Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng. It was the black-robed person. "Who are you?" Lin Huang had no idea who that person was at all. "Do you remember killing a person on the demonic crystal spaceship last July? I''m his daughter" The person switched off the voice modifier, sounding very much like a young girl now. "Last July?" Lin Huang frowned, finally recalling after some thinking. "You mean that bastard?!" "Don''t you dare insult my dad!" The girl took off her hoodie and black mask, revealing a pretty face. "Do you remember me, Lin Huang?" The young girl with two ponytails glared at Lin Huang with undeniable hatred. "You are Lily!" Of course, Lin Huang remembered who she was. The young girl with two ponytails standing in front of him was the girl who had been brainwashed by Mr. Wei. When he had killed Mr. Wei, she had witnessed everything as she stood nearby. However, he remembered that the girl left the spaceship halfway and was sent for psychotherapy. He did not expect her to come back for revenge. This girl had only taken a year to level up from an ordinary person to a holy fire-level at such a mind-boggling speed. "Good that you remember. I was worried that you might forget! If that had been the case, I would have to waste my time making you remember, but now, I can kill you straight away. My pain and hatred will end after I kill you!" Lily shouted at Lin Huang at the top of her lungs. 401 Witch Lily''s scream echoed in the dark warehouse. Before the echo ended, she disappeared from their vision. Next, she appeared behind Lin Huang like a ghost. Under the black robe, her inhuman black claws reached out towards his neck with black mist on them. Her phantom movement was beyond what Lin Huang''s eyes could capture. However, with his Micro Territory that was active at all times, nothing could escape him within a radius of a hundred meters, including Lily''s peculiar movement. Sensing her appearance behind him, Lin Huang did not escape, but he stretched out his grade-5 sword relic, Dragon Slayer, to his back. Before the golden glow left the sword, the sword sliced through the air cleanly. Bang! As the sword and the claws collided, a loud bang was heard. With the help of the force, Lin Huang dashed towards Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng. Lily backed off and disappeared into the dark again. As Lin Huang was closer to Fatty, he was ready to chop off the black chain that was restraining Fatty with his sword. Suddenly, a shadow appeared next to Fatty. Black needles fired like bullets at Lin Huang faster than the speed of sound. He stopped moving while slashing the sword maniacally in the air like it was a giant shield blocking all the black needles. Suddenly, he felt danger coming from behind. He activated his Cloud Steps and Seraphic Speed, then stepped a hundred meters away and saw the black shadow disappear. "What was that?" Lin Huang was puzzled. At that moment, he could sense danger coming from his back again. He stepped away immediately. Under the bright moonlight, he turned around and saw a shadow disappear from where he stood again. "A shadow?!" Lin Huang could tell it was a shadow. Although he had no idea what the shadow was doing, the sense of danger came from it. Lin Huang trusted his instincts. "Lin Huang, the moment you stepped into this warehouse today, there''s no way you''ll leave alive. Give up all your useless struggles now," Lily''s voice echoed. "Lily, if you had gone for the psychotherapy sessions last year, perhaps you''d have been living like a normal kid just like everybody else now. Mr. Wei''s love wasn''t real. It was an odd feeling that you have towards him after his brainwashing. He never loved you. You were a toy to him and you could''ve been thrown away anytime he wanted. You know very well who he really was. His death is a release for you" Lin Huang shouted. "So, you thought my dad is dead! He''s not dead. He was saved by the Grandmistress! She sent me to Phoenix Island for training Phoenix Island is like hell Hahaha" Lily sounded like a lunatic, her laugh scaring Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang got some information from what she said. "Mr. Wei didn''t die? How is that possible!? There was a hole in his head, so how did he manage to survive?" "An ordinary person like you could never imagine Grandmistress''s special ways! Dad will be revived two years later," Lily sounded like she was talking to herself. Lin Huang frowned as he listened to Lily''s crazy talk but he could tell that what she said was true. He could not imagine what kind of person the so-called Grandmistress was. "The Grandmistress that you''re talking about, who is she?" Lin Huang asked. "Grandmistress is dad''s mother. She''s the most incredible woman in the entire world." Lily sounded insane. Now, Lin Huang finally found out that Mr. Wei had a powerful background. He thought it was odd that the Grandmistress did not get anybody to assassinate him for the past one year. Could Lily be here to fulfill some odd fetish? Lin Huang was half right; training Lily to get revenge was the Grandmistress''s fetish. She did send assassins on Lin Huang''s tail, but the assassins were always stopped by the Leng family. "My dad asked me to kill you and keep your dead body in the freezer. By then, Grandmistress will extract your soul to feed the worms. Two years later, when dad is revived, he''ll slice your body into pieces as you watch and use different ways to cook you every day. When your body is all eaten, he will chop off your head and make it into a spittoon and get Grandmistress to put your consciousness into the spittoon" "It seems like killing that pervert didn''t teach him a lesson. Next time when I see him, I''ll wipe away his soul and consciousness so that he won''t be able to live ever again." Lin Huang was furious. "And that Grandmistress? I shall chop off her head one day," Lin Huang added. "Too bad you won''t be able to survive until that day," Lily mocked and attacked again. Three giant shadows dashed towards Lin Huang by sliding on the ground. "It''s redundant to play shadows with me!" Lin Huang shouted, "Come out, Witch!" A human-form monster with a horn on its head appeared in front of Lin Huang. The monster was a female with a pliant body. It was one of the fiend Monster Cards that Lin Huang had obtained the last time. "Monster Card "Rarity: Epic "Monster Name: Witch "Type of Monster: Fiend (Beginner) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-level "Skill 1: Magic of Gu "Skill 2: Poison Magic "Skill 3: Witchcraft "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Trainable" Lin Huang had seen the skills description before. The Witch had the most secular skills. She only had three skills that were of different abilities. For Magic of Gu, she had mastered tens of worms with different functions. Some could control human minds from parasites, some could store venom, while some were cannibal worms that could devour an adult''s flesh to his skeleton within seconds Meanwhile, Witchcraft included some soul-type attack, defense, and psychic abilities. It included some peculiar abilities such as shadow control, plant control and even summoning monsters from another dimension. As Lin Huang had seen the Witch controlling shadows before, he decided to get her to fight Lily. Seeing the three shadows that were coming, the Witch stomped hard, and a giant fiend-form shadow grew under the moonlight. 402 Zhang Mengmeng’s Identity The fiend shadow that the Witch created appeared within seconds. The three shadows that Lily was controlling sensed something was wrong, so they attempted to go around it to get to Lin Huang. However, the fiend shadow entered Lin Huang''s own shadow at the speed of light before the three shadows could even move. He was speechless as he watched his shadow became a gigantic fiend shadow. As the shadows were fighting, he had no idea how he could help. He did not have any idea what would happen to him if he touched Lily''s shadow. The fight among the shadows on the ground was intense; it was like an intriguing shadow play. The shadows collided with each other and separated so fast that Lin Huang could only grasp a little bit of what was going on. The fiend shadow was certainly much stronger than the three shadows. Although it was surrounded by the three shadows, it was winning. It stood on its spot, barely moving, while the other three were constantly in motion. They backed off once they were attacked, not daring to fight the fiend shadow face-to-face. The battle lasted for more than a minute, and it became stagnant. Just when a shadow was attacking, the fiend shadow retaliated by transforming one of its shadow hands into a massive mouth and snapped at the shadow. The other two shadows wanted to help, but they were chased away by the other enormous hand. The shadow that was captured was whimpering like a wounded beast. However, it was soon swallowed, and there was complete silence. After settling the first shadow, the fiend shadow seemed to grow a few times bigger. It turned around and looked at the other two shadows. It extended its claws and transformed them into two thick chains, then dashed towards the two shadows. Under the moonlight, the two shadows were running for their lives. Soon, one of them was captured by the chain. It struggled hard, but its efforts were redundant. As soon as the fiend shadow pulled the chain, it captured the shadow with its claws and consumed it. Knowing that it could not escape, the last shadow left the ground and transformed into a thick, black mist. Soon, it became Lily. Lin Huang was surprised to see that as he did not expect any of the shadows to be Lily herself. As soon as she turned into a human again, Lily screamed at Lin Huang while she attempted to escape, "How could this happen? I have already sealed the space! You shouldn''t be able to summon your monsters!" "Nothing is impossible. Since I couldn''t summon my monsters, it''s obvious that I have my own way of making it happen." Lin Huang did not explain much. Lily, who was escaping, stared deadly at Lin Huang, then turned around and dashed towards Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng. "Since I can''t kill you, even if I die, I must kill these two!" "Witch, kill her!" Lin Huang frowned and instructed. The warehouse became even dimmer as Lin Huang''s shadow changed back to normal. He had no idea when the fiend shadow had left his shadow and where it had gone to. All the dark corners were alive. It looked like the entire warehouse had become the fiend shadow''s playground. Any spots with shadows were transformed into chains. They were like tentacles that grew and sped towards Lily as if they had lost their minds. No matter where she was running to, the chains would follow her. They even left the ground and became individual feelers. Suddenly, Lin Huang noticed that Lily had no shadow! Soon, she was surrounded by the black chains that were coming from everywhere. As the first chain curled up her ankle, the rest followed like maggots. As he watched Lily groaned in the chain hold, Lin Huang held his head down and sighed, "I hope you''ll be reborn into a better family in your next life." She had gone through a year of touch training and exhausted her talent, but all she could manage was holy fire-level and at the most, white flame-level. Although Lin Huang was restricted, the Witch was a blue flame level after all. Moreover, it was a fiend with many odd abilities, so even a gold flame-level might not defeat it. Lily was just an appetizer to it, and it could defeat her easily. As the black chains faded and Lily disappeared in the black robe, Lin Huang turned around and ran towards Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng. The both of them were hung 20 centimeters from the ground. Zhang Mengmeng was still staring blankly while Fatty looked up to Lin Huang slowly as he was getting closer. "That black-robed person" "She''s here for me. I''m so sorry to drag the both of you into it But she''s dead now. I''ll get you out of this place." Lin Huang was guilty as Fatty was out of breath and there was a wound on Zhang Mengmeng''s face. If not for him, Lily would not have captured the both of them. Lin Huang sliced away the hooks on their backs with his sword, and the both of them landed on the ground. Zhang Mengmeng seemed to only snap out of it and starting crying. "Mengmeng" Fatty looked at Zhang Mengmeng in concern. "Don''t worry. I''ll break you free now." Lin Huang sliced the chains that were binding their bodies. "Mengmeng, are you alright?" Ignoring his pain, Fatty attempted to help Zhang Mengmeng up, but his pain restricted him. "Alright, you should rest since you''re in pain. Let me do it." Lin Huang shook his head and held Zhang Mengmeng''s arms in an attempt to help her up. Suddenly, Zhang Mengmeng looked up and stabbed Lin Huang''s stomach with a blade. "Die, Lin Huang!" "You" There was no way Lin Huang could avoid the attack as it was too close, and he did not see that coming. "Mengmeng, what are you doing?!" Fatty was shocked. "Hangyi, we can only be together if he''s dead." Zhang Mengmeng did not look as shy as she had been anymore. "Who are you?" Lin Huang pressed on his wound and backed off meters away. Blood was flowing freely from the stab wound. "I''m the real Lily. The one that you killed just now was just a crazy personality split of me that I sealed in one of my shows Everything was planned by me, not by her," Zhang Mengmeng finally revealed who she really was. "I thought she could kill you so that Hangyi won''t see me doing this. Too bad, that crazy lady is useless" 403 Let’s Break Up! As Lin Huang backed off, Zhang Mengmeng did not pursue him and proceeded to say with a smirk, "There''s no need to struggle, Lin Huang. My blade is coated with venom from a Fiendish Pufferfish, and there''s no antidote in the entire world. You only have one hour to live." The Fiendish Pufferfish was a poisonous monster from the abyss, and a drop of its venom could kill a holy fire-level. Such venom could infect one''s life directly. It looked like a drop of ink dripped into a glass of clear water and could affect the person''s Life Power. "Mengmeng, why would you do that?" Fatty did not expect Zhang Mengmeng to attack Lin Huang. He was still confused by what was happening. "Hangyi, Grandmistress will kill me if I don''t finish Lin Huang. She''s trained me for a year and given me a month to accomplish this assassination. If I fail this mission, no matter which part of the world that I run to, she''ll be able to find me. Grandmistress''s way isn''t what you can ever imagine it to be." Zhang Mengmeng looked like she respected this Grandmistress very much as she spoke of her. "The Lily that I recall doesn''t look like this. Who are you really?!" Yang Ling had confirmed Zhang Mengmeng''s face was real. However, it was odd that she said she was the Lily that he knew a year ago. "It''s all your fault!" Zhang Mengmeng glared deadly at Lin Huang. "If not for you, I wouldn''t have been with Grandmistress and be sent to Phoenix Island which was hell. On the island, the psycho lady Poison Sting would use different ways to torture me every day. She called that training, but I was already tortured to death on the 12th day that I arrived on the island. The lady kept my soul and consciousness and got Grandmistress to send a human android to the island. She then inserted my soul and consciousness into the android, which is what you''re looking at right now. Since then, she tortured me more and more each day, which was also how I managed to level-up from an ordinary person to holy fire-level. I managed to finish the training a month before the expected time. "However, such psychotic training put me through many meltdowns. The lunatic that you killed just now was my split personality. Although she was a lunatic, I should thank her because if not for her, I wouldn''t have been able to complete the 11 months of training. "After the training was completed, I returned to Division7 looking everywhere for Lin Huang, but there''s nothing much. I went to Wulin Town, but your house has been vacant for a very long time. I even looked for your sister Lin Xin. However, it seemed like she disappeared at the end of last year. I then found out that you''re close to Hangyi, that''s why I got closer to him so that I could get to you" Zhang Mengmeng looked at Fatty after she said that. "So, you''ve never loved me? Your intention of being with me is to kill Lin Huang?!" Fatty''s tears flowed from his swollen eyes. "Ahh, that''s why there was no response from the Love Rock because you''ve never loved me. Not even a tiny bit, I''ve been living a lie!" "Hangyi, I admit that I approached you with intentions to use you, but I truly fell in love with you later on Since I was young, nobody has ever treated me like how you do. You''re the only person who treats me sincerely, not like the rest of them who either use me or treat me as a toy. I love it when I''m with you. As long as I''m with you, I feel safe even if you don''t say or do anything. As for the Love Rock that had no response" Zhang Mengmeng was choking back tears as she went on. "Because you''re dead" "What?" Fatty was shocked to hear what Zhang Mengmeng said. "I actually wanted to kill you when we first met at the assessment as well as engulf your soul and consciousness. I wanted to extract everything about Lin Huang from that." Zhang Mengmeng took a deep breath and told the truth. "But after browsing your memories, I found out that you had no idea where Lin Huang was. Helpless, I used the way that Grandmistress taught me and extracted your consciousness and sealed part of your soul into your body to ''revive'' you as well as wipe away the part of your memory of being dead." "In reality, you''re dead and your soul no longer exists. Your consciousness looks like it exists, but it''s just a part of mine" "Since I ''revived'' you, I approached you so that I could retrieve Lin Huang''s location from you. However, after spending time with you for a few days, I realized that I enjoyed being loved by you. It''s a feeling that I have never experienced before. Since then, I regretted killing you. I came up with many plans and looked up many documents on how to revive you. However, your soul is a unique thing. As soon as it dies, it can''t be revived or reversed." "The Love Rock can sense the souls of both people. It will only light up for souls who are connected. You don''t have a soul, so our palms didn''t light up" Not only was Fatty shocked at what Zhang Mengmeng said, even Lin Huang, who was not far away, was dumbfounded. "But I thought about it. It doesn''t matter if you''re alive or not. As long as I keep inserting your soul for you, you can maintain what you are now and we can be together forever." Zhang Mengmeng smiled at Fatty. "If you had kept this as a secret, I would have chosen to believe you. But now How am I supposed to believe you?" Fatty looked up while tears kept pouring down his face. "After I kill Lin Huang and inform Grandmistress, I''ll remove this part of your memory. You won''t remember it was me who killed Lin Huang and you won''t remember whatever I''m saying now. We can still live happily ever after. I can even accompany you to Lin Huang''s funeral" "Enough! Everything isn''t real!" Fatty stopped Zhang Mengmeng from saying any further "Zhang Mengmeng, if you really love me, stop creating illusions to trick me and stop lying to yourself. Let me go. I would rather be dead than live in your illusion." "You''re abandoning me?" Zhang Mengmeng looked at Fatty with tears in her eyes. "If that''s what you think then sure, I don''t want to be with you anymore. Let''s break up!" Fatty looked into Zhang Mengmeng''s eyes. "How dare you?!" Zhang Mengmeng was furious as she strangled Fatty''s neck and dangled him in the air. "I never thought you would be like every other man who treats me like a toy and throw me away when you don''t need me anymore If that''s the case, I shall kill you too!" "Fatty!" As Lin Huang shouted his name in warning, the Witch came to his rescue. Fatty, who was in Zhang Mengmeng''s grasp, turned into a scarecrow. The Witch appeared in front of Zhang Mengmeng and slapped her on the chest. She flew backwards from the blow 404 In My Next Life, I Want to Be Your Wife "Lin Huang, if you kill me, he''ll die too! His consciousness comes from mine. If my consciousness disappears, his will too." Zhang Mengmeng spat blood as she was struck on the warehouse wall by the Witch. As she had made the wall impenetrable to prevent Lin Huang from escaping, she would have gone through the wall as a result of the Witch''s attack if she had not. "Since you''re only left with an hour to live, why not you allow Hangyi and I to leave? Give Hangyi to me. As long as I remove this part of his memory, he''ll love me like he always does. As long as I live, so will he." Zhang Mengmeng landed on the ground slowly. Her two ponytails were loose. Her messy hair and her peculiar facial expression made her looked like a ghost under the moonlight. "You''re still so stubborn!" Lin Huang sympathized with her at first, but now he was irritated. He crushed the Healing Card that was in his hand, and the blade that had stabbed his stomach was pushed out of his body slowly. As that happened, a small capful of purple liquid came out together with the blade. It was the Fiendish Pufferfish''s venom. As soon as the venom was excreted, his wound started to heal at a pace that could be seen with the naked eye. Suddenly, the Witch appeared in front of Lin Huang and looked desperately at the venom. "Take it if you want it." Lin Huang nodded to her. The Witch opened her mouth and swallowed the purple liquid. It only took a moment for Lin Huang''s body to recover to his peak performance after the venom left his body. "What just happened? How is this possible!? There''s no antidote to the Fiendish Pufferfish''s venom! And how did you manage to heal yourself so quickly?!" Zhang Mengmeng was shocked by what she was witnessing. She shook her head vigorously, unable to accept what she was seeing. It had taken her so long to plan out everything, so she was sure that Lin Huang would definitely die from the Fiendish Pufferfish''s venom as there was no antidote to it. However, she did not expect him to be able to get rid of the venom just like that. All her efforts had gone to waste. "Mengmeng, stop dwelling on your mistakes." Seeing that Lin Huang had recovered, Fatty advised Zhang Mengmeng to move on. He hoped that Zhang Mengmeng could escape. Perhaps, Lin Huang would not kill her for the sake of Fatty. However, if Zhang Mengmeng insisted on staying, Lin Huang would not let her go just like that. "Dwell on my own mistakes? Hangyi, there''s no turning back for me. I have wasted too much time. I don''t have much time to complete the mission. I''m only left with less than ten days. If I don''t kill Lin Huang, Grandmistress won''t let me go." Zhang Mengmeng behaved like a lunatic as she cried and laughed at the same time. "I can only live if I kill him, then we can be together!" Zhang Mengmeng said and raced towards Lin Huang. "I''m sorry, Fatty," Lin Huang apologized, then he turned around and nodded to the Witch. The Witch then stood in front of Lin Huang and Fatty. As she opened both her hands wide, countless of black worms flew towards Zhang Mengmeng. These worms were called Lifesiphon Worms. They were the size of an adult thumb. They were completely black, and they were fed by the Life Power of various creatures. Their mouths were like scissors which could cut open the skin of any creatures easily and enter their bodies. These worms usually lived in colonies of tens of thousands. Even an immortal-level would not want to offend them. Zhang Mengmeng recognized the worms. Although she was delirious, she decided to run away from the worms. As the worms chased after her, she ran helter-skelter and shot daggers at Lin Huang. She knew she could not fight the Witch. Although she did not see how exactly the Witch had killed Lily in the black robe earlier, she could tell how dangerous it was from the energy wave that had been created when they were fighting. The Witch took a very short time to kill Lily and it was obvious that the Witch was much more powerful. Just like Lily who had lost her mind, Zhang Mengmeng knew very well that her ability was the same. It was impossible to defeat the Witch. She would have to kill Lin Huang by avoiding the Witch. As she ran, Zhang Mengmeng approached Lin Huang''s direction. At the same time, she threw black needles, targeting at Lin Huang, completely ignoring the Witch. Lin Huang slashed his sword in the air and blocked all of the black needles that got in his way. Meanwhile, as Zhang Mengmeng was pulled a distance away, her body split into two. Soon, from two of her, there were four, then eight She looked like a cell that was going through mitosis. In less than a second, there were 32 Zhang Mengmengs now. The Witch could not tell which was the real one. She extended her palm into the air, and countless vines grew out of her palm. She was like a giant tentacle monster as the monstrous tentacles that were tens of meters long dashed towards Zhang Mengmeng. Even Lin Huang could not tell which was the real Zhang Mengmeng after activating his ocular skill. Suddenly, he felt a shadow encroach into his Micro Territory, rushing towards him. He did not even turn around but just stabbed his sword backward. The Star Dome was powerful. There was a tearing sound in the air as well as white stripes that appeared as his sword collided with the shadow. Following a loud bang, Zhang Mengmeng groaned while the shadow came back to her. "How is that possible?! Even Poison Sting couldn''t tell which is my real body!" Zhang Mengmeng spat blood out again. She did not see Lin Huang''s sword coming. Although she managed to escape from death, she was badly injured in the intense collision. Without Lin Huang saying a word, the Witch appeared behind Zhang Mengmeng like a ghost. It was too late when she realized that. The Witch''s fingers were like venomous snakes preying on their food as they pierced Zhang Mengmeng''s back. The entire hand had come out through Zhang Mengmeng''s chest An immense pain bloomed from her chest. Zhang Mengmeng looked down and saw the bloody hand reaching out from the front of her body. The long nails were like beast''s claws and she finally knew what had happened as she looked at the inhuman limb. The Witch slowly retracted her hand, and Zhang Mengmeng seemed to lose all her strength as she fell to the ground. Tears were pouring while she tried her very best to look at Fatty''s direction. "Hangyi, I''m sorry" "Mengmeng!" Fatty struggled his way to Zhang Mengmeng and held her in his arms. Lin Huang wanted to stop him. However, he just could not do it while his hand hung in the air. "I''m sorry. The thing I regret the most in this life would be killing you. How great would it be if I didn''t kill you that day" Zhang Mengmeng touched Fatty''s swollen face. "Mengmeng, I don''t blame you. The days that I spent with you were the happiest days of my life." Fatty''s tears were streaming down uncontrollably. "Me too. I''m happy whenever I''m with you. You give me a sense of security Perhaps, that''s what real happiness feels like." Zhang Mengmeng was getting weaker and it became hard for her even to speak. "I would love to be your bride" "I''ve thought of marrying you and having kids. We would see our kids grow up while our heads turn white" Fatty laid his face on Zhang Mengmeng''s forehead and said softly. "Hangyi, is reincarnation real in this world?" Zhang Mengmeng asked feebly. "If it''s real, I would like to see you again in my next life Promise me you''ll meet me on the Three Lifetime Mountain Okay?" "Okay!" Fatty nodded firmly. "You''re so fat. I''ll definitely recognize you Don''t you dare not recognize me" Zhang Mengmeng smiled. "How can I not recognize you? The most beautiful one among the crowd has to be you." Fatty hugged Zhang Mengmeng hard while shaking and crying uncontrollably. "It''s a promise then In my next life, I''ll be your bride" "Mmm!" Fatty could not speak anymore. Soon, Zhang Mengmeng''s hand that was touching Fatty''s fell away limply. She was dead, but her face was calm like she had never been before with a light smile. "Mengmeng!" Fatty screamed from the top of his lungs. 405 I Have No Regrets in This Life Lin Huang watched silently as Fatty cried in devastation with Zhang Mengmeng in his arms. Zhang Mengmeng''s consciousness was now dead, and because Fatty was part of her consciousness, his would die very soon too. "Xiao Hei, will the Healing Card work on Fatty?" Although he knew the answer, Lin Huang asked anyway. "The Healing Card only works on living humans but he''s already dead. If one''s soul or consciousness are partially damaged, the Healing Card could still be used as a remedy, but the problem is, his soul has been dead since the beginning. The Healing Card can''t create another soul of a person as there''s only one such thing." "How long does he still have?" Lin Huang asked. "At the most, half an hour. The main consciousness has died, and what he has is just a part of it, so dying is just a matter of time." Lin Huang was solemn. Fatty was one of the first friends that he made since he traveled to this world. He did not expect that killing a bastard a year ago would involve Fatty, who was innocent, and as a consequence, his life was sacrificed. As Fatty cried for more than 20 minutes, he started to realize that there was something going on in his body. He felt weak and tired, and he wanted to sleep. "Lin Huang" He called out to Lin Huang in panic. Lin Huang appeared in front of him immediately and held his shaking body steady. "I feel so tired. Am I dying?" Fatty managed a frail smile. Lin Huang did not say anything. Observing his response, Fatty knew that he did not have much time left. "Lin Huang, you''re my best friend. I have a favor to ask" "Please tell me. Anything for you." Lin Huang nodded. Fatty worked on his Emperor''s Heart Ring''s contact page. "I have sent you two sets of recipes. One is Dad''s and another is mine. I hope you can bring back my dad''s recipe to my family. Give it to my grandmother. He was the only real chef in our family, and he gave me the recipe, so you must bring back the recipe. As for my recipe, it''s not a complete one. I have noted down many recipes that I imagined cooking. I hope that you can give this to a real Food Hunter. Let him or her make my recipes happen" "Sure, I will find the best Food Hunter and get him to make all the recipes come true!" Lin Huang smiled and nodded confidently. "Also, Ke Lai Hotel The hotel was my dad''s hard work but now that my dad is not around and I''m leaving soon, my family might sell the hotel. I hope you can purchase the hotel and keep the business going. The revenue of the hotel is good so that you won''t lose money. Keep a copy of my dad''s recipe, hire a good chef to learn all his signature food and keep the Yin family''s recipe going. If possible, I hope my recipes will appear in the hotel too" "I''ll take care of Ke Lai Hotel for you." "Don''t be sad for me. Although I''ve only lived for 17 years, I''m happy that I did. My grandmother said fate determines how long a person could live. I had a great dad and a grandmother who loves me. Also, I met the love of my life and she loved me too I have no regrets in this life" Fatty smiled. He got weaker and eventually, he passed away. "Fatty" Lin Huang had tears surging in his eyes. He had seen many deaths in this world but he had had no feelings at all. It was his first time seeing a good friend die. A friend who was a glutton, who loved meat. The kind and sincere Fatty was dead. He put Fatty''s body into his storage space. Just when he wanted to store Zhang Mengmeng''s body, there was an odd energy wave that came out of her body. Lin Huang backed off immediately as he sensed intense danger. Just as he backed off, Zhang Mengmeng''s body expanded like a balloon. Bang! It only took a moment for her body to expand to its maximum before exploding. A raw spark flew up and the intense explosion obliterated the entire warehouse. Lin Huang was thrown down in the wave. The warehouse turned into ruins within seconds. The explosion extended 10 kilometers away and the blast was heard even further away. Most of the residents on the east side of the White Capital heard it. Some who were closer saw the bright spark. Fortunately, the warehouse was located at the edge of the eastern suburb and it was secluded. Besides some other warehouses with goods, there was no residential area nearby, so there was no casualty. The explosion happened out of nowhere. Luckily, Lin Huang was fast enough to activate the Dark Shield. Not only that, the Witch created a black spherical defense layer that covered the outside of the Dark Shield. Under the double protection, Lin Huang and the Witch were unhurt. As soon as the explosive was over, Lin Huang removed the defense layer to see the entire place covered in smoke. Zhang Mengmeng''s body that was not far away had completely disappeared. "That must have been a self-destruction programme by an android. It only exploded after Fatty died. Does that mean Zhang Mengmeng''s consciousness is completely finished now?" Lin Huang guessed. "That''s great. Now, I don''t have to wipe away the evidence." He looked around to make sure he did not leave any trails. He then summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk and left. A while after he left, a couple of shadows ran towards the warehouse. They were the powerful humans around who were puzzled by the wreckage, but they left after discovering nothing around the site. Lin Huang went straight back to the dorm in Martial Hunter College. "Brother, how come you''re back so early today?" Lin Xin was confused as Lin Huang usually only headed back after 12 but it was not even 11. "Fatty is dead" Lin Huang muttered after sitting wordlessly on the couch in the living for a while. "Brother Fattyis dead?" Lin Xin was shocked. She had not seen the news coming. Lin Huang then told her about what had happened. "I''ll drop by Fatty''s house tomorrow to pass his body and his remaining belongings to his family," Lin Huang said softly. "I''ll follow you." Lin Xin was worried about Lin Huang''s condition. "That''s great. Since Zhang Mengmeng managed to come to the White Capital, it would be dangerous for you to stay here alone." 406 The Yin Family’s Old Lady Fatty''s hometown was in Nanmu Town, which was also a D-grade foothold like Wulin Town that was under the territory of Baqi City. It was almost 1,300 kilometers from Baqi City. After breakfast, Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to Baqi City which he had pinned on his dimensional relic earlier. They then rode on the Viridescent Thunderhawk and headed towards Nanmu Town. It was past eight in the morning when they arrived and the town had started to get crowded. The appearance of the Viridescent Thunderhawk had attracted the attention of the crowd. Lin Huang recalled the Viridescent Thunderhawk after he found out where the Yin family house was quite easily. The foothold was small, only slightly bigger than Wulin Town. Lin Huang did not summon the Viridian Wolf and walked to the Yin residence by foot with Lin Xin instead. On the way, Lin Huang was thinking about how to break the news while Lin Xin followed without saying a word. She was not as bubbly and capricious as she always was. Seven to eight minutes later, they finally arrived at the big courtyard that the pedestrians had told him about. The Yins were clearly a prosperous family in town. From the look of the courtyard, it looked like it was at least 1,000 square meters large. There was an old man sitting in a pavilion not far behind the entrance and the black wooden door was locked. "What do you want?" When the old man saw the both of them, he stood up and asked. "Is this the Yin residence? I''m Yin Hangyi''s friend and this is my sister. Yin Hangyi asked me to come here to see his old lady," Lin Huang politely explained. "You''re Master''s friend? Please give me a moment while I inform the housekeeper." The old man called someone and hung up after a short exchange of words. He then opened the door. "Please come in. The housekeeper is waiting for you at the door." He opened the door and smiled at the both of them. They walked through the courtyard. There was a middle-aged man in a black tuxedo who nodded to them at the entrance. It was obvious that he was the Yins'' housekeeper. "Please follow me to the living room." The housekeeper brought the both of them to the left side of the halls and headed to the living room. As they entered the living room, the housekeeper got them tea and asked casually, "How do I address the both of you?" "My name is Lin Huang and this is my sister Lin Xin," Lin Huang said. "Oh, so you''re Mr. Lin Huang. Master always talks about you. He told us that you''re young and capable and that you''ve achieved a lot at such a young age." The housekeeper was much friendlier after confirming who Lin Huang was. "I wonder what brings Mr. Lin Huang and Ms. Lin Xin here today?" The housekeeper served them some tea. "Hangyi asked me to see his grandma." Lin Huang knew that it was best if he announced the news to the head of the family. "Oh, is that so? She just woke up and is having breakfast now. I''ll inform her. Please give me a moment." The housekeeper did not ask further and excused himself. "Brother Fatty is quite rich." Lin Xin smiled. "This is all the effort of Fatty''s father''s business. Now that his dad and Fatty aren''t around anymore, the business must find it hard to go on. Many people have gone to the restaurant for Fatty''s dad''s recipe. Fatty picked up 50% to 60% of his dad''s talent. There''s nobody else in the Yin family who is talented in cooking" Lin Huang knew why Fatty asked him to purchase the hotel as the family would sell it to others if he did not. "Without the revenue of the hotel, it seems to be hard for the family to maintain their lifestyle." Lin Xin observed. "So, as soon as they know about Fatty''s death, if they''re smart, they will sell the hotel because if they continue to manage it, they''ll definitely lose money. Since it''s still making money now, the earlier they let it go, the better for them." Lin Huang nodded helplessly. "Why not you buy the hotel, brother? We can get some good chefs to come up with some unique dishes. Even if we don''t make much, at least the business won''t be losing money," Lin Xin suggested. "Fatty hoped that I would purchase it as well, but I can''t be the one who initiates that. We need to hear what the grandma says." Lin Huang knew if he was to suggest that himself, to the Yins, he would seem like he was robbing a burning house instead of trying to help. After taking two sips of tea, the housekeeper came back to them. "Please follow me to Grandma." The both of them trailed behind him and headed to the second floor. On the living room, there was an old lady with white hair on the couch, sandwiched between two women. Lin Huang guessed that they were Fatty''s aunts. The old lady waved to the both of them. "Since the both of you are Hangyi''s friends, don''t be shy and come sit down. Make yourself at home. "Hi Grandma, hi Aunties," Lin Huang greeted the three of them. The housekeeper left after bringing the both of them tea. Lin Huang was seated on a chair that was not far from the couch and was comfortable. However, Lin Xin looked slightly uneasy. "I heard from the housekeeper that you''re Lin Huang?" The old lady chuckled. "Yes, I''m Lin Huang. This is my sister, Lin Xin." "Hangyi mentioned about you before. He said you saved his life once. He also told me that you have great abilities and that you''re a genius," the old lady complimented. "Hangyi was kidding" Lin Huang did not know how to break the news anymore. "Oh yeah, let me introduce yourself. I''m Hangyi''s grandmother and these two are Hangyi''s aunties." The old lady suddenly realized that she did not introduce the three of them. "Do you know that Hangyi has a girlfriend now? Although the girl is pretty, I''m worried that she doesn''t really love Hangyi. Think about it. If she''s so pretty, which part of Hangyi would attract her? Since you''re his friend, watch out for him on my behalf. I don''t want him to get cheated" The old lady did not stop talking. Lin Huang finally knew where Fatty got his chatterbox mouth from. She was interrupted by one of the aunties. "Mom, don''t just talk about yourself. Hangyi went traveling and now he asked his friend to come here, so there must be something important," the aunt said. "Look at me, forgetting about what''s important. Hangyi must have something urgent to tell us?" The old lady asked. Lin Huang was struggling as he did not know how to break the news. He was looking for the opportunity to break it gently but there was no way that he could, judging from the old lady''s conversation. Now that the three of them were looking at him with anticipation, he did not know how to say it anymore. The old lady seemed to notice something was wrong from Lin Huang''s expression. "Lin Huang, did something happento Hangyi?" The old lady asked carefully. Lin Huang''s silence made the ambiance awkward. "Just tell me, I can take it." The old lady took a deep breath and nodded at Lin Huang. She seemed to know what had happened as there were tears in her eyes. "I''m sorry, Hangyi isdead" Lin Huang felt terrible but he told the truth anyway. 407 The Funeral "Hangyi is dead" The light in the old lady''s eyes extinguished but she was much calmer than Lin Huang expected. He was worried that she might not be able to take the news. Nevertheless, she was much stabler than he imagined. "It''s my fault" The old lady slapped her thigh hard. "Mom, don''t say that!" "It has nothing to do with you!" Yin Hangyi''s two aunties stopped the old lady from hurting herself further. Lin Huang and Lin Xin were puzzled. "How is it not my fault?! The fortune teller said that I''m no good for this family. My two husbands are dead. Now, so are my two sons, one daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. If I''m dead, nothing like that will happen to anyone!" The old lady cried and blamed herself. Now, finally, Lin Huang and Lin Xin understood why she blamed herself. "What happened, Lin Huang? Hangyi was just traveling with his girlfriend. How did this happen?" The aunty asked Lin Huang as she wanted to change the topic. "Hangyi and his girlfriend got kidnapped in the White Capital. It was too late when I arrived. Hangyi wasn''t dead yet when I got there but there was no way that I could save him." Lin Huang hid the truth. He had to lie as the less the Yin family knew about the Grandmistress, the safer they would be. They might want to take revenge if he told them the truth. It would be a disaster if the Grandmistress found out about their attempt to seek revenge. "Kidnap? Why didn''t they call us to ask for ransom?" Hangyi''s aunt asked. "The kidnappers didn''t want money. They were actually after Zhang Mengmeng as there was something from her family that they wanted. She was a royalty outside of Division7, so she was targeted before she even came to Division7. It was unfortunate that Hangyi got dragged into this. As Zhang Mengmeng''s family couldn''t come to terms with the kidnappers, the both of them were killed. Zhang Mengmeng''s body was taken away by her family while Hangyi''s is my storage space." Lin Huang came up with the story and intentionally said that Zhang Mengmeng''s family was royalty outside of Division7 as the Yin family was a normal family after all, so it would be difficult for them to get any information that was outside of the division. They would need a massive amount of Life Crystals to get out of the division. A year''s worth of Life Crystals was equivalent to one million credit points. Getting to the nearest Division8 or Division6 would cost each person thousands of Life Crystals. The Heart Network ran individually in every division. Besides people of a certain level, the information of each division was isolated. Normal people would only receive information about the division that they were residing in. If they did not know anyone from other divisions, they would basically know nothing about other divisions for all their lives. They trusted what Lin Huang said as Fatty always mentioned about him and his extensive network as far as the old lady and the others remembered. They had even seen their photos together, so they were not skeptical about Lin Huang at all. "Can we seeHangyi''s body?" The old lady was sobbing but she heard Lin Huang loud and clear. Lin Huang nodded and took out Fatty''s body. He lay his body on the carpet in the living room. The aunties took a quick glance and looked away while the old lady stood up calmly. She walked towards Fatty''s body with her walking stick slowly. Although Fatty was slightly unrecognizable as his face was swollen, the old lady could tell that it was her grandson, Yin Hangyi. "Hangyi" She tossed her walking stick aside and knelt on her knees. She looked devastated as she touched Fatty''s head lovingly. "Why did you leave just like that? Didn''t you say that you want to be a Food Hunter and make monsters into delicious dishes for your grandma?" The old lady lost control as she wept and talked to Fatty. Lin Huang''s eyes turned red as he watched while Lin Xin wiped her tears quietly. Yin Hangyi''s aunts were crying as they stood aside and the atmosphere became gloomy. Around 20 minutes later, the old lady finally calmed herself down, wiped her tears and looked at Lin Huang. "Hangyi''s face" "He was tortured before he died. He must have been protecting Zhang Mengmeng. There was only a sword gash on Zhang Mengmeng''s face, nothing else," Lin Huang nodded and explained. "Hangyi sent me both his dad''s and his recipes to me. Those are the only remaining possessions that he has. Let me forward that to you," Lin Huang said to the old lady. "Did hesay anything before he died?" The old lady asked. "He said he has a grandmother who really loves him, a great dad and that he met the love of his life. He has no regrets in his life," Lin Huang conveyed what Fatty had said. The old lady started crying again after hearing that. Lin Huang stood aside while waiting for them to feel better and did not say anything else. Ten minutes later, the old lady had finally calmed down. She stood up with her walking stick and her daughters'' help. "Lin Huang, who are the kidnappers?" The old lady had the plan to take revenge. "I''ve killed the kidnapper but I''ve no idea who they are. I''ll get to the bottom of this and give all of you an explanation," Lin Huang said as he did not want to get the Yin family involved. To the royals, an ordinary person''s strength was weak. Even a small royal in the Division7 could kill the Yin family easily, let alone the Grandmistress who mastered the immortal-level Poison Sting. Lin Huang even suspected that the Grandmistress could be from the core zone. It was too bad that he did not get sufficient information about the Grandmistress from Zhang Mengmeng. "Don''t you hope that we get to the bottom of this ourselves?" The old lady managed to understand what Lin Huang said. "Yes, as this incident involves the royals, it could possibly be one of the popular families from the other ruling, so let me do it. Hangyi is my friend. I''ll take revenge behalf of him. One day, I shall chop of the mastermind''s head and bring it to your family." Lin Huang looked determinedly into the old lady''s eyes. The old lady nodded her head slowly as she looked at Lin Huang''s conviction. "Alright then, I shall let you handle that. Hangyi has passed, so we have many things to handle anyway. And Hangyi''s funeral" Following the old lady''s arrangement, Lin Huang and Lin Xin stayed with the Yis for the following two days. On the third day, Fatty''s funeral went as planned. After Fatty was buried, Lin Huang bade farewell to the old lady and left with Lin Xin. 408 Worth Having! In the giant castle in Division2 that was as impressive as an art piece, a lady in a purple dress, who looked like she was in her thirties, sat on the single couch. She was caressing a skull with her right hand. A middle-aged man in a black tuxedo, who looked like a butler, knocked three times on her room. "What?" The lady turned around and glared at the butler. "Grandmistress, there''s something wrong with Lily''s android." The housekeeper bowed slightly in respect. "That girl contacted you?" The lady in purple dress raised an eyebrow. "No, but someone in the lab found out that her android''s signal has gone dead. The lab reported that she''s most possibly self-destructed, but there could be something wrong with the signal," the housekeeper explained. "Where did the girl last appear?" The lady asked. "In the White Capital in Division7." "That could mean she failed the mission." The lady in purple dress squinted. "Mother, do you mean that Lily might have been killed by the fellow named Lin Huang? How is that possible?" The skull in the lady''s hand shouted out of nowhere. "The fellow was only an iron-level a year ago. Lily''s completed her training and she''s already a white flame-level. No matter how much of a genius he is, it''s impossible that he could defeat Lily!" "Shan Er, to some geniuses, it''s possible to level up from iron to white flame-level in a year. Lily isn''t very talented. Whatever she''s managed to achieve with all her strength is nothing to the talented," the lady explained calmly. "Of course, it could be the people who have been protecting the young boy. After all, the Leng family interrupted us a year ago. Perhaps, they have been secretly protecting this young boy called Lin Huang." "The Lengs One day, I''ll show them the price to pay for interrupting us Weis!" The skull''s eye sockets had a blue glow coming out of it. As it spoke, its jaw opened and closed. "Grandmistress, should we" the housekeeper trailed off. "Send someone to get to the bottom of this. See if it''s really been destroyed or is it some other factors. After all, it would be trouble if the families in Division7 found out about the android. Leaking of our technology will be nothing, but if the Union Government is informed, they''ll definitely come for us," the lady instructed immediately. "Destroy it as soon as you find it." "Mother, then how about Lily?" The skull was concerned. "That girl can''t even manage to handle a small matter, so why should we keep her? Two years later, when you recover, I''ll get someone to find you a better girl," the lady said in determination. "Yes, Mother." Wei Shan decided to give up on Lily. "Grandmistress, should we get rid of Lin Huang as well?" The housekeeper asked. "Don''t bother about him. If he''s truly being protected by the Leng family, even an imperial-level might not be able to kill him. Moreover, the White Capital is the largest city in Division7, so the Union Government would be notified if something big happened. Our mission should be the top priority. Confirm where the android is. If it''s still alive, bring it back for recycling quietly and try not to be seen by anybody," the lady in purple dress highlighted the priority of matter. "But, Mother, what if he killed Lily by himself without the Leng family''s protection?" Wei Shan the skull could not help but ask. "That means he''s a powerful genius and is worth being Shan Er''s grindstone. Two years later, he shall be your first target then." The lady in purple dress grinned. "But, Mother, what if I lose?" The skull sounded like it was hesitating. "If Shan Er dies in his hands, that means he''s worth being part of my collection. By then, I''ll kill him myself and make him into a beautiful art piece." Wei Shan''s heart sank when he heard what she said. Throughout the year, he had been suspecting if his birth mother did not care about his life. At most, he was just an experiment for her and was nothing more precious than Lily who was also an experiment. He read between the lines of what she said. Instead of saying that Lin Huang was his grindstone, more accurately would his bringing Lin Huang''s grindstone. There was only one reason for his existence, which was to test if Lin Huang was worthy of being in his mother''s collection. If he lost, his mother would focus on Lin Huang and not him. If he won, Lin Huang would lose his mother''s attention and made his existence more valuable. "Don''t worry, Mother, I''ll definitely win!" The skull gave a determined answer. "Mother believes that you will win too." The lady in purple dress caressed the skull and smiled. "I understand. I shall do the arrangement now." The butler understood what Grandmistress meant. He did not react at all as he knew who this Grandmistress really was throughout the years. As expected, her own son was only a chess piece that she could get rid of any time she wanted. Lin Huang had no idea that he had just escaped death. Since he got back from Fatty''s funeral, the first thing he did was to contact Leng Yuexin to ask for her help to retrieve Wei Shan''s real identity. However, he was warned again and again by Leng Yuexin not to investigate into that as Wei Shan might be related to the core zone. Lin Huang''s life was back to normal. He woke up at 6.30 a.m. every morning and headed to the library around 7 a.m. He would stay there until 6 p.m. and train his sword skills at the training room until midnight. He pretended as if nothing had happened a few days ago. In reality, Lin Huang did not give up on the investigation. He remembered Zhang Mengmeng mentioning that Wei Shan was still alive and would take revenge on Lin Huang two years later. Lin Huang was waiting for that day to come. The truth would come out as soon as he captured Wei Shan alive! Lin Xin could sense that although Lin Huang looked the same as when Fatty visited, he had been hiding how he really felt by flooding himself with a hectic schedule. She had nothing to say as she knew Fatty was one of Lin Huang''s best friends. Words could not make him feel better; all he needed was time. Half a month soon passed by. Xiao Hei''s notification came when Lin Huang was in the training room in the middle of the night. "Congratulations, you have accumulated legendary-level skill ''Star Dome'' card pieces x10,000. Would you like to combine the card pieces into a complete Skill Card?" "Yes!" Lin Huang said without thinking twice." "10,000 Star Dome card pieces have been deducted. Combination taking place." "Congratulations, you have obtained legendary-level Skill Card - Star Dome." "Skill Card Name: Star Dome" "Rarity: Legendary" "Type of Skill: Combat Skill" "Skill Level: Transcendent Combat Skill" "Status: Available" "Card Remarks: Worth having!" "Worth having" It was the first time Xiao Hei had given such good comment on a card. The best remark before was just ''not bad''. "Now that I''ve mastered this, it''s almost time to kill the sword type monsters." Lin Huang had gathered all the information of the double-mutated sword type monsters two days ago. He did not head out to kill the monsters as he was close to 10,000 Star Dome card pieces. He could feel that he would obtain the skill as soon as he collected 10,000 card pieces. That was why he had postponed his trip. He looked at the time. It was almost 11 p.m. Since he had gotten the Skill Card, he did not want to train anymore. He kept his sword and returned to the dorm. Lin Xin, who was in her bedroom on the second floor, was still awake. She knew it was Lin Huang when she heard the door creak open downstairs. She sat up immediately, put on her slippers and went downstairs. "Brother, how come you''re so early today?" "Yeah, I''m heading out tomorrow. I might take a few days." Lin Huang nodded at Lin Xin. "What for?" Lin Xin was worried. "To kill a couple of monsters," Lin Huang told the truth. "I''m following you!" Lin Xin said immediately. "Alright, then. Pack your bag. We''ll leave early in the morning tomorrow." Lin Huang thought about it and agreed. There was nothing dangerous on this trip and Lin Xin had been cooping herself up at home for many days. Moreover, he did not have to hide certain things from Lin Xin. 409 Spiritsword Supreme Lin Huang had gotten Lancelot to achieve a double kill when they were in the Volcano Hell. As a result, he had obtained two sword servant cards. Later on, Lancelot killed three sword type monsters before the Mystery Auction started, so Lin Huang obtained another three sword type Monster Cards. He had only received five sword servant cards out of the nine that he needed. They were the Greatsword Fiend that was skilled in handling heavy swords, the Fiery Swordfiend with fire attributes, the Frigid Swordswoman with ice attributes, the Hatted Swordsman of multiple sword skills and the Sword Knight with its sword and shield. Besides the Greatsword Fiend which was single mutated, the rest were all double mutated monsters. Lin Huang finally had some leads on the remaining four double mutated sword type monsters after almost a month of browsing. Lin Huang''s trip this time was mainly to unlock Lancelot to get the remaining four cards. Of course, he would bring Charcoal along to feed it dracaena in the isolated space where the Starlight Beasts were. After washing up early in the morning, Lin Huang and Lin Xin locked all the doors and windows in the dorm, threw out the trash and headed out for breakfast. It was almost 8 a.m. after they were done with breakfast and Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic at a place that was less crowded where he pinned the coordinates for Jinchuan City. Jinchuan City was a B-grade foothold, and Lin Huang had never been there before. It was pinned by Mr. Fu earlier coincidentally. Lin Huang heard that there was a sword type monster less than 2,000 kilometers from the foothold. Therefore, this became his first destination. After passing through the dimensional relic, Lin Huang and Lin Xin appeared in a bedroom of a luxury hotel. There was a young, naked couple in the midst of sex. They cringed when they saw the both of them appear in their room. Lin Huang made a shield to cover Lin Xin''s eyes and pulled her out of the room. They took the elevator and arrived at the top floor of the hotel. "Brother, the coordinates that your dimensional relic pinned is really" Lin Xin was still blushing. Although she had not seen the scene clearly, she could tell what the couple was doing from the moaning. "Ahem It''s not my fault. It was my Master who set the coordinates. I''ve never been to Jinchuan City." It was not Lin Huang''s first time in such an encounter. His first time was when a lady got out of the shower with her towel, but this time was even more embarrassing than the last one. "Well.. Let''s see where we should go," Lin Huang changed the topic immediately and looked at the map on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. After ascertaining the direction, he turned around to face southwest. "It''s 1,993 kilometers straight ahead from this direction" He then summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk. He helped Lin Xin up on it, then pulled himself up. He patted the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s back and instructed, "Around 2,000 kilometers southwest." The Viridescent Thunderhawk nodded and flew up into the sky. "Brother, can this hawk understand what ''2,000 kilometers'' means?" Lin Xin learned that most monsters did not have the concept of numbers, let alone understanding the measure of distance in human language. "Thunder understands. Don''t worry." Lin Huang nodded. Chirp! The Viridescent Thunderhawk heard their conversation and chirped, seeming to agree with what Lin Huang said. After flying for more than an hour, the Viridescent Thunderhawk started slowing down. Lin Huang looked at the map and saw that they had traveled more than 1,700 kilometers away. Lin Xin could sense the deceleration and saw from the map that Lin Huang projected that the destination was not far away. "It really understands!" Lin Xin exclaimed. Soon, the Viridescent Thunderhawk flew lower. It retracted its wings slightly and started gliding downwards. The map showed that they were even closer to their destination. "It should be somewhere around here." Lin Huang patted the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s back when his location matched the coordinates on the map. The Viridescent Thunderhawk circled in the air, spiraling as they flew lower. They landed on top of the hill that was only hundreds of meters high. Lin Huang looked around and found out that he was less than 10 kilometers from his prey. "Stay here. It might be dangerous if you get any closer," Lin Huang said and got the Viridescent Thunderhawk to let Lin Xin down. He then summoned the Witch and instructed her, "Protect my sister." The Witch nodded. Lin Huang then rode on the Viridescent Thunderhawk and headed to the jungle where the monster was. The monster he picked this time was a Spiritsword Supreme. It was a unique monster, and its form was different from all the monsters that Lin Huang had killed before. It looked like a sword. If it had to be categorized, it would be a psychic monster. Lin Huang had researched about the Spiritsword Supreme before. There were two reasons why this monster was tough. Firstly, it could control other sword type monsters that were near it, and it only appeared where there were many sword type monsters. Another reason was that it was 90% immune to sword assaults. That being said, any sword type monster or human fighting it would only have 10% efficiency when the attack reached the Spiritsword Supreme. That characteristic alone made it more powerful than any sword monsters of the same level. Due to those reasons, Lin Huang did not think that Lancelot could kill the Spiritsword Supreme by fighting on his own. He was only worried that Lancelot would be controlled by the Spiritsword Supreme as he was also a sword type monster. If that happened, getting Lancelot to kill Spiritsword Supreme would be considered an impossible mission. The terms of unlocking stated that Lancelot would have to fight alone whereby Lin Huang was not allowed to help at all. The Viridescent Thunderhawk arrived less than one kilometer away from where the Spiritsword Supreme was discovered. Lin Huang recalled it and summoned Lancelot, the Ruthless Sword Master. Lancelot wore black armor with a sheer black mist surrounding his body. He stared at Lin Huang, apparently puzzled by the reason he had been summoned. "There''s a Spiritsword Supreme nearby. It''s one of the monsters that I picked for unlocking," Lin Huang explained. Lancelot''s cyclops eye turned red as he surveyed around. Suddenly, he seemed to be attracted by something and headed out. Lin Huang looked around and noticed that there was a giant golden sword covered by plants more than a kilometer away. "Spiritsword Supreme!" Lin Huang screamed as he did not expect to find the monster so quickly. 410 Ruthless Title Lin Huang followed as he saw Lancelot tearing forward like a lightning bolt. Lancelot was only a complete gold-level while the Spiritsword Supreme was already a white flame-level. Moreover, the Spiritsword Supreme was 90% immune to sword attacks, so it was difficult for Lancelot to defeat it if he was to fight alone. Therefore, it was crucial for Lin Huang to help him. As they dashed less than 100 meters away, they heard the sound of leaves rustling getting closer and closer. Suddenly, dozens of shadows leaped from the branches and blocked them. It was a bunch of apes with golden hair. To be exact, they were Boulderblade Apes. There were more than 30 of them. They had golden hair and they were over a meter tall. They held a rock sword in each of their hands as they hissed at Lin Huang and Lancelot. Lin Huang had read about the Boulderblade Ape in the monster encyclopedia before. They were gold-level monsters that lived in groups. Although they looked like apes, they were oviparous. They were born to be good at mimicking various sword skills and they were born with rock swords in their hand. It was still a mystery to humans how the sword that was clearly not made from flesh could appear when they grew in eggs. Many scientists did experiments on the apes and concluded that the rock sword was the ape''s symbiosis just like an extra limb. However, nobody could explain such a theory. There were results that documented how the Boulderblade Ape''s sword was comparable with a human''s gold-level weapon. The appearance of such monsters in groups spelled trouble for other gold-level humans, but to Lin Huang and Lancelot, they were nothing. "Shall I do it or you do it?" Lin Huang looked at Lancelot. Lancelot did not say a word while transforming himself into a black lightning bolt and rushing into the monster crowd. Despite being agile, the Boulderblade Apes could not do anything within Lancelot''s Death Zone. Lancelot swung his black sword again and again without looking at any of the apes. The apes'' heads were pierced through the air while their brains were scattered all over the place. Their agility and speed were an irony in the Death Zone. No matter where they ran, Lancelot only needed a swing of his sword to kill them. That was how powerful a double mutated monster was against a regular monster; such a vast difference in ability could not be solved by quantity. Within minutes, all of the Boulderblade Apes had their heads pierced opened. Carcasses were strewn everywhere on the ground. Lancelot did not even turn around or look at Lin Huang. Instead, he dashed straight towards the Spiritsword Supreme. Lin Huang shook his head and followed him immediately. He thought to himself that all of the monsters that he summoned had their own attitudes, but he was not sure if that was a good or bad thing. Stepping through the Boulderblade Apes'' carcasses, the both of them were blocked by a bunch of skeletons after just taking a few steps ahead. These skeletons had rusty swords of different forms in their hands. Some of them held a sword in one hand, while some had two in both. They were more and more of them emerging from the ground. Within seconds, there were more than 100 of them. "The Undead Swordsmen" Lin Huang frowned. The Undead Swordsmen were soul type monsters whereby they were formed from swordsmen who had died with strong consciousness intact. After they passed on, their consciousness still remained in the dead bodies and did not wither away with the corpse for some reason. Such monsters had memories of their sword skills when they had been alive, so their abilities were pretty solid. Before Lin Huang could tell Lancelot that such monsters had to be killed by destroying their heads, or else they could regenerate their bodies, Lancelot broke into the skeleton crowd. His method of attack was the same as before. Every swing of his black sword could kill one Undead Swordsman easily. Each and every one of them either had their heads pierced through, cut into half, or blasted as every swing aimed at their heads. Watching the Undead Swordsmen fall one by one, Lin Huang realized that his concern was unnecessary as Lancelot was much smarter than he imagined and he was aware of the Undead Swordsmen''s weakness. Since Lancelot was enjoying himself, Lin Huang did not bother to help him. However, he noticed that the more monsters that Lancelot killed, the black mist that surrounded his body grew thicker. "Is this an illusion?" Lin Huang mumbled to himself. "The thickening black mist isn''t your illusion. The Ruthless Sword Master is a monster that kills for a living. The more he kills, the stronger his ability becomes. Besides, as the number of kills reaches a certain level, he will level up automatically," Xiao Hei explained. It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing such a thing. The monster encyclopedia had records about the Ruthless Sword Master which he had read. However, perhaps there were not many Ruthless Sword Masters that had appeared in the past as the studies in the monster encyclopedia were not detailed. It just covered some basic information, and even the recording of the skills was incomplete. Lin Huang had a more comprehensive understanding of the monster compared to what the encyclopedia stated, which was why he did not know that the Ruthless Sword Master had such a characteristic. "In reality, all monsters with the title of ''Ruthless'' has similar hidden abilities to level up by killing." "''Ruthless'' title?" It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing such a theory. "Some of the monster''s titles are not given by humans, but they''re born with it. Some creatures see them, and they will have matching titles in their head. The Ruthless Sword Master is one of them. ''Ruthless'' is his title, so no matter which level it goes up to, it will always have the title in his name. Titled monsters are unique monsters to date; they will be extremely powerful as they level up to a certain level." "Besides the Ruthless Sword Master, you own another Monster Card which is also a titled monster. The Nephilic Judge''s title is ''judge.''" "Titled monsters It seems like I must train these two properly." Lin Huang''s eyes lit up as he looked at Lancelot after hearing this brand new concept. From what Xiao Hei told him about Lancelot becoming more powerful by killing, Lin Huang gave up on his thought to help him and just stood aside to spectate. Lancelot managed to kill almost 300 Undead Swordsmen within ten minutes. The black mist surrounding his body was getting thicker and thicker. Lancelot looked up at the Spiritsword Supreme''s direction and dashed forward. 411 Summoning Helpers After being blocked twice, Lancelot and Lin Huang''s journey was a smooth one. They arrived at the area where the Spiritsword Supreme was safe and sound. It was an empty area with no trees. To be exact, not only were there no trees, but there was also no grass to be seen. In the stretch of jungle, the empty space stood out even more like a bald patch on a head of thick hair. The Spiritsword Supreme was pierced into the bald ground quietly. What caught Lin Huang''s attention were the four human-form sculptures surrounding the Spiritsword Supreme. He could sense that there was something wrong with these sculptures. They were around two meters tall, and all of them looked like armored humans with a sword each on their waists. The figures were so detailed that if it not for the colorless rocks, they would look no different from real humans. There were not many records on the Spiritsword Supreme in the monster encyclopedia. Although Lin Huang had done his research before coming here, he had never heard of the sculptures. Although he could not sense any aura from the sculptures, his instinct told him that there was definitely something wrong with them. Even Lancelot slowed down, apparently sensing something odd as well. Nevertheless, Lancelot was impatient. After sensing no obvious danger from the sculptures, he headed towards to the Spiritsword Supreme. "Wait!" Lin Huang stopped Lancelot with his hand. Lancelot stared perplexedly at Lin Huang. He took out his grade-5 gun relic and turned on the silencer. He then started shooting at one of the sculptures. Despite the shots being fired, nothing happened to the sculpture at all. He noticed that as the golden Life Power bullets collided with the sculpture, they disappeared. They looked like they had been absorbed by a layer of invisible shield. "Something is really wrong with these sculptures" Lin Huang was sure of that after testing them. However, the sculptures did not come alive like how he imagined. Lancelot stared at the sculpture that Lin Huang had shot. After confirming that it did not move, he dashed towards it. Within seconds, Lancelot appeared before the Spiritsword Supreme. The black mist surrounding his body peaked, and even his black armor was completely enveloped in the mist, blurring him from anyone''s vision. As the black mist climaxed, he extended the black sword in his hand. It was like a black lightning bolt that moved so quickly that even Lin Huang thought he would not be able to avoid it if it came at him. The tip of the black sword broke through the speed of sound, and it only got faster and faster. As it almost collided with the Spiritsword Supreme, his speed surpassed three times more than the speed of sound. Bang! Time seemed to stop as they collided. A while later, the banging and the explosion that broke through the sound barrier happened almost at the same time. The intense soundwave created a strong wind that devoured the entire space. The entire area was covered in sand. Lin Huang embraced his body with his hand while staring at the position where they both collided. Although he had superb vision, he could not see if the attack was successful or not. uddenly, a black shadow backed off from the area. Lin Huang looked closely and found out that it was Lancelot who was being attacked. Instead, he backed off on his own will. Just as Lancelot was doing so, Lin Huang sensed a powerful aura that was awakening. A humming sound was sent underground and he could even feel the earth trembling slightly. The sculptures were cracking as pieces of their outer body crumbled away. "I know they would be revived!" Lin Huang knew this would happen. It was impossible for the sculptures to be there just for decoration. He turned around and looked at Lancelot, now finally understanding why he had backed off. The outer bodies of the four human-form sculptures'' were peeling away, revealing four real hunks with swords. They did not look like monsters. Instead, they looked more like humans. The Spiritsword Supreme that pierced into the ground at an angle seemed like it was pulled off by an invisible hand and floated in the air. Lin Huang could finally see the real image of the Spiritsword Supreme. It was a giant sword of around 1.5 meters long. It was completely golden besides its silver handle and tip. The handle to the body looked like they were made of the same material. Although the patterns on the handle were different from those on the body of the sword, they seemed like they had been created by the same sculptor. The patterns were beautiful and it seemed like that they were alive. The Spiritsword Supreme did not look like a harmful weapon but more like a beautiful sword that was a work of art. It was more suited in the museum for being admired instead of being used in battles. However, the aura that came out of the Spiritsword Supreme was white flame-level, and so were the four human-form sculptures. The Spiritsword Supreme floated in the air and rotated for a couple of rounds with its tip pointed to the ground. It then pointed its tip at Lancelot and Lin Huang''s direction. The four hunks with swords seemed to respond to an unheard instruction and raced towards the both of them. "It seems like I''ll need to summon some assistants" The cards appeared on his hand, it was the Malachian Fiend and the Inferior Imp. "Monster Card "Rarity: Epic "Monster Name: Malachian Fiend "Type of Monster: Fiend (Beginner) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-level (Gold Flame-level) "Skill 1: Ultimate Destruction "Skill 2: Demonic Explosion "Skill 3: Ultimate Armor "Skill 4: Demonic Regeneration "Skill 5: Fiendish Strength "Summon Authority: Activated "Remarks: Monster''s combat level is oppressed by your own "Card Remarks: Trainable "Monster Card "Rarity: Epic "Monster Name: Inferior Imp "Type of Monster: Fiend (Beginner) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-level (Gold Flame-level) "Skill 1: Fiend Vision "Skill 2: Abyssal Fire "Skill 3: Meteoric Descent "Skill 4: Demonic Regeneration "Skill 5: Demonic Telepathy "Skill 6: Fiendish Strength "Summon Authority: Activated "Remarks: Monster''s combat level is oppressed by your own "Card Remarks: Trainable Lin Huang then crushed the cards with his fingers and summoned the two blue flame-level fiends. "Kill these four fellows," he instructed the two fiends. 412 Impatien As the two fiends heard the instruction, they ran towards the four guards with their swords. They were clear about their attack strategy as each of them fought two guards without interrupting each other. The Malachian Fiend did not care about the swords the guards were brandishing in their hands. He was like a tank that tore towards them, fighting with his fists that were like hammers that collided with the two swords. The two guards that were just slightly shorter than him reeled backward from his attack. Meanwhile, the Inferior Imp was fighting with his fists as well but he attacked from a distance away from the guards. As he struck his palm into the air, the two guards fell from getting hit in their chests. They turned into a pile of sand. The Malachian Fiend noticed that the Inferior Imp''s attack was more effective than his, so he then dashed towards the two guards. Both of the guards did not have anywhere to run to, and soon the Malachian Fiend had their heads in his vice-like grip. Their heads were crushed and they turned into a pile of sand just like the other two. Blue flame-level was two levels higher than white flame-level after all. Moreover, the two fiends came with the ability to perform cross-ranking battles, so killing these white flame-level summoning creatures were nothing to them. Just when Lin Huang and Lancelot walked closer, something odd happened. The four piles of sand on the ground curled towards the Spiritsword Supreme like living tentacles and covered it immediately. "Is it going to transform itself?!" Lin Huang was shocked to witness that as he did not know that the Spiritsword Supreme had such an ability. "It seems like the person who compiled the monster encyclopedia had no clue what the real Spiritsword Supreme could do!" It was impossible for the person who had compiled the encyclopedia to encounter each and every monster in it. Most of the information came from researchers and contributors who had encountered the monsters themselves. Having said that, putting the book together was still not a relaxing task. The monster encyclopedia exclusively for Gold Hunters that Lin Huang had in his possession had been compiled by more than 20 Hunter Association staff in a span of six years. In reality, the information in the monster encyclopedia was considered complete. However, as the amount of the Spiritsword Supreme beings over the years was limited and many did not want to offend them, the information on that particular monster was incomplete. The Spiritsword Supreme that was not far away soon gathered the sand its guards had dissolved into and used to create a giant of five meters tall, completely hiding within the giant''s chest. What Lin Huang thought was odd was that the giant that was transformed was not a white or crimson flame-level anymore. It was now a blue flame-level. He did not expect the Spiritsword Supreme to be so tough to handle before he came here. As it transformed into a giant, the Spiritsword Supreme glared at Lin Huang. It seemed to notice that Lin Huang was the mastermind instead of the Ruthless Sword Master who was standing next to him. "Human, you killed my brothers and disturbed my slumber. Do you want to die?!" The Spiritsword Supreme shouted at Lin Huang. "Beat it up until it turns back to its original form, but don''t kill it," Lin Huang did not bother about the Spiritsword Supreme''s threats while instructing the two fiends. The fiends were excited as they watched the giant coming together. They were born with the instinct to fight and only managed to warm up when they were summoned earlier. They were keen to fight as there was a monster of the same level standing in front of them. After hearing Lin Huang''s instruction, the two fiends charged towards the sand giant. With its mighty explosive strength, the Malachian Fiend arrived before the sand giant first and punched hard at the giant''s abdomen. The sand giant seemed to notice the impending hit, so it struck out its fist as well. Bang! An intense blast rang out. It was hundreds of times louder than thunder. Lin Huang, who stood close by, felt like his eardrums were going to pop and he covered his ears immediately. Although the collision did not cover as wide an area as the nuclear bomb did, the area within a few kilometers was affected. Trees in the jungle were annihilated by the impact and wood chips were shooting out everywhere. Even Lin Xin, who was almost 10 kilometers away, could feel the ground quaking. Some of the wood chips flew towards her, but they were blocked out by the Witch with a defense shield. Standing on top of the hill, Lin Xin watched the battle with a detection weapon from far away. Although she had no idea what level the Spiritsword Supreme was on, she could tell that such destruction could not have been created by a gold-level. "Is brother fighting a Transcendent?" Lin Xin could not help but ask the Witch. The Witch hesitated as she was not sure if she should answer her question, but she nodded eventually as she saw how serious Lin Xin looked. Lin Xin saw that the monster that was made out of sand was beaten up very badly. "That''s great!" Lin Xin admired Lin Huang even more after confirming her speculation from the Witch. On the battlefield, the Spiritsword Supreme that was transformed into a giant with a sword was oppressed by the two fiends. It was not as powerful as the Malachian Fiend, and it had lost a part of its hand from the first encounter. Meanwhile, the Inferior Imp showed no mercy while it continued battering holes in its body. The battle lasted for quite a while. The reason why they could not kill the sand monster was because it could heal itself. It was like a monster with ultra regeneration abilities whereby its wounds would heal immediately. After more than 20 minutes of battle between the three, Lin Huang was finally impatient. He thought that the sand monster would reach its self-healing limit but the fiends had attacked it more than a thousand times, yet its healing ability did not seem to weaken or slow down. Lin Huang realized that wasting time would not win the battle. "Come out, Sanguine Skeleton Spirit!" Lin Huang summoned. "Seal its Life Power and see how it can self-heal!" Soon, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit joined the team and tied a Punishment Chain on the giant''s left ankle. At that very moment, the Malachian Fiend punched the sand giant''s chest hard. A golden glow shot out from the giant''s body. Soon, the sand giant completely collapsed. As Lin Huang watched, he noticed a shadow moving from the corner of his eye. Suddenly, a bright white glow glistened from not far away. An intense shockwave shot out and devoured the Spiritsword Supreme''s body. Lin Huang was shocked, but he soon noticed that it was Lancelot''s forbidden skill, the Absolute Life. He shook his head and smiled to himself as he thought Lancelot was impatient. Before the impact faded, a notification came from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you have obtained a new Monster Card, Spiritsword Supreme (Sword Servant)." 413 Men’s Summer After killing the Spiritsword Supreme, Lancelot returned to his card form. As he used a forbidden skill, he could not be summoned within the next 24 hours. Lin Huang recalled the two fiends and the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit. The Spiritsword Supreme''s carcass was in pieces. When the Malachian Fiend performed his last punch, it seemed to have injured the Spiritsword Supreme to a certain extent. Even though it was 90% immune to sword attacks, nothing was left following Lancelot''s Absolute Life skill. The battle lasted for less than an hour. Lin Huang looked at the time. It was only 10.20 in the morning. He then summoned Thunder, hopped on it and headed towards the hill where Lin Xin was. At Thunder''s speed, it only took them a moment to arrive at their destination which was ten kilometers away. Seeing that Lin Xin was safe as he leaped from Thunder, Lin Huang recalled the Witch immediately. "Xin Er, are you alright?" He noticed that the way Lin Xin looked at him was odd as though she was a fan meeting her idol. "I''m okay!" Lin Xin waved her hands. "Come up then. We''ll have to stay in Jinchuan City tonight." Lin Huang pulled Lin Xin up onto Thunder''s back. As Lancelot could only be able to be summoned 24 hours later, there was no need for them to rush. Thunder flapped its wings and headed to Jinchuan City. They did not use the dimensional relic as Lin Huang had thought that they would not go back to Jinchuan City, so he did not pin the coordinates. Moreover, since the embarrassing scene they landed in this morning, he decided not to use the dimensional relic. The couple must still be in the room, and it would be really embarrassing if they were to witness the same obscenity again. After all, the couple was young and passionate, so it was possible that they were copulating all day in the room. "Brother, was that a Transcendent monster that you killed?" Lin Xin asked as soon as Thunder started flying. Although she already knew the answer, she wanted to hear it from Lin Huang. "Mm-hmm." Lin Huang nodded. "There are actually three levels in Transcendent -- the holy fire-level, immortal-level, and the imperial-level. The one I just killed is the lowest one in the holy fire-level, which is a white flame-level monster," Lin Huang added after thinking about it. "Brother, are you a Transcendent already?" Lin Xin asked in excitement. "Not yet. I''m only a gold-level rank-3, not a complete gold-level yet." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. He did not hide his real ability from her. "So, you''ve only used a year to level up from a regular person to gold-level. You''re really a genius!" Lin Xin complimented. What she did not know was that Lin Huang''s speed of leveling up was considered a top genius. "Don''t brag about this, or else, trouble will come," Lin Huang warned. "Yes, I understand! ''Destruction pursues the great''. I read that in a book. I''ll keep it a secret!" Lin Xin nodded vigorously. "Brother, then are your summoning monsters Transcendent-level too?" Lin Xin asked again. "Some of them are." Lin Huang did not deny as he did not want to hide his matters from her anymore. "That''s amazing!" Lin Xin exclaimed and touched Thunder''s feather intimately. She thought that Thunder was a Transcendent-level monster. Lin Huang noticed what she was doing and smiled while he shook his head. He had no idea what this little girl had in her mind. It was 11.40 a.m. when they arrived in Jinchuan City riding on Thunder. Although Jinchuan City was only a B-grade foothold, it was one of the food havens in Division7. It was popular for spicy food. Lin Huang loved spicy food when he was on Earth while Lin Xin was weird as she was not that sensitive to taste and found everything to be delicious. They booked a hotel in the central zone next to a food street. There were not many stores opened in the food street during noon, so they checked into the hotel after having a simple lunch somewhere. Since they were free, Lin Huang headed to the hotel training room in the afternoon to train his sword skills with Star Dome as the summary. The integration of sword skills needed time to achieve, and he was not in a rush. There were training rooms in many high-class hotels in this world where they could only contain levels below holy fire-level. To decrease the damage that might be created by the impact, Lin Huang used a wooden sword to train instead. During the training, he found out that his sword realm that used to be stagnant was increasing slowly. As he practiced the entire afternoon, he realized that the training room was covered in sword marks even though he had only been using a wooden sword. He apologized to the hotel manager and offered to pay for the damages. "Mr. Lin Huang, our hotel is under the Hunter Association''s management. You''re a Gold Hunter, so the damages will be paid by the Hunter Association. You won''t have to fork out a cent," the hotel manager smiled and explained to Lin Huang. Lin Huang thought to himself that having the identity of a hunter was useful. After that, he returned to his room and showered. It was past six when he put on his clothes. He then brought Lin Xin to the food street downstairs. Most of the stores in the food street only opened after six in the evening while some of them started after seven. It was the perfect time to be visiting the food street and Lin Xin was excited. Excluding the time when Fatty and Zhang Mengmeng had visited the White Capital, it had been more than a month since she went shopping with Lin Huang. For her safety, Lin Huang summoned Tyrant to be her bodyguard. Knowing that they were heading to the food street, Tyrant was drooling in the elevator. He could not resist the food in the human word especially when it came to meat. As Lin Huang had spent more than a year with monsters, he knew that each monster had different preferences in food. Tyrant loved meat. If he was allowed to, he could eat more than 30 tons of roasted meat a day. As for Bloody, it preferred sweet food, especially flavored drinks. There were some of them who did not care for food such as the Nephilic Judge. Until now, Lin Huang had no idea if her ignorance towards food was just her cold attitude, or if she was just not interested in any food. The day was still bright when they arrived at the food street, but lights were turned on everywhere. There were mineral stones of various colors lighting up like stars. The crowd never stopped streaming, and the bustling food stores promoting their food as well as the chatter made Lin Huang think that he was back on Earth. It was the end of July, which was the warmest season in summer. Lin Huang smirked as he watched men wearing sleeveless tops eating barbecue while drinking green juice on the street. "It seems like beer and barbecue is always men''s summer favorite past time no matter which world it is" 414 Luminescent Angelwing Lin Huang and Lin Xin started falling in love with Jinchuan City after spending a night there. It lived up to its title of being a city with good food as there was so much delicious food. Although most of them were spicy, even a person who was not fond of such food would be addicted. Tyrant would love to live on the food street. He did not want to leave although Lin Huang and Lin Xin asked him to after they were done eating. The next morning, Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic after breakfast. They were going to Hulun City on foothold No.7A18 this time. Hulun City was located on the northeast side of Division7. Lin Huang had never been there before. It was Mr. Fu who had pinned the coordinates earlier. This A-grade foothold was not his final destination, but it was closest coordinates to it. Even so, it was more than 12,000 kilometers away from where he wanted to go. Lin Huang''s final destination was a canyon which was located on the east side of the Hulun prairie. There was the double mutated sword type monster that he wanted to call the Luminescent Angelwing. It sounded like the name of a bird, but it was not a bird. It was a monster of human-form with wings and was an expert in swordsmanship. Its moving and attacking speeds were two levels above its own combat level. Nobody would want to encounter such a swift monster. Stepping into Hulun City, Lin Huang and Lin Xin looked around and realized that they were in a hotel room again. Fortunately, there was nobody in this hotel room, so they did not see anything embarrassing. However, the environment reminded them of what they saw yesterday morning. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang pulled her hand and left the hotel room immediately. As they got out of the hotel room, he projected the map and pinned his current location while looking for the coordinates of the dimensional portal. "Brother, why do you think your master always pins the coordinates in a hotel room?" Lin Xin pondered and asked. Lin Huang was stunned at the question as he had never thought about it before. He thought and guessed it must be intentionally done so by Mr. Fu. However, Lin Huang suddenly thought of a corrupt hobby He shook his head to get rid of the obscene images that popped up in his head. "Maybe he''s lazy," Lin Huang simply answered. "Oh, is that so?" Lin Xin did not overthink and accepted the answer. Mr. Fu was lying on the hammock on the deck of his demonic crystal spaceship while he sipped on his wine and watched the sunrise. He sneezed out of nowhere and squinted. "Never expected someone to be talking about me when I''m already this old." In Hulun City, Lin Xin felt the weather was odd as she stood at the hotel entrance for a while. She noticed that everyone on the street was wearing long sleeves and sweaters. Many were looking at the both of them as they were wearing short-sleeved clothing. Lin Huang did not feel the cold as he was engrossed in studying the map while Lin Xin started feeling chilly. "Brother, where is this place?" "Hulun City in foothold No.7A18," Lin Huang answered without looking at her. "Young kids, don''t ignore the weather just because you want to look good. If you damage your body now, you''ll suffer when you''re old!" A lady who passed by said to the both of them. Lin Huang looked at the lady, and only then did he notice how warmly everyone was dressed He then turned around and looked at Lin Xin who was folding her arms under her armpits for warmth. "Go change in the bathroom. I forgot that there''s no summer here. Although it''s July, the highest the temperature will go is 20 degrees Celsius." Lin Huang just recalled the weather difference in different areas. Lin Xin nodded immediately and headed to the bathroom of the hotel. Lin Huang returned to the hotel after pinning the coordinates of the dimensional portal. After putting on their spring clothes, he then summoned Thunder and headed to the coordinates where the dimensional portal was. The A-grade foothold was huge and the dimensional portal was more than 200 kilometers away. They would take a couple of hours if they rode on the Viridian Wolf as they could not head in a straight-line direction, so he decided to ride on Thunder instead. In less than ten minutes, they arrived at their destination. "Brother, where are we going?" Lin Xin asked when she saw the dimensional portal far away. "Our final destination is foothold No.7C163, but it''s very far away, so we''ll have to take three different dimensional portals in between." Lin Huang was helpless as he would need the dimensional portal to get to the places that his dimensional relic had never pinned before. Fortunately, they had an exclusive pass whereby he would not need to purchase the dimensional portal tickets beforehand and could get them on the spot. Just like the privilege extended to the royal families, he would not need to queue, and he could use the exclusive hunter tunnel via the dimensional portal exclusively for hunters. Besides that, Gold Hunters could bring three persons with them. However, the ticket was ten times more expensive than the normal one, but it was acceptable to all hunters. After purchasing the tickets at the counter, they arrived at the exclusive dimensional portal via the hunter tunnel smoothly. There were three Gold Hunters queueing at the dimensional portal. The three of them stared at Lin Huang as he was young and he did not bother to hide his aura. They could sense that he was a gold-level rank-3 although they thought that it was unbelievable. As the three of them entered the portal, Lin Huang and Lin Xin stepped into it and they were sent to the first transit, foothold No.7B98. Lin Huang bought a coupon in Hulun City with the final destination being Yi City in foothold No.7C163. There was no need to purchase tickets in between as they could just scan their coupon while the portal personnel would set the destination. After spending less than five minutes in the No.7B98 foothold, they arrived in the second transit in foothold No.7B116, and then foothold No.7B128. The B-grade foothold was more than a thousand kilometers from Yi City, but it was much faster than riding on Thunder. Around five to six minutes later, the both of them finally arrived in Yi City. After stepping out of the dimensional portal, it was almost 8:30 a.m. Yi City was not their final destination, but the Bell Canyon located 1,600 kilometers to the northeast. The Luminescent Angelwing, the double mutated sword type monster that Lin Huang was hunting down was there. 415 Bell Canyon It was 8:30 a.m, two hours before Lancelot could be summoned again while it would only take them over an hour to get to Bell Canyon by riding on Thunder. Since they had more than an hour of free time, Lin Huang decided to bring Lin Xin around the foothold. Lin Xin was puzzled when she saw Lin Huang summoning the Viridian Wolf instead of Thunder. "Brother, is the monster that you''re looking for near to this foothold?" "No, it''s in the Bell Canyon which is more than 1,600 kilometers away." He shook his head, and soon he realized why Lin Xin had asked that question. "We''re not in a rush, so I''ll only head there after an hour as Lancelot is still sealed now. We can walk around the foothold." Yi City was not considered large. It was similar to the size of Baqi City. Riding on the Viridian Wolf with the guidance of Lin Huang''s map, they arrived in the most crowded commercial street in Yi City in less than ten minutes. Although it was only a C-grade foothold, the commercial street was crowded. It was the summer holiday, so many young people from the D-grade footholds around visited the area. "What a crowded street!" Lin Xin enthused. If this had happened half a year ago, she would have found this C-grade commercial street to be fascinating. However, since she had been to the commercial streets in the Winter City and the White Capital, that was the best comment that she could give for the one here. "Let''s shop for clothes?" Lin Huang asked her with his eyebrow raised. "Yes, please!" Lin Xin nodded as she loved shopping with Lin Huang. They headed to the shopping mall that was the nearest to them. On the first floor was the jewelry department, the second was lingerie while they headed straight to the third floor which was selling women clothes. Lin Xin saw her favorite brand as they stepped into the third floor. She liked the trench coat that the mannequin was wearing, so she got the staff to get her an S size, and she ran into the fitting room. She was out two to three minutes later. "What do you think?" Lin Xin asked Lin Huang as she walked over to him. It was a dark gray short trench coat, which would fit a taller, more matured lady more especially since the first impression Lin Huang got was that it suited Yi Yeyu more than it did Lin Xin. She just looked odd now. Although she tried her best to pose maturely, Lin Huang laughed and shook his head. "This doesn''t suit you. Let''s try another one." "Okay" Lin Xin sighed and walked into the fitting room again. They shopped for an hour, but Lin Xin did not pick out anything else that she liked. "Alright, it''s almost time." Lin Huang had set his alarm at 9:30 a.m. before shopping. He stopped walking when he heard his alarm ringing. "Must we leave now?" Lin Xin was not done with shopping yet. "I think it''s better that you stay in Yi City. The monster I''m hunting this time is incredibly fast. If it discovers you in a short distance, I might not be able to save you. Even if you have Kylie protecting you, was Kylie to fight it, you won''t be able to stand the shockwave." While they were shopping, Lin Huang had been considering if he should bring Lin Xin along. For her safety, he decided to ask her to stay in Yi City. If it was other monsters, Lin Huang might be able to stop them from attacking Lin Xin but the Luminescent Angelwing was swift, and it was difficult to chase after it as soon as it changed its target. Lin Xin felt down. She thought she would be able to see how glorious her brother was in battles but she was not allowed to follow this time. "I''ll need more than an hour to get there and killing her will take less than half an hour. I''ll take the dimensional portal to get back. I think I should be back before 11:30 a.m. You can continue to shop with Tyrant. Head back to the hotel after shopping a bit more as it''ll be lunch by then," Lin Huang comforted her. He knew that Lin Xin would be sad, but no matter what, her safety was his top priority. "Okay." Although she was disappointed, she agreed anyway. Lin Huang then summoned Tyrant who was in a black suit, then he watched them leave after briefing Tyrant what to do. He left the shopping mall and summoned Thunder. He leaped and sat on its back, heading to the Bell Canyon. The Bell Canyon was located in the northeast of Yi City and they would pass through Hulun prairie along the way. In reality, the Hulun prairie was huge. The Hulun City that was ten thousand kilometers away was located to the southwest of the prairie. The size of the prairie was even bigger than the continent of Asia on Earth. Although they had departed from Yi City, the journey to Bell Canyon was more than 1,600 kilometers. Riding on Thunder''s back, Lin Huang breathed in the prairie air. Greenery was everywhere, and he could even smell the fragrance of flowers. He finally arrived at the destination more than an hour later. Before Thunder landed, Lin Huang could see the Bell Canyon from above. The Bell Canyon was a rift to be precise. It was situated in the middle of the Wula Highlands, and the millions of square kilometers highlands were divided into east and west. Looking from above, it looked like a giant cake on a table that had been sliced into half in the middle. In reality, there was a myth about how the Bell Canyon was formed. It was said that a person had sliced it with a sword. However, geologists suggested that it was split due to an earthquake. The locals chose to believe the former. In the old epoch, the story narrated about how a god had accidentally sliced the ground as it was fighting an abyssal creature. However, Lin Huang did not think the myth was true as a sword would not be able to slice a path that was thousands of kilometers long. The closer he was to holy fire-level, the more he understood that such a matter was impossible to be done by humans. Even an imperial-level would not be able to do this. He was not sure if the demigod in the myth could do this, but he chose to believe in what the geologist said. He thought about the god of the myth. However, how could a battle with an abyssal creature leave such a trail but destroy nothing else without any trail of struggle? Looking at his coordinates getting closer to those on the map, he patted Thunder''s back. "You can go down now." Thunder retracted its wings and glided downwards. 416 Encountering The Luminescent Angelwing The coordinates where the Luminescent Angelwing was discovered was near the first third of the Bell Canyon''s entrance. Lin Huang did not see the Luminescent Angelwing from above, but he asked Thunder to land on the near the coordinates anyway. When they landed, he recalled Thunder immediately. It was almost 10.40 a.m., so Lancelot was free again as 24 hours had passed. He summoned Lancelot in his black armor again. "The monster I picked this time is the Luminescent Angelwing. It''s very nimble, so it might be tough," Lin Huang briefed Lancelot. He looked around and brought Lancelot into the canyon. Although they did not see any signs of the Luminescent Angelwing at the coordinates, Lin Huang was not worried that the Luminescent Angelwing would not appear. No matter the Hunter Association or the black market, the coordinates that they provided was impossible to be fake because if such a matter happened, the buyer would spread the news and their names would be affected. The Luminescent Angelwing might move away that very day. However, looking at the lifestyle of the monster, it would not usually move too far away from its lair unless something drastic happened. For instance, if it was chased away by more powerful monsters or if something were to happen to its habitat such as lack of food and water. From what Lin Huang could see, it did not seem like the canyon was lacking water or food. He was sure that the Luminescent Angelwing would initiate a fight as he walked deeper into the canyon with Lancelot. Most monsters had the concept of territory, so not only they did not welcome other monsters, they also did not like the invasion of humans as well. To most monsters, humans were extremely dangerous creatures. They would usually react in two possible ways -- one was to back off, while another was to attack. However, the more powerful a monster was, the greater its sense of territory and the more likely it would attack. There was a stream less than ten meters wide at the bottom of the canyon. The water was clear and it was less than two meters deep, so one could see the bottom with their eyes. The shores zig-zagged following the streams, and they were 70 to 150 meters wide. There were 90-degree cliff drops on both sides, bald with no leafy plants on them. There were conifers and minimal moss occasionally. With Lin Huang''s vision, he could see the entire canyon crystal clear; nothing could escape from his eyes. There were some small monsters drinking water by the stream, and even some baby monsters playing around. The stream was shallow with no water predators in it. It was a heaven for the smaller monsters. However, they soon noticed Lin Huang and Lancelot, escaping into the caves immediately. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow as those monsters that could not actually climb seemed to have mastered the skill from living in such an environment. As they walked seven to eight kilometers further, the insects and birds'' chirping disappeared. There were no small monsters around anymore. Lin Huang and Lancelot slowed down as they knew they had entered a powerful monster''s territory. They looked around, but he still did not see the Luminescent Angelwing. Nevertheless, he knew it must be near. uddenly, glowing white balls streaked towards them like meteorites. Lin Huang looked at the direction of the attack and saw a white figure standing arrogantly in the air thousands of meters away. He did not have the time to study it. He picked up his Dark Shield and blocked himself and Lancelot. Although he did not see the attacker clearly, he was sure that he was in the Luminescent Angelwing''s habitat. The balls of white glow created waves on the Dark Shield but soon disappeared. The Dark Shield had the highest defense. It was ten times more powerful than Lin Huang''s attack strength. Before he mastered Star Dome, his most powerful attack was sufficient to injure a blue-flame level. Now with the complete legendary-level Skill Card Star Dome, his attack strength had increased even more substantially. His Dark Shield could now only be broken through by a purple flame-level person. The Absolute Defence that was used by the Final Fortress in the Hunter Arena a year ago was a joke compared to the Dark Shield. With the integration of Star Dome, Lin Huang''s attack ability would have room for improvement before he arrived at holy fire-level. By then, the defense ability of the Dark Shield would be even more powerful. However, with sufficient Life Power, Lin Huang could be standing here, receiving the monster''s attack and the shield would hold up well. The Luminescent Angelwing soon realized that the human who had invaded her territory had a terrifying defense, so it was no use to attack from a distance. She then moved and appeared less than 30 meters from the Dark Shield. The shield was completely black to her, but to Lin Huang, it was transparent. Through the Dark Shield, he finally saw how the monster looked like. "It really is the Luminescent Angelwing!" It was his first time seeing the real Luminescent Angelwing. Although he had seen images of such a monster before, seeing it in front of eyes blew him away. The Luminescent Angelwing was a creature of half energization and looked like a human lady in a white dress. She was 1.6 meters tall with an angelic face. Her body and dress glowed in white. On her back was a pair of wings that looked like they were made of countless white reflections on her back. She was different from any creatures with wings that Lin Huang had seen before. Looking at the wings, Lin Huang finally understand how the Luminescent Angelwing got her name. The monster looked exactly like an angel. In reality, it had angel blood in her body. Just like Kylie, she was a half angel. If the blood evolved, she would then evolve into a light angel, which was a real angel and was as powerful as a god''s blood creature. However, he only managed to observe the Luminescent Angelwing for a while as she had bypassed the Dark Shield after examining it and rushed towards the both of them 417 A Troublesome Opponen To explain the Dark Shield with Mr. Fu''s energy form, it was a skill that could change its form on its surface from any of the three available forms. Lin Huang could transform it into any form that he wanted to, but the coverage depended on the strength of his Life Power. Usually, he would convert it into a hemisphere because besides blocking the incoming attack, it used half the Life Power instead of when it was a full sphere. In real battles, it would always win. However, the Luminescent Angelwing soon noticed the function of Dark Shield, and she bypassed the shield in an attempt to attack from their back. What she did not know was that although her speed was rapid, she was in their territory. Her movements were crystal clear to Lin Huang due to the activation of Micro Territory. As she bypassed the shield, Lin Huang and Lancelot attacked almost at the same time. His grade-5 sword relic, the Dragon Slayer, slashed at the same time as the Ruthless Sword Master''s black sword. Lin Huang''s Micro Territory had evolved from the Ruthless Sword Master''s Life Seed. It was similar to his Death Zone whereby it could attack from where he stood towards any location within its coverage. Lin Huang had little opportunity to use the skill as he was used to gunning for long-distance attacks. Moreover, there was a flaw in using Micro Territory which was having only a small coverage. It only covered a radius of 100 meters where the gun would attack further. By using the gun, he could attack from thousands of meters away from his opponent. As his opponent got closer, he could then switch his weapon to a sword although it was strange for him to wait for his opponent to enter the radius of 100 meters before doing so. However, using Micro Territory was the best to fight looking at the situation now. As the Luminescent Angelwing moved so quickly, it was hard to aim his gun at her. Using Micro Territory to attack from where he was, it was the most effective way. The Luminescent Angelwing did not know that she had just dug her own grave. However, she sensed the danger as she arrived behind the both of them. She backed off immediately, but it was too late. A golden sword glow sliced through her waist, leaving a 10-centimeter gash on her stomach. Another black sword glow headed towards her head. However, it only got less than five millimeters into her forehead, and it could not go further in. It was obvious that Lin Huang''s attack ability was much more powerful than Lancelot''s that was on the same level. Now that he had mastered the Star Dome, any swing of his sword was comparable to a white flame-level. Moreover, he added the Thunder Sting into that earlier swing to prevent him from missing. The Luminescent Angelwing that was weak in defense would definitely die if she could not avoid the strike. Meanwhile, Lancelot was only a white flame-level which could do limited threat to the Luminescent Angelwing. If he were fighting a monster with a high defense such as Tyrant, without using Absolute Life, Lancelot would not be able to win. However, the hit did not excite Lin Huang as he soon confirmed the monster encyclopedia''s description of the Luminescent Angelwing. He witnessed the 10-centimeter wound on the Luminescent Angelwing''s stomach healing itself within seconds. It was the Luminescent Angelwing''s Luminant Regeneration. As she was half energy herself, she could heal any injuries on her flesh. As long as there was sufficient light, it was almost impossible to kill her. Even if the fight took place in the dark, the only way to kill her was to drain all the energy in her body. "A radius of 100 meters is really too small" Lin Huang thought to himself. It would only take the Luminescent Angelwing a second to leave the cover of Micro Territory. He stared at the Luminescent Angelwing that floated in mid-air. Lin Huang was staring her wings as he thought about the theory that he had read about on the network. Meanwhile, the Luminescent Angelwing that was hundreds of meters away watched Lin Huang with her guard up. She knew that the man''s threat was stronger than the fellow in black armor standing next to him. If she had not managed to avoid it just now, she would have been killed by the man. Although she could heal herself, getting sliced on the waist was still pretty darned painful. "She won''t dare to come closer thanks to the lesson she got just now" Lin Huang did not know what to do. It seemed like none of the double mutated monsters were dumb. Since she fell into his trap just now, it was impossible for the Luminescent Angelwing to be lured into his trap for the second time. If she stayed a distance away from him, it was difficult for Lin Huang to kill her. The only long-distance attack he had was his gun, but although the Luminescent Angelwing was slower than the bullets, she would not be any slower for the gun to do minimal harm to her. As for Lancelot, although the Absolute Life was powerful, it was a straight-line attack, and he only had one shot. With the speed of the Luminescent Angelwing that surpassed what Lancelot''s eyes could capture, the probability of him targeting her would be zero. "She might escape if I summon a blue flame-level fiend." Lin Huang was coming up with plans in his head. According to the monster encyclopedia, the Luminescent Angelwing was a timid monster and would escape if she was not confident in a battle. If she managed to escape, it would be difficult to find her again. That was the reason why Lin Huang had not summoned the fiends when he was fighting the Spiritsword Supreme earlier. The Luminescent Angelwing might escape if she saw blue flame-level monsters instead of fighting them. "I can''t use the three fiends. I need to lock down her movement to let Lancelot kill her." After some thoughts, Lin Huang finally had an idea. He summoned Kylie first. Seeing Kylie who was also a half-angel, the Luminescent Angelwing thought of escaping. Fortunately, Lin Huang did not summon the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit first as the Luminescent Angelwing would definitely flee. "Hold her still, don''t let her run away," Lin Huang instructed Kylie. Kylie remained silent while flapping her wings and flew towards the Luminescent Angelwing like a purple lightning bolt. In the air, the purple and white shadow meshed together. They were colliding with each other again and again. 418 Killing The Luminescent Angelwing The two white flame-level monsters collided with each other faster than the speed of sound in the air. The banging thud and the explosion were rumbling like a freak thunderstorm. The noise created ripples of waves everywhere while gravel flew in all directions at the speed of bullets. Lin Huang thought it was fortunate that Lin Xin did not come along, or else, she would be crushed by the gravel. He activated his ocular skill to its maximum while watching the battle that was taking place mid-air. He could barely keep up. He could tell that their speed was similar, but Kylie was more powerful than the Luminescent Angelwing as a whole. She was oppressed by Kylie. However, it was impossible for Kylie to kill the Luminescent Angelwing on her own. Black mist surrounded Lancelot, and he seemed eager to join the battle. However, he was helpless as the fight took place mid-air and he would not be able to react in time as the Luminescent Angelwing was too fast. All he could do was to suppress himself as he watched. Seeing Lancelot glance at her several times as though he was asking for help, she consoled him, "Don''t worry, her head belongs to you." Meanwhile, Lin Huang contacted Kylie secretly and gave her a new instruction, "Bring her closer to me when you can." Kylie was on the winning side. Soon, she found a perfect angle and transformed her spear into a rod. She waved the rod at the Luminescent Angelwing, and as the latter tried to block the attack, she was retreating towards Lin Huang''s direction. At that moment, Lin Huang had crushed the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit''s card in his hand to summon it. As the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit appeared, the Luminescent Angelwing flapped her wings hard and attempted to run. Suddenly, Lin Huang twirled the sword in his hand and chopped off the Luminescent Angelwing''s wings as two golden sword glows slashed in the air. She fell into Lin Huang''s 100-meter Micro Territory coverage which included the air. Despite losing her wings, the Luminescent Angelwing could still fly as she was a white flame-level after all. However, she could not adapt as she was not used to not having her wings out of nowhere. The Sanguine Skeleton Spirit seized the opportunity and flicked the Punishment Chain towards the Luminescent Angelwing. Before she managed to run, a chain snagged her ankle while the rest tied her up, leaving just her head free. The Luminescent Angelwing was not a monster of strength, so it was impossible her to escape from the chain. Moreover, as her body was made of half energy and since her Life Power was being sealed by the Punishment Chains, she was left with nothing. She was not glowing anymore, and her wings were folded into her body. Now, she just looked like a young and beautiful lady. However, Lin Huang was sure that she only looked like a human but bore no other similarity. If he were to extract her genes, hers would be different from a human''s. "She''s yours now." Lin Huang nodded at Lancelot as the Luminescent Angelwing was captured. Lancelot walked forward and swung his black sword, lopping off half of the Luminescent Angelwing''s head onto the ground. "Congratulations, you have obtained a new epic-level Monster Card - the Luminescent Anglewing (Sword Servant)." Lin Huang confirmed the Luminescent Angelwing''s death when he heard Xiao Hei''s notification. He was worried that she would heal herself when her Life Power was sealed. It seemed like his concern was unnecessary. After recalling his Monster Cards, Lin Huang looked at the Luminescent Angelwing''s carcass that looked just like a human lady''s. Since half of her head had been chopped off, it was unable for Bloody to perform his parasitic process. He did not keep the carcass, and summoned his dimensional relic, stepping into it. He arrived at the shopping mall that he had gone to with Lin Xin this morning. It was already 11.40 a.m. when he checked the time; he was ten minutes later than the expected time. He called Lin Xin immediately. The call was connected soon, and Lin Xin was standing in a clothing store. "Brother, are you back?" "Let''s have lunch somewhere. We''ll take a short rest and head to our next destination." "Okay, wait for me at the shopping mall entrance that we went to this morning. I''ll be there soon," Lin Xin said and hung up. Lin Huang turned off the phone and took his time down the stairs. After waiting at the entrance for three to four minutes, Lin Xin ran towards him while Tyrant followed behind her. Compared to Tyrant, Lin Xin, who was already short, looked even shorter now. Lin Huang found it funny as her several steps were slower than Tyrant''s one long stride. "I heard from a clothing store owner that there''s a nice steamboat restaurant around. I think we should try that." Lin Xin seemed to be addicted since she tried steamboat in Jinchuan City. "Let''s go then! Lead the way," Lin Huang agreed. As Lin Xin knew the name of the steamboat restaurant, with the guidance of the store owner using the map, she found the steamboat restaurant in an instant. They chatted while eating. "Brother, are we going to another foothold in the afternoon?" Lin Xin asked. "Yes, I want to finish them as soon as possible so that we can head back earlier. I still have many documents to read." Lin Huang nodded. He had prepared the teaching materials. The stuff that he had been reading in the library was some basic knowledge which was still mind-blowing to him. "So, where are we going?" Lin Xin wanted to shop more as Lin Huang would not have the time to accompany her anymore as soon as they got back to the White Capital. However, knowing that Lin Huang was busy, she accepted his arrangement instead. "The Shadow City in foothold No.7C228. It''ll take some time to get there." Lin Huang was helpless. The Shadow City was another secluded place to which he did not have the coordinates pinned in his dimensional relic. It would take four transits in the dimensional portal to get there. "I don''t want to stay in the foothold alone this time. It''s boring." Lin Xin was worried that Lin Huang might leave her alone again. "Alright then, I''ll bring you along this time," Lin Huang hesitated but agreed anyway. 419 Shadow Land It was almost 1 p.m. after Lin Huang and Lin Xin had lunch and took a short rest. He summoned his dimensional relic and arrived at the Dark Night City in foothold No.7A11. After transiting the four-dimensional portals, they finally arrived at their destination, the Shadow City in foothold No.7C228. His final destination was the Dark Land that was more than 2,300 kilometers from Shadow City. The Shadow Land was an underground ruin that was formed from a sunken city in the old era. It was a huge city sprawling across five million square kilometers which was comparable to half an A-grade foothold. The ruins belonged to the middle-range danger zone. Judging by the three ranges, this zone had at least five holy fire-level monsters and even immortal-level monsters. Compared to Bell Canyon which had few monsters, this ruins was the territory of various monsters. Many buildings were their hidden places. Entering the Shadow Land was like invading the monsters'' lair which was risky. "Are you sure you want to follow me?" Lin Huang asked Lin Xin in all seriousness as they got out of the dimensional portal. "I''m going to the Shadow Land, it''s a dimensional ruin that''s completely occupied with monsters. It''s different from all the places that I''ve brought you before." "Yes!" Lin Xin nodded hard. Lin Huang did not say anything after her confirmation. The reason why he had allowed Lin Xin to follow him was that he had the confidence to protect her. Although it might be too early for her to go to places like this, it was good to expose her to the real side of the world. Most students who had just graduated from college were like fragile, protected flowers. They imagined the world to be all rainbows and butterflies as they grew up in the safe zones. Lin Huang did not want Lin Xin to have that illusion as there would be consequences of being naive. "Are you going to the Shadow Land?" A hunk in golden armor asked, completely ignoring Lin Xin. Lin Huang looked up at him and saw that he was a complete gold-level with great abilities. "Our team can bring you along if you need. We have two complete gold-levels and three gold-level rank-3''s with us. As long as you''re not planning to go to the area with Transcendent monsters, we can bring you along," the man suggested, he extended the invitation since he could see that Lin Huang was a gold-level rank-3. Nobody below Transcendent-level would enter the Shadow Land alone as it would be similar to digging their own grave. Most people would go as a team to look out for one another. Having five people in a team was the basic rule for entering the Shadow Land. That was the reason why the hunk was looking for more teammates as it was dangerous for a team that had less than ten people to enter. "It''s okay, thanks." Lin Huang had researched about the place on the Heart Network before coming. However, it was his first time being invited into a team. He thought it was interesting but he still rejected with a smile. "We''re not from Adventure Paradise. We''re just a team that''s made up at the last minute. You don''t have to pay us to join," the hunk explained immediately as he thought that Lin Huang had misunderstood him as being from the Adventurer Paradise team. "We have my own team." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. He said that knowing that the person was just asking out of kindness. "Oh, is that so? Sorry to bother you then." The hunk then left. Lin Huang projected the map to locate himself, soon he found the location of the Hunter Association division. Before he departed, he wanted to drop by the Hunter Association to inquire about some information that was only known by the locals as well as purchasing a detailed map of the Shadow Land. As soon as he confirmed the Hunter Association''s location, he summoned the Viridian Wolf and left with Lin Xin. The hunk who had been rejected by Lin Huang was shocked as he recalled what Lin Huang said earlier after walking a few steps away. "He said ''we have our own team'' instead of ''I have my own team''. Is he really bringing the little girl who is not even an iron-level into the ruins?! I think I must have misheard. He must''ve said ''I'' instead of ''we''." The hunk shook his head to get rid of the thoughts while he proceeded to look for more teammates. Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to the Hunter Association and got what he wanted. He also purchased a copy of a detailed map of the Shadow Land. The both of them were informed that there was no signal to use the network or their phones, so there was no way that they could pin the coordinates. All they had was the map to find out where they were. Moreover, if they were in trouble, they would not be able to contact anybody. However, Lin Huang was not surprised as he had read about that on the Hunter Forum. "Brother, if we can''t contact anybody when we run into trouble, doesn''t that mean we will die?" Lin Xin asked as soon as they left the Hunter Association. "Most people would have to register themselves with the organization they belong before entering the Shadow City. They would have to write down the time they left the Shadow Land and log out on the network after they leave. If they don''t log out more than 48 hours later, the organization will try to contact the person. If that fails, they will send people to the rescue. So, it''s still possible for the person to survive if they manage to hold on for more than two days if they are captured by monsters or get lost in the Shadow Land. "Moreover, there are many human teams that enter the Shadow Land. If they encounter trouble, they can send signals to the teams nearby. Although the Heart Network and phones can''t be used inside, the S.O.S signal in the Emperor''s Heart Ring still functions. It can reach up to a 100-kilometer radius without any obstacles. Other Emperor''s Heart Rings within the coverage will receive the signal. Even if there are obstacles, the signal will still be received," Lin Huang explained in detail as the information was useful to Lin Xin. He did not know about the function of sending signals earlier and only found out about that recently as from his time in the library. In reality, some experienced hunters knew about the existence of the signal and colleges covered that in their syllabus as well. Only Lin Huang, who had been out in the world for a year, did not know about the hidden function. As they left the Hunter Association, Lin Huang did not plan to follow the other teams as he was sure that his summoning monsters were more reliable than the people. He summoned Thunder and the both of them headed to the Shadow Land. 420 The Underground City The entrance to the Shadow Land was 2,300 kilometers from the southeast of Shadow City. Thunder brought the both of them to the destination in less than half an hour. There were a few teams that were preparing themselves at the entrance while some leaders were briefing their teammates. Many looked envious as they watched the complete gold-level Viridescent Thunderhawk in the air. Although it was not a holy fire-level, such a double mutated flying mount was the same price as a supreme relic, and not everyone could afford it. They were shocked to see the two people who got down from the Viridescent Thunderhawk as they were so young. "I bet they''re some royalty" Many had that first impression of the duo. Lin Huang recalled the Viridescent Thunderhawk and noticed that many were looking at him with respect. It was impressive that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor who did not need a monster taming token to recall his monster. It was even more impressive that he could manage a double mutated complete gold-level monster at such a young age. Lin Huang ignored the teams that were watching him and brought Lin Xin straight to the entrance of the Shadow Land. "The both of them just went in without forming a team. Are they crazy?!" A person gasped after seeing them enter. "I know! Even though he''s an Imperial Censor, the most he could do is to summon two or three monsters, which adds up to a team of five. This guy has the balls to enter the Shadow City just like that!" Another person commented. "That If I''m not wrong, that little girl is just an ordinary person who is not even an iron-level," another person said softly. That reminded many of them that there was no Life Power wave from Lin Xin''s body. "Bringing a normal person in the Shadow Land? This guy must be some royal that thinks that the hotel bed isn''t big enough and wants some excitement somewhere wider?" A hunk with chest hair joked. Lin Huang did not hear the conversation, or else, he would have taught the hunk with chest hair a lesson. The entrance of the Shadow Land was an oval crystal of four to six meters long and it could accommodate five to six person at once. The crypt was discovered by a bunch of geologists more than a hundred years ago. As they exploded into the crypt, only one of them made it out alive. Many adventurers and hunters came here to explore after the news of this went out. There was no virtual eye in the Shadow Land. There were two main reasons why the number of monsters increased despite them being killed by many over the years. One was that there was a crack at the bottom of the land that connected to the abyss, while another reason was that the monsters here had a reproductive ability which helped to replace the monsters that were killed. Lin Huang brought Lin Xin deeper into the crypt. It looked like it had been dug by a monster as it was disorganized. The trench went downwards into the ground with dividers in the middle. Lin Huang followed the instructions on the map and walked more than half an hour following the path and finally arrived at a wide underground space. It was dark in there, but to Lin Huang, his vision was not affected at all. However, Lin Xin had been using a probe light along the way, or else, she would not be able to see at all. "Such a huge space!" Lin Xin exclaimed as she used the probe light to look around. "The Shadow City is the largest underground city that''s discovered in Division7 so far. This is an abandoned area at the edge of the city. The deeper we go, the wider it is," Lin Huang smiled as he explained. "Put your probe light away and follow me," Lin Huang said and held Lin Xin''s hand. Lin Xin blushed, then switched off her probe light and followed Lin Huang forward. She was shocked when she saw the Shadow Land far away after passing an obstacle. Not only her, even Lin Huang was shocked and froze. Although he had seen images of this place before, it was still impressive when his eyes lay sight on it. The abandoned land that they were located at was hundreds of meters higher than a city. The Shadow Land that was far away was lit up. All of the streetlights were shining brightly, and even many of the houses were lit up. The entire city was bright. From afar, it looked like a crowded city that never slept. That reminded of Lin Huang about the first time he had gone to Shanghai and was amazed by the night view. The city that he was looking at was hundreds of times bigger than Shanghai; the only thing that was missing was the chasing cars. "It''s so beautiful!" Lin Xin exclaimed. "It really is." Lin Huang nodded. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang summoned the Viridian Wolf after they admired the view for a while. They rode on the Viridian Wolf and arrived at a broken bridge. The bridge was supposed to connect them to the abandoned land that they were located at earlier. It was broken in the middle for about 30 meters long. The Viridian Wolf accelerated as it got to the broken part, then it leaped and crossed the 30 meters, arriving at the other side of the bridge easily. Listening to the flowing water beneath the bridge, Lin Huang was sure that there were monsters in the underground river. There were a couple of skyscrapers near the end of the bridge, and vines crept up all of the buildings. However, many of the buildings were lit up, and Lin Huang even saw moving shadows in some of the rooms. "Brother, I think there''s something in the building on the left," Lin Xin said softly. Lin Huang briefly warned her not to talk when they arrived at monster areas. If she had to, she had to speak softly, or else, they would attract the monsters. "I saw that too. It''s alright," Lin Huang said and summoned Lancelot. "We''re hunting down the Cursed Swordfiend this time. Lead the way," Lin Huang instructed. 421 Priority The Shadow Land was a city that was overrun by monsters. Every skyscraper, house and even cellar were filled with monsters. Many of them walked around the streets that were made by humans. In the safe zones, such a scene could only be seen if a foothold was completely invaded by the monster crowd. The monsters treated themselves as the owners of the city. Some of them would even avoid some of the buildings so as not to damage the lights. They seemed to really enjoy the lights in the city as it was soft and did not hurt the eyes like the sun did. They were buildings of different heights on both sides of the streets. Most of them were engulfed with plants while there were some parts that were completely damaged. It was the sign that time had passed. There were many abandoned cars by the streets but they were only left with their bare shells as time went by. "Brother, what are those steel shells?" Lin Xin asked while they were riding on the Viridian Wolf. "They should be a form of transportation during the olden times." Lin Huang had no idea if they used cars in this world, so he just called them "transportation". "Transportation? So ugly?" Lin Xin was looking at the broken shells that had been through decades. The metal steel that was rusty seemed really unsightly. "I guess they didn''t look like this when they were not broken. Or maybe, the people in that era had a different definition of beauty compared to us," Lin Huang explained. "But how do these things move?" Lin Xin was curious. "Perhaps it''s powered by some demonic crystal energy source." Lin Huang had no idea how the cars in the old epoch worked. Lin Xin seemed to notice that her questions were too much as Lin Huang was not a teacher who researched the old epoch after all. It was normal for him not to be able to answer her questions. She decided to stop asking to avoid the awkwardness. Under the bright street lights, the Viridian Wolf brought Lin Huang, Lin Xin, and Lancelot into the city without making any sound. Lin Huang and Lin Xin were sitting while Lancelot stood behind Lin Huang, his feet glued on the Viridian Wolf''s back. No matter how bumpy the road got, he did not seem to be affected at all. He was swinging his black sword as they traveled, killing all the monsters within the coverage of his Death Zone. There were not many monsters along the way. Most of the monsters that Lancelot killed were those that wandered the streets. Besides abandoned cars, they were not many obstacles around. The Viridian Wolf could be seen from far away, and the wandering monsters dashed towards them as they saw the humans riding on the Viridian Wolf. To them, the human flesh was definitely delicious food with fresh, tender meat. Some of them would attack when they saw them from the broken windows in the buildings. However, those threats were taken care by the complete gold-level Lancelot easily. Although it was a middle-range danger zone with at least five Transcendent monsters, most of the monsters were below Transcendent. With Lancelot''s white flame-level attack ability, he did not need to swing his sword twice with the Death Zone. He could kill just by standing where he was. Initially, Lin Xin panicked as she saw monsters charging at them, but she soon noticed that none of them could get 20 meters close to the Viridian Wolf as they were killed by Lancelot. "Brother, Lancelot is so powerful! Is he the most powerful summoning monster that you have?" Lin Xin asked instinctively as she thought Lancelot was more powerful than Tyrant and Kylie. What she did not know was that Tyrant and Kylie had already completed their unlocking and were both holy fire-level while Lancelot was only a complete gold-level. No matter Tyrant''s defensive ability or Kylie''s speed, they were definitely more powerful than Lancelot''s attack ability. "No." Lin Huang turned around and looked at Lancelot. "He would be in the top 3 if he managed to mutate again when he''s a holy fire-level." What Lin Huang said was the truth. He owned two triple mutated monsters which were Bai and the Supreme Overlord. Bai was a god''s blood creature and triple mutated, so it was no doubt the most powerful Monster Card that Lin Huang had. The second was the Supreme Overlord. Although he did not have any unique blood, his intelligence was high, and he was good at controlling. He had terrifying abilities himself and ranked second among the other Monster Cards for now. The third would be Charcoal. Once Charcoal was unlocked and leveled up to holy fire-level, it would evolve into an adult and become the remarkable one in the Monster Card collection. Whether its blood would upgrade or whether a triple mutation would happen, the adult Charcoal would be much powerful than before and could be comparable with Bai. Lin Huang said Lancelot would be top 3 if he were triple mutated as he had included the sword servants as well. With the nine sword servants, Lancelot would definitely defeat any of the monsters. Although Lancelot was a monster with the title of "ruthless", Lin Huang did not plan to upgrade him because of the title. Lancelot had no comment about what Lin Huang said as he was clear that the comment meant well. He knew about Bai and the Supreme Overlord''s abilities himself; they were really more powerful than he was. "It can''t be" Lin Xin was stunned. To her, Lancelot was invincible, but to Lin Huang, he would only be top 3 if he managed to achieve a triple mutation. "Lancelot is only a complete gold-level now. He''ll need a very long time to grow strong." Lin Huang remembered that Xiao Hei had mentioned that monsters with titles should be trained properly. That was how he started looking up on Lancelot and Kylie. He had more and more Monster Cards with limited Advanced Cards, so it was impossible for him to train all his monsters at once. He would have to choose those that were talented with real abilities as well as the conformity of the summoning monsters. If blood mattered, Bai and Charcoal should be prioritized while the three fiends would come second. The team should have a controlling monster, so the Supreme Overlord should be prioritized as well. His controlling skill was almost invincible while the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit and the Witch could be his backup. Besides, the intelligent Bloody should be prioritized as well as Tyrant who had the highest defense ability among all of them. Considering what Xiao Hei said, Lancelot and Kylie should be trained too. That was why Lin Huang insisted on taking his time to unlock his monsters as they were worth training. As Lin Huang was thinking about which monsters to prioritize, the Viridian Wolf slowed down. "We''re here?" Lin Huang looked up and looked into a dark alley without any street lights ahead. 422 Bloody’s Ambition The dark alley was not where the Cursed Swordfiend was, but it was the hiding place for a parasite called the Shadow Worm. The Shadow Worm was a unique parasite which would perform parasitizing on creatures'' shadows instead of their bodies, which was unavoidable for the victims. Their reason for being there was because Bloody had mentioned to Lin Huang before that it was one of the parasitizing methods that it desired. The Shadow Worm not only had an unusual parasitizing method but was also a cross-ranking parasite. Lin Huang pinned this location first when they arrived in the area. The Viridian Wolf stopped at the entrance of the alley, and Lin Huang could hear crunching. It was the sound of Shadow Worms that was crawling in the dark. "Come out, Bloody!" Lin Huang waved and summoned Bloody. "This is the Shadow Leech of the Shadow Worm that you wanted. Its is lair ahead," Lin Huang said to Bloody. Bloody nodded in excitement and dashed towards the alley in a crimson glow. Soon, the alley became crowded with chirping noises. There were some Shadow Worms that raced towards Lin Huang and Lin Xin, but they were killed by Lancelot easily. It was the first time for the both of them to see real Shadow Worms. It was a black worm the size of an adult thumb that resembled a spider. They crawled fast, but they could not fly, or else, Lin Huang would not have just stood by the alley entrance so nonchalantly. "Congratulations, your epic-level Monster Card Bloody has obtained a new skill - Shadow Leech (Supreme)." As Xiao Hei''s notification was heard, a red glow dashed towards Lin Huang like a lightning bolt. "I''ve got the skill. Let''s go." Bloody spoke to Lin Huang in his mind. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang patted the Viridian Wolf''s back and they left. As they moved, the Shadow Worms chased them from the alley like a flood of critters. "We have offended them. Luckily, they can''t fly." Lin Huang turned around to look while asking the Viridian Wolf to run as fast as it could. He did not bother about the monsters around that were affected by the Shadow Worms. The Shadow Worms were not quick enough, so the Viridian Wolf managed to get away from them in an instant as it was much larger. Each stride of the Viridian Wolf was equivalent to hundreds of steps of the Shadow Worms. It was impossible for them to catch up. Therefore, the monsters around were attacked out of nowhere. Many of the monsters were puzzled by the chaos. Lin Huang looked at Bloody''s details as he had the time, and he wanted to know what was the effect of the skill that Bloody had obtained. "Monster Card" "Rarity: Epic" "Monster Name: Bloody (Demonic Dandelion Vine)" "Type of Monster: Parasite" "Combat Level: Gold-level Rank-3 (Complete)" "Skill 1: Leech Pods" "Skill 2: Absolute Control" "Skill 3: Supreme Intelligence" "Skill 4: Limitless Ingestion" "Skill 5: Shadow Leech (Supreme)" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Remarks: Monster skill has yet to be fully discovered. One more skill on the way." "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Shadow Leech (Supreme): Using shadows as an agent, it can parasitize on any living thing of two levels higher." "Remark 1: There''s no need to enter the host''s body. All it needs to do is to capture the host''s shadow with its own to complete the parasite." "Remark 2: The shadow of the host can be changed into any form and can move as it wishes as long as the shadow doesn''t cover more than 100 times of its own body. The host''s shadow cannot be smaller than its own body." "Remark 3: 10 targets maximum at once." "Remark 4: The maximum level of the host is two levels higher." "Remark 4: Creatures that have no shadows could not be applied." "My Bloody is so powerful!" Lin Huang thought to himself as he read the description of the new skill. Although Bloody''s Leech Pods could parasitize massive amounts of creatures at once, it only applied to those that had the same combat level as Bloody. Cross-ranking parasitizing was impossible for the Leech Pods. However, now Bloody had a second parasite skill which it should be able to cast on one host, but Lin Huang had no idea how it could parasitize on ten hosts at the same time. Besides, it could cast on not only one level, but two whole levels higher. Lin Huang had never heard of any parasite monsters that possessed cross-ranking and group parasitizing abilities. Perhaps Bloody was the first. If Bloody were a wild monster that was not controlled by humans, although it was not a holy fire-level yet, the destruction that it could create would be chaotic. The two abilities alone could destroy the entire human C-grade foothold. "Have you chosen the last skill? Maybe one for survival or would you like to choose from regeneration, defense, or speed?" Lin Huang asked Bloody as he saw there was still one vacant skill slot. "I have chosen Immortal Tinder." Bloody had its own plan. "Immortal Tinder? Isn''t that the Undead Evil Child''s skill? It''s an undead. Can you extract the skill?" Lin Huang did not mention that the Undead Evil Child was one of the monsters that could not be killed in this world. Since this monster could cast its tinder on other creatures, as soon as it died, one of the tinders would be activated and its consciousness would be transferred into the tinder in the host, which would then completely transform the host into a new Undead Evil Child. Although there were only nine tinders, the tinders were cast far away, so it was impossible for it to be killed. Before the tinder was activated, nobody could tell which monsters were the hosting them. "I don''t need to kill it, all I need is to parasite on one, extract its memory and mimic its ability. I think there are similarities between my Leech Seed and its tinder. I''ll try to integrate my Leech Seed with the ability. If it''s successful, I''ll have hundreds of thousands of lives and that''ll increase even more as I get more powerful. It''s okay even if the integration fails. I can research an ability that''s similar to survival." Bloody had chosen the skill as it was ambitious. If the integration was successful, it was basically immortal. Even Lin Huang was shocked by its grandiose plan. Suddenly, a few birds tore towards them, but they were soon killed by Lancelot who was standing on the Viridian Wolf. "What''s happening? Why''re there more monsters out of nowhere?" Lin Huang noticed that something was wrong as many monsters were chasing after them. "These monsters must be parasitized by the Shadow Worm" Bloody said after a long silence. "But all we did was kill one of their friends, so why are they doing this?" The monsters that were controlled by the Shadow Worms still came after them after the Viridian Wolf was already tens of kilometers away, puzzling Lin Huang. "Maybe because I killed their king" What Bloody said made Lin Huang speechless. No wonder the worms were coming after them like they had killed their father! Lin Huang did not expect their father to truly have been killed! "Maybe they''re chasing us because I have the king''s aura on me. We should be able to get rid of them if you recall me back into card form, Master." Bloody that was hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve suggested. "Alright then" Lin Huang then recalled Bloody into card form. As expected, when the monsters were killed by Lancelot, the rest of them at the back did not chase after them anymore. "Finally, it stopped." Lin Huang was relieved. He then patted the Viridian Wolf''s fluffy head. "Next target - the Cursed Swordfiend!" 423 It Is Somewhat Purified The Cursed Swordfiend was a humanoid demon monster that had gone through three mutations. Most of the sword type monsters and swordsmen among humans were skilled at close combat. Their attack power was rather impressive . However, the Cursed Swordfiend was an exception. It was excellent at assassinating enemies. Aside from that, a variety of spells were cast on its swords. If one were attacked by its sword, a randomly selected curse would befall the person immediately. Each attack would create different types of curse effects, and these effects could be overlaid on the body of the injured. Some curses had an extremely strong effect. For example, the Lethal Curse would cause immediate death in the cursed. Even if the wound was less than a millimeter long and if the opponent''s combat strength was a few levels higher than the Cursed Swordfiend, the curse would still be effective immediately. However, most of the curses could only manage to distract its opponent such as causing dizziness, numbness, diarrhea, urinary incontinence, and so on. Because the Cursed Swordfiend possessed such an evil power, humans tried not to offend such a monster. They would feel extremely awkward if they were injured during the battle, suffering from urinary incontinence or diarrhea. Furthermore, if one were unlucky and encountered the Lethal Curse, they would be weeping without tears. However, Lin Huang had no fear of the Cursed Swordfiend. The monster could be controlled by Kylie the Nephilic Judge who was completely immune to its curse. In addition to that, despite the weak Cursed Swordfiend''s attack power and despite the fact that it was only a white flame-level, Tyrant was unable to break through its defense. It would probably kill Tyrant instead. The Cursed Swordfiend would have no way of penetrating Lin Huang''s energy protective layer that was created by his 5-star armor, let alone bypass Lin Huang''s ultimate defensive skill C the Dark Shield. The people were all afraid of the Cursed Swordfiend. However, to Lin Huang, there was no difference between the Cursed Swordfiend and the rest of the white flame-level monsters. After getting rid of the Shadow Worms, Lin Huang recalled the Viridian Wolf and summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk. He had ridden on the Viridian Wolf previously because the distance between them was short. They were less than 30 kilometers apart. It was also because Lin Huang wanted to take a closer look at the situation of the city. If not for his worrying about Lin Xin''s physical strength, he would have actually preferred to walk. The Cursed Swordfiend was found about 1,200 kilometers away. It was a straight-line distance. Despite the Viridian Wolf running at full speed, it still took them more than ten hours to arrive at their destination. The Viridescent Thunderhawk then carried the three of them and flew off into the sky. In less than an hour, they then arrived at their destination and landed on the ground. The Shadow Land, the place where the Cursed Swordfiend was hiding, was a high-rise building situated towards the west of the ruins. It had a height of more than 570 meters. Despite being located at the center of the city, it still stood out above the rest. Lin Huang could see that before its abandonment, it had been a prosperous business zone. Lights from buildings of different sizes used to be lit up all the time, and the city had been as bright as day. "Before the foothold was abandoned, it must have been a prosperous city," Lin Xin sized up the surrounding and said. Just looking at the buildings, the area of the business zone was comparable to that of an A-grade foothold. Lin Huang then raised his head and looked towards the tallest building. If he was not mistaken, the Cursed Swordfiend should now be hiding on the top floor of the building and it must have noticed them. He immediately recalled the Viridescent Thunderhawk and summoned Kylie. Kylie sized up the surrounding calmly as soon as she realized that she was somewhere she was unfamiliar with. She then turned back and looked at Lin Huang. To be exact, it was a half-red, half-blue mask without any facial features that was looking towards Lin Huang. She did not ask anything about it and Lin Huang said nothing either. He immediately instructed, "There is a Cursed Swordfiend on top of the building, bring it down, but don''t kill it." Kylie did not nod. She lifted her head and looked towards the top of the high-rise building. Her gaze seemed to have penetrated through her mask. She was not restricted to the dark surroundings and managed to see the humanoid monster that was looking at them. Six of her golden wings immediately fluttered, and she flew up to the sky towards the top of the building. After a few moments, a dazzling white glow suddenly appeared in mid-air. Lin Huang, who was looking towards that direction, squinted. Soon after, a loud explosive sound was heard and a black shadow immediately appeared. It struck the ground hard with a cloud of smoke. Bang! Lin Huang could feel the vibration was coming from the ground beneath his feet. Lin Xin, who was standing next to him, almost fell down. He immediately extended his hand and grabbed her. As soon as Lin Xin could balance herself, Lin Huang then looked towards the direction where the black shadow had fallen. A big hole that was a few meters in diameter was formed hundreds of meters away from him. Right at this moment, before Lin Huang could even issue any instructions, Lancelot transformed into a black shadow and took a leap. Kylie then gradually descended from mid-air. It seemed like she was not going to join the fight as she stood next to Lin Huang and became a spectator. There was smoke billowing out from the big hole. Soon, Lancelot body was shrouded in the cloud of smoke and nobody could see him. Even Lin Huang''s vision could only detect a few beams of black shadows flickering and crashes were heard. This situation lasted for less than a minute. Before the smoke cleared away, Xiao Hei''s notification was heard. "Congratulations, you have obtained an Epic level monster card --the Cursed Swordfiend (Sword Servant). Lancelot slowly walked out from the cloud of smoke. Lin Huang was shocked because the Cursed Swordfiend was killed by Lancelot very quickly. Although it was weak in close combat, it was still a white flame-level monster. How did Lancelot manage to kill it in less than a minute without even activating his Absolute Life?! Lin Huang then recalled the white glow that appeared mid-air and looked towards Kylie. "What did you do to the Cursed Swordfiend just now?!" "I did nothing. It is somewhat purified," Kylie said calmly. Lin Huang then recalled the beam of white light that had appeared abruptly in mid-air must have been Kylie''s Purification Light. The Purification Light could be fatal to the Cursed Swordfiend. When it shone on the Cursed Swordfiend, it was as if an ordinary person had been doused with sulphuric acid. Despite the light shining on it for only a short period, it had been weakened drastically. Lin Huang soon understood why Lancelot had been capable of killing it so easily. "An immortal-level monster that is 1,800 kilometers away from you sensed the power of Purification Light. It is coming towards you" Xiao Hei''s voice was suddenly heard. 424 Escape! Lin Huang had expected this to happen since there might be the presence of immortal-level monsters at the moderate danger zone. However, he never thought that Kylie''s Purification Light would catch the immortal-level monster''s attention. "Where''s the immortal-level monster coming from?" Right when Lin Huang asked this, he recalled Kylie and Lancelot back to their card forms and summoned the Viridescent Thunderhawk again. "It''s coming from the northeast." Lin Huang then carried Lin Xin, and the both of them rode on Thunder''s back. He urged, "Let''s head towards the south as fast as you can!" The Viridescent Thunderhawk immediately flew up to the sky and accelerated towards the cave located southwards. "Brother, what happened?" Lin Xin asked in shock. "There is an immortal-level monster coming after us!" Lin Huang did not bother hiding it from her. As soon as Thunder heard that, it accelerated at its maximum speed. "Is an immortal-level even stronger than a holy fire-level?" Lin Xin could still remember that Lin Huang had mentioned to her before the three levels of Transcendents. It was the immortal-level that was ranked above holy fire-level. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded and did not explain any further. Seeing Lin Huang''s reaction, Lin Xin did not continue asking. "How long do we need to arrive at the exit at Thunder''s current speed?" Lin Huang contacted Xiao Hei through his mind. "42 minutes." "Will the monster be able to catch up with us?" Lin Huang then asked. "At the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s current speed, it takes only half an hour for the immortal-level monster to catch up with you." "We won''t be able to run away at Thunder''s speed" Lin Huang frowned. After a short a while, a thought flashed through his mind. "If Thunder is not fast enough, Kylie''s speed should be." As soon as he thought of this, Lin Huang immediately summoned Kylie. Standing on the Viridescent Thunderhawk''s back, Kylie looked at Lin Huang doubtfully. Lin Huang immediately communicated with Kylie through his mind. He wanted Kylie''s body could grow wider so that he and Lin Xin could sit on her back. It was apparent that Kylie was unwilling to let anyone ride on her back. She was not a flying mount. However, she was forced to agree with him. As soon as the body of Kylie who was standing on Thunder''s back grew bigger, Thunder''s speed was somewhat affected. Lin Huang and Lin Xin then rode on her back. Kylie attempted to flap her wings. After knowing that her movement was not being hindered, she then flew off into the sky. Lin Huang then recalled Thunder that was still flying. Kylie accelerated rapidly, and her speed seemed to be three times faster than Thunder''s in an instant. Six of her golden wings fluttered and a golden meteorite streaked across the sky. Roar! The immortal-level monster growled angrily as soon as it discovered Lin Huang was getting farther away from it. However, Lin Huang and the rest could not hear it as Kylie''s flying speed was four times faster than the speed of sound. till, the growl could be heard in the city. The monsters immediately froze as soon as they heard it. All of them knew very well that it was the overlord of the underworld that let out a loud roar. Many of the hunters and adventure teams immediately restrained their aura and hid in the buildings. It was not the first time for those team to be there and they recognized the presence of the overlord as well. "What''s that sound? It''s so scary! It feels like my bladder just shrunk!" A 20 years old young man exclaimed. The monster let out a loud roar that reached the bottom of one''s soul. He was indeed frightened. "Just admit that you peed! What do you mean your bladder has shrunk?" A man next to him saw that he wet his pants and glanced at him disgustedly. "Shut up!" A tall man in golden armor was their leader. He shouted at the both of them. He was the one who had greeted Lin Huang''s team somewhere near the Dimensional Portal. He did not manage to form a team of ten and ended up with only eight of them. He suddenly remembered that they were partners right after he shouted at both of them and that they would not be happy with him. The tall man immediately lowered his voice and explained, "It is the master of the Shadow Land who let out the loud roar. It is an immortal-level monster, namely, the Abyssal Dragon. It was an actual dragonkin" "An immortal-level dragonkin" The people who first came to the Shadow Land were shocked. "It sounded like the Abyssal Dragon isn''t in a good mood. Let''s hide here today. Please don''t cause a stir in this area. We shall rest today and think about killing the monsters tomorrow," the tall team leader instructed. "However, it''s not safe to hide here. We''ll be trapped if it spits dragonflame. This is just an ordinary building and even we can destroy it, let alone the dragonkin," the young man who wet his pants had not calmed down and raised his opinion, "I think it''s better for us to quit now. We''ll come in again tomorrow." "Based on our observation, the Abyssal Dragon won''t simply destroy any buildings in the city. All these years, the city has always been precious to it. It never wanted to tear down the buildings. Besides, when it''s angry, all the monsters in the city will go dormant, and they won''t get us into trouble. Therefore, it''s certainly safe to stay here. If you walk along the streets, you''ll easily become the Abyssal Dragon''s target," the tall man warned. Listening to the leader''s explanation, the young man immediately kept quiet and had no more objections. Of course, Lin Huang did not know that the monster he offended had sent all the humans and monsters in the Shadow Land to go into hiding. He had no idea what type of monster was chasing after him. There was no need for him to know though. As long as it was an immortal-level monster, he could not afford to offend it. Despite having a Provisional Summoning Card as his trump card and being able to summon a monster with similar abilities to the Infernal Dragon that had appeared at the auction hall, he did not want to use the life-saving card if possible. Kylie took about ten minutes and arrived somewhere near the cave. Although the cave was not wide, it was sufficient for Kylie to pass through. She retracted her wings, slowing down, and rushed towards the exit along with Lin Xin and Lin Huang. A few moments later, they passed through the corridor and emerged from the ground. Kylie''s sudden appearance frightened many of the people in the cave. They thought that a monster had broken in. Soon after, they saw two people sitting on the monster''s back. "That''s such a strange mount. It is a humanoid monster and it looks like a girl. Yes, it seems like she has a nice body" A man with a wretched appearance mumbled in a low voice. Kylie gradually landed on the ground when they were a certain distance away from the cave. Lin Huang then recalled Kylie and summoned the Dimensional Portal. He then set the location to Luoxi City where he had been and strode over with Lin Xin. The Meteorite Desert would be his final destination where a double mutated sword type monster existed. Also, it was also the isolated place where the presence of the Starlight Beast was detected as well as the place that Lin Huang had chosen to unseal Charcoal. 425 Arriving at Luoxi City Again Luoxi City was situated north to the C-grade foothold in Divison7. Lin Huang had been there to hunt the brain eater and had bought the quick-frozen cake at Luoxi City before. Looking at the time, it was already slightly after four in the afternoon. "The foothold looks desolate" Lin Xin looked around and said. She could recognize it as a C-grade foothold. However, it was no longer as prosperous as it used to be. "This is Luoxi City. It is located north to Divison7 which is also one of the footholds nearest to northwest area," Lin Huang explained. The economy of a border city will normally be bad since it was too far away from the city. The tourism was unsustainable. "Do you still remember the quick-frozen cake that I gave you?" Lin Xin immediately nodded her head as she could still clearly remember how delicious the cake was. "The main outlet of that quick-frozen cake is here." Lin Huang said with a smile. "Is that true?!" Lin Xin was excited the moment she heard this. "Yes, I''ll bring you to the cake shop later. Let''s walk around and look for a hotel now." Lin Huang was not in a hurry to hunt monsters as Lin Xin was tired. Also, Lancelot had completed the unsealing process for two monsters. There was only one monster left and he was finally able to relax. He would start his journey tomorrow morning. Lin Huang then brought along Lin Xin and checked in into a hotel. They walked out from the hotel, riding on the Viridian Wolf and headed towards the cake shop. Arriving at the cake shop, Lin Xin, who was initially tired, felt more energized. Other than buying 100 quick-frozen cakes, Lin Xin had also chosen many of the desserts. She had never tried some of them before. There were also desserts that she had never eaten before. The desserts looked delicious. Since Lin Huang was not short of money, she bought them all. It seemed like half of the food sold in the shop were bought by Lin Huang and Lin Xin. After buying the desserts, both of them then walked along the business street. When it was almost 6 p.m, both of them looked for a restaurant selling spicy hotpot for dinner. Ever since Lin Xin had been to Jinchuan, she was in love with spicy food. It was already 7 p.m when they returned to the hotel. In the living room, Lin Huang sat on the sofa. He browsed through the Hunter Forum and posted a message on the reward board using an anonymous account. "I''ll offer a reward of 5,000 Life Crystals to look for the Undead Evil Child. Anyone who has the location of the monster, please contact me." It seemed like 5,000 Life Crystals were just a small amount of money. However, it was sufficient to buy a 3-star relic. Furthermore, Lin Huang only requested for the location of the monster. Despite the Undead Evil Child being rare, the monsters were scattered around. The people had discovered them at many places before. This piece of information meant nothing to the discoverers as it was unlikely that people would hunt for the Undead Evil Child as the monsters were immortal. In less than two minutes after Lin Huang posted the message, he received a personal message. He was surprised and opened it. It was sent by an anonymous hunter. "I have the location that you are looking for. It was discovered two months ago. Let''s trade if you need it. Trading account: 93X24X11." "How can that be so fast?" Lin Huang frowned and immediately proceeded with the transaction. He then searched for the account number of the anonymous who had already selected the preferred transaction method. The due date of the transaction was one month from today. Lin Huang had to visit the location specified within one month in order to verify the presence of the target monster. Upon confirmation, only then would the information provider be able to receive the money. If it were not confirmed within one month, the money would be automatically transferred to the other party''s account. Of course, before all this happened, Lin Huang had to authorize the Emperor''s Heart Ring to carry out the transaction before the Life Crystals could be deducted from his account by the Hunter Network. If the target monster did not appear at the specific location within one month, he could apply to cancel the transaction from the Hunter Association. At the same time, he could file a complaint against the person who had provided false information and the people from the Hunter Association would investigate it. Once it was confirmed, the user would be blacklisted by Hunter Association as well as the cooperative organization. Therefore, one would normally not provide fake information as they would have to pay for it. Lin Huang was never worried that he would receive false information from the Hunter Association. Instead, he was worried that there would be organizations from the black market that spread fake news whereby they would swindle him out of money. This was also the reason why whenever Lin Huang posted a message on the black market, the transaction would be done face-to-face. Normally, the organizations that spread false information dared not show up as they were afraid that they would be killed. Only a few of them from the underworld were friendly. It was normal for them to kill the person who offended them. Upon confirming the transaction, the location was quickly sent to him. Lin Huang glanced at it. "Sandy Land? Isn''t it somewhere near Baqi City?" Sandy Land was a level-4 wilderness area. Previously, it was a danger zone. As it was too near to the human foothold, the Transcendent monsters existing there were all killed. Although Sandy Land was near to Baqi City, it was actually nearer to Fatty''s old house. The distance was less than 800 kilometers. Lin Huang would never expect the Undead Evil Child to appear at such a place. "After I''ve settled everything here, I''ll go there. I wonder how''s the situation in Fatty''s hotel." It had been more than half a month since Fatty''s funeral ceremony. Lin Huang was paying close attention to news of Ke Lai Hotel. He had been waiting for the opportunity to purchase the retail chain as it was Fatty''s last will. However, there was no rumor from the Yi family that the hotel was available for sale. Lin Huang was going to visit them and ask the old lady about that. Without the support of Fatty''s father and Fatty, the hotel needed a transformation. Otherwise, it could no longer operate. However, none of them from Fatty''s family knew about this. If they decided not to sell it, perhaps the hotel would continue operating in the classic model. If that happened, they would suffer a great loss. Lin Huang then shut the Hunter Forum screen. He shook his head and snapped himself out of his thoughts. He took a wooden knife and headed towards the training room. Lin Huang deliberately chose a hotel under the Hunter Association as they would be responsible for any damages or losses. It was not because Lin Huang wanted to take advantage of the Hunter Association, but it could save him some trouble instead. If the training room were damaged, he would only have to inform them about it. Otherwise, he would probably have to spend a few hours communicating with the person-in-charge and discussing the compensation for the damage caused. Lin Huang had no time for that. Lin Huang had completed the learning of the Star Dome. He was no longer practicing the Star Dome in the training room. It was the Great Sword Scripture that he was now focusing on instead. He began reintegrating all the sword skills that he had learned before. As soon as he had mastered the Star Dome, he felt that he had some new understandings about his sword skill training and his sword power had been improving. Soon, a few hours had passed. At midnight, Lin Huang then retracted his sword. He was quite satisfied with the training of his sword skill. "I''ll probably need three to four days to complete the integration of the Great Sword Scripture. The same goes for the rest of the sword skills. With my current progress, my Dao of the Sword will be further improved when the integration is about to be completed." 426 Sword Dominator The last unsealing servant chosen by Lin Huang for Lancelot was the Sword Dominator. Sword Dominator was a pseudo-fairy, humanoid monster. The monster''s strongest power was its ability to manipulate swords. It was said to be capable of dominating 3,000 swords at the same time and its attack skills were incredibly ruthless. When Lin Huang saw the skills on the monster guide for the first time, it reminded him of the sword mastery skill in the supernatural genre of novels. According to one of such novels, there was a sage in the sky. Thousands of swords then appeared when he extended his hand, transforming them into sword rain and his enemies were engulfed. The scene was incredible as he thought of it. Perhaps it was the reason why the authors of various supernatural novels and fantasy novels enjoyed writing about sword skills. The Sword Dominator was discovered deep in the Meteorite Desert. It was approximately 2,200 kilometers away from the northwest of the city. It was in the same direction as where the Starlight Beast was; both of them were less than 600 kilometers apart. At 8 a.m, Lin Huang then summoned Thunder after having his breakfast. Lin Huang and Lin Xin headed towards the place where the Sword Dominator was. Lin Huang was not worried that it would secretly attack him as it leaned more towards attacking its opponent face-to-face. Therefore, they continued moving forward, and Lin Huang guided Lin Xin. Sitting on Thunder''s back, he sighed emotionally while looking at the desert that he was familiar with. He had lived in the desert for several days when he was looking for the Starlight Beast. It was the place where he met Liang Qian, who had lost her teammates. He witnessed how cruel the Saint members were, and he had even killed two of them. It was Lin Xin''s first time visiting a desert. Looking at the vast, endless golden sand, she was excited. She could not stop oohing over how beautiful it was. "It''s so lovely! It must be amazing watching the sunrise, sunset, and even the stars over here" Lin Huang twitched his mouth. That was merely what she saw. The Meteorite Desert was similar to the Shadow Land as both of them were moderate danger zones. There were seven known Transcendent monsters, and there might even be immortal-level monsters around. There were a large number of Transcendent monsters on the spacious ground, many of which were hiding underground and could be hardly seen by the naked eye. Without considering the monsters, the difference in temperature between daytime and nighttime alone was fatal to ordinary people. However, Lin Xin knew nothing about that. "This desert is called Meteorite Desert. You may check out this place with your Emperor''s Heart Ring, and you''ll know where you''re at." Lin Huang eventually interrupted her beautiful fantasy as she was talking incessantly. Lin Xin was curious and connected to the network with her Emperor''s Heart Ring. A few moments later, she was no longer excited. She was just trying her luck and asked, "Is this desert really that dangerous?" "In fact, it will actually be more dangerous than what was mentioned on the network. It''s the same as the Shadow Land where we were yesterday. Both of them are moderate danger zones. Even a Gold Hunter can possibly die here, and a Silver Hunter definitely won''t step foot in here." Lin Huang nodded his head. "If you''re becoming a hunter in the future, you can''t judge a place by its appearance and let your guard down. You have to prepare yourself before going to a place that you''re unfamiliar with and take the worst-case scenarios into consideration. That''s the only way you won''t panic when danger comes to you." Lin Huang was behaving like a teacher, dishing out advice. Lin Xin was always obedient and she nodded. More than an hour had passed. Thunder had finally arrived at the place where the Sword Dominator was discovered. It gradually descended from the sky while flapping its wings. The area was an oasis. As soon as Lin Huang and Lin Xin reached the ground, they could smell the scent of flowers. "It''s so fragrant!" Lin Xin looked around as she wanted to know where the smell was coming from. Soon, she saw a tree with a white flower which was the size of a human brain. The flower bloomed beautifully. While she was about to move a step forward, Lin Huang immediately grabbed her arm. "It is the Scented Ent, a type of demon. It will release a unique scent so the creatures will mistakenly identify it as their favorite scent. It will then lure the creatures and kill them. The beautiful white flower is actually its brain. It can reach up to a meter long in diameter. Its brain will eat even a monster the size of Tyrant." Lin Xin was horrified and immediately retreated. She secretly glanced at the big tree with the white flower and no longer dared to look at it after that. She would never expect that such a terrifying monster would exist in this green and peaceful world. "Let''s go." Lin Huang was not scaring Lin Xin intentionally. The Scented Ent had a height of more than 30 meters and its combat level was the same as Lin Huang. Both of them were on gold-level rank-3 as well. Any monsters ranking below Transcendent would be killed if they approached it. Recalling Thunder, Lin Huang summoned Lancelot again. As soon as his instruction was received, Lancelot followed after the both of them, taking up the responsibility as a guardian. Lin Huang was leading Lin Xin, and the both of them then headed towards the location where the Sword Dominator had been discovered previously. The open space where Thunder landed was only about hundreds of meters away from the location. With its body size, it was quite difficult for it to land on the ground. The trio then continued moving forward and soon, the gurgling sound of the flowing stream got nearer. Right after they arrived at their destination, they then found out that it was actually a waterfall. The waterfall was more than 20 meters tall with a width of more than 10 meters. There was a torrential downpour, cascading down into a pool that was 10 meters away from the waterfall. Lin Huang slightly shifted his body while sizing up the surroundings. He then lowered his head and looked at the location set on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He slightly frowned as he looked at the waterfall, mumbling to himself, "There''s nothing wrong with the location on the Emperor''s Heart Ring" "Brother, what''s happened?" Lin Xin asked curiously. "Nothing." Lin Huang shook his head and summoned Kylie again. He then instructed, "Kylie, please protect Lin Xin. Lancelot and I will have a look at the waterfall." Lin Huang reacted in such a way because according to the location provided, the Sword Dominator was inside the waterfall. However, there was no through road. Lin Huang felt strange at the beginning. Soon, he realized that there might be a cave behind the waterfall. The Sword Dominator might be hiding inside the cave. Upon confirming that, Lin Huang then took a leap and walked towards the waterfall. He plunged into the waterfall. Lancelot then followed after him. 427 Lin Huangs Attack Passing through the waterfall, Lin Huang found out that there was indeed a cave over there. The cave must have been naturally formed as the surface of the wall was smooth as if it was the result of being exposed to the scouring of the stream of water over a prolonged period of time. The cave was about 10 meters high with stalactites that looked like bamboo shoots hanging from the roof of the cave. Lin Huang was checking out the surroundings, and soon, Lancelot followed after them and entered the cave. Similar to Lin Huang, its body was clean as well. Before entering the cave, it saw that Lin Huang had formed an umbrella with his Dark Shield. It followed suit, creating an umbrella with his Dark Shield to block himself the flowing water of the waterfall. Despite the Dark Shield being a skill extracted from Lancelot, Lin Huang managed to use it more efficiently than Lancelot did. Right when Lancelot entered the cave, two beams of light flashed through the sky, aiming towards Lin Huang and Lancelot. Lin Huang had already noticed it before the beam of light arrived in his Micro Territory. He quietly grabbed a 5-star relic in his hand. The moment when the two beams of light entered his territory, he brandished his sword, and the glows disappeared at almost the same time. By the time Lancelot reacted to the beams of light, it had no more change to fight. "Come out. There''s no need to hide anymore." Through the trial attack, Lin Huang knew that the ability of Sword Dominator was not much stronger than an ordinary double mutated white flame-level monster. The Sword Dominator knew that its sneak attack was rendered useless, so it no longer bothered sneaking up on Lin Huang and slowly walked towards him. Lin Huang could then see how the Sword Dominator really looked like. There was not much difference between it and a human. It had a white beard and white hair and was dressed in a white robe as well. It was a sage. However, its skin was somewhat different from an old man''s as it had the skin of someone in his twenties. There were no wrinkles and was even smoother and fairer than most teenage girls. In addition to its unique character, it would attract many girls if it had its white beard shaved. The only difference was that on its head, a thumb-sized light blue crystal in the shape of a diamond was set. "You''re indeed a pseudo-fairy that possesses fairy blood. You''re kind of unique," Lin Huang mumbled. He felt that it was a fairy that remained aloof from the world. He did not want to kill it. At this moment, Lancelot reacted. It transformed into a black shadow, leaving a faint black mist in its original position. "He''s really bad-tempered" He was speechless, seeing Lancelot acting impulsively. The Sword Dominator was originally checking Lin Huang out as it could sense that Lin Huang was exuding an intimidating aura. However, just when Lancelot moved, it shifted its gaze towards Lancelot. It lifted its right hand, pointing at Lancelot with two of its fingers. Several long swords immediately formed and dashed towards Lancelot. Lin Huang did not join in the battle. Instead, he was looking on as an outsider. He was interested in Lancelot''s sword manipulation skill as well and now had the chance to observe its skill. "The speed of forming the long sword is incredibly fast. It was formed in an instant! Furthermore, it looks like it is an actual weapon instead of a sword that has been created with Life Power. It requires a lot of time to create a fine sword like this using Life Power. One won''t be able to achieve such a speed even through practice. It must be somewhat similar to the bloody wings of a vampire. It consumes a relatively low amount of Life Power where it is mainly supported by skills. Otherwise, it will be unable to summon 3,000 long swords at the same time" "Its attack speed and strength are slightly stronger than a gunmaster of the same level since it is a monster that has gone through its second mutation. However, compared to the gunmaster, there''s something good about its attack skills. It doesn''t need to move as the angle of attack can be simply changed. It''s capable of performing a 360-degree attack whereby it manages to attack anywhere on its opponent''s body. Its long sword is different from the Life Power bullets of a gunmaster. It can repeatedly be used, provided that it isn''t damaged. Furthermore, it changes its trajectory path as it pleases. Therefore, it is hardly predictable. On the contrary, the bullets of the gunmaster can no longer be controlled after they''re fired out of the bore of a gun" Watching the battle between them, Lin Huang then analyzed the skills of the Sword Dominator. In the karst cave, the battle between Lancelot and Sword Dominator became more intense. It was obvious that Lancelot was completely pinned down by the Sword Dominator. Since Lancelot was only a complete-gold level, its attack meant nothing to the Sword Dominator. Each time it struck an attack with its sword, it only managed to block the hit by the Sword Dominator''s long sword. It had no way to break its sword completely. The Sword Dominator''s swords were still perfectly fine, and it constantly added the number of swords. The number of swords had increased, and the angles of attack became more difficult to handle. If Lancelot did not rely on his Death Zone and his acute senses, perhaps he would have been long defeated. As the number of swords was increasing, Lancelot, who was originally defending himself with its sword, was forced to activate his Dark Shield to defend against its opponent''s attack. Lin Huang knew that it was impossible for Lancelot to defeat it when he saw this. Lancelot''s normal offense was too weak. It was incapable of destroying its opponent''s long sword, resulting in an increase in the number of swords. Eventually, the Sword Dominator became invincible. Despite Lancelot summoning the Dark Shield to protect itself, he had no way to launch an attack. He could only defend passively, and of course, he would not be able to win the fight. The result of the fight was obvious, and it was meaningless for the battle to continue. Lin Huang finally decided to join the fight. Activating his Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps, he lunged towards the Sword Dominator like a flash of lightning. When the Sword Dominator sensed Lin Huang''s movement, it immediately gave up fighting Lancelot and shifted more than 100 of the long swords that it had just summoned towards Lin Huang. More than hundreds of long swords struck Lin Huang in all directions akin to torrential rain. Lin Huang did not dodge at all. Instead, he grinned. In just a short while, the long swords approached him. Right this moment, Lin Huang accelerated abruptly, streaking across the sky. He then escaped from the swords that surrounded him. Before the Sword Dominator could react to it, Lin Huang appeared in front of him. The 5-star sword relic pierced through its waist at a speed that was even faster than the speed of sound. The Sword Dominator could no longer escape when it was caught by the sword. Right at this moment, nine swords as large as doorways instantly formed and appeared in front of the Sword Dominator, blocking Lin Huang''s attack. Bang! The blades of the battle sword and the large sword collided. A loud explosive noise was heard. A few moments later, a cracking sound was heard. The door-sized swords splintered into pieces and soon, they collapsed. It seemed like they had been infected by a virus as the first sword right up to the eighth sword collapsed simultaneously. A cracking sound was heard again. Still, cracks appeared on the blade of the ninth sword. A flicker of fear flashed through the Sword Dominator''s eyes 428 3000 Sword Rain The suddenly created door-sized big swords formed by Lin Huang''s opponent were indeed out of his expectation. However, he did not hesitate and made an attack. Right when his battle sword collided with its big sword, eight out of nine swords were broken into pieces and cracks appeared on the ninth sword as well. However, it did not collapse. Seeing this to happen, Sword Dominator was upset. Soon after, an immense strength came from the blade of its sword. Its body and its last sword dashed towards Lin Huang like a softball being hit. A few moments later, it crashed into the wall of the cave. "Bang" The wall of the cave rapidly collapsed and the cracks began spreading everywhere. The natural cave could no longer bear the immense force generated and eventually collapsed. Water started gushing from the waterfall. Lin Huang then immediately stomped the ground and leaped out of the waterfall. Lancelot followed after him. Since both of them could not fly, it would be a drawback to them if they were being drawn into the waterfall. Escaping from the area would be their only choice. However, Lin Huang knew that Sword Dominator managed to defend against the attack with a large amount of its Life Power. Sword Dominator would definitely survive. The sound of an explosion was heard by Lin Xin and Kylie. They were standing somewhere near the waterfall. Soon after, a loud explosive noise was heard again and the waterfall collapsed. Two figures then appeared next to Lin Xin when they were worried about them. Seeing Lin Huang was safe, Lin Xin was relieved. Lin Huang and Lancelot turned their back on Lin Xin and looked towards the waterfall. All of a sudden, a white shadow appeared out of the waterfall. In fact, Sword Dominator was not dead. It was not injured as well. Sword Dominator who was hanging mid-air looked towards four of them. Hundreds of long swords were surrounding it, preparing for the fight. It shifted its gaze towards Lin Huang in the first place as it was nearly killed by him. It had fear in Lin Huang. Soon after, it noticed the presence of Kylie. It could not ignore the aura released by the white flame-level. After sizing up Lin Huang and Kylie, it was then determined, pointing its fingers at four of them. Hundreds of long swords that resembled meteorites were about to strike four of them. Right that moment when the long swords arrived at Lin Huang''s Micro Territory, Lin Huang took a step forward and brandished his sword. Lancelot wanted to help out as well. However, when it thought it was unable to destroy the opponent''s long sword, it gave up. In mid-air, the long swords that fell into Lin Huang''s Micro Territory were destroyed when they were attacked by Lin Huang in the air. Regardless of which angle the swords were coming from, none of them could escape from Lin Huang''s attack. Not even a single sword managed to approach Lin Huang at a distance of 80 meters. eeing the attacks launched by the white-robed monster lingering mid-air were destroyed by Lin Huang in a few seconds, it was the first time Lin Xin realized that her brother was way stronger than she thought. The Sword Dominator in mid-air was shocked. It did not notice that Lin Huang possessed a territory earlier and it only discovered it now. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to destroy all its long swords from everywhere in the air. A person who possessed a territory was capable of restraining monsters like Sword Dominator to some extent. It was because regardless of how tricky the attack was, one would not have to care where the attack was coming from as the territory would be able to detect it on its own. Furthermore, the attack range of a person who possessed a territory could cover up to the entire region. Therefore, Lin Huang could easily destroy all the long swords in the air. As soon as all the long swords were destroyed, Lin Huang stood up and looked at the Sword Dominator in mid-air. He then tried to provoke it with his offensive hand gesture, "Come on. Bring it on." "Do you want to die!?" A transcendent monster that had gone through its second mutation would normally know the human language as long as they had contacted humans before. A monster with higher intelligence could even speak human language. The offensive gesture and body language were not difficult for them to understand. Without a doubt, Lin Huang''s offensive gesture had stimulated Sword Dominator. A delicately made white scabbard suddenly appeared in Sword Dominator''s hand. Its white Life Power was being inserted into the scabbard. White glows then gushed out of the scabbard and a long sword was rapidly formed in the air. In just a blink of an eye, thousands of long swords were formed. However, it was not the end. The white scabbard did not stop making new swords. Lin Huang felt that it was interesting and looked at the scabbard. He guessed that it must be a relic that Sword Dominator was gifted with and it was exclusively made for Sword Dominator. The rest would be unable to use it. Otherwise, the people would kill all the Sword Dominator in this world in order to obtain the scabbard. "I wonder if Lancelot is unsealed, can the skill of a sword servant be extracted" Lin Huang mumbled. "Sword servant is a unique card where its skills cannot be extracted. However, as soon as Ruthless Sword Master is unsealed, you are allowed to use any of the skills of its sword servant." A notification from Xiao Hei was heard. Lin Huang was just mumbling. He did not know that Xiao Hei would give such a reply. Although the first sentence was disappointing, his eyes brightened and looked at Lancelot as soon as he heard the last sentence. "A double mutated monster possesses at least five skills. Lancelot has nine sword servants. This indicates that there will be more than 40 of skills available for use. In addition to the skill it has, there will be about 50 of them It is an ULTIMATE BOSS!" Lin Huang currently had about 10 of the monster skills. Even if the human combat skills that he had learned from the association were included, there were less than 20 of them. He was incredibly strong now and it seemed like nobody of the same level could fight him. Once Lancelot was unsealed, the number of skills would be more than twice the skill that Lin Huang currently possessed. Lin Huang then knew that he had underestimated Lancelot''s ability. He was excited. He felt lucky that he did not simply choose nine sword type monsters for Lancelot as sword servant to avoid getting into trouble. When Lin Huang was not aware of it, Sword Dominator had already released more than 3,300 long swords in the air. This had proven that Sword Dominator''s ultimate skill was more than 3,000 swords as mentioned in the monster guide. To be exact, there were 3,333 of them. This attack had depleted Sword Dominator''s Life Power. He could barely float in the air now. 3,333 swords were formed. Sword Dominator was holding the scabbard and pointed at four of them. A voice with a terrifying intent to kill was heard. "3000 Sword Rain!" 429 Defeating The Sword Dominator In mid-air, the Sword Dominator''s white robe was flapping around in the wind. It looked like a humanoid fairy. With the scabbard that it was holding, it pointed into the air and soon, 3,333 long swords surrounding it raced towards Lin Huang and the rest, resembling a torrential downpour. Lin Huang gazed at the attack and was excited. Under normal circumstances, it would be best to activate his Dark Shield in order to dodge such an attack. However, Lin Huang attempted to break the attack with his sword skill. "Activate your Dark Shield so that you can protect Lin Xin and the rest." Lin Huang leaped as soon as he contacted Lancelot with his mind. Lancelot retreated next to Lin Xin and activated its Dark Shield. It then transformed into a ball, and Lin Xin and Kylie were enveloped by the Dark Shield. Thousands of streaks that resembled meteorites in the sky struck them and fell into Lin Huang''s territory in an instant. Lin Huang''s eyes turned red abruptly. Four bloody wings then extended out of his back, switching into sword blade mode. The 5-star Dragon Slayer in his hand was completely shrouded in golden Life Power and soon, he disappeared from his original position. Four of the bloody wings and his Dragon Slayer seemed to move at the same time. Their speed was so fast as cuts formed in the air. All of the long swords were broken into pieces right when they collided with each other, producing a thunderous sound in the air. Despite Lin Huang not achieving holy fire-level yet, he was engaged in a holy fire-level battle. The remaining energy resulting from the collision could cause those on gold-level to be severely injured. Luckily, thanks to Lancelot''s Dark Shield which was extremely strong in defense strength, despite Lin Xin being just an ordinary person, she was not affected. However, she could no longer capture Lin Huang''s movement. She could vaguely see that there were glows that looked like thunder flashes striking down from mid-air. Of course, it was because Lancelot had activated the observation mode of its Dark Shield which enabled her to look through it. Outside the Dark Shield, the battle between Lin Huang and the Sword Dominator intensified. In an instant, the Sword Dominator''s hundreds of swords were destroyed by Lin Huang. Loud thuds were heard, and the frequency was akin to that when firecrackers were lit during the Chinese New Year on Earth. The airflow resulting from the collision hit the surface of the lake like rain. Ripples were formed, spreading wider and wider. The trees that were a few kilometers away from them were instantly crushed into powder due to the powerful airflow. A barren area where no plants could survive suddenly appeared in the green oasis. Initially, Lin Huang had kept a distance from the long swords. However, he soon realized that there were a large number of long swords and he had to move his body to avoid the attacks. More than 3,000 of the long swords produced were apparently tougher than their predecessors. Besides, the attack speed and strength were stronger as well, so they were comparable to the crimson flame-level. During the fight with Lancelot, with the Sword Dominator''s current condition, Lancelot could not even block a single sword without the use of the Dark Shield. On the ground, Lin Huang activated his Seraphic Speed and Cloud Steps simultaneously. He then moved his body quickly while dodging his opponent''s swords. Despite his territory being capable of detecting his opponent''s attack, due to the great number of sword attacks, some of the attacks somehow managed to break through Lin Huang''s sword defense. Therefore, Lin Huang was forced to evade those attacks. Despite Lin Huang seeming to avoid the attacks passively, the number of his opponent''s long swords was decreasing every second. None of the attacks hit him, and still, he insisted on not activating the Dark Shield. As the swords collided with each other, explosive sounds were constantly heard throughout the area. The sand and rocks surrounding Lin Huang were all stirred up as if the region was being swept away by a tornado. The long sword in his hand and the Vampire Particles on his back then transformed into swords and advanced. Soon after, Lin Huang''s Thunder Sting integrated with his Star Dome. The speed of integration was countless times faster than the usual speed he could execute during practice. Lin Huang did not realize all these. He could vaguely feel that the movement of his sword skill had become rather smooth and the speed of his attack was getting faster as well. All of a sudden, two notifications from Xiao Hei arrived. "Congratulations, your epic-level sword skill ''Thunder Sting'' has completely integrated with the legendary-level sword skill ''Star Dome''. It is now part of the sword skill ''Star Dome''! "Congratulations, Sword Power Realm has leveled up from consonance to illumination! The qualification and potential of Sword Power Realm have been upgraded! The power of your sword skills has improved!" Lin Huang did not care about the notifications received as he had all his attention focused on the battle with the thousands of long swords. He did not even regard the notification from Xiao Hei as well as the changes in his body. However, the Sword Dominator that was hanging mid-air could feel that something was wrong. It sensed that the attack speed of its opponent was getting faster and he had managed to destroy thousands of swords in a few seconds. It panicked, manipulating the remaining long swords from various angles and hurling them towards Lin Huang. Lin Huang''s courage mounted as the battle progressed. In addition to the number of swords reducing and his extraordinary body condition, he no longer had to duck the attacks. Regardless of the angles of the attack, he was capable of destroying them. His battle sword and the Vampire Particles attacked at a frequency of about 100 times per second, and he managed to destroy a sword during each collision. The situation had gotten worse. The Sword Dominator stared at the Dark Shield activated by Lancelot furiously. Hundreds of swords immediately shifted their trajectory path and headed towards the ball of Dark Shield. It was a very unwise move as it knew nothing about the characteristic of the Dark Shield. It thought that Lancelot was way weaker than itself and therefore, Lancelot had become its target. The power of Lancelot''s forbidden skill, Absolute Kill, was on par with the attack launched by the crimson flame-level at full force. Its Dark Shield was almost capable of defending against the attack by a blue flame-level. As long as the attack power did not exceed the Dark Shield''s defensive ability, it would not collapse. Therefore, the Sword Dominator''s attack was rendered useless. In less than ten seconds after it made such a decision, the 3,333 long swords were all destroyed by Lin Huang. Seeing all the long swords destroyed, the Sword Dominator was stunned. As soon as it recovered from its shock, it wanted to flee. However, its Life Power had been drained, and it could no longer fight. Right at this moment, a golden silhouette that was even faster than the Sword Dominator appeared and blocked its way. Impressively, the golden shadow was Kylie. Kylie could see that the Sword Dominator had used up its Life Power. She did not use her long spear and struck a blow on its chest with her fist instead. The Sword Dominator''s body instantly fell to the ground near Lin Huang. Lancelot immediately removed the Dark Shield and appeared in front of the Sword Dominator in a flash. However, it was then stopped. "Wait a minute! Don''t kill it!" Surprisingly, the one who said this was Lin Huang. 430 Unsealing The Ruthless Sword Master Lin Huang slowly exited the battle and retracted his battle sword. The red color in his eyes and the four bloody wings on his back had disappeared. The reason why he had stopped the battle was that Lancelot''s unsealing would create an illusion. There had to be the presence of immortal-level monsters in the moderate danger zone, and they would be in great trouble if they caught the immortal-level monster''s attention. When Bai had been unsealed in the Volcano Hell, it had attracted many of the powerful monsters'' attention, and there was even an outbreak of a monster attack. Lin Huang did not want this to happen again. He had it planned earlier whereby the Sword Dominator was chosen as the last monster to hunt. It was because there was the independent space of the Starlight Beast in the Meteorite Desert. As long as the Sword Dominator could be caught alive and was brought into the independent space before killing it, the illusion created during unsealing would appear there. The rest of the strong monsters would not discover it as well. Lin Huang''s initial plan was to defeat the Sword Dominator and he would then summon the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit to seal it before bringing it away. However, it seemed like sealing was not required as the Sword Dominator had used up its own Life Power. "Lancelot, don''t kill it first. The illusion of unsealing might appear. Let''s go into the independent space first." Lin Huang tapped Lancelot on its shoulder. Despite it feeling like it could no longer wait, still, it had to bear with it. Lin Huang then turned back and looked at Kylie. "Kylie, bring it to the independent space of the Starlight Beast and look after it. I''ll go there with Thunder later." Kylie then grabbed the Sword Dominator''s arm and flew up into the sky, heading towards the independent space of the Starlight Beast. She was familiar with the desert. Lin Huang then summoned Thunder. After thinking twice, he decided not to recall Lancelot. The three of them then headed towards the independent space. The place where the Sword Dominator was hidden at was less than 600 kilometers away from the oasis where the Starlight Beast''s independent space was located. Thunder took less than 20 minutes to arrive in the sky above the independent space along with three of them. "Go down!" Lin Huang instructed and at the same time, his Dark Shield was activated, and Lin Xin''s body was shrouded in it. A few moments later, Thunder dove into the lake. After a short while, they then passed through the Dimensional Portal and arrived at the place where Starlight Beast lived. Kylie was waiting for Lin Huang and the rest at the entrance. The Sword Dominator looked more pitiful than before. Perhaps it had attempted to run away, so Kylie had hit it. Originally, its ability was on par with Kylie. However, it had no Life Power now, and it could not perform any skills at all. It could only endure its impending doom. "Let''s go deeper in. We''re too near to the entrance." Lin Huang was still worried as he was afraid that the aura might be released outside. Kylie then grabbed the Sword Dominator in her hand and went deeper in. Thunder flapped its wings and followed after them as well. After about half an hour, they were now at a place close to 1,000 kilometers away from the entrance. Thunder eventually descended. Kylie stood still while waiting. She then turned her head back and looked at Lin Huang as if she was stating, "It should be fine now that we''re now away from the entrance at this distance." Lin Huang then nodded in approval. "We''re far enough." He then leaped from Thunder''s back and walked towards Lancelot and the Sword Dominator. The black sword in Lancelot''s hand immediately penetrated through the right side of its chest and pierced right into its heart without mercy. It was incapable of defending against Lancelot''s attack without the protection of Life Power despite it being so powerful. The strength of Lancelot''s attack was comparable to the white flame-level. The black sword seemed to have penetrated through its body without any obstacles. Lin Huang turned back and glanced at Lin Xin. He was afraid that she was not used to seeing such a scene. However, Lin Xin was calm, her gaze fixed on the scene. He was startled. However, soon, Lin Huang felt relieved. Perhaps Lin Xin had witnessed countless bloody scenes that were even worse than this in the Gun Master game. "Brother, why did Lancelot pierce through the right side of its chest? Isn''t it its heart is on the left?" Lin Xin noticed that Lin Huang was looking at her and asked softly. "The heart of the Sword Dominator is on the right," Lin Huang explained with a smile. "The position of the heart of different monsters varies." Right at that moment, the Sword Dominator was dying, and soon after, a notification from Xiao Hei arrived. "Congratulations, you have obtained a new epic-level monster card -- Sword Dominator (sword servant)." A white beam of light that resembled a spotlight then shone on Lancelot. Lancelot''s body gradually floated up in the sky as if it was attracted by the white glow and was no longer restricted by gravitational force. Lin Huang and the rest retreated as they were afraid that they would affect Lancelot''s unsealing. The only thing that was different from Bai''s unsealing was that it seemed like there were no changes in Lancelot''s body. Instead, its aura was getting stronger and stronger. In just a few minutes, it had leveled up from complete gold-level to white flame-level. In just a short while, the white glow disappeared, and Lancelot''s body gradually descended from mid-air. A few notifications then arrived. "Congratulations, you have unsealed your epic-level Ruthless Sword Master (Lancelot) card, and it has been upgraded to white flame-level." "The hidden conditions to unsealing have not been completed. The Ruthless Sword Master is unable to upgrade to a legendary-level card." "Congratulations, the Ruthless Sword Master has received a new skill, Sword Master." Lin Huang immediately tapped open to check Lancelot''s new state. "Monster Card "Rarity: Epic "Monster Name: Ruthless Sword Master "Combat Level: White Flame-Level "Skill 1: Absolute Life "Skill 2: Sword Steps "Skill 3: Ruthless Sword "Skill 4: Dark Sword Spirit "Skill 5: Dark Shield "Skill 6: Death Zone (Beginner) "Skill 7: Sword Master "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Trainable "Sword Master: Capable of controlling nine sword servants and the skills of any of the sword servants can be used. "Remark 1: The skills of the sword servants used by the sword master vary according to the power of the sword master. It has nothing to do with the combat strength of the sword servant. "Remark 2: If the sword servant dies, it will not be revived. There will be a vacancy for a sword servant, and it can be replaced by a new sword servant. "Remark 3: The maximum number of sword servants is nine. "Remark 4: If the sword master dies, all the sword servants will die too." Seeing its new skills, Lin Huang realized that the status of a few of the sword servants had changed where their summoning authority had been activated. Although he was happy, he was depressed to see one of Xiao Hei''s notifications. "Xiao Hei, what do the hidden conditions mean?" "It literally means the hidden conditions." "Do I really need to ask you to explain further about that? I''m asking about what the hidden conditions are," Lin Huang continued asking. "Since it''s a hidden condition, you have to find it out on your own. I can''t tell you the answer." "If you can''t tell me the answer, you can give me some hints." Lin Huang was curious as he wanted to know what the hidden conditions were. "I can''t." "It is now in an incomplete state. Why can''t you tell me? Is the hidden condition is still valid? If I achieve it later, the card will be upgraded?" Lin Huang guessed. Xiao Hei remained silent. Seeing Xiao Hei''s reaction, Lin Huang knew it. "Alright, I''ve finally gotten this done after so many days. Both of you shall take a good rest." Lin Huang gazed at Lancelot and Kylie, recalling them into their card forms. He then summoned Charcoal 431 Unlocking Charcoal The Ruthless Sword Master''s unsealing did not cause a big stir. However, Lin Huang could vaguely feel that Charcoal''s unsealing would not be the same. He had obtained the dracaena from the auction previously, and Yang Ling had unsealed his Emperor''s Heart Ring a few days later. He had taken out the dracaena from his ring, but he had yet to unseal Charcoal because he wanted to get to the independent space first. Due to Charcoal''s appealing aura, it had not been summoned for a long period of time. It gave Lin Huang a pitiful look when it was summoned as if it had suffered greatly. "Alright, after the unsealing is completed, you''ll be able to cover your aura upon entering the adult stage. I''ll summon you in the future when there''s the need to do so." Lin Huang touched Charcoal''s head and comforted it. Charcoal immediately ducked its head and licked his face. "Okay, stop playing. We have to get this done first. Let''s start unsealing!" Lin Huang took out a facial tissue and wiped his face. He could not stand Charcoal''s way of showing friendliness. "Brother, is this a dragon?" Lin Xin''s weak voice was heard. Charcoal then noticed that other than Thunder, which it was familiar with, there was a girl. It was curious and sized up Lin Xin. Lin Xin was curious, sizing up Charcoal as well. They then exchanged glances with each other. "It''s my summoning monster. Its name is Charcoal," Lin Huang introduced and turned back, looking at Charcoal. "Charcoal, she is my sister, Lin Xin." Listening to Lin Huang''s introduction, Charcoal then let down its guard. "Can I touch it?" Lin Xin was excited and asked Lin Huang. "Sure, it won''t bite." Lin Huang nodded. He did not mention that it would just eat humans though. "Come over. Charcoal, you can''t bite her." Lin Huang then guided Charcoal, lowering its head to Lin Xin. He then put Lin Xin''s hand on Charcoal''s head. Lin Xin touched its head. It was cold and had rough skin. Charcoal squinted as if it enjoyed being touched. Lin Xin was excited and happy. She had never imagined that she would be able to meet such a creature. Although Lin Huang did not say that it was not an actual dragonkin, she was happy enough even if it was just a sky dragon. After being touched for a while, Charcoal then moved his head and looked at Lin Huang again. Lin Huang took out 12 dracaenas from his storage space. Each of the plants was the size of the palm of an adult. It was blood red and would turn crystal clear whenever sunlight shone on it. It did not look like a plant, but rather like a piece of hand-engraved art. Charcoal was ecstatic. When Lin Huang was thinking about how the dracaena should be used, it extended its tongue, drawing all 12 of the dracaenas into its mouth and started munching on them. "Xiao Hei, will eating all of them do?" Lin Huang immediately asked. He knew that in order for a sky dragon to upgrade to a dragonkin, they would have to eat the dracaena. However, it would only be effective if it ate a large number of dracaenas. "Under normal circumstances, dracaena is used as a material to be integrated with a dragonkin monster card. However, eating the dracaena can activate the integration effect on the system as well." "Why will only eating a large number of dracaena for the dragonkin and sky dragons work? Is it because the rate of dracaena absorption is different?" Lin Huang doubted. "The rate of absorption is only part of the reason. Direct consumption will indeed waste the blood divisor contained in the dracaena. Only 20% to 30% of that can be extracted whereas the extraction can go up to 100% through the system. However, this is not the main reason. "The blood divisor of dracaena doesn''t only increase the concentration of dragon blood, but it acts as an activator as well. It is also the reason why some of the sky dragons can upgrade by eating a small amount of dracaena whereas some of them are unable to upgrade despite ingesting a large amount of dracaena. It is related to the monster''s body physique. Some of them are more sensitive to the dracaena. Thus, only a small amount of dracaena is required to activate the dragon blood and increase the concentration of blood divisor as well. Those that are less sensitive to the stimulation of dracaena can hardly be activated even after eating a large amount of dracaena. What the system does is to increase the activation effect to 100%." "Understand!" Lin Huang could finally understand the effect of dracaena. After several bites, Charcoal realized that despite the smell of the dracaena being fine, it somehow tasted terrible. Knowing that it was for its own unsealing, it had no choice but to eat them all. After a few moments, a white glow appeared from the sky and Charcoal was shrouded in it. Lin Huang, Lin Xin, and Thunder then retreated a few steps back and moved aside. They waited patiently for Charcoal''s unsealing to be complete. As soon as its body was enveloped by the white glow, black flames were released from Charcoal''s body as if they were all coming out from its pores. The black flames surrounded its body and it started to burn. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw this happen. Lin Xin immediately asked Lin Huang, "Will it be okay?" "Don''t worry, that''s normal." While Lin Huang was hesitating, he heard Xiao Hei''s voice. He was then relieved. "It''ll be fine," he answered Lin Xin while shaking his head. Charcoal''s aura was released slowly as it was surrounded by the flames. However, its body size was increasing quickly at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Its body size had only been about five to six meters tall. However, in just a short while, its height was now more than ten meters. Lin Huang pulled Lin Xin and Thunder further behind. Three of them retreated a few steps back again. As time passed, Charcoal''s body was getting bigger and bigger. After about three hours, Charcoal''s body had expanded to 1,000 meters. It looked like a big mountain hanging in mid-air. Although they could not see its face clearly since it was shrouded in flames, the monster that was originally cute had now become a ferocious beast. Its body had finally stopped growing after reaching such a height. There were no more changes. However, its mighty aura was released. Previously, when its body was growing, Lin Huang could feel that its aura had exceeded the limit of a complete gold-level and it had achieved white flame-level. He was not really powerful though. However, as soon as its body size was fixed, there was a drastic change in its aura. At that moment, Lin Huang could sense what he had felt previously from the Supreme Overlord and Bai. It was undoubtedly powerful An intimidating force was released by Charcoal. Lin Huang immediately activated his Dark Shield, isolating the impact of the force from Lin Xin. The tremendously terrifying force was fatal to Lin Xin. Even those on complete gold-level who encountered this energy would not be able to fight back. Of course, there was an exception for a genius like Lin Huang. It lasted for only a few seconds and soon, it subsided. The white glow in the air had disappeared as well. The black flames surrounding Charcoal gradually ebbed, revealing Charcoal''s actual appearance after unsealing. "How could it be so ugly after it has grown up?" Seeing Charcoal''s current look, Lin Huang sighed emotionally. Charcoal had completely turned into a black, gigantic dragon beast that looked powerful and ferocious. "Congratulations, you have unsealed your epic-level Undying Baby Dragon (Charcoal) card and it is upgraded to white flame-level. "Congratulations, Undying Baby Dragon (Charcoal) has leveled up from beginner-level dragonkin to mid-level dragonkin! "Congratulations, Undying Baby Dragon (Charcoal) has leveled up from epic-level card to legendary-level card! "Congratulations, you have obtained a legendary-level monster card - Undead Evil Dragon (mid-level dragonkin)! Before Lin Huang could check the information of Charcoal, a notification from Xiao Hei came again. "As your authority is restricted, you cannot use a legendary-level monster card, and the monster card of Undead Evil Dragon is automatically sealed. It will be unsealed when you achieve holy fire-level and your authority will be upgraded." "Can''t you even let me feel happy for a while?!" Lin Huang was speechless. 432 The Undead Evil Child Charcoal''s unsealing had led to a significant upgrade. Not only had it leveled up to a mid-level dragonkin, but it had also gone through its third mutation as well, upgrading into a purple legendary-level card. However, the consequence was it being sealed due to its overly high authority. Lin Huang did not expect that it would be sealed as he had just promised Charcoal that he would summon it more often in the future. "It''s not my fault," Lin Huang mumbled. "Brother, why did the black dragon suddenly disappear?" Lin Xin wanted to touch the black dragon that had grown up as she wondered if the texture of its skin would be different from before. "I''ve recalled it." Lin Huang took the blame for Xiao Hei as he could not mention anything about the system to Lin Xin. He had no other choice. "It''s so cute. Please summon it to play with us," Lin Xin begged. Cute?! Lin Huang instantly felt that something was wrong with Lin Xin''s aesthetic judgment just like her sense of taste. If one was to say that Charcoal was previously ugly yet cute, one could only describe it as "ferocious" and "scary" after it had grown up. One would not describe it as "cute" at all. "I can''t summon it anymore. My summon ability has been restricted. Now that it''s been upgraded, I can only summon it again when I level up to holy fire-level," Lin Huang explained by telling her half of the truth. Lin Xin accepted that excuse despite her reluctance. "I''ll summon Little7 to play with you when we go home," Lin Huang compromised. He could only summon Seventails for that. Little7 was a nickname given by Lin Xin, and it seemed like Seventails liked it a lot, so Lin Huang addressed it in such a way. "However, there is a condition for summoning Little7." It had not been released from the pet space for a long period as it was a troublemaker. It would bite any peculiar things regardless of its taste. The most important thing was it had a terribly healthy digestion as if it could digest anything that it ate "What''s that condition?" Lin Xin had been eagerly waiting for Lin Huang to summon Little7. "First of all, you have to feed it on time every day. You can''t forget it. I''ll give you some Life Crystals then. Secondly, you have to take care of it and make sure that it doesn''t mess up the place. Don''t let it bite the sofa, chair, table, or bed. It''s not allowed to eat the bed sheets, curtain, floor mat, as well as the utensils in the kitchen such as the plates, cups, knife" Lin Huang started making a deal with Lin Xin. "Alright" Although it sounded troublesome, still, Lin Xin promised him. "Brother, where are we going now? Are we going home?" Lin Xin was afraid that Lin Huang would continue adding more conditions, so she changed the topic. "We have to go to Nanmu Town again as I have something to deal with over there. We will visit the Yi family as well." Lin Huang shook his head. "Oh, could you please summon Little7 first?" Lin Xin was excited. "No, what should we do if it bites people''s stuff?" Lin Huang refused. "Alright" Lin Xin accepted. Both of them then rode on Thunder and exited the space of the Starlight Beast. They stopped at the lakeside. Right after Thunder was recalled, Lin Huang then summoned Black Ink and relocated the destination point to Fatty''s old house, Nanmu City. Both of them then strode over the big door. A few moments later, Lin Xin and Lin Huang then appeared at one of the old streets in Nanmu City which was rather quiet. It was the place where Lin Huang had last set on the Black Ink. It was not too far away from Fatty''s house. Nanmu City was less than 800 kilometers away from Sandy Land. The place where the Undead Evil Child was discovered was farther about 1,100 kilometers away. The Black Ink was recalled. Soon, Lin Huang summoned Thunder again. Both of them then got up onto Thunder to ride it. Lin Huang then pointed towards the direction of Sandy Land. Thunder immediately flew off into the sky and rapidly headed towards their destination. In less than 40 minutes, they arrived at their destination. Thunder was recalled into its card form again. Sandy Land was a desert. However, there were only golden sand and plants that could be seen occasionally where desertification had not yet been completed. As they had just returned from the Meteorite Desert, Lin Xin''s immunity to the desert climate was a lot stronger. She would somehow prefer the Meteorite Desert though. Lin Huang''s target was the Undead Evil Child. It was a double mutated complete gold-level monster. It belonged to the undying species and looked like a kid. Despite the fact that it had a body the size of a kid, this type of monster was extremely cruel as they were good at creating illusions. They would usually tease their prey mercilessly until they died. According to the record in the monster guide, there were people who had witnessed how Undead Evil Child controlled humans. People who it controlled had even cut out their body flesh and grilled it for the Undead Evil Child to eat. Encountering such a monster, regardless of whether he managed to kill it or not, he would definitely attack it. Perhaps the hunter who provided this piece of information to Lin Huang earlier was not strong enough or had no guts to fight it. Otherwise, the person must have been capable of defeating it but was lazy to do so. As he observed around, he discovered nothing. He summoned Bloody, and Lin Huang explained to it, "We are now at the Sandy Land. A few months ago, people discovered the presence of the Undead Evil Child over here." "Okay, I''ll look for it." As soon as Bloody contacted him through its mind, it twisted around Lin Huang''s left arm and released a large number of leech pods, spreading everywhere. "It''s so beautiful!" Lin Xin saw Bloody using its leech pods for the first time. She then grabbed one of them. Lin Huang did not stop her. The leech pod that Lin Xin grabbed was controlled by Bloody and all its parasitic functions were instantly disabled. "Brother, what''s this flower for? Is it used for monitoring?" Lin Xin felt that Bloody would not have released it without reason. "Yes, it can be used for monitoring," Lin Huang affirmed. He hesitated for a moment and decided to hide part of the truth. Bloody was a unique type of monster. Perhaps it was the only one that existed in this world. It would be better to hide its ability from everyone. After a short while, Bloody contacted him. "I''ve found it. However, it''s very alert and has even crushed my leech pods." "I shall look for it on my own." Lin Xin communicated with Bloody through her brother''s mind and said, "Please guide us!" As soon as the instruction was received, Bloody then left Lin Huang''s arm and headed towards where the Undead Evil Child was. Lin Huang immediately summoned the Viridian Wolf and followed after Bloody with Lin Xin. The Viridian Wolf chased after Bloody for no more than five minutes, and soon, Lin Huang saw that Bloody was fighting a blue monster on top of the mountain. 433 Visiting Again The monster that Bloody was fighting was a human-form monster. It had four limbs and walked upright on both feet. It looked like a seven to an eight-year-old child of 1.2 meters height with a face that was similar to a human child''s. However, its skin was blue, and there was a ten-centimeter-long black horn on its head and a blue tail behind it. Lin Huang immediately recognized that it was the Undead Devil Child that Bloody was looking for. Lin Huang was puzzled as he watched the chaotic fight. Bloody had the ability to parasitize through shadows whereby it could just leech directly onto the monster instead of fighting it at a close distance. However, he noticed that the Undead Evil Child had no shadow under the sunlight. Meanwhile, the Undead Evil Child had cast an illusion on Bloody but it did not expect Bloody to have a more powerful spiritual level than it did, so its illusion did not work. Bloody could control tens of thousands of parasitic hosts at once; its spiritual level was many times more powerful than any creature of the same level. It was immune to many spiritual attacks. As the attacks did not work on both of them, the battle became a chaotic fight show. There were flaws everywhere as Lin Huang watched, and the fight was getting nowhere. However, Lin Xin could not capture the flurry of movement of the two complete gold-level monsters with her eyes. All she could see was a red and a blue shadow moving in the desert which seemed quite interesting. Bloody''s current form was a giant python, which was its original form. The Undead Evil Child always managed to avoid its attacks. Fortunately, the Undead Evil Child was no good in physical attack, so the attacks that were cast on Bloody were ineffective. "Why do you keep chasing after it? With your estimation abilities, you should be able to tell where it''s going to run. All you''ll have to do is to block its way as it escapes and attack again, isn''t it?" Lin Huang could see that Bloody was lacking battle experience. He was considering summoning other monsters that did not have the opportunity to battle to train with his other monsters to strengthen their battle ability. Bloody was inspired by Lin Huang''s reminder. Three minutes later, the Undead Evil Child''s thigh was caught as it was running away and the parasite was released. Bloody then strangled the entire Undead Evil Child''s body like a giant python. It was Lin Huang who had instructed Bloody to do that as he did not want Lin Xin to know about Bloody''s parasitic ability and therefore had created an illusion of strangling the Undead Evil Child. Meanwhile, Bloody could extract its memories as it did that. "Brother, what''s that little blue man that Bloody is strangling?" Lin Xin had only learned about the beginner version of the monster encyclopedia, so she could not recognize many of the monsters. "This is an Undead Evil Child. It''s a gold-level undead monster," Lin Huang then told Lin Xin about the story of the Undead Evil Child hypnotizing people and eating their flesh. "Why do so many monsters love eating human flesh?" Lin Xin asked in all seriousness after listening to the story. Her focus point was very different from the others. "Perhaps human flesh is tastier than monsters''." Lin Huang could only think of that explanation. Fortunately, Bloody was done with its business, so the awkward conversation did not last too long. Bloody shrunk its body back to its earlier size and went into Lin Huang''s sleeve after it had killed the Undead Evil Child. "It''s done?" Lin Huang contacted Bloody in his mind. "I have extracted its memory. I''ll need some time to study. I hope you don''t recall me back into card form just yet, Master," Bloody requested. "Alright then, stay in my sleeve for now. I''ll let you out when we''re back in the White Capital," Lin Huang agreed. "It''s done, let''s go!" Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic. "Where are we going?" Lin Xin asked. "Fatty''s home!" As they stepped into the dimensional relic, they arrived at Fatty''s hometown in Nanmu Town. Fatty''s home was less than two kilometers from the old town. It was past 1 p.m. Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to a random noodle store for lunch before heading to Fatty''s home. It was around 1.40 p.m. when they arrived at Fatty''s home. The man guarding the door noticed that they had just been here earlier, so he informed the housekeeper, and they were soon allowed into the house. The housekeeper greeted them at the door and brought them straight to the second floor, not asking anything this time. The old lady had just woken up from her nap and did not expect Lin Huang to visit. She allowed them in as soon as the housekeeper informed her of their presence. This time, the two aunts were not there, so it was just the old lady alone. The old lady did not look as well as she did the first time they saw her. "Xiao Linzi, you must be free today since you''re visiting this old lady," the old lady chuckled, hiding her emotions. Lin Huang''s eyes twitched when he heard how the old lady addressed him. The nickname was named after a eunuch in a martial art novel on Earth. "I''m running errands around the area, so I thought I would drop by to see you," Lin Huang said with a smile. "What is that? Is it done? Do you need our help?" The old lady was eager. "It''s okay, I came here after I settled my stuff." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. "How have you been?" Lin Huang asked. "Nothing much, just some pain here and there. It''s normal because I''m old as long as they don''t bother me too much," the old lady said. "The aunties aren''t home?" Lin Huang addressed them like how Fatty would have, and the old lady did not mind him calling the aunts like that. The old lady was gloomy when she heard the question. "Don''t talk about the two of them." "What happened?" Lin Huang asked, guessing that it had something to do with the Ke Lai Hotel, which was his purpose of visiting. "Since you''re Hangyi''s friend, you must have heard him mention the family hotel?" The old lady hesitated before she started to speak again. "Yes, I know, Hangyi brought me to Ke Lai Hotel in Baqi City last year. Uncle was at the hotel as well, and he made us some of his signature dishes." The old lady had tears in her eyes when she heard Lin Huang talking about her son and grandson, but she managed to hold her tears in. "So, you have been there before. How was it?" The old lady closed her eyes for a while before asking. "It was great. Uncle''s cooking skill is the best of the best among normal people. Some of the Food Hunters aren''t even as good as him," Lin Huang positively commented on Fatty''s father''s cooking skill. "If he trained himself, he would definitely make a renowned Food Hunter," he added. The old lady was solemn for a while after hearing the comment. "Xiao Linzi, are you interested in taking over Ke Lai Hotel?" The old lady asked after she seemed to have already decided on it. 434 The Yin Family’s Current Condition "Grandma, is there any major predicament at the hotel?" Lin Huang asked the obvious. Just like Fatty''s dying wish, Lin Huang hoped that he could take over Ke Lai Hotel himself, but he did not want to be forceful as the old lady might think that he was plotting a scheme behind this. "Since we''re here, I shan''t hide from you anymore. Ke Lai Hotel was built by Hangyi''s father from scratch. None of us have his skill. Many came to the hotel for his signature dishes." The old lady treated Lin Huang like family now. "The heavy workload took a toll on his health a couple of years ago. He started a reservation service online whereby he only cooked once a day. That didn''t stop customers from coming. Some of the reservations were scheduled for months just to taste his signature dishes. Since he passed on, Hangyi had taken over the kitchen. Although he wasn''t as good, he managed to cook the signature dishes as well as creating some new dishes on his own. The customers didn''t complain. Now that Hangyi has passed away, his father''s signature dishes have lost their inheritance." "Although you brought back the recipe, there''s no one in the family who has the skill. It will take years to learn. Moreover, we don''t trust the chefs that we hired to inherit the recipe. We''ve been thinking to sell the hotel instead because if we continue the business, we''ll lose the old customers and the hotel will be running at a loss," the old lady said. "What does the rest of the family say?" Lin Huang asked. "There aren''t many people left in the family. I''m only left with the youngest son out of the three of them. Hangyi''s mother passed away not long after she gave birth to him. I''m only left with two daughters-in-law. My granddaughter is only 11 this year. My youngest son is doing fishery business, providing mainly to Ke Lai Hotel. Now that the hotel business can''t go on, his business will be affected as well. His wife disagrees to sell the hotel but the other daughter-in-law and I want to sell the hotel before it starts running at a loss. They were arguing over this a few dback ago. My son is in an awkward position with me and his sister-in-law. His wife has been acting up recently, saying that she will divorce my son if we''re selling the hotel" The old lady told Lin Huang about what had happened at home recently, and he was speechless about the family drama while Lin Xin stared at the coffee table. Nobody knew what she was thinking about. "Have you ever thought of remodeling the hotel?" Lin Huang asked as he would do that if he purchased the hotel. "I''ve thought about it before but even if the hotel''s been remodeled, nobody will be managing it. I''m old, and it''s hard for me to even step out of the house. My son doesn''t know hotel management at all. He has a business partner who''s managing the business. What he does all day is play poker, so he''s not the right person to take over the business. My daughter-in-law is well-educated but it would be hard for her manage the hotel. Meanwhile, my other daughter-in-law has only been to school for a few years. She''s not worth mentioning. If not for Hangyi''s father who had this hotel business, our house would be the same with the rest of them in the town, just like an ordinary family''s" The old lady was not afraid to reveal the flaws in her family. The old lady was thorough in her planning. She knew that a person''s capability was limited to his own will and abilities. The problem the Yin family now had was that none of the family members could manage the business that was left behind for them. Lin Huang was thinking how should he respond to the old lady. However, the old lady thought she was troubling him. "I don''t mean to trouble you with this mess. Ke Lai Hotel is still making money. If the remodeling is successful, it would make even more. I thought since you''re a hunter, you should have more friends of the same interest and you might be able to recommend me your friends. I''ll pay you a commission." "Grandma, how about I purchase the hotel with the full amount while I look for new management personnel and chefs? You''ll give me the recipes and take 50% of the share. I''ll carry the losses while your family will take 50% of the profit, but the management of the hotel would 100% belong to me," Lin Huang said after thinking about it. Such a hotel might be able to make hundreds of billions credit points annually which would be equivalent to millions of Life Crystal pieces. Combining them into 10,000 Life Crystals, Lin Huang could easily get that amount by killing and selling a couple of Transcendent monsters. The 50% division of profit was nothing to him but the profit was a crucial financial source for the Yin family. The old lady was stunned to hear such generous terms from Lin Huang as such business was usually once-off as soon as the business was sold. Under normal circumstances, the profit had nothing to do with the Yin family after the hotel was sold. Moreover, the other two buyers that she secretly contacted wanted the recipe from her as well. However, she did not think that Lin Huang''s request was reasonable as it was Lin Huang had the recipe himself. It was generous for him to be willing to give 50% of the share to the family. Meanwhile, the management rights made sense as the hotel would not belong to the family anymore. "I''ll only need the right to use Uncle''s and Hangyi''s recipes. I don''t need to own the rights to them. I promise that the recipes will only be used at Ke Lai Hotel instead of disseminating them everywhere. You guys can use the recipes as well if you''re opening another hotel in the future. Also, as long as the goods from Hangyi''s uncle are trustworthy, I''ll still use him as our supplier. I''ll always put him on top of my list for fisheries," Lin Huang added. The old lady could not resist such generous terms. "I can only think of these for now. You can get somewhere to include the concrete terms and the hotel price in the contract during these couple of days. You can include all the things that I mentioned just now as well as the other terms you want in the contract, and I''ll get someone to look at it. If we''re okay with the terms, we can sign the contract." Lin Huang thought about it and felt it was better for him to talk to someone who was in the business as he was not an expert in this. "Hangyi has made a good friend." The old lady did not expect her grandson''s friend to help her solve the issue. "Hangyi is my friend.This is what friends do. I would want Uncle''s recipe to go on. I would also want people to taste Hangyi''s recipes. What he didn''t manage to do, I''ll try my best to fulfill them for him." Lin Huang still remembered Fatty''s dying wishes. 435 Please Don’t Cry Okay Lin Huang had basically completed his mission after discussing the Ke Lai Hotel with the old lady of the Yin family. Lancelot and Charcoal had been unblocked while Bloody was close to unlocking its two remaining skills. Among his two epic-level cards, only Bloody and Thunder were left. Lin Huang knew that it was not the right time for the both of them to be unlocked, so all he could do was to wait patiently. Bloody had no idea when it could come out with its last vacant skill slot while Thunder would need Yi Yeyu''s monster egg to hatch. It was past 2 p.m. as Lin Huang brought Lin Xin out of the dimensional relic to the White Capital. Since they had been away from the dorm for a couple of days, they started cleaning when they arrived. It was past 5 p.m. after they were done cleaning the first to the third floors, then they headed out for dinner. After dinner, Lin Huang summoned Tyrant to accompany Lin Xin back to the dorm while he headed straight to the training room. The training room in the Martial Hunter College was much stabler than those in most of the hotels as they were mainly made of various holy fire-level monsters'' bones which strengthened its defense. Lin Huang started his training when he entered the training room. He was not using a wooden sword this time but his 5-star sword relic, Dragon Slayer. He could unleash everything he had in the training room without holding back. There was turbulence in the air as Lin Huang swung his sword in the middle of the training room. He had managed to enter the level-3 sword realm Illumination during the battle with the Sword Dominator, but he did not expect that to happen. It felt different as he arrived at the next level of sword realm during practice. Before this, he would take the time to master the epic-level sword skills even when he had learned them. However, he mastered the skills immediately when he trained again. He could also feel the integration of his sword skills accelerated. With his previous speed, he could only integrate one sword skill within three to four days but now he only needed one day. As he swung his sword again and again, his Life Pow accelerated away. The Army Attack Tactics in his body was rotating to refill his Life Power as he trained. He practiced for more than six hours this time, and Xiao Hei''s notification came as he was keeping his sword. "Congratulations, your epic-level sword skills Great Sword Scripture and Star Dome have been integrated on the rudimentary level!" "Only rudimentary level? The Thunder Sting was completely integrated. It seems like real battles are more effective." Lin Huang frowned. "Where should I find an opponent to train real battles with me?" With that question on his mind, Lin Huang walked out of the training room. He stopped after taking a few steps as the fixed road lamp caught his attention. "How could I not think of this? I could always look for the dean!" The next morning, Lin Huang did not go to the library but to the dean, Liu Ming''s house after breakfast. Liu Ming was excited when he saw Lin Huang visiting him. "Brother, are you in some kind of trouble that you''re looking for me?" Liu Ming asked with a smile as he was preparing tea. "Not trouble, but a small request." Lin Huang thought since Liu Ming was Mr Fu''s fan, he would get him as a suitable opponent even if he was unwilling to train with him. "Tell me about it." Liu Ming nodded to Lin Huang as he sipped the tea. "I have been practising integrating my sword skills but my progress is too slow if I train on my own. I''m thinking if you could get someone to train with me." Lin Huang did not request to train with Liu Ming straightaway as he was almost an imperial-level now and might not be willing to do something so petty. "Oh, it''s just a small matter. There''s no need to trouble anyone else. I shall train with you since I''m free these days," Liu Ming agreed to train with him straightaway. "What time do you usually train?" "I''ll train when it''s convenient for you," Lin Huang said. "I''m free anytime since I''ve been just drinking tea, reading the news, and walking my pet monster everyday. There''s nothing else that I have to do. I don''t even need to sleep. Just a couple of hours of nap will do. So, we shall train at your convenience." Liu Ming revealed what he had been during for the past couple of years. "Sure, let''s train everyday from 6 p.m. to midnight then." Lin Huang did not bother changing his lifestyle. "Sure, should we start today or tomorrow?" Liu Ming asked. "Let''s train today then." Lin Huang could not wait anymore. "We shall meet at training room No.101 today at 6 p.m. everyday then," Liu Ming nodded and agreed. "What''s so special about training room No.101?" Lin Huang thought to himself but soon he figured it must be just a random number that Liu Ming had thought of. After the discussion, he did not stay at Liu Ming''s place and headed straight to the library after bidding farewell. He was reading up.on basic sword skills this time. With the powerful learning ability that came from his ocular skill, he was absorbing new knowledge like a sponge. His Omniscient Nature duplicated the contents that he could not digest at the time being. He did not leave the library in the afternoon and had snacks as his lunch like usual. Time went by, and soon, it was past 5 p.m. He left the library an hour earlier than he usually did. After dinner with Lin Xin, he headed straight to training room No.101. There were ten training rooms, each in a row in the college. He headed straight to the 11th row and realized that there was only a building in that row. It did not look like a training room, more like a huge stadium. Just when he was thinking if that was training room No.101, he heard Liu Ming''s voice. "Brother, what are you doing out there? Come in." Lin Huang then walked to the building and saw the little sign on the entrance. There was ''101'' in white writing on the sign. As he entered the building, he realized that it was a gigantic venue that was the size of a football field. However, where the audience seats should have been empty. The entire building was like a giant round venue with the 100-meter high ceiling spanning the entire place. Lin Huang could not relate to the venue with a training room. "Isn''t this training room fantastic?" Liu Ming noticed Lin Huang''s expression and seemed to be satisfied with his surprise. "I don''t think this is still a training room. It''s more like a football field," Lin Huang said after keeping silent for a moment. "All the Transcendent battle training grounds are huge with high ceilings as the moving distance of both parties as well as the space to fly are put into consideration. The usual Transcendent training ground is at least 40,000 square meters with the height of 50 meters. I''ve made this a little too big. It''s almost 30,0000 square meters with more than 100 meters height. Although it''s slightly too big, this building is the real battle training ground for Transcendents." Liu Ming smiled as he explained. Lin Huang had heard of the Transcendent battle training grounds before, but he had never bothered as he thought it would be similar to a normal training room. It seemed like he had been too naive. "You could totally show what you''ve got here without having to worry about damaging anything. You can move around as you like without bashing into the walls. I''ll oppress my combat level to gold-level rank-3 like you when we battle. Please don''t cry, okay?" Liu Ming smirked. 436 Isll Be A Shameless Man It was on a green field under the high ceiling of the white dome in the gigantic battle training ground. Two men stood across each other on the field. One was a young man of 16 or 17 years old with black, fluffy hair. He had clean and sharp features. He wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans with a pair of white sports shoes. His attire was casual, but he had a mature vibe. He did not seem like a young teenager. He held a sword, which was soon filled with golden Life Power shimmering wit glow in his right hand. He was staring at the middle-aged man who stood not far across him. The middle-aged man looked like he was in his forties. He was plump but his full height of 1.8 meters covered that particular imperfection. His facial structure was rough with thick eyebrows and big eyes. He looked like a ragged man. Although he was wearing casual attire that was slightly loose, they did not look cheap. He looked stunned. "Brother, you''ve broken through Illumination now?!" As soon as Lin Huang grasped the sword in his hand, Liu Ming could sense that his sword realm had leveled up since the last time he had seen him. He was already shocked by Lin Huang''s sword realm that had reached level-2 when he was only 16. It was something that only a sword genius could achieve. He was completely shocked now that Lin Huang was already on level-3. "When I was 16, I was still playing in the mud!" Liu Ming teased himself secretly. Liu Ming had actually already achieved silver-level when he was 16 but he had no idea what sword realm was at that time. He only started mastering the sword realm when he arrived on holy fire-level. Now that he was on level-4 Oblivion, which was only a level higher than Lin Huang who was a gold-level, his talent in sword realm was nothing compared to Lin Huang. "Mr. Fu has a monstrous apprentice!" Liu Ming exclaimed to himself as he thought about their differences. "I just broke through two days ago," Lin Huang nodded and admitted. He knew he could not hide from Liu Ming who was also a sword expert. However, he had no clue how difficult it was to level up in the sword realm, so he sounded causal when he said that. He sounded like he achieved it by pure accident. His casual attitude made Liu Ming think how could they both be so different. "Are you okay, brother? I''m going to start now," Lin Huang warned Liu Ming as he noticed that he was distracted. "Nothing, let''s start." Liu Ming snapped out of his thoughts and got ready for the battle. He initially had the mindset of teaching a junior but that had vanished now. As he oppressed his combat level to gold-level rank-3, he treated Lin Huang as a real opponent. Lin Huang did not underestimate Liu Ming as he activated his Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps at the same time. He arrived before Liu Ming like a white lightning bolt. "So quick!" Liu Ming thought to himself as Lin Huang''s speed surpassed what a normal gold-level should have. He was even faster than a white flame-level, and was on par with a powerful crimson flame-level. Although Liu Ming had oppressed his combat level to gold-level rank-3, he maintained his ocular ability, or else, he would die under Lin Huang''s attack. However, the oppression had affected his physical speed. He could see Lin Huang''s attack but his body could not catch up with it. There were many ways that he could fight back, but Liu Ming was only left with one option now, which was to block. Lin Huang was too fast, so the only thing Liu Ming was capable of doing after the oppression was to block. Bang! Lin Huang''s 5-star sword relic collided with Liu Ming''s 1-star sword relic, resounding with a loud thud in the training ground. A golden glow shined brightly in the air, and a strong air pressure rippled in the air. The grass within a radius of hundreds of meters was destroyed. Liu Ming skidded backward from the impact, only stopping when he was more than 20 meters away. He took a deep breath when he finally managed to stand still. "What the hell? How is this a gold-level rank-3? His attack could totally kill a crimson flame-level!" Liu Ming did not say that out loud. However, he realized that he had completely underestimated Lin Huang. Under normal circumstances, even a complete gold-level would have great differen with compared to a holy fire-level. The difference in life level of a white flame-level was significantly higher than a complete gold-level''s. It was much more difficult for a complete gold-level to kill a white flame-level than for a silver-level to kill a complete gold-level. Therefore, as a genius guide, one would usually be judged whether a complete gold-level could kill a white flame-level. However, what Lin Huang had shown had surpassed that. Besides not being able to fly, no matter if it came to his speed, strength or attack ability, Lin Huang could definitely kill a crimson flame-level. He would absolutely stand out among many geniuses. What Liu Ming did not know was that the speed and attack ability of his sword swing just not was not all he had. He was only using Wildfire, which was one of the normal forms in the Wildfire sword skill, and not the ultimate Worldly Purification skill. He had yet to integrate Wildfire with the Star Dome skill. As soon as the integration was done, he would be even more powerful. If he had used his Thunder Sting just now, Liu Ming might not have been able to block his attack. "Brother, are you alright?" Lin Huang saw that Liu Ming backed off from the impact and he had obviously underestimated him, so he stopped attacking. "Ahem, ahem, I''m alright" Liu Ming coughed to cover his embarrassment. He blushed as he recalled teasing Lin Huang earlier, asking him not to cry when they fought. Luckily, he had tanned skin, so Lin Huang might not have noticed his blush. "Brother, your real battle ability has exceeded my expectations. Let me increase my combat level to fight you," Liu Ming said shamelessly. He did not want to eat his words, but if he did not now, he would certainly be defeated by Lin Huang later. He decided to be a shameless man as he thought of the embarrassing consequences. "Sure, I hope you can give me sufficient pressure and not hold back," Lin Huang agreed to Liu Ming''s suggestion. 437 Sword Skill Integration Bang! Bang! Bang! Loud crashes echoed in the Martial Hunter College''s battle training ground. If the training ground had not been soundproofed, there would be many people watching the battle right now. Liu Ming was getting more and more shocked as he fought Lin Huang. At first, he thought Lin Huang was just lucky that he met Mr. Fu. He seemed talented, but he might still need a long time to really grow, but now, he looked at Lin Huang in a different light. He started thinking that Mr. Fu had picked up a piece of rare, uncut diamond. Lin Huang was like a priceless precious stone that shone brightly. One day, when he was polished, he would stun the world with his greatness. What Liu Ming was witnessing was just the beginning. As Lin Huang attacked for the first time, Liu Ming increased his gold-level rank-3 combat level which was oppression to complete gold-level. He also changed his sword to a 5-star relic like Lin Huang did since the 1-star sword that he used earlier had cracked when it collided with Lin Huang''s sword. He thought that if he could not suppress Lin Huang, he could at least fight equally with him since his combat level had leveled up, changed his sword to one with richer Life Power, and had a more powerful physique. He soon found out that he was wrong. As he fought Lin Huang, he realized that he was at a loss again. Helpless, he leveled up his combat level to white flame-level. Liu Ming was confident that he could kill a blue flame-level with his white flame-level ability, so he could surely suppress Lin Huang this time. Finally, his upgrade pressured Lin Huang. After all, his ability was much more powerful than a regular white flame-level''s. However, it was not as easy as Liu Ming thought. Although Lin Huang was at a disadvantage since Liu Ming leveled up to white flame-level, he was getting more and more powerful as they battled. Liu Ming could sense clearly that his ability was increasing with every swing of his sword. Because of that, he realized how terrifying Lin Huang was. "Sword28!" "Sword32!" "Ignition!" "Inferno!" "Mountain Cleave!" As Lin Huang was compelled to fight harder, he was no longer practicing just one sword skill anymore. The training became a real battle. No matter integrated or not, Lin Huang was performing different sword skills each time. Sometimes, he would even swing his sword without any sword skill when he did not manage to come up with any forms. He had gotten Liu Ming indulging in the battle. Liu Ming had forgotten that he was just practicing with Lin Huang; he was thinking about how to defeat Lin Huang instead. He showed no mercy as he wielded his sword at Lin Huang. It was midnight before they even realized it and Lin Huang''s alarm clock on his Emperor''s Heart Ring rang. It dawned on him that they had been fighting for six hours straight. "Hehe, that was fun!" Liu Ming laughed. "I haven''t had so much fun in a long time! Do you want to continue?" "Let''s call it a day. I''ve drained most of my Life Power, and I''ll need to go to the library tomorrow morning. Let''s continue tomorrow afternoon!" Lin Huang looked at the Life Wheels in his body. Among the ten Life Wheels, he only had 500 columns of Life Power in total left. He had even used one Life Power Refill Card secretly to refill five Life Wheels. "Ah, I''ve forgotten about that! Alright then, rest well today, and we shall continue tomorrow!" Liu Ming just recalled that Lin Huang was not a holy fire-level, so his Life Power recovery was much slower. However, the fact that Lin Huang could last for six hours made him realize that he must have drained most of his Life Power, but he did not ask as it was rather personal. Lin Huang returned to the dorm right after leaving the battle training ground. The six hours had exhausted him, but it was efficient as Xiao Hei had sent him three notifications along the way. His Wildfire, Hundred Flowing Blades, and Mountain Blade had completed their rudimentary integration. He checked the notifications and went to bed after he showered. The next morning, Lin Huang felt immensely sore all over his body. It felt like he had not exercised in a long time. In reality, Lin Huang was never idle; his body just could not adapt to the extra training that he had gone through yesterday. After a night of rest, the Army Attack Tactics rotation had refilled all the Life Wheels in his body. When he was on the way to breakfast with Lin Xin, he felt like he was stepping on clouds and like his body was floating. "What''s wrong, brother?" Lin Xin soon noticed Lin Huang''s odd behavior. Lin Huang then told her about his training with Liu Ming yesterday, which stunned Lin Xin. As a student in the Martial Hunter College (she had yet to start school), she had done her research on the school and knew that the dean, Liu Ming, was the top of the leaderboard in Division7. "Brother, what''s the dean''s combat level?" Lin Xin asked. "He''s immortal-level, he''s halfway to imperial-level now. He''s considered the best in Division7. Don''t think too much. He trained with me by suppressing his combat level, or else, I wouldn''t be able to even take a slap from him," Lin Huang explained after noticing Lin Xin''s stunned expression. Lin Huang headed straight to the library after breakfast. He was reading about the basic sword power realm as he allowed the Army Attack Tactics to rotate and continue to recover his Life Power. He trained with Liu Ming again from 6 p.m. to midnight before heading back to the dorm and sleeping. He repeated the same routine for the next few days. He finally completed the integration of the Star Dome with his epic-level sword skills within a week. At the same time, the old lady from the Yin family had sent him the contract. The terms were reasonable. Besides the terms that Lin Huang had mentioned earlier, a couple of basic clauses were added. Lin Huang got Liu Ming to look at it before he signed the contract. Because he promised to continue the fishery supply from the Yin family, Fatty''s aunt stopped all her drama. The old lady, in return, extended her gratitude in the letter. All the hotel chains would add up to 128 billion credit points, which translated into 1,280 Life Crystals. Lin Huang paid up immediately, and the deal was done. Since Lin Huang had gotten Liu Ming to look at the contract, Lin Huang thought he would also get him to help look for management personnel. Liu Ming was more than happy to get a management team from a big hotel and a couple of excellent chefs from other hotels for Lin Huang. Lin Huang had a good impression after meeting with the bunch of people that Liu Ming pooled together. Most of them knew Fatty''s father and respected him. "At my hotel, feel free to show your skills off. The only criteria I have is to pass down the Yin family''s recipe," Lin Huang only conveyed that to the five chefs. The chefs agreed to the criteria. The meeting adjourned after Lin Huang duplicated five copies of Fatty''s father''s recipe as well as Fatty''s recipe and gave them to the five chefs. He only gave out a portion of Fatty''s recipe as the remainder was the inspiration that Fatty had while browsing the monster encyclopedia. Lin Huang thought he would give out the remaining recipe when he had found a suitable Food Hunter in the future. After settling Ke Lai Hotel, Lin Huang placed his trust in the management team while he focused on his work at the Martial Hunter College. 438 Our Friendship Isn’t Pure Bang! Two silhouettes backed off as a loud thud was heard. Lin Huang had been training with Liu Ming in the battle training ground these days. Although he had completed the sword skills integration, he did not want to stop leveling up his sword realm. He had been reading about sword skills at the library where most of them were regular and rare Skill Cards. With his newfound understanding now, he could basically understand a normal sword skill by just reading about it once while he could pick up and master the rare sword skills after practicing it twice or thrice. He had been combining the sword skills integration into his Star Dome outline to remedy his lack of knowledge in sword realm foundation. The Martial Hunter College had epic-level sword skills as well, but they were not complimentary. They could only be retrieved by redeeming contribution points. Lin Huang did not have to learn epic-level sword skills as the normal and rare sword skills that he had mastered were sufficient for him for the time being. The teacher''s contribution points came mostly from teaching a class. Each student would equal to 1 contribution point whereby he would get 50 contribution points as most classes would have around 50 students. Lin Huang was only assigned one class per week which meant that he could only get 2,600 contribution points a year. Each epic-level combat skill would need at least 1,000 contribution points while higher combat skills would need 2,000 to 3,000 contribution points. To Lin Huang, he would talk to Mr. Fu or buy them with Life Crystals if epic-level sword skills were really necessary. He thought that redeeming contribution points by teaching classes would not be favorable to him. Also, spending a year killing monsters and trading Life Crystals would be much faster than teaching for a year. With the money that he made from selling monsters, he would be able to purchase many combat skills. Liu Ming sensed that Lin Huang''s new sword skills were not as powerful as before, but he could tell that his sword realm was strengthening. He insisted on training with Lin Huang as he could feel that his sword realm that had been stagnant was now improving. It was not that Lin Huang had inspired him, but Lin Huang''s condition reminded him of the time when he had started training swordsmanship. What Lin Huang was going through reminded him of why he started what he was doing. Sword training was not mainly to breakthrough levels; it was passion and desire in the sword realm. The training these days reignited the passion that Liu Ming used to have before. He felt that he was around the same age as Lin Huang when they trained. He even forgot about his age, thinking that he was only a few years older than Lin Huang. It was like training and improving with a brother every day. His addressing Lin Huang "brother" was different from before. It was no longer a formality, but a genuine brotherhood that had formed between the both of them. Lin Huang could also sense that Liu Ming was much more sincere than before. He used to be distant, but he had become genuine these few days as they trained. He would even tell Lin Huang about his understanding of the sword realm. As long as Lin Huang had questions for him, he would not hold back on his explanation while sincerely teaching him what he knew. Lin Huang was grateful for this. Although he had no idea what had inspired the change, he knew that the brotherhood was real. As they were training, Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated. Liu Ming backed away while Lin Huang paused to pick up his phone. It was Yi Yeyu, so he answered the video call immediately. "Good evening!" Lin Huang took out a towel from his storage space and wiped off the sweat on his face. "What are you doing that you''re sweating so much?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Training swordsmanship." Lin Huang waved the sword in his hand. "Alright then, you sword maniac." Yi Yeyu knew that Lin Huang''s improvement was leaps and bounds better than hers. "Oh, well, if you''re not talented, you''ll have to work harder." Lin Huang smiled. "You''re not talented?! If the renowned Sword Genius isn''t talented, then who in Division7 is?" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Lin Huang. "Well, I thought it rhymed, so I might as well say it. I''m not talking about myself." Lin Huang rubbed his nose. "You''re so shameless! All you''re doing is fishing for compliments," Yi Yeyu teased. "I guess so. Anyway, why did you call?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. "Didn''t you ask me to call you?" "I asked you to call me?" Lin Huang was surprised. "I''m going to hang up if you really can''t recall," Yi Yeyu threatened. "You baby has hatched?!" Lin Huang suddenly recalled that he wanted the phoenix blood. "Lucky for you that you remember! It hatched an hour ago," Yi Yeyu said and stabilized her phone. She then picked up a red, fluffy baby monster that looked like a slightly bigger and odd chick. "This is Xiao Hong. Say ''hi'' to Uncle Lin Huang." "Erm, I must say you''re worst than me when it comes to naming." Lin Huang teased as he saw how hesitant the baby monster was. "What do you know? It''s just a nickname!" Yi Yeyu said. "So, what''s its real name?" Lin Huang asked in all seriousness. "Its real name is Ugh! What does that have to do with you?! I haven''t thought of its real name. What''s wrong with you?!" Yi Yeyu was embarrassed and mad. "Sure, sure, you''re right about everything." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "It''s not my baby anyway," Lin Huang said under his breath. "Lin Huang, tell me in my face if you don''t want the phoenix blood anymore! I''m hanging up!" Yi Yeyu could not take it anymore when she heard what Lin Huang said in the end. "No, no, no. It''s all my fault, alright?" Lin Huang apologized. It was not easy for Yi Yeyu to finally promise to give him phoenix blood. If it failed, he would have to spend a lot of time and effort looking for an ancient bird monster''s blood for Thunder. "So, do I send over the blood or what?" Yi Yeyu asked. "It''s alright. I need fresh blood. I''ll go to you in a few days when I''m free. Please send me your address." Lin Huang shook his head. He wanted to drop by her place when he was unlocking Bloody so that he did not have to make two trips. "Sure, I''ll send you the address later. I''ll hang up if there''s nothing else." Yi Yeyu was obviously still chuffed at Lin Huang. Now that she had a new toy, she was not interested in chatting further. "Alright then, I''ll let you know before I head there." "Girlfriend?" Liu Ming looked playfully at Lin Huang after the call ended. "No, we''re just friends," Lin Huang denied right away. "A philosopher once said that there''s no pure friendship between a boy and a girl." Liu Ming squinted at Lin Huang, his face even cheekier now. "Our friendship isn''t pure. We have a financial relationship whereby I owe her money." Lin Huang looked at Liu Ming in all seriousness. "Uhh" Liu Ming was speechless. Lin Huang was talking about the time when Tyrant had accidentally damaged the hotel during the Reserve Hunter assessment last year. That was how Lin Huang ended up owing Yi Yeyu money. In reality, the hotel belonged to the Hunter Association, so the damage would be borne by the Hunter Association, and Yi Yeyu did not have to pay anything. When Lin Huang insisted on paying her back, Yi Yeyu had replied, "I don''t want your money, I want to be your creditor." That was how they ended up in such an odd relationship. 439 Shanhai City More than a week had passed. The study on Undead Evil Child''s skills was not as successful as Bloody expected. Although the Undead Evil Child''s Immortal Tinder was similar to Bloody''s Leech Pod, the differences were major. The Immortal Tinder could duplicate the Undead Evil Child''s memory perfectly while Bloody''s Leech Pods could not contain such a massive amount of information. Moreover, the Immortal Tinder was much better at hiding than the Leech Pod whereby it was almost undetectable while Bloody could not do that. However, after a week of studying, Bloody managed to come up with a similar skill. As the Leech Pod could contain limited information, Bloody could only create Leech Pods that were exclusively for memory storage. Such new Leech Pods were more than ten times bigger than the original Leech Pods, but it could completely store Bloody''s memory. The disadvantage was that because it was big, it could be targeted easily, so it could only be used for close-range parasitizing. Besides, it could not hide after parasitizing was performed and it could be easily discovered by humans or monsters with spiritual detection abilities. Although it was a half-baked skill that was full of flaws, Bloody decided to add it to its skill range anyway. If it were a complete skill, it would appear automatically in the skill slot, and it would not take up the currently vacant slot. As it was incomplete, Bloody decided to put it in anyway since it had a vacant slot. Bloody named it Immortal Pods (Beginner). Lin Huang took a look at the skill and knew that it was half-baked. Since all of its skill slots were full, the unlocking terms appeared at the back of Bloody''s card. "The card is sealed at the moment. Unlocking must be done in order to level up to holy fire-level. "Unlocking Terms: Get Demonic Dandelion Vine to kill more parasites with different parasitic abilities! "Terms Description: Kill at least ten types of parasitic monsters; the more, the better. "Remark 1: The monsters'' combat level should not be lower than the Demonic Dandelion Vine''s. "Remark 2: You can get other summoning monsters to help with the killing, but you cannot get help from other participants. "Remark 3: The helpers'' combat level has to be lower than the target''s." As soon as he saw the unlocking terms, Lin Huang posted his request to look for various parasites on the Hunter Forum, and he soon got replies. He headed out three days later after he got Tyrant to stay with Lin Xin this time. As the parasites were scattered everywhere, Lin Huang did not plan to kill the parasites first. Instead, he headed to Shanhai City to meet Yi Yeyu. Shanhai City was located at foothold No.7A2, and it was one of the biggest A-grade footholds in Division7. Its crowd was nothing less than the White Capital''s. However, they were both located far away from each other whereby one was in the north of Division7 while the other was in the southeast. Although the foothold was popular, Lin Huang never had the opportunity to visit it. However, it was clear that Mr. Fu had been there before as the foothold''s coordinates were pinned in the dimensional relic. As Lin Huang stepped into the dimensional relic, he appeared in a hotel room again, but this time, he entered right into the bathroom. He heard the sound of flowing water sound behind him. He wanted to dig his eyes out as soon as he turned around. Under the running shower was an older man with a buff body, showering. With bubbles on his body, the thick hair on his firm chest grabbed Lin Huang''s attention. Luckily, the bubbles managed to cover his lower body region, so Lin Huang did not see anything that he should not have seen. The uncle soon noticed that Lin Huang was in the shower together with him, so he grabbed a towel and covered his chest in disgust. "Uncle, I think you''re covering the wrong place..." Lin Huang wanted to say, but the uncle''s scream did not allow him to. "Help, pervert!" "I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to do this," Lin Huang apologized and left with his dimensional relic. He ran out of the hotel as fast as he could. He was annoyed that he had to see that once he arrived in Shanhai City. It must be bad luck to be labeled as a pervert by someone else. He took a deep breath and protected the map with his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He was not far away from Yi Yeyu''s house. It was only past 8 a.m, and since he was not in a rush, he sat down at an alfresco cafe and called Yi Yeyu. The call was soon connected. Yi Yeyu was having breakfast when he called. "You''re coming to Shanhai City now?" Yi Yeyu was eating a piece of meat as she mumbled to Lin Huang. "I''m already here," Lin Huang said and noticed that Yi Yeyu was dressed in formal attire. "Why are you dressed so formally today? Do you have something going on?" "I''m picking up a good friend today. She''s my big sister. She used to be my great-grandfather''s staff who took good care of me when I was little. She''s been working with the Union Government in Division3 after she broke through immortal-level a few years ago. I didn''t see her since then. She happened to be in Division7 these few days to visit me. I got her a hotel in the middle of the night, and I''m meeting her today," Yi Yeyu explained in detail. "Oh, go meet your friend then, since my matter is not urgent anyway. I''ll shop and walk around in the city. I''ll visit you when you''re done meeting her." Lin Huang thought it would be inconvenient for him to be around since she had an appointment with a friend she had not seen for years. "It''s okay, we''re close and since you''re here, let''s meet up together." Yi Yeyu did not think there was anything wrong. "Alright then." Lin Huang did not say further since she suggested that. "Send me your coordinates. Let me see who should I pick up first." Lin Huang sent his coordinates immediately. "Eh, you''re very close to my big sister! That''s convenient," Yi Yeyu said after looking at the coordinates while grinning. "There are many hotels around, so it''s not unusual that we''re close." Lin Huang looked up and saw six hotels around him. "Wait for me wherever you are, I''ll be there in ten." After the call ended, Lin Huang sipped his coffee and shook his head as he thought of what he had seen earlier. "I thought everything would go smoothly today, but it seems like I was wrong. It''s true that we shouldn''t be too superstitious." 440 Sis Rou Rou Just as Lin Huang was almost done with his coffee in the alfresco cafe, Yi Yeyu came flying on a Crimson Unicorn. Many patrons were shocked to see the flaming Crimson Unicorn in the air. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. Yi Yeyu''s family must be incredibly rich as the Crimson Unicorn was a double mutated holy fire-monster. It was usually a powerful Transcendent flying mount as it was hard to be named. Moreover, it was as expensive as a supreme relic at the auctions. Lin Huang had read about the Crimson Unicorn in the monster encyclopedia before, but it was his first time seeing it. It looked similar to the mythical unicorn on Earth. However, this monster was completely black except for its mouth, nose, eyes, mane, hooves, and tail which were a burning red. Yi Yeyu saw Lin Huang, who was just putting down his coffee and instructed her Crimson Unicorn to land. It landed at outside the cafe. Yi Yeyu leaped and recalled her Crimson Unicorn with a monster taming token. She walked towards Lin Huang in her golden heels. She was already 1.7 meters tall, towering over Lin Huang. With the pair of heels, she was almost 1.85 meters tall. "Hi, rich lady!" Lin Huang waved at Yi Yeyu. "What rich lady? What the hell, man?" Yi Yeyu thought he was ridiculous. "You can afford a Crimson Unicorn, so what else should I call you?" Lin Huang teased. "This Crimson Unicorn retired from the military. I didn''t have to pay anything." Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Lin Huang and sat across him. "Waiter, get me an iced coffee!" Yi Yeyu turned around and shouted to the waiter. The waiter replied and started preparing her coffee. "Why must you involve me since you''re meeting your friend today?" Lin Huang could see that Yi Yeyu had dressed up for the occasion. The person must be important to her. "I can walk around myself and visit you tomorrow," Lin Huang added. "Since you''re here, why the trouble of meeting you on separate occasions? What''s there to be afraid of? My sister won''t eat you." "Miss, your iced coffee." The waiter soon arrived with the coffee. "Don''t talk nonsense when you see my sister later," Yi Yeyu took over the coffee and warned. "Okay." Lin Huang did not overthink about it. He thought that she meant not to talk back to her sister. "So, do we visit her later?" "No, her hotel isn''t far from here. She''ll come here after she checks out from the hotel. I''ve sent her our coordinates, so we''ll wait for her here." Yi Yeyu turned off the message page as she sipped on her coffee. "I shall get another drink then," Lin Huang said and ordered a black coffee. As his coffee was served, Lin Huang saw a familiar face not far away. He was shocked as it was the man that he had seen in the bathroom when he stepped out of the dimensional relic earlier. The man was walking towards the cafe in a blue suit. Lin Huang turned around and switched on the news page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring so that it would cover his face. He changed the page background gray. "What are you doing?" Yi Yeyu noticed his odd behavior immediately. "Don''t you think it''s too bright? I''m hiding from the sun," Lin Huang came out with a lame excuse. "Crazy!" Yi Yeyu looked up at the sky. It was cloudy at the moment, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. As she looked back, she saw a familiar person not far away. "Sis Rou Rou, I''m over here!" Yi Yeyu stood up and waved immediately. Looking at Yi Yeyu''s response, Lin Huang lowered his protection slightly and looked at the direction where Yi Yeyu was waving to. He did not see any woman. There was only the uncle walking towards their direction. "Xiao Yu." Just when Lin Huang was thinking who Yi Yeyu was waving at, the uncle waved back at Yi Yeyu with a smile. "Sis Rou Rou" Lin Huang''s eyeballs almost dropped out of their sockets, and he almost spat out his coffee. The man had a facial beard with hair shorter than Lin Huang''s. His face structure was as sharp as a sculpture''s. He was almost two meters tall and as strong as a hulk. What Lin Huang remembered the most was the thick chest hair that he had seen in the shower. Which part of that looked like "Sis Rou Rou"!? He then lifted up the protection to cover his face again as he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. "How could it be him? What should I do?" Lin Huang did not expect the big sister that Yi Yeyu talked about to be the man that he had seen by accident. The person''s gender was not important anymore. The more important thing here was that he would be dead if the man recognized him. Lin Huang remembered Yi Yeyu saying that this person had broken through immortal-level a few years ago. "I must not panic! Maybe he can''t recognize me since the bathroom was dark and misty" Lin Huang consoled himself. "Is this your friend?" Sis Rou Rou had walked to their table and asked Yi Yeyu as Lin Huang was panicking. Lin Huang stiffened as he turned around. He looked into his eyes, but everything was normal as if the man did not recognize him. "Sis Rou Rou, this is my friend Lin Huang." Yi Yeyu had no idea what happened earlier as she introduced the both of them enthusiastically. "Lin Huang, this is the Sis Rou Rou that I told you about just now." "Hi, my name is Si Kongrou," Si Kongrou, who was dressed in a suit, introduced herself, sounding completely like a matured man. "Hi" Lin Huang was glad as he thought he had managed to escape before she could recognize him in the bathroom earlier. However, his happiness was short-lived when he heard what she said next. "Kid, do I look good in the shower?" Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat as he peeked at her. She was smiling and looked kindly with twinkling eyes at him. She looked like she did not want to talk about it in front of Yi Yeyu. "What would you like to drink? It''s my treat!" Lin Huang said immediately while beaming. 441 Farewell After the three of them finished their coffee, Lin Huang went to the counter to pay immediately. Yi Yeyu was holding onto Si Kongrou''s arm when he came back, and he could not help but feel like a lightbulb between them. "Big sister, since your family name is Si Kong, do you happen to be related to Si Kongjian?" Lin Huang thought the atmosphere was awkward, so he broke the ice as they strolled. "You know Xiao Jian?" Si Kongrou stared puzzledly at Lin Huang. "He was one of the examiners when we were training in the ruins." "Oh, he''s my brother. My cousin brother to be exact. But I have more than ten cousin brothers, so we hardly talk to each other," Si Kongjian explained. "I knew it when I heard his name the last time, but I didn''t ask." Yi Yeyu smugly seemed like she had it all figured out. "You attended that training as well?" Si Kongrou asked with her eyebrow raised. "Yeah, that was how I leveled up to holy fire-level. It was Lin Huang who helped me to kill the monster." Yi Yeyu did not forget about Lin Huang''s help. "It''s nothing." Lin Huang faked a laugh as he needed to please Si Kongrou. After all, it was not in his best interest to be hated by an immortal-level. "Oh, which monster did you kill to level up?" Si Kongrou looked at Lin Huang and asked again. "The Fire Phoenix. It was difficult" Yi Yeyu started telling the entire story about how they killed the Fire Phoenix. And that was how Si Kongrou found out that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor with great abilities. However, she did not have much comment on him. "The Fire Phoenix is a double mutated monster with phoenix blood. It''s a great choice for people with fire attributes." That was all Si Kongrou said. Yi Yeyu then talked to Si Kongjian about her training while Lin Huang listened as he thought it was eye-opening. However, the conversation then shifted to some girls'' talk that included which facial mask was the best, which lip color would be attractive to guys, the latest arrival of the trendiest brands, who just got married and who got divorced, and so on... Lin Huang was staring into space as he listened. He even followed the both of them into a shopping mall without realizing it. The three of them shopped at the ladies'' department. Only Yi Yeyu tried on clothes while Si Kongrou did not. All she did was pick out the largest size for the clothes that she browsed through. Lin Huang did not dare to ask if she was buying them for herself or for someone else. They shopped all the way to the fourth floor where Si Kongrou stopped to gawk at a white wedding dress. "Such a pretty dress!" "I think it''s pretty too. Sis Rou Rou, buy it if you like it," Yi Yeyu encouraged. "Why should I buy something that I would never wear in my life? Which man would ever want to marry me?" Si Kongrou shook her head and looked away. To Lin Huang, her gentle expression and eyes that dimmed in disdain confirmed that she really was a woman. "Fate is odd. There''s always someone for you in this world. It''s just that you haven''t met him yet," Lin Huang comforted her, but he soon regretted what he said as he was afraid that she might think that he was interested in her. "Maybe" Si Kongrou only looked sadly at Lin Huang, obviously still down. To make her feel better, Yi Yeyu brought the both of them to a dessert parlor upstairs. "Oh my!" Si Kongrou grinned when she saw the dessert cafe. "Ten years ago, when I was still a little girl, you would always bring me to eat dessert whenever I was unhappy. I would always forget what upset me as I gorged myself on the yummiest things" Yi Yeyu still remembered the sweet memory that Si Kongrou had given her a decade ago. "To be honest, at first, I thought you would become fat and blame me when you get older. I didn''t know that you''d have a body that won''t ever get fat no matter how much you eat. That''s why I kept buying you dessert," Si Kongrou chuckled. That piece of memory seemed to be rather fresh in her head. After the two ladies picked the desserts that they wanted, Lin Huang initiated to pay. They chatted as they ate in the dessert parlor while Lin Huang listened to their girls'' chatter. He knew more about Si Kongrou as he listened. She was one of the Demon Slayer Troop members back in those days, and she had been sent to be Yi Yeyu''s bodyguard later on for some reason. When Yi Yeyu grew up, Si Kongrou broke through immortal-level and was relocated to work for the Union Government in Division3. Yi Yeyu had no idea why exactly she had gone there. Because she was in the military, she contacted Yi Yeyu less and less. This was the first time she had ever met Yi Yeyu again since she got back to Division7. "Sis Rou Rou, are you doing well in Division3? If you''re not happy there, I''ll try to get great-grandfather to bring you back to Division7." Yi Yeyu was concerned. It was rare for Lin Huang to hear Yi Yeyu speak in such a caring tone. "I''m doing pretty good over there. If I really don''t want to stay there, I''ll speak to the general myself." Si Kongrou smiled. "That''s great." Yi Yeyu was happy to hear that. Si Kongrou seemed like she was casual about it but Lin Huang could sense that she was hiding something. "Sis Rou Rou, do you have some mission that you''re in Division7 for?" Yi Yeyu was curious about Si Kongrou''s visit. "It''s a classified mission. I can''t tell you." Si Kongrou shook her head and smiled. "Can we still meet after your mission is over?" Yi Yeyu asked. "I don''t think so as I don''t have much time. I''ll visit you again if I get the chance in the future and I''ll visit the general as well." Si Kongrou shook her head. "It''s great that I could squeeze some time for you this morning, but I have something to do in the afternoon." Si Kongrou looked at the time of her Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was almost 11 a.m. "Let''s have lunch before you leave," Yi Yeyu suggested. "Alright then," Si Kongrou hesitated as she looked at the time but agreed. "Let''s have a light lunch since we just had so much dessert." Yi Yeyu was familiar with the shopping mall, and she soon found a Chinese restaurant. "The dishes here are delicious. My brother brought me here for the first time, and I''ve been here by myself for a few times. It''s still early now, so let''s order first since there aren''t many customers here. Our food should be served soon." They sat by the window, and their dishes were served a few minutes after they ordered. As they just had dessert, Yi Yeyu only ordered four dishes and a bowl of soup for the three of them. They finished in less than half an hour, and Lin Huang called for the bill. They then sent Si Kongrou off but not before Yi Yeyu gave Si Kongrou a long embrace. "Although Xiao Yu is stubborn sometimes, she''s an innocent girl. If you just want to be friends with her, you''re a good friend. But if you would like to be in a relationship with her, you have to work harder as it''s not easy to get into the Yi family. I hope that you maintain the same relationship you have with her right now as you won''t hurt her if you guys are just friends. I don''t wish to see you hurting her" Si Kongrou whispered into Lin Huang''s ear. Si Kongrou let go of Yi Yeyu after whispering to Lin Huang. The both of them talked for a while before she left. Yi Yeyu stood where she was until Si Kongjian disappeared, then she turned around. "Have some dessert." Lin Huang gave her a cream puff since she appeared upset over the departure of her good friend. Yi Yeyu took the cream puff and ate it quietly. Lin Huang passed her a few more later on. She seemed to be happier after eating those cream puffs. "Are you planning to kill me with these cream puffs so that you can inherit my legacy?" Yi Yeyu asked Lin Huang. "I can''t even if I wanted to!" Lin Huang said. 442 A Unique Venom Yi Yeyu did not have the mood to shop anymore after sending Si Kongrou off. They were sitting in a cafe for a while as Yi Yeyu calmed herself down. She recalled Lin Huang''s purpose of visiting. "Let''s go to my place. My brother is at home too." "Yi Zheng is home? What''s his combat level now?" Lin Huang asked. "He just broke through blue flame-level a few days ago, so he has been resting at home." "Wow, so quickly he''s on blue flame-level now?" Lin Huang remembered that Yi Zheng had only been on complete gold-level when they first met. "He was already white flame-level a year ago. He spent another year to get to blue flame-level. Compared to your speed, that''s nothing." Yi Yeyu stared at Lin Huang. Lin Huang faked a laugh without saying anything. His speed of leveling up was terrifying. He had no explanation for that, so he decided not to talk about it. "But it''s been more than a month. How are you not complete gold-level yet?" Although it would take three months for a regular person to level up from gold-level rank-3 to complete gold-level, Yi Yeyu thought Lin Huang should be complete gold-level by now considering his terrifying speed. She would not be surprised even if he was already white flame-level. However, from his aura, she could feel that Lin Huang was not a complete gold-level yet. "My master wants me to build a stable foundation, so instead of Life Skill, I''ve been studying basic knowledge and sword training," Lin Huang smiled as he explained. "No wonder." Yi Yeyu recalled that Lin Huang had been training his swordsmanship a few days back when she called. "Mr. Fu has a good plan. A stable foundation is crucial. Since you leveled up too fast, it''s good to take some time to digest." They became silent after that conversation. "Yeyu, is Sis Rou Rou a man or a woman?" Lin Huang suddenly thought of the question that he had been speculating about. "A woman, of course!" Yi Yeyu knew Lin Huang would have such doubts. Thus, she was not mad as she explained patiently. "Sis Rou Rou was a pretty lady. She was one of the most beautiful ones in the Demon Slayer Troop. A virtual eye opened during one of her mission. There was a new type of insect that was similar to bees with a unique venom in them. Sis Rou Rou''s body changed after she was stung by the insect. She became like this when she recovered. The doctor said her body produces androgens 20 times more than a male adult every day due to the venom. She had gone to many doctors, but none of them had the solution to the venom. "She couldn''t accept the change to her body when she woke up. She even tried to kill herself once. Because of that, my great-grandfather sent her to the hospital and got a psychologist to talk to her. She finally accepted her new identity half a year later, but she didn''t want to go back to the Demon Slayer Troop anymore. Therefore, my great-grandfather got her to be my bodyguard and nanny since I was born. She left after I turned 15." Although Lin Huang was hazarding something similar, he did not expect to hear that. He did not know that there was venom in monsters that could turn a woman into a man. He shivered as he imagined the possibility of other monsters that could turn a man into a woman. "It seems like I have to be more careful when I encounter monsters in the future, especially those new ones or else, I might encounter the same thing as she did," Lin Huang thought to himself. "That''s why Sis Rou Rou is like a real sister to me," Yi Yeyu said in all seriousness. They became silent again after the conversation. Soon, they arrived at Yi Yeyu''s house. It was as huge as a third of the size of the Martial Hunter College. The houses in Shanhai City were no smaller than those in the White Capital. Regular people could not afford such houses. There were two soldiers in military attire standing at the entrance like pine trees. Lin Huang could sense that the both of them were on complete gold-level. The two soldiers remained immobile as Yi Yeyu brought Lin Huang into the house. They did not even peek at them as if they were two sculptures. The both of them entered a beautiful courtyard. Lin Huang looked around while strolling into the courtyard behind Yi Yeyu. They then arrived at the living room. The buildings that Lin Huang saw along the way were not as luxurious as he imagined. They were plainer and blended with Nature. It was a comfortable place to be in. As he entered the living room, Lin Huang realized that the Yi family''s house was luxurious in a low-key way. There was a monster tooth hanging on the wall. Although it was just a tooth, Lin Huang could sense that it was at least an immortal-level or even stronger. "This is an imperial-level dragon blood monster''s tooth that my great-grandfather killed last time. It shrunk into an art piece later on," Yi Yeyu smiled and explained as she noticed Lin Huang was attracted by the monster teeth. "No wonder the aura of the tooth alone is already so terrifying. I was thinking what kind of tooth this is." Lin Huang learned something new about Yi Donglai. "What would you like to drink?" Yi Yeyu finally assumed the attitude of a host as she got Lin Huang to sit down. "Any fruit juice will do. Don''t trouble yourself." "Alright then, I''ll have some as well." Yi Yeyu got a bottle of unopened fruit juice from the refrigerator and poured it into the glasses for Lin Huang and herself. "This cloud mountain fruit juice is expensive. It costs more than 300 Life Crystals for a bottle. One glass is almost 100 Life Crystals. I don''t usually drink this myself." Lin Huang had heard of the cloud mountain fruit before. It was a rare fruit that required a lot of sunshine. It could only grow on top of mountains with clouds. Besides being delicious, such fruit could even increase one''s Life Power. In Fatty''s made-up recipe, there was a fruit salad with cloud mountain fruit as one of the ingredients. However, Lin Huang had only heard of the fruit but never tasted it before. He took a sip. It was sweet with a unique fragrance. It was not thick at all but was refreshing especially since it was summer now. As soon as the juice trickled down his throat, Lin Huang could feel that Life Power was being released into his body. He had to admit that the fruit was worth the price. In the silence, Lin Huang put down the glass. "Fatty wants to use this fruit in his fruit salad. Now, it seems like a great choice," Lin Huang said to Yi Yeyu while smiling. "Oh yea, did the little Fatty get his hunter license yet? I remember he wanted to be a Food Hunter," Yi Yeyu asked. "He got his license." Lin Huang nodded but was soon upset. "Did something happen to him?" Yi Yeyu noticed Lin Huang''s mood change. "Something happened to him earlier. He''s dead," Lin Huang said with his head hanging down. "What happened?" Yi Yeyu did not expect to hear that. Lin Huang then told her everything, not hiding the truth. "It''s not your fault. It''s that Grandmistress'' fault. Stop blaming yourself," Yi Yeyu comforted him. "I''ll find that Grandmistress and take revenge for Fatty!" Lin Huang clenched his fists. 443 Meeting Yi Zheng Again As they were engrossed in talking about Fatty, Yi Zheng appeared at the door. "Where is Sis Rou?" Yi Zheng looked around the living room and noticed Lin Huang. "This is Lin Huang?" "Bro Zheng," Lin Huang stood up and greeted him immediately. "It really is you. You''ve grown taller." Yi Zheng smiled. Yi Zheng remembered that Lin Huang looked like a kid when he first met him. He was not even 1.7 meters, but he should be 1.75 meters now. "Eh, your combat level" Yi Zheng soon noticed that Lin Huang was already gold-level rank-3 just by looking at him. He clearly remembered that Lin Huang was not even iron-level when they had first met a year ago. His speed of improving levels was terrifying. "You''re considered a genius at this speed!" It was clear that Yi Yeyu did not tell her brother about Lin Huang''s combat level. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything. "Oh yeah, didn''t you say you went to pick up Sis Rou? Where is she?" Yi Zheng did not dwell on Lin Huang as he was considered a junior to him. He was just surprised, and soon he switched his focus to Yi Yeyu. "She has something to do in the afternoon. We had lunch together, then she left," Yi Yeyu explained. "Do you need to talk to her?" "She has left?! I thought since I have just broken through blue flame-level a few days ago, I wanted to train with her." Yi Zheng was upset. "It''s you who didn''t want to follow me this morning," Yi Yeyu teased. "Didn''t you know I was training this morning? I thought she would be staying for a few days." Yi Zheng did not expect to miss the opportunity to train with Si Kongrou. "If you really want to train, let Lin Huang train with you," Yi Yeyu smirked. She had no idea what Lin Huang''s ability now was, but he should be more powerful than herself who was a white flame-level. Although he would not defeat Yi Zheng, he would totally surprise him. Lin Huang glared at Yi Yeyu without saying anything. He was not afraid to challenge Yi Zheng who was on blue flame-level. With his current ability, he should be able to kill one. However, Yi Zheng was considered a genius as well, so he would be much more powerful than a regular blue flame-level. He would be at a loss without the help of his summoning monsters if he were to fight Yi Zheng. "It''s okay. I don''t think he can even fight you." Yi Zheng waved his hand and got ready to leave. "Brother, you''re wrong. Lin Huang is more powerful than I am. It was he who helped me kill the Fire Phoenix in the ruins." Yi Yeyu had mentioned to Yi Zheng that her friend had helped her kill the Fire Phoenix, but she did not say who the friend was. The truth was finally out. The Fire Phoenix was a double mutated monster with phoenix blood. Its ability was comparable with a crimson flame-level. Yi Zheng was curious who Yi Yeyu had gotten help from as the friend must have been a genius to be able to kill the Fire Phoenix when he was only gold-level. Yi Zheng knew very well that his sister would not be able to kill the Fire Phoenix on her own. "Not only is he more powerful than me, but he''s also an Imperial Censor with powerful summoning monsters. Are you sure you don''t want to give it a try?" Yi Yeyu was trying to persuade him, seemingly eager to watch them fight. "I forgot that you''re an Imperial Censor. If you''re not weak yourself, with a couple of summoning monsters, you should be able to warm me up." Yi Zheng turned around and looked at Lin Huang squarely. "I haven''t fought an Imperial Censor for a long time now. Would you like to play?" Yi Zheng asked. "Sure." Lin Huang wanted to test the results of his training as well. Yi Yeyu did not expect Lin Huang to agree so quickly. She thought that she might have to come up with something for him to accept the challenge but it was now unnecessary. "Let''s go to the battle training ground then." Yi Zheng nodded. The three of them passed through two courtyards, and Lin Huang saw a giant spherical ancient-replica building not far away. The building was at least 50 to 60 meters high whereby the roof was completely made of tiles. Just by looking at it, Lin Huang knew it was the battle training ground. Yi Zheng brought the two of them into the building. The interior of the building was the same as the battle training ground in the Martial Hunter College where there was nothing in there. However, the private battle training ground was much smaller than the one in the Martial Hunter College. It looked like it was only 80,000 to 90,000 square meters but it was twice the size of a regular battle training ground. "What do you think? Not bad, isn''t it?" Yi Zheng was showing off. "Hmm, not bad." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. He did not tell Yi Zheng that the battle training ground that he used to practice in the Martial Hunter College was three times bigger than this. "Xiao Yu, do you want to train with us? You can help Lin Huang. An extra person doesn''t make any difference to me." Yi Zheng grinned. "No, I don''t want to trouble myself. I would rather be a beauty who watches the fight quietly." Yi Yeyu shook her head. Without waiting for Yi Zheng to respond, she flew into the air to spectate. Yi Yeyu thought that since Lin Huang could not fly, Yi Zheng would not include her in the battle if she was to watch in the air. Since Yi Zheng was mean, he might involve her if she were to watch on the ground. As they stood in the middle of the area, Lin Huang took out the 5-star sword relic. He wanted to test his real ability in the battle, so he would not show mercy. Yi Zheng who was around 30 meters from him was holding a thin sword that was also a 5-star relic. However, the sword was obviously custom-made as the body of the sword was less than half the length of a regular sword. Although he had supreme relics with him, he thought it was unnecessary as the battle was only meant to test his abilities. "Aren''t you summoning your monsters?" Yi Zheng asked as he saw Lin Huang standing there without the intention to summon his monsters. "Firstly, I have no idea what you''re good at and which monsters will work best, so I don''t think summoning my monsters will help. Secondly, summoning monsters now will give you mental preparation. It would be better if I summoned them when I need them during the battle. Thirdly, I would like to see what my real ability is." Lin Huang listed the three reasons why he did not summon his monsters. "As my first opponent, I must say you''re an interesting Imperial Censor." Yi Zheng laughed when he heard what Lin Huang said. "But let me warn you. If you don''t summon your monsters before the battle starts, you might not have the opportunity to do so during the battle." As soon as Yi Zheng said that, he tore towards Lin Huang''s direction. 444 Lin Huang Versus Yi Zheng Yi Zheng was as fast as lightning. His body seemed to blend into the air as he stepped out. Without any sound or change in air pressure, his speed seemed to peak within seconds. Lin Huang stared at Yi Zheng''s movement without blinking. He thought it was an odd choice of movement since the single step Yi Zheng took had allowed his sword to arrive right in front of him. Fortunately, Lin Huang shifted quickly as well. He backed off as he blocked Yi Zheng''s attack with his sword. As the white Life Power collided with the golden Life Power, a shockwave exploded. The golden Life Power was swallowed instantly while Lin Huang backed off immediately. The one attack alone showed the difference between their Life Powers. Yi Zheng, who was already blue flame-level, extracted his Life Power from his Life Fire. The density of his Life Power was hundreds of times higher than Lin Huang''s. The single collision had proven that. As Liu Ming suppressed his combat level to white flame-level when he fought Lin Huang, the difference was not as obvious. However, when Lin Huang fought a real blue flame-level, the difference was significant. Although Lin Huang managed to block his attack, Yi Zheng smirked as he saw Lin Huang back off tens of meters away. "Your response speed isn''t too bad, but you''ll be killed under the suppression of my Life Power alone. Let''s get help from your summoning monsters, or else, you won''t have the opportunity later." Yi Zheng noticed Lin Huang''s biggest weakness just by attacking once. Suddenly, Lin Huang dashed towards Yi Zheng as he activated his Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps. "So swift!" Yi Zheng exclaimed. Lin Huang''s speed was already the standard of a blue flame-level''s. Within seconds, Lin Huang arrived before Yi Zheng while activating his Thunder Sting. A golden lightning flashed by as Lin Huang swung his sword. Yi Zheng was shocked at Lin Huang''s attack with his nimble movement and swordsmanship. He thought that Lin Huang''s movement was already terrifying enough; he did not expect his sword skill to be even more alarming. Yi Zheng was sure that the swing of his sword alone could definitely kill him, so he backed off while blocking the attack with his sword. Bang! It was the same collision of white and golden Life Power. As the swords smashed into each other, the golden Life Power splashed like an explosion and this time, it smothered the white Life Power. Yi Zheng, who was wearing white, retreated immediately. Yi Yeyu''s jaw dropped. She always knew that Lin Huang was powerful, but she did not know that he could make Yi Zheng back off. Initially, she thought Lin Huang would be suppressed by Yi Zheng, but she was wrong. Seizing the opportunity, Lin Huang raced towards Yi Zheng as he retreated. Yi Zheng looked serious this time. He realized that Lin Huang was not the junior he knew a year ago, but had grown to the level where they could fight fairly. He might lose if he was not serious in this battle. He was reminded that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor who had yet to summon any of his monsters up to this point. Yi Zheng thought Lin Huang was ridiculous for not willing to summon his monsters. However, it seemed like he had a really powerful ability. "Come on, Lin Huang! Don''t hold back, show me what you''ve got!" Yi Zheng shouted and stopped backing off, then he went towards Lin Huang. Bang! Bang! Bang! The both of them collided with each other again and again in the battle training ground. Yi Yeyu was shocked to see the intense shockwave that was created from their Life Power as she watched from the top. "How is it possible that Lin Huang is so powerful?!" If Yi Yeyu was shocked at Lin Huang''s attack that made Yi Zheng back off earlier, she was in a complete stupor as she watched Lin Huang attacked Yi Zheng repeatedly. Yi Yeyu knew Yi Zheng''s ability very well. Although he had just leveled up to blue flame-level recently, he could definitely kill a purple flame-level. He could even fight a gold flame-level. Meanwhile, Lin Huang''s ability to fight Yi Zheng had completely surprised Yi Yeyu. Although Yi Yeyu could see that Lin Huang was being overpowered in this battle, he could always find the opportunity to fight back without showing any signs that he was admitting defeat. Yi Zheng did not hold back in this battle, and he treated Lin Huang as his real opponent. Besides their ultimate moves, the both of them had unleashed almost all of their skills. The battle lasted for more than four hours. Lin Huang had drained his Life Power. It was amazing that he had managed to last for four hours without refilling his Life Power. Yi Zheng noticed that Lin Huang''s Life Power was draining, so he sheathed his sword and backed off. Lin Huang put his sword away as well. He knew Yi Zheng had noticed that and did not want to take advantage of his condition. "I didn''t expect you to be able to fight fairly with me." Yi Zheng smiled at Lin Huang. "I''ve actually lost since my Life Power has been drained. If I were in a real battle, my energy wouldn''t give way when my Life Power is draining." Lin Huang smiled. He knew that he would possibly lose to Yi Zheng since he did not summon any of his monsters. "That''s not certain since you didn''t summon your monsters. If you were in a real battle, you''d definitely summon your monsters to help, then perhaps I''m the one who will lose." Yi Zheng knew very well that this was not Lin Huang''s best. "If I''m not mistaken, you have already reached level-3 of the sword realm?" Yi Zheng asked again. "Yes, I have just achieved Illumination a few days ago." Lin Huang thought there was nothing to hide as they sensed each other''s sword realm during the battle. He could sense that Yi Zheng was level-2 on his sword realm. After confirming his speculation, Yi Zheng''s expression was even more complicated as he gazed at Lin Huang. "I might not be able to fight you anymore when you level up to white flame-level I''ve always thought that I''m comparable with a real genius, but it seems like I''m wrong." Yi Zheng shook his head and smiled awkwardly. What Yi Zheng did not know was that Lin Huang was the top among the geniuses, so he got the wrong person to compare. Lin Huang did not respond to what Yi Zheng said. Yi Yeyu thought Lin Huang would be defeated by Yi Zheng, but it was the other way around instead. "Don''t be upset, brother. Lin Huang''s master is Mr. Fu. His talent and gift should be the top in Division7, or else Mr. Fu wouldn''t take him as his apprentice," Yi Yeyu comforted him. "Mr. Fu is your master?" Yi Zheng was shocked but soon returned to normal. "No wonder Only Mr. Fu could train such a beast like you." "Err" Lin Huang thought about it and realized that Mr. Fu had been allowing him to do whatever he wanted. However, he did not say anything so that he would not hurt Yi Zheng''s feelings again. 445 It Doesn’t Make A Difference Since You’re Already in Deb After the battle ended, the three of them left the battle training ground while Yi Zheng walked away on his own as he was upset. Although he had basically won the battle, he did not feel joy at all. Yi Yeyu did not expect that to be the result. She thought of seeing Lin Huang embarrass himself so that she could take some photos or videos to make fun of him in the future if Lin Huang were to tease her. Not only did she not manage to do that, but now Yi Zheng was miserable. "Did you hide your abilities when we were in the ruins?" Yi Yeyu suspected as the improvement in his ability was too terrifying compared to a month ago. "I didn''t really hide my abilities. It was more like not showing all I have. But I''ve been integrating various sword skills and breaking through the sword realm recently. I''ve also been training real battles every day, so I''ve improved a little," Lin Huang said the truth. "You" Yi Yeyu just found out that Lin Huang had been holding back all the while. "Then, how about the battle just now? Did you give your all?" "Almost all that I had. I couldn''t use some of the skills as it wasn''t a real life and death battle after all." Lin Huang nodded. "But your brother obviously held back. He suppressed his speed and strength to be on the same level with mine," Lin Huang added. "Who do you think would win if you and my brother didn''t hold back at all?" Yi Yeyu wanted to get to the bottom of this. "If I don''t summon any monsters, he has a 95% winning rate. If I summon monsters, he would have an 80% chance of winning," Lin Huang said after thinking to himself. "So, my brother is more powerful!" Yi Yeyu was satisfied with Lin Huang''s answer. Lin Huang only responded with a smile. He knew that once he leveled up to white flame-level, if Yi Zheng did not improve by then, the tables would definitely turn. As they left the battle training ground, Yi Yeyu brought Lin Huang to her own room. To be precise, she brought him to the building that she was staying in. Yi Yeyu''s room was a huge three-story villa. Each floor was more than four times of the size of the dorm Lin Huang was staying in. Although it was said to be three-stories, the basement made up two stories. It looked old with tiles from the outside, but the interior was luxurious. Even the ottoman at the entrance was made of gold strings and other rare creatures. Lin Huang had to admit that Yi Yeyu was filthy rich. "Xiao Hong loves spitting fire everywhere, so I have been changing many things in the room to be fireproof," Yi Yeyu saw Lin Huang staring at the golden string ottoman at the entrance, so she explained. "I must say keeping a pet is much more troublesome than I thought," Yi Yeyu added. "So, you''re still calling your baby Xiao Hong?" Lin Huang looked up at her. "What does that have to do with you!?" Yi Yeyu glared deadly at him. "Do you want me to think of a name?" Lin Huang smiled as he suggested. "Go away!" Yi Yeyu was furious at Lin Huang''s teasing. "It''s okay if you don''t want that. Must you be so furious?" Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "So, do you still want the monster blood?" Yi Yeyu threatened him. "I''m sorry, big sister." Lin Huang suddenly became gentle. "Hmph!" Yi Yeyu scoffed and summoned Xiao Hong. It was the same as Lin Huang saw in the video call two days ago. Its head was slightly bigger now, and its hair was as fiery red as usual. As Lin Huang was checking it out, it was scrutinizing Lin Huang as well. The triple mutated monster had high intelligence, let alone a phoenix blood pet. It could tell that Lin Huang did not have any bad intentions. "Be careful. It spits fire when it''s mad." Yi Yeyu was worried that Xiao Hong might attack strangers. Luckily, it did not look like it was going to attack Lin Huang. Lin Huang took out a molten crystal from his storage space and placed it on his palm. Xiao Hong seemed to sense the fire attributes energy in the crystal and walked towards Lin Huang. It then swallowed the crystal that was bigger than its mouth. "What did you give it?" Yi Yeyu asked immediately. "A Molten Crystal." "Will it be okay?" Yi Yeyu was concerned. "Don''t worry, the Seventails that I have at home eats that too. Yours has pure phoenix blood. It''ll be fine." Lin Huang realized that Yi Yeyu was not familiar with how to feed her pet. "So, what do you usually feed it?" "My great-grandfather told me to feed it food with fire attributes, so I have been feeding it monster flesh and fruits of fire attributes. But it seems to eat everything, so sometimes I feed it what I eat," Yi Yeyu said. Soon, she recalled that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor. "Is there any problem with the way I feed it?" "The way you feed it is very wasteful. You don''t have to trouble yourself. Just feed it some fire minerals. The effect of minerals is better than monster flesh, and it''s also much cheaper. Some high-quality minerals are no less compared to fruits," Lin Huang explained. "Wouldn''t minerals be difficult to digest?" Yi Yeyu hesitated. "Big sister, it''s a phoenix blood, not a human. It has a different digestive system compared to humans''. We humans can''t digest minerals, but to phoenix blood pets, it''s like eating rice. Can you not digest rice?" Lin Huang was speechless. "Oh is it?" Yi Yeyu just realized that she had been feeding her pet wrongly all the while. She thought that basic things that humans could not eat would apply to her pet too. "Then, is it normal that it likes to eat monster bones?" "That should be normal as it can digest the bones." Lin Huang nodded. Yi Yeyu was speechless because the last time Xiao Hong was eating a piece of bone, she had overreacted by jumping up and down to get the bone out of its mouth. Xiao Hong seemed to understand their conversation while it glared at Yi Yeyu like it was judging her. Yi Yeyu noticed its stare and looked at Lin Huang instead. "Erm Let''s get to business." Lin Huang nodded and looked at Xiao Hong. He took a handful of molten crystals from his storage space and placed them before Xiao Hong. "Xiao Hong, I would like to get three drops of your blood. Can I trade that with this bunch of molten crystals?" Xiao Hong looked at the molten crystals for a while and chirped three times at him. "Alright then, three handfuls of molten crystals for three drops of blood." Lin Huang grabbed another two handfuls of molten crystals and put them on the carpet. Xiao Hong nodded while Yi Yeyu was shocked. "You can understand what it''s saying?" "It''s not difficult to understand." Lin Huang did not actually understand. He was just guessing and relating what he said to its response. "I''m so envious of Imperial Censors now." Yi Yeyu misunderstood but Lin Huang did not bother to explain. After communicating with Xiao Hong, Lin Huang took out a syringe and used it to poke Xiao Hong''s leg. Soon, the syringe of a thumb size was filled with blood. Lin Huang removed the syringe immediately. The injury on Xiao Hong''s leg healed almost instantly. "Thanks!" Lin Huang patted Xiao Hong''s back. "I''ll need to use this blood within three hours, so I won''t stay. I''ll treat you to a meal in the future," he then stood up and said to Yi Yeyu. "How many meals do you owe me now?" Yi Yeyu smiled. "Don''t worry. I''ll pay you back slowly. We have many opportunities in the future," Lin Huang said with confidence. "It doesn''t make any difference anyway since you already owe me so much. Go on now." Yi Yeyu waved her hand. "Thanks!" Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and stepped into it. 446 Unsealing Bloody As he stepped into the dimensional relic, Lin Huang appeared in the Meteorite Desert. He pinned the location next to the lake which connected to the isolated space where the Starlight Beasts were. He jumped into the lake after storing his dimensional relic. Twenty minutes later, Lin Huang entered the isolated space. He then summoned Thunder and went further into the isolated space. He took out the syringe of phoenix blood and injected it into Thunder''s left thigh. Soon, Thunder was covered by the white glow that came from the sky. Its body floated slowly, and its aura was growing. In less than five minutes, the white glow faded away, and Thunder landed on the ground. Its aura had leveled up to white flame-level now. However, it did not feel anything different was it was just a normal unsealing. It did not perform a triple mutation or a transformation of its blood. Just like what happened to Lancelot, the unsealing was done like a piece of cake. After achieving Thunder''s unsealing, Lin Huang then rode on Thunder and left. Thunder, which was white flame-level now, was two times faster than before. Although it was still slower than Kylie, it was not too far behind. As usual, Thunder landed by the lake. After recalling Thunder into card form, Lin Huang projected the map. There were coordinates marked with red numbers "1, 2, 3, 4". Those were the coordinates and the hunting sequence of parasites that he and Bloody had prepared two days back. "The first destination is the Lieba City in foothold No.7B21!" Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic, set the coordinates and stepped into it. "All the parasites nearby in the 76th destination, foothold No.7C88 has been cleared!" In the middle of the night eighteen days later, Lin Huang smirked as he witnessed Bloody''s vine pierce through the last parasite''s head. "I''ve only managed to rest for three hours for 18 days consecutively while the remaining time was spent on the road. We have finally killed 100 types of parasites. I think it should be enough to perform a triple mutation during your unsealing." Lin Huang did not manage to sleep well for the past half a month, and his eyes were red. "I think we have enough." Bloody replied. Throughout the real battle training and Lin Huang''s teaching, Bloody had improved immensely. It had transformed from a parasite that was bad at close combat battle to now an expert that could kill all monsters of the same level at a close distance. "I should be able to level up to complete gold-level in less than a month, so I won''t take too long to get to holy fire-level. Even if your triple mutation is sealed, I can get it unsealed soon. Don''t worry," Lin Huang comforted. "I know that, Master. Please take care of yourself." Among many of his summoning monsters, Bloody was the most thoughtful and the most intelligent one. Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and arrived at Meteorite Desert again with Bloody. As soon as they entered the isolated space, Bloody transformed back to its original size of a giant boa. "Xiao Hei, unseal Bloody!" Lin Huang instructed. Bloody had achieved its unsealing terms since the beginning as it only had to kill ten types of parasites. However, to make sure that Bloody could perform a triple mutation, Lin Huang brought it to up to 100 footholds within the 18 days to kill 100 types of parasites. Until today, they came to the isolated space with Starlight Beasts to perform the unsealing. Bloody was the last epic-level card that Lin Huang owned which had not been unsealed. As Lin Huang instructed, a white glow shone from the sky and covered Bloody completely. Bloody''s aura was rising. At the same time, there were purple light spots being released from its body. Soon, the purple dots created a dense coverage like it was painting a layer of purple on its body. Bloody looked like it was sleeping with its body curled into a ball. It was floating quietly in the air and rotating. As soon as its body color changed, Lin Huang knew that it must be performing a triple mutation. Time passed by as Lin Huang sat aside resting while waiting patiently for the unsealing to be over. The purple ball was rotating in the air. As three hours passed, Bloody''s body shrunk to the size of a basketball and became a completely purple ball. If Lin Huang did not sense the terrifying aura that was coming out of Bloody, he would have thought Bloody was dead. Xiao Hei''s notification came as soon as the white glow faded. "Congratulations, your epic-level Monster Card Demonic Dandelion Vine (Bloody) has been unsealed. Your epic-level Monster Card Demonic Dandelion Vine (Bloody) is now a white flame-level. "Congratulations, Demonic Dandelion Vine (Bloody) has leveled up from an epic-level card to a legendary-level card! "Congratulations, you have obtained a legendary-level card! The card is a new monster type that has yet to be named. Please give it a name." Lin Huang was the one who had come up with the name "Demonic Dandelion Vine". Now that Bloody was tripled mutated and had become a new monster type, it was natural that it did not have a name. Bloody uncurled from its ball form. It was not a vine any more, but a cloud. Lin Huang was shocked to see that. "Bloody, what''s wrong with your form?" "Master, I can now change my form as I wish." Bloody seemed to be satisfied with its new form. "Please give it a name!" "Let''s call you Violethaze then." Lin Huang thought about it and assigned a name. "Naming has been successful. Recording new monster type - Violethaze." Xiao Hei''s notification came as soon as the naming was done. "As your authorization is restricted, you won''t be able to use the legendary Monster Card yet. Your Monster Card Violethaze has been sealed. The card will be unsealed when you level up to holy fire-level." Although he had expected that, Lin Huang was upset whenever he saw such that notification. His exhaustion kicked in as soon as he saw Bloody''s body turn into stars, forming into a card and going into his body. The sky was getting bright. Lin Huang closed his eyes as he looked at the sky and smelled the flower fragrance in the air. A while later, he summoned Lancelot to guard the place while he fell into a deep sleep on the field with his arms wide open. 447 The Martial Hunter College Semester Begins The sky was turning dark as Lin Huang woke up from his sleep in the isolated space. He had started sleeping between 4 a.m. to 5 a.m, and it was past 7 p.m. now. He had slept 14 to 15 hours. "Such satisfying sleep!" Lin Huang stretched his body while inhaling the fresh air, feeling refreshed. It was 20th August at 7:21 p.m. when he checked the time on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "I should get back to the White Capital since all of my epic-level Monster Cards had been unlocked now." Lin Huang then recalled Lancelot that was guarding beside him, summoned Thunder and exited the isolated space. It was 7:30 p.m. when Lin Huang arrived at the Martial Hunter College using the dimensional relic. Hearing sounds downstairs, Lin Xin ran down immediately. "Brother, you''re back!" "Yes, let''s have supper?" Lin Huang suggested while smiling. "Yes, please!" Although she just had dinner less than two hours ago, she agreed to supper anyway. Tyrant was the most excited one when he heard that they were going for supper. "Sure, let''s go together!" Lin Huang agreed to bring Tyrant along, looking at his excitement. Lin Huang had not eaten for a day, so he was famished. There was a bigger night market near the Martial Hunter College. Although it was a school holiday, it was not as crowded as before. However, there were many people. Most of them were tourists and not many locals. The sun had just set and the lights were shining brightly in the night market, making it looked like it was daytime. Hordes of people crowded the night market. As Lin Xin just had dinner not long ago, she did not have the appetite to eat, so she got a beverage while strolling in the night market with Lin Huang. Meanwhile, Lin Huang and Tyrant were buying food along the way. He did not have to worry about not being able to finish the food as Tyrant was with them. They returned to the dorm after they strolled until 9 p.m. when Lin Huang was full. "Brother, the dean dropped by looking for you a few days ago. He said he might have to be away from the college for some time and asked you to look for the Vice President who sits next to his office if you need help." Lin Xin suddenly thought. "Oh, I was informed. He sent me a message." Lin Huang nodded. Liu Ming told Lin Huang that he felt he was on the verge of breaking through his sword realm, so he planned to train himself by battling with sword type monsters. If he managed to break through, he would be closer to imperial-level. He also thanked Lin Huang. If he had not met Lin Huang, he had no idea how long he would be stuck on the same level. Liu Ming''s sword realm was on level-4 Pinnacle. If he arrived at level-5, no imperial-level could fight him and leveling up to imperial-level would be a piece of cake for him. Lin Huang was happy for him. However, it was troublesome since Liu Ming was away. What if he could not manage his teaching when the semester started? After all, Lin Huang had never been a teacher before. It was acceptable if he was criticized, but it would be horrible if he taught the wrong things. He was nervous as he thought about it. "I''ve been sent to Class 1. I''m not sure which class you''re teaching." Lin Xin would be happy if Lin Huang could be her teacher. Although she had no idea how his teaching was, she was confident in his abilities. Not many teachers in the Martial Hunter College could defeat him. "I''m not sure yet. The dean didn''t tell me, but I don''t think I''ll be teaching Class 1. Class 1 is a big class of 100 students. They''re the top 100 in Division 7 that are accepted into the college, so it''s impossible that I''ll be assigned to that class since I''m new. Even if brother Liu agrees with that, the rest of the college won''t agree. It would be good enough if I''m sent to Class 2, but I think I''ll be teaching Class 3 onwards." Lin Huang knew his own ability. Class 1 was basically top students from all divisions while Class 2 might have many top students as well. That was why he figured he would be sent to Class 3 or lower. "How''s your preparation so far?" Lin Xin asked. "I''ve done my preparation, but I must pick up the basic knowledge." Lin Huang knew what he lacked. "Actually, I think you could show what you''re good at to remedy your weakness since the Martial Hunter College is training students with battle ability. Yes, you need to work on your basic knowledge, but I think you could consider stressing on the battles instead. Battling is what you''re good at after all. If I''m your student, I would hope to learn some combat techniques from you," Lin Xin voiced her opinion. "That''s a great suggestion. Let me think about it these few days." Lin Huang thought Lin Xin''s suggestion was fabulous. He planned to follow the teaching steps and methods like how the seniors did. However, it seemed like those were not suitable for him. After discussing with Lin Xin, Lin Huang started thinking if he was to have an apprentice, how he would train him. On the next morning, he headed straight to the library to pick up some basic knowledge while looking for unique teaching methods. He was stable in his sword realm now, and since Liu Ming was not around to train swords with him, Lin Huang decided to stay in the library instead. He stayed there from 7 a.m. to midnight, settling his lunch and dinner with the dessert that he had bought in Luoxi City the last time. He spent his next ten days with the same routine whereby he would spend his entire day in the library. With the supreme memory and learning abilities he got from his Omniscient Nature, he learned more than what people could usually learn within one to two years in just ten days. The semester started on 1st September and the college became crowded. Lin Huang received a notification that was sent from the college office. "Sir Lin Huang, you''ve been assigned to teach sword realm for Year 1 Class 2. You''ll be teaching every Friday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. If you need to change the class or time, please arrange with the office within 24 hours." "They sent me to Class 2!" Lin Huang was shocked as the students in Class 2 were no less than those in Class 1. There were many top students from all divisions in that class. It seemed like Lin Huang had to take this seriously. "Sir Lin Huang, as one of the new teachers, please report before 8:30 a.m. today and gather with all the Year 1 teachers at the office for the orientation." Just when Lin Huang was done reading the first notification, the second notification was sent. "I''ll have to join the orientation" Lin Huang scratched his head. "Brother, what''s with the orientation?" Lin Xin asked. "I just received the notification that I must join the orientation," Lin Huang said helplessly. He looked at the time. It was already 7:30 a.m. "Let''s go for breakfast now! I''ll just gather with the other teachers at the office before 8:30 a.m." 448 He’s the Dean’s Man In the registrar''s office, a middle-aged man was complaining to the director, "I''ve been teaching sword realm to Year 1 Class 2 for seven years. How could you get someone new to teach the class this year and get me to teach Class 3 instead? You guys didn''t even inform me ahead and only told me today when the semester starts. What does that mean?! I''ll speak to the dean if you don''t give me a reasonable explain now!" The middle-aged man who was complaining was Zhang Xu, the sword realm teacher who had been teaching at the college for many years. The dean that he was talking about was Zhang Xuefeng, one of the three deans of the college and he was also his grandfather. The director, Li Feng was upset. He was also only informed that there was a new teacher in the college this morning. It was Dean Wang who had made the arrangements while Li Feng was the one passing the message. He knew this would happen when he received the notification this morning. As expected, Zhang Xu came to him in less than half an hour after the notification was sent. He did not want to offend Zhang Xu as he was the Vice President''s grandson. "Lao Zhang, I''ve only just been informed this morning. My job is to inform you. The new teacher was arranged by Dean Wang. I don''t even know how does the new teacher looks like," Li Feng blamed it on the dean. "Director, they''ve sent the new teacher''s biography," a female office admin said to Li Feng. Many people crowded the office. "He''s so handsome!" "He''s so young!" "He doesn''t even look like he''s 20!" Many in the office exclaimed when they saw Lin Huang''s photo. "Show me his details." Li Feng walked behind the female admin while Zhang Xu followed. The female admin then pulled up Lin Huang''s details. "Name: Lin Huang, he''s only 16 this year!" The female admin shouted. "Scroll down." Li Feng was gloomy as he read Lin Huang''s basic details while Zhang Xu looked furious. As the female admin scrolled down, they found out that there was nothing else. Lin Huang had zero teaching experience, no graduating school, and no academical records. "Dean Wang is too much! How dare he get someone who uses a short-cut? I''ve nothing to say if he found a person who is more powerful than me to replace me. But this kid called Lin Huang didn''t even graduate from college. Is this a joke that he''s teaching our students?!" Zhang Xu exclaimed, glaring at the director. "Moreover, even if he''s the college Vice President, it''s wrong for him to step into the management, isn''t it? He doesn''t care about what we do here!" "Send his details to my Emperor''s Heart Ring. I''ll go talk to Dean Wang!" Li Feng instructed the female admin. The female admin could tell that the director was furious from his tone, so she sent him Lin Huang''s details immediately. As soon as he received the document, Li Feng walked out of the office instantly while Zhang Xu followed. "Lao Li, I''m following you!" The dean''s office was above the registrar''s office. In less than three minutes, the duo appeared at the office entrance of Dean Wang. Li Feng knocked on the door and Dean Wang looked up at the both of them. He knew what they were there for. "Come in." As the both of them entered the office, Li Feng did not know how he should start the conversation. "I guess both of you are here to talk about the new teacher?" The Vice President Wang Zijun smiled at the both of them. "Dean Wang, I''ve looked at Sir Lin''s documents just now. I don''t think he has what it takes to teach in our college." Seeing that Wang Zijun initiated the conversation, Li Feng voiced his opinion without holding back. "Do you think the same, Sir Zhang?" Wang Zijun then smiled and looked at Zhang Xu. "Yes." Zhang Xu nodded to show his agreement. "Alright, since the both of you are here, I shall be straightforward then." Wang Zijun stood up, walked towards the both of them and smiled. "It was Dean Liu''s idea to put Sir Lin to teach sword realm in Year 1 Class 1. I''ve no idea who he is, and Dean Liu didn''t say anything about him. I sent him to Year 1 Class 2 after discussing with Dean Liu. He said those who have any comments about Sir Lin could see him directly." "It''s Dean Liu''s idea? And he wants Sir Lin to teach Class 1?!" The both of them knew that Wang Zijun would never make anything like that up as they could always confirm it with Dean Liu. "I think the dean isn''t here today." Zhang Xu and Li Feng had passed by the office earlier and had seen that the dean''s office door was closed. "The dean won''t be here for a couple of months. He''s breaking through his combat level," Wang Zijun explained. "Breaking through his combat level" Li Feng and Zhang Xu were shocked as they confirmed what they heard. As the teachers of Martial Hunter College, they knew Liu Ming''s next combat level was imperial-level, which was also the highest in Division7. "Before he left, he said those who need to talk to him can send him messages or call him. He''ll pick up whenever he''s free," Wang Zijun added. Since Wang Zijun had said that, the duo knew that it was useless to talk to him any further. Thus, they left the office. Li Feng returned to his own office while Zhang Xu went to Dean Zhang''s office in a fit. Zhang Xuefeng was immortal-level, so since Wang Zijun''s office door was opened just now, he heard everything loud and clear. He knew why his grandson was here. "I know what you want to tell me. There''s nothing that I can do since Dean Liu wants Sir Lin to teach here," Zhang Xuefeng said. "But there''s a final assessment every semester, if Sir Lin''s students don''t perform well, I''ll apply to the registrar''s office to dismiss his teaching authorization," Zhang Xuefeng added. Zhang Xu was still unsatisfied after hearing what Zhang Xuefeng said. As he had a powerful background, his journey in the college had been smooth during the past seven years. It was the first time that he was replaced by someone new. He could not get over that fact. It was almost 8:30 a.m. as Zhang Xu left Zhang Xuefeng''s office. "A kid who''s only 16 dares to replace me?! I''m not Zhang Xu if I don''t teach you a lesson today!" Zhang Xu glared deadly. 449 Conflic It was 8.10 a.m. when Lin Huang arrived at the registrar''s office after breakfast. He had no idea what had happened in the registrar''s office and in the dean''s office earlier. The Year 1 teacher''s office was on the first floor, and the registrar was on the fourth floor while the dean''s office was on the fifth floor. They were all on different floors. Meanwhile, the teacher''s offices were not arranged according to the levels of classes but types of classes instead. Those teaching sword skills would be in one office, blade skills in another while martial skills were in the next. The arrangement was made as there was a fight that broke out among teachers of different weapons before. The teachers in cultural studies were arranged into a few offices. There were 200 students in one cultural studies class whereby the programme was different from battle classes. If the battle classes used the same method, it would take forever for a class to correct the students'' skills one by one. The class would be chaotic if there were too many students in one battle class. Including Lin Huang, there were a total of 17 teachers teaching Year 1 blade skills. It was the second biggest programme after sword skills. Among the 3,000 new students, almost a third of them had enrolled in the sword realm programme. Many looked puzzledly at Lin Huang as he walked into the office as he was simply too young. It was obvious that he was not even 20; perhaps he was not even 18. "Which class are you from? Do you need help?" A hot, short-haired female teacher asked Lin Huang. "I''m actually the new teacher." Many were shocked at what Lin Huang said. However, some of them soon sensed his aura that was gold-level rank-3. Lin Huang did not hide his aura. Instead, he just slightly shrouded it without displaying it. It was not difficult to sense his combat level. However, everyone focused on how young he was instead. "Are you the new teacher who is replacing Zhang Xu?" A skinny middle-aged man looked at Lin Huang. "Replacing Zhang Xu?" Lin Huang had no idea what he was talking about. "You''re teaching Class 2 sword skills, aren''t you?" The female teacher asked Lin Huang. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "That''s you then. Zhang Xu has been teaching Class 2 for the past seven years. Since you''re replacing him, he might look for trouble with you. Be careful." The short-haired female teacher looked at Lin Huang with sympathy. Some of them looked at Lin Huang with pity, others were cynical while some of them could not care less. Although they could sense that Lin Huang was gold-level rank-3, there was a huge difference between that and complete gold-level. Moreover, Zhang Xu had been complete gold-level for three years now. He had powerful battle abilities. Lin Huang was considered a genius since he managed to get to gold-level rank-3 when he was not even 20. However, to the teachers, they figured that they had to be weaker than Zhang Xu. None of them knew that Lin Huang was only 16. They thought he looked 17 or 18, but perhaps he just looked young and might be over 20 now. They thought he had just graduated college with no battle experience. "Thanks for the reminder." Lin Huang just found out that he had replaced someone after hearing what the short-haired teacher said. Looking at the others'' reaction and from her description, he could tell that Zhang Xu was difficult to handle. "What''s the occasion?" Just when Lin Huang said that a voice came from the entrance. A tall person walked into the office. It was a man who was around 1.9 meters tall. He looked like he was in his 40''s, and had a buzz-cut with a beard. He wore metal chains around his neck and did not look friendly. Lin Huang checked him out and figured he must be Zhang Hu who was finding fault with him. "Yo, you must be the new teacher for the sword realm!" Zhang Xu recognized Lin Huang immediately as he had seen his photo and documents, so he walked straight towards him. Lin Huang wanted to see what Zhang Xu would do to him. As he walked over to him, he patted Lin Huang''s shoulder and smiled to the rest of them in the office. "Let me introduce you. This is our new teacher. His family name is Lin, and he''s only 16 this year. A 16-year-old teaching at the Martial Hunter College, isn''t that great?" Many looked in shock at Lin Huang. They did not expect him to be so young. However, some of them looked puzzled. Since Lin Huang was already a gold-level rank-3 at the young age of 16, he must be talented or must come from a powerful family. They thought he must have an influential background since he was sent to teach at the Martial Hunter College at 16 and managed to pass through the dean and Vice Presidents. Zhang Xuefeng did not dare to question Lin Huang as he knew Liu Ming would not have sent him here for nothing. Although he had no idea who Lin Huang was, he decided to just watch what would happen. What he told Zhang Xu was just to comfort him. If Lin Huang really had a powerful background, no matter how horrible his teaching skill was, he would not be kicked out just like that. If Lin Huang were really horrible, he would definitely work something out for his grandson. However, Zhang Xu did not think about all that. He was poor in academic studies since he was young. He depended on Zhang Xuefeng to get into the college. That was how he managed to teach in the college. He had been an adventurer for many years since he graduated from college where he achieved great battle ability after years of killing. He was considered a talented teacher from all the experiences that he had accumulated. However, his talent was mediocre. Hence, he had remained stagnant on complete gold-level for a few years now. He was protected by Zhang Xuefeng throughout all the years that he was teaching in the college. Nobody would offend him no matter how much of a bully he was in the college. Now that he was being replaced by a kid after teaching for seven years, he could not move on if he did not do something about it. He did not think deeper into the matter. He thought that all he would get for beating Lin Huang up was some scolding even if Lin Huang was Liu Ming''s relative. He had his grandfather to protect him since Liu Ming was not in the college at the moment. "Err You must be Sir Zhang Xu." Lin Huang could tell who that was from Zhang Xu''s tone. 450 Defeated in One Hi Many knew that they were in for an exciting show as soon as they saw Zhang Xu walking into the Year 1 sword realm class office. "You''re Sir Zhang Xu, aren''t you?" Lin Huang knew he was in trouble. "Yes, I''m Zhang Xu who''s been teaching Class 2 for seven years and am now replaced by you." Zhang Xu smiled as he looked down at Lin Huang. Even the blind could tell that there was sarcasm in his smile. "Sir Zhang, it''s not I who decides which class to teach. I was just informed about that this morning. Before I stepped into this office, I didn''t know that I was replacing you." Lin Huang shook off Zhang Xu''s hand that was placed on his shoulder casually and turned around to look at him. "I''m just starting my career here. I don''t want to make the situation awkward for us since we''re colleagues who''ll be spending a long time together. I can see that you''re also a professional hunter, Sir Zhang, so why not we solve this conflict like hunters?" Most of the teachers were professional hunters. They knew what the hunter way meant. There were the occasional conflicts among hunters even if they knew each other for years. To solve such a situation, they would usually fight. No matter who won, as long as the anger was released, the conflict would be over after the fight. What Lin Huang suggested was what Zhang Xu wanted. He was just thinking how to get Lin Huang to agree to fight him but now Lin Huang had suggested it himself. "The hunter''s way I like it." Zhang Xu grinned. "We must solve the conflict after all! I didn''t expect a boy as young as you to have a temper like mine. But let''s agree that no matter who wins, our conflict will end here. The one who loses won''t play the fool behind the winner''s back." "Deal." Lin Huang smirked. "Since we''ve agreed to solve this by fighting, let''s do this as soon as possible. Let''s do it today. We''ll go someplace after the orientation." Zhang Xu grinned, not wanting to drag this out for too long. "Why the trouble? Let''s do it now." Lin Huang looked at the time projected from his Emperor''s Heart Ring and smiled at Zhang Xu. "We still have three minutes before 8:30 a.m." Zhang Xu was surprised at Lin Huang''s suggestion, but soon he figured that it was a trap. Since they only had three minutes, even if he won, he would not have enough time to beat Lin Huang up. Many of them who were watching thought Lin Huang was smart to set the battle to be three minutes long. They knew that Zhang Xu would agree to Lin Huang''s suggestion based on Zhang Xu''s temper. However, some of them were shocked at Lin Huang''s suggestion as they knew he was not afraid of being beaten up. Instead, he had the confidence to defeat Zhang Xu within three minutes. "Three minutes will be sufficient!" Zhang Xu agreed. He thought that with his ability, he would be able to defeat Lin Huang in a couple of minutes. Although three minutes was short, it was sufficient to teach Lin Huang a lesson. "Let''s do it here then." Lin Huang looked around and thought that the office was wide enough for them to fight. However, to the others, space was restricted as it was not as large as the training room. A gold-level human could easily damage the floor, walls and other equipment in the office. With the restriction, Zhang Wu would not be able to perform at his peak. Zhang Xu had the same thought, but he grinned as he knew he had Zhang Xuefeng behind his back even if he destroyed the office. He did not mind the restriction; all he wanted was to beat Lin Huang up. "Sure, since Sir Lin thinks here will do, let''s do it here then." A 1-star sword relic appeared in Zhang Xu''s hand. He did not plan to let Lin Huang speak any further so that he would not come up with more restrictions. The rest got out of the office and watched from the entrance so that they would not be affected. Looking at the relic in Zhang Xu''s hand, Lin Huang took out a golden weapon ring from his storage space and turned it into a golden sword. "You don''t have any sword relics?" Zhang Xu raised his eyebrow. He was considering if he should change his relic into a normal sword so that he would not be called a bully. "This is good enough." Many thought what Lin Huang said was obnoxious as a relic was much more powerful than a weapon. It was clear that Zhang Xu was nothing to Lin Huang. Zhang Xu became furious when he heard what Lin Huang said. He was still considering if he should change his sword, not caring even if he was called a bully! They stood less than 20 meters across each other. Lin Huang stood where he was without any intention to attack. Zhang Xu was getting madder. He thought that since he was the senior here, he should be a gentleman and let Lin Huang attack first. However, now Lin Huang looked like he was dragging out his time. The rest of the spectators thought that Lin Huang was playing it well as he was delaying. Some of them even looked at the time. It was only two minutes to 8:30 a.m. "This kid is cunning!" Zhang Xu thought to himself. "If you''re not attacking, I shall attack then!" Zhang Xu said. Lin Huang nodded with a smile. Zhang Xu then dashed towards Lin Huang. There was a golden glow all over his body, and he looked majestic. The audience at the entrance exclaimed as the fierce aura came from his battle experiences. They started breathing heavily. Most of the teachers could not do what Zhang Xu was doing. Meanwhile, Lin Huang stood where he was without moving. Within seconds, Zhang Xu appeared before Lin Huang. His sword relic that was like a golden torch was going for the sword in Lin Huang''s hand instead of for his body. "Damn kid, let me destroy your sword and I shall beat the shit out of you!" Zhang Xu grinned as he saw Lin Huang stood where he was without reacting. Just when the swords collided, the sword in Lin Huang''s hand flashed with a golden glow. He seemed to move a bit, but again, he seemed like he had not moved at all. Zhang Xu had no idea how he had passed through Lin Huang''s body. As he was trying to figure out what had happened, the body of his sword relic broke and fell on his feet. Later on, he heard another crunching sound. He looked down and saw the 1-star armor relic that he was wearing with a 20-centimeter crack at his waist. He could even see his tummy that was unhurt through the broken armor. "Lin Huang did this?" Zhang Xu''s body became stiff. His back was soaked in cold sweat. The people who were watching at the office entrance were stunned. As Zhang Xu''s back was facing them, they could not see that his armor had broken. They only saw his broken sword. A golden weapon sword broke a sword relic?! A white flame-level might not be able to do such a thing! Lin Huang had been underestimated. Now, everyone noticed that Lin Huang who was a gold-level rank-3 at the age of 16 was not only a genius in cultivation, he was a real genius himself. 451 Qin Tianxing Not only did Lin Huang manage to break Zhang Xu''s 1-star sword relic, but he had also cut open his 1-star armor relic. He knew very well that a white flame-level could not do that; even a crimson flame-level person might not be able to do that. His mind went blank after that encounter. He was piecing a bunch of information in his head. Suddenly, he realized that he did not see the big picture. Now, he finally knew why Liu Ming got Lin Huang to teach Class 1 despite being new. No wonder Lin Huang did not have any fears during the battle and had chosen to fight with him in three minutes before the orientation. No wonder his grandfather had seemed to be fearful of Lin Huang when they talked about him in the office. Although he had a terrible temper, Zhang Xu was not dumb after all. Looking at the casualty on his defense relic, he knew that Lin Huang could kill him in one hit since he was a genius. Recalling what happened just seconds ago, his neck turned stiff. "What is this? Why is everyone crowding the entrance?" A voice came from the office entrance, and the teachers opened a path for the person to enter. It was a man in a ponytail with a beard. He was much better-looking than Zhang Xu was. He wore a warrior attire in white on top and black at the bottom. He was shocked to see the broken sword in Zhang Xu''s hand and the sword relic in Lin Huang''s hand as he walked into the office. Lin Huang put his sword calmly into his storage space as he checked out the man. He could sense that the man was holy fire-level, or even possibly, crimson flame-level or blue flame-level. His aura was much more powerful than Yi Yeyu''s but slightly weaker than Yi Zheng''s. "Zhang Xu, who''s this young man?" The man asked after checking out Lin Huang. Zhang Xu put away his broken sword and the armor that he was wearing, then turned around with a forceful smile. "Bro Qin, this is Sir Lin. He''s the new teacher in our sword realm department." "You''re the new teacher, Lin Huang?" The man in ponytail raised his eyebrow. He had received the notification from the registrar''s office this morning about this new teacher who would be teaching Class 2. He finally understood what happened to the broken sword in Zhang Xu''s hand. "Hi, my name is Qin Tianxing. I''m teaching sword realm in Class 1. Welcome on board." "Hi." Lin Huang shook Qin Tianxing''s hand. "Sir Lin, Bro Qin is our Year 1 sword realm department director," Zhang Xu introduced to Lin Huang. "Let''s exchange numbers. You can talk to me if you have any questions in the college." Qin Tianxing was rather friendly. "Let''s exchange numbers," Zhang Xu said immediately, having given up on the thought of fighting Lin Huang. "Sure." Lin Huang did not reject them and added the both of them to his phone book. After adding each other, Qin Tianxing then added Lin Huang into two different group chats. "One of the group chats is our sword realm department chat. All teachers in the department from Year 1 to Year 3 are in there. Another one will be the group chat for Martial Hunter College whereby all the teachers are in them, including some who have left the college. You can always mute the group chats and look at the messages whenever you have the time. You can ignore the friend requests in the group chats if you want to." Lin Huang muted the two group chats without thinking twice. He would be distracted if he did not do so as he needed to spend his time studying and training every day. "I guess everybody knows you now. It''s late. Let''s go to the orientation now. I''ll introduce you to some of our colleagues and discuss the sword realm." Qin Tianxing saw that it was 8:30 p.m, so he got everyone to head to the orientation. The orientation as held at the Martial Hunter College field. As Lin Huang and the rest arrived, all 3,000 new students were already present. The registrar had categorized the students into 15 cultural studies classes of 200 students each on the field. The teachers of each department arrived accordingly with the sword realm department considered to be the earliest. With Qin Tianxing''s lead, they sat on the seats that were arranged by the registrar''s office. As they were seated, Lin Huang looked at the students and noticed Lin Xin immediately. Because Lin Xin was short, she was sitting in the first row in Class 1. There were only more than 100 teachers in the crowd, so Lin Xin noticed him soon and made a funny face at him. Lin Huang smiled and nodded at her. The students noticed Lin Huang too. "Is that person a teacher? Why is he sitting with the teachers? He looks like he''s the same age as us." Some of the students were puzzled when they saw him. "Who are you talking about?" A person beside asked. "There''s a guy in the sword realm department who looks one or two years older than us." "Eh, that''s true. He looks 16 or 17 the most. He can''t be 18 already!" A bunch of students soon noticed Lin Huang. "He''s so handsome!" A girl commented. "I think he''s a teacher. It''s just that he looks young. He must be an uncle in his 20''s. Don''t be deceived by his looks!" A hunk, who looked like he was almost 30 but was 15, could not stand people who looked younger than they really were. "You''re an uncle!" A girl said. "Maybe he''s a teacher''s family member who''s here to visit the school," a person speculated. As Lin Huang sat far away from the students as well as the noise, he had no idea that he had become the topic of discussion among the students. Qin Tianxing was introducing Lin Huang to other teachers of the same department. "This is Mu Xiaolan. She''s one of two ladies in our department. She used to teach Class 3, but now she''s teaching Class 4." Qin Tianxing was talking about the hot, short-haired female teacher who had reminded Lin Huang in the office. "Xiaolan has already mastered the sword realm. She''s our sword realm genius here." "Bro Qin, stop teasing me, I dare not call myself a genius in front of Sir Lin." Mu Xiaolan waved her hands. She would admit that she was a genius before others, but now that she knew how powerful Lin Huang was, calling herself a genius would be a joke. "This is another ladies in the department, Yu Fei. She''s teaching Class 11." Qin Tianxing pointed at the lady in the blue dress. This lady was much quieter compared to Mu Xiaolan. All she did was nod at Lin Huang as she smiled when Qin Tianxing introduced her. She was beautiful with a great vibe, but she seemed shy. She did not look like a sword realm teacher, more like a teacher teaching cultural studies. "I bet you know Zhang Xu already. He has rich battle abilities. Many students love his classes as his programme is practical." "That''s too flattering!" Zhang Xu waved his hands. Since the fight earlier, he knew that Lin Huang was much more powerful than he was in real battles. He was embarrassed to hear Qin Tianxing''s compliment. "This is Zhao Gan who''s teaching Class 5" 452 All Grown Up Lin Huang was introduced to his 16 colleagues before the orientation started. With his amazing memory, he had memorized all of their names because it would be awkward if he called the wrong names in the future. The orientation started at 9 a.m. sharp. The first one to speak was Dean Wang. He talked about the history of the college as well as the famous people who were born from the college. The second one who was speaking was Dean Zhang, who only did the formalities. They did not speak too long. The both of them only spoke less than twenty minutes combined. Later on was the speech by the registrar''s office director, Li Feng. He mainly talked about the college management and some of the things that the students should take note of. He finished in less than ten minutes. The longest speech was from the director of cultural studies. Perhaps, he got used to giving three hours of lectures, so he spoke for half an hour, which was longer than the previous three combined. He only stopped speaking after the secretary reminded him. Finally, it was the student representative called Mu Xiao. He was one of the students who had gotten full scores in his graduating exam in Division 7. He was also the only one among the three who had enrolled into Martial Hunter College. Everyone had their attention on Mu Xiao as he walked onto the stage. "Hi, everyone, my name is Mu Xiao. I''m top 1 among all the new students in the college. I plan to sit on my spot until I graduate. The rest of you can fight to get to second place." "My goal is to get to Transcendent within three years and become the youngest Transcendent in Division 7! I want to be the mountain that all students in Martial Hunter College won''t be able to cross in 100 years!" Mu Xiao walked off the stage obnoxiously after giving his speech. Lin Huang smirked as he heard the kid''s goal to become the youngest Transcendent in Division 7. "Young people are full of energy!" "Lin Huang, how long would you take to get to complete gold-level?" Mu Xiaolan who was not far away asked while smiling. "The most would be a month." Lin Huang grinned back at her. "Then, the kid''s dream will be ruined. Even if he managed to get to holy fire-level in three years, he would be top 2." Mu Xiaolan giggled while covering her mouth. "It''s great that the young people are ambitious." Lin Huang could tell that Mu Xiao was only 15, but he was already bronze-level rank-1. He definitely had the right to be obnoxious. "This kid is in kendo. It seems like the department will be ahead of us this year." Qin Tianxing shook his head. Lin Huang just realized that the competition among departments was much more competitive than he thought. After Mu Xiao''s speech, the orientation ended after the secretary spoke. The students and teachers left accordingly. "Lin Huang, there''s a dinner tonight, but teachers who don''t want to join can skip the dinner," Qin Tianxing reminded him. "I won''t be joining then. You guys have fun. I''ll be preparing my teaching materials these few days," Lin Huang rejected directly. "Sure, focus on your teaching materials. I shall not disturb you then." Qin Tianxing knew that the teachers who were teaching for the first time would be nervous as he had experienced the same thing before. "Your class will be next Friday afternoon, right? I''ll sit in," Qin Tianxing said. "Please do!" Lin Huang knew that Qin Tianxing was worried that he could not manage. He probably planned to help him when that happened. As Qin Tianxing left, Lin Huang saw Lin Xin running towards him. "So, have you met your classmates?" Lin Huang smiled. "I guess so. There are just too many people in cultural studies. There are a total of 200 of them. It''s good that I can remember some of the names." "It''s the first day of school. You shouldn''t have any classes, should you?" Lin Huang asked. He only knew his class would be next Friday, but he had no idea about the other students and teachers. "Classes will officially start tomorrow. It''s just going to be this orientation and student ID registration this morning and moving into the dorms in the afternoon. Year 1 and Year 2 students aren''t allowed to stay outside of school, so I''ll drop by your dorm in the afternoon to move out my stuff." Lin Xin was excited as it was her first time staying in school. She had stayed outside previously and had never stayed together with other girls in the dorm. Moreover, now that Lin Huang was teaching at the Martial Hunter College, she could see him anytime she wanted so it made no difference to her. However, Lin Huang was upset as it felt like he was letting go of his child. Although he was a traveler, Lin Xin had become his family member that he could not lose over the years. "Don''t worry about me. I''ll take good care of myself. Since you''re in the college as well, I''ll definitely call you if anybody bullies me," Lin Xin comforted him as she noticed that he was upset. "If anybody, no matter who, dares to bully you, I''ll make them pay the price," Lin Huang said in all seriousness. "Alright then, go pick up your student ID. I''ll help you move in the afternoon." Lin Huang patted Lin Xin''s head while smiling. "It''s okay. You can prepare your teaching materials. I don''t have much stuff anyway. I''ll just have to throw all of them into my storage space." Lin Xin waved her hand. "Alright, I''m leaving now!" Lin Xin ran and joined the queue. "Ling Xue, who''s that person?" A tall girl asked Lin Xin. Ling Xue was Lin Xin''s alter ego that Lin Huang had created for her when they arrived in Winter City half a year ago to prevent the Purple Crow from finding them. Lin Xin had used the name to get into the Martial Hunter College. "He''s so handsome!" The two girls next to her commented. Lin Huang stood where he was while watching Lin Xin leave. He set his alarm clock on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and headed to the library. After reading for more than an hour, his alarm clock rang at 11:30 p.m. Lin Huang turned off the alarm clock and headed to the dorm. He stopped walking when he arrived not far away from his dorm as he could see someone moving in the dorm through the window on the second floor. Lin Xin seemed to have completed her packing and was cleaning. Lin Huang thought about it and stayed where he was while watching Lin Xin from the window. She was smiling, and Lin Huang could sense that she was humming like she usually did. Half an hour later, Lin Xin seemed to finish what she was doing and opened the door. Lin Huang quickly hid behind the tree. Lin Xin looked around, seeming to be upset. She closed the door and walked slowly towards the path under the trees. After a while, Lin Huang leaped from the tree and looked at the direction where Lin Xin left. He then headed to the dorm after she disappeared. The dorm was clean. Even the living room that was usually messy was tidy now. Lin Huang walked to the second floor. Besides the furniture, everything in Lin Xin''s room was moved out. Looking at the empty wardrobe and the little lamp on the table that Lin Xin loved the most which were now gone, Lin Huang felt empty. He walked out of her room and headed to his own room, which was being cleaned. There was a note on the bed head. He walked over quickly and looked at the note that was slipped under the lamp. "Brother, I''ll learn to be independent from today onwards. I''ll take care of myself without having you to worry about me. Please take good care of yourself, eat when it''s time, and rest when it''s time. Don''t forget about the time whenever you''re training," Lin Xin had scrawled gracefully on the note. "This girl has really grown up" 453 Hi, My Name is Lin Huang Lin Xin moved out of Lin Huang''s dorm when the semester started on 1st September. For the next couple of days, Lin Huang basically spent all his time in the library besides sleeping. If the library did not close at midnight, he might have even slept in the library instead. He had been reading all kinds of information these days. Besides Sword Dao, he was also reading up about the history of Division 7''s development, events of famous people, confidential information of organizations and all sorts of monsters. He did not miss out on anything that might be useful for his classes. He was like a piece of sponge, absorbing all the essence of information. Time passed by fast. It was 5th September, which was a Friday. Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated when it was 1.30 p.m. He left the library and headed to the teacher''s office. All the teachers in the Martial Hunter College had their freedom as they only had to be in their assigned classes when it was time. There was hardly anyone in the office during normal days besides the teachers who rested before their classes started. The teachers hardly saw each other when the college had no activities. Whereas at the cultural studies office, since there were teachers of all subjects, the teachers saw each more than the ones in Lin Huang''s department did. When Lin Huang arrived at the office around 1.40 p.m, there was someone sitting in the office. It was not Qin Tianxing who promised to sit in. Instead, it was Mu Xiaolan. "Ms. Mu, you have a class in the afternoon too?" Lin Huang greeted her with a smile. She had no idea who had classes on the same day as he did. "Yes," Mu Xiaolan smiled as she replied. She had referred to the timetable of the department, so she was not surprised to see Lin Huang at all. After greeting her, Lin Huang sat back in his seat. He was rather nervous. Although he had done product introduction and presentations to customers during his working days back on Earth, teaching was completely different from meeting clients. If he was lousy, the students might boo him off the podium. He was anxious when he thought about it, and he started looking at the time after sitting for a while. It had only been two minutes. "Sir Lin, it must be your first time teaching." Mu Xiaolan noticed Lin Huang''s anxiety. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "Don''t be. Just give a simple introduction about yourself and start your class with what you''ve prepared. There are usually a couple of troublemakers in the class. Don''t be afraid of them, just push them down your own way. If you encounter any problems during your class, just take note of the mistake and never repeat it. You''ll improve from there. Your students will definitely see how sincere you are in teaching," Mu Xiaolan advised. "I remembered my first class. I was even more nervous than you are. I lost count of how many times I went to the washroom before the class started. I was afraid that I might need to use the washroom during my three-hour lecture. There''s something worse that happened during class. I stuttered But after speaking for a couple of minutes with my stutter, I noticed that there were students who were paying attention, so I calmed myself down, and the class became smoother and smoother," Mu Xiaolan shared her own experience. Lin Huang was slightly calm after listening to her story. "What are you guys talking about?" A voice came from the entrance. The both of them looked to the entrance while Qin Tianxing walked slowly into the office. "I was telling my embarrassing experience of teaching to Sir Lin." Mu Xiaolan laughed. "Boss Qin, why are you here today?" "It''s Sir Lin''s first class today, so I''m sitting in," Qin Tianxing explained. "With you around, I''m sure the class will be smooth-sailing. It''s time. I shall go to my class now. You guys can continue talking." Mu Xiaolan smiled at Lin Huang. She looked at the time and left. Lin Huang checked the time as well. It was 1:55 p.m. when Mu Xiaolan left. "Don''t be nervous. It''s just teaching. It''s much easier than killing monsters." Qin Tianxing laughed. He had heard about Lin Huang these few days and found out that he was appointed by Liu Ming to teach. After asking the other teachers, he also found out that Lin Huang was a sword genius. He was interested to know more about Lin Huang now. He knew very well that with his crimson flame-level and level-2 sword realm, Liu Ming''s decision to replace him was nothing spontaneous but more because Lin Huang was capable. He had been secretly experimenting attempts to break a 1-star sword relic with a gold-level weapon sword himself these couple of days, but he failed. He now realized that he was not on par with Lin Huang on the Sword Dao. At first, he was just friendly to agree to sit in Lin Huang''s class as he thought Lin Huang had managed to replace Zhang Xu because of his powerful background. However, now his purpose of sitting in had changed. He wanted to know how powerful Lin Huang really was. "I think killing monsters is much easier." Lin Huang smiled awkwardly. "Don''t think too much. Just follow what you''ve prepared. I''ll help you if you make any mistakes or leave something out." Qin Tianxing patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. "Thanks, Bro Xin." Lin Huang was relieved to hear that. "It''s almost time, let''s go," Qin Tianxing said. The Martial Hunter College building was less than 300 meters across the office building. The Year 1 students were on the first floor. Soon, Qin Tianxing brought Lin Huang to the Class 2 of Sword Dao class. Half of the classroom, which accommodated 100 people, was occupied when the both of them arrived. All of the students were present. Seeing them walk in, most of them looked at Qin Tianxing as they thought he was the teacher while Lin Huang was just a latecomer. However, the students were puzzled when they saw Qin Tianxing take a seat in the last row of the classroom. Meanwhile, Lin Huang walked up to the podium. Just when he did, the bell rang. Most of the students looked confused at Lin Huang while many of them turned to Qin Tianxing who was sitting in the last row. Lin Huang took a deep breath and started speaking after clearing his throat when the bell ring ended. "Hi, everyone. My name is Lin Huang. From today onwards, I''ll be your teacher for Sword Dao" 454 As Expected, the Students Created a Scene A bunch of students looked in confusion at Lin Huang in the Year 1 Class 2 as he looked too young to be a teacher. His appearance seemed like he was only 16 or 17, and he was definitely no older than 18. Some of them had noticed him at the orientation and thought that Lin Huang was one of the teacher''s relatives, or else he would not have appeared among the teachers. As Lin Huang introduced himself, a hunk who was sitting at the back raised his hand. "Do you have a question for me?" Lin Huang nodded to him. "Sir, if you don''t mind, may we know how old you are?" The boy''s question was what all of the students wanted to ask. "I''m 16 this year." Lin Huang chose to tell the truth. When he said that, the class became chaotic. Most of the students in the class were 15, and some of them were 14 while there were two of them who were the same age as him. Most of the 16-year-olds should be still studying instead of being a teacher. As most of the students were quite intelligent, they could tell from Lin Huang''s age that he had never been to college. "Sir, may I know which college did you go to?" A handsome boy sitting in front asked. "I''ve never been to college." What he said was like launching a ticking bomb. All of the 50 students were enraged. "Then, what makes you think that you''re qualified to teach us?!" The boy who asked the question stood up and glared at Lin Huang. "There are 50 of us in this class. More than half of us are top students from B-grade footholds. Among billions of graduating students in the entire Division 7, we''re easily the top 3,000! So, what makes you think that you, who has never been to college before, qualified to teach us?!" Lin Huang was helpless. He knew the truth would create such a chaos among the students. After all, they were top students who were selected from Division 7, so their pride was expected. Just when he was trying to explain, Qin Tianxing who was sitting at the back stood up. "Silence!" The class went completely silent as he bellowed. Many of the students turned around to look at him but they quickly looked away due to his intimidating power. Qin Tianxing walked to the podium and sat next to Lin Huang while glaring furiously at the boy who had questioned Lin Huang. "Sit down!" The boy wanted to talk back but looking at Qin Tianxing''s eyes, he obeyed and sat down. After the boy sat down, Qin Tianxing looked around the class and started speaking. "My name is Qin Tianxing. I believe all of you who have looked through our college''s information base would have heard of me. It''s okay if you haven''t. I''m the Martial Hunter College teacher who''s teaching Year 1 Class 1 Dao of the sword. I''m also the department director, and I''ve been teaching here for five years. I believe I have the right to speak." The students did not dare to say anything after finding out who Qin Tianxing was. "Since you guys asked what makes Sir Lin qualified to teach, I shall answer that question. "Firstly, all of the colleges in Division 7 have no restrictions on a teacher''s academic experience. In fact, more than 30% of the teachers in the colleges in the entire Division 7 have never been to college. Many teachers come from the Hunter Association and the Adventurer''s Paradise. Some of them were even chosen from the Union Government military. Many of them have completed their organization assessment without attending college, and they grew throughout the journey. Compared to those who graduated from college, they have more battle experiences. "Although all of you are top students, if all of you enter the Reserve Hunter assessment now, I''m sure it would be great if one among 50 of you can pass the assessment. Don''t talk about you guys. Even if the 100 students in Class 1 were to join, less than 50 of them can pass the assessment. "If I''m not mistaken, Sir Lin next to me here passed the assessment when he was your age." Qin Tianxing looked at Lin Huang. "I passed the assessment last year in June and got my hunter license in December," Lin Huang nodded and said calmly. "Did you hear that? Sir Lin got his hunter license at the age of 15. May I know which of you had gotten your hunter license in December?" Qin Tianxing asked. Nobody said a thing. Although they would have three months to learn and prepare, none of the students had the confidence to pass the Reserve Hunter assessment, let alone get the hunter license. "Whether Sir Lin graduated from college or not, at least his ability has surpassed far from you guys when he was your age. Doesn''t that make him worth learning from?" Many fell into deep thought after Qin Tianxing said that. "Although our college doesn''t have many teachers who didn''t graduate from college, there are 17% of them this year. The 17% were appointed by the dean and the Vice President as well as having gone through a strict assessment. Since the dean passed their assessment, that shows they''re qualified to teach and are no less than other teachers. It''s wrong for you guys to judge a book by its cover. "Moreover, everyone knows that the strongest subject that we have is the Saber Dao department. Ye Tiankong is the one teaching Year 3 Class 1 Saber Dao, and he has never been to college as well. None of the students in the class made any noise about him. Since the Saber Dao students didn''t discriminate a teacher who has never graduated from college, can''t we from the Sword Dao class do the same?" After Qian Tianxing spoke, he looked at the students again. Many of them had their hands lowered. "No matter what, you can only judge whether Sir Lin is qualified to teach after he finishes his class. You guys don''t even know what he''s going to talk about. You''re disrespectful for complaining after hearing his self-introduction. You''re also disrespectful to the Martial Hunter College, especially troublemakers like you." Qian Tianxing looked at the boys who were sitting in the front row who had said that Lin Huang was not qualified to teach. "Please apologize to Sir Lin." Although the main boy was reluctant, he could not talk back to Qian Tianxing. As a student of the Sword Dao, he was reluctant to admit that he was worse than the Saber Dao students. After struggling in his mind, he stood up and bowed to Lin Huang. "Sir Lin, I apologize for my reckless comment. I shouldn''t discriminate against teachers who have never graduated from college. But if your standard doesn''t reach my expectations, I''ll apply to change to another class." The boy was stubborn. Although he had apologized, he was obviously skeptical of Lin Huang''s teaching abilities. "I accept your apology, and I understand your opinion. If you don''t like me after I finish my class, you, I won''t stop you from changing class." "Alright, I shall pass the podium to Sir Lin. I hope you guys will pay attention." Seeing that the issue was solved, Qin Tianxing nodded to Lin Huang and walked to the back of the classroom. 455 Lin Huang’s First Class Lin Huang was not mad at the students being skeptical of his teaching ability as he could put himself in the students'' shoes. He would be skeptical of a teacher who was only a year older than he was. It was understandable for the students not to believe in him as he was not educated. However, he knew that he could gain the students'' trust by teaching the class with his best. "This is my first time teaching. To be honest, I''m anxious. Before I came here, my master told me that as long as I don''t teach the wrong things, I can teach however I want to. I know my own abilities, but I accepted this role as I know this might be the only opportunity for me to enter Martial Hunter College to learn." Seeing that many students looking puzzled, he smiled and explained, "Yes, my purpose here is the same with all of you. I''m here to learn. Teaching is a process of learning. I hope to learn and improve myself together with all of you here. "I''m done talking about things that are unrelated to the class. Let''s start the class officially." After speaking what he had in mind, Lin Huang then started teaching. "Sword Dao is one of the earliest battle techniques in the human world. It has always been the most used battle technique all this time. The history of Life Power has existed since more than 800 years ago, but Sword Dao existed even earlier than Life Power did. Not only during the old epoch, even during the ancient epoch, no matter how much the cultivation system has changed, Sword Dao has also always been one of the most popular battle techniques. "The sword skill is basically categorized into three types which are offensive, defensive, and a combination of both. To break them down, there are different forms of strength, speed, assassination, and so on for offensive styles while there are barrier and counterattack forms of defensive styles. There are more complicated types if we are to break down the combinations. "Although there are three types of categories, the sword skill was created to kill, so most of them are offensive skills. However, what I''m trying to say is that training sword isn''t just about learning to kill" A tall and strong student raised up his hand as Lin Huang spoke. "Yes, do you have any questions?" "Sir Lin, since you said that sword skill was created to kill, then why can''t we just learn to kill? Doesn''t killing fulfill the purpose of sword skill? What''s the purpose of learning non-killing skills?" "That''s a good question." Lin Huang nodded and continued to lead the class with that question. "In reality, no matter which weapon you use, whether it''s sword, saber, spear, or your fist, everyone tends to learn to kill as its the fastest way to increase one''s ability. But I must remind all of you on our first class that the more killings that come from the killing skill, the stronger a person''s brutality aura becomes. At some point, the accumulation of brutality aura will enter the person''s brain and even into the person''s soul. If it were just the brain, the person will go crazy while if the aura goes into one''s soul, the person''s life form will be distorted and eventually turned into a monster such as a sword or a saber slave." What Lin Huang said shocked everyone in the class. Even Qin Tianxing was shocked to hear this theory for the first time. He had seen people who trained until they went crazy like what Lin Huang mentioned but he had never heard of anyone turning into a sword or a saber slave. A few students raised up their hands after Lin Huang finished talking about the theory. "Please speak," Lin Huang pointed at a girl and said. "Sir Lin, I''ve heard of people who have gone crazy from training. But do you have any proof of the brutality aura that enters soul making a person''s life form to change?" All of the students who had raised their hands wanted to ask the same thing the girl just asked. "It''s one of the soul transformations which happens to people under an intense trigger. Demonification is one of them. There are some special cases where people may experience life form change from a viral infection." "If any of you are interested in this topic, you can go to the library to read these two books. One is ''Life Evolution and Mutation'' and the other is ''The Soul''s Foundation''. You can find what I''ve just said in these two books and even some supporting cases. I shall not go further into this topic," Lin Huang said. "Now, let me get back to Sword Dao." Lin Huang looked at the students. He knew this interesting piece of information would gauge the attention of these curious kids. "As the killing skills grow the brutality aura, there''s also spiritual cultivation for Sword Dao. Some of the sword skills might not look like they''re for killing, but they''re suitable for one to calm their spirit. Among all, the Buddhist Sword Withdrawal is the most popular one. Although there are only six words (in Chinese) in this skill, it''s very effective. The Ruler Withdrawal evolved from that." Everyone in the class was puzzled at what Lin Huang just said, including Qin Tianxing. "What I initially thought was to teach all of you the spiritual cultivation in our first class. However, it takes time to see the effect, and it''s not exactly helpfully in killing and real battles, so I gave up on that idea. Considering that killing is more vital, I shall teach you a killing skill today." Many of them were excited. "Follow me to the training ground," Lin Huang said and brought the bunch of students to training ground No.101. Qin Tianxing thought it was ridiculous as the teaching of Sword Dao usually took place at the outdoor training ground, but Lin Huang was leading them somewhere else. As they arrived at training ground No.101, Qin Tianxing finally understood what Lin Huang was trying to do. He walked faster and caught up with Lin Huang. "This training ground isn''t open to the public. Only the dean has the keys." "So do I." Lin Huang took out the keys and shook them in front of Qin Tianxing, then opened the training ground''s door. The bunch of students dashed into the training ground immediately as soon as the door was opened. "Where did you get the keys?" Qin Tianxing pulled Lin Huang aside and asked. "Dean Liu gave them to me. Why?" Lin Huang thought his question was odd. "This is the battle training ground for Transcendents where it''s only opened once or twice every year for the college teachers and teachers from other schools to train," Qin Tianxing explained. "It''s okay since nobody''s using this place anyway. If the dean prohibits this, he''ll take the keys away from me when he''s back." Lin Huang knew Liu Ming would not mind. Lin Huang turned around to the students. All of them were looking around. It was their first time seeing such a massive battle training ground. "Look at how happy there are. Isn''t it great that this environment interests them to pay attention in class?" What Lin Huang said made Qin Tianxing speechless. He thought about it. Since Dean Liu had given Lin Huang the keys, that meant he trusted Lin Huang, so there was no point for him to stop Lin Huang. However, he started thinking about what kind of relationship Lin Huang had with Dean Liu. 456 Another Conflic The students got into a circle in the battle training ground while Lin Huang stood in the middle and spoke clearly, "The first sword skill that I''m going to teach you today is an attacking sword skill called Sanguinary Kill Form. This sword skill comes from the Union Government''s military''s battle sword skill called Sanguinary Battle Sweep. The original Sanguinary Battle Sweep belongs to a battlefield sword skill of 13 forms suitable to kill enemies on the battlefield. I''ve tweaked it into eight forms instead with more powerful tactics that are more suitable for singular killing." "The original Sanguinary Battle Sweep needs a certain strength and Life Power from the performer. If the person''s strength isn''t up to standard, he''ll hurt himself instead. The longer he trains, the more injuries he would have underlying in his body. If Life Power isn''t involved, the effect won''t be anything powerful. The Sanguinary Kill Forms that''s been tweaked is more of a practice of tactic without strength and Life Power. There won''t be any side effects if one trains it for a long period. As long as the skill is there, without using Life Power, it could cause sufficient harms to monsters." After some explanation of the sword skill, Lin Huang took out a wooden sword. "Let me demonstrate once for you. Please stand back. The best would be 50 meters away." Although the students thought that 50 meters were too much, they followed anyway. Meanwhile, Qin Tianxing raised his eyebrow as he would also ask his students to stand 50 meters away if he was to teach the class. However, Lin Huang was only using a wooden sword which could not hold too much Life Power, so he thought it was unnecessary that Lin Huang asked the students to stand so far back. Of course, Lin Huang, who was holding the wooden sword, did not care what Qin Tianxing was thinking of him. As he activated his Life Power, the wooden sword in his hand was covered in golden Life Power and shining brightly within seconds. The students were stunned as they watched. They had just found out that Lin Huang was a gold-level. Before one arrived at Transcendent-level, besides those who had unique Life Skills which was rare, most people''s Life Power color changed as they leveled up. The Life Power color would be black when one was on iron-level, greenish gray on bronze level, silver on silver-level, and gold on gold-level. When the students heard that Lin Huang was 16, they thought he was only bronze-level, or at the most, silver-level. Looking at the golden Life Power covering the wooden sword, they finally realized that their teacher was a genius. Perhaps only a few arrived at gold-level at the tender age of 16 throughout 800 years in the entire Division7. However, some of the students were in disbelief. They thought he was trained in some special Life Skill which caused his Life Power''s color to change. They turned around to ask Qin Tianxing, "Sir Qin, did Sir Lin''s Life Power turned to gold because he practiced some special Life Skill?" Qin Tianxing shook his head. "Sir Lin is already a gold-level rank-3. If everything goes as planned, he should be able to get to Transcendent this year, becoming the youngest Transcendent in the history of Division." Although Qin Tianxing did not speak very loudly, the students around heard him clearly and looked in shock at Lin Huang. They were just students, but they knew how terrifying it was for a 16-year-old to be Transcendent-level. "Could Sir Lin be the the legendary genius?" A student asked. "From what I know, he has the ability to perform cross-ranking kill by killing Transcendent monsters," Qin Tianxing confirmed. Those who heard looked at Lin Huang with respect. Meanwhile, Lin Huang, who was in the middle of the training ground, swung his sword at a slower pace to show how the sword skill was performed. With the help of the sword realm, cracks of 30 meters long appeared on the field of grass. The students were stunned at the skill. They were brought into the realm as if they were watching a powerful sword trainer fighting a giant beast. Qin Tianxing was stunned when he saw Lin Huang brandishing his sword, and he was soon excited. He had arrived on level-2 of the Sword Dao, but he was just stepping in. Looking at Lin Huang''s performance, he could tell that Lin Huang was near level-3. Watching such a performance was beneficial to him. He was soon indulging in the performance. Lin Huang spent more than a minute showing the eight forms of sword skills before putting his sword away. "I''ve demonstrated three times just now. Did all of you get the forms?" Lin Huang looked at everyone. Many of them were shocked, which showed that what he was doing was effective. "It''s okay if you didn''t manage to memorize them as I have reordered a video from my training a few days ago. I''ll create a group chat and I''ll add all of you in, so you guys can download the video and learn from it." Lin Huang then created a group chat and projected the barcode that the app had generated. "Scan the barcode to join the group chat. I''ll upload all the documents into the group chat and you guys can download them yourself." The students scanned their Emperor''s Heart Rings immediately and Qin Tianxing followed too. Lin Huang did not say anything when he saw that. With 50 students in the class plus Lin Huang and Qin Tianxing, the group chat now had 52 persons. Seeing that everyone was in the group chat, Lin Huang uploaded his training of the sword skill that he had recorded a few days ago. The students quickly downloaded the video into their Emperor''s Heart Rings. Qin Tianxing did the same too. "There are still around two hours left in the class. I''ll let all of you train the sword skill by following the video. Before that, I would like to brief you about the arrangement that I have for next week." Lin Huang muted the group chat and turned off the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Next week, I shall test this Sanguinary Kill Forms with all of you. If I''m satisfied with your progress next week, I''ll bring you guys to the wild zone to do real battle practices on the third week. But if you don''t reach my expectations, I''ll test you guys on the third week again. Having said that, before I''m satisfied with your progress, I won''t bring you guys to the wild zone to train, and I won''t be teaching you any new sword skills!" Lin Huang sounded determined. The students were excited when they heard the first half of his briefing as all of them were anticipating real battles but what he said in the last part became pressure to most of them. A petite girl raised her hand. "Please speak!" Lin Huang nodded. "But the school will do a battle drill on the fifth week for all students, and the results will be calculated into the final assessment. What if we don''t reach your expectation on the fourth week? Do we have to give up on the battle drill on the fifth week?" The girl asked shyly. "That''s right. If you guys don''t reach my expectation on the fourth week, I''ll get the school to disqualify all of your from joining the battle drill on the fifth week! All of you will get zero for that!" Lin Huang did not look like he was joking. What he had just said made the harmonious environment chaotic. "That''s not fair! What gives you the right to do that?" A short hair boy shouted at him. "There''s no fairness in this world. The so-called fairness is fighting for yourself with your own abilities." Lin Huang looked at the boy in all seriousness. "Do you know why is the Hunter Association''s assessment is so difficult every time? Even if it was just a Reserve Hunter assessment, some iron-level rank-3 can''t pass. Not that the Hunter Association don''t want more people to join them. The reason why they set the standard so high is to minimize the death rate. If they set the standard lower, there''ll be more people dying. The high standard acts as a protection for the weaker ones to avoid them from digging their own graves." "The reason why I have such high standard for you guys is the same. It''ll be meaningless if I let you join the battle drill before you''re capable. You''ll be safe with the protection of your teacher during the battle drill but what happens three years later? When all of you join your own organizations respectively, without your teacher, have you ever thought of the consequences of not having sufficient abilities?! "I know some of you would disagree with my idea before I even decided as it would affect your results and possibly leave a dark spot on your education record. But what I''m sure is that three years later, as you guys step into your organization respectively, you''ll agree that what I''m doing is right." "Moreover, it''s not that I don''t give you enough time. It''s just the first week, so you guys still have three weeks to practice. If you manage to reach my standard before that, I''ll give you a battle drill before time. By the fifth week, you guys will have the privilege over the students from other classes. If you want me to know if you''re a real genius, show me what you''ve really got!" 457 The Least Favorite Year 1 Teacher "What kind of shitty teacher is he!? What right does he have to disqualify us from joining the battle?!" Zhou Ling demanded angrily as she walked out of the battle training ground. She was the petite girl who had raised her hand to remind Lin Huang about the battle on the fifth week. "He does have the right. He''s our Sword Dao teacher. According to the Martial Hunter College Teacher Condition No. 12, if the teacher decides that the student isn''t qualified, he can take away the student''s battle qualifications and assign the student zero marks in battle," a short-haired girl next to her said expressionlessly. "Xiao Hui, whose side are you really on?!" Zhou Ling was exasperated. The short-haired girl was her dorm mate, so she did not expect the girl to stand on Lin Huang''s side. "I''m just telling the truth." Shangguan Hui remained expressionless. "I think what Sir Lin said is right. Now that we have our teacher with us during the battle, most of us will treat it as a game without taking it seriously. If there''s nobody protecting us after we graduate, we would have to depend on ourselves. We will definitely die if we don''t have sufficient ability. Instead of regretting it in the future, it''s better to treat the battle as a real one. At least, we have the opportunity to make mistakes now. During the real battle, we won''t stand a chance." "But" Although Zhou Ling agreed with what Shangguan Hui said and did not have anything to retort, she was furious. "Everyone is unhappy not because Sir Lin is wrong, but because he has yet to trust to us. Basically, he''s just too young. If it was Sir Qin who had said that, I bet not many people would be mad at him," Shangguan Hui explained further. Zhou Ling thought about it. If it had really been Sir Qin who had said that, she might complain, but she might not question the teacher''s intentions. "So what? He''s not much older than us. Who gave him the right to show off to us?!" Zhou Ling remained stubborn. "Well, he really does have the right to show off. Don''t forget that he got his Hunter license when he was only 15. Not only that, I heard just now that Sir Lin is already on gold-level rank-3 and he might be the youngest one who will reach Transcendent-level in the entire Division 7 this year. Not only that, although he''s only gold-level rank-3 now, he has the ability to kill Transcendent-level monsters already." Shangguan Hui heard what Qin Tianxing said in the battle training ground earlier. "What, a 16-year-old Transcendent-level?" Zhou Ling could not believe that. "I don''t think it''s a lie since it came from Sir Qin. A person usually needs three to four months to level up from gold-level rank-3 to complete gold-level. As soon as one becomes complete gold-level, he can kill tinder and level up to Transcendent-level. It''s early September now. Even if Sir Lin has just arrived at gold-level rank-3, he should be able to break through complete gold-level by December. By then, he might only need to spend a few days to kill a Transcendent monster to break through." Shangguan Hui believed what Qin Tianxing said without a doubt. Zhou Ling stayed silent. "Also, I noticed that Sir Qin''s eyes lit up when Sir Lin was teaching us the sword skill. He looked like a starving pig monster that just saw food out of nowhere. I don''t think the sword skill is as simple as we think." Shangguan Hui noticed Qin Tianxing''s odd behavior. "We don''t know about that. Maybe Sir Qin likes men," Zhou Lin lamented. Meanwhile, Lin Huang and Qin Tianxing were watching the students leave the battle training ground. When the last student left, Qin Tianxing started speaking. "What are you trying to do? Finally, you manage to build your rapport with the students, and now you did this? You can''t blame them for not liking you." "I''m a teacher, I don''t need them to like me." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. "They might not understand what I''m doing now but one day they will." "So, you''re serious about this?" Qin Tianxing''s eyes flew wide. He thought Lin Huang was only scaring the students to pressure them. "Of course! They should treat the battle drill as a real one instead of a game. I won''t let those who are unqualified to join the battle." Lin Huang nodded. "They''ll hate you if you really disqualify them and give them zero marks," Qin Tianxing said in all seriousness. He had been teaching for many years, so he understood what the students had in mind. "But they''ll treat their missions seriously in the future as they won''t want to get zero for the second time." Lin Huang was determined. "Their second time" Even Qin Tianxing was speechless now. "I''ll sit in again next week. Please don''t have such high standards. They''re just kids after all." "I''m just a kid too. Also a stubborn one." Lin Huang laughed at what Qin Tianxing said. "Erm" Qin Tianxing did not know how to respond. "Don''t worry, I believe in these kids'' abilities. The sword skill that I''m teaching isn''t complicated. Although they might not reach my expectations in one or two weeks, they might be able to do it by the fourth week." Since Lin Huang had decided, Qin Tianxing did not want to stop him. As the Sword Dao department director, he should not interfere in Lin Huang''s teaching method. Every teacher had their own teaching style. Moreover, Lin Huang was not wrong in his teaching methods. He was just a little too strict. Since his first class, Lin Huang''s name spread within the new students who took Sword Dao, and he soon became the least favorite Year 1 teacher. Many of the students from the other classes knew that the teacher who was teaching Class 2 was a newbie who was only 16 years old. They heard about his ridiculous standard and his threat to disqualify the class from participating in the battle drill. Many of the students from the other classes were thrilled as they would have less powerful opponents if Class 2 did not join the battle drill that was scheduled to happen a month later. However, another news spread a few days later whereby Sir Lin, who was teaching Class 2, was already on gold-level rank-3 at the age of 16. He would also possibly become Transcendent-level by this year. Many of them thought that it was fake news as the real genius would spend most of their time in training instead of wasting their time on teaching in a college. Lin Huang had heard about himself being the least favorite teacher in Year 1, but he did not care at all. He stuck to his routine of staying in the library from morning until night. As his reputation was already so terrible, sometimes the Year 1 students who bumped into him in the library would avoid him as they were afraid to offend him. 458 Unqualified, Next! It was already Monday when Lin Xin heard the news that Lin Huang was the least favorite teacher in Year 1. She called him during her recess time. Lin Huang was just sitting down in the library after he finished lunch when his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated. He activated the soundproof shield and answered Lin Xin''s video call. "What''s wrong? Anything happened?" Although Lin Xin no longer stayed with him, they would meet during the weekend for a meal. Now that she was calling, it was clear that something had happened. "Brother, how was the class that you gave Class 2 a few days back?" Lin Xin hesitated before asking. "It was successful. Didn''t you already asked that yesterday?" Lin Huang thought it was an odd question. "I knew it. What people are talking about is just a rumor," Lin Xin mumbled to herself. "What rumor?" "Someone said that you''re disqualifying Class 2 students'' right to join the battle drill. I have no idea who has so much time on their hand to come up with such a rumor." Lin Xin thought it was unfair to Lin Huang. "Oh, that. It''s not a rumor. It really happened," Lin Huang admitted. "It''s true?!" Lin Xin was shocked and speechless. "Brother, what exactly are you thinking?" "I''m just setting a phase mission for the students whereby they''ll be rewarded if they accomplish it or get punished if they don''t. That''s a common teaching method. I don''t think there''s anything wrong with it." Lin Huang did not want to explain more. "But do you know that you''re now the least favorite teacher in the entire Year 1?" Lin Xin hesitated for a while before deciding to tell Lin Huang the truth. "I know. They''ve mentioned it in the teacher''s group chat during these few days." Although Lin Huang had muted the group chat, he still ran through the group chat before he slept every night. He saw that some teachers were talking about the topic, but he did not bother. "Don''t worry about it. Just focus on strengthening your abilities and prepare for the battle drill next month," Lin Huang advised. Lin Huang carried on with his life as usual for the next few days without letting what the students said affect him. Soon, it was Friday afternoon. This time, Lin Huang did not teach in class. Instead, he brought the students straight to the battle training ground. Qin Tianxing was worried that Lin Huang would do something ridiculous again, so he sat in the class. "I gave all of you a mission last week. Since it''s been a week, I''m going to test the results of your practice today," Lin Huang announced, looking at everyone present. Some of them looked like they were ready to challenge him, but he decided to ignore them. "Let''s start the drill by following your student ID number from No. 1 to No. 50. No. 1, Yu Yang!" A young man of Lin Huang''s height stood out. Lin Huang stood aside and nodded to him. "Show me what you''ve got!" Yu Yang took out a battle sword from his storage space and swung his sword. His handling of the sword was smooth. Lin Huang was expressionless while Qin Tianxing, who was standing behind the students, frowned. Yu Yang was satisfied with his performance. He put away his sword and turned around to look at Lin Huang. "Unqualified, next!" Lin Huang put a cross on the guarded name list without even looking at him. Many students were shocked to see that, and they were puzzled. "Sir Lin, may I know what did I do wrong?" Yu Yang, who was proud of himself, could not accept the result. The student ID of the Martial Hunter College of each class followed the exam score of each student. He had the highest score in Class 2 whereby he was only 1% away from entering Class 1. He thought he was the top in Class 2, but he did not expect Lin Huang to fail him. "Since you want to know, I shall break this down for you." Lin Huang held his head up and looked at Yu Yang. "If I''m not mistaken, you have only spent less than five hours, at the most, to train this sword skill for the past week, excluding the two hours that I taught in class last week. To be exact, you didn''t put in any effort in your practice. You think you can hide not learning the movement from me and adding your own techniques make it look smoother. "The sword skill that I taught is called the Sanguinary Kill Form. What is the one that you''re practicing? The Dancing Queen?!" Lin Huang berated. Some of them covered their mouths and laughed when they heard Dancing Queen. Yu Yang was upset. "Sanguinary Kill Form is a killing sword skill. The one you''re practicing is just the surface of it. You clearly didn''t understand the skill at all as I didn''t sense any killing aura at all. As long as a person focuses on training, even if he was not from a top college, I''m sure he would perform better than you if he were given a week to practice." Yu Yang was speechless as what Lin Huang was on point. He had not put any effort into training the sword skill. He thought he could just wing it by just improvising some connecting techniques of his own to make the swinging of sword smooth, but Lin Huang managed to see through him. "Next! No. 2, Gong Ning!" As the No. 2 student performed her sword skill, she stood anxiously. "Unqualified, next!" Without saying anything, student No. 2 backed away to where she had been standing. Soon, student No. 3 went on with the sword swinging. "Unqualified, next!" "Unqualified, next!" "Unqualified, next!" An hour later, Lin Huang frowned as all the students finished performing. Even Qin Tianxing was upset. Besides a few of them who had put in the effort, most of them did not take Lin Huang''s instructions seriously. "I''m very dissatisfied with all of your performance today. Among 50 of you, only three of you put in the effort. I want to ask the rest of you, what did you spend your time on for the past week? Did you not have three hours to practice the sword skill?!" Lin Huang held his wrists behind his back and scolded. "It''s just a mission of training sword, and you guys didn''t manage to do it. I want to ask, would you that your mission the same when you enter the Hunter Association or the Union Government three years later?! If you''re in a real battle, such attitude won''t only kill you, but you''ll also kill your teammates and even the entire team. "Also, don''t treat what I said about disqualifying you guys in the battle drill to be a joke. If you don''t reach my expectations by the fourth week, I''ll definitely disqualify all of you from joining the battle drill on the fifth week! "Not only that, I''ll give you a new mission next month. Those who didn''t manage to accomplish the first mission can only take up the new mission after he or she accomplishes the first mission. The new mission will be restricted to three weeks. Those who don''t accomplish it will be disqualified from joining the second battle drill! Same goes for the third month and fourth months. "If any of you spends too long on finishing the first mission and causes the next mission to fail, then you''ll be disqualified in all battle drills, which means you''ll get zero in your battle drill result for the entire semester!" All of the students looked upset. They would be expelled from the Martial Hunter College if they got zero marks for battle drills for the entire semester! 459 Leveled Up to Complete Gold-Level On Monday morning, Yu Yang led 42 Sword Dao students from Year 1 Class 2 to the registrar''s office. "What are you guys doing so early in the morning?" The director of the registrar''s office, Li Feng, frowned. He could guess why the students were here. After Lin Huang''s class ended last Friday, some of the students recorded a video in which Lin Huang said he would disqualify the students from joining the battle drills for the entire semester. The video had been shared all over after omitting the front part of what Lin Huang said. Some teachers in the group chat forwarded the video too. "We request the school to fire Sir Lin Huang! He''s not fit to be a teacher!" Yu Yang who led the class shouted. What was happening in the registrar had gotten the other officers'' attention on the fourth floor. Everyone gathered around and talked among themselves. "The one who''s leading can speak." Li Feng looked at Yu Yang pointedly. Yu Yang who represented the class walked proudly to Li Feng. "You''ll need a legit reason to fire a teacher. Tell me, what is the reason to get us to fire Sir Lin?" Li Feng raised his brow at the young man while he leaned back in his office chair. Yu Yang projected the video that he had edited. It was the part where Lin Huang wanted to disqualify the students from joining the battle drills for the entire semester and giving them zero marks. "He doesn''t know how to teach. All he does is threaten us by disqualifying us from the battle drill. Moreover, a teacher who has never been to college isn''t qualified to be our teacher," Yu Yang explained before he projected the video of Lin Huang admitting that he had never been to college on his first day of class. "All of us agree that he''s not suitable to teach us. So, either the school fires him or relocates him to other classes. We Class 2 students can''t accept such a teacher to teach us." "So, you think I have no idea what really happened?" Li Feng smirked after Yu Yang was done talking. Yu Yang''s heart skipped a beat. Li Feng then showed a video clip of the Class 2 students practicing their sword skills. It was recorded by Qin Tianxing, and the clip included all the students'' performance and the reason why Lin Huang was mad. In reality, after Yu Yang and the rest had shared the edited video on Friday, Li Feng had questioned Qin Tianxing when he saw someone forwarding the video to the teachers'' group chat. He found out what had really happened after watching the complete video that Qin Tianxing had recorded. "How dare you turn the tables around when you didn''t manage to accomplish the mission that''s been set by your teacher? Look at what you guys were doing! All you did was dance instead of giving it a full week of practice! Sir Lin was right. Students from worse colleges are even more powerful than all of you. At least, they''re serious about what they do! You even edited the video and made it viral everywhere to create a scene! Now, you''re here to tell me how bad your teacher is and asking me to fire the teacher?!" What Li Feng roared made Yu Yang turn pale. "Do you know that Lin Huang saw the video that you guys edited from the beginning? I asked him to share the video of your performance to show the reason why he got mad and let everyone judge for themselves. But Lin Huang refused to as the video might affect you guys. He bore all of the accusations that you guys spread. He had the opportunity to prove himself, but he chose to remain silent." Not only Yu Yang, the rest of the students had their heads hanging low in shame. "I''m ending this matter here. We''re standing on Sir Lin Huang''s side. Those who sent out the video, please delete the video that you beautifully edited within 24 hours and the registrar''s office will set this aside. But I would like to emphasize that if any of you got zero for the battle drill, we, the Martial Hunter College, will expel you from the school! It will be the same even if you complain to the dean." Li Feng was determined to support Lin Huang as he knew that Lin Huang had Liu Ming behind his back, and he did not want to offend him. Yu Yang walked out miserably from the office, and the rest of the students departed like they had just lost a battle. They did not expect that the proof that they had created would backfire. Without any other choices, they practiced the sword skill honestly. The matter had been contained by Li Feng just like that. Lin Huang just smiled when he heard what happened. Although the video was deleted, the matter was still a hot topic in the college. Even students from Year 2 and Year 3 heard about this new teacher with a powerful background who managed to get away with his ridiculous decision. Even though the video was deleted. Lin Xin contacted him again because of the matter, but Lin Huang succeeded in comforting her. Soon, it was Friday of the third week, and Lin Huang had class in the afternoon. Lin Huang did the same thing whereby he examined the students'' progress, and he was pretty satisfied this time. "There are 36 students who have passed today. I''ve said this before. It''s not difficult to each my expectations as long as you practice. I hope all of you manage to reach my standards and won''t be disqualified from the battle drill on the fifth week." Lin Huang did not mention the scene that the students had created during the entire class like it had never happened. Many of the students who wanted revenge were relieved. Even Qin Tianxing was glad as he was worried that Lin Huang might find fault with the students again to increase the tension among the students. Luckily, the class was pretty harmonious. After the class, Lin Huang was reading in the library at night. Suddenly, he felt the Life Power in his body completely stabilize. With a slight shift of aura, he had leveled up to complete gold-level. He did not rotate his Life Power this time as he had leveled up from gold-level rank-3 to complete gold-level. Besides training swordsmanship, he allowed his Life Power to rotate by itself. After spending almost three months, he had finally completed his upgrade. It was the longest time for him to stagnate on the same combat level. However, throughout the learning and digesting process, his foundation was now stable. "Congratulations, your epic-level monster Gold Armored Genie (Tyrant) has leveled up automatically to crimson flame-level. "Congratulations, your epic-level monster the Ruthless Sword Master (Lancelot) and the other sword slaves have leveled up automatically to crimson flame-level. "Congratulations, your epic-level monster Nephilic (Kylie) has leveled up automatically to crimson flame-level." A few notifications from Xiao Hei popped up as he leveled up. "Now that I''ve broken through my combat level and my Monster Cards have leveled up, it''s time to hunt for Life Fire monsters!" Lin Huang smirked. "But among the Life Fire monsters that I have shortlisted earlier, which one should I choose?" 460 Choosing Tinder Considering the practicality of Life Fire, Lin Huang had shortlisted three targets since the beginning. The first one was the Gigantic Gold-Armored Dragon with dragon blood. Not only would he get the tinder, killing the Gold-Armored Gigantic Dragon would give him a terrifying monster''s physique with an upgrade in strength and he could possibly even obtain dragon power. The second one would be the double mutated undead monster, the Millennium Corpse. The tinder from killing this monster could earn Lin Huang a secret skill called "Fake Death" which allowed three chances of revival from death. However, the first revival would make the revived sleep for a year, the second for 10 years and third for 100 years. On the fourth death, the owner of the secret skill would not die but would sleep for 300 years. When he woke up, he would turn into a Millennium Corpse himself. The third one would be a double mutated psychic, the Mirror Beast. This monster had a terrifying cloning ability which allowed it to create hundreds of clones that looked exactly like itself. Killing the monster would get him the tinder with the same cloning ability. The Life Fire monsters were shortlisted carefully by Lin Huang based on the practicality of their skills that he needed. The first one was to strengthen his body as a whole while his abilities would increase as well. The second one was to survive death, but it would come with grave consequences. He considered the Life Fire as the Substitute talent that he had to be only a once-off use, which was not enough for him. The third one would be cloning which was a very useful ability. It could help him finish dangerous missions during critical times. After the shortlisting, Lin Huang thought that the most suitable one would be the first and the third one as the consequences of the second one was too much. As he thought to himself, he decided to consult Mr. Fu. However, it was almost 11 p.m, so he did not call Mr. Fu. Instead, he sent a message. He informed him that he had leveled up to complete gold-level, then sent another one to ask about the Life Fire monster. He included the three Life Fire monsters that he had shortlisted in the message. In less than a minute, Mr. Fu sent him a video call request. Lin Huang activated the soundproof shield in the library and picked up the call. Mr. Fu had stood up from a rocking chair in the video call with his usual smiley face. "My dear apprentice, you have leveled up to complete gold-level already?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "I''ve looked at the three Life Fire monsters that you sent me. I think besides the first one, the rest don''t really suit you," Mr. Fu gave his opinion. "When you arrive at holy fire-level, besides physique upgrade talent that can be turned into a secret skill, the remaining physique upgrade skills are basically useless. That''s the reason why most people have the same physique when they''ve just leveled up to holy fire-level while killing the dragon blood will give you a boost in physique that''ll make you much more powerful than people of the same level. "The other two are pretty useless. Only dummies would go for the Millennium Corpse as one would turn into a monster when he becomes dead for more than three times and that''s the end of his combat level up. For the cloning tinder, you could always learn a similar secret skill, so there''s no need to obtain it from the monster." "So, Master, you''re suggesting me to pick the dragon blood?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "I''m saying the first one is passable among the three." Mr. Fu shook his head. "But I think you could try killing a triple mutated monster instead of focusing on double mutated monsters. The more the monster has mutated, the more powerful the tinder is, and the higher your power will be. I think you can try killing triple mutated monsters with your ability. If you really can''t, you can always pick the dragon blood later." "Pick a triple mutated monster?!" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. Mr. Fu''s suggestion was tempting to him. He had thought of picking a triple mutated monster, but he had never heard that killing a triple mutated monster could make a Transcendent-level more powerful. Most importantly, he had no idea what kind of tinder he would get from killing a triple mutated monster. That was why he had put the thought aside. "The more powerful the tinder obtained, the more powerful the person will get. The rank-3 tinder in the triple mutated monster is at least three times more powerful than a rank-2 double mutated monster. Some may even be seven to eight times more powerful," Mr. Fu explained further. Lin Huang knew what Mr. Fu was saying. It was like Yi Yeyu who had killed a twice mutated Fire Phoenix whereby her ability was more powerful compared to a white flame-level who had killed a single mutated monster. "But has anyone ever gotten tinder from a triple mutated monster?" Lin Huang asked. "Very few of them but yes." "In Division 7, there''s a girl named Luo Li from the Demon Slayer Troop. She''s one of them. Besides her, there were another four persons who''ve killed triple mutated monsters to level up to holy fire-level throughout hundreds of years. But there are many of them in the core zones - more than 150 of them in fact - who have killed triple mutated monsters to level up in Division3 alone. There are even more of them in Divisions 1 and 2." "So, there is information about what tinder a triple mutated monster has?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course, I''ve just seen the latest edition recently." Mr. Fu looked like what Lin Huang asked was common knowledge. "Then, Master, which monster do you think I should kill to obtain the tinder?" Lin Huang knew Mr. Fu already had a plan. "You''re training Sword Dao, and you''re on the level-3 of the sword realm. Even if you only obtain a rank-2 Life Fire to level up, you''ll still be a grade-1 genius but far away from a supreme genius." Lin Huang had heard about the grading of geniuses, but it was his first time hearing about a supreme genius, which should be a level higher than a grade-1 genius. "If you want to break through your ability, I think it''s best to focus on your Sword Dao. It''s much more effective than strengthening your physique or learning other minor cloning techniques," Mr. Fu suggested. "The triple mutated monster that I chose for you is a Blacksword Killer. You will inherit a Sword Dao after obtaining its tinder. It was rumored to be a god-level Sword Dao" What Mr. Fu said in the end completely got Lin Huang hooked. "Has anyone inherited the god-level Sword Dao before?" Lin Huang asked with his eyes wide opened. "It''s just a rumor. Nobody has gotten it before. But there''s a person in Division 1 who has gotten a demigod-level Sword Dao before," Mr. Fu told the truth. "Alright, I shall choose this! Master, please send me a copy of this monster''s information," Lin Huang decided without thinking twice. Even if it was just a demigod-level Sword Dao, it was much better than what the other tinder could bring him. 461 The Field that was Rolled Over by Swine Beasts The Blacksword Killer was a triple mutated god''s blood monster that looked like a human with horrific abilities. Lin Huang had seen how powerful a triple mutated monster could be. When the Supreme Overlord managed to break free from him, its performance was three ranks higher than its own ability. Lin Huang could almost tell that a triple mutated white flame-level monster could have the same ability as a purple flame-level monster whereas a god''s blood would be even more powerful. It could even be on gold flame-level. Although a complete gold-level was only one rank away from a white flame-level, in reality, its ability was two ranks apart from each other. Therefore, for a person to obtain the tinder, one must cross at least two ranks to kill the monster. That was also the reason why most people would only choose a single mutated monster when they wanted to level up to holy fire-level. Less than 1% of people would choose a double mutated monster and would usually kill the monster as a team instead of killing it solo. Meanwhile, not only was a triple mutated monster at least 10 times more powerful than a double mutated monster, its intelligence was also higher and probably had odd and convertible abilities. The rule of tinder hunting included the possibility of the hunter''s partner being, at most, a complete gold-level with a maximum of 100 people and 10 summoning monsters. Under such circumstances, many died whenever they attempted to kill triple mutated monsters. As time went by, people gave up on that option and fewer people considered killing triple mutated monsters during the recent years. After getting the Backsword Killer''s information from Mr. Fu, Lin Huang had been preparing himself before the battle for the past few days. He was watching the limited battle video clips that were available and analyzing its weakness. He was careful this time as he could not summon any of his monsters to help him since he had to fight on his own. Although the tinder rule said that one could summon a maximum of 10 summoning monsters whereby their combat levels had to be lower than the monster that one was hunting, Lin Huang''s monsters had just been upgraded to crimson flame-level a few days ago. If they were to join the battle, even if Lin Huang managed to kill the Backsword Killer, the tinder would disappear. To be honest, Lin Huang did not have the confidence to defeat a triple mutated white flame-level monster of god''s blood on his own. "Xiao Hei, will it affect the Life Seed if I used the Transformation Card?" "It''ll be fine if the monster''s combat level that you transform into is lower than that of the monster that you''re hunting. But since all of your epic-level Monster Cards are now crimson flame-level, once you transform yourself, your combat level will be higher than the Blacksword Killer''s. According to the tinder rule, the tinder in the Blacksword Killer will disappear even if you manage to kill it." "What if I use the One-time Skill Card?" "The One-time Skill Card has no combat level on its own, but there are combat levels to its sealed skills. If what you sealed was the attack of the previous gold flame-level that you previously fought, its gold flame-level aura will be released once activated and the tinder will disappear as well." All of the plans that Lin Huang came up with were rejected by Xiao Hei. "Seems like the only way is to fight it myself. I shall depart on Saturday after my class on Friday!" As he finalized his plans, he analyzed the video clips for the next couple of days, looking for ways to tackle its attacks. Time flew by, and soon it was Friday again. As usual, Qin Tianxing sat in his class. As it was already the fourth week, just like Lin Huang said previously, it would be the last sword skill test before the battle drill. Qin Tianxing had come up with a plan before entering the class. As long as any student who failed this time did not perform too badly, he would get Lin Huang to show them mercy and let them pass. As soon as the both met, Qin Tianxing sensed the change in Lin Huang''s aura. "You''ve leveled up to complete gold-level?!" Qin Tianxing exclaimed without considering where he was. Many of the students heard and they eavesdropped. "I''ve stayed on gold-level rank-3 for almost three months now, it would be ridiculous for me to wait further." Lin Huang smiled and admitted as he knew people would find out anyway. "Have you chosen the tinder monster?" Qin Tianxing asked immediately. "Yes, I have." Lin Huang nodded. "Which one did you pick?" Qin Tianxing was curious. "It''s a secret." "With your ability, you must have chosen a double mutated monster. Let me in on a little please." Qin Tianxing was eager to know which tinder monster that Lin Huang had picked. "Why must it be a double mutated monster?" Lin Huang asked him back and walked away while Qin Tianxing was left clueless. "If it isn''t a double mutated monster, is he picking a single mutated monster instead?" Qin Tianxing mumbled to himself, but soon he realized something. "Don''t tell me you picked a triple mutated" Lin Huang smiled and said nothing. Qin Tianxing could not focus during the class. He remembered clearly that he got 16 of his good friends to help him when he killed the double mutated monster when he was obtaining tinder last time. He spent a great effort to kill the monster. It was crazy of Lin Huang to pick a triple mutated monster! His jaw would definitely drop if he found out that not only did Lin Huang pick a triple mutated monster, but also a god''s blood and that he was going to fight it alone. In the fourth class, the students were practicing the Sanguinary Kill Forms as usual. "Pass, next!" "Pass, next!" "I can see that everyone has given effort this week. All 50 of you have done well," Lin Huang looked across the hall as he said while the students held their heads down. Two students had actually failed based on Lin Huang''s standards but since they were close to the passing mark, he showed them mercy and allowed the both of them to pass. "Since all of you are qualified to join the battle drill next week, I hope all of you will give your best and don''t embarrass Class 2." "For the remaining two hours of class, I shall let you guys have some fun. Please wait here for a moment," Lin Huang said and summoned his dimensional relic and brought back three unconscious iron-level monsters. "These are three monsters on iron-level rank-1. One was good in strength, another in speed while the last one in defense. From now on, these three monsters are your target practice." Lin Huang knew that this was what the students wanted. The students were excited when they saw the three iron-level monsters. Although they did not get to go to the wild zone, the three monsters were enough to keep them busy for a while. "Sir Lin, can we practice after class?" A girl asked in anticipation. "Sure, you can practice until midnight. I''ll leave these monsters here." Lin Huang and woke the three monsters up. Sensing Lin Huang''s aura, the three monsters started running as soon as they opened their eyes while the students ran after them. The battle training ground became crowded. "Are you sure the dean won''t be mad if he sees this mess when he''s back?" Qin Tianxing asked Lin Huang as he watched the chaos in the making. "Don''t worry, he won''t." "This field looked like it was rolled over by Swine Beasts when I trained with him earlier," Lin Huang really wanted to say. 462 Elam Island Lin Huang left the Martial Hunter College early morning on Saturday. He had a week before Friday to kill the Blacksword Killer. There would be sufficient time if everything went as planned. He had pinned the location from the information he gotten from Mr. Fu earlier. The last the triple mutated monster had been found was more than half a year ago on Elam Island. The island where the Dragon Gate archipelago was considered to be a moderate danger zone. It was said that the archipelago was where the small-sized dragon blood monsters gathered when Division 7 was first built. The archipelago was located 4,500 kilometers to the east of the A-grade foothold Blue Island City. The city had, of course, been pinned by Mr. Fu before. As Lin Huang crossed the dimensional relic, he arrived on the balcony of a hotel. He was looking at an endless blue sea. "Such a beautiful sea view room. He sure knows how to enjoy life," Lin Huang sighed and shook his head while he projected his coordinates with his Emperor''s Heart Ring. After confirming his route to Elam Island, he leaped from the balcony and Thunder caught him with its sparkling body. It then flew to Elam Island at the speed of light. After Thunder had gone through a double mutation and was unlocked, its speed had reached a terrifying rate. As Lin Huang leveled up to complete gold-level and Thunder was now a crimson flame-level, its speed had experienced a significant upgrade. An hour later, they arrived on top of the Dragon Gate archipelago. From the top, the archipelago looked like a green dragon head with a blue background. As the islands came together, they formed a dragon head on the blue sea. It made sense why the dragon blood had chosen to stay here. Meanwhile, Elam Island was located on the dragon eye, which was the lake 300 kilometers away. The archipelago was full of green like it was still in the prehistoric period. Nobody knew how many monsters were hiding in this moderate danger zone. Fortunately, the Blacksword Killer was hiding in the small Elam Island. Even if it did not hide in the location where it had been found half a year ago, it would not be too tough to find as the island was small. "Head to the lake where the dragon eye is." Lin Huang patted Thunder''s back. Thunder started gliding down and soon, they arrived at the lake. Lin Huang recalled Thunder and set his new coordinates. He then realized that the Blacksword Killer was less than 20 kilometers from him. He hid his aura and headed towards the location. As the jungle was dense with trees, sunlight shone through the gaps between leaves, so it was not completely pitch-dark in there. However, it did not affect Lin Huang much as he activated his ocular skill and Micro Territory, so nothing around him could escape. As he headed forward carefully, he was thinking of his future. Since Mr. Fu said that his major was in swordsmanship while the other abilities were just affiliates, it was crucial that he prioritized Sword Dao. Just like how a student in biology who majored in biological engineering should prioritize genetic engineering and hereditary engineering. Should the student learn about biochemistry, biophysics, and cell biology as well? Of course, he should but those subjects should only come after biological engineering. Meanwhile, the bits of astronomy, theoretical physics, and inorganic chemistry that he decided to learn would be considered extra knowledge which did not contribute to biological engineering. word Dao was what Lin Huang majored in. When it came to upgrading, Sword Dao should always come first. He had been looking at all knowledge and training new sword skills while his battle skills were upgraded slowly these few months. However, his progress was slow as he arrived at the level-3 in Sword Dao. Even though he had increased the sword skills that he was trained in from less than 10 types to more than 50 now, the progress was insignificant. He estimated that at this rate, he would at least train up to 1,000 rare-level sword skills integration to be able to get to level-4. As he thought he would not have any breakthrough in his ability before he could arrive at level-4 in such a short period of time, he was considering to upgrade his ability through other ways. However, after knowing from Mr. Fu that he might be able to inherit powerful Sword Dao from killing the Blacksword Killer, Lin Huang knew that it would be the perfect opportunity to upgrade his Sword Dao. Although he had a copy of the demigod Qi Muxiong''s inheritance in his body, there was nothing that he could learn from the demigod''s cultivation experience. The Goldfinger that the demigod had was a cloud source whereby as long as he kept absorbing the source, he could be more and more powerful. The only things that Lin Huang could learn were his combat experiences and skills. However, there was only a small part of memories that were opened to Lin Huang as he was below Transcendent-level, so there was nothing much to learn. However, the inheritance would be a great help for him in the future. Lin Huang was not in a rush to learn right now as he could always learn those when he leveled up to holy fire-level. He was eager to get the complete Sword Dao inheritance as he wanted to run a comparison with everything that he had learned to further improve his Sword Dao. Although it was quite impossible to get to level-4 Sword Dao right away, it could at least save him more than half a year of training. As he was engrossed in his deep thought, a creature appeared in his sensing circle. Lin Huang finally snapped out of his thoughts. There was a Candoia Devil disguised as a vine in the dark jungle approaching its prey and was ready to attack. Suddenly, there was the glow of a golden sword and a 30-odd meter giant boa was cut in half and it fell onto the ground. Its blood splashed all over the place while its headless body slid slowly from the tree bark. Lin Huang peeked and leaped from the branch and away from the tree. The Candoia Devil was a poisonous creature which had enough venom to kill a holy fire-level person. There were many of them in this jungle. Without Lin Huang''s Micro Territory, he might need hours to traipse through this 20 kilometers of distance carefully. After he leaped from branch to branch, he arrived at his destination in ten minutes. It was near a cliff off the edge of Elam Island, out of the coverage of the dense jungle. As he stood on the tree of the edge and looked at the coordinates, he saw a person sitting on the cliff. The person seemed to notice him watching and turned around slowly 463 Lin Huang’s Miscalculation Although he had seen the monster from images and video clips, Lin Huang had goosebumps when their eyes met. From the back, the Blacksword Killer looked exactly the same as a human. It was like a middle-aged sword knight with a head. However, as it turned it head 180 degrees to the back, it did not have a human face under its hat. Its face seemed like it had human skin but rougher. It had one green eye and a mouth that looked like it was stitched up. Under the hat, its green eye stared deadly at Lin Huang. His skin crawled. As soon as it noticed him, the monster stood up with its head still facing Lin Huang. It stared at him with its eye like it was afraid that Lin Huang might escape. As it stared at Lin Huang, its body turned 180 degrees around so that it was now fully facing Lin Huang. He finally got to see how it really looked like. Besides its face that did not look like a human''s, the rest of its body looked no different than a man''s. It was almost two meters tall and its body was covered in a charcoal grey cloak. Suddenly, Lin Huang felt an intense murderous vibe locked onto him together with a strong sense of danger. He picked up his sword and got ready to attack without thinking twice when suddenly, the Blacksword Killer disappeared from where it was and appeared in front of Lin Huang. Its hand came out of nowhere with a long, arrow-like, black sword which collided with Lin Huang''s sword in an instant. Bang! As the swords collided, waves were created at the meeting point of both swords like ripples on water. A shadow shot backward as a loud thud was heard. The echoing sound was like a thunderbolt as the silhouette flew backward as if launched by a cannon. The shape of a human body was formed on the tree trunk as the shadow landed on the tree after the impact took him through many trees. "Damn it It hurts" The person got himself out of the tree trunk. The young man leaped from the tree hole and stretched his body. It was Lin Huang who had flown backward. Based on the attack alone, he could tell that the monster was near gold flame-level. "I would be injured if I hadn''t worn this 5-star defense relic on me." Lin Huang knew how powerful the monster was and how difficult this battle would be. He peered at the position of his enemy through the gaps between the trees. The Blacksword Killer was standing where he had been earlier. Its green eye under the hat was staring creepily at him. Lin Huang smirked and pointed his sword at it. It was clear that he was challenging it. "Come at me. I''d like to see the results of my training for the past couple of months." Half a year ago, Lin Huang had been challenged by the Supreme Overlord and had to use everything that he had, including summoning many monsters to fight it as he could not challenge it on his own. Now that half a year had passed, he could fight a triple mutated white flame-level god''s blood monster. Such improvement was unbelievable. The Blacksword Killer was surprised that it had not killed Lin Huang as it sensed his combat level to be weak. Nobody of the same combat level could withstand the attack. Not only was Lin Huang still alive, but it also seemed like he was not hurt at all. The Blacksword Killer was puzzled. However, Lin Huang''s challenging gesture managed to turn its curiosity into anger. From its memory, there was no creature which dared to challenge it like that. The Blacksword Killer leaped from the branch as it thought to itself, "Since you challenged me, then you shall pay the price." The branch that was as thick as an adult thigh shook vigorously and the monster disappeared. "That was quick!" Lin Huang''s pupils shrunk slightly as he moved from where he was after activating his Seraphic Speed and Cloud Steps. As soon as the Blacksword Killer appeared, Lin Huang wielded his sword that was covered in golden Life Power from tens of meters away. With the coverage of his Micro Territory, he did not even have to reach his target, which was the plan that he came up with after watching the video clips of the Blacksword Killer''s battles. Its technique was always the same and was rather straightforward whereby its forte was its speed and strength. The technique almost always worked. Lin Huang knew that he was far behind from it when it came to strength and speed. Before he leveled up to complete gold-level, he could only kill blue flame-levels. Now that he was complete gold-level, he should only be able to kill purple flame-levels. Facing the Blacksword Killer which ability was comparable with a gold flame-level, it would be dumb for him to fight it from close-distance as it would drain his Life Power too. Moreover, as he wanted to get the tinder, he could not summon monsters to help him. Therefore, the only plan that he came up with was all the ways to drain the monster''s Life Power. As soon as its Life Power was almost finished, he would release all the Life Power that he had to destroy it when the monster attempted to escape. Although the plan was not glorious, it was an effective one. It would be suicide to go straight for an enemy that was more powerful than himself. The Blacksword Killer landed where Lin Huang was, but it missed him as it did not expect Lin Huang to run away after challenging it. The monster slashed horizontally with its black sword like a hemispherical arc that went towards Lin Huang. All of the trees that the sword passed through were smashed, and the ground was left with a 10-meter wide and hundreds of meters long barren path. Before waiting for the dust to disappear, a golden glow sparked next to the Blacksword Killer and towards its neck. "Hmph!" The black sword swung horizontally out of nowhere as a scoff was heard. The tip of the sword collided with the sword with the golden glow. The glow disappeared immediately. The Blacksword Killer turned around and stared at where Lin Huang was hiding through the trees with its green eye. It smirked with its sewn lips like it was mocking him. It then picked up its sword and swung it across again. Suddenly, Lin Huang felt a strong sense of danger. He backed off immediately. Almost at the same time, the charcoal grey sword glow flashed where he was hiding, slicing towards his waist. "He has the Territory ability too?!" Lin Huang was shocked. 464 Plan B "This is tricky" Lin Huang frowned as he looked at the remaining tree stump that he was standing on as he backed away from the Blacksword Killer''s attack. He had never seen any Blacksword Killer that possessed Territory ability from all the video clips that he had watched. The documents that Mr. Fu had given him did not mention this either. However, it was said that triple mutated monsters had a certain level of self-learning ability. It did not seem like the Blacksword Killer had managed to learn Lin Huang''s Micro Territory just from looking at him. If that were true, such a monster would be invincible. It must have met an opponent that was skilled in Territory and learned the skill from battling it. It was just bad luck that he met this monster that had mastered such an ability. However, this meant that the plan that Lin Huang had come up with after studying all the battle video clips would not work anymore. Initially, he planned to take advantage of the distance to avoid fighting the monster at close distance so that he could drain its Life Power slowly. Unfortunately, that could not work anymore since the monster had the same Territory ability that he did. As soon as he stepped into the monster''s territory, the monster knew his exact location and could attack whenever it wanted within its coverage. "I''ve only started Plan A for three seconds, and it''s failed! How frustrating that the plan that I came up with after plotting it for three days is crushed just like this!" Lin Huang stood on top of a branch as he thought sullenly to himself. He did not go hunting for the Blacksword Killer on impulse simply after knowing about the monster. Instead, he had taken a week to study the battle video clips and strategized a plan, but it had backfired. "Luckily, I have Plan B. Although I don''t really use this Plan B to bully, it seems like I have no other choice now." Lin Huang squinted, targeting the Blacksword Killer that was hundreds of meters away. The Blacksword Killer seemed to have Transcendent-level sensing ability, and it turned its head around, staring at him with its green eye. It disappeared from where it was out of nowhere, and so did Lin Huang. The branch that he was standing on shook vigorously. Suddenly, two shadows collided together mid-air. The Blacksword Killer swung its sword horizontally, creating a trail of vapor cloud in the air. Life Power was rushing towards the Lin Huang from the black sword. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was brandishing the same sword, but it was now covered with a defense layer like a black cloth. Behind the black cloth was his left hand which was cloaked in black mist. Lin Huang smirked as his plan B was launched. He intended to defend himself from the monster''s attack with the Dark Shield and attack with the sword in the other. As his left hand with the Dark Shield defended himself the monster''s deadly attack, Lin Huang swung the Dragon Slayer in his right hand. The golden glow that burst out of it was no slower than the speed of the black sword aiming at the monster''s torso. The Blacksword Killer was surprised that Lin Huang managed to block its attack just like that. Looking at the golden glow on its left, it felt threatened. The waves in its gigantic green eye were swirling tumultuously while its charcoal grey cloak flapped. As Lin Huang''s Thunder Sting swung, it collided with its cloak. However, the deadly attack did not perform as expected. The monster''s cloak blocked it instead. A 10-centimeter tear appeared on its cloak where Lin Huang''s swing impacted it. Sadly, that was all the damage it inflicted; his sharp sword did not manage to pierce through the cloak. With a loud noise, the Blacksword Killer shot backward like a cannon and crashed through more than ten trees behind it. Meanwhile, Lin Huang leaped to the branch that was not far behind him with the help of the inertia. "Now, we''re playing fair!" Lin Huang grinned. From the video clips, he knew since the beginning of the fight that the swing of his sword could not harm the monster physically because the Blacksword Killer''s cloak had powerful defense ability. Compared to other monsters with stalwart attacking power but were either weak in defensive ability or slow in speed, the Blacksword Killer excelled in all the areas. Although it was only a white flame-level, its attacking ability was the standard of a gold flame-level because it was a triple mutated god''s blood monster whereby its defense ability and speed surpassed purple flame-level and was, perhaps, not far away from gold flame-level. That was why Lin Huang''s attack in which he gave his all had only left a minor tear in the monster''s cloak. He also knew that as long as it had sufficient Life Power, it could restore the tear within seconds. Therefore, the only way to kill the Blacksword Killer was to drain all its Life Power. The reason why he executed plan A was because it required the least Life Power from him. Meanwhile, the Life Power that he required for this Plan B was a few times more than plan A. If Lin Huang did not have the three Life Power Refill Cards that he had prepared earlier, it was impossible for him to drain the monster''s Life Power. Although he had ten Life Wheels in his body, with the execution of plan B in which he had to fight face on, he would definitely drain his Life Power before the monster did. By then, he would be dead. The Blacksword Killer was shot and flew through more than a dozen trees behind after Lin Huang''s attack, landing hard on the ground. A hole that was ten meters wide was created on the ground, the dust covering its body. Lin Huang knew very well that the crash did nothing to the monster. As the dust blurred his vision, he did not chase after the monster. Instead, he stared intensely where the Blacksword Killer had disappeared. He was not afraid that the Blacksword Killer would escape from the dust since his display so far was not sufficient to threaten it. After seconds of silence, a green glow shot from the dust cloud and disappeared. The dust was blown away by a strong wind, revealing a devoid hole... 465 Winning by Pretending to be Weak Seeing that the Blacksword Killer had disappeared from the hole and a shadow appeared suddenly next to him, Lin Huang activated his Dark Shield without hesitation. A terrifying murky green Life Power collided with the Dark Shield. As its attack was blocked, the Blacksword Killer changed its sword position, attempting to pierce the top of the shield. A direct shockwave was created as the black sword collided with the golden battle sword. Bang! As the impact exploded in the air, a loop of air pressure created a perfect circle between the both of them. Trees and flowers hundreds of meters surrounding them were destroyed, and the smithereens went in all directions. As a result, the both of them flew away almost at the same time. Lin Huang landed hundreds of meters away, the ground cracking as he landed. Meanwhile, although the Blacksword Killer was not flung as far away as Lin Huang was, it was no better. Lin Huang''s ability could not compare to the monster if they were to fight face to face. The attack ended up as a tie as the Dark Shield drained the monster''s first attack and the impact of its second attack dampened. The Blacksword Killer was forced to change its attack to two forms as its first attack was blocked by the Dark Shield. As it knew that Lin Huang''s Dark Shield was difficult to penetrate, it was redundant to fight him forcefully since it would render its next attack useless. Although the second attack was much weaker and could not fling Lin Huang away like it did earlier, it was better than being attacked outright. Since it learned its lesson, Blacksword Killer then changed its attack mode. Lin Huang noticed that the monster before him was much more intelligent than he expected. Even if he were fighting a human, not many of them would be determined enough to change their attack mode if they were to face the defense of the Dark Shield. Most people would choose to test the Dark Shield''s defense limit and only switch their mode of attack after multiple failed attempts of breaking through. Meanwhile, the Blacksword Killer only took one attempt to determine that it had to change its attack mode without hesitation. Among humans, perhaps only people with extensive experience would manage to come up with such a plan. "It changed its attack to two forms to defend against me instead of fighting me. Perhaps it chose to do that as it still has no idea of what I''m capable of and it daren''t drain its Life Power. This fella is smart!" Lin Huang could speculate what the monster was thinking. "It must want to spend some time testing my limits before coming up with its plan, so it chose to defend against me instead. If I perform well, it might choose to drag the fight on so that it can use its Life Power minimally in hopes that I''ll drain my Life Power first. On the contrary, if I perform poorly, it might choose to unleash everything it has to defeat me once and for all" His smirked as he came up with an idea. In the dense jungle, the both of them leaped again and collided with each other. Lin Huang maintained his strategy of holding a shield in one hand and a sword in the other while the Blacksword Killer used the two-form attack that it had used earlier. Intense blows rumbled on Elam Island like it was in the midst of a thunderstorm. Within minutes, the both of them had struck each other hundreds of times, but none of them were harmed. However, hundreds of kilometers of the jungle were affected. As the both of them collided, everything around them was almost destroyed. Many trees with thick trunks fell, most of them smashed from the impact of their fight. The flowers and bushes on the ground were damaged, and even the ground flipped upwards from the strong wind. All the plants that were not rooted deeply in the earth were uprooted. Whatever ground they stood on was swept away like a grade-12 hurricane. Besides the shore, the island had been lush with greenery, but now, the edge of the east was a bald patch. It was almost like a fight between two gold flame-levels. On the Elam Island, many monsters ran away while those that could not run burrowed deeply in their lairs. They shivered under the intense thuds and rumbles. Many holy fire-level monsters near the island sensed the shockwaves of the battle and watched the island in fear. None of them dared to go closer. When Lin Huang noticed that the first Life Wheel in his body was almost drained, he started to insert less Life Power into his battle sword. He slightly decreased the amount of Life Power on his first attack on purpose; it was insignificant. However, the sensitive Blacksword Killer sensed it. No matter how minute the change was, the monster could sense it. As it realized the human''s odd behavior, the Blacksword Killer''s green eye lit up and it took the opportunity to attack without hesitation. It started swinging its sword at Lin Huang without pondering if it could break his defense anymore as it sensed that Lin Huang''s Life Power should be nearing to an end considering that he started decreasing the amount of Life Power in his sword. Without thinking twice, Lin Huang picked up his Dark Shield and backed off it an instant. "Gotcha!" Lin Huang smirked and thought to himself. Looking at his reaction, the Blacksword Killer confirmed its speculation, so it did not want him to get away. It swung its black sword repetitively in an attempt to drain Lin Huang''s Life Power as soon as possible. Lin Huang had given up attacking while he ran and defended himself with his Dark Shield. Between attacks, he even drank a bottle of Life Power recovery elixir and pretended to let the monster notice him do so. Upon seeing that Lin Huang started to refill his Life Power with the elixir, the Blacksword Killer knew who was on the winning side of the battle. Smugly, it thought to itself that winning was just a matter of time. Keeping the elixir bottle, Lin Huang started running again while the Blacksword Killer chased after him 466 Bright Worldly Purification Lin Huang pretended to run for his life as he leaped from branch to branch deep into the dense rubble. As he adapted to the Blacksword Killer''s rhythm, he always managed to activate his Dark Shield on time, using his Micro Territory to sense whenever it was going to attack. As the Blacksword Killer chased after him, it was faster than him in the beginning, but with the trees around, its vision and speed were affected. Moreover, Lin Huang always changed his direction whenever it managed to run before him and attempted to block his way. There was no way that the Blacksword Killer could stop him from moving. They were racing through the dense jungle for more than an hour. Although Lin Huang was the one who was constantly being attacked, he was actually the one who mastered the rhythm of the battle. He would occasionally decrease the defense of his Dark Shield, run slower, or even drank the Life Power recovery elixir on purpose. The illusions that he created made the Blacksword Killer chase after him no matter what. In reality, as more than an hour passed by, he did not even drain a single Life Wheel of Life Power. The usage of Life Power was a few times slower than before. However, the Blacksword Killer was draining its Life Power by attacking. Although it did not get to attack as frequently as it wanted to, the draining of its Life Power got worse as the time consumed took longer. As they ran, although Lin Huang pretended not to have enough Life Power, his spiritedness made the Blacksword Killer suspect that he was putting on a show. Lin Huang noticed that the Blacksword Killer hesitated a couple of times when it attacked, then he knew that it was starting to be skeptical. He smirked as he rolled to the ground. As soon as he stabilized himself, the Blacksword Killer caught up with him. It did not attack but looked suspiciously at Lin Huang, wanting to know what he would do after stopping. Lin Huang held the sword in one hand, the golden glow shining on the tip. An intense, scorching aura spread out, threatening the Blacksword Killer by the aura as its pupil shrunk. "Come on! Weren''t you chasing me? Come taste my sword!" Lin Huang shouted at the Blacksword Killer that was standing on the branch not far away. The Blacksword Killer did not back off as it thought Lin Huang was betting on his life before he died. As a god''s blood, it was never afraid of challenges from its opponent. Murky green Life Power was released into its black sword, and its narrow and long sword swelled much thicker than a normal battle sword as Life Power flowed in. It grew from 90 centimeters to 1.2 meters long. As the Blacksword Killer''s sword was as thickening, the golden glow on the tip of the sword that Lin Huang was holding was so bright that it could not be stared at directly. The Worldly Purification was the strongest power he had before he arrived on level-3. Now that he had completed the rudimental integration of the legendary-level Star Dome, he had reached level-3 of the sword realm. Even if he was performing a rare-level sword skill, he could do so on an epic-level. The epic-level Wildfire had a significant increase in its impact. Even now, Lin Huang had no idea how powerful the Worldly Purification could be as he had not used it when he was training with Liu Ming. He stomped hard on the ground as soon as the golden glow reached its peak. There were circles of cracks that branched out like spiderwebs on the ground. Soon, he disappeared from where he was. Meanwhile, the Blacksword Killer, who was standing on the branch, disappeared too. Footprints were left on the thick branch. Suddenly, two swords collided together. There was a golden glow that was as bright as the sun on one side while there was a greenish-black glow that was like the night sky on the other. The two colors came together like a yin-yang circle. As a shockwave was created from the force, the two- to three-meter impact coverage expanded in an instant to almost hundreds of meters. The sky on top of their heads was dyed in two tones like a battle of colors. Thunder rumbled from the force as their aura spread out everywhere together with the noise. Apart from ominous sound, Elam Island became silent as if all the creatures had fallen into a deep sleep. Not only was there no sound from the birds and the beasts, but there was also not even a bug chirping. Even the noisy cicadas did not make so much as a rustle. Many monsters from the other islands ran away from the direction of Elam Island. Even some of the holy fire-level monsters hid their aura so that they would not bring trouble to themselves. On the east side of the Elam Island, the shadows were splurging all their Life Power on the barren land. The golden and greenish-black glow filled the sky like two gigantic, formless monsters fighting. Lin Huang almost gave his all in this assault whereby he inserted three Life Wheels of Life Power into his sword and continued to add more as he attacked. Meanwhile, as the Blacksword Killer was worried that Lin Huang would run away again, it gave its all as well, not wanting to lose the opportunity to kill him. A third of its Life Power went into its black sword. It thought that Lin Huang was betting on his life and that he barely had much Life Power left. In its opinion, it thought it could kill him easily. However, as their swords collided, the Blacksword Killer realized that it had been tricked. What Lin Huang was battling with was definitely not the very little Life Power that it presumed he was left with. Instead, it was a blow that he had been waiting hours for. The power of Lin Huang''s sword exceeded the Blacksword Killer''s expectations. Since the swords had collided together, whoever retracted first would definitely lose. Helpless, the only thing the Blacksword Killer could do was to continue to insert more Life Power into its sword to defend itself against Lin Huang. The battle was then turned into a massive collision of Life Power which drained the both of them. Within seconds, Lin Huang almost emptied five Life Wheels of Life Power. He used one Life Power Refill Card immediately and soon, his ten Life Wheels were full again. Of course, the Blacksword Killer did not have such a card, so its Life Power was coming to an end. The greenish-black glow that mashed with the golden glow started to weaken, and soon, it was almost overpowered by the latter. Realizing that it was on the losing end, the Blacksword Killer panicked and backed off immediately. However, it was too late as its remaining greenish-black force faded under the golden glow. Although it acted fast by retreating, it was still not as swift as the expansion of the golden glow. The Blacksword Killer''s entire body was engulfed by the bright golden glow "Did I win?" Lin Huang clearly saw that the Blacksword Killer did not escape from the coverage of golden glow. However, there was no notification from Xiao Hei. 467 Mission Card: Activated Again… Lin Huang found it odd that there was no notification coming from Xiao Hei. "Since the murky green force is fading, the Life Power of the Blacksword Killer should be drained soon, and its cloak''s defense must be weak. My sword can kill a gold flame-level. Since it''s defense is almost zero now, theoretically, it should be dead in an instant" He could not understand what exactly was happening. He had seen in the battle video clips that as long as one could break the Blacksword Killer''s defense, one would be able to harm it. He had also seen in one of the video clips that after the Blacksword Killer''s Life Power was drained, it was later killed. In the video clip, the kill was successful as the Blacksword Killer''s Life Power was drained without any exceptions. However, Lin Huang was encountering something odd. Since the Blacksword Killer''s Life Power was drained, he should be able to kill it. He could not see what exactly happened in the bright golden glow. As soon as the golden glow faded, he could finally see where the Blacksword Killer was standing. It was no longer there. Instead, there was an oval, greenish-black cocoon. The cocoon that was almost three meters tall floated less than 20 centimeters from the ground. There were tiny holes similar to coddle holes all over its surface. It was absorbing the remaining golden Life Power. Trypophobic people would have goosebumps if they were to see this. "What the hell is this?" Lin Huang was puzzled as he had never seen the monster in this form in any of those video clips that he had watched. If the cocoon did not look exactly the same as what he saw in the information section, he would have thought that he had encountered a fake Blacksword Killer. Just when he was going to ask Xiao Hei what was happening, a notification popped up. "Mission Card has been activated due to unique circumstance. "Details of Mission: Your target Blacksword Killer is encountering incomplete evolution, and it will soon be a quadruple mutated Regal Sword Killer (Incomplete). Please kill the Regal Sword Killer (Incomplete) as soon as possible. "Mission Time Limit: 24 hours "Mission Reward: Regal Sword Killer (Incomplete) Card (Pseudo Mythical-level) "You will be punished if you failed to accomplish mission within given time. Three of your legendary-level Monster Cards will be removed randomly! "Remarks: This mission terminates when your Life Fire monster dies, so there''s no restriction in the killing. As soon as the kill is completed, the system will select the tinder for you. You can use all of your summoning cards of holy fire-level as long as they''re not of immortal-level. "Mission announcement stops here. You may read the details on the back of the card." "A Mission Card again" It was nothing good whenever a Mission Card appeared automatically. In some cases, Lin Huang sometimes had to risk his life to complete the mission. He did not expect to encounter this when he was just hunting down a Life Fire monster. The triple mutated monster was now evolving into an incomplete quadruple mutated monster out of nowhere. Nevertheless, he was excited that he would be able to get a pseudo mythical-level card as soon as he killed this monster! However, Lin Huang knew very well that the fight would be a tough one since it had taken him so much effort to finally kill the triple mutated Blacksword Killer. Now that it was evolving into a quadruple mutated monster, though incomplete, its ability would be much more powerful than before. He definitely could not defeat the monster on his own, but fortunately, the terms of the Mission Card allowed him to ask for help. Without hesitation, Lin Huang summoned three of his fiends as they were the most powerful ones. They had leveled up from blue to purple flame-level when Lin Huang arrived at complete gold-level. He then summoned Lancelot the Ruthless Sword Master. Although he was only a crimson flame-level, he had nine sword slaves with him. Summoning Lancelot was the equivalent to summoning ten monsters at once. Lastly, Lin Huang summoned Kylie who was the fastest. He did not pick Tyrant as Lin Huang did not have confidence in Tyrant''s defensive abilities. They were fighting a quadruple mutated monster, after all. It would be too much of a waste if Tyrant could not keep it up and ended up being killed. As Lin Huang summoned his five summoning monsters, he noticed the greenish-black cocoon that was not far away. "That''s a quadruple mutated monster inside?" Lancelot turned around and asked Lin Huang as he sensed the terrifying aura that came out of the cocoon. "It''s an incomplete quadruple mutated monster," Lin Huang corrected him. The five summoning monsters soon looked serious. "Let''s see if we can break the cocoon together," Lin Huang suggested. "It''s redundant. There''s no way to break such an evolution unless you''re a god." It was Kylie who spoke this time. Hearing the certainty in Kylie''s voice and seeing the rest of his monsters look like they knew it was a fact, Lin Huang gave up on that thought. Among the six of them, Lin Huang was the most relaxed one while the five summoning monsters looked grave. The remaining golden Life Power in the air was absorbed by the greenish-black cocoon. Just when Lin Huang thought when the Regal Sword Killer would break free from the cocoon, a deft shadow came out of it and spread around in a circle. Lin Huang saw that all the areas that the shadow touched turned black, causing all the trees, flowers and bushes around it to wilt immediately. The shadow soon headed towards Lin Huang and the rest. "Kylie!" Lin Huang shouted. Kylie grabbed Lin Huang and flew into the air immediately while the remaining four summoning monsters rose up as well. The six of them watched the shadow engulfing the entire green island. All the areas the shadow touched turned charcoal black. It looked like the island had gone through an unforgiving forest fire, and everything was burnt black. The monsters that were hiding in their lairs and did not manage to escape the island turned into skeletons. "What''s happening?" Although Lin Huang had seen many things in his lifetime, he was shocked to see what was happening. "It''s taking life away as this evolution isn''t a normal mutation whereby it requires major energy support," Kylie explained. Lin Huang looked at the island below and frowned. The shadow was expanding, and it did not look like it was going to stop anytime soon. Within minutes, the entire 300 kilometers of Elam Island was covered in the shadow. The rich green on the island was now all dead. However, the Regal Sword Killer did not seem like it was done; the shadow kept expanding towards the ocean outside of the island. Elam Island was surrounded by 50 to 60 kilometers of sea, and there were other islands around it. The waters turned foul as soon as the shadow engulfed it, but it did not stop. Soon, it passed the waters and covering the other islands around. The birds on the other islands started fleeing while the other monsters turned into skeletons just like the unfortunate monsters on Elam Island. The shadow finally stopped when it expanded around 300 kilometers away and faded into nothingness. Meanwhile, the surface of the greenish-black cocoon started to become more and more radiant 468 Killed With a Swing of the Sword The entire Elam Island and the surroundings up to hundreds of kilometers away were stripped into dead land within minutes. The greenish-black cocoon that was dull was now vibrant since it had absorbed the life from the island. Although it was still the same murky green, it now gave out a mysterious vibe. All the plants were burnt black, and the once dark, dense jungle was now exposed to the scorching sunlight. Under the sun, the cocoon reflected a light glow that made it looked like it was covered in a thin greenish-black mist. As Lin Huang observed the changes in the cocoon, he was calculating the likelihood of winning this fight. "This Blacksword Killer had the ability of gold flame-level when it was triple mutated. Now that it''s quadruple mutated, although incomplete, its ability must be the standard of an immortal-level. It could even be a level more powerful than that, which is even stronger than my fiends Moreover, its life form might change as well. Its original skills would be more robust, and it might even have more skills, which renders all the techniques that I picked up in the video clips to be useless now. "All three of the fiends are now purple flame-level, and they''re all double mutated. Their abilities might be able to reach immortal-level, but they''ll be slightly weaker. I''m worried about Lancelot and Kylie as both of them are just crimson flame-level. Even if they give their all, they''ll just be slightly more powerful than a normal purple flame-level, and they won''t reach gold flame-level. Of course, if Lancelot was to use his Absolute Kill, he should be able to kill a gold flame-level, but he can do nothing to an immortal-level. My abilities are restricted. I''m basically a piece of trash when facing an immortal-level opponent." Lin Huang realized that he would not be able to join the battle and all he could do was watch. Time passed by. The cocoon below them was becoming more and more vibrant as it absorbed all the life from the things around it. Soon, it exuded a more and more terrifying aura. As the greenish-black mist surrounding the cocoon reached the peak of its thickness, it started shrinking into the cocoon vigorously. The color on the cocoon''s surface became dull immediately. In less than a minute, the greenish-black cocoon returned to its initial dullness, but its aura was growing. Lin Huang and his five summoning monsters stared deadly at the cocoon. Their instincts told them that the thing in the cocoon was breaking free soon. The aura of the monster in the cocoon climaxed, and Lin Huang could feel that its aura was invincible. "The aura It must be an immortal-level!" Lin Huang was convinced about his speculation. A while later, the aura in the cocoon became calm, and soon it was all silent. Just when Lin Huang was figuring out what was happening, a cracking sound broke the air. An inky black sword pierced through the cocoon. Later on, a lightning-shaped crack appeared from where the tip of the sword was all the way around the entire cocoon. Within seconds, there were cracks all over the greenish-black cocoon. As the sword continued to pierce through, the cocoon was like a shattered glass cover that completely collapsed. Greenish-black pieces were floating in the air and soon disappeared. All of them focused on the monster that had just broken out of the cocoon. The Blacksword Killer''s cloak was now transformed into a greenish-black armor. Its sword was now completely black. There was no hat on its head anymore. Instead, there was a thick, black braid. The biggest transformation was its body. It had initially been more than two meters tall, but it was now 1.8 meters tall and seemed leaner now. Its green eye that occupied half of its face was now a bloody red. There were black patterns swirling in its iris. It did not have ears or a nose. Its mouth that had been sewn shut was now a regular mouth and its lips were bloody red. "So, you''re an Imperial Censor" The Regal Sword Killer looked at Lin Huang with its bloody eye from far away. Its bloody lips were spread slightly opened, and its tone was terrifying. "I wouldn''t have completed my quadruple mutation after killing the last dragon blood, but you''ve ruined it. Your existence has destroyed all my effort of hundreds of years. Now, I''m just an incomplete monster. Are youready to die?!" Lin Huang''s body shook as he felt the terrifying vibe from the monster. As soon as the Regal Sword Killer said that, it disappeared from where it was standing. It suddenly appeared before Lin Huang and swung its black sword towards his waist. Lin Huang was stunned to see what was happening. He could not catch up with what the monster was doing, but all he could feel was an intense sense of danger. A black shield flashed in front as someone stood before him. It was Lancelot who had reacted first. Lin Huang backed off immediately as soon as he realized what was happening. However, Lancelot''s Dark Shield broke immediately while the black sword pierced through the shield horizontally after the feeble block. Lancelot was sliced into half at his waist, and blood splashed everywhere. "Lancelot!" Lin Huang had never thought that any of his Monster Cards would be destroyed during this mission. Even though they were facing an incomplete quadruple mutated monster, the fact that Lancelot had been sliced into half happened right before his eyes. Soon, Xiao Hei''s notification popped up. "Your epic-level Monster Card, the Ruthless Sword Master, is dead! Would you like to use Resurrect from the sword servant?" "Yes!" Lin Huang was stunned for a moment before replying. "Activating Resurrect by using rare-level Monster Card, the Greatsword Fiend, to revive Monster Card, the Ruthless Sword Master. Consuming the Greatsword Fiend (sword servant) x1. Are you sure you want to activate Resurrect?" "Yes!" Lin Huang replied without thinking twice. "Monster Card, the Greatsword Fiend (sword servant), has been consumed. Monster Card, the Ruthless Sword Master, has been revived." As the notification popped up, the Greatsword Fiend card disappeared from the sword servants card. The black and white Ruthless Sword Master card was now revived and returned to its normal color. Lin Huang was relieved to see that Ruthless Sword Master''s card was restored. The communication between him and Xiao Hei happened within seconds. As Lancelot was sliced into half, its body disappeared while the Regal Sword Killer dashed towards Lin Huang without hesitation. Suddenly, a shadow tugged on the Regal Sword Killer''s left leg. It was the Witch! The other two fiends helped as soon as the Witch stepped in. Meanwhile, Kylie grabbed Lin Huang and brought him out of the battlefield. "This battle is out of our league. You''ll distract them if you stay on the battlefield," Kylie stated. 469 Flawless Card The Regal Sword Killer performed much better than Lin Huang expected. It had the ability of an immortal-level, so it would be even more powerful if it gave it everything it had. As Lancelot''s Dark Shield was broken in one hit, Lin Huang realized that the defense that he had been proud of was like a piece of paper to the Regal Sword Killer. If Lancelot had not appeared before him, Lin Huang would have been dead. Given the Regal Sword Killer''s powerful ability, Lancelot and Kylie, who were both on crimson flame-level, were disqualified from the fight. The same applied to Lin Huang whereby all he could do was to watch the three fiends fighting the Regal Sword Killer. The three fiends had responsibilities of their own on the burnt ground. The Witch contained the Regal Sword Killer with all sorts of skills, and the Malachian Fiend was responsible for defending while the Inferior Imp attacked it. Although it was three against one, and the three fiends were three ranks higher than the Regal Sword Killer, they were not on the winning side. The Witch had limited abilities to contain the Regal Sword Killer with her skills as it always managed to break free within seconds. All the controlling skills could only contain it for one to two seconds. The more the Witch tried to restrain it, the shorter the duration of containing it became. It seemed like the Regal Sword Killer was becoming immune to the Witch''s skills. Meanwhile, the Malachian Fiend''s defense was affected as the Regal Sword Killer had not managed to break its defense layer yet. However, the attacks from the Inferior Imp seemed to be ineffective. Even with the Witch''s restraint, the Regal Sword Killer''s armor managed to block all the attacks despite being hit face on. Lin Huang frowned as he summoned the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Although the crimson flame-level Sanguine Skeleton Spirit could not join the battle, all Lin Huang needed from him was to tie it up with its Punishment Chains. Even if the chains only managed to seal the Regal Sword Killer''s Life Power for a second, the Inferior Imp should be able to break its defense within that short period of time. Sensing the appearance of the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, the Regal Sword Killer looked at Lin Huang''s direction with mockery. It did not seem to mind the appearance of one more monster. "Work with the Witch''s controlling skill to seal its Life Power with your Punishment Chains," Lin Huang communicated with the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit in his mind. The Sanguine Skeleton Spirit nodded lightly to Lin Huang. He did not attack immediately as he was waiting for the perfect time. Around two to three minutes later, the Regal Sword Killer experienced delays in its movement as it had been attacked by the Witch''s numbing venom. Seizing the opportunity, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit flicked his nine flaming Punishment Chains towards the Regal Sword Killer. Soon, one of them got hold of one of its arms while the remaining eight chains were tying its body down. Meanwhile, the Inferior Imp seized the opportunity as well by mauling the Regal Sword Killer''s head. As soon as the Inferior Imp reached the Regal Sword Killer''s head, a black glow flashed in the air. The Inferior Imp''s right arm was sliced off, and black blood was oozing out. As its attack was successful, the Regal Sword Killer dashed towards the Inferior Imp without thinking twice. Suddenly, the Malachian Fiend came between the both of them and blocked the Regal Sword Killer''s second hit with its fist. Since its second hit failed, the Regal Sword Killer that was tied by the Punishment Chains turned around and looked at Lin Huang with a mocking smirk while showing its sharp teeth. "Human kid, don''t you know that god''s blood monsters are immune to most of the restraining abilities?" The Punishment Chains broke as soon the Regal Sword Killer said that. They disappeared soon after they fell to the ground. "I''m sorry. It seems like I''m no help here," the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit said helplessly to Lin Huang. Although the Inferior Imp''s broken arm was restoring at the rate that could be seen with the naked eye, the restoration itself drained its Life Power. The three fiends were stuck in the same situation as the Regal Sword Killer''s sword. As Lin Huang recalled the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, he looked at the Regal Sword Killer below as he frowned. "I must win this battle, or else I''ll lose three legendary-level cards!" Lin Huang could not accept such failure as four of his legendary-level Monster Cards were sealed at the moment including the Supreme Overlord, Bai, Charcoal, and Bloody. Besides the Supreme Overlord, the remaining three leveled up following his own upgrade. He did not want to lose any of them, especially Bai, which was Lin Huang''s first ever summoning monster. He definitely could not afford to lose Bai. "The only way is to use the Provisional Transformation Card to upgrade my combat level later," Lin Huang looked at the three fiends as he thought to himself. The three of them were on purple flame-level, which was perfect for him to use the card. He looked at them for a while and locked his target on the Inferior Imp. "It seems like I''ll have to transform myself into the Inferior Imp." The reason why he had chosen the Inferior Imp was that the Witch was not suitable for him to perform a close-distance attack since her physique was weak. Meanwhile, the Malachian Fiend was too plump whereby it would not be suitable for it to perform fast sword skills. On the contrary, the Inferior Imp was the perfect choice as it had sufficient strength and defensive abilities. Although it was bulky, it was agile. Lin Huang did not mind what kind of new ability the card could bring him as all he needed was to perform the sword skills that he already had after leveling up his combat level. "Too bad the pseudo Life Wheels that the Life Power Storage Card can create can''t be transferred to my new body. I can''t splurge my Life Power like I usually do," Lin Huang mumbled to himself as he frowned. Just when he was ready to take out the Provisional Transformation Card, Xiao Hei''s notification came into his ear. "You could use the Flawless Card on yourself to make the pseudo Life Wheels real, so even if you transformed yourself, you''ll have ten Life Wheels like you usually do. Besides that, the Flawless Card will carry out a full restoration on your entire body." "The Flawless Card?" Lin Huang had almost forgotten that he had a few of those cards. He still remembered that the card was used to restore his body, but he could not recall its exact function. "What does the card do again?" He asked immediately. "The Flawless Card is used to restore the user''s body, remove all pain in the body, including but not restricted to Life Power columns, Life Wheel, and blood issues. Just like the broken Life Wheel that you used to have, you can use this card to restore it." After Xiao Hei''s reminder, Lin Huang finally recalled that he received the Flawless Card as his last reward after activating his first Mission Card. However, before he could even do anything, Xue Luo had activated the card instead. "I''ve used one Flawless Card once on Bai a year ago so that his blood wouldn''t be affected by the septic divisor, and I haven''t used the card since then. I should''ve accumulated three of them throughout the year, am I right?" Lin Huang remembered the time when Xiao Hei had explained it to him when he obtained the card. "That''s right." "Alright then, activate one Flawless Card!" Lin Huang instructed without thinking twice. "Are you sure that you want to activate Flawless Card?" "Yes!" "Consuming Flawless Card x1, please select your target." "The target will be me." Lin Huang looked at his own body. Soon, a golden glow came out of nowhere and rushed into his body. It turned into countless tiny, golden dust and ran through his entire body. He could feel warmth in his bones like the warm sun was shining on him in the winter. Within seconds, the golden glow had flowed all over his body and towards his Life Wheels. The pseudo Life Wheels seemed like nothing was happening to them, but Lin Huang could feel an odd sensation spreading out of his body. It felt like the nine pseudo Life Wheels that were like lifeless tools had just come alive. Just like the sword that had become a part of his life, these nine pseudo Life Wheels became a part of his body. They felt no different from his real Life Wheel. Lin Huang even found out that he could activate his ten Life Wheels to absorb and release Life Power at the same time. The speed of Life Power restoration and release were ten times faster than before. He could only use his real Life Wheel to do this. No matter whether absorbing or releasing Life Power, he had to perform that using his real Life Wheel. Meanwhile, his remaining nine Life Wheels were used as Life Power storage tools and could neither absorb nor release Life Power. Lin Huang felt his abilities increase invisibly after activating the Flawless Card. As the golden glow disappeared, he then snapped out of the zone. He could feel clearly that his abilities were upgraded. He then looked at the Regal Sword Killer with a golden card in his hand. "It''s time for the battle to end now!" 470 Please Be My Whetstone On Elam Island, the fight between the Regal Sword Killer and the three fiends did not progress. As the Regal Sword Killer adapted to the trio''s rhythm and its immunity towards the Witch''s containment grew, it was a piece of cake for the Regal Sword Killer to handle the three of them. The battle became stagnant. However, Lin Huang and Kylie, who were watching from the top, knew that the longer they took, the higher the chances for the three fiends to lose. After transforming his Life Wheels with the Flawless Card, Lin Huang took out a Provisional Transformation Card. The golden card was crushed into golden stars in his hand. "The Provisional Transformation Card has been activated. Please select the Monster Card that you would like to transform into." "The Inferior Imp." Lin Huang looked at the Inferior Imp that was fighting below. "You have chosen to transform into Imp (Inferior), confirm?" "Confirmed!" Lin Huang nodded. As Lin Huang said that, the stars were absorbed into his body and he went through an intense transformation. He grew from 1.75 meters to taller than 2.3 meters. His skinny body was now bulky with muscles. Within seconds, his height and body size were like a hunk''s similar to Tyrant. The only differences that told him apart from a human were the gigantic horns on his head and his bloody eyes. The transformation took only a couple of seconds. Instead of his appearance, what Lin Huang cared about was the changes inside of his body. He could feel that his combat level was increasing. He had leveled up from complete gold-level to purple flame-level, which was four ranks higher. Such an upgrade gave him an illusion that he was now invincible. He obviously felt that his Life Power had changed as well since his combat level was upgraded from gold-level to holy fire-level. The difference was like mist and flood. He even suspected that the holy fire-level monster that he killed might be fake as the difference in the Life Power was immense. The Life Power that came from the Life Fire could not be compared with that of a normal Life Wheel''s. Not only Life Power, the power that the body contained was shocking to him. As compared to his original body, it was like comparing an ant and an elephant. "Such a powerful body! The abilities that most of the monsters come with are so much better than humans''!" Lin Huang exclaimed as he familiarized himself with the transformed body. Sensing an additional aura in the air, the Regal Sword Killer looked up and realized that Lin Huang was no longer there. Instead, he was replaced by another fiend. It only observed but it did not care as it thought Lin Huang had escaped. He did not mind the additional fiend as it knew the ability of the Inferior Imp which made no difference to it if there were more of them. After familiarizing with his transformed body, he then took out the supreme sword relic Zenonia that Liu Ming had given him. As he did not have sufficient Life Power, he could never use the sword relic despite having it with him all along. Now that he was on the purple flame level, he could finally activate this battle sword with his Life Power. He could not wait to see how powerful this sword was. As he inserted Life Power into the half-black and half-silver sword, black Life Power started spreading and the level-3 sword realm radiated out of the sword. Almost as soon as Lin Huang held the sword, the Regal Sword Killer looked up at him. As a monster that was training swords, it could sense the sword realm that was radiating out of the sword. It felt a sense of threat. Its bloody red eye held fear in it as it looked at Lin Huang nervously. "Kylie, take a rest." Lin Huang waved his hand and recalled Kylie into card form. Since Kylie was grabbing him mid-air, he fell to the ground as he had yet to master his flying ability. Bang! Within seconds, he fell to the ground from hundreds of meters above. A three-meter diameter hole was created on the burnt ground. Black dust flew up around the hole and engulfed his body. Since the life of the island had been absorbed earlier, all of the underground microorganisms had died, which caused the ground to be dry and easy to break. Lin Huang''s fall grabbed the Regal Sword Killer''s attention. It was distracted and kept looking at him. Ever since the sword realm was accidentally released, the Regal Sword Killer knew that the monster that came out of nowhere was the most powerful enemy that it had ever encountered. Among the dust, Lin Huang climbed out of it with his large body size and the sword that was now 1.5 meters long. As he familiarized with his body and the battle sword that he had just had the chance to use, his footprints marked the burnt land while his aura rose. "Aren''t you a Regal Sword Killer? Let''s see how many hits you can take from me!" Lin Huang was smiling with confidence, and his voice was as loud as the thunder that shook the entire Elam Island. The Regal Sword Killer looked seriously at Lin Huang''s direction. It had yet to recognize that the fiend that was coming to it was actually Lin Huang. It was puzzled at how this fiend that had the same combat level could be so much more powerful than the three fiends that were fighting it. The aura alone shook him. Lin Huang had no answer to the question that the Regal Sword Killer had because he himself had no idea how powerful the purple flame-level fiend that he transformed into would be. When he was on complete gold-level, he could cross one level to kill a purple flame-level. Now that his combat level was four ranks higher, his ability must be extremely more powerful than before. All he could feel was the endless strength that he had from the transformed body. He was even sure that his ability now was much more powerful than the gold flame-level executive, Zhu Nian, from the Hunter Association that he had seen last time. "I would like to know how powerful I am right now, so please be my whetstone today, Regal Sword Killer!" Lin Huang then ran towards the Regal Sword Killer as he said that. The ground cracked and gravel exploded everywhere. Soon, he disappeared from where he was and what was left was a 10-meter hole and a circle of a white wave that was shooting out gravel everywhere. 471 I’ve Only Used 30% of What I Go Lin Huang only took a step out, and there he was in the fight with the Regal Sword Killer and the three fiends that were thousands of meters away. The Regal Sword Killer''s pupil shrunk as it sensed an intense aura that was targeting it. A strong sense of doom came to it, so it had to break free from the three fiends and back off from where it was. The attack that the three fiends rained on the Regal Sword Killer''s greenish-black armor did not work at all. However, as soon as it backed off, a shadow appeared. The Regal Sword Killer could not even see what the shadow was doing. It was clearly Lin Huang who had transformed into a fiend. He held his supreme sword relic in his right hand that was completely covered with a layer of black Life Power like it was painted black. There was a layer of black mist surrounding the surface of the sword, exuding a death threat. Even the Regal Sword Killer was threatened by his terrifying aura. As Lin Huang got less than ten meters from the Regal Sword Killer, he smirked and caught up to it by stomping on the ground. They were now less than two meters away from each other. The Regal Sword Killer swung its sword immediately in the attempt of scaring him away instead of killing him. The nearer they were together, the more intense danger the Regal Sword Killer could feel. However, Lin Huang was even faster than the Regal Sword Killer. He brandished his sword horizontally with his right hand. The space where the sword swung became a vacuum as the air around was pressured to its peak, creating a circle of a white wave that was sent together with the sword towards the Regal Sword Killer. It was as quick as a black lightning bolt that headed towards the Regal Sword Killer''s black sword together with the white wave. As the two swords collided, black Life Power exploded from Lin Huang''s sword like a volcano eruption. Meanwhile, greenish-black Life Power shot out from the Regal Sword Killer''s black sword. However, the difference between the both of them was like a stream and a flood. The greenish-black force was suppressed by Lin Huang''s black Life Power immediately. Soon, the Regal Sword Killer was engulfed by the black Life Power like a flood. The black shockwave from the black sword shot out and covered the Regal Sword Killer completely. A drain thousands of meters long and two meters wide was created on the burnt land. It was not created by Lin Huang''s attack but from the impact of the shockwave. However, Lin Huang did not put his sword away as it was not his all. He knew that the Regal Sword Killer was not dead from his attack. There was no notification from Xiao Hei as well. "Let me handle this. You guys just make sure that it doesn''t run away." Lin Huang turned around and looked at the three fiends. Although he was transformed, the three fiends knew very well that he was their master, Lin Huang. They were shocked by the attack that he performed earlier. Although Lin Huang was on the same combat strength with the three fiends, his ability was much more powerful than theirs. They could not harm the Regal Sword Killer at all despite attacking it for a while, but Lin Huang''s single sword swing managed to suppress it. Nobody knew if it was dead or not. After instructing them, Lin Huang activated his Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps. He dashed more than ten kilometers away after merely two to three steps. Although the Regal Sword Killer''s aura was weaker now, Lin Huang could clearly sense where exactly it was as he had targeted its aura since the beginning. The shockwave had shot the Regal Sword Killer almost 10 kilometers away; even Lin Huang did not expect to see this. The Regal Sword Killer looked clumsy when Lin Huang found him. There were cracks like spider webs all over its greenish-black armor, and it was recovering itself slowly. Although the sword in its hand was in good condition, it was obvious that its right hand was trembling from the attack earlier. "Your sword is pretty solid." Lin Huang noticed that there were no cracks in its sword at all. The Regal Sword Killer looked terrified by Lin Huang''s sudden appearance before it. It then looked at the three fiends following behind, and it knew that it could not escape anymore. "Since you''re so powerful, why are you sacrificing your life to the human? That timid human kid has run away." The Regal Sword Killer looked at Lin Huang and attempted to talk him out of this. "The timid human kid that you''re talking about is me. I didn''t run away. I transformed into this," Lin Huang raised his eyebrow and said to Regal Sword Killer. "Are you satisfied with the answer?" Clearly, the Regal Sword Killer did not expect to hear that, so it was in shock. Perhaps, it was puzzled how a human had managed to transform himself into a complete double mutated fiend that it could not distinguish. "You''re the first one to know the secret that I can transform into a monster. So, please bring this secret together with you to hell." Lin Huang did not want to talk to it anymore as he swung his sword again. The black sword glow shot out like a crescent moon and headed towards the Regal Sword Killer as swiftly as lightning. Red glow shot out of the Regal Sword Killer''s bloody eyes like a fuse lighting up its body which was also soon turned red. Its greenish-black armor became crimson red like charcoals on fire. The cracks on its armor disappeared, and there were bright red patterns on its black sword like lava. It held its sword with both of its hands and sliced the crescent moon black sword glow into halves. The glow disappeared as it was destroyed. "Do you really think that I couldn''t sense your aura? I knew it was you, the human kid. Since you transformed yourself, I just needed to buy myself something to complete my transformation." The Regal Sword Killer glared deadly at Lin Huang and grinned. "You''re still a kid. Your ability is just like that even though you''ve leveled up to purple flame-level. Don''t worry. I''ll kill you first and explore more secrets about you. I can feel that you have what I need to complete my quadruple mutation." "Really? I forgot to tell you something as well. The attack earlier was only 30% of what I''ve got as I have yet to adapt to my new body. Also, it was just a casual attack. I haven''t even used my sword skills," Lin Huang smirked and deepened his voice. "I shall let you in on my other secret. You''re right. I really do have what you need to complete your quadruple mutation." 472 Killed in Three Swings of the Sword! "I really do have what you need to complete your quadruple mutation," Lin Huang stomped and leaped with his sword like a flash of lightning as he taunted. This time, he gave his all. As he activated his Thunder Sting and Thunder Steps, his sword turned into a black lightning bolt in the air and headed towards the Regal Sword Killer. Ripples were created in the air as he wielded his sword so quickly like an osier swung through the water surface. The Regal Sword Killer only saw a black glow before it realized anything. It did not have the time to respond while it defended with its sword by instinct. The force that was like a black lightning bolt collided on its black sword while Lin Huang proceeded to swing his sword at it. The only thing the Regal Sword Killer felt was an invincible force that pressed against it like a gargantuan mountain. Before it even fell, the thousands of black electrical arcs that came from the Thunder Stings radiated from the sword and covered the Regal Sword Killer''s entire body. After a loud groan, its bloody red body was shot out like a cannon. Thousands of meters trees that were burnt disintegrated into powder as it was shot out, black dust filling the place. The Regal Sword Killer''s bloody red body fell clumsily on the ground thousands of meters away while the black electrical arcs were still happily dancing on it. The electrical arcs were numbing its body and at the same time, creating intense heat on its armor. The heat could do more harm than spiritual lava could, which was the reason why it groaned. Lin Huang stomped and appeared before the Regal Sword Killer again. He looked at the Regal Sword Killer that could not get up due to the numbing effect of the black electrical arcs. "It seems like you''re slightly more powerful after transforming yourself. You can defend yourself better now. But that''s good. I can test my ability with you and see how powerful I am after the transformation." With that, he swung his sword again. This time, he was not performing Thunder Stings but form36 from the Great Sword Scriptures. It was a killing style that was explosive, and it was also the last and most powerful form of the Great Sword Scriptures. As he swung his sword horizontally, black Life Power dashed towards the Regal Sword Killer with a serious threat. Although its body was numb, the Regal Sword Killer did not give up just yet. It decided to bite the bullet and blocked its sword in front of its chest as it saw the black sword glow coming towards it. As the swords collided, Regal Sword Killer released all its bloody Life Power in an attempt to defend from the attack. However, its red Life Power was like a flame that was fighting to survive in the dark when fighting the black Life Power. It only lasted for seconds before it was completely burnt out. The Regal Sword Killer was once again engulfed by the black Life Power. The shockwave created from the black Life Power shot it tens of thousands of meters away. Lin Huang looked far into the distance as the shockwave faded away, Regal Sword Killer was tens of thousands of meters away. It was on the ground and was attempting to get up, but it seemed to be difficult for it. Lin Huang leaped and appeared less than ten meters before it. The attack just now had destroyed all the will that the Regal Sword Killer had been left with. To live, it had drained its Life Power to defend the attack. Its bloody armor was destroyed, and it looked even clumsier than it was when it was in its greenish-black armor. Seeing that it was in pain, Lin Huang did not mock it but instead, he complimented it, "You''re an opponent who deserves my respect, but I must kill you today so that I can get your tinder to level-up to holy fire-level." "I''ve never thought I would be killed by a human kid who isn''t even holy fire-level," the Regal Sword Killer smirked in mockery. However, it was not ridiculing Lin Huang but itself. "Could you promise me something?" The Regal Sword Killer stopped its smirk and looked up at Lin Huang. "Do tell." Lin Huang nodded after a moment of silence. He knew that there was no way the Regal Sword Killer could turn the tables around. "I hope you''ll take good care of my body after I die and bury me at the edge of the cliff that you found me on. I hope to see the thing that I''ve been waiting for since half a year ago after I died," the Regal Sword Killer requested. "Sure," Lin Huang agreed without thinking twice. Lin Huang respected its dying wish. After all, he was taking the Regal Sword Killer''s life with no hatred. "Kill me now!" The Regal Sword Killer did not say anything else as it saw Lin Huang''s agreement. It straightened its back with the help of its sword in hand and closed its bloody eye slowly. "This is called Worldly Purification. It''s my most powerful form. It means purifying all the sins of the world," Lin Huang said while the tip of its sword burned in a black flame from his Life Power. Lin Huang did not hold back this time as he inserted three Life Wheels of Life Power into his sword. The black flame on the sword tip became even more intense. The usual bright golden glow was now shiny black. It was as black as piano keys, and it could almost reflect a person''s face. As the black flame was burning at its peak, Lin Huang activated his Thunder Steps and Seraphic Speed, then swung his sword. Within seconds, he cut open the Regal Sword Killer''s hard bloody armor and pierced into its chest without any obstacles. The sword pierced through its heart and protruded from its back. The heat from the sword tip remained in its body like a volcano that was going to erupt. When Lin Huang balanced to his feet, he was thousands of meters away from the Regal Sword Killer. Its body was cracking, and a flaming black force was coming out of the cracks. Even its mouth and eye were shooting out the black flames from the Worldly Purification. Before it could even fall to the ground, notifications came from Xiao Hei. "Congratulations, you''ve killed the Regal Sword Killer (Incomplete), mission accomplished! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained pseudo mythical-level card Regal Sword Killer (Incomplete) x1 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained quadruple tinder card (pseudo)!" 473 Leveled-up to White Flame-Level! Right after the Regal Sword Killer had been killed, there was no need for Lin Huang to extract the tinder since the system had automatically done it for him. Based on the normal procedure of extracting tinder, Lin Huang''s way of killing was against the rules. Not only did he summon a monster of a higher level than the Regal Sword Killer, his combat strength after the transformation was stronger than the Regal Sword Killer''s as well. According to the rules in this world, under normal circumstances, the Regal Sword Killer''s tinder would disappear after its death. However, Xiao Hei stopped that from happening as he had extracted the tinder by force before the Regal Sword Killer died, making it into a card. "Would you like to integrate the tinder?" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without a moment of hesitation. "Integrating tinder." Lin Huang then transformed himself back into the normal state, feeling weak. He felt uncomfortable upon returning normal due to the sudden rise in his combat strength. As he returned to his normal human form, the Tinder Card was transformed into dots of greenish-black with a starry glow. Lin Huang was constantly observing the changes that occurred in his body. The starry glow in his body then transformed into clumps of greenish-black light and dispersed, infusing into ten of his Life Wheels. They were quickly cooled, forming a solid, black object that looked like a greenish-black stone of the size of a pinky finger. It was the tinder of the Regal Sword Killer but was separated into ten parts due to the Life Wheels in Lin Huang''s body. As the tinder entered his Life Wheels, it began absorbing the Life Power contained in Lin Huang''s Life Wheels. Lin Huang immediately took out the Life Power storage card, inserting a large amount of Life Power into his body as he noticed that. He stopped when the Life Power in the third storage card had been drained. Clumps of white glow emptied the Life Power in Lin Huang''s Life Wheels in just a few minutes. Aside from that, the remaining Life Power in his body had been absorbed as well. Until no more Life Power was left in Lin Huang''s body, the thumb-sized, greenish-black tinder began to explode and crack, giving off white flames. The white flame burned stronger as it became smaller. Eventually, it completely turned into a clump of white Life Fire and was placed at the center of the Life Wheel. As soon as the white Life Fire was created, it started releasing Life Power at an insane rate to restore Lin Huang''s Life Wheel and his body that had been drained. After his Life Wheel was filled, new white Life Power started flowing through Lin Huang''s entire body and his body was rapidly strengthened. He could even sense that each of the cells in his body was evolving towards becoming supercells. He could feel that he was becoming stronger and stronger every second, every minute. Lin Huang spent more time on the evolution as compared to Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. It took him exactly three hours until the changes occurring in his body slowed down. However, Lin Huang knew that it was not going to end yet. The Life Power created by tinder would continue modifying his body. The entire process would last for more than a month before it could be completely stopped. Within one month, his ability would constantly improve. The entire process was known as Leaving the Ordinary. Anyone who first leveled up to white flame-level would have to go through one month period of Leaving the Ordinary. After one month had passed, the evolution of his body would then remain stagnant, and the tinder within his Life Wheel would be completely stabilized. As soon as tinder was ignited, Lin Huang felt that his ability was at least ten times stronger. Be it the transformation of his body, or the Life Power in his body that had been trained; they were incomparable to the earlier ones. The improvement in his ability was no longer the same as what he had experienced during his previous upgrades. He experienced changes from head to toe and even each strand of his hair was different from the past. "No wonder humans are called Transcendents after they have achieved holy fire-level. I can feel that I have strength beyond human strength," Lin Huang sighed emotionally after realizing that. "Xiao Hei, have a look at my Exclusive Card!" A few moments later, Lin Huang said impatiently. "Host: Lin Huang "Gender: Male "Age: 16 "Combat Strength: White Flame-Level "Secret Skills: Superhuman Strength, Seraphic Speed, Substitute, Small Territory, Demon Hand "Sword Skills: Star Dome, Wildfire, Thunder Sting, Great Sword Scripture, Hundred Flowing Blades, Mountain Blade "Gunfighting Technique: Thunderstorm, Sandstorm, Torrent "Body Movement Skill: Thunder Steps, Cloud Steps, Spectral Snowsteps "Minor: Fatal Tactics, Heaven''s Wrath, Omniscient Nature "Monster Skills: Vampire Particles, Advanced Disguise, Immense Strength, Leech Pods, Absolute Defense, Lightning Control, Dark Shield "Summon Authority: Activated (Legendary Level) "Available Number of Summons: 10 "Remarks: Finally managed to start training officially. Lin Huang discovered that there were huge changes in the information on the back of his Character Card. His Character Card had become a book whereby his face was printed on the cover. The second page was a brief description of himself. Flipping to the next page, there were pages of skill trees and sword skills that were described in detail. The legendary-level sword skill, Star Dome, was at the top of the skill tree, branching into Wildfire, Thunder Sting, Great Sword Scripture and the rest of the epic-level sword skills. The third group comprised of the rare-level sword skills. The same went for the skill tree of the gunfighting technique. Advanced gunfighting techniques were at the top of the skill tree, followed by the mid-level techniques and lastly, the beginner level techniques. There were 20 empty columns on the page describing the monster skills and currently, only seven of them were occupied. Lin Huang noticed the improvement in his summoning authority. Not only was the summoning authority of the legendary-level monster card activated, the available number of summons had increased from five to ten. "All the legendary-level cards have finally been unsealed!" Lin Huang was excited as he checked on the state of the monster cards of Charcoal, Bai, Bloody, and the Supreme Overlord. Indeed, the cards had been unsealed whereby the grey, stone-like cards had turned purple. Moreover, the cards displayed that the combat strength of the monsters were all on blue flame-level. Upon confirming the status of four of the legendary-level monster cards, Lin Huang gazed at the Regal Sword Killer monster card which he had just obtained. The Regal Sword Killer card was not sealed. The card was not golden in color. It was a purple card surrounded by a golden edge. The card showed that the combat strength of the Regal Sword Killer was blue flame-level. It was apparent that its combat strength was influenced by Lin Huang''s combat level and was then improved. However, its summoning status was "restricted summoning". Lin Huang tapped open on "restricted summoning" to view more details about it. "Restricted summoning: The monster can merely be summoned once for each level and can be summoned for the second time after you have leveled up." "Remarks: As soon as you have achieved immortal-level, the restriction will be void." "It''s not sealed!" Lin Huang grinned. Even if it could only be used once for each level, he could summon it five times when he was a holy fire-level. 474 One Page of Sword Scripture "The summoning period is only one hour but that''s good enough since it''s not sealed." While Lin Huang was looking at the card of the Regal Sword Killer, Xiao Hei''s voice was heard. "A hidden page is detected in the Regal Sword Killer''s body!" Under normal circumstances, after the tinder was extracted and ignited, it would release a large amount of information to the tinder''s owner. These messages would typically include the memories inherited from the monster that was killed. However, Lin Huang did not obtain the memories inherited. Instead, a few seconds later, a notification from Xiao Hei suddenly arrived. "There is a hidden page?" This was strange news to Lin Huang. "It has been verified that it is a Divine Object. As the Regal Sword Killer died, this page started disappearing, but I managed to capture it. There is a missing part, but the impact of that section isn''t that big. If I''m not mistaken, the memories inherited from the tinder of the Regal Sword Killer wasn''t released because this page of scripture might have absorbed it." "Where''s it?" Lin Huang immediately asked. A dark bronze, palm-sized object gradually came out from the Regal Sword Killer''s body, floating in front of Lin Huang. Lin Huang stared at it for a few moments and black inscriptions flickered on the object. "Can I extract the information from this?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "The level of this object is too high and it isn''t possible to turn it into a card. The information can''t be extracted and I can only oppress it. Insert it into your body and try to communicate with it." As soon as Xiao Hei finished his words, Lin Huang extended his hand and he was able to touch the page of scripture. The next moment, Lin Huang felt dizzy. As he regained his senses, he was no longer on Elam Island but in a deserted land where battle swords were all pierced into the ground. "Xiao Hei!" Lin Huang contacted Xiao Hei through his mind as he wanted to ask what was happening. However, Xiao Hei did not answer him. "It seems like we have lost connection." Lin Huang frowned, looking at the vast wilderness. There was nothing other than the battle swords that emitted a threatening aura. Just when Lin Huang was in doubt, a weird thought ran through his mind. "As long as you manage to look for the sword that belongs to you among the 18,800 of them, the recognition by that single page of sword scripture will be given. You only have one chance to do so. The page of the sword scripture will disappear on its own and I''ll lose a chance as well" Lin Huang did not know why but he could suddenly understand the rules. He immediately sized up the surroundings. He could see that none of the battle swords were similar to each other. The swords were emboldened and he had no idea how much stronger they were than his own supreme sword. Lin Huang was confused. As he was wondering how the sword should be picked out, he felt something peculiar as if he was being drawn by a magnet. Lin Huang then turned back and headed towards the direction if the pull, running for more than half an hour. Eventually, he arrived at a place where the peculiar attraction could be felt the strongest. He stood still, looking at the swords surrounding him. He finally targeted one of them. The undefined attraction was coming from this particular sword. It looked ordinary and the handle of the sword was simply made of wood. There were no traces that it had been carved. The blade had an ordinary silver color and there were no remarkable designs on it at all. It had a normal and a rather unappealing appearance. Its aura was calm and run-of-the-mill unlike the rest of the swords whereby some of them emitted a deadly aura, or were overbearing, or even spiritualized "I don''t care whether it is the right one but I''m going to choose you today!" Despite it not being eye-catching, it somehow looked outstanding to Lin Huang. Even if it could not be used to fight, it could still be used to practice. He then grabbed the handle of the sword, slowly drawing it out of the ground. Right when it was being pulled out of the ground, a golden glow emerged. The battle sword that looked unappealing released a dazzling golden gleam that looked like sunlight and instantly expanded throughout the deserted land. As the golden glow faded, Lin Huang''s vision recovered and he returned to Elam Island. "Are you okay?" Xiao Hei''s voice was heard. "I''m okay." Apparently, Xiao Hei did not know what had happened just now. He felt that he had been in the deserted land for at least half an hour. However, as he returned to reality, not even a second had passed. As soon as Lin Huang finished his sentence, the golden page then turned into a beam of light and flowed into his body through his finger. "It seems like you have been verified. You have saved me some trouble." When the page moved, Xiao Hei wanted to oppress it. Soon, it discovered that the scripture had no bad intentions and it was no longer bothered about it, allowing it to enter Lin Huang''s body. When his consciousness immersed his body, Lin Huang managed to capture the presence of the page rapidly in his body. It floated somewhere near Xiao Hei and the rest of the cards. As Lin Huang contacted it, a large amount of information began gushing into his mind. Lin Huang was startled but soon, he was surprised as most of the contents recorded were about the Sword Dao. It was not the content of the human''s Sword Dao but the monster''s! For a monster that had never gone through any mutations to one that had gone through its third mutation, as long as the combat level was below immortal-level, all the sword type monsters were recorded. The monster''s Sword Dao was all recorded on the golden page. Lin Huang was delighted. He did not obtain just one type of the Sword Dao, but there were more than 10,000 of them! The formation process of the sword skill of each monster was clearly recorded. Lin Huang was like an onlooker standing less than three meters away, witnessing everything that had happened. It was already late at night as he skimmed through it. Lin Huang did not notice that while he was reading the legacy, the sword realm in his body was improving unknowingly. When Lin Huang recovered from his thoughts it was already 10 o''clock at night. He took a glance at the time and realized that it was time to leave. Looking at the Regal Sword Killer''s dead body, Lin Huang decided to follow his last request and carried the carcass. He brought along the three fiends and headed towards the east of the island, somewhere near the edge of the cliff. A few minutes had passed and the four of them arrived near the cliff. Lin Huang strode towards the place where the Regal Sword Killer had been found earlier and instructed the fiends, "One of you, please help me dig a hole here." The fiends exchanged glances with one another. One of them then walked to the front, extending its claws and quickly dug a standard rectangular pit that was three meters long and more than a meter wide. It had a depth of about two to three meters. As the fiend extended its hand again, the Regal Sword Killer''s dead body floated on its own. Even the long sword that it was holding with cracks that were visible on its blade gradually fell into the soil pit. Soon, black sand started filling the large pit and the carcass was buried. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction at the Imperial Imp that had completed the task. "You''re quite familiar with this. I''ll look for you when there''s a need in the future." He then recalled the fiends, gazing at the slope. "You''re a worthy opponent. I''d make an exception this time. I won''t do anything with your dead body. May you rest in peace." After finishing his last sentence, Lin Huang immediately summoned the Black Ink and strode over to it. The howl of the wind resonated through the deathly stillness of Elam Island. There were two moons, one in red and another in purple lighting up the night sky. At midnight, underneath the black soil, a faint golden glow appeared on the Regal Sword Killer''s chest which had completely exploded. If one looked into his body carefully, one would discover an incomplete gold, thumb-sized page. Its shape completely matched the missing part of the sword scripture that Lin Huang had obtained. On the island, a deadly aura was inserted into the incomplete page that was on the Regal Sword Killer''s wound. At the same time, the Regal Sword Killer''s body changed strangely. Up until it was about four o''clock in the morning, the charred land completely disappeared. Flowers and grass began to grow. Before the dawn, when the first beam of sunlight shone on the island, the finger of the Regal Sword Killer''s dead corpse that had been buried moved a little 475 Ability Explosion "Monster Card "Rarity: Mythical (Pseudo) "Name of Monster: Regal Sword Killer (Incomplete) "Type of Monster: Protoss (Beginner) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-Level "Major: Sword Dao "Major Skills: Killer (Demigod''s sword skill), other sword skills (Nine types), Sword Realm (Small), Holy Power "Minor Skills: Enhanced Regeneration, Seraphic Speed, Superhuman Strength "Summon Authority: Restricted Summoning "Card Remarks: Recommended to train with maximum effort!" "Monster Card: Charcoal "Rarity: Legendary "Name of Monster: Undead Evil Dragon "Type of Monster: Dragonkin (Mid-Level) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-Level "Major: True Dragon Dao "Major Skills: Black Dragon Flame, Dragon Power, Dragon Breath, Draconic Secret Skill, Dragon Realm "Minor Skills: Elemental Immunity, Absolute Defense, Enhanced Regeneration, Combat Instinct "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Intensive training is recommended!" "Monster Card: Bai "Rarity: Legendary "Name of Monster: Vampire Monarch "Type of Monster: Protoss (Beginner) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-Level "Major: Blood Bond "Major Skills: Vampire Particles, Holy Power, Blood Secret Skill, Vampire Realm "Minor Skills: Seraphic Speed, Instantaneous, Wing Slayer, Enhanced Regeneration "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Intensive training is recommended!" "Monster Card: Bloody "Rarity: Legendary "Name of Monster: Violethaze "Type of Monster: Parasite "Combat Level: Blue Flame-Level "Major: Parasitism" "Major Skills: Parasitic secret skill, Absolute Control "Minor Skills: Supreme Intelligence, Limitless Ingestion, Immortal Pods "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Intensive training is recommended!" "Monster Card: Ghastly Clown "Rarity: Legendary "Name of Monster: Supreme Overlord "Type of Monster: Undying Species (Mid-Level) "Combat Level: Blue Flame-Level "Major: Control "Major Skills: Doll Secret Skill, Deceptive Secret Skil, Spiritual Secret Skil "Minor Skills: Supreme Intelligence, Unknown Trap, Telekinesis "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Intensive training is recommended!" "I''ve finally unsealed all of them!" Late at night, Lin Huang carefully looked at the legendary-level cards that had been unsealed. He had never expected that these monster cards would turn into a book like his Character Card. Flipping through the pages, he could see the skill trees of both the major and the minor skills. Each skill was described in detail compared to the past. Many of the monster skills did not disappear but were included in the secret skills instead. Although it seemed like the number of monster skills displayed on the main page had reduced, it had, in fact, increased. Within Bloody''s Parasitic secret skill, there were more than 100 types of parasitic skills. Also, Ghastly Clown''s Doll secret skill included the Doll Substitute, Puppet Control, and all other doll-related skills. Furthermore, Bai''s Blood secret skill contained various types of skills that utilized the power of the Blood Bond. Moreover, the learning abilities of the monsters that had gone through their third mutation were comparable to the human genius. They could obtain more skills through the learning process. The unlocking of the legendary-level cards and the obtaining of the pseudo-mythical level card, the Regal Sword Killer, had caused Lin Huang''s summoning monsters to become extraordinarily stronger. In addition to Lin Huang leveling up, his Sword Dao had improved significantly. Four of the Life Seed talents were transformed into secret skills that were even stronger. A teleportation skill with flickering effect was added to the Seraphic Speed secret skill. The substitute effect of the Substitute secret skill had increased from being able to use it once a year to twice a year. Also, the Micro Territory had evolved into Small Territory whereby its territory had expanded to a radius of 300 meters. Sly Hand was transformed into Demon Hand as well, turning into an attack type secret skill with speed and strength. There was an explosive change in Lin Huang''s overall abilities compared to prior to leveling up to holy fire-level. When it came to encountering an immortal-level of a lower rank, Lin Huang dared to fight it, let alone a gold flame-level. Upon returning to the Martial Hunter College, Lin Huang did not visit the library anymore. He spent most of his time in the training room. He wanted to verify the monster sword skills that had been inherited and at the same time, he was practicing a set of body training skills called Undefeatable Warrior. The body training skill was provided by Mr. Fu whereby Lin Huang could quickly improve the strength of his body during this period of time at a rapid pace. However, it was a huge burden to his body. Lin Huang could no longer continue after practicing for about two hours. He could only use the remaining time to practice his sword skills. As he practiced every day, it took him less than a week until his practice sessions for the Undefeatable Warrior could be increased to six hours a day. In a blink of an eye, it was already Friday. It was the first battle drill in this week. When Lin Huang appeared at the Sword Dao faculty office early in the morning, all the teachers there were shocked the moment when they saw him. "Teacher Lin, have you leveled up to holy fire-level?" Mu Xiaolan who was closest to Lin Huang asked. Aside from Qin Tianxing, all the teachers in the office were on complete gold-level. In addition to the fact that Lin Huang had just leveled up and could not shrink his aura, everyone could clearly feel the advancement in Lin Huang''s combat strength. "Yes, I just did." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. "When did you level up?" Mu Xiaolan immediately asked. "Last Saturday," Lin Huang said. Right at this moment, Qin Tianxing walked into the office. He saw the upgraded Lin Huang at a first glance. His pupils dilated as he sensed the terrifying aura released by Lin Huang. "Fellow, you managed to level up so quickly. I thought that you''d spend a lot of time preparing." Qin Tianxing smiled as he walked in. "I did actually spend a week preparing for it," Lin Huang smiled as he explained. The rest of them had a strange expression on their faces as they heard what he said. Normally, the people would prepare for a few months or even a few years to kill a Life Fire monster. Moreover, the probability of failing to kill the monster was high. Lin Huang had spent only one week for the preparation and had even succeeded. Many of them were overwhelmed as they heard that. Qin Tianxing walked towards Lin Huang with a smile, covering half of his mouth with a palm and whispered to Lin Huang, "You have just leveled up and you exude a really strong aura. Did you really kill a triple mutated monster?" "Make a guess." Lin Huang smiled and did not answer his question. A flicker of fury flashed through Qin Tianxing''s eyes. Despite Lin Huang not answering him, he knew the answer from the smile on Lin Huang''s face. "You''re great!" Qin Tianxing gave him the thumbs up. "Oh yeah, Brother Qin, tell me about the battle drill." Despite already achieving holy fire-level, he was still being responsible for his students. He would not give up his job even if he was not going to work for exactly a year. He would at least complete his teaching for one whole semester. "All the Year 1 students will join the battle drill. It is based on the points accumulated by each class. However, there can only be a maximum of five students per group. Therefore, there''ll be ten teams for each class," Qin Tianxing explained. "You have 100 students in your class. Are you taking great advantage of it?" Lin Huang raised his brows. "That''s good if it works in this way. However, to ensure that it''s fair, the total score obtained by our class will be divided by two," Qin Tianxing said with his palms up. "I do think that the rules established by the school are awesome." Lin Huang smiled. 476 The Rules of the Battle Drill It was nine o''clock in the morning. There were more than 3,000 new Year 1 students. All of them stood straight in their formations according to their faculties and years. It had been a month since school started and everyone had started familiarizing themselves with one another. They had a better understanding of the rules and the system of the school as well. The school would organize a battle drill in a month, and it was most anticipated by the new students since most of them had never been to the wilderness. The teachers oversaw the battle drill. Therefore, they would not need to worry about their safety. Moreover, it was the first battle drill since the school started. The new students were looking forward to it. They were more excited than nervous. Deputy Dean Wang was the one who was in charge of the battle drill. While he was giving a speech on the stage, Qin Tianxing had sent out the rules of the battle drill to Lin Huang and the rest of the teachers'' via their Emperor''s Heart Rings. Since Lin Huang was the new teacher, he immediately checked them out. Despite having briefly heard about the rules from Qin Tianxing, he still read them carefully. The rules of the battle drill were simple. The training ground was a level-1 wild zone. The staff of the institution had hidden many of the star badges in the wild zones. Points would be awarded to those who retrieved the star badges. Those who managed to kill the iron-level monsters would earn extra points. Furthermore, the battle drill would last for only three days. That being said, the students would have to sleep in the level-1 wild zone for two nights. This would be the greatest challenge that they would face in the assessment. After Lin Huang carefully read the rules, Deputy Dean Wang had almost finished his speech. "That''s all from me. Now, the class teachers will explain the details of the battle drill to the students!" Lin Huang waited for the rest of the teachers to do so before heading towards his students. The students had not seen Lin Huang for a week and noticed some changes in him. However, they could not figure out the difference. "We haven''t seen each other for a week. Did you guys goof around?" Lin Huang gazed at the crowd. A few of them avoided his gaze whereas the rest of them did not seem to have slacked off at work. "Alright, stop talking nonsense. I''ll explain the rules of the assessment." As soon as Lin Huang finished his words, two star-shaped badges were projected. "In the coming three days, the accumulation of points mainly come from these two badges. You''ll be given one point for each silver badge collected whereas you''ll gain ten points for each gold badge. They''ll normally hide the gold badges at dangerous places. There might be iron-level monsters there. Therefore, when you see a gold badge, you have to be cautious. Don''t just focus on getting the badge but neglect the danger. "Aside from collecting badges, points can be accumulated by killing monsters. You''ll get ten points for killing an iron-level rank-1 monster and 30 points for an iron-level rank-2 monster. You''ll obtain 100 points if you kill an iron-level rank-3 monster. "Your performance in the wilderness will be recorded by the Surveillance Mosquito. Therefore, after the monster is killed, there''s no need to handle the carcasses. The staff will do it for you." "Teacher Lin, if we get bitten by a mosquito at night, and we accidentally kill the Surveillance Mosquito, what shall we do?" A fat young man raised his hand and asked. The people around him tittered, covering their mouths. Lin Huang was speechless and shook his head. The Surveillance Mosquito was projected to them. "The Surveillance Mosquito measures a length of about 20 to 30 centimeters. There are eight eyes on its head which gives it a 360-degree vision. It is an iron-level rank-3 monster. The Surveillance Mosquito has been tamed by humans. However, if it encounters an attack, it''ll still fight back. Each Surveillance Mosquito can drink more than ten liters of blood. It has to absorb the blood of two people of your body size to feel full." The young man, who asked the question, kept quiet. The rest of them, who had no idea how the Surveillance Mosquito looked like, felt lucky that they did not ask such a question. "Also, I''d like to remind you that despite the Surveillance Mosquito has been tamed, it is not absolutely safe. Even a pet at home will go mad, let alone monsters. Don''t get too close to the Surveillance Mosquito and it''s best to keep a distance of at least one meter away. Of course, if you don''t provoke them, they usually won''t attack you." Lin Huang was not trying to scare them but such problems did really exist in the past. He then switched the screen to the map and continued, "The wild zone that you guys are going to is called the Mist Forest. It is a level-1 wild-zone and the strongest monster will be an iron-level rank-3. However, mist will form in the forest at night. Therefore, it''s best for you to look for the badges and hunt for monsters during the day. When the mist is formed at night, don''t wander around so that you won''t get lost with your mate. "Also, individual marks will not be given for the assessment but will be calculated based on the points accumulated by each class. Therefore, your opponent isn''t only those from the Sword Dao faculty but also those from Saber Dao faculty, Gun Dao faculty, and so on. "There''ll be 50 students in each class forming a team of five. Therefore, there''ll be ten small teams. Each team will be sent to random places, and the same goes for the rest of the classes. "All the badges collected have been processed specially. Therefore, it''s not possible to put it away in the storage space. You can only bring it along with you. Besides, you can snatch badges from other teams. Therefore, the monsters aren''t your only enemy but so are the students from other classes." Many of their faces turned pale when they heard that the badges could be snatched from other students. The strongest student among all the Year 1 students was, of course, Mu Xiao from the Saber Dao faculty. Before enrolling into school, his combat level was already on bronze-level rank-1. His abilities were far beyond the rest of the students. He surely had no difficulty with the assessment. If they had permission to snatch badges from each other, he would be able to seize all the badges from the teams that bumped into him. "Aside from the enemies, please don''t forget something that you''ll have to do at night. In each team of five, each of you has to take turns to keep watch at night. Therefore, every one of you will get to sleep for about eight hours. Don''t fall asleep together as you won''t know if the monsters or the other teams attack," Lin Huang reminded. "That''s all for the rules of the assessment. The last rule is that you''re only allowed to bring in water during the assessment. No food is allowed because you''ll need to hunt for your own food in the forest. Please hand in all the food you have now. If the Surveillance Mosquito finds out that anyone of you has brought along food, regardless of what food it is, based on the number of people who brought in food, the class marks will be penalized by 100 points per student. If ten students bring along the food with them, the class marks will be -1,000," Lin Huang extended his hand out for their food supplies while saying. Some of the students who heard that immediately passed their food to him. A minority of them passed it to him unwillingly when they saw the rest of them gave it to him. Lin Huang did not care if some of them were trying to hide the food. He had deliberately emphasized, "if the Surveillance Mosquito finds out". In fact, he was trying to hint that if they were not discovered, their marks would not be deducted. However, most of the students did not seem to understand that. It was obvious that some of them could understand what he meant and handed in only a few packets of snacks. "Alright. That''s all I''m going to say. I''ll send the rules and the map of the wild zone to you. Look for your teammates now. I''d suggest you assign the team members according to their abilities. There''s no need for those who are good in attacking to be on the same team. It''d be best for a team to have a good mix of those attacking, defending, controlling, and healing. If it''s impossible to do so, please try your best to follow," Lin Huang reminded. He then sent the details and rules to the group. The group of students then downloaded the map and the rules of the assessment. Soon, they began forming their own groups. 477 Each Facultys Ability At 10 o''clock in the morning, 3,000 new students formed teams of five and were sent to the level-1 wild zone, the Mist Forest. Six hundred locations of different coordinates were set in the dimensional portal of the Deputy Dean, Wang Zijun. All the new students who entered the dimensional portal would be randomly sent to one of those locations. The location would automatically be removed after the team was sent out to avoid sending two teams to the same location. Just slightly after 11 a.m, they had finally sent out all the students. The Surveillance Mosquito was arranged somewhere near the location in advance. After the students were sent out, the Surveillance Mosquito would be activated immediately for live broadcast. The staff immediately activated their receivers, and 600 live videos were projected. Lin Huang could quickly identify ten teams of students from his class and he could see Lin Xin''s team as well. Lin Xin had joined the Sword Dao class too as she had been influenced by Lin Huang. She had actually registered for gunmaster. However, there were not enough students that registered for the gunmaster class, and the classes could only be conducted when all the students had achieved iron-level. Therefore, the classes would only be assigned to the students who had registered for gunmaster in their second year. All the students who had registered for gunmaster would be assigned to other classes according to their scores before graduation. Some of the students in Lin Huang''s class had signed up for gunmaster as well. Perhaps it was because Lin Xin had an outstanding performance in gunmaster, Lin Huang noticed that she was assigned to a very powerful group. Basically, it was one of the three strongest groups in Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty. Two of them in the team had already achieved iron-level. If they did not encounter Mu Xiao from the Saber Dao faculty, the team would pass the assessment easily. As Lin Huang studied the assignment of team members in Lin Xin''s team, he then looked at the rest of the teams in Class 1. He realized that the overall qualification of the Class 1 students was indeed higher. There were 12 out of 100 students who had achieved iron-level. Two of them were on iron-level rank-3. However, there was only one student who had achieved iron-level rank-1 in Class2 which was Lin Huang''s class. There were no students who had achieved iron-level in the rest of the classes. "The Saber Dao faculty is so strong this year!" While Lin Huang was still observing the situation of the students from the Sword Dao faculty, Qin Tianxing beside him suddenly exclaimed. The strongest opponent was not the rest of the classes from the Sword Dao faculty to him but the classes from the Saber Dao faculty. The overall abilities of the students in Class 1 of Sword Dao faculty were a lot stronger than the rest of the classes. Therefore, the students from class 1 of the Saber Dao faculty had always been an informal rival to the students from his class. As Lin Huang heard that, he shifted his gaze to the screen that presented the teams from the Saber Dao faculty. There were 26 students on iron-level in Class 1 of the Saber Dao faculty and Mu Xiao, who was on bronze-level, was one of them. Their overall abilities were indeed stronger than the students from the Sword Dao faculty. There were eight students from Class 2 of the Saber Dao faculty that had achieved iron-level and were almost on par with Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty. The Saber Dao faculty was incomparable to the Sword Dao faculty. Seeing a few of the classes from Saber Dao faculty, Lin Huang then looked at the rest of the classes that were registered under other programmes and realized that there was nothing worth paying attention to. The Gun Dao faculty was slightly weaker than the Sword Dao faculty. There were seven students who had managed to get to iron-level in Class 1 of the Gun Dao faculty, and it was on par with Class 2 of the Saber Dao faculty. There were only about two students who were on iron-level for the rest of the programmes. Lin Huang took a glimpse at the classes and soon, he shifted his focus back to Lin Xin. Four of the members of Lin Xin''s team looked nervous. Lin Xin was the only one who did not look nervous at all and looked somewhat excited. Lin Huang could now see the benefit of having brought her along to explore in the past. She had been to the moderate danger zone with Lin Huang. She would not feel nervous about getting into a level-1 wild zone at all. "Eh, Ling Xue looks weak, but her mental quality is quite excellent," Qin Tianxing mumbled, evaluating the performance of his students. Soon, he shifted his gaze to Lin Xin''s team and realized that she appeared to be rather calm. Lin Xin''s nickname was Ling Xue when she registered herself in this school. Aside from the President, Liu Ming, nobody knew that they were siblings. Of course, Qin Tianxing would not have known that he was commenting on Lin Huang''s sister. Lin Huang was not surprised to see Lin Xin''s expression. He had seen Lin Xin''s performance during the battle in the Gun Master game. She had actually achieved the beginner level of a gunmaster but had yet to achieve iron-level. Therefore, she was unable to activate her Life Power for the use of relics. However, as long as the power of the gun and the bullets were strong enough, Lin Xin would be capable of killing an iron-level rank-3 monster. When it came to the use of guns, Lin Xin was even stronger than Lin Huang who had sat for the Reserve Hunter Assessment a year ago. When Lin Huang was preparing himself for the Reserve Hunter Assessment, he did not even master any of the entry-level gunfighting techniques. However, Lin Xin had already learned 37 types of entry-level gunfighting techniques and 11 types of beginner-level gunfighting techniques that could be used without activating her Life Power. Lin Xin was fated to be a dark horse to be discovered soon in the battle drill. Lin Huang had never doubted it. He was worried about the performance of his students instead. While Lin Huang was observing the performance of the students, the Deputy Dean Wang Zijun shifted his gaze to Lin Huang. He originally wanted to have a look at the young man who had just come and to see if he could adapt the life here. However, he was frightened. When the school had just started, Lin Huang was just a gold-level rank-3. About one month had passed, and he had leveled up to white flame-level. "He''s only 16 years old and he''s now on holy fire-level. He''s perhaps the youngest person who managed to get into holy fire-level in Division7!" Wang Zijun exclaimed. "Although he''s just on white flame-level, his aura is extremely strong. It''s comparable to those on crimson flame-level. Did he kill a triple mutated Life Fire monster?" Wang Zijun had met many of the people who leveled up to white flame-level by killing a double mutated monster. However, it was his first time sensing such a strong aura from Lin Huang. He instantly guessed that Lin Huang could have killed a triple mutated Life Fire monster. "At just 16 years old, he has achieved level-3 sword realm. He even killed a triple mutated monster Where did President Liu discover such a genius?" Wang Zijun was sizing Lin Huang up secretly for about two seconds. However, Lin Huang could still sense it. Lin Huang immediately turned his head to look at Wang Zijun as he sensed his gaze on him. Realizing that it was the Deputy Dean who was sizing him up, Lin Huang roughly knew why he had done so. Wang Zijun was stunned as he never expected Lin Huang to be so sensitive. He immediately smiled to cover up the awkward situation before shifting his gaze away from him. "He''s so strong!" Wang Zijun, who had spiritual detection ability, could sense that Lin Huang had extraordinary abilities as they exchanged glances with each other. "I''ve no idea how his students will be" Again, he shifted his gaze to the screen that projected the situation of the battle drill, looking at the students from Class 2 of the Sword Dao faculty. 478 Mist Fores Shangguan Hui had short, center-parted hair and was always dressed in long-sleeved tops and long pants, making her look like a man. On the first few days, her gender could hardly be distinguished. After a few classes, the students in Class 2 of the Sword Dao faculty could confirm her gender. Apart from her attire, her personality seemed like a man''s as well. She was not as emotional as females and was capable of analyzing problems rationally. This was the reason why she was close to most females as they treated her like their best male friend. They would look for her to analyze their problems if they encountered any. Her roommate, Zhou Ling, was completely different as she was a straightforward person. She was not tall at barely 1.6 meters. However, she had a sweet-looking face, and in addition to her fame, she was the ideal girl that many of the boys in the class liked. Shangguan Hui was asked to join Zhou Ling''s team in the first place. They wanted to look for another two of their roommates to join them, but they realized that it was too late. A group of boys surrounded two of their roommates. They then had to allow three of the boys to join their team. Three of the boys were Zhou Ling''s admirers, and one of them was Si Tuhao who had already achieved iron-level. Si Tuhao was 16 years old this year and was the eldest among all the students in Year 1 Class 2 of the Sword Dao faculty. He was only two months younger than Lin Huang. However, he was tall. Despite only being 16, he was already 1.85 meters tall. He looked rather matured like a young man in his mid-twenties, which contributed to the reason his classmates addressed him as Uncle Hao. Si Tuhao was Zhou Ling''s admirer. He confessed to Zhou Ling after class on the first day when they had met each other resulting in Zhou Ling being frightened and running away. She avoided him for more than a week. Soon, however, she realized that Si Tuhao was a good person. Although she did not accept him as a love interest, the both of them had then become friends. Two of the boys called Yang Jie, and Zhao Ze were Zhou Ling''s admirers as well. Their results were quite outstanding in Class 2. Shangguan Hui''s team was one of the few stronger teams among all the teams in Class 2 of the Sword Dao faculty. "We''re quite lucky as we''ve been directly sent to a lakeside!" Zhou Ling shouted. They were celebrating their fortuitous circumstance. "Let''s have a look at the map to identify our exact location," Shangguan Hui reminded in the first place. "The lake in front of us is one of three large lakes in Mist Forest, Brumaire Lake. It seems like we don''t need to worry about food for the next few days," Si Tuhao announced happily after studying the map. "We''re now at the Southwest of Brumaire Lake. There''s fish in the lake that can solve our problem about food supply. However, we face another problem at the same time." Shangguan Hui looked at the rest of the team members warily. When they heard what she said, they immediately shifted their focus to her. "Firstly, it''s rather difficult to kill monsters in the water compared to monsters on land. The lake has a large area which is more than 800 square kilometers wide. If we stay in the same position for three days, perhaps we won''t even be able to encounter a monster that drinks water. "Secondly, towards the North is the lake. There could be many hidden badges there. To look for the badges, we either have to search along the lakeside or enter the forest. "Our target is not to pass the assessment safely, but to accumulate as many points as we can!" The four of them nodded their head as they heard what Shangguan Hui said. "Xiao Hui, what shall we do?" Zhou Ling knew that Shangguan Hui was an opinionated person. She would not need to think hard with Shangguan Hui around. "First of all, let''s familiarize ourselves with the environment. If there are no strong monsters here, we''ll set up camp here. Regarding the food, let''s look around later if there''re any monsters that we can hunt for food. If there aren''t any, let''s think of ways to catch the fish. It''ll be best if we can prepare enough food for the coming three days. We can either make dried meat or dried fish. We won''t need to worry about food for the next two days, or waste time on that." Shangguan Hui kept quiet for a while and suggested, "As the mist dissipates tomorrow, we''ll head towards the west and enter the forest. We''ll then start hunting monsters." "I agree!" Zhou Ling did not think twice and immediately agreed with her. "Alright, let''s do what you said." The three of them did not raise any objections. Shangguan Hui then randomly picked up a tree branch and stuck it into the ground. She then glanced at the time and said, "It''s now 11 a.m. In order to increase the efficiency of detecting the badges, let''s now explore the areas in three different directions. Zhou Ling and I will head towards the east. Yang Jie and Zhao Ze will go to the south. Since you''re the strongest, Si Tuhao, you shall head towards the west and go into the forest. The main purpose is to check if there''re any badges nearby or any lonely monsters. Let''s gather over here at this exact tree branch at noon. Enable the silent and vibration modes on your Emperor''s Heart Ring. Contact each other if there''re any further updates." "Is it a good idea to separate the five of us?" Zhou Ling asked, feeling insecure. "It''ll be fine. Our main purpose is to look for the badges. If we bump into any monsters or the other teams, come back in the first place to avoid conflict. The assessment has just started, and none of us will have any of the badges. even if we encounter Mu Xiao from the Saber faculty, they probably won''t fight us. Moreover, the places where the massive monster crowds will gather have been marked on the map. The nearest monster crowd is situated west, and it is 30 kilometers away from us. If there''re monsters at other places, perhaps they''ll be the lonely or small monsters," Shangguan Hui explained. "Alright, let''s do what you say. We''ll gather here at noon. If anyone of you discovers any lonely monsters, we''ll kill them together and make them into dried meat. If there aren''t any monsters, we will catch fish and dry them." Si Tuhao nodded in agreement. Yang Jie and Zhao Ze did not disagree with her. Three of them then headed in three different directions. Shangguan Hui''s decision was out of Lin Huang''s expectations as he never knew that a girl would think in such a way. He thought that Si Tuhao was supposed to be the team leader as he was the eldest and also the strongest. He never expected Shangguan Hui to take power from him or for the three boys not to disagree with her at all. "Five of them headed towards three different directions. They are kind of brave However, the girl doesn''t seem to feel nervous at all. She must be the same as Lin Xin in the sense that she has been to the wild zone." Lin Huang seemed to be able to identify the difference between a newbie and a veteran. While the rest of the people were still trying to familiarize themselves with the environment, Shangguan Hui had already assigned tasks to her teammates on the first day. It was obvious that a newbie would not be able to do that. "It looks like she''s from the Shangguan family." Deputy Dean Wang did notice Shangguan Hui''s performance. He forced a smile, shaking his head. He had heard before about her creating some trouble during the graduation examination. Shangguan Hui was supposed to score full marks in her cultural course. However, while answering the questions, she had questioned the teacher, pointing out that the accurate term had not been used. She then gave various types of answers based on different interpretations of the question. Eventually, her marks were deducted by the teacher who examined her paper. Since the Shangguan family was one of the six royal families, Shangguan Hui''s issue alerted the master of the Shangguan family. Eventually, the Shangguans pressured the person who had set the exam questions in the Division 7 Union Government. That person then admitted that it was his fault. In the end, she was assigned full marks in her cultural course. However, her combat abilities were not exceptional. Therefore, she was assigned to Class 2 of the Sword Dao faculty according to her total score. She did not raise any objection and simply accepted the arrangement made by the Martial Hunter College. Of course, Lin Huang knew nothing about it. He just knew that the Shangguan family was one of the six royal families. However, he did not realize that any of the students with the same surname would be from that particular family. Therefore, he did not ask any further about Shangguan Hui''s identity. However, even if he knew Shangguan Hui''s identity, he would not treat her any differently. 479 Come and Chase Me When the clock struck noon, the five of them gathered at a peaceful lakeside at a position marked with a tree branch earlier. "Let''s discuss the current update on finding the badges." Shangguan Hui gazed at the three of them other than Zhou Ling. "We did not discover any monsters, but we managed to find three silver badges very quickly," Yang Jie and Zhao Ze updated her about the outcome of their discovery. "I encountered an iron-level rank-2 Ironhide Pig and immediately came back. However, I found two silver badges on my way back," Si Tuhao told her what he had discovered as well. "The both of us didn''t encounter any monsters as well. We''ve found three silver badges and a gold badge," Zhou Ling said with a smile. "According to the number of badges we have, we''ve now accumulated 18 points. We can collect 30 points by killing an iron-level rank-2 Ironhide Pig. We should think of ways to hunt it down," Shangguan Hui suggested. "It''s a bit difficult for an iron-level rank-2," Zhou Ling hesitated. Since most of the students were the ordinary people that could not even get to iron-level, it was considered an accomplishment if they managed to kill an iron-level rank-1 together. The difficulty of killing an iron-level rank-2 or iron-level rank-3 monster would be double of that. This was also the reason why the points given by the college were relatively high for killing an iron-level rank-2 and an iron-level rank-3 monster. "It''s not difficult to kill an Ironhide Pig. However, it has a terrifying defense ability. Its weakness is apparent though." Shangguan Hui continued, "Firstly, it isn''t quick and agile. Secondly, it can''t climb trees. Thirdly, its stomach is its biggest weakness. It can be severely injured by attacks from assailants who haven''t even reached iron-level. As long as we''re well prepared for it, it''s not difficult to kill it. It depends if you guys are willing to take the risk" Shangguan Hui then looked at four of them after finishing her sentence. "I think we should give it a try. Even if I can''t fight it face to face, we will be able to retreat safely." Si Tuhao nodded in agreement. "If we retreat because we encounter an iron-level rank-2 monster, we definitely won''t be able to score high marks. Let''s give it a try. We can retreat if we can''t fight it since the monster can''t climb trees," Zhao Ze approved. "I agree with killing the monster too. However, we have to plan well before that," Yang Jie agreed with her. They then turned their heads and looked at Zhou Ling, waiting for her to make her decision. "Why are you guys looking at me? I''ve said earlier that I''d listen to Xiao Hui," Zhou Ling immediately said. "Okay. Then, let''s discuss the plan in detail." Since all of them agreed to kill the monster, Shangguan Hui started telling them her plan. "First of all, we''ll have to make it blind so that it''ll lose its vision. Then, look for a chance to tie both of its forelegs with a load-bearing rope. Then, tie another end of the load-bearing rope to the tree. One of us must be the bait, luring it to chase after us. Once it falls down, the rest of us can start attacking it. That''s my overall plan. Is there anything that you guys want to add?" They continued discussing the details of the plan. At about 12.40 p.m, Shangguan Hui''s team went deeper and deeper into the forest. "The target is discovered!" Si Tuhao, who was walking in front of them, gestured to them. The rest of them immediately stepped slowly and softly. Shangguan Hui took out her GrayEagle 18. It was the modified version of the GrayEagle 17 that had been used by Lin Huang last year, which was the female version. The gun was smaller, and it suited female palms better. There were light patterns on top of it and no longer looked as cold as the metal GrayEagle 17. Its recoil force had been reduced, given that its power had been slightly reduced as well. In order to keep up the sales of GrayEagle 17, the Eagle Company had put in a lot of effort. When GrayEagle 18 was launched in May, the advertisement marketed GrayEagle 17 and GrayEagle 18 to couples. A set of the guns was going at a 12% discount, causing many of them who were single to disagree with them on the Heart Network. Shangguan Hui did not like to be engaged in close combat. Similar to Lin Xin, she had registered for the gunmaster programme as well and had also scored full marks in her graduation examination. She had mastered 16 types of entry-level gunfighting techniques and two types of beginner-level gunfighting techniques. Despite being weaker than Lin Xin, she was still considered remarkable. She gestured to the rest of the teammates to keep quiet. Shangguan Hui then quietly moved towards the direction of the Ironhide Pig. When she moved less than ten meters forward, she could then see the target discovered by Si Tuhao -- the Ironhide Pig. It was an omnivorous monster with a hulking body. Its body measured a length of more than five meters and a height of more than two meters. It looked like an abnormally large wild boar. However, it had two big teeth that looked like an elephant''s tusks. Two big horns that resembled the horns of a rhinoceros were on its nose. There was a porcupine-like armor on its back that looked like it was made of black metal. This also explained where the name of the monster came from. Despite there was no armor on both sides of the Ironhide Pig, it had very thick fur. Its defense ability was one of the best among monsters of the same level. Therefore, there would not be much impact done to it by attacking the side of its body. The only weakness was its soft belly which was white. As they took a closer look at the monster, some of them were nervous. However, Shangguan Hui still remained calm. She lifted her gun and aimed at the Ironhide Pig that lowered its head while eating grass. Bang! Bang! Two gunshots were heard at almost the same time, and soon, they could hear the Ironhide Pig growling in pain. Both of its eyeballs were pulverized and could no longer look at its enemies. The pain drove it on a rampage. "It''s getting crazy. Be careful when you''re about to tie its legs," Shangguan Hui said in a low voice. "Si Tuhao, please get ready." Yang Jie took out the rope that had been prepared earlier, tying it around Ironhide Pig''s left foreleg. Realizing that its left foreleg had been chained, the Ironhide Pig started struggling. However, the load-bearing rope could withstand a few tons of force, and the Ironhide Pig was unable to get rid of it. On the other hand, Zhao Ze found a chance to tie the Ironhide Pig''s right foreleg. It growled angrily and loudly. "Be careful. It might be shooting its quills!" Seeing the Ironhide Pig''s body turn red, Shangguan Hui immediately reminded. The rest of them immediately hid behind a tree. Pew! Hearing the whistle coming from the Ironhide Pig, the quills on its back were crazily shooting in all directions. Some of them had pierced deeply through the trees. Its power could be compared to the firing power of the bullets of GrayEagle 17. Perhaps, if it struck an iron-level rank-3 monster, it could cause a huge impact on it. Fortunately, a few of them were prepared for it and managed to avoid the danger. Zhou Ling suddenly sneaked out of the forest and gave the "OK" gesture. "I''ve already tied the other end of the rope." "It''s my turn now!" Si Tuhao was excited. A few moments later, Si Tuhao appeared behind the Ironhide Pig and sent his sword through the Ironhide Pig''s fat buttocks. The sound was dull as the metal collided with its thick hide. However, only a layer of light chinks appeared on the Ironhide Pig''s fur. Not even a strand of blood could be seen. "Eh, pig, over here!" Si Tuhao called loudly. When it sensed that it was being attacked from the back, the Ironhide Pig immediately turned around. Its pair of eyes that were bleeding looked extremely ferocious. Si Tuhao turned back and fled. He then shouted while he was running away, "Come and chase me! If you can chase after me, I''ll let you hahaha" The Ironhide Pig immediately chased after him, following the direction of his voice. 480 Lin Xins Performance In the forest, the light was dim. There was a Surveillance Mosquito on the big tree. Eight of its blue eyes adjusted the angle and soon, reflected the figures of three boys and two girls in its eyes. The five of them were lighting a fire to grill some meat. Lin Huang then shifted his gaze towards the screen showing Shangguan Hui and her team. Lin Huang was quite satisfied with Shangguan Hui''s performance. Despite not having an outstanding ability in the battle drill, she was quite intelligent. She managed to kill an iron-level rank-2 Ironhide Pig with little effort. Lin Huang could roughly predict that the performance of the team in the following few days would be great. He then shifted his gaze towards the rest of the teams in Class2. Aside from two of the teams appearing to panic, the performance of the eight other teams was fairly good. They proved their survival skills. Survival skill was what Lin Huang wanted his students to learn. Regardless of how many points that they could gain, it was not important. Two of the teams that appeared panicked were soon prepared for the battle. Lin Huang was slightly relieved. He then looked at Lin Xin''s team performance in Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty. Lin Xin''s team was indeed strong. Their team consisted of three boys and two girls. Aside from Lin Xin, another girl, who was called Ai Li, was an iron-level rank-2. There was also a tall, skinny man called Nangong Qing and he was an iron-level rank-2 as well. Despite two other guys not getting to iron-level, they had outstanding abilities. While the rest of the teams were still preparing for the battle, Lin Xin''s team had activated their killing mode. Five of them killed all the lonely monsters they encountered when they were on their way. While Shangguan Hui and the rest were still grilling meat, Lin Xin''s team had already killed six lonely monsters, and in addition to the number of badges they collected, they had accumulated a total of 158 points. It was three times the points collected by Shangguan Hui''s team. "Both of them on iron-level are quite good in assigning tasks to the members." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. The strategy of Lin Xin''s team was simple. Lin Xin would first shoot the monster''s eyes with a gun, and the rest of them would then complete the kill. If it were only an iron-level rank-1 monster, two of the boys who did not manage to get into iron-level would kill it. If it were an iron-level rank-2 monster, either Ai Li or Nangong Qing would kill it. Both of them would take turns so that their Life Power could be replenished when they were not fighting. Among the six of the monsters that they had killed, four of them were only on iron-level rank-2 whereas the remaining two were the iron-level rank-1 monsters. In addition to collecting eight gold badges along the way, they were more than 100 points ahead of the rest of the teams. The gun that Lin Xin using was a GrayEagle 17 that had been used by Lin Huang last year. However, she was still using the ordinary GrayEagle 17 bullets. She did not use the armored bullets. Looking at the scene recorded by the Surveillance Mosquito, Lin Xin''s team began their journey again after having their lunch. Nangong Qing had an iron-level weapon that could be used for detection purposes. It somehow functioned like a single-tube telescope but possessed the ability to look through the trees. They continued going deeper into the forest. In less than 20 minutes, he suddenly asked the rest of them to slow down. "At about 600 meters away, there''s an enormous monster. Based on its size, it could possibly be an iron-level rank-3 Ursine Warrior." The detection ability of Nangong Qing''s weapon was limited. He could not clearly see the actual outlook of the monster. It looked like an infrared image and only a yellow shadow could be seen. "If it''s the Ursine Warrior, are we going to kill it?" "It''s just a monster that is slightly stronger in its defense and strength. Why not give it a try?" Ai Li was excited. "That shouldn''t be a big problem. I''ll change the bullets that I''m using." Lin Xin nodded. She then removed the ordinary bullets from the bore and inserted another clip of armored bullets. The price of the armored bullets was higher than that of the ordinary bullets. Although Lin Xin was not in need of money, she would still prefer to be a good girl who used her bullets wisely. "To score high marks, killing an iron-level rank-3 monster is the fastest way. Although the Ursine Warrior is rather difficult to handle among the iron-level rank-3 monsters, we have to make a start since this might not be the only Ursine Warrior that we''ll meet. Therefore, I think there''s no need to avoid," Yao Hao suggested. He was the team''s think tank. "Just kill it, Nangong." Chu Peng nodded as well. He was living in the same dorm with Yao Hao. They still had an iron-level rank-1 roommate but he had joined the other team. "Alright, then just do it!" Nangong Qing had asked for their opinion earlier was not because he was afraid that they might not be able to fight it. Since the Ursine Warrior was one of the strongest monsters among the iron-level rank-3 monsters, he was afraid that his teammates would hold back. However, it seemed like all of them were excited and of course, he would not retreat. The five of them gradually walked towards the monster. The Surveillance Mosquito followed closely after them and recorded the scene. A few minutes later, the monster being detected finally showed up on the screen. It was genuinely an Ursine Warrior. It had merlot-colored fur and was equipped with a layer of greenish-black metal armor on its back and abdomen. Aside from that, there was a greenish-black metal helmet with horns on its head. The monster had a height of about eight meters and its body size was extremely large. Lin Xin was hiding somewhere under the Surveillance Mosquito. It was their first time having a close look at the Ursine Warrior. They were frightened by its body size. Right at this moment, the Ursine Warrior was devouring a carcass. Lin Xin and the rest of them had no idea which monster''s carcass it was since its brain was no longer attached to its body. They could only see that it was a hoofed animal with black fur. The Ursine Warrior was rather picky about food. It did not like to eat monsters'' brains. Under normal circumstances, it would throw the brain of the monster aside. It started licking the blood oozing out from its neck, tearing its abdomen apart and eating its internal organs. Soon after, the whole carcass went into its mouth, and it started munching on it together with the bones. Right when it was enjoying its food, Lin Xin''s gun had aimed at its eyeballs. She looked to the left and to the right. Her teammates nodded their head, indicating that they were ready. She then pulled the trigger. Two shots were fired out of the bore. Bang! Bang! After two consecutive shots, the Ursine Warrior stood up in anger, growling from the pain it suffered. Nangong Qing and Ai Li immediately pounced on the monster from two sides. Both of them attacked in full force. The battle sword was shrouded in black Life Power as if it had been immersed in black ink. Chu Peng and Yao Hao did not pounce on it rashly. They stayed in their original position and waited for the right time to attack. The iron-level rank-3 monster was bursting into a rage. They would definitely die if they attacked now since they were not even on iron-level. Two black battle swords cut through the Ursine Warrior''s legs, leaving two streaks of blood. The Ursine Warrior that had lost its vision was attacked again. It performed a counterattack in all directions senselessly. Nangong Qing and Ai Li immediately dodged the attack. Despite such an attack not being able to kill them, they would still be severely injured if it hit them. Lin Xin then climbed up to a big tree, taking aim at the Ursine Warrior''s head with her GrayEagle 17 and began distracting it. The Ursine Warrior''s anger was indeed triggered when Lin Xin launched another attack. It gave up chasing after Nangong Qing and Ai Li and rushed towards the direction where the sound of the gun could be heard. With several hits, it managed to break the tree where Lin Xin was hiding. As the tree fell, Lin Xin leaped and rolled on the ground. She then climbed up another tree, distracting the Ursine Warrior by attacking with her gun again. While the Ursine Warrior was chasing after Lin Xin, Nangong Qing and Ai Li managed to make several attacks on its legs, and bloody streaks could be seen. The armored bullets were fired, and they struck the Ursine Warrior''s body which was not protected by its armor, causing her to moan in pain. "Ling Xue, continue to attack its eyes!" Yao Hao suddenly shouted. Lin Xin then raised her gun and aimed at the Ursine Warrior''s eyes. Two consecutive attacks were fired and the armored bullets hit the Ursine warrior''s eyes twice. It grabbed its head and let out a howl of pain. At this moment, its merlot fur began to turn blood red. "It''s bursting into a rage! Leave!" Yao Hao immediately shouted at them. Right at this moment, gunshots could be heard coming from mid-air. Two of the armored bullets penetrated through the Ursine Warrior''s left eye again. The next moment, an explosive sound coming from two of the shots that Lin Xin fired was heard. The mixture of its blood and brain juice, which was red and white, abruptly oozed out from the Ursine Warrior''s eyes. The Ursine Warrior stopped growling. After a few moments, it collapsed and fell down to the ground. Lin Huang shook his head, seeing what had happened on the screen. Even though they managed to kill the monster, he was not satisfied with the battle. "They are too weak in battle drill" 481 An Urgent Message from the Registrars Office Lin Xin''s team was the one of the best. They could easily defeat monsters of a lower level. However, their performance was rather poor during the fight with the Ursa Warrior, completely revealing their poor understanding of the monster''s weakness and they lacked experience in engaging in a fight. The Ursa Warrior''s limbs were not equipped with armor. The ligaments in its knee were relatively soft. It would lose its ability to move if any part of the knee was attacked. Once its ligaments were injured, they could attack the femoral artery in its inner thigh. Basically, the Ursa Warrior would not be able to survive if its main artery was cut. Of course, its eyes and mouth were obviously a weakness as well. However, Lin Xin did not understand it as she thought that she would just need to blind the monster. In fact, she could have just struck consecutive attacks on its eyes or shoot its mouth when it let out a growl. She could even hit its nostrils or earlobes. He shook his head, shifted his focus from Lin Xin''s team to the Saber Dao faculty. Many of the teachers kept their focus on Mu Xiao who was from Class 1 of the Saber Dao faculty. It was apparent that Mu Xiao was ambitious. Aside from him being on bronze-level rank-1, two of his teammates were iron-level rank-2 whereas another two of his teammates were iron-level rank-3. Without a doubt, it was the most formidable team among all the Year 1 teams. They were strong as they managed to eliminate all the monsters that they encountered. In addition to the bronze-level saber he had, Mu Xiao''s saber skills were impressive. He felt like he was slicing into a tofu even when facing an iron-level rank-3 monster. Despite several weaknesses of the team such as being weak in task delegation, lacking real battle experience, overuse of Life Power, weak adaptability to changes, and acting rashly, they managed to defeat the monsters luckily. As long as they did not bump into a monster crowd, basically, they would be able to handle the monsters in the level-1 wild zone. In fact, Lin Huang did not have much faith in Mu Xiao''s team. If the team was sent to a level-2 wild zone, perhaps their performance would be weaker than Lin Xin''s team should they encounter a bronze-level rank-1 monster. It was because the team was weak in delegating tasks and acted recklessly. They did not prepare themselves for a long-distance attack and nobody planned the battle ahead. Lin Huang was most satisfied with Shangguan Hui''s team from his class after studying the rest of the teams from other classes. Although they had their weaknesses especially in terms of cooperation, the five of them did plan things ahead at the very least. As an actual hunter, the most important thing is that they had to think. Those who acted rashly would not be able to survive since not everyone could be the main character like Luffy was. The Deputy Dean, Wang Zijun, had a look at the performance of the students. He then greeted the staff and left, maintaining a neutral expression on his face. The rest of the teachers left as well after that. The battle drill would last for three days, and most of the teachers would not be monitoring the performance of the students for three whole days. "It''s about 1 p.m. Let''s go for lunch," Qin Tianxing suggested to Lin Huang. He felt that it was meaningless to stay there as he saw that the rest of the teachers from the Sword Dao faculty had left. "Alright." Basically, Lin Huang had seen whatever he wanted. He did not want to waste his time there as well. "Brother Qin, are you going to treat us a meal?" Mu Xiaolan asked. "Sure!" Qin Tianxing quickly promised since a meal would not cause a hunter a lot of money. Ten minutes later, the three of them appeared at one of the partitioned rooms in the school canteen. "Is this what you''re going to treat us? You don''t seem sincere," Mu Xiaolan commented without any facial expression. "It''s working hours now. We shouldn''t leave the school to go out for food," Qin Tianxing said. "Alright, you have a valid reason," Mu Xiaolan said with a pout. "I''ve never tried the food in the school canteen, but now I can give it a try." Lin Huang smiled, trying to help Qin Tianxing to get over the embarrassment. "The food sold in our school canteen taste good. Many of the people from small areas apply for a food card over here. The dishes are cheap and tasty. Plus, the portions are generous." Qin Tianxing beamed. Mu Xiaolan did not bother to join the conversation. "Teacher Lin, what do you think about the performance of the students?" Qin Tianxing then changed the topic. "It''s still acceptable since most of them have never engaged in a battle. They are allowed to make mistakes during the battle drill." Lin Huang felt that there was nothing to comment about. "The performance of this batch of students is considered pretty good. Last year, the students even wet their pants when they saw a monster." Mu Xiaolan chuckled. Lin Huang did not expect such a phenomenon to have happened. "The overall qualifications of the students are acceptable. Not many of them retreated when they encountered the monsters." Qin Tianxing nodded and continued, "But there''s a little monster from the Saber Dao faculty. He formed such a powerful team. Perhaps, Class 1 of the Saber Dao faculty will get the first place again." "We have no choice since the Saber Dao faculty is the biggest faculty in our college. All the top students have registered for Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty. Only the remaining students will choose the Saber Dao faculty. Moreover, the Union College that''s popular for Sword Dao is snatching students from us." Mu Xiaolan was speechless to hear this. Lin Huang briefly knew that the Union College was snatching students from them. Union College was undoubtedly the best college in the human world. It was the only institution of higher learning established by the Union government. The Sword Dao faculty in the Union College in Division 7 was also the strongest. Therefore, Union College would be the first choice for top students who wanted to learn sword skills. Martial Hunter College and the rest of the institutions would fall under their second choice. "I think there''s no need to care about their scores. The students should gain experience from the battle drill. They should learn to spot the weaknesses of the monsters and build team cooperation with their members. They should figure out their position in a team. "From this perspective, many other teams are stronger than Mu Xiao''s team. The assignment of members of his team is unreasonable, and they act heedlessly. They managed to defeat the monsters because their opponents are weak. If they encounter enemies that are a lot stronger, perhaps it''ll be too late for them to plan." What Lin Huang said was straight to the point. Qin Tianxing and Mu Xiaolan instantly kept quiet after listening to what he said. After a few moments, Qin Tianxing then said, "I didn''t know that I wouldn''t have as thorough a view of it as you do. I''ve almost forgotten the actual purpose of having a battle drill. Point accumulation is just a sport. We actually want the students to grow up." "It seems like I have to observe the fighting mode of the students. They''ll be divided into different groups next month!" Mu Xiaolan said with a solemn expression. After having their lunch, Lin Huang did not return to the field as he had seen whatever he wanted to. He went to the training room and started practicing the Undefeatable Warrior. Soon, two days had passed. At about 4 a.m, while Lin Huang was still sleeping, his communication device suddenly rang. "All the Year 1 to Year 3 teachers, please gather at the field!" It was a message from the registrar''s office! 482 An Unknown Attack Before the sky brightened, an urgent message from the registrar''s office was received. It was definitely not a good thing. Lin Huang immediately jumped out of bed and washed up. He chewed on a breath-freshening gum and left after changing his clothes. When he arrived at the field, two of the deputy deans and the staff from the registrar''s office were already there. The rest of the teachers then trickled in. Lin Huang soon noticed that many of the screens on the field had experienced a blackout. Less than half of the screens were still working, and a few of them turned black only after Lin Huang arrived. "Is there a signal failure?" That was Lin Huang''s first reaction. However, he soon realized that it was not as simple as he thought. "If it''s a signal failure, the blackout won''t happen one by one. It seems like the Surveillance Mosquitoes are under attack." Lin Huang immediately looked at the screen that showed the recording of Lin Xin''s team. The screen had not blacked out but he could see that there were about three tents shrouded in mist. Despite not being able to see exactly what had happened, Lin Huang attempted to call Lin Xin. "Sorry, the number that you have dialed is not available." Seeing the notification on the communication page, Lin Huang frowned. He tried to call the rest of the students, and the same thing happened. Since the communication signal did not work, he opened the Heart Network and tagged all the students in the group. However, nobody replied to his message after more than ten seconds. "Somebody has blocked the communication and network signals! The Surveillance Mosquito uses biological signals, and there''s no way to block it. The screens going down one by one is most likely because somebody has killed the Surveillance Mosquitoes." In an instant, Lin Huang could guess what was happening. More than 3,000 teachers gathered in the field. All of them knew that the urgent message that they received from the registrar''s office was not a joke, so they dared not delay. The Deputy Dean, Wang Zijun, said with a grave expression, "I''m sorry to disturb you at this time. Let me briefly explain what''s happening. "At about 3.30 a.m, the monitors began turning black. The staff on duty thought that it was a signal failure and looked for people to repair them. No problems were found, but the screens from the Surveillance Mosquitoes disappeared one by one. It has only been half an hour and we''ve lost more than half of the monitors. Furthermore, the communication and network signals have been blocked. We attempted to contact the staff stationed over there as well as the students, but we can''t get through." "Although we can''t confirm what exactly has happened at the Mist Forest, we can verify that it is a man-made communication and network signal jamming. Perhaps, we have lost connection with the monitors because the Surveillance Mosquitoes have been killed. Our early assumption is that somebody has invaded the Mist Forest. The person must be going after the students." Lin Huang clenched his fists tightly, staring at the screen displaying Lin Xin''s team as he heard this. "Since the Mist Forest is so large, I need you guys to help out so that we can search for them in the forest and bring all the students out safely," the Deputy Dean finally requested. While the rest of them were discussing, some of them looked worried. "Could it be the people from the underworld?" "If they are from the Purple Crow or the Saint, even the reserve members are capable of killing all of us" Seeing their reactions, both of the Deputy Deans frowned. "Those who are unwilling to go, it''s fine. You may stay here together with Dean Zhang." Wang Zijun was helpless, but still, he had to compromise. "Whoever who''s willing to go, follow me!" As Wang Zijun finished his sentence, he took out the black dimensional portal he had earlier. As he tried to set it up, he frowned. "What''s happening? Why I can''t set the location?" "If I''m not mistaken, the group of people might have locked the dimension to avoid that we can rescue the students after finding out something''s wrong," Lin Huang stood out from the crowd and said. "Since we can''t set the location to the Mist Forest in the dimensional portal, then let''s fix a location which is nearest to it." "However, the nearest location that has been set in my dimensional portal is a B-grade foothold. It is more than 4,000 kilometers away from the Mist Forest." Wang Zijun''s face turned grave. He never expected that the dimension of the Mist Forest would be locked. "If I were to fly at full speed, I''ll need about one and a half hours to reach there. If the rest of them were to travel by riding on their flying mounts, they''d need at least three hours." "Are there any of you that have set a location nearer to the Mist Forest?" Lin Huang gazed at the rest of the teachers as he had never set a location in that area before in his Black Ink. There were more than 3,000 of them, but none of them could answer Lin Huang''s question. Most of the teachers did not actually have a dimensional relic. Even the minority of them who had had never set a location that was nearer to the Mist Forest. The Martial Hunter College would organize the training at different places each month. If it was not necessary, the teachers would not normally go to the C-grade foothold or the D-grade foothold of a level-1 wild zone. "We shall just use your dimensional relic then. If it''s about 4,000 kilometers away, I''ll only need an hour to reach there." Lin Huang then turned back and looked at Wang Zijun since nobody answered his question. "An hour?" Although Wang Zijun could see that Lin Huang had already leveled up to white flame-level, he did not think that the flying speed of a white flame-level could be any faster than his. Lin Huang was lazy to explain and directly summoned Thunder. As Thunder extended its wings, measuring a length of about ten meters, its body was enveloped by purple electricity. It then landed next to Lin Huang, frightening the crowd. "It''s a double mutated monster, the Viridescent Thunderhawk! It has already achieved blue flame-level!" Qin Tianxing said in a low voice. "You''re an Imperial Censor" Both Deputy Deans were shocked. "Go back first. I''ll summon you later." Lin Huang waved his hand and Thunder''s body faded. After a short while, it completely disappeared. "I''ll see what''s happening over there. You guys follow after me later." Lin Huang could not wait to go into the Mist Forest as he was worried that something had happened to Lin Xin. "Alright, you go first. I''ll arrange for people to back you up." Wang Zijun was worried as Lin Huang wanted to go into the forest alone since the man had been hired by Liu Ming. He was unsure of the relationship between Lin Huang and Liu Ming. Moreover, his combat level was only on white flame-level. After seeing his blue flame-level summoning monster, he instantly felt that Lin Huang could be a huge assistance to them. It was impossible that a holy fire-level Imperial Censor could only summon one monster. He felt that Lin Huang''s overall abilities would be on par with those who were on purple flame-level. Wang Zijun immediately set the location in his dimensional portal and Lin Huang was the first to stride over to it. 483 Predator Fly Lin Huang stepped into the dimensional relic, observing the surveillance that was following Lin Xin''s team as the dimensional relic was closing. He noticed that the screen that had been foggy was now blacked out. He was shocked! As he stepped out of the dimensional relic, he was no longer at the Martial Hunter College anymore but in the B-grade foothold Frost City that was 4,330 kilometers from the Mist Forest. It was entering winter in Frost City in October. Lin Huang, who was only wearing a layer of clothing, attracted the attention of many. He did not care at all as he projected the map. He then summoned Thunder after confirming his location and the direction towards Mist Forest. "4,300 kilometers towards the southeast!" Lin Huang hopped onto Thunder''s back and started flying. The disappearance of Lin Xin''s team''s surveillance did not bode well, and he was worried. Along with the cold wind, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. The temperature mid-air was even lower. However, Lin Huang did not seem to notice the chilliness at all while getting Thunder to fly as fast as it could. It was around 5.20 a.m. and the day was breaking while the fog in the forest was fading away. Thunder landed in the central zone of the Mist Forest. Lin Huang had no idea where exactly Lin Xin and his bunch of students were in this stretch of forest. As they landed, Lin Huang recalled Thunder and summoned Bloody. Bloody''s form was different from how it had previously been. It no longer looked like a vine. Instead, it floated in the air like a cloud of violet haze. "I''ll have to ask you to look for Lin Xin and the students. Also, check who is messing with them," Lin Huang instructed. "Sure," Bloody said. "You can talk now?" Lin Huang was stunned. "Yes, I didn''t have vocal cords before, so I couldn''t speak. I still don''t have one now, but I can speak through body vibrations," Bloody explained. "Let''s talk more when we have the time. Let''s do what''s important first." Lin Huang did not want to dwell on the topic. Knowing that it was urgent, Bloody released a massive amount of purple dots which then mixed into the fog and spread far away. Buzz A gigantic bug that was three meters long flapped its wings occasionally on the ground. The big looked like an enormous fly with six legs and a pair of wings. There was thick, black hair on its back. The front half of its head consisted of an infinite number of eyes; there were at least a hundred thousand of them. What differentiated it from a normal fly was its back that was releasing white bubbles resembling foam. When one looked closer, there were black baby bugs in the ten-centimeter bubbles that were growing fast. Within seconds, the baby bugs were completely formed. They poked the bubbles with the needles on their mouths and flew out rapidly. Given the contact with the air, the baby bugs grew bigger as they flew. Soon, all of them became 30 centimeters long. There were two men in white robes standing next to the mother bug with a huge cross on the back of their robes. Although both of them had silver cross patterns streaked on their foreheads, the way they were painted on was different. However, if Lin Huang could see them, he could definitely tell that they belonged to the Saints and they were in the higher management! "There are only a total of 600 Surveillance Mosquitoes, and you''ve released almost 2,000 Predator Flies. Is this necessary?" A man who looked like he was in his thirties looked expressionlessly at the young man next to him. The young man had red hair and green eyes that did not look like a human''s. He turned around and grinned when he heard what his partner said. "Since we''re here, let''s have fun. It''s not every day that we get to let the mother fly out. Let''s let her feast." The red-haired man licked his lips after saying that casually. "Don''t look at me with your disgusting face. I''m afraid I might chop your head off." The man was exuding a terrifying aura. "Oh man, don''t be like that uncle. You''re scaring me" The red-haired man''s eyes turned into crescent moon shapes. Suddenly, the red-haired man felt tightness in his neck like a metal hand was strangling him. His body dangled in the air. "Talk to me like that again and I''ll kill you!" The man remained expressionless, but the red-haired man could tell that he was not joking. "I''m sorry, I''ll never do that again." The red-haired man raised his hands innocently while smiling. The man released him slowly and stood aside. He seemed like he did not want to be in contact with the young man. "I''m just joking. Why are you so mad?" The red-haired man rubbed his asphyxiated throat. "How long does it take to finish this?" The man asked stonily. "Now, the fog is still lingering. Although we have the signals of the Predator Flies, the activities of the people must be affected. Looking at the progress, it might take more than an hour to complete the capture," the red-haired man explained. "The Martial Hunter College is coming. Warn them to watch out," the man instructed. "We''ve locked the forest, so no dimensional relic will be able to enter. The nearest C-grade foothold is more than 2,000 kilometers away. Liu Ming isn''t around, so at the speed of the two deputies, they would need around an hour to get here. The rest who ride on flying mounts will take more than two hours. As long as I block the two deputies, we''ll be able to capture all of them by the time the rest get here. It''ll be useless for them to come." "This batch of offering to the god is massive. We can''t afford to miss anything. Please take this seriously," the man warned. "Don''t worry. This is the first time I''m partnering with you. I''ll give my 120% to make you happy." The red-haired man raised an eyebrow. "Uncle, would you consider me as your full-time partner?" "No, I''m good on my own," the man rejected straight away. "Sigh, such a heartbreaking response" 484 The Saint’s Evil Plan As the day was breaking at 5.30 a.m, Wang Yan sat up from the hammock and leaped out. He unzipped his pants and stood under a tree to pee. "Damn it! I dreamt of looking for a bathroom for the entire night" After peeing, he zipped his pants after shaking his member lightly. He then looked at the time on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "It''s already 5.30 a.m now. Since it''ll take around an hour for the fog to fade away, I can still continue to sleep for a while Eh, what happened to the network?" Wang Yan had launched the Heart Network to see if there was any news but realized that he could not connect to the network. "Could something have happened?" Wang Yan called the college immediately. "Sorry, there''s no signal in your area." All he got was disappointment in return. He proceeded to call a couple more numbers and got the same response, spiking his concern. "Something''s happened! All the signals and networks are locked!" Wang Yan headed towards the students that he had been secretly following. The students were assigned to 600 teams in the battle drill with 600 guardians, one of whom was Wang Yan. The 600 guardians had been selected by drawing lots for those teaching Year 1 to Year 3 who did not have classes on Fridays. Wang Yan was teaching Year 2 Class 12 Sword Dao, and he had been on complete gold-level for a long time. Most of the guardians were on the same combat level, and a couple of them were on holy fire-level. In this grade-1 wild zone, most of the monsters were on iron-level. Because the resources in the wild zone were limited, it would be a miracle for two or three monsters to level up to bronze-level in tens of years. However, as the Virtual Eye opened randomly, the guardians'' job was to prevent such things from happening. After all, most of these students who joined the battle drill were not even iron-level. They would definitely die if they were to encounter bronze-level monsters, let alone monsters of a higher level from the Virtual Eye. The guardians would follow hundreds of meters behind the students. While protecting them in secret, they were responsible for collecting the remaining monster carcasses. As most of the students'' storage space in their Emperor''s Heart Rings had limited space and would be full after only keeping a few monster carcasses, it became one of the guardians'' responsibilities. "Wake up! Right now!" Wang Yan arrived at the tents where the students were. He started pounding on the tents. "Who is that? It''s so early!" A couple of students, who were woken up, complained. "I''m the guardian responsible for your team in this assessment. You have three minutes to wake up and pack! Get up now! I''m not kidding! Those who don''t manage to pack within three minutes will be disqualified from the assessment!" Wang Yan rushed them as he knew it was an emergency. The five of them did not care at first, but they got up immediately when they heard they were at the risk of being disqualified. "Hehe, I''ve finally found you" A voice came from behind him. Wang Yan took out his sword relic without thinking twice and turned around to see where the voice was coming from. A red-haired young man in a white t-shirt was floating mid-air less than ten meters away from him. There were one big cross and two small, bloody red crosses on the left side of his neck. "Heretics?!" Wang Yan had fear in his eyes. Not only did the person belong to the top underground organization, but he was also on holy fire-level. "The signal that the Predator Flies released was too wide. I almost missed these bunch of people. I must thank you for this. If I didn''t hear you earlier, I might not have been able to find you guys so easily." The young, short-haired man grinned. "What do you want from us?" Wang Yan knew he could not fight the person, so he wanted to buy time. "Your students are great offerings. My senior heard that your dean hasn''t been around these few days, so naturally, you guys have become our target," the short-haired man said casually. "Offerings" Wang Yan was a professional hunter as well. He was shocked to hear the word ''offerings'' as he had never heard of the heretics wanting such a thing. They were just a bunch of obnoxious people that did not believe in God. "You''re not the heretics?!" "Oh no, I''ve been busted so easily" The short-haired man laughed. "Alright, let me introduce myself. My name is Wu Tian. I''m not from the heretics, but from Saint." "Saint" Wang Yan looked even more upset now. He finally understood what the offerings meant. The offerings meant sacrificing virgins to the god by all sorts of death sentences. There were no restrictions on the gender as long as the offerings were virgins. The new students of the Martial Hunter College were around 15 or 16 years of age which was what the Saints wanted. "Aren''t you guys afraid that you''ll cause an outrage? The Martial Hunter College is like a cradle training elites. Not only would our students join the Hunter Association after they graduate, but some of them would also join the Adventurer Paradise and the Union Government. Challenging us is the same as challenging the Union organization. Are you sure you can handle that?!" Wang Yan said. "That''s why we''re disguised as heretics." Wu Tian laughed. "I shall tell you this as well. All the surveillance that you guys have placed in this forest, including the Surveillance Mosquitoes, were killed by us. We have left two or three of them on purpose to ''unintentionally'' capture the appearance of the heretics." "Our elders will attack your Deputy Deans later the way the two elders of the heretics would. As for the guardians, we''ll kill all of you. Nobody would know us Saints did it. After all, the heretics did something similar last year. The Union Government and the Hunter Association would not suspect us if something similar happened to the Martial Hunter College. By then, not only we could get 3,000 offerings, but we can even watch the Union killing the bunch of crazy heretics. Killing two birds with one stone, isn''t this great? My brother told me all this. He''s one of the elders who disguised as a heretic." Wu Tian grinned. "Bunch of lunatics!" Wang Yan shouted. He did not expect the Saint to be this evil. They did not only want to attack the Martial Hunter College; they even want to blame the heretics. "Oh no I accidentally spilled our secret." Wu Tian covered his mouth and smiled. "Since you know what you shouldn''t, you must die now." As he said that, Wu Tian disappeared from Wang Yan''s sight and pierced through his left chest from his back without waiting for him to respond. Looking at the tip of the sword oozing with blood that was pierced through his chest, Wang Yan felt dizzy. Suddenly, he saw two young men come out of the tent from the corner of his eye. "Run!" He shouted with all the strength that he had while holding the sword that was through his chest tightly. The two young men ran into the forest immediately. Wu Tian attempted to pull out the sword several times but failed. Looking at the two young men escaping, he glared deadly and kicked Wang Yan away. He then sliced opened the tents with his bloody sword and kept two boys and one girl in his imprisonment relic. Then, he flew towards the direction where the two young men had fled to. 485 Killed in One Hi "Found it! It''s the heretics who attacked. They have the mark of heretics on their necks." Bloody had found the enemy''s train within five minutes. "Heretics? Could they be doing what they did the last time?" Lin Huang frowned. The memory of heretics attacking the Hunter Association''s assessment was still fresh in his mind. It was possible for the heretics to attack again as they were irrational beings. "This people are lunatics. The incident has finally calmed down and they''re at it again less than a year later," Lin Huang said. "I''ve found many Predator Flies around the Surveillance Mosquitoes'' wings. The Predator Flies must''ve eaten the mosquitoes. The heretics must''ve programmed the Predator Flies to target the Surveillance Mosquitoes and get the Predator Flies to locate where the mosquitoes were to find the students'' coordinates before they started capturing them," Bloody speculated. "Can you retrieve the coordinates?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "I''m not sure but I can try. I need some time to study the Predator Fly''s biological construction to learn how they send the signals," Bloody thought for a while and said. "How long do you need?" "At most, two to three minutes, I need to capture a Predator Fly to study it," Bloody explained. "What else did you see? Did you see Lin Xin?" Lin Huang asked again. "I see many students'' tents, but I can''t be sure that Lin Xin was in one of them. Also, some of the heretics are holy fire-level. Some of them are looking for the students, and some are capturing them" "Capturing? Are they killing the students?" Lin Huang asked again. "No, they''re capturing them alive. But I see some of the adults that were killed are mostly complete gold-level. They''re not far away from the tents. I don''t know what their identities are just yet," Bloody updated. "They should be Martial Hunter College teachers and the guardians of the battle drill. Most of them are complete gold-level. They''re not powerful enough to fight the heretics." Lin Huang frowned. Although the students were captured alive, his colleagues being killed was not good news. As they chatted, Bloody spoke again. "I''ve just cast a parasite on a Predator Fly. They''re using biological electromagnetic waves to locate themselves. The heretics have the biological electromagnetic wave receiver with them. That''s how they located the exact locations of the Predator Flies. The biological electromagnetic wave isn''t difficult to be retrieved. I can even get my Leech Pod to interfere with their probing. "Please do that then. It''s good to buy us some time." Lin Huang knew time was of the essence since it was impossible for him to rescue everyone himself. As soon as help arrived, the students would be safe. "I''ve just found out that two students escaped not far away from us. There''s a heretic running after them," Bloody said suddenly. "Where?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Eight o''clock. About three kilometers from here." Lin Huang turned around and disappeared from where he was in a blink. Seconds later, he appeared three kilometers away. It was the secret skill that came from his Seraphic Speed; it was similar to teleportation. Just when he arrived there, he heard someone joking. "Kids, it''s useless for you to hide. I''ll kill you if I find you. Why not you come out yourself and let me capture you alive?" Lin Huang leaped and appeared where the voice was coming from as he looked at the person who was floating mid-air. "It''s really the heretics." Lin Huang frowned as he saw the marks on the person''s neck. "Another kid. Wait, something''s not right White flame-level, you''re a teacher?!" Wu Tian was checking Lin Huang out. Lin Huang could tell from the redhead''s aura that he was a purple flame-level. "Look at you! You''re so young. You must be 20 years old at the most. Tsk tsk, you must be a genius to be on white flame-level at such a tender age." Wu Tian was stunned at first, but soon he started laughing. "Let me ask you a question, young man. This will influence my decision whether to kill you or to capture you as an offering." "Offering?" Lin Huang was skeptical when he heard that. "Now, here''s the question. Are you a virgin?" Wu Tian smirked at Lin Huang. To him, Lin Huang was just a white flame-level and it was impossible for Lin Huang to fight him since they were three ranks apart. "You''re not from the heretics?!" From what he asked, Lin Huang was sure about who he was now. "I''ve encountered the heretics before. They do whatever they want without any restrictions, including God. They would never involve themselves in offerings. The only underground organization that needs virgins for offerings isthe Saint!" "Oh no, my identity has been busted again! The guy just now knew I''m not from the heretics, but he didn''t figure out who I am. It''s impressive that you figured out who I am just from that." Wu Tian did not deny his identity. "Since you know who I am, do you know what you should answer my question now? Would you choose to be killed or choose to be an offering?" "I would like you to die!" Lin Huang raised his hand, a supreme sword relic appearing in it. He then swung his sword from where he stood. A white sword glow appeared before Wu Tian. Before he could even do anything, he was sliced into half at his waist. He did not die immediately as he fell to the ground. "I forgot to tell you that I have Micro Territory whereby I can attack within 300 meters from where I am." Lin Huang mocked. "Although I''ve sliced you in half, I''ve used Life Power to cover your wound when I attacked. You should be able to live for another five minutes. Five minutes is sufficient for me to get you to spill your secrets," Lin Huang said and a cloud of violet haze extended out of his sleeve. A tiny violet stream trickled into Wu Tian''s nostrils. Soon, there was a violet glow in Wu Tian''s eyes. 486 To the Rescue "The Saint''s plan is so evil. How could they trick the heretics to be blamed? If that guy didn''t accidentally spill the beans, I would''ve believed him." Lin Huang found out what was happening after Bloody retrieved Wu Tian''s memory. He had heard that the Saint and the heretics were each other''s biggest enemies in the underground world as one of them worshipped God and thought that those without religion should be burnt to death while another was a freethinker who thought that those promoting religions were lunatics. As their views opposed each other, the two top underground organizations were always backstabbing each other. Their relationship had always been described as the contradiction between lunatics and psychos. Looking at the cold body that was sliced into halves on the ground, Lin Huang knelt down and took the imprisonment relic on Wu Tian''s waist. He also took Wu Tian''s storage ring and kept it. The imprisonment relic was a black metal sphere that was the size of half a palm. As there were lives kept in the relic, there was no way for Lin Huang to keep it inside his storage space. He thought about it and found out how to use the relic. There was a pattern that was similar to the dark pseudo-prison on the relic. Lin Huang inserted his Life Power and rotated it following the direction of the pattern. More than ten students were released from the relic. There were a total of 13 students whereby ten of them had been captured when they were in the tents. They had no idea what had happened while the three remaining students had heard the conversation between Wu Tian and Wang Yan, so they knew that they had been captured by the Saint. The 13 students looked at Lin Huang in great fear. "Don''t be afraid. I''m Sir Lin Huang who is teaching Year 1 Class 2 Sword Dao faculty," Lin Huang said and projected his teacher ID. "I''ve killed the person who captured all of you." Most of the students knew Lin Huang as he looked too young among the Year 1 teachers. Many students had noticed him during the school orientation, and his young age was a hot topic among the girls. Looking at the heretics mark on the neck of the sliced body, a couple of students who did not know Lin Huang chose to believe him. "Both of you who are hiding can come out now." Lin Huang turned around and looked at the bushes. The two young men stepped out of the bushes immediately. They were still in shock as they had witnessed how Lin Huang killed Wu Tian. Seeing the 15 students that he had saved, Lin Huang was not relaxed as he had no idea how to handle these bunch of students. "Now that the forest is being surrounded by the Saint, all communications, networks, and spaces have been locked. There''s no way for me to send you out of this place and rescue will only get here one to two hours later. Until now, I''ve no idea how many of them are here, but I''m sure many students have been captured. It''s not practical for me to bring all of you along, but I can''t leave you guys here." Lin Huang did not know what to do, "Sir Lin, I think you can keep us inside the imprisonment relic and bring it along with you. The relic that you''re holding is called a Dark Sphere. It''s a grade-2 relic and it can contain 100 people. The interior is usually dark, but there''s a light mode in it as long as you activate the white pattern on the side. With the light mode activated, we can kill time by talking to each other in the relic. You won''t destroy this grade-2 relic even when you''re fighting," a boy in black frame glasses spoke up. A few students looked upset as they were unwilling to go back to imprisonment. "No matter heretics or Saint, they must''ve planned this for a very long time. They''ll definitely use the shortest time to capture all the students and leave as soon as they can. So, I think, Sir Lin, you must rescue the rest as soon as possible," explained the boy in glasses as he seemed to notice the reluctance of the students. "I know it''s uncomfortable to be kept in the Dark Sphere but please hold on a little bit more for our safety. I suppose none of us want to be the reason for holding back the rescue process, am I right?" "It seems like there''s no other way to keep you guys. The plan that this student proposed is the simplest and safest one." Even Lin Huang did not think of that. "Sir Lin, please put us in the sphere," a girl said. The students, who were reluctant, agreed as there was no other way. Lin Huang then activated the sphere and put them into it one by one. "What''s your name?" Lin Huang could not help but ask the boy in glasses. "Kong Sizhe from Class 1 Sword Dao faculty." "You''re good!" Lin Huang gave him a thumbs-up before putting him into the sphere. Lin Huang was slightly relieved as he had completed the first rescue. "I''ve cast Leech Pod on more than ten Saint members, but I have to be there myself to cast the parasite on those who are above blue flame-level. The interference of coordinates has been activated. The Saint members will soon realize that their receivers aren''t working after failing to find their targets and report to the two elders. By then, they''ll find out that the rescuers are here," Bloody spoke its speculation after the interference was arranged. "It''s alright, let them know." Lin Huang did not really care. "From Wu Tian''s memory, his brother, Wu Fa is an immortal-level rank-3, but he had no idea who the other elder was. However, looking at Wu Fa''s attitude towards the other elder, the elder should be even more powerful," Bloody reminded. "Higher than immortal-level rank-3. That''s tricky With my ability now, I should be able to kill an immortal-level rank-1, and I''ll need to summon monsters if it''s a immortal-level rank-2. I might need to transform myself to kill an immortal-level rank-3 For those higher than immortal-level rank-3" Lin Huang frowned. Since he leveled up to holy fire-level, his ability had increased tremendously. He could kill blue flame-levels when he was on gold-level rank-3, and it was easy for him to kill purple flame-levels when he was complete gold-level, He might be able to kill gold flame-levels as well. Now that he was on white flame-level, he figured he might be able to kill an immortal-level rank-1, but he was not confident to kill people that were above immortal-level rank-3. "Let''s not think about this now. I must rescue the students! Bloody, give me the nearest coordinates of the enemy." Lin Huang shook the thought out of his head. "Master, it''s inefficient for you to fight alone. Let''s summon the fiends," Bloody reminded. "But only you can guide the way. There''s no use summoning them. Would you want them to run around in the forest and try their luck?" Lin Huang had no idea why Bloody would suggest something like that. "Master, I could clone myself," Bloody suggested and its violet haze separated into two smaller haze clouds. "Why didn''t you tell me earlier?" Lin Huang did not know Bloody had such an ability. He summoned the three fiends, Bai, Charcoal, and the Supreme Overlord. He did not summon Kylie and the rest as they were many purple and even gold flame-level Saint members which they were not able to fight. The fiends were all double mutated and on gold flame-level, so they could kill all of the Saint members as long as they did not run into the two elders. Although three of his triple mutated monsters were just on blue flame-level, their abilities were comparable to the three fiends or even more powerful. Since Bai and Charcoal were unsealed, they could master their aura perfectly without revealing their god''s blood and dragon''s blood aura, so Lin Huang could summon them as usual. "Charcoal, shrink yourself or else you''ll grab too much attention," Lin Huang instructed Charcoal. Charcoal obeyed and shrunk like a leaking balloon where from 1000 meters tall to three meters within seconds. "Your mission this time is to listen to Bloody''s lead to kill the Saint members and take the Dark Spheres from their hands," Lin Huang said and dangled the Dark Sphere in his hand. "It''s easy to recognize the Saint members as they have disguised themselves as heretics with three crosses on the left side of their necks like this guy," Lin Huang told and pointed at the dead body that was sliced into halves on the ground. "Listen to Bloody for the exact arrangement." He nodded to Bloody. Bloody then cloned its body into seven entities and tied themselves on the arms of the six monsters. "Alright, let''s go!" Lin Huang shouted while Bloody led the six monsters and Lin Huang towards different directions. 487 The Insensitive Supreme Overlord "Hehehe What a fun day!" A purple-haired man in a luxurious golden robe smirked. The left side of his face was covered with half of a golden mask. His eyes were long slits, and he exuded an evil kind of charm. There was a middle-aged man with one big cross and two small crosses on his neck standing in front of him. The man was on purple flame-level. His arms, legs, and back were twisted in a way that a master yogi could not. He looked terrified at the purple-haired man. "Please Just kill me" "There are 206 pieces of bones in an adult''s body. Can you guess how many pieces of bones you have now? If you get it right, I''ll kill you so you''ll die in peace but if you''re wrong, we''ll proceed with this yoga game that we''re playing" The purple-haired man looked at the man who was deformed with his head tilted to one side. "Ghastly, stop messing around. Master''s mission is our priority, and our time is limited! If Master is satisfied with what you''ve done, you''ll have more opportunities to get out in the future," a voice reminded. "Alright, alright," the purple-haired man responded in annoyance and looked at the middle-aged man in front of him again. "Hey, uncle, it''s your lucky day today. Since I''m in a good mood, I shall tell you the answer. It''s 918 pieces, remember that!" The middle-aged man nodded immediately. "Since you''re good, I shall show you mercy by giving you a quick death." The purple-haired man snapped his fingers out of nowhere. The middle-aged man''s head turned 1,080 degrees automatically. As his neck had spun three whole rounds, his muscles and fats contorted and were squashed together like floats on water, creating a circular pattern. His eyes, nose, and lips poured out of the wounds. It was a gruesome death. "Now, it''s 1,016 pieces" The purple-haired man looked happy. He bent down and wiped the blood on the man''s face with his finger and put into his mouth. "Oh, how I''ve missed this taste. This makes me so happy, hehehe" He licked his finger while enjoying the metallic taste with his eyes closed. "Ghastly''s still insensitive as usual." Lin Huang was speechless as he watched the images that Bloody sent. "Should I warn him?" Bloody asked. "It won''t help to suppress who he is. Since it''s been a while since I let him out, it''s alright to let him release himself. Just remind him that he has to be efficient instead of wasting time like that. As for his attitude, I''ll think of a way to teach him in the future." Lin Huang thought about it and decided to allow the Supreme Overlord to express himself. The more he understood the monsters, the more Lin Huang realized that monsters of higher intelligence would have a stronger personality. The Supreme Overlord was like a rebellious kid whereby everything in the world, including living things, were toys to him. If Lin Huang was to contain who he was, it could cause him to be even more difficult. Lin Huang had no idea how he could teach the Supreme Overlord at the moment but it seemed to be good for him to release his anger for now. "How are Charcoal and Bai doing?" After checking on the Supreme Overlord that he was most worried about, Lin Huang then focused on Charcoal and Bai. Bloody sent the images of their battles. Bai had transformed his Vampire Particles into eight wings. Lin Huang knew that as his command increased, the number of his wings would increase as well. Bai''s way of battling was simple. He could pierce through the enemy''s chest with his wings without saying anything. Without wasting any time, Bai took the person''s storage ring and Dark Sphere, then left to look for his next target. "Bai has the highest efficiency!" Lin Huang exclaimed. "Let''s take a look at Charcoal!" Bloody then sent Charcoal''s side of the battle. "I can''t believe there''s dragonkin in a grade-1 wild zone. That''s an amazing surprise!" A handsome young man looked excitedly at Charcoal. "Luckily, it''s only blue flame-level or else I don''t have the confidence to capture it." "Hey, ugly, who did you say that you''re capturing?" Charcoal puffed judgmentally. "Ugly?" Lu Feng''s eyes were twitching. It was his first time hearing somebody call him ugly. "It''s okay, monsters have a different view of beauty compared to humans. It must be thinking that the mother dragon is the most beautiful thing in this world!" "Seems like you''re not only ugly but dumb too. Dragons have the perfect life without gender. Please don''t use your lowly reproduction system on us dragons," Charcoal said. "I''m not sure if a mother dragon is beautiful or not, but amongst all humans, my master is the best-looking one. Hmm, Bai isn''t bad too. No matter what, an ugly person like you has no right to comment on my beauty!" "Master? I was just thinking how could a dragonkin appear in this grade-1 wild zone, so you''re the rescue that the Martial Hunter College sent." Lu Feng glared dangerously. "Since this is the case, I shall use my magic to capture a summoning monster like you. Although it''s risky, it''s worth trying for a dragonkin like you," Lu Feng said and performed a series of hand signs next. Soon, three double mutated gold flame-level monsters appeared. They were the Violetcrystal Spider, the Violent Demonic Ape, and the Mysterious Turtlesnake. "That''s a great combination. The Violetcrystal Spider will be responsible for controlling, the Violent Demonic Ape to attack while the Mysterious Turtlesnake will be used to defend. Too bad Charcoal isn''t just a beginner dragonkin. As long as it doesn''t encounter any triple mutated monster that can suppress fire attributes, everything below immortal-level won''t be able to fight it." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling as he could almost tell what would happen next. As the three monsters were summoned, the battle started. The Violent Demonic Ape dashed towards Charcoal immediately. Charcoal yawned nonchalantly and released his Dragon Flame with its mouth wide open. The Dragon Flame engulfed the Violent Demonic Ape immediately and it turned into a pile of ashes. "Oh no, too much flame it seems" Lu Feng was stunned as he watched his gold flame-level Violent Demonic Ape killed in an instant. "How could it be so powerful? Could it be a tripled mutated dragonkin?!" Lu Feng became excited as he thought to himself while looking at Charcoal with burning desire. "I must get you!" "Hey, ugly, stop looking at me like that. It''s disgusting!" Charcoal noticed that Lu Feng was staring at it in lust. "I must get you no matter what," Lu Feng mumbled repeatedly, going insane. A pale red fog was released from his body, and a shadow appeared on top of his head. The aura was increasing tremendously "What''s happening?" Lin Huang frowned as he watched. "It''s battle spirit!" Bloody recognized it immediately. "Usually, it''s only eligible for people of immortal-level, but this guy is a gold flame-level who''s using a unique way to trigger his Life Power to increase the intensity of his Life Power to summon the battle spirit From the aura, this battle spirit has to be at least immortal-level rank-1!" "Damn it! There''s such a person in the Saints?!" Lin Huang realized that Charcoal would not be able to handle this man. "How far away is Charcoal from us?" "1,300 kilometers. With Thunder''s speed, we''ll need at least 17 minutes to reach there," Bloody estimated. "Bai and the rest are nearer to him. They''re only 300 kilometers away, and they can reach there in less than six minutes." "Get Bai to help and tell them that I''ll be there soon!" Lin Huang instructed. 488 Charcoal Versus Herculean Ape "Battle spirit" Charcoal became serious from its initial apathy towards the Herculean Ape. There was a detailed explanation of human battle spirit in the dragonkin''s inherited memory. The battle spirit was extracted from the monster and put into the human''s spirit in a unique way. The battle spirit could be summoned to join battles by inserting Life Power. The battle spirit on top of Lu Feng looked like it was formed completely using Life Power but that was not the truth. The Life Power was used to activate the battle spirit while the forming of the battle spirit came from the battle spirit itself. If Lu Feng were to activate the battle spirit with his Life Power, a single attack would drain his Life Power completely. Battle spirit was different from weapons as it was not a dead thing that was mastered by humans. It contained their intelligence and battle experiences from the time when they were alive whereby their battle modes were not much different from when they were alive. Their battle ability would grow together with the host, so people would usually pick monsters that had the most potential to cultivate the battle spirit. However, Lu Feng''s battle spirit seemed to be of a higher level as its aura had already surpassed the holy fire-level before it had fully formed. On top of his head, the battle spirit was unfolding. It was a giant ape that was more than ten meters tall with thick, turquoise hair. It held a gray staff that looked like it was made of stone in its hand, and it had a terrifying aura. Although Charcoal could not tell what monster it was, it could clearly feel that its alarming aura could not be on holy fire-level. "It''s immortal-level" Charcoal became serious as it knew very well that although it could fight a holy fire-level, it might lose fighting an immortal-level battle spirit. "The battle spirit is a double mutated beginner fiend Herculean Ape with demonic ape''s blood in it. From the aura, it could have been an immortal-level rank-1 when it was alive. Theoretically, the monster spirit''s ability wasn''t as powerful when it was captured, so it must have been some other person," Bloody said as Charcoal extended its foreclaws. "This battle spirit is very powerful, especially its strength that has no rival with monsters of the same level. It has a powerful defensive ability as well, and its speed has surpassed the normal monsters with the same combat level. It doesn''t seem to have any weaknesses; even some triple mutated immortal-level monsters wouldn''t want to fight it. Please be careful, try not to fight it head on. Bai and Master are on their way. Bai will reach in six minutes and Master will be here in 17 minutes. If you can''t fight it, just hold on for a couple of minutes." "Thanks for reminding me, but doesn''t it have any weaknesses at all?" Charcoal seemed to be unsettled. It did not hope for its first mission to fail since it was its first time out since it had been unsealed. "It does have weaknesses. Its spirit is weak, but that''s to monsters of the same level. You''re only a blue flame-level. Even spirit abilities can hardly touch it," Bloody explained. "But as a battle spirit, it has two weaknesses that its orginal form didn''t, which are the weaknesses that all battle spirits have." "What are they?" Charcoal asked immediately. "First, the battle spirit''s appearance comes from the host''s Life Power. The more powerful its attack is or the more powerful attacks it encounters, it''ll drain more Life Power from the host. The host has limited Life Power. The more Life Power is drained, the shorter the battle spirit can exist. "Secondly, when the host dies, the battle spirit dies as well. Also, the host''s Life Power was cut in half when he had to support the battle spirit''s activation. His attack and defense abilities will drop tremendously, so it''s a good target. But usually, the battle spirit will protect the host when the host is being attacked," Bloody explained in detail. "Got it!" Charcoal looked at Lu Feng. Lu Feng recalled two of his other summoning monsters after summoning his battle spirit. After seeing Charcoal kill the Violent Demonic Ape in one hit, he knew that his summoning monsters were like paper to Charcoal. Keeping them on the battlefield would mean that they would be Charcoal''s sacrificial lambs. "Herculean King, teach this baby dragon a lesson. Don''t kill it," Lu Feng glared at Charcoal like a psycho and instructed the battle spirit above his head. The Herculean Ape glared at Charcoal with its golden eyes like two spotlights as it received the instructions. As soon as the Herculean Ape looked at Charcoal, it could feel a sense of power rising. It released its dragon power immediately to suppress the Herculean Ape. As it locked its eyes on Charcoal, the Herculean Ape attacked without thinking twice. It hurled its staff towards Charcoal, crimson red Life Power covering the staff with a threatening aura. Instead of a whistling sound, thunder rumbled where the staff passed through. If Bloody had not reminded it, Charcoal would definitely fight the Herculean Ape face on as it was confident in its ability. However, it changed its usual strategy. It flapped its wings and avoided the Herculean Ape''s staff easily. It then opened its mouth and spat black Dragon Flame at Lu Feng''s direction, choosing to attack its host instead of the Herculean Ape. Its Dragon Flame covered half of the sky towards Lu Feng like a tsunami. Lu Feng did not expect Charcoal to bypass the Herculean Ape and attack him instead. He backed off immediately when he saw the Dragon Flame that was coming after him. He had seen how the flame had burnt the Violent Demonic Ape into ashes. The relic on him aside, his body was nothing like the Violent Demonic Ape. He would be dead if the flame touched him. As Lu Feng backed off, the Herculean Ape noticed that its host was in danger. It recalled its staff and turned its attack into defense mode while waving its staff at the Dragon Flame. The flame was blocked, but Charcoal had moved to another direction and spat its flame at Lu Feng again. Helpless, the Herculean Ape obstructed the flame again. Charcoal flapped its wings and attacked with its flame in another direction again The Herculean Ape became clumsy. Its rhythm was affected by Charcoal since the Dragon Flame coverage was pervasive. To protect its host, it had to block the Dragon Flame again and again. It did not have any opportunities to attack. Soon, there was Dragon Flame on its body. Although it was not harmed, the flame was draining Lu Feng''s Life Power. To Charcoal, the Dragon Flame was a unique ability that dragonkins possess. Performing such an ability required little Life Power which gave it the ability to perform the attack thousands of times. Soon, Lu Feng realized that Charcoal''s plan was to drain his Life Power with the attack. "Since you''re a dragonkin, fight me face to face if you dare!" Lu Feng shouted furiously. "Firstly, I don''t care if I''m called a dragonkin or not. I know I''m an intermediate dragonkin. Secondly, if you dare, don''t summon your battle spirit," Charcoal said and spat Dragon Flame again. "You''re scared to fight face on despite being a dragonkin. Don''t you feel shame?" Lu Feng taunted. "No," Charcoal said and spat Dragon Flame again. "Herculean King, kill him!" Lu Feng was completely mad now. "Initially, I wanted to keep you alive and make you my summoning monster, but it seems like that''s not necessary anymore. I shall kill you, take your soul and make it into a battle spirit," Lu Feng said. "You wish!" Charcoal spat Dragon Flame again. Suddenly, the staff in Herculean Ape''s hand enlarged It held the staff and threw it towards where Charcoal was. The staff expanded like Poseidon''s trident, rooted deep into the sea. An invisible force came from the staff and blocked the Dragon Flame. The staff covered the Dragon Flame completely, smashing Charcoal in its chest as it did not have the time to avoid the attack. Charcoal was like a reversed cannon, and all the trees tens of thousands of meters behind it were destroyed. 489 Bai, They’re Bullying Me! The day was breaking, and the fog was fading away in the lush forest. The fog would thicken when the sun set, and fade away when the sun rose. The unique characteristic of the Mist Forest was like a tidal wave that happened every day. The Mist Forest had behaved like that ever since it was discovered by humans. The fog was almost gone when it was six in the morning. Suddenly, there was a loud thud in the quiet forest. It sounded like thunder that carried hundreds of kilometers away. Trees fell, and there was a deep path of tens of thousands of meters long on the ground. "Ouch" Charcoal stood up slowly from the dancing dust, all of its bones in its chest broken. Even its neck was hurt from the impact. "Luckily, I managed to puff out my Dragon Breath or else, I might be dead by now," Charcoal panted softly. The excruciating pain that came from its broken bones made it nauseous. However, with the Dragon Breath and the Absolute Defence that it had, the attack did not drain all of its strength. With the help of its Enhanced Regeneration, it would take two minutes, at the most, to heal itself from the injury that seemed severe. "As expected, I can''t kill you with this attack" A voice came from the dust, a gigantic shadow becoming clear. Lu Feng brought the Herculean Ape with him from the fog. "A triple mutated intermediate dragonkin I can''t wait to make you my battle spirit!" Lu Feng said while the Herculean Ape that was semi-transparent enlarged the staff in its hand and dashed towards Charcoal. Suddenly, a red glow flashed in the air. The staff smashed into the fallen trees like a lightning bolt, but Charcoal was nowhere to be seen. "What?" Lu Feng opened his eyes wide and looked around. He then saw Charcoal in the air not far away, and there was a red shadow next to it. "This aura It''s a triple mutated god''s blood!" Lu Feng hyperventilated when he saw Bai. He could sense that Bai was a god''s blood as he had a senior who had a triple mutated god''s blood summoning monster. Although Bai''s aura was much weaker due to him concealing it intentionally, Lu Feng could tell since they were close and he was born into a family of Imperial Censors. However, he became calmer after his excitement. "Who exactly is this to own so many rare triple mutated summoning monsters? Could it be royalty from the core zone?" "Bai, you''re finally here." Charcoal flapped its wings with excitement. "Yes." Bai gave a slight response while checking out who he was going to fight. "Bai, the both of them are bullying me! The battle spirit is powerful. It broke many of my bones," Charcoal complained. Bai looked at Charcoal''s chest that was slightly sunken and patted its head to comfort it. He had learned that from Lin Huang. "Don''t worry, I''ll help you kill them!" "Yes, yes!" Charcoal nodded immediately. Bai looked at Lu Feng and the Herculean Ape threateningly. He moved his eight bloody wings on his back and disappeared from where he was. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! In a black robe and silver hair, Bai appeared mid-air like a god. His eight bloody wings turned into eight bloody swords and swung towards the Herculean Ape. He was so fast that all they could see were the shadows of his bloody glow like vines. The Herculean Ape became clumsy as Bai was too fast and the angle he attacked at was odd. The bloody swords seemed to be able to bend and pervade the air at ease. Within seconds, there were a couple of wounds on the Herculean Ape. It could feel clearly that with every attack, Bai seemed to be taking a portion of its Life Power away. That was why the Herculean Ape was defending with all its life to stop Bai from attacking. Within seconds, the Herculean Ape''s body dimmed, and even Lu Feng could feel that his Life Power was draining. "Herculean King, what are you doing? Kill him now!" Lu Feng shouted in panic. He could not be bothered who the master of these summoning monsters was anymore. As soon as his Life Power finished and his battle spirit was dead, he definitely could not fight these two triple mutated monsters himself, and they would not let him go as well. The Herculean Ape felt helpless. It knew that once the host lost all Life Power and was killed, it would die as well. Seeing that its body might break any second, it defended against Bai''s attacks and performed its final secret skill. Its eyes turned a bloody red, and its body that was more than ten meters tall began to grow. Its turquoise hair was now a mysterious purple with even thicker hair. Its body stopped growing when it was 100 meters tall. The Herculean Ape seemed to lose its mind while it shouted furiously into the sky. Ignoring Bai''s attacks, it slapped its massive palm towards Bai. Bai flapped its wings and disappeared from where he was. He appeared higher in the sky while looking at the purple monster. "Such a dumb move" Bai could tell that the Herculean Ape had burnt its soul to perform this secret skill as the host did not have sufficient Life Power to support such a secret skill. However, usage of this secret skill would double up the consumption of the host''s Life Power. As soon as Bai managed to avoid it, the Herculean Ape could not even stand for a few minutes. The Herculean Ape that transformed into such a desperate mode would completely lose its mind while attacking everything in its sight on instinct. Bai released a pale, bloody glow from his body. There were shadows that looked exactly the same as him in the sky. He smirked as he got hundreds of its shadows to dash towards the Herculean Ape. It was the Blood Shadow Skill that only required a minimal amount of Life Power to clone shadows without any abilities to trick the enemies. The Herculean Ape that had lost its mind was the perfect target to be deceived. As expected, the Herculean Ape began attacking the shadows that were advancing at it while ignoring Bai and Charcoal that were far away. "Dumbass, don''t attack the shadows!" Lu Fang shouted furiously towards the bottom. However, the battle spirit that had lost its mind was out of control and was draining his Life Power. In less than a minute, Lu Fang''s Life Power was almost depleted while the Herculean Ape was virtually transparent and had shrunk to its standard size. Bai glared raggedly at the exhausted Herculean Ape while a bloody sword appeared in his hand. "Since you''re a powerful opponent, I shan''t kill you with humiliation." There was a red glow accumulating on Bai''s bloody sword. "This is" Lin Huang was shocked as he just arrived. "That''s right. It''s your Worldly Purification." Bloody gave a firm answer. "Monsters that are triple mutated and above can learn what a human genius has learned, especially human-form monsters. They can learn most of a human''s combat skills." "Seems like I should spend some time to teach them human combat skills in the future." Lin Huang looked at Bai, but he was thinking about the Supreme Overlord, Kylie, Lancelot and his fiends. "Before that, I have to wait for Tyrant and the rest to complete triple mutation." Meanwhile, the red glow on Bai''s sword had peaked like a bright sun. He flapped the eight wings on his back and appeared in front of the Herculean Ape. He swung his sword and pierced through the Herculean Ape''s chest without any obstacles. The red glow spread more than tens kilometers away; even Lin Huang who was few kilometers away squinted. As the red light faded away, the Herculean Ape''s body shattered into pieces. Bai descended from the air and looked at Lu Feng whose Life Power was draining. "Please don''t kill me" Lu Feng looked at Bai in great fear. Bai took the Dark Sphere on his waist and chopped off his finger with the Emperor''s Heart Ring. He then threw his finger to the ground after taking off the ring. "He''s yours now!" Bai walked towards Charcoal. "Yay!" Charcoal flew to Lu Feng and spat its black Dragon Flame. The flame soon engulfed Lu Fang and as the flame faded, what was left was human ashes. "Gah, it''s burnt again. I have nothing to eat" Charcoal shook its head sadly. 490 An Irritating Interruption Lin Huang recalled Thunder and appeared before Charcoal and Bai. "Master!" Charcoal ran towards him in excitement while Bai walked towards him without saying a word. "Are you alright?" Lin Huang looked at Charcoal''s chest that seemed to be completely fine now. "Just something minor. I''ve healed myself." Charcoal was proud of itself. "Good job! I was worried that you guys might not be able to handle them." Lin Huang patted Charcoal''s head while smiling. Charcoal seemed to be enjoying itself while Bai looked aloof. "Bai, would you like to pick up sword skills?" Lin Huang turned around and asked Bai. Bai was stunned and nodded immediately. "I''ll spend some time to teach you when we get back," Lin Huang said in all seriousness. To him, Bai''s upgrade would mean that he would be more powerful himself. "Sure!" Bai''s eyes lit up when he heard what Lin Huang said. He was excited to learn human combat skills. Lin Huang did not only plan to teach Bai sword skills. He even wanted to collect all sorts of combat skills in the human world to teach all of his triple mutated human-form monsters to increase their abilities. He believed that not many people had done that. "Let''s leave as soon as possible. You guys have created a big scene. The two Saint elders might come." Lin Huang did not want to stay any longer. He summoned Thunder again and brought both of them away. In less than 20 minutes after Lin Huang left, two shadows arrived at the battle area, just three seconds apart from each other. They were the two Saint elders disguised as heretics. They had white masks on their faces, and their bodies were covered entirely in black robes. Although the heretics marks on their necks could not be seen, it gave people an illusion that their identity of heretics was legit. "That shockwave should have come from here." The duo looked at the path on the ground and soon found Lu Feng''s burnt body which they landed next to. The red-haired Wu Fa took off the hood and bent down to check the body. "He was directly burnt to death. The person must hold powerful fire attributes. I heard that the Martial Hunter College''s Vice President Zhang Xuefeng is one of such people." "This is done by Dragon Flame. There''s still Dragon Flame''s aura in the air," Yu Wenbin said. "It was a dragonkin that killed him." "A Dragonkin? Do you mean the Martial Hunter College sent an Imperial Censor?" Wu Fa frowned. "We can''t exclude that possibility from our observation." Yu Wenbin nodded. "Can you tell who this is?" "How could I when it''s all burnt?" Wu Fa smiled awkwardly. "There''s another body." Yu Wenbin moved and appeared next to the Herculean Ape''s burnt carcass while Wu Fa followed. "It looks like an ape''s carcass that''s also been burnt by Dragon Flame." Yu Wenbin could not tell which monster it was. "Oh no" Wu Fa looked concerned after examining the carcass. "What''s wrong?" Yu Wenbin looked at him. "If I''m not wrong, that burnt body should be Lu Feng''s. Among the hundred holy fire-levels that we brought this time, he was the only Imperial Censor. I remember he has a Herculean Ape, which should be this burnt carcass." Wu Fa looked upset. "Lu Yuan''s grandson?!" Yu Wenbin looked concerned too. "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure." Wu Fa shook his head. "That''s going to be difficult" Yu Wenbin was upset. The duo was upset as Lu Yuan was the Saint''s second elder who was an immortal-level rank-9. He was only a step away from imperial-level; it was just a matter of time. Once he got to imperial-level, he would be the messenger of the Saint which was a status much higher than an elder''s. Although he would not have the right to give an elder a life sentence, he still had the right to lock an elder up for hundreds of years. There had been such cases in the past. "What should we do now?" Wu Fa, who was usually daring, was clueless now. Among the Saint members, Lu Yuan was one of the few ones that he did not dare to offend. He did not expect Lu Yuan''s grandson to die on this mission. "What else can we do? It''s not like you don''t know Lu Yuan''s temper. Since his grandson followed us here and now he''s dead, how could he not look for us? The only thing to do now is to find the culprit and bring back the culprit''s body to him. Perhaps then, he might not be mad. Maybe we could get the first elder to help and the both of us will have to apologize personally." The only solution that Yu Wenbin could come up with was that. Although it could not solve the issue, it could at least lessen the conflict. "The Imperial Censor who owns the dragonkin must be powerful as well." Wu Fa still looked concerned. "I know Lu Feng''s ability. He had an immortal-level rank-1 battle spirit, and it was double mutated. Since the dragonkin managed to kill it, its ability should be at least an immortal-level rank-2 while the Imperial Censor should be even more powerful. He might even have other summoning monsters that are on the same level or even more powerful." Wu Fa was truly deceived by the way Lu Feng died and had come up with the wrong assumption. He had overestimated Lin Huang and his summoning monsters'' abilities. "Moreover, our only opponent now isn''t just the Imperial Censor, but also the Martial Hunter College''s Vice President," Wu Fa added while looking at Yu Wenbin. "I didn''t expect someone to interrupt the blame game we''re playing. It''s supposed to be simple." Yu Wenbin frowned. "We''ll try our best to kill him and bring back the body. If we don''t manage to kill him, we''ll take a photo of how he looks like and send it to Lu Yuan. We can''t be sacrificing our lives for his grandson." As the duo was discussing Lu Feng, the Marital Hunter College backup arrived in the Mist Forest. As Vice President Wang Zhijun arrived on the edge of the forest, he summoned his dimensional relic and sent all the teachers who participated in the mission in. His dimensional relic was a supreme relic with the ability to transfer a huge amount of people. It could send a thousand people, at the most, in one go while the transfer time only took a minute. The lesser the people, the shorter the time. Meanwhile, Lin Huang''s dimensional relic was a grade-4 relic that could not send people in groups. The most he could transfer was five people at once and the time gap was five minutes. The price difference between the two-dimensional relics was major. As the teachers dashed out of the dimensional relic, Wang Zijun walked into the forest as well. He floated into the sky and activated a grade-5 detection relic by inserting his Life Power. "Let me meet the most powerful guy in this attack!" As Wang Zijun instructed, the result came in from his detection relic. 491 Play with Him Soon, the result obtained from his detection relic was revealed in front of Wang Zijun. "There''s an immortal-level rank-3 and an immortal-level rank-5 in the south-eastern direction." After a moment of hesitation, Wang Zijun exited the Mist Forest. "A two versus one battle is no fun. I''ll find someone to help me!" He then turned back to summon his Dimensional Portal and advanced a step forward. After a few moments, he took Vice President Zhang''s hand and walked toward the Dimensional Portal. "Can you keep your hands off me now?" Zhang Xuefeng looked aghast at Wang Zijun who was still holding his left hand without any facial expression. Could you imagine both the male Vice Presidents, holding hands and entering the portal? Yes, over hundreds of teachers in the Martial Hunter College witnessed this and only one word could describe the expression on most of their faces C dumbfounded. Zhang Xuefeng felt that Wang Zijun''s single small deed had just ruined the image that he had built over the years. "Erm, I''m sorry. I was too excited just now No, I mean I''m too nervous." Wang Zijun then released his hand quickly. "Tell me, what''s happening?" Zhang Xuefeng noticed that Wang Zijun had pulled him over because he could not handle it alone. "There''s an immortal-level rank-3 and an immortal-level rank-5 together," Wang Zijun explained. "I''ll fight the one on rank-3, and you''ll handle the one on rank-5. I''ll help you out after I''ve killed him." Zhang Xuefeng went straight to the point. "Alright!" Wang Zijun immediately agreed with him since he was an immortal-level rank-5 whereas Zhang Xuefeng was only an immortal-level rank-4. Of course, he would not want him to fight an immortal-level rank-5. Both of them entered the forest, and Wang Zijun took out his detection relic again so that he could identify their position. Observing the projection from the detection relic, Wang Zijun frowned. "It shows that they were waiting at their original position earlier, but they are now moving quickly towards the west as if they''re chasing after something" "Could they be chasing after teacher Lin?" Zhang Xuefeng immediately thought of Lin Huang because, among all the teachers, only Lin Huang''s Viridescent Thunderhawk could manage to escape an immortal-level. If the rest of the teachers encountered the two immortal-levels, they would be killed before they could run away. Even teacher Ye Tiankong from Year 3 Class 1 was only on gold flame-level. He would be killed in a split second if he encountered both of the immortal-levels as it was impossible for him to flee. "Let''s quickly follow them!" When reminded, Wang Zijun felt that it was possible for that to happen. Thinking of Liu Ming repeatedly asking them to take good care of Lin Huang, he panicked. "Be honest. Is he the illegitimate son of the President?" Zhang Xuefeng asked in a low voice. "How would I know!? The President asked me to take good care of him, telling me that I''ll be in trouble if something happens to him. You know the President well. I wish that he won''t get me into trouble every few days," Wang Zijun explained as he knew nothing about the relationship between Lin Huang and Liu Ming. However, he too shared the same thought as Zhang Xuefeng and had even secretly compared the photos between the President and Lin Huang when he had time. Realizing that there was nothing similar in their features, he then switched his thoughts. "We have something important to do. Don''t waste any more time." Both of them then flew into the sky, heading towards the location shown on the detection relic. A few minutes ago, at the place where Lu Feng''s dead body had been found. "No matter what, we have to explain to Lu Yuan. Let''s think of a way to find the Imperial Censor. Regardless of whether we''re able to kill him or not, at least we tried!" Yu Wenbin turned back to look at Wu Fa, "Is there any way that you can find him?" "I only managed to find the dragonkin that tried to kill him. When the Imperial Censor recalls the dragonkin, only then will the detection relic point out who the master of the dragonkin is." Wu Fa shrugged his shoulders. "Let''s give it a try." Yu Wenbin nodded. Wu Fa stood in front of Lu Feng''s dead body and took out a piece of burnt skin, placing it on his palm. He started making hand seals with his other hand. After a short while, a black strand extended from the burnt skin and stretched far away. It was a monster skill that Lu Feng had unintentionally obtained from a spiritual monster. It was called the Death Hair which was actually a weaker version of the Death Whisper. The Death Whisper could retrieve a certain amount of information from the dead body whereas the Death Hair could only detect who the murderer was, giving the user a hint such as a strand of hair. Only the user of the skill could see the fine lines that looked like black hair. "Have you found it?" Seeing Wu Fa had stopped his hand seals, Yu Wenbin immediately asked. "Yes, you may now put the dead body away." Yu Wenbin frowned as he saw the condition of the dead body. Still, he took out a body bag, controlling Lu Feng''s dead body with his mind. Soon, the dead body fell into the body bag. He then put it away in the storage space in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Bring along the Demonic Ape''s carcass as well since nobody will be able to recognize Lu Feng''s dead body," Wu Fa reminded. Although Yu Wenbin was unwilling to do so, he still put the Demonic Ape''s carcass away in the same manner. "The dragonkin hasn''t been recalled by the Imperial Censor. Perhaps, it''s acting alone. If we can''t find the Imperial Censor, the only way is to kill the dragonkin and pass it to Lu Yuan." Wu Fa laughed helplessly. "Maybe that''s the only way since we have a limited time here. Lu Yuan isn''t going to let go of it regardless of what we do. It''s important that we capture it so that it can serve as an oblation." Ever since they found out that Lu Feng had been killed, Yu Wenbin''s face was a serious slate. "Let''s go!" Wu Fa did not say anything and let the strand of hair guide him. He took a leap and headed towards the west. Yu Wenbin flew off into the sky as well, following after him. Only the mess after the battle remained. Lin Huang had no idea that Charcoal had become the target of the two immortal-level Saint elders and that its position had been identified. Lin Huang quickly left the battleground with the both of them as he was afraid that they would be looking for him. According to the information obtained by Bloody, between the two Saint elders, the weaker one was an immortal-level rank-3 whereas the stronger one had the combat strength of at least an immortal-level rank-4 or higher. If only his opponent were on immortal-level rank-3, Lin Huang was still capable of fighting them with his cards. However, if they were stronger than that, Lin Huang had zero confidence that he could handle them. Therefore, he decided to flee with Bai and Charcoal in the first place. The three of them escaped about 1,000 kilometers away. When they were about to reach the border of the Mist Forest, they went into three different directions in order to rescue the students. When he had parted ways with Charcoal and Bai for less than ten minutes, a notification from Xiao Hei suddenly arrived. "The system has detected that something is wrong with Charcoal''s card as if somebody has targeted its position in a unique way." "That must be the Saint elders!" Lin Huang frowned. "Recall Charcoal!" "If Charcoal is recalled, most likely, they''ll shift their attention to you. Are you sure you want to recall it?" "Yes, I''m sure!" Lin Huang nodded. He knew that Charcoal would not be able to handle any of the Saint elders, regardless of who activated the trace. "If he''s looking for me, then let them come after me. The Vice Presidents must have arrived. It''s not a problem for me to buy them some time. I''ll just play with him." 492 I Know Who the Imperial Censor That You Are Looking For Is! Lin Huang recalled Charcoal. Bloody kept a few of the Dark Spheres and the Emperor''s Heart Ring with it. Despite knowing that recalling Charcoal would cause the Saint elders to shift their focus to him, Lin Huang did not choose to run further away. Instead, he went deeper into the forest. He raced against the clock to look for the Saint members and to rescue his students. In mid-air, Wu Fa who was flying at breakneck speed suddenly stopped. "What happened?" Yu Wenbin who was following him stopped and asked curiously. "The strand of hair suddenly changed its direction Perhaps they have found out that I''m tailing them or the summoning monster has been recalled." Wu Fa''s face took on a grim expression and looked at Yu Wenbin. "This indicates that the current coordinates of the hair should be showing the position of the Imperial Censor." "If he manages to find out that you''re tailing him, his spiritual strength must be higher than yours. From this, we know that his combat strength is at least an immortal-level rank-4. I''ve no idea where the Martial Hunter College found an immortal-level rank-4 Imperial Censor" Yu Wenbin had a grave expression. Despite the fact that he was an immortal-level rank-5, he was reluctant to encounter such an enemy. A demigod had once commented on Imperial Censors, "Fighting an Imperial Censor is equal to engaging in a battle with a group of trained monsters." This was also the reason why many of the people admired and respected Imperial Censors. The stronger the combat strength of the Imperial Censor, the higher the number of monsters one could summon, resulting in a higher probability of summoning a triple mutated monster. The ability of a triple mutated monster could be compared to a genius. Therefore, performing a rank-crossing kill was an easy feat for an Imperial Censor. "Are you still going to chase after him?" As soon as they were able to predict the combat strength of the interrupter, Wu Fa intended to retreat. "Let''s go and have a look. If we don''t even meet him, it''s hard for us to explain to Lu Yuan." Yu Wenbin hesitated for a moment and finally decided. "If we really can''t fight him, take a photo of him and immediately retreat. I''ll think of ways to get rid of him." "Alright." Listening to what Yu Wenbin said, Wu Fa had no choice but to nod in agreement. Since the both of them had mistakenly predicted that Lin Huang was an immortal-level, they had a false estimation of Lin Huang''s combat strength and treated Lin Huang as an unprecedented enemy. Fortunately, Lin Huang knew nothing about it. Otherwise, he would be secretly smirking at them as he was just a newbie who had just got to white flame-level. He could not even fly, but they assumed he was an immortal-level rank-4. At the Mist Forest, where the mist was slowly thinning, Lin Huang''s battle sword streaked across the sky, and a skull fell onto the ground from the air in a parabolic curve. Soon after, fresh blood sprayed out from the neck of the corpse to a distance of a few meters high, splattering all over the trees and plants. Lin Huang picked up the Dark Sphere around the corpse''s waist with the tip of his sword and passed it to Bloody. He then chopped off the finger that was wearing the Emperor''s Heart Ring and took the ring. When he was about to leave, he sensed a threatening aura approaching him. "Both of the Saint elders are here?" Lin Huang raised his head, looking into the sky. The next moment, Wu Fa and Yu Wenbin arrived above him. Seeing that there was only Lin Huang who was a white flame-level, Yu Wenbin ignored him and looked around. However, there was no one else. "Are you sure that this is the location being traced?" Wu Fa then gazed at Lin Huang in doubt. "The strand of hair is pointing at that guy who''s only a white flame-level." "A white flame-level?" Yu Wenbin then shifted his gaze towards Lin Huang. After sizing him up, still, he could not believe it. "Are you sure that you didn''t get it wrong?" "Now, there''s only one possibility -- the Imperial Censor has been tampering with the result of my detection." Wu Fa did not think that Lin Huang was capable of summoning an immortal-level dragonkin to kill Lu Feng who was on immortal-level rank-1. "Eh, little brat, did any Imperial Censor from the Martial Hunter College come over here to assist?" Yu Wenbin asked. "You''re asking him this way? How possible is it that he''ll answer you?" Wu Fa was speechlessly gawking at Yu Wenbin. "Imperial Censor? Yes!" Lin Huang immediately answered. "Does the Imperial Censor own a dragonkin?" Yu Wenbin immediately continued asking. "Yes, I''ve seen it before. It''s black." Lin Huang nodded enthusiastically with a smile. Wu Fa was inarticulate seeing Lin Huang''s reaction. He never expected the guy to answer their questions so easily. Under normal circumstances, Wu Fa would have to catch and torture him whereby he would rather die than give in. Eventually, the both of them would then not be able to get any information from him. "Do you know the background of the Imperial Censor? What''s his combat strength? Which rank of the immortal-level is he on?" Yu Wenbin then asked, feeling that he had bumped into an idiot who knew nothing about the situation and was willing to tell him anything he asked. "What''s the benefit of telling you this?" Lin Huang tilted his head, smiling at them. "As long as the information that you provide is accurate, we''ll let you go. We promise that we won''t hurt you," Wu Fa guaranteed. "I''m sorry. I''ll never believe a verbal promise." Lin Huang shook his head. "You" Wu Fa exuded an aura with powerful killing intention. However, Yu Wenbin suppressed him. "He''s a person who''s only looking for money. If you''re trying to force him, perhaps we won''t be able to ask anything from him in a short period of time. However, we don''t have much time here. As long as he''s not requesting for something excessive, just promise him anyway. Anything that we give to him, we''re able to snatch away later. Secretly lock the dimension with your territory to avoid him from running away after getting the item!" Yu Wenbin quietly told Wu Fa. He then asked Lin Huang directly, "What do you want?" "I''m not a greedy person. Each of you should give me a supreme relic." Lin Huang picked his ear with his little finger nonchalantly. "Do you want to die!?" Wu fa was furious as this junior who had not even achieved immortal-level dared to blackmail him. Yu Wenbin pressed against Wu Fa''s shoulder and shook his head. He then scowled and told Lin Huang, "Young man, we sincerely want to offer you a deal, but this is an absurd request. It''s impossible to offer you two supreme relics. Please request for something reasonable since we''re just asking for some information. It doesn''t cost that much if we were to buy it from the black market." "It''s true that it costs nothing under normal circumstances, but the case is different now. The Union Government and the Hunter Association have been informed that the Martial Hunter College is under attack. Soon, a large force will enter the Mist Forest, and you''ll probably have to leave soon. If both of you miss out on the information from me, perhaps it''s difficult for you to find out who the Imperial Censor is from the others. "Although I have no idea why you''re so eagerly looking for the Imperial Censor, you didn''t kill me in the first place. Instead, you asked me patiently. This shows that his identity means a lot to both of you! Therefore, the information is as rare as water in the desert, and of course, it''ll cost a lot more!" Both of them were unable to refute Lin Huang. Wu Fa would have killed him if Yu Wenbin did not try to suppress him. Even Yu Wenbin was incensed after listening to what Lin Huang said. "What if we catch him alive? We can ask him about it after bringing him back." Wu Fa''s voice was heard. "Lu Yuan needs a target to vent his anger. There are only two choices to cool him down. We can either bring back the dead body of the Imperial Censor or the carcass of the dragonkin. If we bring him back, Lu Yuan won''t be able to calm down even though we''re able to obtain the information about the Imperial Censor. He will think that we''re useless as we can''t even obtain the information and have set the Imperial Censor free." Yu Wenbin tried very hard to contain his anger and remained alert. "Let''s think of a way to get the answer from him since he has to give us back whatever we gave him afterward!" "Bro, we only have two supreme relics. It''s unrealistic to ask for two." After the discussion, Yu Wenbin said, "I have an extra armor which is a supreme relic. If you''d like to deal with us, I''ll give this armor to you. If you refuse to do so, I can''t promise that you''ll be able to get out of this place alive" The last sentence that Yu Wenbin said sounded intimidating. "Alright, since you only have one, I''ll have to accept. I didn''t know that the both of you are so poor." Lin Huang was unsatisfied and extended his hand. Yu Wenbin was holding himself back as he took out the armor. He then threw it to Lin Huang. As Lin Huang received the armor, he scrutinized it carefully to ensure that nothing was wrong with it. He then put it away in his storage space. "Could you please tell us what we want to know?" Yu Wenbin squinted his eyes. "Alright." Lin Huang nodded his head with a smile. He then extended his right index finger, pointing at himself."The Imperial Censor that both of you are looking for is actually me!" 493 Figh "The Imperial Censor that both of you are looking for Is actually me!" Just when Lin Huang was pointing at himself, he contacted Xiao Hei through his mind. "Use the Provisional Transformational Card. Transform into the Inferior Imp but maintain the human form." "You will lose all the abilities of the monster by activating the Provisional Transformation Card in the human form. There will only be an increase in your combat strength. Are you sure that you would like to transform by maintaining in the human form?" "Yes, I''m sure!" Lin Huang answered firmly. He unintentionally found out from Charcoal a few days ago that the Provisional Transformation Card could be used as a combat strength increment card. It could stop changes that occurred during the transformation while there would be a temporary increase in his combat strength. However, he would be unable to use the power of the monster transformed, and he would not possess the physique of the monster. Furthermore, despite part of the function of the Provisional Transformation Card being restricted, each of the cards could still be used for only an hour. The usage was similar to the normal extent. The effect of the increment in combat strength would automatically disappear after one hour. "Using the Provisional Transformation Card x 1. Restricting transformation effect There is a provisional increase in your combat strength to gold flame-level!" As Xiao Hei''s voice was heard, there was an increase in Lin Huang''s combat strength. In less than a second, he upgraded from a white flame-level to a gold flame-level. He could unmistakably feel that his abilities were improving insanely. Sensing that there was an explosion in Lin Huang''s combat strength, Yu Wenbin and Wu Fa were shocked. They then recovered from their thoughts. "You can alter your combat strength! Your combat strength is actually on gold flame-level No wonder you could kill Lu Feng." Wu Fa was shocked. He then realized that nobody had tampered with the result of the detection. The Death Hair had been pointing at Lin Huang as Lin Huang was the master of the dragonkin! Lin Huang''s performance was confusing. As his combat strength was only on white flame-level, Wu Fa and Yu Wenbin had assumed that he could only control a crimson or blue flame-level monster. It was less likely that he was capable of controlling a monster that was higher than blue flame-level. Even if he was capable of summoning a group of monsters, it was impossible that he had managed to kill someone who was on immortal-level since the gap in combat strength was too big. This had also caused the both of them to make a serious mistake in estimating his combat strength and they thought that somebody had tampered with the detection result when they saw Lin Huang at the very first moment. However, since his combat strength was now on gold flame-level, there was nothing unusual even if he owned an immortal-level summoning monster. It was not difficult for him to defeat Lu Feng''s immortal-level Combat Soul and kill him. "Damn little brat! How dare you lie to me!?" Yu Wenbin''s face turned maroon in fury. He would never have expected to be cheated of his supreme relic. It was an utter humiliation whereby people would still laugh at him even after 10,000 years. He could imagine that even until the day he died, the people who passed by his grave would still be pointing at his grave and mocking, "Yo, he''s the idiot that got cheated out of his supreme relic!" Yu Wenbin''s temper rose higher and higher. Soon, a long supreme relic spear was quickly formed in his hand. It was a long, black spear which was about two meters long and seven centimeters thick. If one ignored the tip of the spear, it looked more like a long, black pole in Yu Wenbin''s hand. There were fine, complicated patterns on the shaft. The refinery had set the sigils. They were actually engraved within the long spear where they were kept secret from the public, and nobody could detect it. However, based on the complexity of the patterns and the faint glow that appeared on the surface of the long spear, Lin Huang could easily determine that the long spear was similar to his Zenonia which was given by Liu Ming. Both of them were supreme relics. "Go to hell!" Yu Wenbin attacked without hesitation, directing his long spear towards Lin Huang. The moment the tip of the spear was flung out, black streaks shot into the sky like arrows. It seemed like he was not holding a spear but a gun that could release quick consecutive shots. At this moment, he did not look like he had taken a major in spearing which would benefit him in close combat. Instead, he looked like a gunmaster who was skilled in ranged attacks. The black flares flashed through the air like arrows at a speed that was a few times faster than sonic speed, resulting in a sonic boom in the air. It stirred up a fierce wind which swept the forest below it away. All the trees fell whenever the beacons passed by. The streaks were akin to torrential rain, correlating with Yu Wenbin''s anger like he wanted to vent his rage on Lin Huang. Countless black flares struck. However, Lin Huang did not look nervous at all. He grinned and moved a step forward. He then disappeared from his original position in an instant. Yes, he had not moved to dodge but had directly dissolved into thin air. At almost the same time when Lin Huang disappeared, infinite black beacons engulfed the entire region where he was standing at earlier. Black beams struck the ground and loud rumbling thunder echoed throughout the land more than 1,000 kilometers away. The ground was shaking and an earthquake seemed to reverberate in the area within more than 10 kilometers. It resembled the eruption of volcanoes. After a short while, the attack finally stopped. Before the smoke cleared, one could vaguely see that the entire surface of the ground looked like a meteor storm had stricken it. A large number of huge pits with a depth of about 100 meters were formed all over. The region surrounding it looked like the surface of the moon with an uneven surface. Within four kilometers, there were no traces of plants. All the plants had been wiped out by the attack. Only a bare land with pits all over remained. "It''s difficult to look for his dead body" Wu Fa covered his forehead, feeling awkward. He never knew that Yu Wenbin would attack in anger without considering the dilemma of bringing his dead body back. "Eh" Yu Wenbin then recovered from his thoughts and recalled he had to report to Lu Yuan. His face turned stiff. "Hey, why are both of you looking for my dead body? Do you guys have any bad habits?" A voice was suddenly heard coming from the forest. Yu Wenbin and Wu Fa immediately turned around and saw Lin Huang standing on the branch of one of the big trees. Lin Huang waved at them and smiled cheekily. "Why are the both of you looking for me?" "Your dragonkin has killed the second elder of the Saint''s grandson," Wu Fa hesitated for a while before answering him. "Oh, are you talking about the guy who uses the Combat Soul? I''ve said that earlier that he won''t be able to control such a Combat Soul. It''s because he has someone to back him up." Lin Huang then admitted, "My summoning monster indeed killed him." Yu Wenbin and Wu Fa exchanged glances with each other after listening to what he said. Lin Huang''s description matched what Lu Feng had said. They confirmed that Lin Huang was the murderer. "Since you''ve admitted that you''re the murderer, that''ll be easy for us." Yu Wenbin smiled bitterly. "Little brat, make a choice. Do you want us to catch you alive or do you want us to bring your dead body back?" "I''m not interested in becoming a Saint member as I''ve always heard that the Saints are a group of idiots that have been brainwashed," Lin Huang insulted. "What do you know about us?" Yu Wenbin said in a deep voice. "I know whatever I''m supposed to. The Saint members pretend to be the heretics to cast the blame on them." Lin Huang gazed at Wu Fa. He could sense that his aura was rather weak and that he must be Wu Tian''s brother. "Oh yeah, I knew all this from Wu Tian." "Xiao Tian?! What did you do to him?" Wu Fa could no longer remain calm. "What''s the point of keeping him alive as I''ve gotten the information I want? Of course, I''ve killed him!" Lin Huang answered with a wry smile. 494 The Darkscythe Apparition "You''ve killed my brother" Wu Fa growled. He did not sound human but more like a beast. He shot a glare at Lin Huang, his green pupils suddenly becoming vertical slits and the color turning amber. He looked like a cat. "I can only turn you into his funeral offering!" As Wu Fa uttered the last word, he gave off a dangerous, monster-like aura. Sharp blades with a length of more than 20 centimeters extended from all ten of his fingers. It looked like his nails had suddenly become extraordinarily long. However, Lin Huang knew that they must be some exclusively made relics. "Hey, hey, only women fight with nails. Also, why do you keep such long nails? Aren''t you afraid that you''ll accidentally poke your brain when you''re picking your nose?" Lin Huang felt that his performance was amazing since his insulting skills had reached level 180. Still, Wu Fa maintained a neutral expression as if he did not care about what Lin Huang said. However, his action said it all. He maintained an offensive posture in mid-air. However, it did not look like a posture a human would assume in a fight. It looked more like a quadruped about to pounce instead. In an instant, Wu Fa disappeared from his original position. "Burn in hell!" The voice was heard from behind. The next moment, silver claws attempted to rip his torso into pieces. The sharp claws instantly pierced through Lin Huang''s body. However, Wu Fa''s facial expression changed abruptly. He immediately looked towards another direction. "Are you looking for me?" Lin Huang''s voice was suddenly heard, followed by a golden glow with electric arc around the blade. Wu Fa twisted his body to dodge the attack as ten sharp blades interlaced to form a shield, barring the front of his neck. Bang! The golden glow that was moving at high speed instantly crashed into Wu Fa''s sharp blades. A beam of dazzling golden glow could be seen, followed by the endless rumbling sound of thunder. The next moment, a shadow dashed forward, creating a huge pit that measured a length of more than 30 kilometers on the ground. "You managed to survive the attack. That''s awesome!" Lin Huang commented to Wu Fa. His current abilities were on par with the Regal Sword Killer that had a similar combat strength but had gone on a rampage. He could now attack opponents of a higher level. Since he was now on gold flame-level, his abilities could compare to those who were on immortal-level rank-5. He had performed a hit with his Thunder Sting just now, but he still could not kill Wu Fa who was only an immortal-level rank-3, taking him by surprise. However, despite Wu Fa surviving, he had probably lost his combat abilities in a short period of time after enduring that single hit. Lin Huang shifted his gaze towards Yu Wenbin. "It seems like it''s my lucky day as I''ve bumped into a supreme genius" Seeing Wu Fa defeated in one hit, Yu Wenbin calmed himself down. He knew very well that despite the fact that Wu Fa''s combat strength being only on immortal-level rank-3, his abilities were actually stronger than those on immortal-level rank-4. Even though he might not be as strong as an immortal-level rank-5, he was halfway there. Lin Huang was mighty. "I''m so adorable! Don''t you feel happy to see me?" Lin Huang tilted his head slightly. "If we weren''t enemies, perhaps I''ll request for a photography session." Yu Wenbin remained calm and did not fight him immediately. He had some concerns about Lin Huang''s identity as an Imperial Censor. "I''m curious. Since you''re an Imperial Censor, why didn''t you summon your monsters?" Lin Huang''s ability alone was terrifying. If he owned one or two summoning monsters of the same combat strength, Yu Wenbin would have no chances of winning at all. "Can''t I test my sword on you?" Lin Hung retorted. "I guess you have some other reasons Perhaps your summoning monsters are not capable of threatening us." Yu Wenbin tried to test him while observing Lin Huang''s reaction. "I used to doubting the Saint''s beliefs." Lin Huang changed the topic. "Could you please clarify it for me?" Yu Wenbin was stunned as he never expected that Lin Huang would be interested in the Saint''s creeds. "If you''re interested in joining the Saint, I can be your referrer. Since you''re a supreme genius, you''ll be treated kindly and generously. As long as you''re sincere, you can even be the potential candidate of the son of God," Yu Wenbin immediately said as the credit would go to him if a supreme genius like Lin Huang joined the Saint. "I''m actually only interested in one thing." Lin Huang never expected that the man would mistakenly interpret what he said. He then asked, "Why are males offered to their God? In my memory, only females are offered to God in most religions. Does their God really accept both males and females?" Yu Wenbin''s eyes were twitching as he heard that. He then explained, "Our God has no gender. As long as they are virgins, they will be considered pure oblations." "Therefore, you admit that the Saint accepts both males and females?" Lin Huang emphasized the phrase that Yu Wenbin did not want to hear. Before Yu Wenbin refuted, Lin Huang then continued, "Tsk tsk, your God is a PAEDOPHILE "Do you know that if your God was human, he''d be castrated during ancient times. Not only would his reproductive organ be castrated, his brain would be dissected whereby the nervous tissues that cause lust will be removed from the cerebral cortex by force so that they''ll completely lose interest in both living and non-living beings. I''ve heard that a minority of the organizations still practice such a castration technique. I''d suggest that your God do a" "You''re insulting God. I''ll have to kill you!" It seemed like Lin Huang had triggered him and Yu Wenbin had completely lost his rationality. The aura released from his body was growing more and more intense. The black Life Power created a huge shadow over his head. It was a large monster taller than 100 meters. It had no legs and was floating in mid-air. It was wearing a black robe with complicated, bloody patterns vaguely appearing on it. The robe flounced mid-air without any wind. It seemed like it was wearing a skeleton mask. Nobody could see how it looked like behind the mask. Only a pair of crystal-clear, white bones protruding like horns could be seen on its head. The horns were more than double the length of the mask. Lin Huang looked downward and noticed that it was grabbing a big black scythe tightly in its hand. "It is a triple mutated undying species, the Darkscythe Apparition. Its combat strength is at least immortal-level rank-5 or even higher." Bloody''s voice was suddenly heard from his sleeves. "Master, you have to be careful. The monster can hide the path of its attack. The effect of the attack is somewhat similar to the Territory but its attack range is larger and it''s even creepier." "Understand!" Lin Huang sobered after listening to Bloody''s introduction.=_=llllll 495 Lin Huang versus Yu Wenbin After the Darkscythe Apparition completely formed in mid-air, its blue eyes slowly moved downwards, fixing its gaze on Lin Huang. "Kill him!" Yu Wenbin''s eyes flashed with a trace of fury and he instructed the Combat Soul mercilessly. The Darkscythe Apparition''s blue eyes glowed brightly, accompanied by a low growl. The black scythe in its white bony hand suddenly moved, silently streaking across the air and producing a ripple that could be vaguely seen in mid-air. At almost the same time that he wielded his scythe, Lin Huang could feel danger aiming for the right of his torso. There were no traces before that but suddenly, a black crescent that was more than ten meters long appeared and slashed at Lin Huang''s waist. Fortunately, Lin Huang sensed that something was wrong in the first place with his Territory skill. He took a step back and immediately retreated, barely managing to dodge the attack. The black crescent-shaped impact energy vibrated. All the trees that were more than 10 kilometers away collapsed, turning into black carbide. Lin Huang''s pupils dilated as he saw this. "Master, the Darkscythe Apparition is a monster that contains the blood of death. Although the concentration is low and it isn''t considered a god''s blood, its attack is capable of engulfing one''s life. By attacking a weaker opponent, it''s able to overwhelm a large amount of Life Power from its opponent. Despite not being to subdue the Life Power of a stronger opponent, the wound it inflicts is hardly curable and it causes dissipation of one''s Life Power. It''s best to avoid being struck by such a monster." "Okay." Lin Huang nodded and at the same time, he sensed a peculiar wave coming from behind him. Lin Huang did not turn back. He moved a step forward and disappeared. Just as he disappeared, a black beam appeared. It resembled an electric shear that caused a black, bald patch more than 10 kilometers long in the forest. As he managed to avoid two of its attacks, Yu Wenbin squinted his eyes and instructed, "Increase the attack frequency. I don''t think that he''ll be able to dodge all of them!" The black glow of the blade appeared in mid-air, and its attack frequency was at least twice as fast. However, Lin Huang was like a slippery loach as he managed to complete the dodge before the black glow struck him. Yu Wenbin noticed that Lin Huang managed to avoid those attacks without looking directly at them. He wondered, "Does he have any prediction abilities or skills like the Territory skill?" When he could confirm that, he knew that none of the abilities that he possessed would affect Lin Huang. "Be it his prediction ability or the Territory skill, the distance within which he can perform a dodge will be limited." Yu Wenbin grinned and secretly contacted the Combat Soul, "Darkscythe, unleash Luna Kill!" "The attack has stopped" After dodge for the last time, Lin Huang noticed that the opponent had stopped attacking. "Master, be careful. He must have discovered that the effect of Luna Slash can do no harm to you. Perhaps, he''ll switch to a regional attack like Luna Kill. Luna Kill can automatically detect living beings around it and it will launch attacks in the form of mist. It''ll be like moonlight whereby everywhere is pervasive. It is useless to dodge such an attack since anywhere within 10 kilometers of its range will come under attack." "Understand!" As he listened to Bloody''s introduction, he raised his head and gazed at the Combat Soul. In mid-air, the Darkscythe Apparition was quickly performing hand seals. In just a short while, complicated sigils were formed in mid-air, resulting in a black imprint. It extended its hand and placed the scythe in front of it. The black imprint seemed to embed with the scythe, both of them merging with each other perfectly. The crescent-shaped scythe instantly became a black mirror that could be used for the exchange of sigils. The Darkscythe Apparition held the handle of the mirror with both of its hands and black Life Power gushed into the mirror like a broken dam. Lin Huang felt that the threat was near and at almost the same time, he activated his Dark Shield. The Dark Shield resembled a perfect dark sphere and Lin Huang was completely enveloped by it. Just as the Dark Shield was created, a massive amount of black mist was produced out of nowhere, surrounding the Dark Shield and completely shrouding it in the black mist. In the instant when the black mist and the Dark Shield touched each other, a hissing sound was produced like water droplets falling on hot ironware. Lin Huang could clearly feel that the black mist outside was a very strong acidic layer that attempted to erode the Dark Shield which acted as a protective layer. Despite the fact that the opponent''s attack was all-pervasive, the strength of the attack was very limited. It was far from capable of breaking through the defense layer of the Dark Shield. Instead, it constantly consumed the Life Power transmitted out from Lin Huang''s body that was used to support the Dark Shield. Lin Huang calculated the rate of his Life Power consumption. Based on the opponent''s rate of consumption, he could support the Dark Shield for at least three days, given that he did not use any Life Power Refill Cards to restore his Life Power. "Such an attack doesn''t require a large amount of Life Power from me, but it must consume a large portion of his Life Power." Lin Huang looked at Yu Wenbin through the Dark Shield. Since it was covered by the dark mist, his vision was somehow affected. However, Lin Huang had incredible eyesight as he could still see that Yu Wenbin was angry. Obviously, he did not expect that Lin Huang would have such a defense skill. "Damned little brat!" Yu Wenbin cursed angrily. This hit had consumed almost half the amount of Life Power he had, yet his opponent managed to dodge all the attacks with the protective layer he used. "It''s not going to work if it continues. The wave of the battle has spread out and it must have attracted the attention of the Vice President of Martial Hunter College. He will arrive really soon." Yu Wenbin pacified himself. He then looked at Wu Fa and realized that he had not stirred. He could sense that Wu Fa was still alive, but he must have probably fainted. "He''s such a burden, and it has now become a one versus two battle. The probability of winning the battle is almost zero" Yu Wenbin wanted to retreat. Lin Huang noticed that Yu Wenbin turned his head to look at Wu Fa. He could instantly guess that he wanted to take Wu Fa and flee. "Hey, there''s nothing special about your attack even though you''ve prepared for so long," Lin Huang insulted again, "I was looking forward to something powerful, but it seems like nothing to me! If all the Saint elders are of your level, I''m really worried about the future development of the Saint!" "I think that it''s because your God isn''t strong enough. That''s why the abilities of the Saint members are weak as well. Your God is utter rubbish. What did your God give you even though you serve him every day? It''s better for you to have faith in me. I promise that I''ll give you good food everyday" Lin Huang knew that whenever he mentioned their God, his opponent would be triggered and would lose his rationality. "I''ll send you to your grave!" Yu Wenbin could no longer bear it anymore. 496 Ism Sorry, I Know a Little about Ocular Skills A philosopher had once said never to step on the cat''s tail every few days as the cat would hate you. Lin Huang could not remember how many times he had offended Yu Wenbin. From this fact alone, he could confirm that the cat would not only hate him for stepping on its tail but could also possibly lose all rationality. He had to admit that despite the Saint members being brainwashed to ensure that they were absolutely loyal to the organization, there were somehow some side effects. Anything related to their God could cause them to lose their rationality and go insane. Their God was the ultimate supreme to the Saint members as they would not even mention his actual name and would only address him as God. It was taboo to them. Humiliating their God would be the greatest sin to the Saint members. The first creed of the Saint was to kill anyone who insults their God! This creed was imprinted in every one of the Saint members'' minds and would provoke their anger. Lin Huang had emphasized that, hitting below the belt and Yu Wenbin was unable to let him go. Under normal circumstances, regardless of what had happened, capturing the sacrificial offering would be Yu Wenbin''s priority. However, he could not ignore Lin Huang''s insult towards their God. The Saint members felt that the humiliation when one insulted their God compared to catching their wife in the act with more than one man in bed was a hundredfold worse. Yu Wenbin had forgotten the task of capturing him as an oblation. He only had one thought in mind now to kill the young man in front of him! He wanted him to disappear completely from the world! It was simply because his very presence was a disrespect to God! Outside the Dark Shield, the black mist was still revolving and the hissing sound of the water vapor did not stop at all. Yu Wenbin, who was hanging mid-air, had broken blood vessels in his eyes. Beneath the cat mask, he looked rather ferocious. Right at this moment, he was holding the supreme relic tightly in his hand with Life Power being inserted into it. The sigils on the relic quickly lit up and ignited from the handle of the relic towards the tip of the spear. Lin Huang''s face turned grave as he saw that. "The guy just performed the second activation on the supreme relic" The second activation was an ability exclusively owned by the supreme relic whereby it would have high compatibility with the Life Power of the user and could be used simultaneously with the Life Power. According to the user''s needs, the changes would occur based on the form of the Life Power. Such an activation would usually need the user to follow the characteristic of the relic to activate a certain skill so that the effect of the relic could be maximized. Otherwise, the effect would not be significant. If the opponent performed the second activation right now, the next skill would be a fatal one. "What kind of skill will it be?" Lin Huang was cautious of it, but at the same time, he was looking forward to it. In Yu Wenbin''s hand, the sigils that were lit up soon extended to the tip of the spear. All the sigils on the long spear were all lit up, resembling a glowing power-saving fluorescent tube that was immensely bright. "Seraphic Spear!" Yu Wenbin said softly. The next moment, on top of the long spear, the dazzling white light grew even brighter like an explosion. In just a blink of an eye, the intensity of the white light had reached its peak and was comparable to the Sun at noon. It was so glaring that one would not be able to look into the light. Right this moment, the "Sun" suddenly dimmed and a beam of white light was about to strike Lin Huang at a terrifying speed. The white electric arcs could be vaguely seen dancing in the sky. Lin Huang''s limited vision was unable to capture the path of the attack. When it was at a distance that could be sensed by his Territory skill which was about 300 meters away, the beam of white light had already struck the Dark Shield. The next moment, Lin Huang''s facial expression changed and he immediately tried to dodge the impact. Just when he shifted, the beam of white light directly penetrated through the Dark Shield as if it was only a meager hindrance to the beam of light. It brushed past the left of Lin Huang''s frame and shot straight out of the Dark Shield behind him. Lin Huang touched his left side of the body. Although the attack did not hit him straight on, there were scratches left on his skin. He immediately became alert and glared at Yu Wenbin. He then found out that Yu Wenbin was still holding the long spear, but the tip of the spear had penetrated through his Dark Shield. The beam of white light had not shot out of the tip of the spear. Instead, the pillar of light was the spear itself. After the spear integrated with the Life Power, the length of the spear would constantly extend and ironically, at the same time, the shaft would be compressed. As it was compressed to a certain extent, it would be ejected. It was the reason why the beam of white light had turned brilliant so quickly like an explosion and right when the attack was launched, the light faded. "The power of the skill is horrifying. It almost killed me!" Lin Huang then gazed at the hole formed by the spear penetrating through the Dark Shield. He knew that the opponent''s attack was far beyond his most powerful hit. Otherwise, he would not have been able to break through the Dark Shield. As it penetrated through the Dark Shield, it began to collapse. The black mist started flowing in through the gap and gushed towards Lin Huang. Lin Huang moved in a flash and appeared at an area that was more than 100 meters away. However, as soon as he appeared, the black mist formed, surrounding his body. Lin Huang dodged several times, but he was still unable to break free from the black mist. It seemed like it had attached itself to his bone. No matter where he went, the black mist formed at almost the same time. After several attempts, Lin Huang suddenly shifted his gaze towards Yu Wenbin. He quickly put away his long spear, staring at Lin Huang with a cold, stony expression. "There''s no use for you to hide. Luna Kill is like your shadow, and you''ll not be able to get rid of it. As for your defense skill that seems like a turtle shell, despite Luna Kill being unable to break it, it''s like a target that doesn''t move. My Seraphic Spear can penetrate through it repeatedly." Yu Wenbin felt that there was no way for Lin Huang to fight back. "Do you think that you''re going to win? I don''t think so." Lin Huang ignored the black mist, activating his defensive relic with his Life Power. He then pounced on Yu Wenbin. "You''re trying to attack me at the risk of getting injured? You''re such an idiot!" Yu Wenbin sneered. Lin Huang did not care so much about that and approached him. A flicker of fury flashed through Yu Wenbin''s eyes and the long spear with dim glow lit up again. Lin Huang leaped and the sword in his hand was gleaming brightly as if it was trying to seize a last-second touchdown. Yu Wenbin smiled coldly. "Go to hell, little brat!" The next moment, the long spear in his hand was moving just as fast as the previous hit. The moment when Lin Huang was about to brandish his sword that was glowing brightly, the long spear pierced through Lin Huang''s head. Lin Huang collapsed onto the ground. Seeing that his head had exploded, Yu Wenbin grinned in victory. "He''s a little brat indeed, having the gall to put up a desperate fight. I''m the one who laughs last." "Oh? Are you sure?" Right at that moment, a voice taunted behind Yu Wenbin. He wanted to turn around, but he realized that he was incapable of doing so. It was because he saw a headless body, dressed in black robes and blood was sputtering out from his neck like a fountain. Behind the body, a young man was holding a battle sword and grinning at him. There was blood dripping from the sword. The next moment, he blacked out. "I''m sorry. I forgot to tell you that I know a little about ocular skills." Unfortunately, Yu Wenbin could no longer listen to Lin Huang''s last sentence. 497 Lin Xin Has Been Discovered His headless body and his head with a frightened expression frozen on its face fell from mid-air. Even after Yu Wenbin died, he still would never know how Lin Huang killed him. The black sigils in Lin Huang''s eyes gradually faded and soon, his pair of eyes returned to normal. "Congratulations, you have obtained a Legendary Monster Soul -- the Darkscythe Apparition!" A notification from Xiao Hei suddenly arrived, telling him of his unexpected gain. The system would not usually give a cross-ranking kill reward. Some other reward would be assigned instead. Lin Huang would obtain the skills and the talent of the person killed but the probability of getting it was tiny. Therefore, he had not expected to get a reward after killing him. Obtaining the opponent''s Combat Soul had come as a complete surprise to him. As Lin Huang landed on the ground, he stabilized himself. Before he read the function of the Combat Soul, a voice from Bloody was heard. "Master It seems like Wu Fa has fled!" "What?" Lin Huang immediately raised his head and looked towards the direction where Wu Fa was sprawled. He was not there anymore. Lin Huang immediately asked Bloody, "When did he run away?" "I''m not sure. When you chopped off the head of the Saint member, Wu Fa, who was originally lying over there, had disappeared. I suspected that he has already fled, but his body was left on the ground," Bloody figured. "That''s possible" Lin Huang frowned, nodding his head. "Please continue monitoring the forest with your Leech Pods. Immediately inform me when you discover him!" Lin Huang felt mad at his carelessness as his enemy had managed to run away from him. Just then, Lin Huang felt that two extremely powerful auras were approaching him quickly, Lin Huang was familiar with them as they were the Vice Presidents of the Martial Hunter College. Without a moment''s hesitation, he removed the effect of the Provisional Transformation Card which increased his combat strength and put his sword relic away. He then bent down and took Yu Wenbin''s Emperor''s Heart Ring, storing it in his storage space. He took the sphere as well. A few moments later, two shadows appeared in the sky at almost the same time. "Lin Huang, are you okay?" Wang Zijun immediately asked. "Yes, I''m alright." Lin Huang turned back to look at both of them and nodded with a smile. When they saw Lin Huang, the both of them quickly landed on the ground. Before they could stabilize themselves, they saw the headless body next to Lin Huang. Zhang Xuefeng saw the symbol of the heretics on the dead body''s neck at first glance. His face instantly turned grave. "Heretics?!" "He''s not a heretic but a Saint member. To be accurate, the Saint members pretended to be the heretics so that they could put the blame on them," Lin Huang explained, shaking his head. "Is there any evidence?" Zhang Xue Feng frowned and asked. "I''ve purposely recorded a few videos." Lin Huang nodded his head, projecting the videos that he had recorded. He knew that if he were to reveal that he had asked Wu Tian about it and Wu Tian was the one who told him about it, it could not be considered evidence. Therefore, he had recorded the conversation between him, Wu Fa, and Yu Wenbin. In the first video, Lin Huang revealed that they were going to shift the blame to others. When he mentioned Wu Tian, Yu Wenbin and Wu Fa had responded strangely. In the second video, he criticized their God for accepting both males and females, and when he mentioned about the castration, Yu Wenbin went insane. He had intentionally provoked him as his main purpose was to record these videos as evidence. After watching both of the videos, Zhang Xuefeng and Wang Zijun, who doubted him, eventually believed Lin Huang. Despite both of them not admitting that they were Saint members in the video, when Lin Huang revealed that they were going to shift the blame on others, they had asked, "What did you know?", giving them away. Wu Fa''s reaction after knowing Wu Tian had died and their response as Lin Huang insulted their God further proved this. The heretics preferred to go after freedom, and they used to despise the Saint''s God. They would not be triggered if Lin Huang scolded their God. Instead, they would curse their God together with him. They would not have reacted in anger as Yu Wenbin did, and it was obvious that his anger was genuine. "Aside from the videos, let the forensics remove the disguise and you''ll know the truth." Lin Huang pointed at the headless corpse. "Where''s the other man? Weren''t there two of them in the video?" Wang Zijun asked. "He fled when I was fighting the guy." Lin Huang was upset as he thought of it. Zhang Xuefeng then took a glance at the trails left after the battle. Apparently, the damage by the fight could not have been done by someone who was only on holy fire-level. "Is he an immortal-level? Did you kill him?" Zhang Xuefeng felt that it was unbelievable as he observed the area. He then turned back and looked at Lin Huang. "No, the both of you killed him. It has nothing to do with me." Lin Huang looked at Zhang Xuefeng, shaking his head with a smile. "I bought you some time so that the both of you can save me and kill the Saint member." "I know what to do. We''ll keep it a secret." Wang Zijun understood what Lin Huang meant as he wanted to hide his ability from the public. Therefore, both of them had to bear the responsibility. "But The guy has left." "If he''s still in the forest, we''ll be able to find him and kill him." Lin Huang had no intention of keeping him alive. "If he has really left the forest, perhaps after today, I''ll be blacklisted by the Saint." "However, we can worry about that later. Let''s hurry up to save the people." Lin Huang summoned Thunder again. Wang Zijun and Zhang Xuefeng remained at the battleground to clean up the mess. Lin Huang was no longer afraid of revealing his true abilities. Ever since he managed to get to holy fire-level, he was capable of protecting himself. In the whole Division 7, apart from some of the immortal-levels with high-ranking and two of the imperial-levels, he was not afraid of anyone else. However, he was reluctant to reveal his abilities as he wanted to save himself some trouble. Therefore, he needed help from both of the Vice Presidents. He knew that the both of them were willing to do so since it would be a good chance for them to raise their reputation by being known for killing the Saint elder. Wu Fa''s escape spelled trouble. However, it had already happened, so Lin Huang could only wait for things to happen patiently. If Wu Fa was still in the forest, it could be positive news as things could be settled if he found him and killed him. If he had left the forest, everything would be out of Lin Huang''s control. There were only two possibilities. If it was the former, Lin Huang could handle it, but if it was the latter, it was out of his control. What he could do now was just to wait for more clues patiently since feeling anxious was of no help. He put his mind to focus on rescuing Lin Xin and the rest of the students. "Master, I''ve discovered Lin Xin. She just walked out of the tent. Her team hasn''t been attacked yet. However, a Saint member is approaching them. His signal detection device is not working as it''s been affected by the Leech Pods. It''s less likely that he''ll be able to find Lin Xin in a short period of time." On Thunder''s back, Bloody''s voice was suddenly heard. "Where are they?!" Lin Huang immediately asked. "It is about 800 kilometers towards the southeast." Bloody extended its antenna and marked the position on the map projected. "Thunder, change direction!" Lin Huang patted Thunder. It immediately switched its direction and accelerated, heading towards the location where Lin Xin''s team was. 498 I Heard That You Are Looking for a Guardian? Lin Xin used to maintain a good sleeping pattern over the past one year. She would usually sleep before 11 p.m and wake up before 6.30 a.m as Lin Huang would prepare breakfast at about 7 a.m. She was still practicing her good habits after entering the Martial Hunter College. As usual, she would still wake up at about 6.30 a.m and go to the library after having her breakfast. She would read some books until about 8.30 a.m and attend her classes after that. If she had no classes in the morning, she would stay in the library until lunch. After having lunch, she would take a nap and go to class. She would complete her homework at night. If she was free, she would go for some actual combat training with her classmates or play the Gun Master. In fact, aside from Lin Xin, most of the students from the Martial Hunter College had healthy habits and their time was well managed. As they entered the Mist Forest, since the mist was formed at night, most of them slept at about 9 p.m. Five of them took turns to watch over the night. Since Lin Xin and Ai Li were girls, both of them were assigned to keep watch over the tent during the first and the last round to avoid having to get up in the middle of the night. Lin Xin would watch over the tent from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. whereas Ai Li would do so from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. To increase their hunting efficiency, they had decided to depart at 7.30 a.m. The reason behind this was because the mist in the forest would completely clear away at about 7 a.m. Lin Xin woke up before 6.30 a.m. Despite being on duty on the first night until 11 p.m, she would still make sure that she had seven hours of sleep and that was sufficient for her. She took a look at the time. It was 6.08 a.m. Lin Xin wanted to continue sleeping, but she found out that she could no longer fall asleep. Lying in the sleeping bag, she opened the Heart Network. She then realized that she had no access to it. She felt that it was strange. "Didn''t they say that there''s no problem with the signal here in the forest? It was still working fine yesterday." She attempted to visit a few websites but failed. Lin Xin did not think any further and closed the webpage. She sat up, rubbing her face and suddenly recalled what Lin Huang had told her before. "As a hunter, you have to pay attention to every detail. If you neglect any of them, it can lead to serious consequences. Network failure will rarely happen on the network of the Emperor''s Heart Ring, but it''s not absolutely impossible. However, when network and communication failure happens at the same time, you have to consider if somebody has done something to it" Lin Xin immediately checked the communication webpage and realized that there was a cross on the communication signal. She attempted to call Lin Huang and soon, she heard, "Sorry, the service is not supported in your region." Since the first attempt failed, she tried to call Ai Li and the same notification was heard. "The network and communication have been blocked," Lin Xin sighed in a low voice. She immediately opened the tent and rushed out in her pink pajamas. Ai Li was sitting on a stool, staring at the projection from the Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Ai Li, can you connect to the network?" Lin Xin asked curiously. "I couldn''t connect to it since I woke up." Ai Li shook her head. "What are you looking at?" Ai Li helplessly turned the webpage to Lin Xin. "Monster Guide C Leech Pods," Lin Xin read out loud and covered her mouth as she laughed, "You didn''t forget to study during the battle drill. You''re indeed Ai Li!" "I didn''t want to do so, but the network isn''t available here, and I have nothing else to do. I downloaded the textbook earlier It''s impossible for me to sit here staring blankly." Ai Li was unsatisfied. "Ai Li, take a look at your Emperor''s Heart Ring. Check and see if you have communication signals!" Lin Xin thought and asked Ai Li. Ai Li felt that Lin Xin''s request was strange, but she still opened the webpage of the Emperor''s Heart Ring. "There''s no signal!" "Try to call any of the teachers or even one of us," Lin Xin urged. Ai Li nodded and tried to call Lin Xin first. She then received a similar notification as Lin Xin had received earlier. "Sorry, the service is not supported in your region." She then attempted to call Teacher Qin Tianxing but could not connect either. "What''s happening? Why''s the communication signal interrupted as well?" Ai Li frowned. "I suspect that something is wrong with the assessment," Lin Xin said in a low voice. "The communication and network signals are blocked. It seems someone intentionally did so." "How could it be? Who dares to offend the Martial Hunter College?" Ai Li found it unbelievable. "Trust me. I''ve been to the wilderness several times with my brother. He has told me few of the things that I have to pay attention to in the wild zone. It is dangerous now as the communication and network signals are blocked. He told me before that when the underworld is going to perform a regional attack, they''ll usually block the network and communication of their targeted region. The dimension will be closed to stop any dimensional travel. I think that''s what we''re encountering now," Lin Xin explained with a serious expression. "Last year December, the heretics made a big issue when they attacked the Hunter examination hall. Have you ever heard of it? The people had the guts to attack the Hunter examination hall, so why not the Martial Hunter College?" Lin Xin looked at Ai Li with an earnest expression. Ai Li struggled for a short while, but in the end, she nodded. "We can''t confirm what exactly has happened yet. Let''s wake the guys up and discuss this." Soon after, they woke the three boys up, and Lin Xin changed her clothes in the tent. Five of them sat together and Lin Xin told the boys what she had just told Ai Li. A few of the boys frowned as they checked their network connection. "I realized that the network connection had been disconnected at around 4 a.m. I thought that it''d just last for a while." It had been Chu Peng''s turn to keep watch over the tent from 3 a.m to 5 a.m. "Two hours have passed. Something''s definitely gone wrong." "My brother told me the same thing as what Ling Xue said. If the communication and network signals are blocked in the wild zone, we have to be careful. If we are lucky, perhaps the signals will only stop working temporarily. If we are unlucky, most probably, the underworld is going to attack us. I think that we have to be prepared for the worst," Nangong Qing said thoughtfully as he gazed at the rest of the members. Listening to what Nangong Qing said, their faces turned grave. "We''ll have to pack our stuff and leave this place as soon as possible. According to Chu Peng, the signals have been blocked for two hours. If the underworld is attacking us, it means that the attack has lasted for two hours. They''ll be able to find us any time now," Yao Hao immediately suggested. "But we have no idea how many people there are and where they are. Where should we go?" Ai Li asked. "We don''t have to worry about that. Let''s look for a guardian. If the guardian knows what''s happening, they''ll think of ways to help us leave this place." All the students actually knew about the presence of the guardians. As long as they requested help from the guardians, marks would be deducted from the team. Therefore, if only one of them encountered danger, 100 marks would be deducted. If all five of them faced danger, 500 marks would be deducted. Based on that fact, all the students neglected the presence of the guardians. As reminded by Yao Hao, Lin Xin and the rest then thought of asking for help from the guardians. "I heard that you guys are looking for a guardian." A woman''s voice was suddenly heard, and a slender figure walked gracefully out of the trees 499 Lin Xins Secre "I heard that you guys are looking for a guardian" A woman gracefully walked out from the trees. She was wearing a white blouse, showing her midriff and the underside of her boobs could be seen. Her busty boobs fit her cropped top that was already very figure-hugging. She also wore a black leather skirt and her pair of long legs that were about 1.3 meters long looked soft and fair under the dim light. Just when she appeared, Lin Xin and the rest were stunned, fixing their crimson gazes at the collar of her cropped top. Soon, the five of them noticed that there was the symbol of the heretics on the left side of her neck, instantly putting everybody on alert. The woman laughed softly and a man''s bloody head suddenly appeared in her right hand. "I guess you guys are looking for him?" Seeing the blood still dripping from the head in her hand, despite not being able to identify who the man was, their backs were all drenched in sweat. "Can''t you see it clearly? I''ll bring it closer to you." The woman grinned, moving forward to them in her boots. Each step she seemed to be treading on their hearts as their heartbeats started racing fast. Perhaps they were overly frightened which caused them to turn stiff and could not even flee! At this moment, Nangong Qing suddenly shouted and regained his ability to move. He then picked up his bronze combat sword and pounced on the woman in the leather skirt. "Run away quickly! Escape in four separate directions!" The woman in the leather skirt giggled softly and did not bother to stop Nangong Qing. She did not even dodge, allowing him to hit her. His bronze combat sword that was surrounded by black Life Power instantly pierced through her stomach. It was out of everybody''s expectation as blood did not splatter around, but a "ding" was heard. The waist of the woman in the leather skirt was not injured, and there were no traces left. However, Nangong Qing''s bronze combat sword had broken into pieces. Nangong Qing''s face turned grave and he gradually lifted his head, looking at the woman in the leather skirt. "You''re a Transcendent" "Only now you realize? It seems like there''s still room for improvement in terms of your observation skills." The woman in the leather skirt than took a few steps in the air. "It''s not convenient to wear high heels here. I''ve been walking in the air all this while." Lin Xin and the rest of them then discovered that she did not step on the ground at all. Instead, she always kept a distance of about ten centimeters away from the ground. Because the ground was covered by grass, Lin Xin and the rest had not noticed that. Five of their hearts sank. Encountering a Transcendent, it was impossible for them to escape. Their enemy could fly. Regardless of how fast they could run away, their attempt would be rendered useless. "It''s impossible for us to escape. Let''s fight!" Lin Xin suddenly shouted in a deep voice. At almost the same time, she changed the bullets used in her GrayEagle 17 to armored bullets and she was the first to launch an attack. The armored bullets were fired out of the bore of the gun, making consecutive hits in front of her head. As Lin Xin attacked, Ai Li and two of the boys picked their weapons up and rushed towards her. However, before the three of them could approach her, the sound of Lin Xin''s bullets exploding could be heard. The woman was not trying to avoid the attacks at all, letting the bullets strike her. She did not even blink. After the explosion, no traces were left on her face and her eyelashes did not even flutter. "Hey, girl, didn''t you know that it''s impossible for any guns other than relics to hurt a Transcendent?" The woman was looking at Lin Xin while she giggled. Immediately, the three of them then rushed towards her, making several cuts on the woman''s body. Ai Li felt that her bronze relic was connecting with a hard diamond as it did not affect her. The next moment, three of their long swords had broken into pieces. Five of them stood in their original positions hopelessly as the there was a huge gap between them. The opponent was like a big mountain which they could not overcome. "That''s enough, follow me." The woman smiled as she waved her hand. In an instant, Ai Li, Nangong Qing and the other two had disappeared. "What did you do to them?" Lin Xin was still aiming at the woman. She dared not let her guard down at all. She was frightened as Ai Li and the others had suddenly disappeared. "Eh, that''s amazing You can''t be stored in my Dark Sphere" The woman sized Lin Xin up curiously. "Theoretically, if I activate it with my combat strength, be it human or monster that is weaker than a Transcendent, they''ll be stored in it. It''s obvious that you''re not even an iron-level yet you can''t be stored in it. Girl, can you tell me who are you?" "I have no idea what you are talking about." Seeing that she was approaching her, Lin Xin took a few steps back. Soon, she backed up into a big tree. "Don''t come near me!" Lin Xin was nervous and simply fired a few shots at her. However, she was unable to stop her from moving forward. "Little girl, I told you before that your gun is like a baby toy to me." The woman smiled as she approached her. Eventually, she slowly walked towards Lin Xin and crushed the GrayEagle 17 that she was holding in her hand. She then touched Lin Xin''s face cautiously. "You look like an ordinary person that has not even achieved iron-level. There must be something hidden in your body. It''s okay if you don''t know about it. I''ll bring you back and I''ll know the answer after the autopsy" As soon as she finished her words, the woman pointed at Lin Xin''s forehead and soon, Lin Xin fainted. When she was about to extend her hand and pick Lin Xin up, the moment when she touched Lin Xin''s body, she immediately retreated. She felt that she had experienced a strong electric shock which could be fatal. The woman lowered her head and looked at her right hand that had touched Lin Xin''s body. She then realized that a black spot had begun to spread upwards from her fingertip. In just a blink of an eye, her right palm had turned black as if it was charred and the black rot was still spreading further up. The woman took prompt action. The sharp blade in her hand streaked across the sky, chopping off her right arm. Her right arm fell to the ground and quickly turned black. Her wound remained unaffected. The woman then raised her head, staring at Lin Xin with fear. "Who are you?!" Lin Xin, who had fainted, gradually floated up into the sky. Her black hair rapidly turned purple and continued growing until it reached her waist. All of a sudden, Lin Xin suddenly opened her eyes. Her pair of eyes that were originally black had now turned gold. As she heard what the woman said, Lin Xin grinned. "Don''t you want to know the answer? I''m the answer that you''re looking for" When she heard the voice of the purple-haired Lin Xin, the woman was terrified and she could feel that death was imminent. She did not even turn back and immediately fled. She wanted to escape from the purple-haired girl at her fastest possible speed. "It''s useless to do so. Regardless of where you are going, as long as you''re still within the gravel world, I''ll only need one word to kill you," Lin Xin mumbled. Her purple hair moved without any wind and her voice rang out clearly, "Die!" Right when the word left her lips, the woman in the leather skirt that tried to escape started collapsing and soon, she fell into a heap onto the ground. Lin Xin extended her hand. The Emperor''s Heart Ring and the Dark Sphere of the woman in leather skirt automatically fell into her palm. After handling her, the purple-haired Lin Xin suddenly turned her head and shifted her gaze towards another direction. A faint white light lingered in the gap between tree branches, hardly noticeable. "Forget!" The purple-haired Lin Xin''s eyes became swirly. Lin Huang and Bloody were terrified as they witnessed the unbelievable scene through the Leech Pods. As the word "forget" was heard, they fell into a trance Lin Xin''s body gradually fell onto the ground and her long purple hair gradually faded. Her pair of eyes returned to their original color. Soon after, she became limp, leaning against the big tree and had lost her consciousness... 500 I Refuse to Comment on This Lin Huang leaped from Thunder''s back and landed somewhere near the place where Lin Xin had fainted. He observed around. Apart from the shell cases and the broken pieces of the swords, no traces of the battle could be found. He then strode towards Lin Xin. Only the broken pieces of Lin Xin''s gun were left next to her and it seemed like she was not injured. "Xin Er, Xin Er!" Lin Huang shouted Lin Xin''s name twice but still, she did not wake up. He pressed against Lin Xin''s shoulder, inserting his Life Power into her body and did a thorough check up on her. A few moments later, he could sense the remaining Life Power in Lin Xin''s brain. He then immediately activated his Life Power in order to remove it from her brain. After a short while, Lin Xin finally regained her consciousness. "Brother!" Lin Xin was stunned when she saw Lin Huang at first glance. She then looked around. "Where''s the woman?" "Are you talking about the woman who attacked you?" Lin Huang asked, "When I arrived, she was gone." "Ai Li and the rest" When Lin Xin was about to ask where were Ai Li and the rest of them, she realized that Lin Huang had fixed his gaze on her right hand. She then noticed the two items that she was holding in her hand. "Whose Emperor''s Heart Ring is this? Why is it here? What''s the sphere for?" Lin Huang then extended his hand and picked up the sphere, inserting his Life Power into it. He detected that four of Lin Xin''s teammates were in the sphere. He then threw it to Bloody. "It''s the dark sphere that the woman used to capture you guys. Your teammates are all inside the sphere and they are safe," Lin Huang explained. He then looked at Lin Xin with a serious expression and asked, "Xin Er, can you remember anything?" "I can only remember the sudden appearance of the woman in the leather skirt and that she killed our guardian. Ai Li and the rest were caught but I wasn''t. She said that my body is unique and she wanted to perform an autopsy on me. She then pointed at my forehead and I can''t remember what happened after that. You''re here after I woke up." After Lin Xin finished her sentence, she then saw the broken pieces of her gun next to her. She immediately continued, "Brother, the woman has crushed the GrayEagle 17 that you gave it to me" "It''s okay. I''ll give you another one next time," Lin Huang simply promised her but he was in serious doubt. What he could see through Bloody''s monitoring scene was similar to what Lin Xin had narrated. After the woman in leather skirt pointed at Lin Xin''s forehead, a white beam of light suddenly flashed on the monitoring screen and lasted for a couple of seconds before it returned normal. Soon after, only Lin Xin who had fainted could be seen on the screen and the woman had disappeared. Lin Huang had asked Bloody about that and it could only see a similar scene as well. Lin Huang felt strange as he wondered why the woman''s Dark Sphere and Emperor''s Heart Ring would appear in Lin Xin''s hand. The Dark Sphere belonged to the woman in the leather skirt, and it was highly possible that the Emperor''s Heart Ring belonged to her as well. Under only two conditions could the Emperor''s Heart Ring be taken from its owner. It would either be because the owner had given it to another person at will or the owner had died. Lin Huang did not think that the Saint member would give it to Lin Xin at will. Therefore, the probability of the woman being killed was extremely high. As for who had killed the woman and where her dead body was, Lin Huang had no idea. However, he could confirm that the person who helped them out had no bad intentions towards Lin Xin. "Xiao Hei, what do you think about this?" He had no choice but to ask Xiao Hei. "It has nothing to do with the system. Therefore, I have no comment on this." Lin Huang was speechless as he listened to Xiao Hei''s reply. "Could the Martial Hunter College have hired other assistants?" Lin Huang felt that the possibility for this to have happened would be quite high. Lin Huang did not pay much attention to what the woman in the leather skirt said regarding Lin Xin not being able to be captured by her Dark Sphere because some of them with unique blood were immune to certain functions of relics. Since the first day Lin Huang had traveled to this world, the integration of his memory was only at 98%. The percentage of his memory integration had never changed since then. He could not remember anything about what Lin Xin had experienced and what happened to her before that at all. In fact, he could vaguely sense that it was highly possible that Lin Xin was not his biological sister. He had no evidence and it was only instinct. However, he did not ask further about it as they had been relying on each other for so many years. It made no difference whether she was his biological sister or not. "Brother, what happened to you?" Lin Xin waved her hand in front of his eyes as she saw that Lin Huang was in a daze. "I''m okay. Are you injured?" Lin Huang then asked as he recovered from his thoughts. "No, I''m not. The woman wanted to catch us but she didn''t hurt any of us." Lin Xin shook her head. "That''s good. The forest is under attack by the Saint members. They wanted to catch you guys back as an oblation. Many of the students haven''t been rescued. Sit on Thunder''s back later as it''ll protect you. I''ll have to save the rest of the students," Lin Huang explained. "The Saint members? Isn''t it the symbol on their neck is the symbol of the heretics?" Lin Xin asked curiously. "The Saint members are pretending to be the heretics. I''ll explain to you later." Lin Huang carried Lin Xin and leaped over a height of more than 100 meters. Thunder fluttered its wings and carried both of them. It then headed to their next destination. At about 7.20 a.m., Lin Huang, two of the Vice Presidents and the teachers of the Martial Hunter College gathered at the Mist Forest. "Thank you, everyone, from the Martial Hunter College. Also, I''d like to thanks all the teachers who joined the operation. 3,000 of our new students have been rescued! Special thanks goes to Teacher Lin Huang as he managed to save more than half of the students alone. Over 100 Saint members have been killed, including the Saint elder. Although one of the elders and an official member managed to escape, we''ve also made a clean sweep!" Lin Huang knew that only the Saint elder, Wu Fa, had fled. The dead body of the woman who had caught Lin Xin and the rest could not be found. Therefore, the Martial Hunter College supposed that she had run away. However, Lin Huang felt that it was not likely that she was still alive. Lin Huang had observed 30 of them from the Martial Hunter College''s backup team. All of them were either on purple or gold flame-level. He did not think that these people were capable of killing the woman in the leather skirt. Bloody could not track Wu Fa''s location as if he had gone missing from the forest. This was despite the fact that the dimension that had been locked. He had disappeared strangely from the forest where dimensional travel could not be performed. No traces were left. Lin Huang felt strange about it. He doubted if Wu Fa had been killed or caught by the unknown who had also killed the woman in the leather skirt. Since both of the Saint elders who were the leaders had disappeared, the Saint members were not notified to retreat and the dimension of the forest had not been unlocked. 100 of the attackers had been killed by the backup team from the Martial Hunter College in less than two hours. Lin Huang, Bai, and Ghastly were the one who had killed most of them. In order to avoid unnecessary trouble, Lin Huang did not release Charcoal. After expressing his gratitude, Wang Zijun activated the Dimensional Portal and the crowd entered. "I''m grateful that you''re here." Wang Zijun walked towards Lin Huang and patted his shoulder. However, he did not look relaxed. "How many teachers have we lost?" Lin Huang asked. "628," Wang Zijun said helplessly, "Most of the guardians have died. Less than 50 of them are lucky not to have been attacked. More than 80 of them who provided assistance to the teachers have died." "We can''t let their sacrifice go in vain." Lin Huang looked at Wang Zijun with a serious expression. "I have informed the Union Government and the Hunter Association about this. The Union Government will settle it in the next few days. Perhaps there''ll be a large-scale cleanup operation in Division 7! They''ll have to pay for what they have done!" Wang Zijun nodded. 501 Sacrifice Due to the Saint''s interruption, the three-day battle drill ended after just a day later. The college gave the Year 1 students a three-day break while adjustments took place for the Year 2 and Year 3 classes. More than 600 teachers had died from the incident this time and teachers from other classes had to replace the fallen teachers. While the college was recruiting new teachers, they were also following up on the incident. The news that the Union Government posted on the Division 7 Heart Network two days later almost broke the entire network. "On 1 October, the underground organization the Saints C disguised as members of the heretics and attacked 3,000 new students of Martial Hunter College, attempting to make them offerings to their God. Led by the two elders, Yu Wenbin and Wu Fa, 102 members attacked the battle drill of the college which took place in Mist Forest. The 100 Saint members including Yu Wenbin were killed with the cooperation of Martial Hunter College and Hunter Association! "The shamelessness of the Saints have crossed the line. The President and the 12 presenters of the Division 7 Union Government have decided after many rounds of discussion. "The Division 7 Union Government is officially at war with the Saints! All Union organizations will have to give at least a third of their support to fight this war together with the Union Governments! "If any of the organizations are working together with the Saints, whether officially or secretly, you''ll be treated as the Saint''s allies and will become the target of the Union organizations!" The Union Government even published all of the photos of Saint member bodies at the bottom of the announcement. Yu Wenbin''s photo was on top. There were 101 of them, including Wu Fa''s body that was retrieved from Yu Wenbin''s ring. Besides the corpses of Wu Tian and a few of them that were severely damaged, each of the bodies was under the guise of the heretics, and their actual photos were published as a comparison after being verified by the forensics team. The Union Government''s harsh announcement had become a hot topic among the people. In less than half an hour after the announcement was posted, the Hunter Association, Adventurer Paradise, and other Union organizations had announced their support towards the Union Government. What the people did not expect was the heretics publishing a video clip after the announcement came out. In the video, the heretics'' judge was in his black robe and terrifying white mask. "Hi, everyone, I''m the judge of the heretics. I''m sure many of you saw my video last year. If you haven''t, you can search for the video if you have the time" "Boss, go back to business!" A voice came from the side. "Oh, right! The reason why we''re posting the video is to mainly thank the Union Government and the other Union organizations. Thank you for only announcing the news after proper investigation to save us heretics from being blamed. We''re saddened by what the Saints have done! Attacking the people is shameless. We heretics would never do anything like that! "We have discussed the Saints disguising as our members and putting the blame on us. We''re sharing the information of the Saint members that we have collected over the years with the Union Government. If necessary, we''ll help the Union organizations with the mission to kill the Saints! "Lastly, please allow me to advertise. Everyone, if you''re interested to join us heretics, please call the number on the bottom right of the screen to join our assessment." "What a hilarious organization!" Lin Huang was not sure if he should laugh or cry when he saw the video. Besides the announcements from the Union Government and the other Union organizations, the heretics'' video was also being forwarded by the netizens on the Heart Network. It became not only the main topic among the Union organizations but also a hot topic among the people. It was the first time in the past 80 years since the Division 7 Union Government had announced war! As the announcement went out, there was a stir among the underground organizations. Many of them were waiting to watch the Saints make a fool out of themselves. Even a few of the organizations that worked with the Saints had abandoned their cooperation as they did not want anything to do with the Saints. All of them knew very well that the Union Government was serious about this. "The Saints are going to be dead!" "The 200 years of building of the Division 7 Saint will be doomed just like that." "The heretics are crazy. They''re helping the Union now?" At the Division 7 Saint headquarters, the first messenger standing in the middle was a tall, skinny old man with a white beard. He was two meters tall like a bamboo stick. He looked across like a hawk at the people in his white robes printed with a silver cross. "Elder, is there still no news about Wu Fa?" The messenger''s voice echoed in the air like thunder without having to open his mouth. "There''s still no news about him I suspect he might have been captured alive by the Hunter Association." The elder was an old man with a crooked spine. "Elder, stop protecting that kid. I''m guessing that kid has failed his mission, leaving my grandson to die and he''s escaped as he doesn''t know how to face us," the Second Elder said. He was just a few years younger than the First Elder, but he looked like a young man. The First Elder had had a major injury many years ago and his Life Wheel was damaged. "How about the other person who disappeared with Wu Fa? Did you find out who that is?" The messenger ignored what the Second Elder said and asked. "Yes, it''s Han Yi. There were only six females who joined the mission this time. She''s the only one who''s been excluded from the five female photos that were published by the Union Government. The rest which the bodies who couldn''t be recognized were all males," the first elder replied. "Get Granny Wu from the black market to help. She must know where Wu Fa is. He knows too much," the messenger instructed. "But Granny Wu" The First Elder looked troubled. "That''s your problem, all I want is the result," the messenger interrupted the elder without waiting for him to finish what he was saying. "Sure Then, what should we do about the Union organizations'' war?" The First Elder asked. "What should we do? Do you plan to go against the Union Government''s anger?" It was the second messenger who spoke this time. Similar to the first messenger, he spoke without having to open his mouth, but his voice was husky. "So" The elder looked troubled. "All the core members can leave now. First Elder, you shall stay to host the meeting," the first messenger said expressionlessly. "This mission was your suggestion, so you should take all the responsibility. Moreover, we need someone in charge to ease the Union Government''s anger. God will forgive all the sins that you''ve done and protect you until you''re with him." The First Elder looked upset as he knew that he was condemned to be a sacrifice. The Second Elder grinned because if the First Elder died, he would be promoted. "I thought about it and figured you alone won''t be sufficient. You should choose an elder to be with you," the third messenger said while the other two messengers nodded in agreement. The elder was concerned. "Then, I''m taking Second Elder with me since the mission was his idea. I thought it was doable, that''s why I suggested that to the messengers," the First Elder advised while smiling. "Gong Sunhai! You''re taking personal revenge!" The Second Elder''s heart skipped a beat and he shouted. "It''s your problem that you''re dying. Why drag me with you!?" The First Elder remained smiling without looking at him. "It should be enough with the both of you. It''s set," the first messenger said ignoring Lu Yuan''s objection. Lu Yuan was shocked to hear the messenger''s decision. "The rest of you will prepare yourselves when you get back. We''ll leave tomorrow morning. First and Second Elders, please stay to handle this. Also, contact Granny Wu as soon as possible and let me know when you get anything from her." The first messenger patted their shoulders and walked out of the hall with the rest. 502 Yellowbird In the western ocean waters of Division 7, there was a gigantic building underneath an island that looked like a skull 3,000 meters below on the seabed. The lights were all turned on. Nestled on the seabed, in the building was a huge, bustling base. In one of the surgery rooms on the lowest floor in the base, the knife in the hand of the man with glasses disappeared. "This defective product is useless now. Destroy it." The man took off his medical gloves and looked solemnly at the surgery table. The man that was lying on the surgery table had his chest cut open. A few young people, who were surrounding him, could see that his heart was still beating hard. Besides his chest, his head had been cut open too. The greyish-white brain tissues were there for everyone to see. The man''s green eyes were wide. The pair of eyes would look terrifying on usual days, but right then, tears poured from them. He seemed to be conscious. "Sir, the color of his eyes is pretty unique. Can I keep them as a sample?" A girl with her golden hair in a bun asked. Although she was wearing a medical mask, her voice was sweet. "Anything, you guys can take whatever you want. But I can only maintain this for another half an hour. Just remember to get rid of the parts that you don''t need. Also, don''t mess up the surgery room." The man left without turning his head. In the surgery room, a few young people in green scrubs started discussing among each other. "The size of his penis isn''t bad. I could keep it in my collection." "Is there anything in his head that anyone of you would like? I would like to keep his skull. If none of you want any part of his head, I''ll chop it off and bring it back." "If you want the skull, then I don''t want his teeth anymore. Give me his brain. I''ll take it out myself later." "Wait! Give me his scalp. I want to try if I can grow his red hair from the part that he''s shaved off." "Such a healthy heart. Don''t take that away from me! Including this heart, I''ll have 99 of them! I''m one step closer to collecting 100 hearts. Yay!" As the man with the glasses left the surgery room, he took off the green scrubs and put on a white coat while heading to an office that was on the top floor of the building. There was an old man with white hair and a beard in a white coat reading his Emperor''s Heart Ring. The man with the glasses knocked on the door that was open. "Come in!" The old man nodded. The man with the glasses walked in and stood before the old man''s desk with respect. "Sir." "So, did you get anything from the kid?" "His body is quite disappointing whereby his gene integration did not upgrade since he was created 12 years ago. It has been maintained at 17%," the man with glasses said without any expression. "That''s expected as he''s a failed product from the first generation." The old man did not react. "How much does he know about the Saints?" "I have been trying to unseal his brain memory for the past two days. I must say, the Saints are impressive when it comes to this. Although I managed to unseal his memory, his core memory of their God isn''t there. I can''t be sure if he doesn''t have the authorization or the Saints have taken control of that part of his memory. All I got from him is basically what we already know," the bespectacled man frowned as he explained. "It shouldn''t be about his authorization. Besides the First Elder, the rest of the elders have the same authorization. The elder is already the Saint''s core hierarchy. He was an elder too. Although he couldn''t reach their God directly, he should be able to learn something about their God. His memory of their God might have been deleted from the Saint''s side," the old man thought to himself and speculated. "Is there anything else?" "We got something unexpected," the man in the glasses smirked as he said. "There''s a special young man in the recycled memory" "Oh, a person that even you think is special. Do tell." The old man noticed the smirk on his face and became interested. "The young man is only white flame-level, but he could force himself to level up to gold flame-level. Besides that, when he became gold flame-level, he was so powerful that he managed to kill an immortal-level rank-5!" The man in the glasses was excited as he spoke. "A gold flame-level killing an immortal-level rank-5. He''s considered a supreme genius already. But leveling up from white flame-level to gold flame-level, are you sure that he did not conceal his combat level?" The old man thought the hiding of combat level was a likelier situation. "I''ve looked at the part of that memory for a couple of times. I confirm that the young man''s real combat level is only white flame-level." The bespectacled man nodded. "A gold flame-level killing an immortal-level rank-5?" The old man''s eyes lit up. "Show me!" Suddenly, a strand of the old man''s hair floated up like it was alive. It looked like a sharp thorn. From the other end, a strand of hair from the man in the glasses floated up as well and connected with the old man''s hair like a snake biting a thorn. Soon, the two strands of hair disconnected and went back to normal. "Sir, I would like to capture him for research," the man in glasses requested. "You can''t do anything to this kid just yet" The old man frowned after looking at the clip. "He has a powerful background?" The bespectacled man raised his eyebrow. "This kid is called Lin Huang. He''s old man Fu''s apprentice. It''s too risky to offend him because of this kid." The old man shrugged helplessly. "That Mr. Fu''s apprentice?" The man in the glasses looked upset. "Old man Fu has got himself a great apprentice. For a white flame-level killing an immortal-level rank-5, he would be rare even if he''s placed in Division 1 Why aren''t I as lucky as he is?" The old man sighed and shook his head. The man in the glasses was unhappy. "Sir, we can capture him when Mr. Fu isn''t in Division 7," the man in glasses said after a moment of silence. He did not seem to want to let it go. "I won''t stop you if you insist, but I have two things to warn you. First, do it cleanly and leave no trails. Second, if old man Fu finds out it''s done by you, not only will I not help you, I''ll draw a clear one with you. You know that I won''t be living too long. I can''t be bearing a burden like this." "Understand, I''ll remember that!" The man in the glasses replied with his head held down. "There''s one more thing that I need you to do." The old man changed the topic immediately. "The Union will be fighting the Saint together soon. The Saint will definitely go for an escape plan by sacrificing the elder in their organization. I need you to get more elder bodies to dig more secrets about the God. Do a clean job!" "Yes sir, I''ll do my best!" The man in the glasses nodded. "You can leave now if that''s all that you have for me." The old man then focused on the Emperor''s Heart Ring''s panel in front of him. "I shall be going now." The bespectacled man bowed and left. 503 Back to a Peaceful Life After the attack of the Saints, the entire Division 7 was chaotic and everyone had their guards up. Meanwhile, it was surprisingly peaceful in the Martial Hunter College. The families of the 600 teachers who were killed in the incident were given a generous compensation from the college while the teacher recruitment drive was successful. There were hundreds of people that came to the recruitment drive as soon as the news was released. The classes remained but the teachers were much busier than they usually were. Nobody in the college knew that Lin Huang had killed the two immortal-level Saint members as the secret was safe with the two Vice Presidents. Only the teachers knew that he had saved most of the students on his own. The students did not know about his admirable feat. His life in the college did not change much as he continued training in the Undefeatable Warrior and integrating his sword skills. The only additional mission he had was to teach Bai sword skills. Meanwhile, life went on as normal for Lin Xin. She seemed not to have any idea about what had happened in the Mist Forest. As Lin Huang was clueless as well, he decided not to dwell on that matter. Besides attending classes, Lin Xin had been absorbing Life Power from Life Crystal pieces at night to trigger her gray Life Wheel columns. Before one became an adult at the age of 15, most of their Life Wheel was unstable, which was why most people chose to level up to iron-level only after they turned 15. Now that Lin Xin was 15, Lin Huang had checked her Life Wheel and gave her a bunch of Life Crystals to trigger the gray Life Wheel columns since she could level up to iron-level now. As soon as the Life Light in her Life Wheel was full, he would get her to achieve iron-level. Considering that she wanted to be a firearms master in the future, Lin Huang had chosen the Purple Dressed Demon as her Life Seed monster to increase her speed. As the battle drill was suspended, the students were not given any rankings. The registrar office was in a mess but they did not have the time to do such a calculation. Most of the Year 1 students were still in shock and did not have the mood to think about the ranking at all. Soon, it was Friday again, and Lin Huang was sitting in the office at 1.40 p.m. Just when he had arrived, Mu Xiaolan arrived shortly after. "Miss Mu," Lin Huang smiled and greeted. Mu Xiaolan was not as active as she usually was. All she did was force a smile and nod at Lin Huang. Lin Huang was stunned to see her response as Mu Xiaolan would always greet him first and was usually friendly. She was oddly cold today. However, Lin Huang did not want to think too much about it. Soon, Qin Tianxing arrived too. He decided to sit in Lin Huang''s class again. At first, he had chosen to sit in as he was worried that Lin Huang might not be able to handle the students. Later on, he found out that Lin Huang had mastered the Sword Dao and now he realized how powerful Lin Huang was. He knew very well that most of the Saint members who had been involved in the Mist Forest incident were mostly purple and even gold flame-levels but Lin Huang had killed almost 60 of them on his own. It only proved how powerful Lin Huang was. Sitting in the class was to improve his knowledge in Sword Dao. On the other hand, he wanted to get closer to Lin Huang. Since Lin Huang was always on his own, the only way to spend time with him was to sit in his class. Lin Huang did not overthink about Qin Tianxing''s intention as he had always been a friendly man since the beginning. Even if he came with an intention, it should not be a bad one. In the college, Lin Huang needed someone like him who could answer whatever questions that he had about the college. It was a win-win situation for the both of them. "Brother Qin, I heard you''re teaching a couple of classes recently. Do you still have the time to sit in my class?" Lin Huang teased. "I have to no matter how busy I am. I would love to learn sword skills from you too," Qin Tianxing said humbly. "Stop teasing." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. "Oh right, how''s the recruitment going?" He asked. "Many of them who came but not many passed. Looking at the progress, we''ll need at least a month to get back to our normal arrangement." Qin Tianxing shook his head. "It''s almost time. I shall get to my class now." Mu Xiaolan left after that. Lin Huang looked at the time. It was not even 1:50 p.m. As she left, Lin Huang asked Qin Tianxing softly, "What happened to Miss Mu? She seems a little off today." "She had a crush on Sir Wang Yan who taught Year 2 Sword Dao faculty for years now. He was one of the guardians in the battle drill and he was killed by the Saint" Qin Tianxing peeked at the direction Mu Xiaolan left and shared softly. "I asked her to take a break for a week or two a few days ago but she declined. She always seems happy but deep inside, she''s stubborn." Lin Huang did not ask further after hearing what had really happened. "Alright, it''s almost time. Let''s go." Lin Huang taught a new speed sword skill called Wind Flow today. The students were excited to learn something new after training their Blood Killing Forms for a month. "Same rule applies. Train properly when you guys get back. The faster you learn, the more sword skills I''ll teach. Whether you learn three or four sword skills this semester depends on you. I''ll be examining your progress as usual next Friday," advised Lin Huang, motivating the students. "Isn''t it a little too much to learn four sword skills in one semester?" Qin Tianxing could not help but ask Lin Huang after the students left. "We usually teach two sword skills in a semester. After all, the students have other classes, so it''s impossible to spend all of their time on Sword Dao." "You underestimate their potential. It might be too much to learn four sword skills in a semester but learning three sword skills wouldn''t be too difficult for them. They''ll have too much time on hand if I only teach two and they won''t practice properly. With proper pressure, they''ll take it seriously ." Lin Huang spoke from experience. He used to always burn the midnight oil right before his exams when he was studying in university and he was the most efficient during that time. The pressure was there as he did not want to fail. Hearing Lin Huang''s theory, Qin Tianxing was considering if he should change his way of teaching as well. After class, it was the weekend. Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated while he was teaching Bai sword skills when they were in the battle training ground on Saturday evening. It was Lin Xin who was calling, so he picked up immediately. "Brother, the Life Light in my Life Wheel is full now!" Lin Xin excitedly broke the news. "Prepare yourself tonight. It''s Sunday tomorrow. I''ll bring you to Wangyou Forest to hunt for your Life Seed tomorrow." Lin Huang had had that in mind since the beginning. 504 Lin Xin’s Odd Physique On Sunday morning, Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to the mountain at the border of Wangyou Forest. As Thunder perched on top of the mountain, he summoned Bloody. "Bloody, find me a Purple Illusion Demon. An iron-level rank-1 one would be the best. If not, find me an iron-level rank." Bloody released a massive amount of Leech Pods and started getting busy. In less than half an hour, Bloody had found Lin Huang a target. "I''ve found one! There''s a Purple Illusion Demon on the northern side of the central zone in the forest." Bloody extended two of its tentacles and pinned the coordinates on Lin Huang''s and Lin Xin''s maps that were projected from their Emperor''s Heart Rings. "Alright, I''ll wait here then. If I get too close, I might affect you." Lin Huang leaped from Thunder''s back. "Thunder, leave as soon as you drop her at the destination." Thunder nodded and brought Lin Xin away. It landed on an empty land more than ten minutes later and flew away after Lin Xin alighted. Lin Xin, who was clad in a long-sleeve top and long pants, realized that the coordinates that Bloody had pinned were less than a kilometer from where he was standing. She took out her two GrayEagle 17''s and held one in each hand, making sure that they were both loaded with armored bullets before dashing towards her target. As a kilometer was just a short distance, she arrived at the destination and saw the Purple Illusion Demon. She was petrified although she was hidden in the bushes, looking at the monster that was spacing out in the burnt land. It was an iron-level rank-1 Purple Illusion Demon that looked the same as the iron-level rank-3 one that Lin Huang had killed a year ago. It had an odd white mask on its face and six crystal arms. Its purple dress was 20 to 30 centimeters from the ground, but its feet were nowhere to be seen. "This monster is just a little ugly. There''s nothing scary about it. You''re a firearms master. Just don''t let it come close to you," Lin Huang''s voice came from the Emperor''s Heart Ring''s earphone as he was watching Lin Xin via Bloody''s Leech Pod. "If you''re nervous, take a deep breath to calm yourself down." Lin Xin did as he said. Bloody''s Leech Pods were not complete sentient being, so it would not affect her obtaining her Life Seed. Armed with that knowledge, Lin Huang got Bloody to monitor her situation. Lin Xin''s heartbeat slowed down after taking a few deep breaths. "I''m a firearms master. I can definitely kill it with a single gun fighting technique as long as I don''t get close to it!" She mumbled to herself while looking at the two GrayEagle 17''s in her hands. She then stood up and opened fire using a gun fighting technique called Potshot. As the armored bullets were released, the Purple Illusion Demon was completed engulfed by the bullets. It sounded like there was a woman groaning and screaming among the loud cracks. Still, Lin Xin did not stop firing as long as she heard screaming. Finally, she stopped as it had gone completely quiet. As soon as the smoke faded, she saw the Purple Illusion Demon had slumped onto the ground. It was completed destroyed and its mask was shattered. It was obvious that it was dead. "It''s already dead. Go to it right now before the Life Seed fades away." Lin Xin heard Lin Huang''s instruction and walked quickly towards the carcass. Just as she took a few steps forward, a white glow came out of the broken mask, shrouding her completely Lin Xin woke up ten minutes later. "Wait where you are. I''ll get you together with Thunder," Lin Huang commanded through the earphone as soon as he saw Lin Xin open her eyes. Soon, Thunder dropped Lin Huang next to her. After recalling Thunder and Bloody, he took out a storage ring and gave it to her. "There are 10,000 Life Crystals in this. They''re mainly for you to refill your Life Wheel and, of course, you can spend it as your allowance." "That''s too much" Lin Xin knew that one Life Crystal was comparable to 100 years of Life Power crystals and was equivalent to 100,000 credit points. To most gold-level people, 10,000 Life Crystals was an enormous amount of wealth. "That''s not much. In fact, it''s necessary for your cultivation. The further you go, the more Life Crystals you''ll need." Lin Huang did not say further while summoning his dimensional relic and he brought her back to the Martial Hunter College. Lin Xin''s mission this time was much easier than the time when Lin Huang had completed his whereby she killed the Purple Illusion Demon by opening fire at it. Ever since she leveled up, besides going to classes, she spent most of her time refilling her Life Wheel in the training room. She could now learn many beginner-level gun fighting techniques that she could not pick up earlier. She knew the biggest issue that she had was having insufficient Life Power. Time passed by, and soon it was Wednesday. As Lin Huang was training with Bai during the evening, his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated. It was Lin Xin who was calling. "What''s wrong, Xin Er?" "Brother, is there anyone with you?" Lin Xin asked. "Only Bai." "Oh, I think there''s something wrong with my body." She was hesitant when she spoke. "Where are you? I''ll look for you now!" Lin Huang frowned. "I''m in training room No. 28." "Wait for me. I''ll be there shortly!" Lin Huang then looked at Bai. "We shall call it a day here. Something''s happened to Xin Er." Bai nodded and Lin Huang recalled him, then left for the training room. Three minutes later, he knocked on the door to training room No. 28 and Lin Xin answered the door immediately. As soon as he got in, she hurriedly bolted the door. "Brother, do you remember that Little 7 could swallow Life Crystals directly?" Lin Xin asked. He nodded. "I found out that I can do that too" Lin Xin whispered softly. "What do you mean? Did you accidentally swallow a Life Crystal?" Lin Huang did not get what Lin Xin was trying to tell him. "Not accidentally. Well, I did it on purpose" Lin Xin shook her head slowly. "So, this is what happened. I''ve been absorbing the Life Power in the Life Crystals these few days. I thought that''s too slow as I''ve only filled tens of the columns in the past few days. Then, I thought of Little 7 eating Life Crystals directly, so I thought of trying that as well As soon as the Life Crystal was in my mouth, it melted right away and flowed into my body from my throat. Then, I realized that the Life Power in my Life Wheel had increased tremendously. I tried another two Life Crystals later on, and the same thing happened" "Really?" Lin Huang thought it was ridiculous as he had never heard of any human who could eat Life Crystals directly to absorb Life Power. If anyone could do that, the person could definitely level up so much faster than he could. While he had to kill monsters out there, the person could just munch on Life Crystals as snacks at home! "Is there something wrong with my body?" Lin Xin was concerned. "Show me," Lin Huang encouraged while placing his hand on her shoulder. He inserted his Life Power all over her body. "You can do it now." Lin Xin took a piece of Life Crystal from her storage space and put it into her mouth. She opened her mouth so that Lin Huang could see what was happening to the Life Crystal. In less than two seconds, the Life Crystal melted into a cloud of white haze on her pink tongue and flowed into her throat. Lin Huang could feel the sudden gush of Life Power that entered her body and flowed straight into her Life Wheel. He could not understand what had just happened. The entrance of Life Power did not make sense as it did not pass through any of the routes of Life Power in her body but suddenly gushed into her Life Wheel. Lin Huang then checked her Life Wheel and released his Life Power after confirming that everything was normal. "Everything seems fine with your body now. Although it''s an odd way to absorb Life Power, that could mean you have a unique physique. It could be a special bloodline that''s been activated since you arrived at iron-level. There''s nothing to worry about," Lin Huang comforted her. "Is that so?" Lin Xin sighed in relief. "This is between us. Don''t tell anyone about this, including your roommates and good friends. If this goes out, it might catch the underground organization''s attention. They might capture you to be their guinea pig," Lin Huang warned her. "Alright, I promise I won''t tell anyone!" Lin Xin nodded. The incident with the Saint got her guard up towards the underground organization. "After the first circle of your Life Power is filled, don''t break through to iron-level rank-2 just yet. I''ll get you a combat level disguise relic, then you can level up after putting that on." Lin Huang did not want anyone to know about her ability to level up so swiftly. She had many Life Crystals with her now. If she did not have to obtain Life Seed to level up each rank, she would take less than a week to get to gold-level rank-3 just by eating Life Crystals. That would be tens of times easier than how Lin Huang had leveled up. "Relic" Lin Xin''s eyes lit up when she heard that. She knew that only Transcendants could utilize relics. "Can I use it?" Lin Xin was concerned. "It''s a unique relic that doesn''t require you to activate it. It can suppress your aura just by you putting it on," Lin Huang nodded and explained. "Oh yeah, these three equipment rings are your presents to celebrate your breakthrough to iron-level. I''ve ordered them long ago but they only arrived yesterday, so I''m only giving them to you today." Lin Huang took three black rings from his storage space and gave them to her. "What are these?" Lin Xin accepted them and looked at them with excitement. "Two custom-made modified BlackEagle 33''s and the latest Black Demon Armor. The two guns have functions of their own. One has accelerated attack speed while the other has added attack strength. You''ll get used to them slowly." "Thank you, brother! You''re the best brother in the world!" Lin Xin thought it would be great to have one BlackEagle 33, but she did not expect two modified ones instead. The price of what she had obtained far surpassed her imagination. A week passed since Lin Xin found out about her odd physique. Lin Huang had gotten her the combat level disguise relic. It was an expensive grade-5 relic that looked like a metal bangle which could disguise combat levels below immortal-level. To be safe, Lin Huang taught her a skill to hide her aura after giving her the bangle. Lin Xin, who had just got her first circle of 360 columns in her Life Wheel filled, starting consuming Life Crystals again and reached iron-level rank-3 in less than half a day 505 Flying Power Sigil Building Soon, two weeks passed. The speed of Lin Huang''s Life Power and body transformation slowed down. His ten Life Fires that were smaller than his thumb was now the size of a ping-pong ball and their flame was more than 20 centimeters high. He was halfway there since he had the Undefinable Warrior Skill Card out. His body was practically non-human now and was more than three times more powerful than the usually transformed physique. Any weapons that were below relics could no longer hurt him. The density of his Life Power was incomparable to the time when he was complete gold-level. Besides being many times thicker, some of its characteristics had completely changed. It was like a transformation to a totally new energy. Since stepping into holy fire-level, the Life Fire and Life Power were dependable on each other. The Life Fire would extract and release Life Power as well as absorb Life Power to grow. As tinder had a different ranking, the strength of the Life Fire was different as well The flame of tinder that was not mutated could only burn a maximum of one meter after it became a Life Fire. Single-mutated tinder could burn up to three meters, while double-mutated tinder could burn up to ten meters, and it was said that triple-mutated tinder could burn up to 50 meters. Meanwhile, nobody knew how high a quadruple-mutated tinder could burn. Lin Huang was curious about how high his Life Fire could burn. The stronger the Life Fire, the faster it could absorb and release Life Power and the higher the density of Life Power. "It''s been more than a month since I leveled up to white flame-level. My Life Power and body must have stabilized from the growth now. It''s time to get the cross-ranking rewards that I obtained earlier." He was beyond excited. "But before that, there''s something that I need to do" Lin Huang mumbled to himself while taking out a few Monster Cards. They were the Supreme Overlord, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, and the three fiends. He wanted to extract their Monster Skills. He had not done that earlier as he had limited slots in Monster Skills whereby he only had three slots out of ten left. Besides, he left the slots vacant as the Supreme Overlord was not unsealed yet. However, since he got to white flame-level, he now had 20 Monster Skill slots which allowed him to own more Monster Skills. "Xiao Hei, extract the skills of these five cards!" Lin Huang instructed after glancing at the cards. "Skill extraction has been activated Randomly choosing skills It has been completed!" "Congratulations, you''ve obtained - Doll secret skill (Supreme Overlord)." "Congratulations, you''ve obtained - Punishment (Sanguine Skeleton Spirit)." "Congratulations, you''ve obtained - Demonic Telepathy (Inferior Imp)." "Congratulations, you''ve obtained - Demonic Regeneration (Malachian Fiend)." "Congratulations, you''ve obtained - Witchcraft (Witch)." After extracting the five skills, Lin Huang had 12 of his Monster Skill slots filled. He wanted to keep the remaining eight slots vacant as the Regal Sword Killer was still in card form, so its skills could not be extracted yet. Meanwhile, the eight sword servants from Lancelot were all epic-level. There were no skills that Lin Huang desired from them, hence he did not extract their skills. "The skills that I obtained this time aren''t bad at all. The Doll secret skill, Punishment, and Witchcraft are control skills that I''ve always wanted. The telepathy and regeneration abilities aren''t bad too!" Lin Huang was satisfied with the extraction results. Later on, he looked at the time and realized that it was only past seven in the evening. He called Mr. Fu right away. On the second ring, Mr. Fu answered his video call. "What''s up, my dear apprentice?" Mr. Fu had a chess board in front of him, and he seemed to be playing chess with someone. "Master. My Life Fire and body have stabilized now. The sigils that you told me about earlier" Someone sitting across Mr. Fu started speaking before Lin Huang could finish what he was saying. "Hurry! If you don''t play, I shall consider you the loser!" "Go away. I''m talking to my favorite apprentice." Mr. Fu waved his hand and turned around to look at Lin Huang. "I''ll send you the flying sigil after I finish my game. Take your time to study. Ask me whenever there''s anything you don''t understand." Mr. Fu hung up the phone right away. In less than ten minutes, Mr. Fu sent the sigil to him. There were many varieties and levels of the sigil. The lower level ones could be purchased at the Hunter Association or on black markets. The sigil that Lin Huang desired was a flying one which was integrated with many different variations that included anti-gravity, dynamic, kinetic adjustment, steering, balancing, sheltering and resistance reduction sigils. These sigils had to be activated by rotating Life Power. The more they were activated, the more likely it was that it would merge to form part of one''s instinct. The reason why people below Transcendent-level could not fly was because the sigils had to be built from the detachment of Life Power, which was impossible for them. On the other hand, many Transcendent monsters could fly as they had inherited similar sigils in their memory. Since he had gotten the sigils, Lin Huang tried it for the first time. The set of sigils that Mr. Fu had given was complicated and detailed. It was made of more than 20 sigils. Lin Huang started learning them one by one. The first one he learned was the anti-gravity sigil. It was tens of times more difficult than the anti-gravity sigil that he had seen on the Heart Network earlier. He tried it over and over again patiently. Although he had just reached white flame-level not long ago, he was familiar with Life Power detachment as he had used Blood Power in his earlier days. Nevertheless, he finally mastered the anti-gravity sigil after failing for more than 20 times. The complicated sigil alone would cause normal people to be dizzy just by looking at it, let alone drafting it. To draft it using Life Power, it was hundreds of times more difficult. After activating the anti-gravity sigil, Lin Huang''s body started to float. He felt like he was a helium balloon as his body detached from the ground. However, because he had just mastered the anti-gravity sigil, he lacked control of where he could go, only able to float off the ground. He repeated the drafting a few more times until he managed to do it perfectly with his eyes closed before learning the second sigil That night, he trained until 1.30 a.m. and he only managed to learn two sigils. However, the first few sigils were more complicated and the subsequent aiding sigils were much easier. The following days, he spent all his time on the battle training ground, learning the drafting of sigils. From non-gravity to dynamic, kinetic adjustments, and steering the sigils After multiple attempts and failures, he managed to integrate all of the sigils on the sixth day. Lin Huang could finally fly! 506 Misery "Congratulations! You''ve obtained a special legendary-level Skill Card (Flying). Please name the skill." "Let''s call it Imperial Flight!" Lin Huang thought before christening the new skill. He smirked as he watched the name of the skill appeared on the purple card. There was a famous line that was passed around among Transcendent-level humans that went, "How can one be considered as a Transcendent-level if he can''t even fly?!". Ever since the building of the flying forcefield was completed, Lin Huang had finally become a true Transcendent-level. He tried the flying effect of Imperial Flight. Its regular flying speed could reach 1,200 kilometers which was close to Mach 1. He could even reach 2,500 kilometers per hour if he accelerated, which would be over Mach 2, but it took up to five times more Life Power compared to the normal flying speed. Double acceleration would allow him to reach 3,700 kilometers per hour which was over Mach 3 and use up at least 50 times more compared to flying at the normal speed. Without the activation of his Seraphic Speed, Lin Huang could reach 4,000 kilometers at the maximum, which was slower than Thunder and Kylie. If he needed to get to a place which was far away in an instant, it would be better to ride on Thunder. The sigil set that Mr. Fu had given him was the top among the flying sigils. The normal sigil only had single acceleration whereby a limited number of them had double acceleration and could only reach Mach 2.5. The flying speed would not change much for a holy fire-level as the sigil was fixed. However, as one got to immortal-level, the sigil could be further explored and the speed could be 30% to 40% faster. "Now that I''ve mastered Imperial Flight and extracted the monster skills, I''ll spend the next two days familiarizing myself with the monster skills, then I shall head to the danger zone this weekend to finish what I have to do." Lin Huang looked at the calendar that was projected out of his Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was Wednesday today and he could not leave just yet as he had class on Friday. He would usually take less than a day to complete what he wanted to but it would take more than a day if an accident happened. He did not want to risk missing his class, so he thought of taking the few days to familiarize himself with the new monster skills and only head to the danger zone after his class on Friday. Soon, two days had passed and it was already Friday. That November week was supposed to start with a battle drill. However, since the Saints incident last month, the Union had yet to settle the issue with the underground organization, so the Martial Hunter College suspended the battle drill this time for safety purposes. All the Year 1 students would attend classes as usual. Although some of the students were unhappy with such an arrangement, they chose to conform when they recalled the terrifying incident. It was 1.40 p.m. and Lin Huang arrived at the office. When it was past 1.50 p.m, Qin Tianxing arrived at the office but Mu Xiaolan was nowhere to be seen. "Brother Qin, is Miss Mu on leave?" Lin Huang asked Qin Tianxing as he found her absence odd. "She''s resigned." Qin Tianxing shook his head. "Resigned?!" "She couldn''t let go of Wang Yan and there seems to be no result in the Union fighting the Saints. She was unsatisfied with that, so she resigned last week after her class. She said she wanted to try breaking through to white flame-level and join the mission to fight the Saints. The registrar and I have been asking her to stay but she didn''t listen." Qin Tianxing shared what had happened. "Why hasn''t the mission come to an end yet? It''s been more than a month." Lin Huang was puzzled. He was only a gold hunter in the Hunter Association, so he could not retrieve the news meant for Transcendent-levels. However, Qin Tianxing had joined the Hunter Association''s executive, so he had the access to some of the internal news. "The Saints disappeared. When the Union arrived at their headquarters, it was completely empty and all of the branches in the other footholds had moved away. Fortunately, the Saints are everybody''s enemies now. The heretics and the black markets have been providing all sorts of information. More than 80% of the Saint members who were hiding have been captured. Still, to capture all of them, that would take at least ten days to half a month," Qin Tianxing explained. "Hopefully, Miss Mu is doing fine," Lin Huang shook his head and sighed. Besides Qin Tianxing, Mu Xiaolan was the other staff that he was close to. As they had the same class schedule, the both of them would see each other in the office every Friday. Lin Huang did not want anything bad to happen to this friendly and happy lady. "It''s almost time now. You should be in class. Looking at the army that the Union has, Miss Mu will be joining the force of many, so she should be alright. Don''t worry about her." Qin Tianxing patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. In foothold No. 7B99 Misery City. Misery City was located in the extreme north in Division 7. It was a place for prisoners during the old epoch times. It was said that a monk passed through the place one day and named it Misery as bodies were strewn everywhere. Since the new epoch, the Union Government used the name when they were rebuilding the city. Mu Xiaolan had killed a mutated Transcendent-level monster here five days ago. The moment she leveled up to white flame-level, she rushed directly to Misery City without waiting for her transformation to be completed. She heard from the black market that Misery City was one of the hiding places of the Saint members. As she was a registered gold hunter, she used the dimensional tunnel that was exclusive to hunters and arrived at the place after spending a day transferring in between a couple of footholds. The following days, she spent most of her time in the black market to ask about the Saint. With the mission of the Union Government, there were many other hunters who were here to kill the Saints. For safety purposes, she was staying in a hotel that was occupied by hunters. On that day, a man in gold-framed glasses and a white coat walked towards her when she just got out of the black market. Mu Xiaolan, who was dressed in a black robe, had her guard up. "Hi, Miss Mu." The man stopped walking and smiled at her when he was less than two meters away from her. "You''ve got the wrong person." Mu Xiaolan remained cold while her face was concealed under the hood. "It can''t be. You''re Mu Xiaolan who teaches at the Martial Hunter College. You were in love with a male teacher named Wang Yan. Unfortunately, Wang Yan was killed when the Saints attacked a month ago, so you''ve resigned last week and plan to take revenge by killing the Saint members." The bespectacled man looked warmly at her under the dimmed street lamps. "Who are you?" Mu Xiaolan took off her hood and stared at the man with her bright eyes. "Don''t worry, I''m not one of the Saints. You can call me doctor." The man smiled as he introduced himself. "You know so much about me. Even if you''re not from the Saints, you must be up to no good. I''m not interested to talk to you. Go away." Mu Xiaolan was wary even if the man was not one of the Saint. "Alright then. I shall tell you my intentions." The man pushed his glasses up his nose before proceeding. "I heard that Lin Huang is your colleague and that you guys are pretty close. I need something about him from you." "No comment!" Mu Xiaolan finally knew that the man was here for Lin Huang. "Lady, this is not your decision." The man took off his glasses. A sigil sparked from his left eye and Mu Xiaolan collapsed. Suddenly, there was a golden glow that shot out of the relic in the man''s hand and covered Mu Xiaolan who was about to slump onto the ground. As the golden glow faded, Mu Xiaolan disappeared. The man summoned a dimensional relic and stepped into it. Soon, the dimensional relic closed and the black market alley was silent again like nothing had happened. 507 Please Stop Dreaming On Saturday morning, Lin Huang had decided on his first destination. It was a severe danger zone with more than ten commander-level monsters or at least three chief-level monsters. Only the top-ranked people dared to enter such a precarious zone. There were a total of 28 severe danger zones in Division 7. This time, Lin Huang''s target was a chief-level monster in the zone, which was also an immortal-level monster. "Xiao Hei, assuming I get ten reward card draws for a quadruple cross-ranking kill, do I get more card draws if I kill more than that?" Lin Huang grinned while he was on the road. "Sextuple cross-ranking kills - Reward Card Draw x15!" "Septuple cross-ranking kills - Reward Card Draw x20!" "Octuple cross-ranking kills - Reward Card Draw x25!" "Nonuple cross-ranking kills - Reward Card Draw x30!" "Decuple cross-ranking kills - Reward Card Draw x40!" "Above decuple cross-ranking kills - you''ll receive Reward Card Draw x10 for every rank." "Now that I''m on white flame-level, if I use a Provisional Transformation Card to increase my combat level and use another two Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards, I can get to immortal-level rank-2. Then, it won''t be too difficult to kill an immortal-level rank-7 monster. It''s 11 ranks from white flame-level to immortal-level rank-7, so I can get 50 card draws. If I use the Double Reward Card, I''ll get 100 card draws and 10 kills would mean I get 1,000 card draws" Lin Huang sat on Thunder''s back and smiled into the sky like an idiot. "You''re thinking too much. The cross-ranking kill depends on your combat level. If you''re using the card to upgrade your combat level temporarily, the calculation will start from the combat level that was upgraded from. That would be no different from you killing an immortal-level rank-1 when you''re on white flame-level. To be able to obtain more cross-ranking rewards, you should think about how to increase your combat level." "Ah, is that so? That''s disappointing." Lin Huang had been fantasizing about obtaining a massive amount of cards but his dream was crushed. "Please stop dreaming. Thank you!" "If that''s the case, I shall get my fiends to help me to kill immortal-level rank-2 monsters. Too bad the fiends have limited abilities, so they can''t do much if we encounter immortal-level rank-3 monsters. Maybe I should try my luck and see if they can kill such monsters. "Then again, killing immortal-level rank-3 monsters would mean a sextuple cross-ranking kill, which means 15 card draws and that''s 30 card draws if doubled. Ten kills mean 300 card draws, which is 100 more cards than a quadruple kill," Lin Huang recalculated how to obtain more cards. Before obtaining the new monster skills, he could already cross one level to kill an immortal-level rank-1 monster. Now that he had five new monster skills with upgraded abilities, he thought it would not be difficult to kill an immortal-level rank-2 monster with the help of the three fiends. However, Lin Huang wanted to spend some time exploring the severe danger zone before he did his hunting. He wanted to know the exact location and the abilities of each chief-level monster. Although he had the preliminary information from the black market, most of the information was from many years ago. Some of them were as long as 20 years ago, and only a few them were refreshed last year. After all, there were 28 severe danger zones and not everyone would go into them every year. Since more than 20 years had passed, the monsters might have upgraded, be killed or moved away. Those were the possibilities. He wanted to confirm the accuracy of the information and pin his next destination on the dimensional relic. One and a half hour later, Thunder brought Lin Huang to their first destination, Big Devil Island. He was familiar with the name of the island as he had been to Little Devil Island when he joined the Hunter Assessment a year ago. There was not much relationship between these two islands as one was on the southeast while the other was on the southwest of Division 7. Both of the islands were across half of the division. Their names were similar as both islands had the shape of a devil''s face. The one that was bigger was named the Big Devil Island while the smaller one was named Little Devil Island. However, the two islands had the same ecosystem with the existence of demons, the undead and soul-type monsters. Of course, the Big Devil Island was a severe danger zone which was incomparable with the grade-4 wild zone of the Little Devil Island. From what information Lin Huang had obtained, there were a total of six chief-level monsters, two immortal-level rank-2 monsters, one immortal-level rank-4 monster, two immortal-level rank-5 monsters and one immortal-level rank-7 monster on the island. There were hundreds of commander-level monsters on the island. However, the statistic was as old as 11 years. Initially, Lin Huang was here for the immortal-level rank-7, but armed with the knowledge of the cross-ranking kill rewards from Xiao Hei, he changed his target to the two immortal-level rank-2 monsters. It was just before 9 a.m. when Thunder landed on a beach at the border of the island. Lin Huang sat on its back and summoned Bloody. "Bloody, check where the chief-level monsters are on this island and their combat levels," Lin Huang said to Bloody. Purple specks spread out from Bloody and flew away. Twenty minutes later, Bloody''s voice came to Lin Huang''s ears. "There are only three chief-levels, one immortal-level rank-2, one immortal-level rank-3 and one immortal-level rank-4. They''re spread out" Bloody marked the locations on Lin Huang''s map. It marked the immortal-level rank-2 in red and another two in white. "Only three of them? The statistic from 11 years ago isn''t reliable," Lin Huang sighed. "I''ve cast my Leech Pods on a blue flame-level monster. According to its memory, someone was here three years ago and fought the overlord-rank monsters on the island. The person killed the three most powerful ones," Bloody explained. "Is that so?" Lin Huang nodded and patted Thunder''s back. "Thunder, let''s go to the location marked in red." Half an hour later, Lin Huang arrived 50 kilometers away from where the immortal-level rank-2 monsters were. The immortal-level monsters had a much stronger sensing ability than holy fire-levels. They could sense an enemy that was tens of kilometers away. It was risky for Lin Huang to appear 50 kilometers away. If he got a little closer, the monsters might attack him. His plan was not to fight them but to mark down their coordinates. He had limited Double Reward Cards; there would be enough cards if he used one of them for every kill. The only way was to complete ten cross-ranking kills using a Double Reward Card within the given time. After pinning the coordinates in his dimensional relic, Lin Huang smirked at the direction of the first targeted monster. "I''ll kill every one of you after I''ve completed marking down all your locations!" 508 The Black Serpen There were a total of 28 severe danger zones in Division 7. Lin Huang spent three days visiting all 23 of them and pinned the locations of ten immortal-level rank-2 monsters. It showed that aside from the information that was refreshed last year, none of the information from three years ago was accurate. The information that was as old as 20 years was so inaccurate that Lin Huang regretted paying such a high price at the black market. "Damn it!" Although he had not exactly been cheated since the date was clearly jotted down on top of the documents, he was unhappy. "I''ll sell this piece of information to earn back the money after I finish the remaining islands and complete all the cross-ranking kills!" The Union Government and the Hunter Association did a check on severe danger zones every three years. However, the result was not opened to the public. It was confidential, and only core members who joined them officially were privy to the information. Ever since Lin Huang got to holy fire-level, he realized the importance of joining an organization. Resources were not crucial as he could obtain them by himself as long as he had the ability. The most important thing was the access to information. In this world, most information was controlled by organizations. Their members could obtain the information that was not publicly available easily while those who did not join any organization would have to spend their money at the black market. Furthermore, some of the information was not up for purchase. If Lin Huang was one of the executives in the Hunter Association, he could obtain the information of the severe danger zone without spending a fortune. He had no idea about the progress between the Union and the Saints but, to Qin Tianxing who was an executive in the Hunter Association, the information was provided to him for free. "I''ll consider how to obtain that information after handling this." Lin Huang shook his head and got rid of his thoughts. He pushed open the dimensional relic and returned to Big Devil Island again. After recalling the dimensional relic, he flew above the island and stared at his first target that was tens of kilometers away. It was a double mutated giant, the Black Serpent. It was at least 2,000 meters long with black metallic scales that gleamed under the sunlight. It was lying next to a gigantic lake, appearing like a black mountain. As Lin Huang stared at it, it seemed to sense somebody watching it and it gazed at Lin Huang with its four bloody eyes. "It saw me! Such sensitive sensing abilities!" Lin Huang did not expect to reveal himself to its observation. However, he did not mind that. "Since I''m already discovered, I''ll kill it then!" He smirked and activated a Double Reward Card while summoning his three fiends. He then activated double acceleration and dashed towards the monster. A white cone of vapor was created in the air, and soon an explosion was heard on top of Big Devil Island. In less than a minute, Lin Huang whizzed past 50 kilometers and arrived before the Black Serpent. Sensing that Lin Huang was unfriendly, the Black Serpent attacked without thinking twice. It opened its mouth wide while black flames spat out like dragon flames towards Lin Huang. "That''s Black Flame. It''s a venomous attack with both water and fire attributes. It''s corrosive, and an immortal-level person''s skin will fall off or you may die," warned Bloody that was hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve. "You need to kill it right now. If it manages to spit out too much of the venomous flames, it''ll accumulate into a lake and it''ll then perform its ultimate move of activating the black lake to attack. By then, countless venomous tentacles will ambush us and we will basically lose." Lin Huang shifted and managed to avoid the flame. Since the attack failed, the flames rained onto the ground and created a deep path which resulted in a black river. Looking at the sight of the phenomenon, Lin Huang had to admit that Bloody was right. "This thing is tricky." Lin Huang held his supreme relic in his hand and inserted Life Power into it. It released a misty white glow. "I thought you''re some powerful human, but you''re just a white flame-level kid." The Black Serpent''s four eyes focused on Lin Huang and it realized that he was just a white flame-level. "Hey, don''t underestimate me! You''ll regret it." Lin Huang grinned. As he said that, his three fiends appeared next to him. "So, you''re an Imperial Censor! No wonder you have the guts to challenge me!" The Black Serpent noticed the three fiends immediately. "Three fiends, hmm, I''d be afraid if they''re immortal-level, but they''re only gold flame-level. They''re just food to me." The Black Serpent then spat Black Flames at the four of them. They were completely engulfed by the flame that was like a massive ocean wave. "That''s it? Humans are such weak creatures" The Black Serpent soon stopped its flames. As the flames faded, a black sphere floating in mid-air appeared. "Hey, don''t you have any other techniques?" The black sphere faded and revealed Lin Huang and the three fiends who were unharmed. "I was anticipating fighting you but it''s pretty boring that you only have this one mundane technique." Lin Huang picked his ear to show how bored he was. "Human kid, it depends if you deserve my other techniques. If you think your psychological game will make me change my attacks, I''m sorry. I won''t be fooled." The Black Serpent grinned like a human. "Do you think that''s a psychological game? You''re thinking too much, I just thought that you spitting saliva is a little disgusting," Lin Huang teased. "In the human world, what you''re doing is unhygienic and you''ll be fined." "How dare you!?" The Black Serpent spat flames again. The four of them spread out and avoided the attack. "Hey, spitting saliva at people is uncourteous. Didn''t your mother teach you that?" The ground where the flame touched was corroded. All of the things around was now purplish-black. "Go to hell!" The Black Serpent proceeded to spit flame. "Black Serpent, I''ll get mad if you do that again!" Lin Huang''s aura was rising. "Die!" The Black Serpent shouted and opened its jaws wide. Suddenly, a shadow appeared under its mouth. A punch was launched from under its chin, smacking its gaping jaw shut with a snap. Black chains appeared out of nowhere and muzzled its mouth, containing the flames in its mouth. Almost at the same time, the remaining flames on the ground became four gigantic guns and fired at the Black Serpent''s four eyes. Lin Huang grinned and sliced the Black Serpent''s heart like a lightning bolt. The Black Serpent''s furious groaning and screaming stopped immediately, blood dripping from Lin Huang''s sword onto the ground "Congratulations, you have obtained an epic-level Monster Card - Black Serpent (Giant) x2!" "Congratulations, you have completed a sextuple cross-ranking kill with reward card draw x30!" "Do you really think I triggered you just to make you change your mode of attack? I just wanted to distract you so that the three of them could attack you." Lin Huang descended and looked at the Black Serpent''s head that looked like a small hill... 509 I Love You, Therefore Isd Eat You Lin Huang would have loved to prolong the fight with the Black Serpent but since the Double Reward Card effective time was only an hour, he could not stay any longer. He needed to complete ten kills within an hour, which was six minutes on average to kill each monster. Therefore, he had to kill the Black Serpent immediately. By teasing the Black Serpent, he managed to distract it while the three fiends cooperated to attack it. First, it was the Malachian Fiend who locked the Black Serpent''s attack and the Witch that used Witchcraft to seal its mouth temporarily while the Inferior Imp was simply a distraction. The real ultimate move was Lin Huang''s Star Dome sword skill. After integrating many sword skills, the Star Dome was no longer comparable to legendary-level skills. The more sword skills were integrated, the stronger the sword skill was. Although the Star Dome was far from being mythical-level, it was much stronger than most legendary-level sword skills. Moreover, since his sword realm had strengthened following the improvement of his sword skills, although he was still far away from level-4 Sword Dao, he was much more powerful than the time he had first stepped into level-3 Sword Dao. Besides, the location Lin Huang chose to attack was the Black Serpent''s heart, which was the weakest point on its body. That was how he managed to slice the terrifying giant with only a single swing of his sword. If he was to cut any other location, he would only manage to puncture less than 20 centimeters into its body, which was an insignificant wound to the Black Serpent. However, the Black Serpent was killed before it could show how mighty it was. The entire process took less than two minutes. "Great teamwork!" Lin Huang flashed a thumbs-up to the three fiends. After storing the Black Serpent''s carcass, he summoned his dimensional relic and brought the three fiends along. The second target that he chose was in another severe danger zone called the Mysterious Colored Desert. It was a vast, unique dessert that changed colors as the weather changed. It would go through at least 30 shades of colors from morning to night. Different areas would have different colors as the weather and temperature varied. The colors would change as well when it was raining, snowing or windy. It was beautiful. However, great danger lied in this beautiful land. Bloody had run a check and found out that there were eight chief-level monsters around. The most powerful one was an immortal-level rank-9. However, Lin Huang''s target this time was only an immortal-level rank-2 Arachnid Enchanter. The Arachnid Enchanter had a human torso and a spider''s body as its bottom. The divide between its uppper and lower body was at its waist and it looked like the manga Monster Girl that Lin Huang had seen when he was on Earth. However, this Arachnid Enchanter was not as cute as the one in the manga. The Arachnid Enchanter was more than three meters tall with its bottom half more than two meters in length. Its furry abdomen and eight claws that released a frigid aura were terrifying. Its chest was bare and its breasts were at least E-cup in size. In reality, there was not only female Arachnid Enchanters but handsome male ones as well. The reason why humans hardly saw male Arachnid Enchanter was because the males would be attracted by the Arachnid Enchanter once they became an adult. They would go into a mating frenzy which would last for more than three days and sometimes went on for more than ten days. They would not rest, eat, or drink between mating. The male would be weak after mating and the female would take the advantage to smash the male''s head and eat it slowly. The Arachnid Enchanter''s love was simple. I love you, therefore I will eat you. According to the statistics done by humans, a single female Arachnid Enchanter could eat up to ten male Arachnid Enchanters in a lifetime. The more they ate, the more powerful they were. Sometimes, they could get to imperial-level just by eating male Arachnid Enchanters. The one that Lin Huang targeted was an immortal-level rank-2. Looking at its combat level, it would have eaten at least two to three male Arachnid Enchanters. As they passed through the dimensional relic, Lin Huang, Bloody, and the three fiends appeared in the Mysterious Colored Desert. Although it was not his first time there, Lin Huang was still enthralled by the colorful sand he stepped on. No matter which angle you took it from, any photos that was taken there could be used as a desktop image. "I shall bring Xin Er here for a picnic when we have the time. She''ll definitely love the view." Lin Huang stayed where he was before looking at the Arachnid Enchanter''s direction. He leaped and rushed towards it as the three fiends followed him. In less than a minute, Lin Huang traveled through tens of kilometers and appeared in the oasis where the Arachnid Enchanter was hiding. The female Arachnid Enchanter was sleeping on its spider web. As soon as Lin Huang invaded the oasis, it opened its eyes. There''s prey! "Bloody, where is she?" Lin Huang asked softly. He was standing at the location where Bloody had pinned three days ago but he did not see the Arachnid Enchanter. "We don''t have to look for her. She know that you''re here. I''m sure she''ll be here soon." Bloody did not cast its Leech Pods this time as it was familiar with the Arachnid Enchanter''s hunting behavior. "Her spider web will vibrate automatically and mark our location when we enter this territory. She''ll be here soon." Lin Huang nodded after hearing what Bloody said while waiting where he was patiently waiting. Suddenly, a white glow invaded Lin Huang''s Territory. It was hurtling towards his head from his back. Lin Huang stepped out and glided aside, managing to avoid the attack. The white glow missed him and passed through tens of trees. He turned around to look at the direction of the attack and saw a female Arachnid Enchanter tilting her head while looking at him with great interest. The top half of her body was naked. Her hot body would definitely make all men lust for her until their noses bled. Her long, black hair barely covered her breasts but that made her even more captivating. What was more attractive was her perfect face. From a human''s perspective, she was a goddess. It was not exaggerating to call her a deity. However, from the waist down, she was terrifying. There were yellow mottled spots all over her dark brown abdomen that was filled with dense, sharp thorns. Below that were eight yellowish-black killer weapons in the form of legs "Oh, it''s a human. It''s been a long time since I''ve eaten human flesh" Th Arachnid Enchanter licked her bloody red lips seductively. 510 The Arachnid Enchanter "Why do all monsters love eating human flesh?" Lin Huang mumbled to himself as it was not the first time hearing about monsters wanting to eat human flesh. However, he thought about it and figured it was the same theory about humans preferring to eat the Swine Beast. It was just a matter of preference. He turned around as he heard an explosion from his back. A white glow exploded from tens of trees away and spider webs streaked everywhere. Lin Huang frowned. "Once the Silk Cocoon explodes, the spider web that''s spread out will cover up to hundreds of meters. Each spider web is as powerful as a relic. They''re sticky and will affect your movement tremendously. The more Silk Cocoon she shoots, the worse the battlefield. However, it''s an advantage to her," Bloody reminded. "Also, her spider web gets stronger every time. Once the Silk Cocoon covers the entire area, it''ll be her explosive territory." "Human, you look really delicious. I shall enjoy you," Arachnid Enchanter cooed and attacked Lin Huang again. Shots of white glow came out from the end of her abdomen. The attacks were not targeting only Lin Huang but went in every direction. "Oh no, I missed!" The Arachnid Enchanter lamented on purpose. Lin Huang did not avoid her attack this time. "Thunder Sting!" As he shouted, his body turned into a white lightning bolt while white electrical arcs surrounded his sword. He moved as fast as lightning when he swung his sword to break every Silk Cocoon. The Arachnid Enchanter was shocked to see him do that. "Do you really think I have no idea what you''re trying to do?" Lin Huang leaped into the air and rushed towards the Arachnid Enchanter. "Hmph!" The Arachnid Enchanter scoffed and spat white mist towards him. The mist seemed harmless but it was heading towards Lin Huang at an alarming pace. "Be careful! The poisonous mist can penetrate into most creatures'' skin, causing illusion!" Bloody said. "This would''ve been tricky if it happened a few days ago, but now" Lin Huang smirked while waving his left hand. A strong wind blew, and the white mist went back to the direction it came from, covering the entire Arachnid Enchanter. "Telekinesis!" Arachnid Enchanter exclaimed in shock. Although the mist could not deceive the Arachnid Enchanter, it covered most of her vision as she looked around cautiously. Suddenly, Lin Huang walked out of the white mist and sliced the Arachnid Enchanter''s waist with his sword. Although she was hot, he did not plan to show her any mercy. The Arachnid Enchanter did not manage to avoid his attack, but she opened her cute little mouth and released a strand of silk. The strand of silk soon expanded into a huge spider web covering him. "A piece of cake!" Lin Huang shouted and brandished his sword at the spider web. The spider web was immediately cut open. He got out of the web and swung his sword at the Arachnid Enchanter again. There were white electrical arcs dancing on his sword, and the space that he sword swung through became a vacuum. As the Arachnid Enchanter managed to buy herself some time from casting the spider web, she lifted her two legs up and kicked Lin Huang''s sword. Bang! The white sword tip collided with the Arachnid Enchanter''s two legs, creating a loud thud. The impact of the collision spread kilometers away. There was a deep crater in the area and the trees were all destroyed. Even the three fiends that had just arrived chose to avoid them at that moment and did not get any closer. The collision lasted for a moment and a shadow sprinted away. There was a huge path tens of thousands meters left on the ground from the impact. From the attack alone, Lin Huang had really reached the immortal-level standard whereby his attack was disastrous. If he were to fight at the human foothold, he would cause a catastrophic amount of damage, which was also why the Union Government controlled the number of human immortal-levels and above in the A and B-grade footholds. Although Lin Huang managed to fling the Arachnid Enchanter tens of thousands of meters away, he knew very well that the attack did not really harm her. The impact of his sword was contained by her two legs, and she would suffer minor skin injuries from that. The Arachnid Enchanter was no more powerful than the Black Serpent that he had killed a few minutes ago. No matter her strength, defenses, or physique, the Arachnid Enchanter was much weaker. She managed to face Lin Huang''s attack as she could see what was coming. Lin Huang leaped and appeared before the Arachnid Enchanter in an instant. The Thunder Sting had left electrical arcs all over her body, temporarily numbing her body. Without hesitating, Lin Huang held his sword high and looked at her calmly like he was killing a Swine Beast. His Life Power filled the tip of the sword, making it grow half a foot longer. "Star Dome!" As Lin Huang whispered that softly, he swung his sword from the top to the bottom. The air around was slightly distorted. There were even light black electric arcs whizzing around The Arachnid Enchanter smelled death on the sword. Although her body was numb, the death threat allowed her to spit countless spider webs at Lin Huang on instinct. However, the spider webs did not stop Lin Huang''s sword. They disappeared when the white sword tip touched them. The sword swing destroyed everything that came its way! The Arachnid Enchanter''s struggle was redundant, and she did not manage to slow down the sword at all. "No!" As a miserable groan was heard, a loud bang echoed. The sword sliced the Arachnid Enchanter into half all the way into the 30-kilometer deep path. Even Lin Huang was shocked at what he had done. "Am I really this powerful now?" Lin Huang looked at his sword in disbelief. The faded Life Power revealed his half-silver, half-black sword. There was purple blood dripping from the tip. "Hmm, but it''s still difficult for me to kill an immortal-level rank-2 on my own now 511 Xiao Hei’s Ability "Congratulations, you have completed sextuple cross-ranking kill with reward card draw x30!" Lin Huang looked at the time when he heard the notification from Xiao Hei. "This took five minutes. Looking at the progress, I have just enough time. It seems like we need help." Lin Huang frowned. The fight started one-on-one. As the both of them collided together, the three fiends could not find a way to help, so it took more time than the previous fight. If he had not used Thunder Sting on the Arachnid Enchanter, the fight might not have ended so easily. After concluding the experience silently while standing, he put his sword and the Arachnid Enchanter''s carcass away, then summoned the dimensional relic again. "Let''s go!" He waved to the three fiends and stepped into the dimensional relic. After completing two kills, he grasped the basic understanding of immortal-level rank-2 monsters. With Bloody''s help on each monster''s weaknesses and abilities together with the fiends'' assistance, Lin Huang managed to kill seven monsters in less than half an hour. "There are 23 minutes left. We should be able to kill all of them." Lin Huang became excited after winning battle after battle. He stepped into the dimensional relic and appeared on an island. It was the Enigma Island where there were many peculiar, unknown monsters. There were new monster types that could not be found in the monster encyclopedia. Some of them were transformed from other existing monster types. Lin Huang''s target was an unknown ape on the island. Although Bloody could not distinguish the type of monster, he could still use it as his target because it was also an immortal-level rank-2. It was Xiao Hei'' that suggested making this island their final destination. Its reason was that there were many odd monsters that it wanted Lin Huang to kill for research. Since he had completed all the cross-ranking kills, it was the perfect timing as he needed to kill monsters to obtain more Life Power to grow his Life Fire. "This ape looks a little like the Mighty Ape from the ancient epoch. The Mighty Ape was a triple-mutated ancient beast and its ability was the top of the triple-mutated monsters. Not many same level monsters could fight it with its strength. However, according to the monster encyclopedia, The Mighty Ape had three descendants, but none of them looks like this one," Bloody said. "There''s something that I''m not sure if I should tell you about" Bloody hesitated. "Just tell me everything." Lin Huang nodded. "This ape gives me an odd feeling that I can''t describe In reality, since the first time we came here a few days ago, besides this ape, I feel that all of the monsters on this island give me an uncomfortable feeling" Bloody said out loud. "Really?" Lin Huang thought that was odd. "This island is a little familiar to me. Like I''ve been here before," the Inferior Imp that was standing next to Lin Huang said after looking around. "I have the same feeling too. It''s like I''ve been here before." Just when Lin Huang was stunned by what the Inferior Imp said, the Witch nodded and agreed. "Me too." The Malachian Fiend nodded in assent. "Did that happen before you guys became my summoning monsters?" Lin Huang thought it could not be a coincidence that the three fiends shared the same feeling. "I think so, but my memory is unclear. I feel the familiarity when I look around the place," the Inferior Imp replied. "Xiao Hei, do the Monster Cards retain their memories before they die?" Lin Huang contacted Xiao Hei secretly. "That would involve the forming of Monster Cards. You have the authority to know about this now, but are you sure you want to hear about it?" "Yes." "The forming of the Monster Card is actually the breakdown of the dead monster''s flesh and soul, transforming it into a particle that can be made into cards. To explain this in Earth language, it''s like a three-dimensional creature that''s placed into the data world in a computer. "To make it simple, you''re a three-dimensional human and I''m the computer that you''re using while your Monster Cards are the data on the computer." "If that''s so, how does the Monster Card appear in the world with body and flesh? On Earth, the data in the computer can''t be transformed back into a three-dimensional creature." Although Lin Huang understood what Xiao Hei was saying, he now had more questions. "That''s because of my existence. I allow the ''data'' to interfere with reality!" Lin Huang became silent before nodding. "I understand now. That means all the Monster Cards retain their memories before they died." "When they are broken down, all of the information in their heads, even the information that was inherited from their genes will be completely copied. To avoid trouble, I have categorized their memories. Most of their memories remained while some of them are sealed. However, to retain their intelligence and character, the memories aren''t completely sealed, so they feel the familiarity whenever they encounter familiar environment and incidents." "So, what happened to the Supreme Overlord who managed to escape from its card form earlier?" Lin Huang asked. "As you did not have enough authority, you could only seal a living creature in a semi-card form. Once the card''s combat level surpasses your authority and I''m unable to suppress it, the living creature will escape back to the world from its semi-card form." "You''re my power source. The higher your authority, the more powerful I am. Before you arrived at white flame-level, my power was limited by you and I couldn''t manage legendary-level cards. That''s why I had to seal them when your Monster Cards leveled up to legendary-level. The Supreme Overlord was only in a semi-card form so I could only seal a portion of his power, not the material portion of him. That''s how he managed to escape. "In reality, as long as you have enough authority to supply me with sufficient power, not only can I turn all the monsters in this world into their card forms, I can even make the entire world into a card" What Xiao Hei said puzzled Lin Huang. As long as it had sufficient power, it could turn the entire world into a card?! 512 The Unknown Ape After communicating with Xiao Hei, Lin Huang had a better understanding of the Goldfinger than he did before. He did not know that Xiao Hei was powerful enough to control the entire world. A while later, he snapped out of his shock and recalled what he wanted to ask. "So, you mean that the three fiends have been here before since they find it familiar?" "Yes, there''s no other reasonable explanation for that. It could be a coincidence if only one fiend feels the deja vu but it''s definitely not a coincidence if the three of them are experiencing the same thing." "Haven''t you seen this part of their memory before?" Lin Huang thought Xiao Hei''s explanation was odd. "I realized that the information in their bodies was messy when I was returning them to their card forms. Some of their memories had been erased earlier. While I was organizing their memories, I didn''t find anything that''s related to this area, so I have no idea what was the memory that was erased." "I first saw them at the Mystery Auction. They were brought by the Purple Crow. If they''ve been here before, could that mean that this is one of the footholds under the Purple Crow''s territory?" Lin Huang frowned as none of his encounters with the Purple Crow had ever been a positive one. "That could be possible Do you remember that I told you that these three fiends were modified by humans before?" "I remember. The three of them looked much more ferocious at the auction. I even asked you what happened to them before." "I found out from Bloody''s Leech Pods'' surveillance that there''s a similar aura coming from the creatures on this island. The same aura as before the fiends were returned to their card form. I suspect they were modified on this island!" "This entire island could be a creature laboratory, but I can''t confirm at the moment if it''s been formed by nature or if it''s man-made. This is also why I picked this place as the final destination. I need you to kill as many monsters as you can on this island so that I can analyze the monster modification." "I understand now." Lin Huang nodded. If this foothold belonged to the Purple Crow, he did not mind causing damage to this place. Even if it was not, it was perfect for him to kill more monsters to grow his Life Fire. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang waved to the three fiends. "Don''t do anything at the moment, let me try to kill it first," Lin Huang said, then activated double acceleration immediately and scooted towards where the ape was. It only took him a moment to arrive at his destination. This ape was 200 meters tall. Although it was nothing comparable to the Black Serpent he had encountered earlier, its aura was even more powerful. The ape had green hair with three gigantic heads. There were six white eyeballs on each of its head, and its teeth were as sharp as a beast''s. As its teeth were too huge, its mouths could not be closed completely. Its six arms were muscular, each of them a few times bigger than its thighs. It was obvious that its upper body strength was terrifying. Its palms were gigantic and were no smaller than its faces. From the front, it had detailed golden scales from its neck all the way to just above its thighs. On its back, there was a metal golden armor from its neck downwards, appearing like an enlarged metal spine that extended all the way to its tail. It did not only cover two-thirds of its back; its entire tail looked like it had been galvanized. The end of its tail looked like a golden metal needle. Although its legs were thinner than its arms, compared to normal apes, they were much more muscular and powerful. Its black feet created odd cracking sounds when walking on the ground, sounding very much like snow being crunched on. It was the sound of the gravel becoming powder under its feet, leaving deep footprints on the ground. "A strength-type monster with powerful defense" Lin Huang checked it out and figured what type of monster it was. "The only weakness is both sides of its body but it has two heads and four arms on both sides. This is tricky" Just as Lin Huang was checking the ape out, it noticed his presence. Three of its heads turned around while its 18 white eyes that seemed devoid of pupils stared at Lin Huang. Fortunately, he was not trypophobic, or he would have had goosebumps all over his body. As the ape locked eyes on Lin Huang, it did not seem to bother if he was friend or foe. It tore right at him. "Attacking directly It seems to only have battle instincts," Bloody mumbled. "Perfect!" Lin Huang shouted and held his battle sword in his hand. He dashed towards the ape after activating his Seraphic Speed and Thunder Steps. "Thunder Sting!" White sparks shone brightly on the sword while electric arcs dashed into the sky. The combination of the Seraphic Speed, Thunder Steps, and Thunder Sting was so fast that Lin Huang looked like he transformed into a white electric bolt. The crescent moon sword glow raced towards the ape that was charging towards Lin Huang. The ape swung its muscular arms at Lin Huang, and a loud explosion was heard. A strong gust of wind blew as a shockwave exploded in the air. The white glow collided with the gigantic fists. Bang! The collision was not like a thunderclap. Instead, it was like a nuclear bomb explosion. Green and white shockwaves shot into the sky in the center of the collision. Circles of energy waves rippled in the air and spread out. The area within 78.5 square kilometers was completely destroyed. The collision lasted less than two seconds before a figure shot out like an arrow The one remaining was the gigantic ape. "Such powerful strength!" Lin Huang exclaimed. Although the ape was only an immortal-level rank-2, its strength surpassed an immortal-level rank-3''s standard and was almost equivalent to an immortal-level rank-4''s. Looking at his deformed right hand, Lin Huang could tell that the single collision had broken every bone in his hand. Fortunately, he managed to heal his hand immediately with the Demonic Regeneration Monster Skill that he had just obtained. Within seconds, his broken bones were completely healed, and the injury seemed like an illusion to him. "It doesn''t seem to be affected by Thunder Sting at all..." Lin Huang looked solemnly at the monster. "I need to try something else" 513 Professor Jin From that single attack, Lin Huang was sure that the ape was much more powerful than he expected. Fortunately, his broken hand was healed immediately with the Demonic Regeneration skill which did not affect him much. The ape charged towards him once again. Each step it took brought it 1,000 meters closer, and it was coming right to Lin Huang. He realized something as he watched what the ape was doing. "So, this is it Most apes aren''t only agile but fast as well. However, this fella has an advantage in strength and defense which makes its speed and agility drop tremendously." The ape arrived before Lin Huang after a few steps while swinging its fist towards him again. He stepped back with the help of Thunder Step, pulling a distance away from the ape. As the ape swung its fist in the air, there was a sonic boom in the air but Lin Huang was not affected at all. Seeing that he managed to avoid its attack unharmed, the ape chased after him furiously. However, it was not any faster than before. "It seems that this is its maximum speed. That''s perfect!" Lin Huang smirked. He leaped into the air and turned around out of nowhere then stormed towards the ape. As the ape raised its fist again, Lin Huang was like a loach that avoided its attack easily. The battle sword in his hand was covered in white, glowing Life Power and he launched it at the ape as it attacked. There were white trails on the ape''s golden scales but it did not manage to break its defense. Lin Huang stepped back again before the ape managed to swing its fist at him. "I can''t break it The defense of these scales should be above immortal-level rank-3 while the thicker metal armor on its back should have a higher defense." Lin Huang observed both sides of the ape. Roar! Suddenly, the ape bellowed furiously into the sky. It was mad as Lin Huang attacked it continuously. Although he did not break its defense, the blows of the sword hurt. Furthermore, it was irritated as it could not hit Lin Huang since the beginning. "This monster seems not to have any intelligence but relies only on battle instinct." Lin Huang peeked at his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "I''ve got 18 minutes left. It''s meaningless to waste time with it like this." Lin Huang snapped out of his thoughts and tore towards the ape with his sword. "What''s happening? Who''s fighting on the island?" The glassware in the huge laboratory under the sea of the Enigma Island was clattering against one another. A petite old man with silver hair in a white coat glared madly at the middle-aged man in the white coat. "I''m sorry, Professor Jin. A young male human invaded the Enigma Island. He''s fighting with a Tri-headed Ape," the middle-aged man explained. "A young man?" The old man named Professor Jin seemed to be interested. "Show me!" The middle-aged man brought Professor Jin to the surveillance room. There were many of them watching what was happening. They left immediately the moment Professor Jin appeared. He walked to the surveillance monitors where everyone surrounded as he frowned. It was a live stream of Lin Huang fighting the ape. "He looks so young! He doesn''t look like he''s older than 20!" Professor Jin exclaimed when he saw Lin Huang. "What''s his combat level?" Professor Jin turned around and asked the middle-aged man next to him after watching for a while. "He''s performing white flame-level skills but I suspect he''s using some relic to hide his real combat level," the middle-aged man presumed. "Usually, it''s impossible for humans to cross a level in battles. Only the legendary Supreme Genius can do that. Besides, the Tri-headed Ape is a double mutated immortal-level rank-2 monster and its strength and defense surpasses immortal-level rank-3. Even an immortal-level rank-2 human can hardly fight it." Professor Jin proceeded to watch the fight. After Lin Huang''s failed attempts to attack, he advanced to attack once more but this time, he aimed at the Tri-headed Ape''s lateral sides that were the weakest. Within a minute, the Tri-headed Ape was badly injured. The dejected Tri-headed Ape fell into a frenzy whereby its body grew bigger. Besides its spike in strength and defense, even its speed had increased tremendously. Lin Huang avoided it calmly like an agile ape that was swinging among the trees. As the Tri-headed Ape showed its flaws again and again, Lin Huang managed to pierce through the 18 eyes on three of its heads with his sword. Finally, he pierced through its heart from the side of its body. The entire process lasted less than ten minutes. Professor Jin stared at the screen without blinking. He did not want to miss a thing. "Lock down the island immediately!" He shouted as soon as Lin Huang killed the Tri-headed Ape. "Yes!" The middle-aged man took out a Transmission Snail and instructed one of the departments, "Lock down Enigma Island!" After carrying out the order, the middle-aged man turned around and asked, "Professor, do we kill him?" "Are you an idiot? Of course, we''re capturing him alive!" Professor Jin shouted. "I''ll arrange that immediately." The middle-aged man remained polite. "Wait, I want to test his ability." Professor Jin raised his hand to stop him. "Release ten inferior immortal-level rank-1 beasts from the cage and target this young man." "Ten? Won''t he be killed?" The middle-aged man was stunned. "Get something to watch over him and don''t get him killed! I want him alive!" "Sure, I''ll arrange that right away." The middle-aged man nodded and left. "This kid could be the legendary Supreme Genius. As long as I manage to capture him and run some tests on him, I can definitely make a creature that''s even more powerful!" Professor Jin looked at the screen with burning desire. "Congratulations, you have obtained an epic-level Monster Card - Tri-headed Ape (Unknown Monster Type) x2!" "Congratulations, you have completed a sextuple cross-ranking kill with reward card draw x30!" "I got a complete Monster Card?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. The ten cross-ranking kills had gotten him 300 card draws and to his surprise, he obtained complete Monster Cards twice. "I''ve told you that I need many modified monsters for research. These two Tri-headed Apes are my advanced reward for you. Unfortunately, I have bad news. The island is being locked down" 514 A Little Game "There''s someone on the island?!" The first thing that popped into Lin Huang''s mind was the Purple Crow when Xiao Hei told him that the island had been locked down as the three fiends in his possession had been brought by the Purple Crow to the auction. "I''ve checked the island these few days. There''s no man-made building. The lock down must''ve been done by humans. The enemy is either hiding under the island or somewhere outside of the island but I''m pretty sure that we''re being watched," Bloody analyzed. Lin Huang turned on the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and found out that signal and network had been cut off. "The signal has been cut. I definitely can''t use the dimensional relic anymore." Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic and found out that he could not set any location. He recalled the dimensional relic and waved to the three fiends in the sky. "Follow me!" He ordered and flew straight up to the sky. Within seconds, he arrived thousands of meters in the sky but was soon blocked by a transparent shield and could not get any further. He held his sword in his hand and white Life Power was coming out of the sword... Suddenly, an excited voice came out of nowhere. It echoed to every corner of the island and sounded old. "It''s useless, kid. Nobody below imperial-level can break the seal layer of the island. You can''t run anywhere. Just accept your fate of being my guinea pig!" "We''re really being watched." Lin Huang frowned and but he did not stop trying. He swung his sword at the shield on top of his head with his Star Dome. An intense impact was sent through his sword and he was shot right down. He crashed into the ground like a cannon. A crater hundreds of meters wide and at least 20 to 30 meters deep was created. The three fiends caught up to him immediately and landed next to the hole. "Master, are you alright?" The Witch asked immediately. "I''m alright." Lin Huang got up from the hole slowly and coughed the sand in his mouth out. He then used his Life Power to clear the dirt on his body and flew to the surface. "This shield should be all around the island. Since I can''t break it, what he said about those below imperial-level not being able to penetrate it is true. Seems like I need to think of another way to escape." Lin Huang looked into the sky wistfully. "Stop trying. There''s no way that you can run," the old person spoke again. "Oh yeah, I''ve prepared a little game exclusively for you. I hope you''ll have fun." "A little game?" Lin Huang frowned and soon, he sensed that he was being targeted by something which was heading towards him at full speed. He immediately understood what the person meant by "game". Within minutes, ten ruthless shadows streaked towards him, ignoring the three fiends. "Ten immortal-level rank-1 Such odd aura! They''re also uglier than one another." Lin Huang put his sword away and slipped his hands into his pockets while grinning to the fiends. "I''ll let you guys handle these ten." The three fiends were excited when they heard his instruction. The Witch performed a hand seal immediately. As the ten monsters were less than ten meters away from Lin Huang, ten purple vines with thorns grew out of the ground and entangled the monsters'' ankles. The vines then crawled up the monsters in an instant. The monsters'' body turned a plum color like they had been poisoned. Lin Huang knew that it was not poison though. The vine was called the Crippling Vine, and it was a type of vine enchanted with witchcraft. Once someone was entangled by the vine, the person would be weakened whereby his strength and speed would drop by 10%. The thorns on the vines were not poisonous, but it was painful and itchy. It would be a form of living death if one was to be entangled by these vines. However, if one encountered monsters with powerful defenses, the thorns would be redundant. As the Witch attacked, the other fiends followed as well. They had great teamwork. The Inferior Imp activated its Telepathy and covered the four of them in a circle. An intense wave shot the ten monsters out of the circle and prevented them from coming closer. Meanwhile, the Malachian Fiend punched through the two monsters'' abdomens that had turned plum without thinking twice. Without even looking at both the monsters, it turned around and started punching another two monsters Suddenly, there were black flames on two of the Inferior Imp''s claws. It was mauling the other two monsters ruthlessly. The Witch was performing well too as she grabbed two figures and tossed them into the carcasses of the dead monsters that the Malachian Fiend had killed. The two dead monsters were revived and they dashed towards a monster after passing through Lin Huang and the rest In less than a minute, the ten immortal-level rank-1 monsters were completely slaughtered by the three fiends. Despite being killed, all of them were controlled by the Witch''s parasitic worms and they were revived. As the three fiends transferred their Life Power to him, Lin Huang could feel intense Life Power flowing into his Life Fire. His Life Fire was akin to being lit up with gasoline and burning wildly. The immortal-level monster''s Life Power was the ultimate replenishment to Lin Huang''s Life Fire. Ten of his Life Fires that had been less than 30 centimeters tall was now burning at 1.5 meters. Almost every monster kill gave them a 10-centimeter growth spurt. As his Life Fire was stronger now, he could feel that his Life Power was more powerful now and his abilities had increased as well. "The Life Power of the ten immortal-level rank-1 monsters only made my Life Fire grow more than one meter tall!" Lin Huang thought that killing one immortal-level monster would make his Life Fire grow by a meter but it was only 10% of what he expected. "It seems like growing Life Fire isn''t easy!" As he observed his Life Fire, the old man spoke again, "Hmm, so the game isn''t difficult enough. Let''s go big. I want to see how long can you stand this!" 515 The Weird Old Man In a huge laboratory deep in the sea under the Enigma Island, the silver-haired Professor Jin was excited as he watched the three fiends from the screen. He did not seem to be sad about losing ten inferior monsters. "Let 50 monsters out this time. I don''t believe the kid won''t fight this time," Professor Jin instructed without even turning his head. His eyes were locked on Lin Huang on the screen. "Yes!" The middle-aged man in white coat nodded and made the arrangements using his Transmission Snail. When the old man spoke again, Lin Huang sensed that he was being targeted again. "It seems like there''s more this time." Lin Huang frowned. A few minutes later, he saw an army of monsters of different varieties raining from the sky. They released their aura and headed towards him like a vampire desiring blood. Just like the previous ten monsters, they completely ignored the existence of the three fiends. They were ugly and they looked like aliens that were not part of this world. "These should be modified monsters since I can''t differentiate their types. Their minds are in a mess. Perhaps it was caused by over-modification. All they have is their battle instinct and they just attack the target that they are assigned," Bloody said to Lin Huang. "Is there anything that can kill them fast?" Lin Huang asked. "I can''t think of anything. As my combat level is restricted, most of my parasitic ability only works on holy fire-level. Although I can control immortal-level rank-1 monster carcasses, the effect is almost the same with the Witch''s parasitic worms. Now there are too many monsters, so the only thing we can do is to kill more monsters for the parasitic worms and control the monster carcasses to join the fight. The more monster carcasses, the more advantage we have." Bloody did not have any better suggestions, but what it recommended was what Lin Huang had in mind. "Well, I guess that''s the only thing that we can do." Lin Huang accepted the fact. The 50 monsters headed towards them in an instant. As the Witch controlled ten monster carcasses that were cast with parasitic worms, she activated the Crippling Vine towards the monsters. The Malachian Fiend dashed into the monster crowd and started punching. Almost every punch took a life. Meanwhile, the Inferior Imp changed its battle strategy. Instead of controlling like the Witch did, it joined the massacre with the Malachian Fiend. With its sharp claws added with Abyssal Fire, its speed of killing was no slower than the Malachian Fiend''s. Lin Huang took out his battle sword and killed the monsters that broke the three fiends'' defenses easily. As the Witch was controlling the monster carcasses, she was releasing parasitic worms into more and more monster carcasses. The battle lasted less than two minutes. The monsters that were on Lin Huang''s side soon outnumbered the number of monsters who were attacking them. They were winning effortlessly, and the 50 immortal-level rank-1 monsters were settled within four minutes. After this round of battle, Lin Huang''s ten Life Fires were burning at six meters high now. Besides the monsters that he killed and did not obtain their Life Power, the rest were fed to his Life Fire. "Let''s see if it will burn even higher after 50 meters," Lin Huang mumbled as he observed the Life Fire in his body. Rank-3 mutated tinder could burn 50 meters, but he was not sure if the tinder in his body was a rank-3 or a rank-4. As he snapped out of his thoughts, Lin Huang looked at the monster army that was surrounding him. With the Witch''s parasitic worms, they obtained 50 more guardian monsters after the battle. As the monsters that were cast with parasitic worms were dead, they could still fight even though their heads were crushed since they did not have any senses anymore. As long as the parasitic worms were alive, they would continue to fight forever without tiring. It was a great advantage. Furthermore, the monsters that the old man released had no basic intelligence, so the monsters could do nothing as they were controlled by the parasitic worms. Even though Lin Huang had a monster army now, he frowned as he knew it would not end so easily. "Witch, can your parasitic worms control immortal-level rank-2 monster carcasses?" Lin Huang asked Witch telepathically. "I can''t. Immortal-level rank-1 is the maximum." The Witch shook her head. "If that''s so, it''s going to get tricky" Although he expected the Witch to give such an answer, he was worried when he heard the confirmation. Just when Lin Huang was thinking, the old man spoke again, "Young man, congratulations for passing the level-2 challenge. The game''s difficulty level will proceed to increase. Let''s go to level-3 now! "In this round, we''re giving you 30 immortal-level rank-2 monsters. Will you be able to pass this level? We shall see!" "Such a weird old man" Lin Huang mumbled but he remained focused. He expected that the difficulty level would increase when the 50 immortal-level rank-1 monsters were released earlier. "I''ve detected that the most powerful monster on this island is an immortal-level rank-8. Looking at the situation, the entire island is the old man''s fun laboratory. Since there''s an immortal-level rank-8 here, that means they have a monster army on the same level." "Judging from the current situation, even if we manage to defeat the immortal-level rank-2 monster army, there will be rank-3, rank-4 and even rank-5 monsters coming to us. As long as we continue to fight, the old man will definitely send monsters that are more powerful to kill us. If that persists, we''ll lose sooner or later. We must think of a way to leave as soon as possible!" Bloody said urgently to Lin Huang. "I realized that when the monsters were sent for the second time," Lin Huang replied. "We''ll leave when my Life Fire burns at its peak later. It''s meaningless to stay here. Even if this is the Purple Crow''s foothold, there''s nothing that I can do now with my current ability." "How do we escape?" Bloody asked. "I have a way." Lin Huang had a plan since the beginning. "Before we leave, I need you to check how he''s monitoring us. It would be perfect if you could deactivate his surveillance for some time. If you can''t do that, maybe cover the surveillance with something." "Sure, I''ll try my best," Bloody replied. 516 I Don’t Want to Play with You Anymore Just when Lin Huang was done discussing with Bloody, dozens of powerful aura appeared out of nowhere. They were pushing towards where Lin Huang and the rest were. "They''re here!" Lin Huang looked in the distance as he saw shadows descending from the sky. Their aura was much more powerful than the 60 monsters that had been sent earlier. It was like comparing domestic dogs to hungry lions. Lin Huang knew that it was a tough battle. The bunch of immortal-level rank-2 monsters were on par with the abilities of the three fiends. The only flaw the monsters had was that they had no intelligence. Without waiting for the monsters to come closer, the 60 monster carcasses that were controlled by the Witch charged towards them. At that same time, the Witch performed a hand seal immediately while strands of vines came out of the ground. Besides the purple Crippling Vine, there were also black Paralyzing Vines. The Paralyzing Vines could inject paralyzing poison into the creature''s bodies. As soon as the vine broke, the poison that shot out of it would be a few times even more powerful. The two types of vines crawled swiftly towards the monsters. The 30 immortal-level rank-2 monster that had lost their minds had their eyes on Lin Huang. They did not avoid the vines that were reaching towards them and soon, all of them were slowed down by the 60 monster carcasses as well as the vines. The Malachian Fiend and the Inferior Imp''s bodies started growing tremendously. The Malachian Fiend grew from two to five meters, its greenish rock body now became blue. The scales on its arms had crystallized into a bluish-black, jagged matter. Its aura was also a few more times more powerful than before. Meanwhile, the Inferior Imp that was next to it was no longer five meters tall as well. Its body was burning in a crimson-black flame. The flame was hot, so fiery that the air around was distorted and its aura was much more terrifying than ever. As the both of them grew, they darted towards the monsters that were slowed down. The movement of the 30 immortal-level rank-2 monsters was interfered by the 60 monsters and the Witch''s vines. Meanwhile, the Malachian Fiend and the Inferior Imp dashed into the monster crowd. Lin Huang did not join the fight as he watched. Bloody that was hiding in his sleeve released transparent flecks everywhere. It could now change the color of its Leech Pods to whatever color that it wanted, including making them transparent. Among the monster crowd, the Malachian Fiend targeted its first opponent. It looked like a deformed human monster. It was over two meters tall and walked on both legs. However, its head was twice the size of a normal human''s and its entire body was covered in citrine scales, including its face. The monster was entangled by two vines while two immortal-level rank-1 monsters attacked it. However, it did not seem to be hurt at all. It then mauled one of the monster carcasses with its claws, leaving a massive hole in its chest. Had the monster carcass been alive, it would definitely have been killed by that single attack. However, under the control of the parasitic worms, the monster carcass was not affected by the attack and it proceeded to attack the monster that was filled with scales. The Malachian Fiend then headed towards the scaled monster and punched hard on its chest. The scaled monster had turned purple from the Crippling Vine since the beginning and its defense had fallen by tenfold. However, the Malachian Fiend''s punch only managed to cave its chest in and break some of its ribs. It did not die and instead, it attacked the Malachian Fiend back in pain. The two monsters started fighting each other aggressively. However, due to the vines that were entangling it as well as the two monster carcasses that were surrounding it, the scaled monster soon lost the battle. In less than half a minute, the Malachian Fiend smashed its skull and the monster was dead. Although the fight took less than a minute, it was a tough one for the Malachian Fiend. Meanwhile, the Inferior Imp was experiencing almost the same situation. Without its Abyssal Fire, its strength was weaker than the Malachian Fiend''s. With the burning of the Abyssal Fire, it took less than half a minute to kill its first opponent. "This isn''t very efficient" Sensing that the Life Fire in his body growing, Lin Huang was not relaxed at all. Looking at the monsters that were slowly being killed, he pulled out his battle sword and ran into the monster crowd. A white glow enveloped his sword as he dashed among the crowd like a lightning bolt. He did not stop moving. Each of his sword swings were quick and each attack left a couple of deep cuts on those immortal-level rank-2 monsters. That was the maximum that he was performing as his aim was to injure the monsters and not kill them as he would not obtain any Life Power if he were to kill the monsters himself. The monsters that were cut by Lin Huang experienced an instant deterioration in their abilities. The two fiends then proceeded to kill the monsters that were hurt. They aimed their attacks at the wounds that Lin Huang left on the monsters, successfully killing the monsters within two to three seconds. The immortal-level rank-2 monsters were killed one by one. As they fell to the ground, the Life Fire in Lin Huang grew tremendously within minutes. When all of the monsters were dead, he looked at the Life Fire in his body. "Each immortal-level rank-2 monsters gives a growth of over ten meters but it stopped growing at 300 meters" Before Lin Huang started the battle, his Life Fire had been burning at over six meters. From his observation, each immortal-level rank-2 monster would give him a boost of over ten meters. Theoretically, killing all 30 monsters would at least give his Life Fire a boost of at least 330 meters. However, it had stopped at 300 meters. "It seems like 300 meters is the limit of my tinder." After confirming that, Lin Huang knew that his mission had come to an end and it was unnecessary to stay any longer. "Bloody, did you manage to pick up on how they are monitoring us?" Lin Huang contacted Bloody secretly as he picked up the monster carcasses. "I''ve tried looking around with my Leech Pods but I can''t find anyone who is monitoring or if there are any monitoring monsters around," Bloody answered helplessly. "I suspect they''re using the defense layer on top of us to watch us. The areas that are covered by the shield should be within their surveillance." Lin Huang looked up into the sky. "If that''s the case, we can''t carry out the plan that we had earlier" The old man spoke again before Lin Huang finished picking up the monster carcasses, "Young man, it seems like your parasitic worms can only control immortal-level rank-1 monsters Will you lose if I increase the difficulty to level-4 by releasing 100 immortal-level rank-2 monsters?! I want to know the answer so badly" "You crazy old man!" Lin Huang shouted, furious that the old man treated him like a toy. "Xiao Hei, I definitely can''t handle the fourth wave. Are these 90 monster carcasses enough for your research? If not, we''ll have to come back next time. I might be captured by this crazy old man for his research if we stay any longer," Lin Huang contacted Xiao Hei secretly. "Yes, they''re enough. Remember to store all of the monster carcasses before you leave," Xiao Hei replied immediately. "Witch, relieve all the parasitic worms," Lin Huang turned around and instructed the Witch. The Witch performed a hand seal and the monster carcasses fell onto the ground one by one. They were put into Lin Huang''s storage space immediately. "What? Are you giving up now?" The old man spoke again. It was clear that he was watching whatever Lin Huang was doing. Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders and recalled the three of his fiends as well as Bloody. It was just him alone. "You''re smart. As long you''re willing to cooperate with my research, I''ll consider keeping your conscience and modify you, making you a truly powerful person." The old man thought Lin Huang had completely given up fighting back. "May I know how to address you?" Lin Huang asked while looking into the sky. "You can call me Professor Jin." The old man did not bother hiding his identity. "Professor Jin, I''ll remember you" Suddenly, Lin Huang smirked and pointed a finger into the sky. A white glow accumulated at his fingertip, growing brighter and brighter. "Still trying to fight?" Professor Jin sounded sarcastic. Within seconds, the white glow blossomed into a white sphere that was the size of a fist. Lin Huang flicked his finger and the white sphere exploded in the sky as it was flung a few meters high. The bright white glow covered a few kilometers. "Crazy old man, I''ll remember what happened today. I''ll come back to end this one day. I have things to do, so I won''t play with you anymore for now. Bye!" Lin Huang''s voice came softly among the white light. He then crushed a card between his fingers, then his body turned into a cloud and he disappeared into the ground As the white glow faded, Professor Jin was stunned to see that Lin Huang was no longer where he stood. "He''s gone?" He got all his staff to scrutinize the surveillance cameras on the entire island. However, half an hour had passed but Lin Huang was still nowhere to be seen. He finally realized that Lin Huang had escaped and was furious. "I don''t care how you do it. You guys have to find that kid for me!!!" 517 Scarborough Workshop As Professor Jin got everyone to search for Lin Huang on the island, Lin Huang had dove underground after transforming himself into the Spectre. As he went deeper, he found out that the middle of the island was hollow. There were many monsters of different varieties hiding underground. To his surprise, there was an entrance leading to the ground. "So, the monsters that attacked us were released from here." Lin Huang could not figure out where the monsters had come from earlier, but he had the answer now. In the hollow island was a huge space with many different monsters. There was also some staff in white coats working there. Lin Huang initially wanted to leave immediately, yet he could not help but take some photos as he strolled around the island within the walls. "The staff are all wearing white coats. None of them are wearing the Purple Crow uniform. Are they not from the Purple Crow?" After a brief exploration, Lin Huang started suspecting that it was not the Purple Crow''s base as he could not find any of the organization''s logo there. Under normal circumstance, even the laboratory staff should have the Purple Crow logo emblazoned on their white coats. However, Lin Huang could not find any sign of the logo on their clothes. They looked more like doctors in normal hospitals. However, considering his current situation, Lin Huang did not dwell on it as he proceeded to dive deeper There were many floors under the base on this island. There were monsters of different types on different floors, and Lin Huang felt dizzy looking at all the monsters. "There are really immortal-level rank-8 and even rank-9 monsters here" The deeper the floor, the more powerful the monsters that were captured. Lin Huang''s pupils dilated slightly when he saw the hundreds of immortal-level rank-8 and rank-9 monsters. If a few imperial-level humans were to control these powerful monsters, they could destroy an A-grade foothold easily. These monsters were not probably trained by a run-of-the-mill organization. "Is it really not the Purple Crow?" Lin Huang thought only a handful of top underground organizations could afford to do this. If it was not the Purple Crow, it had to be another top organization that was just as powerful as the Purple Crow. Lin Huang did not stay any longer after snapping some pictures. The more he saw what was in the organization, the more he thought he should leave. As he dove into the bottom of the island, he entered the ocean as the Spectre. When he was ready to summon his dimensional relic, Lin Huang saw a light under the ocean. He hesitated and gave in to his curiosity, swimming towards the light. As he transformed into the Spectre, he did not have to worry about the water pressure or breathing difficulties. He soon dove hundreds of meters deeper where the light was getting brighter. "This is a base?!" As he dived 4,000 meters down, Lin Huang finally saw the source of the light. It was an underground base that was covered in a transparent defense layer that isolated it from the ocean. Looking at the bubbles, Lin Huang could tell that the island lockdown earlier had been orchestrated by the people from this base. He did not get closer as he locked eyes on the top of the base. There was a weird logo on it that looked like a table knife tilted in a circle. "A table knife? Which organization is this?" Lin Huang could not recall any underground organization with such a logo. When he was in the Purple Crow training camp, he had learned most of the organization logos in Division 7, but he did not remember any of them having a table knife as a logo. He snapped a couple of photos but did not get any closer. Although he was in the Spectre form right now, he could not get into the base as there wasa defense layer around it. He decided to leave as soon as he could after snapping the pictures. After he was a distance away from the island, Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic in the ocean and left. In a control room under the sea, a bunch of staff was working hard. The silver-haired Professor Jin looked upset as Lin Huang was nowhere to be found on the island. "Professor, we''ve looked all over the island, but we can''t find him. The only possibility is that he has escaped," the middle-aged man next to him said. "How is that possible? Isn''t the island locked down? Where could he have possibly run to?!" Professor Jin could not accept the fact. "It''s not difficult for him to escape if he has a supreme escaping relic with him to break free from the lockdown," the man explained softly. "Besides a relic, if he has earth attributes skills or penetrating skills, he can escape from underground. The island is too big. The setting of the lockdown mainly focuses on the top of the island, and excludes the underground." "It has been more than half an hour now. No matter what he used, it''s sufficient time for him to activate a dimensional relic to escape," the man speculated with a helpless expression. "All of you are useless!" Professor Jin seemed to realize that what the man told him was the truth and became mad. "If anything like this happens again, you guys should get ready to be fed to the monsters." The staff in the control room had cold sweat trickling down their backs. "You have 24 hours to find out who exactly this kid is!" Professor Kin stomped out of the control room after bellowing. After escaping from the ocean, Lin Huang returned to the Martial Hunter College dorm. He did not have the time to catch up on the past few days as he called Mr. Fu straight away. As he explained what happened to Mr. Fu, he sent the photos that he had snapped on the island. "Master, which organization does this table knife logo belong to?" Lin Huang could tell from Mr. Fu''s expression that he was familiar with the organization. "What table knife?! That''s a surgical knife!" Mr. Fu chortled before explaining. "This organization is called the Scarborough Workshop, or at least that''s what it was called 200 years ago. I''m not sure what it''s called now. The founder of the organization is a crazy old man. He''s very powerful and is one of my oldest opponents. He was beaten up by me badly. I thought he''d be dead by now, but it seems like he''s still alive" "Do you mean Professor Jin?" Lin Huang asked. "No, Professor Jin is his apprentice. He used to have two apprentices. I killed the first one, and Professor Jin is the second one. I''m not sure if he has any new apprentice now," Mr. Fu said like he could not care less. "I don''t care what they''re doing, but they would never dare to touch you, so there''s nothing to worry about. Especially Professor Jin, he''ll be glad that he didn''t do anything to you when he finds out who you are." "Mr. Mr. Fu''s apprentice" Looking at Lin Huang''s details on the screen, Professor Jin became pale, and his heart was beating fast. The middle-aged man did not notice his reaction while he continued to look at the screen. "This Lin Huang kid is working at the Martial Hunter College. Should I get someone to bring him back?" "This is the end of it. Nobody touches this Lin Huang!" Professor Jin was even more upset after hearing the man''s suggested and shouted. "But didn''t you say" The man could not understand Professor Jin''s reaction. "I don''t care what I said before. Everything before isn''t important now! The most important thing is that you must remember what I''m saying now. Lin Huang has never been here, and we have never had any conflicts with him!" Professor Jin looked seriously across the room. All of the staff nodded immediately while remembering Lin Huang''s name. They could not understand how the kid could make Professor Jin so fearful. Professor Jin headed straight to the washroom after leaving the control room. He panted as he leaned against the bathroom door after locking it. He snapped out of it after a while and washed his face. He had almost wet his pants when he saw Mr. Fu''s photo with that seemingly kind face on the screen. He still remembered how scary Mr. Fu was 518 Special Cards The Scarborough Workshop was a powerful organization that was founded in the olden days. They mainly researched genetics where they were looking into genetic elixirs in the beginning, but they also secretly worked on genetic modification and artificial humans. Later on, as the new era came, the organization started researching on various monsters and modifications. They integrated the genetics of monsters and humans to come up with modified humans. Scarborough''s owner, Si Nan, was not only powerful. He was also a genius scientist who supported human evolution. He said the new era was a world of new human beings. Those humans who refused to be modified would die with history. Lin Huang retrieved the basic information about the Scarborough Workshop from Mr. Fu. Although Mr. Fu only knew that the organization headquarters was located in Division 2 200 years ago, he had no idea where it was now. However, he asked Lin Huang not to worry about the organization as they were not a threat to him. "It seems like the Scarborough Workshop sold the three fiends to the Purple Crow or they had some collaboration going on," Lin Huang speculated from what Mr. Fu told him. The Scarborough Workshop had modification businesses which many underground organizations worked with since hundreds of years ago. It was highly possible that the Purple Crow had bought the fiends from the Scarborough Workshop to join their army. However, both the organizations could be collaborating with each other. Lin Huang thought it was normal that Professor Jin did not recognize the three fiends as they looked a lot more different than before. The fiends had appeared much more terrifying when Lin Huang found them at the Mystery Auction. When they were made into cards, their appearances were restored back to how the fiends usually looked like. However, according to Xiao Hei, the fiends'' modification data remained in their memories, which made them powerful enough to fight immortal-level rank-2 monsters when they were only double mutated gold flame-levels. Lin Huang did not dwell on it further after finding out that the Scarborough Workshop was not a threat to him. However, he remembered clearly that Professor Jin had treated him like a toy and wanted to turn him into his guinea pig. He did not plan to look for Professor Jin at the moment as he was incapable of fighting him now. He would go back for him when he was more powerful in the future. It was clear that Mr. Fu would teach the Scarborough Workshop a lesson as he had said that he would talk to Si Nan soon. Lin Huang decided to forget about the incident while browsing through the rewards that he had obtained in the past few days. "The mission took me a total of four days, and the ten Life Fires in my body are burning at 300 meters now, which exceeds the 50-meter limit of rank-3 tinder. I also got four epic-level monsters, two Black Serpents, and two Tri-headed Apes. However, as my combat level is restricted, these four monsters are suppressed at gold flame-level instead of its previous immortal-level rank-1. The main reward is the cross-ranking rewards" His eyes lit up when he thought about that. "300 card draws!" Before Lin Huang reached white flame-level, he had less than 100 functional cards excluding Monster Cards. The mission this time had rewarded him with 300 card draws. It was like a lousy player who gotten $5 million and became a platinum player. "300 Hehehe" As he giggled to himself, Xiao Hei''s notification came through. "You have accumulated 100 card draws this time, and that has activated a new function. I didn''t remind you earlier. I shall explain to you now before you draw the cards." "A new function?" Lin Huang was excited. "The first new function would be a specific card draw whereby you''ll get one specific card that you desire for every ten card draws. Of course, the specific card may be either a Skill Card, an Item Card, a Function Card and even a Monster Card but not a Special Card." "Special Card?" Lin Huang was surprised to hear that. He was familiar with the four types of card that Xiao Hei had listed, but it was his first time hearing about a Special Card. "A Special Card is a supreme card such as the Revival Card that can revive a dead person, the Invincible Card that makes a person immune to all harm and the Time Freezing Card that can stop time The Deceiving Card that you used the last time is also a Special Card which allows you to hide away, deceiving every living thing in the world." Lin Huang was stunned at what Xiao Hei informed him as the effect of these cards were incredibly attractive. "How about the second new function?" He only snapped out of his daydream zone a while later. "The second new function will be the ability to obtain a Special Card. This function allows you to obtain one Special Card with 100 card draws. The card that you''ll get is random; there''s nothing I can do about it." "So that means I''ll only get three Special Cards for 300 card draws and what I get is random" Lin Huang was tempted after hearing the effects of the Special Card. However, he remained rational. "Xiao Hei, if I draw my cards now, I''ll definitely have the chance of getting a Special Card. Am I right?" "Yes, but the probabilities are slim." "Do you have a more specific ratio?" Lin Huang asked. "No. All I can tell you is that if you''re not lucky, the probability of getting it will be zero." "That depends on my looks then" Lin Huang became gloomy after hearing Xiao Hei''s answer. He always hated games that depended on looks. Although he thought he had become luckier when he got to this world, he was still traumatized from playing ''Master XX'' the last time. Lin Huang made his decision a while later. "Never mind then, I shall keep a hundred card draws for an emergency. If I ever encounter something threatening, at least I''ll have something that I can depend on." He was insecure ever since he got to this world. After thinking about it, he decided not to draw all of the cards now. "I should have enough for 200 card draws." "Xiao Hei, show me the cards that I can choose from!" Lin Huang said to Xiao Hei. "I have randomly picked 3,600 cards for you. Pick 200 cards from these 3,600 cards as your reward." Lin Huang was surrounded by an ocean of cards as Xiao Hei spoke. It was like a card frenzy had set upon him 519 200 Card Rewards! The 3,600 cards floated in the air and surrounded Lin Huang like a gigantic circle. They looked exactly the same. The cards were all black with a flaming golden question mark in the middle. Lin Huang knew that what he would get depended on his looks. There was no skill to this, and there was no way to cheat around this. He could only pick the cards by his instinct. He took a deep breath and looked at each of them. Soon, he intuitively pointed at the cards. "This one, this one, this one" All of the cards that he picked seemed to be lit up on fire. As the black faded away, the cards became flaming golden cards that stood out among the rest. He finally picked 200 cards half an hour later. The remaining 3,400 cards that were not chosen disintegrated into pieces and disappeared. The 200 cards that he had picked were arranged into ten rows of 20 cards each. The flames on the cards faded away, revealing what they were. "Congratulations, the 200 new cards that you have obtained are as below:" "Epiphany Card x1." "Skill Card x1." "Flawless Card x2." "Seal Card x2." "Theft Card x2." "Plunder Card x3." "Challenge Card x3." "Transportation Card x3." "Misfortune Card x3" "Duplication Card x3." "Cloning Card x4." "Disguise Card x4." "Reborn Card x5." "Treasure Card x5." "Trap Card x6." "Mission Card x7." "Crippling Card x8." "Healing Card x11." "Item Card x17." "Advanced Card x25." "Time Cabin x1" "Medium Destruction Card x3." "Skill Combination Card x4" "Provisional Summoning Card x5" "Provisional Transformation Card x8." "Skill Extraction Card x11." "Double Reward Card x12." "Monster Upgrade Card x16." "One-Time Skill Card x7." "Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card x4." "Blood Thickening Card x7." Lin Huang was satisfied with the cards that he obtained. Besides the additional Strengthening Cards that he already had, there were new cards that he had never seen before. He started looking at them one by one. "Theft Card. Gives you the ability to steal one skill from your target and make the skill yours. Escape Card. Escape from any dangerous situations that you encounter upon activation. Plunder Card. Obtain three relics of a specific target within coverage. Misfortune Card. The specific target will experience three consecutive days of misfortune and the person''s fortune level will be negative" Lin Huang was excited as many of the new cards were practical. "Now that I have enough Advanced Cards, I can finally upgrade Tyrant and Kylie to legendary-level." Lin Huang had his eyes on the Advanced Cards. He initially had five with him. With the additional 25, he now had 30 Advanced Cards, so he did not have to worry about that for the meantime. As he looked at all the cards, Lin Huang looked at the Monster Upgrade Card that appeared in his hand. "Monster Upgrade Card: Once activated, a specific monster will be upgraded one rank higher permanently. "Remark 1: Limitless cards can be used at once. "Remark 2: Consumable. Each card can be used once. It''ll disappear once activated." "Xiao Hei, it says that limitless cards can be used at once. Does that mean if I have enough cards, I can upgrade my Monster Card from imperial-level to demi-level?" "Of course not. Limitless means there''s no limit to how many Monster Upgrade Cards that you use on one Monster Card, but it''ll still be restricted by your combat level." "You''re white flame-level now, so the most your Monster Cards can be upgraded to will be gold flame-level. You can''t use the Monster Upgrade Card on them anymore." "If that''s so, why is blue flame-level the highest that I can upgrade Bai and Charcoal?" Lin Huang asked a question that had been bothering him. "That''s the side effect of synchronized leveling up. When you were silver-level, your restriction was gold-level rank-3. When you reached complete gold-level, your restriction should have increased from gold-level to white flame-level, but since you had yet to unseal your Monster Cards, your Monster Cards stayed at complete gold-level, which made the synchronized level up to fail. "Usually, when you''re gold-level rank-1, your Monster Cards will be at white flame-level. When you''re gold-level rank-2, your Monster Cards will be at crimson flame-level. When you''re gold-level rank-3, they''ll be at blue flame-level. When you''re complete gold-level, they''ll be at purple flame-level. However, you only started unsealing your Monster Cards when you were gold-level rank-3. That''s why when you were at gold-level rank-3, your Monster Cards were only at white flame-level, which resulted in your current situation whereby you''re already white flame-level, but your Monster Cards are only on blue flame-level. In reality, your Monster Cards should stay on gold flame-level now." "Is this why the three fiends experienced synchronized leveling up as they did not require unsealing?" Lin Huang finally understood after Xiao Hei''s explanation. "Yes." "However, on different levels, your Monster Cards will have different restrictions. On holy fire-level, your combat level will be white flame-level while your Monster Cards will be at gold flame-level. However, when it comes to immortal-level, if you''re immortal-level rank 1, your Monster Cards'' restriction will be at immortal-level rank-9. But the level up will remain at the same speed where when you''re on immortal-level rank-1, the most your Monster Cards can be at is immortal-level rank-5 looking at your progress now. Under normal circumstances, you can actually upgrade your Monster Cards to immortal-level rank-9 when you have enough Monster Upgrade Cards." "I understand now." Lin Huang nodded. From what Xiao Hei had explained, as long as he had enough Monster Upgrade Cards, he could upgrade all of his Monster Cards to immortal-level rank-9 when he got to immortal-level. Thinking about the potential explosive ability upgrade, Lin Huang was excited. It was past noon when he put away all of his cards. "It''s Tuesday today, and I have class three days later. I shall drop by Meteorite Desert these three days to upgrade my Monster Cards to legendary-level. Before that, I''ll have lunch." 520 Group Upgrade Lin Huang arrived in the isolated space in the Meteorite Desert before 1 p.m. on Tuesday. This place was the only place where the monsters'' triple mutation would be completely isolated and would not get any attention from powerful humans or monsters. Lin Huang summoned a total of eight summoning monsters which were Bai, Charcoal, Tyrant, Bloody, Ghastly, Lancelot, Kylie, and the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. Besides Bloody, the other summoning monsters were puzzled as there was no battle going on when they were summoned. "I''m summoning all of you to upgrade your abilities as a whole. First, there''ll be an upgrade in your combat level. All of you are on the blue flame-level now. You''ll be upgraded to the gold flame-level and have 16 cards. In reality, I have exactly 16 Monster Upgrade Cards; no more and no less, and all of them go to you guys." Lin Huang did not think that it was a pity to use all of his Monster Upgrade Cards to upgrade his monsters anyway. As he did not have anymore Monster Upgrade Cards, he decided to put Thunder aside as it was not meant for battle. "Xiao Hei, activate all of the Monster Upgrade Cards. Two cards for each of them," Lin Huang instructed. "Monster Upgrade Card x16 will upgrade the eight monsters from the blue flame-level to the gold flame-level. Are you sure about using Monster Upgrade Card x16 to upgrade these eight monsters standing here?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "Monster Upgrade Card x16 has been activated. Upgrading the targeted monsters" When Xiao Hei''s notification was heard, the auras of Bai and the rest were increasing tremendously. Within seconds, they leveled up from the blue flame-level to the purple flame-level and seconds later, they leveled up to the gold flame-level. Their aura only stopped growing when they reached the complete gold flame-level. The entire process took less than half a minute. They were surprised to sense that their combat level was two ranks higher now. "Bai, you guys have completed your triple mutation. I''ll recall all of you now," Lin Huang said to his four monsters that had completed triple mutation. Then, he recalled Bai, Bloody, Charcoal, and Ghastly into card form. If he did not have the limit of only summoning ten monsters at a time, he did not mind letting Bai and the rest stay and watch. After recalling the monsters, Lin Huang summoned the three fiends, two Black Serpents, and a Tri-headed Ape. The Black Serpents and the Tri-headed Ape had shrunk. Looking at the ten monsters standing before him, Lin Huang could not summon the last Tri-headed Ape that he had. In reality, the Tri-headed Ape now had only one head and two arms after being restored by Xiao Hei as it was made into card form. However, its other two heads and four arms could grow out if it wanted them to. "I only have 30 Advanced Cards, so the last Tri-headed Ape will have to wait," Lin Huang mumbled to himself as he looked at the ape that he had summoned. However, he waited no more and instructed Xiao Hei again, "Xiao Hei, use the Advanced Cards on these ten monsters to upgrade them to the legendary-level." "I would like to remind you that the Ruthless Sword Master can complete triple mutation on his own he fulfills the hidden condition. Are you sure you want to use your Advanced Card on him?" Hearing Xiao Hei''s reminder, Lin Huang looked at Lancelot. "Lancelot, Xiao Hei told me that you have a hidden mission that allows you to perform a triple mutation automatically. Would you prefer to do that or will you let me use my Advanced Card on you?" Lancelot was surprised to hear the question, but he replied, "I would prefer to do it on my own." "Sure, I''ll try to fulfill your hidden condition." Lin Huang respected Lancelot''s decision. He then recalled Lancelot and summoned the second Tri-headed Ape. He instructed Xiao Hei once again, "Upgrade them to the legendary-level." Xiao Hei did not have any objections this time. "Upgrading ten targeted Monster Cards. Consuming Advanced Card x30. Are you sure you want to use these cards?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded without thinking twice. "Advanced Card x30 has been consumed. Upgrading ten targeted Monster Cards" A white glow beamed down from the sky, covering all ten monsters. The white glow on top of Kylie, the Sanguine Skeleton Spirit, the Malachian Fiend and the Witch faded after a few minutes. The armor on Kylie now had purple lightning patterns. The most significant change was her half red and blue mask now half-concealed her lips, revealing her eyes and forehead. Her blue eyes were as clear as lake water. The Sanguine Skeleton Spirit was in its red robes as usual but the crown on his head was no longer red; it was now gold. There was a red precious stone in the middle of the crown. The most significant change was his eyes that had been blue but were now white. They looked like fog swirling in his eyes. The Malachian Fiend did not change much. Only its face had changed from blue to green. Meanwhile, the Witch experienced the most prominent change as she was not wearing black armor anymore. Her armor had been replaced by a black dress. Her tail was no longer there, and there were two tiny horns on her head that were less than 10 centimeters long. If not for the horns on her head, she looked just like a pale human. They completed their triple mutation within a couple of minutes to achieve the legendary-level. However, they did not feel any changes in their bloodline. Meanwhile, Tyrant, the Inferior Imp, the two Black Serpents and the two Tri-headed Apes were wrapped in energy cocoons separately. Tyrant was wrapped in a bloody cocoon that looked like a heart. There were scars everywhere that looked like undulating blood vessels. The cocoon that wrapped the Inferior Imp up was flaming like lava. Heat was spreading out of the cocoon. The two Black Serpents were wrapped in two black opaque liquid spheres. The two Tri-headed Apes were wrapped in completely different cocoons. One looked like a green rock while another looked like white jade. Lin Huang was stunned as he watched the gigantic cocoons growing under the glow from the sky. He had expected the mutation in Tyrant but not the Black Serpents and the Tri-headed Apes. "Do mutations happen easily for animal-form monsters during the upgrade?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei in a low voice. "That''s right. As the ancestors of animal-form monsters have a stronger reproductive ability and their bloodline was passed on to the next generations, that increases the probability of their bloodline inheritance." "These four monsters are experiencing mutation together as the data was duplicated when you killed the two Black Serpents and Tri-headed Apes that have a great probability of mutation in their body. But I must say that you have pretty good luck." Knowing that the mutation would take a while, Lin Huang watched for a moment and turned to Kylie and the rest. "The Reborn Card can boost the monster''s bloodline, but I only have five. One for Lancelot, one for Ghastly, and one for Bloody. I''ll keep one for Kylie as well. Who should I use the last one on?" Lin Huang looked undecided at the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit and the Witch. 521 The Black Rock’s Odd Activity "Reborn Card: After activating this card on the specific monster, there''s a possibility for the Monster Card to obtain a powerful bloodline. "Remark 1: The higher the rarity of the Monster Card, the higher the probability of obtaining a powerful bloodline." "Remark 2: If the monster has thin bloodline genetic particles in its body, there''s a high possibility to awaken the bloodline." "Remark 3: New type of monster, which source is unknown, has a low probability of obtaining the bloodline." After reading the effects of the Reborn Card, Lin Huang locked his eyes on the Witch eventually. To be exact, she was now the Wicked Witch. The Sanguine Overlord''s Punishment Chain was a powerful control skill. However, using the card might not grow that particular skill. Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch (Witch) had more control skills. Using the card could, more or less, give a portion of her skills a boost. No matter which skills would be boosted, her control ability would increase as a whole. Lin Huang decided to use his last Reborn Card on the Wicked Witch after thinking thoroughly. As he confirmed his targets, he recalled the Sanguine Overlord (Sanguine Skeleton Spirit) and Malachian after they were upgraded. He then summoned Ghastly and Bloody. Bloody knew why it was summoned. Although Ghastly was uncertain, looking at Tyrant and the rest were wrapped in cocoons, it could guess what was happening. "I have five Reborn Cards in my hand which could give you a boost in your bloodline. Besides the one that''s reserved for Lancelot, the remaining four are for you," Lin Huang said to the four monsters. "Whether you can get the bloodline boost depends on you guys." Bloody was calm but anticipated as it could guess what Lin Huang was up to. Ghastly stared at him with burning desire while the Wicked Witch seemed to be puzzled. The only one who had no change in expression was Kylie as she did not care about it at all. "Uh May I know what does this Reborn Card do?" The Wicked Witch looked at the three of them and raised her hand, asking softly after some hesitation. "I''ll explain to you in the future when we have the time. The only thing that I can tell you now is that all of you are receiving treasure that could boost your bloodline. But of course, it''s not 100% guaranteed," Lin Huang explained the concept of the card. "Alright, the four of you, follow me. Don''t disturb their mutation." Lin Huang then brought the four monsters couple of kilometers away. When he saw Tyrant and the rest were now the size of ants, he nodded. "This distance should be good enough. Stand apart from each other so that you don''t interfere with the process." After the four monsters spaced out accordingly, Lin Huang instructed Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, use four Reborn Cards on them." "Are you sure you want to use Reborn Card x4 on these four Monster Cards?" "Yes." "Consuming Reborn Card x4 on the four specific Monster Cards" A golden glow shone down from above and covered the four monsters. Soon, the glow shining on Bloody faded away while the remaining three monsters were wrapped in cocoons of different colors. Kylie''s cocoon was made of golden lightning bolts and looked extremely dangerous. The Wicked Witch''s cocoon was a cloud of black fog that seemed to be unstable. Meanwhile, Ghastly''s cocoon was colorful, and its shape was changing rapidly. "The Reborn Card failed on Bloody!" Bloody knew that the card had failed on it as it watched the rest wrapped in cocoons, so it could only return to Lin Huang in disappointment. "Don''t be sad. It''s normal that this doesn''t work," Lin Huang comforted Bloody while patting it. It was now a purple ball of jelly with great texture. "Oh" Bloody remained upset while it floated next to Lin Huang while watching the monsters'' transformation. Suddenly, a black glow shot up to the sky and the isolation space shook. Lin Huang took up at the source of the black glow. A huge black glow had shot from the ground to the sky, dyeing the sky black. Soon, the sky rumbled. It lasted for a while before fading away, but dark clouds filled a small portion of the isolation space. However, the black glow shrunk vigorously. Within seconds, it went from covering millions of square kilometers to a ball of haze that was smaller than an adult''s fist. Lin Huang watched the dark sky carefully. Although he could not see the forming of the ball of haze as he was too far away, he could feel that the terrifying aura did not disappear. It was getting more and more intense. As the ball of haze formed, it stayed in the sky for a while. It seemed to lock on its target in an instant and dashed towards where the target was at an alarming speed. Its destination was where Lin Huang was. Soon, Lin Huang saw a black meteor coming for him. He frowned and pulled out his battle sword while looking at the black glow dashing towards him. He did not want his monsters'' upgrade to be interrupted by this unknown object. "Don''t worry. It''s nothing bad," Xiao Hei said calmly. "What''s that thing?" Lin Huang asked immediately. Although Xiao Hei had asked him not to worry, he still had his guard up. "Do you remember the black rock in this isolation space? The rock that contains the energy source. It''s coming for Kylie. Her mutation must have triggered it. "Is this something good?" Lin Huang asked. "It should be." Xiao Hei did not sound sure, so Lin Huang was not relieved at all. "Don''t worry. It depends on Kylie herself. If something goes wrong, I''ll try my best to control it," Xiao Hei added as it sensed Lin Huang''s concern. "Alright then" Since Xiao Hei said that, Lin Huang put his sword away helplessly while watching the black glow that was hurtling in their direction at breakneck speed.Sanguine Skeleton SpiritThe Malachian Fiend 522 Batch Transformation The black streak of light fell from the sky like a meteorite from hundreds of kilometers away. Without Xiao Hei''s reminder, Lin Huang would have swung his sword at it from the beginning. Within seconds, the black ray of light had traveled hundreds of kilometers, heading towards Kylie. Before Lin Huang could catch the movement of the light, it penetrated straight into the golden cocoon that Kylie was wrapped in. The cocoon''s surface trembled slightly as its golden glow that was shining brightly remained. However, ever since the black ray penetrated into the cocoon, it had dimmed. The initial golden color had become completely black within seconds. On the black surface were lightning bolts that were covering the cocoon, the black electrical arcs spreading out. The cocoon was now a few times bigger than before. Lin Huang watched the cocoon''s odd transformation without blinking. After confirming that the cocoon was now dormant, he spoke to Xiao Hei again, "Is this a good or bad change for Kylie?" "It''s a good change. It''s now stable. She completed her double mutation from that rock since the beginning. Due to the condition of the card, the black rock has officially integrated with her." Lin Huang was relieved after confirming that Kylie was alright. He was excited to unveil all of the monsters'' transformations as he looked at the colorful cocoons. He looked at the remaining cards that he had. "Lancelot and Thunder are the only epic-level cards left. I must fulfill Lancelot''s secret condition and upgrade him to legendary-level in the meantime. It would be great if he could get a boost of bloodline right away so that I can give the card to the Sanguine Skeletal Spirit. For Thunder It''ll have to wait for the next time I get an Advanced Card again." Thunder had a minute amount of phoenix blood in it since it was unsealed. Although it was not a pure phoenix now, it was still powerful. Unfortunately, as Lin Huang treated it as a flying mount, he ignored its powerful ability. Lin Huang might have appreciated it more if it could evolve into full phoenix blood or some other powerful ancient monster in the future. After looking at Bai, Charcoal, and the Regal Sword Killer that was half-sealed, Lin Huang snapped out of his zone. He had summoned the maximum number of monsters that he was allowed to. The only thing that he could do now was to wait for the transformation of the nine monsters patiently. To kill time, Lin Huang lay on the field while chewing on grass and patting Bloody as he stared at the sky. It had been a long time since he had nothing to do like this after arriving in this world. He spent most of his time on training for the past year. As more and more incidents happened, he had less time for Lin Xin, let alone himself. His thoughts were flying everywhere as he stared at the fluffy clouds. "If I didn''t have Goldfinger and my Life Wheel was perfect when I traveled here, I''m sure I would just be an ordinary person, living an ordinary life under the protection of others. Perhaps the furthest place I would have traveled in this world would be the two B-grade footholds, the Bamboo City and Xiagong City Thinking about it now, living an entire life of ignorance isn''t necessarily a bad thing "Unfortunately, my fate seems to have been set since I traveled here. A powerful Goldfinger a broken Life Wheel It feels like someone is controlling everything somewhere I can''t see. Yang Ling, Xia Hao, Qi Muxiong, they''re all travelers like me. There must be more travelers in this world, but what is the meaning of us being here?" Just when Lin Huang was pondering the meaning of his existence, a portion of Qi Muxiong''s memory was unsealed and released. He was attracted by the content and looked at it immediately. A few hours passed. As the glow from the sky faded away, the cocoons started breaking, revealing the transformed monsters. As Lin Huang had fallen into a deep sleep, they did not disturb him and stood guard next to him. Three hours passed. Besides Kylie, the remaining eight monsters had broken out of their cocoons and stayed near him. Some of them were staring at Kylie''s cocoon, lost in their thoughts. Lin Huang did not know that his thoughts had resonated with Qi Muxiong''s which triggered the release of more of his memories from when he had first achieved holy fire-level. Almost all of the content below imperial-level was now open to him. He indulged himself in the memories. He was shocked when he realized that more than six hours had passed and that the monsters were surrounding him when he woke up. As Kylie''s cocoon did not show any sign of breaking anytime soon, Lin Huang looked at the monsters that had been transformed. Tyrant looked more like a human now. The armor that enveloped his entire body was now gone; it was replaced by a burnt golden armor. His hair was now a crimson red, and his eyes were dark brown. The only thing that remained the same was his messy beard. As compared to before, he looked exactly like a human, but a much bigger human that was over 2.5 meters tall. "Which bloodline is this?" Lin Huang asked in anticipation. "The Celestial Giant bloodline from the archaic period," Tyrant replied with confidence, proud of his bloodline. Although Lin Huang had no idea how powerful the celestial giant''s bloodline was, he nodded anyway and looked at the rest. Ghastly had not changed much. He was garbed in a luxurious golden robe with a crown on his head. He had lilac waist-length hair, and he smiled mischievously at Lin Huang with his long, narrow eye slits. The difference was that the golden mask that had covered half of his face was now gone. "Ghastly, how about you?" "Master, can I please get a new name? I don''t like being called Ghastly" Ghastly was unwilling to accept his name. However, since Lin Huang did not say a word while staring at him, he answered accordingly, "I''ve awoken the title ''Deceiver'', but I didn''t awaken the bloodline." "Awoken a title?" Lin Huang was puzzled, but since he had learned about titles from Xiao Hei earlier, he did not ask further. "It''s possible to awaken a title," Xiao Hei affirmed after hearing what Ghastly said. Lin Huang looked at the Wicked Witch. The two horns on her head were gone. Her complexion was rosier than before. With her long, black hair, she looked like a human lady in a black dress. "I''ve awoken the Ancient Witch bloodline" The Wicked Witch said softly, seeming not to want to have eye contact with him. Lin Huang nodded at her and looked at the Inferior Imp. He had a pair of bat wings on his back and a black tail. "I''ve leveled up to Hellion Imp," it said without expression. Lin Huang then looked at the remaining two giant snakes and apes. They were now much smaller than before. The two snakes were still black in color. They were now less than three meters long and looked identical. Their four bloody eyes were now down to two, and their eyeballs were now an emerald green like two green precious stones mounted on their heads. Their abdomens had a shade of white that was different than before. "We''ve awoken the Dark Crescent Snake bloodline," the two snakes hissed at the same time. Lin Huang nodded and looked at the last two apes. Both of their scales had now become hair of a completely different color. One of them had golden armor sitting atop its golden hair, while another one was completely white in color whereby a part of its body seemed to be covered in white flames. It was clear that their transformations were on different paths. "I''ve awoken the Ancient Mighty Ape bloodline," the gold-haired ape said. "I''ve awoken the Ancient Frost Flame Ape bloodline," the white ape said. Besides Kylie and Bloody, the remaining eight monsters had transformed, and most of them had awoken powerful bloodlines. After recalling all of them into card forms including Bloody, Lin Huang looked at Kylie that was still in the cocoon. "Xiao Hei, how long will Kylie take to come out of the cocoon?" "Looking at the progress, she''ll take at least three days." "Three days?! But I have class on Friday" Lin Huang thought that he would have enough time since he came on Tuesday, but he did not expect this to happen to Kylie. "Never mind, I shall wait until Friday afternoon. If she''s still in the cocoon by then, I''ll have to get Bai and the rest to keep an eye here, and I''ll come back after class." 523 Part of Qi Muxiong’s Memory The flow of time in the isolated space was the same as the world outside. It was past seven in the evening, and the sky was getting dark. Lin Huang was hungry. He started reading the detailed description of the Blood Thickening Card while he munched on snacks. "Blood Thickening Card: It can be used on monsters that have their bloodline awoken to increase the thickness of their bloodline. "Remark 1: The higher the level of the bloodline, the more cards are required. Only one card is required to increase low-level to mid-level. Two cards are required to increase mid-level to high-level. Five cards are required to increase high-level to pure blood. "Remark 2: Ineffective on pure blood monsters. "Remark 3: Consumable. Each card can only be used once, and many cards can be used at once." "Five cards to increase a high-level to pureblood? That''s ridiculous! I only have seven cards now." As Lin Huang had obtained too many cards earlier, he had missed the description of this card. "I initially thought that only one card is required to increase the bloodline, then I could upgrade Bai and Charcoal to pureblood monsters while considering which monster to use the remaining cards on. It seems like I was too naive" He then summoned Bai and Charcoal while explaining the function of the Blood Thickening Card roughly. Charcoal was excited. As the cards were limited, he could not upgrade Charcoal to full dragon blood. The most he could do was to upgrade it to high-level dragon blood, but that was good enough for Charcoal. Meanwhile, Bai was calm, but Lin Huang could tell from his eyes that he was thrilled as well. "Alright, stand away from each other." Lin Huang got the both of them to stand tens of meters away from each other while taking out the five Blood Thickening Cards. He crushed the cards and targeted Bai and Charcoal. "Use three on Bai to increase his bloodline from low-level to high-level god''s blood and use two on Charcoal to increase its bloodline from mid-level to high-level dragon''s blood." The crushed cards transformed into two glimmers of light and penetrated Bai and Charcoal''s bodies respectively. A while later, cocoons wrapped around their bodies. Although there was no glow shooting down from the sky, the both of them were soon completely shrouded in black, bloody cocoons. "Who should I use the remaining two Blood Thickening Cards on?" Lin Huang thought about it for awhile and summoned Tyrant. He used one of the cards on Tyrant after explaining it to him. Tyrant was soon wrapped in a bloody cocoon too. Since the last card could not be used on Ghastly or Bloody, he thought he would keep it for Kylie. Since Tyrant and the rest would take some time to complete their transformation, Lin Huang proceeded to eat after using the upgrading cards. Ten minutes later, he put the snacks away and started organizing Qi Muxiong''s memories that had been released earlier. In the memory, besides the memory of before his leveling up to imperial-level, a portion of them was about him communicating with the other travelers. From what Lin Huang saw, the other travelers were unfriendly. Although they were powerful, they were selfish. Some of them even bullied travelers who were weaker. As Goldfingers could overwhelm each other, most of the travelers had their guards up when they came in contact with others. In Qi Muxiong''s memory, he had a good relationship with only one traveler. The traveler seemed to be like Lin Huang who was from Earth. However, Lin Huang did not naively think that the traveler was not a threat to Qi Muxiong despite their amicable relationship. Although he had the traveler''s contact details, he decided to not contact the person. Of course, he was not even sure if the traveler was still alive. Besides the travelers, there were many Supreme Geniuses that could fight humans that were one level higher during that time in Qi Muxiong''s memory. "Although the number of Supreme Geniuses now are much lesser than then, there should be some of them who are on the same level in the core zones. Their abilities must be much more powerful than mine. This world is pretty dangerous" A couple of hours had passed as Lin Huang indulged himself in Qi Muxiong''s memory. Tyrant was the first one who got out of the cocoon, followed by Charcoal. It was almost midnight when Bai broke out of the cocoon. Tyrant looked the same, but his aura was much more terrifying now. He was like a human beast with an invisible suppressive effect when people stood around him. Charcoal had significant changes. Its scales were now clear, black crystals. Although it was still black, it looked more like a quaint piece of art now. Its appearance did not change much, but it was so much better-looking now. "It''s true that good skin plays a big role in appearance!" Lin Huang exclaimed after taking a close look at Charcoal. Meanwhile, Bai looked the same with his silver hair, but there was a light pattern on his forehead. There were red patterns on his black robe, making it much more vibrant than his boring, plain black robe before. Bai looked more confident now. After the observation, Lin Huang recalled the three monsters into card forms. He shook his head as he saw Kylie''s progress was still stagnant, so he built a tent in the isolated space. The next morning, he summoned Bai to practice sword skills after breakfast. Now that he knew more about other travelers, he was eager to upgrade his abilities. He would not attack the other travelers. However, he would be in trouble if his identity was revealed to other travelers. He did not want to lose Xiao Hei, which was a powerful Goldfinger, so he needed to have the ability to protect himself. It was quite impossible to reveal his Goldfinger to other travelers, but if his performance were too absurd, it would definitely gain their attention. He might not be busted immediately, but he might be suspected. "I have to be more low-key now. I can''t be afraid. I''ll try not to bring trouble to myself." Lin Huang initially thought that not many people could be a threat to him since he was a holy fire-level now. However, it seemed like he was too naive. 524 Army of Nephilic Judges Soon, two days had passed. "It''s past noon now, but nothing is happening" Lin Huang stared helplessly at the golden glow on top of Kylie''s cocoon that did not seem like it was fading any time soon. There was no sign of any cracks in the black lightning cocoon that was bathed in the golden glow. "Bai, I''ll leave for a few hours. Please keep an eye on her for me here. I''ll be back around 5:30 p.m." Lin Huang had no other solution but to instruct Bai to stand guard. It was Friday and he had to be back at the Martial Hunter College to teach in the afternoon. Although Bai had no idea why Lin Huang had to leave, he nodded anyway. Since it was still early, Lin Huang munched on a piece of dried meat from his snack bag before leaving. Seeing that Bai was staring at the bag that he was holding, he passed the bag to him. "These are the snacks that I bought online. They have raving reviews. Try them." Bai took out a piece of dried meat, took a bite, and returned the bag to Lin Huang. "It''s not good." "Alright then" As Lin Huang was taking the bag from Bai, a black glow suddenly shot out of Kylie''s cocoon like a wave coalescing out. The wave passed through Lin Huang and Bai''s bodies immediately, but the both of them did not sense anything odd. However, the isolated space started shaking later. The both of them flew into the air and studied Kylie''s cocoon. Black mist surrounded it and soon, the mist engulfed the golden glow that was sent from the sky. Within seconds, a third of the golden glow was covered by the mist, and it proceeded to climb further. "Xiao Hei, what''s happening?!" Lin Huang asked immediately as he witnessed the odd occurrence. "The black energy source should be a godly phenomenon. It seems to be doing something with the Blood Thickening Card although I''m not sure what," Xiao Hei answered. "It is affecting Kylie?" "No, Kylie''s transformation is basically completed, but the energy source is acting this way now." Lin Huang was relieved to hear Xiao Hei''s answer. He waited for the process to finish patiently. The ground was still shaking, and soon, the black mist engulfed the entire golden glow. Lin Huang and Bai stared at the dark clouds, curious about what would happen next. Within the clouds, thunder rumbled. "Is it going to rain?" Lin Huang asked as he looked at the dark sky and heard the thunder. Suddenly, a black thunderbolt blasted into the ground. It was targeting the black rock. Soon, second and third thunderbolts shot down. More and more thunderbolts were fired towards the same direction. Lin Huang and Bai were puzzled by what was happening. It finally stopped after hundreds of thunderbolts rained down from the sky. Soon, the dark clouds disappeared. The black streak along with the mist had also faded away. Although they had no idea what just happened, they had their eyes fixed on the black cocoon in which Kylie was. Lin Huang looked closely without blinking as a light cracking sound was heard. He knew that it was a sign that Kylie was coming out. More and more cracks were heard, and there were fissures all over the black cocoon. Lin Huang smiled to himself as he looked at the time that was projected from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was not even 12:30 p.m. "Looking at the progress, Kylie should be out of the cocoon in a couple of minutes. Then, I won''t have to come here again after class." The ground stopped shaking. Lin Huang and Bai waited patiently as they flew in the sky. After two to three minutes, the spherical black cocoon finally broke completely and the pieces transformed into black lightning bolts that penetrated Kylie''s body. This time, the half-red, half-blue mask that covered half of her face was replaced by a black one. Her once-silver armor was also now black. It looked like it had been painted with a layer of black piano paint. It was so shiny that you could see your own reflection in it. The 12 black wings on her back had faint white lightning patterns. The purple spear in her hand was now black and was surrounded by detailed purple patterns. Kylie''s aura was just as powerful as Bai''s. "Kylie, which bloodline did you awaken?" Lin Huang headed to her and asked immediately. "Dark Angel, high-level," Kylie replied. Lin Huang was shocked to find out that she had gotten the high-level bloodline right away. It must have been the work of the black energy inside her body. Just when Lin Huang was thinking of keeping the last Blood Thickening Card for Lancelot, Kylie flapped her wings and flew far away. "Hey, where are you going? I must leave now. I have class later!" Lin Huang shouted immediately. Although his voice could not catch up with Kylie, what Lin Huang said was sent into her conscience. "I need to stay here for a while. You guys can leave first," Kylie''s voice entered Lin Huang''s mind. "Where''s she heading to?" Lin Huang realized that the direction Kylie had left in was the same direction where he had found the black rock. He headed there together with Bai. He knew that Kylie had her reasons for staying, but he could not just leave her be without knowing what was happening. Moreover, he was curious about the secret related to where the hundreds of thunderbolts were aimed at. A few minutes later, Lin Huang and Bai arrived where the black rock was. All that was left in place of the rock was thick, black dust. What shocked Lin Huang was not the missing black rock, but the hundreds of cocoons that were covered in purple thunderbolts "These cocoons" Although Lin Huang could guess what was inside the cocoons, he failed to get a hold of what was happening. "These are the Starlight Beasts that you saw the last time. They''re in the midst of transforming into demigods, and they''ll be a part of my army in the future," Kylie told Lin Huang honestly. "Do you mean all of them will evolve into how you looked like when you were the Nephilic Judge?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "All of them will evolve into the Nephilic Judge, but they won''t look like me. Although they''ll be in masks, they''ll look different under the masks," Kylie explained. "Besides them, this piece of land will be my mini world. I''ll keep them after they''ve completed their evolution. I''ll be the only one who can access this space. Let me know when you need to come here." "Sure! I''ll only need this space whenever the monsters need to be upgraded. With you, it''ll be much more convenient as I don''t have to run around anymore." Lin Huang nodded and looked at the hundreds of purple cocoons. "It seems like they won''t be coming out anytime soon. You stay here then. I''ll get Bai to stay here with you. I''ll leave for class now. Let me know when it''s done." Lin Huang thought Kylie would be lonely here alone and that it would take days for the Starlight Beasts to complete their evolution as they were not in card forms. Without waiting for Kylie to object to his suggestion, Lin Huang activated his double acceleration and flew out of the area. 525 Lin Huang’s Cousin Sister? It was past 1 p.m. when Lin Huang arrived at the Martial Hunter College from the Meteorite Desert. He returned to his dorm, took a shower, and headed to the office after changing. Although it was unnecessary for him to shower since his Life Power would be released from his body automatically together with any dirt while preventing foreign elements from entering his body when he achieved holy fire-level, he desperately needed the shower after sleeping in the tent for three consecutive days. He arrived at the office at 1.30 p.m. Qin Tianxing chuckled as he strolled into the office ten minutes later as Lin Huang was looking at his teaching material. "Sir Lin, you''ve been missing from the college for a week. I went to your dorm, but you weren''t there." "Oh, I was out running errands. I just got back today." Lin Huang did not bother explaining that he had been back in the college for more than an hour on Tuesday. "Is there anything that you needed me for?" He asked as Qin Tianxing had a funny expression on his face. "It wasn''t me who was looking for you. A hot lady has been waiting for you for days." Qin Tianxing winked at Lin Huang. "We''re so close. Why didn''t you tell me that you have such a hot older sister who looks like a goddess?" "Hot lady? My older sister?" Lin Huang had no idea what Qin Tianxing was talking about. Just when he was going to explain that he did not have an older sister, an alluring lady in a black dress walked into the office. "Oh, little brother, it''s only been a year, and you can''t recognize me anymore?" The lady in black looked at Lin Huang with her head tilted to the side. The high slit at the side of her dress only increased her sexual appeal. Although her small eyes were not impressive, they added a mysterious touch to her face when all of her features were put together. Her eyes were especially seducing. Those were definitely irresistible to men. The most attention-seeking part of her was her red lips that made every man want a piece of her. Lin Huang was shocked to see the lady. Never had he thought he would see her again in the Martial Hunter College. Although half of her face was covered, revealing only her red lips, Lin Huang recognized her immediately. She had not changed any part of her appearance. "Hong Zhuang from the Purple Crow Why is she here?!" Lin Huang took a while to snap out of his thoughts. Although she was not in the Purple Crow''s signature coat, he could tell who she was right away. He then glared at Qin Tianxing who was star-struck by Hong Zhuang. However, Lin Huang soon noticed that Hong Zhuang''s aura was only blue flame-level. "Did she seal her combat level? No wonder she could enter the White Capital" If she were on her normal immortal-level, Lin Huang would have to hide her. However, she had sealed her combat level instead of suppressing it just to enter the White Capital. This world did not have the same concept of capitals like Earth did, but the White Capital was like the capital of Division 7 with more than one imperial-level guardian. The guardians would find out if an immortal-level person entered the city. There were many holy fire-level persons in the White Capital, at least tens of thousands of them, so the guardians could not be looking for them one by one. That was probably why Hong Zhuang had sealed her combat level so that the imperial-level guardians could not get her. However, such behavior was risky as sealing her combat level would mean that there would be many restrictions on her abilities. As soon as her identity was busted, she would face more risky consequences than entering as an imperial-level. The sealing of her combat level could not be unsealed immediately. It would take a couple of minutes. She would be dead if she encountered someone powerful when her combat level was sealed. "Xiao Lin Zhi, do you really not remember me, Sister Hong?" Hong Zhuang grinned when she saw Lin Huang in shock while she walked towards him. "Sister Hong, how could I forget you? I was a guest at your place last year where I stayed for some time." Lin Huang was relieved as he confirmed that Hong Zhuang was not a threat to him at the moment since her combat level was sealed. "Sister Hong, are you here for me?" Lin Huang asked in a friendly tone. Hong Zhuang stopped in her tracks as she was surprised to find that Lin Huang was talking to her like nothing had happened. "You left without saying goodbye the last time. I''ve missed you throughout the last year, but I''m not here to visit you. I''m here to be a teacher." Hong Zhuang smiled. "A teacher?" Lin Huang was stunned. He had no idea what she was trying to do. "Yeah, Miss Zhuang Hong passed our teacher assessment on Monday and she''s now one of us in the Martial Hunter College." Qin Tianxing was excited as he thought Lin Huang and Zhuang Hong had a close relationship. "Miss Zhuang Hong has been asking about your whereabouts from the two Vice Presidents since Monday. The Vice President couldn''t get to you, so he got her to look for me. I''ve brought her to your dorm two to three times, but you weren''t there. Since you guys are cousins, why don''t you guys have each other''s contact details?" Lin Huang was cursing Qin Tianxing secretly in his heart for his recklessness. It was funny that Qin Tianxing did not find it suspicious that both of them did not have each others'' contact details. "It''s my fault. I lost all of my contacts as my Emperor''s Heart Ring was broken last year. I lost many of my friends'' number," Hong Zhuang explained. Lin Huang now found out that Hong Zhuang was pretending to be his cousin. Since she managed to deceive the two Vice Presidents, that meant she had obtained a fake identity about him for herself. Lin Huang was not in a hurry to expose her real identity. He wanted to know why Hong Zhuang was really there in the White Capital. "I''ll head to class now. Let''s talk when we''re free." Lin Huang ended the conversation as it was almost time for class. Although he had many questions for Hong Zhuang, he did not have the time to talk to her right now. "Can I sit in your class if you don''t mind?" It was clear that Hong Zhuang had managed to learn about the college rules within the short few days to come up with such a request. "Sure, if you''re willing to. Please don''t make fun of me if I''m not good." Lin Huang nodded and accepted Hong Zhuang''s request. It was not even 1:50 p.m. Lin Huang brought Qin Tianxing and Hong Zhuang to the Class 2 Sword Dao class. The students were familiar with Qin Tianxing as he was teaching Class 1 and he would always sit in during Lin Huang''s class. However, they were curious when they saw Hong Zhuang, especially the boys in the class. They could not get their eyes off her svelte body. Meanwhile, the girls were gossiping among one another, guessing whether Hong Zhuang was Qin Tianxing''s or Lin Huang''s girlfriend or if they were in a love triangle. Some of the girls were coming up with absurd stories in their head "This is Miss Zhuang Hong. She''s a teacher that we have just hired this week" "Miss Zhuang Hong is Sir Lin''s cousin," Qin Tianxing added before Lin Huang could finish what he was saying. Hong Zhuang smiled lightly while Lin Huang was speechless. Hearing that Hong Zhuang was Lin Huang''s cousin, many students started asking questions about Lin Huang''s childhood since the class had yet to start. Hong Zhuang made up stories that never happened, including Lin Huang wetting in his bed until he was 11, being scared of bugs when he was already 13, and being beaten up by a petite girl sitting next to her in class when he was 12 Besides the students, even Qin Tianxing was shocked to hear those stories. Lin Huang did not expect Hong Zhuang to use her fake identity to come up with these, but he did not bother to explain. He frowned as the stories she made up were getting more and more ridiculous. "Alright, return to your seats. Class starts now!" Lin Huang slammed on the podium when it was 2 p.m. sharp. The sudden impact turned the entire podium into dust, and a terrifying aura spread out in the classroom. The classroom became silent. 526 A Tough Lady It was 5 p.m. when the class ended, and the students left the classroom. However, Hong Zhuang remained sitting at the back of the classroom. She did not look like she was planning to leave. "You guys should sit down and catch up since it''s been a year since the last time the both of you saw each other. I shall make a move first!" Qin Tianxing said. He then left immediately as he did not want to bother the both of them. Seeing that Qin Tianxing had left, Lin Huang anchored his eyes on the classroom door and shut it immediately with Telekinesis. He then looked at Hong Zhuang solemnly. "Alright, the top management staff of Purple Crow who risked her life by sealing her combat level to enter the White Capital, what is your intention of being here?" "I''m here To look for you, of course." Hong Zhuang''s eyes lit up as she sensed Lin Huang''s confidence that had grown over the year. She was even more interested in him now since he had experienced a significant change, especially the Telekinesis that he had just performed. He could not do that a year ago. "Really? I''m using my own identity to join the Martial Hunter College. I''ve never disguised myself since day one. That means the Purple Crow would know that I''ve been teaching here since 1 September. It''s the end of September now. You''re only here after more than two and a half months. If you''re here really here for me, you would''ve been here more than two months ago." Lin Huang knew very well that she was lying. "I''ve been busy for the past two months. Didn''t I come here for you once I had the time?" Hong Zhuang remained smiling. "Where''s your partner? Did he join the college as well?" Since Lin Huang changed the subject since he could not get anything out of her. "This is my personal mission. Why would I bring any partners?" Hong Zhuang remained calm as she answered. "You might be able to trick others but not me. The Purple Crow would send two persons even if it''s a personal mission. Even if your partner isn''t joining your mission, he would definitely be in the same foothold as you are." Lin Huang knew the Purple Crow''s rules very well whereby it was mandatory for two persons to be on the same mission. If it were a bigger mission, they would even bring teams of holy fire-level members. Even if it were a personal affair, the team would still consist of two persons. Basically, no matter where the partner was, the other person would follow, so it made sense for the other person to be in the same foothold. "What if I told you that we''ve changed the rules in partnering? Would you believe me?" Hong Zhuang smirked. "Who would believe that!?" Lin Huang thought to himself. "Alright then, I shall change my question. Since you''re here for me, tell me what you''re here for," Lin Huang demanded after a moment of silence since he failed to get anything out of her. "It''s simple. We want you to join us." Hong Zhuang opened her arms wide, looking innocent. "I refuse to. If that''s your intention here, you can leave now." Lin Huang stared at her, hoping to look for any loopholes, but there was none. "That''s not possible. If you don''t join us, I''ll have to stay in the college to annoy you until You come with me." Hong Zhuang winked at him. "Your combat level is being sealed now. Aren''t you afraid that I''ll kill you?" Lin Huang squinted as he exuded a terrifying vibe. "Please do that if you can, but think about the consequences" Hong Zhuang turned around after glaring at Lin Huang. "What a happy bunch of young kids, so full of energy" She looked at the students downstairs. Her threat was obvious. Lin Huang then retracted his aura. He knew very well what the Purple Crow was capable of doing. If he killed Hong Zhuang, all of the teachers and students might become the sacrifice that would end up being buried together with her dead body. Lin Huang soon noticed that Hong Zhuang was not the biggest threat. The biggest threat was her partner who was hiding somewhere that he was not aware of. There were also Purple Crow teams in the foothold that could destroy the White Capital. Lin Huang had the thought of reporting her to the Union Government or the Hunter Association. However, the thought did not linger long in his mind. He knew that the Purple Crow would usually have two groups in every mission or even three groups when the mission was a big one. If group A''s operation were interrupted, group B would be sent to cover them immediately. If group B were to be interrupted as well, group C would come and it would take one or two hours, at the most, to finish what group A and group B could not manage to complete. It was futile to report Hong Zhuang. As soon group A, which was probably led by her, noticed that something was wrong, they would retreat immediately and be replaced by group B that was hiding somewhere. By then, things could go out of hand as Lin Huang would not know who group B was even if they bumped into each other. "Actually, it feels good to be a teacher. I''ve never attended college before. Although I''ve only been here for a couple of days, I''ve fallen in love with the environment here," Hong Zhuang said out of nowhere. "These kids are completely different from those in the Purple Crow. They''re much more pumped up. Sometimes, I feel young just by watching them." "It''s weird to hear that coming from you," Lin Huang teased. "I don''t want to interrupt your work here in the White Capital, but if you''re targeting the college, I advise you to stop or else, you''ll definitely regret!" He added. "I''ve made it clear that I''m here for you. Why can''t you just believe me?" "I''m going for dinner now," Lin Huang interrupted Hong Zhuang. "Oh, let''s go! I''m hungry as well." Hong Zhuang stood up slowly. "I don''t feel hungry anymore. You go ahead yourself. I''m going to read at the library." Lin Huang helplessly turned around and headed to the entrance. "Ah, I don''t feel hungry anymore too. I shall head to the library." Hong Zhuang smiled at Lin Huang. "You go ahead then. I''m going back to my dorm." Lin Huang walked out of the building, heading to the dorm, and Hong Zhuang followed. "Can you stop following me? The library is in the other direction." Lin Huang stood still and glared at Hong Zhuang as he pointed at 10 o''clock from where they were. "Nobody''s following you. I''m going back to the dorm as well. We''re going in the same direction." Hong Zhuang walked a few steps ahead and stopped. "Oh yeah, my dorm is just next to yours. I got your neighbor to move out on Wednesday, so we''re now neighbors. I''ll be visiting you often!" "This woman" Lin Huang was speechless. 527 Hong Zhuang’s True Ability Instead of heading back to the dorm, Lin Huang went to battle training ground No. 101 directly after dinner. He called Mr. Fu immediately after locking the door. As Hong Zhuang was there, he could not ignore the threat that the Purple Crow might bring. "My dear apprentice, what trouble are you in this time?" Mr. Fu knew Lin Huang well enough that he would not ask for help from anybody if he could solve the problem on his own. "Uhh" He was speechless by Mr. Fu''s straightforwardness but he updated Mr. Fu about Hong Zhuang immediately. "Oh, the Purple Crow''s operation! I know a little bit about it. It''s a game between them and the Union Government. There''s no need for you to involve yourself in this; you won''t be able to anyway," Mr. Fu smiled and said. "Don''t worry. It has nothing to do with the Martial Hunter College. Hong Zhuang must have used the teacher recruitment to enter the White Capital. She must be interested in you since she chose to join the college. That girl has great talent and ability. If you''re interested in her, I could talk to the Purple Crow and try to matchmake the both of you." Mr. Fu grinned slyly. "Please don''t! I don''t want that." Lin Huang waved his hands vigorously. "Alright, be serious now. Luckily, you didn''t do anything to her by taking advantage of her combat level being sealed. If you did, you would be dead by now. The leader of the Division 9 Purple Crow branch has a unique monster skill whereby he can perform aa pseudo seal on other people. It can unseal a person''s combat level to his or her original combat level. Even a person who''s on demigod-level would be able to find out about such a skill in close range. "In reality, the immortal-level human used the same way to enter Haitian City last year. Without the skill, it was impossible to send his management staff into an A-grade foothold as it''s very risky. The normal seal would take a couple of minutes to unseal. If the management staff entered the White Capital just by performing the normal seal, they would die immediately if any of them were exposed," Mr. Fu shared in all seriousness. Lin Huang was dripping cold sweat when he heard about the pseudo seal. "Also, Hong Zhuang isn''t as simple as you think. She has become the Purple Crow''s core member in Division 7. I heard from the Purple Crow headquarters that they''re planning to train her to become a Crow Spirit" "A core member Crow Spirit" Lin Huang was fixated on the two keywords. As he had been to the Purple Crow training camp, he knew what the two terms meant. There was no elders or executives in the Purple Crow. The core members referred to the core group of the organization. Members who desired to become a core member of each branch in each division would have to be at least an imperial-level. It was the basic standard. Most of them were at least immortal-level rank-9; there were hardly any of them who was a rank below. ince Hong Zhuang had managed to become a core member, that meant even if she was not imperial-level now, she had the ability to fight imperial-levels by herself! Meanwhile, the Crow Spirit was like the Holy Son in the Saint organization and Virgen in the heretics. They were deemed the highest level in the organization and were on the same level as the Crow Leader in the Purple Crow headquarters. However, the Crow Spirit did not have the authority that the Crow Leader commanded. Of course, Lin Huang got another piece of information from what Mr. Fu said. "So, you mean they have at least two imperial-level core members in this operation? Looking at their usual formation, they''ll have at least ten immortal-levels and up to a hundred holy fire-levels What are they trying to do?!" "Not two, but four core members. I have no idea about the formation," Mr. Fu shook his head and corrected him. "Don''t involve yourself in this. Just pretend that Hong Zhuang isn''t here. Just do whatever you do as usual. As long as you don''t offend them, they won''t do anything to you," Mr. Fu cautioned in all seriousness. "I understand." Lin Huang went silent for a moment and nodded. "Oh yeah, I have something up these few days, so I might leave Division 7 for a couple of days. Take care of yourself when I''m not around. If I could, I wouldn''t leave during this period of time. Division 7 has been chaotic recently. With your abilities, you''ll get yourself killed if you offend someone by accident. Especially when it comes to a major organization like this, even an imperial-level person could barely do anything," Mr. Fu sighed. Lin Huang fell into deep thought as he hung up the phone. Mr. Fu was adamant that it was just a game that the Purple Crow and the Union Government was playing. It had nothing to do with the Martial Hunter College or himself. However, Mr. Fu refused to reveal what was the Purple Crow''s intention as he did not want Lin Huang to get involved in this. "Never mind then. I shan''t overthink since it''s not a threat to the Martial Hunter College." Lin Huang decided not to dwell on it. However, he was worried that the Purple Crow would harm Lin Xin if her identity were exposed since Hong Zhuang was in the college now. Lin Huang thought about it and put on Ye Xiu''s Emperor''s Heart Ring to send Lin Xin a message. "Someone from the Purple Crow has gotten into the college. Let''s not contact each other at the moment. Don''t come to my dorm. Pretend that you don''t know me if we see each other. Also, don''t tell anybody about this. Delete this message after reading it!" "Shouldn''t we inform the dean?" Lin Xin replied soon, aware that it was Lin Huang''s other identity. "No, I''ll handle that," Lin Huang responded. He knew that the more he revealed, the more Lin Xin would overthink and that might bring unnecessary trouble. He was relieved as Lin Xin did not reply anymore. He then started practicing his sword skills after deleting the messages that he had sent Lin Xin. He ignored Hong Zhuang completely for the next two to three days. He would go to the library in the day and practice his sword skills at night as usual. Hong Zhuang followed him wherever he went every day, but Lin Huang ignored her existence and read his books. Luckily, she would disappear at night, probably to handle Purple Crow matters and did not interrupt his practice. "Your sister is such a control freak!" Qin Tianxing commented after seeing them together all the time for the past few days, which irritated Lin Huang. If it were not for him bringing Hong Zhuang to the office the other day, this would not have happened. On the fourth morning, Lin Huang was relieved as Hong Zhuang did not follow him this time. Qin Tianxing was having breakfast when Lin Huang got to the canteen, and he waved at Lin Huang immediately. Lin Huang then sat across him with his breakfast. "Isn''t your sister with you today?" He asked. "No, I think she has some stuff to do." Lin Huang guessed that the operation was starting soon. "Oh yeah, there''s an update on the purge the Union Government performed towards the Saint that you asked me to keep an eye on for you earlier," Qin Tianxing said as he munched on a fried bun. "What update?!" Lin Huang lifted his head immediately. "The hiding place of the Saint''s first and second elders were exposed today at 6 a.m. The Union organizations are performing the last kill now!" 528 Kylie’s Mini World "Why does the exposure of the two Saint elders coincide with the Purple Crow''s operation?" Lin Huang fell into deep thought after hearing what Qin Tianxing said. "Hong Zhuang isn''t here today. The Purple Crow''s operation must have something to do with the Saint! What do they want from the Saint? Or maybe they''re attacking the Union Government''s headquarter when it''s empty" Lin Huang had his mind occupied with what Hong Zhuang and the Purple Crow could be up to. He was absolutely distracted when he was reading in the library. When it was around 10:30 a.m, Kylie''s voice came to his mind. "It''s settled." Her message was short and sweet. It was clear that the triple mutation and the awakening of her bloodline did not change her cold attitude. "I''ll recall the both of you if you''re sure that everything has been done," Lin Huang informed before recalling them. "Everything''s done." It was Bai who replied. Lin Huang recalled the two Monster Cards after hearing Bai''s reply. He finally managed to distract himself from the mystery of the Purple Crow. However, he felt an invisible pressure from the Purple Crow''s operation. It also triggered him to want to be more powerful. He was irritated by the thought that he might be killed anytime. However, since he had just leveled up to white flame-level, his Life Fire was still unstable. He could not level up his combat level within a month. He would have to look for alternatives to upgrade his abilities. He then looked at his Monster Skills slots. There were still eight empty slots out of twenty slots. "Besides Lancelot and Thunder, all of the cards have been leveled up to legendary-level. Besides Dark Shield, the remaining Monster Skills in my body have been transformed. I''m only left with the Mighty Ape, the Frost Flame Ape and the two Dark Crescent Snakes whose skills have yet to be extracted Let''s see if there''s anything that''s useful." Lin Huang then placed the four cards in front of him and went through the skills one by one. "The Mighty Ape''s Superhuman Strength and Warrior Body are pretty cool. They can increase my body strength tremendously. The Frost Flame Ape''s Frost Flame isn''t bad, but it''s not very useful for me. Its Frost Armor is redundant to me as well since I already have Absolute Defence and Dark Shield The Dark Crescent Snake''s Crescent Flame isn''t too shabby either, but it doesn''t suit my style" He was only satisfied with the Mighty Ape''s skills after looking at the four monsters thoroughly. It would be great if he could possess more Monster Skills. However, as he only had a limit of eight savant slots for Monster Skills, he had to get rid of whatever was not useful to him. It was better to declutter instead of keeping stuff that one did not need even if it was free. Besides the Mighty Ape, Lin Huang recalled the other three Monster Cards and summoned Kylie. To avoid attention from the skill extraction, he got Kylie to bring him into the isolation space where the Starlight Beasts were. He detected a major change as soon as he entered the space with Kylie. There were endless meadows before, but now there were meadows, forests, mountains, and rivers It had changed completely. Lin Huang was stunned at the change and only snapped out of it after a while. "Did you do all these?" Lin Huang asked Kylie. "It''s my mini world now. I can change it however I want it." Kylie nodded. Lin Huang had read about the concept of mini-worlds in novels before, but it was his first time witnessing one. After Kylie''s revamp on the place, the mini world looked the same as the real world except that it had no creatures. "Wait What''s that?" Just when Lin Huang was thinking that there should be no other creature than Starlight Beasts here, he saw a giant beast which seemed to be running away from a predator. "A Black Tusk Elephant. Bai and I brought it in here. Our army needs food." Kylie''s reply was simple. "I''ll need to hunt for more food for them after this batch of food is finished," she said after a pause. Lin Huang realized that he had overlooked the point that Kylie''s army consisted of normal monsters that were not in card forms. Unlike Kylie, they needed food to survive. "Sure, just let me know ahead. I''ll bring you wherever you need to go," Lin Huang replied. "Although the Black Tusk Elephant is huge, you have more than 300 monsters in your army. That should last them for only a couple of days." "Bai and I brought back all seven holy fire-level monsters from the Meteorite Desert. That should be enough to feed them for half a month," Kylie replied without any expression. Lin Huang was surprised to hear that she and Bai had captured all the Transcendent-level monsters in the Meteorite Desert. In such a huge desert, it had been downgraded from a moderate danger zone to a grade-4 wild zone just because Kylie''s army needed food. He was not sure if he should laugh at that. "The most powerful holy fire-level monsters that you and Bai captured should be at least purple flame-level What''s the combat level of the Starlight Beasts after they evolved? Can they kill purple flame-level monsters?" "They''re the same as me. They''re all gold flame-level. Their combat level will grow together with mine. They''re kind of like clones," Kylie replied shockingly. Just as Kylie said this, a couple of monsters in silver armor flew across the sky and caught up with the Black Tusk Elephant in an instant. The monsters looked exactly like Kylie before she had completed her triple mutation. The only difference was their size. Suddenly, one of them flung its purple spear into the air. The spear was transformed into a purple lightning rod and pierced through the 50-meter thick Black Tusk Elephant''s skull. It died on the spot, brain juice and blood spilling all over the place. After the Nephilic Judges killed the elephant, they soon noticed Kylie and Lin Huang, then ran over to them immediately. "Master." They bowed their heads, standing ten meters before Kylie. "Don''t bother us. Go do your own stuff." Kylie waved her hand, behaving very much like a queen. "Yes!" The Nephilic Judges left with the Black Tusk Elephant immediately. Lin Huang could sense how powerful the Nephilic Judges were when they had gotten closer earlier. It was a powerful army. A single Nephilic Judge alone might be able to kill an immortal-level rank-1. His passion surged as he thought about Kylie''s army that was made of more than 300 monsters. He was one step closer to his dream of building a monster army! He then recalled his intention of getting Kylie to bring him into this mini world. "Xiao Hei, extract the skill now!" Lin Huang instructed Xiao Hei as he looked at the Mighty Ape Monster Card that he held in his hand. "Performing skill extraction Randomly picking a skill Skill extraction has been completed!" "Congratulations, you have obtained the skill - Warrior Body!" 529 The Second Skill Extraction "Congratulations, you have obtained the skill - Warrior Body!" Just when the notification came in, Lin Huang felt a change in his strength. It clearly came from the Warrior Body skill that he had just obtained. As he sensed his body thoroughly, he was surprised to find out that the skill matched the Undefeatable Warrior that Mr. Fu had given him earlier. He thought the upgrade in his body strength was not efficient ever since he leveled up to Transcendent, so he desired this skill intensely. It seemed like the skill had exceeded his expectations. "This skill is awesome!" He nodded in satisfaction and looked at the remaining seven vacant skill slots. "I''m only left with seven slots, but I have twelve Skill Extraction Cards. It''s not enough for me!" He then looked at the detailed description on the Skill Extraction Cards. "Skill Extraction Card: Once activated, you can randomly extract a skill from a Monster Card. "Remark 1: The skill extraction will exclude the skills that you have extracted before. "Remark 2: You can only use this once on each Monster Card. "Remark 3: The activation will not affect any of the skills that the Monster Card possesses. "Remark 4: Please do not activate this card if you don''t have any vacant slots! If you do, the extracted skill using the Skill Extraction Card will disappear if there''re no vacant slots within 24 hours. A second extraction of the same Monster Card is prohibited after that." "Hmm, a random extraction again and only once for each Monster Card That means if there''s one particular skill that I want, I won''t have the opportunity to obtain it anymore if I don''t get that skill during the extraction," Lin Huang frowned as he thought. The Skill Extraction Card was the card that he had always desired as he wanted to extract skills from some Monster Cards that he owned. For instance, Charcoal''s Element Immunity, Bloody''s Supreme Intelligence, Ghastly''s Deceptive and Spiritual secret skills were skills that he desired. "I have so few vacant skill slots" Lin Huang mumbled to himself as he looked at the remaining seven slots. He would have to pick wisely for the skill extraction. The first Monster Card that he took out was Charcoal. Element Immunity was a skill that he lusted for as he looked through Charcoal''s skills. It was already at an advanced level now where it could provide 99% immunity to elemental damages. Aside from increasing Lin Huang''s survival ability tremendously, the skill would also give him the advantage whenever he was fighting close-range with a person who was talented in elemental attacks. Just like his encounter with the Fiery Swordfiend earlier, it was difficult for him to fight it at a close distance as he would be burnt. However, with Element Immunity, it would not be an issue anymore. He would not need to worry about getting burnt. All he needed to do was to slash the monster with his sword. Naturally, aside from Element Immunity, the Draconic secret skill, Dragon Power, and Dragon Realm were great additions too. He would be happy to extract any of the skills. Lin Huang then crushed the Skill Extraction Card after some thought. "Targeted Monster Card - Charcoal. "Activating skill extraction Excluding Absolute Defence Randomly extracting a skill Random extraction has been completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained the skill - Elemental Immunity!" "Elemental Immunity!" Lin Huang was ecstatic to hear that since it was the skill that he wanted. "Elemental Immunity (Advanced): Passive skill, 99% immune to most elemental attacks." It took him a while to get over his excitement after reading the skill''s detailed description. He then recalled Charcoal and took out the second Monster Card, which was Bai, and laid out his second Skill Extraction Card at the same time. The skill that he desired most from Bai was the Blood secret skill. As he already had Vampire Particles, if he obtained the Blood secret skill, he would not have to spend time figuring out how to use Vampire Particles. Instead, he could just use the Vampire Particles directly like how Bai did. He crushed the second Skill Extraction Card immediately. "Targeted Monster Card - Bai. "Activating skill extraction Excluding Vampire Particles Randomly extracting a skill Random extraction has been completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained the skill - Holy Power!" "Oh!" Lin Huang was surprised when he found out that Holy Power was extracted. "It seems like I''m still not European. It was just a coincidence that I obtained the Elemental Immunity just now." Although it was not the Blood secret skill that he wanted, Holy Power was a great skill as well. Once the skill was activated, many would fear him. It was a pretty cool skill. He got over it as he thought about that. He took out Bloody''s card together with his third Skill Extraction Card after recalling Bai''s card. What Lin Huang desired the most from Bloody was Supreme Intelligence. His Leech Pods had now been upgraded to the Parasitic secret skill as Bloody had leveled up. He had all of the parasitic skills that Bloody possessed. Therefore, besides Supreme Intelligence, there was nothing else that he wanted. He then crushed the third Skill Extraction. "Targeted Monster Card - Bloody. "Activating skill extraction Excluding Parasitic secret skill Randomly extracting a skill Random extraction has been completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained the skill - Absolute Control!" "What the hell?" Lin Huang was annoyed when he heard Xiao Hei''s notification. Absolute Control was a skill to boost parasitic control. To be honest, the skill was useful to Bloody but not to Lin Huang. He did not have such a powerful brain as Bloody did. If he was to control a creature, the most he could was one or two at a time. The skill was not useful for a wider coverage of parasites. Unlike Supreme Intelligence, Bloody could control tens of thousands of monsters with the Absolute Control skill. Out of three extractions, Lin Huang had only gotten one skill that he was satisfied with. He was thinking if he should wash his face. Then, he took out Ghastly''s card and the fourth Skill Extraction Card after recalling Bloody. Ghastly had Supreme Intelligence in its list of skills as well. "It''d better be Supreme Intelligence this time! If not, I wouldn''t mind getting the Deceptive or Spirit secret skill," Lin Huang mumbled to himself as he read the skills descriptions at the back of the card. "Targeted Monster Card - Ghastly. "Activating skill extraction Excluding Doll secret skill Randomly extracting a skill Random extraction has been completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained the skill - Telekinesis!" "I''ve already gotten Demonic Telepathy. Why would I need this Telekinesis?! Isn''t it just a repetition? Xiao Hei, I think there''s someone pranking me behind your Skill Extraction machine. I''m protesting!" "I''m glad to hear your customer feedback, but there''s nothing that I can do!" Xiao Hei replied. "" "However, I could give you a helpful suggestion. Integrate all the similar skills so that you can get more skill slots." "That''s right. Since they''re both the same skills, I should be able to integrate them so that I can extract one more skill." Xiao Hei''s suggestion calmed Lin Huang down. He then took out a Skill Combination Card immediately. "Activate Skill Combination Card!" "There''s only one set of skills to be integrated." "Integrate psychic skills: Telekinesis, Demonic Telepathy" "Are you sure you want to integrate them?" "Please do." Lin Huang nodded. "Skill Combination Card has been consumed. Monster Skills Telekinesis and Demonic Telepathy have been consumed. Producing new Skill Card "Congratulations, you have obtained a new psychic card: Divine Telekinesis (Pseudo) "Divine Telekinesis (Pseudo): A powerful telekinesis that only demigods can activate, comes with all telekinesis functions. "Remark 1: The strength of telekinesis depends on the user''s spiritual strength. "Remark 2: Can be used together with Holy Power for better boost. Lin Huang was not completely surprised as he looked at the new Skill Card. He looked at the card thoroughly and tried using it. It took him a while to calm down from his excitement. "Sigh, it would be perfect to have Supreme Intelligence. My spirit strength could get a boost as well as the strength of this Divine Telekinesis" He then proceeded with the skill extraction, full of disappointment. Soon, the skill extraction ended. Lin Huang obtained the Purification Light from Kylie and Enhanced Regeneration from Tyrant. He used another Skill Combination Card to integrate the Demonic Regeneration with the Enhanced Regeneration. He obtained Divine Regeneration (Pseudo), which was a surprise to him. He got a useless skill, Revival, from Sanguine. He had extracted skills seven times in total. However, due to the two skill integrations, he was left with two out of seven vacant slots. He decided to save the two slots for Lancelot and the Regal Sword Killer. After extracting the skills, Lin Huang then looked at his personal exclusive card. "Host: Lin Huang "Gender: Male "Age: 16 "Combat Strength: White Flame-Level "Inheritance: Demigod''s brain, One Page Sword Scripture "Secret Skills: Superhuman Strength, Seraphic Speed, Substitute, Medium Territory, Demon Hand "Sword Skills: Star Dome, Wildfire, Thunder Sting, Great Sword Scripture, Hundred Flowing Blades, Mountain Blade "Gunfighting Technique: Thunderstorm, Sandstorm, Torrent "Movement Skill: Thunder Steps, Cloud Steps, Spectral Snowsteps "Minor: Fatal Tactics, Heaven''s Wrath, Omniscient Nature "Monster Skills: Divine Telekinesis (Pseudo), Divine Regeneration (Pseudo), Holy Power, Element Immunity, Absolute Control, Purification Light, Revival, Warrior Body, Vampire Particles, Advanced Disguise, Immense Strength, Parasitic secret skill, Absolute Defence, Lightning Control, Dark Shield, Doll secret skill, Punishment, Witchcraft) "Summon Authority: Activated (Legendary Level) "Available Number of Summons: 10 "Remarks: Considered on his way to proper cultivation." 530 The Ugly Truth After the skill extraction was completed, Lin Huang did not stay any further in Kylie''s mini world. He recalled her after she sent him back to the library. He then walked out of the library cubicle like nothing had happened as he proceeded to read. Hong Zhuang did not appear at all during the day. After dinner, Lin Huang went to battle training ground No.101 alone as usual to train with Bai. His Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated when it was past 11 p.m. It was a notice from the Union Government. "The Union organizations led by the Division 7 Union Government branch has killed all Saint members in Division 7 at 10:58 p.m. tonight. "The operation took a total of 49 days. The Union organizations have destroyed the Saints'' headquarter and 67 branches in Division 7. More than 130,000 Saint members have been killed, including the first and second elders in Division 7 and more than 300 Transcendent-levels" "They even killed the first and second elders!" The Union organizations'' operation surprised Lin Huang as he never thought that they would kill the elders who were relatively unimportant. Those who were sitting on top or even the senior members would know the secrets of the headquarters and would usually leave whenever there was a crisis. However, Lin Huang soon noticed that there was something fishy behind it. The Union Government had only mentioned the first and second elders getting killed but not any of the other elders. That could possibly mean that none of the other elders were captured. If that were true, it would be fishy. If the other elders managed to escape, theoretically, the first and second elders should have been able to escape as well. Lin Huang estimated that the first and second elders were sent out as sacrificial lambs. The Saints knew very well that the Division 7 Union Government would not give up just like that if they did not do so. If the matter were brought up to the Union Government in the core zone, the purge would not only involve Division 7 alone. What the Saints did was to wipe their record clean with the Union Government. "Such a bold plan! The messenger of the Saints must be someone powerful!" Lin Huang exclaimed. He knew how the organization worked and he was clear about the fact that the highest member was not the first elder, but the messenger. However, most people did not know that about the underground organization. They thought that the first elder was the leader of the organization in Division 7, hence to them, killing the first elder would be the end of it. The Union Government did not plan to explain further on that as they would hope the people would have such a misunderstanding. "I remember Wu Fa mentioning that the one who was burnt in the Mist Forest was the second elder''s grandson. Now that the second elder is dead, it seems like I don''t have to worry that anyone from the Saints will come for me anymore." Lin Huang recalled Wu Fa mentioning the second elder to him. Now that the second elder was dead, everything was over. "Looking at the notice, the Saint elders and some of the core staff must have left Division 7 since the beginning. The Union Government''s operation should have gotten rid of the Saint''s base in Division 7 and there''s no way for the Saints to rise any time soon. Whether they''ll rise again in the future The other underground organizations must take advantage of the opportunity to take over the Saints'' territories. Once the territories are wiped out as well as the resources, many businesses will be replaced. It''ll be difficult for them to make a comeback." The more Lin Huang analyzed the situation, the more relieved he was as he recalled the things that the Saints had done. He recalled the first encounter with a Saint member last year with the team which Du Feng had led and with the lady called Liang Qian. "Liang Qian will be happy to hear about this" As he thought about Liang Qian, Lin Huang looked down at his left arm. He shook his left arm softly, and a black metal box the size of half a palm slipped out from his sleeve. There was a conical cube sitting in there. It was the ruins key that he had gotten from a Saint member last year. "Since the Saints have left Division 7, I shall find time to visit this ruins soon and see what I will find." He closed the cover slowly after looking at the key for a while. He then summoned Kylie and got her to bring the box to her mini world. Since the box could not be kept in his storage space, he had been bringing this box around with him for the past year. It was almost 11:30 p.m. He then recalled Kylie and Bai since he did not have the mood to train anymore. He left the battle training ground for his dorm and went to bed after he took a shower. He was rolling in his bed and could not sleep, so he then started reading the news on the Heart Network. All the websites were talking about the Union Government''s purge on the Heart Network. Most of them were complimenting the Union Government and the Union organizations. The people bombarded discussions and forwarded news on social media platforms. Lin Huang thought they were too many people in this world who did not sleep normal hours. It was already past midnight, but the Heart Network was still chaotic. It proved that most of the people did not know about the Saints organizational frame and thought that the first elder was the leader. Nobody saw anything fishy behind this. Some of the people who could see the truth to it chose not to say anything. The Union Government took this advantage to win themselves a favorable rating. To Lin Huang, what the Union Government did was understandable as they had really put in the effort to kill many Saint members. If they did not do that, the Saints would still be carrying on with their ridiculous doings. Moreover, it was apparent that the Saints had left Division 7. Whether they left on their own after sending the elders to be sacrificed or whether they were being chased after, the fact that there were no more Saint members in Division 7 remained. No matter to the Union organizations or the people, it was a big victory. However, as Lin Huang scrolled through one of the social media platforms, he saw a person''s post revealing the truth. It said that the Saint leader was not the first elder but the messenger was. It even wrote about the two elders just being a sacrifice. There were only a couple of users who shared that post but many bombarded the user with negative comments. "Not sure if this guy is trying to tell the truth or he''s from another underground organization that''s creating a scene." Although what the user wrote was the truth, Lin Huang could not tell the real intention behind this. "Theuglytruth This username" Lin Huang chuckled and shook his head when he saw the person''s user ID. Just when he was going to turn off the page, ''theuglytruth'' released another post. Lin Huang peeked at it and could not keep his eyes off it. "In the following three days, two underground organizations will fight the Union Government together. Location: The White Capital!" The post wrote. 531 A Prophet? Lin Huang raised an eyebrow when he saw the post published by ''theuglytruth''. As Mr. Fu had reminded him in their video call earlier, the Purple Crow had been up to something with the Union Government in White Capital recently. However, the user had said that there would be two underground organizations going against the Union Government in the White Capital. Lin Huang suspected that the user might be telling the truth. "What does this person know?" Lin Huang started reading the older posts that ''theuglytruth'' had posted. "The registration date of this user is 28 September and the first post was published on 30 September. That''s the day before the Martial Hunter College''s assessment for the new students" "The Martial Hunter College will be attacked by the heretics in the following days!" That was the user''s first post. There were only three persons who commented on that post, saying that the user had predicted it wrong. The second post was published on 3 October, the day before the Union Government announced war on the Saint organization. "The Union Government will announce a war against the Saints and fight them together with the other Union organizations!" Many people forwarded it and commented on the post, gushing about how the prediction was finally accurate. The third post was published on October 4, after the Union Government announced the war. "The Saint''s core members will leave Division 7 entirely and two core members will remain as scapegoats." "This fella predicted that one and a half months ago?!" Lin Huang frowned after he read that. The fourth post was published just now, past 11 p.m. after the Union Government had posted the notice. The user revealed that the first and second elders that were killed were just scapegoats for the Saints. The fifth post was a prediction about the war that would break out in the White Capital. Lin Huang read it thoroughly and realized that besides the first post that had been wrongly predicted, all the subsequent posts actually came true while the last one was still unconfirmed. In reality, the first prediction was not entirely wrong as the Saint really did disguise as the heretics and attacked the Martial Hunter College. "Is this really a prophet or a game played by an underground organization?" Lin Huang could not tell but he thought the latter was more likely. The person must have gotten some information from the black market and released the news on purpose for some unknown reason. It also proved that the person had advanced access in the black market. After some hesitation, Lin Huang commented anonymously, "Then, do you know which two underground organizations will fight the Union Government?" Lin Huang waited for a while after commenting. It was almost 12.30 p.m. Seeing that there was no reply, he then shut down the page and went to bed. The next morning, there was a notification on his Emperor''s Heart Ring, so he turned it on casually. The social media platform, Surf Net, that he was looking at last night popped out. He saw a reply from ''theuglytruth'' on the post that he had commented on. "It has something to do with the Saints." The reply was sent at 1 a.m. "It seems like the person really does know something" Based on the person''s reply, Lin Huang was sure that the person knew what was happening. Humans would always be curious about the unknown. Lin Huang was eager to ask the person which organization would be fighting together with the Purple Crow. However, he recalled that Mr. Fu had asked him not to get involved in the matter, so he switched off the page forcefully. Just when he was ready to head out for breakfast after washing up, he saw Hong Zhuang standing not far from his door. She was wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon rabbit print and short jeans with a dark blue trench coat. The trench coat was less than 10 centimeters longer than her jeans, displaying her long legs. "Morning! Did you miss me?" Hong Zhuang smiled at him seductively as he opened the door. "No," Lin Huang gave a determined answer. "You''re cold as usual," Hong Zhuang complained but she soon smiled again. "Aren''t you curious about where I went yesterday?" "No, it has nothing to do with me." Lin Huang looked at her sternly and walked towards the canteen. "Weren''t you curious about why I''m here in the White Capital? Why are you not interested anymore? Did you hear about it from somewhere else?" Hong Zhuang followed him. She sounded like she was testing Lin Huang. "I don''t have the time to do that. It''s your business even if you''re bombing the Union Government. I won''t be questioning you as long as it has nothing to do with the Martial Hunter College." "Alright then, I understand now." Hong Zhuang was satisfied with his answer. Although she had no idea what he might know, at least she knew that Lin Huang would not intervene in her operation. "Hmm, why do I sense that your vibe is even more powerful now after a day?" Hong Zhuang asked as she trailed after Lin Huang. "It''s all in your head." Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat when he heard that but he turned around to glare at Hong Zhuang without an expression. She did not say anything but she looked at Lin Huang suspiciously. It was clear that she sensed the changes in him but she could not tell what it was. "What secrets are you hiding? I really want to know," she thought to herself as she licked her lips after Lin Huang turned back to walk ahead. When they got to the canteen, Lin Huang got his breakfast and sat down at an empty table. Soon, Hong Zhuang sat across him with her breakfast. Lin Huang ignored her and proceeded to eat his meal. A while later, Qin Tianxing joined them. "Good morning, Miss Zhuang and Sir Lin!" Qin Tianxing shamelessly sat next to Hong Zhuang after greeting the both of them. "Good morning, Sir Qin!" Hong Zhuang did not seem like she minded that as she smiled at him while eating her bread. "Did you guys see the news? The Saints have been completely wiped out! I personally think that all of the underground organizations should die! After killing the Saints, the next should be the Purple Crow!" Qin Tianxing discussed the hot topic with sheer excitement. "Brother, can you not? The Purple Crow''s soon-to-be Crow Spirit is just sitting on your right!" Lin Huang screamed internally. He thought Qin Tianxing must be a dead man to Hong Zhuang now. "The Purple Crow is the same as the Saints. None of them are good. If I see any of them, I''ll definitely kill them." Qin Tianxing seemed to be showing off his male ego in front of Hong Zhuang. He could not stop talking about the underground organization. Lin Huang peeked at Hong Zhuang but she seemed calm. What Qin Tianxing was talking about seemed to have nothing to do with her 532 The Underworld of The White Capital In the middle of the night, there were purple and red full moons in the sky. The world was veiled in a mysterious color under the moonlight. It was late, and the crowded White Capital was now quiet. Although the lights were shining brightly, there was nobody on the street. However, not everybody was sleeping at such an hour. Some people were still working hard. Not many people in the White Capital knew that there was an underworld hiding hundreds of meters under the massive city. Outside an underground building in the White Capital were holy fire-level guards and patrol squads issuing a stern warning that no outsiders were allowed in. The building was like a giant metal beast that was tempered from a special metal into the design of a creature. It seemed like the perfect existence in the underworld which did not seem absurd at all as it gave one the feeling that it had existed since tens of thousands of years ago. The black glass material on the surface of the building blocked out all the light from the outside. From the outside, it looked like the entire building was completely black. However, the inside of the building was as bright as day. In a room, there were two dead male bodies lying stark naked on two white beds. One had silver hair and was skinny and old. Meanwhile, the other one was big with dark hair and a beard. He looked like a hunk. The two dead bodies belonged to the first and second elders of the Saints. Both of their skulls were cut open, displaying their greyish-white brains. A middle-aged woman wearing a white contamination suit was standing less than a meter from the second elder''s head. She was observing his brain, and black sigils were rotating quickly in her eyes. A while later, she closed her eyes slowly and walked out of the room. "How is it?" Men in suits walked to her as she opened the door. The leader was a lanky, middle-aged man who was more than two meters tall. He had a mustache on his face that seemed like he had not shaved for days as he looked at the woman in anticipation. The woman took off her contamination suit, revealing her long, black dress. "I''m sorry, I could only retrieve information other than the demigod''s knowledge. It seems like someone has erased the memory of the demigod from their brains." The woman smiled awkwardly. "Again" The tall man frowned. He seemed to be disappointed by the result. "Zhou Ju, are the rest the same as well?" The woman asked. "Yes. Besides you, we have hired 13 people who are experts in retrieving memories and tens of professionals in brain research for the past two days. There''s no progress in the sealed memory zone at all." The middle-aged man was still frowning. "If there''s no progress, we''ll have to get the experts to further examine Lu Yuan''s brain" The woman nodded as she knew that any further examination might destroy the brain. "Let me extract the memories that I''ve retrieved. Maybe there''s something that''s useful to you." "Please do." The middle-aged man named Zhou Ju nodded. "Bring Madam Wang for the data collection," he then said to the man in the suit next to him. "Madam Wang, please follow me." Lao Zhou frowned as he looked at the two dead bodies behind the glass as the duo left. "Why is it always like that when it comes to information about the demigod? Could this really be the data isolation?" He mumbled to himself. "I still think the concept of data isolation is just ridiculous. If nobody can access the demigod information, then where did the Saints get it from? I think the Saint must have deleted the memory of the demigod in these two sacrifices, that''s why we can''t retrieve anything." A man in a suit who was in his 20s opened the wrapping of a lollipop that he retrieved from his storage space as he spoke casually. Lao Zhou glared at him because he was interrupted as he was just going to speak. "Do you want one?" The man in the suit passed him another lollipop. "Wu Sheng! We''re working now. Please be serious!" Lao Zhou scowled at him. "You know I have low blood glucose levels and I can''t work if I don''t eat candy." Wu Sheng shrugged his shoulders. "Who are you blaming since you could''ve actually cured this by entering the bloody sugar correction pod years ago?" Lao Zhou scolded. "You know I hate doctors. I''d want to break the heads of those in the white coats. If I see them in their white coats and glasses, I might not be able to stop myself from killing them You know very well that this is the side effects of what happened. There''s nothing that I could do to control myself" Wu Sheng shrugged again. "You can buy the blood sugar correction pod online. There''s no need to go to the hospital. What excuse is this?!" Lao Zhou knew what Wu Sheng meant by the side effects but it was obvious that he was trying to distract him. "Nope, it''s too troublesome. I think God wants me to eat more candy, that''s why he gave me this illness. Why should I cure it? It''s such a wonderful thing to be able to eat candy whenever and wherever I want!" Wu Sheng declined him again. "" Lao Zhou and the rest gave up on their attempt to stop Wu Sheng from eating too much sugar since he was full of nonsense anyway. "Oh yeah, please be on alert, you guys. The black market has been too quiet these few days. The underground organizations might be coming up with something. Beware," Lao Zhou changed the topic. "It may not be necessary that something is happening. Maybe our attack towards the Saints the past few days scared the black market. Many underground organizations are afraid that we might target them next, so they''re hiding." Wu Sheng thought that Lao Zhou was being too sensitive. "Moreover, there are 33 floors here. Even if any of the organizations wanted the two dead bodies, how would they know which floor we''re on? Unless There''s a spy among us." "Never underestimate the underground organizations. Some of them are so powerful that they''re no less than the Scarborough Workshop. They might even be more powerful!" Lao Zhou looked at Wu Sheng knowingly when he mentioned the Scarborough Workshop. "The Scarborough Workshop Don''t tell me where these people are hiding right now!" Wu Sheng''s pupils shrunk as he clenched his teeth. 533 Building 33 Two days ago, in the middle of the night, in an old, dim warehouse in the eastern suburb of the White Capital, three people appeared out of nowhere when there was usually hardly anyone. The three of them wore black robes that had no logos on them. They hid their faces under the hood. Under the dim light, their masks under the hood could be faintly seen. "Let''s wait for a while. The Purple Crow will be here soon." The leader''s voice was gentle and deep under the voice-modulating shell. The other two persons stood there without saying a thing as they waited patiently. Soon, another four people appeared in the warehouse. The four of them were dressed the same as the three. They were wearing black robes with hoods and masks of different designs on their faces. "Alright, since everyone is here, let''s get straight to business," the gentle voice was heard again. Among the Purple Crow members, the man standing on the second left spoke, "What I heard is that the Union Government has brought Gong Sunhai and Lu Yuan to Building 33, but I''m not sure which floor they''re on. Nobody knows that at the moment." His voice was also deep but was huskier than the leader''s voice. "In reality, aside from the first floor, we have no idea where the remaining 32 floors are at." Building 33 was the Union Government''s underground department that was scattered everywhere in 33 different locations beneath the White Capital. Although the depths of the levels were different, the floors were not arranged according to the depth of ground but to the build order instead. Aside from the first floor that was under the Union Government''s office building, the remaining 32 floors were scattered everywhere under the White Capital where nobody can pinpoint. Only some of the top management in the Union Government know where the exact locations of the 32 floors are and a couple of them were privy to where the bodies of the two Saints elders were hidden. "That''s not a problem. We''ve found someone who knows the locations of Building 33 these few days. It''s not difficult to get him to tell us the building''s exact location. I''ll try to find out which floor the two elders are on," the gentle voice spoke and looked at the four of them. "Have you guys tracked the number of guardians?" "Yes, there are six of them on imperial-level in the White Capital now. However, aside from the six families including the Shangguan and the Li families that we know of, there are at least two powerful humans of the same level. Therefore, there are at least eight imperial-level guardians in the White Capital and that''s just an estimation." It was a voice that was slightly high-pitched. Although the person used a voice-modulating shell, it was not difficult to distinguish that it was a lady. "I heard that the one guarding Building 33 are their director, Zhou Xiong, and deputy director, Wu Sheng. I''ll try to distract two of the eight imperial-level humans these two days. But the most I can take care of are those two, or else, the Union Government might suspect that something is wrong," the husky voice added. "Do you mean Zhou Xiong and Wu Sheng" The gentle voice trailed off with a sigh. "Why? Do you know them?" The husky voice asked. "Nothing. I heard that Zhou Hou is powerful, so it might be tough." The man with the gentle voice shook his head. "Zhou Xiong is really powerful. Even if we get the exact location, it''s inevitable that we will face him when we get to Building 33. One of us will have to go in while the other one would have to watch the entrance," the husky voice said in all seriousness. He was clearly one of the leaders in the Purple Crow with strong power. "Then, you''ll stay at the entrance and I''ll go in. I''d like to see what the forensic room in Building 33 looks like," the man with the gentle voice decided without thinking twice. "As long as you don''t take too long, or else, I''ll leave you behind," the husky voice from the Purple Crow warned. "I like how straightforward you are." "Please don''t, I''m not interested in men." "Let''s talk about the details. Since it''s our first time working together, we have to cooperate so that we miss nothing," the man with the gentle voice said. It was 1 a.m. on the 19th floor in Building 33. Zhou Xiong sat in the room next to the mortuary while staring at the two bodies across the one-way mirror. Nobody knew what he was thinking about. Wu Sheng seemed to be bored while he put another colorful lollipop into his mouth. "I''ll take a look at the monitoring room," he said to Zhou Xiong. "Go, I''ll be here. Let me know if something is up." Zhou Xiong nodded. Wu Sheng went to the top floor slowly by taking the elevator and walked to the monitoring room. There was only three staffmembers working in the massive monitoring room. Since they could not sleep as they were on shift, the three of them started playing cards. Wu Sheng opened the door as they were playing. The three of them were shocked to see Wu Sheng as he was the deputy director of Building 33. They should not be seen playing instead of working. "Deputy Wu!" The three of them stood up immediately and greeted him while covering the cards behind them. "You don''t have to cover. I saw what you guys were doing." Wu Sheng smiled wryly as he walked towards them. The three of them looked even more upset after hearing that. "I''m so bored too. What are you guys playing? Count me in," Wu Sheng smirked at the three of them. They were stunned and the one who looked the oldest responded immediately, "Deputy, we were just playing Beating the Tycoon. The both of them will play with you while I''ll go back to work." "Alright then, let''s play." Wu Sheng nodded. Beating the Tycoon was a card game that was similar to the game called Fighting the Landlord on Earth. It was two against one but instead of a total of 74 cards, there were five more cards to be drawn in this game. On Earth, poker had 13 cards in a group with four groups of suits and two trumps. However, the game here needed 18 cards in a group, four colors, and two trumps. Although Wu Sheng hardly played, he was familiar with the rules as the three of them started playing. The man who had left the game was observing the screen at first, but soon he could not help himself but join the game while he peeped back at the screen occasionally. Just when they were getting engrossed in the game, four black shadows appeared somewhere near the 19th floor quietly 534 Invasion! "We''ve been attacked!" As the four shadows appeared on the 19th floor, the guard standing outside of the building charged at the four of them immediately. An immortal-level leader of the guards ran as quickly as he could to the entrance, attempting to ring the alarm but he was blocked by a person in black robes who teleported himself right before the guard leader. "I''m sorry, this road is closed!" A voice came from a voice-modulating shell. The leader of the guards attacked with his sword without thinking twice and a black streak slashed in the air. However, the black-robed person grabbed the black streak and it disappeared. The immortal-level head guard''s neck was broken as well. By the time the head guard fell to the ground, the tens of the other guards were dead. "The guards at the Union Government are useless," a cold voice said softly. The quad team in black robes spread out immediately. Two of them were guarding the entrance while another two headed into the building for a round of purging. By then, the building alarm had started ringing, echoing throughout the entire building. The four of them in the monitoring room just realized that something was wrong while Wu Sheng was stunned. He looked at the screen and saw that all of the guards outside the building were dead while two black-robed silhouettes who could not be identified were guarding the door. The other two who went into the building were in black robes as well. Wu Sheng thought to himself, "How funny. It''s always the shorter person who attacks." All the black-robed attacker did was move his fingers on his left hand slightly, and black beams shot out as fast as lightning and pierced through the guards'' bodies. They were so fast that nobody could stop them. Suddenly, the assailant in black robes casually removed the Surveillance Snail at the corner of the wall and placed the camera right on his mask. "Good evening. Everyone, we''re here to shut down the party!" A deep voice came out of the voice-modulating shell. The camera blacked out as the person said that. "Inform the director! I''ll settle these two." Wu Sheng walked out of the monitoring room furiously. He had just assured Zhou Xiong that nobody knew about the two Saints elders'' bodies being on the 19th floor an hour ago, but he was soon proven wrong. "There must be a traitor among us! Else, it''s impossible for them to know the location of Building 33 and that the two bodies are here!" Wu Sheng stomped and broke the ground while descending swiftly to the floor below. Zhou Xiong who was on the -3rd floor frowned as he heard the alarm. "That''s an invasion alarm!" He then switched on his walkie-talkie and set the frequency to speak to Wu Sheng. "Wu Sheng, what''s happening? Reply me if you hear this!" There was just white noise coming from Wu Sheng''s side. He then set the frequency to the monitoring room''s but he failed to contact anyone. He then turned on the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and realized that the network and signal had been disconnected. "No wonder" Just when he was thinking of how to communicate with the outside world, there was a crackle coming out of the speaker of the monitoring room. "Attention! The 19th floor is being attacked right now. There are four of them in black robes and they are wearing masks on their faces. There are two of them guarding the entrance now while another two have invaded the building. The four of them seem to be on imperial-level" Zhou Xiong''s pupils shrunk when he heard that. "Four imperial-levels! They''re definitely here for the two dead bodies!" He looked at the two dead bodies through the one-way mirror as he was certain about their intention to attack. "But How do they know that the bodies are on the 19th floor? How do they know our location? Could Wu Sheng be right about a spy among us?" As he had doubts in his mind, he did not slow down as he walked into the room and kept the two bodies in his storage space after packing them into separate bags. He then walked to the elevator immediately. Meanwhile, a shadow came from the top of the first stair of the 19th floor, blocking the way of the two figures in black robes. It was Wu Sheng who always traveled the road less taken. To be able to get to them quickly, he had broken through more than 30 levels and landed on the first level from the top floor. One of the robed persons laughed when he saw the ceiling that was now a gaping hole. "What an entrance, brother." "Who are you?" Wu Sheng did not attack right away. Instead, he took out a lollipop, removed the wrapping and put it into his mouth in front of the guy. He was worried that he might experience low glucose levels during the battle. "What do you think?" A cold voice said. "That''s not important. I asked that question to buy myself some time to eat the lollipop. Since the both of you will be dead men soon, I''ll just bring your heads to the black market, then I''ll know who you guys are." Wu Sheng became terrifying when he had put the lollipop in his mouth. "What an arrogant kid! Let''s see what you''ve got!" "Filthy villain, I''ll kill you, then I''ll kill the one next to you." Wu Sheng dashed towards the person without hesitation. As the both of them collided, it was hard to tell that who was winning. Loud thumps of impact echoed, and the entire building was shaking from the impact. Meanwhile, the other black-robed person noticed an elevator coming up from the basement. The person grinned and disappeared from where he was. When he appeared again, he held one arm of each of the duo who was fighting. The deep-voiced person was shocked and before he could respond, he was flung out by an immense strength. Wu Sheng attempted to attack with his other hand but the black-robed person managed to grab his other arm and pressed him into the wall entirely. "Wake up, my loyal dog" Just when Wu Sheng was trying to break away from the person, the person said gently into his ear. Suddenly, Wu Sheng''s mind went blank. The voice sounded insignificant, yet it was echoing in his ears. Soon, new memories were flooding out of his brain while old memories were playing like they were on a reel. His bright eyes were now blank. An insignificant voice whispered into his ear just when he regained consciousness At the same time, the arms that were holding him down were released. "Hey, what the hell?! Why did you attack me?" The deep-voiced man shouted. He was not a Purple Crow member, so he was disrespectful to his leader. "You''re too slow. Zhou Xiong is here," the gentle voice came out of the voice-modulating shell. Just as he said that, the elevator bell rang and the doors opened. A tall shadow walked out of it. "Since you''ve done this to my office building, there''s no need to pay the compensation. Just hand me your dead bodies!" Zhou Xiong said to the two black-robed attackers as he looked at the destroyed building. 535 Plan B A giant ax measuring almost three meters long appeared in Zhou Xiong''s hand. It was much taller than he was. Its body was like a double scythe with sharp spikes on the back. The gigantic weapon had three attack modes. One was the ax itself, the other was a double scythe with a sawtooth edge while the last one was two steel balls on both sides of the ax handle. It was a powerful weapon that made the pupils of both the people in black robes shrink. The both of them knew that the relic that Zhou Xiong was holding was a terrifying prehistoric relic. It could only be obtained from a special triple mutated imperial-level monster. The fact that he could retrieve this weapon only proved how powerful he was. As Zhou Xiong held the ax in his hand, his aura was rising tremendously while golden Life Power boiled out of every pore of his body. He looked like he had transformed into a Super Saiyan; even his hair was gold now. His ax was also covered with a layer of golden Life Power. "You''re just showing off now! What''s the meaning of this fight then?" The deep voice complained. "Go to hell!" Zhou Xiong shouted while the ground below his feet cracked. He was like a golden lightning bolt as he dashed towards the short man in black robes who was further away. His plan was simple. He wanted to kill the weaker of the two in one hit to avoid being surrounded by the duo. Since they had come as partners, they might be skilled at combo attacks. Therefore, killing one of them could reduce the threat to himself. Seeing Zhou Xiong charge towards him with a heart-stopping aura, the shorter man''s pupils shrunk as he knew what Zhou Xiong was planning to do. He fathomed the threat of Zhou Xiong''s ability as well, so he backed off without thinking twice. When he retreated, a circle of black cloth appeared in front of him. It was the same Dark Shield Monster Skill that Lin Huang had. At the same time, he performed a sigil quickly behind the Dark Shield. Layers of colorless waves rippled behind the shield. Zhou Xiong smirked as he saw the Dark Shield that was forming. He slightly rotated his ax, which was then transformed into steel balls with spikes. He then swung the steel balls towards the Dark Shield. The shield shattered like a piece of glass. Although the invisible waves managed to deflect the impact of the golden ax, it did not completely defend him from the attack. The short man then swiftly placed a metal shield in front of him. The metal shield cracked under the blow while the man shot off like a cannonball and passed through a couple of walls behind him, heading outside the building. Zhou Xiong knew that three defense layers had blocked his attack, thus the impact had not killed the man. Although he did not die, he might not be able to participate in the fight anymore. Zhou Xiong looked at the walls that the short assailant shot out through. He did not bother to go after him and turned around to look at the other black-robed person. He frowned as he saw Wu Sheng being held hostage by the enemy. His body was tied with a flaming chain while the man had a short blade pointed at Wu Sheng''s neck. "Zhou Xiong, two dead bodies for one man," the black-robed person said in his gentle voice. "Two dead bodies? I don''t know whose bodies you''re talking about" Zhou Xiong did not dare to attack anymore as his partner''s life was at stake. "Stop pretending. Tell me now if you want a new deputy director. I''ve limited patience" The black robe person inched his finger slightly and the short blade slashed across Wu Sheng''s neck at a terrifying speed. Blood gushed out of his neck like a fountain. "I''ve broken the aorta in his neck. I advise you not to put your hopes up on his self-healing abilities as the short blade that I''m holding has a non-curing effect. Looking at the speed of his blood loss, he should have six more minutes to live Let me know quick if you want him to live or die." The attacker grabbed Wu Sheng''s head as his voice came out of the voice-modulating shell again. Zhou Xiong thought about it and decided to compromise. The golden Life Power around his body disappeared as he dropped the two bags onto the ground. "You win." "Open the bags." The black-robed person was cautious. Zhou Xiong bent down helplessly and opened the bags, revealing the two dead upper bodies. "Can you let him go now?" "Great!" The mysterious attacker flicked a black glow towards him. Zhou Xiong quickly caught the glow and realized that it was a temporary storage ring. "Put them in and toss the ring back. Thanks!" The black robe person said. Zhou Xiong frowned, but he did as he was told anyway. After stowing the two dead bodies into the temporary storage ring, he tossed it back. "Let him go!" Zhou Xiong knew that Wu Sheng could not last any longer. "Don''t worry, I always keep my promises." The black robe person released the Punishment Chain on Wu Sheng and sped towards the entrance. Zhou Xiong did not chase after him but leaped and appeared beside Wu Sheng. He grabbed him and used his Life Power to seal the wound on his neck. "All doctors, come to the first level right now!" He shouted into the building. "Got them?!" The Purple Crow leader asked as soon as the black-robed man got out of the building. "Yes, get the rest to retreat." He summoned his dimensional relic but soon, he noticed that it was not working. "Bad news. The area has been locked down" "It can''t be. So quickly?" The Purple Crow leader summoned his dimensional relic and realized that he could not set the location anymore. "Maybe the outside world is trying to contact them, but since we have sealed the signal, they noticed that something was wrong after a couple of failed attempts. If I''m not mistaken, the entire White Capital has been locked down," the gentle voice analyzed. "If that''s the case, we''ll have to exit by force!" The Purple Crow leader turned around and looked at the short man in black robes that had been attacked by Zhou Xiong earlier. "Are you alright?" "It shouldn''t be a problem. Zhou Xiong''s attack was powerful, but I prepared for that and blocked most of the impact. Besides, with my Enhanced Regeneration skills, I should be alright. It''s just that my Life Power is drained." The short man nodded. "Alright then, let''s carry out plan B!" The Purple Crow leader affirmed and instructed after confirming that his partner was alright. "Everyone, listen up! We''re carrying out plan B!" The man with the gentle voice conveyed into his device, informing his group. 536 Destruction-Grade Monster Horde! It was 2:30 a.m. The buzzing of his Emperor''s Heart Ring woke Lin Huang up from his sleep. "It''s 2:30 a.m. now. What could be up?" Lin Huang frowned after checking the time. Nobody would be happy to be woken up in the middle of the night. He frowned even deeper as he looked at the notice. It was a mandate. A mandate was a request for help sent by the Union Government to all the Union organizations'' members, recruiting for help in battle when a foothold was in a crisis or came under attack of a large-scale monster horde. Most of the members who received the mandate were either in the foothold of the crisis or somewhere near. The content of mandate was simple. "A large-scale monster horde is approaching the White Capital at an alarming rate. Looking at the situation, the monsters are all at the destruction-grade! All members of the Union organizations that are above iron-level, please head to the south border of the White Capital as soon as possible and prepare to fight!" The simple message was disseminated thrice. "A destruction-grade monster horde!" Lin Huang''s eyes narrowed when he read that. He had experienced how disastrous such a grade of monsters could be. What was scary about the monster horde was not the powerful monsters, but the overwhelming amount of monsters that did not seem to stop barraging, which was suffocating. The monsters were graded from low to high from the violent-grade, the nightmare-grade, the disaster-grade and the destruction-grade was the highest rank. For the violent-grade monster horde, most of the monsters were just on iron-level and bronze-level while some of them were on silver-level, but there were hardly any gold-level and Transcendent-level monsters. For the nightmare-level monster horde, most of the monsters would be on silver-level and gold-level monsters in the beginning, and there would be some holy fire-level monsters as well. The disaster-grade monster horde would have more gold-level monsters with at least five Transcendent-level monsters as well as immortal-level monsters. As for the highest grade, which was the destruction-grade monster horde, aside from a massive amount of iron-level to gold-level monsters, there would be at least hundreds of holy fire-level monsters and even more the ten immortal-level monsters. Sometimes, there would even be imperial-level monsters. Such a spine-chilling monster horde could easily destroy all of the A-grade human footholds. Of course, to an A-grade foothold such as the White Capital, such a monster horde was threatening, to say the very least. "There are 23 B-grade footholds around the White Capital. Any monster hordes that are approaching the White Capital will pass by the other B-grade footholds. If it has already happened in the B-grade foothold, it''s impossible for them not to inform the Union Government who''ll definitely notify us. Since there''s no news about a monster horde in B-grade foothold, the monster horde must have occurred between the White Capital and near the B-grade foothold. Perhaps there''s a Virtual Eye opening?!" The first possibility Lin Huang thought was that, but soon he thought of the prediction ''theuglytruth'' had made online. "Could this be an attack by the Purple Crow and the other underground organization?" As he thought of that possibility, his mind could not get over it any longer. It was not important how the Purple Crow and the other organization drove the monster horde any longer. Lin Huang sat up from his bed and changed immediately. He headed to the south immediately after washing his face. Before he left, he looked at the dorm building. Besides Hong Zhuang''s room and the other two dorms were dark, but the other dorms were lit up. As Lin Huang headed to the south from the Martial Hunter College, he saw many houses that were also lit up. Under the streetlights, many hunters from iron- to gold-level were riding on their flying mounts, heading to the south while some of them were running on their feet. The scene stirred Lin Huang. In this world, humans were in a bad place. If they had not protected each other, they would have died since the beginning. The common people in this world were weak. Even an iron-level monster alone could kill tens of people, and the lowest grade monster horde could kill millions. Without the protection of the Union Government and the other Union organizations, humans would be living in a much worse place. That was the reason why many would choose to join the Union as they could give everything they had to protect their families and friends from being harmed. However, not everyone in the Union organizations was selfless. Most of them joined with the heart to protect others as they were living in such a cruel world. Therefore, whenever there was a monster horde, they would join the battle without thinking twice. They did not want to be heroes. They did that to protect their home. When they joined the Union organizations, they knew very well that if they chose to escape or hide, those who died under the feet of monsters might be their parents, wives, or kids Lin Huang was born on Earth during a time when there was no war. He learned all the knowledge he had slowly when he was living in this world. Li Lang, Yi Yeyu, and the other hunters who had helped him along the way contributed to his mentality as well. If he had not known much about this world, there was a 99% chance that he would have joined the Purple Crow when he had been captured by Hong Zhuang earlier. His perspective of this world would have been so different by then. Besides the importance of the first meeting between people, the first impression of an unfamiliar environment was important too. Just like a city that exuded different feelings to different people. Some people might see the messiest part of the city, and some might be robbed so they would not want to visit the city ever again. However, some would see the beautiful side of the city as well as hot babes with long legs on the streets. That would make them want to visit the city more. Lin Huang''s perception of this world was more of the latter. Although this world was a broken one with many monsters, he had a cute sister with him as well as a bunch of good friends that he had made. His heart was peaceful. "Since Hong Zhuang is away, she must be one of the participants of this chaos But what''s the purpose of the Purple Crow and the other underground organization for starting this monster horde?" Lin Huang did not know what had happened in the White Capital underworld, so it made sense that he was clueless about the objective of this monster horde. 537 Border Pos As Lin Huang released his Life Power to double his acceleration, the light white glow he emitted made him look like a meteor in the night sky. It would not be visible if he were flying during the day. However, he looked like he had a white tail behind him as he flew at night. What he was doing which seemed like he was showing off, making many iron to gold-level hunters on the ground envious. "Wow, I''m so envious of that Transcendent-level who can fly!" A young man in his 20''s in the team made of gold-level hunters looked enviously at Lin Huang who soon disappeared in the night sky. "What is there to be envious about? With your talents, you''ll reach Transcendent-level, the latest by next year!" A middle-aged man riding on a monster''s back comforted him. "We''re old now, so we don''t expect to break through anymore, but you guys are so young. Your future is endless." "Uncle Li, what level do you think the person who flew across was? He''s so fast!" The young man smiled at the middle-aged man''s compliment and asked the leader who was well-experienced. "Looking at his flying speed, perhaps he''s at least an immortal-level," the middle-aged man sighed as he looked at the direction where Lin Huang had disappeared to. "Immortal-level" The other members of the team were impressed. The middle-aged man, who was called Uncle Li, had made the wrong assumption about Lin Huang''s combat level. However, judging from his flying speed, his double acceleration had surpassed the holy fire-level standard and was even faster than many immortal-levels. Although Uncle Li had been around for a long time, it was normal for him to come up with such a wrong judgment. Of course, Lin Huang would not know about that, and even if he did, he would not bother to explain. White Capital was huge. It was 1.5 million square kilometers wide. If it were placed on Earth, it was large enough to be the second largest country on the planet. The White Capital looked like inverted stairs with a wide upper region and a narrower lower part on the map. However, the four borders were of an organic shape. The biggest part in the north was more than 5,000 kilometers while the distance from the north to the south was more than 4,000 kilometers. The Martial Hunter College that Lin Huang was at was located at the center of the White Capital. It was more than 2,000 kilometers from the southern border. With his flying speed, it only took him less than half an hour to get to the southern border. He looked around for the border post. The southern border in the White Capital was more than 3,000 kilometers long whereby nearly a third was flat land. If the defenses were not activated, many monsters could step into the White Capital easily. That was the reason where there were many posts at the border for the Union Government''s guards. Some ordinary people would ask why would the hunters from the Hunter Association or the adventurers from the Adventurer Paradise were sent there whenever there was a crisis in the foothold instead of the army from the Union Government. The reason was simple most of the army was placed at the borders of the safety zones while the remaining ones were placed at the borders of the A and B-grade footholds. The guards at the borders protected the human homes when most of the people were unaware. Lin Huang was looking for a post as most of the Union organizations volunteers would usually choose to gather near the post to fight the monster horde together with the border guards. Although it was 3 a.m. and the sky was still dark, Lin Huang''s powerful vision managed to pinpoint a post that was not far away. He headed there immediately to gather with the rest. A moment later, he landed next to the post. There was already a small bunch of 20 people gathered. Besides them, many others were scattered around other posts. Those who managed to arrive at the border before Lin Huang did not have as fast a flying speed as he did. Instead, they had the location pinned before, and some of them lived nearer than Lin Huang did. He was always a lone wolf who preferred to go solo as he did not want others to see most of his abilities. However, as a destruction-grade monster horde was arriving, Lin Huang did not think that fighting on his own was a wise thing to do as he had witnessed how terrifying it could be. Moreover, besides the monster horde being ''destruction-grade'', he had no idea what exactly was happening as he did not gather more information from the rest. Many of them peered at him as he landed from above. Most people did not bother than he was a white flame-level, but he looked way too young to be this powerful. After all, most of the people who managed to get to Transcendent-level usually came from royal families. Lin Huang was only 16 years old and he looked like he was, at the most, 17. However, this bunch of people thought he simply had youthful looks and that he should be at least 19 or 20. Lin Huang glanced at the people. They were all holy fire-level, and none were on immortal-level. He ignored the way they were studying him and walked straight into the post. Many of them were giggling as he entered the post. There were a man and lady as well as a couple of staff chatting in the post hall. Lin Huang frowned as he saw the duo as he could sense that they were immortal-level. Under normal circumstances, white flame-levels could only determine blue flame or purple flame-levels. However, Lin Huang had killed many immortal-level monsters, so it was not difficult to sense the combat level of the duo. The duo peeked at him as Lin Huang walked in, but they did not bother about him. It was a border soldier who walked to him. "Our directors are speaking to the two masters. You can come back later." "I just want to know what''s the situation right now. Just get someone who is aware of it to talk to me." Lin Huang did not plan to leave, so he gazed calmly at the soldier. Most of the border soldiers'' combat level was on gold-level. Even the directors were mostly complete gold-level; there were hardly any holy fire-levels. Those who managed to get to holy fire-level would usually achieve gold flame-level as long as they were given enough time. None of them would waste their time there. The soldier soon noticed that Lin Huang''s aura was undetectable and he suspected that he could be a Transcendent-level. Looking at his age, the soldier starting guessing his identity as he thought that Lin Huang might have Holy Power on him. He did not dare to delay him anymore. "If that''s the case, Sir, please follow me to the guest room" 538 Partners at the Bonfire Lin Huang sat on a chair as he listened to the border soldier who was talking to him in the guest room. "There''re a total of 32 posts in the southern border of the White Capital. The post that has been discovered is the South Beacon. It''s the biggest post in the south, and there''s a detective supreme relic." "There supreme relic has to be activated using energy crystals. Under normal circumstances, it''ll be randomly activated once a week. It can detect a radius of up to a thousand kilometers which covers half of the southern border. It''ll alert us whenever something is wrong. Of course, an alert will be sent if more than a thousand monsters appear within three hundred kilometers." "Around forty minutes ago, the relic was triggered. When the alert was sent, the South Beacon staff spent a massive amount of energy crystals to activate the relic. That was how they confirmed the monster horde. They informed all of the posts as well as the Union Government headquarters as soon as they found out. After the Union Government confirmed that it''s real, they sent all of you the mandate. You already know the rest" "How did they confirm the scale of the monster horde? Was it with that relic as well? Also, who gave the final say of the destruction-grade monster horde? Is it confirmed that there''ll be many immortal- and imperial-level monsters this time?" Lin Huang asked the questions that he was eager to know after hearing about what had happened. "All of them came from the relic. Not only can it calculate the rough number of the monsters, but it can also differentiate the monsters'' aura. As soon as it detects transcendent-level monsters, it can come up with the exact number and combat level. It has never made any mistakes before." "According to the results sent from the South Beacon, the monster horde this time is massive. There are over 1.5 million monsters from different sources. I heard it''s not the opening of Virtual Eye, but the South Beacon has yet to identify what the cause of the monster horde is. They label it a ''destruction-grade'' monster horde not because there''re so many monsters, but the relic has detected that they are more than three thousand transcendent-level monsters this time with more than a hundred immortal-level monster as well as three imperial-level monsters" Lin Huang was shocked when he heard what the border soldier said. "Thee thousand transcendent-level monsters More than a hundred immortal-level monsters And three imperial-level monsters?!" Lin Huang had never expected such a huge scale of monsters. He started doubting if this was the work of the Purple Crow. If the Purple Crow had really gone out of their way to drive such a terrifying monster horde, the Union Government would have been replaced by them since the beginning of time. "How wide does the area of the monster horde cover?" Lin Huang snapped out of his thoughts and asked. "According to the South Beacon, more than 80% of the southern border is within the range of the monster horde. The monster horde will take an hour and a half to reach the border, but there''re already some flying monsters at some of the posts" Lin Huang got up and left the guest room after obtaining the information that he needed from the border soldier. The two immortal-levels had just finished their conversation with the directors when he got to the hall. The duo peeped at Lin Huang again as he walked out while Lin Huang glanced at them as well. He then walked out of the post, trailed by the duo. "The monster horde will take an hour and a half to arrive here. Should I stay here or should I get to the place where the monsters are already to help?" Just when Lin Huang was deciding, the two immortal-levels flew into the sky and headed to the east. Looking at the duo who disappeared into the sky, he decided to stay. If there were no immortal-level at this post, it would definitely be destroyed once a chief-level monster appeared. Since the two immortal-levels had left, the post lacked an immortal-level, so he decided to stay. Many people started talking about the two immortal-levels who had left while a majority of the holy fire-levels were concerned. They knew about the situation from the border soldier as well. Not only would there be chief-level monsters that were as powerful as immortal-levels, there were even king-level monsters that were comparable with imperial-levels. There were only three imperial-level monsters, so the probability of encountering them was low. However, there were more than a hundred immortal-level monsters. If those were to be divided among the 32 posts, there would be at least three of them at every post on average. Without any immortal-level person there, the post was in crucial danger. Lin Huang did nothing as he watched the insecure people. He could not tell them that he was powerful enough to kill immortal-level monsters. Even if he did, nobody would believe him. As time passed, no immortal-level person arrived. Many of them were in despair, and some of them were even thinking of running to other posts. A few of them decided to leave after giving it a thought. Some of them did not stay as they did not see any immortal-level coming. An hour had passed, and the post was only left with 19 holy fire-levels, including Lin Huang. Apart from Lin Huang, most of them had no expression on their faces. Some of them looked gloomy. Although they know they would die if they stayed, they decided to stay anyway because if there was nobody left here, the monsters could invade right away. If they stayed, they might be able to buy some time for the soldiers. Lin Huang became upset as the atmosphere thickened. He knew that those who decided to stay would probably die. It was the end of November, and despite being the southernmost part of the White Capital, it was winter there. As the sky turned bright, a layer of snow had accumulated on the ground. The 19 of them surrounded a burning bonfire, and the heavy atmosphere was even colder than the weather. Looking at the crackling bonfire, an indescribable emotion mustered in his chest. Lin Huang could not help but breathe out a cloud of white mist. A tall, bearded man sitting on Lin Huang''s left peered at him and the other couple of young men. "Guys, I bet all of you know that this post is at high risk as there''s no immortal-level here. I''m not trying to discourage any of you here, but there''s something that I must say." The bearded guy looked at the young men and said after hesitating. After he had gotten everybody''s attention, he started speaking. "We have three young men here. I''m guessing the oldest of them isn''t even 25. They have the potential to level up to immortal-level or even imperial-level. You shouldn''t waste your lives here. I think you guys should leave and get to a post with at least an immortal-level." What the bearded man said made many of them fall silent, but soon grunts of agreement were heard. "The bearded guy is right. There''s no difference if we have the three of you here anyway. Let the three kids go," another old man with gray hair said. Lin Huang did not say a word. He could see that the two other young men were pausing. "Kids, leave. You guys still have a long way to go. You shouldn''t waste your life here. We''re old, so there''s no hope for us to get to immortal-level anymore. But you guys are different" The bearded man patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. Lin Huang kept quiet for a moment and shook his head while smiling wanly. "I''m staying. If I leave, nobody will kill the immortal-level monsters for you guys." The people were stunned but soon many of them laughed out loud. "You didn''t look like a funny guy." The bearded man patted Lin Huang''s shoulder hard again and grinned. It was not an insulting smile, but a humorous one. The two young men seemed to be much relaxed now and one of them said, "I''m staying. If I run away this time, I''d be guilty for the rest of my life." "I''m staying too. I''ve never seen how an immortal-level monster looks like. I would like to see it." The other young man forced a smile. "Since you guys are so determined, we shall be life and death partners. Let me introduce myself. My name is Ai De." The bearded man raised his wine pot high, took a big swig, and passed it to Lin Huang. "Hi, my name is Lin Huang. Nice to meet everybody here!" Lin Huang was surprised at first, but he then took the wine pot and raised it up. He took a sip like the bearded man did and passed it to the middle-aged man on his right. "My name is Wang Long!" The middle-aged man accepted the wine pot, introduced himself, and passed the pot along All of them then started passing the wine pot around as they surrounded the bonfire. They drank while they introduced themselves. Even the young man, who was not good at drinking, took a big gulp and his face was flushed. Everyone was guffawing at him. Lin Huang remembered all of their names. As the wine pot returned to Ai De''s hands, he took a few sips again and howled hard. "From today onwards, no matter dead or alive, we''re all partners!" Lin Huang was moved as he had never thought having life and death partners could bring such power to him. Suddenly, a horn was blown very loudly as someone shouted from the top of the tower, "The monster horde is here!" "Hahaha" Ai De walked to the bonfire and spilled all of the remaining wine into the fire. The flames roared a couple of meters higher as Ai De took out an ax and smirked, shouting to them, "My brothers, it''s time to party!"Author placed a note saying [Imperial Level] here. 539 Commander Ai De They gazed far into the sky as they saw many monsters flooding in from 20 to 30 kilometers away. The number of monsters was countless; it was just an endless stream of them flying towards the post. The sight of it was suffocating. The people who had been high on their pride earlier became devoid of expression as they gaped at the monsters that were coming their way. Lin Huang looked at the hundreds of monsters in the sky and identified three chief-level monsters. The most powerful one was an immortal-level rank-5 while the other two were immortal-level rank-1 and rank-3. The remaining monsters were all commander-level and their numbers were almost five times more than the number of holy fire-level people posted there. "There''s an immortal-level rank-5 monster It seems like I can only kill it by transforming myself." Lin Huang was still thinking about trying his best not to reveal his abilities. However, it seemed like it was impossible to kill the immortal-level rank-5 monster now. "Those who plan to fight from a distance, get ready. As soon as the monster horde enters the range, work with the border soldiers to fire the Demonic Crystal Cannon! Don''t attack the transcendent-level monsters first. Try to minimize the number of monsters below transcendent-level!" The bearded man named Ai De seemed to be experienced in being a commander as he assigned tasks to everyone. The Demonic Crystal Cannon was a cannon that could be activated using a variety of energy crystals. It could kill any creature below transcendent-level easily, and could even threaten many holy fire-levels. The fire attribute energy crystal was the most effective as it could easily kill white and crimson flame-levels in a single hit. Of course, this could not compare to the range that the cannon on Earth could fire whereby the furthest the Demonic Crystal Cannon could target was only thirty kilometers. It was most accurate and effective when the target range was within twenty kilometers. There were only nineteen transcendent-level monsters there, and none of the Union Organization members below transcendent-level had arrived yet. There were more than thirty border soldiers on gold-level. They had their own tactic of battling as they would fire the Demonic Crystal Cannon from a distance. However, there were not many Demonic Crystal Cannons at this post just twelve of them. While operating the cannon did not need rocket science knowledge, the border soldiers were the best when it came to aiming at the target. Furthermore, there were limited Demonic Crystal Cannons, so there were no extras for Lin Huang and the rest to use. Ai De was once a soldier of the Union Government who had fought monster hordes before, so he knew how important teamwork was in the battle. That was the reason why he wanted the Demonic Crystal Cannon operated by the border soldiers while the rest were to work with them. "Those who aren''t skilled at fighting long-distance, go on to kill the Boulder Beasts that are good at long-distance attacks among the monster horde. After killing the Boulder Beasts, go for the giants that are good at defending. Try not to fight the transcendent-level monsters. Just do your best to buy time as there''ll be rescue teams coming. The more time we buy, the better for us!" The people became calm as they became confident in Ai De as their backbone. They started getting busy as they obeyed Ai De''s orders. Lin Huang gave up on his plan to kill the transcendent-level monsters when he saw everyone following the instructions. After he targeted a Boulder Beast among the monster horde, he started running towards it. Apart from Lin Huang, two other people among the 19 holy fire-levels, who were skilled at long-distance attacking, dashed into the monster crowd. As they dove into the monster horde, Lin Huang summoned Bai, Tyrant, Kylie, Ghastly, the Witch, and Lancelot. He had summoned the six of them as they looked like humans, so the rest would not mistake them for monsters and attack them. He was not so much as worried that the rest would hurt his monsters; he was more concerned that they would offend his summoning monsters and get themselves killed instead. "Kill as many monsters as you can, but don''t bother the transcendent-level monsters in the sky yet. Also, try to avoid the humans and don''t fight them." After his instructions were issued, the six of them dashed into the monster horde as Lin Huang fixed his sights on the Boulder Beast not far away. The Boulder Beast was a psychic monster which was born at gold-level. It was made of black, gigantic rock, and resembled a thirty-meter tall giant man. It had powerful strength and defense abilities with a unique ability to throw rocks to attack from a long distance. When it was ready to attack, it could create a giant rock that was two to three meters in diameter in its hands and fling it up to ten kilometers away. The impact was comparable to that of a cannon''s. Such a monster would usually attack the Demonic Crystal Cannon during the monster horde, so Boulder Beasts were their first priority. The Boulder Beast''s defense level was difficult to break to the average gold-level, but it was nothing to Lin Huang. As he was checking out the Boulder Beast, the monster noticed him nearby. It attempted to stomp on him immediately. He grinned and shook his head, then he pulled out his sword. A white glow shot up into the sky, and the Boulder Beast split from its foot to the top of its head, breaking into two. He had not attacked right away as it was his first time seeing this monster after reading the monster encyclopedia. Furthermore, they were so close to each other, so he had decided to check it out first. He did not expect the Boulder Beast to attack himself and had killed it in an act of defense. After killing the first Boulder Beast without any sweat, Lin Huang flew up into the sky to look for the second one. The Boulder Beast was easy to spot among the monster horde due to its size. Soon, he found the second one and sped towards it like a lightning bolt. This time, there was no delay as Lin Huang killed the second Boulder Beast easily. He then turned around and headed towards his third target In two to three minutes, Lin Huang had killed tens of Boulder Beasts. The transcendent-level monsters that had been observing from above soon noticed him. The leader, which was an immortal-level rank-5 monster, stared at Lin Huang for a while and only started speaking after watching him killing a couple of monsters, "This white flame-level human is powerful. Who would like to kill him?" "He''s just a white flame-level human. I''ll go!" A blue flame-level bird initiated. "Alright, go then. Be careful, this fella might not just be white flame-level." The monster leader cautioned. The bird monster flapped its wings and left the group of transcendent-level monsters while darting towards Lin Huang''s direction. 540 The Appearence of Strength Lin Huang raised his eyebrow as he saw a green bird was dashing towards him. He did not want to offend it but it came to him instead. He looked at it and knew which breed the green bird was. It was a Malachite Feather, a double mutated monster with ancient blood. It had green feathers on its entire body besides its black eyes and blue crest. What could not be overlooked were its giant claws that were half a size bigger than its ratio to its body. From the Malachite Feather''s aura that was completely revealed, it was clearly a blue flame-level. The monster was much smaller than the Fire Phoenix that Lin Huang encountered in the ruins. However, it was not difficult to tell that its amity was much more powerful than the Fire Phoenix. The Malachite Feather''s ability was nothing less than the Fire Phoenix. As it was two ranks higher, it made sense that its ability was much more powerful. Ai De and the rest soon noticed the Malachite Feather that made its sudden landing. Ai De dashed towards Lin Huang''s direction immediately as he saw the Malachite Feather that was dashing towards Lin Huang. He did not think that Lin Huang who was only white flame-level could fight the double mutated blue flame-level monster. "Lin Huang, run!" Seeing that he could not catch up to the Malachite Feather''s speed, Ai De shouted at Lin Huang. "It''s too late to run now!" The Malachite Feather scoffed as he got to Lin Huang. It then landed its claw on top of him, its mind was playing the scene where Lin Huang would be all messed up from its claw. However, Lin Huang looked up and smirked at the Malachite Feather. Seeing his odd smirk, the Malachite Feather''s heart skipped a beat. It then saw a white glow before it as a young man shouted. "Die!" Lin Huang leaped and slashed his sword from its bottom all the way to the top. A crescent moon-shaped white glow shot up to the sky and pierced through the Malachite Feather. The Malachite Feather''s body broke into half like it was torn by invisible hands. Its green blood splashed all over like it was raining heavily, a thick blood mist lingered in the air, disgusting blood stench spread everywhere. The Malachite Feather that was coming strong fell onto the ground like two pieces of meat. Lin Huang stood where he was in the air, there was not even blood on his body. Everyone was shocked to see what just happened. Many were concerned when the Malachite Feather was dashing towards Lin Huang, they were worried that the young man would be killed. They did not expect this to happen. "Killed in a swing of the sword" Ai De and other gold flame-level people thought it was unbelievable, they knew very well that the Malachite Feather was a double mutated monster. Although it was just a blue flame-level, its ability was above purple flame-level. Even the gold flame-level people would take some time to fight that monster. Even Ai De who was stuck in gold flame-level was not confident to say that he could kill the monster in one hit. Meanwhile, the transcendent-level monsters that witnessed that were shocked. They soon realized that Lin Huang was much more powerful than he appeared to be. "Human genius Three of you gold flame-level, kill him!" The immortal-level rank-5 leader looked at Lin Huang furiously before turning around to look at the bearded man to give its second instruction. "All holy fire-level attack, kill all of the mice that are hiding in the monster crowd!" The hundred of transcendent-level monsters spread out as they heard the instruction and dashed towards where the transcendent-level human was. As Ai De wanted to get to Lin Huang as he noticed that the three gold flame-level was dashing to Lin Huang, he had to stop as a couple of gold flame-level monsters were dashing towards him. "Don''t force yourself if you can''t fight them!" He did not forget to remind Lin Huang. As he shouted, he was blocked by four gold flame-level monsters while Lin Huang was surrounded by three gold flame-level monsters. The three monsters that surrounded him was the Triheaded Hound, Ox Fiend, and Witch, the same one before Wicked Witch leveled-up. However, Lin Huang soon realized besides the Witch, the other two monsters were peculiar. The Triheaded Hound and Ox Fiend were different from the ones that he saw on the monster encyclopedia. They seemed like they did not have complete self-conscious. They reminded the monsters that he encountered on Enigma Island where they were only left with killing instinct. Without waiting for him to complete his thought process, the Triheaded Hound and Ox Fiend attacked at the same time while Witch tried to stop Lin Huang with shadow. Lin Huang moved and disappeared from where he was. The Witch''s shadow lost its target while the Triheaded Hound and Ox Fiend dashed into nothing. As Witch was looking around looking for Lin Huang, a voice came from behind. "You guys are too slow." Before he was done speaking, Witch noticed that her upper body slide to the ground. As Witch was killed, the Triheaded Hound and Ox Fiend seemed to lose control and went into frantic. "That''s what I thought" Seeing the two monsters'' condition, Lin Huang was sure of where the monsters came from - The Scarborough Workshop. When he was on Enigma Island, He encountered many monsters that lost their self-conscious like this where all they could do was killing monsters blindly. The two monsters seemed to be controlled by Witch, that was why as Witch was dead, the two of them revealed their true color. "So Scarborough Workshop is the one working together with the Purple Crow?" Lin Huang finally got a clue of what was behind this. As he recalled the prediction of ''theuglytruth'', he was almost sure that the two underground organizations that the user meant were Purple Crow and Scarborough Workshop. However, he was not sure what the Scarborough Workshop was called now. As Lin Huang was deep in his thought, the Triheaded Hound and Ox Fiend attacked him at the same time. The Triheaded Hound opened its mouth while the Ox Fiend swung the giant ax in its hand. The two of them attacked him on both sides. Lin Huang''s sword transformed into a white glow and he swung twice towards the monsters. The both of them stopped moving, four gigantic heads shot out before they could even make a sound. Red blood shot out as far as tens of meters away like a fountain from the monsters'' necks. Lin Huang appeared tens of meters away to avoid getting splashed by the blood, there was no blood on his body at all 541 Killed in a Split Second Again! Lin Huang finally unveiled his true powers for the first time, easily killing the three gold flame-levels as if he was pinching three chicks to death. Again, Ai De, who was paying attention to Lin Huang, was staring aghast. "Is he the Supreme Genius?!" Ai De and the rest had been traveling around everywhere, but they had never heard of a white flame-level killing a double mutated gold flame-level within seconds. Perhaps only the Supreme Genius could do so. After destroying the three gold flame-level monsters, Lin Huang sized up his surroundings. There were more than a hundred holy fire-level monsters that were looking for humans who were hiding in the monster horde. Only Ai De, who had left the monster horde, had been attacked by four gold flame-level monsters when he wanted to rescue Lin Huang. The rest of them were still hiding within the monster horde. "Bai and Kylie, forget the monster horde. Quickly settle the holy fire-level monsters." Lin Huang immediately changed his instructions. Before the transcendent monsters fought against them, Lin Huang wanted to reduce the number of monsters as soon as possible. However, when the transcendent monsters joined the fight, there was a huge number of monsters fighting them as the ratio between the monsters and the transcendent humans had exceeded 5:1. They posed an immense threat to Ai De and the rest. If they were not killed immediately, some of the transcendent humans might die. As soon as the instruction was issued, Lin Huang immediately transformed into a flash of white light, heading towards Ai De. Despite Ai De being powerful, he could not sustain the attacks launched by the four gold flame-level transcendent monsters for a long period of time. Noticing that Lin Huang had transformed into a streak of light, Ai De grinned in exhilaration. In just a short while, Lin Huang appeared at the battleground where Ai De was at. The battle sword in his hand then transformed into a beam of white light and flashed in the air. He then felt that danger was coming behind him abruptly. He immediately dodged thousands of meters away before he turned around and looked at where he had been just now. Two out of three of the immortal-level monsters, who were watching the battle in mid-air, had attacked. One of them was an immortal-level rank-1 Clouded Leopard whereas the other one was an immortal-level rank-3 Mother Arachnid. Lin Huang was familiar with both of these monsters as they had been described in the monster guide. The Clouded Leopard was a mutated beast which speed defied almost any other monster. Its body size was similar to that of an average adult''s arm. It had fur that was snowy-white in color and in fact, it looked cute. However, to judge it by its appearance as a non-threatening monster was a colossal mistake. The adult Clouded Leopard was a mighty immortal-level monster. The sharpness of its claws could be compared to that of the supreme relics. In addition to the terrifying speed it possessed, it could easily pierce through one''s body of the same level. They were ruthless and greedy as they would usually penetrate through the prey''s body, slowly devouring the prey''s internal organs. If food supply were not limited, they would normally eat only the fresh internal organs of the prey. When the prey lost part of its internal organs and died, the temperature of the once-warm internal organs would decrease. They would then stop eating and look for another live prey. On the other hand, the Mother Arachnid was a parasite. The monster was born with a scary, wry face and eight long legs about three meters long. At the end of its stomach was a black poisonous sting which was used to parasitize the host. The habit of the monster was rather similar to that of the Sand Spider. They would capture living beings, and its eggs would parasitize the brain of the prey. The egg would hatch within three days. The spider larvae would then eat the brain of the host, and take over the brain, making the host a puppet that could be manipulated. Aside from its parasitic abilities, its way of hunting for prey was cruel. A type of lethal poison would be injected into the prey via the sting on its stomach. As the poison entered the bloodstream of the prey, it would rapidly dissolve its prey''s blood vessels, muscles, fats, and even bones. However, it would not damage the skin or the fur of the prey. Normally, the body of the prey would turn into a liquid state within three hours. The monster would then extend its straw-like tongue, inserting it into the body of the prey, and suck the liquid out for its own satiation. Only the skin and the fur of the monster would remain. That being said, both of these monsters were certainly not friendly. However, Lin Huang soon noticed something strange about both of the immortal-level monsters. "The Clouded Leopard''s supposed to have black eyes but strangely, it''s green in color. Also, the color of the Mother Arachnid is overly bright. Something''s wrong with their behavior as well. It seems like they are irritated" According to his observation, they got more irritated when their attacks missed the target. It was unusual for the assassination queen, the Mother Arachnid to appear irritated. "Could they be experimental subjects of the Scarborough Workshop?" A thought immediately flashed through Lin Huang''s mind as he pondered what was wrong with both of the monsters. Ai De''s defense became quite clumsy since his enemies were four double mutated gold flame-level monsters. Their combat level was on par with him and they were obviously putting their lives on the line to fight him. Despite the fact that he was experienced, he could barely handle it. Lin Huang soon realized his situation over there. Looking at both of the immortal-level monsters that were blocking his way, a flicker of fury flashed through his eyes. "It seems like the battle has to end soon" "Xiao Hei, use a Transformation Card to increase my combat strength and maintain my human form." Lin Huang used the Provisional Transformation Card as a combat strength increment card. "Using Provisional Transformation Card x1. Restricting transformation effect" "Your combat strength has been increased. There''s a provisional increase in your combat strength to gold flame-level!" As Xiao Hei''s voice was heard, there was a sudden surge in Lin Huang''s combat strength. In less than a second, he was upgraded from white flame-level to gold flame-level. He could obviously feel the increase in his abilities. It was not Lin Huang''s first time transforming, and he could soon adapt to the immense strength. As Lin Huang completed the transformation, the two immortal-level monsters were swiftly approaching. The Clouded Leopard''s sharp claws that were as fast as lightning were about to rip through Lin Huang''s chest. On the other hand, the Mother Arachnid''s spider webs like chains shot out towards him. "Since you came to me by yourself, don''t blame me for being hard on you." Lin Huang grinned, standing firmly in his original position. He thrust his combat sword forward and a golden glow flashed through the air. As the golden glow was released from the blade of the sword, it gave off a dazzling radiance that looked like sunlight, causing everybody to squint towards him. The dazzling beam of glow on the blade of his sword enveloped the body of the Clouded Leopard and the Mother Arachnid. A few moments later, a brilliant crescent light spread over a distance of more than ten kilometers away. Not far away from Lin Huang, two lumps of black powder dissipated into the air as it was blown away by the wind "Oh, a new skill modified from Wordly Purification. It''s quite powerful," Lin Huang mumbled. 542 Yousve Overestimated Yourself At the core of the skill modified from Wordly Purification was the Level-2 sword realm using the legendary-level Star Dome as the general principle. A variety of human and monster sword skills had become the cornerstone of the modified skill. Currently, only one skill was available, and its status was incomplete. It did not even have a name. However, Lin Huang was confident that as long as the set of sword skills could be created, it would be his most powerful skill. In addition, the power of the sword skills would be upgraded and strengthened according to the level of his sword realm and Star Dome as well as the increase in the number of sword skills learned. Lin Huang had used the skill for the first time in an actual battle and the effect was much better than he had expected as he managed to kill two transcendent monsters in one slash instantly. "It seems like I shouldn''t use this skill too often in future. The carcasses of the transcendent monsters are worth a lot of money," he chuckled to himself. Lin Huang looked at Ai De again and noticed that there were several wounds on his body. Based on the fact that he had been attacked by four monsters of the same level, he was incapable of fighting them. He knew that if he did not help out, Ai De would probably die. Lin Huang took a leap and appeared behind one of the monsters that were advancing towards Ai De. It was a monster that looked like a praying mantis. By the time it sensed that danger was coming behind it, its upper torso and waist detached from its body. The monster was killed in one blow and Lin Huang disappeared silently. The next moment when he appeared, he was behind the second monster. It was an Alpha Wolf. It could not sense the danger coming behind it at all. Soon after, Lin Huang chopped off its head. The third and the fourth monster were also killed by Lin Huang within seconds before they could react. Ai De was relieved as soon as he was rescued. He smiled gratefully at Lin Huang and thanked him. He soon became aware of Lin Huang''s extraordinary combat strength. "Your combat strength" "That''s my true combat strength." Lin Huang did not tell him the truth since it was too mind-blowing for a gold flame-level to be capable of killing an immortal-level. Instead, many of the gold flame-level geniuses could do so. Ai De felt relieved as he listened to Lin Huang''s answer. He did not continue to probe. "Continue to clear the monster horde, but it''s better for you not to show up. I''ll handle the transcendent monsters." Lin Huang knew that Ai De was not weak. However, he could not handle the transcendent monsters that surrounded him. "But the one in the sky" Ai De was clearly worried. Although he could not identify the combat level of the monster, he could obviously sense that they were much stronger than the two monsters that Lin Huang had just killed. "Don''t worry, I''ll handle it," Lin Huang comforted him. He felt lucky that aside from him, none of the humans knew that it was an immortal-level rank-5 monster. After killing the monster, he would store its carcass and tell the rest that it was just an immortal-level rank-3 monster. It would be credible as some of the top gold flame-level geniuses could kill an immortal-level rank-3. "Since it''s an immortal-level monster, don''t underestimate it." Ai De indeed had no idea what the rank of the immortal-level monster was. He could only sense that it was much stronger than the other two monsters Lin Huang killed. However, since Lin Huang had managed to kill the two monsters within seconds, it should not be a problem for him to defeat this monster. "Okay, let''s go." Lin Huang nodded. Seeing Ai De return into the monster horde, Lin Huang turned around, lifting his head and staring at the immortal-level rank-5 monster in the sky. It was a female fiend. However, Lin Huang could not identify exactly what type of monster it was. It somehow looked like the Inferior Imp as it also had similar horns. It was wearing a purple armor that looked like a dress with a pair of white, bony wings on its back. Without the bony wings on its back and the strange-looking armored dress, Lin Huang would have thought that it was an orthodox monster. Now, Lin Huang was unsure about that. "Human, you did actually conceal your combat strength?" Right at that moment, the female fiend finally looked at Lin Huang with a solemn facial expression. As he had managed to kill the immortal-level rank-3 Mother Arachnid in one hit, his ability had shone through. However, the female fiend did not think that it would lose. "Regardless of how hard you''re trying to hide your combat strength, you''re only a gold flame-level. Due to the absolute difference between our combat strength, you''re definitely not able to knock me down!" "Confidence is awesome, but I think that soon, you''ll know that you''re being a wee bit overconfident," Lin Huang raised his brows and answered. "It seems like you don''t know the difference between our combat strength" Upon hearing Lin Huang call out its overconfidence, the female fiend laughed. "Should I say that you''re too na?ve or that you''re too brave?" "You''re just an immortal-level rank-3 monster. You''re just three ranks higher than I am. I don''t think that three ranks make that big a difference." Lin Huang intentionally tried to mislead the people. "An immortal-level rank-3?" The female fiend cackled. It thought that Lin Huang had judged its combat strength wrongly, and did not bother to correct his "big mistake" though. "I''ll then show you how powerful an immortal-level rank-3 is!" After finishing its words, it flapped the pair of bony wings on its back. The female fiend appeared in front of Lin Huang in just an instant. Its purple claws then pointed at Lin Huang''s left chest in its usual fighting style which was to grab the heart of its prey directly. Just when its sharp claws were about to graze Lin Huang''s chest, a glow suddenly flashed at a grim speed. Before the female fiend could retract its hand, the beam of light slashed through its wrist, chopping its right hand off. The female fiend growled from the agony it suffered and immediately retreated hundreds of meters away. "You''re wearing a disguise!" It lowered its head and looked in disbelief at its broken right hand. It then gaped at Lin Huang in fear. Lin Huang then raised his arm, placing his sword on his shoulder. He laughed and said, "I told you earlier that you''re being overconfident." "I''ve just underestimated you." The female fiend was not nervous. Its right hand that was chopped off by Lin Huang was regenerating at a speed that could be seen by the naked eye. "I admit that I''ve underestimated you, but from now onwards I won''t make the same mistake!" "No, you don''t understand it even until now. You didn''t underestimate me. You''ve overestimated yourself!" Lin Huang commented rudely as he giggled and shook his head. "I''ve overestimated myself?" The female fiend narrowed its eyes and looked at Lin Huang. Its eyes flashed with a trace of fury. Lin Huang''s act of belittling the female fiend had provoked it. "Little brat, I''ll make you swallow these words before you die!" Just as it uttered those words, the female fiend fluttered its wings again and disappeared from its original position like a ghost. 543 Blurred Blood In mid-air, Lin Huang had crashed into the fiend hundreds of times. Two shadows flickered as they appeared, disappeared, and moved. Each time as they collided with each other, a substantial impact wave was produced, spreading everywhere. Fortunately, it was the monster horde that had not achieved the transcendent level which was affected. The humans were more than ten kilometers away, and the consequences were not significant. There was a strong wind that stirred up the sand, and they had to hide behind the pit. As for those who were on holy fire-level, they had avoided the area where both of them fought and so, were unaffected. The female fiend was different from many of the opponents that Lin Huang had encountered earlier whereby it was adept at ranged attacks. The strength of the pair of wings it had on its back was on par with Lin Huang''s supreme relic, and so was the defense of its armored dress. In addition to that, it possessed the Demonic Regeneration skill. Lin Huang could barely kill it at the moment. Still, the female fiend''s fear was gradually growing as both of them fought. In the beginning, it had been suppressed by Lin Huang, but it was not obvious. As time passed, its opponent''s sword onslaught seemed to have become smoother and it was getting impossible to overcome. It felt immensely pressured as it knew very well that without relying on its armored dress and its Demonic Regeneration skill, it would have died from the start. "The modification of the fiend is successful whereby its abilities are a rank higher," Lin Huang secretly contacted Xiao Hei as he was fighting the fiend, "Its bony wings result in a substantial increase in its attack strength and speed. Not only did the armored dress increase its defenses, it also works well with its Demonic Regeneration too. Its survival ability is improved." "The female fiend is indeed the most successful transformation I''ve ever seen. It is in a state of complete consciousness. Based on the conversation between the both of you, it is obviously different from those with defects that we previously encountered." "Kill it, and you''ll be rewarded with a complete set of the female fiend cards!" "Deal!" Even if Xiao Hei had not said that, Lin Huang had no intention of keeping it alive. Of course, he would be happy to accept the task if he could get an additional monster card as a reward. "However, please help me to retain its memory. I''d like to know if something is going on with the monster horde, the Scarborough Workshop, and the Purple Crow." "No problem," Xiao Hei quickly answered. A thought actually flashed through Lin Huang''s mind as he wondered if he should use a Double Card to obtain two complete sets of monster cards. As he thought about it, he snapped himself out of his thoughts. The fiend was only a double mutated epic-level card. It was not worth using a Double Card for that. Although having twin fiend sisters would look pretty cool, still, Lin Huang chose a rather practical approach. "I''ll only think about the twin sisters when I encounter a triple or quadruple mutated monster. It''s such a waste to use a Double Card on an epic-level card" Since Xiao Hei had promised to reward him with a complete set of cards, Lin Huang''s attack became more aggressive. Soon after, the female fiend could hardly endure Lin Huang''s attacks. Wounds formed on its body, and it could not recover in time even with its Demonic Regeneration skill. The number of injuries on its body was increasing and the load on the Demonic Regeneration skill only got bigger and bigger. The consumption of Life Power was several times greater as well. The female fiend knew that if it did not show its card, it would probably die here. As they collided into each other again, the female fiend flapped its wings and retreated to a safe distance. Soon after, it quickly performed hand seals. "Hmm?" Watching his opponent''s actions, Lin Huang was shocked. It was apparent that it was about to unleash some kind of secret skill. He had seen it before from many of the monsters he had killed, but he rarely encountered monsters that performed hand seals. Before Lin Huang could charge, the female fiend had completed its hand seals. On top of its head, a big shadow rapidly formed. It had a big purple face and seemed like a female mask. It was hundreds of meters tall and an unknown aura spread all over the area. Lin Huang felt oddly oppressed seeing the fiendish face that appeared strong and wicked. "What''s that?" Lin Huang frowned and asked Xiao Hei. The fiendish face looked somewhat like a Combat Soul. However, he could feel that it was completely different from the Combat Soul. Moreover, Lin Huang had never heard of any monster that was capable of exchanging Combat Souls. "It is an image projected due to the Obscure Blood skill. Only immortal-level monsters with strong blood can use this kind of secret skill." "Obscure Blood? What''s that for? It doesn''t look like a real object. It can''t join the fight, can it?" Lin Huang was hearing of such a term for the first time. "For the Obscure Blood skill, there''ll be an enchanting effect on the monster''s blood. However, the enchanted blood has to be powerful. They have to be of ancient blood or dragon blood. Once the blood is enchanted, beginner-level blood power will be temporarily leveled up to mid-level. There''ll be a provisional upgrade of mid-level blood power to advanced-level blood power whereas the advanced-level blood power will be temporarily upgraded to pure blood. If it''s pure blood, the Obscure Blood will coagulate to form a real object, transforming into something that looks like the human Combat Soul. In fact, the origin of the human Combat Soul comes from the obscure object that the monster with pure blood owns." "So, the secret skill of Combat Soul is learned from the monsters. No wonder it looks similar to the Obscure Blood as they can only be unleashed upon achieving immortal-level." Lin Huang had never thought of this. "Does it mean that Bai and Charcoal can use the Obscure Blood skill in future?" "Yes, as long as they achieve immortal-level. The relevant memory inherited will be unsealed, and they''ll be able to learn the secret skill." Just as Lin Huang learned the uses and effects of the Obscure Blood skill from Xiao Hei, the enchantment on the female fiend''s blood was about to end. The faint purple mist spat by the big purple face on top of its head had been almost absorbed by the female fiend''s body. The aura exuded by the female fiend was much stronger and the pair of white, bony wings on its back had turned silver. It was no longer the bony material it projected. Instead, it looked like metal now. Aside from that, there were silver stripes on its purple armored dress, and it looked like it was more delicately made. Other than that, there were no other changes. "It seems like the enchanted blood does have its effects." Neglecting the changes in its appearance, based on the aura it gave off, Lin Huang could still confirm that the combat strength of the female fiend was at least half a rank stronger. Just when Lin Huang was sizing up its changes, the remaining purple mist was completely absorbed by it. The female fiend gradually raised its head up, giving Lin Huang a death glare with both of its red eyes. 544 A Fierce Fight! The aura of the purple-armored female fiend was growing, and its pair of bloody eyes shot a death glare at Lin Huang. In an instant, the pair of silver wings on its back fluttered and it disappeared from its original position. The next moment, it appeared in front of Lin Huang. Its sharp, purple claws covered the entire sky, and they were about to cleave Lin Huang''s head. "That was insanely fast!" Lin Huang''s eyes dilated and he immediately picked up his sword, slashing towards his enemy''s claws. The blade of his battle sword that was shrouded in white Life Power seemed to streak across the water surface, creating ripples in the air. Bang! The next moment, the blade that was covered by the white glow collided fiercely with the purple claws. In the sky, white and purple colors each occupied half of the sky as they crashed into each other at the center of the sky. Although it was barely dawn, a dazzling light diffused everywhere and the sky was as bright as day. The radiating energy spread bigger and bigger, stirring up a robust and fierce gale a few times stronger than what they previously experienced. Even the defenses that were built more than ten kilometers away started shaking as the vibration affected it. Although both of them crashed into each other in mid-air, a large number of monsters that were at about 100 meters away on the ground were crushed into pieces. Despite the fact that it was just the impact of the remaining energy, the monsters below transcendent level could not withstand it. The transcendent monsters and humans quickly flew away as they were afraid that they would be drawn into the fight. The impact had resulted in severe damage, but it had actually lasted for less than a second. The both of them swooped away. Lin Huang landed on the ground stably whereas the female fiend flew even higher into the air. "It has indeed become a lot stronger. Perhaps its combat strength has exceeded immortal-level rank-6." Lin Huang knew his abilities very well. More than 50 days ago, he had managed to kill Yu Wenbin who was an immortal-level rank-5. Now, he was way stronger than that. Without the purple armored dress and the Demonic Regeneration skill, the female fiend would have been long destroyed. A few minutes ago, the female fiend did not dare to attack his battle sword with its sharp claws as Lin Huang had chopped off its fingers before. Although they had regenerated, it had no guts to use its sharp claws to grasp his sword again. It only had the courage to fight Lin Huang with its bony wings. However, as Lin Huang''s sword hit its sharp claws, only a faint white scratch could be seen. He still could not break its defense. Seeing the light scratch on its claws, the female fiend sniggered at Lin Huang, "There''s nothing special about your abilities. You can''t even break my defenses now." "If I''m not mistaken, perhaps the skill has consumed a large portion of your Life Power." Lin Huang did not refute. Instead, he raised his head and looked at the demonic face above the female fiend. "So what? I just want to kill you as fast as possible!" The female fiend was still as confident as before. "Girl, you''ve overestimated yourself again" Lin Huang simpered, shaking his head. "First of all, you won''t be able to kill me but I can''t explain why. Secondly, I purposely forced you to activate such a skill. As long as your Life Power is drained, you won''t be able to heal your wounds with the Demonic Regeneration skill. Performing such a skill will consume your Life Power at a rate at least ten times faster. In order to kill you, the simplest way is to use up your Life Power." For creatures that possessed Enhanced Regeneration or Demonic Regeneration skills, as long as their Life Power was not used up, despite crushing their head, heart or any vital parts, they could not die. There were only two ways to kill them. The first way would be to cut them into more than hundreds of pieces and the second way would be to exhaust their Life Power. With Lin Huang''s abilities, it was not difficult to defeat it. However, it was also not easy for Lin Huang to dismember it into pieces. Therefore, he had chosen the second way which was to drain his opponent''s Life Power. Without any Life Power, it would not be able to complete the process of regeneration. "Drain my Life Power? Then, I''ll have to kill you before my Life Power is used up!" Apparently, the fiend only paid attention to the second reason that Lin Huang had mentioned, but had completely neglected the first reason. It fluttered its wings again and its sharp claws covered the sky. The silver bony wings then transformed into sharp blades, tearing the sky apart and it appeared on top of Lin Huang in an instant. Lin Huang opened his palm and a black beam instantly formed in front of him. It resembled a black curtain that lingered in mid-air, isolating the sky from his head. The fiend''s attacks struck the layer of the black curtain as if they had fallen into the deep sea. There were no other reactions aside from the mild vibrating waves that could be seen on the black surface. A flicker of fear flashed through the fiend''s eyes as its fatal attack could do no harm to Lin Huang. Apparently, it did not expect Lin Huang to use such a defensive skill. Right at this moment, the black curtain fell. The tip of the sword that was glowing with white light penetrated from the back of the curtain straight through the fiend''s head. The fiend''s eyes flashed with a trace of fear and its pair of bony wings immediately dodged the attack. Despite its refusal to die even though the attack struck its head, the Life Power required to recover its injured head would be doubled since it was one of its vital parts. Half a portion of its Life Power had been used up due to the activation of the Obscure Blood. Therefore, the consumption of Life Power needed to recover the injuries on vital parts had to be avoided. Otherwise, the time that it could maintain its Obscure Blood skill would be significantly reduced. Clang! A loud explosive sound was heard as the tip of the blade collided with the bony wings. They were not well matched as Lin Huang''s hit took it by surprise. It was a one-sided battle. The dazzling white light instantly covered the fiend''s body. However, Lin Huang knew that despite activating his Worldly Purification which had the most potent power, it was not likely that he could kill his opponent in one hit. Although he could not see the fiend''s expression as the entire region was covered by the white glow, he could somehow confirm that it was severely injured when it was struck. A few moments later, the white glow in the air cleared, gradually revealing the body of the fiend. It was still hanging in mid-air, but it looked rather clumsy. Half of its silver bony wings had been crushed by Lin Huang''s impact, and part of its purple armored dress had collapsed. Half of its head had exploded and there were burn injuries all over parts of its body that had not been protected by the armored dress. However, the fiend was still alive. Across the wounds on its body, its flesh was growing at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. The flesh kept on growing to fill up the wounds on its body. Half of its head was recovered in about three seconds without leaving any scars. Without the blood stain on its clothes, one would not have known that it was injured. Aside from its body, its purple armored dress and its bony wings were recovering rapidly. Despite the speed of the dress and wings recovering being slightly slower than its body''s, they were completely recovered in less than five seconds. "The effect of the Demonic Regeneration is terrifying!" Lin Huang exclaimed when he saw that. As its body recovered, the fiend glared at Lin Huang ferociously. Lin Huang''s attack had drained more than half of the Life Power remaining in its body. It knew that there was not much time left that it could sustain its Obscure Blood. Lin Huang''s attack had indeed frightened it and it even intended to retreat. As it thought of the consequences of doing so, again, a flicker of fury flashed through its eyes and it stared daggers at Lin Huang. "I''ll definitely die if I attempt to run away. There''s still a chance to survive if I fight him. In order to survive, the only way is to kill him!!!" 545 It’ll Be Fast. You Wonst Feel The Pain In the beginning, the fiend had looked down upon Lin Huang as it thought that he was only a white flame-level that was as weak as a little shrimp. However, it then discovered that he was actually a vicious, man-eating shark as they fought. Without its Demonic Regeneration skill, it would have died several times. Under such conditions, whether its opponent was a man-eating shark or whatever, there was only one choice left - to fight to the death. The chance of surviving was meager if it was to fight to the death. There was still a glimmer of hope at the very least. If it ran away, perhaps it would not even have the last thread of hope of surviving. As the thought flashed through its mind, its killing intent rampaged in its eyes. "Go die, human!" Along with the yell, the transcendent monsters below them went insane and started pouncing on Lin Huang. It had secretly issued a new instruction to more than a hundred of the holy fire-level monsters. Upon seeing the holy fire-level monsters springing towards him, Lin Huang could roughly guess that the fiend had secretly taken control of the monsters. "It has controlled the holy fire-level monsters to come after me Is it trying to buy itself some time?" Lin Huang doubted. Soon, the first monster jumped towards Lin Huang. The body of the bird monster was less than a meter long. Unexpectedly, before Lin Huang could brandish his sword, the body of the monster expanded quickly when it was less than ten meters away from Lin Huang. Lin Huang instantly knew its intention and activated his Dark Shield without a moment of hesitation. The next second when Lin Huang''s Dark Shield was activated, the bird monster''s body exploded. Intense flames gushed towards the sky and engulfed Lin Huang''s body. However, it was not over yet. After the explosion happened to the first bird monster, it was followed by the second, the third, and the fourth All the monsters continued darting towards the direction where the explosions occurred, and soon, booming was heard continuously. Multi-colored beams of flames flashed into the sky. "Lin Huang!" As the sound of the explosion echoed all around, Ai De and the rest were worried. They fixed their gaze in the direction that was covered by flames. "Regardless of how strong you are, you''re still a holy fire-level. The strength of your body is limited and I doubt that you''re able to survive the explosion of so many holy fire-level monsters!" The fiend grinned. It had only thought of this after Lin Huang''s last attack. As it grinned, it spat a mouthful of blood. It felt an intense headache as if its head was about to explode. Soon, its body started to tremble, and the wry face in the sky flickered. Under normal circumstances, despite being the leader of the monster horde, a self-destructing order would not be executed as it did not have the authority to do so. It had made use of the power of the wry face hologram in order to instruct the holy fire-level monsters to commit explosive harakiri by force. Aside from its Life Power having been depleted, its spiritual strength was drained as well. Due to the exhaustion of its Life Power, it was weak and its spiritual strength was overloaded, causing it to suffer from a massive headache. Still, the fiend gave a deathly stare at the center where the explosions took place. "Even though you can defend yourself against the explosions with your Dark Shield, how many times can your Life Power withstand such force?" The fiend adapted to a headache it was suffering from. Again, it looked towards the direction where the flames flashed into the sky with a wicked smile on its face. The fiend''s prediction was right. The explosion of these monsters had indeed troubled Lin Huang. Without the Dark Shield, he would have been severely injured or might have even died. Under the defense of the Dark Shield, the vibration from each explosion drained a significant amount of Lin Huang''s Life Power. About four explosions could drain Lin Huang''s Life Power from one of his Life Wheels. There were ten Life Wheels in his body. Under normal circumstances, he would be able to withstand about thirty explosions and his Life Power would be exhausted. Before the Life Power in his body was drained, he took out a Life Power Refill Card to refill his Life Wheels. To withstand more than a hundred intense explosions, Lin Huang had used up two of his Life Power Refill Cards to restore his Life Power. Even half of the third Life Power Refill Card had been used before the explosions ended. Right until the last holy fire-level exploded, the purple face above the fiend''s head collapsed abruptly, turning into bits and disappearing into the air. Soon, the body of the fiend returned to its original state whereby its silver bony wings turned back into white. The silver stripes on its dress armor disappeared as well and became pure purple. Even the strong aura it exuded returned to its initial strength or was even weaker than before. It felt the weakness from within. With the last bit of Life Power remaining in its body, it barely managed to balance itself in mid-air, boring holes in the direction where the smoke billowed out. The transcendent humans that hid among the monster horde gazed towards the direction as well. They were worried, anticipating the outcome of the battle. If Lin Huang managed to survive the fight, perhaps they could still win the fight. However, if Lin Huang died in the explosions, the humans would undoubtedly lose the fight as there was still an immortal-level monster in the monster horde. Despite the fact that the immortal-level monster was weak, it could still easily pin down more than ten of the humans. However, Bai and Tyrant were not worried about Lin Huang as they could communicate with Lin Huang through their mind anytime. They apparently knew that Lin Huang was not injured. They did not even bother to lift their heads and continued fighting the monsters. "Has it ended?" Lin Huang noticed that after a few moments, no other monsters came after him. Although he did not count how many monsters had exploded, he believed that he was almost there. He stood inside the Dark Shield for a while before removing it. Just then, the smoke gradually cleared and the fiend was waiting for the result of the battle. All of a sudden, a gentle breeze blew by, blowing the layer of smoke covering Lin Huang''s body away. His perfectly intact body was revealed. The wry face above the clumsy fiend''s head had disappeared, and the fiend was staring at him, stunned. Lin Huang grinned deviously. "Are you surprised to see me?" Seeing Lin Huang who was not injured and his aura that was still solid, the fiend went into a trance. As it recovered from its thoughts, it immediately turned around and attempted to flee. As it flew over a distance of fewer than a hundred meters, its body fell onto the ground abruptly, indicating that it did not have sufficient Life Power to sustain it. Even Lin Huang did not expect that the fiend to be that weak. He was about to chase after the fiend when he saw that it attempted to flee. However, he did not expect it to fall to the ground after flying for less than a second. It could not even stand properly now. Lin Huang then appeared in front of the fiend in a flash. As the moonlight shone on the battle sword in his hand, it gave off a cold, flickering glow. "Are you going to kill a girl who''s so weak?" The fiend feebly asked Lin Huang. "If you''re weak, then all the girls in this world are weak," Lin Huang teased. He then said, "Don''t worry, it''ll be fast. You won''t feel the pain" Before Lin Huang could finish his words, the icy glow flashed through the sky. The fiend''s head could be seen in the sky and blood started oozing out from its neck. Watching its headless body, one last thought ran through the fiend''s mind. "I really can''t feel the pain" 546 Removal of Danger As the female fiend fell on the ground, a notification from Xiao Hei arrived. "Congratulations, you have obtained a legendary-level monster card -- Violaceous Enchantress (fiend)!" After storing the carcass, Lin Huang did not even bother to take a glance at the card and flew into the sky. He frowned upon seeing a large number of monsters. At that point, all the transcendent monsters had died. However, the monster horde that was formed by more than a hundred thousand monsters was still big trouble to them. Only a few minutes had passed during the fierce fight and the monster horde was approaching the post from a distance of fewer than twenty kilometers away. The monster horde would utterly drown the human post in less than ten minutes. "Should I use the Small Destruction Card?" Lin Huang frowned as he was figuring out what he should do. Undoubtedly, the fastest way would be to handle it by using the Small Destruction Card. However, if he were to do so, he would be revealing his ability to kill more than a hundred thousand or even a million monsters. "Xiao Hei, other than the Small Destruction Card, is there any way that I can handle the monster horde in the shortest period of time?" Lin Huang had no idea what he should do, so he asked for Xiao Hei''s help. "Among the cards you have, two of the snakes and the apes are appropriate to be summoned during such a group attack. Also, you have Charcoal and Tyrant. Remove the restrictions on their body size. As they return to their normal state, their size will be on par with the giants. Other than that, you still have Kylie''s troop. "Of course, the most effective and secretive skill will certainly be Bloody''s parasitic abilities. With its current ability, it is not difficult for it to parasitize millions of monsters below the transcendent level. The total number of monster there is about half a million. It can easily handle it." "Yes, Bloody''s parasitic abilities! How could I forget about it?!" Usually, Lin Huang would only think of Bloody when an investigation was required. However, he would unintentionally neglect Bloody during a battle. Just like how he used to believe that Thunder was a flying mount and overlooked its ability to fight. This was the reason why when Lin Huang encountered any problems during battles, Bloody and Thunder would fall in his blind spot and would be excluded from the battle by instinct. As reminded by Xiao Hei, Lin Huang then realized that Bloody was indeed an unconquerable executioner in such a large-scale battle. Lin Huang took a glance at the transcendent humans and realized that many of them were looking at him. He then made his way through the monster horde and summoned Bloody. Bloody transformed into a purple snake and tangled around Lin Huang''s left arm. Lin Huang told Bloody about his plan while killing the monsters. "Bloody, we''ve limited time. I guess that we have less than ten minutes left till the monster horde flattens the human post. It''s less likely that you can parasitize half a million monsters now. Can you control part of the monsters to attack the monsters that aren''t parasitized so that there''ll be an internal conflict among them? Or can you please stop the monsters on the front line so that they''ll form a monster wall whereby the rest of the monsters at the back will be blocked?" "I can save you some trouble. I''ll have to parasitize a batch of monsters that will take the lead and change their direction. The rest behind will follow them." Bloody knew those monsters very well. "In such a monster horde, many of the monsters behind actually follow after the monsters in front of them blindly. They don''t even look at the road. They''ll just follow wherever the monsters in front of them go. As long as they change their direction, they won''t crash into the human post." "Is there such a thing?" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. "Yes, since you''ve killed the leading monsters, it''s not difficult to do so." Bloody knew that all the transcendent monsters have been killed through his investigation and he was confident of handling things efficiently. "Hurry up then. We don''t have much time left," Lin Huang urged. "I''ll do it immediately. Please wait for about three minutes and I''ll be able to handle it." After finishing its words, the colorless and transparent Leech Pods dispersed in the air towards the monster horde. After about two minutes, Bloody''s voice was heard again. "The parasitizing process has been completed. I''ll now make them change their direction." After it uttered its words, there was a stir in the monster horde. A few moments later, the monsters surrounding Lin Huang really started to change their direction. Lin Huang felt that it was unbelievable as he witnessed that. He let Bloody hide in his sleeve as he flew down. The monster horde that was heading north suddenly made a turn and was now heading towards the west just like a diverted river. Other than the batch of monsters that had been controlled by Bloody, the monsters following behind them had indeed followed them and made the same turn. When Lin Huang saw that, he immediately recalled Bai and Tyrant into their card forms. He then told Ai De and the rest, "Stop killing. The danger of the monster horde has passed! Come and have a look at the monster horde." As Lin Huang''s voice was heard, Ai De and the rest were surprised. However, Ai De chose to believe Lin Huang and flew into the sky. Seeing the monster horde change their direction, he was startled. "What? What''s happening? Why did the monster horde suddenly change its direction?" He immediately turned and looked at Lin Huang. Lin Huang opened both of his palms and shrugged to express that he knew nothing about it. Ai De did not ask any further and immediately asked the rest of them to stop attacking. Following his instructions, the people then paused and flew into the sky to see what had actually happened. As they saw the unusual phenomenon, the people were bewildered as they had no idea what was happening. "Why did the monster horde suddenly change its direction?" One of them asked Ai De because he was experienced. The rest of them shifted their focus to Ai De as well. "Don''t ask me. I have no idea why as well. I''ve experienced the monster horde three times and it''s my first witnessing such a situation." Ai De shook his head. Right at this moment, one of them asked Lin Huang, "Lin Huang, you''re the first one who discovered that the monster horde has changed its direction. What do you know about it?" "I realized that the monsters surrounding me seemed to have changed their direction while I was killing them. I flew up to see what caused that to happen and found out that the monster horde is heading towards the west." Lin Huang had entirely omitted Bloody''s role. As Lin Huang mentioned that, the rest of them then recalled that the monsters had actually changed their direction abruptly without them noticing. "Perhaps it''s related to the monster leader that you''ve just killed." After falling into deep thought, Ai De came out with an answer. He probably wanted to give credit to Lin Huang. "It''s not definitely so. There might be other reasons that cause this to happen." Lin Huang shook his head. He had caught many people''s attention as he had killed few of the immortal-level monsters. If Bloody''s credit also went to him, he might find himself in too bright a spotlight. "Regardless of what the reason is, the danger we were facing has been overcome. That''s good news as everyone is safe." As the monster horde that headed towards the west was getting farther away from them, the people were relieved. Ai De then shifted his gaze from the monster horde to Lin Huang, sizing him up. "I didn''t know that you have a hidden combat strength. We thought that you were kidding when you said that you''re going to kill the immortal-level monsters!" "Yes, when you said that, none of us thought it was real," another middle-aged man said with a smile. "I was serious when I said that. I have no choice if you don''t believe me." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "Who would believe that a white flame-level could kill an immortal-level?!" The crowd burst into laughter. "But I''m really a white flame-level" Lin Huang silently said to himself. He just smiled at them, remaining silent. 547 The Mission Card Has Been Activated Againnnn! As soon as all the monsters at the post had departed, the people quickly cleaned up the battleground. They exchanged contact numbers and left. Only one out of 32 posts that had encountered danger were settled. The war with the monster horde was not over yet. Lin Huang seized the opportunity to kill more monsters as there was still time for his one-hour transformation. "I''ll probably need to unleash some powerful skills in the following battle. I need to change my face. However, if I disguise myself, those on immortal-level might be able to see through it, let alone the imperial-level" As the rest of them had left, Lin Huang immediately headed towards the next post. He then realized that he had to conceal his identity. He could still clearly recall that Xue Luo had told him about the Small Destruction Card possessing the power of curses. Even the God would be keen on having it and would seize power by all means. He had no idea if the God did really exist in this world, but there was the demigod. He would not be happy if he caught the demigod''s attention. "Xiao Hei, if I were to use the Disguise Card, will I be able to deceive the demigod?" Lin Huang knew that his Disguise skill would not be able to do so. He could only hope that the effect of the Disguise Card could meet his needs. "Yes, you can. Regarding the exact effects, have a look at the card." As soon as Xiao Hei''s voice was heard, a card popped up in front of him. The back of the Disguise Card was golden in color. On the front, there was an image of a colored mask. Lin Huang flipped the card around to read the information. "Disguise Card "Function: After activating the card, you can disguise yourself and take up any identity. "Remark 1: When the card is activated, it''ll be effective for 24 hours. "Remark 2: Within the validity period of the card, you are allowed to remove your disguise. However, the card will be used upon removal, and you are unable to activate it for the second time. "Remark 3: Disguise is not limited to any identity, and it can be any type of living beings. "Remark 4: The strength of aura disguised is restricted. The highest level that the user can disguise as will be demigod level. "Warning: The Disguise Card can only deceive the God or those of lower level. For those of higher level than the God, they will be able to see through the disguise." After reading the description on the Disguise Card, Lin Huang felt slightly relieved. "It''ll be fine as long as it works on the demigod. I''ll be really unlucky if the God finds out about this." "Don''t worry. Under normal circumstances, the strength of this world is unable to bear the presence of the God. The God mentioned is actually the Virtual God. Even if the Virtual God is still alive, he won''t be able to see through the effects of the Disguise Card." "Virtual God?" Lin Huang was hearing this concept for the first time. "Is the Virtual God ranked above the demigod?" "To be accurate, the Virtual God is a level higher than imperial-level. As for the demigod, it''s a special way for the people in this world to address them. It is actually not a level. The so-called ''demigod'' is the imperial-level who has failed to gather the Godhead." Lin Huang had heard about the concept of the demigod for the first time from Xiao Hei. He then asked in doubt, "Since that''s the reason, according to the historical sources that I''ve read in the Martial Hunter College, why is the demigod much stronger than the imperial-level?" "Under normal circumstances, failure to gather the Godhead will cause the Godhead to explode. Their Life Palace will collapse, and their Life Wheel will be broken. As the Life Wheel breaks, their Life Power will be dissipated rapidly and soon, they will die. However, those who are powerful enough will manage to stop their Life Palace from collapsing with some special skills, retaining part of the broken Godhead. Due to the broken pieces of the Godhead that remains in their body, they possess the power of God. Therefore, people address them as demigods. Regarding why they are stronger than imperial-levels, it''s also because of the power of God that they have in their bodies." "Oh, I see!" Lin Huang finally knew how demigod level was achieved as he listened to Xiao Hei. Soon after, many doubts rose in his mind. "What''s the difference between the Virtual God and the God?" "The Virtual God has only managed to gather the Godhead, converting their Life Power to the power of God. As for the God, they ignite the divine fire and own the divine right. That''s what I can tell you, and this not the area you should exploring for now. Stop asking." "Alright" Despite the many doubts in his mind, Lin Huang could do nothing as Xiao Hei was unwilling to talk about it anymore. He kept quiet for a moment, and he thought of something that he had not asked. "Is there any useful information retrieved from the Violaceous Enchantress''s memory?" "Yes, I''ll send it to you. Have a look at it." A few moments later, part of the information gushed into Lin Huang''s mind. He immediately checked on it. After sifting through the information, Lin Huang frowned. "The monster horde is truly man-made!" According to the Violaceous Enchantress''s memory, she and the rest of the immortal-level monsters as well as part of the holy fire-level monsters had been released by someone on imperial-level from the laboratory. The monsters released were divided into three groups and had left together with three imperial-levels that wore black robes. The Violaceous Enchantress''s group was then further divided into ten small groups and had been sent to a moderate danger zone as guided by the person in black robes. The person in black robes instructed them to kill the chief-level monsters in the moderate danger zone. As they had gotten control of the rest of the monsters, the monsters were sent to a place that had been set up earlier where a dimensional shift could occur. Many new monsters entered and the number of monsters grew. The monsters stayed there for about half a day before they were re-released. The Violaceous Enchantress and the rest then received a new instruction, which was to guide these monsters to start a monster attack Lin Huang knew what happened next. "At least three humans on imperial-level joined them From the environment of the laboratory, the Violaceous Enchantress and the rest of the modified monsters must be coming from the Scarborough Workshop. I made the right assumption. The monster outbreak is caused by the Purple Crow and the Scarborough Workshop." Although he could confirm that, there were still many things that Lin Huang could not understand. "However, ''theuglytruth'' said that it''s related to the Saint members. What do the Saint members have to do with the monster attack?" Soon, Lin Huang arrived somewhere near the second post in doubt. The post was more than 100 kilometers away from the first post. Lin Huang had arrived there in less than three minutes without activating his double acceleration. Lin Huang could hear the sound of the explosions when he was still far away. He gazed upon the battleground from afar. The monster horde was less than ten kilometers away from the post, and it was an incredibly intense fight. In mid-air, a few of the immortal-level were fighting the transcendent monsters whereas the holy fire-levels were clearing the monsters below them. "Although there''s a presence of immortal-levels in this post, the condition is even worse than the first post." Lin Huang frowned when he saw the scene in front of him. "I''m only able to overcome the danger at two posts in a short period of time, but I''m unable to overcome all of it in time. There are 32 posts in total. The distance to the south is about 3,300 kilometers Even the imperial-level has to clear the monsters one by one." Just as Lin Huang was wondering what he should do to curb the danger in the White Capital, a notification sound was suddenly heard. "Mission card activated due to special circumstances. "Mission: Kill count exceeds 10 million. "Mission Due: One hour "Reward: Obtain ten million Honorable Kills and three random Reward Cards. "Failure to accomplish the mission before the time limit: you will be punished. Three Function Cards will be randomly removed! "The mission announcement has been conveyed. Please read the back of the card for more information." "It has been f*cking activated" He had just been watching the battle from afar and did not even move. Lin Huang was speechless by the fact that the mission card could even be activated in such a way. 548 My Winky is Gone?! Lin Huang was still a distance away from the battleground. He did not expect to have activated a mission card. "Killing 10 million monsters in one hour? Xiao Hei, are you crazy?" Lin Huang demanded helplessly. "Again, the mission card has been activated due to special circumstances, and it''s not within my control. The mission card is associated with a trigger mechanism. It''ll be triggered if it detects that there''s an immediate event that fulfills its requirements. It has nothing to do with me." "Okay" Lin Huang did not refute as Xiao Hei had shifted the responsibility away from itself. "You''re just forcing me to use the Destruction Card. It''s not easy to draw three of the cards. I wanted to keep it for future use as it might save my life." Although only one Small Destruction Card remained, the region which it covered was limited to only 10,000 square kilometers. It would be unable to include all the monsters on the southern border. Aside from the Medium Destruction Card, Lin Huang could not think of any other way that could clear millions of monsters in an hour. He whipped out the Medium Destruction Card forlornly. Lin Huang had skimmed through the effects of the Medium Destruction Card previously. He could vaguely remember that it covered up to a million square kilometers. He had not gone through the specific information on the card carefully and had forgotten most of the information. The front of the Medium Destruction Card was similar to the Small Destruction Card. There was practically no difference between them. Both of them had a white spot in the sky that released a dazzling white light all over. There was also a dead, burnt, and cracked ground. He then turned to the back of the card and read the description of the card. "Medium Destruction Card. "Function: When the card is activated, it can wipe all the specified targets that are on demigod-level or lower out. It covers up to 100 million square kilometers. "Remark 1: The card cannot be canceled after it has been activated. Please specify the target and region of attack within one hour. Otherwise, the card will randomly choose its target and region. The user is not excluded from being randomly chosen as the target. (Once the user is randomly chosen as the target to attack, the user will definitely die if he or she fulfills the criteria of the destruction card.) "Remark 2: The card is ineffective on those who have the Godhead (or broken Godhead) in their body. "Remark 3: The card is ineffective on those who own the god item. "Remark 4: The effects of the attack are restricted by the user''s combat strength. The particular situation is as such: the maximum combat level of the attack is restricted to gold flame-level for users below the transcendent level. As for holy fire-level users of any rank, the maximum combat level is limited to immortal-level rank-9. For immortal-level users of any rank, the maximum combat level is limited to purple gold-rank. "Remark 5: The user has to be within a 100-kilometers range from the specified region. If the user is more than 100 kilometers away from the specified region, it will be ineffective. "Remark 6: The user is unable to obtain card pieces, a complete card and all other rewards from the monsters killed." "If I didn''t pay attention to the card I might have been killed." After carefully reading the description of the card, Lin Huang noticed the first remark which emphasized that he might be randomly chosen as the target. He was speechless. However, he paid more attention to the fourth remark. "The function of the card mentions that the user can specify all the targets below demigod-level. In fact, this is the maximum attack that the card can perform. The actual effect of the attack is constrained by my combat level. I''m only a white flame-level. At the very most, the attack can only be carried out on immortal-level rank-9. Basically, if its maximum attack is immortal-level rank-9, it''s capable of killing all the monsters in the horde" Lin Huang was quite satisfied with the effect of the Medium Destruction Card. "The attack region is 100 million square kilometers. The southern border has a length of 3,300 kilometers and a width of more than 300 kilometers, so t should be enough to cover all the monsters in the horde." As he confirmed that the effect of the Medium Destruction Card fulfilled his requirements, Lin Huang took out a Disguise Card. "Before using it, I have to disguise myself and change my clothes." Lin Huang gradually landed on a hillside. Nobody from the battleground could see him as the hillside blocked their vision. Again, he activated his Omniscient Nature to observe his surroundings. As soon as he could confirm that nobody was spying on him, he then crushed the Disguise Card. "Disguise Card is activated. Please choose your disguise. Please choose the race that you would like to disguise as." "Human race," Lin Huang chose without hesitation. "Please choose a gender." Lin Huang hesitated for a while. He then grinned evilly. "Female!" He had chosen to disguise as a female mainly because he wanted to avoid anyone relating this to him. Of course, it was also a fetish as he wanted to know how real the Disguise Card could craft his temporary alter ego. "Please proceed with a detailed character design." "Random." Lin Huang did not want to waste his time on creating a face. He was familiar with his behavior from the way he played games in the past. If he were to create his own face, an hour would have passed after he was done with it. "Starting to create the body of the character randomly. Appearance and attire loading The character has been randomly created." As the notification was issued, a mirror appeared in front of Lin Huang. He had become a beautiful girl in a white dress. The white dress was iced with frosty diamonds, but Lin Huang did not know much about fashion anyway. He carefully looked at his face, and he somewhat looked like a mixed-race. The girl had appealing and delicate features. Still, she looked like an Eastern girl as she had black eyes and jet black hair. Her skin was as smooth as white jade, and the dress matched her perfectly. "Such a beautiful woman!" Lin Huang exclaimed. "Would you like to confirm your disguise? (If your answer is no, a face will be randomly chosen again.)" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without a moment of hesitation. After putting on the disguise, Lin Huang touched his chest and grabbed it. "Damn, that''s real!" He touched his stomach through his dress and moved further downward. After a short while, he was stunned. "My winky is gone" "The Disguise Card doesn''t have a disguise effect. It changes the user''s appearance to the specified look!" Lin Huang then understood the effects of the Disguise Card. It was not only eye-deceiving. The user''s appearance had indeed changed to the facade one wished to disguise as. However, Lin Huang did not bother so much about the effects of the Disguise Card. Soon after, he shifted his focus to the Medium Destruction Card in his hand. Without hesitation, Lin Huang crushed the second card. "Medium Destruction Card has been activated. Please specify the type of creatures that you''d like to destroy." "All the monsters." "The target has been successfully chosen. Please select an area." A map then appeared in Lin Huang''s mind. There was the distribution of the monsters. Lin Huang managed to find the southern border of the White Capital. He extended his hand and circled all the monsters in the border. "I''m done choosing the area." "The area has been selected. Are you sure that you would like to clear all the target monsters?" "Yes, I''m sure. Destroy them all!" Lin Huang nodded vigorously. The next moment, a dazzling dot of light the size of a grain appeared on his forehead. It gradually floated up as if it was escaping from his body. As soon as the dot of light left Lin Huang''s forehead, it shot into the sky rapidly. It penetrated through the layer of clouds in an instant. It was too sudden and had caught many people''s attention. They were baffled, gazing into the sky. After a short while, a ring of white light appeared abruptly on the cloud layer, spreading all over the place. It looked like water ripples produced in the sky. It was slightly after 3 a.m. and the sun suddenly appeared, lighting up the night as if it was daytime. As the rippling light ring spread bigger and bigger, wherever the white light passed, the monsters were instantly carbonized by high temperature, turning into powder and were soon dispersed in the air. It happened to a post near Lin Huang. As the ring of white light propagated through the area, the monsters at the battleground turned into powder form and disappeared. None of the monsters were excluded. From levels below the transcendent-level to immortal-level, they were killed before they could defend themselves against it It was mysterious yet wicked. Everybody was stunned. 549 Liu Ming is Back In the skies above the Martial Hunter College, four shadows in black robes materialized abruptly. "Why did you bring me over here?" The Purple Crow leader asked the black-robed man. "To look for someone," he said in his soft voice, and at the same time, his spiritual strength spread rapidly, propagating through every corner of the Martial Hunter College. "The person isn''t here. Lucky guy. Let''s go!" "Can you really leave like this?" Right then, a voice was heard, and a human figure was seen slowly floating up into the sky. "Liu Ming?!" The people could immediately recognize the plump, middle-aged man. "Yes, it is I. Since you''re visiting the Martial Hunter College, I shall play host to you. Please stay." Liu Ming was remarkably calm despite facing four imperial-levels. "It''s not easy to level up to imperial-level. Are you ready to bear the consequences of fighting us?" The soft voice could be faintly heard. "It''s just a matter of victor or loser. I can afford to lose." Liu Ming narrowed his eyes at them. "Can you afford to lose your life?!" A black-robed man yelled and pounced towards him. The rest of them did not stop the man, but they did not help him out either. The man''s choice of weapon was a silver curved blade. As he brandished his sword, the shadows of his sword stacked mid-air, and Liu Ming was drowned in it. Liu Ming took out his thin, black sword calmly. When he waved his sword, all the shadows in the air disintegrated. "Level-5 sword realm?!" Witnessing that single move, a few of the black-robed men turned solemn. Liu Ming simply laughed. He had gained new insights after challenging Lin Huang previously. He managed to break through his sword realm within four months. Also, he got to imperial-level and his abilities had grown more powerful. When he was on immortal-level, he had already killed an imperial-level. Since he had achieved imperial-level in addition to the development in his sword realm, his abilities were undoubtedly even more intimidating. "Back off. You can''t fight him." The soft voice was heard again. After instructing his subordinate, he leaped and appeared opposite Liu Ming. Just when he was about to advance, the black-robed leader''s Emperor''s Heart Ring suddenly vibrated. "Huh?" The black-robed leader suddenly lost focus. The black-robed man, who had represented his leader to fight Liu Ming earlier, wanted to make another assault but was stopped by his leader. "Answer the call first. I''ll wait." Liu Ming shrugged his shoulders. In fact, he wanted to take advantage of any delay. He hoped that the man would linger on the phone longer until the Union Government''s backup team arrived. "Thanks." It seemed like the black-robed leader did not mind wasting some time. He then answered the call. He was wearing a headset and did not seem worried that the rest could listen to their conversation at all. He asked, "What happened?" "Sir, something''s wrong with the monster horde!" A hurried voice was heard. "What''s wrong?" Beneath the mask, the man frowned. "A ring of white light spread throughout the area and soon, all the monsters turned into ashes. I''ve confirmed with two other people, and they saw the same thing. I can''t contact the rest of the immortal-level monster leaders. If I''m guessing correctly, someone has wiped about 15 million monsters out in an instant. I suspect that the God helped them out!" "All the monsters? Including the imperial- and immortal-level monsters?" The black-robed leader asked nervously. "Other than the imperial-levels, all the immortal-level monsters and below have died. I think there''re only three humans and three modified imperial-level monsters left alive." After a moment of silence, the black-robed leader then said, "I knew it. Please buy me some time. We''ll retreat as soon as possible." "What happened?" The Purple Crow leader immediately questioned. "Someone managed to get rid of the monster horde. Only three imperial-level monsters are alive whereas the rest have been killed." After hanging up the call, the black-robed man updated the three of them. "How could it be?" "That''s not our concern now as it has already happened. You may leave first. After killing Liu Ming, I''ll get back to you as soon as possible," the black-robed leader decided. "But, Sir" The black-robed man, who had attacked Liu Ming, wanted to say something but was interrupted by his leader. "The one-way dimension of the White Capital has been sealed. One can only enter but can''t get out. Zhou Xiong will catch up with us soon. Liu Ming isn''t a weakling, and I''m the only one who can kill him in such a short period. Also, I have Mister''s skill. If Zhou Xiong and the rest come after me, I''ll be able to get rid of them. Leave now. Otherwise, you''ll only be a burden to me," the black-robed leader ordered. The three of them then left. Liu Ming was about to wield his sword to stop them, but he sensed that he was gripped with an intense sense of crisis that was fatal and intimidating. He did not dare to move although the three black-robed men were leaving. "Both of us are also using swords. My sword realm''s been stuck at Oblivion-level for a long time. I''ll show you the power of the Void Breaker sword realm today," the black-robed leader cackled. "As you wish!" As Liu Ming uttered those words, he thrust his sword relic forward. At the battleground of the southern border in the White Capital. With sufficient power, the Medium Destruction Card performed a mass culling of all immortal-level rank-9 monsters or lower. The white light that looked like blinding sunlight disappeared on its own and a notification from Xiao Hei was heard. "You have killed more than ten million monsters. Mission completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained ten million Honorable Kills! "You are rewarded with Kill Card x1, Misfortune Card x1, Curse Card x1. Just as Lin Huang was checking out his reward cards, the people around him were discussing the incident that had just happened. "What happened? Did the God just help us out?" The people were shocked. As they looked around, all that lay on the ground were monster carcasses. None of them had survived. Most of them suspected that it was the God who helped them out in the first place. They could not find a better explanation other than that. "Thank God for all the blessings!" Some of them even knelt down and prayed. They felt that they were lucky they were able to overcome this. However, some of them did not feel grateful, such as an Imperial Censor. "F*ck! My summoning monster has been killed!" "Who''s the one who did that?! Three of my double mutated summoning monsters have died!" "It''s not easy for me to get a triple mutated summoning monster I had to save up for several months to get the second one" Lin Huang had indeed neglected the Imperial Censor''s summoning monster when he executed the destruction order. However, he did not do that deliberately. It was because he rarely encountered any Imperial Censor and was oblivious to his presence. It was a disaster for the Imperial Censor. The summoning monsters of all the Imperial Censors who had joined the battle were killed. The Imperial Censors were startled as they did not expect such an accident to happen to them. 550 Giving You A Misfortune Card Although they managed to get rid of the danger of the monster horde, not all the battles had ended. There were still ongoing battles at few of the posts. A tall man was floating in the air at the South Beacon, staring at the black-robed woman opposite him and the giant monster next to her. "If I got it right, you guys started the monster attack to buy the invaders some time. Right now, many of the imperial-levels from other footholds have arrived. In addition to a few of the keepers of the city, there are at least 15 imperial-levels that are looking for your companions. It''s 15 versus four. I don''t think that your companions can survive. "Of course, it''s been carefully planned. You intentionally started a monster attack at the southern border. Even when the rest of the imperial-levels arrive, the people''ll definitely clear the monster horde at the southern border first and won''t have time to handle the four in the city. Unexpectedly, since the white glow instantly removed all the monsters, you guys have no way of retreating. "So, are you going to continue wasting your time here or are you going to give up the companions that haven''t been rescued? Since you''re a woman, I''d like to remind you that if you choose the former, you''ll probably die here." "I didn''t know that the master of the Shangguan family, Shangguan Feng Ao, is so good at nagging." The woman''s voice came through the voice-modulating shell. "Yo, I didn''t know that you''d know me too. It seems like you''ve done your homework." The golden robed man chuckled, "Then, you should know that since you haven''t even achieved imperial-level, you and the imperial-level monster next to you won''t be able to defeat me. "You''re not only good at nagging! You''re arrogant too!" The woman remarked. "It''s time to decide. Do you want to leave or fight?"Shangguan Feng Ao stopped being verbose and issued an ultimatum. "Let''s fight. Stop talking nonsense." The black-robed woman then instructed the imperial-level monster to attack Shangguan Feng Ao. "I don''t feel like fighting a woman" Shangguang Feng Ao swung his arms, clenching his fists tightly and struck a blow. Aside from the drama at the South Beacon post, the imperial-level from the Union Government encountered the imperial-level black-robed man and the king-level monsters at two other posts. They were engaged in a fierce fight. A group of people remained still at the battleground of the post as all the monsters had turned into ashes. Soon after, there were people who recalled that the beam of white light had risen from behind the hillside. They immediately headed towards the direction where Lin Huang was hiding. They wanted to know who had actually killed more than 100,000 monsters on the battleground. They formed a group of more than ten people and looked around. Lin Huang had just finished checking his reward cards and realized that somebody had crossed the hill and seen him. He was definitely not going to come into contact with anyone as a woman. He immediately summoned a white Dimensional Portal and disappeared. Only a minority of them saw Lin Huang''s face whereas the rest could only see a lady in a white dress entering the white Dimensional Portal and leaving. The white Dimensional Portal that Lin Huang had summoned instead of his Black Ink was the item he had obtained from Yu Wenbin''s storage ring after he was killed. The name of the Dimensional Portal was the Golden Wheel, and it was a supreme relic. The door was golden in color, but he changed it to white so as to confuse the public. In fact, after Yang Ling had completed his unlocking and right when Lin Huang had obtained the Golden Wheel, he had found out that there were seven Dimensional Portals of a similar style in Division 7. However, there were more than hundreds of these Dimensional Portals at the core zone. In addition to his feminine disguise, even if the Saint members saw him, nobody would tie it back to him. Lin Huang had only used the Golden Wheel several times before. After removing the locations that Yu Wenbin had previously set, he had only fixed three locations in the Dimensional Portal, and the teacher''s hostel of the Martial Hunter College was one of them. As he strode over to the Golden Wheel, he appeared at his hostel. He was relieved after returning from the fight. Although he knew that three of the imperial-level monsters were still alive, it was somehow beyond his abilities. He also knew that the imperial-level from the White Capital would handle them. As he was about to remove his disguise, Lin Huang suddenly heard the blast. It seemed like there was an intense fight in the sky above the Martial Hunter College. "Why''re they fighting over here?" Lin Huang found it strange as he had no idea what was happening in the city. However, from the force of the impact, he guessed that it was a fight between the imperial-levels. "It can''t be Hong Zhuang, can it?" Lin Huang thought of her in the first place as she had been hiding in the Martial Hunter College. According to what Mr. Fu had said, despite only being an immortal-level rank-9, her abilities could be compared to an imperial-level''s. Both of these conditions matched the current situation of the battle. Right when Lin Huang noticed the battle that was happening in the sky, the black-robed leader, who was fighting Liu Ming, could feel the energy pulse from Lin Huang''s room. Beneath the mask, glee flashed in his eyes. "You came back at the right time!" Forcing Liu Ming to retreat in one hit, the black-robed leader then appeared above Lin Huang''s hostel. The whole building was uprooted in an instant as he smashed the building. Only the bare floor and a few furniture were left as well as Lin Huang who had not removed his disguise. Lin Huang was dumbfounded as he stared at the bright moonlit sky. He could not react to what had just happened. The black-robed man was stunned when he saw Lin Huang in the white dress. The first thought that flashed through his mind was: Did I destroy the wrong house? He looked around. After confirming that he had not made a mistake, he then demanded, "Who are you? Where''s Lin Huang?" Right at that moment, Lin Huang had recovered from his thoughts. As he saw the black-robed man, he knew that he was one of those who had started the monster attack. He was not Hong Zhuang. However, after listening to his question, he instantly understood that the person was coming after him. "Teacher Lin is living in the building next to me. I swapped rooms with him a few days ago." Lin Huang pointed at Hong Zhuang''s hostel without hesitation. The black-robed man was shocked, but he still chose to believe Lin Huang. He extended his hand and obliterated Hong Zhuang''s hostel. However, nobody was there. Just when the black-robed man wanted to ask again, a beam of white light hacked at his back. He immediately turned around and dodged the attack with his sword, then he retreated. A few moments later, Liu Ming appeared at the position where he had been standing at just now. He lowered his head and looked at Lin Huang''s hostel. He was stunned to see Lin Huang in the white dress. "Who are you? Where''s Lin Huang?" "I''m the new teacher who was recruited a few weeks ago. I''ve changed my room with Teacher Lin. He''s living over there, but I think that he''s not here today," Lin Huang told him the same thing because the black-robed man was present. He could not give up his identity. Moreover, he would never want to let Liu Ming know that he had become a woman. "Look for a place to hide. You can''t join the battle." Liu Ming did not doubt the woman''s words as he knew that the college had been busy recruiting new teachers. He chose to protect her in the first place after knowing that she was one of the college teachers. Lin Huang nodded his head and disappeared. The black-robed man thought that he was a passerby and did not pay much attention to him. Nevertheless, he was disappointed. Lin Huang hid behind a building while watching the battle between the two of them. He fixed his gaze on the black-robed man, and a card appeared in his hand. "Misfortune Card "Function: After activating the card, misfortune will strike the target within three days. "Remark 1: The target can be any creature. "Remark 2: The target must be within the user''s range of vision. "Remark 3: The card is ineffective on those who have a complete Godhead. "Remark 4: The card is ineffective on those who own a god item that is immune to misfortune. "Remark 5: The card cannot be canceled after it has been activated. Please specify the target within half an hour. Otherwise, the card will randomly choose a target that is near the user, including the user itself. "Remark 6: The effects of misfortune vary from person to person. The strength of the effect is random, and it will also be affected by the target''s luck." "Hehe, trying to catch me? I''ll give you a Misfortune Card. It''ll bring you bad luck for three days!" An evil smile plastered on his face as he crushed the Misfortune Card. "Target the black-robed man!" 551 The Almighty Surgical Knife Lin Huang had no idea who the black-robed leader was, but he was coming for him, and he was in rivalry with Liu Ming. Moreover, he had uprooted the building, confirming that the visit was an unfriendly one, so Lin Huang activated the Misfortune Card on him without thinking twice. "Since you came uninvited, we shall see what the effects of the Misfortune Card are then." Lin Huang hid behind a building and peeped at the black-robed leader with half his head showing. It was his first time using the Misfortune Card, so he had no idea what the exact effect was. As he crushed the card and aimed at his target, the card transformed into black mist and entered the black-robed leader''s body. Despite his body being encompassed in a layer of black mist, he did not seem to notice. As the black mist lingered around his body, a portion of it went a meter above his head like dark clouds. It seemed like only Lin Huang could see the dark clouds while both the black-robed leader and Liu Ming who were fighting could not see a thing. "What''ll happen next?" Lin Huang was excited as he anticipated the changes. It would not take long to see the effects since the black-robed leader was jinxed with the Misfortune Card like a guinea pig. Black streaks and golden glow collided in the air while endless thunder rumbled in the sky. Although they were fighting thousands of meters above the sky, the Martial Hunter College was shaking from the impact. Energy waves swept the land like a typhoon, and many trees were uprooted. Fortunately, most of the houses in this world were well-built, or else, the houses would have been destroyed from their battle. The black-robed leader did not notice anything wrong with his body. As he fought with Liu Ming, he had thoughts running through his mind. "Lin Huang isn''t in the Martial Hunter College today. It seems like we''ll have to capture him next time. Liu Ming is much more powerful than I expected. It''ll be difficult to be able to kill him in such a short period of time. Without the monster horde, the other imperial-levels should be here soon. Luo Wei and the rest should''ve escaped for quite a distance now. It''s time for me to leave" As the black-robed leader was thinking of retreating, a voice came from behind. "Liu Ming, you''ve finally broken through to imperial-level! I always thought you''d never come this far." The black-robed leader turned around. A silly, old man and a muscular middle-aged man appeared not far behind him. "The Li family" His eyes shrunk as he recognized both of them. "Old Li, you''re still alive! Many people in the White Capital thought that you''re dead since you haven''t been seen for so many years." Liu Ming smiled at the old man. "Nonsense, I won''t be dead before you go yourself!" The skinny, old man called Old Li replied. "You guys have fun. I''m gonna make a move." The black-robed leader took this opportunity to run away. "Where are you going!?" The muscular middle-aged man next to Old Li grabbed the black-robed leader with his colossal hand. The black-robed leader swung his sword in an attempt to scare the man away, but Liu Ming wirled his sword at the black-robed leader. "Old Li, come join me! This guy might be the brains behind all this. Kill him together and extract his brains later!" Liu Ming shouted at Old Li. Liu Ming had said that not because he knew who the black-robed leader was, but because of the fact that the black-robed leader wanted to take Lin Huang away. As Mr. Fu''s No. 1 fan, Liu Ming took good care of Lin Huang. If Liu Ming let the black-robed leader go this time, he might come back for Lin Huang again, so he tried to kill the black-robed leader together with Old Li. "Although it''s sort of bullying, I guess there''s no need to talk about morality since you brought the monster horde to threaten the foothold." Old Li then joined the battle and blocked the black-robed leader''s way. The black-robed leader did not expect the three of them to work together to fight him as imperial-level humans had their pride and would not work with anyone. He thought he could take advantage of that and escape, but he did not expect the three of them to work together to block his way. "So, the imperial-level people in the White Capital are bullies" The black-robed leader teased. "Yes, we are, what can you do about it?!" Old Li jeered while he parried his sword towards the black-robed leader''s face like lightning. The black-robed leader swung his sword to shove Old Li''s sword away from his face. Meanwhile, Liu Ming''s sword dashed towards the black-robed leader''s neck silently. It was so fast that the black-robed leader did not have the time to block the attack with his hand. He then extended his left hand from his robe, golden circles forming on the side of his body. Although the golden circles cracked, it managed to block the sword attack. Suddenly, the muscular middle-aged man dashed towards the black-robed leader''s left chest with his fist. The black-robed leader managed to swing his sword in time. His sword collided with the man''s fist. A resounding thud filled the air. The black-robed leader managed to defend himself from the three of them. Although Lin Huang could not catch their movements, he could tell that the black-robed leader was not on the losing end. "The three of them can''t fight him? He''s so powerful!" Lin Huang was sure that the black-robed leader must be either one of the top leaders of the Purple Crow or the Scarborough Workshop, or else, it was impossible for him to defend against three imperial-levels at once. If it were Hong Zhuang, she would have been dead by now. "He''s using a sword as well" Lin Huang thought of an idea while there was a card in his hand. "Theft Card. "Function: Once the card is activated, you can steal one skill from your target and make it yours. "Remark 1: The target can be any creature. "Remark 2: The target must be within the user''s field of vision. "Remark 3: The card''s effect is useless on complete Godhead creatures. "Remark 4: Can only be used once on each creature. "Remark 5: Please make sure you have a vacant Monster Skill slot if you''re stealing a Monster Skill, or else, the action will fail, and the card will be consumed." Lin Huang smirked as he crushed the card after reading the detailed description. "Target the black-robed leader''s skill!" "The card has been activated. Target is locked. Stealing skill" "Congratulations! You''ve obtained a new Skill Card - Almighty Surgical Knife." 552 Activation of A New Function "Skill Card. "Skill Name: Almighty Surgical Knife. "Rarity: Mythical-level (Pseudo). "Type of Skill: Sword (Special). "Status: Available. "Remarks: This skill is a non-battle special sword skill that''s mainly used for medical surgeries. It can always be used for modification of creatures. "Card Remarks: Comparable with god skill! "A pseudo mythical-level Skill Card!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up as he read the card''s detailed description. Although it was not a combat sword skill, it gave him a medical ability with special creature modification skills. Without hesitation, he crushed the card immediately and added the Skill Card into his slot. Just when the card disappeared from his hand, Xiao Hei''s notification came through. "New skill Almighty Surgical Knife has been detected. The skill can be used fix the system function. Would you like to authorize the skill to read the system core data?" "This skill can fix the system?" It was the first time Lin Huang heard about a skill that could affect Xiao Hei. "Yes, there''s no way for the system to retrieve functions out of thin air. The system will usually have the possibility of obtaining new skills during the upgrade of authorization or under special situations such as absorbing the core source of other Goldfingers as well as what''s happening right now which is fixing the lack of function of the system in terms of special creature skills." "Will there be a new function activation after the system has been fixed?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Yes, I''ve been studying the modified creatures that you killed earlier for a while, but it didn''t manage to activate any new functions as there''s some key data missing. The skill that you''ve just obtained is a remedy to the missing data coincidentally. Of course, without the key data, the missing part will come out on its own. However, that would take years." "Alright, authorizing skill to the system." Lin Huang did not hesitate after hearing Xiao Hei''s explanation. It had been a while since Xiao Hei last activated any new functions. Although Lin Huang had leveled up to holy fire-level two months ago, all Xiao Hei had gotten was an upgrade in its authorization, but not an activation of new functions. "Permission has been authorized. Reading Almighty Surgical Knife''s core data Reading is complete!" Xiao Hei became silent after reading the data, Lin Huang did not urge any further, but he waited patiently as he watched the fight of the four imperial-levels on top. Around three to four minutes later, Xiao Hei''s notification came. "Congratulations, new function Monster Card Integration has been activated!" "Monster Card Integration?!" Lin Huang could not wait to know what exactly this new function could do. "There are two ways of Monster Card Integration: the temporary integration and the permanent integration. The temporary integration is the integration of two or more monsters of the same rarity and combat level. After the integration''s completed, there''s a possibility for a temporary upgrade to a monster of higher rarity and combat level to fight for you "The effect of integration depends on the monster''s bloodline. The higher the similarity of the bloodline, the better the impact of the integration. "The integration period depends on the monsters'' harmony with each other. The more harmonious they are, the longer the integration time. "The more monsters involved in the integration, the more powerful the integrated monster will be theoretically. However, if there''s a monster of higher bloodline repellent in the integration, the higher the likelihood of the integration failing." "The Monster Cards involved in the integration will be sealed in different ways until after the integration period is over, and they can''t be summoned. The sealing time ranges from one to ten days, or even longer. The higher the effectiveness of the integration, the longer the sealing time. If the integration fails, the Monster Cards involved won''t be sealed." "Permanent integration will consume ten monsters of the same rarity. It''s not limited to the monster type and combat level. The Monster Cards involved in the integration will be gone forever while the newly integrated monster will become a new living creature. "The more similarities in the bloodline, the higher the success rate of the integration. "The higher the rarity, the lower the success rate. The integration success probability is as below: Normal to Rare: Success rate of 50%. Rare to Epic: Success rate of 10%. Epic to Legendary: Success rate of 1%. "Legendary to Mythical will consume the Monster Integration Card and the success rate will be random." As Lin Huang read Xiao Hei''s new function, Lin Huang recalled that he had many normal white Monster Cards as well as a couple of rare Monster Cards with him. After leveling up to holy fire-level, those Monster Cards were useless to him as the normal and rare monster cards could not be upgraded to the same holy fire-level. In reality, there were hardly any monsters that never went through mutation or single mutation that could be improved to holy fire-level due to some peculiar reason. However, the standard and rare Monster Cards that Lin Huang possessed had stopped upgrading at gold-level rank-3 under Xiao Hei''s system. Xiao Hei had explained that phenomenon before. "The possibility for normal and rare monsters to level up to holy fire-level is low. It''s much smaller than the standards the system has set. For convenient management, the system has gotten rid of the way of upgrading whereby the success rate is meager. "However, if you encounter such an unmutated or single mutated transcendent-level monsters, the probability of obtaining a complete card is the same with other monsters after the monster''s been killed. However, the monster will only stay on the level that it was in. The most a holy fire-level monster can level up to would be gold flame-level. An immortal-level can only level up to immortal-level rank-9, and it can''t go any further." Compared to permanent integration, Lin Huang was more interested in the effects of the monster integration as it would be perfect for battles. If he could not manage to fight his enemy, he could get a powerful integrated monster to fight for him. All of a sudden, his thoughts that were flying everywhere were interrupted by a loud bang. He looked up into the sky and was shocked by the scene before his eyes. A gigantic golden palace had appeared on top of the black-robed leader''s head. The golden palace door was opened, and a headless body walked out with a massive halberd in its hand. "A dead demigod''s body?" Liu Ming and the rest were shocked to see the headless body. The dead body swung its halberd, rending a hole in the sky like a black scar. There was a bright red glow on top of the gigantic halberd. Liu Ming and the rest did not dare to avoid it. Instead, they defended it because if they were to prevent the attack, half of the White Capital might be destroyed. The red glow catapulted the three of them tens of kilometers away. The black-robed leader scoffed and did not want to proceed with the fight. He stood up, kept his Life Palace and planned to leave. Suddenly, a golden card appeared in Lin Huang''s hand. Lin Huang crushed the card and instructed Xiao Hei, "Activate the Plunder Card and target the black-robed man!" 553 A Bountiful Plundering "Plunder Card "Function: When the card has been activated, you''ll be able to steal three items from the target randomly. "Remark 1: The target can be on any creature. "Remark 2: The target has to be within your field of vision. "Remark 3: Items that don''t belong to the target can''t be stolen. "Remark 4: The card can be used on the same target three times. Each interval has to be more than 24 hours apart. "Remark 5: The card can''t be used on god items and selected items with self-consciousness. "Remark 6: You can''t target creatures with a complete Godhead. Lin Huang did not think twice as he activated the Plunder Card and targeted the black-robed leader just as he saw the person was planning to leave. "The card has been activated. Target has been locked. Plundering in progress" A white glow shot out of the sky as Xiao Hei spoke. The black-robed leader was the focus of the light, including the golden palace and the headless dead body on top of his head. He attempted to run, but he could not move at all. It seemed like his movements had been paused. Next, the headless dead body with a gigantic halberd in its hand shrunk into a red glow and shot into the white light in the sky. At the same time, the sword in the black-robed leader''s hand, as well as his black armor, were taken away by force. They transformed into black and green beams of light and shot into the white glow too. As soon as the three glows disappeared into the cloud, the white glow shot from the sky disappeared. Xiao Hei''s notification came into Lin Huang''s ears. "Congratulations, you have obtained Demigod Dead Body, Air Slicer, and Black Feathered Armor from the target!" The black-robed leader regained his ability to move after the white glow disappeared. He was in shock. "What just happened? Was that God?" Although he could not move, he could see everything that was happening to him. His demigod Dead Body Puppet and two ancient relics, the Air Slicer, and the Black Feathered Armor, had been taken away by the white glow. Without the black armor, his white coat was revealed. Fortunately, he had his mask on, so his face remained hidden. Without his most potent weapons, he did not even plan to retrieve the items that had been taken away from him. He was still stunned. He recalled his Life Palace without thinking twice and escaped far away "Hehe, this fella is such a scaredy-cat!" Lin Huang chuckled secretly as he saw the black-robed leader make his escape. Meanwhile, Liu Ming and the rest looked clumsy as they were chased away by the headless dead body on top of the Martial Hunter College. Although they saw the white glow shoot into the sky from tens of kilometers away, they had no idea what just happened. By the time they got back, the black-robed leader had escaped, and it was too late to chase after him. "Liu Ming, you saw that, didn''t you?" Old Li queried in all seriousness. "That''s the demigod Dead Body Puppet from that battle." Liu Ming nodded as he frowned. "He could drive the monster horde away, and he has the Dead Body Puppet. Could that fella be the remnant of a protoss?" Old Li asked. "I don''t think so. Mr. Fu told me a little about the protoss before. The monster horde that a protoss can drive would be way bigger than this. If it had really been done by a protoss, let alone the White Capital, the entire Division 7 would be destroyed overnight. As for the Dead Body Puppet, he probably got it from the battle ruins." Liu Ming shook his head. "But I''ll let Mr. Fu know what''s happened and see if he knows anything about that," Liu Ming added. "Let''s inform Mr. Fu after the issue has been settled. Should we go after the fella?" The muscular middle-aged man replied. "It''s useless to chase after him. He has that Dead Body Puppet with him. We can''t fight him. Let''s search around for his partners. It''ll be good if we could catch any one of them." Liu Ming shook his head. The three of them spread out after that. Only when the noise had faded away did Lin Huang reveal himself at the dorm. He shook his head as he looked at the dorm that was now destroyed, then he summoned Kylie a while later. Kylie was shocked to see him in the white dress. The usually serious Kylie could not hide her smile this time. "Bring me into the mini world." Lin Huang did not notice Kylie''s smile as he was in deep thought. Kylie waved her hand, and a black wave appeared. The both of them walked into it. Entering Kylie''s mini world, Lin Huang just realized that he was still in his transformed body. He then deactivated the disguise and transformed back to himself. As soon as he transformed back, he reached his hand into the bottom of his storage space in search of his package. "Ahh There''d be trouble if this didn''t come back to me," he sighed in relief. After confirming there were no side effects from activating the Disguise Card, Lin Huang then looked at the items that he had stolen earlier. The three items were now in card form. He took out the cards to read the descriptions. "Item Card: Air Slicer "Type: Sword "Item Level: Ancient relic "Item Description: This is a battle sword that can be used as a surgical knife or a food cutter. "Special Effect: Space attributes. "Additional Attribute: Slicing "Card Remarks: Good stuff "Item Card: Black Feathered Armor "Type: Defense "Item Level: Ancient relic "Item Description: This is just armor. What else do you expect it to be? "Special Effect: Increase moving speed "Additional Attribute: Wings "Card Remarks: Good stuff "Item Card: Dead Body Puppet "Type: Puppetry "Item Level: Demigod relic "Item Description: This is a puppet made of a demigod''s dead body. It requires a massive amount of energy for activation. "Special Effect: None "Additional Attribute: None "Card Remarks: It''s great stuff for your current situation. The only disadvantage is that it''s burning money! "A demigod relic and two ancient relics?!" Lin Huang did not expect to obtain something out of his imagination for the first time by using the Plunder Card. Although he had never seen such a relic, he knew it was an item of demigod-level. Meanwhile, the ancient relics were special items that would only fall out of rare king-level monsters of imperial-levels. They were much more powerful than supreme relics! Naturally, Lin Huang knew very well that it was not by luck that he had managed to get the three relics, but also because the Misfortune Card had been activated on the black-robed leader. His extremely bad luck became Lin Huang''s fortune in turn. "Hmm, it seems like I must activate the Misfortune Card before using the Plunder Card," Lin Huang concluded as he looked gleefully at the three item cards in his hand. 554 Peace That the Lie Brings The day was breaking when Lin Huang got out of Kylie''s mini world. He had no idea if the chaos was over, but at least there were no loud explosions anymore, which meant that the areas nearby were safe. He was upset as he looked at the houses and he missed the flat land. Nevertheless, he felt much better as he thought of the three items that he had obtained from the black-robed leader just by activating the Plunder Card. "Never mind then. I''ve earned something out of my expectations anyway." It was 5.30 a.m. Lin Huang then walked out of the college. There was a store selling sumptuous soup and buns at the east gate of the college. It would usually be crowded when it was past seven in the morning, and they would be sold out before 8 a.m. He had only tried it a few times as the store was closed during the school holidays. The store was managed by a middle-aged couple, and it was said that their child used to study at the Martial Hunter College. They had opened the store since the first year their child enrolled in the college, and they had been there for seven years. Their child became a hunter after graduation. Although they did not need the money anymore, they insisted on carrying on with their business. Many students loved their food which brought the couple immense pleasure. The owners had just arrived not long ago when Lin Huang got to the store. They were busy making the meat filling. All of the buns were made fresh every morning and were limited as they had restricted manpower. They would leave after all of the buns were sold out at 8 a.m. every day. After that, they would rest, which meant that their working hours added up to less than three hours daily. The only downside to that was having to wake up early. However, that was nothing to them as they had gotten used to it, so the work was pretty easy for them. The couple opened the store for lunch and dinner before their child became a hunter for extra income. They worked for more than 15 hours each day. However, they were much more relaxed as they were only open for breakfast now. Seeing that the couple was busy, Lin Huang did not disturb them and got himself a seat in the store. "You''re so early!" The lady boss was friendly. She did not know Lin Huang as he did not frequently visit, so she thought he was a student at the Martial Hunter College. He merely smiled and nodded. "I didn''t manage to get your soup and buns on normal days. Since I can''t sleep today, I decided to come early, but I found out that you guys don''t open this early." "We usually get out of the house past 5 a.m. and get here around 5.20 a.m." The lady boss chatted with Lin Huang as she was preparing her store. Despite her chirpy talk, there was no delay in what she was doing with her hands. "But you''re too early. I''ve just turned on the oven. It''ll take at least 20 minutes." "It''s okay. I can wait." Lin Huang then started reading the news on the Heart Network since he had nothing to do. There was nothing about the monster horde attack in the White Capital on the Heart Network. It was evident that they did not want to panic the people. The White Capital was the No. 1 foothold in Division 7. If people knew that the White Capital had come under siege by a monster horde, that would mean that none of the other footholds in Division 7 were safe. "Nothing on the Heart Network Then, what does the Union Government have to say?" Just when Lin Huang was thinking to himself, the topic named "White Capital Thunder Phenomenon" popped up. Lin Huang tapped on the topic and skimmed it roughly. The article was a fabricated story saying that the explosion in the White Capital in the middle of the night was called the Thunder Phenomenon, which had happened in a couple of footholds hundreds of years ago. It went on further to say that the phenomenon usually occurred in the wild zones and that it was a normal climate phenomenon causing strong gales and shaking on the earth. "What a great made-up story! I''d definitely believe it if I had no idea what happened," Lin Huang laughed at the story. He then browsed for the Thunder Phenomenon on the Heart Network and found out that it had happened in a couple of footholds before. He thought about it and realized that the Union Government had covered up the truth of battles in the past by calling it a Thunder Phenomenon. "People would take it seriously after being lied to for a couple of times" Lin Huang smiled awkwardly. However, it was not entirely a bad thing that the people did not know the truth. Just like the couple who was selling their buns; they had peace in their calm and carried on with their daily lives as they had no idea what had happened. Lin Huang knew that the regular people must be just like the couple. Although they did not know the truth, they were at peace with the lie. Despite not knowing what happened on the Heart Network, many were talking about the incident on the Hunter Forum. However, most of them were discussing the monster horde in the southern border instead of the Thunder Phenomenon in the White Capital. Some of the people who were stationed at the posts on the mountain described the white glow that was shot into the sky to be as bright as the sun when Lin Huang had used the Destruction Card. Some of them even posted photos of the lady of Lin Huang transformed into. They said the lady in white must be the person who had settled the monster horde since she appeared where the white glow was. However, there were differing opinions about the lady in the white dress. Some of them thought she was the one who settled the monster horde as she was the only one there when the rest arrived. Besides, she left as soon as she was discovered. If she were the first one who arrived at the place, it was unnecessary for her to avoid the people who came after her. Some of them figured that the lady in white must have noticed the odd occurrence in the area as she was coincidentally on the way to the post. She might have left since the monster horde was over, and there was nothing worth staying for anymore. Moreover, it was normal for a lady to leave immediately as men were surrounding her and she chose not to talk to strangers. The disputes of opinions caused chaos on the forum, and it did not stop since 3 a.m. It became even more tumultuous when the hunters from other footholds learned about the White Capital being attacked by the monster horde. "Fortunately, I used the Disguise Card." Lin Huang was glad that he had not revealed his real face or else the entire world would be posting his photo everywhere. "Your food''s here." Just as he was reading the debate on the forum in excitement, the lady boss placed a tray of buns on the table. "Thanks, lady boss." He then switched off the page and started gorging on the buns. He had the habit of giving all his attention to his food when he was eating. There were 12 buns on the tray, and it was enough for an average meal. It was past six when Lin Huang was done eating. By then, the store had become crowded. He bumped into two of his students when he was going out of the store to pay. "Sir Lin, that''s early!" The two female students greeted him. "Morning." Lin Huang nodded with a smile. The two students asked him a couple of questions on Sword Dao, and he answered them patiently. "Alright, you guys will need to queue if you don''t go in now." The duo then recalled why they were there and got themselves a table after bidding farewell to Lin Huang. He then left. As his dorm was destroyed, the only place he could go was the 24-hour library. His Emperor''s Heart Ring started ringing when he was at the library around 8 a.m. It was Liu Ming who was calling. 555 Following Up On the Inciden Lin Huang turned on the soundproof barrier in the library cubicle and picked up Liu Ming''s call. Liu Ming looked distressed in the video call, but he was relieved as soon as he saw Lin Huang. "Brother, where are you?" "I''m in the library. Are you back in college?" Lin Huang replied and asked a question that he already knew the answer to. "Yes, I just got back in the middle of the night. I wanted to spend more time on my trip, but I got a notification from the Union Government, so I got back right away." Are you alright?" He asked Lin Huang in concern. "I''m alright, but I don''t know why the dorm has been destroyed." Lin Huang looked helpless, pretending that he had no idea what had happened. "Well, I do know something about that" Liu Ming rubbed his nose as he had witnessed how the dorm was destroyed. "Are you free now? Drop by my office. There''s something that I need to tell you, but we can''t discuss that here." "Sure." Lin Huang nodded and hung up. He flew from the library towards the office building. Two minutes later, he appeared at the dean''s office. As soon as he entered the office, Liu Ming took out a white sphere and pressed the button in the middle. A wave rippled and soon, the entire room was covered in a transparent bubble. "Take a seat." Liu Ming then got up and gestured to Lin Huang to sit on the couch as he sat across him. "What''re you going to tell me that you don''t want people to know?" Lin Huang smiled. "You knew what happened during the middle of the night, don''t you?" Liu Ming asked. "I know about the monster horde in the southern border. I joined the battle as well," Lin Huang affirmed. "What''s wrong? How''s that related to my dorm being destroyed?" "Actually, not only was there a monster horde last night. The city was attacked. Your dorm was destroyed by one of the attackers who wanted to capture you alive," Liu Ming explained. "Capture me alive? Why? Who was it?" Lin Huang fired the two questions that he really wanted to know. "I''ve no idea why he wanted to capture you alive, but I was fighting him. That''s how I know he was coming for you. I have my own assumptions about who the person was, but I can''t be so sure. The only thing that I''m sure of is that he''s a chief-level from one of the top underground organizations." "Do you mean he invaded the White Capital just for me?" Lin Huang frowned. "No, it was just a convenience to capture you. Their main purpose was to get the Saint''s first and second elders'' dead bodies, which they managed to get." Liu Ming did not hide the truth. "How about the monster horde? Was it orchestrated by the same group of people?" Lin Huang asked again. "The monster horde was meant to stop the imperial-levels from entering the southern border while buying time for their partners in the city to escape," Liu Ming explained. After Liu Ming''s explanation, Lin Huang finally understood what had really happened. He had been speculating why would the imperial-levels want to get into the city, why would they drive the monster horde in only to reveal their identity Now, everything made sense. "So, did we get any of the attackers?" Lin Huang frowned. "We killed one of them and captured another while the rest escaped. The one who''s captured has had her identity confirmed. She''s Hong Zhuang from the Purple Crow. She just became a core member of the Purple Crow. Although she''s only on immortal-level rank-9, she''s a dangerous lady" "Hong Zhuang has been captured..." Lin Huang had mixed feelings when he heard that. Honestly, he did not like the Purple Crow. However, after spending time together, he realized that Hong Zhuang was not as evil as he had imagined, but he could not eliminate the chances that she was remarkably skilled at acting. "That lady called Hong Zhuang is just an immortal-level rank-9, but she fought with Shangguan Feng Ao using just a relic. If Shangguan Feng Ao did not have a demigod remnant, she might have escaped from the southern border" Liu Ming kept rambling on about Hong Zhuang and did not notice Lin Huang''s expression. "How about the one that was killed? Who was that?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. He wanted to confirm if the person was from the Scarborough Workshop. "The one who was killed isn''t from the Purple Crow. They''re still identifying the person," Liu Ming said and recalled why he had asked Lin Huang there. "Brother, do you know a lady who wears a white dress?" "A lady in a white dress? What does she look like?" In his head, Lin Huang started making up stories about the lady that he had disguised himself as the night before. "This lady." Liu Ming produced a photo. It was a front-facing photo of the lady that was taken near the post on the mountain. "Isn''t that the lady that everyone is talking about being a god on the Hunter Forum?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow as he looked at Liu Ming. "You don''t know her?" Liu Ming asked. "Of course not. Why would you ask that?" Lin Huang declined. He had thought about his reply if anyone asked him that question when he was in Kylie''s mini world. "But I saw her in your dorm last night. I asked her why she was in your dorm. She said she''s a new teacher and that she swapped dorm rooms with you," Liu Ming explained. "She must''ve lied to you. I''ve never swapped dorm rooms with anyone. I''ve been staying in the same dorm ever since the day I got the dorm room key." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled amusedly. "I didn''t overthink about it that time, but I only realized something was wrong later. I got Old Wang to send me the new teachers'' details, but there''s no such lady after flipping through the documents many times." Liu Ming smiled back awkwardly and nodded. "But why would she appear in your dorm if you don''t know her?" Liu Ming looked at Lin Huang doubtfully. "How would I know?" Lin Huang shrugged. Liu Ming fell into deep thought as he did not get anything from Lin Huang. "Brother Liu, was the lady really the one who cleared the monster horde?" Lin Huang asked softly. He wanted to know what the Union Government thought about the lady that he had disguised as from Liu Ming. "It hasn''t been confirmed yet. The Union Government is still investigating it." Liu Ming shook his head. "To prevent you from getting involved in this, I didn''t tell the Union Government investigator about the lady claiming to know you. Don''t tell anyone anything about this," Liu Ming added. "I understand." Lin Huang nodded graciously as he knew Liu Ming had done that to protect him. "Also, I heard from Vice President Zhang that you were close to Hong Zhuang when she was lurking in the Martial Hunter College. Since she''s been captured, the Union Government might look for you. You can just tell them the truth about being forced to join the Purple Crow earlier. Mr. Fu will handle the rest." "Alright, sure." Lin Huang frowned. He did not expect the news about Hong Zhuang knowing him to spread out so soon. 556 Hong Zhuang’s Reques It was 1 December. Lin Huang initially had class as it was a Friday, but he did not need to teach anymore. His class had been temporarily suspended. The other teachers who were temporarily suspended, including Qin Tianxing, were those who had spoken to Hong Zhuang before. Even Vice President Wang Zijun, who had interviewed her, was suspended temporarily. Hong Zhuang''s identity was sensitive. The Union Government found out that she was not only the core member of the Division 7 Purple Crow but also one of the candidates of the Crow Spirit. Many students and teachers had seen Lin Huang and Qin Tianxing frequently eating with Hong Zhuang at the canteen. Furthermore, because Hong Zhuang got into the college by disguising as Lin Huang''s cousin, Lin Huang was now a suspicious person. They were now being watched by the Union Government personnel and would be interrogated almost every day. They were brought into interrogation whenever there was a new clue, and some questions were repeatedly asked. A familiar knocking came from Lin Huang''s dorm room door that morning. Liu Ming had assigned him a new dorm as his previous one could not be accommodated anymore. Lin Huang opened the door helplessly. There were a man and a lady at the door. The man was tall and skinny. He was almost 1.9 meters tall and wore a gray trench coat. The lady was lanky as well at nearly 1.8 meters with her heels. With her sky-high hair bun, she was no shorter than the man. She wore a beige trench coat, and although her style was different from the one that the man wore, they looked like a couple. The lady smiled as she greeted, "I''m sorry to disturb you again." "Please come in." Lin Huang nodded and invited the both of them to go into the living room. He then poured some tea for the duo. They were the investigators who were responsible for his case these few days. The man remained expressionless. He looked pointedly at Lin Huang after taking a sip of tea. "You know the drill." Lin Huang nodded forlornly as it was useless for him to be pissed. The man was just doing his job. "Name?" "Lin Huang." "Gender?" "Male." "Age?" "16." "When and where was the first time you met Hong Zhuang?" "September last year at the Fog Canyon." "Why were you at the Fog Canyon?" "To kill the Vile Marionette so that I could level up to bronze-level." "You''re saying that you only took a year to level up from bronze-level to white flame-level now?" "Yes." Lin Huang had to admit the fact that he had a terrifying speed of leveling up since the Union Government found out anyway, or else there might be consequences. "Who were you with at that time?" "Yin Hangyi, but he''s passed away." "Who else was with Hong Zhuang?" "Xu Qiang, her partner at that time." "Describe Xu Qiang''s appearance." "He''s very tall. I think he''s 2.2 or 2.3 meters. He''s very muscular, much bigger than an ordinary person. He had a buzz cut and looked like he''s ready to kill. There''s nothing significant on his face. If not for his hulking size, he looks just like everybody else whereby it''s easy to overlook him in a crowd," Lin Huang described as he really did not have much impression of Xu Qiang. He only remembered he was big and had a buzz cut. "So, Hong Zhuang and Xu Qiang from the Purple Crow didn''t kill you when you first saw them?" "No, Hong Zhuang asked me to join the Purple Crow as she knew that I''m an Imperial Censor." "And you agreed?" "Xu Qiang gave me two options. One was to join the Purple Crow while another was to die. To keep my life, I chose the former as I knew I couldn''t escape from the two transcendent-levels that time," Lin Huang explained. "So, you joined the Purple Crow after that?" "I was brought to the Purple Crow training camp, but I escaped after spending almost a month there." "How did you manage to escape?" "I used a relic that Mr. Fu gave me to fake my death," Lin Huang lied as he knew that it was impossible for the investigator to confirm that with Mr. Fu. Even if somebody did look for Mr. Fu to substantiate that, he knew that Mr. Fu would side him. Although some people knew that Mr. Fu had only taken Lin Huang as his apprentice after he left the Purple Crow, nobody knew when was the first time they met. It was not the first time Mr. Fu gave something expensive to juniors that he liked. "Nobody from the Purple Crow came after you since you betrayed them?" "Please allow me to correct you right there. I didn''t betray them as I''ve never joined the Purple Crow. The official steps to join the Purple Crow will be a graduation ceremony from the training camp and you''ll be brainwashed before being considered a reserve member of the Purple Crow. The people in the training camp are only considered captives." Lin Huang frowned as he corrected the investigator as it was not his first time rectifying that fact. "The Purple Crow sent someone to come after me, but I killed them. Mr. Fu knew about this later on and spoke to the Purple Crow leader. Nobody came after me since then." "Why did Hong Zhuang find you after she came into the White Capital? Also, why didn''t you expose her identity and even allowed her to bring a threat to the Martial Hunter College?" "I''ve no idea why Hong Zhuang came here to look for me." Lin Huang stopped and fidgeted. "I know her abilities roughly, that''s why I didn''t expose her identity. The dean wasn''t around, so there was nobody who could fight her. She told me that the students and teachers of the college would suffer if I were to tell anybody about her. According to the Purple Crow''s action model, I know she has her partner with her. Even if Union Government were to send someone to fight her, her partner, who was hiding somewhere, would attack the college. Moreover, she guaranteed that the Purple Crow would not harm the college and asked me not to intervene in her mission. Since there was no harm to us, I chose to keep mum about it." "Why was Qin Tianxing so close to Hong Zhuang?" "Hong Zhuang pretended to be my cousin when she joined the college as a teacher. Qin Tianxing thought she really was my cousin, that''s why he was extra friendly with her since he was told that we were close." Lin Huang did not tell the investigator that Qin Tianxing might have been interested in Hong Zhuang so that he would not get into trouble. After the uncomfortable interrogation ended, the man in the trench coat stood up and stared at Lin Huang in all seriousness as the lady next to him was done documenting. "Lin Huang, Hong Zhuang wants to see you." "What?!" Lin Huang thought that was ridiculous. "She hasn''t wanted to say a word the past few days since she was captured. There''s a special layer of energy guard on her consciousness that makes her mind unreadable. The people in Building 33 tried many ways, but they couldn''t get anything out of her. The only thing she said was that she wants to see you!" The man in trench coat glared deadly at Lin Huang, hoping to see a flaw in his expression. "See me? Why?" Lin Huang had thoughts racing through his mind, but the most significant possibility he could think of was that she might want to use Mr. Fu to get out of her situation. "She didn''t say why. She said she''d only talk if we let her see you." "What if I don''t want to?" Lin Huang frowned. "You must! The only way to prove your innocence is to meet her face-to-face," the man in the trench coat said solemnly. Lin Huang frowned as he had no idea what Hong Zhuang wanted to do, but he did not eliminate the possibility that she might harm him. However, it was clear that he had to see her even if he was unwilling to as the request came from the Union Government. It was useless for him to reject the man in the trench coat now as the Union Government would definitely send someone else later. He might even be brought to see Hong Zhuang by force. "Alright then, I''ll see her." Lin Huang agreed to see Hong Zhuang after some careful consideration. 557 Hong Zhuang’s Story Building 33 was the Union Government''s underground department. It was meant for shady businesses. Lin Huang learned about it when he was in the Purple Crow''s training camp. However, he only knew that the organization was located under the White Capital, but he had no inkling where the exact point was. He did not expect Hong Zhuang to be locked up in Building 33. However, the Union Government did not arrange their meet-up at Building 33. Instead, they were meeting at the Union Government''s headquarters. It was past nine in the morning when Lin Huang followed the two investigators to the headquarters. Standing at the door, Lin Huang could not help himself but to look at the massive building once again. The building was like a giant pillar standing tall all the way to the sky. It seemed unreal as the top part was shrouded in clouds. He had heard from Mr. Fu earlier that the building was actually a demigod relic. Apparently, the Union Government was worried that accidents might happen, which was why the meet-up was arranged at the headquarters. Lin Huang had expected that to happen. He knew there would be more than one imperial-level human watching them. Although he had his mind flooded with thoughts about how things might go wrong such as Hong Zhuang harming him or the Union Government threatening him, he decided to walk into the building anyway. As he entered the hall, he realized that the building was not as luxurious as he expected to be. There were not much extravagant decorations. It was similar to a typical office building. The only expensive decor might be the golden sword in the middle of the hall. The sword was more than three meters long. Although the aura was hidden, Lin Huang figured that it was a demigod relic instead of an ancient relic. He only managed to peep at the sword before he followed the two investigators to the 101st floor by taking the elevator. They were silent in the elevator, and it took them a while to arrive at the floor. The duo brought Lin Huang into one of the rooms. The room was small. It was only 40 square meters large. There was nothing on the three white-washed walls. Dark glass replaced the top half of the fourth wall. Although he could not see the other side of the glass, he knew that there were people watching him from the other side. There was a small metal table and two chairs located across each other in the middle of the room. It was simplicity at its best. Besides, the two chairs were placed in front of the glass wall where no secret gestures could be done as they would be scrutinized. Lin Huang looked at the door and sat on the seat that was closer to the door. As he took his seat, the door shut immediately. He did not turn around. Instead, he sank further into the chair, leaning on his back and closed his eyes. He looked like he was resting, but in reality, he was coming up with answers to possible questions that might arise later. Around five to six minutes later, the door opened again. A somber man in a military uniform brought in Hong Zhuang who was dressed in white and her hands were locked in black chains. As Hong Zhuang sat down, the man placed his palm on the table. A black chain came out of the middle of the table and linked together with the chain on Hong Zhuang''s hands. Lin Huang frowned as he watched that. The man looked at Lin Huang expressionlessly, then walked out of the room and closed the door. "I didn''t expect you to agree to see me." Hong Zhuang smiled as sat across the table. "I didn''t want to come, but I know I can''t decline this." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "So, tell me, what''s the reason you wanted me to come all the way here to see you?" "Nothing, I''m just bored and would love to talk to someone. You know that you''re the only person that I know in the White Capital." "Even if there are still people from the Purple Crow in the city, they wouldn''t have the audacity to come to the Union Government to talk to me," Hong Zhuang added. "I see that you''re still joking around. That shows the Union Government has been kind to you while you''re here." Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. "You''d know what they''d really do to me if I take off my clothes. But they''ve done everything they can. It''s not that easy to get me to talk." Hong Zhuang glared at the black glass with an insulting tone. There were a bunch of men behind the glass just like Lin Huang and Hong Zhuang expected. Even the director of Building 33, Zhou Xiong, was one of them. He glared murderously when he heard Hong Zhuang''s insult. "Don''t take off your clothes. There are people watching. I''d feel shameful even if you don''t." Lin Huang smiled politely as he declined Hong Zhuang''s suggestion. "Let''s talk." "You idiot!" "We shall see who is the idiot when there''s nobody around!" Lin Huang said, but he soon recalled how powerful Hong Zhuang was. He might be the idiot even when nobody was around. Immediately, he felt dumb for saying that. Hong Zhuang smiled and said nothing. "What do you want to talk about?" Lin Huang felt awkward as she was staring at him, so he changed the subject. "Don''t you have many questions? You can ask now, and I''ll see if I want to answer them. But of course, not all answers are the truth." Hong Zhuang leered slyly at him. Lin Huang was happy to hear the first half of what she said, but as soon as she finished her sentence, he thought there might be questions that he would rather not ask. "Alright, let me think about it" "The first question. This has been bothering me for a long time. Why did you insist on me joining the Purple Crow when you first met me? Was it because of my summoning monsters?" "These questions" Hong Zhuang looked like she was recalling her memories. "I was born into a wealthy family more than ten years ago, but they weren''t royalty. They''re an ordinary, rich family in a C-grade foothold. I have a brother who''s two years younger than I am. He was cute when he was a kid. He was just like you. He had dark eyes too. He looked adorable even when he was mad, so I loved tricking him. That happy life lasted until I was 16 "It was winter. I remember it was snowing that day. A Virtual Eye opened near our foothold. It was a disaster-grade monster horde, and the monsters flooded the entire foothold. None of the people from the Union Organizations managed to handle the monsters and they fled. There were even transcendent-level humans who could fly among them. They didn''t even try to fight and they left the hundreds of thousands of people behind. "I was screaming for help under the collapsed house. None of the passersby helped me. All they cared about was to run for their lives. No matter the everyday people or the ''brave'' hunters, the ''fearless'' adventurers, I watched them being attacked and eaten by monsters, so I decided to fake my death. The monsters seemed to be more interested in moving objects. Thus I managed to escape death. "There seemed to be nobody alive in the entire foothold after the monster horde was over. I couldn''t move as I was under the destroyed house. I was famished. I pulled a male dead body next to me and sucked his blood from his neck that had been bitten by a monster and ate his flesh. To fight the cold, I tore off his clothes and covered myself with them. That went on for three days. "On the third morning, a man in a black trench coat found me. He told me that I had potential judging from my survival skill and asked if I would like to join the organization that he was in. I told him that I''d rather die if it were one of the Union Organizations. He then smiled and asked me if I heard of a creature called the Purple Crow. I shook my head. He then explained to me that the Purple Crow was a weak bird monster in the abyss. Although it was weak, it was fearless and courageous. They would attack the prey''s eyes when they hunted in groups, then drill into the prey''s eyeball and eat the brains, killing it. Monsters of all sizes couldn''t scare them. He asked me if I would like to join the Purple Crow. I agreed to without thinking twice. "My spine was broken. I was paralyzed from the bottom down when he saved me from the destroyed house. I wanted to get him to save my parents and brother, but he told me that there was nobody else alive in the entire foothold. I was the only human that was still alive that he found. I didn''t believe him, so he moved the debris, and I saw my parents'' cold dead bodies, but I couldn''t find my brother. "I followed him back to the Purple Crow, fixed my spine, and joined the training camp, then became a reserve member. I then became an official member, an elite member, and now a core member. Throughout the years, I didn''t stop looking for my brother. Perhaps he''s dead, but I can''t move on. Until I met you last year, I felt that I see so much of him in you, so I used the excuse to get you into the Purple Crow. However, I didn''t expect you to fake your death and escape" Lin Huang became silent after hearing Hong Zhuang''s story. He always thought that she had treated him differently, now he finally understood why. "How was it? Isn''t my story good? Doesn''t it sound real?" Hong Zhuang grinned and asked. "You made that up?" Lin Huang was shocked. "Of course, I made that up," Hong Zhuang chuckled. "The real reason why I wanted you to join the Purple Crow was simple. The speed of your leveling up is faster than anybody else''s. The summoning monsters that you own seem to be more powerful than the those owned by other Imperial Censors. I heard that you''re hiding a big secret. I want to know what that is." "Erm" Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat. He did not expect her to have such sharp instincts. "Too bad there''s no way for you to find out what that secret is anymore," Lin Huang thought to himself. "What else do you want to ask? Ask now. You won''t get the chance to after today." Hong Zhuang smiled at him. "Alright then, the second question" 558 Hong Zhuang’s Final Letter "The disaster-grade monster horde ten years ago" Lin Huang made some searched about the monster horde once he got back to his dorm. Hong Zhuang had given him many answers to his questions during the Union Government''s interrogation. Although she answered his questions in detail, it was up to him to find out if she had told the truth. What was most impressive to Lin Huang was the first story that she had told him. It was her own story, and it did not sound like it had been fabricated as some of the details were personal. She would not have been able to make it up if she did not experience that. He could not imagine her despair when she was stuck under the destroyed house and had to eat a dead body. The last thing Hong Zhuang said before leaving the room was in a carefree tone. "It''s impossible for me to leave Building 33 alive. You''re the only person that I know in the White Capital. Please pick my dead body up when I die." Lin Huang''s heart plummeted when he heard that. As he returned to the dorm, he could not help but feel curious. He wanted to find out if what Hong Zhuang said was real. "It was winter 10 to 20 years ago. There was a Virtual Eye that opened near a C-grade foothold with a disaster-grade monster horde," Lin Huang concluded and started searching on the Heart Network. He found his answer a few minutes later. "Two disaster-grade monster hordes happened in the entire Division 7 during that time. The one that matched what Hong Zhuang said with the opening of Virtual Eye and that particular season was foothold No. 7C125 in Hongling City. "It was destroyed in the monster horde 13 years ago. In less than half a day, all of the 800,000 population was dead. Nobody survived." The disaster that happened in Hongling City was exactly the same as what Hong Zhuang had described. There were even photos of the disaster taken by the media. It was an obliterated city covered in snow. All of the buildings were damaged. Although the snow had covered the gruesome blood on the ground, there were dead bodies strewn everywhere. Within hours, the lively foothold was destroyed by the catastrophic attack. The photos made Lin Huang recall the time when he had just traveled to this world last year. That day was the first time he realized how cruel this world was after reading about the aftermath of the monster horde. It seemed like his determination to get more powerful grew from that day on. "I''m still not powerful enough" Looking at the disastrous photo, he recalled being forced to see Hong Zhuang today. He was feeling more and more insecure. "Even a holy fire-level, an immortal-level, and an imperial-level aren''t powerful enough. It seems like one will only be invincible when he becomes a god in this world!" It was noon when Lin Huang was done reading about Hongling City. Just when he was getting ready to head out for lunch, his Emperor''s Heart Ring started buzzing. It was Liu Ming who was calling. "Have you gotten back from the Union Government?" Liu Ming asked directly after he picked up. "I''m at the college now. I''m just heading out for lunch." "The case is being investigated. I heard Hong Zhuang has finally spoken. The Union Government investigators and monitoring personnel have left." Liu Ming gave him a piece of good news. "Go for lunch first. Come to No. 101 battle training ground after that." "Sure, I''ll be there soon," Lin Huang agreed without thinking twice. Liu Ming was an expert in Sword Dao, and he had broken through imperial-level now. He should have broken through Sword Dao as well or else he would not have come back to the White Capital. To him, Liu Ming was the best person to train with. After lunch, Lin Huang headed straight to the battle training ground. When he got there, the door was wide open. Upon entering, Liu Ming was standing in the middle of the ground waiting for him. He locked the door and dashed towards Liu Ming. "Bro, aren''t we training today?" Lin Huang noticed that Liu Ming did not have his sword with him when he walked closer. Liu Ming sighed and took something out of his storage space, then passed it to Lin Huang. "What''s this?" Lin Huang thought it was odd that Liu Ming was passing him a Kraft paper envelope, but he took it anyway. "Hong Zhuang left this letter in my office drawer. I''ve been hesitating to give it to you the past few days. I even consulted Mr. Fu, and he suggested letting you decide about this. I''ve thought about it. Hong Zhuang wanted me to pass this to you. It''s inappropriate for me to keep it with me, and you have the right to know." Liu Ming explained where the envelope had come from, but he did not say what was in it. "Take a look yourself." Lin Huang opened the envelope and took out a folded paper. It seemed to be a letter. "Hong Zhuang left me a letter?" Lin Huang frowned as he opened unfolded the paper. There was nothing much on the two pages, but it took him almost ten minutes to read it carefully. Although the content was limited, it reminded Lin Huang how powerful Hong Zhuang was. She entered the Martial Hunter College, left this letter in Liu Ming''s office, created the monster horde and even staged her capture. Everything had been part of her plan whereby she took every detail into accurate consideration. She came up with this plan to escape from the Purple Crow, and she managed to achieve her goal. The reason why she planned all this was because she did not want to be a Crow Spirit. From her letter, Lin Huang realized how powerful a Crow Spirit was in the Purple Crow. The Crow Spirit was not a formal designation in the Purple Crow but was a lessor of the world. As soon as one became a Crow Spirit, her self-consciousness would be taken away by the Crow God''s will and her body would become the Crow God''s temporary refuge. It was the spirit transfer that was always mentioned in novels. However, because the Crow Spirit was too powerful, it would be damaging for its body to be trapped in another body, so the body could only be used for 10 to 20 years. When the time was up, the vessel needed to be replaced. The Purple Crow would select a new Crow Spirit now and then. Initially, Hong Zhuang was proud that she was being chosen as the Crow Spirit was an honor. However, the Crow Leader, who brought her into the organization, told her about the truth that nobody knew besides her and the leader himself. That prompted her to plan the mission. She wrote this at the end of the letter. "The Purple Crow has treated me well all these years, but I can''t accept myself being a zombie and somebody''s puppet after I die. My soul won''t find peace even after I''m dead. To get away from the Purple Crow, I had to plan this so that I could be a free soul after I die. "I have transferred all the valuables from my Emperor''s Heart Ring to a fake Emperor''s Heart Ring belonging to a ''Zhuang Hong''. They''re yours now. I only have one request. Please burn my body after I''m dead and scatter my ashes into the Eastern Ocean. It was the place where my brother wanted to go when he was younger. If he''s not in this world anymore, his soul must be wandering over there. I hope I could wander with him. "Lastly, my real name is Zhuang Yuer and my brother''s name was Zhuang Hong. I turned his name backward and used it as mine when I got into the Purple Crow. He was probably killed during that monster horde. He was probably eaten by the monsters since his body could not be found. For the past 13 years, I''ve been looking around for him, but all I got was disappointment But if he''s still alive and if you ever see him, please tell him that I never gave up looking for him" 559 Can’t Think of A Good Title... Lin Huang completely changed his perception towards Hong Zhuang after reading the letter that she had written to him. He always thought that she was sly, unpredictable, and a devil who would do anything to get what she wanted. She was like a beautiful snake demon with a dangerous aura on her. However, the letter gave Lin Huang an utterly different perception about Hong Zhuang. At least, she sounded like an ordinary lady made of blood and flesh in the letter. She loved her brother. She had never given up looking for Zhuang Hong for the past 13 years. She even reflected her love that she had for her brother on Lin Huang. He whooshed out a long breath after reading the letter and looked at the envelope that was slightly bulging. There was an Emperor''s Heart Ring in there. He immediately recognized that it was the ring that Hong Zhuang was wearing when she was in the Martial Hunter College. "She''s quite a pitiful lady actually. It''s just that she has bad luck..." Liu Ming said as he noticed Lin Huang was silent after reading the letter. "Yeah..." Lin Huang thought what happened to her was a pity. If someone were to save her from her situation 13 years ago, her life might be completely different. Perhaps she might be one of the Union Government or Hunter Association members. It was unfortunate that fate had sent her into the endless abyss. Lin Huang felt lucky that he had met Li Lang, Yi Yeyu, and the rest who were kind to him when he arrived in this world. "I didn''t want to give you the letter as I thought Hong Zhuang is such a terrifying woman. Her planning is flawless. She even predicted that you''d be investigated, so she slipped the letter in my drawer. Not only did she know nobody would check my office, she even considered my relationship with Mr. Fu. In reality, not many people knew what Mr. Fu said to me." "Initially, I thought she might use this letter to threaten you. Besides, I thought knowing this might not be useful to you. Instead, it might even bring trouble to you, so I had been hesitating if I should give you the letter," Liu Ming explained why he had kept the letter for so many days before giving it to Lin Huang. "Although this letter won''t bring any benefits to me, now I know what exactly happened and some of the answers to the questions that I didn''t understand before. Thank you, brother." Lin Huang nodded to show that he understood. "Whether what the letter says is the truth or not, you must know this. As long as Hong Zhuang is still alive, she still belongs to the Purple Crow." Liu Ming looked at Lin Huang in all seriousness. "I know." Lin Huang knew what Liu Ming said was to remind him that Hong Zhuang still belonged to the rival. No matter what her past was, she was still with the Purple Crow and one of the top management. The Purple Crow, who was infamous for their cruel mindset, contradicted the Union Government''s belief system. No matter what one''s stand was on this, the rivalry was still there. "I''ll try my best to complete her death wish." Liu Ming was relieved to hear what Lin Huang said. In the trial room in Building 33, Hong Zhuang was sitting across a middle-aged man. The man was asking all sorts of questions while she was answering all of them slowly with a smile pasted on her face. There were two persons behind the two-way mirror outside the room. One of them was a hunk peering at Hong Zhuang through the mirror with his arms crossed while another had gauze bandages on his neck. "So, she''s speaking now?" The man took a lollipop from his pocket and put it into his mouth. "Yeah," Zhou Xiong replied as his eyes were locked on Hong Zhuang. "But she didn''t say a word when we did everything to her earlier. Now, she''s so obedient after seeing that kid Lin Huang?" Wu Sheng rubbed his neck on top of the gauze. "Why are you trying to say?" Zhou Xiong turned around and looked at Wu Sheng. "I think there''s something wrong with that Lin Huang. He might have a higher position in the Purple Crow since he managed to get this woman to talk." Wu Sheng took out the lollipop from his mouth and looked at Zhou Xiong gravely. "Do you think the Purple Crow would get a white flame-level to be a Crow Leader?" Zhou Xiong looked at Wu Sheng with his eyebrow raised. "Of course not a Crow Leader as the leader''s abilities would have to be convincing to the people. But it might be a Crow Spirit. After all, nobody has ever seen any of the Crow Spirits for the past 800 years. Nobody knows about the criteria of the Crow Spirit candidate." Wu Sheng put back the lollipop into his mouth after speaking. Zhou Xiong''s pupils shrunk as he tore his gaze away from Wu Sheng. "Lin Huang is Mr. Fu''s apprentice. We can''t do anything to him as long as we don''t have any proof." "Mr. Fu? No matter how glorious he used to be, he''s just an old man now, and he won''t live for long," Wu Sheng said without bothering Zhou Xiong. "I''ve no idea what he has on his mind. He''s already dying, but now he''s got himself an apprentice. He has no idea how many people are waiting to cut open his and Lin Huang''s heads. As soon as he''s dead, there''ll be people from countless organizations wanting to capture him. There might even be people from the core zone." "But as long as he''s still alive, nobody dares to do anything to Lin Huang," Zhou Xiong concluded expressionlessly. "That''s true" Wu Sheng could not deny the truth. He went into silence as his fingers played with the lollipop stick. "Oh yeah, how''s your wound now?" Zhou Xiong turned around and looked at his neck which was wrapped in gauze. "No biggie, but I can''t fight for now, or else my wound might rupture open," Wu Sheng said helplessly. "There''s something special about the person''s sword whereby I can''t heal the wound with my Life Power. I can only wait for it to heal slowly like an ordinary person. I guess it''ll take one to two months to heal and there''ll be an ugly scar. I would''ve been dead if you didn''t stem the bleeding on the gash the other day. You would be looking at a different thing now, for instance, standing at my grave with a wreath." "Take a good rest. I''m here to look after the building. Let''s wait for your wound to heal." Zhou Xiong patted Wu Sheng''s shoulder. "I shall wait for another two days. I want to hear from the woman to find out who that black-robed man was the other day. I''ll look for him and make him pay for what he''s done to me!" Wu Sheng glared savagely. Zhou Xiong frowned but did not say anything. "Oh yeah, what did the management say about this woman?" Wu Sheng asked. "We can do whatever we want to her after the interrogation, but the management said her dead body must be passed to Lin Huang," Zhou Xiong answered honestly. "Mr. Fu has spoken?" Wu Sheng looked annoyed. "Yes." "Let me handle this." Wu Sheng crushed the lollipop in his mouth. "But your health condition" Zhou Xiong was concerned. "I don''t have to fight anyway. Don''t worry. I''ll handle it." Wu Sheng took the lollipop stick out of his mouth and crushed the remaining candy in his mouth. "Alright then." Zhou Xiong nodded. 560 A Loyal Dog In a dark secret room in Building 33. Hong Zhuang lay naked on an operating table naked while her neck and limbs were bound. There was a young man in the room. Although he was wearing a green coat and the mask covered half this face, all of the staff of the Building 33 recognized that he was the deputy director, Wu Sheng. "Such beautiful skin Too bad it''s useless now." Wu Sheng put on a pair of gloves as he caressed her from her thigh up. "But I could dissect you." "Do you think you can scare me like that?" Hong Zhuang scowled at him with an insulting expression. "I''m not scaring you. I just want to see what''s your response when your body parts are being dismembered one by one while you''re awake." Wu Sheng slid the surgery knife across her body softly from her belly to her busty breasts and stopped at her chin. However, Hong Zhuang did not seem to feel the knife that glided across her body as she kept her head where it was. There was blood dripping out of her chin, but she remained unmoving as she looked at Wu Sheng with a mocking smile. "I shall see how long you''ll be able to hold that smile of yours!" Wu Sheng got pissed from seeing her expression. The knife retreated from her chin, and he looked around her body. Soon, he targeted her hands. Her hands were soft and flawless, and her fingers were long like a pianist''s. Her red nail polish gave her pair of hands an extra boost of glamor. "What a beautiful pair of hands, just like an art piece. We shall begin our game with your hands then. Would you like to choose to start from your right or your left hand?" Wu Sheng gestured like a gentleman. Hong Zhuang looked at him calmly like he was an idiot, which made Wu Sheng even madder. However, he suppressed his anger and proceeded. "Since you want to keep quiet, I shall choose for you then. You''re a right-hander, so as a humanitarian gesture, I shall choose your left hand instead. Of course, if you''re not behaving, your right hand will be up next in the game." Hong Zhuang remained silent with her expression unchanged. "Among the five fingers on your left hand, which is your favorite?" Wu Sheng asked. He looked like he was talking to himself as she did not give him any response. "Since you''re still shy, I''ll choose for you then. I suppose your pinkie is pretty useless for anything besides digging your nose. I''ll get rid of this useless finger then" He looked at her, but her expression remained the same. Wu Sheng then pressed her left pinkie and sliced it off easily with a trickle of strength. As her combat level was sealed entirely, her flesh was just slightly stronger than an ordinary person''s. No matter how strong, without any Life Power, her body was like a piece of tofu when a supreme relic was used against her. Blood spurted out of her broken finger and flowed slowly. Throughout the entire process, not even did Hong Zhuang not make any sound, she did not even frown. Her mocking expression was maintained as she looked at Wu Sheng dangle her severed finger in front of her. He got even angrier now as he did not see any response from Hong Zhuang that he expected. "Since you''ve no feelings about losing one finger, let''s cut another two of them then" Wu Sheng then looked at Hong Zhuang''s left hand again. "Your ring finger is useless besides wearing a wedding ring. Since you won''t be getting married, I shall cut it off then. Let''s cut your middle finger too since it''s pretty useless besides flipping people off. What do you think?" "It''s decided then!" Seeing Hong Zhuang did not respond, Wu Sheng said to himself. He cut both of her ring finger and middle finger together, then flourished the two fingers in front of her. However, Hong Zhuang did not move a muscle. Her expression was as if she thought Wu Sheng was an idiot. Wu Sheng was getting more and more pissed at Hong Zhuang''s attitude. "It seems like you don''t care about all of your fingers." Wu Sheng glowered at Hong Zhuang as he cut off the remaining two fingers on her left hand while he locked eyes with her. Hong Zhuang had the same expression on her face as if she had lost all her pain senses. "I want to see how far you can take this!" Wu Sheng then proceeded to cut off her wrist, hand, and her entire arm. Besides yawning, Hong Zhuang did not give any other response. Wu Sheng was furious. After cutting her left hand off, he then cut off her right hand, then both of her legs. She was now left with her torso and head. Hong Zhuang did not even frown throughout the entire process. "Just like that? It seems like you didn''t learn any skills from the man in glasses." Hong Zhuang mocked Wu Sheng as she observed his temper that was going to explode. Wu Sheng''s heart skipped a beat. He looked more and more upset. "Tsk tsk. It''s impressive that you managed to get into Building 33 and even become deputy director. You must''ve used some special technique to hide your memory. The man in glasses must have done all he can" It was clear that Hong Zhuang knew that Wu Sheng was a spy. "I don''t know what you''re talking about," Wu Sheng denied as his identity was exposed. Although there was no surveillance in the secret room and Hong Zhuang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring had been confiscated, he was careful about what he said. "I''m good friends with the man in glasses. We''ve worked together many times. I recognize his work. I figured out that you''re one of his Loyal Dogs among the other two when you cut my first finger." Hong Zhuang was getting more and more sarcastic. "Do you think I''d let you go just because you''re spouting nonsense?" Wu Sheng was panicking secretly as he did not expect to be exposed but he insisted on denying. "I''m not talking nonsense. If I''m not mistaken, your memory shield has been switched on. From what I know, there''s no way for this shield to be activated for the second time. As long as the Union Government investigates your memory, your identity as a spy will be exposed. How long do you think you can hide this for?" Hong Zhuang remained sarcastic. "Don''t you understand until now? From the day the man in glasses put you in Building 33, you''ve become a sacrifice is disposable anytime." "Nonsense!" Wu Sheng''s guard collapsed as Hong Zhuang taunted him. "It''s not nonsense. You know it yourself," Hong Zhuang smirked. "I know a little about how the man in glasses trains his dogs. Ten years to train 10,000 orphans, ten years to kill each other, and the one who''s left will live. The person will be brainwashed to think that being a Loyal Dog is an honor and he''ll be the dog to the man in glasses willingly. You''d even die for him. But have you ever thought why he left you instead of his other two dogs in this place where you have nowhere to run?" "It''s because I''m more capable than them and I can complete the mission for my master!" Wu Sheng panicked and admitted his identity. "Wrong! You have the answer yourself. It''s just that you don''t want to admit it." Hong Zhuang shook her head while smiling. Wu Sheng did not know where to look. His clothes were soaking wet in his sweat. "Do you want me to say it?" Hong Zhuang smiled even wider. "No No" "The man in glasses wants you to die here. Among the three dogs that he has, his least favorite is you!" Hong Zhuang revealed the truth cruelly. "It''s not like that Nonsense!" Wu Sheng broke down onto the ground and started crying. Hong Zhuang started speaking again after a while, "Instead of being eliminated by the man in glasses, why not get rid of him instead and find a new master?" Wu Sheng was stunned when he heard that. "I think you have great potential. As long as you''re willing to serve me, I''ll make you my only Loyal Dog" The tearful Wu Sheng was shocked as he looked at Hong Zhuang. She was smirking and looked at him, full of superiority. "So, what should you call me now, my Loyal Dog?" "Ma-Master! 561 Pick Up the Body Three days had passed since Lin Huang spoke to Hong Zhuang at the Union Government. The investigators had left the Martial Hunter College during the past few days and classes were back to normal. Lin Huang was back to his routine of going to the library, the training battleground, and his dorm. Although he empathized with Hong Zhuang, he decided not to get involved in the case. He was not close to her after all. Although they knew each other, they were not on familiar terms. Lin Huang knew very well from the training camp that none of the people from the Purple Crow were honorable. Hong Zhuang chose her own path. As an adult, she should learn to accept the consequences of her decision, even if the result was death. It was past nine in the morning. Lin Huang stuck to his routine of reading at the library. Suddenly, his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated. It was a message. "Hong Zhuang has been executed. Please bring her body back from the Union Government as soon as possible." Seeing the message, he did not hesitate. He closed the search page in the library and left. He had promised to retrieve Hong Zhuang''s body, and he did not want any delay. As he stepped out of the library door, he summoned his dimensional relic and stepped into it. He then appeared at the entrance of the Union Government. He asked for the morgue''s location and headed to the first floor. The morgue was located at the west wing on the first floor. Lin Huang planned to ask the forensic officer for guidance, but seeing that the door was opened, he walked straight into the morgue. "Hi, I received a message earlier. I''m here to pick up the body," Lin Huang spoke to the man who was standing next to a body. The man with a lollipop in his mouth turned around and said, "Register at the forensic desk next door. They''ll bring you back here after confirming your registration." "Thanks." Lin Huang looked at him and walked to the forensic desk next door after thanking him. After spending a couple of minutes registering himself, a lady in her 20''s brought him back to the morgue to pick up the body. "Hi, Deputy Director Wu." The lady blushed when she saw Wu Sheng. "Hmm." Wu Sheng proceeded to check the body in front of him as he responded casually. He did not seem to bother about Lin Huang and the lady walking in. "Please give me a minute. I''ll look for it. Hong Zhuang''s body was sent here this morning." A semi-transparent list appeared in front of the lady. Soon, she found the cabinet where Hong Zhuang was in and took her body out. Lin Huang walked up to see a frozen corpse. It was Hong Zhuang. Due to the freezing temperatures, she looked pale. Her red lips were purple now. She was wearing the white clothes that she had on a few days ago. Her body was in pristine condition. As he was checking the body out, Wu Sheng glanced at him secretly from the back. "I don''t see any wounds on her. How did you guys execute her?" Lin Huang asked after confirming that the body was still in perfect condition. "The Union Government usually uses euthanasia for most prisoners nowadays. The same applied to Hong Zhuang," the forensic lady explained. "Euthanasia I hope she didn''t have to suffer before she died." Lin Huang nodded and looked at Hong Zhuang''s peaceful expression which seemed like she was asleep. Perhaps death was a relief for her. "So, do I just bring her away with me?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, you may since you''ve already registered. Just make sure that it''s the right body." The forensic lady smiled. "Alright then. I''m bringing her with me." Lin Huang then put Hong Zhuang''s body into his storage space. "Thanks!" He thanked the forensic lady. He even nodded at the man with the lollipop as he was the one who had asked him to register. As he left the Union Government, Lin Huang stepped into his dimensional relic and arrived at a B-grade foothold near the Eastern Ocean. He did not want to delay anything as Hong Zhuang''s wish was to scatter her ashes there. Since it was still early, he planned to burn her body somewhere with nobody around. He then summoned Thunder and in less than half an hour. He arrived at the Eastern Ocean beach. After confirming that there was no one around, he took Hong Zhuang''s body out. After all, it was inappropriate to burn a body in front of strangers. It would be horrible if kids witnessed it. Luckily, there was nobody around where he could do that openly. He took some time to figure out the fire source as he took the body out. It would take forever to burn her body with regular fire. The first thing that popped into his mind was Charcoal as its Dragon Flame would be the quickest solution, but it would be too much to burn a body alone. "Never mind then. I shall use Witch Fire." Lin Huang performed a hand seal. The Witch Fire was one of the techniques from Witchcraft. It was a fire attribute attack, but it was much more challenging to fight compared to a typical fire attack. It was hard to put the fire out as soon as one was attacked. It only took Lin Huang a couple of seconds to perform the hand seal. A cloud of blue flame covered Hong Zhuang''s body. The frost on her body disappeared as the fire burned and her clothes were burnt to ashes. Lin Huang did not realize anything was wrong under the burning flame. Suddenly, Hong Zhuang''s eyelids moved under the blue flame. Soon, she opened her eyes. "Xiao Linzi, are you planning to kill me?" In less than a minute since Lin Huang had summoned the Witch Fire, her voice was heard. The body that was covered in flames stood up slowly. Before a shocked Lin Huang could put the fire out, the blue flames disappeared after an energy wave rippled. Lin Huang looked at the naked Hong Zhuang in apparent shock. He was dumbfounded that she was still alive. On the other hand, he was stunned by her voluptuous body. "My little brother, do you miss me?" Hong Zhuang walked towards Lin Huang. He looked away and tossed a set of clothes that he had found from his storage space to her. "Erm Please dress first." Hong Zhuang smirked as she put on the clothes that Lin Huang passed to her. "I''m dressed now. You don''t have to look away anymore." Lin Huang had given her a set of male clothes that he had never worn before and kept in his storage space after purchasing them. Hong Zhuang looked attractive even in male clothes. "You faked your death?" That was the first question Lin Huang asked. "I learned that from you." Hong Zhuang grinned at him. "But how come I could keep you in my storage space even though you faked your death?" Lin Huang thought it was odd. "Because my way of faking death is more advanced than yours. So advanced that the storage space even mistook me as a dead body." Hong Zhuang smirked as she explained. "So, you''re using me to escape the White Capital?" Lin Huang squinted. "Not really. I really thought I would die this time. It''s just that I was lucky enough to meet a friend at the Union Government" Hong Zhuang stopped there and did not proceed to explain further. "Alright then. Since you managed to escape, please behave yourself." Lin Huang was skeptical. "I''m giving you back your stuff. Please don''t come to me anymore." He flicked her Emperor''s Heart Ring to her and walked into his dimensional relic. "I''ll remember owing you my life. I''ll return you the favor when I get the chance." Hong Zhuang smiled as she waved goodbye at Lin Huang. "It seems like I have to make another fake identity and stay low-key for some time" She glanced at the storage space ring in her hand as she watched Lin Huang left with his dimensional relic. 562 The Stunning Effect of The Misfortune Card Mu Yuntian had been in horrible luck ever since he returned from the White Capital. A flower pot fell on his head when he was walking on the street, a brick flew at him as he was walking at a construction site, and he encountered various birds when he was flying and covered in feathers as well as bird shit Those were just the minor ones. What annoyed him was that everything he used in the laboratory exploded. He even made a huge gash on his hand when he was dissecting a body. Fed up, he went back to his office to deal with his documents, but a fire broke out of nowhere. Many of his documents were destroyed, and even his Emperor''s Heart Ring was not working. "Can you please focus on your work?! Look at you these past few days. You''ve made the laboratory explode 11 times. Are you messing around?!" The white-bearded Si Nan glared at Mu Tianyun in the office. "Are you unhappy with me and actually intend to mess with me?!" "No No." Mu Yuntian held his head down. He had no idea why he was so unlucky these few days. No matter what he did, something terrible would happen! "You even lost the demigod relic a few days ago. Tell me what else you''re going to do now!" Si Nan proceeded to scold him. In his gold-framed glasses, Mu Yuntian hung his head as he thought to himself, "Am I cursed? If this persists, I''ll need to go to a shaman" Life Power was a magical thing. Some of the Life Power would turn into negative Life Power when one died. The negative Life Power carried a unique curse or other adverse effects with it. Most of the people could not see the curse. Only a shaman could see and remove it. Mu Yuntian started wondering if he was cursed since things had been going wrong for him for the past two days. "Oh yeah, did you get anything from the two dead bodies these few days?" Si Nan just remembered after scolding Mu Yuntian for ten whole minutes. "I''ve tried to break through their brains, but that didn''t work. The team''s thinking of other ways to decode it." Mu Yuntian did not dare to tell him that the laboratory had caught fire two days ago and almost destroyed the two bodies. "Alright then, since we have the bodies with us, we don''t have to rush to decode their brains. Take it slow, do it properly, and don''t damage the bodies," Si Nan said, frowning. "What noise is that?" "What noise?" Mu Yuntian was stunned as he heard the banging as well. He had a bad feeling. Alarm broke in the entire base. "There''s a meteor shower around the ocean near our base. There''s a giant meteorite that just landed on Skull Island above us. A third of the island is destroyed!" A panicked announcement came from the monitoring room. "Skull Island has been destroyed?!" Mu Yuntian and Si Nan were shocked. They then summoned a dimensional relic and stepped into it. They appeared above Skull Island to see that the northern side of the island was destroyed. The building under the island was revealed, upsetting the duo. Since the building was out on display, that meant the Union Government and the other organizations might find out about the underground base that they had built for tens of years. Meteorites were still raining down. Some of them were headed towards Skull Island while some crashed into the ocean, creating vigorous waves. "Let me handle this. Bring the two bodies away. Don''t let anything happen to the two bodies!" Si Nan flew up and destroyed the meteorites with black streaks that shot out of his two fingers. Without hesitation, Mu Yuntian summoned his dimensional relic and stepped into it. Just when he returned to the base under the sea, he smelled something burning. "What''s happening?" He grabbed an alarmed staff. "I think the quake just now broke a couple of lamps and a fire spread. Many of the Surveillance Snails went into their shells, so most of the cameras have been blacked out. Until now, we''re unable to find the source of the fire." "Useless!" Mu Yuntian snapped the staff''s neck and rushed towards the laboratory where the bodies were. His heart skipped a beat when he saw smoke coming out of the laboratory. As he attempted to unlock the door with his fingertips, the door only responded with a notification that the door was not working. "F*ck!" Mu Yuntian did not expect this to happen. He punched the door twice, but nothing happened. Only then did he recall that the door was made of a unique metal to prevent theft. It was as powerful as a supreme relic which could not be opened with violence. "Sir, the laboratory door isn''t working. It''s not opening." Mu Yuntian had to ask Si Nan for help. "If the door isn''t working, can''t you just break the wall? Did you lose your brain?!" Si Nan shouted. Mu Yuntian was stunned when he realized that the door was made of metal but not the wall. As he hung up, he punched a hole in the wall and smoke billowed out of it. He could not care about the smoke anymore, and he crawled out of the wall. The laboratory was in a mess. The bodies were covered in flames. Mu Yuntian''s heart dropped when he saw that scene. He put the fire out immediately and put them into his storage space without checking. He took out the bodies again to monitor their condition only after he had left the burning laboratory. The bodies were burnt, and the automatic fire extinguisher in the laboratory seemed to be spoiled way before the fire happened which caused the bodies to be burnt. Mu Yuntian did not know what to do as he looked at the corpse heads that were completely burnt. Suddenly, the base was trembling again. Before Mu Yuntian could react, the ceiling on top of him collapsed. He managed to dodge the falling ceiling, but the two heads were totally crushed Mu Yuntian was in shock. There was still hope to save the burned brains earlier, but now nothing could be done as the heads were utterly crushed. "I''ve handled the meteorites, but the base is destroyed now." A voice came behind Mu Yuntian. The voice was getting closer. "Where are the bodies?" Before Mu Yuntian could respond, Si Nan spotted the two burnt bodies. "Please don''t tell me these two bodies are" Si Nan''s heart almost stopped beating. "I''m sorry, Sir" Mu Yuntian did not expect this to happen and he wanted to cry. Si Nan was upset beyond words. 563 Lancelot’s Triple Mutation As Hong Zhuang''s case was entirely over, Lin Huang''s routine was back to normal for the next few days. He would go to the library and the battle training ground every day and return to his dorm. He would go to class when it was time. It was as if nothing had happened. He did not say anything about Hong Zhuang faking her death. The Union Government had announced to the public that she sentenced to death, and they did not mention that Lin Huang had taken her body away. This time, the Union Government announced the truth on the forum of the Union Organizations. The attack was made by the Purple Crow together with an underground organization called the Leib Lab with the intention to take the bodies of the first and second elders of the Saint. The monster horde outside the White Capital was orchestrated by them as well. The objective of the monster horde was to get the imperial-level humans there so that the attackers in the city could escape. Many were unfamiliar with the Leib Lab, so the Union Government shed more light on that as well. The organization had been the top underground organization 200 years ago, also known as the Scarborough Workshop. It was a hot topic among the Union Organizations members as the two top underground organizations worked together against the Union Government. The Union Government announced war on all the Union Organizations forums but since the forums were only opened to the cultivators, ordinary people did not know about that. All of them thought that the monster horde had been caused by an opening of a Virtual Eye while the explosion in the White Capital was a weather phenomenon that the news had explained earlier. Lin Huang noticed that ''theuglytruth'' had posted the truth on the website again, but nobody believed in him. None of the people thought his prediction would come true as they had not seen his previous speculation about the fight between the two underground organizations and the Union Government. As Lin Huang had been upset the past few days, he did not follow the updates anymore. However, Lin Huang had become popular in the Martial Hunter College after the news about him joining the Purple Crow training camp was exposed. Many thought that he was a Purple Crow spy at the beginning of the investigation. However, the investigation results from the Union Government proved that he was innocent. Many of the teachers and students looked up to him now as he had managed to escape the Purple Crow under Hong Zhuang''s watch, especially some of the teachers who knew that Hong Zhuang''s ability was comparable with an imperial-level''s. Even if she was not as powerful as she was a year ago, she should have been one of the top-ranked among the immortal-levels. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was not even on holy fire-level a year ago. However, some of them suspected the accuracy of the investigation and still insisted that Lin Huang was a Purple Crow spy. Lin Huang decided to ignore those people. Without Hong Zhuang and the Purple Crow''s threat, Lin Huang was in contact with Lin Xin again. It was the first weekend of December. Lin Huang had brought her to hunt for a bronze-level Life Seed, so Lin Xin was now on bronze-level. He then dropped by a severe danger zone to get Lancelot to kill a double mutated Sword Dao monster. He obtained a new sword servant called the Swordfiend Soldier. What he did not expect was that the new sword servant would trigger Lancelot''s triple mutation''s hidden conditions. He had completed his triple mutation, and he was now the legendary-level Ruthless Sword Dominator. He did not undergo any significant changes. His black armor was now a dark maroon, and there was a claret red crown on his head. The black mist surrounding him was also now dark red. Lancelot''s upgrade was a complete surprise. However, he did not obtain any special bloodlines. Lin Huang then used the last Reborn Card on Lancelot. In Kylie''s mini world, Lancelot transformed into a dark red cocoon under a golden glow. He broke out of the cocoon the next day. He had not changed much, but the mist surrounding him had disappeared. His aura was even more terrifying now. Even Lin Huang, who was on the same combat level, was slightly threatened by his aura. "Which bloodline did you get?" Lin Huang asked. "God''s blood. The Ruthless God, low-level," Lancelot replied. Lin Huang was stunned as he did not expect to obtain a second god''s blood! He then activated his last Blood Thickening Card on Lancelot. After getting out of the cocoon for less than a minute, Lancelot transformed into a maroon cocoon once again Soon, a couple of hours had passed. Lancelot got out of the cocoon, and his bloodline was now at mid-level. Lin Huang then looked at the card''s description. "Monster Card: Lancelot "Rarity: Legendary "Monster Name: Ruthless Sword Dominator "Type of Monster: God''s Blood (Mid-Level) "Nickname: Ruthless "Combat Level: Gold Flame-Level "Major: Sword Dao "Major Skills: Sword Master, Dark Sword Spirit, Sword Dao secret skill, Sword Dao Territory, Holy Power. "Minor Skills: Sword Steps, Dark Mirror, Enhanced Regeneration "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Intensive training is recommended!" There were significant changes to the card, and there were now many skills in the slots. There were more than 30 skills in the Sword Dao secret skill alone, and there were more than ten of them under minor skills. "Freaking amazing!" That was Lin Huang''s comment on the new Lancelot. "The Dark Mirror seems to be an upgraded Dark Shield" Lin Huang looked at the changes on his exclusive card and noticed that the Dark Shield was replaced by a Dark Mirror. He took a close look at the card and realized that nothing much had changed to his defensive abilities whereby his limit was still ten times of his most powerful attack. However, there was a new attack bounce function whereby he could make the attacker''s assault rebound back at 100% within his defense limits. "This skill is ridiculous!" He was stunned as he studied the upgraded skill. He thought of what he needed to do after his initial excitement. He could finally extract Lancelot''s skill now. He still had two skill slots that were reserved for Lancelot. Xiao Hei''s notification came soon after he crushed the Skill Extraction Card. "Extracting skill Excluding Dark Mirror that has been extracted Selecting a skill randomly Random selection is completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained Sword Dao Territory! "The system has detected that this skill can be integrated with Medium Territory to create a new secret skill. Would you like to activate a Skill Integration Card for the integration?" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without thinking twice. "Skill Integration Card has been consumed. Monster Skill Sword Dao Territory and secret skill Medium Territory have been consumed. Coming up with a new Secret Skill card "Congratulations, you have obtained a new Secret Skill Card: Exclusive Territory. "Exclusive Territory: Make a 1,000-meter radius into your own exclusive territory. Within the area, your ability will be twice as powerful, and you can suppress your opponent''s ability up to a certain level. "Remark 1: Within the territory, the user can attack any corners of the territory with any attacks and the attack strength won''t be weakened. "Remark 2: Territory can be integrated with a small part of defensive skills to strengthen the defense power. "Remark 3: The territory attributes can be modified according to your combat needs. The attack strength will be increased when the territory attributes align with the attack attributes." "Exclusive Territory? Isn''t that a skill that only imperial-levels have?!" Lin Huang was familiar with Exclusive Territory. It was a skill that was activated whenever a Life Castle was summoned to increase the combat strength. He had heard of it from Mr. Fu before, but he did not expect to obtain this secret skill when he was only a holy fire-level. "I wonder if my Life Castle Exclusive Territory can be activated together with this in the future. If that''s possible, that means I''ll have double territory!" Lin Huang was thrilled. 564 Lin Huang’s Plan After Lin Xin broke through bronze-level, she leveled up to bronze-level rank-3 in less than a day just by eating Life Crystals. Her speed of upgrading was so fast that even Lin Huang, who owned a Goldfinger, was impressed. Luckily, she could not break through a whole level just by eating Life Crystals, or else she would get to imperial-level within a week. Since her Life Power was almost stable now, Lin Huang started training her once a week, mainly to strengthen her battle experience. She was also fast in gaining battle experience. Besides training Lin Xin, Lin Huang gave his all to his students as well. His class on Friday should have started from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., but he would always stay back until 11 p.m. and sometimes even midnight. That was like giving three sessions of classes. However, the students of Sword Dao Class 2 were all ambitious. None of them complained and were dedicated to learning. The battle drill at the beginning of December was when Lin Huang had been interrogated for Hong Zhuang''s case which caused the Sword Dao Class 2''s assessment results to deteriorate. Although the class ranked No. 2 in the Sword Dao faculty, they were more than 200 points away from Class 1 and almost ranked No. 3 at less than 20 points ahead of No. 3. That made the students even more determined in their training. Lin Huang was glad to see the students'' dedication. Meanwhile, Qin Tianxing seemed to be depressed due to Hong Zhuang''s incident, and he did not sit in this time. Lin Huang knew that it had nothing to do with himself, but because Qin Tianxing liked Hong Zhuang. He took it very hard when he found out that Hong Zhuang was one of the Purple Crow members and that she was now dead. However, Lin Huang did not plan to tell him that Hong Zhuang was still alive. On the one hand, it was because Hong Zhuang wanted to keep it a secret and on the other hand, he did not want Old Qin to get close to her. With his character, it was very possible that Hong Zhuang might kill him. Qin Tianxing was one of the countable good friends that Lin Huang had in the college. He did not want to see Qin Tianxing fall into Hong Zhuang''s trap. Time flashed by, and it was the end of December. Some parts of the White Capital was snowing. Although it was sunny every day in the Martial Hunter College which was located in the central zone, the lake in the college was frozen. Students started wearing fur coats to college. Of course, this weather was nothing to transcendent-level humans. Lin Huang still dressed casually in school to continue his routine to the library, the battle training ground and his dorm. After dinner, he trained with Liu Ming again. Liu Ming suppressed his combat level to purple flame-level during the training. If not for his breakthrough in Sword Dao, Liu Ming would have suppressed his combat level to gold flame-level while training with him. Throughout the 20 days, Liu Ming was impressed by Lin Huang''s abilities. He could feel Lin Huang''s improvement over time when they trained. It was scary to know that Lin Huang was getting more and more powerful with each training. With Liu Ming''s high Sword Dao mastery and the pressure of his abilities, Lin Huang did not limit himself to sword skills anymore. He used Vampire Particles, Telekinesis, Witchcraft, Punishment, and other attack Monster Skills during the training. As he grew in his command of Sword Dao, Lin Huang was getting familiar with Vampire Particles, Telekinesis, Witchcraft, and the other skills. He had activated some new techniques from those Monster Skills. He had even modified his Worldly Purification to Flowing Fire Sword! The new technique was inclusive of tens of millions of sword techniques whereby the effect was similar to Worldly Purification. The target would be burnt to ashes from the attack. Lin Huang was working on the second technique as he wanted to compress the Thunder Sting to become a powerful attack with even faster speed. He had been discussing with Liu Ming for the past few days as well as training for many days, but nothing happened. "Bro, why are you still going to the library every day? Shouldn''t you have finished all the sword skills required by the school programme? I''ve already shown you the sword skills that aren''t in the books. Why not use the time you spend in the library to train here?" Liu Ming felt refreshed over time as he trained with Lin Huang since they were going for different directions in Sword Dao. Although Lin Huang''s mastery of Sword Dao was not as far as Liu Ming was, Liu Ming would always learn something new from Lin Huang, so he wanted to train more. "I''ve already read about all the sword skills and learned all of them. What I''m reading now is about other combat skills including Saber Dao, Spear Dao, and other gunfighting techniques to see if I can get some inspiration." Liu Ming was stunned when he heard that as he had never thought of reading about other topics. It was definitely an inspiration for him, but there might be some disadvantages to that. "It''s okay to read other stuff as long as you''re not distracted." "Don''t worry. I''m not distracted." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. "Oh yeah, it''s less than a month to the school holidays. What plans do you have?" Liu Ming asked in anticipation. He was not asking what plans Lin Huang had during the holidays, but rather if he would like to teach in the school after the semester. Lin Huang understood what Liu Ming was trying to say. "I''ll leave Division 7 after I''m done with some stuff. I won''t be able to teach after this semester ends." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. Although Liu Ming was disappointed, he had expected that. "It''s good to leave. The proper place for you to shine would be the core zone. You don''t have to resign. I''ll save a spot for you here. You''re always welcome back," Liu Ming said. "Since you have leveled up to imperial-level, I supposed you''ll leave next year too, bro?" Lin Huang recalled. "Yeah, the management has informed me that I''ll be the Vice President of the Martial Hunter College in Division 3. There''ll be a new dean sent here, but that doesn''t change your position here. Many people in this college hold the position of a teacher, but they don''t teach. Besides, the college''s system is connected. If you''re willing to, you can follow me to Division 3 to teach," Liu Ming invited. "It''s okay. I don''t think I''ll have the time to teach." Lin Huang shook his head. "Then, you''ll still have your position in the college, but you don''t have to teach. It''s set." Liu Ming decided to ignore Lin Huang''s rejection. "Alright, then." Seeing that Liu Ming insisted, Lin Huang did not decline. "Oh yeah, brother, there''s something that I need to ask," Lin Huang recalled something that he had always wanted to ask Liu Ming or Mr. Fu. "You know that I''m on holy fire-level now. I''m restricted from a lot of information if I don''t join any organization. Do you have any suggestion about what I should do?" "There''s nothing much that you can do if you don''t join any organization since most of the information is held with organizations nowadays. The information open to transcendent-levels and above is expensive on the black market. They even sell some of the free information, and there is plenty of fake information. The best is to join an organization. "But, of course, you can build your own small organization if you don''t want to join any organization. Though, you''ll have to work with other bigger organizations for your information data bank. There''s nothing else you can do as it takes tens of years to build a data bank for your own organization." Liu Ming did not have any better suggestion than that. "I think it''s easy for you to get yourself an executive position in the Hunter Association. Their management is pretty liberal." "It won''t take much time to be a staff below the executive level, but executives will have to sign a contract, and there''s a mission every year. I''m used to being on my own. Let me think about it then." Lin Huang smiled awkwardly as he shook his head. Positions above executive level were officially considered top management in the Hunter Association. There would be some restrictions as they would not have the freedom of ordinary hunters. "Why not you ask Mr. Fu?" Liu Ming could not think of anything else than that. "Alright, then. I''ll ask him after he comes back a few days later. He might be busy now." Lin Huang nodded. "Wait for him to come back? Where did he go?" Liu Ming raised an eyebrow. "He said he would leave Division 7 for a couple of days. I''ve no idea where exactly he''s gone. He''s been away for half a month." Lin Huang shook his head. "He left Division 7? Why did he leave?!" Liu Ming was in shock. "What''s wrong with him leaving Division 7?" Lin Huang thought what Liu Ming asked was odd. "No Nothing." Liu Ming peeped at Lin Huang and did not say anything further. "It''s late. Let''s end our training here," Liu Ming said after realizing it was past 11 p.m. "Bro, are you and master hiding something from me?" Lin Huang figured that something was not right. "I guess Mr. Fu has his reasons for not telling you. It''s better for me to not interfere. Maybe it''s better for you to ask him yourself." Liu Ming did not deny it. "Okay, then." Lin Huang thought about it and shook his head. 565 I Won’t Be Responsible for The Students’ Suffering It was a Wednesday on 5th January. The sky was blue while the sun was shining brightly. It was a good day. More than 3,000 Year 1 students queued according to their classes on the Martial Hunter College field, including Lin Huang and the other teachers. It was the last battle drill for the Year 1 students in the semester where the results would be taken into consideration for their final exam. It was important that the teachers and the students took it seriously. Everyone was present. It was the first time the Year 1 students saw how the dean, Liu Ming, looked like. Since he had leveled up to imperial-level, Liu Ming had lost weight. Lin Huang had contributed to that as well since the both of them were training every night for at least five hours a session. It was impossible for Liu Ming not to lose weight when he was working out every day. His features were sharper now. Although he was short, his position gave him a magnificent vibe. If Lin Huang did not know him, he might have been scared of Liu Ming. That intimidation worked on the students on the field. As the news of Liu Ming leveling up to imperial-level spread in the college, the students looked at him with awe and respect. There was complete silence when he appeared; none of the students spoke. He then started giving his speech. As it was his first time speaking since the semester started as well as his last time speaking during his tenure in the college, he made it a long one. Lin Huang poked the gloomy Qin Tianxing next to him with his elbow. "Old Qin, how''s your preparation with the students for this assessment? Are you confident in winning Class 1?" "It''s alright, I guess, but it''s difficult to surpass Class 1." Qin Tianxing smiled awkwardly as he shook his head. He had lost his usual confidence and determination. "Have you been going too easy on yourself these days? Why have you been so mopey recently and not sitting in my class?" Lin Huang jested and pretended that he did not know about his crush on Hong Zhuang. "You''re the one who''s going too easy on yourself!" Qin Tianxing glared at him and gave an excuse. "Maybe I''ve been busy recently" "That''s a shame. Let''s get a drink tonight. Tell your bro all about it!" Lin Huang could not take Qin Tianxing being in the doldrums anymore. "Okay then," Qin Tianxing agreed after some hesitation. The both of them drew lots but they were not selected as the guardians of the battle drill this time. The battle drill would take place from Tuesday to Friday, so those would be their rest days for the next couple of days. After Liu Ming finished his speech, the other two Vice Presidents went up to give their speeches. Before the battle drill officially started after that, Lin Huang and the other teachers spoke to the students one last time. Lin Huang then walked to the students of Sword Dao Class 2. The students were upset because they had heard he would not be teaching anymore after the semester ended. "Sir Lin, are you really not teaching us next semester?" Zhou Ling had tears pooling in her eyes. She had complained about him for a couple of weeks when the semester started and had even talked badly about him behind his back. However, her attitude changed after going through classes. With Lin Huang''s guide, it was obvious that the Class 2 students had improved by leaps and bounds. Zhou Ling was not the only one. The other students did not want Lin Huang to leave either. Lin Huang nodded and did not bother hiding the truth. "We''ll meet again. I''ll leave Division 7 after this and won''t be teaching you guys anymore. Hearing that he was going to leave Division 7, all of them fell silent as that confirmed that he would definitely leave the college. "Don''t think too much. Focus on your assessment. We have one last class next week. I''ll teach you guys a new sword skill. It''s a simplified gold-level combat skill!" All the students'' eyes lit up when they heard Lin Huang''s promise. The students had learned four sword skills this semester as Lin Huang would teach a new one every month. That would add up to be five sword skills if he taught another one next week. Meanwhile, most of the students from other classes had only learned two sword skills while another two or three classes had picked up three sword skills. A gold-level combat skill would mean that the sword skill could be used all the way until they got to gold-level. The college usually only taught bronze-level skills while some of them would teach up to silver-level skills. There had never been a teacher who taught gold-level skill, let alone a simplified one. The students were all pumped by this news. Lin Huang then gave the students some reminders before seeing them off to the dimensional relic. The battle drill took place at a grade-2 wild zone, the Dry Desert, this time. As the semester had passed, all of the new students were now on iron-level. They were vastly different from who they were months ago, so it made sense for the battle drill to be more difficult this time. As the Dry Desert was a grade-2 wild zone, there were bronze-level monsters there. The threat was much more prominent than the first two assessments that had taken place in a grade-1 wild zone. Moreover, this wild zone had limited water source. The assessment was extra challenging because the students were prohibited from bringing any food or water during the three days in the wild zone. Lin Huang and Qin Tianxing were laughing as they watched the excitement on the students'' faces from the video projection. "These kids think that they''re on vacation," Qin Tianxing chuckled. "I''m sure somebody''s going to cry soon," Lin Huang laughed and nodded. The Dry Desert looked beautiful as the humidity in the air was low. The dehydration rate would speed up with time, and perhaps the students would be thirsty in less than two hours. Some of the students realized that and looked for a water source the moment they arrived there while most of the students were taking selfies with the beautiful scenery. As Lin Huang expected, many of them started feeling thirsty after one to two hours. They realized that the assessment was not as simple as they had thought. In reality, everyone, including the teachers had no idea that it was Lin Huang who had suggested the venue to Liu Ming. He wanted to leave the students with an important lesson before he departed the college. Liu Ming agreed to his suggestion right away, not because of Lin Huang''s position, but because he wanted the students to remember the battle drill as well. As expected, many students were crying even before the first day of assessment ended. "I''m so thirsty! I need water" Meanwhile, Lin Huang who was the culprit of the students'' suffering was merrily drinking with Qin Tianxing. 566 The Last Class The battle drill that stretched over three days was a miserable one. Among the 3,000 students, only 800 of them completed the drill, which was barely a quarter of them. Most of them were brought back by the guardians after suffering severe dehydration. Still, the 800 students who completed the assessment almost cried when they heard the drill was finally over. Many teachers could not help but laugh when they watched the students crying for help from the surveillance cameras. "What a great assessment venue the dean picked! I''m sure the students will remember this battle drill for the rest of their lives and figure that the real wild zone isn''t as simple as they thought." Qin Tianxing drank with Lin Huang during the first couple of days. He vented out his crush towards Hong Zhuang while sobbing. He ended up feeling much better after that. However, Lin Huang did not tell him that Hong Zhuang was still alive. "It was I who suggested the venue to the dean," Lin Huang whispered into his ear. Qin Tianxing was speechless. The assessment results came out on Monday. Among all of the Year 1 students, the highest passing rate came from Lin Huang''s Sword Dao Class 2 whereby among the 50 of them, 36 students had passed. In contrast, no other classes had more than 20 students who passed. 19 students passed in Saber Dao Class 1 and 16 from Sword Dao Class 1. Therefore, Sword Dao Class 2 became the dark horse of the assessment and achieved the first place among the entire Year 1. They did not only surpass Sword Dao Year 1 but also Saber Dao Class 1. Of course, there were two most outstanding students. One of them was Mu Xiao from Saber Dao Class 1. He had leveled up to bronze-level rank-3 during the past few months. It was obvious that he did not take it easy on himself at all. Another one would be Lin Xin (Ling Xue). Lin Xin''s combat level was actually the same as Mu Xiao''s, but she had concealed her real abilities. She used gunfighting technique during the battle, and she was only 12 points away from Mu Xiao, which was far away from the third best student. Looking at the results, Qin Tianxing could not help but ask Lin Huang, "Did you tell the students about the assessment venue before the battle started?" "Definitely not. I know the rules, I''ve never ever mentioned the battle drill''s venue." Lin Huang shook his head as he looked dead serious. "Then, how do you explain your students'' excellent passing rate?" Qin Tianxing was still skeptical. "I''ve always taught them the ways to handle different terrains. You''ve sat in my classes before. Besides the desert, I''ve taught them the survival skills to go through islands, glaciers, and the ocean," Lin Huang explained. Qin Tianxing thought about it and recalled that Lin Huang really did talk about all those during his class and had gone through them thoroughly in his explanation. As the results were announced on Monday, many of the students who did not complete the battle drill thought that they would fail, but Liu Ming gave all of them a pass and explained the purpose of the battle drill. The assessment left a deep impression on all of the students. After the results were announced in the morning, the students sat in class as usual. It was the last week of class in this semester. All of the cultural studies'' examinations would end this week. Knowing that all of them passed the battle drill, the students were relieved. In the following days, Lin Huang proceeded with his routine. He basically memorized all of the information that he had studied in the library. He even had copies of the information stored in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. Soon, it was Friday, the students'' last day of the semester. In the battle training ground, Lin Huang gathered his 50 Sword Dao Class 2 students and taught them the sword skill that he had promised them - the Great Sword Scripture (simplified). The Great Sword Scripture was actually an advanced sword skill which Lin Huang had first learned. It formed a solid foundation for him and made the learning of other sword skills easier for him. There were 36 forms in the complete Great Sword Scripture, which belonged to the transcendent-level combat skill and was challenging to learn. If Lin Huang had not learned it by accumulating card pieces, it would have taken him one and a half years to master this sword skill. To make it easier for the students, Lin Huang broke the sword skills down into 12 forms and downgraded it to a gold-level combat skill. It was now much easier to pick up. "The sword skill that I''m teaching today is called the 12 Great Swords. It comes from a transcendent-level combat skill" "A transcendent-level combat skill?!" All of the students'' eyes lit up when they heard that. "This is the last sword skill that I''ll be teaching you guys. I hope that you''ll learn it properly." After the simple introduction, Lin Huang started performing the 12 forms three times before letting the students train. The students were serious during this class where they trained from 2 p.m. until past 11 p.m. None of them left. Some of them who had bought tickets to board the Demonic Crystal Spaceship postponed their ride. Lin Huang looked at the 50 students who were present and gave his farewell message. "I hope that all of you can shine at what you''re good at after you graduate two and a half years later. I believe I''ll be proud of you when I meet any of you in the future." "Sir Lin" Many of the girls started weeping, and some of the boys even had tears rolling down their faces. "Alright, the class ends here. Class adjourned!" Lin Huang looked across the room and beamed. "Sir Lin, please don''t go yet. I still have questions for you!" Shangguan Hui raised her hand. "Sir Lin, I have questions too!" Zhou Ling and the rest echoed Shangguan Hui. The students raised their hands one by one. Lin Huang smiled awkwardly as it was already past 11 p.m. but the students still refused to leave. "Alright then, each of you gets to ask one more question, and then you''ve got to stop messing around. Go back to your dorm after this! It''s okay if you don''t need rest, but the management lady deserves her holiday!" "Sir Lin, which division are you going next year?" Somebody asked immediately. "I think this has nothing to do with your learning." Lin Huang was irritated. "Sir Lin, please tell us that!" A couple of students insisted. "Alright then. I''m considering going to Division 3," Lin Huang answered helplessly. "Sir Lin, Sir Lin, I heard the girls saying that Ling Xue from Class 1 is your sister. Is that true?" The students went into gossip mode. "She''s my cousin." Lin Huang nodded and admitted. As Lin Xin was using a different alias now, he had to say that she was his cousin. "Sir Lin, are you really only 16?" Another girl asked. "I''m 17 this year." Lin Huang smiled. The students asked their questions rapidly. Most of them were merely gossip that had nothing to do with their studies. None of them followed Lin Huang''s rule of one person getting only one question each. They chatted until 3 a.m. and soon, the sky was getting bright. Lin Huang stopped the questions as some of the students were evidently sleepy. "Alright, return to your dorms to rest. Go back home during the holidays and spend more time with your families. I won''t delete the group chat, so I''ll see whatever you guys are talking about. You can talk to me personally if you need to. I''ll still be in Division 7 before New Year''s Eve." The students left unwillingly. Lin Huang watched the battle training ground after sending of the students. He knew that it was the end for him and the college 567 Lin Huang’s Invitation "Brother, when did you come back last night?" Lin Xin walked down the stairs while looking sleepy in her pink pajamas early in the morning. She had gone to Lin Huang''s dorm after packing her stuff yesterday afternoon. She thought she could chat with Lin Huang, but he was still not back at 1 a.m, so she had gone to sleep. "I could have been back just slightly past 11 p.m, but the kids didn''t want to let me go, so we chatted until past 3 a.m." Lin Huang was making breakfast in the kitchen as he turned around and smiled at her. "Brother, did you really resign?" Lin Xin had heard about the news. "Yes, but the dean rejected my resignation, so I still have my position in the college. However, I won''t be teaching." Lin Huang shook his head. "Go wash up and get ready for breakfast. We''ll talk later." "Oh" Lin Xin then went upstairs. She had gone to the kitchen as she heard the sounds of moving about before she could wash up. Soon, Lin Xin came downstairs while Lin Huang served breakfast on the dining table. He did not get the chance to make breakfast for the past few months as his three meals had been provided at the college canteen. However, it was the winter holidays now. The canteen and the stores near the college were closed, so he had to settle his usual three meals by himself. "Brother, where do you plan to go next year?" Lin Xin asked as she munched on her fried egg. "That''s what I''m about to tell you" Lin Huang swallowed the food in his mouth before he spoke again, "I''m leaving Division 7 and head to Division 3." "You''re leaving Division 7?!" Lin Xin was shocked to hear that. She put down her cutlery immediately. She knew that Lin Huang would leave the college, but she did not expect him to leave Division 7 at all. "Yeah, I''ll leave after settling some stuff next year." Lin Huang nodded. Lin Xin remained silent. Whenever Lin Huang disappeared, no matter how long, he was always within Division 7. She could not accept him leaving Division 7 out of nowhere. Seeing that Lin Xin was unhappy, Lin Huang comforted her, "I won''t be leaving for long. I''ll be back in July during your summer break. It''ll be from March to June, so that''s just four months. It''s going be the same as when I was in Division 7. Just pretend that I have a long mission in Division 7." "Oh" Lin Xin was still upset. "Oh yeah, where do you want to go during this winter break?" Lin Huang changed the subject. "I haven''t thought about it." Lin Xin shook her head. "How about we go to a couple of wild zones and return to Winter City on New Year''s Eve?" Lin Huang suggested. "Wild zones? But you''re not allowed to help me!" Lin Xin was excited. "Of course, it''s for you to train your battle skills," Lin Huang smirked. After they decided, they started packing their stuff. Since Lin Huang would not be teaching at the college anymore, he would have to move out of his dorm. Having finished packing his things at past 10 in the morning, he cleaned the dorm one last time. He sent a goodbye message to Liu Ming, and Qin Tianxiang then stepped into the dimensional relic with Lin Xin. The both of them appeared on an island. "This is a grade-3 wild zone, the Wild Forest Island. Give me all your food and water. You have to survive on your own for the next three days." Lin Huang extended his hand. "Are you being serious now?" Lin Xin was surprised. "Of course, you''ll need to protect yourself since I won''t be in Division 7 next year," Lin Huang replied in all seriousness. "Alright then." Lin Xin passed Lin Huang all her food and water. "Send me your location at 10 a.m. three days later, and I''ll come get you." Lin Huang put her food and water into his storage space. "Then, what will you be doing during the next three days?" Lin Xin was curious. "I''ll train somewhere. Okay, your battle drill starts now." Lin Huang had arranged his own agenda. Lin Xin projected the map and headed into the forest with her Black Eagle 33 after identifying her location. After she disappeared, Lin Huang summoned Kylie. "Follow her. Protect her in secret. Don''t help her unless she''s in danger." Kylie disappeared in her black armor from where she was after recalling the 12 black wings on her back. After settling Lin Xin, Lin Huang called someone. A while later, the video call was connected. A beautiful lady with long legs appeared on the screen. "What''s up? What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into again?" Yi Yeyu wore a light pastel shirt with short sleeves and a mini skirt. It was as if she was not living in the same season as Lin Huang. "It''s winter. Is it really okay for you to dress so lightly?" Lin Huang was speechless. "I don''t feel cold. Why do you bother? We have a heater at home." Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes. "Okay" "Is it a holiday at the college?" Although Lin Huang had never mentioned it, Yi Yeyu had found out that he was teaching at the Martial Hunter College. It was easy for her to ask around the social circle that she was living in. "Yes, it''s the first day of the holidays, but I''ve already resigned." "Resigned? Were you fired because you''re lousy at teaching?" Yi Yeyu grinned. "You''re overthinking. My students got the first place among the Year 1 batches in their year-end battle drill, alright?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. "I could easily ask around about the truth of this. Don''t lie to me." Yi Yeyu grinned. "Go ask around. My class did get No. 1." "Alright then. Why did you call? Are you looking for a new job?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Are you free next year?" Lin Huang asked directly. "I''m free during February and March. What''s up?" "I have a ruins key with me. Let''s form a team to go into the ruins with your brother," Lin Huang finally admitted his purpose of calling. "Really? Where did you get the ruins key? Only top organizations would have that. Even our family only have two sets." Yi Yeyu was shocked. "I have to keep this a secret So, are you coming?" "Of course! But including my brother, that would only make the three of us. Isn''t it a little wasteful to go into the ruins with only three people? Yi Yeyu asked. "I''ll get a few more friends, and we''ll go together." "Great, let me tell my brother so that he can clear his schedule. When exactly is it?" "I''ll let you know next year, but don''t tell anyone about the ruins key," Lin Huang reminded. "Of course, I know that!" She rolled her eyes at him. After he hung up, Lin Huang called Leng Yuexin. It was much simpler speaking with her compared to Yi Yeyu. "What''s up?" "Are you free next year?" "When exactly?" "Around mid-February to mid-March. We''ll need a month," Lin Huang provided her with some rough dates. "I''ll try to postpone some of my plans. It shouldn''t be a problem." Leng Yuexin agreed before even asking what they were going to do. Lin Huang then told her that he planned to go into the ruins with a team. Although she was surprised that he had a ruins key with him, she agreed to join without asking further. After getting Leng Yuexin to commit, Lin Huang then called Li Lang and Qin Tianxing. Li Lang decided to join without even thinking while Qin Tianxing rejected him with a wan smile. He had classes next year, and he did not like to take leave from work. It would take more than a month, which meant that he would miss four to five classes. It was unacceptable to him. In conclusion, Lin Huang managed to get a total of five people to join the ruins excursion. 568 It’s New Year’s Eve Again Twelve days passed by quickly. Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to three wild zones. Her battle ability and adaptability to various environments had improved tremendously during that half a month. Lin Huang occupied himself during those 12 days as well. He had modified a sword skill called the Thunder Eclipse with Thunder Sting as the foundation. It was more than ten times faster and more powerful than Thunder Sting. "Brother, where are we going next?" Lin Xin, who had dirt all over her, smiled at him, baring her fangs. She did not feel tired for the past 12 days. On the contrary, she had fun killing monsters. "Of course, we''re going back to Winter City. It''s the New Year in three days. You should rest." Lin Huang picked out the fallen leaves caught in her hair. "You could do with a shower when we get back." "It''s another three days to the New Year, so why not we go to another wild zone? Let''s spend two days hunting and one day for the New Year!" Lin Xin was not done with her killing spree. "We need to go shopping, and there are things to prepare before the New Year. One day is not enough for that. Even if we manage to get all those done, it would be quite a rush for us." Lin Huang shook his head and rejected her suggestion. "Let''s head back earlier. We can shop for two days and rest for a day. That''s more like it." "Alright then." Lin Xin had to admit that his arrangement made more sense, so she agreed to it. As they stepped into the dimensional relic, they arrived at their home in the Winter City. The city was much colder than the wild zones that they were in for the past week. The Emperor''s Heart Ring showed that it was -15 degrees Celsius. Although Lin Xin was shivering, Lin Huang did not feel the cold. Lin Huang covered Lin Xin with a coat and lit up the black rock in the furnace on the first floor. "Stay warm for a while. Let me look for hot water." Lin Huang walked to the bathroom. It had been half a year since they left the Winter City. The air quality there was much higher than the air on Earth. There was not much dust in the house, but the place was dull. He had no idea if some of the home equipment were even still working. He turned on the Demonic Crystal heater and let the cold water out. He then filled the bathtub with hot water. "There''s hot water in the bathroom. Go and shower after the tub is filled. I''ll open the windows for circulation. We can turn on the heater later. " The house had a centralized heater whereby the heat would be sent all over the house when the valve was opened. Lin Xin nodded, then stared at the flaming red furnace. "Brother, where do you think Xiao Xuan is right now?" Lin Xin asked when Lin Huang was going upstairs after opening the windows on the first floor. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard her, and he froze on the stairs. He recalled last year this time when Lin Xuan had been there with them. The three of them had spent New Year''s Eve together. Lin Xuan loved staring at the furnace while he sat on the carpet. "He should be doing well. Don''t worry about him." Lin Huang forced a smile. He knew what he said was not only comforting to Lin Xin, but to himself as well. "Do you think he misses us?" Lin Xin remained silent for a while and asked Lin Huang again. "Of course he does. We''re family!" Lin Huang was sure of that. "Alright, go take a shower now!" "Okay." Lin Xin seemed to have heard the answer that she was waiting for. She nodded and headed towards the bathroom. Lin Huang went upstairs to open the windows on the second and the third floor. There was snow nearly 20 centimeters thick on the balcony of the second floor. Although the sun was shining, the snow did not melt in the cold city. He opened the sliding door on the second door and looked far away as he stepped on the snow. It was the spot where he had watched Lin Xin and Lin Xuan playing in the snow last year. "Where are you, Xiao Xuan?" After letting the fresh air in for ten minutes, he closed all the windows in the house and turned on the heater. He then took a shower on the second floor. When he returned to the first floor, Lin Xin was already dressed and sitting on the carpet next to the furnace. Her hair was still damp. Lin Huang walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and got rid of the food that had expired. There was nothing much left in the refrigerator. "There''s nothing to eat at home. Let''s eat out later and go shopping after lunch. But before that, let''s clean the house since it''s been half a year since we last cleaned it." Lin Huang got Lin Xin to help him on purpose so that she would be distracted. "Okay!" Lin Xin snapped out of her zone. They spent more than an hour cleaning the third floor. It was almost noon when they were done, and they left the house after they changed. Lin Xin''s mood was much better when she saw the snow outside. "The snow on the ground is so thick!" As they had arrived in the living room on the first floor earlier, Lin Xin did not notice the snow outside. "The winter in this city is longer. It starts to snow in October, and the snow only melts in April. The Winter City snowed a few times when we were away," Lin Huang smiled as he explained. Lin Xin took some photos of the scenery and posted it on a social media app. Many of her friends liked her pictures. Lin Huang had the same app, but he hardly used it. They started shopping after they had lunch at a restaurant. Perhaps due to the shopping or the beautiful scenery, Lin Xin felt much better. They shopped until past six in the evening. Lin Huang only managed to get a few items as they spent most of their time buying clothes for Lin Xin. They had dinner and headed home when it was past 10. "It seems like we''ll have to shop again tomorrow," Lin Huang thought to himself when they got home. He was much relaxed the day before New Year''s Eve while Lin Xin was back to her shopaholic mode. She started buying cosmetics thanks to the influence of her roommates. Lin Huang began to decorate the house the day before New Year''s Eve after he was done with shopping, making the house looked rather festive. On the night of New Year''s Eve, Lin Huang sent his well wishes to his friends. Besides Mr. Fu, the rest of them replied his message. Mr. Fu seemed to be busy, but Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to disturb him. On the first day of the year, the Winter City started snowing again. Lin Xin woke up early in the morning and dashed down the stairs in excitement. She could not wait to open her presents. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was sitting on the couch, reading the news quietly. Most of the news was really New Year wishes, and there was nothing much on the Hunter Forum, which made Lin Huang realize the importance of the restriction of information. "Brother, this is for you!" Lin Xin gave him a present. "You got this for me?" Lin Huang was surprised. Lin Xin was holding a small box wrapped in golden wrapping paper. He accepted the box immediately. Just when he was about to open the box, he noticed a blue box on the coffee table. "One would be enough. Why did you get me two presents?" Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. "That''s for Xiao Xuan. I''ve saved half of the stuff that you bought for him. If he returns one day, we can give him all the presents." Lin Xin beamed warmly. Lin Huang did not say anything and patted Lin Xin''s head. "Sure, let''s keep the presents for Xiao Xuan!" "Brother, open your present now!" Lin Xin then urged Lin Huang to open his present. Lin Huang opened the box immediately. There was a black scarf in it. It looked somewhat normal without any patterns. However, Lin Huang did not have any expectations as it was the thought that counted. "Do you like it?" Lin Xin was excited to hear what Lin Huang thought. "I like it!" "I knitted it myself!" Lin Xin declared proudly. "You made this? When did you learn to knit?" Now, Lin Huang understood why this scarf looked so ordinary. "My roommate taught me. I worked on this every night when I had the time. I''ve knitted two scarves in the past few months. One for you, one for Xiao Xuan. The one for him is white in color," Lin Xin explained. "Brilliant craftsmanship!" Lin Huang tied the scarf around his neck and gave her a thumbs up. 569 The Five of Them Together "I''ve got a triple mutated Frost Demon. Are you interested?" "I''m sorry, not interested." Lin Huang turned off the black market mission page after replying in a dark forest. At the beginning of November last year, Lin Huang''s Life Fire was already burning at its limit of 300 meters high. After more than a month, his combat level completely stabilized in December and he was ready to level up to crimson flame-level. However, it was already February now, yet he had yet to find a tinder monster that was suitable, so his combat level stagnated. The reason was simple. Lin Huang was picky when it came to choosing tinder monsters. First, it had to be at least triple mutated and there were not many monsters that qualified for that condition in Division 7. It was rare as many Imperial Censor families were after this type of monster as well. Secondly, the monster would be, at best, a holy fire-level, and the highest would be an immortal-level rank-1. To be honest, triple mutated monsters were powerful. He might not be able to handle a monster higher than immortal-level rank-1 if he ever encountered one. If that happened, instead of obtaining tinder, it would become a suicidal attempt. Thirdly, the tinder would have to cater to his needs. That last condition made the mission impossible. As it was difficult to find the tinder that he desired in Division 7, he had to head to the core zone. The safe zone in Division 3 was 2.4 times bigger than Division 7. The safety zone was much more developed than Division 7. Besides having more powerful monsters, the number of monsters were a couple of times more than the number of monsters in Division 7. Without compromising the criteria of his tinder, the only way to level up was to look for the tinder in the core zone. As he turned off the black market page, Lin Huang sensed somebody walk into his territory. He smirked as he looked at the person''s direction. Soon, Lin Xin revealed herself within the trees. She had a light silver glow under her feet. She had leveled up to silver-level. Although they were in a grade-4 wild zone, she was not as clumsy as she had been before. She had leveled up to silver-level two days ago and she was now on silver-level rank-3. She could definitely fight gold-level rank-3 monsters now. Just as Lin Xin appeared, a black shadow materialized. It was a lady in a black dress. The triple mutated Wicked Witch looked exactly like a human. She had been familiarizing herself with Lin Xin and Lin Huang recently. Initially, Lin Huang wanted to get Kylie or Tyrant to protect Lin Xin as she was more familiar with the both of them. However, their appearance was too attention-seeking, so he thought that the Wicked Witch would be more suitable for the job. Besides, the Witch could conceal herself in Lin Xin''s shadow to protect her anytime, anywhere. "Brother! Witch!" Lin Xin leapt from the branch when she saw Lin Huang and the Witch, landing less than two meters away from Lin Huang. "Not bad," Lin Huang complimented as he knew Lin Xin could basically protect herself now. The three of them stepped into the dimensional relic and disappeared from the forest, appearing at their home in the Winter City. It was the Wicked Witch''s first time here. She looked around with curiosity. "Xin Er, show the Witch around," Lin Huang suggested. "Brother, are you leaving tomorrow?" Lin Xin looked at the calendar on her Emperor''s Heart Ring. "I''m meeting my friends the day after tomorrow, but I want to go there tomorrow night. It''s I who invited them after all. It''d be horrible for them to wait for me. There''s still half a month to your winter holidays. Enjoy the holiday or train your gunfighting techniques at home. I''ve already booked the ticket back to the White Capital for you. They''ll confirm your trip with you a day before," Lin Huang said. "Alright then." Lin Xin knew that Lin Huang was not going to Division 3 this time but to the ruins. He would be back in March, so she was not that upset. "Witch, let me show you around!" She waved at the Wicked Witch. It was the middle of the night on the second day at foothold No. 7B51 Laotian City. On the 131st floor in a luxury hotel, Lin Huang gazed at the snow while standing on the balcony with a glass of green juice in his hand. The communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring was open. "I''m here. Let''s meet at the City Sky Hotel at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Don''t be late." He sent the message to four people in his contact book. "Got it!" "I know." Soon, the four of them replied. The next morning, Lin Huang woke up early. It was not even eight when he was done with his buffet breakfast. He checked out at the reception and sat down at the cafe on the first floor. He ordered a black coffee as he read the news. It was less than ten days since New Year''s Day had passed. There was nothing much on the news or on the Hunter Forum. Most of the hunters were relaxing during this period, so there was nothing new. As Lin Huang was bored, he decided to check his social media app. Many friends posted photos of sceneries and food. He snapped a photo of the coffee that he was drinking and posted it on the app. Lin Xin was the first one who liked his photo while Yi Yeyu and the rest followed suit. After turning off the app, he then launched another app called Weibo and started reading news on topics that he was following. He came across a short post by ''theuglytruth''. It was posted before the new year. "There''s a battle of demigods in Division 1. Many of the islands on the quiet ocean have collapsed It''s too far away, so I can only see the blur images." "A demigod battle in Division 1?" Lin Huang frowned. A person sat across him before he could think any further about the post. "You sure know how to enjoy life!" It was Li Lang who he had not seen in a while. As usual, he was wearing his boring white suit with a red ribbon around his neck and combed back his hair. "You''re pretty early." Lin Huang turned off the app and smiled at his old friend. "Of course! I''ve always been a punctual man! Tell me, are there any hot babes this time?" Li Lang bent down and asked softly. "Yes, the lady from the Yi family that you''ve met." Li Lang rolled his eyes. "Who else?" "Her brother." Lin Huang grinned. "I''m talking about ladies!" Li Lang emphasized. "There''s another one." "Who''s that?" Li Lang was excited. "She''s here!" Lin Huang looked up at the hotel entrance. A girl in a white trench coat and sunglasses spotted him at the same time. He waved to her. She nodded and walked towards him. "This is...?" Li Lang could not recognize her. As she walked over to them, Lin Huang and Li Lang stood up immediately to offer their seats. "This is Ms. Leng Yuexin. This is my friend Li Lang," Lin Huang introduced. "Hi." Leng Yuexin took off her sunglasses and shook Li Lang''s hand. "You''re the lady from the Leng family?" Li Lang was stunned. The three of them sat down. After Li Lang and Leng Yuexin took a few sips of their coffee, Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu arrived at the hotel. The duo had seen the photo that Lin Huang posted and headed straight to the cafe. Yi Zheng was wearing a slate blue trench coat, looking exuberant while Yi Yeyu wore a navy blue dress under a knitted coat. It was not even 8.40 a.m. when the five of them gathered. Lin Huang was dressed the most casual among the five of them in his regular sports attire. Since it was still early, Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu ordered coffee for themselves as they chatted after the introduction. The Yi siblings knew Leng Yuexin as they had met at some events before. Many people in the cafe were looking at them as the five made a handsome bunch. "Lin Huang, you''ve grown taller," Yi Yeyu teased. "Yeah, I''m 178cm now. Maybe 180cm when I''m wearing shoes." Lin Huang nodded. He was not the kid that they knew two years ago. "I wouldn''t have noticed that if you didn''t mention it. He was a whole head shorter than I was two years ago, but now he''s catching up with me." Yi Zheng had just noticed Lin Huang''s height. The four of them had met two years ago where they recalled Lin Huang''s height when they first met. Lin Huang had grown from a teenager to a man. "But why are you still on white flame-level? I''m already a purple flame-level and Xiao Yu is now a crimson flame-level, going onto blue flame-level." Yi Zheng thought it was odd. "There''s no tinder that I''m after in Division 7." Lin Huang shook his head. "Did you choose a triple mutated monster?!" The four of them looked at him in shock. "Yes," Lin Huang confirmed. "Which monster did you choose to get to white flame-level with?" Now, even Leng Yuexin was curious. "The Blacksword Killer," Lin Huang told a half-truth. "You''re insane!" Li Lang was shocked. It was difficult for him to kill double mutated monsters, but Lin Huang had managed to kill a triple mutated monster. As they chatted and got familiar with each other, it was almost 9 a.m. and they had finished their coffee. "Where''s the entrance? How long does it take to fly there?" Yi Zheng glimpsed at the time and realized that it was about time they moved. "Don''t worry about it. I''ve already pinned the location last night. Just step into the dimensional relic and we''ll be at the destination." Lin Huang brought the four of them out of the cafe and summoned his dimensional relic. The five of them stepped into the dimensional relic. As it closed, the five of them disappeared from the hotel. 570 Treasure Card As they stepped out of the dimensional relic, the five of them appeared in a canyon. "Is this the War Canyon?" Yi Zheng studied the cliffs on both sides and figured out where they were. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded and summoned Kylie. Besides Lin Huang, the four of them were stunned when they saw Kylie, who was clad in black armor and had 12 wings on her back, appear before them. "Kylie, the ruins key," Lin Huang instructed. Kylie glared at the four of them and passed Lin Huang a black metal box with the ruins key inside. Lin Huang accepted the box and recalled Kylie. "Was that an angel?" Li Lang was skeptical. "I think so. A Dark Angel." Lin Huang was not paying attention. "A purple or gold flame-level?" Yi Zheng asked as he felt he might not be able to fight Kylie. "A gold flame-level." Lin Huang did not plan to lie. "Is she triple mutated? The bloodline thickness should at least be mid-level," Leng Yuexin offered a more concrete estimation. "Yes," Lin Huang replied but did not give an exact answer. He opened the metal box directly. There was a conical cube the size of a palm in the box. The four of them looked at it immediately. "Is this the ruins key?" It was the first for them to see a ruins key up close. The ruins key detached from Lin Huang''s palm after he inserted a full Life Wheel of Life Power into it. It floated in the air and transformed into a black swirl of energy less than 20 meters away from them. "Alright, let''s go!" Lin Huang nodded to them. The four of them entered the whirlpool accordingly while Lin Huang was the last to step in. In less than a minute after Lin Huang stepped into it, the black swirl disappeared from the canyon as it had never appeared before. The five of them entered a space with a dark sky and an ominous aura in the air. All they could see was dry land with craters left by the damage of the war. There were monsters and even human bones scattered everywhere. As the ruins entrance behind them closed, the key returned into Lin Huang''s hand. It seemed to be able to recognize Lin Huang by his Life Power. He kept the key in his sleeve when he heard Yi Zheng speak, "This seems to be an ancient war zone, so there should be many undead and spirit monsters here." "If that''s the case, are these skeletons our enemies as well?" Li Lang asked softly. "We can''t exclude that from the facts," Yi Zheng said. "What do you know about this ruins? Do you have a map?" Yi Zheng turned around to ask Yi Zheng. "Erm Don''t ask me. I don''t even know what grade of ruins this is." Lin Huang was stuck. "How dare you bring all of us here when you don''t even know the grade of the ruins?" Li Lang was speechless. "You idiot!" Yi Yeyu scolded. "The ruins take a year to reopen. I can''t be coming here myself and only get your guys in next year. So, I thought of getting all of you to discover this place together. If it''s suitable, we can kill the monsters. If the grade is too low, we can leave right away. I''ll buy you guys a meal. Treat this as a New Year''s gathering. If the grade is too high, we can come back a few years later," Lin Huang explained helplessly. "Where did you get the key? Do you not know anything about this place at all?" Yi Yeyu was irritated. "I got the key from the Saints last year. I really know nothing about this place." Lin Huang smiled awkwardly and shook his head. "Let''s just pick any direction then. Without any information, we can only explore blindly," Leng Yuexin said. "Then, you pick the direction then since you''re the leader." Yi Yeyu poked Lin Huang. The three of them looked at him expectantly. Lin Huang looked around, completely lost. It was a barren land that was left from the war, and it seemed like there was no difference which direction they picked. The map on their Emperor''s Heart Ring would not work in such an isolated space. Besides that, the communication and network were locked. It would spell trouble if they lost each other along the way. "Let''s just pick any direction. It looks the same anyway," Li Lang urged Lin Huang when he noticed that he could not make up his mind. "Wait!" Lin Huang suddenly thought of a card that he owned that could be used here as he was feeling lost. "Treasure Card "Function: Once the card is activated, it''ll guide you to the nearest location with treasure including mineral mountains, graveyards, and ruins. "Remark 1: The card is not used to create a treasure. Instead, it''s used to track the location of the treasure. The detection point will be tracked from the user''s activation point, and the limit is a 1,000-kilometer radius. As soon as the card is activated, the detection point will be set. Whether there''s treasure within the range or not, the card will still be consumed." "Remark 2: Each card can be used once, and only one treasure point can be selected. The treasure point can''t be changed once confirmed. As soon as the user is guided to the treasure point, the coordinates will disappear. "Remark 3: Once the card is activated, the coordinates will stay for a month. After that, the coordinates will disappear if the user doesn''t arrive at the coordinates and will be considered as an aborted mission." "Remark 4: There will be three colors of the coordinates according to the value of the treasure. White color indicates normal treasure, red color for rare treasure and gold color for legendary treasure. If there are gold-colored coordinates, the brighter the color, the higher the value of the treasure." Lin Huang instructed Xiao Hei secretly after reading the card''s description, "Xiao Hei, activate one Treasure Card!" "Are you sure you want to use your current location as the detection point and to start searching for treasure?" "Yes!" "Treasure Card has been activated." A ten-meter long white arrow appeared at Lin Huang''s two o''clock. "White coordinates I really have bad luck!" Lin Huang thought to himself. "I''ve decided. Let''s go here!" Lin Huang pointed at his two o''clock and flew up without waiting for them to say anything. The four of them followed him as they did not have a choice. 571 Ism Envious of the Imperial Censors As Lin Huang moved along the direction of the white arrow which was invisible to the others, it was still flickering at a distance of fewer than 20 meters away from him. He maintained the regular speed and flew for more than half an hour. Lin Huang and the four of them behind him found it odd that they did not see any living beings over the distance of hundreds of meters. The five of them heard nothing else aside from the whistling sound produced from the friction between the air and their clothes. Not even a single buzz from the worms or a single chirp from the birds could be heard. It was as if they were in a deadly still world. "Do you guys feel that the ruins are horrifying?" Li Lang asked Lin Huang and the rest. "We haven''t encountered any living beings so far. It''s unusually quiet." Yi Zheng''s voice was soon heard. "Could the resources have been depleted? If so, no treasure can be found in the ruins," Yi Yeyu expressed her opinion. "It can''t be. If the resources have been depleted, the ruins will collapse, but the ruins are still operating as usual. However, it''s bizarre that there are no traces of living beings." Leng Yuexin frowned. "Don''t overthink it. We''ve arrived at our first destination." After flying for more than half an hour, Lin Huang could finally see the final location pointed by the navigation arrow at a distance of more than 700 kilometers away from the entrance, and he quickly landed. The other four of them felt it was strange but still, they followed after Lin Huang and landed. After descending, Yi Yeyu and the rest then discovered that there was an entrance to the underground. Lin Huang and the four of them landed at a distance less than ten meters away from the entrance to the cave. Right at that moment, Lin Huang could see that the white arrow had disappeared. "You have crazy excellent eyesight to discover the cave at such a height!" Li Lang laughed as he said. "I have a monster skill that''s somewhat similar to the ocular skill," Lin Huang simply came up with an excuse as to hide the fact that he was using a Treasure Card. "Let''s go in and have a look!" Yi Zheng was eager to take the lead. However, he was stopped by Lin Huang. "Wait a moment!" Lin Huang summoned Bloody. Bloody turned into a purple, scaleless small snake and twisted around Lin Huang''s left arm. It looked like a harmless animal in an anime. As it blinked its pair of big eyes, Yi Yeyu and Leng Yuexin were attracted to it. "It''s so cute!" Yi Yeyu felt like touching it. "Bloody, have a look at the situation inside the cave," Lin Huang instructed. More than ten dots of purple lights were released from the surface of Bloody''s body and dispersed towards the entrance of the cave. When Yi Yeyu was about to grab one of them when Yi Zheng grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. Yi Yeyu thought that Yi Zheng wanted to stop her from bothering them. In fact, Yi Zheng vaguely felt that the dots of purple light were intimidating. Leng Yuexin could feel that as well. Her eyes flashed with a trace of uncertainty, shifting her focus towards the little beast that twisted around Lin Huang''s arm. "Lin Huang, what''s Bloody''s combat level?" Li Lang was familiar with Bloody as he and Yi Yeyu had witnessed Bloody''s investigating skill before at the Volcanic Hell. "Its combat level is higher than yours." Lin Huang did not give a direct reply. Instead, he just answered with a cryptic smile. "How could it be? My crimson flame-level Life Fire is filled. I''m going to proceed to blue flame-level." Li Lang found it unbelievable. "Is it a gold flame-level?" Yi Zheng guessed. The level of the monster would definitely not be lower than his as he could feel that the monster was intimidating. Lin Huang nodded. In order to avoid the rest from asking him the combat level of his summoning monsters, he explained, "Most of my summoning monsters have basically reached gold flame-level." Yi Zheng initially thought that he would be the strongest among the team members. However, when he heard what Lin Huang said, he instantly understood that Lin Huang was the one with the strongest overall abilities despite the fact that he was just a white flame-level. "So what even if it''s a gold flame-level? It definitely won''t be able to fight me in an actual battle." Li Lang glanced at Bloody arrogantly. Up until now, he was still naive as he was set on the thought that Bloody was a monster that could not fight. Bloody blinked its eyes while looking at Li Lang. It then turned around and looked at Lin Huang innocently. Although it did not say anything, Lin Huang understood what it wanted to say from its gaze. He meant to say, "I can fight 10,000 people like him alone!" Lin Huang sniggered. With Bloody''s parasitic abilities, it was not joking when it implied that it could fight 10,000 people like Li Lang. Bloody''s parasitic abilities allowed it to defeat weak enemies. As long as their combat strength was below its own, they would not be able to escape from being parasitized by the parasite. Quantity meant nothing to Bloody. If Li Lang were unable to surpass Bloody, even if there were one million Li Langs, they would all become Lin Huang''s puppets. Yi Yeyu did not pay much attention to Bloody''s combat strength. Similar to Li Lang, she originally thought that Bloody was just an ordinary summoning monster. However, it was so powerful even though it was just a double mutated monster. She thought that its strongest ability was its detection which could be done by releasing the dots of light. Perhaps, the remaining skills were merely skills for protection, and it did not have any attack skills. However, Yi Zheng, who was on purple flame-level, and Leng Yuexin, who was on blue flame-level, had a completely different opinion. Both of them had encountered the transcendent monsters more often than Yi Yeyu and Li Lang had, and they were more sensitive to danger. Despite disguising itself well, both of them could still sense that it was not an ordinary summoning monster. Before obtaining the results of the investigation, Yi Yeyu then stood next to Lin Huang and touched Bloody''s head. Seeing Bloody had closed its eyes as it enjoyed being caressed, Li Lang joined her as well. "You two idiots," Yi Zheng scolded quietly. In just a short while, Bloody opened its eyes and sent the image detected by its Leech Pods to Lin Huang''s mind. "Is there any news?" Yi Zheng immediately asked as he noticed Bloody''s reaction. "Yes, let''s go in," Lin Huang nodded and instructed. Lancelot that was wearing a maroon armor gradually appeared in front of them. Although the surface of Lancelot''s body was no longer misty, it became even stronger after integrating with the aura of god. Its appearance was somewhat intimidating compared to Kylie''s. If it were a game, there would be a name in bloody red color on top of Lancelot''s head, indicating that it was an extremely dangerous character. Aside from Lin Huang, Yi Zheng could confirm that the monster that was in the maroon armor could easily kill four of them within seconds. "Lancelot, please lead us," Lin Huang instructed. Lancelot''s blue eyes gazed at Yi Zheng and the rest, then finally, it nodded as it looked at Lin Huang. It then strode into the cave. Lin Huang and the four of them followed after Lancelot and entered the cave as well. As the five of them took a few steps forward, Li Lang''s voice could be heard, "I''m envious of the Imperial Censors!" 572 Lancelots Ability The five of them followed after Lancelot and entered the cave. The channel towards the cave was like a descending slope. As they walked along the twisting path for more than ten minutes, Lancelot then dove into an underground cave with them. The cave was dark, and they could not even see their fingers in front of their faces. However, darkness did not hinder the vision of transcendents like Lin Huang and the rest. Soon, the five of them could clearly see the situation inside the cave. The cave was quite spacious, and the ceiling of the cave was about ten meters high. It was a vast underground world. However, their concern was not the size of the underground world. Instead, they were worried about the monsters in the cave. From their body size, they looked like monkeys. However, there was no fur on their bodies. They had pale, waxy skin that resembled dead human corpses. Also, they had elongated limbs. Their faces looked like humans'' with ears that were about twice the size of the average human ear. Their eyes had no pupils and irises. Only the white of their eyes could be seen. They had no noses, and there were only two tiny nostrils where a nose should have been. They had sharp teeth that looked like dogs'' and when they extended their tongue, it was about three times longer than that of the ordinary human''s. Some of these monsters were climbing the wall while some of them were hanging upside down from the ceiling of the cave. There were at least 100 of them, and it looked like they had fallen asleep. "There are finally creatures here. They look hideous!" Li Lang commented. "Are they Cavernous Devils?" Yi Yeyu asked in doubt. She had heard of the monster before, but she had never looked up the information of the monster in the monster guide. "Yes, they are Cavernous Devils." Lin Huang nodded his head. He had been going through various types of reading material at the Martial Hunter College. He could almost remember all the contents of the monster guide. Although he could not remember the information in detail like Bloody could, he could basically recognize all the monsters recorded in the monster guide. The Cavernous Devil was a type of monster that lived underground. It normally ate carrion. When there was no carrion, they would hunt down living beings and eat them after they had decomposed. Under conditions when there was an insufficient supply of food, they would go dormant. If the issue of food supply could still not be solved after being dormant, they would hunt their own species. Therefore, these monsters were rather ruthless. The monsters liked to live in a group. When they became adults, they would automatically level up to gold-level. A minority of them was commander-level, and their claws and teeth were poisonous. This was the reason why even people on holy fire-level were unwilling to offend this type of monster. Lin Huang and the rest had intruded into the Cavernous Devil''s lair. Although the monsters had gone dormant, with their sensitive hearing, they would still be awakened if anything happened. "There are more than 400 of them. Looking at the population size, it''s highly possible that there are commander-level monsters and there might be more than one of them." Leng Yuexin shifted her gaze towards Lin Huang. She only told them what she had analyzed without giving any suggestion. "It''s not worth killing such monsters. Nothing from their bodies can be used as a material, and it''ll be troublesome to kill them due to their large numbers. Should we fight them?" Yi Zheng was not interested in hunting this type of monster. "Let''s warm up since we''re already here," Lin Huang said, "It won''t take us a lot of time to clear these monsters." Lin Huang had no intention to reveal Bloody''s parasitic abilities. He then gave Lancelot a simple instruction, "Kill them all!" A blue glow flashed through Lancelot''s blue eyes. Before Yi Yeyu and the rest could react, a golden glow quickly formed in front of his body, shining brightly throughout the cave as if it was daytime. The ray of light triggered the Cavernous Devils that had gone dormant. They woke up and started growling crazily. Yi Yeyu and the rest were speechless when they saw this. They wanted to secretly kill the monsters since they had gone dormant. They tried not to make any noise and intended to kill as many of them as possible. Therefore, even when the monsters woke up, the monster horde would not have such a significant advantage over them. Lin Huang was kind of speechless as well as he placed his hand on his forehead. He had instructed Lancelot to kill all the monsters, but he did not ask it to kill them alone. However, Lancelot had apparently thought that it had to kill them on its own. Therefore, it had unleashed its ultimate skill, the Sword Manipulation. The golden glow flashed through the air and a short blade that measuring about 10 centimeters long was formed. As the group of Cavernous Devils knew what was happening, they pounced on Lin Huang. The short blade blasted off and penetrated through the bodies of the Cavernous Devils. Soon after, the second and the third groups of monsters were attacked. In less than ten seconds, the crypt that was initially noisy became quiet. Yi Zheng and the rest of them were stunned, staring at the carcasses of the Cavernous Devils that were scattered all over the ground. They remained silent for a few moments. The four of them had just witnessed how powerful Lancelot was in the one-sided battle. They were shocked. "It''s so powerful!" Li Lang had no idea what else could he say to describe what he had just seen. "The killing rate is terrifying!" Yi Yeyu gushed. "I might not be able to defend against the skill if it were to use it as a single attack." Yi Zheng had only seen Lancelot''s skill once, and he could confirm that he was incapable of fighting Lancelot. "Is that the Sword Manipulation?" A flicker of fear flashed through Leng Yuexin''s eyes. The thought ran through her mind, but she had not dared to ask about it earlier. Lancelot''s abilities had been revealed, but it was not planned. Lin Huang was helpless as he had not given explicit instructions just now. However, since its abilities had been exposed, there was nothing to hide as he still had many other monster cards. "Since the Cavernous Devils have been killed, let''s take a look and see if there are any valuable things here. Otherwise, there''s no use sticking around." Lin Huang was the first one to look around the cave. Actually, Bloody had roughly studied the cave. Lin Huang walked straight towards the big pit, lowering his head and peering into the pit. There were skulls of various types of living beings, both monsters as well as humans. "Come over here!" Lin Huang shouted at them. Yi Zheng and the rest of them immediately rushed over there when they heard Lin Huang shouting at them. "A bone pit? Is that the grave of the monsters?" Yi Yeyu asked curiously. "No, this is the place where the Cavernous Devils stored their food to eat," Lin Huang explained. "In other words, it''s their kitchen, dining room, and also their rubbish bin. All the monsters that have been killed are thrown here. As soon as the dead bodies have decomposed, they''ll eat them and all that''s left are the skulls. That''s the reason why the bones have accumulated over here." "Are we going to find any treasure here? Even if there are many of the Emperor''s Heart Rings, we can hardly dig them out." Li Lang opened his palm and said. "Be patient." Lin Huang grinned. "Bloody!" Bloody then came out of Lin Huang''s sleeve and plunged into the bone pit. A few moments later, Bloody''s body turned into the shape of a sphere from which its antennas extended. The antennas then swooped downwards and penetrated through the gap between the skulls. Soon after, Bloody managed to dig out the Emperor''s Heart Rings with its antennas. After a few minutes, it had found hundreds of Emperor''s Heart Rings. "There''s such a function?!" Li Lang was startled. 573 The Cavernous Devils’ Memories Inside the bone pit, Bloody did not stop spreading its antennas and continued penetrating through the gaps between the bones. It extracted the Emperor''s Heart Rings and a few valuable items. After more than half an hour, Bloody stopped digging and gradually floated out of the pit. It levitated in front of Lin Huang. As it opened its mouth, it spat out all the items it had extracted. Lin Huang and the rest glanced through the items. There were thousands of Emperor''s Heart Rings among the rest of the items. "There are 2,276 Emperor''s Heart Rings in total. As for the relics and the other valuable items that are still in good condition, there are 133 of them." Lin Huang obtained the exact figure from Bloody. "Let''s see if there''s anything that you guys need." They shook their heads. Apparently, they were not interested in items of such levels. Lin Huang then took out the storage ring that Leng Yuexin had given him previously and stored all those items in it. "Since we got these items together, I''ll store them in the storage ring first. After exploring the ruins, I''ll look for someone to unlock the ring. I''ll then make a list, and we''ll divide the stuff among the five of us equally. That way, we don''t have to go through the redistribution of the stuff each time since it''s a waste of time," Lin Huang suggested. "Of course, you may speak up if there''s something that you need. You''ll have the priority over the others and get what you want. The person will have to exchange it for the item of the same value and give it to the rest of the group." "What if several people request for the same item?" Li Lang raised one of the possibilities. "We''ll then come up with a solution to distribute the stuff to which those who request for the item agree. After the ownership has been determined, regardless of what the result is, the rest of them mustn''t argue against it." Lin Huang had thought of this answer earlier. "What if the item costs a lot and the person can''t afford to exchange the item for the rest of the items the person has? Does the person need to pay the balance with other items?" Li Lang asked. "Yes, the person will have to pay the balance according to the market price. It''s best if one pays back with the items that we need instead of something unnecessary. If there''s indeed nothing that we need, one may pay the balance with Life Crystals or other types of crystals," Lin Huang explained the additional conditions. "As for the personal items that you guys get on your own, if the others ask for it, it depends on whether the owner of the stuff is willing to exchange it with items of similar value. If the owner disagrees, nobody can force a trade. "Let''s come to an agreement first to avoid any conflict when it comes to the distribution of stuff. You may raise your objections now if there''re any or if there''s anything else that has to be added." ince they were all friends, Lin Huang did not want them to fall out over money. Therefore, he lay out the rules beforehand. If anything happened during the distribution of the items, they would handle it according to what they had agreed upon earlier so that there would be no arguments. "I have no objection." Leng Yuexin was the first one to nod her head. "The same goes for me." Yi Yeyu looked like she did not care. "Although the rules are simple, you have made everything clear. We''ll discuss in detail if there''re any contradictions in future." Yi Zheng agreed as well. "I can''t think of anything to add so far." Li Lang had no objection as well after thinking about it. "Okay, since everyone has agreed, we''ll follow the rules." Lin Huang then continued, "The four of you are all my friends. If there''s anything that you really need, don''t feel embarrassed to ask for it. Since it''s a fair deal, there''s nothing to be embarrassed about. Don''t regret when the item that you need is given to the others." The rest of them nodded in agreement when they heard what he said. "Bloody, please check again if there is any remaining stuff. If there aren''t any items left, we''ll leave." Lin Huang then turned around and gave Bloody a new instruction. Bloody rereleased the dots of purple light and looked around. It found a few more Emperor''s Heart Rings from the Cavernous Devils'' fingers. It seized the opportunity to parasitize the commander-level Cavernous Devils and retrieved the information regarding the ruins from their memories. After confirming that there was nothing left, Lin Huang then led the team and returned to the ground. "Bloody, please check the situation in the ruins." As they returned to the ground, Lin Huang gave Bloody a new instruction again. It then investigated the situation in the ruins. Bloody floated in mid-air. Countless dots of purple light were dispersed in all directions, resembling purple clouds that were clearing away. "It''s so beautiful!" Yi Yeyu exclaimed. "What an amazing investigating skill!" As usual, Li Lang was envious of the Imperial Censor. "How many detection pods can it release at most?" Yi Zheng was somewhat interested in its abilities. "It can release millions of those pods at most," Lin Huang answered with a smile. "Is the distance that the pods can cover restricted? How far away can they leave Bloody?" Yi Zheng asked again. "I''ve never considered this. It seems like there is no restriction. Let me ask and see" Lin Huang smiled and looked at Bloody. After a short while, he answered, "Bloody said that there''s no problem to cover the whole A-grade foothold." That was actually the answer that Bloody told Lin Huang to inform Yi Zheng. The actual answer was that it could cover half of the safe zone. "What about their speed? It seems like they move quite fast," Yi Zheng continued asking. "I guess their maximum speed is about 1,200 kilometers." Lin Huang had asked Bloody about this before. However, Bloody had given him the answer before it leveled up to holy fire-level. Their speed must be much faster now since Bloody was already a gold flame-level that had gone through its third mutation. It seemed like Yi Zheng was interested in Bloody''s investigating abilities as he continued asking several questions. After listening to Lin Huang''s reply, he then nodded his head in satisfaction and kept quiet. "Are we going to wait over here until the investigation ends?" Seeing the pods had all disappeared, Leng Yuexin turned back and asked Lin Huang. "We don''t have to wait until the investigation ends. Let''s walk around as we might probably discover the second exploration point before it." Lin Huang smiled, shaking his head. Bloody shared the information that had been extracted from a few of the Cavernous Devils'' brains with Lin Huang, so he now had a brief understanding of the ruins. The level of the ruins was high. According to Cavernous Devils'' memories, the strongest monster that they had encountered was an imperial-level. Therefore, it must be at least a 4-star ruins. Most of the monsters lived underground during the day and would return to the surface at night to hunt for food. Moreover, the dry bones that they could see everywhere along the roadside would be revived at night. These monsters had a strong desire for blood and flesh, and they were quite sensitive to the aura of living beings. There was only one way for Lin Huang and the rest to survive in the ruins, which was to look for a site that could cover their aura before sunset. There was such a site in the memory of the commander-level Cavernous Devils, and it was not far away from them. Lin Huang could not explain how he had obtained the memory of the Cavernous Devils. Therefore, he guided the four of them and headed towards the right location. It was the only place where they could survive the first night. "I have a foreboding that there''s a big treasure waiting for us over there!" Lin Huang pointed in the direction of their four o''clock. "Did you just randomly point towards a direction?" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes as she felt that Lin Huang was too spontaneous. "Don''t tell me it''s a bone pit again!" Li Lang said. "Let me check it out since I''m the leader." Lin Huang then flew into the sky along with the four of them and Lancelot, heading towards the second destination. 574 A War Foothold That Existed Hundreds of Years Ago The site in the Cavernous Devil''s memory were located more than 600 kilometers away from the cave. Within half an hour, Lin Huang saw the site under him and quickly descended along with Yi Yeyu and the rest. "Yo, the site exists for real!" Li Lang teased as he thought that Lin Huang had got it right only by sheer luck. "See! I didn''t lead you guys the wrong way." Lin Huang was proud of himself. "What''s so good about that? We don''t know if there''s anything in it." Yi Yeyu raised her eyebrows and glanced at Lin Huang. She could vaguely feel that Lin Huang had known that the site was there in advance. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin did not say anything as if they noticed that as well. Lin Huang was resolute in his action as he pointed towards the ruins. Moreover, he was flying in a straight line, and the site was just in front of them without any deviation. If he had found the cave by luck the first time, it was strange that he had managed to find the site by luck for the second time. Both of them were smart. Although they knew that it was strange since Lin Huang did not want to talk about it, there was no need for them to delve further into the matter as well. After looking around, Leng Yuexin frowned. "It looks like a war foothold" "It is indeed a war foothold. Judging from its size, it''s not a regular, small foothold. It''s a least a medium-sized one. The underground must be expansive." Yi Zheng was born in the Yi family, and he could identify it at first glance. "Did you really think that you''re the only one who knows this?" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Yi Zheng. She finally had the opportunity to show off what her talent, but Yi Zheng had stolen her thunder. "Fine. Pray, tell." Yi Zheng immediately noticed that he had made a mistake. "I''m not interested!" Yi Yeyu turned her head away. Lin Huang and the rest believed what Yi Zheng said. Leng Yuexin had met the Yi siblings earlier, and Li Lang knew about Yi Yeyu''s background as they had gone to the Volcanic Hell together. Any of the Yis knew about stuff related to the armed forces very well, let alone the descent of the Yi family. "So Brother Zheng, are there any treasures in it?" Li Lang immediately asked. "There might be the remnants of the army in the storehouse. However, it seems like the foothold existed hundreds of years ago. It''s useless despite valuable items like medicine remaining." Yi Zheng felt that it was less likely that they would retrieve anything from the ruins. "Of course, the storehouse might have been emptied, and there could be nothing left" "Keep your big mouth shut, Brother Zheng. I was hoping that I can get something valuable here!" Li Lang immediately shouted. As both of them were chatting, Lin Huang instructed Bloody again, "Bloody, please check it out." Bloody then released dots of purple lights that spread into the ruins. Just when they were waiting for the results of Bloody''s investigation, Yi Zheng walked towards one of the walls of the ruins. As he put pressure on the wall, a hole was instantly formed. The place where Yi Zheng had touched with his fingers was crushed, turning into sand. Yi Yeyu then went over and asked, "Can you determine the exact year of the foothold?" "As it has weathered to this extent, the foothold must have existed for at least 500 years or even longer." Yi Zheng could only make a rough estimation. "Division 7 has only been developed for about 300 years" Yi Yeyu was dumbfounded. After a short while, they obtained the results of Bloody''s investigation. In the site, many monsters were gathered. Three floors under the ground, there was a chief-level monster that was fast asleep in the storehouse which made up the most significant area. "A chief-level monster? What''s its rank?" Lin Huang immediately asked Bloody when he heard the news about it. "From the aura, its combat level can''t be exceeding immortal-level rank-3." Lin Huang was relieved after listening to Bloody''s reply. "Alright, Bloody has confirmed that there are many holy fire-level monsters in the ruins as well as an immortal-level," Lin Huang shared the results of Bloody''s investigation. "There''s an immortal-level?!" Four pairs of pupils dilated when they heard about the immortal-level. "Let''s explore another place." Li Lang wanted to retreat. "An immortal-level That''s troublesome indeed." Leng Yuexin frowned. Yi Yeyu then looked at Yi Zheng. "Are you confident about defeating an immortal-level?" "I barely managed to kill the immortal-level rank-1. I''m unable to kill those on rank-2 or higher." Yi Zheng shrugged his shoulders and looked at Lin Huang. "Can you determine the rank of the immortal-level monster?" "It can''t be higher than rank-3." After Lin Huang finished his words, all of them remained silent. Lin Huang then continued, "I''ll kill it." "Are you sure?" Yi Zheng took a glance at Lancelot before asking Lin Huang. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "How confident are you?" "I''m 100% positive," Lin Huang answered dauntlessly. "This is not the time for heroics. How confident are you?" Yi Yeyu frowned and repeated Yi Zheng''s question. "100% positive!" Lin Huang gave the same answer. "Lin Huang, if you fail to kill the monster, all of us will have to die here. Stop fooling around!" Yi Yeyu stared at Lin Huang with a serious expression. "Don''t worry. It''s not my first time killing an immortal-level rank-3." Lin Huang had no choice but to reveal one of his small secrets. "Are you really that amazing!?"Li Lang stared at Lin Huang with eyes wide open. The four of them knew Lin Huang very well. They knew that he would not put their lives at risk. However, they were shocked to hear that. "Let Lancelot take the lead. We''ll work together with it and clear all the monsters." Lin Huang did not intend to reveal Bloody''s parasitic abilities since its ability to manipulate a battle was rather terrifying. It was also one of Lin Huang''s trump cards. Although he had faith in Yi Yeyu and the rest of them, the trump card was something too personal. Unless he had no other choice, he would not easily reveal it to the others. "Lancelot, try not to use a large amount of your Life Power. The usual attack will do. We''ll handle the remaining monsters. Minimize the use of your Life Power and save it for the ultimate warrior," Lin Huang instructed Lancelot. It would not bode well if Leng Yuexin and the rest did not get to kill a single monster. He could not let them follow Lancelot and lament about how powerful it was. "Do I need to summon the Sword Servant? The servants will kill the weak monsters, and I''ll be able to save my Life Power," Lancelot suggested. Apparently, he wanted to clear all the monsters on its own and did not want to miss out on any of them. "There''s no need to do so. Just make some random kills, and we''ll do the rest," Lin Huang rejected its suggestion. "Alright." Lancelot did not say any other thing. It lifted its legs and strode into the site. The five of them immediately followed after it. 575 Eating The Meat Without Saving the Soup Most of the regions of the war foothold had collapsed. The walls and the ceilings that had disintegrated sealed many of the places off, resulting in dimming the whole site. As Lin Huang and the rest entered, they started sizing up their surroundings. The wall of the room was covered with moss and poisonous mushrooms of various colors that grew in the corner of the wall. There was the occasional grass that occasionally appeared on the ground, and the leaves rustled as the wind blew past, reminding them that they were not in an entirely dead world. Lancelot followed after Bloody, leading them towards the entrance of the underground. Earlier, Bloody had checked the buildings that had collapsed to ensure that there was no presence of monsters. However, Lancelot, Lin Huang and the rest were still being careful as they walked through the place. On their way, they saw more small plants and fungus. Aside from that, they found nothing. After walking along the path that Bloody detected for five to six minutes, they finally arrived at the entrance of the underground. The entrance looked like a straight path that would lead them to the well of the underground. However, the area of the opening was much larger than the well as it had a diameter of about five meters. Rust covered the metal staircase at the entrance. Fortunately, they were not going to use that. Lancelot was the first one that jumped through the entrance, and soon, Lin Huang and the rest followed after it. When their feet touched the ground after a while, Lin Huang looked upwards. The underground cave was at least hundreds of meters deep. However, Lin Huang soon noticed that something was wrong. Previously, when he was underground, he could not detect anything with his Territory skill as if something had blocked it. However, his detection abilities had recovered although he was underground now. He could sense that within the region of his territory, apart from Yi Yeyu and the rest, there was the presence of other creatures. Lancelot could sense whatever Lin Huang could as the detection radius that its Sword Territory could cover was similar to Lin Huang''s Territory. "It''s so smelly!" Yi Yeyu mumbled softly and quickly pinched her nose a second later after her feet touched the ground. Yi Zheng and the rest were on high alert. Despite not possessing a territorial talent and not being able to detect the presence of the monsters, the pungent smell was apparently due to the excretion of the monsters. This indicated that the monsters in the underground were still alive. If those monsters had died, the smell would have disappeared after hundreds of years. There was a long corridor that had a diameter similar to that of the well. They frowned seeing the muddy and wet ground. They immediately floated up to a distance of a few centimeters away from the ground to avoid their shoes from getting dirty. Lancelot did not mind at all and took a step forward. As its feet touched the mud on the ground, it squished and echoed in the darkness. Lin Huang and the rest followed after it. Aside from Lin Huang, all of them summoned their relics and got ready for a fight. As they walked along the corridor, they soon arrived at the first room in the underground. The room was at least 1,000 square meters large and had a ceiling of about 10 meters tall. Within the region that Lin Huang''s Territory covered, there were more than hundreds of holy fire-level monsters. A minority of them was awoken by Lancelot''s footstep, and they peered curiously at them. "Are they Bloodthirsty Corpses?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Yes. Bloodthirsty Corpses can be easily identified as they have very fair skin which causes their greenish-purple veins to be rather apparent. The veins on their arms and legs that look like tattoos can be seen at first glance. Other than that, their bodies are deformed to a certain extent due to the side effects of demonification. The characteristics on their face are obvious as well. Their eyes tend to glow bright green in the darkness. Besides, they have sharp teeth which are similar to canine teeth of carnivores" Lin Huang gave a brief scientific explanation. "One thing that is different from the Cavernous Devil that we encountered earlier is that it has a very sensitive sense of smell. Even if we didn''t make any noise, the Bloodthirsty Corpses that are asleep would wake up if they smell the aura of living beings." After finishing his words, many of the Bloodthirsty Corpses that were asleep seemed to have sensed their auras and gradually opened their eyes, looking in their direction. Before Lin Huang could even instruct him, a dark red sword appeared in Lancelot''s hand. As it swung its sword, it penetrated through the heads of the Bloodthirsty Corpses that were about to attack from hundreds of meters away. Before the rest could react to it, Lancelot had started a one-sided killing spree. Each time it brandished its sword, the head of four to five Bloodthirsty Corpses that were within its Territory would explode without any trace. With every step forward, there would be at least ten monsters that were killed by its sword. Yi Zheng and the rest were shocked at the scene in front of them, and they were still immersed in their thoughts even after a while. Lin Huang was speechless as well. Obviously, Lancelot was not going to miss any of its targets. "Is that the Territory skill?!" Yi Zheng was the first one to recover from his thoughts and discovered the skill which Lancelot was using. Lin Huang nodded his head helplessly. "It seems like we don''t need to fight." Leng Yuexin seemed to be upset as she had no chance to fight the monsters. "Lin Huang, where did you obtain such a summoning monster? I''d like to seal a monster like this with my monster taming token." Li Lang salivated over the possibility of that. "You''re overthinking. There''s only one monster like this that exists in the world." Lin Huang shook his head. "I don''t have the energy to train another monster like this." "Isn''t it the triple mutated monster that Mr. Fu caught for you?" Yi Yeyu asked curiously. "No, I caught it on my own. It had just gone through its first mutation when it''s caught," Lin Huang explained. The four of them instantly kept quiet. Although they did not have a thorough understanding of the job scope of the Imperial Censor, even Reserve Hunters knew that it was challenging for a monster to go through a mutation even only once. A lot of resources and time were needed for training. Therefore, most of the strong Imperial Censors would capture an already triple mutated monster. They had no idea how much effort was required to train a mutated monster into a triple mutated one. This was also the reason why Lin Huang had said that there was only one such in the world. In the underground room, despite Lancelot not activating its ultimate skill, its performance was terrifying. As covered its Territory, it seemed like none of the monsters was able to approach Lin Huang and the rest of them. They were at least hundreds of meters away from them. Regardless of which direction the monsters were coming from, as long as it thrust its sword forward, the monsters were instantly killed. In less than three minutes, it wiped out hundreds of holy fire-level Bloodthirsty Corpses. Lin Huang and the rest became its cheerleaders again. The blood of the Bloodthirsty Corpse had medicinal value. Therefore, their carcasses were valuable. Lin Huang started collecting the dead bodies. While he was collecting the carcasses, Bloody chose few of the strongest Bloodthirsty Corpses and completed its parasitizing process. It also retrieved their memories from their brains. After collecting the carcasses, Lancelot stopped and was about to continue their journey. Yi Zheng, who was standing next to them, finally said, "Let us take the lead and the both of you can follow after us. Otherwise, there''s nothing for us to play with." Lancelot then looked at Lin Huang in doubt. "Why are you looking at me? You ate the meat without saving the soup for them. Let''s back the rear up." Lin Huang grinned, shaking his head. Lancelot then slowed down so that Yi Zheng and the rest could overtake them before he followed after them. 576 Yi Yeyu and Li Lang Show Their Abilities for the First Time "There are three floors underground. On the first floor, there are 16 rooms that are similar to the first room we entered, and each room is occupied with hundreds of holy fire-level monsters. On the second floor, there are 12 rooms with holy fire-level monsters that are even stronger. Basically, they are on blue and purple flame-level. There are fewer monsters over there as there are 30 to 50 monsters in each room. On the third floor, which is also the lowest floor, there are two big storehouses. The first storehouse contains four gold flame-level monsters whereas there''s an immortal-level monster in the second storehouse" Lin Huang gave brief introduction according to the information he obtained from Bloody. He then continued, "Let''s start from the first floor. Kill all the monsters in each room and go further down. If we do so, when we''re going to kill the last immortal-level monster, it won''t have any backup. If the monsters aren''t all cleared, we might be hindered during the process of killing it." The four of them nodded in agreement. Soon, they reached the second room. As they stepped into the room, the monsters pounced on them without a moment''s hesitation. "Damn! What''s that!? It''s moving so quickly!" Li Lang immediately dodged the attack with his spear as a monster almost struck him. Yi Zheng brandished his saber supreme relic and attacked a few of the monsters that came after him. At this moment, Leng Yuexin and Yi Yeyu who were standing behind them, joined the fight. Lancelot turned its head and looked at Lin Huang. Although it did not say anything, Lin Huang knew what it wanted to ask. "If you join the battle, they won''t have any fun. Let''s kill the monsters that they missed." Lin Huang did not intend to fight, and he put his hands in his pockets. Lancelot turned back and looked at the four of them who were fighting helplessly. However, it did not have the chance to attack. The monsters in the second room were Blind Apes. Their appearance was similar to apes, and they were just as agile as well. There was green fur all over their bodies. However, their eyesight had deteriorated entirely. They could only rely on sound waves released to identify a situation and hunt for their prey. Blind Apes would level up to holy fire-level by default when they reached adulthood. Under normal circumstances, the highest level that they could achieve would be blue flame-level. It would be tough for them to get to levels higher than that. The monsters had strong limbs, a rapid attack speed, and immense strength. They preferred to live in groups. Typically, those who were on gold flame-level would not want to offend them. There were almost 200 Blind Ape in the second room. Under normal circumstances, those below immortal-level would not provoke this kind of monster. However, Yi Zheng and the rest were going to provoke a faceoff. Among the four of them, Yi Zheng was the most formidable as he was on purple flame-level. He was followed by Leng Yuexin, who was a blue flame-level. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were on crimson flame-level. Although they were not stronger than the Blind Apes, as they fought against the monsters together, they managed to defend themselves against the attack of hundreds of Blind Apes. Aside from the fact that they had taken advantage of the supreme relics, this indicated that the four of them had extraordinary abilities. However, they could soon feel the pressure coming from the monster horde. "These monsters are moving too quickly!" Li Lang grumbled. He was using a long spear which compromised his agility. As they fought the monsters together, he only barely managed to defend against them. Whenever he wanted to perform a counterattack, the Blind Ape would have retreated. After a couple of minutes, only a few of the monsters were injured by his attack, but none of them died. His face was dismal. Yi Yeyu was not in any better condition than him though. She only managed to kill three monsters after a few minutes. Watching Leng Yuexin''s performance, she felt annoyed. Leng Yuexin''s performance was much better as she had completed level-2 Sabr Dao and could possibly achieve level-3 anytime. In fact, the speed of her saber was much faster. It somehow gave people the illusion that it was slow, causing many Blind Apes to be killed by her. Yi Zheng was the strongest as he managed to kill a Blind Ape each time he slashed his saber. He never missed any of them. Within a few minutes, he had killed about 50 monsters, which were more than the total number of monsters killed by Leng Yuexin and the other two. It seemed like Yi Yeyu had been triggered by Leng Yuexin and Yi Zheng as she was suddenly flipping out. Red flames were gushing out crazily from her blade that was already blood red. In an instant, a few of the Blind Apes surrounding her were drawn into the flames. The Blind Apes that were shrouded in flames started growling from the pain they suffered. However, their growls lasted for less than five seconds before they stopped. The red flames then disappeared, and the Blind Apes had utterly turned into ashes. "The temperature of the flames is scary!" The power of Yi Yeyu''s flames surpassed Lin Huang''s expectations. Even Lancelot that was standing aside fixed a nervous glance at the blade. Soon after, it seemed like Yi Yeyu was not going to hide her abilities. She waved her saber that was covered in flames. The Blind Apes that were tainted by the flames were burnt in an instant even though only their fur was tainted with the spark. The monsters that she had killed were no weaker than her. The power of her flames was incredibly potent. On the other hand, Li Lang frowned. Seeing the three of them so mighty and his lack of progress, he felt stressed. The long spear that he was holding became longer and bigger, transforming into its second state. The spear that was originally 1.5 meters long and 5 centimeters thick was transformed into a massive spear that measured more than three meters long. Aside from the tip of the spear, it looked exactly like a large blunt blade. Initially, it was a one-handed spear. However, it had now evolved into a two-handed spear. After the supreme relic had changed its state, there was a significant change in its weight. Several Blind Apes pounced on Li Lang again and attacked him. However, Li Lang fought back, thrusting his spear forward. When his spear touched the Blind Apes, the cracking sound of the bones was immediately heard. The apes were flung away as they were attacked by Li Lang and were smashed against the wall. Nobody knew if they were alive or dead. "He has improved like mad!" Seeing Li Lang''s performance, Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. The team of four could easily pin down all the monsters as Yi Yeyu and Li Lang showed off their abilities. Previously, Lancelot had been wielding a spear in its hand as it got ready to fight. However, when it saw what had happened, it had no choice but to put its sword away. It then continued watching the battle. Soon, the four of them had wiped out about 200 of the Blind Apes. None of the monsters survived. Yi Zheng and the rest started collecting the carcasses. The voice box in the Blind Ape''s throat was a unique type of biological material which many laboratories were looking for. Lancelot was upset as it did not get a chance to fight. "Now you know how it feels? Previously, you killed all the monsters alone, and the others could only be your cheerleaders." Lin Huang laughed teasingly at Lancelot. Lancelot kept quiet as it finally understood why Lin Huang had asked it to let the rest to kill the monsters that it missed. "After cleaning up, let''s proceed to the next room!" Lin Huang shouted at Yi Zheng and the rest while patting Lancelot''s shoulder jovially. 577 Lancelot Likes to Eat Vegetables Four hours later, Lin Huang and his posse cleared all the monsters in 16 of the rooms on the first floor. From the second room onwards, it basically became their show time as Lancelot would only help them out occasionally. Most of the monsters on the first floor were below blue-flame level. One to two blue flame-level monsters would only appear once in a while and barely provided a challenge to them. After Yi Yeyu and Li Lang showed off their abilities, Leng Yuexin and Yi Zheng started fighting freely. Leng Yuexin''s Saber Dao was utterly different from that of Yi Yeyu''s as it was of the ice element. If she showed her elemental powers, the speed of the monsters would be affected. In addition to the terrifying Saber Dao that she possessed, she could handle her saber fluidly like flowing water. Yi Zheng''s Saber Dao belonged to the wind element. The level of his Saber Dao was on par with Leng Yuexin''s. However, his saber realm was completely different. It could launch a swift and fierce attack with a horrifying killing rate. Each time he brandished his saber, the effect of the attack would never be rendered useless. Lancelot finally found something interesting while watching the battle among the few of them, fixing its gaze on Yi Zheng, Leng Yuexin, and Yi Yeyu. Although the level of its sword realm was much higher than the three of them, it could still learn something new from them. "It''s not a problem for Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin''s Saber Dao to achieve level-3 before they get to the immortal-level," Lin Huang secretly evaluated their performance. Since he now possessed a level-3 Sword Dao which was also called the Pinnacle level, he could easily identify their accomplishments in Sword Dao. He then shifted his gaze towards Li Lang and Yi Yeyu. He knew that aside from a few of the killing skills that Li Lang had not used, he had basically done his best. Most of the monsters that Lancelot destroyed were monsters that he had missed. However, Yi Yeyu was in greater trouble. Although she had a fast attack speed and could even be compared to Leng Yuexin''s quickness, her attack was too dependent on the flames in her body. This would suppress the development of her Saber Dao to a certain extent, and it was not beneficial in the long run. If this continued, Yi Yeyu would be able to trounce the weak monsters. However, she would be quickly killed by the strong ones, especially those that were immune to elements. "We''ve killed all the monsters on the first floor. Let''s take a break and have some snacks. The fight on the second floor will be more difficult," Lin Huang suggested after the last battle on the first floor where they had cleared all the monsters. Yi Zheng took a look at the time and shook his head. "It''s already two o''clock now! Four hours have passed!" "I didn''t even notice that." Li Lang lowered his head to confirm the time. "It was shocking how time flew by so fast!" They exited the room that was full of blood stains and returned to the clean corridor. They then took out their snacks. They had dried meat and dried vegetables as snacks. Yi Yeyu saw that Lin Huang did not give any food to Lancelot, so she gave a piece of dried meat to it. Lancelot then turned its head back and looked at Lin Huang, asking for his approval. Lin Huang nodded and said, "Take it. You may have a try." Lancelot then accepted the dried meat from Yi Yeyu. When it moved its index finger, it cut a small piece of it and tossed it into its mouth. After munching on it, it gave the remaining to Lin Huang. "It doesn''t taste good." "Alright" Lin Huang had no choice but to take the piece of dried meat. He had never fed Lancelot before. Therefore, he had no idea what Lancelot preferred to eat. Yi Yeyu was upset when she heard Lancelot''s comment. However, it was just a summoning monster, so she could not do anything to it. She could only shoot Lin Huang a deadly stare. Lin Huang then took a bite of the dried meat that Lancelot had given him. After a few bites, he nodded his head at Yi Yeyu and remarked, "It''s quite delicious. Perhaps something is wrong with its taste buds." Lin Huang then gave Lancelot some dried vegetables. Lancelot hesitated for a while as it supposed it should reject human food after giving the dried meat a try. However, it felt that because Lin Huang was its master, it was inappropriate to do so. It then accepted it. Again, it cut a small piece of the dried vegetable and put it into its mouth. After a few bites, its blue eyes glowed in delight. "It''s delicious!" It then put all the vegetables left in its mouth. After finishing them, Lancelot turned to look at Lin Huang. Although there was no expression on his metal helmet, Lin Huang knew that he had fallen in love with vegetables just by examining his pair of blue eyes. "It likes eating vegetables" Lin Huang mumbled to himself. At the same time, he took out a packet of dried vegetables from his storage space and gave it to Lancelot. "It''s all yours." The stony, cold expression on its face immediately disappeared as it gorged on the vegetables. It looked like a kid that had been starved for many years and had just seen delicious grilled meat. "Why didn''t you tell me that he likes vegetables?" Yi Yeyu stared at Lin Huang again. "You gave it meat without asking," Lin Huang answered. However, a thought ran through his mind. "How I would know what it likes to eat? I''ve never fed it." "Hmph!" Yi Yeyu growled with a pout and ignored Lin Huang. As Lin Huang was chewing on his third piece of dried meat, Lancelot had already finished the whole packet of dried vegetables. Even the small morsels of dried vegetables in the empty packet had been cleaned up. Until it was sure that nothing was left in the packet, it turned to peer at Lin Huang. "I don''t have many packets of dried vegetables left. You finished the whole packet in just a short while. We''re going to stay in the ruins for a month. There won''t be enough dried vegetables for you if you eat at the speed at which you do!" Lin Huang was speechless. "So petty! You don''t even want to feed it dried vegetables," Yi Yeyu mumbled and took out another pack of dried vegetables for Lancelot. "I have some with me! Eat mine!" Lancelot did not accept it. Instead, it looked at Lin Huang expectantly again. "Take it. I only bought a few packets of the dried vegetables." Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. Since Lin Huang had granted permission, Lancelot then took the packet of dried vegetables from Yi Yeyu. However, after learning that the supply of the dried vegetables was limited, it ate at a rather slow speed. Leng Yuexin and the rest could not stand watching its plight and gave it their dried vegetables. Seeing that Lancelot holding four packets of dried vegetables, Lin Huang found it humorous. He then extended his hand and said, "Give three packets to me. You should just take one." Lancelot hesitated for a while when it heard what Lin Huang said. "You even know how to save the food for yourself!" Lin Huang chuckled, "I''ll keep it for you. They''re all yours." Lancelot then gave three packets of the dried vegetables to Lin Huang unwillingly. The four of them simmered with laughter as they saw this. They had finished their snacks and Lancelot had finished half of its second pack of dried vegetables. "Alright, it''s time to work." After resting for about half an hour, the five of them were prepared to go to the second floor. Lancelot had stopped eating. As it realized that Lin Huang was staring at the half packet of dried vegetables that it was holding, it hid the snack behind its body as if it was not going to give it to Lin Huang. Seeing its aggrieved expression, Lin Huang did not demand it back. Instead, he smiled, shaking his head. He then turned around, leading the team to enter the second floor. "Let''s proceed to the second floor!" 578 Yi Yeyu is Angry The entrance to the second floor was situated in one of the rooms that they had cleaned out. To be accurate, it was in the eighth room that they had cleared about two hours ago. After cleaning up all the 16 rooms, the five of them returned to the entrance to the second floor underground. The staircase was different from the first one as they were made of stone. As they went down the stairs, they found out that not only were there scratches on the staircase but also on the walls beside the staircase. The scratches were of different depths. That being said, they seemed to be made by various monsters. Seeing the scratches, Yi Yeyu frowned. "It seems like many monsters appear over here." "Many of them are new. It''s obvious that these scratches have been made within three days," Yi Zheng added, "This indicates that the monsters go out often to hunt for food." "Most likely, that''s the reason. It seems like all the monsters that we encounter in the ruins are nocturnal, and they''ll possibly hunt for food in a group at night," Leng Yuexin further analyzed. Their analysis was precisely what Lin Huang wanted them to find out for themselves as he could not explicitly tell Yi Zheng and the rest that about the monsters hunting for food at night. He had gotten this information from Bloody as it had retrieved the memory of the monsters. Lin Huang could not explain the source of the information as he had told them earlier that he had never been to the ruins. He would be contradicting himself if he told them about it. However, since they had guessed that the monsters would hunt for food at night, Lin Huang added, "It seems possible that all the monsters in the ruins are nocturnal. That''s why we didn''t encounter a single monster during the daytime. "There''s also the existence of the chief-level monster in the site, which means that this is at least a 3-star ruins. There''s certainly the presence of other chief-level monsters. If our guess is correct, the ruins will be extremely dangerous at night!" Because they had come up with their own inference, Lin Huang then concluded based on the facts that he already knew. However, he kept it secret that they were at least in a 4-star ruin. Their faces turned grave after listening to what Lin Huang said. "If the monsters appear in the 3-star ruins at night, it''ll be very dangerous." Yi Zheng fretted. "However, we shouldn''t overthink. Let''s kill the monsters before night falls. We''ll be in great trouble if we are surrounded by the monsters at night," Lin Huang reminded them what they had to do now. As reminded by Lin Huang, Yi Zheng came up with a plan. "Regardless of whether we made the right guess, we''ll have to clear all the monsters here. We''re at a depth of more than hundreds of meters, and there''s an aura from the monsters everywhere. They''ll be able to cover our aura. The main thing is that there''s only one entrance which has a diameter of five meters. They can hardly attack us. If hordes of monsters do really appear at night, this place is ten times safer than places that are larger. Even if the monsters manage to squeeze through the entrance, the number of monsters will be limited, and we''ll be able to defend against their attack" The rest of them soon noticed the importance of them clearing the monsters in the site. They snapped out of their thoughts and became serious. Lin Huang felt relieved as he was wondering how he should tell them that the monsters in the ruins would appear at night and that it would be the safest for them to hide in the site. He did not expect that everything would turn out well just as he wished. In less than two minutes after they had finished their conversation, they arrived on the second floor of the site. There was a long corridor at the end of the stairs. There was no need for Lin Huang to show them the way as Yi Zheng and the rest saw that on the left-hand side of the corridor, there was an entrance to the first room. Still, Lancelot and Lin Huang brought up the rear while Yi Zheng and the rest rushed into the room. In the first room on the second floor underground, the sleeping Bat Demons were awoken by the four of them as they entered. The Bat Demon was a type of demon with a black or greyish-black body. It had a falcon-like head and a human body structure. Without looking at its head and wings, it looked exactly like bodybuilders in the human world. Bat Demons were very muscular, but they had a dark skin tone. However, they were different from humans as their feet and palms were agile. They could fully support their body with their feet and hang upside down while they were sleeping. Besides that, they would also cover their whole body with their wings. While a group of Bat Demons was sleeping, people would think that they were black hanging ceiling lamps. However, the "ceiling lamps" woke up as Yi Zheng and the rest entered. Upon realizing that the monsters were Bat Demons, their faces turned grave. Although there were only 50 to 60 of the Bat Demons and the number of monsters was lesser than those on the first floor underground, their abilities were incomparable to the Bat Demons''. Most of the Bat Demons were on blue flame-level after becoming adults. Some of the talented ones could even get to purple flame-level. Their combat strength alone surpassed the monsters on the first floor. Besides, the Bat Demon could fly, and they were skilled at performing short flights. The Blind Apes that Lin Huang and the rest had encountered on the first floor were extremely agile monsters. However, the Bat Demon was way nimbler than the Blind Ape. Aside from that, the Bat Demons did not build those muscles for fun. This type of monster had immense strength. The strength of the blue flame-level was on par with purple flame-levels. As for those that were on purple flame-level, they would definitely be able to fight gold flame-level monsters with their power. That being said, it was a type of monster that possessed all speed, strength, and agility. At almost the same time as the four of them rushed into the room, a few of the Bat Demon pounced on them. Leng Yuexin immediately activated her ice element whereas Yi Zheng brandished his sword. However, there were still two of the Bat Demons that went after Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. Both of them could not block the two Bat Demon''s actions in time, and they could only dodge their attack. Bang! Bang! The loud thuds were heard at almost the same time. Soon after, two shadows were blown out of the room, smashing against the wall on the corridor. In an instant, two big cracks that looked like spider webs appeared on the wall, forming an indent in it. Unexpectedly, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were the ones smashed against the wall. Just as the two Bat Demons were about to pounce on them and continue attacking, Lancelot appeared, standing in front of both of them. It was using a single-handed sword, slashing its sword down on the Bat Demons. They were instantly killed, and their black blood splattered all over the place. Lancelot put its left hand that was still holding the packet of dried vegetables behind its body as it was afraid that it might stain its precious food with blood. "Ahem!" Li Lang coughed as he got up from the indent on the wall. As he patted the dust from his body, he said, "Dirty tricks. He gets me with a sneak attack. I''m just not ready for the fight yet!" Yi Yeyu''s face turned grave, keeping quiet. However, her body was emitting red flames. Not only was her sword surrounded by flames, but her whole body was also burning. Apparently, she was angry. When she got out of the wall, Yi Yeyu gradually walked towards the room. With every step forward, the flames on her body became more intense 579 Rose Demigod Lin Huang had already known from early on that the flames in Yi Yeyu''s body were of a high level. When they were at the Volcanic Hell, he had witnessed her physique almost being able to pin down all the fire element monsters. However, as he watched Yi Yeyu fight with her flames once more, he had a completely different feeling this time. Shrouded in flames, Yi Yeyu looked like a burning goddess. Even if the Bat Demon had not touched her saber, they would still get instantly engulfed by the flames if they even had a slight contact with her burning body and turn into ashes. Although Yi Yeyu''s combat strength was just at the crimson flame-level while most of the Bat Demons were at the blue or purple flame-level, none of them was excluded. Anyone of them who had come into contact with Yi Yeyu''s body would be turned into ashes within moments. The flame attacks grew more and more aggressive compared to what Yi Yeyu had shown them on the first floor. Yi Zheng, Leng Yuexin, and Li Lang were shocked at the scene they just witnessed. Afraid that they would be harmed by her flames, they distanced themselves from her. "The flames are too fierce. Even gold flame-level monsters would be instantly killed by those flames." Lin Huang felt that Yi Yeyu was like an unconquerable lighter, being able to ignite anything at her whim and burn them to ashes. There was no need for her to fight as she was invincible even when standing still. "I wonder if such an effect works on those at the immortal-level." As soon as few of the Bat Demons got burned to death, the rest of the Bat Demons gave up on their attacks against Yi Yeyu. Instead, they began to attack Yi Zheng and the rest. However, Yi Yeyu noticed that the Bat Demons were avoiding her and attempted to attack them with her saber. However, it was rendered useless. She then put her saber away and created a red flaming whip with her Life Power. Yi Yeyu''s whip attack could cover a large area. Beams of red light appeared in the air as her flaming whip flashed through. Despite the fact that the Bat Demons had terrifying speed, they could hardly dodge all the attacks. Many of them were hit by her whip and soon, they were burned to ashes. As Yi Yeyu waved her whip, a look of excitement could be seen on her face. It was then that Lin Huang vaguely felt that she had made the wrong choice when she chose the Saber Dao. It seemed like a whip suited her rather well. It had become a one-sided battle in the first room after Yi Yeyu unleashed her skill. It took them about ten minutes to end the battle and more than fifty of the Bat Demons were killed. The muscle fibers of the Bat Demons could be sold to many biological firms at a good price. Unfortunately, only a few of the carcasses were in a good condition. Yi Zheng and the rest collected the remaining ten carcasses and put them away. "Let''s go to the next room." Lin Huang nodded his head at Lancelot after they had finished cleaning up. After she had vented her anger with the attacks, the flames around Yi Yeyu''s body disappeared and her expression returned to normal. "I''d suggest for you to minor in the whip." Lin Huang suggested while walking along the corridor. "Are you trying to imply that I''m not talented enough in the Saber Dao?" Yi Yeyu glared at Lin Huang." "I didn''t mean that. Since you can''t become a gunmaster, you can overcome your weakness in ranged attacks with the whip. You''re quite talented with the whip." Lin Huang explained. Yi Zheng coughed as if he wanted to interrupt their conversation. Yi Yeyu then raised her head and stared at Yi Zheng. She then explained, "To be honest, I really liked using the whip when I was younger. However, my father and brother told me that it would be hard to marry me off if I chose the whip as my main weapon so they forced me to take a major in saber skills." ''Would it be hard to marry you off if you use a whip?'' Soon, a man who was being tied appeared in Lin Huang''s mind and a woman in leather whipped him. ''Could that be the reason?'' "That''s just prejudice. Females have the right to choose any weapon they prefer. The Rose Demigod is an exception. There are many women who use whips as a weapon before the Rose Demigod. If it wasn''t a problem then, why would you say that using a whip is a problem seeing that this only seemed to happen to her?" Leng Yuexin said. It was what she wanted to tell Yi Zheng. "The Rose Demigod?" Lin Huang had no idea who she was. Bloody seemed to have sensed what Lin Huang was thinking and immediately explained to him. "The Rose Demigod is a female demigod that existed more than 500 years ago. She was powerful and her weapons were two whips laced with poisonous thorns. More than 500 years ago, her husband was caught in bed with another woman. Her husband and his lover were whipped into mincemeat and after that incident passed, she became mentally ill. Following that, she would often gather information about married couples and whenever she found someone who was having an affair, they would bear the brunt of her whip. This terrified the people in the core zone." "The president of the Union in Division 2 was found to be cheating on his partner as well. She attacked him in public but she faced attacks from others and fled before becoming insane. It took her several years to get in league with the monsters beyond the safe zone as they prepared an apocalypse-grade monster horde with the intention to destroy the entire Division 2." "There were 16 demigod-level monsters and more than a dozen billions of monsters that joined the monster horde with most of the monsters in the safe zone joining them as well. With that, they managed to almost wipe out the entire Division 2 in a single night. Thanks to the backup team from Division 3 and Division 1, they managed to prevent Division 2 from getting destroyed." "Although the Rose Demigod killed the president of the Union, she didn''t leave the battleground after she was exhausted and was killed by another demigod. Although it has already ended, humans still avoided using the whip as a weapon after hundreds of years, especially for females who intend on majoring in the whip." After listening to Bloody''s explanation, Lin Huang knew that he had misunderstood the matter. Yi Zheng was speechless that Leng Yuexin supported Yi Yeyu. Although he knew that his understanding was inaccurate, he was still on his father''s side and advised Yi Yeyu to give up her intentions to learn the whip. "That''s discrimination toward women. If women shouldn''t learn to use whips just because of the trouble created by Rose Demigod, why aren''t the men prohibited from using sword after the Sword Maniac incident? Instead, the number of men who use sword has doubled after the incident." Leng Yuexin hated double standards. Yi Zheng remained silent as he knew that he was in the wrong. Li Lang who was standing next to them dared not interrupt them as he was not close to them. Since Lin Huang majored in the sword, he knew very well about the Sword Maniac incident. More than 400 years ago, a person named Sword Maniac was said to have the most powerful weapon in the world. He always held a black sword in his hand and challenged people from various places. He challenged most of the people who were not using swords from Division 3 to Division 1 and none could defeat him. Once he discovered that he was invincible, Sword Maniac went out of his mind. He went to the forbidden area in Division 3 and broke its seal, releasing hordes of monsters that had been sealed more than 800 years ago. He even fought against the first generation protoss for seven days and seven nights before eventually dying of exhaustion. His insane actions had brought a great disaster to Division 3. It was then that the people said that the only reason they were able to suppress the first generation monsters was with divine help. However, none of them suggested prohibiting the use of swords after the Sword Maniac incident. Instead, the number of people who were training with swords grew. While he was being told the story about strong men in the past, Lin Huang felt that there were countless madmen in this world that would simply put their lives at risk. "It''s fine. I simply wanted to give a suggestion. What you guys are arguing about?" Seeing the situation becoming awkward, Lin Huang immediately jumped in. "Nobody cares much about that nowadays. There are many of them who use whips in the arena. Yeyu, you can still train in the whip if you want to do so. However, it''ll take you some time to learn it. If you don''t want to learn the whip, you can minor in other things." The rest of them merely kept quiet for a moment. As they reached the end of the corridor, they turned right at the T-junction and soon arrived at the second monster room. 580 Bladefoot Worm The monsters in the second room on the second underground floor were the Bladefoot Worms. The monsters looked like praying mantes. However, they had six pairs of long legs. Four of their hind limbs under their abdomen possessed an incredible jumping ability and grip which allowed them to climb anywhere. They would attack with eight of their forelimbs and each of them was as sharp as a sword, even comparable to an expert-grade relic. Most insects would have a blind spot on their back. However, the Bladefoot Worm did not have any. Even if somebody attacked them from the back, they would be able to twist their bladefeet to defend against the attacks. They could twist like a professional yogi. One of the abilities of the Bladefoot Worms that were often neglected was their wings. The pair of wings on their back were actually bladed wings that had a sharpness that was on par with their bladefeet. To be precise, there were not only eight blades on their body, there were ten of them instead. Many of the hunters were deceived by its name and were killed by their wings. It was a monster that had speed, explosive power, and an incredible killing ability on their side. The body of the adult Bladefoot Worm measured a length of about five meters with most of them on the blue flame-level. A small minority of their population managed to achieve the purple flame-level and were one of the top predators among monsters of the same level. Put simply, their personal abilities were a rank higher than their actual rank. The moment Yi Zheng and the rest saw that the monsters in the second room were Bladefoot Worms, their faces turned grave. This was especially so for Li Lang because he knew that it would be difficult for him to kill even a single monster like that. "Xiao Yu, Xiao Li, be careful." Yi Zheng reminded both of them. Unlike the Bat Demons, they might be killed if the Bladefoot Worm''s attack struck them. Lin Huang and Lancelot were standing behind four of them looking relaxed. They were not interested in such monsters. "Lin Huang, be careful. Ask your summoning monster to pay attention to the other monsters since they''re exceedingly fast." Leng Yuexin was unsure of Lin Huang''s abilities so she frowned as she reminded him. She was curious as to why Yi Zheng did not remind Lin Huang about this. She then thought that it could be that Yi Zheng was of the opinion that Lancelot was strong enough to protect Lin Huang. In fact, Yi Zheng felt that even if Lin Huang was weaker than him, he would not that much weaker since they had done battle before Lin Huang leveled-up to the holy fire-level. Yi Yeyu was one of the members in the audience of that battle and she knew how strong Lin Huang could be. As for Li Lang, he had earlier witnessed Lin Huang''s abilities at the Volcanic Hell and had no idea how much stronger Lin Huang could be but there was one thing he knew for sure Lin Huang was much stronger than him. Leng Yuexin was the only one who had yet to witness Lin Huang''s abilities during the time when he was still at the complete gold-level. This was the reason she was worried about him. "Don''t worry. Lancelot won''t let the monsters to come near me." Lin Huang answered with a smile, without further explanation. He then told Yi Yeyu and Li Lang, "Yeyu, Old Li, be the doorkeeper. Don''t go too far." Li Lang knew that he was not strong enough and dared not enter rashly. Yi Yeyu was reluctant to do so as she wanted to activate her flames again. However, she knew that the effect of her flames would not be similar to what it could achieve during a battle drill and she gave up after thinking carefully about it. Soon, the Bladefoot Worm sensed the presence of Lin Huang and the rest as it immediately pounced on them. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin were on the frontline, so they immediately made their way through the monster horde while Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were guarding the door not far away from them. Each of them had a monster coming after them. Under such circumstances, there was a big gap between four of their abilities. Li Lang''s long spear had transformed into a large spear that was about three meters in length. His abilities were on par with the Bladefoot Worm. Yi Yeyu on the other hand, ignited her blood-colored saber as the both of them were similarly locked in their own battles. As for Leng Yuexin, she held a saber in each hand. The sabers were made up of the ice and fire elements respectively. She rushed towards the monster horde as an explosion occurred due to the opposing elements. The monsters retreated the moment she passed by. On the other hand, Yi Zheng''s saber had already slipped out of his hand but he moved his hand slightly, manipulating the saber like the wind. By doing so, his sharp, long saber pierced through the body of the monsters. Leng Yuexin and Yi Zheng had also finally shown their true power. As Yi Yeyu and Li Lang could not help out at all in the fight, both of them could no longer retain their abilities. To be honest, Leng Yuexin''s dual attributes and Yi Zheng''s Saber Manipulation were out of Lin Huang''s expectation as he had never seen them using such skills. Leng Yuexin''s current attacks were effective. She would freeze the monsters with ice and kill them with fire. Also, her ice saber could be used as a defensive weapon and she could launch an attack with her fire saber. However, Lin Huang knew that it was actually the simplest skill of the dual attributes. Leng Yuexin must have some other skills up her sleeves that were even more powerful. Since he had seen the Saber Dominator''s skills, he had nothing to say about Yi Zheng''s Saber Manipulation. Right when Yi Zheng was about to unleash his Saber Manipulation, Lin Huang felt curious as to why did he not create few more sabers. However, once he saw that Yi Zheng could not even control a single saber smoothly, he instantly understood that he had been expecting too much from him. Yi Zheng''s Saber Manipulation was obviously different from the one obtained from the monster. Instead, he practiced it on his own. Lin Huang who had fought Yi Zheng before clearly knew that it was not Yi Zheng''s strongest skill. However, it was currently the most effective skill that he had. The speed of the Bladefoot Worm was fast and they could hardly be killed by a regular saber attack. All of a sudden, one of the Bladefoot Worms gave up on its attack against Leng Yuexin. It changed its target and pounced on Li Lang instead. With the strong explosive power of its hind limbs, it appeared in front of Li Lang in a blink of an eye before Li Lang could pick up his large spear in time. "Damn it! I''m doomed!" Scenes of how he would be cut into pieces flashed through his mind. Right this moment, a dark red glow flashed through the air and the Bladefoot Worm that attempted to attack Li Lang immediately exploded. It looked like a bullet that had penetrated through a watermelon, casusing it to explode. Seeing the Bladefoot Worm''s dead body fell onto the ground, Li Lang then turned back and caught a glimpse of Lin Huang. As usual, Lin Huang was still watching the battle at the corridor, folding his arms across his chest. Lancelot took out a dried vegetable and put it in its mouth as if nothing had happened. "Hey, don''t get distracted during a fight." Lin Huang''s languid voice was soon heard. Li Lang then shifted his gaze from them to the battle. Still, he could not calm himself down even after a long while. Despite the fact that he already knew that Lancelot was strong, he had never witnessed its strength before. However, the fact that Lancelot managed to kill in a split second frightened him. Not to mention that he had no chance to fight back at all, he could not even dodge its attack. He could only react to it when Lancelot''s attack had penetrated the Bladefoot Worm''s head. That being said, he would be killed by Lancelot within seconds. "Could Lin Huang himself defeat Lancelot?" Li Lang doubted it. The next second, he denied his own doubt and thought to himself, "Lin Huang is only at the white flame-level. He''s definitely incomparable to Lancelot." The battle in the second room finally ended after half an hour. A few of the monsters that attempted to attack Li Lang and Yi Yeyu were killed by Lancelot within seconds, the rest of the Bladefoot Worms seemed to have felt that there was something unusual so they dared not attack them any longer. After fighting for about half an hour, more than sixty of the Bladefoot Worm were killed by Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin. The feet of the Bladefoot Worms were the most valuable parts of their bodies. They were one of the main materials used to make sword-type relics. Eight of its bladefeet could be sold at a price of two expert-grade relics. Heck, they could actually make some money from this. After collecting the carcasses, they headed towards the next room. 581 Third Underground Floor It was six in the evening when Lin Huang and the rest cleared the twelve rooms on the second underground floor. In the presence of blue and purple flame-level monsters, they gave their all without holding back. Besides their ultimate move, Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu had used almost all of their skills. Lin Huang noticed that Yi Zheng was the most powerful among the four of them where he was almost at the standard of someone at immortal-level rank-1. Leng Yuexin, on the other hand, was slightly weaker than Yi Zheng. Although she was not at immortal-level, she was not far from him and much more powerful than gold flame-level monsters. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang''s combat level was restricted as they were merely at the purple flame-level. If Yi Yeyu were to use her ultimate move that Lin Huang claimed to be a ''lighter'', her ability would be comparable with Leng Yuexin. As they cleared the twelve rooms, Lancelot did not get to fight much. The couple of times he got involved was to kill sneaky monsters for Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. Under Lancelot''s protection, the both of them managed to fight the monsters one-on-one. It was the perfect opportunity for them to train their abilities. However, Lin Huang did not get to fight at all. All of the monsters that broke through their defensive circle to take an attempt at attacking Lin Huang were killed by Lancelot. The entrance to the third underground floor was in the fourth room in the second underground floor. After clearing the twelve rooms, they returned to the fourth room and walked down the stone staircase. "Xiao Yu, Xiao Li, you guys won''t be able to join in the battle on the third floor. You guys can watch." Yi Zheng reminded the both of them. "I can use my flames" Yi Yeyu was keen to help. "Xiao Yu, our main purpose in these ruins are to upgrade our abilities. Obtaining any treasures would have to come after that. It would be your loss if you rely on your flames instead of upgrading your abilities. Upgrading your abilities are similar to improving your foundation, the flames should only be used as your survival skill." Yi Zheng hardly spoke like that to his sister but he could not help himself as he saw Yi Yeyu exploring her talent. Yi Yeyu went into silence as she heard that, she noticed that she had been depending on her flames recently. "There are four gold flame-level monsters downstairs. Your brother and Miss Leng should be able to handle them. Don''t worry, if they aren''t able to, I''m here." Lin Huang said as he noticed the awkward atmosphere. "How do we do this? Two monsters for the each of us?" Leng Yuexin looked at Yi Zheng as they were near the end of the stairs. "I''ll take three monsters, you can come and help me after killing one. It''ll be more efficient." Yi Zheng suggested. As they got to the end of the stairs, they arrived in a massive room. the size was more than twice bigger than the rooms in the second underground floor. Just when they arrived in the room, pairs of eyes were looking at the six of them from different directions. The four monsters located at the four corner of the room while they arrived in the middle of the room. "It seems like we''ll have to kill two monsters each." Yi Zheng smiled awkwardly and dashed toward the two monster ahead. Without saying a word, Leng Yuexin disappeared as she turned around and appeared behind them, dashing toward the two monsters that were coming for them. The four monsters was the Crimson-Eyed Scorpion, the Violethaze Spider, the Spiky Helminth and the Scavenger Horseshoe. There were all venomous, and none of them were easy to handle especially the Spiky Helminth. It gave Yi Yeyu goosebumps when she looked at it. The Crimson-Eyed Scorpion was more than five meters long with a crystal clear body. Its eyes and tail were bloody red like a precious stone. It was not ugly but rather, it looked like an exquisite art piece. However, it would naturally be difficult to place this monster at home as an art piece. The Crimson-Eyed Scorpion would be at the gold flame-level one it became an adult and was extremely fast and venomous. Immortal-level humans who were at a low rank would not dare offend it. The venom stored in its tail could kill an immortal-level rank-3 human. The Violethaze Spider had long legs and a purple, venomous haze surrounding it. Humans that was below immortal-level might die from just breathing in the haze. Besides, as its fangs and legs were surrounded in a venomous haze all year round, the venom would be able to kill humans that were below immortal-level rank-2. The Violethaze Spider could also release a venom that could penetrate the pores on any creature. Within seconds, the venom-contaminated area would decay, bones and all. That was the reason why even an immortal-level human would not want to offend it. Meanwhile, the Spiky Helminth was a worm-like monster that was seven to eight meters long with colorful thorns on it. This monster had up to thousands of different venoms in its thorns. Once one came into contact, it would almost be incurable as the venom was a combination of an entire range of venoms. Although it moved slow and weak in attack, it was tough to handle. Aside from its venomous thorns, it could divide its body hundreds of times once it was separated. It would be hard to handle especially in the limited space that they had. Lastly was the Scavenger Horseshoe that was almost 10 meters long. It fed on carcasses and minerals of all sorts. Consuming minerals would change its body differently. Consuming sufficient elemental minerals would give it elemental strength while consuming sufficient metallic minerals would give it an extraordinary defensive ability. It applied to other minerals where it would be able to obtain various abilities from consuming different minerals. The Scavenger Horseshoe they were looking at must had consumed metallic minerals which caused it to look a darker shade of silver. Its defensive ability must be terrifying. Naturally, it was venomous as well. As soon as one was bitten, one would die from the decay that would happen on one''s body. As Lin Huang looked at the four monsters, he knew that it would be a tough battle for Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin. "Lancelot, be ready to help." Lin Huang spoke to Lancelot telepathically. The four monster were venomous and would spell trouble for the duo so Lin Huang got Lancelot to back them up. 582 Powerful Elemental Enlightenmen Yi Zheng was fighting the Violethaze Spider and Scavenger Horseshoe Crab and they were tough. One excelled at mid-distance attacks while the other excelled at long-distance attacks. The dark silver Scavenger Horseshoe Crab had terrifying defensive abilities. Yi Zheng could not break its defenses with his normal attack, all he could do was to leave white trails on the monster''s back. Although using a powerful sword skill on the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab would work, it had a powerful healing ability that had an effect not unlike Enhanced Regeneration. Flesh would grow out from the wounds and it would be completely healed in mere seconds. On the other hand, the Violethaze Spider would concurrently attack in a random manner. It spat venom and spider webs occasionally but it remained at a distance as it attacked, seemingly realizing how powerful Yi Zheng was. Although it had a venomous haze surrounding it, it remained careful and did not dare to go near Yi Zheng as it attacked. As he was fighting the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab, Yi Zheng did not have the time to fight the Violethaze Spider. Fortunately, both monsters did not overpower him, making the battle seem like a stalemate. Meanwhile, Leng Yuexin was fighting the Crimson-Eyed Scorpion and the Spiky Helminth. The two monsters were on-point with their attacking tactics. Although the Spiky Helminth was not strong in its defenses, it was not afraid to be attacked at all. It played the role of a shield as it was close to Leng Yuexin. The Crimson-Eyed Scorpion on the other hand, maintained its distance as it carefully attacked using its venomous tail. Fortunately, the Spiky Helminth was slow and Leng Yuexin could manage them with her frost ability, preventing the two from doing anything to her. However, whenever she wanted to attack the Crimson-Eyed Scorpion, she would be blocked by the Spiky Helminth''s thorns. The battle on this side was at a stalemate as well. More than ten minutes had passed, and Yi Zheng was irritated as the battle remained in a stalemate. "Lin Huang, without me and Ms. Leng, how confident are you that you can kill that immortal-level monster?" Yi Zheng shouted at Lin Huang. "100%." Lin Huang gave the same answer as before. Yi Zheng did not use his ultimate move as it would drain his Life Power. Initially, he wanted to save that to help Lin Huang with the immortal-level monster. However, it seemed like he had underestimated Lin Huang as he did not need his help. In reality, Yi Zheng was still skeptical when Lin Huang said he could kill immortal-level monsters before entering the ruins. However, his doubts disappeared when he saw Lancelot fight. He was not judging the fact that Lancelot could go against an immortal-level rank-3 on his own but he guessed that Lin Huang had other powerful cards apart from Lancelot. After confirming that Lin Huang that he could kill an immortal-level monster on his own, Yi Zheng thought he did not have to save his Life Power for the immortal-level monster anymore. "Elemental Enlightenment, Blast!" "Level-2 Saber Dao!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he saw Yi Zheng''s sword swing. Aside from the Saber Dao combination, it had a special charm to it. A purple spiraling light shot out at the speed of light from his saber, to the point that even the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab that had been defending against his attacks sensed how lethal the attack could be. However, it was too late when it realized this. The light on his saber pierced through the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab''s chest and shot out of its back. A hole of a fist size tore opened on the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab, allowing one to see through its body. With the intense pain came from its chest, the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab attempted to heal its wound but it found out that there was a special force left on its wound that it could not get rid of as it lost blood at an alarming rate. Ten seconds later, the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab that was acting as a shield was destroyed. It would still be fine if other parts of its body were injured, even if it could not heal them within a short period of time. However, Yi Zheng''s attack pierced through its heart. The fact that this happened was not due to Yi Zheng''s powerful abilities, it was the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab that underestimated his abilities to a certain extent. It would not have died if it had moved a couple of centimeters away. However, it was reckless and underestimated Yi Zheng, thinking that he could not do any harm to its carapace so it had lesser time to respond to the attack. Lin Huang was surprised when he saw Yi Zheng killing the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab. "There seems to be something else aside from his Saber Dao..." Lin Huang mumbled softly. "It''s the Elemental Enlightenment, Blast that boosted his speed and attack power," Lancelot explained. "Elemental Enlightenment? I didn''t know it could be combined with Saber Dao He was only on level-2 in Sword Dao but his attack was as powerful as someone at level-3." Lin Huang had yet to master Elemental Enlightenment. He thought it was refreshing as it was his first time witnessing such an ability. After killing the Scavenger Horseshoe Crab in one attack, Yi Zheng dashed and appeared in front of the Violethaze Spider. The Violethaze Spider spat venom at them as it attempted to get Yi Zheng to back off but that did not work. Yi Zheng swung his saber and the the purple spiralling light pierced through its half-open mouth. The spiralling glow on its saber then shot through the Violethaze Spider''s abdomen. After that, he backed off immediately without touching the venomous haze and the Violethaze Spider died before it disappeared. After killing two gold flame-level monsters in less than a minute, Yi Zheng turned around in an attempt to help Leng Yuexin. He saw that half of the room that she was in had frozen over. The Spiky Helminth was also frozen and could not move as Leng Yuexin fought the Crimson-Eyed Scorpion that had a white frost all over it, causing it to move slowly. "Let her handle them." Lin Huang said to Yi Zheng. Yi Zheng nodded, put away the two monster carcasses and teleported himself to Lin Huang and the rest while watching Leng Yuexin fight. Leng Yuexin seemed to hear the conversation between Lin Huang and Yi Zheng earlier so she did not hold back as she fully showcased her frost attribute abilities. The frost in the half-frozen room began spreading until there was a layer of white frost under their feet. The room was now so cold that Li Lang and Yi Yeyu could no longer bear it anymore, let alone the extreme temperature that the two monsters Leng Yuexin were fighting had to suffer. "She should have already mastered Frost Enlightenment" Yi Zheng looked serious. From what they were looking at, he was sure that Leng Yuexin''s ability no weaker than his. The forces Leng Yuexin had on her side from her ability was perfect to oppress these two monsters. The Spiky Helminth and Crimson-Eyed Scorpion were cold-blooded monsters, so the low temperature affected their movements tremendously. The Spiky Helminth was frozen while the Crimson-Eyed Scorpion was moving slowly from the low temperature. It was no longer as powerful as it was earlier. As Leng Yuexin confidently swung her saber, the area trailing the saber''s path frozen over. Soon, half of the room turned into a freezing hell. Even the Crimson-Eyed Scorpion could not escape its frozen fate and turned into an ice sculpture while the Spiky Helminth became completely frozen. Just when they were thinking if the two monsters were already killed, Leng Yuexin pulled her second saber out. There were blue flames on her saber as a terrifying force accumulated on it. "Blaze Enlightenment?!" Yi Zheng''s pupils shrunk as he watched, not expecting Leng Yuexin to have mastered two enlightenments. Soon, the flame on the saber peaked. Instead of attacking the two frozen monsters, Leng Yuexin stabbed her saber into the ice on the ground and as soon as the saber touched the ground, the ice around it went up in flames. The ice seemed like it was fueling the flames. Lin Huang pulled Li Lang and Yi Yeyu''s hands as he immediately backed off, Yi Zheng did the same. An intense spark appeared in front of them as an explosion was heard, causing the ground to shake violently. The collision of two enlightenments was terrifying. The entire room was swallowed by flames but Lancelot managed to defend against it with Dark Mirror. Soon, the explosive impact dissipated while the frost covering the two monsters disappeared. The two monsters disappeared as well but Leng Yuexin stood standing with her white trench coat. "What a terrifying skill." Lin Huang smirked. Lancelot removed the Dark Mirror and all of them appeared near the wall on the other side of the room. "I''m sorry, it''s my first time using this in battle. I haven''t fully mastered its power." Leng Yuexin shook her head while forcing a smile. "That should be able to kill an immortal-level rank-1 and injure an immortal-level rank-2." Yi Zheng was impressed with Leng Yuexin''s skill. "Looks like I have to spend some time studying Elemental Enlightenment when I get back." Lin Huang was half joking. "You haven''t mastered Elemental Enlightenment yet?" Yi Zheng was surprised. "Yea, I hardly use elemental force." Lin Huang admitted. "Why not we enter the last room after our Life Power has recovered?" Leng Yuexin suggested. "Don''t worry, you guys can step aside and watch. Let me handle the last monster." Lin Huang smirked and brought them to the last room. 583 Kaiserpede Lin Huang and the rest stopped once they arrived at the corridor of the last room on the third underground floor. "Don''t come in." Lin Huang knew that Yi Zheng and the rest would not be able to handle the next battle. "Lancelot, stay here and protect them," he turned around and instructed Lancelot. "Don''t you need my help?" Lancelot asked. "No." As he replied, his supreme sword relic appeared in his hand. He did not use his ancient relic Air Slicer as it would drain too much of his Life Power. Yi Zheng and the rest were surprised to see his sword. "Do you plan to fight by yourself?" Leng Yuexin asked. She thought Lin Huang would summon one of his summoning monsters to kill the immortal-level monster instead of fighting himself. "Don''t worry, just watch." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. He knew he was underestimated by them. Lin Huang leaped with his sword and appeared in the last room. In the dark, twelve red lights lit up like twelve red lamps hanging ten meters off the ground. Then, chirping sounds were heard in the air like there was something crawling about and soon, a giant appeared less than twenty meters from Lin Huang. They finally saw how the immortal-level monster looked like. It was a gigantic black centipede, and aside from its black head, the twelve red lights that were similar to streetlamps were its twelve eyes. It was hundreds of meters long and had black, spiky legs attached to each joint. That aside, venomous spikes also protruded from its purplish-black back. "Kaiserpede!" Yi Zheng and the rest had their pupils shrink when they saw the monster. The Kaiserpede was a gigantic arthropod that was not unlike a centipede. It was a giant insect monster. Such monster would have a hundred pairs of legs when it reached adulthood and achieved the immortal-level. It would grow a pair of legs each year so when it lived until it was a thousand years old, it would have more than a thousand pairs of legs and would possibly at the imperial-level by then, making it a king. That was how the name Kaiserpede came about. The Kaiserpede was ferocious. When it was hungry, almost every living thing in the room would fall prey to its hunger. It also had terrifying venom, and the longer it lived, the more venomous it would become. A Kaiserpede that had just reached adulthood would usually be at immortal-level rank-1 but its venom would still be sufficient to kill a human at immortal-level rank-3. Its poisonous teeth was even more venomous, as a single bite could kill a human at immortal-level rank-4, possible even posing a huge threat to someone at immortal-level rank-5. Bloody could not identify its combat level as it was sleeping earlier. Looking at its 300 pairs of legs, it was obvious that it was at immortal-level rank-3. It was clear that immortal-level rank-6 and rank-7 monsters would not want to fight it in these ruins. Yi Zheng and the rest were shocked when they saw the monster''s appearance. "Hehehe It''s been a long time since I last ate a human." The Kaiserpede did not attack them when it noticed them but uttered those words instead. "It''s my first time seeing a living Kaiserpede!" Lin Huang looked up at his opponent. "It seems like you''re not afraid of me." The Kaiserpede did not sense even an inkling of fear from Lin Huang at all. Instead, he was calm and he did not seem like he was pretending. "Kid, you''re only at the white flame-level, why aren''t you afraid of me? Do you have some hidden card that I don''t know about?" It seemed like it was not the first time the Kaiserpede had encountered humans. It had its guard up when it noticed Lin Huang''s odd behavior, possibly due to the fact that it might have fallen into a human''s trap before. "I''m not afraid of you because your ability isn''t at a level where it can make me fear you." Lin Huang answered. The Kaiserpede then looked at the people behind Lin Huang. It peeped at Yi Zheng and the rest but stopped when it saw Lancelot. "A triple mutated gold flame-level monster It might really pose a problem to me but that''s about it. If that''s all you got, I''m sorry to say that you guys might become my appetizer tonight." The Kaiserpede figured that Lin Huang was an imperial censor. "It''s almost time for me to hunt for food outside after eating all of you." "Too bad you won''t be eating dinner tonight." Lin Huang smirked. Hearing Lin Huang and the Kaiserpede talking about dinner, Lancelot recalled the dried vegetable that he had in his hand and began munching on it. He seemed like he was unafraid of the battle that was about to begin. Yi Zheng and the rest glared at Lancelot, speechless. They could not understand how it was possible for him to be so casual about it. "Lancelot, does Lin Huang have summoning monsters that are more powerful than you?" Yi Yeyu could not help but ask. "With my current ability, he does." Lancelot gave a short answer and did not want to reveal more. His answer surprised Yi Zheng and the rest, making them doubtful at the same time. "Why doesn''t he summon them now?" Leng Yuexin frowned, she thought Lin Huang was being careless. "Because he doesn''t need to." Lancelot said that and proceeded to eat his dried vegetable. Lin Huang remained standing less than twenty meters from the Kaiserpede, not seeming like he was about to summon any of his monsters. "There''s a human saying that goes the naive ones are fearless. I can finally understand what it means today. It''s great that your naivety would cause you to become my appetizer tonight." The Kaiserpede learned about humans in the past but it did not think that Lin Huang was showing off before it. Instead, it thought he was being naive. Just as it said this, the Kaiserpede dashed toward Lin Huang, not unlike an agile baby snake as it appeared before Lin Huang in an instant. Yi Zheng and the rest were shocked when the Kaiserpede moved. It was so fast that they could not even respond in time. Suddenly, a white glow flashed in the air it was the glow of a sword at the Pinnacle, level-3 Sword Dao and came from the sword in Lin Huang''s hand. That single swing of the sword had stopped the immortal-level rank-3 Kaiserpede. Lin Huang smirked as he looked at the giant monster before him. "You asked why am I not afraid of you. The reason is simple, it''s because I''m more powerful than you!" 584 Lin Huang Versus Kaiserpede Yi Zheng and the rest were shocked to see Lin Huang stop the Kaiserpede with one sword swing. Yi Zheng knew Lin Huang was powerful but he did not know Lin Huang was this powerful. Initially, he thought Lin Huang should be slightly weaker than him. No matter how powerful Lin Huang was, Lin Huang should not be more powerful than him. However, it seemed like he had underestimated Lin Huang. Meanwhile, Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were even more shocked than Yi Zheng was. They had witnessed his ability when he was at the gold-level and even then, he was already a genius. Now he was even more powerful than he was in the past. Lin Huang''s ability now was at an entirely new level to the both of them, he was even more terrifying than the legendary supreme genius. A supreme genius meant a human would be one level more powerful than their current combat level. Lin Huang was only white flame-level now but he could fight an immortal-level rank-3, that alone already exceeded the one-level-higher rule. Of course, Leng Yuexin was the most surprised one among the four of them. The last time she met Lin Huang was at the Mystery Auction but she did not see him fight so she had no idea what Lin Huang''s ability was. She only knew that he had powerful summoning monsters like Tyrant, and had always thought that he would depend on his summoning monsters. If she did not witness the events unfolding before them with her own eyes, she would never believe anyone even if they told her that he was able to fight an immortal-level rank-3 monster when he was only at the white flame-level. "A white flame-level fighting against an immortal-level rank-3, I think I must be dreaming." Li Lang''s jaw almost dropped, he even pinched his own cheeks. "Is this really the Lin Huang that I know? I''m suspecting if this guy reincarnated from a god." Yi Yeyu snapped out of her shock. "I''ve always thought I''m quite talented and never believed that there''s any supreme genius that could fight a monster that''s a level higher in this world. I''ve never thought I would witness this with my own eyes today." Yi Zheng forced out a smile. He was affected by how powerful Lin Huang was. "This guy I''ve underestimated him." Leng Yuexin looked envious. Lancelot was the only one who was not surprised. He proceeded to eat his dried vegetable calmly as he already knew how powerful Lin Huang was. The fight between Lin Huang and the Kaiserpede continued in the room. That one collision had made the Kaiserpede realize that Lin Huang was more powerful than he looked. Although it was still skeptical of Lin Huang''s ability, it was no longer relaxed. "So you''re a supreme genius, no wonder you have the audacity to challenge me. A supreme genius must taste even more delicious than other humans! Hehehe" The Kaiserpede had its guard up as Lin Huang managed to block its attack with a single swing of the sword. "That''ll depend if you have the capability to eat me." Lin Huang smiled and gestured the Kaiserpede to come to him. "Is he crazy, he''s challenging an immortal-level monster. How nice would it be if I could do this one day." Li Lang watched in excitement. "I think you should forget about it. Judging by your ability, even if you get to gold-level, you''ll definitely run away if you encounter an immortal-level rank-3 monster." Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes as she insulted Li Lang, he was speechless. "I guess I can only fight an immortal-level rank-3 when I get to the complete gold flame-level. But I don''t think I could block the Kaiserpede''s earlier attack even when I''m at the complete gold flame-level." Yi Zheng frowned and voiced his opinion. "This giant insect''s ability isn''t comparable with other insect-type monsters." Leng Yuexin nodded and agreed. That single swing of his sword had revealed many details about him. "Brother, do you mean you won''t be able to fight Lin Huang now even if you''re at the complete gold flame-level?" Yi Yeyu was unhappy as she asked that. "I''ll definitely lose if he uses his summoning monsters. But if we''re fighting one-on-one, it''ll be a 50-50 chance for me but naturally, it won''t be accurate as he has only shown very little of his current abilities." Yi Zheng did not admit that he was weaker than Lin Huang. As they were chatting, Lin Huang and Kaiserpede had collided dozens of times in the room. Although the Kaiserpede was massive, its speed was terrifying. Each attack was like flowing water, so smooth that it must have peak control and had mastered control of its body. It used its advantages fully in each attack by incorporating its venomous thorns, powerful strength, and defensive abilities. Lin Huang was challenged. He had to admit that the Kaiserpede''s venomous thorns brought much trouble to him as the thorns grew randomly on its body without a fixed sequence. Most importantly, the Kaiserpede could shoot the thorns out of its body like a weapon, making it tough for Lin Huang to estimate as the thorns grew in random places. Without his Territory, he would be hit by the thorns many times. Another trouble he had was the Kaiserpede''s defensive ability. No matter how many times Lin Huang attempted to break its purplish-black shell, his swing of the sword only left scratches that looked like it was from a cat even though he had activated his Sword Dao. Besides, the monster had regenerative healing abilities. Even though it was not as powerful as Enhanced Regeneration, its healing ability was strong. The scratches that Lin Huang left on its body disappeared in less than a minute. "This fella is much more powerful than I imagined." Lin Huang was considering to use his cards. After all, he did not use any sword skills throughout the collisions. "The Kaiserpede''s weakness is its joints, especially the one connected to its head," Bloody said. "I know that but this guy is too agile, it''s moving all the time and its thorns keep coming at me, causing my attacks to miss its target." Lin Huang had been trying to attack its joints but the Kaiserpede was careful. "Tackle its speed by being faster than it is." Bloody suggested. Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. Soon he recalled something and smirked. "Faster than it? I know how I can do that!" 585 Endless Threads The Kaiserpede''s defensive ability was immensely powerful, with its only weakness being its joints. However, the 300 joints that it had looked similar to one another. With its terrifying high speed, it was hard to target a single joint repetitively. Bloody''s suggestion had enlightened Lin Huang. If it was fast, the only thing that you had to do was to be faster than the monster! Since he could not differentiate the joints, he attempted to attack the first joint at the back of its head! Lin Huang gave up his plan of attacking it by force the moment he was enlightened. Although he could kill the monster with his current ability, that method would be quite draining. "Our warm-up is over now. I''ll show you what I''ve got right now." Lin Huang smirked. The white Life Power surrounding his sword now turned to lightning, turning the black sword into a white thunder sword in less than a second. Even the sword itself was a couple of centimeters longer now. "That was just a warm-up?!" Yi Zheng and the rest were shocked. "Is this the lightning attribute?" Yi Zheng was skeptical as he watched as he did not understand what Lin Huang was trying to do. "There''s no Elemental Enlightenment in this" Leng Yuexin frowned. Without the Elemental Enlightenment, the attack would be useless on the Kaiserpede unless the attack was of a high enough level. The lighting that covered Lin Huang''s sword seemed to be regular lightning that was transformed from his Life Power. The Kaiserpede was initially stunned to see Lin Huang''s sword transformation but when it realized that it was just Life Power transforming to regular lightning, it burst out laughing. "I actually thought you were going to do something bizarre. This lightning will do me no harm even if it strikes me for the entire day!" "Really?" All Lin Huang did was smiled. The white lightning spread to his entire body as he dashed towards the monster at lightning speed. "That''s fast!" Even the Kaiserpede was shocked to see Lin Huang''s speed. Yi Zheng and the rest could not capture his movement any longer. All they saw was that Lin Huang had disappeared. In reality, Lin Huang had already teleported above the Kaiserpede''s head and before it could react, he swung his transformed, white-lightning sword at the first joint behind its head repetitively. His speed was so fast that he managed to swing his sword hundreds of times. "ROARRRR!" The Kaiserpede roared in agony, countless venomous thorns shooting towards Lin Huang. This time, he did not dodge but instead used a black mirror that appeared before him to block the attack. The thorns landed on the mirror, causing a shockwave to emanate from the collision but it was soon absorbed by the mirror and was reflected. The reflected thorns were targeted at the Kaiserpede''s joint behind its head where Lin Huang was swinging his sword at. The Kaiserpede''s thorns were no weaker than Lin Huang''s swinging sword. Many of the venomous thorns collided with the joint where Lin Huang was swinging his sword at and the Kaiserpede groaned from the pain. However, as the thorns targetted one of the bony joints, it was unaffected by the venom. The venom could harm itself if it managed to enter its bloodstream but it had a higher immunity to the venom so if it was poisoned, it would only some minor reactions but would not die. ince the attack failed, the Kaiserpede decided to run away. Although it had a stunning healing ability, it could not take Lin Huang''s repetitive attack on its joint. As soon as the joint broke, it would affect its movement immensely. The Kaiserpede moved its hundreds of legs in an attempt to rid itself of Lin Huang. "You''re running?!" Lin Huang shouted and chased it like a bolt of lightning. If he was fighting some other monster, he would have definitely remained standing on the monster''s back. However, the Kaiserpede had countless thorns on its back so there was nowhere that he could stay put at. The only thing he could do was to attack its joint as he pursued it by means of flight. The Kaiserpede''s constant change of speed and direction made it difficult for Lin Huang to attack the right joint, with only half of his attacks landing on the joint. The Kaiserpede knew that although its healing ability was tremendous, its joint would definitely break if Lin Huang did not stop attacking the same point. As soon as the joint broke, it would not be as agile as it was and at that point, it would definitely be killed. "Human, you''ve left me no choice!" The Kaiserpede knew that it could not hold back anymore or it could die in the hands of this white flame-level human genius. There was purple silk being secreted from the Kaiserpede''s thorns on its body. The silk was as thin as spider silk and they formed a web on the Kaiserpede''s back. Its body that was initially purplish-black was now completely black, as it the silk had absorbed all the purple. Lin Huang''s pupils shrunk as he this and he backed off immediately. He acted this way because the Kaiserpede was going to perform its ultimate move. It was called Endless Threads where it would use all the venom from its body to form a web in the air. The venomous web was like a contagious disease that would spread in the air, forming purple spiderwebs everywhere. The venomous silk could even penetrate into the pores of other creatures and invisible beads would enter one''s lungs as one breathed. Since it was the entirety of the venom accumulated in the Kaiserpede''s body, it could even cause the death of a human that was two ranks higher than the Kaiserpede within three minutes. The Kaiserpede was unwilling to perform this as the entirety of its venom would be cleared from its body and it would take it hundreds of years to accumulate such an amount. Another reason for its unwillingness was that it would degrade its own combat rank after performing this. "Seems like I''ve brought some trouble to myself" Lin Huang did not expect the Kaiserpede to perform this so soon. "If this is the first time the Kaiserpede is doing this, perhaps everything within 60 kilometers might die when the venom spread with the current strength of its venom. The venom would stay for more than a month it fades." Bloody estimated. "Lin Huang, let''s go before the venom spreads." Yi Zheng knew that it was impossible to fight the Kaiserpede as soon as it used its ultimate move. "I really don''t want to do this to an immortal-level rank-3 I''d be bullying it." Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. His white-lightning sword was now transformed into flames. "Flowing Fire Sword!" A white glow filled the entire room as Lin Huang said that. The only thing that Yi Zheng and the rest saw was a sword that was as bright as the sun releasing a white glow in Lin Huang''s hand, turning the entire room white. A shadow landed from the air as the white glow faded ten seconds later. There was no longer any purple silk in the room, and the gigantic Kaiserpede was nowhere to be seen. "Lin Huang, you''ve won?" Although he knew that, Li Lang asked that anyway. "Yes." "Where''s the Kaiserpede? It ran away?" Yi Yeyu asked immediately. "Naturally, it''s dead." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. "The venom has been cleared?" Yi Yeyu was skeptical. "Yes, it''s been cleared. Don''t worry." Lin Huang nodded. "The skill that you used" Yi Yeyu proceeded to ask but Yi Zheng tapped her shoulder and shook his head. It was clearly Lin Huang''s ultimate move. Although Yi Zheng was curious regarding the exact move he used, he did not ask as he knew he would be crossing the line. Yi Yeyu then realized that it was inappropriate for her to ask that after Yi Zheng stopped her, so she nodded and held her tongue. "It''s a warehouse here, let''s see if there''s anything worth taking. Since there''s no treasure along the way, there should be some hidden in this room." Lin Huang looked across the room but he saw nothing. As they spread out, Leng Yuexin found a hidden entrance to the basement. The entrance was disguised with a rock, and neither Bloody nor Lin Huang''s Territory managed to detect or sense anything odd. They walked down the stairs to the basement once they discovered the giant rock, and found a warehouse that was less than 200 square meters. All of the cabinets had collapsed, with a pile of Emperor Heart Rings, weapons, armor, and assorted relics in good condition spread on the ground. There were also various military equipment replicas but they were now obsolete. Bloody gave the final calculation after checking out the items. "There''s a total of 3,587 Emperor''s Heart Rings, 327 expert-grade relic replicas in good condition, 511 relics and other miscellaneous items, some Life Crystal pieces, and some minerals. "Not bad!" Lin Huang was satisfied with what they found. "Same old rule, we divide them equally." As they put away all the measure into their storage rings according, Lin Huang brought them out from the basement, all the while attempting to figure out how he was going to explain the ruins to them. "Many monsters are coming out of the basement!" Bloody said as they arrived at the first underground floor. 586 Grade-5 Ruins! Bloody did not bring good news this time. The moment the Kaiserpede was killed, Bloody put its parasites on it. Immortal-level rank-3 was the maximum level of a monster that Bloody can put its parasites in. The information that this chief-level monster knew about was much more than the other monsters that Bloody put its parasites on earlier. According to the memories that Lin Huang retrieved, the Kaiserpede that he killed had been in this ruins for many years. The most powerful monster in this ruins was not at the imperial-level, as three demigod remnants along with a mysterious monster. He thought it was a grade-4 ruin where an imperial-level was the most powerful, only realizing how wrong he was after reading the Kaiserpede''s memories, it was a grade-5 ruin with demigods in it! The three demigod remnants and the mysterious monster required a massive amount of flesh energy so the ruins would have a blood sacrifice every month. After the killing ended, all the monster carcasses would be sacrificed to the demigods and the mysterious monster. Every month, the three demigod remnants would fight with the mysterious monster to decide who would get the sacrifice. If the sacrifices were insufficient, the three demigod remnants and the mysterious monster would kill the monsters themselves. Lin Huang knew very well that the blood sacrifice would not cause the monsters in the ruins to go extinct. As soon as the monsters in the ruins dwindled in population, the ruins would be reset. A Virtual Eye would open and a massive amount of monsters would enter. What Lin Huang was concerned about was the blood sacrifice that would happen three days later. The three demigod remnants and the mysterious monster would awake from their slumber. "Three more days, do we really leave our journey behind just like that?" Lin Huang was upset. Although he had the ruin key with him so he could enter once again, the next time had to be a year later. The blood sacrifice would affect all living things, even hiding in the foothold would be unsafe as the monsters around them would search for things to kill. There would be no safe havens in the ruins. With Lin Huang''s current ability, he could definitely fight an immortal-level monster. However, if he encountered an imperial-level monster, he was not so confident that he could defeat it even with his ultimate ability. That was the reason he was considering to leave the ruins before the blood sacrifice began. Another thing that Lin Huang had in his mind was how he was going to explain this to the rest. Just as he was deep in thought, Bloody spoke, "There''re many monsters coming out from the basement?" "It''s already dark outside?" Lin Huang was stunned. "Yes, it''s time for them to hunt." Bloody answered. The hunting time was during the night between the sunset of that particular day and the sunrise the following morning. This was not the monthly blood sacrifice, but was the food hunt that every monster would participate in every night in the ruins. They would not invade any of the monster lairs so it was safe for Lin Huang and the rest to hide in the underground warehouse. The warehouse used to be the Kaiserpede''s lair, so the monsters would usually avoid the place when they were in its vicinity. "What''s wrong, Lin Huang? You don''t look very good." Leng Yuexin noticed Lin Huang''s concerned expression. "It''s dark outside, Bloody just told me that there''re monsters hunting for food on the ground." Lin Huang kept quiet as he organized his thoughts to give them the news. "How many monsters are there?" Yi Zheng asked. "Quite a lot of them and it''s getting more." Bloody spoke out loud, sounding like a young boy. "How about their combat level? Can you sense that?" Yi Zheng asked again. "The most powerful one is at the imperial-level." Bloody had not detected any imperial-level monsters yet, it said that as it was Lin Huang''s instruction. "So this is actually a grade-4 ruin!" Yi Zheng frowned while the rest looked concerned. If it was a grade-3 ruin, the most powerful monster would only be at the immortal-level. It was worth the journey for them as the rewards were lucrative. However, a grade-4 ruin would be too risky as they might die if they encountered an imperial-level monster. "Are you sure there''s an imperial-level monster?" Leng Yuexin asked Bloody, attempting to confirm the fact. "I''m sure! And there are more than one of them wandering out there right now." Bloody replied without thinking twice. "A grade-4 ruin We aren''t qualified for such a high-level ruin yet." Yi Zheng went silent for a moment before he spoke to Lin Huang. "Judging by our current combat level, this ruin is just too risky." He added. "I agree with Brother Zheng. Lin Huang, maybe we should leave." Li Lang was convinced. With his abilities now, he could not even fight an immortal-level, let alone an imperial-level monster. "We''ve just been here for a few days and you guys want to leave? Such scaredy-cats!" Yi Yeyu voiced her disagreement. "It would take the ruins a year to reopen, and we''ve only been here for such a short period of time. If we leave now, we can only come back next year." Leng Yuexin was unwilling to leave as well. "That''s right, aside from some dead person''s Emperor''s Heart Rings, we haven''t even gotten anything valuable yet!" Yi Yeyu was on the same side as Leng Yuexin. "I agree with Brother Zheng, we should come back next year since we can''t fight the monsters." Li Lang was ready to leave. "Lin Huang, what do you think?" Leng Yuexin remained calm when she asked Lin Huang. "I think we should stay for a few days, it''s better to figure out what''s happening instead of just leaving like that. If we''re sure that the risk is more than what we can stomach, it''s never too late to leave at that point." Lin Huang suggested. "I agree with Lin Huang. We aren''t sure of anything yet, is it necessary to scare ourselves like that?" Yi Yeyu was pissed at Yi Zheng insisting on retreating. "I think we should try staying for a few more days, it''s not easy to come here after all." Leng Yuexin agreed with Lin Huang. "Alright then" Yi Zheng finally compromised. He did not want to leave as well but suggested that as he was thinking about everyone''s safety. "Since all of you insist on staying, I''ll go along with you then." Li Lang was scared but he made a compromise. Soon they arrived at the entrance of the first underground floor. "Let''s hide our aura before going up. We should see those monsters ourselves." Lin Huang stood at the bottom of the well and pointed upward. The rest nodded and flew slowly out of the well. 587 Coming To An Agreemen The five of them activated their supreme relics to hide their aura before leaving the well. They had prepared the relics before entering the ruins, to be used to sneak away and escape. The relic could be used to hide the aura of those below imperial-level, but even those at the imperial-level could hide their aura to certain extent. As they got out of the well, the five of them followed the path of the wreckage and arrived at its entrance. The five of them needed to get out from the wreckage. The sun had set, and the sky was dark. There were many monsters wandering around, at least hundreds of them within their field of vision. "There are a couple of immortal-level monsters." Yi Zheng did not bother about the holy fire-level monsters as he scanned for more powerful monsters among them. Soon he noticed four immortal-level monsters. As the sky was getting dark, more and more monsters appeared in the ruins. Many of them crawled out of the cracks on the ground. There were all sorts of monsters in the ruins. Aside from flesh monsters, there were many skeleton monsters that ranged from those at the holy fire-level to immortal-level as well. To top it all off, there were monsters in human form as well. However, the skeleton monsters seemed to be the rivals of the flesh monsters as they would fight when they encountered one another. "These spirit-type skeleton monsters must be the civilians who used to stay in this war ruins. The flesh monster should come later from the Virtual Eye." Leng Yuexin observed and gave a guess. Lin Huang nodded as he knew that from the Kaiserpede''s memories since the beginning. The spirit monsters did not only kill the flesh monsters, there seemed to be a rivalry between human skeletons and monster skeletons as well. Meanwhile, the flesh monsters killed mainly for food while the skeletons fought to survive. "It seems like they don''t dare to come near this ruins that we''re at." Yi Yeyu thought that was odd. "Perhaps this used to be the Kaiserpede''s territory. Although the Kaiserpede was only immortal-level rank-3, its venom was terrifying as monsters below immortal-level rank-6 wouldn''t even dare to offend it. It was considered to be the boss of these ruins." Yi Zheng voiced his guesses. "The number of monsters are increasing now" Li Lang was concerned as he watched the wandering monsters. Aside from holy fire-level monsters, there was a growing number of immortal-level monsters as well. They could see almost ten immortal-level monsters within their field of vision. "Although we haven''t seen any imperial-level monsters, looking at the number of immortal-level monsters, Bloody''s investigation shouldn''t be wrong. This really is a grade-4 ruin." Leng Yuexin frowned. "I think we''re done watching, let''s go back underground." Lin Huang was relieved as they now knew the danger of the ruins. They nodded and began retreating. Suddenly, Li Lang accidentally stepped on a withered branch which caused a cracking sound. All of them stopped moving and looked far away, as a couple of monsters looked in their direction. Some of them hesitated but they did not come near. However, two gold flame-level monsters walked carefully towards them after some hesitation. "Busted!" All of them thought. Before Lin Huang did anything, Lancelot stepped outside showing himself. He shot a deadly stare deadly at the two monsters that were coming close. The monsters stopped walking but without waiting for their response, Lancelot swung his sword and two monster heads flew, causing blood to spurt everywhere. The monsters nearby looked at Lancelot in fear, including the immortal-level monsters. Lancelot scanned the surroundings and dragged the two monster carcasses back to his location. The monsters around started walking away from the area. The immortal-level monsters that were looking at them, looked away immediately, no planning to fight them anytime soon. Aside from Lin Huang, the rest of them were trembling. It was Bloody who asked Lancelot to do that. If humans exposed themselves here, the monsters would definitely attack them without hesitation. However, it was a different case if it was Lancelot. The monsters would only think that a powerful monster had appeared in the vicinity. The territory used to belong to the Kaiserpede, so the appearance of Lancelot would mean that the Kaiserpede had a powerful guard with it. That was the reason why the immortal-level monsters ignored the incident earlier. They were not afraid of Lancelot but were afraid of the Kaiserpede instead. "It''s okay now, let''s go." Lin Huang brought them underground after confirming that everything was okay. Within the span of a few minutes, Leng Yuexin froze the entire room in the first underground floor. They took out mats from their storage space and sat together after getting rid of the odor in the room. "Now we can confirm that this is at least a grade-4 ruin." Lin Huang was the first one who spoke. "At least?" They looked at him. "Not seeing a demigod doesn''t mean that there aren''t any demigods in these ruins. So, we can only identify it as a grade-4 ruin at the moment." Lin Huang explained. "Lin Huang, is there something that you didn''t tell us? If you treat us as your friends, you shouldn''t keep secrets from us." Leng Yuexin could not help but ask him as this was not the first time she noticed his odd behavior. "Alright then, I''ll tell you all about these ruins." Lin Huang nodded after a moment of silence. Leng Yuexin managed to force Lin Huang to tell them about the ruins. They were excited when they knew about the existence of demigod remnants and mysterious monster in this ruins. "This is such important information, why didn''t you tell us since the beginning?" Li Lang questioned him. "I didn''t know this in the beginning, I''ve only found out about this after encountering the Kaiserpede. I read its memories after killing it" Lin Huang felt helpless. They were shocked to hear about his ability to be able to read a dead monster''s memories as it sounded too bizarre. Now they understood why Lin Huang kept it a secret. "Then Can you read inherited memories as well?" Li Lang was curious. "I can''t read information that''s sealed." Lin Huang hid part of the truth as Bloody''s ability was too stunning as it was able to unseal memories that were below demigod. "Such a powerful ability" Yi Zheng paused, organized his thoughts before proceeding. "We''ll keep the secret, there won''t anyone else who''ll know this aside from us." "I found out about these ruins from the Cavernous Devil but it didn''t have anything about the Kaiserpede." Lin Huang explained. "We won''t ask further about your ability. What we should talk about now is that whether we should explore this ruins any further. After all, it was you who said that there''ll be a blood sacrifice three days later and that no living thing would be able to escape from this war." Yi Zheng said. "No monster would dare invade this room. Firstly, is due to the fact that the Kaiserpede used to live here, and secondly, we hid our aura so no monsters are able to sense our existence. However, we can''t head out at night as it''s the monsters'' hunting time so we can only hunt for monsters during the day." "About the blood sacrifice three days later, monsters would definitely come here so I think it''s wise to stay here. The entrance is only this big so there''s only a limited amount of monsters that can come in each time. That aside, this underground area is made of special materials, so even an imperial-level monster wouldn''t be able to destroy it. As long as we get through this the first time, we''re safe for the entire month." Lin Huang voiced out what he thought. "But what should we do if an imperial-level or one that has an even higher rank than an imperial-level monster come in? There''s only one exit, there''s no way we can run if powerful monsters come in!" Yi Zheng was concerned. "That''s why I''m thinking we should conquer a few more sites for the next two days and pin the location of the sites on the dimensional relic. If powerful monsters come into any of the sites, we could go to another site using the dimensional relic. If the second site was invaded, we could go to the third site!" Lin Huang got that idea from Bloody. Their eyes lit up. "There''re a limited number of imperial-level monsters in the ruins, it''s impossible that we have such bad luck that all the imperial-level monsters will come to us. Moreover, we have Bloody to observe if there''s any foothold that has monsters that aren''t out of our league." Lin Huang proceeded to convince them, hoping they would stay to go through this together. "That''s a great idea, I''m standing on Lin Huang''s side this time!" Li Lang was excited. "I think it''s worth the risk. We will have one month of safety if we get through this one night." Yi Yeyu agreed as well. "I think this plan is workable. It''s a grade-5 ruin after all, as long as we get through this, we''ll have great rewards for the following month." Leng Yuexin nodded. "Alright then, although it''s a little risky, the plan sounds workable. We should discuss the details." Yi Zheng was silent before nodding. After some discussions, the five of them finally came to an agreement. 588 God Crasher Soon, three days had passed. Lin Huang panted as he looked at the gigantic monster carcass on the third underground floor. He used seven Life Wheels of Life Power to kill the immortal-level rank-4 Ghoul Spider. It had the most powerful energy that he had ever encountered since he leveled-up to holy fire-level. He put away the monster carcass into his storage as he caught his breath while Yi Zheng and the rest walked to him. "Are you alright?" Leng Yuexin asked in concern. "I''m alright, just that it drained my Life Power." Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. "You can even kill an immortal-level rank-4 monster, that''s ridiculous!" Li Lang exclaimed. "The most powerful skill that the Ghoul Spider has is that it could control monster carcasses. Since we''ve cleared all of them along the way, that was equivalent to clearing its back-ups. Besides, it wasn''t the most powerful among the immortal-level rank-4 monsters. That''s how I managed to kill it, I might not be able to do so if I encounter other monsters on the same level." Lin Huang knew very well that he could fight immortal-level rank-4 monsters now. However, it was difficult for him to kill one unless it was weaker compared to monsters of the same level. "Your ability is terrifying enough to be able to fight an immortal-level rank-4 monster by yourself. You''re only at the white flame-level after all." Yi Yeyu consoled him. "I''m alright. Let''s collect the rewards while I rest." Lin Huang nodded at Yi Yeyu as he crossed his legs in the middle of the air. The rest followed Bloody to collect the rewards. Just as they were looking at the rewards that were piled up, Li Lang shouted out of nowhere while the rest looked shocked. Lin Huang had just closed his eyes for a few minutes, but he still opened his eyes and looked at them. "It can''t be, is this really a God Crasher?" Li Lang said loudly. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that, he teleported himself to them. They were surrounding a black cannon that was three meters long with complicated golden patterns on it. Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu could not help themselves as they touched the cannon. Since they were born in a military family, such military relics were like a gift to them. The both of them did not say a word after touching the cannon. "So is this a God Crasher? Say something." Li Lang urged the both of them. "Why do you need to ask that? Can''t you tell this is obviously a God Crasher?" Yi Yeyu glared at him. Lin Huang was shocked to hear Yi Yeyu''s confirmation. He had never seen a God Crasher before but he had heard of it. It was a weapon that was created more than 800 years ago by humans to fight powerful monsters. As it was created mainly to kill demigod-level monsters, it got the name God Crasher. Although the name was cool, the God Crasher did not manage to kill any demigods. Even the most powerful third edition God Crasher could only harm a demigod but not kill it. However, as long as there were sufficient energy crystals, the God Crasher could kill imperial-level monsters. Yi Zheng frowned after going through the God Crasher thoroughly. "Brother, it can''t be used anymore?" Yi Yeyu asked immediately when she noticed his expression. "It still can be used, but at most, we''d be able to use it one or two more times. As the third edition of God Crasher''s power was too strong, it can only tolerate ten attacks before it becomes useless. Looking at the level of damage on this cannon, it has probably been used for at least seven times. Since it''s placed in this medium foothold, it must have been thrown away by somebody else. It''d be great if it could even be used once since it''s been here for so many years. It''s basically a collectible now." Yi Zheng shook his head. "I''ll have this, deduct this from my reward based on the value." Yi Yeyu put away the God Crasher into her storage space immediately. "Hey, why would you want it when you don''t even know how to operate it?" Yi Zheng was upset as he wanted the item more than Yi Yeyu did. "Didn''t you say this is more like a collectible?" Yi Yeyu stared at Yi Zheng. "But it might still be able to be used." Yi Zheng was annoyed. "I don''t want to use it, it would be spoiled if I do. The value would remain high if I treat it as a collectible." Yi Yeyu insisted. "It''ll be useless in your hands, be a good girl and give it to your brother." Yi Zheng attempted to persuade her. "Go away! I''m not a kid!" Yi Yeyu became mad. "Lin Huang, this item" After his failed attempts, Yi Zheng looked at Lin Huang with a pitiful expression. "There''s nothing that I can do since it''s family related matters. The item isn''t with me anyway, solve your own problems, alright?" Lin Huang opened his arms wide. The two of them fought for the God Crasher until Bloody had calculated all the items. "4,112 Emperor''s Heart Rings, 301 expert-grade relics in good condition, one God Crasher, 528 other treasure, miscellaneous items, and some minerals." "It''s only past four in the afternoon, let''s end our day here. The blood sacrifice will start in less than three hours. We''ve drained ourselves from the battles just now, let''s rest before the blood sacrifice begins." Lin Huang looked at the time and said. Hearing that the blood sacrifice was commencing, Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu finally stopped fighting while Leng Yuexin and Li Lang wore a serious expression on their faces. They soon found an empty space in the warehouse and rested, getting ready for the war tonight. Throughout the three days, Lin Huang and the rest occupied themselves by conquering four medium sites, three small sites, and pinned all of the site locations on the dimensional relic. They rested well every night as there were no monsters coming to them where they hid. Aside from the seven sites that they had conquered, they had found a large site with an imperial-level monster and a medium site with two immortal-level rank-5 monsters. They decided not to go to those sites after careful consideration. In reality, Lin Huang hesitated before coming to this particular site with immortal-level rank-4 monsters. Without the help of his cards, he did not have the confidence to kill the Ghoul Spider. It was fortunate that he finally managed to kill it. Time passed in the ruins, Lin Huang and the rest had enough rest in the warehouse while the sky was getting dark. The empty ground in the ruins was now filled with monsters from the underground floors. It was extra crowded tonight, in the few hours after the sun set, there were more than tenfold the amount of monsters than it usually had. "The blood sacrifice is commencing!" Bloody said to Lin Huang. 589 The Blood Sacrifice Begins The sky was completely dark in the ruins, the quiet ruins now filled with at least hundreds of billions of them monsters. There were hundreds of imperial-level monsters alone, tens of thousands of immortal-level monsters as well as millions of holy fire-level monsters. Almost all of the living monsters got out of the underground for the monthly blood sacrifice. If such a terrifying monster horde appeared in Division7, it would bring major disasters if it was not destroyed. Lin Huang and the rest were watching the projection from Bloody''s Life Power in the third underground floor. They turned pale when they looked at the number of monsters in the projection, including Lin Huang, he was pale too. "I didn''t know there were so many monsters hiding in these ruins!" Li Lang was shocked to see the monsters in the projection, he opened his mouth wide as he watched. "The amount has exceeded the apocalypse-grade monster horde!" Even Yi Yeyu who was usually courageous had fear in her eyes. "Not only are their numbers scary, I can sense the immense power these monsters that are beyond my imagination through the projection. I feel defeated just by standing here." Yi Zheng looked at the monsters in the projection in fear. "Grade-5 ruins are much scarier than I imagined." Leng Yuexin frowned. If they were not watching this with their own eyes, Lin Huang would not believe that these ruins had so many monsters. "This world is so much richer than we imagined" Lin Huang exclaimed. He had been to many places in Division 7, even more than most holy fire-level human had ever been. However, those were just a small part of Division 7. There were more than 8,000 footholds in Division 7, and Lin Huang had only been to less than 100 of them. Including the wild zones and danger zones outside of the foothold, he had only been to 1% of Division 7. To some extent, he was still a frog in a well. There were many places that he had never been and many sceneries that he had never seen. It was his first time seeing so many monsters as he looked at the number of monsters in the projection. It was overwhelming just by looking at it. However, he knew that there must be places in this world that were even more stunning than the projection that he was looking at. It reminded him of video that he saw when he was on earth. It was a video comparing earth and other planets. When compared, the earth was just an insignificant speck of dust in the galaxy. At the end of the video, the galaxy was mere dust in the universe while humans were just sentient beings on a speck of dust. It was such an insignificant existence. That made Lin Huang think about the world that he was currently in. How big the places were outside the twelve safe zones. Aside from this world, are there any other worlds that were even bigger than this? "I''ve no idea how big these ruins are, but I know this is definitely bigger than an A-grade foothold." Li Lang thought Lin Huang was talking about how big these ruins were so he initiated the topic. Lin Huang snapped out of his thoughts and smiled as he shook his head, he did not bother to correct Li Lang. When it was 8 p.m. sharp, a human voice was heard. "Fight!" The voice pierced through the ground and it was loud and clear to them. They were shocked to hear that. In reality, the voice was loud and clear to all the lifeforms in the ruins. As the voice was heard, all of the monsters became frantic. The ruins were similar to a boiling kettle, as its atmosphere boiled. Bloody projected the seven footholds that they had conquered, the war started as the voice was heard. Countless monsters began frantically attacking their rivals. Many skeletons were attacking the flesh monsters while human skeletons attacked the monster skeletons. Besides, there were flesh monsters of all types killing other flesh monsters. It looked like all the monsters in the entire ruins had gone crazy. Within a few minutes, many monsters were killed and the once dry land was now soaked with blood. Lin Huang and the rest were shocked as they watched the monsters from the projection. "These monsters seem like they''ve lost their mind." Yi Zheng gulped. "It''s not that they''ve lost their mind but more like they''re required to fight. If there aren''t enough monsters for the blood sacrifice, the demigods and the mysterious monster would kill the monsters themselves. There are still chances to live for the monsters who were more powerful but as long as the demigods and mysterious monster comes out to fight, there won''t be a chance for them to live." Lin Huang shook his head as he frowned. "It seems like they''re not planning to fight into these sites." Leng Yuexin was slightly relieved as she did not see any monster crowd invading the sites. "They''ll go to the sites after they''ve killed all monsters around them." Lin Huang explained helplessly. All of them were stunned to hear that. "We can''t escape from the fight, let''s just hope that we encounter weaker monsters." Lin Huang shook his head and forced out a smile. Time passed by in the ruins, as more and more monster carcasses appeared on the ground while the blood flowed into a river, but the massacre still continued. The fight had come to an end in many places once it was past 12 midnight. The ones that won near the site that Lin Huang and the rest were hiding at was an imperial-level gigantic bear leading its team. "We can''t stay here anymore, the gigantic bear is an imperial-level. I think they''ll come here in less than two hours." Lin Huang was ready to leave. The rest did not say anything all they had seen how powerful the gigantic bear was from the projection. In the fighting, the bear summoned its Life Castle which was a terrifying hammer. It only took the bear three swings to kill the other imperial-level monster. It was clear that the bear was one of the more powerful imperial-level monsters. "We can''t go to site No.3 any longer." Leng Yuexin said. The numbering of the sites followed the sequence they conquered it at. The site that they were in was the last one, which was No.7. Site No.3 was conquered a few days back. They looked at the projection immediately when they heard Leng Yuexin. The battle near site No.3 was ending, and the one that won was naturally another imperial-level monster. It was a powerful ant monster with an ant army. The ant monster''s Life Castle was a gigantic nest with tens of thousands of ant monster formed from Life Power. They were all transcendent-level and more than ten of them were immortal-level. Once the Life Castle was summoned, countless Life Power ant monsters dashed out of it. Once the ant monsters were dead, they would return to the nest as Life Power and reemerge as ant monsters again, seemingly in an endless stream. The ant monster alone could not fight the gigantic bear, but the bear could do nothing to it as an ant army. If the bear''s army was not as powerful as they were, their abilities would be definitely inferior to the ant army. "We can''t go to sites No.1 and No.4 as well" Yi Zheng said. The two sites were now occupied by imperial-level monsters. Although fight had yet to end, the results did not really matter. "There are imperial-level monsters in the four medium sites that we''ve conquered How about the remaining three?" Lin Huang looked at the remaining three small sites. "Site No.2 has an immortal-level rank-8 monster while site No.6 has an immortal-level rank-7 monster," Bloody said as Lin Huang looked on with concern. "There''s an immortal-level rank-4 monster near site No.5," said Bloody as Lin Huang quickly looked at the projection. Although the fight was ongoing, it seemed like it was going to end soon. If everything was in their expectation, the immortal-level rank-4 vine monster would win. It seemed to be a parasite as all of its followers had a transparent thread on their heads. "Let''s go to site No.5!" Lin Huang made his decision. 590 Puppet Vine Out of the seven sites, only site No.5 site was the safest one. Lin Huang and the rest did not have any other option apart from that. The five of them and Lancelot stepped into the dimensional relic without hesitation. They arrived at site No.5 which was on the second underground floor 6,000 kilometers away. There were only two floors beneath this small site, and the size was only a quarter of the size of a medium site. Bloody projected the battles when they arrived at site No.5. The imperial-level gigantic bear that was near site No.7 began to attack other sites. Meanwhile, the battle in the No.3 site was over. The imperial-level ant monster had killed all of the monsters thousands of meters around it. The battles were still going on in other sites. Soon, the battle ended in site No.5 where they were located. As expected, the immortal-level rank-4 parasitic vine won. It was controlling its parasites to invade other monster lairs. "The parasites will come to this small site in an hour," Bloody said. "We''ve got an hour, please be prepared. This should be a tough one." Lin Huang passed Bloody''s message to the rest. "It''s a parasitic monster, can we fight it?" Yi Zheng frowned. They had seen the parasite monster fought in the projection, it seemed to be even more powerful than the Ghoul Spider that Lin Huang killed not long ago with its seamless parasitic ability. "I''m not sure since I haven''t fought it." Lin Huang could not guarantee if he could kill the parasite monster without the help of his cards. However, he was not afraid. If he could not handle it, he could use a Transformation Card to level-up to gold flame-level. "You''re not sure! We might be the monster''s parasites if we lose, that would be worse than dying." Li Lang complained. "I mean I''m not sure about my ultimate move." Lin Huang smiled. "What if you use your ultimate move? Are you confident?" Li Lang asked. "I''d only need a swing of the sword." Lin Huang smirked and looked confident. They looked at him with their eyes wide opened. "Stop messing around, just tell us if you have the confidence to win. If not, we''ll have to think of other ways." Yi Yeyu was stunned and thought Lin Huang was not being serious. He might have said that just to tone down the tense situation. "What the hell you got me." Li Lang realized Lin Huang might be kidding when he heard what Yi Yeyu said. "I''m not messing around." Lin Huang looked at them calmly. Although it did not make sense for a white flame-level to kill an immortal-level rank-4 monster with merely one sword swing, looking at how serious Lin Huang was, they did not doubt him anymore. There were secret skills in this world that could increase a person''s ability tremendously in a short period of time. It was possible for Lin Huang to master such secret skill, his master was Mr. Fu after all. In reality, Lin Huang planned to use such secret skill to mask the effect of his activated Transformation Card. After confirming that how powerful Lin Huang''s ultimate move was, they stopped dwelling on the question. Time was passing by as they stared closely at the projections. The battles sites No.1 and No.4 ended soon. One was taken over by a human skeleton monster while another was won by a Black Boa King. Both of them were imperial-level, and were just slightly weaker than the gigantic bear in site No.7. All the winners were tough to handle. Meanwhile, the killing spree of the immortal-level rank-4 parasitic vine in No.5 site went on. It did not drain its energy, on the contrary, it was getting more and more powerful and it had more and more parasitic hosts following it. In less than an hour, it already had five immortal-level hosts following it, including two immortal-level rank-3 monsters. What Yi Zheng and the rest were concerned about was the hosts that the parasitic vine was controlling. They seemed to not feel any pain as they killed endlessly. "This parasite is much more powerful than a normal immortal-level rank-4 monster." Yi Zheng exclaimed as he peeped at Lin Huang, waiting for his response. "Definitely a tough one." Lin Huang remained calm as he responded with a smile. "I''ve seen this monster on the monster encyclopedia, it''s called something vine and it''s rare. There''s nothing much about this monster on the monster encyclopedia." Yi Yeyu said. "It''s called the Puppet Vine, it has never appeared in the Division7 before. This monster can secrete a type of thread into the host''s body and control them like puppets. The host can be living thing or dead carcasses. It could even be fleshless skeletons. This monster has powerful parasitic abilities." "But it has obvious weaknesses too. Its parasitic thread is made of Life Power with means the amount of host is limited to its Life Power. Looking at this vine''s combat level, the largest number of hosts it can get would not exceed 4,000. Moreover, if the hosts are living things, the combat level of the hosts has to be lower than the vine itself. Besides, the Puppet Vine doesn''t have the Supreme Intelligence skill so it can only control the hosts at the basic level. Most of its hosts are like puppets that wander the area fearless but they don''t have their own abilities. Only minority of the hosts that were synced with the vine for a long time would have their own abilities." "Such plant monsters are afraid of fire, but most of the Puppet Vines that have evolved for many times would be immune toward fire to a certain level and were unafraid of fire. However, their biggest weakness is that they were afraid of lightning!" As compared to Bloody, the Puppet Vine was far behind. Yi Zheng and the rest were stunned as what Lin Huang told them were the weaknesses that the Puppet Vine had. "Most of the things that you said aren''t on the monster encyclopedia, where did you get that from?" Leng Yuexin could not help but ask. She had memorized the entire monster encyclopedia but she had no idea the Puppet Vine had so many weaknesses. "The monster encyclopedia that you guys read wasn''t complete." Lin Huang explained. In reality, the monster encyclopedia that he had was incomplete as well. However, the edition that Mr. Fu gave him that was all on the parasite monsters. They knew what Lin Huang meant by incomplete edition. They were the royal families and they know there was a forbidden edition of the monster encyclopedia that could not be found in the market. The reason being the content was too scary where only imperial-level humans had the right to read it. "The Puppet Vine is coming to us now!" Bloody said before the rest could speak. 591 Fight! "Be ready to fight, it''ll only take 10 minutes for the Puppet Vine to get here." Lin Huang said to them as he heard what Bloody said. "Let''s follow our plan of killing the monsters at the entrance." Yi Zheng nodded at them. They then returned to the entrance on the first underground floor and stood in formation that they discussed while waiting for the Puppet Vine patiently. Lin Huang and Lancelot stood in front while Leng Yuexin and the rest stood behind while Yi Zheng stood last in the formation. "Remember, attack the Puppet Vine''s puppets. We must chop off their heads, other attacks are redundant. These puppets don''t feel pain so it''s useless to attack any parts of their bodies. Chopping off their head would cut off the puppet thread." Lin Huang reminded them again. Lin Huang had mentioned that to them before but he wanted to emphasize that before the battle started. All of them nodded at him with all seriousness as they knew the battle would be a tough one. On their side, they only had six of them including Lancelot while the Puppet Vine had more than 3,000 puppets with five immortal-level monsters among them. Bloody removed the projection on the first underground floor, it was complete silence in there. They could even hear Li Lang and the rest''s nervous breath. "They''re here!" As Lin Huang said that, they looked at the entrance while holding tight to their weapons. In less than three seconds, there were buzzing sound coming from the well on top. Within a second, there were insect monsters that looked like mosquitoes appearing at the bottom of the well. They had a low combat level as two were at the crimson flame-level while another was at the blue flame-level. It was obvious that these three monsters were just pathfinders. Before the three monsters could see them clearly, Lin Huang attacked first. A white glow flashed in the air, and the monster heads were chopped off, falling onto the ground before they could even make a sound. Lin Huang was so fast that they were shocked, even Leng Yuexin did not see him swinging his sword. He then kept the monster carcasses wearing an expressionless face while waiting for the next monster to come. "Usually the Puppet Vine would have its guard up when its pathfinders are killed so it would send more pathfinders later to find out what happened. To prevent it from finding out what happened, I''ll kill the pathfinders as soon as I could so it won''t know what happened. It would definitely attack us without a doubt if it finds out that there are only six of us." Lin Huang told them the reason why he killed the three monsters in one hit earlier. As expected, the Puppet Vine send more pathfinders without showing itself. The pathfinders this one were still insect monsters but they were five different types of them. All of them could fly and the most powerful one was gold flame-level. However, all five of them were immediately killed by Lin Huang as soon as they got to the bottom of the well. The sword in his hand was now not unlike white lightning. It was so quick that even Yi Zheng did not see the attack and the battle had ended. Lin Huang''s performance shocked all of them. "The third wave won''t be this easy anymore" A man with silver hair appeared next to Lin Huang as he spoke. The man looked like he was in his early twenties. He had silver hair and wore a black robe, good looking but cold. He gave the impression that he was hard to talk to. Lancelot who had been expressionless looked at the silver-haired man as he appeared while the rest looked at him too. "This is Bai, he''s my partner." Lin Huang did not say too much. Bai looked at them and nodded lightly. "This guy looks exactly the same as a human" Yi Yeyu and the rest knew what Lin Huang meant by ''partner'', they realized that Bai was no different than humans after observing him. "No matter how many monsters are coming in the next wave, you and Lancelot will help me kill them as soon as possible. Also, these monsters are all puppets. You''ll have to chop off their heads, attacking other parts of their body wouldn''t do anything." Lin Huang instructed. "Hmm." Bai nodded. As Lin Huang had yet instructed them, they were buzzing sound coming above. It sounded like there were more than ten flying monsters on top. As the entrance was small, the pathfinders could not come all at once so they came down one by one. As the two monsters landed at the bottom of the well, Lin Huang, Bai and Lancelot attacked together. A white glow, a couple of bloody glows and a dark red glow flashed in the air. As soon as the two pathfinders were killed, a couple of red glow crawled up the well and strangled the ten monsters that were above the well. Their heads were separated from their bodies in the next second, and the annoying buzzing noise stopped as all the headless monsters fell to the bottom of the well. "The Vine Puppet would have known we''re tough by now so it might retreat together with its puppets or it might be furious and attack us." Lin Huang said. "Perhaps this is the biggest difference that we have with an imperial censor. We don''t usually think of what the monsters would think during battles. All we know is to think about the monster''s weakness and how to fight now." Yi Zheng realized that Lin Huang''s way of thinking was different from others. "Don''t underestimate the intelligence of monsters. Many of them are as intelligent as human and some of them are even smarter than humans." Lin Huang did not explain much. Most of his summoning monsters were comparable with humans while Bloody and Clown who possessed Supreme Intelligence were far smarter than a regular human. "The Puppet Vine is intelligent too. It''s highly possible that it would retreat as its pathfinders are killed continuously. But looking at the special circumstances like the blood sacrifice, it might choose to fight instead." Lin Huang frowned. The entrance was silent once again. After a long time, there was nothing coming to the well. "Did they retreat?" Lin Huang asked Bloody. Bloody then projected the scene on top of the well. The Puppet Vine stood not far away with all sorts of puppets around it. Thousands of monsters surrounded the well, they had never left. The Puppet Vine seemed to be thinking whether it should retreat. Yi Zheng and the rest were concerned as they looked at the number of monsters in the projection. They knew that if the Puppet Vine decided to fight, Lin Huang and his two summoning monsters would not be able to handle them while the rest of them could not just watch the battle like they did earlier. 592 The Immortal-Level Monster Has Arrived After minutes of hesitation, the Puppet Vine seemed to have made its decision. Its body that was on the ground stood up without making any noise, less than 10 meters away from the well. The parasites that were controlled with the threads jumped into the well one after the other. Lin Huang and the rest held their weapons tight when they saw the first monster in the bottom of the well on the first underground floor from Bloody''s projection. The projection in front of Lin Huang faded away. Next second, a few monsters landed at the bottom of the well at the same time. The fight had started! Red glows flashed through the air, the monsters that had just landed had their heads chopped off. Their powerful bodies were now carcasses. Bai completely absorbed the qi-blood in the puppets when it attacked. To it, it was nothing different compared to chopping off their heads. A body without qi-blood was equivalent to a dead human body that was oxidized for thousands of years. Even a three-year-old could crush the body with a toy hammer. However, Bai''s ability had shocked Yi Zheng and the rest. As the first batch of monsters was killed, the second batch was sent next second. It was Lancelot who attacked this time, the monsters'' heads were chopped off with a swing of sword. There was dark red mist coming out of Lancelot''s body, Yi Zheng, and Leng Yuexin were fearful of his aura. Soon the third batch of monsters were sent, it was Bai who attacked again. The fourth batch was then handled by Lancelot. The both of them took turns as they agreed before so that they got to show their abilities according. As the well was small, there were just small amounts of monsters come to each of them. Sometimes there were six to seven of them, sometimes there were just three monsters. Lin Huang did not have to move at all while Bai and Lancelot did not seem to be tired at all. Lin Huang chose the both of them due to their special physique. To Bai, its energy was endless as long as it was provided with sufficient qi-blood while Lancelot could gain energy from killing. Meanwhile, as Lin Huang''s Life Wheels were connected to his monsters, as long as they did not stop killing and absorbed Life Light, the Life Power within his body would be refilled endlessly. Of course, that did not mean the three of them were invincible just because their energy was not drained. They would be tired eventually. Lin Huang did not fight as he did not have to while another reason was he wanted to save his energy for later. Bai and Lancelot did not give their all as monsters below immortal-level were nothing to them. They basically killed all of the monsters within mere seconds. After losing hundreds of puppets, the Puppet Vine saw what was happening at the bottom of the well through the puppets'' eyes. "Human Be my puppets!" The Puppet Vine said when it saw Lin Huang and the rest. To many parasite monsters that could retrieve memories, the higher the intelligence of host the better as it could read more information and learn more from the host. The parasitic monsters loved hosts like humans as they had exceptional learning abilities as there were many things in the human world that they could not learn from monsters. The Puppet Vine was over the moon when it found out there were human in this site. However, it soon realized that it would be a tough battle. After carefully thinking it over, the Puppet Vine made its decision. Five of its immortal-level puppets shrunk themselves and jumped into the well. Since holy fire-level monsters could not fight them, the Puppet Vine thought it would have to use immortal-level puppets instead. "There''re five immortal-level puppets coming our way!" Bloody said to Lin Huang, Bai and Lancelot. Soon, the five immortal-level puppets landed at the bottom of the well. Two of them were human but their combat level was low with one at immortal-level rank-1 while the other was at immortal-level rank-2. Meanwhile, there was a fiend, a mutated beast that looked like a lizard and a colorful monster that looked like a snake, seemingly venomous. Aside from the two humans, the other three puppets shrunk themselves before entering. However, the two humans clad in a black robe, making Lin Huang and the rest think that they were human-type monsters. They only found out that they were human when they saw the relics that the two humans were holding. Monsters could not activate human''s relics. "Fight!" As Lin Huang shouted, Bai, Lancelot and himself attacked the five monsters without hesitation. Bai was fighting the mutated beast and the human while Lancelot fought the other human along with the snake. Lin Huang fought the fiend on his own. Among the five monsters, the fiend was the most powerful as it was an immortal-level rank-3 monster. It was a Terraflame Fiend, completely red without legs but had four other limbs instead. Its eyes were flaming while its body levitated less than ten centimeters from the ground. It might not be able to enter the well if it did not shrink itself. Lin Huang did not hold back and dashed towards the Terraflame Fiend with his sword. A white Life Power glow covered his sword and transformed it into a gigantic sword as it collided with the Terraflame Fiend''s punch. "Ka-cha" A light cracking sound was heard, Yi Zheng and rest saw a crack on the Terraflame Fiend''s first. Lin Huang could do this to an immortal-level rank-3 fiend with just a simple swing of the sword without a sword skill?! They learned something new about Lin Huang''s ability. However, Lin Huang did not care about what the attack did as he swung his sword again and again, seemingly so fast that they could only see his afterimage. They could not tell how many times had Lin Huang swing his sword. Soon, he kept his sword and backed off. Just when they were thinking what Lin Huang was doing, the Terraflame Fiend''s body collapsed and exploded. Blood that seemed like lava spilled all over the ground. 593 Trouble Is Here Killed in a second! Lin Huang killed the immortal-level Terraflame Fiend in a second! Although he had swung his sword hundreds of times, it only took one second. Yi Zheng and the rest were stunned to see that, as Lin Huang''s ability seemed bizarre to them. "So he had never given his all before this." Yi Zheng looked at Lin Huang and realized that his talent that he had been proud of since young was nothing compared to Lin Huang. "He''s the true supreme genius, he would rank on top even in the core zone." Leng Yuexin mumbled to herself. "I''m thinking if he could kill god when he reached imperial-level." Yi Yeyu teased. "If he really could kill God, nobody will be able to fight him in Division 7 when he reaches imperial-level." Li Lang forced out a smile, their differences were just too big. "Division 7 isn''t his place to shine. He doesn''t need to wait until he reacts imperial-level, I suppose nobody could even take him on in Division 7 now." Leng Yuexin shook her head. Lin Huang did not tell them about his plan of leaving Division 7 soon. Asking them to join the adventure in these ruins was actually a farewell gift to all of them. He planned to break the news at the end of their journey in the ruins. As he killed the monster under on the first underground floor, Bai and Lancelot were still fighting hard. Bloody projected the scene outside the well again. The Puppet Vine was making up its mind whether to enter the well. It was terrified when it saw Lin Huang killing the Terraflame Fiend within a second. The Terraflame Fiend was its most powerful puppet as it took much effort to capture. However, Lin Huang killing it in one second had it second-guessing its decision to go into the well. It was in a pickle as it was desired to capture human puppets. Lin Huang killed the Terraflame Fiend in one second in order to make the Puppet Vine back off. However, it seemed like it was insufficient. Looking at the Puppet Vine''s expression in the projection, Lin Huang smirked as he was ready to give it a show. Life Power filled his sword again and Lin Huang disappeared from where he was. At the very next second, his sword slashed through to human puppet''s head. He had scored another kill in a second once again! He then used his back hand to chop off the immortal-level rank-1 human puppet''s head. The Puppet Vine then recalled its remaining two immortal-level puppets immediately. The two immortal-level puppets flew up and disappeared from the well. After recalling its two immortal-level puppets, the Puppet Vine left with its puppets without thinking twice. The well that was crowded was now silent again. Yi Zheng and the rest were relieved to see the Puppet Vine left with all its puppets from Bloody''s projection. "I thought the battle would be a tough one luckily the Puppet Vine left on its own." Yi Yeyu kept her saber that she was holding." "It didn''t leave on its own, Lin Huang made it leave." Li Lang laughed. "Killing an immortal-level rank-3 monster, you''ve been keeping this a secret for too long." Yi Zheng turned around to look at Lin Huang. "Oh well, I must scare the Puppet Vine away. That''s the only way to do it." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. "Since the Puppet Vine has left, we should be safe as long as there arent anymore monsters coming to us for the next couple of hours. That being said, we should still be careful and watch the site closely. "Leng Yuexin was still tensed. Lin Huang agreed with Leng Yuexin, scaring the Puppet Vine off did not mean they would be safe so the next couple of hours. "Bloody, continue to monitor this site and inform me as long as something is happening." Lin Huang instructed Bloody. They returned to the second underground floor after scaring the Puppet Vine away while they waited for the sun to rise. As long as they got through tonight, they would not have to worry for the entire month. An hour later, the Puppet Vine leading its puppet army and arrived at a medium site 2,000 kilometers away. It went into the entrance without thinking twice as soon as it arrived. Few minutes later, a bloody snake that was the size of an adult dinger came out of the well. Its bloody eyes looked far into the site where Lin Huang and the rest were. "A human genius? The god would be happy if we bring him to the blood sacrifice!" Just when it said this, countless monsters dashed out of the well. There were tens of thousands of them, the Puppet Vine was one of them. There were another six monsters with an aura that was similar to the Puppet Vine. The snake dashed and arrived on top of a dragon skeleton''s head. It then roared into the sky with volume that did not match its body size. As the loud roar sounded, the monster army flew up into the sky and headed towards the site where Lin Huang and the rest were hiding. As an hour of silence went by, they finally relaxed when it was almost 3 a.m. "Two more hours before the sun rises, we''re almost there." Li Lang said to them with a smile. Suddenly, Lin Huang had a change of expression. "What?!" He knew from Bloody that the monster army was approaching. "Trouble is here! The Puppet Vine is only an imperial-level monster''s follower, it told the imperial-level monsters about us and now they''re coming with an army!" "Lin Huang stop messing around, this isn''t funny at all." Li Lang said. Yi Zheng, Yi Yeyu, and Leng Yuexin looked at Lin Huang upset, they knew he would definitely not joke about something like this. "Project it." Lin Huang patted Bloody''s head, Bloody projected the scene of the monster army that was coming for them. In the projection, there were countless gigantic monsters dashing towards them, including the Puppet Vine that escaped an hour ago. "The leader of the monster army is that bloody snake, it''s an imperial-level. Including the Puppet Vine, it has seven immortal-level followers, with the most powerful one being the immortal-level rank-8 dragon skeleton while the immortal-level rank-4 Puppet Vine that attacked us is the least powerful one." Lin Huang pointed at the projection and told the information that Bloody told him. "There are 30,000 of them, all of them above holy fire-level, and most of them being above the blue flame-level. They''ll need eighty minutes at most to arrive!" 594 Stay Yi Zheng and the rest were upset when they knew about the monster army that was coming to them. "What should we do now, run to other sites?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Bloody, what''s the situation in other sites?" Lin Huang looked at Bloody. Bloody then projected the scenes of the other six sites. In the projection, all of the sites were occupied by monster armies. As soon as the blood sacrifice commenced, the underground room seemed to be the only safe place. No matter living or dead, everything on the ground would become a sacrifice for the three demigod remnants and the mysterious monster. Therefore, all of the monsters that won the battle would hide underground that was nearby the foothold. Yi Zheng and the rest frowned when they looked at the projection. "No.1, No.3, No.4, and No.7 are all occupied by imperial-level monsters, only No.2 and No.6 are occupied by immortal-level monsters. However, regardless of whether we go to sites No.2 or No.6, we''d still be surrounded by thousands of holy fire-level monsters. The site with the least monsters would be No.2 but there are still more than 8,000 of them" Bloody gave the statistics but Lin Huang immediately interrupted. "The number doesn''t matter anymore, we shouldn''t go to any of the six sites. No matter which site we go to, we''ll be drowned in thousands and even tens of thousands of monsters. I could save myself by using Transformation Card but I can''t protect all of you." "There''s nowhere that we can run to" Yi Zheng said the truth after a moment of silence. "The least powerful leader occupying these sites is an immortal-level rank-7 monster with more than three immortal-level monsters with them. Their followers are blue flame-level monsters at most. No matter which site we go, I can''t live for more than 10 seconds." Li Lang knew that himself. "Lin Huang, I know you''re unwilling to leave but it seems like leaving is the only option now. It''s not worth it if we die here, we can come back next year when we''re ready." Yi Yeyu wanted to leave. "Since going to other sites are impossible, we can stay in this site that we''re at right now." Lin Huang insisted. The rest turned silent again. "Let''s hear your plan then." Leng Yuexin spoke when Yi Zheng was going to persuade Lin Huang to leave. "Let''s look at the case with the size of the well again. As long as we''re not surrounded, the number of monsters doesn''t really matter. The size of the well has limited the number of monsters that can come in each time, so no matter there are ten thousand or a million monsters out there, there''ll only be a fixed amount of monsters coming at us at once. All we have to do is to survive until the sun rises around 5 a.m. It''s past 3 a.m. now and it''ll take the monsters an hour and twenty minutes to arrive here. They''ll get here around 4:30 a.m. which means we''ll only have to hold on for an hour." Lin Huang voiced out his plan. "But the biggest issue we have now isn''t the number of monsters and the time we have to stand guard, it''s their combat level. What do you plan to do to the imperial-level monster? It''ll definitely fight if its followers can''t get through the well by the sun rises." Leng Yuexin looked at Lin Huang when she asked that. "Use the God Crasher, it should be able to kill an imperial-level monster." It was Bloody who gave Lin Huang the suggestion. All of them were stunned to hear that, they almost forgot about the God Crasher. "Even if the God Crasher manages to kill the imperial-level snake, what do we do to the immortal-level monsters? The leader has seven immortal-level followers, and the most powerful one is an immortal-level rank-8 monster." Leng Yuexin asked. "Let me handle the immortal-level monsters, you guys can help Bai and Lancelot to kill the rest." Lin Huang decided to carry the biggest responsibility. Leng Yuexin did not say a word as she looked at Lin Huang. "You can handle an immortal-level rank-8 monster?" It was Yi Yeyu who asked the question. "I should be able to if I use my ultimate move!" Lin Huang nodded. All of them were speechless, they did not imagine his ultimate move to be that powerful. "So Can you kill an imperial-level monster with your ultimate move?" Li Lang asked a stupid question. "Do you think I''m the reincarnation of a god?" Lin Huang glared at Li Lang. They were relieved to hear Lin Huang''s reply. They were doubtful of the existence of supreme genius before seeing Lin Huang killing an immortal-level rank-4 monster. However, after witnessing him doing that, they would believe him even if he said he could kill an imperial-level monster. Fortunately, he denied his ability which made them realized that there was a limit even to Lin Huang''s ability. "It''s impossible for me to fight an imperial-level even using my ultimate move. That''s why I thought of using the God Crasher to kill it. It''s such a waste that the God Crasher can''t be used more often or I''d use it to kill the immortal-level monsters as well." Lin Huang admitted the truth. "It''s not that terrible that we have a God Crasher with us. It''s monitored by the Union Government, making it impossible to find on the market. It wouldn''t have been gotten rid of during the war if it hadn''t been used for so many times and we wouldn''t find it." Yi Zheng explained in all seriousness, he was excited to talk about military matters. "I think it won''t be a total loss for us. Although the monster army is terrifying, have powerful imperial and immortal-level monsters as well as a massive monster horde with them, we''ll have a safe month as long as we manage to get through an hour of their onslaught. I think it''s workable. But of course, I''ll respect your decisions if any of you are unwilling to stay and take the risk. I''ll bring all of us out of this site." Lin Huang looked at Yi Zheng before looking at the rest. "Let''s vote. Those who want out, raise your hand." Yi Zheng said out of nowhere. Leng Yuexin and Yi Yeyu held their heads down without raising their hands, neither did Yi Zheng. Meanwhile, Li Lang was hesitating. As he realized nobody raised their hands, he stretched his body with his hand that was half raised. "I''m just stretching, don''t think too much okay." Li Lang smiled awkwardly to them as he thought nobody noticed that he wanted out. "Alright then, since nobody is giving up... Let''s get crazy together, with me!" Lin Huang was relieved, he thought that they would want to give up and did not expect them to want to stay. 595 The Anus — An Opening at the End of the Abdomen It was 4:24 a.m., the quiet night was crowded again. After more than an hour of nerve-wracking wait, the imperial monster had arrived. The leader snaked brought its army of followed to the well that Lin Huang and the rest were hiding. More than 30,000 of them surrounded the well. Without having Bloody to project the situation, they could hear the roaring coming from the top of the well. Their faces turned pale when they saw the countless monsters in the projection. In the projection, the snake was flying on top of the well as it looked down. Since it did not find anything special, it dashed back onto the dragon skeleton''s head and roared. The roar sounded like a gigantic monster that was screaming its lung out, it did not match its tiny body at all. After it roared, a couple of flying monsters came out of the monster crowd and headed into the well. "Devil Flies!" Leng Yuexin''s pupils shrunk. The Devil Fly was an insect with transparent wings, it was a parasitic monster and was one of the fastest flying monsters among holy-fire level monsters who can only fly short distances. Aside from that, it also had intelligent flying skills. It was obvious that the snake did not send the Devil Flies to attack but to investigate what was happening. After all, it was possible that the humans that were hiding escaped after the Puppet Vine left more than two and a half hours ago. It only took the Devil Flies less than a second to arrive at the well that was a hundred meters before it saw Lin Huang and the rest who were hiding at the bottom of the well. Suddenly, a few red glows shot out of a silver-haired man''s back. The glows pierced through the Devil Flies'' heads before they could do anything. It was Bai who killed the pathfinders at the speed of light, the Devil Flies did not even manage to make a sound. The snake that was above the well seemed to realize what happened since the Devil Flies did not return. The snake looked down at the well again but there was nothing as the Devil Flies'' carcasses were already put away. The Devil Flies were blue and purple flame-level monsters. They now had a brand new perception toward humans as the Devil Flies were killed within seconds. The snake roared again after some hesitation. A couple of gold flame-level Devil Beetles flew out of the army. They were one of the holy fire-level monsters that had the most powerful defensive abilities and were experts in flying. Although their attacking abilities was nothing out of the extraordinary, they played the role of being the shields in battles. They were only gold flame-level but even an immortal-level rank-2 would not be able to break through their defenses within a short period of time. The snake obviously wanted the Devil Beetles to block the attacks and get the other monsters to enter the well. If it did not do that, it would be the same as the Puppet Vine described where monsters were basically digging their own graves when they headed down the well. "Can you kill these Devil Beetles in one second?" Yi Zheng was concerned as with his own ability, he could only break the monsters'' defense with all he had but he would not be able to kill them. "No problem." Lin Huang then looked at Lancelot. "The weakest part of the Devil Beetles is the opening at the end of their abdomen. Yes, it''s the anus." The Devil Beetles shrunk from five meters long to one meter after they received the instruction before heading into the well. Soon, the Devil Beetles landed at the bottom of the well. As they were ready to attack when they saw Lin Huang and the rest, a couple of red glows from the sword came from their back. Then (graphic content), the Devil Beetles were dead. The snake had been watching on top of the well, all it could see was that the Devil Beetles died immediately as soon as they got to the bottom of the well. It was stunned as the carcasses were gone. It saw the red glows as well but it had no idea what kind of attack that was. Lancelot used Sword Dao Territory so the attack happened out of nowhere as the monsters were within the area of effect. The attack was bizarre to the snake. Although it could not understand how the attack happened, the snake was sure that the attack was not that powerful. Aside from not being able to harm the snake, it would not work on most of its immortal-level followers. After some hesitation, the snake looked at its immortal-level follower. Since the Devil Beetles were killed in one second, it knew that it would be useless to send its holy fire-level monsters. It was not sure of the ability of the humans and was worried that it might lose its immortal-level monsters. However, it seemed like the humans under the well had restricted abilities which would not get its immortal-level followers killed. Lin Huang and the rest were watching the projection, they knew what the snake was going to do by looking at its action. "It''s going to send in immortal-level monsters!" Yi Zheng frowned while the rest looked concerned at Lin Huang. Nobody knew what ultimate move that Lin Huang was planning on performing. No matter how much trust they had on him, they were not sure if he could win the battle before he killed any immortal-level rank-7 or immortal-level rank-8 monsters. Above the well, the snake instructed all the six immortal-level monsters aside from the dragon skeleton. Among the six immortal-level monsters, the Puppet Vine was unwilling to fight but it could not disobey the snake''s instruction. Meanwhile, the other five immortal-level monsters were excited as it had been a long time since they killed humans. They then shrunk their bodies and entered the well. The Puppet Vine decided to be the last one to enter. Yi Zheng and the rest clenched their fists as they watched the six immortal-level monsters come into the well on the projection. "Use the Transformation Card to upgrade my combat level and hide my transformation ability." Lin Huang communicated with Xiao Hei secretly. As the instruction was given, his combat level rose tremendously. He leveled-up from white flame-level to gold flame-level within seconds. Sensing his aura that was rising, Yi Zheng and the rest were stunned before they looked at him in shock. "Gold flame-level?!" As Yi Zheng was a purple flame-level, his senses were the most sensitive and he was sure that Lin Huang''s current combat level had exceeded his. "He leveled-up four ranks at once!" Leng Yuexin was shocked, she had never heard of such secret skill. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang only sensed that Lin Huang''s combat level had increased tremendously but they had no idea which level he was on now. The both of them looked shocked as they had their mouths wide opened. Just as Lin Huang transformed, the six immortal-level monsters landed at the bottom of the well 596 Doomed Among the six immortal-level monster, the most powerful one was the immortal-level rank-7 Onyx Rat. To be exact, it was monster that looked like a rat with black hair. Naturally, it was much bigger than the normal rats. Excluding its tail, it was over two meters long after it was being shrunk. It was at least seven to eight meters long when it was above the well. It was a mutated beast rat, a monster that was cruel where it would eat almost everything and it was violent. It would eat all preys within its field of vision no matter what type of monster the preys were. Although it looked ordinary with its black hair, its ability was terrifying and it was a dangerous monster. Meanwhile, the remaining immortal-level monsters were a snake monster, a blue scorpion, a red spider, a spirit monster in a white robe and the Puppet Vine that they encountered earlier. the snake and the spirit monsters were both immortal-level rank-6 while the scorpion and the spider were immortal-level rank-5. The Puppet Vine was the least powerful one among them which was only immortal-level rank-4. However, it had two immortal-level puppets with it. Although it had yet to summon them, their combined abilities would be nothing lesser than an immortal-level rank-5 monster. The imperial-level snake''s followers were all powerful. Under the well in the No.5 site, Lin Huang who had transformed into gold flame-level held a sword with golden lightning on it. As the six immortal-level monsters landed at the bottom of the well, Lin Huang moved. "Thunder Eclipse!" His body seemed to merge with his words as he dashed like golden lightning. Within seconds, a golden glow flashed at the bottom of the well and a golden arc was produced. The attack was so fast that even Li Lang and Leng Yuexin did not catch Lin Huang''s movement. All they saw was the golden arc in the air. Lin Huang performed his ultimate move as soon as he attacked. Thunder Eclipse was a merged skill that he came up by combining many sword skills such as Thunder Sting including sword skills from his monsters. It was an exceedingly fast sword skill. Although he had yet to complete the integration, its speed and power were dozens of times faster than Thunder Sting. The reason why he used this was simple, he wanted to kill the monsters as soon as he could. All six monsters were immortal-level with the least powerful of them being an immortal-level rank-4 monster. If any of them managed to break their formation, Yi Zheng and the rest would not be able to handle the monsters. The snake and the dragon skeleton were watching from above the well. The dragon skeleton''s iced blue pupils shrunk when it saw Lin Huang''s attack, even the snake showed a shocked expression that looked like a human. It did not expect the human that was hiding underground to have such an ability. As the golden glow was slashed in the air, besides the immortal-level rank-7 Onyx Rat, the remaining five died immediately. Suddenly, blood of varying colors splashed on the ground, the bottom of the well was now colorful. "How great would it be if I didn''t come to them a few hours back" Puppet Vine looked at its body that was chopped into pieces in regret. It accidentally offended a mad killer which now ended its life. The other monsters were in shock as they were killed before they could even do anything. The Onyx Rat lowered its body as it looked at Lin Huang in death. Although it did not die, there was blood coming out of its abdomen. Yi Zheng and the rest were stunned when they saw Lin Huang killing five immortal-level rank-4 to rank-6 monsters while injuring an immortal-level rank-7 monster with a swing of the sword. It was not because his opponents were weak but instead, it was because Lin Huang was too powerful! He was possibly the most powerful person ever! "Such stunning effect after his secret skill upgrade. Does this mean there won''t be any immortal-level monsters that can fight him if he reaches the gold flame-level in the future?!" Yi Zheng and the rest thought to themselves. Yi Yeyu would think that it was a lie if somebody were to say that a gold flame-level person could kill an immortal-level rank-9 monster. However, she definitely thought Lin Huang could do that now. Lin Huang frowned as the rat was still alive, as his attack did not live up to his expectations. "Looks like the skill need to be polished, it''s still not powerful enough." Above the well, the snake was impatient as it watched its five immortal-level followers killed. If it did not attack itself soon, the rat would die and the only immortal-level follower that it would only be left with would be the dragon skeleton. As it thought about that, it used its tail and patted the dragon skeleton''s head. The dragon skeleton shrunk its body and entered the well. Lin Huang was still in the battle in the rat so he did not see Bloody''s projection, but Yi Zheng and the rest were watching it. Yi Yeyu took out the God Crashed that she prepared without thinking twice. "Lin Huang, move!" Yi Zheng stood behind the God Crasher as he shouted, adjusted the cannon and aimed at the bottom of the well. Lin Huang pulled Bai and Lancelot as he teleported behind the God Crasher. Almost right after Lin Huang moved, the snake who rode on top of the dragon skeleton''s head landed at the bottom of the well. Yi Zheng fired the God Crasher without hesitation. There were sparks that looked like meteors in the air, they drowned the rat that was dying together with the snake and dragon skeleton. "Bang!" A loud thud exploded, the ground was shaking like it was an intense earthquake. The ground where Lin Huang and the rest were standing cracked, it felt like it would collapse at any moment. They did not have the time to worry whether the site was going to collapse as they watched the direction where the cannon was fired. They wanted to know if the imperial-level snake was skilled. Soon, a red glow shot among the spark and dashed towards Lin Huang directly before the spark faded away. They did not see what happened but Lin Huang saw that the snake was still alive. Although it had blood all over its body and it was burnt, he was sure that it was still alive! As the snake dashed out of the spark, it shot a deadly glare at Lin Huang and the rest. Eventually, its eyes stopped at Yi Zheng who fired the cannon and dashed towards him. "We''re doomed" Lin Huang''s back had cold sweat when he realized that the imperial-level snake was still alive. He knew that Yi Zheng and the rest would be killed immediately as they could not fight the snake. He then blocked in front of Yi Zheng with his sword and swung it at the snake with Thunder Eclipse 597 Losing With Just One Hit? A bright red glow collided with the golden sword glow like thunder. The first underground floor was shaking from the collision, and the corridor was filled with cracks, looking like it could collapse at any time. As soon as a loud bang was heard, the bright golden glow was engulfed by a bloody glow. The golden shadow was shot back a more than a hundred meters into the first underground floor''s corridor before eventually landing on the wall. The wall that was additionally reinforced even collapsed from the collision, as cracks that looked like a spider''s web expanded several meters away. "Lin Huang!" Yi Zheng and the rest shouted. The shadow that was shot out was him. From that one collision with the snake, Lin Huang realized the huge difference between an immortal-level and an imperial-level monster. The feeling when his sword collided with the snake felt like a person was being hit by a train, struck by unsurmountable force. His hand that was holding the sword exploded into a bloody mist, and his organs were affected as well. With his heart almost stopping, he spat out blood. His body was thrown away by that unstoppable force before it landed on the wall. Lin Huang had no idea how many broken bones he had in his body now. That one hit alone finished Lin Huang. The major difference in ability could not be made up with certain skills or any other way. After the snake defeated Lin Huang in a single hit, its ruby eyes glared at Yi Zheng again. They did not dare to move as they knew any movement would trigger the snake''s attack. Lin Huang was already dying from that one attack so Yi Zheng and the rest were in despair. His glory of killing five immortal-level monsters in a swing of the sword was now gone because of the snake. That was testament to the snake''s strength, they definitely could not fight it. Bai and Lancelot stood where they were, knowing full well that Lin Huang did not die. If he was dead, both of them would disappear. However, they could not initiate the attack at this moment as the enemy was overpowering; whoever moved would be asking for death. Yi Zheng knew the only thing that could turn the table around was the God Crasher before him but he was not sure if the God Crasher could even fire one more time. Meanwhile, the snake glared at Yi Zheng was who the one who attacked it in the first place, ignoring the rest. Naturally, that was because Bai and Lancelot held back their aura, or else they would turn into the snake''s snack. Although Yi Zheng tried his best not to look at the God Crasher, his eyes betrayed him. Him peeking at the God Crasher had shifted the snake''s attention. "So This is probably the thing that you used to attack me?" The snake''s voice echoed in the corridor of the first underground floor. It sounded like a mature man with a deep voice, which was completely mismatched to its size. Yi Zheng and the rest were surprised to hear that. As long as they lost the God Crasher, that would mean they had completely lost the battle as Lin Huang was ''killed'' by the snake. "Guess I''m right." The snake seemed to be intelligent as it figured out the answer from their expressions. Suddenly, the snake opened its mouth. A red glow shot out and engulfed the God Crasher. As soon as the red glow disappeared, the God Crasher was broken into pieces. Since the snake was not sure if they could control the God Crasher from afar, it destroyed it instead of claiming it as its own. "Now, we''ll talk about the price you''ll have to pay for hurting me earlier." The snake looked at Yi Zheng with its ruby eyes, face wearing an insulting expression after destroying the God Crasher. They were in despair when they saw the God Crasher getting destroyed. "In the end, we can''t escape death. We''re dying in this grade-5 ruin that nobody knows about" Li Lang forced out a smile. This was what the rest was thinking about as well. "Since you''ve all realized that, let me send you off." The snake said but as it opened its mouth, another voice was heard. "Hey little worm, our fight hasn''t ended yet." Lin Huang came out of the sunken wall a hundred meters away, his injured body now almost healed. Even his arm that had gone through an explosion was healed like it was brand new, while his sleeve revealed the muscles on his right arm. He extended his hand, and his sword that was pierced into the wall nearby returned to his hand. The collision earlier only left a tiny crack on his supreme sword. "Enhanced Regeneration? No... This seems to be something more powerful than that" The snake was surprised and began checking Lin Huang out with its ruby eyes. "Only a gold flame-level but you''ve managed to defend yourself against my attack. It seems like you''re a supreme genius in the human world. I''ll have some amazing memories if I engulf you, I''ve never eaten a human supreme genius before" The snake seemed to be interested in Lin Huang as it observed. "Eat me? That depends if you have the ability to even do such a thing!" Lin Huang replied as his aura tremendously increased once more. Within mere seconds, his combat level increased from gold flame-level to immortal-level rank-3. He secretly communicated with Xiao Hei and used three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards, it was the maximum number of cards that could be used at once. The six Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards that he had were now halved. Seeing Lin Huang''s aura, Yi Zheng and the rest were shocked as they knew he used a secret skill to increase his combat level by four ranks but now, he upgraded his combat level for the second time?! The snake did not know Lin Huang''s real combat level was only at the white flame-level. It felt like something was odd when it sensed his aura increasing. "Upgrading your combat level with a secret skill? Even if you upgraded to immortal-level rank-3, you''re still a ways to go from the imperial-level." The snake soon snapped out of its doubt. "You have no say in that." Lin Huang put away his sword and took out his ancient relic Air Slicer. He obtained this from the black-robed leader who attacked the White Capital earlier. He had never used it as the Life Power of someone at the holy fire-level could not activate this ancient relic. He could finally use it as he was temporarily at the immortal-level. The snake wiped off the insulting expression it wore when it saw the ancient relic in Lin Huang''s hands, fear evidently showing in its ruby eyes 598 He Must Win! Lin Huang gave his all in this battle. After activating a Transformation Card and three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards, he managed to get himself from white flame-level to immortal-level rank-3 temporarily. The ancient relic sword that he was holding was the highest level relic that could be obtained by killing a triple mutated imperial-level monster. As he held the Air Slicer, he looked at the snake in all seriousness. The snake was only the size of an adult''s middle finger. Its base color was black with red patterns all over its body with eyes that were ruby red. It looked like an art piece that was placed on an office desk when it was not moving. Although it seemed harmless, Lin Huang knew about this monster. It was called the Eclipse Boa, a triple mutated monster with the ancient mutated beast Sky Boa''s bloodline. It maintained one size from birth to death and would not experience any changes to its body size. When it became an adult, its combat level would automatically be at the imperial-level and it would have powerful abilities. It would be quadruple mutated if it could create Godhead for Virtual God and become Solar Boa where it would be more powerful than most monsters of the same level. The Eclipse Boa that Lin Huang was looking at should have just turned adult not long ago. The Eclipse Boa''s body would transform for the third time when it reaches adulthood. The first transformation would give its black body red patterns. The second would cause blots of red spots to appear, not unlike ones that were drawn using a paintbrush while the last transformation would cause red spots all over its body, turning it into a red boa. The Eclipse Boa would reach its pinnacle when it completed its third transformation but the one before him was just at the first phase of adulthood. There were five ranks to imperial-level which were the black gold, crimson gold, yellow gold, white gold, and purple-glow rank. The Eclipse Snake should be at the crimson gold-rank now. Since it was injured by the God Crasher earlier, its ability should only be as powerful as one at the black gold-rank now. Lin Huang had the confidence to fight it as he knew the facts well. Since he was able to kill a weaker immortal-level rank-4 monster when he was at the white flame-level, he could definitely take on an imperial-level monster since his combat level was now upgraded to immortal-level rank-3. The Eclipse Boa had its guard up when it saw the ancient relic that Lin Huang was holding. What it was fearful of was the relic but not Lin Huang''s ability. What could an immortal-level rank-3 do to it? Even a supreme genius would not be able to fight an immortal-level rank-9. Although the imperial-level black gold-rank was only a rank higher than an immortal-level rank-9, the difference was more like two ranks instead of one. Even a supreme genius would need to be at least an immortal-level rank-6 to fight the boa so there was nothing to be worried about since Lin Huang was only at immortal-level rank-3 now. The Eclipse Boat thought that only thing it had to be wary of was the ancient relic sword. As the monster and human looked at each for a few moments, they were analyzing each other in the heads. "Thunder Eclipse!" Lin Huang shouted and purple lightning surrounded his sword, to the extent that even his body was covered by a layer of purple lightning. "I thought you would have something new to show me so I can feel refreshed after your combat level has been upgraded. It''s the exact same thing as before, seems like I won''t have to waste my time anymore. Go to hell!" The Eclipse Boa teased. The Eclipse Boa then dashed towards Lin Huang in a red glow. It was like an arrow shooting into the air. Meanwhile, Lin Huang moved like purple lightning. A hundred meters long purple glow was seen in the corridor. As the two glows collided, the middle of the corridor was filled with the two colors, seeming like nobody was winning. The intense collision created shockwaves that shook the already collapsing ground that was. The walls that were initially cracked were now worse as the shockwaves rippled towards the corridor. Lancelot held his Dark Mirror without hesitation while Bai pulled the four of them under the well. As the force wave hit, Lancelot was thrown out onto the wall of the well. The Dark Mirror was barely defending them against the shockwave but Lancelot was determined to fight it as Li Lang and Yi Yeyu would not be able to live under such a strong shockwave. They might actually die if they were hit by the wave at such short distance. Bai noticed that and created a defensive layer with his Vampire Particles covering the inside of the Dark Mirror. The initial single layer of defense was now doubled. However, the situation did not seem to be better. "It''s not working, we''re not going to last long!" Bai frowned. Yi Zheng and the rest were concerned. "Let''s go out!" Leng Yuexin looked at the well. "But outside" Yi Yeyu attempted to say something but she was interrupted by Yi Zheng. "Miss Leng is right, we have no other option that escaping the well." Yi Yeyu and Li Lang no longer voice their disagreement after Yi Zheng said that. Suddenly, Lancelot''s Dark Mirror broke. He leaped and activated the Dark Mirror again but this time, he was aiming at the bottom of the well. As the shockwave hit on the Dark Mirror, Lancelot was throw out of the well a few times faster than what Bai encountered. The thousands of monsters looked at them as they appeared above the well with Bai and Lancelot. Lancelot blocked the Dark Mirror in front of them without hesitation. A black sphere floated in the air, no matter how the monsters attacked, they were not harmed at all. Instead, it reflected the monsters'' attacks. Some of the monsters did not manage to escape the attacks that were reflected and were killed immediately. "We''re finally safe now, that was scary." Yi Yeyu was relieved as she knew that Lancelot''s Dark Mirror, now a black sphere could completely block out the attacks. "Imperial-level monsters are just too powerful. That was just the shockwave from the fight and it''s already enough to kill us." Li Lang was traumatized as he thought about what they just witnessed. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin were silent as they looked at the well. "I wonder if Lin Huang would win" Yi Zheng voiced his concern a while later. "He must win! If he doesn''t, all of us would die in this ruins." Leng Yuexin looked at them and said. 599 Killing the Eclipse Boa! As Yi Zheng and the rest escaped from the underground, the fight between Lin Huang ad the Eclipse Boa continued on the first underground floor. Banging noises were heard underground. The Air Slicer that Lin Huang was holding transforming into a purple glow and collided with the red glow that transformed from the Eclipse Boa. Each collision would create an intense tremor. The thud that was as loud as thunder could be heard hundreds of meters away while the tremors that felt like an earthquake could be felt dozens of kilometers away. The first underground floor began to collapse as the duo fought. Gravel fell down from the top of the corridor as the walls collapsed. There were even cracks on the ground. The corridor was in a mess, and no part of it remained in a good condition. The duo backed off after another collision and Lin Huang glared deadly at the boa that was not far away. The Eclipse Boa was more powerful than he imagined. Although it was injured by the God Crasher, its abilities were no less than Lin Huang, even after his combat level had been upgraded. "An imperial-level monster is really something." Lin Huang realized how powerful the monster was as it was his first time fighting against an imperial-level monster. His Thunder Eclipse was continuously upgrading during battle. Some of the parts that he had yet to master were now complete, all while its speed and strength grew more powerful. The Eclipse Boa was getting more and more fearful of Lin Huang now. It did not expect that an immortal-level rank-3 could go toe-to-toe with it. It was obvious that Lin Huang was not merely a supreme genius. Aside from that, Lin Huang was gaining confidence as the fight continued. His sword skill was improving, and the wounds on the Eclipse Boa could not be healed as Lin Huang continued doing battle with it. As time passed, it was evidently on the losing side. However, the Eclipse Boa had not lost hope fighting an immortal-level rank-3 opponent. It knew fairly well that it would win the battle as long as it managed to endure the duration of Lin Huang''s secret skill. As it thought of this, the Eclipse Boa shot a deadly glare with its ruby-red eyes once more and dashed towards Lin Huang while glowing red. Lin Huang was in a trance his Thunder Eclipse almost flawless in this battle. At least to him, it was flawless. It was now one with the Sword Dao and was one step away from perfection. Lin Huang dashed towards the Eclipse Boa as a purple lightning again. "Bang!" The collision this time had created a terrifying shockwave that exceeded the limit that the walls could take, causing them to completely collapse, leaving nothing behind on the first underground floor. Soon, the red and purple shadows shot out of the sky and clashed again. They were so fast that their movements could not be seen with the naked eye. Yi Zheng and the rest could only see the afterimages that were moving in the sky. Without the underground corridor acting as a barrier, the sound from their fight was now much louder than before. Every collision sounded like the Thunder God''s roar, causing even the clouds to fade from the shockwave. "It''s not safe here anymore! Let''s hide on the second underground floor." Yi Zheng noticed Lancelot''s defenses beginning to tremble. Bai nodded and activated his Vampire Particles that transformed into arms, grabbing the rest before they headed underground while Lancelot tailed them from the back. There were monsters that came after them but they were immediately killed by Lancelot''s Sword Dao territory. The six of them arrived at the collapsed site and founded the entrance of the second underground floor, finally safe once more as they entered. Meanwhile, the fight between Lin Huang and the Eclipse Boa peaked in the sky. Their movements were limited by the corridor earlier, but they were no longer restricted in the sky. Their clashes became more frequent, a red and purple glow shooting sparks into the dark sky. Each clash would appear at a different place and a loud bang could be heard each time. Many holy fire-level monsters below their battle were killed from the shockwave, others were blown away, while some of them began escaping. "Thunder Eclipse!" Lin Huang shouted as he merged himself with the sword into a purple lightning and dashed, several times faster than before. Thunder Eclipse had finally reached its perfection during the battle, causing its speed and strength to become several times more powerful than before. This time, the red glow was shot into the ground from the collision. It was the first time Lin Huang seemed to be the victor in the battle. Lin Huang looked at the Eclipse Boa from afar. He knew that it had yet to unleash its powerful abilities but he was no longer afraid. In the hole that was hundreds of meters deep, the Eclipse Snake slowly got up and shot a deadly glare at Lin Huang with its ruby eyes. "I never would''ve thought that you could push me to my edge!" "Show me all you got or you''ll never have another chance." Lin Huang looked at the Eclipse Boa with the gaze that an emperor would spare a peasant. "As you wish!" A gigantic red boa head appeared above the Eclipse Boa''s head. Lin Huang know that it was summoning its Life Castle. He dashed towards it, body not unlike purple lightning as a golden glow enveloped sword. As the head of the red boa that towered a thousand meters completed its formation, Lin Huang''s sword was completely covered in a golden sheen, not unlike a scorching summer sun. It was so bright that it made the surrounding look like it was daytime. "Moon Engulf!" "Flowing Fire Sword!" Both of them shouted at almost the same time. The head opened its mouth and absorbed everything around it like a black hole Meanwhile, Lin Huang''s sword that shone like a sun collided with the head A strong wind blew within hundreds of meters of them clashing, gravel was sent flying while other monsters that were escaping were sucked into the boa''s mouth. Suddenly, the golden sheen on the sword exploded, its glow shining hundreds of meters away. Soon, the wind stopped blowing and the golden sheen faded. The ruins were dark once more, the chaotic thunder no longer present. "Is it over?" Yi Zheng and the rest figured the fight ended as they did not hear anything on the second underground floor. Their hearts were beating as fast as a drum as they wondered Who won the battle? They were relieved as Bai and Lancelot were still around, so Lin Huang was definitely still alive. However, nobody knew who exactly won. "You guys stay here, I''ll go take a look." Yi Zheng suggested. "Let''s go together, we won''t be able to live if Lin Huang loses the battle. If he''s already won, it wouldn''t be dangerous if we go up." Leng Yuexin''s plan was thorough and gained nodding approvals from Yi Yeyu and Li Lang. They then crawled from the collapsed site and looked around from a broken wall. A person was standing nearby. Lin Huang knew that they had left the underground floor but he remained unyielding, not turning around as he continued his gaze at the boa''s carcass. It was Lin Huang who won the battle. He had drained nine out of his ten Life Wheels to kill this monster. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a new legendary-level card - Eclipse Boa!" "Would you like to extract the tinder?" Xiao Hei''s notification came. "Xiao Hei, does its tinder suit me?" Lin Huang did not expect to obtain a complete Monster Card and his concern was more regarding its tinder. "It depends on you. All I can say is that the Eclipse Boa is a powerful legendary-level monster with a good tinder that can be evolved. To a certain extent, it would be able to inherit the complete bloodline of the ancient beast Solar Boa." "Alright then, extract the tinder then." Lin Huang had been stuck in the white flame-level for too long as he was not able to find a suitable tinder. The one that he was looking at was a good one indeed. He pressed his palm on the monster, and Xiao Hei immediately extracted the tinder. "The sun is rising! The blood sacrifice is ending! Let''s get back underground!" Lin Huang put away the monster carcass and ran toward them. Soon, they returned to the second underground floor but before they could ask him anything, Lin Huang found a place to sit and began merging his body with the Eclipse Boa''s tinder. His temporary upgrade in combat level that lasted for half an hour was forcefully ended by Xiao Hei. As his powerful aura faded back to white flame-level, his ascension to the next level began 600 Leveling to the Crimson Flame-Level The sun rose in the ruins when it was past 5 a.m. The monsters that were fighting hard throughout the night returned underground while the ground was filled with carcasses and blood. A bloody shadow appeared not far above the collapsed site as Lin Huang and the rest returned underground for less than five minutes. The shadow seemed like a human that was made of a bloody mist, but nobody could tell if it was a human or some other creature. The bloody shadow floated in the air as it was looking at the burnt ground, seemingly looking for something. In less than five seconds, another shadow appeared less than twenty meters from it. It was a human corpse with part of its skeleton was showing. There was no skin left on its body, it was like a dead body that was ripped off its skin and dried before decaying. It was a disgusting thing to look at. "You''ve crossed the line, this is my territory." The corpse sounded husky. The bloody shadow looked at the corpse and ignored it as it continued to look around. Suddenly, another two undead appeared next to it. One was a dragon while another was a bird. Three of them were in an odd condition as their bodies seemed to show part of their skeletons. "You shouldn''t be here." The bird flapped its wings that were left with a couple of feathers and warned. "The blood sacrifice has ended and the sun is rising. We don''t have much time left, I''m sure you don''t want anything to go wrong now. Am I right?" The undead dragon said to the bloody shadow. The bloody shadow looked up into the sky and did not say a word before disappearing. "Why did that person come to our territory?" The bird asked the corpse. "I have no idea, I sensed its aura when I woke up. It seems to be a fight between it and an imperial-level earlier" The corpse looked around. "Let''s not bother about it, it''s not the first time the fella invaded our territory. We don''t have much time left, let''s eat." The dragon looked at the sky that was getting bright. The dragon and bird faded away, the human corpse was the only one left. It floated into the air and opened its mouth. The qi-blood of the monster carcasses on the ground turned into a bloody mist and was soon swallowed by the corpse. It was quite a majestic scene. If Lin Huang and the rest were still on the ground, they would see the flesh of the monsters, even those that were hiding underground being shredded away from their bodies. All that was left were their bones. However, the remains did not stay. Within seconds, they turned into a white mist, engulfed by the human corpse in the air. If one observed it closely, one could see there was flesh growing on the human corpse''s exposed ribs. It lasted for three to five minutes until all the qi-blood in the surrounding thousands of kilometers were gone. It then teleported to another area and began another round, engulfing the qi-blood Lin Huang and the rest had no idea what happened on the ground. After a near-death experience, all of them hid quietly in the second underground floor while waiting for Lin Huang to level up patiently. They were chatting as they guarded the place while Lin Huang focused on leveling up. "Lin Huang''s secret skill is just too ridiculous, he can even upgrade his combat level twice!" Li Lang was envious. If only he could learn the secret skill himself. Although he would not be able to fight an imperial-level monster, he could definitely fight a few immortal-level monsters. "It''s mainly because he''s a supreme genius himself, and he has stunning abilities. We might not even be able to handle the boa''s attack even if we leveled-up to immortal-level rank-3. I''m sure I would''ve heard if there were immortal-level rank-3''s who could manage an imperial-level in the core zone, but nobody could even imagine doing that in Division 7. At least I''ve never heard of it." Yi Zheng shook his head. "There are such geniuses in the core zone. I heard from my grandfather that there was a holy fire-level human who killed a demigod in Division 1 before. I''ve always thought it was just a myth until I found out it really happened when I traveled to Division 3. I heard the holy fire-level mastered a higher power that doesn''t belong on our life level. There had only been one genius like that who ever existed in the world. Naturally, there''s no one in our generation who can go against such a genius but there are a few immortal-level geniuses who could definitely kill an imperial-level monster. "There are people in the core zone that are so powerful?" Li Lang was skeptical. "The population in the core zones are more than tenfold of that in our division. They have better resources as well. It''s not out of this world that they managed to train such powerful people." Yi Zheng explained. ... Lin Huang had finally completed his level-up to the crimson flame-level when it was past 8 a.m. Aside from having a major upgrade in his body, his Life Power transformed as well. The Life Fire in his ten Life Wheels changed from a pure white to a crimson red, the first Life Fire that burned three hundred meters high was now burning at its original height at only a few centimeters, almost the same with the second Life Fire. Both of them were now parellel, not unlike two tea leaves. The Eclipse Boa''s skill was amazing. Lin Huang obtained an engulfing secret skill that was similar to Moon Engulf. That aside, Lin Huang also learned something new. The ruins were categorized into four parts with three demigods and a mysterious monster. The mysterious monster terrorized the last half of the ruins while the three demigod remnants had their own share of the remaining area. Even so, their territories were similar to half the size of the earth Every time the blood sacrifice ended, the four monsters would engulf the qi-blood in their territories, never once invading any of the other three other territories. The three demigods remnants were no longer remnants as their bodies were now semi-recovered from the blood sacrifice. Meanwhile, nobody had ever seen how the mysterious monster that managed to conquer the three demigod remnants looked like. Apart from the blood sacrifice, the four monsters would hibernate, only waking up during the blood sacrifice. Another piece of information was there was a large site in the central zone of the ruins. There would be white-robed people who would come in once in a while to gather around in that area Lin Huang opened his eyes slowly as he digested the boa''s memories. Yi Zheng and the rest were having breakfast, while Bai and Lancelot joined them later. Lancelot was eating fried vegetable as usual while Bai rank a red, sweet and sour drink. The both of them had broken through the gold flame-level and had leveled-up to immortal-level rank-1 automatically. "Cough!" Lin Huang coughed as he realized that nobody noticed that he had woken up. Yi Zheng and the rest turned around and looked at him. "You''re finally awake!" They laughed. "Go wash up, we''re going to the next site after breakfast!" 601 Level-4 Sword Dao "Congratulations, octuple cross-ranking kill has been completed. You''ve obtained Reward Card Draw x50!" As he pierced through the immortal-level rank-5 monster''s heart, Lin Huang could finally obtain the cross-ranking reward for the tenth time. He managed to kill an immortal-level rank-5 monster despite the fact that his combat strength was merely on the crimson flame-level. He could now achieve an octuple cross-ranking kill. However, he was not satisfied with his performance. "When I''m at immortal-level rank-1, I''ll possibly be able to kill an immortal-level rank-9. However, the abilities of those at the imperial-level will be doubled each time they level up. With the current cross-ranking standard that I can achieve, even if I''m on the black gold-rank in future, I''ll only be able to level-up four ranks at once and kill those on the violet gold-rank. However, I won''t be able to defeat the demigods." From the Eclipse Boa''s memory, Lin Huang knew that there would be a big difference in abilities between each level. If he wanted the ability to kill the demigods, it was insufficient for him to just level-up to the imperial-level. As for the Transformation Card and Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card, they were external factors. Moreover, it definitely depended on one''s look to determine whether one could draw it or not. It was not a permanent solution by depending on such cards to improve abilities. Cards were only for emergencies. During the sunset on the first day after the blood sacrifice, Lin Huang was alone for an hour. Since A Double Reward Card was activated, Lin Huang completed 10 consecutive cross-ranking kills and was given 500 card draws. Since Lin Huang had enough cards to use, he did not draw any cards yet. He accumulated the 500 draws with remaining 100 card draws. A few days after obtaining the cross-ranking rewards, Lin Huang, Yi Zheng and the rest were approaching the center of the ruins. Lin Huang and the rest managed to wipe out the monsters in the small and medium-sized sites. Not only did they obtain many items, Li Lang and Yi Yeyu had also found a suitable Life Fire monster and had already leveled-up to blue flame-level. Naturally, both of them had chosen a double mutated Life Fire monster instead of a triple mutated Life Fire monster. Among other reasons, it was because those monsters were rare and they would not even be able to defeat the triple mutated monsters. After upgrading to the blue flame-level, both of them relied on a large number of Life Crystals for the cultivation of Life Fire. Lin Huang''s Life Fire was growing due to Lancelot''s attacks on the monsters. When there were no powerful monsters at the sites at night, Lin Huang would release Lancelot so that it could attack. There were two Life Fires in Lin Huang''s body. One of them stopped growing when it reached 50 meters whereas the other had reached 300 meters and was still growing. Both of them were initially parallel to each other but for now, the fifty-meter Life Fire would be set off against another of his Life Fire. Lin Huang could do nothing since monsters that had gone through a quadruple mutation were mere legends. It was completely out of his expectation when he previously encountered the Regal Sword Killer. The Life Fire monster that he could find would be a triple mutated monster at the very most. Leng Yuexin and Yi Zheng were rather picky as they could not find a suitable Life Fire monster yet. At the spacious ruins. After about a week, Lin Huang and the rest had finally arrived at the center of the ruins. In the afternoon when the sun was shining high, they could see the big-sized site from afar. Soon, Lin Huang and the rest landed on the periphery of the site. "Lin Huang, is this the site that the Saint members always come?" After Li Lang has descended, he looked at the site from afar. However, he found nothing unique. "Yes, according to the memory inherited from the Eclipse Boa." Lin Huang nodded his head. "The Saint members will not come here without a reason. Let''s look around patiently and see if we can discover anything." Leng Yuexin suggested. The rest nodded in agreement. "Please walk together to avoid unknown dangers that could happen. Although the ruins look safe, we don''t actually know the exact situation yet." Lin Huang reminded. The site was big and looked like a huge palace. However, only half of the floors in the ruins remained. By looking at the door of the remaining floors, it seemed to be about 10 meters tall. They could then estimate that the actual height of the palace door which would be more than 30 meters. "The building is so big. Are giants living in this building?" Yi Yeyu said as she looked at the huge door and windows. Yi Zheng stopped in front of the wall. There was something etched on the wall and it was made with a saber. When Lin Huang and the rest were about to leave, they saw that Yi Zheng was stunned, staring at the etches on the wall. As Yi Yeyu wanted to give her brother a slap, Lin Huang immediately grabbed her wrist and signed her to keep quiet. "Don''t distract him, it seems like these etches have given him some insights." Lin Huang suppressed his voice and told the rest. Yi Yeyu then retracted her hand. "The etches on the wall might be remnants of a war. Let''s look around and we might possibly gain something." Lin Huang noticed the etches on the wall as Yi Zheng mentioned it. Leng Yuexin and the rest began observing the etches on the wall. Lin Huang did not go too far. Instead, he flew up over the door and looked at the etches on the door. Obviously, they were etches made from a sword. Not only did the etches on the door look like this, it seemed like all the etches in the palace were made by a sword. Lin Huang stared at the sword etches on the door for a moment and felt nothing special. He then told Lancelot to look after the rest as he flew along, following the path of the etches. He flew around the site for a few minutes and when he returned, he looked at the etches on the door again. Right this moment, a scene suddenly appeared in Lin Huang''s mind. There was a palace which existed hundreds of years ago, a few hundred meters in height. The palace was ablaze with light, and there were people singing, dancing, drinking, and talking One day, a young man suddenly appeared at the door of the palace. He was wearing a white robe and he had a waist-length hair. Although his face could not be clearly seen, Lin Huang could vaguely feel that he was a handsome man. The man was holding a black sword in his hand but Lin Huang could not figure out its level. Soon after, he suddenly slashed his sword. The next moment, the entire palace was cut in two. Apart from that, thousands of people were immediately cut in half regardless of the floors they were on Lin Huang was stunned at the terrifying scene he just saw. He was pretty sure that the man used only one sword and he wondered how could that happen. He could not figure out why as the man did not use any territorial power. It was just an ordinary sword and it was deeply imprinted on his mind. After a long while, only then Lin Huang could recover from his thoughts. "What just happened?!" Lin Huang did not expect that as he snapped out of his trance, there was a breakthrough in his Sword Dao. He had leveled-up to level-4 Sword Dao C Oblivion. 602 Underground Treasure Lin Huang had been at level-3 of the Sword Dao for quite some time now. He was well-grounded, and with the addition of the external trigger, he managed to make a breakthrough. The level-4 Sword Dao was called Oblivion. Lin Huang could be regarded as an expert in Sword Dao the moment he achieved this level. Oblivion was when the user and the sword merged. The sword had become part of one''s life and they could not be separated, becoming an extension that was not unlike the limbs of a human body. Previously, Liu Ming''s combat strength was actually on immortal-level rank-9 as he only had a level-4 Sword Dao. His Sword Dao was one of the strongest among the people of that generation. Very few in Division 7 could surpass him in terms of his Sword Dao. This was also the reason why he was capable of killing an imperial-level when he was still an immortal-level. At this moment, Lin Huang had made a breakthrough, albeit one that was out of Lin Huang''s expectation. He thought that it would take him at least a year to level-up. The moment the upgrade on his Sword Dao happened, Lin Huang slowly closed his eyes, reviewing the various types of sword skills that he had learned in the past, practicing them in his mind to further stabilize his sword skills. Lin Huang closed his eyes for several hours, and when they opened, the sky had turned dark. Yi Zheng and the rest had learned something as they waited for Lin Huang. Seeing that the sky had turned dark as he opened his eyes, Lin Huang immediately summoned the Dimensional Portal. All of them strode over it and returned to the site near them. Everyone was quietly having their dinner underground. "It seems like you guys have learned something today." Lin Huang sized them up and noticed that they were behaving oddly. "I think the etches on the building have something to do with our dao level improving. My Saber Dao has somewhat benefited from that. I''m not going to kill any monsters in the following days as I can feel that my Saber Dao is about to achieve level-3." Leng Yuexin explained. "I feel the same way too. If we continue observing the etches, perhaps in two to three days, I''ll be able to achieve level-3 Saber Dao." Yi Zheng agreed with her. "I''m not going to kill any monsters too." Although Yi Yeyu was still far from achieving level-3 Saber Dao, she could feel that her Saber Dao was improving. "I''ve been looking around the palace for several hours but I can''t seem to find any etchings for a spear. I''ll try again tomorrow." Seeing that the rest had improved, Li Lang panicked. "Lin Huang, you''ve closed your eyes for so long. Was it a good learning experience?" Li Lang asked. "Yes, I''ve achieved level-4 Sword Dao." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. "..." Comparisons were odious and the rest were speechless. "In the following few days, we shall stay in this site to upgrade our skills. I''ve just made a breakthrough in my Sword Dao. Therefore, it''ll take me some time to stabilize my skills. We can hunt monsters after that." Lin Huang agreed with the rest of them. The next morning, they arrived at the large site through the Dimensional Portal. Lin Huang was standing at his original position and closed his eyes once more to focus on strengthening his skills. Meanwhile, Yi Zheng and the rest stood still before the etches on the walls. When it was slightly past one o''clock in the afternoon, Li Lang finally discovered an etching for spears and stood still before the etchings. In the next few days, Lin Huang and the rest went there during the daytime. They were there when the sun rose and left before sunset. On the fourth day, Yi Zheng''s had achieved level-3 Saber Dao the Illumination level. On the fifth day, Leng Yuexin managed achieve level-3 Saber Dao as well. Yi Yeyu and Li Lang had arrived at the Consonance level. They then stayed at the site for another few days. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin had strengthened their level-3 saber skills whereas Lin Huang''s sword skills had been completely stabilized. He was much stronger than he was before. Both Yi Yeyu and Li Lang were incapable of getting into level-3 as both of them were still lacking experience. It was because of this that they could hardly achieve level-3 within a short period of time. "It seems like there aren''t any entrances to the underground area in this site After completely stabilizing his level-4 Sword Dao, Lin Huang had been exploring the site in the past few days. However, he could not find an underground entrance. According to the normal practice of a site, there had to be a big building under the site. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin joined him after their Saber Dao had been stabilized. Leng Yuexin sized up the surrounding while walking at the center of the hall and accidentally stepped on a crushed stone and twisted her ankle. She immediately grabbed the border of the stone tower and at that moment, the stone tower moved a little. Leng Yuexin immediately noticed something unusual about the stoner tower and informed Lin Huang and the rest. "It seems like the stone tower here can move." They immediately rushed over there. Even Yi Yeyu and Li Lang stopped observing the war etchings. "I accidentally touched the stone tower earlier and I found out that it can actually move." Leng Yuexin said. "Let me try." Lin Huang took a step forward, pressing against the white stone tower that was more than a meter in height. Soon after, it started moving in an anticlockwise direction. After rotating for 180 degrees, it stopped. Right this moment, the ground suddenly trembled. The people floated up into the sky and soon, they saw a circular entrance with a five-meter diameter next to the stone tower being activated. The position of the entrance was right at the center of the hall. There was a stone staircase near the stone tower. "I was right. There''s indeed an underground are here." Seeing the appearance of the underground entrance, Lin Huang confirmed that he made a right guess. "The site is so big. There must be a lot of treasures there. We''re going to be rich!" Li Lang smiled wryly. He wanted to enter rashly but was stopped by Lin Huang. "Please wait, I''ll ask Bloody to investigate the situation first. Twisted around Lin Huang''s wrist, Bloody released purple specks of light and spread them throughout the underground entrance. Soon, several projections created by Bloody appeared in front of Lin Huang. The few of them looked at the projections as well. In the projections, as they reached the end of the spiral staircase, there was a big underground plaza. There were coffins in the plaza that were arranged accordingly and neatly. The leech pods were flying in different directions. There were only coffins in the plaza and there were nearly 10,000 of them. Not a single monster was discovered. There were four rooms outside the underground plaza where the treasures were stored. Lin Huang and the rest were staring at those treasures greedily. Aside from that, at the end of the plaza, there was a red wooden box with a length of less than one meter. There were black intricate patterns all over the box that looked like black chains. "It seems like it''s not dangerous in there. Let''s go in." Li Lang spoke excitedly. Lin Huang frowned, seeing the red wooden box. He was afraid that things might not be that simple. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded his head. "After collecting the items in the palace, leave immediately. Don''t touch the coffins and the box." 603 The Peculiar Red Wooden Box After the inspection was completed and there was no danger detected in the underground, Lin Huang and the rest entered. They climbed down the stone staircase and soon they arrived at the underground plaza. The area of the plaza was not small and the height of the ceilings had even exceeded 30 meters. There were coffins that they saw from the scenes projected by Bloody and the coffins were arranged accordingly. The length of each of the coffins was about three meters and it was at least 1.5 meters wide. The distance between each coffin was about three meters. The base of the coffin was made of wood and they were still in good condition right until now. The coffin cover was transparent and they could clearly see the skeleton in the coffin. "It seems like they were chopped off by the waist." After observing few of the coffins, Yi Yeyu said. The rest of them did notice that as well. The scene that he saw when he was looking at the sword marks appeared again. A young man in white rope cut the entire palace in half. Everyone in the palace, regardless of whether they were right under the sword or not, they were all cut in half "That''s not important. Quickly leave after getting what we want." Lin Huang could vaguely feel that the skeletons have something to do with the scene that he saw in his mind. Few of them flew past the coffins and arrived at the first treasure room situated on the left. The area of the room was at least 10,000 square meters. There was a variety of relics, crystals, and other items. They occupied almost two-thirds of the room. Lin Huang and the rest were going to make large sums of money as the number of relics alone was more than 10,000. The crystals of various colors could definitely fetch a good price as well. "How could it be? There are so many of the God Crashers over here?!" Li Lang was standing on top of the treasure and suddenly, he discovered a cannon barrel. He immediately pulled it out. Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu went over to help him out. A smile that could hardly be seen was plastered on Yi Zheng''s face as he checked it. He did not have a poker face. After entering the ruins, he was always nervous and that was the reason why he rarely smiled. "It''s a third generation God Crasher that''s still in a good condition. It looks like it has never been used before. It''s precious!" Yi Zheng liked the God Crasher a lot. Yi Yeyu wanted to take it from Li Lang but he did not want to let it go. "Hey hey! I was the one who found the cannon. Could you please be reasonable?" "Do you know how to use it?" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at Li Lang. "I don''t know how to use but I can keep it with me." Li Lang was not happy about it. "Go away, don''t spoil it!" Yi Yeyu said. "Let''s talk about this later when we get out of this place. I''ll keep it with me first." After a few moments, Lin Huang stored all the items in the room into his storage ring. Yi Yeyu took the God Crasher from Li Lang as well and stored it in her storage ring. After clearing the first room, they immediately headed towards the second room. In the second treasure room, the number of treasures was rather similar to that in the first room. They then proceeded to the third treasure room after searching through the second room. Just as Lin Huang and the rest entered the third room, at the end of the underground plaza, the blood mist suddenly spread through the gap on the "red wooden" box. At almost the same time, Bloody''s leech pod exploded on its own. Bloody noticed the problem and immediately contacted Lin Huang, "One of my leech pods have been destroyed. I don''t know how it is destroyed but there might be something hidden underground. I didn''t discover anything as I investigated previously. That being said, it might be able to get rid of the investigation of my leech pods." As Bloody reminded, Lin Huang frowned. Bloody was now an immortal-level rank-1. The unknown that could secretly destroy Bloody''s leech pods, it must be something stronger than Bloody. After collecting all the treasures in the room, Lin Huang immediately asked the rest to retreat, "Quickly leave!" The rest were stunned but still, they followed after Lin Huang and rushed towards the underground entrance as they left the room. "Isn''t it there''s another treasure room?" Li Lang asked when they left. "We can''t make it. There''s an unknown monster hiding underground which has just destroyed Bloody''s investigating pods." Lin Huang explained as they escaped. Their face turned grave and headed towards the underground entrance at full speed. At the end of the underground plaza, the blood mist released through the red wooden box became thicker. On the surface of the red wooden box, the black intricate pattern started turning into a golden color which resembled a little golden snake wriggling on the surface of the box. The red wooden box was vibrating vigorously as if it was suppressing something at full force. As the vibration became stronger, the gap between the box became bigger as well. Eventually, a red glow erupted and flashed through the sky, creating a single arm. After a few moments, a bloody mist spread out from the arm, gradually forming a humanoid creature which was in the mist form. Even the arm itself was shrouded in mist. The creature that was entirely covered by the blood mist was three of the carrions that they fought in mid-air at the site where they were hiding. At the back of the misty monster, the red wooden box was completely activated, and golden chains extended from it. The limbs and the neck of the misty monster were instantly locked in it and were being drawn backward. As it was pulled by an immense strength, the misty monster was slowly falling down. However, it looked at Lin Huang and the rest that had reached the underground entrance at a distance of about 10,000 meters. "Roar!" It let out a furious roar and at the next second, its body had completely turned into bloody mist and diffused into the red wooden box. On the red wooden box, the golden pattern gradually faded and ultimately, turning into the black pattern it originally had. The underground plaza became quiet again. When they reached the underground entrance, the monster roar that sounded very much like the rumbling of thunder was heard. They were frightened and broke out in a cold sweat. As soon as Lancelot that was at the end of the line entered, Lin Huang who was standing next to the stone tower immediately turned the stone tower back and the underground entrance was closed. "The growl was terrifying. What''s that?" Li Lang had goosebumps when he heard that. "It''s not the right place to talk. Let''s go!" It was apparent that Lin Huang did not want to stay there any longer. He immediately summoned the Dimensional Portal and the few of them who were there, entered. 604 The Reappearance of the Red Mis At one of the underground floors of a medium-sized site that was thousands of kilometers away from the big-sized site, Lin Huang took out of his Black Ink. Lin Huang put the Black Ink away in relief. "What monster was it that just growled loudly? It has a terrifying roar and it gives me goosebumps!" Yi Yeyu exclaimed. "Me too, I had goosebumps." Li Lang nodded his head in agreement. "My heart skipped a beat at that instant" Yi Zheng took a deep breath as he replied. "If we were only one or two seconds slower, we might''ve died there." Leng Yuexin could finally calm herself down. "I''ve no idea what that was. I only know that it has quietly killed off Bloody''s leech pods. In addition to that, the investigation pods did not discover it earlier. I suppose it''s stronger than me and that was exactly why I urged you guys to leave." Lin Huang explained. "However, from its growl, the abilities of the monster has to be beyond the imperial-level Eclipse Boa that I killed earlier. Fortunately, we managed to escape in time or we''ll all be in great trouble." Of course, they did not know that the monster that let out a loud roar in the underground had been sealed by the red wooden box. However, after experiencing what they had just been through, they had no intentions whatsoever of ever going to the big-sized site again. They took out the items from three out of four treasure rooms, seemingly quite satisfied with they got. "The sky is turning dark soon. Let''s stop here. I''ve aged and I can''t take the torture any longer." Yi Zheng took a look at the time and it was just slightly after 4 p.m. There were at least three hours before the sky turned dark but he did not want to go out anymore. He looked for a wall, leaning against it with his legs crossed. The rest of them were relieved as they sat down. As Lin Huang sat down, he searched through his storage ring and looked for the items that he just obtained with his mind. After a short while, he grinned. He raised his head, glancing at Yi Zheng and the rest. "Are you guys looking for the God Crasher? Among the items that we''ve managed to collect, including the one which Yi Yeyu took, we have a total of 12 God Crashers." Yi Zheng and the rest opened their eyes wide, shifting their gaze to Lin Huang. "Is that true? Don''t joke about this or I''ll be pissed." Yi Yeyu shook her fist at Lin Huang. "I''m not joking. Each of us will get two God Crashers and there are two extras." Lin Huang smiled, as he nodded his head. "Let''s divide the God Crasher among us first. We''ll discuss the rest of the items as we get out of this place." Lin Huang took out 11 of the God Crashers he had with him as he said, "Each of you please choose two!" Each of them then took two God Crashers. Yi Yeyu took two as well. Yi Zheng frowned and asked, "Don''t you already have one with you?" "Don''t bother me!" Yi Yeyu pouted. She then told Lin Huang, "Please deduct the third God Crasher that I took from the other items." Lin Huang nodded his head, storing three of the remaining God Crasher in his storage space as he replied, "I''ll deduct it from the remaining items accordingly as well." Aside from Yi Zheng, the rest of them had stored the God Crasher. Yi Zheng looked at both of the God Crasher carefully. He then took out a lot of Life Crystals from his storage space and started inserting them into the power cabin to refill its Life Power. Right this moment, Li Lang came, "Brother Zheng, since you have nothing to do, can you please teach me how to use the God Crasher?" Yi Zheng smiled, nodding his head. "It''s actually pretty simple. In order to use the God Crasher, the first step is to fill up its power. The latest God Crasher is highly compatible with the energy crystals. Aside from the Life Crystals, many of the energy crystals can be used as a source of energy. However, we now have the third generation God Crasher which can only support Life Crystals and some of the fire element crystals." "It''s easy to fill its power up. You just have to insert the energy crystals into the power cabin behind the barrel. Small crystals can be inserted in bunches but for the bigger crystals, you''ll have to cut them into appropriately sized fragments before inserting them. The power cabin will automatically convert the energy within the energy crystals. The scale next to the power cabin shows the ratio of the power. As soon as it reaches 100%, stop inserting energy crystals into the power cabin or it''ll explode. Also, the third generation God Crasher can only use a single type of crystal. Don''t attempt to mix the powers of various crystals or the power cabin will explode as well." "As soon as it has been charged, it can then launch attacks. You can stabilize it with a cannon carriage or with your shoulder. However, be aware of its recoil" Aside from Li Lang, Lin Huang and Leng Yuexin were paying attention to what he said as well. Despite Yi Yeyu having never used it before, she was familiar with the God Crasher as she was born into a military family. She took out one of her God Crashers and handled it on her own. It was about five o''clock in the afternoon after listening to Yi Zheng. Five of them played some card games after their dinner and soon, they were going at it with their own things. At night, some of them had already fallen asleep while the others were still practicing their skills. In the ruins, the night belonged to the monsters. On the ground, many of the monsters started hunting for food. Killing and being killed was something normal. However, all this had nothing to do with Lin Huang and the rest. Some of them had slept soundly whereas some of them were still immersed in their thoughts, recalling the etchings that they saw as they continued practicing their skills. A peaceful night passed. The next morning, they departed to the next site after having their breakfast. As usual, no monsters appeared during the daytime in the ruins. Only humans like Lin Huang and the rest were there during daytime. They went to various sites during the daytime, taking the opportunity to rest inside the sites at night. Before long, 10 days had passed. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin could finally find their Life Fire monster and had obtained their Life Fire. They had leveled-up, with Yi Zheng now at the gold flame-level while Leng Yuexin managed to achieve the purple flame-level. They were getting closer to the second blood sacrifice. "There''s another two days before the second blood sacrifice" At night, on the second underground floor in a small-sized site, Lin Huang gazed upon the rest of them and said, "I''d suggest leaving in the afternoon on the day after tomorrow." "I''ve nothing to add since I don''t want to experience the blood sacrifice for the second time." Yi Yeyu laughed. "Since the blood sacrifice will start at night on the day after tomorrow, we can still hunt for some treasures tomorrow in the afternoon." Li Lang nodded. "I''d prefer to leave tomorrow before sunset. However, it''s fine to leave in the afternoon the day after tomorrow as well." Yi Zheng nodded as well. "What''s your plan after leaving?" Leng Yuexin smiled, looking at Lin Huang. "I''ll be going to Division 3. I can hardly find a suitable Life Fire monster in Division 7 to upgrade my combat strength" Lin Huang finally told them that he was going to leave. "One of the reasons that I invited you guys to enter these ruins is because I wanted to have a gathering before I leave. I thought that it''ll be like a vacation, something where we can make some good memories. However, it ended up being a grade-5 ruin where we didn''t manage to make any beautiful memories. Instead, we''re all frightened" "You don''t have to feel sorry for that. Being frightened can be very memorable too." Yi Zheng said seriously. "Brother Zheng was right. It''ll remind us of you when we encounter any dangers in the future." Li Lang continued. Yi Yeyu and Leng Yuexin laughed with their mouth covered. Few of them chatted until late at night. However, Lin Huang and the rest did not know that at the city center situated tens of thousands of kilometers away, the bloody mist was spreading out of the red wooden box at the underground plaza again 605 The Appearance of the Misty Shadow At the underground plaza at the large site, the bloody mist escaping from the gaps in the red wooden box got thicker. The intricate golden pattern on the box began moving quickly and the bloody mist did not stop spreading. After hibernating for almost half a month, the mysterious creature was struggling in the box and caught the red wooden box off guard on the night two days before the blood sacrifice. As the red wooden box began vibrating vigorously, the bloody mist finally managed to free itself from the box, forming a human arm in mid-air. It was a man''s arm, muscular with its veins bulging. As soon as the arm was formed, a thicker mist was released. Again, a human-like silhouette was formed in the mist. Countless golden chains suddenly shot out and tangled around the limbs of the misty shadow. Before its neck was locked in the fifth chain, the misty shadow attempted to break free of the chains and succeeded. It then appeared in the sky in a flash. It was hanging in mid-air. The misty shadow lifted its head, staring at the red and purple moons in the sky. With its mouth wide-open, countless monsters that were hunting for food on the ground rapidly turned into a bloody mist, drawn toward the misty shadow. On this night, every single one of the monsters that were hunting for food suffered. Many of the monsters died without knowing why the blood sacrifice happened two days earlier. After spending almost half an hour wiping out all the monsters in the ruins, the misty shadow suddenly stood still in its original position. After a few moments, it lifted its head and stared at the mid-sized site that was about 3,000 kilometers away from it. It was the site that Lin Huang and the rest were hiding at half a month ago. "The ruins The key" The voice was heard coming from its throat and soon, the misty shadow disappeared. Early in the morning, after washing up, Lin Huang and the rest had a chat while having their breakfast. "Lin Huang, have you chosen the site that we''re going to yet?" Yi Yeyu asked while drinking her fruit juice. "Yes, I''ve done it last night." Lin Huang nodded his head. "We''re going to leave tomorrow so our schedule is full today. Let''s see if we can manage to explore three mid-sized sites today. If we can''t make it, I can help out when we''re at the third site." "If we''re going to explore three sites, we may have to skip our afternoon break." It was obvious that Li Lang wanted to goof around. "We''re leaving tomorrow. We should go to as many sites as we can." Yi Zheng agreed with him. "Since all of us have leveled up, we can make it to three sites if we skip our afternoon break." "Let''s give it a try." Leng Yuexin nodded calmly. After having their breakfast, they left the site. Seeing the newly risen sun, Lin Huang felt safe. "I''ve been staying in the ruins for a month and the only thing that can make me feel secure is the sun." Leng Yuexin said as she raised her head and looked at the sun. "I haven''t developed any special feelings for this place despite staying over here for an entire month. The only thing I feel is that I smell terrible. The first thing I''m going to do is to take a shower!" Yi Yeyu said with a smile. "Don''t just take a shower, we need a bath in a tub!" Li Lang was a clean freak but such behavior had gone for the past month. Yi Yeyu laughed and remained quiet afterward. "If we continue dreaming over here, we can''t even finish going into two sites." Lin Huang laughed and stopped them from daydreaming. "Let''s start working!" "Lin Huang, if you were a businessman you''d be a terrible boss!" Li Lang teased. Yi Yeyu and Leng Yuexin did the same thing to Lin Huang as well. They were then guided by Lin Huang and headed towards the north. Bai had been recalled by Lin Huang previously so Lancelot and the five of them began their journey. Just as they were less than 300 kilometers away from their destination, Lin Huang suddenly frowned. He saw the appearance of the red mist from afar that had blocked their way. "What''s that?!" Soon, Yi Zheng and the rest noticed that something was off. Right this moment, a vivid scene suddenly appeared in Lin Huang''s mind. He could see that there was a human-shaped red mist lingering in mid-air, and it seemed like it was staring at the sky with its mouth wide open. Meanwhile, all the monsters on the ground both alive and dead had turned into a bloody mist. They were then engulfed by the misty shadow. It was one of the scenes inherited from the Eclipse Boa''s memory. It happened hundreds of years ago. According to its memory, the incident had almost turned Eclipse Boa into one of the sacrifices. Fortunately, they were close to the site so they managed to dive underground right at the moment when they noticed that something unusual was happening to escape the danger. "Run!" At the very next moment that the memory flashed through Lin Huang''s mind, his eyes dilated. He could roughly guess what the misty shadow was and immediately instructed the rest of them to flee. At the same time, he summoned the Black Ink without a moment of hesitation and pulled them into the Dimensional Portal. The instant when the door of the Dimensional Portal closed, Lin Huang could see the red mist already transforming into the human shape. At the next moment, Lin Huang and the rest returned to the site where they were at early in the morning. "What happened?" Yi Zheng frowned as he asked. "I don''t have the time to explain!" Lin Huang summoned his Black Ink again and set a location to a site that was more than 10,000 kilometers away. He then urged the rest to enter. "I can feel that it''s not safe enough to stay here. We''ve to leave immediately!" Yi Zheng and the rest followed as Lin Huang did not look like he was joking. Just as they just entered the Dimensional portal to leave, the misty shadow appeared right above the site where they were hiding just now. It entered the site in a flash but noticed that the aura that was blocked by the site reappearing somewhere else. Following that, it went underground but still, it left empty-handed. Looking in the direction where Lin Huang and the rest disappeared to, the misty shadow mumbled in a deep voice, "The ruin key" At the underground of one of the sites that were more than 10,000 kilometers away, Lin Huang and the rest stepped out of Black Ink. "Can you please tell us what''s happening now?" Yi Yeyu felt that what Lin Huang did was ridiculous. "Did you ask us to escape because of the bloody mist? What''s that?" Leng Yuexin could roughly guess why Lin Huang asked them to escape. "If my guess is right, the bloody mist must be the mysterious monster that fought during the sacrifice with the three demigod remnants in the ruins." After uttering these words, Lin Huang told them about what he saw flashing through his mind. The facial expression on their faces changed as soon as they heard that. "How could that be?! Isn''t the blood sacrifice happening tomorrow night? Why is it happening today, during daytime?!" Li Lang doubted. "I''ve no idea why it suddenly appeared. We don''t have time for that though." Lin Huang frowned. "Since the monster has appeared, it''s not safe for us to stay here anymore. We have to return to the entrance of the ruins as soon as possible. We must unlock the entrance using the ruin key and leave!" 606 Escape "It''s not important anymore, regardless of whether the mysterious monster is capable of fighting the demigods. For the sake of our safety, it''ll be best if we leave the ruins as soon as possible." Leng Yuexin caught a glimpse of Li Lang and she agreed with Lin Huang. "Under such circumstances, we shouldn''t put our faith in luck. We''ve to be prepared for the worst. According to what Lin Huang said, the bloody mist must be at least on the demigod-level. It''s unlikely that we can win the fight. Leaving the ruins is indeed the only choice we have." Yi Zheng agreed with Lin Huang''s decision as well. "Let''s leave today. I don''t want to die in the ruins." Yi Yeyu said. Seeing that the rest of them had agreed with Lin Huang''s decision after shifting their gaze toward him, Li Lang said, "I don''t mean to disagree with leaving the ruins today but I wonder, why did the mysterious monster appear during this particular time? However, it seems like the reason behind its appearance is no longer important. Also, regardless of whether it was the one who managed to defeat the demigod, that''s no longer a concern. It''s better for us to leave earlier so that I can take a hot shower." "I can assure you that it''s the one." Lin Huang was confident. "Before the Dimensional Portal closed, I saw the bloody mist transforming into the shape of a human, looking exactly the same as the mysterious monster that I saw in the Eclipse Boa''s memory." "I saw that as well" Yi Zheng reassured. Since both of them could confirm this, Li Lang was no longer putting his faith in luck. "Lin Huang, will it discover us if we stay here?" Yi Yeyu was worried about it. "It won''t be able to find us within such a short period of time. Any form of external detection on the sites within these ruins is blocked. To find us, it''ll have to follow the aura left on the ground and search through each site in the ruins. The site that we''re at is more than 10,000 kilometers away from it." Lin Huang explained. He felt lucky that any form of external detection would be blocked at these sites. "Have you set the location of the entrance in the Dimensional Portal?" This was Yi Zheng''s greatest concern. "If you didn''t, the monster will discover us as soon as we reach the ground. We''ll definitely die." "Of course I did. I set the location in my Dimensional Portal as soon as I entered the ruins." Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. In fact, there were several weak points within the ruins that could be used as an entrance. There were quite a number of weak points where the ruin key could be used to unlock the entrances. This was also the reason why they would be sent to different locations each time they entered with the ruin key. However, Lin Huang and the rest had no time to look for other entrances. Therefore, they had to create a new entrance by relying on the location that they earlier entered from. "I''ve already set the location. However, there''s another problem that''s even more troublesome. We need sufficient time to activate the entrance of the ruins. The rate of Life Power absorption of the ruin key is constant. It''ll take me at least five minutes to insert a sufficient amount of Life Power into the key. Then, it''s another process for the ruin key to open the entrance. It''ll require about one to two minutes." Lin Huang sorted out another problem. "That being said, we''ll be on the ground for at least six minutes. The misty monster might sense our presence." "We have to take the risk. We can''t wait here. The longer we stall, the higher the possibility that we''ll be discovered." Leng Yuexin analyzed the situation calmly. "Even if we''re not discovered today, tomorrow night is the blood sacrifice. This makes the situation even more dangerous." "Miss Leng is right. We have no way out." Yi Zheng agreed with Leng Yuexin. Lin Huang remained quiet for a moment but soon, it seemed like something had dawned upon him, "I understand now." "What should we do now?" Li Lang immediately asked. "Let''s prepare for the worst" Lin Huang was not relaxed, "Please charge all twelve of the God Crashers with the crystals that we obtained from the large site. Those are Terraflame Crystals. If the God Crasher is charged with those crystals, the effect will be much better than if we were to charge them with Life Crystals." After he spoke, he took out enough yellow crystals to make them look like a hill, "Take it, I still have more if that''s not enough." They immediately took out their God Crashers, refilling it with the crystals. "Brother Zheng, could you please help to fix the carriage?" Lin Huang then took out spare parts for the carriage. The items that they had obtained earlier had already been sorted by Bloody. Lin Huang could easily find what he wanted. Yi Zheng then passed two of his God Crashers to Li Lang and started dealing with his things. Soon after, all twelve of the God Crashers had been recharged, and Yi Zheng had fixed the carriage as well. "I''ll keep all the God Crashers with me. You guys aren''t familiar with it. It''ll be faster if I were to use it." Yi Zheng suggested. It was well established that he was an expert in operating the God Crashers. The rest of them were still new to it. Yi Yeyu wanted to voice her disagreement. However, once she thought it over carefully, it was no longer important regardless of who owned the God Crashers since they were going to use them soon. Lin Huang and the rest had no objections. "What else do we need to prepare?" Yi Zheng put away all twelve of the God Crashers and the carriage. He then raised his head and looked at Lin Huang. "Get ready. We might have to escape at any moment." Lin Huang shook his head with a smile, "When we encounter those on the demigod-level, there''s nothing else we can use aside from the God Crashers. As soon as the exit opens, run as fast as you can." "Haha, I''m good at escaping." Li Lang laughed. He and Yi Yeyu did not think any further. However, Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin looked at Lin Huang and instantly understood that Lin Huang intended to be the last to leave. "Are you guys ready?" After recalling Lancelot into its card form, Lin Huang gazed upon the rest of them. They nodded their head and as they saw Lancelot disappearing, they knew that even if it stayed, it would not be able to offer any assistance. "Let''s go!" After uttering his words, he summoned the Dimensional Portal once more. After setting up its destination, they pushed the door open. Both of them strode into it. A few moments after the door was closed, the underground room within the ruins turned silent. As they left the Dimensional Portal, they found themselves already at the entrance of the ruins that they were at a month ago. It was a familiar scene Aside from the dried up ground, there was nothing there. After Lin Huang put away his Dimensional Portal, he took out the ruin key and immediately began inserting Life Power into it. Yi Zheng then brought out the God Crashers. The sun was hanging high up in the cloudless sky and time continued to pass in the ruins. Yi Zheng and the rest were stressed out. They felt that the time was passing too slowly as each passing minute and second felt like endless torture. Soon, five minutes had passed. The ruin key was now completely filled with Life Power as it left Lin Huang''s palm. Ripples gradually formed in mid-air. They were relieved. "Two more minutes and we''ll be able to leave" After Li Lang said this, the bloody mist appeared abruptly appeared less than a hundred meters away from them. 607 Eh... Success? Seeing the appearance of the bloody mist, they were stunned. "Yi Zheng, launch an attack!" Lin Huang immediately shouted. He no longer cared if he was yelling Yi Zheng''s name. Yi Zheng then snapped out of his trance, taking aim at the bloody mist. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Three consecutive shockwaves propagated in the air, along with a roar as the attacks struck the fist-sized bloody mist. The bloody mist was shrouded in the golden flares and let out a furious growl. Right this moment, nine of the God Crashers were directed toward the bloody mist by his psychic abilities, defending themselves against the bloody mist. The other three appeared in front of the three God Crashers that had been used to launch an attack instantly. They then rapidly refilled the God Crasher with the Terraflame Crystals. The ruin key could transform into a door on its own and did not need much attention from Lin Huang and the rest. Then, they shot a deadly stare at the bloody mist. After the smoke cleared, the bloody mist was now in a lighter shade. Lin Huang noticed that the formation of the bloody mist was somehow affected by sunlight. When sunlight shone on the bloody mist, it faded a little along with a hissing sound. It sounded like oil, dripping off grilled meat before hitting the coals. He was unsure if this was due to the effect of God Crasher but still, he told Yi Zheng, "Keep attacking. It can buy us some time!" The exit behind them grew larger. However, they would need another minute before it was completely formed. Otherwise, the incomplete dimensional channel would crush them into pieces if they attempted to break in. They had no choice but to wait patiently. Seeing that the God Crasher was seemingly effective, Yi Zheng was slightly relieved. Once again, he pushed the launch button on both God Crashers. The next second, two golden flares shot up into the sky like a spotlight and enveloped the bloody mist again. A loud explosion was heard again in the air, spreading around them in a radius that was tens of thousands of kilometers. The ground within that area trembled from the force. The monsters that were hiding underground attempted to figure out where the explosion of the God Crasher came from in fear. The explosion that sounded very much like the rumbling of thunder, resembling a battle between the demigods. The monsters were considering if they should even hunt for food tonight. After the second attack, Lin Huang and the rest stared at the bloody mist that was still lingering in mid-air. Before the smoke cleared, a bloody glow suddenly flashed in the sky. After a few moments, the red glow exploded abruptly and released a large number of red clouds. Within a few moments, Lin Huang and the rest had been enveloped by the red clouds. Sunlight was completely blocked from entering and a radius that spanned hundreds of kilometers from where they were was now plunged into darkness, as if night had come early. "What is it doing?" Yi Zheng and the rest found out that something was off. "Sunlight will affect the formation of its body. Therefore, it''s attempting to create night." Lin Huang frowned as he stared at the sky. It was impossible for the bloody clouds to clear in a short period of time. In mid-air, the smoke seemed to be clearing. Without sunlight, a human arm was gradually formed in the bloody mist, looking like an arm that was slowly extending from the mist. Lin Huang and the rest felt goosebumps run through their skin as they saw what had happened. "Continue the attack!" Lin Huang shouted. Yi Zheng immediately launched an attack from three God Crashers. Golden flares burst into the sky, enveloping the bloody mist like spotlights on a stage. Right this moment, the arm was now fully extended from within the bloody mist. It managed to deflect the attacks from three of the God Crashers with its palm. Lin Huang and the rest were stunned at what they had just witnessed. Its arm was injured from the attack by the God Crasher, exposing its white bones. However, its wounds were soon enveloped by the bloody mist and were healed in just a few seconds. "Before its body is completely formed, it can''t move. It''s now a live target!" Yi Zheng heard Lin Huang''s voice again, "Continue attacking and stop it from fully forming its body. As long as we have enough time, we can definitely leave this place!" Yi Zheng nodded his head and launched another two attacks. Two golden flares blasted off into the sky again In mid-air, the arm of the misty monster that had just been healed took on another attack by the God Crasher. The monster deflected the attacks with its arms again, its body forming rapidly from its successful defense. Due to the limit on the refill speed for the God Crashers, Yi Zheng could only use two of them at a go. However, the attacks by two God Crashers were unable to break through the defense of its arms. It could only slow down its progress a little. "What card can I use now?" Lin Huang was thinking about what he could do. After a few moments, two cards appeared in his hand. They were the Misfortune Card and the Crippling Card. "I can just try my best!" Right now, Lin Huang could no longer care how many cards he was going to use. Without a moment of hesitation, he crushed his Misfortune Card followed by the Crippling Card. The effects of both of the cards afflicted the monster one after the other. The body of the misty monster faded as soon as the Crippling Card was used. At this moment, a hurricane was formed, dispersing the bloody clouds in the air into several smaller wisps of clouds. The sunlight was now shining on them as usual and it had become rather intense. Since the monster had been weakened, the half-formed body of the monster reduced a little in size once the sunlight shone on it. Yi Zheng thought that this was a blessing and immediately launched another attack. Lin Huang managed to buy them some time by using two cards. The exit behind Lin Huang and the rest was almost fully formed. It could be stabilized in half a minute at most. In mid-air, the misty shadow was slowly forming. Initially, they had no idea what the bloody mist was but now, they could finally see that it was a human figure. It was the mysterious monster that managed to fight the three demigod remnants from the Eclipse Boa''s memory. Similarly, it was one of them who began the blood sacrifice in the ruins. Lin Huang and the rest were racing against the clock and each played their own role. Even Bloody created a few of his clones to recharge the God Crashers with Life Power. At this moment, every second counted. All of them might die if they were even a second slower. Yi Zheng who was responsible for the attacks had his back drenched with sweat. It was not because the weather was too hot, but was because he was nervous. The God Crasher could no longer stop the formation of the human figure. It could only slow it down. Although everybody was racing against the clock, nobody had given up. All of a sudden, they could feel a shockwave from behind them. The exit had finally been formed. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang shouted. Yi Zheng attacked with five God Crashers that had been recharged simultaneously. The human figure was enveloped by the flares once again. They did not even have the time to take back their God Crashers as the five of them immediately rushed toward the exit with Bloody by their side. At that moment, a bloody whip suddenly appeared in the air, targetting Yi Zheng. Lin Huang saw it and immediately grabbed Yi Zheng''s arm, pushing him toward the exit. The bloody whip immediately shifted its target towards Lin Huang as soon as it missed its first target. As it twisted around Lin Huang''s ankle, it dragged him out of the exit by force Seeing that Yi Zheng and the rest had already disappeared through the dimensional channel, Lin Huang turned his body around. The human figure in mid-air was now fully formed as it stared at Lin Huang. The bloody whip that entangled Lin Huang''s ankle extended toward his body and soon, his body was completely bound. He could no longer move. The misty shadow then beckoned Lin Huang toward it and stopped when he was a meter away. "The ruins Exit" Again, the misty shadow uttered those words. It looked excited. Through its shoulder, Lin Huang saw that there was a golden chain that extended behind the misty shadow. "It kept me alive is because it can''t escape!" He could suddenly understand what the misty shadow meant. Right this moment, the misty shadow transformed into a bloody mist, spreading through Lin Huang''s body through his mouth. "Xiao Hei, help me! I''m going to die soon!" Seeing the bloody mist gushing into his body, Lin Huang immediately contacted Xiao Hei. "With the current condition of your body, only the Seal Card can help you to escape this danger. However, the level of the monster is too high, and the success rate of the Seal Card is relatively low. You only have two Seal Cards with you now. If you need more, you can only draw it with 10 times of the normal draw rate to draw a specific card that you want" "Stop explaining and just use it! If 10 cards are not enough, use 20 of them, If 20 cards are not enough, use 30 of them. If 30 cards are not enough, use 100 of them! You have to seal it!" "With the number of card draws you currently have, you can''t draw 100 of them. With 600 card draws and with 10 times of the normal draw rate, you can only draw 60 Seal Cards." "Stop it, I''m really dying" "Alright, I''ll start using the Seal Cards to seal it." "Using Seal Card x1, sealing the target Failed!" "Using Seal Card x1, sealing the target Failed!" "Seal Card has been used up. Using 10 card draws to obtain a Seal Card x1" "Using Seal Card x1, sealing the target Failed!" "Seal Card has been used up. Using 10 card draws to obtain a Seal Card x1" "Using Seal Card x1, sealing the target Eh... Success!" "Why did you say eh!" Lin Huang''s weak voice was heard. 608 A Message from Liu Ming "Congratulations, you''ve used 29 Seal Cards and succeeded in sealing the target. Excluding the two Seal Cards that you already have, you''ve used up 260 card draws and 340 card draws remain." Just as Lin Huang fell onto the ground, Xiao Hei''s voice was heard again. "I almost died" Lin Huang became limp, suffering from pain and feeling weak. The weakness he felt was as if he had gone to the toilet eighty times from food poisoning or that he had sex with his girlfriend eighteen times a day Of course, the pain he suffered was due to the bloody whip used by the monster and it had nothing to do with his girlfriend at all. "Hey, did you intentionally lower the success rate of the Seal Card? Why did I need 28 Seal Cards to successfully seal it?" Lin Huang grumbled weakly. "In fact, you''re considered lucky. Without the Misfortune Card, the success rate to seal it would be less than one ten-thousandth due to the difference in your combat levels. Even if you''ve used 10,000 Seal Cards, you might not be able to seal it." "Well, we can''t give all the credit to the Misfortune Card. The monster has been sealed previously but it managed to get rid of the seal. A huge portion of its strength was spent fighting against the seal. In addition to its abilities being suppressed by the sunlight, the crippling effect of the Crippling Card and the continuous attacks from the God Crashers suppressed his abilities. The combination of all that resulted in a substantial increase in the effect of the Seal Card. If you weren''t lucky, even if you''ve used up all 600 card draws, you might not even be able to seal it with 62 Seal Cards." "I actually doubted what you said. It''s just a demigod" Lin Huang said and took out the card that had been sealed. He was startled when he saw the card. On the front of the card, there was a picture of an arm with a big red "sealed" word on it. The name of the card was C The Virtual God''s Amputee. Lin Huang immediately flipped to the back of the card. "The Virtual God''s Amputee." "Rarity: Pseudo mythical-level." "Combat Level: Virtual God (Broken)" "Seal Target Description: The arm of the Virtual God. The rest of its body parts and its head has gone missing. Other information remains unknown." "Warning: With your current combat level and the authorization level of the system, please do not unseal the card unless it''s necessary. Once unsealed, you won''t be able to reseal it for the second time. The amputee would completely break free of the seal." "Now do you know why I told you that you were lucky?" Noticing that Lin Huang had finished reading the card''s description, Xiao Hei''s voice was heard again. "If it wasn''t an amputee that has lost its Godhead, causing its rarity to be on the pseudo mythical-level, the Seal Card will have no effect on it at all." Lin Huang put away his card and asked, "If the card isn''t sealed, do you have any other way?" "No, if the sealing of the card was unsuccessful, you''ll be possessed by the amputee. Once you''ve lost your consciousness, I''ll leave your body and be recalled back to the world of the Goldfingers. My memory and all my data will be cleared, waiting to be assigned to another host. As for your body, you''ll become a puppet of the amputee." Lin Huang remained silent, listening to what Xiao Hei just said. "I forgot to remind you that if you didn''t leave the ruins within ten seconds, you''ll have to wait until next year." "What?" Lin Huang was stunned. He just recalled that the ruin key had a time limit on the exit. If nobody closed it, it would close on its own after three minutes. Moreover, the entrance could only be externally activated once a year while the exit could only be internally opened once a year. If he had yet to leave after three minutes, the ruin key could only be used next year. "10, 9, 8, 7" When he heard that Xiao Hei was counting down, Lin Huang immediately stood up and put away all twelve of the God Crashers into his storage. He then took a leap with his Thunder Step, transforming himself into a crimson-colored lightning and left through the exit of the ruins. The moment he disappeared through the exit of the ruins took less than three seconds, but it caused the air around it to implode rapidly. At the War Canyon outside the ruins, a shadow suddenly appeared from the black ripples. "Lin Huang!" Yi Zheng and the rest shouted in excitement from seeing Lin Huang escape from the ruins at the very last minute. Before Lin Huang could stabilize himself, Bloody twisted around his left arm again while the rest surrounded him as well. "Are you okay? All of us thought that you have died." Yi Zheng and the rest came up to him, sizing him up to see if something was missing. "I''m okay. Yes, I almost died." Lin Huang removed the dust on his clothes calmly. The amputee of the Virtual God had been sealed and the exit of the ruins had closed. He was not worried if anything could get out of the ruins. "From your clothes, I can see that you''re really clumsy just now." Yi Zheng teased Lin Huang since his clothes had been torn apart by the bloody whip that tangled him. "How did you get out of the ruins? My brother told me that you were caught by the monster." Yi Yeyu immediately asked. "I''m lucky enough. After catching me, something else seemed to have caught its attention. It dumped me and left." Lin Huang hid the truth and told them a story. Yi Zheng and Leng Yuexin''s eyes flashed with a trace of uncertainty. However, they did not ask any further. Li Lang and Yi Yeyu thought that what he said was true. "You''re really lucky that you can survive that." Li Lang gave him a stare. "The monster didn''t eat you before leaving" Yi Yeyu smiled evilly. "It''s great that you managed to survive that." Yi Zheng patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. He knew that Lin Huang did not want to talk about that topic anymore and immediately changed the topic, "Thank you for taking care of us over the past month. Without you, we''d have died in the ruins." "Brother Zheng, there''s no need to thank me. I was the one who invited you guys to go into the ruins. It''s my responsibility to make sure that all of you can leave the ruins safely." Lin Huang smiled, waving his hand. "Although the trip might not be a happy one, it''s somehow a memorable one." "We''ve been filled with fear every day over the past month but that''s quite happy." Leng Yuexin said. "I don''t think that it''s happy but it''s indeed an exciting one." Yi Yeyu said. "If there''s something like that, don''t forget to find us! As for the stuff that we''ve collected, don''t forget to give me once you''ve done distributing them!" Li Lang did not forget about that. "I''ll have to consider whether to go on a trip like that with you guys since I''m getting old" Before Yi Zheng could finish his words, Yi Yeyu interrupted. "Damn, you''re just two years older than me. Do you think that you''re 20 years older than me?" Yi Yeyu rolled her eyes at him. "When are you going to leave Division 7?" Yi Zheng ignored Yi Yeyu and asked as he wanted to change the topic. "I''ll leave most probably by the end of March or during the beginning of April. I''ll have to deal with the stuff in Division7 first." Lin Huang thought for a while and realized that he had to deal with a few of the things before leaving Division 7. "Before I leave, I''ll distribute the items that we have. I''ll make a list and send it to you guys in the first place after I''m done with it. However, as for the items in the Emperor''s Heart Ring that have to be unlocked, the person who unlocks it will request 30% of the total. Please bear that in mind." "I understand that." Yi Zheng nodded. "By the way, I took twelve of the God Crashers with me. I''ll give them to you first." Lin Huang said, taking all twelve of the God Crashers out. "One is enough for me. I don''t need it actually." Leng Yuexin only took one of them. "I only need one as well since it''s just for my collection. There''s no need to take two." Li Lang took one as well. "I''ll take two then. I''ll give one of them to my father. People from the military like this." Yi Zheng took two God Crashers. "I''ll take two of them as well!" Yi Yeyu stared at Yi Zheng, "You give it to daddy, I''ll give it to grandfather!" Lin Huang had no choice but to put the remaining six God Crashers in his storage. "Why are you guys giving half of them to me?" Lin Huang was speechless but he could roughly guess why Yi Zheng and the rest did that. "It''ll be useful when you go to the core zone. It means nothing to us and it should be given to people who need it more than us. Otherwise, it''ll be a waste." Yi Zheng patted Lin Huang''s shoulder again. "None of the auction houses will accept the God Crasher and it''s illegal to sell them at the black market. The Union Government will investigate it. My brother doesn''t have the guts to sell it." Yi Yeyu said. "I understand it." Lin Huang knew that Yi Yeyu was just trying to make him feel better. "You must accomplish something at the core zone for the reputation of Division 7!" Li Lang patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. "Next time, if I happen to visit the core zone, I''ll brag about you to the others and say, Lin Huang is my brother!" "Lin Huang, all the best to you!" Yi Yeyu clenched her small fists. "I hope we get the chance to meet again in the core zone." Yi Zheng did not say any other thing. "It''s dangerous at the core zone, be careful." Leng Yuexin said seriously. "I''ll remember that." Lin Huang nodded, saying goodbye to the rest while waving his hand, "Take care guys. I hope to see you guys again!" Seeing the dimensional relic send them away, Lin Huang rubbed Boody''s head and said, "It''s time to for us to leave as well." After summoning his Black Ink and when he was about to enter, a notification suddenly arrived. Lin Huang then tapped open the communication page. Apart from a few of the missed calls he received, there were more than ten incoming messages. The message that he just received was from Liu Ming. Lin Huang read it. "Please get back to me as soon as possible when you read this message!" Lin Huang did not pay much attention to it as it was just a simple message. However, his facial expression changed as soon as he closed the communication page. The reason behind this was because Liu Ming had sent 25 to 26 messages like this over the past month. He sent him a message like that almost every day. 609 Mr. Fus Identity Liu Ming must not be joking as he had sent him so many messages. Lin Huang immediately called him back. The video call was answered after it rang once. "Brother Liu, are you looking for me?" On the screen, Liu Ming looked distraught. "I''ve been looking for you for a month. Finally, I got in touch with you." Lin Huang was curious as to why Liu Ming was looking for him. "Just as I opened the communication page, I saw more than 20 messages from you. What happened?" "Go home first. I''ll talk to you face to face." Liu Ming did not say what had happened. "Okay, I''ll send you the address." "I have your address. You don''t need to send it to me. I still have some work to do. I''ll be there in about three minutes." Liu Ming hung up the call straight away. As he closed the communication page, Lin Huang immediately pushed against the dimensional relic, stepping into it. As he returned home at the Winter City, Lin Xin was not home. The doors and the windows were closed and the house was clean and tidy. She had started school half a month ago at the Martial Hunter College. She must have gone back to the White Capital. After changing his clothes in his room, Lin Huang heard a knock on the door. He immediately ran down the stairs to open the door. Liu Ming was standing at the door, wearing a grey wind coat. He looked more distraught than he was in the video call. As Liu Ming went into his house and sat on the sofa, Lin Huang went to the kitchen. He wanted to brew a cup of tea for Liu Ming. However, he realized that there was no hot water at home. Lin Huang then made him a glass of fruit juice. "Brother, why are you looking for me?" Liu Ming took over the glass of fruit juice and simply put it on the tea table. He nodded his head at Lin Huang and said, "Sit down first." Lin Huan then sat on the comfy chair. Looking at the serious expression on Liu Ming''s face, he knew that something serious must have happened. "It''s about Mr. Fu." After finishing his words, he stared at the tea table and remained quiet for a while, organizing his thoughts before proceeding. ''Something happened to him?'' Lin Huang was shocked. However, he did not ask that, patiently waiting for Liu Ming to continue with his thoughts. "I wanted to tell this to you face to face because it might involve some of the top management from the Union Government. Our conversation might be tracked if we communicated through the Emperor''s Heart Ring." Liu Ming told him the reason that he wanted to meet him. Lin Huang nodded and did not interrupt him. "At the end of the year, Mr. Fu visited one of the ruins and he came back last month. He could not get to you when he came back so he asked me to get in touch with you as soon as possible and bring you to him." Liu Ming explained. "What''s wrong with him?" Lin Huang asked. "He''s injured but his life is not at risk." Despite saying that, Liu Ming did not stop worrying. "That''s great" Lin Huang felt relieved, "So should we go now?" "I''ll bring you there later. However, I have something else to tell you before that." Liu Ming paused for a moment and proceeded, "Although you''re Mr. Fu''s true apprentice, I guess that you don''t have a good understanding of him. Perhaps he won''t tell you about his past but let me do it for him. Lin Huang nodded his head, patiently waiting for Liu Ming to proceed. "We''re not from the same generation. Mr. Fu is born in ancient times. Not only did he participate in the war due to the opening of the Virtual Eye that happened more than 800 years ago, he''s also one of three commanders in the human world. He''s also one of the three Virtual Gods that''s still alive" Lin Huang was stunned. He actually wondered if Mr. Fu was a demigod. However, he never expected Mr. Fu to be the Virtual God. "Despite the fact that monsters had been sealed, humans suffered greatly in the war that happened 800 years ago. Mr. Fu was severely injured and his Godhead was damaged. The other two Virtual Gods died and half of those on the demigod-level were either injured or dead as well. The human race has indeed suffered a major loss." "Although the monster hordes have subsided and the Virtual Eyes have closed, the world we now know has become the ruins. Mr. Fu and humans that survived were forced to establish the Union Government. They then gathered all the residents that were still alive and built the No.0 Safe Zone which is now so-called the Land of Origin." "They recuperated at the Land of Origin for decades before humans were able to have a stable life after the war. They slowly expanded after hundreds of years, constructing the safe zones one by one. That''s how we came to have the three core zones with the other safe zones." "Mr. Fu was the first president of the Union Government in the new era. He took up the position for more than 50 years right until the Land of Origin became prosperous. He then offered the position to the second president. This is also the reason why many of the organizations respected Mr. Fu, including those from the underworld. Not only are they afraid of Mr. Fu''s abilities, they also know that without Mr. Fu, the human race might''ve gone extinct 800 years ago." Lin Huang was shocked when he heard this. He had never expected that would be Mr. Fu''s actual identity and status. He finally understood why Liu Ming, Teacher Li and the rest of them from the Hunter Association would become Mr. Fu''s biggest fans. "You mentioned that his injury might be related to some of the top management from the Union Government. What''s that about, then?" Lin Huang asked. "The ruins that Mr. Fu went into were the place where the war happened 800 years ago. It''s also the place where the monster is sealed. He went to the ruins previously because the Union Government informed him that the seal has loosened and they requested him to reseal the monster." "However, as he entered the ruins, Mr. Fu realized that the seal has obviously been broken by someone else. Fortunately, the monster was not completely unsealed. After that, he only managed to seal it with a great amount of effort. Once the seal on the monster was complete, a few demigods clad in black robes took the opportunity to attack Mr. Fu as a large portion of his Life Power has already been drained." "After a fierce fight, Mr. Fu managed to escape from the ruins. He went to look for the keeper of the ruin key and discovered that the demigod who''s the keeper of the key has gone missing. He was angry and looked for the president of the Union Government. However, after the investigation, they came up with a conclusion, saying that nobody has actually informed Mr. Fu that something was amiss with the ruins. They even told him that the keeper of the ruin key was on leave a week ago as the keeper was going into one of the ruins. Nobody could find him in a short period of time." "Mr. Fu suspected that there''s a spy from the Union Government who''s at the senior executive level. There has to be one of them who masterminded the attack and even covered the truth." "He''s now injured and dares not reveal his location. Therefore, he asked me to contact you. Not many know about the relationship between us both. He secretly came to my house that day and nobody even knew." "I understand. Bring me to his house." After listening to what Liu Ming said, Lin Huang did not want any further delays as he nodded his head. 610 Three Years to Live The place where Mr. Fu was hiding in was a forbidden land called the Peaceful Ocean. It was the largest ocean in the war, with an area that covered eight out of the twelve safe zones. Division 7 was one of them. Aside from that, the opening of the first Virtual Eye that happened 800 years ago was in the sky above the Peaceful Ocean. The danger level of the ocean was ranked third on the world''s forbidden land board. Not only were there a large number of imperial-level monsters in the ocean, even those who were on the demigod level were present there. As Lin Huang and Liu Ming stepped into the dimensional portal, Lin Huang regained his senses as they appeared on a ship. As usual, Mr. Fu was fishing leisurely at the edge of the ship. "Sir." Lin Huang gradually walked towards him. "My good apprentice, you''re here." Mr. Fu smiled, squinting his eyes. He then turned his head around to look at Liu Ming to say, "Thank you. Stay here for dinner tonight." "Sure." Liu Ming nodded his head respectfully. He did not want to interrupt the conversation between them so he turned around and left for the cabin of the ship. "Sir, are you okay?" Lin Huang was worried. After knowing Mr. Fu''s identity and achievements, his respect for the elder grew. "They''re just some minor injuries. I''m fine." Mr. Fu waved his hand and patted the deck, "Have a seat. I''ll get you a big fish." "Do you still have another fishing rod?" Lin Huang sat with his legs crossed and asked with a smile. "Yes, I do but this place is not for you. You''re my only apprentice. I don''t want you to be eaten by the fish." Mr. Fu smiled, shaking his head. Lin Huang then recalled that he was at the Peaceful Ocean. All the regions in the Peaceful Ocean in Division 7 were classified as forbidden land as imperial-level monsters were present there. It was indeed not suitable those on the holy fire-level like him to fish there. "You just wait for the food to be served today." Mr. Fu then noticed Lin Huang feeling embarrassed so he said, "We haven''t met each other for a long time, let''s have a chat." "Alright." Lin Huang nodded. "I heard it from Xiao Liu that you''ve resigned from your job at the Martial Hunter College a year ago?" Mr. Fu asked. "Yes, I did. I''ve read most of the resources available in the library. I''ve even downloaded the reading materials that I haven''t read before I left." Lin Huang nodded his head. "It''s difficult for me to look for a Life Fire monster in Division 7. Therefore, I''ve already made plans to go to Division 3 by the end of March or sometime at the beginning of April after I''m done with things in Division 7." "Great minds think alike. The main reason why I asked you to work as a teacher at the Martial Hunter College is to hope that you can gain some experience there. You''ve been leveling-up too quickly and that''s why you''ll be less experienced than those from royalty. You''ve been doing pretty good over the first half-year. I''ve been watching the videos of your lectures. I can see that in order to give a good lecture, you''ve been exploring different areas. In certain areas, you even have your own understanding of the subject matter. There''s indeed no longer a need for you to stay in the Martial Hunter College as you''ve achieved your goal of being a teacher." "The plan I previously had for you was to be a teacher for one semester. I''d then send you to Division 3. However, I didn''t think about the issue regarding the Life Fire monster. I feel that nobody in Division 7 who''s in your generation that can go against you. You''ll meet many young geniuses in the core zone. By then, you'' might be even more motivated to train." "I''ve planned it out for you earlier. I''d send you to Division 3 as my apprentice, and the people over there will take care of you. However, it seems like all this is unnecessary now. You''ll have to disguise yourself if you''re going to the core zone. You''ve to change into an identity that has got nothing to do with me as well." Mr. Fu said with an apologetic look. "Does it have to do with the people in the black robes who attacked you?" Lin Huang knew that Mr. Fu did not want him to get involved in that issue. "Xiao Liu has told you about that?" Mr. Fu frowned as he asked. He was not surprised though. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded his head. He briefly told him what they had talked about earlier. "Do you have any clues regarding who the demigod in black robes are?" "No, I don''t for now but one thing I can confirm is that there must be a spy in the Union Government. Otherwise, they won''t be able to set a trap for me." Mr. Fu frowned and said, "Since they have the guts to provoke me, you won''t be safe as well. Therefore, if you''re going to the core zone, you have to fake an identity which has nothing to do with me." "Regarding the incident that you''ve been attacked, the Union Government found nothing from their investigation?" Lin Huang asked again. "It has been a month but yet they have no clues regarding the matter. This is also the reason why I can confirm that the people who attacked me must be connected to the Union Government. Somebody has interfered with the result of the investigation." Mr. Fu was helpless. "Could they be your enemies?" Aside from seeking revenge on him, Lin Huang could not think of any other motives. Supposedly, Mr. Fu no longer held the public''s attention. He no longer has a beneficial relationship with anyone else. Lin Huang could not think of a better reason other than them wanting to take revenge on Mr. Fu. "Most of my enemies have died 800 years ago. Newer enemies would only backstab me." Mr. Fu knew that Lin Huang was trying to identify the reason why Mr. Fu''s enemy would attack him. "There are indeed many of them who wanted to kill me but that''s not because of hatred." "Many of them want to kill me because I''m the last Virtual God in the world. Despite the fact that my Godhead has been broken, I''m still a genuine Virtual God." Mr. Fu said as he lifted his head and stared at one of the clouds in the sky, "They wanted to know how to become a Virtual God and that''s why, they attempted to kill me. My dead body means a lot to many of the organizations and people. It''s an extremely important research material." Lin Huang kept quiet as he heard that. He suddenly recalled the character, Xuanzang in the story of the Journey to the West. All the monsters wanted to eat Xuanzang''s meat. It was not because he had done something wrong but it was because the monsters desire longevity. The desire could only be fulfilled by eating Xuanzang''s meat. For this case, Mr. Fu was like Xuanzang. The people attacked him to satisfy one simple yet selfish desire to become a Virtual God. "Why did they choose to act now?" Another question flashed through Lin Huang''s mind. Mr. Fu had never encountered a problem like that over the past 800 years. Lin Huang wondered why he was attacked at this juncture in time. When he heard the question from Lin Huang, Mr. Fu remained silent for a long while. After two to three minutes, he then turned his head around, looked at Lin Huang and said disappointingly, "It''s because I have only three years to live." Lin Huang was stunned when he heard Mr. Fu''s reply. He was immersed in his thoughts for a long while. "My Godhead was broken during the battle that happened more than 800 years ago and I was severely injured. It''s not easy for me to live until this very day. It''s actually not a secret as many of them know that I''m going to die soon, so most of them are waiting for that day to come. The reason they attempted to trap me this time was probably because they''re afraid that they won''t be able to get to my dead body after I''ve passed on. They might also choose to kill me before that happens due to some other reasons." "I''m sure that the incident of those people attacking me has something to do with the Union Government. It can''t be kept secret from the public eye. Once they spread the news to the public, many of them will have the desire to do so. The people do understand that a strong tiger won''t be able to defeat its enemies in an outnumbered fight, let alone a strong tiger that''s about to die." "Sir" Lin Huang had no idea what he should say to comfort Mr. Fu so he secretly contacted Xiao Hei through his mind. "Xiao Hei, are there any cards that can be used to repair Mr. Fu''s Godhead?" "No. Due to the restriction placed on your authorization, all the Function Cards will only work on the second level creatures. Any creature that possesses a Godhead belongs to third level creatures. These creatures are of higher level than the second level creatures." Lin Huang was helpless when he got Xiao Hei''s opinion. After keeping quiet for a moment, he suddenly thought of the items he had that might be able to help Mr. Fu. He immediately took them out. "Sir, please take the God Crashers with you. If you''re attacked by the demigods, these weapons might be able to save you some energy." Lin Huang took out five of the six God Crashers, reserving one for himself for emergency use. "I don''t need the God Crashers." Mr. Fu smiled, shaking his head. "Thank you for your concern. However, these weapons aren''t effective on the demigods. It can only slow them down but it can do no harm to them." Mr. Fu caught a glimpse of the God Crashers that Lin Huang took out as he said. He was startled, "Is this the third generation God Crasher? Where did you get it?" "It''s one of the items that I got it from the ruins." Lin Huang explained. "What kind of ruins was that?" Mr. Fu asked curiously. Lin Huang hesitated for a moment and decided to tell him everything that happened in the grade-5 ruins. Mr. Fu remained silent for a long while as he heard that. He then said, "I didn''t know that the ruin key of the war ruins would have been taken by the Saint members" "The war ruins?" "The war that happened 800 years ago broke the ground into pieces. It was not the protoss who caused this to happen. It was caused by one of the servants of the protoss and a few of his subordinates. We ended up not being able to kill them as they had the blood of the True God in their body. We could only seal them." "A few of the Virtual God and I sealed the subordinates in one of the spiritual volcanos. The volcano now belongs to Division 3." "As for the servant who''s the strongest among them, I chopped his head, limbs, and chest into six parts. They were sealed in six different battlegrounds. Soon after, a few of the demigods who possessed good dimensional skills and I joined to make six of the battlegrounds into the ruins." "The ruins that you''ve been to must be one of the ones where his limbs were sealed in. The Union Government has lost two pairs of keys through all these years. One of them was the one where his left arm was sealed while the other was the ruins where his right leg was sealed. The ruins where I was trapped was the one where the servant''s most powerful part was sealed. Because his Godhead could be found in his chest, so it took me a great amount of effort to reseal it." Listening to what Mr. Fu said, Lin Huang finally knew whose arm was sealed by his Seal Card. 611 What Happened 800 Years Ago "To prevent chaos, we came up with a lie and told everyone that we killed the protoss who invaded. In reality, the invader wasn''t a real protoss. It was just a God''s servant. The irritating thing was that we didn''t even manage to kill the god''s servant and subordinates. We only sealed them." Mr. Fu had regret written all over his face when he talked about the past. "Is the protoss really that powerful?" Lin Huang had only heard of the protoss from Xue Luo, but she had not revealed much about it. "Our understanding about the real protoss is limited as well. All we know is that they have the bloodline of the True God or above, and they''ll level up to a Virtual God automatically when they became an adult. Due to their powerful bloodline, even when they''re only a Virtual God, their ability is comparable with a True God''s." "The God''s Servants are the protoss''s bodyguards that usually possess powerful talents at least the level of a Human Genius''s. They''re like high-level house servants among the protoss. Meanwhile, the God''s Subordinates have ordinary talents, but their combat level is high. They''re considered low-level house servants among the protoss whereby they''d have to do menial tasks. I heard that protoss will usually have at least two God''s Servants and 20 God''s Subordinates with them. Therefore, a lone protoss would mean a powerful army." "The ones that attacked us were just a God''s Servant and 12 God''s Subordinates. Their master was a True God with 12 God Servants and 200 God''s Subordinates. The God''s Servant that attacked us ranked the last three among the 12 God Servants." "The reason why we couldn''t kill the God''s Servant and 12 God''s Subordinates was that each of them had the blood of the True God in them, which came from their master. They won''t die unless the blood of the True God is destroyed." "Is there nowhere to destroy the blood of the True God?" Lin Huang asked. "It isn''t difficult to destroy the blood of the True God as a Virtual God, but the problem is its master will sense it immediately as soon as the blood of the True God in their bodies were destroyed. By then, our world would be doomed if the True God brought its entire army to attack us." Lin Huang finally understood that it was not because Mr. Fu and the rest lacked the capability to kill the God''s Servant and 12 God''s Subordinates, but merely because they could not. "Throughout hundreds of years, some lunatics founded an organization called the Saint and the True God that they''re worshipping is the God''s Servant''s master that we sealed. They call themselves the followers of the True God with the aim of cleansing the world''s sins and letting the True God rule the world. They''ve been studying how to destroy the blood of the True God throughout the years to summon the protoss. They''ve tried to unseal it many times, but they were stopped." "What a bunch of idiots." Lin Huang commented about the Saint without thinking twice. "We''ve basically retrieved all these information about the protoss from the God''s Servant and 12 God''s Subordinates'' memories, but we''re unable to extract their full memory, so the information is limited," Mr. Fu explained before he waved his hand. "We''ve gone off topic. Let''s talk about what we''re supposed to talk about." "I still have three years to live, so you must grow within these three years to at least an imperial-level as well as have the ability to fight a demigod. I know it''s hard, but you have to try your best to fulfill this," Mr. Fu said in all seriousness. "Nobody will dare to hurt you during these three years as nobody would want to get it from me. As soon as I''m dead, they''ll come to do so ruthlessly. By then, you''ll be their second target after they get my dead body. Just because you''re my apprentice, whether or not you know about my becoming a Virtual God, those who desire to become a Virtual God won''t let you go." Lin Huang knew very well that once Mr. Fu died, he would be the secondary target. "I won''t slack these few years, and I''ll try to get to imperial-level as soon as possible." "Becoming a Virtual God isn''t a secret actually. The cultivation before the new epoch was different. During that time, we didn''t have to kill monsters to upgrade our combat level, but we cultivate instead. As long as we do that, our combat level would increase. However, since the Virtual Eye opened 800 years ago, the rules of the world changed, and people relied on killing monsters to increase their combat level. There''re no Virtual God monsters in this world, so nobody can become a Virtual God now." "The cultivation that we practiced last time was difficult. One of the factors was the person''s talent while another would be the time that was put in. You''ve been trained in Army Attack Tactics before, so you should know how difficult it is to get to level-9. Our cultivation started with training the Army Attack Tactics to level-10, and we would practice the Twisted Fate Scripture after that. That was the real cultivation. There weren''t many powerful people during the old epoch as it was difficult, and on the other hand, there weren''t many techniques to the Twisted Fate Scripture back in those days." "Don''t the demigods know that your cultivation technique was different?" Lin Huang asked. "They basically did." Mr. Fu smiled awkwardly and shook his head. "But what can they do? Even if they know that I used a different cultivation technique, they might still be able to retrieve something from my dead body. Moreover, they were a few of the demigods were cultivators like me. They''d want my dead body even more." "Is there really no way to break through Virtual God with our part of cultivation?" Lin Huang was concerned that he might get stuck at demigod-level in the future. "There are two ways. One is to tweak the old epoch''s cultivation path whereby you''ll learn Army Attack Tactics until level-10 and then train in the Twisted Fate Scripture after that to create a second cultivation system in your body. The other way is to go into the virtual zone to kill Virtual God monsters." "All of the demigods know about the two different ways. However, they''re not good enough to go for the first option as it''s hard to progress as soon as one gets to level-8 in Army Attacks Tactics. Only a few of them managed to train until level-9. Meanwhile, not many people will want to go for the second option as nobody has ever returned as soon as they enter the virtual zone, not a single one. Even the saying about Virtual God monsters in the virtual zone is a myth since nobody has ever proven that." "Because of that, all they can do is to look for shortcuts." Mr. Fu knew very well the reason why the demigods targeted him. "I announced the Army Attacks Tactics ever since I discovered the disadvantages of the cultivation system. Some of them trained up to level-10 and studied the Twisted Fate Scripture later on to become a Virtual God or even a True God, preventing the world from being destroyed if it were to be attacked in the future." "I asked you to be my apprentice because besides your personality, you have been trained in Army Attack Tactics pretty well, which proves that your talent is outstanding," Mr. Fu finally told Lin Huang why he had chosen Lin Huang to be his apprentice. "You haven''t been practicing the Army Attack Tactics for the past two years. You should practice whenever you have the time. As soon as you reach level-10, the Twisted Fate Scripture will be activated automatically. It''s possible to level up to a Virtual God or even a True God as long as you have enough time and resources." "I''ll remember that." Lin Huang nodded. "Speaking of the Army Attack Tactics, I must mention my first apprentice. You''re my second apprentice, but I had an apprentice during the old epoch called Mo Kui. He only spent three years to reach level-10 Army Attack Tactics. His talent was way above genius level. I''ve always regarded myself as a genius, but I was nothing like him since I spent five years to complete level-10 Army Attack Tactics." Mr. Fu looked at the calm sea, seemingly reminiscing about something. "Bro Mo Kui" "He became a Virtual God in less than 200 years, and he''s no less powerful than I am," Mr. Fu paused. "He blocked an attack from the God''s Servant during the battle 800 years ago and died That silly kid, if he were still alive, he would definitely be a True God by now" Both of them fell silent after the conversation. Around three to four minutes later, the fishing rod in Mr. Fu''s hands was tugged at. He snapped out of his silence. "Hehe, a fish is hooked. We have something for lunch and dinner today!" 612 Ink Mr. Fu''s fishing rod was not an ordinary one. It became a bow as soon as the fish monster was pulling in the water. He grinned as he attempted to tug at the fish monster with one hand. Half an hour later, the fish monster was finally exhausted. Mr. Fu had had his fun and dragged the fish monster of the water. It landed on the deck. Only then did Lin Huang notice that the ship was not the same Red Devil as before but another one which was much bigger. The fish passed out as it landed on the deck. "A Crimson Arowana?!" Lin Huang exclaimed when he saw the fish that measured hundreds of meters long which occupied half of the deck. The Crimson Dragon Fish was a sky dragon monster which ranked on top of its species. Such a monster would level up to imperial-level automatically once it became an adult. It was powerful whenever it was in the water. If the thickness of dragon blood in its body increased to a certain level, it would evolve into a dragonkin that was comparable with a demigod called the Crimson Dragon. As Lin Huang was thinking about the Crimson Dragon, it was only natural for him to compare Charcoal which was also a dragonkin. Charcoal had high-level dragonkin blood now. It would probably be classified as a Virtual God now if its combat level had not been suppressed by Lin Huang''s combat level. It would be able to toss the Crimson Dragon around and might even be more powerful than the God''s Servant that was sealed. Lin Huang was even more eager to increase his combat level. "What''s that noise!?" Liu Ming dashed from the cabin as he heard the loud thud and the ship trembled. He was stunned to see the gigantic Crimson Arowana. "There are only a few Crimson Arowanas around this area. This is the third one I''ve gotten this month. How lucky for the both of you!" Mr. Fu chuckled as he put his fishing rod away. He stood up, patted his chest and walked to the motionless fish. He then started gutting the fish with his knife. In less than a minute, the fish was cleaned and chopped into many pieces. Half an hour later, a bowl of fresh fish soup was served. It was a filling lunch, and Lin Huang had too much to eat. Liu Ming sat aside with his big tummy that made him look like he was three months pregnant. "It''s been a while since I tasted your cooking. I''ve had too much to eat today." Liu Ming was embarrassed. "It''s been almost two years since I last tried Sir''s fish soup," Lin Huang said. "As long as you guys like it." Mr. Fu nodded happily. It was an achievement for a chef to render his customers into a food coma. "Take a rest and digest the food well. Xiao Liu, you''ll practice sword with Lin Huang later." "Sure, it''s been almost two months since we last practiced together," Liu Ming said, then he looked at Lin Huang with his eyes wide open. "You''ve leveled up to level-4 already?!" "I just broke through a few days ago." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "Did you get the Sword Heart already?" Liu Ming thought it was unbelievable. "No, I would love to, but I haven''t found any monster that''s suitable enough to obtain such a skill." Lin Huang shook his head. "How could you be so talented in Sword Dao without the Sword Heart?" Liu Ming was stunned. The Sword Heart was a unique monster skill that was like the Saber Heart. It could speed up the realization of all sword skills. Of course, it would depend on the person''s talent as well. Lin Huang had always wanted to find a triple mutated monster with Sword Heart to extract its Life Fire, but there was no such monster in Division 7. There were only double mutated monsters. "I''ve spent more than 30 years to get to level-4 Sword Dao with the Sword Heart. You''ve only been training for three years, right?" Liu Ming was who always proud of himself felt useless in front of Lin Huang. "Actually, I''ve only taken less than two years," Lin Huang thought to himself as he peeped at Liu Ming and decided not to tell the truth. Mr. Fu knew the truth, and he smiled without saying a word. After chatting for a while, they stood up and got ready to practice as they did not feel as full as before. Just as Lin Huang took out his sword, Liu Ming and Mr. Fu noticed the crack on the sword. It was the sword that Liu Ming had given him in front of Mr. Fu. Mr. Fu was shocked to see the crack on the supreme relic sword. "Bro, what''s with the crack on your sword?" Liu Ming was even more shocked than Mr. Fu was. It was quite impossible to crack a supreme relic even if he used an ancient relic sword and gave his all. "I encountered a powerful monster in the ruins, and it did this to my sword. I might''ve died in the ruins if I didn''t manage to kill it," Lin Huang smiled awkwardly as he explained. "Even I might not be able to crack a supreme relic. Lin Huang must be something else to be able to escape from such a powerful monster," Liu Ming thought to himself without asking further. Mr. Fu looked at Lin Huang and was impressed by how Lin Huang managed to survive. "Is there any way to fix this sword?" Lin Huang could not activate an ancient relic before he reached immortal-level, and it was the best sword that he had. "I shall give you another one then," Liu Ming said and took out a black sword for Lin Huang from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. The sword was completely ebony in color with light silver patterns on the handle. "This" Lin Huang longed for the sword, but he was embarrassed. After all, Liu Ming had given him a sword before, and this black sword was obviously another supreme relic which was expensive. "Take it. We''re family. There''s no need to feel bad," Mr. Fu offered. "This is Ink. I''ve never used it before as I''ve treated it as a collectible ever since I bought it as there aren''t many swords that are completely black like this. It''ll be the sword''s honor to be used by you," Liu Ming said to Lin Huang. "Thank, Bro!" Lin Huang took the sword without beating around the bush. "It''s not difficult to fix your sword. Give it to me. I''ll fix it and bring it back a few days later." Liu Ming smiled. "Sure." Lin Huang passed the sword to Liu Ming. He observed the sword for a while and stored the sword in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He then took out another supreme sword relic. "Alright, let''s practice now!" Liu Ming looked at a Lin Huang. "Yes, please!" Ink transformed into the mode that Lin Huang was familiar with. 613 Training Programme All Messed Up Liu Ming practiced with Lin Huang for the entire afternoon while Mr. Fu watched. They had dinner past 6 p.m. before Mr. Fu asked Lin Huang to stay after sending Liu Ming off. "I''ve basically let you do whatever you wanted for the past two years and didn''t teach you much as you have better talent than I do. It wouldn''t be right for me to teach from my experience as it might even restrict your development." "In reality, you have proven that what I''ve done was the right thing since you''re now far ahead than I expected. Of course, I''m not talking about your combat level, but your Sword Dao, your escape ability and some of your other tricks." Mr. Fu figured that Lin Huang must have some secret escape ability that nobody knew about based on the crack on the supreme sword relic, but he did not dwell on it. "You''re on your own path in Sword Dao, which is what people can usually manage to do after tens of years or even a hundred years. Although you''ve just only built your foundation, it''s very impressive seeing that you''ve only been practicing for two years. Even without the Sword Heart, I can foresee that you''ll be extraordinary in Sword Dao in the future. "However, there''s still much to learn to become a really powerful person besides learning battle techniques. Stay here with me before heading to the core zone. I can get someone to run your errands. If there''re things that you must do yourself, you can do them after you leave." "I really do have some errands, but it''ll be fantastic if you can get someone to do that for me," Lin Huang said and he took out four storage space rings. "There are 250,000 Emperor Heart Rings in this white storage space ring. I need to get someone to unseal all of them. There are more than 10,000 expert-grade relic sets, 20,000 expert-grade relic items, 50,000 intermediate-grade, and low-grade relics as well as 10,000 miscellaneous items in this red storage space ring. I''d like to sell all of them. There are a variety of monster carcasses including hundreds of holy fire-level monsters and 70 immortal-level monsters in this black storage space ring. Sell all of them. Lastly, there are low-grade and intermediate-grade minerals in this green storage space ring. I''ve never counted how many there are but they''re piled into hills. I want to sell all of them as well," Lin Huang said and passed Mr. Fu the four storage space rings. Among the rewards that he had gotten from the ruins, besides some of the supreme relics and expert-grade minerals, Lin Huang planned to sell all of them in return for Life Crystal as Yi Zheng and the rest did not want any of the items that were below supreme-grade. They had decided to settle the rewards this way when they had been in the ruins. Mr. Fu took the rings and looked at them before shaking his head and smiling. "You''re making a fortune here." "Apart from the monster carcasses, I''m sharing the rest with my friends." When they were in the ruins, they had picked the monsters that they killed themselves up while they shared the treasures. "I''ll categorize the items after the Emperor''s Heart rings are unsealed, but I''ll need someone to do that for me. I''ll pay for the unsealing." "I''ll get a reliable friend for you, the unsealing should be 10%." "10%? That''s cheap. My friend asked for 30% from me in the past." Lin Huang forced out a wan smile. "30% is the market price. I know this friend for many years, so it''s different. I actually don''t have to pay him, but it''s not fair for him to do the job for free, so I usually give him 10%. He wouldn''t take it if it''s any more than that." "10% is good enough. Thank you so much!" Lin Huang was thrilled that he would be able to pocket 20% more of the total value. After storing the four storage space rings into his Emperor''s Heart Ring, Mr. Fu patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. "Take a good rest tonight. We shall start the training tomorrow. Let''s not activate the communication and map functions on your Emperor''s Heart Ring while you''re here." "Alright, I understand." Lin Huang knew Mr. Fu did not want his location to be exposed. It was the first time Lin Huang had a good night''s sleep since he left the ruins. It was past 7 a.m. when he woke up the next morning. He heard Mr. Fu''s voice just when he opened his eyes. "Come down for breakfast after washing up.'' Lin Huang had picked the room on top of the ship for the view. After washing up, Lin Huang headed straight to the restaurant on the first floor. There was food served on the table. Mr. Fu had eaten and was sunbathing on the deck. Lin Huang cleaned the kitchen after breakfast and went to the deck. "Have you eaten?" "Yes I have." Lin Huang nodded. "Let''s get to work then," Mr. Fu said and took out an item that looked like a remote control the size of his palm. He then pressed a button on it. Suddenly, the space in the ship became distorted, but soon, the distortion went back to normal. Lin Huang realized that the ship had appeared on different waters, and there was a mini island. "Space Warp?" Lin Huang was stunned. "All demigod-level ships can do this. There''s nothing to be surprised about," Mr. Fu nonchalantly said, but he was proud of himself for being able to look cool in front of Lin Huang. "Considering your extraordinary ability, the first opponent that I''ve picked for you is no longer a holy fire-level monster, but an immortal-level rank-1 monster. It''s just below our ship. Go fight, young man!" Mr. Fu anticipated surprise from Lin Huang, but there was none. "Immortal-level rank-1 Seems like I''ve been underestimated." Lin Huang had an odd expression on his face. "Are you scared? An immortal-level monster isn''t as scary as you imagined. Looking at you practicing with Xiao Liu yesterday, it shouldn''t be difficult for you to kill an immortal-level rank-1 monster." Although Mr. Fu noticed that Lin Huang had held back his ability when he was practicing with Liu Ming, he had no idea how much he had held back by. However, looking at his performance the previous day, he would be able to kill an immortal-level rank-2 monster. He asked Lin Huang to fight an immortal-level rank-1 monster so that he could get used to the idea of fighting immortal-level monsters. Lin Huang looked at Mr. Fu helplessly and leaped from the ship. In the next second, he swung Ink at the immortal-level rank-1 Rhino Beast and sliced it into half. He returned to the ship after storing the monster carcass into his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "So, you hid your ability yesterday?" Mr. Fu was stunned at Lin Huang''s performance. "I didn''t do it intentionally, I just didn''t want to scare Brother Liu." Lin Huang nodded and smiled awkwardly. "So, you killed all of the immortal-level monsters in that black storage space ring that you gave me yesterday?" Mr. Fu asked. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "I thought you brought an immortal-level friend into the ruins" Mr. Fu did not know that Lin Huang had killed the monsters when he got the rings from him. "So, is immortal-level rank-5 monster the highest rank that you can kill now?" "I can kill most of the immortal-level rank-5 monsters now, and I can fight a weaker immortal-level rank-6 monster." Lin Huang''s ability had increased since he had broken through Sword Dao. "I''ve underestimated you." Lin Huang''s ability was totally out of Mr. Fu''s expectations. He looked worried as Lin Huang had unintentionally messed up the initial plan that he had. "Erm You should rest today then. I need time to make changes to the training programme." 614 Come Out, Charcoal! Due to Mr. Fu''s underestimation of Lin Huang, he would have to make changes to the training programme that he had planned earlier. He left Lin Huang on the deck and advised him before leaving, "Don''t worry if demigod-level monsters appear as I''ve already activated the ship''s defense system. The ship will fire at such monsters if they ever come close. Monsters below demigod-level won''t be able to break through the ship''s defense layer. Also, settle your own lunch and dinner." Mr. Fu disappeared for the entire day and only got back in the middle of the night. "You should''ve had enough rest today. The new training programme is ready. I believe it''ll give you a memory that you won''t forget for the rest of your life," Mr. Fu smirked. "That one month was memorable enough. I don''t want any more unforgettable memories as my brain capacity is limited," Lin Huang really wanted to say, but he restrained himself as Mr. Fu looked excited. The next morning, Mr. Fu prepared breakfast that was even more scrumptious than the day before''s. "Gobble it and let''s start early." Mr. Fu beamed happily at Lin Huang as he sat at the dining table. "Is this a special breakfast for those who''re going to be sentenced to death?" Lin Huang noticed that Mr. Fu''s smile was odd. He had his guard up as he figured that the training that Mr. Fu had planned for him would not be as simple as he thought. After breakfast, the ship appeared on top of an ocean through a space warp. However, there was nowhere that they could land this time. There were no islands, not even a piece of coral. "Is there something wrong with the location?" Lin Huang mumbled to himself as he looked around. "There''s nothing wrong with it. The targeted monster this time isn''t on the island, but 12,000 meters below sea level." Mr. Fu grinned. "There''s a Dragon Whale''s lair right under the ship with two immortal-level rank-5 Dragon Whales. One''s a male while the other''s a female. "In this training, you''ll kill the two Dragon Whales within 24 hours and bring the two monster carcasses back. You''ll be considered to have failed if you don''t bring the carcasses back within the time frame given no matter what the reason is. For each failed training, I''ll take 10% of the items in the four storage space rings that you gave me earlier," Mr. Fu leered. "I remember you said that you''re sharing the rewards with another four people. If you fail more than twice, you won''t be getting any of the rewards and you''ll have to pay your friends instead!" "I knew something was up behind that scrumptious breakfast!" Lin Huang was speechless. He did not expect Mr. Fu to be so cunning. "Oh yeah, there''s something that I would like to remind you. This training is just an appetizer as it''s the easiest one. The training later on will get more and more difficult." Mr. Fu grinned so widely that his eyes looked like they were slits. "I''m looking forward to you losing all of your rewards." Looking at Mr. Fu''s irritating expression, Lin Huang finally understood why the students in the Martial Hunter College hated him so much in the beginning. It was not an uneasy feeling to have Mr. Fu treating him like that. "This supreme relic is a monitoring ring. I want to witness everything in your battle. Besides your Sword Dao, you can show me everything that you''re not afraid to reveal. Just don''t use those tricks that you want to keep a secret." Mr. Fu tossed a black ring to Lin Huang. He knew that Lin Huang had his own secrets, but he did not want to dwell on that. "Alright, it''s 7:47 a.m. now. You''ll complete your mission as long as you bring back the monster carcasses before 8 a.m. tomorrow." Mr. Fu gave Lin Huang an extra 13 minutes. Lin Huang caught the monitoring ring and wore it on his left index finger. He nodded to Mr. Fu and leaped into the ocean. As Lin Huang was diving in the water, he formed his plan. There were three challenges in the mission. The first one would be fighting in the water which would be an advantage to the monster. Although he could adjust his oxygen requirement since he had reached transcendent-level, that did not mean that he could breathe underwater. He could stay for two to three days in the water without oxygen if he were not moving, but he would need more oxygen if he were fighting underwater. If he could last a couple of hours in the water, that would be considered amazing. The second difficulty would be the high water pressure 12,000 meters underwater where he would have to face intense pressure around him all the time. Besides suppressing his ability, his movement and attacks would be affected by the water pressure. However, the water pressure would not affect the monsters at all as they had adapted to such an environment. The third test would be killing the Dragon Whales that were sky dragon monsters whereby their ability was above most immortal-level rank-5 monsters. Moreover, such a monster had a gigantic body, measuring tens of thousands of meters long. They had remarkable defense abilities as well due to the fats under their skin. As long as the attacks did not penetrate its skin, it would not be harmed at all. They could also heal by eating flesh, so it was difficult for them to be killed. Most of all, he would have to kill two of them within 24 hours. Lin Huang frowned as he dove deeper. The water pressure was getting more and more overwhelming. He could feel each cell in his body under tremendous pressure, and it was getting more than just uncomfortable. He realized that at least 20% of his ability was suppressed when he was 10,000 meters underwater. "This is just irritating. I must get a waterproof relic in the future." Just as Lin Huang thought of that, he saw a massive monster under him. A massive Dragon Whale immediately noticed Lin Huang who had invited himself underwater. As they locked eyes, the Dragon Whale opened its jaws wide. A terrifying energy ball like a tsunami came at Lin Huang. He knew that it was one of the Dragon Whale''s skills called the Water Command. Such an ability allowed the Dragon Whale to control the speed and direction of the water flow. It could even complicate the water flow and was also how the Dragon Whale terrorized the piece of ocean for itself. Looking at the water energy that was hurtling at him in all directions, Lin Huang activated his secret Seraphic Speed skill and managed to escape the assault. He turned around and looked at where he had been standing. It was entirely engulfed by the water, becoming a gigantic frost whirlpool with many sharp teeth. "What a ruthless skill" Lin Huang imagined himself being minced meat for dumplings had he been engulfed by the whirlpool earlier. "If that''s how you want to play the game, I shan''t show you mercy then!" "Come out, Charcoal!" Lin Huang shouted to summon Charcoal. 615 Eye-Opening As Lin Huang thought of the three challenges of killing the Dragon Whale while diving into the water, he came up with a plan immediately. Charcoal was an immortal-level rank-1 now. With its thick dragon blood as a high-level dragonkin, it could definitely suppress other sky dragon monsters. Even an immortal-level rank-9 would be affected by its Dragon Power, let alone an immortal-level rank-5 monster. Mr. Fu had emphasized that he could use any techniques he wanted. Lin Huang thought that Mr. Fu intentionally made the training difficult as he figured Lin Huang would summon his monsters. He was an Imperial Censor after all, so it was only natural for him to summon his monsters. However, Lin Huang did not plan to get Charcoal to kill the two monsters for him. His plan was to get Charcoal to bring the two Dragon Whales to the surface of the ocean. As soon as the two monsters surfaced, the three difficulties that he thought about earlier, including the breathing and water pressure, would not be an issue anymore. When the Dragon Whales lost their advantage in the water, it would be much easier for Lin Huang to kill them. As expected, as soon as Charcoal appeared and released its Dragon Power, besides the male Dragon Whale below Lin Huang, even the female that planned to attack Lin Huang secretly was now trembling due to the suppression of their bloodline whereby high-level dragonkins could overwhelm sky dragon monsters on the same level. A dragonkin of pure blood, even a holy fire-level, would be able to suppress an imperial-level sky dragon. Unless there was nothing else that it could do, an imperial-level sky dragon would not attack a pure blood dragonkin, usually choosing to run away. No matter how young the emperor was, the general had to respect him. It was the same theory. Charcoal was summoned in its original form that was thousands of meters long. It was very thrilled when it was summoned. It soon noticed the two monsters that were below it. Although it sensed that the two monsters were much more powerful in terms of combat level, it was not afraid at all. Instead, it was excited to attack. "Get them to the surface of the ocean!" Lin Huang instructed Charcoal. Charcoal dashed towards the two Dragon Whales immediately like a black thread. Although the two monsters were much more powerful than Charcoal and their sizes were more than ten times bigger than it, they did not plan to attack it. All they did was run away. Charcoal was having the time of its life as it had been a long time since it was summoned. After chasing the monsters around, Charcoal finally got the two monsters to surface just as Lin Huang had urged it to. The two gigantic monsters'' backs were showing on the surface like two little islands. Charcoal surrounded both of the monsters to prevent them from escaping. Lin Huang floated midair and smirked. "My time to shine." There was a golden spark that surrounded his Ink sword. It was as bright as the sun during noon. Even Mr. Fu that was watching Lin Huang''s battle from the demigod-level ship on top had to squint his eyes. Within seconds, the golden glow around his sword peaked and Lin Huang dashed into the ocean after activating his Thunder Steps as well as his Seraphic Speed. Next, his sword pierced deep into one of the Dragon Whales'' head. The massive monster''s head cracked as it groaned. It would usually use up one Life Wheel of Life Power to kill an immortal-level rank-5 monster. However, as his target was so huge this time, Lin Huang used two Life Wheels of Life Power just to be sure. It created a terrifying scene. Seeing the first Dragon Whale killed in a second, the second one attempted to escape, but it was blocked by Charcoal. The Dragon Whale did not sure to attack Charcoal, so it controlled the water attacking Lin Huang. The calm sea had churned into an intense tsunami. Lin Huang stood where he was like an invincible warrior and sliced the wave into half with his sword. There was a purple glow springing from his sword. Before the Dragon Whale could attack again, Lin Huang swung his sword again. Purple streaks that looked like purple crescent moons were fired as he performed hundreds of sword swings within seconds. The purple light collided with the Dragon Whale''s head at the same spot repetitively. Eventually, the Dragon Whale''s head was chopped off. The once turquoise ocean water was now bloody red. In less than three minutes, Lin Huang had managed to kill both of the Dragon Whales. Including the time Charcoal took to chase the monsters, it was less than 20 minutes in total. After storing the monster carcasses, Lin Huang shrunk Charcoal and brought it back to the demigod-level ship. He was concerned to face Mr. Fu as he had played a trick by summoning Charcoal to help him during this round of assessment. Without Charcoal''s help, besides his ability being restricted in the Dragon Whales'' territory, the monsters could escape if they could not fight him, and they could even eat other monsters to heal themselves. He might not have been able to complete the mission within 24 hours. Mr. Fu smiled as he observed Charcoal, then looked at Lin Huang. "I''m satisfied with your performance. You even surpassed my expectations!" Lin Huang thought he would receive a lesson from Mr. Fu for getting help from Charcoal, but Mr. Fu was nodding satisfactorily. "The two Dragon Whales were supposed to own the stage in the battle, but you turned it around by summoning a monster. That''s well done! A real kill is never about a one-on-one fight, but a combination of abilities. Fighting your opponent with brute strength is a dumb move as it wastes time and energy. If you have some other enemy that''s hiding and waiting for the opportunity to attack you, you''d be taken advantage of. Never drag the battle if you can kill your enemy as soon as possible. "Just that with this demigod-level ship, I wouldn''t attack my enemy right away if a demigod were to attack me. Instead, I would fire at it using my ship from far away. I have enough energy crystals anyway to fire, so why would I waste my energy? Even if I don''t manage to kill it, injuring it would be good enough. Even if I don''t manage to injure it, I can drain its Life Power which makes the battle easier." Lin Huang was confused as he was listening. He did not expect Mr. Fu''s battle style to be this nasty. However, his theory made sense. "Of course, I''m not asking you to use your tricks all the way. Do it when you should, but your own ability should be the root of everything. Without ability, those tricks might make kill you even faster" Mr. Fu explained and gave him some examples of real cases to turn the tables around with tricks. It was an eye-opening lesson. Now, he knew that Mr. Fu was not the only one who had nasty tricks up his sleeve. Many of the demigods that he had heard before were even nastier than Mr. Fu was. 616 Lin Xuan’s Identity Lin Huang''s training went on from mid-March to mid-April just like that. Mr. Fu managed to come out with something new every day during the one-month training. It was proven that the two Dragon Whales on the first day was really an appetizer. Before the training, Lin Huang could only fight an immortal-level rank-6 monster with brute strength. After the training ended, he could break free from being surrounded by five immortal-level rank-6 monsters and kill all of them within 24 hours. He even did that without activating any Function Cards. Throughout the 30 days, Lin Huang had gone through no less than 100 battles. Besides the first one, he gave his all for the rest of the battles to fulfill Mr. Fu''s request. Mr. Fu would point out his problems without holding back after each battle every day and got Lin Huang to think of a solution to improve himself, then plan the training according to Lin Huang''s issues. If he did not manage to improve or amend his mistakes, the training would focus on his mistake until he managed to overcome it. He went through hell for the entire month, but his ability had transformed. Liu Ming had visited once during his training period to return Lin Huang''s sword that he had fixed. Lin Huang used his temporary Emperor''s Heart Ring to contact Yi Zheng and the rest to give out the rewards that they had obtained from the ruins. On the night of the 30th day, Mr. Fu brought him to the restaurant on the first floor of the demigod-level ship after concluding his performance of the day. Lin Huang figured that it was time to say goodbye when he saw that the spread on the table was more scrumptious than usual. "Your performance has exceeded my expectations through the past month. Actually, I gave you some difficult tasks most of the time during the training, and I didn''t think you would manage to complete them, but you completed all of them. You''ve managed to surprise me again and again. "I''ve basically taught you everything about battles throughout the month. The rest I''ll leave you with are my memories," Mr. Fu said and smiled at Lin Huang. "Close your eyes and enjoy." Lin Huang closed his eyes as Mr. Fu asked him to, then he felt Mr. Fu place a finger on his forehead. In the next second, Mr. Fu''s memories played in his mind. Under his guidance, the memories were fast-forwarded. "I''m bringing you through my cultivation journey as well as storing a memory seed for you. Although my cultivation path doesn''t suit you, you may keep it as a reference. You can take a look at it when you have time in the future." Lin Huang opened his eyes slowly as he heard Mr. Fu''s weak voice. In reality, he had only closed his eyes for less than ten seconds, but he had already watched Mr. Fu''s thousands of years on his road to cultivation. "Sir, are you alright?" Lin Huang could tell that bringing him through his memory lane had drained Mr. Fu much of his energy from his apparent exhaustion. "Don''t worry. I''ll be fine after some rest." Mr. Fu waved his hand and picked up his chopsticks. "Let''s eat!" They took a long time to enjoy the dinner as they were chatted while eating. They started talking about Lin Huang''s family. Lin Huang told some of the funny things that Lin Xin had done and some interesting stuff about Lin Xuan. Mr. Fu would occasionally laugh when they talked about Lin Xin, but he was quiet when they talked about Lin Xuan. Lin Huang noticed it, but he had no idea why Mr. Fu was quiet, so he stopped talking proceeded to eat. After a moment of silence, Mr. Fu spoke again, "My apprentice, I''ve been keeping this a secret from you." Lin Huang was stunned as he looked at Mr. Fu after swallowing the food in his mouth. "It was I who made Lin Xuan leave" Lin Huang was confused when he heard what Mr. Fu said. "Why would you do that?" Lin Huang asked after calming himself down. "I suspected he was my first apprentice, Mo Kui, when I first saw him. Mo Kui was an orphan that I looked after since he was young, and Lin Xuan looked exactly the same as Mo Kui when he was young," Mr. Fu told the truth. "I gave him a drop of Mo Kui''s blood, and he managed to integrate the blood. He left the place where you guys live, which proved my estimation to be true." "So, is this reincarnation?" Lin Huang frowned. "I don''t think so. Reincarnation is just some hearsay that''s passed around among the people. Nobody knows if that really exists." Mr. Fu shook his head. "I remember you told me that his name was a serial number when you found him. I suspect somebody cloned him with some genetic technique." "I know normal people can be cloned, but can Virtual Gods be cloned too?" Lin Huang thought it was bizarre. "Theoretically, every living thing can be cloned using genetic technique including the True God and even the more powerful beings." Mr. Fu nodded. "The Scarborough Workshop did a similar experiment before. They used some of the demigod''s genes to clone, but due to the lack of technology, the experiment kept failing. They then focused on genetic modification as well as man-made humans." "It''s been hundreds of years, and the genetic technique is much more mature than before. Perhaps the laboratory can really clone Virtual Gods now." Mr. Fu was sure that his guess was accurate. "Lin Xuan could have only integrated Mo Kui''s blood if they share the same genes." "I''ve no idea where they got Mo Kui''s genes. I preserved his body well, and buried it somewhere nobody knows apart from me." Mr. Fu frowned. "If the cloning technology is advanced enough, I''m sure that a single strand of hair will be enough for them to clone." Lin Huang tried his best to grasp the bizarre idea. "Sir, do you know where Lin Xuan is right now?" "He''s in the Origin Continent, which is the No. 0 Safe Zone. I''ve been following him ever since he left home. He went directly to the Origin Continent, probably looking for his memory." Mr. Fu seemed apologetic. "I would like to apologize to you and Lin Xin. I couldn''t help myself but test him with Mo Kui''s blood. I didn''t know that he would leave home. I should''ve discussed with you before doing that. I wasn''t prepared to tell you about Mo Kui that time." "It''s all in the past now. It''s good that he''s alright now." Although Mr. Fu had crossed his boundaries, as his apprentice who loved him dearly, Lin Huang chose to forgive him. "I have one last favor that I need to ask of you before you leave." Mr. Fu looked at Lin Huang in all seriousness. "I''m only left with three years to live. I''ll contact you before I die. I hope that you''ll come to Division 7 and bury my body at the Three Lifetime Mountain." "Three Lifetime Mountain?" Lin Huang was surprised to hear that. "I owe my life to these two persons. One would be Mo Kui, the other would be Jingyue. I owe Mo Kui my life, but I owe Jingyue my heart" Mr. Fu sighed. "The person that demigod Jingyue waited for at the Three Lifetime Mountain was you?" Lin Huang was shocked. Throughout 200 years, nobody knew who the man demigod Jingyue was waiting for was. Lin Huang did not expect Mr. Fu, his master, to be the answer. "I''ve already known that I wouldn''t live long 800 years ago. I met Jingyue 200 years ago. She''s a very special lady who loves deeply. I didn''t want to waste her time, so I decided to let her go. I didn''t expect that silly girl to wait for me at the Three Lifetime Mountain for ten years I''ve no baggage in this world, so it doesn''t really matter where I''m buried at. Perhaps being buried at the Three Lifetime Mountain could be deemed as giving back her love for me." Lin Huang was silent after hearing that. "Sir, don''t think too much, alright? Take care of yourself within these three years. I''ll look for a cure for you as soon as possible." Lin Huang knew Xiao Hei must have a card that could heal Mr. Fu, but he was not authorized to use it yet. 617 Returning to the White Capital On the next morning, Lin Huang returned to the Martial Hunter College after bidding farewell to Mr. Fu. Liu Ming had handed over the role as Dean to the new Dean and headed to Division 3. Although he had given the door passcode to Lin Huang before he left, to prevent people from knowing how close he was to Mr. Fu, Lin Huang decided not to stay in the villa Liu Ming was staying at. Instead, he checked into a hotel that was near the college. The hotel was less than 300 meters from the college. After settling the check-in process, Lin Huang ambled to the Martial Hunter College. The security guard recognized him at once and greeted him immediately. "Sir Lin, you''re back." "I''ve some errands to run in the White Capital, so I thought I''d drop by." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. After a short chat with the security guard, Lin Huang entered the college. Looking at the environment that he had familiarized with for half a year, his emotions welled up. He had spent most of the year in the college with Lin Xin; more than the time they had spent together at their home in Winter City. The time he spent at the college was the most relaxed time that he had in this world. Although his days had been packed, his life was calm without the pressure that he had always had before. However, such peace was fated to be short in this world. He then walked to the Sword Dao office. He planned to visit Qin Tianxing and the other colleagues to check on his students during this trip. He knocked on the door while grinning, taking Zhang Xu and Yu Fei by surprise. "Lin Huang, why are you back?" Yu Fei smiled as she asked. As one of the two ladies in Sword Dao faculty besides Mu Xiaolan, she looked reserved on the outside, but she was lively once she warmed up. "Are you teaching again?" Zhang Xu asked. Although he and Lin Huang had some misunderstanding earlier, it was all over now. "No, I''ve something to do in the White Capital, so I thought I''d drop by," Lin Huang said as he noticed Zhang Xu''s relief. "Isn''t Old Qin teaching Sword Dao Class 1 today? Why isn''t he here?" "He has resigned. He resigned at the beginning of the semester. I called him, but he didn''t pick up. Nobody knows what he''s doing now." Zhang Xu shook his head. "Then, how about the class" Lin Huang had not finished his question, but he could guess what the answer was. "Zhang Xu is teaching his class," Yu Fei replied. Lin Huang now understood why Zhang Xu was relieved when he confirmed that he was not back to teach. "So, who''s teaching Class 2 now?" Lin Huang asked. "A transcendent-level teacher that was sent from the Union College." Zhang Xu was upset. Unless he had many years of teaching experience and was related to the Vice Dean, he would not be able to teach Class 1. The teacher that was sent from the Union College was excellent so he would be able to teach Class 1 after teaching for two years. "Getting the holy fire-level Life Fire is much easier than you imagined. After determining the Life Fire monster and the monster''s weaknesses, just get a few friends with you to kill it. As long as you''re well prepared before the trip, it''s not difficult to kill. You haven''t even started the battle yet, and you''re scared of holy fire-level monsters without even trying. You won''t be able to even perform up to 80% of your ability, that''s why you failed again and again. You''re an old-time hunter. You should know that most times, the difference in combat level isn''t the same with the difference in ability. Holy fire-level monsters are really not as scary as you think." Lin Huang patted Zhang Xu''s shoulder and left. "Holy fire-level" Looking at Lin Huang walking away, Zhang Xu clenched his fists. "I didn''t expect Old Qin to resign" Lin Huang called Qin Tianxing''s number after leaving the office. His answering machine informed him that he was not within the service area. "That means he''s either in the ruins or he kept his Emperor''s Heart Ring." Lin Huang shook his head and walked to the building where Class 2 was. He hid on top of a tree that was 100 meters away from the cultural studies to watch his students. Most of them were paying attention in class while a few were not. They were doing well overall. One of them, who was not paying attention, was looking around the field outside the window. Suddenly, he saw Lin Huang who was on the tree. He widened his eyes. "Sir Lin!" The young man almost screamed out loud. Lin Huang glared at him and waved his fist, then he pointed at the podium where the teacher was speaking. The young man then looked away. Lin Huang left immediately since he was noticed. A few seconds later, the students peeped at the tree, but Lin Huang was long gone. Lin Xin had cultural studies as well. Lin Huang knew that she did not have class in the afternoon, so he sent her a message using Ye Xiu''s Emperor''s Heart Ring before heading back to the hotel. Lin Xin called Lin Huang when she saw his message after she finished the class. "Brother, you''re back!" Lin Xin jumped excitedly in the video call. "Yeah. There''re too many people that I know in the college. Come to my hotel. We''ll talk later." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. Soon, Lin Xin arrived at the hotel after the call ended. Lin Huang brought Lin Xin to the private room in the restaurant on the second floor. They started chatting after ordering. "Brother, didn''t you say that you would leave at the end of March or the beginning of April? I thought you''ve left. Why are you still in Division 7?" Lin Xin thought it was odd. "Something happened, so my plan got postponed for a month." Lin Huang did not mention Mr. Fu as he did not want to involve her in the matter. "I''ll leave in a few days after finishing up some stuff." "Can you come back during the summer holidays?" Lin Xin asked. "I don''t think so. Something''s happened recently. I''ll be busy these three years. I might be able to only come back during New Year''s Eve." Lin Huang helplessly shrugged as he could not promise to come back during the summer holidays. "Can you tell me what happened?" Lin Xin asked. "I can''t involve you in this, so it''s better that you don''t know." Lin Huang shook his head. "Also, don''t tell anyone that you''re my sister. I''ll erase the memories of those who know about you." Lin Xin had told her roommates that Lin Huang was her cousin. Some of the girls in Class 1 and Class 2 might know about it too. "Is it the Purple Crow?" Lin Xin asked. "No, it''s even worse than that." Lin Huang''s enemy was a demigod who was hiding somewhere, and he had to be careful. "Oh, yeah. This is for you." Lin Huang passed her a red storage space ring after a moment of silence. "What''s this?" Lin Xin tried to figure out what the ring contained. "Most of them are fire attributes crystals, and a selection of them are Life Crystals. The fire attribute crystals are for Little 7 (Seventails), and the Life Crystals are for you. People will find out if I send money to you using my account. Use the Life Crystals whenever you need money." "Later, when we get back to my room, I''ll change the ownership of Little 7 to you. It''s actually a triple mutated phoenix blood monster. Although it''s not a purebred, it will be if its blood thickness is upgraded. Train it well. It''s highly possible for it to be upgraded to a purebred. Also, don''t show off about it being a triple mutated monster, or else they might steal it from you," Lin Huang advised. "When are you leaving?" Lin Xin asked. "Should be tomorrow morning." After lunch, Lin Huang brought her to his hotel room and swapped Little 7''s ownership to Lin Xin. A long hug later, Lin Huang sent her off and waited patiently for the night to come. 618 White Capital at Nigh The White Capital had amazing nightlife. Although it was a chilly spring in mid-April, there were people on the streets through to midnight. The streets finally became quiet when it was around 1:30 a.m. Lin Huang was still awake. Opening the sliding door on his balcony, he walked out and looked around. He then looked at the direction of the Martial Hunter College. Soon, a purple Monster Card appeared in his hand. He looked at the purple monster on the card and crushed it. A purple haze appeared before him. It was how Bloody looked like after completing its triple mutation. However, it would disguise itself as a vine whenever there was someone else around. "Bloody, I need you to find out everyone who knows anything about me and Lin Xin''s relationship in the Martial Hunter College and remove that from their memories." Lin Huang knew very well that he could not leave any traces behind. Although there were not many people who knew of their relationship, as long as somebody was targeting him or Mr. Fu, the person would definitely discover this fact as long as they spent some time in the college. As soon as he left Division 7, he would not be back for quite some time and it would be dangerous for Lin Xin, which was why he had to get Bloody to do this. Lin Huang had thought about bringing Lin Xin along with him but he figured that the three years in the core zone would probably not be peaceful. As soon as his identity was revealed, he might not be able to survive. If he encountered somebody powerful, it would be impossible to run away with Lin Xin. After careful consideration, he had decided to leave Lin Xin in Division 7. "That''s easy... However, I''ll have to put my parasites on everyone in the college. I can only determine which of them know about you and Lin Xin through reading their memories," Bloody replied. "Do that then. Be quick. Try to hide as much as you can, there are many powerful people in the White Capital. It''ll spell trouble if we''re exposed." Lin Huang reminded Bloody. He knew that Bloody''s Leech Pods would disappear without any side-effects after that and the hosts would not notice anything at all. "Understood." Bloody replied and started getting busy. A massive amount of colorless Leech Pods began spreading from Bloody. Without Lin Huang''s Territory, he would not be able to see any of the Leech Pods. It was only with Territory that Lin Huang would be able to sense the Leech Pods that were many times smaller than a dandelion, floating toward the Martial Hunter College''s direction. Soon, Bloody opened its eyes. "Aside from Lin Xin, I''ve found twelve people who know about your relationship with her. However, all of them know that you''re her cousin." "That''s right, erase that part of their memories." Lin Huang nodded. Bloody closed its eyes again and opened them shortly after. "It''s been deleted and replaced by some other memories. Are there any other things that you want to erase or amend? If not, I''ll recall my Leech Pods." Recalling would mean the disappearance of its Leech Pods, where only the information would return to Bloody. The pods would not come back to it. "You''ve done well! Recall the pods, there''s nothing else that I need to do." Lin Huang was relieved. "I found out there''s someone who came to the Martial Hunter College for you," Bloody spoke again. "I''ve recalled all of the pods besides these. One is monitoring him while the other is in his brain." Bloody then projected a young man. He looked like he was in his early twenties, Lin Huang was sure that he had never seen the person before. "Is he a teacher at the college?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, he''s white flame-level teaching the Sword Dao in Year 1 Class 2. He didn''t only take over your students, he''s also staying in the dorm that you were living at," Bloody said. "From his memory, he''s coming for you. He even found out about Lin Xin being your cousin in the past two days and is trying to get closer to her to ask about you." "Who is this person?" Lin Huang frowned. "He''s from a place called Leib Lab, a spy that was sent by a man in glasses. He has two missions. One is to find out where you''re at while the other is to find out who the lady in the white dress is." "Leib lab" Lin Huang was familiar with the organization. It was the one who attacked the White Capital together with the Purple Crow. They were the Scarborough Workshop 200 years ago. Lin Huang''s ancient sword relic Air Slicer, Black Feathered Armor, and Dead Body Puppet were stolen from an imperial-level member of the organization. He even activated a Misfortune Card on the person. They did not give up looking for Lin Huang. The incident had just calmed down earlier but now, they had sent a spy to the college to find him. "What else did you get?" Lin Huang asked again. He was not sure if Leib Lab was related to the matter plaguing Mr. Fu''s or if the organization was purely coming for him. "That''s basically it. This person is nobody significant, he doesn''t know much. From his memory, the man in glasses who gave him the mission should be the boss of the Leib Lab. It was his first time meeting the man in glasses when he got the mission. He respects the man in glasses deeply." "That''s all I have." Bloody looked at Lin Huang. "What should we do to this guy?" "Kill him." Lin Huang was determined. "There''s nothing good for keeping him in the college, they might fight out that his memory was amended by you if he returns to Leib Lab. It might expose Lin Xin. Leib Lab would not send a second spy so soon after he''s killed. Even if they do, they won''t find out much about me and Lin Xin''s relationship any longer." Bloody agreed with Lin Huang''s analysis. Although it was confident with its memory amendment, it was only an immortal-level rank-1 after all. It might be exposed if the person''s brain was dissected by an imperial-level person who was expert in the field. As instructed, Bloody detonated the Leech Pods that were hiding in the spy''s head. In the projection, the head of the young man who was sleeping exploded like a watermelon dropped from mid-air. His brain splattered all over the wall, even to the extent that it was plastered on the ceiling. Blood endlessly flowed from the neck of the headless body that was lying on a bed with blue bedsheet 619 Goodbye, Division 7 Lin Huang went to bed peacefully after settling the matter at the Martial Hunter College. On the next morning, Lin Huang used Ye Xiu''s identity to send Lin Xin a message after breakfast. "I''m leaving. Take care of yourself, be good in school." "I understand. Please take care of yourself," Lin Xin replied shortly after. After switching off the contact page, Lin Huang paid for his hotel room that he checked in with his fake identity online. He then summoned his dimensional relic and stepped through it after changing his features. Early in the morning, Luo Yao dressed herself up and walked out quickly when she realized that it was already 7:15 a.m. She was relieved to see that nobody was waiting for her under the trees nearby. She slowly walked to the tree and looked at the teacher''s dorm building next to her room, all the while waiting for the man to walk out of his room. She met this man on the same day during the Martial Hunter College''s teacher recruitment drive, and they began teaching on the very same day as well. They stayed just next to each other, so she thought it was fate. She was teaching Saber Dao Class 8 while the man was a transcendent-level who was teaching in Sword Dao Class 2. He was young and handsome, and she would be lying if she said she did not like him. Ever since school began and they met for the very first time when they headed out of the dorm, having breakfast with this man became a habit for Luo Yao. Most of the time, the man would wait for her under the tree. Sometimes he would be one or two minutes late. However, time passed by and even after it was 7:30 a.m., the man was still not there. Luo Yao thought it was odd. ''Perhaps he has something to do today.'' She thought about it and walked away. She was upset after having breakfast alone. After some hesitation, she could not help but call the man but it showed that he was not in the service zone. "Where did he go? It''s Friday, doesn''t he have a class this afternoon?" Luo Yao returned to her dorm with that question. It was past 2 p.m. In the afternoon, Luo Yao had lunch and went shopping before heading back to her dorm. She then noticed that there was a bunch of people gathering outside the dorm. "What happened?" She asked a girl. "They say a teacher died and didn''t go to his class this afternoon. He was found in his dorm by a student, he doesn''t have his head anymore. That''s so scary" The girl explained. "Sir Zhang?" Luo Yao''s heart skipped a beat. She pushed the people away and dashed into the dorm. On the second floor of the dorm, she saw a few staff members from the Union Government who were observing a headless body. She started crying A black dimensional relic appeared in an alley of foothold No.7C357 in Daxi City and a young man walked out of the dimensional relic. The handsome man wore a deep blue trench coat. He looked like he was in his early twenties with maroon hair and was 1.82 meters tall. It was Lin Huang in disguise. Aside from his handsome looks that remained, he looked totally different than before. He found the bar where Yang Ling was located by following his memory, and the staff brought him to the underground room where Yang Ling was in. The skinny Yang Ling was cuddling a voluptuous lady while being half asleep. The lady winked at Lin Huang as he pushed the door open but he ignored her and looked at Yang Ling instead. Then, he knocked on the door that was shut behind him. In response, Yang Ling slapped the lady''s butt and pinched it. "Come again tonight," he whispered into the lady''s ear. The lady giggled and removed the blanket she had draped over her body. Then, as she got down from the bed naked to put on clothes in front of the both of them, she proceeded to shoot look at Lin Huang with a teasing expression. It took her more than ten minutes to put on two pieces of clothing a bra and a dress. Lin Huang sat on Yang Ling''s work desk as he watched the show that the lady put on calmly. She had a nice body and a tempting expression, that was the only comment that he had for her. The lady walked slowly to him after putting on her clothes. "Hey handsome, look for me if you''re interested. It''s complimentary for the first time," she whispered into his ear. Watching the lady leave, Yang Ling removed the blanket on him and put on a gold sleeping robe without even bothering to put on his underwear. He then sat on his work desk. "Have we met before?" He asked after checking Lin Huang out. "Take a wild guess." Lin Huang smirked without giving him an answer. "Nevermind, black card?" Yang Ling asked. "That''s right." "Which one?" Yang Ling asked again. "For royalty. The higher the authorization, the better. The best would be one that''s opened to those on the demigod-level." "That''s too risky, I''m not doing that. The most that I can do for people outside the core zone is one that authorizes immortal-level people. If you''re using it in the core zone, I could give you the one that''s open to imperial-level. However, if you use it outside the core zone, you''d have to bear the consequences." Yang Ling looked at Lin Huang in all seriousness. "Imperial-level it is then." Lin Huang nodded without thinking twice. "Normal ones for royalty would cost 10,000 Life Crystals, where it''ll have authorization up to the holy fire-level. I''ll give you a fixed price for the imperial-level card, 500,000 Life Crystals. However, I must clarify that this information comes from the underworld, not the Union. It comes from the Saints. If you use it outside of the core zone, the Saints will come for you and I won''t be able to help you if that happens." "Sure, do it." Lin Huang transferred the fee to Yang Ling''s trading chip. After confirming that the transferred amount was correct, Yang Ling started working on it. "Name and age?" Yang Ling asked after taking a photo of Lin Huang. "Lin Xie, 22." It was the new name that Lin Huang came up with. "Parents died since young, had a brother who is two years older but I''ve no idea where he is. The rest of the information would be the default setting." Yang Ling looked at Lin Huang and proceeded to work on the registration without saying a word. He came up with an identity with a brother so that people would not relate him with the old Lin Huang. He picked the name Lin Xie last night from a couple of names that he came u with. It was safe to keep his surname as there were billions of people in this world with the same surname. With a false identity, it was likely that people would not relate him to his old identity. 10 minutes later, the new Emperor''s Heart Ring was complete. The gold ring was beautiful like an art piece. "Don''t activate it whenever you''re outside of the core zone." Yang Ling reminded him when he was trying on the ring. "I know." Lin Huang tried it on, took it off and put it away in his storage space. Lin Huang stood at the entrance of the bar and looked at the sunny sky. "Goodbye, Division 7." 620 Stepping into Division3 Lin Huang was feeling dizzy as he stepped out of the dimensional portal. It was the side effect of taking the long-distance dimensional portal. Even an imperial-level would experience the same feeling but milder. The two holy fire-levels who took the same dimensional portal as he did throw up after taking a few steps. A few staff in uniforms came and blocked the way of the duo. "We''re the staff from the health department of Sweep City. You guys have broken the rules of the city. Please show your ID and pay the fine as well as cleaning the trash." The staff was all on immortal-level. The two holy fire-levels did not dare to talk back and paid a fine although they were still dizzy. They were released after cleaning the area. "Breaking the rules? We''ll be fined 1,000 Life Crystals just for vomiting?" Lin Huang thought that was strange. The rule sounded like it was fabricated. Moreover, 1,000 Life Crystals were enough to get a customized grade-1 relic. He figured that the staff must be fake. Lin Huang left after watching that bizarre scene. A bald hunk, who was over two meters tall, headed his way soon after. There were a few men following behind him. Lin Huang frowned and dodged the baldy. Just as the baldy missed Lin Huang, he fell onto the ground. "Damn it, kid! Are you blind? You knocked me over! Ahh, it hurts! You hurt me! What should we do now?" The baldy sat on the ground and refused to get up as the men following him surrounded Lin Huang. "You''re so bad at scamming. I didn''t even touch you." Lin Huang instantly understood what was happening. "Nonsense, you knocked me over! My bros saw it too. They''re my witnesses! You said you didn''t touch me. Do you have any witnesses?" The baldy looked around with a threatening expression. Many people had gathered to watch what was going on. Some of them wanted to stand up for Lin Huang, but upon realizing that the baldy was a gold flame-level and his men were all on purple flame-level, none of them dared to say anything. "This young man is in trouble. Sun Ba has been in this scamming business for more than 30 years. They target people who have low combat levels. Nobody can escape from them. This young man might have to give everything he has up, or else he won''t be able to leave." Some of the people among the crowd knew the baldy''s background. Most of them knew the truth about what happened, but nobody dared to stand up for Lin Huang. Lin Huang put his hands in his pockets and looked at the baldy calmly. "You sure you won''t regret scamming me?" The baldy was stunned to hear that. His hunky followers did not know what to do and looked questioningly at the baldy. "Wow, look at this brave man!" The crowd was ready to watch the show. The baldy hesitated before shouting at Lin Huang, "It makes sense for you to pay for knocking someone over! I don''t care who you are, even if you''re one of our Purple Crow members!" Many of them were scared when they heard about the Purple Crow. Lin Huang smirked when he heard that. "Alright, then If you want money, come and get it." He flashed a storage ring in his palm. Many of the bystanders were disappointed to see the young man decide to compromise as the Purple Crow was just too powerful The baldy got up from the ground, dusted his clothes, and signaled the hunk next to him. The hunk walked to Lin Huang and grabbed the storage ring from his palm. Suddenly, Lin Huang clenched his fist and lashed out a punch at the hunk''s cheek. The guy flew away as an impact of the blow. Everyone was shocked. Many of them had a shocking impression of the kid who dared to make the first move. Later on, many of them realized that the young man was only on crimson flame-level and the hunk who was punched was on purple flame-level! Baldy and the rest snapped out of it after a while. "How dare you?!" "Didn''t you guys want this storage ring? Come and take it if you can. Don''t blame me if you can''t," Lin Huang taunted the baldy. "Bros, kill him!" As the baldy shouted, the hunks dashed towards Lin Huang. He stood where he was, and a few shadows shot out like cannons. He grabbed the baldy, who was the last to come at him, holding him up as he grabbed his neck. The baldy did not dare to move as he could sense that Lin Huang was very close to snapping his neck. The five purple flame-levels and the single gold flame-level lost to a crimson flame-level in less than three seconds. The crowd was shocked to see the fight. "A crimson flame-level fighting a gold flame-level! That''s three whole ranks higher! This young man is a genius!" "What comes around, goes around. Sun Ba and the rest finally got it today for offending a genius. I wonder which organization does this young man belong to. If he''s from an underground organization, they''ll be dead today." "They wouldn''t have gone through whatever they''re going through now if they didn''t do what they do. I think they deserve it!" Nobody among the crowd wanted to help Sun Ba as they chatted among each other. "Do you still want me to pay the compensation?" Lin Huang smiled at the baldy. "No, no need" The baldy stammered immediately, frightened out of his wits. A genius who could cross three ranks to fight him must be a member of the top organization. He had offended someone that he should not have that day. "But why is it that I recall somebody saying that I''ll have to pay no matter what background I come from if I knocked you over?" Lin Huang asked while grinning. "You didn''t knock me over. It was I who scammed the wrong person and offended a god like you. It''s my fault. I''ll never do that again. Please let me go. I''m not worthy of your time," Sun Ba begged Lin Huang as he knew that he could not fight Lin Huang. "Do you know if there''s anywhere less crowded around here?" Lin Huang asked out of nowhere. "Sir, please, it''s tough to make a living here. There''re so many people watching. Don''t you think the guards would know that you''ll kill me even if you bring me to somewhere less crowded?" Sun Ba was scared. "I just need to get to a quiet place to ask you some questions." Lin Huang let go of Sun Ba''s neck and studied the rest. "Stop pretending. I know how much strength I used just now. I might really kill you guys if you continue to lie on the ground." The hunks got up from the ground immediately after hearing Lin Huang. "Alright, show the way!" Lin Huang looked at Sun Ba. Though unwilling, Sun Ba had no other option, but to bring Lin Huang with him. 621 The Lady Driver Who Covers Her Eyes When She Pilots It was Lin Huang''s first time in Division 3. Although he knew something about the place from Mr. Fu, the information was from many years ago and might be outdated. He planned to settle down in a hotel room and find out more about Division 3 on his own, but he did not expect "tour guides" to be sent his way. Of course, he took advantage of them. Sun Ba and the rest brought Lin Huang to an abandoned warehouse which was one of their gathering points. They did not dare to bring Lin Huang to their base camp. "Dear Master, please ask whatever you have in mind. We''ll answer whatever we know!" Sun Ba pulled a chair out for Lin Huang as they entered the warehouse while they stood aside. They were actually worried that Lin Huang might kill them. "Isn''t there anyone in the Sweep City who does anything about your scamming?" Lin Huang asked his first question. Theoretically, core zones should have better safety protocols than Division 7. However, the Sweep City, which was an A-grade foothold in a core zone, seemed to be less safe than any of the A-grade footholds in Division 7. "It must be your first time in Division 3, Master." Sun Ba smiled when he heard that question. Lin Huang glared at him. Sun Ba then stopped smiling and started explaining, "Actually, in Division 7, besides No. A1 to No. A10 footholds that require a pass for entering, the other footholds aren''t as safe. Our Sweep City isn''t the only one." "Why''s that?" Lin Huang found Sun Ba''s reply to be ridiculous. "It''s normal that you don''t know about this as many people outside the core zone have no idea about this. Division 3 is labeled a core zone to the outside, but it''s just a piece of chaotic land. There are many underground organizations'' headquarters here. In fact, 80% of the popular underground organizations, including the top ones, have their headquarters based here." Lin Huang was surprised by what Sun Ba said. "Did the Union Government close one eye to this?" Lin Huang asked. "No, they approved it. 200 years ago, the Union Organization had an agreement with the underground organizations to let go of Division 3. From the outside, Division 3 is still under the Union Government''s territory, but it''s really the territory of all the underground organizations." Now, Lin Huang finally understood why Division 3 had such low security. It made sense that Sun Ba announced his ties to the Purple Crow in public so nobody would do anything to him. If that happened in Division 7, someone might have reported him to the Union Government as soon as he said that. "So, those people from the health department who were giving out fines aren''t fake? They were genuine staff?" Lin Huang had thought the staff who were acting like gangsters were bogus. He had never seen anybody who issued fines for lack of cleanliness in Division 7. However, such a thing happened in the territory of the underground organizations. "They''re considered real staff, I guess, but they don''t belong to the Union Government," Sun Ba smiled as he explained. "Are they from the Purple Crow?" Lin Huang speculated since Sun Ba pretended to be one of the Purple Crow members earlier. "Yes, Sweep City is under the control of the Purple Crow," Sun Ba confirmed. "There are 33 A-grade footholds in Division 3. Besides Sweep City that''s terrorized by Purple Crow, which organization took over the other footholds?" What Lin Huang was asking was not pictured on the map. "No. A1 to A.10 are under the Union Government. No. A11 to No. A13 belong to Dynasty. No. A14 and No. A15 belong to the Heretics, while No. 16 and No. 17 belong to the Purple Crow" Sun Ba told Lin Huang accordingly. Basically, No. A11 to No. A27 belonged to the top underground organizations, while No. A28 to No. A33 belonged to the other underground organizations. Besides Dynasty, the remaining top underground organizations were similar in terms of abilities. The numbering followed the time of agreement from the Union Government and was not related to the power of each organization. Sweep City was No. 3A17 which belonged to the Purple Crow. Later on, Lin Huang asked Sun Ba a couple more questions before leaving. Sun Ba and the rest were relieved as they watched Lin Huang leaving their field of vision. They were afraid that Lin Huang might kill them after finishing his questioning. After leaving the place, Lin Huang activated Lin Xie''s Emperor''s Heart Ring and checked into a hotel in the central zone of Sweep City. Although the security was terrible, Sweep City was much more crowded than most of the A-grade footholds in Division 7. The population was even bigger than the White Capital''s. Standing on the hotel''s balcony, Lin Huang felt refreshed as he watched people flying across skyscrapers on their flying mounts. People were using flying mounts in the White Capital too, but not as many as there were here. Most of them had Zephyr Dragons as their flying mounts in the White Capital. It was a mini sky dragon that was either red, green, or blue. However, Lin Huang saw more than 20 different types of flying mounts after standing less than three minutes on the balcony. There were different sizes with varying levels of combat. It was a messy scene. "Stupid dragon, can you stop looking at others'' butts? Didn''t I feed you this morning?" Lin Huang looked amusedly at a lady who was shouting at her dragon. It was a cool blonde lady riding on a red dragon. The dragon was looking at the Inky Duck''s fat butt as it flapped its wings. It was looking around distractedly as it flew in a straight line. Everything that came its way was destroyed. Lin Huang frowned as the dragon was flying towards the balcony. "Stupid dragon, you''d better stop now. There''s someone over there!" The blonde lady slapped the dragon''s head, but it totally ignored her screaming and slapping. All it was focusing on was the Inky Duck''s butt. It had set its mind on biting its butt. Soon, the dragon flew into the balcony where Lin Huang was standing. To the dragon, Lin Huang and the balcony was just an obstacle to it. "No!" The blonde lady covered her eyes and screamed as the dragon was going to crash into Lin Huang. However, the blonde lady felt an intense force coming her way and yanked the dragon from going forward. She almost fell off the dragon''s back. She opened her eyes and saw a dark shield that was fading away. A young man stood in front of the dragon unharmed. Meanwhile, her dragon had passed out and was falling to the ground. Just when they almost landed on the ground, she snapped out of the zone, leaped and landed on Lin Huang''s balcony. "Thanks! Luckily, you managed to make it stop." The blonde lady knew that her dragon had just passed out. However, she was curious about Lin Huang when she noticed his combat level. Her dragon was on gold flame-level while the young man in front of her was just a crimson flame-level like she was, yet he had managed to stop her dragon. Before she could say anything, there was a bunch of people coming after her. They were demanding compensation for the stuff that her dragon had destroyed. "I''m so sorry, I''ll pay" The blonde lady bowed and apologized to the people sincerely. She then turned around and said to Lin Huang, "I''m so sorry. I''ll thank you again after I''ve settled the compensation." "There''s no need. It''s just a small matter." Lin Huang shook his head. "I have to. I''ll be back tomorrow and treat you to a meal." Without waiting for Lin Huang to reply, the blonde lady leaped down and recalled her dragon before leaving with the victims. "So, she''s an Imperial Censor" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow when he saw her recalling her dragon. 622 An Interruption that Came Out of Nowhere Lin Huang planned to visit the black market after lunch. Although he had obtained a lot of information from Sun Ba for free, some of the information would need to be purchased at the black market, including where a specific triple mutated monster would appear, the different monster types, and the combat levels across the danger zones. The main reason why he had chosen to come to Division 3 was to look for a suitable Life Fire monster for himself to level up. He was even more determined since Mr. Fu had been attacked. Just when he was about to go out, Lin Huang sensed someone following him. The person seemed to linger on the balconies of the same floor for a while, and he was coming closer to his room. He frowned as he observed the balcony. He had no idea if it was a thief or someone else. Soon, the person arrived on his balcony. Just when he was ready to attack, he looked closer and realized that it was the blonde lady that he had seen this morning. The lady stood behind the sliding door on the balcony. She was surprised when she saw Lin Huang, but soon she was overjoyed as she waved at him. "I''m back!" Lin Huang shook his head and opened the balcony door for her. "Can''t you use the front door?" "I wanted to, but I don''t know your name and your room number, so I could only follow what I remember. This lousy hotel has balconies that look the same. I forgot which room it was, so I had to look from balcony to balcony. Luckily, I got the right floor." The lady''s explanation made Lin Huang realize why she had lingered on each balcony for a little while earlier. "Please, come in," Lin Huang welcomed the lady into his room. "Oh, it''s nothing special! The one I''m staying at is nicer," The lady looked around as she entered and commented. "It''s not bad," Lin Huang simply said, not wanting to dwell on the topic. "Didn''t you say you would drop by tomorrow?" "I was bored, so I thought I would come now." The lady peered at Lin Huang. "Can''t I do that?" "I have something to do in the afternoon." Lin Huang did not bother to answer her question. "Let''s go for lunch together. It''s my treat," the lady initiated. "I had lunch." Lin Huang pointed at the lunch box in his dustbin. It was lunch hour, so the hotel restaurant was full. He ordered take-out and had his lunch in his room instead. The lady thought Lin Huang was just polite, but she realized that he was telling the truth when she saw the lunch box. "A lunch box I''ll treat you a better meal." The lady looked at Lin Huang emphatically as she concluded that Lin Huang was poor, judging from the room that he was staying in as well as the food that he had. "It''s alright. I know you''re being nice, but I really have something to do now." Lin Huang opened his door, making it evident that he wanted her to leave. "Where are you going? I can go with you since I''ve nothing to do in the afternoon." The blonde lady was reckless and was not afraid that Lin Huang might be a human trafficker. Lin Huang figured that she must come from a wealthy family background since she managed to live with such poor social skills. "I''m going to the black market. It''s not a place for a lady like you." People who went to the black market were usually people from the underground organizations. Lin Huang thought that the lady might be scared if he said that, but she gave an unexpected response. "Oh, the black market! I''ve never been there. My dad and sister won''t allow me to go. I can''t find the place by myself. I heard there''re a lot of good stuff in the black market, and I''ve always wanted to go there. Since you''re going, you should bring me along then." The blonde lady looked anticipatedly at Lin Huang. "I have proper business to settle at the black market. It''s inconvenient to bring you along," Lin Huang rejected right away. He started thinking that this lady was even more difficult than Sun Ba the scammer. "All you''ll have to do is to bring me to the black market. You can do your own thing while I look around myself without disturbing you. We''ll meet at the entrance for dinner. I''ll bring you somewhere good." "I''ll bug you every day until I repay you if you don''t promise to bring me along," she insisted as she noticed Lin Huang''s deep frown. "What I did this morning was just something menial. You don''t have to take it so seriously." Lin Huang did not expect the lady to be so stubborn. "It''s something small to you, but it''s not to me," she said in all seriousness. "If you didn''t do what you had this morning, my stupid dragon would''ve destroyed more stuff, and I''d have to pay more compensation. Moreover, what my stupid dragon did might have even killed people. My dad would definitely ground me. I hate being grounded! "Also, my dad taught me that we must remember those who helped us. You''ve helped me so much, so I must thank you with all my heart. If you don''t accept it, this debt will stay in my heart forever." After hearing the long story, Lin Huang did not want to retort back because he knew if he did, the lady would not give it up easily since she was stubborn. He thought about it and nodded eventually. "Alright, then. I''ll bring you to the black market, but you''ll have to listen to me. Don''t run around there. Wait for me while I''m settling my stuff. I''ll show you around when I''m done. Also, everything comes to an end after dinner. You''ll go home and pretend that you never knew me and I never knew you." Although the lady looked naive, Lin Huang had his guard up whenever someone got close to him due to Mr. Fu. His disguise would usually work for people under imperial-level, but people with unique skills might still be able to see through his disguise. "Got it!" The blonde lady nodded in excitement after hearing his confirmation. "Oh yeah, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Yao Huanhuan." She extended her hand for a handshake. Lin Huang realized that the lady had not paid any attention to what he said. He had told her to pretend not to know each other, but now that she was introducing herself, he was not sure if she had done so on purpose. "Wu Ming." He shook her hand anyway. "Why''s your name like that? It doesn''t sound like a name. Which ''Ming'' is that? Is it the ''Ming'' from ''Guang Ming''? Can I call you Xiao Ming?" Lin Huang ignored her questions and stormed out of the room. "Close the door!" He said to Yao Huanhuan who was left behind. 623 Killing Lin Huang had found out the location of the black market from Sun Ba. It was located near a busy street in the southeast of Sweep City. He summoned Thunder and rode on it once they got out of the hotel entrance. Yao Huanhuan was surprised to see the flying mount summoned. "You''re an Imperial Censor too?" Lin Huang nodded. He already knew that Yao Huanhuan was an Imperial Censor when they had first met in the morning. "What a coincidence! Me too!" Yao Huanhuan seemed to think that they had something in common which made them even closer to each other now. She then summoned her flying mount, a Tweedle Bird. Perhaps she was worried that her dragon would destroy things again, so she did not summon it. Her flying mount was a gold flame-level double mutated Tweedle Bird. It drew attention when it chirped loudly as it was summoned. No less subtle were its colorful feathers. The Tweedle Bird seemed to be proud that people were looking at it. Just when it was ready to chirp again, it noticed Thunder glaring at it not far away. It stopped making any noises and stepped aside. Thunder was different from the Tweedle Bird as it was a cruel predator while the Tweedle Bird was a pet with a melodious voice. Although they were both double mutated, even if they were on the same combat level, Thunder was much higher than the Tweedle Bird on the food chain. Let alone when Thunder was an immortal-level rank-1 now while the Tweedle Bird was only on gold flame-level. "Why are you so scared, Xiao Hong?" Yao Huanhuan noticed the change in her pet''s behavior and patted Tweedle Bird''s wings as she smiled. The Tweedle Bird was upset and ignored Yao Huanhuan by turning its head away. "Let''s go." Lin Huang patted Thunder and flew into the sky. Yao Huanhuan rode on Tweedle Bird and chased after them. As Lin Huang rode on Thunder, he figured that he had been too busy earlier and he needed to groom this old partner again. He planned to activate an Advanced Card to upgrade it to triple mutation, then use the Reborn Card and the Blood Thickening Card. After all that was done, Thunder should go through an ability transformation. He had used up his Advanced Cards, Reborn Cards, and Blood Thickening Cards earlier, so he put this aside. Now that he was left with 340 card draws, he would start a new round of cross-ranking kills after he leveled up to blue flame-level in a few days, and he would get even more card draws by then. Sweep City was almost the same size as the White Capital which was 15 million square kilometers. It was almost of the size of Russia on Earth. The distance from the hotel to the black market in the southeast was 2,500 kilometers away, and they took more than 40 minutes to arrive. Thunder landed on top of a skyscraper following Lin Huang''s command while the Tweedle Bird followed. He then caressed Thunder''s wings and recalled it back into card form. "Your pet is so well behaved!" Yao Huanhuan enviously commented. he then fed the Tweedle Bird with a jelly bean and recalled it much to its chagrin. It was Lin Huang''s first time witnessing a relationship between an Imperial Censor and its pet, and he found it was interesting. All of his Monster Cards did not need to eat. Unlike regular pet monsters, they needed to be fed and had to shit every day. Although his monsters had a character of their own, they would not throw tantrums like this Tweedle Bird or ignore instructions like the dragon this morning. Basically, they obeyed whatever Lin Huang said. As he thought about that, Lin Huang figured that he might not be a qualified Imperial Censor. Although Yao Huanhuan would occasionally be tortured by her pet monsters, looking at the way she communicated with them, despite not being an extraordinary Imperial Censor, she was much more qualified than Lin Huang was in many ways. "Let''s go." Lin Huang then looked away from Yao Huanhuan and glanced at the streets down below. "So, it''s in the busy streets down there? It''s so crowded!" Yao Huanhuan recalled Tweedle Bird and studied where Lin Huang was gazing. However, she was looking at the busy streets next to the black market. "Follow me." Lin Huang leaped and fell gracefully to the ground. Yao Huanhuan shrieked and followed him by leaping at the edge of the building. Soon, the both of them landed at different paces. Lin Huang then walked into the black market that was ten meters away while Yao Huanhuan followed him excitedly. When they arrived at the entrance, Yao Huanhuan looked at the busy streets that were 20 meters away. She was disappointed. "Oh, so it''s not that way!" "Follow me, don''t run around. It''s not my problem if the human traffickers take you away," Lin Huang warned her and walked into the alley ahead. "What human traffickers? Do you think I''m a three-year-old kid?" Yao Huanhuan giggled. Lin Huang stared at the naive Yao Huanhuan who was still giggling. "Are there really human traffickers?" Yao Huanhuan was stunned when she noticed Lin Huang''s serious expression. "Of course, this is a black market. Any of the stores could be doing human trafficking businesses," Lin Huang revealed the truth. "Hmph, if they dare to touch me, I''ll get my stupid dragon to bite them." Yao Huanhuan remained carefree. "It''s better that you don''t let your dragon out, or else people might follow you. In this black market, there might be immortal-level and even imperial-level people here. To them, your dragon is priceless. Don''t show your wealth off here, or else you''ll get yourself into trouble," Lin Huang said. Just when Yao Huanhuan wanted to object to Lin Huang, the door of the house ahead was opened. Five young men who dressed like gangsters walked out of it, all of them on gold flame-level. "Kill the man, keep the lady. Let''s take turns to have fun with her later." The leader with blonde hair and a nose piercing glared at Lin Huang and focused his attention on Yao Huanhuan. The men around him had dyed hair like watercolor had been splashed onto their heads. They had nose piercings too. "F*ck off!" Lin Huang did not hold back. In the black market, the more timid you were, the more you would be bullied. Of course, you would need to have abilities yourself to be fearless, or else you would leave this place as a dead body. Killing was prohibited in all footholds besides the black market. "Wow, are you trying to be a hero here?" The leader with blonde hair then looked at Lin Huang amusedly. "You won''t have the time to if you don''t run now." Lin Huang stared at the leader and ignored the rest. "Kill him! Kill the lady as well. We can have fun with her even if she''s dead!" The leader was taken aback by Lin Huang''s response, but he soon snapped out of it. Yao Huanhuan was terrified when she saw the men coming towards her. She was planning to summon her dragon. Suddenly, five crimson glows flashed in the air as Lin Huang raised his hand. There were holes that were the size of thumbs on the five men''s foreheads. They then fell onto the ground. After killing the five of them in one hit, Lin Huang moved his finger and retrieved their Emperor''s Heart Rings with his Telekinesis. He then kept the rings in his storage space. "They''re dead" Yao Huanhuan was shocked as she stared at the dead bodies on the ground which were still bleeding in their heads. "Let''s go." Lin Huang did not bother about Yao Huanhuan who was in shock and gestured at her to leave. He crossed the dead bodies and proceeded to walk ahead. Yao Huanhuan looked at Lin Huang who was getting further and ran after him following a moment''s hesitation. 624 Shopping at the Black Marke Since the five gold flame-level men were killed in a single hit, the store owners and visitors, who were ready to watch an exciting show, returned to the stores. They proceeded to do what they were doing and pretended not to have seen anything. Besides showing his stunning ability off, Lin Huang had just sent everyone a message that he was a crimson flame-level genius who had the ability of an immortal-level. Everyone knew that such a genius must be a core member of a top organization. People who dared to touch him would suffer a horrible death. Lin Huang brought Yao Huanhuan deeper into the alley. As soon as they disappeared, a few people dashed towards the dead bodies. In less than a second, the bodies were taken away, and there were even two individuals who fought each other for a dead body. To ordinary people, a dead human body was useless. However, to many of the business owners in the black market, it was something valuable that could be sold to puppeteers or witches. A complete gold flame-level human body could be sold at a higher price than a gold flame-level monster carcass. Of course, Lin Huang had no idea about all that. Even if he did, he had no one to sell the bodies to. As they entered the alley, they soon arrived at the main street of the black market. There were more stores there, but business was slow. Including Lin Huang and Yao Huanhuan, the number of visitors were less than half of the number of stores that were available. "It''s so quiet." Yao Huanhuan was upset as she walked into the alley. She did not speak until she saw the actual black market. "Most of the trading is done online now, so fewer people are shopping at the brick and mortar stores," Lin Huang turned around and explained to her. "Then, why didn''t you do it online?" Yao Huanhuan asked. "There''re many scammers online who sell fake stuff and fake information. I prefer to shop at the stores. There are fewer scammers here," Lin Huang explained patiently. "But what if there are scammers at the stores? They might just close their stores and leave after scamming you." Yao Huanhuan was determined to get to the bottom of this. "If that happens, I''ll try to look for the scammer when I have the time and make him pay for the price." Although Lin Huang''s tone was calm, Yao Huanhuan could sense that the cold tone in it. She recalled the dead bodies at the entrance of the black market. "Do you always kill?" Yao Huanhuan asked after a moment of silence. "If I don''t kill, they would''ve killed me." Lin Huang did not answer her question directly. "Is this why you refuse to tell me your real name? Are you afraid that I''m here to kill you?" Yao Huanhuan knew the name that he had given her was fake. She had just been pretending earlier. "Too many people want to kill me, so I have to be careful," Lin Huang admitted that he had his guard up against Yao Huanhuan. They became silent after that conversation. Soon, Lin Huang finally found the store selling information that Sun Ba had told him about. "Wait for me at the hall. Don''t run around and create trouble. There are many people like the five men in the black market, and there are even more powerful people than that," Lin Huang reminded Yao Huanhuan again as they walked into the store. Lin Huang then followed the female staff into a room. There was a lady who was in her early 30''s in the room. She had a voluptuous body, but she was not fat. Her combat level seemed to be hidden using a relic, so Lin Huang could only sense that her aura was just like an average person''s. "Dear Sir, what would you like to know?" The lady sounded extraordinarily sweet which made Lin Huang feel comfortable. She did not use any bewitching skills, but her voice was distinctive. "I want to know all the details of holy fire-level and immortal-level triple mutated monsters that are located in Division 3. Also, I need all the details of the danger zones and forbidden lands as well as the monsters in them," Lin Huang requested directly. The lady raised her eyebrow and smiled. "Not many people ask for such information. It''s a massive amount of data, and I''ll need some time to put them together. Could you come back tomorrow?" "Sure." Lin Huang nodded. "Is there anything else that you need?" The lady asked. Lin Huang thought about it and nodded. "All the details of the organizations in the Division 3 footholds." "That''s tough. I can only provide you info on A- to C-grade footholds although the C-grade foothold data is just a tough one, let alone the D-grade. But it seems like no organization wants to take over the D-grade footholds," the lady explained. "A- to C-grade are good enough." Lin Huang nodded. "If you''re not in a hurry, you can collect all of them tomorrow." The lady smiled at Lin Huang. "Sure!" After transferring the fee, Lin Huang gave her Lin Xie''s contact number. "Just send everything to this number tomorrow." "Please come back soon!" Lin Huang left after hearing the lady''s sweet voice. He soon noticed that Yao Huanhuan was no longer at the hall. He frowned and asked the staff who had brought him into the room, "Do you know where the lady went?" "She went into another trading room after you left," the staff explained. Soon, Yao Huanhuan returned. "Didn''t I ask you not to leave?" "I heard from the staff that they sell information here. I happen to have something to ask. Moreover, I didn''t leave this store. That''s not considered leaving!" Yao Huanhuan denied. Lin Huang did not want to argue with her. After leaving the store, Lin Huang shopped at the black market with Yao Huanhuan just like he promised. She would stop whenever she saw something interesting like a curious kid who stopped to look at fun things. After shopping at most of the stores, Yao Huanhuan bought many peculiar things that Lin Huang did not know about. She said she spent all her money on items that she had never seen before as collectibles. Lin Huang did not bother to tell her that some of the odd pots that she had bought were spittoons from the olden days. They finally got out of the black market when it was past 6 p.m. Yao Huanhuan projected the map, pinned the location, and summoned her Tweedle Bird. She then waved at Lin Huang. "Let''s go! I''ll bring you somewhere good!" 625 A Kid from a Rich Family It was proven that Yao Huanhuan was from a wealthy family as she brought Lin Huang to a posh restaurant called the Sweep Gourmet. The restaurant looked like a glorious palace and was decorated just like a palace where a real emperor lived. It was not the obnoxious kind of decoration whereby gaudiness ruled over class. The settings were just right. It seemed like every corner of the restaurant was carefully designed. Lin Huang secretly searched for the restaurant on the Heart Network and found out that it was opened by a demigod. The restaurant was a demigod relic just like the Union Government headquarter in Division 7. It was also the first official restaurant in Sweep City and ranked No. 9 in Division 3. It was famous from excellent word-of-mouth and delicious food. There might only be one flaw that the restaurant had -- its menu was so freaking expensive! Of course, almost everything was served here including double mutated imperial-level monsters. As long as one had enough Life Crystals, they could even order a triple mutated monster or rare types such as dragonkin. However, the price of such monsters would be even more expensive than purchasing them alive from an Imperial Censor. Yao Huanhuan seemed to be a regular customer. She brought Lin Huang straight to the third floor and asked for a private room. He was shocked to see the prices on the menu. The price of a plate of meat was equivalent to a third of a monster carcass on the market. The restaurant''s profit must be sky-high. For instance, an adult Swine Beast weighed more than five tons, and its meat made up 70% of its body. Taking away its bones and pure meat that occupied 35%, the meat was only 1.75 tonnes. Assuming a plate of stir-fried meat weighed 0.5 kilograms, one Swine Beast would be equivalent to 3,500 plates. Moreover, the Swine Beast''s bones could be used to boil soup, make braised pork, and be barbecued The gross profit would at least be thousands of times more. Deducting the labor and other costs, the restaurant''s clean profit was hundreds of times more than a typical restaurant''s. They ordered four dishes and one soup for dinner. It cost more than 5,000 Life Crystals. A modified grade-3 relic only cost 4,000 Life Crystals while 5,000 Life Crystals could be spent on a customized grade-3 relic. Lin Huang was embarrassed to let Yao Huanhuan pay, so he went to the counter to settle with the excuse that he was going to the loo. The staff at the counter then told him that the dinner was complimentary. Lin Huang was surprised as he did not know that Yao Huanhuan was such a big shot. He returned to the private room on the third floor without asking any further. He did not plan to find out more about Yao Huanhuan''s identity as they would not be seeing each other after dinner. No matter how interesting her identity seemed to be, it was none of his business. Yao Huanhuan had no idea that he had attempted to pay. It would be a total joke to know that a crimson flame-level person could not hold his bladder after one meal, but she pretended not to bother. It was 8 p.m. when they were done with dinner, and the sky was completely dark now. "Thanks for dinner," Lin Huang said after noticing that Yao Huanhuan finally put her chopsticks down. "How was it? Sumptuous, isn''t it?" Yao Huanhuan was contented. "Pretty good." "I''ll treat you again some other time." "I''ll be leaving Sweep City in two days." Lin Huang planned to leave after getting the monster''s location to get himself a suitable Life Fire monster the next day. "Where''re you going?" Yao Huanhuan asked immediately. "Not sure yet. I''ll only decide tomorrow after obtaining the information," Lin Huang said truthfully. "Will you come back?" Yao Huanhuan asked in anticipation. "Not sure, we''ll see." "Oh" Yao Huanhuan seemed to be gloomy to hear his answer. As they walked out of the restaurant, Yao Huanhuan stood at the entrance and asked Lin Huang, "Can you tell me your real name now?" Lin Huang hesitated before nodding. "My name is Lin Xie." Since it was a new identity, Yao Huanhuan would not be able to find anything. Besides, he would leave the next day if everything went as planned. There was no way for her to look for him. "I''ll remember that!" Yao Huanhuan nodded firmly before she grabbed Lin Huang''s hand and introduced herself again, "My name is Yao Huanhuan. From now on, we''re officially friends." Lin Huang wanted to withdraw his hand, but he did not. What Yao Huanhuan did was out of his expectations. "I need to go home now, or else I''ll get scolded. See you if we have the chance in the future." Yao Huanhuan withdrew her hand and summoned her white dimensional relic. She stepped into it and waved goodbye at him. Lin Huang smiled and shook his head as he watched Yao Huanhuan disappear together with her dimensional relic. The lady was even weirder than he thought. He then summoned his dimensional relic and vanished from where was. After he returned to the hotel, figuring that he would have a long day tomorrow, he got ready for bed when it was past 11 p.m. after reading some news. However, something caught his attention. The headlines were "Little Princess Dating A Strange Man in the Middle of the Night" and the photo was of him holding Yao Huanhuan''s hand at the entrance of Sweep Gourmet. "Princess?" Lin Huang tapped on the news in doubt. Three sentences into the news, Lin Huang finally found out Yao Huanhuan''s true identity. She was the daughter of Sweep City''s first family. Although Sweep City was under the Purple Crow, the Yao family was the first family who lived in the Sweep City 700 years ago. They were also an Imperial Censor family. In Division 3, besides the top eight families, the Yao family was the first echelon family. They held a high status as they had been in Sweep City for many years. Even the Purple Crow would avoid them as they were the real royal family. The restaurant''s demigod founder was Yao Huanhuan''s great-grandfather. Now, Lin Huang finally understood how Yao Huanhuan could eat for free. She was the youngest member in the family at only 17. She had a sister called Yao Lan, and the both of them were the only two daughters in the youngest generation of the family, so they were precious. They were called the Big Princess and Little Princess in Sweep City. The most popular thing about the little princess was that she would get a new summoning monster every six months. When she obtained her new monster, she would destroy the city. However, she did not do that on purpose because she had yet to master the summoning monster which was triggered by the environment and would start destroying buildings. The dragon that Lin Huang encountered earlier was one such situation. At first, nobody dared to ask for compensation as the Yao family was a significant royal family after all. However, she would always initiate the compensation and would always pay more than twice the price of the damages. Since then, everyone got used to it and would ask for compensation from the family. They even welcomed the Little Princess to destroy their houses. "I didn''t know I would be famous on my first day in Division 3" Lin Huang wondered if he should laugh or cry after reading about the Yao family. 626 Scary Instinc The next morning, Lin Huang went to the buffet breakfast on the second floor after washing up. Just when he was getting his food, he noticed that many people were watching him. He did not bother at first, but as he sat down after exploring the buffet spread and getting the food that he wanted, he realized that almost everyone in the restaurant was staring at him. Some of them were even pointing and talking about him. "What''s this about?" Lin Huang looked down at himself. He seemed to be dressed alright today. He then turned on the selfie mode on his Emperor''s Heart Ring to see if there was anything on his face. He was getting more and more skeptical. "Why are all these people looking at me?" On the double, Lin Huang left the restaurant after finishing his breakfast. Noticing that the staff at the entrance was looking curiously at him too, he could not help but ask, "Why are you guys looking at me? Is there anything wrong with me?" "Dear guest, didn''t you read the local news?" The female staff asked him back. "The local news?" "About you dating Little Princess last night. Everybody knows about it now. It''s the biggest news of the year in Sweep City." The female staff smiled. "People in Sweep City has nothing better to do" Lin Huang thought to himself when he heard the staff''s answer. After he returned to his room, he found out that the comments of the news last night had blown up. "Little Princess is mine! The strange man can go f*ck himself!" "Judging by his look, we know that he''s a bastard who scams little girls!" "5 credit points to get the strange man''s address who dated Little Princess. I want to stab him to death!'' "Upvote to that! Credit point +1. Don''t forget to livestream when you stab him to death!" "I support that! Credit point +2. I''ll give you chicken feet if you livestream that." "Credit point +3! Please get more chicken feet and marinate them Ahh, I''m drooling!" "Credit point +4. We''ve found a man-eater here! I''m reporting this!" They were almost 100,000 comments on that single piece of news. Lin Huang then registered a new account on Weibo and found out that all the locals were talking about the same topic. Tens of thousands of threads had been created in a night and it was increasing. There were new threads coming up almost every second. It was mind-blowing. Lin Huang was speechless. "That girl did this to me!" His plan was to stay low for a while in Division 3 so that he could focus on leveling up. He could always show off when he reached immortal-level. He did not expect himself to become famous in Sweep City on the second day after arriving in Division 3. If the topic became the number one in the browsing section, not only Sweep City, all of the other footholds in Division 3 would see his face. Luckily, his face was a disguise. Even a demigod could not tell how he really looked like from his picture. Lin Huang calmed himself down and read the other news as well as the public information about the black market. He received a message from the lady from the black market when it was past 9 a.m. Before he could view the attachments, the lady sent a video call request. Lin Huang frowned and decided to pick up the call. "Morning, dear customer!" "Why are you calling?" Lin Huang asked. "Mainly to tell you about the documents that I''ve just sent you." The lady sounded sweet as usual. "Of course, but I''m sure there''s something else besides that." "Go on." "Do you know that many people contacted us to find out about you after the news got out last night?" The lady smiled. "And then?" "We did a check on you, but we didn''t manage to get anything, so we didn''t really make much money from that." "Are you saying that you want to pay me a portion of what you made?" Lin Huang remained calm. There was nothing much about Lin Xie, so it was only natural that the lady did not manage to get anything. "You''re so good at joking." The lady smiled. "Stop beating around the bush. Say what you need to say." Lin Huang knew very well that the lady had not just called to chat with him. "Alright then, I shall get straight to the point!" She became serious. "Since you asked for information about monsters, I''m sure you''re going to kill a number of them. Could you sell us the monster carcasses after that? We''ll buy them at market price since we don''t have many monster carcass resources." "Why me?" Lin Huang asked. "We need the stock urgently. We''ve already contacted customers who hunt and you''re one of them. You''ve proven that you have stunning killing abilities. That''s the kind of collaborating partner that we''re looking for." "I can sell them to anyone I want. What do I get if I sell them to you?" Lin Huang asked practically. "As long as you agree to do this, you''ll be our partner and we''ll guarantee not to leak your identity," she said slyly, "Especially your identity that''s being investigated to find out who you really are." Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat. The lady knew that he was using a fake identity. "Why don''t you tell me who I really am?" Lin Huang remained calm on the surface. "We don''t know as we didn''t investigate." The lady was honest. "But I can''t guarantee that nobody will spend a sum of money to find out about you. Trust me, no matter how you hide, there are ways to discover your real identity as long as someone pays. If we become partners, we''ll keep this a secret and even come up with fake information when it''s needed." "I''m just an ordinary person. There''s nothing to investigate about my identity." Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. "I''m not sure how you even came up with this false assumption that my identity is fake. Without any practical benefits, I won''t come all the way here just to sell the monster carcasses to you. I can sell them anywhere else at the same price. That''s more convenient for me. I''m hanging up if that''s all you have to say." "Wait!" The lady was surprised by Lin Huang''s response, but soon she came up with a new plan. "We''ll give you a 20% discount if you''re asking for information or purchasing items from us!" "Can you give a better discount?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "20% is the highest that I can get for you." The lady shook her head and smiled. "This is the best that I can do. Please don''t make it tough for me." "Alright then, it''s set!" Lin Huang agreed. Lin Huang was relieved as he hung up the call. He had almost admitted his fake identity. Luckily, he was smart enough to deny it. On the other side, the lady frowned as she looked at Lin Huang''s identity in her hand. "So, did he agree?" A man in glasses asked as he stood at the door. "Yes, he did. He agreed to the 20% discount that I offered." The lady forced a smile. "Didn''t you say that you could get him to talk since you know that his identity is fake?" The man in glasses was surprised. "He denied it." The lady shook her head. "I''ve investigated his identity, but there''s nothing wrong with it. My instincts tell me that he''s using a fake identity, so I tried to trap him, but I failed. Perhaps my instincts were wrong. It''s not the first time anyway" "Maybe you''re too tired. Rest more, alright?" The man in glasses comforted her. 627 Yao Family’s Reaction Early morning in the Yao residence in Sweep City, Yao Huanhuan walked to the dining room while humming after washing up. Her mother, father, and sister were seated. The three of them were peeking at her as they ate slowly. "Sis, when did you come back?" Yao Huanhuan was surprised to see the young lady home. "This morning," Yao Lan replied. "So early? Don''t you always come back during lunch? So, you''ve decided to come back during breakfast now?" Yao Huanhuan giggled. "I had a last-minute mission in the middle of the night which was just near home, so I dropped by. "Oh." Yao Huanhuan chatted with her sister before joining them for breakfast. "Huanhuan, where did you go last night that you had to come home so late?" Her mother asked a while later. "Didn''t I tell you that I bought my friend a meal? We ended up shopping in the afternoon, so I bought him dinner before coming home." Yao Huanhuan skipped the part where she went to the black market. "You bought someone a meal?" Yao Lan thought it was odd. "Yeah, I told you about the guy who blocked my Dumb Dumb yesterday morning," Yao Huanhuan said with a smile. "Dumb Dumb?" Yao Lan thought that she could not understand her own sister anymore. "The dragonkin that you got her earlier," her mother explained helplessly. "Didn''t you call it Hong Hong?" Yao Lan frowned. "I changed its name yesterday. It''s so dumb!" Yao Huanhuan explained. "I suppose you rode on it before even coming to an agreement with your summoning monster?" Yao Lan glared at her. "Didn''t I tell you many times that you need to train your summoning monster for at least three months before bringing it out in public?!" "But it behaved well when it was at home!" Yao Huanhuan denied. "That''s just the preliminary training. You''ll need more training such as anti-interference. You''ve always brought your summoning monsters out in public after finishing the preliminary training and ignored the other training. It''s normal for it to go crazy when it sees so many people and flying mounts all around it!" Yao Lan gave her a lesson, knowing how reckless Yao Huanhuan was. "So, how many streets did it destroy yesterday? "Not many. Less than two streets," Yao Huanghuan chuckled. "All thanks to my friend. If he didn''t slap Dumb Dumb to make it pass out, I''ve no idea how much compensation I''d need to pay. So, of course, I had to buy him a meal to thank him." "He made your gold flame-level triple mutated dragonkin pass out with one slap?" Yao Lan raised her eyebrow. "Your friend is an immortal-level?" "Hehe, he''s only crimson flame-level," Yao Huanhuan said excitedly. "Sis, you might not be able to fight him even if the both of you are on the same level. He didn''t only slap Dumb Dumb, he even killed" Yao Huanhuan then realized that she had said something that she should not have, so she stopped immediately. "What did he kill?" Her father, who had been quiet, frowned and asked when he heard that. "No Nothing." Yao Huanhuan looked down and shoved a bread into her mouth. "Did he kill people in front of you?" Her father demanded. "No, no," Yao Huanhuan denied. She knew that if her parents found out what Lin Huang had done, they would ask her to stop being friends with him. Her parents looked at each other. They knew how she behaved like when she was lying, and it was obvious that she had just lied. "You''re not allowed to see this person anymore!" Her father said furiously. "Huanhuan, try not to get close to people like that. Since you''ve already bought him a meal, you''ve already paid your deed." Although her mother''s tone was gentle, the message she was trying to send was the same as Yao Huanhuan''s father. "Huanhuan, the triple mutated gold flame-level dragonkin that I got you actually has the ability of an immortal-level rank-2. Your friend is just on crimson flame-level, but he managed to settle the dragon that was a level higher than him. That proves that he''s a real supreme genius. I would''ve lost to an immortal-level rank-2 monster if I were to fight one when I was on crimson flame-level, let alone settling it in a single blow. Such a person must be trained by a powerful organization, and there are only a few such organizations in Division 3 besides underground members. I know most of them, but I''ve never heard of such a person. That possibly mean he''s a member of an underground organization, most probably one of the top ones," Yao Lan analyzed Lin Huang''s identity. Yao Huanhuan did not say a word as she already knew that Lin Huang was a member of an underground organization. It was not difficult to conclude that from the way that he had killed and how familiar he was with the black market. However, she did not think that Lin Huang was a bad person. "I''m full. You guys go on." Yao Huanhuan put the bread down on the table and left. The three of them looked at her leave without stopping her. After Yao Huanhuan left, Yao Lan spoke to her parents, "You guys have spoiled her. I think the guy didn''t know who Huanhuan is, so he wasn''t interested in her. Now that it''s all over the news, it''s too risky to let her get close to that guy." "Old Yao, get something to find out who that guy is." The mother looked at her husband desperately. "Whether it''s related to Huanhuan or not, this person must have some kind of intention. We must find out what he''s doing in Sweep City." "Yes, we should. The father nodded and glared deadly. "If he''s coming for the Yao family, no matter which organization he''s from, I won''t let him live. Lin Huang, who was tens of kilometers away, had no idea that he was being targeted by the Yao family After hanging up on the call from the lady, he looked at the documents that she had sent immediately. The first one was of the organizations in all footholds of Division 3. It detailed the records from A-grade to C-grade footholds and even included the contradictions between the organizations as well as the fights that had happened in the past. He had a rough skim through and started looking at the second document. The second one held the information of severe danger zones and forbidden lands as well as where the monsters were. Lin Huang noticed that the number of severe danger zones in Division 3 were more than thrice the number that they had in Division 7. There were 18 forbidden lands, which was almost triple what Division 7 had. He then looked at the last document about holy fire-level and immortal-level triple mutated monsters in Division 3. It was the most important document to him at that point. He then started looking for the Life Fire monster that suited him the most 628 Third Life Fire Monster The Four-Faced Beast was an immortal-level rank-5 triple mutated monster. It had a gigantic head with four human faces that faced different directions. Besides the four faces, it had 16 muscular arms and four strong legs. If it was placed on Earth, it would definitely be classified as a deformed human caused by severe nuclear radiation. Obtaining its tinder would give Lin Huang the ability to form extra arms during battles. The Argus Scorpiodemon was an immortal-level rank-6 triple mutated fiend. It had four large and eight small eyes on its head. Besides that, there were tens of yellowish fangs exposed in the middle of its head. The entire head and body were covered with a brown, hard carapace. Its dark purple pinchers were bigger than its head. There were irregular spikes growing on its head all the way to its tails. It had three long tails on its back with a green iridescent shimmer that could be seen under the sun. Obtaining its tinder would give Lin Huang the ability to master more than 300 types of venom. Meanwhile, the Cimmerian Corpse was an immortal-level rank-6 triple mutated spirit monster. It was covered in a big black robe that almost covered its feet as it floated around. In its loose sleeves were five black claws measuring almost 50 centimeters in length like the tail of a scorpion. It had a rotten human face with maggots squirming all around. Its tinder would give Lin Huang the ability to control bones whereby he could form a black bone structure that could be a weapon or a shield. The strength of the bone structure was as powerful as a supreme relic. The black market provided Lin Huang with the information about more than 30 triple mutated monsters. After some careful elimination, those that he was able to kill shrunk the list to less than half while the rest were monsters that were above immortal-level rank-7. He was not surprised by that as there were not many triple mutated monsters since the beginning. Moreover, all of the powerful Imperial Censors would follow the trails of triple mutated monsters and hunt them down as soon as they found one that was suitable for them. Besides Imperial Censors, geniuses, who would able to fight triple mutated monsters, would kill them to obtain their tinder or their monster souls. Those triple mutated monsters that were not killed or captured were weak and nobody wanted them as a pet or a monster soul. Meanwhile, the powerful ones could not be killed by geniuses or tamed by Imperial Censors. Sometimes, they appeared in areas that were difficult to access such as forbidden lands which death rate was high. Lin Huang frowned as he finished reading the document. There was only one monster that was related to Sword Dao among the 30-odd monsters, but it was an immortal-level rank-9 monster. Besides, the tinder of the monster was only a legendary-level Sword Dao skill, and not the Sword Heart that he desired. Lin Huang was not interested in the Sword Dao skill as he had Mr. Fu and Qi Mu Xiong''s memories. With his One Page Sword Scripture, he was already on his path in Sword Dao, so skills that were below god-level could not interest him anymore. A holy fire-level only had five chances to get to Life Fire. Lin Huang did not want to waste the opportunity on a Sword Dao skill that was unnecessary. Moreover, he would need to waste a Provisional Transformation Card to level up his combat level to kill the immortal-level rank-5 monster. However, besides that monster''s tinder, there was none that he was happy with. He could not make a decision until lunch time. Feeling helpless, he summoned Bloody for advice as well as contacting the hotel staff for service. Soon, the staff sent two portions of lunch. As Lin Huang ate his lunch, he waited for Bloody to read all about the monsters patiently so that it could give him some suggestion. As he was finishing lunch, Bloody had read everything about the monsters. "I''ve ordered lunch for you. You can eat it before advising me." Lin Huang pointed at the plate. Bloody then extended its two antennas, grabbed the plate and poured the food into its mouth. It put the plate back where it had been after licking the plate clean. Lin Huang had just finished his food and passed his plate to Bloody when he saw what it had done. "You can clear this as well." Bloody did not mind Lin Huang''s leftovers and licked his plate clean too. "I sure hope the staff clean the plates when they get them back," Lin Huang mumbled to himself. Bloody then started speaking after spending a couple of seconds finishing its lunch, "I think this is the Life Fire monster that suits you best." Bloody used its antenna to point at one of the monsters on the projection. "The Devil''s Psykid?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow when he saw the monster that Bloody was pointing at. It was a human kid monster on the screen. It looked like a little boy that was less than 1.2 meters tall with a black cloak. Its face was hiding under the hood. Half of it was a skeleton while another half was perfectly fine. Its eye on the right looked scary. The Devil''s Psykid was a triple mutated fiend that was skilled at Telekinesis and spirit attack. In the document, it stated that it was an immortal-level rank-6. It was the perfect range for Lin Huang to fight without using a Transformation Card. However, he eliminated this monster as his Life Fire monster from the beginning. "The Devil''s Psykid''s Life Fire has Demonic Telekinesis. I already have Divine Telekinesis. Wouldn''t it waste my time killing it?" Lin Huang shook his head as he explained. "Master, you got something wrong. Telekinesis is an ability that can be strengthened continuously. The Divine Telekinesis that you have will be strengthened when you obtained Demonic Telekinesis," Bloody paused. "Moreover, the most important part is although the Devil''s Psykid doesn''t have Supreme Intelligence, it''s a monster with high intelligence. The telekinesis that it has is already on a terrifying level whereby it''s comparable with a supreme genius who''s an expert in telekinesis. You won''t be just getting its telekinesis skill when you get its Life Fire, you''ll also obtain its experience in telekinesis. It''s a whole package. If you obtain this skill, Master, you''ll save two to three years mastering telekinesis." "The path to telekinesis doesn''t sound bad." Lin Huang was convinced after hearing Bloody''s explanation. "With this new identity in Division 3, it isn''t convenient for me to use my sword. My close-distance ability is limited, so the most I can fight is an immortal-level rank-2 or rank-3 monster" There were actually many telekinesis skills and techniques in Qi Muxiong''s memories, but Lin Huang did not have the time to train earlier. It would take time to master telekinesis, so he had put it aside. Not that there was a shortcut available, but he would not want to let it go. "Sure, let''s go for the Devil''s Psykid then!" 629 The Second Most Dangerous Forbidden Land The immortal-level rank-6 Devil''s Psykid was a great source of tinder as well as an excellent choice as a summoning monster. It had not been captured or killed by anyone mainly because it was locked on the second layer of the forbidden land, Abyss Brink. The Abyss Brink existed 800 years ago before the first Virtual Eye opened, and it was the second most dangerous forbidden land in this world. The Abyss Brink almost covered the entire world. If one was to shrink the world map many times smaller, the Abyss Brink was like a gigantic, complicated spider web. Its ocean covered 8 of the 12 safe zones while the entire Abyss Brink covered the 13 safe zones, including the land of origin. Mr. Fu and the rest who were involved in the building of safe zones could not help this. Besides the borders of the world, no matter where the safe zones were built, they would always land on the Abyss Brink. This particular forbidden land was dangerous as the Abyss Brink did not have any monsters that were below transcendent-level. Even the least powerful monster on the first level of the Abyss Brink was a holy fire-level monster. There were even many immortal-level monsters wandering on the first layer of the Abyss Brink. Meanwhile, on the second layer where the Devil''s Psykid was located, the least powerful monster was an immortal-level rank-1, and there were even imperial-level monsters. On the third level, even an imperial-level person would not dare to enter as the least powerful monster was on imperial-level, and there were even demigod monsters. There was also a fourth level in the Abyss Brink, which was called the virtual zone, as well as an isolated forbidden land that was the most dangerous forbidden land in the world! Its entrance was located on the third layer while its opening times and location were different every time. The period for which the entrance stayed open differed from time to time as well. It was like a ruin that opened irregularly, which was why it was called a virtual zone. The virtual zone''s existence was similar to the Abyss Brink''s whereby it had opened way before the first Virtual Eye. However, all of the ancient recordings during the ancient epoch had never mentioned anybody surviving the virtual zone after entering it. This forbidden land that existed in isolation was like a massive black hole that engulfed everything. With Lin Huang''s current ability, he was unwilling to risk his life in the Abyss Brink. If he had to, he would usually explore the first level and would not go to the second level as there were just too many life-threatening monsters there. However, after hearing about all the benefits that killing the Devil''s Psykid would give, he decided to risk his life this time. "Although it''s the second layer of the Abyss Brink, it should still be safe if I follow the coordinates that were provided to find the Devil''s Psykid and get out from the place as soon as I kill it," Lin Huang comforted himself. The six God Crashers that he had were only down to three to four shots but to be safe, he decided to reload all of them just in case something happened. After spending the entire afternoon and half his evening preparing for his trip, he went to bed right after that. He had no idea that the Yao family had been doing all sorts of investigation throughout the day. In the middle of the night, Yao Huanhuan''s father, mother, and sister Yao Lan gathered in their family reading room. "So, did you manage to get anything about the guy?" The mother asked. "This guy is hiding very well. There''s nothing wrong in his network history on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He has never downloaded any ''movies'' before. I mean, which young kid like him has never watched those sort of ''movies''? I remember when I was younger" The father started, then he realized that his wife was staring angrily at him, so he changed the topic. "Ahem, so that shows that he''s hiding many things. Although it''s been a short period and the people investigating him could only find his basic information, it proves that there''s a powerful organization that''s concealing his identity for him. If he''s from a Union Organization or some member from a prestigious family, he wouldn''t conceal his identity like that. It''s no surprise that he might even be a member of an underground organization. It''s just that we haven''t managed to find out which underground organization he belongs to." "So, you''re saying that you didn''t manage to find out any sh*t about this guy?" The mother was dissatisfied with the outcome of the investigation. "Don''t say that! At least now I know he''s not interested in our Huanhuan." The father smiled. "Why so?" The mother asked. "He has bought a ticket to the Abyss Brink today and he''ll leave Sweep City tomorrow," he explained with a wide grin. "He''s only a crimson flame-level but he''s going to the Abyss Brink. Is he digging his own grave?" Yao Lan rolled her eyes. "Supreme geniuses usually have high expectations. Didn''t you say that you wanted to explore the Abyss Brink when you had just reached white flame-level?" The father had a less biased judgement towards Lin Huang ever since he found out that Lin Huang was not interested in his daughter. "Moreover, as Huanhuan described, the possibility of this guy risking his life on the first level of Abyss Brink is low." "Since he''s going to the Abyss Brink, why can''t he just go from another city? Why must he come to Sweep City?" Yao Lan still could not get over the fact that this strange man had gotten so close to her sister. That''s my sister. Get off, bastard! She had rejected a mission in the middle of the night when she saw the picture of Yao Huanhuan holding a strange man''s hand. What she had said in the morning was just an excuse. "I found out that he didn''t come to Sweep City on purpose. He was sent from another safe zone''s dimensional portal." Many people had witnessed the incident involving Lin Huang with Sun Ba, so that was not difficult to find out. "You mean this guy came from a safe zone outside of the core zone?" Yao Lan raised an eyebrow. "There''re supreme geniuses outside of the core zone" The dimensional portal in Sweep City sent people randomly from divisions outside of the core zones. Besides Sweep City, to save energy, besides the dimensional portal in No. A1 to No. A10 footholds, all of the other A-grade footholds in Division 3 would transport people at the same time. The operation was only done once a day. The dimensional portals in Division 3 were like receiving terminals that received people who were sent across the safe zones at the same time. Therefore, Sweep City could not determine which division was Lin Huang sent from. Hearing Yao Lan''s doubts, the father said in all seriousness, "Lan Er, don''t underestimate anyone''s birthplace as one''s ability. There are also supreme geniuses who are comparable with the people in Division 1 to Division 3, so it''s normal that there are supreme geniuses in other divisions." Yao Lan was quiet as she stared at the table. Nobody knew what she was thinking about. A while later, she peered up from the table. "I shall visit the Abyss Brink as well. There''s a mission taking place there." "Lan Er, please don''t find fault with the kid. After all, he didn''t do anything to our family. Don''t create trouble out of nowhere and offend the organization behind him." The mother frowned. "Don''t worry. I''m not going to find fault with him. I''m just going for a mission and I shall see what''s the guy that Huanhuan has so many good things to say about is like." Yao Lan smirked. 630 Yao Lan’s Probe The next morning, Lin Huang checked out of the hotel after breakfast and headed straight to the dimensional portal terminal to the Abyss Brink. The dimensional portal to the Abyss Brink was located at a different place from the usual foothold dimensional portal as the both of them were hundreds of kilometers apart. Just like the usual dimensional portal, it was operated by a team that handled the daily maintenance. The dimensional portal would only be opened at 9 a.m. once a day. If a person missed it, he would have to purchase a ticket again and come back the next day. There were already 30 to 40 people at the dimensional portal when Lin Huang arrived. Most of them were having breakfast or drinking coffee at the stores nearby. Some of them sat on the bench reading news and scrolling on social media sites. He went into the cafe and got himself a seat after ordering a cup of black coffee. He started reading the news. Soon, the waiter served his drink. He waited patiently for the dimensional portal to open as he sipped on his coffee. As he was finishing his coffee, a young lady in her early 20''s walked into the cafe. The lady smirked when she saw Lin Huang. As she passed by where he sat at the al fresco area and ordered her coffee, she turned around and headed towards Lin Huang''s table. "Hi, anyone sitting here?" The lady asked as she stood across Lin Huang at the table. "No." Lin Huang was so engrossed in reading the news that he did not even look up when he responded. The lady frowned when she realized that Lin Huang did not even bother to look at her. After a moment of silence, the lady suddenly spoke, "Eh, aren''t you the guy who dated Yao Huanhuan?" Lin Huang then looked up and studied the lady. His eyes lit up. She looked like she was in her early 20''s and was almost 1.7 meters tall. She had a pair of long legs and a pretty nice body but her breasts were a little too small. "You''ve got the wrong guy." Lin Huang looked away after checking her out. "How is that possible? You look exactly like the guy in the picture!" The lady exclaimed and projected the picture in the news. "The picture only shows the side profile of the man. I admit his side profile looks a little like mine, but if you compare me and him, you''ll realize that his front profile isn''t as handsome as mine," Lin Huang started rattling nonsense. "Ever since the news was published that night, people have told me that I look like him yesterday. It''s irritating. So, I''ll tell you once again that the guy in the news isn''t me. Our side profiles just look slightly similar." The lady was stunned like she did not expect Lin Huang would deny her like that. She almost believed that she had the wrong guy, but soon she snapped out of it. "It''s you. Stop denying!" "Lady, you''ve really got the wrong guy. Can''t you see that we''re wearing different clothes?" Lin Huang proceeded to deny. "Different clothes?" The lady was stunned. She then studied Lin Huang and looked at the picture before realizing he was playing a fool with her. "You can change your clothes! Do you think I''m a three-year-old?!" "I''ve already told you that I''m not the guy in the news. What do you want from me?" Lin Huang spread his arms wide. "Whether you admit it or not, I know you''re the guy!" The lady insisted. "Whether you believe me or not, I''m not," Lin Huang insisted. The staff finally served the lady''s coffee, and she calmed down slightly. Lin Huang then proceeded to read the news again. After taking a sip of coffee, the lady interrogated, "What''s your relationship with Yao Huanhuan?" "We''re not in any relationship. I don''t even know her," Lin Huang replied callously without even looking up. "Alright then, maybe I''ve really got the wrong guy." The lady finally let it go. "I''ve told you that since the beginning, there''s nothing that I can do if you don''t believe me." Lin Huang had his eyes on the news page. "Since you said you don''t know Yao Huanhuan, that means you''re not from Sweep City then? She''s the Little Princess of Sweep City. Nobody in the foothold doesn''t know her. Even if they''ve never seen her, the name should ring a bell," the lady proceeded to probe. "Yeah, I''m not," Lin Huang gave a short reply. "Then, why are you here in Sweep City?" The lady asked. Lin Huang frowned when he heard that. If the lady recognized him from the news, what she asked should be all about Yao Huanhuan. After all, Yao Huanhuan was the person everybody cared about while he was just a sidekick that rode on the wave of fame. However, now that the lady had started focusing on him instead of Yao Huanhuan, he had his guard up towards her. "I''m just passing by," Lin Huang gave a short reply again. "So, where are you from?" "Why don''t you guess?" Lin Huang glared at the lady, trying to figure out if the lady had investigated him. "I can''t guess. Forget it if you''re not telling." The lady did not fall into his trap and changed the subject instead. "Why are you going to the Abyss Brink? I guess you can tell me that?" "To hunt for Life Fire monsters," Lin Huang told the truth. "Me too. My name is Lan Yao. Let''s form a team." Yao Lan gave a fake name and suggested that they form a team. "No," Lin Huang rejected her directly. "Why not? It''ll be safer if the both of us are together." "I''m used to doing things on my own," Lin Huang replied. "So, you want me to go on my own? What if something happens to me?" Yao Lan showed a pitiful expression. "Then, you shouldn''t go or get a few friends to go with you. There''s no difference if you go now or later since you''re hunting Life Fire monsters." Yao Lan had no idea what to say to Lin Huang as what he said made sense. "What''s the matter with you?" She did not expect to be backhanded so many times by him. "Lady, let me give this to you straight. We''re on different roads. I''m going to the second layer of the Abyss Brink." To Lin Huang, she was just another crimson flame-level. To prevent her from following him, he revealed his plans. "You''re going to the second layer?" Yao Lan was shocked to hear that and she could tell that Lin Huang was not lying. However, the second layer of the Abyss Brink was not a place for her as an immortal-level rank-3. Lin Huang was only a crimson flame-level, but he had the guts to go to the second layer. To her, he was digging his own grave. "You''re only crimson flame-level and you''re going to the second layer? Do you plan to die there?" "There''s nothing that I can do. The Life Fire monster that I''m looking for is on the second layer. I''ll leave right after I kill it." Lin Huang shrugged. "Do you think the Abyss Brink is a place that you can just enter and leave as you wish?" Yao Lan thought Lin Huang was being ridiculous. "Never mind then. I''m not stopping you from killing yourself. Have fun!" Yao Lan stood up and left immediately, not bothering to speak to Lin Huang anymore. To her, as long as he got to the second layer, it was impossible for him to get out alive. It was unnecessary for her to waste her time on a person who was going to die soon. "I''ve finally chased her away." Lin Huang looked at the time. It was already 8.40 a.m. and the dimensional portal would be opened soon. He ordered another cup of coffee as he waited patiently. 631 The Three of Them Are Here for Your Breakfas When it was almost 9 a.m., they started queuing up a few minutes beforehand to have their tickets checked. Surprisingly, when they formed two lines, there were a total of 167 of them. Lin Huang took a glance at the queues and realized that two teams were going on a trip! The leaders of both of the teams were the immortal-levels, and he guessed that they were on the rank-3 or rank-4. Both of them were holding red flags with white words printed A day trip to the Abyss Brink. The holy fire-level young men that followed them were chatting with each other. ''How could they develop the tourism industry in the forbidden land? The people in the core zone are really geniuses'' Lin Huang thought to himself. Looking at the time, it was already 8.57 a.m. He then put the cup down and slowly made his way towards the queue. A young man was queuing up in front of Lin Huang. Because he saw that Lin Huang had lined up behind him, he asked curiously, "Bro, are you from our group? Why didn''t I see you just now?" The man was one of the team members on the trip. "No, I''m going on my own." Lin Huang shook his head. "You''re just on crimson flame-level, yet you have the guts to enter the Abyss Brink on your own? You''re kind of brave, aren''t you?!" He exclaimed. In fact, he felt that Lin Huang was eager to die. However, he was not close to Lin Huang and felt that if he were too direct, he would undoubtedly offend him. "Is it safe to go on a trip in a group?" Lin Huang was curious. "It''s quite safe. Although it''s a vacation, we actually follow the tour guide and walk along the safe route for only half a day. We''ll take photos and kill two monsters in the Abyss Brink so that we can experience how it feels like to hunt monsters in the forbidden land. After we return, we can share the photos on our social networks," the man explained honestly. "Can''t you guys stay overnight?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course we can''t. Doing so is dangerous. The monsters will be rather active at night compared to during the daytime. Most of the predators are active at night." The man explained further, "However, there''s also an overnight package which costs a lot more and signing a waiver is necessary. If anything happens, the tour company and the tour guide aren''t going to bear the responsibility. It''s less likely for anyone to sign up for that tour package. They can''t even get a single business transaction for that package in a month. Most of the day trip tour guides are immortal-level rank-3 or rank-4. As for the tour guides of the overnight trip, they are immortal-levels of higher ranks, possibly immortal-level rank-6 or rank-7." "Is there any limit on the combat strength of the people who join the travel program?" Lin Huang made a guess as he noticed that none of the holy fire-levels joined the team. "They must be at least on white flame-level. Also, they must''ve completed building their flying forcefield so that they can master the flying skills. Otherwise, they won''t be able to escape if anything happens." "It sounds interesting." Lin Huang felt that the person who came up with the idea of the tour program was intelligent. "I suppose it''s not cheap to go for a trip like this, is it?" "It''s quite expensive! It costs 3,000 Life Crystals, and there''s no refund or transfer allowed. We have to pay for everything that we prepare for the trip as well as the traveling tickets through the dimensional portal." The man looked upset. "I regretted right after paying for the tour program. Oh well, since I''ve already paid for it, it''ll go to waste if I don''t go." "This is considered the cheapest package among all. There''s the overnight package, the three-day trip, and the seven-day trip. The overnight trip costs more than 10,000 Life Crystals. As for the three-day trip, it costs 50,000 Life Crystals, and the seven-day trip costs 100,000 Life Crystals." After chatting for a while, the portal was activated. Both of them then stopped talking. Soon, both of the teams entered after scanning their entrance tickets. Lin Huang was the last one to enter the portal. After he stepped into the portal, the door gradually closed. A few moments later, the crowd cautiously strode out of the dimensional portal and appeared at the border of the deep entrance. "Right through this entrance is the Abyss Brink. Please fly according to the white dotted line drawn on the cliff and make sure that you don''t stray from the flight path as you''ll get lost easily over here. If you''re flying off track, you might accidentally wander into places that you shouldn''t enter, and you''ll have to bear the responsibility." After explaining, the staff summoned his dimensional relic and left. Lin Huang set the location in his dimensional relic as well so that he could come the next time again. Many of them jumped into the entrance. "Good luck, bro." The man who had chatted with Lin Huang patted his shoulder, then followed his team and entered. He wondered if Lin Huang would survive. Many of them had left. Lan Yao, the girl who had talked to him earlier, was there as well. He did not bother about her and took a leap towards the entrance. "I''d like to see if the guy is actually going to the second layer!" Yao Lan hesitated for a while when she saw Lin Huang leap towards the entrance. Still, she chose to follow after him. After Yao Lan had left, three of the men exchanged glances with each other. "She''s so pretty!" "But she has small boobs." "What''s wrong with having small boobs? She''s still pretty! Do you want her? If you don''t, she''ll belong to both of us." "Yes, I do. Of course, I do!" The three of them entered as well. As Lin Huang flew along the white dotted line, he saw many other black ripples that might possibly be the entrance to the other parts of the Abyss Brink. Some of them allowed direct access deep into the Abyss Brink whereas some of them were temporary entrances that nobody knew when would close. If anybody happened to enter the Abyss Brink through those, it would be difficult for them to leave. After moving down for about five minutes, Lin Huang finally arrived at the end of the dotted line. There was a giant arrow pointing downward at a large, blue-black ripple. It was the actual entrance to the Abyss Brink which would lead them to the periphery of the first layer. Seeing that the people in front of him had entered, Lin Huang followed after them as well. As he passed through the blue-black ripple, he could see a yellowish sky that looked somewhat like the weather during a sandstorm in the city on Earth. They could not see the Sun although it was now daytime. Only the sound of the wind howling could be heard. The ground had become desolate with a few clumps of withered grass. The place did not look like it had entered spring at all. Apparently, the weather over here was different from the outside. Not far away from Lin Huang, two of the small teams rested for a while, and soon, they left with the four immortal-level leaders acting as their guide. The rest of them left in groups of at least three. Only a minority of them left on their own, and they were on immortal-level. Just as Lin Huang was about to leave, he was blocked by four people. The four of them were on gold flame-level. "Little brat, give us your Emperor''s Heart Ring, and you may leave," one of them threatened. Still, Lin Huang placed both of his hands in his pockets and said, "Why don''t the four of you give me your Emperor''s Heart Rings and leave?" "I hate those who''re weak but arrogant." A flicker of fury flashed through his eyes, and he snarled, "I''ve changed my mind. I want to kill you and cut you into 18 pieces to feed my pet monster." "I hate those who''re weak but arrogant too." Lin Huang grinned at the man. "Therefore, I''ve also changed my mind, and I want to kill all of you." Yao Lan, who had just passed through the entrance, saw this. She grinned as she stood nearby and watched what had just happened. From her sister, she knew that Lin Huang was strong. It would be easy for Lin Huang to defeat the four gold flame-levels that were trying to get him into trouble. However, she wanted to know how strong Lin Huang exactly was. Right at that moment, the three men, who had followed her, approached her. "Hey girl, let''s have some fun." Yao Lan rolled her eyes at the three of them. Soon after, a snake the size of her thumb appeared on her palm. "A Braineater Serpent?" Their eyes flashed with fear. "Sister, it''s our fault" "Green Scale, the three of them are here for your breakfast." A second later after Yao Lan finished her words, a sage green glow streaked across the sky and penetrated through their heads. Their bodies immediately became limp and collapsed. After Yao Lan recalled her little snake, there were already four dead bodies in front of Lin Huang, and he was searching through the body of the corpses rather rudely. 632 The Second Layer of the Abyss Brink After rifling through the four dead bodies, Lin Huang then stood up and looked behind him. He vaguely heard people growling in pain earlier. However, as he turned his head around, he could only see three dead bodies. The assailant was no longer there. Still, he noticed that the Emperor''s Heart Rings on the three bodies were still intact. He then sized up the surroundings and concluded that there was no one else there. He walked towards the corpses. At about ten meters away from the corpses, Lin Huang stopped advancing forward. The men had been killed in the same way. There was a thumb-sized hole on their temples as if they had been pierced through forcefully by a finger. However, Lin Huang felt that it was strange as there were no traces of blood splatter. Lin Huang did not investigate any further. To avoid having to make contact with the dead bodies and risking his safety, he extracted the three rings by using his psychic skill. After storing the three Emperor''s Heart Rings in his storage space, he took out the map provided by the black market. Upon confirming his location and the location of the entrance to the second layer, he set the next destination in his dimensional relic. He then summoned Thunder and rode on its back. "Let''s depart!" Lin Huang pointed towards the direction of the entrance to the second layer. Thunder fluttered its wings and flew into the sky. Soon, it disappeared from the sky After Lin Huang had left, a woman gradually appeared from the cliff. Impressively, it was Yao Lan who had just killed the three men who had harassed her. "He''s an Imperial Censor?!" Yao Lan was shocked as Yao Huanhuan had never told her about that. She raised her head, looking in the direction where Lin Huang had just disappeared. She frowned. "That direction It seems like he''s really going to the second layer..." Sitting on Thunder''s back, Lin Huang fixed his gaze upon the ground. Though barren, the land was not wholly dead. One could still see one to two dying trees with a few leaves occasionally. After a short while, Lin Huang could see the group of people that had left the entrance not long ago following a low-level flight. Seeing Thunder fly over them, some of them that were flying in the same direction as Lin Huang switched their paths to another direction. Lin Huang spotted the two small teams that were going on a trip. As soon as they detected Thunder, they did not flee. However, they brought the passengers to land on the ground. They were preparing to defend themselves. "It''s an immortal-level rank-1 Viridescent Thunderhawk. Hide behind us!" The four leaders shouted at the crowd. "An immortal-level rank-1! He should be easy to handle, shouldn''t he?" Some of them asked. "Although the Viridescent Thunderhawk is merely a double mutated monster, it''s one of the best predators. The sky is their playground. An immortal-level rank-2 might not be able to take advantage of it. Even if immortal-levels rank-3 and rank-4 like us fail to kill it in a single hit and it attempts to escape, we won''t be able to catch up with it. Once it''s offended, we''ll be in great trouble if we attract a flock of bird monsters. Most of them hold grudges," one of the leaders explained. "However, it seems like they''re just passing by. As long as we don''t block their way, we won''t be their target." "It seems like a person is sitting on its back!" A young man with 20/20 eyesight shouted. "Yes, there''s someone sitting on its back! I just noticed that." One of the leaders smiled, nodding his head. He saw that there was a figure sitting on the back of the Viridescent Thunderhawk. However, he could not identify who that was, and he was unsure of the person''s combat strength. "It''s actually not strange for an immortal-level to have an immortal-level monster as a flying mount. Even if he''s not an Imperial Censor, they can buy the pet monster that''s been tamed from many of the large-scale auctions. The only downside is that it''s quite expensive." They felt envious of the rider when they heard that. They wished that they could get to immortal-level as soon as possible so that they could buy an immortal-level pet monster as a flying mount. Of course, Lin Huang did not know that the people were daydreaming enviously of his luck as he passed by. After having sat on Thunder''s back for more than seven hours, Lin Huang finally arrived at the entrance to the second layer. On their way there, many of the monsters had avoided Thunder. They were afraid that they would become Thunder''s hunting target. Aside from encountering attacks by immortal-level monsters thrice, Lin Huang managed to go all the way to straight to his destination. As for the three of the immortal-level monsters that had attacked him, they were killed by Lin Huang in a blow. The carcasses were then stored in Lin Huang''s storage space. Lin Huang knew that he had reached the entrance to the second layer as soon as he saw the crack on the ground from afar that looked very much like a gaping mouth. He then patted Thunder''s back and said, "Let''s land next to the crack in the ground. When Thunder heard that, it retracted its wings a little and descended towards the crack on the ground. After a few moments, Thunder flapped its wings and landed gracefully next to the crack. Lin Huang leaped down from Thunder''s back. He patted its wings, and soon, it was recalled back into its card form. Because Thunder was a double mutated monster, it could not be summoned on the second layer of the Abyss Brink. With its abilities, it would end up at the bottom of the food chain where most of the monsters were eager to hunt it for food. The entrance to the second layer of the Abyss Brink looked like a wide-opened mouth when studied from an aerial view in the sky. In fact, it was actually a vast fissure towards the underground. It was a few kilometers long with a width of more than 500 meters. Somewhere near the crack, there was a massive stone table that measured about ten meters tall. A phrase was engraved on the stone tablet: "The crack is the entrance to the second layer of the Abyss Brink. Please do not enter if you''re any lower than immortal-level rank-3. Otherwise, you''ll certainly die!" As soon as he saw the engraving on the stone tablet, the first thought that came to his mind was, "None of them actually commented on this?" He took a few steps forward with his hand extended and touched the stone tablet. He then discovered that there was a faint white glow being emitted which blocked him from contacting the stone tablet. Apparently, it was a protective measure taken by the predecessors to prevent humans or monsters from damaging the stone tablet. The tablet must have existed for a long time. So many years had passed, but the power of the protective layer was still there. It must have surpassed the skill of a demigod. "It''s not because nothing is engraved on it. There''s a protective layer, and nobody can carve it," Lin Huang laughed. He then retracted his hand from the stone tablet and stood at the border of the crack. Looking down into the Abyss Brink, it seemed to be bottomless. Without a moment''s hesitation, he took a deep breath and leaped into the Abyss Brink. He continued moving forward and soon, Lin Huang discovered that the world beneath the fissure was like a bottle. It became wider as he moved downward. After a minute of passing through clouds, Lin Huang finally reached its bottom. Lin Huang was startled upon realizing that the ground under his feet was grassy. The second layer of the Abyss Brink was utterly different from the scenery of the first layer where the plants were all dying. Instead, it looked like the outside world with spring in the air. Lin Huang had a temporary illusion as if he was back at the grassland in Division 7. What made Lin Huang feel strange was that he could no longer see cliffs or the entrance that looked like a gaping mouth above him. Instead, above him was a blue sky with the bright sun hanging in the air 633 Bais Ability After familiarizing himself with the environment, Lin Huang could feel an aura approaching him swiftly. He raised his head and looked ahead. A blue bird was flying towards him. As it extended its wings, he noticed that they were more than ten meters long. "It''s an immortal-level rank-2 Blue Sparrow Does it see me as prey?" Lin Huang frowned, and the next moment, a snake the size of his middle finger with crimson patterns over its body appeared in his hand. It was the imperial-level Eclipse Boa that he had encountered in the ruins previously. However, after being transformed into its card form, its abilities were restricted by Lin Huang''s combat strength. Therefore, its capabilities had been lowered to immortal-level rank-1. Nevertheless, the triple mutated Eclipse Boa had been a boss in the past. One could definitely not afford to offend it. Seeing the Blue Sparrow in the air pouncing towards him, the Eclipse Boa''s red eyes flashed with a trace of fury. The next moment, it opened its small mouth and swept the entire area with its terrifying power. It was too late when the Blue Sparrow realized that something was wrong. As it frantically flapped its wings and attempted to flee, its efforts were in vain. It was being drawn in by the fierce wind. After letting out a growl, it was drawn into the Eclipse Boa''s mouth which was even smaller than the size of a palm. The Blue Sparrow was rather pitiful. Even though it was an immortal-level rank-2 monster, it was easily defeated by the Eclipse Boa that had gone through its third mutation. It was killed within seconds. However, the Eclipse Boa did not actually eat its prey. Instead, it extracted the soul of its prey. The soul was then crushed and absorbed as it stored the carcass in an independent space within its body. It could disgorge its prey in its complete form when necessary. Lin Huang knew this, and that was the reason why he had chosen to summon it. Otherwise, if it digested the entire immortal-level carcass, Lin Huang would suffer a significant loss as he would not be able to sell the carcasses. Each of the immortal-level carcasses would earn him at least 10,000 Life Crystals. After swallowing the Blue Sparrow, the Eclipse Boa shook its head at Lin Huang as if it wanted to butter up to him since it was the first time Lin Huang released it after it became a monster card. For the sake of its freedom, it chose to fawn over its master. Lin Huang touched the Eclipse Boa''s head and said, "Hide in my right sleeve." He did not recall the Eclipse Boa. Since it was small in size and convenient to bring along, plus the fact that it was quite powerful and capable of defeating monsters that attempted to attack him quickly without leaving any traces, he decided to leave it out. The Eclipse Boa nodded its head slightly and slipped into his right sleeve. After it went up into his sleeve, Lin Huang took out his dimensional relic again and set the next location. He then put his dimensional relic away, projecting the map of the second layer of the abyss which had been provided by the black market. eeing the symbol of the Devil''s Psykid shown on the map, he frowned. "It''s so far away. It''s at least 20,000 kilometers away from my current location" At Lin Huang''s current flying speed, even if he activated his single acceleration, he had to fly for ten continuous hours to arrive at his destination. Although it would be faster to ride on Thunder, they would quickly become the target of the other monsters. As for his double acceleration, it would consume a significant amount of his Life Power. In dangerous places, it would be imperative for him to conserve his Life Power. That was why Lin Huang strategized to clear all the monsters that attempted to attack him with his summoning monsters. "The sky will possibly turn dark in two hours. If we resume our journey, the probability of encountering monsters will increase. We have to look for a suitable place for our stay tonight before the sky turns dark. We shall depart when the sun rises tomorrow morning." Lin Huang immediately activated his single acceleration and quickly headed towards the direction where the Devil''s Psykid was. He maintained a low-level flight for almost half an hour, and none of the monsters blocked him. Although the monsters on the ground often attempted to attack him, he managed to dodge all those attacks. He did not waste any time and did not bug them either. Although a few of the monsters tried to chase after him, Lin Huang activated his double acceleration for a short while, and soon, he managed to get rid of them. This proved that Lin Huang was like a delicious dish to all the monsters on the second layer of the abyss which all of them would like to taste. If he were to kill all the monsters, he wondered if he could reach the place where the Devil''s Psykid was at in a week, let alone arrive tomorrow afternoon. It was almost six o''clock in the evening. Seeing that the sun was about to set as he fixed his gaze upon the sky, he made his way through a forest and summoned Bloody. Bloody then transformed into a purple snake and twisted around Lin Huang''s left arm. "Bloody, please check if there are any places that I can hide in. It''s fine even if it''s a monster''s lair." Upon receiving Lin Huang''s instruction, clear Leech Pods were released by Bloody, spreading everywhere. Lin Huang waited patiently at his original position for the result of the investigation. After more than ten minutes, he received the information from Bloody which had found three places. They were monster caves. Fortunately, the three monsters were not that strong as they were merely immortal-level rank-3 and immortal-level rank-4. Lin Huang chose the one that was nearer to the location of the Devil''s Psykid. After several minutes, Lin Huang then appeared at the entrance of the monster lair. The master of the monster lair was only an immortal-level rank-4 Cavernous Ursa. Although it was only a double mutated monster, it had rather strong defensive abilities and strength. Its skills could be compared to some of the immortal-level rank-5 monsters. However, encountering such a monster like that, Lin Huang still did not fight but summoned Bai instead. Right after Bai entered the monster lair, furious roars were heard coming from the cave. In less than 20 seconds, the roars faded into groans. The cave then ended in silence within the next ten seconds. After several moments, Bai walked out of the cave, nodding its head at Lin Huang. As Lin Huang walked into the monster lair, he saw that the Cavernous Ursa that was more than ten meters tall had been entirely mummified. The monster was supposed to be extremely strong. However, it looked very skinny at the moment as if it was suffering from hunger. Aside from a few of the wounds that were visible on its body, there was only a gash on its neck. However, there was no blood dripping out of its injuries. Neither were there any blood stains on the ground or the wall. Lin Huang had never underestimated Bai''s ability. Each time when it was summoned during a fight, its performance was often out of his expectations. Lin Huang thought that it would be a fierce battle for Bai. However, from the marks left in the cave, he could see that it was an easy fight and it seemed like it had managed to pin its enemy down easily. "Could a triple mutated God''s Blood be this strong? Perhaps it''s on par with a supreme genius" Seeing the situation of the battle, Lin Huang had to re-evaluate Bai''s ability. Although it was only an immortal-level rank-1, its ability might be comparable to the immortal-level rank-6. It was a leap that spanned five ranks and was definitely something the supreme genius could achieve. The Eclipse Boa secretly peered at the Cavernous Ursa''s dead body through Lin Huang''s sleeve. A flicker of fear then flashed through its eyes. After putting the Cavernous Ursa''s carcass away, Lin Huang did not recall Bai into its card form. Bai was then instructed to keep watch at night. With Bai''s assistance, Lin Huang would not have to worry that they would be distracted by the monsters at night. He had to be prepared for the extraction of the tinder the next day as well. 634 Ashenplume Falcon That night, Lin Huang could sleep soundly as not a single monster roar was heard. The next morning, after washing up, Lin Huang then noticed four carcasses outside the cave when he walked out. The weakest monster was an immortal-level rank-3 whereas the strongest one was an immortal-level rank-5. All four of the carcasses were killed in a blow, and their heads were chopped off. There were no other wounds on their body. All the corpses appeared to be mummified, and no blood stains could be found at all. After storing the four carcasses, Lin Huang knew that he had made the right decision by asking Bai to keep watch at night. If the Eclipse Boa had been assigned instead, he would not have gotten to sleep until the early morning. After having some snacks, Lin Huang recalled Bai to its card form before 7 a.m. Along with Bloody and Eclipse Boa, they departed. The reason why he did not bring Bai along was if he encountered a monster attack, it would be inconvenient to activate his double acceleration. Bai''s flying speed was slower than his double acceleration. As opposed to Bai, Bloody and Eclipse Boa would sit on him like passengers. It took him more than eight hours to arrive at his destination from the monster lair that he had stayed at for the night. He intended to find the Devil''s Psykid before sunset and complete the kill. If he was attacked by monsters during the journey, it was less likely that he could reach his destination before the sky turned dark. Although the exact location had been provided to him by the black market source, the probability of the Devil''s Psykid staying at the same place was low. After he arrived, he might probably have to search through the area with the help of Bloody. Taking all sorts of possibilities into consideration, Lin Huang departed early in the morning. He maintained a low-level flight and the situation was similar to what had happened yesterday. Many of the monsters attempted to launch ranged attacks, and some of them even chased after him. Just like what he did the day before, Lin Huang accelerated to get rid of them. He had been using this skill for more than five hours, and everything went smoothly. However, at about noon, Lin Huang got into trouble. An immortal-level rank-5 triple mutated monster was staring at Lin Huang from high in the sky. "An Ashenplume Falcon" At that very moment, Lin Huang sensed that he had become the monster''s target and he could recognize it in mid-air. Lin Huang chose to maintain a low-level flight to avoid encountering such monsters. Apart from that, there was often an outbreak of groups of monsters in the sky. There was also the occasional lonely monster that was extremely strong. The reason why he did not want to offend such monsters was that most of them possessed terrifying flying abilities. Their speed could surpass Lin Huang''s double acceleration easily. He would not be able to get rid of them if he bumped into them in the sky and could only kill them. It was fine if such an encounter happened only once or twice. However, if that happened all throughout their journey, it would be a waste of time. Despite having chosen a low-level flight, he was still targeted by the Ashenplume Falcon. He felt helpless. The Ashenplume Falcon was a triple mutated monster. It had the blood of an ancient monster, the Bloodcrow Falcon, in its body and it was one of the top predators in the sky. The position of Thunder or the Viridescent Thunderhawk in the food chain was much lower than the Ashenplume Falcon. They were of different levels regardless of the number of times of mutations, the strength of their blood, and their combat level. Lin Huang did not want to waste any more time. As soon as he discovered that he was being targeted by the monster, he immediately activated his double acceleration and attempted to get rid of it. Unexpectedly, the Ashenplume Falcon did not give up chasing after him. It did not pounce on Lin Huang. Instead, it kept trailing after him as if they were playing hide and seek. Soon, Lin Huang did not bother as it did not attempt to attack him. He then proceeded on his journey at his initial speed. Since the Ashenplume Falcon was following him, many of the monsters fled as they were afraid that they would become its prey. They did not even attack him. Lin Huang wondered if he should laugh or cry seeing the "side effects" of the appearance of Ashenplume Falcon. "I didn''t expect that I can take advantage of it this round." However, Lin Huang''s happiness did not last long. About ten minutes later, the Ashenplume Falcon seemed to have sensed that the prey below it was actually not afraid of it. It lost its patience and immediately pounced on Lin Huang. "I''m waiting for you to attack!" Seeing that the Ashenplume Falcon was diving towards him, Lin Huang was not shocked. Instead, he felt a thrill. A black battle sword instantly appeared in his hand. Seeing Lin Huang whip out his weapon, the Ashenplume Falcon''s eyes flashed with a trace of egotistical fury. How dare the human the size of an ant attack me?! Chirp! A screeching bird cry was heard as the Ashenplume Falcon pulsated its wings up and down. Wind gusts were formed out of nowhere, creating ripples in the air and heading towards Lin Huang. "Its skill is quite impressive." Lin Huang grinned. The Ashenplume Falcon unleashed its ultimate skill in its first hit. If the attack struck an immortal-level rank-5, they might probably die on the spot. However, Lin Huang showed no terror on his face. He picked up his long sword and simply thrust his sword forward. A crimson glow could be seen on the blade of his sword as it flashed into the sky in the form of a bloody crescent. At that instant, it collided with the gust of wind. The next moment after he collided with the gust, which managed to kill an immortal-level rank-5, was cut into half like tofu. In mid-air after performing the cut, the bloody crescent sliced through the neck of the Ashenplume Falcon without slowing down. The screeching of the Ashenplume Falcon immediately stopped. After several moments, purple blood streams dripped out of its neck. Soon after, its head was detached from its body, and its purple blood started oozing out of its neck. At this moment, a bloody glow appeared from Lin Huang''s sleeve. The Eclipse Boa then flew into mid-air, opening its small mouth and swallowing the Ashenplume Falcon''s head and body that still had blood oozing out of it. The Ashenplume Falcon actually had strong abilities. Even if it were on the second layer of the Abyss Brink, if it encountered any monster that it was unable to defeat, it would still manage to escape. Unfortunately, it was easily killed by Lin Huang in one hit because it had underestimated its enemy. Another reason was that Lin Huang was extremely strong. If this had happened before Mr. Fu''s special training, Lin Huang might have taken some time to kill the Ashenplume Falcon. However, after undergoing the rigorous training, he was now a changed man. His ability was incomparable to the past. The Ashenplume Falcon''s appearance only caused him a little delay on his journey and did not create that big a trouble for him. The remaining three hours after that was much more peaceful. Lin Huang did not encounter any more bird monsters. By using the skill that he used the day before, he managed to reach the location at about 3.30 p.m. He sized up his surroundings. However, he did not discover any traces of the Devil''s Psykid. He gradually landed on the ground, observing around but still, he found nothing. "Bloody, I''m counting on you." Lin Huang knew that he could only rely on Bloody at the moment. "Please get me the location of the Devil''s Psykid!" 635 Rakshasa Mother The transparent Life Power pods were spreading out in all directions, and Bloody started combing through the surrounding area. 10 kilometers, 20 kilometers 50 kilometers, 100 kilometers Time had passed, but still, he did not receive any news from Bloody regarding the Devil''s Psykid. "Could it be fake news?" Lin Huang frowned but soon, he shook his head and excluded the possibility. He had made three trades with the woman from the black market that day. They even agreed for him to sell her monster carcasses after that. The woman could not possibly fool him with fake news. As he thought about it carefully, the woman had gotten the information about the location from someone else more than two months ago. Perhaps the Devil''s Psykid had been attacked within the two months and was forced to leave. It might even have been killed by other monsters or humans. If it were the former one, it would take him some time to find it again. However, if it were the latter, his efforts to go into the Abyss Brink were in vain. "Please don''t be killed by the others" Lin Huang thought to himself as he did not want to go home empty-handed. It was not easy for him to choose a suitable Life Fire monster. If he could not find it, he would have to select another one again. If there were no other suitable monster, he would have to wait for the latest news of the monster up to a few months. "I''ve found it!" After about an hour, Bloody''s voice was suddenly heard. "Is it far from here?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "It''s not too far. It is approximately 1,500 kilometers away," Bloody answered. "However, it''s not easy to kill it." "Has it leveled up?" Lin Huang immediately asked. According to the information he had, the Devil''s Psykid was originally an immortal-level rank-6. If it were now an immortal-level rank-7, it would be beyond Lin Huang''s capabilities. He would have to use the Transformation Card to increase his combat strength. "It''s not about its combat strength, but it''s been captured by a Rakshasa Mother." Bloody sounded helpless. "A Rakshasa Mother?!" It was not Lin Huang''s first time coming across this monster name. The Rakshasa Mother was a fiend. It was a humanoid monster which was born an immortal-level. As it grew up, it would upgrade to imperial-level. The Rakshasa Mother liked kids, especially boys. It was said that if it happened to bump into boys aged below 16 years old, it would catch them to its lair and raise them. Due to its maternal instincts, it would treat them as its own child. However, as they grew up and became an adult, they would then be killed. Therefore, some of the monsters that looked like kids would surrender to it so that they would be protected for their whole life. Of course, Lin Huang had only heard of such legendary monsters before. There was just a brief description of this monster in the monster guide as it was not clearly recorded. He had never expected to encounter one on his own. "Does it really catch monsters that look like kids?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "I guess it does," Bloody said while projecting a picture that it had managed to capture through its Leech Pods. It was a building with dim lights. Not only did Lin Huang see the Devil''s Psykid that he wanted to kill, but there were also two other monsters that looked like kids and a monster that looked like a baby. However, it seemed like the Rakshasa Mother was not present. "It seems like we''re in big trouble" Lin Huang never expected this to happen. The Devil''s Psykid had been adopted by the Rakshasa Mother which made killing it much more difficult. "Bloody, do you have any good ideas?" Lin Huang felt that he had a slight headache. "There are three ways to kill the Devil''s Psykid," Bloody suggested, "First, kill the Rakshasa Mother. Secondly, sneak into the building when the Rakshasa Mother isn''t there and kill the Devil''s Psykid. Thirdly, try to lure the Devil''s Psykid out and destroy it. "The first way will prevent any future trouble, but that costs us too much. As for the second way, it''s difficult to ensure that we won''t be discovered by the Rakshasa Mother while sneaking in. It must''ve set up some monitoring systems in the building. The third way will be the safest one, but we have to think of a way to lure the Devil''s Psykid out." Lin Huang then shook his head slightly. "If the Rakshasa Mother is only an imperial-level of black- or crimson gold-rank, I might be able to win the battle with my cards. However, if its combat strength is on yellow- or white gold-rank, I''m simply seeking for death. Moreover, it''s not worth wasting a card that can protect my life for the sake of obtaining tinder. As for the second method, it''s too risky to sneak in. We know nothing about the Rakshasa Mother''s abilities. If it possesses abilities like dimensional travel and I''m detected by its monitoring skill, it''ll probably kill me in the next second. Let''s follow the third suggestion and find a way to lure the Devil''s Psykid out." "If you were to choose the third way, we might possibly have to stay in the Abyss Brink for a few more days," Bloody answered. "I''ll need a few days to monitor their activities so that I can come up with a plan." "Sure. Let''s stay here for another few days." Lin Huang nodded in agreement. "Let''s look for somewhere to stay." "There''s a Humanoid Spider in a cave that''s 120 kilometers away. The Humanoid Spider is only an immortal-level rank-3." Bloody extended its antenna, pointing towards the two o''clock direction. After several minutes, Lin Huang appeared outside of the cave as directed by Bloody. Before Lin Huang could even instruct it, the Eclipse Boa then transformed into a bloody glow and entered the cave. A moment later, it returned victoriously. Lin Huang cleaned up the cave and set up his tent. Since he was going to stay there for several days, he had to make sure that the environment was conducive. After cleaning up and setting up his tent, it was about 6 p.m. The sky was turning dark. Lin Huang then summoned Bai and Lancelot, and they had their snacks together in the cave. As usual, Lancelot was in love with its vegetables whereas Bai was drinking its fruit juice that was bright red in color. It did not bother to eat any of the solid foods. Bloody was munching on sweets happily whereas the Eclipse Boa was taking a small bite of the dried meat. Lin Huang and his summoning monsters lived peacefully in the following few days. Although they were on the second layer of the Abyss Brink which dangerous, he could still live a happy life. There were no strong monsters in the place where he was living. The strongest monster would be an immortal-level rank-5 or rank-6. After he had occupied the cave of the Humanoid Spider, Bai and Lancelot fought an immortal-level rank-6 invader on that day itself. After that, the both of them had risen up to become one of the bosses in the area as they had gained considerable prestige. Many of the monsters did not dare to approach the cave where Lin Huang was. Lin Huang was afraid that they would be discovered by the Rakshasa Mother which was more than 1,000 kilometers away. Otherwise, he would have organized a barbecue party each night. He had been eating snacks in the past few days and was soon bored with the food. Something that Lin Huang did not know was that Yao Huanhuan who was at Sweep City had created trouble for her parents. "Daddy, it has been a few days. Do you have news about Lin Xie?" After knowing that her sister had gone to the Abyss Brink to get Lin Huang into trouble, Yao Huanhuan had been asking for permission to go to the Abyss Brink every day. Of course, her parents would not let their daughter take the risk. They could only help her ask about Lin Huang. "He hasn''t gotten out after so many days. Did Sister kill him?" "Huanhuan, your sister has her limits." Father Yao was speechless. "Could he have been eaten by monsters?" Yao Huanhuan asked again. "I''m not sure about that since it is the Abyss Brink" Before Father Yao could finish his words, Mother Yao stared at him and said, "He might be able to survive." "Even if one day isn''t enough, he can definitely hunt for tinder in two days. Why hasn''t he got out of the Abyss Brink?" Father Yao wanted to reply, "He has most probably died there." However, seeing his wife, who was standing next to him glaring at him, he dared not say that. "Something might have slowed him down. Your sister is still there. Let''s ask her when she comes back. Perhaps she has met Lin Xie there." Mother Yao comforted her again. After consoling her, Father Yao and Mother Yao frowned. They were not worried about Lin Huang but about Yao Lan instead. Yao Lan had gone into the Abyss Brink for three days, but she had not come back yet. If it were a hunting mission, she would have completed it in a day or two. However, it was already the third day. As for the young man called Lin Xie, they did not care at all. For a crimson flame-level young man, who had not returned after entering the Abyss Brink for three days, her parents considered him dead. 636 The Devil’s Psykid’s Secre Lin Huang had been staying in the Abyss Brink for six days. Other than the first two days, he practiced the Army Attack Tactics in the next four days. One of the reasons that he did so was Mr. Fu had advised him to before. Another reason was that his Sword Dao was stuck. He had to find a way to improve his abilities via other methods. Lin Huang achieved level eight in his Army Attack Tactics two years ago. However, he had neglected it since then. It rotated on its own with the use of his Life Power. He would use it occasionally during a fight to increase the speed of releasing his Life Power. It would require 810,000 card pieces to level up to level nine. However, he had only managed to collect 600,000 pieces over the past two years. When he activated his Life Power at full speed, he could complete a skill rotation cycle in a second. On the first day of his training, he managed to collect more than 50,000 card pieces in about ten hours. He did not do anything else in the next few days. Other than eating and sleeping, he spent almost 15 hours practicing Army Attack Tactics. Four days later, he finally collected 810,000 card pieces, and a notification from Xiao Hei arrived. "810,000 Army Attack Tactics card pieces detected. You have fulfilled the requirement to level up. Would you like to use 810,000 Army Attack Tactics card pieces to level up?" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without a moment of hesitation. "Using Army Attack Tactics card pieces x810,000 Army Attack Tactics is being leveled up" "Congratulations, Army Attack Tactics has leveled up to level nine!" "You''re required to collect 10 million Army Attack Tactics card pieces for the next level!" "Eh, 10 million? I can finally understand why there are so few of them who practiced this in the past." Lin Huang was speechless right after he saw the figure. Even he, who had a Goldfinger, would need 10 million card pieces to level up to Army Attack Tactics level 10. It was the standard to become a cultivator. However, to gather 10 million card pieces, even if he did not do anything else and just trained Army Attack Tactics for 15 hours a day, he would need 200 days to complete the collection, let alone ordinary people that had no Goldfinger. They could not obtain the complete skill set just by collecting card pieces. Forget leveling up from level one to level nine, to upgrade from level nine to level ten alone, they would not be able to achieve it without practicing for several years. In Army Attack Tactics, for every six levels there would be a low threshold, and for every eight levels, there would be a high threshold. From the ninth level to the tenth, it was a bottomless pit. Anyone without talent, ability, and determination would have given up halfway through. However, by achieving level 10, only then they could practice The Twisted Fate Scripture and become a true cultivator. This was the reason why there were so few cultivators in the old epoch. However, there would not be much improvement in Lin Huang''s ability when he leveled up to level nine. The only difference was that the speed of his recovery of Life Power was a few times faster than before, which enabled Lin Huang to have better control over his Life Power. In the afternoon of the sixth day, Lin Huang gradually opened his eyes after leveling up to Army Attack Tactics level nine. "Master, I''ve found a chance to kill the Devil''s Psykid." Sensing that Lin Huang had regained his consciousness, Bloody spoke, "Tomorrow is when the Rakshasa Mother gives the kids free time. Free time is only given to them once a month. That''s the only day when the Devil''s Psykid and the rest of the monsters will leave the Rakshasa Mother''s lair." "Tomorrow? I shall quickly think of a way to kill it," Lin Huang said. The news came at the right time as he had just completed his upgrade in the Army Attack Tactics. "The Rakshasa Mother will leave its lair early in the morning. So, it''s a workable plan. However, their bodies may be monitored," Bloody reminded. "Therefore, right after I''ve completed the kill, I''ll have to leave immediately with the carcass. I can''t extract its tinder first." Lin Huang nodded. After the monster died, the Life Fire in its body would go through a slow process of collapsing. He had an hour to extract the tinder. After an hour, when the Life Fire had disappeared entirely, he would have no way of obtaining it. Lin Huang did not have much time. "Yes, since we have no idea how strong the Rakshasa Mother is, we''ll have to be prepared for the worst and assume that she can perform dimensional travel," Bloody confirmed. "Therefore, you have to leave right after you''ve completed the kill." After communicating with Bloody, they then confirmed their murder strategy. At about 1 a.m, Lin Huang went to bed. Early in the morning, before 6 a.m, Lin Huang was awake. After waiting for so many days, he finally had the chance to extract the tinder. Lin Huang then recalled Bai, Lancelot, and the Eclipse Boa into their card forms after having his breakfast. Bloody was not recalled as he needed its guidance. Sitting at the entrance of the cave, he waited patiently for the chance to strike. At slightly after eight o''clock in the morning, as shown in Bloody''s monitoring screen, the Rakshasa Mother carried a monster that looked like a baby and left. In just a short while, a few of the monsters that it had adopted were released from the building. Lin Huang''s target, the Devil''s Psykid, was the last one to be released. The monsters soon headed in their own directions. The Devil''s Psykid sized up the surroundings, then it flew in a random direction of its choice. It seemed like it was flying towards where Lin Huang was. "Why is it coming towards our direction?" Lin Huang asked curiously. "It''s not coming after us. Perhaps it''s going back to its own lair," Bloody guessed. "It''s going back to its lair? Does it miss home?" Lin Huang felt that only humans had emotions, but he was unsure if a triple mutated monster would be emotional. "I don''t think so. Most of the monsters have different ways of thinking compared to humans. They know nothing about home. Their lair is just a temporary habitat to them. The concept is the same as humans'' short-term tenancy, and they won''t miss home. It chooses to go back to its own lair probably because there''s something it cares for over there." "Something that''s caught a triple mutated monster''s attention? It must be something valuable!" Lin Huang laughed, "Can you confirm the exact location of its lair?" "I confirmed it two days ago. Other than the cave that we''ve been staying in, there''s only another cave around us that''s vacant." "Let''s wait for it at its lair!" Lin Huang grinned wryly. A few minutes later, Lin Huang and Bloody appeared outside the lair. "Here it is. Are we going in?" Bloody asked. "It''ll need more than half an hour to arrive. Although I found nothing inside its lair by using my Leech Pods, we can still search." "There''s no need to do so. Let''s wait outside." Lin Huang shook his head. They then hid in the forest nearby, restraining their aura. In fact, the Devil''s Psykid was indeed heading back to its lair. It appeared outside its den after about half an hour. It stopped for a moment and looked around before entering the cave. After the Devil''s Psykid entered the cave, Bloody projected the situation inside the cave immediately. The Devil''s Psykid went deep into the cave. Before reaching the wall, it pressed a portion of it. A few moments later, the wall started cracking and becoming stone chips. Black crevasses that looked like strands of hair appeared. The cracks were like vines forming all over the wall. Countless small fissures started extending slowly. Black mist was gushing out of the wall, entering the Devil''s Psykid''s nose and mouth 637 Attacked by an Imperial-Level "What''s that?!" Lin Huang frowned at what just happened in the cave. It was strange. "If I''m not mistaken, it must be the Abyssal Mist. However, I''ve no idea why it is being released from the wall," Bloody answered cluelessly. Right at that moment, a strand of mist that looked like a long whip came out of the wall, heading for Bloody''s monitoring Leech Pods. Bloody was caught unprepared, and soon, its Leech Pods were covered by the mist. A few moments later, Bloody screamed in shock. Soon after, there was a blackout on the monitoring screen. "Bloody, what happened?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "The Abyssal Mist is kind of evil. It''s capable of capturing the aura of any living beings. By touching my Leech Pods, it can contaminate my body" Bloody murmured in shock. "Fortunately, I managed to destroy my Leech Pods in time." Lin Huang knew that the Abyssal Mist was capable of contaminating bodies with a soul to demonize them. To most humans and non-fiends, the Abyssal Mist was the source of contamination. However, it was a supplement to the fiends and demons. The Abyssal Mist was a holistic medicine to most of the monsters in the Abyss Brink. That was the reason why the Devil''s Psykid hid it there. The wall that released the Abyssal Mist could be intimidating to the imperial-level Rakshasa Mother. Of course, there were grades for the contamination power of the Abyssal Mist. The demonizing effect of the grade-1 Abyssal Mist could only work on ordinary people or monsters with no Life Power in their bodies. The grade-2 Abyssal Mist could contaminate any humans or monsters of any levels lower than transcendent. The grade-3 Abyssal Mist could complete the demonizing process swiftly on those of a level lower than transcendent. It could also affect holy fire-levels and immortal-levels. The grade-4 Abyssal Mist could slowly contaminate those on imperial-level. As for the grade-5 Abyssal Mist, even demigods would avoid it if they happened to encounter it. Lin Huang and Bloody had never heard of an Abyssal Mist that seemed to possess self-consciousness before. Both of them were shocked by the scene they saw when the Abyssal Mist attack Bloody''s Leech Pods. "Since you''re an immortal-level and it has an effect on you through your Leech Pods, the Abyssal Mist being released from the wall must be at least on grade-4. It shouldn''t exist on the second layer of the Abyss Brink," Lin Huang analyzed in a deep voice. "The monitoring screen has been destroyed. I''ll release another Leech Pods so that we can monitor at a further distance," Bloody suggested. "There''s no need to do so. Let''s just wait here." Lin Huang shook his head. "Since it''s here to inhale the Abyssal Mist, it''ll definitely get out of its lair after it''s done with that. We''ll kill it by then." Bloody did not refute him. It was still filled with intense fear due to the demonizing power coming from its Leech Pods. The reason why Lin Huang no longer needed to monitor the situation inside the lair was that with his Territory, he could roughly investigate the situation inside the cave. Although it looked like an infrared image at night, he could still clearly see everything that happened inside the cave. He would not have to worry about the Devil''s Psykid running away. Outside the cave, time passed. Lin Huang and Bloody waited patiently for the Devil''s Psykid to finish inhaling the Abyssal Mist. After about two hours, Lin Huang could finally detect that the Devil''s Psykid had stopped inhaling the Abyssal Mist with his Territory skill. It spent another half an hour digesting the Abyssal Mist in its body. Soon after, the Devil''s Psykid pressed the wall again. Controlled by its mind, the surrounding stone chips quickly turned into a layer of a wall, returning to its original state where the cracks on the wall were completely sealed. The Devil''s Psykid then stepped out of the cave after doing all this. When it stepped out of the cave, Lin Huang appeared in front of it in a flash. He did not show any mercy as he unleashed Thunder Eclipse in his first hit. Transforming his black sword into purple lightning, he slashed his sword at the Devil''s Psykid. A flicker of fury flashed through the Devil''s Psykid''s eyes. It could not dodge the attack in time. A layer of a crystal-clear shield was immediately formed in front of it with its Telekinesis powers. Purple lightning hit the shield at almost the same time when it was formed. The transparent shield immediately cracked, and the purple blade of the sword penetrated through the Devil''s Psykid''s body without any hindrance. Seeing its body collapsing, the Devil''s Psykid was shocked. It thought that with the Abyssal Mist in the cave, as long as it had sufficient time, it would soon become one of the bosses in the Abyss Brink. However, it never expected that it would not have the chance to enjoy the treasure that he had found. Relying on a sneak attack, the Devil''s Psykid was caught unprepared and was killed within seconds. The level of difficulty of the fight was totally out of Lin Huang''s imagination. He initially thought that if his first attack failed, he would summon Bai and the rest, and fight it together. He had to complete the kill as fast as he could. Seeing that the Devil''s Psykid had died, Lin Huang then stored it in his storage space without any delay. He then turned around and summoned his dimensional relic. Just when he was about to enter, a woman approached him. Lin Huang caught a glimpse of the woman. He initially did not bother to entertain her and was about to leave. However, he realized that she was the one who had flirted with him at the coffee shop a few days ago. He immediately stopped in his tracks. "It''s you?!" Obviously, Lan Yao could recognize him as well and landed in front of him. "Why are you here?!" "I don''t have time to explain. Let''s go!" Lin Huang immediately grabbed Yao Lan''s wrist. "What are you doing?!" As Yao Lan struggled, she sensed the sky suddenly turning dark. "Follow me if you don''t want to die!" Lin Huang immediately tugged Yao Lan into his dimensional relic. Right then, a demonic face in the form of dark clouds appeared in the sky. The rumbling sound of thunder was heard. "Little brat, you killed my children! Do you think that you can run away?!" "It''s an imperial-level" Yao Lan was terrified. At almost the same time when its voice was heard, the dimensional relic closed. Both of them then disappeared from their original positions. The next second after they disappeared, a blue ripple was formed not far away. A woman in black robes who was carrying a baby walked out of the ripple. "Damned human! I must kill you today!" As it shouted, its hand swept across the sky, and a blue ripple was formed again. It then walked into it. Stepping out of the Dimensional Portal, Lin Huang and Yao Lan appeared at the entrance of the second layer of the Abyss Brink. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang immediately put away his dimensional relic. Again, he grabbed Yao Lan''s wrist and dragged her towards the exit. "Get your hands off me!" Yao Lan shoved Lin Huang angrily. "Why are you bringing me along with you when you''re being attacked by an imperial-level monster? Do you want me to die?" "If I didn''t bring you along, you''d have died," Lin Huang answered simply. Yao Lan then realized that it had been an imperial-level monster. If Lin Huang had not dragged her along, she would have undoubtedly become the monster''s target to vent its anger. At that moment, Lin Huang saw a blue ripple rapidly forming. Again, he grabbed Yao Lan''s wrist and dragged her to the passageway of the exit before she could react. 638 Being Born into the Same Family Lin Huang was slightly relieved as he rushed out of the exit. The imperial-level would be unable to enter the crack that could lead them to the first layer. This was also the reason why there were no imperial-level monsters on the first layer of the Abyss Brink. In fact, be it the entrance or the exit on the first layer, the intrusion by any imperial-level was prohibited as they would be restricted by a unique kind of power. Even a Virtual God would not be able to break the rule. Aside from imperial-level monsters, even human imperial-levels were not allowed to enter the first layer of the Abyss Brink. They could only enter the second or the third layer of the Abyss Brink through another channel. "What are you doing? I haven''t completed my mission, and I can''t leave the Abyss Brink now!" Yao Lan struggled again as she was being dragged to the first layer of the Abyss Brink. "Don''t give a damn about that mission! The imperial-level monster is chasing you. Do you want to go back to seek for death?" Lin Huang swore. Yao Lan immediately kept quiet. A few moments later, Lin Huang realized that what he said sounded rude. He then calmed himself down and pleaded, "Please give up on that mission. Our presence is being targeted by the imperial-level monster. If you were to go to the second layer of the Abyss Brink again, it''d sense your aura right away. In addition to that, she possesses the ability of dimensional travel." "Why did you save me?" Yao Lan suddenly asked after keeping quiet for a while. "There''s no reason behind what I do. I simply wanted to," Lin Huang thought to himself for a while and said. He had not contemplated much at that moment. Seeing the Rakshasa Mother chasing after them, he had just dragged her into the dimensional relic. Lin Huang''s reply was beyond Yao Lan''s expectations. Right just as they were in that awkward situation, a figure suddenly emerged from the ground. To their utter horror, it was the Rakshasa Mother. "Human, do you think that the channel can stop me from chasing after you?!" At the same time when the Rakshasa Mother''s voice boomed, it appeared in front of both of them in a flash. "Aren''t imperial-levels not allowed to enter?" Yao Lan was shocked as despair overcame her. "This is just a clone. It''s only an immortal-level rank-9!" Lin Huang was startled when he saw the appearance of the Rakshasa Mother. However, it suddenly dawned on him that something was wrong with its combat strength. "You''re quite intelligent. I can''t chase after you but my clone can. An immortal-level rank-9 is more than enough to kill the both of you!" The Rakshasa Mother cackled, proud of herself. As it was approaching them, it imagined Lin Huang''s head being used to commemorate its child. "An immortal-level rank-9" Yao Lan bit her lip. She was an immortal-level rank-3. Since she was a supreme genius, she could defeat most immortal-level rank-8s. She managed to fight immortal-level rank-9s as well. However, the humanoid monster that appeared in front of her had apparently gone through its third mutation. Moreover, because its true body was on imperial-level, she would have a low chance of winning the battle. "Lin Xie, leave first. I''ll be able to defend against it for a while!" After a moment of hesitation, Yao Lan finally came up with a firm decision. It was not because she liked Lin Huang. Instead, she felt that because Lin Huang had saved her life twice, she did indeed owe him a favor. If she were not going to return the favor, Lin Huang would probably die there. Although she was incapable of defeating the monster, she could buy him some time at the very least. In addition to having skills that could protect her life, she could still escape if she could not fight the monster. "I didn''t know that you were so generous." Listening to Yao Lan''s order, Lin Huang grinned. "It''s fine. Since it''s just an immortal-level rank-9 clone, it''s far from capable of killing me." "Stop bullshitting at this moment. Leave now. I''m capable of protecting myself." Yao Lan frowned. Still, she felt that Lin Huang was letting his ego speak over his rationale. "Do you like firecrackers?" Lin Huang asked mischievously. Yao Lan did not answer his question. Instead, she looked at him as if she was looking at an idiot. "Alright, ignore me then." Lin Huang rubbed his nose and took out the God Crasher from his storage space. He then placed it on his shoulder. Yao Lan was stunned when she saw the God Crasher. She could identify what it was at first glance and immediately understood why Lin Huang had no fear at all. The Rakshasa Mother had been staying in the Abyss Brink all the time. Despite living for so many years, it had never seen a God Crasher before. It thought that Lin Huang was just taking out a strange-looking weapon and it shouted at him, "Even if you were to use a demigod-level relic, it can do no harm to me!" "Let''s see what''ll happen then. Even if your real body were here, you wouldn''t be able to survive this, let alone your immortal-level rank-9 clone!" Lin Huang grinned as he took aim at the Rakshasa Mother with his God Crasher. The next moment, a golden flare zipped through the air abruptly along with a loud explosive sound. The Rakshasa Mother''s clone could not dodge the attack in time, and it could only look on as it was engulfed by the flare. Soon after, the bright light faded and the clone had disappeared as well. At the second layer entrance, the real body of the Rakshasa Mother spat a mouthful of blood out and glared at the exit on top of it. It let out a furious growl and said, "Human, I''ll remember you!" After putting his God Crasher away, Lin Huang and Yao Lan passed through the passageway, reaching the first layer of the Abyss Brink. "I still have something to deal with. Let''s go home on our own." Lin Huang was in a hurry as he wanted to extract the Life Fire tinder. The Life Fire inside the Devil''s Psykid''s body would only exist for an hour at the most. "Do you hate me?" Yao Lan felt that he was trying to get rid of her. "No, I don''t. I''ve only met you twice, and I don''t know much about you. Of course, I won''t hate you." Lin Huang shook his head. "You managed to hide your combat strength well. You even fooled me. I''ve no idea why you''re trying to approach me, but I''m not interested though. Regardless of what your actual combat strength is, please don''t get me into trouble anymore. Otherwise, you''ll regret what you''ve done to me." "My name is Yao Lan. I''m Yao Huanhuan''s sister." From what Lin Huang said, Yao Lan knew that she had to be frank with him. "One of the reasons that I''m looking for you is because of the mission. I have to go into the Abyss Brink. Another reason is that I''ve seen the news about you going on a date with my sister." "No wonder" Lin Huang then noticed that Yao Lan and Yao Huanhuan looked alike. However, it had not crossed his mind previously. He then explained, "Don''t get me wrong. We were just eating together, but it wasn''t a date. You don''t have to worry about me snatching your sister away." "Aren''t you worry that what you said will make Huanhuan feel sad?" Yao Lan asked with a smile. "Do you mean that you wished there''d be something between your sister and me?" Lin Huang asked. "Go to hell!" Yao Lan scoffed angrily. "Stop fooling around. I really have something to deal with urgently." Lin Huang turned to leave. "What''s more important than talking to a beautiful girl like me?" Yao Lan stared at him. "What''s the use of being pretty? I can look but I can''t f*ck," Lin Huang thought to himself. However, he just politely replied, "Sis, I''m looking for a place for extracting tinder. I don''t have much time left." "Okay." Yao Lan then understood why Lin Huang was so nervous. "I can stand guard while you do what you have to." "There''s no need to. Go and look for a place to have fun," Lin Huang rejected. "What does that mean? Don''t you want an immortal-level rank-3 supreme genius to guard you?" Yao Lan rolled her eyes at Lin Huang. "I''m afraid that you''ll attack me while I''m extracting the tinder," Lin Huang told her the truth. "You''re just a crimson flame-level. If I were to attack you, would a sneak attack truly be required?" Yao Lan sneered annoyedly. However, she soon recalled the God Crasher that Lin Huang owned. If she were to fight him, she might be killed. She instantly felt guilty. "Whether you want it or not, it''s no longer important as I''m going to do it for you no matter what. Unless you''re not going to extract the tinder." "What do you want from me? I didn''t even offend you." Lin Huang was speechless. "You''ve saved my life twice. I owe you two favors. I''ll only feel better after returning you the favor," Yao Lan said as-a-matter-of-factly. "I can finally believe that Yao Huanhuan is your sister now." Lin Huang smacked his hand to his forehead as he recalled how Yao Huanhuan insisted on returning his favor earlier. She had been so attached to him then like a wad of chewing gum. What Yao Lan was doing was exactly the same as what Yao Huanhuan did. Naturally, they were born into the same family. 639 Getting Chewing Gum Stuck to the Sole of His Shoe Yao Lan followed after Lin Huang, asking various questions. She was like a sticky candy that he could not get rid of. After confirming her relationship with Yao Huanhuan, Lin Huang could not chase her away. He had no choice but to let her follow after him. "What''s the imperial-level monster that wanted to attack you?" "The Rakshasa Mother." "The Rakshasa Mother is a legend. Does it really exist?!" Yao Lan was shocked and stared at Lin Huang with a strange expression on her face. "You''re kind of brave. How dare you offend an imperial-level monster that has gone through its third mutation? Don''t you know that you''re only on crimson flame-level?" "I didn''t provoke it. It''s because the Life Fire monster that I''ve chosen had been adopted by it. I only knew after entering the second layer of the Abyss Brink," Lin Huang said helplessly. Although he had quite a number of trump cards, he wanted to keep them for an emergency. He undoubtedly would not have intentionally provoked an imperial-level monster. If the Rakshasa Mother had not adopted the Devil''s Psykid, he would have avoided the imperial-level monster. Since those cards were consumables, he would have a card less whenever he used one. Even the God Crasher could only be used once. Moreover, he was not a person that would simply offend others. "What''s the Life Fire monster that you''ve chosen?" Yao Lan was curious. "The Devil''s Psykid." Lin Huang knew that he could not hide this from her. Even if he were not going to tell her now, she would definitely steal a glance later as Yao Huanhuan, and she had the same behavior which was being over-friendly. "The Devil''s Psykid. That''s good. It''s a triple mutated immortal-level monster. Its tinder inherits its Telekinesis." Yao Lan acted as if she was a senior and commented, "Such tinder can indeed improve minor skills. However, I''d suggest you consider attack-based tinder as strengthening your abilities is essential. Telekinesis is just a minor skill" "The demigod Qi Muxiong, demigod Coulaux, demigod Cyclone Didn''t you inherit their Telekinesis?" Lin Huang reeled off a few names. They were demigods with extremely powerful Telekinesis that existed in the battle that had happened more than 800 years ago. Each of them had abilities that were almost on par with the Virtual God. Yao Lan then realized that she had been boasting and quickly retorted, "They are different You obtained the Telekinesis from the monsters. It can''t be compared to those who are born with Telekinesis." Lin Huang did not want to talk about that with Yao Lan anymore. He had chosen the Devil''s Psykid as his Life Fire monster not because he wanted to obtain its Telekinesis. Instead, it was because of the experience it had in developing and using its Telekinesis. Ten minutes later, under the guidance of Bloody, Lin Huang found a monster lair. After killing the resident monster, Lin Huang made it the site for his tinder extraction. Yao Lan then guarded the outside of the cave and did not follow after him. Despite confirming that Yao Lan would not attack him, still, Lin Huang had to be careful. He summoned Bai and Lancelot to protect him. The extraction of tinder was completed in an instant as Xiao Hei turned it into a card. The training went smoothly after that. After inserting the new tinder into his body, Lin Huang could feel that his body had gained immense strength. The two-leaved Life Fire flame he initially had in his body had now become a three-leaved Life Fire flame. However, the third leaf was as small as a sesame seed compared to the other two leaves. After about three hours, Lin Huang had finally leveled up from crimson flame-level to blue flame-level. The Life Fire and Life Power in his body had turned from flaming red color to a deep blue color. Not only did the Telekinesis inherited by the tinder further improve Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis, but the experience that the Devil''s Psykid had in the development of Telekinesis had also instantly been integrated into his body. Although he would still need some time to completely master it, Lin Huang could obviously sense that the control he had over his Telekinesis had been upgraded. If his skill was equated to being on kindergarten level previously, he was now at least on high school level now. It would not be a problem for him at all achieve university level after practicing for a specified period of time. After leveling up, Lin Huang immediately recalled Bai that had leveled up to immortal-level rank-2 and Lancelot into their card forms. He then walked out of the cave. "You''ve completed it in less than three hours. That''s fast enough." Seeing Lin Huang walk out of the cave, Yao Lan, who was sitting in a rocking chair, glanced at the time and got up from the chair. She could sense that Lin Huang''s aura had been upgraded to blue flame-level. Under normal circumstances, the higher the level of the tinder, the higher the difficulty level of extraction. Therefore, the time taken to train it would be longer. Normally, a double mutated rank-2 tinder would require one to two hours for the extraction and the training of tinder. As for a triple mutated monster, one would need more than five hours to do the same for a rank-3 tinder. The faster he managed to extract and train the tinder, the higher the compatibility between them. He could also master the inheritance of the tinder more quickly. Lin Huang had completed the process of extraction and training in three hours. Other than Xiao Hei saving him some time during the extraction of the tinder, his training speed was indeed faster than an average person''s. "You''ve leveled up to blue flame-level. What''s your plan? Going home to absorb Life Crystal to strengthen your combat strength?" Yao Lan asked. "I''m going to stay in the Abyss Brink for a period. I''ve accepted an order for monster carcasses before I came. I''ll only leave after my Emperor''s Heart Ring has been fully loaded. I can then focus on my training as well." Lin Huang gave an excuse to stay. In fact, he wanted to train his third Fire Flame to its maximum height by killing monsters. "I''ll stay here and assist you then. Since I have nothing to do and my mission has failed, I have to vent my frustration." "Sis, are you in need of sex?" When he heard that Yao Lan wanted to vent her frustration, Lin Huang thought to himself. Of course, he dared not say that out loud. "Since you''ve failed your mission, you should go back and report to them so that others can take over. Staying here isn''t a solution." "That''s your fault. Perhaps I''d have successfully completed the investigation without you!" Yao Lan fumed as she recalled this. "I''ve never failed any mission in the past." "What was your mission anyway?" Lin Huang hesitated for a while before asking. He actually did not want to care so much. However, as he thought about it carefully, if he could help her complete the mission so that she could leave the Abyss Brink earlier, he could stop her from bugging him. "An unusual energy wave appeared on the second layer of the Abyss Brink. I wanted to investigate what caused this to happen." Yao Lan did not hide what her mission was about. "In the past few months, many people have accepted the mission, but none of them managed to figure out the reason behind this. A few days ago, I had something to do at the Abyss Brink, which was why I accepted the mission." Yao Lan did not tell him what she wanted to do was actually to see who Lin Xie was as her sister had often praised him. However, Lin Huang did not bother much about that. He frowned and asked, "Can''t unusual energy waves be easily detected by an energy detection shell? Although the second layer Abyss Brink isn''t that small an area, how is it possible that it can''t be detected even after a few days?" "Don''t you think the others never thought of this before? I''ve no idea how many times have people searched through the Abyss Brink over the past few months." Yao Lan rolled her eyes at Lin Huang. "However, before encountering you today, I did actually get a strange alarm from my detection shell. It''s somewhere near the area where you were. However, can''t understand it. I was at the area two days ago, but my detection shell picked up nothing" After listening to what Yao Lan said, Lin Huang suddenly thought of the Abyssal Mist. "I roughly know what triggered your detection shell." Lin Huang then told her about the Devil''s Psykid immersing itself in the Abyssal Mist at the cave. The truth dawned on Yao Lan when she heard his explanation. "No wonder so many of them can''t figure out where the unusual energy wave came from. It''s possibly due to this reason that the Abyssal Mist remained hidden as it had been sealed by the Devil''s Psykid. That''s why the unusual energy appeared only once a month, and each time it''d only appear for several hours. No wonder everybody couldn''t find it!" "It seems like I didn''t fail my mission. Do you have any photos as evidence? I''ll have to inform Adventurer''s Paradise regarding this." Yao Lan was excited. However, she suddenly thought of the fact that it was Lin Huang who had discovered it. "Don''t worry, the credits will be given to you. I''ll only ask for the reward points from Adventurer''s Paradise." "There''s no need to do so. Take a photo of this and report to them earlier." Lin Huang projected the image taken by Bloody. The communication function of the Emperor''s Heart Ring could not be used where they were, so Yao Lan could only snap a photo of it. After taking the picture, Yao Lan then patted Lin Huang on the shoulder happily. "I owe you a favor again! I''ll have to leave first and treat you to a meal later." "As you like." Lin Huang nodded with a smile. He recalled the food that Yao Huanhuan had treated him to at the Sweep Gourmet tasting sumptuous, so he did not reject her offer. Of course, the main reason was that he knew that if he were to refuse Yao Huanhuan, the consequences would be... It would feel like there was a wad of chewing gum stuck to the sole of his shoe 641 Seamless The Yao family heard about the news as soon as Lin Huang left the Abyss Brink. Instead of informing Yao Huanhuan, her parents contacted their elder daughter, Yao Lan, who was busy working. "Lan Er, did you meet that Lin Xie kid at the Abyss Brink?" The mother asked during the call in the reading room. "Yes, I did." "What do you think about him?" The father asked directly. "He''s very powerful. I can''t fight him even if we were on the same level," Yao Lan commented. "It can''t be. You''re a supreme genius as well. How could you guys be so different ability wise?" The father frowned. "It''s not only his battle ability. He''s much more powerful than normal holy fire-levels overall as well as being skilled in a variety of techniques He''s overall ability would top all supreme geniuses. Perhaps not more than five people of the same level could fight him in Division 3," Yao Lan gave an honorable comment. "Did you fight him?" The father was surprised to hear her. "No, I imitated what Huanhuan would say and do while I spent a day with him." Yao Lan smirked. The parents were concerned. They did not expect their elder daughter to be this mischievous. "His ability is indeed out of my expectations. He''s a crimson flame-level who hunts for immortal-level rank-6 triple mutated Life Fire monsters. He even escaped from an imperial-level triple mutated monster. I think I wouldn''t have been able to do it if I didn''t use my ultimate move with my current abilities," Yao Lan shared what she observed after spending a day with Lin Huang. Her parents, who were on imperial-level, were in disbelief about how powerful Lin Huang was after listening to what Yao Lan said. "But the good news is that he''s really not interested in Huanhuan." The parents were relieved by Yao Lan''s conclusion. "But the kid is back in Sweep City now for God-knows-what reason. We haven''t told Huanhuan yet, but she''s been bugging us to get the kid''s whereabouts," the father said helplessly. "This Lin Xie isn''t a bad person, but it''s better not to let Huanhuan get close to him. I couldn''t get anything from his identity besides what''s on the surface. Judging from his ability, he could be a Holy Son candidate trained by a top underground organization. We shouldn''t offend the organization behind him." "But Huanhuan" The mother looked troubled. "You guys have spoiled her. Why don''t I talk to Huanhuan after I''m done with my stuff here a few days later?" Yao Lan told her parents. "Stop investigating Lin Xie. It''s better than we don''t have anything to do with him. Don''t say anything even if somebody asks us about him." After hanging up, from a hotel room in the foothold near the second layer of the Abyss Brink, Yao Lan projected a gold list from her Emperor''s Heart Ring. If somebody else had been there with her, they would have recognized that more than ten names on the list were famous supreme geniuses in Division 3. Yao Lan smirked while she moved her graceful fingers, adding ''Lin Xie'' at the bottom of the list in gold ink. Besides visiting the black market, Lin Huang had been staying in his hotel room ever since he returned to Sweep City. He had been getting used to the telekinesis ability before obtaining the telekinesis weapon. After spending two days practicing the Devil''s Psykid''s telekinesis, he had mastered 80% of it. The inheritance of monster tinder was different from the legacy of the human memory as the former was more than just a memory whereby the human could obtain the skill directly. Take an ordinary person obtaining the ability to make dual-vector foil out of nowhere for instance. He did not have to learn and understand the theory of making it. Gaining such an ability became part of his body; he could create a dual-vector foil by himself as long as he had enough materials. The only thing that he had to go through was to get used to the process of creation. The inheritance of the human''s memory allowed one to obtain the memory but not the ability. It was like obtaining all of the information on how to make a dual-vector foil, but you would have to learn and understand the information before creating the dual-vector foil itself. If one could not understand the theory of making it, he could not make the dual-vector foil even the information was in his brain and the materials were sufficient. That was the main reason why Lin Huang had picked the Devil''s Psykid as his Life Fire monster after listening to Bloody''s explanation. Obtaining the Devil''s Psykid''s telekinesis would save him at least two years of training time. It was calculated based on Lin Huang''s supreme genius standard. For others, it would take tens of years - even up to 100 years - to master the ability. Ever since he received the ability, he had mastered it from kindergarten-level to a highschooler''s level within two days. Besides some detailed and complicated techniques that required more training, he had basically mastered it. With his current mastery of Divine Telekinesis, he could easily kill an immortal-level rank-3 monster without using any telekinesis weapons. "There are still some difficulties in mastering the details. I''ll need at least a week to practice and familiarize the Devil''s Psykid''s telekinesis." Lin Huang was aware of his own progress. Although he had mastered 80% of the Devil''s Psykid''s ability, the remaining 20% required more time as it was complicated. Besides possessing Divine Telekinesis himself, Lin Huang chose the ability to hide his identity as he also inherited memory of the demigod Qi Muxiong. Qi Muxiong was a master in telekinesis, so it was a no-brainer that his telekinesis power was mighty since he was young. Besides discovering many telekinesis techniques throughout his life, he had also come up with a telekinesis cultivation called Seamless. The cultivation would allow a person to channel telekinetic power into countless threads which could then be controlled from far away. Qi Muxiong could divide his telekinetic power into 18,000 threads as well as controlling the threads to attack at will within the range of 30,000 kilometers. If he was on Earth, he could stand on his balcony and control the threads to pierce through any creature''s head that was located in any corner on Earth. The level-1 of Seamless was to use telekinetic power to divide 300 threads. After two days of training and mastering the basics, Lin Huang finally proceeded to learn Seamless 642 A Massive Crisis The telekinetic division was a difficult task whereby it required detailed control ability in telekinesis. Before obtaining the Devil''s Psykid''s ability, training Seamless would be as tricky as a kindergarten child being asked to solve a high school academic question. However, it was not difficult for Lin Huang to train that now. Within a single morning, he managed to use his Divine Telekinesis power to divide a strand of thread into two, two into four, and so on Eventually, he managed to divide the thread into 300 of them, completing level-1 of Seamless. Later on, he started practicing the controlling of the 300 threads. When it was past 10 p.m., Lin Huang managed to control the 300 threads to dissect and sew monster carcasses. The poor White Night Wolf that he used to practice on was dissected more than 1,000 times. It was so disgusting that even the Eclipse Boa refused to eat it and Lin Huang had to dispose of it. The next morning, he began training level-2 of Seamless and dividing threads using Divine Telekinesis. Since he was now more in control of the mastery of his power, his speed of dividing accelerated. By the time it was past two in the afternoon, he had completed level-2 of Seamless and had managed to split 1,000 threads. He then began practicing the control of those 1,000 threads. Just after five in the afternoon, Lin Huang''s communication device rang. It was a message from Hu Lu with three documents attached. "Mr. Lin, we''ve found three supreme telekinetic weapons in different forms for you. One is conical, one is star-shaped while another is in a flying dagger-form. You can take a look at the details of the three weapons. I''ll arrange the purchase for you once you''ve decided." Lin Huang looked at the three documents as soon as he read Hu Lu''s message. The first one was the conical telekinetic weapon. It was made of 180 spikes that looked like beaks. The weapon was the fastest as well as the most penetrable one among all. Therefore, most of the psychics used weapons in such form. It cost 9.8 million Life Crystals. The second document was of the star-shaped weapon made of 108 meteorites. The attack of this weapon was like the falling of meteorites, which required minimum control of telekinesis. It was easy to be mastered as it was mainly operated by the speed of telekinesis control as well as the weight of the meteorites. It cost 8.5 million Life Crystals. Each of the meteorites cost was higher than the spikes. Finally, the third document was the telekinetic weapon in flying dagger-form which was made of 360 flying daggers. It required a high control of telekinesis. If one controlled his power well, the speed and penetrability were just as powerful as the conical weapon. Besides, it had more modes compared to the latter. However, if one could not master the power well, the impact would be worse than the star-shaped weapon. This was the most expensive one, costing 21.9 million Life Crystals. Lin Huang picked the most expensive one without thinking twice as the flying dagger one would match his Sword Dao. "Too bad it''s too little. It''d be great if there are thousands or even tens of thousands of flying daggers in one of those." He thought of the time when the Sword Dominator controlled more than 3,000 flying daggers. The scene still impressed him until now. After picking his weapon, Lin Huang called Hu Lu immediately. Hu Lu picked up his call with a smile in her voice. "You''ve made your decision?" "Yes, I would like the flying dagger one." Hu Lu was not surprised at all. "Sure, I''ll order it for you." "No news on the ancient relic?" Lin Huang asked. "Ancient relics are rare, let alone telekinetic weapons which hardly appear in a few years." Hu Lu shook her head. "I''ll keep an eye on that for you and inform you as soon as there''s any news. The one you''re ordering is a supreme one. You can use that first. Is there anything else that you need?" "Erm" Lin Huang hesitated before nodding. "Let me know if you can order more of this supreme flying dagger weapon. I''d like to get more of them." "More?" Hu Lu was skeptical. She thought that Lin Huang wanted to resell the item. "If you''re planning to resell them, you''re not going to make much profit as the price is quite transparent. Moreover, such a supreme weapon is expensive. You''d be lucky if you could make 10% from it." "That''s none of your business. Just order it for me." Lin Huang did not bother to explain. "Alright then, how many do you want?" Hu Lu asked unwillingly. "Get me nine more to round it up to ten." Lin Huang smirked. "10?!" Hu Lu thought Lin Huang had gone crazy. "Mr. Lin, you can get two of them to test the market if you''re really planning to resell them. If you buy ten of them, you might lose 200 million!" Hu Lu had never expected that Lin Huang would buy all the weapons for his own use as most of the psychics could only divide 100 threads and even fewer of them could split more than 300 threads. The weapon was amazing enough for most of the psychics out there. "That''s my problem. I won''t look for you if that happens. Just order them for me." Lin Huang smiled. "Let me know the price. I''ll pay the deposit." Hu Lu did not want to say any further since Lin Huang insisted. She did not understand how spoilt brats spent their money. After the call ended, Lin Huang transferred the 21.8 million Life Crystals to Hu Lu for the first weapon that he had ordered. The next afternoon, Hu Lu dropped by the hotel Lin Huang was staying at just before he was ready to train level-3 of Seamless. She was there to pass the weapon to him. After confirming that he wanted to order the other nine weapons, Hu Lu left full of doubts while Lin Huang stayed in the hotel to train his Seamless skill. Just as he wrapped up in the evening, he managed to divide more than 1,800 threads. He could clearly feel that he was getting better at controlling the threads as a whole. Three days passed, and Lin Huang had mastered 90% of the Devil''s Psykid''s ability. He figured he would achieve the Devil''s Psykid''s standard when he completed level-3 of Seamless and could control 3,000 threads. Lin Huang began reading the news after washing up. It was a habit of his before he went to bed. Just when he opened the black market''s page, the top news caught his attention immediately. The headlines were ''Mysterious Case in the Level-2 Abyss Brink''. Lin Huang frowned as he read the news. The mysterious case was actually the wall with Abyssal Mist in the cave where Devil''s Psykid had entered. After Yao Lan had reported that to the Adventure Paradise a few days ago, besides the imperial-level people that were sent to investigate, even the Union Government and the Hunter Association had assigned more imperial-level people to check the case out. The report showed that the cracks on the wall was nothing ordinary, but was a gap connecting to an unknown space. The cracks were slowly expanding. The Abyssal Mist that was seeping from the cracks was a level-5 contamination. Two imperial-level people had become fiends in less than ten minutes after accidentally touching the mist. It was irreversible, and what was worse was that the mist seemed to have an instinct whereby it would go for non-fiend creatures. The incident had caught the attention of a couple of demigods who speculated that there was a perilous world on the other side of the cracks since they learned about the report. As the fissures enlarged, the creatures from the other side might head to the Abyss Brink and even access the humans'' world from there. The humans'' world might encounter a massive crisis that was just as catastrophic as the Virtual Eye opening 800 years ago 643 The Genius Organization What happened in the second layer of the Abyss Brink brought people from the mainland to investigate. The conclusion was that although the cracks were expanding at a slow pace, it would take at least five years for the creatures from the other side to enter the Abyss Brink. The mainland even gathered a group of demigods to seal the space. Tens of techniques were used, but none of them worked. The news soon spread and many transcendent- levels in the community found out about it. Besides the core zones, even the safe zones heard of the story. Under the Union Government''s strict orders, the news did not spread to people below transcendent-level. Lin Huang could sense that the crisis was getting more intense. He heard about the catastrophe that had happened 800 years ago from Mr. Fu. If something similar happened, even Virtual Gods might not survive the disaster. He knew very well that the five-year period was not just hearsay. "Seems like imperial-level isn''t enough anymore. I must get to Virtual God or even True God within five years!" Lin Huang gave himself a new target. He did not have the ambition of saving the world, at least not now. All he hoped for was not to die in the coming war. Throughout the coming days, besides sleeping, Lin Huang spent his time training his telekinesis. His usual three meals a day were consolidated into a single breakfast for him. He even used his telekinesis to order take-out food for himself. If the lack of food did not affect his health, he might have even skipped breakfast. Skipping meals for a week would not affect holy fire-level humans, but it would be detrimental if it exceeded more than a week. On the second day after the news of the Abyss Brink broke, Lin Huang had broken through level-3 of Seamless and managed to divide 3,000 threads. He had arrived at the Devil''s Psykid''s level. After that, he spent a week achieving the division of 8,000 strands. He could finally slow down at level-4 of Seamless training. Although his Divine Telekinesis was powerful, his spirit was restricted by his low combat level which resulted in greater thread division. However, after ten days of non-stop training, Lin Huang''s telekinetic power was strong enough to kill the immortal-level rank-6 Devil''s Psykid that he had encountered earlier. Within that week, Hu Lu had ordered two supreme telekinetic weapons made of 360 flying daggers. By then, he had more than 1,000 telekinetic flying daggers with him. With the three weapons, his combat strength in telekinesis was nothing lower than his Sword Dao''s. After the ten days in Sweep City, Yao Lan finally contacted Lin Huang again. She sent a short message: "8 p.m. tonight, Sweep Gourmet. Room 301. There''s something good for you." He was not surprised that Yao Lan knew he was in Sweep City. After all, the city was the Yao family''s territory, and nothing could escape them. Since his training had stagnated these two days, Lin Huang agreed to meet her right away since he was not busy anyway. At 7.50 p.m., he arrived at the Sweep Gourmet ten minutes before the agreed time. A female staff brought him to Room 301. Just as the staff was serving him tea, Yao Lan walked into the room with a young man who looked like he was in his mid-twenties. The man was a rank higher than Yao Lan on immortal-level rank-4. Lin Huang had his guard up. Just in one glance, Lin Huang could tell that the man was also a supreme genius and his ability might exceed immortal-level rank-9. "Lin Xie, let me introduce you guys. This is Huangfu Hao from the Huangfu family," Yao Lan introduced the both of them. "Hao Zi, this is the Lin Xie that I told you about." The Huangfu family was the second most prominent family in Sweep City whereby their overall ability was level with the Yao family, and they were not too far apart. Lin Huang had heard of Huangfu Hao before. He was a supreme genius among the Huangfu family''s younger generation. "I heard from Xiao Lan that you have a mind-blowing ability. Attack me with all you have," Huangfu Hao challenged directly after checking Lin Huang out. "Hao Zi, let''s eat first" Yao Lan frowned. "Xiao Lan, I know you would prefer to take this slow, but you know that I''m impatient. I''m used to finishing business first." Huangfu Hao raised his hand to stop Yao Lan from talking. Then he looked at Lin Huang. "If you manage to win my trust, I''ll apologize for my absurd attitude later." "So, this is the ''good'' stuff you told me about?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow as he looked at Yao Lan. "This guy has a low EQ. Please don''t take it personally," Yao Lan explained helplessly. "Don''t mind him. Let''s eat first. We''ll talk about it later." "We don''t have to do that. Let''s get straight to business." Lin Huang took a sip of his tea and put the teacup down. "Alright then." Noticing that the atmosphere was tense and nobody had the appetite to eat, she agreed to what Lin Huang suggested. "We would like to invite you to join the Sweep Alliance." "The Sweep Alliance?" Lin Huang had never heard of such an organization. "The Sweep Alliance is a special organization that was founded by geniuses more than 300 years ago. All of the members of the organization are geniuses. There are supreme geniuses among them including myself and Huangfu Hao," Yao Lan explained. "A genius organization?" Lin Huang had heard from Mr. Fu that it would be best if he could join such an organization when he arrived at the core zone because some of the rare ruins and special mysterious lands were opened only to genius organizations. However, different genius organizations would have different criteria whereby some of them would thoroughly investigate the person before allowing one to join. That was why Lin Huang did not have high hopes of joining any genius organization from the beginning as his identity was fake. It would mean trouble for him if he got investigated. "Yes, our Sweep Alliance is more flexible. You can join as long as you have at least two members who recommend you. Although more than a third of the members are locals, we don''t have any requirement about the member''s origin, so we won''t dig into your personal details. It''s alright even if you''re coming from an underground organization as long as you have impressive abilities and aren''t involved in any other genius organizations. However, the reason why the terms are flexible is that our organization is less powerful compared to the other genius organizations," Yao Lan told Lin Huang the reason why she had asked him to join. "The powerful genius organizations in Division 1 wouldn''t need to recruit members as all the powerful geniuses would go to them on their own." "Are there any restrictions after joining the organization?" Lin Huang asked. "The management is very flexible as it''s not a formal organization, but it still is a beneficial one. Let me send you the offer letter since it''s nothing confidential," Yao Lan said and sent the offer letter to Lin Huang. He started reading it as soon as he received the document. There was nothing strict on the member duty list. There were only three requirements. The first one would be to claim the Stairway Tree as often as the member could, while another would be to explore the ruins and mysterious lands while the last one would be to join at least one battle hunt once a year. "What''s the Stairway Tree?" It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing about that. "It''s no surprise that you''ve no idea what that is. The Stairway Tree is a tree in the virtual world that only genius organization members are eligible to climb. The higher you climb, the more points you''ll get. Not only will it be added to your total points in the genius organization, but you can also use the points to redeem items. Those who rank on top will enjoy rewards every month. Ancient relics, demigod relics As long as you have enough points, you can redeem almost everything at the Stairway Mall." "I supposed it''s not as simple as climbing a tree." Lin Huang knew instantly that it would not be that straightforward when he heard Yao Lan''s explanation. "Of course not. Climbing the tree is just the tip of the iceberg. The difficult part is fighting with the rest. The capacity of the tree is limited at different heights, so competition is inevitable. You''ll know the exact rules when you get there," Yao Lan explained it vaguely. "Sounds interesting." Lin Huang thought everything sounded fine after reading the offer letter that Yao Lan had sent him. He then turned around and looked at Huangfu Hao. "So, you''re the second referrer?" "That''s right, but you''ll have to win my trust before I can recommend you," Huangfu Hao said directly. "Sure, let''s fight." It was clear that Lin Huang agreed to Yao Lan''s invitation. "Can''t you guys fight after dinner? I''m hungry" Yao Lan whined helplessly. "No!" Lin Huang and Huangfu Hao exclaimed at the same time. 644 Joining the Sweep Alliance "Don''t hold back. Attack me with all you have. It''d be best if you could show me all of your techniques," Huanggu Hao said to Lin Huang. "Should we do this somewhere else?" Lin Huang studied the room in the restaurant and looked at Yao Lan. Although the restaurant was a demigod relic itself, he was not sure if the building structure was stable. After all, the restaurant was the property of the Yao family. With the daughter of the Yao family there, it would be bad to destroy the restaurant in front of her. "Don''t worry, the restaurant is a demigod relic. There are special defenses in the rooms that make it indestructible to people below imperial-level. There''s nothing valuable in this room anyway, and we can always replace them." Yao Lan then mumbled to herself, "Luckily, the dishes have yet to be served" After confirming that the battle would not annihilate the restaurant, Lin Huang then stared at Huangfu Hao. A silver glow flashed in the air and appeared in front of Huangfu Hao at an instant. "That''s fast!" Yao Lan, who was watching, exclaimed. Huangfu Hao''s pupils shrunk as a gold shield appeared in front of his body when he extended his hand. The silver glow collided with the shield and sliced through the shield at an odd angle. Huangfu Hao did not have the time to avoid the attack. All he could do was watch the silver glow glide by his arm, leaving a light trail. Yao Lan was shocked to see that happen. Lin Huang then retrieved his flying dagger and said to Huangfu Hao, "Is that enough?" "Was that all you''ve got?" Huangfu Hao disabled his shield and fronted Lin Huang. "Almost there." Lin Huang nodded. Neither did he release his Life Power nor his Sword Dao in his attack. However, he had given 90% of what he had in terms of speed and strength. "Your speed is almost at the immortal-level rank-7 standard," Yao Lan concluded before Huangfu Hao could say anything, "But I can''t determine your attack strength." "Your attack strength is on immortal-level rank-7 as well. Most immortal-level psychics wouldn''t be able to switch the attack angle just like you did. If we were on the same combat level, your attack just now could definitely kill me." Huangfu Hao made a fair comment. "I would like to apologize for my absurdness earlier. Welcome to the Sweep Alliance," Huangfu Hao said and extended his hand for a friendly handshake. Lin Huang shook his hand. "Your defense is terrifying. My flying dagger couldn''t break through it," Lin Huang smiled when he said. "My inherited ability is special. Although I''m only an immortal-level rank-4, nobody below imperial-level can break my defense." Huangfu Hao''s poker face was long gone. "Xiao Lan, why didn''t you tell me that Lin Xie is a psychic? You only told me that he''s a powerful Imperial Censor," Huangfu Hao turned around and asked Yao Lan. "How would I know that he''s a psychic? He never used any telekinetic power in front of me." Yao Lan glared at Lin Huang as his biodata did not state that he was a psychic; not even his Imperial Censor identity was revealed. "Didn''t you know that?" Huangfu Hao realized that it was a surprise to Yao Lan that Lin Huang was a psychic. "How many flying daggers can you control?" Yao Lan questioned Lin Huang, perking Huangfu Hao''s interest as well. "More than 300." Lin Huang did not tell the truth since controlling 300 flying daggers were terrifying enough. "You''re crazily talented as a psychic! I''ve met a couple of immortal-level psychic geniuses. The most they could control were 280 psychic weapons. Most of them could only control within 180 to 240 weapons." Huangfu Hao could not be any happier that Lin Huang was joining the alliance. "Let''s scan your identity." Yao Lan was worried that Lin Huang might take his words back, so she protected the scan page immediately. "Don''t you want to eat first? I thought you''re hungry!" Lin Huang teased. "I''m not hungry anymore. Hurry!" Yao Lan urged. Lin Huang projected his ID while Yao Lan and Huangfu Hao scanned theirs to apply for Lin Huang''s membership together. In less than ten seconds, his application had been approved. An offer letter was sent to Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Have a look now. Sign your name if everything is fine and you''ll be one of us." Yao Lan was impatient. "Take a look first. Let us know if there''s anything that you find unreasonable and we can get it amended," Huangfu Hao added. Lin Huang nodded and started reading the offer letter. The terms of the offer letter were clear. It was basically the same as what Yao Lan had sent earlier. After confirming that everything was fine, Lin Huang signed his name ''Lin Xie'' on the offer letter and sent it back. Soon, an identity token was sent. There was a huge ''Sweep'' engraved on the golden token. From the projection, the token was breathtaking. It was obvious that it was the work of a master. "Here you go." Yao Lan flicked her finger and a golden ball fell into his hand. He opened his hand and saw that it was the physical version of the token that was half the size of a palm. It was almost exactly the same as the one that had been projected. "It''s just a collectible. Most of our activities are carried out on the Heart Network. Since the design of the token is pretty, many members wanted the physical one, so it was made later on," Yao Lan smiled as she explained. The token was really beautifully designed with good material, Lin Huang observed for a while before keeping it into his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Let''s eat. We''ll talk about the Sweep Alliance later while we eat." Yao Lan started ordering as she browsed the food menu. After ordering food, Yao Lan spoke again, "Lin Xie, about the Abyss Brink, the Union Government will send the rewards within these two days. I''ll bring them to you. As promised, you''ll get the rewards and I''ll get the points." "What happened at the Abyss Brink?" Huangfu Hao asked. "It was Lin Xie who found out about the cracks on the second layer of Abyss Brink and I reported it," Yao Lan explained. Of course, Huangfu Hao knew about the cracks as every transcendent-level person knew about it since a few days ago. He did not expect that it was Lin Huang who had discovered it. "You found out about the cracks?" "It was just a coincidence. I was hunting a Life Fire monster and found out about the Abyssal Mist that was coming out of the cracks on the wall. However, I thought it was just a normal wall crack which might be connected to the ground, and that was how the Abyssal Mist came about." Lin Huang nodded as he explained. "There will be a catastrophe coming in five years. All of the transcendent-levels are worried about their own lives. Many organizations are recruiting members to train more people to prepare for the war. The same goes for genius organizations. We need more resources to level up our abilities. This is the reason why the Sweep Alliance started the recruitment early this time." "Nevertheless, we usually make an exception to recruit supreme geniuses even if the war isn''t happening," Yao Lan smiled as she said. "We don''t have many members. Including you, there''re only 36 of us and there''re only four supreme geniuses. Besides the three of us, the other supreme genius would be Hao Zi''s sister, Huangfu Lin. You''re the second member that I managed to recruit." "Aren''t you shameless? The ridiculous list that you have are all supreme geniuses. It''s your luck that you managed to get two," Huangfu Hao teased Yao Lan. "Why would I want to waste my time if it''s not for supreme geniuses?!" Yao Lan rolled her eyes. "So, the first one that you recruited would be" Lin Huang interrupted. "Him." Yao Lan pointed at Huangfu Hao. "Well, this girl insisted that I must join for the honor of Sweep City. After I rejected her, she followed me everywhere we went, even to the toilet. She even told me that the way I pee is wrong" Huangfu Hao was pissed as he talked about it. "I thought your sister got you to join." Lin Huang did not expect Huangfu Hao had such a terrible experience. "This girl got me to bring my sister in as well. There was nothing that I could do, so I begged my sister. If I had known her well, I wouldn''t have slapped this b*tch since the beginning." Lin Huang was glad that he agreed to join, or else similar consequences would happen to him. "Oh, right, you said there are only 36 members at the moment. Did they quit? We''re there many of them?" Lin Huang asked. "They didn''t quit. They retired," Yao Lan shook her head and explained. "All of the members of genius organizations will have to retire when you''re above 40 or arrive on imperial-level. This rule came about as most of the members would be at immortal-level rank-9 when they''re 40. Those who can''t level up to imperial-level would waste the organization''s resources if they stay while imperial-level people would need resources to sustain themselves. Since they have the ability as well as enough resources on their own, it would affect the resources for the new members if they continue to stay in the organization" The conversation with Huangfu Hao and Yao Lan went on until past 11 p.m. The dishes were amazing. There was even a soup made of an immortal-level rank-9 monster. However, Lin Huang focused more on the information that was provided by the both of them. The conversation had given him a better understanding of the genius organization and the Sweep Alliance. He had officially stepped into a brand new community. 645 I Think I’ve Been Tricked On the second day of joining the Sweep Alliance, Lin Huang logged into the Genius Union''s website through a unique site on the Heart Network after his breakfast. The website scanned the identity of the user automatically. Without registering via the genius organization, the page would not be found. Two options popped up on the main page once Lin Huang logged in: "Browsing Mode" and "Conscious Mode". Lin Huang heard Yao Lan mentioned this yesterday. The browsing mode was available for people to browse pages, news, videos, and search for information without joining any activities while the conscious mode allowed the person to enter the Genius Union''s virtual world with one''s consciousness. The latter was the only way to participate in the Stairway Tree climb. After summoning Bloody and Bai to protect himself, Lin Huang pressed the conscious mode button. In the next second, he appeared in a white space. "We''ve detected that this is the first time you''re logging in. You''re given one complimentary opportunity to adjust your own height and appearance. Would you like to proceed with the adjustment?" A gentle female voice echoed. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded immediately. The wall transformed into a full-length mirror, reflecting Lin Huang''s original appearance. As he was thinking how he would like to look like, the voice came again. "You''ll only have to think of the appearance and height that you desire, and we''ll make the adjustments accordingly." He then thought of Lin Xie''s appearance that he had disguised as immediately. His appearance soon changed to how Lin Xie exactly looked like in the full-length mirror. "Are you sure you want to make these changes? Please take note that once the change is confirmed, your appearance and height in Genius Union will be fixed. In the eyes of all Genius Union members, this is how your appearance will be unless you want to change it again using your Stairway points." "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without any hesitation. "Appearance settings completed. Please complete personal information privacy settings." "Privacy settings available: "Visible to everyone. "Visible to friends. "Only specific information are visible (to be selected manually). "Confidential (Any information other than name and organization is not open to anyone else.)" "I choose No.4. Confidential!" Lin Huang did not want his age to be revealed to anyone. "Basic settings are complete. Please fill in your details below" After spending more than ten minutes completing all the settings, Lin Huang was finally sent into the virtual world of the Genius Union officially. As he stepped out of the dimensional portal, it was as if Lin Huang had arrived in a bustling city which was as well-developed as Sweep City. Looking at the skyscrapers around and the people strolling on the streets as well as the breeze on his skin, it did not feel like a virtual world at all. Ding! "You have a voice message. Would you like to play it?" Lin Huang''s attention was brought back by the prompt tone of the Emperor''s Heart Ring. After playing it, Yao Lan''s voice ordered, "Come to the Stairway Tree as soon as possible since you''re here. Open the map on the Emperor''s Heart Ring directly." After listening to the voice message, Lin Huang opened the map of the Emperor''s Heart Ring, finding the location of the Stairway Tree at the center of the map quickly. An option popped out after he clicked the Stairway Tree. "Are you sure you want to be sent to the Stairway Tree?" "Yes!" After Lin Huang clicked on the option, he was sent to the bottom of the Stairway Tree immediately. "This transfer function is so useful!" After turning off the map, Lin Huang looked up at the moat-like Stairway Tree not far away from him. The size of the tree was beyond his understanding. Besides not being able to see the top of the tree, he could not see the end of the ''wall'' as he looked to the left and the right. He looked at the details of the giant tree and realized that the diameter of the trunk alone was more than 300 kilometers. The longest branch extended up to tens of millions of square kilometers, occupying the entire sky of the virtual city. Not only could he not see the treetop by gazing up, but he also could not even see the end of this wall as he looked around horizontally. "The area of the treetop is even larger than the continent of China on Earth" Lin Huang thought it was incredible. "I had the same reaction as yours the first time I saw this tree." A female voice came from behind. Lin Huang turned around immediately and saw Yao Lan who he was expecting. "You''re 5 minutes and 18 seconds late," Yao Lan glanced at the time and said to him in all seriousness. "I''m sorry. There was some delay with the settings when I came in." Lin Huang forced a smile, knowing that he was late without having to look at the time. He initially thought he could make it on time since he had entered ten minutes ahead, but he did not expect that the settings would have delayed him by 15 minutes "Don''t worry about it. I forgot to tell you about the information settings yesterday." Yao Lan waved her hand. "Let''s get a drink and then I''ll show you around." Yao Lan brought Lin Huang to an open-air bar and sat down. She ordered a glass of mixed fruit juice while Lin Huang ordered a glass of green juice. "Since you were late, the drinks are on you," Yao Lan said as a matter of fact. "Sure," Lin Huang replied. He was curious as the seats were almost fully occupied in the bar as well as in the stores around. The streets were crowded too. "Didn''t you say that all people are geniuses in this virtual world? Why are there so many people everywhere?" "The people that you see aren''t human but are virtual humans. Some of them are service staff providing various services to us. For instance, the bar owner and waiters as well as the staff in the stores over there. Besides them, the rest are virtual residents who don''t do anything. After all, there are limited geniuses in this world. It''d be pretty empty if we place limited geniuses in this city that''s the size of an A-grade foothold. I think that''s the reason why they came up with virtual residents. "Also, there''s a rule in this virtual world. We''re not allowed to fight the virtual humans, or else, we''ll be banned from entering," Yao Lan reminded Lin Huang while they were on the topic of virtual residents. He was not interested in the virtual humans at all as he looked at the Stairway Tree nearby. People were climbing the tree. "I supposed we''re not allowed to fly up the tree?" "Yes, anything that flies is prohibited on the tree. Not only that, teleportation is prohibited too. All you can do is climb." Yao Lan nodded. "Can I ride my summoning monster then?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, you can, but your flying summoning monster won''t be able to fly near the tree. Besides, there''s nothing that we can do about the gravity over here. Apart from summoning monsters that can climb, the rest won''t apply to the tree," Yao Lan explained. "But even if you have a summoning monster that can climb, you''ll be attacked by the other climbers much more easily." "They can attack as they wish?" "Of course, competition on the tree is intense. As long as you have sufficient abilities, besides attacking, you can kill as you wish. You''ll gain half of the points of the other person if you kill him. As soon as the person dies, not only will his accumulated points in the year be cut by half, he''ll have to climb from the very bottom again. Although the points can be used to redeem items, the monthly rewards are based on the height climbed. That''s the reason why many people would prefer to be robbed by half of their points instead of getting killed and starting from the bottom." "Why are you at the bottom of the tree?" Lin Huang was curious. "I used my points to redeem a virtual clone. My real body is on the tree. Do you really think I''d come all the way to the bottom to welcome you? There are different difficulties at different heights where we''ll have to try a couple of times before succeeding. It''s difficult to go back to how far you''ve climbed when you''re starting all over again." "A virtual clone?" Lin Huang could not tell that she was just a clone. "I used my points to redeem it. The clone is just an empty shall with my aura without any combat ability," Yao Lan confirmed. "How do we get points?" Lin Huang asked. "You''ll obtain basic points from climbing different heights. Killing the monsters on the tree will earn you points. You can kill or rob the others to get points too. You can also use items to redeem points on the system or trade with others. Those are the four ways of getting points," Yao Lan explained in detail. "Climbing the Stairway Tree basically depends on yourself. The most we can provide you with are some strategies. Unless we''re climbing on the same height, there''s nothing that we can do to help you. We don''t have many members in the Sweep Alliance. Unlike those powerful genius organizations in Division 1 and Division 2, they have 18 supreme geniuses with 15 immortal-level rank-9s among them. Each of them can kill imperial-level humans." "Seven of the top 10 genius organizations come from Division 1 while three are from Division 2. The No. 1 in our Division 3 is only ranked No. 12 on the leaderboard." "Where does the Sweep Alliance sit?" Lin Huang asked. "Erm No. 180" Yao Lan scratched her nose out of embarrassment. Lin Huang felt that he had been tricked into this organization after hearing the ranking. "No wonder the Huangfu siblings were unwilling to join" 646 Climbing the Stairway There were more than 120 genius organizations in Division 1 alone and more than 80 in Division 2. Although there were lesser in Division 3, there were still more than 40 of them. Meanwhile, the remaining nine divisions outside the core zones had a total of 12 genius organizations. There were a total of 268 genius organizations in the Genius Union. The Sweep Alliance ranked No. 183 due to two main reasons. One was their low number of members. Half of the 268 genius organizations had more than 100 members while the Sweep Alliance only had 36 members. They ranked No. 240 based on their number of members, coming in at almost the last 20. Another reason was that the did not have a really powerful member. Huangfu Lin was the only one in the Sweep Alliance that could kill imperial-levels. Her combat level was only on immortal-level rank-7. Immortal-level rank-9 supreme geniuses led the top-ranking organizations, and they even had more than one immortal-level rank-9 supreme geniuses. Lin Huang understood where the Sweep Alliance stood after hearing Yao Lan''s explanation. She was picky when it came to picking members while Huangfu Lin did not bother about that at all. Among the 36 members, besides some of them that had been recruited by Huangfu Hao, most of them joined on their own. Some of them joined before Yao Lan did and they had yet to retire. However, due to the war that was coming within five years, the Genius Union would need more resources. She had lowered her criteria in recruiting to get more members for the Sweep Alliance. Besides personal rewards for higher positions, there were also rewards for team ranking. The benefits were definitely attractive. After completing the basic explanation, Yao Lan brought Lin Huang to the Stairway Tree. "You can start climbing today if you''re not too busy. Rewards will be given 20 days later, and your result will be added to the points for the month." Yao Lan sounded impatient. "Alright, I shall warm up today." Lin Huang nodded and summoned a golden-haired ape. It was one of the Monster Cards that he had obtained after killing the Triheaded Ape earlier. After Xiao Hei''s amendment, the apes'' genetic issues had been solved. Besides that, one of them obtained an ancient Mighty Ape''s bloodline during its triple mutation while another obtained the bloodline of an ancient Frost Flame Ape. The golden-haired ape was the one that had obtained the Mighty Ape''s bloodline. It was more than 200 meters tall like a little mountain. Many people exclaimed when they saw it. "That''s a triple mutated ancient monster''s bloodline!" Yao Lan was stunned when she saw the golden-haired ape. Some of the people who were climbing mid-way and those ready to climb looked enviously at the ape. None of them planned to capture it as the Mighty Ape''s aura was an immortal-level. Besides, from its size alone, it seemed like a bad idea to offend it. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang waved at Yao Lan and hopped onto the Mighty Ape''s shoulder. "Herculean King, let''s climb trees today!" The Mighty Ape (the ape only had the bloodline of the Mighty Ape, but not a genuine one as it was just a temporary name) that was summoned by Lin Huang was excited as it was its first time being summoned. It pounded its chest after hearing his instruction and roared into the sky before climbing. Although the branches of the Stairway Tree were as thick as a wall, the barks were not as smooth as the surface of a wall. The cracks in the barks were the best climbing points of the tree. Although the Mighty Ape was huge, its ape instinct still made it much agiler than the people who were having a hard time climbing. Because of its massive size, in less than one minute, it had climbed thousands of meters high and disappeared into the clouds. The people below were envious as they watched the ape disappear. Yao Lan, who was watching at the bottom of the tree, smiled and she shook her head. "At this speed, he should face his first challenge soon." There would be checkpoints every 10,000 meters on the Stairway Tree. The higher it was, the more difficult it was to go through the checkpoint. Besides abilities, most of the checkpoints would require specific skills or strategies to be exact. The lower checkpoints were public whereby everybody knew the usual modus operandi, but up to a certain level, the strategies were kept private by the organizations and would not be leaked to other organizations. Some of the organizations would sell the strategies at a high price, but only some of the top organizations had the strategies to the more difficult checkpoints. They were not lacking points and did not wish to be on par with other organizations. The first checkpoint that was 10,000 meters above ground was the Fog Cloud level. It was the layer of white clouds that Lin Huang had seen when he was at the bottom of the tree. The cloud was thousands of meters thick. Entering the cloud was like entering fog that made everything poorly visible. Most importantly, the fog had an intense hallucinogenic effect that penetrated directly into human bodies and could not be avoided. Those who were not aware and breathed normally would accelerate the hallucinogenic effect once the fog was in the lungs. In the fog, let alone holy fire-level human, an immortal-level person would be affected if they stayed. It was easy to get lost in the thick fog, and with the hallucinogenic effect, many holy fire-level humans would be stuck on this level. Yao Lan had planned to give the strategy to Lin Huang, but he did not ask for it. He even refused to hear anything about the checkpoint. He thought it would be more exciting and new that way. He wanted to know how far he could go with his own ability and without any strategies that were told by someone else. As soon as he entered the clouds, Lin Huang sensed something odd in the fog. As a psychic, his sense was much more powerful than the average person. He could sense clearly that there was an odd energy in the fog that was trying to penetrate his body. "This hallucinogenic cloud should be the first checkpoint. It will definitely affect those who have weak spirits. Normal people should be slower than me if they''re not riding a summoning monster as I do. The longer one stays in this cloud, the more one will be lost," Lin Huang analyzed the complication of the checkpoint. Before he could analyze further, the Mighty Ape had gotten out of the clouds and climbed further up. Clearly, the hallucinogenic effect could do little to no harm to immortal-level humans in such a short period of time. "I wonder what the second checkpoint is going to be..." Lin Huang stopped looking at the clouds beneath and looked up into the sky. There was a layer of dark clouds on top of his head. Suddenly, it was snowing 647 God Relic — Emperor’s Hear "It''s snowing?" Lin Huang frowned as he looked at the nebulous cloud that was getting thicker on top of him. As the Mighty Ape was climbing higher, the cloud got darker. In less in than a minute, the sky was so dark that it looked like it was dyed in black ink. The day became night in an instant. Lin Huang realized that the absurd change of weather was not natural at all. "This should be the second checkpoint." The higher they went, the lower the temperature became. There was a layer of white frost on the tree bark. "It''s a little cold up here." Soon, he felt a chilly breeze penetrate his body. The cold breath that he exhaled became frost. He opened the thermometer on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. It measured -80 degree Celsius and was still descending. Although Lin Huang''s body was immune to the cold since he had a layer of Life Power covering him, the cold was draining his Life Power. In less than half a minute, he had drained almost one Life Wheel of Life Power. The Mighty Ape had frost on its body too. However, it did not affect it as much as the Mighty Ape was an immortal-level. It started climbing slower as the surface was getting slippery. However, the wind was blowing strongly, and the snowfall was getting heavier as they ascended. The Mighty Ape missed its steps a couple of times as its vision was affected. Noticing that, Lin Huang recalled the Mighty Ape and summoned the Frost Flame Ape. Because the Frost Flame Ape was a monster with frost attributes, the weather could do nothing to it. With its thick, white fur, every breath it took absorbed the cold around it, and every exhalation released heat. It was like a giant air conditioner that absorbed and release heat. It felt like spring in winter as Lin Huang rode on its shoulder as his Life Power that had been draining went back to normal. The Frost Flame Ape was excited to be summoned. It started climbing as soon as Lin Huang instructed it and it was no slower than the Mighty Ape. It did not have to climb using the cracks as frost formed on its palms and feet that clung onto the bark as soon as they touched its surface. Climbing was like walking on flatland to it. The chilly wind that was blowing on top could do nothing to the Frost Flame Ape that was exhaling heat. In less than five minutes, the Frost Flame Ape brought Lin Huang to arrive at the dark cloud. The black fog lingered around the ape and still could not defeat the heat that it was breathing out. Suddenly, the Frost Flame Ape slowed down its pace and said to Lin Huang, "Master, the black fog is beneficial to me. I would like to stay here for a while to absorb the cloud." Lin Huang know that he could not deny the Frost Flame Ape''s request. "This is a virtual world. Theoretically, your real body won''t be affected if you absorbed the cloud here. Give me a minute. Let me ask someone about this." Lin Huang then contacted Yao Lan. As soon as the video call was connected, the first thing Yao Lan noticed was the change of color of the ape. "Eh, how come your ape''s color has changed? Wasn''t it gold earlier? Does it have color-changing abilities?" "This is another ape that I have" Lin Huang answered helplessly. "Let''s not talk about that now. I have a question." "Do tell." "Whatever that we get from this virtual world will lose its effect in the real world, right?" Lin Huang asked. "Why are you asking this? Did you get anything worth keeping?" Yao Lan asked with her eyes wide open. "No, my monster would like to stay in the second checkpoint," Lin Huang said and switched the angle of his question. "If it doesn''t work in reality, I shan''t stay here any longer." Yao Lan was shocked when she saw where Lin Huang was. She suppressed her curiosity and answered his question, "The cultivation in the virtual world will be the same as in reality. Everything that you get, including items, can be brought into existence. "It can''t be. I can understand the projection of items from the real world into this world, but not virtual items into reality. Is that even possible?" Lin Huang thought he would just confirm with Yao Lan, but she gave him an answer that he never expected. "Are you messing with me?" "I might mess with you on other matters, but not this as it will affect your Stairway points and our accumulated Sweep Alliance points." Yao Lan did not look like she was joking. "All of us have an Emperor''s Heart Ring with us, but most of the people don''t know that the ring was made of a god relic called the Emperor''s Heart. The virtual world of the Genius Union is also made of the Emperor''s Heart. The power of the Emperor''s Heart isn''t the Heart Network that''s used by all humans, but the ability to make virtual items into reality. All of the items that we obtain here are real. All of the things that we consume here will work on our bodies in reality. All of the ancient relics and demigod relics will become real in reality!" "Making virtual items into reality That''s too mind-boggling even for a god relic." Yao Lan''s explanation made Lin Huang''s jaw drop. He thought such an ability was even more powerful than Xiao Hei his Goldfinger. "The Emperor''s Heart shouldn''t be a god relic. It''s impossible for an ancient god relic to make virtual items real. Even I can only use part of the virtual world to make a slight shift in reality. There is a 99.998% possibility that the Emperor''s Heart is a Goldfinger that was manufactured from the same place that I was." Xiao Hei''s notification popped out of Lin Huang''s eyes all of a sudden. "Then, how about the 0.002%?" Lin Huang asked secretly. "The 0.002% could possibly be a relic that''s gone through an advanced evolution either on its own or through the powerful people that owned it and eventually were got rid of, but the likelihood of this is almost impossible." "However, there''s a condition to bringing virtual items into reality. You must place the items into the storage space in your Emperor''s Heart Ring. If you hold the items in your hands or hide them in your clothes as you exit the virtual world, the items won''t be brought into reality. The next time you log in, the items that you didn''t place in your Emperor''s Heart Ring would have disappeared," Yao Lan added. "So, whatever that you got in the virtual world either use them immediately or keep them in your storage space. Don''t bring the items that you''d like to trade with you. Only bring them out from your Emperor''s Heart Ring when you''re ready to trade." "Alright, I understand now. Thanks for reminding me," Lin Huang said. Lin Huang was shocked to find out about that from Yao Lan. He took a while to calm himself down after hanging up the call and said to the Frost Flame Ape, "You can stay here to absorb the cloud then. I''d love to conduct an experiment as well." As soon as getting Lin Huang''s permission, the Frost Flame Ape started absorbing the black fog around it. Lin Huang then left its shoulder and climbed down to leave the dark cloud. Under the snow, he found a crack in the bark and hid in it. He activated his Army Attack Tactics to recover his Life Power. The experiment he was trying to conduct was to give himself pressure in the cold weather to see if he could accelerate his cultivation in the Army Attack Tactics as his Life Power was rapidly draining. 648 Difficulty Beyond His Expectations As Lin Huang sat in the crack of the bark, he was activating his Life Power to prevent the cold from entering his body. He was like a candle swaying in the wind, and he looked like he was going to be put out anytime. Without the Frost Flame Ape''s protection, he was exposed to -200 degree Celsius conditions. The draining of his Life Power was much faster than before. In such a horrible environment, Lin Huang activated the Army Attack Tactics'' rotation. He did not want to stay there, but he wanted to see if he could accelerate the speed of his Army Attack Tactics'' card accumulation under such circumstances. If this worked, he planned to train his Army Attack Tactics there whenever he had the time. This only proved that Lin Huang''s speculation was true. Under the quick draining of his Life Power, the Army Attack Tactics level-9 which required one second to complete a cycle was increased in less than five minutes to 0.5 seconds per cycle. Besides, it was not the end yet. He could feel that the speed was accelerating. Noticing that his last Life Wheel was depleting, he used a Life Power Refill Card immediately and climbed back to the Frost Flame Ape immediately. As soon as he got back to the Frost Flame Ape, Lin Huang started the rotation of his Army Attack Tactics again to restore the Life Power that was depleted. Without the pressure, the rotation went back to one second per cycle. Time went by on the Stairway Tree. The gigantic Frost Flame Ape attached itself on the bark as it absorbed the black fog with its mouth wide open. Lin Huang had no idea what the fog was, but he could feel the deadly threat looming behind it. He could also feel the chill when he used the telekinetic thread to touch it. He figured he might become frozen if his body were to touch the fog. Lin Huang and the Frost Flame Ape were stuck at the second checkpoint for more than three hours. The ape stopped absorbing the fog, and it seemed like it was now full with the fog in itself. Meanwhile, seven out of ten Life Wheels in Lin Huang''s body were filled. It was past noon when he checked the time. He did not plan to stay any longer, so he instructed the ape to move on. In less than three minutes, they passed through the second checkpoint. Looking at the area that was covered in black fog beneath, Lin Huang knew that he would be back one day. However, he shook his head while forcing a smile when he recalled the chill in his bones. "I guess many geniuses that are below immortal-level will be stuck in this checkpoint for a while" Just when they left the second checkpoint, the Frost Flame Ape spoke to him., I''m sorry, Master. Since I''ve absorbed a massive amount of black fog earlier, my bloodline thickness is going to level up soon. I might not serve you at the moment." "Don''t worry about it. Focus on breaking through." Lin Huang nodded and leaped to a crack in the bark. He summoned the golden-haired Mighty Ape again after recalling the Frost Flame Ape. "Let''s go up!" Lin Huang climbed on top of the Mighty Ape''s shoulder and instructed. The Mighty Ape was exuberant as it claimed. It was worried that Lin Huang might not summon it again since it had made mistakes earlier. Without the snow, the Mighty Ape''s performance peaked as it was reaching more than 30,000 meters. Lin Huang looked up as he noticed that the reading on his Emperor''s Heart Ring showed 30,000 meters. He could not wait to see what the third checkpoint was about. The clouds were gray this time, and it looked like it was going to rain. "It was a snow storm on the second checkpoint. Could this be rain?" Lin Huang thought it would be lack of creativity if the third checkpoint were as he speculated. Just when he was going to get the Mighty Ape to pass through the cloud, there were purple flashes of lightning on top of the clouds coming towards them. The Mighty Ape sensed danger by instinct and leaped aside, managing to dodge the attack. However, that was just the beginning. Right after the Mighty Ape dodged it, the gray cloud was like an angry beast that was awoken as purple lightning bolts struck towards them. It felt like there was a giant purple squid on top of the sky that was attacking Lin Huang and the Mighty Ape with its lightning-like tentacles. "It''s useless to hide like this. Let''s go through it." Noticing that the Mighty Ape was dodging the attacks clumsily, Lin Huang thought avoiding was a waste of time and strength as they could not move with the lightning bolts striking them. The Mighty Ape noticed that it was impossible for it to dodge every single lightning bolts that were coming their way at such a high frequency. It made more sense to just go through it. After hearing Lin Huang''s instruction, the Mighty Ape gave up on dodging and proceeded to climb up after covering its body with a layer of Life Power. Lin Huang, who was sitting on the ape''s shoulder, activated his Dark Mirror as his defense. Along the way, the purple lightning bolts hit the Mighty Ape''s body, but it did almost nothing to it as it was an immortal-level. After confirming that the lightning was not a threat, the Mighty Ape climbed as fast as it could. Lin Huang was a smaller target. Although he was hit by lightning occasionally, the lightning would be reflected away by the Dark Mirror. This checkpoint was nothing difficult for him. However, the deeper the Mighty Ape got into the gray cloud, the purple lightning turned into blue, and it was more powerful now. Every strike of blue lightning would drain tens of times more of the ape''s Life Power than before. The bolts of lightning could occasionally break through the Mighty Ape''s Life Power shield and cause it to be stiff. Lin Huang could feel that the Life Power of the Mighty Ape was tapering and its body was stiff. He did not expect that it was merely the third checkpoint that would be such trouble to an immortal-level Mighty Ape. He then urged the Mighty Ape to climb at its peak speed. As the Mighty Ape climbed as fast it could, they finally passed through the gray cloud more than two minutes later. After passing through the third checkpoint, Lin Huang had a new understanding of the challenges of the Stairway Tree. It was a few times more difficult than he imagined. The third checkpoint could stop more than 90% of holy fire-level humans and even some less powerful immortal-levels. They might even be stuck at the second checkpoint. "The third checkpoint is already so difficult, but some people managed to get to the 72nd checkpoint when they''re only on immortal-level rank-9" Lin Huang was impressed by those people who had managed to pass through 70 checkpoints in history. Although they depended on strategies on some of the levels, looking at how difficult they were, they''re not easy to go through even provided with strategies. Lin Huang had heard from Yao Lan that the 72nd checkpoint was the highest checkpoint anyone had ever gotten to in history. However, the highest checkpoint that the current genius organizations members managed to climb to was only the 63rd checkpoint. They could not pass through that despite being provided with strategies. After some realization, Lin Huang snapped out of his thoughts and looked up to the sky, knowing that the fourth checkpoint would be even more difficult than before! 649 Increasing Difficulty As the Mighty Ape was clambering up, Lin Huang heard an odd sound that he could not identify. It sounded like a collision on the ground. It was so insignificant that nobody could probably notice it. At first, he thought it was just the sound of the wind, but soon he sensed something had entered his territory. "Is there something in the bark?!" Lin Huang clearly sensed that something was moving through the cracks not far above. They were not moving fast, but there were many of them. Looking at the way they traveled, they did not seem like humans. "Be careful," Lin Huang was alert as he warned the Mighty Ape. He had a couple of telekinetic flying daggers in front of him. He heard from Yao Lan that killing monsters on the Stairway Tree would earn him points. Since the moving objects did not look like humans, they must be monsters then. The Mighty Ape took a few leaps and climbed more than 1,000 meters high. Just when it was bounding in the air, a couple of white silk threads shot out of one of the cracks, heading towards the Mighty Ape. A couple of silver lights flashed in the air and sliced the threads, then shot towards the cracks where the threads originated from. Soon, groans were heard. Lin Huang instantly killed the monsters that had attacked the Mighty Ape. He knew that the monsters would attack, so he reacted as soon as they made their move. He had no idea what the monsters looked like; all he did was to identify their locations with his Territory skill and killed them with his flying daggers. It was a battle model that he had come up with earlier which seemed to work for now. However, the coverage area was small at the moment. Even since Lancelot had leveled up to immortal-level rank-2, his territory coverage had increased from 1,000 meters to 2,000 meters together with Lancelot''s Sword Dao Territory, but he thought it was still insufficient. After killing the faceless monsters, Lin Huang was not relaxed at all because he felt that something was wrong when he heard the groans. Just when he wanted to get the Mighty Ape to leave the area, the monsters that were hiding in the bark cracks acted up. The groans of the dying monsters were like pebbles that were tossed into the calm water, creating ripples. Within the coverage of his territory, Lin Huang sensed that all of the monsters that were hiding in the bark were starting to dash out. "Let''s get out now!" Lin Huang shouted at the Mighty Ape when the threat intensified. The ape seemed to sense the danger as well, so it started climbing as fast as it could. Standing on the ape''s shoulder, Lin Huang finally saw how the monsters looked like. Worms were coming out of the cracks of the bark everywhere. Although they were crystal white in color, they had a sticky mucus on their bodies which was disgusting. The worms looked like maggots that were hundreds of times bigger. The smaller ones were two meters long while the longer ones were above five meters. As they got out of the cracks, they crawled sturdily towards Lin Huang and the Mighty Ape. Some of them stuck their lower bodies to the bark and spat white threads at the Mighty Ape. Lin Huang did not hold back anymore as he got all 300 of his flying daggers to cut off the threads and kill the worms, clearing a path for the Mighty Ape. However, Lin Huang was horrified when the tens of worms exploded upon being killed. Green mucus shot everywhere before the carcasses disappeared. The corrosive slime sizzled as it clung to the bark and green smoke danced out of it. Lin Huang activated his Dark Mirror that looked like an umbrella and held it on top of his and the Mighty Ape''s head. A few drops of the green mucus fell on the ape. After switching the Dark Mirror to transparent mode, the ape''s vision was no longer blocked and it started climbing up again as it ignored the corrosive pain from the mucus. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was controlling his hundreds of telekinetic flying daggers to kill the worms as he defended themselves with the Dark Mirror. Without the Dark Mirror and the flying daggers, Lin Huang might not have been able to go through the fourth checkpoint as the least powerful worm was on gold flame-level while many of them were on immortal-level rank-1 and rank-2. There were tens of thousands of them in Lin Huang''s field of vision and they were coming everywhere for him and the Mighty Ape. The mucus that was produced after the worms exploded was extremely corrosive. The Mighty Ape was unfortunate to get a few drops on it and those spots were now bald. Its skin was decaying too. Luckily, the wounds were small and with the Mighty Ape''s Enhanced Regeneration, the corrosion on its skin was healing albeit at a slow pace. Within the short seven to eight minutes, Lin Huang had killed at least thousands of worm monsters while the Mighty Ape managed to pass through the worms and complete the fourth checkpoint. After they got through, the worms did not come after them and returned to the cracks in the bark. In less than 20 seconds, the barks that were filled with white worms were nowhere to be seen. It felt like everything had just been a figment of Lin Huang''s illusion. If not for the wounds on the Mighty Ape''s skin caused by the green mucus, he would have really thought that it was all an illusion. "There are already immortal-level monsters at the fourth checkpoint. Although the worms were slow and their defenses were weak, there were just too many of them and the corrosive effect was terrifying. It''s not easy for an immortal-level rank-4 person to win this," Lin Huang concluded about the fourth checkpoint. The higher he climbed, the more respect he had for the people who made it to the 60th to 70th checkpoints. After breaking through the fourth checkpoint, Lin Huang rode on the Mighty Ape and got to the fifth checkpoint soon. They encountered a star-beaked bird beast that Lin Huang had never seen in the monster encyclopedia before at the fifth checkpoint. It was in between immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3 and was remarkably agile. The Mighty Ape suffered at this checkpoint while Lin Huang remained safe thanks to the defense of the Dark Mirror. It was proven that the no-fly condition on the Stairway Tree only applied to humans and summoning monsters, but not the local creatures on the tree. The bird beast was flying territorially at this checkpoint. After passing the arduous fifth checkpoint, Lin Huang rode on the Mighty Ape''s shoulder and passed through the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth checkpoints 650 The 21st Checkpoin After 6 p.m., Lin Huang had finally broken through the 20th checkpoint and arrived at the 21st checkpoint. He had primarily managed to break through each checkpoint within ten minutes for first to the ninth checkpoints. However, he and the Mighty Ape took more than 15 minutes to get through each checkpoint since the 10th one; some even took more than 20 minutes to break through, especially the 20th checkpoint that they had just passed. For that particular one, they needed half an hour to break through it. From the 21st checkpoint onwards, there were finally branches on the Stairway Tree. Lin Huang looked up at the branches that extended up to the sky. All of them surpassed his field of vision. They were like pillars that disappeared into the sky. It felt like they were scaling a massive wall when they were climbing on the trunk earlier. In no way did they think that they were climbing a tree. When he saw the branches, he finally realized that they were not climbing a tree, but an ancient, gigantic tree. He finally had a sense of the proportion of the Stairway Tree. "Yao Lan said that places above the 21st checkpoint with leaves are safe. There''s an isolation bubble on the last leaf of each branch. Those are the refuge spots for humans. The Life Power in the isolation space can accelerate our recovery, and we won''t be attacked by monsters when we''re there. It even isolates humans from attacking us. Even an imperial-level human can''t break through it." Although Lin Huang did not see leaves anywhere, he knew that the place must be the gathering point for humans. Below the 30th checkpoint, only the 21st checkpoint had branches. It was the first formal gathering point for humans on the Stairway Tree, and it was also the most crowded point. As soon as he arrived at the checkpoint, Lin Huang did not plan to climb further up. It was late, and the parasitic monsters on the tree would be out hunting for food when the sky turned dark. He would be digging his own grave if he were to climb the tree at night. Moreover, he wanted to see how the human gathering point looked like. Lin Huang then instructed the Mighty Ape to head to the branch that was nearest to him. Riding on the Mighty Ape, they soon arrived at that branch, and the ape leaped onto the branch. The Mighty Ape''s appearance caught many people''s attention. Many of them were afraid as they thought it was a local monster from the Stairway Tree while some of them noticed a person sitting on its shoulder and realized that it was a summoning monster. Lin Huang jumped onto the branch and just when he was ready to recall Mighty Ape, a young man in white shirt walked towards him. The man was an immortal-level rank-1. "Name me a price for the giant ape." The man in the white shirt was apparently from a wealthy family as he sounded obnoxious. "You want to buy it?" Lin Huang thought that was a ridiculous idea. Then he looked at the Mighty Ape. "It depends if he wants to go with you." The Mighty Ape shook its head immediately and glared furiously at the man. It did not want to leave Lin Huang as he had made it into a triple mutated monster as well as obtaining the Mighty Ape''s bloodline which gave it the possibility to level up to a quadruple mutation. It was natural that it did not want to leave its master. Even without all those advantages, a Monster Card would usually have 100% loyalty towards its master (except for special conditions). "Did you see that? It doesn''t want to go with you." Lin Huang turned around and smiled at the man. "10 million Life Crystals." The man did not give up and named his price. 10 million Life Crystals was a high offer. Although an immortal-level triple mutated monster was rare, the market value of an immortal-level rank-3 monster would usually cost around 5 million. Even a monster with ancient monster blood would require, at most, 8 million. It would not exceed 9 million if it were sold at an auction. Since the man offered 10 million, it was clear that he knew the market value. All of the people watching discussed among each other when they heard the offer. Many of them knew the man in the white shirt and his background, so they knew he could afford the ridiculous price that he offered. "Take a good rest, Herculean King," Lin Huang ignored the man and said to the Mighty Ape, "We shall continue tomorrow." He then recalled the Mighty Ape into its card form. "12 million!" The man in the white shirt insisted. "Not selling." Lin Huang glared at him and left without bothering to talk to him. The onlookers buzzed with conversation. "The guy is stupid to not sell it for 12 million. He''ll be lucky enough if that triple mutated ape can be sold for 9 million at auctions." "The guy is an Imperial Censor. Perhaps he has feelings for his pet." "What can feelings do? Can that compare to money? That''s 12 million Life Crystals! He could get a pretty impressive ancient relic with that money." "15 million!" The man in the white shirt teleported and blocked Lin Huang''s way, glaring deadly at him. "You must know that 15 million is enough to purchase an immortal-level rank-9 triple mutated ancient blood monster. Your ape is just an immortal-level rank-2. If you miss this opportunity now, I won''t offer such a price anymore." "I''ve told you that I''m not selling!" Lin Huang stared into the man''s eyes. He lost his patience with the man''s stubbornness. "Is it so hard to understand?" "How dare you talk to me like that? You''re only a blue flame-level. Do you want to die?" The man became mad. On the one hand, he was repeatedly rejected by Lin Huang while on the other hand, he did not like Lin Huang''s tone. "You can try and see who''ll die first." Lin Huang grinned as he did not mind sending the man to the beginning point of the Stairway Tree as he would obtain half of the man''s accumulated points. The people who were watching were excited. Some of them pulled out chairs from their storage space while some even started munching on snacks as they watched. "They''re going to fight! Who wants to bet? 1-5 for the new kid and 1-1.2 for Sun Yu!" "1-5 for the new kid? Isn''t that way too low, Zhao San? It should be 1-10." "1-10? You''ll take the lead then!" The guy named Zhao San glared at the other man who spoke. "Never mind, I''ll bet 10 points on the new kid that he''ll win!" The man, who had shouted earlier, said. "Aren''t you ashamed of yourself for betting only 10 points?!" Zhao Yan rolled his eyes. "Hehe, then I won''t lose much, and I''ll get 50 points if the new kid wins." "I''m betting 100 points on Sun Yu!" "I''m betting 200 points on Sun Yu!" "I''m betting 300 points on Sun Yu!" Most of them bet on Sun Yu while only some of them bet on Lin Huang. Those who bet on Lin Huang were only wagering with 10 and 20 points. Only one person placed an ante of 30 points. Zhao San was grumbling, "What the hell? Wouldn''t I lose a lot as a maker?" "Hey, can I join the bet as well?" Lin Huang asked Zhao San as he noticed that everyone was betting. Zhao Sun was shocked to hear that, and he nodded immediately. "Yes you can, but you can only bet on yourself." "Then, I''ll be betting with all of my points." Lin Huang was confident in himself. "No, you can only bet on half of your points. If you''re killed, half of your points will go to Sun Yu, and you''ll only be left with half," Zhao San explained. "You don''t have to transfer your points to me. I shall hold your account since everyone is watching. There''s nowhere you can run to later." "Sure, let''s do that." Lin Huang nodded. "What''re your total points?" Zhao San wanted to record Lin Huang''s points. Since he was a newbie, he thought Lin Huang would not have that many points. "5,728 points," Lin Huang declared. Besides Zhao San, all of the onlookers were shocked when they heard the figure. Even Sun Yu raised his eyebrow. "How is that possible? Is that a mistake?" Zhan San went to Lin Huang and looked at the personal details that Lin Huang projected. Besides his name Lin Xie and the organization that he belonged to, there was only the total of his points showing. The figure was indeed 5,728 as Lin Huang had announced earlier. "How is it possible that you already have so many points when you''re new here?" Zhao San was skeptical. "I killed some monsters along the way," Lin Huang explained. Each checkpoint from the first to the 10th checkpoint earned one point. From the 11th to the 20th checkpoint, one would receive 10 points per checkpoint. Killing a holy fire-level monster would only gain one point, 10 points for an immortal-level rank-1, 20 points for an immortal-level rank-2, and 30 points for an immortal-level rank-3. The points would double up accordingly for every rank. Lin Huang managed to get so many points because he had killed many monsters along the way. The least powerful one was a holy fire-level while the most powerful one was an immortal-level rank-3. Besides the monsters that he killed, the monsters that the Mighty Ape killed would add to his total tally as well. However, Zhao San and the rest did not think that Lin Huang obtained the points by himself. They doubted that his points came from his summoning monster that would have helped him killed the monsters. They reasoned that to get more than 5,000 points below the 20th checkpoint would mean he had killed a massive amount of monsters. Many of them speculated that Lin Huang had acquired the points from other members of the Sweep Alliance. Even Sun Yu thought the same as he did not believe that Lin Huang could depend on an immortal-level rank-2 ape to obtain that amount of points. "Half of my total points would be 2,864, so I''ll bet on that. Please record this down for me." Seeing that Zhao San had confirmed that what he said was accurate, Lin Huang proclaimed the points that he was betting on out loud. "If that''s what you want, I shall give it to you then." Sun Yu laughed. "I have 12,000 points now. I''ll bet 6,000 on myself!" "Sure! I''ve recorded both your points. After the battle ends, the loser will transfer the points to me!" Zhao San agreed on their bets. Soon, the people gathered to watch the show. Lin Huang and Sun Yu stood 30 meters across each other, and Zhao San who was the maker became the judge of this battle. "3, 2, 1. Fight!" 651 Tens of Thousands of Points As Zhao San counted down, Sun Yu hurtled towards Lin Huang without waiting for him to summon his monster. Sun Yu thought it was impossible for Lin Huang to have gotten to the 21st checkpoint on his own since he was only a blue flame-level. He had experienced it himself, and he knew how difficult it was to get through the 20 checkpoints. It was impossible for a holy fire-level to get there on his own. Among the active members of the Genius Union, the last holy fire-level who managed to get there was a golden flame-level seven years ago. It was a supreme genius from Division 1. Now that seven years had passed, the person had already got to the 63rd checkpoint, and he was now an immortal-level rank-9. Sun Yu did not think that Lin Huang was on par with the man. He thought Lin Huang must have depended on the triple mutated immortal-level rank-2 gigantic ape. To him, most of the Imperial Censors were merely adequate. Without their powerful summoning monsters, they were just garbage. As soon as the countdown ended, Sun Yu attacked first so that he could kill Lin Huang before Lin Huang could summon his monster. He was sure that Lin Huang was incapable of fighting without his summoning monster. Many onlookers who bet on Lin Huang were concerned as they watched Sun Yu advance before Lin Huang did. They did not have faith in Lin Huang, but they believed in his Mighty Ape. To them, Lin Huang''s combat level was too low as an Imperial Censor. He could not fight Sun Yu even though he was a genius. After all, everyone who got to this virtual world was a genius. Although Sun Yu was only an immortal-level rank-1, his ability was actually on immortal-level rank-4. Even though Lin Huang was a supreme genius who was able to fight someone one level above him, he as a blue flame-level could only fight an immortal-level rank-3. He definitely could not fight Sun Yu. In this battle, the only way for Lin Huang to turn the tables around depended on whether he had the time to call for his summoning monster. If Lin Huang managed to summon the ape before Sun Yu killed him, the battle would be a great show with unpredictable results. However, if Lin Huang did not manage to summon the ape, there was nothing to watch in this battle as Lin Huang would definitely lose! All of the onlookers assumed that Lin Huang was incapable by himself as an Imperial Censor. Many of them smiled and shook their heads when they watched Sun Yu dash towards Lin Huang before he could summon his monster. The poor kid''s points would go back to zero soon. Those who had bet on Lin Huang felt their hearts skip a beat as they realized they would lose their wager. However, a silver glow flashed in the air. Some of the onlookers were shocked by the sight of this. Sun Yu brushed shoulders with Lin Huang while the latter stood where he was without moving. Sun Yu was appalled as he spat a mouthful of blood. They then noticed that there was blood blooming out of his left chest. "So, you''ve been hiding your abilities" Sun Yu clenched his teeth as he glared at Lin Huang. "You''re the one who asked for this." Lin Huang turned around and smirked at Sun Yu. "I shall take your 6,000 points then." As soon as Lin Huang said that, Sun Yu''s body faded into sparks and disappeared entirely within seconds. A notification from the virtual system came to Lin Huang''s ears. "You''ve obtained 6,102 points from killing Sun Yu!" Those onlookers were shocked to see that Sun Yu was killed in an instant. Although some of them noticed the silver glow, they had no idea what exactly it was. "What exactly happened?" "Did that guy cheat?" "What was that silver glow that came out of nowhere? Is that the new kid''s technique?" "How could an Imperial Censor be so powerful? I thought he''s just a blue flame-level. The people started discussing among themselves, most of them not knowing how Lin Huang managed to win. "Alright, stop guessing among yourselves. This new kid is a powerful psychic. The silver glow was a flying dagger. As Sun Yu rushed towards him, the flying dagger pierced through his heart. That was how Lin Huang killed him," a tall, bald, middle-aged man among the crowd spoke. He was an immortal-level rank-4, and it was clear that he knew what Lin Huang did just now. "I''m sure some of you recorded the battle just now. Just play the video at a slower speed, and you''ll see." Some of them who had recorded the fight then played the video. Zhao San, who started the bet, played the video ten times slower and saw the flying dagger that appeared before Lin Huang piercing through Sun Yu''s chest. Many of them underestimated Lin Huang, so none of them expected such a result. The blue flame-level newbie standing in front of them was not only an Imperial Censor but also a psychic who managed to kill the immortal-level rank-1 Sun Yu in a flash. "He''s a supreme genius!" Someone exclaimed after a moment of silence. Besides fear, they now looked at Lin Huang with respect. It was rare to find a supreme genius outside of core zones, and they were lucky to see one or two occasionally. There were not many supreme geniuses in the core zones. There were only 50 supreme geniuses in the Genius Union in Division 3. All those people who were stuck on the 21st checkpoint were mostly geniuses outside of the core zones. To them, supreme geniuses were hard to come by, so it was natural that they would hold such respect for Lin Huang. Lin Huang ignored the people''s discussion about him, and he walked over to Zhao San. "You''re giving me the 2,864 points that I bet on, right?" Lin Huang asked Zhao San. "Yes Yes!" Zhao San nodded immediately. His ability was just slightly more powerful than Sun Yu. If he denied what he promised, this newbie would definitely send him to the bottom of the Stairway Tree. "Five times of 2,864 will be 14,320. Deducting the deposit that you haven''t paid, I''ll need to give you 11,456 points." Zhao San transferred the points immediately after he had done the calculation. Lin Huang was thrilled to see the 6,000-odd points from Sun Yu being added to his 5,000-odd points, together with more than 10,000 points that he had won from the bet. The sky was getting dark. Lin Huang looked at the time and thought he should log out now. Zhao San noticed that Lin Huang was opening the log out page, then he quickly went to him. "Mr. Lin, are you interested in joining our hunting team?" "Hunting team?" Lin Huang looked skeptically at Zhao San. "It''s a temporary team that we formed to hunt at night," Zhao San explained to him since he was new. Lin Huang understood what he meant after Zhao San clarified. Usually, many monsters came out to look for food at night, so it was difficult for people to climb the tree. However, it was the golden hour to kill monsters for points too. The people could hunt for monsters from sunset to just before midnight when the number of monsters had yet to reach a peak. Therefore, many people would form hunting teams on their own at the 21st checkpoint to kill the monsters together. The points would still be the same as usual, but creating a team made hunting easier, and they could look after each other. "We''ll leave to the isolated space when the monsters get out of hand during midnight, and we''ll leave the virtual world. It''s pretty safe if we stick together," Zhao San explained further. "Thanks for your invitation, but I don''t plan to stay any longer below the 30th checkpoint. However, I''ll stay together to hunt together just for the experience." Lin Huang rejected Zhao San''s invitation, but he decided to join them for the night. 652 Zhao San’s Hunting Team Zhao San''s real name was actually Zhao Shan, but due to his mispronunciation, people started calling him Zhao San instead. As time went by, his real name did not matter anymore. Although Lin Huang had rejected his invitation to join the hunting team, Zhao San brought him to the hunting team''s gathering point. There were a total of six members in Zhao San''s team which consisted of five men and a lady. All of them were on either immortal-level rank-2 or rank-3. They were ranked on top of the 21st checkpoint as a team. The teammates were excited as they saw Zhao San bringing Lin Huang with him. They had participated in the bet earlier and had witnessed how powerful Lin Huang was. None of them doubted his ability. The female member named Jiang Xin could not help but to pipe up, "Brother San, is this handsome hunk joining our team?" Before Zhao San could reply, the tall, skinny man, who looked like he was in his early 30s, smiled as he spoke, "Since Zhao San brought him here, that definitely means that he''s joining us." The teammates were excited that they had a powerful addition to the team. After all, there was no conflict of interest in the team as everyone would get points for the monsters that they killed. All they wanted was to look after each other. Moreover, Lin Huang was a psychic who was skilled at long-range attacks. With him, their safety was upgraded to the next level. "Erm Mr. Lin Xie isn''t joining us," Zhao San told the truth helplessly as he peeped at Lin Huang. "I''m sorry. It''s my first time in this Genius Union virtual world. There are many things that I need to learn. I heard from Zhao San that you guys are hunting tonight, so I''ve decided to take a look. I''ll leave the 21st checkpoint tomorrow morning," Lin Huang explained. Since everyone was friendly to him, he thought he owed them an explanation. The teammates could not hide their disappointment. All of them thought that Lin Huang was joining their team when they saw Zhao San bringing him here. "Mr. Lin, you mean you''ve gone through 21 checkpoints since your first day in the virtual world?" Jiang Xin was the first one to speak after a moment of silence. "Mm-hmm." Lin Huang nodded. He thought there was nothing to hide about. "Incredibly powerful!" Jiang Xin exclaimed. The Genius Union was a competitive place where powerful people were respected regardless of one''s combat level. "Not many people can pass through 21 checkpoints within a day. Most of them would take at least a week to get here from the first checkpoint on their first attempt." Zhao San forced a smile, thinking how different they were. "It took me eight days to get to the 21st checkpoint. I''ve been defeated twice, and I had to start from the bottom again. Getting here took me three days." "It took me five days to get here, but I was defeated a couple of times later on. It took me a few days to get here from the bottom," the immortal-level rank-3 man said. Although Lin Huang was not one of the teammates, they started talking as the topic was relatable. "Mr. Lin you must be from a genius organization in one of the core zones. Didn''t your partner from the same organization tell you about the rules of this virtual world?" Zhao San was curious as Lin Huang had asked something quite fundamental about the virtual world. "I come from Division 3. My partner only managed to guide me through roughly as her time was limited. I didn''t manage to ask about the details," Lin Huang explained. "She only told me that there are leaves at the 21st checkpoint and that''s the first gathering point for humans on the Stairway Tree. The leaves are safe as the isolation bubbles on the leaves will block out the monsters as well as humans" "No wonder you didn''t know about the hunting at night" Zhao San thought Lin Huang''s partner was not reliable after hearing what he said. "Mr. Lin, since you''re from Division 3, you must have the detailed strategy of the 30th checkpoint? Could you sell me a copy?" The tall, skinny man in his 30s asked. "I''m sorry, I really don''t have the strategy." Lin Huang shook his head. "I rejected the strategies my partner sent before entering the Stairway Tree. Until now, I''ve no idea what''s at the 30th checkpoint, let alone the strategy." "So, you didn''t use any strategies to get to the 21st checkpoint today?" The tall, skinny man raised his eyebrow. He thought Lin Huang had come up with the excuse so that he did not have to sell him the strategy. "No." Lin Huang smiled as he shook his head. "I figured it wouldn''t be fun if I knew what it''s going to be beforehand. I prefer surprises." The man did not speak further since Lin Huang was determined. Including Zhao San, everyone on the team was skeptical about what Lin Huang said. Even though he had shown how dominant he was in the battle, they did not believe that he managed to get to the 21st checkpoint without using any strategies. Lin Huang could tell from that they were doubtful from the way they looked at him. He did not bother to explain as he had already said what he was supposed to say. It was up to them to believe him. Although the tall, skinny man did not pick a fight with Lin Huang for not selling him the strategy, he was now cold towards Lin Huang. The rest did not speak further about the strategies. After all, the selling of strategy had to go both ways. If Lin Huang was unwilling to sell, there was nothing that they could do. All of them actually had the strategy for the 30th checkpoint with them, but they failed to pass through with the strategy. That was the reason why the tall, skinny man had asked Lin Huang instead, Although it was awkward, they had a sumptuous dinner together. The sky was dark by then. Hearing the monster roars from above, Lin Huang knew that it was time for the monsters on the Stairway Tree to hunt for food. "Is the 21st checkpoint about killing the parasitical monsters?" Lin Huang asked Zhao San. Zhao San thought it was an odd question, but he explained anyway, "The 21st checkpoint isn''t about killing monsters. These monsters that are hunting for food at night come from the 23rd checkpoint while some of them are from the 29th checkpoint." The other teammates thought that Lin Huang was still going on with the lie that he had made up earlier and was pretending not to know. Lin Huang just learned from Zhao San that the 23rd and 29th checkpoints were going to be chockful of monsters. "The monsters are here!" Soon, there were shouts from not far away. Hearing the movement from the other teams, they headed towards the source of the sound. "Let''s go!" Zhao San nodded at Lin Huang and commanded the rest before dashing forward. Lin Huang and the other five members followed. 653 The Tentacle Beetle Soon, Lin Huang followed Zhao San''s hunting team to a branch nearby. There were more than twenty hunting teams who patiently lay in wait for the monsters to come down from the branches. Lin Huang looked up at the branch and saw hideous beetles surrounding the entire branch. The combat level of the beetles were all immortal-level rank-3 and rank-4. They were around two to three meters long and were covered both black and white spots on their backs. The only thing worth mentioning about this monster was the weapon in their mouth. The outer layer of the weapon looked like an octopus tentacle while the inner layer looked like a meat grinder lined with sharp blades. Lin Huang figured that this was one of the methods these bugs use that he had never seen in the monster encyclopedia. They would basically grab their prey with the tentacle before the prey are pulled in and ground in their mouths. "We must be careful during the battle. Try not to touch the Tentacle Beetle''s tentacles. Their tentacles can be both soft and hard. Aside from capturing prey like insects usually do, they can be used to pierce through bodies of its prey. Nobody below immortal-level rank-5 could break their tentacles. Even if anyone managed to break them, the Tentacle Beetles could regenerate new ones immediately." Zhao San reminded Lin Huang and the rest. "The Tentacle Beetles only have two weakness. The first was the point where their head connects to their back while the second was located within their mouths. Usually, we''d only manage to attack the connecting point while others who excel in long-ranged attacks could try their hand at attacking the insides of their mouth. There was a gun master last year who managed to shoot into their mouths whenever it opened. All of them died immediately, and that particular gun master alone was more efficient than the entire team added up." Zhao San used a tone of respect every time he spoke of the gun master. "Is the gun master still here?" Lin Huang asked. It was natural for him to be interested in other gun masters as he was a gun master who had never obtained an official license. "He left since the very beginning and had only stayed on the 21st checkpoint for three days. The gun master left after asking around for some stuff. I heard he broke through the 30th checkpoint without stopping or he would''ve come back again." Zhao San smiled as he shook his head. Lin Huang had expected this before he even asked his question. A powerful person would not stay too long on the 21st checkpoint. After a short conversation, the first Tentacle Beetle horde arrived from the branches. The hunting teams dashed toward the beetles accordingly. Since the sky had just turned dark, the Tentacle Beetles seemed to have only woken up and were moving slowly. It was the perfect time to kill them. "The first monster horde is basically giving us points for free! Let''s start killing." Zhao San stopped chatting with Lin Huang and dashed toward the monsters along with the rest. Lin Huang followed suit shortly after. The first monster horde seemed to be rather underwhelming. Although the combat level of the monsters was rather high, they were basically sheep ready for slaughter. There were less than thirty teams of over 200 people going against a horde of tens of thousands of monsters. However, the hunting teams were like tigers among the goats where all of the monsters were killed and disappeared immediately. Zhao San''s team was performing well. The six of them had managed to kill all the Tentacle Beetles they faced with one hit. Zhao San was an expert with the sword, and was at level-3 of the Sword Dao. He had trained extensively in speed, allowing him to move at breakneck speed while still maintaining the efficiency of his attacks. His attacks were accurate, and pretty much severing the heads of the beetles from their backs with just a slash. He would require explosive strength to be able to achieve such a feat if he were going up against another person as this attack of his would definitely fail if it was defended against. Jiang Xin who was the only lady in the team was using a rather special weapon. She used a pair of short blades that were more than thirty centimeters long and two centimeters wide. Her movement seemed to match her weapon, making her look like a silent spirit when she was drowned in battle. She would stab her blades through the point that connects the beetles head and back. She lost the gentleness she had from when she was speaking to Lin Huang earlier. The rest of the team was performing well too. The most powerful among them was the immortal-level rank-3 hunk who was holding a gigantic ax and managed to chop off the beetle''s head with almost every slash. Meanwhile, Lin Huang seemed rather uninterested in killing the monsters. All he did was follow the rest from the back, killing the monsters that the other''s had missed out on. He was so relaxed that he looked like a tourist who had just wandered his way into the midst of a war. With Lin Huang''s help in killing the monsters, Zhao San and the rest did not have to worry about the monsters that they missed. This allowed them to move twice as fast as they usually were. Since they did not miss many monsters, Lin Huang was only killing the stragglers with his telekinetic flying dagger. The flying dagger would pierce through the mouth of the beetle before it came out from its head. All of them were killed by their exploding heads. To Lin Huang''s flying dagger, it made no difference regardless if the beetles'' mouths were opened or not. Apparently, his method of killing was much crueler than the gun master they encountered a year ago. Soon, an hour and a half had passed. The first monster horde finally ended when it was almost 9 p.m. "The first monster horde is usually the easiest. The upcoming ones would get increasingly difficult. Each horde would usually end in an hour an a half to two hours, and we''d usually stay until the third horde before we leave halfway through." Zhao San and the rest gathered once more as Zhao San explained how they did things to Lin Huang before the second monster horde came. "Why do we have to leave halfway through the third horde?" Lin Huang could not understand. "The monsters in the first horde are usually not from this zone so they''re basically free points. However, the monsters in the second horde are kind of hyperactive, like they''ve been drugged or something. The third monster horde will be rather difficult since there''ll be some monsters from the 29th checkpoint." Zhao San explained. "Are the monsters in the 29th checkpoint very powerful?" Lin Huang had no idea what kind of monsters were there on the 29th checkpoint. "The monsters on the 29th checkpoint include the Velocious Swordfiend. They''re immortal-level rank-4 but their speed is on par with monsters from immortal-level rank-6. Not only can they jump exceedingly far, they can fly as well. Their four sword arms are as powerful and sharp as a supreme relic." Zhao San explained. "Another monster that''s not in the monster encyclopedia" Lin Huang imagined the monster''s appearance in his mind after hearing the explanation. "The monsters aren''t that scary but they''re quite sly when it comes to battles. They''d usually hide among the insects while waiting for the perfect opportunity to launch an attack. If we show just a slight flaw in our formation, we might actually be killed by the monsters immediately." It was clear that Zhao San had seen such monsters before as he explained in all seriousness. As they were chatting, there were bugs chirping coming from the branches above. The second monster horde had arrived! 654 The Second Monster Horde It was still the Tentacle Beetles that attacked in the second monster horde. However, they were different this time. Standing near the branch, Lin Huang noticed that the Tentacle Beetles were almost twice as fast compared to the first wave. Moreover, they were more than double the sizes before, and all of them were roaring curiously. Lin Huang also noticed that what used to be white spots on their backs were now bloody red spots. "Collective Infuriation?" Lin Huang could not understand what he was seeing. He did not find it odd as he had never seen such a monster in the monster encyclopedia, so he had no idea what kind of ability the monsters had, and the individual phenomenon was not surprising to him. What he found astonishing was the tens of thousands of monsters becoming infuriated together. It was his first time witnessing this. The infuriated Tentacle Beetles were different from before as they were now all pumped up. Before the beetles even got to the branches, from tens of meters away, they started jumping toward the people. Now, Lin Huang finally understood why the hunting teams retreated to a distance before the second monster horde arrived, leaving a gap between the trunk and the branches. If they had been standing where they were, many of the beetles would have attacked them directly from behind. As soon as the first batch of Tentacle Beetles pounced down, they did not charge toward the beetles immediately. Instead, they waited for the beetles to come nearer to attack them. "Follow us from behind. Don''t go among them. If you step into their jumping territory, they''ll jump at you in a frenzy. No matter how powerful you are, you''ll be drowned by the mass of beetles." After Zhou San explained it to him, Lin Huang finally understood why the other hunting teams patrolled the perimeter around the beetles without going in. Lin Huang nodded and started killing the monsters together with Zhou San''s team. He remained relaxed with his single flying dagger. However, Zhou San and the rest were not as laid-back as before. The infuriated Tentacle Beetles were not only exuberant, but they were also at their peak performance whereby their speed, strength, and defense levels were doubled and even tripled compared to before. Even the regeneration of their tentacles was a few times quicker than before. They almost fully healed within a second. Their 12 tentacles dashed forward, some of them pliable like rattan while some were hard as thorns. They used various modes to fight the humans that were coming for them. Zhao San and the rest were pressured since the Tentacle Beetles were infuriated as they were now challenging to kill compared to the kills they made in a single blow earlier. Now, Zhao San needed at least three slashes to kill one beetle. His movement was just mediocre, and avoiding the tentacles became strenuous for him. Although Jiang Xin''s moved like a phantom, her efficiency had dropped immensely. Ever since the beetles'' defense became more powerful, she failed to pierce through the connecting thorax of the beetle''s head and back in one slash. Now, she needed two to three attacks to kill one beetle. The entire team saw a drop in efficiency, including the most powerful hunk with the giant ax. Although he was still destroying the beetles in a blow, his weak movements made him clumsier than Zhao San under the beetles'' siege. Lin Huang looked away from Zhao San and the rest while he studied the other teams. They were experiencing the same thing. In the first monster horde, everyone was like a warrior dashing into the beetles. They were glorious and brave. However, they now looked serious and tensed. They would avoid the creatures as much as they could whenever the beetles moved. It was apparent that they had lost the courage they possessed before. Lin Huang became the most relaxed person in the battle. He was the only one who was calm. The flying dagger floated in front of him like a living thing as it pierced through all the monsters that attempted to come near him. His strategy remained the same whereby the flying dagger would pierce through the beetles'' mouths and come out from their heads which exploded. A radius of ten meters around him was empty. He followed not far behind from Zhao San and the rest. Whenever tentacles surrounded them, Lin Huang would kill those monsters for them. Besides that, Lin Huang did not interfere with their battle with the monsters at all. They knew that if Lin Huang were to kill the monsters together with them, they would not be able to touch any of them at all. Soon, more than two hours had passed. The second monster horde finally came to an end when it was past 11 p.m. The hunting teams retreated immediately as soon as the monster horde stopped. "So, are we giving up now?" Lin Huang raised the question as he followed Zhao San and the rest to leave the place. "Retreating is a better solution." Zhao San did not explain any further. The 28 hunting teams soon came to a fork in the branch and proceeded to the branch on the right. Zhao San finally explained further, "Most of the monsters will go along the main branch to look for humans. That''s the reason why we come here to reduce the number of monsters that come for us. Fighting here is less pressure than fighting on the main branch." Lin Huang finally understood that the main branch was like the main water pipe while they hid in one of the smaller pipes. The monsters were like a stream of water flowing toward the main pipe, so hiding in the smaller pipes would mean fewer monsters. "That''s a great idea." Lin Huang had to admit that the idea was brilliant especially to relieve some stress off everyone. "One senior from Division 6 came up with this idea more than 20 years ago. It was said that many people were disqualified from this round of monster horde due to the number of monsters, so they decided to give up. As soon as the second monster horde ended, they either logged out of the virtual world or retreated to the isolated space in the leaves." Zhao San was proud when he recalled the senior who came from the same division that he did. "The senior made it to the 63rd checkpoint and stayed there until he was 40 before he retired from the Genius Union." As he listened to Zhao San, Lin Huang could not help but think about Division 7. He thought of his sister Lin Xin and his friends such as Leng Yuexin and Yi Yeyu. "If I manage to make it to the 63rd checkpoint one day, all of the newbies from Division 6 will definitely remember my name," Zhao San said to himself. "Isn''t your name Zhao San? It''s a number. How difficult it is to remember that?" The man with the giant ax teased. "Damn it! My name is Zhao Shan!" Soon, a loud voice came from not far away as the both of them exchanged banter. "Buckle up! The third monster horde is coming!" 655 The Velocious Swordfiend The 28 hunting teams waited patiently on the branch opposite the main branch on the 21st checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. The third monster horde was more arduous than the second one. Besides the furious Tentacle Beetles, there were also the Velocious Swordfiends from the 29th checkpoint. The Velocious Swordfiends were immortal-level rank-4 creatures that possessed terrifying speed like an immortal-level rank-6 monster. Half of the 200-strong crowd could not fight the Velocious Swordfiend on their own. It was even trickier as the Velocious Swordfiend would always hide among the monsters and attack sneakily. All of them had grave expressions as none of them wanted to die there. If they were killed, not only would they be sent back to the first checkpoint of the tree, 50% of their points would be deducted. Soon, the monster horde finally came. Countless black beetles were leading the pack. Lin Huang was watching from a distance, but he did not see the Velocious Swordfiend that Zhao San mentioned. The hunting teams did not move as well. They only started attacking when the beetles got nearer to them. However, the teammates were not fighting on their own anymore. Instead, they were split into two groups. The same happened to Zhao San''s group whereby the six of them formed three groups. They ignored Lin Huang completely. Judging from Lin Huang''s ability to kill the furious Tentacle Beetles within a second, he had proven that he was much more powerful than them. They were sure that as a psychic, Lin Huang could control at least hundreds of telekinetic weapons by himself. However, he had only been using one telekinetic flying dagger so far and did not show what he was really capable of. Therefore, they would rather focus on themselves than on him. Just like before, Lin Huang walked before Zhao San''s team like a tourist. He was like an odd species among the people who were fighting the beetles to death. All of the Tentacle Beetles that dashed toward him died following a silver glow that flashed by. There was nothing alive ten meters around him besides the fading monster carcasses. As he walked further into the monster horde behind Zhao San''s team, he realized he had yet to see the Velocious Swordfiend. "Are the monsters so skilled at hiding or are they not even here?" Lin Huang was interested in the unknown monster as he had never seen it in the monster encyclopedia. On the other hand, the monster''s attack technique was a sword skill. Just as he was thinking to himself, a couple of black silhouettes darted out from the monster horde. They were like black bolts of lightning that were advancing toward him. Lin Huang noticed the black figures as soon as they appeared. He knew that those were definitely not the Tentacle Beetles as they were not that nimble. "They''re finally here!" Lin Huang smirked as two more flying daggers appeared before him. The three silver glows aimed for the three black shadows that were coming toward him. In the next second, the silver glows pierced through the black shadows and groans were heard. The cries did not sound like the screeching chirps from the Tentacle Beetles when they were killed. They sounded more like groans of ferocious beasts. Many of the humans looked at Lin Huang''s direction when the odd groans broke out. Even Zhao San and the rest turned around to look. Suddenly, a couple of black figures hurtled toward Zhao San and the rest who were not paying attention. Seeing the black glow heading toward them, it was too late for them to do anything although they noticed them at the last second. The three silver glows in front of Lin Huang barreled at a speed faster than before. Just when the black shadows almost got to them, the three silver glows cleaved through the black shadows as Zhao San, and the rest gaped in shock. In less than two seconds, Lin Huang had managed to kill six Velocious Swordfiends. All of the people around watched with their jaws slack. Even some of them who had not noticed him as a newbie were stunned by how powerful he was. Zhao San and the rest had a new impression of Lin Huang''s real ability. However, Lin Huang did not bother about what the others thought about him as he watched the Velocious Swordfiend''s carcass that was fading away. He finally got a decent look at how the monster looked like. The Velocious Swordfiend had a triangular head with its eye occupying half of its face. It had a saw-like mouth, and its upper body was covered in a hard pod with four sharp sword arms and a pair of black wings. On the lower part of its body was a pair of long, spiky legs which could undoubtedly jump impressive heights. Although the monster walked on both legs, from its body structure, it resembled an insect. It was completely different from what Lin Huang''s imagination illustrated from Zhao San''s description. "I thought it was a human-form monster, but it''s an insect instead." Lin Huang shook his head in disappointment. He now understood why he had not noticed their existence as the Velocious Swordfiend possessed a dynamic mimicry ability which allowed it to blend into the environment without being noticed. "It''s got great speed and amazing mimicry, but overall, such a monster is only talented at assassination," Lin Huang mumbled to himself after having overcome the Velocious Swordfiends. "Its attacking ability isn''t bad, but it has a weak defense. Its ability is just mediocre as a whole. As soon as its killing plan failed and it revealed itself, it was easily killed by people who are skilled in close-range attack." However, the hunting teams on the 21st checkpoint were afraid of such a monster''s abilities. As soon as Lin Huang killed the six Velocious Swordfiends, the beasts knew that he was tough and did not target him anymore. They vented their anger on other humans instead. Many of the teams were attacked by the Velocious Swordfiends, and some of them were killed. Unfortunately, Lin Huang did not manage to save them. As he witnessed more and more people getting disqualified while Zhao San and the rest attempted to retreat, Lin Huang thought he had to offer his true abilities. "Come out, Lancelot." Lin Huang waved and summoned the Ruthless Sword Dominator Lancelot. He was now almost two meters tall in his maroon armor and exuded a dangerous aura. Some of them, who were sensitive to the change, noticed something odd coming from Lin Huang and looked at Lancelot. "Kill all those monsters with the mimicry ability as fast as you can. As for the rest, kill them if you want to or just leave them to the others," Lin Huang instructed. Lancelot nodded and stared at the monsters. He held his sword in front of his cheek and raised it above his head as he mumbled to himself. Soon, nine sword servants appeared and squatted in front of him in a single line. "Kill them!" The blue glow in Lancelot''s eyes sparkled as he pointed his sword at the monsters. The nine sword servants then stood up and lunged toward the monsters. Lancelot followed behind them. 656 Kill All the Bugs! Although Lancelot was only an immortal-level rank-2, he was a triple mutated god''s blood monster after all. He was like a ferocious tiger prowling into herds of goats. All of the monsters were killed wherever his sword swung. Although his nine sword servants were only on double mutated immortal-level rank-2, they were no slower than Lancelot as they fought together. In less than a minute, Lancelot and the nine sword servants were deep into the monster horde and had left Lin Huang''s sensing coverage. Lin Huang was not worried about Lancelot as he had his Dark Mirror, so the monsters could not break through his defense at all. After summoning Lancelot, Lin Huang got busy himself as he planned to kill the Velocious Swordfiends to relieve the teams of their stress. He greeted Zhao San and circled the team while killing the Velocious Swordfiends that were hiding around. He then proceeded to help the next team. Although the Velocious Swordfiends'' mimicry ability was powerful, Lin Huang''s ocular skill was just as terrifying as the Velocious Swordfiends could not escape from him. The next hunting team was less than 300 meters away from Zhao San''s team, and three Velocious Swordfiends were attacking them. They were suffering as the monsters surrounded them. Once attacked, The Velocious Swordfiends would usually back off. If they missed their strike, they would hide and find another opportunity to attack again. The eight members of the hunting team had their guards up against the three Velocious Swordfiends as they were busy killing the Tentacle Beetles. As soon as Lin Huang got to them, he headed straight towards the Velocious Swordfiends that were hiding among the monsters. With his ocular skill, the Velocious Swordfiends that were cloaking themselves were like candle lights in the dark. His three telekinetic flying daggers shot out in three silver glows. The Velocious Swordfiends that thought were invisible did not expect the three silver bolts of light to assault them in an instant. However, it was too late when they sensed the danger upon them as the silver glows slashed right through their heads. Their carcasses faded into pieces and disappeared. The eight members of the hunting team did not even see the three Velocious Swordfiends that were being cloaked. All they saw were the disappearing monster carcasses after witnessing the silver flashes. They then realized that it was Lin Huang who had helped them. "Bro, thanks!" A person shouted at Lin Huang while the rest looked at him in gratitude. Lin Huang nodded at them and looked around. He then killed another two Velocious Swordfiends before leaving for the third hunting team. In less than a minute, Lin Huang had helped the third hunting team kill the Velocious Swordfiends that were surrounding them before heading to the fourth and fifth hunting teams. As the 28 teams were not too far apart from one another, he spent around half an hour killing all of the Velocious Swordfiends that were hiding. Most of the teams were grateful for his help as they would not have been able to hold on for long if not for his support. Without the Velocious Swordfiends, the killing efficiency climbed up again. Lancelot and the sword servants seemed to be doing well. In the next hour, the 28 hunting teams soon cleared all of the monsters on the branch. It was their first time managing to kill all of the monsters on the branch as they would usually only last for half an hour and leave the virtual world or hide amongst the leaves when it got too overwhelming. After clearing the branch, there were not that many monsters left on the main branch. The 28 hunting teams charged into the monsters, and the third monster horde was over in 20 minutes. That night saw the highest number of kills that most of them achieved on the 21st checkpoint. Zhao San and his team were excited as they had never obtained so many points at once before. Lancelot then recalled his sword servants and returned to Lin Huang. Many were envious of the handsome human-form summoning monster in dark red armor. Lin Huang did not recall or compliment Lancelot. Instead, he handed him a packet of dried vegetables. Lancelot took the dried vegetables blissfully and started eating while he stood where he was. The onlookers pitied Lancelot as they thought he had decided to follow a cheapskate master who rewarded him with dried vegetables instead of dried meat. "Erm, is that dried vegetables?" Zhao San, who was watching, could not help but to ask. He was hoping to hear something else such as it actually was some other food that resembled dried vegetables. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded, but he soon noticed that the people were looking at him like he had done something wrong, so he explained further, "That''s his favorite." "Yeah, right!" All of them had the same thought when they heard what Lin Huang said. Lin Huang noticed their doubtful expressions, but he did not bother to explain and changed the subject instead. "What''re the monsters in the fourth monster horde?" "I don''t know. Nobody knows." Zhao San shook his head helplessly. "Ever since the Stairway Tree existed, nobody on the 21st checkpoint managed to witness the fourth monster horde. Not only this branch, but it''s also the same with the other five branches. Everyone was either disqualified in the third monster horde or logged out of the virtual world. The fourth monster horde won''t come if the third one isn''t completely cleared, so even the people hiding in the isolation bubbles in the leaves have no idea what the fourth monster horde is like. We''re not even sure if there''ll ever be one." "We shall wait and see then. I''ll log out to sleep if nothing happens in ten minutes." It was 12.30 a.m. when Lin Huang checked the time. He planned to get a good night''s sleep and proceed to climb the tree tomorrow. All of the other hunting teams did not log out as well. It was not that they were confident of beating the next monster horde, but they wanted to witness how would the fourth monster horde looked like. After all, nobody had ever seen that before. Staying here would make them witnesses of history. After they waited for two to three minutes, the monsters'' roar was finally heard. They craned their necks to look in the distance, trying to see how the fourth monster horde looked like. Lin Huang activated his ocular skill and soon saw the so-called fourth monster horde. To his surprise, the monsters that were coming were still Tentacle Beetles and Velocious Swordfiends. However, there were many more Velocious Swordfiends this time. During the third monster horde, there were only one or two occasionally, but they now occupied half of the mob. The Velocious Swordfiends no longer hid themselves among the monsters. Instead, they formed an army. Their black eyes were blood red, and even their four sword arms were carmine, seeming like they were splashed in blood. "The Velocious Swordfiends are infuriated as well" Lin Huang turned serious. The average Velocious Swordfiend was already fast, but now that they were infuriated, their speed must be accelerated. Perhaps not many among the teams would manage to hold up for long with this horde. "Let''s retreat. There''s no way that we can win this time," Lin Huang said to Zhao San. From a distance, Zhao San and the rest noticed that the Velocious Swordfiends were infuriated. They were concerned while the other teams were attempting to retreat too. "Retreat!" Zhao San nodded and made his decision. They then logged out of the virtual world one-by-one. "I shall leave too. I''ll see you tomorrow morning then," Zhao San said to Lin Huang and logged out. The other hunting teams noticed that many teams had retreated, so they logged out as well because it would be meaningless for them to stay. Soon, only Lin Huang was left on the branch. He smirked as he looked around. "I shall get all the points this time!" His summoning monsters were summoned one by one in front of him Bai, Charcoal, Tyrant, Kylie, Clown, Bloody "Our mission today is to kill all the bugs!" 657 Lin Xie Cheated? Looking at the monsters coming their way, Lin Huang used his ultimate move by summoning Bai, Charcoal and the rest. He summoned a total of ten of them. It was the first time in history that he was summoning the maximum number of monsters that he was allowed to. Tyrant was now in his original giant form as he dashed towards the monsters like a gigantic tank. Even though he was only an immortal-level rank-2, the immortal-level rank-3 and rank-4 bugs could not do anything to break through his defense. All he had to do was to wave his hands, and the bugs were slaughtered. Bai, who was not far away, transformed the 12 bloody wings at his back into blades and sometimes into sharp thorns. The monsters that passed through were slashed into halves, or their heads were pierced through. None of them managed to escape. Bloody appeared as a cloud of purple haze in the battle as it extended its hundreds of purple tentacles everywhere. While its tentacles pierced the monsters, they were cast with parasites at the same time. If Bloody were not restricted to only cast parasites on monsters that were on immortal-level rank-2 or below, the number of monsters that were available there might not satisfy Bloody. Meanwhile, Charcoal returned to its body length that was thousands of meters long among the monsters. Although a part of its ability was restricted since flying was prohibited on the Stairway Tree, its Dragon Flame was as powerful as ever. The black Dragon Flame burnt the monsters into ashes. Its efficiency was just as mighty as Tyrant that was killing like a human tank. Kylie, who was decked in black armor, flapped the dozen black wings on her back and dashed out like a bolt of black lightning. There was an army of 300 in silver armor who were on the same combat level as her following behind. They transformed into silver lightning bolts as they rushed forward. Even Kylie and her army were affected by the restriction. Although they looked like they were flying, all they did was move at the speed of light. The paths were destroyed as they made strips of holes among the monsters. In his dark red armor, Lancelot led his nine sword servants as they marched into the monster horde. To increase the efficiency of killing them, he used the Sword Dominator''s Sword Manipulation as hundreds of Life Power swords came out of his body and pierced through the monsters'' bodies. Among the monsters, the Clown was the most independent one as he danced around the monsters while singing. All of the monsters became frantic and started killing each other. None of the monsters managed to escape his Deception Magic. He would occasionally control the monsters with his hands like a kid playing with puppets. The battle turned into his playground while the monsters were his toys. The Sanguine Overlord and the two fiends joined the battle too. They were performing well. The Malachian Fiend''s defense was just slightly weaker than Tyrant''s. It was also charging among the monsters like a tank while the Hellion Imp summoned a meteorite to hit the ground, creating a wide range of damage while the Sanguine Overlord took the monsters'' Life Power away with his Punishment Chains and burned them into ashes. As soon as the ten summoning monsters appeared, Lin Huang was on the winning end of the battle. Although all of the monsters were infuriated and more powerful than before, they were helpless under the siege of Lin Huang''s triple mutated monsters with advanced bloodlines. The battle lasted for more than three hours. When it was almost 4 a.m., all of the monsters on the branches were killed and had disappeared. After the fourth monster horde ended, Lin Huang recalled all ten of his summoning monsters. He did not care if there was a fifth monster horde or not as he did not plan to fight anymore. The sky was getting bright, and the people who logged in might see him if he proceeded to fight. He then looked at his accumulated points. The entire killing spree had given him a boost in his points, totaling over eight million. What made him speechless was that he was now ranked No. 2 on the leaderboard. "No. 2: Lin Xie" "Organization: Sweep Alliance" "Points: 8,211,586 "Current Checkpoint: 21" "Oh, I''ve now become high profile again" Lin Huang did not expect to be getting such recognition. All he wanted was to collect points to redeem resources when nobody was around, but he clinched the No. 2 spot on the leaderboard. He was only less than 300,000 points behind the person who ranked No. 1 and more than a million points ahead of No.3. He was just surprised at the results, but he did not dwell on it. Lin Huang then logged out of the virtual world so that he could get some rest to continue climbing tomorrow. As he logged out, he took a shower and fell asleep when it was around 4.30 a.m. After sleeping for two hours, he was woken up by the vibration of his Emperor''s Heart Ring before 7 a.m. He glanced at it with his bleary eyes and realized that it was Yao Lan who was calling. Figuring that there might be an emergency, he picked up the video call. "Hey, Lin Xin, did you cheat yesterday?" Yao Lan asked directly. "What? Cheat?" He asked her back while yawning. Lin Huang thought what she was accusing him of was ridiculous. "Your points How did you manage to get more than eight million points without cheating?" Yao Lan asked as though what she was asking was not wrong. "You sure have got balls! You''re now ranked No. 2. The Genius Union is now in chaos since morning. All of the people who logged in are talking about you especially those from Divisions 1 and 2. I''ve heard that many people have reported you. I guess you might be disqualified from the Genius Union today" "Tsk, tsk, look at you. Why can''t you be more low profile since you''re cheating? Nobody might notice if you cheated by 100,000 to 200,000 points, but you cheated all the way to No. 2 on the leaderboard. Karma is here for you now," Yao Lan lowered her voice. "Since you''ll be removed from the organization soon anyway, why not you tell me how you cheated so that I can get myself some points to rank higher on the leaderboard?" "Who told you that I cheated?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. "Nobody told me, but everyone in the Genius Union knows that. Do you think we''re idiots to believe that you managed to get eight million points within a night?" Yao Lan rolled her eyes. "I got those points from killing monsters last night," Lin Huang told the truth. "You''re too much! To be able to get eight million points, you''d have to kill 100,000 immortal-level rank-4 monsters worth 80 points each on the 21st checkpoint. Even an infuriated immortal-level rank-4 monster is worth only 160 points, which means you''d have to kill more than 50,000 of them. Since you''re only a blue flame-level, I believe you can kill one or two immortal-level rank-4 monsters, but tens of thousands of them?! I don''t believe you!" "It''s your problem that you don''t believe me. What I told you is the truth." Lin Huang did not bother to explain further. "Alright, I''ll go back to sleep. I''m going to climb the tree again after lunch." He covered himself in his blanket and fell asleep after hanging up. 658 Leaving the 21st Checkpoin The Genius Union was in chaos since the wee hours of the morning as there was an unfamiliar name that popped up on the leaderboard. It was normal for the rankings on the leaderboard to change and it was not that surprising when a black horse appeared occasionally. However, the unfamiliar person that everyone was buzzing about was a person who was stuck on the 21st checkpoint on the Stairway Tree. To those on the 50th to the 60th checkpoints, anyone who was stuck on the 21st checkpoint must be a weakling. It was ridiculous for such a person to obtain more than eight million points overnight and rank No. 2 on the leaderboard. "Since he''s so shameless, why didn''t he get No. 1 instead?" "Eight million points overnight! Wouldn''t he be a god if he''s given a year on the tree?" "This kid is too much! I''m on the 59th checkpoint, and I can''t get 800,000 points if I were to kill monsters for the entire night. How could he get eight million points?" "I''m not going to say anything anymore. I''ve reported him!" "Report +1. This kid is waiting to be suspended!" The only topic in the Genius Organization that was on everyone''s lips that day was Lin Huang. The same happened in the virtual world whereby everyone was talking about how Lin Huang cheated to get his accumulated points. Up to tens of thousands of people reported the issue, asking the Genius Union to suspend Lin Huang. Some of the geniuses from Divisions 1 and 2 even humiliated the entire Division 3 and the Sweep Alliance, saying that there must be more cheaters besides Lin Xie. It caused an uproar between Divisions 2 and 3 while the safe zones outside of the core zones were enjoying the show. It was past noon when Lin Huang woke up. He set his communication page to silent mode since he ended the call with Yao Lan. He noticed there were five missed calls when he checked his device. Three were from Yao Lan, one was from Huangfu Hao, and there was one unknown number. Lin Huang ignored all of the calls as he knew that Yao Lan and Huangfu Hao must be contacting him about the Genius Union while the unknown number must be a mistake. He took a shower and had a sumptuous lunch while he relaxed. He then logged into the virtual world after returning to his room. As he appeared on the 21st checkpoint on the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang noticed that many people were gawking at him. He figured that it had to do with his ranking on the leaderboard. After all, he was now ranked No. 2, so it was natural for people to stare at him. Although he had helped many of them during the monster hordes last night and they had witnessed Lin Huang leading the teams to kill the third monster horde for the very first time, most of them still thought that he had cheated to obtain more than eight million points overnight. Lin Huang did not care about what people thought of him. The truth was the truth. No matter how the rumors were spreading like wildfire, time would reveal the truth. As soon as he logged in, he did not plan on staying on the 21st checkpoint. He walked towards the gathering point where Zhao San''s team was so that he could bid them farewell. As he arrived at the gathering point, he noticed all six of the hunting teammates there. They walked towards Lin Huang when they saw him. "No matter what other people are saying, I, Zhao San, believe that you''ve never cheated!" Zhao San declared directly. "Although I''ve no idea how you did it, I know you didn''t cheat." Jiang Xin looked at Lin Huang in all seriousness with her beautiful eyes. "Those who are doubting you will realize that they''re wrong one day." All of the teammates chose to believe that Lin Huang did not cheat. It was out of his expectations because he was unfamiliar with Zhao San and the rest after all. He did not even know some of their names. He only knew them by the nicknames that Zhao San called them. However, these people, who had only spent a night with him, chose to believe him while the rumors were rife. "Thanks." Lin Huang felt a warmth flooding his heart. He did not say anything else after thanking them. "I''m leaving the 21st checkpoint." "Make yourself known. Show everyone that you deserve to be ranked No. 2 on the leaderboard!" Zhao San patted his shoulder. "What I want isn''t No. 2." Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. Zhao San was surprised to hear what Lin Huang said and gave him a thumbs up. "All the best. I believe you can do it!" Jiang Xin was his little fan. After bidding farewell to them, Lin Huang returned to the Stairway Tree''s main branch and started climbing again. It was not difficult to go through the 21st to the 29th checkpoints. Lin Huang had passed through the nine checkpoints before 6 p.m. and arrived at the 30th checkpoint where many geniuses were stuck. However, Lin Huang did not hear anything about this checkpoint when he was on the 21st checkpoint. Standing on the Mighty Ape''s shoulder, Lin Huang looked up when he arrived at the 30th checkpoint. There were dark clouds above him that seemed similar to those on the second checkpoint. "Is it going to be another snow storm?" Lin Huang still remembered the chilly weather on the second checkpoint. As the Mighty Ape climbed up, it started to rain. The higher they went, the stronger the torrents. "If it''s just rain, no one should be stuck here for too long. There should be something else." Lin Huang knew that the checkpoint would not be this simple or else, tens of thousands of people would not have gotten stuck on this checkpoint. Soon, Lin Huang found out what was so tricky about this checkpoint. As the Mighty Ape climbed less than 1,000 meters up, the rain poured down like a waterfall. The higher they went, the stronger the water flow. Due to the constant wash of water, the cracks between the barks became slippery, which caused the Mighty Ape to slip occasionally. As the waterfall was pouring down like a tsunami, the Mighty Ape held tightly onto the bark. It was already difficult enough for it just to stay put. Meanwhile, Lin Huang held the Dark Mirror in his hand to prevent himself from falling off the Mighty Ape''s shoulder. "It seems like we can''t just go through it this way." Lin Huang knew that the Mighty Ape was already doing its best and he should not go on with this anymore. He then held the Dark Mirror on top of the Mighty Ape''s head as he shook his head to form a giant umbrella. The water that was pouring down was blocked entirely out now, while the steady flow of water poured on the other side of the mirror where Lin Huang was bearing less than 1% of the flow. The Dark Mirror had solved the issue that caused so many others to be stuck on this checkpoint easily. Soon, the Mighty Ape passed through the clouds in less than five minutes, and they made it to the 31st checkpoint. 659 The Second Repor "Eh, I thought Lin Xie was still on the 21st checkpoint at noon. Why''s he on the 31st checkpoint now? Did I misread or something?" A person mumbled to himself as he noticed the changes on the checkpoint that Lin Huang was currently on when he logged into the virtual world after 6 p.m. He was not the only one who noticed the changes. Many people had been paying attention to Lin Huang ever since the rumor spread. They noticed that the checkpoint that Lin Huang was on kept changing since the afternoon. They saw that he passed through one checkpoint every half an hour. Many people thought that Lin Huang would be stuck on the 30th checkpoint, but they did not expect him to go through it in 20 minutes, which was even shorter than the time he took for the previous checkpoints. The person who noticed that spread the news and accused Lin Huang of cheating again. Before the first heat was over came the second one when Lin Huang was minding his own business. However, Lin Huang logged out of the virtual world when he arrived at the 31st checkpoint as the sky was getting dark. Many people on the Stairway Tree were still discussing the same topic. "In just one afternoon, less than six hours, and he managed to climb from the 21st checkpoint to the 31st checkpoint? Furthermore, he only used 20 minutes to get through the 30th checkpoint. This guy must have cheated again!" "He managed to get through ten checkpoints in one afternoon. That would mean 20 checkpoints in a day. Looking at his progress, wouldn''t he get to the 80th checkpoint in four days?!" "Not only did he cheat on the way he got his points, but now he''s also cheating to pass through checkpoints. This guy is so shameless!" "Let''s report him again!" "I''ve reported him!" "Report him +1!" In reality, it was pretty easy for people who were on the 50th to the 60th checkpoints to get through ten checkpoints in one afternoon. One reason was that they were already on immortal-level rank-8 or rank-9. Some of them even had the ability of an imperial-level, so the checkpoints below the 50th were nothing to them. On the other hand, all of them had strategized. Therefore it was easy for them to climb the stairs again. It was possible for one to climb from the first checkpoint to the 40th in one day, let alone ten checkpoints in an afternoon. What everyone was mad about was that Lin Xie had appeared out of nowhere. Since everyone was convinced that he had cheated earlier, they believed that he had done it again to get through ten checkpoints in one afternoon. Once he made such a terrible first impression, whatever he did, later on, would be judged anyway. Many people had heard about Lin Xie due to the "cheating" incident. With that impression, no matter what Lin Xie achieved after that, he would always be accused of cheating. However, a person from Division 3, who was on the 61st checkpoint, spoke up after hearing about the second accusation. "It''s nothing for an immortal-level rank-8 or rank-9 to climb from the 21st checkpoint to the 31st in one afternoon. It''s achievable even without any strategy." Some of the people from Division 3 supported what the person said. Soon, a person who claimed to be on the 21st checkpoint revealed that Lin Xie was only a blue flame-level instead of immortal-level. Later on, more people who were on the 21st checkpoint revealed more about Lin Huang, including how he looked like, his identity as an Imperial Censor and a psychic. Those from Division 3 who spoke for Lin Huang became silent. "I don''t believe that a person who''s only on blue flame-level could get to the 31st checkpoint without cheating! "I couldn''t even pass the second checkpoint when I was on blue flame-level, and I only managed to pass through the 10th checkpoint when I was gold flame-level. Even if he''s a supreme genius, it''s impossible for him to get to the 31st checkpoint when he''s only a blue flame-level." "Now, it seems like he didn''t just cheat his way from the 21st to the 31st checkpoint. I bet he even cheated his way up to the 21st checkpoint." Zhao San and the rest attempted to reveal the truth on behalf of Lin Huang, but it backfired. Their comments were drowned in those hateful comments that the others posted. "This Lin Xie won''t be around for long. The Emperor''s Heart will act on the reports within 24 hours. People have been reporting him since six in the morning. I bet his account will be suspended tomorrow morning." "That''s what I''m talking about!" "I shall report him again before he gets suspended!" Lin Huang had no idea that his getting to the 31st checkpoint had caused another uproar. He had dinner after logging out of the virtual world. Yao Lan called again when the sky was getting dark. Lin Huang hesitated before picking up the call. "What''s wrong with you? Why didn''t you pick up my calls earlier? Are you afraid of being criticized?" Yao Lan said with a huge grin. "Scared, my a*s! My communication page was on silent in the morning, and I spent my afternoon climbing the tree. I''ve been busy. What do you want from me?" Lin Huang asked. "I want to know where you got those strategies." "What strategies?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "The strategies to climb the Stairway Tree. We have the strategies to pass through the 21st to the 30th checkpoint with us, but we''re not able to do that within one afternoon. Your strategies must be coming from some top organization. Can I buy a copy from you? I want those after the 40th checkpoint," Yao Lan told him her intention. "There''s no strategy." Lin Huang shook his head. "I don''t even know what''s going to happen at any of the checkpoints. How would I have the strategies?" "Selfish. You''ll be suspended tomorrow morning anyway. Why would you want to keep them to yourself?" Yao Lan huffed angrily. "Don''t you worry. I won''t be suspended." Lin Huang was sure as he had read the suspension criteria on the Emperor''s Heart. Those who were reported would not be suspended directly but would be investigated instead. If the account were found to be cheating, a suspension would be the solution. However, accumulating points by summoning monsters was not deemed as cheating. The verdict was not determined by what the people said, so he was not worried that he would be suspended. Yao Lan did not dwell on it since Lin Huang did not want to admit that he had his own strategies. "Oh yeah, there''s another thing that I need to inform you. Huangfu Lin will return to Sweep City later, and she wants to see you." "I''ll spare some time to see her," Lin Huang agreed immediately. He wanted to see how the most influential person in the Sweep Alliance, who managed to kill an imperial-level when she was only an immortal-level rank-7 looked like. 660 The Heaven Alliance Lin Huang received a notification when he woke up the next morning. It was the Genius Union who sent the notification, Lin Huang read it out of curiosity and found out that it was sent to the masses and was related to him. "Dear members, we''ve investigated and reviewed our member ''Lin Xie'' who was heavily reported recently due to an allegation of him cheating on the Stairway Tree, and we''ve concluded that he did not cheat. Lin Xie went through the checkpoints and obtained the points with proper methods which are aligned with the conditions. End of notice!" Lin Huang grinned as he shook his head after reading the message. He figured that would be the verdict as well. Besides Lin Huang, all of the members of the Genius Union received the same notification at the same time. "He didn''t cheat? How is that even possible?!" "How could a blue flame-level manage to get more than eight million points overnight without cheating?" "Even with strategies, it''s difficult for a blue flame-level person to get from the 21st to the 30th checkpoint in one afternoon. What I don''t understand is how did he manage to get more than eight million points overnight." "I think either the Emperor''s Heart is faulty or this Lin Xie really is something." "We''ve been slapped by Emperor''s Heart! My cheek hurts. Someone, please comfort me" "Please, your ass! I have a 21-centimeter steel rod that could comfort you!" "Oh no, the ride has departed. Please buckle up guys." "This is not my ride to the kindergarten. Pull over!" On the 63rd checkpoint was the Heaven Alliance from the foothold of Division 1. Three immortal-level rank-9s had promised to meet in the morning. They received a notification on their Emperor''s Heart Rings when they were just starting to chat. They read it immediately when they realized that it came from the Genius Union. The three of them frowned after reading the notification. The allegation about Lin Huang was the hottest topic for the past few days. While they knew about it, they did not follow the case. On the 63rd checkpoint, everyone was occupied with how to break through the checkpoint, and they were not really interested in what was happening below the 60th checkpoint. The three of them had briefly discussed how Lin Huang managed to get more than eight million points overnight yesterday and they were convinced that he had cheated. Besides cheating, there was no other explanation for Lin Huang''s achievement. They were surprised to see the verdict as they read the notification. "A blue flame-level got more than eight million points overnight, and the Emperor''s Heart said he did it without cheating. The Emperor''s Heart must be broken!" A man wearing a long-sleeved printed tee guffawed. "Have you ever heard about the Emperor''s Heart being broken throughout the 800 years of history?" A man in a white shirt raised his eyebrow. "So, you think that Lin Xie achieved what he did just with his own ability?" A man in a trench coat asked in all seriousness. "Stop messing around. You and I can kill immortal-level rank-4 monsters like we''re killing dogs when we''re only blue flame-level, but we can''t kill tens of thousands of monsters overnight and get eight million points. Even if we drain all the Life Power that we have, we can only kill hundreds of monsters at once. Furthermore, we have special Life Power columns with extra Life Wheels in our bodies. It''s pretty impressive for an ordinary person to be able to kill more than 100 monsters overnight," the man in the t-shirt disagreed. "What we''re unable to do doesn''t mean that others can''t. What if he has unlimited Life Power as the legend says? Or maybe he has the ability to clone himself? What if he has a demigod relic that can attack within a wide range?" The man in the white shirt voiced out the possibilities. The both of them were speechless. "Of course, he might have his own way to cheat that escaped the investigation of the Emperor''s Heart." The man in the white shirt did not fully believe in the conclusion that the Emperor''s Heart had announced. "So, you''re not sure if he cheated or not." The man in the t-shirt laughed. "Even if he did and he escaped the god''s relic Emperor''s Heart, don''t you think this guy is really something?" The man in white shirt grinned amusedly as he asked. "If he didn''t cheat, that proves how powerful he really is." "Do you want to recruit him?" The man in the trench coat looked at the man in the white shirt gravely. "It''s been almost two years since we recruited anyone. This guy''s combat level is too low." "Don''t forget that he''s not from Division 1 like us," the man in the t-shirt added. "Low combat level is something temporary. Are you worried that such a person will be stuck below immortal-level?" The man in the white shirt supported Lin Huang. "It shouldn''t be a problem that he''s not from Division 1. It''s not like we don''t have any members that come from Divisions 2 and 3." "Of course, that''s just a suggestion. Whether or not my suggestion becomes action depends on you guys. The recruitment follows our usual way of voting. I''ll get everyone online later." The man in white shirt seemed to have made a decision. "Let''s wait until the voting session later." Lin Huang had no idea that he was being picked to be on the waiting list of the No. 1 organization among the genius organizations, the Heaven Alliance. Yao Lan called again when he was having his breakfast. He picked up her call helplessly as he knew that she would definitely call back later if he avoided her. "What''re you up to?" Yao Lan chirped. "Breakfast." Lin Huang put a spoonful of salad into his mouth. "Congratulations, you''re not a suspect of cheating anymore." Yao Lan smiled naturally. She was shameless even to call him as she had been sure that Lin Huang was going to be suspended. "I''ve told you that I didn''t cheat. It''s you who doesn''t believe me." "Are you kidding? I''ve always believed you." Yao Lan did not even blush when she said that. "Thanks. I''ve finally understood what shameless means today." Lin Huang wiped his mouth with a piece of serviette. "You''re the shameless one" A message popped up when they were bantering. Lin Huang ignored Yao Lan and read the message instead. "Hi, Mr. Lin Xie. My name is Chan Dou, and I''m from the Heaven Alliance. I''m representing the alliance to invite you to join us officially. I hope to hear from you within the next three days." Attached with the message was a delicate invitation letter. As long as he signed his name and stamped his thumbprint on it, he would officially be one of the Heaven Alliance members. "Hey, why aren''t you speaking? Who sent you the message? You look so serious!" Yao Lan spoke again. "Nothing." Lin Huang turned off the message page. "Oh yeah, I''m calling to tell you that Huangfu Lin will be in Sweep City tomorrow. Let''s meet for dinner." "Sure!" Lin Huang agreed immediately. 661 Huangfu Lin After hanging up the call with Yao Lan, Lin Huang returned to his hotel and logged in to the Genius Union again. On the Stairway Tree, the notice from the Emperor''s Heart had become the focus of the public, and a majority of them believed the investigation result of the Emperor''s Heart as it had never made a false judgment. Therefore, the discussion shifted from how Lin Xie cheated yesterday to how Lin Xie managed to gather 8 million points in a day. Lin Huang did not pay much attention to it. As soon as he returned to the Stairway Tree, he summoned the Mighty Ape and began another round of climbing up the stairway. The difficulty was much higher for him to get from the 31st checkpoint to the 40th checkpoint as he was attacked by immortal-level rank-5 worm monsters. Lin Huang took about 50 minutes to pass through each checkpoint. Once he reached the 40th checkpoint, he spent exactly an hour and a half to complete it. Upon reaching the 41st checkpoint, it was already 6 p.m. so Lin Huang did not continue, and logged out of virtual reality. "The difficulty level is getting higher. My Mighty Ape is no longer effective from the 36th checkpoint onward. Fortunately, I still have Tyrant and I should be able to handle it" As he exited the virtual reality, he looked rather flustered. He had encountered various extreme conditions on the Stairway Tree. Each level felt difficult for him, and the difficulty was comparable to the training given by Mr. Fu. "The difficulty level from the 31st checkpoint to the 39th checkpoint is designed for those at immortal-level rank-6 while for the 40th checkpoint required one to possess the ability of someone at immortal-level rank-7. Due to the increasing difficulty, it might be difficult for me to get to the 50th checkpoint" Lin Huang knew himself quite well. Although he had well-rounded abilities, his physique was much weaker compared to others on immortal-level rank-7 or rank-8. The Stairway Tree did not only assess one''s abilities but took stock of every aspect. Most people get stuck on the 63rd checkpoint because the use of Life Power was prohibited. It was simply a test of one''s physique, and cheating would not be possible. Naturally, this information was gleaned from Zhao San. He did not ask for the exact information but he knew that if his Life Power was restrained, it would be impossible for him to get through that. After having his dinner, Lin Huang did not slack. Instead, he continued practicing Army Attack Tactics until it was slightly after 11 p.m. before he went to bed. The next morning, he logged into Genius Union and continued climbing the Stairway Tree. There was a rapid increase in the difficulty beginning from the 41st checkpoint. It took Lin Huang an hour and fifty minutes to get through the 41st checkpoint. From the 42nd to the 44th checkpoint, he took about two hours to get through each checkpoint, and only barely managed to get past the 45th checkpoint after two and a half hours. There was a branch on the Stairway Tree''s 46th checkpoint. It was the third gathering point after the 21st and 34th checkpoint. After passing through the 45th checkpoint, Lin Huang did not continue. He had originally planned to ascend from a random point on the 46th checkpoint. However, Yao Lan sent him a message telling him that Huangfu Lin had arrived at the Sweep City so he logged out of virtual reality through a crack in the bark in the Stairway Tree. Since a notice had been issued by the Emperor''s Heart to address Lin Huang''s matter, the others had been putting less focus on him. However, there was still a number of people who checked on Lin Huang''s status every day. The news about Lin Huang being on the 46th checkpoint already to most of the people at the gathering point. Many of them wanted to challenge him. Since he was now a popular person, anyone who managed to kill him would obtain more than four million points. Many of them had thought about this earlier when they were on the 33rd checkpoint. However, Lin Huang did not even stay at the 33rd checkpoint yesterday as he managed to get to the 41st checkpoint. At this moment, he was taking a break on the 46th checkpoint. To many of the other people, it was a good chance to rob him. Since he was logged out of virtual reality, Lin Huang had no idea that he had caught the attention of so many people. After changing his clothes, he went to the Sweep Gourmet. After sitting in room No.301 for about three minutes, Yao Lan, Huangfu Hao, and a tall lady in a white top and black pants came in. The lady had waist-length black hair and she looked pretty yet cool. Although she managed to restrain her aura well, Lin Huang could still vaguely feel that she was intimidating. Lin Huang knew that she must be the Sweep Alliance''s chief, Huangfu Lin. Just as he was checking her out, she was checking him out as well. "Ms. Lin, he''s Lin Xie." Yao Lan introduced with a smile, "Lin Xie, the pretty girl standing next to me is the chief of Sweep Alliance, Huangfu Lin." "Hello, nice to meet you." Lin Huang stood up and shook hands with her. After greeting each other, all three sat down. As usual, Yao Lan was the one who ordered the dishes. It seemed like Huangfu Hao was rather reserved since he remained silent when he met his sister. Lin Huang was not close with Huangfu Lin so he kept quiet as well. Instead, Huangfu Lin started a conversation with Lin Huang, "I actually wanted to talk to you two days ago but you didn''t answer my call." "Two days ago?" Lin Huang was stunned and immediately recalled what happened back then. "Is that your number? I thought someone called the wrong number so I didn''t call back." "It''s okay. Sometimes it''s better to talk face to face." Huangfu Lin nodded her head and immediately said, "I heard it from Xiao Lan that you didn''t ask for the strategy of the Stairway Tree?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "It''s more interesting to pass through each checkpoint on my own." "Does it mean that you''re now on the 46th checkpoint but you knew nothing about each checkpoint while you were going through them?" Huangfu Lin asked. "When I was on the 21st checkpoint, I overheard the strategy for several checkpoints but I didn''t ask for a more detailed description of the checkpoints." Lin Huang nodded his head and admitted. "Why do you want to do so? Isn''t it much easier if you know how each checkpoint is supposed to be?" Huangfu Lin frowned. "Climbing the stairway is like practice to me. It depends on how well-trained we are. That, will determine how far we''ll be able to go. It''s a natural thing. Don''t take completing each checkpoint as a goal and attempt to achieve checkpoints that are beyond one''s ability." Lin Huang explained. After listening to what Lin Huang said, Huangfu Lin, Huangfu Hao, and Yao Lan remained silent. "I believe that you didn''t cheat." Huangfu Lin sized him up and said. "A person who says this will definitely not cheat for the sake of getting more points." "Thank you." Lin Huang did not thank her for the compliment. Instead, it was because she could understand him. "What do you feel about Sweep Alliance?" What Huangfu Lin asked had caught Yao Lan and Huangfu Hao''s attention, shifting their focus to Lin Huang. "It''s good." Lin Huang had nothing to comment on since he had just joined the Sweep Alliance for a few days. Aside from Yao Lan and Huangfu Hao, he was not close with the rest of them. "I''m a straightforward person. To be frank, the Sweep Alliance is not for you." Huangfu Hao and Yao Lan were stunned as they heard what Huangfu Lin just said. This also caused Lin Huang to frown. "Sis Lin, you..." Huangfu Lin immediately interrupted, "The Sweep Alliance resembles a fish pond in the Genius Union. However, you aren''t a small fish. You''re a fish that has grown up. You can only become successful by living in a big ocean where the likes of the Heaven Alliance, Hong Alliance, and Tang Alliance are at." "You''re not strong enough now so the Sweep Alliance can indeed be helpful to you. However, as your combat strength gradually grows, the Sweep Alliance will slowly become your burden. I hope that you can leave. I''ll help you to contact the top alliances in Division 3. I believe they''ll accept you." Lin Huang stared at Huangfu Lin and kept quiet for a moment. It seemed like he could discern something from her eyes. It sounded like she was talking about herself She was supposed to have a bright future. However, the Sweep Alliance became a burden to her due to its limited resources. She did not want Lin Huang to repeat the same mistake. "Since you''re being honest with me, I''ll accept your suggestion and leave the Sweep Alliance." Still, Lin Huang nodded his head and said, "However, there''s no need for you to find another alliance for me. I know where to go." They then kept quiet during the dinner. After dinner, Lin Huang returned the Sweep Alliance token to her. On the Genius Union''s page, he tapped the "leave" button and left. The other three of them were still sitting in the room. "Let''s go." Huangfu Hao told Yao Lan. It seemed like he was angry at Huangfu Lin and was reluctant to talk to her. "You may leave first. I have something to talk to Sister Lin." "What are you going to tell her? It''s not easy to find a talented person but she asked him to leave." Huangfu Hao could no longer bear it and said what he wanted to say. "Go home first. I have something to talk to Sister Lin." After sending him away, Yao Lan sat in front of Huangfu Lin. "Sis Lin, did you regret joining Sweep Alliance?" Huangfu Lin kept quiet and did not answer her question. "Thank you, I know the answer." Yao Lan knew very well that silence was the best answer to her question. "I''m sorry. I shouldn''t have been so reckless" "Don''t feel sorry for me. You and Xiao Hao are victims too." Huangfu Lin shook her head helplessly and lamented, "Sweep Alliance is like a sinking ship. Regardless of how good the captain and the sailor are, they won''t be able to stop the ship from sinking. It''s enough to have only three of us on the ship. We shouldn''t drag the others with us into this." 662 Never Insult the Heaven Alliance! Lin Huang did not know why Huangfu Lin suggested that he leave the Sweep Alliance. However, he knew very well that it was just an excuse as Huangfu Lin had told him that the Sweep Alliance was not a place for him to shine. There were some other reasons that she did not mention. Since she was reluctant to share, Lin Huang did not ask any further. After the farewell dinner, Lin Huang returned to the hotel. Sitting on the sofa in the living room, he opened the communication page and studied the invitation letter that the Heaven Alliance sent to him. Joining the Heaven Alliance was actually a wise decision since he had to achieve imperial-level in three years time. He needed plenty of resources to support him. He would be going onto something big five years later. Therefore, he had to keep improving himself. If Huangfu Lin had not asked him to leave, he would have probably gone after achieving immortal-level to join a stronger alliance. After thinking for a while, Lin Huang tapped the invitation letter open. He carefully read through the details of the letter twice. He did not hesitate after confirming that not many restrictions were imposed on him. He immediately signed the letter with a digital fingerprint and sent it back to the Heaven Alliance. In less than ten seconds, a system message came from the Genius Union. "Congratulations! You''re now a member of the Heaven Alliance!" The next second after Lin Huang received the message, a notification from an unknown number arrived. "Welcome to the Heaven Alliance! I''m currently the chief of the Heaven Alliance. My name is Chan Dou. If you''re free tomorrow morning, let''s meet up to talk." Lin Huang was surprised to see the sender of the message. He was familiar with this name. It was not his first time coming across this name after coming to Division 3 because not only was he the current chief of the Heaven Alliance, he was also one of the five strongest geniuses in Division 1 (by the Genius Union''s standard below 40 years old). He was only 28 years old and was now an immortal-level rank-9. It was said that he had killed a crimson gold-rank before. "Alright. May I know the time and venue please?" Lin Huang gave a short reply. "I''ll see you at 8 a.m tomorrow at the Heaven Alliance''s 46th checkpoint." Chan Dou soon sent him the place and time to meet. Lin Huang was shocked as Chan Dou seemed to have paid attention to him. After closing the communication page, he snapped out of his thoughts and continued practicing his Army Attack Tactics. The next morning, Lin Huang kept to his regular schedule and logged into the virtual reality after breakfast. Through the cracks on the branch on the 46th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, the location of the Heaven Alliance was displayed on Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was at one of the branches near to him. After confirming the location, Lin Huang quickly climbed towards the branch. After more than ten minutes, Lin Huang finally reached the branch where the Heaven Alliance was at. As he leaped forward from the tree branch, everyone recognized him. "Are you Lin Xie?!" A squat man was stunned the moment he saw Lin Huang and exclaimed. The people nearby who heard that immediately shifted their focus to Lin Huang. The short man soon noticed that something was wrong. A flicker of fury flashed through his eyes, and soon, two daggers appeared in his hand. He immediately dashed towards Lin Huang. "Four million points are mine!" Lin Huang was startled as he wondered why would they attack him the second they met him. However, when he heard what the man said, he instantly understood why the person was coming after him. He did not bother replying with nonsense. Soon, a silver glow flashed through the air and pierced between the man''s brows. Just when he was about to pounce on Lin Huang, the short man''s body became limp. He was shocked, and his intention to kill was unsatisfied. His body immediately turned into pieces and disappeared as he was sent to the first checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. "Zhang Hui has been killed. You''ve obtained 123,181 points!" Seeing the crowd coming after him, Lin Huang frowned. He had to say that the man called Zhang Hui had acted recklessly as he attacked him without thinking twice. He did not even consider whether he, as an immortal-level rank-4, was capable of obtaining the four million points. The abilities of the people who surrounded him now all surpassed him, and the weakest one was on immortal-level rank-5. The strongest one was on immortal-level rank-7. Lin Huang would not worry if the assailants were just ordinary immortal-level rank-7s. However, most of the Genius Union members could cross three ranks to fight him. Seeing four of them charging at him, if he did not use any unique skills, he definitely could not defeat them. It seemed like the four of them were in a team as they did not fight among themselves. "Are you Lin Xie? We aren''t going to make things difficult for you. As long as you''re willing to let go of half of the total points you''ve collected, we won''t attack you," a muscular young man said, "I guess you don''t want to start again from the first checkpoint since it''s not been easy for you to reach here." In the virtual reality, the transfer of points was like plunder. The most that they could transfer was only half of their total points. Moreover, only one transaction could be a day as the Emperor''s Heart wanted to protect the weak. "If I were to transfer half of my points to you, won''t the others mind?" Lin Huang asked with a sardonic grin. "There''s no need to sow discord between us. The four of us have come to an agreement regarding the distribution of the points. As long as you''re willing to transfer half of your points to me, you don''t have to worry about the rest." The muscular man and the other three were approaching Lin Huang. They did not act rashly. They were aware of Lin Huang''s telekinetic throwing dagger as the immortal-level rank-4 man''s head had exploded in an instant. They were unsure about Lin Huang''s ability, so they were reluctant to risk their lives. However, they knew that Lin Huang was a psychic. If somebody attempted to approach a psychic, the psychic could activate less than 10% of his skills. This was the reason why they went closer to Lin Huang slowly. After confirming that the four of them were in a team, Lin Huang scowled. He did not want to waste his Transformation Card to increase his combat strength at such a place. However, if he did not kill the four of them, he would have to give them half of his points. Aware that the four of them were getting closer to him, the Transformation Card suddenly appeared in his hand. Right when he was about to crush it, a strong, intimidating aura suddenly appeared behind the quad. They then turned around to see where the aura came from and saw a man in a white shirt who was gradually walking towards them. In an instant, the white shirt man had surpassed them and immediately appeared in front of Lin Huang. Lin Huang''s eyes could not capture the man''s movement at all as if he had teleported. However, Lin Huang knew very well that such a traveling skill was prohibited in the Stairway Tree. "Hello, Lin Xie. I finally get to meet you." The white shirt man extended his hand. "You''re Chan Dou?" Lin Huang guessed. Both of them shook hands. Chan Dou then turned back, glaring at the four of them who wanted to rob Lin Huang. "So, the four of you are attempting to rob a member of the Heaven Alliance?" "Heaven Alliance?" They were stunned and soon, their facial expressions changed. "He''s the chief of the Heaven Alliance, Chan Dou!" A couple of them could finally recognize him. "I''m sorry. It''s just a misunderstanding. We''ll leave immediately," the muscular young man apologized and was about to leave. The rest of them begged for pardon as well and were about to flee. "It''s too late to leave now!" Chan Dou did not want to let them go. "I''ll teach the four of you a lesson today! Never insult the Heaven Alliance!" After uttering his words, a black shadow streaked through Chan Dou''s eyes and in the next second, a black mist gradually emitted out of four of their bodies. Soon after, their bodies were shrouded in a black fog. They screamed in terror and completely disappeared. Seeing that Chan Dou had killed the four of them within seconds, the people surrounding him immediately left as they were afraid that they might get into trouble. After killing them, Chan Dou turned to look at Lin Huang contentedly as if nothing had happened. "Let''s have some drinks and chat at the subdivision of the foothold." 663 A Conversation with Chan Dou The 46th checkpoint of the Heaven Alliance was built on one of the thickest tree branches. The branch, including hundreds of leaves that grew at its tips that covered an area with a circumference that spanned thousands of kilometers. The entire area belonged to the Heaven Alliance. Lin Huang followed after Chan Dou, but he realized that they rarely met any Heaven Alliance members on their way. Lin Huang felt strange as he remembered Yao Lan telling him before that there were thousands of Heaven Alliance members. As they reached the end of the branch, Lin Huang could finally see the leaves of the Stairway Tree. It was somewhat different from what Lin Huang had imagined earlier as the leaves that grew on the Stairway Tree were of peculiar shapes. They were not of the ordinary leaf type. Instead, they looked more like islands of various forms. On top of the island, different hemispherical white bubbles enveloped the leaves in the front. Before reaching the leaves that were wrapped in bubbles, Chan Dou pressed against the bubble, and soon, a small door that was about two meters high was activated. "This is the Heaven Alliance''s territory. Most of the leaves are opened to the Heaven Alliance members. If you want to enter any of the dimensions through the leaves, you''ll have to place your hand that you used to sign the agreement on top of the bubble. The bubble will activate the door. Of course, some of the places are restricted at the 63rd checkpoint, and only the chief and vice chief are allowed to enter." After finishing his words, Chan Dou strode into the bubble. The opening of the bubble immediately closed right at that instant as he entered and Lin Huang was blocked. Lin Huang did according to what Chan Dou told him, placing his right hand on the bubble. Soon, a small, black door was activated, and Lin Huang immediately entered. Lin Huang then discovered that there was a looming building that looked like the Union Government''s building upon entering. "The leaf belongs to the Union Government. Therefore, the style of the buildings will somewhat look like the Union Government''s office. We didn''t bother renovating though, and these buildings are used as an office," Chan Dou explained. Soon, he guided Lin Huang to their office. In the living hall, a tall man wearing a suit stood stiffly. He slightly nodded his head as he greeted Chan Dou and sized Lin Huang up. "He''s the person in charge of the 46th checkpoint, Wang Zhong." Chan Dou gave a brief introduction and told Wang Zhong, "I''ll talk to him. You may come later." Wang Zhong nodded and guided the both of them to the meeting room. He then left. "Please take your seats." On the table in the meeting room, Wang Zhong had already prepared two cups of tea. Chan Dou did not sit at the head of the table. Instead, he merely pulled a chair out and sat down. Lin Huang sat opposite him. He thought that it would be Chan Dou''s clone who would meet him today. However, after he witnessed him killing the four men who attempted to rob him within seconds, he knew that this was his real body. "Firstly, I''d like to welcome you on behalf of the Heaven Alliance members. To be honest, I was mentally prepared for the rejection when I sent you the invitation yesterday." Chan Dou laughed. "I originally had no intention of accepting the invitation. However, there was a sudden change." Lin Huang did not tell him the exact reason. "It seems like I''m quite lucky." Chan Dou did not ask any further. "Since you''re already our member, I''ll briefly introduce the Heaven Alliance to you." "The Heaven Alliance was established 783 years ago. It''s the first organization that exists in the virtual reality during the new epoch. It''s also the only genius organization. As Division 1 expanded, the number of geniuses increased. We were then divided into different alliances. As Division 2, Division 3, and the safe zones were being developed, the rest of the organizations started to join in. Some of the sub-alliances gained independence due to specific reasons, and they are now called the Hong Alliance, the Tang Alliance. "Over the past 700 years, the Heaven Alliance has been the leader among all the alliances in the Genius Union. Privileges are granted to members of the Heaven Alliance. For instance, we use points to exchange items in the Genius Union. All the items are offered at 30% off. As for the chief and the vice chief, they are eligible to enjoy a 40% discount on all items. On the other hand, the chief and the vice chief of Hong Alliance enjoy only 30% discount off. Moreover, many rewards are given to the members each month which are twice of what is awarded to the Hong Alliance members that rank second in the Genius Union. In reality, priority such as choosing the new ruins and gaining access to the ruins is given to us by the Emperor''s Heart. "Of course, because we''re the leader, our actions are often monitored by the people. Some of the vice chiefs opposed my suggestion and the main reason is that during this period, there''ve been too many comments about you." Before Chan Dou finished his last sentence, Lin Huang already knew that many of the Heaven Alliance members did not want a cheat to join them as it would ruin their reputation. "Why did you choose to stand by my side?" Lin Huang doubted. "It''s because you''re really a strong person. Although I''ve no idea how you managed to do it, it would''ve been impossible for me to earn eight million points at the 21st checkpoint when I was still a blue flame-level. I won''t even be able to do that when I''m a gold flame-level. Moreover, for a blue flame-level to get to the 46th checkpoint, even if I have the strategy, it''s less likely for me to achieve this." Chan Dou admitted that he would be weaker than Lin Huang if they were of the same level. He did not want to mention that he might have cheated. "If you don''t die young, when you achieve immortal-level rank-9, your abilities can be compared to mine or be even stronger. I don''t wish to see such a young plant being dumped to grow in the wilderness and end up dying together with the rank grasses. You''ll only be able to grow into a massive tree in rich soil. I hope that the Heaven Alliance will be the one to help you instead of the other organizations." "Thank you for your compliment. I''m just a blue flame-level" "This is just your temporary combat strength. I believe that you''ll grow up soon and prove to everyone that I''m right. You must show them that they are wrong! "To be honest, over the past 20 to 30 years, we usually recruit those who are higher than immortal-level rank-6 or rank-7. It''s less likely that we''ll recruit those who are weaker than immortal-level rank-3. Most of the talented immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3s will typically be recruited by the Hong Alliance, the Tang Alliance, and the rest. They''ve been expanding all these years as the immortal-level of low ranks have leveled up to higher levels. However, those with strong combat strength in our alliance have left, and the number of people is decreasing. "I realize that this is the downside since I took over the Heaven Alliance. However, I''ve no idea how to solve this issue. I hope that you can do something good for the Heaven Alliance. When the seniors see that the newbie is growing, we can then bring in new blood into the Heaven Alliance, so that the alliance can grow stronger" After having chatted with Lin Huang for more than half an hour, he was the one who ended up talking most of the time whereas Lin Huang listened to him. He had told him about many of their glorious achievements in the past, and about the challenge that they were facing right now as well as the Heaven Alliance''s vision. They even talked about the disasters that could probably happen in five years and some topics that were not related to the Heaven Alliance. "I wanted to meet you as I''d like to know what kind of person you were. Now, I got to see you in the flesh. Despite being different from what I imagined, I''m satisfied with you." More than half an hour later, Chan Dou finally got up from his seat. "I wish that you can build a sense of belonging in the Heaven Alliance and treat it like your home. "As for the new member reception, I''ll pass it to Wang Zhong. If you''ve any doubts, you may ask him." Chan Dou patted Lin Huang''s shoulder and said, "If you encounter any problems that you can''t solve, you may directly contact me since you already have my contact number." 664 Betting Wang Zhong was a muscular man, and he was at least 1.95 meters tall. There was a green shadow on his face after shaving, and he had a serious look on his face. His combat strength was on immortal-level rank-7, and he was the person in charge of the 46th checkpoint of the Heaven Alliance subdivision. "Most of the Heaven Alliance members are at the foothold of the 55th checkpoint. Only a small number of us are on the 46th checkpoint. Including you and I, there''re a total of 28 people." Wang Zhong pretty much explained why the area was so quiet. "Considering that you might stay at the 46th checkpoint for a long period of time, I''ll bring you around so that you can familiarize yourself with the environment." Wang Zhong did not despise Lin Huang though. He was just straightforward as he felt that it was less likely that Lin Huang could make a breakthrough to the 55th checkpoint in a short span of time. Lin Huang knew himself very well. With his current ability, getting to the 50th checkpoint was a challenge to him, let alone reaching the 55th checkpoint. As for any levels below the 55th checkpoint, the nearest gathering point for the humans was the 46th checkpoint. Despite Lin Huang not being able to understand his facial expressions, he was somehow a responsible man. He spent the entire morning bringing him around so that he could familiarize himself with the environment. He answered all of Lin Huang''s questions when they were on their way, and he explained everything in detail. It seemed like he had nothing to hide. "On the 46th checkpoint, the strongest alliance is the Hong Alliance, followed by the Tang Alliance. Our overall ability is on par with the Divine Alliance. We are ranked third, and it''s a fierce fight." While they were having their lunch, Wang Zhong roughly told him the situation of their competitors. "Under normal circumstances, the majority of them in the checkpoints below the 55th checkpoint won''t get the Heaven Alliance members into trouble. However, there''s an exclusion. Also, your condition is rather special. The people from the Hong Alliance and Tang Alliance might probably challenge you and make use of you to achieve their goals. The Divine Alliance members are more evil as they''ll deliberately trigger you so that you''ll bet on a fight. They can then get points from you. Don''t get cheated if this happens to you. Just contact me in the first place. I''ll get it done." "I know that you''re a supreme genius and you aren''t weak. However, everyone on the Stairway Tree is geniuses. Those who are on immortal-level rank-6 are on par with immortal-level rank-9s. Moreover, there are quite a number of immortal-level rank-6s at the 46th checkpoint." Wang Zhong looked at Lin Huang with a serious expression and advised, "I''d suggest using the points as soon as possible. Otherwise, wherever you go, you''ll look like a tasty lamb on the grilling rack releasing the fragrance of meat. A majority of them won''t be able to obtain more than four million points in a year at that checkpoint. If I weren''t a member of the Heaven Alliance, I might''ve attacked you. If you can''t think of anything to buy, you can choose to buy some ancient relics or convert the points to Life Crystals." "I''ll use it within a day or two." Lin Huang nodded. He knew that the number of points he had would definitely get him into trouble. Therefore, he had to spend some time listing out the items that he needed and use up whatever points he had. One thing that Lin Huang was not aware of because he was on the 46th checkpoint the whole morning was that almost everyone in the Genius Union knew that he had joined the Heaven Alliance. It was because somebody had taken a video of Chan Dao killing the four robbers this morning and posted it in the Genius Union forum. Many of the passersby became Chan Dou''s fans after he said, "Never insult the Heaven Alliance!" "He''s so powerful! Chan Dou is my idol from today onwards!" "Idol, I want a baby with you!" "Damn, why doesn''t the chief of the Hong Alliance have such an ability to show off in public?" "Bro Chan V587, I want a baby with you too. @Chan Dou." The person who sent this message was the chief of Hong Alliance, Zhu Hong. Aside from posting a comment, she even mentioned Chan Dou in her comment and attracted many people''s attention. "The goddess is here. Let''s switch our focus to our goddess!" In just a short while, Chan Dou replied: "Sis Hong, are you serious? (Drooling)" His message had caught many people''s attention as well, stirring up the crowd. "It''s a gone case. Love is blind!" "Are the Heaven Alliance and the Hong Alliance going to consolidate?!" However, Zhu Hong''s reply soon threw cold water on the hot topic: "I''m just kidding. (Face with stuck-out tongue)" Chan Dou replied promptly, and there were no words in the message. There was only an emoji: "(Frown)". Interrupted by Chan Dou and Zhu Hong, the people had no further concern about Lin Huang''s issue. However, from the video, everybody knew that ''Lin Xie'' had joined the Heaven Alliance. Following this bold statement, aside from few of the top alliances, the rest of the alliances no longer attempted to steal his points. Chan Dou''s stance was evident as he welcomed Lin Xie at the 46th checkpoint. He indicated that Lin Xie was important to him. Since Chan Dou had shown up to attack them, even some of the influential members had no guts to assault him with a sneak attack. They only dared to fight him face to face because even if the sneak attack were successful, the extra four million points would earn them a higher ranking on the leaderboard. Then, Chan Dou could easily find out who had attacked, and nobody dared to offend him. However, if they were to fight him face to face, as long as Lin Xie accepted the battle, he would lose all the points to them in public. Chan Dou could then not do anything to them. After lunch, Wang Zhong intentionally reminded him, "Don''t accept any challenges." Lin Huang then left the Heaven Alliance territory and headed towards the Stairway Tree to prepare to continue climbing the Stairway Tree. On the tree branches, no one attempted to attack Lin Huang as when they had first met him. Apparently, Chan Dou''s attack intimidated many people. Many of them purposely avoided Lin Huang. Although four million points meant a lot to them, they did not want Chan Dou to send them to the first checkpoint. However, as expected by Wang Zhong, not all of them were afraid of Chan Dou. A slovenly immortal-level rank-6 soon blocked Lin Huang''s way. He knew nothing about aesthetics as he was dressed like a gangster. He seemed older than 40 years old (although he was actually below 40). Not only was he wearing earrings, but he also had nose rings as well. Nobody knew if there were other rings beneath his clothes. "Aren''t you the well-known Lin Xie who ranks second on the leaderboard?" The man cackled evilly. "What''s wrong? Please get out of the way." Lin Huang knew that trouble was here. "I''d like to play a game with you" Lin Huang did not wait for him to continue and interrupted, "I''m sorry. I''m not interested in men. Please look for someone else." "I mean let''s make a bet!" The man with the piercings got angry and immediately revealed his actual intention. "Oh, you want to make a bet. Can''t you say it clearly? You said that you want to play a game with me. How the f*ck would I know what game you want to play?" Lin Huang acted like he was shocked. "Do you have the guts to accept?!" "No, I''m not interested," Lin Huang rejected. Seeing he was about to swear at him again, he said, "I have more than 8.3 million points now. If you want to place a bet, collect eight million points first. I don''t count odd points. Once you''ve collected enough points, I''ll give you a chance to have a life-and-death fight with me. Anyone who loses the fight will have to start again from the first checkpoint and surrender half of their total points. If you don''t have enough points, I''ll give you the time to collect them. At 6 p.m., I''ll accept your challenge here. If you fail to collect the points by 6 p.m., there''s no need for you to come here. Otherwise, I''d have to look for our chief to get the remaining points from you." "Lin Xie, I''ve just recorded what you said. Please keep your promise. Otherwise, you''re not the only one who''ll feel embarrassed, but the entire Heaven Alliance will be humiliated," the man with the piercings said with a wry smile. "Don''t worry. I''ll be here at 6 p.m. sharp. After this, don''t ever attempt to challenge me because I''ll use up all the points tonight. Collect the points if you want to challenge me!" 665 The Person Who Wears Earrings on His Nose In the afternoon, Lin Huang made a breakthrough from the 46th to the 48th checkpoint at the Stairway Tree five and a half hour ago. Soon, he returned to the human foothold on the 46th checkpoint. The rule of the Stairway Tree was that the checkpoints that they had cleared would not be reset as long as one did not die and leave the Stairway Tree. Therefore, he would not be able to go through the checkpoints he had already cleared again regardless of whether he was climbing up or down the tree. Lin Huang only found out about this after he heard about it from Zhao San so his plan to return to the previous checkpoints to practice Army Attack Tactics under extreme conditions would not work. He would only be able to restart his progress from the first checkpoint if he was killed or if he exited the Stairway Tree so it did not take him too long to return to the 46th checkpoint. At 5.45p.m., Lin Huang appeared where to promised to be at this afternoon. His appearance caught the attention of many people because the crowd thought he would not have the guts to show up. There were quite a number of immortal-level rank-6 people on the 46th checkpoint. Those who were at immortal-level rank-6 in the Genius Union were capable of going against ordinary immortal-level rank-9 monsters. Some of them even managed to kill the immortal-level rank-9 monsters they went up against. Lin Huang''s combat strength was only on the blue flame-level but many of them doubted it since he dared to provoke those at immortal-level rank-6. Most of the people present figured that he had a trump card but nobody knew what it was. The people discussed this among themselves. "Lin Xie actually had the guts to show up. I wonder what he has on hand." "I''ve heard that he''s taken control of a powerful demigod relic though I''m unsure if it''s true." "Even if he''s able to control it, he can probably only use it to attack once. To control a demigod relic is difficult, even for those on the imperial-level. With his combat strength as a blue flame-level, the fact that he could even use it a single time was amazing. If he managed to kill the first challenger with his demigod relic, what about the rest of the challengers? Wouldn''t it be beneficial to them? I don''t think he has a demigod relic as a trump card. Perhaps it''s a skill he can use repeatedly." Despite there being people who disagreed with it, most of them who were present felt that Lin Huang had a demigod relic up his sleeves. When it was almost six in the evening, the man with piercings from the Divine Alliance and the rest of the challengers arrived. The few of them finally managed to collect eight million points after putting in quite a large amount of effort. They knew very well that Lin Huang probably had something up his sleeves since he had the guts to show up so they prepared themselves well before they came. Lin Huang''s invitation to fight them attracted everybody''s attention, not just those on the 46th checkpoint. Many of the people in different checkpoints knew about this battle because those who were present did not only post it in the Genius Union''s forum, they even started a live video of the battle. Wang Zhong had logged out after entertaining Lin Huang in the afternoon, and it was already 6.p.m when he found out about this. He immediately logged in to Genius Union and rushed to the battle. "Lin Xie, I''ve told you this morning specifically not to accept anyone''s challenge. Why can''t you control yourself?" Wang Zhong frowned. There were a few live videos now but he had no choice but to stop the fight since he promised Chan Dou that he would take good care of Lin Xie. He turned back and looked at the man with piercings. "Punk, how dare you! An immortal-level rank-6 group teaming up to bully someone at the blue flame-level? Doesn''t the Divine Alliance feel embarrassed? If you actually want to fight him, I''ll entertain you instead!" The man with piercings did not bother with Wang Zhong at all. Instead, he smiled at Lin Huang. "I didn''t know that this was your intention. You pretend to invite us and then ask this guy named Wang to stop us." "You''re thinking too much. Since I''ve accepted your challenge, I''m naturally capable of sending you back to the first checkpoint." After uttering those words, Lin Huang looked at Wang Zhong and said, "Brother Wang, avoiding them is not the way to solve this problem. Killing them is the only way I know of that can solve this matter. The chief once said to never insult the Heaven Alliance. Anybody who dares to extend their claws and attack the Heaven Alliance will have to face us as we chop off their claws to teach them a lesson." After listening to what Lin Huang had to say, utter shock flashed through Wang Zhong''s eyes. Then, as his face turned serious, he asked, "How confident are you to win this fight?" "I''m 100% confident!" Lin Huang grinned. "I know that they''re prepared for this." Wang Zhong was still worried. "I know they are." Lin Huang nodded. "Brother Wang, please do me a favor and be the judge." "Hey! Isn''t it unfair to let someone from the Heaven Alliance be the judge?" The man with piercings shouted when he overheard their conversation. "There are so many people here, and there are live videos as well. Moreover, it''s a battle to the death. Won''t the one who survivor and the one who dies be clear?" Lin Huang laughed. "I asked Brother Wang to be the judge so that he can verify your strength to see if you''re qualified to challenge me. Also, he can be a witness to the signing of the agreement for our battle to the death." "I''ve said this before, anyone who has eight million points can challenge me. Brother Wang, please check if these few challengers have enough points. Otherwise, send them right back to the first checkpoint." After listening to Lin Huang, two men standing behind the man with piercings immediately walked back to the crowd. Wang Zhong glanced at the two of them but held his tongue. He began checking the points for the remaining four challengers. The page where their points were recorded popped up in front of him. They had more than eight million points and their four names were indeed on the leaderboard. They were ranked from the third to sixth place respectively. After the check was complete, Wang Zhong nodded his head at Lin Huang and said, "There''s no problem with their points." "Let''s start signing the agreement then." Wang Zhong projected the agreement in front of them. It contained within it the basic provisions of the Stairway Tree''s agreement for a fight to the death. There were no additional rules. After showing both parties the provisions and confirming that there were no other problems, both parties signed their name and put down their fingerprints. "Who''s going to be the first one to challenge me?" After signing the agreement, Lin Huang looked at the four of them with a smile. Four of them exchanged glances with each other. All of them looked hesitant. The first one to challenge him would be exposed to a higher risk since nobody knew what Lin Huang had up his sleeves. Despite the fact that the four of them had prepared themselves earlier, they were still unwilling to be the first one to challenge him. However, they knew that if the first person won the fight, the rest of the challengers would have no chance of challenging him since Lin Xie would be sent back to the first checkpoint after his death. As this thought ran through their heads, the four of them struggled with making a choice. "Hey! The person with earrings on his nose. Aren''t you''re the one who was shouting in excitement this morning? Don''t you have the guts to go first?" Lin Huang teased. "Just admit defeat if you don''t want to fight. I''ll just take four million points and you won''t be sent back to the first checkpoint. Isn''t it a win-win situation?" Lin Huang insulted, causing the crowd to burst into laughter. ''Damn it! It''s not a win-win situation, and these aren''t earrings!'' The man with piercings thought to himself. Since Lin Huang insulted him, he had no choice but to stand out from the rest since the battle was broadcast live. The people in the Genius Union would definitely laugh at him if he was afraid of Lin Huang at this moment. "Hmph, sharp-tongued boy! I''m interested to see if your abilities are as strong as your mouth!" 666 Brother Lin Has No Mercy but Many Cannons! Standing on the 46th checkpoint branch of the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang and the man with piercings stood to face each other. Both of them were standing about 30 meters away from each other while the rest of the people, including the three challengers stood aside. In an area that was thousands of meters in circumference, only Lin Huang, the man with piercings, and Wang Zhong who was the judge stood there. "Are you ready?" Wang Zhong frowned and asked Lin Huang after the man with piercings took out two one-handed axes while he did nothing. "Please wait a moment." After uttering those words, Lin Huang gazed upon the man with piercings, the three other challengers, and the rest of the people. He grinned. "Aren''t you guys curious about what''s my trump card is? I''ll reveal it now" As he said that, a black door that was about three meters high with intricate golden patterns carved into it gradually appeared before Lin Huang. As if controlled by Telekinesis, something appeared and lingered in mid-air, and the muzzle of the cannon pointed directly at the man with piercings. Most of the people could recognize the item at first glance. "I-is that a God Crasher?!" "How could Lin Xie get a God Crasher? That''s a demigod-level item!" "I think Zhou Huai is in trouble. He''ll definitely be sent back to the first checkpoint if he''s attacked by the God Crasher." "It''s uncertain. Though the God Crasher is powerful, nobody knows if he can even hit his target." Zhou Huai was the punk''s real name. Since he dressed in a slovenly manner, the people called him a punk. Then, as his nickname spread beyond the Divine Alliance, everybody thought it matched him well so people began addressing him this way. Only a few of them would call his by his real name. Seeing Lin Huang take out the God Crasher, Zhou Huai''s expression changed. Soon, a sinister laugh was heard as he said to Lin Huang, "I thought you''d have something incredible. It''s just a God Crasher. You''re doomed if your first hit misses your target!" "Now, whoever told you that I only have one?" Lin Huang smirked as he took out taking out his second God Crasher. "Two God Crashers" Zhou Huai''s face turned serious. "Nobody knows who the winner is now," many of them who were watching the live video said. However, after taking out the second God Crasher, he still did not signal Wang Zhong that he was ready. Instead, he sniggered and took out a third God Crasher Seeing the appearance of the third God Crasher, Zhou Huai''s face turned grave. The crowd who were watching the livestream no longer had faith in him. If the three God Crashers failed to hit Zhou Huai even once, Lin Xie would be fated to lose the fight. As the judge, Wang Zhong seemed to be quite relaxed. Lin Huang smiled as he looked at Zhou Huai and teased, "You can still give up now." "Even if you have three God Crashers, it doesn''t mean you''ll win the fight!" Zhuo Huai was being stubborn. "Is that so?" Lin Huang frowned. "What if I have a fourth one?" After saying that, another God Crasher appeared in front of Lin Huang. "Damn, four God Crashers! Lin Xie must be the Union Government Armed Forces leader''s son!" Zhou Huai''s lips were twitching. He hated himself for being stubborn. Otherwise, Lin Xie might not have taken out the fourth God Crasher. "It seems like four God Crashers are still not enough for you" Naturally, Lin Huang knew that Zhou Huai was dying inside but he still continued piling the stress on him. "What if I have... Five God Crashers?" The crowd no longer knew what to say. Was he trying to show off his wealth or his background? "If five isn''t enough... I still have a sixth one!" Just as he said that, he took out his final God Crasher. "I think six should be enough since you''re just immortal-level rank-6. If you were someone at immortal-level rank-9, I don''t mind taking out another three God Crashers." Seeing Lin Huang continuously take out six God Crashers, the screens showing the livestream was about to explode. "Brother Lin has no mercy but many cannons!" "It''s a group of idiots! They actually thought that Lin Xie was weak but he''s actually the king of cannons. He''ll shoot you in the face!" "I''d like to bet five credit points! The head of the second artillery corps must be the one backing him!" At the 63rd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, a few of the seniors were paying attention to the fight as well. Since it was a battle between the Heaven Alliance and Divine Alliance that even involved Lin Xie who was previously the focus of the entire Genius Union, they were curious about his performance. "He''s doing pretty well. Looks like me when I was younger." Seeing Lin Huang take out six God Crashers, Chan Dou gave him a thumbs up in front of the screen. Zhu Hong, Hong Meng''s chief paid close attention to the battle as well. She fixed her gaze on Lin Huang as if something had dawned on her. "Too bad I won''t be able to witness his true abilities I somehow feel that he''s intentionally using the God Crashers to hide his true abilities?" Zhong Liyan, the Divine Alliance''s chief''s face turned grave as he stared at the video. He thought that they would definitely win the battle and finally show off to the Heaven Alliance. However, after seeing the six God Crashers, he knew that the situation had changed. Instead, it was as if he was sending his face out for others to slap. In the live video, six God Crashers appeared before Lin Huang, and they were arranged in a circle measuring about one meter. The black cannon muzzles all took aim at Zhou Huai who had now already lost his fighting spirit. "I''m ready." Lin Huang nodded his head at Wang Zhong. He then looked at Zhou Huai and said, "Before it begins, you still have time to give up." Zhou Huai shot Lin Huang a deadly stare and nodded his head at Wang Zhong. "Let''s begin." "Counting down. 3, 2, 1, start!" The moment Wang Zhong''s voice was heard, Zhou Huai immediately rushed toward him like a phantom. Lin Huang remained calm. He immediately shifted the direction of one of the muzzles and soon, red flares could be seen shooting out of it, completely shrouding Zhou Huai in it. At the next moment, the second God Crasher''s muzzle behind Lin Huang suddenly shifted its aim and red flares flew past his body. When that happened, Lin Huang frowned as he willed the third God Crasher to move to the left and shot red flares into the sky, flying at lightning speed. As the flames flickered, a groan that lasted less than a second was heard. "Zhou Huai is killed. You''ve obtained 4,135,186 points!" The battle lasted for less than two seconds. Many of them could not even see Zhou Huai''s movement at all. They could only see Lin Huang launched the three attacks before Zhou Huai lost. Only Wang Zhong and a few of them knew what had really just happened. Humans were not allowed to fly or teleport at the Stairway Tree, and Zhou Huai spent many of his points in exchange for the two dimensional relics he had with him. However, the relics were consumed when Lin Huang made his first two attacks. Only the third attack struck him. Wang Zhong was puzzled that Lin Huang actually managed to sense Zhou Huai''s position faster than him before accurately launching a rapid attack. Naturally, Chan Dou and the rest noticed something strange. However, nobody had expected Lin Huang to use his territory before the battle. They only thought that Lin Huang had extraordinary sensory abilities. Once Zhou Huai was killed in that split second, Lin Huang glanced at the remaining three challengers. He did not request to continue. Instead, he requested, "I want to take a 20 minutes break before moving on to the second battle." Many of them were puzzled when they heard Lin Huang''s request. However, Lin Huang did not explain anything as he walked toward Wang Zhong. He then took out several molten crystals to recharge the energy used by the three God Crashers. "Isn''t it against the rules to do so?" one of the challengers asked. "If Lin Xie recharged the God Crashers after every battle, we would have no way to win the fight." "Didn''t you read the agreement for our battle to the death that you just signed? If it''s a continuous fight, the person who''s challenged is allowed to take a break after every fight. They''re allowed to have an hour for their break at most." Lin Huang frowned. "It''s not an additional rule. It exists in the Stairway Tree''s basic provisions." The challengers then immediately tapped on their letter of challenge to fact-check this information. Soon, they saw the rule that Lin Huang had just mentioned, and their face instantly turned grave. After about 15 minutes, the three drained God Crashers were filled to the brim once more. Lin Huang returned to the open space and gazing at the remaining three challengers who had signed the agreement before he asked, "Who''s up for round two?" 667 Buy Buy Buy! The three challengers from the Divine Alliance panicked. After watching Lin Huang''s previous battle, they knew that they had no chance of winning. Not only would they be sent back to the first checkpoint, even the points that they got from the rest of the Divine Alliance members would also have to be surrendered to Lin Huang. Because the battle was being streamed live, it would be embarrassing to admit defeat now. However, they would feel ashamed as well if they were killed and had to give their points to him. The three of them discussed secretly and soon, they made up their minds. "Lin Xie, it''s our fault as we attempted to steal your points. We admit that we''re weak," a skinny, young man said, "Since you''ve killed Zhou Huai and obtained more than four million points, please stop here. If you can act as if nothing has happened, we guarantee that we won''t trouble you any longer. We can still be friends when we meet in the future." "What do you mean?" Lin Huang frowned. "You''ve already signed the agreement, but now you''re telling me now to act as if nothing has happened. Are you trying to break the contract? Why didn''t you consider the consequences before robbing me? You can''t fight me now, so you say that you''re weak. If I''m the one who loses the fight, do I deserve to give you all the points? Do I deserve to get bullied just because I''m weaker than you guys?!" What he said struck the trio dumb. "You signed the agreement along with your fingerprints at your own will. Nobody forced you to do so. Everyone here and the people who are watching the live stream video witnessed this. Rules are rules. If you were to break the contract, I suppose that the audience won''t agree to it, let alone me. You only have two choices if you want to leave. The first choice is to admit defeat and give half of your points to me whereas the second choice is to let me send you back to the first checkpoint of the Stairway Tree!" Apparently, Lin Huang was not going to accept the three of them merely admitting that they were weak. "Lin Xie, don''t be so mean to us," whined the skinny young man gloomily. "Don''t lecture me." Lin Huang knew that he sounded intimidating. "Also, if you were to get me into trouble in the future, just come to me. Even if you''re an immortal-level rank-9, I''ll still send you back to the first checkpoint of the Stairway Tree." The audience''s eyes flew open wide, and comments could be seen flooding the screen. "I hope that the chief of the Heaven Alliance can keep me with him. I know how to do household chores." "When I was still a blue flame-level, I froze to death for many times on the second checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. Look at the blue flame-levels nowadays. Tsk, tsk, why''s there such a huge difference?" "If I have more than ten God Crashers, I can also Alright, I''ll stop bullshitting. I can''t even afford to use the God Crasher" "Fight or admit defeat? Make your choice." Lin Huang did not give them a third choice. Since it had already come so far, the three challengers knew that they had no way out. As they thought of the live video that was capturing them and the fact that their boss would probably be watching them, the three of them had no choice but to fight. They did not have any hope left in the next three battles. Although the three of them also had dimensional relics, Lin Huang managed to capture their movements with his Territory skill. His God Crashers killed them after a few teleport attempts. None of them managed to survive his attacks for more than two seconds. After killing Zhou Huai and the rest, Lin Huang''s points exceeded 24 million and were double that of Chan Dou''s, who was previously ranked first. He now topped the chart. Many of them were eyeing his points. However, whoever watched the live video basically had no means of grabbing his points at all. Six God Crashers were no joke, and nobody knew how many he had in total. After the four battles ended, it was about 6.40p.m. As the sky turned dark, he followed Wang Zhong and returned to the Heaven Alliance subdivision. "Little brat, you make me feel relieved. Fortunately, you won the fight and didn''t embarrass the Heaven Alliance." Wang Zhong was impressed. "If we try to avoid them all the time, they''ll ask for more. What they say to me will get harsher every time we meet." Lin Huang decided to fight them only after careful consideration. He did not act rashly. "Even if they''re here in the future, I guess they''ll be humble. As for the rest who saw the God Crashers, I guess they won''t want to fight me anymore." "Although the third generation God Crasher is powerful, the number of usages is restricted. It''s helpful in emergencies. Try not to use it so often in the future." Wang Zhong could identify that it was a third generation God Crasher. "I know. I wouldn''t have used the God Crasher if there weren''t so many points for me to grab. I have an additional 16 million now, which I can exchange for many amazing items." Lin Huang grinned. "One Stairway point equals to 1,000 Life Crystals. 24 million points equal to 24 billion Life Crystals. It''s enough to buy two demigod relics!" Wang Zhong exclaimed. "However, I''d suggest you not to buy the demigod relic. Try to buy whatever you can use now or in the near future. What you should do now is to enhance your ability as the God Crasher is just an external support." "Got it. Don''t worry." Lin Huang already knew how he was going to use the points. After saying goodbye to Wang Zhong, Lin Huang logged out of the Genius Union. At the hotel, he visited the Genius Union Stairway Mall in browsing mode. The first item he checked out was the telekinetic throwing daggers. Under normal circumstances, ancient relics could only be activated when Lin Huang achieved immortal-level. Nevertheless, he bought it now because he could use it when he used the Transformation Card. Moreover, he was now on blue flame-level. As soon as he found a suitable Life Fire monster, he could get on gold flame-level in two to three months, at the most. Perhaps it would take him about half a year to level up to immortal-level. Therefore, it was not too early to prepare. Six types of telekinetic throwing daggers were found in the Stairway Mall. Lin Huang was interested in the strongest weapon at first glance. The name of the Life Power throwing dagger was the Ink Feather. A triple mutated Dark Angel had dropped the item. Despite the fact that the combat strength of the Dark Angels being on purple gold-rank, their abilities were comparable to a demigod''s. Killing those rare creatures was tough. There were only three sets of Ink Feathers in the Stairway Mall. 3,600 dark jade-like throwing daggers formed each set and were being sold at a price of 1.8 million points, which could be converted to 1.8 billion Life Crystals. "It''s expensive, but it''s worth it! It''s on par with a demigod relic, and it''s the best telekinetic weapon." Lin Huang then ordered the daggers without hesitation. Each set would cost him 1.8 million points, so three sets would cost 5.4 million points. The members of the Heaven Alliance enjoyed a discount of 30%. Therefore, the price ended up to be 3.78 million. "The 30% discount is awesome! I can save more than 1.6 million points then." He paid without hesitating and soon, he started looking for sword skills. His Sword Dao was stuck at level-4 as he only had a few transcendent sword skills. The transcendent sword skills ranked from Illumination, Oblivion, and Void Breaker. They were on level-3, level-4, and level-5 Sword Dao respectively. According to Xiao Hei, the epic-level sword skills incorporated two levels, which were Illumination and Oblivion. The corresponding level of the legendary-level sword skills would be the Void Breaker. When he was at the Martial Hunter College, he had learned almost all the sword skills below transcendent level in Divison 7. However, the transcendent sword skills were possessed by different organizations and were not publicly available. He had learned less than ten types of epic-level sword skills, including the two skills he had picked up at the Martial Hunter College and a few that he had already learned on his own. As for the legendary-level sword skills, the only one he had discovered was the Star Dome. In the Stairway Mall, there was a variety of Illumination skills; there was a total of 1,300 of them. The skills were relatively cheap as he could buy them at a price of just about 10 points. The most expensive skill cost about 80 points, and none of them cost more than 100 points. Lin Huang then spent more than 40,000 points to download more than 1,300 types of Illumination sword skills. He then started checking on the Oblivion and Void Breaker sword skills. The Oblivion sword skill was rather expensive as it cost at least 300 points per skill. Some of them even required 5,000 to 6,000 points. There were 700 of them. Lin Huang spent 1.2 million points to buy all of them. As for the Void Breaker sword skill, each of them was sold at a price of more than 10,000 points. Many of them cost about 100,000 points. Also, the price of seven of the sword skills cost more than a million. However, there were only about 80 types of Void Breaker sword skills. All in all, Lin Huang had spent about 18 million points to buy seven of the most expensive sword skills and the remaining 78 sword skills. After purchasing all the items, Lin Huang had almost used up all the 24 million points he initially had. 668 Which Checkpoint of the Stairway Tree Were You At When You Were a Blue Flame-Level? Seeing his remaining 780,000 points, he forced a smile. "The points can be used up terribly easily." After buying all the stuff he wanted, it was about 8 p.m. He started checking the sword skills that he had just acquired. The sword skills were encrypted and had been sent to him through his Emperor''s Heart Ring after payment had been made. The Illumination sword skill was the first set projected. Lin Huang spent about 15 minutes watching its tutorial. Since his Sword Dao was already on level-4, he basically managed to learn the level-3 sword skills after watching the practical part of the sword skill and its tutorial. It was like a person who had mastered advanced mathematics and was looking back at the syllabus of high school mathematics. They would understand it after studying it once. It took him another five to six minutes to watch the practicing of the sword skill thrice. However, he did not watch the detailed tutorial. After about 20 minutes, he started practicing the sword skill in the hotel living room. He practiced thrice after a few minutes. Each time after finishing the practice of his sword skill, he obtained thousands of card pieces. After three rounds, the Skill Card of the first sword skill was formed. Soon after, a Skill Card was formed in his body after every 20 minutes. By midnight, Lin Huang had already learned 11 Illumination sword skills. He could sense that there was a slight improvement in his Sword Dao. Obviously, his way of practicing was correct. The next day, Lin Huang got out of bed early in the morning and logged into the Genius Union world. He started climbing again. After more than two hours, he finally managed to get through the 49th checkpoint. However, after more than two hours, Lin Huang was stuck on the 50th checkpoint. He was completely wrapped in a sticky resin at the 50th checkpoint, and he could not get rid of it at all. Attacking was the only way to free himself. He had to slash it by force and make his way through the ditch. However, the resin was immune to almost all types of energy including Life Power, elemental energy, telekinetic energy, and some of the unusual energies. Only physical attacks could destroy it. Moreover, the resin could move and recover on its own. If the attack were not launched fast enough, the damaged section would recover on its own swiftly. Some of them teamed up and attempted to attack it. However, as long as there was more than one person who attacked the same part, the defense strength of the resin would be 10 to 100 times stronger. Lin Huang was most fearful of checkpoints like this. Since he was just a blue flame-level, his physique was incomparable to an immortal-level''s. As the resin was immune to his telekinetic power, the power of the telekinetic weapon would be suppressed when it reached a particular area. Its power would be even weaker than 1/10,000 of its standard power. In fact, it would not affect the resin at all. After several attempts, not even a crack could be seen on the resin. He had tried many ways such as removing his telekinetic power as he approached the resin, relying on the throwing dagger to attack, and grouping the throwing daggers into a drill to bore a hole in it. He had even summoned the Mighty Ape. Since there was an audience, Lin Huang did not summon Tyrant or attempt to attack with his sword skills. He then returned to the 46th checkpoint. Just as he returned to the 46th checkpoint, somebody had started a new thread in the Genius Union forum. The post was about Lin Huang failing the 50th checkpoint. The people started commenting rapidly, saying that Lin Xie could only rely on the God Crasher. Without the God Crasher, he was trash. Once the people started criticizing him, many of them followed the trend and commented on him. They commented that it was useless to rely on external support. Only those who were weak would depend on external forces. Only a few of them supported him as he had gained some new fans since the incident that happened yesterday. What ended this commotion was Chan Dou''s comment. "For those who say that Lin Xie is weak, I''d like to ask, which checkpoint of the Stairway Tree were you on when you were a blue flame-level?" The comment struck everybody dumb. Lin Xie was only on blue flame-level, yet he had already reached the 49th checkpoint. Nobody had ever achieved this in the past. He indeed had the God Crasher. However, could someone get into the 49th checkpoint solely by relying on the God Crashers? Even idiots would know that it was impossible. Aside from some of the checkpoints where the God Crasher would be useful to him when there were the monster attacks, the God Crasher could not assist him at all at the rest of the checkpoints. By the time Lin Huang knew that people were commenting on him, the issue had already subsided. He did not care so much about it though. After returning to the Heaven Alliance subdivision, he logged out of the Genius Union. Since he was stuck and could no longer continue climbing up the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang decided to focus on practicing his sword skills. He did not log into the Genius Union for ten consecutive days. Under normal circumstances, Lin Huang could master one set of sword skills in about 20 minutes. However, sometimes when the swords skills were somewhat tricky, it would take him twice as long to master the skill. Over the past ten days, Lin Huang had learned about 450 Illumination sword skills, which was about a third of the Illumination sword skills that he had bought. Lin Huang''s sword realm was improving rapidly in the past ten days. At first, he was initially at the beginning stage of Oblivion. He had now proceeded to the middle stage. Lin Huang planned to practice for 20 consecutive days so that he could learn all the Illumination sword skills. However, he received a video call from Chan Dou early in the morning. As soon as the video call was answered, Chan Dou asked with a smile, "You haven''t logged into the Genius Union for 13 days. What are you up to?" "Recently, I''ve been busy practicing my sword skills. I didn''t know that it''s the end of the month already," Lin Huang replied. "I''m calling you because it''s near the end of the month. A few days later, the Stairway Tree will summarize the rewards to be given out in May. If you''re capable of breaking through the 50th checkpoint, try your best to do so. Rewards given to you after you reach the 50th checkpoint or higher are completely different from what you obtain from the 40th to the 49th checkpoint. However, if you can''t do so, just ignore what I''ve said since 90% of them who stay on the 46th checkpoint failed to reach the 50th checkpoint anyway. There aren''t any useful strategies for this checkpoint." "I''ll try again when I''m free." Lin Huang nodded. He did not notice that it was now the end of May. After hanging up, he took a look at the date. It was already May 29. There were two days left until the monthly rewards would be given to them on the first of June. He hesitated for a moment and soon, he logged into the Genius Union again. It was still early in the morning at about 7 a.m. Not many people were online. He then rode on the Mighty Ape and directly climbed up to the 50th checkpoint. After observing the surroundings and making sure that there was no one else around him, he then took out his ink-tainted battle sword. His sword realm had been fully activated. Even without the use of Life Power, he sliced his sword forward and cut through the resin. Lin Huang did not expect that a big ditch would form as he attacked. He managed to cut through the resin without any obstacle. "It''s my sword realm!" Lin Huang could clearly sense that the change because of his sword realm. As his sword penetrated through the resin layer, he felt that it was as easy as cutting through tofu. The resin that was tainted by his sword realm resembled plastic that was being melted by a high temperature as it shriveled up on its own and shrank, creating a path. He knew that not all of the sword realms would work. The effect of his sword realm was apparent because it was incredibly strong. Since there was a shortcut, Lin Huang did not bother staying there any longer. He thrust his sword forward and formed ditches, paving a route on the resin. In less than five minutes, he had broken through the 50th checkpoint that had been a barrier to more than 10,000 people. As he reached the 51st checkpoint, he immediately put his battle sword away and summoned Tyrant to get through this checkpoint. The difficulty level from the 50th checkpoint onwards was much higher. Lin Huang spent precisely five hours to complete the 51st checkpoint. He broke through the 52nd checkpoint just when the sky was turning dark. Lin Huang spent exactly two days getting through four checkpoints, from the 51st checkpoint to the 54th checkpoint. Nobody expected that he would reach the humans'' foothold on the 55th checkpoint. Even he himself did not expect that to happen. At every checkpoint above the 50th checkpoint, each level was very challenging, and Lin Huang even felt like giving up. Fortunately, there were no people there, and he could perform his strongest sword realm, summoning Bai and the rest to help him out without any qualms. Even then, he only managed to reach the 55th checkpoint before the sky turned dark. As he stepped into the 55th checkpoint, Lin Huang immediately looked for a crack on the bark and logged out of the virtual reality. 669 The Bizarre Seed Since any expenditure on the Stairway Mall would not affect their ranking, Lin Xie''s name was still ranked first on the leaderboard. Many people paid close attention to the changes in Lin Huang''s achievement these few days. In the beginning, everybody was shocked when Lin Huang managed to break through the 50th checkpoint as the majority of them were stuck at the 46th checkpoint, having failed to get to the 50th checkpoint. Lin Huang then only managed to break through two checkpoints in a day. Everyone could feel that his climb was getting tougher. At the 51st checkpoint, he did not complete the level even after several hours, so they expected him to stop there. However, after more than 5 hours, he finally managed to get through it. The next few checkpoints were tough for him, and it took him a long time to pass through each checkpoint. Still, Lin Huang managed to reach the 55th checkpoint. The 55th checkpoint was the fourth gathering point of the humans at the Stairway Tree. Anyone who was capable of reaching this checkpoint was primarily on immortal-level rank-7. Everybody in the Genius Union did not expect Lin Xie, who was only on blue flame-level, to reach this checkpoint. Even Lin Huang himself did not expect this achievement. This had to be recorded in the history as a mind-blowing feat because nobody who was on holy fire-level could ever climb to the 55th checkpoint in the past. Lin Huang was the first and only one. After Lin Huang had broken the record, the Emperor''s Heart even blasted an announcement to all the Genius Union''s current members. "Congratulations to Lin Xie, who''s a blue flame-level! He has reached the 55th checkpoint! It''s the highest checkpoint that a holy fire-level can reach so far!" The announcement from the Emperor''s Heart was pinned at the top of the Genius Union''s forum. Many of them who had not paid attention to Lin Huang''s achievement were shocked when they received the announcement. Some of them even started a topic under the pinned post in the forum. #When you were a blue flame-level, which checkpoint of the Stairway Tree were you on?# Soon, many people started commenting on this topic. "The The first checkpoint (Covers face)" "I''ve been frozen to death 11 times at the second checkpoint. I''ve no choice but to go back to the first checkpoint! (Nose picking)" "I''ve been frozen to death 13 times" "Hey, I didn''t say anything though I''ve been frozen to death 28 times! (Shrugs)" "When I was a blue flame-level, I think I was at the 29th checkpoint." This was Chan Dou. "Oh my god. A pro has appeared. Allow me, the noob, to leech on you." "I only saw a noob being sucked dry by a pro instead." After logging out, Lin Huang was immediately pinged by the Emperor''s Heart because he had broken a record. Along with the announcement, a notice about a reward was sent to him as well. "Due to your outstanding performance in the Genius Union, a bizarre seed is rewarded to you." Aside from the notice, there was also an attachment, which Lin Huang opened. He found a black seed. Feeling curious, he immediately downloaded it. After a short while, the download was completed. The virtual black seed appeared in his hand unexpectedly. "What''s happening?" Lin Huang was shocked. He knew that many of the items from the Genius Union could be brought to reality. However, that would only happen when the item was stored in the Emperor''s Heart Ring, and one would have to take it out from there. However, the black seed had become a tangible item and had appeared in his hand right after he downloaded it. Staring at the seed with careful observation, he noticed that the black seed was only the size of his pinky finger. He could not figure out if there was anything special about it. Lin Huang then wanted to store it in his Emperor''s Heart Ring, but he failed to do so. He had no other choice but to put it in his pocket. Full of doubts, he opened the Heart Network to search for more information regarding the bizarre seed. However, he could find no information regarding it. In the Genius Union, as he searched for the keywords "bizarre seed", the result screen showed that he had no authority to access it. Lin Huang was even more curious now, and he sent Chan Dou a message. "What is a bizarre seed?" After sending the message for less than two seconds, he received a video call from Chan Dou. Lin Huang answered the video call, feeling odd. "Did you obtain the bizarre seed as a reward?" Chan Dou exclaimed in surprise. "Hmmm I''m just asking." Lin Huang did not answer him directly. "I see." Chan Dou realized that he was being dramatic. After calming himself down, he replied, "The bizarre seed is an exclusive reward given by the Genius Union to those with outstanding performance. It''s the best reward in the Genius Union. Its level even surpasses a demigod relic. "Although I''ve never seen it before, I''ve heard from the seniors that the bizarre seed is actually a God''s item. Its value may possibly be higher than a God''s relic. When the seed is inserted into your body, each bizarre seed will grow into different fruits. Some of the fruits will allow you to have supernatural powers whereas some of them will turn into a God''s item or a God''s relic. What it''ll grow into varies in different bodies. It''s said that its breeding time varies according to different bodies as well. Some of them take only a day to grow into fruits whereas some of them can''t germinate into fruits even after a hundred years. "The seed can be activated easily. As long as you insert your Life Power into it continuously until it has been completely filled, it''ll be automatically activated. The activated seed will enter the body of the person who inserted Life Power into it. You don''t need to bother it after that." Chan Dou shared the method of activation with him. Obviously, he guessed that Lin Huang had obtained the bizarre seed as a reward. "Thank you." Lin Huang did not bother denying that he had received the bizarre seed. Chan Dou looked at him enviously and did not say anything else. He then hung up. After the conversation with Chan Dou ended, Lin Huang took out the black seed from his pocket. Without a moment of hesitation, he started inserting Life Power as Chan Dou had taught him. He was practicing his Army Attack Tactics while inserting his Life Power into the seed. Soon, the first Life Wheel had been drained, followed by the second, the third, and the fourth Eventually, ten of his Life Wheels had been depleted, but nothing happened to the seed. The seed resembled an abyss as it engulfed all the Life Power in ten of his Life Wheels without being activated. Lin Huang immediately used a Life Power Refill Card since his Life Power had been drained. After restoring the Life Power in ten of his Life Wheels, he began inserting Life Power into the black seed for the second time. After half an hour, the Life Power in ten of his Life Wheels had been used up again. Still, there was no response from the seed. Lin Huang then took out the second and the third Life Power Refill Cards and inserted Life Power into the seed yet again. An hour had passed, and the amount of Life Power from 40 Life Wheels had been inserted. The little pinky-sized black seed showed no response though. "It seems like it''s hard to activate it in a short period of time." Lin Huang forced a smile. He was exhausted, so he kept the seed in his pocket. He then started practicing his Army Attack Tactics to restore the Life Power in his body. 670 The Fourth Life Fire Monster Lin Huang did not sleep at night as he spent the whole night training his Army Attack Tactics. By about noon, it had taken him about 15 hours to fill up the Life Power in ten of his Life Wheels. At the same time, he had restored the Life Power in three of the Life Power Refill Cards. After lunch, Lin Huang did not log into the Genius Union. It was meaningless if he were to log into the virtual reality as there were quite a number of them at the 55th checkpoint. If he continued climbing, he would catch the people''s attention again. He did not want to reveal that he had mastered Sword Dao and owned a monster troop. Even if he were to use his trump card, the possibility of breaking through level 55 was low. Therefore, he did not want to waste his time and effort on such an attempt. In the afternoon, Lin Huang started practicing his sword skills. At about 11 p.m., he had learned 31 of the Illumination sword skills. Before he slept, he took out the black seed again. He inserted the Life Power from nine out of ten of his Life Wheels. He then put his bizarre seed away. Knowing that the seed could not be activated in a short period of time, he did not intend to spend much time on it. Even if it was activated, he was unsure of how long it would need to grow. After retaining the Life Power in one of his Life Wheels in case he would need to use it, Lin Huang took a shower and slept. Just after 6 a.m., upon waking up, ten of the Life Wheels in his body had been recharged. Of course, it would be slower for the Army Attack Tactics skill to rotate itself compared to when it was activated. Nevertheless, it would not be a problem for it to fill up ten Life Wheels overnight. After breakfast, he started training his sword skills again. At about 8 a.m., he received the monthly rewards for the month of May from the Genius Union. From the first to the 10th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, he obtained one point for every checkpoint he broke through. From the 11th to the 20th checkpoint, 10 points would be awarded to him for each checkpoint. From the 21st to the 30th checkpoint, 100 points would be given and so on From the 51st to the 60th checkpoint, he would obtain 100,000 points for each checkpoint. Lin Huang had got to the 54th checkpoint. Therefore, he would obtain 400,000 points each year. These points would be distributed ten times from January to October, and each time, only 40,000 points would be awarded. As for November and December, there would be no rewards. However, within these two months, the points would be recalculated. For those who had new achievements, the points could be redeemed retroactively. For example, if somebody managed to reach the 50th checkpoint the previous month, their points would total up to 100,000. However, if they could break through the 60th checkpoint this month, their points would rise to one million. They would then be rewarded 100,000 points each month. Therefore, in November and December, after the points had been recalculated, the remaining points for the past few months would be given to them. After December, the Emperor''s Heart would file an annual settlement. According to the personal points accumulated on an annual basis and the annual ranking of the organizations, the rewards would be assigned. This was the reason why many geniuses joined the Genius Union. Monthly rewards meant nothing to them as only points or relics would be rewarded. For those who managed to get to checkpoints above the 50th checkpoint, some of the rewards could be Void Breaker skills whereas some of them were the ancient relics. They were much more valuable than the items rewarded below the 50th checkpoint. However, the monthly rewards seemed unappealing to Lin Huang because for checkpoints below the 60th checkpoint, the rewards from the Emperor''s Heart could only be Void Breaker skills or low-grade ancient relics. They only cost tens of millions of Life Crystals. He had ensured that the transaction for the 40,000 points had been done. Lin Huang then took a look at the item he received. It was an ancient sword relic. Similar to the three sets of Ink Feathers that Lin Huang had just bought a few days ago, the combat sword was directly stored in his storage space. He took it out and studied it. Its quality was apparently incomparable to the Air Slicer. He supposed that the sword was obtained from a black gold-level monster. He wanted to sell it at the auction when he was free. Since ancient relics were rare, the sword could possibly be sold at a price of more than 10 million Life Crystals at the auction. After storing his combat sword, Lin Huang did not pay close attention to the monthly reward. Again, he switched his focus back to his Sword Dao training. When it was slightly after 11 at night, he inserted his Life Power into the black seed again. He then took a shower and went to bed. Lin Huang repeated this process for the next 21 days. Every morning, he started training his sword skills at about 7 a.m. At about 11 p.m., he spent about half an hour inserting his Life Power into the black seed and went to bed at around midnight. Still, the black seed was not activated. However, Lin Huang finally completed the training of 1,368 Illumination Sword Skills. His level-4 Sword Dao had improved from the beginning stage to the peak of Oblivion. He knew that with his sword realm, he was about to achieve level-5 Sword Dao. However, he did not force himself to train his Oblivion sword skills in order to make a breakthrough. Instead, he chose to settle down, waiting for the chance to come. When Liu Ming was an immortal-level rank-9, he was stuck at this checkpoint for tens of years because he was too eager to achieve it, but things turned out differently for him. Liu Ming had explicitly emphasized this when they talked about Sword Dao. Each level of Sword Dao could not be achieved by force. He had to let nature take its course. Otherwise, he might get on the wrong path. Since there was a substantial improvement in his Sword Dao in addition to his blue flame-level Life Power becoming stable after more than a month, Lin Huang was finally leaving Sweep City. He had gotten an update from the black market a week ago regarding the triple mutated monster. One of them was a triple mutated humanoid monster which possessed a sword heart in its body. The monster''s tinder would definitely inherit its sword heart. Lin Huang was eager to obtain the ability of a sword heart a long time ago. However, he could not find a suitable Life Fire monster all the while. He now finally had the chance to hunt this monster. If the practice of his Sword Dao could not be completed in the nick of time, Lin Huang would have left to hunt down the monster a week ago. According to the information he got from the black market, it was a Whitesword Supreme with an immortal-level rank-6 combat strength. The Whitesword Supreme was not a new monster to Lin Huang as he had seen it before in the monster guide. However, he had never had a chance of encountering such a monster. The triple mutated monster was relatively strong as it could fight an immortal-level rank-8. If he were to kill it on its own, Lin Huang was not confident of defeating it. Fortunately, he was not alone as he had his monster troop. The place where the Whitesword Supreme had appeared was not easy to access. It had been discovered on an island in the Peaceful Ocean. "It seems like I''ve to go to the Peaceful Ocean" Lin Huang fixed his gaze on the map provided by the black market. 671 F*ck, I Forgot to Save My Draft! The Peaceful Ocean was the third most dangerous forbidden land in the entire world. It ranked just right behind the virtual zone and the Abyss Brink. It was the largest ocean in the world, connecting 8 of the 12 safe zones. Before leaving Division 7, the ocean that Mr. Fu had brought him to train at was a small portion of the Peaceful Ocean in Division 7. Division 3 was connected to the east coast of the Peaceful Ocean. The Peaceful Ocean was much more perilous than the second layer of the Abyss Brink. Besides king sea monsters that were even more humongous than giants, there were many imperial and even demigod-level monsters around. There were four harbors that one could enter the Peaceful Ocean through. The Victoria Harbor was the nearest island to the harbor where the Whitesword Supreme was. It was 16,000 nautical miles (almost 30,000 kilometers) away. From the south point that Lin Huang trained at, he would have to get to Victoria Harbor and take the Demonic Crystal Spaceship to the Far East Island. The Far East Island was the closest island that the Demonic Crystal Spaceship could reach and was the nearest to the Supreme Whitesword. Even so, it was more than 8,000 nautical miles away from the unknown island where the Supreme Whitesword was, so Lin Huang would still have to fly there on his own. After plotting the route in the middle of the night, Lin Huang bought the tickets to Victoria City and the Far East Island when it was past 1 a.m. In the morning, Lin Huang packed his bag and checked out of the room after his breakfast downstairs. He had stayed more than a month in Sweep City, and he hardly got out of his hotel room because he was training. Now that it was the end of June, most sections of Division 3 were experiencing summer, and everyone in Sweep City was wearing short-sleeved clothing. Lin Huang dressed casually in a white t-shirt with a blue Furry Beast printed on it and a pair of jeans. In such a handsome disguise, the two ladies at the reception ogled him as they were assisting him to check out of his room. After he left, the two ladies excitedly discussed between themselves about whether he was the most handsome guest that they ever had this year. After leaving the hotel, Lin Huang summoned Thunder and headed to the dimensional portal of the Peaceful Ocean. The portal to Victoria City would open only once a day at 9 a.m. daily. There were only six people including Lin Huang when he arrived at the dimensional portal. Since Victoria City was a large harbor, many tourists were visiting the beach during the summer. There were very few people at the dimensional portal as it was the end of June and the summer holidays had yet to start. When it was 9 a.m. sharp, the dimensional portal opened. Lin Huang scanned his ticket together with the other five, then stepped into the portal. Soon, they stepped out of the portal and arrived at Victoria City. It was a sunny, cloudless day. Lin Huang then took out his dimensional portal to pin the coordinates. After confirming the location of Victoria Harbor on the Emperor''s Heart Ring''s map, he summoned Thunder again and headed there. Twenty minutes later, Thunder brought Lin Huang to the Victoria Harbor. There was only one ship that headed to the Far East Island from that harbor once a week and coincidentally, it was that very day. The ship would depart at 11 a.m., which was the reason why Lin Huang went there early in the morning. If he had not made it to the ship today, he would have to wait for another week. He had bought the ticket in the middle of the night and found it expensive at 3,000 Life Crystals per ticket, which was the price of a grade-2 or grade-3 relic. It only covered a standard cabin with two people to a room. A private cabin would cost 20,000 Life Crystals per ticket, which was the price of a grade-5 relic. Besides being a private room for one, it came with an en-suite bathroom with a bathtub. Although Lin Huang had the money, the tickets for the private cabin were sold out. Of course, there was the economy cabin that was cheaper than the standard cabin at only 500 Life Crystals per ticket. There would be eight people in a room without a bathroom. Even so, the tickets were sold out since the beginning. As soon as he arrived at the harbor, Lin Huang soon saw the gigantic Demonic Crystal Spaceship floating in mid-air. It was even bigger than any of the ships that Lin Huang had ever seen. It was almost like a battleship. He knew that such a ship was called the Emperor''s Ship and it was a supreme relic that was made of the bones of an imperial-level king sea monster. Although it was only a supreme relic, its defense was much more powerful than most of the ancient relic armors. Besides that, there were God Crashers and other weapons on the ship that could be used to chase away sea monsters. The ship was like a demigod relic. If it were to be sold at auctions, it would be more expensive than a demigod relic. After Lin Huang was done admiring the ship, he searched for a place to wait for the ship to depart. He looked far away to see tourists wandering around the stores in the harbor. Although it was not the summer holidays yet, there were already many tourists. The Far East Island was the most eastern island that the Division 3 Demonic Crystal Spaceship could get to. The island itself was beautiful, and you could catch the earliest sunset in Division 3 there, hence the flocking tourists. Lin Huang observed around and soon noticed an al fresco cafe. However, it was almost entirely occupied with only one vacant seat under an umbrella. There was a man with a messy mustache sitting across the vacant seat. He wore sunglasses, a white t-shirt, a pair of sky blue beach shorts, and flip-flops. He was tapping on a virtual keyboard on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Uncle, is there anyone sitting here?" Lin Huang asked. The man in the sunglasses peered at him over the Emperor''s Heart Ring projection and said in all seriousness, "You should call me ''brother'' at your age. If you''re below 16, it''s okay for you to call me ''uncle'', but it''s obvious that you''re over 20 and I''m only 31. I think you shouldn''t call me that." "Oh Alright then. Brother, is anyone sitting here?" Lin Huang corrected himself. "No, please sit." The man turned back to the projection in front of him. Lin Huang ordered a cup of coffee while waiting for the ship to depart patiently. The man across him occasionally frowned, scratching his head and sometimes biting his nails. He seemed to be in a dilemma as he typed slowly on his virtual keyboard. Although Lin Huang was curious about what the man was doing, recalling the conversation they had earlier, he gave up asking to save himself any possible embarrassment. When it was 10.30 a.m., the checking of the tickets started. Seeing that many people had stood up to queue, Lin Huang ordered himself another cup of coffee. The man sitting across him did not look like he was standing up either as he continued typing on the virtual keyboard slowly. Ten minutes later, Lin Huang stood up after noticing that there were not many people left in the queue. Just when he was leaving, he decided to remind the man because he noticed that the man did not seem to be leaving. "Brother, the ship is leaving. Don''t you want to make a move?" "The ship is leaving!" The man switched off the projection frantically and let out a groan out of nowhere as he shot up to his feet with his bag. "F*ck, I forgot to save my draft!" Lin Huang ignored the man and boarded the ship. 672 Lin Huang’s Roommate After boarding the ship, Lin Huang soon found his assigned cabin that was printed on his ticket, Room 308. There was nobody in the room. The speed of the Emperor''s Ship was not considered fast whereby its normal flying speed was only 2,000 kilometers per hour. The distance between the Victoria Harbor to the Far East Island was 15,000 kilometers with two stops in between. It would take almost eight hours to get there. If Lin Huang were to summon Thunder at full speed, he would take half the time the ship needed. However, many people did not choose to ride on their flying mounts as it was safer on the Emperor''s Ship as long as they did not encounter any demigod-level monsters. Even if they encountered imperial-level monsters, the tens of God Crashers would destroy the monsters. They were hardly any demigod-level monsters 10,000 nautical miles along the east coast. It would be unfortunate if they did encounter one. Lin Huang looked out of the window as he sat on his bed. Many people were admiring the blue and calm Peaceful Ocean on the deck. It did not look like an ocean, but more like a massive lake. However, Lin Huang, who had stayed more than a month on the Peaceful Ocean, knew that everything was not as tranquil as it seemed. "308 308" While Lin Huang was spacing out as he looked out of the window, he heard someone mumbling at the door. He turned around and looked expectantly at the door as he heard his room number. A man in beach shorts stood at the door and glanced at the room number before walking in. "It''s you!" The man saw Lin Huang as soon as he entered. Lin Huang did not expect the weird man in sunglasses whom he met at the cafe to be his roommate. The man took off his sunglasses and walked to Lin Huang. "I know that you meant me well when you urged me to get on the ship earlier. I''d like to thank you for that, but you made me forget to save my draft! My four hours of work was washed down the drain. Do you know the pain of losing four hours of work as a lousy writer who managed to squeeze out 2,000 words?" "Erm" Lin Huang looked awkward as he genuinely could not understand the pain. However, seeing that the man was so mad that he was going to cry, he decided to apologize. "I''m sorry, it''s my fault." Since Lin Huang apologized, the man was slightly placated. He then put his sunglasses on again. "Forget about it. Just be careful the next time and not be so hurried for a small matter like that. A man should be calm." "Who was the one who forgot to save his own draft? It''s you who isn''t calm" Lin Huang thought to himself. "Brother, are you an author?" Lin Huang could not help but ask as he watched the man typing on his virtual keyboard again. He was not really that interested in his occupation, but since they would be in the same room for eight hours, it would be boring not to speak to each other. He was shy to practice his sword skills when there was a stranger in the room anyway. "Just a small one. I''m just trying to make a living." The man smiled. "Are you looking for inspiration on the Far East Island?" Lin Huang asked again. "Yeah, I''ve been stuck recently probably due to staying home for too long, so I guess it''s good to get some fresh air. It''s summer now, so it''s the perfect time to spend some time on an island." The man was much friendlier when he talked about his job. "What kind of book do you write, brother?" "I''ve been writing a story about this world recently. The main character is an Imperial Censor with many triple mutated summoning monsters" Lin Huang''s interest was sparked when he heard that the man was writing a story about an Imperial Censor, so he asked further, "What''s the name of the book? I shall read it whenever I have the time." "It''s called ''Monster Paradise''. My pen name is Nuclear Warhead. You can look for my book or pen name on the Heart Network, and you''ll find me. Oh yeah, please support the original only, alright?" The man recommended his own book when he realized he had a potential reader in the room. "Sure, I''ll take a look when I''ve got the time, and I''ll definitely support the original." "My name is Zhu Jiu, but you can call me Bro Jiu. What do I call you, little brother?" The man asked. "My name''s Lin Xie." Lin Huang smiled. "What a coincidence! The main character of my book is also Lin." Zhu Jiu laughed when he heard Lin Huang''s name. "I''ll definitely read your book when I''m done with my stuff." Lin Huang thought that the coincidence was interesting. "Bro Lin, didn''t you bring your girlfriend to the Far East Island with you?" Zhu Jiu asked. "I''m still single." Lin Huang let out an awkward laugh. "Didn''t you bring your wife, Bro Jiu?" "I''m already so old. No woman wants me anymore," Zhu Jiu sighed. "Since you''re still young, you should really appreciate the people around you. Don''t be like me. I can''t return to the people that got away. You''re young. Go after whoever you like. Don''t be shy. Let go of your ego, or you''ll regret letting some people go for the rest of your life" Lin Huang became silent when he heard the advice. He had been in a relationship before when he was on Earth. In fact, he had more than one relationship. There was once when he almost tied the knot with the love of his life, but the girl could not take the fact that he was always out with his clients and away from home for work. They had broken up in the end. He still remembered the first movie he had ever watched with her. It was ''Big Hero 6'' and it was his first time holding the girl''s hand. He remembered which bench there sat on by the lake on their second date as well as the noodle store that they went to for lunch. He recalled his first time kissing the girl while peeping at the side of her startled face carefully. "I''d like to kiss you" "Kiss me then," the girl had replied with a smile. He remembered the girl leaving the next day, and he had taken a plane to the city the girl was in before calling her at the airport so that they could meet. He had cried at the airport when the girl rejected him. He did not even leave the airport that day as he had immediately bought a plane ticket to go back to where he was "The past is in the past. Appreciate what we have now." Lin Huang shook his head and snapped out of his thoughts. A lady''s voice was then heard. "The ship is departing soon. Passengers who are on the deck, please get back to your rooms as soon as possible" 673 Thunder’s Upgrade The Emperor''s Ship departed when it was 11 a.m.. Many people returned to the deck to enjoy the view. Lin Huang was reading the news as he was bored. His roommate Zhu Jiu proceeded to work on his book as he typed slowly on his virtual keyboard with an upset expression. The buffet lunch announcement was heard when it was 11:30 a.m.. "Bro Jiu, let''s eat." Lin Huang stood up and said to Zhu Jiu. "You go, I''m not eating." Zhu Jiu frowned as he was deep in his thought without even looking up. "How about I bring you food, what would you like eat?" "That''s great, bring barbecue if there''s any. If they don''t have that, just bring me whatever that you think is good." Zhu Jiu looked at Lin Huang and said. "Sure!" The restaurant on the first floor was crowded, there was no vacant seats at all. More than half of the 3,000 passengers on the spaceship were in the restaurant. Since there were too many people, Lin Huang ordered two sets of barbecued meat and returned to his room. After lunch, Lin Huang proceeded to read news, scrolling on social media sites while Zhu Jiu proceeded to write while looking constipated. An intense shake came from the spaceship when it was past 2 p.m.. Lin Huang looked out in doubt, there were a bunch of bird monsters outside of the spaceship''s defence layer. "What happened?" Zhu Jiu could not write anymore as the room was shaking like there was an earthquake. "Nothing, we''ve been attacked by birds." Lin Huang was calm. An announcement came was then heard. "Dear passengers, please do not be afraid. We''ve encountered birds so there''ll be a slight turbulence. Our staff is working on it." Soon, there were purple lightnings flashed outside of the spaceship''s defence layer. All of the bird monsters were burnt into ashes. The crises was solved easily. "Oh wow this Emperor''s Ship is really something!" Lin Huang exclaimed as he watched by the window. There were tens of thousands of birds earlier. Although they were only immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3, if Lin Huang was not in the Emperor''s Ship, he would have a tough time killing all of the monsters. The spaceship went through a peaceful hour since the attack and there was another intense turbulence when it was 3:30 p.m.. The entire spaceship felt heavier at an instant, many people at the deck screamed out of dear. Lin Huang looked out of the window in shock and saw a gigantic tentacle wrapping around the spaceship, the defence layer of the spaceship was now slightly distorted. That was the reason why the people on the deck were screaming as the defence looked like it was going to break anytime soon. "Sea king?" Lin Huang observed the tentacle curiously. They were flying 12,000 meters above the sky, the monster must be massive to be able to reach that high. Lin Huang had seen a sea king monster before when he was in Division7. However, it was only thousands of meters long, which was only slightly bigger than a giant of the same combat level. Mr. Fu told him that the sea king monster that they encountered was just a baby, Lin Huang did not believe him that time. He believed what Mr. Fu said now that he was looking at the tentacle. He could not imagine how massive the monster was since its tentacle was already tens of thousands of meters long. "Dear passengers, we''ve been attacked by an imperial-level sea king monster. For safety purpose, please return to your rooms and stay away from the deck" "We''ve been attacked by sea king monster?" Zhu Jiu looked out of the window immediately. He started recording with his Emperor''s Heart Ring when he saw the gigantic tentacle. He was oddly excited. "I didn''t expect to see such amazing thing. I must write this down so that I have material for my book" "Being attacked by a sea king monster is a good thing?" Lin Huang could not understand Zhu Jiu''s mindset but he was unwilling to encounter such massive monster during his trip. The advantage of a sea king monster was that they were born massive and full of strength. Their body was of high defence, they would be invincible if they had Enhanced Regeneration. It was the kind of monster that Lin Huang did not want to encounter during this trip. Fortunately he was on the Emperor''s Ship and did not have to fight the monster himself. It was obvious that it was not the first time for the staff on the spaceship to encounter this as they did not panic at all. They reacted within seconds when they were attacked. A few God Crasher on top of the spaceship locked onto the tentacle and fired at the tentacle as a few white flashes were shot. The tentacle did not break from the attack but a burnt patch appeared on it. The monster released the defence layer accidentally from the pain and the spaceship took the advantage as it flew higher immediately. The spaceship had reached new high that the tentacle could reach and proceeded with its journey as usual. Lin Huang was relieved that the crisis was over. "Too bad we didn''t get to see how the monster looks like." Zhu Jiu was disappointed. There were too many sea king monsters in the Peaceful Ocean that did not make it into the monster encyclopedia so Lin Huang could not tell which monster was that. Since the incident, the journey was a smooth sailing besides encountering another bunch of bird monsters before arriving at the Fareast Island past 7 p.m.. The sky was completely dark when the spaceship landed at the Fareast Island. After bidding farewell with Zhu Jiu, Lin Huang headed to the hotel that he booked earlier. The Peaceful Ocean was dangerous enough during the day so Lin Huang did not want to risk his life by proceeding with his journey at night. He wanted to take a good rest at the hotel before heading to the unknown island where the Whitesword Supreme was. The Fareast Island was not big where it was less than 30 square kilometers. It used to be an deserted island until someone found a mineral mountain on the island 100 years ago. The Union Government then bought the mineral mountain and got people to mine it later on. After the job was done 10 years later, many of the workers lived on the island and became the first generation on the island. Since the island was developed, there were more than 300 population on the island. Including the outsiders who were running their businesses, there were almost 500 people on the island. The hotel that Lin Huang was staying located near the harbor was run by a local aunty, it had good mouth-of-word. As it was not peak season yet, the rooms were not fully booked. He got himself a sea view room with a big balcony that was facing the Peaceful Ocean. After checking into the room, he was satisfied after looking around. Lin Huang then summoned Kylie when he returned to the living room. "I need to use your mini world." Kylie opened the door to her mini world without saying a word while Lin Huang walked into it. He then summoned Thunder as soon as he entered. "Buddy, it''s about time for you to level-up." Thunder nodded immediately as it was excited to be triple mutated. After redeeming three Advanced Cards from his 30 card rewards, Lin Huang held the three cards in his hand. "Xiao Hei, use the Advanced Cards on Thunder." As soon as the three Advanced Cards in his hard disappeared, a white glow shot from the sky and covered Thunder entirely 674 All Human Should Die! Thunder completed its transformation overnight. The three Advanced Cards did not merely make it a triple mutated monster; they even activated the double bloodline of the Thunder Lord and the Storm Phoenix. The Thunder Lord was a powerful monster with an ancient bloodline. It looked like a falcon surrounded by purple lightning. With an extremely powerful physique, it was great at close-ranged combat. As a leading ferocious beast in the ancient times, it was as powerful as a real phoenix. Meanwhile, the Storm Phoenix stemmed from a divisions of the phoenix blood monsters. It had wind attributes that enabled it to glide through the air. Thunder''s appearance experienced a significant change after its third mutation. It now had charcoal grey feathers with golden patterns woven among them, and its eyes were dark blue. It was much more muscular and taller than before, which made it look elegant without compromising its masculinity. Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he saw Thunder that was reborn in Kylie''s mini world the next morning. "How are you feeling, Thunder?" "I feel amazing! Like I have boundless energy in me." Thunder sounded like a titillating, mature man as it flapped its wings in excitement. Light purple lightning bolts appeared as it beat them. "That''s great. Follow me." Lin Huang then patted its wings and recalled it back to its card form. He then recalled Kylie after exiting her mini world. Lin Huang checked out of the hotel and summoned Thunder again when he was at the Far East Island beach. He rode on Thunder''s back after showing it their destination on the projected map. As Thunder flapped its wings, purple lightning bolts crackled around it. However, the lightning did not harm Lin Huang at all. On the contrary, it was like a defensive layer that protected him. Thunder then turned into a charcoal grey lightning bolt and flew far away. It accelerated along the way from four thousand kilometers per hour in the beginning to five, then six. It peaked when it reached seven thousand kilometers per hour, which brought back the thrill that Lin Huang had not felt for a long time. To prevent unforeseen accidents, he got it to fly at six thousand kilometers instead. At that speed, it took them only two and a half hours to get to the unknown island that was fifteen thousand kilometers away. Thunder was like a thunderbolt that traveled faster than the speed of light as it shot fifteen thousand meters above the Peaceful Ocean. Since the ship that Lin Huang was traveling in had been attacked at twelve thousand meters above the water surface, he thought it was still dangerous to fly at that height. Therefore, he got Thunder to fly three thousand meters higher. An hour had passed, and the journey was a smooth-sailing one. They encountered birds twice in between, but Thunder managed to get rid of them just by flying past them. The birds chased after them in the beginning but gave up eventually as Thunder was flying too fast. oon, two hours had passed, and they would be arriving on the unknown island in less than half an hour. Lin Huang was relieved that they were lucky enough not to have encountered any sea kings. As long as they arrived safely and killed the Supreme Whitesword, they would not have to cross the Peaceful Ocean anymore as they could use the dimensional portal instead. Not long after Lin Huang was counting his lucky stars, he saw a massive flock of birds fleeing for their lives ahead. It was a group of Giant Teratorns. Each and every one of them was flailing their wings hopelessly. Lin Huang looked closer and noticed that each of them was above immortal-level rank-6. What would giant birds with a wingspan of hundreds of meters be running from? Just when Lin Huang was pondering to himself, he finally saw a couple of gigantic tentacles grabbing the Giant Teratorns from behind. Each time the tentacles waved, they would get up to tens of Giant Teratorns, and sent them hurtling into the jaws of a gigantic monster that looked like an island on the surface of the ocean. Lin Huang finally saw how the monster looked like. It had a human face without hair on its head. Its body below the head was covered in a thick layer of fat. It looked like an extremely obese human, whose wrinkly skin looked like a dead body that had been soaking in water for an extended period of time. However, it did not have limbs. The gross layer of fat covered everything all the way to its abdomen, and it no longer had a human''s body from below. Instead, it possessed twelve octopus-like red tentacles. "Up, Thunder!" Lin Huang instructed Thunder to pull up as soon as he noticed the monster. Thunder saw the sea king as well. Under normal circumstances, when encountering such a monster, it would definitely turn and flee in the first place since trespassing its territory would count as an offense. However, since Lin Huang had ordered it to do so, it could only obey. It then flew up from fifteen thousand meters to sixteen and then seventeen Soon, it was flying more than twenty thousand meters above the ocean, exceeding the height that the tentacles could reach. As Lin Huang observed the monster below, he was high-strung. He recognized that it was the monster that had attacked the ship yesterday. There was a scorch mark from the God Crasher on one of its tentacles. Even without the burn mark, it was not difficult to tell that it was the same monster like the one from yesterday. It was impossible for two imperial-level sea kings to coexist within a distance smaller than tens of thousands of kilometers. Most of such monsters were parthenogenetic and lived solo, whereby they would fight each other to the death if they ever encountered each other. Such aggression was because they had a big appetite, so food was scarce even for them, let alone with another appearance of the same monster within their territory. The monster soon noticed Thunder. Lin Huang, who was riding on it, sensed that the monster was checking him out. "Leave as fast as you can," Lin Huang urged Thunder as he sensed that something was wrong. Suddenly, the monster''s features crumpled into a ferocious expression, and it then floated into the sky. It gave up hunting the Giant Teratorns as its twelve tentacles begun zooming towards Thunder. "All humans should die! 675 I’ll Definitely Kill You Next Time "All human should die!" The monster released a loud, brain-piercing ultrasonic cry which made Lin Huang dizzy. Thunder was affected as well as it fell downward. The monster took the advantage as it attempted to catch Thunder and Lin Huang with its tentacle. "Thunder!" Thunder snapped back to its senses when Lin Huang shouted its name. It then flapped its wings to fly but it was too late. A tentacle had caught its tail. Lin Huang took out six God Crashers without thinking twice. Controlling two God Crashers with his telekinesis, he shot at the tentacles tentacle. The God Crashers that he had were the most powerful third-generation ones. However, the attacks did not manage to pierce through the tentacle that was less than 10 meters away. There were two bleeding wounds that went meters deep. The monster was so powerful that Lin Huang became concerned. If the God Crashers could do nothing to it, the monster would almost be like a demigod. Fortunately, the God Crasher did something as the monster released them from its tentacle as it cringed from pain, and seemed like it was being electrocuted. When this happened, the monster wore an even more ferocious look and let out another ultrasonic song. "Human, you must die!" "Thunder, close off your ears!" Lin Huang said to Thunder. "I can attack two to three more times at most, and we''ll have to leave by then!" The God Crasher needed time to recharge. Since Lin Huang had used two God Crashers, he was only left with four of them. He had figured that using one was not going to be enough so he used two at once. Now, he only had two or three more openings to take a shot at the monster. Thunder knew that Lin Huang and it would become monster chow if they did not make their escape this time around. It flapped its wing rapidly and accelerated to a speed of 7,000 kilometers an hour as purple bolts of lightning surrounded its body. Then, it shot up high like a bolt of lightning as it flew away from the tentacles. The monster was enraged that it was attacked and missed its opportunity to capture them. In its final salvo, it shot its 11 tentacles in every direction in an attempt to grab Thunder. Meanwhile, Thunder was flying up high as its dual wind and thunder attributes allowed it to fly so fast that nothing could touch it. To top it all off, it could also control the airflow to adjust its flight with ease. Since it had already shut off its ears, it was unaffected by the monster''s ultrasonic cry any longer, allowing it to fly freely. The tentacles that were coming to them were brushed off by the air controlled by Thunder. There were several times when Lin Huang was about to use the God Crashers to fire at the approaching tentacles but Thunder managed to avoid them by changing the arc of its flight. There was even once where a tentacle almost caught hold of Thunder''s wings as it was only less than three meters away. Thunder''s performance impressed Lin Huang because it was using flying techniques that were rather advanced. He had to admit that Thunder''s talent in flying was better than most since they would not be able to learn these techniques within a short period of time. However, Thunder seemed to naturally be endowed with them. Fighting the monster, Lin Huang felt the seconds turn to hours. Although Thunder managed to avoid the monster, it was still within reach of the monster''s tentacles. The monster became smarter after several failed attempts. It blocked Thunder''s way with a couple of tentacles. Thunder attempted to break through them but it failed. When Lin Huang finally noticed, the monster was already restricting the airspace available to Thunder little by little. "This is not going to work any longer. It''s shrinking our airspace, the small it gets, the higher chance we''d get attacked." Lin Huang said to Thunder. "We can''t go back anymore. Pick a direction, and dash toward it." Thunder nodded and dashed in one direction. The moment it began dashing, a tentacle appeared and blocked the way forward. "Don''t avoid it, just fly across it!" Lin Huang said as he fired a God Crasher in front of him. A red glow appeared at the cannon and flew ahead toward the tentacle in their path. The monster shook from the pain as the shot made huge gaping wounds in its tentacles. "Go through it!" Seeing the gaps in its tentacles, Thunder accelerated and flew out of one of the gaps like a purple bolt of lightning. The monster noticed it and used another tentacle to block them again. However, before it managed to do that, Lin Huang shot another God Crasher at it. A red glow landed on the tentacle after it was shot. Once again, the monster shook from pain, and in less than a second, Thunder managed to fly through its tentacle. Seeing Thunder escape its tentacles twice infuriated the monster. It was then that it decided to go all-out and use all twelve tentacles to go after Thunder. However, this did not concern Thunder since it was attempting to escape them by flying to a height that they could not reach. Regardless of how much the monster tried to reach them, it could only helplessly look at Lin Huang and Thunder escape. Lin Huang was finally relieved as they managed to escape the monster. He then turned around and shouted at the monster that was roaring at him and Thunder. "Hey ugly! I, Lin Huang, will remember what you did to us today. I''ll definitely kill you the next time I come to the coast." He accidentally revealed his real name. The monster heard what he said and roared even louder at them, vigorously waving its twelve tentacles. However, it was useless. Lin Huang smirked as he watched the helplessly infuriated monster. In less than a few seconds, the gigantic monster had become the size of an ant and completely disappeared from his field of vision as Thunder flew at full speed. 676 The Supreme Whitesword The thirty-minute journey was smooth after escaping the sea monster. Lin Huang and Thunder did not even encounter any birds along the way as they arrived at the unknown island that he had pinned on the map. Lin Huang got Thunder to land where the Supreme Whitesword was last seen before recalling it back to card form. Lin Huang looked around, but he did not see any trails of the Supreme Whitesword, so he summoned Bloody to help. The unfamiliar island was huge, and he would need one to two days to explore the entire island without any help. Bloody which was now a hazy purple cloud. It then released its transparent Leech Pods everywhere. In a couple of minutes, it had gotten the result and pointed its vine towards Lin Huang''s eight o''clock. "It''s just three kilometers away from us." "That near?!" Lin Huang looked at the direction that Bloody was pointing at. Three kilometers had just exceeded the coverage of his territory. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang brought Bloody across three kilometers of jungle and arrived at where the Supreme Whitesword was. The Supreme Whitesword was chasing after an Armored Bull, but it seemed like it was having fun. It followed behind the Armored Bull and poked its body that was covered with armor. It did not look like he was planning to kill the bull. Although Lin Huang and Bloody did not reveal themselves, the Supreme Whitesword could sense their existence. It then gave up chasing after the Armored Bull and stared at Lin Huang through the trees. Lin Huang was checking the Supreme Whitesword out too. He had seen this monster in the monster encyclopedia before, but it was his first time seeing it in real life. The Supreme Whitesword looked no different from a human. Although it was covered in a white robe, including its arms and feet, its face was the same as a human''s with a couple of scars caused by slashes. "A human sword cultivator?" The Supreme Whitesword moved and appeared less than ten meters from Lin Huang as he glared deadly at him. "That''s right." Lin Huang nodded. He was not surprised that the Supreme Whitesword could tell that he was a sword cultivator. "You have powerful Sword Dao in you. I might be afraid of you if your combat level is higher, but now you''re just food to me." The Supreme Whitesword grinned. "I''ll absorb all your skills from you after killing you. Then I''ll be closer to quadruple mutation." "What a coincidence as I''ve got the same thought as you do." Lin Huang grinned after hearing what the Supreme Whitesword said. "I''ll kill you and get the Life Fire tinder in your so that I can obtain your Sword Heart." "If that''s the case, let''s see who''ll be killed first." The Supreme Whitesword was confident in itself. A sword arm that was almost 1.8 meters long came out of the white robe. The muscular arm was a regular human limb from the shoulder to the joint. However, the part below the joint lengthened into a sharp sword. Lin Huang was not surprised when he saw that. From the monster encyclopedia, he learned that the Supreme Whitesword had four sword limbs. Besides its sword arms, its legs were of the same structure whereby they were half-flesh and half-sword. It also had a tail hiding under its white robe with a short blade at the end. All of its weapons were hiding underneath the white robe, and they would only come out when they were needed. Lin Huang then took out Ink when he saw the Supreme Whitesword''s sword arm. With Ink in his hand, Lin Huang released level-4 Sword Dao, and his aura peaked at an instant. Sensing that, the Supreme Whitesword was shocked, but it was soon relieved when it recalled how low Lin Huang''s combat level was. "No matter how strong your Sword Dao is, everything is redundant without a powerful combat level." The Supreme Whitesword''s body was fading as his white robe swayed. It then appeared right in front of Lin Huang and slashed its silver sword arm towards Lin Huang''s torso like a lightning bolt. Lin Huang moved at the same time as it did. He swung his sword ahead, and there was a blue glow in the air as the sword was covered in Life Power. The silver and blue glow collided in the air, causing the both of them to back off. Lin Huang was shot out hundreds of meters away with his feet deep in the ground while the Supreme Whitesword flew dozens of meters away with two deep paths under his feet. The single collision proved which one of them was on the winning side. Even though Lin Huang had used his powerful sword skill together with level-4 Sword Dao, he was still way behind the Supreme Whitesword. Now, he knew that it was impossible for him to kill the Supreme Whitesword with what he did. "What a triple mutated Sword Dao monster! You''re even more powerful than all the immortal-level rank-6 monsters that I''ve ever met!" Lin Huang thought to himself. What he did not know was that the Supreme Whitesword was even more surprised than he was. The Supreme Whitesword did not understand how could Lin Huang, who was only a blue flame-level, managed to defend its attack and even managed to push it dozens of meters back. It was now interested in the young man that was standing in front of it. "Human, I must admit that your ability is out of my expectations. You excite me. I hope you can stand longer for my next attack. Don''t die too soon, or else I''ll be disappointed." "I, on the other hand, hope that I can kill you easily so that I can level up to purple flame-level," Lin Huang told the Supreme Whitesword what he thought honestly as he smirked. "I guess that''s not going to happen." The Supreme Whitesword grinned and rushed towards Lin Huang like a white glow. Lin Huang picked up his sword and swung it at the Supreme Whitesword as the sword was covered in blue Life Power. The silver and white sword glows collided together again. "Thunder Eclipse!" Lin Huang''s sword that was covered in blue Life Power started releasing blue electrical arcs. He swung his sword so rapidly that only the light trails of the sword could be seen. Just as the swords collided, Lin Huang added sword 11 into the attack. The both of them backed off due to the collision, and the distance they were shot away to was the same. Lin Huang came up with the overlaying Thunder Eclipse with another epic-level sword skill. It was his first time performing it in a battle, and he did not expect it to work so well, which managed to increase the strength of his sword swing to be the same as the Supreme Whitesword''s, so they were shot the same distance away from each other. "Come on, don''t stop!" Realizing that it worked, Lin Huang was all pumped up and shouted at the Supreme Whitesword He then dashed towards the Supreme Whitesword. 677 Killing the Supreme Whitesword Blue and white flashes collided with each other in the air. Every time they clashed, an intense force rippled in the air. Just like tossing a stone into calm water, a strong wind was blowing everywhere. Although they were fighting in mid-air, all of the trees around the unknown island were destroyed as a result of the force. Within a few minutes, almost a third of the trees on the island were obliterated. With the overlaying of the sword skills, Lin Huang was all pumped up to fight as he was getting more and more familiar with the technique that he had come up with. He would add in one or two sword skills in each attack, and the Supreme Whitesword felt the pressure gradually. The battle seemed to be at a tie at first, but Lin Huang was suppressing the Supreme Whitesword more and more. Anyone who had no idea about Sword Dao could tell that the Supreme Whitesword was definitely on the losing end after watching the battle for three to four minutes. Lin Huang''s every attack made him back off hundreds of meters away while Lin Huang would only be shot less than ten meters away. Lin Huang did not plan to give the Supreme Whitesword a rest as he was more and more ferocious in his attacks, making the gap between the attacks shorter. The Supreme Whitesword, which was already losing, had his rhythm taken away by Lin Huang. It became tense upon noticing that. Not wanting to hold back anymore, it flashed its second sword arm that was under the white robe. Its left arm looked the same as his right arm whereby the upper part was flesh, and the lower part was a long, silver sword that looked exactly like the one on its right hand. Lin Huang was thrilled as he studied the Supreme Whitesword that was going to fight with both his arms. He would occasionally train his left hand when he was bored during his training, but he was more used to his right hand. Although he knew about the Supreme Whitesword from the monster encyclopedia, it was his first time encountering a monster that was fighting with both sword arms. As the second sword arm slid out, the Supreme Whitesword that was almost defeated finally picked up his speed with Lin Huang. It was much agiler now since he had his second arm. Besides blocking with both arms, it would sometimes use its sword leg to attack. The swords on his legs were different from its sword arms as they were like scimitars. They were much broader, and although they were less penetrable than his sword arms, the effect of slicing was much higher. Lin Huang had read about this in the monster encyclopedia before, and he remembered every single detail, so he was prepared. The Supreme Whitesword attempted to attack Lin Huang with his sword legs, but Lin Huang managed to avoid them. As soon as its four limbs were out, the Supreme Whitesword managed to turn the tables around, and the battle came to a tie again. "Human, I''ve underestimated you. I''ve never expected a blue flame-level that has such abilities as you. I''ve given my all now to fight you." The Supreme Whitesword had to admit that Lin Huang was a powerful opponent. "But if the battle remains stagnant, I''ll be the one winning as your Life Power will definitely be drained before mine." "I''m not sure if that''s true, but I must get your Life Fire tinder today!" Lin Huang shouted as a silver glow came from the side of his body as their swords collided. It was followed by a second and a third silver glow. Soon, 360 silver beams of light dashed towards the Supreme Whitesword like silver fish swimming around him. The Supreme Whitesword did not expect the telekinetic attack from Lin Huang. It thought that even if Lin Huang had some other ability, it would be sword skills. The telekinetic flying daggers caught it off guard. It was too late for the Supreme Whitesword to run as they were very close together. It then expanded his white robe to defend himself. Lin Huang smirked as he controlled the 360 flying daggers towards the Supreme Whitesword''s face. Although the white robe shielded him, its face was still showing. The Supreme Whitesword was shocked when it saw the flying daggers that were going to pierce through its face. Suddenly, the scars on its face cracked and its face was all bloody now. After its face ''exploded'', swords flew out of his scars, colliding with Lin Huang''s telekinetic flying daggers which prevented them from getting to it. Lin Huang knew that was the Supreme Whitesword''s ultimate move. He had noticed the scars on the Supreme Whitesword''s face, and he had read from the monster encyclopedia that the scars came from the absorbing of humans'' sword cultivation. Those who came to hunt for the Supreme Whitesword would have their sword cultivation absorbed after being killed. The cultivation would be transformed into scars whereby swords were kept beneath his face. The scars were not only the Supreme Whitesword''s pride but also a survival technique. The Supreme Whitesword would not release the attack as it was just a one-time attack and the scars would disappear once released. It would also mean less pride for the Supreme Whitesword as it had one scar less now. Although the Supreme Whitesword''s face was all bloody now, there would not be any scars left on his face when the wounds recovered. The Supreme Whitesword backed off immediately after managing to block Lin Huang''s flying daggers. In normal circumstances, standing closer to a psychic would be an advantage as a psychic was skilled in long-distance attacks. However, standing close to Lin Huang would mean that Lin Huang''s sword would attack the Supreme Whitesword and it would not be able to defend itself from Lin Huang''s telekinetic flying daggers. As he pulled away, all the Supreme Whitesword had to worry about was the flying daggers, but not Lin Huang''s sword. Lin Huang knew what the Supreme Whitesword was thinking. He grinned sarcastically while surrounding the Supreme Whitesword with his 360 flying daggers without going after it. The 360 flying daggers were meant to prevent the Supreme Whitesword from running away. Meanwhile, Lin Huang held his sword Ink in his hand and mumbled Flowing Fire Sword to himself softly. The blue Life Power on his sword turned into flames and burned brightly. The Supreme Whitesword soon sensed that something was not right and it looked at Lin Huang''s direction. It was shocked to see the flames on Lin Huang''s sword and felt an impending threat of death from it. It was the first time it wanted to attempt to repeat its unique skill, but it was too late as the telekinesis flying daggers completely surrounded it. "This is called Flowing Fire Sword. It''s the most powerful sword skill that I have now. I respect you. Therefore I''m giving you my best so that you can die with pride. Also, don''t worry about your tinder as I won''t bring disgrace to it." Lin Huang appeared less than a meter before the Supreme Whitesword out of nowhere and stabbed his sword between its eyes through his head. 678 Leveling-Up to Purple Flame-Level! After killing the Supreme Whitesword, Lin Huang did not obtain a complete Monster Card, but he got a card piece instead. He kept the Supreme Whitesword''s carcass and summoned Kylie. He then extracted the tinder after entering Kylie''s mini world. Since Lin Huang was a sword cultivator, the tinder matched him perfectly and it only took around an hour and a half to complete the tinder integration. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Sword Heart." Lin Huang then looked at his body and saw a white sword shadow in his first Life Wheel. The sword was pointing downwards and was floating. The shadow was only the size of his thumb and it looked weak and of the virtual world. Lin Huang then inserted sword cultivation into it and it started to solidify. At first, he was just inserting level-1 Sword Dao, making the white sword shadow solidify from its thumb-size to a meter long. It looked like a short sword that was carved from ice. As soon as it was formed, the Sword Heart started to rejected the level-1 Sword Dao insertion. Lin Huang then inserted level-2 Sword Dao. The short sword then turned green and continued growing. It peaked at ten meters long and became emerald green. The Sword Heart looked like a gigantic jade that was inherited from someone''s grandmother. Soon, Lin Huang then started inserted level-3 Sword Dao. The Sword Heart then turned blue and eventually, it became a blue iceberg that was hundreds of meters long. Later on, Lin Huang inserted level-4 Sword Dao. The blue Sword Heart then turned purple and stopped growing when it was 1,000 meters long. It now looked like a mountain that was made of purple crystal floating in the Life Wheel. Just when Lin Huang was ready to come back to reality, purple light shot out of the Sword Heart. The glow filled the entire Life Wheel and spread across the second, the third, all the way until the tenth Life Wheel. Each and every corner of Lin Huang''s body was covered in the purple glow. Before the purple glow faded, all of the sword skill cards that Lin Huang had flown out accordingly as they entered the purple sword mountain in bluish-purple glows. Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat when he saw that. He took a look at his exclusive card immediately. Fortunately, all of his Skill Cards were still there. Lin Huang had learned more than 1,000 of sword skills and all of them, including Stardome, had been absorbed into the sword mountain. Soon, various swords appeared on top of the mountain. There were more than 1,000 of them. Lin Huang then realized that the swords were not real; they were the projection of his sword skills. As soon as the swords were formed on top of the sword mountain, the One Page Sword Scripture that was deep in his body just like Xiao Hei appeared on top of the sword mountain. The One Page Sword Scripture that was only the size of a palm started to grow on top of the sword mountain and soon it covered the entire peak. Just when Lin Huang was trying to figure out what was happening, a golden glow shot out of the One Page Sword Scripture and engulfed the entire sword mountain. The purple crystal sword mountain started to shake vigorously and crack under the golden glow. Lin Huang was shocked at first, but an epiphany came to his mind. It felt like a layer of film had been broken through whereby everything became clear in his head. The 1,000 sword skills were like 1,000 split screens arranged in front of him and every one of them was playing the scene of him practicing the respective sword skills. However, it was not messy to him at all. On the contrary, he was seeing each of them clearly Soon, the sword mountain started to break and collapse. Lin Huang did not notice the change in the sword mountain as he was focusing on the 1,000 screens in front of him. The mountain peak revealed its silver inner layer as it cracked. Following the growth, more and more purple crystals were falling. The purple crystals disappeared as they fell from the sword mountain and the silver inside was revealing more and more. It looked like silver patterns at first, but it became completely silver as the purple crystals were completely shed. It only stopped growing when it was 1,500 meters tall. Just when Lin Huang was done watching the last screen, he noticed that the sword mountain was now completely silver. He was now on level-5 of Sword Dao, which was called the Void Breaker. He knew that he had been at the peak of level-4 and would have a breakthrough anytime, but he did not expect it to come so soon. As soon as the One Page Sword Scripture completed its transformation, it shrunk to its original palm-size and went back to where it had been like nothing had happened. "Thanks!" The One Page Sword Scripture shouted at Lin Huang before leaving and did not bother if he would hear it or not. Coming back to reality, Lin Huang took a proper look at his body. His physical body and spirit had been strengthened. The fourth Life Fire in his ten Life Wheels appeared. The four Life Fires had changed from blue to purple. Even his Life Power was now purple. He was officially a purple flame-level now. All of his summoning monsters'' combat level had also increased from immortal-level rank-2 to immortal-level rank-3 automatically. When Lin Huang came back to reality, he realized that it was already the next morning. It had taken him almost a day to complete the transformation and he did not know that time had passed. It was past 8 a.m. when he left Kylie''s mini world and came back to the unknown island. The sun was just rising. Instead of leaving the deserted island, Lin Huang summoned Bai, Tyrant, and the rest to start a killing spree on the island. On the third morning, a day of recharging his Life Power fueled the fourth Life Fire in his body to burn at 50 meters. He had also completed ten cross-ranking kills. By using the Double Reward Cards, he had obtained 600 card rewards. The trip had finally came to an end. Lin Huang summoned his dimensional portal after recalling all of his monsters. 679 News from Chan Dou After selling all the monster carcasses at the Sweep City black market, Lin Huang made some money and got back to Victoria City next to the Peaceful Ocean via his dimensional portal. He wanted to change his environment as he had been staying in Sweep City for more than a month. Victoria City that had beaches around seemed to be an excellent choice. As he settled down in Victoria City, Lin Huang started to dwell on his training again and stayed in his hotel room all day. He was stuck practicing telekinesis earlier as he was restricted by his combat level and spiritual strength whereby he failed to divide more telekinetic threads. Since he had leveled up, he started practicing Seamless again. After practicing for a day, he managed to increase the number of telekinetic threads from 8,000 to 9,000, but he came to a plateau again. He then started practicing Sword Dao the next day. His speed was obviously slower this time. Although he had reached Void Breaker, which was the level-5 of Sword Dao, he was still slow at learning Oblivion. When he had been practicing Illumination earlier, he would get up to 1,000 card pieces, and three practices would earn him a complete Skill Card. Including the time he spent looking at the video tutorials, it only took him 20 minutes to get a complete Skill Card. However, Lin Huang could only master Oblivion after watching the tutorials for two to three hours and would only get 20 to 30 card pieces. Sometimes, he would just get slightly more than ten card pieces. The sword skill required tens of thousands of card pieces to make a complete card, and the most were 15,000 card pieces to form a card. Lin Huang had to spend the entire day and sometimes two days to get a complete Skill Card after practicing the skill hundreds of times. "This is too slow. There are more than 700 sword skills. Even if I learn one a day, I''ll take two years to learn all of them." After practicing for a few days, Lin Huang thought this method would not work. Since he did not have any better solution, he proceeded to practice anyway. The slow sword skill training meant the leveling up of his Sword Dao had slowed down as well. Lin Huang had been training for the past week at that dull, boring speed. One night, Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring started vibrating when he was training after 10 p.m. He picked up the call immediately when he realized that it was Chan Dou. "Wow, it''s been a month since you last logged into the Genius Union!" Chan Dao smiled at Lin Huang as soon as the video call was connected. "I think it''s just been a month." Lin Huang looked at the date and realized that it was already 29th June. "It''s the last day of June tomorrow. Will you be climbing the tree again?" Chan Dou asked. "Forget about it. Even if I manage to climb a couple more checkpoints, I won''t be able to get to the 63rd one, so it''s meaningless. The monthly reward is nothing interesting anyway." Lin Huang shook his head. He was not interested in the Stairway Tree''s monthly reward. "It''s okay if you don''t log into the Genius Union, but your account will be temporarily suspended if you don''t log in for three months and the application to release the suspension is troublesome. You''ll be suspended permanently if you don''t log in for six months and you''ll need the organization director to submit the application for you. If you don''t log in for a year, you''ll be blacklisted by the Emperor''s Heart," Chan Dou reminded him. "I know. They do this so that they won''t waste resources on someone who''s dead. The Emperor''s Heart will treat someone as missing if one doesn''t log in for more than three months." Lin Huang confirmed that he had heard of the condition from Yao Lan before. "That''s right, so please log in before you reach three months." "Oh yeah, is there any update on the bizarre seed that you asked me about earlier?" "I''ve been inserting Life Power into it throughout the 20 days, but nothing has happened. There''s no way for me to activate it." Lin Huang did not hide the truth. He had seen the comments that Chan Dou posted to protect him and knew that he was a trustworthy friend. "Perhaps your Life Power level is too low," Chan Dou concluded after giving it some thought. "Then, I shall put it aside and try again when I get to immortal-level." "Why not try inserting something else such as spirit, telekinesis, or Dao? I heard it doesn''t have to be Life Power. You can insert some other energy," Chan Dou suggested. "Another type of energy" Lin Huang thought of Sword Dao. Would something beneficial happen to his cultivation if he were to insert Sword Dao? "I''ll try that later!" Lin Huang responded. "Is there anything that you''re looking for me for apart from reminding me to log into the Genius Union?" "Yes, but that depends if you have the time or not." Chan Dou nodded and smiled. "I''m mainly training nowadays as my combat level is too low. I''d like to break through to immortal-level as soon as possible. I''m not exactly busy, so let me know what, and I''ll try to spare some time." "Someone discovered new ruins not far away from Division 3 today. The Union Government will launch the ruins officially within these few days. I heard that the ruins are only opened to holy fire-levels and immortal-levels whereby imperial-levels are prohibited from entering. The Division 3 Union Government has announced that Divisions 1 and two aren''t allowed to be involved in this. It''s only opened to the people in Division 3. I plan to apply for 30 seats for the Heaven Alliance, and I''ll include you if you''re interested." "Only 30?" Lin Huang thought that the quota was rather low. "All of the organizations in Divisions 1 and 2 get 30 seats each. It''s set by the Division 3 Union Government." Chan Dou''s smile held an element of teasing. "But that''s enough for the Heaven Alliance as we don''t have many members in Division 3 anyway. Including you, there are only 23 of us. I''m sending seven more just to fill the seats." "Didn''t they say that Divisions 1 and two aren''t allowed to interfere?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. "That''s what they said to prevent the main members of the Genius Union from going. If any of us go, the other immortal-levels in Division 3 won''t stand a chance at all. They thought if the names that are submitted are unheard of, the applicants aren''t powerful. That''s why a full name list has to be included in the application. There might even be demigods there; they don''t want to let just anybody in." Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat when he heard there might be demigods. An imperial-level would definitely see through his disguise, let alone a demigod. However, he was slightly relieved when he recalled that he still had four Disguise Cards with him to last him for four days. "Besides me, who else is going?" Lin Huang asked. "I wanted to bring all of us from Division 3 there since everything we get in the ruins will belong to us individually. Besides all of you, I''ll get some of them from the headquarters. They''ll send people who are immortal-level rank-7 and rank-8. There''s only one immortal-level rank-9 there. There''s two immortal-level rank-9s in Division 3. Three of them should be enough. I''m afraid the submission might fail if we have more," Chan Dou explained. "How about the other organizations?" Lin Huang asked. "The Hong Alliance and the Tang Alliance are almost the same as us, but I''m not sure about the local organizations in Division 3. What I''m sure is that many of the immortal-level rank-9 seniors in Division 3 will be there, including those who have retired as well as imperial-levels from the Genius Union who have yet to level up. Also, the Overlord Alliance in Division 3 isn''t bad too. They are ranked No. 12 in the Genius Union. They have three immortal-level rank-9 supreme geniuses with them. I''m not sure about other organizations, but the competition is intense." "Alright then, count me in." Lin Huang went silent for a moment before nodding and agreeing to join. "Sure, I''ll let you know the details after the application has been approved. Prepare yourself within these few days." Chan Dou hung up the call after reminding him as he proceeded to inform the rest. "Ruins in a chaotic place" Lin Huang was excited as he thought about it. He had never left the safe zone. The ruins would be the first chaotic land out of the safe zone that he would go to. 680 The Bizarre Seed Has Hatched After hearing the news from Chan Dou, Lin Huang noticed it had become a hot topic on the black market and the Genius Union forums. Many of the Division 1 and Division 2 Genius Union members were complaining about the Division 3''s Union Government. They were ranting about the Union Government''s selfishness as the rest did not have any say about the ruins that were discovered. Meanwhile, the people in Division 3 defended that they had the right to do that as the ruins had appeared near their area and the other divisions had no right to interfere. They were being generous for opening themselves up to the other divisions instead of shutting them away completely while some of the people from Division 3 insisted that the ruins should not allow any other member from the other divisions in at all. As the three divisions wee throwing bombs at each other, the safe zones were just enjoying the show. The request orders in the black market were booming and people were asking about various items on the forums. They were getting ready for their trip to the ruins. Lin Huang thought about it and realized that he had everything he needed. He had a couple of Transportation Cards and Escape Cards for survival, Transformation Cards and Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards to level up his combat level, plus Trap Cards, Cloning Cards and Crippling Cards to help in the battles. Moreover, he had a bunch of immortal-level rank-3 monsters as well as God Crashers with him. If he were to give his all, even if he was not the top in the ruins list, he would be one of the most powerful survivors. Lin Huang proceeded to train as usual after breakfast and scrolled through the forum. He had mastered another Oblivion sword skill by the time it was past 11 p.m. He took a shower and returned to his bedroom, exhausted. As usual, he took out the bizarre seed from his pocket and inserted Life Power into it. Suddenly, he recalled what Chan Dou said. "Maybe I should try inserting Sword Dao instead. If that doesn''t work, I''ll try inserting Telekinesis a couple of days later." Since nothing happened to the seed after inserting Life Power for a month, Lin Huang thought that either something was wrong with the seed or his Life Power. He then decided to listen to Chan Dou''s suggestion by inserting another energy. Sword Dao was not exactly an energy. It was more like an Elemental Enlightenment that was a special energy. However, that did not stop Lin Huang from trying to insert his Sword Dao into the bizarre seed. As he held the seed in his palm, he inserted level-1 Sword Dao into it. Seeing that the seed had no reaction, he then proceeded to insert Sword Dao. An hour later, the bizarre seed stopped absorbing his Sword Dao. Just as Lin Huang noticed it, he felt a pinch on his palm. He opened his hand and realized that the black seed had roots growing out of it which had pierced into his palm. Soon, he felt level-2 Sword Dao being released from his body into the black seed. That went on for more than two hours before the black seed started absorbing level-3 Sword Dao. After more than four hours had passed, the black seed started absorbing level-4 Sword Dao when the sun was rising. This time, it took more than eight hours before the black seed started absorbing level-5 Sword Dao. It lasted for more than 16 hours until the black seed seemed to be full by the time it was past 6 a.m. on the third morning. As soon as it was done, it then disappeared into Lin Huang''s palm and entered his first Life Wheel with a black glow. Lin Huang observed closely and noticed that it had entered the silver sword mountain. Lin Huang knew that the Sword Dao had completely activated the bizarre seed. It went into the sword mountain to start its own cultivation, so he had no idea what the seed would be in the future. As soon as the seed went into his body, he felt an overwhelming exhaustion. He would usually be alright if he did not eat, sleep, and rest for two days, but the insertion of the Sword Dao drained his strength. He then took a drink from the refrigerator and had a bowl of instant noodles before falling asleep on his bed. He slept all the way until sunset when he was woken up by the vibration of his Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was Chan Dou who was calling. Lin Huang picked up the call immediately. "You''re sleeping? It should be 6 p.m. over there. Why are you" Chan Dou saw that Lin Huang was lying on his bed when the video call was connected. He did not understand it at first, but soon he seemed to have realized something. "Ahh, you must have a chick with you." "Just say what you want to say." Lin Huang did not bother to explain. "I''m sorry to interrupt you and your chick. I''ll be quick so that you guys can proceed to do what you were doing." Chan Dou was indulging in his misunderstanding. Before Lin Huang could say anything, Chan Dou went ahead. "The list that I submitted has been approved. I think all of the lists that were submitted by other organizations will be finalized within a day or two. If everything goes well, the Division 3 Union Government will gather all of you to head over to the ruins within three to five days. "Many members from the underground organizations including Dynasty, the Purple Crow, the Heretics and the Saints are coming too. I never thought that the underground organizations would be interested in this. They''re ruthless. I can get other people to go if you would like to pull out." "No need for that. I''ll be there on time." Lin Huang did not plan to retreat at all since it would not be his first time interacting with the underground organization. "Since you''ve decided to go, prepare yourself these few days and get more items that can keep you alive. There will be Union Government staff contacting you before your departure," Chan Dou reminded before letting out a smirk. "Alright, continue what you were doing with the chick. I shan''t interrupt anymore." Lin Huang only realized that the sky was getting dark after hanging up. He got out of bed and washed his face. He started training again after ordering himself take-away food. Just when he was getting absorbed in his training, he noticed something different with his body. He looked inside and saw a three to four-year-old kid under the silver sword mountain in his first Life Wheel. "What''s that?" Lin Huang was surprised to see a living thing in his Life Wheel. He became afraid as he had no idea how the kid had entered his body. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Sword Soul!" Xiao Hei''s voice was heard. "You mean this kid is a Sword Soul?" Lin Huang thought it was unbelievable. "Why can''t I remember getting this?" Lin Huang had heard about the Sword Soul before. However, it was just a myth. It was said that in the ancient epoch, there were some powerful Sword Dao cultivators who could form Sword Souls in their bodies. However, nobody ever knew how and which level of Sword Dao a person would need to form a Sword Soul as nobody had ever done it ever since the new epoch. Lin Huang was not even sure what could the Sword Dao do, so he was not even sure if such a thing really existed. "You didn''t cultivate it. It hatched from your bizarre seed," Xiao Hei said. "Why didn''t anyone ever tell me that the Sword Soul is in human form?" Lin Huang was going out of his mind. "I don''t think this kid could be summoned to fight. What does it do then?" "You''ll need to explore that on your own." Since Xiao Hei was not being helpful, Lin Huang decided to go back to reality. Before he did, the little thing noticed him and appeared at his feet while it smiled and waved at him. "Carry me!" Lin Huang was shocked, but he picked it up anyway. After some interaction, he realized that the little thing did not know many words, so it could only make simple conversation. Fortunately, the little thing was obedient and Lin Huang went back to reality after playing with it. As soon as he returned, the first thing he did was to look for ''Sword Soul'' on the Heart Network. There was a lot of information about it on the network, but none of them was useful. It was the same on the black market forum and the Genius Union whereby there was nothing useful when Lin Huang looked up the same keyword. Helpless, he decided to listen to Xiao Hei''s suggestion to explore on his own since he would not be busy for the next couple of days. 681 Sword Souls First Ability Despite possessing the Sword Soul, Lin Huang did not sense any improvement in his ability. In the next two days, he did not obtain more card pieces after training his sword skills. However, every day after his training, he would immerse his body in his consciousness, communicating with the Sword Soul. His primary goal was to teach the Sword Soul to talk and to play with it. After finished practicing sword his skill, again, Lin Huang immersed his body in his consciousness before he slept. He saw that the Sword Soul was climbing the sword mountain. It was a game invented by the Sword Soul itself. It had to climb the sword mountain and do a freefall jump. Lin Huang was initially worried that it would get injured if it indulged in such play. In fact, it would not. Not only was it born to fly, but its body could also penetrate through the ground between the Life Wheels and could even penetrate right through the sword mountain. Sometimes, Lin Huang would compete climbing with it. Seeing that the Sword Soul was halfway up the hill, he joined it. Realizing that Lin Huang was climbing up the hill and was getting nearer to it, Sword Soul immediately sped up. Both of them soon got to the top of the mountain one after another. The Sword Soul was slightly ahead of Lin Huang and won the climbing competition. It could not stop laughing. "It''s such an innocent kid." Seeing the Sword Soul achieve happiness so easily, Lin Huang sighed emotionally. A thought suddenly flashed through his mind C he should teach the Sword Soul something new today. He had been teaching it to speak in the past two days. Despite trying hard to learn, it was not satisfied. After thinking about it carefully, Lin Huang decided to teach it a set of sword skills. Since it was born because of the sword, it might like it. "Xiao Dao, I''m going to teach you something new today." Xiao Dao was the new name that Lin Huang had christened it. Though ordinary, the Sword Soul was quite happy with the name. "I''m going to teach you a set of sword skills today. I''ll show it to you once, and you''ll follow after me when I do it the second time." After finishing his words, an inky combat sword appeared in his hand and he started demonstrating the sword skill. It was the simplified version of the Great Sword Scripture. Despite the fact that it was not considered tough, it was not easy either. Even the students from the Martial Hunter College would need at least half a month to 20 days to master it. Lin Huang practiced the sword at a speed that was three times slower. He noticed that while he was practicing the sword skill, Xiao Dao fixed its gaze on his movement. He then knew that he was interested in this set of sword skills. After practicing it for the first time, Xiao Dao shook its head and said, "Slow." "Do you need me to do it slower?" Lin Huang was stunned as he guessed that was what Xiao Dao was trying to say. "Or do you mean that I''ve been doing it too slow and you want me to speed it up?" "Speed up!" Xiao Dao immediately nodded. "Alright, I''ll do it the second time." Lin Huang performed the sword skill at a reasonable speed again. After practicing it, he walked towards Xiao Dao and asked, "Do you know how to do it?" Xiao Dao nodded. It extended its hand into the air and soon, a sword appeared. It looked exactly the same as Lin Huang''s inky sword. Even the details were exactly the same, and the only difference was it had been reduced to a size that was much smaller. As it grabbed its small sword, Xiao Dao did not wait for Lin Huang to demonstrate again. It immediately performed the sword skill in front of him. Lin Huang was stunned at what he just saw. Xiao Dao had only watched him practicing the sword skill twice. It managed to learn the sword skill despite being its first time practicing the skill. Not only could it master all the movements, but it had also wholly mastered the essence of the sword skill as well. "It doesn''t blindly follow what I did. Instead, it grasps the essence of the sword skill itself through my movements." After watching Xiao Dao practice the sword skill, Lin Huang felt that he had a better understanding of the sword skill compared to the past. Xiao Dao had learned the sword skill in an instant, and Lin Huang wanted to increase the difficulty of the skill. He showed Xiao Dao the first part of the Great Sword Scripture. After showing Xiao Dao the skill once, it picked up the sword skill easily once more. Lin Huang then practiced the complete version of the Great Sword Scripture. Despite it being the Illumination sword skill, Xiao Dao could still master it with ease. Lin Huang continued increasing the difficulty and practiced the Oblivion sword skill. As usual, Xiao Dao mastered the skill after watching it once. Lin Huang then thought to himself and wondered if it was possible that Xiao Dao actually knew all the sword skills that he had learned. Therefore, it could quickly master it after he demonstrated the sword skill once. Therefore, Lin Huang practiced the set of sword skills that he just learned that day. It was the Oblivion sword skill which Skill Card had yet to be formed. After showing it once, there was a serious expression on Xiao Dao''s face. It said to Lin Huang, "It isn''t right." It then revised Lin Huang''s sword skill and performed it. Lin Huang was dumbstruck as it was a skill that he had not finished learning. However, Xiao Dao had managed to master the sword skill through the movements that he did once. "Xiao Dao, I haven''t finished learning this skill. Please teach me." Lin Huang then looked at Xiao Dao in awe. He was delighted as he had finally discovered Xiao Dao''s ability. "Sure!" Xiao Dao answered happily. It wished that Lin Huang could have more time for it every day. Lin Huang did not expect the Sword Soul to have the ability to master sword skills in an instant. Regardless of how well the sword skill was shown in the tutorial, it would not be as effective as having somebody teach him in person. The Sword Soul could definitely be his tutor and assist him with his sword training. Lin Huang did not sleep as he spent the whole night practicing sword skill in the world inside his body. As guided by the Sword Soul, he managed to learn 1.5 sets of the sword skill in one night, which was only about nine hours. His efficiency was much higher than before. As the barrier of communication had been reduced, the efficiency of Lin Huang''s sword skill training would improve. The next morning, after discovering the Sword Soul''s incredible ability, Lin Huang was very excited, and he did not feel like sleeping at all. He knew very well that it would not be the Sword Soul''s only ability. There must be some abilities that he had not discovered yet. However, its current ability was already of great assistance to him. After having his breakfast, Lin Huang was about to continue practicing sword skills in the world inside his body when his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated abruptly. Lin Huang tapped opened the communication page and received a message. It was a message from an anonymous number. However, it was sent by the Union Government in Division 3. Lin Huang immediately opened the message. "Hello, Mr. Lin Xie. You''ve been selected by the Heaven Alliance as one of the explorers to go into the new ruins. Please prepare yourself before departing. On the 7th of July, please gather at the Magical Sky Plaza in Division 3 No. 3A1 foothold with the rest of the explorers at 9 a.m. sharp. If you don''t come on time, you''ll be considered as having given up as an explorer. Please take note of this." "Is it the day after tomorrow?" Lin Huang did not realize that time had passed so quickly. He did not feel nervous at all. Instead, he laughed to himself and said, "It seems like I have to go to bed early tomorrow night." 682 The Floating Land? Anyone intended to enter the No. A1 to the No. A10 footholds in Division 3 had to be inspected. Lin Huang had attached the Union Government''s invitation letter when he purchased the ticket. With the invitation letter, the purchase inspection was completed in less than ten seconds, and the pre-booking was completed. Lin Huang arrived at the No. 3A1 foothold in Magical Sky City a day before. He checked into a hotel next to the Magical Sky Plaza. After checking in, his Emperor''s Heart Ring received two messages. The first notification was from an anonymous number. There was only one sentence in the message: "The Heaven Alliance members who are going to the ruins, please join the chat group so that it''ll be more convenient for us to communicate with each other." The second message was a chat group invitation link from the unknown number. Lin Huang then clicked on the link. Since the group chat could be muted, it would not affect him much. Upon joining the group chat, there were more than ten people there, and the number of people was increasing. Some of them took the initiative to greet him. Since they had just joined the group, they were excited. Lin Huang and a minority of them chose to keep quiet. In just a short while, there were already 30 of them. Obviously, all those who were going to the ruins had been added to the group chat. At that moment, the admin of the group chat was online. He mentioned every one of them in the message. "Welcome to the group chat. I''m Shen Tao, from the Heaven Alliance headquarters in Division 1. The purpose of gathering everyone here is to talk about our plan for tomorrow. Since many of them are going to the ruins and only 30 members of the Heaven Alliance are allowed to go, the number of people is incomparable to that of the native organization in Division 3. Therefore, it''ll be best for you guys to work together. At 8.30 a.m, I''ll wait for all of you at an outdoor caf situated in the east of the Magical Sky Plaza. I hope that every one of you can attend." Shen Tao sent a photo of himself after his text. As Lin Huang finished reading the message, he muted the group chat. Although he had many secrets to hide, he had no comment on meeting up with the rest. Before he thoroughly familiarized himself with the ruins, it would be more convenient to work with the rest of them. He might be able to gleam unknown information from the others. Nevertheless, after entering the ruins, he could leave the team if there was the need to do so. The next morning, Lin Huang took out a Disguise Card. As he crushed the card and activated it, he set his look to the current Lin Xie''s look. The main reason for using a Disguise Card was to avoid the demigod from finding out that he was wearing a disguise. If that happened, he would not be allowed to enter the ruins. After putting on a disguise, Lin Huang then left the hotel room and headed towards the caf that Shen Tao had shared with them yesterday. His hotel was situated in the northeast of the Magical Sky Plaza. The straight line distance between them was less than a kilometer. When he arrived at the caf, it was not even 8 a.m. yet. He ordered a set of breakfast and a cup of coffee, and leisurely enjoyed his breakfast under the umbrella. After having his breakfast, Shen Tao appeared not far away from him. He was tall at more than 1.9 meters tall. He was not muscular but was rather skinny. He was wearing a black shirt and a pair of grey pants. In a pair of sunglasses, he looked like he was dressed somewhat formally. However, he did not seem serious. Lin Huang was hesitating if he should greet him first since the both of them were not close to each other. Right at this moment, Shen Tao saw him and walked towards him. "Are you Lin Xie?" As he approached Lin Huang, Shen Tao stopped, taking off his sunglasses. Lin Xie was the most famous person in the Genius Union previously. He was still ranked first on the leaderboard, and his photo had been posted on the leaderboard. Of course, Shen Tao could recognize him. "Nice to meet you." Lin Huang nodded with a smile. After shaking hands, Shen Tao sat in front of Lin Huang. He then ordered a cup of coffee and started chatting with Lin Huang. "Lin Xie, you haven''t logged into the Genius Union for more than a month." "Yes." "Are you busy?" "Yes, I''m busy with my training." Shen Tao then noticed that Lin Huang had already leveled up to purple flame-level. "Your abilities are indeed restricted by your combat strength. I hope that you can achieve immortal-level really soon and appear on the 63rd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree." Even though Shen Tao was an immortal-level rank-9, he was modest, and Lin Huang felt that it was strange. Everybody in the Genius Union was a genius. Aside from some of them who were envious of the supreme geniuses, most of them did not like each other. However, many of them had to agree that Lin Xie was pretty outstanding as he had managed to climb to the 55th checkpoint at the Stairway Tree as a blue flame-level. The Stairway Tree evaluated their overall abilities instead of just their combat strength. All of them knew very well that when they had still been a blue flame-level, even if they owned a demigod relic that had no restriction on the number of usages, they would not have been able to get to the 55th checkpoint. However, Lin Xie had achieved it! This proved that Lin Xie was stronger than the rest. Although Lin Huang''s combat level was low, Shen Tao was pleased with him because he knew that if Lin Huang did not die, his ability would definitely surpass him and might be on par with the five kings. After chatting for a while, the rest of the members arrived one after another. Since Shen Tao had posted his photo in the group, the people could recognize him at first glance. They then saw Lin Huang who was sitting in front of him. It seemed like most of the Genius Union members could recognize Lin Xie, let alone the people in the Heaven Alliance. They immediately sat down and surrounded the both of them. Most of their topics revolved around Lin Xie and they rarely talked about matters related to the ruins. Lin Huang attempted to change the topic several times and tried to talk about the ruins. "About the ruins, do you guys have any information about it?" "I''m unsure of this since I just came from Division 1 yesterday." Shen Tao shook his head. "Do the natives in Division 3 know anything about it?" "I''ve got some information from them." An immortal-level rank-9 native girl from Division 3 shared, "It''s said that the ruins are 400,000 kilometers away from Division 3. It''s located in the sky above the Peaceful Ocean. It''s a land lingering in mid-air. The area of the land is a few times larger than the Magical Sky City." Although it was just a brief description, Lin Huang and the rest were stunned. 400,000 kilometers was the distance between the Earth and the Moon. What made Lin Huang feel incredulous was the statement about the land existing in mid-air. The area of the Magical Sky City was more than 32 million square kilometers, equivalent to the area of Africa. However, the floating land was a few times larger than the Magical Sky City. Could it be hundreds of millions of square kilometers large?! The first thought that flashed through his mind was that it must be false information. The topic had attracted their attention, and they started buzzing about it. They no longer had their focus on Lin Huang. About 8.50 a.m, 30 of the members had arrived. The Union Government that was in military uniform had almost completed the decoration in the plaza, and various organizations started entering. The attire of the Genius Union members was rather casual. However, the people from the formal organizations were in uniform, including those from the Union Government. They were divided into two teams, and there were 300 of them. Next, the people from the various underworld organizations entered. Lin Huang saw that there were people with a cross on their face, the Saint members in white robes, the Purple Crow members in black coats, the Dynasty members in golden armor, and the heretics that were wearing colorful attire with three crosses tattooed on their neck Aside from the Union Government, most of them were from the Hunter Association, the Adventurer Paradise, and Dynasty. There were 200 of them in total. The Saint, the Purple Crow, the heretics, and the rest of the organizations had 100 members respectively. The rest of them were native organizations in Division 3. Aside from the Overlord Alliance that was given 50 quotas, the rest of them were the same as the organizations in Divisions 1 and two whereby only 30 quotas were assigned to them. "It seems like we can only earn a bit from that." Shen Tao laughed, shaking his head. "It depends on how big the ruins are." Lin Huang was positive. "Even if we''re lucky enough to hunt some relics, the rest of the organizations will definitely grab the relics from us," a girl said softly. "Grab it from us? Let''s see if they''re capable of doing so." Lin Huang had no fear at all. The people from the Heaven Alliance caught a glimpse of him. Facing so many of them who were stronger than him, Lin Huang still had the courage to say so. No wonder he could do things that others could not. Aside from the Heaven Alliance, the members from the other organizations were chatting about him as well. Many of them in the Genius Union could recognize Lin Xie, and they shifted their focus to the people from the Heaven Alliance. At 9 a.m. sharp, a demigod with white hair and a mustache from the Union Government floated in mid-air. As he waved his hand, he muted all the noises in the plaza and started speaking, "Please keep quiet. I''ll talk about the condition of the ruins." As the elder demigod talked, everybody remained quiet and shifted their attention to him. "The ruins were discovered during our exploration. The ruins are located on the east coast of the Peaceful Ocean. It''s about 400,000 kilometers away from the Division 3 safe zone. The ruins are a land floating in mid-air above the Peaceful Ocean. The area of the land is expected to exceed 100 million square kilometers." Lin Huang was bewildered as he listened to the information from the demigod. He never expected it to be true. "Since the ruins only allow holy fire-levels and immortal-levels to enter, we''ve invited people from different organizations to join the exploration. Everything that you obtain in the ruins belongs to you. The Division 3 Union Government will not impose any charges on the items. Therefore, don''t worry" After giving a brief introduction regarding the rules, the elder demigod left, and a middle-aged imperial-level in a military uniform took over. He started making arrangements for the trip to the ruins. "Please remain in your original position according to the organizations. The staff will activate the Dimensional Portal later. Since the Peaceful Ocean is a perilous place, the Dimensional Portal will only send you to an island near the ruins. Please stay there when you reach, and we''ll make the arrangements to send you to the actual destination by the Emperor''s Ship." 683 The True Enemy Lin Huang followed the Heaven Alliance''s team and passed through the Dimensional Portal. They arrived on an island above the Peaceful Ocean, waiting patiently for the rest to come. The monsters on the island must have been cleared by the Union Government and the Hunter Association earlier. The crowd had been standing over there for about ten minutes, but not a single monster had appeared. When it was about 9.30 a.m, all of them had arrived. The elder demigod then summoned the Emperor''s Ship. The Emperor''s Ship was apparently much more expensive than the commercial Emperor''s Ship that Lin Huang had boarded at the Victoria Harbour. He knew it just by looking at its appearance alone. A famous designer intricately decorated the patterns on the surface of the ship. However, on the surface of the commercial Emperor''s Ship, only the logo of the organization was printed on it. The body of the ship was silver in color. The size of the ship was almost similar to the one for commercial use. However, its weapons had been enhanced, and the number of God Crashers was twice of those on the previous ship. Perhaps the manufacturing cost of the ship would be double or more of that of the former spaceship. If it were to be sold at an auction, its starting bid would perhaps be equivalent to 2.5 demigod relics. Seeing the Emperor''s Ship, not only Lin Huang but the rest of them were looking at it with envy. After summoning the ship, the elder demigod felt proud of himself as he looked at everyone''s expression. He grinned but soon, he maintained a neutral expression and commanded, "Quickly get up onto the ship!" "Please keep in order." The imperial-level man in the military uniform from the Union Government appeared to keep everyone in line. About 1,000 of them went on board, and the people sized each other up. Lin Huang noticed that many of its components were much better than that of the commercial Emperor''s Ship. They were of a different standard. The difference was like that between low-cost cars and luxury cars. The former could only be used for transportation whereas the latter was a luxury for people could show off their wealth. After spending more than ten minutes, the people got into the ship one after another. The elder demigod then said, "We''re currently more than 6,000 kilometers away from the ruins. At the cruising speed of my ship, we''ll reach there in two hours. You''re allowed to do anything you like in these two hours, but please don''t create trouble. The first floor of the ship is open to the public. I''ve prepared some food and drinks for all of you. Since we''re going to the ruins right after we arrive, we only serve ordinary sweet beverages which are non-alcoholic. Please bring along your trash as you leave. Otherwise, it''ll be troublesome for me when I clean up." After the instructions, the ship was activated. "You may leave now. Gather here when we''re about to get out of the ship." After Shen Tao finished his words, the Heaven Alliance members left. The members of the rest of the organizations did their own thing. Some of them stood at the side of the ship, looking out at the scenery. There were groups of people sitting on the deck of the ship, talking to each other. Also, some of the people went to the ship''s cabin to look for food. Lin Huang walked towards the cafeteria located on the first floor as well. Although he had had his breakfast, he did not mind trying some of the excellent food there. After taking a few steps forward, a few people blocked his way. The leader was a man with yellow hair that resembled the bottom end of a broom. He was dressed in a green singlet and camouflage pants. He was muscular, and he was on immortal-level rank-9. Without considering his hair, he had a height of more than two meters tall. He looked like an iron pagoda. "Hey fella, are you the Lin Xie who created a stir in the Genius Union?" Lin Huang raised his head and took a glance at him. He then fixed his gaze on the rest of them. Other than the muscular man who was an immortal-level rank-9, the rest of them were on immortal-level rank-7 or rank-8. They did not have any apparent characteristics on their bodies. Lin Huang could only confirm that they were Genius Union members. However, he was unsure of which organization they belonged to. "Why are you looking for me?" After sizing them up, Lin Huang asked without any facial expression. As the people had come up to him, he knew that it was not a good thing. Therefore, there was no need for him to be polite. "You''re just a blue flame" Right when he was about to utter those words, the man in the singlet noticed the change in Lin Huang''s combat strength and immediately said, "How can a purple flame-level be so arrogant? I" "Gu Li, the people from the Divine Alliance are shameless. How can an immortal-level rank-9 bully a newbie who''s only on purple flame-level?" Somebody interrupted the man. Unexpectedly, the person was Shen Tao. "Shen Tao, when did I bully him? I''m here to become friends with him as he''s Lin Xie who ranks first on the leaderboard. I''m interested to know if he''s different from the others." Gu Li, the man in the singlet, chuckled and said to Shen Tao, "However, I''ve seen him in person now. There''s nothing special about him though. He''s as weak as a chick. I won''t bother to bully him." "There''s only one question that I''d like to ask you. When you were a blue flame-level, which checkpoint of the Stairway Tree were you on?" Lin Huang asked without any expression. Their facial expressions changed right after they heard what Lin Huang asked. Nobody was willing to answer his question as it was a rhetorical smack in the face. Lin Huang was on the 55th checkpoint when he was a blue flame-level. He had broken the record on the Stairway Tree. Regardless of how he had managed to achieve that, it remained a fact that he had broken the record. "Let''s go and have some food over there." Seeing that the rest of them were dumbstruck, Lin Huang greeted Shen Tao and walked past Gu Li and the rest. Their faces looked gloomy, but they did not stop him. Many people witnessed what had just happened. To many of the people outside the Genius Union and those who had left the Genius Union, they had no idea who Lin Huang was. Seeing a purple flame-level could be intimidating to an immortal-level rank-9, so they were curious about him. "Who''s the young man in the white t-shirt?" Some of them started asking. "He''s Lin Xie, the supreme genius of the Heaven Alliance. He managed to get to the 55th checkpoint when he was a blue flame-level. He''s currently ranked first on the leaderboard," one of them from the Genius Union informed. As Gu Li from the Divine Alliance attempted to provoke him, soon, Lin Xie''s name was on the lips of everyone outside the Genius Union. Lin Huang did not know the effects brought about by the conflict. He was enjoying the delicious food at the cafeteria on the first floor of the ship. "What you said has struck Gu Li dumb. I think it''s funny, recalling his facial expression as if he was suffering from constipation." Shen Tao laughed although soon, his face turned serious. "However, Gu Li''s ability is on par with mine. After entering the ruins, beware of him." "A barking dog doesn''t bite. His stopping me before we enter the ruins is a way to put on airs. He isn''t going to threaten me. Since he''s an immortal-level rank-9, he won''t fight me as it''s embarrassing." Lin Huang knew him well. "If he really were to fight me, he won''t create trouble for me in public. He''ll secretly kill me in the ruins so that no one will suspect him of being the murderer." "The people from the Divine Alliance aren''t dangerous, but the underworld organization is," Lin Huang frowned as he said. He could sense that the gaze of the people from the underworld organization was penetrating through his body. Their abilities were far beyond Shen Tao''s. "The people from the underworld organization have no mercy. As long as they are confident that they can do it, they''ll probably attack regardless of who the person is." 684 Entering the Floating Land for the First Time With the elder demigod there, nobody got them into trouble throughout the voyage. Although they encountered an imperial-level king sea monster, it was smacked by the elder demigod and fell into the sea. Nobody knew if it was alive or dead. Soon after, no monsters appeared to trouble them. After two hours into the voyage, when it was reaching noon, the ship started moving towards the sky. The Emperor''s Ship flew from its initial position which was 10,000 meters above sea level to 15,000 meters, 20,000 meters and finally, it was more than 30,000 meters above sea level. It penetrated through the cloud layers, and the crowd could then see the infinitely large floating land above them. The land was shrouded in a dense fog. A layer of transparent film isolated it. Not even its shadow could be seen on the surface of the sea. If one did not go up to more than 30,000 meters in the sky, nobody would ever be able to discover the ruins that were being enveloped by the dense fog. Lin Huang guessed that the person who had discovered the ruins might have almost been killed by the king sea monster, which was the reason why he or she would fly to this height. Usually, spaceships and people would fly to a height of about 10,000 meters to 12,000 meters. It was less likely for them to continue flying upwards because the higher they went, the thinner the air. It would be a huge burden to the human body. "Alright, we''re here." The voice of the elder demigod was soon heard. "After entering the ruins, please remember to save the coordinates through the dimensional relic first. If you can''t stay there any longer, you''re allowed to travel to the border of the ruins. As long as you manage to get out of the protective layer, you''ll be sent back to the safe zone immediately." The imperial-level man in the military uniform then continued, "The Union Government armed forces are going to take over the ruins a month later which will be on the 7th of August. All of you are given three days to leave. It means that you can only stay in the ruins until the 10th of August. You have to bear the consequences if you''re still here after the specified date." They had no comment on what the Union Government had just announced as it was something common in Division 3. Due to the unpredictable nature of the danger in the ruins and the Union Government being afraid of suffering great losses, they had assigned two small teams and people from other organizations to explore the ruins. After the preliminary exploration had been done and the evaluation had been carried out, a big group of people would be assigned to be stationed at the ruins. Large-scale exploitation of the ruins would then begin. Lin Huang and the rest were the first batches of people to enter. They were the vanguard. How much they could earn would solely depend on one''s ability. The Union Government would not bother about it as they were only given a month to stay there. The area of the land was tremendously significant. Even if more than 2,000 people were thrown into it, not a splash of water could be seen. After the man in the military uniform finished his words, the people then gradually floated into the sky and flew towards the land. Lin Huang and the rest of the Heaven Alliance members entered the ruins. As they penetrated the transparent protective layer, Lin Huang did not feel hindered by it. He felt like he was passing through a layer of water and the chill ran all the way through his skin. Upon entering the ruins, the people saw the world behind the protective layer and were shocked. Outside the layer, what they saw was a thick forest. As soon as they went through, a world of ice and snow appeared before them. Looking towards the land far away, the world became a vast expanse of whiteness and snow continuously fell from the sky. The people from the Union Government and the Hunter Association seemed to expect this to happen. It took them a few seconds to get their team in order and soon, they flew far away. A few of the teams from the underworld organizations left, following their own direction. The people from the rest of the organizations followed the people from the Union Government and the Hunter Association as a safety measure. Shen Tao glanced at Lin Huang and the rest and asked, "Which team are we going to follow?" "Any teams will do as long as we''re not following the Dynasty, the Saint, and the few other teams." As the rest of them did not voice out their opinions, Lin Huang answered with a smile. "Let''s follow the Union Government. Regardless of how brave the people from Dynasty are, I supposed they wouldn''t fight the army," Shen Tao decided, seeing that the rest had no comment on this. The Heaven Alliance members left, following one of the army teams. Lin Huang was at the end of the line. He secretly summoned Bloody so that it could release its invisible Leech Pods to investigate the condition of the ruins. The people flew for about 20 minutes. They did not encounter any monsters when they were on their way. However, traces of a fight that were left not long ago were discovered. Observing the traces of the battle, Lin Huang felt that something was amiss. However, he could not figure out what was wrong in such a short period of time, so he did not say anything about it. They proceeded and flew for another ten minutes. Lin Huang and the rest then saw that few of the teams had stopped at a place not far away from them, one of which was the Divine Alliance team. "What happened? Where are the people from the Union Government?" Shen Tao asked. The other teams knew that Lin Huang and the others were members of the Heaven Alliance. Listening to what Shen Tao said, the people explained, "The Union Government has cheated us. The remains of this battle have been fabricated! They actually headed towards another direction." Lin Huang then realized what was wrong with the battleground. The battleground seemed orchestrated, and it was not messy at all. As he thought of it carefully, only a battlefield that was deliberately fabricated would look like this. "The people from the Union Government must''ve explored the ruins a few days ago and discovered something. That''s why they are trying to get rid of us," Gu Li from the Divine Alliance grumbled. "Regardless of what they''ve discovered, it has nothing to do with me." Shen Tao took a glance at Gu Li. If the people from the Union Government had gone to the ruins a few days ago and discovered something, they must''ve saved the coordinates in their dimensional relic. The people from the Union Government might be thousands of kilometers away now." Shen Tao turned back and flew back to the Heaven Alliance camp. He was not going to waste his time there, so he said, "Let''s go." Listening to what Shen Tao said, a particular person obviously wanted to remind him about something. However, Gu Li stared at him, then kept quiet. Lin Huang watched what had just happened and called out, "Please wait!" "Lin Xie, what happened?" Shen Tao was startled. "Bro, can you please tell me why you guys are here? Why aren''t you guys proceeding forward?" Lin Huang slowly flew in front of the person who wanted to talk earlier. The person then looked at Gu Li helplessly. Shen Tao noticed that Gu Li seemed to want to trick them. "Just tell us what you know. If anyone attempts to get you into trouble because of this, I''ll settle it." "The detection relic picked up a group of monsters blocking our way ahead. We''ve sent two people on immortal-level rank-7 to see what''s going on. However, there''s been no news from them even after five to six minutes." After listening to what he said, Lin Huang and the rest shifted their gaze towards Gu Li. Lin Huang contacted Bloody through his mind. He asked Bloody to help to check what was happening in front of them. In just a short while, he received the information from Bloody. "The area in front of them is the territory of the Yeti Maniacs. It''d be rather far if they were to make a detour." When Lin Huang heard that, he frowned. The Yeti Maniac came from the Abyss Brink, and it was an ice elemental. It was born to be violent and insane. According to the monster guide, the monster was less than a meter tall. They preferred living in groups, and they looked like ugly snowmen. Despite the fact that their combat strength was quite low, most of them were on immortal-level rank-4 to rank-6. They liked to bug people. Since they possessed the characteristics of an elemental monster which had the undying characteristic, as long as the place had sufficient ice energy, if damaged, their bodies would be recreated endlessly. Aside from that, the monster was skilled at throwing snowballs at their enemies. The snowballs would not only threaten one''s body, but it could also freeze one''s Life Power to a certain extent as well. Even for those who were on immortal-level rank-8 or rank-9, once about 20 snowballs struck them, their Life Power would be frozen. After confirming that the Yeti Maniac''s territory was in front of them, Lin Huang predicted that two of the immortal-levels that had gone to check out the situation had become ice sculptures. 685 Frost Helminth "Because we''ve discovered that it''s the monster''s gathering point, only then did we realize that the Union Government has gotten rid of us. The Union Government must''ve cleared all the monsters if they were heading towards this direction," the member of a small organization said. "Do you know what monster it is?" Shen Tao asked. "I don''t know. We''ve sent two immortal-levels there, but they''ve not returned yet. I guess that they aren''t coming back anymore." "I know what monster it is." Lin Huang walked out of the crowd. "If I''m not mistaken, it must be the place where the Yeti Maniac gathered." "The Yeti Maniac?" It was apparent that all of them had seen the monster before in the monster guide. Their faces turned grave. It was one of the most troublesome elemental monsters. It spelled bigger havoc than the undying species. The majority of them were reluctant to bump into such a creature. "Lin Xie, do you have any evidence?" Gu Li from the Divine Alliance asked. "My vision is slightly stronger than the rest. I can see that about 3,000 kilometers away, there are two ice sculptures made by the Yeti Maniac," Lin Huang explained. "I thought you saw the Yeti Maniac. Even if you saw the ice sculptures, that doesn''t mean that it''s the Yeti Maniac that made them, does it? The sculptures might be created by the other monsters, or they might be the remnants from the past," Gu Li teased. "If they were the remains of the past, do you think that according to the speed of the snow falling, a two- to three-meter tall ice sculpture could maintain its shape for several days without collapsing? Lin Huang asked. "Also, stop bullshitting if you don''t even have a solid understanding of the monster''s lifestyle. I''m an Imperial Censor, and I can understand the monsters better than you. Among the known monster types, the Yeti Maniac is the only one that''s adept at creating ice sculptures. There won''t be any monsters that can do so. Of course, we can''t exclude the possibility that it might be some other unknown monster. However, I think it''s most likely the Yeti Maniac." "Lin Xie is right. Other than the Yeti Maniac, there are indeed no other monsters that make ice sculptures." Another Imperial Censor from a small organization agreed with Lin Huang. Most of the Imperial Censors had memorized the whole monster guide. Of course, they knew for a fact that Lin Huang had spoken the truth. Even the rest of them, who had never memorized the monster guide, were willing to believe Lin Huang as well. Knowing that he was in the wrong, Gu Li did not refute. He stared at Lin Huang and kept quiet. "If it really is the Yeti Maniac, we''re in trouble." Shen Tao frowned, looking at Lin Huang. "Although the Yeti Maniac is only an immortal-level rank-4 to rank-6, this type of monster usually lives in a group. Even an immortal-level rank-9 wouldn''t want to offend it." hen Tao lifted his head and gazed at the sky. "If we can''t defeat them, let''s enter from the top although we might encounter a flock of birds." "We''ll definitely encounter them," Lin Huang confirmed, "When there is a Yeti Maniac, the Glacial Phoenix will definitely be there." "The Glacial Phoenix?" Reminded by Lin Huang, Shen Tao then recalled that the monster was the enemy of the Yeti Maniac. They would appear whenever the Yeti Maniac was around. The Glacial Phoenix''s body possessed the blood of the frost phoenix. However, the concentration of its blood was on par with the dragon''s blood in a dragonkin''s body. Although it was not a phoenix blood species, it was incredibly strong. Their combat strength was on immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9, and they would typically appear in a group. Their species belonged to the overlord-rank monster in the sky. This type of monster usually hunted other ice element monsters as food and the Yeti Maniac was their favorite. "We''re now maintaining a low-level flight. Our existence doesn''t matter to the Glacial Phoenix. However, when we fly to a certain height, they''ll feel that their territory is under threat and they''ll definitely swarm out," Lin Huang warned clearly. "There are cliffs everywhere here. It''s not strange if the Glacial Phoenix are hiding over there." "So, do you mean that we have to take a detour?" Shen Tao asked. "That''s one way," Lin Huang said, gazing at the rest of the organizations. "Let''s have a brainstorming session and discuss if there''s any other better way." More than 140 of them started discussing. "What''s happening? We''ve just come in for half an hour, and the monsters are already blocking our way." "If we can''t move forward and we can''t fly higher in the sky, taking a detour is the only way." "If we were to make a detour, we might possibly meet the people from the underworld organization." "If it doesn''t work, let''s dig an underground hole and walk through an underground passage," a young man suggested, catching many people''s attention. "It seems like it''s not a shabby idea to walk through an underground passage." Shen Tao shifted his gaze to Lin Huang. "Theoretically, it works. However, we can''t confirm if there are any Frost Helminth or any other monsters." Lin Huang did not reject the suggestion. However, he voiced out some of the issues that had to be taken into consideration. "Lin Xie, you''re saying that everywhere is dangerous. Let''s stay here for a month until the exploration ends." Gu Li could no longer stand it as each time they gave a suggestion, Lin Huang would shoot it down. "What I''m actually trying to say is that it doesn''t matter if the Frost Helminth gets into our body. As long as we''re not seriously infected, we won''t die. There won''t be any side effects if the Frost Helminth is forced out of the body using the fire element Life Power. Therefore, most likely it''ll work if we were to walk via the underground passage," Lin Huang explained while shooting Gu Li a sidelong glance. The reason why he had said so was to tease Gu Li. Bloody had informed him that there was a large number of Frost Helminth in the snow. "So, we''re" Shen Tao was about to act immediately as his Life Power possessed the fire element. He was not afraid of the Frost Helminth getting into his body. "Don''t worry. Boss Gu is excited to try. Let him and the Divine Alliance take the lead." Lin Huang smirked, looking at Gu Li. "There''s no need to goad me since we''ll be the first to go underground. We won''t die if the Frost Helminth gets into our body. Stay here until the exploration ends if you''re so afraid of the Frost Helminth," Gu Li insulted Lin Huang and Shen Tao. He then shouted at the Divine Alliance members, "Please put on your defensive relics and cover your body with Life Power. Let''s start digging!" After he finished his words, a group of people then landed on the ground. They then picked up their relics and started digging an underground passage. The Heaven Alliance members and the rest remained at their original positions, patiently waiting to see if digging an underground hole would work. They would know after half an hour. After a short while, Gu Li and the people from the Divine Alliance had dug a large hole in the ground. Since the snow had accumulated for a long time, the snow got thicker and denser as the hole went deeper. However, the thickness meant nothing to a supreme relic or an ancient relic. Soon, the Divine Alliance members managed to dig a hole with a depth of ten meters. Lin Huang and the rest were floating above the hole, peering down it. After about two to three minutes, the people in the hole suddenly shouted. "Damn, there''s really Frost Helminth!" "I''m doomed. I''m being parasitized by the Frost Helminth!" "Stop screaming! You won''t die!" It was Gu Li''s voice. The people from the Divine Alliance kept quiet after listening to what Gu Li said. Soon after, the people in the hole shouted, "There are too many of them!" "Many of them have gotten into my left leg. They''ve frozen it! Whoever who has fire element Life Power, please help me to defrost it!" "I''m going to die. One of the Frost Helminth has gotten into my brain. Please help me unfreeze it!" The Divine Alliance members sounded tragic. "Don''t go any deeper! Quickly leave!" Sensing that it was impossible to accomplish the task, Gu Li finally instructed the members to leave. 686 Lin Huangs Plan The Frost Helminth was a parasite and their combat strength was on immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3. They were diminutive in size and were usually the stature of an ant. However, they could disguise themselves as snowflakes, penetrating the bodies of living beings when they touched the host''s body. Isolating Life Power had a weak effect on them and they could easily penetrate through one''s body as long as it was not covered by any relics. This type of monster would not immediately inflict damage. However, after completing its parasitizing, they would absorb the heat energy from the host''s body, causing the host to lose its body temperature rapidly. The parasite was life-threatening to anyone who was below immortal-level. However, for those who were on the immortal-level or higher, only a large number of parasites could threaten them. The Divine Alliance members had been attacked because there were too many Frost Helminths underground. One or two Frost Helminths would not affect immortal-levels rank-7 to rank-9. However, being parasitized by tens or hundreds of Frost Helminth, even an immortal-level rank-9 would not be able to bear it. The parasite was an ice element creature. Apart from being susceptible to some unique flames with extremely high temperature, it could not be killed. Their reaction was within Lin Huang''s expectations as Bloody had informed him earlier that there was a huge number of Frost Helminths beneath the ground. Seeing Gu Li and the Divine Alliance members escape from the hole clumsily, Lin Huang did not feel at ease though. 30 Divine Alliance members had gone down, but only 28 of them managed to get out of the hole. Two of them did not return and they could not be saved. They had only entered the ruins for more than half an hour and two people had already died. The ruins were indeed dangerous. Gu Li gave Lin Huang a deadly stare as soon as he got out of the hole. He did not say anything and immediately instructed the members with fire element Life Power to help those who were severely injured to get rid of the Frost Helminth. Gu Li and the rest had set a serious example to them. They no longer wanted to walk through the underground passage anymore. They counted their lucky stars that it had not been their team that had gone into the underground hole. Otherwise, the injuries that they might have suffered would have been more severe. "Let''s make a detour. Although it might take more time, it''s better than wasting our time here," Shen Tao was about to leave as he told Lin Huang and the rest. Most of them nodded in agreement. Lin Huang was the only one who remained silent. "Lin Xie, please feel free to express your opinion about this." Shen Tao realized that Lin Huang did not agree to the detour. "Let''s wait for a while." Many people were startled when they heard what Lin Huang said. "Why do we have to wait?" Shen Tao immediately asked as he wanted to know Lin Huang''s intention. "Let''s wait for a chance to hunt." Lin Huang gazed at the hills from afar. "A chance to hunt?" Shen Tao could not understand. "The Glacial Phoenix will hunt for the Yeti Maniac every afternoon. They''ll usually start hunting from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The hunting hours of the monster groups vary accordingly." Lin Huang then suggested, "We can make our way through the Yeti Maniac''s territory during their hunting hours since the Glacial Phoenix will hunt for the Yeti Maniac. As long as we don''t attack them, they won''t be interested to fight us. As for the Yeti Maniac, they won''t put extra effort to fight us when they''re being hunted. Even if the Yeti Maniac attacks us, there''ll be only a small number of them." "It''s already 12.30 p.m. Could the hunting hours have passed?" Shen Tao found that the plan was workable if, and only if, the Glacial Phoenix had not started hunting the Yeti Maniac. "Yes. Therefore, we''ll know if the plan works after waiting for more than half an hour here. If the hunting doesn''t start at 1 p.m, we''ll have to take a detour," Lin Huang said. In fact, he knew that the Glacial Phoenix had not started hunting the Yeti Maniac yet. If they already did start doing so, the Yeti Maniac''s gathering place must have looked like a battleground. However, according to Bloody''s investigation, the Yeti Maniac was prepared for a fight. Obviously, the war had not begun yet. "What do you think? Wait for another half an hour, or leave now?" Shen Tao turned his body around and asked the rest of them for their opinion. "Let''s wait for another half an hour. We''ve no idea how long we''d have to wait if we were to make a detour." "I''m worried that it''ll be even troublesome if we encounter monsters that block our way when we make a detour. Let''s wait for another half an hour." "I personally think that Lin Xie''s plan is workable and it''s less risky." In the end, most of them agreed to wait for another half an hour. Lin Huang did not hide his suggestion from the rest of the organizations. The more people agreed to the plan, the more the Yeti Maniac would be afraid of them, and the safer they would be. If he were to invite the rest to join them, they would assume that he had bad intentions. Therefore, Lin Huang announced it publicly. Those who wanted to join were welcomed to do so. Lin Huang would not force those who were reluctant to join either. Many of the organizations were secretly discussing if Lin Huang''s plan was feasible. Many of them asked the other two the Imperial Censors. "Are the hunting hours that Lin Xie mentioned true?" "Aren''t we going to be attacked by the Yeti Maniac if we were to make our way through their territory when they''re being attacked?" The final reply that they received confirmed that Lin Xie''s suggestion was highly feasible. Aside from the Divine Alliance, the leader of the other three organizations looked for Shen Tao and Lin Huang as they wanted to join them. Of course, Lin Huang and Shen Tao agreed with them. The people from the Divine Alliance were unwilling to bow their heads to the Heaven Alliance. However, they were reluctant to take a detour as well, so they struggled to make a decision. After more than ten minutes, they managed to get rid of the Frost Helminth that parasitized the Divine Alliance members'' bodies. Their combat strength had recovered in that short amount of time. Gu Li did not look for Shen Tao and Lin Huang to discuss this, but he did not leave with the members. "I guess that they''re going to follow us shamelessly," Shen Tao told Lin Huang grumpily. "If they''re going to follow us, just let them be." Since Lin Huang had just fooled them and two of their members had been killed, Lin Huang was not going to make a fuss over it. Furthermore, he did not have a real grudge against them. At about 12.50 p.m, the people were disappointed as the hunting hours were about to pass. Gu Li and the rest even sneered at them. The sounds of birds chirping echoed from the snow-covered mountain. Soon after, a flock of white birds swarmed out of the mountain, resembling clouds. They headed towards the Yeti Maniac''s territory. Lin Huang could hear the birds flapping their wings from afar. "The Glacial Phoenix has started their hunt!" Shen Tao did not expect things to turn out as Lin Huang hoped. "Stop daydreaming. Let''s move!" Lin Huang yelled and rushed towards the Yeti Maniac''s territory. 687 Splitting Up On the white, snowy ground, the crowd moved quickly forward in a flash, and a path was created on the ground as the wind blew past. Lin Huang and Shen Tao led the Heaven Alliance team while the rest of the three organizations followed after them. Just ten meters away were the members of the Divine Alliance. More than 140 of them made their way through the Yeti Maniac''s territory in an instant. As they looked ahead, they saw ice sculptures of various shapes in which dead bodies were sealed. Most of them were Glacial Phoenix. Obviously, sometimes the predators would become the prey. The Glacial Phoenix itself was truly beautiful. They looked impressively breathtaking after being sealed in ice. The Glacial Phoenix''s combat strength was higher than the Yeti Maniac''s, and they could defend themselves against ice element attacks, but even so, they were vastly outnumbered by the Yeti Maniacs. If tens or hundreds of snowballs struck them, they would be locked in ice. Other than the Glacial Phoenix, there were other monsters as well. Unexpectedly, they saw the two immortal-level rank-7 whom they had sent. There were only a small number of monsters sealed in ice. Obviously, most of the monsters knew that it was the Yeti Maniac''s territory and only some rash ones would trespass. Not far away from them, the Glacial Phoenix and the Yeti Maniacs had already started fighting. In mid-air, Glacial Phoenix were continually pouncing on the monsters. Only a minority of them managed to capture the Yeti Maniacs in one go as the prey managed to dodge most of the attacks. The Yeti Maniacs counterattacked as well while dodging their attacks. Snowballs were quickly formed in their hands and were being thrown towards the Glacial Phoenix that avoided the attacks as well. If the Yeti Maniac''s snowballs struck them, not only would their movement be slowed down; there would be a drastic increase in the consumption of their Life Power as well. While both parties were engaged in an intense fight, they noticed Lin Huang and the rest approaching them. "Immediately activate your Life Power and reveal your combat strength!" Lin Huang shouted. Their Life Power was activated and reached its peak, revealing their combat strength as immortal-levels. Even the Divine Alliance members that followed after them did so. Lin Huang then whispered to Shen Tao after all of them had activated their Life Power. After listening to him, Shen Tao immediately announced to the two parties that were fighting each other, "We have no bad intentions, and we''re just passersby. If anyone of you attacks our members, we have no choice but to join another party to attack you. Although there''s only a small number of us, we have nine immortal-level rank-9 members here. As long as you''re willing to ignore us, we''ll leave this place quietly. I promise that we won''t hurt any of you." The two parties noticed that he was an immortal-level rank-9 as well. Although neither of the parties responded to him, the people passed by the Yeti Maniac unharmed. The crowd continued to move forward. Shen Tao then told the rest of the people who followed him, "If you don''t want to die, have good control over your hands. We''re in a hurry. Don''t create trouble for us." On the Yeti Maniac''s turf, both parties continued fighting each other. Although they were paying close attention to the humans who had suddenly appeared, still, the monsters did not attack them. Because the both of them were equally strong, they did not want either side to have a backup team. Although there was only a small number of people, they were obviously strong as most of their combat strength ranged from immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9. After five to six minutes, more than 140 of them managed to pass through the Yeti Maniacs'' territory unscathed. After leaving the Yeti Maniac''s territory, the crowd then stopped. Many of them looked at Lin Huang respectfully. Before the plan had proved workable, many of them had wondered if the plan would succeed. In fact, not only had the plan succeeded, it was almost perfect. They managed to pass through without being attacked. The Divine Alliance did not bother to deal with the Heaven Alliance. As soon as the danger had been removed, Gu Li brought the people along and left without saying anything. Seeing that the Divine Alliance members had left, Shen Tao then said to the rest of the teams from other organizations, "Alright, since everybody has passed through, you may choose which way you want to go." Shen Tao and the Heaven Alliance members did not want the others to follow after them as they did not want to share whatever treasures they discovered. Moreover, the three other organizations were not really strong, and they could not provide any assistance to them even if they encountered any danger. Since they had overcome the threat, the rest of the organizations were not going to follow the Heaven Alliance as well. The people from the Heaven Alliance would definitely take a significant portion of the treasures they discovered, and only a small portion would be given to them. Therefore, they would prefer to explore the ruins on their own. Since they did not want to team up, the three organizations soon said goodbye to the Heaven Alliance members and went their separate ways. Seeing the direction in which one of the teams was heading to, Lin Huang wanted to warn them, but he still remained silent. The team was heading in a direction where the monsters were gathered. If they did not discover the monster gathering place in time, all of them might be killed. Looking at the different directions where the teams had left, Shen Tao then pointed towards another way. "Let''s go there." Lin Huang glanced in the direction that he pointed to, keeping mum. According to Bloody''s investigation, there was actually a group of monsters over there. Since it was only a small-scale monster horde, it would not be a hindrance to them. If he were to go on his own, he would avoid the group of monsters and head where the treasures were kept at his fastest speed. Bloody''s monitoring pods only managed to cover the areas nearby, so he could not gather enough information regarding the land yet, and he had not discovered any places where there was treasure. Therefore, he decided to follow the team. They flew in the direction where Shen Tao had chosen for less than half an hour. Soon, they encountered a small monster horde. "There''s a monster horde about five to six kilometers away. There''s only a small number of them, but I''m not sure what kind of monster it is," one of them who was responsible for scoping the situation of the ruins with a detection relic whispered to Shen Tao. "Please take a break over here. I''ll send two immortal-level rank-8s to identify the type of monster in front of us, and if we''re capable of killing it," Shen Tao ordered the rest of them to stop, sending two of his members to check it out. In just a short while, they returned. "It''s the gathering place of a small-scale Frigid Yak monster horde. There are only 26 of them, and there aren''t any other monsters nearby." The people were excited when they heard the investigation results. Although the Frigid Yak was an immortal-level monster, they could be used as a high-grade ingredient and made a finger-licking steak. "I''ve tried the Frigid Yak steak at Celestial Tower. It''s not cheap though as it costs 100,000 Life Crystals. I''m lucky that the others paid for it." "That''s not the most expensive one. The immortal-level rank-6 Frigid Yak steak sold at the Star Pavilion costs 300,000 Life Crystal each. I treated my friend at that restaurant, but I didn''t order that. "My saliva is dripping." "It seems like we''re going to have pretty awesome food in the following days." The people''s laughter soon spread to the place where the Frigid Yak was. 688 Loaded with Danger The Frigid Yak had white fur all over its body. It looked very similar to the yak that was on Earth. However, its size was about four times of that yak. The combat strength of the 26 Frigid Yaks only ranged from immortal-level rank-4 to rank-6. Aside from Lin Huang, the rest of the 30 members were on at least immortal-level rank-6. The yaks were like lambs that lived in captivity to the members who slaughtered them quickly before Lin Huang could even attack. 26 of the dead bodies were sent to the food hunter of their team named Zhu Hao, who took about an hour to prepare a sumptuous bovine meal for all of them. All of them felt satiated after eating, so they rested for a while. Shen Tao then brought the rest of them along and proceeded with their scheduled journey. After another half an hour, someone detected something amiss and raised the alarm. "A monster horde has been picked up by the detection relic!" Lin Huang already knew from Bloody earlier that there was a group of more than 100 Frost Wolves in front of them. The combat strength of the Frost Wolf ranged from immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9. Due to the large number of monsters, they would threaten the Heaven Alliance team to a certain extent. However, Lin Huang knew that the owner of the detection relic would discover this when they reached a certain distance. Therefore, he did not warn Shen Tao about it as they would only have to make a detour. The scouts returned with some news. "It''s the Frost Wolf, and there are more than 120 of them." Shen Tao decided to detour without a moment of hesitation. All the Heaven Alliance members might probably die if they were to fight the monsters face-to-face. Right at this moment, Lin Huang frowned as he got more information from Bloody. He then whispered to Shen Tao who immediately disappeared from his original position. When he appeared, he brought the dead body of a Frost Wolf. "Both of you are being followed by two Frost Wolf. I didn''t notice that thought. Lin Xie was the one who told me." After storing the two Frost Wolf''s dead bodies in his storage space, Shen Tao did not look relaxed. "We have to leave this place as soon as possible. We''ve killed two Frost Wolves. Perhaps they won''t realize it in such a short period. However, there''ll soon definitely be an outbreak of the Frost Wolves!" Lin Huang urged. Both of the scouts felt embarrassed as they had been too careless. They did not know that the Frost Wolf would be so intelligent and they did not expect that it to follow them. Shen Tao knew that they should not delay any more. "Let''s fly higher in the sky and not leave any traces on the ground. The Frost Wolves will be able to track us using that." After that, Shen Tao was the first one to fly into the sky. He appeared at about 30 meters away from the snowy ground. Lin Huang and the rest immediately followed suit. Not only did the Heaven Alliance members soar higher than before, but they also changed their path as well. After fleeing for more than half an hour, Lin Huang and the rest did not encounter any other monster. Bloody had been continuously monitoring the Frost Wolves'' movement. About five to six minutes after they left, the Frost Wolves noticed that something was off. Soon, they sent out a few of their own and noticed the blood stains on the hill where Shen Tao had killed the two Frost Wolves. Soon, they discovered that Lin Huang and the others had been there earlier. They then informed the rest of the Frost Wolves. All of them got out of their lair, combing the area where the Heaven Alliance members were previously. They broke into groups and looked for them in different directions after realizing that there was no trace of humans. One of the teams went towards where the Heaven Alliance members were. However, after chasing for about 500 kilometers, the monsters decided to give up as they discovered nothing. In fact, Lin Huang and the rest were actually less than 300 kilometers away from them. They were lucky as they did not bump into any monsters that blocked their way while the Frost Wolf were chasing after them. If the other monsters had delayed them for several minutes, the Frost Wolves would be able to catch up with them, and they would then be attacked from both behind and in front. Seeing that the Frost Wolves had left, Lin Huang was relieved. Since it was only a quarter of the pack, there were only 30 of them, and they were not terrifying. However, he understood the characteristics of the Frost Wolf. If they happened to kill one of the Frost Wolf teams, the rest of the monsters would attack them non-stop. "Are there any other monsters in front of us? Should we take a detour?" After overcoming the danger coming from behind, Lin Huang then contacted Bloody through his mind. "The monsters are scattered around the region that you guys are entering. There''s no monster horde, and there are only tens of types of lonely monsters that are spread around different areas." Bloody''s investigation results showed that the area was safe. "At about 1,500 kilometers away, there''s a small monster horde of Arctic Bears. There are 30 of them." Listening to Bloody''s reply, Lin Huang was slightly relieved. This indicated that they would be safe in the next half hour. He was not worried that they were going to encounter the Arctic Bear half an hour later. Although the combat strength of the Arctic Bear ranged from immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9, there were only a few of them, and they did not usually fight in a group. Therefore, they were not threatening to the Heaven Alliance members. In fact, they would make good target practice. The monsters had thick flesh with immense strength. However, they were not very agile, so pros could quickly kill them. Due to them having to live in places with extremely low temperatures, Arctic Bears were rare. Their fur was extremely valuable. The price of an immortal-level rank-7 Arctic Bear pelt could fetch a price of more than 10 million Life Crystals at many auctions. The price of an immortal-level rank-9 Arctic Bear pelt could exceed 50 million Life Crystals, which was a few times higher than an immortal-level rank-9 carcass that was in pristine condition. Just when Lin Huang wanted to hunt for the Arctic Bears, a flock of birds zoomed quickly towards him. Shen Tao immediately instructed them to maintain a low-level flight. Again, they returned to their initial flying height. Lin Huang thought that the bird monsters would definitely attack them and they would have no way of avoiding the fight as they were very close to each other. However, as soon as the Heaven Alliance''s members flew in a lower height, the monsters seemed to have lost their interest in the Heaven Alliance members and gave up hunting them. They flapped their wings and left. "I thought that the Crimsoncrown Sparrow likes to fight. Why did they give up attacking us although we were so close to each other?" Lin Huang was startled. "That''s indeed strange." Bloody felt that something was off. It had memorized the whole monster guide before Lin Huang did. Therefore, it was familiar with the Crimsoncrown Sparrow that liked confrontation. They would definitely attack anyone who attempted to invade their territory. Even if they encountered an imperial-level monster, they would have the guts to fight them in a group. When Lin Huang and Bloody felt that something was wrong, the snowy ground suddenly trembled. A huge, ice-blue hand suddenly emerged from the ground, extending towards the Heaven Alliance members! 689 Frostyape Corpse The icy blue palm was about ten meters long. Its claws emerged from the ground, and it managed to cover almost half of the Heaven Alliance members who shouted in fear and immediately fled. Since Lin Huang was on alert, he had the fastest reaction. He reappeared hundreds of meters away in a flash. As he turned around, seeing that the others were incapable of avoiding the big palm which was about to smash them into pieces, he immediately activated his God Crasher. Dazzling red flames immediately shot out of the cannon muzzle and struck the back of the icy blue hand. The God Crasher had formed a barrel-sized hole in its hand. It immediately retracted its hand due to the pain it suffered. The people then managed to escape from the danger. A furious growl was immediately heard coming from underground. The ground started trembling vigorously as if an earthquake was about to happen. "It''s an imperial-level monster. Those who are on immortal-level rank-9, back us up. The others, please leave!" Shen Tao shouted. Although they were only on immortal-level rank-9, they were the geniuses of the Heaven Alliance. They were capable of killing black gold-ranks. With the three immortal-level rank-9s teaming up to fight, they could even defeat a crimson gold-rank monster. Right after Shen Tao had finished, a huge arm suddenly burst out from the snowy ground. Soon after, its head appeared. Lin Huang then knew that it was a Frostyape Corpse when he saw the head of the monster. It was a spirit type, and its combat strength could be on any level as it depended on the combat strength of the carcass when it had been alive. Normally, only corpses that were still in pristine condition would be preserved. Only monsters that still had a strong self-consciousness after death would come alive and become a monster corpse. In contrast to other carcasses, that due to prolonged exposure to ice and snow, their bodies would integrate with the ice element to a certain extent, resulting in the icy blue color of their bodies. Not only would they have terrifying defense abilities, but their attack would also be associated with the ice element. The frosty corpse must have been a Frostyape when it was alive. Although it exposed only half of its body, it was already hundreds of meters tall. Despite the change in its life form, its combat strength which was on imperial-level had been preserved, so it was on par with its ability when it had been alive. As the Frostyape Corpse got out of the snowy ground, it gazed around. Finally, it fixed its gaze on Lin Huang who had the God Crasher floating in front of him. It could recognize that he was the human that had attacked its hand. He was the culprit that caused him to miss its hunting target. Shen Tao noticed that Lin Huang would become the Frostyape Corpse''s target because he had attacked it just now. He immediately whispered to Lin Huang, "Lin Xie, leave together with the rest of them. The number of usages of your God Crasher is limited. There''s no need to waste it at a place like this." Then, he turned back and looked at the two immortal-level rank-9s. "It''s an imperial-level Frostyape Corpse. With its attack speed, the rest of them won''t be able to get rid of it. Therefore, we''ll have to buy them some time so that they can escape to the safe zone." The two of them nodded their head. Three of them then surrounded the Frostyape Corpse that was crawling out of the ground. Lin Huang felt that the three of them were capable of defeating the Frostyape Corpse. Furthermore, he would not be able to help them out if he were to stay, so he decided to leave together with the others. After putting his God Crasher away and when he was about to flee, he heard the growl of the Frostyape Corpse coming from behind. It had completely pulled itself out of the ground. The Frostyape Corpse that was more than 400 meters tall was about to pounce on him. "Hurry!" Shen Tao yelled. The three immortal-level rank-9s attacked. Shen Tao''s weapon was a single-handed saber which was blood red in color. The zigzag pattern on the tip of the saber was visible. The bloody Life Power constantly gushed out of his body, and it complemented the color of the length of his saber. It felt like blood was coming out from the saber itself and the weapon came alive. As he brandished his saber, his bloody Life Power resembled a crimson python with its mouth wide open. As for the two of them, one of them majored in sword, and another person majored in spear. Both of their attacks hit the Frostyape Corpse at almost the same time. A glowing sword appeared in front of the Frostyape Corpse while a black spear that resembled a shooting arrow moved tremendously fast towards it. The Frostyape Corpse did not attempt to avoid the attacks. Instead, it struck a massive blow after letting out a furious growl. Its first hit collided with the black spear which instantly collapsed. The force of the blow was not reduced, and it smashed into the black spear. At almost the same time, the person who majored in spear was groaning in pain. The spear in his hand had penetrated through his chest, and he was nailed to a snow mountain that was hundreds of meters away. The second blow struck the white sword glow and broke into pieces like glass. Soon, the heavy blow then collided with the combat sword. The combat sword immediately detached from his hand. He was like a bullet that was being shot into another snow mountain. The Frostyape Corpse''s third blow then crashed with Shen Tao''s attack. As its attack hit him, the bloody python instantly exploded. The next second, the Frostyape Corpse''s attack jolted his blood-colored saber while Shen Tao was still in shock. Shen Tao felt that an unavoidable force was coming from the tip of the saber. It was like he was holding an ordinary saber and had slashed through a steel door that was tens of centimeters thick. At that instant, his saber was about to detach from his hand. The point between his right thumb and right forefinger that was holding the saber exploded as his carpal and forearm bones from his palm to his arm fractured. Soon after, Shen Tao''s body was blown away, and he smashed into a snow mountain at the front to the right. Shen Tao and the three of them collapsed, surprising Lin Huang. The three of them were on par with an imperial-level but were defeated by the Frostyape Corpse within seconds. Although the three of them did not die, they must be suffering from serious injuries. They could no longer fight. "Hurry, run away! It''s at least on white gold-level. It might even be on purple gold-level! We won''t be able to defend ourselves against it." Shen Tao''s weak voice could be heard coming from the snow mountain. The 20 of them immediately sped up and fled upon seeing that the monster defeated Shen Tao and the two of them. They were afraid that they would become the Frostyape Corpse''s target. Seemingly, the Frostyape Corpse had lost its interest in the rest of them. After getting rid of the strongest three humans, the Frostyape Corpse smiled wryly. Again, it fixed its gaze on its first target C Lin Huang. It could clearly remember that he was the one who had attacked his left palm with a strange weapon. Its wound was not fully recovered even until then. It took a leap and immediately chased after Lin Huang. "It''s coming after us," Bloody immediately cautioned. "I know." Lin Huang did not bother to turn back at all. He could feel that the Frostyape Corpse''s breath was getting closer to him. "I''ll lure it away. Please escape to somewhere else!" He shouted and immediately ran in a direction that nobody was heading to. The Frostyape Corpse immediately switched its direction as well and continued chasing him. Seeing the distance between them narrow, Lin Huang activated his double acceleration immediately. He accelerated and again, he managed to stay a distance away from the Frostyape Corpse. 690 Overnight at the Monster Lair The giant ape leaped in mid-air. Each time it jumped, it would cover a huge distance. Although it could not fly, its running speed in mid-air was on par with Lin Huang who had activated his double acceleration. As soon as his double acceleration had been activated, Lin Huang only managed to stay about 1,200 meters away from it at the beginning. The giant ape then sped up and did not give up chasing him. He had no way of getting rid of the giant ape. However, Lin Huang did not panic. He was in a direction where nobody would travel, and he managed to make the Heaven Alliance members stay a distance away from the giant ape. The giant ape had been chasing him for 20 minutes. It was now thousands of kilometers away from its own territory, but Lin Huang was almost close at hand, and it did not want to give up chasing after him. After pursuing him for a long time, it let out a furious roar. It even activated its Life Power to attack him in bursts. Since it was within the area that Lin Huang''s territory could cover, Lin Huang managed to dodge its attack with ease. Also, each time it attacked, Lin Huang was able to increase the distance between them. After several attempts, it gave up the thought of attacking him. Although the giant ape was strong, it was not the strongest enemy that Lin Huang had ever met. Lin Huang recalled his encounter with the king sea monster that was on demigod-level and the humanoid monster that had transformed from the Virtual God''s arm. The rest might feel nervous as they encountered the giant ape. However, Lin Huang did not feel anxious at all. The reason why he took the initiative to lure the giant ape away was that he was capable of escaping from it. Ten minutes had passed. The chase had lasted for more than half an hour, and Lin Huang felt that it was almost time. He then asked Bloody, "Half an hour has passed. Shen Tao and the rest must be far away from us now, aren''t they?" "They''re now thousands of kilometers away from us. The giant ape will take half an hour to go back. It definitely won''t be able to chase them." Bloody had been monitoring their movements. "That''s great. The giant ape has wandered around for a while. It''s time to leave." Lin Huang looked back, and the giant ape was still staring at him furiously. As he turned his head back, it grinned and roared. Lin Huang smirked. "Monkey King, let''s stop here. I''m going somewhere else, and I''ll have fun with you another day." The giant ape was stunned as it could not understand what Lin Huang meant. Soon, it realized that he was teasing it and it got even angrier. Lin Huang then summoned Thunder and rode on its back as he waved at the giant ape. "Bye, Monkey King!" The giant ape then spat Life Power out as it wanted to attack Lin Huang. However, Thunder flapped its wings, and they were surrounded by its electric glow, which transformed into a purple glow and they fled at a tremendously fast speed. eeing that they were getting farther away, the giant ape immediately spat a column of Life Power to maim them. However, Thunder managed to dodge it with ease. The giant ape continued spitting columns of Life Power. Yet, it could not hit its target. After ten seconds, Thunder completely disappeared from the ape''s vision. The giant ape was dumbstruck as it found it unbelievable. It continued ahead for a certain distance, but still, it found no trace of Lin Huang. It then confirmed that Lin Huang had indeed fled away. It then stopped in mid-air and slapped its chest hard, letting out a furious growl in the direction where Lin Huang and Thunder had disappeared to. However, Lin Huang could no longer hear the growl as Thunder''s speed exceeded six times that of the sonic speed. Lin Huang, who was riding on Thunder, finally managed to get rid of the giant ape. After some careful thought, he decided not to return to the Heaven Alliance team. Despite feeling quite contented being with them, he was already used to being alone. Also, he could not reveal some of the secrets to the Heaven Alliance members. Encountering the giant ape was an accident. Hence he took the opportunity to leave the team so that he could fight on his own. Aside from the Union Government, most of the organizations did not have a proper understanding of the ruins. Exploring the ruins blindly was definitely a waste of time. With Bloody''s guidance and the Treasure Card he had on hand, acting alone would definitely be more efficient than working in a group. If he were to join the Heaven Alliance, he could not reveal the existence of Bloody and the Treasure Card. He could only follow the majority. If he found out about something, he could only hint at Shen Tao and the rest, but he could not say much. He would have more freedom exploring the ruins on his own. "Bloody, did you discover any places with treasure?" When he could confirm with Bloody that the giant ape was no longer chasing them and had returned to its lair, Lin Huang immediately got down to business. His primary purpose of going to the ruins was to look for a variety of treasure. "Nothing has been discovered so far." Bloody twisted around Lin Huang''s left arm, shaking its head. "All the areas that I covered are smothered with ice and snow. Similar to the natural safe zones, not a single human building can be found. I supposed that it''s because the area that the Leech Pods can cover isn''t big enough. The ruins might be the same as the human world. Most of the areas are occupied by monsters and only a small part of the ruins is the human foothold." "Although the ruins are located above the Peaceful Ocean, it''s unlikely that nobody has ever discovered this before us. Even if it wasn''t discovered during the new epoch, people must''ve been here during the old epoch. It''s strange that no traces of humans have been found." Lin Huang agreed with Bloody. Most likely, the treasure would be kept in the human buildings. However, no human buildings were found possibly because the area covered by Bloody''s detection was not wide enough. "Perhaps we''ll have to wait until 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. so that my Leech Pods can cover the entire ruins," Bloody said. "If we can really find any of the places with the hidden treasures, we''ll depart tomorrow." "It''s about 4 p.m. now. Perhaps the sky will turn dark in less than two hours. Let''s look for a place to rest." Lin Huang had entered the ruins for more than four hours. However, he had never stopped throughout his journey. Since Bloody''s Leech Pods had picked nothing up in the ruins, he was going to look for a place to rest so that he was well prepared for the next day''s journey. Guided by Bloody, Lin Huang soon arrived at a monster lair on top of the snow mountain. After killing all the ursine monsters, Lin Huang then occupied its lair. There was a rock wall that jutted out at the entrance of the cave and blocked the wind, making it warm inside. After dinner, Lin Huang started training his sword skills. At about 10 o''clock at night, he summoned Lancelot to keep watch. He then set up his tent and set a monster skin as his mat. He then snoozed in his sleeping bag comfortably. 691 Beneath the Snow Lin Huang woke up past 6 a.m. the next morning, and the first thing he did was to ask Bloody about the investigation about the ruins. "How is it? Have all the Leech Pods spread everywhere?" "The pods have covered the entire last night past 11 p.m., but the ruins seem to be barren without anyone around. There''re no buildings. There''s nothing at all besides snow and monsters," Bloody said. "But there''s something odd though. I checked several times last night, and I couldn''t find the two teams from the Division 3 Union Government. Even the Dynasty team has disappeared." "No buildings and three teams missing" Lin Huang frowned as he sat up from his sleeping bag slowly. "Since it was the Division 3 Union Government who organized this trip, it''s impossible for them to exit this place after a day in here. There''re so many powerful people in Dynasty that it''s impossible for them to retreat just like that. The three teams must still be in this ruins. I think they''ve probably discovered something." "Are you sure you didn''t miss out any corner of the ruins?" Lin Huang asked Bloody again. "I don''t think so. I''ve released millions of Leech Pods this time, so the coverage is complete. There''s one every five to six kilometers. There shouldn''t be any spots that have been missed out." Bloody was confident in its own ability. "I managed to find the resting spots of the other teams easily last night." "If you''re sure that you didn''t miss out any spots, there''s only one explanation for this. They''re under the snow." Lin Huang thought that was the highest possibility. "That''s what I thought too. I''m speculating that all of the buildings in the ruins are covered under the year-long snow as all my Leech Pods can see is a land of snow from the top." "If that''s true, we can''t find the exact location of the buildings." Lin Huang frowned again. "My Leech Pods could be sent underground, but the ruins are just too big. I''ve no idea where to even start." Bloody felt helpless. "Don''t worry about it. Let''s just monitor the monsters'' whereabouts from above then. I have the Treasure Card for the underground." After speaking to Bloody, Lin Huang did not have the mood to sleep anymore, so he got up from his sleeping bag. When he opened the tent, he saw Lancelot sitting nearby and munching on dried vegetables. There were five empty packets arranged on the ground neatly. Since there had been no monsters last night, Lancelot had been eating out of boredom. "It''s your sixth packet now. Aren''t you sick of it yet?" Lin Huang was speechless. Lancelot shook his head immediately. "Don''t throw the packets everywhere." Lin Huang walked over to him and kept the five empty packets into his storage space. Lancelot was afraid that Lin Huang might take the packet that he was still eating away, and he retreated his hand slightly. "Wow, you''re protecting your food!" Lin Huang thought it was funny. "Alright, nobody''s taking your food away from you." Lin Huang put the tent away and started eating his snacks for breakfast. As he swallowed his last morsel, Lancelot finished his sixth packet of dried vegetables. Lin Huang then took out a Treasure Card and crushed it after recalling Lancelot. "Treasure Card has been activated!" As soon as Xiao Hei''s voice was heard, there was a red arrow pointing at Lin Huang''s 10 o''clock not far away. "A red arrow! It looks like I''m in good luck today." A red arrow indicated that the treasure was rare which excited Lin Huang. When he got to the cave, a chill blew frigidly. It was snowing, and the sky was gray. Lin Huang looked at the time. It was not even 7 a.m. yet. He cocked an eyebrow as he realized that it was too early. However, he summoned Thunder anyway and rode on its back. "Let''s go, 10 o''clock!" Thunder flapped its wings and followed the direction that Lin Huang had instructed it. In less than 20 minutes, he saw the end of the arrow that the Treasure Card was pointing at. It was an empty land, and there was nothing at all. He would have thought that the Treasure Card was faulty if he had not figured out that the treasure was hidden underground. "Thunder, land in another two to three kilometers." Thunder started slowing down, and soon it landed less than 200 meters from the end of the arrow. Lin Huang then flew towards the arrow after recalling Thunder into its card form. "Is this the end of the arrow?" As they came to a stop, Bloody looked around and asked because it could not see where the Treasure Card arrow was. Yes, it''s under my feet." Lin Huang nodded. "Seems like our speculation is right. There''s nothing here. The treasure has to be underground." Bloody was thrilled when it realized that their speculation was correct. "Who''s good at digging?" Lin Huang stood less than 20 centimeters above the snowy ground and mumbled to himself. He was thinking about which monster he should summon to dig a hole in the ground. "You don''t have to look for anyone. I''ll do it." Bloody said after hearing him mumble. "You?" Lin Huang was surprised. "Not me. I''ll get someone to do it." Bloody smiled. Just as Lin Huang was puzzled, he sensed Bloody releasing many Leech Pods into the ground and soon, a big hole appeared. The depth of the hold increased in an instant, and a spiral staircase that led underground was formed. "What''s happening?" Lin Huang was puzzled as he watched. "I controlled some Frost Helminths to dig the hole. The Frost Helminths can absorb heat, and on the other hand, it can release heat too. That''s how they move around the snow," Bloody explained. Bloody was now an immortal-level rank-3 since Lin Huang had leveled up to purple flame-level whereby it could cast Leech Seeds on Frost Helminths that were on immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3 easily. "So, I don''t have to worry that the Frost Helminths will attack us anymore?" Lin Huang was just thinking that there might be many Frost Helminths underground. He still undoubtedly remembered what had happened to the Divine Alliance yesterday, but it seemed like that would not happen anymore. As he waited where he was for three to five minutes, Bloody finally spoke again, "It''s ready now. Let''s go." Lin Huang then walked down the spiral staircase that was made of snow. Suddenly, the light from above disappeared when he was seven to eight meters below the surface. "I got the Frost Helminth to block the entrance with frost so that nobody can follow us." Bloody''s plan was thorough. They finally reached the end after walking 200 to 300 meters down. As he stepped out of the cave, he finally saw the mystery that was hiding underground. 692 Duo Er What Lin Huang was looking at was not a building, but rows and rows of buildings. It looked like it used to be a city. However, it seemed to have gone through a catastrophe. The buildings had collapsed, and even the houses were destroyed. There seemed to be no activity anymore. "Bloody, go take a look." Lin Huang stood where he was, not wanting to get closer to the city at the moment. Bloody released its Leech Pods which then floated in the underground city sky. Soon, it came back with results. "This should be an empty city. There''re no signs of human or monsters." Lin Huang was not surprised. After all, this ruins had existed for many years. Judging from the damage, there should not be anyone living there anymore. "There''s a tower-like building in the middle of the city that seems perfectly fine. If there''s really any treasure here, it''s most probably in the tower," Bloody added. Lin Huang nodded as he noticed the red arrow from the Treasure Card which appeared once they got to the underground city. It pointed at the center of the city. He then flew up and headed towards the direction that the arrow was pointing at. As he flew up in the sky, he observed the buildings in the city. From the colony of buildings, this city should have been a busy one. Although it could not compare to most of the A-grade footholds, it was similar to most B-grade footholds albeit much smaller. However, he could tell that this unknown civilization was developed for a city that had been founded before the new epoch. As Lin Huang passed through a toy store, he saw movement from a doll that was placed in the broken window. He stopped immediately and floated mid-air, observing the toy store from far away. "Did you see that?" He asked Bloody. "Yes, I did. The doll moved." Bloody noded. "You saw that too. I thought it was an illusion." Lin Huang changed his direction and teleported outside the toy store. "Don''t go in yet, let me take a look first," Bloody said. Bloody then released a couple of Leech Pods that flew into the toy store through the broken window. "There''s nothing in there." Bloody was puzzled. "Let me go in and take a look." Lin Huang summoned a couple of flying daggers that surrounded him as he crawled in through the broken window. The toy store was small at only 60 square meters and consisted of only one floor. Lin Huang stood by the window and could see everything that was in the store. The only place that was covered was the cashier. He walked carefully and looked behind the cashier, but there was nothing there. Lin Huang frowned as he turned around and observed again. Besides all sorts of dolls, there was nothing else in the store, and there was nowhere to hide. If it were not for him and Bloody who noticed that the doll had moved, he would have thought he had seen an illusion. Since the both of them saw it, Lin Huang did not think so. He walked back to the window and picked up the doll that he had seen moving earlier. The doll was just a cartoon puppet with a big head and googly eyes. It was only 30 centimeters tall with a pink dress and dark red hair with a yellow flower clip in it. Lin Huang took a good look at the doll, but there was nothing wrong with it. Recalling that the doll had moved its head, he attempted to touch the doll''s head to see if it could be moved or not. Just when his left hand was reaching for the doll''s head, a female voice was heard. "What are you trying to do?" Lin Huang looked around immediately as the flying daggers surrounded him, ready to attack. However, there was nothing around. "The voice seems to have come from the doll," Bloody said. Lin Huang then looked at the doll in doubt. "Were you the one speaking just now?" "It wasn''t me!" The doll insisted, but noticing that she had revealed herself again, she struggled her way out of Lin Huang''s hand. "It''s alive?" Lin Huang thought it was unbelievable as he had never seen such a monster in the monster encyclopedia. The doll then hid behind a bunch of fluffy dolls as it revealed half of her face, looking at Lin Huang in fear. Lin Huang then squatted down without going closer to her. "Little fella, are you a local here?" Lin Huang asked. "Don''t call me little fella. My name''s Duo Er," the doll corrected him. "Duo Er, what a nice name!" Lin Huang smiled. "My name''s Lin Xie. Nice meeting you." "Lin Xie You must be a human from the outside world then?" Duo Er asked. "That''s right." Lin Huang nodded. "You''ve seen humans from the outside world before?" "I''ve seen them from far away, but it''s my first time looking at one up-close." Duo Er was curious about Lin Huang. "My father doesn''t let me get close to humans from the outside world. He told me that they''re bad people." "I''m not a bad person." Lin Huang was surprised because what Duo Er said proved that she was not the only one in the city, so he attempted to get her to talk more. "Duo Er, you must be an aboriginal here." "Of course." Duo Er was proud of herself. "Besides you, there must be many of your tribe in this city?" Lin Huang glanced at the other dolls that were in the store. "Of course." Duo Er noticed that Lin Huang was looking at the other dolls, so she laughed while covering her mouth. "That''s so funny! You thought all of us look like dolls?" "Is that not how it is?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "Only a few of us including myself are dolls while the rest are in different forms. After all, dolls aren''t a great fit in battles. Our father and the rest chose their bodies to be fit for battles." Duo Er seemed to have her guard down as they chatted, then she walked out from behind the dolls. "They get to choose their body?" Lin Huang was puzzled. "I don''t know how to explain to you. Follow me if you''d like to know. I''ll bring you to where our tribe is. The tribe leader and my father will explain to you." Duo Er thought about it and decided to bring Lin Huang to see her tribe. "Does your tribe welcome outsiders like me?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrow. "Usually, they don''t as most of the humans who came were bad people. But I can explain to the tribe leader that you''re not bad," Duo Was said in all seriousness. "Will your tribe leader listen to you?" Lin Huang was skeptical. "Of course, the tribe leader loves me." Duo Er was sure. "Loving you and trusting me are two different things" Lin Huang thought to himself, but he decided to go with Duo Er as he wanted to know more about the ruins. "Alright, follow me!" 693 The Forgotten Tribe of the Middle Ages Duo Er was enthusiastic as she led the way after Lin Huang agreed to see her tribe. Duo Er flew out of the toy store immediately and shouted at him from the broken window, "Keep up with me!" Lin Huang nodded and followed her after recalling his telekinetic daggers. As they left the toy store, Lin Huang trailed behind Duo Er. The direction she was flying towards was the city center that the Treasure Card''s arrow had been pointing at. Lin Huang was guessing that Duo Er was bringing him to the tower that Bloody had discovered earlier. In a couple of minutes, she started slowing down when a rock tower appeared not far from them. The rock tower was quite short at only 20 meters tall. However, it occupied thousands of square meters of the place. Before Lin Huang could get closer, an angry roar was heard. "Human, why are you bullying our people? Are you digging your own grave?!" Lin Huang was shocked to hear that as he looked towards the source of the voice. There was a gigantic human face that appeared on the tower. "Uncle Rock, you''ve misunderstood him. He didn''t bully me!" Duo Er shouted immediately. "It was I who brought him here!" "Duo Er, don''t be deceived by him. He''s a human that comes from the outside world," the rock face said to Duo Er. "He didn''t deceive me. He''s a nice person. That''s why I brought him here," Duo Er defended Lin Huang. "Sir, I really didn''t deceive Duo Er. I''ve told her that I''m a human from the beginning." Lin Huang landed on the ground slowly, but he did not get any closer to the tower. "Really? Since you''re being honest, why do you have to disguise your real face?" What the rock face said stunned Lin Huang. An imperial-level person could easily reveal his disguise without a Disguise Card. He had forgotten entirely about that. Since he was exposed, Lin Huang removed his disguise and revealed his real appearance. "I''m sorry, I didn''t do it on purpose. I''ve offended some top organizations in the human world, so to avoid getting myself into trouble, I''ve been in disguise for the past two months. I know that I''m not good at this and imperial-levels will see through me easily. If I really wanted to deceive you, I wouldn''t have to disguise myself at all as it would lower your trust in me if I were to be exposed. I came into this ruins in disguise and forgot to remove it when I followed Duo Er." "That''s just an excuse." Even though Lin Huang''s explanation made sense, the rock face did not believe him. "Alright, Rock, this kid is telling the truth." Another voice was heard, and it sounded older this time. A hunched human skeleton walked out of a museum nearby the tower. There were monster samples and bones following behind him. It was the human skeleton who had spoken. The human skeleton seemed almost three meters tall. Suddenly, a black robe appeared on him, covering everything besides his head. A red walking stick that was nearly two meters long appeared in his hand. As he took a step, he appeared less than three meters away from Lin Huang while the monster samples, bones, and dolls surrounded him. "Sir." Lin Huang bowed to the human skeleton. "Kid, do you know where you are right now?" The human skeleton supported his body with the walking stick as he looked down on Lin Huang. "I know. Duo Er told me that this is where your people live." Lin Huang nodded. "And how dare you come here?" The human skeleton asked. "I didn''t do anything wrong. Why wouldn''t I dare to come?" Lin Huang looked right into the hollow skeleton''s eyes and asked. What Lin Huang said made all the discussion stopped. The human skeleton was speechless for a moment before he started guffawing loudly. "Oh, wow, you surprise me! Yes, you didn''t do anything wrong at all. Because of that, you''re now our guest." "Follow me." The human skeleton turned around and walked towards the tower. Just when he took a few steps ahead, he turned around and looked at Duo Er. "Duo Er, come with us too." Duo Er was sitting on the shoulder of a sample of an Iceberg Bear and talking to it. Noticing that the human skeleton was calling her, she responded immediately and dashed towards his shoulder. She then turned around and pulled a funny face at Lin Huang. Lin Huang followed the human skeleton and walked towards the tower. As they arrived at the tower, the face on the town appeared again. Lin Huang frowned as he thought the face was going to attack him, but he did not expect the face to speak to him again. "I''m sorry, I was rude to you because I thought you were chasing Duo Er." "Don''t worry about it. It really looked like that, so it''s normal that you misunderstood." Lin Huang accepted the face''s apology. After they walked into the tower, the door shut immediately. The human skeleton brought Lin Huang into a quiet room. "Take a seat. It''s been years since we last had a guest. Please forgive me if we''re not welcoming." The human skeleton sat on the couch. Lin Huang sat across the human skeleton. He had many questions, but he did not know how to start the conversation. "My name''s Bai Gu. What''s yours?" The human skeleton introduced himself. "His name''s Lin Xie," Duo Er replied on behalf of Lin Huang. "It''s actually Lin Huang. Lin Xie''s the name I use for my fake identity." Lin Huang smiled in embarrassment. "Liar!" Duo Er stared at Lin Huang angrily. "Duo Er." Bai Gu patted Duo Er''s head. Duo Er then stopped staring at Lin Huang and turned her head away. "It''s understandable that you''re using a fake identity because you don''t want to be exposed by your enemies." Bai Gu returned a smile. "Thanks for understanding, sir. I''m forced to do that." Lin Huang fidgeted awkwardly. "Kid, since you''re from the outside world, can you tell me more about what''s happening out there?" Bai Gu seemed to be curious about the outside world. Lin Huang thought about it and decided to tell the story of 800 years ago. "800 years ago, a person who called himself God came and summoned many monsters into the world We have 12 safe zones now, and one of them is called the No. 0 safe zone which is also named the Land of Origin." "So many things have happened in 800 years?"Bai Gu was shocked, and Duo Er''s jaw dropped. "When did this piece of landed detach from the ground?" Lin Huang asked. "Should be 30,000 years ago when that era was coming to an end," Bai Gu explained. "30,000 years ago. That''s the middle ages. The era ended after the war 800 years ago. The one we''re living in now is called the new era." Lin Huang did not expect the piece of land to have existed so long ago. "So, what exactly happened during the middle ages that caused the entire era to end?" Lin Huang was curious as there was no accurate documentation since the related information had become lost in between time. What he heard was just speculation from the later generation. "The abyss broke, and countless powerful monsters poured out of it. The least powerful one was similar to a demigod, and there were even True Gods" Bai Gu was shaking as he recalled what had happened many years ago. The trauma lingered like a shadow for the past 30,000 years. Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat when he heard that. "The Abyss Brink?!" 694 The Tribe’s Pas Lin Huang did not expect that the reason why the middle era had perished was due to the crack from the Abyss Brink. "Sir, could you tell me more about it?" "At first, there was an odd energy change from the Abyss Brink that we ignored. By the time we found the source of the issue, the crack in the third layer of the Abyss Brink was unsalvageable. Even a virtual god could not seal it anymore. It was too late when we realized that. The only thing we could do was to watch the crack getting bigger day by day. Until one day, catastrophe struck when many monsters came out of the crack. "Within seven days, everyone above imperial-level was wiped out by the monsters. 200,000 imperial-levels, 8,000 demigods, hundreds of virtual gods and two True Gods were killed within those fateful seven days." Lin Huang was shocked to hear that. The number of powerful people during the middle era was tens of times more than what they had in the new era. However, such a powerful era was obliterated by the monsters that had come out of the abyss, proving just how powerful the monsters were. "What happened after that?" Lin Huang asked. "Was everyone in the middle era killed?" "Those who were trained in Witchcraft were killed." Bai Gu shook his head sadly. "Those monsters that came out of the crack could sense Witchcraft energy easily, so it was useless to hide. On the contrary, ordinary people who hid well managed to survive. The monsters weren''t interested in ordinary people anyway." "We managed to escape as our Sorcerer Goddess moved the entire land above the Peaceful Ocean. Another reason that allowed us to escape is that we transformed into how we look now, hence the monsters could not sense the Witchcraft energy." "So, it was your choice to transform into how you look now?" Lin Huang though they had been cursed to transform themselves from humans to their current appearance. "Yes, the Sorcerer Goddess thought that it''d be the best way for us to survive. She transferred our souls into the bodies of different puppets. As long as we don''t use Witchcraft, we''re no different from an inanimate thing. Nobody could tell, not even the monsters. That''s how we survived." "After making sure that we were safe, the Sorcerer Goddess went back to the war. A white glow shot into the sky on the third day that the Sorcerer Goddess left. A defense layer then covered the sky above the land, and that was how we realized that she had passed on as the defense was her god relic, the Frost Fortress. It often snows here, and the snow is the Frost Fortress'' tears." After listening to Bai Gu''s story, Lin Huang finally understood what had exactly happened. He now realized the reason why the land was above the Peaceful Ocean and why all the people were in such odd forms. "If that''s the case, there shouldn''t be many who survived. Is there any other foothold in the underground?" Lin Huang immediately realized that might be the consequence. "There are other footholds here, but not many people are alive anymore," Bai Gu said. "What happened?" Lin Huang asked. "Many people want to live forever, but it''s actually boring. We''ve paid the price for immortality by giving up our ability to grow or to increase our combat level. We''ve lived our life on a loop for the past tens of thousands of years every day. Many of them killed themselves as they couldn''t take how boring it was anymore. Some of them went crazy and started wars. We can''t bear offspring, which is why our population is dying out." "Why don''t you guys leave this land since it''s so boring?" Lin Huang thought that it was strange. "There wouldn''t have been so many people going crazy if we could leave." Bai Gu shook his head as he pointed at the sky outside the window. "Not long after the Sorcerer Goddess passed away, the Frost Fortress shut down by itself. Although it''s protecting us, it''s also stopping us from leaving." "Shut down? Could that be a mistake? We''re able to get out of the layer when we want to." Lin Huang thought Bai Gu must have been mistaken. "I know. Any outsider that is below imperial-level can enter and exit as he or she wants. That''s the default setting considering that if humans discovered us after the war ended, they could come in and spread the news. But because outsiders might harm us, there''s a restriction on the outsider''s combat level," Bai Gu explained. "The only way for us to leave this piece of land is to get someone to activate the Frost Fortress." Bai Gu then looked at Lin Huang imploringly. "All of us here have tried, but none of us have managed to do it. We''ve had our hopes up on outsiders for a period. "However, fewer and fewer humans came in through the layer the past tens of thousands of years. Most of them came in with the intention of wanting to benefit from us instead of wanting to help us. Moreover, none of them could activate the Frost Fortress. As time went by, we''ve since lost our faith in outsiders." What Bai Gu said helped Lin Huang understand why some of them had not welcomed him at first. "Some of you even attempted to attack us, which caused us to see outsiders as enemies. That''s why some of the people came up with an evil plan towards outsiders, which is the spirit transfer." Lin Huang had goosebumps when he heard that. Even if Bai Gu was not a demigod, he was just as powerful as one. Lin Huang might not survive if Bai Gu were to attack him. "If we carry out spirit transfer on outsiders like you, we can get out of the bodies that we''re currently in and be reincarnated into blood and flesh. As long as we have enough time to adapt to our new body, we''ll be able to train again. Although we still won''t be able to leave this land since our spirit is still in the body, at least we can train again. "Since the suggestion came up, our tribe separated into two groups whereby some of the stubborn ones left and built their own footholds in other places. That''s also the source of our contradiction. As the time went by, more and more people got bored of their lives, so they started joining the other group which has been growing gradually. "Many years later, since not many outsiders have been coming in, they started asking us to give them the outsiders that we''ve been contacting. They''ve started wars because of this. Since the first war, the two groups became enemies. Many wars have happened throughout the years, and the groups then proceeded to divide into more groups. From one tribe, we are now more than 30 tribes. Ours is just a small one. "Nevertheless, you don''t have to worry as our tribe is friendlier to outsiders compared to the rest and we disagree with the idea of the spirit transfer," Bai Gu added after explaining the entire incident which made Lin Huang feel relieved. Lin Huang forced out a laugh without saying anything. It had been a long time since Bai Gu had chatted with someone like that. He could not stop talking when he met someone like Lin Huang. Lin Huang proceeded to banter with him, but his head was occupied with what had happened to the Abyss Brink. If the mighty middle era had perished from the monsters'' attack, the new era that he was in would not stand a chance at all. 695 Sorcerer Goddess Tower Bai Gu and Lin Huang''s chat went on until noon. Besides the tribe''s past, Bai Gu also told him many interesting stories about the people. As a courtesy, Lin Huang did not interrupt him and listened patiently. The conversation only came to an end when Bai Gu noticed the time. "I''m sorry. You know old people are talkative and get easily carried away. Sorry to take so much of your time." "It''s alright. Lots of what you shared with me are what I wanted to know." Lin Huang smiled. "Let me get you some food. We''ve been talking for half a day. I forgot that you need to eat." Bai Gu and the rest did not have to eat, so he had gotten used to that. He suddenly recalled that Lin Huang was a human who needed to eat. "There''s no need for that. I''ve got food in my storage space ring," Lin Huang rejected and savored the moment of silence before breaking the shocking news. "Sir, we''ve actually found out that the second level of Abyss Brink experienced the cracks that you were talking about more than a month ago. Many demigods who investigated it have concluded that monsters will emerge from the cracks in five years'' time." Bai Gu was horrified to hear that. "What? The Abyss Brink is cracking again?" Lin Huang nodded in all seriousness and projected the picture that Bloody had taken earlier via his Emperor''s Heart Ring. In the image, purplish-black fissures covered half of the wall like vines. Black mist was curling out of the cracks like tentacles and reaching towards the sky. Bai Gu trembled when he saw the picture. "That''s really the abyss crack" "Sir, since you''ve gone through the same thing, do you know if there''s anything that we can do to stop the cracks from getting bigger?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Someone suggested that a True God can seal the cracks that happen within a year. The cracks might come back in the future, but it would take much longer since it''s difficult to break through." Bai Gu became slightly optimistic when he mentioned that. "From the picture, the cracks have just happened. You can get a True God to seal it as soon as possible. The next crack would then take tens to hundreds of years to reappear." "Erm, we don''t have any True Gods in the era now" Lin Huang looked helpless. "No True God?" Bai Gu did not expect to hear that. "Then, you can get tens of Virtual Gods to do it, but I''m not sure if they can seal it completely." "We only have one Virtual God" Lin Huang looked even more destitute now. "Only one Virtual God?!" Bai Gu''s eyeballs would have dropped out by now if he had any. "How weak is this era that you''re living in now?" "There are only 20 to 30 demigods and 2,000 imperial-levels that we know of." Lin Huang gave a rough number. "There should be more, but we''d be lucky enough if there''re a third more than the figure that I''ve just told you." "I forgot that your era has only existed for 800 years, so that sort of development is considered not too bad." Bai Gu felt powerless too. "There''s nothing else that you can do besides sealing the cracks. All you can do is to watch them get bigger day by day, just like what we did at that time. There aren''t many people in your era, so I think the monster will only take a day to kill all of you." Lin Huang was not sure if he should cry or laugh about the looming truth that Bai Gu concluded with at the end. "There''s really nothing else that we can do?" "Perhaps there is, but we don''t know what that is. We only came up with that one solution then," Bai Gu said. Lin Huang went into silence again. There was no reason for Bai Gu to lie to him. According to what he said, the catastrophe that was going to happen in five years would end the new era entirely. "Kid, looking at your current combat level, I don''t think you should join the battle in five years. Why not find ways to hide your body energy within these years and live with us before the catastrophe comes?" Bai Gu suggested fervently. "Thank you, Sir." Lin Huang nodded with a smile. He knew that Bai Gu meant well, but what he wanted was a solution that did not involve running away. "Don''t dwell on this. Let the others worry about it. What you should think about now is how to increase your ability so that you can survive the catastrophe." Bai Gu patted Lin Huang''s shoulder assuredly. "You can stay here these few days. Training at the Sorcerer Goddess Tower is beneficial for you. Just let us know when you''re leaving. What you told me about the Abyss Brink isn''t something trivial. I''ll need to inform the rest so that they''re prepared for it." "Alright." Lin Huang planned to stay there temporarily so that he could get more information about the ruins. After Bai Gu left, the huge face that was previously on the tower appeared. "Kid, Sir told me that you''re allowed to get into the Sorcerer Goddess Tower as and when you wish. Let me tell you more about the tower. There''re a total of nine levels. The one that you''re on is the first level. The spirit energy on the first level is twice as thick as the spirit energy in the air outside. It''s four times more on the second level, eight times more on the third level, and so on. It''s 512 times more on the ninth level." Lin Huang had heard about the spirit energy from Mr. Fu before. It was an energy that wandered in the air and could be absorbed through a couple of ways to transform it into life energy. Before the new era, no matter which cultivation one was training, the only way to obtain life energy was by absorbing spirit energy. Just like the Army Attack Tactics, there was a technique to do so. However, the spirit energy was called differently in each cultivation. Some called it ''spirit power'' while some called it ''vitality power''. At the end of the day, it was energy particles that wandered in the air. "Can I get to other levels of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower?" Lin Huang knew that the higher he went, the better it was for his training in the Army Attack Tactics. "Yes, you can, but I can''t let you pass through the levels. You''ll have to break through them yourself." The gigantic face grinned. "There''ll be a stone tablet on each level. As long as you''ve completed the mission, you''ll be able to go to the next level. You''ll enter the ninth level as you wish after you''ve completed the first to eighth levels." "Is there a stone tablet on the ninth level as well?" Lin Huang asked. "There is." "What will I get if I complete the ninth level?" There were only nine levels on the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, after all, so Lin Huang figured that there might be something for him if he managed to break through. "If anyone can break through the ninth level, the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine will be activated. Once you''ve broken through the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine''s test, you''ll inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory." The large face revealed a sardonic smile as he did not think that Lin Huang would manage to pass the test. "Inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory?!" Lin Huang was moved because he knew that the Sorcerer Goddess that the huge face mentioned was a real god. "Even if you don''t pass the test, as long as you manage to activate the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine, the Sorcerer Goddess will reward you. It''s possible to get god relics and even the Sorcerer Goddess''s blood," the gigantic face added. Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard that. "Where''s the stone tablet?!" "The stone tablet on the first level is located at the courtyard in the middle of the tower." 696 The Stone Tablet’s Tes The courtyard in the middle of the tower was filled with greenery. Lin Huang had caught a glimpse of the stone tablet when he was walking into the room with Bai Gu, but he had ignored it as he thought it was just a piece of decoration. When he returned to the courtyard again, Lin Huang stood in front of the stone tablet and observed it carefully. The stone tablet was a charcoal grey without any inscriptions on it. There were only odd golden lines that looked like a complicated maze. As Lin Huang was looking at the stone tablet, he suddenly felt woozy and found himself in a maze with gray stone walls surrounding him. He was standing at a crossroads with no idea what was happening. Just when he was trying to figure things out, a female voice came from above. "The rules of the challenge are as below: "Each time you''re sent into a random location, you''ll have to look for any of the exits in the maze within three minutes, and you''ll win the level. Flying, space manipulation, and detection abilities are prohibited. "Please get ready. We''re counting down!" A countdown timer appeared in the sky as the lady said that and the numbers were descending rapidly. "10, 9, 8, 2,1." When the timer counted to ''1'', gigantic words appeared in the sky: "Go!" Lin Huang stood where he was, frozen. He could sense clearly that his Territory ability was shutting down and he could no longer detect what was near him anymore. He looked at the four paths. It was fortunate that he did not have difficulty choosing, or else, he would not know which path to take. He was only given three minutes. Once he picked the wrong path, he would fail the test. Suddenly, four telekinetic flying daggers came out of his body as he was thinking about it. He then controlled the four daggers to whiz down the four different paths. As long as any of them hit a wall, he would control the daggers to switch directions as well as summoning more and more flying daggers to go towards the crossroads that the other flying daggers had discovered. In less than a minute, Lin Huang had summoned hundreds of flying daggers and eventually found where the exit was. As soon as he found the exit, he then recalled all of the other flying daggers as he charged towards the flying dagger that led him towards the exit. Finally, just as the timer flashed 2:08, he got out the exit. As soon as he got out of the maze, a white glow flashed in front of him, and he was back at the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, standing in front of the stone tablet. "Xiao Hei, did I leave this place just now?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei immediately. "No, your consciousness was taken away from the stone table for about two minutes. I think that''s the stone tablet''s test." Lin Huang looked at the stone tablet differently now as he found it terrifying that a god could remove and transfer his consciousness without him even realizing it. "I didn''t expect you to pass the test," The gigantic face appeared and boomed in surprise. "I just happen to be lucky." Lin Huang grinned. "Sir, since I''ve already passed the test, what should I do to get to the second level?" "That''s easy. Do you see the red dot on the stone tablet?" Lin Huang noticed the red dot on the stone tablet that had not been there before. "The red dot is the starting point of the maze that you were sent to earlier. Since you know where the exit is now, all you''ll have to do now is to insert your energy into the stone tablet to control the red dot and go through the path that you took earlier until the red dot leaves the maze. "However, there are two things that I must remind you. First, your control of energy has to be accurate and mustn''t touch the lines on the stone tablet although the lines are just one millimeter away from each other. As long as you touch the lines, you''ll have to start all over again by going into the stone tablet with your consciousness and finding the exit again. Second, you''ll need to be fast when you control the red dot. You''ll have to use the same amount of time that you used to pass the test with your consciousness earlier. If you fail to do that, you''ll have to start all over again." "So, there are two tests on each level. One in the consciousness and one in reality. The second test assesses the accuracy of energy usage." Lin Huang realized the breakdown of the tests. The gigantic face smiled without saying anything. Lin Huang then looked at the stone tablet solemnly. The second test was just as difficult as the first one in which he had to look for the maze exit. It required a high accuracy in controlling his Life Power whereby he had to move across lines that were just millimeter apart. Feeling up to the challenge, Lin Huang became excited. He wanted to know how much he could achieve. As he took his place beside the stone tablet and inserted his Life Power, the dark red dot then became bright red. He did not insert very much Life Power since the red dot rejected any more Life Power from him. A three-minute countdown timer appeared on the blank space on top of the stone tablet. "3:00." "2:59, 2:58" Lin Huang only took a glance at the timer. Then, he focused on moving the red dot forward. He did not panic as he moved the red dot carefully as he soon got the hang of it. A minute passed, but he had only managed to complete a fifth of the path although he was accelerating. When the timer was only left with a minute, he was only halfway there. After peeping at the timer, Lin Huang then put all his attention on moving the red dot. Because he was getting used to it, the red dot was moving faster and faster as time went by. When he only had ten seconds left, the exit was still a distance away from the red dot, and there were some turns in between. "You''ve only got ten seconds!" The huge face reminded Lin Huang. He did not expect Lin Huang to be able to get that far without failing. As he noticed that the time was almost up, the large face was rooting for Lin Huang to pass the test. Lin Huang obviously heard the face''s reminder and accelerated when he was taking a turn. Although the gold lines were very close to each other, Lin Huang did not touch any of them. He did the same thing for the second and third turns, making his movements looked like drifting a car. After passing the three turnings, Lin Huang managed to control the red dot to get out of the maze with just three seconds left on the clock. Lin Huang whooshed out a long breath and pulled back his hand that was placed on the stone tablet. Suddenly, the gold lines on the stone tablet faded away while the red dot that Lin Huang had controlled earlier transformed into three lines, forming three unique paths on the stone tablet. The three paths were clearly drawn using lava. Around ten seconds after they appeared, they then shrunk into a light dot and shot in between Lin Huang''s eyebrows. As soon as that happened, Lin Huang realized what had happened immediately. "That''s a cultivation method, and this is only the first level!" 697 The Witchcraft Rune After taking a rough look at the cultivation method, Lin Huang realized that it was actually a set of Witchcraft Rune secret skills. It was only the first level of the secret skill, which was the basic performance of Witchcraft Rune. The path that he had taken to get out of the maze, as well as the line that was drawn on the stone tablet, was actually one of the lines of the primary rune. Lin Huang had also obtained the image of the first Witchcraft Rune from the secret skill and found out that he had only figured out one of the three exits of the maze. "There are 108 lines in the basic rune alone. Each of them has different Witchcraft effects when combined together. My brain might explode if I cultivate such a mind-boggling skill." Lin Huang recalled the time when he had learned English on Earth. The combination of 26 alphabets was torturing enough for him, and he had a headache as he thought about the 108 complicated rune lines. According to the secret skill, besides being carved on energy crystals and nonliving things such as weapons, the Witchcraft Rune could also be engraved on a person''s soul. In reality, that was how the sorcerers cultivated back in those days. Lin Huang did not dare to do anything about it yet. If he made a slight mistake while carving the Witchcraft Rune on his soul, he might kill his own soul. Moreover, he was not ready to be a sorcerer yet. Lin Huang then snapped out of it after taking a quick look at the secret skill. He then stared at the gigantic face nearby him. "Sir, can you tell me how do I get to the second level of the tower now?" "You''ve already passed the test. Just place your palm on the stone tablet and think about wanting to get to the second level in your heart. The stone tablet will take you there. The same applies if you want to get to a higher or a lower level. All you''ve got to do is to think about it in your heart. Of course, that''s provided if you''ve already passed the test on each level, or else, that wouldn''t work," the huge face explained. Lin Huang then placed his palm on the stone tablet. As soon as he touched it, the blank charcoal grey stone suddenly softened. His palm was sinking into a material like a ball of clay, leaving an imprint of his hand on the stone tablet. Just when Lin Huang was trying to figure out what was happening, he looked up and noticed that his surroundings were different from before. "I''m on the second level already?" Lin Huang looked around. The garden that he had been in was now a vast hall. The stone tablet was still in front of him, but it had transformed back to its original form with many golden lines on it. However, the lines were different from before. The stone tablet was not soft anymore, and there was no handprint on it too. Lin Huang looked at his palm, which was devoid of any grayish-black marks on it at all. "Continue with the rest. I''m excited to see how far can you go." The large face appeared on top of the ceiling. Lin Huang peered up at the stone tablet. After staring at the lines for a while, his consciousness was brought into a maze again. Just as he entered the maze, the female voice was heard once more. "Look for any of the exits in the maze within five minutes, and you''ll pass the test. The rules are the same as the first level." A countdown timer then appeared in the sky. Lin Huang looked around. He was standing at a crossroads that looked the same as the one on the first level. He then summoned his four telekinetic flying daggers again and controlled them to look for the way out just like before. The maze was much more difficult this time as he had to use more than 300 telekinetic flying daggers and spent almost three minutes finding the exit. The timer was showing nearly 4:30 when he got out of the exit. As his consciousness returned to his body, he did not try to move the red dot on the stone tablet. Instead, he stood where he was and recalled the path that he had taken earlier with his eyes closed. A while later, he opened his eyes and inserted his Life Power into the red dot as he placed his palm on the side of the stone tablet. As soon as the red dot lit up, a countdown timer appeared on the black area of the stone tablet. Lin Huang did not even glance at it as he was focused on moving the red dot. Time passed as he used his same old method to move carefully and only accelerated when he got the hang of it. His challenge was smooth this time as he controlled the red dot and got out of the maze in less than four minutes. A red dot entered in between his eyebrows again. It was the second level of the Witchcraft Rune. The rune lines were more complicated than the first level, but there were only 36 lines. The 108 rune lines were just the fundamental while the 36 lines were the advanced version with more complicated rune images. Lin Huang took a quick look and realized that it had been challenging to be a sorcerer back in those days. "I knew the second level shouldn''t have been difficult for you, but I didn''t expect you to pass it only on one try," the gigantic face spoke again. "I didn''t expect that too." Lin Huang smiled. He had stopped focusing on whether he could pass anymore, but treated it as a game instead. He just wanted to try his best at having fun. "Third level, let''s go!" Lin Huang exclaimed and placed his palm on the stone tablet again. As his hand was imprinted on the stone tablet, he was sent to the third level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. He still appeared in a hall with a slight change. He did not bother even to assess the place, and started the test immediately. The third level was almost the same as the first two levels whereby he had to get out of the maze. However, he was given ten minutes this time with an increase in difficulty. This time, Lin Huang managed to exit the maze within the given time, but he was slow at moving the red dot and did not manage to exit within the given time. When he retook the test, he brushed the gold lines because he panicked. Eventually, he passed the test on his third try. The third red dot that went in between his eyebrows was the third level of the secret skill with nine high-level lines. They were even more complicated than the 36 advanced lines that he had gotten earlier. "The third level is already high-level lines. The test on the fourth level should be different..." Lin Huang mumbled to himself. "Seems like you''re not that dumb after all." The gigantic face chuckled. "You know what the test is about?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course, I do, but you''ll have to figure it out yourself as I won''t reveal anything to you." The large face grinned. "Whatever, I''ll see it for myself soon anyway," Lin Huang said and placed his right palm on the stone tablet again. Soon, he faded away and disappeared from the third level of the tower. 698 Asking for Bloody’s Help The fourth level of the tower looked different from the previous levels. It looked like a bright castle with a dome on top. It did not seem like it was in a tower, but it was more like a place that had nothing to do with a tower. Lin Huang was slightly surprised by the new environment, but soon he got back into the zone. The charcoal grey stone tablet looked exactly the same as before, but the pattern on it was now different. The maze-like golden lines were now a complicated image formed by the 36 basic rune lines. Lin Huang frowned as he had no idea how he was supposed to pass this test. The gigantic face appeared on the dome on top of him, grinning as he noticed Lin Huang''s knitted brows. After staring at the image for a while and not seeing anything happen to the stone tablet, Lin Huang then realized that the way to activate it was different from before. He placed his palm on it but nothing happened. After giving it some thought, Lin Huang inserted Life Power into the stone tablet, but still, nothing happened. He then attempted to insert telekinesis and spirit energy, but nothing happened to the stone tablet at all. "Alright, stop trying. No matter what you do, the result is the same. It''s a sealing rune. You''ll have to unseal it to enter the stone tablet''s consciousness," reminded the face on top as he could not bear to watch him fail anymore. "You were given rune lines on the previous three levels. On the fourth to the sixth levels, you''ll be tested on the performance of the rune. Sealing and unsealing is a basic performance of the rune. If you want to go higher, you''ll have the learn the rune diligently, but I think you won''t be able to get to the fifth level in this short period." "I''ll learn then. I won''t lose anything if I learn one more skill," Lin Huang thought to himself. Since he planned to stay there for a couple of days, he figured it would not hurt to learn. It was never too late to give up if he figured out that he had no talent. He then turned around and walked a distance away from the stone tablet. He found a place with the sun shining and sat with his legs crossed. He then closed his eyes and started studying the rune secret skill that he had gotten earlier. Lin Huang read the first level of secret skill over and over again. After memorizing all the 108 basic rune lines, he realized that there were just too many things to remember for each of them. There were tens of thousands of words that each rune could be combined into, so the total combinations came up to almost four million words. With his memory, he could definitely memorize all of them if he were given the time, but the thing was that it would be redundant if he could not understand the meaning of each term. After all, not everyone could understand the dual-vector foil manual directly without learning. It was the same as the basic rune lines whereby some of them were hard to understand and there were some specific terms used in Witchcraft that Lin Huang could not understand at all. After failing to grasp it, he decided to summon Bloody. As he shared his memory of the rune with Bloody, he sat aside while waiting for Bloody to tell him more about it. Bloody took two to three minutes to study it and suggested to him to read a dictionary that was specialized in Witchcraft. Helpless, Lin Huang then asked for the gigantic face''s help. "Sir, could you get me a dictionary that''s specialized in Witchcraft?" "That''s simple." The face tossed him a crystal ball. "Look at it yourself." Lin Huang brought the crystal ball to Bloody while it extended its tentacle to read the contents of the crystal ball. "Kid, what''s that summoning monster of yours that looks like a cotton candy? Why haven''t I seen it before?" The gigantic face could not help but ask. "It''s a new type of monster that I call Violethaze." "This fella doesn''t look like it could fight. Why would you want such a useless monster?" The face could not tell that Bloody was a threatening parasitical monster. Of course, Lin Huang would not tell him the truth. "Although Bloody isn''t good at fighting, it has an ability called Enhanced Intelligence. It has an extremely high intelligence and it can decide things for me whenever there are issues that I can''t solve." "A monster with Enhanced Intelligence. That''s rare." The gigantic face was interested in Bloody now. "Are you selling this summoning monster?" "No," Lin Huang rejected directly. "Alright then." The gigantic face knew that Lin Huang would reply as such, but he was just testing him. "So, are you planning to get it to use its Enhanced Intelligence to learn the basic rune?" The face observed Bloody for a while before speaking again. "Yes, there''s just too much to learn. I''ve taken a rough look and found that it''s hard to understand. If I were to learn it by myself, I might not be able to master it in a month. Bloody learns so much faster than I do, and it''ll be easier for it to learn and teach me later." Lin Huang had come up with a plan. He even planned to let Bloody share its memory with him if he could not understand the rune after Bloody simplified it so that he could just memorize them directly. Bloody took almost half an hour before giving back the crystal ball to Lin Huang. It then started learning the Witchcraft Rune by itself. Time passed by on the fourth level of the tower. The gigantic face brought him some food in between, thanks to Bai Gu who had instructed the people to prepare food for him. Bloody finally opened its eyes when it was 4 p.m. "So, how is it?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Almost there." Bloody nodded and shared the simplified programme that it had concluded with Lin Huang by using one of its tentacles. Lin Huang then started to learn the rune. The simplified version was much easier as the descriptions of many words were truncated in short sentences. The four million words were consolidated into 120,000 words. Bloody had also arranged the combinations of each line since it had found more than 50,000 combinations for the 108 rune lines. "This is only the preliminary step and I''ve only managed to come up with more than 50,000 runes. I might be able to make 80,000 runes if I''m given more than those lines. There''ll be more for advanced and high-level rune lines. I''m still figuring them out and I need more time," Bloody explained. "Let me memorize those that you''ve come up with first." Lin Huang nodded. Memorizing was the simplest way to learn. 699 The Fourth Level of the Tower There were more than 3,000 completed runes in the first level of the secret rune skill. The completed runes were available to the public back in those days, so every sorcerer knew about the first-level runes and had to figure out the rest on their own. In less than a couple of hours, Bloody had come up with more than 50,000 highly useful completed runes. Although they were simplified, one would need a very long time to be able to learn and to come up with completed runes. Because Lin Huang had limited time in the ruins, he planned to memorize all the completed runes as it would be much easier than learning them from scratch. After Bloody categorized the 50,000-odd completed runes, it then shared that part of its memory with Lin Huang. "Elemental rune, amplification rune, sealing rune, spirit rune" Lin Huang memorized the runes by their category. He finally memorized all of them within three days on the fourth level of the tower. Meanwhile, Bloody came up with more runes within the few days including the combination of advanced and high-level runes. It then shared all of them with Lin Huang. After memorizing the completed runes, he figured out that he did not have much time left, so he did not pay attention to the more complicated runes that Bloody came up with again. On the afternoon of the fourth day, Lin Huang finally stood up and walked to the stone tablet. He smirked when he saw the sealing rune on it. It was one of the runes that Bloody had discovered, so he knew which unsealing rune to perform to unlock it. He used a finger to draw on the sealing rune. A brand new completed rune made of 30 rune lines was formed on the stone tablet. As soon as the rune was formed, the 30 golden lines lit up and covered the top of the original rune. Even the original sealing rune was lit up now. Soon, the golden lines started to fade away as the color became dull. Within seconds, the sealing and unsealing runes disappeared together. The stone tablet became blank again. Just when Lin Huang wanted to ask the face what he should do, his consciousness was sent somewhere different from the maze that he had been in. It was a vast space with gray rocks that were a meter in diameter and were floating in the sky like floating islands. Lin Huang stood on the first rock that was around 20 centimeters away from the second rock. The third and fourth rocks formed into a straight line behind them whereby each of them was about 20 centimeters away from each other. "The rules are as below: There''re 101 rocks on this level. Besides the first one, the other 100 of them behind have completed runes on each of them. The maximum rune lines are 36. You have three minutes to come up with a rune to decode the rune on each rock. If you don''t manage to decipher them within three minutes, the rock will break, and that would mean that you''ve failed. "Once that happens, you''ll be sent back to the first rock, and you''ll have to start over again. The runes on rocks that you''ve decoded will also change. "You''re not allowed to repeat the same decoded runes. That''s the only restriction. You''re allowed to use advanced runes and even high-level runes, as well as completed runes that have more than 36 rune lines." After the rules were announced, the timer in the sky started counting down to 10. A Witchcraft rune was appearing on the second rock in front of Lin Huang. As soon as the countdown ended, the rune was displayed clearly. It was a rune with 36 primary lines. Lin Huang observed it carefully and found a completed rune that could be used to decode it. "A fire attribute rune. Is it a warning to me not to step on it directly?" Lin Huang mumbled to himself and soon thought of the strategy. "It''ll be the easiest to use an elementary rune for this. Since this is a fire attribute rune, using a water attribute rune on the same level should do, but this is tricky as it''s not a regular fire attribute rune. It has the tendency to explode, so I should be using a frost rune." After figuring it out, Lin Huang squatted down immediately and started drawing a frost rune on the rock. Around two minutes later, he had drawn the frost rune that was made up of 36 rune lines accurately. As soon as the rune was formed, the two completed runes disappeared, and the rock became blank. Lin Huang then took a step onto the rock. As he stepped on the third rock, a rune appeared slowly. This time, Lin Huang could tell that it was an illusion rune right away and knew that he needed to use an illusion-breaking rune. As soon as he found a suitable rune in his head, he then drew the rune and decoded it immediately. When he stepped on the third rock, the rune on the fourth rock was a dimensional rune. Lin Huang then used a dimensional-freeze rune to decode it. As he got further, more and more variety of runes came up on the rocks. Fortunately, he had memorized enough runes before this, so none of them were out of Bloody''s knowledge base. All he had to do was to think about which type of rune it belonged to, what kind of effect it had, and which was the decoding rune. He was given three minutes to go through one level. At first, he needed around two minutes to decode the runes, but as he got the hang out it, he managed to finish each level in around a minute as he became faster in searching for the suitable decoding ruins. Lin Huang spent less than two hours decoding all 100 runes on the rocks. As he stepped on the last floating rock, a golden glow came out of nowhere and flew into his head. Lin Huang was sent back to the castle on the fourth level in the tower before he realized it. As he looked into his body, he soon found what the golden glow was. It was more than 10,000 completed runes. He took a quick look and found that they were not useful to him anymore as they all had been covered by the runes that Bloody had mastered. "Let''s see if the completed runes that will be given in the next level are in Bloody''s collection." Lin Huang was excited. 700 An Unfamiliar Rune After passing the test on the fourth layer, Lin Huang soon came to the fifth level, which was similar to the fourth level whereby he was sent to a castle of a different style. There was also a sealing rune on the stone tablet. However, this time it was made up of 72 primary rune lines and was much more complicated than the previous one. Since Lin Huang had gone through the fourth level, he was familiar with the steps. He soon found a decoding rune in his head and started drawing on the stone tablet. After the deciphering of the 72 rune lines was completed, the sealing rune then faded away while his consciousness was sent into a virtual space. This time, he was still required to decode the runes on the rocks, but it was triple the number than before; he had to go through 300 rocks while the time on each rock was extended to five minutes. Lin Huang went through all of the rocks with the runes that he had memorized in his head. After that, a golden glow went into his head. It was 6 a.m. in the next morning when he was sent back to the tower. He then looked at the 30,000-odd completed runes that he had just obtained. Only 16 of them were out of Bloody''s knowledge base. He stood by the stone tablet and memorized the 16 strange runes carefully. A while later, Lin Huang opened his eyes and placed his palm on the stone tablet. He was then sent to the sixth level of the tower. This time, he did not start the challenge right away. Instead, he took out a tent and slept in his sleeping bag. Besides draining his Life Power, the drawing of the runes was exhausting as each of the lines were complicated, and there was no room for mistakes. The rune would not work it was different by a single millimeter. Moreover, he did not sleep the night before, so he wanted to have enough rest before starting the challenge. The gigantic face was puzzled as he watched. He was excited to see how would Lin Huang finish the rest, but he did not expect Lin Huang to sleep instead. Now, all he could do was to wait patiently. Lin Huang slept until past 5 p.m. before he came out of the tent. He then walked to the stone tablet after eating some snacks and putting the tent away. The stone tablet on the sixth level was still a sealing rune, but this time, it was made of 108 basic rune lines. Not only it was much more complicated than the previous one, but Lin Huang also found the rune unfamiliar after studying it. As he went through the runes that he had memorized, he realized that the rune was not covered under Bloody''s knowledge base. He then summoned Bloody, which nodded after taking a look at the rune on the stone tablet. "This really wasn''t covered in the 50,000 runes that I went through the last round, but it''s not difficult to decode it." Bloody then shared the decoding rune with Lin Huang. After memorizing both the rune on the stone tablet and the one that Bloody shared with him, Lin Huang then recalled Bloody and drew the decoding rune on the stone tablet. As soon as the rune disappeared, his consciousness was sent into an opening again. There were 500 rocks this time whereby each rock had completed runes with 108 primary rune lines while the time allocated to be spent on each rock was ten minutes. Lin Huang then started the test immediately and went through the first to the 183rd levels smoothly as he had all of the decoding runes in his head. However, he was stuck on the 34th level as he had never seen the rune before. He then realized that the rune was out of Bloody''s knowledge base again. He was worried that he could not summon Bloody in his consciousness, but he then realized that his concern was redundant. "Another one that''s out of coverage." Lin Huang forced a smile. Bloody was puzzled as it looked around. It did not ask anything and started looking at the rune of the rock. "This is an illusion rune, and it''s slightly complicated." Despite that, Bloody managed to come up with the decoding rune within three minutes. After memorizing the rune, he then started drawing it on the rock. As he had taken some time to search for the rune in his head, he only managed to finish drawing the decoding rune two seconds before the countdown ended. He did not recall Bloody as he stepped onto the 35th rock. "Don''t go back yet. I haven''t completed a tenth of the levels, and I think there''ll be many unfamiliar runes later." Bloody nodded and wrapped itself around Lin Huang''s left arm. Lin Huang encountered another unfamiliar rune when he was on the 45th level. As he was thinking about it, Bloody spoke directly, "I''ve never done this one before, let me think about how to decode it." Bloody gave him the decoding rune in less than five seconds, and Lin Huang passed the level once again. Later on, he encountered 28 unfamiliar runes. He did not even have to check if those were runes that he had never seen before as Bloody would give him the decoding runes directly which saved a lot of his time. Just like that, Lin Huang managed to pass 500 levels with Bloody''s help. As he stood on the 501st rock, a golden glow went in between his eyebrows, and they were both sent out of the space. As soon as they got back to the sixth level of the tower, Lin Huang then looked at the runes that he had just obtained. There were more than 50,000 of them this time, and Lin Huang was unfamiliar with half of them. He decided to find a seat in the tower with the sun shining through, and he started memorizing all the unknown runes. Two days passed just like that. Finally, he managed to memorize more than 20,000 unfamiliar completed runes. It was on the third morning when he opened his eyes. "I''ve been on the Sorcerer Goddess Tower for a week, and I''m only on the sixth level. Hopefully, I''ll spend less time on the last three levels, or else, I''ll run out of time." He was concerned as he looked at the time shown on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He could only stay a month in the ruins. As he stood up, he walked to the stone tablet again and placed his palm on it. Soon, his body faded away from the sixth level. 701 The Book of Sorcerer Dao The seventh level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower was located in a wooden room. It did not look very big, and the decoration was simple. It was the complete opposite of the luxurious setting in the castle earlier. Lin Huang took a quick look around and focused on the stone tablet that was not far in front of him. It was not as simple as the golden lines on the previous stone tablets. There were now 36 advanced rune lines. Lin Huang''s eyebrows knitted together. He could tell that it should not be a sealing rune, but some other rune. He did not summon Bloody or ask the grinning face above. He sat down in the corner of the wooden room as he started memorizing the 30,000 advanced completed runes and the 8,000 high-level completed runes. Three days went by just like that, and he had finally memorized all of the completed runes that Bloody had shared with him. In the middle of the night on the fourth day, Lin Huang finally opened his eyes and walked to the stone tablet. He now understood what the rune was referring to. "So, this is an invitation rune." Sorcerers sent the invitation rune. Only people who could read as well as decode runes would be invited. It was like a door that required a custom-made key to enter. Lin Huang smirked. The more he studied Witchcraft Rune, the more he thought that being a sorcerer was an interesting job. The invitation rune was one of the runes that Bloody had come up with. He soon found the decoding rune in his head and drew the rune on the stone tablet. A while later, the invitation rune transformed into stars and flew into the sky. Then, a golden door appeared. Although Lin Huang knew it was the effect of the invitation rune, he was still surprised when he saw the door. Without hesitation, he pushed the door open and walked into it. As he stepped in, Lin Huang appeared in a large battle ring. There were hundreds of occupied seats surrounding the ring, and the audience members were wearing robes of all sorts. There was a certain high in the atmosphere, and many people were screaming excitedly from their seats. "What''s this?" Lin Huang was stunned to see this. As he was trying to figure out what had happened, a female voice came from above. "This is a sorcerer''s battle ring that''s reflected from the time river. You''ll have to fight the sorcerers from the ancient times, and you''ll pass this level if you get a 100-battle winning streak. You''ll have to kill your opponent to be considered a victor. Once you lose, your winning streak will be deemed ended, and you''ll have to start from the first battle again." "Did I not come here with my flesh and blood? Wouldn''t I die if I lose the battle?" Lin Huang asked. "You won''t. It''s your consciousness that opened the door while your real body remains on the seventh floor of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. This is just the projection of your consciousness. If you die here, the projection of your consciousness will be recreated." "So, is there any restriction in the battle ring?" Lin Huang asked. "You can only use Witchcraft and not any other skill. You wouldn''t be able to use any skills even if you wanted to. There''s no other restriction besides this." "But I''m not a sorcerer! I''ve only learned some runes, and I can''t even perform any Witchcraft. How do I fight with those sorcerers without using any other skills?" Lin Huang was astounded because he had not performed the rune on his soul, and neither did he have any book related to Witchcraft nor tools with him. "Perhaps you weren''t a sorcerer before, but now you are." As the female above spoke, six golden beams shot out between his eyebrows and transformed into a book. The book had a golden cover, and it was just the size of an adult''s palm when it was closed. It did not look thick, but when Lin Huang opened it, there were hundreds of thousands of pages with completed runes in it. Besides those that he had obtained from the Sorcerer Goddess Tower earlier, there were also the advanced and high-level ones that Bloody had discovered. "Is this the Book of Sorcerer Dao?!" Lin Huang was shocked as only real sorcerers would own The Book of Sorcerer Dao or the Sorcerer Book. He had never cultivated the Sorcerer Dao; all he did was memorize runes. Suddenly, the thought of the six golden beams that transformed into the Sorcerer Dao book earlier came to his mind. "So, the six golden glows that I obtained from the Sorcerer Goddess Tower combined into a complete Sorcerer Dao?" "That''s right. It''s the beginner inheritance that the Sorcerer Goddess left in the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. As long as a person manages to break through the sixth level, the six memory seeds will combine into a complete Sorcerer Dao heirloom. This inheritance can be added to a sorcerer''s Sorcerer Book, but for a non-sorcerer, it allows one to obtain the Book of Sorcerer Dao directly and become a sorcerer." Lin Huang did not expect to obtain a side-job out of nowhere. All he wanted from the Sorcerer Goddess Tower was the Sorcerer Goddess''s relics. He never wanted to be a sorcerer. However, what he could not understand was that according to the documentation in the secret skill that he obtained on the first level, the runes would only be recorded in the Book of Sorcerer Dao when the sorcerer had completely mastered the meaning of each rune or created their own runes. Meanwhile, all Lin Huang did was merely memorize the hundreds of thousands of runes without understanding them, let alone master them. However, the runes that he forced himself to memorize were printed on the Book of Sorcerer Dao. "Perhaps the Book of Sorcerer Dao thought I understood the runes because Bloody does?" Lin Huang could not think of any other better explanation than that. Although he did not understand it, he knew that it was a good thing. The Book of Sorcerer Dao would be blank if it followed what he understood and he would not be able to fight in the ring. There were hundreds of thousands of completed runes in the Book of Sorcerer Dao which were sufficient for the battles that he was soon going to face. He knew very well that a sorcerer who understood more than 30,000 completed runes would be an elite among all of them. One who understood more than 50,000 runes would be a talent while mastering more than 80,000 would be considered a genius. It was rare for a sorcerer to understand more than 100,000 runes during the ancient times. Those who were still alive would have been a Sorcerer Goddess by now. "The 100 opponents on this level have the same combat level as you do. They''ll only be using basic runes, not advanced or high-level runes. However, there''s no restriction for you, so you can perform any of the runes that you know. I hope you don''t lose too quickly." As the female voice faded away, the arena became utterly silent. The timer on top of the battle ring started counting down from ten seconds. The opponent across Lin Huang gradually appeared. 702 Sorcerer Lin Huang Lin Huang''s first opponent was a handsome, young man wearing a white robe with a blonde ponytail. As soon as he appeared, almost all of the females in the audience screamed in excitement. Lin Huang recalled that the emcee had said that the battle ring was a projection of the time river. He figured that his opponent must be a popular man back in those days. The audience''s deafening cheer was most probably a projection of what had happened in the past. The white-robed man sized Lin Huang up obnoxiously as he appeared in the ring. "How dare you challenge I, Tai Yun? Prepare to die." Lin Huang raised his eyebrow as he did not expect to be challenged so daringly. He replied, "We''ll find out who''ll die later." Although Lin Huang had never fought with anyone with Witchcraft, he was experienced and was not afraid of imperial-levels or even demigods. Fighting a sorcerer who had the same combat level as him was nothing to him. The battle was just a show for him to perform with a huge audience watching. Soon, the countdown ended. Tai Yun scoffed and a Sorcerer Book covered in white appeared in front of him. He extended his right hand and placed it on top of the book which flipped open on its own while a red rune lit up from the page and transformed into a flame boa. The flame boa then sped towards Lin Huang who was tens of meters away. "A flame boa Fire attribute rune?" Lin Huang smirked as he could tell which rune the man was performing at one glance. "Alright then. I shall use you as practice then." He pressed his hand on top of the Sorcerer Book as well. In the next second, the book opened on its own with a blue rune lighting up. A terrifying chill came out of the book with icy blue arrows that bolted out of it and swallowed the flame boa. Within seconds, the flame boa was pierced by the icy arrows hundreds of times and disappeared. However, the remaining arrows were now hurtling towards Tai Yun at an alarming speed. Tai Yun was shocked, but he did not panic. He placed his palm on top of the book again, and this time, a yellow rune lit up. Pieces of thick bricks started stacking in front of the white-robed man until a barrier which was tens of centimeters thick was formed and blocked the arrows that were coming towards him. Although some of the arrows penetrated the wall, none of them managed to pierce through and get to Tai Yun. "Break it!" Lin Huang shouted. Silver arrows shot out of the book in a spiral form. In the air, the arrows spun like drills with an intense sound of the wind, rushing towards Tai Yun. Tai Yun was stunned. He thought the barrier would buy him some time to think of a strategy, but the drilling arrows seemed to be able to pierce through his wall of bricks easily. Helpless, he had to strengthen the barrier. As he placed his palm on the book, a layer of frost spread out of it and soon, the barrier was now frozen. Lin Huang''s drilling arrows could not pierce through the barrier that was now reinforced with a layer of ice. As Tai Yun felt relieved, he was coming up with strategies to attack next. Although Lin Huang''s attacks had been blocked twice, he did not panic at all since he had mastered the battle rhythm while Tai Yun was just defending himself from his attacks. "You use ice. Then, I''ll use fire." Lin Huang grinned. He placed his palm on the book again. Sparks of flames that were the size of a thumb roared towards Tai Yun''s barrier like a meteor shower. Tai Yun thought that he could relax for a bit, so he was shocked to see what was coming towards him. Before he could react, the stars collided against the barrier. Sparks flew, and explosions were heard. The explosions melted the ice on the barrier at an alarming rate while many of the bricks were smashed. Lin Huang had retreated to the edge of the ring, unaffected by the explosion. It was a different story for Tai Yun. The spiral arrows that were stuck on the barrier were shot in all directions when the explosion happened. Tai Yun was devoured entirely in the explosion flare, and it felt like death for him. "I think I''ve overdone it. Will he die just like that? I thought I found someone to practice with me," Lin Huang mumbled to himself. Fortunately, the explosion muffled his mumbling, or else, Tai Yun would be pissed if he heard what he had just said. Soon, the hundreds of explosive stars burned out, but smoke still lingered in the ring, and nobody could see how Tai Yun''s condition was. However, Lin Huang was sure that he had not perished as there was no announcement declaring the loser. Lin Huang did not continue to attack as he waited for the smoke to disperse patiently. The challenges in the Sorcerer Goddess Tower were tricky. Although the arrangement of the opponents was random, they would be more powerful than the other. Tai Yun should be the least powerful one among the 100 opponents on this level. He was the best for Lin Huang to practice with, so Lin Huang did not wish for him to be killed that easily so that he could practice more. It took a while for the smoke to clear. A clumsy person appeared amidst the smoke. The person''s body was black like it had been charred. His hair was frizzy from the heat of the fire. Although he looked disheveled, people could still recognize that it was Tai Yun in his once-white robes. He could not bother about his image anymore as he panted hard. If he had not managed to defend himself with Witchcraft, he might be dead in the ring now. "Hey, can you still fight like that?" Lin Huang teased. "We can proceed if you''re still able to fight. If not, I''ll send you out of the ring." Tai Yun glared lethally at Lin Huang as he noticed that Lin Huang was ready to attack him again. He then said unwillingly as he clenched his teeth, "I surrender!" "What? You surrender just like that?" Lin Huang did not expect that at all. The announcement of the female voice was heard. "The winner of the first battle - Lin Huang! 1% of winning streak completed." "You can choose to rest for half an hour after each battle. Would you like to take a rest?" "There''s no need for that. please continue." As he had gotten the hang of fighting with Witchcraft, Lin Huang decided to proceed with the battle since the first battle did not drain any of his energy at all. 703 The Lady in a Red Robe The second opponent that Lin Huang encountered was a sorcerer in a black robe. He was just slightly more powerful than Tai Yun, but that was it. After confirming where he stood in terms of ability, Lin Huang did not kill him instantly. Instead, he treated his opponent as an experiment as well as his practice partner. Different runes kept lighting up from the Sorcerer Book and charging towards his opponent. The black-robed man was finally killed following Lin Huang''s 29th attack after defending himself fiercely from the previous 28 attacks. Lin Huang won his second victory. However, he had yet to be satisfied with the practice. The coming battles became his solo performance in which he did not even give the slightest chance to his opponents as he would always attack first as soon as the battle started. All of the opponents became his moving targets. Only some of them managed to strike back while the rest were killed almost instantly. Just like that, Lin Huang won battle after battle. The first one, the second one, the third one, the tenth one Until the 67th battle. It was a tall lady with red chiffon covering her face with only her eyes revealed. Her entire body was wrapped in a dark burgundy robe, but Lin Huang could see her seductive body. The lady was almost 1.8 meters tall. However, he noticed that she was wearing heels underneath her robe, but he had no idea how high they were. The lady was not Lin Huang''s first female opponent. After glancing at her, he thought that he would not have to hold back on her. As soon as the countdown ended, he did what he usually did, which was to attack first. This time, something out of his expectations happened. The lady placed both her palms on the books and opened the both of them. Two runes of defense and attack lit up at the same time. Lin Huang was shocked to see that as it was his first time encountering a person who managed to handle two runes at the same time. As the two runes lit up, a large hemispherical frost shield and a frost ranged attack appeared. The chill spread all over the battle ring. "Ranged attack?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow as such an attack did not have much effect, but he knew what the lady was up to. Besides strengthening her frost shield, the frost ranged attack could also turn the battle ring into her show. As soon as the ring was covered in frost, she could attack with any frost rune from any corner. "It seems like I''ve encountered someone powerful." Lin Huang grinned. No matter if it was her Witchcraft performance or her battle instinct, this lady was so much more powerful than the opponents that he had encountered earlier. He became serious. Then, he placed his palm on his book. As a red rune lit up, waves of flames flowed like waves in the ocean. The white frost collided with the waves of fire. The ring was now half-flaming red and half-frost white. However, this only lasted for less than two seconds. A blue rune lit up on the lady''s book, and a dripping sound was heard in the ring. It started raining heavily. As both the frost and the rainwater suppressed Lin Huang''s fire wave, his attack was soon washed away. It was his first time being subdued in the battle since his winning streak. A red rune lit up on Lin Huang''s book, and a fiery tornado appeared like a flame dragon, attempting to devour the heavy rain. The battle came to a tie once again. Lin Huang had finally broken free from the lady''s suppression. The lady had a potent ability. It proved that besides the ability to perform two runes at the same time, she was also very agile in different types of runes. Lin Huang was attacked by her restraint rune and was almost defeated. However, Lin Huang was becoming more familiar with the runes as they fought. He even managed to learn how to use two runes at the same time as she did. Besides that, his performance in runes improved. As they fought for more than an hour, the lady became slower in the frequency of her rune performance as her energy was drained. That was how Lin Huang turned the tables around and won the battle. After the battle ended, he took a half an hour''s rest not only to recover his Life Power but also to digest the lessons that he had learned from the battle. The battle with the red-robed lady had benefited him significantly and transformed his standard in using runes. He was now excited for the opponents to advance. However, the opponent in the 68th battle was mediocre and was not as powerful as the red-robed lady before. The same happened to all of her opponents after that. None of them could compare to the red-robed lady. They were not even on the same level compared to her. Lin Huang won all the way to more than 90 battles, but none of the opponents could pique his interest. "What''s with the red-robed lady? Why is she so much powerful than the opponents that were sent later?" Lin Huang could not understand it. Although the last blue-robed man that he encountered was much stronger than the opponents before, he still could not compare to the red-robed lady. Just like that, Lin Huang won the 100 winning streak with disappointment. "Congratulations, you''ve completed the 100 winning streak and passed the test!" Lin Huang asked immediately when he heard the announcement, "What''s with the red-robed lady that I encountered in the middle of the battle?" "She''s a special challenger who might or might not appear," the female voice explained. "It depends on your luck." "That means I might still encounter special challengers in the eighth and the ninth level?" Lin Huang understood immediately. "Yes." The female voice gave an assuring reply. "They might or might not appear. The sequence of their appearance is random too." "I get it now." Lin Huang nodded and was sent out of the ring. 704 Heart-Glimpsing Rune Lin Huang learned a lot from winning the 100 battles on the seventh layer of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, especially the battle with the red-robed lady. The lady had plenty of battle experience, and her battle instinct was just as honed as Lin Huang''s especially her performance in Witchcraft that was much more powerful than his. If Lin Huang did not have that much Life Power in him, he might have been defeated. After he completed the 100 winning streak, Lin Huang got to the eighth level of the tower. Instead of decoding the invitation rune on the stone tablet, he sat with his legs crossed as he revised all the details of the 100 battles that he had just gone through. He was studying the mistakes that he had done. A few hours went by before he walked to the stone tablet after concluding all his errors. The invitation rune this time was a high-level rune with nine lines. After decoding the rune, the golden door appeared again. Lin Huang then pushed opened the door and stepped inside. He was sent to a battle ring that was the same size as the previous one which was hundreds of meters long and wide. However, there were more seats this time. There were 4,000 to 5,000 seats this time, and they were all occupied. The female voice came from above again. "You''ll have to achieve a 300 winning streak this time! The rules are the same as the previous one, but your opponents this time won''t be using basic runes only. They''ll also use advanced runes." Lin Huang nodded without saying anything. The timer started counting down above him, and his first opponent appeared slowly. Like he usually did, Lin Huang made the first move. However, he soon realized that the basic runes did not have any significant effect on his opponent this time around as there were defense techniques added to the advanced rune which was difficult to be penetrated with the primary runes alone. Lin Huang then started fighting with the advanced rune. He had never used any such runes even when he was fighting the red-robed lady. However, since his opponent was using advanced runes now, he did not plan to hold back anymore. As soon as Lin Huang executed the advanced rune, his opponent, who could not be perturbed at all, did not see what was coming. After struggling for a while, he was finally killed in less than 20 blows. It proved that even a sorcerer who had mastered the advanced rune could not handle Lin Huang''s attacks that rained on him like a storm. He emerged as victor all the way to the 223rd battle without any obstacles. On the other hand, he started to get familiar with the advanced runes. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw his opponent on the 224th battle. It was the red-robed lady! Although he had never seen the lady''s face, he could tell that it was her from her body, her height and those pair of alluring eyes. Lin Huang sobered up because he knew that the lady would be much more powerful than before as she would definitely perform advanced runes this time! As the countdown ended, Lin Huang did not even test the waters as he attacked with two advanced runes using both his hands at the same time. It was a restraint rune and an arrow rune. Many black chains and arrows dashed towards the lady. She did not panic at all as she performed a substitute rune that attracted all the attacks to her clone while her real body was not harmed at all. At the same time, she attacked using the frost rune. The battle became stagnant again. This time, Lin Huang did not want to drag the battle on until the lady was out of energy as it was not as glorious as he thought it would be. Besides high-level runes, he had used all the runes that he could think of. The battle lasted for more than an hour, and he finally got the opportunity to perform his ultimate move: meteorite rain. After half an hour of rest, the battles onwards were much easier, and he achieved the 300 winning streak without breaking into a heavy sweat. Finally, he passed the eighth level. As he was sent out, the gigantic face could not help but ask him, "Have you broken through the eighth level?" "What do you think?" Lin Huang simpered and placed his palm on the stone tablet. He was then sent to the ninth level. "You surprised me. I didn''t even think that you could pass the battles on the seventh level. I didn''t expect you to break through the eighth level." The face soon appeared on the wall of the ninth level, stunned. "Nothing''s impossible as long as you do your best," Lin Huang said wisely and sat with his legs crossed. He did not continue chatting with the huge face but focused on revising the details of the 300 battles earlier instead. A couple of hours later, he stood up again and walked to the stone tablet. He was puzzled as he looked at the rune on the stone tablet. "So, it isn''t an invitation rune anymore," he thought drily to himself, but he could not find any complete or decoding rune that matched this one. Without any clue, he summoned Bloody. Lin Huang then pointed at the stone tablet. "I don''t understand this rune." Bloody floated to the stone tablet and observed it carefully. It only turned around after a while. "This is a heart-glimpsing rune that can reflect a person''s deepest fear. There''s no need to decode it. All you''ll have to do is activate it. As soon as you do that, the opponents that you encounter might be those that you''re most afraid of encountering." Lin Huang did not expect the Sorcerer Goddess Tower to throw him something completely different from the seventh and eighth levels. "My deepest fear, huh?" Lin Huang frowned. There were many opponents that he did not want to encounter such as the imperial-level king sea monsters that had demigod abilities, the misty monster made of a Virtual God''s arms and those demigods who had attacked Mr. Fu Any one of them could easily kill him. If the heart-glimpsing rune could really summon those nightmares, he would definitely die. After a moment of silence, Lin Huang nodded eventually. "I''ll have to face them one day anyway. Activate it!" Seeing that Lin Huang had made his decision, Bloody shared the activation rune with him. Without hesitation, he then stepped up to the stone tablet and drew the rune on it. As the rune formed, a white glare lit up on the stone tablet and engulfed Lin Huang entirely. A while later, he shut his eyes like he was fast asleep. 705 Lin Huang’s Pas "Where''s this place?" Lin Huang looked around the vaguely familiar place that he was in. He was shocked when he realized where he was. It was an apartment with a room, a living room, a bathroom and a kitchen. The decoration in the apartment looked exactly the same as the one that he used to stay in two years ago before he traveled to another world. To be exact, it was his home before he left. The hole that he had accidentally burnt with his cigarette after falling asleep was still on the couch in the living room. On the coffee table, there was a crack on the ashtray that had slipped when he was washing it. In the multipurpose cabinets under the television were the novels that he had collected. Lin Huang then rushed into the bedroom. The blanket was folded like he usually did on the bed, covering half of the bed. The pillowcase was the one with the dark blue night sky and stars that matched his quilt cover. His watch and keys were placed on the left side of his bed head beside the lamp. His jeans, t-shirt, underwear, and socks hung on the balcony outside his bedroom. "I''m back on Earth?" Lin Huang had a complicated expression as he glanced around. He had thought of many manifestations of his deepest fears that the heart-glimpsing rune would show him after activating it, but he did not expect to be brought back to Earth at all. Just as he was digesting everything, his mobile phone in pocket started vibrating. He had gotten used to the Emperor''s Heart Ring for the past two years and had almost forgotten about the existence of mobile phones. He took out his Fruit7 phone and realized that it was Xiao Wang who was calling. He did not know what to do. Should he pick up the call? Too much had happened in the past two years, and he could not really remember who this Xiao Wang was. He did not pick up the call as he held his phone in his hand. However, the phone did not stop vibrating. This Xiao Wang guy sure was stubborn. Lin Huang thought about it and decided to pick up anyway. "Xiao Wang, are you looking for me?" Lin Huang still had no idea who Xiao Wang was. "Handsome, come drink with me tonight?" Listening to the voice and how he addressed him, Lin Huang recalled who the person was. Xiao Wang''s real name was Wang Zhi. He was his junior from the same university. He was a smart guy, and they worked together. After he became Lin Huang''s junior at work, he started inviting Lin Huang out for drinks, spa, and massages as well as helping him at work every week. They became close after that, so it was natural that they would drink and eat together occasionally. "I have something up today. Let''s do that some other day," Lin Huang declined. After all, he had yet to recover his memory and would be exposed easily if he met someone who knew him. "Oh, alright then. Go ahead with your stuff." Xiao Wang then hung up. Lin Huang walked around the apartment. The kitchen and bathroom were still the same, and the floor mat in the bathroom was still wet. Even the trash in the kitchen was still there. He roughly remembered that it was how his home had looked like the day before he set off. He then looked at the date on his phone. It was 3rd June 2017, Saturday, which was the day he had left. "So, I''ve gone back to the day I left?" Lin Huang looked at the time. It was 9.41 a.m. "I remember peeking at the time before I left. It was 9.40 a.m. That means this is when I just left." Lin Huang could not understand why the heart-glimpsing rune had sent him here. There was nothing that he was terrified of on Earth as he had seen too much on the other side throughout the years. Any transcendent-level monster could kill the entire human race if it was placed on Earth. Lin Huang then returned to the living room and sat on the couch. He lit up a cigarette without any idea what was going to happen next. The silence only lasted for less than three minutes. The phone in his pocket started vibrating again. He was shocked when he saw who was calling. It was his mother who had passed away in a car accident when he was nine. He hesitated for a long time before finally picking up the call. A familiar voice came from the other side before he started speaking. "Xiao Mu Tou, it''s the weekend. Will you be home for lunch? I''ve made dumplings for you with chives and egg filling." Xiao Mu Tou was Lin Huang''s nickname. Her mother called his father Mu Tou, therefore when he was born, his father was called Da Mu Tou, and Xiao Mu Tou naturally became Lin Huang''s nickname. He could not move when he heard that voice. He had never imagined that he would hear his mother again. Dumpling with chives and egg filling was his favorite food when he was a kid. His mother would always make him dumplings whenever he got excellent results in his primary school. "Hello, can you hear me? Why aren''t you speaking?" Lin Huang''s tears started pouring. "Mom I miss you." "What''s wrong? Did someone bully you?" Although his mother did not hear him crying, she knew that something was wrong. "No." Lin Huang calmed himself down and asked, "Is dad home?" "Your dad is here. I''ll get him to speak with you." His mother had no idea what happened as she passed the phone to his father. "Son, what''s wrong?" His father''s energetic voice came from the other side. Lin Huang''s tears proceeded to pour, but he managed to calm down. "I''m alright, Dad I''ll be home for dumplings later." "Oh, be safe on the road." His father reminded him. As the phone went dead, Lin Huang started shaking and started crying. When he had been on Earth, his mother had passed away from a car accident when he was nine. His father became depressed since then and died of a heart attack when Lin Huang was 13. His grandmother took care of him until he graduated from high school and got into university. His grandmother passed away when he was halfway through university. He only managed to get through university with loans and by working part-time, which was why he was much more hardworking than others. The Earth that he was sent to this time was not the Earth that was from, but it was a parallel world where his parents were still around. Speaking to his parents that he had lost when he was young made Lin Huang, who had been suppressing his emotions all along, to lose himself completely 706 I’m Back In first person point of view "Mom and Dad are still alive" I dropped onto the couch shaking, and my tears could not stop pouring. I finally calmed down after a while. It was past 10 a.m. when I rechecked the time. I stood up and went to the bathroom, peering at myself in the mirror. Besides my eyes that were slightly red, I looked perfectly normal. After washing my face with cold water, my mind was clearing up. The heart-glimpsing rune was meant to bring one''s deepest fear to life. Unlike an illusion, you could not get out of it. Just like a movie that was 100-minutes long, the story would go on without skipping any second. Once the heart-glimpsing rune was activated, the person would not be able to leave the movie as the main character and had to continue until it ended. I knew that activating the rune was not a simple act. To be exact, it was a test of the human emotion. Since I could not leave, the only way was to go on with it. However, I had no idea what kind of test I was given and how I would pass the test. All I could do was to go with the flow and allow the story to develop. "Xiao Hei?" I whispered, but nobody answered me. "Xiao Hei!" I shouted. This time, I even attempted to contact Xiao Hei with my consciousness, but my message was as though it was drowning in quicksand without any response. I panicked when my reliable Goldfinger did not answer me. I tried looking into my body, but that did not work as well. I attempted to summon Bloody, Bai, and the rest but there was nothing. "It can''t be!" My heart skipped a beat as I knew that something was wrong. I tried using my Life Power, but I could not sense anything. The same happened with my Telekinesis. I could not summon my telekinetic flying daggers. My Sword Dao that was already on level-5 could not be activated as well. "Witchcraft" With my last hope, I tried summoning the Book of Sorcerer Dao, but there was only nothing. My body felt like it was dead. I was now an average, helpless person. This terrified me. I had never felt like this before even when I encountered the Virtual God''s arm and the king sea monster as I knew I had everything under control. However, nothing was in my control now. "I''ll definitely die if the rune sends that king sea monster or the Virtual God''s arm here now." That was my biggest concern. I had no idea what was in the rune script. "Forget about it! Since I''m here, I''ll just have to go with the flow." I let out a sigh and looked into the mirror. I was in a blur as the face looked unfamiliar to me now. After all, I had been in another body for the past two years. Perhaps because my body was different now, everything that I had on the other side was not here with me. I shook my head to get the thoughts out of my head after staring at myself. I then walked out of the bathroom after adjusting my clothes. Hailing a cab after leaving the house, I headed to see my parents. I could not wait to see them after so many years. They were still young in my memory, but I had no idea how they looked like now since I was already a young man of 25. Half an hour later, the cab stopped outside a small, old village. I had not been in this area for many years. My fear was boiling in the pit of my stomach As I stood at the entrance, my heart became full of complicated emotions again. Tears were flooding my eyes, and my heart was beating fast. I had no idea what I should say when I saw them. I could not expose myself. After taking two deep breaths, I calmed myself down and walked in with as much courage as I could muster. A couple of minutes later, I arrived at our old home. The door was the new anti-theft door, but the couplet was still the same pair that I remembered. ''The grind of stone makes a mighty sword. The bitter cold gives fragrance to the cherry blossom.'' The streamer was ''Spring comes after winter''. I had written the couplet the year my grandmother passed away as a reminder for myself. However, I could recognize my handwriting; what I was seeing was not the one that I had written. It had been bought somewhere else. Memories were coming back to me as I stood there. I prepared what I was going to say before pressing the doorbell. A moment later, the door opened, and a person stood in front of me. My mind became blank. Whatever I had prepared to say evaporated. All I could think about was the middle-aged man that was standing in front of me. Father had not really changed, but he had gained some weight, and his hair was now gray. I recognized him right away. Rooted to the spot, I attempted to speak, but I just could not. All I felt was tears welling in my eyes. "Get your sh*t together!" I kept telling myself that I had to suppress my emotions. "You''re back." Father smiled as he looked at me, but he soon noticed that something was wrong. "What''s wrong?" "Dad!" I snapped out of my own thoughts from the familiar voice. I tried to hold my tears back, but I could not help myself from going up to give my father a firm hug. The words just slipped out of my lips. "Dad, I miss you." "What''s wrong, you silly boy?" Father was stunned. Although I was taller than him now, he patted my head anyway. I let go of him after calming myself down. "I''m alright. Where''s Mom?" "She''s sorting the vegetables in the kitchen." Father looked at me skeptically. I avoided eye contact with him and walked directly into the kitchen. Mother was wearing an apron and sorting vegetables while perched on a chair. She plucked the leaves from the stems and threw them into the plastic basket. Noticing that there was someone at the kitchen entrance, she held her head up and looked at me. "Oh, you''re back?" Mother looked at me with a smile. She had lost weight, and there were wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. Although she was a little different from what I remembered, the memory was coming back. "Mom." I calmed myself down and walked over to her. I squatted down and helped her with the sorting. "Nevermind, I''ll handle this. Go talk to your Granny." Mother said. "Granny?" My hands stopped moving when I heard her. "Where''s she?" "She''s in her room watching TV. She has been watching this ''Fighter of the Destiny'' and she''s basically been stuck to the TV every day." Mother smiled while rolling her eyes. "I''ll go see her." I stood up immediately, not expecting Grandmother to still be alive in this world. As I stood at her room door, I saw the old lady with gray hair on a wooden chair. She was staring at the TV, oblivious to my existence. My emotions were threatening to come up again although I could only see half of her face. She was the person who had brought me up since Father passed away. She took care of me from 13 to 18 years of my age all by herself. Unfortunately, she passed away before I started working and never got even to enjoy her life. My tears started pouring as I said, "Granny, I''m back." 707 Let’s Get Married In first person point of view Ever since I started working, I have never expected what would it be like if my parents and Grandmother were still alive. I never thought that it would happen with the help of the heart-glimpsing rune. I could not resist the happiness in my heart. Although I knew this was not real, I indulged in it anyway. We had dumplings for lunch as a happy family, and I could not help but feel that this was bliss. Although I lost myself in front of Granny, she did not dwell on it after I came up with an excuse. She was a smart lady, not even telling my parents about me crying in front of her. She also got me out of the awkward situation when Mother asked me about my red eyes at the table. "I got Xiao Mu Tou to bring me my stuff, and something got into his eyes." I stayed at my parents'' place during the weekend, enjoying the family reunion that I had lost for 20 years in this familiar yet unfamiliar house. After dinner on Sunday, I hailed a cab and went back to my place. The two days brought back most of the memories of my job scope at work. On Monday morning, I went into my office early as I wanted to spend more time familiarizing with my work. Since the heart-glimpsing rune''s script was written this way, I had to go with it instead of quitting my job. As soon as one portion of the script went wrong, it would create a domino effect, and many uncontrollable things would be affected. Following the script gave me an idea of what the story was going to turn out like as well as the techniques to work with the flow. Things would become unpredictable if I changed the script on my own. It was 7 a.m. I got to the office and found my seat immediately. It took me a while to recall my computer password. After I logged into the computer, I looked at what had I been working on recently. Although it was unfamiliar, I got used to the computer soon and found my work list on a spreadsheet. I then started checking the documents following the list. When it was 7.40 a.m, Xiao Wang from our group had arrived. He greeted me as soon as he saw me. "Bro Lin, you''re here." I nodded at him and proceeded with my work. There were six teams in the sales and marketing team. I was one of the team leaders, a supervisor with eight employees under my watch. After taking some time to familiarize with my work, I looked at the contact list for each department on the table and matched their names with their faces in my head. After thorough preparation, I did not expose anything. Soon, one week had passed, and I had completely adapted to work. I went to see my parents during the weekends. As we had dinner on Saturday night, Mother came up with an awkward topic out of nowhere. "Xiao Mu Tou, you aren''t young anymore. You''re already 25. It''s time to get a girlfriend and think about marriage." I was stunned to hear that, and this popped into my head: "Would marriage change the story?" I smiled as I nodded. "I want that too, but first, I''ll need to find someone suitable." "I heard about this lady that your Aunt Liu knows. She''s half a year younger than you, and she''s a newbie at work. She''s pretty cute." Mother grinned. "Are you interested in meeting her?" "It depends if she wants to see me." I knew that Mother could not wait for me to get married. "It''s Sunday tomorrow. You can meet her tomorrow if you want." Mother clearly could not wait anymore. "Alright then, I''ll meet her." Lin Huang did not have any opinion on marriage. Since this was how the story developed, he thought he should see her anyway as it could be crucial to the story. After agreeing to meet the lady, Mother called Aunt Liu without even doing the dishes after dinner. The lady agreed to meet us as well. The next morning, I arrived at the cafe that we were meeting 20 minutes earlier. I waited patiently after ordering a cup of coffee. We had agreed to meet at 9 a.m. I saw a familiar person walking towards the cafe when it was 8.50 a.m. The girl wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a pair of jeans. She had a ponytail and sunglasses that covered half of her face. She carried a khaki brown handbag, and I found her attire refreshing during the summer season. I was just as shocked as she was when she saw me upon entering the cafe. She hesitated before walking towards me as she took off her sunglasses. "Long time no see" I did not expect to see the girl that I once wanted to kiss and had allowed me to. "I didn''t expect to see you as well." Zhang Yan sat down. Silence came between the both of us. I had no idea what to say while she seemed to be awkward as well. "When did you come back?" I decided to break the ice with a safe topic. "I just came back a month ago." Zhang Yan peeked at me secretly from under her glasses "Yanyan Let''s get married." I did not know how that slipped out of my lips, but I really did not want to let go of the girl that I had spent almost two years with. If I had to marry someone on Earth, she would be the perfect girl. Zhang Yan became silent again as she seemed to be hesitating. "I''ll spend more time with you at home. I''ll try to decline unnecessary entertainment." I knew very well why had she left me. "You promise?" Zhang Yan''s eyes lit up. "I promise!" I nodded hard. "Promise me. We''ll get married, have two kids, and grow old with them." Zhang Yan giggled as she covered her mouth. "You''re still so silly." "Promise me, okay?" I looked at her passionately. I had never wanted to spend my life with a person as much as this before. "You didn''t even get a ring! Hmph!" Zhang Yan pouted and looked away. "Erm, I didn''t know that I would propose today" I panicked and stood up immediately. "You wait here. I''ll go buy one!" "Buy what?" "The ring!" "Do you think I''ll say yes if you buy the ring?" Zhang Yan smirked. "You" I was stunned, but I caught her mischievous expression. "I don''t care. I''ll buy it even if you say no! If you don''t say yes today, I''ll ask you again tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. I''ll propose to you every day!" "You sure you want to stick with me for the rest of your life?" Zhang Yan smiled. "I''m sure. I know you''re the one," I said in all seriousness. "Then I do." Light shone in her eyes as she recollected our beautiful memories. 708 My Life In first person point of view I decided to make up to my regrets since it was a test from the heart-glimpsing rune. I knew how devastated I was when my parents and Granny passed away, not to mention breaking up with Zhang Yan. Those were the reasons for my lack of confidence. I could only set myself free if I completely got over it, so I decided to follow my heart and propose to Zhang Yan. My parents did not expect me to marry Zhang Yan as they thought it was our first time meeting each other. My parents and Granny had passed away when I started dating Zhang Yan, so they did not get to meet her. In this parallel world, perhaps the heart-glimpsing altered my memories when it was writing the script because Zhang Yan had never met my parents. After informing them that we had been dating for two years, they realized that our wanting to get married was not a hasty decision. After they met each other, the wedding date was soon decided. It was the 7th of July, the Chinese Valentine''s day. The wedding was well prepared to be held two and a half months later. Time passed by quickly, and soon it was the big day. Zhang Yan wore a white wedding dress like an elegant swan among everyone else. Fortunately, I was not a toad. If I may say so, I looked like a black swan in a black suit. We exchanged rings in the presence of our friends and families as witnesses. I felt a great sense of achievement as I put the wedding band on her beautiful ring finger. During our two years of dating, I had considered spending my life with this girl more than twice. I did not expect that my dream would come true with the heart-glimpsing rune. My parents and Granny were still alive, I was married to the love of my life, and I had no regrets in my life. However, I was well aware that I was still in a story. It had been going too smoothly; it was almost perfect. Until now, I had no idea what the heart-glimpsing rune test was about. At the end of the night, Zhang Yan and I went back to our wedding room after sending our friends and families off. As we turned off the light, the bright moonlight glowed on the bed through the balcony sliding door. My heart almost stopped beating when I saw Zhang Yan taking off her clothes under the moonlight. Her skin was as fair as snow, and she looked like she was glowing. I was utterly indulging in the moment, forgetting everything about the heart-glimpsing rune On the second morning, I felt like I had forgotten something when I woke up from the bed. I could not recall anything, but I had a terrible headache from a hangover as well as an unrealistic sense of reality. "Lin Zhi, come drink this honey ginger tea." Zhang Yan brought a glass over. I took the cup and had a sip, smirking when I look at her. "I think you should call me something else now, wife?" Zhang Yan blushed as she bent down and looked into my eyes. "Okay, my husband!" "Come, kiss your husband now," I teased and got closer to her. "No, you haven''t washed your face." Zhang Yan pouted like she was disgusted with me. "Oh no, my head is hurting." I pretended. "Drink this. It''ll help with your hangover." Zhang Yan knew how bad hangovers made me feel. "I''ll drink it if you kiss me," I insisted playfully. As soon as her warm lips touched my face, she stood up and looked at me angrily. "Finish it, don''t leave a single drop behind!" "Alright, my wife." I finished the drink once and for all. I even licked the last few drops at the bottom of the cup. "I think I''ll need to sterilize the cup" Zhang Yang pretended to be repelled as she picked up the cup with two fingers and left to the kitchen. We entered our honeymoon period. Since we had dated for two years, we knew other so well that we could understand each other just with a single glance. I completely indulged myself in this sweet life, losing all semblance of what was real and what was fake anymore. I had even forgotten about Xiao Hei, Bai, Charcoal, Tyrant I had forgotten about Life Power, Sword Skill, Telekinesis, Witchcraft I had forgotten that my parents and Granny had left me When I woke up every morning, I would feel that something was missing, but I could not put a finger on what that was. Three months into our marriage, Zhang Yan got pregnant. I stopped fretting about what was missing. The happiness of fatherhood occupied my heart, my head, and even my soul. Zhang Yan gave birth to a son when she was nine months pregnant. Our creation of love made us even happier than ever. It was challenging to bring a child up, but we managed to get through it. To be exact, there was more happiness than pain. My wife was pregnant again when our son was almost one. It was a daughter this time. Our kids grew up, and our life was finally much more relaxed when they went to kindergarten. I got promoted and became the department manager while my wife started working again. Our life was getting better day by day. The only bad news that I had was that Granny passed away. On the day she passed away, some unsettling images flashed vaguely through my head. However, the images disappeared immediately, so I did not figure them out. Time was passing by swiftly, and our kids grew up from kindergarten, primary school, junior high, high school, and university. My wife and I had finally completed our role in bringing our kids up. They then started working, and we did not have to worry about them anymore. It was then that I realized that time had flown by. My wife and I were old. Our hair was getting gray Father passed away the day our son got married. There was an odd image that flashed in my head again, but it disappeared quickly. I did not manage to figure out what it was. Our daughter got married later on, and we soon had grandkids, followed by Mother passing away Although our life was getting better, my wife and I were getting older day by day. She passed away when she was 87. Our marriage lasted for 62 years, but our love could not fight the fate of life Many images flashed in my head the day she passed away, but I was drowning in the pain of losing her and treated those images as ridiculous hallucinations. Losing a person that you have spent 62 years with was like your soul being wrenched away, and you felt completely alone After my wife passed away, my health went downhill. I would dream of my wife whenever I closed my eyes. Not sure if I was not feeling well, I was eating less, and I was becoming weaker. Although my kids tried to help me, I could not stop time from making me older. I woke up from a coma on the hospital bed, and I had an oxygen mask on my face. I knew I did not have much time left. "Dad" My son''s eyes were red, and I knew he had been crying. My daughter was holding my hand. "Dad, are you trying to tell us something?" I tried my very best to nod. The tiniest movement made me tired. Taking the oxygen mask off, they came closer to me. "Dad, speak to us. We''re listening." I tried my very best to speak, but my voice was low and weak. "I have no regrets in this life" After saying that, I felt like I had lost all my strength. As I stared at the white hospital ceiling, I felt my body was drowning as though I was falling somewhere. "I think I forgot something. What''s that?" Suddenly, an odd thought came into my head. I was trying to think about what I had overlooked. I heard my son and daughter sobbing in the hospital room as well as somebody else wailing. However, the sound was getting further away like it was being isolated. Images started flashing through my head. My father opening the door for me, Mother sorting our vegetables in the kitchen, Granny watching TV in the room, my wife''s fair skin under the moonlight Wait, why were those memories starting from when I was 25? What had happened to my memories before that? I thought that it was odd. Suddenly, another reel of images started playing. It was a rainy night when I was 9 and completing my homework in the house. The phone was ringing. My father ran out of the house like a lunatic after answering the phone without bringing an umbrella with him. He looked devastated when he got home. I only found out from my Granny that Mother was not coming back the next day. When I was 13, I went to junior high. My class teacher called me when I was revising at school. "Lin Huang, something''s happened to your dad. Let me send you home." Granny was crying when I got home. I kept asking my class teacher what had happened and soon found out that my father had a heart attack. It was too late when he was sent to the hospital. When I was 19, and at school, I got a phone call from my aunt saying that Granny had passed away When I was 24, Zhang Yan called and broke up with me I was doubtful that of all these images that were completely different from the reality I had been living in. "Where did all these memories come from?! Why is the timeline wrong?" My body was getting heavier as images looped in my head like a movie. Every detail was clear from the beginning to the end. Just when I felt like I was falling into an abyss, a subtly familiar name flashed in my head. "Xiao Hei?" As the name came up, more and more names appeared in my mind. "Bai, Charcoal, Tyrant, Kylie" "Oh yeah, my name is Lin Huang. I''ve Life Power in me. I also have Telekinesis and Witchcraft. I know the Sword Skill and flying daggers. I can also summon monsters I''m now in a virtual world that the heart-glimpsing rune has created!" As that thought came to me starkly, the feeling of falling completely disappeared. There was a bright light ahead, and the dark world started to shatter. A moment later, my consciousness returned to my body. I realized that I was standing in front of a stone tablet. A golden glow shot out of the stone tablet and went in between my eyebrows. 709 The Sorcerer Goddess Shrine Key Lin Huang looked lost as he stood before the stone tablet. The effect of the heart-glimpsing rune felt like he had just been given an opportunity to relive his life. He had been aware in the beginning and kept reminding himself that it was a virtual world that the heart-glimpsing rune had created. However, he completely fell for it on the night he and Zhang Yan got married. He forgot about what had happened in reality and could not pull himself together as he drowned himself in the virtual world. As his family passed away one by one, the truth was revealing itself but was soon covered by the heart-glimpsing rune quickly. The death of Zhang Yan was actually the best time for him to break free from the heart-glimpsing rune. However, he had been in too much pain that he thought the images that flashed through his mind were just some hallucinations as a result of not resting. He realized that he was trapped in the world that the heart-glimpsing rune created when he realized that he had no recollection of his memories before the age of 25 when he was dying. Those realistic memories were a paradox to prove that the virtual world was not real. When Lin Huang realized that, the virtual world started to crash in, revealing the true reality that Lin Huang was in. "Was I in the dream or was the dream in me?" Lin Huang forced a grim smile. The heart-glimpsing rune was terrifying. The script that it had written for him was the kind of life that he had been dreaming of on Earth, a life without any regrets. He had fallen for it completely and almost lost himself. "You passed?!" The large face was shocked. "I''ve always thought that no matter how powerful you are, you''d definitely fail this." "The heart-glimpsing rune is really scary. I fell for it without even realizing it." Lin Huang had goosebumps as he thought about it. The soft approach from the heart-glimpsing rune was much more terrifying than powerful monsters as one would fall into the trap without even knowing. "Do you know that nobody has ever broken through the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower since the tower was built? Nobody in our epoch could do it," the face told Lin Huang truthfully. "The Sorcerer Goddess herself wrote this heart-glimpsing rune on the ninth level, not only does it reflect a person''s deepest fear, but also their greatest regrets. As soon as the rune is activated, nobody can get out from the trap. Well, you''re the first one who has ever gotten out of it." "Actually, I fell into the trap too" Lin Huang moved his lips, but he did not say that out loud. He then smiled forcefully while shaking his head and changed the topic. "I was told that once a person passes the test on the ninth level, the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine will be activated? And that I''ll also get a reward from the Sorcerer Goddess?" "Yes, you might be able to obtain the Sorcerer Goddess inheritance as well," the face added. "If you manage to obtain the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance, you might help us to get out of here." "But the world will perish from the monsters coming out of the abyss, so wouldn''t it be more dangerous for you guys to leave this place?" "You might not understand that freedom is more important than life to us. We''ve been trapped here for more than 30,000 years. We''re always looking out at a piece of land with snow," the huge face sighed as he said. "Not everyone has the patience to stand the loneliness of 30,000 years. Some people decided to kill themselves, and some went crazy while others started wars" Lin Huang became silent and only spoke again a while later. "I understand now, so what should I do next?" "The golden glow that went in between your eyebrows was the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. As soon as you insert your energy into the key, you''ll activate the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine," the face continued, "But I hope that you don''t activate it now. Give us a day or two to prepare ourselves and activate it after that." "Why?" Lin Huang could not understand. He did not have much time left there, so it made sense for him to want to activate the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine earlier to get his reward. "As soon as the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is activated, it''ll be open to the public for ten days. According to their combat levels, all of the holy fire- and immortal-levels will come in. We hope that you only activate it after we''ve prepared ourselves so that we can enter right away without wasting any time." The gigantic face requested in embarrassment. "Then again, of course, you can activate it if you''re in a rush." "Since it doesn''t really make any difference as it''ll be open to the public after activation, I''ll wait two days." Lin Huang thought it was necessary to decline his request, but he had his doubts. "Since anybody can enter the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine after it''s activated, does that mean that it doesn''t matter who holds the key?" "Of course, it''s different. The person with the key will be sent directly into the shrine to pick a Sorcerer Goddess''s treasure of the person''s choice as well as to look at the Sorcerer Goddess tablet. Not only that, the person will be able to control some of the doors in the shrine while the rest will have to enter from the entrance." "Alright, I understand now. Prepare yourself as well as you can within the next two days and inform me once you guys are ready. Then, I''ll activate the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine." Lin Huang nodded since Bai Gu, and the rest had taken such good care of him during his visit. "Thanks, I''ll inform the leader. You can practice on this level within these two days. We''ll inform you as soon as we''re ready." The face was glad to find out that Lin Huang was a grateful person. As the large face disappeared, Lin Huang sat down with his legs crossed on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. The thick spirit energy had accelerated his Army Attack Tactics rotation in his body, so he focused on that since he had nothing to do for the next two days. The rotation speed was tens of time faster than before. If the speed had been like a flowing stream before, it was now like an angry, flushing river. His collection of skill card pieces accelerated at a pace that could be seen with the naked eye. Meanwhile, the face had contacted Bai Gu outside the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. "You mean the young man really passed the test on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower?" Bai Gu was shocked to find out about that. He did not expect that to happen at all. He thought he would just let Lin Huang try to break through the Sorcerer Goddess Tower and had never expected him to get beyond the third level and above. However, Lin Huang was a living miracle who managed to pass through again and again. To be honest, he was surprised to discover that Lin Huang had broken through the seventh level, but he did not expect the young man to go all the way to the ninth level. Now, he had even broken through the ninth level which was out of everyone''s expectations. "I saw the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine key go in between his eyebrows with my own eyes. It has to be real." The gigantic face was sure of it. "He''s agreed to give us two days to prepare. Should we inform the other tribes? They''ll realize something''s happening if we don''t move quickly. "The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine being activated is something huge. There''s no way that we can hide it. It doesn''t matter if we enter the shrine one or two days before the others do. They''ll lose hope in us if we do that. Let''s just inform them and work together. If they want to fight, then we shall entertain them. It''s not like we''ve never done that before since we''ve been here tens of thousands of years." Although Bai Gu nonchalantly said that, he still sounded upset. "I''m afraid this Lin Huang kid might be targeted by many. We''ll have to try our best to protect him" 710 The Opening of Sorcerer Goddess Shrine Soon, two days passed. Lin Huang had been practicing his Army Attack Tactics throughout the two days. The spirit energy on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower was hundreds of times thicker than the outside. The regular one hour of practice would get him more than 3,000 skill card pieces, but now that the speed of rotation was more than 20 times faster in the tower, he could get 80,000 skill card pieces in an hour. Having practiced the Army Attack Tactics besides eating and sleeping for those two days, he obtained more than 2.4 million card pieces, but he was still far away from obtaining 10 million card pieces to get to level 10 of the skill. If it were not for the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, he would rather start there until he broke through to level 10. However, the large face appeared on the morning of the third day. "Hi, Lin, we''re ready now. You can activate the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine anytime you want. To avoid trouble, we didn''t tell anyone about your identity. We''ve even used a unique way to spread the news whereby no other tribe will know where this news is coming from. Nobody knows that you''re the one who''s going to enter the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine and nobody knows that you''ve broken through the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower and are holding the key with you. However, to be honest, you might be in trouble as you''ve managed to get into the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine with your current combat level, so we''re suggesting you that you try your best to sneak out as soon you''ve taken your reward from the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine." "Thanks for reminding me, Sir. I''ll know what to do." Lin Huang nodded. As the gigantic face disappeared, a golden token floated out of his head. The token was as large as half a fist with a carving of a lady in a dress standing sideways on top of a giant rock. There was an odd Witchcraft Rune at the back of it with complicated rune lines. There were some lines that he had never seen before. He could not tell what the effect of the rune was. The token was naturally the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. The instruction flooded into his head as he thought of it. He then inserted his Life Power into the token slowly. Soon, the token expanded into a golden whirlpool that was three meters in diameter. Without hesitation, Lin Huang stepped into the whirlpool. The whirlpool disappeared as soon as he stepped into it. The face appeared slowly on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower and looked at the direction of the golden whirlpool. As he appeared, a tall and skinny person stood next to him. "Hopefully, this kid can leave this place alive" The face looked concerned. "How far he''ll go depends on him. Whether he''ll die, escape alive, or obtain the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance" Bai Gu said slowly. "Leader, do you think that he''ll obtain the Sorcerer Goddess inheritance?" The large face was surprised. "I don''t know about that, but I know that the force is with him and he might be able to change the fate of the new epoch." Bai Gu gazed at the direction of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. "You looked into his future?" The gigantic face asked immediately. "I tried, but I couldn''t see anything. He might have a relic with him or something else that''s even more powerful than that and can''t be penetrated." Bai Gu still remembered the day his investigation stopped and when his soul was almost harmed as a result. "If he really had such treasure with him, he should be able to protect himself," the face sighed. "But would it be a good thing for the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance to fall into the hands of an outsider?" Bai Gu then looked at the gigantic face. "The Sorcerer Goddess decided to leave her inheritance here, and she wouldn''t mind who inherits it. To us, it''s good news as long as it doesn''t fall into those lunatics'' hands." "It''s the first time the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is being activated for the past tens of thousands of years. Those lunatics would definitely go for the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance." The face viewed the matter negatively. "If they manage to get that, they''ll definitely come for us." "Don''t be such a pessimist. There''ll be so many of us. We don''t know who''ll last until the end," Bai Gu said. Suddenly, a white glow shot into the sky. The entire floating land started shaking. Bai Gu and the gigantic face looked at the direction of the light pillar. In reality, besides Bai Gu and the face, all the living things on the floating land sensed the source of the light. Although those who were far away could not see the light pillar, they peered at the direction like a large-scale worshipping was going on. All the human teams who entered the floating land felt the tremendous phenomenon. "Must be something good! Let''s go!" "It must be. Let''s get there as soon as we can before everyone else does!" "There must be wealth at risk. Let''s just bet our lives on it!" The human teams, who had no idea about the existence of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, joined the adventure. The floating land became crowded. Thousands of beings surrounded the light pillar that was in the middle of the floating island including different types of toys, rotten samples, corpses, and humans. If Lin Huang had been there, he would recognize that he had met most of the people there as they were the two teams from the Union Government as well as the team from Dynasty. However, the tribes were not surprised by their existence. They did not even bother to look at them. "The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is really open!" A scary, middle-aged man looked at the light pillar and mumbled to himself. As the light pillar was disappearing, the ground was shaking even more like something was going to burst out of the ground. Sensing that, almost everyone retreated hundreds of meters away while waiting for what would emerge out of the ground patiently. Time passed by, and the land that was covered in snow collapsed while a gigantic building made of ice crystals surfaced from the ground and floated hundreds of meters from the ground. It was a massive shrine! Following the sudden and bizarre emergence of the shrine, the wind and the snow stopped completely while the thick clouds faded away, revealing sunshine that had not appeared in a long time. 711 Sorcerer Goddess Blood Lin Huang appeared in a shrine when he walked out of the golden whirlpool. It was crystal white around him with gusts of chilly wind all around. "Is this ice crystal?" He could not help but touch a pillar near him. A striking chill blasted out of the pillar, confirming his speculation. The shrine seemed to be made of the frost attribute and was probably created by powerful people. Added with the powerful Witchcraft Rune as well as a long period of cultivation, this shrine was as powerful as a god relic. Just as Lin Huang managed to find his footing, the ground started to shake. His feet detached from the ground and floated tens of centimeters off ground. The trembling continued, but that did not affect him anymore. He ignored it and started to observe the area around him This shrine was made of compressed ice crystals. There were countless Witchcraft Runes carved on the walls, pillars, ceiling, and even on the ground. Lin Huang was dizzy from just looking at them. However, he noticed that the dozen ice crystal cases were arranged in circle. Just when he wanted to check them out, a familiar female voice was heard. "As a challenger who''s broken through the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, you can pick any of the treasures as your reward." Lin Huang was shocked to hear that as the voice sounded familiar. He looked at the source of voice and saw a lady in a white dress appearing from thin air. She looked like she was only 20 years young. She was short at only 160 centimeters with black waist-length hair. She wore a white dress and was barefooted. She had a face as pretty as a porcelain doll with skin as white as snow. She was flawless. "Who are you?" Lin Huang asked carefully. Although the lady was beautiful, her appearance was rather strange. "Don''t you recognize my voice?" The lady smiled mischievously at Lin Huang. "Your voice" Lin Huang was stunned as he recalled that it was the voice who had explained the instructions whenever his consciousness was taken out of the tower. "You''re the person who explained the rules on the Sorcerer Goddess Tower?" "Yes, that''s me. My name is Wu Mo, but this is only my consciousness as I''m dead," Wu Mo said in a sad but composed manner. Looking at the barefooted lady in white, Lin Huang thought of something and summoned the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine key. He then compared the lady that was carved on the token and looked at Wu Mo. "You''re the owner of the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine?" Lin Huang was shocked. The side profile of the lady carved on the token looked exactly the same as the lady standing in front of him. "Busted." Wu Mo smiled without confirming her identity. Of course, Lin Huang knew that the owner of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine was the Sorcerer Goddess herself. Wu Mo was the True God who had moved this piece of land into the sky above the Peaceful Ocean 30,000 years ago. Lin Huang had his own idea of how a True God in the middle epoch would look like, but he did not expect her to appear as the 20-year-old lady standing in front of him. She did not look like she had the power of a god. In fact, she seemed more like a cute, mischievous person. "Master Sorcerer Goddess" Lin Huang did not dare to be rude after confirming her identity. Although it was just her consciousness, killing him would only need a flick of her finger. "I hate people calling me Master. That makes me sound old. You can call me Momo. All of my friends used to call me that." Wu Mo did not sound like a True God at all. "I don''t think that''s proper. You''re a Master after all," Lin Huang answered shyly. "It''s just an address. Don''t take it so seriously." "If you think that it''s rude to call me by my name, you can call me Sis Momo then." "Alright then." Since she insisted, Lin Huang decided to go with it. "Sis Momo, did you say that I can pick any one of the treasures that I like here?" "Yes, all 12 items in the shrine are god-level treasures. Because you''ve broken through the ninth level on the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, you can pick any one of them as your reward." Wu Mo nodded. "Sis Momo, do you have any suggestion?" Lin Huang was playing it smart. "I can''t do that, you''ll have to decide yourself." Wu Mo shook her head and stayed silent. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang walked to the cases and looked carefully at the items one by one. Suddenly, Xiao Hei spoke, "Pick the blood of the True God!" Lin Huang was surprised to hear its comment. He walked around but did not see any liquid blood in any of the cases, so he contacted Xiao Hei in his mind. "I don''t see it." "The purplish-gold crystal that''s the size of a fist." Lin Huang turned around and looked at the irregular crystal that he had seen earlier. He walked slowly to the case and observed it before he then contacted Xiao Hei once again. "This looks more like a piece of mineral. Shouldn''t blood be in liquid form? Or is the blood hiding in the mineral?" "Not that it''s hiding inside. The entire crystal is the blood of the True God. As soon as the blood gets out of the body, it solidifies into a crystal." "Are you sure about that?" Lin Huang was still skeptical. "I''ll remove myself from you and get you a better Goldfinger if I''m wrong." "Oh, alright then. I trust you." Lin Huang stopped doubting after hearing what Xiao Hei said. "Don''t you want to seize this opportunity to get a better Goldfinger? You won''t have the opportunity again if you miss this one. I suggest that you consider it. There''re many Goldfingers that are more powerful than me. Some of them can be upgraded after killing a couple of Swine Beasts, while some of them are powerful since the beginning where even an ordinary person will be able to slap a god to death" "Never mind, I''ve gotten used to you." Lin Huang scratched his nose to cover the white lie that he had just told. "Alright then, I was messing with you. In reality, no traveller can change the Goldfinger that they''re assigned. Also, God is an existence from the level-3 of the life level. Stop using your limited brain capacity to craft how a higher life should look like." Lin Huang was speechless. "Have you picked one?" Wu Mo was curious as she watched Lin Huang standing before the purplish-gold crystal without moving. "Yes, I''m picking this one." Lin Huang nodded and pointed at the crystal. "Are you sure?" Wu Mo asked. "Yes!" "Alright then, as you wish!" Wu Mo said and placed her palm on top of the case. The case that was sealed with ice broke as Wu Mo caught the fist-size purplish-gold crystal in her hand. She then flicked it into Lin Huang''s chest. 712 The Conditions to Enter the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine "You''ve obtained the blood of the True God. Would you like to turn it into a card?" "Will this thing be restricted after it becomes a card due to my combat level?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Yes, the card will be sealed immediately." "Then, I shan''t make it into a card at the moment." Lin Huang then looked at Wu Mo after declining Xiao Hei''s request. "Sis Momo, I understand that I''ll obtain your inheritance here besides the reward, won''t I?" "That''s right, but my inheritance isn''t that easy to get." Wu Mo cunningly grinned at Lin Huang. "I''ll give it a try whether I can get it or not. I might be able to get it." Lin Huang smiled back. "Follow me," Wu Mo said and left. Lin Huang caught up to her immediately. After walking not far away, he saw a familiar charcoal grey stone tablet. It looked exactly like the one at the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. Wu Mo pointed at the stone tablet and looked at Lin Huang as they stood before it. "You know what you need to do." It was a sealing rune that was made of complicated rune lines that Lin Huang recognized immediately. Wu Mo spoke again as he was ready to decode the rune, "This is a Ten Thousand Sealing Rune. Over time after you decode it, there''ll be a new sealing rune which appears. It''ll only be decoded entirely after 10,000 times. If you fail in the middle, you''ll have to start from the beginning again. It''ll be a completely new set of runes that are different from what you''ve decoded before, so it''s best if you go through it once instead of doing it all over again. "Also, you''re only given 30 seconds to decode each rune. You''ll have to start over again if you take more than that. As soon as you decode each rune within 30 seconds, the new rune will appear instead of waiting for the 30 seconds to be up." Wu Mo added after she was done with the conditions, "You can get your little pet monster to help. It''s allowed since your summoning monsters are also one of your abilities." It was clear that Wu Mo had already seen Bloody at the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. There was nothing that Lin Huang should hide, so he summoned Bloody immediately. "Let me try first. I''ll ask for your help if I can''t manage to do it," Lin Huang said to Bloody. Bloody looked at Wu Mo who was standing aside without saying anything. It nodded, then wrapped itself around his left wrist while Lin Huang started drawing the decoding rune on the stone tablet with his right hand. He completed the first decoding rune successfully in less than 20 seconds. As the first sealing rune faded away, the second one appeared automatically. Now Lin Huang knew that what Wu Mo had said about the Ten Thousand Sealing Runes was real as the second sealing rune appeared immediately. Just as soon as he managed to decode the second one in 22 seconds, the third one appeared. Lin Huang decoded them one by one patiently and carefully since a single error in stroke would break the entire rune. Time was passing by in the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine, but he had no idea what was happening outside. Even if he did, he did not have the time to do anything about it. A female voice was heard as the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine drifted into the air and the shaking stopped. All of the people below heard her crystal-clear. "The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine welcomes all holy fire- and immortal-levels to enter. Those whose combat level don''t qualify will be killed without mercy if you come in by force! Those who are hiding or suppressing your combat level can try if you''re not afraid to die." Many of the tribal members turned around and fled as they were afraid to become targets while some of them stood where they were without moving. "Those who are qualified to come in may enter the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine after I''m done explaining the conditions of the assessments. "There are a dozen external shrines around the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine with an assessment each. You''ll only be able to go to the next one after you''ve passed the assessment. All challengers who pass the 12 external shrines are eligible to enter. "There''re 12 god-level treasures inside. Besides the one that was taken away by the activator of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, the remaining 11 will be randomly given out to those who manage to break through the 12 external shrines. If more than 11 people pass, the one who comes later won''t receive any of the treasures. That being said, only the first 11 who breakthrough will be rewarded with the treasure." Many people became excited when they heard about the treasure, but they proceeded to listen patiently. After all, it was the first time the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine was open, so nobody knew what the conditions of entering were. It would be a pity if any of them accidentally broke the conditions and were disqualified. "There''s something that I must emphasize here. No fighting is allowed in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. Nobody is allowed to use any techniques to interrupt anybody. Whoever picks a fight or interferes will be disqualified immediately. Besides being sent out of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, the treasure will be confiscated, and the troublemaker will be blacklisted from the entering the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine forever. If the person tries to enter the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine again, he will be killed without mercy!" Although fighting was harshly punishable in there, it also meant that they were allowed to fight outside. Many of them managed to read between the lines. Those who planned to rob treasures from others had to come up with another plan. "The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine will be opened for ten days. Throughout this period, all of the people who qualify may enter and exit the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine as they wish. The shrine will be closed ten days later. Everyone, including the activator, will be sent out of the shrine no matter which level they are on. "If anybody manages to get the Sorcerer Goddess inheritance within ten days, the person will have the right to handle the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine whereby he or she will have the right to decide whether to close the shrine and send everyone out" Wu Mo read out the conditions to everyone clearly although she was nowhere to be seen. After that, she answered everyone''s questions one by one and eventually announced, "The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is officially open. All those of you who are qualified to come in may enter the door to the first shrine to join the assessment!" As Wu Mo said that, thousands of people thronged the entrance of the first shrine like a swarm of locusts. 713 The Challenge Has Begun! As the challengers entered the first shrine, they soon realized that they were not inside a shrine, but it was more like they were being sent to a corner of the ruins. There was snow everywhere, and the place seemed to be an endless sprawl of white while heavy snow fell from above. Many of them were stunned, but they soon realized that instead of having been sent somewhere, it was, in fact, the first shrine of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. They did not care whether it was an illusion or if the space was imbued with special effects as the most important thing was the content of the assessment. As soon as the 4,000-odd people entered, Wu Mo''s voice came from above again. "Welcome to the first level of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine! Since the first batch has arrived, let me explain what this level is going to be like. "In this level, you''ll be tested on your personal ability. There''ll be a monster horde soon in which the least powerful creature will be an immortal-level rank-1 and the most powerful will be an imperial-level black gold-level." "There are three conditions to passing the level. The first is to survive the monster horde. The second is to kill 5,000 monsters in the ten hours, and the last one will be to kill ten imperial-level black gold-rank monsters in the ten hours. You''ll have to fulfill all three conditions to pass the level. Those who fail will be sent out of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine and won''t be allowed in anymore. "You''re allowed to work together with the others on this level, but the number of monsters killed will be calculated individually. The person who manages to kill the monsters eventually will be considered the killer. No matter how much damage you''ve done to the targeted monsters, the tally won''t belong to you as long as you''re not the one who killed the monster." Everyone was excited to hear that they could work together, but they became upset when they heard the last rule. According to the method of calculation, there would definitely be conflict among the teams as everyone would want to be the last who killed the monster. Those who failed to do so would be bumped off. As long as there was conflict among the teams, the possibility of being disqualified was high. After all, since they would have to kill 5,000 monsters in ten hours, that would mean that everyone would have to kill a monster in 7.2 seconds on average. A couple of minutes of conflict would affect their efficiency significantly. Therefore, the teams had to plan among themselves properly before the assessment started to prevent any friction happening. "Don''t be afraid. Don''t worry that you''ll die in this assessment. This is just a space for your consciousness. Your consciousness will return to your body after you die," Wu Mo reminded. "That''s all from me. You can ask whatever questions that you may have now before the assessment starts." Among the crowd, a man in a Union Government military uniform raised his hand. "If I managed to kill 5,000 monsters and ten imperial-level monsters before the ten hours ends, will I be exempted from the first condition and head to the second shrine right away?" "No, you''ll have to fulfill all three conditions to pass the level." This time, a member of the Dynasty spoke. Up, "Since this level is restricted to ten hours, that means that everyone who passes will be sent to the second shrine after the ten hours has passed without any difference in time. I''d like to know if there''ll be many levels with time restrictions like this. If yes, doesn''t that mean it''ll be difficult to have any time difference between each challenger?" "Including the first level, there are only two levels that have a time restriction, so as long as you have sufficient ability, you don''t have to worry about the time difference." A couple of people asked their questions after that, and Wu Mo answered them one by one. "Alright, if there are no more questions, you guys may start the assessment now." As Wu Mo said that, the monster horde advanced from far away. Apart from some of them, most of the challengers teamed up with people that they were familiar with. It was a monster horde after all, and besides some of the powerful people, it was hard for the rest to survive on their own. Teaming up would increase their survival rate. However, the conflict started after the teams were formed. "There are five of us. The efficiency will be poor if we take turns to kill one at a time. So, do the remaining four just watch while one person kills the monsters? I think this is such a waste of time!" "What do you suggest? Help one person to kill all 5,000 monsters and the next person will continue after that? If that''s the case, do you think the person who has fulfilled the mission will have the strength to help the next person? We only have ten hours. It''s possible for the first four people to complete the mission within the time limit, but what about the fifth person? Who can guarantee that the fifth person will fulfill the condition? And who is willing to be the fifth person?" Everyone on the team became silent as nobody was willing to be the last person. A moment later, a person put up his hand and suggested, "Why don''t each of us kill a hundred. The next person will go after the first person fulfills the 100 kills? This way, the last two people will be left with 100 monsters each, so it doesn''t really matter who goes last anymore." Everyone supported this suggestion, and many teams carried out the same strategy to minimize the conflict. Soon, the first monster horde finally arrived. Millions of monsters dashed towards them. They were mostly blue frost corpses on immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3. Although there were many monsters in this round of horde, the combat level of the monsters was considered low. However, everybody knew that the next horde would have more powerful monsters. "Since the monsters in this horde will be the least powerful, let''s not hold back and kill as many as we can since the later ones are more difficult to kill," a person said to his team members and the rest nodded. However, they were not the first team to think that way. Many of them had the same strategy. Before the monsters came closer, they initiated the attack by dashing into the horde and starting the massacre. Most of them who entered the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine were immortal-levels rank-7 to rank-9. The monsters that were on immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3 were like herds of goats entering the territory of tigers whereby the humans were on the winning side. It was not a battle anymore, but a one-sided grisly massacre! 714 A Powerful Challenger Not long into the first level of the challenge in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, a few challengers stood out. They did not form teams with anybody and just fought solo. None of the monsters that passed them managed to survive. They were like fishes swimming freely in water whereby none of the monsters could stop them from whatever they wanted to do. Moreover, they did not only kill one monster per attack. Instead, they were like Grim Reapers, exterminating everything that came their way. The first monster horde lasted for around two hours before the second one came. This time, there were immortal-levels rank-4 to rank-6 monsters. This stressed many of the teams as their efficiency significantly dropped while those who were weaker were injured, which affected their productivity even more. However, the few powerful lone rangers remained moving among the monsters, making it look like there was no difference with the first monster horde. The second horde also lasted for two hours before the third one came. This time, there were monsters of immortal-levels rank-7 to rank-9. Since the monsters were much more powerful, most of the challengers slowed down. At the same combat level, the number of monsters had far surpassed the number of challengers. The monsters could bring harm to most of the challengers, so they were more careful this time. Even the lone rangers who stood out experienced a significant drop in their efficiency. Previously, they could kill a bunch of monsters at once, but now they could only kill a couple or only one at a time. The third monster horde brought trouble to many of the teams. Some of them could not attack anymore and started defending themselves instead. Three minutes into the third monster horde, a challenger was killed by a monster and was disqualified. The team that lost their member failed in less than ten minutes later as their team members were killed and disqualified. It was just the beginning. Soon, the second and the third teams started to fall as well. In less than half an hour, seven teams had fallen, and 37 people were disqualified. It was not the end yet. After the seventh team was disqualified, so were the eighth and ninth teams. An hour into the third monster horde, 13 teams were disqualified. As the monster horde was coming to an end after close to two hours, 21 teams and more than 100 people were disqualified. As soon as the third monster horde ended, the fourth monster horde arrived. The imperial-level monsters were finally here. Gigantic Frostyape Corpses marched towards the challengers in a deadly manner. Besides imperial-level monsters, the number of monsters this time was a few times more than the third monster horde. It was even more than the three monster hordes added up as there were millions of them. Many of them were terrified when they saw the Frostyape Corpses. Even the tribe members who could transform into dolls were fearful of them. The Frostyape Corpses were not only mighty in terms of defense, but they also had terrifying strength too. Most of the imperial-level humans could not even break through the Frostyape Corpses'' defense, let alone kill them. However, a few of the challengers among them were fearless as they stared deadly at the Frostyape Corpses. "The whole carcass of a Frostyape Corpses can be sold at a high price, but it''s too bad that this is just virtual reality." A plump man from the Dynasty smiled grimly. "Whether you can sell them or not, killing ten of them is our mission," retorted a tall, skinny man next to him. "Let''s see who can kill faster!" "I don''t want to reveal my real ability here. You can look for someone else," the plump man said, smiling. "This is just a game that I play out of boredom. Nobody is asking you to reveal your real ability." The tall, skinny man pouted. "Don''t you know how I am? I''m not interested in all these games." The plump man smirked back. "If you really want to play, I think we can bet on the treasures in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. The loser will have to surrender his treasure to the winner. What do you think?" "F*ck off!" The tall, skinny man cursed. "You might not lose. Don''t you want to try?" The plump man smiled to the extent that his eyes became long, thin slits. The tall, skinny man glared at him and ignored him. He then shot out as a golden glow towards one of the Frostyape Corpses. As the man started forward, the other lone rangers picked their own Frostyape Corpses and dashed forward. Among the lone rangers, the plump man from the Dynasty was the last to attack. He seemed to be chilled as he ambled and blocked the way of a Frostyape Corpse. He then smiled as he looked at his target. "I''m sorry. You shall not pass." The Frostyape Corpse understood what he meant, and it slapped him without hesitation. The slap was terrifyingly fast with a scary chill as the air became frosty. As the slap reached the plump man, he stood where he was with his smile frozen on his face like he did not have the time to dodge the attack. However, as the slap was inches away from his head, he raised his hand. A golden glow flashed, and a gold battle sword appeared in his hand. He raised the sword slowly and placed the back of his sword on his shoulder as he covered his mouth with his left hand while yawning. "This level is so boring." Just as he uttered those words, the Frostyape Corpse stopped moving like it was frozen. The Frostyape Corpse''s palm stopped less than ten centimeters away from his head. Some of the challengers noticed the bizarre scene. "Why isn''t that Frostyape Corpse moving?" "Is this a space restraint?" All of a sudden, a blue crack appeared in between the Frostyape Corpse''s eyebrows. It was like a thread that was being pulled downwards that soon arrived at the Frostyape Corpse''s chin. Until then, blue fluid gushed out of the crack and exploded. Blue blood spurted everywhere like a fountain. The huge monster collapsed like a mountain. Above its neck, its head was cut in half like a watermelon in summer. 715 Increasing Difficulty With Each Level At the first shrine of the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine, the fourth monster horde arrived. It had completely revealed the true abilities of everybody there. The powerful challengers who got into the first echelon were those who went at it alone. They were also the people who dared to challenge the imperial-level monsters. Among these challengers, the plump man was not the only one who managed to kill the Frostyape Corpse in one hit, the skinny man who challenged him previously managed to complete a kill only mere seconds before him! Aside from the both of them who were from Dynasty, the other three from the Union Government managed to kill the Frostyape Corpse at breakneck speed as well! They were the five strongest humans there. Despite there being a large number of tribal members, none of them had the courage to fight the imperial-level monsters alone. Instead, they formed teams and fought the monsters together. Nobody knew if they were doing this to conceal their true abilities or if they were truly that weak. A few of the smaller teams that were formed to take on the imperial-level monsters managed to get into the second echelon. The abilities of each team member were on par with the Frostyape Corpse. However, they did not choose to fight the monsters alone. Instead, they banded together to take on the Frostyape Corpse as they struck several heavy blows and killed them. Although the monsters were not killed in a split second, they still managed to kill them quite quickly and completed a kill within two to three seconds on average. The party in the third echelon formed a team to kill the imperial-level monsters as well. However, they were apparently much weaker than those in the second echelon. The fight was not an easy one to them since they had to spend about 10 minutes to kill a Frostyape Corpse. The fourth echelon did not even intend to hunt down the Frostyape Corspe since they knew fairly well that they were incapable of defeating such monsters. Even if they could, they would be unable to complete 10 kills within the time limit. They knew that they would definitely be disqualified and they did not strive to survive. The fifth echelon was the weakest among the rest. They only managed to defend themselves against the monster horde and they would probably be disqualified at any time. They had no faith in themselves at all and were easily destroyed by the imperial-level Frostyape Corpse. The fourth monster horde lasted longer than the previous three. More than two hours had passed but it seemed like it was not going to stop anytime soon. Many of the teams from the fifth echelon were disqualified after the arrival of the monster horde, and some of the teams from the fourth echelon were disqualified as well. It was only at the fourth hour after the assessment had begun for exactly 10 hours, that the fourth monster horde finally ended. The monster troops transformed into glowing light and soon, they disappeared as the countdown ended. Wu Mo''s voice was heard in the air again. "There are only 312 challengers who fulfilled all three requirements and are qualified to pass through the first level. I''m sorry to say that the rest of the challengers are disqualified." "As for those who are disqualified, please don''t attempt to enter the Sorcerer Goddess Shine any longer. If you wish to enter, please wait for the next opening of the Sorcerer Goddess Shine." Just as Wu Mo''s voice was heard, the body of the challengers who failed to qualify for the next level collapsed and soon disappeared from the snowy world. Among the crowd, less than a tenth of the people remained after a several seconds passed. Among the remaining 312 people, most of them were the tribal members while about a hundred them were people from the Union Government and Dynasty. The elimination rate had exceeded 90% in just the first assessment. This had put many of them on alert. "Congratulations, you''ve got through the first assessment. Now, I''ll send you the second shrine." Along with the voice, 312 of them entered a trance and appeared in a shrine shortly after. The shrine was extremely large but there was nothing else aside from the posts, walls, and dome. Just as everybody was looking around the shrine, Wu Mo''s voice was heard once more. "There are Witchcraft Runes everywhere in this shrine. Among these runes, only 200 of them are single-use dimensional runes that''ll send the user directly sent to the third shrine. Activating the wrong one will lead to the immediate destruction of the rune. If it''s inaccurately activated, the rune will be destroyed right after it has been activated." Everybody''s facial expression changed as soon as they heard what Wu Mo said. "Here''s a gentle reminder. Aside from the 200 runes that will send you directly to the third shrine, there are also a hundred runes that''ll directly send you out of the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine. If you happen to activate such a rune, please come again during the next opening of the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine." The tribal members'' face turned grave as they heard this. "The rules are pretty simple and I think everyone can understand it. If there are no further questions, the assessment for the second shrine will officially begin." Runes appeared from the dome and floated around in the shrine. In just a few seconds, the runes had occupied the entire shrine. Not only were the runes attached to the ground, the runic inscriptions were found on the posts as well. As one looked from afar, the number of runes had exceeded 100,000. To find 200 of the specified runes from more than 100,000 runic inscriptions was obviously not an easy task. More than 200 of the tribal members were busy looking for the correct rune right after they appeared. As for the humans, more than half of them seemed panicked. Despite the fact that the rest of them had begun looking for the right runes, a majority of them looked upset. Only about 10 of them were able to remain calm as they prepared for the challenge. In less than 10 minutes after the second assessment had started, one of the tribal members had successfully activated a dimensional rune and disappeared from the shrine. Nobody knew if he was sent to the third shrine or if he was sent out of the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine. After the first person had successfully activated the dimensional rune, the second and third person followed suit. "Haha, I''ve found one!" The plump man from Dynasty stood still in front of a rune and fell into a trance. Then, he pointed his finger at the rune and activated it. After a short while, his body was enveloped by a white glow, and he disappeared from the shrine at the very next moment. As time passed, the number of people who remained in the shrine got lesser and lesser. The second assessment had yet to end. However, whoever managed to get into the third shrine in advance would be able to start the third assessment. "The third assessment is called Hopscotch. Each participant will be sent to an independent space. There''ll be a 3x100 grid on the ground over there. The challenger will have to arrive at the finishing point a hundred boxes away from the starting point. There''ll be an attack rune on each of the grid. Some of the attack runes are real while the rest are fake. If you happen to step on the a real rune, you''ll be immediately disqualified. If you step on a fake rune, nothing will happen to you. Some of them might be a trip rune. Once you''re trapped, you''ll be disqualified as well." "Flying is not allowed in this round. Therefore, you won''t be able to activate spatial manipulation abilities. Challengers can only step on the grid on their left, right, or directly in front of them. Moving backward and walking diagonally are prohibited. You can''t skip as well. You can use the Witchcraft Rune to decode any of the runes on the grid." The difficulty level of the third assessment had obviously increased! Lin Huang who was inside the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine had no idea what was happening outside. He was still focused on decoding the Ten Thousand Sealing Rune. 716 The Rune Cliff After the Ten Thousand Sealing Rune had been decoded for more than 300 times, Lin Huang encountered a rune that he was unfamiliar with for the first time. Bloody accepted the mission without hesitation and rapidly drafted the sealing rune. Having decoded the rune for about 900 times, Lin Huang faced some problems for the second time. Bloody helped him out again. With Bloody''s assistance, Lin Huang only managed to unseal more than 800 runes after working on it for precisely two days without any rest. As he continued unsealing the runes, he sensed an energy wave coming from the shrine. Lin Huang then turned his head back and looked in the direction where he sensed the source of the energy wave. A plump, young man appeared in the shrine. The golden armor revealed his identity that he was wearing. "It''s the people from Dynasty!" Lin Huang frowned. Zhu Xing soon noticed Lin Huang who was hundreds of meters away from him. He was stunned when he saw Lin Huang at first glance. However, he was able to confirm Lin Huang''s identity soon and started sizing Lin Huang up. However, due to the rules that Wu Mo had mentioned earlier, he did not take the initiative to talk to Lin Huang. Lin Huang caught a glimpse of Zhu Xing and shifted his focus back on to the stone tablet. He knew the rules of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine as well. Therefore, he was not worried that the person would attack him. Zhu Xing knew that Lin Huang was only a purple flame-level at first glimpse. He was not even an immortal-level. Of course, he was envious of Lin Huang as the fellow with such low combat level could own the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. Furthermore, Lin Huang had even entered the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine two days ahead of him. Zhu Xing then quickly shifted his gaze from Lin Huang towards the 11 treasures that remained in the frosted cabinet. "The Sorcerer Goddess''s blood isn''t here. The fella must''ve taken it." Zhu Xing glanced at Lin Huang again, and greed flashed in his eyes. As he was about to shift his gaze and carefully study the treasures, the cabinet suddenly vibrated. White, jade-like phalanges shot out of the cabinet abruptly. The phalanges entered Zhu Xing''s body when he was unaware of it. Zhu Xing immediately sat down with his legs crossed and started digesting the item that he had just obtained. After sitting down for a while, he felt a stir in the space in the shrine. It was a tribal member that was being sent there. His body was in the form of a teddy bear that was more than two meters tall. Zhu Xing opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of the guy, and soon, he immediately closed his eyes to complete his task. Lin Huang did not bother to turn around this time. Since the first person was sent, he knew that the number of people sent to the shrine would only increase after that. Da Xiong soon noticed the presence of Lin Huang and Zhu Xing. Zhu Xing was familiar to him as the man had exhibited outstanding performance and it was hard for him not to notice him. eeing that two items had disappeared from 12 of the cabinets, Da Xiong could confirm Lin Huang''s identity as well. As a tribal member, he was curious about Lin Huang, who had obtained the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. He secretly sized Lin Huang up. After a short while, the cabinet vibrated again. A book slowly floated in front of Da Xiong. He then extended his hand and grabbed the item that he had chosen. The book turned into a ball of light that gradually merged in between Da Xiong''s eyebrows. Da Xiong immediately sat down with his legs crossed as well, watching the item that he had just obtained. In the last ten hours, before Lin Huang could complete decoding the Ten Thousand Sealing Rune, five people were sent to the shrine one after another. Wu Mo guided them to a stone tablet that looked similar to the one in front of Lin Huang. They started the assessment of the Ten Thousand Sealing Rune as well. As for Lin Huang who had not rested for almost 60 hours, he finally carved the last rune on the last sealing rune of the Ten Thousand Sealing Rune. The outer body of the stone tablet peeled away, revealing the dark bronze metal. Soon after, the complete form of the stone tablet appeared in front of Lin Huang C it was a metal door. As the outer body had been completely peeled off, the metal door expanded rapidly and soon, a door that was three meters tall and a meter wide formed. The changes that happened on Lin Huang''s side had attracted the attention of the five of them who looked at the metal door. The four of them immediately shifted their focus back to their work, but Zhu Xing did not. His eyes stared dangerously at Lin Huang, but his hands did not stop decoding the runes. He was just drawing blindly. Lin Huang did not see this, and neither did the other four. Lin Huang was standing in front of the door. However, he did not push it open. Right at this moment, Wu Mo appeared next to him and said, "Please enter. The next assessment is the key to decide if you can inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory." Lin Huang nodded, extending his hand and pushing against the door. He then strode into the dark space behind the door. Right after Lin Huang disappeared, the dark bronze door that was transformed from the stone tablet faded away as well. Wu Mo then turned around, exchanging glances with Zhu Xing who had been staring at Lin Huang. Zhu Xing took a glance at her and soon, shifted his gaze back to the stone tablet in front of him. Lin Huang appeared in front of an extremely high cliff right after he entered the door. The cliff was thousands of meters tall. There were intricate carvings on the cliff which were made of various types of complete runes. There were at least 100,000 or millions of them. Wu Mo''s voice was heard again. "On the rune cliff, there are 1,080,000 complete runes. You''re given three days to memorize all the runes. If you can''t finish it within three days, you won''t be qualified to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory. Your memory regarding what you''ve seen from the cliff will be erased as well." "Memorizing 1,080,000 complete runes in three days" Lin Huang had no confidence that he could achieve it. He even doubted if Bloody could do so. "You can ask your pet monster to help you. However, whatever that it memorizes won''t be considered. You have to memorize it by yourself. Despite its talent in Witchcraft Runes going beyond comparison, it''s still a monster and won''t be able to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory." Wu Mo felt disappointed. If it were human, it might be the one to inherit her memory. "Bloody, I''m counting on you." Lin Huang knew that he would not be able to do it on his own. Bloody nodded and started memorizing the complete runes. Lin Huang had no choice but to memorize the complete runes one by one. However, he was slow at memorizing. He managed to memorize less than 20,000 runes in a day. Even Bloody was only able to memorize less than half of the total number of runes in a day. "I won''t have much time left in the afternoon." Lin Huang knew that he would not be able to finish it according to their efficiency. He frowned as he started thinking of solutions. While he was immersed in his thoughts, an idea suddenly ran through his mind. A golden card suddenly appeared in his hand 717 Epiphany Card "Epiphany Card: Gives the user a chance for an epiphany. "Remarks: Consumable, can only be used once. The effective period and effect depend on the user''s credentials and talents." Looking at the Epiphany Card he had on hand, Lin Huang seemed disconcerted. He could only get three of such cards in the next two years and one of what he had had already been used. However, as he thought about the fact that it was redeemable in the future, he felt relieved. No matter what, it was definitely worth inheriting the True God''s memory by using one or two Epiphany Cards. Without hesitation, Lin Huang immediately crushed the Epiphany Card that he had. The card transformed into a bright, golden glow and merged in between Lin Huang''s eyebrows. However, Wu Mo did not notice that. As soon as the Epiphany Card became effective, Lin Huang felt like his brain had detached from his body as his thoughts were much clearer than ever before. It seemed like the mist had cleared away, and the world was incredibly clear now. Whatever that he could not see clearly in the past was now all revealed. Even the runes on the cliff no longer looked like simplified runes. Instead, they looked like numbers. The rune lines that befuddled Lin Huang had become simple calculations. Lin Huang was able to grasp the meaning in an instant. As he looked at the cliff again, Lin Huang managed to memorize all the intricate runes in one glance. He could even understand the constitutive principles and the constructive process of the runes perfectly well. The impact of the Epiphany Card was beyond Lin Huang''s expectations. Soon, a day passed, and the effect of the Epiphany Card still remained. With the help of the Epiphany Card, Lin Huang managed to memorize more than 600,000 out of 1,080,000 of the runes. He was catching up with Bloody''s progress. Despite Wu Mo not finding out that Lin Huang actually used the Epiphany Card, she realized that Lin Huang had entered the state of experiencing an epiphany. She thought that Lin Huang was lucky because she clearly knew that although Lin Huang was not weak in Sorcerer Dao, he was not a pro either. He had solely relied on Bloody to pass through the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. She did not have faith that he was capable of inheriting the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory. She was just giving him a chance to try his luck. However, she never expected that Lin Huang would enter the state of epiphany at the last minute. The effect of the Epiphany Card lasted until the afternoon of the next day. It no longer became effective right after Lin Huang had completely memorized the 1,080,000 runes. Bloody had not finished memorizing the runes by the time Lin Huang was done. "You''re kind of lucky to be able to experience an epiphany at the very last minute," Wu Mo whispered. "Yes, I am." Lin Huang nodded as he knew that she would not be able to see Xiao Hei''s card and had mistakenly thought that he had an epiphany simply by luck. "The last round of the assessment isn''t as simple as merely memorizing the runes." Wu Mo remained calm. Apparently, she did not think that Lin Huang would be able to get through the last round of the assessment. "It''s fine. I''m confident enough to accept the challenge." After memorizing all the runes, Lin Huang was positive. "Are you sure?" Wu Mo turned back and looked at Lin Huang when she heard what he just said. She smiled wryly. "Yes, of course, I am. I''ve nothing to lose," Lin Huang answered optimistically, "Of course, I''ll be happy if I''m able to get it, but it''s within my expectations if I fail to do so." "It means you''re not really that confident though." Wu Mo pouted. "My confidence in accepting the challenge doesn''t mean that I''ll be able to go through it," Lin Huang told her the truth with a smile. "So, are you ready to accept the next challenge?" Wu Mo asked, raising her brows. "Wait a minute so that Bloody can get its stuff done," Lin Huang suggested. "I want to recall what I''ve just memorized as well." "Alright, then let''s wait." Wu Mo nodded and agreed with him. Bloody was still memorizing the contents on the cliff while Lin Huang was sitting down at somewhere not far away from it with his legs crossed. Soon, he closed his eyes and started recalling what he had just memorized. After recalling the runes that he had just memorized twice, Lin Huang then slowly opened his eyes. Seeing that Bloody was still busy, he did not interrupt it and just waited patiently. "You''re rather kind to your pet monster," Wu Mo commented, seeing that he had nothing to do. "Bloody has helped me a lot in the past. It''s the most intelligent pet monster among all the pet monsters I have." Bloody was indeed the most reliable companion to Lin Huang. "Is it called Bloody? But I thought it''s purple in color?" Wu Mo wanted to ask if he was color blind, but she did not. Instead, she cocked her head at Lin Huang with a strange expression. "It was originally red in color. However, it looked like this after going through its mutation. I''m used to addressing it this way that''s why I didn''t bother to change," Lin Huang explained. "Oh, I see. This at least explains that you aren''t color blind." Lin Huang was speechless. Both of them remained quiet for a while. Lin Huang then asked, "Can you transform back to your real body with the remaining consciousness that you have?" "Theoretically, it could work, but it''s difficult to do so," Wu Mo took a glance at Lin Huang and said after keeping quiet for a long while. "To be honest, I don''t hold out much hope." "Since it''s going to work theoretically, there''s still a glimmer of hope. How can I help you? Do let me know if there''s anything that I can do for you," Lin Huang offered. "Let''s just forget about it since you''re only on this combat level. You might be able to help if you''re a True God." Wu Mo laughed. "I don''t know when you''re becoming a True God!" "Instead of staying here, why not give it a try? Leave together with me as soon as everything that happens here ends. Let''s look for a way so that you can transform back to your real body," Lin Huang suggested. "If you want to bring me along, let''s talk about it later after you''ve inherited my memory, without which, I won''t leave." Wu Mo kept quiet for a while before saying, "Another thing that I''ll have to clarify is that if I were to leave the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, I could only stay in the droplet of the True God''s blood. I''ll be asleep, and I won''t be able to help you out." "Even if you aren''t asleep, I don''t think that there''s anything that you can help me in your current state." Lin Huang laughed, shaking his head. "As for inheriting your memory, I''ll try my best to do so. Please don''t forget me when you''re able to recover to your original state in the near future." "Alright." Wu Mo smiled. As time passed, it was already late at night. At midnight, when the deadline was near, Bloody had finally completed memorizing everything on the cliff. After recalling Bloody, Lin Huang then looked towards Wu Mo. "Let''s begin now." 718 The Final Assessmen "What''s the final assessment about? Is it going to be a real battle?" He made a wild guess based on the practice of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. "It isn''t going to be a real battle. After you''ve mastered the Witchcraft Rune, as long as sufficient training is provided, you''ll be able to do well in the actual battle. Also, your ability in an actual battle has already been proven since you''re here now. The final assessment wouldn''t be meaningful then if it were the real battle." Wu Mo smiled evilly. "If it''s not a real battle, then what could it be?" Lin Huang had absolutely no idea. Wu Mo''s facial expression was grave as she announced, "You have to create new rune lines and new complete runes." "Create new rune lines?" Lin Huang was stunned. "Yes. You should know that the Witchcraft Rune has a total of 108 basic runes lines. During our epoch, 36 advanced rune lines are available in public and also nine high-level lines. You should also realize by now that among the 1,080,000 runes you memorized yesterday, there are actually many new rune lines," Wu Mo continued. "Yes. 76 of them are new rune lines." "These are the new rune lines provided by the Virtual God during our epoch. The 1,080,000 complete runes are basically the encyclopedia during our epoch, which took us tens of thousands of years to develop. Aside from the rune lines which one owns privately and won''t be recorded, basically, all of that covers almost all of the runes available during our epoch. Despite the many rune lines and the complete runes, they belong to others. To be a qualified sorcerer, you will need to create your own rune lines. Therefore, the final assessment will lead you to become a real sorcerer." "In order to pass the final assessment, you have to create at least three rune lines that belong to you and develop 3,000 complete runes," Wu Mo shared the exact content of the assessment with him. "Creating three rune lines and developing 3,000 complete runes?" Lin Huang frowned. "I might be able to accomplish the task if sufficient time is given. However, I don''t think there''s much time left for the opening of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Tower." "You still have four and a half days to go. It''s one of the challenges of the assessment. However, compared to those who are often exposed to the Witchcraft Rune, it''s easier for beginners like you to develop your own rune lines since your thoughts aren''t restricted. As for people like us who''re used to the Witchcraft Rune, we won''t be able to think out of the box. It takes us a long time to create new rune lines. Moreover, rune lines are easier created at the beginning. It''s possible to create a few new rune lines for the first time. "Forcing you to create three or more rune lines in four and half days is actually a test on your credentials and talents in Sorcerer Dao. If you lack talent, you definitely won''t be able to do so. "Additionally, this assessment aims to test your understanding of the Witchcraft Rune. If you don''t have a good understanding of the Witchcraft Rune, it''s impossible for you to create your own rune lines." Lin Huang knew that creating new rune lines was like creating new alphabets other than the 26 alphabets that were already in existence. He had to develop the 27th and the 28th alphabet along with creating new words by using the alphabets that were previously available. A new word with a new meaning had to be created. In addition, the creation could not deviate from the language system itself. The newly created word would be an extension of the existing language after having a solid grasp of the original language system. It was not something that could be created blindly. The combination of the rune lines was rather precise. If they were incompatible, the complete rune would not work. Creating new rune lines and developing the new runes required a certain level of understanding of the Witchcraft Rune. Only those with a keen understanding of the Witchcraft Rune would be able to do so. Compared to this assessment, the rest of it meant nothing to Lin Huang. "There''s not much time left. Let''s start now." After listening to Wu Mo''s explanation, Lin Huang did not wish to have any delay. In the next four and a half days, each passing minute and second were precious to him. Wu Mo nodded her head. She extended her hand and summoned a silver door. "Get in." Lin Huang entered without a moment of hesitation. As he strode to the silver door, Lin Huang was stunned. In front of him was an infinitely large, starry sky. He was floating in the air like a speck of dust. He then turned back and found out that the silver door had already disappeared. As he wondered how would he return, Wu Mo''s voice was heard again. "Don''t worry. Four and a half days later, regardless of the result, you''ll be sent back here on time. Just focus on what you have to do now." Lin Huang was relieved after listening to what Wu Mo said. As he gazed upon the sky, he snapped himself out of his deep thoughts. After crushing the second Epiphany Card he had in his hand, he gradually closed his eyes. Soon, the Epiphany Card did its magic, and Lin Huang was immersed in his thoughts again. The human brain was transformed into a cosmic brain in an instant as the brain had no limit for its capacity and its speed of processing thoughts. The complete runes appeared in his mind. They were analyzed in reverse order whereby they were decomposed into rune lines. It seemed like the rune lines were alive as they were automatically being sorted into various valid groups. Lin Huang was like a witness, observing the runes being created and decomposed. The rune lines were like soldiers on a battleground, continually changing their formation to produce different effects. Soon, four days passed. On the final half of the day, he still had not started creating new rune lines or newly complete runes. Wu Mo watched everything that happened in the sky. Despite her astonishment, noticing that Lin Huang had gotten an epiphany again, she thought that Lin Huang was lucky again and did not think any further. Although Lin Huang had entered the state of epiphany, Wu Mo did not believe that Lin Huang could complete the final assessment given that only half a day was left. As it was closer to the closing of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, the lower the probability that Lin Huang could get through the final assessment. Right when Wu Mo felt that Lin Huang was going to fail, she suddenly sensed a vibration coming from mid-air. She then looked in the direction where the vibration came from, and a bronze metal door opened. A plump, young man then stepped out of the metal door and approached her. The plump man waved his hand at Wu Mo as he saw her and said, "Hi, Sorcerer Goddess." Wu Mo squinted her eyes and asked, "Who are you?" "Is that important? I''ve passed all the assessments, and I''ve got to the second last challenge," Zhu Xing said haughtily while looking around. However, he did not see Lin Huang. His facial expression change. "Did the guy manage to get to the final challenge?" "Yes, you''re right. He''s gone there for four days already. He''s almost gotten the inheritance," Wu Mo taunted. "It means that he hasn''t got it yet." Zhu Xing grinned and said confidently, "It seems like I''m going to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory!" 719 Getting C*ckblocked at the Last Minute Wu Mo frowned as she looked at Zhu Xing, the plump man. She felt that he was somewhat sinister, but she could not figure out what was wrong. Since she was not in the actual body of the Sorcerer Goddess, her sight was limited. Zhu Xing walked calmly towards the cliff where millions of runes were carved. He stood still and looked through the runes. Managing to look through all the runes at one glance, his speed far surpassed Lin Huang who received an epiphany. Wu Mo was shocked. Soon after, she frowned as if something had dawned on her. Zhu Xing spent less than eight hours to look through all the runes on the cliff. He then closed his eyes and fell into deep thought. After a short while, he turned back and said, "I''ve memorized all of them. Can I proceed to the next round?" "You''ve seen the cliff before! Who are you?" Wu Mo asked in a deep voice. "Sorcerer Goddess, does it matter?" Zhu Xing asked as he tilted his head slightly. "I guess that you don''t have the right to bother who I am as long as I''m qualified to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory. Am I right?" Wu Mo remained silent. He knew very well that Wu Mo was just a shell with her remaining consciousness. She did not have the authority to make any decision regarding who would inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory. "Don''t waste my time anymore. Let''s proceed to the last round." Zhu Xing waved his hand at her. "I know you wish for the fella to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory rather than me. However, there are only four hours left. I think you know very well that the fella will stand no chance to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory anymore." Wu Mo did not refute. Lin Huang had gone in for four days. In the last four hours, not a single rune line had been created. The probability that he could complete the assessment was close to zero. Wu Mo did not say anything else. A silver door soon appeared as she waved her hand. "Get in." Zhu Xing did not continue provoking her. Instead, he caught a glimpse of Wu Mo before entering. As the silver door closed, Wu Mo pondered herself. A scene of Zhu Xing in the final assessment was being projected. She was still monitoring him. In the projection, Zhu Xing was not nervous at all as he was sent to a dimension that looked like the vast universe. Even then, he was not shocked at all. After closing his eyes for a moment, he opened his eyes again in less than half a minute. He extended his hand and started drawing rune lines in mid-air with his Life Power. Yes, it was an entirely new rune line. It did not belong to any of the rune lines that were already available in public. It did not belong to the rune line that was decomposed from the 1,080,000 completed runes carved on the cliff as well. Wu Mo frowned when she saw what just happened. She could confirm that Zhu Xing did not master the essence of the runes on the spot. He had been prepared for this. Wu Mo could confirm her thoughts as she watched what Zhu Xing did next. After drawing the first new rune line, he immediately drew the second rune line, followed by the third rune line. Similarly, two of the rune lines did not belong to any of the rune lines that Wu Mo already knew. After finished drawing the three rune lines, Zhu Xing grinned. He then lifted his wrist. Without even pausing for a moment, he started drawing the new runes. In just a few seconds, a complete rune was drawn. Next, there was the second one, the third one During the final hour of the assessment, 3,000 complete runes were drawn by Zhu Xing. After drawing the last rune, Zhu Xing stopped. "I''ve completed the requirement of the final assessment. Am I qualified to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory now?" He said as if he was talking to himself. It seemed like he knew that Wu Mo was spying on him. "Are you sure that you aren''t going to add any new runes or rune lines to increase the probability of your winning?" Wu Mo''s voice echoed. "No, there''s no need to do so. It''s less than an hour away from the closing of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. The fella who has gotten the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine won''t be able to get through this. If the rest of them can complete the second last round, they won''t be able to enter the last round. Even if they''re already prepared for it like I was, they won''t be able to achieve the drawing on time." Zhu Xing was extremely confident. Wu Mo remained quiet again as what Zhu Xing said was a fact. Lin Huang would be unable to get through this since he had not created a single rune line yet. Two others managed to get through the second last challenge. However, it was too late for them to get to the final assessment as they no longer had enough time to get through the final assessment. It seemed like Zhu Xing was going to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory. Right when Wu Mo was immersed in her thoughts, Lin Huang, who had been closing his eyes in the sky, finally opened his eyes. As he opened his eyes, dazzling stars moved around in his eyes. Of course, the peculiar phenomenon disappeared in an instant. Wu Mo felt that right at the moment when Lin Huang opened his eyes, she experienced an illusion. As she looked at him carefully, there was nothing different than usual in Lin Huang''s eyes. After opening his eyes, Lin Huang did not get out of his epiphany. Instead, he pointed in mid-air and drew a completely new rune line with his Life Power. Soon after, he drew the second, the third, the fourth He stopped right after drawing the 11th rune line. Wu Mo was stunned to see what just happened. Lin Huang''s performance was completely beyond her expectations. Soon after, a thought ran through her mind, "Damn it! You don''t have enough time!" In the air, Lin Huang had utterly forgotten about the time limit. After drawing 11 of the new rune lines, he started drawing the complete rune. Although she felt that he would be unable to complete it on time, still, she reminded Lin Huang, "Lin Huang, you don''t have enough time to finish the drawing. You have less than an hour left. You have to finish drawing the complete rune as soon as possible." As soon as he heard Wu Mo''s voice, Lin Huang suddenly paused. He then retracted his arm, and threads extended mid-air, controlled by his telekinesis. More than 9,000 threads were created, and they all started drawing the Witchcraft Rune at almost the same time. What Lin Huang did was out of Wu Mo''s expectations again. She initially had no faith in Lin Huang as it was almost impossible for him to draw 3,000 runes in an hour. This indicated that he had to finish drawing one complete rune in about a second. It was an unconventional way for Lin Huang to draw thousands of runes at the same time and he quickly managed to complete drawing more than 9,000 complete runes. Lin Huang did not recall all the threads that were controlled by his telekinesis power after drawing more than 9,000 of the complete runes. He kept about 6,000 threads with him and started the second round of training. After more than ten seconds, about 6,000 complete runes were drawn. He then slowly recalled all the threads. Lin Huang exited his epiphany after he had completed all the drawings. He was collapsing as dizziness struck him. He felt as if he was suffering from an intense bout of flu and fever. 720 Zhu Xings Ambition Zhu Xing inserted both of his hands into his pocket and was waiting leisurely in the vast expanse of the sky. "Sorcerer Goddess, do I really have to wait here for the last 40 minutes?" "Are you sure you want to end the assessment before it''s over?" Wu Mo asked. "I''ve already completed the assessment. It''s meaningless for me to wait here since I must be the one who''s going to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory." Zhu Xing sneered upon the rest of the challengers. "Before the assessment ends, nobody knows who''s going to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory." Of course, by looking at Lin Huang''s performance, Wu Mo knew that Zhu Xing would be disqualified. However, she was not going to tell him. However, Zhu Xing could vaguely sense that something was wrong based on Wu Mo''s tone. "Sorcerer Goddess, you''re worrying me. Could somebody else have completed the assessment too?" "You''ll know that as soon as the assessment ends." Wu Mo gave an ambiguous reply. "You refused to answer my question. It means 80% of what I guessed might be correct," Zhu Xing analyzed, stroking his chin. "You didn''t want me to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory, but you sound like you''re not fearful of anything. It means that most likely that person is going to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess'' memory and I won''t be able to surpass that person in the remaining 40 minutes." Wu Mo chose to keep quiet. After several moments, seeing that Wu Mo did not respond to him, Zhu Xing said again, "Your silence means that I made the right guess. I can basically confirm that about a 90% chance that the person has surpassed me." "Who''s the one who did that?" Zhu Xing narrowed his eyes. "Less likely that the few of them who are lagging behind me can get through this. Most probably it''s the fella who has the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine Of course, he must be capable if he can get the key. I''ve underestimated him." Zhu Xing knew the truth through the tiny bit of clue he had, and he was sure that Lin Huang was the one who surpassed him. "If he''s the one who inherits the Sorcerer Goddess'' memory, it''s simple. As long as I can catch him alive, I''ll force him to transfer whatever he has inherited to me," Zhu Xing said, nodding his head as if he had made up his mind. He was whispering to himself and did not notice that Wu Mo was watching him. It seemed like he purposely wanted to tell Wu Mo this. "I think I know who you are," Wu Mo said, "I never expected that you''d still be alive." "I think you''ve got the wrong person, Sorcerer Goddess." Zhu Xing refused to admit it. "I can''t be wrong. You''re Wu Zhi," Wu Mo stated confidently. "If I''m not mistaken, you must''ve implanted the God''s soul in your son''s body. Your soul was awakened as soon as I activated the Sorcerer Goddess Shrine. After occupying your son''s body, you seized the opportunity to transfer the soul to an outsider''s body." "I don''t understand what you''re trying to say," Zhu Xing insisted on denying. "Don''t you understand? I''ll explain to you then." Wu Mo did not doubt that he was Wu Zhi. "Wu Zhi is a Virtual God during our epoch. He''s the most intelligent among all my followers. However, he made a mistake due to a disaster that happened in the abyss. He did not try to defend us against the abyssal monsters. Instead, he took the opportunity to gather all the Virtual Gods'' corpses. He intended to reach his goal of becoming the True God by evilly offering a sacrifice. He even encouraged the rest of the Virtual Gods to act with him. He took advantage of the war and did not contribute to the battle. As soon as I discovered it, he attempted to flee and ended up being killed by an abyssal monster." "Evilly offering a sacrifice?" After listening to what Wu Mo said, Zhu Xing could no longer stand his curiosity. "Is it a cruel way to reuse the dead bodies? Isn''t it evil to sell the monster carcasses for money and eat their meat? They are all dead bodies. Why should humans deserve better treatment than monsters?!" "Wu Mo, I chose to avoid the battle previously because I didn''t want to burn bridges. If I were a True God, the tribal members wouldn''t need to stay here for ages. If the True God protected us, the tribal members would have ruled the new epoch, let alone the old epoch!" "You''re the one who talks about principles and stopped me from becoming the True God. Look at the tribal members. They''re all living in puppets. They''re struggling to survive! Why not just kill the entire ethnic?!" Zhu Xing finally admitted his identity. Wu Mo kept quiet for a long time after listening to what he said. "However, what you did was still wrong," Wu Mo sighed after a long while. "Is it right to allow the people from the old epoch and the new epoch to rule the world? Why can''t the tribal members rule the word?!" Zhu Xing was triggered. "Our epoch has been destroyed. That''s certain. Since it''s already ended, why can''t you just let it go?" "It''s not that I don''t want to let it go. Instead, here''s a chance for the rise of the tribal members. In less than five years, the abyssal monsters will wipe out the entire land again. After the monsters return to the abyss, we shall make a comeback. The entire land will belong to the tribal members! It''s an opportunity given by the God for the rise of the tribal members!" "Wu Mo, as long as I''m the one that inherits the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory, I''ll lead the tribal members to march towards prosperity and create a new epoch that solely belongs to the tribal members!" Wu Mo remained silent again. After a long while, she said, "The era doesn''t belong to us. This will cause war and create more suffering." "As a Sorcerer Goddess, why do you always think about the others instead of the tribal members?" Zhu Xing questioned. "You want an outsider to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess'' memory instead of me." "That''s fine. Even if the fella who owns the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine successfully inherits the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory, I''ll have my way to grab it. I''ll not only take away whatever that he has inherited, but he''ll also be my slave so that he can be my toy and completely be under my control!" On the other side, after Lin Huang had completed the assessment, but his body had given way to exhaustion. After about half an hour, he slowly recovered. "It''s less than ten minutes away from the closing of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. I''ve completed the assessment, so if I''m not mistaken, I''ll be able to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess'' memory." Lin Huang was satisfied with his performance. Suddenly, Wu Mo''s voice was heard. "Lin Huang, before inheriting the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory, I have some bad news for you." "Bad news?" Lin Huang was stunned. "After the closing of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, you''ll have to leave the floating land as soon as possible. Someone knows that you''re going to obtain the inheritance, and he''ll attack you and grab the inheritance from you. He might want to enslave you." "Eh, is he strong?" Lin Huang asked. "According to the usual way of classifying combat strength, he''s an immortal-level rank-9. However, his ability has far surpassed that. A Virtual God is living in his body." Lin Huang''s face turned grave as he heard that. He never expected to encounter a Virtual God. "How does he look like?" Wu Mo projected Zhu Xing''s appearance. "He has now parasitized this person''s body. However, it''s easy for him to wear a disguise." After remembering Zhu Xing''s appearance, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind. "I know. I''ll be careful of him." 721 Creating Trouble for the Goblin "You said that the Virtual God wanted to steal my inheritance. Could you please provide more information?" Lin Huang asked. "His name is Wu Zhi. He was one of my followers during the old era. Despite not being the strongest, he''s the most intelligent. During our era, when the abyssal monsters arrived, he did not fight them. Instead, he avoided them. He took advantage of the war and collected the corpses of the Virtual Gods. He wanted to become the True God evilly. However, he was killed before the plot succeeded. The God''s soul remained in his son''s body. "When humans entered the land, his son took over the human''s body using some tricks. After the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine was activated, the God''s soul sensed it and was awakened. Therefore, he has now occupied the person''s body. "Wu Zhi is ambitious as he''s eager for the rise of the tribal members. The credentials and talents of the body that he has occupied are comparable to yours. If he can inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory, he''ll definitely be able to become the True God given ample time. Regardless of whether the abyssal monsters arrive or not, he''ll be a nightmare to all the cultivators in the new era." Lin Huang frowned again as he heard that ominous news. "How long will he take to transform back to a Virtual God?" "That''s uncertain. Besides being a Virtual God, his body has terrifying abilities, so it''s not difficult for him to restore his original combat strength. However, I''m doubtful of how complete the memory of the God''s soul is. If the God''s soul manages to store all the memory, in half a year or a year at the most, he''ll be able to restore his combat strength as a Virtual God. He doesn''t lack any resources to level up in the floating land. If the memory of the God''s soul is incomplete, I can''t predict how long it''ll take him to restore his ability. It might take him several years, or he might not be able to even after hundreds of years." "What about the human that he has parasitized? Is there any useful information?" Lin Huang questioned. "He is called Zhu Xing. He''s also a supreme genius, and his combat strength is on immortal-level rank-9. I don''t know much about him though." Wu Mo paused, "You''re not the only one who managed to get through the last round of the assessment. He has completed the drawing of three new rune lines and developed 3,000 complete runes. However, he prepared it beforehand." "Does it count as cheating if he knows the content of the assessment beforehand?" Lin Huang recalled how they had cheated during the exams when he was in university. "It is indeed considered cheating. However, the Sorcerer Goddess didn''t mention that cheating is prohibited. That''s why he''s not deemed having violated the rules." Wu Mo explained helplessly. "Does it mean that he''s qualified to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory as well?" Lin Huang frowned. "Theoretically, yes, he is. However, after the last round of the assessment has ended and there''s more than one successful candidate, the one with the best performance will be chosen. The Sorcerer Goddess has thought about this earlier." "Therefore, I''m still the one who gets the inheritance, am I not?" Lin Huang was relieved when he heard that. "Of course, you''ll be the one," Wu Mo assured him and continued, "You have less than ten minutes now. I''ll insert the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory into your body. It''s best for you to leave early. As long as the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is automatically closed, nobody will know that the memory has been obtained. Wu Zhi wanted to inherit the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory on his own. Therefore, it''s impossible for him to reveal the information to the others. As long as you can avoid Wu Zhi, you''ll be safe." "There''s no need to avoid him. If he were to get me into trouble, I''d have fun with him." Lin Huang had a mischievous look on his face. "Are you sure that you''re able to handle him? His ability is on par with an imperial-level." Although Lin Huang had performed many miracles throughout the challenge, Wu Mo did not think that he was capable of fighting Wu Zhi. "I''ll be able to defend myself against him." Lin Huang assured confidently. "Don''t get yourself into trouble. He''s way more to difficult to deal with than you can imagine." "Don''t worry. I''m not going to fight him face to face. I''ll just create trouble for him." Lin Huang grinned. Wu Mo had no idea what Lin Huang was thinking. Encountering such a strong enemy, anyone would usually choose aversion in the first place. However, Lin Huang decided to stir chaos instead. "If you''re caught, you''ll wish you chose death," Wu Mo warned. However, she did not want to talk about this anymore. "I''ll now insert the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory into your body." After Wu Mo''s voice was heard, a meteorite suddenly streaked across the vast expanse of sky at lightning fast speed. It was heading straight towards Lin Huang. The meteorite was flying at a breakneck speed, and Lin Huang could not avoid it at all. He was stunned as he gaped at the meteorite that appeared less than ten meters away from him. When he was about to strike, the meteorite suddenly stopped moving. It was like a mountain that spanned across the sky. "What''s happening?" As Lin Huang wondered, a crack was heard coming from the meteorite in front of him. Soon, there was a second crack, a third Within seconds, many cracks appeared on the meteorite like a spider web. After several moments, the meteorite was crushed entirely into debris. Lin Huang felt odd as he stared at the scene that had just happened without any clue. As soon as the meteorite collapsed, the debris scattered and floated in mid-air like Lin Huang. Soon after that, Lin Huang found a shiny, golden item among the debris. He appeared next to the golden item in a flash and grabbed it. The crystal was the size of a fist, and it looked like a golden mineral in a bizarre shape. When he grabbed it, Lin Huang sensed a familiar energy wave. "Is this the inheritance of the Sorcerer Goddess?" Lin Huang asked, feeling puzzled. "Yes, you''re right." Wu Mo''s voice was heard again. "How should I use this?" "Hold it between your eyebrows. It''ll enter your body on its own," Wu Mo said, then added, "However, due to your low combat strength, you''re not allowed to read most of the contents. Perhaps you''ll only be able to completely receive the inheritance when you achieve the Virtual God level. Since the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is closing soon, you don''t need to read the inherited memory yet. Let''s talk about it later after you get out of this place. I''ll now grant you some of the authority of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. Before Lin Huang could check out the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance, many messages gushed into his mind. Going through them, he realized that they were some of the jurisdictions of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. "It''s only activated once a year. Please come again next year if you want to enter." Lin Huang soon noticed the time and grinned. "Fortunately, there are still a few minutes remaining." He adjusted his voice slightly and soon he sounded like a lady. It was the effect of the Advanced Disguise. "Sorcerer Goddess, do I sound the same as you?" "What are you trying to do?" Wu Mo found him ridiculous. "I told you earlier that I''m going to create trouble for the goblin." Lin Huang smirked wryly. After several moments, a voice that sounded exactly the same as Wu Mo''s was heard throughout the 12 shrines in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. "Congratulations, Zhu Xing! You''ve successfully obtained the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance!" 722 The Closing of the Sorcerer Goddess’s Shrine "Congratulations, Zhu Xing. You''ve successfully obtained the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance!" Every one of they distinctly heard the woman''s voice in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. Regardless of whether they were inside or outside the shrine, even Lin Huang and Zhu Xing who were in mid-air could hear it clearly. As the announcement rang out, everybody was stunned. Many of them started asking who Zhu Xing was. In mid-air, Wu Zhi was astonished to hear the notification. "What does it mean? Was Wu Mo trying to scare me just now? In fact, nobody has actually passed the assessment. Am I the one who''s able to receive the inheritance?" However, the thought lasted for less than ten seconds, and Wu Zhi knew that he was wrong because he found out that there were only a few minutes left before the closing of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. Apart from the announcement, he did not receive any rewards related to the inheritance, and there were no new messages in his mind. "Wu Mo, are you fooling me?!" Noticing that the notification was unusual, Wu Zhi''s temper shot up, and he yelled upon finding out that he was wrong. Since he knew Wu Mo for so many years, he knew that she would not do something silly like this although she did not want him to receive the inheritance. "No, it''s not you. It must be the fella who received the inheritance! Since he''s gotten the inheritance, he must''ve been granted some authority over the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. The fella must have spread the rumor!" Zhu Xing managed to figure out that Lin Huang was the one who had done it with little effort. Wu Mo remained quiet. At this moment, if she happened to say anything wrong, Wu Zhi would have something to use against her. She simply refused to talk to him and provide him with any other useful information. On the other hand, Wu Mo contacted Lin Huang again. "Wu Zhi already knows that it was you who did that. He knows me well enough to know that I won''t trick him to fulfill my own desires. Also, he knew that you''ve gotten my inheritance and obtained part of the authority over the control of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine." "It seems like he''s smarter than I thought. However, that''s fine. Just let it be." Lin Huang was not worried at all. "You''ve tricked him. Aren''t you afraid that he''ll tell the public that you''re actually the one who''s obtained the inheritance?" Wu Mo asked. "He has planned to become the True God for tens of thousands of years. Do you think that he''ll share this piece of information with the others?" Lin Huang laughed. "No, he won''t." When she heard Lin Huang''s rhetorical question, Wu Mo immediately realized that Lin Huang was taking advantage of Wu Zhi''s attitude. "Yes, you''re right. Ordinary people will definitely think of ways to make things clear when they''re falsely accused. The simplest way is to tell the truth. However, Wu Zhi isn''t an average person. Since he could secretly work for a sole goal for ages, it''s proven that he has a high tolerance. He won''t lose his rationality simply because I tricked him. If he were to tell the truth about me actually being the one who obtained the inheritance, he''d only increase the number of competitors. He would''ve wished that he was the only one who knows the truth. Though I framed him, he''ll choose to bear with it. He might probably refute the others when he''s attacked, but he definitely won''t tell them the truth. That being said, he''ll be the one who wants to keep the secret instead of me. The fewer people who know the truth, the higher the probability that he''ll be able to steal the inheritance." After listening to Lin Huang''s analysis, Wu Mo instantly discovered that Lin Huang''s thought process was not that simple. "Yes, you''re right. Even if Wu Mo is falsely accused, he''ll choose to keep the secret. He''s an extremely arrogant guy, and he isn''t afraid of being attacked by the others at all. You did a good job by getting him into trouble. However, Wu Zhi holds grudges. If there''s a chance for him to take revenge on you, he''ll definitely do so. You have to be careful. It''s not difficult for him to figure out your plot. As soon as he manages to get away with it, that''s when he''s going to create trouble for you." "If he''s hiding all the while and gets me into trouble only when he has leveled up to Virtual God, I won''t be able to handle him. However, if he creates trouble for me before restoring his combat strength, he''s always more than welcome." Lin Huang had no fear of the Virtual God at all. Since Lin Huang was so confident, Wu Mo did not say anything else. She knew that the young man was more matured than she thought and he would not get himself into trouble despite the fact that the opponent was once a Virtual God. She could see that there was no fear in Lin Huang''s eyes and he put up a false bravado. In fact, he was not afraid of Wu Zhi at all. In the vast expanse of sky, Wu Mo did not respond to Wu Zhi after a long while. He then confirmed that Lin Huang was the one who had tricked him. "Wu Mo, I have to admit that the guy who inherited the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory is a smart guy. He tricked me to buy him some time. He did a great job. I''m afraid that I won''t be able to create trouble for him in a short period of time. "However, please tell him not to feel so jubilant first. After I get my stuff done, he''ll know the definition of big trouble. I''m definitely going to take revenge on him, and you know this. On the day when I manage to capture him, I''ll show him what death feels like! "Alright, stop bullshitting. The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is closing soon. Think of ways to get away with this. Many of them are going to try to kill you now," Wu Mo gloated. "They are just small potatoes. I''ll need some time to deal with this. If you want to laugh at me, you''re just going to be disappointed." Wu Zhi looked down upon the rest. "I''m going to see what will happen next. I have faith that you''ll do a fantastic job," Wu Mo said, and her voice could no longer be heard. The calmer Wu Mo was, the more Wu Zhi felt offended. He attempted to communicate with Wu Mo several times. As he did not get any reply, he kept quiet, waiting for the closing of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. On the other side, Lin Huang started talking to Wu Mo again. "Sis Momo, what do you think about my suggestion?" "What suggestion is that?" Wu Mo asked although she knew what he was trying to say. "Let''s leave the floating land together. You promised that we''d leave together as soon as I receive the inheritance. I''ve already gotten the inheritance, so shouldn''t you keep your word?" Lin Huang mentioned this again. After a moment of silence, Wu Mo asked, "Why are you insisting on leaving together with me?" "I have my own intentions though. The disaster of the invasion of the abyssal monster is going to arrive in less than five years. I hope that you can return to your real body in five years'' time. You''ll be a great assistance to us by then. In the new era, humans are too weak. The strongest man is one of the Virtual Gods that is severely injured. The rest of them are demigods. If we''re attacked by the abyssal monsters now, we''ll definitely lose the battle. I see no chance of winning at all." "Do you want to be a savior?" Wu Mo asked suspiciously. "No, I don''t. However, I don''t want my family and friends to get killed. My sister is only 16 years old, and many of my friends are in their 20''s. I don''t want them to die young." Wu Mo remained silent for a while. Just when Lin Huang thought that she was not going to keep her promise, she finally said, "Alright, let''s leave together!" As soon as her voice was heard, a notification arrived. "The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine is closing soon. To all the challengers, please get ready to leave. The countdown begins now. 10, 9, 8...3, 2, 1." 723 Hes Zhu Xing! Right when the sound of the countdown timer was heard, Wu Mo spoke up, "After leaving the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, I''ll be asleep within the droplet of the God''s blood. I''ve imprinted all the materials and methods required to restore my combat strength. However, it''s only in theory. I''m unsure of its rate of success though. Try your best to collect all the required sources." Apparently, Wu Mo had no faith in transforming back to her real body. She sounded casual like she was trying to tell Lin Huang, "Just try your best. Fate has its way." "Don''t worry. I''ll keep my promise and try my best." Lin Huang knew that Wu Mo had no faith in him. However, he pretended as if he did not realize it. "Thank you." She did not say anything else. At that moment, the countdown timer that lingered in the air was about to end. Right at this moment, a flash of gold suddenly appeared. In an instant, the golden glow streamed into Lin Huang''s chest just like the Sorcerer Goddess''s blood had. Lin Huang was stunned. He immediately responded to it and realized that the golden glow must be the remaining consciousness of Wu Mo''s real body. At that second, the countdown timer in the sky ended. Lin Huang went into a trance. As soon as he was able to react, the sky had disappeared and was replaced by a snowy land. Despite the snow having stopped, Lin Huang could still easily recognize that it was the floating land. The Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine that was made of ice crystals appeared in front of Lin Huang at less than 20 meters away. The door was closed, and it became transparent. Lin Huang noticed that people were constantly sent back and the number of people was increasing. In just a blink of an eye, the humans and the tribal members who had previously stayed in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine were sent back. As for the shrine made of ice crystals, it became transparent in less than three seconds, and it eventually disappeared. Lin Huang sized up the surroundings and realized that not many of them were sent out from the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. There were about 200 of them. However, they were not weak as they were able to stay in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine right until it closed. Among the crowd, Lin Huang saw the plump man, Zhu Xing. As he was sizing him up, Zhu Xing looked towards him as well. Zhu Xing had seen Lin Huang before when they were in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. He could recognize Lin Huang at first glance. He also knew that Wu Mo might have told Lin Huang about him before. However, Zhu Xing was not going to attack Lin Huang since the place was crowded. Instead, he smiled at Lin Huang from afar. Lin Huang grinned back and did not provoke him. He slowly walked towards Zhu Xing. Zhu Xing did not expect that Lin Huang would have the courage to walk towards him. He frowned when he saw this. Lin Huang stopped when he was about three meters away from Zhu Xing. He greeted him. "Is this our first time meeting?" The first time when they met each other had been in the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. However, the meeting was not an official one. "Let it be," Zhu Xin replied. He wondered what Lin Huang''s intention was. Seeing Lin Huang walking towards him, he suppressed his urge to attack. He knew very well that if he were to attack him, the rest would know that Lin Huang was actually the one who had obtained the inheritance. "You know who I am, yet you''re standing so close to me. Should I say that you''re brave? Or are you mad?" "No, I''m neither. The reason why I have the guts to stand near you is that I know that you won''t attack me." Lin Huang was confident. Zhu Xin frowned at his sass. Soon, his features returned to normal as he gazed at Lin Huang''s face. "I have to admit that you''re smart. No wonder you could think of a way to set me up." "I''m forced to do so. If I didn''t set you up, perhaps you were going to get me into trouble once you leave." Lin Huang was frank with him and told him the reason why he wanted to fool him. "I hold grudges. I believe that Wu Mo has mentioned that to you before." Zhu Xing narrowed his eyes. "Yes, she did." Lin Huang nodded and smiled. "I guess you''ve no idea how I deal with people who take me as a fool." Zhu Xing guffawed. "Tell me." "To deal with a person who has fooled me, I''ll first chop off their limbs and blend them into juice. I''ll feed the person with the juice, and no leftover is allowed. I''ll keep the person alive with some unique tactics and start dissecting them. I''ll first exchange the person''s heart, lungs, kidney, and the rest of his organs with the swine beast''s organ. The person can only live up to three days at the most and the shortest time that one can survive is less than three minutes. "As long as you''re willing to let go of the inheritance of the True God, I won''t kill you. Since you have outstanding credentials and you''re talented, you can become my slave and part of your consciousness will remain. "You have to know that there''s no chance of winning if you were to fight me. As long as you''re willing to let go of the True God''s inheritance, I can forgive your past misdeeds, including the fact that you''ve actually set me up." "It sounds like an attractive offer" Lin Huang was tempted. "I''ll give you an hour to consider whether to accept my offer or not. I''ll wait for you right here," Zhu Xing urged. Lin Huang stroked his chin and kept quiet for less than ten seconds and said, "I don''t need to consider it anymore. I''ve made up my mind." "So, your decision is" "My decision is" When Lin Huang''s voice was heard, he suddenly pointed at Zhu Xing and yelled, "Guys, come here! He''s Zhu Xing! He''s the guy who has gotten the True God''s inheritance!" Lin Huang''s voice drew everybody''s attention. Everybody''s eyes brightened as soon as they heard Zhu Xing''s name since the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine informed them that Zhu Xing was the one who had inherited the Sorcerer Goddess''s memory. The few of them who got into the shrine were exceptionally strong. They thought that Zhu Xing was the one who had obtained the inheritance. Having watched Zhu Xing''s attacks more than once throughout the challenges, they knew that he was terrifying. Zhu Xing had never expected that was what Lin Huang was going to do. Although Lin Huang had mentioned his name before during the announcement, not many of them knew how he looked like. Therefore, he would only have to handle a small number of people. Right now, after Lin Huang set him up, he instantly became the public''s attention. Zhu Xing could not tell the truth. Seeing the crowd was coming after him, he gave Lin Huang a killer stare and immediately fled. Since Zhu Xing was trying to escape, the people were like a swarm of bees chasing after him. Lin Huang stood in his original position, witnessing Zhu Xing being chased by the crowd and he was getting further away from him. He grinned triumphantly. "I''ve temporarily resolved the problem." 724 Returning to the Sorcerer Goddess Tower Seeing the crowd chasing after Zhu Xing, Lin Huang, who stayed in his original position, summoned Thunder. As he rode on Thunder''s back, he extended his finger, pointing in another direction. "Let''s head back to the Sorcerer Goddess Tower!" Thunder fluttered its wings and flew off into the sky. They headed towards the tribal members'' foothold where Bai Gu was previously. After flying for a short while, a black shadow gradually emerged from the snowy land. Unexpectedly, it was the position where Zhu Xing had been sent back just now. Soon, the black shadow transformed into a human form. Although his features could not be seen clearly, he looked remarkably like Zhu Xing. "The fella runs away so quickly," the black shadow mumbled. If Wu Mo had not been asleep, she would have figured out that it was Zhu Xing''s voice. "I won''t let you go next time!" Witnessing Thunder disappear within seconds, the black shadow did not chase after it. Instead, he muttered to himself. Soon after, his body faded away just like the snow that quickly melted as the sunlight shone on it. Lin Huang did not notice what had just happened at the snowy land. Of course, he would not mind even if he saw that. At Thunder''s flying speed, even an immortal-level human would not be able to catch up with it. Since Lin Huang was riding on Thunder, they flew for more than half an hour. Eventually, they arrived at the foothold where Bai Gu and the rest were, and Lin Huang recalled Thunder. The second they stepped into the foothold, a lady''s voice was heard. "Lin Xie, you''re back!" As the voice was heard, a pink shadow appeared in front of Lin Huang in a flash. Indeed, she was Duo Er. "Lin Xie, did you just get out of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine?" Duo Er''s doll-like body floated mid-air, and she asked curiously. "How did you know that I went to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine?" Lin Huang frowned. "The tribe leader told me." Duo Er was proud of herself. "I was sent back to the foothold by the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine a few days ago. I didn''t see you since then, so I thought that you were practicing in the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. The tribe leader told me that you left the Sorcerer Goddess Tower three days after we went to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine and that you went to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine alone." "Yes, you''re right. After the training, I heard that the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine was open and I immediately rushed over." When he heard what Duo Er said, Lin Huang knew that Bai Gu had not told them that he had obtained the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine''s key. He wove a lie according to Bai Gu''s story. "Today is the last day of the opening of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. I reckon that you managed to get through many of the challenges?" Duo Er asked. "No, I was stuck at the seventh shrine, and I didn''t manage to get through that even after the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine was closed," Lin Huang lied. Since he owned part of the authority of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, he knew the structure of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine and the contents of the assessment pretty well. "You did a great job. I was disqualified in the third shrine." Duo Er was upset. While the both of them were chatting, a familiar voice was heard again. "Duo Er, don''t block his way. Please come in." It was the tribe leader, Bai Gu. Zhu Er stuck her tongue out at him before moving aside. Lin Huang lifted his head and looked towards Bai Gu. He then greeted, "Hi, Sir." "Are you free to talk?" Bai Gu was holding his walking stick, the tip of which, pointed at the ground. His eyes were hollow as he looked towards Lin Huang. "Sure," Lin Huang answered. He touched Duo Er''s head affectionately and walked towards Bai Gu. Duo Er did not follow him. As the two of them disappeared, she left, heading towards another direction. Bai Gu led Lin Huang back to the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. The gigantic face was surprised when he saw Lin Huang. "Kid, you''re back." "Am I not welcomed?" Lin Huang smiled. "You''re always welcome," the face answered with a smile as well. After chatting for a while, Lin Huang and Bai Gu entered the first level of the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine. It was the first time that he was brought into that room. "Take a seat." Bai Gu then sat down on the futon opposite him with his legs crossed and Lin Huang followed suit. "Have you met the Sorcerer Goddess? Is she fine?" Bai Gu asked a question that was utterly unrelated to the result of the assessment. Lin Huang remained silent for a while and answered, "Yes, she''s fine with the remaining consciousness she has." "That''s good." Bai Gu nodded. After a moment of silence, he asked, "Have you obtained the inheritance? To be honest, I didn''t want to ask this, but I have to know." "Do you want me to tell you the truth or lie to you?" Lin Huang asked with a wry smile. "Lie to me." "A person named Zhu Xing has gotten the inheritance. A Virtual God has occupied his body called Wu Zhi," Lin Huang replied. "I understand." Bai Gu nodded his head. He slowly got up, picking up his walking stick. "There''s not much time left for you to stay here in the floating land. Make good use of the remaining time. I don''t want to disturb you anymore." "Aren''t you interested in knowing the truth?" Lin Huang asked. "No, I already know the answer." As Bai Gu got up, he pushed the door and walked out of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower without turning his head back. Seeing that Bai Gu had left, Lin Huang then appeared on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. One would not have to go through the levels that one had passed through in the Sorcerer Goddess Tower for the second time. Instead, he could be transported in an instant. On level nine, Lin Huang sat down and started practicing his Army Attack Tactics. He realized that when he was on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, the speed of practicing his Army Attack Tactics was more than 20 times faster. He managed to collect more than 80,000 skill pieces in an hour. It was a heaven for practicing his Army Attack Tactics. Since the spirit energy was 500 times more concentrated, he wished that he could complete practicing level-10 of his Army Attack Tactics. As he sat down, the Army Attack Tactics started circulating in Lin Huang''s body, and skill pieces were gathered just as he expected. Soon, Lin Huang was immersed in the state of practicing. Three days soon passed. In the snowy land that was thousands of kilometers away from the foothold of the tribal members, a plump man was surrounded by 20 people. To be more precise, there were six humans whereas the rest of them were tribal members in their puppet forms. "Zhu Xing, let go of the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance. You can''t take it all on your own," one of the tribal members said. "Zhu Xing, we do agree that you''re strong. However, none of us are weak either. It might be difficult for us to steal something away from you if it were a one-on-one battle. However, there are 20 of us here. Don''t attempt to fight back, which will be an effort in vain. Also, we''ve locked the entire dimension down. You won''t be able to run away this time." "I''ve said countless times that I don''t have the inheritance with me. The person who obtained the inheritance set me back," Zhu Xing insisted helplessly. "Since you''ve been fooled, tell us who the person is. We can talk to him face to face," someone suggested. "I''ve no idea who has it." Zhu Xing was reluctant to tell that Lin Huang was the one. "We''ll just kill you so that the inheritance will be freed from your dead body!" 725 Available Mythical-Level Card Dead bodies lay scattered on the snow. Most of the 23 slain were killed instantly, and only some of them suffered multiple injuries on their bodies. Most of them were had their heads chopped off. A plump man stood in the middle of the bodies, the tip of his supreme sword relic still dripping with blood. "I''m in luck this time. I didn''t expect that this host would be so talented in Sword Dao. He remedied those in our tribe who are weak at close-range fighting." Zhu Xing started to browse through all the bodies after putting his sword away. Wu Zhi would not be interested in searching for treasure on the corpses. However, since he had made Zhu Xing his host, there was nothing on him that was valuable besides the finger bone that he got from the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine earlier. Moreover, he needed a massive amount of resources to improve his combat level so he would have to put down his pride and search for stuff from these people who were not even on imperial-level. Zhu Xing shook his head in disappointment after going through all the 23 bodies. "Not even a demigod relic. I''ve got no idea what''s in their Emperor''s Heart Rings, and I''ll have to get someone to unseal them later. Ugh, so much trouble!" "Since I can''t find the guy who''s got the key to the Sorcerer Goddess''s Shrine, he must be hiding in the Sorcerer Goddess Tower now. Tomorrow will be the last day of the one-month period. There''s only 12 Sorcerer Goddess Towers. Besides the one that my tribe is in, there''re 11 others. Among the 11 Sorcerer Goddess Towers, there''re only 7 of them who aren''t against humans. Only these seven tribes would allow humans to enter their tower. I should have enough time to visit the seven footholds within the remaining two days. "It''ll be much easier if I manage to kill the guy on this floating land. He''s a genius after all, and there must be people protecting him out there. In my current condition, I won''t be able to handle imperial-levels who are just slightly powerful, let alone demigods. Moreover, many people will be eyeing the inheritance. The competition will be even more intense, so I''ll have to take the inheritance from him before tomorrow. I''ll disguise as a different face and leave this land together with the rest." After coming up with a plan, Zhu Xing flew into the air and looked far away. "But before that, I''ll need some assistance" He then raced like an arrow towards the direction that he was looking at As time passed by, Lin Huang spent four days on the ninth level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. During the four days, he did not eat or rest as he focused on the cultivation of his Army Attack Tactics. He accumulated more two million skill card pieces every day. Compared to the two million-odd card pieces that he collected in the beginning, he was closer to his goal of ten million card pieces to break through to the level-10 of Army Attack Tactics. By the middle of the night on the fourth day, he had accumulated eight million card pieces and was still going strong. 8.5 million Nine million 9.5 million On the fourth night, he finally accumulated ten million Army Attack Tactics card pieces, triggering Xiao Hei''s notification. "Congratulations, you''ve accumulated ten million Army Attack Tactics card pieces. Would you like to consume the ten million card pieces to complete the level-10 Army Attack Tactics?" "Yes!" Lin Huang decided without thinking twice. "Consuming ten million Army Attack Tactics card pieces. Breaking through level-10 Army Attack Tactics Completed!" "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a mythical-level cultivation method card - Twisted Fate Scripture!" "Mythical-level card? I can''t activate it, can I?" Lin Huang asked. "The Twisted Fate Scripture card is unique as it evolved from the Army Attack Tactics. Although it''s a mythical-level, there''s no restriction in activating it." "So, I can cultivate it directly?" After confirming that he could activate the mythical-level card, Lin Huang was pumped up and forgot all about his exhaustion from not resting for the past four days. "Sure, you can take a look at the card description yourself." Lin Huang summoned the Twisted Fate Scripture card immediately. "Special Life Skill Card "Life Skill Name: Twisted Fate Scripture "Rarity: Mythical "Mastery Level: Twisted Rotation No. 1 (0/1 million) "Twisted Nine Rotations: Your physical and spiritual strength, power, speed, and reflexes will be doubled in each rotation. After the nine rotations are completed, your body will transform directly into a Virtual God! "Fate Nine Rotations: Your authorization is restricted, so the effect is unknown. "Card Remarks: F*cking awesome!" It was his first time seeing such an excellent comment from Xiao Hei on a card. However, he recalled Mr. Fu saying that the cultivation method and Monster Skills that were acquired once he got to transcendent-level would be unlikely to boost his physical strength and other body attributes. Perhaps the cultivation method that he had just obtained was so rare that even Xiao Hei complimented it. "Does the 0/1 Million in the brackets mean that I''ll need one million card pieces to complete the first rotation of cultivation?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei. "Yes." "Then, how about the second and third rotation?" Lin Huang knew that it was impossible for every rotation to require the same amount of cards pieces. If that were the case, it was too easy to master the Twisted Nine Rotations. "The requirement of the card pieces will double up in each rotation." "It can''t be. The first rotation requires one million card pieces. Doesn''t that mean I''ll need more than two billion card pieces for the ninth rotation?" Lin Huang asked in horror. "That''s theoretically right. It''s tough to master this cultivation method." Although the requirement of the card pieces was terrifying, Lin Huang managed to calm himself down quickly. After all, the cultivation method was on mythical-level. Besides, as long as he completed the Twisted Nine Rotations, he would be a Virtual God instantly. Therefore, it made sense for it to be difficult, or else, everyone who practiced the same cultivation method during those days would have become Virtual Gods at the snap of a finger. "The ninth level of Sorcerer Goddess Tower is a perfect place for cultivation. It would be great if I can stay there to practice the Twisted Fate Scripture." On the ninth level of the tower, the speed of obtaining card pieces was more than 20 times faster than being out there. Figuring that he would need a huge number of card pieces for the Twisted Fate Scripture, Lin Huang planned to stay on the tower to practice. "Tomorrow will be the last day. The people from the Union Government will kill you if you don''t leave," Xiao Hei reminded. "I know that. It''s such a bummer." Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. "Since I still have a half day left tomorrow, I shall see how many Twisted Fate Scripture card pieces I can get." "Oh, you''ve finally woken up! Bai Gu''s looking for you." The gigantic face appeared on the ceiling before Lin Huang managed to start his practice. 726 The Weather’s Great to Walk Your Dog As Lin Huang was sent from to the ninth level to the first level of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, he walked straight towards the living room that Bai Gu was usually in. Just as he was going to knock on the door, he heard Bai Gu''s voice. "You don''t have to do that. Come and have a seat." Lin Huang walked in to see Bai Gu seated with his legs crossed in front of the coffee table as he gestured for him to take a seat. Lin Huang took his seat and asked immediately, "Are you looking for me, Sir?" "I heard that somebody is looking for you. It should be about the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance," Bai Gu said directly. "I think it''s Wu Zhi!" Lin Huang frowned. Theoretically, Wu Zhi was the only one who knew that he had gotten the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance. It was quite impossible that Wu Zhi would tell anybody else about it. "It should be him. I don''t think anybody else can persuade those powerful people to share where his descendants'' tribe is." Bai Gu nodded. "You mean there are others besides him?" Lin Huang frowned even deeper. "Yes, almost every powerful person in each tribe is coming. There''re even demigods. It only makes sense that they''re only coming for the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance." Bai Gu looked at Lin Huang with his empty eye sockets. "How would they know where I am?" Lin Huang could not understand it. "They''ve no idea where exactly you are, but Wu Zhi has his way to find your coordinates as long as you''re outside of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. Unless you''re in the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, then he won''t find out where you are. But there are only 12 Sorcerer Goddess Towers in this land and only seven of them welcome humans. All he''s got to do is to visit these seven tribes, and he''ll find out where you are. "He''s visited four footholds this afternoon, and I''m guessing he''ll be here next. Leave as soon as you can. You''ll be safe once you get back to your world," Bai Gu suggested. "He''ll find out that I was hiding at your foothold if I run away, and he''ll definitely come after you guys." Lin Huang was confident of the outcome as Wu Zhi was clearly evil. To prevent the news from spreading, he might kill the entire tribe. "Our tribe will be in bigger trouble if you stay," Bai Gu spoke the truth. "I''ll settle whatever''s coming for us after you leave." Lin Huang went into silence. He was thinking how he could settle this. He could not just leave like that and let Bai Gu settle Wu Zhi, but he could not stay either. "Alright then, I''ll leave." Lin Huang made his decision a while later. "Lin Huang, this Wu Zhi has great greed. The Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance must not fall into his hands, or else, there''ll be disaster for your new era," Bai Gu reminded. "I know, the Sorcerer Goddess has told me about him." "Pack your stuff. I''ll send you out later. My Witchcraft should be able to isolate you from Wu Zhi''s detection for a short period of time." "You don''t have to do that. I''ve already pinned the coordinates of the floating land border earlier. There''s nothing much for me to pack." Lin Huang shook his head as he rejected Bai Gu''s kindness. "If there''s nothing else, I''ll leave now." Bai Gu nodded. "Leave as soon as you arrive at the border. Don''t reveal yourself too much when you''re back to where you''re from. He''s a Virtual God after all, so I''m not sure what he''s capable of. It''s better to be safe than sorry." "I know. Thank you, Sir and the rest, for your time spent taking care of me." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "Don''t worry about me. I''ve quite some enemies, but I managed to survive until now. Although my combat level is just mediocre, I have some pretty neat survival skills." "Even so, don''t underestimate any of your enemies," Bai Gu reminded again. "Yes, I understand." Lin Huang gave a short response and stood up slowly from the futon. "Alright, I shall make a move now." Bai Gu stood up as well. "Let me send you off." The both of them walked out of the Sorcerer Goddess Tower. It was near midnight, and there were red and purple crescent moons hanging high up in the sky. There were so bright that they masked the stars around them. Most of the people had fallen asleep. Although they were now dolls, they went on with their daily lives as usual. As they walked out of the tower, the gigantic face appeared and watched Lin Huang quietly. Lin Huang nodded at the face with a smile while the latter nodded back without saying a word. As he arrived ten meters away from the Sorcerer Goddess Tower entrance, Lin Huang summoned his dimensional relic. Bai Gu watched him quietly by the entrance. After adjusting the coordinates, he then stepped into the dimensional relic without thinking twice. Before the dimensional relic shut, he turned around to wave at Bai Gu and the huge face. Bai Gu waved back too. They watched the dimensional relic close slowly, fade away and disappear. "Goodbye, human kid from the new era," Bai Gu mumbled. "Leader, do you really like him?" The gigantic face looked at Bai Gu questioningly. "Since the Sorcerer Goddess picked him, I shall trust her choice." Bai Gu nodded without hesitation. "There will be a war among the tribes because of him. Is it worth it?" The face asked again. "There''s no saying whether it''s worth it or not. Our conflict has been piling up for tens of thousands of years. The war is unavoidable anyway. It''s just a matter of time. Lin Huang''s appearance is just a trigger. After all, he''s taken the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance with him, so we''ve completed our mission. There''s no need for us to worry anymore. We don''t belong to this new era anyway. We''ve been living for more than 30,000 years. Isn''t that enough?" "That''s enough" The face nodded while forcing a smile. "Get everyone ready to fight. Also, inform the tribes to get ready." Bai Gu pointed with his walking stick. "Wu Zhi, how dare you show yourself since you were a traitor before? How dare you come for the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance? Don''t blame us if we have to attack you!" A black dimensional relic opened slowly thousands of kilometers away, and a person walked out of it at the border of the floating land. It was Lin Huang who had just left the foothold. After recalling the dimensional relic, he summoned Bloody instead of leaving the floating land immediately. "Find out where Zhu Xing is." Bloody''s Leech Pods spread across the entire land and soon it got the results after searching with its eyes closed. "Got him. But this guy is dangerous. My Leech Pods can''t get too close to him, or else, he''ll definitely find out." "It''s okay as long as you know his rough location." Bloody projected the image that it found. In the projection, Zhu Xing was resting with his eyes closed in front of a bonfire. Suddenly, his eyes flew wide open with excitement. "Human named Lin, you''ve finally shown yourself!" "I think we''ve exposed ourselves." Although Bloody could not hear Zhu Xing''s voice, it could read his lips and knew what he had just mumbled to himself. "Really?" Lin Huang smirked as he looked at the red and purple crescent moons in the sky. "The weather''s great today. It''s best to bring your dog for a walk." 727 Something Is Wrong with the Coordinates? In the monitor, Zhu Xin was seen getting up quickly. It was not easy for him to detect Lin Huang''s location. It was apparent that he would not miss it if he had a chance of killing Lin Huang. "I''ve finally found the guy. He''s in the seven o''clock direction and is approximately 6,000 kilometers away from us. He''s at the border of the land!" Zhu Xing shouted at the rest of the tribal members. "We have to get there as soon as possible. We can''t let him leave the land. Lie Kong, bring me there. The rest can stay here and wait for the latest updates." The man called Lie Kong was a snow giant. However, it was evident that it was neither a wild monster nor a pet monster. Instead, its body was occupied by a tribal member. The snow giant took a step forward and appeared in front of Zhu Xing. It lowered its head and asked, "Do you have the exact location?" Zhu Xing''s hand swept past the sky and soon, a square map that was about a meter wide formed. Unexpectedly, it was the map of the floating land. "Our location is represented by the white dot whereas the red dot represents the fella''s position." Zhu Xing simply touched the map and two white and red dots appeared. The snow giant stared at the map for a moment and nodded its head. "Alright, I know. Let''s go!" Zhu Xing acknowledged it and leaped onto the snow giant''s shoulder. As the snow giant waved its hand, a whirlpool was quickly produced in front of him amidst the snow. He then strode into the whirlpool. After a short while, as the whirlpool faded away, the snow giant''s gigantic body and Zhu Xing had disappeared. Although the monitoring scene projected by the Leech Pods was a certain distance away, the actions of Zhu Xing''s and the rest were clearly monitored by Lin Huang and Bloody. Bloody translated even the movements of their lips through lip-reading. Seeing the map being projected in front of Zhu Xing and that he was their target, Lin Huang chuckled and summoned the Golden Wheel. The Golden Wheel was a supreme relic. He obtained it after he killed the Saint member, Yu Wenbin. To avoid getting into trouble, Lin Huang had changed its color to white. Even the decorations on the dimensional relic were changed, and he rarely used it. When he set the coordinates in the Black Ink, he saved it in the Golden Wheel as well. Since it was a supreme relic, there was no restriction on the interval of its usage. Moreover, the distance it could travel was way further than the Black Ink since it was a 4-star relic. Watching the snow giant in the monitoring screen summon the Dimensional Whirlpool, Lin Huang grinned as he pushed the door of the Golden Wheel open. As he entered, he instructed, "Bloody, let''s walk the dog!" After a few moments, the Golden Wheel automatically closed. It vanished in thin air as it transformed into small, minute pieces. Lin Huang disappeared as well with Bloody twisted around his arm. Less than three seconds after Lin Huang disappeared, a snow whirlpool formed hundreds of meters away from where he was standing at earlier. An enormous shadow then appeared with a person standing on its shoulder. As soon as they arrived, they looked around, and no traces of Lin Huang could be found. "Is something wrong with the coordinates?" The snow giant turned his head back and asked the plump man. "There shouldn''t be any problem with the coordinates. This guy must be somewhere around here. The result won''t deviate further than 300 meters." Zhu Xing was confident. "Nothing is blocking our view here. We can look around the area up to a few kilometers away." The snow giant started sizing up the surrounding. However, they discovered nothing. "I''ll try detecting it again." Zhu Xing frowned. He then summoned The Book of Sorcerer Dao. He bit his finger anxiously and started flipping through the book until specks of blood stained the pages. A complicated chain of Witchcraft Rune formed in mid-air. However, the rune was blood red in color. After a short while, the bloody rune glowed and transformed into a red ring, spreading everywhere. It resembled a stone being thrown into a pool of water and forming ripples on the surface of the water. As the whirlpool spread wider and wider, the color faded. It became transparent when it was one kilometer away. It was hardly noticeable. Of course, Lin Huang, who was thousands of kilometers, away monitored what just happened through Bloody''s Leech Pods. "It''s within my expectations. He''s going to pay for it since he used the detection skill. As for the weeping blood rune, if it''s used three to five times a day, one''s body will collapse." Lin Huang grinned. "The detection technique of the chain rune is incredible. It''s going to continue for 24 hours if the target isn''t detected. However, if the target enters the detection region within 24 hours, one will be immediately targeted. That''s how you were discovered," Bloody analyzed the effect of the chain rune at first glance. "It''s useless. Tomorrow is the 10th of August. It''s the deadline when we have to leave. Even if he can still use the detection technique for ten times, he won''t be able to catch up with me. Moreover, the number of usages of the weeping blood rune is restricted. A large portion of the snow giant''s energy will be drained due to its teleporting ability. However, as long as I have sufficient energy crystals, I can use the dimensional relic non-stop." Lin Huang was calm because he was confident that Zhu Xing would not be able to catch up with him. "Be careful since he used to be a Virtual God in the past." Bloody was still on alert. "Alright. I''ve been targeted. Let''s go." From the monitoring screen, Lin Huang saw that Zhu Xing had marked his location on the map again. He then summoned the Golden Wheel. Noticing the snow whirlpool which was created by the snow giant again, Lin Huang then pushed against the door of the Golden Wheel and strode into it. After two to three seconds, Zhu Xing and the snow giant appeared where Lin Huang had just disappeared. They were less than 100 meters away from it. However, Lin Huang had gone missing again. As they arrived, they looked around again. Of course, no traces of Lin Huang were found. "How could that be?" Zhu Xing frowned. He had no idea why there was nobody at both of the coordinates. "Are you sure that there''s nothing wrong with your detection technique?" The snow giant asked again. It seemed to have assumed that the problem arose from Zhu Xing''s detection skill. "That''s impossible. I''ve used this skill thousands of times, and it''s never made a single mistake." Zhu Xing shook his head, sure of his skill. "Could the fella have something which will affect the result of the detection?" The snow giant suggested after keeping quiet for a while. "That''s possible. However, if he has any god relic that''s hindered me from detecting his location, the detection must''ve been directly blocked, and I won''t be able to use my skill. It won''t lead me to the wrong location though. Perhaps the god relic that he has is rather unique. While it doesn''t block me from detecting his location, the results will deviate from reality, or an illusion might happen. It might be activated passively," Zhu Xing guessed. "If that''s the reason, are we still going to chase after them?" The snow giant hesitated. Though it was a demigod, a significant amount of his energy was drained each time teleportation was performed. "Yes, of course. We aren''t going to stop until he''s captured! We aren''t going to lose anything since we''ll definitely have a chance to track him!" Zhu Xing insisted. 728 Theres No Charge for Setting Him Up Through Bloody''s monitoring screen, the conversation between Zhu Xing and the snow giant could clearly be observed. Bloody read their lips to discover what they were talking about. "They think that we have the god relic which distorted their detection result." Lin Huang was looking at the monitoring screen, shaking his head and said, "It''s great that they think so. At least, they think that their results have been distorted instead of someone monitoring them." "It seems like they won''t stop chasing us," Bloody reminded. "If they wish to continue chasing after us, let''s play with them." Lin Huang was optimistic as he was not afraid of being caught at all. Seeing that Zhu Xing had reset the coordinates, Lin Huang summoned the Golden Wheel again and disappeared together with Bloody. Again, Zhu Xing and the snow giant missed their target as they arrived. Still, they were not giving up. Zhu Xing bit on his finger again as he tried to detect Lin Huang''s position. The entire process was repeated for seven to eight times. The time needed for Zhu Xing to activate the detection rune got longer and longer. The snow giant started swallowing energy crystals as well to restore its energy that had been drained. "Zhu Xing has activated the weeping blood rune about eight times now without collapsing. He''s amazing." Lin Huang laughed. "Blood acts as an agent in the rune. What is mainly being drained is one''s mental strength. With Zhu Xing''s mind, he won''t be able to support this type of rune for too many times. However, Wu Zhi is the one who''s living in his body. He''s somehow a Virtual God in the past." Bloody was still wary of Wu Zhi since he used to be a Virtual God. "The demigod snow giant who possesses teleportation isn''t friendly as well. With its ability, it can easily freeze me, and I''ll have nowhere to run away to." "Of course, I know that I''m putting my life at risk. If I leave one to two seconds earlier, the coordinates located by Zhu Xing will be my new location. If I''m a second slower, we''ll bump into each other. However, if I don''t bother with anything and just leave the land, they''ll get Bai Gu into trouble." Lin Huang did not want anyone to get into trouble because of him. "Bai Gu is gathering the other members to fight Wu Zhi." After a moment of silence, Bloody told him the truth. "There are Leech Pods in Bai Gu''s territory, and Bai Gu was the one who said this." "Why do they want to fight? Is it because of me?" Lin Huang frowned. "Perhaps you''re the spark" Bloody said, projecting the conversation between Bai Gu and the broad face. After watching the projection, Lin Huang kept quiet for a long while. Bai Gu had an incisive mind. He knew what he should have done and what he should not have. At the same time, he knew how to make a wise decision. Since Lin Huang had obtained the inheritance, Bai Gu could actually kill him and grab the memory that he had inherited. However, instead of doing so, he chose to protect Lin Huang. In the projection, there was a sentence that came up: "You''ve been living for more than 30,000 years. Isn''t that enough?" Lin Huang was respectful to the elder as he treated death as nothing. "It''s an inevitable battle," Bloody said, staring at Lin Huang. "Even if we were to leave, we won''t make a difference to the situation." Lin Huang lowered his head, remaining quiet for a long while. He then slowly raised his head and said, "Tomorrow is the deadline. We shall leave tomorrow. I wish that I can fight together with them until the last minute." Bloody looked at Lin Huang who was so adamant about his decision. Knowing that it would be useless to say anything, Bloody then replied, "Alright, since you''ve made up your mind, I''ll be there with you until the last minute." As soon as he managed to escape from Zhu Xing, Lin Huang and Bloody appeared in an empty, snowy land. "If we continue escaping, we won''t make any difference aside from buying us some time," Bloody said. "Do you have any other ideas?" Lin Huang asked. "Since we''ve already put our lives at risk, we probably won''t mind if the situation gets a little bit more dangerous." Bloody chuckled. "Let''s draw them to a foothold where monsters gather or where powerful monsters live. Let''s create some trouble for the both of them." "That''s a good idea." Lin Huang''s eyes brightened. "I''ve encountered the Frostyape Corpse before. Though it isn''t even a demigod, its ability is on par with one. Each teleport uses up a large portion of the snow giant''s energy. I guess that they''ll be in trouble if they''re drawn to the Frostyape Corpse''s territory. Previously, to save myself from being attacked by those stronger than me, I''ve saved the coordinates of the imperial-level monster''s territory whenever I pass by." "Let''s go there and get them into trouble!" Despite it being an evil plan, Bloody did not feel guilty at all. It even sounded remarkably calm. "I didn''t know you''d have such a wicked plan," Lin Huang teased. "To deal with an enemy, any tactic can be used." Bloody remained calm. From the monitoring screen, they saw that Zhu Xing had located their coordinates again. Lin Huang then summoned the Golden Wheel and fixed the location to somewhere near the Frostyape Corpse''s territory. As the snow giant''s Dimensional Whirlpool was formed once again, he entered the Golden Wheel together with Bloody. When they got out of the Golden Wheel, Lin Huang returned to the Frostyape Corpe''s territory where he had been a month ago. After recognizing the direction, Lin Huang found the place where the Frostyape Corpse hid. He restrained his aura, floating in the safe zone outside the Frostyape Corpse''s territory. They then waited patiently for Zhu Xing and the snow giant to arrive. Ten minutes later, just when Zhu Xing''s rune was being created, Lin Huang grinned and summoned the Golden Wheel. At the same time, the Book of Sorcerer Dao was being summoned as well. As Zhu Xing was flipping the Book of Sorcerer Dao quickly to the last page, Lin Huang pressed his hand against the rune. A golden rune was formed swiftly in the air. "Snow transformation!" As Lin Huang pointed the finger at it, the rune transformed into a dazzling, golden glow which enveloped the entire region where the Frostyape Corpse was hiding. The whole area was like snow being quickly melted by high temperature. In less than three minutes, the Frostyape Corpse became a big, black pit. A few moments later, a furious roar was heard coming out from the pit. From Bloody''s monitoring screen, the snow giant''s Dimensional Whirlpool was generated. "I hope that you''ll appreciate my gift." Lin Huang grinned as he pushed the door of the Golden Wheel open and entered. The next moment when Lin Huang disappeared, the furious Frostyape Corpse emerged from the underground. At the same time when it appeared, the snow giant and Zhu Xing strode out of the Dimensional Whirlpool. 729 Snow Giant VS Frostyape Corpse The moment Zhu Xing and the snow giant stepped out of the Dimensional Whirlpool, a Frostyape Corpse could be seen from afar, emerging from underground. The Frostyape Corpse pounced on the both of them without a moment of hesitation as soon as it saw Zhu Xing and the snow giant. It did not see Lin Huang and thought that the both of them were the culprits who woke it up from its sleep. Fuelled by anger, it completely ignored the fact that the snow giant was actually a demigod. Zhu Xing and the snow giant were stunned when they saw that the Frostyape Corpse was pouncing on them. They were actually chasing Lin Huang and did not expect to encounter an imperial-level monster. The Frostyape Corpse was tremendous as it measured a height of at least 700 meters. It was about 20 times larger than the snow giant whereas Zhu Xing looked precisely like an ant compared to the Frostyape Corpse. In an instant, it appeared in front of the both of them. It lifted its leg and stomped hard on the both of them. "Beast, do you want to die?!" Zhu Xing yelled. He used to be a Virtual God and was not looked down upon by imperial-level monsters. However, this monster dared to even step on him, and he could no longer stand it. The snow giant''s eyes flashed with a trace of fury. It was a demigod and was now provoked by the imperial-level monster. It struck a blow in the air and soon, a huge arm that was made of snow instantly formed in the air. It then collided with the Frostyape Corpse''s blue foot. Bang! As they collided with each other, a loud explosion was heard. A blast wave was produced in the air, rippling out everywhere. A strong wind blew ferociously, and of course, the snow giant remained steady. Standing behind him, Zhu Xing was unaffected as well. However, the Frostyape Corpse was blown away, and soon, it collapsed. Obviously, regardless of its size, the gap in combat strength could hardly be compensated. "Hmm?" After a few moments, the snow giant frowned. Zhu Xing frowned as well. "Is it still alive?" The Frostyape Corpse''s body slowly got up off the ground as it shot them a deadly stare. "I''ve almost used up all my strength to hit it!" The snow giant did not turn its head back. Instead, it stared at the Frostyape Corpse with fear as it said that to Zhu Xing. "The Frostyape Corpse is about to gather its Godhead. I guess we won''t be able to leave this place if we don''t defeat it." As Zhu Xing carefully sized up the Frostyape Corpse, he then realized that it was not an ordinary imperial-level monster. "If I didn''t keep teleporting and draining my strength significantly, I''d have killed it!" The snow giant scoffed. "It seems like it''s flipping out," Zhu Xing said, pointing in the direction where the Frostyape Corpse was. He did not comment on the snow giant''s last remark. As the Frostyape Corpse got up from the ground, its pair of blue eyes instantly turned black. A layer of ice blue crystal surrounded it like a piece of icy blue armor. Icy thorns were formed on its tail as well. "Troublesome!" The snow giant grumbled, "I hate spirit types and the undying species the most." "Why didn''t you kill it in one hit?" Zhu Xing retreated hundreds of meters away. It seemed like he was not worried that the snow giant might lose. The Frostyape Corpse advanced as Zhu Xing retreated. It stomped the ground hard and disappeared at a speed that was several times faster. It then appeared in front of the snow giant in an instant. "That''s fast!" A flicker of fear flashed through the snow giant''s eyes. The Frostyape Corpse clenched its fist and attacked the snow giant without delay. At that moment, it seemed like the whole region was shrouded in its icy blue fist. It appeared like the hills were collapsing, and the collapsing hills wholly covered the snow giant. The snow giant remained calm. The Book of Sorcerer Dao was summoned, and it pressed its hand against one of the pages of the runes. As soon as the white rune lit up in mid-air, the snow giant was wrapped in a layer of crystal-clear, spherical defense shield. The Frostyape Corpse''s fist, which was the size of a mountain, struck the layer of defense shield. Each attack produced waves that looked like water ripples. However, it failed to break through its defense. In the defense shield, the snow giant remained calm. The effect of the attack outside the defense shield was rendered useless, and the Frostyape Corpse got even more ferocious. It did not feel tired and continued thumping the defense shield. It seemed like it was not going to stop unless it could break through the shield. In the beginning, the snow giant remained calm. However, it saw that the Frostyape Corpse''s attack had lasted for more than ten minutes and cracks started to appear on the defense shield. Moreover, the frequency of the Frostyape Corpse''s attacks did not reduce. Instead, it had increased. The snow giant could no longer remain patient. Since it had just teleported, only a small portion of energy remained in his body. It could not sustain a long battle. The Frostyape Corpse''s abilities were beyond its expectations. Right when the snow giant was thinking how he should end the battle quickly, a crack came from the defense shield. The snow giant frowned as it saw that the shield was about to break. It pressed its hand against The Book of Sorcerer Dao again. Just as the defense shield was about to collapse, Glacial Chains were formed, and the Frostyape Corpse''s limbs and neck were locked in it. "This type of monster was born in the snowy land. It''s restricted by the Witchcraft to a certain extent since Witchcraft is of the ice element," Zhu Xing said. The snow giant had activated Witchcraft twice. The defense shield that it first built was made of the ice element, and so were the chains. "I know that you''ve been using the snow giant''s body for a long time, and have gotten used to the ice element Witchcraft. However, if you don''t stop using the ice element skill and kill it, you might be the one killed." As soon as Zhu Xing''s voice rang out, the Frostyape Corpse that was growling and struggling to survive finally managed to get rid of the Glacial Chains. The Glacial Chains that locked its body collapsed and broke into pieces, vanishing as they fell to the ground. Roar!!! The Frostyape Corpse slapped its own chest as it managed to break free from the Glacial Chains, letting out a furious growl at the snow giant. The ice crystals that surrounded its body got thicker, and it looked even more violent. Its colossal body grew a few times bigger as well. 730 Killing the Frostyape Corpse As soon as it managed to break free from the Glacial Chains, the Frostyape Corpse struck a massive blow. Along with the sound of the wind, its attack hit the snow giant. The snow giant''s facial expression changed. When it was about to use the ice element skill, it thought of what Zhu Xing had just said. It then paused for a moment. At that moment, the Frostyape Corpse''s attack hit it, blowing it away like a kite breaking up in the air. By the time the snow giant was able to react, it had fallen into a pit hundreds of meters away from the snowy land. Inside the pit, the snow giant was stunned by the fact that a demigod had just been blown away by an imperial-level monster''s punch. Despite not being physically injured, it felt its ego bruised. On the other hand, the Frostyape Corpse was arrogant after the snow giant was attacked in one hit. It then appeared in front of the snow giant in a flash, bringing its huge leg down hard on the snow giant''s body. The snow giant went wild as it was pinned down by an imperial-level monster. How humiliating! It pressed its hand against The Book of Sorcerer Dao and started inserting power into the book without preserving its power. A flame red rune formed in the air. A gigantic, red bird then appeared in the sky above the snow giant. It attacked the Frostyape Corpse with its mouth wide open. Hundreds of flames that resembled meteorites shot into the sky and headed towards the Frostyape Corpse''s feet. A loud bang was heard along with the Frostyape Corpse''s furious growl. The snow giant gradually clambered out of the bottomless pit, and a flicker of fury flashed through its eyes as it watched the battle between the Blazing Bird and the Frostyape Corpse. "Go die!" It shouted and soon, the snow giant pressed its hand against The Book of Sorcerer Dao again. Another flaming red rune was produced in the air. After several moments, Flaming Pythons appeared and wiggled around the Frostyape Corpse. Since it was defending itself against the Blazing Bird, the Frostyape Corpse had no more effort to deal with the Flaming Pythons. Soon after, it got entangled by the Flaming Pythons. As the Flaming Pythons entwined around the Frostyape Corpse''s body, they transformed into Raging Chains own their own and locked the Frostyape Corpse down. It had no way of breaking through the chains. The snow giant did not stop there. Once more, it pressed its hand against The Book of Sorcerer Dao. With the remaining power it had in its body, it inserted the power into the book. Fiery arrows then appeared in mid-air. They looked like they were taken out from a forging furnace as flames surrounded the body of the arrows. The arrows dissipated a terrifying amount of heat, even distorting the air slightly. After thousands of arrows were formed, the snow giant contemplated the Frostyape Corpse coldly. The Frostyape Corpse seemed to have sensed that danger was near and started struggling as soon as it saw the shooting arrows. Since it was locked in the Raging Chains, its efforts to break free from the chains were in vain. The snow giant pointed at the Frostyape Corpse from afar and said coldly, "Go to hell, dirty monster!" As the red-hot shooting arrows streaked across the sky rapidly, it produced a kind of friction whereby peculiar red flames were formed. The arrows then struck the Frostyape Corpse. The Frostyape Corpse was trapped, and at the same time, it was controlled by the Blazing Bird. It could not dodge the arrows at all and was incapable of defending itself against the attack. It then drowned in flames. As the burning flames shot through the sky, they pierced through the Frostyape Corpse''s body. Despite the fact that the Frostyape Corpse had powerful defenses, it could not dodge the attack at all, and the shooting arrows easily broke through its defense layer, resembling steel pins that were nailed into the Frostyape Corpse''s body. The Frostyape Corpse snarled from the pain it suffered. As more and more arrows penetrated its body, its growl got weaker. The snow giant smiled ruthlessly as it witnessed the Frostyape Corpse no longer being able to fight back. It then pressed its hand against The Book of Sorcerer Dao again. Right at this moment, a golden rune appeared in the air. After a short while, an extremely large, blazing cross that was hundreds of meters tall formed above the Frostyape Corpse. The cross was shrouded in milky white flames. Before the cross touched the Frostyape Corpse''s body, the Frostyape Corpse felt suffocated as a boiling temperature was released into the air. It started struggling and thrashing violently. Lin Huang, who was watching the fight thousands of meters away through the monitoring screen, could not understand why this would happen. "Is there anything special about the cross? Why is the Frostyape Corpse so afraid of it?" "It''s not afraid of the cross, but of the holy flame that surrounds the cross," Bloody explained, "The Frostyape Corpse is a spirit type of monster. Naturally, it''ll be afraid of God''s power. It''s obvious that the snow giant''s attack intends to kill the Frostyape Corpse." From the monitoring screen, the large cross gradually descended from the sky and struck the Frostyape Corpse''s back. The Frostyape Corpse tried its best to free itself from the cross. However, after several attempts, it was still defeated. The bones in both of its legs were broken. It fell to the ground, and it could not move at all. White flames were continually gushing out of the cross. In an instant, the Frostyape Corpse''s body was enveloped by the white flames. The Frostyape Corpse let out a few roars at the beginning. Soon, it started moaning in pain. After a short while, its moan became weaker and eventually disappeared. The huge body that was shrouded in white flame finally stopped moving after struggling for more than half an hour. Lin Huang frowned at the sight. "The demigod is still a demigod. Its skill is terrifying. Though it''s weak, it''s still an easy task for it to kill an imperial-level monster." "If it had no concern at the beginning, it might be able to defeat the Frostyape Corpse in one hit. The snow giant is probably the strongest among the demigods," Bloody analyzed, "The Frostyape Corpse managed to buy us some time. At the same time, we''ve witnessed the snow giant''s true power. It''s a worthy death." "We have to increase the difficulty level the next round. If one imperial-level monster is not enough, a group of them might be." Lin Huang projected the floating land''s map, fixing his gaze on one of the locations on the map. Again, he grinned. 731 Arctic Dragons "The monster is so annoying! I''m going to have to kill it to make me feel good!" Seeing that the Frostyape Corpse had died, the snow giant then recalled The Book of Sorcerer Dao. "You''ve almost used up the power in your body. Let''s take a break before we proceed to our next destination." Zhu Xing suggested. He then walked slowly toward the Frostyape Corpse''s territory and lowered his head to look at the pit Lin Huang made. He returned after a moment, and although he was deep in thought, he did not say anything. The snow giant sat cross-legged, and after swallowing an energy crystal, it began restoring the energy in its body. Soon, an hour passed, and the snow giant opened its eyes to say to Zhu Xing, "Let''s go." "How much power have you restored?" Zhu Xing asked. "About 30% of my power has been restored. Even if we encounter a monster like the Frostyape Corpse, I''ll have enough power to handle it." The snow giant answered. "30%..." Zhu Xing frowned. He vaguely felt that restoring only 30% of its total power might not be enough. "Quickly set the next location and stop wasting time!" the snow giant urged, "There are only a few hours left until the deadline set by the Union Government." "Alright" Zhu Xing had to compromise with it after he put some thought to the deadline set by the Union Government. After spending about 10 minutes to acquire Lin Huang''s position, the snow giant then summoned a Dimensional Whirlpool. As they entered the Dimensional Whirlpool, both of them wore a serious look because their next destination was a lair of the Arctic Dragon. As both of them arrived, a few of the dragons shot a deadly stare in their direction. Obviously, Lin Huang was the one who set them up. Lin Huang quickly made a detour as he passed by the Arctic Dragon lair earlier. He never knew that the place would be so useful to him now. "There is more than one Arctic Dragon Is it because we didn''t look at the almanac today?" The snow giant was speechless. "Don''t you know that? We''ve been tricked." Zhu Xing could confirm that this encounter was not accidental at all. "We''ve been tricked?" The snow giant could not understand why. "Yes. If I''m not mistaken, that person set us up at the beginning." Zhu Xing could guess that Lin Huang was the one who did it. He dared not look down on him at all as he managed to grab the Sorcerer Goddess'' inheritance. "Do you mean that he''s been fooling us all the while? Did he purposely lure us to the Frostyape Corpse''s territory and the Arctic Dragon''s lair?" After being reminded by Zhu Xing, it finally dawned on the snow giant. "Yes, you''re right. I think he''s probably monitoring us with some kind of skill. That''s why he managed to act before us." Zhu Xin made another guess. "Let''s discuss this later. Our main concern now is to overcome the danger before us," the snow giant whispered. Soon, they ended their conversation because it was not the right time to discuss the topic. Surrounded by a few Arctic Dragons, even the demigod snow giant felt like they were in trouble. "There are six of them. Are you capable of fighting them?" Seeing the Arctic Dragons approach them, Zhu Xing asked. "Yes, when I have full power but now, I''m Let''s run." Despite the snow giant was reluctant to flee, still, it decided to escape after thinking of it carefully. It seemed like the few of the Arctic Dragons opposite them had lost interest in the both of them after sizing them up. After secretly communicating with each other, the Arctic Dragons opened their mouth wide and spat frost at the both of them. At this moment, the snow giant grabbed Zhu Xing as it transformed into lightning to flee as the frost spread around them. Seeing the snow giant''s attempt to escape, the six Arctic Dragons fluttered their wings and chased after them. Thousands of meters away, Lin Huang and Bloody could clearly see what just happened. "It seemed like the demigod isn''t unconquerable after all. They''re being chased by the six Arctic Dragons as well." Lin Huang grinned. "If his strength is fully recovered, it won''t be difficult for it to kill the six Arctic Dragons if it wanted to. However, only about 30% of its power is in its body. It''s definitely not a wise choice to fight them head-on." Bloody felt that retreat was a better option for the snow giant. "They aren''t stupid. Encountering two monster attacks in a row, they must''ve known that we''re the one who''s behind it all. Perhaps, we can''t do this anymore since they''ll be prepared for it." Despite not being able to hear the conversation between Zhu Xing and the snow giant, Bloody could roughly guess that their plan had been revealed. "Naturally, that''ll happen eventually. It''s just a matter of time." Everything was within Lin Huang''s expectation. "What''s your next plan?" Bloody asked. "I still have a gift for them. I wonder if they can take it." Lin Huang laughed like an evil maniac. Bloody was stunned. Soon, a thought flashed through its mind as it asked, "Do you mean... that?" "Yes, I do." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. "That''s too dangerous. If we''re not careful enough, we might get involved as well," Bloody said fearfully. "It''ll be fine. The thing is related to Wu Mo. Since I have Wu Mo''s inheritance as well as the Sorcerer Goddess blood, it''s less likely that I''ll attack me. However, I''ll send you back into your card form before we go. It probably won''t be a problem." Lin Huang was firm on his decision. "After this, if they manage to survive, I don''t think they''ll have the guts to mess with me anymore" "The probability of survival is low. You have to be careful as well. Although you have the Sorcerer Goddess blood, safety is not certain, especially since so many years had passed. We don''t know if it still remembers Wu Mo''s aura." Bloody reminded Lin Huang worriedly. "I''ll be careful. If something feels off, I''ll flee immediately." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. After a short while, he saw that the Arctic Dragons had caught up with Zhu Xing and the snow giant from the monitoring screen. Their battle had begun. After about 1.5 hours, the snow giant and Zhu Xing finally killed the six Arctic Dragons together but they had almost used up all of their strength. After resting for about two hours, the sky began to brighten. They were now ready to take Lin Huang on again. 732 The Fearsome Fading Petals As they strode out of the Golden Wheel, Lin Huang appeared at the foot of the iceberg. He then raised his head and looked toward the frost covered mountains. "Where''s the exact location?" he lowered his head and asked bloody. "It''s inside the third iceberg. As for the actual location, you might have to look around." Bloody projected a map where the coordinates were marked. After remembering the coordinates, he nodded his head at Bloody and said, "I''ll handle the rest. I''ll return you to your card form so you won''t be attacked." "I''ll switch the authority for controlling the leech pods monitoring Zhu Xing and the snow giant to you." Bloody nodded. "You''ll be able to control the leech pods. Although it might be difficult for you to control a large number them at the same time, it''s not difficult to control one leech pod." As Bloody said this, it extended its antennae and twisted them around Lin Huang''s left arm. After a short while, a purple dot was released on Lin Huang''s palm. "This is the specular pod. As long as you''re able to stay focused, you''ll be able to obtain the authority over the control of the leech pods. You can also monitor what''s happening over there through the pods," Bloody explained, "I''ve actually been developing these specular pods for a long time. However, this is the first time I''ve used them. I''ve tested them quite extensively in the past so there shouldn''t be any problems. Give it a try." Lin Huang nodded. He focused on the specular pods and soon, he could see the monitoring screen. From the monitoring screen, he could see that Zhu Xing had began pinpointing his whereabouts with a skill. As he withdrew his attention from the specular pods, Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction and said, "It''s convenient to use, and the monitoring screen is clear." "Zhu Xing has started pinpointing your location. You should go now." Bloody saw what was happening over there so it reminded him. "I''ll recall you into your card form then." Lin Huang said. Soon, Bloody returned to its card form and he headed toward the third iceberg. When he arrived at the third iceberg, it took him a few minutes to locate the exact position Bloody had saved earlier. Seeing the unappealing icy blue flower that was blowing in the wind, Lin Huang knew that he had arrived at his destination. The height of the plant was only half of a regular person''s height. The entire plant only had a small, icy blue flower. It looked like a flower of a lotus that was even smaller and was only half the size of a human palm. The flower was being shaken around by the cold air as it gave off a pitiful look. Although Lin Huang saw the flower from afar, he dared not move forward. Others may not know what type of plant it was but Lin Huang clearly knew that it was more dangerous than the demigod Wu Zhi who reigned supreme tens of thousands of year ago. While Lin Huang lingered in fear without getting any closer, the icy blue flower faded away. It puzzled Lin Huang but soon, the plant reappeared less than a meter away from him, lingering before him while it slowly swirled. Lin Huang attempted to hold his breath since he was quite fearful of the flower. At that moment, a blue mist was released from the flower, and Lin Huang''s body was enveloped by the mist. He did not dare to dodge so he stood there, not even moving a muscle. After a short while, a beam of purple light appeared between Lin Huang''s eyebrows, and a semi-transparent purple crystal was gradually projected in front of his eyebrows. Lin Huang knew that it was the projection of the Sorcerer Goddess blood. The icy blue flower shivered as it saw the projection. Then, it quickly withdrew the blue mist that covered Lin Huang''s body. A soft sound was heard coming from the flower but Lin Huang had no idea what it meant. Then, it began collapsing and soon, it reappeared where Lin Huang first saw it, hundreds of meters away. It seemed like it never even moved. Lin Huang knew that danger had finally passed. He was slightly relieved, and he began focusing on the specular pod in his palm. In the monitoring screen, Zhu Xing had just completed drawing the detection rune that had pinpointed Lin Huang''s current location. Lin Huang grinned as he patiently waited for the projection of the map. The snow giant would soon summon its Dimensional Whirlpool. Upon seeing both of them getting ready to enter the whirlpool, Lin Huang summoned the Golden Wheel and strode into it. The ice-blue flower did not stop Lin Huang from doing anything, allowing Lin Huang to leave. After the Golden Wheel closed, a whirlpool that was less than 20 meters away from it was formed, and two figures strode out of the whirlpool. Just as Zhu Xing and the snow giant was sent to the new location, they saw the icy blue flower, putting grave expressions on their face. "Are those the Fading Petals?!" The snow giant asked, trembling. "Run!" Zhu Xing did not bother to answer its question and shouted. He then turned around and fled. As the God of the tribal members, he knew fairly well how fearsome the Fading Petals were. It was an abyssal plant planted by the one True God, Wu Mo more than 10,000 years ago. Since it was cared for by Wu Mo, it possessed a terrifying ability that was comparable to the Virtual God that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Consuming demigod monsters as its food, it was a predator at the top of the food chain. Although more than 10,000 years had passed, aside from Wu Mo, even Virtual Gods would become its food. The Fading Petals showed no mercy except for Wu Mo. This was the reason why Zhu Xing and the snow giant became limp as they attempted to run away in different directions after bumping into the Fading Petals. After the both of them moved, the Fading Petals disappeared from its original position again and reappeared before the snow giant, blocking its way. Seeing the icy blue flower appear in front of him, the snow giant shivered as its back became drenched in sweat. It attempted to escape but it was enveloped by the flower''s blue mist. After a short while, the snow giant''s body distorted as if it was being crushed by an invisible hand. The snow giant could not defend against the blue mist that was crushing its body. It let out a pitiful growl which lasted for less than 10 seconds before its huge body became limp and collapsed. It had died. The huge dead body that was enveloped by blue mist disappeared after several moments before the blue mist cleared. The snow giant was killed in less than half a minute. Zhu Xing did not even bother to turn his head around as he continued running. However, the icy blue flower appeared again and blocked his way. Zhu Xing''s pupils dilated as he begged, "Please don''t do this to me. I''m a tribal member. I''m Wu Mo''s subordinate" However, the Fading Petals did not seem to understand what he was trying to say as the blue mist began enveloping his body. Soon, Zhu Xing''s body was getting crushed like the snow giant earlier. After a few moments, his body collapsed and transformed into jade-like phalanges. The icy blue flower let out a furious growl and soon, the phalanges were engulfed by the blue mist as well. Hundreds of meters away, Zhu Xing took a deep breath of relief. "I almost died. Thank god for this God item that saved my life." 733 Hunting for Zhu Xing! Seeing that he was now hundreds of meters away from the Fading Petals, Zhu Xing concluded that he had finally rid himself of it so he stopped running. He had expended a large amount of strength in his attempt to escape. ''This guy is really skilled. He managed to almost kill me by using the Fading Petals.'' Zhu Xing thought fearfully about the Fading Petals. He would not have dared to provoke the Fading Petals in the past even while he was at the peak of his strength, let alone in his current form after parasitizing an immortal-level body. He could very well turn into food for it if his skill did not activate in time "The Fading Petals chased after Lie Kong before me. I think Lie Kong is dead" Zhu Xing did not see the snow giant getting killed but he could guess that the snow giant had fallen. It was impossible that the Fading Petals would let go of a demigod to give chase to him. "There are a few hours left until the deadline set by the Union Government. Without Lie Kong''s teleportation ability, I won''t be able to chase after that person any longer. I''ll remember this forever. After leaving the floating land in the near future, he''ll have to pay for what he has done!" Zhu Xing''s eyes flashed with a trace of fury. After summoning Bloody, Lin Huang finally felt like he had vented his anger after witnessing the snow giant dying and Zhu Xing fleeing clumsily through Bloody''s projection. He felt lucky because he was now safe. He knew that the Fading Petals was terrifying. However, it was not until he saw the demigod snow giant suffering before it died on the screen that he realized how fearsome the Fading Petals were. It was hundreds of times scarier than what he could ever imagine. "The Fading Petals hail from the abyss and is simply too terrifying." Lin Huang sighed. "I guess Zhu Xing is too afraid to come after me anymore." As seen from the monitoring screen, Zhu Xing looked like a frightened bird. Lin Huang knew that he would no longer be able to cause any trouble for him any longer. "Without teleportation, it''ll be difficult for him to locate you." Bloody laughed. "Unfortunately, Zhu Xing is still alive." Lin Huang was upset. "He was a Virtual God in the past, and he''s quite skilled." It was within Bloody''s expectation. "At least the result is a positive one, and you''ve temporarily rid yourself of one of the biggest problems you''re facing. "As you said, this is just a temporary plan. I''m pretty sure Zhu Xing will still get me into trouble after we leave this place." Lin Huang knew that Zhu Xing would not give up a chance for him to exact revenge on him. "What are you going to do? Kill him before leaving the floating land?" Bloody asked. "It''s definitely difficult to kill him but now is the best timing. He''s alone and he doesn''t have a guardian with him. Also, he''s just completed parasitizing his new body so his combat strength must be at its weakest point now. Once he recovered his combat strength to the level of a Virtual God, it''ll difficult to kill him." Lin Huang wanted him dead because he was a threat and was eager to kill him so that nothing would happen in the future. "He won''t expect that I''m planning to kill him now." "Regardless of how weak he is, he''s still an immortal-level rank-9. His ability is on par with someone at the imperial-level. His escape from the Fading Petals is proof enough of his power. Even if you were to start a fight with him, the probability of defeating him will be extremely low. Also, the number of times you can use your skills against him will be reduced each time they''re activated. Are you still going to give it a try?" Bloody disagreed with Lin Huang. "Let''s give it a try. We''ll flee if the plan fails. If the plan succeeds, we''ll be able to rid ourselves of this danger permanently. I think it worth a bet." Lin Huang insisted. "Since you''ve made up your mind, let''s make a wager. However, we''ll need to discuss the details of the plan." Bloody failed to persuade Lin Huang so it had to agree with him. Thousands of kilometers away, he gave up the thought of chasing after Lin Huang after confirming that he managed to escape from danger and headed towards the gathering point of the tribal members. Despite being unsure of the person who took Lin Huang in the past, he was ready to fend anyone of them off. ''All the tribal members who were friendly to humans were traitors! They should be killed!'' Of course, Zhu Xing did not know that he had become Lin Huang''s target. Each and every action of his was being monitored by Lin Huang. "Based on the direction that he''s headed in... Is he going to meet the tribal members? Lin Huang frowned after seeing Bloody''s projection. "Yes. According to his current flight speed, he''ll meet with the tribal members in 1.5 hours at most." Bloody nodded. "If we want to kill him, we''ll have to do it before they meet." Lin Huang nodded as he projected the map of the floating land. Soon, they managed to pinpoint Zhu Xing''s location. He pointed at it and said, "He''s there! About 200 kilometers away. It must be somewhere near the coordinates that I saved in my dimensional relic earlier. Please help me estimate his path. We''ll have to block his way and kill him!" "Alright!" Bloody replied. After summoning the Golden Wheel, Lin Huang and Bloody were sent to a place that was thousands of kilometers ahead of Zhu Xing. "Let''s head toward two o''clock. There''s a forest situated about 25 kilometers that way. We can hide there since Zhu Xing is definitely going to pass by that place." Lin Huang recalled the Golden Wheel while Bloody estimated Zhu Xing''s path. "Let''s wait for him over there." Lin Huang grinned as he headed toward the two o''clock direction. In just a short while, Lin Huang arrived at the forest that Bloody was mentioning. As they went deeper into the forest, Bloody led Lin Huang to a place to hide. It was a hollow tree. They squatted inside the tree while Lin Huang patiently waited for Zhu Xing to arrive. After three minutes passed, Zhu Xing appeared in the sky above the forest. He had no idea that they were hiding there. All of a sudden, flocks of birds in the forest randomly flew to the sky in every direction as if they were frightened. Zhu Xing frowned and slowed down to avoid the flocks of birds. However, a flock of Thunder Sparrows rushed toward him. Zhu Xing immediately landed on the ground once he saw what just happened. It would not be wise for him to take on the flocks of birds in the sky in his current condition. "Now''s the time! Let''s fight!" At this moment, Bloody whispered to Lin Huang. Lin Huang had prepared himself with six of his God Crashers. With his telekinetic powers, the muzzle of the cannons took aim at Zhu Xing while he descended from the sky. "Bang!" A golden beam was seen flashing through the sky along with a loud bang. Not even expecting anything, Zhu Xing was engulfed by the golden beam 734 Lin Huang Versus Zhu Xing "Did the attack just strike him?" Lin Huang witnessed Zhu Xing''s body being enveloped by the God Crasher''s attack. However, he was unsure if the attack struck him since he was a Virtual God in the past. There were many ways he could save himself. A black figure suddenly descended from within the golden beam. After the black figure landed, Lin Huang immediately appeared next to it to confirm if Zhu Xing was dead. Lin Huang frowned the moment he laid eyes on the barely-recognizable black figure. Although it really looked like a burnt corpse, he instinctively felt like this was not Zhu Xing''s corpse. There was no notification from Xiao Hei as well. Although he would not be able to obtain cards or human pieces from killing humans, there was still a chance for him to obtain skill card, skill pieces, or even relics. The moment Lin Huang confirmed that Zhu Xing was still alive, he sensed danger coming from behind and immediately retreated hundreds of meters away. Zhu Xing was holding a sword as he appeared at the position where Lin Huang was standing at earlier. The sword in his hand sliced through Lin Huang''s shadow without even a hint of hesitation. Zhu Xing did not chase after Lin Huang despite missing him. Instead, he smiled at Lin Huang and said, "I didn''t expect for you to come to me after I''ve given up chasing after you." "Of course! I had to run since you brought a demigod along with you. Think about it. If I attempted to kill you with a demigod, would you run?" Lin Huang laughed. "You''ve indeed been monitoring me all this time! What amazing skill you have." As he listened to what Lin Huang said, Zhu Xing confirmed that Lin Huang had been keeping track of his movements all this while. This was why he was always late. "I do agree that you''ve done a great job in setting me up with the Fading Petals. My heart is still fluttering with fear. You''re kind of brave. However, if you think that you''ll have a chance to kill me after the demigod died, you aren''t that brave after. You''re being too na?ve." Zhu Xing laughed at Lin Huang as he said this. "Thank you for the compliment. It''s the first time I''ve been praised for being too na?ve. Do you know that naivet actually means that a person is kind, straightforward, real, and loves to stride toward freedom." Lin Huang smiled while he lectured Zhu Xing. Then, he continued, "Of course, I''m hoping others would think that I''m more innocent than naive. "You''re a sharp-tongued boy!" Zhu Xing did not want to argue with him any longer. "Since you''re here, you''ll just die here. Don''t worry. After killing you, Wu Mo''s inheritance will be extracted from your dead body. It won''t just die here." After finished uttering those words, Zhu Xing took a step forward and transformed into a ghostly figure. His movements were eerie. Now, Lin Huang could no longer distinguish his true body from the ghostly figure and was unable to take aim with the God Crasher. The limited attacks the God Crasher could perform required him to take some time to restore its energy. Just as Zhu Xing was approaching, the flock of birds flying in the sky pounced on him once more, enveloping the ghostly figure that was Zhu Xing. His shadow was ripped apart by the flock of birds, and he had to use his true body to clumsily fight against the birds. At this moment, Lin Huang''s God Crasher took aim at Zhu Xing once more as red flares gushed out of the muzzle to drown Zhu Xing in wave-like flames. Before Lin Huang could confirm his death, Zhu Xing''s body was gradually formed behind Lin Huang. "Correct me if I''m wrong but... this flock of birds and the attack I encountered earlier are from your monitoring skill?" Zhu Xing squinted his eyes and looked toward Lin Huang. "Is it a spiritual control? Puppet control? Illusion control? What skill is it? I think birds aren''t the only monster that you can control. You''ve control over other monsters too, right?" Zhu Xing was close to the truth. However, he did not expect that Lin Huang would own a monster like Bloody who could control the leech pods. Lin Huang smiled in silence. He heard it from Wu Mo that Wu Zhi, who was also known as Zhu Xing, was good at gleaning the truth from one''s conversation. He would definitely not reveal anything if he kept quiet. Since Lin Huang did not respond, Zhu Xing could guess what he was thinking. "It''s fine if you don''t want to tell me. There''s no difference regardless of the skill being used. You have four more chances to attack me with the God Crasher. However, I can activate my molting ability endlessly so you''re going to die as soon as you''re done using the attacks of the God Crashers." Zhu Xing laughed arrogantly as he finished his last sentence. "Is it possible to unravel his molting rune?" Lin Huang communicated with Bloody telepathically. He did not even attempt to whisper since he was afraid that Zhu Xing had the ability to detect what he just said. "It''s probably the effect of the compound rune which allows him to unleash his molting skill multiple times within time limit. That''s why he doesn''t need to activate the rune repeatedly in order to obtain its effects." Then, Bloody continued its analysis. "It''ll take me some time to observe the type of compound rune that can produce such an effect." "Alright, I''ll try my best to buy you some time. Please be fast." After communicating with Bloody, Lin Huang lifted his head to look at Zhu Xing. "Didn''t you know? As the saying goes, whoever laughs the last, will laugh the longest. It''s too early for you to feel happy." "Is that so? I guess I''ll be the one who laughs last since you''ll already be a corpse by then," Zhu Xing said before taking another step forward. Then, he transformed into his ghostly figure and lunged toward Lin Huang. Again, the swarm of birds went into a frenzy mid-air and enveloped Zhu Xing''s ghostly figure. Soon, the shadows were torn apart into pieces by the swarm of birds identified Zhu Xing''s true body. Lin Huang did not launch an attack. Instead, he took aim at Zhu Xing from afar and targeted his true body. "Why didn''t you launch an attack? Is it because you know that you only have four chances left, and you''re afraid that the game will end after those four attacks?" Zhu Xing teased while he killed off the birds. Lin Huang kept quiet as it was useless for him to attack before he managed to decipher his molting rune. He knew fairly well that the number of attacks he could make with his God Crashers were limited. Once he had used up all the attacks, he would be pinned down by Zhu Xing. In just a short while, Zhu Xing managed to wipe out all the birds. Then, he picked up his sword and dashed toward Lin Huang, appearing instantly before him. Lin Huang did not dodge as he glared at Zhu Xing who was less than 10 meters away from him coldly. It was then that a flare suddenly shot out from the God Crashed to envelop Zhu Xing in it. After a few moments, the flare vanished and Zhu Xing''s body regained its form hundreds of meters away. He squinted his eyes and looked toward Lin Huang before showing him three fingers. "You only have three attacks remaining." 735 Are You Ready to Say Goodbye to This World? "Bloody, how long do you still need?" Lin Huang secretly contacted Bloody. "Give me another three minutes at least. Naturally, the longer you can delay for me, the better it''ll be. Buying me more time will allow me to decode the rune more thoroughly, resulting in a higher success rate at breaking the rune," Bloody responded. "Three minutes?! The guy has noticed my attempt to buy some time" Lin Huang knew that Zhu Xing had found out. "I won''t be able to hold him off for another three minutes by myself. Manipulate some of the parasites to assist me!" "Sure!"Bloody said. Zhu Xing had already discovered Lin Huang''s attempt at buying some time when he insulted him with a smile before he said, "Do you think that delaying me like this is going to be of any use? You''re simply trying to buy yourself some time so you can recharge one or two of your God Crashers. Even if you managed to delay me, do you think it''s going to work? It''s just a few minutes worth of time before you die. Why do you bother struggling to survive?" "Do you really think I''m buying myself some time just because I want to recharge the God Crashers? Can''t it be because I want to wait for backup to come or some other reason?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. Zhu Xing was stunned when he heard this. He squinted his eyes and sized him up but he found nothing. "You''re just trying to scare me off! If you really had anything up your sleeves, you''re definitely not going to tell me. You''d much rather give me a fatal ''surprise'' instead. However, since you''re telling me this, you have to be lying since you know that you''ve no chance of winning! You''re doing this with hopes that I''d retreat." After saying his piece, Zhu Xing paused for a moment and fixed his gaze at Lin Huang. "Am I right?" Lin Huang did not bother with what Zhu Xing was asking and looked toward the sky. A swarm of birds was flying toward as they chirped. It was as if half of the sky was covered by dark clouds. They even blocked the sunlight until the light on the ground dimmed abruptly. Zhu Xing did notice the disturbance to the light as he raised his head to gaze toward where Lin Huang was looking at. At that moment, his face turned pale. There were more than one species of bird that gathered in the sky, and they were all pretty much on the immortal-level. There were tens of thousands of them. Naturally, he knew that Lin Huang was the one behind it. "I''ve really underestimated you. How could you possibly manipulate so many monsters? However, regardless of the number of birds, they''re no different than the poultry I eat at home since they only have a maximum combined strength of immortal-level rank-3. Why are you trying to annoy me with such a huge swarm of birds? Are you going to try and run away?" "Normally, the flock of birds might mean nothing to you since you''re at the imperial-level. However, you shouldn''t be so certain of yourself right now. I guess you don''t have that much Life Power remaining in you, right?" Lin Huang tilted his head slightly to look at Zhu Xing. "I wonder... Would the molting rune still function once the Life Power in your body runs out?" Zhu Xing''s face was aghast. Under normal circumstances, the molting rune would definitely not function without an energy source to activate it once the energy in his body had been drained. However, since his opponent had God Crashers, he could launch an attack to kill him once his energy ran out so he could no longer activate the molting rune. After Lin Huang finished questioning him, the birds flying in mid-air approached him. Tens of thousands of birds completely ignored his presence as they fluttered their wings hard and pounced on Zhu Xing. In just a blink of an eye, Zhu Xing was completely surrounded by the birds. "With the number of birds we have here, I think you''ll have sufficient time to decode the rune, right?" Lin Huang was relieved after seeing Zhu Xing disappear so he contacted Bloody. "If nothing out of our expectation happens, we should have enough time." Bloody gave a prompt reply. Lin Huang quietly moved aside to recharge the God Crasher with some Life Power. However, in less than thirty seconds, he heard Bloody panicking through its voice, "Be careful, he''s coming for you!" Before Bloody could complete its sentence, a peculiar sound was heard from the swarm of birds. It sounded much like the roars of ancient monsters. As the sound spread, all the birds were suddenly killed. Zhu Xing stood at his original position with his right hand holding a black horn. Seeing Lin Huang''s shock, he grinned and said, "I''ve been hiding for so many years. Do you think I''m so unprepared for a comeback?" "Be careful. The item that he''s holding is at least on the demigod level. It might even be God''s item." Bloody reminded. Lin Huang knew that it would be impossible for Zhu Xing to kill tens of thousands of immortal-level creatures in a split second even if he was at his peak. The only way this could happen was through the use of a demigod relic or a God-tier item. At Zhu Xing''s current condition, he would not be able to activate the relic that many times. "What else do you have other than those birds?" Zhu Xing said in ridicule. He was not looking at Lin Huang as he said this. Instead, his hand was gently caressing the horn he was holding. He was looking at the horn the way he would look at his lover. "Bloody, what should we do now?" Lin Huang was out of ideas. "Bear with it for a while. Other monsters are coming. The number of times he can use his horn must be limited." Bloody did not have any better ideas. "Alright. That''s all we can do for now." Lin Huang knew that Bloody did not expect Zhu Xing to own such a relic. He managed to slaughter tens of thousands of immortal-level monsters within seconds. Since Bloody could not do anything to help, it began spewing nonsense to buy them some time. "I still have plenty of things up my sleeves. You, on the other hand... probably only have limited uses of that horn of yours. Or rather, is it that you can''t get it up a second time?" "Go ahead, try me and find out." Zhu Xing did not launch an attack immediately. Nobody knew if it was the side effect of using the horn or if he was afraid that Lin Huang had some other hidden abilities. After remaining still for about 10 minutes, both parties realized that their opponents were in a weak state. "It seems like using the horn is a big sacrifice for you." "I think the same probably happened to you? Why don''t you continue summoning the birds?" Lin Huang was eager to kill Zhu Xing while he was weak. However, he was worried that Zhu Xing might be setting him up to fail. He was unsure if Zhu Xing had run out of energy for another attack or if it was simply because he wanted Lin Huang to waste his God Crasher by pretending to be weak. As they exchanged glances, Zhu Xing saw Lin Huang recharging his God Crasher. Lin Huang had finally launched an attack. Putting away his horn, Zhu Xing appeared in front of Lin Huang in a flash, slashing forwrd with his sword. Lin Huang activated his God Crasher again without a moment of hesitation, completely covering Zhu Xing''s body in flames. A moment later, Zhu Xing''s body reformed and he attacked Lin Huang. Lin Huang had no choice but to activate his God Crasher to make another attack. Within mere moments, Zhu Xing''s body reappeared. He grinned. "It''s the last attack you can make. Are you ready to say goodbye to this world?" 736 Cloning Card "Bloody, I can''t stand it anymore!" Lin Huang immediately contacted Bloody. Since he was not even immortal-level, it was unrealistic for him to confront an immortal-level rank-9 that possessed the ability of an imperial-level. He could not summon any other monsters aside from Bloody since Bai and the rest were only immortal-level rank-3. They would be easily killed by Zhu Xing, especially since he was a supreme genius. Seeing that Zhu Xing getting ready to attack him, Lin Huang had no choice but to lift his God Crasher to aim at Zhu Xing''s body once more, covering it in flames. Immediately after another shot was fired, Lin Huang immediately summoned the Golden Wheel to flee but as he pushed against the door, a black glow suddenly flashed through the sky and hit his Golden Wheel before he managed to enter. The force from the strike blew the dimensional relic away. "Are you going to escape now? It''s a bit too late, isn''t it? Zhu Xing''s body appeared hundreds of meters away, grinning from ear to ear as he looked at Lin Huang from afar. Lin Huang''s expression changed. Despite not taking any damage after that attack, the Golden Wheel was now thousands of meters away, putting a stop to Lin Huang''s plan to escape. "It seems like you''re out of tricks up those sleeves. Instead of making these useless efforts, I''ll spare you and kill you here." Zhu Xing picked up his sword and without bothering to use any movement skills, he reappeared in front of Lin Huang within mere moments with his sword dashing toward Lin Huang. Lin Huang could not defend against the attack and was about to get killed. However, right before Zhu Xing''s sword touched Lin Huang''s body, Zhu Xing frowned. Lin Huang''s body was cut in half but there was no blood dripping from his wound. Then, his severed body gradually began to fade. "Is it a fake?!" Zhu Xing immediately turned back and looked around to find Lin Huang appearing at the location of the dimensional relic thousands of meters away. However, he did not push open the door. Instead, he put it away and laughed at Zhu Xing, "Do you think that you''re the only one who can fake your death? I did this a few years ago." "Aren''t you''re going to run away now?" Zhu Xing was instantly on alert. "There''s no need for me to do such a thing." Lin Huang said and pointed behind Zhu Xing. As Zhu Xing turned his head around, he saw flocks of birds covering the sky like dark clouds appearing once again in mid-air. It was several times more than the number of birds he summoned earlier. Apart from that, the sound of hooves clicking on the ground could be heard as well. He then looked at Lin Huang with a strange expression. "You''re not using spirit type skills. Be it illusion or the spiritual control, it''s impossible for you to control this amount of monsters remotely. To be able to control such a large number of monsters at such a distance... This reminds me of the parasites Who are you?!" Zhu Xing was not that far from the truth based on the information he had. Lin Huang''s eyes flashed with fear. However, Zhu Xing ran out of time to continue thinking about it. The birds in the sky were approaching and were quickly surrounding him. "He''s quite fearsome. He''s able to accurately guess that this was the ability of the parasites." Even Bloody was in fear of him. "He has to die or we''ll be in great trouble!" A flicker of fury flashed through Lin Huang''s eyes. Zhu Xing was a huge threat to him. If he was not killed, he would get them into bigger trouble in the future. "Fortunately, you''ve completed decoding the rune or I''ll have to escape. I''ve even used a Cloning Card just now to buy me some time." "Isn''t it your God Crasher charged? You can launch another two attacks. Why didn''t you use it?" Bloody asked. "The two attacks are for emergencies. I have four Cloning Cards so I won''t feel that bad after using them. Moreover, I didn''t have an idea how long you''d need to decode the rune. You only told me you were done with it after the Cloning Card has been used, and I was about to flee. After being surrounded by the swarm of birds for a while, the monster horde arrived. More than 10,000 monsters surrounded the entire region, making it extremely crowded. Lin Huang then retreated hundreds of meters away to watch the battle in the air. "How long does he need to get rid of the monsters?" Lin Huang asked. "He''ll have to be fast. He knows that the longer he takes, the more dangerous his situation will be in. He doesn''t know if you have any other skills. That''s why he''ll kill the monster horde at lighting fast speed just like what he did previously. He''ll try his best to minimize the use of Life Power so he can still handle any unknown dangers he might encounter." Bloody gave its explanation. Just thirty seconds after Bloody finished speaking, all the monsters surrounding Zhu Xing had been killed. All the birds in the sky fell to the ground. Amidst the carcasses, a human figure could be seen holding a gradually fading horn. Lin Huang noticed blood dripping from between Zhu Xing''s fingers. "I can confirm that the horn is a God-tier item. It was owned by Wu Zhi tens of thousands of years ago. Therefore, that item can still be activated with ease by relying on the blood sacrifice skill after many years. The demigod relic has no spirit. Therefore, it won''t be able to recognize its host after tens of thousands of years and he won''t be able to activate it with the blood sacrifice skill." "Although the blood sacrifice only drains a portion of his Life Power, it still puts a huge burden on his body. I think he can probably activate it twice at most. He''s probably exhausted now." Noticing the blood dripping from Zhu Xing''s finger, Bloody continued its analysis. "Regardless of the skill that he has used, it''s not what an ordinary person can do. He managed to activate that God-tier item twice with the body of an immortal-level. It''s a miracle that he can still stand." Lin Huang knew that Zhu Xing could not stand it any longer. "However, you have to be careful. Since he activated the God-tier item with a blood sacrifice, he''s really eager to obtain the Sorcerer Goddess'' inheritance from you." Bloody reminded him. "The decoding rune has been created. I''ll be able to break his molting rune as long as I can touch his body. However, I''ll need your assistance. He has to be within three meters from you. If it''s possible, it''ll be best if he''s within one meter from your body. The probability of touching him will be much higher at such a distance. The further he is, it''ll increase the chances of me getting discovered, making our success rate smaller. It''s the only chance we have. If we fail, he''ll know of my existence and he''ll be on alert." "However, this is quite risky. Approaching Zhu Xing who''s impeccable in Sword Dao is extremely dangerous. You can''t activate the God Crasher when he''s more than three meters away from you. If you miss the chance, he''ll be able to kill you in one hit." "I know. Don''t worry. I''ll use the Cloning Card if anything happens." Even if Bloody did not mention this, Lin Huang knew the risks he was taking. Since he was trained in the sword, he knew how dangerous it was to approach a person who had mastered the sword. Zhu Xing''s combat strength could completely pin him down. "Alright. Once his molting rune is decoded. I''ll inform you and you''ll have to activate the God Crasher to kill him immediately!" 737 Killing Zhu Xing After discussing his plan with Bloody, Lin Huang was now certain. Zhu Xing slightly tilted his head and looked at Lin Huang after freeing himself from the monster horde. "Do you really think that monster horde can save you?" After finishing that sentence, his entire body lunged toward Lin Huang like a shooting arrow. After encountering two monster hordes, he decided to end it quickly, not wanting to give Lin Huang any more chances. "Xiao Hei, use a Transformation Card to increase my combat strength to immortal-level rank-3 and maintain my human form." Lin Huang secretly contacted Xiao Hei before Zhu Xing took action. Lin Huang''s combat strength improved significantly when the Transformation Card took effect. Although he did not expect to be able to detect Zhu Xing''s movements with his eyesight, he realized he could still clearly identify the path Zhu Xing was taking. Of course, Lin Huang would not be able to hide the sudden increase in his strength from Zhu Xing. When Zhu Xing noticed this, he trembled in fear but was soon relieved after realizing that Lin Huang''s combat strength stopped after reaching immortal-level rank-3. Almost instantly, he approached Lin Huang and was now less than ten meters away from him. It was then that the sword in his hand began giving off a scarlet glow. Lin Huang fixed his gaze on Zhu Xing. Seeing that he was getting closer to him, he did not retreat at all. He was secretly counting down instead, "ten meters, nine meters, eight meters" Just as Lin Huang counted down to three, Zhu Xing grinned. He was exhilarated as he exclaimed, "Die!" As he shouted, he thrusted his sword forward. The glow that enveloped the sword began gushing out of the body of the sword maniacally and headed for Lin Huang. At that moment, Lin Huang did not retreat. Instead, he took a step forward to reduce the distance between them from three meters to one meter. Zhu Xing''s eyes flashed with a flicker of fury. He noticed the purple glow leaving Lin Huang''s sleeves. However, as he attempted to dodge it with his sword, the purple glow began twisting around his wrist. At the next moment, Zhu Xing''s sword penetrated through Lin Huang''s body and he began collapsing. Just as Zhu Xing was about to slash through the purple glow that was around his wrist, it abruptly disappeared. It was as if the purple glow that he just saw was an illusion. However, Zhu Xing was still on alert. He began checking himself to see if he was injured. After a short while, his face turned pale. "You''ve noticed it right." At this moment, a voice was heard from behind Zhu Xing. Lin Huang''s true body was less than 20 meters away from him, and the muzzle of the God Crasher was aimed at him. "I''ve decoded the molting rune." "How did you do that? I''ve been investigating the molting rune for hundreds of years before I finally managed to produce a chain rune after thousands of attempts." Zhu Xing slowly turned around in doubt. "Despite being the person who knows every detail of the rune, I''d need at least a few months to decode and multiple attempts." "If I''m not mistaken, decoding the molting rune must be related to the sudden appearance of the purple glow, right? You approached me earlier simply because you wanted to let the purple glow to break through my molting rune." It finally dawned on Zhu Xing. He had guessed correctly. Lin Huang did not expect for him to make a guess that was so close to the truth. "Am I right?" Zhu Xing noticed that Lin Huang looking a little uncomfortable. "However, I''m really curious what the purple glow is? Could you please indulge my curiosity?" "No, I can''t." Lin Huang did not want to beat around the bush with him any longer. "Go to hell with your doubts!" After uttering those words, red flares were shot from the God Crasher. At this moment, Zhu Xing grinned. As he retreated, more than ten of his clones appeared and escaped in different directions. They could not identify which copy was his true body. "You''re still young. As soon as I leave this land, I''ll" While he was escaping, Zhu Xing teased. However, the next moment, he was shocked. "How could this happen?!" The red flares emitted by the God Crasher were dead-on. It did not attack his clones but took aim at his true body instead. It was as though it could distinguish between the clone and the real body. Zhu Xing was being engulfed by the flames instantly, causing the remaining clones that fled in different directions to collapse. After quite some time, the flames vanished, and a black shadow gradually landed on the ground from mid-air. Lin Huang chased after it in immediately to witness Zhu Xing fall to the snowy ground after being burnt to a crisp. He was still alive, but it was his last breath. When the God Crasher''s attack was about to strike him, he used his Life Power to activate a defensive rune and barely managed to withstand the God Crasher''s attack. However, his Life Power was now depleted, and he had no more strength. He shot Lin Huang a deadly state and asked unwillingly, "How did you recognize my real body?" "It''s pretty simple. I left a mark on your body when I decoded the rune," Lin Huang explained with a smile. Bloody thought he might run away while it was decoding Zhu Xing''s rune so it left a mark on his body. The events turned out just as Bloody expected, making the mark extremely useful to them. This allowed Bloody to easily identify Zhu Xing''s real body from his clones from Lin Huang''s sleeves. "Now, it''s time to send you to hell." Lin Huang slowly shifted his last God Crasher and took aim at Zhu Xing. The red flares gushed out of the muzzle at a distance of fewer than two meters to completely envelop Zhu Xing in it. Zhu Xing groaned in the pain, and only suffered for about two seconds before he died. Soon, the place was in absolute silence. "Congratulations, you have obtained Legendary Skill Card C Royal Sword." "Congratulations, you have obtained Mythical Skill Card C The Devil''s Horn." Two notifications from Xiao Hei arrived. It was then that Lin Huang confirmed Zhu Xing''s death in relief. After a moment, the flames from the God Crasher vanished, revealing Zhu Xing''s burnt corpse. "It has finally ended" Just as Lin Huang was feeling relief, Bloody warned. "Be careful!" A black beam emerged from the black ashes and was shot between Lin Huang''s eyebrows. He was caught unprepared and did not manage to react to it in time. 738 A Death-Seeking Spirit Transfer Just as Zhu Xing''s body turned into ashes, a black glow appeared abruptly. Lin Huang was caught unprepared and the black glow flicked between Lin Huang''s eyebrows. "F*ck! It''s a spirit transfer!" Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat but when he was finally able to react, it was too late. He could vaguely guess what the black glow was. Soon, he was immersed in his thoughts as he entered the world in his body. In the world within Lin Huang''s body, Zhu Xing No, he was now Wu Zhi. Wu Zhi''s consciousness rapidly transformed into his true body. He looked totally different from Zhu Xing and was different from what Lin Huang imagined previously. Lin Huang initially thought that an intelligent man would be physically inferior to other men. However, Wu Zhi was muscular and had a height of about three meters. His body was comparable to polar bears and could possibly even be stronger than them. His consciousness was transformed back into his true body in the world within Lin Huang''s body. He did not deliberately increase his size. In fact, his body had always been that size. He was muscular and tall, with a fierce expression that made him seem like a butcher. He did not look intelligent at all. It was the first impression Lin Huang had when he first saw his true body. Upon entering the world within Lin Huang''s body, Wu Zhi saw the ten Life Wheels that he had. He was shocked and soon, he realized that the burning Life Fire in his Life Wheels was hundreds of meters tall. It had far surpassed Zhu Xing''s Life Fire. "This person is more talented than the previous. This is such a steal!" After uttering those words, he saw an all black "painting" hanging in mid-air as he lifted his head. "What''s that?" Wu Zhi was curious. Just as he was about to look at it carefully, a black glow was released from the "painting" all of a sudden. Wu Zhi could not react to it in time, and the black glow penetrated through his body. The body that was just formed began collapsing at a slow speed. He was in fear as he watched his body collapse. Aside from that, he could clearly sense that his consciousness was being erased. He could neither utter a word nor make a sound. He could do nothing as he saw his body being transformed into countless energy particles while his consciousness gradually emptied itself. As soon as Lin Huang regained his consciousness, he saw Wu Zhi''s body collapse. "He died too quickly Xiao Hei, it seems like you''ve restrained your power previously." Lin Huang raised his head to stare at the "painting" in mid-air. He was the only one who knew that it was not a "painting". Instead, it was a huge card. "I may not be able to do anything to him elsewhere, but this is my territory." Xiao Hei''s voice resounded and did not bother to explain any further. "Alright, I''m leaving." Realizing that the so-called spirit transfer was just a false alarm, Lin Huang did not want to wander around in his body any longer. "As for the consciousness of the Virtual God, do you want me to turn it into an Inheritance Card or a Combat Soul Card?" Xiao Hei''s voice was heard once again. "Huh?" Lin Huang was stunned. "The Virtual God''s consciousness can be turned into a card. Choose either one of them. Do you want an Inheritance Card or a Combat Soul Card?" "I didn''t know that there''s such a great deal!?" It was not because Lin Huang did not hear it clearly. Instead, it was because he thought he did not hear it correctly. "I''ve gotten Wu Mo''s inheritance so let''s just forget about Wu Zhi''s inheritance. Let''s turn it into a Combat Soul Card." Lin Huang decided without hesitation. Since he had gotten the True God''s inheritance, he felt that there was no need to obtain the Virtual God''s inheritance anymore. Moreover, the Combat Soul Card was apparently much stronger. With a Virtual God as the combat soul, it could be summoned when he eventually became an immortal-level. He would have no fear of demigods by then. "Nothing will be consumed if you were to make it into an Inheritance Card. However, as for the Combat Soul Card, 300 card draws are required." "Eh, you did that on purpose! You know that I''m left with 310 card draws! Why are you still forcing me to use 300 card draws all at once?" Lin Huang stared at Xiao Hei. "You''re overthinking it. If he was in good condition, I wouldn''t be able to turn him into a card even if you have 3,000 card draws, let alone 300. It consumes a large amount of energy in order to transform it into a Combat Soul Card. If I were to convert it into a card by using my own energy, it''ll cause me to fall asleep. Most of the system functions will be disabled and I figure you wouldn''t want that to happen. Fortunately, only a small portion of his consciousness remains. I can barely transform it into a Combat Soul Card with the energy gathered from the 300 card draws." "I actually concealed the fact that it can be transformed into three types of cards from you. However, this would consume even more energy." "What is the third type of card?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "It can be transformed into a spirit type monster card or an undead-type monster card so that it can become a summoning monster." "How many card draws are required?" Lin Huang was startled and immediately asked. "More than 30,000 card draws." "Just ignore my question" Lin Huang was shocked. At first, he imagined himself owning a Virtual God summoning monster. However, he immediately gave up on his thought when Xiao Hei told him the number of card draws required. "Are you sure you''d like to consume 300 card draws to turn it into a Combat Soul Card?" "Please wait a minute. I have two questions that need some clarification." Lin Huang did not answer recklessly. "The first question is, will it be able to retain its ability as a Virtual God after being transformed into a combat soul? "The combat strength of his true body is originally on Virtual God rank-8. Creating a combat soul with the remaining consciousness will result in his combat strength being on Virtual God rank-1 where it will be maintained." "As for the second question, after transforming it into a Combat Soul Card, I suppose that I won''t be granted the authority to summon it even after I''ve gotten to immortal-level. Will the card be sealed?" Lin Huang then raised an issue related to his summoning authority. "It won''t be sealed but yes, your authority will be restricted. However, it doesn''t mean that you can''t use it. Instead, a restriction is imposed on its usage. An immortal-level only can only summon it once and the summoning period is limited to three minutes. At the imperial-level, you''ll have three chances to summon it with a summoning period is five minutes. After becoming a Demigod or a Virtual God, these restrictions will be removed." "Is it possible to increase the number of uses allowed?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s impossible to do so. These are the rules, and I''ve no control over it." "Alright. It''s great that an immortal-level can summon it once." Lin Huang knew that Xiao Hei did not lie to him regarding not being to change the number of uses allowed. "Do you have any other questions?" "No, I don''t. Let''s turn it into a Combat Soul Card." Lin Huang shook his head since he had already got the answers that he was looking for. "Consuming card draws x300. Commence forming a Combat Soul Card The Combat Soul Card is completed." "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a Mythical level Combat Soul Card C Sorcerer God!" Lin Huang had already regained his consciousness earlier. After staying at his original position for about 10 minutes, a notification from Xiao Hei finally arrived. 739 Encountering the Divine Alliance Again After it had been turned into a Combat Soul Card, Lin Huang could not wait to take the card out and began looking through it carefully. The Combat Soul Card was orange in color, and Wu Zhi''s face was printed on the front with a semi-transparent body. Moreover, there were the floating black sigils flickering on top of it with two diagonal lines connecting from the four corners to form a cross, and there was a word "sealed" printed in the middle of the card. Flipping to the back of the card, Lin Huang began reading through the exact information of the card. "Combat Soul Card" "Rarity: Mythical" "Type of Combat Soul: Human (Tribal member)" "Combat Level: Virtual God rank-1" "Skill: Unavailable" "Summon Authority: Deactivated (Immortal-level required)" "Card Remarks: Passable" "Remarks: Since you have insufficient authorization to access the card, it is not available for use. As soon as you achieve the immortal-level, it can be summoned once. Upon achieving the imperial-level, you''re allowed to summon it three times. The summoning authority will be completely activated after transforming into a Demigod or a Virtual God." After he thought of The Devil''s Horn that he had just obtained being sealed as well, Lin Huang did not bother to look at the other legendary skill card, the Royal Sword. He divided his telekinetic powers into multiple thread-like strands and searched through the snowy land. Soon, Zhu Xing''s Emperor''s Heart Ring was found, and he stored it in his storage ring. Looking at the time displayed on the Emperor''s Heart Ring, it was slightly after 11 in the morning. There was only half an hour left until the deadline set by the Union Government. Lin Huang raised his head and fixed his gaze in a certain direction, looking worried. Thousands of kilometers away was the foothold where Bai Gu and the rest were staying. Seeing Lin Huang remain still for several moments, Bloody extended its head from his sleeve. It could read Lin Huang''s mind. "You don''t have to worry about Bai Gu and the rest. They''ve contacted the rest of the ethnic groups and are ready for the fight." Bloody said, projecting several monitoring scenes in front of Lin Huang. In the monitoring scenes, a few ethnic groups were busy preparing for war. They all seemed ready for it. "The Union Government''s troops have entered their land three days ago. The tribal members might not be able to win the war." Bloody continued, "Since the deadline is over, the Union Government''s troops will start wiping out the humans beginning this afternoon. It isn''t a wise choice to stay. The conflict between you and the Union Government will get worse. If you''re still worried about Bai Gu and the rest, you may leave first and get back to them a few months later. Your inheritance of the Sorcerer Goddess'' memory will allow you to enter these lands whenever you please." Lin Huang remained silent for a moment. Eventually, he nodded his head and replied, "Okay, let''s leave." After summoning the Golden Wheel, Lin Huang went through it without a moment of hesitation. A few moments later after he stepped out of the dimensional relic, Lin Huang and Bloody appeared from an entrance at the previously marked coordinates. About ten Union Government''s soldiers were stationed somewhere close to the entrance, and a few teams were there to register themselves. Lin Huang walked toward them and was about to leave. However, after registering with his fake identity, Lin Xie, he was stopped by one of the soldiers. Lin Huang''s heart was racing as he thought to himself, ''Has my true identity been revealed?'' "Wait a moment. Where are your teammates?" Looking at his uniform, the one who stopped Lin Huang must be one of the small leaders among the ten of them. "We''ve been attacked by monsters and we lost track of each other." Lin Huang did not lie. "Which organization are you from?" the leader asked again. "The Heaven Alliance, Division 3." "What''s the name of the leader?" The leader asked as he lowered his head, glancing at the information shown. "Shen Tao. He''s from the headquarters in Division 1." Lin Huang was relieved because he roughly knew why the soldier asked him about it. "Do you have any other questions?" "No, I don''t. You may leave now." The leader waved his hand, allowing him to leave. Lin Huang was originally worried that his true identity being discovered since the detection instruments used by the armed forces must be more advanced than the regular ones. However, the questions asked by the leader were apparently unrelated to his identity. It might have had involved the tribal members instead. The Union Government was likely to have already discovered the presence of the tribal members. They were afraid that the tribal members would sneak into a human group and leave these land. Therefore, they would further question people if they met lone rangers wandering around like Lin Huang. Of course, Lin Huang knew that the investigation might be rendered useless. The tribal members could perform a spirit transfer on a person and obtain most of their memories. However, from the way the soldier questioned him, the Union Government did not seem to know that the tribal members were capable of performing a spirit transfer. However, the Union Government''s omission was none of Lin Huang''s concern. He twitched his mouth and left. He then passed through the thin film that covered the entire land instantly. It seemed as if there was nothing there. After leaving, Lin Huang appeared in the sky above the Peaceful Ocean. Lin Huang was surrounded by a few people the moment he appeared and as he gazed at them, he could roughly remember four of them being members of the Divine Alliance. However, Gu Li was not there and the number of people there was different. Perhaps, they may have gotten lost. "Why are the people from the Divine Alliance here? Are you guys going to bully a lone ranger like me?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. "Lin Xie, give us the Emperor''s Heart Ring and we''ll release you. I promise you that we won''t do you any harm." A skinny young man smiled with an evil demeanor. "Is this how the Divine Alliance''s members behave? How could four immortal-levels surround a holy fire-level just to steal an item from him? Don''t you guys feel any embarrassment?" Lin Huang insulted. "Stop bullshitting me! Just tell me if you''re handing over the item to us. If you keep talking nonsense, don''t blame me for being rude to you!" the skinny young man yelled. "Okay" Lin Huang pointed at the Emperor''s Heart Ring on his left middle finger. Then, he turned the ring around and said, "How about the four of you give me your Emperor''s Heart Rings, and I''ll let you leave." "Lin Xie, you''re just a purple flame-level. Despite being a supreme genius, your ability is only on par with immortal-level rank-4 or rank-5 people. The weakest among the four of us is an immortal-level rank-7. Why do you want to make such a useless attempt?" One of the most handsome men among them said. "I''ll repeat myself. The four of you, give your Emperor''s Heart Rings to me. Otherwise, leave your arm here." Lin Huang completely ignored the guy as an ancient sword relic was gradually formed in his hand. "Is he insane?" The four of them exchanged glances with each other and a similar thought ran through their mind. They did not know that Lin Huang had just used a Transformation Card to increase his combat strength. Since the card was still in effect, his combat strength was not on the purple flame-level. Instead, he was on immortal-level rank-3. "If you guys are not going to take it from me, I''m going to do that to the four of you" Lin Huang grinned. Before he could finish his words, he disappeared from his original position. In just a short while, he could hear people growling in pain. Four arms with their respective Emperor''s Heart Rings were detached from their body at almost the same time. With Lin Huang''s telekinetic powers, he took the Emperor''s Heart Rings and threw the four arms into the Peaceful Ocean. "This is just a lesson for you. You won''t be so lucky next time." Lin Huang then put the four Emperor''s Heart Rings away into storage. Then, he summoned the Golden Wheel and strode into it. The four of them were frightened, and none of them dared to stop him. They could do nothing as they saw him leave with the dimensional relic. 740 Choosing a Life Fire Monster At the border of the Peaceful Ocean, a teenage boy gradually opened his eyes in one of the sea view rooms at a luxury hotel. He did not even seem to have reached the age of 20. His black, fluffy short hair and the pair of black eyes he had would make him one of the most handsome young man on Earth. Clearly, he was Lin Huang. He had just returned from the floating land. Mid-August was summertime in Victoria City. There were many tourists who visited the sea town and most of the hotels were fully booked. Lin Huang only managed to book this hotel with the help of the Heaven Alliance. It was one of the three best hotels in Victoria City, and it had an attached training room. From the moment he returned from the floating land, he had never left the training room. Lin Huang took a deep breath after leaving his training. He spent most of his time in organizing the memories inherited from Wu Mo in the next four days. As for the Royal Sword, it took him only a short while to completely master the Legendary level sword skill since he had obtained the Skill Card. Despite having a connection with the tribal members, Lin Huang did not have a thorough understanding of them. As for witchcraft, he had only mastered the Witchcraft Rune. Also, most of the runes were not made by him, and the inheritance of Wu Mo''s memory had helped him improve the weakness he had in this aspect. After reading through Wu Mo''s memories for about four days, he did not only did he have a better understanding of the tribal members, but his witchcraft abilities were upgraded as well. "The memory storage of that True God was huge. It took me exactly four days to organize the part of the memories that were unsealed," he mumbled while shaking his head. Soon, he checked on the condition of his body condition, and said in a deep voice, "After circulating it for more than a month, the Life Power in my body has been stabilized. It''s time to level-up to the gold flame-level." He had been maintaining the same position while he meditated in the training room for the past four days. When he stood up, popping sounds from the joints of his body could be heard. He slightly moved his body and pushed open the door of the enclosed training room. When he left the training room, he took a deep breath and inhaled the fresh air with the scent of the ocean. Soon after, he mumbled, "Why did I feel hungry as I smell the scent? Could it because it reminds me of seafood?" Although he had not eaten anything for four days, Lin Huang would not feel hungry with his physique. However, when he thought of food, he began feeling hungry. After contacting the hotel staff, Lin Huang ordered room service and slowly walked toward the liquor cabinet in the living room. After a moment''s consideration, he took out a blue liquor. It was a blue-green algae liquor made from the blue-green algae. It was one of the species of the algae living in the neritic zone of the Peaceful Ocean. It was food for many fishes and other ocean animals. It was highly nutritious, so humans who live near the coast tend to use it as food as well. It was an ingredient often used in making cold dishes or soups. Eventually, people began using it to make liquor. The blue-green algae liquor was common in the neritic zone but beyond that, it was a rare sight. Lin Huang had never tasted it before so he wanted to give it a try. After opening the bottle of liquor, the light scented herbs spread through the entire living room. The fragrance of the herbs boosted Lin Huang''s concentration and he immediately poured himself a glass and walked toward the balcony. He was on the 96th floor. Opposite his balcony was the beach of the Peaceful Ocean which was hundreds of kilometers long. During the summer, the sun was high in the sky, the beaches were crowded, and everyone was in their beachwear. It was a beautiful scene. Lin Huang took his glass of liquor and began observing the liquid in it under the sun. In the blue liquid, there were dark blue granules of the size of rice. These granules were the form of crushed blue-green algae. Under the sun, the algae looked mysterious as they sank in the glass. Lin Huang sipped at his warm liquor and felt a minty feeling at the back of his throat. He then recalled that he had once read from a book that said blue-green algae liquor was amazing to be used as refreshment on a hot day. It could also be paired with seafood. After finishing the glass of liquor, there was a knock on the door, and Lin Huang headed back to the living room. As he opened the door, the waiter was there, pushing a trolley with a tray to serve the seafood. It was quite expensive, seeing as Lin Huang spent more than 100,000 Life Crystals for that meal. The ingredients were not ordinary fishes but instead, they were marine monsters that lived in the Peaceful Ocean. The combat level of most of these marine monsters ranged from immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3. In addition to that, the dishes were prepared by a food hunter. Lin Huang began dealing with some things after having his luxurious lunch. He disguised himself as Lin Xie and dialed a number for Hu Lu''s who was from the black market. The call was answered on the first ring. Hu Lu was in her dress, and she was projected in front of Lin Huang less than three meters away. To be honest, Hu Lu was not slim. No, she was rather curvy. However, her dress that looked like a cheongsam flattered her body shape. She looked rather beautiful in an inexplicable way. "Mr. Lin, it''s been a long time since we last met," Hu Lu smiled as she greeted him. "Yeah, it has been a while." Lin Huang nodded. He then continued with the conversation and said, "Let''s get straight to the point. Have you prepared the information that I''m looking for?" "I''ve been researching it all this while. Do you want it now?" Hu Lu asked. "Yes. Send it to me by today if it''s possible." "Alright. I''ll organize the information before sending it to you." Hu Lu paused for a moment and asked, "Mr. Lin, do you have monster carcasses for sale?" "I only have a small number of monster carcasses. I''m quite busy recently and I don''t have time to hunt for monsters." Lin Huang shook his head. "However, there might be something else that I''d like to sell. I''ll bring it to you when I''m free tomorrow or the day after tomorrow." "Alright, just pass it to me." After hanging up the call, he received the document from Hu Lu within three minutes. Lin Huang downloaded the document to his Emperor''s Heart Ring and started checking on it. He breezed through the information and felt somewhat excited. He was choosing the last tinder monster for himself in order to level-up to gold flame-level. The Mutilated Man was an undead-type monster that had gone through its third mutation. It was immortal-level rank-7. The monster looked like a human covered in grey armor. However, its waist was broken and there was a 20 centimeters gap between its upper and lower body. It was a unique monster that could separate its upper torso from its lower body during combat. Then Cunning Sting was a triple mutated psychic-type monster at immortal-level rank-6. Similar to humans, the monster could walk on both legs. However, there would be bony spurs growing from its body. Each bony spur penetrated through their skin. The shape and the size of each bony spur could be adjusted according to their needs. Not only could it be used as a defense mechanism, it could be used as a weapon. Also, the tail of the monster was about three meters long and was completely formed by these bony spurs. It was an extremely terrifying weapon. 741 A Free Piece of Information According to the information provided by the black market, there were only 31 triple mutated monsters. Compared to the information that he got more than a month ago when he leveled up to purple flame-level, the number of triple mutated monsters had reduced by three, and there were eight newly added monsters in the list. However, 11 of them had been removed from the list. Among the 31 triple mutated monsters, none of their Life Fire tinder could satisfy Lin Huang. After scanning through the information, Lin Huang frowned. "Is there no suitable tinder among all the monsters in Division 3?" Though it was within his expectations, he did not hope to see this happen. He remained silent for a moment and called Chan Dou. Chan Dou answered the call on the second ring. As usual, he appeared in the video dressed in his white shirt as if he had never changed his clothing before. He was holding a green drink, slouched on a leather sofa as he raised his glass. "I know you''re still alive. I heard from Shen Tao that an imperial-level Frostyape Corpse attacked you and you guys lost each other. They never saw you after that. He even told me that you''re most likely already dead." "I''m lucky as I managed to run away," Lin Huang said humbly. "So, did you get anything from the floating land?" Chan Dou sipped his drink while he asked. "Yes. However, with my ability, I only barely managed to survive over there. It''s quite satisfying to get some rewards from the floating land." Lin Huang did not reveal the truth. Although Chan Dou was kind, Lin Huang was not that close to him to tell him that he had gotten the Sorcerer Goddess''s inheritance. "That''s great. I didn''t expect you guys to get anything over there. It''s just about gaining some experience." Chan Dou did not think any further. Although he knew that Lin Huang was strong, his combat strength was somehow restricted. Regardless of how strong he was, his ability was still being controlled. From what he learned from Shen Tao, the level of danger in the floating land far surpassed the range which Lin Huang could explore freely. "Oh yeah, we''ve been chatting for a while. Why did you call me?" "I''d like to look for the information of the triple mutated monsters via the Heaven Alliance''s databank," Lin Huang immediately requested when Chan Dou asked. "You''re looking for the monsters in Division 3? We didn''t build any information network in Division 3 as we don''t have many people over there. It costs a lot to build the information network on our own. We got the information in Division 3 from the black market," Chan Dou explained calmly without feeling sorry at all. "If you''re looking for the monster distribution graphs in Divisions 1 and 2, I can get it for you and send it to you by tomorrow the latest." Lin Huang was speechless. He knew that there was only a small number of the Heaven Alliance members were in Division 3. However, he did not expect them not to have an information network in Division 3. "Alright, send me the information about Divisions 1 and 2." After thinking for a while, he decided to get a copy of the information in the two divisions in case he needed them. If he could not get a tinder that suited him in Division 3, he might have to go to the other two divisions. After hanging up the phone on Chan Dou, Lin Huang poured another glass of blue-green algae liquor and took a shot. He then summoned Bai. After instructing Bai, he walked towards the bedroom and quickly fell asleep. Only on the first day when he returned from the floating land, he slept. In the next four days, food and sleep were far from his mind. Lin Huang could finally relax as he was not as stressed as he was when he was on the floating land. Also, his training had ended. In addition to having Bai to keep watch over him, he could sleep tight. He dozed off from about one o''clock in the afternoon until seven o''clock in the next morning. Lin Huang felt energized after he woke up. He then got up from the bed and walked to the living room after washing up. He realized that Bai was sitting on the floor, resting its mind with its eyes closed. When it heard the sound of footsteps, it slowly opened its eyes and looked towards Lin Huang. "I''m going for breakfaster later after changing. However, I have something to deal with after breakfast. I''ll have to store you back into your card form. What do you want to eat for breakfast? I''ll buy it for you," Lin Huang said to Bai. Bai nodded its head, pointing at the bottle on the tea table that had been emptied. "It''s quite tasty." Lin Huang then found out that Bai had finished half a bottle of the blue-green algae liquor. "I''ll buy you another bottle later." Lin Huang knew what Bai was trying to convey. It meant that it wanted that for breakfast as it found the blue-green algae liquor tasty. Bai never ate any solid food. He used to be interested in all sorts of red drinks. Lin Huang had no idea why it would be interested in the blue liquor all of a sudden. Bai tilted its head and thought for a while as if one bottle was not enough. It hesitated for a while and said, "Two bottles?" Although Bai sounded like it was asking a question, it could hardly hide its excitement. "Alright, two bottles then." Seeing it smiling happily, Lin Huang said, "You''re so genuine." It was how Bai behaved. Bai would never snatch things out from another''s hands. Also, it would always obey Lin Huang''s instructions and was quite reliable. Lin Huang always had faith in his first summoning monster. If there were chances to level up, it would be the first summoning monster that Lin Huang would think of. After changing, he went for breakfast. Upon returning, he saw that Bai was looking at him with enthusiasm. "Here''s your blue-green algae liquor." Lin Huang took out a box of blue-green algae liquor with a dozen bottles. "I''ve bought 30 boxes, and all of them are yours. The boss wanted to keep some for his customers, so he could only sell me 30 boxes." "However, that''s liquor. It''s not healthy if you drink too much. Keep it moderate," Lin Huang reminded. "Two bottles a day." Bai nodded, setting a limit for itself. "You promised. You can''t drink more than that." Lin Huang smiled. After downing the two bottles of blue-green algae liquor, Lin Huang then recalled Bai back into its card form. At the same time, he stored a box of blue-green algae liquor in his storage box. Having got all these done, he then summoned the Golden Wheel and entered it. He fixed the coordinates somewhere near the black market street of Sweep City. As he got out of the dimensional relic, he appeared on the roof of a skyscraper. Lin Huang took a leap and soon, he disappeared from the black market street. A few minutes later, he went deep into the black market street and stopped at one of the shops. In a room, Lin Huang took out an Emperor''s Heart Ring and gave it to a woman in a dress. "Everything is stored in the Emperor''s Heart Ring. Please quote me the price." "Alright. I''ll ask someone to do it for you." Hu Lu grinned as she took the ring. After checking the items in the ring, she looked even brighter. She asked a female staff to come over and instructed her. She then passed the ring to the staff. Seeing that the staff had left, Hu Lu then turned back and looked at Lin Huang. "Mr. Lin, let''s drink some tea while waiting." "By the way, about that monster list that I gave you yesterday, is there any monster that meets your needs?" Hu Lu took a sip of the tea and asked. "No. I wanted to ask about this. Do you have any other information?" Lin Huang could not wait to look for a suitable Life Fire monster. "All the information that we provide to our customers has been verified. We don''t sell information that hasn''t been verified. We don''t want to ruin our reputation." Hu Lu smiled, shaking her head. "It''s okay if the information hasn''t been confirmed. I''m willing to buy it at its original price as long as you''re not selling me fake news," Lin Huang insisted while looking at Hu Lu. "That''s not right," Hu Lu insisted. "Rules are dead, and people are alive. Please lend me a hand." Lin Huang was not giving up. Hu Lu remained quiet for a short while and said, "I''ll give you the information for free. If it''s fake, just don''t mention that you got it from us." "Okay. It''ll just take me some time to verify it," Lin Huang promised, "Whether it''s reliable or fake, I won''t get you into trouble." "Regarding the serial murders that have occurred in Martel City, the deceased aren''t ordinary residents. They range from immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3 instead. Some people suspect that the parasites or the highly intelligent monsters might be the culprit. Many of them from the Union Government is investigating this issue. More than ten days have passed. Still, they have no idea who the suspects are at all" 742 The 16 Dead Men Returning to the hotel from the black market, Lin Huang immediately summoned Bloody and discussed the incident that happened in Martel City. After sharing the information provided by Hu Lu with Bloody, Lin Huang projected the images of the deceased victims that he retrieved from Hu Lu. From the photos, all of them had died in different ways. However, it was apparent that they were all murdered. There were blood and pulp all over the dead bodies. They were severely injured. One of them even had their head chopped off. Also, there was also a victim whose heart had been extracted from his chest. Some of their heads had exploded as if a heavy weapon had attacked them. Besides, some of them had no injuries all over their bodies, and the reason for their death was still unknown. The combat strength of all 16 victims ranged from immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3. None of them were killed in the same way. "What did you discover?" Lin Huang asked after Bloody had looked through all the photos projected. "The information provided by the lady is limited. Despite having the photos of the victims, I can''t confirm that the culprit of the murder cases is a highly intelligent monster." Bloody was unsure. "The causes of death of the 16 victims are different. From the wounds on the dead bodies, it''s obvious that different weapons injured them since it''s rare for highly intelligent monsters that can fool humans in such a way." "Do you have any other useful information?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes, I do." Bloody nodded, shifting its gaze to Lin Huang. It did not continue. Instead, it raised another question. "If you''ve murdered someone in Martel City and the people from the Union Government are investigating this case, what would you do?" "There''s nothing else that I could do other than escape." Lin Huang raised his brows and paused for a moment. He stroked his chin and continued, "If I can''t run away, I''ll definitely look for a place to hide. I''ll try to escape after the investigation has ended." "Yes, that''s what a normal person would do." Bloody nodded slightly. "However, according to the information provided by Hu Lu, the murderer killed one person each day. Even after the Union Government started investigating on this, the slaughter didn''t stop. It''s impossible that the murderer didn''t know this as the news was spread everywhere in the city. Since the murderer continued killing, what does it mean?" "The murderer is confident that he won''t be caught!" Guided by Bloody, Lin Huang came up with a firm conclusion. "That''s one of the possibilities. Another possibility is that he doesn''t care at all if he''ll be captured," Bloody explained, "If the murderer is a madman whereby killing is his only intention, this would be the reason why he doesn''t care about the Union Government''s investigation at all. "However, from the fact that he''s not been captured after tens of days, we can ignore the second possibility. Therefore, there''s one possibility left C he''s pretty confident that he''ll not be caught. "Such a confident person must be intelligent and is conceited. Psychologically, the person must''ve treated the slaughter as a game, and the Union Government staff are the toys in the game. Therefore, he has no fear of the investigation at all. He enjoys the game more after the pursuers joined. That''s why he didn''t stop killing." "Are all intelligent people self-conceited?" Lin Huang mumbled after listening to Bloody''s analysis. "That''s possible. However, I won''t be that silly to offend the Union Government." Bloody snorted, shaking its head. "If I were the murderer, I''d choose to maintain a low profile before I''m capable of wiping out the entire land. I won''t appear in front of humans unless there''s a need to do so. Even if I were to get humans into trouble, I''ll do it secretly and immediately leave if anything happens. I definitely won''t maintain a high profile and be so daring." "I didn''t know that you''re so mean" Lin Huang had an incredulous expression on his face. "Alright, back to the topic." Bloody immediately interrupted, "We don''t have many clues yet. The place where the murderer will commit a crime and the killing methods are random. We can''t determine the murderer''s motive. Aside from the combat level of all the victims ranging from immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3, there''s nothing else related that we could get from the information provided. However, I can roughly estimate that the murderer is of at least immortal-level rank-5. Otherwise, he won''t be able to kill the few of the immortal-level rank-3s in one hit. He''s currently targeting those on immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3. This might be due to the limit on his ability. However, it can also be a trick for him to convey misleading information. Therefore, his combat level is yet to be confirmed." "The information is minimal." Lin Huang frowned as what Bloody concluded was very much similar to his thoughts. "However, from the information provided, it''s highly possible that the murderer is a monster," Bloody added. "Why do you say so?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "Humans'' behavioral pattern is rather complicated especially when it comes to the decision to murder. Humans need to have a valid reason to make the ultimate decision. Unless the person is crazy, nobody will kill someone without a valid reason. From the information we currently have, the 16 victims have no relation to each other. Being killed for an unknown reason is most likely what a monster would do as if they want to hunt for food." "If the monster is hunting for food, I supposed that the organs or flesh of the dead body must''ve gone missing." Lin Huang did not agree with Bloody. "However, based on the information provided, not all the organs of the victims have been extracted. Some of the dead bodies are complete." "It''s just an example. The slaughter is definitely not because the monster is hunting for food," Bloody explained further, "What I''m trying to say is that monster is different from humans as they don''t need any motive to kill. It''s instinct." "I think that we can''t exclude the possibility that a human might be the murderer." Lin Huang remained silent for a while and said, "Perhaps a certain person or a certain organization has a motive to kill. However, we can''t figure it out due to the limited information available. This doesn''t mean that the motive doesn''t exist." "Yes, I just wanted to emphasize this." Bloody nodded. "The information that we currently have is very limited. We can''t make any conclusions on this since there are many things that we don''t know yet." "We shall go to Martel City for more accurate information." "Are you sure you want to go? If the murderer is a human, our efforts will go in vain," Bloody asked. "Since we have nothing to do, let''s go and have a look. What if we happen to encounter a suitable Life Fire monster by chance?" 743 Xia Hou Martel City which was also known as the foothold No. 3B47 was an ordinary B-grade foothold in Division 3. It was an ordinary foothold because be it the economic prosperity, the culture or some other aspects, the B-grade foothold was of moderate level in Division 3. The landlocked foothold was far from the Peaceful Ocean and the Abyss Brink, which were the two moderate danger zones and were the most dangerous areas surrounding the foothold. To some extent, it was considered a stable place for the elders to stay. This was also the reason why very few of the strong people would stay there. Aside from those who were stationed outside the foothold, most of them were on immortal-level and above. They would not stay at the foothold for a long period of time unless they were on duty or due to some exceptional condition. If not for the serial murders, many of them might have never heard of Martel City. Before Lin Huang received that information, of course, he himself had never heard of the city before. After getting the news from the black market and further analyzing it with Bloody, Lin Huang soon arrived at Martel City along with Bloody. However, on the first day when they arrived at Martel City, their investigation was hindered. "What f*cking rules are these?! One must be at least on immortal-level rank-4 to be qualified to investigate the serial murder cases? One must get the approval from the Union Government in order to access the detailed information of the case and carry out the field investigation?" Lin Huang was standing at the lobby of the Union Government division at Martel City. Just as he saw the content displayed on the big announcement screen, he was triggered. "Can''t I lend a helping hand?!" "We''re actually here to look for the tinder of the triple mutated monster" Bloody thought to itself. However, it articulated something different instead. "It''s understandable why the Union Government set these rules as the killer is capable of killing an immortal-level rank-3. I guess that these rules are established because they didn''t want the investigators to be the victims. Moreover, without any restriction, anyone can simply enter the crime scene, and it''ll adversely affect the investigation." Of course, Lin Huang knew the reason behind it. He was upset about it because even after using the Transformation Card to improve his combat strength, he only managed to get to immortal-level rank-3. Even then, he would not be qualified to earn the investigation pass from the Union Government. "What should we do in order to get the investigation pass without which we won''t be able to get a complete set of information regarding the case?" Lin Huang frowned deeply. It was an electronic investigation pass which would sync to one''s Emperor''s Heart Ring. There was no way to get it illegally. "The only way is to look for a qualified person or those who have gotten their pass to bring us in," Bloody suggested a solution. "It''s stated in the announcement that whoever who owns an investigation pass can bring an assistant along during the investigation. Since our main purpose is to go to the crime scene, just look for a person who needs an assistant. I''m a summoning monster, and I can go in together with you." "That''s a brilliant idea." Lin Huang just thought of asking Yang Ling to make him a fake pass. However, what Bloody suggested was indeed a better choice. Lin Huang turned back and was about to walk towards the door where the receptionist was standing. Just as he wanted to ask about the application of the investigation pass, he heard chatter from a group of people. He immediately stood still and looked in the direction where the discussion was heard. "I''m here to apply for the investigation pass for the murder case," said a man who was standing at No. 1 counter. He did not say it loudly. However, when he said "murder case" and "investigation pass", Lin Huang and Bloody''s attention were caught. "Found it!" Lin Huang grinned as he patiently waited for him to complete the application. In less than two minutes, the man had completed his application. He then left the No. 1 counter and headed towards the exit. Lin Huang observed his face. He was a man around the age of 30. He had dark skin, thick eyebrows, and big eyes. He was about 1.8 meters tall. However, he was big-boned and muscular which caused him to look as if he was slightly shorter than Lin Huang who was only 1.78 meters tall. "Bro, are you here to investigate the serial murder cases?" Lin Huang took a step forward, blocking his way. "Yes, I am. I just got the investigation pass." The man was momentarily stunned, and soon, he nodded his head. "Why are you looking for me?" "My name is Lin Xie. May I know your name please?" Lin Huang extended his hand and greeted. "If you''re here to sell any products to me, I''m sorry, but I''m not interested. You''re kind of brave to promote your products at the Union Government office." The man took a glance at the officer as if he was about to call the guards. "Bro, I think you''ve misunderstood me. I''m not a promoter." Lin Huang was nervous. "I''m actually interested in the serial murder cases. However, due to the restriction imposed on the combat level, I''m unable to apply for an investigation pass. Therefore, I can only rely on the quota given to the assistant. I hope that I could get it from you" Before Lin Huang could even finish his words, the man answered, "The assistant quota? I''ll just give it to you if you want it." Lin Huang thought that the man would request for something and that he would have to spend some time bargaining with him. Unexpectedly, he got it with ease. "You suddenly blocked my way, so I thought that you''re trying to promote your products. It''s good that you''re not. It''s good that you''re not" The man was relieved, smiling with his mouth wide open. "By the way, my name is Xia Hou. Let''s work together on the murder cases." "Eh, why did he suddenly change his attitude?" Lin Huang thought to himself. "Could he have been hurt by a promoter in the past?" "To be honest, I was fooled by a promoter last time. That''s why I''m afraid of strangers who suddenly block my way" Before Lin Huang could ask, Xia Hou was friendly and volunteered his history about being fooled by a promoter before Lin Huang. After listening to Xia Hou''s tale for more than half an hour, Lin Huang was speechless. Despite Xia Hou being rather strong as he was an immortal-level rank-4, he could be cheated easily. Just by encountering an eloquent speaker, he could be easily convinced. This was the reason why he was fooled by many of the promoters for hundreds of time over the past ten years, causing him to buy a lot of unnecessary stuff. Also, it was the reason why he was afraid of the promoters. "Can''t you say no to them if they persuade you to buy stuff that you don''t need?" Lin Huang gave a simple suggestion. "Sometimes, the items are really appealing when they promote it." Xia Hou looked helpless. "For example, they would suggest using a bar soap to wash clothes, to take a bath, to induce vomiting (during food poisoning), to be used as a lubricant (don''t get me wrong, it''s used for stuck zippers)... It can even be carved" "You don''t even need some of the functions at all! What''s the point of having tons of bar soaps at home? For fun?!" Lin Huang thought to himself. He knew that the man was brainwashed after listening to what the promoters said and regretted each time after the purchase. However, the next time he bumped into another promoter, he would be brainwashed again and fooled by the promoters. Lin Huang knew very well that the problem did not arise from the promoters. It was Xia Hou''s problem instead. There was a pit in his brain. No, to be more accurate, it was a black hole. This was the reason why he was fooled every time and had never been able to learn from his mistakes. 744 Examining the Corpses After chatting with Xia Hou, Lin Huang had a brief understanding of him. He could conclude that he was a kind but na?ve person. Upon registering as an assistant at the Union Government with Xia Hou, Lin Huang was finally allowed to join the investigation into the serial murder cases. "Bro Lin, we''re now done with the registration. Let''s go." Xia Hou turned back, walking out of the Union Government office. "Where are you going?" Lin Huang asked. "We''re going to the crime scene." Xia Hou turned his head back, looking at Lin Huang curiously. "Hey The detailed information about the case and the dead body of the victim are stored at the Union Government office. Maybe we could go there first?" Lin Huang reminded. "You''re right. If we were to go to the crime scene first, we might have to come back again." Xia Hou mumbled in a low voice and immediately nodded his head. "Let''s have a look at the corpse first." "Bro Xia, you go to the morgue first. I''ll catch up with you as soon as I get the information from the data office." Lin Huang was lazy to go to the data office with Xia Hou. "Why are you going to the data office? Didn''t I share the information to you upon your registration?" Xia Hou was staring at Lin Huang puzzledly. "Those are the basic information. I still need some other relevant information for the investigation." The Union Government sent the information which Xia Hou had shared with him. They were the court records and the case report. Lin Huang and Bloody felt that the information provided was far from enough. "Alright then. Let''s distribute our tasks." Xia Hou nodded and headed towards the morgue. Lin Huang then brought Bloody along and arrived at the data office. A Violetcrystal Brain managed the Union Government data office. It was not Lin Huang''s first time seeing such a monster as he had previously seen it at the Martial Hunter College library in Division 7. It was a librarian. Its body looked like a huge blue brain which was wrapped in a semi-transparent purple jelly. It was hanging on the dome of the data office. Light purple tentacles grew on the border of its body that looked like a layer of jelly. It resembled a gigantic jellyfish. Lin Huang took a seat under one of the tentacles and quickly retrieved the information that he needed. The moment when the Emperor''s Heart Ring was connected to the tentacle, the Violetcrystal Brain could identify that Lin Huang was an assistant and allowed him to access the relevant information. After sitting down, Bloody''s voice was heard. "A lot of information is missing from what the black market has provided that. We need detailed information if we want to make things clear. Other than the court records and the autopsy report, all the information regarding the victims'' backgrounds, including the information of the victims'' relatives are required. Also, the victims'' daily activities before their deaths and their call logs are needed." "Yes. I''ll download all the information and look through it carefully when we go back to the hotel. From the way Xia Hou behaved, I guess he can''t wait any longer at the morgue." Lin Huang stayed concentrated on his work. After about ten minutes, all the information that he needed had been downloaded. He then left the data office. Just as Lin Huang arrived at the morgue which was situated in the most western part of the building, Xia Hou had started examining the fifth corpse. "You''re finally here." As he heard the door opening, he turned around and caught a glimpse of Lin Huang. Xia Hou waved at him and exclaimed, "Quickly have a look at this dead body!" "What happened?" Lin Huang strode quickly towards him. It was the dead body of a muscular man whose chest was ripped apart. Both his lungs had gone missing. It was the heart that had been sliced into half in his chest which caused his death. Lin Huang frowned as he looked at the dead body at a close distance. It was much clearer than the photos provided by the black market. "Looking at the wound on his chest, it was a smooth cut," Xia Hou said, pointing at the chest of the dead body. "I don''t think a monster is capable of doing this. It looks more like a human who''s skilled at dissecting." Lin Huang took a glance at Xia Hou who was not as weak as he expected. At the very least, he had careful observation and analyzing skills. Lin Huang compared the autopsy report and the personal information with the dead body. Unexpectedly, he made no comment on the dead body. Instead, after a long while, he said, "Let''s look at the next dead body." They took out the sixth dead body from the next cold chamber. It was a corpse without a head, and there were irregular shapes that appeared on his neck. Before the forensic pathologist cleaned him, there must have been flesh and blood everywhere. Lin Huang knew the cause of death of the victim at first glance. "It''s a tragedy. His head exploded, and there are flesh and blood all over his neck." Xia Hou laughed but soon, he stopped, "He died in a different way. It looks like it was the gunmaster who did it." Lin Huang compared the corpse to the autopsy report, and again, he frowned. The seventh corpse was a man that looked rather plump. It was a miserable death as there were injuries all over his body. There was a hole of the size of a basketball in his stomach, and all the internal organs went missing. "Tsk, tsk He''s more pitiful than the previous one. He looked as if the small predatory monsters ate him. Not only were his internal organs extracted, but his bones were also exposed." Xia Hou paused for a moment. "It''s obvious that humans didn''t kill him." They examined the dead body one by one right until the 16th dead body. Lin Huang then looked at the first four corpses that he had never seen before. Xia Hou examined the corpses again with Lin Huang before leaving the morgue. "Why are they called serial murder cases? It''s obvious that the same person didn''t kill them. Some of them are killed by humans, and the monster killed some of them," Xia Hou said as the walked out of the morgue. "If they were not serial murder cases, how could you explain each of the cases happening one after another? Also, the forensic pathologist determined that their time of death is at about midnight." Lin Huang refuted, "Do you think everything that''s happened in the past 16 days is merely a coincidence?" "It''s less likely to be a coincidence. However, how can you explain why they''re killed in a different way?" Xia Hou thought for a while and asked. "There are only three possibilities. The first possibility is that the killer is not a person but a criminal gang. Next, it could be mimic crimes. After knowing what the first murderer has done, the second criminal killed the rest of them, following the time and details of when the first victim was killed. The third possibility is that the murderer can be a person or a highly intelligent monster whereby they intentionally create different ways of killing," Lin Huang told him what he and Bloody had concluded. "I don''t think that a monster is possible of dissecting a human in such a way!" Although he agreed with the three possibilities suggested by Lin Huang, Xia Hou still asked. Again, Lin Huang explained, "As long as the highly intelligent monster has been living with humans who are good in dissecting for a long period of time or it''s been taught dissection skills by humans, the monster is capable of doing so." "The probability must be low," Xia Hou lamented as he felt that Lin Huang was overthinking it. "The probability is indeed low, but it''s not zero. We can''t ignore it." Lin Huang was being frank with him. "Since we''ve examined the dead bodies, what shall we do next?" Sensing that Lin Huang could analyze much better than him, Xia Hou gave up on being a leader. He felt that following Lin Huang''s plan could save him some effort. "It''s about noon now. Let''s take our lunch first so that I can have a look at the information that I just got." 745 The Tragic Crime Scene When they were having lunch, Lin Huang quickly skimmed through the information he had. Based on the detailed information provided, it was clear that the 16 victims had no relation to each other. Basically, they came from different footholds and their family members did not know each other as well. Nothing odd was found from the victims'' journeys and call logs a month ago before their death. "How is it? Is there any useful information?" Xia Hou asked. He could not speak clearly as he was munching on a rare steak. His mouth was covered in juice. "No." Lin Huang shook his head. He was lost after sifting through the information. "What should we do next?" Xia Hou swallowed the steak and asked again. "Let''s decide later after going to the crime scene." Lin Huang had no other ideas though. After lunch, the both of them headed to the crime scene. Lin Huang decided to investigate the time when the incident happened. He went to the crime scene where the first victim was killed 16 days ago. It was located in a small lane with low-rise housing. The both of them followed the coordinates provided by the Union Government. Soon, they got the exact location. The small lane was completely isolated by the Union Government using the supreme relic and there were only two guards. After Xia Hou and Lin Huang had shown them their investigation and assistant passes, they were allowed to enter. The lane was paved with blue stones and it looked like it had existed for years. The lane was about 30 meters long and it was less than 1.5 meters wide. Despite the houses on both sides not being tall, they had a height of at least eight meters. This was the reason why the lane was rather dark. "It''s such a small lane. Why did the victim come here at midnight? Was he looking for a place to pee?" Xia Hou mumbled. "Didn''t you read the information?" Lin Huang turned back and glanced at Xia Hou. Before he replied, Lin Huang continued, "The black market is located less than 300 meters away. The victim was killed at a place like this probably because he just got out of the black market since it closes at midnight." "Why didn''t he use his dimensional relic to leave?" Xia Hou immediately asked. "So, you really didn''t read through the information given He was staying at a homestay which is very nearby. It''s just a few minutes walk from the black market. There''s no need to use a dimensional relic." Soon, they arrived at the crime scene while chatting with each other. The outline of the victim''s dead body had been sketched by the Union Government staff with a white thread. As it was covered by a relic, the thread was still there despite the rain and it was as clear as it had been half a month ago. According to the outline of the thread, the person had fallen to the ground as soon as he died. His head that had been chopped off had flown a meter away. On both sides of the wall and the ground, blood splattered over a terribly large area. As Lin Huang saw the crime scene, he could almost imagine the horrifying scene when the victim was killed C his head was chopped off in one blow and soon, blood started oozing out from the headless corpse. "Killed in one hit. It''s really a tragedy," Xia Hou mumbled. "It''s a narrow lane. If a stranger happened to come to me in the middle of the night, I''ll definitely be on alert. However, based on the autopsy report, there''s no evidence that the victim was engaged in a fight before he died. He was killed without a struggle. That being said, the killer might''ve been very close to the victim and the victim was caught unprepared. Otherwise, the murderer must be good in his movement skills and managed to make such rapid attacks that the victim had no time to respond to it," Lin Huang said while taking shots of the crime scene. After examining and capturing photos of the first crime scene, both of them did not stay any longer. They immediately left the small lane and rushed towards the second crime scene, which was located in a luxury hotel room. Due to the incident, the hotel had stopped operating. Other than the investigators and the assistants, nobody else was allowed to enter. Lin Huang and Xia Hou were granted entry by the guards. They then entered the floating staircase and went up to the 91st floor. They found the room where the incident had happened which was room No. 091021. Apart from the dead body not being in its original location, everything looked exactly the same as how it was when the crime had been committed. Even the bed sheets and the pillows had not been moved. "It''s kind of clean. Did the staff do the housekeeping?" Xia Hou asked. In the living room, everything was clean. It did not look like a crime scene at all. Lin Huang had read through the information earlier. There was indeed no traces of fighting found at the crime scene. Seeing Xia Hou reading through the materials, Lin Huang did not say anything. He walked towards the master bedroom which was located on the right. When he entered, he saw a bed. The blood stains on the bed sheets had turned black. The stains covered almost three-quarters of the bed. The moment when he saw that, a scene of how the victim was killed was pictured in Lin Huang''s mind. His head and limbs were chopped off while he was sleeping and he could not retaliate at all. "His death is way more awful than the first victim''s. He was mutilated while he was sleeping." Xia Hou slowly entered the bedroom. "If he had slept later, he might not have died." "Whether he sleeps or not, he''d still have died. The only difference is that the place where his dead body would''ve been found would be different." Lin Huang offered a different opinion. "The killer murders a person every day at 12 a.m. sharp. That being said, the victim has been targeted by the killer beforehand. Therefore, regardless of where the person is, what he''s doing, the murderer will definitely kill him when the time comes." "According to what you just said, the murderer must''ve targeted the victim beforehand." Xia Hou nodded in agreement. He paused for a moment and continued, "However, there''s something that I can''t figure out why. Martel City is a B-grade foothold. There are only a few of them on immortal-level. There are less than 100 of them who are permanent residents of Martel City. Under normal circumstances, the probability of encountering an immortal-level in Martel City is less than 1/200,000. The probability of encountering an immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3 will be even smaller. With such a low probability, how could the murderer have targeted those victims? I don''t think they would just randomly pick someone on the street." However, after reading through the information provided, Bloody actually mentioned, "I''ve thought of this before." The both of them had secretly discussed this issue. "There are two possibilities. The first one would be that the murderer has the name list of those who have registered to travel in Martel City. The second possibility is that the murderer has been hiding somewhere near the dimensional portal in Martel City." "I think it''s less likely for the second possibility to have happened. There are two dimensional portals in Martel City and the both of them are thousands of kilometers apart. How can the murderer keep watch over both of the dimensional portals at the same time? Even if he has clones, it''s impossible to control the two clones when the portals are thousands of kilometers away. Even an imperial-level wouldn''t be able to do so," Xia Hou disagreed. "Who says that he''d be keep watching the dimensional portal on his own? Don''t you think it''s possible that he might have companions? Couldn''t he have spent some money to hire people to do it for him?" Lin Huang asked with a wry smile. "Alright." Xia Hou was speechless and immediately changed the topic. "The first possibility that you mentioned just now Do you mean that the murderer is a staff from the Union Government?" "I''m not sure. There are three possibilities through which the murderer could''ve gotten the name list. The first one is that the murderer''s partner is working with the Union Government. Next, the murderer must''ve hacked the relevant department of the Union Government and obtained the name list. Lastly, the only possibility is that the murderer himself is the one from the Union Government." "Are we still going to the next crime scene?" Xia Hou asked again. "Yes, of course. What if there is some other evidence? If we''re not going over, we might miss out on something." Lin Huang was excited after getting a new direction in the investigation of the case. Looking for a suitable Life Fire monster was no longer his main concern. He found it interesting as he was one step closer to the truth, causing him to temporarily forget about the need to level up. 746 The 17th Victim After investigating all the 16 crime scenes, it was already just after six in the evening. Lin Huang and Xia Hou went to a ramen restaurant to have their dinner. Soon after, they went back to their own hotel. As soon as he was back, Lin Huang started looking through all the information again together with Bloody. Since he was an assistant, all the information that he got from the Union Government was pretty complete. However, due to the time constraint, he only managed to briefly browse through the information. If Xia Hou did not urge him to go to the crime scenes, he would have spent a whole day looking for clues from the information he had. At about 11 p.m, only did the both of them finish looking through all the data. "Still, there isn''t any useful evidence. Each time before the crime is committed, the monitor bird, Surveillance Mosquito, and all the other monitoring monsters were killed in less than two minutes. The Transmission Shell that records voices was destroyed as well. The murderer left no trace at the crime scene," Lin Huang sighed. "The Union Government didn''t just keep watch on the content of the monitoring monsters on the day itself when the crime was committed. They even cross-checked all the surveillance videos that have been recorded earlier before the incident happened at all the 16 crime scenes. Still, they got no clues even after watching 30 days of the recordings." "What I can''t understand is if the murderer hasn''t been to the crime scene, how could he have known the position of the monitoring monsters and kill all of them?" Lin Huang expressed his doubt, "Could the person possess a territorial skill like I do?" "One normally obtains a territorial skill after leveling up to imperial level as the person would have a Life Palace. The murderer was said to be an immortal-level. Therefore, it''s quite likely that the murderer has a territorial talent," Lin Huang then explained. "Perhaps he has disguising skills and appears as a different person each time. Therefore, the Union Government can''t figure out who he is even after cross-checking all the information. Of course, like what you just said, the murderer might probably have a territorial skill and is capable of sensing the number of monitoring monsters and their exact locations within a specific region." Bloody agreed with Lin Huang and suggested that the murderer might have disguising skills as well. "If it''s the former, it''ll be troublesome." Lin Huang frowned. As a person who possessed disguising skills, he knew how terrifying the talent was. Despite the fact that his disguising skills were much weaker than the masters, he almost managed to cheat all those who ranked below imperial-level. If the murderer''s disguising skills were more advanced than his, even imperial-levels might not be able to detect it. He could definitely enter the foothold freely by disguising himself despite there being many guards on duty. He might have even passed by the guards without being discovered. "Perhaps the 17th crime will happen in less than half an hour." Lin Huang took a look at the time and said, "Unfortunately, we''ve no idea who the next victim is and where the next crime scene will be. We can''t stop this from happening." Bloody was helpless. "We can only wait for it to happen and rush to the crime scene as soon as possible, hoping that we''ll find some clues over there." Half an hour passed. Despite it being midnight, Lin Huang did not feel sleepy at all. He was sitting on the sofa, patiently waiting for the announcement from the Union Government. When it was almost about 12.10 a.m, his Emperor''s Heart Ring suddenly vibrated. A message popped out as soon as Lin Huang opened the communication page. "All the investigators and their assistants, please come over to Chenxing Building as soon as possible!" With that single sentence, Lin Huang instantly knew that a murder had happened at Chenxing Building. Attached to the message from the Union Government were the coordinates. The coordinates were automatically synced to the map of the Emperor''s Heart Ring and the route was determined. "The crime scene happened at the center of the area and it''s only about 100 kilometers away from us." Lin Huang closed the communication page and walked towards the balcony. Bloody then transformed into a purple shadow and twisted around Lin Huang''s left hand. Lin Huang took a few steps to the balcony. Lazy to summon Thunder, he directly flew towards the destination. In just a short while, Lin Huang arrived at Chenxing Building. The building was quite big. Its logo was about 30 meters high and was made of tens of thousands of sunstones. They would all light up at night. Even those who were thousands of meters away could see it clearly. As Lin Huang landed on the ground, about 10 of them were already gathered outside Chenxing Building. Many of them caught a glimpse of Lin Huang and started sizing him up doubtfully. Soon, they shifted their focus to the others and a few of them were grinning because Lin Huang was just a purple flame-level and the majority of them were ranked above immortal-level rank-4. Lin Huang looked at the crowd and saw everyone''s expression at a glance. Of course, he discovered those who were laughing at him. He did not bother, gazing at them calmly. Soon after, he shifted his gaze away from the crowd. In less than a minute, a few of them arrived one after another and finally, Xia Hou was there. "How''s it? Have you seen the corpse?" Xia Hou asked as soon as he landed on the ground. "No, I haven''t seen the corpse yet as I''ve just arrived." Lin Huang shook his head and looked towards the guards stationed outside the building. "Perhaps they''ll only let us in after everyone has arrived." At about 12.20 p.m, there were about 50 of them, including the investigators and their assistants. Soon, two people came out of the building. One of them was in a grey coat and wore a trilby, holding a cigar in his mouth. Another man was dressed in a suit. He had short hair and looked energized. However, he had a serious expression on his face. Seeing the both of them, the crowd shifted their attention to them and immediately remained silent. The man in the coat studied the crowd. He took the cigar out from his mouth with his right hand that was originally in his pocket, exhaling the cigar smoke. Without saying anything, he put the cigar back into his mouth. He squinted his eyes and looked at the man in the suit that was standing on his left. After exchanging glances with each other, the man in the suit nodded his head slightly and moved a step forward. He said, "The victim was 61 years old and was the boss of the Jingchen Financial Group. Li Jingbiao was an immortal-level rank-3 and he was usually accompanied by two immortal-level rank-9 bodyguards who were poisoned to death. We''ll provide more detailed information to all of you by tomorrow afternoon. You may come in now. The crime scene is on the 186th floor, room 001. We''ll carry out an autopsy at 1 a.m." The crowd rushed into the building. Lin Huang frowned. He noticed that when the man mentioned the name of the victim, many of their facial expressions changed, including Xia Hou''s. "Xia Hou, is the victim a very popular person?" Lin Huang whispered. "Don''t you know who Li Jingbiao is?" Xia Hou was surprised and asked. However, seeing Lin Huang''s perplexed expression, he realized something. "I guess you''re not from Division 3." "Yes, that''s right." Lin Huang nodded. The conversation ended. Apparently, Lin Huang did not want to tell where he was from. After waiting for a while, Xia Hou caught a glimpse of Lin Huang and continued, "The Jingchen Financial Group that was operated by Li Jingbiao is the second largest financial company in Division 3. He''s a legend. His parents are just ordinary people in the small foothold. However, it took him more than 40 years to build a business empire. It''s on par with the Royal Star Group which has been established for hundreds of years. He''s a commercial genius and his story has been written in the textbook of the schools in Division 3 more than 20 years ago. In Division 3, even a six-year-old kid knows who he is. I''ve never expected he''d be attacked..." "It seems like the murderer has stirred up a nest of hornets." Lin Huang smiled wryly, shaking his head. He could already guess how Jingchen Financial Group would react. With such a big financial group joining the investigation, the murderer would be unable to escape. 747 The Murderer Has Appeared Seeing everyone enter the building, Feng Yuan lit a cigar and slowly walked towards the stairs in front of the building. He straightened his coat and quietly sat down. After inhaling and exhaling the smoke for several times, he shifted his gaze towards Lan Luo who was in a suit. "After the case has ended, you can apply to transfer to Division 2. I''ll inform the leader about it. I guess the approval shouldn''t be a problem." "Bro, we handled the case together and we should bear the responsibility together. I don''t want to go to Division 2. I''ll follow you wherever you go," Lan Luo refused. "I''m getting married and having kids. Are you going to marry me? Can you give birth?" Feng Yuan teased. Seeing that Lan Luo did not dare talk about it anymore, he inhaled the cigar deeply and said after a long while, "The victim is Li Jingbiao. I''ll bear all the responsibilities. There''s no need to get others involved. I''m retiring a few years later. You''re still young. If you are loyal to me, listen to me. Don''t meddle in this case. Unlock your achievements in Division 2 so that there''s a place for me to chill in the future." "Bro" "Stop harping on. Let''s call it a deal. If you happen to resign, I''ll turn against you. Don''t blame me if I ignore you in the future," Feng Yuan stared at his partner who had been with him for almost 20 years and said with a serious expression. It seemed like Lan Luo had something to say. However, at that moment, both of their Emperor''s Heart Rings vibrated at the same time. The communication page then popped up in front of them, projecting the same person. "Leader!" Lan Luo immediately stood as straight as a ramrod. It was a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved checkered shirt that appeared in the projection. He was their boss. Feng Yue put out the cigar calmly and slowly stood up. Before the man in the projection spoke, he said, "I''ll take full responsibility for the case. Lan Luo" The man in the short-sleeve caught a glimpse of Feng Yuan and interrupted him, "The victim isn''t Li Jingbiao. The victim is just a substitute for Li Jingbiao." They were stunned when they heard that. After a moment, they recovered from their thoughts and felt relieved. "However, this is not the end. Despite the fact that he''s just a substitute, Li Jingbiao is angry. He feels that the murderer is coming after him. A few minutes ago, he contacted the Union Government headquarters in Division 3 and the top management pressured me. Both of you are given three days to find out who the murderer is. Otherwise, please get ready to file for your unemployment benefits!" The man showed no mercy as he gazed at the both of them with a stern face. After quietly sizing them up, he hung up the phone straight away. Seeing the projection disappear, Feng Yuan immediately took out another cigar. "I'' didn''t expect that there''d be good news. Li Jingbiao is still alive." "Why don''t I think that it''s good news? Did you miss out on the last sentence? The leader warned us that we''ll be fired if the case isn''t solved within three days." Lan Luo was worried. "Do you think he''ll fire the both of us because of a substitute?" Feng Yuan smirked. "I don''t think so." Although that was Lan Luo''s answer, he was uncertain. "I''m going home to sleep now. See you tomorrow!" Feng Yuan stood up and waved his hand at him, without turning back. Soon, he placed both of his hands in the pocket of his coat and disappeared as soon as he strode towards a dimensional relic. "I have to pick up the slack again." Lan Luo was speechless, shaking his head. He turned his head back and looked towards Chenxing Building. On the 186th floor of Chenxing Building, in the brightly lit room No.1. The living room was about 300 square meters large. It was slightly packed with about 50 of them gathered there. However, most of them stayed for a while in the living room and soon, they rushed towards the bedroom. There were two corpses in the living room. Both of the victims were muscular and were wearing black suits. One of them was found dead on the sofa whereas the other victim died on the floor next to the wine cabinet. Obviously, the both of them were the security guards. After the crowd had dispersed, Lin Huang then looked at the two corpses that had turned black. Obviously, both of the dead bodies were tainted with some kind of poison. Since they had no idea what type of poison it was, Lin Huang dared not touch the two corpses for further investigation. One of the reasons was that they had to properly preserve the crime scene. Also, they would be poisoned if it was the type of poison that could enter their body. "Can you identify what type of poison that is?" Lin Huang asked Bloody. "Since an imperial-level rank-9 could be poisoned in a short period of time, it''s highly possible that it''s a type that''s been extracted from the body of an imperial-level rank-9. However, to provide a more accurate answer, it has to be tested." Bloody knew more about this than Lin Huang did. While Lin Huang was a teacher in the Martial Hunter College, Bloody would be summoned whenever Lin Huang was in the library. Its speed of reading was several times faster than Lin Huang''s and it had memorized almost all the contents in the books available in the Martial Hunter College, including the knowledge about the use of various types of poisons. "However, for the sake of our safety, we shall just wait for the autopsy report." "By looking at the position of the two dead bodies, the poison acted very fast as they didn''t struggle when they died. The sofa, the tea table, and the liquor cabinet are still in good condition. The poison has a terrifying effect." Since they could not get any other information from the corpses, Lin Huang shifted his attention to the surroundings. Soon, based on the information that he got from the surrounding he concluded, "From what I know, there are 11 types of poisons that are extracted from imperial-level monsters which can result in deaths like this. These are only the raw poisons that are extracted, not considering complex poison which is a mixture of various types of raw poisons." Bloody was not interested in the two corpses since it could not get any other useful information. "Since we can''t confirm if the poison can spread and we can''t figure out what type of poison it is, let''s have a look at the victim in the bedroom." Lin Huang nodded. He did not stay there any longer and walked towards the crowd in the bedroom. A minority of them had left after looking around. However, it was still very packed in the room. Lin Huang finally managed to squeeze through the crowd and reach the dead body. He then saw the "fresh" corpse. "That''s awful." It was the first thing that came across Lin Huang''s mind just as he saw the dead body. He had seen many of the corpses in the past two days and still, he gave such a comment. The bloated corpse was out of shape as he had puncture wounds all over his body that were made with a sharp weapon. There were at least 100 wounds on his body and all of them were about the size of an adult eyeball. The sharp weapon had penetrated through his body and the naked body looked exactly like a human honeycomb. After observing for a while, Bloody who was hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve said, "The fatal injuries were the two attacks on his eyeballs. The weapon pierced right through his eyeballs and poked out of the back of his head. The victim''s brain was smashed into tofu in an instant." "If the murderer is the same person, he does really have a lot of killing tactics. Since he uses different methods to kill each time he commits a crime, is he trying to show off his skills?" Lin Huang mumbled. Many of them had activated their detection skills next to the fake Li Jingbiao''s dead body. A thought suddenly ran through Lin Huang''s mind. "The guy has died for less than half an hour. I remember that there''s a chain rune that can recover the scene in a given period of time." "You''re talking about the Backtracking Mirror, right? So, can you really go back in time?" Bloody recalled the Witchcraft Rune as well. However, harsh terms were imposed on it. The rune must be activated at the crime scene and it had to be used within 24 hours after the incident happened. Besides, the time that one could backtrack varied according to one''s strength. "I''ve used it once and it shouldn''t be a problem to set the clock back by half an hour. I should be able to turn back time by an hour if I were to do it at a full stretch." "I''ll do the task. I can set the clock back by about three hours." Bloody was not showing off. "It''ll be better if there are fewer people who know that we excel at the Witchcraft Rune. Since the Sorcerer Dao is somehow related to the floating land, it''ll easily catch the Union Government and the rest of the organization''s attention. We shall activate the Backtracking Mirror after the rest of them leave." Many of the investigators left after examining the dead body. At about 1 a.m, Lan Luo, who was in his suit, and a few of the staff with their protection suits entered. There were about seven investigators there. "We''re storing the dead bodies now." Lan Luo gazed at Lin Huang and the rest. He did not urge them to leave. Instead, he nodded his head at the staff. The staff started taking out a few body bags and stored the corpses. The investigators did not intend to stay there anymore after the staff had put the corpses away. "I''m going home to sleep. Aren''t you leaving yet?" Xia Hou yawned. "You may leave first. I''ll stay here for a little while." Lin Huang stared at the mattress in the bedroom and did not leave. Lan Luo glanced at Lin Huang, feeling weird. However, he did not think any further and warned, "Don''t damage the evidence at the crime scene." Soon, he left with the staff. "I guess the guy will be back within a few minutes. We have to be quick." Monitored by the Leech Pods, they ensured everyone in the room had left, then Bloody and Lin Huang then returned to the bedroom. Bloody''s Book of Sorcerer Dao was different from the one that Lin Huang had as it was purple in color. As Bloody flipped opened the book, it quickly inserted Life Power into it, activating the chain rune called the Backtracking Mirror. The runes appeared in mid-air one after another. Ultimately, all of them collapsed, transforming into a scene with rapid playback. Bloody could soon capture the scene that happened an hour ago which was the scene that Lin Huang had been waiting for. They could see from the scene that there was a semi-transparent monster, which body was in liquid form, breaking through the window and making its way to the sofa. It spat a cloud of white mist at the back of the neck of the security guard. The white mist was very thin and was almost invisible. The white mist entered the security guard''s body as he inhaled. As soon as he inhaled the white mist, he looked like he had fallen into a kind of trance. However, it lasted for less than three seconds and his skin started turning black from head to toe. Soon, he died soundlessly and the entire process lasted less than ten seconds. Soon after that, the semi-transparent monster quietly appeared next to the second security guard. A cloud of white mist was released at the back of his neck. The second security guard collapsed as well. The semi-transparent monster then headed towards the bedroom. He appeared above "Li Jingbiao" who had fallen asleep in a spherical shape. The spherical body started transforming rapidly. In just a few seconds, it transformed into a human form and it looked similar to Li Jingbiao. After the transformation had been completed, the monster slowly opened its mouth, extending its tongue which was of the size of a human arm. Its soft tongue extended up to a meter long. It looked like a poisonous snake revealing its upper body. It was about ten centimeters away from "Li Jingbiao''s" chubby face. All of a sudden, the tongue broke in half, resembling a shooting arrow and pierced through "Li Jiangbiao''s" eyes. A weird sound was heard coming out from the monster after "Li Jingbiao" was killed. Soon, its body transformed again. Sharp thorns that looked like tentacles were constantly growing from its body, penetrating through "Li Jingbiao''s" dead body. Seeing the entire process, Lin Huang frowned and he attempted to look for information about the monster in his brain. However, it was in vain. "Bloody, do you know what monster that is?" "I don''t know. I''ve never seen this monster in the monster guide," Bloody answered confidently, "However, we can basically confirm that this monster possesses Enhanced Intelligence and powerful mimicry ability." "I used to think that the murderer was a human before activating the Backtracking Mirror. I''ve never expected it to be a monster." Lin Huang smiled, shaking his head. "It possesses both Enhanced Intelligence and powerful mimicry ability in addition to having a variety of attack skills. It must be extremely difficult to kill." "Yes, indeed. We''re now facing the first difficulty. How do we find it!" 748 Planing to Sit Back and Wai Despite the answer that he got from the Backtracking Mirror being less than satisfactory, it was still better than no progress. It was relatively easy for a monster with Enhanced Intelligence and mimicry ability to hide in an area that was two million square meters wide with more than 60 million residents. To look for it was like fishing for a needle in a haystack. In addition to it being a new monster that had not been recorded in the monster guide, nobody knew where would it be hiding. After they returned to the hotel, Lin Huang did not sleep. Instead, he continued discussing the case with Bloody. "I thought that the murderer would be capable of finding the victims because there''s a spy in the Union Government. Based on what we know now, it disguised itself as the first victim and got the name list of the immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3 from the Union Government. It was lucky though since its first victim was an executive of the Union Government." "I doubt if it was lucky or if it intentionally chose him to be its target. Its intention was to obtain the name list in the first place." Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat when he heard what Bloody said. He had never expected that a monster could be so scheming. "It''s really a terrifying monster" "It''s okay. We''ll catch it one day." Bloody was extraordinarily calm. "We can monitor the entire foothold with Leech Pods. However, if it can really disguise itself as anyone, the monitoring pods can''t do anything to it. Moreover, this is a human foothold. They have many types of skills that can probably detect the presence of your Leech Pods. You have to be extra careful to avoid being discovered. Also, there are many buildings in the foothold. The obstacles that you''re going to encounter far surpass whatever you faced in any of the wild zones and danger zones. The performance of the monitoring pods might be affected as well. You have to consider all these factors." Lin Huang stated all the problems that might arise. However, after listening to what he said, Bloody slightly shook its head. "It''s not that troublesome. We don''t need to monitor the whole city. We just need to monitor the potential victims. It will act soon. Instead of putting in a lot of effort to look for it, why not wait for it to fall into the trap?" Lin Huang''s eyes brightened as he heard that. "I almost forgot about it! There are only a few immortal-levels here. Those who are on immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3 are even lesser. Perhaps there are only 100 of them. Our workload is much lower if we were to monitor the 100 of them. With their combat strength, it''s less likely that your Leech Pods will be discovered." "I plan to find out all the potential victims by tonight. Right when the Leech Pods are released into their body to monitor their position, I''ll set up a surveillance system without blind spots near their residential areas. I don''t think that it can run away!" Encountering an opponent with Enhanced Intelligence just like Bloody, it was ambitious. "Remember to send me their coordinates after you''ve found out where they are staying at. I''ll have to save them in my dimensional relic so that we''ll be able to reach there in the first place when it appears." Lin Huang did not miss out on any detail. Lin Huang fell asleep very quickly as he had to prepare himself for the battle in the morning. Bloody was busy until at about eight o''clock in the morning. It managed to find out about 118 of the potential victims who ranked immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3. It searched through the foothold repeatedly three times to make sure that it did not miss out on any of them. After secretly releasing the Leech Pods into the body of the 118 potential victims, Bloody did not activate them. Instead, it allowed the pods to lie dormant. Bloody did not intend to control them. Instead, it wanted to determine their position and monitor them. The Leech Pods would take over their body when necessary so that it could control them to run away and avoid being killed. Aside from releasing Leech Pods into their body, their house and toilet were being monitored by the surveillance system without any blind spots as well. Other than that, the area within a 10-kilometer radius from their house was being monitored by Bloody. The surveillance system was activated for 24 hours. All of these were done to avoid the monster from escaping. Although the probability of this happening was relatively small, they had to consider whatever situation that might happen. After setting everything up, Lin Huang had already finished his breakfast. He got 118 of the coordinates from Bloody and summoned Thunder. He then started another round of his work. Soon, Thunder sent Lin Huang to each of the coordinates marked on the map. He did consider asking for help from Kylie since her speed was on par with Thunder. However, as he thought about everyone in Martel City being in fear and they might assume Kylie to be the murderer, so Huang decided to ask for help from Thunder. An immortal pet monster which had gone through its third mutation was rare in Martel City. Once Thunder was summoned, it caught many people''s attention. Thanks to Thunder''s tremendously terrifying speed, before the rest of them could surround it, it flapped its wings and left together with Lin Huang. Thunder took about three to four minutes to travel from one coordinate to another. In order to save the coordinates, Lin Huang would need only a few minutes. However, he spent more than seven hours saving 118 of the coordinates in his dimensional relic. It was slightly after four in the afternoon when they returned to the hotel. Lin Huang then noticed that Xia Hou had called him for a few times. In order to save the coordinates more efficiently, he had disabled the communication function of the Emperor''s Heart Ring so that it would not keep vibrating. After calling back, soon, Xia Hou answered the video call. "What are you doing? Why couldn''t I reach you all day long? I''ve sent you a few messages and you didn''t reply as well." "I had something personal to deal with today. That''s why I disabled the communication function," Lin Huang explained. "The autopsy report is out. Have you seen it?" Xia Hou asked. "No, I haven''t. I just returned to the hotel." "I''ll briefly tell you about it. The autopsy report indicates that both of the immortal-level rank-9s were killed by a new form of poison. Although it won''t spread, it''s fatal. The poison can get into the human body through breathing, pores and more. If any of the immortal-levels are poisoned, the death rate is 100%. One might only be able to survive for less than ten seconds. However, the body of an imperial-level might not be able to defend against such a poison completely." Xia Hou continued, "I''ve been thinking about it for a long time. Since the case is too dangerous, I''m not going to investigate any further. In fact, after obtaining the autopsy report, about half of the investigators have left Martel City. I advise you to quit. It''s not worth dying for a few resources. The case can''t be handled by an immortal-level. They have to look for an imperial-level." "Thank you for reminding me. However, I''ll make my decision only after reading through the autopsy report on my own." He then hung up the phone with Xia Hou and quickly checked the autopsy report. He did not expect so many of them to quit. After carefully reading through the autopsy report, he understood everyone''s concern. They used to think that the murderer''s ability was very limited since the murderer was only capable of killing immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3. However, after knowing that the monster''s ability was far beyond their imaginations and could even kill an immortal-level rank-9, in addition to the new type of poison which nobody had ever seen before, it was pretty understandable that they decided to quit. Lin Huang did not persuade Xia Hou to stay since he was not going to ask him to join the operation that night. He had too many secrets and would definitely reveal his ability if he were to act together with Xia Hou. "They don''t know that regardless of whether they quit or not. It makes no difference." Bloody laughed. "After tonight, the monster will no longer appear." Closing the communication page, Lin Huang said what Bloody wanted to very calmly. 749 The Murderer Showed Up Before midnight, there was complete silence in Martel City as if the big foothold had fallen asleep. It was almost 12 a.m. now. It was drizzling with rain and there were only a few people on the street. The street lights had equal distances between each other and they were placed along both sides of the street. The lights gave a faint yellow glow and apparently, the sunstones had not been replaced for a long time. Martel City itself was not a prosperous city, which was why it had a rather boring nightlife. On a normal day, one could hardly see any people on the street after 10.30 p.m, let alone on a rainy day. "How long has it been raining for?" In the hotel room which was brightly lit, Lin Huang, who was sitting with his legs crossed on the sofa, slowly opened his eyes. He had been connected to his soul for the whole day to learn about the Sorcerer Dao and now, he was recovering from his thoughts. He heard the rain pelting the window right after he regained his senses. "It started raining since 8.30 a.m. and the rain has never stopped since then." Bloody was floating on top of the tea table in front of Lin Huang. It was lingering in the air and it looked like purple cotton candy that had been magnified ten times. "Is the weather going to affect the investigation of your Leech Pods?" Lin Huang slightly frowned, looking out of the window. "To be honest, it does affect the Leech Pods. On a rainy day, there''s less sunlight and the rainfall will affect their ability to see. With the weather like this, the detection ability of the pods will be reduced by approximately 15%," Bloody explained in detailed, "Another problem is that the monster is capable of transforming itself into its semi-transparent state, so it can definitely take advantage of the weather." "Is it going to have a significant impact on it?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "Not that significant though. Despite its capability of transforming into a semi-transparent state, it doesn''t mean that it''ll completely disappear from sight. The rain isn''t going to pass through its body. Instead, raindrops that fall onto its body help in outlining the shape of its body. With careful observation, it shouldn''t be difficult to figure it out," Bloody explained further. Lin Huang was then relieved and nodded. He got up from the sofa and walked towards the window, standing in front of it and looking through it. There were only three walls in the hotel room. One of the walls was made completely of bio-resin glass. The two large windows in the living room were attached to the glass wall, through which he could look from the room. As the rain hit the resin glass, the water accumulated and trickled down the glass. Lin Huang did not fix his gaze on the raindrops. Instead, he looked through the transparent glass as if his vision could pass through the dark night. There was a potential immortal-level rank-3 victim living in the luxurious area which was about two hundred meters away. Lin Huang only realized that the potential victim was so near to the hotel that he had chosen two days ago after Bloody had completely identified all the potential victims. There were the villas in the luxurious area. Lin Huang''s hotel room was on the 128th floor. As he looked down from the top, he had a clear view of the entire vicinity. The area was empty. Aside from the guard house that was located at the entrance, there were only three houses that still had their lights turned on, including the potential victim''s house. The small region was within the range covered by Lin Huang''s territory which had a radius of 3,000 meters. He could monitor everyone''s activities in the region without his eyesight. In the guard house, the security guard on-duty was having his supper. In one of the villas that were brightly lit, there was a couple exercising on the bed. In another villa, a muscular man was taking his bath. As for the last villa, the potential victim was sitting up straight in his study room. It seemed like he was checking the mails on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. Lin Huang managed to look through the entire region in just one glance. Realizing that there was nothing odd happening, he shifted his gaze and lowered his head to look at the Emperor''s Heart Ring. As projected by the Emperor''s Heart Ring, it was already 11.46 p.m. "Nothing happened, has it?" Lin Huang looked in the direction where Bloody was. He believed that with Bloody''s monitoring ability, it was impossible for it to miss anything. Since there was no news coming from Bloody, it indicated that the murderer had not acted yet. However, the clock was about to strike 12, causing Lin Huang to frown. As doubt arose in his mind, he looked out the window again. As his sight penetrated through the dark night, he fixed his gaze on a street which was devoid of presence. The street looked the same as what he had seen earlier. It was still empty. As the street lamps shone down the street, an extremely thin, green shadow appeared in a flash. Due to the interference caused by the raindrops and the mist, the green shadow could be barely detected. Lin Huang sensed that something had broken into his territory. Otherwise, he might not have been able to discover the presence of the shadow. "The murderer is here! It''s right below us!" "What a coincidence!" Lin Huang smiled, shaking his head. He indeed had never expected that among 118 of the potential victims, the murderer would choose the one right below him. There was no need to use the coordinates that he had saved into his dimensional relic previously. Bloody immediately transformed into a purple glow and hid in Lin Huang''s sleeve. Without a moment of hesitation, Lin Huang then left the hotel room through the window. Like a night bird, he flew down from a building that was hundreds of meters tall. His target was the shadow that was barely visible to the naked eye. Despite the fact that its body was close to being transparent, the murderer which was within the coverage of Lin Huang''s territory resembled a lamp in the dark. Regardless of how it was going to hide, Lin Huang would be able to sense it. The method used by Bloody was rather stupid. Its Leech Pods noticed that the raindrops in that area splashed in mid-air before they hit the ground. Seemingly, the murderer did not know that it had already been discovered. It moved swiftly and killed all the monitoring monsters in that area. After killing the last surveillance mosquito, it then realized that something was amiss and gradually turned its body around. Right at this moment, Lin Huang landed on the ground. He was like falling leaves in autumn as he landed on the ground quietly. Although he could hardly see his opponent''s body, Lin Huang knew very well that the murderer was less than ten meters away from him. Also, he knew that the unknown monster was sizing him up curiously. "You have quite a strong detection ability. I tried to restrain my aura to the most I could, but I''ve still been discovered," Lin Huang said as if he was talking to himself. The monster that was almost transparent knew that it had been discovered. It did not bother to hide anymore and its body gradually solidified. Seeing the body apparition, Lin Huang frowned. His opponent appeared in a human form without fear. Its body and face looked exactly the same as the muscular corpse that he had seen in the morgue two days ago. After its body was formed, a heavy coat appeared on the surface of the monster''s body, covering it. Obviously, it had a certain degree of understanding about the human lifestyle. "I know that you can understand what I''m talking about. If you don''t mind, could you please tell me what type of monster are you? I couldn''t find you in the monster guide," Lin Huang asked as if he was teasing the monster. In fact, his body was actually ready to be engaged in a fight. "You''ve not even achieved immortal-level. How dare you provoke me?" The monster narrowed its eyes. He did not act immediately as he could not understand why Lin Huang had the courage to do so. He even doubted if Lin Huang had set a trap for it or if he might have some other people to back him up. "You don''t need to look around. I didn''t bring anyone here," Lin Huang said with his palms up in mock surrender. However, he thought to himself, "Summoning monsters aren''t humans anyway." The monster guessed that what Lin Huang said might be true since it detected nothing. Its eyes then flashed with a trace of fury. "Since you want to die, I''m not going to be kind to you!" 750 Evil Spirit Type It was about midnight right now and the night was pitch black. The sky was covered by a cloak of dark clouds and the stars could not be seen. Without the street lamps, one could see nothing in the dark as they walked along the street. Martel City experienced a light drizzle, which made the weather a little chilly, adding to the joys of autumn which had just started in August. On a lonely street next to the luxurious area, there were two figures standing on the opposite side of the street lamp. One of the figures was about two meters tall and was dressed in a dark-colored coat, looking very muscular. Lightning crackled through the sky and its face could be clearly seen in an instant. It had extremely short hair which was very close to the scalp. It looked ferocious and the scar on the bridge of its nose enhanced its terrifying appearance. As for another figure, he looked like an ordinary teenager at the height of about 1.8 meters. Compared to the man next to him, he looked rather skinny. He was in casual wear. He wore a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The only difference was that he had an attractive appearance. His pair of black eyes looked brighter at night as if they were two priceless, black gemstones. The sunstones emitted a faint yellow glow, projecting light over up to ten meters away. The light highlighted the shimmer of the rain, resembling snowflakes that were falling from the sky. However, the two of them who stood under the streetlight, did not get soaked in the rain. With careful observation, one would notice that the raindrops were actually repelled before touching their clothes. Seemingly, there was a layer of thin, transparent film that repelled the rain. Sleet Repel! Only those who were on holy fire-level possessed such a skill. With a slight activation, the rotating Life Power in the body of the holy fire-level would cause a force field to appear on the surface of their body. Despite the fact that the force field did not possess the ability to defend them, it was sufficient to protect their body from rain or hailstones. It was also one of the differences between transcendents and ordinary humans. In fact, after getting to the immortal-level, one''s Life Power would be further strengthened and there was no need to deliberately activate their Life Power. The force field would be activated on its own and it would last for 24 hours. Not only would it protect them from sleet, even dust would not settle on their clothes. Generally, it could keep one''s body away from dirt even if one did not shower for a year. (Hmmm, I feel like spa therapists are going to lose their jobs) Lin Huang sized his opponent up through the rain. If he had not witnessed the entire process of his transformation in addition to knowing that the human that he transformed into had already died, Lin Huang might have thought that he was indeed a human. The aura exuded by the monster was exactly the same as a human''s. Despite Lin Huang only being ten meters away from it, he could not figure out anything odd. Furthermore, he could sense just from its aura alone that the strength of the monster was the same as the victim''s; the both of them were on immortal-level rank-3. An ordinary immortal-level rank-3 would mean nothing to him. However, he dared not underestimate the monster that had appeared right in front of him. He witnessed how he managed to poison two immortal-level rank-9s through the Backtracking Mirror. He could not even confirm whether the monster''s ability was of immortal-level rank-3 or not as it might be trying to mimic the victim''s combat strength. Just as Lin Huang was carefully sizing the monster up, the monster was studying Lin Huang as well. Not only was it sizing him up, it looked at the surroundings carefully as well. After confirming that nobody was there to back Lin Huang up, it suddenly released its aura that was initially suppressed. Earlier, the aura resembled Mars, but eventually, it burnt the entire grassland. At that moment, only then Lin Huang was able to sense its fiendish aura that was different from humans. "The aura Are you a fiend?" Lin Huang frowned. However, he could vaguely feel that the aura it released was slightly different from the fiends''. Although it was as brutal as the aura released by the fiends, it was rather wicked. "No, it should be an evil spirit type. The aura of the fiends tends to be darker, but the evil spirit''s aura will be eviler." Bloody''s voice was heard. Lin Huang frowned again as he heard of the evil spirit type. He had to be careful and his dark combat sword instantly formed in his hand. Since Lin Huang used to be a teacher who had read through all the monster guides and other monster information in the Martial Hunter College, he knew very well what the evil spirit type was. Most of the evil spirits were created after going through a spiritual transformation. Some of them were transformed from the spirits of the dead due to resentment. Also, some of the spiritual creatures were transformed into evil spirits as they were contaminated. Evil spirits were also formed simply due to the accumulation of negative emotions. In short, this type of monster was extremely wicked and they had shockingly sinister attack skills. "Isn''t the evil spirit type often controlled by their negative emotions and that there''s a limit to their intelligence?" A thought suddenly came across Lin Huang''s mind. "The monster managed to plan chain murders without leaving any evidence. It doesn''t look like it''s a monster with low intelligence." "I wouldn''t get it wrong based on the aura it released. It''s dark, brutal, and evil. They''re all mixed up It''s definitely the evil spirit type," Bloody said confidently, "Although it''s smart, it might just be a special case." As soon as the aura emitted by the monster reached its peak, the evil spirit suddenly moved. Despite moving with a bulky body that had a height of more than two meters, its speed was terribly fast, which far surpassed an immortal-level rank-3. Lin Huang could only see a moving shadow. However, not being able to capture its motion was not a big problem for Lin Huang as his territory managed to cover about three kilometers. Even an ant would not be able to escape him, let alone a muscular man that was more than two meters tall. Lin Huang reacted just as his Territory sensed it. He brandished his sword forward without a moment of hesitation. The purple Life Fire in his Life Wheel was burning vigorously. His Life Power resembled a river, flowing through his body. Right at that moment, the black combat sword turned purple and a purple glow covered its blade. The blade which was about 80 centimeters long instantly transformed into a giant blade that was about two meters long. Bang! At almost the same time when the purple blade was formed, the evil spirit came right in front of Lin Huang. It was so muscular and had bulging veins. One could even vaguely see the blood coursing through. The evil spirit did not hold any weapons in hand. However, it had a gigantic fist. After stretching it back, it struck a heavy blow at him. At that moment, there was a loud explosion in the air. Before the blow struck, a vacuum was formed and the rain stopped. Lin Huang''s pupils dilated as he witnessed the attack unfolding. He immediately activated his Life Power to its maximum and the purple blade expanded a few more feet. The blade was extremely sharp as the air was slightly distorted while it flew by. His sword slashed through the raindrops right in front of him. The both of them did not hold back, striking with murderous intent. Right under the streetlamps, a white and a black shadow crashed into each other. 751 Lin Huang Versus Evil Spirit Type Under the dark sky, the street lights emitted a faint, yellow glow, lighting up the street. Two glows suddenly crashed into each other under one of the street lamps. One of the glows was as black as ink whereas the other glow was purple in color. The black and the purple glow covered the light of the sunstones in an instant and collided with each other. Bang! A loud explosion was heard as if hundreds of thunders had crashed together at the same time. Neither of the glows would give in, spreading out like mist. All the lights emitted from the street lamps were engulfed as they flew by. The aftershock of the force as a result of the collision stirred up the atmosphere. It was akin to throwing stones into still water. The atmosphere resembled waves, bringing forth an aggressive wind that rippled everywhere. The street lamp, which was situated right at the center of the force, was shrouded by the two beams of lights in an instant, being crushed into powder. Despite the fact that the main material used to make the street lamps was the biochemically manufactured alloy, which was corrosion-resistant and had high tensile strength when encountering a strong immortal-level, it was just as weak as a plastic toy. The street lamp was not the only thing destroyed. Almost everything within the area covered by the two glows turned into ashes. Not only did the walls on both sides of the area disappear, even the ground beneath their feet had collapsed, creating a huge pit which was about ten meters deep. The wind blew ferociously, causing the trees and plants on both sides of the street to fall. Some of them were even uprooted. The garbage bins on the roadsides clattered to the ground and there was trash everywhere as they were blown by the wind. Some of the garbage bins were sent hundreds of meters away. The loud explosion stirred up the atmosphere, causing the glass in many of the houses to break. Countless people were awakened by the thunderous booms and many of them thought that an earthquake was rumbling. Some of them even ran out of their houses naked. Some of the transcendents could sense the vibration of the force and they knew that it was a battle between immortal-levels. They carefully looked through the window from afar in the direction where the explosion had happened. In mid-air, the two glows gradually faded like mist after the collision. The black and the white shadows each retreated tens of meters away from the mist. Lin Huang could confirm that his opponent''s ability was on par with his after the collision. Despite being merely a purple flame-level, he could actually fight against an ordinary immortal-level rank-8. Although the monster''s combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-3, its ability could be compared to Bai and Charcoal''s. "It''s a battle between advanced immortal-levels!" In the luxurious area, a middle-aged man''s pupils dilated as he looked in the direction where the both of them fought. Although he was an immortal-level rank-3, he could clearly sense from the aftershock of the explosion that his ability was far beyond theirs. He would definitely be killed within seconds if the attack struck him. The middle-aged man was startled. Soon after, it seemed like something dawned on him as terror filled his face. He immediately left his house through the window and quickly headed in the opposite direction where the battle was taking place. Of course, Lin Huang could sense that the potential victim was escaping using his Territory skill. "He''s not stupid. He knows that the battle might have happened because of him." Lin Huang took a glance in the direction where the potential victim was heading. Right at this moment, the evil spirit seemed to possess some unique detection abilities too as it could sense that its target had fled. It caught a glimpse of Lin Huang and seemingly, it was reluctant to fight him anymore. It stomped down hard on the ground. Along with the howling of the wind, it headed towards its target and chased after it. "Hey, the game is not over yet. Where are you going?" Lin Huang grinned, remaining still. However, he thrust his purple combat sword forward. A beam of purple light appeared in mid-air hundreds of meters away, blocking the evil spirit''s way. It was the effect of Lin Huang''s Territory as his attack could simply reach any place within the coverage of his skill. In an area with a 3,000-meter radius, the power of the attacks launched within 1,000 meters would not be weakened. Attacks made within 2,000 meters might have 90% of its original attack power whereas 80% of the effect of the attack''s strength could be maintained within 3,000 meters. Despite the evil spirit leaping hundreds of meters forward, it was still within the area covered by Lin Huang''s territory. The power of his attack was almost the same as the attack he had struck previously. Seeing the glow appear in front of it out of nowhere, the evil spirit''s eyes flashed with a trace of fear. It was curious about how Lin Huang had managed to do so. However, it reacted immediately. It did not dodge, but it struck a blow instead! Its black Life Power resembled the torrential downpour of a waterfall and again, it bumped into the crescent purple glow. The black and the purple glow lit up again. Each of the glows engulfed an area which was tens of meters wide, wiping out everything within that region. A loud thud exploded as if hundreds of cannons had just fired at the same time. During the explosion, one could still vaguely hear the residents screaming in fear. In fact, the position where Lin Huang attacked had avoided the residential area. Nobody was injured, but the majority of them were frightened. As it was blocked by Lin Huang''s attack, the evil spirit retreated tens of meters away. Lin Huang was relieved as he could sense that the potential victim had left the region covered by his territory. The evil spirit seemed to have realized that it would not be able to chase after its target as Lin Huang had obstructed it. It then decided to give up on its target. It turned its body around, giving Lin Huang a death glare. "Since you want me to let go of my material, you have to replace him and be my material. Although you''re weak, you''re considered a high-quality material with the abilities and the unique skills you currently have." "It seems like the both of us are thinking of the same thing." Lin Huang grinned, showing both of his canine teeth. "I wanted to extract your Life Fire tinder as well so that I can level up to gold flame-level." The evil spirit smiled evilly. "Since that''s the case, let''s see who''s going to be whose material!" Having uttered these words, the evil spirit completely gave up on its initial target. With its coat fluttering in the wind, black mist enveloped its entire body as if a heinous monster was arriving. All the areas that he passed by were covered in the black mist. The dark sky became even more ominous and it seemed like an apocalypse was happening within hundreds of meters around them. Lin Huang had no fear at all. He took a step forward with his sword and flew up into the sky. The purple mist surrounding his body got thicker as he passed through the sky. It looked like a purple ribbon was streaking across the sky as he flew by, resembling a gigantic purple python. In mid-air, many of the people witnessed the strange phenomenon that was happening thousands of meters away. After watching this, the majority of the ordinary residents knew that the thunderous booms did not happen because of a natural disaster. Instead, it was a battle between them. Many of the residents who were once brave lowered their heads, hiding behind the building. They secretly watched the rare scene from afar. The cultivators nearby were extraordinarily excited as they watched the battle with anticipation and respect. 752 The Unwelcome Reinforcements Mid-air, the black, and the purple glow appeared in a flash and crashed into each other intensely. Both of the glows faded and the collision repeated again and again. It looked like someone had caused a fire, but each time, the location of the fire could not be confirmed. In less than a minute, Lin Huang had collided with the evil spirit for more than ten times. Each time that they clashed with each other, it would always result in a strong explosion and a terrifying shock. In an area within hundreds of kilometers, almost all the transcendents could sense the battle happening. Some of them were shocked at their abilities, but they could not understand why the both of them would fight in the city. There were also those who guessed that the battle must be somehow related to the murder cases that had happened within the first half of the month. Both of them fought right at the center of the city, not far away from the Union Government. The majority of the Union Government''s officers were staying somewhere near the Union Government''s office. As soon as they could sense the intense battle that was happening, the immortal-levels in Martel City quickly rushed towards the place where Lin Huang and the evil spirit were. The evil spirit did not manage to take advantage of Lin Huang even after several collisions. It began to feel nervous. It knew very well that the longer the battle, the less favorable the conditions would be. It was the human world. The people from the Union Government and the Hunter Association would arrive very soon to back Lin Huang up. If it were to be surrounded by them, it would not be able to make it. After giving it some thought, the evil spirit type no longer had the urge to fight. It was eager to kill the human who had ruined its plans. However, saving its own life was more important. The evil spirit would be the one to bear the loss if it continued fighting the human. Lin Huang noticed that it wanted to retreat as well. His attack grew more and more intense. After clashing with each other several times, the black glow was gradually covered by the purple glow. Initially, the both of them were equally powerful. Then, the situation got warped. It turned out to be a one-sided battle. Lin Huang did not want his opponent to escape. If it happened to run away, it would be more careful the next time since its whereabouts had now been found. On the other hand, he wished that he could kill the evil spirit before the rest of them got there because those who were stronger than the evil spirit would arrive later. Their appearance would cause the tinder in the evil spirit''s body to disappear right after its death and he would not be able to extract the tinder. Then, his efforts over the past few days would have been in vain. "Hmph. I''m giving up today. I''ll definitely kill you the next time!" A flicker of fury flashed through its eyes. It did not expect that it would be suppressed by a holy fire-level. How humiliating! However, it knew the situation very well. If it were to stay there, perhaps in less than two minutes, more humans and the rest of them would be here and it would be unable to escape by then. As the thought flashed through its mind, the evil spirit type did not hesitate any more. Again, it struck a heavy blow in mid-air and crashed with the purple glow. It was apparent that it did not strike at full force. Even its fist was slashed by the purple blade and a long, bloody wound appeared. However, it did not look like it suffered from the wound pain. Instead, it glanced at Lin Huang with an insulting expression. It stomped on the ground and with the help of the aftershock as a result of Lin Huang''s sword attack, it retreated at a speed that was three times faster than its top speed. The evil spirit almost managed to leave Lin Huang''s territory. Lin Huang did not block its way. He grinned, calling out a name instead, "Kylie!" Soon, a tall and slim lady, who was clad in her black armor, suddenly appeared next to Lin Huang on his right. She wore a black mask which covered half of her face. Twelve black wings extended from her back, featuring white lightning patterns on them as if they heralded the arrival of a god. The black spear in her hand was surrounded by the purple patterns and her aura had reached its peak. "Block its way," Lin Huang uttered three simple words. Kylie instantly transformed into a black shadow and flew towards the evil spirit in a flash. In just the blink of an eye, the black shadow was there to block its way. Seeing Kylie appear out of nowhere, the evil spirit''s pupils dilated. The both of them were on immortal-level rank-3 and Kylie was at her maximum speed. None of the creatures of the same combat level could be faster than her, including the evil spirit. The evil spirit could confirm that the lady who was blocking its way was not weak. However, it had no other choice. Vengeance flickered in its eyes as it attempted to make it through to strike a blow at Kylie. Since Kylie was much faster than it was, its effort to avoid her and to escape in the other direction would be rendered useless as Kylie would block its way again. However, it did not want to bug Kylie anymore. It wanted to escape as soon as its attack struck her. Despite her tremendously terrifying fast speed, it did not mean that she would have powerful close-range skills. It was very confident in its close-range combat. The evil spirit was surrounded by a black mist. As it was ready to strike, its black Life Power had reached its peak as if its arms and fists were shrouded in black colloids. Just as it struck a heavy blow, black Life Power was released, gushing out like a flowing river. It did not restrain its power at all, hoping that the lady would be severely injured and that it could make its way through. In her black half mask, Kylie had no facial expression on the other half of her face. Even when she was summoned, she did not speak a single word. As usual, she had a stone cold expression on her face. Even seeing the evil spirit launch an attack at her, her facial expression did not change. She lifted her hand and swiftly hurled the black spear that she was holding towards the evil spirit. The white lightning pattern on her spear transformed into a dazzling, white spot at the tip of the spear in an instant. Before crashing with the black, river-like Life Power, the white spot exploded abruptly. A white shockwave suddenly appeared and clashed with the black, river-like Life Power. The black and the white glow attracted everyone''s attention. The collision between the two beams of lights resulted in countless thunderous booms, creating a strong wind. Many of them who witnessed this felt strange. Originally, the purple glow was fighting the black glow. They wondered why the white glow would appear and how come the aura exuded by the white glow was slightly different. Could there be a third person? Lin Huang floated in mid-air and he remained unaffected by the strong wind. He fixed his gaze at the region where the both of them collided and seemingly, he was not affected by the intense light resulting from the explosion at all as he could still see the situation of the battle clearly. Both of them were on immortal-level rank-3. Lin Huang was surprised as the evil spirit was capable of fighting Kylie face-to-face even after Kylie had gone through her third mutation in addition to possessing advanced dark angel blood. Lin Huang had seen how powerful Kylie''s close-range skills were. Along with the transformation of her blood and the increasing number of mutations which she had gone through, Kylie was much more potent than before. Kylie was one of the strongest summoning monsters that Lin Huang owned. If Kylie were to fight Lin Huang, the outcome of the battle would be unknown. "What is the evil spirit actually?" Lin Huang slightly narrowed his eyes, looking at the evil spirit that had transformed into a human form. After sizing up the evil spirit for a short while, he suddenly turned his head in another direction. His facial expression immediately changed. He could sense that several powerful auras were approaching him swiftly. Two of the auras were of at least immortal-level rank-7 or above. "Someone''s coming. It seems like they''re from the Union Government." Lin Huang knew that reinforcement was arriving, but he did not look happy. He frowned instead. Their appearance would indicate that even if he managed to kill the evil spirit, he would not be able to extract the tinder as the Life Fire would vanish. "I''m in trouble" 753 Changing the Battleground According to the tinder extraction rules imposed in this world, if humans with higher combat strength than the Life Fire monster were present during its death, its Life Fire would collapse on its own, and nobody would be able to perform the extraction. This was also the reason why Lin Huang had activated his Sword Dao at full force at the beginning of the battle. Apart from a few of his trump cards, he had used up almost all the skills he possessed to kill the evil spirit before the rest of them arrived. However, it seemed like it was too late now. The immortal-levels from the Union Government were approaching. From the aura they released, their combat levels were at least on immortal-level rank-7. At almost the same time when Lin Huang discovered the people within his territory radius, they entered the evil spirit''s as well. At this moment, even if the evil spirit were killed, the Life Fire in its body would disintegrate as well. Sensing that the human reinforcements were approaching, the evil spirit felt nervous and insecure. It knew very well that if it were to be surrounded by them, it would not be able to survive. It made a few turns as it wanted to avoid Kylie. However, Kylie and her spear blocked it. As the Union Government''s reinforcements were approaching, Lin Huang frowned, troubled. The evil spirit was at least a triple mutated monster with Enhanced Intelligence. It was the best choice as a tinder monster. Just as Lin Huang was fretting about this, Bloody''s voice was heard coming from his sleeve. "You won''t be able to extract the tinder once the Union Government officers arrive. We don''t have time to change the battleground now. The only thing we can do is to stop the tinder from sensing it." Bloody''s piece of advice enlightened Lin Huang. "I know what to do!" As soon as he finished his sentence, a golden, palm-sized book quickly formed in front of Lin Huang. The golden Book of Sorcerer Dao floated at less than a meter away from Lin Huang on its own. Lin Huang extended his hand and placed it on top of the book. Resembling the activation of a door, the Book of the Sorcerer Dao gradually opened. A black rune lit up in the middle of the page, and soon, a rune was created in the air. Right after the rune was formed, black mist started spreading out, causing one to feel insecure. Lin Huang did not do anything. All of a sudden, the air surrounding the evil spirit vibrated. Black chains that resembled shooting arrows blasted off into the sky. There were more than 100 chains, and the number of chains was continually increasing. Despite nobody being able to figure out where the chains were coming from, the evil spirit was obviously their target. The evil spirit glanced at Kylie and Lin Huang who was far away from it. It could immediately identify the skill that Lin Huang was using as it had spotted the rune being created in front of Lin Huang. It knew Lin Huang''s abilities very well. It would be irrational for it to touch the chains since it knew nothing about the effects of the skill. As the thought came to its mind, the evil spirit moved aside, attempting to dodge the attack. However, right after it did, Kylie then appeared in front of it. She thrust her spear towards it, forcing it to get locked in the chains. The evil spirit could not do anything and ended up striking several blows at the chains. Despite the chains breaking rapidly after being struck by it, they formed again at a speed faster than before. In addition to that, the number of chains was constantly increasing, pouncing on the evil spirit again and again. Just as the evil spirit got locked in the chains, the Book of Sorcerer Dao appeared in front of Lin Huang. He started flipping quickly and the second black rune was produced rapidly in the air. Lin Huang grinned, looking in the direction where the evil spirit was. Then, he uttered these words calmly, "Hellish Cage!" Before he could even finish his words, a huge cage materialized out of nowhere, covering the evil spirit''s surroundings which were tens of meters in diameter. It then quickly shrank into a cube which measured a length of about three meters long. The cube was made entirely of the black chains which were roughly the circumference of an adult''s arm, and they looked like living black pythons that were entangled together. "Kylie, activate your mini world." As soon as the evil spirit got locked in the Hellish Cage, Lin Huang immediately contacted Kylie. He knew very well that the cage would not be able to contain the evil spirit for a long time. However, it would be able to buy him some time. Kylie slightly nodded her head and a whirlpool, which was the entrance to the mini world, was formed in a blink of an eye. "That''s really fast!" Lin Huang took a glance in the direction where the reinforcements were. The few immortal-levels were getting closer and closer. Perhaps they would arrive in less than 20 seconds. He did not dare to delay a minute longer. With his telekinetic power, he managed to control one of the edges of the Hellish Cage, hurling it towards the entrance of the mini world. The relatively big black cage hit the whirlpool, sinking into it as if it was drowned in a swamp. "Let''s catch up with it!" The next second after the Hellish Cage disappeared, Lin Huang transformed into a white beam of light and entered the whirlpool. Kylie, who had received Lin Huang''s instructions, immediately turned into a black glow and entered the whirlpool as well. Right after Kylie disappeared, the whirlpool faded. In just a short while after that, several figures appeared at the battleground at almost the same time. The first person was a middle-aged man in a blue checkered shirt, and two people followed him. One of them was in a grey coat, wearing a hat. Another man was in a suit and had short hair. Unexpectedly, they were Feng Yuan and Lan Luo, the people in charge of the murder cases assigned by the Union Government. The three of them sized up their surroundings. Aside from the collapsed buildings, the vast pits, the fallen trees, and many other traces that were the result of the battle, nobody was there. "That''s kind of weird. Where are they? We could still hear the sound of the battle a few seconds ago. Why isn''t there anybody here right now?" Lan Luo, who was in his suit, said curiously. Feng Yuen lit a cigar and put it into his mouth. He then said casually, "The aftershock of the force is proof that a battle has indeed happened here a few seconds ago." "Since both parties have disappeared, could either one of them had won the battle a few seconds before we arrived? The one who won must have left together with the dead body." Lan Luo frowned as his assumption had not been verified yet. "There''s no release of Life Power from the transcendent''s dead body. What you said might be true." Feng Yuan then exhaled the cigar smoke and smiled, shaking his head. "But I''m more inclined to another possibility." "What''s that?" "They didn''t want us to interfere in their battle. That''s why they changed the battleground." As Feng Yuan said that, his facial expression looked different. "They must''ve sensed that we were approaching them. Under normal circumstances, the murderer would''ve wanted to leave as soon as possible, so that we wouldn''t attack it in a group. The investigator who fought it would''ve tried to buy us time. The activation of a dimensional relic takes time. Normally, the investigator wouldn''t give the murderer the time to activate its dimensional relic. Since the both of them disappeared at the same time, it means that the both of them agreed to fight someplace else." "Why would the investigator want to do so?" Lan Luo still felt that the logic behind it was strange. "Who knows? Perhaps he''s an arrogant man who feels that he can deal with the murderer alone and doesn''t want any of us to interfere in the battle." Feng Yue shook his head helplessly. He knew nothing about the "investigator" who fought the murderer and that was the only guess he could come up with. 754 Trump Card In Kylie''s mini world, the Hellish Cage that was structured from hundreds of black chains was floating in mid-air. A loud thud was heard coming from the cage, along with an immense impact wave. The evil spirit was striking the cage aggressively. The Hellish Cage had just got into the mini world for less than ten seconds and there were cracks all over it as it was besieged by the evil spirit. Out of the hundreds of black chains, none of them was in good condition. Lin Huang knew earlier that his Witchcraft skills would not have that great an effect on monsters with such abilities. However, it was considered strong enough as he managed to lock it for tens of seconds. Although he had activated the skill, trapping the evil spirit was not his main intention. Instead, he wanted the evil spirit to go into the mini world. Since his purpose had been achieved, he would be able to extract its tinder even if it could get rid of the cage. Lin Huang and Kylie were standing on the same level as the Hellish Cage, less than 20 meters away. They witnessed the moment when the evil spirit smashed the cage into pieces and breaking out. The evil spirit was pissed. It wanted to fight Lin Huang who had secretly attacked it as soon as it got out of the cage. However, it discovered something strange. "Why is the sky so bright?" The evil spirit raised his head and looked towards the sky doubtfully. It should be slightly after midnight now in Martel City and the sky was dark there. However, it was daytime now in the mini world. Seeing the sun hanging high in the sky, the evil spirit was puzzled. It shifted its gaze from the sky and peered around. The skyscrapers and the street lamps it was used to had completely disappeared. There was a field instead. Also, it could see flowers of different colors, dancing in the wind. Sizing up its surroundings, the evil spirit finally shifted its gaze to Lin Huang with a strange facial expression. "Is this the kingdom?" "The kingdom?" Lin Huang was startled to hear that. Seeing Lin Huang unable to understand its question, instead of the strange facial expression it initially had, a smile was now plastered on its face. "It seems like you know nothing about this dimension. That''s good. The kingdom belongs to me after your death." Despite not having any idea what the kingdom was, Lin Huang knew that the dimension it was referring to must be the mini world. Seemingly, it thought that the dimension was within its control and had completely ignored the fact that the owner of the dimension was actually Kylie. "Whatever. It seems like it''s not going to tell me what the kingdom is. I''ll just kill it and read its mind." Lin Huang did not want to talk nonsense with it anymore. With Bloody''s help, he could still retrieve its memory after it was killed. There was no need for him to waste his time on this. Since the evil spirit wanted to take over the control of the dimension while Lin Huang wanted to retrieve its memory, their intentions to kill each other were growing. "Kylie, if it attempts to flee, block its way!" Right at the moment as he uttered those words, he rushed towards the evil spirit. The ten purple Life Fires in his body were burning intensely and the black combat sword in his hand had turned purple in an instant, transforming into a purple thunderbolt. On the other hand, the evil spirit''s body was shrouded in a black mist. On its right arm, the black mist got denser, turning into liquid form and had completely covered its arm. Seeing Lin Huang was about to pounce on it, it immediately stomped hard on the ground and struck a heavy blow at Lin Huang. The both of them clashed with each other. Bang! The collision was different from the one that had happened within the foothold. The both of them gave it their all this time. The first few collisions that happened at Martel City were just trial attacks as the evil spirit wanted to test Lin Huang''s abilities. Although it could confirm that Lin Huang was incapable of killing it, it had not given its all then. It had attempted to flee as it did not want to be attacked by the group. Lin Huang had suppressed his ability as well. He restricted the areas and regions that would be involved in the battle as he was worried that the battle might affect the ordinary residents. For a battle between immortal-levels, even the aftershock of the battle within a certain distance range would be harmful to ordinary people. Since they were now in the mini world, aside from Kylie and Bloody, there was no other audience watching the battle, hence Lin Huang was no longer afraid of harming the innocent. Without having to worry about being surrounded by people, the evil spirit could finally give its best shot. Its ability was at least three times stronger than before. In mid-air, the purple and the black glows crashed into each other again. Both of the glows resembled the explosion of clouds, enveloping almost half of the sky. The boom of an explosion was heard soon after, stirring up the atmosphere. The grass quivered as a strong wind blew past, and the waves of grass moved across the field into the distance The two figures collided with each other again in the air, creating thunderous booms. However, the winner of the battle was still unknown. Each attack Lin Huang launched was activated with level-5 Sword Dao and each legendary-level sword skill unleashed was close to perfect. He was almost reaching the limit achievable by a human in Sword Dao. However, he was still unable to kill the evil spirit. The evil spirit did not have any relics on hand. It defended Lin Huang''s supreme relic with its bare hands. Despite its fists bleeding each time after the collision, the wounds were healed in an instant as if it never had any injuries before. The most surprising fact was that without any skills to support it, the evil spirit''s attack was on par with Lin Huang''s legendary-level sword skills. Each attack it struck was powerful and even far surpassed the abilities of most humans with a similar combat strength. Since Lin Huang was not even an immortal-level, the evil spirit did not expect him to be able to put up a fair fight. Lin Huang himself knew very well that even without a trump card, he could fight an immortal-level rank-8. "I''ve indeed underestimated you. Your abilities are comparable to a human supreme genius. I didn''t expect a gravel world could train a person like you." Lin Huang was stunned when he heard what it said. It was the first time for him to come across the term "gravel world". However, since the first day he traveled to this world, he knew that this was an "initial world". Aside from the world he picked for this voyage, there should be other worlds present too. "Do you come from a different world?" Lin Huang asked. "Of course. How could I be the same as the low-class creatures in the gravel world like you? Have you ever encountered any monster in this world that''s as smart as I am?" The evil spirit said arrogantly. "I did really encounter one that was smarter than you. It''s hiding in my sleeve," Lin Huang thought to himself. "It''s difficult even to become a Virtual God in the gravel world with rules that are incomprehensive. Many restrictions are imposed on the mutants; even going through our fourth mutation is restricted. I''m not interested in becoming a resident of your world." Perhaps because the evil spirit was trying to show off, more information was revealed. "So, where did you come from?" Lin Huang had to admit that what it said piqued his curiosity. "You don''t need to know." The evil spirit refused to disclose anything about its background. "I shall change the question then. Why are you here in our world and intentionally committing murders?" Lin Huang rephrased. "I''m here purely by accident. I simply wanted to experiment." The evil spirit did not refuse to answer him. After finishing its sentence, the evil spirit started sizing Lin Huang up with a strange expression. "Actually, you''re decent material to experiment on too. Unfortunately, I can''t bring your corpse back" "Is that true? I have my way to transport your dead body though. There''s a skilled forensic scientist who can perform an autopsy on you too," Lin Huang grinned as he said. "You''re such a silver-tongued brat. If it weren''t because I''ve got such a weak body which has severely restricted my combat strength, I would''ve pinned you down with one finger. However, it''s not difficult for me to kill you now, but it''ll be a burden to this body" After finishing its words, the evil spirit''s aura started to grow. It was originally an immortal-level rank-3. In just a blink of an eye, it managed to grow into an immortal-level rank-4. Its aura still did not stop growing. It was strengthened and soon, it made another breakthrough and leveled up to immortal-level rank-5. In just a short while, there was an upgrade in its combat strength again and it finally achieved immortal-level rank-6. After three consecutive upgrades, its growing aura started to subside and stopped right after it reached the peak of immortal-level rank-6. "I''m now capable of fighting an imperial level. Human, just use whatever trump cards you have. Otherwise, you won''t have the chance to use them later." "I''ll do as you wish!" After having uttered those words, Lin Huang secretly crushed a transformation card. Similar to the evil spirit, his combat strength started increasing insanely! 755 Murder Purple flame-level! Gold flame-level! Immortal-level rank-1! After several moments, Lin Huang''s combat strength had upgraded from purple flame-level to immortal-level rank-3. Still, he transformed into Bai with his Transformation Card. The incremental effect on his combat strength was maintained, restricting only the transformation effect. However, his physique was a carbon copy of Bai. Bai''s physique ranked on top when he was compared to triple mutated monsters since he possessed God''s blood. He was much more powerful than Lin Huang''s original body and he also far exceeded most of the people with similar combat strength. Sensing that his internal strength was rapidly growing, Lin Huang experienced a temporary delusion of ruining the entire mini world in one strike. However, he knew that it was merely an illusion. As Lin Huang''s combat strength was improving, the evil spirit had a strange expression on its face. It originally thought that if its body could upgrade three levels higher, it could definitely fight Lin Huang regardless of what his trump card was. It did not expect the increase in Lin Huang''s combat strength as well. Moreover, his combat strength was now four levels higher, narrowing the gap in combat strength between them. Noticing the complicated expression his opponent had, Lin Huang calmly retracted the black sword in his hand, switching to an ancient combat sword C the Air Slicer. Soon after, he took out another ancient relic C the Black Feathered Armor and put it on. He had obtained both of the ancient relics from the black-robed man in the Leib Lab. "You''re the one who asked me to use my trump card. The equipment and the skill to increase my combat strength are my trump cards." Lin Huang laughed, looking at the evil spirit. He continued, "Are you surprised?" "Dumbass!" The evil spirit thought to itself. However, it maintained a neutral facial expression. "Do you think that you can defeat me this way?" "You''ll know after giving it a try!" Lin Hung''s silver Air Slicer was gradually covered by his red Life Power at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Right after the Transformation Card had been activated, there were no changes in Lin Huang''s body size and at the same time, he could not use Bai''s skills. However, the Life Power element in his body had somehow been taken over by Bai''s Vampire Particles to a certain extent. The purple color his Life Power used to have due to his purple Life Fire had now turned red, the color of the Vampire Particles. In addition to that, he had inherited part of the Vampire Particles'' characteristics. The blade of the Air Slicer seemed to be shrouded in a thick layer of blood, extending the length of the combat sword which was initially fewer than 80 centimeters to about two meters. The rotation of Life Power resembled lava coursing through the blade of the sword. On the other hand, the evil spirit''s body was enveloped by the black mist. Each and every minute was suppressing as if it the Devil himself was arriving. Its abilities were way more powerful than before due to the increase in its combat strength. Despite the larger upgrade in Lin Huang''s abilities, the evil spirit was shocked for a short while. Soon, it managed to calm itself down. It had no fear. Instead, its intention to fight grew stronger due to the pressure coming from Lin Huang. In mid-air, the both of them were crashing into each other incessantly. It was like a fuse lighting up the sky. As they exchanged glances with each other, the grey and the white figures moved at almost the same time. The black and the purple glows covered the entire sky again, crashing into each other violently in an instant. A beam of dazzling white light suddenly appeared as they collided with each other. It was so bright and almost covered the sun that was hanging up high in the sky. Due to the impact that resulted from the explosion, it stirred up the atmosphere, creating a ripple-like storm. All the flowers and the grass on the field were repressed by the storm, seeming as though they were expressing their fear of the force. Kylie had retreated thousands of meters away, watching the fierce fight between the both of them from afar. Having achieved an upgrade in their combat strengths, their abilities were far beyond hers. Even the aftershock of the battle would be harmful to her if she got too close. The purple and the black glows in the air lasted for a short while before the winner was revealed. Soon after, the purple glow smothered the black glow. Before the black glow started to fade, the evil spirit immediately retreated as it attempted to distance itself from Lin Huang. Thousands of meters away, the evil spirit glanced at its right hand. Lin Huang''s attack had almost managed to cut its palm in half. Even the recovery rate of its body was much slower than before. It then looked at Lin Huang''s combat sword which was shrouded in the purple glow with fear. Apparently, there was something special with the sword which hindered its recovery rate. In just one hit, the evil spirit suffered a great loss beyond its expectation. The sharpness of Lin Huang''s Air Slicer was far beyond the supreme relic which he used earlier. Initially, the effect of his attack could do no harm to the evil spirit type and its wound could be healed in just a blink of an eye. However, the attack which he just made almost caused his opponent to lose an arm. Although the evil spirit type was covered by black mist, still, Lin Huang saw that he almost managed to cut his opponent''s palm in half. "I can finally break through its defense. That''s an encouraging start." He grinned. Before the evil spirit''s wound could fully recover, Lin Huang seized the opportunity, raising his sword up again and dashing towards the evil spirit. Mid-air, the black and the purple glows clashed with each other again. Each time after the collision, the purple glow grew bigger and bigger. On the contrary, the black glow was now weaker than before. A new wound was formed on the evil spirit''s body after each collision. The evil spirit''s physique was capable of healing the ordinary sword wounds in an instant. However, there was something special about Lin Huang''s Air Slicer and that it most probably hindered its ability to recover. The more collisions they had, the more wounds there were on the evil spirit''s body. Even after multiple collisions, the first wound made on its body had not recovered yet. Despite the fact that it tried to avoid the important body parts, the increasing number of wounds had caused it to become weaker. Noticing that its body was getting weaker and weaker, the evil spirit''s eyes flashed with a trace of fury. When Lin Huang was about to assault it again, it did not dodge and even ignored the attack, striking a blow at Lin Huang''s brain. "Are you trying to exchange wound for wound?" Soon, Lin Huang figured out what its intention was. He then shifted the direction of his sword. He wanted to attack its waist and turned out to be attacking his opponent''s arms instead. After several attacks, the evil spirit had less control over its body. In addition to having just struck at full force, it could no longer hold back. The next moment, as the blood red sword sliced through it, black blood started oozing out from its wound and its arm was blown high up in the sky. The limb had completely detached from the evil spirit''s body. With just one mistake, the evil spirit had lost an arm. As for the upcoming battles, the evil spirit could no longer fight back. It looked like a collapsing dam that could no longer stop the torrential flow of blood. In less than three minutes, Lin Huang ended the battle, cutting the evil spirit in half with his blood red sword. Seeing the two halves of the body that had fallen to the ground, Lin Huang frowned. "I didn''t receive any notification that I''ve obtained the dropped item and there isn''t any notification regarding the extraction of the tinder as well Is it still alive?" Lin Huang gradually descended, staring at the upper body of the evil spirit. The evil spirit with only half of its body remained glaring at Lin Huang without an ounce of fear. It laughed wryly instead. "Human brat, the battle isn''t over yet!" 756 Revived? "Human brat, the battle isn''t over yet!" After having those words uttered, the evil spirit looked at Lin Huang with an insulting expression. It grinned, then let out a wicked, loud laugh. "What are you laughing at!?" Lin Huang ignored its strange behavior. He moved his arms slightly, slicing through the evil spirit with his bloody sword again. On its ferocious face, blood started flowing out from its forehead to its chin. The next second, the evil spirit''s head was cut in half. Black brain juice dripped from its skull to the ground, and the copper scent of the blood permeated the air. The next moment, Lin Huang frowned and looked towards the half of its dead body from which its head had already exploded. "It''s strange. I didn''t receive any notification saying that it''s been killed," Lin Huang mumbled. As he gazed at the headless half of the corpse, it seemed like a certain substance had melted it as it quickly turned into a black mist and vanished. Soon, the same happened to the evil spirit''s lower body as it disappeared as well. Seeing the strange phenomenon, Lin Huang picked up his sword again, tearing towards the black mist with his Air Slicer. However, his sword penetrated through the black mist and his attack was rendered useless. With his trial attack, he realized that his offense had no effect on the evil spirit. Lin Huang then retreated tens of meters away in a flash. He observed the region enveloped by the black mist from afar. He knew that his opponent had not died yet. Although he had no idea what the black mist was, he still chose to retreat to avoid being tainted by the black mist. Ever since he had traveled to this world, there was danger lurking everywhere. Everyone had various types of skills. Even Mr. Fu, who was a Virtual God, could be tricked. Therefore, Lin Huang was more cautious about the things which he was unsure of. Lin Huang was unfamiliar with the current situation. It was his first time encountering a monster that could not die despite its head having exploded. Even those who possessed Enhanced Regeneration would definitely die due to the unique attributes exhibited by the Air Slicer. Still, Lin Huang did not shift his gaze elsewhere, focusing on the two clumps of black mist. He then asked Bloody that was hiding in his sleeve, "Its dead body was burnt. Do you have any idea what''s happening over there?" "There are no relevant records found in the monster guide, and I''ve never seen anything like this before," Bloody said based on its observation, "It was killed just now, but it''s still alive. It seems like it''s using some sort of substitute skill. It could be a new skill that hasn''t been recorded." "Sounds like it." Lin Huang recalled what he just saw, feeling that what Bloody said might be true. Just when the both of them were talking to each other, Lin Huang suddenly noticed that the two masses of black mist which had transformed from the evil spirit''s lower body was starting to merge. He frowned and soon, he thrust his sword forward. The bloody glow that could be seen on its blade pierced through the black mist and struck the ground far away from him, forming a bottomless pit in the ground. The black mist remained unaffected and continued to merge. Although Lin Huang found it worrisome, since his attack had no effect on his enemy, he was not going to waste his energy on it. Following the merging of the black mist, a human figure gradually formed. Witnessing the human figure was getting clearer and clearer, Lin Huang could vaguely guess what was going to happen next. Within seconds, the human figure that was formed from the black mist became so clear as if it were real. It simply looked like somebody had modeled a black female silhouette. Lin Huang relaunched another trial attack. As usual, his bloody sword managed to penetrate through the black silhouette with ease as if there was nothing there. A person''s face slowly appeared from the black mist. The person''s features could be clearly seen on the face which was initially dark. Unexpectedly, it was the face of a beautiful lady. The moment as Lin Huang saw its face, he felt a sense of deja vu as though he had seen it before. While its body was gradually forming, its waist-length hair was blowing in the wind. Finally, a whole female body was revealed. At that moment, Lin Huang then recalled who the woman was. "Indeed, it has come back to life. I can clearly remember this is how the female victim looked like when I saw her in the mortuary." Startlingly, its body looked like the immortal-level rank-3 woman who was killed by the evil spirit earlier. From its face to its body, each strand of her hair looked exactly the same as if the female victim had come back to life. The evil spirit that had transformed into a woman slowly opened its eyes. It fixed its gaze at Lin Huang and gave him a cunning smile. "I told you earlier that the battle between us isn''t over yet." "I think it''s better for you to put your clothes on first. Otherwise, people might think that we''re filming some education film." Lin Huang studied her from head to toe. He had to admit that she had an attractive body. Since she was the one who did not bother putting on her clothes, he had nothing to lose. "Is this the human sense of shame?" The evil spirit laughed. "Perhaps it is," Lin Huang admitted, "It''s your decision whether to put on your clothes or not. Regardless of what your decision is, I''m not going to show you any mercy. Also, don''t expect me to take my clothes off together with you. I''m not that open a person." The evil spirit chuckled, and soon, clothes gradually materialized. The piece of clothing was precisely what the victim had worn when she was killed. It wore a short-sleeved, light yellow top and a light blue linen skirt. It looked quite pretty in the attire. "Hehe, it doesn''t matter whether you''re an open person or not as you''re going to be a dead person soon." As soon as it finished its words, a green saber appeared in the evil spirit''s hand. A glow could be seen on the blade of the saber itself, and apparently, it was a supreme relic. "It majors in saber?" Lin Huang was startled. He had gone through the victim''s information. He knew that the evil spirit had transformed into the woman who used to major in saber. However, he did not expect that the evil spirit would have mastered Saber Dao. When the evil spirit had fought him with the body of the muscular man, it was using close-range skills. "Be careful. The effect of its transformation skill might not be just being a substitute. It could''ve inherited the victim''s skills," Bloody immediately reminded. Just as he saw the evil spirit taking out the supreme relic, Lin Huang had already made such a guess. However, Lin Huang was excited. Since there were arguments between sword and saber as those who majored in both schools had equally powerful attacks, the cultivators from both sides argued that each of their weapons was the strongest. Despite such a thought never having come across Lin Huang''s mind since he believed that different weapons would have different effects, it was inevitable that he would want to know who would be stronger. After all, he never had the opportunity to bump into a person who majored in Saber Dao and was as strong as him so far. "I hope that your saber will be stronger than your fist. Otherwise, I''ll feel really disappointed." 757 I Definitely Want It! The saber-wielding woman which the evil spirit transformed into was pretty. As it looked at Lin Huang, charm oozed out of it. Seemingly, its personality would change together with its body after each transformation. The first time when it had transformed into a muscular man, its beast mode was activated. Not a single weapon was used, and its attack mode was precisely what the body was good at, which was the close-range combat. As for the second transformation, it had apparently activated the demonic saber mode. Looking at the saber itself, one would know that there would be significant changes in its attack mode after its transformation. However, despite the woman being a saber major, there were different types of saber specializations. Before striking, Lin Huang could not identify which stream it specialized in. In this era, the three major streams of the saber major were speed stream, assassination stream, and attack stream. They were then categorized into ten sub-streams and based on physique alone, one would not be able to judge which stream they specialized in. In addition to that, his opponent was a transcendent instead of an ordinary person whose strength could be judged based on their muscularity and their body size. Seeing the woman''s body gradually form and the evil spirit taking out a green saber, Lin Huang''s intention to fight grew. "I''m afraid that I might damage the previous body. That''s why I didn''t give it my all during the strength upgrade when I was using his body." The evil spirit''s voice was suddenly heard. "I''ll not repeat the same mistake again in the next round." As soon as it finished its words, the evil spirit''s aura started to grow again. The situation was exactly the same as what had happened during the muscular man''s combat strength upgrade. In just a blink of an eye, the woman''s combat strength had reached immortal-level rank-3. Soon after, it managed to go through the levels as if there were no obstacles at all. Immortal-level rank-4! Immortal-level rank-5! Immortal-level rank-6! Right after it got to immortal-level rank-6 which was at the same level as the muscular man''s, the saber-wielding woman''s combat strength still did not stop growing. Instead, it managed to make a breakthrough, leveling up to immortal-level rank-7! As the beautiful woman got to that level, it seemed like its body had reached its limit as well. It revealed a pained face and veins started bulging in its neck and forehead, looking extremely ferocious. The beautiful woman, who seemed about 20 years of age, was now at least twice as old as before. Obviously, immortal-level rank-6 was the maximum limit which the saber-wielding woman could achieve. Exceeding this limit, its body would go into overdrive. When its body was overloaded with stress, its body could not sustain for the long-term. However, the evil spirit decided to do so as it wanted to defeat Lin Huang. Despite it being highly possible that the evil spirit would lose the body forever if the body were overworked, the body could somehow strengthen its abilities, increasing its probability of winning the fight. It would definitely be better than losing the battle and being killed by Lin Huang. However, what caught Lin Huang''s attention during the evil spirit''s transformation was not the upgrade in its combat strength. It was the supreme relic which the saber-wielding woman was holding instead. Unexpectedly, the quality of its supreme relic had also been upgraded, and it was now an ancient relic. The aura exuded by the ancient relic could not be disguised. "The supreme relic has evolved to an ancient relic?! How could it have done that?" Lin Huang found it unbelievable. It was his first time encountering someone who was capable of upgrading a supreme relic to an ancient relic. He even doubted if the Virtual God, Mr. Fu, could do so. Before Lin Huang could figure it out, the evil spirit''s aura which had reached immortal-level rank-3 had stabilized. Be it its combat strength or the new ancient relic which it was holding, it was evident that its abilities were incomparable to the muscular man''s. "Are you ready?" The evil spirit''s purple skirt blew up in the wind as it smiled crookedly. Before it could even finish its words, the green saber had turned into a beam of light and ripped out at a breakneck speed. Its speed was at least ten times faster than the muscular man''s. "Holy cow, that''s quick!" Lin Huang exclaimed. He had encountered many enemies in the past few years. However, this attack was undoubtedly the fastest he had ever seen. At almost the same time when the green glow flashed, the tip of the saber was already less than a meter away from Lin Huang. Despite his Territory skill being activated and completely capturing the evil spirit''s movement, the attack was so agile to the point that Lin Huang could not pick up his sword in time. Seeing the green glow tearing apart the layer of air and arriving right between his eyebrows, Lin Huang frowned and his fingers on his left hand twitched slightly. When the green blade was less than 20 centimeters away from Lin Huang''s brows, it suddenly stopped. A black wave appeared out of nowhere as if a drop of water had fallen into the contaminated black water and the ripples spread. A black mirror that resembled the surface of the water appeared in front of Lin Huang, and the attack was dodged. The evil spirit did not expect Lin Huang to possess a defensive skill like that. Since its attack was blocked, it was stunned. However, right at the moment when it was shocked, a beam of green light shot out of the mirror. It was the glow of the saber, striking towards the evil spirit''s brows at a similar speed. "A reflection?!" The evil spirit was startled. The speed of the beam of green light was about as fast as its own. At such a short distance, it had no time to either retract the saber or to move aside in order to dodge the attack. The evil spirit clenched its teeth as it slightly tilted its head, barely avoiding the attack. It knew that it could not completely prevent it. However, it had no other choice. At that moment, the green beam of light pierced through the evil spirit''s right eye and went straight out from the back of its head. The attack struck the hill which was hundreds of meters away. Eventually, the entire hill collapsed. Lin Huang had never expected that the effect of the Dark Mirror could be so terrifying. His opponent was struck without even having the time to react. Especially encountering that fast an attack, the reflection effect caused the attack to be inevitable at such a short distance. "Don''t tell me that it''s been killed in one hit?" Lin Huang immediately looked towards the evil spirit. The evil spirit''s right eye turned into a black hole. Lin Huang could even see the scene behind the evil spirit through the hole. Obviously, the attack did not only strike through its eyeball; it had penetrated through its head as well. The evil spirit did not die after the attack. Black flesh started to grow over its right eye. It was continually growing at a speed visible to the naked eye, recovering its head, eyeball, and the broken skull. After several moments, the evil spirit''s skull which was severely injured had healed. If not for the remaining black blood stain on its face, Lin Huang would have thought that the Dark Mirror''s reflection attack was just an illusion. "Human brat, you''re giving me more and more surprises!" Although the evil spirit was struck in one hit, it did not look nervous. It extended its tongue, licking the black blood on its face instead and presenting a crooked smile. "I''m a person who really hates trouble. I used to think that your combat strength is too weak and that the upgrade will be too troublesome. Initially, I wasn''t interested in your body as I''ve collected a few human bodies with similar talents. However, your combat strength is much stronger "I''ve changed my mind now. I certainly want your body!" 758 Second Kill The evil spirit was lingering mid-air. Half of its head that was struck by the Dark Mirror recovered in a blink of an eye. It was not surprised even though Lin Huang''s Dark Mirror had almost killed it. It stared at Lin Huang without fear, looking possessive instead. It seemed like an irrational fan who had just met their favorite idol. The only thing was that it did not scream, "Marry me!" Lin Huang did not comment on the evil spirit''s possessive instinct. It was not because he did not want to insult it. It was because his opponent was terribly fast. It might attack him when he was unaware, which was why he decided to keep quiet, maintaining his focus on the discernment of his territory. Seeing Lin Huang not bothering to respond, the evil spirit seemed to know what he was thinking about. He laughed softly and said, "Since you remain silent, I''ll consider that you''ve agreed to surrender your body to me." As soon as it finished its words, the evil spirit disappeared abruptly. What emerged next was a green beam of light shooting out at lightning fast speed. Although he could capture the complete path of his opponent''s movements with his Territory skill, he still did not manage to pick up his sword in time. He could do nothing. Again, he pointed in the air, and the Dark Mirror formed. It blocked the saber''s glow at a distance of about 20 centimeters away. Although the mirror reflected the green saber glow, the evil spirit had no fear at all. It grinned instead and slightly inched its body aside, managing to avoid the reflected attack. The main reason that it got struck by the first reflected attack was not due to its lack of speed. It was because the attack had been too sudden and was entirely out of its expectations. On the contrary, it was well prepared for the attack this time. It immediately dodged immediately as the tip of its saber hit the Dark Mirror. It did not wait for the attack to be reflected. However, it was still a little bit slow as the reflected green glow sliced through the left of its face, leaving a bruise that was about five centimeters long. However, the injury meant nothing to it. It felt nothing at all. Instead, the smile plastered on its face looked even more ferocious as if it was gleeful that the attack did not strike its head. Although the evil spirit''s combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-7, its attack speed was on par with the imperial-level. Even Lin Huang, who had upgraded to immortal-level rank-3, was no match for it. Perhaps even Kylie who was extremely fast could not compare to her. Still, Lin Huang did not manage to lift his sword during the second attack. Nevertheless, he did not feel upset. He had already activated his Omniscient Nature just as the evil spirit advanced. The moment when he was analyzing his opponent''s attack with his Boundless Vision, he managed to record the entire process of his opponent''s attack with his Third Eye. His failure to avoid the attack was not because he did not have a clear picture of the evil spirit''s movement since his Territory and his Boundless Vision skills were capable of capturing his opponent''s movement and its attack pathway. The most significant problem was that his body could not react in time. Although his combat strength had leveled up to immortal-level rank-3 whereby his body strength and his sensory abilities had improved by leaps and bounds, it would still take some time to adapt to the upgrade. If it were an ordinary battle, one might not realize it. However, since he was encountering a pro, it would be difficult for him to hide his flaws. The slightest discoordination would be apparent to a pro like the evil spirit. Of course, despite having a well-coordinated body, Lin Huang''s speed was still incomparable to that of the evil spirit''s. At least, the situation would not be the same as he did not even have the chance to fight back now. "What happened to you, human brat? Are you going to hide in your shell for the rest of your life?" "I thought you used to be very arrogant. Why are you behaving like a cowardly bastard now?" "Battling is for the adults. A little brat like you should go home and drink your milk!" The evil spirit launched several saber attacks, and at the same time, he taunted Lin Huang again and again. Still, Lin Huang was not offended. He knew that the evil spirit was merely trying to trigger him, forcing him to fight back. After several attacks, the evil spirit soon mastered the order of the reflection. It managed to dodge the reflected attacks without getting injured at all, instigating it to react more aggressively. Also, Lin Huang gradually adapted to his body with the powerful combat strength during each attack. After confirming that his body had adapted to his opponent''s attack speed, Lin Hung''s face still preserved a neutral expression as he patiently waited to attack his opponent''s weak point. The evil spirit launched its attack one after another. Each attack was driven at the maximum speed of an imperial-level. Within half an hour, Lin Huang was completely pinned down by the evil spirit without a single chance to fight back. "Human brat, how long do you think your Life Power can sustain the shell? Half an hour? An hour?" While talking nonsense, again, the evil spirit cast his saber forward. The green glow of its saber streaked across the sky and appeared less than 30 centimeters away from Lin Huang. The water-like black mirror appeared out of nowhere again. The tip of the green blade struck it. The attack was capable of killing an immortal-level rank-9. However, black ripples appeared as usual, and the attack could not go any further. The evil spirit was not surprised by that though as it had already made several attempts. It was Lin Huang''s absolute defense and the evil spirit was unable to break through it. Regardless of that, it was not worried about it at all. Before the reflected attack appeared, it dodged again. It moved its body a few centimeters away, slightly to the right. It knew that it could evade the attack right there. At this moment, the reflected green glow suddenly blasted off. However, it deviated from its expected direction and struck right in front of the evil spirit. "How could that be?" The evil spirit was shocked. It had made hundreds of attempts, and the attack reflected by the mirror had never deviated from its expected direction. However, this time was different. At that moment, it finally understood the reason that had happened, but it was too late now. Less than a meter away, it was too weak to block the attack. The reflected green glow of the blade pierced between its brows and went straight through the back of its head. A hole the size of a baby''s fist was formed. Then, the Dark Mirror collapsed on its own. Behind the mirror and on Lin Huang''s back, bloody wings quickly formed. Six bloody wings stacked on top of each other and protected Lin Huang against the continuous saber attacks from the evil spirit as a result of inertia. The green glow penetrated through three layers of the wings and failed to go any further, becoming stuck right between the wings. There was a gap between the wings, and a bloody sword suddenly flew past it. The evil spirit was caught unaware, and the sword penetrated the left of its chest. "Go to hell!" Lin Huang yelled. The blade that pierced through the evil spirit''s body radiated, and the bloody glow became more and more intense. Soon, it exploded, and the evil spirit''s body turned into pieces Lin Huang then retracted his sword, gazing in the direction where the black mist could be seen. "I''ve never said that the direction of the Dark Mirror''s reflection can''t be adjusted. You just assumed that it works this way." 759 Exhausting All Trump Cards! Seeing the evil spirit''s body which had been shattered into pieces turn into the black mist again, Lin Huang scowled. He actually wondered if it was because his first kill was not powerful enough, and his opponent had been revived. That was the reason why during the second attack, he had deliberately activated the strengthened version of his Wordly Purification. It was the sword skill he possessed with the highest damage, smashing his opponent''s body into pieces. Still, it could not stop the evil spirit''s body from turning into the black mist. Although it was within his expectations, it was not the ideal outcome. Lin Huang started to feel that this was troublesome. Glancing in the direction where the evil spirit''s ancient relic had fallen, the green saber collapsed on its own in the air, transforming into a black mist. Looking at what had just happened, Lin Huang was stunned. He used to think that the ancient relic could be one of the rewards he could obtain, but seemingly, it was not a real relic. Instead, it was the same as its physique which was created by the black mist. "What monster is this? It can''t die and can even randomly produce an ancient relic!" As his thought to snatch the ancient relic dwindled, Lin Huang glanced towards the black mist which was in a blurry human form from afar. He vaguely felt that he seemed to have chosen the wrong Life Fire monster. The blurry human figure was becoming more prominent. It was a middle-aged man who was slightly taller than Lin Huang, at a height of about 1.85 meters. However, he was much more muscular than Lin Huang. The weapon which the man was holding was a silver spear which was about two meters long. Lin Huang was not surprised when he saw the man''s face as if he expected it. The man was also one of the victims who had been killed by the evil spirit earlier. It was the first dead body Lin Huang had seen in the mortuary. He could still clearly remember the corpse''s heart sliced apart. Both of his lungs had been removed, and his chest was cut open. Right now, the dead man was alive, standing right in front of Lin Huang and there was nothing strange about him. "If I''m not mistaken, I guess you can only transform into someone you''ve killed," Lin Huang suddenly said, "It means that you can''t come back to life as many times as you want. I''ll only need to kill you 17 times, and you''ll finally die." "Are you going to make such a guess without any evidence and just by judging that my transformation into the person whom I''ve killed?" The evil spirit remained calm, and the body formed by its black mist had stabilized. Although he could not tell whether the evil spirit was trying to mislead him or not, Lin Huang was pretty sure that his assumption was right. "I''ve seen the corpses of all 17 victims. Please prove me wrong by transforming into a body that I''ve never seen before the next round." "Since you''re kind of interested in my secrets, why not agree to give me your body and I''ll tell you my secrets?" "I''m afraid that you can''t afford to have my body!" After uttering his words, the bloody wings on Lin Huang''s back fluttered. Before the evil spirit could upgrade its combat strength, he tore his sword towards it, attempting to kill it. Lin Huang appeared right in front of the evil spirit in an instant and thrust his sword forward. The evil spirit gave an insulting smile and did not care about Lin Huang''s attack at all. It stood still without avoiding the attack. It activated its skill to upgrade its combat strength in front of Lin Huang. Mid-air, the entire sky was covered in the bloody glow, slicing through the evil spirit''s neck. However, the bloody glow was stopped from piercing the evil spirit''s neck just as it was about a centimeter away from it. It could not move any further as if there was a defense shield which had stopped Lin Huang''s fatal attack. Noticing the evil spirit''s combat strength starting to upgrade from immortal-level rank-3, Lin Huang still did not give up. He continuously launched several attacks, each attack more fatal than the last. Neither did the evil spirit dodge nor avoid, allowing Lin Huang to attack as he liked with an insulting smile. Its body did not move at all as if it had shielded itself from all the forces coming from the attacks. "It''s useless. Once my secret skill is activated, it won''t stop. Even the Virtual God''s attack isn''t going to work, let alone yours," the evil spirit said as its aura reached immortal-level rank-7. "People from the gravel world with incomprehensive rules won''t understand such power." Although Lin Huang did not want to believe him, he could still vaguely feel that the evil spirit was telling the truth. After several attempts whereby his attacks could do no harm to the evil spirit, its aura had finally stabilized as it reached immortal-level rank-7. The silver spear had been upgraded to an ancient relic as well. However, just as the evil spirit''s aura stabilized, the defense shield disappeared on its own. Observing Lin Huang striking another attack, the evil spirit finally dodged. In the air, the bloody glow and the black glow collided with each other again. Another round of a fierce fight had been triggered! The two silhouettes crashed into each other again in the sky. Since his Vampire Particles had been activated, Lin Huang''s speed was a few times faster than before with his bloody wings. The evil spirit''s body did not have a speedy attack this time. It lost to Lin Huang in terms of speed instead. Despite its speed being incomparable to Lin Huang''s, it had excellent eyesight. In addition to its achievements in Spear Dao, each of its attacks was on par with Lin Huang''s attack. Though slow, it was not lagging behind. After fighting for almost half an hour, the outcome of the battle was still unknown. Lin Huang had no idea how many times his opponent''s attacks had hit him and how many injuries he suffered from. However, his wounds were quickly healed by his Divine Regeneration without leaving any scars. Lin Huang had inflicted hundreds of wounds on his opponent''s body as well. However, the evil spirit managed to avoid the fatal parts, and the injuries were all minor ones. Although his Air Slicer exhibited unique characteristics which slowed down his opponent''s recovery rate, he could not tell how long it would take to kill it since it had the advantage of its weapon on its side. "It''s going to exhaust a lot of my Life Power" Almost all the attacks he made within the half an hour were his best shots. The Life Power in a third of his ten Life Wheels had been depleted, but his opponent seemed to have infinite strength. If this continued, even after using up all three of his Life Power Refill Cards, he could only kill his opponent 11 times. Lin Huang guessed that it would have at least 17 bodies. Despite the evil spirit having being killed twice previously, he would still be unable to kill it even after exhausting all his three Life Power Refill Cards. "What happened? Don''t you have sufficient Life Power for that?" The evil spirit grinned as if it had already expected this to happen. "Oh, I''ve forgotten to tell you something. The power of the body comes from my real body. Having a body with strength like this, even if the battle continues for 10,000 years, my real body will be able to refill the power depleted in merely one breath." "Indeed" Lin Huang had thought of this earlier, and the evil spirit had finally proven him right. He knew that it was not likely that the evil spirit would lie to him. However, he did not panic at all. "It seems like I have to use some of my trump cards." As the thought struck him, Lin Huang knew that he had to fight with every fiber in him this time. Three cards suddenly appeared in his right hand, and these were his last three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards. When he made Wu Zhi into a Combat Soul Card, he had used up almost all the reward card draws. Only a few of the cards remained. The Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card would put too much load on one''s body, and only three cards could be used at once. However, it was enough for him. "The game shall end here." Having uttered these words, Lin Huang''s left hand exerted a slight force on the three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card, and they were instantly crushed, transforming into a luminous glow and going into his body. The evil spirit did not notice that though. However, it could clearly sense that there was an upgrade in Lin Huang''s combat strength again. Immortal-level rank-4! Immortal-level rank-5! Immortal-level rank-6! 760 The Undead? "How could it be? How could you achieve a seven-level upgrade without affecting your body?" The evil spirit could not tell how Lin Huang had done that. Despite his real body being extremely strong, it only managed to achieve a four-level upgrade in its combat strength. It would not be able to maintain the stability of its body if there was any further improvement. Regardless of how strong its physique was, a four-level upgrade was simply its limit. It was an absolute rule. One thing that the evil spirit did not know was that Lin Huang''s Transformation Card was not used for the sake of strengthening his body but was only a substitute. Once the Transformation Card was activated, it was equivalent to duplicating a monster''s body with Lin Huang''s consciousness and his body was sealed on the other side of the dimension. The Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card which he had used later was applied to the monster''s body whereby a further upgrade could be performed on them. Although it seemed like he managed to break through from purple flame-level to immortal-level rank-6,equating to a seven-level upgrade, in fact, Lin Huang only managed to achieve the upgrade in his combat strength after using three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards. Moreover, he was only restricted to using three Combat Strength Upgrade Cards at once. In addition to Xiao Hei itself being powerful enough, directly using all the three cards would do no harm to Lin Huang''s body. Of course, Lin Huang was not going to tell the evil spirit about it. He was gleeful to see the evil spirit being so confused. When he was on immortal-level rank-3, the both of them were equally powerful. After three consecutive upgrades, Lin Huang''s strength, power, speed, Life Power in his body and many other aspects were completely different now. Even the evil spirit who would not die after several kills appeared panicked. Without any facial expression, Lin Huang looked towards the evil spirit. It seemed like the six bloody wings on his back could breathe, sending chills down one''s spine. He slowly lifted the combat sword in his hand, pointing in the direction where the evil spirit was. "I don''t care where you''re from and I don''t care how many times you can revive yourself either. I certainly want your Life Fire tinder today!" Just as his voice rang out in the air, the bloody wings on Lin Huang''s back fluttered and soon, he disappeared from his original position. The evil spirit''s pupils dilated as Lin Huang''s speed far exceeded what it could see. It tried its best to squint, but could just see a bloody glow streaking across the sky at a tremendously terrifying speed. It could only block the bloody glow with its spear in both its hands instinctively. In the next moment, the bloody glow suddenly appeared right in front of the evil spirit. It resembled an electric current that collided with the evil spirit''s long spear. Bang! A loud explosion was heard. At almost the same time, the black glow flew backwards and smashed through several mountains. Seven consecutive mountains collapsed in an instant after being hit by the black glow. Deafening booms were echoed throughout the area. Lin Huang knew very well that evil spirit was not killed by his attack as it had managed to dodge the attack at the very last minute. If it were using a supreme relic, perhaps Lin Huang would have cut the evil spirit and its spear into half. However, since it was using an ancient relic, even an imperial-level could hardly inflict a scratch on it. Since it still survived, Lin Huang did not mind giving a few more strikes. He appeared at the mountainous region in a flash where the evil spirit was stuck. With just one hit, the evil spirit knew that it could no longer defeat Lin Huang. It seemed like getting killed was a foregone conclusion. Regardless of how it struggled to survive, all its efforts were in vain. "Outside the Kingdom, I might have the chance to flee by shedding my outer skin. However, the Kingdom is a sealed dimension. Even if the human brat doesn''t have full control over the Kingdom, it''s extremely easy to detect my aura in the Kingdom. I have nowhere to go" In the mountains region, the evil spirit frowned. Despite the previous attack not causing serious injury to it, the minor injuries it suffered from the shock resulted in pain in its lungs each time it breathed. It had a headache which refused to go away due to the intense collision. Although its broken bones were instantly cured, its body was still stiff. Fighting Lin Huang now would be akin to knocking on Death''s door. Several thoughts quickly ran through the evil spirit''s mind. Soon, it sensed that Lin Huang was not waiting for it to break out of the mountains from his original position. Instead, he was coming after it. "Since you''re not coming out, I shall go in then." As soon as his voice was heard, he appeared right in front of the evil spirit. Before it could respond to him, his long bloody sword raced towards it again. A loud thud was heard again, spreading throughout the mountain range. A black silhouette fled out of the mountain range. Before the mountains collapsed, the bloody silhouette streaked across the sky at a terribly fast speed, chasing after it. Mid-air, the evil spirit spat a mouthful of black blood out. It knew that its body condition had worsened. Despite having managed to dodge Lin Huang''s second attack with its long spear, the effect of the aftershock was more severe than before. Its chest had collapsed and its internal organs had shattered. Both of its hands had been crushed by Lin Huang''s attack and it no longer had the grip to hold its spear tightly. Lin Huang could sense that his opponent was severely injured by his second attack. He also knew that it possessed the Enhanced Regeneration skill. He was not going to give the evil spirit any chance to recuperate. "I''d like to see how many attacks you can dodge!" Along with his scream, Lin Huang leaped towards it. Seeing Lin Huang was chasing after it, the evil spirit struggled. It felt like there was a way to overcome this, but it was unsure of whether it should use the skill. While it was hesitating, Lin Huang advanced nearer. This time, he was holding a sword in both of his hands, slicing through the air vertically. As his sword ripped the sky apart, it resembled a bloody lightning bolt striking down from the sky and aiming right at the evil spirit''s forehead. The evil spirit''s face turned ghastly. If it happened to strike it, perhaps it would be chopped into half from its forehead to its thigh. It immediately lifted its spear and fuelled its arms which had not fully recovered yet with all its strength. A huge black shield was created out of nowhere, attempting to block the attack. It knew very well that if it failed to dodge the attack, it had to abandon this body. The beam of bloody electric current collided with the huge black, misty shield. A loud explosion was heard as if hundreds of lightning bolts had struck at the same time. The bloody glow struck like the torrential downpour of a waterfall. Despite the mystery of the misty shield, it still could not defend itself against the bloody glow''s attack. It only managed to block it for a while until spider web-like cracks started spreading across the huge shield. Beams of bloody electric current penetrated through the cracks. The shield sustained for less than three breaths and eventually, it collapsed. The broken pieces of the shield then transformed back into its black mist form. As the bloody glow had penetrated through the black mist and was about to strike it, a flicker of fury flashed through the evil spirit''s eyes while they suddenly turned midnight black. In the next second, the gushing bloody glow penetrated through the black mist and the black glow within the evil spirit''s eyes exploded abruptly. Lin Huang instantly discovered that something was wrong and a spike of anger flashed through his eyes. He immediately retracted his sword, retreating thousands of meters away next to Kylie. At the same time, he activated his Dark Mirror, covering Kylie and himself. After all that, the black glow suddenly exploded at the position where the evil spirit had been initially at. A frightening white glow then started spreading everywhere. The beam of white light was incredibly intense as it even covered the sunlight. The white glow resembled a constantly expanding balloon, spreading out in all directions. It barely stopped as it extended to more than 100 kilometers away. Everything turned into nothingness as the white glow passed by. A squeak could be heard coming from the defensive sphere structured by the Dark Mirror as if it was a vulnerable house in a raging storm. Lin Huang had no choice but to constantly reduce the size of the defensive sphere. Just as the 100-meter sphere was being reduced to five meters in diameter, it stabilized. Fortunately, the expansion of the white glow lasted for less than a minute. Otherwise, Lin Huang might need to continue minimizing the size of his Dark Mirror. "I didn''t know that it''d self-combust simply because it could no longer fight me." As the white glow faded, Lin Huang did not remove his Dark Mirror immediately. Instead, he activated his ocular skill and looked in the direction where the explosion of the evil spirit had taken place from afar. The evil spirit''s body was not there, but there was no smugness in him at all. "Nothing was left. I guess it has died. It wasted so many of my cards and still, I didn''t manage to extract its tinder" Just as he was mumbling, he saw that the black mist was quickly forming at the position where the explosion had occurred. 761 Revealing Its True Body "Why is it still alive?!" Lin Huang was flabbergasted. Despite possessing the Divine Regeneration skill, he would definitely die when all his body particles died out. "I somehow feel that the ability it has isn''t merely regeneration," Bloody that was hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve suddenly said, "It did mention before that each time it''s killed, the only thing it needs to do is to get another body. Just like human clothes, regardless of how the clothes are damaged and even if they''re burnt to ashes, it''ll have no effect on the rest of the clothes. One will only need to change to another set of clothing. That''s why despite its body being severely damaged to the point where not even a single piece of its physique was left, it can still switch to another body." What Bloody said dawned upon Lin Huang. He used to think that the evil spirit possessed a secret skill like regeneration. That was why he had been scratching his head for a way to obliterate its body into pieces so that it could no longer regenerate. After listening to Bloody''s explanation, he knew that he no longer had to waste his energy on that. Regardless of the extent to which its body was damaged, it could simply revive itself by switching to another body. "Since that''s the case, I don''t need to waste my Life Power attempting to kill it into pieces." Lin Huang felt relieved as his Worldly Purification consumed a large portion of his Life Power. As the black mist formed again, he could confirm that the explosion had ended and that the area was no longer dangerous. Lin Huang then removed his Dark Mirror, appearing next to the black mist in a flash. He made countless attempts trying to interfere with the formation of the black mist. All his efforts were in vain. Lin Huang was not going to waste his energy on that anymore. Therefore, he patiently waited next to the evil spirit until its new body was created. The black mist swiftly formed and in less than half a second, its new body stabilized. This time, it transformed into a skinny man. Right after its body was formed, the evil spirit opened its eyes. It then saw Lin Huang standing less than ten meters away from it, revealing a "kind" smile. The next second, the bloody glow streaked across the sky. The evil spirit did not have time to respond at all. Its skull flew away and black blood spurted out of its neck to a height of two meters. After a long while, it collapsed to the ground, transforming into the black mist and fading. "That saves me a lot of effort." It was the fastest win since Lin Huang had started fighting it. Lin Huang did not retreat after it was killed. He remained at its original position, patiently waiting for its body to form again. Perhaps the evil spirit itself might not notice that there was such a flaw in its secret "regenerative" skill. Each time when its body was formed, the black mist was visible and its speed was not fast enough, so its whereabouts could easily be tracked. It seemed like it did not have full control over its body replacement process which took place on its own. Once the body died, the replacement would happen within a minute. Seemingly, the evil spirit had no way of prolonging the time needed for the formation of the black mist. Otherwise, it would have extended the period to a few hours or even a few days until Lin Huang''s upgrade in his combat strength had lost its effect before replacing it with another body. However, it was convenient for Lin Huang to camp out and wait due to its flaws. Regardless of where the black mist formed, he would be there next to it. Before using the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card, it would have been difficult for him to kill the evil spirit despite being a camper because it could react to his attacks in time. However, after achieving an upgrade by another three levels, Lin Huang''s speed was so swift to the point that the evil spirit could no longer catch sight of him. Therefore, being a camper and killing it would become much easier. The evil spirit did not have enough time to respond right after it was revived. Noticing the black mist moving away from him, Lin Huang remained calm and leisurely followed after it. Despite traversing the sky, the formation of the black mist did not slow down. The new body was being formed while it moved. "It seems like I guessed it correctly. As long as the body dies, a new body will automatically replace it. The entire process is out of its control." Bloody noticed that as well. It then whispered to Lin Huang, "Otherwise, it would''ve extended the duration needed for the body replacement process until you lost the combat strength increment effect since the process wouldn''t be interrupted by any external factor." "That''s good. Since it does not have control over it, it''s easier for me to just camp out." Lin Huang smirked. In just a short while, the evil spirit''s body was formed again. Impressively, the body formed was the victim who had helped them figure out who the murderer was. It was Li Jingbiao''s substitute. The evil spirit with the chubby face gradually opened its eyes, shooting Lin Huang a deadly stare. At almost the same time as Lin Huang hurled his sword forward, the black glow in its eyes started to grow. Its brutal self-combusting force caused its plump body to expand as if it was a balloon. Lin Huang backed off to where Kylie was a few kilometers away. He took out his Dark Mirror again, producing a defensive shield five meters in diameter. Kylie and he were enveloped by the shield. The evil spirit''s plump body eventually collapsed as its body could no longer sustain the force from within. A black energy was emitted as well, releasing a dazzling white glow that resembled the sunlight and spread everywhere. In less than a minute, a tsunami-like white glow had engulfed the entire region, covering more than 100 kilometers in circumference. The same thing happened again and the burnt ground was lit up. Aside from the Dark Mirror''s defensive sphere being in pristine condition, not a single item on the ground was left unharmed. As the white glow faded, Lin Huang removed the Dark Mirror, looking in the direction where the evil spirit''s self-combustion had happened. He shook his head and laughed. "It''s decisive. It decided to go for self-combustion, knowing that it doesn''t have the chance to counterattack." "It''s actually a wise decision. Unfortunately, you''re the one it encountered. Within a certain distance, the force that resulted from its self-combustion was actually capable of killing those whose abilities range from black gold-level to imperial-level. However, your Dark Mirror is capable of defending against its self-combustion. If this happened to any of them who had yet to get to imperial-level, most probably they''d have been killed." Bloody''s voice was heard again. "It was just bad luck that it met me." Lin Huang chuckled. After the white glow faded, the black mist was quickly created again. The evil spirit switched to another body again. It saw Lin Huang as soon as it opened its eyes. However, it did not choose to go for self-combustion this time. In just one hit, Lin Huang chopped its body in half with ease. "Did I just kill it? Wasn''t it able to respond?" As soon as the thought flashed through Lin Huang''s mind, Bloody''s voice was heard. "Run!" Lin Huang immediately fled without asking why. Right when the evil spirit''s body was chopped in half, the black glow in its left eye suddenly radiated. The next moment, a white glow appeared abruptly, engulfing the corpse which had been chopped in half. The white glow spread towards Lin Huang in just a blink of an eye. Lin Huang initially wanted to go to Kylie. Right then, he had no choice but to activate his Dark Mirror and cover himself. As the white glow passed through the Dark Mirror and continued spreading towards Kylie at a breakneck speed, Lin Huang immediately recalled Kylie into its card form. Seeing the white glow had again, engulfed almost everything surrounding him, Lin Huang''s face turned pale. "It''s really evil. It managed to activate self-combustion even after its death." His back was drenched in sweat. His t-shirt was all wet. Even if he was a fraction of a second slower, he might have been killed by the evil spirit''s white glow and could have possibly lost Kylie. "Encountering such an opponent, you have to be extra careful." Bloody''s voice was deep. "I must kill it!" Lin Huang was incensed as he realized that he had almost been defeated. Seeing its body being formed again, Lin Huang decided to stand right next to the corpse without fear. As soon as its body was formed, the evil spirit gave Lin Huang an insulting smile. Still, it did not go for self-combustion immediately. Lin Huang killed it without a moment of hesitation. This time, the evil spirit''s self-combustion became creepier. It activated it just as it was killed. However, Lin Huang was prepared for it. He did not even bother to flee and immediately activated his Dark Mirror at his original position. The defensive sphere shrank to only a meter in diameter. He was at the center of the explosion and managed to overcome the evil spirit''s self-combustion. Regardless of what the evil spirit did, Lin Huang did not give up camping. He overcame all the explosions. A few of the explosions tore the defensive sphere of the Dark Mirror apart and even penetrated through the defenses of the bloody wings, causing injuries to Lin Huang''s body. However, they were quickly healed by Lin Huang''s Divine Regeneration. By doing so, Lin Huang managed to kill his opponent 17 times. Witnessing the 17th body of the evil spirit self-combust and disappear, Lin Huang then saw the black mist gradually appear at the ruins again. Lin Huang frowned. After several moments, he could no longer shift his gaze. The black mist did not apparition into a human figure this round. A monstrous face gradually formed instead. Despite not being completely formed, Lin Huang could recognize it as the semi-transparent monster that had killed the two immortal-level rank-9s at Chenxing Building. "Its true body has been revealed!" Lin Huang smirked, staring deadly at the monster which was about to fully form. 762 A Play of the Tentacles In the air, the semi-transparent monster floated where the evil spirit''s last body had disappeared. It looked like running water lingering in the air and not look like a living creature at all. Until the liquid creature started forming a whip-like tentacle, it looked about 50% similar to a jellyfish on Earth. Despite having seen how the monster actually looked like through the Backtracking Mirror, at the moment when he saw its true body, he somehow felt relieved. "It''s finally revealing its actual form!" The evil spirit was in its jellyfish form which was less than two meters wide. However, each of its tentacles measured a length of at least seven meters and there were more than hundreds of them. Lin Huang had seen the evil spirit killing people with its tentacles. The tentacles that appeared soft had very easily penetrated through the immortal-level''s supreme relics and their bodies. It was a very sharp killing weapon. However, what made Lin Huang feel strange about it was that the evil spirits combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-2. It was way weaker than most of the bodies it had transformed into previously. "So, immortal-level rank-2 is your real combat strength?" Lin Huang thought to himself. However, just as the thought came to his mind, the evil spirit''s combat strength started to grow. Within seconds, it managed to get to immortal-level rank-6, which was at the same level as him. "It seems like it''s kind of powerful" Despite the fact it had undergone an increment in its combat strength, the evil spirit''s combat strength was still no match to the bodies it had transformed into. Lin Huang could sense that the evil spirit was intimidating right after it went through the upgrade. He rarely encountered opponents of a similar combat level that could make him feel in this way. Lin Huang could clearly feel that after the upgrade, the evil spirit was fixing its gaze on him. Although it did not have eyes since it was in its jellyfish form, Lin Huang could clearly tell how it must feel like being stared at by the predators on top of the food chain. It was definitely not an illusion. The evil spirit was floating high in mid-air, gazing upon Lin Huang. It moved its body slightly and the clear water instantly became even more transparent, merging with the surroundings. It then disappeared from Lin Huang''s sight. Lin Huang frowned at the strange phenomenon that he had just seen. Although he was unable to see it, he could still sense every moment of the evil spirit since it was within the range covered by his territory. It looked like it had just moved slightly. In fact, it was but a remaining shadow as it moved and became completely transparent right after it moved. Lin Huang monitored the entire process as the evil spirit moved with his territory. Apparently, it was afraid of stirring up the atmosphere and being discovered. Therefore, the movement of the evil spirit was not quick. It moved its tentacles alternately in mid-air as if it was a long-legged spider spinning a web. It did not make any noise. It secretly moved towards the left in steps. After a few moments, it was right behind Lin Huang. Raising up a few of its tentacles, it quietly aimed towards the back of Lin Huang''s head, backbone, and heart. It was about to pierce through the vital parts of his body. Lin Huang pretended as if he knew nothing. He was grasping his sword, getting ready to defend against the evil spirit in the direction where it had originally been at. At the same time, Lin Huang looked to the left and to the right, pretending as if he did not know where the evil spirit was. Just as the evil spirit was about to strike, Lin Huang suddenly rolled to another side clumsily and managed to dodge the attack as the sharp tentacles were about to pierce through his body. The evil spirit was stunned as its fatal attack had missed its target. When it launched its attack, it had shielded its aura to its maximum. It had never missed a target, hence it doubted if Lin Huang knew its exact position. However, Lin Huang was still playing on the defense and appeared panicked. Seeing that he was looking around and did not fix his gaze on itself, it then snapped out of its thoughts. "I don''t think that I''ve been discovered. He might have the ability to predict danger, that''s why he managed to avoid my attack." After missing its target, the evil spirit was now ready to deal with Lin Huang again. It took another step forward and moved towards the back of Lin Huang''s body from the right. Again, several tentacles formed, quietly targeting the vital parts of his body. Before the attack struck, Lin Huang leaped aside and dodged the evil spirit''s second attack. As the second attack missed its target again, the evil spirit suspected it. "How did he successfully avoid the attack?!" "Just show up if you''re strong! Let''s fight face-to-face! Do you think you''re strong if you were to secretly attack a person?" Lin Huang raised his voice as if in alarm, looking around as he yelled. Obviously, his acting confused the evil spirit as it no longer doubted him. The evil spirit did not attack immediately after missing its target twice. Instead, it stared at Lin Huang from its original position for a couple of moments, and soon after, it seemed like it had a new plan. This round, it moved about ten meters away from Lin Huang but did not attack. Instead, it gradually extended several vine-like tentacles. They resembled little snakes that slithered across the ground, not wanting to be noticed. Lin Huang immediately figured out what the evil spirit was going to do. It wanted to approach him and secretly tie him up with his tentacles so that his movements would be restricted. Then, he would definitely be killed. Lin Huang did not have any facial expressions but he had a plan. A card secretly appeared between his fingers on his left hand. He exerted a slight pressure on it and the card was crushed. The next moment, the evil spirit''s tentacles extended towards his legs and exploded into motion when they were less than ten centimeters away. Lin Huang could not respond to it at all. The tentacles twisted around his ankle. It was too late when he wanted to get rid of them. The two tentacles that twisted around his ankle got tighter and were constantly moving upwards. The other tentacles entangled his arms and neck, so it would be impossible for him to escape or counterattack. Seeing that it had successfully captured Lin Huang, the evil spirit''s body gradually exited its hidden state, turning back into its semi-transparent form again. "I''ve finally captured you!" A face gradually appeared on the evil spirit''s jellyfish-like body. It was like a floating sculpture of the human face on a semi-transparent wall. The lips on the big carving-like face spread opened and the voices of hundreds of males and females could be heard. "I''ve released more than 3,000 God''s Blood Pods into different gravel worlds. These pods are going to encounter countless opponents during their growth phase. Among the opponents, you''re one of them with the lowest combat strength, yet, you''re the one who''s the most difficult to deal with. You managed to destroy all the bodies of the God''s Blood Pods all on your own. But that''s fine since your body is way better than all the bodies that you''ve destroyed. As long as I can possess your body, the losses that I''ve suffered mean nothing to me." After uttering its words, two tentacles of the evil spirit transformed into sharp thorns and blasted off into the sky, penetrating Lin Huang''s eyeballs and going right into his brain 763 Ink Feather Just as the tentacles pierced through Lin Huang''s eyeballs, the evil spirit noticed that something was off and it froze for a while. At that moment, a bloody glow that looked like a lightning bolt struck on top of the evil spirit''s head. The red glow moved so quickly that the evil spirit could not react to it at all. Its huge body then slumped to the ground. Half of the blade of the bloody sword that was about two meters long had penetrated through the evil spirit''s head from the top and the person who was holding the sword was no other than Lin Huang, whose body was shrouded in his bloody Life Power. Till then, "Lin Huang" who had his head pierced by the evil spirit transformed into a starry glow and vanished. Lin Huang was holding a sword with both of his hands. He exerted more force, attempting to pierce deeper into it with his Air Slicer. The evil spirit roared angrily and soon after, hundreds of tentacles ripped out at almost the same time, heading straight for Lin Huang. It wanted to rip him into pieces. As the countless tentacles went after him, Lin Huang immediately whipped out his sword. He then stomped the ground hard and retreated. Black blood constantly oozed out from the evil spirit''s wounds. Due to the special characteristics exhibited by his Air Slicer, despite it possessing an extraordinarily strong recovery ability, it was difficult for its wound to heal in such a short period of time. Enduring the pain that it suffered, hundreds of tentacles that resembled bones headed out for Lin Huang. The tentacles that were initially about seven meters long extended to thousands of meters and continued growing. With the help of his Vampire Particles, Lin Huang''s speed was slightly faster than those who just got to imperial-level. However, the evil spirits tentacles were even faster and ambushed him. They were initially tens of meters away, but the distance between them was constantly reducing. "How long can the tentacles actually extend to?" Lin Huang thought to himself in bewilderment as he fled. Since he had encountered monsters like this in the past, he already knew that the evil spirit''s tentacles could extend. He used to think that escaping from the tentacles'' attack range would not be difficult, but the extension of the tentacles was far beyond his expectations. As the tentacles were less than two meters away from his ankle and were still approaching him, Lin Huang had no choice but to wave his hand, forming the Dark Mirror out of nowhere. Hundreds of the tentacles completely ignored the mirror which blocked them and went straight towards him. However, they were blocked by the tentacles that were reflected by the mirror. Seeing this, Lin Huang did not continue fighting them and immediately fled. As soon as he left, the Dark Mirror lost the forces supporting it and collapsed. The evil spirit''s tentacles continued to chase after him. Blocked by the Dark Mirror, Lin Huang managed to distance himself tens of meters away from the tentacles. Although the Dark Mirror could block the attack of the tentacles, Lin Huang did not want to exhaust his strength by using the Dark Mirror to fight the evil spirit. In order to use the Dark Mirror secret skill, the exhaustion of his Life Power depended on the attack of his opponent. The stronger the attack and the higher the frequency of attack, the larger the consumption of his Life Power. According to what the evil spirit had said, its forces originated from its real body and were infinite. Despite having three Life Power Refill Cards in hand, Lin Huang would not have sufficient Life Power for that. Lin Huang decided to use his Dark Mirror so that it could buy him some time and he could immediately escape. He knew very well that there would definitely be a limit to the extension of the evil spirit''s tentacles as such a secret skill could be a big burden to the user''s body. If it went over the limit, the user''s body would be unable to bear the burden. One''s body might be severely injured by the secret skill and the body could even collapse. In fact, the evil spirit stopped extending its tentacles as soon as they reached more than 3,000 meters. Although it was unwilling to stop, it still had to retract all its tentacles. As the attack of the evil spirit had stopped, Lin Huang who was 3,500 meters away stopped as well, looking at it from afar. Despite his attack injuring the evil spirit and even managing to get rid of the tentacles'' attack, Lin Huang did not look relaxed. "The attack range of its tentacles covers at least 3,200 meters. In addition to the number of tentacles and their attack speed, it''s difficult for me to approach it. Even if its flaws are discovered and I can successfully get near it, one or two attacks aren''t going to kill it. It''ll be difficult for me to escape by then" Just as Lin Huang was quietly thinking about what he should do, the evil spirit''s body that was thousands of meters away gradually faded. It transformed into its hidden state again, merging into the surroundings. Having leveled up to immortal-level rank-6, the region covered by Lin Huang''s territory was no longer restricted by Lancelot who was only an immortal-level rank-3. The radius of his territory had increased from 3,000 meters to 6,000 meters. He looked like he remained still in his original position. However, he was monitoring each and every movement of the evil spirit. After the evil spirit transformed into its hidden state, it pounced right in front of Lin Huang. Its speed could be compared to that of Lin Huang''s as it reached less than 100 meters away from him in just a blink of an eye. Till then, Lin Huang still did not move. He did not dodge or defend himself. Just when it was less than 20 meters away, the evil spirit finally attacked. "You won''t be able to run away this time!" Hundreds of tentacles streaked across the sky in different paths. They instantly blocked Lin Huang''s way to retreat. Even a mosquito could hardly escape from them. As Lin Huang was being attacked, a wicked sound was heard coming from his sleeve. Black daggers then ripped out. The Ink Feather that had not been used for a long time was like black fishes swimming away from him and colliding with the tentacles. "Are you actually able to see me?!" Seeing the daggers hit each of its tentacles precisely, the evil spirit then realized that it had been fooled. All along, Lin Huang could see it. "I can''t" Lin Huang immediately denied, shaking his head. "But I can feel you." The evil spirit was stunned when it first heard him. It then regained its senses immediately. "Is that your Territory skill?!" Lin Huang did not give any response. The daggers hit the evil spirit''s tentacles like wriggling fishes. Aside from causing the tentacles to deviate from their original path, wounds formed on the tentacles as well. Despite the fact that the Ink Feather daggers were not as sharp as Lin Huang''s Air Slicer, it was still an ancient relic. The evil spirit''s combat strength was only on immortal-level. Regardless of how strong its body was, it could not compare to an ancient relic. Lin Huang floated up high in the sky, allowing the evil spirit''s tentacles to attack him. The daggers shot out of his sleeve, defending him against all the tentacles. He was like a mountain that remained unaffected despite being pounded by waves. The evil spirit made several attempts to attack. Its tentacles resembled waves that continually hitting him, trying to figure out if any of his flaws could be exposed. It wanted to take advantage of that, but its efforts were in vain. The number of daggers coming out from Lin Huang''s sleeve was increasing and there was a plot twist. The evil spirit originally had a great advantage over him due to the number of tentacles. However, due to the increasing number of his daggers, he successfully pinned it down. There were 3,600 daggers in a set of Ink Feather. After about 1,000 of the daggers had shot out of Lin Huang''s sleeve, he managed to defend himself against the onslaught on him. As the number of daggers continued increasing, Lin Huang started controlling the remaining daggers to weave through the gaps between the tentacles during the defense and attack the evil spirit. The evil spirit could not do anything and it had to retract its tentacles in order to dodge. The battle was turned around in an instant. Just as about 3,000 of the daggers shot out of Lin Huang''s sleeve, the evil spirit had lost its chance to attack. It had to focus on defending itself against the daggers. The daggers flashed in the air like piranhas swimming in the river and scaring every creature. The evil spirit still did not want to retreat although hundreds of its tentacles were injured and blood stains were everywhere. None of its limbs got away scot-free. However, the daggers were different from the combat sword which Lin Huang was holding as they exhibited no special characteristics. The evil spirit''s tentacles were all bloody now. In fact, they were recovering on their own at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Of course, Lin Huang noticed that. The Ink Feather could injure the evil spirit. However, due to its strong recovery abilities, it could not be harmed. In the next ten minutes, its perseverance was proven as it managed to survive the 3,600-dagger attack by Lin Huang. The evil spirit did not only dodge the attacks with his tentacles. It had extremely strange body movements as well. Its water-like body could twist into unimaginable shapes and successfully avoided his onslaught. "You''re controlling thousands of ancient relics that work differently with Telekinesis. You''ve indeed done a great job. However, how long can your Telekinesis sustain?" The evil spirit insulted, "I suppose you can still sustain for another three months based on your attack strength." Lin Huang knew that it was an exaggeration to say that he could still sustain for another three months. It had an endless supply of energy and its wounds recovered on their own. Moreover, it could avoid all his attacks with its body movements. "If this continues, I''ll be the one killed." Flesh constantly grew from the evil spirit''s wounds. Despite having countless wounds, its aura was not weakened at all. It became stronger instead. Sensing the slight changes that occurred in the evil spirit''s body, Lin Huang who was still struggling finally made up his mind. A flicker of fury flashed through his eyes. "Since one set of Ink Feather isn''t enough for you, let''s have two more sets! I don''t believe that I can''t kill you with that!" 764 10,800 Daggers When Lin Huang was at the Stairway Mall, the first thing that he had redeemed with his points was the Ink Feather. There had been only three sets of the Ink Feather available at the Stairway Mall and he had bought them all. He had never used them since then. Since an ancient relic could only be dominated by an immortal-level, he would need to use his Transformation Cards in order to achieve immortal-level. Otherwise, Lin Huang was capable of handling his enemies with his Air Slicer. The evil spirit was the first enemy he encountered that forced him to use a whole set of his Ink Feather. The evil spirit would also be the first to witness Lin Huang use all three sets of his Ink Feather. There were 3,600 daggers in each set of the Ink Feather and they were sufficient to force the evil spirit to focus its attention on defending itself. It did not even have the chance to counterattack. What would happen if he were to use all three sets of the Ink Feather? The answer to this question would be revealed very soon. Lin Huang put both of his hands into his pockets and an increasing number of daggers shot out like swimming fish. The Ink Feather that resembled black fishes soon gathered, forming into a school of fish and covering the entire sky. Looking at what just happened, the evil spirit was upset. The reason behind having only thousands of telekinetic weapons in a set of the ancient relic was because the majority of psychics were only capable of controlling that many telekinetic weapons. However, Lin Huang could control them with ease and even managed to control the movement of every single dagger. The evil spirit felt that this was not an easy feat. Right now, three sets of the Ink Feather, which had 10,800 daggers, were flying towards the evil spirit. It was terrified. More than 3,000 of the God''s Blood Pods were dispersed into more than 3,000 gravel worlds and the longest that the pods could stay there were more than 500 years. It had only met two people who could be as strong as Lin Huang. The both of them majored in Telekinesis and they were also on imperial-level. Aside from feeling afraid, the evil spirit soon realized that it was in great trouble. It had given all it had to avoid being killed by the 3,600 daggers. It could imagine what the consequences would be as the number of daggers had tripled. Hundreds of tentacles were in straitened circumstances right after they were attacked by the daggers which outnumbered them by at least ten times. More than 10,000 daggers split up their tasks as they were all manipulated by Lin Huang. Half of them were used to restrict the evil spirit''s tentacles, controlling their path. The other half of the daggers were like piranhas picking up the scent of blood as they attacked the evil spirit''s jellyfish-like brain through the gaps beneath the tentacles. The daggers struck the evil spirit''s body, boring holes. Although they could not completely pierce through its body, each attack inflicted wounds on its body which were about ten centimeters deep. However, its ability to recover was extremely strong. Flesh grew on its body within seconds and the wounds were quickly healed despite the wounds being more than ten centimeters deep. Nevertheless, the speed at which the wounds were formed was far beyond its recovery rate. Therefore, it had an increasing number of injuries on its body. The assault had only begun for less than five minutes and there were already wounds all over the evil spirit''s body. The face of the floating sculpture looked scarier and became even more ferocious. Still, it had no means of retreating. It knew very well that if it happened to retreat, it would be completely pinned down by Lin Huang and would not have the opportunity to fight back after that. Right at this moment, if it managed to survive through this until Lin Huang''s telekinesis was exhausted, it would emerge as the winner. Manipulating more than 10,000 daggers at the same time did really put a huge strain on Lin Huang''s body. However, his telekinetic power originated from Divine Telekinesis, which was the integration of Telekinesis and Demonic Telekinesis. His telekinetic power was way stronger than the rest of the psychics and at the same time, the consumption of his telekinetic power was much lower compared to the rest. Otherwise, with his combat level, his telekinetic power would have been depleted in less than ten minutes if he were to control this amount of weapons. The evil spirit struggled to survive for another half an hour, concentrating all its efforts to defend and dodge. It could no longer maintain in its hidden state. Its movement skill was at its peak performance, performing various forms mid-air which even the best yoga masters would not be able to do. Hundreds of tentacles wove in the air at their maximum speed and not a second''s rest was allowed. However, there were countless wounds on its body and there was blood all over. Seemingly, black blood stains had tainted all over its body, covering almost its whole semi-transparent body. It no longer had the additional strength to get rid of the blood stains with its Life Power. However, for the past half hour, Lin Huang''s attack had not backed down at all. Be it his attack frequency or his attack strength, they were comparatively strong. They were so stable, resembling a machine that would not fail or fatigue. It initially intended to rely on its strong recovery ability in order to exhaust Lin Huang''s telekinetic power. However, after the half an hour attempt, it finally realized that it had underestimated how powerful Lin Huang''s telekinetic power was. It was too late when its realized the problem. Despite the fact that the wounds on its body were recovering, there were too many injuries that had accumulated over the last half hour which resulted in excessive blood loss. Its condition was deteriorating. It began to feel dizzy and no longer had control over its body. Its defense was slowing down as well. "It''s dying!" Lin Huang noticed that the evil spirit''s movements were slowing down and its defense had become much weaker. Its condition had worsened. Still, he remained calm, maintaining his attack rate, frequency, and damage. Despite the fact that the defense of the evil spirit''s tentacles was much weaker than before, he did not reduce the number of daggers that restricted the movement of the tentacles; neither did he increase the number of daggers attacking. He knew the boiling frog syndrome very well, whereby it was safest to patiently let the frog being slowly boiled alive to be cooked to death. If one were to suddenly put the frog into boiling water, the frog would jump out and the cook might even be scalded. Of course, the evil spirit would be killed faster if he were to increase his attack strength. However, this would cause it to fight more aggressively. If he were to slowly torture the evil spirit, it would suffer from more severe injuries. Even if it were to counterattack, its damage impact would definitely become weaker. The evil spirit panicked and its body became substantially weaker due to excessive blood loss. After all, this was its initial body through which the God''s Blood Pod had been first dispersed into this world. If it happened to lose its original body, the consequences would be very grave. In order to avoid being rejected by the gravel world''s rules, each of the God''s Blood Pods created by the evil spirit carried a limited amount of energy. All the God''s Blood Pods had to parasitize its host within 24 hours as soon as they entered the gravel world. After parasitizing its host, the pods would use up a large portion of the energy within its body in order to create its initial body, exploiting the host''s potential so that the pods and the body itself could be integrated perfectly. If it happened to lose its initial body which it had put in so much effort to cultivate, the God''s Blood Pods would not have any extra energy to enter another host for the second time. Of course, it did not mean that the hosts could not spread the God''s Blood Pods to others. There were two ways to do so. The first way would be to accumulate sufficient energy within its body. Then, it would need to parasitize another host and perform some modification. It would take several years for the process of accumulating energy to do so. The evil spirit had said earlier that it wanted to possess Lin Huang''s body. In fact, it wanted to spread the God''s Blood Pods into Lin Huang''s body this way. Another way was known as summoning the body, which required the will of the body itself. With its will, the God''s Blood Pod could leave its initial body without causing harm to its body, spreading it to another host. However, the consciousness of the God''s Blood Pod would be like a reformatted hard disk as its initial body would lose all its memory and inheritance and it would have to start from scratch. After being formatted and losing its consciousness, whether it would still be the same God''s Blood Pod or not would be a philosophical issue that was worth addressing. Seeing that he was about to destroy its initial body and its vitality was quickly disappearing, the evil spirit knew that there was no way that it could be rescued. It raised its head, staring at Lin Huang who was not far away from it. A flicker of fury flashed through the eyes of the floating sculpture. "You forced me to do this!" 765 Die, Evil Spirit! If one''s consciousness was emptied, was the person still the same as before? This topic had actually been discussed by many, but nobody could actually give an accurate answer. Somebody had once said that as soon as one''s consciousness was wiped away, the person would not only experience a loss of memory. Aside from their memory, they would lose their personality as well. Personality was complex as it was determined by nature and nurture. Having had their personality erased, they would lose a part of themselves as well. This indicated that they would lose their personality that had been shaped by their experiences, their emotions, will, and all other aspects of life. Losing one''s consciousness actually meant that one''s consciousness was replaced by the new consciousness. There were also people who likened the emptying of consciousness to reformatting a hard disk. After it was being reformatted, the hard disk was still what it used to be. With or without consciousness, you were still you. You would just be a different version of yourself. The evil spirit had never done research on this topic. However, it definitely did not want to lose its consciousness. However, because of Lin Huang, it had no other choice. It either had to be killed by Lin Huang or its consciousness had to be removed. Both choices were equally bad. However, as it thought of what it had encountered today and felt how miserable it was now, the evil spirit chose the latter. Lin Huang instantly felt that something was amiss just as he heard it growl, "You forced me to do this!" Before he could react to it, a black glow emerged between the eyebrows of the evil spirit''s floating sculpture. All of a sudden, the black glow then flashed in the air and penetrated through the cloud layers in an instant. Lin Huang could not identify where it was going. He felt insecure as he had no idea what the evil spirit was doing. He immediately transferred a large number of daggers that were initially restricting the evil spirit''s tentacles to attack it. Also, he increased his attack speed as he wanted to kill it as soon as possible. "It''s useless. It''s no use even if you completely damage my body." A ferocious smile plastered across the evil spirit''s face. "You forced me to do this" "What have you done?" Lin Huang frowned, feeling more and more insecure. "Nothing special. I''ve just summoned my real body." The evil spirit laughed loudly after uttering its words. As countless daggers were coming after it, it went mad and completely gave up defending itself. It allowed the daggers to strike against its body and yelled at Lin Huang, "Enjoy the last slaughter of your life! Kill me and become my new body!" "Has the dude gone crazy?" Lin Huang frowned, seeing the evil spirit''s reaction. However, he got some important information from the evil spirit, which was that it had summoned its real body. Lin Huang felt his emotions spiral downwards. Right until this moment, he could not understand the actual concept of the God''s Blood Pods. Based on what he could see from the evil spirit, he guessed that it could be something with a cloning ability. With its cloning ability, he had to use almost all of his trump cards in order to gain victory. Right now, the evil spirit''s real body was coming from an even stronger world. Despite the fact that it was only the consciousness of the real body itself, its ability would far surpass the God''s Blood Pods''. Moreover, Lin Huang speculated that its real body might be a Virtual God or a True God due to the phrase "God''s Blood" in the God''s Blood Pods. Lin Huang lifted his head and looked towards the sky. On top of his head, a powerful yet unusual energy was throbbing vigorously between the cloud layers which the black glow had just penetrated through. The energy was spreading and increasing tremendously. Perhaps within half a minute, the plan that it was brewing would soon be revealed. "It''s too late to escape now. Even if I were to leave the mini world, with the God''s power, it could easily tear the mini world apart and chase after me," Lin Huang surmised. He then quickly shifted his gaze towards the evil spirit. The evil spirit''s black blood was splashed everywhere on the ground and there were wounds all over its body. It was spine-chilling to look at. It no longer cared to what extent its body was damaged. It put its tentacles down and gave up defending itself against Lin Huang''s attacks. However, it could still survive at the moment due to its body''s recovery ability. "Let''s kill it first!" Lin Huang did not want to waste his time fighting the evil spirit any longer. He then took out his God Crasher. Manipulated by his telekinesis, the God Crasher then took aim at the evil spirit. The six third-generation God Crashers that Lin Huang owned only had two remaining shots. They would be completely destroyed after being used. Lin Huang had been unwilling to use them all the while as they were weapons that could save his life, so he tried his best not to use them. He had wanted to purchase more of the God Crashers from the black market for emergency use. However, the purchase of the item was strictly controlled by the Union Government. It was an extremely rare item in the black market as well. At almost every foothold if he happened to drop by the local black market, he would ask if the arms dealers had any God Crashers available for sale. However, each time he would receive the same reply: out of stock. The God Crashers could not be replenished, so Lin Huang could only reduce the usage of the weapon. Seeing the God Crashers taking aim at it, the evil spirit could clearly sense that it was threatening. All the memory regarding the God Crashers that it had inherited from the bodies that it had previously killed flashed through its mind. It then knew very well that the weapon could destroy it into ashes. However, the face of the floating sculpture revealed no fear. It taunted instead, "I''ve told you before that it''s useless. As long as my God''s Blood Pod isn''t destroyed, the summoning process won''t be interrupted. The arrival of my real body won''t be stopped as well. The God Crashers that you have can''t even break through the God''s Blood Pods'' defense." "You''re not the one to judge whether it''s useful or not!" Lin Huang glared at the evil spirit. The daggers stopped attacking and scattered in all directions. The evil spirit was at the center, which stopped it from running away. At the same time, a red glow appeared at the muzzle of the God Crashers. It continued to radiate intensely and reached its peak in an instant. The lava-like red glow then gushed out of the muzzle like lightning. The evil spirit''s eyes flashed with fear. The red glow then penetrated through its head before it could react to it. A large hole that was about a meter in diameter appeared next to its tentacles that were less than a meter away. The brain juice within its wound was boiling. Lin Huang could see the towering mountain behind its back through the hole. A third of its head had exploded in one hit. The evil spirit''s body became limp and it fell down to the ground. Lin Huang stared at the evil spirit, not letting his guard down. A notification from Xiao Hei was then heard. "Congratulations! You''ve obtained a Pseudo Mythical-level Monster Card (Unnamed) x1" Lin Huang then felt relief flood through him. He had made countless attempts to kill the evil spirit but kept failing. Now, Lin Huang could confirm that it had died after receiving the notification from Xiao Hei. Soon after, his face turned ghastly because the summoning force of the evil spirit had not faded away. It remained unaffected and continued to grow immensely. Lin Huang could clearly sense that the terrifying aura growing stronger every second. "What it said is indeed true. Killing it won''t stop the arrival of its real body" 766 Death Goddess Between the clouds, the sky was enveloped by a black mist. A wave of terrifying energy gathered quickly along with an immense power. The entire mini world dimmed due to the presence of the oppressive energy. Lightning flashed in between the cloud layers and the ground trembled slightly. It seemed like its arrival was a big burden to the mini world and the world was about to collapse. By unleashing his ocular skills, only then could Lin Huang see the layer of black mist in the air and the scar-like crack that was spreading quickly in mid-air. Lin Huang frowned as he shifted his focus away, figuring out what he should do. Bloody paid attention to everything that was happening on Lin Huang''s sleeve. Seeing that Lin Huang had no idea what to do, Bloody then suggested, "Given my current ability, it''s impossible to fight a Virtual God or even a True God face-to-face. There''s only one way to overcome the danger, which is to stop the summoning of the evil spirit!" "I''ve killed the evil spirit, yet I can''t seem to stop its summoning," Lin Huang lamented. He suddenly recalled what the evil spirit had said. "Oh yeah, the God''s Blood Pod! The evil spirit once said that in order to stop its summoning, one will have to destroy the God''s Blood Pod!" Lin Huang then appeared next to the evil spirit''s carcass in a flash, pressing against its head. He quickly inserted his Life Power into it, searching for the so-called God''s Blood Pod. After a short while, he discovered a very weak and unusual energy fluctuation near the root of its tentacles. The fluctuation of the energy was weak and obscure. They were more difficult to discover compared to Bloody''s Leech Pods. He was familiar with the weak energy fluctuation since he possessed the ability to control the Leech Pods, without which, he would have neglected the presence of the energy fluctuation despite having inserted his Life Power into the corpse. "I''ve found it!" After targeting where the unusual fluctuation of energy originated from, Lin Huang recalled the God Crasher that could not be recharged in time, summoning the rest of his five God Crashers. He retreated hundreds of meters away. Soon after, the five God Crashers were arranged in a row less than 10 meters away from the evil spirit''s dead body. The God Crashers accurately took aim at the dead body where the unusual energy fluctuation came from. Soon, red flames appeared on the muzzles of the God Crashers. The lightning-like red flames then gathered and shot out at the same time. Bang! Attacks from the five God Crashers were launched at the same time. Of course, the effects of the attacks were way more effective than having just one God Crasher. As a consequence of the energy generated by the five God Crashers, a chain reaction occurred with an intense explosion. Its power far exceeded Lin Huang''s expectations. A bloody sphere that was completely made of fire began to expand like a balloon and covered a radius of ten kilometers in an instant. The ground was burnt as soon as the bloody glow passed by. A red mushroom cloud shot up into the sky and a loud explosion was heard. Lin Huang was thousands of meters beneath the ground with his Dark Mirror activated, trembling. He had realized that something was off and managed to use his Transformation Card in time, transforming himself into Spectre and went underground. Otherwise, he would have been caught in the explosion. "Is this the effect of the God Crashers?" Sensing that the vibration of the ground had stopped, Lin Huang then went up to the surface. What he saw was burnt marks all over the ground and a gaping, round pit that was more than 100 meters deep where the explosion had occurred. Lin Huang felt anguish when he saw that the evil spirit and the five God Crashers had turned into ashes. Two out of five of the God Crashers had one remaining attack each. Soon after, Lin Huang noticed that right at the bottom of the big pit was a thumb-sized black crystal. Thanks to Lin Huang''s terribly good eyesight, he saw it. Otherwise, nobody would have noticed the black crystal that was almost similar in color to the charred black ground. "Could it be the God''s Blood Pod?" Lin Huang appeared at the bottom of the pit so that he could have a closer look at the black, jade-like crystal. The crystal was of the size of a female adult thumb. It was slightly larger than a water droplet. However, it was not round in shape. Instead, it looked like a diamond with countless crystal structures. A layer of faint black mist spread on the surface of the crystal and it was soon covered by the smoke coming out from the burnt ground. Lin Huang saw it as he went closer to it. Lin Huang stopped approaching it when he was about ten meters away. He could vaguely sense that the layer of black mist surrounding the surface of the crystal was threatening. "It seems like it''s not been destroyed at all" Lin Huang''s face turned ghastly as he carefully observed it. However, he could then confirm that the black crystal was the God''s Blood Pod. All five of his God Crashers had been used and that was Lin Huang''s most powerful skill. The God''s Blood Pod was not damaged by the attack at all, and Lin Huang had no idea what he should do now. An opening could be seen in the sky where the scar-like crack in the air had been torn apart. Black, sticky liquid that looked like asphalt gradually dripped out of the opening. In the mini world, the sky had completely turned dark as though the day had turned to night in an instant. The sky was overcast with dark clouds and beams of golden lightning flashed continuously. The ground trembled vigorously as if there was an earthquake. The howl of the wind resonated through the area, resembling the devil''s cry. It was like a phenomenon before the apocalypse. "Is there any way to stop this from happening?" In the air, Lin Huang saw that the black, sticky liquid was still gushing into the mini world and a humanoid feature was gradually forming. Lin Huang had been staring at the sky all the while and he did not realize that the surface of the God''s Blood Pod was emitting a faint black glow. Seemingly, it echoed the real body''s consciousness. Right at this moment, Lin Huang received a notification from Xiao Hei. "A Divine Pod is detected. Its consciousness has collapsed and it can be turned into a card. Do you want to make it into a card?" "What?" Lin Huang was stunned. He then shifted his gaze to the God''s Blood Pod and noticed the changes. He soon understood that the Divine Pod that Xiao Hei had mentioned must be the God''s Blood Pod right in front of him. He immediately nodded his head and said, "Get it!" After finishing his words, the God''s Blood Pod was immediately shrouded in a golden glow that appeared out of nowhere. The God''s Blood Pod vibrated vigorously as it was covered by the glow. It struggled to get rid of the golden glow. Soon after, it got weaker as it struggled. It was completely suppressed and could no longer move. The golden glow then began to shrink, transforming into a card form. It then collapsed, turning into a golden beam and flowing in between Lin Huang''s brows. "Congratulations! You''ve obtained a Divine Pod (True God-level)" After the arrival of the notification, before Lin Huang could even respond to it, his body stiffened. He could feel an immensely strong and oppressive aura coming from the top of his head. He felt like he was being suppressed by a huge mountain. The crack in the air soon sealed and the black, asphalt-like, sticky liquid dissipated, flowing back into the crack in the air. However, between the cloud layers, a huge, demonic face formed and gazed down at the mini world. The demonic female face covered tens of thousands of square meters. A pair of black, jade-like eyes shot Lin Huang a deadly stare. Its glare alone could petrify Lin Huang. "A holy fire-level managed to destroy my God''s Blood Pod. That''s kind of interesting, human brat Please remember my name: the Death Goddess! I''ll come back to you after I''ve finished my stuff. You won''t be able to run away so easily next time. Your body is fated to be mine" After having uttered those words, the demonic face''s left eye suddenly flashed with a black glow. Lin Huang felt that his chest was burning. He lowered his head and soon, he noticed that a black imprint was quickly forming on his chest. At this moment, the opening in the air had completely closed. The demonic face had disappeared as well as if it had never appeared. The dark clouds that covered the mini world had cleared and the howling of wind had stopped. There was no more trembling of the ground as well. Lin Huang stood at his original position as he looked at the imprint on his chest, remaining quiet. 767 Xiao Heis Suggestion The imprint on Lin Huang''s left chest turned black as if his skin had been inked. It was about the size of an adult fist and its shape looked like a complicated Witchcraft Rune. However, Lin Huang could clearly tell that it was not the Witchcraft Rune. It was something from another system as the lines were not structured by any fundamental Witchcraft Runes. Moreover, its style was way more different from the Witchcraft Rune. Although he had no idea what the imprint was, he could confirm that it was definitely not something good. He stood still, carefully checking his body from head to toe. He checked his soul, the Life Wheels in his body and also his physique. Not even a single strand of his hair was neglected. He checked thrice but still, he found nothing odd. "It doesn''t mean that there isn''t any problem although I can''t figure it out," Lin Huang mumbled. He extended his hand and an Ink Feather fell right into his palm. The dagger ripped through his collar and he tore his T-shirt apart. Again, he lowered his head and studied his left chest. "Let''s see if I can get rid of this in the simplest way." After finishing his words, with the Ink Feather he was holding with his right hand, he pierced his chest. He could feel that the dagger stopped piercing through as it hit his breastbone. The dagger then began cutting along the imprint when it was a centimeter away. Soon, a circular wound was formed on his chest. Lin Huang endured the pain and pierced the dagger deeper into his chest. He groaned and soon after, he cut the circular flesh with the weird imprint out from his body. Lin Huang was being harsh with himself. After the flesh was cut out of his body, one could clearly see his exposed breastbone. However, thanks to his Divine Regeneration skill, his flesh grew at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. In less than two seconds, his chest injury had healed as if he had never experienced any injury before. Yes, he looked exactly like he was not injured at all. The imprint was still there and it could clearly be seen on the flesh that had just grown back. The position of the imprint was exactly the same and its size and angle remained unchanged. It seemed like Lin Huang''s flesh had never been cut from his body before. Without the bloody flesh that he was still holding in his hand, Lin Huang would have thought that what had just happened was merely an illusion. The weirdest thing was that the imprint on the flesh that had been removed had disappeared. "It''s not working." The outcome was as Lin Huang expected. He simply wanted to verify if such a crude way could get rid of the imprint. "The imprint has targeted your body. It won''t disappear as long as your body still has its vitality. This matches with what the demonic face said. What it wants is your body," Bloody slithered out of Lin Huang''s sleeve and said. "That means even if I die, as long as my body is still here, the imprint isn''t going to disappear." Lin Huang was helpless. With his Divine Regeneration, as long as there was no destructive damage, even after his body had lost its vitality, he could remain as he looked for tens of thousands of years and there would be not a single change. "Yes, it is. In addition to the woman being at least a Virtual God, the imprint she left on your body most probably contains the remnants of divinity. The power it contains is of another level. Perhaps onlyGod is capable of getting rid of it," Bloody added. "There''s another piece of bad news. She''s at least a True God," Lin Huang said helplessly. Despite Lin Huang not looking at the card after the Divine Pod was made into its card form, he did take a glance at Xiao Hei''s notification. Next to the Divine Pod, it stated that it was on the True God-level. The name of the Death Goddess itself sounded like it was a monster that nobody could afford to offend. In addition to it being capable of dominating more than 3,000 God''s Blood Pods that were on True God-level, it indicated that it was at least a True God or even stronger. Lin Huang was only looking for a Life Fire monster. He had never expected that things would get so complicated. Aside from only managing to kill it after about 20 attempts, he had even attracted the arrival of the big boss that almost killed him. "Just let it be. Since I can''t feel anything, I''ll think of a solution after leaving this place." Lin Huang shook his head, snapping out of his thoughts. After recalling all the daggers, he crushed his flesh with his left hand and it vanished. "It''s too bad that the evil spirit''s body has been destroyed. I don''t have time to extract its tinder. I have to look for another tinder monster" Lin Huang lowered his head, looking at the deep pit caused by the God Crashers. Nothing was left of the evil spirit''s body. Obviously, it had been destroyed due to the high temperature generated from the explosion caused by the God Crashers. Just as Lin Huang was about to leave the mini word, Xiao Hei''s voice was suddenly heard. "I helped you to extract the tinder." "When did you extract it? Why don''t I know it?" Lin Huang found it strange. Lin Huang had to touch the monster''s carcass after it was killed each time during the extraction of tinder. Lin Huang had never touched the evil spirit''s dead body at all, yet Xiao Hei said that the tinder had been extracted. "The Divine Pod can be used as tinder." "Isn''t it the Divine Pod on the True God-level? Do I have sufficient authority to activate it?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "It''s indeed on True God-level. However, since the Divine Pod is artificially made, it can be used by a holy fire-level. In addition to its previous body having a low combat level, its activation state remains on the beginner level. Therefore, a low level of authority is sufficient to activate it. You can use it." "Are you sure that it can be used as tinder? Is it going to affect the upgrade in my combat strength in future?" Still, Lin Huang was worried. "I''ve made a thorough analysis. The core structure of the Divine Pod and the Life Fire in the human body is 70% similar. Perhaps, the person who made it referred to the structure of the Life Fire which causes it to be completely compatible with the human body. Of course, its structure is much stabler and stronger than the tinder''s. "If it''s used as tinder, it won''t influence the upgrade in your combat strength. Instead, you''ll become even stronger. "Of course, if it influences the upgrade in your combat strength in future, I can turn it into its card form again. Then, you can look for a new tinder to replace it. Stroking his chin, Lin Huang then agreed with Xiao Hei''s suggestion. "Alright. Then, I''m going to use it as tinder!" It was not easy for him to look for a tinder monster like the evil spirit. If he were not going to use the Divine Pod, it would take him a few more months to look for a suitable tinder. Be it on Mr. Fu''s side or at the Abyss Brink, he could not afford to waste any more time. After making up his mind, Lin Huang took out the Divine Pod card. The golden card floated above Lin Huang''s palm. The animated image on top of the card was a diamond-like black crystal. There was a layer of faint black mist on its surface and it looked exactly the same as the real item that Lin Huang had seen previously. Staring at the card for a moment, Lin Huang took a deep breath. Two of his fingers exerted force and the card was crushed. 768 Leveled-up to Gold Flame-level The golden card was crushed in between Lin Huang''s fingers. Soon, it transformed into a beam of black light and flowed into Lin Huang''s chest. Lin Huang then snapped out of his thoughts, carefully observing the changes that had occurred in his body. If the God''s Blood Pod were in its original state, he certainly would not have inserted it into his body. Since it was a True God-level item, if there were any problems, he would be putting his life at risk. However, after Xiao Hei had transformed it, he was relieved to use it as a card. After inserting the Divine Pod into his body, it then went into Lin Huang''s main Life Wheel, becoming a black tinder. The black tinder began to engulf the Life Power in Lin Huang''s body as soon as it formed. It expanded rapidly at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. In less than three minutes, in his main Life Wheel, the dozen circles of the purple Life Power in the 360 columns were depleted. Lin Huang was about to activate the nine other Life Wheels and insert the Life Power into his empty Life Wheel so that more energy could be used to replenish the black tinder. Just as he was about to do so, the black tinder that had grown to a height of ten meters began to exude a layer of faint black mist, enveloping the four Life Fire next to it. Lin Huang frowned as he witnessed the phenomenon. He could not tell if the change was beneficial or malevolent. Soon, the four purple Life Fires were tainted black as they were shrouded in the layer of black mist. Not only did the color change, but even their shape also began to merge with the black flame. Naturally, the state of his Life Fire should be made of five Life Fire, and there would be five Life Fire petals. However, the four Life Fire which he initially had started to merge with the black Life Fire as if they were merging into one Life Fire. "Xiao Hei, are you sure what''s happening right now is normal?" Lin Huang did not immediately stop the strange phenomenon from happening because he could clearly feel that the process of leveling up was somehow normal. There was no sign that he had failed to level up. "Perhaps the Divine Pod is too powerful. It might have treated your Life Fire as food and engulfed it. Do you need me to stop the process so that the Divine Pod can be separated? Before finishing the merging, it can be separated anytime. However, after it''s completed, I''m not sure if it can still be separated." Lin Huang hesitated when he heard what Xiao Hei said. He was no longer sure how the leveling up process worked and he could vaguely feel that the unknown might not be necessarily bad. Seeing the rest of the Life Fire starting to merge with the Divine Pod, Lin Huang made a decision courageously. "No, I''d like to see how it''ll look like later." In his Life Wheel, the four Life Fires then merged with the black flame. The black flame had already grown 300 meters tall, and it was the same height as the most towering Life Fire. However, Lin Huang could feel that the new Life Fire was much stronger than the previous four. Before Lin Huang could react to it, the black flame suddenly separated into nine thumb-sized flares in his main Life Wheel. They shot towards the remaining nine Life Wheels. Soon, the nine Life Wheels experienced the same thing that had just happened in his main Life Wheel whereby the black Life Fire completely replaced their Life Fire. As soon as ten of the black Life Fires were formed, Lin Huang could vaguely sense the hunger coming from the black Life Fire. At the same time, the Life Power in the rest of his body was quickly drawn towards the ten Life Wheels, embedding into his Life Fire. Lin Huang immediately took out his Life Power Refill Card and crushed it so that the Life Power in his body could be replenished. In less than three minutes, the first Life Power Refill Card had been used up. In a matter of time, the second and the third Life Power Refill Cards were exhausted as well. The black Life Fire had reached a height of 1,000 meters tall, and it was still hungry for more. "The power supply isn''t sufficient yet!" Lin Huang frowned. He immediately took out a large number of Life Crystals and began extracting power from them to fuel his Life Fire. However, it was likely to be but a drop in the ocean. After slowly absorbing the energy for less than a minute, the black Life Fire in his body was no longer satisfied with the speed of his Life Power being supplied. In his Life Wheel, the black Life Fire started releasing a black mist, and Lin Huang could vaguely predict what the Life Fire was thinking. It wanted to release the black mist to engulf the Life Crystals on its own. "Alright, you do it on your own then." After getting permission from Lin Huang, the black mist soon dissipated out of his Life Wheel. It was then released into the real world through Lin Huang''s chest. The layer of faint black mist seemed to have its own consciousness as it covered the regions with Life Crystals and began absorbing the Life Power. The Life Crystals shrank swiftly, resembling snow under the sun. In less than a minute, the Life Crystals right in front of Lin Huang were absorbed by the layer of black mist. Lin Huang then took out more Life Crystals and piled them up in front of him. The black mist then covered the area and started engulfing the Life Crystals. The speed of the black mist shrouding the crystals far exceeded the rate at which Lin Huang could absorb. Lin Huang noticed that the black Life Fire continued to grow while the black mist was absorbing the Life Crystals. Its height grew from 1,000 meters to 2,000 meters, and then it reached 3,000 meters. Just as it reached 10,000 meters, only then did it stop growing. More than three hours had passed. In Lin Huang''s storage space, he found that he had used about a billion of his Life Crystals. If the tinder continued to absorb power at this rate, Lin Huang had no idea what else he should use to feed it. "I''ve just gone broke overnight" Lin Huang twitched his mouth, forcing a smile. He had never expected to become poor because of a tinder. In his Life Wheel, after his Life Fire had reached 10,000 meters, the Divine Pod finally felt satiated and gradually recalled the layer of black mist that had been released out of Lin Huang''s body. As the Life Fire vibrated, Lin Huang''s ten Life Wheels that had been drained were restored within three minutes. The black Life Power started coursing through Lin Huang''s body, restoring his veins and changing every single cell in his body. The change in his Life Power was much faster than before as it took him less than 20 minutes. The upgrade process to become a gold flame-level had been completed. Although he only had one Life Fire left in his body, he could feel that he was more than ten times stronger than before. Seeing the black Life Power moving through his palm, he could clearly feel that the quality of the Life Power was far beyond the strength of a holy fire-level''s. To be exact, the precision of his Life Power could be compared to an immortal-level. "I''ve finally leveled up to gold flame-level. I used to think that using five Life Fires was the right cultivation technique. It seems like merging five Life Fire into one is better," Lin Huang mumbled. Soon, he frowned. "The Life Fire is so powerful. How am I going to light up the Life Lamp?" 769 True God-level Life Fire By the time he returned from Kylie''s mini world to Martel City, it was already slightly after five in the morning. Those who had come to fight early in the morning might have left as there was nothing to discover. Even the residents had fled. After the fight, what remained were the ruins and the vacant buildings. Some of them also forgot to turn off the lights in their houses. Watching the sunrise, Lin Huang felt like he was in another world. This was by far the most miserable battle he had ever experienced. The first thing he did as soon as he went back to his hotel was sleep. After fighting overnight, he was well and truly exhausted. Despite his body feeling energized after leveling up, he was mentally tired, which was why he could fall asleep so quickly. Bloody was reading various sources of information through the Emperor''s Heart Ring next to him. Lin Huang woke up at about 6 p.m. and felt recharged. "A person called Xia Hou visited you at about eight o''clock in the morning. He knocked on the door for a while, but I ignored him. He then left. I was afraid that he''d wake you up, so I blocked the noise out," Bloody said when it saw that Lin Huang was awake. "Xia Hou?" Reminded by Bloody, Lin Huang then recalled that he was the investigator who had investigated the crime with him. "He must''ve heard about the incident that happened last night, so he should be asking me to investigate. Since I''ve killed the evil spirit, it''s fated that they won''t get any results for their investigation." "Is there any other person who came?" Lin Huang asked. "No." Bloody shook its head. It then added, "I''ve done some research on what you asked me to look for this morning." "The imprint on your body is known as the True God imprint. During the old era, it was a mark the True God left on their slaves. It was mainly used as a symbol of authority over all their slaves. It can be used to locate them, but they don''t have full control over their slaves. It can only be used as a mark. There''s no way to destroy the imprint. Only the one who made the imprint or those who are of the same level are capable of removing it." "It can only be used as a mark?" Lin Huang felt relieved when he heard that. Soon, he secretly contacted Xiao Hei and asked, "Is there any Healing Card that can be used to remove it?" "Nothing strange is detected in your body. The Healing Card can''t be used." "It''s fine. If it can''t be destroyed, I shall just leave it there." Since there was no way to get rid of the imprint, Lin Huang decided to put it aside. "What about the information regarding the immortal-level?" "The cultivation technique of an immortal-level is to kill an immortal-level monster and capture the monster''s soul. The monster''s soul serves as a container which stores the Life Fire in it. The monster''s soul is initially used as a furnace to nurture the Life Fire, turning it into a Life Furnace. However, due to the shape of the Life Furnace that looks like there''s a semi-transparent screen covering the Life Fire, it looks very similar to a lamp. Therefore, it was named as a Life Lamp. The people got used to calling it this way, and they seem to have forgotten what it used to be called. The name ''Life Furnace'' was then replaced by ''Life Lamp''," Bloody continued. "I''ve come across this before. In fact, the Life Lamp looks like an energy reaction furnace whereby the monster''s soul is a container that stores the burning Life Fire. With the current strength of my Life Fire, there''s no way that I can store any of the monsters'' souls in it. My Life Fire can probably burn an imperial-level monster''s soul into ashes within minutes, let alone an immortal-level''s monster''s soul." The Divine Pod was the perfect tinder. However, its sequel had become Lin Huang''s greatest problem. If none of the monster souls could bear his Life Fire, it was an indication that the Life Furnace (Life Lamp) could not be formed. Lin Huang would then be unable to level-up to immortal-level. "The Life Fire in your body is a True God-level item. Not only does the imperial-level monster''s soul does not affect you; in fact, aside from the True God-level monster''s soul that can be used as a container, all containers of other levels will be damaged. Even a Virtual God-level monster''s soul will be destroyed later on." After finishing its words, Bloody then stated, "That''s why I think that the conventional leveling technique of an immortal-level no longer works for you. "I have two suggestions. First, you could major in another cultivation system, but you have to look for a system that''s compatible with your current training technique. Secondly, you could refer to another cultivation system and create your own set of cultivation system." "Both of your suggestions are less feasible." Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. "Most of the cultivations systems are independent. There are only a few of them that are compatible with each other. Even if they aren''t independent, it''s rare for their compatibility level to exceed 30%. If I were to major in a cultivation system with such a low compatibility level, why not I spend some time learning it again? "As for the second suggestion, creating a new cultivation system can only be achieved through the efforts contributed by different tribes for tens of years or even hundreds of years. I don''t have the sufficient knowledge to do so or the time." Bloody kept quiet for a while and soon, it said, "There''s another way" "Do tell." Lin Huang nodded. "Look for something that can replace the monster''s soul so that it can be used as a container that stores Life Fire," Bloody said, "The items that can be used to replace the God-level monster''s soul are mostly soul god items or god relics. It''d be better if the god items or god relics are on a True God-level." "This plan could probably work." Lin Huang had a strange expression on his face. In the gravel world, god items and god relics were extremely rare. If either of them happened to be available for sale at the auction, people would''ve gone crazy. Lin Huang could hardly afford to buy a demigod-level item even when he was wealthy, let alone a True God-level item. "Also, don''t forget that you have nine Life Lamps," Bloody reminded. Lin Huang felt that he had just been splashed with a bucket of ice water. He stiffened. Although he had found his way out after communicating with Bloody, he knew that he had a long way to go. "So, I need nine True God-level items. That''s if there are that many of them in this world. If there are, I guess I''ll be broke hundreds of times if I were to buy them with all the money I have." It was stressing him out. "It seems like I have to participate in more exploration of ruins and heritage sites." Snapping out of his thoughts, Lin Huang then began to check the rewards he got from killing the evil spirit. Still, he was unable to obtain the Supreme Intelligence that he desired during the hunting of Life Fire. Right before the Divine Pod was made into its card form, its internal consciousness had collapsed. Neither its inheritance nor memory had been retained. When Xiao Hei had made it into its card form, it handled and extracted the remaining pieces of consciousness that were not completely destroyed. However, it only managed to retrieve one secret skill: the Golden Cicada. That secret skill was what the evil spirit had been using to revive itself. However, the effect of the skill he had obtained was much weaker than the evil spirit''s. The Golden Cicada secret skill allowed Lin Huang to disguise himself as anyone perfectly he had ever killed (disguising himself as a monster was not allowed) and at the same time, he could completely mimic one''s inheritance, memory, and abilities. He was given three chances a day to shed. He could either abandon the body or the body itself could remain as a scapegoat. However, once the body was discarded, he would be unable to disguise himself as the body any longer. The secret skill consisted of two abilities which were Disguise and Scapegoat. Despite it being way weaker than the evil spirit''s skill, Lin Huang was quite satisfied with it. After scanning through the description of the secret skill, he took out another card. "Monster Card "Rarity: Mythical (Pseudo) "Name of Monster: (Unnamed) "Type of Monster: God''s Blood (Initially the evil spirit) (Pseudo Pureblood) "Combat Level: Immortal-level rank-2 (Beginner) "Summoning Limit: Activated for the immortal-level "Card Remarks: Recommended to train with maximum effort!" "God''s Blood?" Seeing the information on the evil spirit''s card, Lin Huang was shocked because he used to think that it was an evil spirit, but it turned out to be a God''s Blood. After carefully checking the information on the card, Lin Huang could briefly tell what had happened to the monster. It was an evil spirit for real. However, after being parasitized by the God''s Blood, it was modified into a God''s Blood with pure blood. Since it was human-made, Xiao Hei had stated that it was a monster with pseudo pureblood. Bai was only a high-level God''s Blood and was still far away from containing pureblood. In terms of levels, the "evil spirit" was much higher than Bai and Charcoal. "Unfortunately, only an immortal-level can summon it." Seeing the chain seal on the front of the card, Lin Huang knew that he had insufficient authority to use it. He then put the card away after a while. As the sky was turning dark, Lin Huang took a step forward towards the balcony. He glanced up into the sky, watching the cloud layers being tainted golden red by the setting sun. Lin Huang observed the sunset from afar and mumbled, "I''m going to leave early tomorrow. I''ll first get the cross-ranking rewards for the gold flame-level!" 770 The Cursed Land The Cursed Land was one of the six forbidden lands in Division 3. It was a lonely island located on the east coast of the Peaceful Ocean. The reason why the people named it the Cursed Land was not because humans who visited the land would be cursed. Instead, it was because all the monsters that entered would be cursed and would be unable to leave. It was said that all the monsters that left the island would die within 24 hours. Their dead bodies would transform into spirits, and they would return to the island. There was more than one Imperial Censor who had performed experiments here with their pet monster. As long as the pet monster was summoned on the island, they would die within 24 hours, transforming into a spirit despite being recalled when the Imperial Censor left the island. The contract between the pet monster and the Imperial Censor would then be rendered void. They would attack all the creatures that blocked their way for the sake of returning to the island. Apart from that, all the creatures that died on this island, including humans would turn into spirits and become new prisoners on the island. Lin Huang had heard of the different kinds of stories about the forbidden land soon after he reached Division 3. He had also read through the information, so he was not even going to attempt it. He chose such a place to obtain the cross-ranking reward because he suspected that there would be a hidden spiritual god''s item or god relic on this island. In fact, Lin Huang was not the first one who thought about this. Just as the Cursed Land was discovered, many had suggested this. Up until more than 100 years ago, the rumor had spread to the entire Division 3, and almost all of the transcendents knew this. Back then, many groups of explorers visited the Cursed Land. The explorers slaughtered almost all the spirits on the island. Every single corner of the island was explored, but nothing was discovered. Over the past hundred years, nobody managed to find any of the spiritual items. Soon, the number of people who believed in this became lesser, and the number of explorers who visited the island declined. What Lin Huang was thinking of was pretty simple. He merely wanted to look for a place with many immortal-level rank-9 monsters. The only locations that fulfilled this criterion were the six forbidden lands in Division 3. Since the Cursed Land was one of the forbidden lands and there was such a legend about it being a place with spiritual items, Lin Huang decided to pay it a visit. He was not expecting much from this trip. His main intention was to hunt the monsters so that he could obtain the cross-ranking reward. He would walk around and leave the Cursed Land after that. He departed from Martel City and finally arrived at his destination, the Cursed Land, after two days. The island was not as deserted as Lin Huang expected. He used to think that a place where spirits lived would not have any living plants. However, it was an island with lush greenery. Since the island was barely visited, it looked like a primitive jungle. Most of the immortal-level explorers had to be extra careful when exploring a forbidden land like this, including Lin Huang. He did not enter the jungle in the first place. He gradually floated into the air, retreating hundreds of meters away from the island. He then summoned Bloody. The curse was not going to work if one did not enter the region covered by the island. This was also the reason why the fishes nearby could leave safely after hunting for food in the vicinity. After confirming this, Lin Huang then dared to summon Bloody. However, for the sake of his monster''s safety, he retreated 300 meters away before crushing Bloody''s card. "Is this the Cursed Land?" Bloody was curious about the island. "It''s much livelier than I thought." "That''s what I thought too." Lin Huang said, smiling. "I won''t bring you in this round. Please help me to check the location of the immortal-level rank-9 monsters, and I''ll recall you back into your card form later." Bloody nodded its head. It knew that Lin Huang was doing so for the sake of its safety. The Leech Pods were then controlled by Bloody, spreading towards the vast island. After more than half an hour, Bloody then nodded its head at Lin Huang. "I''ve found them. There are quite a number of immortal-level rank-9 monsters on this island." "I supposed that you''ve explored further. Is there anything else you discovered?" Lin Huang knew Bloody very well. Since it knew that there were hidden spiritual items on this island, it would definitely check those out. "I found nothing special. There''s a burial ground situated at the west of the island. However, it seems like it''s been dug countless times. There are a few lakes, which I think the people have explored as well. I''ll mark them on the map for you." A map that Lin Huang had bought from the black market was then projected. Bloody marked it with different colors. The location of the immortal-level rank-9 monsters was marked in yellow whereas the location of the imperial-levels was marked in red. As for the lakes, Bloody marked them with a blue water droplet, and the burial ground was marked with a skeleton symbol. Several places looked strange to Bloody, so it marked them with a yellow question mark. After getting all these done, Bloody briefly explained to Lin Huang about the condition of the places other than the burial ground. Lin Huang then recalled it back into its card form and headed towards the yellow spot, which was the nearest to him. Before exploring, he wanted to obtain all the cross-ranking rewards first. Soon, Lin Huang arrived at his first destination. The first monster marked by Bloody was a spiritual bird. It had two heads, but it obviously had them all along even before turning into a spirit. On top of the two of its heads, four white eyeballs without irises appeared. There were wounds on its stomach and wings. The wounds had stopped bleeding and had even begun to decay. However, it did not seem to have any reaction to it. "I''ve no idea how long the Twinhead Dragon Condor has died for." Lin Huang could tell what type of monster it was at first glance. After observing it for a while, Lin Huang crushed the Double Reward Card he had and attacked the immortal-level rank-9 monster in a flash. If he leveled up to gold flame-level under the regular leveling process, he would not have the confidence to kill an immortal-level rank-9 monster. However, he was pretty confident that he could now kill most of the immortal-level rank-9 monsters. In less than two minutes, both the Twinhead Dragon Condor''s heads were chopped off by Lin Huang''s constant attacks. Before he could even store its dead body in his storage space, a notification from Xiao Hei arrived. "Congratulations! You''ve completed nonuple cross-ranking kill: Reward Card Draw x60!" The effective period of the Double Reward Card was only an hour. Lin Huang then put the dead body away and did not linger there any longer. He opened his map and proceeded towards the second yellow spot! 771 Dark Knigh "Congratulations! You''ve completed nonuple cross-ranking kill C Reward Card Draw x60!" "Congratulations! You''ve obtained an Epic Monster Card C Dark Knight (Spirit) x2!" As soon as Xiao Hei''s second notification was heard, Lin Huang frowned. He was not expecting to obtain a complete set of monster card from the last cross-ranking kill. Thanks to the Double Reward Card, he managed to get two monster cards. Lin Huang, who already owned a large number of Legendary Monster Cards, was not interested in a double-mutated Epic Monster Card. He was going to put them away after catching a glimpse of the monster cards. There was nothing special on the front of the card. The image of the monster was similar to its real body. Both of them were also humanoid monsters with black armor, holding a long, black spear in its hand. Lin Huang took a glance at it and flipped to the back of the card. He wanted to see what skills the monster possessed. As soon as he skimmed through the first description line, Lin Huang suddenly fixed his gaze on one of the skills. After several moments, a smile was plastered across his face. "How is it possible to own such a skill?!" Lin Huang did not expect the Dark Knight that could not perform well in battle would possess such an attractive skill. "Knight: It allows the Dark Knight to ride on any non-human monsters. On a ride, the Dark Knight can unleash its true ability, and the mount''s combat strength will be one to three ranks higher (it depends on the mount''s grade and combat strength). At the same time, the Dark Knight can share the skills that the mount possesses, which increases the skill power anywhere from three to five times stronger. "Remarks: A knight without a mount is not a complete knight." Lin Huang decided to train the two Dark Knights after seeing the skill. He did not act on impulse. The Knight skill seemed to be the most powerful skill Lin Huang had ever seen on an Epic Monster Card. After reading through the skill description twice, Lin Huang already knew which mount to choose for the two Dark Knights. Earlier in Division 7, Lin Huang had killed two Black Serpents. After that, both the Black Serpents went through their third mutation and evolved into Dark Crescent Snakes with ancient blood. Both the Dark Crescent Snakes were pretty strong, but Bai and Lancelot outshone them. That was the reason why Lin Huang rarely summoned them. However, since he now had the two Dark Knights, both of the Dark Crescent Snakes could be paired perfectly with them. "I''ll upgrade both of the Dark Knights into a triple mutated monster after I return. After matching them with the Dark Crescent Snakes, perhaps their abilities will be on par with Bai''s," Lin Huang thought to himself, "However, I''m not sure whether turning the two Dark Knights into card form would be affected by the curse or not." Theoretically, the Monster Cards which he obtained after killing the Dark Knight would have nothing to do with the monster itself. However, Lin Huang was still feeling dubious. It took a total of three hours to obtain ten cross-ranking rewards, and he got a total of 600 card draws. Lin Huang''s main task had been completed. In fact, the ten battles took him only about half an hour. He spent 2.5 hours traveling. If he could summon Thunder, perhaps he would have gotten it done within two hours and could have even saved a Double Reward Card. However, Lin Huang was pretty satisfied with the outcome. He had obtained 300 extra card draws with three Double Reward Cards. It was a great deal. After recalling both the Dark Knight cards, Lin Huang tapped the map open again and looked at the rest of the marks made by Bloody. "The burial ground is situated at the west of the island. From here, I''ll pass three lakes and a place marked with the question mark. I need to detour." Lin Huang soon made up his mind and chose the first destination: the largest lake on the island. After more than 40 minutes, Lin Huang eventually arrived at his destination after avoiding an imperial-level monster lair on his way. The largest lake on the island was not that vast at just about 80 square meters. The vivid water of the lake enhanced the beauty of the greenery. If this were a place on Earth, it would definitely be a favorite tourist spot for sailing. Lin Huang did not really enjoy the beautiful scenery in front of him. When Bloody explored the island with its Leech Pods, the pods had actually parasitized a small number of the monsters. He then managed to retrieve some useful information from the monsters. On this island was a monstrous bird on demigod-level. It liked to hunt for monsters living in the water. If there were any imperial-level monsters in the lake, they would be eaten in the first place. Sometimes when it was hungry, even immortal-levels would be killed. This was also the reason why almost all the monsters in the lake were incapable of fighting Lin Huang. As he recalled the information provided by Bloody, Lin Huang felt relieved and soon, he dove into the water. Despite the lake not being huge, it was deep. Lin Huang surrounded himself with Life Power and dove to the bottom of the lake, which was about 200 meters deep. The lake water was quite clear, and in addition to Lin Huang''s terribly good eyesight, he could see everything about 100 meters away clearly. He monitored a four-kilometer radius with Telekinesis. At the same time, he sized up the surroundings while monitoring the monster activities with his territory. It took him about half an hour to thoroughly explore the lake. Despite the wall of the lake being scanned by his Telekinesis, he found nothing. Therefore, he emerged from the lake and did not go in for the second time. He immediately opened the map and headed towards the second lake. After exploring the second lake, Lin Huang then arrived at the location which was marked with a question mark on the map. It was a swamp. Bloody had marked it with a question mark because its Leech Pods were unable to detect whether if there were any hidden items in the swamp. The area of the swamp was no smaller than the first lake he had gone to. Based on the memory of the monsters which the Leech Pods had parasitized, there was nothing strange about this place. However, since it remained a mystery, Bloody had marked it on the map for Lin Huang so that it would not be neglected. After entering the swamp, Lin Huang activated his Telekinesis again. He walked deeper in the swamp and began to explore. He spent more time exploring the swamp compared to the time taken to examine the first lake. It took him about 40 minutes to complete combing the swamp. Thanks to his Telekinesis, he discovered the greatest secret of the swamp. A large number of monster carcasses were buried beneath. After leaving the swamp, Lin Huang spent another ten minutes exploring the third lake and still found nothing. "Let it be. Perhaps the rest of the places will be more or less the same." Since there was no new discovery after four attempts, Lin Huang''s desire to explore gradually subsided. "Let the burial ground be the final destination. I shall leave after exploring it." 772 The Burial Ground The burial ground was at the most western side of the island and was surrounded by mountains. It was already 6 p.m. when Lin Huang arrived at the valley. The sky was turning dark. As the setting sun glowed all over the valley, it added beauty to the scenery. A randomly captured photo of the scene could be set as a desktop or mobile wallpaper without the need to choose the perfect angle. Lin Huang captured a few of the videos as well, sharing them on his social media which he had not logged in to for a long time. He was not active on social media, and the total number of friends he had was less than ten. Just as he posted the videos, his friend commented within seconds. "That''s so beautiful. Where''s it?" Lin Huang then took a look at it and realized the person who had commented was Yi Yeyu. It was evident that she had a lot of free time. He then replied briefly, "The Cursed Land". Lin Huang then logged out of his social media as he did not have the time to chat with Yi Yeyu. Even imperial-levels would not put their guards down when they were in the forbidden land, let alone Lin Huang. As soon as he entered the valley, Lin Huang delved deeper and soon, he was at the deepest point of the valley. He went completely silent after seeing the scenery in the deepest part of the valley. He had no idea how to describe how he felt at the moment. Above the ground, white bones entirely covered the ground. There were several big pits in the valley. Apparently, humans were the ones who had dug them. The deepest pit was hundreds of meters deep. However, when Lin Huang peered into it, what he could see were still the remains of the monsters. Apart from that, he discovered nothing, not even a blade of grass. There were several versions about the origin of the burial ground that could be found online. However, they sounded ridiculous. Nobody knew the actual reason behind the formation of the ground. When the island was discovered, the burial ground had already existed for a couple of years. However, there was a most widespread version, and it was also the one which most people agreed with. This was what it said: The hidden god''s item was at the burial ground of the Cursed Land. The item had dominated all the monsters'' souls on the island. When all the monsters died, they returned to the place where the souls were kept. This was the only way where they could achieve peace. Since many of them believed this, many people dug the burial ground, making it appear thus. "It''s similar to the elephants'' graveyard, which people have been talking about on Earth." Lin Huang remembered that he had heard of this legend before back on Earth. When the elephants sensed they were near death, they would enter the deep forest during the last few days of their lives. Following the path, they would reach the elephants'' graveyard where they were buried. Of course, Lin Huang could not confirm whether if elephants'' graveyards really existed or not. "It''s less likely that it''d be a human-made burial ground. It must be related to the strange story behind the island. If I''m not mistaken, it''s the same thing that caused the formation of the burial ground and the curse cast on the island. However, nobody knows what it actually is. Be it an item or a living being, no one can confirm," Lin Huang speculated. He took a few photos and soon, he activated his Telekinesis. He then began to explore every single corner of the area. The burial ground was not really big at about 30 square meters. However, due to its depth, Lin Huang had to investigate carefully. The sky had turned completely dark even before the first round of exploration was completed. Far away in the sky, a red and a purple moon rose from different directions. It was a beautiful and cloudless night with the moonlight glinting off the ground without obstacles. The white bones buried beneath the burial ground looked even whiter. "It''s really a good place for the filming of a horror movie," Lin Huang grumbled. It was even creepier when the moonlight shone on the burial ground. Despite the sky becoming dark, it had no effect on Lin Huang''s investigation. The impact of the light ray on his eyesight was not significant, let alone given his Telekinesis and territorial skill. The investigation effect had nothing to do with the intensity of the light ray. At night, all the spiritual monsters would become active. However, the burial ground was an exception. There was no living monster here. Even imperial-levels or demigods would intentionally avoid this area. The remains buried beneath the burial ground were different from the rest of the spirits as they would not reanimate back to life and attack others. They seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep forever. "I have to complete the investigation twice before 10 p.m. After that, I can go back to the hotel and take my supper. I shall sleep after taking my bath." Lin Huang secretly planned. At about 8 p.m, Lin Huang was finishing up the first round of investigation at the burial ground. His Telekinesis penetrated through the gap of the remains and went 4,000 meters deep. However, he still did not manage to get to the deepest part of the burial ground. 4,000 meters was the maximum distance which Lin Huang''s Telekinesis could reach to retrieve information in detail. It was not because his Telekinesis power could no longer be extended, but because there was a substantial decrease in his ability to control his Telekinesis and risked deteriorating the accuracy of the investigation. Lin Huang was expecting to investigate with his Telekinesis in the first round whereby the investigation could be done precisely. If nothing was discovered, he would increase the depth of investigation in which his Telekinesis could reach. It would be fine if the investigation was not precise enough. If anything suspicious was found, he could use his Transformation Card, transforming himself into the Spectre and go underground for a more detailed investigation. Since the first round of investigation was about to end, Lin Huang seemed disappointed. He had scanned almost all the remains that were 4,000 meters beneath the ground. The performance of his oracle skill was at its peak as well. Observing all the skeletons that he could see with his eyes, there was nothing. After a short while, Lin Huang''s Telekinesis scanned through the last region of the burial ground. It penetrated through the gap of the skeletons that were all piled up, resembling a spider web that scattered all around the underground world. His Telekinesis power went deeper and deeper through the gaps and extended thousands of meters away. The underground world which was 4,000 meters deep was all revealed by Lin Huang''s Telekinesis. Even if it was a granule of sand, Lin Huang could clearly identify how many crystal surfaces it had. However, despite being able to detect things so precisely, Lin Huang could not find anything. After the first round of investigation, Lin Huang could hardly hide his disappointment. Although it was within his expectations, he was still unwilling to accept the truth. "Never mind. I shall follow my original plan to carry out the second round of investigation. If I find nothing, I''ll just go back to the hotel." Lin Huang then turned back, getting ready for the second round of investigation. However, he saw a cliff not far away from him. "The surface of the cliff is so smooth as if someone cut it out with a saber," Lin Huang mumbled. He then scanned it with his Telekinesis. However, after doing so, his Telekinesis disappeared as if it would never return. "What''s happening? Could the god''s item be right there in the mountain?" Lin Huang''s eyes brightened as he stared towards the cliff. He never thought he would stumble upon an unexpected discovery just by merely scanning the cliff for fun. 773 The Gods Item in the Mountain Lin Huang could confirm that there was a treasure in the cliff since he had detected something strange with his Telekinesis. It could be the god''s item that caused the weird phenomena to happen at the Cursed Land. "It''s highly possible that it''s a spiritual god''s item since it''s capable of engulfing my Telekinesis power. In addition to that, its characteristic is similar to a legendary god''s item''s." Lin Huang looked at the cliff with excitement. Since Telekinesis was a type of spiritual power, it would most probably be a spiritual item that could overwhelm his Telekinesis power. He appeared at the bottom of the cliff in a flash. Lin Huang then pressed against the rock wall which had a rough surface and was similar to an ordinary mountain. Again, he activated his ocular skill and carefully observed the cliff. However, he did not manage to find anything strange. He attempted to detect with his Telekinesis, and again, as soon as his Telekinesis power reached the rock wall, it disappeared. Since his ocular skill had been activated, Lin Huang could capture the energy waves that were created. They were completely transparent, and there was no force generated. Thanks to Lin Huang''s ocular skill and his Boundless Vision, he could observe things beyond what the average eye could see. Otherwise, he might not have noticed it. Lin Huang kept his Telekinesis activated while observing the cliff with his ocular skill. Colorless waves spread wider and wider on the surface of the cliff which was where his Telekinesis power was in contact with the cliff. It seemed like the waves tightly adhered to the surface of the cliff by an invisible isolation layer. Again, Lin Huang extended his hands towards the cliff. The position that he touched was right at the core of the waves. However, what he felt was similar to touching an ordinary rock. He could even pick up the rough texture on the surface of the rock caused by the rain as if the isolation layer did not exist at all. Lin Huang frowned. He fell into deep thought for a while, standing in his original position. After several moments, he suddenly raised his hand up. His palm was shrouded in black Life Power, and he smashed into the center of the waves created on the cliff. Bang! It seemed to be an ordinary attack, but his power should never be underestimated. A gaping pit was formed on the surface of the cliff with a diameter of more than two meters. "It doesn''t have any defensive power. It seems like I made the right guess. It''s an isolation layer with spirit. That''s why it doesn''t interfere with the substances on the surface of the cliff. It also explains why my palm can reach the rock and why my attack isn''t blocked. The isolation layer has ignored all the interference effects that occurred on the surface of the cliff." Lin Huang could then be more confident that there was something hidden in the mountain. Perhaps it was the spiritual god''s item, according to the legend. Upon the confirmation, Lin Huang then remained calm. He started thinking of ways to obtain the item. It was named as a god''s item not merely because of its grade. It was also because it had an instinct. The instinct it had was completely different from that of some evil creatures which were influenced by negative emotions. A god''s item could think independently and even could learn. Its intelligence could be compared to a human''s. Even a baby would be on alert when encountering strangers, let alone the intelligent god''s item. There were two primary methods to capture the god''s item. The first method was to suppress and capture by force. However, the captor had to meet a very high requirement in order to capture it with this method because the god''s item would fight hard. The captor would have to be at least a Virtual God or even stronger. The second method would be the influence method. One would have to research the god''s item''s preference beforehand in order to persuade it and coax it to enter into a contract with humans voluntarily. Lin Huang had not prepared for it before he came since he could not confirm if the god''s item really did exist on this island. His main intention had been to obtain the cross-ranking rewards and scout around if there was anything he could discover. He was not expecting himself to discover the legendary god''s item by sheer luck. "The god''s item is hidden somewhere in the mountain. It''s not easy to get it out of the mountain," Lin Huang thought to himself. Soon, he had a plan. He took out a Transformation Card, transforming into Spectre after crushing it. He then squeezed his hand against the mountain. However, Lin Huang''s hand did not penetrate the mountain. Instead, he was blocked by the transparent isolation layer. He felt a smooth and cold surface as he touched the isolation layer as if it was glass. "So, it''s true that the isolation layer only has effects on spirits. Spirits like Spectre would become isolated." Since Spectre, who could normally pass through mountains, was being blocked, Lin Huang could not think of a better solution at the moment. "If it doesn''t work, I guess I have to smash the entire mountain." As soon as the thought ran through his mind, an immense attraction force acted towards his palm that was touching the surface of the isolation layer. He wanted to retreat, but it was too late to do so. His body penetrated through the isolation layer in an instant and was being drawn into the mountain. Lin Huang''s body was steadily being dragged into the mountain by the immense force. No matter how hard he struggled against it, all his efforts were in vain. The force far exceeded his strength which was usually incomparable. Despite returning to his own body from his spectral form, the immense force still did not let go of him. What was so strange about it was that although he was inside the mountain, his movement was not restricted. There was very little difference compared to when he was in his spectral form. It seemed like the rock and soil were not real and that they were just an illusion. However, with his ocular skill, he could quickly confirm that it was not an illusion. He had thought that it was not real simply because his body was entirely wrapped by the force, isolating him from touching the substances. After realizing that his struggle was in vain, Lin Huang completely gave up. He waited until the immense force dragged him to its final destination. After a short while, Lin Huang could clearly feel that the force dragging him was weakening and he knew that they were reaching their destination. At the moment when the immense power disappeared, Lin Huang experienced a feeling of release. He immediately balanced himself and looked around, curious to know where he was. He was stunned as he looked around. "What''s happening?" Lin Huang''s eyes flew wide open. He had been brought to a dimension with a starry sky, and he was in zero gravity as he floated in space. Within his field of vision, the planets were so massive, making him feel insignificant. Soon, he saw an enormous object approaching him at an incredibly fast speed. It was obviously not a planet. However, its size exceeded all the planets that Lin Huang had ever seen. "A stone tablet?" Lin Huang gaped at the object in shock. He then quickly reacted. It must be the hidden god''s item in the mountain. 774 A Stone Table In the quiet skies, the black stone tablet was so colossal to the point that it far exceeded the size of anything Lin Huang had ever seen. It was floating in the air, exuding an ancient aura. Apparently, it had existed even longer than the dimension itself. Sensing the aura coming from the stone tablet, Lin Huang was reminded of the many memories that he had left behind. These were the memories from Earth before he started traveling. It was like a playback of a video in which he could recall each and every detail clearly. Even some of the once-blur memories were now like videos that had been recorded in high definition. He heard the creaking of the wooden door in his old house clearly when it was pushed open gently. The thread that was even thinner than a strand of hair could clearly be seen on his mother''s black turtleneck sweater. Also, he could count precisely how many ants had escaped the ant nest in which he had poured water into when he was young and mischievous. Even though he could not remember anything when he was a swaddled babe, he could now remember everything clearly. "What''s the stone tablet for? Its aura alone can affect my memory." As the stone tablet came nearer to him, Lin Huang then saw that the surface of the stone tablet had been struck by meteorites countless times. The great pits created by the meteorites scattered around three-quarters of its surface. In addition to that, there were apparent cracks that had begun to spread around the pits. Some of the cracks were rather significant and apparent. Lin Huang looked into these cracks and discovered that they were endless abysses. It seemed like the entire stone tablet was severely damaged. Based on the number of pits and the depth of the cracks, it was not easy to keep it whole without collapsing. "I don''t think that the crashing of the meteorites causes them. Since all the god''s items have instincts, it would''ve activated its defense shield when it encounters a meteor crash. It wouldn''t leave any traces on the stone tablet. In addition to the power of the god''s item, only a certain amount of damage can be caused to the stone tablet when its defense shield is completely activated. Causing such damage to the stone tablet is impossible. It''s most likely man-made creatures (including humans and monsters) who are capable of damaging a god''s item to this extent. Moreover, only True Gods or those who are stronger must''ve managed to do so. "Perhaps it''s not an ordinary god''s item. Despite having encountered damages to this extent, its power is still capable of covering the entire island that''s more than a million square meters, and it''s still casting curses." The more he analyzed it, the more he felt that the god''s item was out of the ordinary. Seeing the stone tablet advancing in his direction, he felt insecure. "I hope it''s not coming after me!" As that thought arose in Lin Huang''s mind, he immediately retreated, attempting to flee from the stone tablet. Soon, he realized that the stone tablet had changed its path and it was still following him. "It''s really coming after me!" Lin Huang''s face became grave, and he changed his flying direction again. He turned around and again, he saw that the stone tablet had changed its direction as well, chasing after him. He made several attempts to alter his direction and each time, the stone tablet followed. It was still heading for him, and to his horror, it was getting closer to him. Despite having activated his double acceleration and flying at his maximum speed, he did not manage to distance himself from the stone tablet. "I can''t escape!" Lin Huang then resigned to his fate as he knew that his efforts would be in vain even if he continued to escape. He decided not to run away. He crushed the Transformation Card, and his combat strength immediately leveled up from gold flame-level to immortal-level rank-4. He even had three spare Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards in his left sleeve. He then grabbed the Air Slicer with his right hand. He was floating in mid-air, facing the stone tablet head-on. He had a cold expression on his face as he braced himself to fight. The giant black stone tablet moved forward, and soon, it approached Lin Huang. Seeing that there were just merely hundreds of meters remaining, Lin Huang gathered the power of his sword skills, getting reading to attack. All of a sudden, the stone tablet suddenly stopped moving and lingered in front of Lin Huang who was about 100 meters away. Just as Lin Huang realized that something was amiss, a loud thud resembling the rumbling of thunder boomed. "Human, there''s something special about your soul." Lin Huang froze, sizing up his surroundings with his Telekinesis. However, he found nothing. He quickly regained his senses, fixing his gaze on the huge stone tablet. He then retreated hundreds of meters away, putting his guard up and staring in the direction where the stone tablet was with trepidation. There was nothing there, and obviously, the voice was coming from the stone tablet. "Don''t panic. I have no bad intentions towards humans." The voice was heard again. "Are you the stone tablet itself? Or is there a hidden creature in the stone tablet?" Lin Huang asked. "Since you have no bad intentions, why don''t you reveal your true body and talk to me face-to-face?" Lin Huang had seen many of the talking monsters after traveling to this world. However, apart from his Goldfinger Xiao Hei, he had never seen any other items that could talk. That was why when he heard its voice for the first time, he did not think that it was the stone tablet that had spoken. Still, when he could not find anything, he could then tell that the voice was coming from the stone tablet. However, he could not confirm whether if it was the stone tablet or the creature inside the stone tablet that had spoken. Lin Huang did not get an answer from it. After a moment of silence, he suddenly realized that the size of the stone tablet was decreasing drastically. In less than ten seconds, the huge stone tablet that used to be larger than the stars had shrunk to a height of only three meters. At almost the same time, the same voice was heard again. "Now, do you know who I am?" The answer was clear. Lin Huang was startled as he stared at the stone tablet close to him. He could not imagine that the colossal item could have possibly reduced its size to this extent. After a couple of moments, Lin Huang then recovered from his thoughts, but he was still alert. "You just said that you have no bad intentions towards humans. Why did you bring me here then?" "Your soul releases an aura that strikes me as familiar." The stone tablet paused for a moment. "If I''m not mistaken, you''re a traveler, aren''t you?" His heart plummeted when he heard this. For the first time, somebody managed to figure out his identity. Still, he maintained a neutral expression and did not answer its question. "I''m sorry if I sounded rude. I haven''t been talking to humans for a long time. My conversation skills have gotten rusty." The stone tablet then changed the topic. "Before asking you something personal, let me tell you about myself. "My previous master is actually just like you. He''s also a traveler. That''s why the aura the both of you exude is somewhat similar. Also, I can clearly sense the Goldfinger''s aura in your body because I used to be a Goldfinger too." "You''re also a Goldfinger?" Lin Huang was nervous. He could clearly remember what Xiao Hei had told him before about Goldfingers being able to subdue one another. He could also sense that the moment when he entered the dimension, Xiao Hei became quiet. When he used the Transformation Card, he did not receive any notification as well. Due to his anxiety, he neglected this earlier. As he recalled what had just happened, he believed that Xiao Hei might have sensed its existence and was forced to go into hiding. Because it was severely damaged, if it managed to overthrow Xiao Hei, part of its casualties could be recovered. As the thought crossed his mind, Xiao Hei''s face turned ghastly. Noticing the changes in Lin Huang''s facial expression, the stone tablet seemed to know what he was thinking. "Don''t worry. I''m not going to do anything to you and your Goldfinger. Taking over a 2-Star Authority Goldfinger isn''t going to have any significant effect on my recovery. Moreover, it''s in its complete form. If I were to engulf it, I might be putting myself at risk as it might devour me." "A 2-Star Authority Goldfinger?" Lin Huang mumbled. He was doubtful as he remembered that Xiao Hei had actually leveled up several times. "You know nothing about its authority?" The stone tablet questioned. "It seems like your Goldfinger has a bad attitude." "Hmm, it''s still acceptable." Lin Huang immediately recalled back then when he just obtained Xiao Hei, the remarks he had received for his Exclusive Card had been awful for a long period of time. "Could you tell me more about that?" "It''s pretty simple. It''s related to the host''s life level. An ordinary person would normally have a 1-Star Authority Goldfinger whereas a transcendent''s Goldfinger would be upgraded to 2-Star Authority. After becoming a God, one''s Goldfinger would be upgraded to 3-Star Authority, and so on." "So, do you mean that the notification we received from the system regarding the upgrade in authority isn''t exactly an upgrade in the Goldfinger''s Star Authority?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "What you mean should be the upgrade in its functionality which includes functions unlocking and upgrading. It''s the upgrade it obtains when it meets a certain requirement. It has nothing to do with the host''s life level. The authority it has over the functionality and its Star Authority are two different things. However, each time the Star Authority levels up, some of the functions will be unlocked as well." Lin Huang was suddenly enlightened after listening to the stone tablet''s explanation. "Can I ask you some other questions?" The stone tablet''s explanation had given Lin Huang the courage to ask further. "Shoot away. I''ll try my best to answer." "What''s your Star Authority?" Lin Huang tried his luck. "4-Star." The stone tablet did not try to hide anything from him. "4-Star?! Does it mean that your previous master is even stronger than a God?" Lin Huang was shocked. "Yes, indeed. His ability ranks above of many powerful men." "Is he dead?" Under normal circumstances, Goldfingers would never leave their masters. Since the stone tablet was here and was severely damaged, Lin Huang assumed something must have happened. After a moment of silence, the stone tablet answered solemnly, "Yes." "With his abilities and your help, how could he have died?" Lin Huang could not imagine how the stone tablet''s master died. "He offended a mighty enemy." The stone tablet was trying to avoid the question. Obviously, it was a topic that it did not want to talk about. As Lin Huang realized this, he did not ask any further. He remained silent for a couple of moments, and soon, he changed the topic. "Why do you want to bring me here? I don''t think it''s simply because the aura which my soul releases is similar to that of your master''s." Again, the stone tablet kept quiet. After several moments, it said, "Let me tell you the truth. The reason why I''m bringing you here is that I wish that you can become my host." "Wait. You know that I can only have a contract with one Goldfinger, don''t you?" Lin Huang frowned. Under normal circumstances, he would, of course, not mind having another Goldfinger. However, he could remember that the contract with the Goldfinger was unique and it would be impossible for him to sign another contract. "That''s simple. You just need to terminate the contract with your current Goldfinger." 775 A Conversation with the Stone Table "Since you know nothing about your Goldfinger, I can surmise that the attitude of your current Goldfinger is quite bad. It might not like you either. Considering that it''s only a 2-Star Goldfinger, you still won''t know whether it can level up to 3- or 4-Star. "But I''m different. I''m a 4-Star Goldfinger. All the functionalities from 1-Star to 4-Star have already been activated. Despite my authority being restricted to only 2-Star after getting into a contract with you, I''ll definitely be stronger than your current Goldfinger. If necessary, I can even activate my 3-Star Authority with some special skills to provide assistance to you. "By the way, I forgot to tell you that I''m capable of dominating spirits. To be exact, my functions include engulfing, controlling, sealing, endowing with spirits, and more. If I may exaggerate, I possess many skills that spirits have. I was on Level-S when I was a beginner. It''s a level with the most powerful functions." "Level-S?" Lin Huang picked up yet another concept which he had never heard from Xiao Hei before. "It''s our initial grading quality," the stone tablet explained, "The lowest level would be Level-D, followed by C, B, A, and S." "A Level-D Goldfinger basically has defects as some of them don''t even have an instinct. However, some of the Level-D Goldfingers with acceptable functions might be assigned to some unlucky travelers. "Most travelers will randomly be assigned a Level-C or Level-B Goldfinger. Less than 1% of them will get a level-A Goldfinger. It has been said that the probability of getting a Level-S Goldfinger is less than 0.0001. "Since your Goldfinger is hiding this from you, ostensibly, it''s less likely to be a Level-A Goldfinger. If it''s a Level-S Goldfinger, it''s definitely going to brag about it. It won''t keep quiet like this." After understanding what the grading quality was all about, Lin Huang remained quiet. He was not considering the stone tablet''s suggestion though. Instead, he was secretly guessing Xiao Hei''s level. After a couple of moments, the stone tablet then asked, "How''s it? Have you made up your mind?" "I''m sorry. I think Xiao Hei is great. I''ve been with it for several years, and I''ve gotten used to it. I''m not going to change." Lin Huang shook his head and rejected it. "I don''t really understand the logic behind this. I thought humans used to say ''The new should replace the old''?" "Well, there''s indeed a phrase like this. However, there''s also a saying which goes ''Choose something that best suits your needs''." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head. "The golden ax and the silver ax aren''t as good as my iron ax. Perhaps you''re much stronger than Xiao Hei, but I''m pretty satisfied with Xiao Hei''s functions. I''m not going to change." "You''re a fascinating person," the stone tablet commented, "My previous master told me something like this before. People on the planet where he was born all strove to get the best car, the best house, the nicest clothing, the prettiest woman Humans have always been doing things like that regardless of where they are. "Humans have an endless desire like a bottomless dark pit. There are always more beautiful clothes, prettier women, and better cars in this world. If one were to endlessly chase after things like that, spending even a lifetime on that will not be enough for them. "Perhaps giving what one desires can temporarily satisfy one''s need. However, people tend to ask for more after feeling satisfied. They''ll ask for more to have greater satisfaction and you''ll need to give more. In the end, you''ll be devoured when you can no longer satisfy them." Lin Huang shared, "This sounds like the concept of the ascetic cultivators. I''ve met those who only need a few essentials whereas the rest of the things are unnecessary to them. The clothes that they are wearing have patches everywhere, and they only eat once in a few years. The rest of the time, they survive by only drinking water. Even during their training sessions, they don''t need external resources. What they rely on are constantly oppressing their bodies and the energy of their souls." What Lin Huang said reminded the stone tablet of the ascetic cultivators it had encountered. "There''s a big difference between the ascetic cultivators and me." Lin Huang roughly guessed that they must be similar to the ascetic monks on Earth. "The ascetic cultivators never strive for anything, but I will when there''s the need to do so. I don''t take whatever that doesn''t belong to me, unlike the ascetic cultivators who refuse all worldly goods." "So, do you think that I''m something that you shouldn''t take?" The stone tablet asked when it heard what Lin Huang said. "If I need to exchange Xiao Hei for you, I don''t think that''s what I should do." Lin Huang nodded. "Even if you''re a 5-Star Goldfinger that''s in perfect condition, I shouldn''t take you as well." "Should I say that you''re dumb or that you''re stubborn?" The stone tablet had no idea how to comment on Lin Huang. "If I were to replace Xiao Hei with a Goldfinger that has more stars, I''d rather train Xiao Hei until it reaches 4- or 5-Stars. I believe Xiao Hei will be on par with the Goldfingers that are on the same level by then." Lin Huang had no idea where he got the courage to say words like that. The stone tablet kept quiet for a long while before responding, "Xiao Hei is lucky to have met you." "I think that I''m lucky to meet Xiao Hei though. Without Xiao Hei, I wouldn''t have been able to survive in this world for even three months. Because of it, I''m still alive now." Lin Huang knew very well that without the Monster Card, Bai, he would not have passed the Reserve Hunter assessment. All credits should go to Xiao Hei. "I hope that you''ll appreciate it till the end" The stone tablet sounded depressed. Lin Huang did not know if it was because it was thinking of its previous master. It stopped being emotional after a while and asked, "Human, I saw that you were digging the burial ground just now. What are you looking for?" "The god''s item," Lin Huang said. He then briefly told the stone tablet about the Cursed Land. "I''m looking for a spiritual god''s item that can store the Divine Fire in my body. I didn''t manage to find any god''s item, but I found you." "How did you get a Life Fire of this level?" The stone tablet knew Lin Huang''s body condition. "It''s definitely a good thing to have a high-level Life Fire. However, you''re in trouble now. None of the monsters'' souls in this gravel world can withstand your Life Fire." "I know. That''s why I''m looking for a god''s item or a god''s relic with a spirit that can substitute the monster soul." Lin Huang was helpless. "That''s right. But there are only a small number of god''s items and god''s relics in the gravel world, let alone those with spirit." The stone tablet could understand the gravel world quite well. "I guess you won''t be able to gather enough god''s items and god''s relics to level up to immortal-level rank-9 after tens of years." "Do you have any ways to overcome my problem?" Lin Huang could vaguely feel that the stone tablet might have a solution. "Yes, I do. But whether you want to use it or not depends on you." The stone tablet smiled. 776 The Deal Has Been Made "What''s that?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "I''ve told you earlier that I''ve mastered many of the spirit secret skills." The stone tablet then explained, "I guess one of them can help you with your problem." "Which skill is that?" Lin Huang asked skeptically. "It''s the Spirit Visualization skill." It did not explain any further. "Do you mean that I could visualize the True God-level monster''s soul with the Spirit Visualization skill, making it the container to store the Divine Fire in my body?" After listening to the stone table''s terse answer, Lin Huang immediately understood what it meant. Lin Huang knew a little about the Spirit Visualization skill. It was a talent that was usually used to visualize a particular object, and his body could imitate the corresponding monster''s soul. The visualized object could be the monster''s skeleton, the monster''s remains, a statue, a portrait, and more. However, the difficulty level of cultivating a skill like this was extremely high. Also, it had a very high requirement of one''s comprehension and intelligence, without which, it would be difficult to even master the regular visualization skill, let alone the True God-level one. "Yeah, you''re right. Are you interested in giving it a try?" The stone tablet tempted. "What would it cost?" Lin Huang knew very well that the price for the skill to visualize the True God-level monster soul would come at a huge cost. It was impossible that the stone tablet would give it to him for free. After raising his question, the stone tablet remained silent for a moment. Lin Huang did not urge it to answer though. He patiently waited for its reply instead. After a couple of moments, the stone tablet seemed to have made up its mind. "I want to create a clone and keep it in your body." Lin Huang frowned when he heard what it said. If he allowed the stone tablet to enter his body, it would know many of his secrets. What it asked for had surpassed what his tolerance level. "I''m not interested in knowing your personal issues. However, my real body is trapped in the burial ground. There''s only one way to leave, which is to look for a new host. Since you don''t agree with becoming my new host, I''m not forcing you to do so. I just wish that you can bring along my clone when you leave. Then, I''ll get to access the outside world through my clone, and it''ll be easier for me to look for a new host." The stone tablet knew what Lin Huang was concerned about. In fact, all the travelers who owned a Goldfinger would have the same concern. "I can create a shield imprint that blocks my clone from reaching your secrets. You don''t need to worry about me having access to your personal matters then." Right this moment, Xiao Hei''s voice was suddenly heard. "Just promise it!" "Are you sure?" Lin Huang was stunned and immediately contacted Xiao Hei through his mind. "You can promise the stone tablet, but you have to request for something. I don''t feel secure if it were to create its own shield" After communicating with Xiao Hei, Lin Huang accepted its suggestion. "Alright, I promise you, but I have a request," Lin Huang stated what he had just discussed with Xiao Hei, "I don''t need you to create a shield imprint. I just need your clone to be a 2-Star Goldfinger." "That''s not a problem. With my current ability, I''ve only managed to create a 3-Star clone, and it''s going to consume quite a large portion of my power. To find a new host, a 2-Star Goldfinger is sufficient." The stone tablet immediately agreed with him. "I''ll pass you the skill first." After finishing its words, a golden glow appeared and penetrated right between Lin Huang''s brows. "The visualization skill is named the True Spirit Guide. There are 183 portraits of true spiritual monsters which are True God-level monsters. There are descriptions of various types of monsters in the guide. Choose whichever you like. After visualizing it, the embryo of the monster''s soul will be formed in the form of a monster egg. The spiritual power that you need to fill has to be at least equivalent to the strength of the Demigod''s soul in order to hatch the monster egg. Of course, it''s not necessary for you to kill a Demigod-level monster. You can also kill a large number of monsters with low combat strength in order to accumulate their spiritual power." "Although the monster egg''s combat strength is only on Demigod-level after hatching, the soul itself is still on True God-level. It''s not going to be afraid of the Divine Fire in your body, and it''ll be sufficient for you to use it as a container for your Divine Fire." As the stone tablet explained the circumstances, Lin Huang quickly skimmed through the True Spirit Guide. He could then confirm that the skill would work for him. "Alright, you can create your clone now." "Wait a moment." Upon getting the confirmation from Lin Huang, the size of the stone tablet expanded rapidly. In just a few seconds, it recovered to its initial size, transforming into a massive object that was even bigger than the stars. After returning to its original form, a shadow slowly left the stone tablet like its spirit was freeing itself from the physical body. The overlapping images seemed unreal. As time passed, the shadow gradually withdrew itself from the body of the stone tablet, and the number of overlapping images was getting lesser and lesser. It took about five minutes to leave the stone tablet completely. It looked exactly like the stone tablet, but it was somewhat similar to a virtual projection as it was semi-transparent. After leaving its body, the size of the shadow diminished quickly. After a short while, its size reduced from the colossal size of the stone tablet to only three meters tall. However, it did not stop shrinking. Lin Huang was shocked to witness it rapidly shrinking to the size of a palm. The huge stone tablet had now become a token in the shape of a tombstone. It gradually floated in front of Lin Huang. "The clone only has the basic functions of a 2-Star Goldfinger. The authority to use the functions are open to you. However, if you were to use it, you have to pay for it with an equal amount of spiritual power." Lin Huang did not expect the stone tablet to give him the authority to use the functions. It was already deemed a fair exchange to use the functions at an equal value since he could not use Xiao Hei''s functions for free either. "In order for it to work conveniently, I''ve granted it consciousness, and it has inherited most of my memory. It can be considered a semi-finished 2-Star Goldfinger. I hope that both of you can get along with each other happily." After the stone tablet finished its sentence, the clone flew around Lin Huang''s body and soon, it transformed into a golden glow and went right between Lin Huang''s brows. Lin Huang immediately inspected the world within his body. After the clone had entered its body, it circled around in his body. It noticed the existence of Xiao Hei, but it did not provoke it. Instead, it moved away and kept a certain distance from Xiao Hei. It then landed. After settling down, the body of the stone tablet''s clone began to expand. However, it stopped changing in size after growing to the size of an ordinary planet. Lin Huang noticed that it was different from how it had looked like when it was in its shadow form. The stone tablet''s clone looked like a tangible object now. Lin Huang then felt relieved. Seeing that Lin Huang had recovered from his thoughts, the stone tablet then said, "Since the deal has been done, I''ll send you out if you don''t have any other questions." Lin Huang gazed upon the sky, keeping quiet for a moment and finally, he asked out of curiosity, "Where''s this place? How did you manage to bring me here? Is it a teleportation dimension?" "The dimension doesn''t really exist. It''s a spiritual world. I didn''t drag your body over. It was your soul instead. Your body is still right in front of the cliff," the stone tablet explained. "Why can''t you leave then? I remember that Xiao Hei told me before that once the host dies, the Goldfinger will be recalled and reassigned," Lin Huang continued. "The soul of my previous host isn''t completely dead. The contract between us hasn''t been terminated as well. It has become a contract without a host whereby one party no longer has an instinct." The stone tablet further explained, "Just when the spiritual world was being created, my host integrated his soul with this world. Simply because of the remaining soul, the contract between us can''t be terminated. The spiritual world has since become a prison for me. The only way to leave this place is to look for a new host and enter a new contract so the current contract can be replaced." "I understand. I''ll try my best to look for a new host for you," Lin Huang promised. 777 Canst Afford Anything At the safety zone of Division 3, foothold No. 3A5, Wanbao City. A young man was sleeping soundlessly in the top management room of a luxurious hotel. The Emperor''s Heart Ring on his left hand suddenly vibrated. "Who is it?" The young man reluctantly tapped the communication page of his Emperor''s Heart Ring open having been disturbed from his slumber. After identifying who the person who called him was, he hesitated for a while, but he still ended up accepting the person''s video call with a frown. "I can finally reach you!" A beautiful lady with long legs appeared and soon, she realized that the person she called was lying in bed. It seemed like he did not want to get up from bed at all. "Lin Huang, why are you still sleeping? What''s the time now?" "Sis, do you know that we''re not in the same time zone? It''s not even 5 a.m. here..." Lin Huang slightly shifted the camera. Dawn was breaking, and the sun had not even risen yet. "Eh, I forgot. It''s about 11 a.m. here, and it''s lunchtime soon." Yi Yeyu then recalled that they were in different time zones. Then, she said confidently, "So are you trying to say that I''m disturbing your sleep? Why don''t you just ignore my call?" "Don''t you know that you''re an expert at calling incessantly?" Lin Huang sighed helplessly. This was the main reason why Lin Huang had not chosen to ignore her call. It seemed like she could not refute. She then rolled her eyes at Lin Huang and changed the topic. "I couldn''t seem to reach you at all yesterday. Did you really go to the Cursed Land in Division 3?" "Yeah, I disabled the communication function." Lin Huang nodded his head. Under normal circumstances, most people would decide to disable the communication function while exploring the danger zones temporarily. This was to avoid getting themselves from getting into trouble by receiving calls from others when they were in danger or when they had to hide. Of course, Lin Huang had done the same as the place he had gone to was the Cursed Land. "So, the videos and photos that you posted on your social media were taken in the Cursed Land?" Yi Yeyu asked. "Yes. Why?" Lin Huang felt that Yi Yeyu''s facial expression seemed weird. "No Nothing." After uttering her words, she realized that Lin Huang was staring at her quietly. She then told him the truth grudgingly, "I''ve shared your videos and photos on my social media. My friends shared them as well. It ended up getting more than 800,000 shares and approximately a billion views. The videos and photos are trending on a few of the social media platforms right now." "Many of them said that they must visit the place in the video at least once in their lifetime." Yi Yeyu''s voice became softer and softer. Lin Huang did not expect that the photos and videos that he had randomly captured would become the latest social media trend. Remaining silent for a while, Lin Huang then asked, "Did you tell them it''s the Cursed Land?" They would die if they were to enter forbidden areas like the Cursed Land randomly. He was worried that if Yi Yeyu revealed the location, those who were still weak would die there. "No, I didn''t. I just said that a friend of mine took the photos and videos in Division 3 and that I''m not sure about its exact location. I was wondering whether you were joking when you said you''re going to visit the Cursed Land. Even then, I''m afraid that some of the dumbasses might go there and seek for death after I tell them the location." Yi Yeyu immediately shook her head. Although she would make silly mistakes, she would still consider the consequences when dealing with a serious issue. "That''s great." Lin Huang felt relieved. "It''s just been a day, and the videos and photos have become viral. I''m afraid that they''ll be widespread on social media in the future. I guess many of the travel companies are going to seize the opportunity, offering tour packages to Division 3." Yi Yeyu forced a smile. "That''s good as one gains knowledge when they travel. Just don''t go to the dangerous spots. Most of the places in Division 3 are actually considered safe." Lin Huang did not mind at all. It had nothing to do with him as long as the tourists did not go to the forbidden land. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you this." Yi Yeyu suddenly recalled why she had called Lin Huang. "My brother has just leveled up to immortal-level a few days ago. My family is going to send him to Division 3 for training. He''s going to leave tomorrow early in the morning. I heard that his first destination is at Wanbao City which is situated in the grade-A foothold. Recently, they''ve organized an auction over there. You can go and have a look and ask him out for lunch." Lin Huang knew that Yi Yeyu was worried about Yi Zheng since he was alone and was unfamiliar with the place. He then promised her, "I''m at Wanbao City now. Ask him to call me once he reaches." "Thanks!" After dealing with the important stuff, both of them chatted casually for a while until Yi Yeyu''s housekeeper started urging her to go for lunch. She then hung up the phone. The time projected by Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring was about 6 a.m. now. Both of them had been on the phone for nearly an hour. "Yi Zheng has leveled up to immortal-level. Perhaps he''s one of the youngest people who managed to get to immortal-level in Division 7." When Lin Huang was still on white flame-level, Yi Zheng had already gotten to purple flame-level. Lin Huang did not feel surprised that he had managed to achieve immortal-level. He was not even 25 years of age but was already an immortal-level. The boy was a genius. "The Yi family is sending their eldest grandson to Division 3 for training. They''re really strict." Lin Huang was impressed by how they trained the younger generation. At least, the Yi family had their very own way of training. Many others who came from smaller royal families would be unable to compare to them. Yi Yeyu had awoken lin Huang early in the morning. He wanted to sleep for a little longer as he had been swamped over the past few days and did not get to sleep well. However, he could no longer fall asleep after tossing and turning in the bed for a while. He had no choice but to get up. After taking his shower, he changed his clothes and went downstairs for breakfast. Instead of going out to paint the town red, he went back to his hotel room. He was not a homebody, but the reason why he came to Wanbao City was not to go on a vacation. Lin Huan had rushed back to Wanbao City as soon as he returned from the Cursed Land because he wanted to attend the auction which Yi Yeyu had just mentioned. On the sofa in the living room, he browsed through the auction website and began looking at the items. There was a variety of items being sold. However, there were only a few photos and a brief description of each of the item. The prices were not mentioned at all. "There are a total of 273 items. The auction will officially start three days later, but I can''t afford anything now." Lin Huang forced a smile helplessly. When he had upgraded to gold flame-level in the Cursed Land, the True God-level Life Fire had almost engulfed all his Life Crystals. He could not afford to place a bid on almost all the items displayed on the website, let alone buy them. "After the auction has ended, there''ll be an underground auction that sells illegal items. I heard that they have God Crashers this time. I''ve no idea if that''s true." The God Crasher was the reason why Lin Huang came to Wanbao City. 778 A Way to Make Money Among the six God Crashers that Lin Huang had, five were completely destroyed during the battle with the evil spirit. Absolutely nothing was left. The last God Crasher he had was severely damaged and could only be used as a decoration now. He had lost his trump card. Therefore, when he heard about the news of the God Crashers, he immediately rushed to Wanbao City. Upon arriving at Wanbao City, Lin Huang found out that he was facing a severe problem C he had no money! The Divine Fire in his body had engulfed all his Life Crystals. He might not even be able to afford an ordinary item, let alone the God Crashers for sale at the underground auction. "The 33rd edition of the God Crasher is the latest model which the Union Government is selling at 280 million Life Crystals. It''ll be priced at 350 million Life Crystals or more at the underground auction. Even the rest of the older models that have become obsolete are going to cost me more than 80 million Life Crystals. The 28th edition of the God Crasher that experiences deteriorating performance used to fetch 230 million Life Crystals on average at the underground auction," he thought to himself. The reason why the 28th edition of the God Crasher was expensive was simply that it was the most successfully modified model of the third generation God Crasher. Everybody knew that the third generation God Crasher was the most powerful one and that its only limitation was that it could only be used ten times. According to the test data, the 28th edition of the God Crasher managed to achieve 82% more power than the third generation one. It was known to be one of the best versions of the third generation God Crashers. In addition to that, new materials had been used to replace the old ones, solving the problem that occurred due to the restriction imposed on the number of usages. Many of them were optimistic about the 28th edition of the God Crasher. After using it, the Union Government discovered that despite having been able to overcome the problem of the number of usages, another issue arose. The barrel of the bulk-produced God Crashers began , and the precision of its attack was affected. The higher the number of usages, the more severe the distortion in the barrel, significantly impacting the precision of its attack. The God Crasher was actually a failed product. It was once a hot-selling item when it was first launched. However, after the problem of the distortion in its barrel was revealed, the new generation of God Crashers rapidly replaced it. Some of the top gun masters were fascinated by this product and even boasted of it being a masterpiece because the precision of its attack could be adjusted personally. Although an ordinary gun master could only use it 30 times, many of the mighty gun masters could use it for about 80 times without affecting its precision. The top-ranked gun masters could even use it for more than 100 times. As a result, many of the top gun masters flaunted their abilities, comparing the number of usages between one another. Moreover, these gun masters would usually place a bid for this model of the God Crasher at the auction. "I wonder if the news that about them selling the God Crashers at the underground auction is true. If it is, which model are they going to sell?" Lin Huang zoned out, but soon, he snapped back to reality, thinking of the problem that he was facing. "Regardless of what model they''re going to sell, I need to think of a way to make money. The auction is starting in three days." Lin Huang had considered borrowing money from Yi Zheng, but he dismissed the thought quickly. There would surely be something that Yi Zheng wanted to buy at the auction. If he were to borrow money from him to buy the God Crasher, it was going to be a considerable sum. He did not want to affect Yi Zheng''s purchasing decision. Furthermore, he was a person that did not like to owe others anything. When Lin Huang was living on Earth, he had borrowed an eraser from his classmate when he went to school. He returned it to his classmate right after using it, not wanting to keep it any longer. If he were to borrow notes from his classmate, he would send them back to his classmate''s house by bicycle right after he had finished copying them. He would not keep it with him until the second day. After he began to work, he ate steamed buns for two months when he was in serious financial strain. The steamed buns cost him two yuan for two meals and the preserved vegetables cost him 1.5 yuan. He spent only 3.5 yuan in a day. He lived in a house no bigger than four square meters whereby he could only put a bed in it. The rental of his house was cheap at only 220 yuan per month. Even then, he had never borrowed money from anyone. It seemed to be impossible to earn hundred million of Life Crystals in three days. However, Lin Huang soon understood what he needed to do. "It isn''t difficult to make money by selling the monster carcasses after killing immortal-level monsters. I have three more days to go. Although the Abyss Brink is a place where high-level monsters gather, the immortal-level monsters are scattered all around. I''ll spend most of my time traveling. If it takes me ten minutes on average to kill a monster, I''ll need about 17 hours to kill 100 monsters. "It won''t be a problem if I''m on the Stairway Tree. I''m already on the 55th checkpoint at the Stairway Tree. The 56th checkpoint is the level to hunt monsters. The monsters on that checkpoint range from immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9." "According to the points on the Stairway Tree, I''ll gain 640 points for each of the immortal-level rank-7 monsters killed. I will obtain 1,280 points if I kill an immortal-level rank-8 monster. That''s equivalent to 1.28 million Life Crystals." Although that was what he was thinking about, Lin Huang was not going to convert the points to Life Crystals. He wanted to buy some of the rare items with his points so that he could sell them at the auction. Without a doubt, he could make way more money this way. "Ancient relics are a hard currency. If I were to exchange my points for an ancient relic and sell it at the auction, the Life Crystals I obtain would definitely be 30% more than what I can get from directly converting the points to Life Crystals. The ancient telekinetic weapon belongs to an extremely rare category. Selling it at 50% higher is possible. There are also some modified guns that I can sell at the auction to make some money. If that''s still not enough, I''ll accumulate more points to exchange for the demigod relic and sell it at the auction!" There were various types of items being sold at the Stairway Mall. Aside from some of the illegal goods that were prohibited for sale by the Union Government, there was nothing that one could not find from the Stairway Mall. The God Crasher was an illegal item. Since it was extremely powerful in addition to the requirements for users not being very high, it was a very dangerous weapon. Unlike Lin Huang, not every one of them would buy the God Crashers for emergency use. Many of them who bought items like this from the underground auction were from the underworld. Organizations such as the Hunter Association and the Adventurer Paradise would not need to buy weapons from the underground auction as they could directly purchase it from the Union Government. After making up his mind on how to earn money, Lin Huang did not hesitate any longer. He immediately tapped the Genius Union''s website, which he had not visited for a long time, open. He then logged into the system after scanning his identity code. "Since Yi Zheng isn''t here yet and nobody is going to interrupt me, let''s collect some points first!" 779 Ism Logging in to Collect Points The 55th checkpoint on the Stairway Tree was the fourth human gathering point. When Lin Huang was still a blue flame-level, he had almost given his all to reach this checkpoint. He had not logged into his account for about two months and had never used the points he collected. However, he was still ranked first on the leaderboard. All the members of the Genius Union could see the name who ranked first on the leaderboard light up the second Lin Huang logged in. All of a sudden, the Genius Union that had gone quiet for almost a month became active. "He disappeared for two months, and now, Lin Xie has finally logged in!" "I wonder if Lin Xie is going to collect more points this round!" "Do you think that he''s still on the 21st checkpoint? Starting from the 56th checkpoint right until the 60th checkpoint, the monsters on any of these levels will be on immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9. Lin Xie''s combat strength is only on blue flame-level regardless of how strong he is. Do you think that a blue flame-level is capable of dealing with the monster horde that consists of immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9s with ease?" "You''re right. Although two months have passed and he has leveled up to purple flame-level, it''s less likely that he''s capable of doing so." Of course, Lin Huang had no idea that the people were discussing him. After logging into the Genius Union, he did not dive headfirst into the challenge. He headed directly towards the foothold of the Heaven Alliance. The 55th checkpoint on the Stairway Tree was one of the checkpoints with the most intense competition among all other organizations because most of their combat strength was on immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9. There were many formidable challengers there. Despite the challengers on the 63rd checkpoint being much stronger, the number of challengers on that checkpoint was less than a hundredth of those on the 55th checkpoint. On the 55th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, the number of members from the Heaven Alliance alone had exceeded 1,500. Of course, the Heaven Alliance was the organization with the most number of challengers on this checkpoint. The Hong Alliance ranked second, and the number of challengers who lingered at this checkpoint was more than 900. There were about 800 members from the Tang Alliance that took third place. There were a total of 268 genius organizations in the Genius Union. As one reached the 55th checkpoint, it was pretty easy to determine who the strong and the weak ones were. Those that managed to get into the first echelon would, of course, be the Heaven Alliance, the Hong Alliance, the Tang Alliance, and the Divine Alliance. They had more than 500 members on the 55th checkpoint. 11 organizations got into the second echelon, and they had more than 100 members on the 55th checkpoint. The number of challengers was slightly higher at the third echelon as there were about 50 of them. There were more than 20 of them who managed to reach the 55th checkpoint. Next would be the fourth echelon with only a few of them who were capable of getting to the 55th checkpoint. It was the echelon with the most members -- about 180 of them. Lastly, it would be the genius organizations that occupied the lowest level in the hierarchy. None of the members managed to reach the 55th checkpoint, and there were about ten such organizations. Of course, the Heaven Alliance was known to be the strongest genius organization in the Genius Union, not because of the number of people they had. Most importantly, it was because of the existence of the dominant challengers. Excluding Lin Huang, there were 18 supreme geniuses from the Heaven Alliance, 15 of whom were on immortal-level rank-9. The other three were on immortal-level rank-7 or rank-8. Their abilities were sufficient to kill an imperial-level. Despite the Hong Alliance ranking second based on their overall abilities, they only had 12 supreme geniuses. There were only 7 of them who were on immortal-level rank-9 which was less than half the number from the Heaven Alliance. As for the Tang Alliance and the Divine Alliance, the number of supreme genius they had was much lesser; there were less than ten of them. Simply because the Heaven Alliance had completely revealed how powerful it was on the 55th checkpoint, most people no longer dared to offend the members. This was different from what had happened on the previous checkpoints whereby the challengers from the Divine Alliance dared to provoke them as the latter did not seem to be much weaker than the Heaven Alliance''s members. As Lin Huang walked towards the foothold of the Heaven Alliance, he encountered challengers from various genius organizations. He was mentally prepared to be challenged, but nothing happened at all. Many people were watching him, and each of them saluted him with their glances. None of them came to block his way. "Could they have given up on challenging me as they know that I''ve used up all the points and there''s nothing they can get from me?" Lin Huang guessed. In fact, the truth was that the Heaven Alliance was immensely powerful on the 55th checkpoint. The Heaven Alliance had the most number of people at this checkpoint, occupying the three largest branches on the Stairway Tree. Three immortal-level members guarded the three footholds. Lin Huang was walking on the first branch where the reception of the Heaven Alliance was. Earlier, he had logged out as soon as he reached the 55th checkpoint, so he had never been to the Heaven Alliance''s foothold on this checkpoint. Of course, he had to meet them now since he was here. In just a short while, Lin Huang arrived at the bubble leaf where the reception was. The building could be clearly seen through the semi-transparent white bubble. After confirming that he was at the right place, Lin Huang took a step forward and pressed his palm against the surface of the bubble. A couple of moments later, a small door that was about two meters tall was activated, and Lin Huang strode towards it. The moment as he entered the dimension of the leaf, a tall and young lady welcomed him. "Mr. Lin, please come with me." Lin Huang was stunned, but he immediately followed her. "Did you guys know that I was coming?" "Yes, we knew right after you logged into the Genius Union. Soon after, you headed towards the Heaven Alliance''s foothold. The Surveillance Mosquito captured it," she said while sizing Lin Huang up. "Where are you bringing me to?" Lin Huang could roughly guess the answer, but he wanted to verify it. "To meet the guardians." The lady''s answer was as he expected. The guardians were the three immortal-level rank-9 supreme geniuses on the 55th checkpoint. Each of them guarded one foothold on the 55th checkpoint, hence they were called the guardians. "Who''s the guardian here?" Aside from Chan Dou, Lin Huang had no idea what the names of the rest of the supreme genius were. He heeded no attention to information like this. "It''s Master Feng Yi." "Feng Yi?" Lin Huang knew nothing about this person. The lady kept quiet after that and did not explain any further. Lin Huang did not bother to ask as well since there would be no difference regardless of who the guardian was. After a short while, Lin Huang followed the lady, and the both of them arrived at a door. "You may enter..." It seemed like the lady had something else to say, but she ended up keeping mum. Lin Huang frowned as he noticed this and he pushed the door open. As he entered, Lin Huang realized that the room was small with an area of less than 30 square meters. There was a towering book cabinet along the wall and a sturdy man who had his back facing him. He was standing in front of the book cabinet as if he was looking for something. "Have a seat," the man said without turning his head around as if he heard Lin Huang''s entrance. Lin Huang did not say anything as he sat down on the sofa placed on the side of the room. After several moments, the man took a book from the book rack and turned around. He then put the book on his desk and started studying Lin Huang. After studying him, Feng Yi then said without any facial expression, "Lin Xie, let us know if there''s anything you need from us. Chan Dou has told us all about you." Nobody could ascertain if he were pleased or upset by his voice. Lin Huang thought that he would make small talk with him first. Unexpectedly, he was so straightforward. "Let me be frank with you. I need the complete details for the levels after the 55th checkpoint, including the information after the 63rd checkpoint," Lin Huang told him his real intention. Feng Yi frowned but soon, he maintained a neutral expression. "I can send you the information starting from the 55th to the 63rd checkpoints. As for the information after the 63rd checkpoint, only the chief and the deputy chief have the authority to send that to you. I don''t have sufficient authority over that." "It''s okay. I''ll have the details from the 55th to the 63rd checkpoints then. I''m not urgently in need of the information after checkpoint 63. I''ll get it from the chief later on when I''m free." Lin Huang nodded. He was not surprised. Many organizations treated the information about the Stairway Tree after checkpoint 55 as private and confidential. The information for the checkpoints after checkpoint 63 would, of course, be top secret. "I''ve sent you the information. It belongs to the Heaven Alliance''s internal database. You''re not allowed to reveal it to others or send it to the rest of the Heaven Alliance''s members that are below the 55th checkpoint. You have to keep it with you. Of course, the document itself has been protected. You aren''t granted any authority to forward it to others." Feng Yi had solid multi-tasking skills. Before Lin Huang could even finish his words, the file had already been sent. "He''s really an impetuous fellow," Lin Huang thought to himself. "Is there anything else that you need?" Feng Yi asked. "No, thank you!" Lin Huang shook his head, getting up from the sofa as he was about to leave. As he took a few steps forward and was about to reach the door, Feng Yi''s voice was suddenly heard coming from the back. "Are you coming back to attempt the 63rd checkpoint?" Lin Huang stopped, turning around and looking at Feng Yi. "No, I''m not. I''m logging in to collect points, but I''ll try and see how far I can go at the next login." 780 Secret Fores The 55th checkpoint on the Stairway Tree was not only a human gathering point. It was also a lush forest. Perhaps people would see moss and fungus growing on a regular tree, but that was not what one could see growing on the trees at checkpoint 55. Standing on the base of the branches of the Stairway Tree at checkpoint 55, Lin Huang lifted his head, gazing at the trunk on top of him. The large tree trunk was now entirely covered by the ancient forest. The roots of the big tree penetrated deep into the bark of the Stairway Tree. There were also various types of wildflowers that grew from the bark. Lin Huang was surprised by what he just saw. After climbing more than 50 checkpoints on the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang knew how hard the bark of the Stairway Tree was. He was unable to damage the bark despite attacking it with all he had. He even doubted if the Stairway Tree itself was something that could be destroyed in the virtual world. Naturally, he was surprised when he saw the grass that grew from the bark of the Stairway Tree. "I guess this is the Secret Forest" Lin Huang studied the forest curiously. He had briefly browsed through the information provided by Feng Yi and knew that the 55th checkpoint on the Stairway Tree would not be as simple as he thought. The unique thing about the Secret Forest on the 55th checkpoint was not the flowers on the tree branches. What drew the people''s attention were the special rules imposed on this level. All the creatures that entered the Secret Forest, be it humans like Lin Huang or monsters that were used to staying on the Stairway Tree, experienced shrinking. Their body sizes would be reduced to a thousandth of their original size. That being said, if a person as tall as two meters entered the forest, that person''s height would instantly be reduced to two millimeters. The decrease in size would happen to all relics and equipment that one had, including one''s clothing, shoes, Emperor''s Heart Ring and more; there were no exceptions. The shrinking effect caused the climbing route that was initially 10,000 meters long to shorten to 1,000 meters. One was unable to fly on the Stairway Tree, and teleportation was prohibited from being activated. They could only climb with their hands and feet, and the terrifying gravitational force completely restricted their traveling speed. Even people like Chan Dao, who was capable of killing an imperial-level, had his traveling speed completely suppressed to the point that he was now slower than a transcendent. His traveling speed would no faster than an ordinary cultivator with a golden Life Wheel, let alone Lin Huang''s. With his body that had been reduced to a size that was 1,000 times smaller, Lin Huang knew that it would take him at least three days to complete the climb that was 10,000 meters long without any rest and without encountering any obstacles. "It will take me at least three days to complete the climb with this reduced body size. However, the auction would have started three days later." Lin Huang grinned. "Luckily, I have my own transportation. Thanks to the Mighty Ape''s size, despite being reduced 1,000 times smaller, it can complete the climb in less than a day if it doesn''t face any obstacles. Let''s get to the 56th checkpoint today. I need to meet Yi Zheng tomorrow morning, then I can start collecting points tomorrow night." "Herculean King!" Lin Huang crushed the card in his hand and the Mighty Ape was summoned, accompanied by a low growl. The Mighty Ape, which was now an immortal-level rank-4, was more than 400 meters tall, resembling a small mountain. Lin Huang leaped on the Mighty Ape''s shoulder in a flash, pointing towards the leafy forest. "Go through the forest as fast as you can!" The Mighty Ape bounded and entered the Secret Forest. At almost the same time as it entered the forest, Lin Huang and its body shrunk to 1/1000 of their original size. Lin Huang felt nothing strange during the entire process. The only thing he felt was that everything in front of him became much larger all of a sudden. The Mighty Ape was slightly startled. It had no idea what was happening. Sensing that the Mighty Ape was stunned, Lin Huang patted its neck reassuringly. "Don''t worry. It''s the rule of this region to make us 1,000 times smaller. We''ll be able to return to our original size after getting out of this forest." The Mighty Ape nodded its head as it heard what Lin Huang said. It regained its initial excitement from when it had been summoned and quickly scaled upwards. The 400-meter tall Mighty Ape shrank to only 40 centimeters following the rules of the forest, turning from King Kong into a humble monkey. However, the changes did not have a significant effect on the Mighty Ape''s movement. Its diminished body size enabled it to be more agile when passing through the tree branches. It loped through the trees at a breakneck speed. Sometimes, it held onto the tree branches to swing from branch to branch and leaped from tree to tree. As it familiarized itself with the forest, its movement became smoother, and its speed got faster and faster. Lin Huang felt that the decision to summon the Mighty Ape was absolutely spot-on. However, he was still very alert towards his surroundings. His territorial and telekinetic powers covered a four-kilometers radius around him. The sword that he was holding in his right hand never left him. Apart from the remaining monsters in the Secret Forest that could be dangerous, there were some perilous plants as well. Some of their skills were rather destructive, and they could kill an immortal-level rank-9 in an instant. "Herculean King, stop!" Lin Huang suddenly yelled. The Mighty Ape immediately stopped moving forward, grasping onto a tree branch with one of its arms. It then turned its head back, staring at Lin Huang doubtfully. "There are Witch Petals in front of us. The region that it covers isn''t that big. Let''s cross that area from the right." Lin Huang''s facial expression was stern as he looked towards the front. He had sensed the existence of the Witch Petals with his telekinetic power. It was a type of demonic plant with enchantment power, and it was talented at casting enchantments on creatures that approached it, causing the creatures to commit suicide. Subsequently, the corpses would be used as its nutrients. The combat level of the Witch Petals was not high and basically ranged from immortal-levels rank-1 to rank-3. The enchantment effect of a single plant could only deceive those who were on immortal-levels rank-4 to rank-6. However, the enchantment effect of the plant could be multiplied. The effect might not be strong when it came to one or two plants, but it could be a huge nightmare when there were thousands of Witch Petals. They were capable of getting an imperial-level into that terrifying state of dreamland. There were more than 8,000 Witch Petals in front of them. Fortunately, Lin Huang realized that in time. He could not tell if he could get out of the dreamland if the Herculean King brought him there. Despite the Mighty Ape not having any idea what the Witch Petal was, it would definitely obey Lin Huang''s instructions. After turning right and moving a certain distance away from the Witch Petals, Lin Huang then allowed the Mighty Ape to turn back as soon as he could confirm that they had left the region covered by the Witch Petals. They then headed towards the Secret Forest. Thanks to Lin Huang''s telekinesis, the human and the monster managed to avoid the perils around them several times. After spending the entire afternoon, the Mighty Ape had completed half the journey with Lin Huang on its back. "At this speed, we''ll be able to pass through the Secret Forest before 4 p.m., and we''ll soon arrive at the 56th checkpoint." 781 Hornets Nes In the Secret Forest, Lin Huang''s body had shrunk to a size of fewer than two millimeters tall. Everything seemed so massive to him. Lin Huang felt that even an ordinary palm-sized leaf could be compared to a huge dome. Trees in the Secret Forest were like towering cliffs that nobody could pass through. Fortunately, his combat strength and telekinetic power were not affected. The region detected by his Territory skill and his Divine Telekinesis were not restricted as well. He could still detect what was within a 4,000-meter radius and take great advantage of it. Under such circumstances in which all the creatures were shrunken, the coverage of his detection was expanded to 1,000 times larger. This allowed him to travel without obstacles and avoid danger. Of course, Lin Huang did not bypass all the obstacles. Most of the time, he would choose to fight through it, going through all the obstacles in the shortest possible time. Only when he encountered monsters like the Witch Petals or obstacles that were rather troublesome or regions that he could hardly get through in a short period of time, he would ask the Mighty Ape for help to make it through these areas. Standing on the Mighty Ape''s shoulder, Lin Huang suddenly warned, "There''s a hornet nest not far away from us. Let''s prepare for a fight." Roar! The Mighty Ape let out a low growl, slowing down its crawling speed, and was on alert. After a short while, Lin Huang then detected the hornet nest with his Divine Telekinesis. The black hornet nest was not very large. It was approximately the size of two human fists and was hanging on one of the tree branches. However, the hornet nest was extremely huge to Lin Huang in his condition. Each of the hornets that were flying around the nest was a few times larger than him. Some of them were even ten times larger than Lin Huang. "The Combat Hornetdemon is on the 56th checkpoint for real. Perhaps it''s the remaining Combat Hornetdemons on the 55th checkpoint that built these hives after the monster horde. Fortunately, the hornet nest became much smaller since the Combat Hornetdemons shrank. There should be less than 20,000 Combat Hornetdemons in the hive." Combat Hornetdemons were monsters on the 56th checkpoint. Their nests were everywhere on the 56th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. Combat Hornetdemons were demons that liked confrontation. They had powerful territorial awareness, killing any creatures that attempted to invade their territory. Their combat strength normally ranged from immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9. Their personal abilities were not that strong, but they were not afraid of death, and they liked to gather in a swarm and were venomous. Contact with their venom resulted in pain and itching. The poison would spread quickly throughout a person''s body. Black pustules would grow non-stop, and the fluid inside was contagious, and the infection could spread to others. The venom would only work on the surface of the skin in the beginning. However, after more than 24 hours, it would penetrate through the flesh and burrow deep into the organs after 36 hours. Even the brain would be infected. Eventually, the infected person would then die. There was a slight difference in the composition of the venom in each of the Combat Hornetdemons'' body. However, the venom could work in multiple doses. If an immortal-level rank-9 was injected with a Combat Hornetdemon''s venom, the person could only survive for, at most, 40 hours. If a second shot were given to this person by a second Combat Hornetdemon, the destructive effect would be multiplied and the time for it to take effect would be reduced by half. This meant that this person could only live for a maximum of 20 hours. If this person were stung by a third Combat Hornetdemon, the venomous effect would be even worse. Of course, the person''s physique had to be able to support the multiplier effect of the poison. Most immortal-levels would die as they could not take it after getting poisoned by more than three Combat Hornetdemons. Most imperial-levels would avoid places with a large swarm of Combat Hornetdemons. This was also the reason why they did not want to offend monsters like this. The venom of a Combat Hornetdemon seemed to have no effect on an imperial-level. However, if seven or eight Combat Hornetdemons attacked one, the imperial-level would be poisoned due to the multiplier effect of the venom. Since the number of poison multiplier was high, they would still die. Seeing the hornet nest from afar, even the Mighty Ape, who was usually not afraid of anything, stopped moving forward. Although it could not recognize the Combat Hornetdemons, it could still sense that the monster was threatening. "Since we''ve encountered the Combat Hornetdemons here, it''s time to try a few of the hunting skills that I''ve previously thought of," Lin Huang mumbled, "Charcoal''s dragon flames can restrict the Combat Hornetdemon''s venom; Bai''s Vampire Particles can be an excellent defense against the Combat Hornetdemon''s attack. Because of Tyrant''s defenses and its physique, it has no fear of the Combat Hornetdemon''s poison. Lancelot''s Dark Mirror can perfectly guard against the Combat Hornetdemon''s attack. Its Saber Dao Territory and Sword Manipulation are good skills to attack with. Kylie''s Lightning Control can be a counter to the negative effects and should be effective for the demonized poison while the Ghastly Clown''s telekinetic power and illusion skill are good for fighting in a group. The Eclipse Boa''s engulfment ability has no fear of the poison as well. There are also two fiends with advanced-level bloodlines (The witch is now with Lin Xin)." Although the Mighty Ape that had gone through its third mutation was not weak, its ability was still weaker than Bai and the rest. It was not suitable to fight a venomous monster like the Combat Hornetdemon. "This fight is not yours to take up. Get some rest first. We''ll continue our journey later." After recalling the Mighty Ape, Lin Huang then crushed the monster cards. Charcoal, Bai, Tyrant and the rest were summoned, and they appeared in front of Lin Huang. "The plants" Bai frowned. Charcoal and the rest noticed that the plants over there were strange as well. "There are some special rules imposed in this forest. All creatures that enter, including local creatures, will be 1,000 times smaller," Lin Huang explained briefly and immediately got back to his main point. "The reason why I summoned all of you today is to kill the Combat Hornetdemons. Bloody will be in charge of the battle." After briefly describing his plan, Bloody then projected the Combat Hornetdemon''s information. Bloody did not directly join the fight. He was in charge of strategizing the entire battle to maximize everyone''s efficiency to kill. Parasitism would not work on creatures with a combat strength higher than Bloody''s. It was currently on immortal-level rank-4 while the weakest Combat Hornetdemon was on immortal-level rank-7. If its combat strength were not restricted, Bloody could fight all the Combat Hornetdemons alone regardless of how many of them there were. "This is just a warm-up battle. There''s only a small number of Combat Hornetdemons. I hope that all of you can try your best to follow Bloody''s plan, killing the monsters at the highest efficiency. The number of enemies will be hundreds of times larger during the fight on the 56th checkpoint. It''ll be much more difficult. Not all of you are immune to the Combat Hornetdemon''s poison, but I hope not to see any injuries," Lin Huang glanced at the Supreme Overlord as he said. He was not worried about the rest, but the Clown was quite a character. Seeing Lin Huang looking at it, the Supreme Overlord stuck its tongue out, flashing a funny face. Lin Huang then let Bloody take over the conversation. Bloody began distributing the work to each of them. After a short while, Bloody was done assigning tasks to them. "Alright, let the slaughter begin!" Lin Huang raised his hand up, pointing towards the hornet''s nest from afar. Before he could finish his words, Bai and the rest had already headed towards the hive. 782 A One-Sided Figh There were ten monster cards, and Bloody was there to be in charge of what went on behind the scenes. Kylie, who was in her black armor, flapped the 12 pairs of black wings on her back and in the next moment, she arrived right in front of the hornet''s nest. Despite her flying abilities being restricted by the rules of the Stairway Tree and her speed being affected by her size, her short-distance flight was still the fastest among all the other monster cards. Even Thunder could not compare to her. Before everyone else arrived, Kylie picked up her spear. A razor-like, purple electric glow sparked on her black spear. As soon as the tip of the spear was flung out, a few of the Combat Hornetdemons were engulfed by the purple electric glow and instantly turned into ashes. Just as Kylie attacked, the Combat Hornetdemons flapped their wings and surrounded Kylie. Many of the Combat Hornetdemons in the nest could sense the energy generated outside the hive. They immediately gushed out of the hornet nest, and Kylie was besieged on all sides. Just before Kylie got entangled in an intense battle, Bai then joined the fight. In its black robe with its 12 pairs of wings on its back too, Bai was a sight to behold. Its wings were made of Vampire Particles which were utterly blood red in color. Compared to Kylie''s wings, Bai''s wings were more like a weapon that possessed a terrifying ability to slice and kill. As soon as Bai joined the battle, it was surrounded by another swarm of Combat Hornetdemons. However, it had no fear at all. Its killing speed was even faster than Kylie''s. Transforming its Vampire Particles into sharp blades or thorns, dead bodies of Combat Hornetdemons fell wherever its wings sliced through. Soon after, Bai''s attack had lured a large number of Combat Hornetdemons away, and Kylie''s side of the battle had become less stressful. Before the swarm of hornets surrounded the both of them, Charcoal and the rest struck. As Lin Huang had leveled up to gold flame-level, Charcoal''s combat strength was upgraded to immortal-level rank-4. It was now 4,000 meters tall. Despite the fact that its body was compressed to thousands of times smaller, it still stood at a staggering height of four meters. Charcoal was considered huge compared to the Combat Hornetdemons which were only about two centimeters tall. As it opened its mouth, black dragon flames gushed out of its mouth and enveloped the massive swarm of hornets. Its speed was even faster than Bai''s. Not far away from Charcoal, Tyrant crushed the swarm of hornets like a tank. Although its body was less than a tenth of the Combat Hornetdemon''s, each attack it rained managed to kill the monsters. As Tyrant struck a heavy blow on the Combat Hornetdemons, they exploded without him having to make a second attack. Tyrant had never released its body after feeling the Celestial Giant''s bloodline in his body. Its body had always been only about 2.5 meters tall all the while. Even Lin Huang had no idea how huge it could truly be. Typically, the size of a giant could reach thousands of meters tall, and its body could be as large as a king sea monster or a super gigantic monster. An adult could grow more than 10,000 meters tall. However, Lin Huang knew nothing about the Celestial Giant. Not much information was passed down from the ancient times. He had referred to many of the information sources in the Martial Hunter College, but he found nothing about the Celestial Giant. According to what Tyrant told him from the memories it had inherited, the body of the most powerful Celestial Giant during the ancient times was comparable to a galaxy. It was a tremendously powerful and terrifying creature. Although Lin Huang had never seen Tyrant''s real body before, he guessed that even if it was not a Celestial Giant with pure blood, it would not be any smaller than a king sea monster or the supreme giant. Lin Huang was pumped up when he saw Tyrant''s attack strike right into the Combat Hornetdemon''s body. Lancelot, the Ghastly Clown, and the rest of them were incredible. The one-sided slaughter began as soon as they got into the fight with the swarm of hornets. In fact, the combat strength of Bai and the others were only 4-stars. Since they were immortal-level monsters that had gone through three mutations, they were capable of engaging in a battle to fight enemies that were two levels higher than themselves. In addition to that, the God''s Blood creatures, the fiends, and the Celestial Giant had an enchantment effect on their blood. Even if it were only beginner-level enchanted blood, it could fight enemies that were a level higher, let alone Bai and the rest who now had advanced-level blood power. They were only one step away from getting the pure blood whereby they could then fight enemies that were three levels higher easily. Although their combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-4, the addition of their combat strengths resulted in their abilities being on par with an immortal-level rank-9. Besides, Lin Huang would train them when he was free, and he would occasionally teach them something related to martial arts. As long as they did not encounter a supreme genius, they were capable of handling enemies below imperial-level. The Combat Hornetdemon was only an ordinary double mutated monster and did not possess enchanted blood. Even if their combat strength was on immortal-level rank-9, they could definitely not fight Bai and the rest. Despite there being a large number of Combat Hornetdemons, they could not harm Bai and the rest. The fight was a one-sided massacre. The horrifying Combat Hornetdemons were like helpless little lambs in front of them as they had no way of fighting back at all. Bloody, who was in charge of the entire battle, did not give any instructions mid-way at all. At the beginning of the fight, Bloody issued some brief instructions and distributed the work among them. They then did the work on their own. Bai and the rest knew each other''s abilities very well, and they had great teamwork. It took them more than half an hour to defeat more than 10,000 Combat Hornetdemons. Just as Lin Huang was about to recall them back into their card forms, he heard Bloody''s voice. He nodded after listening to what Bloody said, gathering Bai and the rest. "Your overall performance is quite good, but there are some minor problems. Bloody, please explain to them." Bloody nodded and stood out from the rest. It then called out their names. "Ghastly, I know that your fighting style tends to be lazier, but I hope that you can change your attitude in the following battles. You''re only using about 20% of what you''ve got to protect yourself. You relied on the others to kill the enemies, and it''s kind of irresponsible as a team member. Luckily, you didn''t slow us down. Otherwise, I''d have asked Master to expel you." Lin Huang frowned, looking at Ghastly. It was the one with the worst attitude among all his monsters. "I actually think that the rest of you were capable of handling them. That''s why I didn''t help out. Since you''re telling me this, I''ll take it more seriously next time." The Supreme Overlord shrugged its shoulders, worried that Lin Huang might not summon it anymore. Bloody caught a glimpse of the Supreme Overlord and did not say anything else, shifting its gaze towards Bai. "Bai, you went too deep into the monster horde. Your physique isn''t completely immune to the Combat Hornetdemon''s attack like Tyrant. Although the defenses of your Vampire Particles is quite good, I guess you''ll still collapse if you''re attacked by tens of the immortal-level rank-9 Combat Hornetdemons." "I''d suggest you not to go too deep into the battle. Try to reduce the number of enemies that you need to deal with at any one point in time. According to the control you have over your Vampire Particles, fighting 12 enemies at the same time will be ideal. There won''t be a significant increase in your efficiency if you were to fight more enemies. There''ll be only a 20% increase in your efficiency at the most. Therefore, as soon as you make it through the monster horde, it''s unnecessary to fight 20 to 30 monsters at the same time. You should make sure that you''re fighting at the best efficiency instead of the highest killing rate. The latter will cause you to make mistakes more easily. In the following battles, we''ll fight in a team. If any of you happen to collapse, the pressure faced by the rest of us will increase. I hope that you''re not the one that collapses." "Got it." Bai accepted its comment. Bloody nodded its head and shifted its gaze towards Kylie. "Kylie, I know that you''re pretty strong on your own. However, I wish that you can do better when you fight in a team. Instead of simply killing the monsters, you can actually have better control of the fight by unleashing your Lightning Control. Attacking with lightning reduces the number of monsters the rest of the team members will encounter, and it''ll be much easier for them to handle the monsters. Moreover, the number of monsters killed in this way might not be lesser than what your number from directly killing them." Kylie did not refute and nodded her head, expressing that she understood what Bloody was trying to say. Bloody then pointed out each of their shortcomings and suggested ways to improve. All of them accepted his suggestions. After recalling all the monster cards, Lin Huang looked towards the hornet''s nest hanging on the tree branch and grinned. "The Combat Hornetdemon''s honey is fantastic stuff. Selling it together with the hive will be worth even more!" Lin Huang then appeared at the bottom of the hornet''s nest in a flash. He took out his combat sword and hacked at the nest for about seven minutes before storing it in his storage space. After putting the hive away, he summoned the Mighty Ape again and quickly climbed towards the forest. 783 The 56th Checkpoint on the Stairway Tree The second half of the journey in the Secret Forest went smoothly. It was not because the challenges on the 55th checkpoint were easy. Instead, Lin Huang had taken significant advantage of the situation as the capabilities of his Territorial skill and his Divine Telekinesis were not suppressed, allowing him to avoid the danger. The Mighty Ape carried Lin Huang along and was guided by him. They did not encounter any obstacles on their way. At about 4 p.m., the both of them finally passed through the Secret Forest. The moment when the Mighty Ape swung through the Secret Forest from one of the tree branches, Lin Huang''s facial expression changed. Before recovering to its original body size, he instantly recalled the Mighty Ape back into its card form. The next second, he returned to his original state. As he landed on the ground, he crouched down and hid in the bushes. He restrained his aura, studying the object that had caused him to turn grave through the gaps between the grass blades. It was a massive hornet nest that was black. It was less than 300 meters away from where he was hiding. After analyzing it for a couple of moments with his Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang was relieved. "Oh, it''s just an abandoned hornet nest. It scared me!" The reason why he had recalled the Mighty Ape was that he had spotted the horrifying hive at first glance. If the Mighty Ape returned to its original body size, it would definitely become the Combat Hornetdemon''s target within such a short distance. Fortunately, the hornet nest was abandoned. Lin Huang was relieved when his Divine Telekinesis detected that there was no Combat Hornetdemon in the nest. The abandoned hive could actually do no harm to Lin Huang, but he simply did not like to attack passively. Instead of being attacked by a swarm of Combat Hornetdemons the moment he entered the 56th checkpoint, he would prefer to be the one who started the fight once he was ready so that he would be on the winning side. Shifting his gaze away from the abandoned hornet nest, Lin Huang began to sense what was happening within the region covered by his Territory skill. He combed through the area with his telekinetic skill as well, overlapping with the area covered by his Territory skill. He could sense anything that was within a four-kilometer radius as if he was monitoring everything from God''s perspective. He could even see what each Combat Hornetdemon was doing through the exterior of the nest. "The hornet nests are densely distributed. There are 13 hives within a four-kilometer radius. Except for the one that''s nearest to me, there are Combat Hornetdemons gathered in the rest of the nests." Lin Huang stood up, activating his Ocular skill, and headed towards the nests that he had just detected. In fact, all 13 hornet nests were clearly visible. However, Lin Huang knew very well that he would not be discovered easily because the 56th checkpoint was somewhat similar to the 55th whereby the both of the checkpoints were rich with flora. As long as he hunched his body a little, he could hide in the bushes. Confirming that he was temporarily safe, Lin Huang then summoned Bloody. Bloody saw the hornet nest not far away from him as soon as it was summoned. Just as it was getting ready to fight, Lin Huang''s voice was heard. "Don''t worry. It''s an abandoned hornet nest." "Is this the 56th checkpoint?" Bloody observed for a while, realizing that not a single Combat Hornetdemon was found near the hive. Only then did it begin to let its guard down. "Yes, it is. I need you to check the distribution of the hornet nests. After locating the hornet queen, please check if there are any hornet guardians on security patrol." Since the area that could be detected by Lin Huang was very limited, he needed help from Bloody''s Leech Pods in order to expand the area to monitor their whereabouts. The hornet guardians he mentioned were directly under the hornet queen. They were triple mutated Combat Hornetdemons as well as having a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9. They were brutal and had the courage to fight even if they encountered an imperial-level despite not being able to fight them. However, if three hornet guardians were to fight together, they were capable of dealing with an imperial-level face-to-face. As for the hornet queen, she dominated the hornets. The queen bred hornets and hornet guardians. Under normal circumstances, the hornet queen would not leave their nest or fight. It was said that the hornet queen would only give birth to a new generation and had no ability to fight. Somebody had also once said that the hornet queen actually possessed remarkably terrifying abilities and surpassed the abilities of the hornet guardians. However, she would not easily engage in a fight. Of course, there were also the ordinary hornets which were what Lin Huang encountered in the Secret Forest. Their combat strength ranged from immortal-levels rank-7 to rank-9, and they were double mutated monsters. After instructing Bloody, Lin Huang appeared at the bottom of the abandoned hornet nest in a flash. He raised his head and carefully observed the hive. The lotus-shaped hive looked like a dried lotus from which its seeds had been extracted. The only difference was that it was slightly bigger. From the front, the hornet nest had a diameter of about 150 meters long, resembling a small hill. However, Lin Huang felt like it did not seem as large as the one that had hung from the tree branch in the Secret Forest. He was actually right. If the hive in the forest was magnified 1,000 times more massive, its diameter from the front should be approximately 300 meters. The diameter was double of what he saw now, and its volume was about eight times more. Although there was no honey in the hive, the value of a complete hornet nest would be comparable to an ancient relic. Aside from being highly valuable, many insects liked to stay there. Imperial Censors who owned insects as pet monsters would be more than happy to pay a high price for it. Besides, after the hornet nest had decomposed, a rare constituent could be extracted for detoxification purposes. The extracted compound could be used to make an expensive broad-spectrum antidote which was effective for 80% of the known poisons. Despite Lin Huang being really eager to store the hornet nest in his storage space, he decided to put that idea on hold. The nest was too huge. If it disappeared, perhaps the other 12 hornet nests would find out that something was wrong. The rest of the nests within 20 kilometers would realize that something was off. Suppressing his desire to take the hornet nest away, Lin Huang sat down quietly and patiently waited for the detection analysis from Bloody. After about half an hour, Bloody finally opened its eyes. "The hornet queen''s nest is very far away from us. It''s 1,000 kilometers away. Also, I can''t detect any hornet guardians leaving the hornet queen''s nest and patrolling." "What about humans?" Lin Huang asked. He did not want anyone to see him summoning ten monsters at the same time. "Two humans are trying to level up. The one who''s closest to us is about 350 kilometers away." After getting the updates from Bloody, Lin Huang grinned. "Since the hornet queen and the hornet guardians have shut themselves up, and the human who''s nearest to us is also 300 kilometers away, this is undoubtedly the best time to collect points." "Xiao Hei, summon Bai, Tyrant, Charcoal Lancelot!" After finishing his words, Bai, Tyrant and the rest of the monsters appeared right in front of Lin Huang at almost the same time. It took Bloody about half an hour to delegate the tasks to them. Bloody then repeatedly reminded them about a few of the things that they had to be aware of. After making sure that there was no other issue, it then nodded its head at Lin Huang. "Are you ready?" Lin Huang gazed at each and every one of them. "I''m ready!" Bai and the rest answered confidently. "Begin the massacre!" After receiving Lin Huang''s order, Bai and the rest rapidly headed towards the first hornet nest. 784 A Sudden Rise in Points The only tip the Heaven Alliance could give anyone to break through the 56th checkpoint was: get through it in one sitting! It was as simple as that because the hornet nests on this checkpoint were densely distributed. There was a nest for about every 1,000 meters. Most of the areas with hornet nest overlapped one another. There was no safe route where they could actually avoid fighting the Combat Hornetdemons. Therefore, getting through the checkpoint in one sitting could significantly reduce the chances of encountering the Combat Hornetdemons. However, Lin Huang''s main intention was not to get through the checkpoint. Instead, he wanted to collect points. At this moment, he was engaged in a tough battle as what he intended to do was different from the rest. "Bloody, the first wave of reinforcement is arriving. There are eight hornet nests that have joined the reinforcement. The eight reinforcements have at least 2,000 of them and probably 4,000 at the most," Lin Huang whispered to Bloody, sharing what he observed according to the discovery of his Divine Telekinesis. In less than a minute after Bai and the rest began to clear the first hornet nest, a few of the hives nearby discovered that there was a battle going on and immediately sent reinforcements. Lin Huang was not surprised though as he knew earlier that it was only natural of the Combat Hornetdemons to do so. On the 56th checkpoint, all the Combat Hornetdemons were the future generations of the hornet queen. Although they were living in different hives, they did not classify themselves according to the different nests but followed the entire hornet group instead. Realizing that one of the nests was being attacked, they would immediately send reinforcements to defend against the enemies. In the beginning, the hives would send about a tenth of the total number of Combat Hornetdemons in the nests as back-up. If the reinforcements were unable to help the besieged hornet nest, the second wave of Combat Hornetdemons reinforcements would swarm out, leaving only about 10% of the Combat Hornetdemons to guard their home nest. The rest of the Combat Hornetdemons would join the army, fighting the invaders at full strength. Apparently, they understood that mutual dependence was needed for survival. Once the hornet nest nearby was being attacked, it indicated that their hive would soon be attacked. Therefore, before their nest was attacked, sending reinforcements to kill all the invaders was the most cautious solution to get rid of the danger. Unfortunately, the hornets were going up against Lin Huang and the rest. "Ghastly, your task is to create chaos, activating an illusion to cover a wide area. Walk around the entire battleground and try your best to set the Combat Hornetdemons up. "Lancelot, activate Sword Manipulation with extensive coverage. Each attack doesn''t necessary have to kill. Causing severe injuries is good enough. "Kylie, you are the fastest. Assist Lancelot and hit the Combat Hornetdemons that haven''t died after being attacked by Lancelot''s Sword Manipulation." Bai and the rest that were led by Bloody launched a one-sided massacre. Lin Huang''s Stairway points increased tremendously. He initially had about 24 million points when he was ranked first on the leaderboard. When he entered the Secret Forest and encountered the first hornet nest, his points had exceeded 60 million within half an hour. The points were now increasing at an even terrifying rate. 60 million, 70 million, 80 million Just as the sky was turning dark, Lin Huang''s points had exceeded 200 million. Nobody had ever racked up points like that before, and it immediately became a hot topic among the members of the Stairway Tree who were now online. "Is there something wrong with the system!? He has accumulated 200 million points in just a day!" "If there''s nothing wrong with the system, it means that even the Stairway Tree system can''t detect when Lin Xie is cheating!" "I''m saddened by Lin Huang''s cheating. He has broken the rules of the Stairway Tree and has even violated the fairness and justice of the leaderboard on the Stairway Tree. He has disregarded everyone''s else efforts. What I wanted to say is, bro, please count me in!" There were only a small number of people who believed that Lin Huang had collected the points with his own ability. "The monster with the highest combat strength on the 21st checkpoint is on immortal-level rank-4. Killing each of the monsters can only earn 80 points. Lin Xie managed to accumulate eight million points in one night. He''s now on the 56th checkpoint where the monster with the weakest combat strength is on immortal-level rank-7. He''ll gain 640 points by killing such a monster. He can even obtain 2,560 points for killing an immortal-level rank-9. It''s not impossible to accumulate 200 million points in a day." "If anyone else collected 200 million points in a day, I''d have thought that the person was cheating, but Lin Xie might have gotten the points with his own capabilities. He''s incredible." Lin Huang knew nothing about their comments. He was busy fighting the Combat Hornetdemons. Many of them believed that Lin Huang had cheated because even people like Chan Dou would not want to offend the Combat Hornetdemons. There were at least 20,000 Combat Hornetdemons in a regular hive. Although Chan Dou was strong, he did not have a monstrous physique like Tyrant and the rest. Furthermore, he was not immune to poison like Kylie. He could only deal with about 3,000 Combat Hornetdemons at the same time. He might die if he were to handle more than 3,000 Combat Hornetdemons. It was impossible for him to kill hundreds of thousands of Combat Hornetdemons in a single afternoon. The reason why Lin Huang had managed to wipe out the hornets with ten summoning monsters was that the monsters that he had chosen were capable of controlling the Combat Hornetdemons to a certain extent. In addition to the bloodlines they possessed and the distribution of work almost being perfect, he could fight the Combat Hornetdemons with ease. Of course, if Lin Huang were to fight them alone, he would be unable to collect points in this way. At about 6.30p.m., the sky was turning dark. "It''s getting darker, and the monsters on the Stairway Tree are coming out to hunt for food," Bloody whispered to Lin Huang, "If we were to continue collecting points, we''re not only going to face the Combat Hornetdemons. Two other types of monsters are way more powerful. We won''t encounter monster hordes like this by then. It''s going to be a massive monster horde consisting of tens of millions of monsters." As the sky turned dark, the Stairway Tree would be a paradise for the monsters. All the monsters above checkpoint 55 and below checkpoint 66 would head over to the human gathering point on checkpoint 55. "I''d suggest to exit first and continue tomorrow," Bloody added. Lin Huang frowned, stroking his chin. Soon, he made up his mind and said, "The auction will begin three days later. I''m going to meet Yi Zheng tomorrow, so I guess I don''t have much time left tomorrow. If I were to give up collecting points at night when there''ll be monster hordes, I only have one day left" "I guess we can give it a try even though it''s riskier at night. We can go back to the Secret Forest since it''s rather spacious over there. When the monster horde appears, they''ll become smaller in size. The monsters will scatter all over the place, and we can take advantage of that to hide. If the outcome of the detection happens to be undesirable, I''ll recall all of you back into your card forms right away and log out of the Genius Union." 785 Guerrilla At about 7 p.m., the sky was pitch black. All the monsters on the Stairway Tree looked like they had consumed stimulants as they got ready to hunt for food. On each of the checkpoints with monsters, a variety of creatures headed towards the human gathering point. There were three checkpoints with monsters between checkpoints 55 and 63, namely checkpoints 56, 58, and 61. The monsters that occupied checkpoint 56 were the venomous Combat Hornetdemons. They lived in a large swarm and were extremely difficult to handle. The Mutated Serpent, a unique snake monster, occupied checkpoint 58. Almost all Mutated Serpents would go through a genetic mutation when they were young, causing each of them to be different from one another. Some of them were huge, some of them could release venom, some of them were terribly fast, while some of them could even control the elements. Even twins would be utterly different from each other after the mutation. As for checkpoint 61, it was occupied by the Luna Beast. The Luna Beast was a type of monster with long ears, looking somewhat like a rabbit. It had red fur all over its body, fangs, and sharp claws which looked like the cat''s claws. Its body was usually two to three meters long. It had explosive power and speed, and at the same time, it possessed immense strength. It had a very powerful defensive ability and was adept at close-range attacks. It could also absorb moonlight, going on a rampage whereby its combat strength would be multiplied. All three types of monsters were not easy to handle. Still, Lin Huang decided to fight the monster hordes. Just as Lin Huang returned to the Secret Forest on checkpoint 55 along with Bloody and the rest while waiting for the arrival of the monster hordes, the people at the gathering point on checkpoint 55 started discussing when they saw that Lin Huang''s name was still lit up on the leaderboard. "The sky has turned dark, and the monster hordes are arriving. Has Lin Xie not logged out yet?" "According to the points he has just gained, he must be on checkpoint 56. He hasn''t returned to the gathering point yet. Could it be that he wants to fight the monster hordes on his own?" "He must''ve cheated. Why didn''t he come back and fight the monster hordes with us? He didn''t want us to see him cheating!" The people from Heaven Alliance soon noticed that something was wrong. "What''s Lin Huang doing? The monster hordes are arriving, and he''s still there to collect points?" "Perhaps he''s surrounded by the hornets and is unable to get rid of them." "If he dies, he''s going to have to bear the loss. He''ll lose half the points from the 200 million points that he just gained." As the creatures from the outside entered the Secret Forest on the 55th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, their bodies would be reduced 1,000 times smaller. Lin Huang and the rest had many places to hide like behind the grass, the flowers or even the splits in the bark. This made their hunting much more convenient. At that moment, Lin Huang and the rest were hiding in one of the bark fissures, patiently waiting for the monster hordes to appear. At about 7.20 p.m., the sky had turned completely dark. Lin Huang knew that the monster hordes would come very soon. After almost half an hour, Lin Huang heard a buzzing sound from far away. The sound was fast approaching. "It''s the Combat Hornetdemon. It seems like after their body size has been reduced, they scattered everywhere. There aren''t many hornets, less than 50,000 of them. I guess they''re from the same hive." Lin Huang could tell what was happening a few kilometers away with his Divine Telekinesis. "No other monster hordes are discovered so far within the area covered by my detection. However, we need to be fast. The monster hordes behind will catch up soon." "Let''s get ready to fight and give your all. Try to kill all the enemies at the fastest speed possible. After killing the hornets, we''ve got to move." Bloody had discussed with Lin Huang earlier that it was not practical to launch a frontal attack on the monster hordes that consisted of tens of thousands of monsters. Therefore, they planned to launch guerrilla attacks according to the topography of the Secret Forest. They would move after the fight and try to get rid of the monsters. "I''ll be aware of what''s happening out there. If there''s any monster horde that approaches us, I''ll judge whether if it''s going to be harmful to us. If it is, I''ll recall of you back into your card forms whether or not the hornets have been cleared. I''ll then leave the battleground immediately. The same goes for the rest of the battles." Lin Huang and Bloody whispered to each other and came up with a strategy. Bai and the rest had no objections. They clearly knew that their abilities were far from being capable of handling all the monster hordes. After a short while, the hornets appeared in front of Lin Huang and the rest. "Fight!" Bai and the rest immediately rushed towards the hornets after receiving the instruction from Bloody. Charcoal had returned to its original size. Despite it being reduced to 1,000 times smaller, it still looked gigantic at about four meters tall. Black dragon flames gushed out as it opened its mouth. The hornets fled. It was not easy to put the flames out once the dragon flames tainted them. Charcoal was a high-level dragonkin. With its dragon flames, even an imperial-level would not dare to offend it. Perhaps even the chief of the Heaven Alliance, Chan Dou, would not want to get tainted by the dragon flames. Lancelot had fully activated its Sword Manipulation as well. Thousands of black swords accompanied by powerful sword intent penetrated through the swarm of hornets like swimming fish. If it were not on immortal-level rank-4 with its ability being restricted, perhaps it could fight the hornets with ease. Bai''s attack was like an artistic performance. No extra movements were needed. As it flowed, it managed to cut a few of the Combat Hornetdemons into half without a second attack. Despite it only being on immortal-level rank-4, encountering the immortal-level rank-9 Combat Hornetdemons, the fight was like slicing vegetables to it. Ghastly was probably the most relaxed one compared to the rest. He made it through the Combat Hornetdemons leisurely, creating chaos wherever he passed. Not only could they not see Ghastly at all, but they had also gone insane and even attacked each other. Other than Bai and the rest, even Lin Huang joined the fight so that they could get rid of the swarm of hornets as soon as possible. Three supreme telekinetic weapons and thousands of telekinetic flying daggers whistled in the air. Controlled by his Divine Telekinesis, they penetrated through the Combat Hornetdemons'' bodies. Lin Huang was unable to dominate the ancient telekinetic weapons without using the Transformation Card. Despite the fact that the power of his flying daggers was much weaker than before, they were capable of killing the immortal-level rank-7s and rank-8s. Even if he could not kill the immortal-level rank-9s in one hit, the monster would be severely injured, and it would be much more convenient for Kylie and the rest to kill. The battle lasted for about 20 minutes before it ended. Before completely obliterating the Combat Hornetdemons, Lin Huang suddenly raised his head and frowned, looking towards the border of the forest. "Luna Beast?!" Using his Divine Telekinesis, he could see that at the crossing point of checkpoints 55 and 56, a large number of Luna Beasts were heading towards the Secret Forest. 786 Outstanding Bai "Please hurry. The Luna Beast is entering the Secret Forest," Lin Huang immediately informed Bloody and the rest just as he detected. "Don''t worry. We''re 3.3 kilometers away from the border of the forest. Under normal circumstances, the Luna Beast can travel a distance of three to four kilometers in a blink of an eye. However, since they''ll be compressed to a thousandth of their usual size, the Luna Beast will need at least 40 minutes to reach here." Bloody felt that they had sufficient time to fight. "I know, but it''ll be better for us to get rid of the hornets as soon as possible. The more time we have, the better we can prepare ourselves." Lin Huang nodded. "The Luna Beasts are actually much stronger than the Combat Hornetdemons. Apart from that, there are more of them than the Combat Hornetdemons. At least 50,000 of them to be more precise. If we don''t have any plan and were to fight them face-to-face, perhaps it''ll be difficult for us to clear all of them." "That''s true," Bloody agreed with what Lin Huang said. Although the ability of the Luna Beasts would be slightly weaker than that of the hornet guardians, they were much stronger than the ordinary Combat Hornetdemons. Even if it did not go on a rampage, a Luna Beast was capable of fighting three Combat Hornetdemons. If it did go on a rampage, one Luna Beast could fight ten Combat Hornetdemons. In addition to their strong defenses, killing them would be much more difficult than killing the Combat Hornetdemon. "I''m thinking to ask the Clown to set several traps. However, it''ll need some time to set those traps up. 40 to 50 minutes might not be enough for it," Lin Huang revealed his plan. However, he could not confirm whether if his plan could achieve the desired outcome. "Do you have any better suggestions?" "Your plan is too time-consuming. Besides, if Ghastly were to set a large number of traps, the damage caused will be limited. If Ghastly were an immortal-level rank-9, it could easily kill the Luna Beasts. He''s now only an immortal-level rank-4." Bloody immediately scrapped the plan and gave its own suggestion. "It doesn''t have to be so troublesome. There are many dangerous places in the Secret Forest. We''ve avoided all those areas, and it''s time to make good use of it now." "We can actually lure the monster hordes to those places. Right after their strength has been drained, we can then capture all at once." "Do you think that the Luna Beasts will be tricked?" Lin Huang was still worried. "The Luna Beasts aren''t smart, and they''re monsters that are all brawn and no brains. As long as we try to bait them, they''ll bite," Bloody said confidently. "Bait?" Lin Huang frowned when he heard what Bloody said. Bloody did not continue talking, shifting its gaze towards Kylie who was attacking the hornets instead. Lin Huang immediately understood what Bloody''s plan was and kept quiet. "Only Thunder and her speed can compare to that of the Luna Beasts''. Aside from their speed, the Luna Beasts possess terrifying explosive power within short distances. They can even go on a rampage so that their speed can be multiplied. She is more suitable than Thunder to be bait." Still, Bloody did not mention Kylie''s name. Lin Huang remained silent as usual. Regardless of how fast Kylie''s speed was, it would be risky for her to be the bait alone. She would be surrounded by the monster hordes even if only a small mistake was made. She would be ripped into pieces by tens of thousands of Luna Beasts. Moreover, if she were to lure the Luna Beasts to the danger zone, she had to enter the danger zone as well. "I''ll be the bait." Kylie appeared in front of the both of them all of a sudden. What she said had clearly expressed herself. Bloody had not secretly contacted Kylie. Instead, she had heard the conversation between the both of them. Seeing Lin Huang''s indecision, she then spoke out. As Lin Huang was still keeping quiet, Kylie added, "I''ll be fine." "Alright, then," Lin Huang finally said, "I''ll relinquish the task to you. Please be careful." Kylie nodded and did not say anything else. She then returned to the battleground, killing the remaining Combat Hornetdemons. "Where are you going to lure the Luna Beasts to?" Lin Huang turned his head back, looking at Bloody. "There''s a Fiendish Osiery about two kilometers away from us." Bloody had a plan. "A Fiendish Osiery That''s too dangerous." Lin Huang frowned, lifting his head and gazing in the direction where Kylie was. He was still worried about her. "We don''t have any other choice. We need to bear some of the risks. Within five kilometers, the Fiendish Osiery is the most suitable area to fight the Luna Beasts." "The Fiendish Osier looks like an ordinary willow, and no energy fluctuation will be alarming to the Luna Beasts. They''re quite smart. If the prey doesn''t go deep into the forest, they won''t simply launch an attack. Right when the Luna Beasts realize something is wrong, perhaps the entire monster horde would''ve already entered the forest." "The Fiendish Osier''s abilities can restrict the Luna Beasts. The splitting of the tree branches can restrict the movements and the strength of the Luna Beasts to a great extent. However, with Kylie''s speed, as long as she doesn''t go too deep into it, it''s not difficult for her to escape." Lin Huang nodded and did not say anything else. After a short while, they cleared the swarm of hornets. Lin Huang gathered Bai and the rest again. Bloody pulled Kylie aside and whispered to her. After the conversation between them had ended, only then did they join the team. "Kylie, please stay. The rest of you, please follow me and lie in wait outside the Fiendish Osiery. I''ll explain the details later when we''re on our way." Bloody did not say anything else. It nodded its head at Lin Huang, transforming into a vine and wrapping around his left arm. "Follow me." As soon as Lin Huang uttered these words, he activated his double acceleration and headed towards the Fiendish Osiery. Bai and the rest immediately followed after him. Kylie was the only one who stayed there, watching the rest leave. Right after Lin Huang and the rest had disappeared from her sight, Kylie then transformed into a black glow and headed in another direction. After half an hour, Lin Huang and the rest finally arrived where the Fiendish Osiery was. Seeing the peaceful Fiendish Osier, even Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis could not sense anything strange. The Fiendish Osier was like an ordinary willow. If the Fiendish Osier had not been introduced in the information provided by the Heaven Alliance, perhaps not only Lin Huang, even Bloody might not realize the specialty of this forest. Scanning the forest, Charcoal then said, "It looks like an ordinary plant." "Be careful. According to what has been recorded in the information provided by the Heaven Alliance, at least 50 people have died in this forest ever since it has been discovered. They were sent back to the first checkpoint on the Stairway Tree. Bear in mind that humans who reach here are supreme geniuses that have made it through 55 checkpoints on the Stairway Tree," Lin Huang reminded. After listening to what he said, the facial expressions on Bai and the rest became serious. In the Genius Union, those who managed to reach checkpoint 55 were at least immortal-level rank-7s. The geniuses of these combat strength were a step away from achieving imperial-level. Although Bai''s ability was on par with the geniuses that were three levels higher, it was much weaker than them, let alone the other monsters. "Kylie has approached the Luna Beasts. We should do something now. Let''s move and do what I''ve told you to do earlier." Bloody was monitoring Kylie with its Leech Pods. Several kilometers away, Kylie had launched an attack as soon as she discovered the Luna Beasts. She summoned Lightning to cover the entire region, striking hundreds of Luna Beasts. They growled from the pain they suffered. Although not a single Luna Beast was killed, she had successfully triggered their rage. Hundreds of her victims then led the rest of the Luna Beasts to pursue her. 787 Bloodys Misjudgemen Kylie''s speed and explosiveness in short-distance flight surpassed all the monsters Lin Huang owned. Even Thunder that was good at flying could only excel Kylie in long-distance flight. Encountering Luna Beasts with extremely high explosiveness, it was apparent that Kylie could make better bait than Thunder. In fact, Kylie did an impressive job. Kylie was about 10% faster than the Luna Beasts all the way. The Luna Beasts had made several attempts to accelerate, but Kylie sped up only when they were less than a meter away from her, maintaining her speed at 10% faster than the Luna Beasts. Some of the Luna Beasts had gone on a rampage, but they were still trailing behind by Kylie. Kylie maintained a speed at which the Luna Beasts could see her but were unable to attack her. Lin Huang and Bloody were monitoring the situation on Kylie''s side all the while. They felt relieved, seeing Kylie''s performance. All of a sudden, Lin Huang frowned. "The Luna Beasts are slowing down!" "It seems like they''re giving up on Kylie." Bloody was surprised. The Luna Beasts had terrible tempers, and they were monsters that held grudges. They were not intelligent and under normal circumstances, they would chase after their enemies non-stop and would not choose to retreat. It seemed like the Luna Beasts had lost their patience upon realizing that the possibility of chasing after Kylie was low. They were not going to bug her anymore. "She''s made it through half the journey. What should we do now?" Lin Huang raised his head and looked towards Bloody. "Ask Kylie to attack them," Bloody suggested. "Would it work? Since they''ve already found out that they can''t possibly chase Kylie..." Lin Huang doubted. "I guess it''ll work this time, but I''m not sure if it''ll still work the next time." Bloody did not expect the Luna Beasts to retreat after being fooled by Kylie. After getting the confirmation from Bloody, Lin Huang immediately contacted Kylie with his Divine Telekinesis and told her what to do next. A few kilometers away, Kylie then turned back to the Luna Beasts after listening to what Lin Huang told her. She then realized that the Luna Beasts were actually slowing down. She scoffed and again, she activated her Lightning Control. Hundreds of beams of black lightning rained down from the sky. The attack covered a broader range compared to the first attack launched by Kylie. Besides that, it was much stronger as well. More than 500 of the Luna Beasts let out a howl of pain. Their fur was burnt and singed. Still, Kylie was unable to kill any of the Luna Beasts. Nevertheless, it was quite effective. The Luna Beasts lost their rationality and began to chase after Kylie insanely. Seeing what Kylie did, Lin Huang flashed a thumbs-up. "They''re now bearing a huge grudge!" "Don''t count your eggs before they hatch. While it''s effective, it''s still unknown whether Kylie can lure them to this place." Bloody pointed out pessimistically. Lin Huang kept quiet for a moment, and something seemed to have dawned on him. "Does it mean that the effect will be reduced each time Kylie attempts to aggravate them?" "Yes, it does. Although the Luna Beasts aren''t intelligent and can be easily triggered, they won''t be tricked repeatedly. Since they''ve already confirmed that they are unable to catch up to Kylie, they''ll be wise enough to give up their target. Once attacked, they''ll temporarily lose their rationality. The more they''re attacked, the less likely they''ll act irrationally and the higher the possibility that they''ll give up their target." Bloody nodded while giving a detailed explanation. "Also, the Luna Beasts will regain their rationality in a shorter period this round. Soon, they''ll realize that it''s useless to chase after Kylie." "What should we do?" Lin Huang''s eyebrows knitted together. He now understood why Bloody had expressed its doubt on whether Kylie could successfully lure the Luna Beasts to this place. "The best way is to change baits." Obviously, Bloody had a plan. "They''ve lost confidence in chasing Kylie, and it''s time for us to change their target. They''ll regain the thrill of the chase once they have a new target. They can then complete the second half of the journey." "Do you mean that we need Thunder to be the bait?" Lin Huang knew who Bloody was referring to. "Other than Kylie, it''ll be the most suitable one." Bloody nodded. "No, we can''t. Thunder is too huge, and its agility is nowhere near Kylie''s. If it happens to enter the Fiendish Osiery, it''s difficult for it to survive through it," Lin Huang rejected. Compared to Kylie, Thunder''s size would make it an easy target. Moreover, Kylie''s agility would allow her to avoid sudden attacks whereas Thunder was much weaker than her and it would be easier for the Fiendish Osiers to attack it. Once it became the Fiendish Osiers'' target, it would be in great danger. "Do you have any other plan?" It was already risky for Kylie to enter the Fiendish Osiery. If Thunder was the one that entered the Fiendish Osiery, the probability of it surviving was close to zero. A pet monster was different from humans. If it died on the Stairway Tree, it would die in reality instead of returning to the first checkpoint on the Stairway Tree. Bloody kept quiet for a long while after listening to what Lin Huang asked. "This isn''t how you''d look like if you''re running out of ideas." Lin Huang knew that it was not because Bloody had no other plans. It was because of some reason that it was reluctant to tell. "Just spit it out." "Other than Kylie and Thunder, there''s actually someone who can be the bait," Bloody then said slowly, shifting its gaze towards Lin Huang. Lin Huang was stunned. After a couple of moments, he then pointed at himself and asked, "Me?" After confirming that Bloody was referring to him, a thought suddenly ran through Lin Huang''s mind. "Oh, right, the Transformation Card! How could I forget about it?!" Lin Huang had almost forgotten that he could actually use the Provisional Transformation Card, transforming into Kylie or Thunder. As long as he changed into how they looked like, he would have all of their abilities, including their speed. "I''ll first transform into Thunder and become bait. As soon as I enter the Fiendish Osiery, I''ll transform into Kylie and get out of there as swiftly as possible." Bloody was unwilling to reveal its plan. It did not want Lin Huang to take the risk, but it was running out of solutions. Setting the Luna Beasts up was risky business. "Alright, I''ll take on the task!" Lin Huang accepted without thinking twice. "It''s too dangerous," Bai, who had kept quiet all the while, frowned as he said. It turned back and looked at Bloody. "Is there any other way?" Bloody shook its head helplessly. "Changing the bait is the only way to solve the problem. It''s uncertain whether any other solutions are going to work." "Don''t worry. After using the Transformation Card, my combat strength will level up to immortal-level rank-4. My abilities will be stronger than any of you." Lin Huang patted Bai''s shoulder reassuringly. "I didn''t really make any contribution for the whole day. It''s time to move and do some exercise." "That''s it. I''m going to back Kylie up!" 788 Falling into the Trap In the Secret Forest, a charcoal grey silhouette flashed through the tree branches quickly. The silhouette was extremely fast. The immortal-level rank-8 and rank-9 monsters only managed to detect that a black shadow passing through. When one actually throttled down the speed of the silhouette 100 times slower, one could actually see that it was a charcoal grey bird with an intricate golden pattern on its body. It had a slender body that looked elegant yet powerful. The bird that looked almost eerily similar to Thunder was, of course, Lin Huang. Lin Huang could not get used to Thunder''s body in the beginning. Unlike Bai and the rest that were humanoid monsters, he felt awkward having his hands change into wings. However, in less than an hour, he had gotten used to the body and even liked flying by flapping his wings. Feeling excited for only a few minutes, Lin Huang started to calm himself down. Sensing that Kylie was approaching him at a breakneck speed with his Territory skill, he slowed down. While waiting for Kylie to appear, he started practicing some skills that could trigger the anger of the Luna Beasts. After a short while, he saw a black shadow flying towards him at lightning speed. There was a massive monster horde that followed the black shadow. Lin Huang immediately fluttered his wings and stopped moving forward, staying in one place. Kylie caught a glimpse of Lin Huang and brushed past him without slowing down. This was what Lin Huang had instructed Kylie earlier. She had to pretend that she did not know Lin Huang and continued to flee, leaving the rest of the act to Lin Huang. Obviously, Kylie did what she had been told. She did not even greet him. She directly grazed Lin Huang and flew away. It went so smoothly as though it had been practiced countless times. "She simply just left" Lin Huang thought to himself. The Luna Beasts, of course, noticed Lin Huang in the first place. He now looked exactly like Thunder, and its body was a few times bigger than Kylie''s, so it was hard not to steal the attention. Seeing the monster horde chasing after him, Lin Huang did not immediately turn back and flee. He flapped his wings, and his body began to glow purple. His body was flickering in a purple electric arc, creating peculiar patterns. As Lin Huang opened his mouth wide, a purple glow accumulated within his mouth. The dazzling purple light glowed even brighter as Lin Huang flapped his wings. In just a short while, the intensity of the beam of purple light had reached its peak, becoming much more resplendent. At that moment, Lin Huang let out a screeching bird cry, accompanied by the purple glow shooting out from his mouth. The fist-like purple sphere lingered in mid-air. While it expanded, it rotated quickly. The purple sphere expanded to the size of a fitness ball in just one breath, and it was still increasing in size. Just when the Luna Beasts were less than ten meters away from Lin Huang, the sphere that consisted of the purple thunder exploded. A dazzling purple beam was instantly released. Nobody could gaze directly at the brilliant beam of light. Countless beams of purple electric arcs were gushing out like snakes, spreading in the form of a fan towards the direction where the monster horde was. It was like casting a net into a lake full of fish. The attack which Lin Huang had deliberately launched covered a much wider region compared to Kylie''s. It covered almost half of the monster horde. The purple electric arc struck tens of thousands of Luna Beasts. Although it could do no harm to the Luna Beasts, they would still experience numbness and pain. Reacting to the assault, the Luna Beasts roared in pain. Despite the range of attack being much more comprehensive than Kylie''s, the force was relatively weak. Lin Huang knew very well that the attack would not be able to kill any of the Luna Beasts, but it was the most suitable skill to trigger them. Lin Huang turned back and fled after the attack without a moment of hesitation. The angry Luna Beasts soon targeted Lin Huang and started pursuing him. Although his agility was incomparable to Kylie''s after transforming into Thunder, Lin Huang had his way of getting rid of the Luna Beast''s attack. He did not fly in a straight line, but he flew in a Z-shape instead. He was like a drunkard, flying up and down. He became much more provoking to the Luna Beasts. The insult level had been 100% initially, but it had now risen to 120%. The group of Luna Beasts had forgotten entirely that they were previously chasing Kylie. The evil bird was now their target. "The outcome is pretty awesome." As the bait-changing plan was working, Lin Huang felt relieved. Kylie was flying at her maximum speed and had already disappeared from his sight. Lin Huang then leisurely led the Luna Beasts forward. Perhaps because the attack had triggered a large number of Luna Beasts or because Lin Huang looked much easier to defeat than Kylie, the Luna Beasts did not give up on him easily. Lin Huang then managed to bring the Luna Beasts to their destination. Sensing that Bloody and the rest had hidden well and were ready, Lin Huang grinned and looked towards the Fiendish Osiery. He then accelerated and headed towards it. The Luna Beasts were so na?ve, and they did not realize that the Fiendish Osiery was dangerous. They thought that Lin Huang wanted to get rid of them using the forest. Therefore, they sped up and followed him. Of course, they did not realize that Bloody and the rest were hiding there. The monster horde followed Lin Huang and entered the terrifying Fiendish Osiery. After entering the Fiendish Osiery, Lin Huang immediately looked back at the Luna Beasts. He was worried about the Luna Beasts finding out and retreating at the very last minute. The group of Luna Beasts was obviously not as alert as he thought. They went into the Fiendish Osiery without hesitation. "Success!" Lin Huang was exhilarated. As the Luna Beasts got into the Fiendish Osiery, 80% of the hunting plan had succeeded. He knew that he could gain tens of millions of points with extreme ease. Although more than half of the plan was turning out well, Lin Huang did not let his guard down. He did not immediately leave the Fiendish Osiery. Instead, he continued leading them deeper in. He knew that nobody could retreat after entering the Fiendish Osiery. If he did so, the Fiendish Osiery would immediately block his way, and the Luna Beasts would definitely be startled by them. In addition to the monster horde not going deep enough into the Fiendish Osiery, if they found out that something was wrong, it was highly possible that they could get rid of the controlling willow forest. Once they managed to get rid of the Fiendish Osiery''s control, Bai and the rest would not be able to stop such a large number of monsters. The plan would definitely fail. "It''s best for me to go 43 meters deep into the Fiendish Osiery. The Luna Beasts will follow me at least 30 meters deep" Lin Huang was doing the calculations in his mind so that he would not make any mistakes. The best distance was, of course, calculated by Bloody based on its understanding of the Luna Beasts and the Fiendish Osiers. It was the distance where the Luna Beasts could be controlled, and at the same time, it was also the safest distance for Lin Huang. "35 40, 41, 42, 43!" As soon as it reached the depth calculated by Bloody, Lin Huang immediately flapped his wings, turning back and flying right towards the Luna Beasts that were chasing after him. 789 The Uncatchable Prey Lin Huang had caught the Fiendish Osier''s attention the moment he turned back. It began extending its osiers, reaching out for Lin Huang. The Fiendish Osiers in the Fiendish Osiery were really patient. If their prey did not go deep enough, they would patiently wait until they were confident enough to control their prey before launching any attack. However, as for those who wanted to leave after breaking into the Fiendish Osiery, they would immediately attack, forcing their victim to stay. As Lin Huang retreated, he undoubtedly triggered the Fiendish Osiery''s instinct which was to extend their osiers to stop him immediately. Hundreds of osiers headed out for Lin Huang from all directions. Ten tentacles with the circumference of an adult''s arm extended from the tip of each of the osiers. "Although I''ve seen this earlier, it''s kind of disgusting to see it at such a close distance," Lin Huang thought to himself. The tentacles were green in color and looked somewhat sticky like a slug. It was like a future generation of the earthworm and the slug that had gone through some kind of mutation. Not only was it ten times bigger, but it was also hundreds of times uglier. One would indeed find them disgusting. Lin Huang''s mentality was considered stable, but still, he felt sickened seeing those tentacles. Thousands of tentacles wriggled in mid-air, heading out for Lin Huang. At the same time, the Luna Beasts in front of Lin Huang were in trouble as well. The Fiendish Osier extended their osiers, and there were millions of tentacles going after the Luna Beasts. Since they had already revealed themselves, the Fiendish Osiers was not going wait any longer. If they did not take any action to make the Luna Beasts stay, perhaps the Luna Beasts could escape from the Fiendish Osiery very quickly with their speed, which was the reason why the Fiendish Osier attacked without hesitation. As the group of Fiendish Osiers went on a rampage, Lin Huang did not feel panicked at all. What happened right in front of him was entirely within his expectations. Tens of thousands of tentacles did not stop chasing him. There was an ocean of tentacles right in front of him. Lin Huang flapped his wings and distanced himself from the tentacles. Seeing that he was about to enter the ocean of tentacles, he immediately crushed a Provisional Transformation Card. His immensely colossal body immediately shrank and transformed from Thunder to Kylie. He did not stop and sped up instead as he flew towards the Luna Beasts. He then entered the region where there were countless tentacles. The Luna Beasts that were chasing after Lin Huang were caught in a frenzy as the Fiendish Osier was suddenly attacking them. At that moment, only then did they know that they had fallen into a trap. The Luna Beasts could no longer go after Lin Huang as the Fiendish Osier attacked them. They were alarmed. A majority of the Luna Beasts knew that they had to flee in the direction where they had come from in order to leave the Fiendish Osiery as soon as possible. A small number of them were confused, and soon, they were captured by the Fiendish Osier''s tentacles. Those who fled in the correct direction were entangled by the Fiendish Osier as well. They had no way of getting rid of them. Despite being able to break the tentacles with their fangs and sharp claws repeatedly, the Fiendish Osier''s tentacles could regenerate on their own endlessly. Their energy and Life Power were being drained, resulting in many of the Luna Beasts being caught. Regardless of how fast the Luna Beasts were, how powerful its explosiveness was, and how sharp its fangs were, they were vastly outnumbered by the Fiendish Osier''s tentacles, putting them at significant risk in the battle. Their destiny was like a script written in advance whereby the outcome had already been determined. Lin Huang, who had transformed into Kylie, approached the ocean of tentacles as well. There were 12 pairs of black wings on his back, fluttering at a horrifying frequency. He was traveling through the ocean of tentacles at an extremely fast speed. Like a swimming fish in the ocean, he was moving forward with ease. The tentacles attempted to capture him several times, but still, he managed to avoid the capture perfectly by flapping his wings. Lin Huang could clearly sense that the movements of all the tentacles that were covered by his Territorial skill. In addition to Kylie''s speed and her explosiveness, he could easily sense the attack coming from any of the tentacles. He managed to dodge the attacks in advance and could even use Flicker when necessary. This allowed him to travel in the danger zone without obstruction. Moreover, the Luna Beasts had caught the Fiendish Osier''s attention. Lin Huang was not worried that he might be unable to leave the Fiendish Osiery at all. The osiers of the Fiendish Osier spasmed, extending their tentacles towards their enemies. If one of the tentacles tangled the Luna Beast, it was fated that it would be unable to break free from the entanglement of the tentacles. This was because if it happened to pause for just a moment, the rest of the tentacles would twist around it one after another. Nothing would work even if the Luna Beasts struggled to rip them apart. After breaking one of the tentacles apart, more than ten others would replace it. The broken tentacle could even regenerate at the speed that was visible to the naked eye. The Luna Beasts were being wrapped like dumplings. The Fiendish Osier soon realized that there was a prey that they were unable to capture. It was much smaller than the Luna Beasts. Upon closer inspection, it was a humanoid monster with 12 pairs of wings. It seemed as if any of the tentacles that approached him at a certain distance could complete the capture at the next second. However, he always managed to dodge the capture. Most of the time, he was capable of avoiding the attack of the tentacles by moving a little as though he could foresee things. "You must have discovered the weird guy with 12 pairs of wings on its back." One of the Fiendish Osiers realized that Lin Huang was different from the rest as it failed to catch him after several attempts. Soon, the information spread everywhere, and tens of the Fiendish Osiers nearby could receive the incoming message. "He might be a human. He has strange movements as though he can foresee the trajectory path of our attack." One of the Fiendish Osiers next to it found out that something was weird about Lin Huang. "Humans used to be evil. It''s normal if they invented some movements to restrict our attack." Seemingly, the Fiendish Osier had dealt with humans before and did not have a positive experience. "I don''t think that he can dodge all of our attacks!" After finishing its words, it immediately launched another attack on Lin Huang. More than 20 osiers headed towards Lin Huang and hundreds of tentacles gushed towards him. "It''s not easy to encounter such an interesting prey. Let''s see who has the ability to capture him!" Another Fiendish Osier suggested. Many of the Fiendish Osiers agreed with his suggestion. After reaching a consensus, most of them had given up capturing the Luna Beasts. Lin Huang was their primary target, and they were giving their all to catch him. Lin Huang knew nothing about the discussion between the Fiendish Osiers. The only thing he knew was that the Fiendish Osier was quite smart, but he did not know that this type of monster could actually communicate with each other. He unconsciously became the target of tens of the Fiendish Osiers. Despite not knowing that they were talking about him, he soon noticed that something was wrong because there was a larger number of tentacles that attacked him. "What''s happening? Are they afraid that I''ll be able to leave this place, so they''re all turning on me?" Lin Huang soon realized that the tentacles of the Fiendish Osiers had ignored the Luna Beasts that were not far away from him. Not a single tentacle was extended towards them. Instead, the tentacles were all coming at him! 790 The Insane Fiendish Osier Seeing the tentacles coming for him multiply many times over, Lin Huang frowned. The events that had just transpired were far beyond his expectations. Although he was faster than the Luna Beasts and according to Bloody''s calculations, there would still be half the number of Luna Beasts remaining when he would escape the Fiendish Osier. Theoretically, it would target the larger group of Luna Beasts who were clustered in a group and would be more easily captured. However, they seemingly had a greater interest in Lin Huang instead of the Luna Beast group. "Bloody, what''s wrong with the Fiendish Osiers? Why would they give up attacking the Luna Beasts and come after me?" Lin Huang was under a lot of pressure and asked Bloody with his Divine Telekinesis. Bloody kept quiet for a moment before answering, "The information we have on the Fiendish Osiers is very limited. I didn''t notice it previously as I used to think that they''re just demonic plants that are rather evil when they hunt. However, it seems like I''ve underestimated the Fiendish Osiers'' intelligence." "Most of the triple mutated monsters or those who''re weaker are limited by intelligence. They hunt for survival. However, it seems like the Fiendish Osiers are beyond that and are more intelligent. Not only are they hunting for food, they''re also hunting for higher level needs fun." "You''ve probably become their main target because your unusual behavior drew their attention. Hunting for you has become a game to them, and whoever that managed to capture you will be the winner of the game." "Just like how a well-fed cat will hunts for mice. They''re not going to eat it, it''s just for fun." Lin Huang soon understood Bloody''s explanation, "I''m now the Fiendish Osier''s mouse." "You''re right." Bloody nodded. "So before I get caught, it''s less likely that they''ll give up such an ''interesting'' prey right?" Lin Huang knew the predicament he was in. "Yes, it is. Before getting bored of you, a well-fed cat will definitely not give up their prey that easily." Bloody was not panicked though, "You''re halfway through the 43-meter flight. You''ll be able to make it through the remaining 20 meters in your current condition. You just need to be extra careful." "Alright, I got it. Don''t worry and get ready to attack. Immediately launch an attack as soon as I get rid of the Fiendish Osiery!" After contacting with Bloody and knew what was actually happening, Lin Huang felt relieved. The Fiendish Osier was behaving like how a cat was trying to fool a mouse. They extended their tentacles, attempting to capture Lin Huang. However, they failed. Lin Huang flew past countless tentacles and accelerated from time to time. At times, he slashed his sword to get away from the tentacles and occasionally moved his body aside to dodge the attacks. Flicker would also be used to get rid of the tentacles at times Regardless of how many tentacles there were, the angle he was being attacked from, and the speed the attack, they were unable to even touch the edge of Lin Huang''s clothes. However, there were several hits when they managed to cordon the area off but still, Lin Huang managed to break through it with ease with Flicker. Seeing countless criss-crossed tentacles before him attempting to wrap him up, he grinned. ''It seems like the Fiendish Osiers have no idea what they can still do now. They''ve used the same attack over and over again but they''ve been rendered useless. Still, they''re using the same skill to attack.'' Just as the thought ran through his mind, Lin Huang''s body reacted. He flapped the twelve pairs of black wings on his body abruptly and soon, he completely disappeared. When he reappeared, he had already passed through the big net formed by the tentacles, appearing at a location where there were no tentacles at all. However, when his body became visible, something had put him on alert. He immediately activated Flicker and again, he disappeared. At almost the same time that he disappeared from his original position, a big net made of tentacles emerged from the ground, enveloping the area where Lin Huang was initially at. Lin Huang who was dozens of centimeters away saw what just happened and was glad that he believed his instinct so he managed to avoid the danger. Lin Huang had his guard up after figuring that there was a trap. "It seems like the Fiendish Osiers are much more intelligent than what has been described!" "There''s less than a third of the distance remaining. Don''t be careless anymore. I didn''t even notice that they''ve set a trap underground with their roots. Despite their intelligence being inferior to triple mutated monsters, it''s on par with the intelligence of a 10-year-old child. If you happen to underestimate them again, you''re possibly going to bear some losses." Bloody reminded, "It was mere luck that you managed to overcome the danger with your instinct. However, bear in mind that your instincts are not there to help all the time. In order to survive in such a dangerous place, abilities and cautiousness are of utmost importance." "In fact, I was too careless. I didn''t expect the Fiendish Osier to be actually able to attack with their roots." Lin Huang admitted his carelessness. "The Fiendish Osiers are totally depraved. They set me up by using their roots that I''ve never seen before. I was almost tricked by them." "Another thing that you need to be aware of is that breaking the Fiendish Osier tentacles might not be as easy as it seems despite how unassuming it looks. I''ve been monitoring the battle between the Fiendish Osiers and the Luna Beasts and realized that only a small number of Luna Beasts managed to break free form the tentacles after being captured. Most of the Luna Beasts struggled for a couple of moments before they gave up, looking sluggish. I suspect that the tentacles contain a poison that can restrict the activities of their prey." "Got it. I''ll be careful." Lin Huang was focused on fleeing from the Fiendish Osier but did not notice this point. The information regarding the Fiendish Osiers he had made no mention of their poisonous tentacles. However, according to what had been observed by Bloody, Lin Huang believed that it was true. Lin Huang did not know that he had triggered the Fiendish Osier''s rage when he managed to escape earlier. "How can he possibly get away from us? He''s really good at escaping!" "His movements aren''t the best. It''s his ability to foresee the future! He can accurately predict our attack and dodge it in time. That''s the scariest part." "Did you realize that he''s only immortal-level rank-4? If he advances to immortal-level rank-9, what''s going to happen?" All the Fiendish Osiers that joined the discussion then kept quiet. After a short while, one of the elder Fiendish Osiers said, "After leveling up, perhaps he''ll come back and take revenge on us. We won''t be the ones attacking him by then, for the sake of our safety, I think we should make him stay." "I agree!" "I agree too!" The rest of the Fiendish Osiers agreed with it as well. "Since there are no objections, inform the rest of the members who''re still able to reach him with their attacks, we don''t need to catch him alive!" All the Fiendish Osiers did not treat it as something fun now. Instead, they treated Lin Huang as their greatest enemy. Although Lin Huang knew nothing about it, he was on alert after nearly being trapped by them. After the discussion, the Fiendish Osiers'' killing intent immediately grew, and Lin Huang could sense that the atmosphere was somewhat strange. The next second, the battle escalated. The Fiendish Osier gave up hunting for the Luna Beasts. Millions of tentacles were now heading out for Lin Huang. Lin Huang was shocked. Although he had no idea what was happening, his body had already responded to the attack. He activated Flicker, transforming into a silhouette and disappeared from his original position. Just as the silhouette appeared, countless tentacles ripped it into pieces. "Are they crazy?!" Lin Huang mumbled, feeling that it was ridiculous. "Get out of the Fiendish Osiery as soon as possible. Stop bugging them." Bloody had no idea what was happening as well. What they had to do now was to make sure that Lin Huang could get rid of the region covered by the Fiendish Osiers'' attack. "Okay." Just as Lin Huang answered while nodding his head, the tentacles pounced towards him again. The number of tentacles was about the same. The entire dimension was being vacuumed as a large number of tentacles moved. No noise could be heard. However, Lin Huang knew it earlier and again, he activated Flicker and was several meters away. He was less than eight meters away from the border of the Fiendish Osiery. After stabilizing himself, the Fiendish Osiers performed another attack. They knew that they had very few chances left to kill him. Their opponent could escape for another three times at most before getting away from the area within the Fiendish Osiery''s attack range. Seeing countless tentacles come after him, Lin Huang activated Flicker again. However, as soon as his figure could be seen, a huge net immediately emerged from the ground. Just as it was about to wrap Lin Huang up, Lin Huang disappeared again after slightly moving his body aside. The next moment, shots scattered through the air and surrounded Lin Huang within a ten-meter-wide area as soon as his body appeared. He fixed his gaze on the Fiendish Osier and noticed them exploding abruptly, transforming into countless daggers that flew in all directions. A majority of them did not take aim at Lin Huang. "There''s nowhere else you can escape to, and the only thing you can do is to attack while teleporting." Bloody could clearly see everything that happened with his leech pods from the top. The Fiendish Osier''s daggers had covered an area with a circumference that spanned about 13 meters. The attacks of the daggers were irregular and there were no more safe places. Lin Huang nodded his head. The next moment, he activated Dark Mirror. The daggers then hit the dark sphere that covered Lin Huang''s body, creating ripples on the surface of the sphere before they were reflected. After the activation of Dark Mirror, Lin Huang decided to test the attack power of these daggers. Again, he took a step forward and appeared a few meters away. "The Fiendish Osiers must''ve gone insane. They''d rather harm themselves to kill me." As soon as he showed up, his Dark Mirror was attacked by countless daggers. Lin Huang smirked as he was now only two meters away from the border of the Fiendish Osiery. "He''ll completely get rid of our control if he were to teleport again. Don''t let him run away!" After listening to this, all the Fiendish Osiers went into a frenzy. On the osiers, countless catkins were dispersed by the wind and instantly enveloped an area dozens of meters wide. Just as Lin Huang was feeling terrified, the catkins exploded and transformed into flares. Seeing himself being surrounded by dozens of catkins that were about to explode, Lin Huang took a leap and soon disappeared. 791 It Is Here "These demonic monsters are really crazy!" As Lin Huang showed up in the next moment, he had already left the area of the Fiendish Osiery that was within the osiers'' control. He then turned back to look at the continuous explosions of the catkins that were scattered through the air. A third of the region near the Fiendish Osiery was now shrouded in flames. "It''s not that out of the ordinary for demonic monsters to do something crazy like this." Bloody slowly floated toward Lin Huang, "The mentality of those demonic monsters is controlled by their negative emotions. When they''re triggered, their negative emotions will multiply, causing them to lose all ability to think rationally and consider the consequences of their actions." "But why would they hurt themselves to kill me?!" Lin Huang felt amused when he saw the Fiendish Osiery shrouded in flames with most of the osiers left with nothing. Neither the daggers not the bombs were usually used by the Fiendish Osiers. Those abilities were usually reserved for self-protection and once activated, it would remain unusable for the next three months. The Fiendish Osiers had given their all in their attempt to kill Lin Huang. "It''s almost time to attack! Although the explosion did directly affect the group of Luna Beasts, some of them may have been severely injured. If we don''t attack them now, the Fiendish Osiers might kill them." Bloody reminded, "If they''re killed by the Fiendish Osiers, you won''t get any points." Lin Huang nodded his head and shifted his gaze in the direction where Bai and the rest were. "It''s time to show up!" After saying that, a few shadows flashed by and at the next moment, Bai and the rest appeared standing next to Bloody. "I relinquish the task to you." Lin Huang then allowed Bloody to take charge of the situation. Bloody nodded slightly and called out the first name. "Charcoal!" As soon as Bloody''s voice was heard, Charcoal rapidly returned to its original body size. It knew very well what it was doing because Bloody had already planned a strategy to fight when they began setting up the trap. Charcoal only had to follow what had been planned. It opened its mouth wide as black flames shot out in waves, engulfing the Fiendish Osiers and some of the Luna Beasts. The Luna Beasts that were caught in the attack attacked groaned as they struggled. They wanted to break free from the Fiendish Osier''s entanglement and escape from the fire. However, the Fiendish Osier waved their osiers, extending their tentacles in Charcoal''s direction to rip Charcoal into pieces. In the beginning, Charcoal would still flutter its wings so it could fly to a higher position. It feared getting tangled by the Fiendish Osiers but soon, it realized that the height Bloody told it to fly at had already exceeded the Fiendish Osier''s range so it did not need to worry about attacks from the Fiendish Osiers. "Kylie!" Bloody''s voice was heard before the first attack was over. Kylie who was in her black armor then picked up her spear, pointing the tip of her spear toward the sky. A purple electric glow began flickering on the spear. All of a sudden, dark clouds were formed in the air, and purple lightning was quickly formed on top of the cloud layers. After a short while, endless thunder rumbled in the sky and lightning bolts struck the ground like a storm was coming. The lightning accompanied with the purification power was a poison to the Fiendish Osiers. In addition to the injuries caused by Charcoal''s dragon flames, many of the Fiendish Osiers were burned and died on the spot. Despite there being a small number of Fiendish Osiers that were still alive, they were severely injured and were already on the verge of death. As for the Luna Beasts, the Fiendish Osiers had almost taken their lives away. After experiencing the explosion of the catkins, the dragon flames, and the lightning strikes, it was not easy for them to stay alive. They did not have the energy to run away now, let alone engage in a fight. Bloody did not seem satisfied with the battle''s outcome so it did not immediately ask the rest of them to enter the Fiendish Osiery. Instead, it called Lancelot. Lancelot nodded its head before it brandished its saber, pointing toward somewhere in the Fiendish Osiery. A strange force wave could be felt coming from the sky. A black saber was then formed out of nowhere. Its blade was narrow, long, and was about a meter long. As soon as the first saber appeared, a second and third saber with the same length began to form. In a blink of an eye, tens of thousands of black sabers that looked exactly the same appeared in front of Lancelot. The tips of the sabers were all pointed in the same direction as the saber Lancelot was holding C the Fiendish Osiery. "Kill!" A deep voice was then heard, accompanied by tens of thousands of sabers that streaked across the sky with a whistling sound. The streaking sabers raced toward the Fiendish Osiery like a torrential rain, passing through the bodies of the Fiendish Osiers. Lancelot''s Sword Manipulation was not that strong and could only be compared to a random attack from an immortal-level rank-8. Usually, it could do no harm to the Fiendish Osiers. However, its attack was the final straw that would spell the doom of the Fiendish Osiers. The ones that were already knocking on death''s door could no longer defend themselves against their enemy. Soon, they succumbed to their injuries after the onslaught of the sabers. The Fiendish Osiers finally died after three attacks from Charcoal and the rest. Less than a tenth of them managed to survive the onslaught. The Luna Beasts were rather pitiful. Each attack from Lancelot''s dominating saber was a fatal strike especially since the Luna Beasts had depleted their life power earlier. The onslaught of Lancelot''s sabers only added to their casualties. However, due to a limited range attack, it only managed to cover a twentieth of the Fiendish Osiery. "Charcoal, Kylie, Lancelot! Continue assisting the fight. Attack the rest of the areas in the Fiendish Osiery. You don''t need to care how many Luna Beasts and Fiendish Osiers are killed. I''ll ask the rest to complete the remaining task." After instructing Charcoal and the rest, Bloody turned its body around and looked toward Bai. "Bai, please lead the rest to continue clearing up the monsters. Kill the remaining Fiendish Osiers and Luna Beasts that are still alive after the first wave of attack. Don''t go to places where Charcoal and the rest haven''t been to. Just go after them and complete the kill." Bloody intentionally glanced at Ghastly after finishing its words as if it wanted to warn Ghastly. Ghastly grinned as if it did not mind at all. "I''ll look after it." Bai took a glance at Ghastly and whispered to Bloody. After taking a leap, a voice was heard, "Follow after me!" Tyrant and the rest immediately followed after Bai and Ghastly was no exception. However, it followed at the back of the team, looking relaxed without even an ounce of nervousness despite the fact that the battle was about to begin. Soon after, the battle began as instructed by Bloody. The battle was not as intense as expected by Lin Huang. After three rounds of attacks launched by Charcoal, Kylie, and Lancelot, they no longer had the strength to fight back, be it the Fiendish Osiers or the Luna Beasts. This made it much easier for Bai and the rest to complete the kills. It was certainly a one-sided fight, and Lin Huang''s points kept increasing every second. In the Fiendish Osiery, Bai and the rest were busy with the fight while Ghastly walked leisurely as if it was on a vacation. It did help to attack the Fiendish Osiers in the beginning. However, it began to slack off after a while. Since it did not influence the overall efficiency of the team, Bloody did not bother scolding it. Ghastly walked before one of the Fiendish Osiers for about five times, having observed it for a long time. Them, as it made up its mind, it waved its right hand that wore a white glove. Soon, a gigantic arm was formed out of nowhere, grabbing the Fiendish Osier''s trunk and easily uprooting it. Ghastly then dragged it toward the sky and disappeared from sight. Bloody and Lin Huang saw everything that just happened clearly. "Ghastly, what are you doing?" Bloody frowned as it asked. "Killing all of them is just a waste. I want to catch a few of them alive so that I can do some experiments." Ghastly was being frank with Bloody. Although the instruction given was to kill, Ghastly did not actually go against Bloody by catching a few of them alive. Bloody did not say anything else. "It''s fine. Just let it be." Lin Huang then whispered to Bloody. He did not mean to spoil Ghastly. In fact, there was nothing wrong with Ghastly''s decision to catch them alive. Despite Ghastly slacking all the while, the battle ended very quickly. After less than 10 minutes, they were about to end the fight. They managed to wipe out all the Luna Beasts and almost two-thirds of the Fiendish Osiers had sacrificed themselves in the battle. Just as Bloody was about to give the last instruction to clear up the Fiendish Osiery, its body suddenly became stiff. At almost the same time, Lin Huang who was standing next to Bloody had a shocked expression. Lin Huang''s neck was stiff as he turned his head around to look at Bloody. Bloody''s face had a shocked expression as well as both of them exchanged glances with each other. They knew they had seen. "It seems like it has discovered us." Bloody was feeling worried. "Yes. In fact, it''s already staring at me." Lin Huang shook his head, forcing a smile. "I felt like something was wrong right at the moment when she entered the area covered by my Territory. I checked what''s actually happening out there with my Divine Telekinesis. However, it activated its telekinetic skill as well and the power it was on par with mine. It then managed to locate me after getting into contact with me." Lin Huang told Bloody what had just happened. "I''ve hidden thousands of leech pods throughout the journey, and it has destroyed all of them in an instant. I was wondering how it did it earlier but after listening to what you said, I finally understood. It''s because of its telekinetic skill." Bloody felt relieved as it was really frightened by its opponent. "It''s really strong even without its telekinetic skill. Its aura can be compared to that of Chan Dou. It''s the strongest immortal-level monster that I''ve ever encountered." Lin Huang''s face contorted. "Should we leave?" Bloody asked. "Yes, we should." Lin Huang quickly nodded his head. "The ability of the hornet queen is incredible. Also, there are 12 hornet guardians that have abilities that are almost at the imperial-level as well as millions of Combat Hornetdemons. With our current abilities, we''re incapable of fighting them." "Moreover, I''ve earned enough points." Lin Huang smirked as he looked in the direction where the hornet queen was leading a swarm of hornets at several kilometers away. "Keep the rest of the Fiendish Osiers alive, let''s get them into trouble." 792 Three Demigod Relics Seeing the points of the first name on the leaderboard constantly increasing, the people on the Stairway Tree started feeling bored. Lin Huang''s points had never stopped rising. However, as it reached 287 million points, it suddenly stopped increasing, catching the attention of many. "Lin Xie''s points have stopped changing since 10 minutes ago, but the name on the leaderboard shows that he''s still online. Is he looking for a place to hide?" "The monster horde has just begun for a while but he can already no longer fight them. It seems like he isn''t as strong as we think. I thought that he could fight the entire night." "You said that it has just been a while but to be exact, it''s been two hours. Lin Xie had the courage to stop the monster horde in the Secret Forest and still, he didn''t die after the two-hour fight. This has indeed proven his ability. Those who think that Lin Xie isn''t that powerful, why not enter the Secret Forest and see if you can stay alive for two hours?" Lin Xie did not bother about the discussion that went on in the Genius Union at all. Instead of logging out, he entered the Stairway Mall. "There''re a total of 287 million points. 263 million points are usable which equals 263 billion Life Crystals. The outcome is completely out of my expectations." Lin Huang laughed. He thought that he would be fortunate enough if he could earn tens of millions of points in two days as he already had 24 million points previously. He did not expect using that Bloody''s battle strategy, the points he gained would far exceed his expectations. "It''s not worth directly exchanging your points for Life Crystals here," Bloody reminded. Before returning to checkpoint 55 on the Stairway Tree, he had recalled Bai and the rest back into their card forms. He only brought Bloody along with him to the Stairway Mall. "I know. That''s why I brought you along to see if there''s anything that''s worth exchanging here to be sold at a premium out there." Of course, Lin Huang would not directly exchange his points for Life Crystals. It was terribly silly to do so. "The rarer the item, the higher the offer price at the auction. With your points now, your first choice will be to purchase a demigod relic. Among the demigod relics, demigod-level swords and sabers have the highest demand, followed by armors. If you were to sell these demigod relics at the auction, you don''t need to worry that nobody will buy it," Bloody laughed as it suggested. "Although 263 million points seem like a lot, we can only afford to buy a few demigod relics. The cheapest demigod relic at the Stairway Mall costs 10 million points." Lin Huang had skimmed through the prices of the demigod relics. He was now screening through the items again, looking at the big screen at the Stairway Mall. "The cheapest demigod-level saber costs 16 million points. It''s 15 million points for the sword and 19 million points for armor." Lin Huang realized that they were much more expensive than what he had seen previously. Perhaps the cheaper items might have already been purchased by others. "Check the details," Bloody was staring at the screen as it said. Not many demigod relics were left at the Stairway Mall. The weapon which was in abundance was the saber; they had 28 of them. The item they had least was armor with only 17 of them remaining. There were 23 swords as well. Lin Huang and Bloody soon read through the detailed information of these three types of items. "The items with the highest price are the best quality ones. If I were to sell them at the auction, perhaps the increment in price will be lower than that of the lower priced items." Lin Huang was quite well-versed with this matter. "Should we buy the lower priced items?" "Have you seen the list of items for sale at the auction? What''s the last item to be sold off on the last day of the auction?" Bloody asked, not suggesting anything right away. "Yes. The two items to be sold off on the last day are a demigod-level saber and a demigod-level combat sword." "Are there only two of these demigod relics for sale?" "Yes, there are only two of them. The demigod relics aren''t cabbage. It''s considered an attractive thing to have these two items sold off on the last day." Lin Huang nodded. "How''s the quality of the two demigod relics?" Bloody asked again. "According to the information provided, their quality is about the same as these two items." Lin Huang then selected a demigod-level sword and a demigod-level saber on the screen. The price of the sword was 22 million points whereas the saber cost 23 million points. "Since that''s the quality of their last item for sale at the auction, we should try giving them a chance to change the items for sale on the last day of the auction." Bloody chuckled. "Do you mean that we should look for a demigod relic that''s of an even better quality so that it''ll be the last item for sale at the auction?" "Yes, you''re right. Since they''ve announced the last item for sale in advance and the price has already been fixed, they can offer a better price if we were to send them items that are even better in quality. Since people can compare these items in terms of quality, the bidders will spend more in order to bid for a higher quality demigod relic." Bloody already had the entire plan in its mind. "But they''ve already promoted those items. Even if I were to send these items in today, it''s a bit too late to do so. Are they still going to offer me the best price?" Lin Huang was still worried. "Don''t worry. They''re experts in this field and they will have their way. We just need to send them the items and they''ll do the rest," Bloody assured confidently. "Choose this for the saber. It costs 31 million points. It has a better quality than the saber that costs 23 million points. Choose the sword that costs 29 million points." After Bloody had finished its words, it then picked out a set of armor which cost 33 million points. "These three items, right?" Lin Huang confirmed. "Yes, these three are enough. Having three different types of items, we can target three different customer groups. This is the only armor being sold and it will definitely excite the bidders. There''s already one saber and sword being sold at the auction. Therefore, buying one sword and one saber will be enough. They''ll feel that it isn''t valuable if we have more. The rest of the demigod relics have very low demand and we can hardly sell it off at a good price. There''s no need to get those items," Bloody explained. The Heaven Alliance members would receive 30% off their purchase. Lin Huang spent 65.1 million points purchasing the three demigod relics that Bloody had chosen. He saved about 28 million points which was almost equivalent to buying two items and getting one free. Initially upset, he felt much happier now. After purchasing the three demigod relics, Lin Huang then logged out of the Genius Union after leaving the Secret Forest for about half an hour. On the Stairway Tree, many people were staring at the points on the leaderboard, wondering if something had happened to Lin Huang. After half an hour, Lin Huang''s points never changed right until the light on his name dimmed. "Lin Huang has logged out?!" "His points never changed for half an hour. He''s just started playing. How can he log out at this moment!? What is he doing? Is he fooling us?" "Could he have encountered some scary monsters or a massive monster horde and was escaping from them?" Many people agreed with this hypothesis because one would not be able to instantly log out from the Stairway Tree. There was a two-second delay. If the person was distracted during the two seconds delay, he or she would not be able to log out. If monsters were chasing Lin Huang the past half an hour, then everything would make sense. Just as everybody was discussing on the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang had dressed himself up in a disguise and rushed towards the auction in Wanbao City. 793 A Unique Disguise "Disguise Card is activated. Please choose your disguise. Please choose the race that you would like to disguise as." "Human race." "Please choose a gender." "Male." "Please choose a combat level that you would like to disguise as." "Demigod-level." "Please proceed with a detailed character design." "Random." "Starting to create the body of the character randomly. Appearance and attire loading The character has been randomly created." "Would you like to confirm your disguise? (If your answer is no, a face will be randomly chosen again.)" "Yes!" A skinny and tall man was then randomly created. He had a height of about 1.92 meters with long limbs. Even the size of his palm far exceeded an ordinary man''s. However, all these did not draw Lin Huang''s attention. What stunned him was his reflection as he fixed his gaze at the mirror. He had a sinister yet handsome face. Pairing his gloomy face with a pair of bloodshot eyes, he looked extraordinary. From his face, one would know that he was definitely not a kind person. Looking into his eyes, anyone would wonder how many people''s blood was on his hand. Lin Huang smirked as he looked at the mirror. As he opened his mouth wide, a chill spread everywhere. He shivered as he saw his own reflection and he immediately dropped his smirk. "I look scary." He practiced some expressions and movements in front of the mirror, familiarizing himself with the new body. Lin Huang then donned a black robe. It was a long robe which completely covered his body. It was difficult to even detect his body shape after putting on the robe. His head was covered by a hat, and his hairstyle could not be seen at all. His face was barely visible as the shadow of the hat masked it. One could hardly see him clearly. "The attire makes me look even scarier." Lin Huang smirked in mockery. After preparing himself well, Lin Huang then left and headed towards the Wanbao Auction. The Wanbao Auction was open for 16 hours a day from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. When Lin Huang logged out of the Genius Union, it was not even 10 p.m. yet. It was just slightly after 10 p.m. when he arrived at the auction which was lively as usual. A week before the auction officially began, the small dealers had very brisk business because many people from different footholds went there to seek good deals. They wanted to find treasures that people might possibly miss out on. As he entered the auction, the liveliness of the place was out of Lin Huang''s expectations. He thought there would not be that many people at this hour. However, he seemed to have entered the wet market area where it was incredibly crowded. As he gazed around the auction square, Lin Huang walked towards a lady in a uniform. From the uniform that she was wearing, it was not difficult to identify that she was neither a seller nor a buyer. She was an auction staff. "I have something to sell. Please bring me to meet your boss," Lin Huang said as he approached the lady. He did not bother whispering. "May May I know what kind of item you have?" Seeing Lin Huang''s pair of red eyes, the uniformed lady was frightened and stammered immediately. She tried not to distance herself from him while forcing a smile. "Demigod relics," Lin Huang spoke audibly. Despite the fact that it was noisy at the auction, complete silence fell over the hall as soon as he uttered his words. Most of them then looked towards Lin Huang who grinned as this was precisely the effect he wanted. He wanted as many people as possible to know that he had demigod relics for sale. Therefore, many of them would know that there would be more than two demigod relics on sale on the last day of the auction. They would then prepare more credits for the relics. However, many of them did not size Lin Huang up immediately. The moment when they saw his pair of eyes, they quickly shifted their gazes as they did not have the guts to look at him. A minority of them checked him out, but they did not fix their gaze on Lin Huang any longer. They tagged Lin Huang as "an extremely dangerous" person. Only a small number of people could bear the effect of deterrence and secretly observed Lin Huang. They wanted to know if they could get some clues from him. Lin Huang did not mind at all. He stared at the staff, patiently waiting for her reply. "Demi-Demigod relic?!" The staff was terrified and still, she spoke with a stutter. Her lips moved slightly as if she had something else to say. However, Lin Huang interrupted her. "Stop wasting my time. Bring me to meet your boss." Lin Huang''s character was meant to be rude and unreasonable. A person like his character would certainly not have the patience to listen to her. The staff''s body shivered slightly. Fearfully, she brought Lin Huang to meet her boss. She had completely forgotten that she did not have the right to bring anyone to meet the boss. Under normal circumstances, if someone requested to meet the boss, she had to inform the manager who would have the power to bring the guest to meet the boss. After a short while, the staff brought Lin Huang in front of a door. "This is the boss''s office." After completing the task given by Lin Huang, the staff felt relieved and no longer spoke with a stutter. "Is he in at this hour?" Lin Huang wondered as it was about 10 p.m. In order to disguise himself, he had even removed his Territorial skill as he was afraid that someone would notice that something was off. He dared not simply activate his Divine Telekinesis either. He knew nothing about what was happening behind that door. "He should be in at this hour. The auction is about to begin. The boss is in the office almost 24 hours a day." The staff nodded her head. Lin Huang did not ask her to go and she also did not dare to leave. Just as Lin Huang was about to push the door open, a voice was heard coming from behind the door. "The VIP is here. Please come in." After finishing his words, the door opened on its own accord. Lin Huang grinned and strode into the room without any hesitation. He looked around the room as he entered. It was a room with a clean and simple renovation, but one could tell that it was an extremely luxurious room just by looking at the room details. The office table was made of ink lightstone which was a scarce type of mineral. Seemingly, the entire ink lightstone had been used to make the office table. Based on its weight, Lin Huang estimated its price to be comparable to an ancient relic''s. On the other hand, the office chair was built using dark gold. Dark gold was an alloy and it was one of the primary materials used to make ancient relics. The chair was made of quality materials and its price could also be compared to an ancient relic. The cost of the sofa was high. Just by looking at the sofa legs and arms, it was apparent that its frame was made from the bones of monsters. The leather that wrapped around the sofa was from the black-scaled dragonkin while its back and seats were made of skin with leopard print. Lin Huang could roughly recognize that it was the skin of a monster called the Sapphire Coeurl. As for the leather, it should be made from the skin of the Thinscale Night Dragon. Both of them were imperial-level monsters. Therefore, Lin Huang guessed that the bones of the monster must belong to the bone of an imperial-level monster as well. As for the price of the sofa, it should be equivalent to the price of an ancient telekinetic weapon. The both of them sat up straight on the sofa. 794 Glorious Exi The duo sitting on the sofa did not release any aura that was suppressing to Lin Huang. However, they did not bother to restrain the aura that exuded from their body. Lin Huang had dealt with imperial-levels several times, so from their aura, he could easily identify that the both of them were on imperial-level. While the both of them were sizing Lin Huang up, Lin Huang returned the favor. The one sitting on the left side of the sofa was quite tall, and he was wearing a navy blue suit. It was evident that he had recently just shaved as he had a mild green tint on his face. However, one could also see the growing stubble on his face. Right at this second, he was sitting up straight like a ramrod and his facial expression was stern. He looked at Lin Huang like he was scrutinizing him. The man sitting on the right was very lanky too. However, he was thinner than the man sitting next to him. He had long brown hair that was tied back in a ponytail. He had a mustache and a beard that he shaved very often. He looked much more relaxed than the one sitting next to him. However, he did not completely lie back on the sofa as he was still on his guard. He did not scrutinize him though, but he looked at him curiously. After studying up, Lin Huang then took off his hat, revealing his hidden face. He did not worry that both of them might discover that something was amiss. Xiao Hei had told him before that only a True God could see through the effects of the Disguise Card. Even a Virtual God would not realize anything wrong if they were to look at him close-up, let alone the two imperial-levels. Just as Lin Huang took off his hat, the disguised aura of the demigod was released. Although there was only a slight release of the aura, the two imperial-levels could clearly sense the combat level screened by Lin Huang at such a close distance. Their pupils immediately dilated, and they exchanged glances with each other. They stood up from the sofa at almost the same time and bowed deeply to Lin Huang. "Sir!" A demigod had the most powerful combat strength on this land and was undoubtedly one of the strongest people even if they were to go to the Land of Origin in Division 1. Many of the old and well-known families at the core zones and the leaders from various organizations were also on demigod-level. The man with the ponytail and the man in the suit were respectful not just due to the difference in combat strength, but also the disparity in status. The status of all demigods on this land, including those who trained themselves without joining any organization, could be compared to the elders from the royal families. Both of them ought to respect the elders. Of course, Lin Huang knew about this and did not feel strange when they paid him their respects. He waved his hand slightly and walked towards the sofa. He then moved one of the single-seater sofas and sat down. He did not say anything while sizing up the man with the ponytail. After a moment of silence, the both of them felt nervous and the man with the ponytail finally initiated the conversation. "May I know if you''re a buyer or a seller?" "I have a few items for sale, but I''m not sure if you know much about them." Lin Huang sounded as if he was lecturing his juniors. "Don''t worry. We have 28 professional appraisers. 25 of them are Grade-A appraisers and the other three are Grade-S appraisers. The man next to me and I are both Grade-S appraisers." An appraiser could not be blase when examining the grade of an item. A true appraiser had to be capable of clearly determining the ingredients of each item, its raw materials, the price of each raw material, and the difficulty of the finishing process of the product. Only then could the appraiser make an accurate estimate of its price. An appraiser had the right to set the call price of each item. The grade of each appraiser was highly dependent on their combat strength. The reason being was that the appraiser would need to insert Life Power into the relic in order to know the exact function of the relic, the conversion rate of the Life Power of the relic and other details. For example, anyone below immortal-level would be unable to activate an ancient relic. Therefore, in order to examine an ancient relic, one would need to fulfill the requirement whereby their combat strength had to be at least on immortal-level. The so-called Grade-A appraisers were on immortal-level. They could accurately evaluate an ancient relic. At the same time, they had the right to set a price for the ancient relic, so the auction could refer to the price provided to fix the call price. As for the Grade-S appraisers, they basically had to be on imperial-level and they must possess the ability to examine a demigod relic. Of course, they had the right to set a price for the demigod relic. Lin Huang was surprised. Despite not having been to many of the auctions, he knew that as the largest auction house in Division 7, the Kyoto Auction House only had three Grade-S appraisers. The Wanbao Auction could only obtain the 10th place among all the auction houses in Division 3. It was no better than the Dark Auction House which was ranked 11th. Basically, the Wanbao Auction could possibly be replaced at any time by the Dark Auction. However, such an auction house would be on par with the first auction house, the Kyoto Auction House in Division 7. "This is a core zone for real. Other divisions are incomparable to it," Lin Huang thought to himself. However, he acted as if there was nothing exciting. "Are the both of you Grade-S appraisers?" Lin Huang glanced at the both of them with a scrutinizing gaze. The man with the ponytail smiled while projecting his certificate as an appraiser. "Sir, this is my certificate." The man in the suit who stood next to him immediately projected his certificate without any facial expression. It was a card with only some brief information about the appraiser. There was information like photos, names, certificate ID, and registration time. Information such as items that had been examined and the detailed evaluation reports was hidden. The appraiser would need to authorize others in order for the rest to have access to it. Lin Huang did not need to know all this. It was not necessary for him to look at their certificates though. To prove his arrogance, he doubted their identity, behaving in a manner he should be. Glancing through both of their certificates, Lin Huang immediately shifted his gaze back to the man with the ponytail and smirked. "Your name is Tang Xu. Are you from the Tang family?" Among a few of the royal families in Division 3, the Tang family was one of them with two demigods from the Tang family. Before coming to the Wanbao Auction, Lin Huang had no idea that the auction house was actually the run by the Tangs. "Please don''t laugh at me." Tang Xu smiled, nodding his head. Lin Huang nodded and did not ask further about Tang Xu''s identity. "It''s quite reliable I guess since the auction house is part of the Tang family''s business." After finishing his words, Lin Huang took out the demigod saber chosen by Bloody from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He then gradually drew it from the scabbard. As soon as the saber was pulled out of the scabbard, a blood intricate lit up on the blade of the saber, releasing a faint bloody glow. Soon after, the bloody glow surrounded the entire blade of the saber. "Demigod relic!" Right after the saber was being drawn out of the scabbard, the both of them fixed their gazes on the saber. "What do you think about this saber?" Lin Huang grinned as he asked both of them. "It''s an incredible saber! It''s much better than the one that we intend to sell on the last day of the auction!" Tang Xu excitedly grabbed the saber from Lin Huang and took a closer look at it. He was in love with the saber. The man in the suit who stood next to him carefully looked at each and every inch of the saber as well. "Offer me a price." Lin Huang did not show them the other two demigod relics. He patiently waited for the both of them to have a better look at the saber before he requested them to offer him a price. "The call price of this saber is 30 billion," the main in the suit offered. "What do you think?" Lin Huang seemed to be unhappy with the price, turning his head back and looking at Tang Xu. "30 billion is a pretty reasonable price." Tang Xu kept quiet for a moment before responding to him, "However, the price can be a little higher since the saber can be sold off on the last day of the auction. I''ll fix the price at 33 billion then." After setting the price, Tang Xu noticed that Lin Huang''s facial expression remained unchanged. He then continued, "Sir, the call price doesn''t have to be too high. If the price being set is too high, you might scare some of the potential bidders away." "What''s the call price of the item that you just mentioned which you intend to sell on the last day of the auction?" Lin Huang asked. "25 billion. The price is slightly higher than usual. If it weren''t the last item for sale at the auction, the price wouldn''t be higher than 23 billion." Tang Xu was honest. "Alright. I''ll accept the offer then." Lin Huang grinned. "Since the price of the saber is 33 billion, I suppose that the other two demigod relics of similar quality will be offered almost the same price, right? Can the both of you please have a look at them?" After having his words uttered, Lin Huang then took out the other two demigod relics where he had a combat sword and a set of armor. Tang Xu and Tang Yi were startled. Lin Huang had set them up. The price of the saber was actually set slightly higher than normal price. They did not expect Lin Huang to have another two demigod relics. However, both of them were soon attracted by the other two demigod relics. Spending almost 20 minutes to complete the evaluation, both of them then decided the final price of the relics after a short discussion. "The quality of the sword is almost the same as that of the saber as it can be sold during the last day of the auction as well. The call price will be 32 billion. As for the set of armor, since it''s the only demigod-level armor we have at the auction, it can be priced slightly higher at 38 billion. Sir, do you agree with the price offered?" "Okay." Still, Lin Huang answered without any facial expression. In fact, he was feeling great inside. He was expecting to earn about 90 billion from the three demigod relics. However, the price offered had exceeded 100 billion. "Under normal circumstances, a 5% administration fee will be charged by the auction house. I''ll give you a Supreme Member Card and only 3% administration fees will be charged. If you feel like buying anything from the Wanbao Auction, you''ll get 20% off on all items!" Tang Xu then paused for a moment, lowering his voice and added, "Including the illegal items." "Also, the card will be valid for a lifetime as long as our auction house does not go bankrupt," Tang Xu said as he took out a golden card the size of half a palm from his Emperor''s Heart Ring and passed it to Lin Huang. "Scan it with your Emperor''s Heart Ring and it''ll be in sync with your identity. Our system will be able to detect your Emperor''s Heart Ring on its own then." Lin Huang took the card from him and fiddled around with it. "Does it mean that the card can no longer be used after scanning it with my Emperor''s Heart Ring?" "Yes, it is. You can only sync one Emperor''s Heart Ring to one card. You no longer need to use the card after it''s in sync with your identity. You can do whatever you like to the card." "Does it mean that I can give it to anyone as long as I don''t connect it to my Emperor''s Heart Ring?" Lin Huang asked again. "Yes, it is. However, only the Emperor''s Heart Ring that''s in sync with the Supreme member card will be eligible to enjoy those offers." "Alright, I know. I''ll leave the items here and I''m not going to the auction. My apprentice will be attending instead.. You shall just pay the final amount of money for the items sold to him. He''ll bring along this card when he attends the auction." Lin Huang was preparing himself for what was going to happen soon as he had to come along with Yi Zheng and he could not attend the auction by wearing a disguise. "It''s sad that you can''t attend the auction on your own. However, we''ll treat your apprentice well." "Please remind him about the underground auction as well. I think he has something to buy," Lin Huang deliberately urged him. He knew that an invitation was required in order to join the underground auction as there were many illegal items that could not be sold in public. They had to restrict the buyers to avoid getting into trouble. "Okay, I got it. Don''t worry. I''ll make arrangements for you." Tang Xu nodded his head as he did not feel strange about it. "I''m done with it. You may continue with your work. Thank you for your hospitality." After finishing his words, Lin Huang''s body was akin to the breaking of glass as it decomposed swiftly and faded away. The duo was stunned when they saw what just happened. They only regained their senses when Lin Huang''s body had disappeared entirely. "The skill of a demigod is fantastic!" Tang Xu exclaimed. "I can''t even recognize if it was a unique body movement or a cloning skill." Tang Yi was feeling surprised. "There''s a monitoring system in my office. The scene should''ve been recorded." Tang Xu looked in the direction where the Surveillance Snail was being hidden. "I guess we should show this to the elders. Perhaps they''ll know who he is." Tang Yi suggested. "That''s what I was thinking too." Hundreds of meters away from the hotel, Lin Huang grinned. In order to create such an astonishing departing effect, Lin Huang sent his clone to meet the both of them. The clone was created with his Cloning Card. The clone then wore a disguise with the Disguise Card, putting his consciousness into the clone. His real body had been sitting on the hotel sofa since the very beginning. Just as he wanted to use the Disguise Card, Lin Huang pondered how he could leave the auction house without being followed so that his identity would not be revealed. Regardless of how well he could disguise himself, his combat strength was only on holy fire-level. If he were followed by an imperial-level, he would be unable to get rid of them. After a long while, only then did he come up with this plan. He met them with his clone, making such a glorious exit. Nobody could follow after him and he could even deter the people from the auction house. Lin Huang even asked Xiao Hei to turn his Emperor''s Heart Ring into a card. The card was recalled right as the clone left. As for the Supreme member card, Lin Huang had already stored it into his Emperor''s Heart Ring. Putting on his Emperor''s Heart Ring that gradually formed in his hand, Lin Huang took a deep breath and said, "I''m glad that there were no mistakes." 795 Yi Zheng Is Here Late August marked the beginning of autumn at Wanbao City. The temperature was about 27 degree Celsius and it was much more comfortable than the climate a week ago. Framing both sides of the road were Jingui Trees with stunning blossoms and its fragrance permeated the air. It was named the Jingui Tree because its flower was golden in color. It glowed as the sun shone on it, looking luxurious. The plant was somewhat similar to the sweet osmanthus on Earth. However, it was lightly scented and did not overpower the senses. Contrary to its reserved scent, the Jingui Tree was larger and taller than the sweet osmanthus on Earth. Most of the trees were 15 meters to 25 meters tall. A few of them reached 30 meters and above. Those with a height of 50 meters and above were known as Jingui Kings. They were rare and their price could be compared to that of an ancient relic''s. Lin Huang had taken his bath early in the morning. He leisurely walked toward the portal located at the center of Wanbao City. He went to a caf opposite the portal and sat by the window. He then ordered a set of breakfast with a black coffee, patiently waiting for Yi Zheng to arrive. He even captured a photo of his breakfast and posted on his social media. There were a few comments and likes less than three minutes after the photo was posted. "Are you waiting for my brother?" Yi Yeyu was the first person who commented. She seemed to be tracking all of her friends'' activities constantly. "Why are you taking pictures of food? You should''ve taken pictures of the beautiful ladies!" Li Lang posted the second comment. Leng Yuexin liked the post without commenting on anything. Lin Xin commented with an emoji showing bared teeth. On his way, Yi Zheng saw his post as well and he commented, "I departed without eating breakfast. I''m ravenous now Xiao Yu, comfort me, please. Boohoo!" However, Yi Yeyu''s reply was "F*ck off!!!" Lin Huang did not expect Mr. Fu to comment as well. However, his comment was "Does it taste good?" After chatting with his friends for a while, Lin Huang browsed the news on his Emperor''s Heart Ring since it was still early. By default, the Emperor''s Heart Ring would show the local news. Unless he changed its default homepage, the news that first popped up would be the local news regardless of where he was. As he tapped the webpage open, he was startled to see the news headlines. The headline was "Wanbao Auction Will Have Three Secret Items to Be Auctioned Off on the Last Day of the Auction!" Lin Huang immediately tapped it open to read the contents. The news reported that there was a demigod who secretly visited Wanbao Auction House at night, leaving three items to them and left." The news did not mention what those three items were. However, it did say that the two demigod relics that they intended to sell on the last day of the auction would be shifted to the first day of the auction instead. Right after the news was published, many people began commenting. "The three items have replaced the demigod relics. Could they be God relics?" "They might be God relics or God items." "Items offered by a demigod must be at least on demigod-level. The quality of these items must be better than the previous two demigod relics in order to be able to replace them. The three secret items are definitely worth looking forward to." The people from different royal families and organizations panicked after reading the news early in the morning. "There might be the appearance of Virtual God items at the auction. I need more cash!" "Regardless of the probability of having a God relic or a God item at the auction, as long as there''s a gleam of hope, we have to be well prepared and get them all!" "The last time there was a God relic at the auction was 31 years ago. As for the God item, the last time they had such an item for sale was at the Land of Origin 46 years ago. If there really is a God item or a God relic at the auction, we''re getting it by all means!" Lin Huang was the culprit who had caused all this to happen. He was now leisurely reading the news while drinking his cup of coffee. At 9.26 a.m., Lin Huang received a voice message from Yi Zheng. "I''m here. Where are you?" "Exit from the south door. I''m in the caf opposite." Lin Huang then finished his last sip of coffee and strolled out of the caf. Just as he stepped out of the caf, he saw Yi Zheng walking towards him from the south door of the portal. He waved his hand and Yi Zheng walked towards him with a smile. "I haven''t seen you in half a year. You''ve grown taller." Yi Zheng patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. "Is it?" Lin Huang asked as he raised his brows. He had been in Division 3 for more than four months using Lin Xie''s fake identity most of the time and he did not realize the changes in his body. "You''re almost the same height as I am," Yi Zheng compared. The difference between their heights was probably less than a centimeter and was hardly detectable. He was 183 centimeters tall. Half a year ago, when the both of them entered the grade-5 ruins together, they were about five centimeters different in height, which was apparent. "Perhaps I''ve really grown taller." Lin Huang realized that they were now at the same eye level. "Let''s go back to the hotel." "You haven''t taken your breakfast. Don''t you want to eat something first?" Lin Huang turned his body slightly, pointing at the restaurant that he had just taken his breakfast at. "They serve pretty good food." "It''s okay. I''ve taken my breakfast. I was just teasing Xiao Yu just now." Yi Zheng smiled, shaking his head. "Alright. Let''s go back to the hotel then." Lin Huang immediately summoned the Dimensional Portal without a moment of hesitation. The both of them then strode into it. In the next moment, they arrived at the hotel where Lin Huang was staying. "The room looks cozy," Yi Zheng teased as he glanced around the room. "This is your room. Mine is to the right of yours." Lin Huang pointed at his room. "I''ve done the check-in process for you, so you''re all set. I''ll send you the key card now." After finishing his sentence, Yi Zheng then received the electronic key card from Lin Huang. "Do you want to take a rest first and walk around the stalls later after lunch? Or do you want to go now?" Lin Huang asked. "I think we shall go now. The auction begins tomorrow. I need to familiarize myself with the place first. Let''s see if we can find something worth buying," Yi Zheng said in excitement. Before the auction officially began, sellers peddled a variety of items outside the auction house. Not every one of them would set up a stall. Some of them had their own platform to display the items for sale. However, everybody had already gotten used to calling them "stalls". Most of the people who wanted to attend the auction would usually walk around these stalls before the auction officially began. They hoped to buy something that others could have possibly missed out on. "Alright, then let''s walk around the stalls first." Lin Huang had actually visited these stalls on the very first day that he arrived at Wanbao City. However, there was nothing worth buying. Seeing Yi Zheng''s excitement, he did not want to disappoint him. 796 A Healthy Sibling Relationship The hotel which Lin Huang was staying at was less than 300 meters away from the auction house. He left the hotel with Yi Zheng. They walked along the street and soon, they arrived at the auction house. There were many sellers outside the auction house. Yi Zheng then joined the crowd excitedly and visited each of the stalls. Lin Huang followed after him. He took a glance at the stalls and he clearly detected everything through his Divine Telekinesis. Most of them were just selling worthless stuff and there were many counterfeit goods as well. Lin Huang scanned through tens of stalls with his Divine Telekinesis. Not a single transcendent item could be found. Although Yi Zheng did not possess Divine Telekinesis, he had been brought up in a royal family. Despite not being an appraiser, he was definitely an expert in this field. They spent the entire morning visiting hundreds of stalls. Soon, Yi Zheng''s facial expression changed as he found nothing to buy. "I''m overthinking. There are just a few transcendent items which aren''t really great in terms of quality, but they''re being sold at an exceptionally high price." "The stalls have been here for more than a week. Many immortal and imperial-levels have visited these stalls. If there were items that were really valuable, they''d have bought them earlier," Lin Huang raised his brows and said with a simper, "Are you really expecting to find something valuable here? That''s too good to be true." "Let''s go in and walk around." Yi Zheng did not want to give up yet. Lin Huang had no choice but to follow him into the auction house. It was much more crowded inside. Yi Zheng had regained his enthusiasm and soon, he followed the crowd. Lin Huang accompanied him for a while but was quickly left behind. Although Lin Huang could easily locate his position with Divine Telekinesis, he could not follow him closely as the auction house was now jammed packed. He was too lazy to make his way through the crowd, so he decided to follow the crowd while detecting the stalls nearby with his Divine Telekinesis. He had to admit that the items the stalls in the auction house sold were of a higher quality compared to the items being sold outside. Lin Huang scanned through more than 20 stalls with his Divine Telekinesis, and almost every stall had transcendent items available for sale. Most of the sellers were on holy fire-level and there were even some immortal-levels as well. However, those transcendent items came at a steep price as they were at least 20% more expensive than the market price. As Lin Huang glanced through the stall, he noticed a few supreme relics as well. However, none of them managed to attract his attention. Among the supreme relics he owned, he had two combat swords, three sets of telekinetic daggers and two sets of armor that were still new. As for ancient relics, he had a sword, an armor, and three sets of daggers. Of course, he would not be interested in the items sold at these stalls. With his Divine Telekinesis, he detected that Yi Zheng had stopped in front of one of the stalls not far away from him. He was looking at a supreme relic that was in the shape of an umbrella. Soon, he began to bargain with the owner. Lin Huang felt that it was strange and he contacted him, "Why do you want to buy this?" "Since I''m here in Division 3, I''ll need to buy some New Year gifts for Xiao Yu. The umbrella looks pretty. I think that she''ll like it," Yi Zheng answered. Lin Huang was speechless. He could buy an umbrella like this anywhere. Moreover, the one that Yi Zheng was holding was not an umbrella. It was a unique type of weapon that appeared like an umbrella. The process of making of that particular umbrella was very complicated. The market price of this item was at least 50% much more expensive than a sword of the same grade. The stall owner was quoting him double the cost of a supreme relic. Nevertheless, Lin Huang did not stop him. From a short distance, he saw Yi Zheng purchase the umbrella at a price that was 1.8 times higher than the price of a sword of the same quality. "He''s a siscon for real" Lin Huang mumbled. The face of a short-haired girl with bangs then flashed through his mind. "Xin Er" Lin Huang had a rather soft gaze as he thought about Lin Xin. "What New Year gift should I buy for her?" It was about 1 p.m. after he visited all the stalls. Lin Huang did not buy anything while Yi Zheng''s only purchase was the umbrella. "Let''s eat something first. I know a seafood restaurant nearby that serves delicious food," Lin Huang suggested as they walked out of the auction house. "Okay. Let''s talk over lunch. I''m interested in what you''ve been through over the past few months." Yi Zheng respected Lin Huang to some extent. He had left home at the age of 18 and trained in the core zone alone. It seemed like he had been doing exceptionally well there. They then arrived at the restaurant and ordered some food. Yi Zheng initiated the conversation. "What do you want to buy at the Wanbao Auction? An ancient relic?" He could sense that Lin Huang''s combat strength had advanced to gold flame-level. That being said, he was actually close to immortal-level. "No. I have an ancient relic. I''m here to sell off some of my stuff and have a look at the underground auction. I want to buy God Crashers." Lin Huang did not hide his intention from Yi Zheng since they had discovered the God Crashers together. "God Crashers?!" Yi Zheng frowned as he heard that. "Have you used up all the God Crashers?" Lin Huang grinned, nodding his head and he did not say anything else. "It seems like the past few months have been hard on you." Yi Zheng knew that Lin Huang definitely would not have used the God Crashers if it was not an extreme emergency. He had encountered danger for more than once since he had used up all the God Crashers. "Division 3 is a complicated place. You have to be careful if you are to train here." Lin Huang did not explain any further and warned Yi Zheng. He then changed the topic. "How''s Yeyu?" "As usual, she still slacks off at training." Yi Zheng looked resentful. "She''s actually way more talented than I am. As long as she''s willing to put more effort into her training, she''ll be able to surpass me very soon." "Will you be worried if she beats you?" Lin Huang teased. As a siscon, it was his nature to protect his sister. If Yi Yeyu happened to be stronger than him and no longer needed his protection, he would probably be upset. Yi Zheng was stunned when he heard that. He kept quiet for a couple of moments before changing the topic again. "Tell me what you''ve done in the past few months so that I can learn from your experience. Knowing that you''ve used up all the God Crashers, I worry if I''ll die in Division 3. If I die during the training, Xiao Yu might engrave stuff I wouldn''t want to see on my grave such as ''The weak person who died from choking on his saliva'', ''The fool who died from slipping on a watermelon rind" "Both of you sure have a healthy sibling relationship!" Lin Huang thought to himself. 797 Ism Just Selling off a Few of the Demigod Relics The long-awaited Wanbao Auction officially began on the first of September. Slightly after seven o''clock in the morning, Lin Huang knocked on Yi Zheng''s door as his room was just next to his. After a short while, Yi Zheng opened the door and was stunned when he saw Lin Huang. He then shook his head helplessly. "I''m not used to seeing you in this guise." "I''ve no choice but to temporarily use this identity in Division 3 to avoid getting into trouble." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders as he had already disguised himself as Lin Xie. "You''ll get used to it soon." He had told Yi Zheng about his fake identity the night before. He even showed him how he looked like after putting on his disguise. It was Yi Zheng''s second time seeing this face but he still could not get used to it. "Your name is Lin Xi, isn''t it?" Yi Zheng confirmed with Lin Huang again. Lin Huang had already told him the night before, but he was afraid that he might recall wrongly. "You''re right." Lin Huang nodded his head. "I''ll address you as Lin Xie from now onwards." In order to avoid calling him the wrong name, Yi Zheng decided to start addressing him as Lin Xie. "I guess you should get a pseudo-relic in the future. It''d be best if it were an ancient relic which can cheat most imperial-levels," Lin Huang then said, "It''s very complicated in Division 3 with so many underworlds. Some of the footholds are ridiculously confusing. There''s almost half a year left to the new year. You''ll face some trouble. Sometimes, when you don''t feel like getting involved at all, trouble will come to you too. Having a pseudo-relic can save you from that hassle." Yi Zheng was not weak and he was just as experienced as Lin Huang. Lin Huang was telling him all this not because he doubted Yi Zheng''s ability and experience. Instead, he was worried that Yi Zheng did not realize how dangerous Division 3 was. He would die if he were to be careless especially in places like Division 3. "I''ve got it. Don''t worry. I won''t put my life at risk." Yi Zheng''s facial expression became serious. "As for the pseudo-relic, I''ll get myself one soon." In fact, before meeting up with Lin Huang, Yi Zheng did not take training seriously. He used to think that he was now on immortal-level and nothing could possibly endanger his life. He thought that the half-year training program could not be compared to the training at home. However, after listening to what Lin Huang said regarding the distribution of various organizations and some of the incidents between the organizations in Division 3 the night before, he suddenly felt that he had entered an ancient forest. There were cruel, carnivorous monsters that could kill him at any time. After chatting for a while, they then entered the floating staircase and had their buffet breakfast on the first floor of the hotel. It was just 7.30 a.m. After leaving the hotel, they leisurely headed towards the auction house. Soon, they arrived. Many of the stalls had been set up at the plaza in front of the auction house. Some of the crowd was casually walking around the stalls but most of them were there for the auction. The auction began at 9 a.m. and they could only enter at 8.30 a.m. They had to wait for another hour. Since they had gone there early, they could only walk around to kill time. "Let''s walk around?" Yi Zheng asked, turning his head back at Lin Huang. "There''s nothing to see here. Let''s enter the auction house." Lin Huang then walked towards the entrance of the auction house. "We''re only allowed to enter at 8.30 a.m.!" Seeing the two guards in uniforms stationed in front of the entrance, Yi Zheng whispered to Lin Huang. He could sense that the both of them were at least on immortal-level rank-7. "I''m a member, so I''m allowed to go in earlier." Lin Huang did not stop and continued heading towards the entrance of the auction house. Yi Zheng had no choice but to follow after him. As they reached the entrance, the guards blocked their way. "The auction hasn''t started yet. Only members and Supreme members are allowed to enter. Please show us your member card." Lin Huang then projected the Supreme member card that had been synced to his Emperor''s Heart Ring. A beam of red light shone out from the Emperor''s Heart Ring of the guard on the left. A notification sound was then heard. Beep "Identity is verified. Identity: Supreme member. You''re allowed to bring three people along." "A gold flame-level Supreme member?" Both of the guards secretly exchanged glances with each other and moved aside. They then allowed Lin Huang to enter. "Welcome." Although Yi Zheng did not say anything, he looked at Lin Huang with a strange expression. As they entered the auction hall, a tall female staff approached them. "Please follow me." The female staff then led them to a closed floating staircase and said, "Please scan your member card at the detector." Lin Huang projected the Supreme member card and scanned it on the detector built into the floating staircase. The number three then lit up on the upper part of the floating staircase. Soon after, the floating staircase began to move. Lin Huang could clearly tell that the floating staircase was moving upward. After reaching a certain distance, it began to move horizontally. After a short while, the floating staircase stopped moving and the door opened. He then noticed that the floating staircase had actually stopped right in front of a room. The female staff led them out of the floating staircase and entered one of the big halls. "The rooms on the third floor are VIP rooms for the Supreme members. There''re a total of eight VIP rooms. We''ll arrange it according to the sequence the VIP members arrive. VIP room No. 1 is now full and this is VIP room No. 2." "Is this the hall?" Seeing the luxurious design of the hall which was more than 500 square meters, he felt that it resembled a small palace. "Yes, it is. The Grade-S VIP room for all the Supreme members has been renovated with the highest standard of design. The total area of each of the VP rooms is more than 3,000 square meters. Aside from its living room, bedroom, kitchen, toilet, and other basic functions, it''s also equipped with a training room, game room, cinema, bathhouse, swimming pool, balcony, and other facilities. Of course, the most important facility will definitely be the stage that enables them to have a full view of the auction. "Building the VIP room must cost a lot. Is the room left vacant when there''s no auction?" Lin Huang, who followed after the female staff, asked. Perhaps the price of building the VIP room would far exceed the price of an ancient relic. "No. The VIP rooms normally serve as a hotel. This isn''t only an auction house, but it''s also one of the three most expensive hotels in Wanbao City. However, the Grade-S VIP room will never be opened to the public. Only members and Supreme members are eligible to check into the hotel. Non-members are only allowed to check into the Grade-A VIP room. "Also, during the auction, the VIP room won''t accept any check-ins. We''ll provide a free stay for members and Supreme members. When there''s no auction going on, even Supreme members will need to pay for their stay. "The guests in VIP room No.1 came three days ago. They have to pay for their stay up until last night. He''s eligible for the free stay starting from tonight. There are other guests in the Grade-S VIP room too. However, because of the auction today, all of them have checked out yesterday." "So, the hotel business is quite profitable?" Lin Huang raised his brows. "Yes, it is. We''re booked out until next June." "Are there many of them who book the Grade-S VIP room as well?" "As for the Grade-S VIP room, the bookings are full until next September since the number of rooms available is relatively few," the female staff laughed as she said. "I''m wondering if we should check out from our current hotel" Lin Huang thought to himself. The female staff guided Lin Huang and Yi Zheng to walk around the room. It took her about 50 minutes to finish introducing all the functions available in the VIP room. "Dear customer, if you need anything else, you may visit the check-in webpage of the hotel on the Emperor''s Heart Ring and click on the bell-shaped button. We''ll then make the arrangements for you." After telling them what to do, the female staff then left the room. "The auction is about to start. Let''s go to the stage and have a look." Lin Huang glanced at the clock. It was about 8.30 a.m. The stage in the VIP room spanned about 20 meters. There was an artificial periosteum that was akin to a huge, arc-shaped, transparent glass which separated the VIP room from the auction hall. It was as clear as glass if one were to look at the auction hall from the stage. However, from the auction hall, it seemed like everything behind it was covered by a huge black curtain. The both of them then sat on a sofa in front of the stage. Lin Huang unsealed an alcoholic beverage, pouring it for himself and Yi Zheng. They then gulped the drink, slowly finishing their beverages. Yi Zheng, who had been keeping quiet all the while, then turn his head back and looked at Lin Huang. "I''ve been wanting to ask you in the beginning. What did you offer them for sale to the point that you''re now the Supreme member of Wanbao Auction?" "To be honest, I''ve no idea what we should do in order to become a Supreme member of Wanbao Auction. However, I know that there are two ways to become their ordinary members. The first one is to spend more than 100 million Life Crystals and the other is to sell items that worth more than 500 million Life Crystals. That being said, even if you were to sell an ancient relic, you need to sell at least 10 of them." Yi Zheng paused for a moment. He then added, "Of course, it''s okay if you don''t feel like telling. I''m just asking out of curiosity." "There''s nothing that I can''t tell." Lin Huang then downed the other half of his drink, turning his head back with a smile as he looked at Yi Zheng. "I''m just selling off a few demigod relics." 798 The Auction Has Begun At 8.30a.m. the door of the auction house officially opened and the bidders entered the auction house one after another. Excluding the VIP room, Wanbao Auction could accommodate 12,000 people at most. It was different from the stadium that could simply hold tens of thousands of people. Wanbao Auction was considered big for an auction house. It was because the spectators in a stadium were mostly ordinary people. However, those who attended an auction were mostly the cultivators and the number of transcendents who attended could be more than one-third of the total number of people at times. Some of the cultivators attended the auction not because they wanted to bid at an auction. Instead, they wanted to gain knowledge and see how the transcendents looked like. There were also people who came here just for fun, wanting to see the war between the pros at the auction. Soon, 12,000 seats were occupied. Lin Huang and Yi Zheng could clearly sense that there were about 5,000 transcendents out there and a majority of them were on holy fire-level. "There are only four immortal-level and none of them is on imperial-level." Yi Zheng looked around, feeling surprised. "Perhaps they''ve entered the VIP room." Lin Huang stood up, walking towards the transparent periosteum. He lowered his head as he looked downward. It was covered in black and he could see nothing. As the staff brought the both of them to look around the room, she had briefly told them about the VIP room. Aside from having eight Grade-S VIP rooms on the third floor, there were 128 Grade-A VIP rooms on the second floor as well. It was about 9a.m. now after getting the crowd seated. The auctioneer who had been waiting for them then gradually walked onto the auction stage. The auctioneer looked young as if he was at the age of 20. He was handsome and was definitely a young guy who could attract many women on Earth. However, Lin Huang and Yi Zheng could clearly tell that his combat strength was on immortal-level rank-9. His age was definitely not as young as he looked. "Welcome to Wanbao Auction. I''m the auctioneer C Yu Bo. I hope that you''ll be able to bid whatever you want in the next five days." "I''m not going to waste your time and I''ll keep it short. Let the bidding begin!" Yu Bo took a look at the time and it was 9a.m. sharp. He then got straight to the point. "Let''s take a look at the first item!" After finishing his words, the staff who had already prepared themselves then brought over the first item which was covered by a red cloth. By looking at the shape itself, it should be a long box. Generally, there would be a sword type weapon in a box of a shape like this. Of course, Lin Huang could not be completely sure about it as there could be some other items inside the box. "The first item is" Yu Bo then unveiled the red cloth, revealing a red wooden box with delicately made engraving. Even the lock was made of pure gold. "Ancient relic C Gold Saber!" After having his words uttered, the red wooden box was slowly being opened and a saber could be seen. The saber was about one meter long with a black handle. It had a golden scabbard with exquisite engraving on it. "The Gold Saber was dropped by the Gold Serpent after being killed by an imperial-level. It''s extremely sharp" Many of them had a stronger interest in it after listening to Yu Bo''s explanation. Even Yi Zheng felt the same about it. He had heavy breathing and it was obvious that he was already attracted by the first item. "Do you want to buy the saber?" Lin Huang asked, raising his brows. Lin Huang had read through the information regarding the Gold Serpent on the monster guide before. Its combat strength varied from black gold-rank to yellow gold-rank. After it was being killed, the probability of dropping an ancient relic was extremely low. However, among the ancient relics, the Gold Saber was only considered as a beginner-level weapon. Lin Huang felt that it was not worth buying it. "The ancient relic is a very rare weapon in Division 7 and it''s rarely available for sale on the market. After getting into immortal-level, the ancient relic which my family rewarded me was merely a Blackscale Saber. The weapon was obtained from killing the Dragonscale Hog where there''s no addition of attributes. The quality of the Gold Saber is quite good with sharpness addition. It''s much better than the one that I''m using." Yi Zheng said helplessly. Lin Huang was startled as heard that. He then thought of it carefully, as compared to Division 3, Division 7 was indeed a place that faced resource scarcity. There was only a small number of imperial-level monsters over there. On the other hand, there were very few people who were on imperial-level as well. The two reasons had amplified the impact as the probability of a monster dropping an ancient relic was extremely small. One could then tell its supply rate. As for the black gold-rank Dragonscale Hog, other than having outstanding defensive ability and strength, it had nothing special in other aspects. It even had relatively low intelligent. If the immortal-level were to fight in a group, it would not be difficult to kill it as long as an appropriate way was used. Therefore, a large number of Blackscale Sabers obtained from this monster was available for sale on the market. It was not difficult to buy it as long as one was willing to spend some money for it. However, one could hardly find an ancient relic better than it and normally had to get it from the auction. Yi Zheng''s first destination was Wanbao Auction and his intention was clear. He wanted to change his equipment in the first place, preparing himself for the training after that. On the auction stage, after the auctioneer had done a brief introduction, he finally revealed the starting price of the ancient relic. "The starting price will be 22 million Life Crystals! The price increment must not be less than 500,000 Life Crystals each raise." After having his words uttered, the bidders began to place their bid. "23 million!" "24 million!" "25 million!" After just a couple of moments, the bid price had exceeded 30 million. Seeing the situation at the auction house, Yi Zheng had not placed a bid yet. It was not because he did not want to bid for it, it was simply because the bids were being placed too quickly. He did not even have the chance to hit the button to place a bid each time. However, after the price had increased to 30 million, the number of bidders had reduced significantly. The price increment for each raise was no longer one million but only 500,000. Just as the price rose to 31.5 million, Yi Zheng finally pressed the button to raise the bid. He then offered his bid price, "35 million!" Lin Huang did not stop him as he could use it first after purchasing it. He could buy another one when there was a better choice later on. If he were to sell it to the auction house by then, he would not suffer great losses. It could be treated as the usage fees. All of them shifted their gaze in the direction where the Supreme member who had just placed a bid on the third floor. Since it was being covered by a black screen, what could be seen were the golden characters, "35 million!" It was the special effect for the bid price of the Grade-S VIP room. The price would be displayed in the state of a golden spark on the isolation layer which was 20 meters long. Yi Zheng was the first person who placed a bid among all the guests in the VIP rooms. Many of them began to talk about it as it was their first time to join Wanbao Auction. What just happened was like a novelty to them. "He''s on the third floor. I heard that only the Supreme members are qualified to enter the Grade-S VIP room." "It''s really different to be in the Grade-S VIP room. They even have a special effect on the bid price!" "The Supreme members of Wanbao Auction will usually have a powerful background. Why is he interested in an ancient relic of such a quality?" A man who wore glasses and had blond hair in one of the Grade-A VIP rooms on the second floor smirked. Soon after, he pressed the bid button. "36 million!" Characters in silver color suddenly lit up on the isolation layer on the second floor. It was the special effect for the members in the Grade-A VIP rooms. However, it was much weaker as compared to the effect it had when Yi Zheng placed a bid. "Someone in the Grade-A VIP room just placed a bid!" "What is he doing? Is he trying to suppress the pro on the third floor with his wealth?" "What''s happening? Is there anything special about the saber?" What the bidder from the Grade-A VIP room on the second floor just did had attracted many people''s attention. A few of the bidders no longer had the desire to bid for the saber as they saw the price being offered by the person on the third floor. They were afraid that they would offend the pro on the third floor. Seeing that the bidder from the second floor was trying to get into the bidding war, they got even more excited to watch the show. "40 million!" Yi Zheng had no idea why he placed a bid but he could not be bothered to continue the bidding war with him, so he simply increased the bidding price to 40 million. "The more you desire, the more it shows that something''s wrong with the saber!" The blonde man on the second floor grinned, pressing the bid button again. "41 million!" "61 million!" Yi Zheng unexpectedly increased the price by 20 million. The crowd was overwhelmed as they felt that the pro on the third floor might be feeling angry now. Some of them doubted that there could be some hidden secrets in the saber being sold on the auction stage. Even Lin Huang who sat next to him was startled, "Bro Zheng, stop fooling around. The saber worth at most 30 million. You can buy two sabers at this price." Yi Zheng did not stay anything, staring at the auctioneer on the auction stage. Nobody knew what he was thinking about. At the next second, the bidding price on the second floor lit up again. "62 million!" Lin Huang was worried that Yi Zheng would place another bid. However, Yi Zheng turned back and patted his shoulder, "Don''t worry, I''m not going to place another bid." At the auction hall, many of them lifted their head, fixing their gaze at the VIP room where Lin Huang and Yi Zheng were at. They were hoping to see the new bid price offered by Yi Zheng. Even the auctioneer was thinking about the same thing. However, the isolation layer on the third floor remained dark. Right until the auctioneer announced that the deal had been made, the isolation layer on the third floor did not light up. "62 million going thrice! Deal!" "Congratulations to the bidder in VIP room No. A22 for getting the first item for sale at our auction!" The blonde man on the second floor frowned, "Why didn''t he place another bid? Perhaps I''ve made the wrong guess?" In the VIP room on the third floor, Lin Huang smirked as he sized Yi Zheng up. "You did it on purpose?'' "Did I?" Yi Zheng was trying to look innocent, "I wanted to increase the price by two million but I end up entering another zero. I then accidentally hit the bid button and the bid was placed Fortunately, the bastard on the second floor placed a bid for it. Otherwise, I''m going to suffer great losses." "I''m not going to believe you." Lin Huang thought to himself. After the first item was being sold at a price of 62 million, the second item was then being displayed on the auction stage. "Now, let''s take a look at the second item!" 799 The Death Knight and the Fallen Knigh After the first item was sold at a high price of 62 million Life Crystals, it seemed like none of the following items was priced higher than that. A few of the ancient relics were put up for sale, but there was no saber type of weapon. Yi Zheng was not interested in the sale, let alone Lin Huang. Everyone would expect better quality items later in the auction. The show only began especially on the last day of the auction. Soon, the first day of the auction ended. There was nothing appealing and it made most of the crowd sleepy. Some of them could not bear it any longer and left early. Just as the first day of the auction was about to end, the auctioneer suddenly dropped a bombshell. "The last item for sale today won''t disappoint you. Many of you know that we have three secret items to be sold off on the last day of the auction. Therefore, one of the two demigod items that we initially intended to sell on the last day of the auction will be the last item for sale today!" As the red cloth was unveiled, it revealed a long, golden scabbard which exuded a powerful aura. Without a doubt, it was a demigod relic. In the auction hall, everybody obsessed over it as soon as they saw the saber. Even Yi Zheng who sat next to Lin Huang had his eyes fixed on it. "This is the saber of legends" Although Lin Huang could tell that he was dying to get his hands on the saber, he was not going to lend Yi Zheng his money. Only an imperial-level would be capable of activating a demigod relic. Yi Zheng would have no way of using it despite buying it now. He had just made it to immortal-level rank-1. Lin Huang had no idea how long Yi Zheng would have to wait until he could level up to imperial-level. Instead of buying a demigod relic, he would be better off buying equipment that he could use and training guides that were useful for him to improve his abilities. "It''s called the Dragon Slayer. Its master used to be a demon slayer who achieved imperial-level about 100 years ago. The saber was originally obtained from killing a triple mutated white gold-rank Silver-Winged Rocfiend. It was then modified and reforged with 99 sets of dragonkins'' teeth and three dragonkins'' vertebrae as auxiliary materials" On the auction stage, Yu Bo was putting a lot of effort to introduce the particular item and hype it up. After listening to him for a while, Lin Huang then ignored him and began searching for the "demon slayer" online. After a short while, he went through all the information about this item''s previous master. The demon slayer''s original name was Jiang Yi who was an imperial-level in Division 3 more than 100 years ago. About 80 years ago, he was severely injured after he explored one of the underwater ruins in the Peaceful Ocean. Less than half a year after he returned to Division 3, he died from an incurable illness. The Dragon Slayer he owned then became his son''s legacy. However, after tens of years, none of his descendants managed to break through to imperial-level. None of them could use the saber and it was then abandoned. However, Lin Huang had no idea why the saber would appear at the auction house. Since the auctioneer dared to reveal the actual information about the saber, it had to be a legitimate item. Otherwise, they could only sell it at the underground auction instead of selling it in public. As one of the top auction houses in Division 3, the Wanbao Auction knew the unspoken rules of the business very well and it was impossible for them to make such a silly mistake. While Lin Huang was pondering to himself, Yu Bo who was on the auction stage had completed the introduction. "I''ll stop bullshitting now. Let''s begin the last round of bidding!" "Dragon Slayer! Its starting price is 20 billion Life Crystals. The price increment mustn''t be less than 500 million Life Crystals each round!" "25 billion!" Just as the auctioneer finished his sentence, the bidder in the VIP room on the second floor placed a bid at a price that was five billion higher than the starting price. Seeing the silver figures light up abruptly on the black screen, most of the onlookers at the auction house were surprised. "He increased the price by five billion without thinking twice I can''t even spare 50 Life Crystals for a bowl of noodles." "It''s great to be rich. As peasants, we wouldn''t know how it feels like" "To the rich man on the second floor, are you looking for a son-in-law?" As the black screen on the second floor lit up for less than two seconds, the black screen on the third floor lit up as well. The figures were bigger and brighter this round, and they were golden in color. "30 billion!!!" The bidder on the third floor raised the price for the second time and again, it was an increment of five billion. The bidding price had immediately risen up to 30 billion. At the auction house, everybody appeared stunned. Nobody would expect such an aggressive bid for the second time! "To the rich man on the third floor, are you looking for a son-in-law? Or do you need a houseboy? I''m an excellent bedwarmer!" Seeing the one who said this was a muscular man who was more than two meters tall, the crowd gagged. Yi Zheng, who was in VIP room No. 2 on the third floor, was shocked as well. "Why are the pros in Division 3 so rich? I used to think that I was wealthy enough with hundreds of millions of Life Crystals." "You aren''t considered rich with hundreds of millions of Life Crystals." Lin Huang laughed, shaking his head. "The cheapest ancient relic costs tens of millions of Life Crystals. Those on white gold-rank basically cost at least hundreds of millions. As for those on purple gold-rank, the starting price is at least 200 million. Not forgetting the telekinetic weapons whereby the lowest ranking is on black gold-rank and costs at least 100 million. You aren''t even qualified to bid for the purple gold-rank telekinetic weapon if you don''t have at least two billion Life Crystals. The price of the demigod relic is even higher. Any of them will start from 10 billion Life Crystals. If they''re of really premium quality, they don''t accept Life Crystals but Divine Stones instead." "Divine Stones?" Yi Zheng had just arrived at Division 3 and it was his first time coming across this term. "A Divine Stone is a rare ore that comes with God''s energy. A Divine Stone is equivalent to 100 million Life Crystals. However, almost none of them will exchange Divine Stones for Life Crystals. The God''s energy within the Divine Stone can be absorbed by demigods. This is a high-ranking currency only used by the demigods to trade." Lin Huang heard the information regarding the Divine Stone from Mr. Fu who had casually mentioned it and he could remember it up until that day. On the auction stage, the price of the Dragon Slayer had increased to 38 billion. The number of bidders had increased from two to five as well. Each time, the increment of price would either be 500 million or a billion. Among the five bidders, three of them were Supreme members on the third floor whereas the other two were members on the second floor. None of the people in the auction hall had placed any bids and they were just sitting there, watching what was going to happen next. It was not strange though since only an imperial-level was capable of activating a demigod relic. The strongest person in the auction hall was only on immortal-level rank-7. The bidding lasted for more than ten minutes and the Dragon Slayer was finally sold to somebody else. "The member in No. S4 VIP room bid 43 billion Crystals!" "43 billion going once!" "43 billion going twice!" "Anyone wants to place another bid? Otherwise, you might not have the chance anymore!" "Alright, 43 billion going thrice!" "Sold!" "43 billion" Yi Zheng was so envious of him. Lin Huang then thought to himself, "If the saber can be sold at 43 billion, I guess I can sell mine at 55 billion and above." The first day of auction then ended. Lin Huang and Yi Zheng went back to the hotel empty-handed. After having their dinner, just as Lin Huang and Yi Zheng were about to walk around the night market, Kylie''s card suddenly vibrated in his body. "I just thought of something else I have to deal with. You go first and I''ll meet you at the night market after getting my things done." After sending Yi Zheng off, Lin Huang went back to his room and summoned Kylie. "What happened?" "The two dark knights that you placed in my mini world have completed the evolution and awoken the bloodline." "Let''s have a look." Before coming to Wanbao City, Lin Huang had advanced the two Dark Knight cards that he just obtained, transforming them into two cocoons. Nothing happened after that but they finally managed to break free from their cocoons. Lin Huang could not wait any longer to enter Kylie''s mini world. Soon, he saw the two Dark Knights that had been transformed. The two of them used to be exactly the same but after the evolution, they were now completely different. However, the change was out of Lin Huang''s expectations. "They look formidable." Sensing the aura of the two knights, Lin Huang frowned and immediately checked their information in detail. "Monster Card "Rarity: Legendary "Monster name: Death Knight "Type of Monster: Spirit type "Unique Bloodline: Death (Beginner) "Combat Level: Immortal-Level Rank-4 "Skill 1: Immortal "Skill 2: Dead Eye "Skill 3: Disastrous Ring" "Skill 9: Death Punishment "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Trainable" "Monster Card "Rarity: Legendary "Monster Name: Fallen Knight "Type of Monster: Undying Species "Unique Bloodline: Master of the Abyss (Beginner) "Combat Level: Immortal-Level Rank-4 "Skill 1: Triple Inferno "Skill 2: Instant Kill "Skill 3: Cursed Ring" "Skill 9: Falling Abyss "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Trainable." "They''re really powerful!" Lin Huang exclaimed after looking through their information. Having nine beginner skills were the maximum of what a triple mutated monster could have. Many other skills could be derived from beginner skills, forming a massive skill tree. However, many of the derived skills and advanced skills could not be used yet and were gray in color. Lin Huang knew that the two monsters had great potential just by briefly looking at their information. "The Immortal skill is incredible. It has full blood revival three times. After the fourth death, it''ll transform into a strong, immortal egg. Dead Eye is a spirit type attack skill that can directly burn its opponent''s spirit. Disastrous Ring deters creatures in a specific region, depriving the opponent''s intent to fight to various extents, lowering the opponent''s ability to fight. "The skills of the Fallen Knight are impressive too! Triple Inferno allows it to recover its total blood volume to 50%, 30%, and 10% three times in a row when it''s on the edge of death. Its ability will be multiplied each time as its blood is restored! The Cursed Ring can weaken its opponent and includes curse effects in its skill to lower its opponent''s ability. In addition to that, the Falling Abyss contaminates most of the creatures, demonizing them and gaining control over them. I suppose this is the ability of a parasite" Even Lin Huang was envious of some of the skills. He then took out a bottle of mineral water from his Emperor''s Heart Ring to wash his hands and face after that. After preparing himself in a spiritual way, Lin Huang mumbled, "Buddha, Jade Emperor, Guan Yin, Monkey King, Xuanzang, Pig God Please bless me with two solid skills" As Lin Huang mumbled his words, he opened the skills that he had obtained. "Skill extraction has been completed! "Congratulations, you have obtained a skill C Knight (Death Knight). "Congratulations, you have obtained a skill C Integration (Fallen Knight)." "Eh" Seeing the two skills, Lin Huang had no idea what to say. The two skills were possessed by both the Death Knight and Fallen Knight. They were not weak and were even considered powerful. However, Lin Huang was not interested in becoming a knight. He was more inclined to get into a solo fight. "Knight: The user of the skill is allowed to ride on any non-human monsters. On a ride, the mount''s combat strength will be one to three ranks higher (depending on the grade and combat strength). At the same time, the user and the mount can share all the skills that the both of them possess, which increases the skill power anywhere from three to five times stronger. "Remarks: A knight without a mount is not a complete knight." "Integration: The user of the skill can integrate with any mount, pet, or summoning monster. After the integration is completed, one''s combat strength can increase anywhere from one to three ranks higher (based on the one with a higher combat strength). The leader possesses all the skills of those one has integrated with. "Remark 1: Integration can only be done upon agreement of both parties. Otherwise, integration can''t be completed. "Remark 2: The skill can be used to overlay with the effect of the Knight skill." However, after carefully reading the skill descriptions, Lin Huang noticed that both of the skills could be used to compensate for his greatest weakness which was his weak combat strength. "If I were to use Knight and Integration at the same time, Bai''s combat strength will be considered the initial combat strength which is immortal-level rank-4. I can level up to at least two ranks higher, reaching immortal-level rank-6. If three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards are used, my combat strength will be upgraded to immortal-level rank-9 and I can even save my Transformation Card. "I didn''t expect that the two skills that I''m not interested in are much more practical than the skills I''ve been longing for." Lin Huang was just skimming through the skill description of the two knights. He did not analyze them carefully as to which would be the most beneficial to him. He only noticed a few of the skills that he was eager to obtain. After obtaining the skills, he then realized that it was not necessary for the skill to have amazing effects. The best ones would be those that suited him the most. He still had a few Skill Extraction Cards whereby he could extract the skills for the second time. However, after obtaining two of the new skills, 20 of his skill slots had been filled. He had to wait until he got to immortal-level for more vacant skill slots. "My combat strength can only be upgraded to immortal-level rank-7 at the most with my Transformation Card and Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards. It''s a limit that I can never break through. However, with the two new skills, it''s no longer difficult for me to upgrade my combat strength to immortal-level rank-9. I''m now capable of killing black gold-rank and crimson gold-rank enemies. I can finally compensate for my weaknesses!" 800 The Fifth Day On the second day of the auction, still, nothing caught Lin Huang''s attention and he did not join the bidding war. Yi Zheng spent 48 million bidding for a set of ancient armor. He did not buy anything else. However, just as the auction was about to end on the second day, the last item became everybody''s focus again. Wanbao Auction had taken the demigod-level combat sword out as the last item to be sold off on that day. The members on the second and the third floor placed their bids. The fight was even more intense compared to the first day when they wanted to buy the Dragon Slayer. Eventually, the combat sword named Combat Shade was sold at a price of 46 billion. The buyer was the member in VIP room No. A21 on the second floor. Since the identity of the members would be kept a secret, Lin Huang could not see how the buyer looked like. Although the buyers in the auction hall did not place any bids, they looked happier watching the bidding war rather than placing a bid of their own. The second day of auction then ended in high spirits. The auction remained rather dull on the third and the fourth days as nothing appealing was sold. Over the past two days, the most expensive item that was sold as a set of ancient telekinetic weapons which was priced at 23 billion. The price was just a portion of the price of a demigod relic. On the fourth day, Yi Zheng had finally gotten whatever he wanted after buying an ancient relic at 51 million Life Crystals. Its quality was higher than the one sold on the first day of the auction. Just as the auctioneer mentioned that the deal was closed, he was so thrilled because he was afraid that someone would continue to raise the bid. Lin Huang had never hit the bid button. If Yi Zheng had not been in the room, people might have doubted that there was anyone in VIP room No. 2 on the third floor. He did not place any bid because there was nothing he was interested in. In the past four days, there was nothing that caught his attention. There were no problems with the items sold at Wanbao Auction. Instead, Lin Huang had a very clear target. He did not like fancy things and his main concern was the practicality of the item itself. Unless it had a better function than the equipment that he was using currently or if it was an item that possessed a unique function that could improve his abilities, nothing could catch his eye. The former was hard to find and the latter was exceptionally rare. Indeed, none of the items sold at the auction fulfilled his two criterions. Time passed and soon, it was the fifth and last day of the auction. Before the auction began, all the seats were already occupied and the attendees were talking excitedly to each other. In the auction hall, the seats of the guests never changed. Despite the fact that they did know not each other in the very beginning, after being "desk mates" for four days, they started to familiarize themselves with one another. In addition to being the last day of the auction, the last three secret items to be sold off at the auction would be revealed soon. It was the reason why the people were feeling rather excited and the auction hall was livelier than it had been a few days ago. Almost everybody was discussing the same topic C what were the last three secret items for sale? On the third floor, Lin Huang and Yi Zheng were chatting with each other in VIP room No. 2. "It''s so lively today and it''s much better than the past two days. I almost fell asleep then," Lin Huang said before tossing a red berry into his mouth. "Today''s the last day. Many of them are here for the items that you''re selling," Yi Zheng said while making himself a cup of tea. After a short while, the room was filled with the fragrance of tea leaves. "I hope that they can be sold at a good price." Lin Huang raised his brows. "Don''t worry. The prices of the three demigod relics itself aren''t low," Yi Zheng laughed as he said, "They had a fierce fight to bid for the demigod relics on the first and the second day. The war between them will definitely be more intense on the last day of the auction." Lin Huang smiled, nodding his head without saying anything else. The room remained quiet for a short while. Soon, Lin Huang broke the silence and asked, "Where are you going after the auction?" "I''ll stay in Wanbao City for a period of time. I''ll adapt myself to the environment in Division 3 and gather some information so that I can prepare myself for the upcoming training." Apparently, Yi Zheng had a plan. "Wanbao City is under the Union Government''s jurisdiction. Compared to the footholds with the code after No. A10, it''s safer. Footholds after No. A10 are mostly under the underworld''s jurisdiction. It''s different from Division 7 where there are different kinds of people in the areas under the underworld''s jurisdiction." After finishing his sentence, he told Yi Zheng about the incident of him being blackmailed by the people in Division 3 when he first arrived. Yi Zheng simmered with laughter when he heard the anecdote. "Despite many of them from the underworld not being strong, they have their ways to blackmail others. They can do bad stuff to you. You have to be careful when checking into a hotel. You need to check the background of the hotel before deciding whether to stay there or not. Some of the hotels look luxurious in photos, but they''re actually tourist traps. Not to mention robberies and the badger game, some of them will even use guest towels to wash the toilet bowl. After that, they''ll use the same towel to clean the glasses and tea set" Yi Zheng fixed his gaze on the tea set that he had just used. He then took a long, hard look at the cup that he was holding, pretending as if nothing had happened and placed the cup back on the table. After chatting for a while, the auction finally began. After the auctioneer''s opening remarks, the first item was soon available for bidding. "The first item we have today is an ancient telekinetic weapon The starting price is 300 million Life Crystals! The price increment must be at least five million Life Crystals each round." "310 million!" "330 million!" "350 million!" The last day of the Wanbao Auction then began. 35 items had been sold as lunchtime approached. Aside from a few of the items that managed to trigger an intense battle, there were no eye-catching items. "It''s about noon now. Let''s go for lunch!" Lin Huang stood up from the sofa, stretching his body. "There are six more minutes to go. There must be one more item to bid for." Yi Zheng did not stand up. "The items are almost the same. There''s nothing to see." Lin Huang was not interested at all. "Let''s wait for a while. Just a few more minutes to go." "Alright, let''s see what''s next." Lin Huang then sat down helplessly. 36 items were brought up the auction stage. As the red cloth was unveiled, it revealed a palm-sized wood carving. Lin Huang caught a glimpse of it, seeming as if he was not interested in it. All of a sudden, he received a peculiar feedback from his Divine Telekinesis. Before Lin Huang could confirm what the feedback from his Divine Telekinesis was trying to tell him, a voice urged him, "Buy it!" "The voice is coming from" Lin Huang frowned. "The stone tablet?" "It''s me," the stone tablet soon responded, "It''s best if you can buy the item on the auction stage." "It''s just a wood carving. Is there anything special about it?" Lin Huang could not understand why he had to get it. However, he could sense that there was something odd about the detection of God''s Soul. However, he could not understand the feedback it was providing. "It''s a God''s Figurine. I''ll explain to you later when we have the time. Buy it first. It''s more valuable than a demigod relic!" On the auction stage, Yu Bo began introducing the item, "This wood carving originated from the battle ruins. We don''t know any further information about it though. We aren''t hiding it from you. Our appraisers have no idea what it''s made of and its grade can''t be evaluated as well. However, this item is exceptionally hard. We''ve tested it with an ancient relic many times and no traces were left on it. The wooden material used might be a new material that hasn''t been discovered yet" 801 Gods Figurine After giving a vague introduction where nothing could be referred, the auctioneer then shouted its starting price, "The starting price is 20 million Life Crystals! The price increment must be at least 500,000 Life Crystals each round!" The starting price was not considered to be high as it was the equivalent price of an ancient relic of a lower grade. However, it was an item with unknown functions. Aside from its hard material, there was nothing special about it. Most likely, it could only be used for decorative purposes. Under normal circumstances, anyone would be reluctant to spend money on it. Even the auctioneer was worried that nobody would place a bid on it and that it would remain unsold. However, it seemed like he had been worrying too much. The moment the starting price was announced, someone hit the bid button. "21 million!" However, the price was not offered by Lin Huang. It was a member from VIP room No. 1 on the third floor. Lin Huang was stunned as he thought that nobody would bid for it. He moved his head slightly and caught a glimpse of the room next to him. He then pressed the bid button too. "30 million!" He raised the price to 30 million and his message was unmistakableC I want it. Just as the bid was placed, the person next to him responded. The increment offered was not low though. "50 million!" Lin Huang frowned. He pondered the response of the member in VIP room No. 1. He wondered if the person simply wanted to retaliate or if he knew that it was a valuable item. Although he was in doubt, Lin Huang hit the bid button without a moment of hesitation. "100 million!" Just as the bid was placed, a racket instantly came from the people in the auction hall. "What''s happening up there? Are the two Supreme members confronting each other?" "It''s a bidding war between members in VIP rooms No. S1 and S2. Did the neighbor just fight? What about neighborhood harmony?" "That''s interesting. I wonder how they''re going to end this." Many of the members in the VIP room on the second floor started studying this scenario. Some of them raised their suspicions. "Is it possible for the wood carving to be something valuable?" Obviously, the bidding price of 100 million did not scare him away. After a moment of silence, the bidder in VIP room No. 1 placed another bid. "300 million!" Lin Huang smirked, looking in the direction where the VIP room was. Again, he pushed the bid button hard. "One billion!" "If he continues bidding for the wood carving, most probably he knows the actual function of the statue." Lin Huang frowned, looking at the statue on the auction stage. He did not expect this to happen as it was his first time bidding. Since he had bid for it at a price of one billion Life Crystals, the bidder would know that placing his next bid with a small increment in price would be useless. If he were really eager to buy the statue, he would need to increase the price by a large margin. If he were just trying to fight back, it would be ridiculous to spend a billion Life Crystals buying a decorative item with unknown functions. A Supreme member of the Wanbao Auction would not be so irrational. Moreover, the identity of all the guests in the VIP rooms had to be kept secret. Even if he lost the bid, there was nothing embarrassing about it because nobody would know who he was. The price of the statue had risen from 20 million to one billion in less than a minute. It was exactly five times higher than its starting price. The people felt that it was strange and at the same time, they hoped that the bidder in VIP room No. 1 could place a higher bid. However, the member in VIP room No.1 decided to remain silent. In the rest of the VIP rooms on the second and the third floor, many of the members and Supreme members speculated if there were any hidden secrets. However, the price had already increased to a billion Life Crystals. Nobody dared to continue bidding for it purely based on speculation. "One billion Life Crystals, sold!" As the auctioneer knocked the hammer, the final decision had been made, signifying that Lin Huang had successfully become the owner of the statue. "I''ve bought the statue. Can you please tell me what the God''s Figurine is?" Lin Huang secretly contacted the stone tablet. "Do you know the protoss?" The stone tablet asked. "Yes, I do. What does it have to do with the protoss?" Lin Huang was eager to know more. "The God''s Figurine is the dead body of the protoss. To be exact, it''s the remnants of the protoss''s body after its death." "Are you sure you''re not kidding me?" Lin Huang could not believe it at all. "It''s a palm-sized statue and it''s obvious that it''s made of wood. You''re telling me that it''s the remnants of the protoss?" "The reason why it''s only the size of a palm is that after the death of the protoss, the particles of its body collapsed and reshaped, turning into the state of a God''s Figurine. Just like when a dead star collapses and becomes a white dwarf, there''ll be a substantial decrease in size. The reason why it looks wooden is that wood was the main attribute of the God''s Figurine before its death." The explanation made sense to Lin Huang. However, something suddenly crossed his mind. "No, a friend of my told me before that a protoss has a perfect human figure. However, the God''s Figurine looks like a mutated monster." "Your friend is right. However, all protoss actually have three bodies. The first body is in the human state which is known as the mortal body. The second body is in the state when it''s born; we call it the source body. Lastly, it''s called the God''s body when its body is in the form of energy. "They''ll normally appear in the form of a mortal body in their daily life. When they''re engaged in a fight, they''ll return to their energy form, transforming into God''s body which is normally huge. The stronger it is, the larger it is. Some of their sizes are on par with whole galaxies. "All protoss are strongest when they''re in the form of their source body. Under such conditions, they can maximize their abilities with ease. However, there''s a drawback for transforming its body into this form. The protoss can reshape themselves after the death of their mortal body and God''s body. However, if the source body dies, they''ll die for real." "The God''s Figurine basically rings the death of the protoss''s source body. This is how they originally looked like." Lin Huang could finally believe the stone tablet''s explanation after he heard this. "The God''s Figurine is only as big as my palm. What can it be used for?" He immediately asked. "As long as it possesses divinity, it can be reactivated." "Reactivated? Do you mean that you want to revive it?" Lin Huang''s eyes widened. "No. The reactivated God''s Figurine no longer has consciousness. It''s just like a puppet." "So, as long as I''m able to reactivate it, it means that I have a protoss that can fight?" Lin Huang comprehended. "That could be true. However, its combat strength won''t be on the God-level that it used to be. It depends on the strength of the soul inserted into it. If you were to insert a soul of demigod-level into it, its combat strength would be on demigod-level. If a Virtual God-level soul is inserted into it, its combat strength would be on the Virtual God-level, and so on," the stone tablet explained in detail. When Lin Huang heard this, he suddenly recalled that when Zhu Xing was killed, he had obtained Wu Zhi''s Combat Soul Card. Obviously, it could be used now. However, he then thought that he would need the combat soul when he advanced to immortal-level so that he could forge his Life Furnace. He suddenly had a headache. "According to its description, the God''s Figurine can be used as a Life Furnace to store the Divine Fire in your body." Xiao Hei''s voice was suddenly heard. It was apparent that it managed to sense what Lin Huang was worrying about. "Storing the Divine Fire? That''s something spiritual. Other than the God''s soul, only the spiritual god''s relic and god''s item can store the Divine Fire, isn''t it?" "Since the God''s Figurine is the remnant of the protoss, it''ll be used to store the soul of the protoss in the past. You''re supposed to be able to use it as a container that stores Divine Fire. You can give it a try when you get it." After Xiao Hei had finished its sentence, it kept quiet again. Lin Huang began pondering how the God''s Figurine should be used. 802 Items to Be Sold off at the End of the Auction After lunch, the second half of the auction then began. The auction got livelier in the afternoon. Almost every item sold was exquisitely made. A majority of them were ancient relics of similar levels. All of them were sold at a price of at least 100 million Life Crystals. Lin Huang had lost his focus as he kept on thinking about the God''s Figurine and the Divine Fire in his body. Yi Zheng found that Lin Huang had been exceptionally quiet in the afternoon and asked about his moodiness. Lin Huang just told him that he was thinking about something. Since he did not want to share much, Yi Zheng did not ask any further. At about 5.40 p.m., 48 items had been sold. Since the 49th item had not been brought up to the stage after a long while, the crowd knew what was going to happen soon and they were excited. Yu Bo remained quiet for a few moments as well. He then said, "Perhaps many of you know that right up to now, we have three more items left available for sale." "I guess many of you have been waiting for this to come for a long time. I''ll stop here and now for our staff to unveil the first secret item!" After finishing his sentence, two muscular staff brought something that was as large as a wardrobe up on stage. Almost every person in the auction hall held their breaths, fixing their gazes on the item covered by a red cloth. They were secretly guessing what the item under the red cloth was. "The first secret item is" Yu Bo paused for a moment. He then pulled the red cloth away. A transparent cabinet was unveiled. A long saber with a scabbard was floating in the middle of the cabinet. The handle of the saber was burgundy in color. The blade of the saber along with its scabbard emitted a faint, red glow. The oppressing aura of the demigod relic spread throughout the auction hall. In order to give it a grandiose display, the imperial-level had temporarily activated it before bringing it up on the stage. Since it was one of the items sold at the end of the auction, they treated the saber which Lin Huang had sent in in a completely different way. After it was activated, all of them could clearly sense the immense power of the demigod relic. "It''s such a terrifying oppression!" "I seem to be able to smell the scent of blood." Everybody was discussing it and they could clearly sense how bone-chilling the demigod relic was. Many of the members on the second and the third floor had fallen into deep thought. "It seems to be a saber that drinks blood" Yu Bo finally revealed where the three secret items came from and they were all curious about it. "Perhaps some of you might''ve discovered that it''s a Bloodthirster. It''s forged through blood sacrifice. The Bloodthirster can grow and might even create saber spirit after engulfing sufficient blood. "We''re unsure about the history of the saber. However, based on the evaluation done by the Grade-S appraiser, it should be remnants from the old era. The main material used is the bones of unknown demigods. Most likely, they''re monsters that existed in the ancient times and have gone extinct now. "Although we don''t know much about this saber, the person who sent this saber in is a demigod for real. Two days before the auction began, a demigod visited us late at night, sending three items in for sale. The saber is one of them. "The first item to be sold off at the end of the auction is the Bloodthirster. The starting price is 33 billion! The price increment must be at least one billion Life Crystals each round!" After finishing his words on the auction stage, three bids lit up at almost the same time from the VIP room on the third floor. "35 billion!" "38 billion!" "40 billion!" The black screen suddenly glowed continuously and large numbers were displayed. The crowd in the auction hall exclaimed as it was the first time they were witnessing such intense bidding since the last five days. "The bidder in VIP room No. 26 has offered a price of 40 billion Life Crystals. Is there anyone" Before the auctioneer could finish his words, the black screen on the third floor lit up again. "45 billion!" "The bidder from VIP room No. S8 has offered 45 billion" In less than five seconds, the bid rose from 33 billion to 45 billion. The people were surprised by what they just saw. "In less than five seconds, the price has exceeded the final bid price of the demigod relic sold on the first day of the auction." Yi Zheng looked towards Lin Huang. "How do you feel?" "I don''t feel anything." Lin Huang remained calm as it was completely within his expectations. "The quality of the Bloodthirster is better than the demigod relic sold on the first day. The saber can be further enhanced, so that''s why it''s normal for it to fetch a higher price." After Lin Huang explained his opinion, the bid had exceeded 50 billion. It was the highest price offered so far among all the items sold. However, it was not the end. "55 billion!" "The member from VIP room No. S3 has offered 55 billion. Again, he''s just broken the record! Is there anyone going to place a higher bid for it?" Seeing that nobody continued to place a bid, Yu Bo grinned. "I''m now putting my job at risk to reveal some information. The Bloodthirster is the last saber for sale at the auction. It''s the saber with the highest quality. If you''re majoring in saber, perhaps you''ll have to wait for another year if you miss out on this chance." Soon, the black screen on the third floor lit up again. "60 billion!" It was offered by the member in VIP room No. 6. "The member from VIP room No. S6 has offered 60 billion!" "65 billion!" At the next second, the black screen glowed again. "The member from VIP room No. S8 has raised the price by five billion. The bid price is now 65 billion! Is the guest from VIP room No. S8 going to own the Bloodthirster?" Yu Bo''s gaze swept through the rest of the VIP rooms on the third floor. Despite the price exceeding his expectation, he still wanted to know if the price could go even higher. However, at a price like this, the true value of the Bloodthirster was on the low side. Those who majored in saber knew about this and the rest of the guests in the VIP room remained quiet. Yu Bo waited for a few seconds. Since no one else continued bidding for it, he then shouted, "65 billion, going once!" "65 billion, going twice!" "There goes the last chance" Yu Bo lifted his hammer and waited for another two seconds, then he shouted, "65 billion, going thrice!" At the same time, he knocked down the hammer. "Sold!" A smile finally plastered across Lin Huang''s face who was in VIP room No. 2 on the third floor. "That''s great. It''s higher than my expected price." His expected price was about 55 billion and he did not expect the final bid price to be 10 billion higher. Selling the first item went more smoothly than expected. The final bid price had exceeded his expectations as well. He was much happier now, forgetting about the God''s Figurine. He began to anticipate the bidding of the next two items. Soon, the second item was brought up to the stage. It was the demigod-level combat sword Lin Huang provided. As soon as it was unveiled, the combat sword that floated in the middle of the crystal-clear cabinet released a faint, golden glow, appearing very powerful. Bloody had intentionally chosen a golden sword. Not only did it have beautiful arcs on the blade of the sword, but the blade and the sheath of the sword were also delicately made. The golden engraving on the sheath looked remarkably artistic. "It''s a demigod-level combat sword forged about 200 years ago. Based on the arcs on its blade and the degree of fineness of the blade and the sheath, it must be the work of Master Jing. Master Jing is the only female forgemaster in this era who can forge a demigod relic. She''s also a demigod. There''s only a small number of her artworks and it''s rare to own a demigod relic forged by her. There are only three demigod relics available in the market so far. The combat sword must be the fourth one and it''s also the first demigod-level combat sword she has ever forged" Even Lin Huang did not know about the information provided by Wanbao Auction House. He was shocked as he heard it from the VIP room. Obviously, they had put in a lot of effort to raise the bid price of the item. "It makes me feel like buying it" Lin Huang mumbled. "You majored in sword. Why don''t you keep it for yourself? It''s just a matter of time for you to get to imperial-level," Yi Zheng asked. "If I want a sword, I can get a better one at any time," Lin Huang said, raising his brows. He felt that the Stairway Tree was an amazing place. What he said startled Yi Zheng. However, Lin Huang did not seem to be lying. Seeing the doubt on Yi Zheng''s face, Lin Huang did not say anything else. However, a thought crossed his mind. "I must look for a chance to ask Yi Zheng to join the Genius Union." Yi Zheng''s abilities were on par with a genius''. If Lin Huang were to recommend him, he could definitely join the Genius Union. There was no harm asking him to join the Genius Union. On the auction stage, Yu Bo announced the starting price of the combat sword. "The starting price is 32 billion Life Crystals! The price increment must be at least one billion Life Crystals each round!" An intense bidding war began immediately. "35 billion!" "40 billion!" Five minutes later, the combat sword was sold at a price of 62 billion. The final buyer was the guest in VIP room No. A3 on the second floor. He showed his determination in buying the sword throughout the bidding process. He raised the price by one to two billion each time. The two bidders on the third floor gave up bidding for the item as they did not want to increase the price by such a large margin anymore. After the bidding of the combat sword had ended, there was only one last item remaining and everybody was excited to know what the last item was. 803 The Last Auction Item "Is the last auction item a god''s relic?" "The demigod-level sword and saber have been sold. Will the last auction item be a god''s item?" The crowd was anticipating for it in suspense until the last auction item was then brought to the auction stage. "The last item for sale today, which is also the last item to be sold off at the auction, is here." Yu Bo was not in a hurry to unveil the red cloth. "Do you want to know what it is?" "Stop dragging. Just show it!" "Please be quick. I''m going home to breastfeed my baby!" A man with chest hair shouted, exposing his pecs to Yu Bo. "Hurry up. I have the urge to pee. I can''t stand it anymore! I''m going to the toilet after this!" The auction hall was now bustling with chatter. Many of them even neglected the point that the friendly young man was actually an immortal-level rank-9. He was only one step closer to imperial-level. "I feel like hitting someone" Yu Bo did not expect the crowd to react in such a way. He used to imagine that they would be like primary school kids and would all yell, "Yes!". In fact, the adult world was much more complicated. His emotions then completely returned to normal as he uncovered the last item. The combat armor that Lin Huang provided was displayed. The black combat armor floated in the transparent cabinet and exuded a faint, black mist. Two beams of bloody light glowed at the helmet visor, resembling a humanoid monster floating on the auction stage that scrutinized everyone in the auction hall. Everybody kept quiet as soon as the combat armor appeared. The moment when they saw the bloody glow, their bodies stiffened and they had goosebumps. They felt like an extremely powerful monster was glaring at them. Yu Bo grinned as the effect was within his expectations. Despite him being on immortal-level rank-9, he had goosebumps too when he saw the item for the first time. Most of them in the auction hall had not reached immortal-level yet, so they were very cautious of the appearance and aura of the combat armor. "The demigod-level combat armor is the only combat armor available for sale at this auction. The three Grade-S appraisers evaluated that the demigod relic wasn''t formed from an ancient relic. It wasn''t made of the flesh of the demigod-level monsters as well. Instead, it was dropped by the demigod-level monsters after their death. The monster type that dropped the combat armor remains unknown. However, it can be confirmed that it''s an abyssal monster and it''s highly possible that it''s an abyssal monster in the third layer of the Abyss Brink. It''s in perfect condition with no damages found" "The starting price of the combat armor is 38 billion Life Crystals! The price increment must be at least one billion Life Crystals each round!" After having uttered his words, the black screen on the third floor lit up abruptly. "68 billion!" The member from VIP room No. 3 raised the price by 30 billion. Obviously, he was eager to buy the set of combat armor. The crowd at the auction hall exclaimed when they saw the bid price. "Did he accidentally enter an extra zero?" "I''m pretty sure that he didn''t. It''s the strategy of bidding. He''s not giving others the chance to bid by raising the bid price to 30 billion higher." "The bidder in VIP room No. S3 is amazing!" "Perhaps 68 billion isn''t too expensive for him." Even Yu Bo was stunned. He thought that he had seen the wrong figure. Before Yu Bo had the chance to mention the bid price, the black screen which was a certain distance away lit up again. "75 billion!" The bidder who offered it was the member in VIP room No. 5. He had never placed any bid for the previous two demigod relics. "Is it going to be sold at an extremely high price?!" "Can it reach 80 billion? I heard that none of the items sold at the Wanbao Auction has ever exceeded 80 billion in the past 30 years." Yu Bo''s heartbeat started racing fast. He was waiting for the others to place another bid so that the bid price could exceed 80 billion. The highest bid in the past 30 years was 78 billion and it had happened 13 years ago. If he managed to break the record of the highest bid price at the auction that he hosted, he would definitely be rewarded by the top management. He might even have the opportunity to be upgraded to imperial-level. Yu Bo then calmed himself down. Just as he was about to say something to trigger the bidders'' buying intention, a figure lit up on the black screen on the third floor again. "85 billion!" Again, it was offered by the bidder in VIP room No. 3. Seeing the figure, Yu Bo was overjoyed. "It''s broken the record!!!" The next second, the member in VIP room No. 5 placed another bid. An even higher bid price was achieved. "95 billion!" The crowd felt that the members in the two VIP rooms on the third floor had gone insane. "What''s happening? It''s reaching 100 billion!" "I guess 95 billion should mean a lot to those on the third floor." "I used to think being rich makes me happy. Right until this moment, I realize that I''ve no idea what the happiness of a rich man is like" As an auctioneer, when Yu Bo saw the bid price of 95 billion, his breathing turned into a mess. He had just been trying to break the 30-year record. However, it seemed like it had broken the 50-year record now. After calming himself down, Yu Bo was preparing himself for what to say next. Again, the black screen on the third floor glowed. "120 billion!" The golden figure lit up abruptly on the black screen in front of VIP room No. 1. Everybody exclaimed in surprise. Nobody expected that with just one bid, the bidder from VIP room No. 1 would manage to outbid the bidders in VIP room No. 3 and No. 5 who had been fighting over the item for a long while. Seeing the bid price, Yu Bo was feeling lost as he mumbled, "1-120 billion" Soon, he recovered from his thoughts and tried to figure out when was the last time when the bid price had exceeded 120 billion. "I think the last time the bid was higher than 120 billion was 117 years ago. The highest bid price for a demigod relic was 130 billion. Within 100 years, the highest bid price for a demigod relic was 110 billion which happened 81 years ago. Does it mean that the current bid price has broken the 100-year record?!" Yu Bo could imagine his status at Wanbao Auction House in the future. "If everything goes well, the position of the principal auctioneer will belong to me!" After the bid of 120 billion was announced, the members from the rest of the VIP rooms remained silent. Yu Bo then knew that that would be the final price of the item. However, he was still ambitious, hoping to push the bid higher. "The bidder from VIP room No. S1 has bid 120 billion for it. This is, by far, the highest bid price over the past 100 years. Congratulations to the member in VIP room No. S1 for breaking the 100-year record of Wanbao Auction House!" "I''ve something else to say about this item. Many of you know that the items dropped by monsters can be refined and there''s no exception for the demigod relic. This demigod relic is just an intermediate-grade item. However, it''s like a raw material that has never been carved to the expert refiners. There are chances that it can be upgraded to an expert-grade item. Everybody knows that there are only three demigod-level combat armors that are of expert-grade in Division 3. This could possibly be the fourth one." Yu Bo wanted to share this earlier. However, he did not have the chance to do so, but this was a good time. Many of them could finally understand why it was priced at a much higher price compared to the previous two weapons. A majority of them used to think that the Supreme members on the third floor were just trying to fight one another as they bid like crazy. Apparently, they were bidding for the potential value of the combat armor. They were all clever ones. It suddenly dawned on Yi Zheng who then looked at Lin Huang and asked, "Are there grades for demigod relics?" "Yes, but the difference between them isn''t obvious." Lin Huang nodded his head and explained in detail, "A demigod relic is classified into beginner-grade, intermediate-grade, expert-grade, and ultimate-grade. The difference between the beginner- and intermediate-grade demigod relics isn''t significant. However, an expert-grade demigod relic is much more powerful. As for the ultimate-grade demigod relic, a minority of them can be compared to a god''s relic without instincts. "By looking at the price itself, a beginner-grade demigod relic can be sold within a price range of 10 to 30 billion Life Crystals. Some of them can be sold at a price of 40 billion and above. However, under normal circumstances, it won''t exceed 50 billion. The price of an intermediate-grade demigod relic starts from 30 billion Life Crystals and usually ranges from 30 to 80 billion. Normally, it won''t exceed 100 billion. The starting price for an expert-grade demigod relic will be 100 billion and its highest bid price can go to 300 to 400 billion. It won''t exceed 500 billion. The starting price for the ultimate-grade demigod relic will be 300 billion" On the auction stage, Yu Bo waited for a few seconds. Since nobody placed another bid, he shouted, "120 billion, going once!" "120 billion, going twice!" "Is there anyone who''s going to bid for it? Otherwise, the combat armor will belong to the member in VIP room No. S1." Obviously, 120 billion had exceeded the acceptable price range of the rest of the members on the third floor. They knew very well that a subtle increase in price meant nothing to him and that they would suffer great losses if they were to increase it substantially. Therefore, they decided to give up bidding for it. Yu Bo gazed at the VIP rooms on the third floor. He knew that nobody would place another bid. Therefore, he had to knock the gavel. "120 billion going, thrice! Sold!" 804 Leveling-up to Immortal-level! The last auction item was sold at 120 billion Life Crystals and the five days of the auction had finally ended with a speech from the top management of Wanbao Auction House. In Lin Huang''s VIP room, the doorbell rang. Yi Zheng opened the door and a female staff entered. She nodded her head at Yi Zheng and walked straight to Lin Huang. Then, she took out two items from her Emperor''s Heart Ring. One of them was the God''s Figurine which Lin Huang had bid for in the afternoon and the other thing was a thumb-sized crystal card. "Mr. Lin, this is the item that you bid for in the afternoon and the payment for the items sold. 3% of the processing fees and the money you spent buying the auction item has been deducted from the payment in the crystal card. Please check." Lin Huang took the two items from her. He put the God''s Figurine into his storage and immediately inserted the crystal card into his Emperor''s Heart Ring. The total amount for the three demigod relics was 247 billion. After deducting 3% of processing fees and the one billion Life Crystals which he had spent bidding for the auction item, the remaining amount was 238.59 billion Life Crystals. Making sure that it was the right amount, Lin Huang then completed the transaction. He removed the crystal card and stored it in his storage space. The transaction crystal card that could only temporarily store Life Crystals had its limit and was not valuable. Therefore, the auction house would give it to their customers each time after a transaction. "It''s exactly the right amount of money." Lin Huang nodded his head at the staff. "The two invitation cards of the underground auction will be emailed to you before 10 p.m. Please take note," the female staff reminded, "The auction begins tomorrow at 8 p.m. It starts from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. for three consecutive days. For further details, please check the invitation card after you''ve received it. Is there anything else I can help you with?" "Is there a list of items for the underground auction?" "The list will be attached in the invitation email. However, that''s just for your reference as the list is subject to change," she explained. "One more thing. During the auction, can we stay at the VIP room for free?" Lin Huang came up with a shameless request. He had enjoyed staying there for the past few days. "No, you can''t. Wanbao Auction has already ended to the outside world and the VIP rooms will serve as hotel rooms again. All the VIP rooms will be cleaned up today and we''ll start our usual business tomorrow. Moreover, the underground auction won''t be held here. It''s at another underground area." "Okay." Lin Huang nodded. As the staff left, the speech on the auction stage had ended as well. The majority of them had left the auction hall. "Should we leave now or should we stay for a while?" Yi Zheng felt that it was too crowded down there and felt like leaving only when it had subsided. "What are we waiting for? Don''t you know that they''re about to clean up this space?" Lin Huang stood up, tossing a red berry into his mouth and walked towards the floating staircase. Yi Zheng then had to follow after him. The both of them entered the floating staircase and went down to the first floor. They left the auction hall together with the crowd. They then returned to the hotel they used to stay at which was just a short distance away from the auction hall. After bidding Yi Zheng goodbye, he then returned to his room. The first thing he did was to summon Kylie and entered her mini world. Lin Huang was so excited to take the God''s Figurine out in her mini world. The God''s Figurine was only the size of an adult''s palm. It looked like a statue made of redwood. However, on it was the carving of a creature that Lin Huang had never seen before and it had never appeared in the monster guide either. It was a humanoid monster that looked feminine and wore a red dress that looked like an inverted rose. Its upper body was completely naked. It looked like it did not have arms and there were two pairs of butterfly-like wings on its back. There were scales all over its body and it had a vine-like tail which extended from the lower edge of its dress. The tail behind its dress hung low on the floor. After briefly looking at the shape of the God''s Figurine, Lin Huang shifted his gaze towards its face. It had a very beautiful face that looked like a lady from the West. Its head was slightly lowered with its eyes closed and it had waist-length hair that was a bit messy. Perhaps because it had no arms, Lin Huang felt that it looked sick and weak. "You''re lucky enough. It''s a matured Petal Devil. Its previous combat strength was at least on the high-rank True God-level." The stone tablet''s voice was heard. "Is it called the Petal Devil? Is it powerful?" Lin Huang asked. "The Petal Devil isn''t a monster that''s skilled at fighting. However, the abilities of a matured Petal Devil can be compared to the protoss that''s good at fighting. I said that you''re lucky simply because they''re monsters that possess the wood attribute. They''re the favorites of Nature. In the True Spirit Guide that I gave you, there''s a divine tree called Fusang which is also known as the sun tree. It has been said that the strongest sun tree stretches across the Milky Way. The stars and black holes are pretty much its food. It''s unbreakable and immortal. The Petal Devil and the sun tree originate from the same monster. With the God''s Figurine of the Petal Devil as a medium, visualizing the sun tree''s combat soul can be accomplished with ease." Lin Huang was excited when he heard this. It was a sun tree that stretched across the Milky Way and could even engulf the stars and black holes! If he could form a combat soul like this, he would have the courage to fight someone stronger than the True God. However, after calming himself down, he felt that what the stone tablet said was deceiving. "You said that the combat strength of the sun tree is even stronger than the True God right? Have you seen it before?" "I''ve never seen the sun tree stretching across the Milky Way before. However, I''ve seen the engulfment of the stars and black holes for real. I''ve seen the sun tree extend its branches and twist around the stars. It spent 33 days to engulf everything completely." What it said startled Lin Huang and he could not say a word for several moments. "Don''t think of creating a sun tree that can engulf the stars. As long as you can form a demigod-level plant, it''s probably sufficient to defeat all the demigods in the gravel world." Lin Huang forced a smile, shaking his head. He then took a deep breath, fixing his gaze back on the God''s Figurine. His Divine Telekinesis surrounded the God''s Figurine, slowly dragging it into the world in his body. If anyone saw what was happening to him, one would see the palm-sized wood statue slowly being dragged towards Lin Huang''s chest and disappearing. After storing the God'' Figurine into his body, Lin Huang dragged it to the Divine Fire of the first Life Wheel. The palm-sized God''s Figurine was instantly engulfed by the flames. Lin Huang kept his focus on the internal changes that were happening to his Divine Fire. Soon, a huge whirlpool was formed in the flames that were tens of thousands of meters tall. Its size then began to shrink rapidly. At the same time, the Life Power that was initially full in his Life Wheel was being overwhelmed entirely by the whirlpool. It did not happen to only the first Life Wheel... Instead, the Life Power in the rest of the nine Life Wheels was being depleted. Lin Huang could roughly guess what was happening. He immediately used three Life Power Refill Cards to replenish his Life Power, inserting it into the whirlpool. About half an hour had passed and all the Life Power in Lin Huang''s body had been emptied. Even the Divine Fire in his first Life Wheel had completely disappeared. Only the palm-sized God''s Figurine remained. Lin Huang waited for it excitedly yet patiently. He was not worried about his Life Power having already been depleted. About two to three minutes later, the eyes of the God''s Figurine opened abruptly. Two black Divine Fires shot out of its eyes. The red flower-like dress that it was wearing initially became black as if it was dyed by ink. At almost the same time, the size of the God''s Figurine began to grow. It was initially the size of a palm but it continued to grow until it was more than two meters tall. After its size had finally stabilized, the God''s Figurine slowly closed its eyes. However, the color of its dress was still black in color and did not return to its original color. The God''s Figurine''s black dress blew upwards a little with the circles of Life Power. It began to refill his first Life Wheel, followed by the second one, the third one After all ten of his Life Wheels were being restored, it began to pass through Lin Huang''s veins and arteries, muscles, bones, and soul Lin Huang was exhilarated. He could clearly sense that the Life Power in his body was transforming. His body and the strength of his soul were transforming as well. "It can really help me to level up to immortal-level rank-1!" Lin Huang inspected his own body. "The only difference between an immortal-level rank-1 and I is that I don''t have a combat soul in my body." Under normal circumstances, one would need to kill an immortal-level monster and hunt for a monster soul in order to advance from holy fire-level to immortal-level. The monster soul would then be used as a Life Furnace that stored Life Fire. The process was known as lighting up the Life Lamp. However, since the Life Fire in Lin Huang''s body originated from a Divine Pod whereby it belonged to the true Divine Fire, only a True God-level monster soul could store it. Therefore, he had to choose a spiritual god item or god relic to store the Divine Fire. The God''s Figurine was a spiritual god''s item. It could be used as a container to store his Divine Fire, allowing Lin Huang to light up his Life Lamp. Theoretically, Lin Huang knew that it would work. Therefore, he gave it a try and ended up successfully upgrading to immortal-level. "What I shall do next is to visualize the sun tree''s monster soul to create a combat soul!" Lin Huang knew what his next step was. "However, I don''t think that it can be achieved in such a short period of time." 805 Getting Kidnapped "Congratulations, you''ve leveled up to immortal-level! "There''s an upgrade in some of the authorities. "1. Summon authority of pseudo-mythical-level card is activated. "2. The number of summoning increases from 10 to 15. "3. Personal skill slots increase from 20 slots to 30 slots. "4. The maximum limit of the combat strength of the monster cards is immortal-level rank-9. "5: Activation of new cards: Duplication Card, Forge Card, Modification Card "6: Change of cross-ranking reward rules: You''ll only obtain a cross-ranking reward by killing an imperial-level. You can no longer obtain a cross-ranking reward by killing an immortal-level. "When on the beginner-level of an immortal-level (from rank-1 to rank-3), you''ll obtain 10 card draws by killing a black gold-rank; you''ll obtain 20 card draws by killing a crimson gold-rank; you''ll obtain 40 card draws by killing a yellow gold-rank; you''ll obtain 80 card draws by killing a white gold-rank; you''ll obtain 160 card draws by killing a purple gold-rank; and you''ll obtain 320 card draws by killing a demigod. "When on the intermediate-level of an immortal-level (from rank-4 to rank-6), you''ll obtain 10 card draws by killing a crimson gold-rank; you''ll obtain 20 card draws by killing a yellow gold-rank; you''ll obtain 40 card draws by killing a white gold-rank; you''ll obtain 80 card draws by killing a purple gold-rank; and you''ll obtain 160 card draws by killing a demigod. "When on the expert-level of an immortal-level (from rank-7 to rank-9), you''ll obtain 10 card draws by killing a yellow gold-rank; you''ll obtain 20 card draws by killing a white gold-rank; you''ll obtain 40 card draws by killing a purple gold-rank; and you''ll obtain 80 card draws by killing a demigod." "Remark: You can''t use a Function Card to assist in a cross-ranking kill." "I can''t use a Function Card? I guess I''m not cheating if I were to use the Knight skill and Integration skill to achieve an upgrade in my combat strength, right?" Lin Huang mumbled with an evil smile, "I can first upgrade the combat strength of the monster that I''m riding on to immortal-level rank-9. With the overlaying effect of the Knight and Integration skills, my combat strength can be upgraded to at least black gold-level or even crimson gold-level" "That''s too much. According to the strength of your body and soul, black gold-rank is your limit. If you were to advance it to crimson gold-level forcefully, your body and soul will probably collapse in an instant. Therefore, given the restriction of the system, you''ll only be able to obtain the minimum overlaying effect of Knight and Integration and your combat strength will only reach black gold-rank. There''ll be an exception if you level up to the intermediate-level of the immortal-level." "Black gold-rank. That''s great." Lin Huang did not feel upset at all. "With my abilities on black gold-rank, it won''t be difficult for me to fight crimson gold- and yellow gold-ranks. Bai and the rest of their combat strength can be upgraded to immortal-level rank-9 too. Furthermore, I have two pseudo-mythical-level monster card: evil spirit type and Regal Sword Killer. Despite not being able to use the Combat Strength Upgrade Card, they can fight in a team and see if they can kill white gold-rank monsters" There was actually a significant increase in Lin Huang''s abilities as he leveled up to immortal-level. Nevertheless, he knew that there was still room for improvement. Training the monster soul could allow him to own the combat soul. The training of the Seamless skill would enable him to create more telekinetic threads, expanding the region covered by his telekinesis. The training of his Sword Dao that had begun to plateau could be further improved. Also, the tremendous improvement in his combat strength unsealed many of the memories inherited As he thought of this, Lin Huang knew that he had a lot of things to do. After returning from Kylie''s mini world to the hotel room, it was already 10 p.m. He felt strange as he could detect with his territory that Yi Zheng was not in the room. "Did he go for supper?" Lin Huang did not think too much about it since he had entered Kylie''s mini world after they got back from the auction hall. Most likely, because he had seen that he was not in, Yi Zheng had gone out for supper on his own. After taking a shower, Lin Huang began reading the news on the sofa. After reading all the news and browsing through social media, it was about 11 p.m. but Yi Zheng had not come back yet. Lin Huang began to worry about him. He thought for a while. Then, he opened the communication page and decided to call Yi Zheng. Soon, the call was connected. However, after waiting for a long while, only a beeping could be heard. Until the sound ended after a minute, nobody picked up the call. "What happened to him?" Lin Huang frowned. After calming himself down, he texted him. "I called you just now but nobody picked up. Where are you? Please get back to me soon when you see this message." After the message had been sent, one minute passed, then two minutes, three minutes Nobody replied to him and Lin Huang panicked. The Emperor''s Heart Ring was different from the usual mobile phone on Earth. It was worn directly on the finger and would not be taken it off even when they were taking their shower. As long as they received a call or text message, it would vibrate. It was impossible that they could not sense it. Even if they were too busy to pick up the call, replying a voice message would only take them a few seconds. Yi Zheng had grown up in the military and he used to be really efficient at work. Normally, he would reply to text messages within seconds. Since he did not reply Lin Huang after so long, it indicated that something had happened to him. After making such a conclusion, Lin Huang immediately entered Yi Zheng''s hotel room. It was so clean and tidy inside the room and there were no traces of any scuffle or conflict. Lin Huang scanned the area with his Divine Telekinesis several times but he discovered nothing apart from the balcony door being open. However, no evidence was found at the balcony. "Yi Zheng normally closes the balcony door before going out and locks it." Standing at the balcony, Lin Huang checked if he had missed out on anything. "That guy must be strong. He managed to control Yi Zheng in an instant as soon as he entered from the balcony and kidnapped him. When did he get targeted by the kidnapper?" Lin Huang frowned as he carefully recalled whether somebody had been following after them or spying on them. However, he discovered nothing. "Regardless of who his target is, if somebody is following me, I''ll be able to detect it with my territory. If the opponent is using a spiritual detection skill, I''ll be able to detect it easily with my Divine Telekinesis. However, nothing has been detected in the past few days when Yi Zheng was with me." Lin Huang could not understand it. He had no idea when they got targeted by the kidnapper or why would this happen. Just as Lin Huang was in doubt, his Emperor''s Heart Ring suddenly vibrated. A message came through. He immediately tapped opened the communication page and unexpectedly, the sender was Yi Zheng. "He replied?" Lin Huang was stunned. However, it was 20 minutes ago when he had sent the message to Yi Zheng. He did not expect him to reply at this moment. "Did I overthink?" As he read the message, Lin Huang''s pupils dilated. "If you want to save him, come to Yangui Tower before midnight. Bring along all the auction items you bid from the auction hall and come here alone. If you don''t bring all the items you have or you have someone following you, you have to bear the consequences." "Someone has caught him!" Surprisingly, Lin Huang felt relieved after receiving the message. Firstly, the person was using Yi Zheng''s Emperor''s Heart Ring to send him the message. That being said, Yi Zheng was still alive and it was good news. Secondly, the reason why he kidnapped Yi Zheng was obvious. It was because of the auction items. Therefore, it was less likely that the person would kill Yi Zheng before the deal had been made. Yi Zheng and Lin Huang had a total of five auction items. The four items that Yi Zheng bought were ancient relics. It was not worth doing so for those items. The only item Lin Huang got was the God''s Figurine. Lin Huang smirked as he understood everything that had happened and could roughly guess the identity of the kidnapper. "He''s coming after the God''s Figurine! During the auction, the only person who bid for the God''s Figurine was the member in VIP room No. 1 on the third floor. Most probably, he knows the truth about the God''s Figurine and that''s the reason why he''s giving his all to get it. If I''m not mistaken, he''s the kidnapper!" 806 Yousve Been Thinking About Dating My Sister All the Time! Given Yi Zheng''s abilities, if he got kidnapped without having the ability to fight back, it meant that the kidnapper was probably an imperial-level. Had it happened last time, Lin Huang would have feared him. However, he felt smug now and was excited to fight him. He hardly had the chance to fight an imperial-level. Furthermore, he was just estimating his abilities based on theory. In order to know how powerful his abilities were, he had to engage in a real battle. Since the opponent came to him first, Lin Huang was thrilled. As for Yi Zheng who got kidnapped"Hmm Let''s fight the kidnapper first," he thought to himself. After making the decision, Lin Huang flew up to the sky from the balcony, transforming into a black meteor and headed towards the west of the city. Guiyan Tower was an abandoned building site at the west of Wanbao City. The buildings used to be part of a temple during ancient times. However, the temple had turned into a rubble of debris and broken bricks now. Only the lower half of the tower remained. When the abandoned site was first discovered, the Union Government had sent people in to inspect the site. However, they only managed to dig out some of the books and bones of ordinary people. They then concluded that it was just an ordinary temple. In the past hundred years, many people came to explore this place. However, nothing was discovered and the number of people who came here subsequently decreased. In addition, it was too far from the center of Wanbao City. It was more than 2,000 kilometers away and it covered only a small area. Considering the extremely pathetic visitation rate of the ordinary tourists, the Union Government did not make it a tourist spot. Therefore, it was now an abandoned land. Aside from visiting a few of the tourist spots, Lin Huang had not been to other places ever since he came to Wanbao City. Of course, he had not been to Guiyan Tower. If the kidnapper had not mentioned it, he would have forgotten that there was such a site during the old era. Activating his double acceleration, it took him about 20 minutes to arrive at the west of the city. He could see the abandoned site with a half-burnt tower and broken bricks all over from afar. He could obviously sense that there were two figures on the first floor of the abandoned tower in the region covered by his territory. A person was leaning against the wall while another stood, lifting his head and looking in his direction. Obviously, he had been discovered. Lin Huang gradually landed on a hillside with broken bricks all over it. It was about 20 meters away from the abandoned tower and he could maintain a safe distance. "I came as promised. Can you come out?" Lin Huang remained calm and both of them in the tower heard his voice clearly. At the entrance of Yangui Tower, a pale, skinny man appeared along with Yi Zheng. As the moonlight shone on him, Lin Huang could evidently see how the kidnapper looked like. He looked so pale and ill. He was like the classic vampire described in most novels. He was about 1.8 meters tall and had a skinny and slender body. With very ordinary looks, he could hardly stand out from the crowd. Without sensing the strength of his aura, Lin Huang would think that he was just an ordinary person. "You''re really an imperial-level. The first rank of an imperial-level C black gold-rank." After sizing him up, Lin Huang had a rough estimate of his combat strength. He then shifted his gaze towards Yi Zheng. Yi Zheng''s Life Power had been emptied and must have been sealed by some sort of secret skill. However, it seemed like the kidnapper had not tortured him as he still looked fine. However, his face turned ghastly as he saw Lin Huang. "He''s an imperial-level. You shouldn''t have come." "You didn''t answer my call and reply to my text. What could I do?" Lin Huang smiled with his palms up. "If I don''t do anything and you die here, I''ve no idea how to explain this to your sister." "The conversation shall end here." The pale man pressed his hand against Yi Zheng''s shoulder. Yi Zheng groaned and stopped talking. "Give it to me and I''ll let him go." The man lifted his head and looked at Lin Huang threateningly. "What''s that? You have to tell me clearly," Lin Huang challenged. "Stop bullshitting me. You know that I want the God''s Figurine!" "Indeed, he knows what the God''s Figurine is." Lin Huang''s heart sank. However, nothing strange could be picked up from his facial expression. "I really have no idea what the God''s Figurine is." "You''ve no idea?! Why did you bid for it at the auction?" The man narrowed his eyes. "I''ve just scanned through his memory. Don''t think that I don''t know both of you were the members in VIP room No. 3 on the third floor. You''re the one who bid for it." "I bid for it? Oh Are you talking about the wood carving?" Lin Huang looked like he was suddenly enlightened. "I just found out that it''s called the God''s Figurine. As an imperial-level, you kidnapped my friend because of the wood carving? It seems to be something valuable." "Stop talking nonsense. Give it to me!" The man was impatient. "If you give it to him, the both of us will die," Yi Zheng said calmly. "I''m not allowing you to talk!" The man pressed against Yi Zheng''s shoulder hard with his left hand and the sound of the bone being broken echoed. It was so painful that sweat dripped from Yi Zheng''s forehead. He was startled and kept quiet. "Don''t fight first. I''m not saying that I won''t give it to you," Lin Huang immediately said, "I can give it to you, but I have one condition. Let him go first." "I''ll let him go after you''ve given it to me," the man said without any facial expression. "No, I can''t do so. I don''t trust you. My friend was right. You might probably kill us after getting what you want," Lin Huang insisted. "He''s the brother to a female friend of mine. If he dies, his sister will definitely blame me. Even if I die, she''ll hate me forever. Let him go and I''ll stay. You know that the item is with me and not him. As long as he can leave here safely, I''ll give it to you. If you want to break your promise, just kill me. As long as he''s still alive, his sister won''t blame me for not taking good care of him. She''ll miss me every day because I sacrificed my life for his brother. Thinking of her long legs, it''s worth dying for." Lin Huang acted like a drooling pervert. "Lin Huang, you''re thinking about dating my sister all the time!" Yi Zheng glared at Lin Huang. He was so angry and accidentally called out his real name. "Do you think that I''m treating her like a friend?" Lin Huang raised his brows. "There''s no pure friendship between a man and a lady. It''s general knowledge that all adults should know." "You" Yi Zheng was too mad to the point that he could not say anything. "Humans really are boring and low-class creatures" The pale-faced man mumbled. He lifted his head and looked at Lin Huang again. "Alright, I promise you. However, I have another request. I want to have a look whether you''ve really brought what I want. I''ll let him go immediately upon confirmation." "Alright, keep your promise." Lin Huang grinned. The man was staring at Lin Huang''s hand movement. However, he was laughing on the inside. "Keep your promise? Such an innocent fella. If it weren''t because I''m not sure whether you brought the God''s Figurine along, I wouldn''t have talked so much nonsense to you. After confirming that the item is with you, both of you must die! The only thing I need is the Emperor''s Heart Ring." 807 Lin Huang Versus the Imperial-Level Lin Huang extended his right arm with his palm facing up. A palm-sized God''s Figurine instantly appeared on his palm, floating a few centimeters off his palm. "Can you see it now?" Seemingly, Lin Huang was not worried that he would snatch it away. He did not put it away after showing him the God''s Figurine. "Can you let him go now?" "That''s great!" The pale man grinned. "Since you''ve brought it along, there''s no use keeping both of you alive." After finishing his sentence, the man gradually faded away from his original position and appeared right in front of Lin Huang without a trace. He penetrated through Lin Huang''s chest as he struck a blow at him. At that moment, his facial expression changed as Lin Huang''s body distorted slightly and disappeared. "Kylie, bring Yi Zheng away." In front of Yi Zheng, two figures appeared abruptly. One of them was Lin Huang whereas the other one was Kylie. Kylie grabbed Yi Zheng''s arm and the both of them instantly disappeared. Seeing Yi Zheng being brought to Kylie''s mini world, Lin Huang grinned. He lifted his head, looking at the pale man with an insulting expression. "An illusion? You did a great job." The man soon responded to him coldly. "It''s just a trick. Not worth mentioning though," Lin Huang said calmly as if fooling an imperial-level with his ocular skill was just a small matter. "Why didn''t you run away? Do you think that I won''t kill you?" The man did not panic when Yi Zheng was evacuated. "Make another guess." Lin Huang smiled. The man squinted and glanced at Lin Huang for a while. "You look confident. It''s either a big bluff or you have a trump card in hand which makes you think that you''re capable of fighting me." "You''re smarter than I can imagine." Hearing the answer, Lin Huang smiled again. "However, I need to correct you. I''m not thinking that I''m capable of fighting you. Instead, I know that I have the ability to kill you." "That''s a funny joke. I don''t feel like killing you now. If I were to make you my pet, you could tell me jokes when I''m bored" The man tilted his head slightly, looking at Lin Huang. "Hmm Let it be. It''s too troublesome to have a pet. I shall just kill you to make a new leather bag." "A leather bag?" Lin Huang could not understand his rationale. However, before he could ask further, Kylie walked out from her mini world. "Your pet is back. I''ve been waiting for her." After uttering his words, an invisible wave spread out from his body, passing through Lin Huang and Kylie and spread further away. Lin Huang could instantly feel that it was causing their surroundings to freeze. He took a glance at where Kylie was at and the same thing seemed to happen there. "Is it a dimensional territory?" Lin Huang raised his brows, looking at the pale man. "You''ve got 20/20 eyesight." He stared at Lin Huang and grinned. "To stop you from running away like what you did just now, I purposely waited for the return of your pet before sealing the dimension." "Nothing is affected as the entrance is still open," Kylie contacted Lin Huang through her mind. Lin Huang grinned. Even if Kylie had not told him about it, he knew that his effort of sealing the dimension would be rendered useless. Kylie''s mini world was left on this land by someone who was at least on the Virtual God-level. Regardless of how powerful the imperial-level''s territory was, it was impossible for it to affect it. "Would you believe me if I tell you that I''m not going to run away?" Lin Huang spoke the truth with a smile. "It doesn''t matter whether if I trust you or not. You''re going to regret what you said." The man''s killing intent immediately grew. He was not going to secretly attack Lin Huang as he was going to kill him from the front, snatching his Emperor''s Heart Ring away. "Such a strong intent to kill. You''re scary." Lin Huang sounded like he was teasing him. However, he was really careful. From the aura he released, Lin Huang could sense that he was not an opponent that was easy to deal with. "Come out, Charcoal!" Lin Huang then summoned Charcoal whose height had been reduced to only five meters tall. A non-humanoid monster was needed to activate the Knight skill. Seeing the appearance of Charcoal, the pale-faced man squinted. "A dragonkin?! And the concentration of its blood isn''t low!" Sensing Charcoal''s blood purity, instead of being fearful, the man got more excited. He extended his tongue, licking his own lips. "I can''t wait to taste the delicious monster!" Although he was just mumbling to himself, Charcoal who had just been summoned could hear everything clearly. He immediately targeted the pale man, spitting black dragon flames towards him. The black dragon flames gushed out like the tide, instantly enveloping the area where the man stood. Right at this moment, Lin Huang''s pupils dilated. He immediately grabbed Kylie''s wrist and rode on Charcoal''s back. "Knight!" "Integration!" The two skills were unleashed simultaneously. Kylie then transformed into a beam of black light and penetrated through Lin Huang''s chest. Lin Huang''s combat strength then began to advance. Immortal-level rank-1! Immortal-level rank-2! Immortal-level rank-3! Immortal-level rank-9! Charcoal received a similar upgrade in its combat strength. The entire process sounded long but it actually happened within seconds. After the upgrade in combat strength, a figure appeared on top of Lin Huang. Impressively, it was the pale man who was shrouded in the dragon flames earlier. "That''s your trump card!?" He then struck a blow from the sky. A black, gigantic claw that was formed by his Life Power went after Lin Huang and Charcoal. The gigantic claw could be compared to the size of about four basketball courts. Lin Huang and Charcoal had nowhere to flee. Seeing the gigantic claw on top of him, Charcoal''s bloody eyes flashed with a trace of fury. Just as it was about to spit its dragon flames, on its back, Lin Huang swiftly dashed his sword forward. A black glow that resembled a crescent moon streaked across the sky, crashing into the black, gigantic claw in an instant. In the next second, the huge claw was sliced into half like tofu, revealing a smooth surface. After slicing through the gigantic claw, the glow of the sword that was akin to a crescent moon did not collapse. Instead, it went towards the pale man who was in the sky immediately. Witnessing what had just happened, a flicker of fear flashed through his eyes. For the first time, he had a serious expression on his face. The glow of the sword arrived right in front of him in an instant. Just as the sword was about to strike him, he grabbed the blade of the sword. Exerting force on the black glow with five of his fingers, the black glow collapsed into pieces like broken glass. Although he managed to dodge Lin Huang''s attack without getting injured, he did not look fine. He had to admit that the young man in front of him was really capable of fighting him. He was not being na?ve or swashbuckling. 808 You Canst Imagine the Happiness of Spitting Dragon Flame Mid-air, Lin Huang was standing on Charcoal''s back. It was his first time combining the two skills: the Knight skill and the Integration skill. He was quite satisfied with the effect. Charcoal was on immortal-level rank-5 and the combat strength of the two skills could only be upgraded three levels higher. However, there were some uncertainties about the advancement of the combat strength as it could increase anywhere from one to three levels higher. However, Lin Huang combined the two skills and his combat strength was four levels higher. He managed to reach his pinnacle C immortal-level rank-9. It was his first time fighting an imperial-level with the combat strength he currently possessed. Lin Huang could confirm that the estimation he made for his ability was correct in just one blow. The pale man who was on black gold-rank was pinned down by him. Despite the fact that it was also his first time engaging in a fight while standing on Charcoal''s back, the both of them could communicate really well with the help of the Knight skill. Lin Huang felt that Charcoal was an extension of his body. Apart from being able to instantly express what he wanted to Charcoal without saying anything, he could even see how the world looked like from Charcoal''s point of view. It was unbelievable that the combination of the Integration and Knight skills could result in such an effect. After combining with Kylie, not only did she share her abilities and skills with Lin Huang, but she also shared them with Charcoal too. Aside from possessing Kylie''s speed and agility, Charcoal had perfectly inherited all the skills she owned as well. Lin Huang felt that he had never been so powerful before. However, the pale man did not have a good time there. He was familiar with Lin Huang''s identity as an Imperial Censor and could tell that Lin Huang might have had a provisional upgrade in his combat strength. He knew this clearly because he had seen Yi Zheng''s memory before. However, he did not expect Lin Huang to be able to level up from immortal-level rank-1 to rank-9. It was unbelievable that Lin Huang, who was on immortal-level rank-9, was capable of fighting him and even possessed the ability to suppress him. He had underestimated him previously as he used to think that he could pin him down easily. However, he now had to go through a big obstacle getting the God''s Figurine. "I''ve underestimated you," the pale man admitted unwillingly. He then glanced at Lin Huang vengefully. "You''re hiding your skills well!" "I didn''t. It''s just that you''ve underestimated me. " Lin Huang laughed. "Everybody thinks that an immortal-level rank-1 is just an ant to the imperial-level and that they can be easily defeated. However, they never knew that ants could kill too." "Regardless of how powerful your combat strength is, your time is limited. After that period of time that you receive an upgrade in your combat strength, I can still do whatever I want to you." Despite the fact that Lin Huang''s ability had surprised him and he was in disbelief about it, the sallow man still had good control over the battle as he was not blinded by fear. "Regardless of what upgrade you''ve experienced in your combat strength, you''re just an immortal-level rank-1. That''s my greatest advantage." After finishing his words, a monster soon formed in front of the man. Soon, there were seven monsters and each of them was on imperial-level. Seeing what just happened, Lin Huang frowned. His opponent was not an Imperial Censor and the monsters that appeared were not summoning monsters. Instead, they were combat souls. Their combat strength had been upgraded from immortal-level rank-9 to imperial-level. Of course, they would have nine combat souls. After getting to imperial-level from immortal-level, the combat souls would transform as the souls were strengthened, leveling up to imperial-level. The combat souls would again be the greatest assistance to the imperial-level. The pale man had excellent control over them, the reason being regardless of how many ranks higher Lin Huang''s combat strength could reach, he was just an immortal-level rank-1. He would only have one combat soul. Seven imperial-level combat souls were summoned and there were two more that had not been summoned yet. Lin Huang could not confirm if the two remaining combat souls were the strongest ones or if they had been destroyed and could no longer be summoned. However, it was difficult for him to kill the seven combat soul monsters. Among the seven combat souls, two of them had gone through their third mutation. There were also two undying species that could hardly be killed. Seven of them had appeared at the same time. Even Lin Huang felt that it was difficult to defeat them. Lin Huang would, of course, had a higher number of summoning monsters. After getting into immortal-level, his summoning authority had been activated. The number of summoning monsters he was allowed to summon increased from 10 to 15. However, most of his summoning monsters were on immortal-level rank-5. They could not join the fight. A thought suddenly ran through Lin Huang''s mind and he decided not to summon Bai and the rest. "Charcoal!" Lin Huang shouted and soon, Charcoal received Lin Huang''s instruction in detail in his mind. Flapping its wings, its huge body then strangely disappeared from its original position. In the next moment, a human and a monster then appeared on top of the monsters. "Dragon flames!" At almost the same time, Charcoal and Lin Huang opened their mouths wide. Dragon flames then spewed out of their mouths. The two flames did not repel each other. Instead, they grew stronger rapidly, gushing towards the seven combat souls and the pale man. Black flames then engulfed the eight of them like a tsunami, spanning tens of kilometers from where they were and turning the entire region into a black ocean. Unexpectedly, the force that resulted from Charcoal and his dragon flames did not just double. Instead, it went far beyond that. Its damage and power had multiplied many times. Although the effect might not be as powerful as what Charcoal could achieve when it officially leveled up to imperial-level, the effect was similar. "It''s less likely that they can get rid of our attack as the range of attack is very wide. Most probably, they''ll be forced to fight back. If that happens, even if we can''t kill the seven combat souls, they''ll be severely injured," Lin Huang thought to himself. This was also the reason why he had activated this skill. He wanted to reduce the number of enemies that could threaten him. It would be terribly disastrous to be besieged by seven imperial-levels. Despite the fact that they were merely combat souls with no real bodies, their abilities were not much weaker than those with physical bodies. He would feel more relieved even if only one of the combat souls got injured. The spitting of dragon flames lasted for several minutes. Lin Huang and Charcoal had no means of stopping. Under normal circumstances, as a dragonkin, Charcoal would not spit dragon flames in such a way. The spitting of dragon flames lasted for just a couple of seconds each time, the longest one lasting for only about 20 seconds. It never lasted longer than half a minute. It was because the use of dragon flames depleted a large portion of its Life Power. The Life Power in its Life Wheel drained drastically every second like a tidal wave. It was very important for a dragonkin to rationally distribute the use of its Life Power. If the time it took to spit dragon flames got too long, its Life Power would be exhausted and it would become a drawback. If the dragon flames were unable to kill its enemy, it would be killed by its opponent. However, it was not a problem to Lin Huang as he possessed Divine Fire in his body. Compared to the rest of the people, the speed at which his Life Power could be restored was like the difference between a nuclear power plant and a hydraulic power plant. After possessing the Divine Fire, the Life Power in his body was inexhaustible. He could constantly channel it to Charcoal. Spitting dragon flames for a month would not be a problem to him, let alone a few minutes. Of course, their jaws would feel tired if they were to spit dragon flames for a month. Charcoal got to enjoy the satisfaction of spitting dragon flames for the first time after getting a constant supply of Life Power from Lin Huang. Nobody could imagine its delight of spitting dragon flames. Its brutish nature and its desire to destroy things could finally be satisfied. It was like a Husky, which had been kept indoors for a long period of time, happily tearing apart a leather sofa that cost tens of thousands of Life Crystals, three pairs of Armani jeans, a Louis Vuitton bag, and an iPad 809 Lin Huang Had a Headache 10 seconds... 20 seconds... 30 seconds The pale man was secretly counting the time Charcoal took to spit the dragon flames. As time passed, his face turned ghastly. When Lin Huang and Charcoal spat the dragon flames, he thought of sacrificing two combat souls to interrupt the spitting of the flames. The area covered by the dragon flames was too vast and it was unavoidable. There were only two ways to deal with such an attack. They had to either interrupt it or dodge it. However, he knew that the time for a dragonkin to spit dragon flames would be limited. He only needed to bear it for about 20 seconds as it would drain a huge portion of its Life Power. The depletion of its Life Power had far exceeded the Life Power consumed by his defensive skill. It would be beneficial to him if a large amount of its Life Power became exhausted. Therefore, he chose to fight against them. However, half a minute had passed and the flames did not weaken. He could clearly sense that apart from the two triple mutated combat souls, there were some problems with the defense layer of the five combat souls. "Hold on a little longer. Their Life Power won''t last that long." He had miscalculated. One whole minute had passed and the dragon flames were still as powerful as ever. He began to panic. The defense layer of the five double mutated combat souls was shaking and could collapse at any time. Despite the demigod-level armor which he was wearing completely isolating him from the dragon flames, he was pressured as the armor was constantly exhausting his Life Power. "It''s lasted for a minute" The sallow man then looked at the combat souls in front of him. Only the two triple mutated combat souls could still bear the dragon flames and were moving against them. The closer they were to the origin of the dragon flames, the higher the damages and the temperature. The combat soul might become destroyed if they were to go against the dragon flames. As he thought of this, the man ground his teeth and decided to bear it. "According to the consumption of Life Power of the dragon flames, I don''t think it can still last any longer!" One minute and 10 seconds One minute and 15 seconds... One minute and 20 seconds He continued calculating the time. Every second was a torment to him. After one minute and 23 seconds, the defense layer of the first combat soul had collapsed. The Life Power of the combat soul was being depleted, turning into ashes in less than two seconds after being burnt by the dragon flames. After one minute and 26 seconds, the defense layer of the second combat soul collapsed as well After one minute and 32 seconds, the third combat soul was destroyed. After one minute and 36 seconds, the fourth After one minute and 42 seconds, the fifth As for the two undying species, after their Life Power was drained, there was no way of reviving them and they were burnt to ashes as well. The defense layer of the two remaining triple mutated combat souls began to collapse A third of the Life Power of the pale man remained. He had made many mistakes in this battle and suffered great losses. The spitting of dragon flames had lasted for more than one minute and 40 seconds. Still, the flames did not weaken to his utter shock. He could not understand why the dragon flames were now stronger than what he had seen coming from Lin Huang''s mouth earlier. At that moment, he felt regret instead of shock. He regretted not interrupting the spitting of dragon flames. He regretted choosing to fight Lin Huang in terms of Life Power consumption. If he had made the right decision, there would still have been losses, but not to such an extent. Seeing the two triple mutated combat souls about to collapse, he had a steely determination in his eyes. Two palm-sized statues suddenly appeared in his hand. Mumbling, he looked at the two statues in his hand. "God Master, I''ve ruined your treasure. I''ll offer my apology with death when I return." After finishing his words, he pressed the two statues against his chest. In a short while, two figures appeared in front of him. They were two mutated monsters. Their aura barely managed to cover the aura of the two triple mutated monster souls. One of them looked like a cat but had a wry skeleton-like face. It had sharp teeth that looked like steel nails. Its body was long and it looked like a magnified cheetah with stripes all over its body. The second one was a snake-headed monster and its lower body looked like a hoofed mammal. However, it had metallic scales all over its body and four extremely huge hooves that could be compared to a basin. Most of the monsters feared being trampled on by the hooves. Lin Huang had no idea what the name of the two mutated monsters was. They were standing in the middle of the ocean of dragon flames without any defenses. Seemingly, they were completely fine in the ocean of flames. "Stop the spitting of the dragon flames!" After receiving the instruction from the pale man, the two mutated monsters then looked into the sky. Soon, they could locate where Lin Huang and Charcoal were. The two figures then blasted off into the sky, heading towards the dragon flames. The black dragon flames that possessed terrifying destructive power and extremely high temperature surged towards the two mutated monsters. However, it did no harm to their bodies as if they were completely immune to the dragon flames. Of course, Lin Huang and Charcoal realized this. The dragon flames were like a huge territory to them and they could sense whatever that happened within it easily. Lin Huang could clearly see the pale man take the two statues out. "How is it possible for him to have two God''s Figurines?!" Lin Huang''s face turned grim as he saw the man pressing the two God''s Figurines against his chest. In fact, it was within his expectations when he integrated the God''s Figurine with his combat soul, summoning two combat souls with the figurine. The tablet had told Lin Huang about the characteristics of the God''s Figurine. Although the combat strength of the combat soul would not increase after the integration of the God''s Figurine with his combat soul, the combat soul would obtain a god-level body. It would be impossible for any force below god-level to leave any trace on its body, let alone destroy it. The physical defense of such a combat soul could be completely immune to forces below god-level. This was also the reason why the two combat souls could resist the dragon flames without the use of any Life Power. They could easily go against the dragon flames. The two mutated monsters gushed out of the dragon flames and pounced towards Charcoal and Lin Huang. The second Lin Huang saw that, he immediately took out his sword. His attack transformed into a crescent moon-shaped black glow and struck the two mutated monsters. The two mutated monsters howled, but they did not dodge the sword attack and went after it. Just as they collided with the sword, the glow of the sword that was capable of fighting a black gold-rank collapsed. The two mutated monsters dove towards them without any obstacles. Lin Huang''s Life Power immediately sheathed the blade of the sword and it turned completely black. Lin Huang leaped down from Charcoal''s back and headed for the two mutated monsters. Bang! A loud thud was heard just as the blade crashed with the claws of the mutated monsters. The impact stirred the atmosphere. Lin Huang could feel that there was a force flowing through the blade of the combat sword. The aftershock of the force had far exceeded all the forces he had ever encountered in his life. His combat sword almost detached from his hand when they crashed into each other. The blade shrouded by his Life Power immediately collapsed and the cracking of bones could be vaguely heard coming from his arms. The next moment, Lin Huang''s body flew away and landed on the ground very far away. Of course, the two mutated monsters were not completely fine. Although their bodies were strong and nobody could break through their defenses, they were not completely immune to the impact that resulted from Lin Huang''s sword. They flew away as well and two huge pits were formed on the ground. Charcoal immediately stopped spitting dragon flames. It flapped its wings and soon, it appeared on top of Lin Huang. Worriedly, it gazed down at the ground where a pit was formed. "I''m fine." Thanks to his Divine Regeneration, Lin Huang''s broken arms were recovered in the blink of an eye. His injuries resulting from the aftershock were almost recovered as well. He then got onto Charcoal''s back. The pale man returned to the sky as well after getting rid of the dragon flames. He then recalled the two triple mutated combat souls back into his body. Although they had not collapsed, their Life Power was almost depleted and they could no longer fight. Apparently, Lin Huang had won the fight as he managed to deal with seven combat souls with just one skill. Seeing the two monsters that got out of the pits without any injuries and appeared right in front of the man in a flash, Lin Huang felt a headache coming on. 810 To Catch Bandits, First Catch the Ringleader The greatest advantage of the God''s Figurine was that it had an unbeatable body. As long as the opponent''s damage was unable to destroy the God''s Figurine body (or the protoss'' body), it would be immune to all kinds of injuries. The protoss was at least on the True God-level. One could imagine how strong its body was. Nobody in the gravel world could destroy a God''s Figurine combat soul, let alone Lin Huang. Fortunately, only the physical body of the God''s Figurine combat soul could be strengthened, but its combat strength would still depend on that of the combat soul. The combat strength of the two combat souls was only on the first rank of imperial-level: black gold-rank. They were not invincible. The problem was how could he get rid of the two God''s Figurine combat souls. The pale man was happy on the inside. He clearly saw that Lin Huang was injured as he fought the God''s Figurine combat soul. "The dragon flames no longer work and you can no longer engage in close combat. I''d like to see what you can still do!" The pale-faced man dominated the two God''s Figurine combat souls and again, he pounced towards Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang had learned from the first lesson. He did not use any sword skill to deal with the two God''s Figurine combat souls anymore. Instead, he activated his Dark Mirror. The defense power of the Dark Mirror was 10 times mightier than Lin Huang''s strongest attack. Moreover, it possessed a 100% reflection effect. The attack power of the two God''s Figurine combat souls would not exceed the Dark Mirror''s maximum defensive power. Therefore, regardless of what kind of attack they were going to launch, their attacks would be reflected by the mirror. Although Lin Huang would be affected by the aftershock, it was much better compared to the aftershock he faced from the front. The consumption of his Life Power was relatively lower as well. Noticing that the attacks launched by the God''s Figurine combat souls in mid-air were rendered useless, the pale man''s face turned grave. Soon, he noticed that even he himself and the God''s Figurine combat souls would be unable to break through Lin Huang''s defensive skill. He stared at Lin Huang for a moment and soon, he shifted his gaze from Lin Huang to Charcoal. "In order to control Lin Xie, the both of you must first kill the dragonkin!" Sensing that he was unable to break through Lin Huang''s defense, the pale-faced man decided to attack Charcoal. "I don''t think that your defense skills can protect the dragonkin!" After receiving new instructions from the pale-faced man, the two God''s Figurine combat souls soon changed their target and gave up fighting Lin Huang. Charcoal was now their hunting target. The pale man then pounced towards Lin Huang. He knew very well that the ability of his close combat was incomparable to that of Lin Huang. However, as long as he was not going to fight him face to face, it should not be a problem to gain a little control over him. Watching the man who was advancing towards him, Lin Huang laughed. "You choose to come to me by yourself." Just as Lin Huang wondered how he could approach the while being bugged by the two God''s Figurine combat souls, he did not expect the man to come to him by himself. Catching a glimpse of the direction where the two God''s Figurine combat souls were heading, Lin Huang instantly knew his intentions and he grinned. The pale man went right in front of Lin Huang at lightning-fast speed. He opened his hands wide and his sharp claws were about to seize Lin Huang''s head. The hellish claws gathered by his black Life Power then grabbed Lin Huang''s head with a deadly aura. Lin Huang picked up his sword and his black Life Power immediately enveloped the entire blade of the sword. A black beam with a crescent moon-like glow then instantly gushed out of the blade of the sword, streaking across the sky! The crescent moon-like glow then ripped the sky apart, instantly colliding with the claws mid-air. Just as they crashed into each other, the terrifying claws were ripped apart. It was akin to a paper that was rent into half in a split second. It then collapsed, turning into black ashes, and faded away. The wan man did not dodge. A flash of fury flashed through his eyes and he struck several blows with his claws. He completely ignored Lin Huang''s sword attack. On the other hand, the two God''s Figurine combat souls launched an attack towards Charcoal. The snake-headed monster pounced towards Charcoal, raised its hooves up high and was about to stomp hard on Charcoal''s head. The wry-faced monster was agile as it quietly went next to Charcoal. It lowered its body, extending its sharp claws and aimed for Charcoal''s abdomen. Charcoal''s eyes flashed with mockery. Just as the monsters'' attacks were about to strike it, two Dark Mirrors were instantly formed. The two God''s Figurine combat souls were stunned when they saw the Dark Mirrors. However, it was too late for them to stop their attacks. The snake-headed monster stomped hard with its hooves and it struck the mirror. An immense force reflected and struck its hooves, sending it flying away The wry-faced monster encountered the same thing as well. As it stealthily attacked Charcoal with its sharp claws, its attack was reflected by the mirror and it sailed away. Not far away, the pale man who was engaged in a fierce fight with Lin Huang could sense the situation of the battle on the God''s Figurine combat souls'' side. His face turned grave. In order to control Lin Huang, he had put on demigod-level combat armor to battle him. He did not defend against his attack and was continuously attacking Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang still barely managed to pin him down. He did not expect that the control he had over Lin Huang could do nothing to him. He initially wanted to make use of the two God''s Figurine combat souls to get rid of the dragonkin. However, the dragonkin had similar defensive skills to what Lin Xie possessed, so the two God''s Figurine combat souls could do no harm to it. After the failed attempt, it was meaningless to fight Lin Huang any longer. The sallow man stomped in an attempt to get away from the fight. "Trying to run away? It''s too late!" Lin Huang smirked. The next moment, the man felt that there was a force dragging his ankles down. He saw nothing as he looked downwards. After several moments, his facial expression changed drastically. "Telekinesis?!" Although he could not see it, he could feel that both of his ankles were being tangled by at least tens of threads. He then detected the terrifying scene with his spiritual strength. Aside from his ankles, his wrists, neck, knees, elbows, and other joints were entangled by countless telekinetic threads. There were more than thousands of them. If Lin Xie wanted to do so, he could turn the pale man into his puppet. The man''s back was drenched in sweat as he had not realized that at all. "Did you just understand the situation you''re in?" Lin Huang smiled calmly. "With my demigod-level combat armor, even if you''re able to control me, you can''t kill me. There''s a time limit for the advancement in your combat strength. As long as the upgrade in your combat strength ends, I''ll still be the winner!" The man still did not think that Lin Huang was capable of killing him. "It''s true that I can''t break through the defense of a demigod relic. What if the Life Power in your body is depleted?" Daggers gushed out from his sleeve like swimming fishes. They were all arranged in a row in front of him, totaling to about 7,000 daggers. Witnessing what just happened, the pale man was upset. He knew very well that his Life Power would be consumed in order to maintain the defensive power of a demigod relic. The consumption of Life Power would increase each time when he was being attacked. Once his Life Power was drained, the demigod relic would return back into his body as it no longer had any energy supply. His body would need to endure all of Lin Huang''s attack by then. Without any Life Power to protect himself against those attacks, he was as weak as tofu when he was attacked by a sword that carried imperial-level power. 811 The Pale Mans Trump Card There were three ways to kill the God''s Figurine combat soul. The first way was to kill the God''s Figurine. However, only a True God could do so. The second way was to kill the monster soul inside the God''s Figurine. However, the strength requirement to kill the combat soul was extremely high. Since the pale man''s combat soul was on black gold-rank, only a combat soul that was at least two ranks higher, which was yellow gold-rank, would be capable of killing it. As for the third way, it was to exhaust the Life Power of the God''s Figurine. This method was very time-consuming. Since the God''s Figurine defense was exceptionally strong, it could sustain the attacks with its body and its Life Power would not be consumed at all. Therefore, in order to deplete the God''s Figurine Life Power, the only way was to let the God''s Figurine attack continuously so that their Life Power would be constantly used during the fight. Another way was to kill the owner of the God''s Figurine in the combat soul. As long as the owner of the God''s Figurine in the combat soul died, the combat soul inside the God''s Figurine would collapse. Consequently, the God''s Figurine would return to its initial form which was a palm-sized statue. Lin Huang was unable to execute the first two methods. The third method was way too time-consuming. Therefore, he chose the fourth method. Lin Huang was still thinking how to get rid of the two God''s Figurine combat souls and approach the pale man. He did not expect him to instruct the two God''s Figurine combat souls to surround Charcoal and come to Lin Huang by himself. It was a fantastic chance and, of course, Lin Huang would not miss it. The two God''s Figurine combat souls would certainly fail to kill Charcoal. To avoid the pale man from running away after the failed attempt, he secretly set up everything with his telekinetic threads, so the man did not discover anything. This explained everything that had happened up till now. The man''s limbs and neck got entangled by thousands of telekinetic threads. He was now being strung up in mid-air like an insect trapped in a spider web. He could not break free from it at all. "I don''t know where you''re from and I don''t need to know either." Lin Huang stared at the man coldly. "It''s because there''ll only be one type of person who''ll hurt me and the people around me, which are the dead." After finishing his words, Lin Huang pointed in the direction where the pale man was. The telekinetic daggers then sped towards the pale man, resembling piranhas that were attracted by the smell of blood. The man became a live target as he was entangled by the telekinetic threads. The daggers struck the pale man like swimming fishes and the sound of colliding metal could be heard. The sound could be heard so frequently as if it was a torrential downpour. As he was protected by the demigod relic, he did not sustain any injuries. Still, he looked upset because he could clearly sense that the Life Power in his body was gushing out uncontrollably in an attempt to restore the Life Power of the demigod relic. "I can''t let this continue. It can last for five minutes at the most and my Life Power will be drained." He immediately contacted the two God''s Figurine combat souls, issuing a new instruction. The two God''s Figurines got out of the deep pit, appearing right in front of the man in a flash. One of them surrounded its sharp claws with Life Power, striving to tear the telekinetic threads apart. Another one stood right in front of the man, blocking all the attacks. "You''re really na?ve." Lin Huang was amused. He moved his fingers slightly and the telekinetic threads then headed out for the wry-faced monster. It immediately dodged the threads and was unable to assist the man. Again, Lin Huang snapped his fingers. The trajectory path of the telekinetic daggers began to change. They avoided the snake-headed monster that was blocking the front of the man and continued attacking him without any obstacles. The man''s plan had failed again. He was furious. "Don''t worry about me. Activate ranged attack and destroy all the telekinetic daggers!" After receiving a new instruction, the two God''s Figurine combat souls did as they were told. The snake-headed monster lifted its hooves up and stomped hard on the telekinetic daggers surrounding it. The wry-faced monster extended its sharp claws as well, attempting to destroy the telekinetic daggers. "Although it''s stupid, it''s still acceptable." Lin Huang guffawed when he saw that. He had a plan in store. After patting Charcoal''s head, Lin Huang and Charcoal opened their mouths at almost the same time. Black dragon flames rushed out of their mouths again, enveloping the entire area where the wan man was. Although the spitting of dragon flames looked the same as the last time, in fact, Lin Huang and Charcoal had hidden a spiritual attack within the flames. They wanted to avoid affecting the impact of the telekinetic threads and the telekinetic daggers. They did not intend to attack with the spitting of dragon flames. Instead, they wanted to create an environment that was beneficial to them. Of course, this sped up the consumption of the pale man''s Life Power as well. Seeing the arrival of the dragon flames from mid-air, the man had an urge to criticize and curse out loud. The next moment, everything in front of him turned dark. He could not even see the two God''s Figurine combat souls. He could sense that they were not far away from him. Still, the two God''s Figurine combat souls who were drowned in flames stood there without any defenses. Aside from the black flames, both of them could not see anything. They were unable to attack the telekinetic weapons now. The black daggers moved freely in the flames. It was hard to even trace these black daggers as they were covered by the dragon flames. However, the coverage of the dragon flames was akin to a huge territory whereby he could sense everything that happened inside. The same went for the pale man''s position. The daggers managed to accurately strike his body each time. In addition to the burning effect of the dragon flames, the consumption of Life Power in the body of the pale man did not slow down; it sped up instead. The energy reaction of the dragon flames had far exceeded the telekinetic power. Although they were very close to each other, as long as it was not visible to the naked eye, the two God''s Figurine combat souls would be unable to sense the existence of the telekinetic daggers. They seemed completely blind. They could occasionally sense the position of the daggers that were slightly nearer to them. However, before they could react, the daggers had disappeared into the dragon flames. Sensing the condition of the two God''s Figurine combat souls, the pale man had to admit that he was doomed. "Lin Xie, I admit defeat now. Please let me go and I promise that I''ll not get you into trouble in the future." "Admit defeat?" Lin Huang raised his brows when he heard that. "Do you think that you''re playing a game now whereby you can replay after you''ve lost the game?" "What do you want? Are you asking for compensation?" The pale man looked in the direction where Lin Huang was through the dragon flames. "Make me an offer." "It seems like you have a bad memory." It was obvious that Lin Huang was not going to let him go. "I''ve made everything clear just now. Only the dead will attack me and the people around me! You kidnapped Yi Zheng and even attempted to kill me in order to snatch away the God''s Figurine. It''s enough for you to die twice!" "Are you sure you want every one of us to die?" The man''s tone became calm. In fact, he could not see Lin Huang, but could roughly tell where Lin Huang was, shifting his gaze towards him. "Just use whatever skills you have since you don''t have much time left." Lin Huang was not worried that the man could threaten him. "If I''m not mistaken, you have one minute left and your Life Power will be completely drained. You won''t have any chance by then." "I''ll do as you wish then. I hope that you won''t regret it later!" After finishing his words, the man''s Life Power that was depleting was restored abruptly. Lin Huang could even feel that there was a breakthrough in the pale man''s combat strength. His aura grew stronger and stronger. Just as his aura reached the pinnacle of black gold-rank, it lasted for about three seconds and again, he made a breakthrough in his combat strength, leveling up to crimson gold-rank! His aura continued to grow and it had no means to stop. Lin Huang was stunned as he sensed the changes. He felt even more surprised by what he had just seen. A claw that looked like a sharp blade extended from the head of the pale man. Looking from the top, it seemed like a sharp claw had penetrated through his head. The blood stains could still be seen clearly. As the claw penetrated through the man''s head, it moved down slightly, resembling a paper cutter cutting a piece of paper. Lin Huang frowned when he saw this. The sharp claw continued to move downwards and blood spurted wherever it passed. The claw stopped cutting when it reached his abdomen, retracting back into the man''s body. After a moment of silence, the squishing of the flesh could be heard. Blood began to ooze out from the man''s wound. The shape of his body began to change as if there was something struggling in his body. He looked like he was in so much pain as he let out some weird sounds that no normal human being could. Lin Huang''s eyes were wide open as he fixed his gaze on the tremendously terrifying scene. The man''s wound was being stretched open by an invisible force and there was blood all over his body. A ferocious monster then gradually crawled out of the wound on his body. The man had died, turning into bloody flesh as if he had lost his skeleton. 812 The Defensive System of Grade-A Foothold As the moonlight shone on it, Lin Huang could clearly see the monster''s features. It was a humanoid monster that was more than three meters tall. There were blood stains all over its body. It had four limbs like a human and could stand straight on both of his legs. However, unlike humans, it had no skin. It also had no scales or feathers like the rest of the animals. It looked like a human specimen with its skin ripped off. There were countless disgusting pustules on its body. It had a peculiar head. There were no human organs and the only organ it had was a ferocious mouth that occupied almost half of its face. Steely fangs crowded in its mouth. If one were to describe it, it was like an egg with a wide mouth and pustules all over it. Lin Huang had seen many ugly monsters in the monster guide. However, this was the ugliest one he had ever seen. "It has no winky for real. It''s too ugly to be loved," Lin Huang thought to himself. Soon, his facial expression became serious. The moment it got out of the pale man''s body, its combat strength had increased three ranks higher to yellow gold-rank. Regardless of how it looked, it was undoubtedly strong. After sizing it up, Lin Huang''s face suddenly turned solemn. His change in mood was not because of its combat strength but because of the disgusting yet devilish aura it exuded from its body. Lin Huang hated it as soon as he sensed the aura just like how an ordinary person would detest seeing a cockroach. However, his hatred was hundreds of times stronger. "An abyssal monster" Lin Huang knew where the monster came from the moment he sensed its aura. It was not his first time fighting an abyssal monster. He had the same feeling each time, but it was rather obvious this time. The dragon flames on the ground had stopped burning. The skinless monster staggered before it managed to balance itself. At that moment, a beam of dazzling red light struck from the sky and the position of the skinless monster was the center point. The area with a circumference that spanned hundreds of meters was enveloped by the red light. At the same time, a red warning page popped up on Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring and a short buzzing sound like an alarm was heard. "Warning! It''s suspected that an imperial-level monster has invaded foothold No. 3A5! "Preliminary inspection shows that it''s an abyssal monster of yellow gold-rank! "Target has been identified. Please head over to this location and kill it!" It was a message sent by the defense system of the Grade-A foothold. The defense system would inspect all the safe zones every minute. If it happened to sense any unusual aura from monsters, they would immediately mark down its coordinates and send a warning message to those who had authority over it. The skinless monster was on imperial-level. Therefore, only imperial-level would receive this message. Coincidently, Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring was granted this authority as well. He had heard about such a defense system at the Grade-A foothold earlier in Division 7. However, it was his first time encountering the activation of the defense system. All the imperial-level in Wanbao City received the warning message at almost the same time. "Is this a loophole in the defense system of the Grade-A foothold? Or is there any new monster type that managed to get rid of the detection of the defense system? If it''s the latter, I''ll have new research material." "Is there a monster invasion? I''m bored. I can now get into the fight and get some materials! Eh, it''s on yellow gold-rank. It seems like I can''t fight it" "It''s at the west of the city and it''s too far away from me. If I were to go from the east, it''s about 1,800 kilometers away. Why doesn''t it come to the east of the city? There are so many beautiful ladies here" "I can make soup with the yellow gold-rank monster. I hope it''s not a humanoid monster or an extremely ugly monster. Now, that''ll spoil my appetite." Many imperial-level then headed towards the west of the city. There were very few people there and it was an abandoned plot of land. In fact, nobody was willing to save the coordinates of any location near this place since they could not be transported and had to fly over there. "Warning! You''re reaching your target. You''re 237 meters away from the monster. Please get ready!" The message suddenly popped up on Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring. He then turned off the notification, lowering his head to look at the skinless monster which aura had reached its peak. The skinless monster gradually raised his head, taking aim at Lin Huang in mid-air with its head that had no eyes. It slowly opened its ferocious mouth wide and said in the voice that sounded exactly the same as the pale man''s, "It''s so difficult for me to get into the human foothold. I''ve been particularly careful over the past few months as I was afraid that my identity will be discovered. I even managed to get into the Grade-A foothold a few days ago. I never expected that I''d bump into you" Lin Huang was speechless. Before the skinless monster revealed itself, he really had no idea that it was a monster. He thought that it was the top management from the underworld. "If you had listened to me just now and let me go, perhaps you could still survive for a short period of time. However, since my identity has been exposed, I don''t need to hide my true abilities any longer. It''s time to deal with you" "Eh, are you sure that you''re going to waste your time on me?" Lin Huang pointed at the beam of red light that emerged from the sky. "The defense system of the foothold has been activated. All the imperial-level in Wanbao City are rushing over here. If you were to stay here for another minute, perhaps you''ll be besieged by a few of them." "I''m not worried about them. I don''t even need a minute to kill you." After uttering those words, the skinless monster then disappeared from its original position. The next moment, Lin Huang could detect that the skinless monster that was within his territory appeared right in front of him. He was unable to pull out his sword in time as the monster''s sharp claws were about to strike the left of his chest. Lin Huang had no choice but to create a Dark Mirror, blocking the attack right in front of him. At almost the same time when the Dark Mirror was created, the ghost-like claws then hit the surface of the Dark Mirror. Just as they collided with each other, a crack was instantly formed on the surface of the Dark Mirror that used to be unbreakable. It was like a tempered glass being struck by a heavy object. There were white cracks that were visible to the naked eye all over it. However, the cracks lasted for less than a second and eventually, the Dark Mirror collapsed, turning into broken shards. Lin Huang''s eyes dilated as it was his first time witnessing the Dark Mirror being destroyed in one hit. After the Dark Mirror was broken, the remaining force struck Lin Huang. In the next second, his body flew away from Charcoal''s back like a meteorite. He then landed on the ground and a deep pit was formed. "Are you still alive?" The skinless monster could clearly sense that Lin Huang''s aura was still there. It took a glance at Charcoal, but did not fight it. Instead, it appeared right on top of the pit where Lin Huang landed in a flash. It extended its claws and was about to make another attack. However, it could sense that there was a heat wave coming from behind. As it turned its body around, it had no idea when Charcoal appeared behind it. Charcoal opened its mouth wide and dragon flames began to gush out of its mouth. "If you''re on imperial-level, I might be afraid of your dragon flames. However, you''re just tickling me now." The skinless monster struck a blow with its claws and it managed to get rid of the dragon flames. A trace of fear flashed through Charcoal''s eyes as its opponent had managed to get rid of its dragon flames. It knew very well that its opponent''s ability was far beyond its own. Catching a glimpse of the deep pit below it, Charcoal shifted its gaze, staring deadly at the skinless monster. Nevertheless, it did not retreat. "Dragonkins used to be arrogant and it was impossible to tame one. You''re an exception. You''re so faithful to the human." The skinless monster laughed. Of course, it knew that Charcoal was trying to protect its master. "Why are you commenting about me? Didn''t you follow someone''s instructions too?" Charcoal stared at the skinless monster, confronting it. It secretly hoped that it could buy Lin Huang some time so that he could recover from his injuries. "My master is on True God-level rank-9. It''s known as the God Master in the virtual world. You can''t compare despicable creatures like humans to my master" After finishing its words, the skinless monster realized that something was wrong. "Are you buying time for that human?!" The skinless monster was mad as it extended its claws and again, it pounced towards the deep pit below it. Right at that moment, Charcoal appeared right in front of him and bit its head. Before Charcoal could sink its teeth into its disgusting head, an immense force reached Charcoal''s torso and it flew away, landing in a deep pit that was hundreds of meters away. "I''m not going to kill you because you''re a dragonkin and the concentration of your blood is close to pure blood. If I were to catch you alive for the God Master, I can probably train a few of the dragonkins with pure blood. I can level up to a True God by then." The skinless monster looked at Charcoal coldly. "However, if you were to continue bugging me, I have no choice but to kill you. I''ll bring your dead body back. The sorcerer can make you into a dead puppet." 813 The Imperial-Level Versus the Imperial-Level At the bottom of the pit, Lin Huang was quietly resting. There was a bowl-sized hole on the left side of his chest that penetrated all the way to the back of his chest. He had even lost his heart. His breathing was extremely weak and his body was about to die. However, he still had his consciousness. Flesh grew out of nowhere in his chest. In less than two seconds, a heart was quickly formed, connecting all the blood vessels. His body was then further healed. Lin Huang''s breathing slowly stabilized and he gradually opened his eyes. He then realized that he had almost died just now. However, his Divine Regeneration had saved him. He could feel an immense pain throbbing from every part of his body, accompanied by numbness as if he had experienced an electric shock. Through his Territory skill, he could sense that the skinless monster had appeared on top of him. He wanted to get out of the pit, but he was unable to do so. Even moving his fingers was difficult for him. Fortunately, Charcoal appeared and blocked the skinless monster''s attack. "The difference in ability is too large" Lin Huang forced a wry smile. The skinless monster managed to break the Dark Mirror with its claws. The remaining force even penetrated the Dark Mirror and struck its chest with ease, almost killing Charcoal. "After returning to its real body, aside from its combat strength that''s being upgraded to yellow gold-rank, even its strength and speed have changed," Lin Huang secretly analyzed the difference between them in his mind, "It seems like I need to upgrade my combat strength to imperial-level." "Xiao Hei, if Charcoal''s combat strength is advanced to immortal-level rank-9, which level can I upgrade my combat strength to?" "Normally, your combat strength can be four ranks higher, bringing you to crimson gold-rank. However, there''s a limit on your body. The maximum limit is only black gold-rank. Therefore, you can only reach the peak of black gold-rank." "That should be enough. I''ll use four Monster Upgrade Cards and upgrade Charcoal''s real battle ability to immortal-level rank-9," Lin Huang instructed without a moment of hesitation. "Consuming Monster Upgrade Card x4. "Monster card used. Charcoal has obtained an upgrade in combat strength. "Its new combat strength is Immortal-level rank-9!" After Xiao Hei had finished its sentence, Lin Huang felt an immense strength gushing into his body. There was an instant breakthrough in his combat strength, leveling him up from immortal-level rank-9 to imperial-level. The aura of the black gold-rank that was released from his body grew stronger. It then stopped growing as it reached its peak and was about to get to the imperial-level. (The Knight skill is activated after the first ride on the summoned monster. The user does not need to be riding the summoned monster all the time.) After attacking Charcoal, the skinless monster was about to instruct the two God''s Figurine combat souls to capture Charcoal alive. It then sensed that Lin Huang''s aura was growing drastically from the deep pit. "Did he just level up to imperial-level?!" The skinless monster was shocked. Soon, it realized that Lin Huang''s aura had stopped growing as it reached black gold-rank. Sarcastically, it said, "I might be afraid of you if you were to level up to crimson or yellow gold-rank. If you''re just a black gold-rank, perhaps you can only stay alive for a little longer." "Is that true? I think a black gold-rank is enough to kill you!" Lin Huang steadily rose from the deep pit, holding a golden ink sword in his hand. It was a demigod relic that he had just gotten from the Stairway Mall. The sword name was Ba Huang and Lin Huang had exchanged 120 million points for the sword. It was an expert-grade demigod relic. The skinless monster soon noticed the combat sword in Lin Huang''s hand. "It''s an expert-grade demigod relic! Why do you have such an awesome weapon?" Greed filled the skinless monster''s eyes. Lin Huang stood up straight with his sword, pointing the tip of his sword towards the skinless monster. The skinless monster opened its mouth wide and it disappeared abruptly from its original position. On the other hand, Lin Huang''s body transformed into a silhouette and gradually faded away. In mid-air, the two figures crashed into each other again and again like lightning bolts. Each collision resulted in an blast like a nuclear explosion. The ground that was thousands of meters away shook as if it was afraid of the collision between the both of them. The vibrations even stirred up the atmosphere and radiated everywhere. The wind was blowing strongly along with howling in the air. The ground that was hundreds of meters away from the two of them became flat. Even the grass could no longer be seen. On the other hand, Charcoal continued to fight the two God''s Figurine combat souls. Charcoal had leveled up to black gold-rank and the combat strength of the two God''s Figurine combat souls was affected by the skinless monster whereby they had leveled up to gold flame-level. Basically, Charcoal was incapable of fighting the two God''s Figurine combat souls. It was difficult for it to fight even one of them since there was a huge difference in combat strength. However, it decided to fight in a nasty way by hiding behind the Dark Mirror all the while. If the two God''s Figurine combat souls happened to launch an attack, it would block the attacks with the Dark Mirror. Since it could use all the skills possessed by Lin Huang, the effect of the skills would be exactly the same. That being said, despite Charcoal being the one who activated the Dark Mirror, the defensive effect would still be the same. The defensive power of the Dark Mirror was not 10 times of its maximum attack power but was that of Lin Huang''s attack power instead. Of course, the two God''s Figurine combat souls would be unable to break through it. They hit it again and again, but they were reflected again and again. Charcoal was secretly laughing behind the Dark Mirror. "Haha, it''s such a magnificent skill to use." Thousands of kilometers away, many imperial-levels were heading towards the battleground where Lin Huang was. Many of them bumped into their friends and they headed towards the battleground together. "You''ve just leveled up to black gold-rank. Why are you going over there? It''s a yellow gold-rank monster!" An old man with a white beard who was about 1.6 meters tall frowned as he lectured a man who was at the age of 40 with a height of about two meters tall. "I''m going over there for fun. I''m not going to fight." The middle-aged man scratched his head. He did not expect to bump into his teacher. "Sir, I thought you''ve gone to Division 1." "I just came back two days ago." The old man took a glance at his disciple. "Stop distracting me! Just watch the fight later. Don''t fight! Don''t you know how strong you are? It''s a yellow gold-rank monster. I need to be careful too" The middle-aged man suddenly raised his head, looking in the direction where the monster was. "The vibrations are strong. That person arrived so quickly!" The old man''s face turned grave as he turned in the same direction. "There''s more than just one vibration wave. There are three of them! One of them is extremely strong and the remaining two are slightly weaker. All of them are on imperial-level! You can only feel one of them because the frequency of its collision is much higher to the point that it''s covered the other two vibration waves." "Do you mean that there are three battles happening simultaneously at one battleground?" The middle-aged man did not sense the two collisions that were slightly weaker. "No. From the collision itself, it seems like there are two monsters being blocked by three humans. It could also be there are three monsters attacking two humans. However, there must be more than one monster!" The old man''s facial expression was stern as he said this. 814 The Imperial-Level Life Palace Lin Huang had crashed into the skinless monster more than 10,000 times within five minutes. The skinless monster appeared to be nervous as it knew very well that its aura had been discovered. The imperial-levels of Wanbao City would be there at any time. He wanted to leave with the dimensional portal right after killing Lin Huang. However, he was unable to kill him now and was even bugged by him now. It was difficult for it to get rid of Lin Huang. To its dismay, the two God''s Figurine combat souls had to deal with Charcoal and were unable to help it. As for its opponent Lin Huang, he only got stronger and stronger in the fight. After leveling up to imperial-level, there was an increase in his abilities. Still, it was hard for him to get used to the new combat sword. Soon, he adapted to the new combat sword after colliding with the skinless monster several times. He then had perfect control over his combat strength and Life Power. Lin Huang noticed that the skinless monster was being impatient. Of course, he knew the reason behind that, so he grinned widely. "Are you regretting that you didn''t kill me before my combat strength was upgraded to imperial-level?" The skinless monster remained quiet but secretly agreed with what Lin Huang had just said. "Before upgrading my combat strength, you had the chance to run away. However, that opportunity is gone now. "Most of the imperial-levels in Wanbao City have gathered at the center of the foothold. They''re about 2,000 kilometers away. Your aura has been targeted by the defense system of the foothold. In less than half an hour, more than 80% of the imperial-levels will reach here. "Five minutes have passed. I need to fight you for another 25 minutes and the reinforcements will arrive. White gold-ranks or even the purple gold-ranks might turn up. I personally think that you might be captured alive. "Once you''re captured alive, the people from the Union Government will start digging secrets from you. For example, they''ll ask how you sneaked into the Grade-A foothold? Why do you want to collect the God''s Figurine? Who''s the God Master that you just mentioned? The answers to all these questions will soon be revealed" "Should I thank you for thinking from my point of view?" The skinless monster interrupted Lin Huang. "I''m just telling the truth." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "If I''m not mistaken, the time limit for the upgrade in your combat strength should be stricter, shouldn''t it? How long can it still last? Half an hour? 20 minutes? Or is it even shorter than that? You''re telling me this because you hope that I can end the battle before the upgrade in your combat strength ends." Lin Huang laughed and did not deny the skinless monster''s speculation. "Do you think that you have any other choice? If you want to drag the battle on, I can do it with you. However, can you afford to do so?" Again, the skinless monster remained quiet. He knew that that was part of Lin Huang''s trick. However, he had no other choices because he really could not afford to let the battle drag on. The reinforcements from Lin Huang''s side could arrive at any time. The battle was now at a standstill. If the reinforcements arrived, even if there were only one or two of them, its chances of running away would be much lower. The skinless monster soon made its decision after thinking thoroughly. "Lin Xie, you''ve no idea what kind of monster you''ve offended," said the skinless monster in a low voice as it slowly raised its head. It placed its hand in front of its chest and mumbled. Lin Huang found that it was strange as the skinless monster looked like it was mourning. A huge shadow soon appeared on top of its head. He frowned as soon as he saw the shadow. It was a very huge altar made of countless white bones. Lin Huang could see more than 10 types of skeletons. There were palms of giants, a dragonkin''s spine, a wolf''s fangs, and a god''s blood skull There were nine dragon''s teeth that were tens of meters long surrounding the altar. A raised platform that was about three meters tall stood at the center of the altar. It was made of tens of skeletons of different sizes. On top of it, there was a god''s blood skull that looked similar to a human''s skull. It was slightly bigger in size and was golden in color. It seemed like it was made of gold. Lin Huang''s face turned grave as he could recognize that it was the skinless monster''s Life Palace at a first glance. An imperial-level''s Life Palace would usually be created in their body. One might think of a palace when they came across the name of Life Palace. They might think that creating a Life Palace was like creating an actual palace in their body. However, that was far from the truth. A real Life Palace could take any form. It could be a building, a mutated monster, or even a human. It could also be in the form of a weapon, armor, or a spaceship. The form of a Life Palace would depend on its function. The function of a Life Palace that resembled a weapon would be related to the increment in combat strength. For instance, it could be upgrading one''s skill, attack power, or obtaining attack skills with immense power. Most of them who majored in sword would choose a Life Palace like that as it was the simplest one. The function of a monster-like Life Palace was basically related to the skill of the monster itself. Some of them would create a Life Palace of an undying monster. With the Life Palace they had, they could probably inherit the traits of the undying species so they could hardly be killed. Some of their Life Palaces would be in the form of a dragonkin whereby they could obtain dragon flames. The most peculiar type of Life Palace was the prop type of Life Palace. The owner of a Life Palace like that would obtain strange auxiliary abilities. Lin Huang had heard from Mr. Fu before that a few of them possessed such a Life Palace. Someone even had a Life Palace that looked like a clock. The ability of his Life Palace was to stop the time of the region covered by his Life Palace. Of course, it could last for only three seconds at the most. Another person''s Life Palace was a multi-faceted dice with a total of 160 numbers on the dice. The number obtained from the dice would be the number of times of increment in his attack with the highest being 160 times. However, Lin Huang knew that the Life Palace could not be created based on one''s preferences. First of all, the form of a Life Palace depended on the Life Base of the imperial-level monster killed by an imperial-level. Aside from that, it also depended on the skill level mastered by the person, their Elemental Enlightenment and many other aspects. Thirdly, the Life Palace would be created randomly. Even twins who had similar qualifications and had obtained similar Life Bases could have completely different Life Palaces formed. The Life Palace could take any form on and would result in different effects. Just like the altar of the skinless monster which was made of skeletons, Lin Huang had no idea what its function was. The altar was then completely formed. The skinless monster gradually raised its head, pointing its finger and slitting its left wrist. Blood started oozing out of the wound on its wrist, flowing towards the altar like a river. Soon, the blood flowed into the god''s blood skull through its hollow eyes. After a couple of moments, two beams of red lights flashed through the eyes of the god''s blood skull at the center of the altar as if it had suddenly opened its eyes! 815 Altar The Life Palace was the most common building one would come across. In fact, most of the imperial-levels would build a Life Palace in this form due to the training system of that era. Most of their Life Palaces were in the form of a pavilion or a palace. Among the two of them, many of them had palaces. Since a majority of them had a Life Palace, they would occasionally compare who had the better palace. Soon, the Life Palaces got more and more luxurious. Some of them could be compared to an actual palace whereby it would be called an imperial palace. As time passed, people then got used to it and named the combat strength of this level imperial-level. Lin Huang had heard about the building of Life Palaces from Mr. Fu. Most of the tower type of palaces had a suppressing effect. As for the totem type of Life Palace, it possessed a summoning effect. The function of a palace type of Life Palace was rather complicated. It could be a storage space whereby it could hold armed forces. Some of them possessed a suppressing effect whereas some of them could teleport like a spaceship. As for the Life Palace that looked like an altar, Mr. Fu had never mentioned it before and Lin Huang was seeing it for the first time. At first glance, he thought that it exuded a dangerous aura. He felt the same as when the skinless monster had first revealed its real body. Seeing the skinless monster cutting its wrists and offering sacrifices to something unknown, Lin Huang felt insecure. The ancient daggers blasted off and headed towards the skinless monster, controlled by Lin Huang''s Telekinesis since he was now an imperial-level in an attempt to interrupt the sacrifice. However, they were blocked by an invisible defensive layer which was tens of meters away from the skinless monster. The daggers then struck from another side. Lin Huang frowned and immediately surrounded the skinless monster and the altar above him with more daggers, trying to find its flaw. Lin Huang activated his ocular skill but could not find anything odd. The defensive layer was like an invisible eggshell, enveloping the skinless monster and the altar above him. It was faultless. Attempting to attack with his dagger in an irregular fashion several times, his effort was still in vain. Lin Huang did not want to waste his energy any longer. Although he had no idea what would happen after the sacrifice, he still had to wait patiently to see what would happen next. After a short while, the sacrificial ceremony on the skinless monster''s side finally ended. At the center of the altar, two crimson glows shot out of the eyes of the golden god''s bloody skull as if it had awakened from a deep slumber. Lin Huang could feel that the aura released at the center of the altar had reached its pinnacle, and it was hundreds of times nastier than that of the skinless monster. He gripped his demigod-level combat sword tightly, putting his guard up. He was afraid that something might happen. In the middle of the altar, after the god''s bloody skull opened its eyes, it fixed its gaze on the skinless monster. After sizing it up, the skull began to speak, "Little brat, I can smell the scent of the masked old witch from your body" "Sir, my God Master is the Mask Master for real." The skinless monster slightly bent its body as a sign of respect. Since it dared to address its God Master in this way, perhaps it was a True God that was as strong as the God Master. Even if it was not, it would not be that much weaker as well. "I rarely have any contact with the old witch. It seems like we don''t have any conflict to break the contract with you. The function of your Life Palace is quite special as it managed to lead my conscience over here. Do tell. What''s your deal?" "If I want to level up to demigod-level, what do I need to do?" "Three ultimate-grade demigod relics," the skull said, "If you''re just asking for a provisional upgrade, one ultimate-grade demigod relic is enough." It expected to pay for it. However, the skinless monster did not expect that the demands would be so greedy. "What What about leveling up to purple gold-rank?" It did not reply the skull and made another request instead. "For a permanent upgrade, you''ll need an ultimate-grade demigod relic. For a provisional upgrade, you''ll need an expert-grade demigod relic." If the skinless monster had brows, he would be frowning. One could now see that its mouth was turned down. "I don''t have an expert-grade demigod relic" "There''ll be a time limit for the provisional upgrade. It keeps you on the purple gold-rank for three days with an expert-grade demigod relic. If you only need a three-hour provisional upgrade in combat strength, an intermediate-grade demigod relic will suffice. If you only need it for 10 minutes, then a beginner-grade demigod relic will do." "Exchanging a beginner-level demigod relic for 10 minutes" It would be trading at a loss. However, the skinless monster had no other choice. Remaining quiet for a short while, he eventually agreed to trade. "Deal!" It then took out a beginner-level demigod relic from its storage space and gave it to the skull. The skull then opened its mouth and sucked it. The beginner-level demigod relic then transformed into a beam of light and entered its mouth, completely disappearing. At that moment, the skull opened its mouth again, shooting a black beam towards the skinless monster. It penetrated the position between its brows. The aura of the skinless monster immediately grew and it broke through the yellow gold-rank in less than two breaths. After getting to the white gold-rank, its combat strength continued to grow. Soon, it leveled up to imperial-level rank-5 and was a purple gold-rank. Its combat strength continued to grow until it reached the peak of purple gold-rank. The skinless monster felt energized and extremely powerful. Lin Huang witnessed what just happened with a sinking heart. Although he could not listen to the conversation between the skull and the skinless monster, he could see that the latter had given a demigod relic to the skull. Soon, the skull spat out a black glow towards it. Its combat strength then began to evolve until it reached purple gold-rank. Lin Huang''s face turned grave. Right at that moment, the skull turned its head and looked in the direction where Lin Huang was. It did not shift its gaze away though. Instead, it fixed its gaze on Lin Huang and sized him up. It then turned its body around and told the skinless monster, "The little brat won''t die today." "What?" The skinless monster was stunned. "I''m saying that the human brat that you want to kill today won''t die. There was no deadly aura that lingered around his body. Even if you were to level up to demigod-level, you can''t kill him." The skull continued by saying something strange, "Since your Life Palace looks pretty interesting, it''d be a waste if you were killed. Let me give you another piece of advice. There''s a deadly aura that lingers all over your body and it''s getting stronger and stronger. There are high chances that you''ll die here today. Try to leave this place as soon as possible. Perhaps you can survive" After finishing its sentence, the skinless monster did not ask anything else. Looking at the center of the altar, the two red glows disappeared swiftly as if nothing had happened. 816 Killing the Skinless Monster Lin Huang had no idea what the function of the skinless monster''s Life Palace was since it was in the form of an altar. However, witnessing the trade between the skinless monster and the skull, he could roughly guess what it was. "It seems like it allows communication with the God through a blood sacrifice. They then trade I suppose they''re exchanging something for abilities." He watched the skinless monster take a demigod relic out and give it to the skull, which then released a black beam of light and inserted it into the skinless monster''s body. Its combat strength then began to grow. Lin Huang guessed that was the function of the Life Palace. In fact, Lin Huang did not find it rare. When he was at the Hunter College, he had read through most of the information regarding the Life Palace. Besides that, Mr. Fu had explained to him before. Theoretically, a Life Palace could possess any function. His opponent''s combat strength was the most troublesome thing to him. After the trade at the altar, the skinless monster''s combat strength advanced from yellow gold-rank to purple gold-rank. The purple gold-rank was the last rank of an imperial-level. It was the most unattainable level for anyone below the demigod-level. Lin Huang knew that his opponent would have a backup plan. However, it was out of its expectations. "I''m in trouble." When the skinless monster was still a yellow gold-rank, he was barely able to suppress it as he was on black gold-rank. However, as the combat strength of his opponent became two ranks higher and managed to get to purple gold-rank, even a black gold-rank could not handle that. Lin Huang secretly contacted Xiao Hei. "If I were to continue upgrading my combat strength, how long can my body bear the additional burden?" "Without Divine Regeneration, your body will completely collapse after three minutes at the most if you were to level up to crimson gold-rank. "With Divine Regeneration, your body can sustain for about 20 to 30 minutes on crimson gold-rank. Your body will collapse after 30 minutes. You can last for about two to three minutes on yellow gold-rank. You''ll definitely die if you stay at this level for more than three minutes." "What about white gold-rank? How long can my body sustain?" Lin Huang continued asking. "It''s quite meaningless to ask this question. At 10 seconds the most, your body and soul will collapse." "I know. Activate two Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards." After its combat strength was stabilized, the skinless monster said, "Lin Xie, regardless of how strong your secret skill is, you''ll just receive an upgrade in combat strength. You can''t become a true imperial-level!" It actually believed what the skull said regarding the deadly aura because it was now in Wanbao City. An imperial-level could appear at any time and it would be killed. Perhaps this was also the reason why its body released a strong, deadly aura. "I have to admit that you''re really an amazing opponent. However, it should end here." After finishing its sentence, the skinless monster then appeared right in front of Lin Huang. It pointed its finger between Lin Huang''s brows. At that moment, Lin Huang''s combat strength grew immediately and had broken through crimson gold-rank, getting to yellow gold-rank. He extended his palm and the Dark Mirror was quickly formed again, blocking the front of Lin Huang. The skinless monster''s finger that was initially pointing at Lin Huang''s brows then aimed at the Dark Mirror, but its attack was soon reflected. The skinless monster was caught unaware and again, it flew away. It was difficult for it to balance itself in mid-air. It then stared at Lin Huang in shock. "Your combat strength How could it be?!" "Nothing''s impossible." Lin Huang then transformed into a shadow. There was a spark in the air as his demigod relic streaked across the sky. "Since you''ve used your trump card, let''s see who will be the winner of this battle!" After uttering those words, he hurled his sword forward. In mid-air, the collision between the figures had instantly intensified and it was 10 times stronger than before. The area that was hundreds of kilometers in circumference was affected by their battle as well. The clouds had cleared away and the bird monsters had fled. Even the ground began to crack open and a huge gully was formed. The mountains collapsed and the peaceful lakes were stirred. The explosive sound of the battle spread throughout the entire Wanbao City. The rumbling of thunder could be heard late at night, awakening many of the ordinary people. Those who were heading towards the battleground clearly sensed the energy fluctuation as well, and their faces turned grave. "The battle''s become much more intense now!" "Perhaps only the purple gold-ranks can result in such an energy fluctuation." "The battle is so intense. Perhaps they''ve used their trump cards!" Right at this moment, a warning from the defense system of Wanbao City was issued. "Warning! The combat strength of the invader has increased!" "Its combat strength is now on purple gold-rank!" Seeing the warning, many of the imperial-levels who wanted to watch the battle began to wonder if they should go to the battleground. If the combat strength of the monster was only on yellow gold-rank, it would probably miss out on achieving black gold-rank if it were injured. However, it was now on purple gold-rank and was just one step away from getting to demigod-level. Perhaps there were less than five of them in Wanbao City who could fight it. They would be seeking death if they were to go to the battleground. "The monster is skilled!" The old man squinted his eyes. "The human who''s blocking its way isn''t weak." The middle-aged man next to him was upset. "I was still wondering if I could benefit from the fight. It seems like I have no chance to do so now." At the battleground, Lin Huang crashed into the skinless monster again and again. After getting to yellow gold-rank, he knew that he did not have much time remaining. He only had three minutes at the most. If he failed to kill his opponent within three minutes, he would die. Even if his body did not collapse, the skinless monster would not let him go when he returned to being immortal-level rank-1. The skinless monster was extraordinarily hostile. Its opponent''s Sword Dao was way too powerful. Even though it had leveled up to purple gold-rank and was only one step away from getting to demigod-level, it was still pinned down by the yellow gold-rank. Despite the fact that it was wearing demigod-level armor, it became slightly injured after each collision. "No, I can''t let this continue. I might be the one that dies." The skinless monster panicked. It knew that the upgrade in Lin Huang''s combat strength would be limited in terms of time. However, it did not know that he only had three minutes. As it thought about what the skull said, it felt that Lin Huang''s reinforcements would arrive very soon. Again, he recalled the skull commenting that there was no deadly aura lingering around Lin Xie''s body. It had used up all its skills and had no way to defeat Lin Xie, so it wanted to retreat. It did not show any hint of its fear to Lin Huang and set its plan in mind. After a short while, it shouted at Lin Huang, "Lin Xie, since I can''t run away, let''s die together!" As soon as it finished its sentence, blood started oozing out of its skinless body. The blood then coagulated at a speed that was visible to the naked eye and flesh was formed. It continued to grow. In just the blink of an eye, the skinless monster''s body became much more muscular. It was originally three meters tall and it looked slightly skinny. It was now four meters tall and was even brawnier. Again, Lin Huang battled the skinless monster. Unexpectedly, a metallic sound was heard as his sword struck it. There were no wounds and only white stripes could be seen wherever his sword made contact. The skinless monster smiled wryly, opening its big hand and pouncing towards Lin Huang. Lin Huang frowned. Again, he brandished his sword, piercing it through its chest. He retreated as he felt the impact traveling up his arms. He then managed to block most of the impact. At that moment, the flesh on the skinless monster''s spine began to creep across its body. A figure was then formed in the blink of an eye. Lin Huang caught a glimpse of it. It was another skinless monster. The muscular humanoid monster was now an empty shell. Unexpectedly, the empty shell pounced towards Lin Huang. The real body of the skinless monster took out a dimensional portal and looked at Lin Huang with an insulting expression as it pushed open the door. "Have fun with my clone. See you!" It did not know that when its real body got out of the empty shell, Lin Huang had secretly contacted Xiao Hei. "How long can my body sustain if I were to use another Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card?" "Three seconds." "That''s enough." Lin Huang nodded his head. "Do you think that you can run away?" Seeing the skinless monster that was standing at the entrance of the dimensional portal, Lin Huang gave an insulting smile. The skinless monster was afraid of him and immediately took a step forward. Just as it strode into the dimensional portal, a black glow appeared out of nowhere. At almost the same time, it felt a chill coming from its knees. It lowered its head and blood stains extended from its knees to its head. Before losing its consciousness, it finally saw that the one who had attacked it was Lin Xie who was less than two meters away from it. As it shifted its gaze, it saw that there was another Lin Xie who stood where its clone was. The most surprising fact was that both of them were not on yellow gold-rank but white gold-rank instead. The dimensional portal collapsed on its own. Obviously, Lin Huang''s attack had struck the dimensional portal as well. The dead body that was cut into half fell to the ground. The skinless monster''s real body had died while its clone became limp and turned into flesh. The two God''s Figurine combat souls that were fighting Charcoal transformed into two palm-sized God''s Figurines. Charcoal gripped them in its mouth, flying towards Lin Huang. "Fortunately, the Cloning Card can create a clone anywhere within my territory." Since he was bugged by the clone, not only did Lin Huang activate a Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card and level up to white gold-rank, but he had used a Cloning Card as well. He had created a clone of similar abilities to kill the skinless monster. He actually got the idea of using a Cloning Card from his opponent''s clone. Removing the effect of the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card, Lin Huang''s body that was about to collapse had been stabilized. Lin Huang removed the Knight and Integration skills as well, and his combat strength quickly returned to immortal-level rank-1. He felt extremely weak instantly. Kylie then took all the spoils of war before riding on Charcoal''s back and leaving the battleground. Lin Huang then took out his dimensional portal and returned to the hotel. 817 Memory Pieces After Lin Huang had left for less than 10 minutes, two figures arrived at almost the same time at the battleground where Lin Huang and the skinless monster had fought. They were an old man and a skinny man. The elder was about 1.6 meters tall with white hair. However, what stood out was his pair of bright piercing eyes, carefully sizing up the surroundings. The skinny man was about 1.8 meters tall and he looked like he was 30 years old. He had a gloomy expression. Nobody had offended him but he was born with that face. "Didn''t your disciple follow you?" "He''s over there. The vibrations of the battle ended just now. He''s such a burden, that''s why came over here first." The elder did not turn his head around and continued sizing up the surroundings. Obviously, the two of them were very close to each other, so they did not need to be really polite when talking to each other. "I think it''s because he has just leveled up to imperial-level. That''s when he likes to watch battles the most," the skinny man said. "He just got to imperial-level and he thought he can go anywhere he wants. He has no idea how dangerous the world is and he''ll have to bear the losses later on," the elder grumbled. He then changed the topic. "Let''s not talk about him. What do you think about this battleground?" "No dead bodies were discovered. Aside from the traces of the battle, only two pieces of flesh could be seen on the ground. I''ve no idea where they''re from. We''ll need a forensic expert to evaluate it. However, looking at the traces of the battle and the remaining energy, the situation should be almost the same as what we sensed when we were on our way here. There were five of them, two of whom were extremely strong. The last explosion was on par with a purple gold-rank''s power. The other three should''ve been in a two versus one battle whereby their abilities were relatively weaker" "Yes, what you said is along the lines of my observation. Just as the energy fluctuation ended, the warning reported by the defense system was removed. The monster must''ve been killed and its dead body was probably brought away." The elder nodded his head. "We can''t eliminate the possibility that the hunter might''ve been killed and the monster has won the fight either. Since the monster was capable of sneaking into the foothold, it means it has the ability to get rid of the defense system. It''s possible for it to do the same thing again." "That could be true but that''s less likely to happen. I''m more inclined to another possibility whereby the monster was killed. If what you said is true, it''s not difficult for us to ask around whether there''s a missing person on yellow gold-rank but possesses purple gold-rank abilities." While both of them were chatting, the rest of the imperial-levels arrived one after another. After the defense system had removed the warning alert, they no longer needed to go there. However, almost everybody decided to go as they wanted to see the battle of the purple gold-rank. ome of them hoped that the hunter had not left yet as they wanted to know him. While everybody was still searching for clues, Lin Huang had already gone back to his hotel room. After recalling Charcoal back into its card form, Yi Zheng was released from Kylie''s mini world. Just as Yi Zheng got out of her mini world, he saw that there were blood stains all over Lin Huang''s body. "Are you okay?" "I''m fine." Lin Huang smiled, shaking his head. He was injured but thanks to his Divine Regeneration, he quickly healed. Only blood stains remained on his clothes. "Where''s the imperial-level? Did he chase after us? He knows that we''re staying here." Yi Zheng thought that Lin Huang had escaped from the imperial-level and that it was not safe to be in the hotel room. "Don''t worry. He''s dead." "He''s dead?" Yi Zheng was startled. He then looked at Lin Huang with an incredulous expression. "Yes. He''s really strong. I''ve almost used up all my trump cards to kill it." Lin Huang briefly told him what had happened and was not going to explain any further. He did not want to tell Yi Zheng that the imperial-level was actually not a human but a yellow gold-rank monster instead. He was not trying to hide his abilities but it would take him a lot of effort to explain himself. When he heard this, Yi Zheng knew that he should not ask any further. Since it involved Lin Huang''s trump cards, even though they were friends who trusted each other, he did not need to know about it. He then recalled the independent dimension where Kylie had brought him to. He gave up his intention of asking any further. "Are you sure you''re okay?" However, he was still worried about whether Lin Huang''s body was fine. The bloodstains looked like it was not an ordinary wound. In fact, he was injured because he had saved his life. "Look at me." Seeing that Yi Zheng was still worried about him, Lin Huang sighed, taking off his clothes and revealing his upper body. There were muscles rippling across his body but no scars could be found. "I have a secret skill that can heal my body. As long as I have sufficient Life Power in my body, I can recover regardless of how serious the wound is." "Don''t worry that your combat strength is now sealed. The person who sealed your combat strength has died. Perhaps in less than an hour, the seal in your body will be destroyed and your combat strength will be restored. There''s an underground auction tomorrow. Go back to your room and rest well." After sending Yi Zheng off, Lin Huang burnt the stained clothes and took a shower, cleaning all the blood on his body. He took out the two palm-sized God''s Figurines from the bathtub. Most of the rewards were still in his opponent''s Emperor''s Heart Ring. He was not going to take them out yet. After all, the most valuable items were the two God''s Figurines. One of them looked like a cat with a wry face. It had a slender body and there were cheetah stripes all over its fur. Another one was a snake-headed hooved monster with black scales all over its body, resembling a statue made of black metal. Lin Huang had never seen the two monsters in the monster guide before. If he managed to train the two God''s Figurines, he could level up to immortal-level rank-3. However, he knew that it was not the time yet. One of the reasons was that Yi Zheng was with him. It was difficult for him to explain to him how he managed to move up by two ranks in a day. Another reason was that he knew that the people from the Wanbao Auction paid close attention to his identity. He would be in trouble if there was an upgrade in his combat strength. Putting the two God''s Figurines away, his body slowly submerged into the water. He closed his eyes, recalling the battle that had just happened. Lin Huang had to do his homework this time. Each time after experiencing an intense battle, he would recall the entire process of the battle, analyzing every detail. He had to figure out what he did wrong so that he could avoid making the same mistake the next time. Another thing he had to do was to analyze his opponent''s strength and determine if there was anything he could learn from his opponent. Also, he would also think from a different perspective, reviewing the entire battle and thinking about whether there could have been a better solution. Those scenes constantly ran through his mind Yi Zheng had been kidnapped. He had saved Yi Zheng and got engaged in an intense fight with the imperial-level. The monster then revealed its real body, offering a sacrifice to the God''s Figurine combat souls and its Life Palace. His brain played back all those scenes very quickly and he recalled all the details. He replayed them again and again. "I actually had the chance to kill it when it revealed its real body before the appearance of the God''s Figurine combat souls and the Life Palace. Before it offered the sacrifice to the Life Palace, I had a chance to kill it as well. I missed two chances" "The dragon flames with Charcoal was effective. I''ve defeated five of its combat souls." "Nobody can withstand the attack by a demigod relic, not even a demigod. Its clone managed to block my attack as a result of the integration of the clone and the demigod-level. Such a secret skill must''ve been derived from the cloning skill. Luckily, I figured it out in time and knew that the demigod-level armor isn''t on its body but on the clone''s body instead. I eventually made the right decision, killing it with my clone." "It was too risky to make such a decision. If I misjudged and its real body was wearing the demigod-level armor, I wouldn''t have been able to kill it. The dimensional portal would''ve been destroyed and I''d have killed myself since the effect of the combat strength upgrade can only last for three seconds" Before he could finish analyzing everything, a few scenes suddenly flashed through his mind. He calmed himself down and began checking what they were. After a short while, he finally found out the sources of those scenes in his Life Lamp. "These are the memories of the skinless monster" 818 The Images in His Head In the God''s Figurine which had a Divine Fire burning, a cloud of pure spiritual energy hovered above the flames and was covered by a layer of faint green glow. It was the protective layer created automatically by the God''s Figurine in order for the spiritual energy to block any interference from the Divine Fire. After some investigation, Lin Huang realized that the images flashing through his head came from the cloud of spiritual energy. To be exact, the God''s Figurine had absorbed the skinless monster''s soul automatically after he killed it. With the help of the Divine Fire, it turned the monster''s soul into pure spiritual energy. Since it was filtered through the Divine Fire, most of the information in the cloud of spiritual energy, which was the storage of the monster''s soul, vanished. Only a small amount of it remained and was not completely wiped off. The few images that flashed through Lin Huang''s mind was the only remaining information. "Unfortunately, there''s no more information left." Lin Huang did not manage to find out more after checking out the contents of the spiritual energy. Lin Huang lost his mood for a bubble bath, so he put his clothes on again and returned to the bedroom. He was initially exhausted physically and mentally from the intense fight. However, he did not feel sleepy at the moment. His eyes were opened despite lying on the bed as he recalled the few images that had flashed through his head earlier. The first image was the back of a man. Although he could only see the man''s back, he could discern that the man was young while his body was not exactly strong. He even seemed a little skinny and weak. The second image was the interior of a hall. There were two rows of powerhouses sitting on both sides in the bright and magnificent hall. There was a massive golden throne further in the hall with someone sitting on it. However, it was just a black silhouette of which no details could be detected and he could not even determine the person''s gender. The third image was a sky full of blood mist. Under the bloody sky was a variety of monsters gathering all over the land. There were at least millions of monsters within his field of vision. Meanwhile, the fourth image was a black crack that looked like a spider web. It was a massive crack situated in the sky. The image was dark while the crack was sucking in air rampantly from all directions. The last three images were all God''s Figurines. Not only did they include the two items that Lin Huang had just obtained, even what he had just refined in his hand was included too. "These must be the more important memories which it put away deep in his soul without realizing to the point that the memories weren''t erased in the preliminary filtering in the Divine Fire. Now, they''re just static images with the audio removed. "The bloody sky in the third image doesn''t seem like it happened in our land. "The crack in the fourth image looks like the Abyss Brink''s crack, possibly the other side of it. If that''s the case, it must have passed through the air crack and arrived at the human foothold via the Abyss Brink. That''s a reasonable explanation. In this case, the bloody sky in the third image could possibly be the virtual zone connected to the Abyss Brink. "The black silhouette sitting on the throne in the second image should be the God Master the skinless monster mentioned but I can''t identify the man in the first image. "The three God''s Figurine images should be the reason why the skinless monster came to our land but I''ve no idea why would it have or if it looked for the God Figurines. It shouldn''t have just created God''s Figurine combat souls for all the effort that they''re putting in. The nature of a God''s Figurine combat soul isn''t much more powerful than an ordinary combat soul''s. It''s just harder to kill" Lin Huang thought a lot about the images that he saw but the connection between the images were insufficient. He could not come up with a complete theory. "If this monster really came from the Abyss Brink''s crack, then there might be a change to the five-year catastrophe from the Abyss Brink. It seems like I''ll have to visit Abyss Brink after the auction ends." Lin Huang''s mind was fully occupied that night. He finally fell asleep when it was past four in the morning as a result of his physical and mental exhaustion. Around three hours after that, Yi Zheng was going to ask Lin Huang along for breakfast after washing up. The seal was removed automatically the night before. He was relieved now. It was rare that he could relax. Just when he was ready to knock on Lin Huang''s door, he heard the Voice Transmission coming from Bloody behind the door. "Master''s just fallen asleep a while ago. Let him rest during the day. I''ll inform him before the auction starts in the evening." Although Yi Zheng did not communicate much with Bloody, he knew about its existence, so its voice was not a stranger to him. He nodded immediately after hearing what it said. "Sure, then I won''t disturb him. I''ll be on my own during the day. I''ll see him in the evening." After sending Yi Zheng off, Bloody dashed back to the couch where it proceeded to work on the Heart Network. Lin Huang slept all the way past four in the afternoon. He only woke up after sleeping for approximately twelve hours. Although the major fight which took place in the middle of the night did not leave any after-effects on him, it exhausted him gravely. His exhaustion only went away by 60 to 70% after sleeping. "It''s 4.21p.m.? Have I slept for twelve hours?!" Lin Huang projected the clock from his Emperor''s Heart Ring as soon as he opened his eyes and was shocked when he saw the time. "You''ve overworked your body, so sleeping a lot from the exhaustion is normal. Generally speaking, you''d need three days at the most to recover completely." Bloody floated into the bedroom slowly. "The underground auction only opens at 7.30 p.m. You can sleep for a few more hours if you''re still tired. I''ll wake you up by then." "There''s no need. My exhaustion won''t be completely taken away even if I sleep for the entire day." Lin Huang hopped off the bed directly. "Then, eat something. I asked Yi Zheng to bring you some food at noon. It''s in the cooler box," Bloody had arranged everything accordingly. Lin Huang nodded and headed straight to the kitchen. He took the food out from the cooler box and brought it to the dining hall. He asked while eating after sitting down, "Is there any news today?" "What happened in the middle of the night is up on the local news. The media says an anonymous powerhouse killed the monster that invaded the foothold. From the news on the media, nobody knows who exactly killed the monster. Otherwise, they would''ve come to you for interviews." "What else?" Lin Huang asked again after swallowing the fried egg in his mouth. "Also, many people from the underworld are investigating this. Some of the forces are trying to find out who killed the monster that invaded. Most of them should be interesting in recruiting the killer." "How about the God''s Figurine? Did you find anything about it?" Ever since he elevated to immortal rank, Lin Huang planned to find as many God''s Figurines as he could so that he could elevate to immortal-level rank-9 as quickly as possible. "No clue. I can''t find anything on the Web. I suspect the Union Government secretly did something. There''s no news from the black market as well but it''s only been a day, so it''s normal that we haven''t heard anything yet." "It''s been blocked by the Union Government? Seems like the Union Government knows what the God''s Figurine is" Lin Huang squinted lightly. 819 The Underground Auction Begins! It was early autumn at the beginning of September. The weather was turning cold while the heat from the summer was long gone. The sky turned completely dark before it was even 7 p.m. After dinner, Lin Huang and Yi Zheng rushed to the Wanbao Auction together. The underground auction was not held there; it was just a hub. A few staff welcomed them as soon as they entered the entrance of the auction. One of them asked, "May I know if the both of you are participating in this together or do you want to be separated?" "Let''s do it together," Lin Huang answered. "Please follow me." The staff who asked the question led the both of them to an elevator as soon as he was done speaking. "The elevator will take the both of you to a random vacant room underground. You can pick a mask and cloak that you like. Please go to Room B1 after the both of you put on the mask and cloak. Someone will bring you to the underground auction." The staff tapped open the elevator doors after the simple explanation and watched the both of them enter. Soon after entering the elevator, the doors opened again and they arrived at an exhibition hall that was more than 100 square meters in size. There were hundreds of simulation models in the exhibition hall. Each of them wore a different mask and cloak. Only a minority did not have any cloaks or masks. It was clear that they had been picked by people who arrived before they did. Yi Zheng was dazzled by the choices at the moment and he had no idea which one he should go for. However, it was not an issue for Lin Huang. Each and every mask and cloak became clear to him in his head as he scanned through them with his Divine Telekinesis. He picked the mask and cloak that he desired in less than a minute. The material of the mask was a light alloy with a silver base and there were not many patterns on it. It seemed extremely plain and simple. For the cloak, Lin Huang picked a black, long robe. Just like the mask, there were no patterns or decorations on it while the hoodie covered most of his face. Although he had put on the mask and cloak, Yi Zheng, on the other hand, had not even picked any. "Aren''t you quick to pick?" "I''m a psychic. I''d be able to see through all of the masks and cloaks with a scan of my Divine Telekinesis. Naturally, it''s easy for me to pick them." Lin Huang only realized that his voice had changed after speaking. It must have been a function that came together with the mask. "I''m dazzled by them. Maybe you should pick for me." Yi Zheng did not bother to choose his own any longer. "Just get something that''s similar to yours. The simpler, the better. I don''t want anything with patterns or decorations." "Sure." Using his Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang soon picked three masks and four cloaks for Yi Zheng. Yi Zheng picked a set among the shortlisted ones that Lin Huang had picked out for him. He selected a golden mask that had no decorations and a long, black robe similar to the one Lin Huang was wearing. After Yi Zheng put the mask and cloak on, Lin Huang finished putting the remaining masks and cloaks back on the models. "Let''s go!" The both of them then pushed the door open and left the room. They lifted their heads and found out that the room that they were in was Room B18. The room numbers got smaller as they walked along the left side of the corridor. After walking ahead for a moment, the door to Room B11 swung open suddenly. A person in a white robe and a painted mask walked out of the room. The person was skinny and one could not tell if the person was a man or a woman since the robe did a good job at shrouding the person. The person was slightly surprised to see Lin Huang and Yi Zheng, but soon snapped back to his or her senses and walked towards Room B1 as he turned. Lin Huang and Yi Zheng were less than 30 meters behind the person. They were following him all the way but were not in a hurry to catch up with him. When they arrived at the entrance of Room B1, the white-robed person turned around and glanced at them before going into the room. Lin Huang and Yi Zheng soon followed and entered the room. The interior of Room B1 was similar to that of a meeting room. There were already 18 people sitting at the long table while there were still three vacant seats. Among the 18 of them, 17 of them wore cloaks and a variety of masks including the white-robed man earlier. The man who sat at the main seat of the table was the exceptional one. He wore a mask that was as white as a piece of jade but donned a black suit. He did not fit in with the rest of them. Almost everyone had their eyes on Lin Huang and Yi Zheng. However, since the masks and cloaks had the function of blocking out detection, nobody could find out anything about the both of them. Lin Huang glanced through everyone present and his eyes landed on the man in the suit. He figured that man was the staff of the underground auction. "Take a seat." As expected, the man in the suit spoke after observing them for a little while, "The dimensional portal can transport 20 people each time. We''re only lacking one more person now excluding me." Lin Huang and Yi Zheng then sat down in the vacant seats that were close to them. The room with 20 people soon fell into a dead silence. None of them knew each other. Moreover, since their bodies were completely covered, not only were their personal details blocked, but their trust towards each other had dropped to the lowest. so there was nothing that they could talk about. Although they would check each other out, their eyes usually would not stay on the same person for too long because they could not see anything from just looking. Secondly, some hot heads would treat that as a provocation and that would bring unnecessary trouble to oneself. Everyone knew that people who were invited to an underground auction were not ordinary people, so none of them wanted to make enemies. Fortunately, the dead silence did not last for too long as a newcomer came in. The man in the suit stood up when there were a total of 20 of them. He then brought out a white Dimensional Portal and got everyone to walk through it after activating the transportation coordinates. As the Dimensional Portal shut slowly, Lin Huang and the rest realized that they had arrived in a hall as a flash illuminated before their eyes. Lin Huang looked around after hearing chattering. There was an auction stage not far away. A lady wearing bunny ears was standing on it and she was looking at Lin Huang and the rest of them. "To the guests who have just arrived, please take a seat wherever you like." Lin Huang turned to the other side and found that most of the seats were vacant, but around 100 of them were taken. There seats on the first two rows were almost occupied. The chattering came from there. Lin Huang glanced over and saw a few pairs of people talking to each other. He figured that they must have come together. The 20 of them scattered and found their seats after listening to the lady on the stage. Noticing there were no more seats in the center zone on the third row, Lin Huang found two vacant seats in the middle of the fourth row and sat down with Yi Zheng. "This venue''s so small. There are only a total of 1,200 seats," Lin Huang said through Voice Transmission and smiled. "The underground auction''s usually small-scaled. Moreover, Wanbao City''s under the ruling of the Union Government. They''d need to give face to the Union Government, so they have to keep it low," Yi Zheng explained, "The more people they invite to auctions like this, the more trouble there might be." They were chatting out of boredom since there was still time before the auction began. More and more guests were transported to the venue while the seats became occupied. When it was almost 7.50p.m., the 1,200 seats were all filled at the venue as all the invitees arrived. The lady in the bunny ears finally spoke again when it was 8 p.m. sharp, "Good evening, our honorable guests. Welcome to the auction. I''m the auctioneer of the current auction, Bunny Ears. There''s no need to suspect my name. It''s obvious that it''s not my real name. I hope we can have an enjoyable evening today and that everyone will purchase something that they desire." "Let''s cut to the chase and send the first collection to the stage!" She corrected herself as soon as she was done speaking, "To be exact, this is the first set of collections." As she spoke, 20 naked men walked onto the auction stage and stood in two rows. The opening act caused many of the guests to discuss among themselves. "Are they human slaves who have been castrated?" Lin Huang frowned while Yi Zheng looked displeased. There were no traces of genitals on the lower half of the 20 naked men. "Isn''t the surgery pretty darn clean-cut?" The gray-robed man who sat behind Lin Huang could not help but say out loud. "It seems like I must explain myself," Bunny Ears spoke again, "These 20 men aren''t human slaves like what all of you are thinking. Although they look exactly like humans, they''re actually artificial men made with genetic technology. This batch is just the first whereby they''re small-scale tests. All of them are on the combat level of immortal-level rank-9." "There are 20 of them and the opening price will be 100 million Life Crystals each. The bidding increment has to be at least five million Life Crystals. We''ll begin the auction with No. 1!" 820 Mutan Each and every artificial man was different. The auctioneer only gave a simple description like a summary about them due to the time constraint at the auction. At the same time, the organizing team projected the detailed information of each of the artificial men on the screen behind the auction stage. From the projected information, it was clear that these artificial men were very different from one another. Some of them were proficient in either Sword Dao, Saber Dao, close-distance combat or telekinesis. "They have an ability on par with a double mutated monster and come with five skills. They''re similar to customized summoning beasts in the form of humans and their price is equivalent to purchasing an immortal-level rank-9 summoning beast."'' Lin Huang raised his eyebrow after reading the details. "But coupled with the fact that obtaining new skills from learning makes them more powerful than summoning beasts, I just can''t understand why their price is higher than summoning beasts." Lin Huang was not exactly interested in artificial men like those. He already had more than ten summoning beasts which talents were more powerful, so it was unnecessary for him to purchase such artificial men. Moreover, such living creatures could not be made into cards directly like how he could with Bai and the rest. He would not mind purchasing one if they could be made into cards so that he could train them bit by bit. However, Lin Huang had no idea if artificial men were classified as humans or monsters. If they were humans, there would be no Monster Card given when they were killed. The most one could get was Skill Cards. If they were monsters, the chances of getting Monster Cards were slim even if all 20 of them on the stage were killed. Lin Huang decided not to participate in the auction after giving it some thought. "Lend me some Life Crystals if I don''t have enough later," Yi Zheng who was sitting beside him said through Voice Transmission suddenly. "Sure." Lin Huang nodded directly. He did not lack money and he was not afraid that Yi Zheng would not return the money. The artificial men were sold one after another on the auction stage. Yi Zheng, who sat next to Lin Huang, suddenly called his bid when they were auctioning the sixth artificial man. "150 million!" Lin Huang was stunned to hear his price and turned to ask, "What do you want to do with this thing?" "I want the military to study them," Yi Zheng replied through Voice Transmission, "If possible, I''d like to purchase three of them: a spear cultivator, a sword cultivator and one that''s proficient in close-range combat." "Sure, let me know if you''re out of Life Crystals." Lin Huang nodded. Yi Zheng had grown up in a military family and he actually had a job in the military. However, it was just a cinch whereby he had little power in his position. The objective of him going to Division 3 to train was mainly for him to add colors to his experience. Just like those who were studying their Ph.D. on Earth, many of them were required to study abroad. Although Yi Zheng''s direction of development in the military had nothing to do with research, it would be an achievement for him to bring the artificial men back. Furthermore, the military would definitely reimburse his spending. After intense bidding, Yi Zheng managed to purchase the sword cultivator at 270 million. Later on, he purchased a spear cultivator at 230 million and a close-range combat cultivator at 240 million. The man in red mask right behind Lin Huang and Yi Zheng could not help but mumble out loud, "I wonder what''s he going to do with so many male artificial men given that all of the ones he purchased are strong." He was judging Yi Zheng beneath his mask. "I''d like to purchase an artificial female, but the thing is, there isn''t any" Yi Zheng forced a smile while shrugging helplessly. Most of the other bidders only purchased one while a minority of them purchased two. Yi Zheng had purchased the most and he happened to purchase the three strongest ones. However, he was analyzing the three artificial men''s abilities and the fact that they possessed the skills and test reports from the factory. He did not notice how the artificial men looked like at all. In reality, just like the man in the red mask, most of them were hoping to see the female version after seeing this batch of artificial men. However, the auctioneer revealed they had yet to perfect the manufacturing technique of the artificial females, so none were produced this time. It might be next year if the technical issues were solved. Soon, the 20 artificial men were all sold out. Bunny Ears then presented the second collection. The staff brought ten cabinets that were around two meters high onto the auction stage. Ten metal cages were revealed when the red cloths were lifted. There was a lady in each cage. They were naked and seemed no different from humans, just that their breasts were much larger than ordinary ladies''. "Busty women" Lin Huang frowned. It was not his first time seeing busty women being auctioned. He had seen them once when he went to the Mystery Auction with Leng Yue Xin in the past. Busty women were not human; they were mutants produced by human and busty monsters. However, these mutants almost went extinct 800 years ago. It was impossible for ten of them to exist even if they were the Descendants of the Sin. Clearly, these ten busty women were created through genetic modification elixir made of living female bodies through genetical technique. One wondered how many women died from the modification process for them to come up with ten end products. "This Wanbao Auction must be related to the Mystery Auction." Lin Huang had not thought of that earlier when the artificial men were auctioned. Now that he saw these busty women, he figured that these two auctions must have the same supplier or may even be run by the same person. Soon, the busty women created an outburst that was even bigger than before. It was clear that Wanbao Auction had arranged that on purpose. They auctioned male artificial men first to gauge the crowd''s anticipation of artificial females. Although there were no artificial females, they could get many busty women. Although he pitied these women, Lin Huang did not participate in the bidding while next to him, Yi Zheng did not bid since his last purchase. The reason being that it was redundant for him to purchase them. As long as there was no end to the production of such mutants, there would be more busty women and other mutants sold at various auctions. As he thought of the mutant''s situation, Lin Huang could not help but think of Xiao Mo who he met at the Purple Crow training camp. The kid was a mutant too. Although he seemed like a human on the surface, there was a Descendants of the Sin''s mark on his body. It was a mark of shame for him that would follow him for the rest of his life. "I wonder how''s that kid Xiao Mo now" Soon, the ten busty women were sold out in the heat of the crowd''s enthusiasm The third item was a batch of combat-type mutants. Lin Huang was in deep thought when he saw the third batch of items. "There must be an organization that does genetic modification exclusively behind this Wanbao Auction which captures humans illegally and creates these mutants in mass production. These artificial men might even be related to the organization. They dare to do this in the ruling area of the Union Government, so perhaps even the Union Government''s internal department isn''t that clean too." Lin Huang thought of the bunch of demigods who had plotted to kill Mr. Fu as he thought about this. He was frowning even more now. "They knew the catastrophe from the Abyss Brink is coming soon, but they''re still thinking of ways to benefit themselves unscrupulously." 821 Auctioning the God Crasher Time flew by and it was soon the third day of the underground auction. Lin Huang saw many genetical products on the first two days. Apart from artificial men and mutants, there were many genetically modified monsters that did not exist in the monster encyclopedia. It reminded him of the Scarborough Workshop. He clearly remembered that there were many similar monsters on the Enigma Island created by the people from the Scarborough Workshop. "It seems like the supply to the Wanbao Auction might be coming from the Scarborough Workshop. They might even have more collaboration. After all, organizations such as the Scarborough Workshop would need massive financial backing to run studies like these." The name Leib Lab flashed through Lin Huang''s mind. Since it was an organization that originated from the Scarborough Workshop, it might be working on studies on a similar track. However, Lin Huang could not be sure of that since he did not know much about it. His mind wandered off as he sat on his seat at the auction until the appearance of the God Crashers on the auction stage. "The eighth collection today is something that many have been waiting for" Thick black barrels were revealed as the red cloths were lifted. The muzzles pointed at the audience''s direction, causing many to exclaim out loud. "These are 28th generation God Crashers that the Union Government''s military has eliminated. There are a total of 30 of them. They''ve been left alone in the warehouse ever since they were produced and have never been used before. "Perhaps some of you aren''t aware of what the 28th generation God Crasher is. Let me take some time to explain this. "The 28th generation God Crasher ranks second in power among all God Crashers. It''s ranked right behind the 3rd generation God Crasher. However, the flaw of the 3rd generation God Crasher is very obvious. Some of you might have heard that although it''s powerful, it can only be used for ten times. It''s completely worthless after ten times. "Meanwhile, the 28th generation God Crasher is the improved version of the 3rd generation God Crasher. Its power is equivalent to 82% of the latter which is enough to cripple an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. Moreover, its effect will last more than 60 times. Experienced Gunmasters can even use it for 100 times" A lot of them who were proficient in guns and firearms realized that the rabbit-eared auctioneer was actually mixing up the concepts on purpose. The 28th generation God Crasher was only effective for 30 uses whereby the muzzle would begin to deform after that. Naturally, the data was the result of test after test in which the God Crasher was not maintained at all during the process. Meanwhile, Gunmasters would usually maintain the muzzle, so it would basically only begin to deform when it was used for more than 60 times. On a certain level, Lin Huang was not considered a certified Gunmaster, so he was usually rough when he used God Crashers. Taking time to maintain them? He would rather spend the time practicing his sword skills. However, the precise 30 uses of the 28th generation God Crasher was enough for him. The auctioneer was intentionally mixing up the concepts to confuse those who knew nothing about God Crashers. After some introduction, the auctioneer finally named the starting price. "The starting bid of the 30 God Crashers are the same which is 150 million Life Crystals! Each bid has to be an increment of at least five million Life Crystals. Now, let''s begin the bidding of the first God Crasher!" "200 million!" Someone in the audience named his bid as soon as the auctioneer was done speaking. The person who bid was even faster than Lin Huang. Lin Huang raised his eyebrow under his mask and spoke directly before the second person could bid, "250 million!" As soon as the bid was out, nobody in the crowd made a sound. Most of the wise buyers knew very well that the 28th generation God Crashers were auctioned at 230 million on average. Any price higher than that was not worth it. Furthermore, there would be 29 more later. It was unnecessary to fight with Lin Huang at 250 million. "250 million, going once! "250 million, going twice! "If nobody is bidding at a higher price, our first God Crasher will go to this man in the silver mask. "250 million going, thrice! Sold! "Now, let''s begin the bidding of the second God Crasher" "240 million!" Lin Huang was the first one who bid. Bunny Ears attempted to pique the interest of the others, but nobody was willing to bid at a higher price. "240 million, sold!" The second God Crasher became Lin Huang''s too. "230 million!" This time it was not Lin Huang who called out the price. However, Lin Huang''s voice followed. "240 million!" He purchased the third God Crasher. "Now, let''s begin the bidding for the fourth" "240 million!" Again, Lin Huang was not the first one who called out the price. "250 million!" Lin Huang was the second to call out the price again. He purchased the fourth God Crasher. "Now, let''s begin the bidding for the fifth" "250 million!" It was not Lin Huang who called out the price first. "255 million!" This time, Lin Huang only added five million. He purchased the fifth God Crasher. The bunny-eared auctioneer was a little speechless. The starting bid of the God Crasher was only 150 million, but it rose above 250 million because of Lin Huang which blew the other buyer''s desire to bid. Lin Huang purchased ten God Crashers at a price of around 250 million each with the same method. Finally, somebody could not help but challenge Lin Huang when it came to bidding for the eleventh one. The both of them competed until the bid went all the way to 350 million. Finally, the person gave up and let Lin Huang win the God Crasher. The rest turned solemn after finding out that Lin Huang''s base price had exceeded 350 million. He then proceeded to purchase the remaining God Crashers at around 250 million each. Almost nobody competed with him. When they were auctioning the last few God Crashers off, the participants could not tolerate Lin Huang for dominating the auction, so they began to bid too. The 21st God Crasher was sold at a high price of 410 million. Finally, Lin Huang was not the buyer this time. However, he was a troublemaker in the coming auction whereby he kept bidding and raising most of the God Crashers'' price to over 400 million. Meanwhile, he purchased two more God Crashers at 390 million and one more at 400 million. The bidding of the last three God Crashers was intense. They were sold at 490 million, 530 million, and 610 million respectively. Since Lin Huang purchased 23 God Crashers, he became the biggest winner and was resented by the participants at the auction. "Aren''t you afraid that you''d be targeted for buying so many God Crashers yourself?" Yi Zheng teased. "They don''t know who I am anyway," Lin Huang said like he did not care, "These are trump cards to save my life. Of course, the more the better. I just don''t want people to think that I''m an idiot who splurges, or else I wouldn''t have let go of any of the 30 God Crashers." He knew very well that the other buyers would definitely raise his price if he was determined to purchase every single God Crasher available at the auction. By then, 600 million aside, he might not even be able to purchase them at six billion. Therefore, he made up his mind to stop bidding after purchasing 20 God Crashers. The three that he purchased later was actually a bonus to him. 822 The Truth About the Crack After obtaining the 23 God Crashers, Lin Huang had finally accomplished his ultimate goal of going to Wanbao City this time. The items that were auctioned later were some contrabands which sale was prohibited by the Union Government. Nevertheless, Lin Huang and Yi Zheng had little interest in those items. The third day of the auction had finally come to an end when it was almost 12.30 a.m. The staff arranged for Lin Huang and the rest to remove their masks and cloaks respectively. Then, they were transported back to Wanbao City. The Wanbao Auction managed the underground auction in complete confidentiality. The communication and positioning system on everyone''s Emperor''s Heart Ring were locked, so none of the guests knew where it took place. Although Wanbao Auction clearly had the Union Government supporting them and sleeper agents, they were cautious and prudent in managing the auction to eliminate the possibility of being held ransom. "They''re worthy of being the top ten in Division 3. The way they handle things is extraordinary." Even Lin Huang admired their efforts on confidentiality. The night passed by peacefully. What Lin Huang was unaware about was that the imperial-level powerhouses in Wanbao City had been looking for the killer who destroyed the monster which invaded the city. However, that had nothing to do with him since he was ready to leave. Lin Huang said goodbye to Yi Zheng when they were having breakfast early in the morning. "I''ve sent you all the detailed documents on the segregation of Division 3''s organizations. You must be extra cautious when you get into the territory of underground organizations. Never underestimate those fellas whose combat strength are lower than yours. It''s messy in there and they can do anything to achieve what they want. Even a person on holy fire-level could possibly plot against you. You must watch out for that" "You told me that you''d leave after the auction ended. I thought you''d stay for at least another one or two days. I didn''t expect you to leave so soon," Yi Zheng said while shaking his head with a smile. "I came to Wanbao City to purchase God Crashers. Since I''ve gotten them, why should I continue staying here?" Lin Huang shoved half a fried egg into his mouth. "So, where are you heading to next? Mind sharing?" Yin Zheng asked rather curiously. "I''ll drop by the Abyss Brink. There''s something that I need to handle there." "The Abyss Brink" Yi Zheng''s pupils shrunk when he heard that name. The Abyss Brink was ranked the No. 2 forbidden land in the entire continent. There were a massive amount of immortal-level monsters wandering on each level. It was not exactly safe even for an immortal-level powerhouse. Yi Zheng had some goosebumps just from hearing the name. He did not ask any further. "You already have ancient relic-level equipment now but have as many life-saving measures as you can on stand-by. Borrow Life Crystals from me if you don''t have enough. Don''t be embarrassed to do so. Please contact me if you get yourself into unsolvable troubles. You have my number. Don''t be embarrassed to ask. Your reputation isn''t as important as your life," Lin Huang advised. "Alright." Yi Zheng looked helpless. Although he was the senior between the both of them age-wise, Lin Huang was advising him instead. "There''s something that I almost forgot to tell you." Lin Huang recalled suddenly. "I''ve sent you the Genius Union invitation code earlier. Take some time to sign up. There might be a virtual assessment by then, and you should be able to pass it with your abilities as long as you roughly prepare yourself." "Genius Union?!" Naturally, Yi Zheng had heard of the organization. He was a little dumbstruck hearing Lin Huang talking about it so casually. "Yes, sign up and familiarize yourself. I can be your referrer to the Heaven Alliance if you want to join the genius organization by then." Yi Zheng had no idea what the Heaven Alliance was. Only people in the internal management of Genius Union or those in the higher management of major organizations knew the names of Genius Union''s internal organizations. Yi Zheng''s eyeballs might fall out now if he found out that the Heaven Alliance was the No. 1 organization in the Genius Union. Lin Huang got the idea of getting Yi Zheng and the rest to join the Genius Union in order to obtain more resources after seeing the latter purchasing equipment at the auction. He had always thought since Yi Zheng came from a rich family, his family should not lack cultivation resources. It was past eight in the morning when they were done with breakfast. They walked to the hotel lobby as they chatted. Yi Zheng then sent Lin Huang to the hotel entrance after he checked out of his room. "Please don''t die. Your sister''s waiting for you to go home," Lin Huang said while smiling and waving after summoning a Dimensional Portal. "Same to you." Lin Huang stepped into the Dimensional Portal and vanished after the portal was shut. Seeing the Dimensional Portal disappear, Yi Zheng then turned around slowly while a faint smile appeared at the edge of his lips. "I can''t believe this kid who wasn''t even on iron-level has grown to what he is now in a short two years. I really won''t be able to catch up with him if I don''t work harder." In a deserted city in a Grade-B foothold near the second layer of the Abyss Brink, a white Dimensional Portal slowly opened in a residential alley. A young man walked out of it. The young man mumbled softly after putting the Dimensional Portal away, "There''s no need to stay in a hotel this time. I''ll just go straight to the second layer of the Abyss Brink after I refine the two God Figurines." "Kylie, bring me to your mini world." A lady in black armor appeared following his soft mumbling. She grabbed the young man''s wrist and both of them disappeared in the next second. Lin Huang sat in a meadow after entering Kylie''s mini world. He then took out the two God Figurines that he had obtained after killing the skinless monster. One of them was a feline with a grimacing skull face. Its body was slender while it was covered in leopard fur. It looked like a specimen that was made of a tiny feline''s carcass. Another one was a hooved monster with the head of a snake. It had black armor covering its entire body like a sculpture made of black metal. "The Grimace Feline Demon and the Snake Ungulate are combat-type of protosses. When they were alive they were True Gods which combat strength was on the medium-rank True God-level." The stone tablet''s voice came out of nowhere. "Is it weaker than the Petal Devil that I obtained earlier?" Lin Huang remembered the stone tablet had mentioned before that the Petal Devil was a high-rank True God-level. "You can''t compare them like that. That''s just the difference in combat strength. The Petal Devil''s still more powerful than both of them in terms of combat strength. After all, the Petal Devil isn''t a combat-type protoss," the stone tablet explained. "So, what kind of combat souls are these two suitable to visualize?" "The Grimace Feline Demon''s most suitable visualization is a Ninetails Lynx while the Snake Ungulate should visualize the Destructive Divine Mammoth," the stone tablet proceeded. "The Ninetails Lynx is the most energetic monster in the True Spirit Encyclopedia. It''s said that a peak-level Ninetails Lynx has the ability to control space whereby it can traverse the world as it wishes. Meanwhile, the Destructive Divine Mammoth is a monster of strength. It''s definitely worthy of being ranked in the top ten among the strength-type of living forms. I heard the most powerful one has the ability to crash the galaxy, suppressing the other side of the world." Lin Huang was lost just by listening to that. He only grumbled to himself after a while, "The more I listen, the more I think that this True Spirit Encyclopedia''s fabricated by some novel author. It''s either traversing or crashing the galaxy" The stone tablet heard what he said and refuted, "What does a kid like you know? You''d know that those descriptions of creatures whose power surpasses True God are valid as soon as you witness it." It seemed to recall something suddenly, then it rhetorically said, "What do you think caused that massive crack next to this foothold? It''s a crack in the world that was created as a result of the fight between True God-level powerhouses." "Do you mean the Abyss Brink" Lin Huang seemed to have heard an earth-shattering secret. "Also, that ocean named the Peaceful Ocean or something Wasn''t it caused by the collapsing of continents due to the fight between True God-level powerhouses too?" The stone tablet revealed another shocking news. "Hmm, are you sure those are done by humans?" Lin Huang was in disbelief. "Well, do you think it''s by natural causes?" If the stone tablet had eyes, Lin Huang was sure that it had to be rolling its eyes at him when he said that. "Alright then" Lin Huang felt his world perspective being reconstructed. If what the stone tablet said was true about the True God-level powerhouses being able to cause such damage to the continent, it was possible for those powerhouses above True God-level to crash the galaxy. "What''s exactly behind the crack in the Abyss Brink? Do you know?" Lin Huang asked in a testing manner. He was not sure if he could get a direct answer from the stone tablet. "Such a crack in the world could lead to anywhere. If one''s lucky for it to lead to a gravel world of the same level, the abilities of the living forms should be similar to what you have here. A world war is the worst that could happen. If one''s unlucky whereby the crack connects to a higher world, a world invasion would take place even if it''s just a small world as long as it has a complete set of rules and regulations of its own. That would happen because to the higher world, your gravel world''s just a subsidiary space. Put simply, your world''s just a model or a test run in a game for one to brush up their experience by playing it." The stone tablet''s words sent chills down Lin Huang''s spine. From the conversation he had with the True God Wu Mo from the tribe, Lin Huang knew that the reason the ancient era had perished was due to the complete opening of the crack in the Abyss Brink. It had led to an insane amount of powerhouses from the outside world carrying out a massacre. Wu Mo even speculated that the ending of each era of the continent was caused by the same thing. "If what you said is true, the latter might possibly be what happened to our continent," he said, feeling helpless although he was unwilling to admit it. 823 One-Month Junk Food Reward After the conversation with the stone, Lin Huang felt a stronger sense of danger and he was eager to achieve an upgrade in his combat strength After integrating the two God''s Figurines into two different Life Wheels, it took Lin Huang a whole day to completely refine the figurines. "I''ve finally managed to get to immortal-level rank-3." Lin Huang, who was in the meadow, slowly opened his eyes. He could clearly distinguish that there was an advancement in his combat strength. "It seems like my combat strength can be quickly upgraded as long as I have enough God''s Figurines. I can even level up to immortal-level rank-9!" After confirming that, Lin Huang knew that before getting to imperial-level, his main task would be to collect the God''s Figurines! In fact, he was already doing that now. He had contacted the black market earlier to ask about the God''s Figurine. He asked Yi Zheng to contact him as well if there was any information from the Union Government. However, as for the secret of the God''s Figurine, he had had a question in mind while he fought the skinless monster earlier. However, he had forgotten about it because he had been really busy these days. "Stone tablet, you told me earlier that the God''s Figurine can be activated as long as it possesses divinity. For example, if a demigod-level possesses divinity in his body, he''ll be able to activate a God''s Figurine. The skinless monster which I encountered earlier was just an imperial-level. How could it have activated the God''s Figurine as well?" "Because it''s not just an abyssal monster, but also a god''s blood monster. It possesses god''s blood in its body. Under normal circumstances, possessing god''s blood alone can''t activate the God''s Figurine. However, it seems to have some sort of secret skills whereby the divinity of the god''s blood was activated. That''s how it managed to activate two God''s Figurines. If I''m not mistaken, the skill must''ve been taught by the God''s Master it mentioned. It makes sense for the True God-level to own such a skill," the stone tablet explained. "It means that most of the time, other than those who are on demigod-level and me, it''s useless for the rest to own a God''s Figurine," Lin Huang sought confirmation. "In fact, that''s what normally happens," the stone tablet continued, "However, I realized that most of the demigods don''t know that the God''s Figurine can actually be integrated with a combat soul. Therefore, not many people collect the God''s Figurine like you do." "The Union Government must''ve known something about it. Otherwise, they wouldn''t have blocked all relevant news about the God''s Figurine on the Heart Network. I''m not sure about the other organizations though." Lin Huang was slightly relieved. "That''s good news for me. The lesser the number of people who know this, the better it is. I''ll have lesser opponents and collecting the God''s Figurine will be way easier." After resolving his doubts, Lin Huang then left Kylie''s mini world. By the time he returned from Kylie''s mini world to the deserted city, it was about six o''clock in the evening. The sky was turning dark. Under the lights along the street, a faint white glow was emitted and the area was brightly lit. There was the scent of food in the air. It was time for dinner. There were two boys chasing after each other, laughing and having fun as they ran down the street. Lin Huang had an illusion as if he had gone back to Earth when he saw this. "Everything will be destroyed if it''s invaded by the higher world" Lin Huang clenched his fists tightly. Walking halfway down the street, he flew up into the sky, transforming into a meteorite and headed to the second layer of the Abyss Brink. When he arrived at the entrance, he did not stop at all and went straight into it. The timezone at the second layer of the Abyss Brink was the same as the outside world. The sky had also turned dark. Lin Huang gradually landed on the ground and summoned Bloody. "Bloody, please check the distribution of monsters. You may then parasitize some of the monsters in different areas. Let''s see if there''s anything odd." After instructing Bloody, Lin Huang summoned the rest of the monster cards: Bai, Tyrant, Lancelot, Kylie, Ghastly, Thunder, the Sanguine Overlord, the Malachian Fiend, the Imp, the Eclipse Boa, the Death Knight, the Fallen Knight, and two Dark Crescent Snakes. Similar to Bloody, after Lin Huang leveled up to immortal-level rank-3, the 14 monsters cards were upgraded to immortal-level rank-7 as well. Lin Huang did not summon Charcoal because its combat strength was already on immortal-level rank-9. "You are now currently on immortal-level rank-7. However, the maximum combat strength you can actually achieve is immortal-level rank-9. Therefore, in the next few days, form a team of two and kill the abyssal monsters so that you can level up to immortal-level rank-9." Lin Huang issued this instruction because most of the immortal-level monsters would occupy the entire region on their own. They would rarely come in a group. Without a doubt, allowing the monster cards to kill separately would definitely increase their efficiency instead of killing as a group. "Bloody will send all the dead bodies to me and it''ll take care of it. The only thing that you need to do is to hunt for monsters so that your combat strength can be upgraded. "I''ll now divide all of you into different groups. Bai teams up with Ghastly, Tyrant teams up with the Eclipse Boa, Thunder teams up with the Sanguine Overlord, the Malachian Fiend teams up with the Inferior Imp, and the Death Knight teams up with Dark Crescent Snakes. Lancelot and Kylie can fight on their own because they have the sword servants and Starlight Beasts to back them up." The 14 monsters were divided into eight groups. "Bloody, you''re in charge of contacting them. You need to provide them with various information as well as the hunting paths and plans." "It''s now free and easy time, but there are three rules that you must obey. First of all, don''t stray from the hunting path given by Bloody. Otherwise, you''ll probably encounter imperial-level monsters or humans. "Secondly, don''t ever fight humans unless you''re forced to do so. If you ever attempt to provoke humans or kill them, you''ll be sealed and be stuck in your card form forever. I''ll never summon you." As Lin Huang said that, he glanced at the Supreme Overlord. "Thirdly, try not to fight the imperial-level monsters. Most of them have gone through their third mutation as you have. Even if your combat strength is on immortal-level rank-9, it''s still risky to kill them. Also, it''s a waste of time and strength. "Lastly, let''s talk about the rewards. You''ll be given one month of junk food as a reward if you manage to complete the upgrade within three days. You can exchange it for other items if you don''t want junk food. As long as it''s a reasonable request, I''ll try my best to satisfy you." Everyone was excited to give it a try when they heard this. Even Bai, who used to be calm, was about to act immediately. Although the Supreme Overlord looked like it was not interested in it at all, its eyes flashed with a trace of uncertainty. Seeing everyone being so exhilarated, Lin Huang knew that his trick had worked. Despite the monster cards being unable to go against his instructions, he still wanted them to complete the task willingly as this would obviously increase their efficiency. "That''s all. Bloody will contact you afterward. You can now spread out according to your groups." After Lin Huang had given his orders, the eight teams then chose a direction and left. Bloody asked him after Bai and the rest had left, "Master, the rewards that you just mentioned" "The task assigned to you is much more important than the rest. You''ll be rewarded without any upgrade in combat strength." Lin Huang patted Bloody''s head. 824 We Fight, We Fight for A Head The monsters were most active at night in the Abyss Brink. However, the second layer of the Abyss Brink was slightly different from usual that day as there were fourteen rather different monsters blending in. There was a sky dragon that looked like T. Rex with a body over 30 meters long running out of control on the meadow. Meanwhile, a silhouette that looked like a human was chasing it. If one were to look closer, the human-form monster was over three meters tall. It had a muscular body and wore a pair of army green capri pants while it chased the monster in bare feet. Deep footprints were imprinted on the ground every step it took as if it was stepping on the sand at the beach. It would move hundreds of meters forward with every leap it took, getting closer and closer to the sky dragon in front of it. The sky dragon was roaring in rage as it ran out of control. There were a couple of obvious wounds on its body. The wounds did not look like they were caused by weapons. Instead, they resembled more like the result of a monster''s claws and teeth tearing through the flesh. Some of them were still bleeding continuously. However, the monster could not be bothered about its wounds right now. All it could do was to run as fast as it could. Meanwhile, the human-form monster behind it was getting closer and closer. 300 meters! 200 meters! 100 meters! 50 meters Roar! As it was catching up to the sky dragon, Tyrant released a roar of excitement and accelerated. It extended its hand and grabbed the sky dragon''s tail. The sky dragon that was running for its life felt the great pulling force that came from its back and soon its feet were lifted from the floor before it was smashed hard on the ground. With both of its hands, Tyrant lifted the sky dragon''s body by grabbing its tail and smashing it on the ground hard. It repeated the same thing over and over again. The gigantic sky dragon was like a giant hammer at the moment which was continuously being smashed by Tyrant. Around ten minutes, Tyrant released its hands and tossed the body of the sky dragon on the ground. This immortal-level rank-9 sky dragon seemed to have no intact bones left in its body while it was at its brink of death now. It seemed like it would die any second. Tyrant leaped onto its stomach and stomped towards its head. However, a bloody glow came out of Tyrant''s body at that moment and pierced through the sky dragon''s eyes. In the next second, the gigantic monster lost its pulse completely. "Hey, you didn''t put any effort this time. Also, how dare you take the head from me?" Tyrant frowned as it looked at the sky dragon''s head and shouted. "Don''t be selfish, big guy. All of the prey will be yours after I elevate to immortal-level rank-9," A tiny brain came out of the sky dragon''s nostril. It was just the size of an adult''s thumb. There was a layer of semi-transparent mucus covering it. "Look at this. The fella has quite a big brain. I can give you some. Do you want to eat it?" "No," Tyrant declined right away, "I''ll help you elevate to immortal-level rank-8 and you''ll help me back. Then, I''ll help you boost yourself to immortal-level rank-9 after that. But you must help me to get to immortal-level rank-9 later on. If you disagree with that, we''ll just part ways now." "Deal!" The Eclipse Boa agreed to that immediately. "This sky dragon''s brain is much juicier than those before it. Are you sure you don''t want any?" "No. Finish it now so that we can proceed on our journey." Tyrant declined again. "We fight! We fight for a head and we got a dumb dragon. We smash! We smash its head open and indulge in a fresh dragon''s brain" A tune was sung from where the sky dragon''s head was after a short moment of silence. "Shut up!" "Hehe, it tastes good!" On a cliff, there was a gigantic dark gray bird with golden patterns on it. It was looking at a swamp not far beneath it. "I see the prey that Bloody mentioned." "You''ve such great eyes. I''ve looked around three times and saw nothing but some mosquitoes." Thick white mist flowed continuously from the Sanguine Overlord''s white flaming eyes on his skull. He had a crown on his head and a red robe around on his body. "How does the monster look like?" "It should be a Champsosaurus-type of sky dragon. It''s pretty big at least 30 meters long, but it has a great disguise whereby it almost blends with the swap completely. It makes sense that you can''t see it." Thunder''s eyes did not leave the swamp when it was speaking. "The swamp''s its home ground. I think it''ll take us a great effort to kill it." "That''s easy. We''ll just have to make it our home ground," Bloody Robe snickered. "How do we do that?" Thunder turned around to look at Bloody Robe. "I''ll turn this swamp into lava." Bloody Robe turned his head too and locked eyes with Thunder. "Alright, let''s use your method to get it out." "Wait, we must make it clear before we do it. Whose will this prey belong to later?" Bloody Robe seized the opportunity to ask. "It''ll be yours, okay?" Thunder was quick to respond. "You''ll do the last hit, I won''t do it." "Deal!" As soon as the both of them came to a consensus, they then attacked the monster below. Dark red lava emerged from the underground and drowned the entire swamp in an instant. The prey had finally shown itself. It was a giant Champsosaurus close to 50 meters long. It climbed out of the lava while roaring. Then, it looked at the two culprits after lifting its head. It bellowed in rage, "Who is your master? Don''t you know the rules?" "In fact, we don''t actually know." Dark clouds were formed in the sky as soon as Thunder said that. A purple lightning bolt flashed through the night sky and struck the Champsosaurus''s body accurately. "How dare the both of you attack me? Do you know that my boss is Master Ku Long?!" Not sure if enraged or if it was the lighting''s doing, the Champsosaurus was shaking as it was speaking. As soon as it spoke, another purple lighting bolt struck followed by the second one and the third one... Lightning was striking one after another. Not only did the Champsosaurus not have the opportunity to fight it, but Thunder also did not even give it the opportunity to speak. "I... want... to see your... master..." The Champsosaurus expressed what it wanted while being interrupted. "You''ll definitely see him, but that''ll only happen after you''re dead." Thunder did not stop its attack. "This fella has such thick skin. It feels like your attacks are just numbing it temporarily while no physical damages are done at all," Bloody Robe who was aside said while stroking his chin, "Let me help you." Bloody Robe extended his hand and a couple of flaming chains materialized out of thin air. The Champsosaurus that was numbed by the lightning strikes had a drastic change of expression seeing that. It tried its very best to dodge, but only managed to move ten meters away before Bloody Robe''s Punishment Chains bonded it tightly. Its Life Power retreated back into its body while it felt a clear gush of weakness spread all over its body. Another lightning struck in the next second. "Ahh!!!" A burn that it had never experienced before shocked it, causing the Champsosaurus to release a devastating wail. "Bondage, electric shock and devastating wail What a perfection combination!" There was joy in Bloody Robe''s voice. "It''d be even more perfect if there are some tentacles. Hmm, I''ll replace the lava with that" In the next second, the ground beneath the Champsosaurus turned into lava instantly. M?ny lava tentacles clung onto its body and went into its eyes, nose, and mouth like they would not let go of any holes there were on its body... Under the duo''s attacks in the condition of Life Power being sealed, it only managed to hold on to dear life for less than five minutes before it was killed on the spot despite its powerful body defenses. "It hasn''t even been five minutes. How pathetically weak! What kind of male animal is this that it can''t be even challenged for half an hour?" Bloody Robe clearly wanted more fun. "Let''s go for the next one." Thunder flapped its wings and lifted into the air. Bloody Robe flew immediately and caught up with Thunder. "Hey, Thunder, I just thought of a new way to play. Put your lightning onto my lava tentacles and let''s see what''s the effect of electrical tentacles" "I disagree!" Thunder who was flying ahead declined determinedly before Bloody Robe could finish what he was saying.Author''s note: Please sing this in the tune of (a classic Chinese children''s song). 825 I’m Sorry, Boss A tremendous battle was going on in a valley. There was a fiend and an imp on one side while an Earth Ursine was on the other side of the battle. The Earth Ursine was a triple mutated monster with midnight-black skin and a layer of golden armor on its head, abdomen, and back. The golden armor was not put on. Instead, it grew together with their skin since birth. The strongest suit of such a monster was its body whereby it could tear most of the double mutated monsters of the same combat level into half like a piece of thin paper. Its defense ability was strong enough to protect itself from most of the monsters of the same combat level, preventing them from breaking their defenses. This Earth Ursine before them had a combat level of immortal-level rank-9. The shocking fact was that the Malachian Fiend, which combat level was only on immortal-level rank-7, was going strong against the Earth Ursine. His green skin showed signs of turning into a metallic armor which expanded his body further, making him look even bigger. He was initially two meters tall, but with the addition, he looked at least 2.5 meters. However, he was still a fat meatball. Meanwhile, the Earth Ursine was over 30 meters long. Even if the Malachian Fiend expanded by heaps, it would still be a tiny bean before the Earth Ursine. The Inferior Imp who was on the same side as the Malachian Fiend was hovering hundreds of meters away from the battle. It seemed like it was just a spectator. However, if one was to study it with spiritual strength, they would see the hundreds of telekinetic threads being released from his body. The other ends of those telekinetic threads clung onto the Earth Ursine''s limbs and neck. The telekinetic threads were breaking one after another as a result of the Earth Ursine''s immense strength. However, the Inferior Imp reconnected them again and again. The strength the Inferior Imp was putting in was nothing lesser than the Malachian Fiend that was fighting on the battlefield. "You damned Fatty, why couldn''t you have chosen an easier prey?!" The Inferior Imp''s bloodshot eyes seemed like they were going to spit fire. "Forget about those before this that had crazy strength! This ursine has such insane defense. The both of us might not be able to kill it even if we keep doing this until the next morning!" "Big Bull, you don''t know the fun in fighting at all," the Malachian Fiend replied immediately, "Such a collision of power is the biggest joy a man could have!" "Stop calling me Big Bull!" The Inferior Imp objected. "It''s you who called me Fatty first." "It''s because you''re fat! Fat*ss!" "Then, I''ll call you Big Bull because of the bullhorns on your head and your nose that looks like a bull," the Malachian Fiend retorted rudely. "Do you want to fight?!" The Inferior Imp really sounded mad now. "Come at me! I''m not afraid of you! I''ve despised you since the beginning." The Malachian Fiend threw a punch at the Earth Ursine and turned around to look at the Inferior Imp. The Earth Ursine retreated slowly and did not attack the Malachian Fiend sneakily from his back. To the Earth Ursine, these two foes were on par with it when they fought together. It was uncertain who would emerge as the winner eventually. However, this was undoubtedly an advantage for the Earth Ursine since both of them had an internal conflict now. It decided to strike the last blow when they seriously injured each other later. It required little effort, and the Earth Ursine was happy to do it. It chose to watch aside decisively. Meanwhile, the two silhouettes were about to collide. The Inferior Imp''s close-range ability was not too shabby. It was just that he had gotten used to fighting methodically. However, he was not at a complete disadvantage fighting with the Malachian Fiend. The Earth Ursine was watching the fight delightedly, sitting on the ground not far away. It would have been perfect if there were snacks like popcorn or sunflower seeds for it to munch on. In the air, the Inferior Imp soon fell at a disadvantage. After all, he did not have much opportunity in close-range confrontations in real life and its body was not as powerful as the Malachian Fiend''s. It crawled out of the ground slowly after being punched by the Malachian Fiend while spitting a mouthful of blood that looked like lava onto the ground. He lifted his head to look at the Malachian Fiend while resentment filled his eyes. "What else do you have? Show me all of it now or else you won''t have the opportunity to when I kill you later," the Malachian Fiend said fearlessly while crossing his arms. "Since you want to die so badly, I''ll make your wish come true!" The red glow in the Inferior Imp''s eyes grew. "If you''re that powerful, don''t dodge my next attack!" "I won''t dodge then! I''m not afraid of you!" As soon as the Malachian Fiend was done speaking, a spark lit up in the sky. It was extra bright in the night sky like a meteor that was plummeting from outer space. Evidently, the meteor was flying towards the battlefield in the valley. The Earth Ursine that was watching aside noticed that something was off immediately. It could not help but open its mouth wide seeing the meteor that was flying towards them. "It can''t be! How can he summon a meteor... shower?!" Before the Earth Ursine was done speaking, it saw the second and third meteor raining down from the sky. Sparks fell one after another. Soon, there were hundreds of them. "a This fella has such terrifying technique!" The Earth Ursine gaped at the Inferior Imp with fear now. However, it soon noticed that the Malachian Fiend was just hovering where he was, maintaining his stance of crossing his arms without showing any signs of dodging. "Is this fella a little dumb? Is he really not dodging?!" The Earth Ursine was secretly glad after being concerned for the Malachian Fiend for a split second. "As soon as the Malachian Fiend is dead, I shouldn''t worried about that Inferior Imp. He has already unleashed a big hit, so he should be exhausted by now. He shouldn''t be able to execute such a powerful blow for the second time in a short period of time. I''ll be able to do anything I want with him by then." The Earth Ursine retreated a distance away and did not leave. It was waiting for the duo to finish their fight and it would pick up whatever was left. Hundreds of meteors come raining down from the sky. They could even hear the air-piercing whistles from far away. The meteor shower added vibrant color to the quiet night sky. However, grave danger came after the beautiful scene. Each of the meteors was burning furiously. They were dropping to the ground at a terrifying speed. One could only imagine how much damage they would bring. The more the Earth Ursine watched, the more terrified it felt. Among the meteorites, the smallest one was just slightly smaller than the Earth Ursine. It was even mourning a little for the Malachian Fiend. "I''m afraid such an attack could even kill an Inferior Imperial-level." However, the Malachian Fiend remained hovering where he was with no plan to escape. The meteorites arrived close to the valley in the blink of an eye, aiming at the Malachian Fiend. "There''s no way that he can turn the situation around at all." The Earth Ursine found it hard to watch the disaster that was Inferior Impending. However, something changed. The meteorites in the air moved in an arc in the air while the Earth Ursine now became their target. "What happened?!" The Earth Ursine was stunned to see that. It reacted right away and shouted at the Inferior Imp and Malachian Fiend, "The both of you tricked me!" The first one landed as soon as it uttered its last word. Bang! A deafening thud exploded while a huge piece of the ground collapsed in the valley. Amongst the endless chunks of dirt flying in the air, a gigantic silhouette flew out in devastation and fell hard into a mountain range in the valley. The Earth Ursine fell deep in the mountainside and could not help but spit a mouthful of blood out. It had tried to defend itself from the attack with its palm in panic. Now, it''s entire arm was entirely obliterated as a result of the collision while the golden armor on its chest had faint cracks on it. Meanwhile, its organs went through a serious tremor while it felt a burning sensation as if there was a fire in its lungs when it breathed. The second meteorite came crashing into the mountainside before it could even catch its breath. Followed by the third, fourth, fifth Over 200 meteorites fell like cannonballs, and the entire valley was smashed into a flatland completely. Meanwhile, the Earth Ursine was killed upon the crashing of the eleventh meteorite. "That ursine''s so dumb to even believe what a Malachian Fiend says. He actually thought we were having an internal conflict!" The Malachian Fiend landed slowly on the ground which was now completely ruined. "We Inferior Imps are born con men and actors." The Inferior Imp walked over slowly too while looking at the Malachian Fiend with a smirk. "I''ve taken so much physical pain from this round of attacks which caught it off-guard." "I''m sorry, Boss" The Malachian Fiend turned into a scaredy-cat in a split second. "Do you think an apology does anything?" The Inferior Imp remained smiling. "Ugh I think we should look for the next prey now. If we can''t accomplish the mission within three days, we''ll lose a month''s supply of junk food." The Malachian Fiend changed the topic immediately. "It''s your fault, Fat*ss. You pick preys that are getting harder and harder to kill!" The Inferior Imp was enraged as he thought about this point. "Big Bull, I''m warning you. Stop calling me Fatty! And don''t even think about calling me Fat*ass!" "What did you call me?! I''ll summon the meteorites to kill you." "I''m sorry, Boss" 826 I’ll Cheer On For You in My Heart! Two black and gold silhouettes flew under the sunlight with one of them leading the way. "Hey, handsome boy with the white hair before me, could you fly a little slower please?" The man in the golden robe shouted at the man in the black robe in front. "I can''t." The black-robed man with white hair turned around and glared at him while replying with those two words coldly. He then accelerated after that. "Hey, hey, can you not do this? You''ve got the skill to boost your speed, but I don''t. It wouldn''t kill you to consider someone else''s feelings," the golden-robed man shouted again. The man with white hair then slowed down his pace. However, he did not even turn around this time and stayed silent. The golden-robed man then caught up with him slowly and they proceeded on their journey together. The duo was the Ghastly Clown and Bai. Lin Huang had put the both of them in a team. "Xiao Bai Bai, we should be partners since we''ve been fighting together for two days now" Before the Ghastly Clown was done speaking, Bai turned around, glaring at him. His eyes were cold. "Did we fight together? It was me who was fighting while you just watched. Not helping aside, you even took my prey in the end," Bai said, looking pissed. If not for Lin Huang who had asked them not to fight among themselves beforehand, he would have attacked the Ghastly Clown since the beginning. "Is it necessary for you to be this mad? All that I did was take a couple of your victims," Ghastly Clown said like he did not care, "I didn''t help because I knew you could handle them yourself. I''d definitely have helped if you encountered one that you couldn''t handle." "I''d be stupid to believe you," Bai thought to himself secretly. "You''ll definitely run faster than anyone else if I really encounter monsters that I can''t handle." After spending two days together, Bai knew the Ghastly Clown''s character well now. All he was competent at was cheating. Anyone would be unfortunate to encounter him. "Look, we''re both on immortal-level rank-9 now and we''ve accomplished our mission a day ahead. Shouldn''t everyone be happy now?" "Yeah, right!" Bai did not say that out loud. Bai had lost interest in what the Ghastly Clown was saying. Later on, he thought that communicating with the Ghastly Clown was a complete waste of time. "Xiao Bai Bai, we''re already on immortal-level rank-9 now. It''s no fun killing monsters on the same level. Why don''t we start killing prey on imperial-level now? I''ve never killed anyone on imperial-level before," the Ghastly Clown suggested all of a sudden. Bai pretended like he did not hear him and ignored the suggestion. "Xiao Bai Bai, did you hear what I said?" Bai proceeded to ignore him. He knew that the more he responded to the Ghastly Clown, the more he would babble on. "Xiao Bai Bai, are you ignoring me?" After being snubbed twice, the Ghastly Clown knew what Bai was doing in response, or lack thereof, to him. He smirked and come up with a strategy. "Bloody, give me the nearest black gold-rank''s coordinates." "Ghastly Clown, please don''t create trouble and stay on your mission obediently." It was clear that Bloody took the same side as Bai. "I''ll just go in a random direction if you don''t give me the coordinates." The Ghastly Clown stood where he was and watched Bai go. "Ghastly Clown, Master mentioned that those who disobey will be sealed into card form and won''t be summoned ever again. Are you sure you want to go against the Master''s orders?" Bloody took out the big guns. The Ghastly Clown had a slight change of expression, but soon he looked normal again. "Master doesn''t like me anyway. Even if I obey the orders, I might not have many opportunities to be summoned in the future. Go ahead and seal me. I don''t care." Bloody went speechless at that moment. Feeling helpless, it sent a message across to Lin Huang. "Ask him to go ahead if he wants to kill imperial-levels. It''s good to teach him a lesson. Tell him that since this is his idea, he''ll have to fight while Bai''s only responsible for assisting. I''d love to see his capacity." Lin Huang had always been slack about the different personalities of his Monster Cards. Not that he did not care about them, but he thought it would be healthier for them to explore and express themselves. Even when it came to the stubborn Ghastly Ghost, Lin Huang did not plan to oppress or correct him. The most he would do was to guide him accordingly. He had always thought that a person''s perspective on life should not be taught. Instead, it should come from self-learning and self-correction. It was something that should be built slowly within a person. Due to everyone''s different genes since birth, the people that they came to know in society differed as they grew and learned in different environments. Therefore, it might not be the best for one to apply something that someone else had learned to themselves. Just like if one copied what the world''s richest man did and applied it to a newborn, it would still be hard to cultivate the newborn into the next richest man tens of years later. The best view of life came from the person''s personal failures. It was the value that the particular individual could come up with from the mistakes that they made. What was right, what was wrong, what could be done, what could not be done Compared to the values that you fed him, it would not be as impactful as letting him make the mistake himself. He would understand it clearly as soon as he realized his mistake. Lin Huang understood that theory very well, which was the reason why he took such loose measures with the Ghastly Clown. Soon, Bloody''s Leech Pods sent Lin Huang''s message across thousands of kilometers away. The Ghastly Clown had a rather odd expression. It was obvious that he did not expect Lin Huang to agree to his idea just like that. He thought Lin Huang would warn him, but still, he said nothing. "Did he really just say that and nothing else?" "He said you''d learn the lesson when you get yourself into trouble." Bloody''s voice came through the Leech Pods once again. "Alright, I''ll give you the coordinates." Bloody called Bai who had left far away over after showing it the coordinates. "What exactly do you want?" Bai advanced towards the Ghastly Crown while looking mad. "Xiao Bai Bai, I''ve told you that we''ll team up to kill imperial-level prey." The Ghastly Clown winked at Bai. "I''m not interested in that. You can go on your own," Bai rejected directly and turned around, about to leave. "The Boss has agreed that you''ll be my assistant. I''ll be fighting. You just have to cheer me on from the side." The Ghastly Clown grinned as he spoke. Bai looked doubtful at the Leech Pods, clearly seeking confirmation from Bloody. "Master said it''s for him to learn a lesson." Bloody''s voice came through the Leech Pods again. Hearing what Bloody said, Bai understood Lin Huang''s intentions immediately and nodded. "Let''s go then." The duo turned into black and gold bright glows as they turned around, heading towards their new target. "Xiao Bai Bai, I won''t mind if you''d like to help me. If you fight, I''ll try my very best to assist you. If you don''t want me to help, I''ll cheer you on from the side" "It''s you who chose the opponent. I''ll be stealing your limelight if I interfered. I''ll cheer on for you in my heart." Bai turned around and looked at the Ghastly Clown while smirking. 827 Army The hunt went on for two days. In his dark-red armor, Lancelot led nine sword servants as they killed a variety of monsters along the way. He obtained Life Power and finally accomplished Lin Huang''s mission, which was to elevate him to immortal-level rank-9. Besides him, the nine sword servants under him were elevated to immortal-level rank-9 too. They experienced an immense boost in their ability. A cold gleam flashed through Lancelot''s eyes when he looked at the nine sword servants. "Bloody, help me find triple mutated Sword Dao monsters. Their combat strength must be on immortal-level rank-9." "No problem. But there aren''t many such monsters on the second layer of the Abyss Brink. I''ve only found three at the moment," Bloody replied immediately. "It''s alright. Three is good enough. We''ll look for more slowly if it''s necessary in the future. Please send me the coordinates." Lancelot nodded. After he was done communicating with Bloody, Lancelot gathered his nine sword servants. They were the Fiery Swordfiend with fire attributes, the Frigid Swordswoman with frost attributes, the Luminescent Angelwing with light attributes, the Hatted Swordsman with many swords, the Sword Knight with a sword and a shield, the Swordfiend Soldier with a greatsword, the Cursed Swordfiend that was an expert in assassination, the Sword Dominator who could manipulate swords, and the Spiritsword Supreme in sword form. "To the nine of you, double mutation isn''t enough if all of you want to follow me in the future. Immortal-level rank-9 is the limit of double mutation and you won''t be able to reach imperial-level. Meanwhile, it''s just a matter of time for me to go up to imperial-level. If your combat strength stays on immortal-level rank-9, I''ll have to replace you guys when necessary." The nine sword servants had special skills of their own while they were the best of the best among the double mutated monsters. However, Lancelot thought it was not good enough because being immortal-level rank-9 was basically the end for a double mutated monster''s combat strength. Their chances of breaking through and stepping into imperial-level were slim. Many of the sword servants changed their expressions as soon as Lancelot said that. "Sword Master, please don''t refrain from telling us what you need us to do directly," the Spiritsword Supreme who took the sword form spoke right away. It seemed to grasp the underlying meaning of what Lancelot said. "Alright then, I''ll be straightforward. I hope that you guys can achieve a triple mutation. I have an idea on how to get you guys there." Lancelot paused and glanced at the nine of them before he proceeded to speak, "But it''s extremely risky for you guys to carry out this plan. You might even die while you''re at it." "Sword Master, please do tell!" It was the Sword Dominator who could not wait to hear what Lancelot''s plan was. Meanwhile, the other sword servants looked at Lancelot with anticipation. "I have a secret skill that can replace the Life Fire in your bodies, but there are four preconditions to perform this secret skill. "Firstly, it can only be used on my sword servants. Secondly, the substitute and the monster to be replaced must be skilled in Sword Dao. "Thirdly, the sword servant will have to kill the monster to be replaced. The other sword servants can help, but their combat strength can''t be higher than the monster''s. The mutation level must be lower than the monster''s as well. "Lastly, the monster to be replaced must have the exact combat strength with the sword servant. "To put simply, you guys will have to kill immortal-level rank-9 triple mutated Sword Dao monsters. I''ll use the secret skill to retrieve the rank-3 Life Fire from the monster''s body and replace the rank-2 Life Fire in your bodies." The nine sword servants realized the difficulty of the plan as they listened. To be able to achieve triple mutation, they would have to kill other triple mutated monsters on the same level. A triple mutated monster was much powerful than a double mutated monster, let alone monsters of Sword Dao with powerful attack strength. Although they had the upper hand in quantity since it was nine against one, it was possible for a powerful triple mutated monster of Sword Dao to kill them with a single swing of a sword. Moreover, the more sword servants elevated to triple mutation, the fewer of them could participate in the killing. In other words, with fewer of them killing the monster, the more difficult it would be. Especially for the last one to elevate, the sword servant would have to fight the triple mutated monster on his own since the remaining sword servants had elevated to triple mutation and they could no longer help. Naturally, Lancelot hid a fact here. Although he and the sword servants who completed the elevation would not be able to participate in the killing, they could share their skills. Lancelot could share his skills with the sword servants while the power of the skills could be copied 100%. The reason he hid this fact from them was that he hoped his sword servants would fight with their own might without thinking of having a plan B to fall back on. "Only three monsters of Sword Dao fit the requirements in this area, so only three of you can elevate first. The three that I''ve picked are the Hatted Swordsman, the Swordfiend Soldier, and the Fiery Swordfiend." In her black armor, Kylie flapped her dozen black wings that were as sharp as blades on her back slightly as she hovered in mid-air, watching the battle beneath. The 368 troops of the Nephilic Judge army in silver armor formed a killing formation as they fought a triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monster. These Nephilic Judges were only double mutated beings while most of their combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-5 or rank-6. However, their combat strength was on par with an imperial-level black gold-rank powerhouse when they performed the formation. Even Kylie herself found it hard to believe. Theoretically, such a difference should not be possible with hundreds of Nephilic Judges. However, she achieved it with the formation inheritance she received from the black rock. Not only were the Nephilic Judges fighting hard against the immortal-level rank-9 triple mutated monster, but they had also completely oppressed the monster. In less than ten minutes, this triple mutated monster that was just slightly less powerful than Kylie was killed on the spot. It did not manage to fight back even once from the beginning until the end. Not a single Nephilic Judge was harmed. "If it were me, I might have needed two to three hours to kill this monster" Kylie watched everything above the battlefield. The triple mutated monster that died was powerful, but the formation the Nephilic Judges came up with was even more domineering. As her mind wandered off for a moment, Kylie suddenly noticed something happening among the Nephilic Judges. There was a glaring white glow kindling within an immortal-level rank-7 Nephilic Judge. Other Nephilic Judges moved away and watched what was happening curiously. Kylie was shocked to see threads coming out of the white glow gradually and wrap around the Nephilic Judge slowly. "Is it going to perform a triple mutation?!" Meanwhile, Lin Huang who was thousands of kilometers away watched the scene through Bloody''s projection. "They''d be an invincible army if more than 300 Nephilic Judges complete the triple mutation at once!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up as he watched. "The last hit was performed by this Nephilic Judge that''s going through the mutation now," Bloody narrated its observation. "So, do you mean these Nephilic Judges will mutate automatically as soon as they kill a triple mutation monster?" Lin Huang raised his brows. "But this isn''t the first triple mutated monster that Kylie''s army has killed. Am I right?" "The monster that''s just been killed is a spirit type monster. Maybe it''s related to that," Bloody speculated. "So, it''s similar to the terms of Kylie''s evolution back then. It''s just that the condition to elevate their combat strength is stricter now," Lin Huang mumbled softly, "The monster the Nephilic Judges kill must be triple mutated dark creatures. Nephilic Judges would''ve to complete the trial on the monster that suits the conditions for the elevation to happen." As he had no bond with these Nephilic Judges, Lin Huang could not see their specific information. He had to speculate about most things. "This is just a speculation for now, but we can get Kylie to lead them and test that out," Bloody suggested. "Tell Kylie then. If she still has full control over these Nephilic Judges after they''ve elevated, then let her do it. If these Nephilic Judges will provoke her power after they''ve elevated, there''s no need for them to elevate." Lin Huang made up his mind decisively. Even though the elevation of the Nephilic Judges would make them a powerful army, Lin Huang hoped that it would not turn into grave trouble. If Kylie was unable to control such a powerful army, it would mean that these elevated Nephilic Judges would rebel anytime and turn into her enemies. Such tremendous power would become disastrous as soon as they came together and might even be used by other organizations. It would be better if they were smothered in the cradle before a disaster happened. 828 Pseudo Mythical-level Card The moonlight was shining brightly late at night. There were two powerful aurae colliding into each other repetitively above a lake in the second layer of the Abyss Brink. Many of them who had been to the Abyss Brink would know the name of the lake - Black Water Lake. Due to the existence of imperial-level monsters, many immortal-level human powerhouses treated this lake as a forbidden land which made it hard to discover. If anyone who learned about the lake was nearby, one glance was enough for the person to recognize the master of the lake which was fighting above the lake at the moment: the black gold-rank Devil Ray. Meanwhile, a pitch-black gigantic boa was fighting the Devil Ray at the moment. The boa was 9,000 meters long while there was a human-form monster in black armor standing steadily on its head. The monster had a faint layer of black mist surrounding its body. A similar thing was happening above a snowy area thousands of kilometers away. A gigantic boa was also carrying a black-armored monster in a human form and fighting a black gold-rank Frost Bear. However, the boa disappeared in the middle of the battle. The human-form monster with an unknown aura lingering around its body experienced a boost in its combat strength. It was elevated to crimson gold-rank. The battle turned one-sided later on. In less than three minutes, the head of the powerful Frost Bear was chopped off. Bright, red blood splashed all over from its severed neck, dyeing the snow red. It was like a red rose being painted on a piece of white paper. "Everyone has accomplished their mission in less than three days and has gone up to immortal-level rank-9," Bloody reported its observation, "Some of them even took the initiative to kill imperial-level monsters." "It''s the third day tomorrow. Should we call all of them back?" "There''s no need. Most of them are trying something new. It''s good to let them practice, but Thunder, Bloody Robe, the Malachian Fiend, and the Inferior Imp should be done having their fun. We can change the teams now." Lin Huang came up with a plan ahead. Lin Huang could not stand some of the repulsive addictions that Bloody Robe had when he teamed up with Thunder. Meanwhile, the Malachian Fiend and imp duo had the bad habit of torturing and tricking their prey. However, that was something that was planted deep in the Malachian Fiend''s bones and there was no way to eradicate it at all. Their behavior might worsen if they were ordered to stop behaving that way in the long run. All Lin Huang could do was to take the opportunity to let them release it moderately. "Is there still nothing about the crack in the world at all?" "No, my Leech Pods have spread all over the second layer of the Abyss Brink these few days, but they found nothing. Nothing odd has happened recently to the monsters that were parasitized. I''ll need more time to investigate this further." "There''s no rush. I haven''t even collected half of the spiritual energy. We''ll need to stay for three or four more days, or even longer." Getting Bai and the rest to kill in teams allowed them to obtain Life Power and, on the other hand, obtain spiritual energy to fill the God''s Figurine in his body. "Bai and the rest have killed at least over 300 monsters these few days whereby the lowest combat strength of the monsters was immortal-level rank-9. How come you haven''t collected the full spiritual energy? Is the conversion rate very low?" Bloody could not help but ask. "Yes, even with the God''s Figurine protection, the spiritual energy needs to be filtered by the Divine Fire. The spiritual energy''s conversion success rate is less than 1%." Lin Huang looked helpless as he spoke. "But that''s not entirely bad. At least, the converted spiritual energy will be extremely pure and won''t be affected by the Divine Fire again." The third night was the due date of the mission Lin Huang had assigned to them. All of them thought that the time given was too short and they were not done having fun. Initially, they had accepted this mission for the junk food reward or other things that they desired. However, without Lin Huang by their side for the past few days, almost all of them unleashed their true monster characters. When Bloody sent Lin Huang''s order across for them to continue with the killing through his Leech Pods, Tyrant and the rest almost cheered. However, some of them were unhappy, including Thunder, Bloody Robe, the Malachian Fiend, and the Inferior Imp. After recalling the four of them into cards, Lin Huang summoned the Herculean King, Bing Wang, Killer and the Evil Dominator. Killer and the Evil Dominator were two pseudo-mythical-level monsters, and it was the first time Lin Huang had summoned them. They teamed up with Bing Wang and the Herculean King to begin a new round of killing. Lin Huang had been watching the two teams as he was worried. However, the truth revealed that his concern was unnecessary as the two pseudo-mythical-level monsters were invincibly powerful. Although they only had a combat strength of immortal-level rank-7, they won the battle in less than a minute when they encountered triple mutated monsters of immortal-level rank-9. The two apes only realized that the teammates they had never met before were the real bosses after seeing them fight. "Pseudo mythical-level is so much more powerful than legendary-level. I wonder how powerful a real mythical-level Monster Card is!" Lin Huang became excited looking at the duo''s performance. The two pseudo-mythical-level monsters led the two apes and elevated to immortal-level rank-9 that night itself. The reason why the two teams had such high efficiency was that the two pseudo-mythical-level monsters would cripple the prey since they advanced to immortal-level rank-9. Then, they would get the two apes to kill them directly. Ever since they got to immortal-level rank-9, Killer and the Evil Dominator brought their burden along to fight imperial-level monsters. If they were in other teams, the two apes might have been able to share the responsibility and be of great help. However, in the shadow of these two pseudo-mythical-level bosses, the two apes had no opportunity to fight at all. They ended up being their transportation vehicles and would sometimes cheer for them. "The Herculean King and Bing Wang seemed to be treated as transportation vehicles now. They hardly get out to move around, these poor babies" Even Bloody could not take it any longer. As opposed to the two Dark Crescent Snakes which had the opportunity to fight with the Knights, the two apes completely became benchwarmers. "It''s my fault. I miscalculated the two pseudo mythical-level monsters'' abilities. I should''ve paired the two apes up instead while letting Killer and the Evil Dominator be on the same team." Lin Huang was not sure to laugh or to cry. "The only thing I can do is to make up with free time for the Herculean King and Bing Wang next time." Time flew by and soon three days passed. The spiritual energy of the three God''s Figurine in Lin Huang''s body had been finally filled to the amount he expected. Bai and the rest killed tens of black gold-rank monsters throughout the past few days. There were not many imperial-level monsters on the entire second level of the Abyss Brink, let alone black gold-rank monsters. The news of a massive amount of black gold-rank monsters being killed was spread a few days ago, so many of the black gold-rank monsters hid. However, Bloody found most of them while a handful of them ran to the third level of the Abyss Brink. Since that was the case, Bai and the rest could only hunt for immortal-level rank-9 monsters which were abundant in the Abyss Brink. Meanwhile, Killer and the Evil Dominator challenged a crimson gold-rank monster each which ended up to be a tie. They then retreated respectively. Later on, the two pseudo-mythical-level monsters proceeded to challenge more crimson gold-rank monsters. They won some and lost some, but did not manage to kill any. The two apes, on the other hand, were put into a team when the two pseudo-mythical-level monsters were challenging their first crimson gold-rank monster. They proceeded to kill immortal-level rank-9 monsters. Among the nine sword servants that Lancelot was leading, three of them completed triple mutation. Meanwhile, on Kylie''s side, only 16 monsters completed triple mutation. The truth proved that Nephilic Judges would really have to go through a trial to advance into triple mutated Nephilic Angels. However, the success rate of elevation was less than 10%. Too many things had happened throughout the past three days, but Bloody had yet to find anything about the crack in the world. Lin Huang even began to suspect the new crack might not be on this level. "If the imperial-level skinless monster managed to pass through the crack, it proves that the crack must either be on the second or third level of the Abyss Brink. The reason being that there''s a limitation on the first level whereby imperial-levels can''t enter. Now that we can''t find it on the second level, the only possibility is that the new crack''s on the third level." "Please give me two more days. Let me look for it thoroughly one more time." Bloody refused to give up. At midnight of the fourth day, Bloody exclaimed out of nowhere, "I''ve found it!" 829 Flat-Chested like a Boy "Found it!" Bloody finally managed to find the new crack after it looked around. Lin Huang was shocked as it projected the scene monitored by the Leech Pods. "Isn''t that the crack that we discovered earlier? Is the seal no longer working?!" The location displayed on the screen was the crack Lin Huang had discovered in a cave a few months back. The wall looked exactly the same. Right at this moment, the black mist was coming out from the purple-black crack as if it was alive, spreading out from the fissure. "It''s not because the seal is no longer working. Instead, the second crack was found in the same position," Bloody said, projecting an image. "This is the photo I captured earlier. You can compare them." "It seems like there are some cracks that look different over there." Lin Huang could immediately recognize the differences between them. "That''s not the point," Bloody explained, "If you were to look at it carefully, you should realize that the crack initially looks like a huge spider web. The additional crack is just another spider web. The new spider web is a new channel and it''s completely different from the seal that you discovered a few months ago." After listening to Bloody''s explanation, Lin Huang soon realized that it was correct. The new crack seemed to be overlaid with the original crack. One would feel that the original crack was spreading, which was not true. Just like what Bloody said, there were two spiders forming two spider webs that were completely different in the same position. "I didn''t discover it earlier as there used to be a crack over there. I didn''t pay close attention to it. Until today, the black mist was released from the crack. Only then did I notice that something was wrong." Bloody had put a lot of effort into looking for the crack. It did not expect it to be the one. "I felt the same too. I thought there was something wrong with the seal. After observing it carefully, I noticed that it''s a new channel created after the previous channel was sealed." "Let''s go there and have a look." Lin Huang immediately flew into the sky, heading towards the cave where the Devil''s Psykid had been a few months ago. It took him more than an hour to reach there. He then immediately recorded the latest situation of the new crack in the cave with his Emperor''s Heart Ring as well as capturing some high-definition images. It was about 2 a.m. now after getting all this done. "Bloody, you may stay at the Abyss Brink and monitor the killing process of Bai and the rest. I have somewhere else to go." Lin Huang immediately gave new instructions as he got out of the cave. The Emperor''s Heart Ring had no network connection and signal in the Abyss Brink, so Lin Huang had to leave the Abyss Brink if he wanted to send the message. Lin Huang immediately strode into it after activating his dimensional portal. Bloody waited at the entrance of the cave where the crack was, patiently waiting for Lin Huang to return. As he passed through the entrance of the Abyss Brink, Lin Huang immediately sent the videos and photos he recorded in the cave to Yao Lan and dialed her number as well. Lin Huang did not know many people in Division 3. Yao Lan was royalty and also the member of the Adventurer''s Paradise. In addition to her previous task being related to the crack in the world, Lin Huang had thought of her in the first place. It was about 2 a.m. now. However, Lin Huang''s video call request was answered in just a heartbeat. "Why are you disrupting my sleep in the middle of the night?!" As soon as Yao Lan''s voice was heard, Lin Huang could see from the video that the room was brightly lit and Yao Lan had just gotten up from her bed. Her upper body was exposed outside the blanket and she was naked "Ah!!!" Seeing that the person in the video call was Lin Huang, Yao Lan was shocked. Soon, she heard an ear-piercing scream. She immediately grabbed the blanket to cover her body and wrapped herself tightly in the blanket. Not even her neck could be seen. She then shifted her gaze towards Lin Huang. "Lin Xie, what did you see?" "No, I didn''t see anything," Lin Huang answered innocently with his palms up. "You did!" "I saw nothing for real" Lin Huang mumbled, "You''re flat-chested like a boy. What can I see?" "What did you say?!" Yao Lan heard it clearly and she got even angrier. "I didn''t say anything. I have something serious to tell you." Lin Huang immediately changed the topic. "It''s 2 a.m. now and you''re making a video call. Do you think that I''m that close to you?!" "There''s another crack that''s appeared at the second layer of the Abyss Brink." Lin Huang knew very well that there was no need to continue the conversation with her, so he went straight to the point. "I''ve just sent the videos and photos to you. Have a look first." Yao Lan was stunned. She rolled her eyes at Lin Huang then tapped the images open and videos. She frowned. "Isn''t the position similar to the one discovered earlier? Was it unsealed?" "It''s the same position, but it''s a different crack." Lin Huang shared Bloody''s observation, "You''ll know once you compare it to the photo that was taken previously." "I got it. I''ll check whether if it''s true later. If it is, I''ll make a report immediately." Yao Lan nodded her head. Just as she was about to hang up the call, a question ran through her mind. "Why did you go back to the cave?" "I''m hunting for monsters. I went back to the cave to have a look since I was nearby. I then saw what was captured in the videos and photos." It was impossible for Lin Huang to tell Yao Lan that he had killed an imperial-level monster and had gotten the clue from the monster. Therefore, he then lied to her. "Can you please tell a more plausible lie?" Yao Lan knew that he was lying. "I''m telling the truth. Let it be if you don''t trust me." Lin Huang shrugged his shoulders. "I''m not going to trust you." Yao Lan knew that she would not find anything out from him and did not bother talking nonsense to him any longer. She then hung up the call. Lin Huang grinned after she hung up the video call. "She''s really flat-chested like a boy" Lin Huang did not go to the cave after he returned to the Abyss Brink. He recalled Bloody instead and did not meet Yao Lan as well. One of the reasons was that the flat-chested lady would get him into trouble. Another reason was that when he last met her, he was only on crimson flame-level. His combat strength had leveled up to immortal-level rank-3 in less than half a year. Such an upgrade was unusual. The crack in the world was found and he had informed the person-in-charge as well. Lin Huang had basically completed his task at the Abyss Brink. "The last thing to do now is to obtain the cross-ranking reward!" Lin Huang had gathered 30 cross-ranking rewards from immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3. Since he had used the Combat Strength Upgrade Card, the system did not consider the imperial-level skinless monster that Lin Huang killed a few days ago as a cross-ranking kill. Otherwise, there would be 29 cross-ranking rewards remaining. "My combat strength is now on immortal-level rank-3. It belongs to beginner-level immortal-level. My combat strength can still be upgraded to black gold-rank if I were to combine the Knight and Integration skills." Xiao Hei had given a detailed explanation regarding the upgrade in combat strength when the Knight and Integration skills were activated. For a beginner-level immortal-level, authority would be restricted to black gold-rank. Despite achieving immortal-level rank-3 whereby Lin Huang''s body could barely manage to withstand the combat strength of crimson gold-rank, the level of authority he had would not change. Only an immortal-level rank-4 to rank-6 would be granted the authority of crimson gold-rank. "I suppose yellow gold-rank is sufficient to perform a cross-ranking kill since the second layer of the Abyss Brink can only bear monsters of yellow gold-rank. The efficiency of killing them will be increased if Killer and the Evil Dominator are summoned." Lin Huang pieced his plan together and soon, he decided his first hunting target. "The first monster to kill is the Rakshasa Mother. It''s never too late for revenge. It seems like it''s been less than half a year since I last came." 830 It’s Never Too Late for Revenge Lin Huang encountered the Rakshasa Mother when he entered the Abyss Brink for the first time to hunt for the Devil''s Psykid. The Devil''s Psykid was the Rakshasa Mother''s adopted son. After Lin Huang killed it, he was attacked by the Rakshasa Mother. The Rakshasa Mother''s clone chased after him until he escaped to the first layer of the Abyss Brink. Finally, Lin Huang managed to kill its clone with his God Crasher. As the saying went, every dog had its day. Lin Huang was going to take revenge that day. Along with the Regal Sword Killer and the Evil Dominator, Lin Huang rode on Charcoal''s back and arrived at the Rakshasa Mother''s lair. "It''s you!" The Rakshasa Mother saw Lin Huang from afar and could recognize him at first glance. Less than half a year had passed. The Devil''s Psykid had been the one with the greatest potential among all its adopted sons, so of course, it could clearly remember how Lin Huang looked like since he had murdered the Devil''s Psykid. "It seems like you can still remember me, Rakshasa Mother." Lin Huang lowered his head, shifting his gaze towards the Rakshasa Mother in its red robe. Catching a glimpse of Lin Huang, the Rakshasa Mother soon noticed Charcoal and the two pseudo-mythical-levels. Seemingly, she did not notice anything special about the Regal Sword Killer and the Evil Dominator. Soon, it shifted its focus back to Lin Huang. "There are three triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters and a dragonkin. It''s a solid combination, but their combat strength is rather weak. Human brat, do you think that you''re capable of fighting me with your three little monster pets? I have to admit that you''re too na?ve and a little cute." The Rakshasa Mother stood about 1.8 meters tall in its red robes. It had a curvy body and was extremely seductive. It was beautiful and it spoke like a human. However, Lin Huang knew that the monster could disguise itself as any female creature it had ever seen. Only when it was emotionally aroused or engaged in a fight would it reveal its true self. It had a green, ghastly face with fangs. One would not describe it as beautiful at all. "You''ll know soon enough whether if I''m capable of fighting you or not." After uttering those words, Lin Huang''s Knight skill was activated. Charcoal and his combat strength immediately grew to black gold-rank. The Rakshasa Mother was surprised by what unfolded before it. "It''s indeed a great skill to level up straight away from immortal-level rank-3 to black gold-rank. However, if that''s your trump card, perhaps you won''t even have a chance to run away later." "I''m an imperial-level rank-3 on yellow gold-rank. If you were to ask for help from three monsters on crimson gold-rank, you might get me into trouble. At least, you''d have a higher chance of running away. However, since this is the case, the four of you came to me by yourself and you''re going to be my snack. Hmm, I can imagine that you''re going to be delicious," the Rakshasa Mother cackled, licking its lips. "It still remains unknown who''s the one who has to be extra careful." Lin Huang did not want to talk nonsense to it. After sending a message via his mind, Charcoal was the first one to launch an attack. It opened its mouth wide, black dragon flames beginning to gush out of its mouth and covering an area with a circumference that spanned tens of kilometers in an instant. "You''ve destroyed my lair. You''re digging your own grave!" Along with the yell, dragon flames spat out of the Rakshasa Mother''s mouth. Its entire body was covered by a layer of red Life Power. Seemingly, it could defend itself against flames to a certain degree as it did not seem to be injured by the dragon flames. Its once pretty face turned green with fangs while two glimmers of bluish green light glowed in its eyes. Just as the dragon flames struck, the Rakshasa Mother immediately flew up into the sky, pouncing towards Lin Huang and Charcoal. Right at that moment, a shadow appeared in front of it abruptly. Before the Rakshasa Mother could figure out who was blocking its way, a black sword glow flashed in the air. The sword glow streaked across the sky and spanned hundreds of meters, resembling a gulf that blocked the Rakshasa Mother''s way. Sensing the danger coming from the sword glow, the Rakshasa Mother''s flaming eyes dilated. "That''s incredible!" It did not dare to fight it straight away. Pointing its finger at the crack in the air that was tens of meters long, it instantly collided with the gulf-like black sword glow. A snap was heard. Soon after, the crack and the sword glow collapsed at almost the same time. Just as the Rakshasa Mother appeared again, another sword glow that looked exactly the same struck from behind. Even Lin Huang was startled. Two Regal Sword Killers blocked the Rakshasa Mother''s way. One of them came from the front whereas the other came from behind. They looked exactly the same. However, Lin Huang soon figured out what was happening now. The Evil Dominator had transformed itself into the Regal Sword Killer. Lin Huang could still remember that one of the skills possessed by the Evil Dominator was called Evil Blood Substitute. As long as it managed to obtain one drip of its target''s drop of blood, it could create a clone that looked exactly the same as its target. Also, it could perfectly duplicate all the abilities of its target. Even if the substitute was killed, it would not die. It could still create another clone and continue the battle. It was apparent that it had borrowed blood from the Regal Sword Killer, creating a clone that looked exactly the same as the latter and perfectly inherited the Regal Sword Killer''s abilities. The Regal Sword Killer itself was shocked when it saw what just happened. The Rakshasa Mother felt that it was facing difficulties that it had never encountered before after being attacked by the two Regal Sword Killers. It used to think that they were only on immortal-level rank-9. Despite the fact that they were triple mutated monsters with special bloodlines in their body, it would be amazing if their abilities were on par with a black gold-rank''s. However, it seemed like the two monsters were of crimson gold-rank. "Have the two of you Gone through deification?!" The Rakshasa Mother exclaimed. A deified monster was a monster that had gone through its fourth mutation. "No. We''re just halfway through deification," Killer admitted its weakness. The Evil Dominator then continued, "Otherwise, I''d be able to kill you on my own." In fact, if Killer and the Evil Dominator were not of pseudo-mythical-level but true mythical-level, Lin Huang would have been unable to summon them with his current level of authority. The Rakshasa Mother was slightly relieved. However, it began to have its guard up and staying aware of Lin Huang who had yet to fight. It knew that since Lin Huang was capable of taming the two monsters, his abilities could probably be much stronger than the monsters. Still, Lin Huang who was in mid-air did not launch an attack. He could tell that the Rakshasa Mother had not given its all yet. It was still capable of fighting the three of them. Occasionally, it managed to strike out at the two Regal Sword Killers as well as fighting Charcoal. The intense battle lasted for about half an hour. However, no flaw was found in the Rakshasa Mother''s attack. Lin Huang knew that it was meaningless if he were to continue waiting. He then brandished his sword, unleashing his Thunder Sting. It was an extremely quick attack and was more than 10 times quicker than Killer''s maximum speed. His sword appeared right in front of the Rakshasa Mother at almost the same time when he wielded his sword. The Rakshasa Mother was unable to defend against it in time. It moved its body slightly, attempting to dodge the attack. However, it was unable to act as fast as Lin Huang''s sword. Despite not being annihilated by the attack, a wound that was about 10 centimeters long was formed on the right side of its waist. One could even see its internal organs through its wound. He joined the battle with a powerful offense, severely injuring the Rakshasa Mother in just one hit. One must not underestimate the injury caused by an expert-grade demigod relic. Lin Huang did not hold back against his opponent. He did not even give the Rakshasa Mother a chance to breathe. The second attack was then launched. The Rakshasa Mother felt a strong sense of doom advancing towards it. Withstanding the pain coming from its wound, it attempted to flee. However, it was blocked by Killer and the next attack struck it. Again, the black sword glow streaked across the sky. It clenched its teeth, extending its claws and pouncing towards Killer. It knew that Lin Huang''s attack would be much scarier. At that second, the Evil Dominator stealthily attacked from the side. The sword shot out rapidly like a crescent moon. There was nowhere else for the Rakshasa Mother to dodge and another wound formed on the left side of its torso. The injury was less serious than the one caused by Lin Huang. Still, blood dripped out of its wound. The Rakshasa Monster covered its wound with its left hand, glaring at Lin Huang and the rest with a stone cold expression on its face. She had been struck by two consecutive attacks. She knew that she might not have the chance to use her trump card any longer if she did not use it now. Before Lin Huang made his third attack, it summoned its trump card. A bloody red Life Palace appeared.It''s called deification here instead of mythical. Mythical-level refers to the level of a card. For example, a triple mutated monster is of legendary-level but going through three mutations is known as the ultimate mutation. 831 Die, Rakshasa Mother! The Life Palace lingering in mid-air looked like an ordinary house. It had a red roof and white walls that seemed completely new. The wooden door of the house was automatically activated right with the arrival of the Life Palace and humanoid monsters then strode out of the door. The most surprising fact was that all the monsters looked like 15-year-old teenagers. There were thousands of monsters like this and the one with the weakest combat strength was on immortal-level rank-9. The one with the strongest combat strength was on crimson gold-rank, placing next to the Rakshasa Mother. However, there was only a small number of imperial-level; there were three of them. There were two crimson gold-ranks and a black gold-rank. The rest of the immortal-level rank-9s had just completed their double mutation. They must be the Rakshasa Mother''s adopted children. Oddly, their bodies did not exude the aura of a living creature. "Kill all of them!" The humanoid monsters immediately pounced towards Lin Huang and the three monsters after receiving the instruction from the Rakshasa Mother. "Charcoal!" Lin Huang was not afraid of being outnumbered by his opponents. With Charcoal''s dragon flames, as long as their combat strength was weak enough, it was just a waste of effort regardless of the number of opponents. As an advanced dragonkin that had completed its third mutation, its dragon flames would rip off the skin of the triple mutated monsters of the same rank, let alone those that were weaker in combat strength. Charcoal was now on black gold-rank. When he encountered the double mutated immortal-level rank-9s, they would turn into ashes in less than a minute if they were tainted by its dragon flames. There would be no exception. Upon receiving the instruction, dragon flames then gushed out of Charcoal''s mouth. The ocean of black flames instantly engulfed the thousands of monsters summoned by the Rakshasa Mother. The two teenagers on crimson gold-rank managed to break through the dragon flames and fought the two Regal Sword Killers. Lin Huang smirked as he looked at the Rakshasa Mother. "It seems like your troops made of your children are going to die soon." "Don''t count your eggs before they hatch!" The Rakshasa Mother did not look nervous at all. At that moment, Lin Huang heard Charcoal whisper, "They have a tremendously terrifying recovery ability. Their recovery rate is on par with the speed that my dragon flames can harm them." Lin Huang''s vision penetrated through the dragon flames with his ocular skill and he could see how the humanoid monsters looked. Charcoal''s dragon flames had destroyed their bodies at a speed visible to the naked eye. At the same time, their body recovered rapidly as well. It looked like the effect of Divine Regeneration. "I guess it''s not Divine Regeneration or any regeneration type skill. That''d consume an extremely large portion of Life Power. Their Life Power is in its active state and still at its peak condition. There are no signs of their Life Power weakening." Lin Huang felt that it was suspicious. "Moreover, Divine Regeneration is an extremely rare secret skill. It''s impossible for thousands of monsters to possess such a secret skill." "It seems like you''ve found out." The Rakshasa Mother noticed Lin Huang''s facial expression as she smirked. "My children are immortal. Regardless of the way you use to harm them, they''ll be able to recover on their own in an instant." "This is the effect of your Life Palace." Lin Huang soon understood after listening to the Rakshasa Mother. "You made the right guess!" The Rakshasa Mother clapped its hands and laughed. "The power of my Life Palace is called ''mother''s love''. As long as my children are cultivated by my Life Palace, they''ll be protected by their mother''s love. No matter what injury it is, they''ll instantly be nurtured by their mother''s love. Therefore, my children will never be killed. Are you feeling disappointed now? Your Life Power will eventually be drained. I''m still going to be the winner!" "I have to admit that the ability of your Life Palace is immensely strong and you''ve got a sound plan. However, you didn''t realize that you''re the weakest link in your entire plan. As long as you die, all the little monsters that have been assimilated by your Life Palace will immediately perish." Lin Huang grasped the key point. "Then, let''s see if your dragonkin is capable of killing me before its Life Power is depleted. How long can the spitting of its dragon flames last? Is it three minutes or five?" The Rakshasa Mother grinned evilly. "The only thing that I need to do is to wait until the exhaustion of its Life Power. My children will be able to get rid of its dragon flames then." "Trust me. You''ll never be able to wait until its Life Power is depleted." Lin Huang did not bother to explain any further as he encountered another opponent that mistakenly estimated the timing of the dragon flames. With his black gold-rank combat sword in hand, he brandished his sword with his fastest skill, Thunder Sting. His legendary-level sword skill, Star Dome, was used as an outline and the pseudo-mythical-level Almighty Surgical Knife was the core of the skill. There were also hundreds of human and monster sword skills being integrated as the basis of the skill. His Level-5 sword realm would play a leading role. The modified Thunder Sting could never be compared to an ordinary epic-level sword skill. Thunder Sting maximized the speed of the sword attack. Each attack was unleashed at lightning-fast speed. The attack struck just as he brandished his sword. The same thing happened to the yellow gold-rank Rakshasa Mother as well. It was unable to capture the entire process when Lin Huang advanced. It could see that him brandishing his sword. In the next moment, it appeared right in front of it and his black gold-rank combat sword then struck it. It attempted to block the attack with its claws. In mid-air, ten black claws hindered the attack from the black sword that looked like a crescent moon. Right at this moment, tens of daggers shot out of Lin Huang''s sleeve, streaking across the sky. The daggers then made their way through the Rakshasa Mother''s arms and crushed its vital parts. The Rakshasa Mother''s pupils dilated. The attack was out of its expectations. It stomped hard and immediately retreated as its body made several turns in the air and managed to avoid most of the attacks. Still, a few of the daggers managed to penetrate through its body. Lin Huang did not give it any chance to rest. Before it could balance itself, his Thunder Sting was unleashed again. It appeared right in front of the Rakshasa Mother in a flash. The Rakshasa Mother felt a strong sense of doom as it was struck by the attack. It retreated again and the wounds on its body did not have time to heal. Lin Huang flourished his sword which sliced at the Rakshasa Mother like tarsal bone maggots. The Rakshasa Mother extended its claws and collided with his sword. A loud clang was heard and the aftershock of the collision spread throughout an area that was tens of kilometers away. Lin Huang took a step in the air and chased after it. Both of them then pursued each other and the battle lasted for about ten minutes. The Rakshasa Mother was severely injured. However, Charcoal''s Life Power had not been drained yet and its children had no way to get rid of the dragon flames. Lin Huang did not expect the Rakshasa Mother to withstand the attack for so long. It was just trying to dodge Lin Huang''s attack, not initiating any attack at all because it wanted to drag the battle on. However, it never knew that with the condition that Lin Huang and Charcoal could both share their Life Power, it would be impossible to drain Charcoal''s Life Power. Its Life Power would never be emptied despite spitting dragon flames for three days and three nights. The Rakshasa Mother that was severely injured withstood the attack for ten minutes and it seemed to have reached its limit. "How could it be? Why can''t it use up its Life Power?" "There''s something that I forgot to tell you." Lin Huang grinned as the Rakshasa Mother mumbled. "Charcoal is rather special as its Life Power can never be drained. It can continue spitting dragon flames for three days and three nights. That''s why I told you that you won''t have the chance to wait until its Life Power is depleted." The Rakshasa Mother was stunned. Although it did not completely believe what Lin Huang said, from the aura released by Charcoal, it could tell that Charcoal''s Life Power had never become weak. As the saying went, one false step might ruin you forever. The Rakshasa Mother had risked its own life because of a misjudgment. Thousands of immortal-level rank-9s and a black gold-rank were drowned in the dragon flames and they had no way of escaping. The two crimson gold-ranks were fighting the two monster pets and could hardly escape from them as well. They were unable to fight Lin Huang even if they were to fight face to face. The situation had worsened as the Rakshasa Mother was now severely wounded and had to fight Lin Huang on its own. After checking its own condition, the Rakshasa Mother pondered to itself. It decided to continue defending itself from Lin Huang''s attack while waiting for its children to escape from the dragon flames. Still, it did not believe that Charcoal''s Life Power was inexhaustible. Its heart sank as time passed. 11 minutes, 12 minutes As it reached the 16th minute, it could not hold it any longer. His Thunder Sting that was akin to a black electric glow streaked across the sky, piercing through the Rakshasa Mother''s neck. Immediately, blood began to drip out of its wound and soon, its head fell off. Blood then gushed out of its neck like a fountain, splashing all over the sky. After the Rakshasa Mother''s death, the red house lingering in mid-air broke into pieces. The body of the two crimson gold-rank monsters that fought the two Regal Sword Killers began to collapse. Besides that, the thousands of monsters that were shrouded in the dragon flames began to collapse. After a couple of moments, everything turned into ashes. Aside from the dead body of the woman with a broken head, there were only traces of blood splatter that remained 832 War Overlord Soon, three days had passed. In the past three days, Lin Huang along with Charcoal and the two pseudo-mythical-level monsters had been busy hunting for monsters. They managed to kill 30 imperial-level monsters in three days, slaughtering almost all the yellow gold-rank monsters in the second layer of the Abyss Brink. Many of the imperial-level monsters went back to the third layer of the Abyss Brink when they knew this. They were afraid that they would be involved in the slaughter. Despite Lin Huang killing all the yellow gold-rank monsters, they were completely different in terms of their strength and weaknesses. The first Rakshasa Mother killed was not considered weak in terms of its overall ability. Among the 30 yellow gold-rank monsters, it was moderately competent. Its Life Palace was indeed strong but had been restricted by Charcoal. However, its ability was considered the worst among the rest of the yellow gold-ranks. Lin Huang managed to kill most of the 30 yellow gold-rank monsters within an hour. It even took him less than half an hour for some of them. However, as for those that were extraordinarily strong, Lin Huang spent more than three hours destroying them. One of the most difficult monsters to handle was a humanoid monster called the War Overlord. It was a mechanical monster with an appearance that looked like a black metallic egg about one meter in diameter. Although it looked ordinary, its overall ability was immensely powerful to the point that Lin Huang used up all his trump cards. Under the condition where he was not allowed to use any cards, Lin Huang had no choice but to kill it with a God Crasher. It was also the monster that took Lin Huang the longest time to kill at exactly 6.5 hours. During the fight, Lin Huang was overwhelmed by a few of the skills possessed by the War Overlord. One of them was the grandmaster-level Mechanical Building. This skill enabled the use of a variety of materials to build a mechanical weapon with the best function and quality in an instant. Another skill was known as the grandmaster-level Mechanical Recovery. The skill was capable of recovering all the weapons destroyed in an instant, transforming back into its raw materials so that they could be reused for a mechanical building. There was also the Dimensional Shift which was somewhat similar to Kylie''s teleportation. However, it was not a space warp. It was short-distance teleportation, creating an effect similar to the space warp although it was unable to create an energy wave in the space. Another one was the ability of its Life Palace, the Intellectual Territory. All the mechanical weapons within this territory possessed an intelligence that could be compared to humans. They would automatically strike an attack and defend against their enemy, judging the right timing during a battle like an army. Lin Huang felt that he was fighting a fort that could move. Most of the time he seemed to be playing kites as he had to attack from afar. There had been many times when Lin Huang was very close to his opponent, but it managed to flee with its teleportation and distance itself from Lin Huang. Nobody could approach it. Fortunately, Lin Huang''s Dark Mirror had the ability to defend and reflect. Moreover, his Life Power was supported by his Divine Fire and would not be exhausted. Eventually, he still had to use his God Crasher and kill his opponent when it was unaware of him. He was lucky though as the War Overlord with the strongest overall ability was the only monster card through which Lin Huang obtained a complete set among the 30 king-level monsters. "Monster Card: Unnamed "Rarity: Legendary "Monster Name: War Overlord "Type of Monster: Mechanical type "Combat Level: Immortal-level rank-9 (Yellow gold-rank) "Life Palace: Mechanical Territory "Major: Mechanics "Major Skills: Mechanical Building (Grandmaster-level), Mechanical Recovery (Grandmaster-level) "Minor Skills: Dimensional Shift, Gunmaster, Defensive Fort "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Intensive training is recommended!" As soon as he got the monster card, Lin Huang began to consider whether he should become a gun master. The War Overlord''s performance had simply been amazing. The monster card was a surprise to Lin Huang as he had obtained a lot of card rewards in the past three days. He performed a cross-ranking kill to kill a yellow gold-rank with a combat strength of immortal-level rank-1 to rank-3. He was rewarded 40 card draws each time. There were 30 cross-ranking kills in three consecutive days. He had used 30 Double Reward Cards and was rewarded with a total of 2,400 card draws. He had never reaped such huge rewards before this as the rewards he got covered three ranks. Aside from that, he obtained a small reward whereby 39 of Kylie''s Nephilic Judges had completed their triple mutation, evolving into six-winged Nephilic Angels. The reward Lin Huang got during his trip to the Abyss Brink was far beyond his expectations. It was in the early hours of the fourth day after killing the last yellow gold-rank monster. It was meaningless for him to stay there any longer. After telling Bai and the rest, he then recalled all the monster cards and headed towards the exit of the Abyss Brink. As he returned to the deserted city, he checked into a hotel. Lin Huang then immediately tapped open his communication page to check his messages. He had been waiting for the news of the God Figurine when he was at the Abyss Brink. However, no news came from the black market or Yi Zheng''s side. The same thing happened now. There were three missed calls from Yao Lan. There were also two unread messages from her as well. Lin Huang frowned and read the two messages. The first message was sent to him three days ago. He had informed her about the crack and she sent him a message half a day later. "I''ve seen the crack and it''s there for real. I''ve sent the videos and photos as well as a report to my superior. Someone will deal with this matter." The second message was sent to him two days ago. "The Adventurer''s Paradise and the Union Government have sent four demigods to seal the crack. At the same time, the Union Government will send investigators to each layer of the Abyss Brink to investigate whether other cracks actually exist." "Fortunately, the crack was discovered in time as it''s been formed for less than a year. The Union Government is going to reward you and you can probably choose a demigod relic. However, I''ve not been able to reach you in the last few days. Let me know what you want and I''ll pass the message on to the person-in-charge. Please reply me as soon as possible." Lin Huang''s eyes brightened after reading the second message. "I wonder if I can get a God Figurine. It''d be amazing if I can exchange for one." As he thought of this, he immediately replied Yao Lan with a short message. "The reward I want is pretty simple. I want a God Figurine." "What''s a God Figurine?" Yao Lan replied within seconds. "Please keep it a secret. Just inform the Union Government that this is what I want. I guess they''d know what I''m looking for." Yao Lan then replied with an eye-rolling emoji instantly. Lin Huang grinned as he closed the communication page. "If the Union Government agrees to reward me with a God Figurine, that''d be great. I can then level up to mid-level immortal-level. The combat strength of Bai and the rest will also be upgraded to black gold imperial-level. My overall abilities will have a substantial increase. If they don''t agree to do so, I can make another reasonable request" 833 Non-Elemental Life Palace Now that it was the end of September, the weather in the deserted city had turned cold. Early in the morning, the sun was high in the sky. It felt warm as the sun shone down. It was the second day since Lin Huang had come back from the Abyss Brink. He had been really tired in the past few days and he woke up at about 8 a.m. today. After washing up, Lin Huang immediately changed his clothes, sitting on the sofa in the living room without having his breakfast. He suddenly had three additional monster cards in hand: Killer, the Evil Dominator, and the War Overlord that had not been named. Due to the fact that his summoning authority had previously been limited, Lin Huang was unable to extract the skills of the two pseudo-mythical-level monsters. He could now extract the skill together with the War Overlord''s skill that he had just obtained. Lin Huang showered early in the morning in anticipation that the skill would be randomly extracted for the first time. He began to extract the skills before having his breakfast with the hopes that he could pick a good one. He somewhat had to believe in spirituality as it might probably work. He closed his eyes, calming himself down. Then, he slowly opened his eyes. "Xiao Hei, extract all three skills at once." "Skill extraction activated Randomly choosing a skill Random selection has completed! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a skill C Mechanical Recovery (War Overlord) "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a skill C Sword Realm (Killer) "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a skill C Super Clone (the Evil Dominator) "Mechanical Recovery It seems like I can only extract Mechanical Building as the second skill. Without Mechanical Building, this skill can only be used to recover equipment to become raw materials," Lin Huang thought to himself when he saw the skill extracted from the War Overlord. "I guess Sword Realm can integrate with my territorial skill." Lin Huang then looked at the last skill. "Super Clone. Although it''s just a minor non-combat skill, it isn''t weak. Seemingly, it''s possible to easily integrate it with Super Disguise. However, nobody knows what the new Skill Card that will be produced is after combining them" The three randomly selected skills were not what Lin Huang wanted. However, they were not weak. Taking out three Skill Extraction Cards, Lin Huang specified the skill to be extracted for the second time without hesitation. "Xiao Hei, I want to extract Mechanical Building from the War Overlord, Killer''s Sword from Killer, and the Evil Dominator''s Evil Blood Substitute." "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a skill C Mechanical Building (War Overlord) "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a skill C Killer (Killer) "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a skill C Evil Blood Substitute (Evil Dominator)" Mechanical Building was being selected as it paired perfectly with Mechanical Recovery. Having had great interest in gunfighting, Lin Huang was actually quite interested in the War Overlord''s set of skills. He thought to himself, "After obtaining the two core skills from the War Overlord, I can now figure out how they can be played Eh, no. I mean figure out a brand new battle mode." As for Killer, it was the Regal Sword Killer''s strongest sword skill where it was on pseudo-mythical-level. Choosing this skill was like learning a pseudo-mythical-level sword skill from scratch without wasting any time. The Evil Blood Substitute was rather different from the Golden Cicada secret skill. Without killing anybody, a clone could be created with a mere drop of blood. Its advantage was that it was extremely easy to be used. However, its weakness was that the clone could only exist for 24 hours. As for the Golden Cicada secret skill, the created clone could exist forever as long as it was not murdered and could be summoned at any time. "Xiao Hei, activate Skill Combination Card." "Skill Combination Card activated. "Choose from the below two combinations. "Combine Territorial Skills: Sword Realm, Exclusive Territory "Combine Minor Skills: Super Clone, Super Disguise "Are you sure you want to combine them?" "Please do." Lin Huang nodded. "Skill Combination Card has been consumed. Monster Skills Sword Realm and Exclusive Territory have been consumed. Producing new Skill Card "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a new card: Life Palace (Non-elemental)." "Life Palace (Non-elemental): Creates a Life Palace whereby its ability can be defined by the user. Upon confirming the ability, Life Palace will be created. "Remarks: It doesn''t affect the formation of the imperial-level Life Palace." "Skill Combination Card has been consumed. Monster Skills Super Clone and Super Disguise have been consumed. Producing new Skill Card "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a new Minor Skill Card: Perfect Disguise "Perfect Disguise: It is a flawless disguise whereby it is able to deceive those below god-level. "Remarks: Demigods who possess unique detection ability can probably see through it." "How did I just produce a non-elemental Life Palace?!" It was an unexpected surprise to Lin Huang as he used to think that there would not be a substantial change by combining the two territorial skills. Obtaining a non-elemental Life Palace could probably be Li Huang''s greatest reward in the extraction of skills. After completely forgetting that he had to christen the War Overlord, Lin Huang immediately recalled the three monster cards and tapped his personal data open. He then checked it. "Host: Lin Huang "Gender: Male "Age: 18 "Combat Strength: Immortal-Level Rank-3 "Inheritance: Demigod''s brain, One Page Sword Scripture, Sorcerer Goddess, Moon Engulf, Telekinesis "Secret Skills: Superhuman Strength, Seraphic Speed, Substitute, Engulf Power, Golden Cicada, demon hand "Life Palace: Unnamed Life Palace (Non-elemental) "Sword Dao (Level-5): Possesses Sword Heart, Sword Spirit "Sword Skills: Almighty Surgical Knife, Killer, Star Dome, Royal Sword, Wildfire, Thunder Sting, Great Sword Scripture, Hundred Flowing Blades, Mountain Blade "Gunfighting Technique: Thunderstorm, Sandstorm, Torrent "Movement Skills: Thunder Steps, Cloud Steps, Spectral Snowsteps, Imperial Flight "Minor: The Twisted Fate Scripture, Seamless, Fatal Tactic, Undefeatable Warrior, Heaven''s Wrath, Omniscient Nature "Monster Skills: Telekinesis (Pseudo), Divine Regeneration (Pseudo), Holy Power, Elemental Immunity, Leech Pods, Absolute Control, Purification Light, Revival, Warrior Body, Vampire Particles, Immense Strength, Absolute Defense, Lightning Control, Dark Mirror, Doll secret skill, Punishment, Witchcraft, Knight, Integration, Mechanical Building, Mechanical Recovery, Evil Blood Substitute, Perfect Disguise. "Summon Authority: Activated (Pseudo Mythical-Level) "Available Number of Summons: 15 "Remarks: Finally managed to be on the same level as primary school kids." The Life Palace alone was separated from the Monster Skills and did not occupy any of his Monster Skill slots. Exclusive Territory had disappeared from the secret skill as well. Killer''s Sword did not occupy any Monster Skills slots either. It was dragged to the sword skill slot instead. Super Clone that had been combined with Super Disguise had also disappeared and it was replaced by the new skill, Perfect Disguise. The remaining three monster skills had occupied three Monster Skill Slots. "What ability should I choose for the non-elemental Life Palace?" Lin Huang took a look at his exclusive card, stroking his chin and falling into deep thought.That''s right, the name of its sword skill is called Killer too. 834 Lin Huang summoned the two intelligent monsters, Bloody and Ghastly to discuss the construction of the Life Palace. According to what Lin Huang and Bloody had read and by referring to all the Life Palaces owned by the imperial-level that the three of them had encountered, it took them the entire afternoon to come up with three solutions. The first one was most people''s popular choice which was to upgrade themselves as a whole and build a Life Palace that could strengthen them in a fight. With such an elemental Life Palace, Lin Huang would become stronger regardless of the weapon he used. Be it a sword, Life Power, gun, or even mechanical skills, they could be boosted. The second one would suit Lin Huang best which was to simply build a Sword Dao Life Palace. Such an elemental Life Palace could further improve Lin Huang''s Sword Dao and upgrade Lin Huang''s abilities directly. Such an upgrade would, of course, be much stronger than the one that improved one''s ability in a fight. Furthermore, it could probably derive other abilities in his Sword Dao. The third idea was a result of the Rakshasa Mother''s Life Palace which was to structure a Life Palace that gathered all the monster cards. The Life Palace he attempted to build was the one that possessed unlimited revival ability. After all the monster cards were inserted into the Life Palace and connected to it, the spirit would return to the Life Palace on their own each time after death. They would then be revived with Life Power and could be summoned again to engage in the next fight. As long as there was sufficient Life Power, they could be revived endlessly. Lin Huang named the Life Palace Monster Paradise. Bloody had something to comment about this. "It''s a great idea. However, the ability of such a Life Palace is way too complicated. Also, the building process of the Life Palace is out of your control. It might turn out not to be the effect that you desire. I personally do think that the first two ideas are rather safe. At least, its final product won''t deviate much from the targeted one." "As for me, if there are a total of 100 marks available, the first idea would''ve failed. The second one would get a score of 70 whereas the last idea would get 99 marks." Ghastly fully supported the third idea instead. "I''m more inclined to the third one." After falling into deep thought, Lin Huang then decided, "If it turns out not to be the effect I desire, I''ll just take it as I''ve never obtained a Life Palace Card before anyway." Lin Huang then took out his Life Palace Card. "Activate Life Palace Card." "Life Palace Card (Non-elemental) activated. "Please name your Life Palace. "Monster Paradise. "Please briefly describe the ability of the Life Palace that you would like to set up in one sentence. Do not exceed 20 words." "I want my Monster Cards to have unlimited revival abilities with my Life Power." Lin Huang intentionally restricted it to his Life Power as he was afraid that during the construction of Life Palace, other types of energy would be used to revive his Monster Cards by default. They could be spiritual energy, spiritual strength, or even one''s life. All this were possibilities As for Lin Huang who possessed the Divine Fire, what he had in excess was Life Power. "The idea is verified. Beginning construction..." The Life Palace Card transformed into a golden stream and trickled into Lin Huang''s chest. After a short while, Lin Huang noticed that a golden palace had quickly formed in his body in less than an hour. As soon as the luxurious golden palace was formed, all the Monster Cards in Lin Huang''s body transformed into beams of lights and were inserted into it. Soon, the lights became real objects with monstrous physiques. In the Life Palace, a dimension that looked exactly the same as Lin Huang''s surroundings had been created. The hotel room looked exactly the same and there were buildings of different heights outside it. Even the shape of the clouds looked exactly the same The entire dimension was exactly the carbon copy of Lin Huang''s physical world. However, aside from Bai and the rest of the Monster Cards as well as some plants, there were no other creatures. Lin Huang soon discovered that there was a border in the dimension of the Life Palace. If he were the center point, the area that was three kilometers away from him was separated by an invisible, hemispherical isolation layer. Bai and the rest could look at the scenery that was three kilometers away from them. However, they were unable to leave the radius. Their movements were restricted by the isolation layer. "Perhaps this is the active range of the territory of my Life Palace." Lin Huang was not surprised by it. "As I grow stronger, the range will probably increase." "The construction of Life Palace ''Monster Paradise'' has been completed! "Life Palace: Monster Paradise. "Life Palace Ability: If the monster dies within the active range of the territory of the Life Palace, its spirit will return to the Life Palace and its body will be restructured with Life Power, completing the revival process." "Territory of Life Palace: Taking the host''s body as the center point, it will be within a three-kilometer radius (expandable). "Ability Restriction: Each monster can only be revived three times at the most within 24 hours. The spirit will immediately collapse if it exceeds three times and it will be unable to return to its Life Palace (can be trained). "Ability to Derive: None (activated for imperial-level)" The card information was soon revealed after the construction of the Life Palace. "In fact, it''s unable to have unlimited revivals.Three revivals in 24 hours are pretty decent though. The number of times can be increased later on." Lin Huang was quite satisfied with the construction of the Life Palace. He then immersed his body in his consciousness while observing the situation in the Life Palace. Bai and the rest had separated, exploring the completely new world. Although the radius in which they could move was not large, there were quite a number of houses available. It would be good for them to familiarize themselves with the environment. Just as Lin Huang was checking on his Life Palace, his Emperor''s Heart Ring suddenly vibrated. Lin Huang immediately regained his consciousness. Seeing that the caller of the video call was Yao Lan, Lin Huang knew that it was regarding the rewards dished out by the Union Government. Answering the call, Yao Lan had donned an office lady look with black-framed glasses on her nose bridge. "What is a God Figurine?" As soon as the video call was answered, Yao Lan immediately demanded. "Good afternoon," Lin Huang greeted with a smile, completely ignoring her question. "Stop interrupting me. I''m asking you what a God Figurine is." "It''s just a statue that''s used for decoration," Lin Huang answered as he raised his brows. "You lie! If you''re not telling the truth, I''m not going to give it to you." Yao Lan intimidated him with a smile. "You didn''t manage to get it, did you?" Lin Huang said confidently. "What makes you think so?" "It''s simply because right until now, you didn''t take anything out." Lin Huang remained calm. "If you''ve already gotten the God Figurine, you''d have taken it out in the first place when I answered your call. You''d show off before asking me what it actually is." "Alright, it''s true that I didn''t manage to get it. The Union Government has rejected your request. They said that the reward that you requested has exceeded what they can give and asked if you can request for something else," Yao Lan had no choice but to admit. Still, she did not give up and asked, "What is a God Figurine? I can''t seem to find anything about it online. Apparently, the information has been blocked by the Emperor''s Heart." "It''s just a unique god item. You don''t need to ask anything about it anymore. For those below demigod-level, it''s similar to an ordinary decorative item but its hardness is slightly stronger," Lin Huang briefly explained and changed the topic as he did not want to get into trouble. "Since I can request for something else, I''ll do so. I want to be granted the highest reading authority in the central library in Division 3!" 835 The Fallen God Land There were a total of 183 monsters being recorded in the True Spirit Encyclopedia. Each of them was born to be a True God. Some of them were of a higher level whereby they had immense strength to destroy everything in their adult phase. The most surprising fact was that with the visualization skill, Lin Huang only had to stare at the image of the monster for ten seconds. The image of the monster would then be created in his mind. He could visualize the growth experienced by the monster and each of its battles could clearly be seen. He was like an onlooker, watching the entire life of the monster. However, the progress of the visualization was extremely slow. The first monster he visualized was the sun tree. It took him exactly three days to visualize the germination of the sun tree seed. A sprout that was shorter than the little finger then grew. "According to my current process, I guess I''ll need to visualize for another ten years to be able to see the formation of the sun tree" Lin Huang was speechless. The visualization skill was not as simple as he thought but he did not expect it to be so difficult. "The visualization speed is related to your spiritual strength and your comprehension ability. Your comprehension ability usually won''t change much. However, your spiritual strength will grow as your combat strength becomes stronger. The stronger your spiritual strength, the faster the visualization speed will be. Therefore, you definitely don''t need to wait for ten years. I guess two to three years should be enough for you," the stone tablet explained. "If you happen to have a chance of epiphany, it''ll probably be created in less than two years." Two to three years were short to the stone tablet. It gave Lin Huang the True Spirit Encyclopedia for his long-term development instead of accomplishing it within one stroke. However, two to three years were very long to Lin Huang. After all, it had been two years since he traveled to this word from Earth. However, Lin Huang was suddenly enlightened after listening to the stone tablet. "Epiphany can speed up the process!" Exchanging ten card draws for an Epiphany Card, Lin Huang crushed the card without a moment of hesitation. Again, he began to visualize. With the effect of the Epiphany Card, Lin Huang felt that his brain seemed to have detached from his body and his mind had never been so clear before. He seemed to own the whole world and the entire growing process of the sun tree could be observed. It seemed like someone had fast-forwarded the growing process of the sun tree as well. Time passed very quickly in this dimension. In just the blink of an eye, the sun tree that was about one meter tall grew. The Life Soul in Lin Huang''s first God Figurine had completely turned into a tree with a height of one meter as well. It looked exactly the same as the tree visualized and it was surrounded by the aura of an imperial-level. Right at that moment, the effect of the Epiphany Card disappeared. Lin Huang then snapped out of his visualization. Before he could check on his body condition, Bloody''s voice was heard. "You''ve been visualizing for nine days. The reading authority that you asked Yao Lan to apply for has been approved. However, the first level of authority is only opened to you for three days and you have complete access to the second level of reading authority. She said that this is what the Union Government can do at the most. If you''re not going to accept it, you can ask for other rewards." "Also, Chan Dou from Division 1 has called you twice. He''s left a message, asking you to contact him immediately once you''re free. He didn''t tell what has actually happened." Lin Huang did not know that the epiphany would have taken so much of his time. After replying Yao Lan''s message regarding the reward, he immediately called Chan Dou''s number. As soon as the video call was answered, Chan Dou appeared, still looking the same. He was in his elegant white shirt, holding a green beverage in his hand. "Lin Xie, how long has it been since you showered? You need to shave." "I''ve been really busy these days. I immediately called you back as soon as I received your message. What happened?" Lin Huang then noticed that he did appear rather sloppy. "I heard that you''re looking for a God Figurine?" Chan Dou took a sip of his drink and asked. "How did you know that?" Lin Huang was stunned. "I have my way. I even know that you''ve bought the God Figurine sold at the Wanbao Auction," Chan Dou laughed as he said. Lin Huang frowned when he heard that. The information of the VIP members at the Wanbao Auction was supposed to be kept private. "Don''t worry. Everyone has their secrets. I''m not interested in knowing the reason why you''re looking for a God Figurine." Chan Dou knew what Lin Huang was worrying about. "I''m calling to tell you that I know there''s a place where you can probably find one." "Where?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "Fallen God Land," Chan Dou uttered. "Are you referring to the war ruins where many of the True Gods died?" Lin Huang had heard of the ruins before. It was the second largest ruins in Division 3. "Isn''t it only opened to imperial-level?" "A new crack has appeared at the Abyss Brink in Division 3 recently. Those from Division 1 and Division 2 have been investigating this issue and the crack has been discovered as well. Although we managed to seal it in time, it shows that the condition at the Abyss Brink has deteriorated. We predict that the crack will become uncontrollable within five years. However, it seems like it can''t even last for three years. "The Union Government from different divisions have been discussing this. However, they''ve not come up with a solution yet. There are a few things that have been confirmed. One of them is to train more transcendents, increasing the number of imperial-levels. Therefore, many of the sites and ruins that are only opened to imperial-level will be opened to immortal-levels and holy fire-levels too. The number of people allowed has been increased as well. "Also, the Union Government and other organizations fully support the development of the Genius Union. Aside from some of the extremely dangerous areas, we have access to almost all of the ruins and sites. Only the members from the Genius Union are given the privilege to access the sites. "The Fallen God Land in Division 3 will be activated once in 100 years. It''s now about a month away from the next opening. It''s going to be the first 7-star ruins opened to immortal-levels and holy fire-levels." The 5-star ruins could be threatening to demigod-levels and the 6-star ruins could be dangerous to Virtual Gods as well. As for the 7-star ruins, they were the sites and ruins with the highest danger level and could even be threatening to True Gods. "However, the Fallen God Land has been activated many times. It''s been explored by many imperial-levels in the past." Lin Huang was not really interested in it as the 7-star ruins were too dangerous. Moreover, the ruins had been explored by many people and the rewards were very limited. The probability of obtaining the God Figurine would be too low. "You''re wrong. The area of the Fallen God Land is extremely big. The war ruins keep on drifting in the dimension and they merge with other war pieces as they drift. The area will be expanded each time during the activation of the Fallen God Land." "Furthermore, the ruins are only opened for three months. In addition to the limited number of imperial-levels available and Division 3 not allowing people from other regions to enter, not even a fifth of the area has been explored. The area of the Fallen God Land will become larger this time and probably only a seventh or an eighth of the area has been explored," Chan Dou explained and Lin Huang began to feel excited. "So, are you asking me to go into the ruins?" "Yes, you''re right. The Heaven Alliance was given 10 quotas and I''m going to give one to you." Chan Dou placed the beverage that he was holding down and said, "One thing good about it is that your combat strength is only on holy fire-level. The imperial-level won''t fight you. The immortal-levels from other organizations won''t fight you as well. In addition to you being capable of fighting the high immortal-levels, as long as you keep a low profile when you enter the ruins, most of the enemies that you''ll encounter will be on holy fire-level. Therefore, you have a higher survival rate compared to the others." Obviously, he could not sense Lin Huang''s aura from the video call. Chan Dou thought that Lin Huang''s combat strength was still on holy fire-level since it had just been a few months since they last met on the Stairway Tree. Lin Huang did not bother to explain that his combat strength had been upgraded to immortal-level rank-3. He asked another question that he was rather interested in instead, "Who''s the most powerful person among the immortal-levels that enter the ruins?" "Why are you asking about this?" Chan Dou found it strange. "I have to run away if I happen to bump into them." Lin Huang sounded reasonable. Chan Dou was stunned. Soon, he said, "The Holy Sons from a few of the organizations are going and they''re very powerful. Although they''re the Holy Sons that have obtained a lower ranking, they''re all supreme geniuses. They''re on at least black gold-rank. The strongest one has to be the Seventh Prince. His abilities are capable of fighting a crimson gold-rank." "The one who''s capable of fighting a crimson gold-rank is only ranked seventh?!" Lin Huang was bewildered. Chan Dou and the rest who were capable of fighting crimson gold-ranks had been the Five Princes in the old days. However, since Chan Dou sounded calm, Lin Huang began to feel that his capability of killing a crimson gold-rank was merely what Chan Dou showed the others. His true abilities could be much stronger. "The dynasty is strong. Even among the underworlds in Division 1, their abilities are ranked the top 3. They''re doing pretty well in Division 2 and Division 3. Especially in Division 3, they''re undoubtedly strong. The First Prince is one of the Five Princes C Royal Infinity. "Aside from the Holy Sons like the Seventh Prince, there are also the EA.2 members from the Union Government, the Hunter King from the Hunter Association, and the Adventure King from the Adventurer''s Paradise Their abilities can be compared to the Holy Sons from the underworld. "Other than that, try to avoid the imperial-levels as well. Under normal circumstances, an imperial-level won''t bother to fight a holy fire-level. Many of them are from the underworld and some of them might have psychological problems, so they might probably fight you." "And also the demigods" Lin Huang forced a smile. "You don''t need to worry about them. The demigods aren''t going to enter the ruins since it''s less likely they''ll get an upgrade. Therefore, they gave the opportunity to the rest. Those that enter the Fallen God Land with the highest combat strength will be on purple gold-rank." "Can you please tell me who are the nine of them that will enter the ruins?" Lin Huang asked again. "It hasn''t been confirmed yet. I''ve just come up with the list, but not everyone is willing to take the risk." Chan Dou had nothing to hide. "I can now confirm that Tan Lang is going. His abilities are on par with the Seventh Prince. The rest that I''ve chosen are those with strong survival abilities and are on immortal-level rank-9." Among the three deputy chiefs of the Heaven Alliance, Tan Lang was one of them and he had the strongest abilities in the Heaven Alliance. "Is Tan Lang going to be the leader? How are we going to divide the rewards then?" Lin Huang asked realistically. "It doesn''t have to be in teams. Everyone will go by themselves. As for the rewards, they belong to the person who manages to get it. The Heaven Alliance isn''t going to divide the rewards. However, if there''s anything you want to sell, please first consider selling it internally in the Heaven Alliance." "Alright, I agree to join." Lin Huang then accepted the invitation to join. "The Fallen God Land will be activated on the first of November and the gathering point is at the Magical Sky City. You may arrange your time and don''t delay." "I got it." 836 Pre-Battle Preparation "It''ll open on 1 November and last for three months, which means it''ll be 1 February when I get out. Will I miss the New Year then?" Lin Huang checked the calendar immediately. Next to him, Bloody spoke directly, "The New Year falls on 8 February. You''ll still have time to head back to Division 7." "Alright, great." Lin Huang was relieved, but he checked the calendar anyway as he was still a little worried. He wanted to make sure that what Bloody said was accurate. After all, he had promised Lin Xin he would go home for the New Year. The girl would definitely be hopping mad if he were to miss it. "Is it already 28 September today?" Lin Huang also noticed the date shown on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "I''ve already told you that you were in an epiphany for full nine days and your body began to smell." Bloody moved a little further away while looking disgusted. Lin Huang pulled his shirt and sniffed it. "I really do." He stood up from the couch and stretched his body while his bones cracked loud and clear. He then walked toward the bathroom. After taking a shower and eating, Lin Huang returned to his room again after getting the hotel staff to clean it. In reality, the hotel staff had been wanting to go in to clean it for the past couple of days, but they had been sent away by Bloody who had disguised as Lin Huang. The reason why Lin Huang was not chased out of the hotel was that Bloody had been extending his stay for him. After returning to the hotel room, Lin Huang sat with his legs crossed on the couch again after informing Bloody. He then crushed another Epiphany Card and entered the second round of the epiphany mode. It was only a month before the opening of the Fallen God Land. He had to consolidate the combat souls as soon as possible. For the next 20 days or so, Lin Huang spent nine days consolidating the Ninetails Lynx''s combat soul and ten days consolidating the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s combat soul. At that moment, the three combat souls were formed preliminarily. All of their combat strength was on imperial-level black gold-rank. If not for the 30 imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters that were killed and allowing Bai and the rest stay for another three days in the Abyss Brink, the amount of spiritual energy Lin Huang accumulated might only be enough to consolidate three immortal-level rank-9 combat souls. That was one of the God Figurine''s advantages. As the God Figurine''s spiritual energy storage was on par with a True God, a powerful combat soul could be consolidated as long as there was sufficient spiritual energy. Normal immortal-level powerhouses, on the other hand, were limited to the Life Fire and Life Wheel power in their bodies. They could only consolidate combat souls that had the same combat strength as the powerhouse himself. For instance, a powerhouse with immortal-level rank-3 combat strength could only consolidate a combat soul of immortal-level rank-3 at the most. It was impossible for them to even consolidate a combat soul that was a rank higher. After the three combat souls'' consolidation, it was half a month before the opening of the Fallen God Land. Lin Huang took a shower and changed after he was done visualizing. He packed his stuff as well. He checked out of the hotel room on his Emperor''s Heart Ring directly and stepped into the Dimensional Portal without hesitation. He arrived in No. 3A1 foothold, the Magical Sky City. After checking into a hotel in the Magical Sky City, Lin Huang frequented the black market, the auctions and the chamber of commerce for the next few days. He purchased all sorts of metallic and non-metallic materials in bulk as well as ancient and supreme relic pieces. For the next few days, Lin Huang put his hotel room into soundproof mode as he summoned the War Overlord to make a variety of mechanical weapons with his insane mechanical crafting skills. He initially gave the War Overlord a cool nickname which was Metal Egg. However, due to strong objections, it was changed to Warlord. Lin Huang did not stay idle during the days when Warlord was making mechanical weapons. He redeemed two sets of ancient relic-level telekinetic flying daggers from the Stairway Mall and began practicing Seamless. When he was on gold flame-level, his telekinetic cultivation arrived at a bottleneck. Due to the restriction of combat strength and low spiritual force, he could no longer divide more telekinetic threads. Now that his combat strength had experienced a three-rank leap and his spiritual force had a boost, he could divide the telekinetic threads further. Days passed and the amount of Lin Huang''s telekinetic threads did not stop growing. He had been focusing on his cultivation to the point that he did not even have time to read the news. It was more and more crowded in the Magical Sky City these few days. Almost every transcendent knew of this place since the Fallen God Land was the second biggest ruins in Division 7. Although it was a grade-7 ruin that was full of danger, everyone was flocking there as they figured that this round of searching could get them something advantageous that would allow them to sky-rocket. However, to maintain the stability of the ruins, the search was only limited to 8,000 people. Moreover, among these 8,000 people, almost everyone in Division 3 participated apart from more than 300 imperial-level powerhouses and some other powerhouses from Division 1 and Division 2. In other words, almost all the outstanding powerhouses of Division 3 were participating. Among the 8,000 people, at least half of them were members of the Genius Union while more than 80% of them were high immortal-levels. Although only 8,000 people were allowed into the ruins, there were more than 8,000 transcendents in the Magical Sky City. Almost all of the hotels in the central area of the entire Magical Sky City were fully booked. It was as crowded as the New Year. Not only were thee transcendent powerhouses from Division 3 talking about this, but even the cultivators below transcendent level also heard of this and began all sorts of discussions on forums. Some of them posted invitations that they had screen-shot somewhere else, and the post went viral from people commenting. Lin Huang only received the official invitation from Chan Dou on 29 October. The invitation was exquisite. It was a card that was only the size of a palm and it was bright red. There were two big, black words stamped on top of it. The handwriting was beautiful, clearly the hand of a famous calligrapher. Personal information was not shown on the invitation but was hidden inside. One could only see the invitee''s personal information by scanning it. Lin Huang was almost done with the division of his telekinetic threads when he received the invitation. The initial 10,000 telekinetic threads increased to more than 18,000 threads. However, his cultivation on Seamless came to yet another bottleneck. Although his spiritual force was a few folds more powerful than the time when he was on gold flame-level, it was harder to divide telekinetic threads as the cultivation of his Seamless skill went on. Looking at the current process, Lin Huang speculated he could only divide 30,000 telekinetic threads when he was on immortal-level rank-9. Until 29 October evening, Lin Huang had finally ended his cultivation in the Seamless skill. Meanwhile, Warlord had exhausted all of the materials. Most of his previous mechanical weapon materials came from monster bones and some human relics, which were disintegrated from machinery recycling. The materials Lin Huang purchased were not only given a boost in his mechanical weapon power, but the number of mechanical weapons was also at least threefolds more now. Warlord''s current overall ability might be more powerful than Bai''s. "I can finally rest well for the next two days to adjust my body." Ever since he had promised Chan Dou, Lin Huang had been worried that he might not have enough time. No matter whether it was the previous epiphany or the cultivation of Seamless during this period of time, he had cut his eating and sleeping time down drastically. On average, he might not even eat, drink a glass of water, or shower in a week. He would only take a nap for one or two hours when he was exhausted, but that only happened every four to five days. The truth had proven that such management of time allowed him to reach his goal and he completed all of the basic preparation he needed before the battle. He could finally feel relieved and the exhaustion kicked in quickly. 837 Seventh Prince Lin Huang slept from past eight in the evening on the 29th until eight in the morning on the 31st. He had slept a whole day, so he felt refreshed when he woke up. After taking a shower and having his breakfast, Lin Huang headed to the biggest supermarket nearby and spent almost the entire morning there. He bought a variety of food and drinks in bulk before heading back to the hotel. He just recalled he would have to spend three months in the ruins this trip when he woke up in the morning. If he did not bring anything with him, he might have to eat grilled meat for three months continuously. While grilled meat was delicious, he would definitely be sick if he had to eat it for three meals a day for three months. Drinks were mandatory. It would be huge trouble if there was no clean water source in the ruins. Although transcendents would not die from not drinking water for a long time, it would still affect his body condition as well as affecting him from performing his abilities well. After the trip to the supermarket, Lin Huang began to think what he might have missed out on. After all, he had been sleep-deprived before this and was not 100% there. He might miss out on something, just like how he had almost forgotten to prepare food and water. After some thorough thinking, he relaxed upon confirming that he did not miss anything. After lunch, Lin Huang read some news and looked at a few social media sites. He smiled when he read the hot discussion on the Fallen God Land. He even saw a fake Heaven Alliance invitation being posted. It was the same red design but the words were golden in color and written in cursive. It was even prettier than the one Lin Huang had received. There were up to a million comments on the post, consisting mostly of compliments. There were also people who were asking what the Heaven Alliance was. Soon someone found out that the Heaven Alliance was the most powerful organization in the Genius Union while the chief was Chan Dou of the Five Princes. The comment section was then flooded with praises and fawning upon the person who had posted the fake invitation. Lin Huang was not sure to cry or to laugh reading those comments. As every organization had a different invitation design, there were many exquisite ones posted on the web, and Lin Huang could not identity their authenticity. He also saw people he followed posting similar things. Yi Yeyu posted an invitation screenshot that she had gotten from somewhere. The caption was: "Should I go or not?" The first comment came from Yi Zheng. "You''re thinking too much, Sister." Li Lang used the same screenshot Yi Yeyu had but he posted a couple minutes later than she did with the caption: "Selling this invitation. The bid starts at 100 million Life Crystals and each increment has to be at least 10 million. The highest bidder wins." Yi Yeyu was the first one who commented. "Aren''t you shameless to be stealing my screenshot!?" The second comment came from Yi Zheng. "Shameless! How dare you steal my sister''s screenshot!?" Lin Huang smiled and took a screenshot of his invitation, then sent it to his friends. The caption was: "Three months. Please leave a message if you need me." The first comment came from Li Lang. "Great job, Brother. Your invitation looks exactly the same as the real one! And it''s from the Heaven Alliance! But it''ll look even more authentic if the words are in gold." He had browsed through the web and found out what kind of organization the Heaven Alliance was. The second comment came from Yi Zheng. It was clear he knew Lin Huang''s invitation was authentic. ''You shouldn''t have accepted the invitation. The Fallen God Land''s too dangerous.'' Lin Huang smiled as he replied. ''I''ll just take a stroll in there. It''s good to learn something.'' The third comment came from Leng Yuexin and was just a simple "Be careful." The fourth comment came from Yi Yeyu. "You''re going to the grade-7 forbidden land! Are you crazy?!" Li Lang commented again subsequently. "The heck!? Your invitation''s real! I must kiss your ass now!" After chatting with a couple of friends, Lin Huang then turned off the chat. For the rest of the afternoon, he drank tea while sunbathing on the balcony. He completely indulged in relaxation and laziness. He watched the evening news after dinner and went to bed early. Early the next morning, Lin Huang checked out of his room right after his breakfast and walked towards the Union Government office building like he was taking a stroll. The hotel he stayed at was less than 300 meters across the Union Government office building, so it only took him a couple of minutes to walk there. A female staff welcomed him after he scanned his identity and registered himself at the entrance of the office building. She got Lin Huang to show his invitation. After the scanning went through, she led him to a room entrance. It was a small meeting room with only 300 seats as he looked. There were already some ten people sitting in the room. Lin Huang took a glance at those people. All of them had a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9 with no exception. Since he knew no one there, he occupied a vacant seat in the first row. The people were pretty curious about Lin Huang too. He did not hide his combat strength after all. Everyone was clear that he was on immortal-level rank-3. Most of them only took a glance at him and that was it while a minority of them began to discuss among themselves softy. "Even an immortal-level rank-3''s invited. He must be from some insignificant organization that has no high immortal-level powerhouse." "He might''ve come in from the back door by using his connection." Although those people were discussing softly, Lin Huang heard them loud and clear, but he did not bother to take it to heart. More people came in continuously awhile after he took his seat. Basically, all of them had a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9. Finally, a short, young man appeared at the entrance after ten minutes. His combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-6. He glanced through the room at the entrance, appearing a little fearful upon realizing that everyone in the room were immortal-level rank-9 powerhouses. However, very soon, he saw Lin Huang who was in the first row. He was slightly relieved and walked towards Lin Huang quickly, sitting next to him. "Hi, my name''s Tong Lin." "Hi, I''m Lin Xie." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "Oh my god. I thought I''m the only one who isn''t immortal-level rank-9." Tong Lin felt like he had just met someone similar to him seeing that Lin Huang had a lower combat strength than him. Lin Huang smiled and said nothing. He knew 80% of the participants were high immortal-levels this time and only 80% of them were on immortal-level rank-9. That being said, participants with a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9 only consisted 64% of all the participants. The reason why everyone in the room was on immortal-level rank-9 was that it was still early, so there were less than 40 of them. Just as expected, more people on immortal-level rank-7 and rank-8 came into the room after Tong Lin. When there were almost 100 of them in the room, a few silhouettes wearing golden vests appeared at the entrance out of nowhere. The entire room became silent as soon as they appeared. Everyone recognized them. They were from Dynasty. The leading person was a young man who looked like he was in his early 20s. He had slicked back hair and instead of a vest, he was wearing a black suit with a golden trench coat on top. "The Seventh Prince from Dynasty..." Tong Lin who was sitting next to Lin Huang said softly. Lin Huang could not help but frown when he heard that. He remembered clearly that Chan Dou said this Seventh Prince should be the most powerful immortal-level in the participant list this time. The Seventh Prince took a glance around the room and merely paused when he saw Lin Huang, then looked away. It was probably not because he realized how powerful Lin Huang was, but a little surprised that even a person with an immortal-level rank-3 combat strength would be invited. He lingered at the entrance for less than a second and led the few people behind him towards the last row of the room. The people who were sitting in the last row took the initiative to give up their seats immediately. Ever since the people from Dynasty came, more and more people came. The room was almost full after five to six minutes. At that moment, a male staff in a uniform walked in. He explained after bringing out a Dimensional Portal, "Behind this Dimensional Portal is the entrance to the Fallen God Land. There''ll be staff attending to all of you when all of you are transferred, and they''ll assist you in the Fallen God Land." "Now let''s begin from the first row. Please queue to enter the Dimensional Portal." "Why aren''t you starting from the last row!?" At that moment, one of the Dynasty members wearing golden vests and sitting in the last row shouted. The man in the uniform lifted his head and took a glance at him. He then looked at the Seventh Prince sitting next to the golden-vested man who was waiting for an impressive show to begin before he spoke, "Because the first row is closer to the Dimensional Portal. If you were to calculate the distance between the first row to the last row and everyone''s walking speed on average, getting the first row into the Dimensional Portal first would take one minute and 40 seconds faster than getting the last row to queue first." The people from Dynasty did not seem to expect the person to give such a serious explanation which rendered them speechless. Lin Huang smiled but said nothing. "Alright, we''ll start from the first row. Stop wasting time." Lin Huang and the rest then walked into the Dimensional Portal one after another. After all 300 of them entered the Dimensional Portal, the man in uniform then closed the Dimensional Portal. A lady''s voice came into the meeting room all of a sudden. "One minute and 40 seconds faster? You''re so good at making things up." A tall lady in heels walked in while smiling. "Haha, you heard that!" The man in uniform smiled as he said. "It''s not every day that they can come to the Union Government headquarters. The people from Dynasty are always looking for ways to stir things up so that they can brag to their acquaintances when they go back. They''d make noise if I insisted on letting people in the first row go first. Although I''d definitely oppress them, it''d only delay the time. If I do what they want me to, which is to let them go first, they''d tell everyone that the Union Government''s afraid of Dynasty. So, why not just come up with a lie which solved the problem like a piece of cake?" 838 Two Familiar People Lin Huang only snapped back to his senses after staring at the black, gigantic crack that seemed like a Virtual Eye for a while. Almost everyone who was transported together with Lin Huang had the same shocked expression on their faces. Lin Huang looked around and very soon saw a bunch of people on his left. There were about 300 of them, and they should be the team that had been transported before them. There was a bunch of men in military uniform under the crack in the sky. The leader, a hulking, tall man who wore a white cloak, walked towards Lin Huang and the rest. He did not hide the powerful aura on him at all. ''This person''s definitely a demigod!'' Lin Huang could clearly sense that the aura on this man was much more powerful than those imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters that he had killed. It was the distinction between a candlelight and a sun; it was so powerful that it made one tremble. "Please project your invitation. We need to verify your invitation once again." As soon as he spoke, he moved his finger slightly while the 20 men in military uniform began to verify the invitation. After a couple of minutes of verification, the leader of the army spoke again after confirming that everything was alright. "The ruins will officially open at nine. Before that, all of you can take a rest at formation No. 2. "Don''t run around or create trouble. If any of you do that, you''ll delay the opening time of the ruins. You''ll be executed even if the delay is only by a mere second!" The leader glanced at everyone coldly when he uttered the last sentence. A terrifying intention to kill swept across the 300 people including Lin Huang in the blink of an eye. It gave them chills and goosebumps. He did not seem like he was joking at all. Nobody objected, even the Seventh Prince only glared at the man for a second while scowling. He then followed everyone and walked to the space in formation No. 2. "Oh my god! It''s Bai Qi, the God of Slaughter from the army," Tong Lin who was next to Lin Huang mumbled softly. "Bai Qi?" Lin Huang was familiar with the name. However, it was clear that this person just happened to share the same name with the historical person on earth. "Do you mean the fella wearing a cloak just now?" "Haven''t you heard of Bai Qi? The God of Slaughter from the Union Government Military, the No. 1 in Division 3''s army! I heard that his ability ranks top five among the demigods in Division 3!" Ever since Lin Huang arrived in Division 3, he did not follow such news and it was his first time hearing about Bai Qi. "How did he get the nickname ''God of Slaughter''? Did he kill many monsters?" "Not monsters, human," Tong Lin said through voice transmission, "He was put in a special force in the military and was responsible for wiping out underground organizations. There are at least tens of thousands of underground organization members who died by his hand within the past century." "Otherwise, why is the Seventh Prince so quiet like a coward now and even followed the team here? If he really stirred things up, Bai Qi would surely kill him. Among the underground organizations, Bai Qi has killed at least over 20 Holy Sons, including the First Holy Son. Even the Dynasty would have to accept it if Bai Qi killed the Second and Third Prince, and they wouldn''t take revenge, let alone if he annihilated the Seventh Prince. The price to pay for killing Bai Qi''s too high. It might even cause the demigod in one''s organization to be killed. There''s already been two cases like that." Bai Qi''s ability alone caused powerful underground organizations to fear him, which proved how terrifying his ability was. That was the direction Lin Huang had been working towards. "Lin Xie, you''re not a local from Division 3, am I right? Even the local transcendents on holy fire-level would''ve heard of Bai Qi." Tong Lin was very sure of that. "Indeed, I''m not. I came from another Safety Zone," Lin Huang confirmed. "I saw that your invitation came from the Heaven Alliance just now. Don''t tell me that you come from the Heaven Alliance''s headquarters in Division 1?!" Tong Lin''s eyes lit up. "I thought you''re a member from the Heaven Alliance''s branch in Division 3." "I didn''t come from the headquarters but another division." "It must be Division 2''s branch then!" Tong Lin thought of Division 2 immediately. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything since he was lazy to explain. "Then, you must be powerful, aren''t you?" Tong Lin asked immediately. "There are indeed many powerhouses in the Heaven Alliance. I''m just a normal member who just joined not long again," Lin Huang said humbly. He did not have the habit of boasting about himself before others. His skin was not that thick. "The more humble you are, the more I think you''re hiding who you really are." Tong Lin had disbelief written all over his face. "I think it''s impossible that the Heaven Alliance would send someone incompetent here to die. They would definitely send powerhouses here to make the quota worth it and to obtain some resources. Also, I think you must''ve been specially transferred from Division 2" Lin Huang smiled and said nothing again. He really did not bother to explain anything to him. More people were being sent through the Dimensional Portal as the both of them chatted. Those people verified their identities again and were arranged to group at formations No. 3 and No. 4. After eight o''clock, the frequency of people being sent in through the Dimensional Portal became higher and higher. Soon, there was a batch every two to three minutes. Lin Huang saw someone familiar among the crowd Huangfu Lin from the Sweep Alliance. Judging from her aura, she had elevated to immortal-level rank-8. However, Huangfu Lin did not notice Lin Huang''s presence. Perhaps, she did not imagine that he would have managed to score himself a place there. After all, Lin Huang''s combat strength was only blue flame-level when they last saw each other three months ago. After Huangfu Lin''s batch, Lin Huang saw another Heaven Alliance member, Shen Tao. The last time when they had entered the tribe''s floating land, it was the immortal-level rank-9 Shen Tao who had led the Heaven Alliance team. Although his combat strength remained on immortal-level rank-9, it was clear that his aura was much stronger than it had been a couple of months ago. He was almost on the verge of breaking through to imperial-level. Lin Huang guessed that his goal of coming to the Fallen God Land this time must be to break through to imperial-level black gold-rank. However, Shen Tao''s aura was not considered the top among those people. Lin Huang sensed at least 20 people on immortal-level rank-9 who had more powerful auras than Shen Tao did. Judging by aura alone, the Seventh Prince was considered the best of the best among the group of more than 20 people. However, what Lin Huang cared about were those imperial-level powerhouses who were mixed in the teams. Almost every one of them had a much more powerful aura than the Seventh Prince. They were like firewood that burned in the night which nobody could ignore. Naturally, the strength of one''s aura could not be used to determine one''s ability. Lin Huang was a great example himself. His aura strength was only on immortal-level rank-3. Without those tens of holy fire-levels, his aura was the weakest among the crowd. However, if his overall ability was taken into account and the comparison even included imperial-level powerhouses, he would easily rank in the top 100. When it was close to 8.50 a.m., all 8,000 of them were assembled. Many of the armies were secretly relieved. They were worried that there would be a delay and were scared that Bai Qi would be mad. Bai Qi had an obsession disorder when it came to time. Almost every military in Division 3 knew about that. He had even snapped at the current Division 3 Union Government chairman at a meeting for being late for three minutes. "Alright, you can relax since everyone is here. We''ll open the ruins officially at nine sharp!" Bai Qi looked at the time and his rather serious expression finally eased. 839 Nephilic Judge Army It was 9 a.m. sharp on 1 November. Bai Qi flew slowly to the crack in the sky and produced a golden key in his right palm. He flicked it softly, the key turning into a golden stream that flowed into the black crack in the air. Subsequently, he began to perform a set of complicated seals at a rapid speed. The black crack gradually turned golden until eventually, there was a golden glow that shot out of it. It was like sunshine that shone through clouds onto the ground. "All of you, stand where the golden glow is shining!" As Bai Qi ordered them, the people from each formation hurried to the area where the golden glow was shining. Lin Huang walked over there, following his team. As soon as he entered the glowing region, he felt his body seeming to lose gravity and he began to float. He was drifting rapidly towards the source of the glow. In less than ten seconds, Lin Huang and the rest got into the golden crack in the air following the stream and vanished completely. After passing through the golden crack, Lin Huang could feel his body descending slowly. As his feet touched the ground, his sight that was covered by the golden glow finally recovered gradually. Lin Huang looked everywhere. Apart from himself, there was nobody else in his field of vision. It was clear that the entrance would send the person to different locations of the ruins randomly. The sky above his head was gray and he could not see the sun. It was a little similar to the hazy weather back on Earth, just that the light was even dimmer here. It felt like dusk when the sun was setting. There were cracks as well as potholes all over the ground. They were war scars everywhere. Lin Huang did not see any plants at all. All he saw were bones that were covered with some soil and a couple of broken swords and sabers. After a slight observation and not finding anything odd, Lin Huang then focused a small part of his consciousness into his Life Palace. He was surprised to find that the space in his Life Palace had completely simulated the environment of the ruins. After a moment of shock, Lin Huang recalled his main objective and summoned Bloody and Lancelot. He did not lose his sensing ability since his territory had been converted into his Life Palace. However, his territory had become his Life Palace''s subsidiary skill, which was now on par with Lancelot''s, so the coverage of his Territory skill depended on his combat strength now. Now that Lancelot''s combat strength had reached immortal-level rank-9, the radius of his Territory skill had expanded to nine kilometers. The coverage far surpassed Lin Huang''s which was merely three kilometers. Summoning Lancelot could undoubtedly expand the coverage to sense danger. After all, Bloody''s Leech Pods could only sense sight and sound. They could not sense anything intangible. Meanwhile, summoning Bloody was something that Lin Huang had to do whenever he went somewhere new. In reality, Lin Huang knew that Bloody''s Leech Pods had powerful functions and applications. However, they were best used in investigating logistics. Bloody was fond of collecting information itself whereby it would browse through different information on the Heart Network whenever it had nothing to do. To Bloody, investigating a new place was collecting information as well which it enjoyed. Planning logistics was the basics of battle strategy. Compared to fighting, Bloody preferred being a military adviser as well as feeling in control of the whole situation. Bloody received the preliminary investigation report in less than ten minutes while Lin Huang stayed where he was. "There''s an immortal-level rank-6 Spirit Skeleton at our one o''clock, 252 kilometers from us. Judging from its aura, it should a triple mutated monster. It''s suitable for Kylie to lead her Nephilic Judges to hunt it down." Out of 368 Kylie''s Nephilic Judges, only 39 of them had evolved into triple mutated Nephilic Angels. All of the local monsters in this ruins were either spirit or undying types, which were the targets for Nephilic Judges to evolve. "Bloody, look around for triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 Sword Dao monsters for me please," Lancelot gulped the dried vegetable in his mouth down instantly and said to Bloody. "Don''t worry. I always have that in mind," Bloody said while smiling and nodding. Lancelot then put another dried vegetable into his mouth and chewed on it slowly. "Do your best in these three months. You''ll be rewarded with three months worth of junk food if you perform well!" Lin Huang patted Lancelot''s shoulder. Two blue rays shot out of Lancelot''s blue eyes when he heard that. He said to Lin Huang immediately, "I would like dried carrots, please!" Lin Huang nodded while smiling and he thought to himself, ''Am I feeding a rabbit now?'' Lin Huang only summoned Kylie and Thunder after setting his coordinates on the Dimensional Portal. They then sat on Thunder''s back and headed toward the destination Bloody had told them about. Soon, Lin Huang saw the Spirit Skeleton that was almost three meters tall with red flames burning in its eyes. The monster noticed Lin Huang and the rest at an instant. However, it turned around in an attempt to run away when it sensed Lancelot, Kylie and Thunder''s powerful aura. As usual, Bloody curled itself around Lin Huang''s arm and hid its aura just like Lin Huang did. As Kylie waved her hand, at least 300 Nephilic Judges made their glorious entry. Although the Nephilic Angels did not participate in the confrontation, the Spirit Skeleton was drowned by the overwhelming amount of Nephilic Judges. It was killed in the blink of an eye while its bones were scattered all over the place. "Wow, a human wave attack is kind of scary," Lin Huang could not help but exclaim out loud after witnessing that. "Two o''clock, 128 kilometers." Thunder deviated immediately. They arrived at their second destination in less than a minute as Thunder flapped its wings. The Nephilic Judges were just as fast as Thunder as they caught up with it subsequently. The target was another triple mutated spirit monster in the form of a beast skeleton. Its eyes were the same with the skeleton earlier whereby they burned with red flames as well. However, it had a more powerful combat strength at immortal-level rank-8. The Nephilic Judges charged at it all together again. The spirit monster only managed to hold on to its dear life for less than five seconds before it turned into a pile of broken bones. At that moment, one of the Nephilic Judges experienced a blaring, white glow shooting out of its body, and soon it turned into a white cocoon. "Is the evolution of a Nephilic Judge into a triple mutated Nephilic Angel this simple?" Lin Huang thought it was a little odd as he witnessed that. He had spent quite some effort to elevate Lancelot and the rest to perform their triple mutation. "It should''ve something to do with the mini world in my body." It was clear that Kylie shared a similar thought. "I''ve been having a subtle feeling recently that I might elevate to quadruple mutated mythical-level directly if all of them elevated to triple mutation." Lin Huang was elated to hear that but he realized something immediately. As soon as Kylie elevated to mythical-level, she would surpass his own limit and he would not be able to summon her any longer. By then, the army of over 300 triple mutated Nephilic Angels would be sealed altogether and he would not be able to use them in battles. "I can clearly sense that the mini world in my body has been urging me to make this happen as soon as possible in order to elevate to mythical-level," Kylie could not help but reveal the secret that she had been hiding all this time. "Actually, I''ve been having this feeling ever since the first Nephilic Judge evolved to a Nephilic Angel. The feeling''s getting more and more intense following the increasing number of Nephilic Judges evolving into Nephilic Angels." "Don''t overthink so much. Just go ahead on your elevation. My summoning limit should open when I break through to imperial-level." Lin Huang did not plan to stop Kylie''s evolution, especially when she was currently in such a situation. Lin Huang knew if he was not mistaken, the summoning authority of mythical-level Monster Cards should expand when he elevated to imperial-level. Even if Kylie elevated to mythical-level now, she would only be sealed temporarily. 840 Kylie’s Battle Formations The ruins was huge. Bloody spent two full days spreading up to a million Leech Pods to complete the preliminary search. "This ruins is insanely huge! It''s almost ten times bigger than the surface area of Earth that you mentioned." The reason why Bloody would say that was that Lin Huang would always compare this world''s footholds with the size of the countries on Earth. Bloody had asked about Earth before and found out its surface area was 510 million square kilometers. "No wonder Chan Dou said he has explored less than a fifth of the place. This is simply too big." Lin Huang projected the explored regions that Chan Dou had sent him while Bloody began to draft the complete map on the existing map. Bloody only managed to come up with the first draft of the map half an hour later. "What''s with the area marked with question marks?" Lin Huang could not help but ask, noticing that Bloody had drawn question marks on a couple of spots on the map. "There are some areas where the Leech Pods failed to enter. There seems to be a thin layer of transparent film around them. There are also some of them with odd occurrences. For instance, the Leech Pods lost their signal as soon as they entered one of these areas. I''m not sure if they were attacked or something else caused that. There are also areas covered in fog, thunderstorms, special magnetic fields" "Then, how about those marked with a skull?" "Those are areas where the Leech Pods basically found demigod-level powerhouses." "The imperial-levels'' ranks are marked by colors. Black for black gold-rank, red for crimson gold-rank, yellow for yellow gold-rank, silver-white for white gold-rank, and purple for purple gold-rank. Since the base color is white, we could only use silver-white color for white gold-rank." "So, where are we now?" Lin Huang asked again. "We''re here!" Bloody extended a tentacle and marked a red dot on the map. The red dot was located on the southeast of the map. "This map''s just a simple first draft. I''ll put in the detailed information into your Emperor''s Heart Ring tonight and make a virtual map of this ruins. By then, the positioning system would''ve come up with the calculation following the location on the virtual map and note the virtual positioning. It''s like playing a single-player game whereby no network signal is required." Lin Huang had no idea that Bloody could do that. "Bloody, did you find any target that suits my requirement?" Finally, Lancelot, who was standing aside, could not hold it in any longer and asked again. He did not interrupt Bloody since it had been investigating the ruins the past two days. "I''ve found a total of 31 triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 Sword Dao monsters that suit your requirement, but they''re quite far from where we are now. I''ll complete the map tonight and plan the route again. If everything goes as planned, you should be able to get your sword servants to kill the first target tomorrow before noon," Bloody laid out the preliminary plan. ince entering the ruins, Lin Huang had not let Bai and the rest out. The reason being, Bloody had yet to complete the logistics planning while they had no clue about the distribution of monsters or where the other human powerhouses were transported to. Letting Bai and the rest out like that would risk their lives for intruding dangerous monsters'' territories or even be killed by human powerhouses. This was a grade-7 ruins after all. There were too many powerful monsters in there. Moreover, among the people who had entered this time, a third of them were the outstanding ones in the entire Division 3, excluding demigods. In the past two days, along with Thunder and Lancelot, Lin Huang had been trailing Kylie to watch her Nephilic Judge army battle. Within the short two days, there were eleven of them in the Nephilic Judge army that had elevated to triple mutated Nephilic Angels. It increased the number of Nephilic Angels to 50. In reality, the Nephilic Judge army had killed more than 100 undying and spirit monsters throughout the two days which far surpassed the amount of Nephilic Judges that had elevated. However, Lin Huang witnessed how terrifying the Nephilic Judge army''s ability was. In actual fact, among the Nephilic Judges, most of their combat strength were only immortal-level rank-6 and rank-7. However, when they created a battle formation, they could fight straight on even if they encountered an imperial-level black gold-rank monster. Whenever they encountered immortal-level monsters, even if those were triple mutated, they would not be able to withstand the Nephilic Judge army for more than 20 minutes. That was the result even without the 50 Nephilic Angels and Kylie joining the battle. "Your battle formations are really powerful. They almost unleashed the full advantage of these Nephilic Judges'' speed." Lin Huang recognized the amazing result too. "I''ll improve the battle formations slightly. Then, I should be able to use it on my Parasitic Puppets." Bloody began to consider the practicality of Kylie''s battle formations. "I''ll share them with you. This isn''t consider a core inheritance, so it can be shared." As soon as Kylie said that, she pointed her finger between Lin Huang''s brows while laying another finger on Bloody''s head. A while later, the complete inherited information was sent into both of their heads directly. "36 sets! That many?" Lin Huang was a little surprised. He had only seen the Nephilic Judges using two sets of battle formations, so he expected Kylie to have only two sets of battle formations in the inheritance. "Although there are a total of 36 sets, you''ll need to practice the battle formations. They''re only familiarized with eight sets of battle formations at the moment. The first 18 sets are still manageable, but the last 18 sets are very complicated. Also, I don''t have enough Nephilic Judges." Kylie was not entirely satisfied with the current progress. Bloody got some ideas after studying them for merely a couple of minutes. "Among the 36 sets, the first 18 sets aren''t complete battle formations. They were put together from three different complete battle formations for simple application. They were disassembled intentionally for one to learn them easily. The second half are real complete battle formations. However, they are still just the foundation. They can be developed into more complicated and powerful battle formations." "I''ve understood their application mechanism roughly. I''ll spend some time developing them, so I should be able to fortify the battle formations for you. I can also tweak them a little and make a puppet battle formation. The impact should be impressive." Bloody had created up to a thousand Parasitic Puppets in the Abyss Brink. Most of them were triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters that Bai and the rest had killed but which brains were still well maintained. Their brains had been parasitized by Leech Pods when they were still active. A small amount of them were triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters which Bai and the rest had killed along the way. They were then parasitized by Leech Pods directly. Naturally, it was more taxing for Bloody to cast parasites on living things. There were two failed cases as proof of that. Apart from that, there were 32 imperial-level black gold-rank puppets. They were flying puppetry monsters which were brought back in time for Bloody to cast parasites on when their brains were still active. After all, Leech Pods could not cast parasites on monsters which rank was higher. Hence, Bloody had to do that itself. Unfortunately, the 30 imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters Lin Huang killed surpassed Bloody''s parasitic ability. They were then left in Lin Huang''s storage space. However, since their brains had lost activity, they could no longer be parasitized. They could only be summoned into spirits with a Witchcraft Rune. However, that could only be done when Bloody reached imperial-level black gold-rank. Otherwise, there would be a high possibility that the summoned spirit would lose control and might even backfire. After obtaining Kylie''s battle formations, Bloody was more confident in its puppet army now. It even had the confidence to fight imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses with its puppet army after they successfully practiced the battle formations. 841 Bloody’s Puppet Army In the blink of an eye, it was the third day since they entered the Fallen God Land. Early in the morning, Lin Huang went all out to summon 15 monsters, which was the limit of his summoning authority. They were Killer, the Evil Dominator, Bloody, Kylie, Lancelot, Bai, Tyrant, Grimace, Charcoal, Warlord, Bloody Robe, the Death Knight, the Fallen Knight, and the two Dark Crescent Snakes. "Bai with Grimace, Tyrant with Charcoal, Warlord with Bloody Robe, and the two knights with the two Dark Crescent Snakes each. The Evil Dominator, Kylie and Lancelot will be fighting alone." "I wouldn''t have released all of you if not for the sprawling ruins. There are a total of 8,000 people who''ve entered the ruins this time, which is over 20 times more than the last search. However, from Bloody''s investigation, there are still many areas that have yet to be explored by humans. The places that all of you are going to are those that humans have yet to step foot in. "Those who perform well in the next three months will be rewarded while those who underperform will have their previous reward taken away." Lin Huang looked at Grimace intentionally when he said that. Grimace had not asked for junk food for his last reward. Instead, he had asked for an ancient relic-level puppet whose price was double of an ancient relic-level telekinetic weapon. It had been painful for Lin Huang. However, the puppet doll was rather practical. At least, it could be used to fight an imperial-level black gold-rank powerhouse under Grimace''s control. "Can I ask for three puppets this time?" Grimace asked with anticipation written all over his face. "Two," Lin Huang bargained. The toy Grimace wanted was too expensive. He began to worry that he might not be able to afford to keep Grimace. "Deal!" Grimace agreed directly. Lin Huang was secretly relieved to see Grimace so obedient. After a round of simple briefing from Lin Huang, Bai and the rest dispersed under Bloody''s guidance. Lin Huang together with Bloody and the Parasitic Puppet army it moved from Kylie''s mini world were the only ones left. "That many of them?" Lin Huang was shocked to see the army. "There are a total of 1,128 of them. 32 of them are black gold-rank while the rest are immortal-level rank-9. Also, all of the puppets are tripled mutated." It was clear that Bloody was bragging a little bit judging from its tone. "I''ve tweaked the battle formations that Kylie gave me last night. I''ve also done some preliminary development and come up with 21 foundation battle formations and over 400 combo battle formations that suit these bunch of Parasitic Puppet army the best. We can officially begin practice now." "What are you waiting for then? Let''s go!" Lin Huang was interested to see the power of battle formations from this parasitic army. Soon, Bloody found its first target, which was an imperial-level black gold-rank corpse ghost. Its height was around two meters and it looked like a dead human corpse that was going through the first stage of rotting. However, there were red flames burning in its eyes like lava. The 32 imperial-level black gold-rank puppets did not participate in this battle. Over 1,000 immortal-level rank-9 Parasitic Puppets formed into a battle formation instantly and began to fight the corpse ghost. The corpse ghost almost escaped in the first couple of minutes, but soon, Bloody was at its peak of controlling the battle formation. In less than five minutes, they managed to kill the corpse ghost. Later on, it spent a couple of minutes parasitizing the corpse ghost, adding another member to its imperial-level black gold-rank puppets. "Your battle formation seems to be even more powerful than Kylie''s," Lin Huang voiced out what he thought after watching the battle. "Mine is a complete foundation battle formation and I''ve more puppets than her Nephilic Judges. Also, my puppets'' combat strength and mutation level are higher than her army''s. Furthermore, I''m controlling everything in this battle formation whereby I can adjust them whenever I want. It makes sense that the overall ability is more powerful than her Nephilic Judge army''s," Bloody explained, "But Kylie''s upper hand is that her Nephilic Judges have a high growth rate which my Parasitic Puppets don''t. I can only replace the Parasitic Puppets with higher combat strength ones continuously to strengthen the battle formation." For the next few days, Lin Huang stayed by Bloody''s side at all times. He saw it performing different versions of battle formations every day while they got more and more powerful. Bloody would parasitize the imperial-level black gold-rank monster every time whenever one was killed. More and more imperial-level black gold-rank puppets were added to its collection. Until the third day, the Parasitic Puppets finally mastered the foundation battle formations fully, so Bloody began to practice the combo battle formations. The power of the combo battle formations was undoubtedly a few folds more compelling than the foundation battle formations earlier. They could kill imperial-level black gold-rank monsters almost like a piece of cake. They then began to hunt for higher ranked preys in the form of crimson gold-rank monsters. The truth proved that the imperial-level black gold-rank puppets that were added to Bloody''s puppet battle formations were good enough to fight imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouses face-on. Ever since the imperial-level black gold-rank monsters were added into their battle formations, they slaughtered the imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters easily. Bloody then began a new around of hunting and parasitizing, possessing more and more imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets. In this ruins, Bloody''s puppet army was like a bulldozer, killing everything wherever it passed. All of the deceased monsters became one of the puppet army. During these couple of days, the other Monster Cards did not stay idle as well. Lin Huang felt the spiritual energy in his God Figurines growing each day. Although the amount of growth was minor, he knew it was possible for the combat soul in his body to grow to imperial-level crimson gold-rank during this trip to the ruins. The objective of letting Bai and the rest out in the ruins was to help him to hunt for spiritual energy. Looking at the current progress, it was almost ten times faster than him hunting on his own. Lin Huang had accompanied Bloody all the time during the past few days. He did not fight even once. Apart from the time they were on the move, he was always practicing his swordsmanship. The pseudo-god-level sword skill Killer had gotten from the Regal Sword Killer had yet to be integrated into his Sword Dao system. It was the best time to practise it. Lin Huang''s Sword Dao reached bottleneck since he achieved gold flame-level which caused him to almost stop practicing entirely. Now that he had broken through to immortal-level rank-3, he already had the basic foundation to advance further. What he was lacking the most now were his sword skill resources. He had only mastered less than 80 types of legendary-level sword skills, which was the reason why he had requested access to the Central Library. The level-one reading authorization even gave him the access to pseudo-god-level methods, but he could only read one set of method per day at the most. Lin Huang only had three days of authorization which meant that he only had the opportunity to learn a maximum of three sets of pseudo-god-level sword skills. A level-two reading authorization would give him access to any legendary-level methods with no restrictions. This authorization was usually given to imperial-level powerhouses who contributed to the Union Government. ''I''ll make a trip to the Central Library after the three months of searching the ruins is over before heading back to Division 7,'' Lin Huang secretly planned. However, Lin Huang and Bloody had no idea that they were targeted even though they avoided all the areas where humans were hunting along the way. It was the middle of the night when five people gathered in a tent hundreds of kilometers away. The five of them wore white robes with a golden cross on their foreheads. They were the members of the underground organization, the Saints. "The reason I ask you all to gather is because I noticed a huge amount of beasts 2,000 kilometers away. There are over 1,000 beasts. Most of their combat strength is on immortal-level rank-9 while there are tens of black gold-rank beasts. I think we can sweep them together!" "Immortal-level beasts living in such a massive scale? Are they beasts living in groups?" One of them could not help but ask. "I''ve no idea what beasts they are exactly, but all of you know about that demigod-level detection relic that I have. It can detect the rough condition of creatures within 3,000 kilometers. It can only be activated once a day, so it''s a yes or no for this mission. But I must warn you, I''m not sure when will we ever see such an insane number of beasts in the future if we miss this opportunity now." "I''m in! 1,000 immortal-level rank-9 beasts are worth some great sacrifice." "I think that''s a sign that God is showing us!" "Thank you, God !" 842 Meeting the Saints Again It was in the middle of the night. Lin Huang sat in the tent with his legs crossed while he tapped open the virtual map to look at Bai and the rest''s coordinates. Bloody had planted virtual positioning in them, so they could see everyone''s exact location. The Evil Dominator, Kylie, the two knights, and the Dark Crescent Snakes were still on the move while the rest of them were on idle mode. "Kylie''s still leading her army to hunt. The two knights'' killing efficiency is higher at night due to the two Dark Crescent Snakes." Bloody had been watching them at all times. "Meanwhile, the Evil Dominator challenged a powerful crimson gold-rank, but he failed, so he''s running for his life now." "Is the Evil Dominator going to be alright?" Lin Huang did not want to lose a pseudo-mythical-level Monster Card. "He''s alright. None of his substitutes are dead. He seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to turn the tables around, so he provoked the monster along the way. If not for that, he''d have gotten away from the monster long ago," Bloody said while projecting the video that its Leech Pod had taken earlier. In the video, the Evil Dominator took off his pants and farted at the monster. Most importantly, he was not using his own image, but the Regal Sword Killer''s image. "If Killer found out about this, he''d definitely kill him" Lin Huang was speechless. The Evil Dominator was pretty close to Killer. Due to their close relationship, Killer gave a lot of his blood to Evil Dominator to duplicate his Evil Blood Substitutes over and over again. If Killer found out that the Evil Dominator had used his substitute to do this, he might not provide Evil Dominator even a drip of his blood ever again. "Ask Kylie not to rush things. Tell her to rest when she needs to," Lin Huang told Bloody to pass his message. After turning off the map, Bloody''s voice transmission came out of nowhere just when Lin Huang was going to sleep. "We might be targeted. A Saints team is coming close to where we are at rapid speed. They''re less than 300 kilometers from us now." "A team from the Saints?" Lin Huang put away his tent immediately and got into fighting mode. "How many of them? What are their combat strengths?" "Five of them. Two imperial-level yellow gold-ranks and three imperial-level crimson gold-ranks." "Do you have the confidence to defeat them? Do you need me to hold the two imperial-level yellow gold-ranks for you while you take the three imperial-level crimson gold-ranks first?" Lin Huang asked. "No need. I happen to have 28 imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets that I''ve yet to put into battle formation. They can practice by joining the battle this time. There are only two imperial-level yellow gold-ranks, so we should be able to handle them." Bloody was always confident in its battle formation. In reality, even without imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets participating in the battle formation, a battle formation with imperial-level black gold-rank puppets as its core was sufficient to fight imperial-level yellow gold-ranks. It was just that they did not have the ability to kill an imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Bloody had not hunted any imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters for the past two days. The reason being, it could not parasitize them, so it had been hunting imperial-level black gold-rank and imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters to increase the number of its Parasitic Puppets. At the moment, apart from the 28 imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets, the number of imperial-level black gold-rank puppets had skyrocketed to 96. However, to avoid scaring their prey away, the 28 imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets had been in hiding mode. That was the reason why the Saint members did not manage to detect the 28 imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets. After confirming the five Saint members'' whereabouts, Lin Huang was ready to fight on his side. The five Saint members, on the other hand, had no inkling about that. They were rushing towards the coordinates following the detection relic. They traveled across hundreds of kilometers in a couple of minutes. The five Saint messengers saw the group of a variety of monsters far away. Just when they thought that it was odd, the monsters suddenly moved. They went into their battle formation and surrounded all five of them. The five of them had a slight change of expression at that moment. Soon, they realized that someone was controlling the monsters because most of the monsters were obviously foreign. The ruins'' local monsters only consisted of undying and spirit types. Soon, apart from almost 100 imperial-level black gold-rank monsters, they saw the tens of imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters among the group. They looked even more aghast now. A human powerhouse who could control up to 100 imperial-level monsters and up to 1,000 of immortal-level rank-9 monsters was not someone that they could defeat. "Senior, the five of us are messengers from the Saint. We''ve made a mistake coming to your territory. Please forgive us. We''ll leave right away," apologized one of the imperial-level yellow gold-rank messengers who was the leader immediately. He was the one with the demigod-level detention relic. "I didn''t hunt you, but you showed up at my doorstep. Since you''re here, let''s just stay." Lin Huang did not reveal himself, but his voice came from the monsters and entered the ears of the five messengers loud and clear. After the command, the Parasitic Puppet battle formation launched their attack. The participation of imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets boosted the battle formation power. One blow was all they needed to kill one of the imperial-level crimson gold-rank messengers. The remaining four of them then come together in an attempt to launch a sneak attack. However, the two imperial-level crimson gold-rank messengers were killed in less than three minutes. The two imperial-level yellow gold-rank messengers were the only ones left. "Now that we''re done warming up, let''s play." Bloody''s voice subsequently rang out. More than 1,000 Parasitic Puppets changed their formation in an instant, forming a six-armed giant with the 28 imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets as its core. The giant was 10,000 meters tall whereby a single palm alone was 1,000 meters long. The giant slammed its palm towards the two imperial-level yellow gold-rank messengers. Bang! As the palm smashed into them, the ground within hundreds of kilometers radius shook. The ground where the palm was hit had sunken in while a gigantic crater thousands of meters deep was created. Although the two messengers were not killed by the attack, they were badly injured and they spat out mouthfuls of blood. "Let''s split up!" One of them whispered softly. The two silhouettes emerged underground and escaped towards two different directions. "Stay!" The six-armed giant shouted while extending both arms in an attempt to catch them. The duo saw a black shadow coming from above their heads and in the next second, they were wrapped in an immense force, unable to move. "Die!" The six-armed giant clapped its palms hard together with the duo trapped in them. Both of them felt like their bodies were crushed together by giant walls. The attack almost broke every bone in their bodies while none of the organs in their bodies functioned after that. They were almost killed by the attack. "Not dead yet?" The six-armed giant threw six giant punches at them continuously after tossing them onto the ground. One punch, two punches, three punches The ground trembled intensely with each punch that was thrown. Lin Huang was a little speechless as he watched. Both of them were already dead when the six-armed giant threw its third punch, but it still ravaged the two corpses. Bloody only got the six-armed giant to stop after it threw 100 punches while the duo had completely turned into a pile of mushy meat. "You were venting because you can''t parasitize them since they are imperial-level yellow gold-rank, am I right?" Lin Huang said while pouting. Bloody looked embarrassed when Lin Huang called out its game. Bloody told the six-armed giant''s battle formation to retreat and began the parasitization on the three imperial-level crimson gold-rank messengers after handing over the items from the five of them to Lin Huang. "You can use the three of them, but you must change their clothes and remove the cross on their faces. We''ll bring unnecessary trouble to ourselves if someone sees this." Lin Huang then turned around and began to set up the tent after he was done speaking. "Yes, Sir!" 843 The Third Pseudo Mythical-level Monster Card In the Fallen God Land before daybreak, the golden cross on the forehead of a man in white robes shone brightly out of nowhere like it was burning in flames. The glow dimmed quickly a moment later. In his white robes, Min Ze opened his eyes all of a sudden. "Yuan Feng and Luo Liang are dead?! And so are three of our imperial-level crimson gold-ranks?!" Everything that happened before the five of them were killed came clearly into his mind. "A battle formation made of up to 1,000 different monsters and its ability is close to an imperial-level white gold-rank''s battle form" Min Ze frowned while feeling perplexed. "There must be someone controlling these monsters. Who exactly is that who can control up to 1,000 monsters at the same time?!" In reality, not only did Min Ze see that. The other Saint messengers saw the same thing too and they were horrified. The Saints had sent a total of ten imperial-level messengers and half of them were killed. Furthermore, they did not see the murderer''s face from the beginning until the end. Min Ze, the No. 1 powerhouse among the Saint members who were sent into the Fallen God Land did not see any information about the murderer from the scenes that were transmitted from the five dead men. Apart from knowing that the person was a powerful Imperial Censor, he did not have any idea about the location where they were killed. He could not avenge them even if he wanted to. "I''ve no clue apart from knowing that the person''s a powerful Imperial Censor. I can only hope that I''ll have the opportunity to bump into this person who controls the monsters within these three months." Lin Huang, who was over 20,000 kilometers away, had no idea that the news about the Saint members being killed had been received by the remaining Saint members. To him, the death of the five Saint members was just a tiny bump which did not affect him much. In less than a week, Bloody accumulated over 150 imperial-level black gold-rank puppets and it even had over 50 imperial-level crimson gold-rank puppets. The battle formation consisting of those puppets gave them the ability to fight imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses. However, Bloody knew that was the limit of its puppet battle formation. It was not about the battle formation itself, but the core level of the battle formation. To be able to reach a level whereby they could kill imperial-level white gold-ranks, it must have at least 20 imperial-level yellow gold-rank puppets as the core of its battle formation. However, with Bloody''s current combat strength, it could not parasitize imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters at all. While Bloody''s battle formation had almost reached its bottleneck, Kylie''s battle formation was soaring. She now had over 120 triple mutated Nephilic Judges which made up a third of her army. Furthermore, since her Nephilic Judges had elevated to immortal-level rank-8 and rank-9, the battle formation power was much more compelling than when she had just entered the Fallen God Land. The army was powerful enough to kill most imperial-level black gold-rank powerhouses. Lancelot surprised Lin Huang even more as he spent most of his time on the move these days. The reason being was that the hunting condition was too strict. The prey had to be Sword Dao monsters whereby their combat strength had to be immortal-level rank-9. In addition to that, they must be triple mutated too. There were only 31 monsters that fit the condition in the entire Fallen God Land and they were scattered far away from each other. However, after spending over ten days, Lancelot had finally elevated all nine of his sword servants to triple mutation. They even encountered prey that was immensely powerful along the way, so Lancelot was forced to fight. That caused the elevation to fail twice and they had to look for prey all over again. Although there were some bumps, all nine sword servants completed their elevation. Lancelot might not have expected this himself, but since the nine sword servants completed their triple mutation, he was elevated to pseudo-mythical-level. Lancelot becoming the third pseudo-mythical-level Monster Card went beyond Lin Huang''s expectations. Even since he had elevated to pseudo-mythical-level, Lancelot did not only experience a boost in ability, but his sword servant quota had increased by one fold. He now had 18 slots for sword servants. He had been busy looking for new sword servants since then. "I''ve never expected this fella who loves vegetables to become the most powerful one among all of you." Lin Huang could not help but chuckle when he said, "He should have the ability to kill imperial-level crimson gold-ranks together with his sword servants." "Master, I should be the most powerful one overall ability-wise," Bloody corrected him with full confidence. "Oh, I almost forgot about you and your army!" Lin Huang just recalled that Bloody''s puppet army was truly invincible now. They would fight imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses head-on whenever they encountered one. They were more powerful than a few pseudo-god-level powerhouses combined. "If my combat strength breaks through further and I get to imperial-level black gold-rank, I''ll be able to control imperial-level yellow gold-rank puppets. By then, we''ll be able to even kill imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses!" Bloody was not boasting at all. As soon as the core of the battle formation rank was elevated, the entire battle formation power would be boosted by folds. Compared to Bloody, Kylie, Lancelot, and the other Monster Cards did not go through that much increase in their abilities. After all, their combat strength was still stuck on immortal-level rank-9. There was no way that they could elevate further. It was even more impossible for them to mutate further, so it was only natural that their ability had an insignificant boost. The only improvement they could have was richer battle experiences. After watching Bai and the rest battle, Lin Huang was planning to buy some pet equipment for them when the search in the ruins ended. He had always thought pet equipment was expensive and impractical for them. However, after seeing Grimace control his puppet relic, he realized that the elevation in a summoning beast''s ability was correlated with their equipment. Grimace had killed imperial-level black gold-rank monsters with Bai earlier whereby they would have to show their trump card almost every time they fought. However, with the puppet relic, it was clear that killing was much easier for them. The puppet alone minimized the stress from all imperial-level black gold-rank monsters. "I''ll get Bai two demigod longsword relics to boost his attack ability. I''ll get Tyrant either a demigod-level battle hammer or battle ax which can boost his attack ability by a few folds at least. Charcoal too... I''ll get it a fire attribute crystal" Lin Huang was thorough with his plan, but he knew his pathetic savings was unable to buy all of his summoning beasts equipment. Most pet equipment was even more expensive than human equipment as some of them had to be customized according to the pet''s ability, allowing the pet to boost their ability to their maximum capacity. As time went by, half a month passed since the opening of the Fallen God Land. The intensity of the combat souls in Lin Huang''s God Figurines rose rapidly every day from the continuous hunting by his 15 summoning beasts. "Looking at the progress, the three combat souls in my body will be able to elevate to crimson gold-rank in five days at the most, or the soonest, in three days." The elevation speed was much faster than what he imagined. "The monsters that we can kill away from human-populated areas are getting lesser and lesser. More than 80% of the immortal-level rank-9 and imperial-level black gold-rank monsters in these areas have already been cleared," Bloody told Lin Huang a piece of rather bad news, "Those humans who''ve entered the ruins are searching towards all directions continuously, so our activity range is getting smaller and smaller." "It''s very common for the collision force to spread up to 1,000 kilometers away with fights involving imperial-levels. People will find out about us sooner or later. It''s just a matter of time," Bloody voiced a realistic opinion. "I''ve thought about what you said, but I didn''t expect it to come so soon." Lin Huang frowned. "How about we get them to kill underground organization members whenever they encounter one? They''ll kill them if they''re capable to and they''ll avoid them if they''re unable to fight them. We won''t fight if we encounter any non-underground organization members. We''ll avoid them entirely. "Also, handle their bodies cleanly and don''t leave any traces so that we won''t bring any unnecessary trouble to ourselves." 844 Golden Cicada Substitute It was a windy night. Wang Xu stood next to a beast''s carcass whose head was severed. He took out a piece of paper from his Emperor''s Heart Ring and wiped his demigod relic, the Waning Moon, that was covered with blood. The Waning Moon was a scimitar that resembled a crescent moon. Wang Xu had this mid-grade demigod relic scimitar customized especially before he entered the Fallen God Land. He had spent almost all of his savings on it. However, he thought it was worth it. He had gotten the hang of it these days and felt that his ability had elevated like never before. A ferocious glow was glistening on the silver saber body after the blood was wiped off. As he put the carcass away, he tossed the paper onto the ground and was ready to leave. Just as he was turning around, Wang Xu suddenly felt a stirring force coming from far away. "Is that a fight between imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouses?!" He lifted his head and looked towards the direction of the force while showing hesitation on his face. He would have definitely avoided such a situation in the past. The reason being, he had just broken through to imperial-level crimson gold-rank less than half a year ago. The chance of him defeating an imperial-level crimson gold-rank expert was extremely slim. Wang Xu was in a pickle for a moment as he looked at the Waning Moon in his hand. Eventually, he made up his mind as a fierce gleam flashed through his eyes. ''Those who have guts will benefit while the timid ones starve. I might not lose even if I fight him now. Moreover, since both of them are fighting now, I''ll just hide while waiting for them to finish. By then, I''ll reap what''s left without putting any effort in.'' Wang Xu put the scimitar away as his thoughts flowed. He then hovered in the air and flew quickly towards the source of force. His black robes seemed to be invisible in the night sky. However, the white circle on the back of his vest stood out. There was a purple crow standing on a branch in the circle and it seemed lively as if it were alive. His collar that was lifted fluttered in the wind. There was a purple metal piece the size of a thumb inside the collar. Like the crow on his trench coat, the metal piece was a purple crow. Sensing the force that was getting more and more intense, Wang Xu slowed down and flew lower. After flying for around 800 kilometers, he finally saw the duo that were fighting. It was an imperial-level crimson gold-rank human fighting an imperial-level crimson gold-rank monster. The human was covered in black robes which made it hard to identify which organization he came from. His weapon was a demigod longsword relic and he had extraordinary abilities. Meanwhile, his opponent was a Seventails Scorpion, a poisonous undying monster. This monster had a super regenerative ability whereby it could recover from almost any wound immediately. The only way to kill such a monster was to destroy its heart. The black-robed man seemed to be aware of that, so he had been trying to aim for its heart. Unfortunately, the monster had a seamless defense. Both man and monster seemed to fight equally as they had powerful abilities. Wang Xu realized that the difference between him and the old-time imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouse was very clear now. Even with the Waning Moon, he would still rank slightly below average. However, he did not plan to leave just yet. Instead, he proceeded to hide in the bushes a couple of kilometers away and hid his aura as much as he could. The fight between man and monster went on for some ten minutes while the black-robed man''s stance turned weak all of a sudden. ''What happened? Is he poisoned?'' Just when Wang Xu was in doubt, the black-robed man began to retreat quickly. He was retreating towards the direction where he was hiding. ''Sh*t!'' Wang Xu did not think that the man had noticed him. He thought the black-robed man might have been poisoned and attempted to flee since he could not defeat the monster, and just so happened to run towards his hiding place. The Seventails Scorpion caught up with the black-robed man as soon as he began to run. However, the black-robed man was simply dodging the monster''s attacks or running towards some other direction instead of retaliating. Tail whips struck through the air continuously, creating massive potholes in the ground. The black-robed man happened to deflect one of the attacks from where it was and slammed towards where Wang Xu was hiding. Feeling helpless, Wang Xu retreated immediately and managed to dodge the attack. Although he dodged the Seventails Scorpion''s attack, Wang Xu had revealed himself. "Brother, you''re finally here!" The black-robed man shouted to Wang Xu suddenly, "Help me quickly. Let''s get this monster together!" The Seventails Scorpion began to attack Wang Xu right away as soon as it heard that. Wang Xu only snapped back to his senses after a while of being stunned. He did not expect his plan of waiting for free fortune to end up making the Seventails Scorpion thinking he was the black-robed man''s partner. He was being attacked just like the black-robed man was. "I know you''re hiding here to wait for the reward, but there''s nowhere for you to escape now," said the black-robed man through voice transmission, "Let''s kill it together and half the reward. Or you don''t have to agree to my plan. I''ll just retreat now and you won''t get anything." "Sure, let''s kill it together!" Although Wang Xu agreed to him, he had another plan in his head. ''Since you''re poisoned anyway, we''ll kill the monster together, then I''ll kill you,'' he thought to himself. "You''ll contain its tail and I''ll find ways to attack its heart." The black-robed man came up with a plan immediately. "Why don''t you contain its tail instead?" Wang Xu was a little reluctant. "Your scimitar''s more suitable for defending a wider range while my sword''s more suitable for a focused attack." Wang Xu had nothing to retort back to the black-robed man. The reason why he had picked the scimitar as his weapon was because of its powerful cutting ability and indeed, he had a defensive saber skill that was suitable for a scimitar of such form. Feeling helpless again, Wang Xu charged towards the Seventails Scorpion. After blocking the Seventails Scorpion''s tail whip attack, Wang Xu felt a sense of threat coming from his back as he was thinking about what he should do to the black-robed man after killing this monster. Just when he wanted to dodge, the Seventails Scorpion''s tail came whipping before him and he had nowhere to run. In the next second, a silver ray pierced through the left side of his chest. As he was going out of consciousness, he heard a voice by his ear, "I''m sorry. I wasn''t poisoned at all. I pretended to retreat so that I could end you first before I could fight this Seventails Scorpion in peace." After killing the core member of the Purple Crow, the black-robed man did not even glance at the body and proceeded to fight the Seventails Scorpion. Around half an hour later, the Seventails Scorpion become the second dead body on this battlefield. The black-robed man took off his hood and picked up Wang Xu''s scimitar. His face then turned into Wang Xu''s instantly. Lin Huang grinned as he nodded, watching the result of this battle 10,000 kilometers away. "The Evil Dominator''s performance isn''t too shabby. He killed an imperial-level crimson gold-rank and imperial-level yellow gold-rank in the past two days with the help of Bloody. After obtaining two Golden Cicada Substitutes, he possesses the ability to kill imperial-level crimson gold-ranks now. If he takes his trump card out, he''ll be able to fight imperial-level yellow gold-ranks," Lin Huang said. "Unfortunately, the Golden Cicada can only make human substitutes. Otherwise, he''d have at least ten imperial-level crimson gold-rank monster substitutes. Although the Evil Dominator doesn''t have such a limitation, he has a time restriction. The two skills have flaws of their own," Bloody commented. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything. The Evil Dominator would be almost invincible if there were no flaws in either skill. Lin Huang had both of the skills while his Evil Blood Substitute was exactly the same as the one the Evil Dominator had. However, his Golden Cicada had been extracted from the Evil Dominator''s body by Xiao Hei back then. It was the lower-end version which he could only use three times per day*. Lin Huang did not really care about the substitute''s ability back then. After all, the substitute had not exactly been powerful when he had used it to kill an evil spirit type of monster as it just seemed to be harder to be defeated. However, its terrifying ability seemed to be coming out as his ability elevated. Just like the Evil Dominator which was on immortal-level rank-9, his ability would elevate to imperial-level yellow gold-rank as soon as he summoned the imperial-level yellow gold-rank substitute. It was many times more powerful than his own combat strength. ''Looking at my current body strength, I could bear an imperial-level yellow gold-rank''s substitute forcefully which is a rank higher than the boost using the knight''s skill. Moreover, the Golden Cicada can copy the substitute''s inheritance, memory, and abilities completely'' A new idea popped into Lin Huang''s head instantly as he thought about this. "Bloody, please look for some imperial-level crimson gold-rank sword cultivators from an underground organization for me. I would like a few of them, also some imperial-level black gold-rank sword cultivators as well!" *Translator''s note: (details in Chapter 769) 845 We Didn’t Hit It Off Ever since entering the Fallen God Land the past half a month, Han Jie''s journey had been a smooth sailing one. As a Duke of Dynasty, the members from the other organizations would avoid him no matter what kind of monsters he was hunting. Although his combat strength was only on imperial-level crimson gold-rank, which was the lowest among the 20 imperial-level Dukes from Dynasty who entered this round, even some imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses dared not challenge him for prey due to the golden cape he was wearing. Once, he even encountered an imperial-level yellow gold-rank from the Hunter Association, but the person did not fight him. "This Fallen God Land''s such an amazing place! I''ve already killed more than 20 imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters in the past 20 days while I''ve already killed up to 100 imperial-level black gold-rank monsters. I''ll make a clean cut of tens of billions of Life Crystals just by selling all these monster carcasses. With the extra reward, I''ll make at least hundreds of billions" Han Jie grinned while looking at the corpse wearing a trench coat under his foot as he spoke. The body was lying facing him, and there was a logo of a purple metal crow on the collar. As a member of an underground organization, although his main goal was to kill monsters every day, Han Jie did not let go of other organization members whenever he encountered one. No matter if it was members of the union organization or an underground organization, he basically destroyed everyone that he could defeat. The body below his feet was the fifth imperial-level black gold-rank powerhouse that Han Jie had killed ever since he arrived at the Fallen God Land. Three days ago, he attacked an imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouse from the Union Government when the person was fighting a monster. Eventually, he killed the powerhouse. Everything in the person''s Emperor''s Heart Ring naturally belonged to Han Jie eventually. "I''ll make billions selling these human bodies as puppets!" After browsing through the items on the body, Han Jie was planning to let go of them. As a member of Dynasty, he did this kind of business frequently. Even if it was a naked corpse, he would sell everything he could possibly retrieve from the body. In reality, all organizations would recycle dead bodies and bury them. Since there were few human corpses with high combat strength, the selling price was many folds higher than monster carcasses of the same level. Although Lin Huang would take everything from the dead people that he killed too, he had never done any business selling human bodies. "Who is that?!" Just when he was ready to leave after putting the dead body away, Han Jie lifted his head all of a sudden and looked towards one of the directions. A man in a black trench coat walked over, and he had a purple crow pin on his collar too. Han Jie was stunned for a moment when he saw the person''s attire. After all, the imperial-level black gold-rank powerhouse that he had just killed was from the Purple Crow and now, he was caught by someone else from the same organization. He was slightly relieved after sensing that the person had the same aura as he did, which was imperial-level crimson gold-rank. "Brother, I killed him because he attacked me first." Han Jie turned the tables around before anything could happen. "Really? I might believe it if you''re from a union organization," said the man in the trench coat as he walked towards Han Jie slowly. Han Jie knew that what he said was hard to believe. Dynasty was worthy of being called the No. 1 underground organization in Division 3 with which other underground organizations were unwilling to have any conflicts. Even an imperial-level yellow gold-rank Purple Crow member might not attack Han Jie if they bumped into each other, let alone an imperial-level blank gold-rank member. "So what do you want? To avenge him?" Han Jie had his guard up slightly, but he still thought it was quite impossible for the person to attack him. "Why would I do that? I wasn''t close to him." The man in the trench coat shook his head while smiling. "Let''s just share 50% of the reward since he belongs to the same organization as I do." "What makes you think that you deserve that? I was the one who killed him. You did nothing and you''re asking for 50% of the reward?!" Han Jie scoffed in disdain. It was clear that the person did not plan to attack him, so there was no need for him to be afraid of him. "I''m leaving now. Don''t tell me you''re going to stop me?" "I won''t stop you, but I''ll tell on you." The man in the trench coat continued to grin. "The father of this person you killed is a demigod while his brother''s in this ruins as well. He''s an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. What''re the odds of you walking out of this Fallen God Land alive when I tell them who the murderer is? Even if you manage to survive the remaining two months or so, do you think Dynasty would protect you if a demigod demands for you by then?" "You" Han Jie was sweating profusely when he heard this revelation. He had no idea that he had killed such a prominent person. However, he now had the intention to kill this black-robed man before him. "Naturally, I won''t sell you out as long as you give me 50% of the reward. I''d be asking for death if I did that," proceeded the man. "I''ll give you a minute to think about it. You can reject me, then I won''t ask you to stay. I''ll leave and report about you." "How do you want to do it? He only has one Emperor''s Heart Ring." Han Jie chose to compromise temporarily while looking irritated. "Give me the Emperor''s Heart Ring. I''ll give you half of the contents after I unlock it." "No way. What if you ran away after taking the Emperor''s Heart Ring from me?" It was clear that Han Jie did not trust the man in the trench coat before him. "Don''t worry. I''ll definitely share half of the items with you. I don''t want you to turn the tables around and tell people that I killed him when you get out of this place." The man looked down and glanced at the time on the Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Also, you don''t have any other choice now. You only have 30 seconds. I''ll leave if you don''t decide." "Fine, I''ll give you the Emperor''s Heart Ring!" Han Jie tossed the Emperor''s Heart Ring at him while looking reluctant. Just when the man reached out to grab the ring, Han Jie moved all of a sudden. He tore towards the man in the trench coat while unsheathing his battle sword in an instant. A fleeting green sword ray flashed through the air and arrived at the throat of the man in the trench coat while the Emperor''s Heart Ring was still in the air. However, an intense sense of danger came at this moment. Han Jie saw a black ray radiating through the air and the man passed him in the next second. He felt a devastating pain radiating from his chest at the moment. Han Jie looked down and suddenly noticed a gash which appeared on his chest without even realizing it. The wound went through his chest and his heart beneath it was crushed. As his vision was fading slowly, the voice of the man in the trench coat came from behind faintly, "Your sword''s too slow" The man''s body changed as soon as he put away his sword into its sheath. Soon, the person took on Han Jie''s appearance. "This is the sixth imperial-level crimson gold-rank substitute now" A cloud of purple mist came out of the sleeve of the substitute Han Jie slowly. "You could''ve killed him in one hit. Why did you have to talk so much with him?" "Why must we use violence so soon? I think it''s nice to chat. I might let the person go if I encounter someone who hit it off with me," said ''Han Jie'' while smiling. "Too bad this fella from Dynasty didn''t hit it off with me." Bloody roughly understood what Lin Huang said. Not everyone who joined an underground organization was wicked. Some of them were forced to enter, but they were not evil just like Xiao Mo, the boy Lin Huang met in the Purple Crow training camp. The reason why Lin Huang chatted with the person was because he was deciding if he should kill him. For the past few days, Lin Huang had been killing underground organization members. Since the Golden Cicada secret skill would give him their inheritance, everyone he killed was sword cultivators. There had been 17 imperial-level black gold-rank sword cultivators and six imperial-level crimson gold-rank sword cultivators who died by his hand in the past few days. With his current ability, he could even fight imperial-level white gold-ranks with an imperial-level crimson gold-rank substitute. If not for the heavy burden an imperial-level crimson gold-rank substitute brought him and the time limitation that was restricted to half an hour, he could even kill imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses. It was not difficult for him to kill an imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouse in one blow under the condition of using an imperial-level crimson gold-rank substitute. Meanwhile, he could kill imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses within 10 swings of his sword. Apart from the increasing number of substitutes, the three combat souls in Lin Huang''s body completed their breakthrough two days ago. They elevated from imperial-level black gold-rank to imperial-level crimson gold-rank. His overall ability was considered a rank higher now. However, his summoning beasts began to face trouble. Due to the ever-growing expansion of human exploration areas, Bai and the rest could not avoid encountering humans. Their hunting speed was plummeting more and more in the past week due to the encounter with humans. As Lin Huang asked them to avoid members from the union organization as well as the underground organization members that they could not fight. This caused their activity range to be more and more limited. Moreover, the army Kylie led was too large. They were sought after a couple of times as their whereabouts were revealed by the humans'' detection relics. Her Nephilic Judge army had close to 200 triple mutated Nephilic Angels now. With Bloody''s improved battle formations, they could even fight imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters. However, there were some imperial-level yellow gold- and white gold-rank people who joined two of the hunting expeditions looking for Kylie and her army. If not for her mini world, Kylie and her Nephilic Judge army would have been caught alive. Although the rest of his summoning beasts were doing better than Kylie, Lin Huang speculated their hunting range would be completely occupied by humans in a few days. By then, he would have to turn them back into cards. However, Lin Huang did not consider that as a setback. What upset him was not having any news about the God Figurines since the day he set foot in the Fallen God Land over 20 days ago. "Did Chan Dou trick me?" Lin Huang even began to suspect that Chan Dou had misled him about the God Figurines being in the ruins just to trick him to enter. 846 A Sudden, Unusual Phenomenon As time passed, it had been more than a month since Lin Huang entered the Fallen God Land. A few days ago, since the number of human explorers was constantly growing, Bai and the rest did not have any place to hunt. Aside from Bloody, the rest of the summoning monsters had been recalled back into their card forms. More than 200 Nephilic Angels from Kylie''s army had completed their triple mutation. Despite the fact that all the Nephilic Judges had completed the upgrade, her army was still incapable of fighting a yellow gold-rank. However, there were not only yellow gold-ranks but also white gold and purple gold-ranks. Although Kylie was unwilling to do so, she still accepted Lin Huang''s arrangement. Lin Huang promised her that she would be summoned again when the time was right. He had never stopped hunting for those who majored in swordsmanship from the underworld. The number of inheritances he obtained increased as well. The number of legendary-level sword skills he used to have was less than 80 and there were more than 180 of them now after they had been multiplied. He even obtained pseudo-mythical-level sword skills: the Void Sword and the Instantaneous Slash. The Void Sword was a very powerful skill, but it was rather different from Killer. Killer leaned more towards a close-range attack whereas the Void Sword tended to be a Life Power attack. Of course, it would not be weak if one were to use it for a close-range attack. As for the Instantaneous Slash, it was a completely different kind of sword skill as there was only one hit for the skill. It was an extremely fast attack. Lin Huang had practiced sword skills of such speed before. He had even derived many legendary-level sword skills from Thunder Sting. The sword skill that he recently used to kill the crimson gold-rank was the new version of Thunder Sting. However, be it the speed of the sword, its cutting ability or its speed when the attack was launched, it was more than 10 times faster than the new version of Thunder Sting. Despite the fact that the skill consisted of only one single hit, its power was tremendously terrifying. Even Lin Huang dared not fight such an attack. Lin Huang felt that the Instantaneous Slash would be on par with the mythical-level skill. The one who created this skill was definitely on god-level. The scariest part of Golden Cicada was that not only did it allow others to learn the skill, but it could be directly inherited and the memory could be retained. In the past 10 days, each time when Lin Huang killed a person who mastered swordsmanship, he was able to completely obtain their experience in sword training. He could even get the hang of the skill. Lin Huang''s Sword Dao was improving by the day. Aside from taking a good rest, he basically did only three things every day which were to proceed with his journey, kill sword majors, and go for sword training. As for Bloody, it had stopped hunting for the Parasitic Puppet. Its responsibility was to provide Lin Huang with a hunting target and parasitize the sword majors that had been killed by Lin Huang. Also, it had to look for the God Figurine which nobody had any idea about. Lin Huang practiced his sword skills as usual tonight. Before midnight, a silver glow lit up abruptly in the sky as if there was an explosion. The silver cloud lingered in the air and did not clear away even after a long while. Seeing what just happened, Lin Huang stopped his sword training and asked, "Bloody, can you see what''s happening out there?" "A beam of light was released from the foggy area which I''ve no way of exploring. However, there are no changes in the fog." Bloody''s Leech Pods could immediately identify where the silver glow originated from. "Hey, it''s kind of weird." "What happened?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "There are people heading over there right now. It seems like even the people that are tens of thousands of kilometers away from the ruins have witnessed this phenomenon," Bloody explained. "If it''s bright enough, there''s nothing unusual about everyone seeing it. Just like how we''re able to see the sun and the moon." "However, it seems like only immortal- and holy fire-levels can see it. The imperial-levels can''t seem to see the strange phenomenon at all," Bloody said, projecting a few of the imperial-levels. "The three imperial-levels are less than 100 kilometers away from the fog. The one who''s farthest away is only 300 kilometers away. Look at their reactions." From the projection, the three of them ignored the strange phenomenon above them. It seemed like they could not see it at all and they were busy getting their work done. One of them ran in the opposite direction while another one was setting up a tent, getting ready to sleep. The third one got into an intense fight with the imperial-level monster. "Aside from the three of them, it seems like all the imperial-levels are unable to see this phenomenon. They''re busy with their own work and none of them even bother to look in the direction where the strange phenomenon occurred." Bloody projected more than 10 of the imperial-levels being monitored. Lin Huang frowned. "Only those who''re below imperial-level are able to see it? That''s really strange." "Do we need to go and have a look?" Bloody asked. It was feeling worried because its Leech Pods were unable to explore that area. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang nodded his head without a moment of hesitation. "Chan Dou mentioned that the God Figurine is in the ruins. I guess he''s not bluffing as he won''t tell such a joke. You haven''t been able to find anything regarding the God Figurine for the past month. That being said, the God Figurine might be in an area that you''re unable to detect. If we don''t go and have a look, it''s a waste coming to the Fallen God Land." "However, I think it''s too risky as it''s an area that can distract the imperial-levels." Bloody tended to avoid those unknown areas. "The rest of the immortal-levels have the courage to go. Why don''t we give it a try? We''re capable of fighting a white gold-rank. Even if we encounter any danger, I guess our survival rate will be higher than the immortal-levels''." Lin Huang was quite confident in his abilities. "In addition to having so many God Crashers in our hands, even if we happen to bump into demigod-levels, we can fight them. If we''re in really great trouble, we can even hide in Kylie''s mini world." After listening to what he said, Bloody frowned. It knew that Lin Huang had made up his mind and very unlikely that it could do anything to change his decision. The foggy area was at the northwest of the ruins. It was an extremely huge stretch and was approximately half the area of Earth. It had attempted to explore this region with its Leech Pods previously. However, once the Leech Pods entered the foggy area, they would completely lose connection. This was the reason it wanted to stay away from this region all the time. However, the appearance of the phenomenon indicated that there might be hidden danger lurking there. It could be an opportunity for Lin Huang as opportunities were often accompanied by risks and it was inevitable. If Lin Huang managed to obtain the God Figurine, he would level up to immortal-level rank-4 and advance to the intermediate level of an immortal-level. Its combat strength would be upgraded to black gold-rank as well. It would not be a problem to parasitize a yellow gold-rank by then. The upgrade in its abilities could even surpass more than that. As it thought of this, Bloody no longer stopped Lin Huang from entering the area. However, it made a request. "We can go, but you have to promise me that you''ll quit if one of your clones dies." "Sure," Lin Huang promised. If it was so dangerous to the point that his crimson gold-rank clone died, he would probably perish there. After coming to an agreement, the two of them departed. Lin Huang then summoned Thunder and headed towards the fog. 847 Tan Lang It was past ten in the morning on the second day when Lin Huang arrived at the entrance of the foggy area. The entrance of the foggy area was located in a valley and there were already hundreds of people gathering there. Lin Huang saw a familiar person there Huangfu Lin. He saw her even before they entered the ruins. However, Huangfu Lin did not notice him among the crowd. Startled was her first reaction when she saw Lin Huang. His presence was out of her expectations. However, after sensing his powerful aura, her frozen reaction turned into shock in the blink of an eye. "It''s been awhile." Noticing that Huangfu Lin had seen him, Lin Huang knew there was nowhere he could run, so he walked towards her while smirking. The reason he did not really want to meet Huangfu Lin, his old friend, was that of the illogical elevation rate of his combat strength. As expected, the first thing Huangfu Lin said was, "Your combat strength''s on immortal-level rank-3 now?!" The last time they had seen each other was merely half a year ago and Lin Huang''s combat strength had been only blue flame-level back then. Leaping five ranks above within half a year and elevating by a level from holy fire-level to immortal-level in between, his cultivation speed was so fast that it was absurd. "Yeah, I just happen to have great luck." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. However, that simple response halted the topic completely. What he really meant was that he did not want to talk about it. Huangfu Lin did not ask further so she changed the topic, "You shouldn''t have come even though you''ve advanced to immortal-level rank-3." "I just thought of taking a look since there was quota available." Lin Huang did not bother to explain although he knew he was being underestimated. After all, apart for a couple of people on holy fire-level, his combat strength was indeed the lowest among all who were present. It would be ridiculous for him to tell Huangfu Lin that he was actually so powerful that he could even fight an imperial-level white gold-rank. "Why is everyone gathering at the entrance but not going in?" Lin Huang changed the topic to avoid Huangfu Lin discussing his combat strength. "We can''t go in yet. The area covered in white fog seems to be blocked by a layer of invisible film. You''ll know what I mean if you touch it with your hand," Huangfu Lin explained. She had arrived a few hours before Lin Huang, so she already found out what had happened. "So what do we do now? Do we just wait?" "The people from the Union Government said the defense layer will only be effective for 24 hours. It''ll fade away automatically 24 hours later. We can go in by then." It was not confidential information, so naturally, Huangfu Lin did not have to keep it a secret. After chatting with Huangfu Lin for a while, Lin Huang saw Shen Tao from the Heaven Alliance descending from the sky, riding on a beast. hen Tao noticed Lin Huang in the crowd in an instant. After putting the beast away, he walked towards Lin Huang in large strides. He only noticed how extraordinary Lin Huang''s combat strength was when he got closer. "Lin Xie, your combat strength" "Just luck." Lin Huang shook Shen Tao''s hand while smiling. Compared to Huangfu Lin, Lin Huang had fought alongside with Shen Tao at the tribal land before, so it was natural for them to be closer. "You guys go ahead." Huangfu Lin nodded to both of them and left. Shen Tao took a glance at Huangfu Lin, then patted Lin Huang''s shoulder and gave him a thumbs up when she left far away. He said softly, "That chick''s not bad!" "You''re thinking too much. We''ve just met once before this." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. "Let''s meet more frequently. Work harder. It''s possible to meet her for another 10 or 20 times," Shen Tao winked as he spoke, "Let me tell you, you must be clingy if you want to win a lady''s heart." "I don''t need you, a single dog, to teach me how to woo a lady. I''m afraid I''ll have an even harder time to find a girlfriend after listening to your advice," Lin Huang attacked him verbally in a straightforward way. Shen Tao had nothing to say. "What do you guys know about this foggy land?" Lin Huang said through voice transmission all of a sudden. "We know nothing," Shen Tao replied in all seriousness, "The Fallen God Land is a grade-7 ruins. The Union Government in Division 3 is keeping it confidential. Although the ruins opened on a major scale, they only provide us with the most basic information." "Although they''ve only explored less than a fifth of the ruins throughout the past hundreds of years, the Division 3 Union Government must have collected quite some information. As for this foggy land, I think the people from the union organizations such as the Union Government and Hunter Association might know something about it," Shen Tao voiced his speculation. Recalling what Huangfu Lin had said earlier about the people from the Union Government knowing the defense layer would only be effective for 24 hours, Lin Huang figured that Shen Tao''s speculation was accurate. "Let''s not talk about this. Since you''re here, let''s join the rest, so we can take care of each other." Shen Tao pulled Lin Huang towards the direction where the few Heaven Alliance members were gathering. "Big Brother Tan Lang''s here too. He''s been wanting to meet you." Lin Huang had only heard of Tan Lang but had never seen him before. In reality, Lin Huang had never seen any of the three Heaven Alliance deputy chiefs before and had no idea how they looked like. Five Heaven Alliance members arrived before Lin Huang and Shen Tao did. Seeing Shen Tao walking over with Lin Huang, the five of them from the Heaven Alliance were observing him while feeling a little curious. They did not expect Lin Huang, who was only holy fire-level from what they recalled, to elevate to immortal-level rank-3 now. They were all surprised by the elevation speed of his combat strength. Lin Huang scanned through the five of them. Although all of them had a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9, he recognized Tan Lang immediately. He was not as tall as Lin Huang had imagined at a little over 1.8 meters, which was similar to Lin Huang''s height. He wore a black, slim-fit trench coat with a stand-up collar while his body was rather skinny. However, Lin Huang was almost sure that he was the kind who appeared skinny but was chubby underneath those clothes. His skin was tanned. Although his appearance was not considered handsome, he was very manly. There was a scar across the left side of his cheek which was almost three centimeters long. However, instead of making him hideous, it made him cool. Although they were all immortal-level rank-9s, Tan Lang, who was clad in black, had the strongest aura which was much more powerful than the three of them among the four. ''He''s indeed on par with the Seventh Prince from Dynasty,'' Lin Huang secretly commented. Apart from Tan Lang, there was a baby-faced person who made Lin Huang do a double take. That person''s aura was just slightly weaker than Tan Lang''s, but it was clear that he was a supreme genius too. His age should be at least 28, but he looked only 17 or 18 at the most. He dressed like a student with a gentle smile on his face which made him look rather harmless. "He disguises himself to be harmless, but he''s actually not." Lin Huang secretly gave him a label. "Hi, everyone. My name''s Lin Xie." Lin Huang walked forward and greeted them. "Tan Lang." Tan Lang was the first one who shook hands with Lin Huang. "Li Jia." The baby-face was the second. After some introduction, Lin Huang found out that Tan Lang and Shen Tao both came from Division 1 while Li Jia came from Division 2. Among the 10 quotas that the Heaven Alliance were given, Chan Dou gave two to Division 1, one to Division 2 while the remaining seven were assigned to the local members from Division 3. "Lin Xie, I know that your ability surpasses your combat strength. Although your combat strength''s only immortal-level rank-3 now, your real ability might be more powerful than many immortal-level rank-9 powerhouses. But there are many immortal-level rank-9 supreme geniuses who are coming into the ruins this time. Some even have the ability to kill imperial-levels while there might also be many imperial-level powerhouses who participated this time. To put it simply and although it was rather displeasing to hear, your ability''s not worth mentioning among these people." "Chan Dou gave me a mission before I came. If I happen to see you in the ruins, I must do my best to protect you. He thinks you''ve got the potential to be one of the Five Princes and hopes you won''t die here. I don''t want to judge if what he thought is accurate or not but I don''t want to fail my mission. Hence, I''m giving you a mission here. The mission sounds simple, but it might not be easy to fulfill: protect yourself," Tan Lang said in all honesty and straightforward. Although it was rather displeasing, it was clear that he came with good intentions. "Alright then." Lin Huang had no idea how to respond to what Tan Lang said. "Don''t leave the group once we get into the foggy area. We must move together. If we''re separated, you must follow me first, Li Jia second and Shen Tao third" "Understood," Lin Huang agreed while nodding calmly. 848 Bug Master At midnight, the silver clouds in the sky dispersed slowly while the phenomenon finally began to fade away Everyone knew that the isolation layer lingering around the foggy area should be waning soon. There were already over 5,000 human powerhouses gathered at the entrance of the foggy area. It surpassed half of the total people who had entered the ruins. Among the thousands of people, most of them were immortal-level rank-9 powerhouses while a minority of them were holy fire-levels. There were even over 30 imperial-level powerhouses among them. These imperial-level powerhouses could not witness the phenomenon in the sky at all. Most of them came here following the news spread by the immortal-level members from the same organizations. Although the communication function on the Emperor''s Heart Ring could not be used, these major organizations had their unique way of communicating. However, it was not as convenient as the Emperor''s Heart Ring which had a limited communication range too. There was also a minority of them hunting around the area and could not help but go there to check it out after noticing many immortal-level powerhouses gathering towards the direction. Among the crowd, many of the immortal-level powerhouses were complaining discreetly. With more than 30 imperial-level powerhouses there, they might not even get a piece of monster bone if they got in. The phenomenon in the sky was fading quickly and many of them began to touch the invisible isolation film at the entrance of the valley. Soon, someone in the crowd shouted, "The isolation layer''s gone!" The people became excited when the scream rang out while many of them began to rush into the valley. Lin Huang and the rest were behind them. They saw many of them entering the entrance and disappearing into the fog. In a while, they could no longer sense any of their aurae. The members of the few major organizations under Union Government did not rush in like the rest. Instead, they got their members to join hands and walk into it in groups. "I don''t think the people from the Union Government joined hands because they''re afraid they''d be separated. They might be transported when they go in," Tan Lang voiced his speculation as he watched. The rest agreed with what he said. Just when the 10 of them from the Heaven Alliance joined hands before entering, an imperial-level powerhouse dashed towards the entrance all of a sudden. However, the person seemed to have smacked himself onto an invisible glass and his face deformed a little when he bounced back. Everyone was stunned to see that. "Is the entrance closed?" Someone shouted in surprise. An immortal-level member from a group extended his hand and passed through the layer of isolation easily. He then disappeared with his team into the fog. Later on, other immortal-level groups went in one after another and none of them faced any obstacles. Imperial-level powerhouses then extended their hands, but they realized that they were blocked out. It was clear that the foggy area stopped imperial-levels from entering. An imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouse frowned a little and appeared next to a group of immortal-levels that was going into the valley in a flash. He grabbed one of the group members'' hands. "Bring me in!" The member dared not deny him, so they had to bring him in. The group of five passed through the isolation layer very soon, but when it was the imperial-level white gold-rank''s turn, he let go of the immortal-level''s hand that he was holding automatically when he bounced back. Looking at that, the rest of them basically confirmed one thing. This foggy area prohibited imperial-level powerhouses from entering. Tan Lang and the few of them were secretly pleased. Without the participation of imperial-level powerhouses, it would mean they were the most powerful powerhouses in the area. They would not have to tiptoe around other powerhouses when they were looking for resources, so it was undoubtedly great news for them. The rest of the imperial-level powerhouses looked extremely horrified. They had spent the entire day waiting outside, but they could not enter in the end. "Let''s go!" Staying there and watching would only make the imperial-level powerhouses even madder, so Tan Lang urged them to join hands and dash towards the entrance. The ten of them made it through the isolation layer successfully as they vanished into the fog. All Lin Huang felt was that he passed through a layer of white fog and his vision became clear all of a sudden. The fog around vanished completely and the ten of them appeared on a field while joining hands. There was a fresh floral aroma in the air. There was a red and a purple crescent moon hanging in the sky above their heads, giving the night a mysterious cast. "It kind of looks like we''re back in our world," Shen Tao mumbled softly. "Can we let go of our hands now?" Lin Huang turned to look at Tan Lang beside him. After letting go of their hands, Tan Lang looked around before speaking, "There''s no one else''s aura around. We should be transported somewhere in the foggy area as a team while the other team should be experiencing the same thing." "Does anyone have any detection abilities or detection relics? Let''s see if there''s anything odd happening around here and see if there''s anywhere to rest our feet." "I''ll do it," Li Jia walked out from the crowd and said to Tan Lang. Tan Lang nodded. As the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance, he had a rough understanding of his Heaven Alliance members. Especially before going there, he did his homework as he had gotten the list from Chan Dou beforehand. Li Jia closed his eyes slowly. A while later, black, flying bugs that were the size of mosquitoes came out of his collars and sleeves. They flapped their wings and flew towards all directions. "A Bug Master?!" Someone among the crowd shouted out loud. Lin Huang was a little surprised too as it was his first time seeing a Bug Master. He had heard of such profession before whereby he knew that a Bug Master was even rarer than an Imperial Censor, but he had never seen a real one. In the ancient times, a Bug Master was actually a branch under an Imperial Censor a Bug Imperial Censor. However, due to further studies into varieties of bugs, the Bug Imperial Censors came up with all sorts of new abilities and new battle modes. That was how they got their independence from the Imperial Censor and a new profession was born the Bug Master. Bugs had the most varieties among all monsters, hence the battle style of a Bug Master was more colorful than an Imperial Censor''s. They walked on a different path which only got further away from Imperial Censors. Now almost everyone agreed completely that the Bug Master was an independent profession which was different from the Imperial Censor. To Lin Huang, Li Jia''s detection skill was similar to Bloody''s Leech Pods. However, the number of bugs was limited while its detection range was smaller. Their detection accuracy was definitely below Bloody''s. After all, Bloody possessed Supreme Intelligence which allowed it to control information coming from tens of millions of Leech Pods. Li Jia definitely would not be able to do that. However, Li Jia had released up to 10,000 bugs now. It proved that his soul was much more powerful than those who had the same combat strength as he did. Around some ten minutes later, the bugs came back and entered Li Jia''s body. He then opened his eyes slowly while looking a little peculiar. "What''s wrong?" Tan Lang asked immediately. "There are natives here" What Li Jia said shocked everyone. He then proceeded to give a detailed explanation, "In our 10 o''clock, 120 kilometers away is a little town where people live. They''re all ordinary people who have no cultivation base and they dress rather strangely. They kind of dress like those ancient people, like the kind of clothes I''ve seen in the museum" 849 Little Town Li Jia''s discovery was rather unexpected. Even Lin Huang was a little surprised by that. "Are you sure it''s a mistake? Are they really human and not disguised by monsters?" Tan Lang still thought it was a little unbelievable. "They should be real. It''s clear that the buildings in the town are made by humans and it''s brightly lit now. I don''t think monsters are able to build such a human town." Li Jia was sure of that. "Could they be survivors from the ancient times?" Shen Tao could not help but frown. "It''s possible that the people who survived during the war gathered and bred, then slowly built a town of their own." "It''s certainly possible theoretically." Lin Huang nodded to agree with what he said. What Shen Tao said was logically reasonable. "Maybe this foggy area happens to protect them and prevents outsiders from interfering with their lives. Maybe that''s how they managed to live for generations until now," Li Jia added. His voiced thoughts made everyone believe those people might really be survivors of ancient times. "Then, let''s check it out together. We need a place to rest anyway, so we can ask around about the area as well." Tan Lang came up with a plan after some thinking. However, he did not forget to remind them, "No matter whether these people are ancient time survivors or not, we should have our guard up. Remember, we''re still in grade-7 ruins. It''s possible for anything to happen." After that piece of short advice, Tan Lang then led them to fly towards the town ahead. Soon, they saw the town that Li Jia was talking about. The town was small. It was approximately 40 to 50 square kilometers large. The buildings in the town were almost all low houses with red bricks and green tiles. There were hardly any double-story houses. There were red lanterns lit up at the entrance of every house. The fire burned inside the lanterns; the light did not come from energy stones. "I''ve seen such lanterns at the museum before. I remember them being used by the commoners in the Middle Ages as a source of light," recalled an immortal-level rank-9 powerhouse, "I think the fuel is made of animal fats." They descended slowly from the sky. "There really isn''t any energy around. The people around here should be ordinary people who have no cultivation base." Tan Lang finally proved that Li Jia''s speculation earlier was accurate. He was relieved after finding out about it himself. Meanwhile, Lin Huang noticed a 12 or 13-year-old boy looking at them descending from the sky through the window in a house not far away. He turned to look at where the young boy was. The young boy hid his head under the window immediately and only revealed half of his head slowly to peek at Lin Huang and the rest after a while. Lin Huang smiled while nodding at him. The boy was stunned for a moment and seemed troubled for a while before he opened the window and shouted at Lin Huang, "Are you guys immortal?" Lin Huang and the rest were stunned to hear his question. "Kid" Lin Huang held Shen Tao''s shoulder just when he was going to say something and shook his head. Lin Huang took a step forward and said to the young boy with a smile, "We''re not immortal, we''re cultivators." "But I saw you guys fly from the sky. It means all of you are immortal!" The young boy said with conviction. "You mean like this?" Lin Huang hovered from the ground slowly and flew towards the window. "You guys really are immortal!" The young boy''s eyes lit up and he was no longer scared upon realizing that Lin Huang was friendly. He then said to Lin Huang in excitement, "You guys must know how to kill demons then! "Demons?" Lin Huang was stunned again hearing that, but he responded, "How does the demon you mentioned look like?" "They" The young boy was interrupted all of a sudden. "Xiao Yu, who are you talking to?" A woman suddenly opened the door to the young boy''s room. "Aunty" The young boy turned to glance at the door immediately. "Who are you?" The woman looked at Lin Huang warily. She then stepped forward and pushed the young boy behind her. "Aunty, he''s an immortal!" The young boy named Xiao Yu exclaimed excitedly. "Immortal? More like a con man!" The woman seemed even more skeptical now. "He''s not a con man. I really saw him fly!" Xiao Yu explained on behalf of Lin Huang quickly. "Are you leaving? I''ll call the police if you don''t!" The woman threatened Lin Huang fiercely. She was sure that Lin Huang was a con man. "Sis, please calm down. I just want to ask about the demons." Lin Huang wrung his hands helplessly. "Oh, you want to know about the demons. You really think you''re immortal, don''t you!?" The woman said in disdain, "I''ve seen so many scammers in my life. You''re not the only one who can fly. Do you think I don''t know the tricks that you guys play to scam people?! If you really are who you said you are, then make me fly! I''ll believe that you''re immortal if you make me fly." "If you say so." Lin Huang could not help but smile hearing what the woman said. He extended two telekinetic threads which tangled around the bodies of the woman and the young boy. Lin Huang moved his fingers slightly while the duo''s feet floated from the ground. "I" The woman wanted to say something but she realized that she was hovering in the air. She swallowed the words that were coming out of her mouth. "I''m flying!" Seeing that he was flying, Xiao Yu was cheering and dancing with excitement. "So, can we talk now?" Lin Huang said with a smirk after a while, waiting for the woman to snap out of her bewilderment. "You really are an immortal" The woman mumbled softly. After opening the door and letting Lin Huang and the rest into the house, she realized that there was not only one immortal who came, but ten of them. "Please Please take a seat" The woman brought all of the stools that she had at home out clumsily, but there were only eight of them. She was panicking even more now. "Sis, don''t panic. We only have a few questions." Lin Huang knew the woman might be spooked. "Please do shoot away. I''ll definitely tell you everything that I know." "Well, we''ve just arrived at this town, so we''ve no idea what''s the situation here. I heard from Xiao Yu that there are demons here. Could you tell me more about that?" Lin Huang went straight to the point while Tan Lang and the rest listened carefully because they did not want to miss a thing. "Oh, so you guys are here to kill the demons! That''s great!" The woman was relieved and started rattling on like a bullet train. "There''s this Black Dragon Mountain near our town and there''s a super powerful demon on the mountain. I heard it''s a black, one-eyed dragon. The black dragon has tens of small demons as its minions and each of them is insanely strong. Even the officers from the local authority can only fight equally with the demons. One small demon can take on three officers. Those small demons would come into town to devour people every three to five days. My poor son was taken away by a wolf demon even though he was hiding under the bed" "Sis, how do those small demons look like?" Lin Huang asked after listening to the woman narrate her story in tears. "All of them look different. Some look like monkeys, some like wolves, and some of them are like humans and they walk as we do No matter what, they have sharp teeth and claws. They''re stronger than tigers!" Lin Huang looked at Tan Lang and the rest. They were almost sure that the demons the woman was talking about should be monsters. "Sis, why don''t all of you move away since there are demons in this town?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. "Wouldn''t it be the same no matter where we move? Which town doesn''t have demons now? I heard that people from a town died of no reason every day before this. And nobody even saw any demons in there. They had no idea where to hide, so all of them ran away. At least, we can still see the demons here and we can hide somewhere," explained the woman helplessly, "The cities are safe, but they''re too far away. We don''t have the money to live there!" "Why are the cities safe?" Now, Lin Huang finally understood that this town was not the only town in the foggy area. There were many towns, and there were more people living there. "There are walls around the cities and guards. Of course, they''re safe!" The woman did not know much about the cities. After confirming those pieces of information, Lin Huang asked a couple more questions and found out that her knowledge was limited. It was clear that she had heard rumors and hearsay, some of which were exaggerated and fake. Moreover, she told many things that were unrelated to what Lin Huang asked, such as Xiao Yu''s parents being captured by the demons and that she was taking care of him out of pity Since he was sure that he could not ask any further, Lin Huang and the rest then left her house. 850 The Remnants of the Immortals The Good Luck Inn was one of the rare double-story buildings in town. Lin Huang and the rest stayed in the biggest dormitory in the inn. "Now, we''re basically sure that there are many humans living in this foggy area as well as a massive amount of monsters around. People are living in two types of places. One is the town that we''re currently in where security is low while the other one is the cities, which is the safest place. They''re similar to the human footholds in our world, just that the classification isn''t as detailed. "There are many towns while the guards depend mainly on the officers from the local authority. The officers are called ''warriors'' and their aura is basically below holy fire-level. People who are more powerful than warriors are called immortals. To the commoners, only immortals can fly. I''m guessing that the ''immortals'' they''ve labeled are cultivators above holy fire-level, but they have a different cultivation system than we do. "There are only 12 cities with high walls surrounding them and immortals guarding them. They have to pay a high accommodation fee in order to live in the city in return for the protection. Hence, most of the people who can''t afford it only live in the towns. Although the towns are invaded by demons, it''s still much safer than living in the wild. "The demons that they talk about are monsters of our world. These monsters are scattered all over with many varieties. Most of them consume humans and other animals. A minority of them don''t consume humans, but they''re not exactly friendly to humans since they hunt and kill them for fun. "These demons live in groups while many of them are of different kinds whereby the most powerful one will be the leader. Some of the demon leaders can even speak the human language. These demons usually live near towns where humans are easy prey. Apart from that, places with more monsters have a head honcho which they call a demon king. The demon king is in charge of a territory. "According to what the local authority said, demon kings have powerful abilities while some of them can even kill immortals. From my speculation, those so-called ''demon kings'' have a much more powerful ability than the leaders. They should have immortal-level combat strength, but we''ve no idea for now if there are any monsters that are more powerful than demon king." Tan Lang summarized the information that he had gathered one by one. He had gotten most of them from the local authority earlier. After leaving Xiao Yu''s house earlier, Lin Huang and the rest headed straight to the local authority. The officer saw all ten of them flying, so he told them everything that he knew and answered every question quickly. The information they obtained from him was much more detailed and clearer than what the woman had told them earlier. "I guess only ''immortals'' can give us more detailed information. I think we should head straight to the city to know more about the situation from the ''immortals''," Li Jia suggested. "The cities have curfews at midnight when people are prohibited from entering and exiting. The officer said that demons that fly won''t be able to fly into the cities as there''s a prohibitive barrier in the sky above the city wall. We can only head over there when the city door opens tomorrow morning. Let''s rest well tonight." Tan Lang came up with a plan. "I think we should clear the demons nearby before we leave," Lin Huang who was standing aside said all of a sudden. The rest looked a little uneasy upon hearing what he said. Lin Huang could roughly figure out what they were thinking about. After all, the people in this world were different from theirs. It was unnecessary for them to protect the people, so they were unwilling to put in any effort to help. "I''ll take a walk. You guys rest well." "I''ll go with you." Seeing that nobody responded, Shen Tao patted his thighs and stood up. "It''s alright. I''ll go on my own. I''ll come back in a couple of minutes," Lin Huang rejected Shen Tao''s kind intention. He could feel that Shen Tao was actually unwilling to do it, but he initiated accompanying him just so Lin Huang did not seem so awkward alone. Lin Huang hovered into the sky after getting out of the inn and headed towards the Black Dragon Mountain. Li Jia shook his head and said while smiling and watching Lin Huang vanish into the sky, "Young people just can''t sit still." "You look even younger than him," Shen Tao teased. "I''m already 28, which means I''m already an uncle," Li Jia wanted to look mature, but his baby-face was not convincing at all. "Your constipated face makes you look nothing older than 18!" What Shen Tao said made everyone burst out laughing. Black Dragon Mountain was less than 300 miles from the town, so it only took Lin Huang a short while to arrive above the mountain range. The mountain range stretched up to a hundred miles across and it was filled with dense, lush greenery and hulking trees. "Bloody, release your Leech Pods and see what''s the deal about this world. Also, look where those demons are hiding." Lin Huang had hidden Bloody when he was with Tan Lang and the rest, so he did not get it to release its Leech Pods to look around to prevent Bloody from exposing itself. Although the Leech Pods could hardly be discovered under usual circumstances, it was possible for one to see them if the distance was very close. After all, Tan Lang''s ability was considered the best of the best among immortal-level powerhouses while Li Jia had extraordinary spiritual energy since he was a Bug Master. Although they were all from the Heaven Alliance, Lin Huang did not want them to find out about Bloody''s skills. Hence, he used an excuse to get away from the people before getting Bloody to release the Leech Pods. Killing the demons surrounding them was just something he would do conveniently. Bloody found a demon after releasing its Leech Pods for a moment. "Found it!" Bloody projected the demon right away. Lin Huang raised his brow slightly as he watched the projection. "I thought it would either be a dragonkin or a sky dragon. Hmm, it''s just a boa" Lin Huang remembered the woman from Xiao Yu''s house claiming that the demon on the Black Dragon Mountain was a black, one-eyed dragon. However, what Bloody projected was a humongous black, one-eyed boa. The boa was hundreds of meters long and had a green eye with black scales all over its body. Half of its body was hidden in the swamp, which was pretty terrifying to look at. "Its combat strength''s just purple flame-level on the holy fire-level. It should be double mutated judging from the intensity of its aura," Bloody voiced its observation. "Cast parasites on it then. See if there''s any useful information in its head." Such a holy fire-level monster was too easy for Bloody to cast parasites on since Bloody was on immortal-level rank-9. The Leech Pods went into the demon''s body like a piece of cake without it even realizing at all. Its consciousness was taken away and replaced in the blink of an eye. It only took less than three seconds to retrieve its memory. Just like that, Bloody received everything in its head. "This demon''s called the Dark Water Boa. It has a demon king behind it called the Bewitching Spider Lady. It''s a monster that can turn into a human lady. The Dark Water Boa received her orders to watch the Black Dragon Mountain. It has to hand 100 humans to her to consume on time every month. The Bewitching Spider Lady has 16 leaders guarding each spot under her. The other leaders have a similar ability as the Dark Water Boa." "It seems like this Bewitching Spider Lady should have a combat strength of immortal-level. It''s very possible that it''s triple mutated since it can turn human." Lin Huang nodded lightly after hearing the report and asked immediately, "Is there anything about the demons above the demon king?" "No. According to the memory of this Dark Water Boa, the Bewitching Spider Lady has the most powerful ability it has ever seen. It has some images of the Bewitching Spider Lady fighting human powerhouses from this world in its head. Looking at the images, the Bewitching Spider Lady''s ability should be mid-immortal-level while the human powerhouse who fought her should have a similar ability as hers." "So, there are immortal-level powerhouses among those ''immortals''..." For now, Lin Huang could only be sure that there were immortal-level powerhouses in this part of the world, but he could not confirm if immortal-level rank-9 was the highest combat strength in this area. He was not even sure if imperial-level powerhouses existed in this world. "This monster doesn''t know much about human cultivators. It''s killed a few ''immortals'' but they had inferior abilities," Bloody proceeded. "How about the remnants of those ''immortals''? Did it keep them?" Lin Huang asked not because he figured there might be something valuable from those immortals. Rather, he wanted to learn more about the human cultivators from those remnants. "It kept them. They''re all hiding in his stomach," Bloody confirmed, "I''ll bring it over." A while later, the black boa whizzed in front of Lin Huang and spat everything out of its stomach. Apart from a few weapons and armors, Lin Huang saw a few rings. He extended telekinetic threads to retrieve the four rings into his palm and began to take a good look at them. "These should be storage rings to store items, but their craftsmanship is completely different from an Emperor''s Heart Ring." Lin Huang attempted to insert his Life Power, but the rings showed no response. He then used Divine Telekinesis which activated the rings in an instant. He began looking into the space of the rings right away. "I see. They can be activated with spiritual energy." Lin Huang was elated by the unexpected discovery. As opposed to the Emperor''s Heart Ring, these storage rings would not be locked after the owners died. Instead, the rings would go back to ownerless mode. They would be activated again as soon as spiritual energy was inserted while the items inside could be explored and taken out as one wished. Soon, a gray crystal that was the size of a thumb appeared in Lin Huang''s hand. This was what occupied most of the four storage rings. "It has a massive amount of active energy, but it''s completely different from Life Power." Lin Huang studied it for a while with Divine Telekinesis. "All the crystals are of the same standard. If I''m not mistaken, this should be a currency similar to the Life Crystal which could be the exclusive currency used among the immortals. Looking at its active energy, the immortals'' cultivation system here should be completely different from ours." After peering into the storage rings for a while, apart from the gray crystals, Lin Huang found many tiny bottles too. There were tiny pills with different colors in those bottles. There were many metallic and non-metallic materials as well as some herbs. Eventually, a couple of crystal clear jade slips caught Lin Huang''s attention. "Are these accessories?" Lin Huang was a little perplexed as he picked up a jade slip. "But there''s no hole, so how does one wear it?" Lin Huang could not help but release his Divine Telekinesis to see if he missed out any details. However, an extensive amount of information rushed into Lin Huang''s head as soon as his Divine Telekinesis touched the jade slip. "Ice Heart Tactic?" After taking some time to read all of the information, Lin Huang came to a realization. "These jade slips contain methods and tactics!" 851 City Lin Huang used his Divine Telekinesis to inspect the jade slips one by one and found out that all six of them had cultivation methods recorded in them. However, those were incomplete methods which could only get someone to immortal-level at the most. The system of these cultivation methods was completely different from the usual cultivation system outside. Instead of elevating by killing monsters, it involved internal cultivation. They belonged to the same system as the Twisted Fate Scripture Lin Huang had cultivated before, but these methods had a much lower threshold than the Twisted Fate Scripture. One must know that Lin Huang had to cultivate the Army Attack Tactics to level 10 before he could learn the Twisted Fate Scripture. The threshold stopped most cultivators out there from developing the method. However, the difficulty in cultivating the methods recorded in these jade slips was just slightly higher than cultivating the Army Attack Tactics. Basically, anyone who was on holy fire-level was eligible to cultivate them. To Lin Huang, it was easy to cultivate these methods to immortal-level. However, since the method content did not include anything beyond immortal-level, it prevented him from identifying if these methods were similar to the Twisted Fate Scripture whereby they required the cultivator''s innate ability to develop them. He had no idea what level those methods could get a person to. If it could get someone to virtual god-level and the requirement was low, it would mean that many powerhouses would be elevated to virtual god-level in the future. It was great news to a certain extent because the more powerhouses there were, the more force could be used to fight the Abyss Brink crisis. However, it was bad news for Lin Huang and Mr. Fu. Mr. Fu was the only Virtual God in the continent (at least for the moment). Although he was dying, he could still fight anyone who was less powerful. His rivals and those who wanted him dead dared not do anything to him for now. As soon as the new cultivation system spread out, there would be a boost in Virtual Gods in the world and Mr. Fu would be in danger. Lin Huang had yet to mature entirely. Even though he could fight imperial-level powerhouses by using all of his trump cards, he could not fight demigods at all, let alone virtual god-level powerhouses who were even more dominant. Lin Huang was thinking a lot while holding the jade slips in his hand. Eventually, he decided to keep this a secret for the time being. He planned to discuss this with Mr. Fu after getting out of the ruins to decide what to do about them then. Whether others would discover this secret or not, there was nothing that Lin Huang could do about it. All he could do was to let God take the wheel. After putting the jade slips away, Lin Huang glanced at the Dark Water Boa while a ferocious gleam flashed through his eyes. "Kill it. Kill those little demons too. Spare no lives." In the next second, the one-eyed boa''s humongous head exploded right away. Its headless carcass fell onto the ground while black blood spilled all over the place. The heads of the tens of small demons more than ten kilometers away exploded like watermelons falling from a high place. All of them turned into headless carcasses. After putting the one-eyed boa''s headless carcass away, Lin Huang brought Bloody back to the inn. A couple of them had fallen asleep at the inn. Tan Lang sat on the couch as he was on night watch duty. Seeing Lin Huang coming in, he asked while keeping his voice low, "Is it done?" "Mm-hmm." Lin Huang nodded. Li Jia sat on the bed with his legs crossed, only opening his eyes upon hearing their conversation. He looked at Lin Huang with a rather surprised expression. "So quickly?" Although the Black Dragon Mountain was not far from them, it was rather difficult to find monsters on the mountain range that stretched a hundred miles across. "I was rather fortunate to have found that snake monster not long after I got there." "It''s not a sky dragon?" Shen Tao, who was sitting aside, asked. "No, it''s a boa." "Go to bed early. Get a good night''s rest. We''ve no idea what''s the condition in the city that we''re going to tomorrow." Tan Lang stopped the few of them from chatting. Lin Huang had something on his mind and had no mood to chat anyway. He went to a vacant bed and lay on it after taking his jacket off. Shen Tao and the rest figured he must be tired, so they did not bother him. Lin Huang did not sleep at all that night. Although his eyes were shut the whole time, he was thinking about the methods and tactics in the jade slips. They headed straight to the closest city the next morning the moment the sun rose. They had no idea that the news about the immortals coming to town had spread early that morning. The innkeeper and the servant found out that the ten paupers who were staying in the dormitory last night were immortals. However, Lin Huang and the rest had arrived in the city when the news spread. Cities would collect fees from commoners and warriors, but it was free for immortals. Lin Huang and the rest found out from the local authority in the little town last night that immortals held an exclusive privilege in this world and they were treated properly everywhere they went. The ten of them waited for the city gates to open before they descended from the sky, attracting many to watch. The city guards welcomed the ten of them into the city, smiling all the way. The reason they did that was because they did not have any local currency. They had borrowed money from the officer at the local authority to pay for their accommodation at the inn and stayed in the cheapest dormitory. If they did not reveal their immortal identities, they would need to pay a large sum to enter the city. "Can we go to a market or an auction? At least, get us some local currency. It feels terrible to not have any money," Shen Tao was the first to suggest as soon as they entered the city. "I agree. Experiencing the life of a pauper for a night is more than enough," Li Jia added immediately, "Also, I want to stay in a room of my own tonight. You guys have stinky feet." "That excludes me. My feet have no odor," Shen Tao defended himself immediately. "I''m talking about you. The odor on your feet''s stinkier than salted vegetables that have been marinated for 18 years." Li Jia glared at Shen Tao when he said that. "Alright, stop fighting. Let''s go to the market and get some money from selling monster carcasses." Finally, Tan Lang could not take it anymore and interrupted the conversation. Soon, they found a market that was exclusively for immortals. Each of them took out a few monster carcasses that they had killed in the ruins and sold them for money. The first monster carcass Lin Huang brought out was the one-eyed boa that Bloody had just killed by making its head explode. He then brought out two high immortal-level monsters carcasses which heads were destroyed and could not be used for parasitization. Looking at the monster carcasses in their mortifying condition, Tan Lang and the rest looked at him rather oddly. "I didn''t know you''ve got a fetish of blowing monsters'' heads up," Shen Tao rubbed his nose and teased softly. Lin Huang did not bother to explain anything. He had always assumed the identity of a psychic on the Stairway Tree. A psychic who used flying daggers to attack a monster''s crucial parts such as its head would indeed cause its head to explode. The currency used to purchase monster carcasses at the market was the same currency used by immortals: the spirit stone. It was the gray crystal that Lin Huang had found in the storage ring earlier. A high immortal-level monster carcass could be sold for between one to ten million spirit stones. After selling just a few monster carcasses, they went from broke men to rich men. Having gotten their hands on spirit stones, Tan Lang stayed at the market for a little while and brought the rest to an inn called the Hidden Dragon Inn after speaking to some people around. He heard that the owner of the Hidden Dragon Inn was a powerful immortal and that the inn was most frequented by immortals in the entire city. They only took spirit stones at the inn and no commoners'' currency was accepted. As soon as they stepped into the inn, Lin Huang and the rest sensed the cultivators'' aura. There were holy fire- and immortal-levels. However, the most powerful powerhouse there only had an aura of mid-immortal-level, which was far behind Tan Lang and the rest who had a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9. Tan Lang gave Shen Tao a signal upon noticing many cultivators ogling them. Shen Tao took a step forward and spread out his terrifying immortal-level rank-9 aura in the inn. The inn then fell into dead silence from the pressure. Some of them who had been looking at them with ill intentions seemed petrified now. After sending out the intended warning for a moment, Shen Tao withdrew his aura and turned to the counter. "Servant, get us ten premium rooms!" The servant actually had a combat strength of golden flame-level, but he was nothing compared to the ten of them. He was shocked after sensing Shen Tao''s aura earlier. He only snapped back to his senses when he heard Shen Tao speaking to him, so he greeted him passionately. After checking them in, he eagerly brought them to look at the rooms on the third floor right away. He only returned to the counter on the first floor to work on other stuff after they had picked ten rooms that they were satisfied with. "So, what should we do now?" All ten of them gathered in Tan Lang''s room. "We''ll wait for the people from the government residence. According to the person I spoke to at the market, the governor will meet any immortal-level powerhouses who enters the city. It should apply to us." Tan Lang got Shen Tao to release his aura intentionally so that the news of their arrival would spread out faster. "As soon as we manage to speak to the governor, many of our questions will be answered." 852 Hidden Sec Just as Tan Lang expected, the deputy governor Lu Wen visited Lin Huang and the rest early the next morning. He invited them to the government residence. Naturally, they did not decline the request since that was their intention. They then followed Lu Wen and the two guards in silver armor into the monster car. The monster car appeared to be the size of a horse carriage from the outside, so theoretically, it would be a little crowded carrying four adults. Lin Huang and the gang hesitated a little when they were getting in. After all, there were ten of them in the group. Together with Lu Wen and the other two, that would make a total of 13 of them. It would be too small for all of them to squeeze into even if they were to stand. However, they went in anyway upon seeing Lu Wen waving at them from the car. As soon as they stepped into the monster car, they realized that the interior of the monster car was a rather spacious guest lounge. Lu Wen poured some tea for them and began to chat while smiling. Lin Huang and the gang learned about the rough situation going on in the city from him. The city''s authority body was called the government residence. It was similar to the Union Government outside, which was the proper, official organization of this world. The city was run by a governor and his two deputies. The three of them were picked among the most compelling powerhouses in the entire city. Apart from the governor and the deputy governors, there was another institution called the elder institution which was made of 12 powerhouses. The elder institution was responsible for making decisions about a variety of meetings and they shared the same voting power as the governor and the deputy governors. One could say that the development of the entire city was set and guided by the governor, the deputy governors, and the elder institution. Apart from that, there were also immortal guards responsible for protecting the city. The qualification to be an immortal guard was rather low as one could enroll themselves as long as they had holy fire-level combat strength. The entry assessment was very simple; more than 95% of holy fire-level powerhouses could pass. Only a minority of them who had zero battle experience would be disqualified. Naturally, that was just the requirement for ordinary immortal guards. There was an independent legion among the immortal guards called the honorary immortal guards that specially took immortal-level powerhouses in. It was said that they would only be eligible to join if they brought back three immortal-level demons that they had killed themselves. The two guards wearing silver armor who had come to the inn with the deputy governor were the two captains of the honorary immortal guard. The duo had a high immortal-level combat strength. Judging from their aura, they were not much weaker than the deputy governor. The monster car was driven by a humongous deer beast. Although the deer beast had no wings, it could leap into the air and fly. Despite carrying more than ten people in the carriage, it seemed to feel no weight and its feet seemed to move as light as a feather. In less than three minutes, Lin Huang and the gang arrived at the entrance of the government residence in the monster car. As soon as the monster car stopped, Lu Wen guided them into the government residence. The two immortal guards in silver armor stopped following them and stayed at the entrance. Lu Wen led them into the meeting room and got someone to serve them tea. "Please wait for a moment. The governor will be here soon." Not long later, a tall, middle-aged man walked towards them just when the tea was done being served. The man had a similar height with Shen Tao, which was over 1.9 meters, but he was much more muscular. Even his aura was alike; he was on his way to break through to imperial-level. Lin Huang and the rest knew who he was without guessing as soon as he opened the door. The man chuckled happily and introduced himself, "I''m Zhou Yun Long. Welcome to all of you!" "This is our governor," Lu Wen stood up and added. Lin Huang and the rest stood up to greet him. After some light banter, Zhou Yun Long sat in the main seat while the rest remained where they were sitting. "I realized that all of you have extraordinary abilities. I wonder where you''re from." Zhou Yun Long went straight to the subject in an instant. Tan Lang grinned as all of them had discussed what they were going to say yesterday. "Governor, the ten of us come from a secret sect called the Heaven Alliance. Our sect has been hiding in the forest since tens of thousands of years ago and the door has just been opened recently. The ten of us are sect brothers. We''re the first batch from the sect to come into the world after so many years." "A secret sect from tens of thousands of years ago?!" Zhou Yun Long and Lu Wen''s pupils shrunk when they heard this. A sect that had existed for tens of thousands of years must be terrifyingly powerful. Zhou Yun Long might not believe it if someone else had said this, but apart from Lin Huang, the rest of them had the same aura as he did. Two of them had a more powerful aura than he did, which made him sit on the fence now. After taking a careful look at the ten of them, Zhou Yun Long''s eyes eventually landed on Lin Huang. "Is this little brother from the same sect as all of you?" Just when Tan Lang was going to speak on behalf of Lin Huang, the latter gripped his shoulder immediately. "It seems like you''re skeptical of my ability, governor?" Lin Huang took a step forward and smirked faintly. He did not say much. "Come out, Herculean King!" As soon as he spoke, a gigantic golden ape appeared in the courtyard out of nowhere while its terrifying aura shot up into the sky. The Herculean King roared ferociously into the sky at Lin Huang''s subtle cue. The entire government residence shook when the roar was released. The roar even spread throughout the entire city, shocking many. Many of them thought there was a demon attacking the city, so the immortal guards dashed towards the source of the roar and surrounded the Herculean King that was even taller than the buildings in the city. "Everyone, retreat!" Zhou Yun Long told them to back off as he watched. The reason why he ordered them to do so immediately was that he was really afraid the giant ape would kill his immortal guards. He clearly sensed that this giant ape''s aura was just as mighty as his. "So, this little brother''s a Demontamer. It''s I who was being rude," Zhou Yun Long apologized to Lin Huang and he looked at him rather respectfully now. He was not terrified by Lin Huang''s ability, but he was respectful of a Demontamer. Even Lin Huang had no idea that there were very few Demontamers in the world and the few top sects desired such people. Currently, there were only two top sects that had one Demontamer each, and they were pampered and trained by the sects at all costs. The two Demontamers had more powerful abilities than Lin Huang did, but their demon-taming ability was not as impressive as how he summoned this giant ape. Since Lin Huang had revealed his hand, Zhou Yun Long and Lu Wen stopped doubting their identities as hidden sect disciples. After recalling the Herculean King into its card form, Lin Huang noticed that Tan Lang and the rest were looking at him in a rather odd way. He had summoned the Herculean King at the Stairway Tree before. Back then, the Herculean King''s combat strength was only immortal-level rank-2 and many of them knew that. Now that just half a month had passed, the Herculean King''s combat strength had skyrocketed to immortal-level rank-9. Such an acceleration in combat strength was incredibly terrifying. Since confirming Lin Huang and the gang''s identities, Zhou Yun Long''s attitude was much friendlier now. "I wonder how can I help you since you came to our Gushan City." "We''re just here to ask around. We want to know how has this world changed. After all, our sect''s been hidden for tens of thousands of years. We have limited information about the outside world," Tan Lang finally told them their objective of being there. "That''s easy. I''ll give all of you access to the library and the government residence''s database. All of you can come anytime you want to access the information. You can ask Lu Wen directly if you''ve any questions at all." Zhou Yun Long made the arrangements immediately. "Governor Zhou, there''s something that I think you should know," Tan Lang called out to Zhou Yun Long who had stood up and was about to leave. "Yes?" "Actually, we''re not the only hidden sect that''s been coming into the world recently. There are tens of them. A portion of them are like us who want peace, but there are some of them who are devil cultivators. They kill and take, and they are the essence of evil." The devil cultivator that Tan Lang was talking about were the people from underground organizations. As soon as they discovered human cities, they would definitely kill and loot without respecting the house rules. The devil cultivators of this world were a similar bunch and they would do anything for resources. "There are hidden sects with devil cultivators?!" Zhou Yun Long frowned when he heard the news. He asked after a moment of silence, "How are the devil cultivators'' abilities compared to all of yours?" "Their personal abilities are similar to ours, but there are some devil sects that have released many disciples this time Possibly up to 100 people." Tan Lang shared this information because he knew that they were fighting the underground organizations. As soon as they bumped into each other in this world, a battle was unavoidable, so he thought of asking for the locals'' help. "100 people who have similar abilities as you all do." Zhou Yun Long inhaled sharply. "Although we don''t have cold, hard proof whether these devil cultivators are on their way, I thought it''s better for you to prepare ahead before the battle so that you won''t be caught off-guard when the devil cultivators arrive." 853 The Immortal Path That Was Cut Off For the next two days, the ten members of the Heaven Alliance were divided into two groups. A team of three stayed in Gushan City mainly to source for information while the other group of seven was assigned the task to hunt for items. They came to an agreement whereby the seven of them would share the items they found with all ten of them aside from the monster carcasses that they obtained. Lin Huang chose to stay in Gushan City where he was responsible for collecting information at the library. For the past two days, apart from the library closing at night, Lin Huang practically did not leave the library at all. With Bloody''s help, he was wading through a sea of information rapidly each day. This world had a completely different cultivation system compared to the outside world. In the outside world, life wheel-level cultivators were called "mortal-levels" in this world. The more common name for them would be "warriors". People on one level higher, which was holy fire-level, were called "mortal transformation-levels" there. Meanwhile, immortal-levels were called "ascendance-levels". People on the next level, which was imperial-level, were called "human immortals". Lin Huang read about even higher levels which were the earth immortals and the celestial immortals. He speculated that those were Virtual Gods and True Gods in the outside world. Since the ancient books had such complete recording on different levels, Lin Huang was sure that there must have been Virtual Gods and even True Gods in this world. However, he was not sure if there were any now. Ever since they entered the foggy area, the most powerful local powerhouse that Lin Huang and the rest had seen was just ascendance-level which was the same as immortal-level. They did not even see a single human immortal (imperial-level). Full of doubts, Lin Huang skimmed through many other books, but he did not find any explanation about the disappearance of human immortals. Eventually, he had to ask Lu Wen about it. Hearing the question, Lu Wen looked at him rather oddly, but he explained anyway, "You should know that people on ascendance-level will have to go on the Immortal Path to obtain immortal roots in order to elevate to human immortal-level, don''t you?" "I know that." Naturally, Lin Huang knew about the requirement to get to human immortal-level. "We''ve never seen any human immortals until now. Is it because it''s difficult to go on the Immortal Path?" "Difficulty isn''t the only factor" Lu Wen looked helpless as he let out a long sigh while shaking his head. "Throughout these tens of thousands of years, nobody came back alive after taking the Immortal Path. Not even one!" "How can that be?!" Lin Huang was shocked to hear that. "Aside from humans, the same goes for those demons too. Everyone who goes on the Immortal Path goes missing," Lu Wen continued further, "There has been a rumor in the past 1,000 years that the Immortal Path in our world has been cut off." "You mean there are no human immortals in this entire world?" Lin Huang queried immediately. "I''m not sure if there''re any now." Lu Wen shook his head, feeling helpless. "All I know is that there were human immortals in this world tens of thousands of years ago. Even more potent powerhouses existed. But one day, all the powerhouses above human immortal-level vanished out of nowhere. Later on, something happened to the Immortal Path. Since then, nobody has ever elevated to human immortal again. The stars above seemed to be cut off as well, so there''s no way for human immortals to elevate to earth immortals." "People on mortal transformation-level live up to 1,800 years, while ascendance-levels can go up to 3,000 years. No matter how powerful a human immortal is, he can only live up to 10,000 years. In order to live, they have to seal themselves. Since then, there''ve been fewer and fewer human immortals in this world. Now that tens of thousands of years have passed, nobody knows if those human immortals who sealed themselves are still alive. Furthermore, there are no longer any ascendance-level powerhouses who dare to go on the Immortal Path now." "Didn''t any human immortal try to take the Immortal Path to see what went wrong?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "Of course, there were. Many human immortals volunteered to take a look at it when the Immortal Path went wrong. But just like the ascendance-levels, none of them come back alive." Speaking to Lu Wen provided Lin Huang much more information that was not recorded on the books. However, he had yet to confirm whether there were still any living human immortals in this world. While Lin Huang had his hands full in the city, outside, Tan Lang and the rest did not stay idle. The seven of them maimed and slaughtered all the way even when they encountered demon kings. Small demons were just appetizers to them. Moreover, with Li Jia the Bug Master with them, they managed to dig out everything, no matter how secretively the demon kings and demon leaders hid their treasures. In the short few days, the seven of them killed almost every single demon within a 1,000-kilometer radius around Gushan City. They obtained over 200 storage rings alone. In the middle of the night, the Heaven Alliance members sat in a circle once again. Tan Lang took out all of the items they obtained and began to distribute them. "I really couldn''t fight the complete ascendance-level monster that we encountered today. I might not really have been able to kill her if we didn''t fight her together," Tan Lang could not help but lament over the rather unsuccessful hunting experience that happened that day. "But there''s so many good stuff in her lair. I''m guessing there are three storage rings that belonged to powerful peak ascendance-level powerhouses. There are billions of spirit stones in the spirit cards and many rare metals too. There''s even a storage ring with a demigod relic!" Although they had different cultivation systems in this world, the weapons and equipment could be activated and used through Life Power. "I''ll give everyone the Life Crystals after I sell the demigod relic when we''re out. We''ll share the other items equally as we agreed. Put those items that you don''t want aside. Don''t throw them everywhere." After distributing the items, the remaining ones were just miscellaneous items. Lin Huang collected all of the jade slips from the miscellaneous pile. In reality, Li Jia had discovered the local cultivation methods in the jade slips on the first day. He was a Bug Master after all and he had extra sensitive spiritual energy compared to others. It was a piece of cake for him to find out about the secret. However, the methods recorded in those jade slips could only get a cultivator to ascendance-level. Furthermore, he had lost all interest in the jade slips since he found out that it had been tens of thousands of years since any human immortals appeared in this world. However, those jade slips were treasures that were hard to come by to Lin Huang. Since he was done browsing for the information two days ago, he began to run simulations of the methods from the jade slips and those that he had found in the library in his head. He wanted to know how it was like to cultivate them. Surprisingly, he found out that the simulation of the methods boosted his proficiency in the Twisted Fate Scripture. His cultivation of the Twisted Fate Scripture had been increasing bit by bit initially, but since he performed a simple simulation of the methods in the jade slips recently, his proficiency skyrocketed. In those few days, he came close to the one million points required for the first rotation in the Twisted Fate Scripture. Lin Huang used his Divine Telekinesis to read all of the jade slips as soon as he received them. He was surprised to find two methods that allowed one to cultivate straight to human immortal (imperial-level). After the distribution of items, Lin Huang and the other two shared what they found for the day. Meanwhile, Tang Ning, who was in charge of communicating with the government residence and market, broke a piece of bad news. "The underground organizations are on the move. They''ve seized seven out of the 21 cities. The news was blocked a few days ago and was only spread out today. For now, we know that those underground organizations who have started wars include Dynasty, the Purple Crow, the Saint, and Charm" 854 Invasion This happened a few days ago in North Sand City. It was evening when Nie Jun returned to an inn in North Sand City after a whole day of hunting. "Waiter, get me four cattiesof oxen meat, three ounces of boiled peanuts, and a bottle of flower wine." That was a classic warrior''s meal. However, Nie Jun was not a warrior. To be exact, he was not a warrior at that moment. He had been practicing martial arts for years and only joined a cultivation sect after spending 30 years in martial arts and advanced to mortal transformation-level. Although he was already a great mid-ascendance-level cultivator, a warrior''s habit was forged in his blood. He was not fond of staying in a crowded, luxurious inn with other cultivators. It was not that he had no spirit stones to spend; he despised talking about things cultivators were always going on about. Compared to that, staying with warriors gave him peace of mind. Looking at those drunk warriors who were chowing down on meat and gulping swigs of wine, he felt like he was looking at the very person he used to be. However, those brothers who used to dine and drink with him had passed away. He could not find anyone who would drink with him now. After ordering from the waiter, Nie Jun headed upstairs right away. The waiter knocked on his door with a tray as the sky was getting dark. "Sir, the food you ordered is ready." "Come in." The waiter opened the door and placed the tray on the table. He then turned around and left, shutting the room door as he went out. Nie Jun stood up and walked to the food that was served on the dining table. He did not bother to use the chopsticks as he grabbed the sliced meat with his hands directly. A mouthful of meat, a sip of wine, followed by a mouthful of appetizer. Soon, the plates on the table were emptied. After swilling the last drop of wine, Nie Jun put the bottle down and belched loudly. Just when he was ready to get up, he felt a sense of danger coming from behind. Before he managed to react, a silver dagger was on his neck, causing him to sweat. "Don''t make a sound and get up slowly." A deep voice came from behind. "Brother, if you''re robbing me, my storage ring''s on my left middle finger. Just take it. I promise I won''t come after you." Nie Jun raised his left hand to show the attacker the storage ring on his left hand. The reason he did that was because he was sure that the person was a professional assassin. Only a professional assassin would be able to find a place to hide himself perfectly in such a small room to the extent that Nie Jun did not realize his existence throughout his meal. Looking at the person''s speed, his ability was definitely on par or even more powerful than him. Pain flared from Nie Jun''s left hand just when he spoke. "I warned you not to make a sound." Nie Jun looked towards his left hand and noticed that his left middle finger had been chopped off simply because he had spoken. The person was obviously ruthless. Nie Jun''s heart sank to the bottom at that moment. Not letting him speak would mean there was no room for negotiation. He had met people of all walks of life during his 30 years in martial arts, so he roughly knew what kind of person he was dealing with from the signals the person sent. ''It seems like I won''t be able to escape death today.'' Nie Jun forced a smile quietly and did not attempt to speak again. He knew the person would give him an even more intense warning if he were to talk again. The person might kill him right away. "Pick up the plates and bring them to the door." Nie Jun placed the plates and wine bottle onto the tray as he was told. As he walked to the door and opened it, the dagger distanced from his neck all of a sudden. Nie Jun''s eyes lit up, but he noticed that something was off just when he was going to run. A thread that was as thick as human hair wound around his neck. "I''m glad that you didn''t do what you were attempting to do. Otherwise, your head wouldn''t be on your neck right now," said the deep voice from behind. Nie Jun was sweating all over his forehead. He just realized what had sliced off his finger earlier. After opening the door, Nie Jun bent at the waist and placed the tray on the ground. As he got up, a short blade appeared from his right pocket. He cut through the narrow space between his neck and the transparent thread. He squatted down as he did that, causing him to dodge the threat from the colorless thread. Without the thought of fighting the man, Nie Jun pumped his legs in an attempt to run. However, both of his ankles screamed immediately. His body lost balance and he slumped onto the ground. At the same time, he finally saw how the assassin looked like. It was a skinny man who was covered in a black robe and wore a black mask on his face. There were two oval holes on the mask, revealing his black, cold and emotionless eyes. "Smarty pants." The man in the mask walked towards Nie Jun slowly. Nie Jun lay in a pool of blood, appearing like he was dead inside. After closing the door, the man grabbed Nie Jun''s collar and threw him onto the chair in front of the dining table. Nie Jun had lost his will to fight since his legs were severed together with his chance to run. He just allowed the person to do anything to him. The man took out a syringe from his storage ring and injected it into Nie Jun''s arm. Without knowing what its contents were, all Nie Jun could feel was his whole body turning numb. Not only could he not speak at all, but he also could not even move a finger now. Later on, he watched the man bring out a dagger and slice open his skull slowly Before his consciousness blacked out, he heard the man in the mask mumble faintly, "Let''s see if there''s anything that I want in your head" In the middle of the night, 20 people in masks wearing black robes gathered in a dark room. Although their masks were all black, each mask was of a different design. "How''s the investigation going?" It was a lady who asked that question. There was a red ruby the size of a thumb at the forehead area on her mask. "I''ve got something," spoke up a skinny silhouette. His mask was exactly the same as the person''s who had killed Nie Jun earlier. "I caught a fella who was on his own today. His combat strength is on par with mid-immortal-level aI found something pretty useful in his head." "They call people on imperial-level human immortals in this world. It has been tens of thousands of years since any human immortals have shown themselves, and there''s nobody who has elevated to human immortal-level for the past tens of thousands of years. "Currently, the most powerful people in this city are the three governors who have a combat strength that''s on par with immortal-level rank-9. The three of them are the enemies that we must face. "Apart from that, the people that we must be careful of should be the honorary immortal guards. It''s said that all the honorary immortal guards in every city have mastered battle formations and with their abilities, they can fight human immortals that are less powerful." "Did we alert anyone?" The lady asked. "No, the earliest they''ll discover the body should be tomorrow morning," said the skinny man confidently. "Then, let''s do as we''ve planned. We''ll move out today." The lady in the ruby red mask seemed to be the leader of the pack as she made all the arrangements immediately. "There are only 20 of us from Charm who came in. We''re not like those major organizations like the Union Government, the Hunter Association, and Dynasty, so we have to try our best to minimize our losses in battles and maximize our advantages. After midnight, all of you will kill every living thing in the government residence as fast as you can and rob the treasury. Try to leave before the honorary immortal guards come."The catty, kati or jin (commonly in China), symbol , is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia. 855 We’re from the Heaven Alliance! It was before daybreak in North Sand City. 20 black silhouettes gathered around the government residence quickly and hid in dark corners. Nobody noticed their existence since there was a wall outside the government residence. "Go!" As a lady''s voice transmission came into their ears loud and clear, two silhouettes moved almost simultaneously. Two black rays flashed through the air like needles. In the next second, two honorary immortal guards that were guarding the door pressed their temples and collapsed onto the ground quietly. Before they fell, the two black silhouettes dashed towards them immediately and dragged the two bodies into the bushes. From attacking to handling the dead bodies, the entire process took less than two seconds. After settling the guards, the 20 black silhouettes slipped into the government residence. They slunk out of the dark corners and scattered around, beginning the official hunt. In the government residence, the powerhouses, who were in deep sleep, died silently in a variety of ways. Some of them had their heads severed right away, some had a blade pierced through their head while some had tiny needles stabbed through their heads. There seemed to be no wounds on the surface. In the governor''s room, Wei Yun who was sitting with his legs crossed on the bed opened his eyes all of a sudden. "Who is that?!" He fairly sensed that he was being watched by a poisonous snake in the shadows and would experience a fatal attack anytime. "You''ve quite an extraordinary sensing ability" A black silhouette revealed itself from the shadows slowly. There was a black mask on her face and a red ruby mounted on the forehead of her mask. "An assassin?!" Wei Yun''s pupils shrunk a little. Although he saw the lady before him, he did not sense her existence at all. Only a top professional assassin would be able to hide her aura to such an extent. "You got that right. I''ll reward you for that!" The black-robed lady walked towards Wei Yun slowly, not seeming to be in a rush to kill him. "Why don''t you choose how you want to be killed?" "I choose for you to be dead instead!" Wei Yun got up and launched his attack. He threw a hard punch at the lady''s face right away. However, a silver ray lit the room up all of a sudden while a spike bayonet pierced through Wei Yun''s face. The room fell into dead silence. After removing the spike bayonet from Wei Yun''s face, the lady took out a white handkerchief and wiped it in her hand. "I forget to tell you that I''m not only good in assassinating, but I''m also pretty good at fighting too." After wiping the blood off the spike bayonet, the lady then tossed the bloody handkerchief onto Wei Yun''s deformed face and opened the door as she turned around. At the door entrance, the 19 black-robed men gathered and waited. "There''s still 57 minutes before the honorary immortal guards change shifts. Let''s look for the valuables as fast as we can" What was happening in the North Sand City government residence was happening in a few other cities at the same time. The only difference was that the people and the plans in each city. After one to two days of lurking, the underground organizations only revealed their ruthless side after finding out there were no imperial-level powerhouses in this world. The massacre in government residences and plundering of resources were nothing. Some of them carried out massacres in the entire city. Powerhouses such as the Seventh Prince were almost invincible when they fought people on the same combat strength. They broke through the honorary immortal guards'' battle formations easily. Moreover, since all underground organization members were genius powerhouses on immortal-level rank-9, nobody at the government residences could fight them. The whole world was plunged into a panic of invasion and plunder. In the middle of the night, the Heaven Alliance members gathered again. "I''ve two pieces of bad news," Tang Ning spoke in all seriousness before they distributed the items. "People from the Saints invaded the city today. Over three million in Fenglai City were killed. Nothing was left." All of them were horrified to hear that. "How did that happen? Don''t they only use virgins for their sacrifice? Why do they have to kill everyone in the city?" Tan Lang was a little puzzled. "Their sacrificial ceremony was interrupted. They killed the entire city in their rage, saying that they had to do that in order to put out their god''s anger," Tang Ning explained while feeling a little helpless. "Did nobody from the Union Government and the Hunter Association do anything?" Lin Huang asked while frowning. "The Union Government has their hands full dealing with Dynasty for the past few days, so they wouldn''t have time for this. Dynasty has robbed two cities and tens of smaller towns. If nobody stops them, I wonder how much resources will be taken away." "The Hunter Association''s dealing with the Purple Crow, so it''s hard for them to spare time to help as well. The adventurers are the only ones that are allocating people to try and stop the Saints and prevent them from doing more harm." "How about Charm and the heretics? Are nobody dealing with them?" Shen Tao asked immediately. "That''s the second bad news." Tang Ning looked perturbed all of a sudden. "People from Charm seem to be coming for us" Everyone was overwrought with anxiety upon hearing what Tang Ning said. The room fell into pin-drop silence. "Should we retreat? We''ve no upper hand if we''re dealing with Charm," Li Jia consulted Tan Lang, "If we''re fighting, we still have the upper hand to win if we fight one-on-one. But they have double our people, the odds of us winning are slim. Moreover, Charm is an organization of professional assassins. Their people are experts in assassination and other sneaky techniques. It''s impossible for us to watch out for their attacks." Tan Lang became silent and nobody knew what he was thinking about. "I think it''s possible for us to give it a shot," Lin Huang could not help but speak up, "We can work with the government residence to fight them. In that case, the number of people from Charm will no longer be their upper hand. In terms of assassination, we''ve Li Jia who''s skilled at sensing. I suppose they won''t be performing at 100% with their sneaky techniques since Li Jia''s with us. I''ve some techniques in that aspect, so I should be able to help. Moreover, we can ask for help from the union organization. We just have to stall until the rescue team arrives. We don''t have to kill everyone from Charm." Although Lin Huang said that they would not have to kill everyone from Charm, he was already thinking about how to kill all of them in one shot and take everything that they had plundered. He even thought of getting away from the group and hunt for the people from Charm if Tan Lang and the rest decided to retreat. After all, they had sent themselves to their doorstep and he could not let them get away just like that. After a moment of silence, Tan Lang finally spoke, "Retreating without trying isn''t who the Heaven Alliance is. Even if we have to fight Dynasty, we''ll fight and not retreat! Our enemy is Charm this time, so not only will we stay, but we must also win! However, this battle is a tough one and some of us might even die. Please be prepared for that and don''t take any chances. "We''re from the Heaven Alliance. We''re the No. 1 genius organization in the world! We''ll show everyone in this battle that we, the Heaven Alliance, deserves the No. 1 title!" 856 The Exterminated Charm Lin Huang knew nothing much about Charm. He only knew it was the No. 2 assassin organization in Division 3. Overall, ability-wise, they were slightly weaker than the Purple Crow and the heretics. However, they were considered an outstanding underground organization. The assassin organization that ranked No. 1, Shadow Killer had their hands full with the opening of another set of ruins in Division 2 lately. They allocated most of their powerhouses from the Division 3 branch to help, so they did not participate in the Fallen God Land this time. Lin Huang knew about the news of Charm before Tang Ning broke it to them. He had been getting Bloody to monitor all the organization''s movements. Apart from Charm, even Dynasty and the Union Government were under Bloody''s watchful eye. He had gained a better understanding of these underground organizations through Bloody''s projections in the past few days. To those people, humans were no different from animals. They were killing people, destroying entire cities, and making people puppets. There was completely no limit to what they did. Since Charm had sent themselves to their doorstep this time, it was only natural that Lin Huang would not let anybody live. Bloody projected a video when the sky turned dark. There were 20 black-robed men going at full speed in the video. "They''ll be here soon. They''re just less than 1,000 kilometers away." "Let''s go. We''ll go meet them." Lin Huang crushed a Provisional Specific Transformation Card and he turned into Spectre slowly. He penetrated the wall and glided down deep into the ground through the wall. He then tore towards the gates of the city. After getting out of the city, he headed straight to the battle location that Bloody had picked and surfaced from the ground. He then removed the card''s effect. The reason why he did all this was because he did not want Tan Lang and the rest to see his real ability. Lin Huang had decided on going up against Charm since the beginning. It was just a distraction when he talked about asking the union organization to help. He did not really plan to get Tan Lang and the rest to fight Charm. It was true that every one of the Heaven Alliance members had a compelling ability. Their combat abilities might even be more powerful than the members of Charm. However, it was difficult to deal with Charm since they were experts in assassinating. The deaths and casualties of the Heaven Alliance members would be inevitable if they were to fight. He would rather interrupt the operation in the middle, kill all of them, and reap all of the rewards all for himself. Not long after he arrived, he saw the 20 Charm members speeding in the sky. He hovered into the sky slowly and blocked their way. "You''re not allowed to enter." Lin Huang''s calm voice went into all of their ears. "Kill him!" A lady''s voice rang out without hesitation. One of the black-robed men disappeared and appeared next to Lin Huang in the next second. He pointed a dagger straight at Lin Huang''s face. However, a black silhouette appeared at that moment. The black-robed man became stiff all of a sudden. The bunch of Charm members saw a black spear protruding out of their partner''s chest. There were neat purple patterns on the spear. "How dare you compare your speed with Kylie''s? You must be crazy" Lin Huang mumbled softly. Just as Kylie was done with killing the man, Bloody completed its parasitization. It controlled the black-robed man to draw the spear out from his body slowly. He then stood next to Lin Huang and looked at the Charm members who had once been his partners. Watching that strange phenomenon, the Charm members had fear in their eyes. They clearly sensed that their partner had been dead earlier, but he was now alive. More outrageously, he had now become Lin Huang''s partner. "Who exactly are you?!" The leading lady asked fiercely. "Lin Xie from the Heaven Alliance," Lin Huang reported his name and the sect he belonged to. The lady was stunned to hear him. She did not expect Lin Huang to reveal his name. However, she thought that the name was rather familiar. "Lin Xie? Are you the Lin Xie who ranked No. 1 on the Stairway Tree scoreboard this year?!" A black-robed man could not help but exclaim. They were many Genius Union members in all organizations and naturally, that included Charm. Many of them had actually seen pictures of Lin Huang, but the combat strength of the Lin Xie on the Stairway Tree''s scoreboard was very different from that of the person standing before them. The change in attire and hairstyle was also another factor why they did not recognize him. "He should be the real Lin Xie. He looks exactly like the picture. Also, Lin Xie''s an Imperial Censor," confirmed another black-robed man. ''It can''t be! Since when does Lin Xie have such powerful combat strength? Wasn''t he only crimson flame-level a few months ago?!'' Many of them thought secretly, ''His ability''s terrifying'' "Lin Xie, are you trying to stop us on your own?" The leading lady took a step forward, her terrifying aura spreading all over Lin Huang. Lin Huang did nothing about the pressure exuding from her aura. He had killed more than one imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouse, so an immortal-level rank-9 powerhouse who had an ability comparable to imperial-level black gold-rank could not scare him. "Firstly, I''m not on my own. I''ve got summoning beasts. Secondly, I''m not planning to stop all of you. I''m planning to kill all of you." Lin Huang took a step forward as well as he corrected her. "Nonsense!" The lady screamed and turned to order the people behind her, "I''ll fight the summoning beasts and all of you will kill him!" As soon as the order went out, the 18 black-robed men attacked Lin Huang from all directions. Meanwhile, the lady gripped the spike bayonet tightly and charged at Kylie. Lin Huang stood where he was without moving, his face remaining calm. Kylie did not flinch at the sight of the black-robed lady dashing towards her. As she waved her hand, 368 of her Nephilic Judge army advanced. All of the Charm members were stunned when they saw a bunch of silver-armored monsters coming out of nowhere. The Nephilic Judge army formed their battle formation as soon as they arrived and surrounded all of the Charm members. "We''ve surrounded all of you," Lin Huang declared while smirking faintly. "Retreat!" Looking at the battle formation, the lady knew they could not win this battle, so she ordered them to retreat immediately. "Kylie, kill all of them. Spare no lives!" Lin Huang was cold as he ordered. "Kill!" Kylie hissed the word softly while her Nephilic Judge army attacked in an instant. The Charm members attempted to break the formation, but it was to no avail. In less than a minute, all 18 of them were killed. The female leader was the only one left. "Lin Xie, my father will definitely come for you if you kill me! He''s an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. We came into the Fallen God Land together this time!" "He won''t find out." Lin Huang''s tone was calm as he said, "It''s fine even if he does." Although she was powerful, she did not last more than three minutes when Kylie joined the battle formation. Kylie''s spear pierced through her heart, killing her. After recalling Kylie and letting Bloody performing parasitization on all 19 of them, Lin Huang summoned the Inferior Imp to destroy the battleground with meteors. After confirming there were no traces left behind, Lin Huang returned to the room at the inn quietly. It took him less than 10 minutes to leave and return to the room. 857 Augur When it was slightly after 10 at night, Tan Lang instructed Lin Huang to meet. Tan Lang led all the Heaven Alliance members and went to the government residence. In order to fight Charm, Tan Lang made a plan with the government residence. He even asked the Union Government and the Hunter Association for backup. Lin Huang pretended as if he knew nothing about the extermination of Charm. He went to the government residence with the team. They waited until 7 o''clock in the morning but nothing happened. "Can we go back to our hotel room and get a decent rest?" Lin Huang yawned as he was really sleepy. "It''s daytime now. According to Charm''s fighting behavior, it''s less likely that they''ll fight us now." Li Jia''s bug did not detect anything unusual. "Let''s continue waiting. They might be waiting for us to slack off before fighting us." Still, Tan Lang was worried. One day and one night had passed. Of course, the exterminated Charm would not appear. "It has been two days and they haven''t done anything. What if they''ve retreated because there are too many of us here?" Shen Tao speculated. "Let''s continue waiting." Tan Lang remained alert. Lin Huang was speechless. Had it not been for him not leaving any traces, people would have known that Charm and the rest had been killed. Tan Lang would not have asked everybody to stay up all night with him either. "I''m fooling myself" Lin Huang had no choice but to stay up all night with them as well. However, it did not last for a very long while. In the afternoon, Li Jia received a message from the Union Government. "You guys don''t need to wait here anymore. The people from Charm won''t come. They''ve been killed." Apart from Lin Huang, everyone felt doubtful after listening to what Tang Ning said. "Were they attacked by the Union Government?" Tan Lang''s first thought was that the Union Government had done something. "No." Tang Ning shook his head. "We did nothing this round." "The Union Government would definitely admit if they were the ones who did that. It''s a military glory." Shen Tao seemed to have something to comment about the people from the Union Government. "From the message they sent, they mentioned that they didn''t do anything, so they''re definitely not the one." "If it wasn''t the Union Government, how can they confirm that the people from Charm are dead?" Tan Lang continued asking. "There are two augurs in their team. Both of them got the same prediction results C 20 of them from Charm were killed. None of them managed to survive it," Tang Ning told them what the Union Government said. The crowd then no longer suspected the truth after knowing that it was the prediction results of the two augurs. It was said that the main criteria of being an augur was to possess an ability related to time. The secret of being an augur was related to time, without which, regardless of how knowledgeable the person was, one would be unable to become a true augur. A true augur had to be capable of using the secret of time, exploring the past and predicting the future. The two augurs were, of course, true augurs as they were chosen by the Union Government and were sent to the god''s land. Since the two of them received similar prediction results, it meant that the prediction had come true. "Does the augur know which organization did it?" Lin Huang paid attention just as Tan Lang asked this question. It would still be fine if the Heaven Alliance knew about it. In fact, he did not want the Union Government to find out about his true abilities. Somehow, Mr. Fu being set up had something to do with the Union Government. In addition to the Union Government being a very large organization, nobody knew how many of them were Mr. Fu''s enemies. Despite the fact that he did not leave any traces, the augurs possessed unique abilities, so they might have seen something. "The officers from the Union Government said that the two augurs attempted to check who did it. However, they didn''t manage to do so. Both of them saw a scene where meteorites struck the ground," Tang Ning shared what he heard. "Meteorite showers?" Other than Lin Huang, the rest of them were confused. "Meteorite showers Is there any chance that this is a prediction?" Tan Lang said while stroking his chin. "I''ve really seen meteorites streaking across the sky a few days ago," Shen Tao suddenly said, "Right before the sky turns dark." "Are you sure?" Tan Lang immediately asked. "I guess my eyes didn''t fail me. Did anyone of you happen to see that?'' The crowd shook their heads, including Lin Huang. "It''s on the east of the city. The meteorites struck somewhere less than 300 kilometers away from the city." Shen Tao could remember it clearly. "Bring me there," Tan Lang immediately requested. It seemed like he would only feel relieved after seeing the dead bodies of the Charm members. "Li Jia, follow me. Let''s see if we can find any clues over there." Tan Lang asked two other people to follow after him and they headed towards the east of the city. Since the three of them had left, Lin Huang was not worried. He was pretty sure that they would be unable to discover anything there. "Did you manage to find it?" Lin Huang, who was lying on a deck chair under the sun, gradually opened his eyes to look at Tan Lang. "We found a meteorite crater, but there''s nothing there." Lin Huang frowned without saying anything. He took his hat off to cover his face and continued sleeping. "Since the augurs have already come out with the prediction results, I guess we don''t need to be really particular about what has actually happened," Li Jia advised. "Yes, that''s right. Instead of wasting time investigating this issue, why not let everything work as usual? Our main purpose of entering the ruins is to get more resources," Shen Tao suggested. "Let it be." Still, Tan Lang did not reveal what he was worried about as he shook his head. "Let everything end here and have a good rest. We''ll leave Gushan City early tomorrow morning and head towards Enlightenment City!" "Are you going to leave Gushan City?" Li Jia asked. "We''ve hunted most of the monsters at Gushan City within 3,000 kilometers. It''s time to go to the next station." Tan Lang nodded. He had prepared for this earlier. His initial plan was to overcome the danger before leaving. However, since Charm had been wiped out, there was no need for them to stay there any longer. Gushan City seemed peaceful that day. However, there were many rumors going around. The news regarding the extermination of Charm soon spread to most of the organizations. "Exterminated? Nobody managed to survive and not even a single dead body can be discovered?!" "Do you think that the Union Government did this?!" "I guess the Heaven Alliance is incapable of doing so since there''re only 10 of them. It''s less likely that they can wipe Charm out without injuries." "Although Tan Lang from the Heaven Alliance is strong, Ye Ye from Charm is not that much weaker than him. He''s incapable of defeating Charm on his own. Unless Chan Dou was the one who did that, he could''ve also probably done so." "Could it have been the human immortals?" There were all kinds of speculations regarding the extermination of Charm. The underworld organizations kept a low profile after receiving this news as what Charm encountered was really weird. Most of the Union Government were thrilled upon receiving this news. A minority of them was worried about it. If it was an unknown who had done this, the level of threat in this world would be beyond their expectations. The people from the Heaven Alliance did not ask about it any further. The next morning, Tan Lang and the rest left towards the second government residence. 858 Do You Want to Sell Your Herculean King? Enlightenment City was a capital situated on the north-western border of the land. It was one of the few cities that had not been seized by any organization. The Heaven Alliance members took the whole afternoon to arrive at the Enlightenment City. After settling into their accommodation, they planned their attack strategy once more. Only one liaison was required this time and the nine of them could join the fight. However, Lin Huang summoned the Herculean King to replace his position in the team whilst he stayed in the city. Tan Lang and the rest did not have any objections. The ability of Lin Huang''s summoning monster far surpassed his and it was rather suitable to join the fight compared to Lin Huang. After having their lunch, Tan Lang and his team left. Lin Huang and Tang Ning, who was the liaison, stayed in the city. Because of their relationship with Gushan City, Lin Huang and Tang Ning were easily given the authority to enter the library when they arrived at the capital. After bidding Tang Ning goodbye, they then headed towards the library on their own. Since he had never revealed his sword skill at the Genius Union, Lin Huang was unable to train his sword skills. Recently, he discovered that practicing the methods in this world could increase his depth of skill in the Twisted Fate Scripture. Therefore, Lin Huang decided to memorize as many training methods as possible in this world. It would not be difficult for Lin Huang. He could perfectly memorize all the content that he had gone through with his Divine Telekinesis. He did not need to read it with his eyes. Instead, he just had to skim through all the content with his Divine Telekinesis. Lin Huang soon found the books he wanted in the library. He then sat on the floor next to the book rack, quickly skimming through them. With his Divine Telekinesis, he could scan one page of words in less than 0.01 seconds. In fact, it would be much faster than his speed of flipping the page. If it were not because of the other people in the library, Lin Huang would have read the book with his telekinetic threads whereby hundreds of telekinesis threads would turn the page at the same time. He could finish reading a book within seconds. The requirement of the training method for The Twisted Fate Scripture was not high. As long as the method was mortal transformation-level and above, there would be a substantial increase in his familiarity with the skill. At least, this was what happened in the second rotation. The library did not lack any mortal transformation-level training methods. Lin Huang managed to find hundreds of them in Gushan City''s library. However, the ascendance-level training method was extremely rare and there were only a few of them. However, Lin Huang was not in a hurry. He was currently practicing 35 types of mortal transformation-level skills and he had already gotten into the second rotation of the Twisted Fate Scripture. The requirement to break through the third rotation had doubled where it required two million points. Lin Huang spent the entire afternoon memorizing all the methods available in the library of the Enlightenment City. More than 120 of them were different from the methods available at Gushan City and three of them were on ascendance-level. At night, when Tan Lang and the rest of them returned, they were elated. Lin Huang and Tang Ning asked what had happened but they were reluctant to tell them. After they had distributed all the rewards at night and Tang Ning confirmed that there was nobody spying on them, he then whispered a secret, "I found out that the ''internal elixir'' created by the body of a monster is the ''crystal core'' we mentioned. The Life Power within it can be extracted rapidly." "I discovered that the Life Power can be extracted earlier. However, the Life Power that can be extracted is only 50% of the total Life Power," Lin Huang described his observation. "Extraction and the speed of extraction are two different things." Tan Lang looked at Lin Huang in excitement. "What I meant is that the crystal core can quickly replenish the Life Power that''s been drained during a battle. As long as there''s a sufficient amount of crystal cores, there''ll be no way to use up our Life Power!" Everybody''s eyes brightened and even Lin Huang was startled. He had Divine Fire in his body as well as 10 Life Wheels. He did not lack Life Power, but it did not mean that the others did not need it though. In fact, many of them would not simply activate a powerful skill because they were afraid that their Life Power could hardly sustain it. If a person could have inexhaustible Life Power, one could activate their most potent skill until their opponent died. Previously, Lin Huang could kill the yellow gold-rank monsters with ease despite being a black gold-rank because of this. The news meant nothing to Lin Huang. However, it was positive news for the rest of them. "Luckily, I didn''t sell any of the monster carcasses that I''ve previously killed. I can now dig out all the crystal cores from the carcasses!" Shen Tao exclaimed happily like a kid. "Why didn''t you tell me earlier? I''ve fed the carcasses to the bug." Li Jia sulked. ''I''m glad that my summoning monsters don''t need any food. Otherwise, I''d have fed them with the monster carcasses too,'' Lin Huang thought to himself, ''Although I don''t need those crystal cores, if I were to sell them to the outside world, they could probably fetch a good price. If I were to collect more, I might be able to even earn a set of demigod-level telekinetic weapon!'' The price of a demigod-level telekinetic weapon was at least 10 times of an ordinary demigod relic. Lin Huang was not interested in the beginner- and intermediate-grade demigod relics. An ordinary expert-grade demigod relic cost at least 100 billion Life Crystals. One might not be able to buy a telekinetic weapon of a similar grade with 1.5 trillion Life Crystals. It was much more expensive than an ultimate-grade demigod relic. Just as Lin Huang was calculating how many crystal cores he would need to exchange for a telekinetic weapon, Tan Lang suddenly chuckled and inched closer to him. "Lin Xie, let me tell you something." Looking at Tan Lang''s revolting smile, Lin Huang was petrified and he leaned backward. "Deputy chief, please don''t do that to me. I''m only interested in women." "Hey" Tan Lang''s smile became stiff and he slowly took a step backward. He then said, "I just wanted to ask if you want to sell your Herculean King?" Lin Huang glared at Tan Lang. "No!" It was within his expectations. However, Tan Lang still looked disappointed after listening to his reply. He then took a glance at the Herculean King, whose body had shrunk, that was standing next to Lin Huang. The Herculean King noticed his sidelong glance. "Do you want to fight?" The Herculean King stared at him. Of course, the Herculean King would not be able to fight Tan Lang. Its abilities were only slightly stronger than an immortal-level rank-9 in the Heaven Alliance. Compared to Shen Tao, his strength was still unknown, let alone Li Jia and Tan Lang who were much stronger than Shen Tao. However, Tan Lang did not get angry. Instead, he grinned at the Herculean King because he really liked it. He paid close attention to the Herculean King''s abilities in fights. It had immense strength and terrifying defensive ability. Apart from that, it had a very strong battle instinct as well. If he were to train its combat strength, it would definitely be a very formidable companion. Tan Lang would not have asked Lin Huang about it if he did not like it. Of course, the Herculean King was unwilling to make such a change. It knew the benefits of following Lin Huang. Its upgrade to mythical-level was just a matter of time. Getting an upgrade in its bloodline would not be difficult either. The Herculean King felt that the man named Tan Lang was just slightly stronger than it was and that it would definitely surpass him in the future. How could he be its master!? Lin Huang was reluctant to sell the Herculean King and he was unable to anyway since Xiao Hei had never activated the function of canceling a monster contract. 859 You Won’t Go Through Whatever You’re Going Through Now If You Hadn’t Done What You Did After knowing that the crystal core in a monster''s body could rapidly replenish one''s power, Tan Lang and the rest became more passionate about fighting. The next morning, they left the city and began hunting for monsters although it was only seven o''clock in the morning. Lin Huang then returned to the hotel room after having his breakfast. He took out an ascendance-level monster carcass, digging out the crystal core with a dagger. The crystal core in the monster body was known as an internal elixir. The crystal core in Lin Huang''s hand was the size of a male adult''s thumb and it was colorful. He could clearly sense various types of energy stored in the crystal core as he held it in his hand. Life Power alone occupied about 50% of it. Just as he was about to give it a try, from its hidden place up his sleeve, Bloody whispered, "The crystal core looks delicious." "What?" Lin Huang was stunned and he had a peculiar facial expression on his face. It was not his first time extracting a crystal core. Bloody could see everything clearly from his sleeve every extraction. It had never mentioned that it felt like eating the crystal core. This was the only time when Bloody seemed to crave the crystal core. "Is there anything special about this crystal core?" Lin Huang asked. "I don''t know. I simply feel that it has a sweet fragrance and it smells like a very delicious kind of candy." Bloody then slipped out of Lin Huang''s sleeve, lingering around the crystal core. "A candy kind of smell?" Lin Huang smelt it and he frowned. He could not smell anything. "Let it be. Just eat it." Since Lin Huang could not find out the reason, he did not bother to ask any further and tossed the crystal core to Bloody. Bloody immediately twisted its tentacles around the crystal core and quickly pitched it into its mouth. After a short while, it closed its eyes as if it was enjoying it tremendously. "Was it that good?" Lin Huang thought to himself. After a couple of moments, Bloody gradually opened its eyes, shifting its gaze towards the monster carcass where its crystal core had been extracted. "I guess I know what''s happening." "Do tell." Lin Huang was keen to know more. "After eating the crystal core, I''ve inherited its memory. I even obtained two abilities from the owner of the crystal core," Bloody shared what he received after eating the crystal core. It then continued, "If I''m not mistaken, only the crystal core that''s compatible with me will give such a weird craving. "As for why I had such a weird craving, I suppose the answer lies in my genes where I can sense things that are beneficial to me, just like how most of the creatures are born with the ability to sense danger, but the strength of one''s ability to sense it will be different. "Moreover, I think the crystal core doesn''t only work for me. It should work for Bai and the rest too. However, I think the crystal cores that we need will be rather different." "Didn''t you sense anything when you see the monster carcass?" Lin Huang asked again. "No, I didn''t. I only sensed it after the crystal core was extracted. Perhaps, the monster carcass has isolated the effect of the detection ability." Bloody shook its head. "Alright, I got it." Lin Huang nodded his head. After summoning Kylie, Lin Huang brought Bloody to Kylie''s mini world. He looked for open space and took out all the monster carcasses that he had collected in the past few days. The monster carcasses piled up like up a mountain and there were more than 10,000 of them. However, only about 100 of them that were on ascendance-level could be compared to immortal-levels. The rest were on mortal transformation-level. Lin Huang then summoned Bai, Lancelot, Killer, the Death Knight, and the Fallen Knight as they were monsters with weapons in their hands. "I have a task for you. Dissect all the monster carcasses and extract their crystal cores." Lin Huang decided to slack off and summoned his monster pets to do all the work. "After extracting all the crystal cores, I''ll need to sort them out, so you''re not allowed to eat first. Try to keep the carcasses in their complete form and don''t eat them first. I''ll need to exchange them for crystal cores." They were excited the moment they were summoned. However, after discovering the reason why they were being summoned, they suddenly looked bitter. "Is it suitable to use the human idiom ''break a butterfly on a wheel'' here?" Bai turned its head towards Bloody and asked. "Yes," Bloody answered seriously. "Every 100 carcasses dissected will be given a day''s worth of junk food as a reward." Lin Huang extended his finger. Lancelot''s eyes immediately lit up. "May I look for helpers?" "Yes, you may." Lin Huang inclined his head. Without a moment of hesitation, Lancelot summoned the sword slayers and began dissecting. The rest of them immediately worked on them as well. Kylie caught a glimpse of Lancelot''s sword slayers. She then whistled and the Nephilic Judge army instantly arrived. "Dissect all the monster carcasses and try not to damage them." After she pointed at the dead bodies, more than 300 of the Nephilic Judges began dissecting the carcasses. Kylie stood next to Lin Huang, turning her head towards him. "There aren''t that many monster carcasses. Do I need to hunt for monsters?" "No, you don''t need to do so for now." Lin Huang shook his head. Seeing Kylie''s disappointment, he then explained, "There''s something strange about this world. Let''s talk about your upgrade after leaving this place." Kylie nodded her head and did not say anything else. After leaving Kylie''s mini world with Bloody, Lin Huang headed towards the library and began looking for information regarding the internal elixir from the monster''s body. After reading for the whole afternoon at the library, Lin Huang still did not manage to find out about the exact explanation regarding how consuming the monster''s internal elixir could result in inheriting its memory. However, there were a few articles that mentioned humans becoming monsters after consuming the monster''s internal elixir. One of the articles was very remarkable. The main character of the story was a person called Mo Fei. He was very powerful and had killed countless monsters. One day, Mo Fei arrived at a small town. The people of the town were very friendly to him. However, everybody in the town would turn into monsters at night. With a lot of effort, Mo Fei spent almost the entire night killing all the monsters. As the sun rose, he sat on the green staircase at his hotel with his saber. He then realized that all the monsters he had killed the night before were actually humans. He only realized that he had encountered a monster called an incubus. The monster set him up, causing him to exterminate all the humans in the town. With guilt and hatred, Mo Fei began hunting for the incubus. It took him decades to hunt for the monster and his hatred grew even stronger. Eventually, he finally found a way to enter the dreamland and managed to find the incubus. After a brutal fight, he murdered the incubus. Due to his intense dislike for the incubus, he ripped the incubus apart and devoured its internal elixir. He then became an incubus that was even stronger with many negative emotions. "Is the story telling us that you won''t go through whatever you''re going through now if you hadn''t done what you did?" Lin Huang described how he felt in the first place after reading the story. 860 Door Opening In the next few days, Lin Huang was busy practicing the training methods in this world, improving his familiarity with the Twisted Fate Scripture. Tan Lang and the rest were extraordinarily keen on fighting monsters. Sometimes, they would even hunt for monsters overnight. Nobody knew whether it was because there had been an increasing number of hunters or because their aggressiveness in hunting monsters had increased, but the number of monsters Tan Lang and the rest killed had doubled. Just as everybody from the Heaven Alliance was busy dealing with their work in the northwest of the city, a group of people who had invited themselves appeared at one of the northwest mountains. They were clad in golden armor and the leader was a man that was 20 years old. His hair was all combed up his forehead and he was wearing a golden coat. As they entered the Fallen God Land, everybody could easily recognize that it was the team from Dynasty which was led by the Seventh Prince. "Are you sure this is the place?" The Seventh Prince turned his head and looked at a man wearing a vest. "There''s nothing here." The man in the vest looked like he was about 20 years old, and was rather plump and friendly. "Yes, this is the place. We can''t see anything here because some skills that have been activated deter us from seeing the door," said the plump man with a smile. "However, I''ve already found a way to activate the door from the governor''s knowledge." After finishing his sentence, the plump man took a step forward, rapidly creating 10 fingerprints. As soon as the last fingerprint was created, loud crashes echoed in the air. It sounded like a gigantic golden door was gradually being pushed open. The sound grew louder and soon, the shadow of a huge red door was quickly formed in mid-air. Before it was completely created, the door opened. "It took so much effort to come here. It won''t go unrewarded." The Seventh Prince guffawed. "Let''s see what they have here in the Luotian Sect!" After uttering those words, the Seventh Prince then entered through the door and the rest of the people from Dynasty immediately followed after him. Right after everybody entered, the red door gradually closed and there was nothing. The people from Dynasty began murdering and robbing as soon as they entered this world. They pillaged a few cities and towns. To ensure that there was nothing in this world that could threaten them, they began to attack the government residence. If the Union Government had not stopped them, they might have robbed more than three government residences. Since the Union Government was now having their eyes on them, Dynasty knew that it would be impossible to continue robbing the government residences. Therefore, they shifted their focus to the sects. The treasures stored by the organizations that had existed for thousands of years would be no lesser than a government residence and they probably had more than a government residence. With this in mind, the people from Dynasty retrieved the memories of the governor and the deputy governor that had been killed. They managed to find information regarding the sect. Activating the door of the Luotian Sect that was situated northwest of the mountain forest was one of the pieces of information they found out. Striding over to the door, a broad staircase appeared right in front of them. The staircase stretched all the way as if it could arc across the sky. "If you happen to bump into anyone, there''s no need to talk nonsense with them. Just attack and slaughter them all!" instructed the Seventh Prince. The people from Dynasty reacted in outrage after listening to the instruction of the Seventh Prince. 100 of them moved upwards from the staircase. After a short while, the Seventh Prince saw the living beings. A few of them were in blue robes and their hair was bunned up. They looked like 11-year-old kids that were holding brooms, sweeping the staircase. However, the Seventh Prince showed them no mercy. He grinned instead. Holding two combat swords in his hands and with his arms spread wide open, he passed through the kids at an extremely fast speed by maintaining a low-level flight. After a short while, blood began oozing out of their necks. Soon after, their skulls fell down to the ground, rolling down the stairs. The headless bodies in the blue robes then fell down to their deaths. "Hahaha" After killing the weak children, the Seventh Prince seemed to be very proud of himself and he laughed loudly. As the Dynasty members moved further forward, there was an increasing number of teenagers that were sweeping the floor in their robe. The people from Dynasty then started a massacre. These children were aged from 7 to 16 years old. Some of them had not begun their cultivation and the strongest one was only on mortal-level. None of them was on mortal transformation-level. Obviously, the people from Dynasty had bumped into the weak ones. As they fought and reached the end of the staircase, the Seventh Prince and the rest then saw some buildings. Two muscular men in armor on mortal transformation-level were stationed at the entrance. Both of them could see the Seventh Prince advancing from afar. "You''re not allowed to enter! This is the Luotian Sect and you''re not allowed to do whatever you want here!" One of the men in armor shouted at them. The reply he got was a bloody sword glow. The one who attacked was the person standing next to the Seventh Prince who majored in sword skills. He was an immortal-level rank-9. The mortal transformation-level would be unable to dodge his attack. In fact, they did not even have the chance to capture the movement of the attack. A red glow struck and the two men in armor were killed at almost the same time. Blood spattered all over the ground. Witnessing what had just happened, the people behind the door screamed. "Kill!" The Seventh Prince instructed again. 99 of the Dynasty members gushed into the buildings and began a new round of carnage. Many of the ascendance-levels from the Luotian Sect finally revealed themselves, defending against the fight. However, the Dynasty members were incredibly strong and their members were the top among the rest of the immortal-levels. Despite the fact that there was a greater number of humans on ascendance-level compared to Dynasty, they were unable to take advantage of the situation. The Luotian Sect was soon defeated and a few of the ascendance-levels had died. However, although a few of the members from Dynasty were injured, their fighting spirit was not affected. Instead, they got more aggressive. The members of Dynasty grew stronger each time after a dangerous fight. They teetered on the edge of death every time they completed a mission. Of course, the people from the Luotian Sect could not be compared to the Dynasty members as the only real battle experience the disciples trained by the Luotian Sect had gone through were fights in the arena. The Luotian Sect had members who were on immortal-level rank-9. However, when they encountered the people from Dynasty, it only proved which one of them was the winner. Witnessing his members being defeated and many of them being killed, they were pressured by their opponent. In his green robe, the chief of the Luotian Sect struggled for a long time. He then made up his mind, turning his head towards a kid standing next to him. "Ling Quan, bring my token along and ask the patriarch to please show up!" 861 The Human Immortals Have Appeared This happened at the mountain behind the Luotian Sect. A young Taoist priest in blue robes who looked 12 or 13 was running clumsily in the dense forest. Though a little clumsy, his steps were agile and sturdy. Soon, he arrived at the cliff behind the mountain. The wall of the cliff looked as smooth as a mirror; there was not even a single weed growing on it. The young Taoist priest went to the wall and knelt onto the ground. He took the golden token before his chest out. "It''s Disciple Ling Quan''s pleasure to meet all patriarchs!" "Wicked men have invaded our Luotian Sect. There''ve been many deaths and casualties. The Sect Leader asked me to bring the sect token to ask the patriarch to show himself!" After he was done speaking, the young Taoist priest then banged his head against the wall that was as smooth as jade. For every blow of his head, he would hold his head up and shout, "Patriarch, please show yourself!" He repeated that over and over again while his voice echoed in the mountain forest. The young Taoist priest''s forehead was bleeding from the violence, but that did not stop him at all. After banging his head for over 20 times, the young Taoist priest felt a little dizzy and he heard someone sighing softly. Not long later, a cloud of mist appeared on the wall of the cliff. The wall that was as smooth as a mirror vanished completely and was replaced by the mountain with a crack on its surface. Many gray-robed Taoist priests ran out of the crack and arrived at the foot of the mountain. A white-haired old man with a long beard walked to the young Taoist priest with a horsetail whisk in his hand and spoke politely, "Is your name Ling Quan?" "Yes." The young Taoist priest lifted his head, his eyes blurry with tears. "You''re good." The old man brushed his hand on the young Taoist priest''s head. The wound on his forehead was healing at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. It was good as new in the blink of an eye. However, the young Taoist priest did not seem to care about his forehead as he spoke while choking up, "Patriarch, please help us" "Alright." The old man nodded lightly and turned to look at a middle-aged man. "Ming Jing, stay here to take care of this kid." "The rest will follow me!" The old man flew into the sky as soon as he was done speaking. The remaining 20 or so of them flew to catch up with him. Looking at the patriarchs leaving, the young Taoist priest finally could not hold himself back and wailed out loud while kneeling on the ground. The Taoist devotee named Ming Jing squatted down and patted the young Taoist priest''s back. "It''s alright. Everything''s alright" "Who dares to mess with my Luotian Sect?!" A scream that sounded like an explosive thunder echoed in every corner of the Luotian Sect. The spirits of the Taoist priests in the Luotian Sect were lifted upon hearing that voice while the people from Dynasty looked terrified at that moment. As immortal-level rank-9 powerhouses themselves, the people from Dynasty were familiar with an imperial-level powerhouse''s aura. Hearing the Taoist priests screaming ''the patriarchs have shown up'', the people from Dynasty came to a realization that the legendary human immortals had presented themselves. "I can''t believe these old things are still alive!" A sense of fear flashed through the Seventh Prince''s eyes. He clearly sensed there were more than 20 imperial-level people coming at a rapid speed. The most powerful one was even more powerful than imperial-level yellow gold-rank. The person was on at least imperial-level white gold-rank or even imperial-level purple gold-rank. The Seventh Prince knew he was no match for that person. "Retreat!" Without hesitation, the Seventh Prince ordered them to fall back. He was the first to turn and run. As he did, he remembered to grab the plump man who opened the door. The people from Dynasty stopped fighting their opponents immediately when they realized that the Seventh Prince had retreated and began to run down the mountain. "Don''t let those vile creatures get away!" A green-robed Taoist devotee shouted. The Taoist priests ran after the people as fast as they could. They no longer feared them, knowing that the patriarchs were standing behind them. Sword rays shot in the air one after another, chasing the people from Dynasty. Due to their rich battle experience, the people from Dynasty knew they could not fight them. They dodged the attacks instead of fighting back. Some of them, who could not dodge, defended the attacks forcefully. They would rather be hurt than battle the opponents. The strategy worked well as they were getting further and further away from the Taoist priests behind them. Just when they were feeling slightly relieved, more than 20 silhouettes came after them at a rapid speed. The Dynasty members had a drastic change of expression. They evidently sensed that the ones who were coming after them this time were imperial-level powerhouses! "How dare you come to our Luotian Sect''s doorstep and kill our people? I don''t care who you are. You must leave your lives here today!" The leading white-haired Taoist devotee shouted ferociously. As he swung the horsetail whisk, hundreds of sword rays solidified in the air. The sword rays shot down like arrows one after another. With an intense whistling, they pierced through the Dynasty members'' chests. The single blow killed half of the hundreds of Dynasty members while over 20 of them were badly wounded. Only about 20 of them who had demigod armor were not injured by the sword rays. Fear flashed through the Seventh Prince''s eyes. The blow alone gave him a clear picture that the old Taoist devotee with horsetail whisk was definitely a supreme powerhouse on imperial-level purple gold-rank. His ability might be just a level lower than a demigod''s. Although the sword ray earlier vanished after colliding with his expert-grade demigod armor, the single attack drained close to a third of his Life Power. Shock flashed through the old Taoist devotee''s eyes after noticing that more than 20 of them were unwounded from his attack. Soon, he realized these people had a high defense armor on them. The bunch of human immortal-level powerhouses attacked the Dynasty members who were injured together with the old Taoist devotee. "Don''t kill all of them. Keep a few of them for interrogation!" The old Taoist devotee ordered and proceeded to chase the members that were running away. He swung his horsetail whisk in the air again. Another hundred of sword rays consolidated. They were firing at the Seventh Prince and the rest like arrows. Nobody was wounded in this round of attack, but a few of them clearly experienced a significant deceleration in their flying speed due to the intense exhaustion of Life Power from the demigod armor which drained the already low Life Power in their bodies. The old Taoist devotee noticed that instantly. "Running low on Life Power, eh?" He swung his horsetail whisk. As a result, five ropes were divided and attached to the five men whose speed were decelerating. The ropes captured the five of them. "Got them!" Having been caught by five human immortals, they dared not fight back at all. They knew very well that their Life Power was exhausted and they recalled the demigod armors. They would die sooner if they were to fight back now. Logically, they would rather pretend to obey now and look for an opportunity to escape later. The remaining 18 of them were fleeing since the five had been captured. Knowing that the Seventh Prince and the rest experienced major exhaustion of their Life Power from the armor they were wearing, the old devotee attacked them from far away again. The third wave of sword rays shot across the sky. A dozen Dynasty members had worn their Life Power out completely. They could not even fly any further and plummeted straight to the ground. A couple of them were spitting blood, badly wounded. A bunch of Taoist devotees stepped forward to capture them immediately. Seeing that the remaining six had arrived at their door, the old Taoist devotee swung the horsetail whisk while hundreds of sword rays blasted out again. At that moment, the Seventh Prince turned around all of a sudden and crushed a jade token. An intense tremor came from the sky out of nowhere while a fissure appeared in the air, blocking the old Taoist devotee''s attack. A terrifyingly compelling aura came out of the crack. Shaken, the old Taoist devotee stopped chasing after them and halted the other Taoist devotees behind him. Suddenly, the crack was torn open while a gigantic human hand came out of it and headed towards the Taoist devotees. "Retreat!" The old Taoist devotee yelled and swung the horsetail whisk at the same time. A giant crystal-clear sword that was hundreds of meters long appeared in the air and smashed towards the gigantic hand. The people from the Luotian Sect were petrified as they watched this round of collision. The giant sword was crushed bit by bit by the gigantic hand. Even the old Taoist devotee, who had formidable abilities, could not help but spit a mouthful of blood out. However, thunder exploded in the sky when the giant sword was about to be crushed entirely and the gigantic hand was getting nearer to the old Taoist devotee. Black lighting bolts came from above unexpectedly and landed on the gigantic hand hard. The gigantic hand was crushed into pieces as a result of the attack. The old Taoist devotee landed on the ground slowly. Fortunately, another gray-robed Taoist priest managed to grab him. Watching the door that was closing and the six who had disappeared, the few human immortal-level Taoist priests attempted to go after them, but the old Taoist devotee stopped them. "Forget it. There''s no need to go after them. These people have powerful techniques and they might have more." Although the other Taoist devotees were unwilling, they could only let it go recalling the gigantic hand. "Lock those who are still alive up. Interrogate them separately!" A gray-robed Taoist devotee waved and told the rest. Meanwhile, the old Taoist devotee looked at the direction where the black lightning had appeared and mumbled softly, "The appearance of thunder means that catastrophe is upon us. We didn''t manage to escape this in the end" 862 Killing Seventh Prince In Enlightenment City, Lin Huang had been performing simulated cultivation on a variety of local methods while his Twisted Fate Scripture had advanced all the way to rotation No. 4. All he needed now was eight million mastery level to proceed to rotation No. 5. For the past few days, Bloody had come up with all the types of crystal cores needed for the monster card. Lin Huang traded the unwanted crystal cores with Tan Lang and the rest for all the crystals cores that could whet his monster cards'' appetite. Naturally, Tan Lang and the rest thought it was a little odd, but Lin Huang did not explain much about it. All he said was that the Herculean King and the rest of his pet monsters found some crystal cores delicious. Those rejected crystal cores were those that they found yucky. For that, Lin Huang even got the Herculean King to eat a crystal core that he liked. Since the Herculean King enjoyed himself, whatever doubts Tan Lang and the rest had were cleared. Naturally, Tan Lang suspected Lin Huang might be hiding something, but he did not delve further. "I''ve recorded how everyone felt and the effects every time they consumed those crystal cores." Bloody carried out a series of comprehensive recording. "I think I''ve got the approximate effects of the crystal core now." "Tell me more." Lin Huang was interested in learning about the crystal cores. "According to my current observation, every time they consume the crystal core, they obtain the memory of the crystal core''s owner. However, they won''t be able to inherit 100% of its contents. Moreover, different skills have different probabilities of inheritance. The highest one was above 90% while the lowest one was less than 20%. I''m speculating that the success rate of inheritance should be related to our skill slots. "As long as we don''t elevate, the main branch of our skill slot will remain the same. Meanwhile, the skills that we obtain through these crystal cores will only appear at the very end of our skill slot. The closer the skill that can be placed on the main branch of the skill slot, the higher the chances of the skill being accepted and the higher probability of inheriting it. On the contrary, the more conflicted the skill is with the development of the skill slot, the easier it is to be rejected by the skill slot and the lower the probability of inheriting it. "The main branch of my skill slot is parasitical ability. Almost all parasitical skills turned into branches in my skill slot. This is the precursor of the core crystals being absorbed into my body. However, there''s a division in parasitical skills too. I''m developing more into group parasitization at the moment, so group parasitical skills will be easier to be assimilated into my skill slot and has the highest probability of being inherited. "Moreover, my parasitical control is more focused on refined control, so low-level or parasitical skills that have poor control will be expelled from my skill slot by instinct, mainly because such skills aren''t exactly useful to me. They might even burden my elevation and development of skills unnecessarily in the future. They contribute zero value to my skill slot, so the inheritance probability will be lowered automatically." "I get it now." Lin Huang somewhat understood what Bloody meant. "Find time to discuss with Bai and the rest about the direction of their development. You guys will decide which crystals cores to consume by yourselves. I won''t interfere with that." The more skills one had did not guarantee better performance. After all, everyone had limited time and energy, so it was impossible to master each skill to their peak. Nevertheless, some people could master a group of skills to their peak and that allowed them to become a formidable powerhouse. For instance, the demigod Qi Muxiong who had virtually invincible telekinesis could fight equally with a True God despite having a demigod''s body. One of the reasons why Lin Huang gave up being a firearms master was because of the powerful telekinesis ability that he had. The battle direction of a firearms master would overlap with what he was cultivating. Another reason was that he did not have extra time and energy to cultivate that. If he were to insist on picking up firearms, his cultivation speed might be heavily affected by this sideline while his ability would definitely not be as great as it was now. The most powerful talent that he was mainly cultivating was Sword Dao. The telekinesis which he was talented in came in handy. It had undoubtedly saved him a lot of time when it came to his elevation. It would not hurt for him to work on those side skills such as sorcery, firearms and mechanical mastery when he reached a bottleneck in his main cultivation. After all, there would be times when his Life Power or telekinesis would be limited. By then, he could rely on those side skills. Since he was done speaking with Bloody, Lin Huang went into the simulated cultivation again. Not long later, Bloody slipped out of Lin Huang''s sleeve all of a sudden. "People from Dynasty have appeared. They''re coming to the city that we''re in!" Lin Huang stopped his cultivation immediately upon hearing that. A couple of hours ago, he heard from Bloody that the people from Dynasty were coming northwest and had entered a mountain not far away from Enlightenment City. They vanished all of a sudden when they went into the mountain. Lin Huang was rather skeptical when he looked at the six people Bloody projected. "Only the six of them?" "Yes, just the six of them. Apart from Seventh Prince, the rest don''t seem to have much Life Power left in them," Bloody confirmed, "I was watching them the last time and Seventh Prince noticed my Leech Pods immediately, but he didn''t notice them at all this time. Although I''m further away compared to the last time, under normal circumstances, he should be able to notice me. However, he hasn''t until now. Seems like he''s in a rather bad condition. The Leech Pods were far away and they could not really see their faces clearly. However, Lin Huang had outstanding eyesight and instantly noticed their gait. "From their flying speed and clumsiness, they seem to be running for their lives." "Should we attack them?" Bloody hesitated. "The people that are coming after them must have terrifying ability judging from the fact that they rendered Dynasty so inept and only six of them have survived." "We can''t let go of this opportunity to attack them. As soon as they enter the city, it''s difficult for us to find them when they go into hiding. Judging from their character, they''ll definitely attack the Heaven Alliance as soon as they''re healed." Lin Huang knew underground organizations very well and had no sympathy for this bunch that was with Seventh Prince. "Moreover, the enemy''s enemy should be treated as friends. People who are after Dynasty probably won''t attack us if they see us stopping and killing Seventh Prince." After making up his mind, Lin Huang brought Bloody out of Enlightenment City secretly. As the Dynasty members ran for their lives to Enlightenment City, they had to travel 500 kilometers. Lin Huang hovered in the sky casually while waiting for Seventh Prince and the few injured Dynasty men patiently. In less than 20 minutes, Seventh Prince appeared with the Dynasty members as expected. Seventh Prince noticed a silhouette that was blocking their way from a distance. At first, he was shocked as he was afraid it was the old Taoist devotee who had caught up to them. However, he realized that it was a young man upon closer inspection. Furthermore, he found the person''s face familiar. "Lin Xie of the Heaven Alliance, what are you doing here?" Seventh Prince squinted a little to scrutinize Lin Huang when they flew closer. He was familiar with Lin Huang since he was a member of the Genius Union too. Before entering the Fallen God Land, he recognized Lin Huang immediately after taking a glance at him. However, he did not bother to talk to him because he thought he was weak. Lin Huang blocking their way now caused him to feel insecurity that came out of nowhere. "I''m here because I know you guys would come. I''m here to kill all of you," Lin Huang said casually and did not hide what he was planning to do at all. 863 Die, Seventh Prince! "Kill us? Just you alone?" Disdain filled Seventh Prince''s face but he secretly had his guard up. He spoke to the five Dynasty members behind him through voice transmission, "This fella''s behaving weirdly. He might be planning an ambush. Try to attack him on my cue." "Yes, it''s just I alone." Lin Huang nodded in all seriousness. "Lin Xie, I might be really scared of you if you have the same combat strength as I do which is immortal-level rank-9. But you''re only immortal-level rank-3. Speaking to me like that will bring your death forward faster." Seventh Prince did not think that Lin Huang was alone. He suspected that the rest of the Heaven Alliance were hiding nearby. With their current condition, they might not be a match with the ten Heaven Alliance members. Moreover, they were out in the open while their enemies were hiding, so they were at a disadvantage in their given situation. "Seventh Prince, I thought you''d have the ability to see beyond a person''s combat strength. I''ve overestimated you," Lin Huang teased. Seventh Prince''s lips twitched. He was not sure what kind of irritating words Lin Huang would say if he were to continue to speak to him. He could not help but interrupt him right away, "Alright, quit your act. Get Tan Lang and the rest out. Do you really think we don''t know that you have people hiding nearby?" At least, they could see what they were dealing with if the people from the Heaven Alliance revealed themselves, so they could attack their weaknesses. Lin Huang spread his arms wide helplessly. "It''s only me this time. Tan Lang and the rest are still busy hunting monsters. They don''t even know that all of you are in the northwest." "I''d be stupid to believe you." It was clear that Seventh Prince assumed Lin Huang had backup hiding. "It seems like all of you really doubt my abilities." Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. "If that''s the case, I''ll show you a little of what I''m capable of doing then." Lin Huang moved his left hand slightly as soon as he was done speaking. More than 2,000 immortal-level rank-9 Parasitic Puppets that were hiding in the pet spatial ring emerged out all at once. Lin Huang had bought the pet spatial ring to disguise his identity as an Imperial Censor. It had always been empty until Bloody gained a massive amount of Parasitic Puppets recently, so Lin Huang put all of them into it. After all, if he were to put them in Kylie''s mini world, he would first need to summon her to get her to open it to let all of the Parasitic Puppets out. Keeping them in the pet spatial ring not only allowed him to skip a step but summoning them directly also suited his character as an Imperial Censor. The people from Dynasty were shocked to witness the thousands of immortal-level rank-9 monsters appear out of nowhere. Seventh Prince immediately sensed that the monsters were all triple mutated. He looked extremely horror-struck at the moment. He finally comprehended that what Lin Huang said was the truth. He really was alone as he did not need any of the Heaven Alliance members to help him at all. "We''ve surrounded all of you," Lin Huang said for the second time with a smirk. Although Seventh Prince was arrogant, he knew his capability very well. Not long ago, he had retreated from the imperial-level purple gold-rank old Taoist devotee because he knew it was time to flee. Looking at the army of thousands of pet monsters, he was sure that it was time for them to run again. "Retreat!" His voice transmission went into the ears of the remaining five Dynasty members. Without even waiting for a response, Seventh Prince stepped back immediately. He turned around and flew as fast as he could towards the direction they came from. Meanwhile, the remaining five of them were scrambling for their lives in different directions. Apart from Seventh Prince, none of them had the confidence to fight the Parasitic Puppets army before them. Furthermore, their Life Power was exhausted. They might not be able to fight one of them given their current condition, let alone a whole army of them. Anyone would be dumb not to run when encountering such enemies! However, Lin Huang and Bloody expected them to respond in such a way. Lin Huang stood where he was while watching them with his hands in his pockets. He was not afraid of any of them escaping. Bloody, on the other hand, was just getting busy. "Dragnet formation!" As Bloody issued the order, the Parasitic Puppets spread out quickly and surrounded the six of them in the air like a giant web. "A battle formation?!" The fear in Seventh Prince''s eyes intensified when they were surrounded. He could guess how Lin Huang managed to obtain such insane points on the Stairway Tree now. If he had such a monster army, he would be able to secure No. 1 on the scoreboard easily too. However, he had no idea that the ''truth'' that he believed in was not the truth at all. Lin Huang did not have such an army when he was on the Stairway Tree. The Parasitic Puppets army had just been raised less than a month ago. Bloody carried out the next step ruthlessly after surrounding the six of them. "Killer Spider!" The name of the battle formation was Killer Spider, and not Killing. The army was divided into six groups which separated the six of them. There were more and more monsters participating in the groups, just like spiders trapping their prey with their spider web. Seventh Prince struggled to get out of it, but he could not since the group formation had now changed. The other five were attacked by the five mini monster groups continuously. Their Life Power became depleted one after another and they were smashed into heaps of meat after their demigod armor was obliterated. In less than a minute, Dynasty was down to one member: Seventh Prince. Although he could not see their condition, Seventh Prince clearly sensed that their breaths were disappearing one after another. He was the only one left in the end. He could also tell that the monsters were coming for him since the five of them had perished. More than 2,000 monsters were attacking him from far away. His Life Power that had been depleted to less than a third seemed to be dropping at a horrifying speed. He attempted to escape from the attack but he would still be surrounded eventually. None of the pet monsters in the battle formation was wounded from his retaliation. Realizing that it was impossible for him to run, Seventh Prince finally panicked. "Lin Xie, I surrender! Get them to stop! I''ll give you everything I have as long as you''re willing to let me go." Soon, he heard Lin Huang''s voice booming outside the monster horde coldly, "Surrender? Do you think this is a match?! Everything that you have will belong to me anyway when you''re dead." "Lin Xie, I''m the Prince of Dynasty. If you kill me, Dynasty will definitely come for you! As long as you''re willing to let me go, I guarantee that I won''t tell anyone about you attacking us and I won''t reveal your real abilities to anyone." Seventh Prince attempted to turn things around one last time, hoping that Lin Huang would change his mind. "Dynasty will come for me even if I don''t kill you. Don''t you forget that I''ve already taken five lives from Dynasty. On the contrary, Dynasty wouldn''t be able to find me as easily if I killed you. Nobody would think an immortal-level rank-3 powerhouse like me would be able to kill the Holy Son of Dynasty. Also, your guarantee is worth nothing. To me, only a dead person is the best at keeping secrets." "Lin Xie, are you a man for hiding behind your monsters? Kill me if you''re man enough!" Seventh Prince went insane after confirming that Lin Huang would not let him go. He then tried the very last possibility getting Lin Huang to show himself. "Such a dumb way to instigate me!" Lin Huang shook his head helplessly when he heard the taunt and gave Bloody the last order, "Kill him!" "Consolidation!" The thousands of monsters consolidated into a gigantic battle character in a human form immediately as ordered. Lin Huang was a little bewildered when he saw the battle character that looked 80% like him. A sword was the only thing that was lacking. The battle character that was up to 1,000 meters tall clenched its right fist tightly while its body turned into a bow-shape. It charged forward and threw a hard punch at Seventh Prince. It was a punch that could kill an imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouse. As it collided into Seventh Prince''s chest, the force of the punch stirred the air within 100 kilometers. Seventh Prince was flung away from the attack and crushed more than ten huge mountains behind him. The demigod armor on his body was damaged from the attack immediately while his chest caved in. All of his organs were crushed. There were almost no bones that were intact in his body. Even his skull was cracked. Bloody had avoided attacking his head in order to cast parasites on him later. The attack killed Seventh Prince who had less than a tenth of Life Power left in him. After getting Bloody to perform parasitization on the people from Dynasty, Lin Huang cleared the battlefield and put the Parasitic Puppets army away into his pet spatial ring. He then summoned the Inferior Imp and gave a similar order as he did the last time, "Settle the battlefield. Use a couple more meteorites this time." After watching over 10 meteorites falling from the sky and smashing the entire battlefield into ruins, Lin Huang left Enlightenment City with Bloody secretly after making sure there were no traces left. 864 The Forming of a Phenomenon, a Chaotic Tribulation Returning to the hotel, Bloody then reported what had been retrieved from their memories, "The place that Dynasty previously went to was the Luotian Sect. They initially wanted to plunder the sect. However, the members of the Luotian Sect have awakened the human immortals that were sealed. One of the elder Taoist priests who possesses the strongest ability is on par with the purple gold-rank. He''s capable of killing half of the people from Dynasty in one blow. Seventh Prince only managed to escape along with five other people with his life-saving skill." "So, there really are human immortals!" Lin Huang felt thrilled on the inside but he kept his cool. "Since there are human immortals from the Luotian Sect that managed to survive up until now, there are probably other human immortals from other sects that are still alive." "There could be demigods or those that are even stronger," Bloody added. "Does the governor and deputy governor of the city have any relationship with the sect?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes. Many of the immortal guards are from the sect. Only a few of them who trained themselves will take this position up." Bloody acquired this information from the plump man who had inherited the governor''s memory. "Is there any other useful information?" Bloody thought for a while before it decided to share, "There''s a strange apocalyptic prediction. The plump man retrieved it from the governor''s memory too." "Do tell." "A strike of thunder heralds the arrival of disaster. The forming of a phenomenon, a chaotic tribulation," Bloody uttered the prophecy. "I guess it doesn''t really mean anything. It might just be something they said during the ancient times." Lin Huang pondered for a while. He had no idea what it could mean. Soon, he snapped out of his thoughts and did not think any further about it. Two days had passed. Tan Lang and the rest returned and the ten Heaven Alliance members gathered again. After distributing the items they obtained, Tang Ning reported the information he had received in the past few days with a weird facial expression. "The government residence has recently received a few weird messages." "A city situated in the east disappeared abruptly. A few places at the Thule City which is located in the north of the government residence are also haunted. In the south, a sudden snowstorm broke out at Luohua City. The entire government residence was covered in snow in just one night. As for the deserted area in the west, a town has appeared out of nowhere" After listening to Tang Ning''s report, Lin Huang''s heart skipped a beat. He could clearly remember the last two phrases in the prediction: "the forming of a phenomenon, a chaotic tribulation." "Can you please tell in detail?" Lin Huang immediately requested. "What do you mean by the town suddenly disappearing?" "All the buildings and residents in town have disappeared. There''s only open space there as if nothing has ever existed." "The exact opposite happened in the west of the government residence. A town suddenly appeared out of nowhere with about 100,000 residents there. There are warriors and cultivators. According to the people in the town, they''ve been staying there for tens of thousands of years. However, many cultivators who go there to hunt said that they''ve never seen the town before. They''re pretty sure that the area used to be an open space. "As for the haunted Thule City, nobody has managed to figure out what''s the reason behind the strange incidents. A family hears the sound of crying babies every day. The crying can be heard irregularly and most of the time, it comes from one of the small rooms. A cultivator has investigated this issue, but nothing odd has been discovered. Another family sees shadows in the house from time to time. The shadows are like images that nobody can capture. The weirdest part is that in another house, they smell the aroma of food when it''s time to eat. It can be the smell of roasted pork, soup, or steamed rice. "The snowstorm that hit Xueluo City for a whole night has engulfed the city. Only the third floor of a few three-story buildings aren''t buried in snow. Fortunately, that was just ordinary snow and nobody was injured." Tan Lang and the rest did not pay much attention after listening to the news from Tang Ning. Lin Huang was the only one who frowned as it reminded him about the prophecy. "Lin Xie, are you okay?" Tan Lang soon noticed that something was wrong with him. Lin Huang hesitated for a while. He then told him about the prediction. "I accidentally came across an ancient book when I was at the library of Gushan City. There''s this stanza" Part of what Lin Huang spoke was the truth as he shared coming across the prophecy from an ancient book. "A strike of thunder heralds the arrival of disaster. The forming of a phenomenon, a chaotic tribulation." Tan Lang and the rest frowned as they heard the saying. "Is the phenomenon referring to our current situation?" Shen Tao asked. "That''s possible." Lin Huang nodded his head. "Listening to that, I suddenly recall that when I received the information regarding the strange phenomenon from the rest of the government residences, one of the deputy governors was there. He had a strange facial expression and left immediately as soon as he received the information." Tang Ning frowned. "I guess the governor and the deputy governor must have known something about this." "I''ll ask more about it." Tan Lang felt that things were not that simple. "Any other information?" "There''s another important message." Tang Ning bobbed his head with a serious facial expression. "One of the sects called the Luotian Sect was attacked. According to the description, it was probably the people from Dynasty who did it." Tang Ning paused for a while as he said, "It''s been said that the attack has caused a big scene, causing all the patriarchs at the Luotian Sect to be unsealed. More than 20 of the human immortals have shown up. The people from Dynasty have disappeared in the past few days. Perhaps, they''re all dead." "The people from Dynasty are all dead?!" Tan Lang and the rest were stunned. "According to the abilities of the people from Dynasty, they might not all be dead if they encounter a yellow gold-rank. Perhaps, the abilities of the human immortals can be compared to the white or purple gold-rank." Tan Lang was familiar with the overall abilities of Seventh Prince and the people from Dynasty. "It seems like this world is much more complicated than we think." "I guess the people from the sect aren''t unreasonable. As long as we maintain a good relationship with the government residence, it''s less likely that they''re going to attack us." Lin Huang could understand the sect as he had grasped the knowledge from the memory retrieved by Bloody. "If they aren''t friendly, we can just leave the foggy world and try not to have any conflict with them." "That''s what I was thinking." Tan Lang nodded his head. "Since the Fallen God Land is so big, we can explore other places." "That''s it. I''ll head over to the government residence to ask about the unusual phenomenon tomorrow." Tan Lang made further arrangements. "We''ll only need six people, including the Herculean King, for tomorrow''s monster hunt. We''ll need two people to stay at the government residence for safety purposes. Who''s going to stay?" "I''ll stay. I have stronger senses." Li Jia was the first to suggest. "I''ll stay here too." Shen Tao volunteered to stay there as well. "Alright. Li Jia and Shen Tao will be in charge of safety at the government residence. Lin Xie and Tang Ning will remain at their original positions. The Herculean King and the rest will follow me to go monster hunting." 865 Two Governors The next morning, Tan Lang arrived at the government residence because he doubted the prophecy. However, the door of the government residence was closed and the entrance was blocked by a team of honorary immortal guards. Under normal circumstances, the door of the government residence would be opened at 8 a.m. sharp. There would be two honorary immortal guards stationed in front of the entrance and four people to work in shifts. The team would change every three days. Other than the leader of the team, the members would take turns to be on duty. In the government residence, there was a team of 13 honorary immortal guards that was responsible to be on patrol duty. The leader would take the lead and the team would be rotated each day. The entrance was now blocked by a team of honorary immortal guards. That being said, something must have happened at the government residence. Tan Lang frowned and rushed to the leader of the team. "What happened?" The leader could recognize Tan Lang at first glance and he was familiar with the people from the Heaven Alliance. Aside from his sleeping hours, Tang Ning from the Heaven Alliance had been staying at the government residence most of the time. He knew that Tan Lang was the leader of the Heaven Alliance and he exuded an aura that was much stronger than that of the governor. "Mr. Tan Lang" The leader seemed troubled as he was being questioned. "The deputy governor instructed that we''re not allowed to reveal anything that happens in the government residence. I can''t tell you anything. Please don''t ask about it anymore. I''m sorry. The entrance to the government residence has been blocked and nobody can enter or leave." The leader shook his head. "Alright, I don''t want to trouble you. You may look for us at the inn if there''s any problem that you can''t settle." Tan Lang took a glimpse at the door that had been shut and left as if he had something in mind. Returning to the inn, Tan Lang gathered everybody and told them what he had encountered at the entrance of the government residence. "Any chance that an unusual phenomenon has occurred at the government residence?" Lin Huang was the first one to ask after hearing the report. He actually knew what was happening at the government residence through Bloody''s Leech Pods. However, he could not tell them that. "That''s possible," Li Jia agreed with Lin Huang, "If the government residence was under attack, they shouldn''t be reacting this way. Furthermore, the inn is less than a kilometer away from the government residence. If there''s a battle, it''s impossible for us not to be able to sense anything. However, it''s possible for the unusual phenomenon to appear without a trace." "If it''s something serious, we shall stay here and not go hunting for monsters. Let''s wait for the news from the government residence." Tan Lang was still worried about it. "There''s no need to do so. Li Jia and Shen Tao are here. Don''t worry and go hunt for monsters." Lin Huang did not want Tan Lang and the rest to slow his progress down. If they did not go on a monster hunt, he would obtain lesser crystal cores. "If there''s no news from the government residence for three days, are you going to wait here for three days?" "The Herculean King shall stay here. You need an imperial monster for safety purposes." Tan Lang was worried about Lin Huang''s safety as Chan Dou had asked him to take good care of Lin Xie. "Ask the Herculean King whether if I''m lacking imperial monsters or not." Lin Huang shook his head and smiled. The Herculean King turned its head and looked at Tan Lang. "Among all the imperial monsters he has, I''m considered as the one with the weakest abilities." Everybody from the Heaven Alliance was astonished when they heard that and they stared at Lin Huang in surprise. "The Herculean King is just being humble," Lin Huang said with a smile. Of course, the Herculean King knew that Lin Huang actually wanted to hide his abilities, so it did not say anything else. "Oh, you really scared the crap out of me!" Listening to Lin Huang''s explanation, Tan Lang then looked at the Herculean King with a burning desire while thinking to himself, ''It knows how to be humble. Its intelligence is comparable to humans.'' Realizing that Tan Lang was looking at itself with a strange expression, the Herculean King that was initially standing on the left side of Lin Huang stepped back. "It doesn''t want me." Seeing what the Herculean King did, Tan Lang became gloomy. After the discussion, they decided to follow last night''s plan whereby Lin Huang and the three others would stay there and the Herculean King and the rest would go on a monster hunt. After Tan Lang and the rest had left, Tang Ning headed towards the government residence to ask for more information. Lin Huang and the others stayed at the inn. After a short while, Tang Ning returned. He was stopped by the honorary immortal guard outside the government residence as well and did not manage to get any useful information from them. Seeing Tang Ning being blocked, Li Jia was triggered. "It sucks to be kept completely in the dark about this. Let the bugs detect what''s actually going on." "We must stay calm," Lin Huang disagreed with Li Jia. "The government residence has blocked the information. This means that they don''t want anyone else to know about this. Something strange just happened to the whole world. The government residence doesn''t completely trust us. If we were to investigate this, it''ll be fine if they don''t discover us. However, they''re going to lose trust in us if they find out. Especially at this point of time when it''s been proven that there are sects and human immortals backing the government residence up, we have to build a good relationship with the government residence. Don''t get ourselves into too much trouble. "Moreover, if the government residence needs help, they''ll definitely look for us. If they don''t, it simply means that they''re capable of solving the problem and they don''t need our help. If we were to investigate this by ourselves, they might think that we have other intentions." "What Lin Xie said makes sense." Shen Tao nodded his head in agreement with Lin Huang. "Let''s not think about this anymore. Get on with your work. Otherwise, take a good rest." After Lin Huang finished his sentence, they went back to their own rooms. The three of them then exchanged glances with each other and left. In the afternoon, the deputy governor came to the inn along with the honorary immortal guards. They were looking for Lin Huang and the rest. Obviously, they were incapable of solving the problem and they had to ask for help from the Heaven Alliance. Looking at the Heaven Alliance members, the deputy governor felt awkward. "What''s happening? Can you please tell us now?" Li Jia had been itching to ask about this for the entire afternoon. He finally had the chance to do so now. "An unusual phenomenon has occurred at the government residence this morning. There are now two governors," said the deputy governor helplessly. "It took us the entire afternoon and we can''t figure out who''s the real governor" "Are you sure that it''s caused by the unusual phenomenon? Could it be somebody disguising themselves as the governor?" Tang Ning asked. "I don''t think so. He knows a lot about the secrets of the sects, including the governor''s private matters. No outsider would know this." He Tao, the deputy governor, shook his head. "The only possibility must be in relation to the unusual phenomenon." "What can we do?" Lin Huang asked. He had already known about this early in the morning because Bloody''s Leech Pods had been monitoring the situation in the government residence. However, he was unable to identify who the real governor was through Bloody''s screen. "We have no idea what to do. That''s why we''re here to ask for your opinion." He Tao looked helpless. "Perhaps there''s nothing we can help since you''re unable to recognize him as well." Shen Tao shook his head. "Let''s go and have a look." Li Jia was interested in this dilemma. "However, we can''t promise that we''ll know what to do." "Alright!" He Tao had no other choice, allowing Lin Huang and the rest to give it a try. 866 I Think It’s A Steal Lin Huang and the rest followed Deputy Governor He Tao to the city. The city gates remained closed just like they were in the morning. However, they were not stopped by the honorary immortal guard troop this time. Instead, He Tao brought Lin Huang and the rest to the government residence as he wished. He Tao brought a few of them straight to the meeting hall. There were two governors sitting in all seriousness in the meeting hall. They were drinking tea and they did not even bother to look at each other. To Lin Huang and the rest, the two looked exactly the same. There seemed to be no difference between them. They had large eyes, thick brows, and a mustache. They had the same body size and height. Even the way they drank their tea was the same. "You guys are here!" Seeing Lin Huang and the rest, both of them stood up almost at the same time to greet them. Shen Tao stepped forward and walked around them, chuckling with his eyes wide. "The both of you really look the same!" As Lin Huang observed them, he fixed his eyes on the duo''s storage rings on their left hands. He then asked the Deputy Governor upon noticing that the two storage rings were exactly the same. "Have you checked their storage rings?" "We have." Deputy Governor He Tao shook his head helplessly. "The items in both rings are exactly the same. So are the inner garments they''re wearing. There''s nothing more, nothing less. They''ve also gotten us to check the weapon armors which ownership has been claimed. Theoretically, it''s impossible for there to be a second Blood Dragon Halberd, but after our thorough investigation, we found out that the duo''s Blood Dragon Halberds are real." "How is it impossible to have a second Blood Dragon Halberd?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "It was my master who made the Blood Dragon Halberd exclusively for me. The main material to make it was the entire spine of the one and only blood dragon," the governor on the left explained, "There''s no other blood dragon in the world." "My master was dying when he was making the Blood Dragon Halberd. He passed away on the third day the Blood Dragon Halberd was made," added the governor on the right. Lin Huang went completely silent after hearing that and he did not ask further. "Since you''ve gone through the things that they have, how about their bodies?" Li Jia asked. "The governors initiated us to check their bodies," He Tao responded, "Not just the appearance of their bodies, but even the inside of their bodies look exactly the same. There''s no difference between them." "May I investigate further?" Li Jia looked at both of them. "You might feel a little uncomfortable during the process. I need you to tolerate it a little." "No problem." "I''m fine too." Li Jia walked to them and held their arms in each of his hands. "Please don''t resist." As soon as he was done speaking, countless black bugs crawled out of his sleeves and burrowed into the skin on both of their arms. They wanted to pull their arms back by instinct, but resisted the urge immediately, allowing the bugs to crawl into their bodies. The bugs that Li Jia used this time were much smaller than those that he used for the investigation the last time. They were approximately a tenth of an ant. Completely black, they did not seem to have the ability to fly. Those little bugs penetrated the duo''s skin easily and disappeared into their bodies. The two governors began having a slightly odd expression on their faces as soon as the bugs entered their body. "It''s a little ticklish. Please bear it, or else you''ll chase the bugs away," Li Jia reminded. Around five to six minutes later, the bugs returned to Li Jia''s sleeves after crawling around their bodies twice. The two governors were relieved. Li Jia closed his eyes in silence for a little while after releasing both of their arms. He only opened his eyes later and shook his head helplessly. "I was checking their muscles and bones. I''m so sorry, but I don''t find anything different between them." "There''s nothing else that I can do. They''re all yours now." Li Jia looked at Lin Huang and the rest with his arms opened. Tang Ning thought about it for a while and asked, "When was the first time the both of you met? What exactly happened?" "I saw a person in my bed when I opened my eyes this morning." The governor on the left peeped at the one on his right as soon as he was done speaking. "I''ve been busy the past few days and didn''t get enough rest. Because I was exhausted last night, I slept all the way until the morning. When I woke up, just like he said, I noticed a person in my bed, which is ridiculous!" The governor on the right had a more detailed explanation. "How could both of you not sense anything since someone appeared so close to you?" Tang Ning asked while frowning. "I should''ve been able to sense it immediately under usual circumstances, but I really didn''t sense anything this time. My mind was completely blank when I saw him. I thought I was hallucinating," explained the governor on the left. "It''s the same for me. I didn''t sense anything. I just noticed a person sleeping next to me when I woke up." The governor on the right provided the same answer. "Is there any surveillance around?" Tang Ning turned to ask Deputy Governor He Tao who was standing at the side. "There''s none in the bedroom, but there is at the entrance. I''ve already checked both surveillances at the bedroom entrance and didn''t find anything out of the ordinary." "Alright then. There''s nothing I can do here." Tang Ning thought about it and realized there was no longer anything worth asking. The questions that he came up with had been asked by the government residence this morning. The rest then looked pointedly at Shen Tao and Lin Huang. Lin Huang turned to ask Shan Tao, "Do you have any suggestions?" "No." Shen Tao shook his head. "I''ve been observing them when you guys asked your questions. The observation proved that they''re the same person." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "You''re right about that. Indeed, they are both Governor Tu Ming." "Lin Xie, what do you mean?" Both of the governors were triggered upon hearing that. "If I''m not mistaken, the phenomenon must''ve cloned another Governor Tu Ming. That''s why we can''t find anything different between them," Lin Huang voiced his observation, "When the both of you said it''s impossible to have two Blood Dragon Halberds in this world, I suspected it might possibly be cloning done by the phenomenon''s force. Governor Tu Ming isn''t the only thing being cloned, but everything that comes with him was duplicated too. That''s the reason why there are two storage rings with exactly the same contents and even two identical Blood Dragon Halberds." "So, is there any way to identify which is the clone?" The two governors asked almost in unison. "There''s no way." Lin Huang shook his head. "Even the clone doesn''t know he''s a clone. With the complete memory of Governor Tu Ming, the clone thinks he''s the real one." "What should we do now?" Deputy Governor He Tao asked immediately. "I don''t think we should do anything about it." Lin Huang raised his brow. "Since the clone possesses Governor Tu Ming''s complete memory and wouldn''t do any harm to the government residence or the city, I don''t think there''s a need to distinguish them apart." "Moreover, no one can tell who the real Governor Tu Ming is before the phenomenon fades away. So, why waste all this effort in futile?" "But who knows when is the phenomenon going away? It wouldn''t affect much if we don''t have a governor for a couple of days, but what if the phenomenon goes on for a couple of months or even years? Without the governor, there are many things that we won''t be able to do," He Tao said while looking worried. "Who says you have no governor? All of you can use both of the governors now. A clone isn''t an outsider in disguise. He won''t be exposing anything, so why can''t you use him?" Lin Huang asked like it was a no-brainer. Deputy Governor He Tao looked at Lin Huang with his eyes wide open. He had no idea what to say at the moment. "We can do that?!" "Other government residences can''t have two governors even if they wanted to. It''s a steal." Lin Huang raised his brow again. "Alright. Since it''s been solved, we should head back to the inn now." Lin Huang turned and left after patting He Tao''s shoulder. The rest of the Heaven Alliance followed him while wearing smiles. The puzzled He Tao and the two governors who were staring at each other were the only ones left. 867 Gullies Lin Huang really had no idea what to do about Governor Tu Ming. The phenomenon cloned the entire person. It did not only apply to every single cell in his body, but even his soul was also duplicated entirely. There was no way to tell who was the real person and who was the clone. However, the phenomenon was indeed something that did not require solving. Lin Huang did not follow up on Governor Tu Ming since then. He only heard the news coming from the sect and that the two governors had left Enlightenment City together from Tang Ning. The city regained its peace a few days after the strange phenomenon. Tan Lang and the rest would still come back once every few days for supplies as well as to distribute the rewards. Tang Ning would consolidate the news regarding the phenomenon from various places. The frequency of the phenomenon was getting higher and higher. Although it did not cause any severe trouble at the moment, everyone knew that the peace was just temporary. Li Jia released his bugs to every city to monitor them. With his monitoring, Lin Huang stayed indoors even more now. Shen Tao was the only one was bored. He was currently on the brink of elevating to imperial-level. The reason he had yet to elevate was that he had yet to find a suitable imperial-level monster. One would have to kill an imperial-level monster to obtain the Life Base of its Life Palace in order to elevate from immortal-level to imperial-level. If one were to treat a Life Palace as a building, the Life Base would be the blueprint. One would only be able to construct a building with a blueprint. Obtaining a monster''s Life Base was to form the foundation of Life Palace. The reason why Shen Tao entered the Fallen God Land was to find a suitable imperial-level monster. However, he had not seen any imperial-level monster ever since he entered the foggy area. After killing ascendance-level monsters with Tan Lang for a while, the slaughter was almost one-sided which did little to help his cultivation. Hence, he decided to stay in the city. However, he was getting bored these days. He looked for Li Jia for battle practice, but the latter rejected him with the excuse of being busy. He even lowered his pride to ask Lin Huang to allow him to practice his sword skills with his summoning beast. However, Lin Huang rejected him, saying he did not want his summoning beast to be killed by Shen Tao. In reality, Lin Huang''s Lancelot and the sword servants under him were suitable to practice sword skills with Shen Tao. If it Lancelot elevated to pseudo-mythical-level while fighting Shen Tao, it was uncertain who would be killed. Lin Huang did not want to expose his abilities, so he rejected Shen Tao directly. For the past few peaceful days in the city, Lin Huang maintained his usual lifestyle whereby he proceeded to cultivate the simulation of local methods. He stayed in ever since Li Jia got his bugs to monitor the situation. The Twisted Fate Scripture had broken through rotation No. 4 within a few days and entered rotation No. 5. He would need 16 million mastery levels to get to rotation No. 6 of the Twisted Fate Scripture. Although it was quite impossible to break through in such a short period of time, Lin Huang insisted on doing the simulation in his room every day. Meanwhile, Bloody was monitoring the entire world. Lin Huang would know what happened in the world each day even before Tang Ning did. In the morning, Bloody interrupted Lin Huang out of nowhere as he was cultivating after breakfast as usual. "Something''s happened!" "What''s that?" Lin Huang knew Bloody would not interrupt his cultivation if it was something minor. Bloody projected the images captured by a couple of Leech Pods right away. In the images, gigantic gullies appeared in the ground out of nowhere. The gullies were deep and endless, but the Leech Pods detected many monsters crawling up from the walls of the crevasses continuously. There were countless monsters. There were so many of them that it was horrifying. This was happening in more than one location. Bloody had already projected eight locations. "Are those monster hordes?!" Lin Huang frowned a little. Although he foresaw that the world would end sooner or later, he thought it was unreal when the problem surfaced. "There are eight of these at the moment, but I speculate that there''ll be even more later on." Bloody''s tone sounded negative. "These gullies Why do they look a little like the Abyss Brink?" Lin Huang realized all of a sudden after taking a closer look at the eight images. "You noticed it too. Indeed, those are the eight main branches of the Abyss Brink, but they''re much smaller," Bloody spoke while projecting another image. It was shot from an aerial view far from the ground. He could see the eight gigantic intersecting gullies on the ground. There were like the frame of an umbrella. "How are the abilities of those monsters that are crawling out of the abyss?" Lin Huang could not sense the monsters'' abilities through the images, so he could only ask Bloody. "I''ve only seen holy fire-levels at the moment. There isn''t even one immortal-level monster." Bloody added as soon as it was done speaking, "But I''m suspecting this is just the first wave of the monster horde. There might be immortal-level monsters and even imperial-level monsters after this." "I''m sure that the other government residences will hear about this since it''s such a huge commotion. Let''s see what they''re going to do and we''ll plan later on." Lin Huang frowned. He did not think much about it before this since this world might be built by a bunch of survivors from the ancient times. However, now it seemed like it was not as simple as he thought. The eight gigantic gullies that were similar to the Abyss Brink made him realize that this world might not be as straightforward as he believed. Tang Ning returned from the government residence in the afternoon. As expected, he brought back the news about the monster hordes. The government residence asked the Heaven Alliance for help, hoping that they could fight the monster horde together. Apart from that, they expressed that they were willing to pay the price of an equivalent value. Tang Ning sent the message to Tan Lang and the rest who were hunting out there. They rushed back before the sky turned dark and had a meeting with the two deputy governors and the bunch from the Heaven Alliance at the government residence. The people from the government residence explained the situation, which was similar to what Bloody had observed. The Heaven Alliance members noticed that something was off as they studied the eight intersecting gullies. After some discussions, the people from the Heaven Alliance returned to the inn while Tan Lang gathered them around. "What do you guys think the eight gullies look like?" Tan Lang glanced at everyone. "What else do they look like? They''re the eight main branches of the Abyss Brink." Shen Tao was the first to speak while the rest nodded in agreement. "Now, I''m suspecting whether this world''s made of ancient survivors." Li Jia''s suspicion was aligned with what everyone was thinking about. "I think the Union Government should know something about it, but they won''t release the news easily now," Lin Huang voiced his speculation. "Why don''t we capture some of the people from the Union Government and interrogate them?" Shen Tao grinned. "Are you trying to create trouble?" Tan Lang stared at Shen Tao. "There are 200 of them from the Union Government coming in this time. The ordinary members shouldn''t know that much about it. If you want, you should capture those EA.2 members." Lin Huang looked at Shen Tao while grinning. Shen Tao looked troubled when he heard what Lin Huang said. The Union Government''s intelligence agency Agency EA had sent three EA.2 members into the Fallen God Land this time. Each of their abilities was on par with the Heaven Alliance''s Tan Lang or Dynasty''s Seventh Prince. Shen Tao would definitely be defeated if they were to fight one-on-one. Because of the three of them, even Dynasty''s Seventh Prince would have to make way if he bumped into the Union Government''s team. "The Union Government would have to collaborate with the others to survive the crisis this time. They''ll share the news sooner or later," Lin Huang continued, "I think our priority now is to handle the monster horde with the government residence and reap all of the benefits that we can!" 868 Our Sect Isn’t To Be Underestimated Meanwhile at the Luotian Sect Hall, Sect Leader Duan Mu Rui sat on the main seat uneasily. There were 24 human immortals sitting in both rows next to him, all of them exuding a majestically powerful aura. The bunch of human immortals was discussing how should they handle the arrested Dynasty members. As Sect Leader, Duan Mu Riu had been listening quietly. He sat with his back straight, not daring to interrupt from the beginning until the end. Although he was the Luotian Sect Leader, among the 24 people who were present, his grandmaster ranked the last in seniority. Most of them were even great-grandmasters. As the people were in the zone of discussion, a messenger burst into the hall all of a sudden. "Sect Leader, all patriarchs There''s an emergency coming from the city!" "We''ll talk about it when the meeting is over!" Duan Mu Rui frowned and waved him away. "Wait." The old, white-bearded Taoist devotee sitting on Duan Mu Rui''s left lifted his head to look at the messenger and turned to Duan Mu Rui. "Sect Leader, let him speak since it''s an emergency. We won''t have any results for our discussion anytime soon anyway." "You''re right, Patriarch." Duan Mu Rui nodded immediately. The white-bearded Taoist devotee holding a horsetail whisk was the most senior among the patriarchs. He was the old Sect Leader who had decided to seal the door tens of thousands year ago. Including the time he sealed himself, he was close to 13,000 years old. Duan Mu Rui knew that the old Taoist devotee had no right to bypass him to command the messenger just like that. Instead, he was showing his respect to Duan Mu Rui as the Sect Leader. "What''s the emergency? Please, speak." "A piece of news has come from the government residence. Gigantic gullies have appeared in several locations early in the morning. They''ve found eight gullies so far which have spread across the entire continent." The messenger disciple provided a summary of the news. "Also, there''s a massive amount of demons crawling out of the gullies. Looking at the current situation, they''re all mortal transformation-level demons." The entire hall fell into dead silence as soon as the messenger reported that. Besides Duan Mu Rui, even all of the patriarchs, including the old, white-bearded Taoist devotee were stunned. "Have you confirmed the authenticity of the news?" The old Taoist devotee was the first to snap out of his shock and asked immediately while frowning. "I''ve confirmed it. More than one government residence has found out about this. Moreover, the Wuchen Sect, the Xiaoyao Sect, and the other sects heard about this before we did. There are rumors saying that they''re opening their doors," said the messenger respectfully. The hall fell into a dead stillness once again. The old Taoist devotee could no longer consider Duan Mu Rui''s position and he said to the messenger directly, "Contact the government residence now. We want to know more about it." The messenger stepped forward immediately and contacted the government residence after bringing out a communication crystal stone. After talking to the government residence, the people from the Luotian Sect looked horrified. The old, white-bearded Taoist devotee looked at Duan Mu Rui after asking the messenger to leave. He seemed to be hesitating if he should ask him to leave too. Noticing his great-grandmaster''s hesitation, Duan Mu Rui stood up on his own and said with cupped hands, "I''ll make a move." "No need. Stay. You need to know about this sooner or later," sighed the white-bearded old Taoist devotee softly and he signaled Duan Mu Rui to stay in the end. "It must be those outsiders who brought this disaster upon us!" A middle-aged bearded Taoist priest was the first to speak, unable to hold it back any longer. "If not for them, the thunder wouldn''t have appeared! We should ask them to leave!" It was clear that the Luotian Sect found out that organizations such as Dynasty had come from outside. "Indeed, it''s the outsiders who have brought this, but why are you complaining now?" The fat Taoist priest sitting next to him said while shaking his head, "Even if we were to ask them to leave now, would the phenomenon disappear and the disaster be averted?" "Now that the disaster''s here, it''s unwise to declare war with the outsiders. I think it''ll be better for us to fight this with them." An old Taoist devotee with white hair disagreed too. "There are quite a number of them, after all. There are over 5,000 people while most of them are complete ascendance-levels and some of them even have an ability on par with human immortals." "These people are greedy! They dared to fight our sect for resources." The bearded Taoist devotee was resolute in his objection. "Aren''t we afraid that they''ll stab us in the back if we were to collaborate with them?!" "I''ve got the same concern too." The silver-haired old Taoist devotee sitting on Duan Mu Rui''s right could not help but speak up while frowning. He had his silver hair knotted in a bun with a black hairpin. "These outsiders come to our world for resources. Looking at their behavior, they don''t seem to be treating us as their human partners but merely survivors of ancient times. To them, our time has long ended, so our dying would be something acceptable to them. Even if we come to an agreement, as soon as the disaster comes at full force, they can exit our world anytime they want and let us die." "No matter what, I don''t trust those outsiders." The silver-haired old Taoist devotee smacked the ground with the walking stick in his hand. "Junior Brother, I understand your concern," addressed the old, white-bearded Taoist devotee with the horsetail whisk finally while stroking his beard. "But there are dozens of different organizations coming from outside. We shouldn''t generalize them. Also, about the trust issue, there''s a way to solve it." All of them had their eyes on the white-bearded old Taoist devotee when he spoke sagely. "All they want are resources, so that''s what we''ll give them then," said the old Taoist devotee while smiling lightly as he stroked his beard. "We''ll give them as much as the effort they put in." "We actually don''t need mutual trust. All we need is an employment relationship. I believe these people will definitely accept being employed. After all, they''re here for the resources." "I think Junior Uncle''s idea''s great." The white-haired old Taoist devotee nodded to show agreement. "An employment is more stable than an alliance. Moreover, we''re the employer who holds the power." "This seems to be the only workable solution at the moment." The fat Taoist priest nodded lightly. "I think we can discuss this employment with the other sects and share the resources for the employment. If we share resources, each sect will only have to contribute a small part of it," added the white-bearded old Taoist devotee. The few of them who disagreed became silent. "Since there are no better suggestions, let''s vote now." The white-bearded old Taoist devotee glanced at everyone. "Those who agree with the employment, please raise your hand." Including Duan Mu Rui, among 25 of them, only six of them did not raise their hands. "19 to 6. The voting results are very clear," announced the old Taoist devotee while smiling, "So, it''s set!" "Senior Brother!" However, the old silver-haired man sitting across him spoke again, "Since you said that, should we release the people from Dynasty, return the resources to them and get them to fight for us?" "Of course not." The old man stood up with a smile. "Since they''re prisoners, they''ll get a different treatment naturally." "Give them a slave imprint and train them to be our battle slaves! Show the outsiders that our sect isn''t to be underestimated!" 869 The Sects Resurfaced Monster hordes broke out the night the gullies were formed. From the images Bloody projected, Lin Huang saw the bone-chilling number of mortal transformation-level monsters crawling out of the abyss. They were like countless ants gushing out of the core of the entire continent, spreading towards all directions. Everywhere they passed turned into barren land. Over 200 towns were destroyed in one night while seven cities were besieged by the monster horde. The situation was still alright in the cities due to the city walls and formations to protect the cities since the monsters were blocked outside the cities. However, almost all of the towns turned into ruins. Apart from the ascendance-level powerhouses who managed to run in time when they realized how bad the situation, the rest became monster food. Looking at the scenes, Lin Huang could not help but recall the world outside of the ruins. Perhaps this would happen when monster horde broke out of the Abyss Brink a few years later. The next morning, Tang Ning spread the news of monster horde breaking out in all the locations not long after he arrived at the government residence. Lin Huang knew about it last night and he could not sleep because of that. However, Tang Ning brought another piece of news. The sects had a mass-resurface and over 80 of them founded an alliance organization: the Sect Alliance. All of the outsiders knew that war was at their doorstep upon hearing that news. Apart from Tang Ning, everyone from the Heaven Alliance gathered in the inn. "We''ve no idea what this alliance organization, the Sect Alliance, thinks about us." Tan Lang was a little concerned. "Judging by Dynasty and those underground organizations'' doings, I''m afraid that we outsiders can''t win the trust of these local sects." Li Jia shook his head while looking bitter. He was not optimistic about this. "Even if they know we come from different organizations, they wouldn''t change their perception about us. After all, we come from the same world as those underground organizations. It''s a little difficult for them to work with us." "It''s fine if we don''t work together. We can continue to hunt for monsters for resources as long as they don''t chase us away." Shen Tao was unwilling to let go of the monster crystal cores that could replenish his Life Power rapidly. "Tang Ning wasn''t chased out of the government residence this morning. That shows that the probability of us getting chased out of this world is rather low." Lin Huang was rather clear about this. "The monster horde has broken out, so I suppose the sects won''t want to waste their efforts on us." "If I were in the high management of a sect, I''d definitely be keen to use the outsiders to fight the monster horde. After all, most of the 5,000 people who came in are on par with complete ascendance-levels while some of them even are on par with human immortal-level powerhouses. Such a force will be great to share the burden of the monster horde," Lin Huang voiced his thoughts. "There should be wise men in the sects. I think it''s quite possible that they would want to work with us. I''m just not sure what kind of collaboration method will they implement eventually." Tang Ning came back from the government residence when it was close to noon. They knew the Sect Alliance must have decided to collaborate looking at the excitement written all over his face. Tang Ning only spoke with a wide grin after gathering all the people from the Heaven Alliance. "The Sect Alliance has come up with a decision. They want to work with us in the form of employment. The 83 sects have founded a Glory Treasury together. I heard there are treasures from mortal transformation-level to celestial immortal-level in there. "We outsiders will help them hunt monsters and we''ll get Glory Points. Later on, we can use the points to redeem treasure. "Also, there''ll be a Glory Ranking. A one-star Glory will receive a 10% discount on redeemable treasures, 20% for a two-star Glory, 30% for a three-star Glory 50% for five-star Glory while the highest will be 70% for a seven-star Glory." Tang Ning excitedly explained the conditions roughly and projected the rules of the hunting points that he had retrieved from the government residence. ''Glory Ranking ''One-star Glory: 100 Glory Points ''Two-star Glory: 1,000 Glory Points ''Three-star Glory: 10,000 Glory Points ''Four-star Glory: 100,000 Glory Points ''Five-star Glory: One million Glory Points ''Six-star Glory: Ten million Glory Points ''Seven-star Glory: 100 million Glory Points'' ''Redeemable points for treasures of each rank (excluding Glory Ranking discount) ''Points to redeem mortal transformation-level treasure: 1 - 100 points ''Points to redeem ascendance-level treasure: 10 - 1,000 points ''Points to redeem human immortal-level treasure: 1,000 - 100,000 points ''Points to redeem earth immortal-level treasure: 100,000 - 10 million points ''Remarks: Some unique items might exceed the points system'' ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, and advanced-stage mortal transformation-level demon carcass: 1 point, 2 points, 4 points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, and advanced-stage mortal transformation-level demon internal elixir: 2 points, 4 points, 8 points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, advanced-stage, and peak-stage (including complete-stage) ascendance-level demon carcass: 10 points, 20 points, 40 points, 80 points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, advanced-stage and peak-stage (including complete-stage) ascendance-level demon internal elixir: 20 points, 40 points, 80 points, 160 points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, advanced-stage, peak-stage and complete-stage human immortal-level demon carcass: 1,000 points, 2,000 points, 4,000 points, 8,000 points, 16,000 points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, advanced-stage, peak-stage and complete-stage human immortal-level demon internal elixir: 2,000 points, 4,000 points, 8,000 points, 16,000 points, 32,000 points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, advanced-stage, peak-stage and complete-stage earth immortal-level demon carcass: 100,000 points, 200,000 points, 400,000 points, 800,000 points, 1.6 million points ''Respective Glory Points for each beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, advanced-stage, peak-stage and complete-stage earth immortal-level demon internal elixir: 200,000 points, 400,000 points, 800,000 points, 1.6 million points, 3.2 million points'' "Did they set the redeemable points all the way to 1,000 points for one monster carcass when it comes to human immortal-levels on purpose to encourage us to hunt more imperial-level monsters?" Shen Tao shook his head while querying with a smirk. "Earth immortal-levels too. The points skyrocket to 100,000 points each. It''s too bad that the equivalent of an Earth immortal is a Virtual God. We''ll have to see if we manage to do that by then." "The redeemable points for monster carcasses and crystals cores are just a false hike. Didn''t you see that the points for the treasures increase as well?" Li Jia who was standing aside noticed. "It''s a steal if we redeem low-level treasures, but redeeming same-level treasures would still be a high price." "In order to obtain more discounts, we''ll still have to kill more monsters while redeeming monster carcasses and crystal cores to level up in the Glory Ranking. I wonder who came up with this. It''s pretty brilliant." Lin Huang could not help but compliment after taking a careful look at the rules. "If we don''t kill any imperial-level (human immortal-level) monsters, we''ll need to kill at least 600 immortal-level rank-9 (peak-stage ascendance-level) monsters to get to four-star Glory. It''s quite difficult. To get to five-star Glory, we''ll need to kill 1,000 monsters even if the monsters are on imperial-level black gold-rank (beginner-stage human immortal-level). "Judging from that, most people will be stuck on three-star Glory for quite some time and they can only elevate to four-star Glory at the most. To the Sect Alliance, they might not really be at a loss if they were to sell the items at a discount of 30% or 40%. What a thorough calculation in these set of rules!" Lin Huang did some calculation and found out that it was a little difficult for him to elevate to five-star Glory, let alone the others. "40% is actually not bad. That''s better than not collaborating and buying the items from other stores at full price," Tan Lang pointed out. He calculated secretly after hearing Lin Huang''s observation and realized that it was indeed difficult to elevate to five-star Glory. "Indeed. No matter what, we''ve come to an agreement now," Lin Huang acknowledged. In reality, this was what everyone wanted. Even without working together, the people from the Heaven Alliance hoped they could stay in this world to hunt for monster crystal cores (internal elixirs). However, they were more motivated since there was this set of rules. "Chief, now that monster horde has broken out and there are so many monsters, we''d have a higher efficiency if we hunt on our own than in a group. I think we should do this separately," Shen Tao suggested all of a sudden, seeming very enthusiastic. "Then, we''ll hunt separately then since there are only holy fire-level monsters in this wave. We still have a rapid replenishment of Life Power with the crystal cores, so the risk''s low." Tan Lang glanced at them and agreed with Shen Tao''s suggestion knowing that was what everyone wanted. Lin Huang was secretly elated. Hunting alone would mean that he could use all of the techniques that he did not want them to know about. 870 The Hunt Begins The monster horde broke out in the central area. Enlightenment City which was at the border of the northwestern area only had a small monster horde at the moment. As soon as the order to hunt individually came from Tan Lang, the ten Heaven Alliance members departed in the afternoon. Lin Huang summoned Bing Wang and headed straight to the gully of the abyss. All of the monsters they encountered along the way froze into ice sculptures that seemed alive. It was the same even when they encountered triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters. With Bing Wang who had the ancient Frost Flame Ape''s bloodline, they could not escape their fate of turning into ice sculptures no matter how powerful they were. Lin Huang put all of the ice sculptures away in his storage rings along the way. Fortunately, he had gotten many storage rings from the rewards earlier. Otherwise, he might not have enough space in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. In reality, these holy fire-level monster carcasses and crystal cores were worthless to him. Although the monsters had low combat strength, the crystal cores in the bodies might be useful for his Monster Cards'' skills. Moreover, as long as there were many carcasses, he would be able to redeem a lot of Glory Points. Hence, he decided to collect the monster carcasses in the end since he had enough space. It would be dumb not to do so. After over an hour collecting monster carcasses while sitting on Bing Wang''s shoulder, Lin Huang finally saw the true form of the gully. There were massive numbers of mortal transformation-level (holy fire-level) monsters gushing out of the gully. It looked like a burst pipe from which water was rushing out of it. "Go!" As soon as Lin Huang ordered him, Bing Wang dashed into the crowd of monsters without hesitation. Everywhere he stepped would turn into white frost. With him as the center point, everything around him would start to freeze. Besides the monsters that were diving at him, the grass, flowers, and even the soil on the ground froze into ice that was harder than metal. In a few breaths, Bing Wang passed through the monsters and arrived at the edge of the gully. "Let''s go down!" Lin Huang issued a new order without thinking much. Bing Wang hopped into the gully and tore towards the bottom of the abyss. Lin Huang looked at the walls around along the way. There were mortal transformation-level monsters everywhere like the walls were full of crawling ants. The gully was immensely deep. Even with Bing Wang''s speed, they only arrived at the bottom half an hour later. After they arrived at the bottom, Lin Huang summoned Bai, Lancelot, Thunder, and Kylie. The reason he summoned them was that they were just like Bing Wang who had a compelling group of killing techniques. Naturally, Charcoal and Bloody Robe had similar techniques too, but one of them used Dragon Flame while another used lava. They would destroy the monster carcasses. Lin Huang decided to not summon them after giving it some thought. Tyrant, Malachian Fiend, and the Herculean King were like tanks in the battlefield which made them suitable for group kills under usual circumstances. Lin Huang figured they might just crush the monster carcasses entirely, so he did not summon them. Holy fire-level monsters were rather weak after all. Hunting was the second priority for summoning Kylie whereby the main objective was to help collect monster carcasses. Her Nephilic Judge army had tremendous speed. Also, she could put away the piles of monster carcasses in her mini world. Naturally, Kylie was unsatisfied with her assigned responsibility. She only agreed to do it when Lin Huang promised to put aside a tenth of the monster carcasses for her Nephilic Judge army as food. The hunting was almost a bloodbath. Bai turned Vampire Particles into bloody threads which penetrated the holy fire-level monsters'' hearts and brains easily. Monster carcasses were strewn all over the place with no wounds on them wherever the threads passed by. Lancelot summoned the Sword Dominator, the Luminescent Angelwing, the Frigid Swordswoman, and a few sword servants who were experts in group battles while he killed rapidly with his Sword Manipulation all the way. Little black swords were flying in the air and pierced through the monsters'' bodies one after another quickly. Thunder''s attack was the most straightforward. It summoned thunderclouds directly as it flapped its wings and aimed for the ground. All of the monsters that were struck by the bolts of lightning fell onto the ground. To prevent it from destroying the monster carcasses, Lin Huang especially reminded it to maintain the intensity of the lightning bolts so that it was enough to kill immortal-level rank-2 or rank-3 monsters. As usual, everywhere Bing Wang went turned into a land of snow while all of the monsters froze into ice sculptures. Kylie did not fight at all. Instead, she summoned her Nephilic Judge army to move all of the monster carcasses into her mini world. Meanwhile, she was standing on Bing Wang''s shoulder watching the fight just like Lin Huang was. Lin Huang''s four summoning beasts fought all the way slowly towards the center of the gully. When it was almost night time, Lin Huang and his bunch of summoning beasts had traveled almost 150 kilometers deep into the gully. Bloody roughly calculated the number of monsters killed. There were at least 800,000 monsters. "The speed of accumulating points is so much faster than I imagined. It seems like going down the bottom of the gully was a wise move." Lin Huang had excitement written all over his face. He would achieve at least millions of Glory Points with those 800,000 holy fire-level monsters. It would mean that he had elevated to five-star Glory in merely one afternoon. "I''m already eligible to enjoy 50% off the treasures. Judging from the speed of accumulating points, I guess I''ll elevate to seven-star Glory in a few days. I''ll be enjoying a 70% discount by then which countless people will envy." As a matter of fact, Lin Huang''s body was a great advantage in such a situation. The Divine Fire in his body continuously provided Life Power to his Monster Cards, allowing Bai and the rest to unleash all the skills that they possessed as they wished. That was how they managed to achieve such a high killing rate. Without the Divine Fire providing Life Power, Bai and the rest would not be able to withstand such speed of killing for even half an hour. As soon as half an hour passed, their Life Power would be drained. They would not even be able to run by then and would drown in the endless amount of monsters. Even the human immortals from the sects dared not come to the bottom of the gully of the abyss following the breakout of monster horde this time. Lin Huang was the only one who had the guts to do this due to his abundant Life Power. However, although they had endless Life Power, Bai and the rest had limited strength. The hunt went on until past eleven at night where their strength began to drop while their hunting rate was decreasing. "Alright, that''s all for today." Lin Huang finally stopped the hunt upon noticing that. After recalling Bai and the rest, Lin Huang summoned Bloody Robe to make a cave in the wall using lava to be his temporary shed. After entering the cave, Lin Huang got him to seal the cave entrance with the cooled down lava to prevent monsters from coming in at night. As soon as a human elevated to transcendent-level, he would have a strong adaptative ability. Without oxygen, a holy fire-level human could live for two to three days. Meanwhile, an immortal-level powerhouse could live ten days to half a month without oxygen. Moreover, Lin Huang would only need a night''s rest in such an enclosed environment. He brought his tent out in the cave. After setting it up, he got Bloody Robe to guard outside while he went into the tent. Due to his excitement, Lin Huang chatted with Bloody until past 1 a.m. before he fell asleep. Bloody did not tell him about the progress of Tan Lang and the rest before he fell asleep. For the entire afternoon, they had killed almost zero monsters because Lin Huang had wiped their prey out. 871 A Great Place to Obtain Points Lin Huang felt refreshed when he woke up early the next morning. After washing up and having some snacks that he had prepared beforehand for breakfast, he put away the tent and broke out of the cave. Countless monsters surrounded his field of vision as soon as he exited the cave. They were scurrying towards all directions at the bottom and crawling upwards on the walls continuously. They were like an army of ants migrating on a large scale. Soon, many monsters noticed Lin Huang''s presence and jumped to attack him. Observing that, Lin Huang summoned Bai, Lancelot, Thunder, Bing Wang, and Kylie immediately. As soon as Bai was summoned, he attacked at lightning speed the moment he saw the monsters targeting Lin Huang. He turned his Vampire Particles into a couple of sharp blades. A few monsters were killed directly as he attacked in a flash. There was not even a drop of blood as the monsters were slashed in half. The carcasses dropped onto the ground. Meanwhile, Lancelot, Thunder and Bing Wang landed on the ground one after another and began a new round of killing as they looked around. Bai then joined the killing spree instantly. The four monsters that were experts in killing as a group entered the herd of lambs like tigers. Eventually, the mortal transformation-level monsters were killed one by one. As the monsters were killed, Kylie summoned her Nephilic Judge army to begin collecting their carcasses. Lin Huang turned to look at the monsters that had been initially behind him while looking a little puzzled. Those monsters that had passed him and his summoning beasts by did not turn back to attack. Instead, they were running in all directions. Those monsters that were crawling on the walls also did not jump down to attack him or his summoning beasts. They continued crawling upwards as if nothing else mattered to them. "These monsters are behaving rather oddly," Lin Huang said softly with a frown. "If this is a normal monster horde, no matter where I am, they would treat me as their target as long as they can see or sense me. They would want to kill me no matter what, but those monsters that passed us ignored me completely. They didn''t turn back to attack. Instead, they proceeded with their journey. The only exception were those that saw me right before they attacked me." "There are two possibilities." Bloody attended to Lin Huang''s confusion. "The first possibility would be that they''re moving or they''re escaping. Hence, they don''t have the time to care about you. Some of them attacked you not because you''re human, but simply because you''re blocking their way. "The second possibility would be that they''ve received a powerful order. Compared to the order, you''re nothing, so they decided to ignore you and follow the order." "This isn''t something bad. At least, it means that we can go forward without having to kill all of the monsters along the way," Bloody added. "Do you mean minimizing the hunting zone and speeding up?" Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard what Bloody said. "If that''s the case, wouldn''t Tan Lang and the rest have more pressure on them?" "They don''t even have any monsters to kill at the moment." Feeling helpless, Bloody told Lin Huang about Tan Lang and the rest who had nothing to do since yesterday afternoon until the night due to him slaying all of the monsters. "Besides Tan Lang and the rest, a couple of government residences in the northwestern area and the Luotian Sect were affected too. Because of us hogging all of the monsters, they didn''t get many kills yesterday. "Also, the Luotian Sect couldn''t help but send two teams out to investigate last night. Fortunately, the monster horde went back to normal after we went to sleep last night. Their teams encountered the monster horde not long after that and they retreated. "Li Jia sent a couple of bugs to investigate as well. Luckily, his bugs have a limited range which is less than 300 kilometers, so he didn''t find anything." "Ahh, okay, I''ve overlooked this." Lin Huang thought he would kill as many monsters as he could to minimize Tan Lang and the rest''s burden, but he never realized that he would confuse them instead. "Alright, we''ll go as fast as we can to get to the central area of the gully and begin the hunt there. We can ease the pressure off the people outside and at the same time, we won''t kill the monster horde entirely." Lin Huang came up with a new plan immediately. "We can do that before the advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters appear," Bloody nodded. "But as soon as the monster horde levels up and the advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters come out, I''m afraid it''s a little difficult for us to survive in the center of the gully with our abilities. We can only guard one of the gullies." "Sure, let''s do that then." Lin Huang understood what Bloody meant. As soon as the monster horde leveled up, the advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters would have the equivalent combat strength of immortal-level rank-6 to rank-9 monsters. Such monsters would be difficult for Bing Wang and the rest to kill in one hit if their defense was slightly more powerful. Some triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters even had the ability to fight Bing Wang and the rest. As soon as they were attacked by one of those monsters, it would be hard for them to come out of the monster horde. By then, the risk of losing their lives there would be high. After giving Bai and the rest a new order, Lin Huang and his army began to speed up towards the central zone of the gully. The closer it was to the central zone, the lower the terrain was and more spacious too. It was like a narrow, fan-shaped slope. The closer Lin Huang was into the center of the gully, he realized there were more and more monsters ahead of them. Bai and the rest fought together like arrows continuously shooting into the sea of monsters that were in front of them. They ignored the monsters that were surrounding them left and right. The monsters that passed them did not turn around to attack. Instead, they were whizzing towards the northwestern direction. After changing the hunting plan, Lin Huang and his army sped up so much more that they could travel up to 1,000 kilometers per hour. When the sky was turning dark, Lin Huang finally saw the central zone which was the end of the intersection of the gully. It was a gigantic sunken pit that looked like a huge crater. There was a huge hole in the middle of the crater. To Lin Huang, the eight gigantic gullies looked like eight slender legs that expanded from a humongous spider while the sunken hole was the spider''s heart. Lin Huang got Bai and the others to go into the bowl-shaped crater to kill the monsters while he stood by the edge and peered down. It was pitch black. Apart from the various monsters that were crawling up tens of meters around the edge, he could not see anything else down there. "This must be the center of the abyss" Lin Huang used his Divine Telekinesis curiously but he sensed nothing. It was like his Divine Telekinesis had entered a land of nothingness. "Bloody, release a few Leech Pods down there and see," Lin Huang said to Bloody since his effort was to no avail. Bloody released a few Leech Pods immediately. The pods were going towards the center abyss slowly. However, Bloody shook its head after a short while. "The communication was cut off. I''m not sure if someone shot them or if the Leech Pods floated somewhere else." Lin Huang gazed at the center of the abyss for a while and eventually shook his head. He gave up on the thought to jump into it to discover for himself. He turned to look at the countless monsters within the hundreds of kilometers radius in the gigantic crater. Lin Huang was elated all of a sudden. "This is a great place to reap Glory Points!" 872 The Sixth Day Time passed by. It was the fifth day since the monster horde broke out. Throughout the past five days, the combat strength of the monsters that had been gushing out of the abyss was increasing day by day. It was just monsters on the beginner-stage mortal transformation-level on the first day, but there were intermediate-stage mortal transformation-level monsters beginning to appear on the second day. On the fifth day, there were already intermediate-stage ascendance-level monsters appearing, which combat strength was equivalent to immortal-level rank-4 to rank-6 monsters. To Tan Lang and the rest, the pressure increased day after day. On the fifth day since the monster horde broke out, most of the Heaven Alliance members could no longer take the pressure and had to retreat back to Enlightenment City. Even Tan Lang returned to Enlightenment City when the city door closed on the fifth night. As soon as he returned to the inn, Tan Lang gathered the people from the Heaven Alliance. He glanced through everyone, all members were there while Lin Huang was the only one missing. "Didn''t Lin Xie come back?" Tan Lang asked while frowning a little. Chan Dou had assigned Tan Lang a mission which was to take care of Lin Xie''s safety. He was a little worried when he noticed Lin Xie''s absence. "He didn''t. We haven''t been able to contact him via the communication ring." Shen Tao shook his head. He had tried contacting Lin Huang a couple of times yesterday, but his attempt was futile. They could not use the communication system in their Emperor''s Heart Ring there, but it worked for the local communication ring. The function was nothing less than the Emperor''s Heart Ring. For convenience, all of them had one of their own. However, since Lin Huang had been in the gully for the past few days, the communication ring could not receive any reception outside of the abyss. "He didn''t reply the messages?" Tan Lang asked again. "No. I''ve sent a few messages to him, asking him to contact me as soon as he sees my messages, but he didn''t reply since yesterday. I''m guessing that he''s somewhere that has no reception." Tan Lang said nothing and used his communication ring to call Lin Huang directly. However, the call did not connect. Since the call was not connected the first time, he called again, but it was the same result. "It can''t connect" Tan Lang frowned. "It shows that he might still be alive," Tang Ning comforted, "The communication ring here is different from the Emperor''s Heart Ring whereby the communication ring''s reception won''t be affected when the person is dead. You can still call, just that nobody will pick up." "What if the person is dead and the communication ring is broken?" Tan Lang glared at Tang Ning. He knew not having any reception did not mean that Lin Huang was dead. All of a sudden, Tang Ning fell silent. If Lin Huang was dead and his body was trampled by the monsters, there was a high chance that his communication ring was broken. A broken communication ring would have the same no-reception mode just like what happened when they attempted to call. "I''m not worried about Lin Xie. Remember that he killed so many monsters on the Stairway Tree?" Shen Tao comforted Tan Lang while wearing a smile. "There''ll be advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters coming out of the abyss tomorrow. Do you think he has the ability to kill monsters that are equivalent to immortal-level rank-7 to rank-9?!" Tan Lang shook his head helplessly. "Even I would have to avoid them if I encountered monsters of such a level!" Even though Tan Lang had an ability comparable with imperial-level crimson gold-ranks, he dared not guarantee that he could kill all of the advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters alone. The reason was that being attacked by monsters of such level would cause severe damage to him. "Perhaps Lin Xie has a way of his own. Nobody saw exactly how he killed the monsters on the Stairway Tree earlier." In reality, Li Jia was very curious about how Lin Huang managed to obtain such a high score on the Stairway Tree. He was a Bug Master. On a certain level, it was a branch of the Imperial Censor. He had always wanted to see Lin Huang''s full blast combat strength as an Imperial Censor. "Don''t worry, Imperial Censors usually have much more survival techniques than us ordinary people do. Moreover, Lin Xie isn''t a reckless person. If he knew that the situation''s out of hand, he''ll definitely come back." Shen Tao stepped forward and patted Tan Lang''s shoulder. Tan Lang went silent for a moment. A strange thought popped into his mind after he calmed down, and he could not help but say it out loud, "Do you guys think it''s true what the Herculean King said the other day about his ability being the least powerful among all of the summoning beasts that Lin Xie has?" Shen Tao and the rest had their eyes wide open when they heard that and they fell into a dead silence. They knew the Herculean King since they had fought together before. The Herculean King was not only a triple mutated beast. It had an ancient beast bloodline too. His ability was much more powerful than most of them who were present. He was just a tiny bit lagging behind Shen Tao who was about to elevate to imperial-level. Shen Tao chuckled awkwardly a while later. "Then, Lin Xie''s ability''s really terrifying." Just when the people from the Heaven Alliance were discussing Lin Huang, he had just ended the massacre of the day. On the second day that he entered the gully since the monster horde broke out, Lin Huang had been getting the kills for his Monster Cards in the central zone of the abyss. It was like a job to him every day whereby he would hunt for 17 hours from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m. Throughout the four days, he had killed more than four million monsters in total. Lin Huang estimated that he could obtain at least 30 million Glory Points just by selling the monster carcasses alone. He called off the hunting when it was close to twelve midnight. "That''s all for today. Let''s rest well tonight. Tomorrow will be the last day that we''ll be in the abyss." After entering the cave that he had been staying in temporarily for those few days, Lin Huang recalled Bai and the rest into their card forms and summoned Bloody Robe. Lin Huang did not sleep right away after getting Bloody Robe to seal the cave. Instead, he got Bloody to project the images taken at the bowl-shaped crater. It was the sixth day since the monster horde had broken out after midnight. As expected, there were advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters that began crawling out of the abyss. There were countless of them. "Looking at the progress of monsters coming out of the center abyss, there''ll be peak-stage ascendance-level monsters coming out after midnight tomorrow and there''ll be human immortal-level monsters the day after that, which are equivalent to imperial-level black gold-rank monsters. And there''ll be imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters coming out three days later" Lin Huang shook his head while forcing a smile. "Can the sects of this world really handle such an impact?" "According to my current observation, these sects are actually formidable. However, the chances of them defeating imperial-level monsters aren''t high." Bloody was pessimistic about this crisis. "Even if an imperial-level monster horde were to happen in the outside world, we might need many demigods to fight together to solve the crisis. However, there''s not even one demigod that''s surfaced in this world until now." "Maybe the demigods are hiding just like those sects before," Lin Huang teased. Even he did not believe what he had just said. "We could still hunt the last day tomorrow. We must leave the abyss tomorrow at midnight," Bloody reminded Lin Huang in all seriousness while looking at him. "There''ll be peak-stage ascendance-level monsters coming out the day after tomorrow which is equivalent to immortal-level rank-9. Some of them might even be just as strong as us. Furthermore, there are many more monsters than what our own numbers." "I understand." Lin Huang shook his head, feeling helpless. "Seems like it''s not possible to obtain 100 million points to achieve seven-star Glory after all." "The Sect Alliance''s point system was never made for anyone to achieve seven-star Glory or even six-star Glory. It''d be great if you achieved six-star Glory to purchase items at a 60% discount," Bloody smiled as it said, "If you really want to achieve seven-star Glory, you''d need to sell the crystal cores as well." "It''s not worth redeeming points with crystal cores here. I''ll only sell them when I get out. Then, I should be able to get a better price." Lin Huang was very sure of that. Such an item that could replenish Life Power at a high speed would definitely be something that countless people would fight for out there. Just when Lin Huang was ready to sleep after chatting with Bloody for a while, he heard a dumbfounded gasp from Bloody. ''What''s wrong?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "It''s the people from the Union Government. They''re trying to come down to the abyss now" 873 The Union Government’s Unusual Behavior Lin Huang thought it was a little puzzling when he saw the image that Bloody projected. 200 of them from the Union Government initiated the slaughter of the monsters along the way down to the central zone of the abyss. "What''s this? Isn''t it a little too late for them to only come to the center abyss to stop the monsters now?" "I''m afraid their objective isn''t that simple." Bloody gave a completely different opinion. "They''ve come down on the first day the abyss was formed. They even attempted to enter the crater in the center abyss but they failed. I''m guessing they''re here for the crater." "I don''t think you''ve told me about this before." Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard the explanation. "You were in cultivation when they came and they only stopped by for less than half an hour. They gave up and left after trying a few times, but their attempts were to no avail. I didn''t think it was something important and they didn''t come back since then. That''s why I didn''t mention it to you," Bloody explained. Lin Huang did not dwell on that. Instead, he asked while frowning. "They''re trying to get into the crater. Is it because they knew there''s something in there? But why do they choose to come today?" "As soon midnight passes, the monsters that are crawling out of the crater will become advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters. Wouldn''t the pressure be even bigger if they go in now?" Lin Huang thought it was rather hard to understand. "If it were me, I would try every way I could possibly think of to get in if I failed on the first day, but they only started trying again today since they failed the first time. Moreover, they did this right when midnight passed. It shows that they might have possibly mastered the way or the pattern of getting into the crater. "There''s another thing that seems a little odd now that I think about it. They rushed to Weiyang City which is closest to the central zone as soon as the gully was formed. They''ve never left Weiyang City since then. "Looking at their behavior, they must''ve known something about the crater. Even if they''re not entirely sure about the situation in there, they must''ve confirmed there''s something that they want in there. That might possibly be the ultimate objective of why they entered the ruins," Bloody voiced its speculation. In the projected image, the battle formation made by 200 of the Union Government members was formidable. They killed almost all the monsters that they encountered along the way. Their goal was not to kill all of their enemies but to travel as fast as they could. They managed to get to the abyss from Weiyang City which was 200 kilometers in less than ten minutes. They jumped down without hesitation as soon as they arrived at the abyss and made their way to the bowl-shaped crater. All of the monsters they encountered along the away were killed by the compelling Union Government army. They did not even collect any monster carcasses. Another ten minutes later, this powerful Union Government army opened a bloody path and finally arrived at the border of the crater. A tall lady walked out of the crowd. She wore a big white coat and seemed to be the leader of the pack. She looked down the crater as she walked to the edge and turned to shout at the people behind her, "Begin the experiment now!" Three Imperial Censors summoned twelve immortal-level rank-9 monsters while the others guarded them. Although the twelve monsters were all on immortal-level rank-9, they were just double mutated while their abilities seemed ordinary. Under the three Imperial Censors'' command, the twelve monsters hopped into the crater together. Nine of them were torn into pieces by the monsters that were crawling up as soon as they jumped in while another two were attacked. Nobody knew if they survived. Only one of the twelve managed to dodge the monsters'' attack and disappeared into the abyss. After waiting for two to three minutes, the three Imperial Censors looked at their pet spatial ring with their heads down. One of the Imperial Censors lifted his head after checking it thoroughly. He said to the people helplessly while shaking his head, "All dead." Subsequently, the second one lifted his head. "It''s the same on my side. None of them survived." The last one only spoke after the second person was done speaking, "One of mine survived. I guess the first round of experiment''s complete." "Go on with the second round of the experiment!" The leading lady nodded. The three Imperial Censors carried out another round of summoning whereby they summoned another twelve monsters. Just like before, they were all on immortal-level rank-9 and double mutated. The twelve monsters jumped into the crater under the three Imperial Censors'' command. A few minutes later, an Imperial Censor nodded at the leading lady again. "I have two monsters that survived. The second experiment is complete." "Begin with the last round of experiment!" The leading lady ordered again. Soon, the new round of experiment was accomplished while only one of the twelve monsters that jumped down survived this time. "Since the three rounds of experiments were successful, we can go in now." A man wearing a white robe nodded at the leading lady. His attire was out of tune with the Union Government''s uniform, but nobody seemed to have an opinion on that. As soon as he spoke, the white-robed man was the first to jump into the crater. The leading lady did not have the chance to stop him even if she wanted to. Seeing the man disappear into the crater, the leading lady followed suit while frowning slightly. The rest of them from the Union Government then jumped in too. Lin Huang was stunned watching the projection. "All of them jumped?!" "I''ve attached two Leech Pods on two of them," Bloody said while grinning, "For some reason, I failed to look at the images the Leech Pods sent back, but I could sense that the two Leech Pods are still around this time." "Let''s go in too." Lin Huang''s interest was piqued all of a sudden. Although he had reaped a number of great rewards throughout these few days from killing monsters, he thought it was rather boring. Now that he found something interesting, he would not want to miss it naturally. "The Union Government has formed an army of 200 who are experts in battle formation. I''m afraid it''s not safe down there." Bloody was unwilling to take the risk. It preferred to fight as long as it could master the situation. Its instinct was to avoid such an unknown area at all costs. "No matter how powerful this battle formation from the Union Government''s army is, they''ll never beat your battle formation. None of them is a match for me when it comes to personal ability." Lin Huang had faith in Bloody and himself. "I think it''ll be easy for us to handle the risk that they could handle." "Moreover, judging by the Union Government''s huge effort of forming such a team, the treasures in the crater must be exotic!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up as he spoke about this. "Let''s follow secretly behind them." Bloody knew that since Lin Huang had made up his mind, it was futile for it to stop him, so it did not bother wasting its effort on doing so. The exuberant Lin Huang did what he said right away. He put the tent away immediately and got out of the wall as soon as he donned his clothes. He then summoned Bai and the rest to kill all of the monsters along the way before arriving at the border of the crater. After recalling all of the Monster Cards apart from Bloody, Lin Huang jumped into the crater without thinking twice. 874 The Source of the Monster Horde Lin Huang looked around as he hovered in the air. Everything that he was observing was a little different than what he had imagined before going in. It was clear that he was not hovering underground but above an isolated space. The sky was gray, and there was an unpleasant, pungent smell lingering in the air. The stench undoubtedly came from the few volcanoes that had smoke billowing out of them not far away. One of the volcanoes was erupting where an insane amount of burning lava was flowing out from the crater. It drowned the burnt soil on the ground and connected with the dark-red lava river, making it even more disastrous than ever. Although the ordinary lava could not cause any physical damage to ascendance-level monsters, the swarm of monsters decided to dodge the lava river and the erupting volcano. After all, monsters that lacked strength would not want their flesh to be burned by lava. Lin Huang saw the Union Government members that were a distance away after taking a glance around. They were forming a battle formation and zooming towards the direction in which the monsters were coming out. They seemed to be gunning for the source of the monster horde. However, they appeared rather beaten although the battle formation was formed successfully. The monsters were a little different from those on the outside. All of the monsters that sensed their existence attacked them, including those that had already passed them. They turned around to attack the people at full force. The members were surrounded by the monster horde entirely now. Unlike before, the only threat they had faced earlier was the monsters ahead of them. Unfortunately, now monsters from all directions and even angles were attacking them. Lin Huang only took a moment to complete his observation. However, the monsters noticed him in the next moment. As they surged toward him, Lin Huang did not attack impulsively. He slid under a gigantic ungulate monster''s abdomen, ignoring the monsters that were coming at him. Then, he crushed a Transformation Card. In the next second, Lin Huang turned into a little black snake the size of a thumb with red patterns all over his body. He slithered below the monster''s abdomen together with a tiny purple snake which was Bloody. Its body was compressed to the same size as the Eclipse Boa that Lin Huang had transformed into. The monsters that were chasing Lin Huang realized that his aura suddenly vanished out of nowhere. They left helplessly after their failed attempts to detect them. The two little snakes turned into red and purple ferocious gleams as they traveled among the monsters. Many of the monsters saw them, but they did not attack. It was clear that the monsters treated Bloody and Lin Huang who had transformed themselves as one of themselves. Lin Huang was secretly glad. The idea of using a Transformation Card came to him out of nowhere. He was taking a risk to see whether he would be attacked if he did that. He did not expect it to turn out so well. They were completely ignored even though they were traveling the opposite way. "The people from the Union Government are going to the source of the monster horde. There might be treasures that they are after," Lin Huang said to Bloody through voice transmission, "Let''s go there before they do." Lin Huang raced against the current of the monster horde with Bloody as soon as he spoke. They were so tiny that they were traveling among the monsters'' legs, so they did not affect the flow of the horde at all. Meanwhile, the Union Government army that was far away did not notice them at all. The duo passed them in a few seconds after their great efforts to struggle through less than ten kilometers in the monster horde. Lin Huang and Bloody finally arrived at the source of monster horde after traveling for over an hour against the current. Lin Huang had to crush the second Transformation Card along the way to extend the duration of the transformation. Lin Huang and Bloody were stunned when they saw what was happening at the source. All of the monsters thronged from the gigantic crater before them. However, there was a giant black dragon, which was thousands of meters long, perching on top of the crater. It seemed like it was in a deep sleep, but its aura was so powerful that Lin Huang and Bloody felt core-chilling fear despite being so far away. "What a terrifying aura! That dragon must be at least a Virtual God!" Lin Huang and Bloody hid behind the other volcano and watched the dragon quietly. "Why are both of you hiding? This Nightmare Dragon has been dead for a long time. It''s just a carcass now." The stone tablet''s thick voice came into Lin Huang''s ears all of a sudden. "Are you sure it''s really a carcass and not just sleeping?" Lin Huang felt the compelling aura of that giant dragon. He found it hard to believe that it was already dead. "Of course, it''s a carcass! Why do you think that a True God wouldn''t have noticed you when you''re so close to it?" The stone tablet asked him back as if he was stupid. "Maybe it noticed us, but couldn''t be bothered to do anything because we''re too weak." Although Lin Huang was in doubt, he believed the stone tablet. "Do you still want the God Figurine?" The stone tablet did not want to argue with Lin Huang so it brought that up right away. "Yes!" Lin Huang answered without thinking twice. "This dragon carcass is actually a God Figurine," revealed the stone tablet, "It''s just that it still has the very last remnant of will which is the reason why it isn''t in the form of a God Figurine." "Do you mean I''ll have to fight this true god-level giant dragon in order to obtain the God Figurine?" Lin Huang was speechless to hear that. He did not think he could win. "You don''t fight it. You fight the gush of will that it has left," corrected the stone tablet. "What''s the difference?" "The difference is that it''s just a gush of will." "You might as well not answer me" "Its gush of will extremely weak now. In fact, it''s so weak that it can''t drive this dragon carcass to fight. It''s just using some sort of ability that the dragon carcass had when it was still alive. The ability''s restricted due to the strength of the will." Lin Huang finally understood the stone tablet after the explanation. He was finally relieved. "So, what should I do?" "Simple. Turn back to a human, activate this gush of will, then destroy it! As soon as this last gush of will disappears, this dragon carcass will turn into a harmless God Figurine." "Can I destroy it directly without activating it?" Lin Huang asked shamelessly. He could actually guess the answer to this question but he could not help asking anyway. "You wish!" The stone tablet teased then explained in all seriousness, "Your will has to be tens of folds more powerful than this dragon''s will when it was still alive in order to destroy its current will directly. Without activating the gush of will, it''ll stay in this dragon carcass forever. It might take hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to fade away slowly on its own." "Alright then" Lin Huang looked helpless as he knew that was the answer he would get anyway. "So, how do I destroy it?" "Just keep fighting it. When it''s activated, it''ll drain itself every minute and second. Fighting will only speed up the draining." "So, how long does it take to destroy it completely?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. "From the intensity of its will that I can sense, it''ll take three days at the most for it to be completely drained as long as it stays activated. If it''s in battle mode, the duration will be shortened by heaps. It might not even be able to take it for a day if the fight''s intense enough." ''You sound like you''re making it up,'' Lin Huang thought to himself secretly, but he did not seem to have any other option now. If he did not do anything now, it would be harder for him to do it the next day when the monster horde leveled up to peak-stage ascendance-level. The chance of achieving this would be even slimmer. After some thought to himself, Lin Huang finally made up his mind. "Let''s do it for the God Figurine!" 875 Remnant Of The Will "The Nightmare Dragon''s a pureblood dragonkin whereby it''s a true god-level powerhouse when it becomes an adult. As opposed to many other dragons, it masters the soul-type power, especially spirit methods. "It can traverse through dreams of different living beings as it wishes and alters reality with dreams. If they kill a person in the dream, the person will be dead in reality. "An adult Nightmare Dragon can even materialize something in dreams into reality, including living things. Just like this world that both of you are in now, it''s been reified by the remnants of this Nightmare Dragon''s energy." Lin Huang was completely shocked upon hearing the stone tablet. "You mean these volcanoes, the lava, the monster hordes, and the entire underground space are products of this Nightmare Dragon?" "Besides this underground space, even the entire foggy area above is too," revealed the stone tablet, stunning Lin Huang even more. "However, the things that were reified on land was interfered with by another force." "Do you mean that even the government residences, the sects and even the people in the cities are" Lin Huang''s eyes flew wide and suddenly, he felt like his head was too small to consume all this information. "That''s right. They''re all materialized by the dragon." "So, True Gods are so powerful that they can do this?" Lin Huang inhaled sharply. "Not all True Gods. In reality, most of the true god-level powerhouses can''t do this," explained the stone tablet immediately, "Reification and traversing in dreams are the Nightmare Dragon''s innate abilities. Because of these two abilities, the Nightmare Dragon''s clan made it to the top of pureblood dragonkins. "Moreover, the reification of the entire foggy area isn''t entirely the work of this Nightmare Dragon. There''s another true god-level monster which seems to also have a similar reification ability," the stone tablet added. "Also, these two monsters were top True Gods when they were still alive. Their will has traveled through countless eras, but they''re still there, which proves that they were the best of the best when they were still alive." "There''s another will? Would it appear to help the other one?" Lin Huang questioned immediately. He did not have full confidence in handling one, and he did not think he would win if both of them were to challenge him together. "From what I''ve observed, these two wills are rivals. The other gush of will should be glad to see you killing this Nightmare Dragon''s will," assured the stone tablet while grinning. "Alright, let me tell you the possible battle patterns the will might carry out in detail" After hearing the stone tablet''s detailed explanation and analysis, Lin Huang had a thorough understanding of his opponent and found out that defeating it was possible. "No matter how powerful it used to be, it''s just a remnant of a will right now. It doesn''t even have complete consciousness. All that it''s left with is its battle instinct. You don''t have to be stressed about it. Just treat it as an ordinary opponent," reminded the stone tablet later on. "Alright." Lin Huang nodded. He did not remove the effect of the Transformation Card immediately. Instead, in the Eclipse Boa''s form, he slithered to the Nightmare Dragon''s head which was above the volcano. He only removed the effect of the card and revealed himself then. In reality, being close to the carcass of the Nightmare Dragon was immensely uncomfortable because there was a gush of terrifying energy remnants being released from the dragon carcass at all times. The energy was on at least virtual god-level. Although Lin Huang had the same ability as it, which was the Holy Power, due to the major difference in combat strength, he could not enter the area tens meters from the dragon carcass. He could not land on the dragon carcass either, so he hovered more than ten meters above the dragon''s head. Bloody, on the other hand, hid deep in Lin Huang''s sleeve and dared not show itself. Even with the Holy Power from Lin Huang''s body, it felt uncomfortable being so close to the dragon carcass. As soon as Lin Huang unveiled his aura, the monsters around lifted their heads to examine the aura. Soon, their eyes locked onto Lin Huang who was above the dragon''s head. Many monsters roared and tried to get closer to him but they were repelled by the Dragon Power. They simply could not reach Lin Huang. That was a technique the stone table had taught Lin Huang earlier, which was to avoid unnecessary confrontation as much as he could. Furthermore, the stone tablet also hinted to him that getting close to the dragon carcass was the best way to activate the remnant of the will. "Avoiding confrontation really worked!" Lin Huang trusted the stone tablet even more now looking at the crazy number of monsters roaming the crater as if they were ants on a heated pot. Still, they did not dare to get close to him. "I wonder how long does it take to activate its will." Lin Huang looked down to study the dragon carcass beneath his feet. Right at that moment, the dragon carcass opened its eyes slowly. It stared deadly at Lin Huang with its black, crystal-like eyes. Lin Huang was shocked to see that. Even his heart skipped a beat. Cold sweat was dripping down his back and he dared not move now. "Don''t worry. It''s just scaring you. With its weak will, making those eyes open is the best that it can do." The stone tablet''s voice came instantly. Lin Huang was stunned to hear that and calmed down upon noticing that the dragon carcass did not move a couple of seconds later. "Scared the sh*t out of me! I thought it came back to life." Lin Huang patted his chest and released a long whoosh of air. Realizing that staring at Lin Huang was to no avail, the remnant of the will could not help but roar, "Worthless ant, are you seeking death?!" Naturally, that did not come from the dragon carcass, but directly from thin air. However, the remnant of the will shifted the source of voice to the dragon carcass, making it sound like the carcass was speaking. "Is this all you have?" Lin Huang did not panic at all this time as he had seen through the little trick. "You should just destroy yourself and give me the God Figurine if this is all you''ve got." "I''m going to kill you!" Another shriek came. However, there was a commotion among the monsters all of a sudden. The countless monsters that were repelled by the Holy Power earlier began to rush towards Lin Huang in madness. Lin Huang grinned. "This is what I''ve been waiting for!" Bai, Bing Wang, Lancelot, Thunder, Charcoal, and Bloody Robe that were experts in killing groups of monsters appeared around Lin Huang in the next second. In order to get the monsters to kill Lin Huang, the remnant of the will weakened the Holy Power on its carcass, allowing those monsters that were dying to kill Lin Huang to surge in. However, Lin Huang seized the opportunity to summon his summoning beasts that were experienced in group kills while he landed a meter away from the dragon carcass slowly. Within that distance, the monsters could not get close to him even with the weakened Holy Power. It would be equivalent to Lin Huang entering the safe zone again. He lifted his head to watch the one-sided massacre above excitedly. Popcorn was the only thing that was missing from his hands. "Shameless!" The remnant of the will''s voice boomed again. "Hey, it was you who attacked me with the monsters first. What''s wrong with me using my summoning beasts?" Lin Huang looked like he had done nothing wrong. "I''m an Imperial Censor, so it''s my pride to use my summoning beasts to fight. Have you seen any Imperial Censor who fights with his own hands while neglecting his summoning beasts aside?" 876 Going All Ou The stone tablet predicted the battle pattern of the remnant of the will completely. At the start, the stone tablet had told Lin Huang that the chances of the remnant of the will initiating a fight was slim as it would want to minimize exhausting its energy. Its likeliest attack would be to use the dragon carcass to drive the monster horde to attack him. As expected, all it did was to hold back the dragon carcass''s Holy Power to allow the monster horde to get closer to Lin Huang so that they could initiate an attack. However, Lin Huang was smarter than it was. He entered the range of the Holy Power as well as summoning his Monster Cards to fight the monsters. If it were not for him wanting to obtain more monster carcasses and crystal cores, in reality, Lin Huang would not bother summoning Bai and the rest. All he had to do was to hide in the coverage of the Holy Power since the monsters outside would not be able to touch him at all. He could just activate his Dark Mirror for long-distance attacking. Meanwhile, the remnant of the will would speed up the drain on itself no matter which form of energy it was using. It was draining for it to suppress the dragon carcass''s Holy Power too, but it was just a minor depletion. However, the more it suppressed the Holy Power, the more draining it would be. The remnant of the will had no solution to Lin Huang hiding in the range of the Holy Power. Lin Huang seemed to have a rather powerful defense against the Holy Power whereby he was not affected just by staying in its coverage. Feeling helpless, all it could do was watch at that moment. It hoped the monsters could kill Lin Huang''s summoning beasts as soon as they could to weaken his ability. However, Bai and the rest were all triple mutated. Moreover, with the effects of the Rebirth Card and the Blood Thickening Card, their ancient beast bloodlines and god''s blood made them the top of the food chain among the immortal-level monsters. The killing was one-sided when they encountered advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters. Although there were the occasional monsters on par with an immortal-level rank-9, Lancelot, who possessed Sword Dao Territory, would annihilate them if they were not already killed by the first hit from Bai and the rest. Now that Lancelot had elevated to pseudo-mythical-level Ruthless Sword Dominator, the radius of his territory had doubled to 18 kilometers. Anything within his territory would not be able to escape from him. He did not even need to move to kill by swinging his sword from where he was. His attack strength was just as powerful as Killer''s who was also on pseudo-mythical-level. Even a triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monster could be killed by one swing of a sword as long as the monster did not possess some unique defense ability or technique. Seeing that the battle had turned one-sided and the massacre of the monsters went on for a few hours, the remnant of the will finally realized that such a level of the monster horde was not a threat to Lin Huang at all. Initially, it thought that the monster horde would drain the Life Power of Lin Huang''s summoning beasts even if they could not kill them. However, the Life Power in the summoning beasts maintained at their peak even a few hours after that; there was no decline in their Life Power at all. It then realized that the human standing before it was tougher than it imagined. "I thought the remnant of a true god-level powerhouse''s will would be compelling, but it seems like I''ve overestimated you," Lin Huang teased, "I can''t believe that you need to use the dragon carcass to draw the monster horde to attack me! Didn''t you inherit the Nightmare Dragon''s reification ability? I''ll definitely run away if you reified a human immortal-level monster horde." "There''s no need to do that. Your summoning beasts will definitely not be able to handle the next wave of monsters!" As soon as the remnant of the will''s voice echoed, the monsters that crawled out of the volcano beneath the giant dragon carcass elevated to peak-stage ascendance-level. Their aura was on par with immortal-level rank-9 monsters. Sensing Lin Huang''s aura, the monsters began to join in the battle with Bai and the rest like they were rabid. ''It interfered with the release of the monsters directly as expected.'' Lin Huang was not surprised by that. The stone tablet had reminded him before that its reification ability would exhaust its energy faster and it would not stop draining. Compared to the interference of the monster release, although the exhaustion was major, the exhaustion would not proceed as reification did. However, the tablet suspected that the remnant of the will would only use such a technique once. Now that their opponents had elevated from advanced-stage to peak-stage ascendance-level, Bai and the rest felt a hike of pressure. It was easy for them to kill advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters that were on par with immortal-level rank-7 to rank-8s in one hit. However, now that they were fighting monsters of the same level as they were, their upper hand was taken away. It was difficult for them to kill those monsters in one blow. It now took them a few hits. Nevertheless, it was not a dead end for Lin Huang. Bai and the rest were not his trump cards after all. "Come out, Killer, the Evil Dominator, Kylie, Warlord, the Death Knight, the Fallen Knight, and the Dark Crescent Snakes!" Lin Huang yelled to summon the best army he had: two pseudo-mythical-level monsters, a Nephilic Judge army, a mechanical army, and two knights who had the combat strength of imperial-level crimson gold-ranks when they fought together. Bai and the rest felt the pressure being lifted by heaps as soon as the eight monsters joined the battle. The remnant of the will was stunned to see those monsters that had a compelling aura on par with human immortals joining the battle all of a sudden. Soon, Killer and the rest showcased their stunning abilities. Killer and the Evil Dominator, who had an imperial-level crimson gold-rank substitute and two imperial-level crimson gold-rank knights, were exterminating the monsters like a piece of cake as soon as they encountered all the monsters. It was almost one slash per monster for them; it was as easy as slicing vegetables. Kylie''s Nephilic Judge army fared very well as they killed hundreds of monsters at once and commenced the second round of killing right after that. The cycle never ended like they were chomping on a bunch of chives. Warlord was amazing whereby he began the battle with his 100,000-strong mechanical army. They outnumbered the monsters that approached them. Although his mechanical army could not kill peak-stage ascendance-level monsters in one blow, no monster could withstand his high-frequency shooting. Ammunition was fired as if they were free-of-charge. If not for Lin Huang''s never-ending Life Power supply, he would have gone soft within 30 seconds attacking like this, at the most Err, I mean, his Life Power would be exhausted and he would become weak. Moreover, the mechanical army could be recycled instantly as soon as they were destroyed. The same applied to those used ammunition too. "Shameless! You have more support than I do!" The remnant of the will almost cursed when it saw Warlord attacking. "It''s not enough for them. You should send more," Lin Huang could not help but tease again as he noticed that the speed of the monsters coming out of the crater was slower than Warlord and the rest while Kylie''s Nephilic Judge army was so bored that they began to collect carcasses. "You" The remnant of the will was so mad that it was speechless. "Please just bring out whatever you have. Since peak-stage ascendance-levels don''t work on us, you should reify human immortal-level monsters. Maybe it would work." Lin Huang looked calm as he planted the idea. "You''re just depending on your summoning beasts. Without them, you''re nothing!" The remnant of the will turned calm all of a sudden while a black ray shot out of the dragon''s eyes. It caught Lin Huang off-guard. In a flash, the black ray penetrated his eyes. Suddenly, Lin Huang could no longer move. 877 Dreamland The giant dragon above the crater closed its eyes slowly. Meanwhile, although Lin Huang, who was hovering above the giant dragon carcass, had his eyes opened, he could not move as his aura was being suppressed entirely. Sensing Lin Huang''s aura changing, Bai and the rest had a drastic shift of expression. They were stopped by Bloody''s voice transmission just when they were about to dash toward him. "Don''t worry, Master''s fine. Just do your part and guard outside. Don''t let any monsters come in." Bai and the rest were relieved to hear that. Hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve, Bloody was rather worried. It knew that Lin Huang was not wounded in that situation. Instead, he had been pulled into dreamland by the remnant of the will. It was uncertain whether Lin Huang could leave the dream alive. Meanwhile, in the present dreamland. All that Lin Huang felt was a flash before his eyes before he found himself in a quiet place when he snapped back to his senses. He was still where he had been earlier. The giant black dragon that was in a deep slumber was still beneath his feet while it occupied the same volcano. However, there was no monster horde around. Even his summoning beasts had vanished. Not only had Bai and the rest disappeared, but even Bloody that had been hiding in his sleeve was nowhere to be seen too. The giant black dragon beneath him opened its eyes all a sudden and ridiculed with its mouth wide open, "Being a Demontamer''s such a weak profession. You''re nothing without your summoning beasts!" "If I''m not mistaken, this should a dream. Am I right?" Soon, Lin Huang realized what had just happened. The stone tablet had also foreseen this. "That''s right, and this will be where you die!" The remnant of the will''s voice boomed again. "Well, I''m not sure about that." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. "Although we''re in a dream while your level of exhaustion is much lesser than direct reification, your Life Power will still continue to drain even in a dream. Moreover, the rules apply similarly in reification whereby the more powerful and more monsters you summon, the more power you''ll drain. The more intense our fight is, the more the exhausting it is for you to maintain the dreamland." "Neither of us knows whether I''ll die in this dreamland or you''ll be completely drained first." "Seems like old man Gong Sun has told you a lot," said the remnant of the will, puzzling Lin Huang. "Old man Gong Sun?" "Stop playing dumb. There are only two True Gods'' will in this world. Moreover, apart from old man Gong Sun, nobody knows about my existence, let alone my techniques." Lin Huang barely understood what the remnant of the will meant. It thought that the other remnant of the will had gotten him to go there. It put Lin Huang in doubt as old man Gong Sun sounded like the family name of a human but according to the stone tablet, the other True God''s will was also a monster. Lin Huang did not bother to explain the remnant of the will''s misunderstanding as he did not want to expose the stone tablet''s existence. Since Lin Huang kept mum, the remnant of the will thought that he was admitting its speculation. "It''s useless even if old man Gong Sun told you about my techniques because, I''m the ruler of the entire world in this dreamland!" As soon as the remnant of the will proclaimed that, an insane amount of monsters began rushing out of the crater beneath the giant dragon. Just like a beehive that had been poked, the monsters tore toward Lin Huang as though the floodgates were opened. Lin Huang had a slight change of expression at that second. He summoned Killer, the Evil Dominator, Lancelot, Charcoal, Grimace, Kylie, Bloody, the Imp, Warlord, the Death Knight, the Fallen Knight, and the two Dark Crescent Snakes. Killer, the Evil Dominator, and Lancelot had combat strength of pseudo-mythical-level which was on par with imperial-level crimson gold-ranks. As long as Lin Huang provided them with endless Life Power, they would have stunning lethality among an imperial-level black gold-rank monster horde. Combined, the two knights and the two Dark Crescent Snakes were on par with pseudo-mythical-level combat strength. Meanwhile, the reason he summoned Charcoal was that the intensity of its Dragon Flame could wound imperial-level black gold-rank monsters. Even though the Dragon Flame was not enough to kill, it could cripple the monsters on a wide scale. The Imp''s Meteoric Descent, on the other hand, could cause casualty to imperial-level black gold-rank monsters. Although Grimace''s magic could hardly kill any imperial-level black gold-rank monsters, it would work wonders to cause confusion among the monster horde. Kylie, Bloody, and Warlord had armies of their own. Their armies were much more powerful than their own personal abilities. Beneath, the remnant of the will was stunned as soon as the 13 monsters were summoned. "You''re pretty smart to master the basic rule of the dreamland so soon." "Someone''s stellar at teaching," Lin Huang complimented with a faint smile. Naturally, he was not talking about old man Gong Sun like the remnant of the will thought, but about the stone tablet. The remnant of the will was indeed the ruler of the dreamland. As long as it was not exhausted, it was almost invincible in this dreamland. However, it would need to connect its own dreamland with Lin Huang''s forcefully to pull him in. On a certain level, Lin Huang, who was dragged into the dreamland by the Nightmare Dragon, was also the ruler of the dreamland too. However, the Nightmare Dragon knew the rule of dreamland like the back of its hand. That was how it managed to defeat the others in this world who were also the rulers as easy as pie. It was just like a professional chess player dragging a rookie who knew nothing about the rules of chess into a chess game. Although the rookie had the same number of chess pieces as the professional player did, it was almost impossible for the former to win. Although Lin Huang had learned about the rules of this dreamland from the stone tablet, it was impossible for him to master it as soon as he entered the dreamland. All he could do was to follow the stone tablet''s instruction, which was to start with the things and ability that he had in order to familiarize with the rule. The rule of this dreamland was very simple: anything that you believed in would come true. Lin Huang believed that he possessed Monster Cards, which was why even though it was his first time entering the dreamland, he could summon his Monster Cards in a snap. The remnant of the will thought that Lin Huang would panic because he was dragged in from the outside world and would not know what to do when his summoning beasts were nowhere to be seen. Never did he expect Lin Huang to summon his summoning beasts again calmly as soon as he got there. The monsters that he summoned in the dreamland completely inherited the true abilities of Bloody and the rest. They were ridiculously compelling. Although it was gravely difficult, they managed to fight back against those beginner-stage human immortal-level monsters that were on par with imperial-level black gold-ranks. Lin Huang even noticed that the dragon carcass controlled by the remnant of the will had a slight change of expression. "Since beginner-stage human immortal-level monsters can''t defeat you, I''ll see how you fight advanced-stage human immortal-level monsters!" It had been half an hour, and a huge chunk of the remnant of the will''s energy had been drained. Its effort was to no avail. To prevent any unforeseen circumstances, the remnant of the will went all out and increased two ranks of the monster horde. As soon as it spoke, the advanced-stage human immortal-level monsters that were comparable with imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters began crawling out of the crater. Their aura was so powerful that it was bone-chilling. Monsters of such a level surpassed the abilities of Lancelot and the rest ability even though they were on pseudo-mythical-level. The only monster that could match them was the parasitic army under Bloody. However, even with Bloody''s parasitic army, the most that they could do was to fight six to seven imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters at once. They would not be able to handle any more than that. Lin Huang observed the monster horde beneath him while frowning slightly. He recalled all of his Monster Cards eventually. He knew that he had to bring out the real trump card now. 878 Invincible Combat Souls Even Lin Huang himself would only have an ability which was on par with an imperial-level white gold-rank by using the knights combined or an imperial-level crimson gold-rank substitute, Even so, it was rather difficult to kill an imperial-level yellow gold-rank monster in one blow. It would be possible if he encountered an imperial-level yellow gold-rank monster with a normal defense ability, but one hit was definitely not enough if he was to encounter monsters that had a powerful defense or some unique defensive skill. Moreover, due to the combat strength limitation of his body, Lin Huang had a limited time maintaining imperial-level crimson gold-rank combat strength. It was almost impossible for him to fight the advanced-stage human immortal-level monster horde that was on par with imperial-level yellow gold-rank on his own. However, Lin Huang did not seem panicked at all as he watched the monster horde approach. He had more than one trump card to handle that sort of trouble. There was one that he had never used in battles, which was the God Figurine''s Combat Soul. Lin Huang had killed more than four million monsters throughout the past few days since the monster horde broke out. Although those were just holy fire-level and immortal-level monsters, the change in volume caused an impressionable qualitative change. The number of monsters killed elevated the three Combat Souls in Lin Huang''s body from imperial-level crimson gold-rank to imperial-level yellow gold-rank. The three Combat Souls took on the physical appearance of the Protoss'' God Figurines. Using the True Spirit in the True Spirit Guide as their template, they were made from spiritual energy extracted from Divine Fire. If one were to consider the rarity of the monsters, they might far exceed that of quadruple mutated mythical-level monsters. Lin Huang knew very well that even he would not be able to defeat these God Figurines'' Combat Souls with the same combat strength. Moreover, God Figurines'' Combat Souls were almost indestructible physically. As long as his Divine Fire provided them with infinite energy, the God Figurines'' Combat Souls would have no limitation in their strength at all whereby they could fight forever without feeling exhausted. One could say they were definitely a valuable battle conquest weapon. Without hesitation, Lin Huang summoned the three God Figurines'' Combat Souls as he thought about this point. The three God Figurines'' Combat Souls solidified above Lin Huang''s head instantly. However, he wanted to chuckle when he saw how they looked like. There was a skinny little sapling that was only around three meters tall, a little white cat that was smaller than a palm, and a little elephant the similar size as a Swine Beast. The three combat souls seemed underaged no matter how he looked at them. They did not seem to have the ability to fight at all. "Are you really summoning three young beasts'' Combat Souls that have no combat strength at all to fight? Are you here to make fun of yourself?" The remnant of the will was stunned when it saw this and it teased while laughing. Lin Huang had no idea what caused the combat strength of the three Combat Souls not to be sensed by outsiders. However, he clearly sensed that the three Combat Souls were all imperial-level yellow gold-rank. He did not doubt the three little beasts'' abilities at all. "Let me see what you''ve got, you little beasts." Hearing Lin Huang''s order, the three Combat Souls whisked toward the monster horde. The remnant of the will smirked on the dragon''s face. It was waiting to guffaw when the three little beasts drowned in the monster horde. However, the expression on its face soon turned into shock and surprise. Without waiting for the monster horde to come closer, the tiny sapling shook its branches and released a glaring golden ray instantly. As soon as the golden ray shone on them, all the monsters began to burn. In less than three seconds, the tens of thousands of monsters were burnt to ashes. One must understand that those were advanced-stage human immortal-level monsters that were on par with imperial-level yellow gold-ranks. Tens of thousands of them were exterminated by the tiny sapling in one hit in the blink of an eye. The two little beasts, on the other hand, were just as capable. The little white cat the size of a palm hovered in the air alone. As it scratched the air with its sharp claws, five silver threads were formed. All of the monsters were sliced into six wherever the threads passed, and they died on the spot. Including the monsters that had a defensive ability that was on par with imperial-level white gold-rank, they were as fragile as a sheet of paper under the little white cat''s claw attack. Meanwhile, the little elephant had a more direct way of attacking. It stomped one of its front feet in the air, making a terrifying wave ripple outward. All the monsters'' heads exploded wherever the wave passed. It was as if something had imploded in their heads, and countless headless monster carcasses fell all over the ground. The attack of the three God Figurines'' Combat Souls astounded the remnant of the will completely. Not even many imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses could kill that many imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters at once as efficiently like that. Lin Huang was shocked at that very moment. It was not his first time summoning the God Figurines'' Combat Souls, but he had just done a simple test on them before this. It was clear that they had not exhibited their full strength back then. It was his first time seeing their full blast ability without holding back at all. Lin Huang had to admit that these three Combat Souls'' abilities had exceeded his expectation by leaps and bounds. After a pregnant pause of doubts and silence, the remnant of the will seemed to recall something and shouted in rage, "This is Protoss'' aura! Human prick, how dare you make the Protoss God Figurines your Combat Souls?!" "Ahh, you see through them" Lin Huang did not bother to hide the fact since the remnant of the will found out about that. "You don''t have to look so shocked. Yes, I made God Figurines into Combat Souls, but I bet many of you among the Protosses have activated God Figurines and made them into Corpse Slaves. Compared to what I did, what they''ve done is hundreds of folds worse than me! Why don''t you condemn them instead?" Even though Lin Huang told him the truth, the remnant of the will was enraged. "This is our business. How dare you, a human, do this to our Protoss'' corpses?!" "I''ve already done it, so what are you going to do about that?" Lin Huang grinned devilishly. "After I''ve destroyed you, your dragon carcass will be my next Combat Soul!" "You''re asking for death!" The remnant of the will was consumed in total fury now. The aura of the monsters that were rushing out of the crater elevated again. From advanced-stage human immortal-level, it skipped peak-stage human immortal-level directly and upgraded to complete-stage human immortal-level. It was on par with imperial-level purple gold-rank. The speed of the three Combat Souls'' killing went through an obvious drop after monsters of that level were released. Since the long-range attack could no longer kill those monsters in one blow, the three Combat Souls rushed into the monster horde to fight the monsters. The little sapling pitched its few branches like whips. All of the monsters would be killed wherever the whips traveled. However, the range of the attack was now less than ten meters and the efficiency was much lower than before. The little white cat was speeding across the monsters. It was so quick that even the imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters could not see it. It sliced all of the monsters into shreds with its claws wherever it passed. The little elephant, on the other hand, was crashing around blindly. It would hit the monsters it encountered right away no matter what kind they were. The imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters were trampled and died from ruptured organs. Meanwhile, the attacks of those complete-stage human immortal-level monsters did nothing to the three Combat Souls. None of the attacks managed to break their defenses. Although the three Combat Souls only had a combat strength of imperial-level yellow gold-rank, the ability at which they were performing was close to demigod-level. However, due to the decline in killing efficiency from the three Combat Souls, some of the monsters began to break through their defenses and raced toward Lin Huang. Lin Huang was not alarmed at all seeing that. He brought out 23 God Crashers from his Emperor''s Heart Ring while beginning to fire each one of them after connecting them with his telekinetic threads. Tonnes of imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters were killed as soon as the God Crashers were fired. Since it was a dreamland, Lin Huang was not worried about exhausting the God Crashers at all. He was having fun firing at the monsters without having to worry about anything. Time passed quickly, and another half an hour flew by. The imperial-level purple gold-rank monster horde could not get any closer to Lin Huang. He saw the emotion the remnant of the will on the giant dragon''s face clearly. It was clenching its teeth in anger. "Are you having a spasm on your face?" Lin Huang remembered to show ''kindness'' as he had time to spare while controlling the God Crashers. "Eat more food that cleanses the arteries like kelp and oatmeal." "Do you really think that that''s all that I got?" The remnant of the will growled. Even though it was not screaming, Lin Huang could hear the wrath in its voice. As he hovered above the head of the dragon carcass, he said nothing but showed a beckoning sign to the remnant of the will beneath him with a smirk. "You''re asking for trouble!" The remnant of the will finally unleashed its fury. The dragon carcass beneath him had two glaring white rays shining from its eyes. 879 18,000 God Crashers! Glaring white rays shot out from the Nightmare Dragon''s eyes, making the entire dreamland shake. As the white rays faded a while later, the hundreds of thousands of imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters in the horde melted like snow under the blazing sun. The Nightmare Dragon occupying the top of the volcano that was initially dead was resurrected rapidly while its combat strength experienced a boost. Mortal transformation-level, ascendance-level, human immortal-level Earth immortal-level! In the blink of an eye, the aura of the dragon carcass skyrocketed to a level that shocked Lin Huang to his very core. "Virtual god-level?!" Lin Huang''s pupils shrunk. He clearly sensed that the intensity of the aura was definitely not only on demigod-level, but even higher. Only a real God could make his soul that had Divine Telekinesis consolidated around it shiver so violently. As the white rays faded, the Nightmare Dragon''s eyes that were looking at Lin Huang lost the rage that it held earlier. The only thing left was indifference and coldness. It was the attitude only a superior reserved for a low-rank person. The difference of ranking was like comparing a giant dragon to a measly ant. The Nightmare Dragon had no change of emotion at all when it looked at Lin Huang. A single word came out of its mouth calmly. "Die!" Just when Lin Huang was about to do something, he realized he could no longer move. It seemed like he was stuck in a space filled with glue whereby he could hardly move his fingers. On the other hand, the Nightmare Dragon lifted a dragon claw slowly. The claw arrived less than a meter near Lin Huang in the next second. As the claw was about to touch Lin Huang''s body, a white silhouette came out of nowhere. It brought Lin Huang with it and appeared a few kilometers away in the next second. Lin Huang, who was constrained, finally broke away from it. It was the Ninetails Lynx''s Combat Soul which did that. Meanwhile, the other two God Figurines'' Combat Souls attacked the Nightmare Dragon at the same time. The two God Figurines'' Combat Souls underwent a major change in their size. They expanded to the mass of the Nightmare Dragon in the blink of an eye. The Divine Sun Tree had fire all over while its branches turned into flaming whips that went after the Nightmare Dragon''s body. The Destructive Divine Mammoth that had black armor all over it lifted both its front legs that were covered in black metal and crushed the Nightmare Dragon. "Get out!" As the Nightmare Dragon shrieked, a black ray came out of its body. The Divine Sun Tree''s branches dangling on its body were torn apart by the black ray. The Nightmare Dragon seized the opportunity to retaliate as it lifted its claws to smack the Divine Sun Tree''s branches. The fire on the Divine Sun Tree extinguished and it flew away. Its body shrunk back to its original size in the air. In the next second, the Nightmare Dragon threw its gigantic boa-like black tail into the air as a ferocious gleam flashed through its eyes. Its attack that came later collided with the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s two front legs. It was as if millions of thunderstorms exploded in the air while strong winds rippled like waves. Even Lin Huang, who was a few kilometers away, almost fell down from the impact. A moment later, the Destructive Divine Mammoth let out a devastating groan and its gigantic body was slammed a distance away like a cannon. It spat a mouthful of blood out when it was in mid-air. Just like the Divine Sun Tree, its body shrunk rapidly. Lin Huang was relieved upon sensing the condition of the two God Figurines'' Combat Souls. Only true god-level ability could destroy a true god-level''s flesh. The Nightmare Dragon only had virtual god-level combat strength after all, so it was difficult for it to kill them. However, due to the vast difference in combat strength, the flesh-on-flesh collision affected the souls and wounded both of them. The two Combat Souls might be dead now if the Nightmare Dragon had performed a spiritual-type attack that it was an expert in earlier. The remnant of the will did not have such a technique. It was easy for Lin Huang to figure out that it did not have much energy left now. Using spiritual energy directly would deplete its will gravely. "You won''t be able to run this time!" After getting rid of the two God Figurines'' Combat Souls, the Nightmare Dragon fixed its eyes on Lin Huang again with an intent will to kill. It opened its mouth wide, a navy blue force consolidating in its mouth quickly. Lin Huang was not constrained this time; the Nightmare Dragon did not seem worried that he might run away at all. Perhaps it was because there was no way that he could flee as soon as the dragon flame went out. Lin Huang was familiar with such a dragonkin. Naturally, he knew that the Nightmare Dragon was going to spit dragon flames. The Ninetails Lynx that was standing on Lin Huang''s shoulder sensed the crisis and arched its back, exhibiting a cat''s natural behavior when it was threatened. However, Lin Huang was extremely calm while the deadly attack was being charged. He patted the Ninetails Lynx''s back. "I should be able to handle this." As soon as he said that, Lin Huang brought out 23 God Crashers from his storage space. Naturally, that many God Crashers would not be able to handle the virtual god-level attack. However, the 23 God Crashers before Lin Huang seemed to have a cloning ability and they began to duplicate swiftly. There were over 18,000 God Crashers in a blink of an eye. In reality, Lin Huang only had 23 God Crashers but this was a dreamland. He could clone as many God Crashers as he wanted. The over 18,000 God Crashers hovered in the air before Lin Huang like a navy parade. There was a telekinesis thread connected to each God Crasher. Sensing the unusual activity coming from Lin Huang, the Nightmare Dragon did not proceed to consolidate its dragon flame. It opened its mouth wide while dark blue dragon flames shot out. It was like a tsunami expanding toward Lin Huang disastrously. At that moment, Lin Huang activated his Divine Telekinesis where the battalion of more than 18,000 God Crashers was fired at the same time. Explosive red sparks formed into a gigantic shockwave instantly. The terrifying red ray of light shot out and occupied half of the sky immediately. It was Bloody''s idea to combine all the God Crashers to attack. It also Bloody calculated the angle of the arrangement. That was the only arrangement that could get the 18,000 God Crashers to merge the attacks into one. Naturally, such merging was only feasible in theory but difficult to do in reality. However, it was a dreamland. As long as Lin Huang could think of it and believe in it, the attack would definitely materialize. Perhaps one God Crasher could do nothing to a virtual god-level powerhouse, but it was a different story when there were so many of them. The combo attack from the tens of thousands of God Crashers meant that the boost in power was thousands of times stronger as well. It was not to be underestimated naturally. The dragon flame that was like an ocean wave soon collided with the gunfire that was forceful enough to tear the sky apart. The crimson gunfire tore an opening in the dark blue dragon flames all the way to the end of the flames in an instant. The dragon flames were put out completely wherever the gunfire passed. However, the gunfire was burning out rapidly in the process. When it passed through the dragon flames completely, it was left with a red ball of light that was smaller than a fist. The ball of light was then smashed by the Nightmare Dragon''s giant claws. The Nightmare Dragon lifted its head to look at its human opponent. It did not expect Lin Huang to be able to survive two of its most powerful attacks. There was fear in its eyes when it looked at him. Lin Huang could not help but grin when the dragon flames were destroyed by the God Crashers. He lifted his head to look at the Nightmare Dragon and spoke again, "If I''m not mistaken, I suppose your will''s going out anytime now, isn''t it?" The Nightmare Dragon glared coldly at Lin Huang and said nothing. "I still have a trump card that I''ve never used before. I''d like to see how powerful it is." Lin Huang sounded like he was casually chatting with a good friend. "If you''re okay with it, I''ll try it on you." 880 The Fourth God Figurine! Lin Huang grabbed the Ninetails Lynx on his shoulder and placed it on his palm. Meanwhile, he crushed an orange card with his other hand. It was a mythical-level Sorcerer Goddess Combat Soul Card. The orange card turned into a salmon-colored ray and penetrated into the Ninetails Lynx''s body. Naturally, the Nightmare Dragon could not see that happening. All it sensed was that little white cat on Lin Huang''s palm experiencing a ridiculous boost in its aura. Its combat strength was elevating from imperial-level yellow gold-rank to white gold-rank, purple gold-rank To virtual god-level! As the Ninetails Lynx hopped from Lin Huang''s palm and hovered in the air, its body had grown to one meter long, excluding its tail. It glared coldly at the Nightmare Dragon that was nearby. The glare alone gave the Nightmare Dragon chills. Although they had the same combat strength on virtual god-level rank-1, the Ninetails Lynx felt like a top predator to the Nightmare Dragon. It had doubt and confusion in its mind. It could not figure what kind of technique this ascendance-level human had performed to elevate a human immortal-level monster to such a terrifying Earth immortal-level. However, it put the thought aside a moment later. Sensing the threat looming from the Ninetails Lynx, the Nightmare Dragon initiated the attack without thinking twice. Dragon flames shot out as soon as it opened its mouth. The disastrous flames were going after the Ninetails Lynx like a rolling wave. Compared to the dragon flames it released, the dragon flames Charcoal produced was complete child''s play. The dragon flames were earth-shattering as they covered thousands of kilometers in diameter. What puzzled the Nightmare Dragon was how the white cat disappeared. The young human disappeared along with it at the same time. Within the coverage of the dragon flames, the Nightmare Dragon could only sense the little elephant and the tree that it had attacked earlier. The dragon flame did nothing to them; there was no charring on them at all. Surprisingly, the unusual sapling was even absorbing its dragon flames secretly. Right at that moment, the Nightmare Dragon sensed an intense danger coming from behind it. It flapped its wings and flew into the sky, but it was a little too late to dodge the Ninetails Lynx''s sneak attack. A couple of ferocious rays flashed in the sky. Although the Nightmare Dragon dodged the attack that could have beheaded it, its right wing and right leg were chopped off. There were two deep wounds on its back too. They were so deep that its bones could be seen. The single attack wounded the Nightmare Dragon severely until it could no longer move as agilely now. ''That''s incredibly powerful!'' The Nightmare Dragon had its guard up as it looked around, holding back its pain. Its flesh was healing at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. However, there was fear growing in its heart. The Ninetails Lynx charged at it, taking it over completely. The Ninetails Lynx''s untraceable hiding technique and terrifying attack speed were out of its control. As a monster that had the same combat strength as it did on virtual god-level rank-1, the Ninetails Lynx was so much more powerful than it was! Soon, the Nightmare Dragon felt danger coming for the second time. It was even slower than the first time since its wounds had yet to recover completely. A tearing sound was heard. The Nightmare Dragon''s left wing was ripped off. Its left back leg was chopped off after that. The wound on its back was even more serious than before. The second cut saw a cut on its cervical vertebra. If the first attack affected the Nightmare Dragon''s ability by 20%, this attack caused it to have less than 30% ability left. After the second attack, the Ninetails Lynx attacked for the third time without waiting for the Nightmare Dragon to heal. The attack impacted the Nightmare Dragon''s cervical vertebra again, slicing it into pieces. Its gigantic head fell from the lack of support from its cervical vertebra. However, it did not die as it was a tough Virtual God. Still, its mobility was majorly affected. Despair kicked into the Nightmare Dragon. This battle was unfair to it since it could not capture the Ninetails Lynx''s movement from the beginning until the end. If not for its sense of danger, it would have been dead from the start. It would not have been able to survive until now. Lin Huang, who was riding on the Ninetails Lynx''s back, finally could not help but say, "Alright, stop playing." A cat was always fond of playing with its prey, and that was a trait the Ninetails Lynx inherited, but Lin Huang thought it was a bad habit. Naturally, the Nightmare Dragon heard Lin Huang''s voice and panicked. Just when it was thinking how to buy itself time, it felt chills running down its neck and it saw a headless dragon carcass fall slowly from the sky. A myriad of colorless ferocious rays shot out and became larger in its eyes as it thought to itself, ''Is that my dead body?'' Watching the dragon head being sliced into tens of pieces, the headless dragon carcass turned into broken bits instantly and disappeared in the sky. Darkness engulfed Lin Huang''s vision before he snapped back to his senses completely. When his vision recovered, he realized that he had gotten out of the dreamland. Not only were the God Crashers before him all gone, but the three Combat Souls of the God Figurines were also gone, let alone the Ninetails Lynx with the Sorcerer Goddess Combat Soul Card. Bai and the rest were still fighting the monster horde while Bloody was still in his sleeve. The gigantic Nightmare Dragon carcass had lost all signs of resurrecting completely while its carcass shrunk rapidly. It turned into a black sculpture the size of his palm in the blink of an eye. Lin Huang activated his Divine Telekinesis and grabbed the sculpture that was falling into the crater right into his palm. The remnant of the Nightmare Dragon''s will was destroyed and he had finally gotten the fourth God''s Figurine! "Are you alright?" Bloody asked immediately after sensing Lin Huang waking up. "I''m fine. I was just dragged into the dreamland," Lin Huang explained. Bloody figured what had happened naturally seeing the dragon carcass turned into God''s Figurine. Bai and the rest were finally relieved upon sensing that Lin Huang''s aura was back to normal. They then put all of their focus into fighting the monster horde. Since the dragon carcass disappeared, the volcano finally stopped releasing monsters. However, those monsters that were already reified did not disappear. They proceeded to attack Bai and the rest in a frenzy. Sensing the unusual aura inside the volcano, above the volcano, Lin Huang turned to order Bai and the rest, "Please take care of this for me a while more. I''m going to check out what''s happening in there." He then brought Bloody along as he entered the volcano immediately. Soon, Lin Huang arrived at the bottom of the volcano. His eyes lit up like jewels when he saw the mountains of monster bones and metal equipment. The volcano was where the Nightmare Dragon kept its treasures! "These monster bones and equipment basically have no more Holy Power." The stone tablet''s voice came out of nowhere. "The reification of the monster horde should''ve come from here. The remaining energy of the Nightmare Dragon carcass was only conducive to the monster horde." "It seems like the Nightmare Dragon set up a formation especially to absorb the Holy Power from those monster bones and god relics before it died. But now that it has turned into a God Figurine, the formation was deactivated automatically. "This formation has existed for at least an era. These virtual god-level monster bones and normal god relics have no more Holy Power left. There are only a couple of monster bones and god relics which I think used to be true god-level that have Holy Power left in them." "I can use these monster bones and god relics as materials even though there''s no more Holy Power in them, right?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "You can, but it''s a little troublesome to process them." "I can take care of them, but your authorization is restricted for now." Xiao Hei''s voice rang out all of a sudden. "Sure, they''re all mine then!" Lin Huang smirked and got Bloody to categorize them. "128 virtual god-level monster bones, 89 virtual god-level human bones, and 101 virtual god-level equipment that have no more Holy Power left. Three out of 12 true god-level monster bones still have Holy Power left and two out of 11 true god-level human bones have Holy Power left. There are also five out of 23 true god-level equipment that has Holy Power left, and there''s one out of the five telekinesis weapons are suitable for you. "Apart from that, there are still 128 storage rings that haven''t been cleared out at the moment. We don''t know how much valuable things are in them." Lin Huang only left in satisfaction after spending half an hour clearing the entire volcano and categorizing all the monster bones and equipment into different storage rings. He did not plan to stay after coming out of the crater. Since the source of the monster horde was cut off, there were no more threats to the outside world. Moreover, without the never-ending monster horde, the people from the Union Government would be there soon. Lin Huang ordered Kylie to put all of the monster carcasses away immediately as he thought about this point. Shortly, Kylie''s Nephilic Judge army cleared all of the monsters away. Lin Huang then recalled all of his Monster Cards in an instant while he turned into a tiny snake with red patterns and left the underground quietly. 881 Returning to Enlightenment City It was past two in the morning when Lin Huang got out of the underground. He did not stay in the abyss. After summoning Kylie to clear the monster horde and carcasses, he recalled her and returned to Enlightenment City with his Dimensional Portal. When Lin Huang appeared in the room of the inn directly, Tan Lang and the rest sensed the ripple of the Dimensional Portal immediately at the entrance of the room. "You''re finally back!" Tan Lang exhaled deeply when he saw that Lin Huang was back in one whole piece. Chan Dou had asked him to take good care of Lin Huang before they went there. If Lin Huang died, Tan Lang would be caught in a difficult position. "Sorry, I was caught up with the monster horde. It took me a while to get rid of them," Lin Huang lied while grinning. "As long as you''re back. The abyss should have high-level immortal-level monsters coming out at midnight today. We can''t fight a monster horde of such a level. We''ve spoken to the government residence last night about the different ways to guard the city. Take a good rest. I''ll tell you more details tomorrow morning." After speaking to Lin Huang, Tan Lang left while tugging on Shen Tao and the rest. "You guys, please don''t disturb Lin Xie. You can talk to him tomorrow morning." "Sure, see you guys tomorrow morning." Lin Huang sent them off while smiling and nodding. Naturally, he could not tell them about the monster horde that was already stopped. Tan Lang and the rest would find out about it a few days later anyway. After sending them off, Lin Huang did not sleep right away. Instead, he took a shower and immersed himself in the bathtub. He was not sleep-deprived in the past few days, but it had been a week since he last showered. Being in the bathtub melted the stress that he had been feeling away slowly. Although the fight with the remnant of the Nightmare Dragon''s will was just on a conscious level, he had used up almost all of his trump cards and there was not a second that he let his guard down. He took out the Nightmare Dragon''s God Figurine from his storage space and caressed the black, aura-less sculpture softly. The sculpture looked exactly the same as the dragon carcass that occupied the crater, except that it was many folds smaller now. This God Figurine was the biggest reward that Lin Huang had ever obtained since entering the Fallen God''s Land. "This Nightmare Dragon had the combat strength of a high-rank true god-level when it was still alive. Its ability matches a True Spirit called the Nightmare Tapir in the True Spirit Guide. The Nightmare Tapir''s a powerful monster that masters the spirit force. Compared to the Nightmare Dragon, even an adult Nightmare Dragon can only consider itself a baby when it comes to controlling the spirit force compared to a Nightmare Tapir." Lin Huang shook his head after hearing the stone tablet talk about the Nightmare Tapir. "I''m not in a rush to refine the God Figurine at the moment." To the people from the Heaven Alliance, the elevation of Lin Huang''s combat strength was already mind-blowingly fast. He did not want his combat strength to advance again when the Heaven Alliance members were around. He knew very well that as soon as he refined the fourth God Figurine, his combat strength would officially be on mid-level immortal-level. There would definitely be a big leap in his overall ability by then. If he elevated to mid-level immortal-level, it would mean that Bai and the rest would be upgraded to imperial-level black gold-rank. Leaping to imperial-level black gold-rank would mean that they could construct their Life Palace, so Bai and the rest would have a great elevation in their ability. Since he had obtained the fourth God Figurine, Lin Huang asked about the fifth one immediately, "You told me that there''s another True God''s will in this world. Do you know where it is?" "I''ve only sensed it once. It''s hiding somewhere deep." The stone tablet gave a negative answer. "But I should be able to sense it if it appears again." "Sure, please take note of that for me. Inform me as soon as that comes up." Since there was no news about that at the moment, Lin Huang did not plan to dwell on that. After putting the God Figurine away, Lin Huang took a golden metal cube box out and put it right next to the bathtub. The box that was a meter tall opened automatically as soon as he inserted his telekinesis in. A black metal sculpture of a bird monster revealed itself. It was the only god relic that Lin Huang found from the Nightmare Dragon''s loot that was suitable for him, a true god-level telekinesis weapon. "Such fine craftsmanship!" Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. "This telekinesis weapon''s made of 36,000 parts. It looks like it has at least two forms as a whole and separately. The whole form should be a robotic puppet while the separated parts should be similar to your telekinetic flying dagger. "The Divine Power from this telekinesis weapon is almost wearing out, but you can''t activate it with your current combat strength at all. You could put it in your body and cultivate it with your Divine Fire to restore its Divine Power." "So, when can I use it?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Either when your combat strength''s elevated to demigod-level or virtual god-level, which is the basic standard of using Divine Power or when your pseudo-Divine Telekinesis turns into Divine Telekinesis. There are no other ways apart from these two," the stone tablet answered calmly. "So, what should I do to cultivate it in my body?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. "A true god-level god relic''s an item with a spirit. It''ll sense it as soon as you insert your Divine Telekinesis." Lin Huang did just that right away. He inserted his Divine Telekinesis into this telekinesis weapon. It only took a moment for the black, metallic bird monster-like sculpture to have red sparks in its eyes. As it glanced at Lin Huang, the red sparks turned into a black ray and penetrated between Lin Huang''s brows in the next second. Lin Huang looked into his body. After some searching, he found out that the bird monster had entered his tenth Life Wheel directly and got into the blazing Divine Fire. It then hibernated in the fire. After snapping back to reality, he realized that the golden box which contained the telekinesis weapon was gone too. His Divine Telekinesis seemed to have put it away for him earlier. "Too bad there''s no sword or armor god relic" Lin Huang was rather disappointed after browsing through his Emperor''s Heart Ring. However, he became a little excited when he recalled there being more than 100 storage rings that he needed to sort. He brought out the storage rings one after another and began to look through them attentively. The more he looked, the more disappointed he was. There were no god relics in those storage rings at all. There was not even one energy crystal. It was clear that the Nightmare Dragon had perused through those storage rings before. There were only some metallic materials, recordings of methods, miscellaneous stuff that he could not identify, and many useless pill bottles. It had been too long. The pills in those bottles had lost their effect, so they were useless now. Lin Huang even found two pet spatial rings in those 100-odd storage rings, but there was not even one pet monster in them. Even if there were, he suspected that they must have been killed by the Nightmare Dragon and placed in the pile of carcass bones at the volcano. Fortunately, his search through those storage rings was not futile at all. Most of the metallic materials were in perfect condition and he could study those recordings of the methods too. He did not read through all of the methods, but he saw more than 20 sword skills. "These sword skills should be of high quality. They are a god''s collection after all," Lin Huang comforted himself after looking through all rings. "These storage rings aren''t that shabby either. All of them have quite a large capacity." Lin Huang stood up when he realized that it was past three in the morning while the water in the bathtub had gone a little cold now. He slid into the bed, groaning, after wiping himself dry and putting his pajamas on. "The bed in the inn is so much more comfortable!" 882 What A Big, Handsome Hawk! Lin Huang only slept for less than four hours and woke up when it was around 7 a.m. His exhaustion fighting the remnant of the will was now washed away. To a person on immortal-level, sleeping two to three hours a day would suffice. In reality, not sleeping for a few days would not pose a problem, except that he might be a little tired. It would not be an issue if he was fighting someone ordinary. However, the slightest deterioration in performance due to his personal condition would cause defeat. When it came to fighting, proper rest was mandatory because the worst that could happen with a poor condition would be death. Lin Huang made it a habit to maintain sufficient sleep every day. Having sufficient sleep allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do with all the energy and focus that he had, resulting in higher efficiency compared to if he lacked rest. In reality, many transcendent-level people did the same. They would sleep at night if they did not encounter any unusual situations. Lin Huang bumped into Tan Lang when he left after washing up. "Let''s have breakfast together. I''ll tell you about what we discussed yesterday as we eat," Tan Lang invited, wearing a smile. The inn did not provide breakfast in the morning, but there was a noodle stall that served delicious noodles and was open in the morning not far from the inn. The duo headed straight to the noodle stall without hesitation when they arrived downstairs. It was still early. Most of the tables in the noodle stall were vacant; only four of them were occupied. Lin Huang and Tan Lang walked straight in and sat at a table by the window. Lin Huang ordered a bowl of regular beef noodles while Tan Lang ordered a bowl of assorted beef noodles. They also ordered two appetizers. Tan Lang went over the discussion they had last night in a low tone to Lin Huang before the food was served. "We have limited immortal-level powerhouses here compared to the number of monsters in the monster horde. So, in the discussion last night, we decided that we would mainly guard the area where the two city gates are. We''ll place some long-range experts in the city to patrol the city walls and prevent monsters from climbing in. "There''ll be high-level immortal-level monsters next. Although your ability''s strong enough to fight them, it''ll spell trouble if you drown in the monster horde. Since you''re a psychic and skilled in long-range attack, you should stay in the city to guard the city walls. Just get your summoning beasts to fight outside the city." Tan Lang was worried that something might happen to Lin Huang. After all, an Imperial Censor was not known for being talented in close-ranged attacks. Moreover, Lin Huang was a psychic which made him more suitable to defend the city. "Oh right, I''ve been meaning to ask, how many imperial monsters can you summon?" Lin Huang was stunned for a moment upon hearing that question. The summoning number an ordinary Imperial Censor would have flashed in his mind before he gave his answer. "Five, at best." Under normal circumstances, most Imperial Censors would be restricted by their soul before they get to holy fire-level and they could only handle one imperial monster. Some who were talented could handle two at the most. Those were considered talented Imperial Censors while those who could handle three imperial monsters would be geniuses. When they got to holy fire-level especially golden flame-level, most Imperial Censors could handle two to three imperial monsters at the same time since they had ample power within their souls. Only a handful could handle more than four imperial monsters at once, which was a rare feat. Upon achieving immortal-level, most Imperial Censors would be able to handle more than four imperial monsters. It would be normal for one to handle five, but it was rare for an Imperial Censor to handle more than six. His declaration of being able to handle a maximum of five imperial monsters would imply that he was an Imperial Censor who was above average. Apart from taking that into consideration, Lin Huang even contemplated the summoning beasts that he could reveal at that moment. He only had five summoning beasts with rather low combat ability. They were the Herculean King, Bing Wang, Thunder, the Malachian Fiend, and Bloody Robe. In reality, he was unwilling to summon the Malachian Fiend. Defense-wise, the Malachian Fiend ranked second below Tyrant. Even imperial-level black gold-rank monsters could not break through its defenses. Fortunately, the current monster horde was only high-level immortal-level. If they were to encounter triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters that had a more powerful defense, it would make sense if they could not get through its defenses. The Herculean King could do the same and the rest should not be able to see through the Malachian Fiend''s unusual trait. "Why don''t you keep one with you and the remaining four follow us? We''ll get two of them each at the two city gates." Seeing Lin Huang frown a little as he answered that, Tan Lang thought he was unwilling to talk about his qualification as an Imperial Censor. He then shifted the topic to the imperial monsters'' abilities immediately after he was done with the arrangement. "How are the other imperial monsters'' ability compared to the Herculean King?" "They''re more or less the same, I guess." Lin Huang smiled wryly. He had 22 immortal-level rank-9 summoning beasts under him at the moment. The top echelon with combined abilities would include the three pseudo-mythical-level monsters: Lancelot, Killer, and the Evil Dominator, as well as Bloody that owned an army, and the two knights who could merge with the Dark Crescent Snakes. Grimace who owned puppet relics, Kylie, her army, and Warlord were considered in the same echelon as well. The second echelon consisted of Bai, Charcoal, Tyrant, and the rest. Bai, Charcoal, and Tyrant initially belonged to the top echelon, but since they were stuck on triple mutation at the moment, they did not have a significant elevation in their ability. However, Lin Huang knew that they would have abilities that were on par with Lancelot''s as soon as they advanced. The Eclipse Boa, Bloody Robe, the Inferior Imp, the Malachian Fiend, and the Witch who was far away in Division 7 were in the same echelon. Those who were in the third echelon would be the Herculean King, Bing Wang, and Thunder. The two Dark Crescent Snakes would belong to this echelon too if not for the merging skill with the knights. They would even be slightly weaker than the Herculean King and the rest. Tan Lang was stunned to hear Lin Huang stating that his imperial monsters had similar abilities as the Herculean King did. He then recalled the Herculean King mentioning that his ability was the lowest among Lin Huang''s imperial monsters. ''Was what the Herculean King said the other day true?!'' Tan Lang thought to himself and lifted his head to look at Lin Huang who seemed poker-faced. Noticing his expression, Lin Huang figured out what Tan Lang was thinking about, so he explained immediately, "My imperial monsters consist of different types whereby some of them are exceptional in close-range battle and some are great at long-distance attacking. Some have notable speed while some are experts in strength. In reality, they''ve different directions when it comes to their development, so it''s unfair to compare them with the Herculean King. I said they''re more or less the same based on their overall standards. Not all of them have the same stunning ability in close-range battles like the Herculean King." "I see." Tan Lang was finally relieved to hear Lin Huang''s explanation. Earlier, he had secretly calculated the probability of him winning if Lin Huang had five summoning beasts that had similar abilities with the Herculean King. What he had no idea about was that he had zero chances of winning if he were to fight the team of the Herculean King, Bing Wang, Thunder, the Malachian Fiend, and Bloody Robe. Bing Wang had the ability to slow someone down. As soon as Bloody Robe used the Punishment Chains, Tan Lang''s probability of dying would be 100%. There was no way for him to survive at all; the other three monsters did not even have to move an inch to kill him. Naturally, Lin Huang would not let Tan Lang know about that. He was going to ask Bloody Robe and the rest not to reveal their real abilities before they headed out to fight later. After breakfast, the duo returned to the inn since Tan Lang had told Lin Huang everything about the discussion last night. The ten of them from the Heaven Alliance gathered at 8 a.m. "Li Jia and Lin Xie will be staying in the city, guarding the west and the north city walls. Some people from the government residence will be guarding them too. The rest will follow me out of the city. Four will go to the east city gate while another four will go to the south city gate." Tan Lang turned to look at Lin Huang after he was done with the explanation. "Lin Xie, you can summon your imperial monsters now." Lin Huang nodded and appeared at the entrance of the inn as he took a step forward. He crushed five Monster Cards while rubbing the pet spatial rings. The Herculean King, Bing Wang, Thunder, the Malachian Fiend, and Bloody Robe manifested themselves almost at the same time. The people from the Heaven Alliance including Tan Lang held their breaths upon sensing the powerful aura rolling from the five summoning beasts. They were familiar with Bing Wang since Lin Huang had summoned him at the Stairway Tree before. However, it was their first time seeing the other three imperial monsters. "Five triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 imperial monsters!" Shen Tao could not help but gasp out loud. The rest of them were thinking the same but they did not say it loudly. "What a big, handsome hawk!" Tan Lang could not help but exclaim out loud. He fixed his eyes on Thunder and could not shift his attention away. Arrogantly, Thunder looked down and peeped at Tan Lang, then glanced away like it did not care. The Herculean King glanced at Tan Lang as well and scoffed in disdain. Only then did Tan Lang snap back to his senses and look at the Herculean King while feeling embarrassed. "Alright, Thunder will stay while the remaining four will follow you guys," Lin Huang announced and spoke to Bloody Robe and Malachian Fiend secretly, reminding them not to show their trump cards. Tan Lang then left with the Herculean King and Bloody Robe unwillingly while the other four, led by Shen Tao, brought Bing Wang and the Malachian Fiend with them. 883 Anchovies When Tan Lang arrived at the east gate of Enlightenment City leading the other three of them from the Heaven Alliance and two imperial monsters, Deputy Governor He Tao was already fighting with six elders and 100 honorary immortal guards. The advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters were out of the control of those ordinary immortal guards. Apart from the honorary immortal guards, no one had the ability to fight them. Most of the honorary immortal guards from the government residence were on intermediate-stage ascendance-level. Only the leaders were on advanced-stage ascendance-level. Nonetheless, they were rich in battle experience. They were put into teams of 13 while building a small battle formation with the leaders as the core. Each battle formation was like a complete individual, and their overall abilities were just as powerful as the Herculean King. The five teams were at ease as they fought in the monster horde. Meanwhile, the other five teams stood on guard not far from the city, watching out for the monsters that they missed while waiting for their turn to fight later. Deputy Governor He Tao already had attained a combat strength of peak-stage ascendance-level, so he was as strong as Shen Tao. He performed stunning Sword Manipulation and his ability was similar to the Sword Dominator who just a level below Lancelot. The six elders were slightly weaker, but all of them had a combat strength of advanced-stage ascendance-level. Although they did not have powerful abilities individually, they had combined battle tactics that were slightly more powerful than the honorary immortal guard teams. The disastrous monster horde was blocked three kilometers outside of the walls of Enlightenment City by the hundreds of people. Upon noticing the mass, Tan Lang led the people into the battlefield. All the Heaven Alliance members were genius powerhouses. Furthermore, all of them had combat strength on immortal-level rank-9. Therefore, fighting advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters that were on par with high-level immortal-levels was nothing difficult for them. The battle turned one-sided as soon as the four of them leaped into the monster horde, especially Tan Lang who had a terrifying ability. He wore black battle armor and did not use any weapon. Many monsters were defeated the second he threw a punch at them. He even had spare time to pay close attention to how the two imperial monsters were doing. The Herculean King was stable as usual. He was like an invincible tank in the monster horde whereby all the monsters would be killed everywhere he passed. Those advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters could not break its defenses at all. After watching the Herculean King''s fight with admiration, Tan Lang then shifted his attention to Bloody Robe. Bloody Robe hovered in the air calmly while his robe fluttered in the wind. He extended a hand out of the robe all of a sudden. There was no flesh on his hand at all. Instead, there was a bone that was as white as snow with phalanges that were over 20 centimeters long. The ground began shaking as he clenched his fist slightly. A moment later, volcanoes formed rapidly while fiery, red spiritual lava spouted out of them in a frenzy. Within hundreds of kilometers, Bloody Robe seemed to be on some sort of stage from which lava spewed out like ocean waves, swallowing many monsters. The single attack alone killed tens of thousands of monsters. Everyone was dumbstruck watching Bloody Robe doing that. Secretly observing him, Tan Lang''s jaw dropped. Noticing Tan Lang''s gaze, Bloody Robe glared at him with his blue eyes while expanding the lava river like it was no big deal. The lava was reaching out to those monsters that were further away. As the battle was heating up at the east gate, they had their hands full at the south gate too. Another Deputy Governor from the government residence led six elders and ten honorary immortal guard teams in the battle. Shen Tao led the people from the Heaven Alliance and the two imperial monsters into the battlefield. The four of them from the Heaven Alliance thought Bing Wang and the Herculean King had the same battle technique. After all, apart from their different hair color, they looked exactly like twins. However, they realized their judgment was gravely wrong when the ground began to freeze as Bing Wan stomped down. Countless monsters turned into semi-transparent ice sculptures immediately. Bing Wang''s ability to kill groups was so much more powerful than the Herculean King''s. The advanced-stage ascendance-level monsters could not challenge his frozen ability at all. The four of them from the Heaven Alliance secretly exclaimed that they were in luck after seeing Bing Wang''s attack. Meanwhile, the Malachian Fiend had the same battle technique as the Herculean King whereby it sprinted into the monster horde like a tank. There would be a metal clanking noise whenever the monsters charged at him as if their offenses hit a piece of metal. Apart from that, there were no wounds that could be found on his body. The Malachian Fiend''s muscular arms were his best weapon. One monster was destroyed for every punch it threw. No second punch was needed to exterminate them. Even Shen Tao was stunned to see that. He quietly wondered to himself if he was a match for the Malachian Fiend if they were to fight one-on-one. Bloody had been watching the battle outside the city gates, but it did not project the scene to Lin Huang since there were people from the government residence with him. There were two honorary immortal guard teams and thousands of ordinary immortal guards on each of the west and the north city walls. Lin Huang was on the north city wall with the people from the government residence at the moment. The monster horde was coming from the southeastern direction and there were teams blocking them on both flanks. Only some monsters took a detour and got close to the city occasionally. At least, there was nothing within Lin Huang''s field of vision. Apart from a couple of monster carcasses lying below the wall, there was not even one monster that was attacking in the area. The immortal guards from the government residence were bored. Most of them had their eyes glued to Thunder that was next to Lin Huang. They could not hide the envy on their faces. Thunder had shiny grayish-black feathers with beautiful golden patterns on them. Its body was long and elegant, and there were purple electric discharges flickering around its body occasionally. From the looks of it, Thunder was almost perfect. Moreover, the aura that it released was almost on the same level as the governor. This imperial monster was almost every powerhouse''s desired flying mount. Even the two honorary immortal guard leaders who were usually disciplined could not help but take the initiative to speak to Lin Huang about Thunder. "What''re the attributes of this hawk?" "It has both attributes of wind and lightning." "Does it fly fast?" "Pretty fast." "What do you usually feed it?" "Ugh, well" Lin Huang wanted to say that he usually did not feed it and soon recalled Thunder asked for anchovies for junk food the last time, so he replied shamelessly, "I usually feed it fish" "I like eating snakes too," Thunder spoke through voice transmission secretly. "Sometimes, I feed it snakes too," Lin Huang added brazenly. As the people from the government residence chatted, in his mind, Lin Huang was caught in a pickle. If he went to the government residence to redeem points for the insane amount of demons that he killed, the news would definitely spread quickly. If that happened, not only would he expose his ability, but the people from the Union Government might also figure out that it was him who had taken the God Figurine away as soon as they heard the news when they got out of underground. Although there was no need for him to fear those powerhouses from the Union Government who came into the Fallen God''s Land, it was inevitable that trouble would come knocking on his doorstep. ''Should I disguise myself and redeem points from other government residences or sects?'' 884 Beaten! It was 11 p.m. and this happened in the underground beneath the gully of the abyss. After exactly 23 hours, the Union Government army finally arrived close to the volcano where the Nightmare Dragon was after traveling across over 5,000 kilometers. At that moment, the 200-strong army had dwindled down to 176 people. The 176 people separated into a couple of smaller groups and began their search. Fu Qingwei frowned as she looked around. She mumbled to herself softly while feeling puzzled, "That''s strange. The coordinates Gong Sun gave is somewhere around here, but why can''t we find the source of the monster horde?" As the leader of the mission from the Union Government this time and the head of EA.2, she was sure that the information was legit. "There''s something here!" Someone from one of the teams shouted all of a sudden. Fu Qingwei headed there immediately in a flash. One of the members in the team voiced his observation, "There seem to be battle traces on the ground and they''re recent." The other few EA.2 members landed on the ground and took a careful look around. The marks on the ground seemed to be cut by some kind of sword, but it might be caused by a monster with sharp claws too. Fu Qingwei scowled slightly after looking around for a while. "The monsters around this volcano have all been cleared!" All of the teams stopped searching immediately and joined the hunting team. Around 20 minutes later, they finally cleared the area around the volcano and the ground was revealed. The people from the Union Government could eventually see the traces left from the battle of Bai and the rest as well as the pools of blood that had seeped into the ground. "There are many battle traces around the volcano which is obviously not the result of a fight between monsters. The blood all over the ground has been here for less than 24 hours." The few EA.2 members came up with the same conclusion after checking the area thoroughly. They had been beaten! "There are saber marks, sword marks, frozen marks, burn marks and gunfire marks left from a firearms master The battle covered a wide surface. It seems like it was a one-sided, large-scale massacre. It was clearly not done by a person. Only a huge army could''ve orchestrated such a thing!" "But who would know about the Nightmare Dragon apart from us?" Fu Qingwei was a little puzzled. "That fella called Gong Sun mentioned that he didn''t tell anyone else when he told us about it." "What if Gong Sun lied?" A girl dressed in a camo asked softly. Fu Qingwei was stunned when she heard this suggestion. The truth was right before her eyes, and it seemed like there was no other explanation. If Gong Sun had not exposed the information to anyone else apart from them, there would not have been a second group of people who knew about the Nightmare Dragon''s existence and they would not have been defeated. "I would suspect the people from Dynasty if they hadn''t been killed by the Luotian Sect," a young man with a buzzcut voiced his opinion. He was also one of the EA.2 members, and his name was Fei Yun. Dynasty was the first name that flashed through Fu Qingwei''s mind because it was the most capable one among the underground organizations that came in this period. They were the most likely culprits. However, Dynasty had been killed by a local organization. She even got someone to confirm the news when she first heard about it a few days ago. "Maybe it''s the Purple Crow or Saint, or maybe it''s the heretics. The heretics have the most techniques. It seems like their style whereby they leave quietly after taking everything and avoid a face-to-face confrontation with us," said a short, muscular hunk. He was also an EA.2 member, and his name was Feng Yong. Fu Qingwei turned to look at the man in white robes next to her. "Can you predict this?" "The success rate isn''t high since it involves god, but I can try." The white-robed man nodded. His name was Cao Zhen, and he was the only Diviner in the team. The Union Government had released a piece of news earlier, saying they had two Diviners working for them. The intention was to confuse people out there so that the Diviner would not be targeted by underground organizations. The probability of an underground organization assassinating the Diviner would be high if they knew that the Union Government only had one Diviner. However, the underground organization would consider acting if there were two Diviners. The reason being it would only work if they were to kill both Diviners since killing one was futile. However, killing two would be much more difficult than killing one, and the price to pay might be higher too. Cao Zhen took out a tortoise shell and three coins. He slotted the coins into the empty shell and performed a complicated hand signal as he chanted. The tortoise shell hovered in the air and began rolling by itself. As Cao Zhen grabbed the tortoise shell after he was done with the hand signal a while later, the shell exploded. Together with the coins, they shattered into dust. Cao Zhen''s hand hung in the air and he only retracted it after a while. He shrugged his shoulders and looked helplessly at Fu Qingwei. "It doesn''t work." "Let''s see if we can find anything else." Since the prediction failed, Fu Qingwei did not get Cao Zhen to try again. She pointed at the volcanoes before them. "Look through those few volcanoes too." The people from the Union Government separated into more than ten teams and began scanning around. Around half an hour later, the teams that were responsible in the investigation came back one after another. Their effort was to no avail. "It seems like the organization that took the God Figurine didn''t leave us anything at all." Fu Qingwei was so pissed that she was smirking at their own stupidity. "Let''s return to Weiyang City!" "Do we go back empty-handed?" Feng Yong said a little unwillingly. "What else can we do? There''s nothing here!" Fu Qingwei glared at him in annoyance. "Let''s go back for now. The Nightmare Dragon''s God Figurine has been taken and the monster horde has ended. We can always come back if we want to in the future." Cao Zhen signaled Feng Yong immediately so that he would not get himself into any more trouble. "There are too many cultivators who practice sword and saber, so it''s difficult to find out who it was. But there aren''t many cultivators who have frost and fire attributes. Neither are there many firearm masters." A ferocious gleam flashed through Fu Qingwei''s eyes. "Help me find out when we get out. I''d love to see which organization has the capability of beating us!" Lin Huang was just getting into bed at the Inn at the moment. He had no idea that Fu Qingwei and the people from EA.2 were cursing him underground. However, he figured that it was about time the people from the Union Government arrived at the Nightmare Dragon''s previous coordinates. "The people from the Union Government should arrive there soon. I wonder when will the news of the end of monster horde spread." Lin Huang did not sleep as he lay in bed. His head was occupied with things that he needed the handle later. "I must find time to excuse myself from the Heaven Alliance to trade those monster carcasses for resources after the news comes out" "Now the biggest trouble is that True God''s will called Gong Sun. The stone tablet can''t locate it as long as it''s in hiding." 885 Blamed Out of Nowhere It was almost 2 a.m. when the Union Government army rushed back to Weiyang City after their failed mission. They spread the news of the passing of the monster horde the next morning. However, they did not mention that they were beaten and took the credit of solving the monster horde crisis. Lin Huang was elated to hear the news from the Union Government early that morning. The way the Union Government hid the truth was precisely the outcome he wanted. He did not care that they took the credit. He had all of the physical benefits in his storage space anyway. All he cared about was the hushed fortune that he was getting. However, the people from the Heaven Alliance were shocked to hear the news. "They''re worthy of their name to be daring enough to go to the gully and fight the source of the monster horde." Even Tan Lang admired the Union Government''s guts. "They''ve got the upper hand of people in numbers. We could''ve done it too if there were 200 of us!" Shen Tao was reluctant to admit defeat. "Since the monster horde has ended, the crisis in this foggy land has been solved. I guess we should leave after clearing the remaining monsters, shouldn''t we?" Li Jia lifted his head to look at Tan Lang. "The resources here are limited after all, and so is our time in the Fallen God Land." "What do you guys think?" Tan Lang did not voice his opinion right away. Instead, he threw the question at them. "Indeed, it''s unnecessary for us to stay," Tang Ning agreed. "We''ve been staying in this foggy land for more than half a month. To be exact, it''s the 47th day since we''ve entered the Fallen God Land. We''re only left with less than half of the three months limit. There are still many things to be discovered in the Fallen God Land, so there''s no need for us to waste our time here." The rest nodded in assent. Lin Huang was the only one who showed no response. "Lin Xie, do you disagree with this?" Tan Lang noticed his lack of reaction and could not help but ask. "I would like to stay for a couple of days to get more crystal cores." Lin Huang made up an excuse. "After all, such an item that can restore Life Power instantly is rare outside." The rest were rather surprised by Lin Huang''s idea. All of them wanted to leave, but he was the only one who chose to stay. That would mean he would have to be separated from the group and go solo. Li Jia gazed deeply into Lin Huang''s eyes and looked down at the teacup on the table before him. Nobody could tell what he was thinking about. Shen Tao was stunned for a second and objected immediately, "Lin Xie, there''s no more monster horde, so you wouldn''t get that many crystal cores even if you stayed to hunt. Why don''t you leave with us? Our efficiency would be higher if we hunted together as a team." Tan Lang turned silent for a moment and he seemed to recall something. He did not support what Shen Tao said. "You can stay if you really want to. This foggy area''s much safer than it is out there. You could always join us out there when you get bored here." "Thanks." Lin Huang nodded while wearing a smile. As the Heaven Alliance was discussing their plan, the other organizations were discussing a similar topic. Most of the organizations had obtained the resources from the government residences. The sects had presented themselves. With Dynasty''s failed attempt as a warning, the underground organizations knew they could not use violence to steal. The monster horde had ended. Apart from clearing the remaining monsters and redeeming the points for resources, it would be a waste a time for them to stay. All the organizations were beginning to discuss leaving. When night came, one of the inns in Weiyang City became crowded all of a sudden. The inn had been fully booked by the people from the Union Government for the past week and no outsiders had been allowed in. The army from the Union Government sat together in the hall of the inn. The young man with the buzzcut, Fei Yun, shared the result of his investigation he had been working on for the entire day, "I''ve checked out the organization that beat us. If I''m not mistaken, it should be the work of the heretics." "There are two firearms masters among the heretics who came in this time, and they are a pair of female twins. There''s also an Element Master who has frost and fire attributes among them. Of all underground organizations, only the heretics match the battle traces left in the underground perfectly." "I told you it was the heretics!" Feng Yong wore a proud expression, bragging that he managed to get it right. "Damn it, heretics! How dare you beat us?!" Fu Qingwei slammed the table while looking pissed. Instantly, the wooden table turned into dust. "Boss, should we teach them a lesson?" Fei Yun asked eagerly. "Of course! Otherwise, they would think it''s okay for them to take from the Union Government!" Fu Qingwei answered affirmatively without hesitation, but soon she calmed down. "However, wait, it''s not time yet." "Everyone''s been exhausted for the past two days. Let''s rest for two days and clear the monsters outside the city." "The monster horde crisis has been solved now. Most of the organizations must be preparing to leave this foggy land, including the heretics. We''ll just have to stop the heretics before they leave. Await the enemy on our own terms." "Fei Yun, you must take note of the heretics'' movement from now on. Inform me immediately as soon as there''re any updates." The heretics that were tens of thousands of kilometers away had no idea that they were taking the fall for Lin Huang for nothing. Just because they had two firearms masters and an Element Master who possessed frost and fire attributes in their team, the Union Government targeted them and treated them as their implacable foe. Meanwhile, the culprit, Lin Huang, who caused all these knew nothing about it. Although Bloody''s Leech Pods were monitoring the Union Government''s movement, they dared not get too close. In EA.2, Fu Qingwei and the Diviner named Cao Zhen could sense the existence of Leech Pods if they were close enough. Bloody could only control the Leech Pods to monitor from hundreds of meters away. They could not hear what they were talking about behind closed doors in the inn. Since he no longer had to guard the city walls, Lin Huang got the Herculean King, Bing Wang, Bloody Robe, and the Malachian Fiend to follow Tan Lang and the rest to clear the monsters. On the other hand, he stayed at the inn to proceed with the simulated cultivation of local methods. Time flew by and two days had passed. Tan Lang and the rest cleared all of the remaining monsters thousands of kilometers around Enlightenment City. Apart from Lin Huang, everyone from the Heaven Alliance redeemed points using the monster carcasses and traded many resources. Since it was unnecessary for them to stay, Tan Lang and the rest bade farewell to the people at the government residence. Apart from Lin Huang, everyone from the Heaven Alliance left on the third morning. Lin Huang sent them off at the Dimensional Portal near the exit of the foggy land. Watching the portal close and the people disappear, he turned around and returned to his room at the inn. Lin Huang could not get used to the empty inn since it had been crowded for the past half a month. When he returned to the room, he had a slight change of expression all of a sudden. He released the three God Figurines'' Combat Souls at the same time and shouted, "Who is that?!" Lin Huang was sure that he had been pulled into the dreamland without even realizing it. The reason he noticed that was because he realized Bloody was no longer in his sleeve. He then recalled the unusualness downstairs earlier. Not only was there not a single guest at the inn, but even the owner and servants had also disappeared. The noise from the guests downstairs and the clamor of the servants was nowhere to be heard. The entire inn was so quiet that it was like a haunted house in a remote land. 886 I’m Very Materialistic A white silhouette that looked like a ghost penetrated into the wall of the room in the inn. The three God Figurines'' Combat Souls surrounded the person before Lin Huang could take a better look. "I come in peace, kid." A man with white hair and a beard wearing a white robe stood by the wall and expressed his intention immediately. "Are you Gong Sun?" The stone tablet in his body spoke via voice transmission just when Lin Huang managed to catch a view of the person''s face. It told him that the old man before him was the other True God''s will, the old man Gong Sun that the Nightmare Dragon had mentioned. "Seems like you''ve learned about me from that inferior dragon." The white-bearded old man nodded while wearing a grin. "Why did you pull me into this dreamland?" Lin Huang asked while getting the three Combat Souls to retreat some distance away although they did let their guard down. "Because this is the only way I could talk to you." Gong Sun forced a smile while shrugging helplessly. "After I died from fighting that inferior dragon, it did not die right away. It then used its broken fragment of its kingdom to build this world. Later on, it came up with a series of plans in an attempt to resurrect one day. "I, on the other hand, was only left with a gush of will. When it was building this world, I slipped into the only fragment of its kingdom that it was left with when it had its guard down. An accident happened whereby I merged with the fragment of its kingdom and became a part of this world. I can''t be seen by anyone, and neither can I communicate with others. "However, the merge gave me a part of the inferior dragon''s ability. So I thought of using the dreamland to communicate with others because I can only be heard and seen in the dreamland." Gong Sun''s explanation made Lin Huang let his guard down a little, but there was a suspicion that rose suddenly. "Why did you only look for me now? It has been three days since the Nightmare Dragon''s the remnant of the will vanished. Why didn''t you appear right away? Why did you choose to show yourself today, when all of my comrades have left?" "There are two reasons. The first reason is although I can neither be seen nor can I communicate, my presence can be sensed by Divine Telekinesis within a close distance. Someone among your comrades has the same Divine Telekinesis as you do. His is even more powerful than yours. I didn''t want to cause any complications, so I chose to meet you after he left." "The reason why I didn''t meet you right away was that I wasn''t ready yet. I watched you fighting with the remnant of the inferior dragon''s will, including the battle in the dreamland. I saw everything through a unique sensing technique. "To be honest, it''s a surprise that you won. I thought you''d definitely die when it dragged you into the dreamland. I was in disbelief when you killed it. To be precise, I was in shock and felt lost. "Destroying the remnant of the inferior dragon''s will was the mission I gave myself. It was the meaning of my existence. You killing the remnant of the inferior dragon''s will meant that you accomplished my mission, which made me lose my purpose. "Whilst my head was in chaos, you left right after you were done excavating the volcano, so I lost my chance." "Who were you referring to that has the same Divine Telekinesis as I do?" Lin Huang could not help but ask what mattered to him the most after listening to Gong Sun. "It''s the guy who looks like a kid, the one who controls bugs." "Li Jia?! That fella sure hid it well" Lin Huang''s pupils shrunk slightly. He doubted Li Jia might know about the things that he had done secretly, including hunting Charm and Dynasty. "Kid, I''ve been thinking how to thank you for the past few days, but I''ve no idea what should I do until today." Noticing that Lin Huang was silent, Gong Sun could not help but speak again, "Since we''ve met today, maybe you could tell me what would you like directly." "Then, I won''t hold back." Hearing that, Lin Huang snapped back to his senses immediately. The gloom that he had been feeling was washed away. "If you have God Figurines, you could give me a few. If you don''t, you could give me some god items relics. If there''re none, I''ll take demigod relics too." "So, materials are the only reward you need?" Gong Sun was stunned to hear his demands. "Yes, I''m very materialistic," Lin Huang admitted solemnly. "When the inferior dragon was killed, its the remnant of the will was in hibernation for quite some time. I secretly got the people whom the inferior dragon reified to investigate the outside world for a while. At that time, the main objective was to find out about the situation outside the kingdom. Some of them who survived the trip brought some treasures back." "I remember there''s a God Figurine." Gong Sun frowned slightly as he thought for a while. "There should be a few god relics too." "That''s great!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard this. He dared not ask for much. After all, he was an African Chieftain whereby he always had bad luck regardless of what game he played. Gong Sun extended his hand into the air and a chilly blue sculpture appeared in his hand a moment later. The sculpture resembled half of a human lady''s body that was frozen. "This Mysterious Frostwoman had powerful abilities when she was still alive. Even I had to avoid her when I encountered her on the battlefield." Gong Sun handed the God Figurine in his hand over. "Mysterious Frostwoman" Lin Huang accepted it immediately and realized instantly that he was in a dreamland. "Do you have the real item?" "Don''t worry. I''ll send the items that you''ve picked to you later. Although I have no solid form, it doesn''t affect me from claiming items," explained Gong Sun as he smiled. "Great, then." Lin Huang was relieved. Gong Sun took out a couple of items later on, all of which were all god relics. There were a total of seven items. However, there was no sword or armor. "Don''t you have a sword or armor? A telekinesis weapon would be fine too," Lin Huang asked while raising a brow. "No, these are the only ones that are in one piece." Gong Sun shook his head. "They don''t suit me." Lin Huang forced a wry smile while shaking his head. "Just take them. You can trade them with swords and armor that you desire when you get out." Gong Sun shoved all of the items to Lin Huang. "Alright, then." Lin Huang took the god relics. There was even a true god-level saber among them. "Do you want demigod relics?" Gong Sun asked. Lin Huang flushed and shook his head. "There''s no need. I have demigod sword relics." Lin Huang was a little embarrassed that Gong Sun was being so generous. "Is there anything else that you need?" Lin Huang thought to himself and decided to ask shamelessly, "Method recordings, especially in sword skills, would be great." "Although I''m not a sword cultivator, I had a good friend who was a powerful sword cultivator. His sword skills ranked the top three during our time. I''ve fought him countless times to elevate his sword skill and I''ve also examined his sword skill recordings before. He''s been dead for a long time now. It''d be good if you could inherit his skills. "Apart from him, I''ve also encountered some other powerful sword cultivators. I remember some of the sword skills, so I''ll record whatever I have in my memory." Whether it was due to his easy-going character or if it had just been a long time since he chatted with anyone, Gong Sun was rather talkative. He prattled non-stop with Lin Huang after settling the material rewards with him. Through him, Lin Huang learned many secrets of this world. The world had been built by the Nightmare Dragon''s broken fragment of its kingdom before it died. The Nightmare Dragon used the energy from god items and relics that it gathered to create the monster horde. The reason being, it wanted to accumulate a massive amount of living things and sacrifice those souls in order to resurrect itself. The remnant of its will was in hibernation most of the time and the key to activate it was the appearance of living things that possessed Holy Power. Not matter demigod or Virtual God, it would be time to sacrifice as soon as such a level of living thing was born in the kingdom. The remnant of the Nightmare Dragon''s will would wake up to activate the formation it had set when it was still alive to drive the monster horde. The purpose of the monster horde was not to kill humans on land but to boost the number of living things for the soul sacrifice. In reality, before Lin Huang and the rest discovered this foggy land, such a sacrifice had been activated a couple of times but Gong Sun would always put it to a halt. Gong Sun led humans generation after generation with the dreamland, getting them to fight the monster horde in order to destroy the Nightmare Dragon''s soul sacrifice. Sometimes, he would even strain its will to stop the monster horde. After a couple of attempts, he did something on the Immortal Path directly to get it done once and for all. He made ascendance-level the highest combat strength all living things in the kingdom could have. It put the possibility of people elevating to human immortal to an end. Naturally, there would not be any demigods since then. However, he could not bring himself to kill those tens and thousands of human immortal-level powerhouses. Although they lived, there was no way for them to elevate to Virtual God or demigod. He even restricted the combat strength of outsiders to below human immortal-level just in case but never had he thought that the Seventh Prince would have such a demigod-level defense technique. When the demigod energy was released, he used thunder to destroy the energy, but the remnant of the Nightmare Dragon''s will was activated anyway. Gong Sun gave a detailed explanation about the saying that Lin Huang had been wondering about. "A strike of thunder heralds the arrival of disaster. The forming of a phenomenon, a chaotic tribulation". Strike of thunder inferred to Gong Sun killing those powerhouses who were elevating to Earth immortal with thunder to prevent the remnant of the Nightmare Dragon''s will from being activated. The forming of a phenomenon would refer to the remnant of the Nightmare Dragon''s will adjusting the monster horde formation every time it woke up. Such an adjustment would affect the fragment of its kingdom, causing unique dreamland or reification. It was night time when Lin Huang left the dreamland. Gong Sun was gone. The Mysterious Frostwoman''s God Figurine was placed on the table before him. There were also the seven god relics and a couple of jade slips. After putting the God Figurine and god relics away, Lin Huang looked through the jade slips. He recalled something all of a sudden after putting them away for a while. "I forgot to get Gong Sun to handle the monster carcasses for me directly Old man Gong Sun, are you still around?" 887 70 Million Glory Points! Lin Huang was not as thrilled as he imagined he would be when he got the fifth God Figurine. He found out many secrets chatting with Gong Sun. Not only about this foggy land, but the era in which Gong Sun lived in. Although he cultivated methods that were similar to the Twisted Fate Scripture, Gong Sun was born in an era even earlier than Mr. Fu''s. According to Gong Sun, there were 13 True Gods in the entire world at that time, including up to 1,000 Virtual Gods and tens of thousands of demigod-level powerhouses. It was an era that was many folds more powerful than the tribe but had been destroyed by the world connected to the Abyss Brink. Gong Sun''s story made Lin Huang''s skin prickle with danger even more now. Lin Huang then told Gong Sun about the Abyss Brink and the old man looked helpless when he heard about it. However, his battle had come to an end. All he could do was to utter comforting words to Lin Huang. Lin Huang only realized there were more than just sword skills in the jade slips that Gong Sun had left behind. There were three types of complete true god inheritances and over ten virtual god inheritances. He did not sleep well after chatting with Gong Sun. After breakfast the next morning, he left Enlightenment City as he bade farewell to the people at the government residence. As he left the city, he changed his appearance using his disguise skill and changed his combat strength to immortal-level rank-9 before heading to the Luotian Sect. He had over four million monster carcasses that he had yet to redeem Glory Points for before leaving this foggy land. Although he had already obtained the biggest reward, those monster carcasses were still worth redeeming no matter how little the rewards were. Moreover, he would redeem quite a huge amount of Glory Points from them. Lin Huang got Bloody to do the calculation. He could redeem at least 70 million Glory Points from the four million monster carcasses. Although he would only attain six-star Glory, he could enjoy a 60% discount which was exceptional. According to the buying power of the Glory Points, he could redeem 20 to 30 god relics. Lin Huang arrived at the entrance to the Luotian Sect''s door before 9 a.m. After the monster horde broke out, almost all the sects chose to open their doors and accept the redemption of monster carcasses and crystal cores. Lin Huang walked into the door proudly before someone led him to the registration counter. The elder who was sitting at the counter was a plump, middle-aged man. He had a rather high combat strength of advanced-stage ascendance-level which was on par with high immortal-level. The plump elder seemed a little impatient as he lifted his head to glare at Lin Huang. "Fill up the form for the monster carcasses that you have and the level of the internal elixir." "Oh." Lin Huang nodded then picked up a form and filled it up on his own. Bloody had categorized the monster carcasses into different combat strengths while Lin Huang studied the storage rings one after another. He saw the number with a glance using his Divine Telekinesis. It only took him less than a second. After filling up the form, Lin Huang passed it to the elder who was stunned when he first saw it. Subsequently, he was enraged. "Brat, are you here to prank me?! 820,000 intermediate-stage mortal transformation-level monster carcasses, 860,000 advanced-stage mortal transformation-levels, 810,000 beginner-stage ascendance-levels Why don''t you just fill in 8 million or 80 million?!" "If I do that, wouldn''t the number not add up?" Lin Huang stared at him like the form was nothing out of the norm. "Do you mean that the number will add up when you fill in 800,000?" The plump elder still thought that Lin Huang was pranking him. "Wouldn''t you find out if you start counting?" Lin Huang took out six storage rings at once. "I''ve categorized them into intermediate-stage mortal transformation-level, advanced-stage mortal transformation-level, beginner-stage ascendance-level, intermediate-stage ascendance-level, advanced-stage ascendance-level, and peak-stage ascendance-level." "Ha, you even put them into six storage rings!" The elder raised his brow as he looked cynically at him. "Sure, let me count them." The plump elder smirked after taking the storage rings. "Brat, let me warn you. You''ll have to pay the price if you make me a fool. If the number of monster carcasses doesn''t add up to the number you''ve filled today, I''ll confiscate the storage rings one by one. If the numbers in all the six storage rings don''t add up, all of them will belong to me. You won''t be getting any Glory Points today!" "What if they add up?" Lin Huang did not panic and grinned instead. "If they add up" The elder had no idea what to say next. "I won''t trouble you. I only have one request if the numbers add up." Lin Huang looked at the plump elder while wearing a smirk. "Do tell." "You won''t tell anyone about me redeeming the points, including everyone in your sect. I don''t care if you lie or whatever else, but you must keep it a secret for me." Lin Huang looked grave when he named his request. He did not expect the elder to really keep his secret despite his request. All he hoped for was the elder to let the cat out of the bag and spread the news as late as possible. After all, there were still organizations staying in the foggy land. Lin Huang hoped that the news would only come after all the organizations that came from outside left the area. If that was the case, the news would stay in the Fallen God Land and would not spread to the outside world. If the news came out too early and the organizations outside heard about it, the news would almost definitely go to the Union Government, which would definitely link the news with the God Figurine being taken away. As a result, they would most probably send people to investigate. The Diviner from the Union Government could not find Lin Huang because old man Gong Sun had helped him secretly. However, without old man Gong Sun''s interference out there, the Diviner might have a way to find Lin Huang. Lin Huang was not sure if his disguise worked on the Diviner, so he chose to be extra careful. He had thought of killing the plump elder so the secret would die with him. However, the elder was not in rivalry with him after all, and killing ruthlessly was not his style. Moreover, Lin Huang had no idea what kind of surveillance the sect might use whereby his tricks might draw the attention of the imperial-level experts. By then, more people would know about him redeeming points with an insane number of monster carcasses. It would be ridiculous to put the sect to an end just to cover things up. Only a heartless underground organization would do such a thing. As Lin Huang had tens of ideas flashing in his head, the plump elder agreed to his request without thinking much. "Sure, I''ll keep it a secret." He used two fingers to pick the first storage ring up as soon as he was done speaking. He glanced at Lin Huang while grinning. "I shall see exactly how many monster carcasses there are in this ring of yours." The elder had a slight change of expression when he looked through the storage space. The number of monster carcasses went beyond his imagination before he could even begin counting. The number came to his mind instantly as he scanned through the mountains of monster carcasses. "825,179 intermediate-stage mortal transformation-level monster carcasses" The plump elder turned to gape at the form Lin Huang filled out as he snapped back to his senses. The number on the form was 825,179 too, which was exactly what he counted. The elder lifted his head and stared at Lin Huang in doubt before proceeding to access the second storage ring. "851,723 advanced-stage mortal transformation-levels" The plump elder referred to the form. The number on the form correlated to it. The plump elder''s face was a little pale now as he proceeded to check the third storage ring. Cold sweat started dripping from his forehead when he was done comparing the number he had gotten from the third ring with the one on the form. By now, he believed that the young man before him was a god. To him, such a massacre of demons could not have been done by a human. As he panicked, he counted the remaining three rings and began calculating the Glory Points. "825,179 intermediate-stage mortal transformation-level monster carcasses... 1,650,358 Glory Points." "861,123 advanced-stage mortal transformation-level monster carcasses... 3,406,892 Glory Points." "416,378 peak-stage ascendance-level monster carcasses... 33,310,240 Glory Points." "The total would be 72,538,610 Glory Points!" The plump elder transferred all the six rings containing the monster carcasses into the warehouse ring while his fingers trembled frantically. He then returned the six storage rings to Lin Huang as well as the credited crystal card. Lin Huang looked into the crystal card with his Divine Telekinesis and saw the number of Glory Points in the crystal card clearly. "Where do I redeem items with these points?" "You redeem them from me too." The plump elder''s attitude was clearly nicer now. "Everything about Glory Points is my responsibility." He handed the treasure list over to Lin Huang as soon as he was done speaking. It was a thick book with at least hundreds of pages. "The types of items are indexed. The front is items of lower grade while those with a higher grade will be at the back." Lin Huang nodded and browsed through the index instantly. He did not see any God Figurines after the first round of search. He then looked at the sword relics whereby the highest one was only a demigod relic. He then looked for armor but the highest one was still a demigod relic... "Is everything on the list?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes," the plump elder confirmed. Lin Huang looked through the list again to see if there were any god relics or god items, but his search was to no avail. "I thought there are Earth immortal-level treasures? Why don''t I see any?" Lin Huang asked again. "From what I remember, there are six earth immortal-level treasures and one celestial immortal-level treasure. If there are none on the list, it would mean that somebody has redeemed them. This list links automatically with the record we have in the warehouse. The item will vanish from the list as soon as it is taken out of the warehouse." "Six earth immortal-level treasures and one celestial immortal-level treasure" Lin Huang immediately realized what had happened. The seven god items Gong Sun had given him came from this warehouse. Despite feeling helpless, Lin Huang could only accept the truth. He redeemed over 1,000 sword skills that he chose from the list. Apart from two that were mythical-level, the rest were legendary-level. Although there was no Virtual God that appeared in this world, there were tens of talented geniuses who created mythical-level methods as a few eras had passed. However, some of them lost the inheritance. Apart from those, Lin Huang redeemed over 3,000 cultivation methods, 11 of which could be cultivated to virtual god-level. He then swept over 300 demigod relics in the warehouse. Among them were three telekinesis weapons, 11 battle swords and 23 armors. They were all suitable for him. Eventually, he redeemed the remaining points for a total of over 20,000 human immortal-level monster crystal cores. Lin Huang did not feel any pain spending all of his Glory Points at once. He even indulged in the joy shopping brought him. Redeeming items with Glory Points was like purchasing stuff with cash vouchers. After putting all of the items he had redeemed away in his Emperor''s Heart Ring, Lin Huang did not bother keeping the Glory Point crystal card, so he returned it to the plump elder directly. "Don''t forget your promise," Lin Huang emphasized again when he returned the crystal card. "Don''t worry. I, Zhao Linde, have always been a man of my word. I''ll definitely keep my promise!" The plump elder pounded his chest as he spoke. "If not for my sound reputation, the seniors wouldn''t have given all of the responsibilities regarding Glory Points to me." "But it won''t mean nobody will find out about this even if I don''t breathe a word. You''ve redeemed too many treasures this time. The sects will find out sooner or later. They have their ways of finding out about anything," reminded the plump elder again. "Just drag it out for me as much as you can. The longer it is, the better," Lin Huang responded. "I can definitely do that!" The elder promised right away. 888 Returning to the Fallen God Land After spending all his Glory Points, Lin Huang was not going to stay at the foggy world any longer despite the fact that it was a blessing to him. Getting out from the Luotian Sect, Lin Huang then entered a forest. After making sure that there was no detection skill around him, he transformed back into Lin Xie. He then took out his dimensional relic and stepped into it. The coordinates he had pinned on the dimensional relic was the entrance to the foggy world. As soon as Lin Huang stepped out of the dimensional relic, he felt that something was odd before he could even recall his dimensional relic. People dressed in the Union Government''s military uniform were blocking the entrance. Lin Huang was shocked. "Has my identity been revealed?" Just as he wondered whether if he should brave it through the crowd, a lady in a cloak questioned, "Are you Lin Xie from the Heaven Alliance?" "Yes, I am." Lin Huang was forced to answer her question. "Don''t worry. We''re here to stop the heretics." Fu Qingwei and the EA.2 members were unable to join the Genius Union because of the Union Government. However, as an intelligence agency, they had detailed information about strong individuals in the Genius Union. Of course, there was no exception for Lin Huang who was the new talent that ranked first on the leaderboard of the Stairway Tree. "To stop the heretics?" Lin Huang was stunned. Although he felt that it was strange, he did not ask any further. Instead, he felt relieved. "The rest of the members from other organizations are allowed to enter." Fu Qingwei did not intend to explain any further either. Instead, she told Lin Huang that he could leave and that he did not need to concern himself about them. Lin Huang nodded before recalling his dimensional relic and slowly flying towards the exit without anyone getting in his way. Seeing that Lin Huang had disappeared, Cao Zhen who was in his white robe frowned. "The guy named Lin Xie isn''t as simple as we think." An augur''s instinct was said to be exceptionally accurate. "Of course, he isn''t. He''s just a holy fire-level but he''s managed to rank first on the leaderboard of the Genius Union''s Stairway Tree." Fu Qingwei smiled, nodding her head. "His training speed far surpasses that of an ordinary person''s." "Even if he''s a genius, he''s still much weaker than Zang Yi," remarked Feng Yong who was short yet muscular as he was quite bitter. Fu Qingwei''s facial expression changed and she immediately glared at Feng Yong with a fierce whisper, "Don''t simply talk about Zang Yi!" The EA.2 members immediately kept quiet. Of course, Lin Huang did not know that the EA.2 members were discussing him in the foggy world. Getting out of the foggy world, he returned to the Fallen God Land again. The Leech Pods which Bloody had left there were soon activated. About ten minutes later, Lin Huang then received the updated map of the organization and the distribution of monsters. Seeing Bloody''s result of the distribution, Lin Huang was startled. "Is this the right one? Why have the number of monsters increased compared to 20 days ago?" "Yes, the number of monsters have increased," Blood confirmed, "There seems to be a unique rule being imposed on the ruins whereby the undying species and the spirit types can be constantly summoned." It came to this conclusion because part of its Leech Pods had parasitized in the monsters'' bodies. The monsters being parasitized had witnessed the changes and their memories were stored. Right after the Leech Pods were activated, the stored memories would be transferred to Bloody''s knowledge base. Lin Huang frowned. "It''s actually a good thing to us. We have more monsters to hunt now." "However, based on the map, aside from a few of the unknown regions, it seems like most of the places have been explored." Lin Huang studied the map carefully again. He could not find a suitable location to go monster hunting. After exploring for tens of days, the union and the underworld began to unite their members. They no longer fought solo. The organizations divided the Fallen God Land into small segments like a whole cake. "There are fewer people in the forest situated in the northeast. The level of the monsters over there isn''t high and it''s only occupied by a few of the smaller organizations. However, although there are fewer people over there, they are scattered all over the place. We can easily bump into humans when we hunt." Bloody did not have any good suggestions. "Other than that, we have control of the central region which is the largest area. There are many monsters over there, but it''s occupied by three big organizations." "If we can''t find a place to hunt for monsters, let''s go for those that are occupied." Lin Huang was much more confident now after fighting the Nightmare Dragon''s will. "Let''s see if there''s any region being occupied by the underworld." "That''s great," Bloody sighed in relief. Previously, Lin Huang did not want to have any conflict with humans. However, since 50 days had passed, the humans seemed to have scattered all around the Fallen God Land. He was unable to look for a suitable place to hunt for monsters where he would not bump into humans. Bloody soon circled 12 regions and he numbered them accordingly. "12 of these places are being occupied by the underworld and there''s no union around them. I''ve numbered them from the weakest to the strongest. "Region No. 1 has the weakest overall ability whereby the strongest monster is on crimson gold-rank and there are only three of them. It''s been taken over by the Purple Crow, Saint, and Charm. There are seven of them on black gold-rank and tens of them are on immortal-level. The strongest member is on yellow gold-rank. "Region No. 12 has the strongest overall ability. It''s occupied by Dynasty, the Purple Crow, Saint, and the heretics. The four strongest people are on white gold-rank and there''re a total of 13 imperial-level. None of them is on immortal-level. The strongest monster is on purple gold-rank and there are only three of them." "Let''s start from region No. 1 then." When it came to fighting the underworld, Lin Huang would not hold back his ability. He summoned Thunder which went all out and arrived at region No. 1 in less than an hour. After recalling Thunder, Lin Huang summoned the three pseudo-mythical-levels, Lancelot, the Regal Sword Killer, and the Evil Dominator. He summoned the two knights, the two Dark Crescent Snakes, and Kylie as well. After the large-scale slaughter in the foggy world, the combat strength of Kylie''s Nephilic Judges had leveled up to immortal-level rank-9. However, only a few of them had gone through their third mutation. Despite the fact that many of the monsters from the foggy world exhibited dark attributes, only a few of them had completed their third mutation. Regardless of how many mutated or double mutated monsters were killed, the Nephilic Judges were unable to upgrade to Nephilic Angels. Over the past 20 days, there was only a subtle increase in the number of Nephilic Angels. When they returned to the Fallen God Land, it was a great opportunity for an upgrade. Be it Kylie''s Nephilic Judges or Lancelot and the rest, they were capable of fighting a crimson gold-rank. This was also the reason why Lin Huang had summoned them this round to hunt for monsters. "Let''s kill all the immortal-levels as soon as possible. There are many of them. If we were to fight the crimson gold-levels, they''ll probably inform the rest if they discover there''s a fight going on. After killing all the immortal-levels, we''ll have to kill the black gold-ranks followed by the crimson gold-ranks." Lin Huang soon distributed the tasks to each of them. Guided by Bloody, Kylie and the rest soon left and went after their hunting targets. In less than 15 minutes, Kylie and the rest had secretly killed the first batch of monsters. Those who were on immortal-level rank-9 were unable to fight Kylie''s Nephilic Judges, Lancelot and the rest at all. Before they could inform anybody, they were all murdered. The imperial monsters soon targeted the second batch of monsters after being guided by Bloody. Only one out of seven of the black gold-ranks was not killed and managed to inform the others about the battle. Despite having caught the attention of the three crimson gold-ranks, the outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion. Bloody suddenly changed his mind, making the black gold-rank the bait. He managed to bait the three crimson gold-ranks. Kylie and the rest then besieged them. Three waves of battle ended within an hour. Region No. 1 had officially become Lin Huang''s territory. 889 Singing in the Victory Singing in the Victory After taking over region No. 1, Lin Huang summoned Bai and the rest. All the immortal-level rank-9 and imperial-level monsters at the region were involved. Lin Huang initially intended to insert the God Figurine into his body as he wanted to visualize the True Spirit Encyclopedia to train his combat soul. After he thought about it carefully, he knew that he had to stay at the Fallen God Land for more than a month. If he could not level up to immortal-level rank-4, the combat strength of Bai and the rest would remain at immortal-level rank-9. The combat strength of Bloody''s Parasitic Puppet would be restricted as well. The highest level of combat strength they could achieve would only be crimson gold-rank. They had to sell the yellow gold-rank monsters that had been killed. As for the combat strength of Kylie''s Nephilic Judges, they would all be stuck at immortal-level rank-9 as well. The same thing would happen to Lancelot''s sword servants as well. Despite his careful consideration, he decided to level up to immortal-level rank-4. The Fallen God Land would be opened for three months. Although it was a little too soon to upgrade one rank higher in three months, it was still possible. After he made up his mind, he then inserted the Nightmare Dragon''s God Figurine into his fourth Life Wheel. His combat strength immediately upgraded to immortal-level rank-4. As soon as he got to mid-level immortal-level, the combat strength of Bai and the rest had automatically leveled up to the first rank of an imperial-level C black gold-rank. Guided by the inherited memory, in addition to Bloody''s suggestion, the Life Palace of Bai and the rest could soon be formed. Lin Huang did not slack at all. Since he already owned the fourth combat soul, he decided to hide in Kylie''s mini world. He then crushed an Epiphany Card and entered a state of visualization. Eleven days later, the combat soul of the Nightmare Tapir was formed. Its appearance looked like a saber-toothed tiger. However, it had an elephant''s trunk. Its body was surrounded by revolving white clouds. The combat strength of the combat soul was slightly weaker compared to the other three as it was currently on black gold-rank. Lin Huang was not in a hurry. He knew that as Bai and the rest hunt for monsters, spiritual energy would be inserted into his body. It was just a matter of time for the upgrade in the combat soul''s combat strength to happen. As he got out of Kylie''s mini world, it was already late at night on day 11. After communicating with Bloody, Lin Huang then knew that Bai and the rest were guided by Bloody and were now hunting in region No. 4. The ability of Bloody''s army grew again. The number of black gold-rank Parasitic Puppets and crimson gold-rank Parasitic Puppets had increased to 188 and 73 respectively. As for the yellow gold-rank Parasitic Puppets, there were already 10 of them. Although they were still insufficient to kill the white gold-rank monsters, it would not be difficult for them to defeat an ordinary white gold-rank. As for Kylie''s side, almost a third of the Nephilic Judges had leveled up to black gold-rank. The number of triple mutated Nephilic Angels had exceeded 260. About 100 of them had not evolved. Lancelot had an additional sword servant as well. He had 18 slots in total for sword servants and there were two more remaining. Among the 16 sword servants, half of them had leveled up to black gold-rank. The Evil Dominator had three additional yellow gold-rank Golden Cicada Substitutes. Bloody gave it a chance to kill since he could obtain a human substitute just by performing a kill. Bloody could still make use of the dead bodies to create Parasitic Puppets. Bloody had arranged everything in good order and it was unaffected by Lin Huang. "Are there any humans or monsters that majored in sword?" Lin Huang asked. "Among the humans, there are 13 immortal-levels who majored in sword and there are two imperial-levels." "As for the monsters, there are eight immortal-levels. There''s one imperial-level that''s on yellow gold-rank. It has very strong abilities. The Regal Sword Killer, Lancelot, and the Evil Dominator had to team up to be able to kill it." "I noticed that if the Regal Sword Killer happens to kill any monsters or humans that majored in swords, it can completely duplicate its opponent''s inheritance and merge the capabilities with its Sword Dao," Bloody shared what it accidentally discovered. "If that''s the case, I won''t use the Golden Cicada Substitutes that often. Let it duplicate the inheritance." Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. Soon, he smiled and nodded his head in understanding. Although the use of Golden Cicada Substitutes allowed him to obtain the inheritance of a sword major that was killed, not using the Golden Cicada Substitutes would not have much of an impact on him. Bloody then quickly duplicated the Sword Dao inheritance and sent it to Lin Huang. Two days had passed. Bai and the rest had almost cleared everything in region No. 4. Early in the morning on day 14, Lin Huang and his imperial monsters rushed towards region No. 5. By now, three days had passed. All the immortal-level rank-9 and imperial-level monsters in region No. 5 had been wiped out. The imperial monsters then headed towards region No. 6. Lin Huang had been practicing the skills he used in the foggy world every day. There had been a substantial increase in his familiarity with the Twisted Fate Scripture. Besides that, there was an upgrade in the Nightmare Tapir''s combat soul in Lin Huang''s body as well. As Bai and the rest had been hunting for several days, the combat strength of the Nightmare Tapir''s combat soul had advanced to crimson gold-rank. Aside from that, Bloody and Kylie''s troops grew stronger each day. As for Bloody''s side, the number of imperial-level Parasitic Puppets had been constantly increasing. After getting to black gold-rank, Bloody did not have much faith in the immortal-level Parasitic Puppets. The combat strength of Kylie''s Nephilic Judges was improving each day. Nephilic Judges upgraded to Nephilic Angels each day. Just as they were singing in victory, what they did managed to attracte the underworld''s attention. "Who''s messing with us?! We''ve lost six imperial-levels and two yellow gold-ranks in half a month! Including three of them who died previously, there are only three of us who are alive!" Lei Jie, who clad in his black coat, was infuriated. As the leader of the Purple Crow, in order to obtain more resources, he had divided nine of the members into three teams, so there were three members in each team. Other than his team, the members from the other two teams had all died. The Purple Crow had invested a lot to train each of their core members. The Purple Crow would definitely not be able to accept losing nine core members in one single mission. As the team leader, Lei Jie would be severely punished after they had completed the mission. Despite the fact that he was very powerful and was on purple gold-rank, he would not be forgiven. "According to the information I have, they''re not coming after us. Dynasty, Saint, Charm, and the heretics were attacked as well. All the teams were killed. Six out of 12 of the regions taken by the underworld had been attacked. None of us managed to survive it," Zheng Nan shared the information he had. "Do you mean that someone''s trying to fight all the underworld organizations?!" Lei Jie found it unbelievable. "You can say so." Zheng Nan nodded his head. "It sounds like the people from the Union Government and the Hunter Association are trying to kill us with the ruins." Lei Jie narrowed his eyes. "Regardless of who''s the culprit and which organization they''re from, they''re really strong. They''re at least on white gold-rank and there must be more than one person. "Regardless of how strong they are, their abilities are only on par with mine. No demigods are allowed to enter the ruins," Lei Jie scoffed. "Do you know where are they going to attack next?" "I''ve come up with the order in which they''ll launch an attack. They fight according to their overall abilities and will fight from the weakest to the strongest. It shouldn''t be difficult to identify the next region that they''re going to attack," Zheng Nan said without any facial expression. "Old Lei, I suggest not stopping them alone." Right this moment, the one-eyed man said, "If there are two or more purple gold-ranks, we''ll die." "That''s what I was thinking too." Zheng Nan nodded and agreed with him. "If we were to stop them, we better team up with Dynasty and Saint. Since they''re also suffering great losses, I guess they won''t turn us down." "Alright, you shall make the arrangements for that." Lei Jie kept quiet for a while and agreed. "Tell them not to bring their yellow gold-ranks along. It''d be best if there are three or more purple gold-ranks." 890 The Third Solution On the 17th day after Lin Huang had returned to the Fallen God Land, Bloody along with Bai and the rest had already cleared region No. 6. There were more than 200 black gold-rank Parasitic Puppets in Bloody''s troop and the number of crimson gold-rank Parasitic Puppets had increased to 82. It had 15 yellow gold-rank Parasitic Puppets as well. As for Kylie''s side, about half of the Nephilic Judges had leveled up to black gold-rank. The number of triple mutated Nephilic Angels had exceeded 280 as well. They were now getting closer and closer to their target. Lancelot got an additional sword servant and out of the 18 sword servant slots, there was only one last slot remaining. The Evil Dominator obtained two yellow gold-rank Golden Cicada Substitutes while Killer inherited two Sword Dao skills. Although it seemed like there were no changes in Lin Huang''s body, the Nightmare Tapir''s combat soul in his body was becoming stronger each day. Despite being yet to level up to yellow gold-rank, it was improving. His training in the Twisted Fate Scripture remained at the fifth rotation. As for the 16 million points that he required, he had accumulated more than half of them. The Fallen God Land seemed peaceful. In fact, there were many things going on. In the afternoon of day 18, Bloody that was controlling its army of parasites suddenly whispered, "The four organizations, Dynasty, the Purple Crow, Saint, and Charm have done something. It seems like they''re heading to our next destination C region No. 7." "It seems like they''ve discovered our route. They''re here to stop us." Lin Huang did not feel surprised. He knew that they would definitely fight back since he was seizing their territory. "How many of them are there? What''s their combat strength?" "There are only 13 of them. There are four purple gold-ranks and nine white gold-ranks," Bloody told him what he could monitor from afar, "We''re incapable of fighting them. We''ve got two solutions. "The first one is to clear all the monsters in this region and immediately leave. Look for a place to hide. Dynasty and the rest won''t know who attacked them. It''s less likely that they''ll suspect us. "The second solution is to skip region No. 7 and go straight to region No. 8. If they happen to come after us, we can escape to region No. 9. We can hunt while we escape all the way till region No. 12, but we have to quickly kill the monsters there. It''s rather beneficial for us to do so, but at the same time, it''s much riskier." "I''d suggest a third solution then." Lin Huang grinned after listening to what it said. "After clearing region No. 6, we go straight to region No. 7. After killing those who block us, we can attack all the 12 regions without any obstacles. "There are four purple gold-ranks and nine white gold-ranks. Are you sure you''re able to handle them?" Bloody had never seen Lin Huang''s combat souls launch an attack as the God Figurines were only summoned in the dream thus far. "Yes, I''m sure. Don''t worry." Lin Huang patted Bloody''s head. Bloody dodged away from Lin Huang''s palm, raising its head and asking Lin Huang with a serious expression, "I''d like to know the probability of winning the fight." "100%," said Lin Huang as he grinned widely. "Alright, let''s follow your solution then." Bloody then felt relieved. It took them another two days to completely clear region No. 6. Lin Huang then recalled Bai and the rest, keeping only Bloody with him. He rested for the whole night and after taking his breakfast, he summoned Thunder and headed towards region No. 7. Lin Huang arrived at region No. 7 on the 21st day before 9 a.m. At region No. 7, the six imperial-levels who were responsible for looking after the region had left. Only 13 of them were there to stop them. Lin Huang did not try to hide anything and soon, he drew their attention. From the monitoring screen, a young man who was about 20 years old descended from the sky riding on a beast. After recalling the beast, he gradually walked towards them, shocking them. "There''s only one person?!" "It seems like he knows that we''re here to stop him. He came right to us." Through the monitoring screen, they were unable to sense the strength of Lin Huang''s aura. They could vaguely feel that their target was not as weak as they thought. "Have you seen this person before? Why do I feel that he looks somewhat familiar?" Huang Tianqi from Dynasty was staring at the young man in the screen and he frowned. "I find him familiar too." Lei Jie actually found that he seemed to know this man. However, he could not recall where he had seen him before. "If I''m not mistaken, he looks like Lin Xie from the Heaven Alliance" said Zheng Nan who was from the Purple Crow, but he was unsure. The Genius Union was really a very powerful organization. However, regardless of how strong it was, it would only accept holy fire-levels and immortal-levels. All the members who had achieved imperial-level would automatically leave the Genius Union. Compared to organizations like the Union Government and Dynasty, the Genius Union was more like a school. Regardless of how excellent a person was in school, not many of the outsiders would know about this, just like how an imperial-level would not pay much attention to who the strongest among the immortal-levels was. They might have seen it on the news but could not really remember who he was. "Are you sure he''s the one?" Lei Jie''s facial expression was strange after listening to Zheng Nan''s speculation. "I remember that I saw Lin Xie only being on holy fire-level a few months ago." An old man with a white bear who was in a Saint''s robe said confidently, "He''s Lin Xie. His combat strength is already on immortal-level rank-3." His name was Xie Pengshan. He was the leader of the Saints. Being on purple gold-rank, his combat strength was on par with Lei Jie and Huang Tianqi''s. "Lin Xie is the Saint''s hunting target. That''s why we paid close attention to him," Du Long who had a scar on his face explained as he stood behind the old man with the white beard. "So, do you mean that this immortal-level rank-3 has killed all the members at the six footholds? There are hundreds of immortal-level rank-9s and more than 20 imperial-levels. There are five yellow gold-ranks as well!" The leader of Charm, Yu Hong finally exclaimed in disbelief. Everybody remained silent after listening to what he said. It was impossible for the young man to do so. Even if it was Chan Dou who was one of the Five Princes and Huang Wuji who were now on immortal-level rank-9, they would be incapable of killing a yellow gold-rank. They could only fight them face-to-face, let alone an immortal-level rank-3. It would be useless even if they had a God Crasher. An immortal-level rank-3 would be unable to capture the movement of a yellow gold-rank. It was impossible for a God Crasher to hit a yellow gold-rank. "Could he be here purely by accident?" Zheng Nan asked, carefully looking at the rest of them. "I don''t think so. He''s not trying to kill any monsters and he came straight to us." Lei Jie shook his head. "Since that''s not possible, there''s only one remaining possibility." The killing intent from Huang Tianqi suddenly grew. "He''s the one who attacked the foothold!" 891 I Have Assistants! Lin Huang flew to the coordinates Bloody gave him easily. He landed slowly when he saw a building that looked an ancient castle. There was no such complete building left in the Fallen God Land at all. The ancient castle was just a structural-type relic. Most structural-type relics of such a big scale were expensive. Relics of the same quality were just slightly cheaper than a battleship, but its price-performance ratio was lower than a battleship. A battleship was an attack weapon that was similar to a God Crasher. Furthermore, it was mobile. However, apart from having a higher defense compared to a battleship, such a structural-type relic only had the upper hand of being much smaller than a battleship. However, compared to a battleship, such a structural-type relic could not contain large-scale weapons or travel. Its practicality was much lower. In reality, structural-type relics were not entirely redundant. Some of them were more practical. The most practical one would be a battle fortress which was also popular. Such a relic could contain a massive amount of large-scale weapons. Furthermore, it was a mobile relic in the form of a fortress. On a certain level, its practicality was even higher than a battleship in wars. However, its cost was over ten times more expensive than a battleship of the same level. It was rare with less than ten of them in the entire world that people knew of. It was even lesser in quantity than god relics. Naturally, there were still people who would purchase such structural-type relics as it was great for showing off. As soon as it was activated in the wild, everyone would know that you were rich. Just like the ancient castle before Lin Huang''s eyes, it would be in high demand at an auction. It could be easily sold at the price of a demigod relic. To be honest, most people could not afford it. Even demigods would not spend money on such a thing. It was completely useless to Lin Huang who was all about practicality. He would rather dig a cave in the mountain wall. However, his mood boosted when he saw this relic. The reason being he was sure of one thing the people who were coming to stop him were pretty rich! Lin Huang took a careful look at the entire ancient castle as he landed slowly. The ancient castle occupied over 300,000 square meters on the ground. The main building was five floors tall while the walls were 12 meters tall. The round sentinel tower was almost 40 meters tall. Although he could not see what was happening inside the ancient castle, Lin Huang was very sure that the people there were watching him. Indeed, through the window in the ancient castle, Huang Tianqi and the rest were observing Lin Huang who came alone. "His combat strength''s only immortal-level rank-4" The 13 of them sensed Lin Huang''s combat strength clearly and doubt rose in them at the same time. An immortal-level rank-4 person had killed imperial-level yellow gold-ranks? "Whether it was him who killed the people or not, there''s no reason for us not to meet him since he came here on his own." Huang Tianqi grinned. He was the first who got up and leaped out as soon as he opened the window. The other three imperial-level white gold-rank Dynasty members caught up with him without hesitation. The four of them landed on the wall at the entrance of the ancient castle with one of them standing in front. Lin Huang lifted his head and looked above the entrance. He glanced at the three imperial-level white gold-rank members behind Huang Tianqi and eventually fixed his eyes on Huang Tianqi. ''People from Dynasty?'' Lin Huang identified the few people right away. Only people from Dynasty would dress in that poop-yellow color on the streets. Huang Tianqi, who was dressed in golden armor, stood on the wall looking down at Lin Huang who was beneath. He released his imperial-level purple gold-rank aura without holding back towards where Lin Huang was. The three imperial-level white gold-rank members behind him staggered back immediately and leaped to the top of the main building. They were afraid of being impacted by the terrifying aura. Naturally, Lin Huang, at whom the aura was aiming, sensed Huang Tianqi''s show of power. However, an imperial-level''s aura was just child''s play to him since he could withstand the petrifying aura coming from a god like the Nightmare Dragon''s carcass. Huang Tianqi''s suppressing aura was considered powerful among the imperial-level purple gold-ranks. Lin Huang felt it like it was a gentle, soothing breeze coming at him. Huang Tianqi had been observing Lin Huang''s change of expression. However, apart from his clothes fluttering slightly, what he expected to happen never did. He thought Lin Huang would kneel onto the ground and would not be able to get up from his terrifying aura. Under normal circumstances, an ordinary immortal-level rank-4 cultivator would definitely kneel down as soon as he encountered an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse''s aura. He might not be able to stand up from such powerful aura. However, Lin Huang who possessed Holy Power was clearly an exception. The probability of him kneeling was slim even if he were to encounter a virtual-level powerhouse''s aura. Huang Tianqi''s trick was completely useless on him. The remaining people in the ancient castle had a slight change of expression when they witnessed that. Huang Tianqi had already released all of his aura. Even the couple of imperial-level white gold-rank members in the ancient castle were rather suffocated while three imperial-level purple gold-rank members looked grave. However, Lin Huang who was at the center of suppression seemed like nothing was happening to him. "Now, I''m beginning to believe it was him who destroyed our six footholds." Lei Jie from the Purple Crow had his guard up a little as he looked at Lin Huang. "Something''s definitely up with this fella." Xie Pengshan from Saint stared deadly at Lin Huang while narrowing his eyes. Although Yu Hong from Charm said nothing, he was gripping a short dagger in his left hand. It was clear that he was ready to attack anytime now. Lin Huang''s current level of ease was completely impossible for an immortal-level rank-4. In reality, it was impossible for anyone on immortal-level to feel as comfortable as him. It was impossible for even supreme geniuses such as Chan Dou and the Five Princes to be at ease facing Huang Tianqi''s powerful aura. One must know that Chan Dou and Huang Wuji had combat strengths of immortal-level rank-9 while Lin Huang was only on immortal-level rank-4. "Hahaha Lin Xie from the Heaven Alliance, it seems like everyone in the world underestimated you." Huang Tianqi''s intent to kill rippled rapidly all over his body. "I''m flattered," Lin Huang replied calmly with a smile. His tone was light and there was no pressure on him at all. "I wonder which Duke of Dynasty are you?" "Huang Tianqi!" Huang Tianqi announced his name. "Oh, so you''re Duke Qi," Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard the announcement. He had heard some names of the imperial-levels from Chan Dou before entering the Fallen God Land. Huang Tianqi had a combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank, and his ability could easily rank the top three among the over 300 imperial-level powerhouses who entered the Fallen God Land this time. "Lin Xie, since you''ve heard of my name, let''s not beat around the bush." Huang Tianqi recalled his terrifying aura and stared deadly at Lin Huang. "What''s your intention coming here this time?" "Duke Qi, why are you asking this when you already know what my intention is?" Lin Huang could not help but laugh when he heard the question. "Was it you who killed the people in the six footholds?!" Huang Tianqi''s eyes turned icy gradually. He had an affirmative answer to the question despite asking it out loud. "I guess," Lin Huang did not deny it but he added instead, "Although I didn''t do it myself." Lin Huang''s straightforwardness caught them by surprise, but Huang Tianqi and the rest were stunned when they heard what he said later. "What do you mean?" "I mean I have assistants." Lin Huang smirked while the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls'' silhouettes appeared out of thin air. Yu Hong from Charm revealed himself almost at the same time. His severed arm holding the short dagger fell to the ground less than three meters behind Lin Huang. He staggered tens of feet away from Lin Huang rapidly, staring fearfully at the little white cat that landed on Lin Huang''s shoulder. 892 I Killed All of Them Looking at the severed arm that was tumbling onto the ground, Huang Tianqi and the rest gaped in shock at the little white cat on Lin Huang''s shoulder as their pupils shrunk. The single blow alone chopped off Yu Hong''s arm. It proved that the little feline that seemed harmless had the ability of at least an imperial-level purple gold-rank or even higher. Besides the nine imperial-level white gold-rank people, even Huang Tianqi and the other three imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses had fear in their eyes when they stared at the little white cat. Apart from Lin Huang, each and every one of them was a top powerhouse in the underground organizations. They were familiar with Yu Hong from Charm. Appearing only 25 or 26, he was an androgynous young man who ranked No. 10 as a supreme assassin among the imperial-level powerhouses in the entire continent. Even demigod-level powerhouses could only make it to the top 15 in the Assassin Leaderboard. Even the other three imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses present dared not say they would survive his assassination. However, such a top world-ranking assassin not only failed to attack the little white cat, but his arm was also severed. Furthermore, Huang Tianqi and the rest did not see the white cat attacking. Its stealth technique seemed to be more terrifying than Yu Hong who was an assassin. Moreover, its attack speed seemed to be even faster than his. What bothered Huang Tianqi and the rest even more were the other three little monsters that were similar to the white cat. There was a little sapling, a little elephant, and a little leopard with a long snout. They looked like baby monsters that had yet to mature. The white cat performed an ability that almost overcame Yu Hong. How about the rest of the little monsters? "You''re such a hot-head. I told you that I have assistants, but you came at me anyway." Lin Huang turned to tsk at Yu Hong as a smile remained on his face. He had actually summoned the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls when he recalled Thunder but the Ninetails Lynx hid them in the alternate dimension. Nobody could sense them in the alternate dimension, but they could see what happened in the main dimension. That was why the Ninetails Lynx had come out of the alternate dimension the moment Yu Hong performed the sneak attack, resulting in his severed arm. Yu Hong sensed the intent to kill that came out of nowhere, so he recalled his attack and retreated immediately. His response saved his life, but it was a little too late. His arm had been chopped off by the Ninetails Lynx''s sharp claws. "If I''m not mistaken, you must be a Nightingale from Charm, aren''t you?" Lin Huang continued in his chatty tone, "I wonder how should I address you?" Nightingale was the title given to Charm''s imperial-level powerhouses. They were actually similar to the Hunter Association''s elder. "Yu Hong," Yu Hong said his name coldly. His severed arm was healing at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. He was eager to buy himself more time. "Yu Hong That name sounds rather familiar." Lin Huang picked up the severed arm as he spoke. He took the short dagger from the severed limb and put it away into his storage space. He then simply tossed the arm to the ground. He did that smoothly before Yu Hong. There was no shame in his action at all. Yu Hong was so pissed that his face turned livid. The dagger that Lin Huang had taken as his reward was an expert-grade demigod relic that Yu Hong had just bid for at a high price not long ago. It was also one of the two most expensive pieces of equipment that he had with him. It had become Lin Huang''s just like that as if he deserved it. "I can''t recall where I''ve seen this name before. Never mind, I won''t dwell on it." Lin Huang had no intention to humiliate Yu Hong. The Emperor''s Heart Ring that he was using came from an underground organization. He would look at the underground organization''s leaderboards when he was bored. The Assassin Leaderboard was one of them. However, he would usually only remember the top three names on all the leaderboards while the names after that would just seem familiar to him. Yu Hong''s name fell into the latter category. He thought it was familiar, but he could not really pin down which leaderboard on which he saw that name and which ranking he was on. Moreover, some of the organization members that entered the Fallen God Land this time, including Charm, were not very open to the public. Chan Dou had no idea who Charm had sent, so he only mentioned them when he spoke to Lin Huang. He had no idea that Yu Hong was a top world-ranking assassin at all. However, whatever Lin Huang said was treated as an intentional humiliation to him. He was so mad that he was going to explode. "Yu Hong, I can''t believe you''re being underestimated!" Another two silhouettes joined the fray as a voice was heard. The person who spoke had a Purple Crow trench coat on him. His body was heavy-built and he carried a gigantic blade that was over two meters long on his back. The blade was slightly taller than he was. The other person wore the Saint''s white robes. He looked old with a long, white beard that reached his chest, and the way in which he looked at Lin Huang was rather demented. "If I''m not mistaken, the both of you should be Lei Jie of Purple Crow and Saint''s second messenger Xie Pengshan," Lin Huang identified the duo immediately. The gigantic blade on Lei Jie''s back and Xie Pengshan''s white beard were their distinctive features. Moreover, Chan Dou had shown Lin Huang both of their pictures when he briefed him. Yu Hong looked even more terrible now that Lin Huang had identified the duo. Huang Tianqi and the rest were thinking to themselves, ''This fella must be doing this on purpose.'' "Lin Xie, since you recognized me, there''s a suggestion that I''d like you to hear," said Xie Pengshan who was in white robes while wearing a smile. "Do tell," Lin Huang said while raising his brow with a smile. "There are four of us on imperial-level purple gold-rank. The rest of us can fight you as long as we constrain your four summoning beasts for a moment. I admit that you have a stunning talent as an Imperial Censor, but no matter how powerful you are, you shouldn''t have the ability of an imperial-level white gold-rank. Hence, it''s impossible for you to win this battle. "How about this? We''ll forget about everything you''ve done in the past as long as you agree to join the Saint. We can communicate with the other three organizations for you and give the respective compensation to put the rivalry to an end. Apart from that, we''ll also make you our First Holy Son of Division 3 and cultivate you with all our might." Huang Tianqi and the rest were dumbstruck by Xie Pengshan''s suggestion out of nowhere. They were about to fight but he was recruiting openly now? Xie Pengshan''s action made Huang Tianqi and the rest fell into deep thoughts. Lin Xie''s overall ability was indeed stunning. Bringing him back would be much better than killing him directly. He was only on immortal-level rank-4, but his summoning beasts were already so powerful. Would that not mean he would be invincible when he reached imperial-level?! Such a genius might be even more powerful than the Five Princes such as Chan Dou if anyone were to cultivate him Lin Huang finally spoke just when Huang Tianqi and the rest were considering if they should change their strategy. "Firstly, I''d like to correct you. These four little things aren''t summoning beasts. They''re my Combat Souls." Lin Huang knew why Xie Pengshan would think that his Combat Souls were summoning beasts. The reason being that it was impossible for ordinary people to have Combat Souls that were more powerful than the person himself. Huang Tianqi and the rest were stunned to hear that while they stared at the four little monsters with their eyes wide open. The three imperial-level yellow gold-rank and one imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters were all Combat Souls?! Are you not only on immortal-level rank-4?! "Secondly, I''m afraid the Saints won''t be able to put the conflict I have with Dynasty and Charm to an end." Everyone could not help but listen attentively when he said that. Was there some deadly grudge?! Were his parents killed by people from Dynasty and Charm? Or was it his siblings? Or was it his girlfriend that he had known since he was a child? "I bumped into Dynasty''s Seventh Prince and Charm''s entire squad when I was in the foggy world." Lin Huang smirked slightly. "I killed all of them." 893 Even the Imperial-level Purple Gold-rank Surrendered To Dynasty, every Prince was the top Duke candidates. As soon as they elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank, they would be the top powerhouse among imperial-level powerhouses and become the person who held the most power in the entire Dynasty. Huang Tianqi, for one, was elevated from a Prince. Apart from a few demigods, his ability ranked No. 2 in Dynasty''s Division 3 branch. The death of a Prince would be treated as a serious event the same level of the death of an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. Not only did that mean Dynasty had lost a potential top imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse, but it was also a humiliation to them too. Whoever killed Dynasty''s Prince would mean that he created a rivalry with the entire Dynasty. Even if it was a demigod-level powerhouse who did it, Dynasty would come after him with no mercy. Throughout the hundreds of years, Bai Qi from the Union Government was the only person who had killed a Dynasty''s Prince and managed to live peacefully. It was not that Dynasty did not attack Bai Qi, but two demigods had died while three demigods were severely wounded as a result of the two fights. They had to give up eventually. Lin Huang killing Dynasty''s Seventh Prince would mean that he had planted an irreversible, deadly rivalry with Dynasty. Such a grudge could not be solved by compensation. To Dynasty, repaying with blood was the only solution. Xie Pengshan of Saint forced a smile helplessly while shaking his head upon hearing Lin Huang''s situation. The conflict he had with Dynasty alone made him give up recruiting Lin Huang entirely because taking him in would mean declaring war with Dynasty. Although Saint was also a top underground organization, it was slightly behind Dynasty. It was not worth declaring war with Dynasty just for a Holy Son. Killing the entire Charm''s immortal-level squad would mean making enemies with Charm too. Taking Lin Huang in would get himself into a rivalry with two major organizations, and Xie Pengshan knew how much of a loss that would be. One must know that Charm''s Division 3 branch had sent a third of their immortal-level geniuses for the search in the Fallen God Land this time. The entire squad dying in Lin Huang''s hands was equivalent to a third of Charm''s future pillar of support being killed in the cradle. Such animosity was nothing less than Dynasty having their Prince killed. Yu Hong''s intent to kill was rising rapidly as he looked at Lin Huang. He was not mad about Charm''s loss. He was mad because his daughter was Charm''s immortal-level squad leader this time. More than 20 days ago, he found out that his daughter had been killed in the foggy world. He had been depressed for the past few days because he had no idea who the murderer was and unable to avenge her. Never had he thought that the murderer would appear before him right now and admit his own doing. Yu Hong had not said anything no matter how Lin Huang had humiliated him earlier. Now that he found out that Lin Huang was the one who killed his daughter, he could no longer hold his fury back and shouted out loudly, "Lin Xie, you killed my daughter. I''ll kill you today!" "Your daughter?" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. He then recalled the day when he had annihilated Charm''s squad. The lady said her father was an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse who was also in the Fallen God Land and would definitely avenge her. Never had he thought he would really bump into the lady''s father that day. "Are you talking about the leading lady? She did say that her dad is an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse." Yu Hong stared deadly at Lin Huang. What he had just said confirmed the fact that Lin Huang truly did annihilate the entire Charm''s squad. If looks could kill, he would have murdered Lin Huang tens of millions of times by now. Meanwhile, the rest who were listening to their conversation that involved the grudge had different expressions of their own. Xie Pengshan noticed that Huang Tianqi was looking at him. He knew it was time for him to speak now. "Since there''s such a conflict, we the Saints organization, will not interfere. We''ll give up recruiting Lin Xie." The four underground organizations stood on the same side once again as soon as the Saint made that statement. The rest of them gave up on the thought of recruiting completely. The Purple Crow and Saint were mainly fearful of Dynasty and had no intention to be rivals with Dynasty. Charm, on the other hand, held a grudge with Lin Huang. As the leader, Yu Hong treated Lin Huang as his eternal foe, so it was impossible for Charm to recruit him at all. Meanwhile, for Dynasty, no matter how powerful Lin Huang''s talent was, the rules were the rules. One would have to pay the price with their life if they killed a Holy Son, so it was impossible to recruit the murderer into the organization. If such a thing happened, there would be many geniuses who would come after Dynasty''s Princes just because they had stunning talent and potential. If that happened, would there be any dignity left for Dynasty? Since the four major underground organizations had shown where they stood, the situation was self-explanatory. Noticing that Yu Hong''s arm had yet to recover, Huang Tianqi did not plan to wait any further. He began to move after speaking to everyone though voice transmission. The four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses moved quickly, going after the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls each. Huang Tianqi went after the Ninetails Lynx that attacked earlier while the Purple Crow''s Lei Jie and Saint''s Xie Pengshan went after the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Divine Sun Tree respectively. Meanwhile, Yu Hong, who had yet to recover, charged at the Nightmare Tapir that had the lowest combat strength. Whether they were hiding or not, the remaining imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses stared at Lin Huang. They were waiting to attack once the four Combat Souls scattered. However, the Nightmare Tapir which body was only around two meters long lifted its long snout and trumpeted out of nowhere. A circle of invisible sound wave rippled like waves. Its speed was hundreds of times faster than the regular speed of sound. It rippled through everyone instantly. Huang Tianqi and the other three imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses stopped moving while the other nine imperial-level white gold-ranks fell from the sky to the ground directly. Nobody knew if any of them survived the impact. Disdain flashed through the Ninetails Lynx''s eyes. Just when it was ready to seize the opportunity to kill them, Lin Huang spoke through voice transmission, "Don''t kill them. The Evil Dominator won''t get the substitutes if you kill them. Just drain their Life Power." The Ninetails Lynx was a little reluctant but obeyed anyway. Its body turned into a white ray of light as it dashed forward. In the next second, Huang Tianqi and the other three of them had their limbs severed. They turned into stick figures with no limbs. In intense pain, Huang Tianqi and the other three finally came out of the dreamland the Nightmare Tapir had created. The four of them noticed what happened to their bodies as soon as they woke up, and they looked around frantically. Although they would not be considered as having lost all of their battle techniques without their limbs, they still lost most of their abilities. All they could do was to use their Life Power to recover as fast as they could. Soon, they noticed the imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses who had fallen to the ground. They had no idea if they were still alive or not. They then looked at Lin Huang and the little monsters in fear. The four Combat Souls were amazingly powerful! In reality, Lancelot and the rest that were on pseudo-mythical-level could fight imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses with their imperial-level black gold-rank combat strength. According to Lin Huang''s speculation, a real mythical-level Monster Card would have an ability that surpassed pseudo-mythical-level on which Lancelot and the rest were by heaps. It should not be difficult for imperial-level black gold-ranks to fight imperial-level purple gold-ranks. Lin Huang''s four Combat Souls were at least on par with supreme god-level Monster Cards at the moment. It would be nothing for imperial-level black gold-ranks to defeat imperial-level purple gold-ranks, let alone if their combat strength that was on imperial-level crimson gold-rank and imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Even though Huang Tianqi and the rest were the best of the best among all the imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses, they were still a distance away from the Ninetails Lynx which ability was close to demigod-level. Lin Huang thought the one-sided battle was expected. One must know that Ninetails Lynx and the rest could kill imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses like they were cutting vegetables in dreamland. Lin Huang was not fond of playing around with his opponents. However, both imperial-level purple gold-rank and imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses surpassed Bloody''s Leech Pods'' abilities. Making them the Evil Dominator''s substitutes by draining their Life Power would be the optimum choice of seizing the resources. He had even thought of the way to handle the bodies. Each and every one of them here was worth an extremely high reward at the Union Government whereby they could be sold at a price ten or even hundreds of times higher than monster carcasses of the same combat strength. Combined, their bodies should be able to redeem a god relic. It was none of Lin Huang''s business what the Union Government would do with those bodies. 894 That Doesn’t Make Sense! A few breaths had passed. Huang Tianqi and the other three had regenerated their severed limbs. However, before they could do anything, a white ray of light flashed through the sky while blood sprayed everywhere. Huang Tianqi and the rest felt agony coming from their limbs again. They turned to look and realized that the limbs that they had just regenerated were detached from their bodies again. The four of them were dumbstruck. How were they supposed to fight?! The Ninetails Lynx''s speed was incredibly fast. It was so fast that it surpassed their ability to capture its movement. Their limbs would be severed whenever they saw the white afterimage flashed by; there was no time for them to react at all. "Don''t panic. Summon the Combat Souls to block the attack when our limbs regenerate, then activate the Life Palace ability to show our trump cards right away," Huang Tianqi spoke to them through voice transmission, "Time''s critical now. We''ll really die here if we hide our abilities!" Although they were unwilling to show their trump cards, Lei Jie and the other two agreed to Huang Tianqi''s suggestion. They had no other choice anyway since they really might die if they did not fight with all their might. A few breaths passed quickly, and their limbs regenerated once again. Just when Ninetails Lynx was ready to attack, the four of them summoned all of their Combat Souls at the same time. 36 Combat Souls with the combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank appeared almost at the same time. The Combat Souls of different forms were just as majestic as the four of them. At the same time, the four of them summoned their Life Palaces. Four gigantic Life Palaces hovered above Huang Tianqi and the other three''s heads, looking very spectacular. "Wow, you guys are going all out!" Lin Huang smirked. At that moment, the Divine Sun Tree extended tens of its branches like spiritual serpents that came alive. Its attack was terrifyingly quick. It was almost on par with the Ninetails Lynx. Before Huang Tianqi and the other three managed to react, they watched their Combat Souls being pierced through their bodies by branches. They looked like Szechuan skewers. The pierced Combat Souls were like balloons that were poked, deflating rapidly and becoming nutrient for the Divine Sun Tree. Adult Divine Sun Trees could even swallow stars and black holes, so a baby Divine Sun Tree was not to be underestimated at all. The Combat Souls were like a refreshing drink in the summer. It drank them all after a few sips with a straw. Have you tried putting 36 straws into 36 bottles of chilled Coke and drank them at the same time during a hot summer? It was amazing! The 36 Combat Souls were all killed in less than a second after they revealed themselves. Huang Tianqi and the other three were stunned just looking at them. All of the Combat Souls had been killed before they could grow their palms and feet! Could they not hold on for two more seconds?! Oh no, there was no way they should hold it back any longer! They had to go all out! Huang Tianqi signaled the rest and he began to activate his Life Palace''s ability. He dared not delay the process until his limbs were done regenerating. However, disdain flashed through the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s eyes. It lifted one of its massive front feet and stomped in the air. Bang! An unusual explosion that sounded like a muffled thunder erupted. In the next second, a circle of invisible energy wave spread out. It rippled through the Life Palaces above Huang Tianqi and the rest''s heads. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The four explosions came almost at the same time. Huang Tianqi and the other three spat blood out and they looked above their heads in terror. The four Life Palaces were directly blasted and skyscrapers and collapsed rapidly. They then disintegrated completely and turned into broken pieces. They were left with a bare palm-sized Life Base which turned into a ferocious gleam that withdrew back into their bodies immediately. The four Life Palaces were pretty much completely destroyed. Although their Life Base was still there, it would take a long time to rebuild the Life Palace. It required a massive amount of energy too. Their Life Palaces were destroyed before they managed to activate their Life Power abilities. The four of them felt so screwed at that moment. They initially thought that the little white cat was the most powerful among Lin Huang''s four Combat Souls. However, it seemed like the other three had almost the same standard as the cat. The little white cat alone had fought four of them on its own without any pressure and Lin Xie had three more of such Combat Souls. What was an immortal-level rank-4 doing with four such powerful Combat Souls?! He only had immortal-level rank-4 combat strength, but his Combat Soul was on imperial-level yellow gold-rank. That did not make sense! His Combat Soul only had imperial-level yellow gold-rank combat strength, but it could fight imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. Moreover, it was one versus four. It simply did not make sense at all! Where did he buy such a plug-in? I would love to have one too! Huang Tianqi and the other three wanted to cry. "The attack the four of you attempted wasn''t too shabby," Lin Huang commented while chuckling as though he was a kind mentor on a variety show, "Keep it up. I have faith in you guys." "A gentleman would rather die than be humiliated!" Yu Hong flushed and shrieked, "Lin Xie, if you''re a man" Shrrrrrr A shredding sound came when Yu Hong was halfway speaking. His limbs were severed again. Huang Tianqi and the other two experienced the same thing too. Their limbs were chopped off from their bodies. They did not notice that their palms and feet were regenerating at all. The four of them were speechless as they watched their limbs falling onto the ground, having freshly regenerated from their bodies. They were puzzled why Lin Huang did not just kill them since he totally had the ability to. Instead, he kept chopping off their limbs again and again. Could this fella be a masochist?! If chopping limbs off and making people into sticks was just an appetizer to him, what would he do to the rest of them after Huang Tianqi? The four of them had goosebumps just thinking about that. Naturally, Lin Huang had no idea what the four of them were thinking about. He extended four telekinetic threads and took the Emperor''s Heart Rings from their severed arms before them. He then put the rings away into his storage space. The four of them were enraged watching that, but they could do nothing to stop him. All they could do was stare at him fiercely. Lin Huang peeped at the four of them and glanced away like he did not care. He then extended nine telekinetic threads to the nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses who fell onto the ground. After taking the nine of their Emperor''s Heart Rings away, Lin Huang browsed through their bodies and put the items away into his storage space. Naturally, the nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses were still alive. It was not that the Nightmare Tapir could not kill them, but Lin Huang got it to spare their lives. After all, imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses were great substitutes for the Evil Dominator who was only on imperial-level black gold-rank. The Nightmare Tapir created a massive amount of monster hordes in the dreamland while the nine of them fought the monsters over and over again. They had no idea that they had been dragged into the dreamland. The Nightmare Tapir''s dreamland ability was more powerful than the Nightmare Dragon''s. In its dreamland, it was impossible for one to turn the table around just like Lin Huang had done to the Nightmare Dragon. The draining of their Life Power was reflected perfectly in reality. The nine of them experienced a rapid drop in Life Power in their bodies. "These nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses will drain their Life Power soon." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. He then looked at the four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses'' direction. "But looking at these few fellas'' progress, it seems like it''ll take a while to drain their Life Power" 895 Volleyball Game Huang Tianqi and the other three imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses used their Life Power mainly on the demigod armor relic''s defense and the regeneration of their limbs. Naturally, the defense of the demigod armor relic was difficult for the Ninetails Lynx to cut through. However, it sliced at the gap between the joints of the armor the first time. The surfaces that were out of the coverage of the armor depended on the defense layer that extended from the armor. It would be very difficult for a person who had the same combat strength as Huang Tianqi and the rest to break through their defenses. However, such a defense layer was nothing too difficult for the Ninetails Lynx which had the ability to suppress them. The four of them had their armors detached from their bodies for the first time after their limbs were severed. They were only left with the armor on their upper bodies and helmets. Their overall defenses dropped by more than 70% compared to the time they donned their full armor. Now, the difficulty for the Ninetails Lynx to severe them was much lower. However, the draining of Life Power from the continuous regeneration of their limbs was still insignificant to Lin Huang. "The regeneration of their limbs is too slow, causing their attack frequency to be low." Lin Huang had an idea all of a sudden after thinking to himself as he stared at the four of them. He spoke to his four God Figurines'' Combat Souls including the Ninetails Lynx while grinning. For some reason, the Nightmare Tapir had sympathy in its eyes as it looked at the four of them after hearing Lin Huang''s voice transmission. This time, the Ninetails Lynx moved suddenly without waiting for the four of them to regenerate their limbs. It turned into a white figure as it raced out while its white cat claw was imprinted brutally on the demigod armor relic that Huang Tianqi wore. He felt an intense tremor that came from his chest. He had no idea how many bones were crushed while his heart almost burst. He could no longer control his body as he shot out like a cannonball. Right at that moment, the shadow of a whip came from the air and struck hard on Huang Tianqi''s back. He spat a mouthful of blood out as a result of the attack and his flight route changed without resistance. He had no idea how wounded his back was at the moment. Just when he was shot less than three seconds away, the Destructive Divine Mammoth whipped its trunk and smacked the side of Huang Tianqi''s body hard. He could clearly sense that his left waist had been crushed. Before he could whine about his waist, his body was shot out once again. A moment later, a cat claw came flying in the air again and imprinted on the right side of his body with a terrifying force. His right waist was crushed at that moment. Lei Jie and the other two were dumbstruck while watching the three bullies messing with him like he was a volleyball. Huang Tianqi had no time to heal himself as the three Combat Souls were attacking him one after another. The Life Power in his body was absorbed insanely by the demigod armor relic almost every second to keep up with the defense. Huang Tianqi knew very well that if not for the demigod armor relic that had absorbed most of the impact, he would have died many times by now. However, Huang Tianqi only managed to hold on for less than three minutes as he faced the attacks coming from the Ninetails Lynx and the rest that were assaulting him almost without reserve. His Life Power was completely drained. Since the demigod armor relic had no more Life Power to charge it, it retreated back into his body automatically. Watching a whip shadow darting in the air at him, Huang Tianqi closed his eyes helplessly. He accepted his fate of death was the price of his defeat. However, he felt a rope-like thing rolling around his waist and releasing him in the air. When he opened his eyes, he was lying less than ten meters away from Lin Huang. He also saw a long-snouted leopard on Lin Huang''s right staring at him. It seemed to be waiting to see if he would have any more trump cards with him. He forced a smile helplessly. There was no Life Power left in his body and he did not even have the energy to heal his organs, let alone regenerate his limbs to fight. He laid on the ground like a piece of salted fish. He looked at the sky above him. Suddenly, he realized that it had been years since he had felt so relaxed like he was at that moment. Lin Huang glanced at Huang Tianqi and spoke to the Nightmare Tapir through voice transmission. The Nightmare Tapir gazed at Huang Tianqi, his pupils turning black all of a sudden. In the next heartbeat, Huang Tianqi fell into a deep slumber. After handling Huang Tianqi, the Ninetails Lynx, the Destructive Divine Mammoth, and the Divine Sun Tree headed to Lei Jie and the other two. They were in a frantic and their faces had turned pale. They knew what kind of torture they would be experiencing without even having to think about it. The three out them shot out like cannonballs as they shrieked devastatingly. Meanwhile, the Ninetails Lynx and the other two monsters turned into three rays as they chased after them. In less than five minutes, the three wounded, limbless human sticks were sent to Lin Huang. The demigod relics on their bodies were nowhere to be seen. Lei Jie and Xie Pengshan had lost all of their hopes. Despair showed on their faces. Yu Hong, on the other hand, was staring deadly at Lin Huang while rage was written all over his face. However, he could not speak due to his broken voice box. Lin Huang put them into a line using telekinesis, devoid of any expression on his face. He then summoned the Evil Dominator and Killer. "Apart from sword cultivators that belong to Killer, the rest will be yours, Evil Dominator." Killer took a step forward without hesitation and chopped Lei Jie''s head off. The Evil Dominator was grinning as he did as Killer did, chopping the heads of Huang Tianqi and the other two off. The demigod relics in the four''s bodies came out automatically as soon as they were dead. Lin Huang used telekinesis thread to pick up the four heads and demigod relics, then put them away in his storage space. He turned and walked to the pile of severed limbs of Huang Tianqi and the rest. He used telekinesis thread to put the demigod armor relics'' parts away. After handling the four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses, the nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses who were stuck in the dreamland should have their Life Power drained very soon. Lin Huang and the monsters only waited for two to three minutes before the nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses'' demigod relics withdrew back into their bodies. The Evil Dominator attacked without thinking twice and killed seven of them in a row. Killer swung his sword immediately and chopped off two sword cultivators'' heads. He then walked to Lin Huang and shared the three sword cultivators'' inheritance with him. Lin Huang closed his eyes and then nodded to Killer slightly after digesting the inheritance. As he recalled the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls, Lin Huang used telekinesis thread to put the nine powerhouses'' heads and the demigod relics that came out of them away. After he was done with all that, Lin Huang browsed through the 13 headless bodies. He then summoned Lancelot, Kylie and the rest after making sure that he had not missed out any valuable items. "We''ve taken down region No. 7. Let''s proceed with the hunting." The 14 Monster Cards scattered as Lin Huang ordered, beginning a new round of hunting under Bloody''s guidance. Tens of thousands of kilometers away, the imperial-level powerhouses who were in charge of region No. 7 were waiting for good news from their organization''s seniors anxiously. They were eager to return to region No. 7 to begin hunting again. However, nobody heard any news after a day had passed. On the second morning, someone from Dynasty finally could not take it any longer. He took the initiative to contact Huang Tianqi, but the communication device used by Dynasty''s internal team could not be connected from morning until afternoon. The person began to realize that something was off. The Saints began to suspect something was wrong too. On the third day, the people from Dynasty and the Saints basically confirmed that Huang Tianqi, Xie Pengshan, and the other imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses were dead. On the fourth morning, a Dynasty imperial-level yellow gold-rank who was an expert in stealth technique went to region No. 7 secretly. He wanted to know exactly what had happened. Soon, he saw the headless bodies scattered all over a battlefield that was turned into ruins. He did not dare to go any nearer, but he could identify who they were from the torn clothes on their bodies. His scalp turned numb and he had weak knees when he saw the limbless bodies. He summoned a Dimensional Portal immediately and crawled into it. What he had no idea about was that Lin Huang had brought his summoning beasts team to region No. 8 an hour before he came checking on the powerhouses. The news of the underground organizations'' four imperial-level purple gold-rank and nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses being killed spread through the entire Fallen God Land that very noon. All the organizations that entered the Fallen God Land were shocked to hear the news! 896 Killing Spree Mode In the central region of the Fallen God Land, the Union Government, the Hunter Association and Adventurer Paradise had gathered their high management around. The eight of them present were imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. There were four of them who were dressed in the Union Government''s military uniform and donned military cloaks on their backs while the other four were dressed rather casually. A hunk with messy hair and an unshaven mustache, carrying a big golden bow who was dressed in a military uniform asked, "Is the news confirmed? Are Huang Tianqi and the rest really dead?" He was Tu Yu of the Hunter Association and the leader for the mission this time. He was also the top person below demigod level in the association. His ability easily ranked No. 1 among all of the imperial-level powerhouses who had entered the Fallen God Land this round. He was more powerful than the four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses from the Union Government. "We had our spies confirm that Huang Tianqi from Dynasty, Lei Jie from the Purple Crow, Xie Pengshan from the Saints and Yu Hong from Charm are all dead. Apart from the four of them, there were nine imperial-level white gold-rank bodies at the scene too," added Wei Xia who was dressed in military uniform in all seriousness. "Old Wei, it really wasn''t you guys who did it?" Leader Chang Ling from Adventurer Paradise could not help but ask. "If we did it, do you think the four of us could stand here speaking to all of you unwounded?" Wei Xia frowned slightly. "Huang Tianqi''s ability was no lesser than mine. We might not even be able to kill him if the four of us imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses were to fight him together, let alone having Lei Jie and the other three fighting on Huang Tianqi''s side. "Moreover, the three organizations had nine imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses with them. That''s only one imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouse lesser than us. It would be a bloodbath even if we could defeat them. At least half of our team would be killed. It''s impossible for us to kill them all." "Huang Tianqi was really powerful. It would''ve been difficult even for me to kill him." Tu Yu nodded in agreement hearing that. "Judging by the team that they assembled, we might be able to kill them all if we combined three organizations together but it''s difficult to defeat them without any injuries." "There''re no other bodies at the scene. Could the assailant put his comrades'' bodies away?" Chang Ling asked again. "That''s possible." Wei Xie nodded. "But even if his comrades died, the team must have a terrifying overall ability to kill Huang Tianqi''s team. We might all be killed if any of us were to encounter them." "Did you investigate why did Huang Tianqi''s team appear in that area?" Tu Yu asked again. "According to insider news, throughout the 20 days or so, the regions terrorized by underground organizations had been attacked by an unknown organization. The unknown organization would kill all the underground organization''s residents every region they attacked and they annihilated all the immortal-level rank-9 and imperial-level monsters." "The Purple Crow estimated the unknown organization''s route after confirming the news and invited Huang Tianqi and the rest to collaborate with them. Never did they think that this would happen. Huang Tianqi and the rest were all killed by the bunch of fighters." "Is the unknown organization attacking the 12 regions terrorized by the underground organization?" Tu Yu asked again. "Yes," Wei Xia confirmed, "According to the news that we heard this morning, the unknown organization''s already attacking region No. 8 yesterday. Looking at their hunting speed, they''ll proceed to region No. 9, at the earliest, on the day after tomorrow." "Judging from their progress, they''ll need around 14 days to clear all 12 regions. It''s 16 days to the day that the Fallen God Land''s closes." Tu Yu frowned as he spoke to this point. "They might attack the region we are in for the remaining two days." All of them turned pale when they heard that. The overall ability of the three organizations including the Union Government, the Hunter Association and Adventurer Paradise was much more powerful than Dynasty and the other two underground organizations. However, none of them here dared to say they had the confidence to defeat the unknown organization that had killed Dynasty, the Saints and the rest. "But there are regions that we occupy around the 12 regions which the underground organization have terrorized. They didn''t attack the regions in which our people reside. Maybe they bear no ill intentions toward us?" Chang Ling could not help but voice his speculation. "Until now, we have yet to identify who this unknown organization is, so we can''t be reckless," Wei Xia agreed with Tu Yu''s point that they must always have their guard up before identifying who the person was. "Why not we send someone to try to talk to them?" As an adventurer, Chang Ling was always curious about the unknown. Everyone rolled their eyes at him. The death rate of the members in Adventurer Paradise had always been higher than most organizations. The reason being that they were always asking for death. "Fine, we won''t talk to them. Why are you guys staring at me like that?" Chang Ling mumbled softly with his head stooped down. The people ignored his mumbling and proceeded to discuss the ways to tackle the potential crisis. "To prevent unnecessary casualties of our members, I suggest that we bring some of our members back respectively, especially in those regions that are close to the underground organization''s territory. We might as well just vacate the regions. We will then gather people with high combat strength to the central region to prevent the unknown organization from attacking," Tu Yu voiced his idea. "I agree with Boss Tu''s suggestion. Although we will lose part of our resources, keeping our members safe is our priority. Considering it as a whole, such a strategy could minimize our loss," Wei Xie stated his opinion. The people looked at Chang Ling subsequently. "Why are you guys looking at me? I didn''t say that I object to the idea." Chang Ling had disdain written all over his face. Noticing that Tu Yu and Wei Xia were still staring at him, he nodded helplessly. "Fine, I agree." "Old Zhang, please watch him. Don''t let him do something stupid." Wei Xia glanced at Chang Ling and shifted his focus onto the old, plump man next to him. The old man smirked. "I know that. Don''t worry about it, Boss Wei." "Old Zhang, you really are the spy from the Union Government targeting us Adventurer Paradise!" Chang Ling turned and glared at the old man madly. "Heh!" Old Zhang responded to Chang Ling with his expressionless face. Tens and thousands of kilometers away, Lin Huang found out about the gathering of high management from the union organizations, but he had no idea what they were talking about at all. Throughout the next few days, the union organizations got their members who were close to region No. 8 to leave immediately, followed by region No. 9, region No. 10 all the way to region No.12. From their reaction, Lin Huang guessed what the union organization''s meeting was about roughly. Their vacating the regions should be the result of their fear after Lin Huang defeated the underground organizations. The union organization was afraid that he might fight their members, so they chose to leave without being asked. Naturally, Lin Huang was elated that his area of hunting was wider now. Initially, he decided to hunt the 12 regions terrorized by underground organizations before the Fallen God Land closed. Hence, he had been holding his hunting speed back whereby he was in a relaxed mode. However, now that the union organization had left him with more space, he would take them all for himself naturally. Lin Huang got Bloody''s parasitic army and the Warlord''s mechanical army to join the battlefield. They boosted Bai and the rest''s hunting rhythm and activated their killing spree mode. 897 The First Mythical-level Monster Card! Every summoning beast went all out on the battlefield. Bloody separated its parasitic army into two groups. The team consisting of thousands of triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters were responsible for killing immortal-level rank-9 monsters while the team with monsters above imperial-level would be responsible for killing imperial-level black gold-rank to yellow gold-rank monsters. The Evil Dominator used an imperial-level purple gold-rank substitute right away which was Yu Hong''s body expert in assassinating. Lin Huang even handed the expert-grade demigod short dagger relic that Yu Hong usually used to the Evil Dominator. With the demigod relic, he could kill one monster in every attack, even when he encountered imperial-level white gold-rank monsters. Lin Huang did not get the Evil Dominator to fight even though they encountered imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters a few times. Instead, he summoned the God Figurines'' Combat Souls to put it to an end as fast as they could. Meanwhile, Lancelot and Killer had been practicing their skills with imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters earlier. To boost their killing efficiency, both of them were only attacking imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters now. Bai and the rest had been practicing killing monsters which ranks were higher. Instead of fighting imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters, they were fighting imperial-level black gold-rank monsters now. They had a unique bloodline in their body, so fighting monsters of the same combat strength was child''s play to them. The Warlord''s mechanical army, on the other hand, did not challenge themselves by killing monsters of a higher rank. Just like Bai and the rest, they were only killing monsters of the same rank, causing them to have terrifying efficiency. After all, they had many opportunities to practice, but such an opportunity to kill was rare. Among all of the teams, Kylie''s team was the only one that had the same responsibility. All they did was clear the triple mutated monsters with dark attributes. Her Nephilic Judge army would have Nephilic Judges evolving into triple mutated Nephilic Angels everyday. She was closer to evolving to become quadruple mutated. The monster army that given their all experienced a few folds'' boost in their killing speed. After clearing region No. 8, Lin Huang and his army took a day and a half to clear the areas the two union organizations had left for them. They then headed straight to region No. 9. Before arriving at region No. 9, Lin Huang had heard from Bloody that the Union Government was not the only one that had carried out the retreat strategy. The underground organizations had also decided to vacate the remaining few joint regions as well. After all, the remaining high management had a similar combat strength with the 13 powerhouses that Lin Huang had killed earlier. Furthermore, the high management''s ability was even slightly weaker than the 13 of them. Instead of coming after Lin Huang for revenge, they were worried that he would come after them. Lin Huang thought that it was a waste for the underground organizations retreated at their own will. After all, the effort to kill the underground organization members was minor. Moreover, the killing could boost the number of Bloody''s puppet army and he could obtain more Sword Dao inheritance when he encountered sword cultivators occasionally. However, Lin Huang expected such a decision to come from the underground organizations. It only took Lin Huang and his army three days to clear region No. 9 as well as the three joint areas around it. They then headed to region No. 10 It was the 31st day since Lin Huang returned to the Fallen God Land which was the 81st day since the opening of the Fallen God Land. When Lin Huang''s summoning beast army was almost done clearing region No. 10, the very last Nephilic Judge in Kylie''s Nephilic Judge army finally completed the triple mutation and elevated to Nephilic Angel. As soon as the 368-strong imperial-level black gold-rank Nephilic Angel army was formed, they vanished from where they were together with Kylie. Lin Huang could sense that Kylie had returned to her mini world. He could not go into the mini world without Kylie''s invitation, so all he could do was wait for Kylie''s evolution to be completed patiently. The summoning beast army did not stop fighting just because of Kylie''s departure. They proceeded to fight and their killing efficiency was barely affected. After spending three days to clear region No. 10 and the areas around it, Lin Huang headed straight to region No. 11 and region No. 12 with his Monster Cards. This time, Kylie''s evolution went on for seven days. She had just completed the evolution when Lin Huang and the rest began their killing spree in region No. 12. Just when Lin Huang sensed the change of the card in his body, Kylie walked out of her mini world. There was a thin golden mask covering her face. It hid her entire face and her white pupils were the only thing showing. Her purplish-gold fauld covered her from her upper body all the way down while the metal fauld on her lower body covered her knees, but the black hemline extended all the way to her ankles. It seemed like even the hemline came with defensive power. The 36 pairs of black wings on her back were releasing a terrifying aura. They were clearly weapons to attack. Another thing that had gone through changes would be the spear in her hand. It looked much lighter than before and was only approximately two meters long. It was dark purple in color with sigils all over it. There were faint purplish-gold lightning bolts sparkling around it. Lin Huang could not figure out Kylie''s aura. He could not even determine exactly what her combat strength was. The 368 Nephilic Angels behind her had a change in terms of looks too. They were initially Nephilic Angels in silver armor, and now their armor was black. They looked similar to Kylie''s previous appearance and their aura was different from before. Kylie let Lin Huang take a good look at them before speaking. Her voice came through her mask. "Initially, I wanted to get my Nephilic Angel army to stay so that they could fight for you when I went into deep sleep. But they''ve become part of me now and they can''t be separated from me" "Don''t worry about it. I should elevate to imperial-level soon. By then, the summoning authority for mythical-level monster will be activated automatically," Lin Huang assured, "I''m worried about you. You''ve been working hard these days. It''s advisable to rest." Kylie nodded and said nothing else. The 368 Nephilic Angels behind her turned into black rays and penetrated into Kylie''s body one after another. Kylie''s body disintegrated automatically and turned into an orange card that lay on Lin Huang''s palm. "Monster Card "Rarity: Mythical "Monster Name: Darkness Judge Master (Lightning Attribute) "Type of Monster: God''s Blood (Pure Blood)/ Nephilic Judge Tribe) "Nickname: Judge "Combat Level: Imperial-level Black Gold-rank / Virtual God (Immature) "Major: Spear Dao, Lightning Element "Major Skills: Spearheart, Absolute Judgement, Darkness Purification, Cursed Lightning, Godslayer Army, Holy Power "Minor Skills: Seraphic Wings, Seraphic Speed, Elemental Transformation "Summon Authority: Denied (to be activated when you reach imperial-level) "Card Remarks: You finally have a Monster Card that you can show off." Ignoring Xiao Hei''s card remark, Lin Huang stared at Kylie''s skill slot for a long time. Due to the insane amount of monster crystal cores they had obtained in the foggy world, Lin Huang got Bai and the rest to absorb the crystal cores respectively, increasing their skill slots. At the moment, Kylie had more than 300 skills in her skill slots. Lin Huang was dizzy just looking at them. He just scanned through them and gave up the thought of looking at the detailed information of each skill. He then noticed the change in Kylie''s nickname and monster type, so he could not help but asked, "Xiao Hei, didn''t Kylie awaken the Dark Angel''s bloodline before? Why is she a God''s Blood now? And what''s with the Nephilic Judge Tribe at the back?" "It''s not I who decided to make her a God''s Blood. There are some changes in her bloodline, so I''m not sure what the exact reason is. Usually, there wouldn''t be such a change in bloodline for elevation. Perhaps, something unusual happened during the course of elevation. "About the tribe at the back, it refers to a race that has successfully created a tribe in the universe. Kylie''s type shows that such a circumstance explains that her bloodline came from a formidable species. Only a Pure Blood would have their tribe on the card. The reason being that in the universe, only Pure Bloods would be approved by their respective tribes." After studying it for a while, Lin Huang recalled Kylie''s card while feeling elated. He finally had his very first mythical-level Monster Card! 898 The Closing of the Ruins Lin Huang was elated with Kylie''s elevation, but the inadequate summoning authority intensified his pressure. If he did not elevate to imperial-level soon, the elevation of Bai and the rest would make him be stuck in a pickle whereby he would not be able to summon his imperial beasts. Therefore, he could only pause Bai and the rest''s elevation for the time being. Meanwhile, triple mutated legendary-level monsters would lose their upper hand when they reached imperial-level. If not for their powerful bloodline, Bai and the rest could not fight monsters that were a rank higher at all. Elevating them to quadruple mutated mythical-level monsters was mandatory and urgent. ''I must collect more God Figurines as soon as I can when we get out of here,'' Lin Huang decided secretly. His summoning beast army proceeded with the hunt since Kylie had elevated. They had only cleared region No. 12 and the two hunting areas around it an hour before the Fallen God Land closed. After recalling all of his Monster Cards, Lin Huang counted the rewards that he had obtained throughout the three months. There were two God Figurines, one true god relic, six god relics, close to 400 demigod relics, three true god inheritances, 14 virtual god inheritances, 11 true god methods, over 1,300 sword skills, close to five million monster crystal cores, and close to 200 immortal-level rank-9 and imperial-level Emperor''s Heart Rings. Apart from the material rewards, the cultivation of Lin Huang''s Twisted Fate Scripture had reached rotation No. 6. Among the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls, three of them were already on imperial-level yellow gold-rank while another was not far from there. His summoning beast army had elevated to imperial-level black gold-rank. Kylie had successfully elevated to mythical-level. Lancelot, on the other hand, had elevated to pseudo-mythical-level while all of his 18 sword servants were now on triple mutated imperial-level black gold-rank. The Evil Dominator had the largest improvement whereby he had three imperial-level purple gold-rank substitutes and seven imperial-level white gold-rank substitutes. Bloody''s imperial-level army experienced a boost on a bigger scale. It had 46 imperial-level yellow gold-rank puppets, over 200 imperial-level crimson gold-rank, and over 500 imperial-level black gold-rank puppets. This army could easily kill imperial-level white gold-ranks and even fight imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses head-on. It seemed like Lin Huang''s combat strength had only gone up by one rank, but in reality, his overall ability had advanced more than that. Time was ticking. What Lin Huang had no idea about was that the union organization and underground organizations finally felt relieved the last few minutes before the Fallen God Land was closed. For the past ten days or so, they had been worried that the mystery organization which had killed Huang Tianqi and gang would come after them. In reality, the union organization used some spying techniques to find out what the mystery organization was after. However, Bloody found out about all their nosing about and put them to an end. Since the efforts were to no avail, the union organization eventually decided to give up with the concern that what they were doing might trigger the mystery organization, causing an unnecessary fight. On the other hand, the underground organization was behaving like a coward from the beginning until the end. They dared not even investigate the matter because they were afraid that the mystery organization might come after them. After all, the single fight earlier had annihilated half of their high combat strength powerhouses. If another battle broke out, all of their high combat strength powerhouses might be killed. Initially, they thought it was the union organization that came together to do this and they condemned their sinister act secretly. Later on, they found out that the union organization had vacated many areas at their own will while their members with high combat strength had gathered in the central region. They seemed to be ready for a war to break out with someone else. It was then that they only realized the union organization was not the culprit. On 1st February at 9 a.m. sharp, a white light sphere appeared above the central region of the Fallen God Land like a sun illuminating the entire ruins. Just when the people noticed the unusual phenomenon happening in the sky, the white light sphere intensified, and all they could see was an intense white before their eyes. When Lin Huang got his vision back, he realized he was at the entrance of the Fallen God Land. The black crack that looked like a Virtual Eye was still there in the sky, and it was exuding a terrifying aura like a giant beast that was ready to devour the world. Lin Huang was almost sure that anyone who insisted on entering the entrance when the Fallen God Land was shut would be torn apart into pieces by the energy of the crack He then shifted his focus from the sky to his surroundings. There were people everywhere. Clearly, they were the participants who had survived the ruins. However, Lin Huang noticed there were only around 3,000 people, which was less than half of the 8,000 people who had entered the Fallen God Land before. The high management of the Union Government, the Hunter Association, Dynasty, and the rest were waiting not far away. Most of them had an aghast expression on their faces as they gaped at the members who had survived. The demigod branch leader of Division 3, who was the Third Prince of Dynasty''s face was pale when he saw the remaining members from Dynasty. He shouted at the few imperial-level Dynasty members from far away, "Where is Huang Tianqi?! Where are the Seventh Prince and the immortal-level team?!" The remaining imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses from Dynasty shrunk as one of them informed Third Prince about what happened through voice transmission. Not only did the Third Prince lose his calm after hearing that, but he was also even more furious now. "All of you are useless! You don''t even dare to investigate who killed Huang Tianqi and the rest. Furthermore, you only heard the news of the Seventh Prince and the immortal-level team being killed by a local organization from someone else. Why are all of you even here?!" Another person who was just as enraged as the Third Price was the demigod leader of Division 3 Charm, Yue Ji. However, she did not reveal her rage on the spot as the Third Prince did. She said nothing after asking about what had happened to Yu Hong and the immortal-level team while looking livid. The intent to kill vibrated from her body. The happiest ones were the few union organizations including the Union Government and the Hunter Association. The had lost less than 20% of their members and all of their imperial-level purple gold-rank and imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses had survived. Only less than five of their imperial-level black gold-rank to yellow gold-rank members did not make it this time. Lin Huang glanced through the crowd quickly and soon saw the short, young man Tong Lin who had spoken to him before they entered the Fallen God Land. His combat strength had elevated from immortal-level rank-6 to immortal-level rank-7. "What? This fella''s still alive?" Lin Huang was rather surprised because Tong Lin had ordinary abilities and was not even considered a genius. He must have immense luck to be able to survive. As he looked away from Tong Lin, Lin Huang soon saw Huangfu Lin of the Sweep Alliance. Her combat strength was already on immortal-level rank-9, and her aura had been even more powerful than Shen Tao''s before entering the Fallen God Land. This lady''s ability was much more powerful than Lin Huang had estimated earlier. Lin Huang looked away again and soon noticed Tan Lang and the rest. The nine of them were still alive. Tan Lang and Shen Tao had advanced to imperial-level black gold-rank. Although the rest did not improve in terms of combat strength, the intensity of their aura was now higher. Recalling what Gong Sun had said before, Lin Huang fixed his eyes on Li Jia. However, he suddenly turned to look at him at that precise moment. Li Jia smiled at him as their eyes met. He then turned to speak to Tan Lang and the rest, pointing in Lin Huang''s direction. Tan Lang and the rest looked over immediately as elation filled their faces the moment they saw Lin Huang. Lin Huang smiled at them and nodded. He then walked towards them through the crowd. "I knew you had to still be alive!" Shen Tao smirked. "You''re always on your own. You didn''t even contact us after getting out of the foggy world," Tan Lang grinned while speaking. "It wasn''t that I didn''t want to contact you guys, but the communication device''s broken, so I can''t use it." Lin Huang came up with an excuse. In reality, it was he who had broken the communication device. Naturally, Tan Lang and the rest noticed that his combat strength had elevated to immortal-level rank-4, but they did not find it odd. After all, he had already achieved immortal-level rank-3 three months ago. After chatting with each other, Tan Lang began to get down to business. "Initially, I didn''t have high hopes of elevating to imperial-level this time because the Life Base that I want is very rare. Never would I have thought I would find it in the Fallen God Land and could advance to imperial-level with Shen Tao. "I''m sure every one of you knows the Genius Union''s rule. Members will be removed from the list as soon as they elevate to imperial-level and will no longer be eligible to be in the Genius Union. In other words, both of us are no longer Heaven Alliance members. "However, I want to say that we''re always Heaven Alliance members. Whether our combat strength elevated to imperial-level, demigod-level or virtual god-level, the Heaven Alliance will always be the family that we fought for. "If anyone of you encounters any troubles at all, please contact me, Tan Lang. If you ever need my help. I''ll do everything I can to help. Everybody has each other''s number, so please keep in touch!" "Me too. I''ll definitely help as long as I can!" Shen Tao said while pounding his chest. 899 Returning to Division 7 It was the 2nd of February at foothold No. 3A5, Wanbao City. As the sky was getting dark, a man whose body was shrouded in a black robe and hoodie walked into the Wanbao Auction. Ignoring the crowded stalls in the auction and the people walking in and out, the man walked straight to the lady in uniform who was in charge of customer service. "Hi, Sir. May I know if I can help you with anything?" "I have a business opportunity that I would like to speak about with your boss." The man whipped out a golden card that was half the size of a palm and showed it to the lady. The female attendant recognized it as a VIP membership card right away. She nodded immediately. "Sure, Sir, our boss is here today. Please give me a moment and I''ll get the manager to bring you to the boss''s office." "There''s no need for the trouble as long as he''s here. I know how to get to his office." The man breezed straight to the office area. She dared not stop him. She allowed Lin Huang to go in, but she informed the manager immediately. The man opened the door and went straight into the office when he arrived at the entrance. The man with a ponytail, who was playing games on the Heart Network, looked up all of a sudden. He was stunned by the appearance of the man in the black robe. The moment the man removed the hood, Tang Xu could not help but exclaim out loud, "Sir?!" "Seems like you still remember me." The man smirked but his smile gave one goosebumps. Tang Xu could not help but shiver. Just when he was going to say something, a manager arrived at the entrance, clearly having sprinted over and gazed at the black-robed man as he looked concernedly into the office. "Boss, this guest" "I know. You may leave now," Tang Xu dismissed lightly. After getting rid of the manager, Tang Xu stood up and studied the man before him in excitement. "Sir, are you selling something or purchasing resources this time?" "I have a batch of some rather valuable items but I''m not sure if your auction will accept them or not." The man plopped onto the couch comfortably. Tang Xu poured him a cup of tea immediately. "Please do tell me more, Sir." "Ten demigod relics" The man took a sip of the tea and proceeded to continue slowly, "Two god relics." "Two god relics?" Tang Xu was completely dumbstruck. There had only been three god relics that appeared in the entire Division 3 throughout the past hundreds of years. However, the man before him had announced that he had two god relics as soon as he arrived. It would be odd if nobody felt indifferent hearing that. "Would you accept them? If not, I can always look for someone else." The man in the black robe caressed the surface of the teacup softly with his fingers while he set his eyes on Tang Xu like he was looking at a harmless little creature. "We''ll accept them! You have my word, Sir," Tang Xu assured immediately. No god relic had appeared even in Division 1 for more than 30 years. If he accepted those, his Wanbao Auction would definitely shoot to instant fame. "Sure, tell me about your requirements." The black-robed man nodded in satisfaction. "Two god relics. I won''t sell them for Life Crystals. I''ll only trade them for items. Also, the buy-in of each relic must be two God Figurines. The proceeding bids after that do not necessarily have to be God Figurines." "Must the starting bid be God Figurines? Can''t they bid with other items of the same value?" Tang Xu asked immediately. He found out about a God Figurine''s real value after Lin Huang''s lucky bid last time. "No, it must be a God Figurine." The black-robed man''s tone was determined. "Alright then" Tang Xu could only accept the strict condition. It was the seller''s request after all and he was just the middle-man. "Can I take a look at the two god relics?" "Sure." The man agreed and nodded right away. He then took out the two god relics which were a sword and a spear. Tang Xu fell into a trance immediately. He could not take his eyes off the items, and only snapped back to his senses unwillingly after a long time. "Shall we talk about the details now?" The black-robed man looked at Tang Xu while smirking. Lin Huang had not slept for three days at the Magical Sky City''s Central Library. He had been ''staying'' there ever since the Union Government sent him back to Magical Sky City. The Central Library was open for 24 hours all year long. Apart from less than half an hour''s rest in between, Lin Huang spent almost all the 72 hours throughout the library. After all, he was only given a three-day pass with level-one reading authorization from the Union Government. Lin Huang initially planned to bring Bloody there in order to memorize all of the useful information he could access with a level-one reading authorization using its Supreme Intelligence. However, later, he found out that the Central Library only allowed access to humans while imperial monsters and pet monsters were prohibited. There was even a ban set for demigods whereby they were killed if they sensed a monster''s aura right away. It was a sure death even if the monster that came in was on imperial-level purple-gold rank. After learning about such a rule, Lin Huang had to give up the idea of bringing Bloody in and took the mission up himself. For the past three days, he had used three Provisional Transformation Cards to borrow Bloody''s Super Intelligence for the highest efficiency in the absorption of information. He got the idea of using Provisional Transformation Cards in such a brilliant way from Xiao Hei. With the help of Super Intelligence, Lin Huang obtained the memorization and analytical abilities which were on par with Bloody''s. After spending some time to filter through the data, he spent the next three days memorizing over 30,000 bits of knowledge accessible with level-one reading authorization. During the half an hour of ''rest'' in between, he used his Cloning Card and Disguise Card to create the demigod-level powerhouse just like before. He used them to head to Wanbao City to auction the two god relics, which were a spear and a sword, off. The condition of trading the god relics was very simple. They could only be traded with God Figurines. Moreover, the starting bid for a god relic had to be two God Figurines. Although Lin Huang mentioned the acquisition of information about God Figurines, nobody suspected him. One of the reasons was that he had the alibi of being at the Central Library when his clone appeared in the Wanbao Auction. The other reason was that demigods had acquired God Figurines in the past before in order to remodel their Combat Souls. The demigod Lin Huang disguised as was not the first demigod to make such an odd request. Even if the people from the Wanbao Auction found out that the man in the black robe had a ''master-disciple'' relationship with Lin Huang, they would think that it was the black-robed man who wanted the God Figurine while Lin Huang had nothing to do with it. They would not think that the god and demigod relics the black-robed man possessed had anything to do with Lin Huang. After all, relics of such a level were unattainable for an immortal-level powerhouse like Lin Huang. Naturally, the appearance of two god relics at the same time created a stir in the entire Division 3. Even many demigods in Division 1 and Division 2 were shocked. Such a level of treasure was extremely rare. Even Division 1 had less than ten god relics that showed up throughout the past 800 years; that number was naturally fewer in Divisions 2 and 3. Apart from the two god relics that Lin Huang handed over this time, Division 3 only seen three god relics in the past hundreds of years. Lin Huang gave the Wanbao Auction the full authority to auction the god relics off while he freed his hands from the responsibility. The Wanbao Auction set the official auction date as soon as they released the news of the god relics being available. It would take place on the 8th of March after the New Year. On the 4th of February at 10 a.m., Lin Huang''s level-1 reading authorization expired. He then walked out of the library and headed to the long-distance dimensional portal to travel to a different division. Although it was an exclusive passage for transcendence-levels, many of them were heading home to celebrate the New Year. Lin Huang, who had booked his ticket over three months ago, queued until past 2 p.m. and finally walked into the dimensional portal with 29 other people. His vision recovered after a moment of being in a daze and realized that he was in the White Capital of Division 7 now. 900 Reunion It was snowing heavily in Winter City. Although it was cold, there were lights and decorations everywhere on the streets since it was close to the New Year. They were people walking in and out of the crowded commercial district. Two little girls trudged in the snow while holding hands in a villa area close to the commercial district in the east of the foothold. Both of them were dressed in the same jacket but in different colors. One was white while the other was black. "Little Witch, do you think Brother will like the presents that we picked out?" Lin Xin who wore the white jacket asked in excitement. The Witch who wore the black jacket had soft hair sweeping her shoulders. She replied softly while flushing, "Master will definitely like the present Young Master picked out." "Then, let''s go home right away. Maybe Brother''s already at home waiting for us." Lin Xin nodded while wearing a smile and pulling the Witch along to hasten their footsteps. The two girls slowed down as they reached a three-story villa. They entered the house after scanning their fingerprints at the door. The villa remained the same as it was when they had headed out in the morning. Looking at the furnace devoid of fire, Lin Xin seemed rather disappointed. She changed her shoes at the entrance, removed her jacket and hung it on the rack. Then, she walked to the furnace and tossed a red crystal in. A crimson spark lit up in the furnace while circles of heatwaves were released at the same time. The chill in the house disappeared immediately. "The house''s much warmer." Having changed into slippers, the Witch sat on the floor in front of the furnace. She extended her hands to the furnace for warmth. Lin Xin stood by the furnace, her eyes reflecting the red sparks dazzling in the furnace. She stared emptily for a while before asking softly, "Little Witch, it''ll be the New Year in four days. Do you think that Brother isn''t coming back?" The Witch went silent for a while and tugged Lin Xin to sit down. "Since Master has promised you that he''ll come back, he''ll definitely be back as he agreed as long as he doesn''t encounter any unusual circumstances." "He said he would go into the ruins for three months, but it''s been a few days since three months have passed." Lin Xin was rather worried. "Could he be in some kind of trouble?" "Given Master''s current abilities, he shouldn''t get himself into any trouble as long as he doesn''t encounter some extraordinarily powerful imperial-level powerhouse. After all, since my combat strength has elevated to imperial-level, Master''s other imperial monsters should be the same too. Moreover, there are a few imperial monsters that are more powerful than me over there. It would be a relief if he doesn''t create trouble for himself," the Witch explained with a smile, "Master said three months, but maybe it isn''t exactly three months." Noticing that Lin Xin was still upset, the Witch stood up and changed the subject. "We''ve bought all the goods for the New Year, so let''s decorate the house today. Master will definitely feel the New Year spirit when he comes back." Lin Xin finally felt her spirits lifted after hearing that. "That''s right. We must shower Brother with the New Year spirit." "Little Witch, let''s start working! We''ll start with cleaning!" The young lady who was exuberant and full of energy was back. Walking out of the long-distance dimensional portal in the White Capital, Lin Huang knew that Lin Xin was not staying in the Martial Hunter College because the Witch must be with her and he did not sense the Witch''s aura in the White Capital. However, Lin Huang did not summon the dimensional portal to leave the White Capital right away. Instead, he headed straight to the largest shopping district in the White Capital. He had to bring some presents back for his sister before heading home. Unsure what combat strength Lin Xin was on now, he ended up buying two sets of equipment one on silver-level while the other was on gold-level. The two sets of equipment included the latest battle armor. Apart from that, Lin Huang picked two top-quality battle swords as well as two modified weapon firearms for Lin Xin. He got the staff to wrap them up as gifts and put them away in his storage space. He then bought the Witch a puppet and got it wrapped too. The puppet was an ancient relic similar to the doll that Grimace wanted. However, a doll was a battle-type of relic while a puppet was more for controlling the battlefield. Its battle ability was much weaker when it came to fighting enemies head-on. After buying those gifts, Lin Huang summoned a dimensional portal and stepped into it. The Witch, who was hanging lanterns with Lin Xin, shivered all of a sudden. She stopped what she was doing the second she sensed Lin Huang''s return. "What''s wrong, Little Witch?" Lin Xin noticed the weird reaction from the Witch. "Master''s back! I can sense it." "Brother?" Lin Xin''s eyes flew wide open and she turned to look at the door. Right at that moment, the door opened while a silhouette walked in. Seeing the person''s face, Lin Xin bolted right into the person''s embrace instantly. "Brother!" Lin Huang hugged Lin Xin while patting her head. She only let go of him after a long while her eyes had become a little red. "You''ve grown taller quite a fair bit, silly girl! Let me take a good look at you!" Lin Huang put both his hands on her shoulders and took a long look at her while beaming. "Wow, you''re getting prettier! You''re a beauty now." "Nah Really?" Lin Xin was flushing. Although she denied it softly, she was secretly over the moon. While he was complimenting her, Lin Huang was secretly shocked as he could clearly sense that Lin Xin''s combat strength had elevated to complete-stage gold-level rank-3. It seemed like she would break through to holy fire-level anytime now. Lin Huang was slightly upset that the present he had picked out for her was useless since she could use relics now. ''Seems like I need to buy her something else,'' Lin Huang thought to himself. At that moment, the Witch walked towards him while feeling bashful and greeted him softly, "Master." "Little Witch, you don''t seem to have changed at all." Lin Huang nodded at the Witch while smiling, but he thought what he said was not right as soon the words came out of his mouth. He added immediately, "You''re still as cute as always." The Witch blushed when she heard that. She dared not look at Lin Huang and gazed down at her toes nervously. After closing the door, Lin Huang looked up at the decorations around the house. It was almost done now. "Not bad. The New Year spirit''s here." The two ladies were overjoyed to hear that because that was what they had hoped for. Lin Huang summoned Bloody and Bai to finish up the decorating in the house after changing into his slippers and taking his jacket off. The reason why he did not summon Tyrant and the rest was mainly that they were not suitable for doing such a fine and meticulous task. He might end up with collapsed walls if he got them to paste some decorations. He did not want the simple job of decorating the house to end up in tearing the house down. The speed of the task was boosted immensely when Lin Huang and the other two monsters joined them. In less than half an hour, they had hung all of the lanterns and decorations while the ceiling looked like a sky full of stars with the dazzling crystals. Lin Huang indulged in the New Year atmosphere as he looked at the decorations. However, he could not help but slip into his memory of the New Year back on Earth. Although there were some differences here and there, the overall ambiance was similar. ''It''s my third New Year in this world now'' Lin Huang could not help but sigh in his heart. 901 Before the New Year The first day he returned to Division 7, Lin Huang did not get himself take-out for dinner. Seeing that the fridge was filled to the brim with ingredients Lin Xin and the Witch had bought, he prepared dinner with whatever was available. During dinner, Lin Huang summoned Lancelot, Tyrant and the rest, using up all the 15 quotas he had. Observing what Lin Huang had done, Lin Xie summoned Little 7 as well. The Seventails'' combat strength was already on crimson flame-level. It shivered, sensing the aura of the imperial-levels. However, as soon as it noticed that they were not enemies, combined with the friendliness of Bai and the rest, they soon got along well with each other. Lin Xie glanced around and noticed that the one she was most familiar with, Kylie, was not there. She immediately asked, "Brother, where''s Sister Kylie?" To be exact, there were no gender differences in angels. Despite the fact that Kylie was no longer an angel, Lin Huang was unsure whether she was a female. However, the way Kylie previously presented herself was actually in the form of a female. She was also one of the few "female" imperial monsters that had made contact with Lin Xin. This was the reason why Lin Xin had asked about her. "Kylie leveled up earlier and she has now fallen into a deep sleep. I can''t summon her at the moment," Lin Huang explained. "I''m glad she''s fine. I thought" Lin Xin did not continue what she initially wanted to say. "Don''t worry. My imperial monster won''t be killed so easily," Lin Huang answered with a smile, shaking his head. Of course, he knew what Lin Xin wanted to say. After dinner, the sky turned dark. To avoid getting into unnecessary trouble, Lin Huang allowed the imperial monsters to stay indoors. Bai was sitting by the window, watching the falling snow while enjoying a glass of orange-colored beverage. Charcoal''s body had shrunk and it was sleeping right in front of the fireplace. Tyrant was sitting next to it, munching on its dried meat. Bloody Robe sat on the other side of the fireplace, curiously sizing up the flames in the fireplace. Lancelot munched on its dried vegetables while watching the projected television in front of the tea table. Two of its close friends, the Evil Dominator and Killer sat on its right and left. Bloody and Ghastly were playing chess. Ghastly had lost a few games was evidently unhappy about it. Lin Xin and the Witch were cleaning the kitchen while the Imp and the Malachian Fiend were trying to help them out. Thunder''s body had reduced in size and it was playing games with Little 7. The size of the Herculean King and Bing Wang''s bodies were compressed to the size of a palm. They were jumping in the room like monkeys. Fortunately, the Witch had set several defensive and robust runes up to avoid the room from being destroyed. Nobody would have expected there to be so many imperial-level monsters gathering in the small villa. Lin Huang quietly went back to his room and opened the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. After his finger swiped through the contact list, he dialed a number. After a short while, the video call was answered. The face of an old man was projected in front of Lin Huang. "My dear apprentice, are you back in Division 7?" Mr. Fu was in his boardshorts and a mustard Hawaiian shirt. He was lying on a deck chair while drinking a glass of beverage with a straw. However, the deck chair was placed in a snow-covered land. "Yes, I just came back today." Lin Huang nodded his head. He asked, "Sir, where are you?" "I''ve discovered this Iceland in the Peaceful Ocean a few days ago. I''ve never seen some of the monsters on this Iceland. That''s why I''ve been staying here over the past few days and I''m about to do some research about them," Mr. Fu said as he shifted the projection lens. Lin Huang could see that there were some penguin-like monsters on the surface of the ice, but he had no idea what they were doing. Unlike the regular penguins, the limbs of these monsters looked like a gorilla''s and they were muscular. Also, they were covered with thick, white fur. Some of them did not only have two arms but four or six limbs. Lin Huang was speechless to see strange animals like this. "These monsters are powerful in the water. They are adept at capturing sea creatures," Mr. Fu related with excitement on his face. Lin Huang roughly knew the reason why he stayed on the island. These monsters were free labor to him, helping him to capture what he needed from the Peaceful Ocean. After chatting for a while, Mr. Fu then got back to his main point. "Are you on immortal-level now?" "I''m now an immortal-level rank-4. I''m about to level up to immortal-level rank-5." Lin Huang nodded his head. "That''s pretty fast!" Although he knew that Lin Huang''s speed of leveling up was fantastic, Mr. Fu was still surprised by Lin Huang''s current combat strength. Before leaving Division 7, Lin Huang''s combat strength was only on crimson gold-rank. His combat strength had leaped seven ranks higher in less than 10 months and he managed to advance a level higher. "According to your progress, you can level up to imperial-level after half a year. I don''t need to worry about it then." Mr. Fu was relieved. He was still concerned about him as he wondered whether if it would be too harsh for Lin Huang to level up to imperial-level in three years. It seemed like Lin Huang could achieve the target in 1.5 years. "Sir, I have something to tell you." Lin Huang was not thrilled after listening to Mr. Fu''s compliment. Instead, he was stressed. He immediately told Mr. Fu about the crack that had appeared at the Abyss Brink. He knew that he would have heard about this, but he might not know the details. "I''ve heard about this, but I never expected it to be so serious." Mr. Fu frowned after listening to what he said. "So, based on your speculation, are you saying that the crack will be completely activated after a year or two?" "Yes." "It''s much more dangerous than what happened 800 years ago. I''ve no idea whether if we can survive this." Mr. Fu''s cheerfulness was nowhere to be detected now. "There''s something else about the training skills at the old epoch." Lin Huang immediately told Mr. Fu that he had obtained the skills from the Fallen God Land. "Are you sure that those are the Virtual God or True God skills?" Mr. Fu doubted it. "I think so. However, there seem to be some restrictions on the Virtual God and True God skills. I''m unable to duplicate them." Lin Huang looked helpless. "I shall visit you after the New Year and show you the jade slip later on." "It seems like they''re skills on the god-level. Only those who''ve mastered Divine Power are capable of duplicating them." Mr. Fu immediately knew what happened. "You don''t need to come over. I''ll visit you in two days although I might have to disguise myself then." "Alright. We can celebrate the New Year together." Lin Huang nodded in agreement. After hanging up with Mr. Fu, Lin Huang immediately contacted Yang Ling who was also a traveler so that he could unlock hundreds of Emperor''s Heart Rings for him. After dealing with Yang Ling, he then contacted the black market in Division 3 to make an appointment to settle the relics and the rest of the rewards he had obtained after the New Year. Since those items were illegal especially because he obtained them from killing the members from the underworld, he could only sell them at the black market. Having settled what he needed to, he then opened the Heart Network and began to search for relics that he could buy as a gift for Lin Xin. Unfortunately for him, the presents he had prepared earlier could no longer be used now. 902 Its Your Era! In the next few days, Lin Huang only allowed Bai and the rest to stay at his villa for a day as Mr. Fu might come at any time. He then recalled all the monster cards except for Bloody and the Witch. Since the seventh rotation of the Twisted Fate Scripture was equivalent to the combat strength of an imperial-level, Lin Huang did not want to mess up the training system in his body. This was why he stopped training this skill and remained at the sixth rotation. He was trying to digest the sword skills that he had obtained over the past few days. He then discovered that for all the sword skills, as long as he had seen them once, he did not need to train on his own. The little Sword Spirit in his body would have mastered it. It seemed like the little Sword Spirit in Lin Huang''s body would not feel fatigue at all. It practiced all the sword skills Lin Huang inherited repeatedly. Lin Huang also noticed that he did not need to practice the skill for hundreds of times in order to obtain skill pieces. What he had to do was learn from the little Sword Spirit and the number of skill pieces he obtained would increase rapidly. With his current Sword Dao''s comprehension ability, it would take him at least two to three days to accumulate a sufficient number of skill pieces to obtain a complete Skill Card for a legendary-level sword skill. However, he managed to obtain a legendary-level sword skill card within an hour. In just two days, Lin Huang managed to obtain 35 complete legendary-level sword skill cards. It was fantastically efficient. Lin Huang initially intended to digest these sword skills with the Epiphany Card after the New Year. However, it seemed like he did not need to use the Epiphany Card at all. He just had to please the little Sword Spirit. After having mastered more than 220 legendary-level sword skills, Lin Huang could clearly feel that his level-5 Sword Dao had already reached its peak. It was approaching complete-stage. Perhaps, in just a short while, there would be a breakthrough in his Sword Dao. He would achieve level-6 real soon, which was Deity. Lin Huang then focused on his sword skill training and completely forgot that Mr. Fu would come at any time. On New Year''s Eve, which was the seventh of February, the doorbell of the villa rang early in the morning. Lin Huang was in his training room whereas Lin Xin was playing Gunmaster. The Witch was the only one on the living area of the first floor. The Witch was startled when she heard the ringing of the doorbell. Still, she opened the door. "Who are you looking for?" The Witch was alert as it was a stranger that she had never seen before. Seeing the Witch, the young man, who wore a baseball cap, frowned. He then said, "I''m looking for Lin Huang. I told him a few days ago that I''m coming over before the New Year." Although she was doubtful, since he knew her master''s name and said that he had told him about this, she allowed him to enter. "Please wait for a while. I''ll let my Master know." As the guest entered the living room, she served him some water. After that, she went upstairs and knocked on Lin Huang''s door. Lin Huang immediately exited his state of training. After listening to what the Witch reported, he knew who had come. However, when he saw a young man holding a teacup and sizing up the surroundings, he was startled. He looked like he was 20 and he was about 1.85 meters tall. With such towering height, he was completely different from Mr. Fu. However, Lin Huang soon noticed that he looked somewhat similar to Mr. Fu. "My dear apprentice, are you shocked to see me in this disguise?" The young man''s voice sounded exactly the same as Mr. Fu''s, so Lin Huang could then confirm his identity. "Sir To be honest, I''m shocked." Lin Huang smiled, confirming his surprise. "This is how I looked like when I was 20 years old. Am I handsome?" Mr. Fu''s voice sounded young and he was evidently proud of himself. "Hey, you are quite handsome." Lin Huang could only agree with him, nodding his head. However, he thought to himself, ''Are you sure that you were 1.85 meters tall when you were 20 years old? That''ll be two centimeters taller than me.'' "Are you wondering if that''s really my height?" Mr. Fu seemed to know what Lin Huang was thinking. "No." Lin Huang immediately shook his head in denial. "Let me tell you, I really was 1.85 meters tall last time," Mr. Fu explained in a very serious manner, "I was cursed in the battle that happened 800 years ago. I suffered from bone structure deterioration and soon, I became the little old man that I look like today." "Did you become short because of a curse?" Of course, Lin Huang did not believe what Mr. Fu said. It puzzled him. Still, he nodded at Mr. Fu and said, "Yes, I believe you." Mr. Fu could see that Lin Huang was just trying to put him off. "If you don''t believe me, you can ask Liu Ming about it. He knows." "Don''t annoy Senior Liu Ming. I trust you," Lin Huang answered with a serious expression. Staring at Lin Huang for a short while, Mr. Fu knew that no matter what explanation he came up with, he would not trust him. He shook his head unhappily and gave up explaining to Lin Huang. "Let''s get back to the point. Show me the jade slips that you mentioned earlier." Lin Huang then took out two Virtual God-level jade slips, passing them to Mr. Fu. Mr. Fu then took the jade slips and inserted Divine Telekinesis into them. After a short while, he roughly went through the two techniques and there was a strange expression on his face. "Is there a problem with the two skills?" Lin Huang immediately asked. "There isn''t any problem with the skills and they''re indeed Virtual God-level skills which can be used until one reaches Virtual God-level." Mr. Fu shook his head and soon, he continued, "However, the Twisted Fate Scripture is much more difficult compared to the two skills. An ordinary immortal-level will be able to practice those skills. Moreover, as long as one''s body is compatible with the skills, the probability of a talented and potential individual to become a Virtual God is pretty high." "Does it mean that the God-level skills we gained from this place will allow many of us to achieve God-level?!" Lin Hung had been worried about this previously. "Yes, it is." Mr. Fu frowned. Both of them remained silent. One of the reasons was that the world needed those who were on God-level to face the upcoming adversities. However, once these skills got about, Mr. Fu would not be the only one who was on God-level in this world. "The skills" Lin Huang had no idea whether the skills should be sealed or be made public. Mr. Fu seemed gloomy. He then took a deep breath, passing the two jade slips to Lin Huang. "Sell them to the Union Government or the people from the Hunter Association. The price of these skills must be higher than a god relic. You can exchange them for many training resources." "But you" "I can''t live a long life. This world needs more people to be on God-level." Mr. Fu eventually came up with a decision. "It can benefit humans if the skills were promoted." "My era has already ended 800 years ago. It''s your time now." Mr. Fu then turned back to Lin Huang as he said this. "I know that there''ll be tonnes of them that can surpass me in this era. However, I hope that you''ll be the first to do so!" 903 It’s Fine to Not Change My Appearance The sun was hanging high up in the sky, releasing warmth and light. It felt like summer and Lin Huang then looked at the surroundings. Waves washed over the golden sand. Impressively, there were Mr. Fu''s favorite sunlight, beach, and the sea "Is this the place?" Lin Huang found it odd. He was discussing the training techniques in the dreamland with Mr. Fu who then mentioned, "Show me the results you''ve obtained over the past half year." Soon after that, he felt dizzy and appeared at this unfamiliar place as he regained his senses. "This is my Kingdom," Mr. Fu explained, "This so-called Kingdom is actually a territory that''s been transformed to a mini world after leveling up to virtual god-level." Lin Huang was immediately reminded of Kylie''s mini world. It might be a Kingdom as well. However, he had no idea why the Kingdom had no King and how Kylie was able to take advantage of it. Before Lin Huang managed to ask anything further, Mr. Fu suddenly tossed a puppet doll out. "Fight it. I can test the functionality of the new toy as well." Of course, Lin Huang could recognize the puppet doll as he had just bought one for Ghastly previously. However, Mr. Fu''s one was obviously a luxurious version of a puppet doll. It looked about 70% human and took on the appearance of a teenage boy with its ancient white robe. The one which Lin Huang bought for Ghastly was just a basic one. It did not even have human features, let alone an elaborate outfit. It was just a puppet in a human form. Its price was exceptionally high despite the fact that Lin Huang had only bought a basic one. It was double the price of an ancient telekinetic weapon. On the other hand, Mr. Fu had bought the luxurious version. Its price must be more than three times of the basic version. However, its functionality was only equivalent to 1.5 times better. Since only the materials for the ancient relic were used, there would be little difference in functionality. As for the price, it would be equal to the price of changing one''s appearance. Lin Huang used to be a pragmatist and he did not see the need to change his appearance. Although he knew that the ability of the puppet doll would not be weak under Mr. Fu''s control, he was still unhappy as he actually looked forward to fighting him. "Just a heads up, I''m not going to pay for anything if I happen to damage it." "Don''t worry. I''ll take care of it," Mr. Fu answered straightaway. Instantly, Mr. Fu''s Life Power transformed into threads and was inserted into the puppet doll. The inert puppet was alive all of a sudden. Seeing that the puppet was all ready for the battle, Lin Huang dared not underestimate it. He took out an ancient relic that he had not used for a long while C the Air Slicer. With the combat sword in hand, Lin Huang''s aura immediately expanded. Mr. Fu did not panic. Instead, he waited for Lin Huang''s aura to reach its peak before moving his fingers slightly. Standing on tip-toe on the sandy beach, it rushed towards Lin Huang, creating traces that were barely visible. Lin Huang was thrilled. He was never afraid of any of his enemies even if he had to fight them face-to-face. He initially thought that Mr. Fu would mess with him as he mastered the puppet doll, showcasing his controlling skills. He did not expect it to be a frontal attack. Although Lin Huang was in mid-air and was more than 10 centimeters away from the ground, when he stomped hard, trails were formed on the beach. He sped towards his opponent as well. In mid-air, the two figures were approaching each other rapidly. Exhilarated, Lin Huang lifted his sword with his right hand, slashing down on its left ribs. It was an angle where one could hardly defend themselves against an attack. Under normal circumstances, his opponent either had to dodge his attack or defend against it. However, the puppet struck a heavy blow right at the back of Lin Huang''s sword. As a result, the direction of Lin Huang''s sword deviated. Before Lin Huang could launch another attack, the puppet''s right leg transformed into a whip, tearing toward the left side of Lin Huang''s waist. His kidney could explode if he were hit by the attack. Lin Huang''s face turned grave and he changed the direction of his sword and slashed down toward his opponent. If his opponent did not retract its feet, the blow was powerful enough to chop its feet off. Seeing what just happened, the puppet pirouetted on its left foot in the air and retreated tens of feet away, managing to dodge the blow. Its attacks were fired at lighting speed and Lin Huang was unable to take advantage of it. Mr. Fu seemed to be satisfied. "Your sword skills are close to complete-stage level-5. I guess you''ll be able to get to level-6 really soon. That''s just a test for your skill. Things will get real now. I hope you''ll do your best and show me your true abilities." "No problem," Lin Huang agreed. After the trial attack, he could clearly sense that if he did not take it seriously, the puppet might probably pin him down. "Let''s begin the second round then." Before Mr. Fu could finish his words, the puppet appeared again. Its speed was a few times faster than before. Lin Huang''s pupils dilated and he immediately activated his Seraphic Speed and chased it. Two white figures flickered in mid-air and collided with each other. Circles of terrifying waves formed in the air as both of them collided with each other and the impact waves spread out. On the coastline which had a length of more than 100 kilometers, strong waves were stirred. A variety of tropical trees and the rest of the plants that grew along the beach were all uprooted and fell hundreds of kilometers away. The two figures backed off from the area of the explosion. Soon after that, they blasted off and crashed into each other again. In mid-air, a terrifying wave was created in the air again The sand was stirred up and covered the sky as if the apocalypse was about to happen. Over and over again, the two figures smashed into each in mid-air. Lin Huang could clearly sense that Mr. Fu was constantly pressuring him. Although the puppet doll''s combat strength stayed on crimson gold-tank, its skills became more precise. There was a subtle increase in its strength and speed. The battle lasted for more than three hours. In addition to not summoning any combat souls, asking for help from his summoning monsters, and not using any Combat Strength Upgrade Cards, he had used up almost all his skills. Mr. Fu had upgraded the puppet doll''s combat strength to crimson gold-rank, and Lin Huang was slowly being pinned down. After enduring the battle for almost an hour, the puppet doll struck him and he fell into the sea. Lin Huang burst out of the sea and wanted to continue the fight. However, he saw that Mr. Fu had recalled the puppet doll. "That''s good enough. Your combat strength is currently on immortal-level rank-4. However, your abilities can be compressed to a crimson gold-level''s, so you can kill a black gold-rank with ease. Basically, you''re capable of protecting yourself." Mr. Fu was quite satisfied with the results of the test. 904 Flimsy Mr. Fu changed the topic suddenly after commenting on Lin Huang''s personal abilities. "The lady Xiao Wu who opened the door earlier Is she your imperial monster?" "Yes." "I see that her combat strength is already on imperial-level black gold-rank. Is she your most powerful imperial monster?" Mr. Fu asked again. "No, all of my imperial monsters are on imperial-level black gold-rank now," Lin Huang explained with a grin. "All of them are on imperial-level black gold-rank already? How many are there?" Mr. Fu was stunned to hear the update. "Over 20 of them." Lin Huang did not hide the fact. "Why don''t you summon all of them within your limit and let me test their abilities?" Mr. Fu guided his puppet doll again. It was clear that his fun from battling Lin Huang earlier was not over yet. Lin Huang raised a brow and summoned a total of 13 monsters including Bai, Tyrant, Thunder, Bloody Robe, the Malachian Fiend, the Imp, Charcoal, the Herculean King, Bing Wang, the Death Knight, the Fallen Knight, and the two Dark Crescent Snakes at once. Bloody was coiled up in his sleeve while the Witch was in the living room on the first floor, hence occupying two summoning quotas. That was why he could only summon 13 imperial monsters to fight. Mr. Fu was clearly stunned when he saw the 13 monsters appearing at the same time. It was his first time seeing Lin Huang summoning all of his imperial monsters within his limit. "Can you really control so many imperial-level black gold-rank imperial monsters?" Mr. Fu asked with surprise written all over his face. He clearly sensed that each monster had an aura that was much powerful than the typical triple mutated monster. They clearly had powerful bloodlines. Although he was not an Imperial Censor himself, he knew that the more powerful the imperial monster was, the more burden it was to the Imperial Censor''s soul. Judging from Lin Huang''s immortal-level rank-4 combat strength, theoretically, controlling one imperial-level black gold-rank monster should be his limit. However, now it seemed like not only was he controlling more than ten imperial-level black gold-rank monsters, but he also did not show any signs of suffering burden on his soul at all. "The most I can control are 15 monsters. I can''t control more than that," Lin Huang stated. Mr. Fu looked deeply into Lin Huang''s eyes and faintly guessed that his disciple might have some hidden secret. However, he did not dwell upon it. "Each and every one of them has a notably powerful aura. I wonder how their abilities are like." Mr. Fu glanced through all the 13 imperial monsters. "Fight me at once. We can save time by doing that." Bai and the rest looked at Lin Huang, seeming to be miffed that they were being underestimated. "This is my Master. He''d like to see all of your abilities. Fight him together and don''t hold back." Lin Huang nodded toward Bai and the rest. He knew it was pretty impossible for Bai and the rest to win even if they were to fight together. Under Mr. Fu''s control, the puppet doll''s combat strength could easily rise to imperial-level purple gold-rank which was on par with a supreme genius''s abilities. Bai and the rest had been killing everywhere they ventured recently. It was not a bad thing for them to suffer a setback occasionally. At least, it would encourage them to become more powerful. Despite their reluctance, Bai and the rest obeyed Lin Huang''s order and soon got into their battle mode. They raced towards the puppet doll Mr. Fu was controlling. Initially, Bai and the rest thought that a puppet doll would not be that powerful even if it was controlled by a formidable person. However, the imperial monsters soon fell into hardship. The puppet doll Mr. Fu was controlling maintained its combat strength of imperial-level black gold-rank which was the same with Bai and the rest. Its body was like a specter moving among the monsters at ease, reining Charcoal and the rest under its control. Bai and the rest did not bond at all when they were fighting as a team. Each of them only exerted 50% to 60% of their abilities. Even Lin Huang frowned as he observed them. He had never gotten his imperial monsters to fight together; the most were two in a group. He would use his army directly when he encountered compelling enemies, but he could tell that they were lacking in that aspect now. The cooperation between one another was horrible. Their overall ability was at least twice as worse compared to the sword formation of Lancelot''s 18 sword servants. One must know that their personal abilities could suppress the sword servants. "Their personal abilities aren''t bad, but I could tell that your imperial monsters have never fought together," Mr. Fu commented. At that moment, Bloody could no longer take it. Just when Mr. Fu was ready to stop the fight, Bloody spoke to Bai and the rest through voice transmission. Soon, they formed a simple battle formation following Bloody''s order, carrying a different imposing manner now. "A battle formation?" Mr. Fu raised his brow and peeped at Lin Huang''s left sleeve. With his virtual god-level combat strength, he sensed Bloody that was hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve since the beginning. He had also heard Bloody''s voice transmission earlier loud and clear. Although he initially planned to stop, his interest was now piqued. He wanted to see what the little fella hiding in Lin Huang''s sleeve could do. "The two combined knights will be the center of the battle formation. The rest will attack following the duo," Bloody instructed their next moves through voice transmission. The Death Knight, who was already on imperial-level yellow gold-rank, attacked first as soon as the battle formation was formed. He swung the spear in his hand like a dragon. The air would be sliced wherever the spear passed by. The deathly sharp spear tip was like a cannibalistic poisonous snake that was directed at the skull of the puppet doll. Mr. Fu had elevated the puppet doll''s combat strength to imperial-level yellow gold-rank and it did not hold back. It threw a punch at the spear tip. Immediately, there were explosions coming from the punch, and the air in the affected areas was evacuated. The two collided in the air. It sounded like millions of thunderbolts exploding at the same time and circles of turbulent air current spread towards all directions like ripples. The Death Knight only retreated three steps away from this collision while the puppet doll shot out and fell into the sea with a loud splash. "Interesting!" The collision made Mr. Fu''s eyes light up. As he moved his fingers slightly, the puppet doll came out of the sea immediately and dashed towards the battle formation formed by the imperial monsters. Under Bloody''s instruction, within the entire battle formation, the two merged knights were the center. One was in charge of attacking and the other was in charge of defending. Bai and the rest bonded more and more whereby Bloody did not really have to instruct them after that and they would know how to work the formation. Mr. Fu did almost everything he could by controlling the puppet doll, but he failed to break the formation after trying for almost two hours. Eventually, he helplessly elevated the puppet doll''s combat strength to imperial-level white gold-rank and spent over 20 minutes breaking the formation completely. Bai and the rest were eager to proceed with the fight, but Lin Huang stopped them. "Not bad. These imperial monsters of yours have very strong learning abilities that are on par with humans." Mr. Fu recalled the puppet doll completely and nodded in satisfaction. He then looked at Lin Huang''s left sleeve. "Of course, the most powerful one would be this little thing up your sleeve." Bloody crawled out of Lin Huang''s sleeve following his signal and clung onto his left arm. "If I''m not mistaken, this little thing should have Supreme Intelligence, shouldn''t it?" Mr. Fu figured easily. "Yes, Bloody''s my adviser," Lin Huang acknowledged. "Isn''t it purple?" Mr. Fu looked at Lin Huang in confusion and thought to himself, ''Could this disciple of mine be color blind?'' Lin Huang figured what Mr. Fu was thinking about looking at his expression and explained immediately, "Bloody''s body was initially red and its color has changed since its elevation. I''ve gotten used to calling it that, so I didn''t change its name." "I can change myself to other colors too," Bloody responded and changed itself to crimson. "Monsters with Supreme Intelligence aren''t easily tamed." Mr. Fu could not help but look at Bloody again. A monster that mediated for its master should have been completely tamed. He had encountered many types of monsters and some of them possessed Supreme Intelligence. However, most monsters with Supreme Intelligence would have superior intellect and it was rather impossible for them to humble themselves to humans. ''Its body looks flimsy. I don''t think it has any combat ability. That''s why it was tamed easily," Mr. Fu secretly concluded after observing Bloody for a while. He had no idea that Bloody was definitely one of Lin Huang''s most powerful imperial monsters when it came to overall abilities. 905 The True Meaning of Martial Dao Mr. Fu thought to himself for a moment before speaking again after getting a general understanding of Lin Huang and his imperial monsters'' abilities. "Now, I can see that your imperial monsters are fine and their personal abilities are very powerful. Moreover, with Bloody, the power of the battle formation isn''t too shabby, but overall, there''s still room for improvement. "I''ve thought of two directions for now. Firstly would be for Bloody to possess Supreme Intelligence. Get it to learn more often. It''s a superb assistant to you. The more powerful it is, the more powerful your imperial monster team will be. You could prioritize its training. "Also, you could consider adding some equipment for your imperial monsters." "Although the big guy Tyrant has a super powerful defense, there''s nothing wrong with getting it a set of battle armor. Moreover, since he has so much strength, the impact of using large weapons will definitely be better than fighting with his fists. You could get him a hammer, an ax, a mace or a saber. With his current intelligence, it shouldn''t be difficult for him to pick up human combat skills. "Bai also has great ability and powerful battle consciousness. He''s suitable for learning many genres of combat skills including the sword, the saber, and the spear. He can create a weapon of many forms, so he must unleash that advantage of his. "You could change the bone spears in the two knights'' hands into demigod relics and get them to acquire more human spear combat skills." Mr. Fu commented on each and every one of the 13 monsters. He raised a number of questions too, including the changing of equipment and learning combat skills that Lin Huang had thought of before. Lin Huang nodded continuously as he listened. After he was done commenting on the imperial monsters, Mr. Fu trained his eyes back on Lin Huang. "Now, you. Your overall ability''s already compelling, but the biggest weakest that you currently have would be your low combat strength. "I only have two suggestions for you. Firstly, elevate yourself to imperial-level as soon as possible under the premise that you won''t hurt yourself. Of course, you''re actually executing it well. The speed of your combat strength elevation is already terrifying. Just maintain this momentum. "Secondly, break through to level-6 on Sword Dao as soon as you can. If possible, advance beyond that after you''ve reached level-6." "Master, isn''t level-6 Sword Dao the final destination? Is there a higher level above that?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. From the countless documents that he had read, all of them only had recordings of up to level-6 on Martial Dao. Level-6 Deity was the final destination of all Martial Dao. "Let''s talk about Sword Dao. Indeed, the level-6 Deity''s final destination." Mr. Fu nodded lightly. "But you can actually break through above level-6." "Any Martial Dao will experience a transformation once they''ve broken through level-6. Then, the true meaning of Martial Dao will dawn upon them. "The true meaning of Martial Dao is a power that contains a rule, one that''s comparable with divine skill and elemental rules. Only True Gods can master the rule. Even Virtual Gods can''t master it. "Theoretically, one could say that a person would have the ability to kill gods when one masters the true meaning of Martial Dao. "If you''ve mastered the true meaning of Sword Dao, no matter whether you''re on immortal- or imperial-level, you''ll be able to kill Virtual Gods in theory. You could even harm True Gods!" Shock was written all over Lin Huang''s face, but he understood what Mr. Fu meant. "So, the true meaning of Martial Dao is like a sharp blade that could be used to kill an adult even if it''s held by a child." "Yes, it''s like a blade to slay gods," Mr. Fu confirmed and subsequently became upset and apologetic. "But I won''t be able to get there even before I die." "To me, you''re the person who is most likely to attain that level on the entire continent at the moment." Mr. Fu was only unsettled for a moment before he lifted his head to look at Lin Huang with anticipation. "I''ll try my best" Lin Huang had no idea what to say. Although he knew very well that he had great talent, it was not ridiculously excellent. The main reason he could reach this level in Sword Dao was because of his Goldfinger, Xiao Hei. It was already past two in the afternoon when they came out of Mr. Fu''s Kingdom. Lin Huang thought he would just skip lunch and get back to his room to practice his sword skills. However, Mr. Fu insisted on cooking. As a Food Hunter, he could not accept someone being hungry. He looked annoyed as he rifled through Lin Huang''s refrigerator. In the end, he did not use any of Lin Huang''s ingredients and used all the food he stored in his storage ring. In less than 20 minutes, a few dishes that seemed to be sparkling were served. Lin Huang was dumbstruck, gawking at the spread. ''The food sparkles? Will I become a god after eating them?'' Soon, the fragrance wafting from the kitchen spread through the rooms. The Witch was drooling as she lingered around the dining table. Even Lin Xin who was playing Gunmaster in the game pod came downstairs following the fragrance. "What''s that? It smells so amazing!" "Master''s cooking. Would you guys want to order anything?" Lin Huang said while smiling. Lin Xin struggled for a while. It had been less than two hours since she had her lunch. As a lady who was going through puberty, she took her figure very seriously. Apart from main meals, she often watched the snacks that she ate. However, she could not handle the amazing smell that was coming from the kitchen. In the end, she decided to give in to the temptation of delicious food. Six dishes and a large bowl of soup were served. Every one of them looked exquisite with appealing colors of their own. Lin Xin snapped pictures of the food immediately. Even Lin Huang, who usually hated taking pictures before eating, could not help but snap one and shared it with his friends. It was the best meal Lin Huang and the rest ever had. On the other hand, Mr. Fu stopped eating after trying a few dishes. He brought a bottle of wine out of his Emperor''s Heart Ring while watching Lin Huang and the rest attack the food clumsily. Lin Xin ate until she was a little bloated before shyly stopping. She secretly got up and returned to her room when Lin Huang was not looking. In contrast, the Witch did not care about her image as she gorged on the food and moaned with her mouth full, "It''s so good" After all of the dishes were wiped clean, the Witch initiated taking care of the cleaning task. "I''ll do the dishes!" As she brought the plates to the kitchen, she secretly turned her head to peep at Lin Huang and Mr. Fu. Noticing that they were not looking at her, she stuck her tongue out and was ready to lick the sauce on the plate. At that moment, Lin Huang''s voice came to her ears to warn, "Don''t lick the plates!" The Witch then put the plate down shyly. In the living room, Mr. Fu, who was sitting on the couch, asked Lin Huang, "It''s the New Year tomorrow. Don''t you want to summon your imperial monsters out for fresh air?" "I got them out two days ago, but they were a nuisance and messed up the house," Lin Huang explained while smiling. "I thought since you were coming, I''d better recall them right away." "It''s fine. Let them out. The more, the merrier." Mr. Fu drank a mouthful of wine and announced, "I''ll cook a feast tomorrow." When the Witch, who was doing the dishes in the kitchen, heard the word ''feast'', she began to listen attentively. Seeing that Mr. Fu did not mind, Lin Huang nodded and summoned Bai and the rest. He could not help but feel excited as he wondered what kind of feast Mr. Fu would prepare tomorrow. 906 The Third New Year It was the New Year on the 8th of February. Lin Huang, who had been practicing his sword skill for the past few days, decided to rest that day. He headed out with Lin Xin early in the morning. All of the stores nearby, regardless of whether big or small, were closed due to the festivities. The siblings headed straight to the largest supermarket close by to buy the ingredients that Mr. Fu needed. Mr. Fu and the bunch of imperial monsters were the only ones left in the three-story villa. He sat by the coffee table watching Bloody and Grimace playing a chess game. Naturally, the two monsters that possessed Super Intelligence were not playing an ordinary chess game but were playing Chain Strike that was claimed to be the most difficult game by everyone. Each of them would have 32 chess pieces with different functions of their own. The most difficult part was the space on the chess board and the time given. The chess board was three-dimensional with a total of 27,000 coordinates. In addition to that, achieving certain conditions would unlock various time and space effects. For instance, there were turning back tome (reviving a disqualified chess piece), time acceleration (giving oneself more turns in the game), freezing time (denying the opponent their turn for a few rounds), teleportation (trade places with any chess piece on the chess board), space jump (moving chess pieces ahead), space crack (forcing all of the chess pieces in a certain area to be out of the game). Bloody and Grimace had played that for the entire day yesterday and did not even sleep that night. Grimace surrendered for more than 30 rounds, and he loathed losing over and over again. On the other hand, Bloody was playing at ease while sipping coffee in a relaxed manner while Grimace frowned looking like he bore a deep grudge. In reality, the duo was evenly-matched in terms of their computing ability. The main reason Bloody was winning all the way was that it would play this game on the Heart Network with others whenever it was free. It even got dragged into a master club and would often play with experts. Hence, it was much better than Grimace in this game since it knew all of the functions and rules of each chess piece. Grimace was a rookie when it came to this. Although he knew the rules, he was not as skilled as Bloody when it came to using them, let alone Bloody who was an expert at finding the loopholes of man-made rules. Mr. Fu had fun watching them. He was an expert in this game as well, but his computing ability lagged behind compared to these two extremely intelligent monsters. He kept nodding while watching them play; he was learning so much from watching them. The Seventails had been clinging onto Thunder. It was not that Little 7 had never encountered any bird monsters ever since it was born, but none had ever played with it. Those monitor birds would fly away whenever they saw it from a distance. As for those Silvertongue Birds that delivered items, they would be so scared that they would fly away instead of waiting for candies. This bird with such a bloodline was the cause of it not having anybody to play with. Naturally, it would not let go of Thunder since it was a rare opportunity that was hard to come by. Initially, Thunder wanted to ignore the little fellow, but since Lin Huang ordered it to take good care of Little 7, it could only take up the burden. Thunder was tired whenever it thought of having to take care of Little 7 and being its flying mount instead of fighting alongside with other monsters. Meanwhile, Charcoal slept lying down in front of the furnace. Little 7 was actually a little curious about his extended wings, but it would ignore Little 7 whenever it got closer to it. Instead, Charcoal would pretend to sleep so that it could escape from being assigned babysitter duties. The Witch was scolding the Imp and the Malachian Fiend in the kitchen. "Can the both of you not mess the kitchen up? You guys have been walking all over the place while I prepare snacks. Look at that! Your footprints are all over the floor now." "I''ll go get the mop." The Imp stood up and walked to the bathroom. "I''ll go too." The Malachian Fiend followed him. Lancelot was watching the projected television on the couch in the living room while munching on dried vegetables. Killer, who was sitting beside him, had the intention to battle all over his face. "I''ve digested another Sword Dao inheritance. Lancelot, let''s spar." "I want to watch TV," Lancelot declined right away without even lifting his head. "I''ll spar with you," Sitting beside him, the Evil Dominator grinned. "I''m going to make this clear. You''re not allowed to use substitutes that are above imperial-level yellow gold-rank." Killer remembered that the Evil Dominator had used an imperial-level white gold-rank and beaten him up the last time they sparred. "Sure, I won''t," agreed the Evil Dominator. They were sent into the Kingdom to battle as soon as they went to Mr. Fu. The Herculean King and Bing Wang shrunk to the size of a palm and hopped from one lantern to another on the ceiling. Bai, on the other hand, stood by the window and stared blankly at the snow outside. Tyrant walked to him with ice-cream in his hands and put one of it in front of Bai. "You go ahead." Bai shook his head. "Try it. It''s really delicious!" Tyrant persuaded and licked his ice-cream. He did not want to chomp into it because it was too yummy. Otherwise, he would be able to inhale a few of the ice-creams in one go. Bai accepted it after a moment of hesitation. "Bloody said you''re in a bad mood, so I''d like to ask you what''s wrong." Tyrant betrayed Bloody right away. Bai turned and shot daggers at Bloody. It was still playing chess and did not seem to notice him at all. "I''m alright." "Just tell me. We''re brothers. There''s nothing that we can''t talk about." Tyrant put his hand on Bai''s shoulder. Bai peeped where Lancelot and the other two ''gay friends'' were, then he looked away immediately. He then held his head while looking down at the ice-cream in his hand. "I''m Master''s first imperial monster, but Lancelot and the rest have elevated to pseudo-mythical-level while Kylie has elevated to mythical-level. And I''m stuck on legendary-level while my overall ability''s even lower than Warlord who''s new to the team" "Warlord has his own army. You shouldn''t compare yourself to him. Believe in Master. Us being stuck on legendary-level is only temporary. We''ll elevate to mythical-level sooner or later." Tyrant was an old-timer just like Bai, but he was much more optimistic. "But Kylie elevated to mythical-level with her own efforts" Bai took that to heart. He was not jealous. He just thought he was not good enough. "Bai, you''re too hard on yourself. Kylie actually put a lot of effort into elevating to mythical-level. She depends mostly on the mini world that she obtained. Meanwhile, Lancelot depended on his sword servants to elevate to pseudo-mythical-level. Killer was born close to mythical-level. The Evil Dominator was born a god whereby his existence came from God Blood Pods." Bloody could not help itself but speak through voice transmission at that moment. "You, me and most of the imperial monsters under Master elevated step by step from single mutated to double mutated. Our starting point is different from Killer and the rest. If you want to compare with them, you should only do that when you''ve elevated to pseudo-mythical-level or mythical-level. You can only compare whose ability is more powerful when you''re on the same level as them. "Moreover, us stopping at legendary-level now is vital in helping Master with his current combat strength. As soon as we elevate to mythical-level as Kylie did, we can no longer help him. That''s bad for Master. "If you have time for self-loathing now, why don''t you take the time to cultivate the human combat methods instead? Close the gap of your abilities between Lancelot and the rest with diligent cultivation." Bai''s gloom earlier vanished after listening to Bloody''s advice. He was in high spirits again. "Bloody, pick a method that''s suitable for me!" Bai gave the ice-cream that was melting in his hand back to Tyrant and headed straight to the balcony on the top floor. Seeing that the ice-cream was melting, Tyrant shoved the ice-cream Bai had just passed him into his mouth immediately. He swallowed it after some munching. "Mmm So good!" Lin Huang and Lin Xin had returned after buying ingredients when it was almost noon. They had lunch together while the Witch helped in the kitchen. When it was time for lunch, Mr. Fu brought Killer and the Evil Dominator back from Kingdom. Killer lost terribly and shouted at the Evil Dominator, "You liar! You said you wouldn''t use substitutes above imperial-level yellow gold-rank." "You can''t blame me. A verbal agreement isn''t serious enough, to begin with." The Evil Dominator spread his hands, looking like a douchebag. Since lunch, the imperial monsters behaved themselves because Lin Huang was home. Bloody told Lin Huang about Bai. Subsequently, he told Bloody his plan after that. "Besides Advance Card, they''ll need materials to elevate from legendary-level to mythical-level. I planned to only start collecting those materials after the New Year because we need many types of materials and some of them are rather rare. It''ll take some time to gather all of them, so it''s better to get started as soon as possible. Take note of that, Bai. I''ll gather all the materials that we need as soon as I can." The villa became crowded again when Mr. Fu was cooking in the evening. The dishes Mr. Fu prepared smelled fantastic. The imperial monsters were drooling before the dishes were even served. They did not have the mood to play. Almost all of them gathered at the dining hall, waiting for the food to be served. Everyone was stunned when they gaped at the mouth-watering dishes Mr. Fu put onto plates. They were much more enthusiastic about having dinner compared to lunch. Not having eaten much during lunch, Bai could not resist the tempting food. He ate so much that he became bloated. Lin Huang recalled the Herculean King and the other imperial monsters that were lying bloated on the floor into cards and summoned the Fallen Knight and the rest. They had not been summoned for the past few days, so the dinner was definitely a treat for them. "I''ve never had such delicious meat in my life!" Tyrant commented. "You mean there''s food that''s even more delicious than dried carrot?!" Lancelot was completely shocked. "Master, could you learn to cook this well?" Even Grimace humbled himself to Lin Huang for the sake of good food. "Your master shouldn''t be learning to cook in order to conserve his energy." Mr. Fu shook his head while smiling. "If all of you would like to learn, I could send you a cooking inheritance." "I''ll try to learn!" Bloody was the first to register. "I want to learn too." Lin Xin was the second to raise her hand. "Me too." The Witch raised her hand too. "I''ll be in charge of eating then," Tyrant offered while smiling. The rest shared the same thought too. Night soon fell after dinner. It was beginning to get crowded outside too. Fireworks of all colors exploded. Under Grimace''s illusion as their cover, all of the imperial monsters gathered on the balcony of the second and the third floor, watching the fireworks dazzling in the sky. For most of them, it was their first time seeing fireworks. "It''s so beautiful!" "I bought some in the morning. Would you guys want to play?" Lin Huang asked while smiling. "Yes!" The imperial monsters answered in unison. Lin Huang took the fireworks out and put them into a little pile. He got the imperial monsters to choose what they wanted and all of the fireworks were whizzed away immediately. He demonstrated by setting off one firework. They learned fast and began setting their fireworks off on their own. Fireworks of various colors shot into the sky and exploded into beautiful glows. The sound of laughter came from below. Lin Xin secretly lay her head on Lin Huang''s shoulder while he grabbed her shoulder and caressed her hair lovingly. Mr. Fu was smiling faintly as he watched the siblings and the imperial monsters under the sparks. This third New Year was the most crowded and warm one Lin Huang had ever experienced in this world. 907 Such Big Nostrils It was a new beginning after the New Year. Early morning on the 9th, Mr. Fu made everyone breakfast. He bade farewell to Lin Huang after that. Bai and the rest did not want to Mr. Fu to leave. Tyrant was so close to crying. "To be honest, I''m not worthy of being called your master. You''re on your own path now and you''re doing better than I expected you to. There''s nothing that I could teach you any longer." Mr. Fu completely gave up the thought of staying a few more days to teach Lin Huang cultivation after witnessing his cultivation speed in sword skills for the past few days. "Please don''t say that, Master. What you''ve taught me is much more important than Sword Dao and ability." Lin Huang really admired Mr. Fu for sacrificing so much for the humans of the world. "You little fellas, listen to your master. I won''t cook for those who are disobedient," Mr. Fu warned Tyrant and the rest of imperial monsters that nodded immediately. After giving them some reminders, Mr. Fu summoned a dimensional portal and stepped into it. Soon, the dimensional portal shut and he disappeared completely. Lin Huang returned to the house with his imperial monsters, appearing gloomy. "I''ll never have such delicious meat again" Tears rolled from Tyrant''s eyes. Lancelot seemed like he was broken. He kept muttering the same thing over and over again, "I want cucumber salad" "Hey, have you looked at the inheritance? How long will you take to learn it?" Grimace asked Bloody directly. "It''s not difficult to learn. The key is that we might not be able to cook as well as he does even if we follow the inheritance that he gave," Bloody spoke the truth. "If you can''t do it, show me the inheritance. I''d like to learn too. We''ll compete and see who cooks better!" It was clear that Grimace was unwilling to lose to Bloody. "Sure," Bloody agreed right away. Bloody did not care if it could defeat Grimace in cooking because it would be great if someone could share the workload in the kitchen. Moreover, getting Grimace to do something was better than him creating trouble out of boredom. Lin Huang returned to his room, but he could not quiet his mind to practice his sword skills. Mr. Fu had duplicated a copy of 11 virtual god-level methods for him while he had made a copy of the three true god inheritances and 14 virtual god inheritances which he had obtained from Gong Sun for Mr. Fu. Lin Huang discussed how to handle those methods and inheritances with Mr. Fu. They decided to keep the three true god inheritances a complete secret. They would record the 14 virtual god inheritances into jade slips and sell them together with the 11 virtual god methods to the Union Government. Mr. Fu would follow up with the Union Government and trade some exclusive authorization and cultivation resources for Lin Huang. The 25 different cultivation methods were sufficient to cultivate millions of virtual god-level powerhouses. It was quite impossible that the Union Government would decline this business. However, Lin Huang was concerned about Mr. Fu. After all, the person who had plotted against him the last time came from the Union Government. Just when Lin Huang was worrying about Mr. Fu, the temporary communication ring on his finger vibrated all of a sudden. He had only left the contact number for this communication ring at the Wanbao Auction. The communication page popped up. As expected, it showed that the person who was calling was Tang Xu from the Wanbao Auction. Lin Huang was suspicious about the reason he would contact him at such a time. "Maybe he''s calling for season''s greetings?" Lin Huang accepted the video call request after disguising as a demigod. "Yes?" "Sir, I''m sorry to call out of the blue, but I must tell you this immediately." From Tang Xu''s tone, Lin Huang faintly sensed that it might be bad news. "Do tell." "I heard news coming from Division 1 early in the morning. Gigantic ruins appeared in Division 1 last night out of nowhere. Judging by the intensity of its power, it should be grade-7 ruins. Many demigods are interested in this brand new ruins." "I heard that the Union Government''s planning to open this new ruins to all demigods for them to discover on their own. We''ve set the auction on the 8th of March, but the official opening day for the ruins is set on the 25th of February. In other words, most of the demigods on this continent will be in the new ruins rather than attending our auction when it begins." "So, I''m wondering if we should shift the auction earlier or postpone it later?" Tang Xu was asking for Lin Huang''s opinion. "It doesn''t make sense to bring it forward because the God Figurine is what I want. The God Figurine''s Combat Soul is a conquest weapon. It''s pretty impossible for them to trade god relics with that. Meanwhile, it''s unnecessary to postpone it to the date after they''ve come out of the ruins. You''ve already set the date before the New Year and the news has spread far and wide. It''ll be embarrassing to change the date." Lin Huang shook his head. "Let''s just go with the initial date. If they''re not sold, we''ll do it again next time." "Alright then." Tang Xu could only accept Lin Huang''s suggestion helplessly. He regretted releasing the news before the New Year especially since it would have definitely been fine to release the news after that. If he were to change the date all of a sudden now, it would make people think that the Wanbao Action was unreliable. Lin Huang changed his appearance after the call with Tang Xu and forced a smile while shaking his head helplessly. How would he have thought that this obstacle would happen when he was all ready for the auction. He thought he would get at least four God Figurines after the auction and advance all the way to immortal-level rank-9. However, now it seemed like it would be an issue to even sell one of his god relics. His targeted customers would be exploring the new ruins in Division 1, so who would come to the auction? "Never mind. Just go with the flow. I''ll sell them off sooner or later." Lin Huang was sure of that. It was just that he would elevate to immortal-level rank-9 much later. His Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated all of a sudden soon after he ended the call with Tang Xu. The communication page popped up. It was Yi Yeyu calling this time. After accepting the video call request, Yi Yeyu''s image was projected. She wore a loose, bright yellow coat with a denim mini skirt. The hemline of the coat was almost the same length as her mini skirt. There was a cute Swine Beast printed on her fluffy sandals under her long, fair legs. They were so fair that they were almost reflective. "It''s winter now and you''re showing your legs off. Aren''t you cold?" Lin Huang could not help but tease her as soon as he picked up her call. Yi Yeyu was stunned when she heard his statement and explained immediately, "I have heating at home." "Why are you wearing a coat when there''s heating at home?" Lin Huang was speechless. "Also, I think you bought the coat three sizes bigger than you are. I think this is supposed to be worn by girls who are 250 pounds or so." "You are the one who weighs 250 pounds! I bought a bigger size on purpose. This is called layering. You''ve no f*cking idea about fashion!" Yi Yeyu could not help but use profanity. "Sure, you know about fashion." Lin Huang shrugged. "I don''t want to talk to you anymore. I''m hanging up." Yi Yeyu pretended like she was going to put the phone down. "Don''t hang up. You''ve already called, so let''s just spend your Life Crystals on this call," Lin Huang said wearing a smile. "Then, don''t talk about my clothes." Yi Yeyu named her condition. "The Swine Beast printed on your sandals has such big nostrils." "Don''t talk about my sandals!" Yi Yeyu thought that Lin Huang would say her sandals were cute, but he teased her about the big nostrils instead. Lin Huang shifted his focus up and his eyes eventually landed on Yi Yeyu''s face. "Why did you apply such heavy make-up today? Your lips are so red that they''re going to drip with blood" "I''ve only put some lipstick on. I don''t have any make-up on!" Yi Yeyu insisted furiously. "Your hair" "Don''t you dare talk about my hair!" Yi Yeyu interrupted Lin Huang directly this time. "I just wanted to say that your hair looks nice this time. You seem radiant," Lin Huang mumbled softly. "Thanks, but I don''t need your compliments!" Yi Yeyu did not look any happier although she was complimented. "You don''t look too well. Are you sick? Drink more warm water," Lin Huang asked earnestly. "I''m feeling fine. I don''t need to drink warm water!" "Alright then. So, tell me, why are you calling?" Lin Huang could not find anything else to talk about since he had commented about her from bottom to top. Moreover, she did not look pleased now. "Nothing. Bye!" "Don''t. Just tell me what you were going to say." Yi Yeyu glared at Lin Huang madly and only spoke a moment later, "I''ve elevated to immortal-level." "Congratulations!" "Soon, I want to train in Division 3 too." "Sure, I''ll buy you a meal then," Lin Huang said generously. "I heard that the Wanbao Auction will be auctioning god relics after the New Year, and I''d like to take a look," Yi Yeyu proceeded to say. "I''m going to that auction too. Let''s go together," Lin Huang suggested. "My brother might come as well. He said he wanted to see how a god relic looks like." "Sure, let''s go together," Lin Huang responded while nodding with a grin. "I''m pretty familiar with Wanbao City. I''ll be your host." After chatting with Yi Yeyu, Lin Huang put the concern he had for Mr. Fu aside. He took a wooden sword out after hanging up and went into the zone to cultivate his sword skills for the day. 908 The Royal Trial Lin Huang did not waste time the days after the New Year. In order to get Bai, Tyrant and the rest to learn human combat skills faster, he took an entire day to talk it through with Bloody and Grimace. They eventually came up with an idea. Lin Huang got Bloody to collect a massive amount of combat skills as its database, analyze the core composition of all combat skills, extract them and merge them into combat skills that were suitable for Bai and the rest. The reason he wanted to spend so much time doing this was that it took a long time to learn high-grade combat skills. Even an immortal-level human powerhouse who was talented in Sword Dao would need at least a year to master a legendary-level sword skill perfectly. Lin Huang''s ability to learn one sword skill an hour did not come from his talent but from the cheats that he collected. Getting Bai and the rest to spend hundreds to thousands of years to learn combat skills would be a waste of time, so he would rather create exclusive combat skills for each of them. Even though the combat skills were more difficult, they would only take two to three years to learn. Bloody had collected combat skills on the Heart Network before and later, its parasitic army cast parasites on many human powerhouses. Hence, it mastered quite a number of combat skills. However, to fill up the database, Lin Huang shared a copy of all of the combat skills including Sword Dao that he had in his head. He even retrieved an extensive number of combat skills from Mr. Fu for Bloody to memorize. To reduce its workload, Bloody delegated a portion of work to Grimace. It shared the database with Grimace. Grimace was very curious about human combat skills, so he soon immersed himself in the study of it. Both of them put aside the cooking competition they had agreed on earlier. Apart from practicing sword skills every day, Lin Huang became Bloody and Grimace''s consultant at the same time. They would ask Lin Huang whatever combat skills they did not understand. After all, the data that they obtained was more theory than practical. Although Lin Huang did not cultivate many combat skills, he had achieved a certain standard in Sword Dao. Just like the saying ''a principle passes a hundred principles to be bright'', the epic-level and legendary-level combat skills were not obscure to him now when he looked at them. He could give an elaborate explanation on most of them. Otherwise, he would ask Mr. Fu if there was anything he could not comprehend. Although the exclusive combat skills were still new to Bloody and the rest, most of the imperial monsters had their own elevation techniques. For instance, Lin Huang shared all Witchcraft Runes with the Witch. Meanwhile, Lin Huang shared the Seamless skill with the Imp and Grimace who were experts at telekinesis. For Killer, Lin Huang shared all of his Sword Dao inheritance and sword skills with him. Lancelot, on the other hand, had Bloody sharing all of the Saber Dao combat skills with him. Killer and Lancelot were different from the other imperial monsters. They had rather terrifying talent and comprehensive ability in Sword Dao and Saber Dao. Both of them learned human sword and saber skills insanely fast. Although they could not compare with Lin Huang who had shortcuts, picking up one type of legendary-level combat skill in a day or two was normal to them. Lin Huang figured the reason they were like that was not that they were on pseudo-mythical-level. Instead, they were born with an extraordinary affinity toward the nature of their combat skills. The Evil Dominator was on pseudo-mythical-level too, but he learned human combat skills. Its efficiency was nothing higher than Bai. In fact, it was even slightly lower. As Bloody and Grimace got on track with the exclusive combat skills, Lin Huang had more time to cultivate his sword skills. The legendary-level sword skills that he mastered were growing every single day. On the 13th of February evening, Lin Huang finally obtained 30,000 card pieces for the 300th legendary-level sword skill that he cultivated. Xiao Hei notified him that a complete legendary-level sword skill card had merged with him. Just when the card became one with Lin Huang''s body, he could feel that his Sword Dao was closing its gap rapidly. It was like the very last puzzle piece being fixed into the frame. He instantly comprehended some of the questions that he could not understand in Sword Dao. It was like a layer of membrane that was pried open, and he could now see a bigger world. Lin Huang shut his eyes for a long time and realized that his Sword Dao had reached the legendary level-6 when he opened his eyes again. Deity, level-6 of Sword Dao! If Mr. Fu had not told him this a few days ago, perhaps Lin Huang might think that his Sword Dao had reached its peak now. However, after listening to Mr. Fu explain the true meaning of Sword Dao, Lin Huang knew he was still far from his goal. His determination and will were pumped. The breakthrough of his Sword Dao gave Lin Huang a deeper understanding which accelerated his speed in the cultivation of his legendary-level sword skills. Initially, he would have taken more than an hour to accumulate a complete sword skill card by cultivating legendary-level sword skills together with his Sword Spirit. However, he would only need slightly more than ten minutes for one legendary-level sword skill in order to get a complete sword skill card. He could obtain four to five sword skill cards within an hour. The boost in the learning of his sword skills gave Lin Huang more confidence which made him cultivate his sword skills even more diligently. However, figuring that it was still the New Year, Lin Huang would still spend time eating and shopping with Lin Xin every day. He also took the time to contact Leng Yuexin, Li Lang, and the rest of his old friends to find out how they had been. Leng Yuexin had elevated to immortal-level rank-2. She had already been on blue flame-level 11 months ago after all. On the other hand, Li Lang had elevated to immortal-level rank-1. His skin was much tanner now. Having looked like a brat before, he now looked mature. It was clear that he had gone through a lot in the past year. Lin Huang did not contact Yi Zheng, but he was almost sure that he was more powerful than Leng Yuexin. The resources in Division 3 were richer compared to Division 7, and since Lin Huang had introduced Yi Zheng to the Genius Union, his growth must have skyrocketed. On the night of the 14th of February, Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated when he was practicing his sword skills. Seeing that it was Yang Ling on the communication page, he figured that the Emperor''s Heart Rings must be unlocked. He picked up the video call after disguising as Lin Xie. Surprisingly, Yang Ling did not show any body parts this time in the video call. Instead, he was wearing a smart suit. "Yo, you dressed up today." "It''s a must since it''s a special day today," Yang Ling said while smiling. "What''s so special about today?" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. "It''s obvious that you''re a single dog." Tang Ling had disdain on his face. "You don''t even know it''s Valentine''s Day today." "Aren''t you a single dog as well?" Lin Huang pouted. "Not exactly. I met this goddess the other day, so today might spell the end of my singledom," Yang Ling said with full confidence. "You might end your singledom today, but you''ll become single again tomorrow." Lin Huang seriously had no comment on Yang Ling''s messy private life. He was lucky to not have contracted any diseases by now. "It''s different this time." Yang Ling nodded in all seriousness. "I''m really in love." "Sure, I''ll congratulate you in advance then." Lin Huang was a little surprised, but he did not plan to delve into Yang Ling''s private life. "Are you contacting me this time to tell me that you''ve unlocked all of the Emperor''s Heart Rings?" "I''ve taken a few days off during the New Year and spent half a day yesterday unlocking all of them." Yang Ling put his private life aside as soon as it came to business. "Your rewards are pretty dope this time!" Yang Ling could see all of the items in the Emperor''s Heart Rings via projection after unlocking them. However, he could only see the projected items and not take them away since the rings were physically with Lin Huang. "But there''s something that I must tell you. There''s this one item among all of them that you must get rid of as soon as you can, or else, you might get yourself into major trouble." Yang Ling could not help but frown as he warned. "What''s that?" Lin Huang asked doubtfully. "It''s Dynasty''s Royal Trials token," Yang Ling announced while projecting an image. It was a golden token with the character ''royal'' imprinted right in the middle amidst complicated sigils around it. "What does this thing do?" "It''s the trial token that''s only owned by Dynasty''s Princes. Every Prince has one," Yang Ling explained, "Dynasty will have a Royal Trial every decade. All of the Princes must participate in it. The person who passes the final elimination will obtain the Royal Title and became the leader of Dynasty. It has been over 600 years since Dynasty was established and there''s only been one person who won the title. He was Dynasty''s founder. "If I''m not mistaken, Dynasty should have the Royal Trials this year. Huang Wuji of Five Princes will most probably win the title and become Dynasty''s new leader." "A trial token would mean a place in the Royal Trials. Dynasty won''t allow the Royal Trials token to be wandering out there. Having this token with you spells big trouble, so I suggest you get rid of it as soon as you can." "Can they sense where the token is since it''s in the Emperor''s Heart Ring?" Lin Huang raised a brow. "They can''t, but they have their way of locating it as soon as you take it out." Yang Ling shook his head and added, "I''ve changed the positioning of those Emperor''s Heart Rings that you obtained this time before I activated them, but we can''t get rid of the possibility that they might find out about the rings being activated and retrieve the items from far away. I honestly suggest you get rid of them as soon as possible." "I understand. Thanks." Lin Huang nodded. As soon as they were done talking, Lin Huang heard someone knocking on Yang Ling''s door when he was going to hang up on the video call. "I think it''s my goddess. Don''t hang up. I''ll show you how gorgeous my goddess is!" Yang Ling stood up to get the door instantly. A delicate and shy girl appeared standing at the door. Lin Huang was completely bewildered when he took a closer look. He almost exclaimed out loud, ''Hong Zhuang?!'' The girl was Hong Zhuang, but her make-up seemed completely different than before. She looked like a naive student now. "You''re here, Hong Hong!" Yang Ling looked shy which was a rare sight. "Oh yeah, I was just talking to my client. Let me hang up now." Yang Ling turned around and winked at Lin Huang''s projection at his work desk as he walked over. It only took him a few steps to reach his desk before he ended the call. Looking at the empty communication page before him, Lin Huang could not snap back to reality for a long time. 909 Isd Like to Try Hong Zhuang''s appearance surprised Lin Huang. He knew how powerful that lady was. When he had still been on bronze-level, that lady had brought him into the Purple Crow from which he took great effort to escape by faking his death. Her make-up aside, Lin Huang could recognize her right away by looking at her back. This lady was no ordinary person. She was the person who fooled the two major organizations; she faked her death to escape the Union Government''s headquarters and left the Purple Crow without getting caught. Even though Yang Ling was a traveler just like Lin Huang, and possessed a heaven-defying Goldfinger, he might not gain any benefits from this lady. After some struggle, Lin Huang decided to keep quiet about Hong Zhuang''s identity. That lady must have her own objectives of being with Yang Ling. Exposing her identity might trigger him and result in Yang Ling being killed to keep the secret safe. Lin Huang shook his head to get Hong Zhuang out of his mind. He then began to look at the Emperor''s Heart Rings Yang Ling had unlocked. Among the 300 or so Emperor''s Heart Rings, over 60 of them belonged to imperial-level powerhouses. Lin Huang browsed through them one after another. Apart from an impressive number of Life Crystals, all sort of materials, elixirs and monster carcasses, there were also thousands of ancient relics, over 70 demigod relics, and many miscellaneous items. He also found the token Yang Ling mentioned among the miscellaneous items. It was completely golden with the character ''royal'' imprinted right in the middle just like Yang Ling projected. "There really is a Royal Trials token!" Lin Huang did not take it out. Instead, he looked through the ring with his Divine Telekinesis. After recalling his Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang thought hard about how to handle this token. "There''s a high possibility that people from Dynasty will find it and take it back if I throw it away like that." He was reluctant to do that. After some thought, he went on the Heart Network and began reading up more on the Royal Trials. However, he got nothing after browsing through for half an hour. It was clear that Dynasty kept the news confidential. After thinking to himself, he decided to contact Mr. Fu. "Mr dear disciple, what''s wrong? Is there anything about the combat skills that you don''t understand?" "Master, do you know what the Royal Trials entail?" Lin Huang asked directly. "This I really have no idea about. Dynasty has never made the Royal Trials public. Apart from the Princes who participate in it, nobody from Dynasty knows what''s in it, let alone outsiders. Moreover, it''s said that the tests are different every time." Mr. Fu thought it was weird for Lin Huang to ask about this. "Why are you asking about this out of nowhere?" "I have a Royal Trials token with me," Lin Huang revealed honestly. "You killed a Prince of Dynasty?" Mr. Fu could not help but raise his brow when he heard the revelation. "Yes, the Seventh Prince." "Don''t worry about it since you''ve already killed him." Mr. Fu shook his head subsequently. "But it''s better that you get rid of this trial token. Especially since the Royal Trials will open this year, people from Dynasty will definitely look for the trial tokens that are wandering out there. They might come after you if you keep it with you." "So, anyone can participate in the trial as long as they have this token?" Lin Huang asked again. "Yes, according to the rumors. Dynasty''s founder used the token to participate in the Royal Trials before Dynasty was even founded. Ever since he established Dynasty, he got people to gather information about the trial tokens and collect them in all sort of ways. "So, whether you''re a Prince or not, you can take part in it even if you''re not from Dynasty. You''re eligible to enter the trials as long as you have the token to activate it while your combat strength must be on immortal-level. "However, the problem is that Dynasty has been treating where the trials are held as their private properly. Dynasty Princes will definitely attack together as soon as an outsider appears." Mr. Fu looked at Lin Huang suspiciously after he explained at length. "Are you thinking of participating in the Royal Trials?" "I would like to try." Lin Huang smiled while nodding. "There must be many benefits of these trials since the founder of Dynasty values it so much. Moreover, I''m dying to find out how difficult the trials are. The trials that only one person has passed in more than 500 years." Mr. Fu went silent for a moment before speaking again, "I won''t interfere with your decision. Go ahead if you think it''s the right thing to do." "With your current ability and your imperial monsters, it shouldn''t be a problem for you to handle the ordinary Dynasty Princes. However, you must beware of this one person, Huang Wuji. He was already on immortal-level rank-9 three years ago and he''s been suppressing his combat strength on immortal-level for the past few years just for the trials this time. He''s known as one of the most powerful immortal-level powerhouses in the entire continent." "If he really only has immortal-level rank-9 combat strength, he shouldn''t be a major threat to your knight imperial monster who can merge, but it''s very likely that he''ll break through his combat strength as soon as he enters the trials. It''s possible for him to break through to imperial-level crimson gold-rank or even imperial-level yellow gold-rank right away with three years of work, heavy support of resources from Dynasty and some special techniques. His real ability might be on par with imperial-level purple gold-rank if he elevates to imperial-level yellow gold-rank." "Huang Wuji of the Five Princes... I''ve heard of him." Lin Huang nodded lightly upon hearing Mr. Fu''s advice. "I''ll be careful." "Don''t think too much when you''re in the trials. Just give all you have to fight. If you pass the trial, I could ask Dynasty for some resources for you. After all, it''s pretty impossible that they''d get an outsider like you to be their leader." "I''ll try my best." Lin Huang faintly sensed that Mr. Fu seemed to have rather high expectations of him. Looking at him grinning in the projection, Lin Huang figured he must be imagining himself giving Dynasty a good lesson. Mr. Fu snapped back to his senses a moment later. Lin Huang asked then, "Master, do you know when do the trials open?" He had browsed through the Web but found nothing, so he could only ask Mr. Fu for the answer. "I''m not sure about the exact time. From what I remember, the opening varies every time." Mr. Fu shook his head. "But don''t you worry. They always make it so ridiculously big like it''s the New Year every time the Royal Trials open. With Huang Wuji this time, they''ll definitely make everyone hear about it before it opens. Moreover, a new ruin has opened in Division 1. Dynasty will only have time to make the Royal Trials happen after they are done exploring the ruins. I''m guessing the trials will only happen in two months no matter what. I''ll keep tabs on it and inform you as soon as I hear about it." Mr. Fu changed the subject as soon as they were done talking about the trials. "I''ve talked to the Union Government about the virtual god-level methods. We''re in the preliminary stage of the discussion now and I''m still negotiating some details. A decision should be made in these few days, and I''ll contact you as soon as the decision''s out." "Sure." Lin Huang had gotten one problem off his chest after speaking to Mr. Fu, but he had something else bothering him now. "There''s no rush for the Royal Trials yet, but Wanbao City''s auction will start on the 8th of March. I''ll have to go back to Division 3 in 20 days. What about the silly girl, Lin Xin?" 910 Why Don’t You Stay at the Martial Hunter College to be Their Teacher To Lin Huang, getting Lin Xin to stay in Division 7 would be much safer. Division 3 was a mix of highs and lows. 80% of the underground organizations'' headquarters on the entire continent was there. Even the Union Government gave up on the overall jurisdiction of the area whereby they took footholds No. A1 to A10 with other union organizations. Among the 38 Grade-A footholds, 28 of them were occupied by top underground organizations. The Grade-B footholds were all taken up by the remaining underground organizations. Meanwhile, the leftover Grade-C''s and Grade-D''s with little value were filled with underground organization members. Such a safety zone was not the best environment for Lin Xin to grow up in. Lin Huang could always leave whenever he got into any trouble if he was alone. However, if he brought Lin Xin along, not only would it be a drag, but his rivals might come after both of them. After laying out the pros and cons, Lin Huang came up with a plan right away. He shared his opinion during dinner. Lin Xin listened to him from the beginning until the end without saying a word. She did not show any expression on her face, but Lin Huang knew that she must be upset. "It would be a relief for me if you stayed in Division 7," Lin Huang added, "White Capital''s the safest foothold in the entire Division 7." "But I''ve applied for graduation." Lin Xin lifted her head to look at Lin Huang. She had been hiding her expression from him. "When did you apply for that?" Lin Huang was a little surprised. "Before the winter holidays," Lin Xin said softly, "The stuff Martial Hunter College''s teaching is no longer useful for me. I''ve learned everything about Sword Dao and firearms through whatever''s available at the library by myself throughout the year So, I applied for the graduation exam ahead of time and passed with full marks." Lin Huang frowned slightly. It was not that he was unsatisfied with Lin Xin''s result, but he was worried that she would be not able to stay in Martial Hunter College any longer since she was no longer a student there. Winter City was a grade more dangerous than the White Capital. To be honest, Lin Huang was worried about leaving her alone in Winter City. Moreover, Lin Xin would consider leaving her initial circle after leaving Martial Hunter College. Apart from the Witch, she had no friends, which was bad for her growth. After some deep thought, an idea popped into Lin Huang''s mind. "Xin Er, why don''t you stay at Martial Hunter College to be a teacher?" "Huh?!" Lin Xin was shocked to hear that. "It''s great to be a teacher. I think you could try that." "Am I good enough to be one?" Lin Xin felt a little emotional now. After all, her brother had been a teacher at Martial Hunter College before. It sounded like a fantastic idea to experience what her brother had gone through. "With your current standards, you should be good enough to teach the Sword Dao faculty or firearms at Martial Hunter College," Lin Huang said while smiling and nodding approvingly. Lin Xin teaching at Martial Hunter College would be another way to push her back to the White Capital for better safety. "You''ll still see your classmates and teachers if you go back to Martial Hunter College. Wouldn''t that be great? It''s way more fun than staying in Winter City with the Witch alone." Lin Huang proceeded to persuade her. "Is Division 3 really as dangerous as you described?" Lin Xin gazed at Lin Huang and asked grudgingly. She knew that he was being dramatic in order to get her to follow him. "I''ll send you the statistical reports of the distribution of the organizations and the crime rates in Division 3." Lin Huang selected two documents immediately and sent them to Lin Xin. Lin Xin took a look at the documents right away. She was just glancing through them and found out that he did not lie about the distribution of the organizations. She then studied the crime report. The longer she looked through it, the deeper her frown became while her little face turned pale. "Apart from footholds No. A1 to A10, the rest of the footholds in Division 3 aren''t safe," Lin Huang confirmed, "But you''ll need a permit to enter the safe footholds, let alone reside there. "As for the rest of the areas, even Grade-A footholds have an average of at least 30,000 crimes, including murder, every year. There are some Grade-A footholds that have recorded more than 50,000 crimes annually. Grade-B and Grace-C areas are even messier. Even the data statistic isn''t complete." "Why isn''t the Union Government doing anything about it since it''s so messed up?" Lin Xin knew he was telling the truth after looking at the statistics. "It''s not that they don''t want to do anything, but there''s nothing that they can do. If the Union Government didn''t vacate Division 3, there would''ve been more underground organizations residing in Divisions 1 and 2. If that happened, the three core zones would be in chaos. For overall stability, the Union Government was forced to give and take." Lin Huang provided a simple explanation. Lin Xin went silent for a moment and finally nodded. "I''ll promise to stay in Division 7, but I have a condition!" "Do tell." Lin Huang raised his brow in curiosity. It was clear that Lin Xin had grown up now that she was laying her conditions down. "I want to go to Division 3 when I reach immortal-level. By then, you''re not allowed to use all sorts of excuses to trick me." Lin Xin firmly named her condition. "I''ll accept your condition, but I''d like to add another one." Lin Huang nodded after agreeing to her condition and laid out his terms. "You must wait until you''re totally stable in each rank before elevating to the next rank when you reach holy fire-level. Don''t destroy your foundation just because you want to fulfill the agreement you''ve made with me as soon as you can." "I''m not that stupid to destroy my own foundation." Lin Xin retaliated immediately. "So Deal?" Lin Huang extended his fist. "Deal!" Lin Xin extended her fist as well and bumped it with Lin Huang''s. Lin Huang had another worry crossed off his mind after coming to an agreement with her. "Do you need to hunt for Life Fire monsters to elevate from gold-level to holy fire-level? Or will you be able to achieve that just by guzzling Life Crystals like before?" The reason Lin Huang asked that was that Lin Xin had an extremely unique physique whereby she had depended on eating Life Crystals alone to elevate from iron-level all the way to gold-level. She did not even have to obtain any Life Seeds. He was unsure if Lin Xin would need Life Fire or merely depended on the Life Crystals to elevate from gold-level to white flame-level which was a big leap. "I think I can achieve that with sufficient Life Crystals." Lin Xin was hesitant when she answered. Lin Huang transferred a sum of Life Crystals to Lin Xin right away. "Let me know if it''s not enough." Lin Xin heard a chime a moment later and she checked her account immediately. "One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand" Lin Xin counted the number of zeroes one after another. "100 million, one billion!" She counted again to make sure that she did not get it wrong. She then gaped at Lin Huang with her eyes wide open. "A billion Life Crystals?!" "Is it not enough?" Lin Huang raised a brow. "It''s enough. It''s enough!" Lin Xin nodded immediately. "Just take whatever you need and break through these few days when I''m around. Your combat strength was close to complete-stage gold-level much earlier, so there''s no need for you to stay on this level," Lin Huang urged Lin Xin to break through to holy fire-level as soon as possible. He wanted to guide her in the system before he left. "If you can''t break through from eating Life Crystals, I''ll bring you to hunt Life Fire monsters." "Alright, I''ll go to the Credit Bureau to withdraw Life Crystals now." Lin Xin did not plan to drag this on anymore. She was eager to become a transcendence since the beginning. 911 Lin Xin — Elevating to Transcendence Lin Huang got himself a chair and sat on guard outside of Lin Xin''s room. He used his Divine Telekinesis to penetrate the wall and was aware of Lin Xin''s condition at all times although he was just a wall away from her. Lin Xin sat by her bed with Life Crystals piled into a little hill under her bed. She opened her mouth and the Life Crystals the size of a thumb turned into white rays which seeped into her mouth one after another. The pile of Life Crystals that looked like a little hill was getting smaller and smaller at a speed could be seen with the naked eye. Whenever the Life Crystals pile on the floor finished, she would fill them up from the stock in her Emperor''s Heart Ring immediately. She repeated that for more than ten hours and eventually stopped when it was almost midnight. Lin Huang, who had been guarding outside the door, could not help but stand up. He fixed his eyes where Lin Xin was through the wall. He could finally sense that her aura was getting more powerful at a rapid speed. Using his Divine Telekinesis, he had been following up with her, and he waited for the change to end patiently. However, Lin Xin''s aura elevated from complete-stage gold-level all the way to white flame-level in less than a minute. It finally stopped when it reached the peak of white flame-level. He was rather surprised to sense Lin Xin''s current aura. Her aura had clearly surpassed most triple mutated white flame-level monsters. She was almost on par with the God Blood, Bai, back then. In less than three minutes, Lin Xin''s flesh transformed at a high speed. It was transforming internally and could not be seen with one''s eyes. Lin Huang clearly sensed with his Divine Telekinesis that her soul was transforming at the same time. Moreover, the transformation speed of her soul was no slower than that of her flesh. Lin Huang thought it was mind-boggling when he sensed the transformation speed of her flesh and soul. One must know that it had taken him more than three hours to complete the preliminary transformation of his flesh and soul when he elevated to white flame-level back then. He then took almost a month to stabilize the transformation completely. However, Lin Xin only took less than three minutes to complete the transformation of her flesh and soul completely. Compared to his process that took a month, this was astounding. Just when Lin Huang was worrying about her, in her bedroom, Lin Xin opened her eyes slowly. She looked around before holding her head down to look at her hands. "Is this transcendence? I feel like I''m so much more powerful now." After confirming that Lin Xin had woken up, Lin Huang knocked on her door. "Come in." Lin Xin knew that her brother was the only one who would knock on her door at that moment. Lin Huang opened the door and stopped when he noticed the Life Crystals that were strewn all over the floor. "Xin Er, do you feel any discomfort in your body since you''ve just elevated?" "No." Lin Xin checked her body and did not notice any unusualness. "Why do you ask?" "Oh, great then." Lin Huang was relieved. "Some people will experience some discomfort from not being able to control their body or soul that''s become powerful all of a sudden after they''ve just elevated." Lin Huang made up an excuse to cover up his concern. He figured that her transformation speed must have something to do with her body that was one of a kind. "Tidy up your room and sleep early." "Sleep early?" Lin Xin turned to look out of the window, only realizing that the sky was now dark. She then turned to ask Lin Huang immediately, "What time is it now?" "It''s past midnight," Lin Huang said with a grin, "You took over ten hours to break through this time." "That long?" "Leaping through a level will result in a transformation of flesh and soul, so it''s normal for it to take longer," Lin Huang assured. "Sleep early. I''ll teach you how to build the Flying Power Sigil tomorrow. You''ll be able to fly after you learn that." "Flying Power!" Lin Xin''s eyes lit up upon hearing that. Lin Huang shook his head while smiling before he returned to his room. Lin Xin put all of the Life Crystals on the floor into her Emperor''s Heart Ring but sleep eluded her due to the excitement. On the next morning, Lin Xin woke Lin Huang up before it was even 7 a.m. The silly girl did not sleep the entire night because she could not wait to learn how to build the Flying Power Sigil! Lin Huang rolled off his bed slowly and ignored Lin Xin''s prodding. He proceeded to wash up as usual. Just when he was on his way down to prepare breakfast after washing up, he found out that Lin Xin had already made breakfast and finished her food. There was no peace during breakfast for him that day. "Hurry up and finish. Then, we can learn the Flying Power Sigil when you''re done!" Lin Xin did not stop urging him. Lin Huang followed his own rhythm and finished his breakfast at his own pace. He then pointed between Lin Xin''s brows to transfer the Flying Power Sigil to her. "Try building it yourself first. Ask me if there''s anything that you don''t understand." Lin Huang picked the plate up and walked toward the kitchen sink. Lin Xin returned to her room in excitement after obtaining the sigil. Lin Huang had given her the set of Flying Power runes that Mr. Fu had passed him back then. It was made up of a total of 28 different sigils. The set of runes was great for people elevating before immortal-level. It would not be difficult for Lin Xin to adapt, but it was not enough for Lin Huang now. Especially after encountering so many imperial-level enemies, he decided to use the Witchcraft Rune to make himself a new set of Flying Power runes. Now that Lin Xin could learn Flying Power, he did not plan to drag it on any longer. He put his Sword Dao cultivation aside temporarily and spent more than two hours finally building a new set of Flying Power. He used over 800 Witchcraft Runes for the set, which was close to 30 folds of the set of sigils before. The rune combination was hundreds of times more complicated than the previous sigil. The massive number of runes formed a brand new anti-gravity sigil, a motion sigil, a kinetic energy regulation sigil, a direction-shifting sigil, a balancing sigil, a shelter sigil, a reduction sigil, an instant acceleration sigil, and so on. After spending over half an hour building a whole set of sigils, a Skill Card appeared in Lin Huang''s body. He was stunned to hear Xiao Hei''s notification because it was a pseudo-mythical-card. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a pseudo-mythical-level flying-type Skill Card x1 "Skill Card "Skill Name: Unnamed "Rarity: Mythical-level (Pseudo) "Type of Skill: Flying "Status: Available "Skill Description: This is a flying-type skill mainly used for flying in the air. "Remarks: Comprehensive function. There are no flaws about it, but drains Life Power "Card Remarks: Not bad "Would you like to name this card?" "Let''s call it Wandering God." Lin Huang came up with that name after giving it some thought. He wanted to depict a person wandering around like a god. He then walked out of the house after the card was formed. He activated the newly built Flying Power and hovered in the sky. Picking a direction, he flew after taking some time to familiarize himself with it. After half an hour, Lin Huang''s body turned into a stream of light and he penetrated a door in a small area. ''With this flying skill, my flying speed''s on par with Kylie''s when she was on immortal-level rank-4. The turbo speed''s also almost the same speed when Kylie was flying on turbo mode. If I add Seraphic Speed on, the speed will get another 50% boost!'' Lin Huang was pretty satisfied with the Flying Power. However, he was comparing himself with Kylie when she was still triple mutated on the same combat strength instead of the version of her having elevated to mythical-level now. 912 Ancient-level Soul Crystal For the next few days, Lin Huang''s life returned to its original discipline whereby he spent most of his time practicing his sword skills. He could clearly feel that the more sword skills he mastered each day, the closer he was getting to level-6 Sword Dao gradually. However, he was the only who could feel the boost while outsiders had no way of sensing it at all. Meanwhile, Lin Xin spent three days to finish building the Flying Power. It was not that she was dumb, but she had never worked with sigils before. After obtaining the sigil from Lin Huang, she spent three days studying it on her own. She only went to Lin Huang on the third afternoon and asked more than 30 questions that she had accumulated all at once. Lin Huang gave her a detailed explanation for each question. After getting the answers, she returned to her room and completed building her power within an hour and a half. She then flew from the window of the second floor in excitement. However, she fell onto the ground before she could fly ten meters away. Her head plunged into the snow. She stood up in the snow immediately so that she would not embarrass herself in front of Lin Huang. After looking around and seeing no one, she crawled quietly back to the second floor and into her room through the window. Naturally, that little embarrassing incident of hers could not escape from Lin Huang''s territory. He shook his head while smiling. He decided to pretend that he had no idea about it. After the past few days, Bloody and Grimace finally finished working on the exclusive combat skills for all the imperial monsters. Bai obtained a set of combat skills combined with weapons including swords, sabers, spears, and so on. The set of combat skills was pretty straightforward but each and every one of them was a sure-kill. Tyrant got a set of mixed close-distance combat skills and a set of cultivation methods. Bloody combined up to 1,000 close-distance battle methods to come up with this. Similar to Tyrant, the Herculean King and the Malachian Fiend received a set of cultivation methods and a set of close-distance combat skills. The difference was that those methods and skills were adjusted following their respective battle styles. On the other hand, the Death Knight and the Fallen Knight would be cultivating the same spear combat skill. Meanwhile, Charcoal, Thunder and the rest of the monsters that were not humanoid were unable to cultivate combat skills. Bloody picked the inheritance that suited them most from the various inheritances its parasitic monsters had obtained and shared it with them. After completing the building of her Flying Power, Lin Xin only spent half a day familiarizing herself with flying. However, Lin Huang did not let her rest just yet. He passed the Sword Dao inheritance that he had mastered to her. Lin Xin cultivated mainly in firearms and minored in Sword Dao. She was not sure what would happen to her when she was done digesting the Sword Dao inheritance Lin Huang had given her. However, the inheritance alone could keep her cultivating for a long time. On the second day, Mr. Fu came with a piece of news when Lin Huang was guiding Lin Xin on Sword Dao. Seeing that it was Mr. Fu calling on the communication page, Lin Huang returned to his room and picked up the video call. "Master, has it been decided?" "Yes. Though I''m not exactly satisfied with the results, it''s considered acceptable," Mr. Fu said. "Which condition did the Union Government agree with?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "First would be all of the permits into all union organizations'' ruins. Second would be the level-one reading authorization and a 10-day VIP pass to all union organizations'' libraries. The third one would be the level-one authorization for all union organizations'' information channels. Fourth would be the permit into No. 0 Safe Zone while the last one would be the ancient-level soul crystals that you want. They''re giving 30,000 ancient-level soul crystals." "I asked for a few demigod-level soul crystals for you, but those fellas were unwilling to give them up no matter what." Mr. Fu had upset written all over his face. However, Lin Huang was pretty shocked to hear that. The four authorizations that Mr. Fu had asked for him were basically for demigod-level. Naturally, such a privilege was not even given to demigods from union organizations, but demigods who were unofficial personnel and collaborated with them. All union organization demigod-level powerhouses had VIP passes. "Permit into all union organizations'' ruins" Lin Huang raised his brow. "Including the ruins that just opened in Division 1?" "Let''s not go to that one," Mr. Fu warned him immediately, "Going into an unknown ruin that has yet to be explored is the most dangerous choice you can make. Even Virtual Gods might die in this virgin exploration, let alone demigods. It''s even more dangerous than the Fallen God Land." "I''m just asking for fun." Lin Huang looked guilty. He did not want to die for no reason. "Just wait patiently for the Royal Trials from Dynasty to open. Don''t go around before that. Try your best to improve your abilities," Mr. Fu advised again, "These authorizations should be activated, at the latest, within 24 hours and the soul crystals will be transferred to your account in your Emperor''s Heart Ring." Lin Huang was rather satisfied with the deal this time around after he hung up Mr. Fu''s call. No matter whether it was the permit into the ruins or the library as well as the level-one authorization for the information channel, none of them could be bought with money. Especially the permit into No. 0 Safe Zone, one could usually earn it only when one had made sufficient contribution to the Union Government. Even a majority of the higher management of the Union Government did not have such a privilege. What mattered the most to him were the ancient-level soul crystals. There was an extremely low chance of obtaining ancient soul crystals from hunting imperial-level monsters. The probability was much lower than obtaining ancient relics. Nobody knew how a soul crystal was formed, but most of the powerhouses knew that such a thing contained an insane amount of spiritual energy which could be used to recover from spiritual damage. That was the reason why such an item was being sold at a ridiculous price. It was sold at 100 million Life Crystals and was in high demand, so it was priceless. 30,000 of them would be equivalent to three trillion Life Crystals. Naturally, Lin Huang did not want them for himself but to feed those Combat Souls. It was extremely difficult to elevate the combat strength of God Figurines'' Combat Souls in his body. The spiritual intensity of the God Figurines'' Combat Souls were tens of folds higher than others on the same level. Furthermore, with the filter through the Divine Fire, the spiritual energy was all gone. They would need to kill thousands of imperial-level white gold-rank monsters for the Divine Sun Tree and the rest to elevate from imperial-level yellow gold-rank to imperial-level white gold-rank. If they were killing high-level immortal-level monsters, they would have to kill millions of them in order to elevate. However, with the ancient-level soul crystals, he would only need 3,000 to 5,000 of them to elevate one imperial-level yellow gold-rank God Figurine''s Combat Soul to imperial-level white gold-rank. It was great that Mr. Fu managed to get 30,000 soul crystals for him. "I''ll elevate the few God Figurines'' Combat Souls to imperial-level white gold-rank when the soul crystals are transferred to my account tomorrow." Lin Huang made up his mind. The next morning, he received a notification from the Union Government. All of the authorizations that Mr. Fu had requested for him had been activated officially. He had also received the 30,000 ancient-level soul crystals in his account. Lin Huang dropped by the Credit Bureau and withdrew half of them at once. He summoned his four God Figurines'' Combat Souls as soon as he arrived home and began feeding them. Due to the massacre in the Fallen God Land, they had accumulated a certain amount of spiritual energy which caused a mediocre draining of soul crystals for the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls. When Lin Huang was done feeding less than 10,000 soul crystals, all four of his God Figurines'' Combat Souls had elevated to imperial-level white gold-rank. His trump card was boosted once again! 913 Settling In It was on the 23rd of February. Lin Huang and Lin Xin returned to the White Capital with the Witch early in the morning. It had been half a month since the New Year. Martial Hunter College had yet to open school officially, but many teachers and students had returned. Lin Xin''s application as a Martial Hunter College teacher was smooth-sailing. She was an outstanding graduate of the college with a combat strength that fitted the school''s standard. Moreover, Lin Huang had spoken to his Senior Brother Liu Ming beforehand. Although Liu Ming was no longer at the college, he was advancing his career in the core zone now. The current dean at Division 7 would still have to give him face. Moreover, even if the dean had no idea about him, the two deputy deans used to be under Liu Ming''s wing, so it was easy to send Lin Xin in. Lin Huang checked into a hotel close to Martial Hunter College instead of going to the school with Lin Xin. Before leaving Division 7 last year, he used a method to wipe some people''s memory. Nobody in the entire Martial Hunter College knew about his relationship with Lin Xin now, and he did not want to cause any trouble. He stood at the balcony of the hotel room and watched Lin Xin go into the Martial Hunter College''s entrance. He then looked away, but he did not recall his Divine Telekinesis. At the same time, with an ounce of deja vu, Lin Xin was a little nervous to be returning to Martial Hunter College. After all, her identity here was previously a student, but she was now a teacher. Furthermore, she was the same age as most Year 2 students and a year younger than most Year 3 students. She was getting more and more nervous when she recalled that her brother was named the least popular teacher among the Sword Dao faculty students when he had just begun his career there. Just when Lin Xin''s head was in chaos, a voice came from across all of a sudden. "Lin Xin, you''re back in school!" It was a tall and skinny boy who was walking toward her. He was her classmate, Nangong Qing. Lin Xin was stunned to bump into someone she knew out of the blue. She nodded and spoke subsequently, "Yes, I''ve just come back today." She did not tell anyone about her applying to graduate. She did not even tell her close friends who stayed in the same dorm as she did. Initially, she planned to drop by the college when she had the time that year to explain to her close friends. It seemed like there was no need for that now. Both of them had just begun to chat while another boy walked towards them in long strides. "Mu Xiao" Fear flashed through Nangong Qing''s face. From a distance, Lin Huang recognized that the boy was the top student of the same year as Lin Xin. He had created an uproar at the orientation back then, claiming that he wanted to break through to transcendence-level and become the youngest transcendent in Division 7. However, this boy''s combat strength was stuck on white silver-level rank-3. He lagged far behind Lin Xin despite being the same age. "Lin Xin, I''ll definitely earn the No. 1 rank that belongs to me this year!" Mu Xiao roared furiously when he arrived in front of Lin Xin and stormed off. Lin Xin was stunned but she subsequently smiled while shaking her head. After saying goodbye to Nangong Qing, she headed straight to the dean''s office. Lin Huang saw what happened loud and clear with his Divine Telekinesis. "That little fella named Nangong Qing seems to like Xin Er, but it''s obvious that Xin Er isn''t interested in him," Lin Huang mumbled to himself with his hand on his chin. "While that little fella named Mu Xiao has great talent and potential, he''s hot-headed. There''s nothing to worry about him. Hmm, I''ll observe for a few more days and see if there''s anyone who has ill intentions toward Xin Er. If there is, I''ll end their plot right away!" Ferocious gleam sparkled in his eyes. Lin Xin knocked on the dean''s office door when she arrived. "Fellow student, how may I help you?" The dean was a man with neatly combed white hair. He wore an ironed dark-blue Chinese tunic suit with a plain white shirt inside. He seemed to be in his early fifties, but the way he dressed was different from most clumsy old men. He put in effort into his appearance. The grave seriousness on his face loosened when he lifted his head and saw Lin Xin, whom he thought was a student, standing at the door. However, he sensed Lin Xin''s combat strength as soon as he spoke. She was on gold-level rank-3. Lin Huang gave her a disguise demigod relic when she elevated to white flame-level, so the dean was looking at Lin Xin undercover. After all, it was shocking for a 16-year-old to achieve transcendence-level. The new dean only had a combat strength of an immortal-level rank-9. Naturally, he could not see through Lin Xin''s real combat strength. "Are you the new teacher that Old Liu recommended?" The dean asked immediately and waved at Lin Xin at the same time, inviting her to come in. "Yes, my name''s Ling Xue. I applied to graduate before the New Year." Lin Xin sat down nervously at the dean''s desk. "Hmm, I''ve looked at your documents. Very impressive." The dean looked rather serious now. A gold-level rank-3 16-year-old. He thought that this girl must have some powerful background or came from some honorable family to have Liu Ming''s recommendation! "Looking at your document, you''re good at Sword Dao and firearms. Which one would you like to teach?" "I would like to teach firearms," Lin Xin answered without thinking twice. It was Lin Huang who had taught her Sword Dao. There was a possibility that people might find out about her relationship with Lin Huang if she were to teach Sword Dao. She did not want to take the risk. "Sure, we happen to lack teachers for firearms." The dean thought for some time before speaking, "Miss Ling, you''ll teach Year 1 Class 2 for the second half of the semester." Lin Xin was stunned to hear that. She did not expect to be asked to teach Class 2 given that she was new. However, she knew very well that Martial Hunter College distributed the students according to their exam results. Although Class 2 was less powerful than Class 1, they were still geniuses. This new dean was efficient. After working on his Emperor''s Heart Ring for a moment, he lifted his head to look at Lin Xin. "I''ve sent you the teaching certificate." "The 26th of February will be the official school opening day. Go to the academic affairs office when you have the time these few days. They''ll give you the teaching materials and arrange your accommodation. Ask them if there''s anything that you don''t understand." "Sure." Lin Xin nodded immediately. She headed straight to the academic affairs office as soon as she left the dean''s office. She wanted to get the teaching materials as soon as she could to prepare ahead. There was only a middle-aged lady on duty at the academic affairs office. She immediately asked upon seeing Lin Xin knocking on the door, "Fellow student, how may I help you?" "Hi, I''m a new teacher. Dean Chen told me that I could get the teaching materials and arrange my accommodation here." "A new teacher?!" The lady was stunned for a second before snapping back to her senses shortly after that. "Please show me your teaching certificate." Lin Xin projected her certificate immediately. The lady scanned it with her Emperor''s Heart Ring and saw Lin Xin''s document right away. ''Ling Xue, 16 years old, gold-level rank-3 combat strength'' The more the lady read, the more surprised she was. ''Arranged to teach firearms in Year 1 Class 2'' "Alright, the details have been confirmed and recorded. I''ll send you the teaching materials now." The lady was sure that Lin Xin came from an honorable family with a powerful background after reading her details. Lin Xin received the packed documents a moment later. The lady gushed passionately, "Let''s go. I''ll bring you to pick an apartment!" 914 Yes, Senior After she was done settling in, Lin Xin did not stay in Martial Hunter College. Instead, she returned to the hotel room where Lin Huang was. She planned to ask for some teaching advice, seizing the opportunity since Lin Huang was still around. Although Lin Huang was the least popular teacher in Year 1 in the beginning, he later became the most popular teacher. It was enough to prove that his teaching method was great. After spending a day to go through all of the teaching materials, Lin Xin spent the next two days looking at video lessons by rather popular firearms teachers. She came up with questions every day and would ask Lin Huang about it. "Brother, what if the students refuse to listen to me?" "That''s why you must stand your ground as a teacher. It''ll be difficult for you to manage them if you don''t have your stance in the beginning," Lin Huang advised, "There are ways you could use appropriately to manage them if you''re in a rut." "Would the students hate me if I''m too strict with them?" Lin Xin raised another concern. "You''re here to be their teacher, not to their friends. The more they learn in your class, the higher the probability of them surviving being a hunter or being in the military after they graduate." "Also, I saw in the videos that some teachers talk about topics that have nothing to do with firearms, but they''re very practical. However, I don''t know much about things other than being a firearms master. What should I do?" "That''s why it''s important to have a range of knowledge. Make it a habit to read more at the library to get more knowledge. Then, you''ll have a wide array of topics to talk about in class." Lin Huang added after he was done, "Since you don''t have much now, you could branch the topic out from firearms for now. Go deeper into the topic. You could reveal some related topics that will be taught in Year 2 and Year 3 suitably. Of course, do it at an appropriate amount so that you won''t confuse your students. As for your own benefit in the long-term, you should still read more to learn more." Lin Xin recorded all of those teaching experiences in the little notebook projected from her Emperor''s Heart Ring. On the 26th of February, Martial Hunter College officially opened. All of the students in Year 2 Class 1 Sword Dao faculty noticed that their No. 1 student in the class, Ling Xue, was absent. The class was in chaos at the moment. "Ling Xue isn''t coming?" "It''s the first day of school. Could she be involved in something that''s dragging her down?" Some of them asked the few girls who stayed in the same dorm as Lin Xin did. They, too, had no idea where Lin Xin had gone. "That''s odd. I saw her a few days ago in school," Nangong Qing said while looking puzzled. While a few boys were bombarding Nangong Qing with questions, a muscular man walked in. His name was Cao Long and he was the new Sword Dao teacher the college had hired last year. His combat strength was on holy fire-level. He replaced Qin Tianxing and was in charge of teaching Year 2 Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty. "Teacher, our classmate Ling Xue isn''t here," a boy shouted at Cao Long. Cao Long was stunned to hear that and recalled the students had no idea that Ling Xue applied for the graduation exam earlier. Now that the students were asking, he had to explain, "Your classmate Ling Xue took the graduation exam before the winter holidays and graduated with full marks in all the subjects." The students in the class were dumbstruck to hear that piece of news. Huh? Did she graduate? We''re only halfway through Year 2 and she''s graduated? Moreover, she graduated with full marks in all the subjects! "But I have good news." Cao Long cleared his throat and said slowly, "Ling Xue has taken up a position in school and she''s now the teacher of Year 1 Class 2 of the Firearms faculty." Cao Long had heard there was a pretty teacher in the Firearms faculty who had just come on board early in the morning. The name Ling Xue rang a bell. He thought she merely shared the same name as his student. However, he found out from the sneaky photo his colleague had snapped that she really was his student. Everyone in class appeared lost upon hearing what Cao Long said. Huh? Did she come back to be a teacher? It had to be a lie! Almost all the students were in disbelief. "Teacher, I think you''re mistaken. They probably happen to have the same name!" A girl could not help but shout. "I thought so too in the beginning, but I saw the photo my colleague took secr I saw her photo. It really was Ling Xue." Cao Long almost revealed that her photo had been taken secretly. "Alright, the class will begin now. We''ll speak after class if you guys have any other questions." Just when chaos stirred in Year 2 Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty, Year 1 Class 2 of the Firearms faculty welcomed a new teacher. The students in the class were discussing among themselves when they realized that the girl on the podium was almost the same age as they were. "Did this student walk into the wrong class?" "Class should be beginning now. Why isn''t the teacher here yet? Is this girl the teacher''s family member?" "Why is she standing on the podium?" The bell went off, but the teacher was not there yet, so everyone stared in confusion at the girl standing on the podium. Lin Xin took a deep breath in before speaking, "Hi, everyone. My name''s Ling Xue. From today onwards, I''ll be the teacher of Year 1 Class 2 of the Firearms faculty" The students in Year 1 Class 2 of the Firearms faculty looked lost. After some simple self-introduction, a boy raised his hand all of a sudden. Lin Xin nodded at him. "Do you have any questions?" "Teacher, may I ask how old are you?" "17." Lin Xin thought to herself that that would not be considered lying since she would be turning 17 next month. A girl sitting on the front row raised her hand next. "Go ahead." Lin Xin nodded. "From what I know, the lowest combat strength for teachers in Martial Hunter College is on gold-level. May I ask what''s your combat strength, Miss Ling?" The girl stood up and asked, feeling unconvinced. "Gold-level rank-3. Next!" Lin Xin pointed at a short and plump girl. "Teacher, may I ask which school did you graduate from?" "Martial Hunter College. I graduated last year," Lin Xin said that to sound more convincing since graduating before the New Year would also be considered as last year too. This time, a girl with braids asked directly without raising her hand, "But our Firearms faculty have never heard of any senior called Ling Xue." "First of all, please raise your hand before you speak in my class." Lin Xin frowned a little. "Secondly, I wasn''t a student in the Firearms faculty. I was in the Sword Dao faculty and firearms was my minor." At the moment, the girl in braids, who did not raise her hand before speaking, lifted her hand. "Do speak." Lin Xin looked at her expressionlessly. "So, you''re saying not only are you not from the Firearms faculty, but you''re also a Sword Dao student who just graduated last year and has zero teaching experience. Do you think you''re qualified to teach us?" The girl in braids was not convinced. Lin Huang, who was observing that scene using his Divine Telekinesis from two kilometers away, smirked. "Seems like you''ve encountered a bump. How will you handle that?" Lin Xin frowned and only spoke after staring at the girl in braids for a moment. "Follow me to the shooting range and you''ll find out if I''m qualified or not!" She turned and walked off right after she spoke. The girl in braids pouted and followed her while everyone else in the class followed them immediately. They soon arrived at the shooting range in high spirits. Lin Xin got the controller to get a default iron-level gun. She held the gun up and began to shoot as soon as she positioned herself at the specified spot. Bang, bang, bang! She opened fire ten times with almost no pause in between. She had full accuracy. "Take them 100 meters away!" Lin Xin turned her head and shouted at the controller. The ten targets that were initially 50 meters away were soon moved 100 meters away. Bang, bang, bang! She opened ten shots continuously without stopping again. Again, she demonstrated full accuracy. "200 meters!" Lin Xin shouted. The controller moved the targets further away again. Bang, bang, bang! Still, she performed with full accuracy. "300 meters!" Bang, bang, bang! Full accuracy again. "Anyone could get fixed targets right. The only difference is just that the distance is further away. I can do that too if I practiced for a year." The girl in braids was still dissatisfied. Lin Xin glared at the girl in braids for a second and shouted at the controller, "Move them horizontally!" "Should I shift the distance closer?" The controller asked. "No need. Keep them at 300 meters." All of the students in the Firearms faculty had a slight change of expression as soon as they heard what Lin Xin said. It was difficult to aim a moving target at 100 meters. Looking at the current distance of 300 meters, no one could tell if Lin Xin could shoot any one of them at all, let alone with full accuracy. Soon, the ten targets beginning to move horizontally 300 meters away. Lin Xin did not stop. She lifted her hand and fired ten consecutive times with full accuracy! The Firearms faculty students were dumbfounded now. This senior really was something! "Add irregular movement and speed!" Lin Xin shouted again. All of the students were shocked. "Coming right up!" The controller took action immediately. A moment later, the targets were moving in an unpredictable manner. Finally, Lin Xin did not move immediately this time. Instead, she took a deep breath in before pulling the trigger. She fired ten consecutive times. Bang, bang, bang! The result was out a moment later full accuracy! At 300 meters with irregular movement and speed, having fired ten consecutive times, she achieved full accuracy! All of the students were blown away to see the results. It took them a while to snap back to their senses. "Senior, you''re amazing!" "Senior, you''re a god!" "Senior, please punish me!" Everyone glared at the boy who said that with disdain as soon as he said that. He corrected himself immediately, "I made a mistake. I meant to say teach me." "Senior, I give up." The girl in braids was finally convinced and apologized, holding her head down. "Call me Miss Ling!" Lin Xin put her hands on her hips sternly. "Yes, Senior." 915 Returning to Division 3 The first class that Lin Xin taught was undoubtedly a success. Despite his worry that she might be overwhelmed by the class, Lin Huang was finally relieved. He then recalled his Divine Telekinesis. Just when he was ready to practice his sword skills after taking the wooden sword out from his Emperor''s Heart Ring, the ring vibrated all of a sudden. He looked at the communication page. It showed that it was Tang Xu of the Wanbao Auction from Division 3 who was calling. Lin Huang only picked up the video call after he quickly put a disguise on. "Sir, didn''t you go into the ruins?" Tang Xu seemed to be surprised by the call being picked up. "No, just say whatever you want to say." Lin Huang''s expression was cold. "I suppose you know that the ruins in Division 1 opened yesterday?" Tang Xu asked. "I do." Lin Huang nodded and thought to himself, ''Did Tang Xu forget that it was Tang Xu who had informed him about this?'' "I heard this morning that there were many demigods who entered the ruins yesterday," Tang Xu proceeded to say, "I heard that more than 80% of demigods from Division 1 went in while more than half of the demigods in Division 2 and our Division 3 went in." "Are you trying to say that the auction will be greatly affected?" Lin Huang asked. "Yes. Judging from the current situation, I think the two god relics would have a higher chance of being bought-in1 if we carry out the auction as planned." "It''s fine if there''s such a case. We''ll just sell them again next them. If that doesn''t work, I''ll put another god relic in next time." Lin Huang did not want to postpone the auction mainly because he was participating in Dynasty''s Royal Trials soon. He wanted to get as many God Figurines as he could before that and try to elevate his combat strength. It would take another month to prepare the auction if it were postponed. He might not be able to go for the Royal Trials if they started the auction after the demigods returned. Tang Xu raised his brow when he heard that. He was surprised to find that Lin Huang owned another god relic. The reason he wanted to postpone the auction of the god relics, ignoring his previous announcement was that he wanted to gain fame for the Wanbao Auction using the god relics. However, most demigods were in Division 1''s ruins now, so the auction would definitely not turn out as crowded as he expected. As soon as the god relics were bought-in, it would be less attractive if they were put them up for auction them again. Now that Lin Huang said he had more god relics with him, Tang Xu could still advertise a brand new auction with fresh god relics after all of the demigods came out of the ruins. It would not matter if the two god relics in the first auction were bought-in. "Do you really have another god relic with you?" Tang Xu confirmed carefully. "I have a few of them," Lin Huang confirmed, "Is there a problem?" "No, there''s no problem." Tang Xu shook his head immediately. "Then, we''ll do as you say. We''ll run the auction as planned." After hanging up Tang Xu''s call, Lin Huang removed the disguise and proceeded to practice his sword skills. For the next few days, Lin Huang spent most of his time practicing. Occasionally, he would check on Lin Xin. On the second day of school, the students from Year 2 Class 1 Sword faculty came to the Firearms faculty when Lin Xin was preparing for her class in the office. The few boys pretended to pass by and checked her out in the office. Lin Xin noticed the eyes watching her and saw a few familiar people as she lifted her head. She put the documents away and walked out while smiling. "My old classmates, I guess you guys found out about it, huh?" "Sir Cao told us yesterday, but we didn''t really believe him." Nangong Qing forced a smile. As the second in class, he had always thought that he was almost on par with Lin Xin. Now, it seemed like their difference was like heaven and earth. "Ling Xue, you''re really staying to be a teacher!" A girl was still in disbelief. "Yes, initially I wanted to contact you guys during the weekend to get together and tell you guys about this." "I heard from Sir Cao that your combat strength is already on gold-level rank-3." He Lili, who used to stay in the same dorm as Lin Xin, asked with her eyes opened wide. "Yes, I''m on gold-level rank-3 now." "I''m sure that Mu Xiao''s so mad now. He''s just broken through to silver-level rank-3," said a boy while smirking. Lin Xin only responded with a smile upon hearing that. The fellow who had declared that he would become a transcendent before turning 18 and become No. 1 in Division 7 was destined to have his dreams crushed. Lin Xin realized it was time for class after chatting with her old classmates for a while. They then ended their conversation. "I''ve just accustomed to my job these few days, and it''s been rather hectic. Let''s get together this weekend. We''ll talk more by then." Apart from this mini-episode, Lin Xin''s life was peaceful throughout the past few days. She would prepare her class well beforehand. Although there was still a lot to improve in her teaching, she was developing each time she taught. Moreover, her students loved her and called her "Senior". Sometimes her old classmates from Year 2 Class 1 of the Sword Dao faculty would do a sit-in. The teachers who were in the same office took care of this fresh young lady. Apart from teaching, Lin Xin spent most of her time in the library. She took Lin Huang''s suggestion to widen her knowledge every day, hoping that she could do better in teaching. The staff apartment that she picked was the same block Lin Huang used to live in. The unit that Lin Huang had been staying in before collapsing from the battle and nobody stayed in there ever since it was rebuilt. Although there was nothing that belonged to Lin Huang in there, Lin Xin picked the unit that her brother used to live in without hesitation. With the Witch and Little 7''s company, she did not feel lonely in the apartment. She had her students and old classmates in the college. Furthermore, her life was getting more and more enriching. Seeing that Lin Xin''s life was getting on track gradually, Lin Huang knew it was time for him to leave. On the 2nd of March, he accompanied Lin Xin around the White Capital for the whole day. They headed out before 8 a.m. and only returned to the hotel past midnight, having bought a bunch of practical and impractical stuff. Lin Xin knew that her brother was leaving. On the morning of the 3rd of March, Lin Huang finally told her that he was leaving. "I''m leaving now, silly girl. Take good care of yourself." "Mmm." Lin Xin nodded lightly. There was not much emotion on her face. After summoning a dimensional portal, Lin Huang stepped into it and waved at Lin Xin. The dimensional portal closed slowly. After Lin Huang disappeared completely, Lin Xin tightened her fists. "I''ll definitely elevate to the immortal-level as soon as I can!" Hundreds of kilometers away, Lin Huang got out of the dimensional portal and arrived at the White Capital''s long-distance dimensional portal. Looking at the gravely long queue at the long-distance dimensional portal, he sighed slightly, "I''m too late." He went into the toilet and disguised as Lin Xie, and spent a few minutes to change into a new set of clothes. When he returned to the queue, he realized it was a couple of meters longer than before now. He shook his head helplessly, entering the queue as the last person. Around one and a half hours later, Lin Huang finally stepped into the dimensional portal with another 29 people. They disappeared from a moment later. Translator''s note 1 Bought-in - If there are no bids on a lot, or if bidding does not reach the reserve price, the lot is "bought in," meaning it is left unsold and remains the property of the owner. 916 Handling the Loo The long-distance dimensional portal traveling from Division 7 to Division 3 was located in Sweep City. After walking out of the dimensional portal, Lin Huang did not head straight to Wanbao City. Instead, he disguised himself in a hidden corner without surveillance. He changed his physique, features, and clothes. He then put on a demigod relic mask with a disguise function, changing his aura to imperial-level black gold-rank. After making sure there were no flaws in his disguise, he headed straight to the black market of Sweep City. Lin Huang walked into a store and spoke directly when a lady attendant welcomed him, "I''m looking for Hu Lu." "Sure, please follow me." The attendant could tell he was a regular customer from his tone, so she brought him to Hu Lu''s room on the second floor immediately. Lin Huang entered and took a careful look at Hu Lu. "Are you Hu Lu? A friend recommended me, saying that you''re reliable." "Thanks for your friend''s compliment," Hu Lu said without humbling herself, "Please take a seat, Sir. Do tell me what you need." "I have a bunch of stuff to sell." Lin Huang sat across Hu Lu, teasing flashing through his eyes under the mask. "I wonder if you guys would dare to take them or not." "Could you tell me about the source roughly?" Hu Lu asked, "You don''t have to tell me which organization exactly they''re from just yet. Just roughly tell me about them and what are the items that you''re getting rid of." "Most of the items come from top underground organizations." Lin Huang smirked, but Hu Lu could not see that since there was a mask on his face. "The most troublesome one among these items would probably be a Holy Son''s stuff." Hu Lu''s pupils shrunk upon hearing the first sentence. Then, her face turned pale all of a sudden upon hearing the last sentence. She could tell that Lin Huang was not joking with her. "Sir, we daren''t accept them if the items really are from the organization that you mentioned." Hu Lu forced a smile while shaking her head. Disappointment flashed through Lin Huang''s eyes and he stood up right away. "It''s fine if you don''t accept them. I won''t force you." "Sir, please don''t leave just yet." Seeing that Lin Huang was leaving, Hu Lu stopped him immediately. "We can''t accept them, but I know a place that will." Lin Huang stopped walking and turned around. "Do tell." "The Exotic Treasure Pavilion in Wanbao City." "What''s the background of this place?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. "It''s opened by the heretics. They take anything as long as the items don''t belong to their Virgen." "Do you charge for this piece of information?" Lin Huang asked wearing a smirk. "No, many people know about the Exotic Treasure Pavilion. It''s not a piece of valuable information." "Don''t tell me that the organization behind you guys is by the heretics too?" Lin Huang took a stab at Hu Lu''s background. "We''re only considered as their underling''s branch." Hu Lu nodded, admitting in all honesty. "Thanks." Lin Huang turned around and left right away. Hu Lu''s soft voice came from behind. "Please visit us in the future if you can, Sir." "Sure!" Lin Huang did not even turn his head as he left after saying that monosyllabic answer. After leaving the black market of Sweep City, Lin Huang summoned a dimensional portal after making sure that nobody was watching or following him. He then stepped into it. When he stepped out of the dimensional portal, he arrived at Wanbao City. Since he arrived, he headed straight to the black market and very soon, he found the Exotic Treasure Pavilion. He was then guided to a room after informing the customer service personnel at the front counter that he had something to sell. "Sir, could you show us the items that you''re selling?" The receptionist was an old man with white hair. "Do you guys really take anything at all?" Lin Huang did not bring out the items right away. He wanted to make sure they were really keen. "Oh, we take anything." The old man nodded in determination. "Do you accept items from top underground organization''s Holy Son and elders?" Lin Huang proceeded to question. The old man looked at Lin Huang and nodded. "We accept those too." "That''s great then." Lin Huang then passed a storage ring containing a barrage of loot to the old man. Apart from some useful elixirs, a few types of expensive rare minerals, and a few ancient-level telekinesis weapon relics that he had put aside for himself, he got Bloody to categorize all the relics, miscellaneous items, elixirs, and minerals from grade-1 to ancient-level in the ring. The old man soon saw the two ancient-level combat sword relics belonging to Dynasty''s Seventh Prince when he was going through the items. There were pieces of equipment that clearly came from Dynasty, Charm, the Purple Crow, Saint, and other organizations. There were even a few items from the heretics. The old man could not help but have a slight change of expression when he saw those items. Looking at that plunder alone, he knew that the man in the mask before him had killed at least hundreds of underground organization members. Not only that, most of them were on the immortal-level while some were on the imperial-level. The old man came up with such speculation mainly because Lin Huang did not bring out those demigod-level items. Otherwise, the old man would have known that the sheer number of imperial-level powerhouses Lin Huang killed was beyond his imagination. After spending over 20 minutes to count the items three times, the old man finally came up with the final figure. He had calculated the price of the items. "Sir, among the items that you''ve brought today, there are a total of 1,128 ancient relics, 161 supreme relics; a total of 37 types of elixirs including 36,521 bottles of ancient-level healing elixirs, 587,951 supreme-grade healing elixirs; 26 types of minerals including 24,579 ton of iron ore. The final price for the items would be 78.7 billion Life Crystals." "Why don''t you round it up to 80 billion for me?" Lin Huang suggested shamelessly. "I can''t do that" The old man looked troubled. "The most we could offer is to round it up to 79 billion." "Alright, 79 billion then." Lin Huang did not bother to bargain further. In reality, he knew that they earned twice what they offered for this deal, but the items were shady after all. The items could not be sold at auctions or markets, so the price could not go any higher. If they could be sold at markets, the price would at least double. If they went all the way to auctions, the price would at least triple. After the deal was done, Lin Huang stood up right after receiving the Life Crystals in his account. He did not bother to say anything more to the old man. The old man, on the other hand, said in a friendly manner while smiling, "Please come again." Lin Huang removed his disguise in an area without surveillance. He turned his face back to Lin Xie''s and headed straight to somewhere around the Wanbao Auction. He checked into a hotel called Wanguo Hotel. Initially, he planned to stay at the Wanbao Auction''s S-class VIP room, but Yi Yeyu said that she had arrived on the 1st of March and had booked her stay at Wanguo Hotel, so Lin Huang decided to stay in the same hotel as she did. After checking in, Lin Huang removed his disguise upon going into the room. He then called Yi Yeyu to ask which room she was staying in. However, the call was cut off directly before the first tone even rang. He received a message a moment later. ''I''m busy shopping now. I''ll contact you when I''m back at the hotel.'' It was Yi Yeyu''s style indeed. Lin Huang shook his head, wearing a smile while feeling helpless. He replied to her message, ''I''m already at Wanguo Hotel. My room number is 3303.'' 917 Slightly More Handsome Than Your Brother When Lin Huang was practicing his sword skills in the room at past five in the afternoon, someone knocked on his door all of a sudden. He saw Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng standing at the door when he opened it. Yi Yeyu was stunned when she saw him in his disguise. "Did we get the wrong room?" She peered up at the room number and looked suspiciously at Lin Huang. "It''s the correct one. Let''s go in." Yi Zheng did not bother explaining. "It''s me. I''m just disguising as another identity of mine," Lin Huang had just recalled that he was under disguise. He changed back into his original look immediately. "I thought I got the wrong room." Yi Yeyu only walked in then. Yi Zheng followed her but trained his eyes on Lin Huang. He only spoke hesitantly a moment later, "Has your combat strength elevated to immortal-level rank-4?" Yi Yeyu only realized that about him. Then, she looked at Lin Huang too. Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "Yes, I''ve elevated to immortal-level rank-4 now." "The speed of your combat strength elevation insane." Yi Zheng had no idea what else to say now. "It was the end of August when we last met. It''s only been half a year and you''ve already elevated from immortal-level rank-1 to immortal-level rank-4. That''s a three-rank leap. You elevated a rank every two months on average." "Have you elevated to immortal-level rank-2 now?" Lin Huang could tell that Yi Zheng was on immortal-level rank-2. "I spent half a year and finally got the opportunity to go into the ruins. I''ve just elevated a few days ago." Yi Zheng thought that his elevation speed could not compare with Lin Huang''s at all. "No wonder I couldn''t contact you before the New Year. Was it because you were in the ruins?" Lin Huang raised his brow. "Yes, I''ve just come out a few days ago," Yi Zheng confirmed, "I heard that Xiao Yu was coming to Wanbao City, so I came for her." "Which ruins did you go to?" Lin Huang asked rather curiously. "It''s a grade-3 ruin shared with the Combat God Alliance and a few other genius organizations. The highest combat strength for monsters was just immortal-level rank-9. Those who participated in the exploration were all low-level and mid-level immortal-levels," Yi Zheng explained. "The Combat God Alliance?" Lin Huang thought hard and realized that he had never heard of such a genius organization. "It''s normal not to have heard of it. The Combat God Alliance is Division 3''s local organization," Yi Zheng revealed while smiling. He only realized what a formidable organization the Heaven Alliance which Lin Huang was talking about after joining the Genius Union. He had also asked around about the entry requirements to get into the Heaven Alliance. In the end, he was too embarrassed to join the Heaven Alliance using Lin Huang''s name. If his abilities were not so mediocre, perhaps he might choose to pull some strings and catch up to other members slowly. However, the issue was that the entry requirements for the Heaven Alliance were too high. He figured he would not pass any of the tests after looking at the contents of the tests, so he gave up immediately. He selected a few local Division 3 organizations instead and eventually got accepted into the Combat God Alliance after participating in the exam. It was Chan Dou who had invited Lin Huang to join the Heaven Alliance. He had no idea what the exam entailed. Naturally, he had no idea what the exact reason why Yi Zheng gave up on joining the Heaven Alliance was. However, since he chose to join that organization, Lin Huang did not ask any further. "It''s great to join Division 3''s local organization. There are only a few Heaven Alliance members in Division 3, so there aren''t many resources." Although Lin Huang said the truth, he was comparing resources with the top organizations including the Divine Alliance, the Hong Alliance, and the Tang Alliance. However, to Yi Zheng, the Heaven Alliance''s resources were worthy of being envied. Although there were not many Heaven Alliance members in Division 3, the Heaven Alliance would definitely be given the permission to enter the ruins whenever one opened in Division 3. "Oh yeah, it''s been a long time since you''ve logged into Genius Union." Yi Zheng did not want to dwell on the upsetting topic, so he changed the subject instead. "I think it''s been four to five months since I last logged in." Lin Huang counted to himself and nodded subsequently. "I was very busy the few months before the New Year and I''ve been practicing my sword skills after that." "No wonder I don''t see your name on the Stairway Tree this year," Yi Zheng said while grinning. "The scoreboard refreshes every 1st of January, am I right?" Lin Huang just remembered that the Stairway Tree scoreboard would be refreshed annually. "The Stairway Tree scoreboard is calculated annually. It''ll be refreshed every year at midnight on the 1st of January. Then, everyone will have zero points on the scoreboard," Yi Zheng confirmed. The zero points Yi Zheng was referring to was just on the scoreboard. All of the accumulated points would be stored in everyone''s accounts. As long as it was unused, the points would be kept year after year. It would only be cleared completely when the member elevated to imperial-level and was removed from the Genius Union. "Everyone in the Genius Union has been talking that you haven''t been slaying monsters on the Stairway Tree these few months," Yi Zheng proceeded to speak, "Many of them say that checkpoint 56 is your limit. You could''ve only stayed on that checkpoint if you planned to continue winning points. Some even started a bet, speculating on which checkpoint you could reach. Most people are betting on checkpoint 56. It''s the one with most bets for now while the second would be checkpoint 58. Nobody''s betting on a checkpoint that''s higher than that." "They''re doing that?" Lin Huang raised his brow curiously. "What are the odds like?" "1:1.05 for checkpoint 56, 1:1.25 for checkpoint 58, 1:10 for checkpoint 61, and 1:100 for checkpoint 63." ''I think I''ve found a way to make a large sum of money again.'' Lin Huang smirked. "When do you plan to hunt on the Stairway Tree?" Yi Zheng was excited too. "After the auction ends, I guess," Lin Huang was thrilled to kill monsters on the Stairway Tree after getting new God Figurines in order to elevate his new God Figurines'' Combat Souls quickly. Although the Genius Union was a virtual world, the things obtained from the Stairway Tree were real. Apart from monsters turning into broken pieces after being killed and the person not being able to obtain the monster carcasses, the rest was the same with reality. Lin Huang could obtain card pieces as well as complete Monster Cards by killing monsters on the Stairway Tree. He could replenish Life Power for Bai and the rest and also replenish spiritual energy for his God Figurines'' Combat Souls. Yi Yeyu had been listening to their conversation and she was getting more and more interested when both of them were talking about the Genius Union. As an offspring of an honorable family, it was natural to have heard of the Genius Union. However, she had no idea that Lin Huang and her brother had become a member of Genius Union. "Can I join that Genius Union?" Yi Yeyu asked with anticipation. Yi Zheng glanced at his sister. No matter whether it was qualification or talent, Yi Yeyu was definitely qualified. However, she was still lacking combat abilities to be a genius. Even if she joined the Genius Union, the chances of any organization wanting her were slim. "Sure, your qualifications and talents are definitely up to standard." However, Lin Huang, who was standing aside, nodded and said directly, "If you''re willing to join the Heaven Alliance, I''ll ask Chan Dou to get someone in Division 3 to guide you in your cultivation." "Chan Dou of the Five Princes? You know him?" Yi Zheng asked with his eyes wide open. "Of course I know him! He''s the chief of our Heaven Alliance." Lin Huang thought there was nothing extraordinary about it. "But I heard that Chan Dou''s very secretive and hardly shows up at the Genius Union. Apart from the Heaven Alliance''s high management, most of the people wouldn''t even see him once in a few years." "Where did you hear that from? I''m not in the Heaven Alliance''s high management, but I''ve seen him a few times in a year. Of course, I''ve never seen him in real life. I''ve only seen him in the Genius Union''s video projections." Lin Huang thought what Yi Zheng heard was just a rumor. "What''re the Five Princes?" Yi Yeyu could not help but interrupt. "The most powerful five people below imperial-level in the entire continent. They''re also the most powerful powerhouses among the young generation," Yi Zheng explained immediately. "Is Chan Dou handsome?" Yi Yeyu''s gossip mode was turned on immediately. Yi Zheng stopped talking all of a sudden. He had never seen how Chan Dou looked like after all. Lin Huang thought for a moment and answered, "I think he''s slightly more handsome than your brother." He thought that his comment was very objective. Yi Zheng was speechless. ''Why am I being compared?'' Yi Yeyu turned to look at Yi Zheng disgustedly. She then turned to look at Lin Huang and said in excitement, "Do you have his picture?" "Yes, that''s him in his profile picture," Lin Huang said and opened his address book. He found Chan Dou''s contact details. Yi Yeyu''s eyes lit up when he projected Chan Dou''s photo. "He''s so handsome! He''s so much more handsome than my brother!" Yi Zheng thought he was being given the cold shoulder. ''Why am I being compared to again? Also, how is Chan Dou much more handsome than me!? He''s just a teeny-tiny more handsome than me!'' 918 The Auction Began After meeting Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng, Lin Huang had been practicing his sword skills in the room alone apart from the time they spent having dinner together. On the night before the auction began, he finally learned all of the over 1,300 legendary-level sword skills that he obtained. He had mastered close to 1,600 legendary-level sword skills in total. However, he could clearly feel that his Sword Dao was still very far away from breaking through level-6. On the 8th of March, the Wanbao Auction finally officially began. Lin Huang used Lin Xie''s identity when he brought Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu to enjoy the VIP treatment. They went into an S-class VIP room. However, Lin Huang was put into Room S7 this time. It was clear that there were six VIP members who had come before he did. ''If all six people in the S-class VIP rooms are demigods, there''s a high possibility that the two god relics can be sold this time.'' Lin Huang began to anticipate secretly. Yi Yeyu was walking around after getting into the VIP room. She returned to the deck and said to Lin Huang after she was done with her stroll, "My brother told me that you''re doing well in Division 3 and I doubted that. It seems like you really are doing superbly. Staying a night in this VIP room is at least three times more than the room we stayed in at Wanguo Hotel. The price isn''t the most important part. I''m afraid not any Tom, Dick and Harry are eligible to stay here." "I''ve sold something at the auction before, so the owner gave me a VIP card," Lin Huang explained simply. However, Yi Zheng thought to himself secretly, ''He was selling a few demigod relics, which was why the owner gave him a VIP card, but he said it like it was no big deal'' "Yi Zheng, you''re living in Division 3 too. Look at how great his life is! What about you?" Yi Yeyu turned her head and said to Yi Zheng who was sitting on the other side. Being dragged into this for no reason, Yi Zheng went speechless as he thought to himself, ''I didn''t say anything. Why is this about me now?'' "I came to Division 3 half a year before your brother did after all." Lin Huang tried to get Yi Zheng out of the situation while beaming. "How was that half a year early? You came in April and he came at the end of August. That''s just over four months." Yi Yeyu exposed the true time difference mercilessly. Yi Zheng felt weary inside. His sister had changed. She used to always cling onto him and call him "Brother". He had always been her role model. Now, she called him by his name directly and often compared him with others. He missed his sister who was once so naive Lin Huang was secretly glad. ''Luckily, my sister isn''t like this.'' "The auction has begun!" Yi Zheng finally found the opportunity to change the subject when he saw the auctioneer walked onto the stage. People occupied the hall beneath when it was almost nine o''clock. Fortunately, Yi Yeyu''s focus shifted to the auctioneer and she did not dwell on the previous topic. The auctioneer of the Wanbao Auction this time was a lady with a sensual figure. In terms of appearance, she was not considered a top beauty. She had red, wavy hair that reached her breasts. A grayish-black slim-fit shirt hugged her top while the buttons above her breasts were opened. It was pretty revealing as her breasts were half exposed. For her bottom, she wore a pair of white, slim-fit capri pants. Although her long legs were a little less alluring than Yi Yeyu''s, they were almost on the same standard. There was a pair of red heels on her feet, while a diamond size of an adult thumb and a few small diamonds were mounted on the back of each of her heels. Yi Yeyu took a good look at the auctioneer up and down and eventually stopped at her breasts. She looked like she had ill intentions. Her own bust size was admirable, but compared to the lady, she was slightly less impressive. ''Big wavy hair and flashing her boobs on purpose She''s not even wearing a bra. I can tell she''s a bimbo!'' Naturally, Yi Yeyu did not say that out loud. She was just thinking to herself. Meanwhile, Lin Huang and Yi Zheng who were sitting next to Yi Yeyu fixed their eyes on the auctioneer. They had not looked away since she went up onto the stage. Naturally, Yi Yeyu noticed that and she was getting pissed. The lady auctioneer gave a simple self-introduction on the stage. "Welcome, all honorable guests to our Wanbao Auction today! My name''s Yun Mei''er and I''m the auctioneer of this round. I''ll be hosting and showing all of you all kinds of treasures for the next five days. I hope every one of you can bring home the treasures that you desire" "This lady seems to be a born sycophant," Lin Huang muttered softly all of a sudden. It was clear that Tang Xu had put some effort into this auction earlier since he hired an auctioneer who was born an obedient person. He figured Tang Xu must have hired her much earlier before finding out about the opening of the grade-7 ruins in Division 1. "What does ''born sycophant'' mean?" Yi Yeyu, who was sitting beside him, heard Lin Huang''s muttering and could not help but to ask. "It''s a unique physique that someone is born with," Lin Huang explained, "People who possess such a physique will attract the attention of opposite sex without trying." Lin Huang left out a part of the explanation. People who were born sycophants would give an irresistible vibe to the opposite sex as long as there was body contact. They could even cause love at first sight, giving the illusion that one must own them to be fulfilled in life. People with such a physique would be best at cultivating charm-type methods and skills. "She really is a bimbo!" Yi Yeyu spat out the comment that she had secretly harboring earlier out loud after hearing half of Lin Huang''s explanation. However, Lin Huang could tell that this auctioneer called Yun Mei''er did not use any charm-type techniques at all at the moment. Her extraordinary physique alone attracted the attention of all males present. The only people who would not be affected at all would probably be powerhouses above imperial-level. Yi Zheng only realized that something was off after hearing the conversation between Lin Huang and Yi Yeyu. He just found out that he was attracted by the lady auctioneer without even realizing it. Although it was just affecting him indistinctly, he had his guard up immediately. "Weren''t you indulging in gazing at that lady? Why aren''t you staring anymore?" Yi Yeyu teased, noticing that Yi Zheng had snapped back to his senses. "I''m not interested in this item." Yi Zheng made himself an excuse and implied that he had not been looking at the auctioneer earlier, but the item next to the auctioneer. Yi Yeyu scoffed and turned to look at the auction beneath instead of dwelling on that. The first mystery collector''s item was finally revealed on the auction stage. It was a notebook that was twice the size of a palm. "This is the first collector''s item we have for today, demigod Song Tiandao''s notebook." The auction had officially begun. Yun Mei''er appeared to be tremendously professional as she began to describe the item. "Perhaps many people aren''t familiar with demigod Song Tiandao, so I''ll give a brief introduction of his life. "Song Tiandao''s real name is Song Wuque. He was a powerful sword cultivator during ancient times. Before failing to elevate to a god, he could only be considered an outstanding sword cultivator. Since he failed in his elevation, he spent a lot of time studying Sword Dao after becoming a demigod and achieved Sword Dao divinity eventually. It was said that he could kill gods with his body as a demigod" Lin Huang could not help but sat up straight when he listened to this narration. He was very interested in the notebook. Besides Lin Huang, many people clearly had their interest piqued. "But I must inform you about this before I begin the bid. There''s nothing special about this notebook itself. The reason it managed to be kept until now is mainly that it was put away in a wooden box in the storage ring. Secondly, the notebook contents don''t include any complete sword skills and neither is there any inheritance. It looks more like a notebook with random scribbles." Yun Mei''er''s additional explanation made most of the buyers lose interest immediately. However, Lin Huang''s burning desire in his eyes remained. He wanted to get his hand on the notebook. "This demigod notebook starts at 100 million Life Crystals and the raise must be at least five million Life Crystals each time!" 919 The Happy-Go-Lucky Sir Song After some intense bidding, Lin Huang successfully bid for the first item at the Wanbao Auction this time at 360 million Life Crystals. It was proven that this demigod notebook had a high value to sword cultivators. Its bid skyrocketed to a price that was comparable with an ancient telekinetic weapon, but eventually, the other buyers gave up. "You spent 360 million for a notebook? Man, you''re loaded!" Yi Yeyu thought that Lin Huang was definitely wasting his money. "I think the auctioneer exaggerated about this item. What Sword Dao divinity? I think she''s just saying whatever comes to her mind. A demigod killing a Virtual God sounds like nonsense to me." Yi Zheng who was sitting aside was on the same side with his sister this time. "Demigod''s just an imperial-level powerhouse with a little Divine Power in their body while a Virtual God''s a real god, a whole life on the next level. It''s just like how it''s impossible for an ant to kill an elephant no matter what." "Brother Zheng, you''re wrong this time." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. "As long as one can master the right amount of power, not only demigods, but even an ordinary imperial-level powerhouse would be able to kill a god." "My master once told me that one would reach the true meaning of Martial Dao as soon as one breaks through level-6 Martial Dao. Even most Virtual Gods have never mastered the power with such a condition. It''s said that the power not only made killing Virtual Gods possible, but it could also even wound a True God," Lin Huang repeated what Mr. Fu said. "What the auctioneer said about Song Tiandao being a Sword Dao divinity who could kill Virtual Gods with the body of a demigod is possibly true." "If this Sir Song really did master the true meaning of Sword Dao when he was alive, this notebook of his is worth looking at. I won''t be considered to be at a loss if I could learn something from it." "Did Mr. Fu really tell you that?" Yi Zheng still refused to believe that. "Do you think there''s a need for me to make such a thing up?" Lin Huang retorted. "One will reach the true meaning of Martial Dao as soon as one breaks through level-6 Martial Dao" Yi Zheng held his head low and recorded the sentence in the notebook in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Lin Huang, which level of Sword Dao are you on now?" Yi Yeyu, who was standing aside, could not help but ask all of a sudden. "I remember you were already on level-4 last year. Did you break through again this year?" Even Yi Zheng lifted his head to look at Lin Huang hearing that question. "Do you guys want to hear a lie or the truth?" Lin Huang asked while smirking. "What would be the lie? Level-4?" Yi Zheng figured faintly that Lin Huang should have broken through again. "Level-5," Lin Huang answered, wearing a smile. Hearing that, Yi Zheng figured that Lin Huang must not have broken through and just remained on level-4. It would be best that he did not ask further. However, Yi Yeyu did not notice that and insisted on probing further, "What about the truth?" "The truth would be level-6." Lin Huang thought that he had nothing to hide with the siblings. Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu were dumbstruck when they heard the answer. Yi Zheng only asked after a moment later, "Are you really on level-6 now?" "Yes, I''ve just broken through a few days ago," Lin Huang confirmed. "No wonder Mr. Fu told you about the true meaning of Martial Dao" Now Yi Zheng finally believed that Lin Huang did not make up the true meaning of Martial Dao. "Which means that you''ll be able to kill Virtual Gods as soon as your Sword Dao breaks through further?!" Yi Yeyu asked with her eyes wide opened. "That would only mean I''ll have techniques to kill Virtual Gods, but not necessarily have the ability to kill," Lin Huang explained, "After all, powerhouses on demigod-level are so much more powerful than I am in all aspects. My vision might not be able to catch their movements. "Furthermore, it''s extremely difficult to break through from level-6 Sword Dao to grasp the true meaning of Sword Dao. I''ve no idea how to achieve that at the moment." "Then, this notebook''s the perfect purchase for you. It might really help you to break through if you learn something from it." Yi Zheng took a supportive stance compared to his initial opposition. "It seems like you must have this notebook no matter if it''s useful or not. You''ll strike gold if it''s useful!" Yi Yeyu changed her mind too. The auction beneath them proceeded with enthusiasm. Lin Huang had no interest in that. He paid even before the auction ended and got the staff to send the notebook over. He began to flip through it and read it as soon as it got into his hands. Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu joined him to read as well but they soon gave up. "It really is just a notebook recording the author''s daily life." Yi Yeyu was a little disappointed. "It wouldn''t be obvious even if that demigod really hid some secret in this notebook. Otherwise, the auction wouldn''t have exaggerated this and sold it like a god relic." Yi Zheng, on the other hand, was patient. "You should look at it again and again when you have the time. You might be able to uncover the secret in this notebook." Lin Huang stared at the notebook in his hand and flipped it from the first page to the last. He had an unusual feeling. This feeling had nothing to do with Sword Dao but had something to do with the person, Song Tiandao, himself. ''This Song Tiandao seemed to be a traveler'' The main reason why Lin Huang had such a feeling was that the scribbles in the notebook were like deja vu coming from an online friend. "The sky''s so blue, the air''s so fresh. This world''s amazing!" "I saw a person selling pancakes by the road. The pancakes didn''t look appetizing at all. I wouldn''t have bought any if not for the lady boss''s long legs. The pancakes were surprisingly good! I ended up buying all of the pancakes she had. Mmm, so good! What long legs! I don''t know what''s that. Don''t disturb me when I''m eating my pancakes!" "Met a troll today who insists that demigods can''t kill Virtual Gods, I didn''t find any virtual god-level monsters after looking around. I''ll show him that it''s possible next time!" "It''s the New Year today. I''m so bored. Oh, I saw a dragonkin a few days ago. It''s completely red in color and so fat that it looks like a huge koi that weighs millions of tonnes. Now that I think about it, I really shouldn''t have eaten it. I might have my luck turn around this year if I had kept it." "Killed a sea king monster today! I think I had food poisoning from that. I was so high! It felt like my life has reached its climax, kind of like my life has peaked! It''s majestic! It''s dazzling! It''s beautiful!" However, apart from figuring that the person might be a traveler, Lin Huang did not find anything related to cultivation in this notebook. Besides Sword Dao, Song Wuque mentioned nothing about cultivation in this notebook. It was all his daily scribbles of his life in this notebook, including some grumbles, complaints and occasionally some artistic, pretentious sentences. It looked more like quotes from QQ or stuff that was written in WeChat''s "moments" section. ''It seems like this Sir was really a foodie when he was still alive. Most of the stuff recorded in this notebook has something to do with food,'' Lin Huang complained helplessly. Looking at the notes, Sir Song was pretty much a happy-go-lucky person who had zero superiority. ''Seems like my 360 million really has gone to waste this time'' 920 The Opening Item on the Fifth Day The auction went on for the next few days. However, Lin Huang did not see any collectors'' items that he was interested in, so he did not bid at all. On the other hand, Yi Zheng got an ancient sword relic for Yi Yeyu. Lin Huang had been flipping through Song Wuque''s notebook for the past few days and was sure that Sir Song was definitely a traveler. Moreover, looking at the various details hidden in this notebook, Sir Song seemed to have taken over demigod Song Wuque''s body as a soul after Song Wuque failed to elevate to Virtual God. ''This explains why Sir Song only had extraordinary Sword Dao before but became a Sword Dao divinity all of a sudden.'' Lin Huang came up with a conclusion. After all, according to what Xiao Hei said earlier, a real traveler would be given a Goldfinger. Indeed, a demigod who had a Goldfinger and achieved the true meaning of Sword Dao was nothing remarkable. Apart from confirming Sir Song''s identity, Lin Huang did not find any relevant information on cultivation after flipping through the notebook a couple of times. The only clue was the few location names in the notes, but those were places in ancient times. He failed to find out anything about the exact location of those places on the Heart Network. He planned to ask someone to find out for him when he had the time. He would find the opportunity to travel to those places if he really found out the coordinates. Time flew by, four days had passed since the auction began. Many collector''s items broke the record whereby they were sold at a high price throughout the four days. All of the bidders were terribly enthusiastic. Many people knew that the main reason that caused this phenomenon was because of the sale of the two god relics which attracted many rich bidders. Many of them among the people had no God Figurines, so they lost the eligibility to bid. However, they wanted to see how the legendary god relics looked like and witness the god relics being auctioned off. One must know that it had been over 30 years since Division 1 last auctioned off god relics. These people were not eligible to bid for god relics, but they were loaded. They wanted to see if there was anything that they were interested in at the auction, so they offered prices as they wished to fulfill their desire to spend. The situation caught the auctioneer Yun Mei''er a little off guard. She had hosted many auctions and sold over 70% of the items here before. Naturally, she knew the average price of each item. Upon calculating secretly, she discovered that most of the collector''s items that were auctioned off throughout the four days were sold at a minimum of 20% more than their average price. Naturally, she knew her charm was not the selling factor. After thinking to herself, she soon found out that it must be the effect of the two god relics. She could not help but secretly exclaim how tempting god relics were compared to women. On the fourth day after the auction ended, Lin Huang followed Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu to dinner. Lin Huang finally put the notebook belonged to that Sir Song away. "Why did you put it away? Did you find out about something?" Yi Zheng asked rather curiously. "I didn''t find anything at all. It''s just a notebook filled with random scribbles no matter how I look at it," Lin Huang said while shaking his head. "360 million. Man, that''s enough to buy a few ancient relics!" Yi Yeyu added fuel to the flame. "Hey, you supported me on this purchase two days ago!" Lin Huang turned his head to glare at the fickle-minded lady. "I supported you under the premise that it''s useful, but isn''t it useless now?" Yi Yeyu was not embarrassed by her firm comment at all. "It''s okay. Study it again and again. Sir Song might have hidden some secrets in there," Yi Zheng comforted. "I''m afraid that the chances of that are low. I''ve used my Life Power and telekinesis power on it. The only thing I''ve not done is disassemble the sentences and decode them like passwords." Lin Huang held no high hopes on that. He had other ways to elevate his Sword Dao anyway. Moreover, he was still far away from breaking through level-6 Sword Dao, so there was no rush about that. The Wanbao Auction had finally come to an end on the fifth day. Early in the morning, Lin Huang and the rest had a relaxed breakfast. When they sat down at the deck, there was already a crowd amassed at the auction. It was a full house half an hour before the auction even began. "Everyone''s so enthusiastic today." Yi Yeyu clearly felt that the atmosphere was different from the previous days. "It''s the last day of the auction today. The final items are two god relics, so of course, people are excited." Yi Zheng nodded while smiling. "It''s just like the last few days at work before the New Year whereby people will enjoy ten days of holidays after that." Lin Huang''s explanation was more relatable. After half an hour of waiting, the auctioneer Yun Mei''er finally walked onto the stage. "It''s the fifth day of the auction and the last day of the auction. The two god relics will mark today''s finale. They''ll only be unveiled at the very last moment of the auction today. Are you guys excited?" "Yes, we are!" Many of the bidders clamored together. Most of them had come for the god relics. The siblings beside Lin Huang could not help but show excitement on their faces. "Of course, apart from the two god relics for our finale today, we have one more surprise." Yun Mei''er paused dramatically on purpose as she spoke. She only continued to speak after seeing the surprised and eager faces of the guests below the stage. "We will also be auctioning eight demigod-level items today!" Apart from the excited crowd, even Lin Huang could not help but raise his brow upon hearing that. Among the ten demigod relics that Lin Huang had auctioned with the two god relics, three more demigod relics were auctioned as the final items on the first three days of the auction. They were sold at impressive prices. On the fourth day, the final item was a demigod relic that Lin Huang had never seen before. It must be someone else who had put that up for auction. However, now that Yun Mei''er said there were eight demigod-level items, it would mean that the Wanbao Auction had another demigod-level item apart from the seven demigod relics that he was selling. ''She said eight demigod-level items, not demigod relics which means that the item isn''t a demigod relic!'' Lin Huang became excited at that moment. He had not much interest in demigod relics since he had obtained over 400 of them in the Fallen God Land whereby he got a few sets of demigod-level battle swords, armors, and telekinetic weapons. However, a demigod-level item might be useful to him. "Alright, I shan''t ramble unnecessarily. Now, let''s get our staff to present the first collector''s item of the day!" After piquing everyone''s interest, Yun Mei''er looked at the time and realized it was exactly nine o''clock. She did not waste even a minute and introduced the first item immediately. As the cloth was unveiled, a white, semi-transparent crystal the size of a fist was revealed. There was a little monster the size of a small thumb floating faintly in the crystal. It was like a little fish swimming in rather murky water in a small fish tank. Although he was not paying attention at first, Lin Huang''s eyes lit up suddenly when he saw the item. His mood was stirred that second. 921 Extremely Strict Bidding Conditions "The first collector''s item that we''re auctioning today is one of the eight demigod-level items that I mentioned earlier." The auctioneer Yun Mei''er smirked as she knew that some of the people already recognized the item. However, most of the people at the auction had no idea what it was. All they heard was that the first opening collector''s item was a demigod-level item which attracted their attention even without them trying. The auction that was initially noisy became completely silent now. Everyone had their eyes trained on the timer next to Yun Mei''er. She then began to introduce it while smiling. "I''m sure some of our honorable guests already recognize this. Yes, it''s a soul crystal. To be exact, it''s a demigod-level soul crystal." Most cultivators knew what a soul crystal was. There were very few items that could replenish spiritual power in this world and soul crystal was the most well-known one. However, while most cultivators had only heard of such a thing called soul crystal, they had never seen the real thing before. The reason being, the probability of soul crystals dropping from monsters was extremely low. It was much lower than the probability of imperial-level monsters dropping ancient relics from their bodies after they died. Ever since Lin Huang began cultivating, he had killed at least tens of millions of monsters throughout the three years but he had never experienced any monsters having soul crystals dropping from their bodies. That proved how low the probability was. Due to the scarcity and the benefit of soul crystals, most people were unwilling to sell it even if they obtained them from killing monsters. Even if they were to sell them, they would do so within their own organizations. It could hardly be found on the market. That applied only to ordinary soul crystals. It would be even more scarce to find high high-quality ancient-level and demigod-level soul crystals. Lin Huang figured that it was pretty impossible for the demigod-level soul crystal on the stage to come from an outsider. It might be Tang Xu who got it from the Tang Clan for the auction this time. Tang Clan was an ancient family, so it was normal for them to possess such a demigod-level soul crystal. After she was done with the introductions, Yun Mei''er finally named the condition of the auction. "This demigod-level soul crystal won''t be sold using Life Crystals. The seller has named this bidding condition: a mid-level demigod archery relic." Almost everyone who was eager to bid for this item had their hopes crushed as soon as Yun Mei''er named the condition. There were extremely few archery weapons around mainly because there were only a handful of cultivators who focused mainly on archery. Since demand was low, production was also naturally low. There were limited archery weapons itself, let alone demigod archery relics. The seller of the demigod-level soul crystal had imposed an extremely strict bidding condition. However, Lin Huang smirked upon hearing the condition. He happened to have an archery relic in his storage space. that fitted the condition. ''If we''re talking about this demigod-level soul crystal''s actual value, it''s equivalent to the price of a low-level demigod relic. However, since this item''s so rare, it will be sold at least 100 billion Life Crystals at auctions. It''s reasonable for a mid-level demigod relic to be auctioned at seven to eight billion Life Crystals. I won''t be losing anything by trading a mid-level demigod relic with this archery. ''But does Tang Xu not want to sell this soul crystal, which was why he came up with such a strict condition? Maybe he just included the demigod-level soul crystal just to get an auspicious number.'' That thought popped into his mind but soon flashed by and was forgotten. ''Who cares? I have an item that fits the condition with me. I''ll pretend that I''ve no idea about his trick and I''ll just bid directly. Let''s see if he really sells it or not. ''This soul crystal''s sufficient for me to elevate one God Figurine to imperial-level purple gold-rank. It''s an opportunity that''s hard to come by.'' After Yun Mei''er named the condition, nobody made a peep in the entire auction for a while. Just when Yun Mei''er thought the collector''s item would be a bought-in, the screen in the 7th VIP room on the third floor lit up. A voice came from Room S7. "Since nobody''s bidding, I''ll take it then. I happen to have a mid-level demigod archery relic with me." Many people looked towards the VIP room where Lin Huang was. Although they could not see anything through the window, they were discussing among themselves. "Everyone in S-class VIP rooms is really loaded. They even have such rare demigod archery relics." "Someone who can whip out a demigod relic so easily must be a demigod himself." An old man with white hair and a beard in Room S1 on the third floor frowned. "I wonder who is in VIP Room S7. I hope we have different goals." In VIP Room S2, a muscular, short-haired lady narrowed her eyes slightly. "VIP Room S7 Hmm, might be a strong opponent." The owner of the Wanbao Auction, Tang Xu, who was backstage, had a complicated expression on his face. Just as Lin Huang expected, Tang Xu had indeed borrowed the demigod-level soul crystal from his family. He wanted to gather eight demigod-level items to make up an auspicious number. He set the bidding condition to be a mid-level demigod archery relic on purpose, thinking that there should be nobody who could fulfill such strict criteria. If that was the case, the soul crystal would naturally be a bought-in and come back to him again. How would he have thought that somebody would really have a demigod archery relic that fitted the condition? What troubled him even more was that the bidder was the disciple of the man who auctioned the two god relics. He could discuss it with the bidder after the auction ended if someone else were to offer a certain amount of compensation and call the deal off. However, he was really reluctant to offend the man''s disciple. If the young man called Lin Xie complained to his master when he returned, Tang Xu would lose his god relic resources completely. He might even lose his demigod relic resources altogether. He wanted to bring fame to his Wanbao Auction with the man''s resources, so he definitely could not afford to offend the disciple. After some deep thought and struggling, Tang Xu finally made up his mind. He was giving up on the demigod-level soul crystal. On the stage, Yun Mei''er responded immediately when she noticed the screen of Room S7 light up on the third floor. "The guest from VIP Room S7 has placed a bid with a mid-level demigod archery relic." "Is there anyone who wants to raise?" Yun Mei''er looked across everyone and proceeded to speak upon seeing no bidder, "From what I know, this is the first time in the history of Division 3 that a demigod-level soul crystal is being auctioned. The person who gets this soul crystal will have his name etched in the history of Division 3''s auction." Many of them felt moved to hear her declaration, but they were helpless. The benchmark of the bidding condition was too high. They had no way of competing with Lin Huang. Yun Mei''er waited for a while after she spoke. Seeing that nobody else named their price, she knew there would not be a second bidder. After all, demigod archery relics were limited. She did not bother wasting any more time. "Since nobody has come up with a higher bid, this demigod-level soul crystal now belongs to the guest in VIP Room S7." 922 Tang Xu’s Gif Yi Yeyu, who was in VIP Room S7, looked at Lin Huang with her eyes wide opened. She could not believe that this little guy, who was not even on iron-level three years ago, could trade with demigod relics now. Yi Zheng, on the other hand, looked like there was nothing to be surprised about since he had witnessed Lin Huang auctioning demigod relics off half a year ago. He thought about it and figured why his sister would think someone else''s brother was more outstanding than he was, resulting in the dissatisfaction Yi Yeyu had for him. Lin Huang delayed no further after he successfully bid for the item and he got the staff to complete the transaction with the mid-level demigod archery relic. It was a huge golden bow with 12 black arrows. Yi Yeyu could not help but ask when she saw the archery set, "Why don''t you keep this demigod relic to trade for a demigod relic that you can use, like a sword or some armor?" Yi Zheng glanced sympathetically at his sister sitting beside him. He already had the answer to her question. As expected, Lin Hung answered immediately, "I already have all the demigod relics that I need." Yi Yeyu became speechless at that moment. She turned to look at Yi Zheng while he turned away and pretended he saw nothing. She glared deadly at her brother. It was clear that Yi Zheng knew about this since the beginning. Until now, she faintly sensed that she seemed to have misunderstood Lin Huang''s comment on ''doing well in Division 3'' earlier. Although it had only been a few days since she came to Division 3, Yi Yeyu had already gained a basic understanding of the combat strength and spending power of Division 3''s cultivators. It was remarkable even for the top imperial-level powerhouse to have two demigod relics. A powerhouse who had one demigod relic for his own use and could trade with his additional demigod relics was basically a demigod himself. Judging from that alone, Lin Huang''s fortune should be comparable with a demigod-level powerhouse''s. ''It''s only been a year and he has grown to this from being almost the same level as we were. Could the Heaven Alliance be the reason behind this?'' During the spare time throughout the past few days, Yi Yeyu asked Yi Zheng about the Genius Organization and found out that the Heaven Alliance was the No. 1 organization in the Genius Organization. Thinking that Lin Huang''s growth was related to the Heaven Alliance, she could not help but anticipate joining the Heaven Alliance soon. Naturally, Lin Huang had no idea what Yi Yeyu was thinking about. Soon, the staff, who was in charge of the transaction, came knocking on the door. Lin Huang opened the door and realized it was the owner of the Wanbao Auction, Tang Xu. He had always been communicating with Tang Xu with his demigod disguise and had never met Tang Xu as Lin Xie before. "Why did you come alone and not with an appraiser?" Lin Huang pretended not to know Tang Xu. "I''m the appraiser, and I''m also the owner of the Wanbao Auction," Tang Xu revealed his identity directly. Lin Huang''s heart sank. Tang Xu might want to persuade him to call off the soul crystal deal since he came here himself. He pretended like he knew nothing. "Oh, it''s the owner himself. I apologize for being rude." "Kid, you don''t know me, but I know you," Tang Xu said while smiling, "Your master''s our big client. You should know that the two god relics included in our auction this time belongs to your master." The reason why Tang Xu said so was that Lin Huang did not really participate in bidding for the past few days. His presence there could possibly be part of an inspection on his master''s collector''s items to monitor the result of the auction. "I know that," Lin Huang admitted. "Apart from the two god relics, there are 12 demigod-level items in this auction while 10 of them belong to your master. We put the other two in." Tang Xu finally got to the topic. "Please don''t laugh at me for telling you this. Actually, I borrowed the demigod-level soul crystal that you bid for from my family just to make up the number. I''ve never planned to auction it off. That''s why I set such a strict opening bid condition. Never had I thought that you''d have such a demigod archery relic with you," Tang Xu said sheepishly and looked at the archery on the table behind Lin Huang. "Boss, are you here to cancel the deal yourself?" Lin Huang raised his brow. Tang Xu''s words were exactly what he guessed earlier. "Kid, what kind of person do you think I am?" Tang Xu waved his hand while grinning and took out the demigod-level soul crystal that was at the auction earlier from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Although our Wanbao Auction isn''t big and we don''t have the best reputation, it''s impossible that we''d break the promise for items that we''ve auctioned off." "Kid, I see that you''re pretty fated with this demigod-level soul crystal. I''ll give it to you as a gift, eh? Let''s be friends." Although it was painful for Tang Xu, he made a bold decision. The reason why Tang Xu made that decision was that under normal circumstances, people below demigod-level would not be able to use this demigod-level soul crystal at all. Even people on imperial-level purple gold-rank could not take the impact of the spiritual energy of such a level. Only demigods could use it. He figured Lin Huang must have bought the demigod-level soul crystal for his master. The kindness that Tang Xu showed was actually directed at the demigod who supplied him with resources. As long as he had a stable supply of demigod relics and god relics, the Wanbao Auction''s fame would rise as time passed by. The long-term profit would be much more than the total amount of profits from one or two auctions, let alone a demigod-level soul crystal. However, what he had no idea about was that Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Soul was the body of a god. This little demigod-level soul crystal aside, it could even swallow a true god-level spiritual energy. "Are you sure you want to give it to me for free?" Lin Huang narrowed his eyes while asking. He knew very well that Tang Xu did that just to get closer to his ''demigod master'' for more demigod relics and god relics in the future. "You could sell this demigod-level soul crystal for at least 100 billion Life Crystals if you were to auction it. That''s enough for you to trade two mid-level demigod relics." "You can never make enough money. Friendship''s more important compared to money." Tang Xu shoved the soul crystal into Lin Huang''s hand. ''He''s so good at talking,'' Lin Huang thought to himself, ''Businessmen have such terrifying talking abilities. "I won''t beat around the bush if you say so. I''ll take it then." Lin Huang took the soul crystal and nodded with a smile. "Thank you, Boss Tang, for this great gift. I''ll remember that." "Then, I won''t be disturbing you any longer, kid. You guys proceed with the auction." Tang Xu nodded while smiling since he had achieved his goal. He left after shaking hands with Lin Huang and waved at Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu not far away. "Boss Tang''s so generous! He gave out an item worth hundreds of billions of Life Crystals just like that!" Yi Yeyu exclaimed with envy written all over her face. "Lin Huang, are the two god relics in this auction from Mr. Fu?" Something caught Yi Zheng''s attention. "He meant someone else when he said ''master''," Lin Huang gave Yi Zheng a simple reply and put the soul crystal in his hand away. Yi Zheng knew Lin Huang was unwilling to talk about it, so he did not ask further. He thought Lin Huang had another master of his own. It was clear that Yi Yeyu wanted to ask the same thing. Noticing that she was going to ask further, Lin Huang walked straight to the deck and sat down. "Let''s just enjoy the auction." 923 There Are Plenty of Tycoons in Division 3 The auction came to an end when it was past five in the afternoon. The auctioneer, Yun Mei''er, could not help but smirk again when an ancient relic was auctioned off. "Next up will be the last couple of items that we have for this auction." The crowd became excited as soon as she said that. The reason being, everybody knew that the collector''s items that were coming up next would be the remaining seven demigod relics and two god relics. Almost all of the guests in the VIP rooms on the second and third floors put down whatever they were doing and focused their attention on the stage in anticipation for the climax of the auction. "Staff, please bring out the first demigod relic of the day!" As soon as Yun Mei''er commanded, two men in black suits brought a case with a red cloth covering it onto the stage. "This is the first demigod relic we have for today, which is also the second demigod-level item for the day. I wonder what would it be." Yun Mei''er grinned while holding onto the edge of the red cloth. She paused and scanned across the crowd. Realizing that everyone had their eyes on her, she shook her wrist slightly and unveiled the red cloth. There was a quaint, long sword with its tip pointing downward in the transparent case. It hovered mid-air and was rotating slowly with the sword ridge as the center point. The visual effect was caused by the carving of an anti-gravity sigil and a balancing sigil in the case. "This is a demigod longsword relic. Its name is Hong Ying which sounds like a lady''s name. In reality, it first belonged to a demigod sword cultivator named Gu Yu in ancient times. He was a real hunk. He named the sword after his wife who passed away. "Although Hong Ying''s just a mid-level demigod relic, from the historical data that we''ve read, Sir Gu Yu has killed at least 13 demigod-level monsters with this sword when he was still alive. "I personally think that this is an excellent weapon that a sword cultivator must own." Yun Mei''er only named the starting price after giving all of the guests a simple introduction, which allowed them to gain an understanding of the longsword. "The starting price for Hong Ying is 40 billion Life Crystals with at least two billion Life Crystals increment each time!" Screens lit up consecutively on the second floor as soon as she was done speaking. "VIP Room A2 offers 42 billion! "VIP Room A11 offers 44 billion! "VIP Room A23 offers 48 billion! "VIP Room A41 offers 50 billion!" The crowd clamored in surprise after Yun Mei''er announced the four bids consecutively. In less than ten seconds, the demigod relic had skyrocketed to tens of billions of Life Crystals. "I just realized there are so many loaded people after participating in an auction like this." "Those were just the bids from the A-class VIP rooms. The big bosses in the S-class VIP rooms on the third floor have yet to bid." "I suppose people who are eligible to compete for demigod relics must be at least imperial-level powerhouses. It''s normal for them to be loaded." "VIP Room A53 offers 52 billion! "VIP Room S1 offers 60 billion! "VIP Room S2 offers 70 billion!" The people exclaimed again as soon as the two bosses in the S-class VIP rooms placed their bids. "The big bosses on the third floor have finally released their bullets!" "Their markup in price is insane!" "They''re worthy of being called big bosses. They raised by eight to ten billion each time." "Tycoons on the second floor, don''t give in. Show them what you''ve got!" The people on the second floor who were initially participating in the bid became silent as soon as the two big bosses on the third floor named their price. Only one of them offered 75 billion but he was shut down by the big boss from VIP Room S2 immediately at 85 billion. He dared not bid any longer. "The guest from VIP Room S1 offers again. 90 billion!" The screen in VIP Room S2 lit up again as soon as Yun Mei''er called the bid out. "100 billion! The guest in VIP Room S2 has raised by another ten billion. It''s clear that he must get his hands on Hong Ying!" Lin Huang who was in VIP Room S7 teased while smiling, "Seems like the guest in VIP Room S2''s a hot-head." "I think it''s a demigod," Yi Zheng, who was sitting aside, voiced his speculation. Everyone thought the result was decided after VIP Room S2 offered 100 billion Life Crystals. Even Yun Mei''er was ready to announce the final result. However, VIP Room S1 placed a bid again all of a sudden. Yun Mei''er was stunned for a moment. She thought she was mistaken, but she soon snapped back to her senses. "The guest from VIP Room S1 has bid again. 105 billion! It seems like he''s not giving up!" Breaking through 100 billion actually surpassed the maximum price of a normal demigod relic. Never had they expected there to be people who would offer more than that. ''It must be settled by now!'' Almost everyone thought the same. However, the screen in VIP Room S2 lit up again at that moment. Yun Mei''er''s eyes flew wide open. She was surprised that the guest in VIP Room S2 was so determined to get the sword. "The guest in VIP Room S2 has bid again. He''s raised by ten billion again and now the bid stands at 115 billion!" "Is there anyone who is willing to go higher? If not, this Hong Ying will belong to the guest from VIP Room S2." A muscular, short-haired girl in VIP Room S2 on the third floor snarled rather fiercely, "I must have this sword!" 115 billion clearly surpassed the maximum price of a mid-level demigod relic. Eventually, the guest in VIP Room S1 did not choose to bid again. In the end, the first demigod relic on the last day of the auction was successfully auctioned off to the female demigod in VIP Room S2 at an insane price of 115 billion. The auctioning of the first demigod relic ignited the atmosphere completely. The people were getting more and more excited about the next item. Meanwhile, Yi Yeyu, who was in VIP Room S7, was shocked. "People in Division 3 are so loaded! A mid-level demigod relic being auctioned off at 115 billion?" "Not only Division 3, but many tycoons from Divisions 1 and 2 also came to this auction," Yi Zheng corrected her. Lin Huang explained while smiling, "There are actually many reasons for people to bid for an item at such high price. However, the main reason is that the guests in VIP Rooms S1 and S2 are eager to get Hong Ying. There was actually heat emanating between both of them at the end of the bid." "Especially the guest in VIP Room S2, he''s clearly a hot-head. He raised by ten billion no matter how much the other guest offered. If not for his way of bidding, the final price wouldn''t be as high as it is." "Actually, I think 105 billion should be the highest price the guest VIP Room S1 is willing to pay. If the guest in VIP Room S2 can calm himself down, the guest in VIP Room S1 shouldn''t bid again if he raised by another two billion. He could''ve bid for the sword at 107 billion, but he wasted eight billion Life Crystals just like that." The first demigod relic was auctioned off at a high price which was out of anyone''s expectations. Although Yun Mei''er was elated that she had broken the record of a mid-level demigod relic''s price in Division 3, that did not delay her job at all. Soon, she got the staff to bring the second demigod relic up. 924 Black Jade The second demigod relic was a battle sword. The reason why Lin Huang was auctioning the battle sword off was that it was just a low-level demigod relic. He had a total of 13 demigod battle sword relics with him, five of which were mid-level demigod battle sword relics and one was a high-level demigod battle sword relic. The higher level the demigod relic, the more Life Power it would drain during usage. However, that was none of Lin Huang''s concern. The Life Power in his body was endless due to his Divine Fire. To him, he could use the high-level demigod battle sword relic directly after he elevated to imperial-level. At the most, he would put one or two mid-level demigod battle sword relics away as backups and sell the rest. Yun Mei''er unveiled the red cloth on the stage. A cool black battle sword was presented before the people. It was as clear as a piece of black jade. Everyone exclaimed the moment they saw the battle sword. They had an even bigger reaction than the time they saw the mid-level demigod sword relic earlier. "It''s so beautiful! This sword''s like a piece of art!" "I think it''ll look great in the living room as decoration." "The material doesn''t seem like metal. Wouldn''t it break if it''s used in battles?" Even Yi Yeyu in VIP Room S7 on the third floor could not help but exclaim, "I''m not a sword cultivator, but I''m so eager to buy this sword when I look at it. Just like the saying ''appearances are everything'', this saying applies to anything." "I''m sure this sword will cause a wild fight between sword cultivators." Yi Zheng nodded too. He peeped at Lin Huang but noticed there was no change of emotion on his face. He could not tell what Lin Huang was feeling. In reality, Lin Huang liked the sword very much but eventually decided to sell it off after some struggling. He was not like Liu Ming; he never had the habit of collecting swords. To him, the practicality of a weapon should be prioritized while everything else did not matter. No matter how amazing it looked, there was no need to keep if it was less practical than those mid-level and high-level demigod relics. On stage, Yun Mei''er did not speak immediately. Instead, she looked across the crowd and only spoke slowly after everyone had their eyes glued to the battle sword. "The name of this battle sword is Black Jade." "I''m sure many have guessed that the material of this sword isn''t metal. It''s mainly made of the spine of a demigod-level dragonkin and embellished with crystal tuff essence." "Everyone might think that this sword''s beautiful, but in reality, it''s even more beautiful when the light penetrates through it at night." Yun Mei''er clapped her hands twice after saying that. The auction turned completely dark all of a sudden. Almost at the same time, a white ray infiltrated the transparent case with the battle sword from behind. The people saw the dazzling golden shimmer being reflected from the body of the sword like sand when the white ray penetrated the battle sword. It was like a sky full of twinkling stars. Everyone was in an uproar. Many of them launched the camera from their Emperor''s Heart Rings and took a photo of the item. Lin Huang who was in VIP Room S7 on the third floor was dumbstruck. ''People actually do that?!'' A moment later, the ray vanished while the lights were turned on again. Yun Mei''er only continued to speak in satisfaction after seeing the expression on the people''s faces. "Looking at the historical data, this Black Jade was the early work of an ancient weapon master, Ou Yunming. Sir Ou''s early works were known to be extremely exquisite. Although the Black Jade''s just a low-level demigod relic, its craftsmanship moved the notorious collection master Luqiu Yu to purchase it at a high price. "I''m sure everyone''s familiar with the name Luqiu Yu. He''s the No. 1 collector during ancient times recorded in history books, but many might not know that he was also a virtual god-level powerhouse. "It was said that Master Luqiu placed the Black Jade in his home as decoration after purchasing it. His nephew, Luqiu Hao, visited and saw it a few years later. "Luqiu Hao fell in love with the Black Jade as soon as he saw it and told his uncle, ''This is a weapon. Weapons should see blood while fighting their enemies. That''s its destiny. You''re wasting God''s gift by putting it in your room like a toy, which would upset it. If you really want to collect it, you should let it fulfill its destiny by winning battles and experiencing massacres. It''ll come back to you when it''s done drinking blood.'' Master Luqiu then gave his nephew the Black Jade while Luqiu Hao gave life to it. "There were at least 20 demigod-level monsters that were killed with this sword and countless monsters below demigod-level that died as well. Luqiu Hao died in a war later on. Instead of retrieving the sword, Master Luqiu buried his nephew with the sword as a gift. "Although the Black Jade''s just a low-level demigod relic, its value''s much higher than high-level demigod relics. It''s comparable with a supreme-grade demigod relic. "There''s only one of this in the entire world. I hope that everyone can seize the opportunity at this auction. There''s no second chance ever again if you miss it this time. "The Black Jade will start at 30 billion Life Crystals and each increment must be at least 1.5 billion Life Crystals!" The screens of the VIP rooms on the second and third floors lit up consecutively as soon as Yun Mei''er named the starting bid. "VIP Room A32 offers 40 billion!" "VIP Room A1 offers 50 billion!" "VIP Room S3 offers 60 billion!" "VIP Room S8 offers 80 billion!" The crowd became excited to see the frenzied bid that was increasing. "Holy cow! A low-level demigod relic''s going at a price that''s higher than a mid-level demigod relic!" "The Wanbao Auction has never treated this battle sword as a low-level demigod relic since the beginning. After all, the starting price is already 30 billion Life Crystals!" "There are so many rich people here! They''re competing for a low-level demigod relic like madmen!" Lin Huang, who was in VIP Room S7, could not understand that. It was just a low-level demigod relic. Theoretically, it should only be sold at 30 billion Life Crystals at the most, but now it was already at 80 million. Meanwhile, there were people who were still bidding for it. "Is this what people call ''the rich become stupid when they have too much money''?" Yi Yeyu said while pouting. "It''s more like the happiness of the rich is beyond your imagination," Yi Zheng corrected her while grinning. After some intense bidding, the battle sword, the Black Jade, was sold to the guest from VIP Room S8 at a whopping price of 160 billion Life Crystals. The price was on par with a high-level demigod relic. Yun Mei''er was getting wrinkles around her eyes from grinning so much. She had just broken a second record that day by selling a low-level demigod relic at double the highest price of a low-level demigod relic ever to be auctioned in history. Perhaps nobody would be able to break that record within centuries. For the next century, anyone who would learn about auction would remember this auctioneer named Yun Mei''er who auctioned off a low-level demigod relic at 160 billion Life Crystals. After the Black Jade battle sword was auctioned off, the demigod relics were sent onto the stage one after another. There were low-level and mid-level demigod relics. The next five demigod relics were sold at 98 billion Life Crystals, 37 billion Life Crystals, 95 billion Life Crystals, 35 billion Life Crystals, and 110 billion Life Crystals respectively. Including the three mid-level demigod relics, none of them were sold at a price higher than the Black Jade. After the seven demigod relics were sold consecutively, the excitement level at the auction peaked because the two god relics would be auctioned next. 925 The First God Relic Yun Mei''er became more excited on stage. It was the very first time in her life that she was auctioning god relics off. In addition to that, there were two god relics this time. It was an exclusive honor for Division 3''s auctioneers in close to 200 years. She could clearly sense that the guests'' anticipation for the last two collector''s items. "I believe all of you should feel the same as I do. We''re all practically jumping for the arrival of the last two items. "To be honest, I''m a little nervous right now. Throughout my 16 years of being an auctioneer, this is my second time feeling nervous. The last time I felt nervous was the very first time being an auctioneer 16 years ago. "In reality, I couldn''t really believe it when Boss Tang contacted me last month, telling me that I''d be hosting this auction. I didn''t expect myself to be selected when I signed up for it. "The reason being, everyone in the industry knew that there will be two extraordinary finale items in this auction. Many seniors with rich experience signed up for this Wanbao Auction. Even some of the notorious seniors from Divisions 1 and 2 signed up too, hoping to host this auction. "I''ve no idea why did Boss Tang picked me eventually. I still don''t understand it until today, but since he did, I hope I won''t disappoint his faith in me. I''ll try to do my very best." Yun Mei''er poured her heart out sincerely while waiting for the staff to prepare the next item. The crowd cheered for her. "Now, that we are ready, please allow the team to bring our first final item of the day!" As soon as she spoke, four staff carried a huge case onto the stage. The people were already discussing among themselves before the cloth was removed. "Why is the case so big?" "It seems to be strenuous for the staff to carry. Man, that looks heavy." "I guess it should be the spear." "Not necessarily. It could be the sword." Although Tang Xu had announced the god relics before the New Year, he only said that the two god relics that were being auctioned this time would be a spear and a sword. Apart from that, he revealed no more. Hence, nobody knew what the two god relics looked like. The staff put the case with the red cloth down slowly. Everyone held their breaths while waiting. Including the people in the VIP rooms on the second and third floors, they had their eyes fixated on the case. Yi Yeyu, who was in VIP Room S7, could not help but ask, "Lin Huang, you should know what the two god relics look like, don''t you?" Lin Huang turned his head and raised his brow. "Take a guess." "Go away!" Yi Zheng peeped at the both of them quietly and stopped the duo''s ''flirting'' with one sentence. "You''ll know when the cloth is removed." On stage, the auctioneer, Yun Mei''er, pulled the edge of the red cloth and smiled at the crowd. "Well, it seems like everyone''s excited. Oh, then I shan''t keep everyone guessing." he pulled the red cloth that was covering the case as soon as she was done speaking. There was a huge spear placed slanted in the transparent case. The total length of the spear was at least five meters from its handle to the tip and it was dark blue in color. The spear was in the form of a tower. However, instead of being smooth and conically-shaped, it had a spiral structure like a screw. The bottom of the handle was thick while it got thinner as it went up. The tip of the spear was so thin that it was almost as narrow as an embroidery needle. Clearly, apart from turning enemies into skewers, this heavy weapon could be used to smash enemies into a pile of mush. "According to the seller, this name of this spear is Ba Huang. It''s been around for a long time, passed down even before the middle era. We''ve read many historical documents, but we couldn''t find any direct information about the spear. "However, there''s a document recorded in the middle era with a similar description. It says ''a spear that''s six feet long, dark blue, and in the shape of a tower''. We figured roughly that it should be referring to this spear. "According to the description in the document, the spear appeared in the early era whereby its first appearance was in the hand of a dragon knight. "Although there are no records of the dragon knight''s exact name, looking at the document, he had the combat strength of virtual god-level. Also, he had three high-level virtual god-level dragonkins with him. He was almost the No. 1 person under True Gods at that time. "A war broke out later on. After he died with his three dragonkins in the war, the spear went missing. "This is the only information we have, so we can''t verify the authenticity of the information," Yun Mei''er added, "You can take it as a story." "Now, let''s talk about this spear. In reality, this giant form is just its original form. It has a second sharp form whereby it can shrink to two meters long. The tip of the spear will turn into a sharp blade while its weight would lighten tremendously. "The original form''s suitable for fighting wars while the sharp form''s suitable for hunting or fighting another person. "Since it can only be activated using Divine Power, there''s no way that we can demonstrate it for everyone." Yun Mei''er spread her arms helplessly. Initially, Tang Xu wanted to ask his clan''s patriarch to demonstrate the two god relics here before the New Year. However, since the opening of the ruins in Division 1, the patriarch of the Tang Clan could not help but join the fun as well. Therefore, the thought of demonstrating on the spot was put aside. A lady''s voice came from VIP Room S2 when Yun Mei''er was still speaking. "I could demonstrate it to all of you for free." Yun Mei''er was stunned to hear that offer. She looked at Tang Xu who was below the stage, wanting to ask his opinion. Tang Xu hesitated for a second before nodding. He was rather worried that the person would leave with the spear directly since she was a demigod. However, he thought about it and figured that she would not do such a thing in public. There were so many eyes watching after all, and she would lose her dignity completely once the news spread. "Sure. Please demonstrate it for us, Ma''am." After getting Tang Xu''s approval, Yun Mei''er nodded to the person upstairs while smiling. A silhouette appeared on stage as soon as she was done speaking. It was a short-haired lady with a brawny body. She was dressed in quite a masculine way. She wore a black tank top and a blue denim miniskirt with muscles bulging from her arms. Lin Huang thought her arms were almost the size of his thighs. The lady demigod did not even bother to introduce herself and put her hand into the case directly. She held the handle and pulled out the huge spear. "Watch closely. I''ll only demonstrate once." The lady demigod inserted her Divine Power into the spear. A deep blue gleam appeared on the spear''s surface like mist. A moment later, the lady demigod shrank the spear rapidly with a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. Merely three to four seconds later, the spear that was more than five meters long shrank to a deep blue spear that was two meters long. The diameter of the spear was less than five centimeters. The blade on top was flat, appearing more like a sharp dagger. The lady demigod swung it casually for a while and nodded with a grin. "It''s indeed much lighter." After some demonstration, she put the spear into the case and returned to the VIP room. "Alright. Since the lady from VIP Room S2 has shown us the change of form that the spear can do, now let''s begin the auction officially! The starting bid is two God Figurines! Each increment will have to be an item nothing lower than demigod-level." 926 Bought-in?! "The starting bid is two God Figurines! Each bid would have to be an item nothing lower than demigod-level." Almost everyone there was dumbstruck when Yun Mei''er announced the starting bid. ''What''s this God Figurine?'' Almost everyone had the same question flashing in their heads. Even Yun Mei''er, who was a professional auctioneer, had only heard about what a God Figurine was a few days ago. In reality, hardly anyone knew about God Figurines apart from demigods. Tang Xu did not announce the bidding condition when he spread the news out earlier. However, those demigods who were interested in purchasing the god relics contacted the Tang Clan and found out that the starting bid was two God Figurines. At that moment, most of the crowd, including most of the people in the VIP rooms on the second floor, had confusion written all over their faces. Many of them knew that nobody would trade Life Crystals with god relics. There must be a strict bidding condition, but never had they thought that the item to be traded in exchange for the god relics was something they had never even heard of. Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu were both dumbstruck in VIP Room S7. "What''s a God Figurine?" Yi Yeyu asked her brother. "I''ve no idea." Yi Zheng then turned his head to look at Lin Huang. "Lin Huang, you should know about it, shouldn''t you?" Lin Huang nodded while beaming. "A God Figurine is actually the remnant of a god." "A Gods remnant? What is the use of it? To be made into a puppet?" Yi Yeyu was even more confused now. "It can be used as a Combat Soul carrier for demigods or Virtual Gods. Driving a God Figurine with a Combat Soul could result in a person achieving invincibility in flesh." Lin Huang did not bother hiding the fact. "So, it has to be activated with Divine Power?" Yi Zheng had a better understanding now. "To be exact, it can be activated with any god-level energy," Lin Huang confirmed. "If it can only boost the Combat Soul''s flesh, it should be pretty limited to a boost in the Combat Soul''s overall abilities. It seems like this thing is pretty useless. I think it''s a great loss for one to only trade two God Figurines for one god relic." Yi Yeyu lost interest in God Figurine right away. "No matter what, a God Figurine is a god-level item and the amount is limited. It''s pretty challenging to trade a god relic with two God Figurines." Lin Huang smiled while shaking his head. Yun Mei''er waited for a moment on the stage. She became a little concern upon seeing no screens lighting up on the second and the third floors. However, since she was an experienced auctioneer, she began to buy time immediately. "Perhaps many of you have no idea what a God Figurine is. Well, I''ll give you a simple explanation. A God Figurine is a Gods item. To be exact, it''s the remnant of a god after his death." Yun Mei''er spent one to two minutes explaining, but nobody was bidding. It hit her that this god relic might be bought-in. "This is a god relic spear, Ba Huang. The starting bid is two God Figurines! Each increment must be an item nothing lower than demigod-level." "If nobody''s bidding, then this collection item will be bought-in." "Wait!" At that very moment, a voice came from VIP Room S4 on the third floor. "Since nobody''s bidding, could I ask if the person-in-charge to contact the seller to change the bidding condition? I really don''t have any God Figurine with me." "Please give me a moment, Sir. Let me talk to the boss." Yun Mei''er was finally relieved that the situation had turned around. Tang Xu, who had been sitting on the first row at the auction, walked onto the stage and discussed with Yun Mei''er with their backs facing the audience. Observing that, Lin Huang, who was in VIP Room S7, removed the anonymous Emperor''s Heart Ring he had on his finger quietly and put it away into his storage space. A while later, Tang Xu got off the stage and attempted to contact Lin Huang''s ''demigod master''. However, he realized that he could not reach him. Feeling helpless, he called Lin Huang instead. His call was not rejected. "Kid, is it possible for you to contact your master?" Tang Xu asked rather anxiously. The reason for his anxiety was the guest in VIP Room S4, who coincidentally was the demigod, Chu Yang. He was rather close to the patriarch of the Tang Clan. "My master told me that he might be busy these few days. If you guys have failed to contact him, I''d probably face the same challenge too," replied Lin Huang. "Could you take the liberty to change the bidding condition?" Tang Xu asked again. "This belongs to my master. Since he said that a God Figurine is the only thing he wants, he won''t accept other items in exchange." Lin Huang shook his head and declined right away. "I''m sorry. I really can''t help you." Tang Xu could only accept the truth helplessly. After hanging up the call, he walked onto the stage, looking terrible. "I''m sorry to the Sir in VIP Room S4. We''ve contacted the seller, but he doesn''t accept any other trading conditions." "Alright then." Demigod Chu Yang accepted the outcome anyway. After all, he could not force things to happen. The auction went on after the tiny episode. Although Yun Mei''er maintained a grin on her face, she felt morose inside. It seemed like the very first god relic that she was auctioning was destined to be bought in. "The god relic spear, Ba Huang, for two God Figurines Going once!" "God relic spear, Ba Huang, for two God Figurines Going twice!" "If nobody''s bidding, then it''ll be bought in!" "God relic spear, Ba Huang, for two God Figurines Last call!" "It''s a bought-in for the god relic spear, Ba Huang!" The resounding knock of the hammer echoed in the room and an uproar broke in the crowd. "What? A bought-in?!" "I can''t believe that a god relic that was so hard to come by has become a bought-in just like that!" "I thought we have many big bosses in our Division 3 these few days, but now I realize they''re just pretending to be big bosses." "The bidding condition''s too strict, I guess. We''ve never heard of such a thing called a God Figurine before this. I suppose nobody knew what it was apart from the demigods." "If the bidding condition remains the same, wouldn''t the second god relic end up in the same situation too since the first one was bought in?" In VIP Room S7, Lin Huang scowled. Although Tang Xu had told him before that there might be a bought-in at the beginning, Lin Huang was quite upset seeing it happen on the spot. Moreover, he was a little worried that the second god relic would also be bought in since the bidding condition would remain the same. "I can''t believe it''s bought in!" Yi Yeyu had shock written all over her face. "Perhaps there aren''t many demigods in Division 3. It should''ve been sold easily if the auction were to be in Division 1," said Yi Zheng who was sitting aside. However, Lin Huang shook his head. "It would be almost the same outcome if the auction happened in Division 1. This has nothing much to do with the division. Under normal circumstances, basically, demigods who use similar weapons wouldn''t miss it for the world as long as there are god relics in the auction. However, there''s a new grade-7 ruin that opened in Division 1 earlier, so more than 70% of the demigods of the entire continent are exploring the ruins now, causing a drastic drop of demigods participating in the auction this time." "I see." Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng finally understood the real reason for the relic being a bought-in. After putting the case on the stage away, Yun Mei''er regained her normal expression, but she was secretly panicking now. ''Please don''t let the second god relic be bought in. If that happens, I''ll really be the laughing stock of the auction history.'' After calming herself down by gulping a deep breath, Yun Mei''er then nodded at the staff below. "Let''s bring in the final item of the day!" 927 The Last Auction Item Soon, two staff brought the last case onto the stage. Yun Mei''er was fretting. However, with more than ten years of auction experience under her belt, one could not tell how she felt since she managed to contain her feelings and concealed them well. "This is the last collector''s item we have for the day. It''s also the very last item at our auction this time. I believe the few demigods who are here today came just for this. I won''t waste any more time. I present to you the second god relic of the day!" Yun Mei''er pulled the red cloth away as soon as she was done speaking. An exquisite sword in the case was presented before the people. It was a sword without a scabbard, and it was around one meter long. The hilt was wooden with two little intertwining dragons carved on it. The crossguard on the other side was completely golden and was the size of less than half a palm. Its shape looked like a hollowed jade piece with dragon patterns on it. The sword seemed to be very shiny and was around 75 centimeters long. Its material did not seem like steel. Instead, it resembled silver. There were dragon patterns carved on one side of the sword while a poem was carved in messy ancient text on the back. ''Three thousand guests indulge themselves in the blooming flowers; one frosty sword is enough to conquer the world.'' Judging from its appearance, although the sword was not on par with the battle sword, the Black Jade, it was very beautiful. Undeniably, it carried a quaint charm. Many of the onlookers were stunned just looking at it. "This sword''s called Frost Flower. It''s a famous sword from the early era. Although it''s named Frost Flower, it has nothing to do with the frost attribute," Yun Mei''er began to tell the story. "Legend has it that the swordsmith who crafted this sword was a powerful sword cultivator, and so was his wife. She was wounded badly in a monster horde war and passed away not long later. The day his wife passed away, white frost flowers bloomed on the frozen lake next to his house. "He was always drinking by the lake since his wife passed away and never made any weapons for years since then. One winter 11 years later, the lake was frozen again. Frost flowers formed on the lake again on his wife''s death anniversary. "Unable to take it any longer, the emotions that he had been keeping inside for 11 years exploded completely. He wailed devastatingly while kneeling by the lake, screaming his wife''s name over and over again. "After spending the day releasing all of his emotions, he suddenly thought of something that his wife had said before. ''All of the swords that you''ve made are for men. They''re so ugly. When will you customize one for me? A sword that would be love at first sight for me?'' "Recalling that he still owed his wife a sword, the swordsmith began working that day itself. He spent an entire year before he finally completed the sword. The day the sword was completed was his wife''s death anniversary. There were frost flowers all over the lake again, so he named the sword Frost Flower. "Later on, he fought with the sword and died in the monster horde war. Frost Flower then fell into the possession of a few other people and ended up with a lady sword cultivator, Nangong Xin, eventually. She gave life to the sword. "It was said that Nangong Xin was a Sword Dao divinity and defeated all the male sword cultivators. She was the most powerful sword cultivator powerhouse in the era. There were at least 20 virtual god-level monsters that died by Frost Flower''s power. Besides that, there was a true god-level monster that died by the sword too. "Nangong Xin''s stunning record made Frost Flower a famous sword and it was then documented in history. Although this sword was made for women, it actually combines a bit of the swordsmith''s style which seems tough and rugged. It''s a sword for both men and women." After she was done with the story of Frost Flower, Yun Mei''er then began to go into the details of the sword. "The total length of the sword is 1.8 meters whereby the body''s 75 centimeters long and five centimeters wide. There are dragon patterns carved everywhere. "The starting bid is two God Figurines. Each increment must be an item nothing lower than demigod-level." The auction became stirred once again when the bidding condition was stated. "The bidding condition remains the same! Will it be bought in again?" "It''s hard to say. There are so many more sword cultivators than spear cultivators after all." "This auction will be a laughing stock if it''s bought in again. If it really happens, they would''ve auctioned two god relics and none of them were sold!" Lin Huang felt anxious too. Although it would not matter if a bought-in happened again since he could auction them again after the demigods came out of the ruins, he wanted to get God Figurines as soon as possible to elevate the God Figurines'' Combat Souls. On stage, Yun Mei''er was nervous too. She was really worried that the second god relic would be bought in as well. Fortunately, she was relieved when the screen of VIP Room S1 on the third floor lit up. "I''m offering two God Figurines. If nobody here has items that fit the bidding condition, then this Frost Flower will belong to me." The screen of VIP Room S2 lit up suddenly as soon as the old man from VIP Room S1 was done speaking. "I''m bidding God Figurines and a mid-grade demigod battle sword relic! To the old man from VIP Room S1, do you really think nobody has brought God Figurines this time? Do you think you can take the item home with just the starting bid?" The short-haired muscular lady in VIP Room S2 condemned right away. "Hehe, I was just breaking the ice. Its been a while, Lady Lu. You''re still as straightforward as ever." It was clear that the old man in VIP Room S1 knew the person. "Old man, I don''t really know you. Don''t try to kiss my ass!" The screen on VIP Room S8 lit up when the duo was talking. "Two God Figurines and three mid-grade demigod relics. You can choose any armor among the three mid-grade demigod relics. I should have everything as long as it''s not too rare." The guest in VIP Room S8 stopped speaking right away. It was clear that he did not plan to communicate with anyone else. "Two God Figurines and five mid-grade demigod relics!" The old man from VIP Room S1 offered a higher bid again. "I''ll give the same treatment as VIP Room S8. Pick any five demigod relics." "Old man, it''s rare seeing you being so generous," teased the lady from VIP Room S2 and she offered again, "I''ll just go all out then. Two God Figurines and ten mid-grade demigod relics!" "Lady Lu, you''re just messing with us now." The old man from VIP Room S1 said helplessly, but he offered again while biting the bullet, "Two God Figurines and 20 mid-grade demigod relics!" The screen on VIP Room S8 lit up again. "Two God Figurines, two expert-grade demigod relics, and 10 mid-grade demigod relics. You can pick any demigod relics." The bid shut the demigods in VIP Rooms S1 and S2 up right away. It was rather difficult for one to obtain an expert-grade demigod relic. The people who were watching the auction were discussing intently among themselves. "That dude is so rich! He''s using expert-grade demigod relics like currency." "He must be a big boss since he brought out expert-grade demigod relics just like that!" "I''m afraid the big boss in VIP Room S8 isn''t from Division 3." Lin Huang, who was sitting in VIP Room S7, could not help but felt a little pleased. Although he had close to 400 demigod relics, there were only ten expert-grade demigod relics among them and there was only one battle sword that suited him. "The guest from VIP Room S8 has offered two God Figurines, two expert-grade demigod relics, and 10 mid-grade demigod relics. Does anyone have a higher bid?" Yun Mei''er added upon noticing VIP Rooms S1 and S2 being silent. The screen on VIP Room S2 lit up again as soon as she was done speaking. "Two God Figurines, three expert-grade demigod relics, and 20 mid-grade demigod relics," growled the muscular lady fiercely. One would guess that she was offering almost everything she had. However, the screen in VIP Room S8 lit up once again. "Two God Figurines, one supreme-grade demigod relic, three expert-grade demigod relics, and 20 mid-grade demigod relics." His bid this time basically included a supreme-grade demigod relic on top of the bid called by VIP Room S2. The muscular lady in VIP Room S2 knew that she definitely could not beat the person. She had no supreme-grade demigod relic with her, so she could not compete with the other person at all. It would be futile even if she were to add another expert- or mid-grade demigod relic because the person could do the same. The guest from VIP Room S1 was completely silent now. It was clear that the bid was out of his expectations, so he decided to give up entirely. In VIP Room S7, Lin Huang was pretty satisfied with the bid. Combining the God Figurine that he had, the two God Figurines were enough to boost his combat strength to immortal-level rank-7. He could advance to high-level immortal-level officially, which meant that Bai and the rest would benefit by elevating their combat strength to imperial-level crimson gold-rank. "If everything goes as expected, this should be the final bid. I think the guest from VIP Room S8 isn''t from Division 3 since he can even bid with a supreme-grade demigod relic." Yi Zheng had been staying in Division 3 for half a year, so he knew about the demigods in Division 3. "Why? Is there no demigod in Division 3 who has supreme-grade demigod relic?" Yi Yeyu could not help but ask. "There are very few demigods in Division 3 after all. From what I know, only three of them own a supreme-grade demigod relic. They only have one supreme-grade demigod relic, so it''s pretty impossible for them to bid with it this time," Lin Huang explained, "The guest from VIP Room S8''s most probably from Division 1." Many people figured the guest in VIP Room S8 was not a local resident. "I wonder if he''s a big boss from Division 1 or 2." "Compared to Divisions 1 and 2, our big bosses are fake bosses." "I pity the demigods from our division. They''re being oppressed directly without the ability to fight back at all." On stage, Yun Mei''erm who had a rich experience in auctions, naturally knew that the result was established up to this point. "The guest in VIP Room S8 has offered two God Figurines, one supreme-grade demigod relic, three expert-grade demigod relics, and 20 mid-grade demigod relics. "Going once! "Going twice!" "If there are no objections, this final item of the day goes to the guest in VIP Room S8. "Alright, going thrice! "Sold!" The last item of the auction was finally sold officially as the resounding thud of the gavel echoed. 928 Obtaining Two God Figurines The burden in Lin Huang''s heart finally lifted when the five-day long auction came to an end. Although he only sold one out of the two god relics, it was good enough. Combining the two God Figurines and the one that he already possessed, they were enough to boost his combat strength all the way to immortal-level rank-7. As soon as Lin Huang''s combat strength elevated to high-level immortal-level, the combat strength of Bai and the rest would advance to imperial-level crimson gold-rank. It would mean that Lin Huang''s overall ability would rise to the next level. Apart from that, he had a surprise reward: the demigod-level soul crystal. Such a demigod-level soul crystal was sufficient to upgrade any of his imperial-level white gold-rank Combat Souls to imperial-level purple gold-rank. At night, Lin Huang put the anonymous Emperor''s Heart Ring on and saw the unread message from Tang Xu on the communication page. "Only the sword Frost Flower was sold among the two god relics. The final bid was two God Figurines, one supreme-grade demigod relic, three expert-grade demigod relics, and 20 mid-grade demigod relics. You can choose any demigod relic, but please try to decide within 48 hours." Lin Huang replied after he was done reading the message. "My first pick for the supreme-grade demigod relic is a battle sword. If not, I''ll take armor. I''ll get any sword, saber or armor for the three expert-grade demigod relics. As for the 20 mid-grade demigod relics, just pick any that are in higher demand." Tang Xu replied immediately. It took him less than three seconds after Lin Huang replied. "Understood. May I know when will you pick them up, Sir? Or should we send them to your disciple directly?" "I''ll try to make a trip within three days." The reason why Lin Huang wanted to go through the trouble was that it would be a problem if someone found out that he had the items with him. However, not many people would plot against a demigod who came for the items himself. The next morning after the auction ended, Lin Huang left the VIP room with the siblings. "There''ll be an underground auction tomorrow night. You guys could go if you''re interested." Lin Huang forwarded the invitation that the Wanbao Auction had sent him to Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu. "Judging from your tone, I''m guessing that you''re not joining?" Yi Zheng asked while raising his brow. "I''ve seen the list. I won''t waste my time since there''s nothing that I want." Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. "But such an underground auction usually only reveals half of the real items up for auction on the list. What if there''s something that you want that''s not included in the list?" Yi Yeyu asked. "I only need a few specific items now. The first would be God Figurines, the second would be ancient-level or demigod-level soul crystals, thirdly would be God''s Crashers and lastly, demigod-level or god-level telekinetic weapons," Lin Huang named the items that he needed. "Apart from this underground auction, please take note of these items for me if you guys are joining other auctions in the future. If necessary, you can bid for me directly and I''ll transfer the amount to you." "Sure, we''ll keep an eye out for you." Yi Yeyu nodded. "So, what''s your plan now? Are you going to obtain points on the Genius Union?" Yi Zheng could not help but ask. "I''ll elevate my combat strength further in the coming month. Then, I''ll log onto the Genius Union to get some points." Lin Huang gave them a brief version of his plan. Yi Zheng was speechless upon hearing that. He could not believe that Lin Huang was going to break through his combat strength so soon. "What plans do the both of you have? Do you guys intend to train together?" Lin Huang asked Yi Zheng. "I''m planning to bring her around Division 3 after the underground auction ends to familiarize herself. However, I can only be her company for over a month at the most. I''ll have to work on my own stuff after that." "He has a girlfriend now," Yi Yeyu spoke all of a sudden, "He no longer needs his sister." "What utter nonsense! There''s a mission from the Combat God Alliance," Yi Zheng explained immediately. "Your brother isn''t young after all, so it''s normal for him to be with his girlfriend. You should learn to understand that," Lin Huang ignored Yi Zheng''s explanation directly and comforted Yi Yeyu. "What do you mean I''m not young anymore? I''m only 23!" Yi Zheng was flabbergasted. "A man turns into an uncle once he passes 20," Lin Huang said at ease because he was only 18 in this world. "He''s not just an uncle. He''s an old uncle now," Yi Yeyu added. Yi Zheng could not argue back because he really was an uncle at home. His cousins already had children of their own. He was eager to say to his sister "you''re an aunty too" but he lacked the guts in the end. All he could do was murmur secretly, "Why are other people''s sisters so cute, obedient and gentle?" "I''ll get Chan Dou to arrange your application for the Genius Union." Lin Huang recalled that when Yi Zheng mentioned the Combat God Alliance. "However, I would like to be clear about this. Although the Heaven Alliance''s a powerful organization in the Genius Union, your development in Division 3 will be ordinary and there aren''t many resources as well. You''ll have to fight for whatever you want. You''re only on immortal-level rank-1 now, so I think you should focus mainly on combat strength elevation and train your battle ability. When your ability advances, you''ll be able to enter ruins and secret zones for more resources." Yi Yeyu nodded quietly. Reflecting on Lin Huang''s transformation, she was excited to join the Heaven Alliance. After breakfast, the siblings returned to Wanguo Hotel. Lin Huang, on the other hand, found a professional cultivation room. Such a cultivation room was a branch of hotels because the hotel''s usual building was for light use only and could be easily damaged by cultivators. However, cultivation rooms were made of special materials and fortified with various sigils. On one hand, it was highly durable and on the other, it gave one a certain boost in cultivation. Although the environment was simple, business was usually good. The reason Lin Huang wanted to book such a room was mainly that he needed a very long time to visualize his True Spirit Guide and could not be interrupted during the period of time. Naturally, he did not visualize the True Spirit Guide on the first day of checking in. Instead, he practiced his sword. Skills. He still had two God Figurines pending and planned to only visualize the three God Figurines together when he gathered all of them. At past ten at night, Lin Huang sent Tang Xu a message using his anonymous Emperor''s Heart Ring. "I''m on the way. I''ll be there in five minutes." He used a Transformation Card to turn into a specter and got out of the cultivation room. In a secluded area, he used a Disguise Card to change into a demigod and put on a black robe. He then summoned the dimensional portal and appeared at the entrance of Wanbao Auction directly. Tang Xu was already waiting for him at the hall as soon as he stepped in. "Sir!" Tang Xu welcomed him immediately upon noticing his arrival. "I''ve prepared everything. Please check it through." The only item that was not sold, the god relic spear Ba Huang, was placed at the most obvious spot. The rest were the items traded for Frost Flower: a supreme-grade demigod battle sword, three expert-grade demigod relics including a sword, a saber and armor, and 20 mid-grade demigod relics which were basically common swords, sabers, spears, and armors. Meanwhile, Lin Huang soon had his eyes on the two God Figurines. Among the two, one had the form of a roaring devil while the other was clearly a plant. However, Lin Huang could not tell what kind of plant it was. Lin Huang put all of the items away without saying a word. Tang Xu then handed over a thumb-sized chip. "These are all of the Life Crystals obtained from the auction. We''ve deducted the handling fee. The rest is in there." Lin Huang took the chip and transferred the amount to the anonymous account. The figure came up soon, and Lin Huang raised his brow looking at it. "722 billion? You didn''t charge a handling fee for the auction of the god relic?" "Sir, you showed your trust by letting us, the Wanbao Auction, sell your god relics. To us, auctioning god relics is a boost to our fame. Hence, you''ve done us a huge favor. This will never, ever change. We won''t charge any fee as long as you bring us god relics," Tang Xu said while smiling. For the future of the Wanbao Auction, he had sacrificed a whole lot of benefits that were presented before his eyes. "You''re too kind." Lin Huang did not say much after that. He knew that it was difficult for him to return the favor when Tang Xu had given him the demigod-level soul crystal a few days ago. There was no major difference in where to auction the god relics, but at least, now it seemed that Tang Xu was a trustworthy person to deal with. He was one to collaborate with for the long term. Tang Xu said nothing about the next auction from the beginning until Lin Huang left with the items. 929 Elevating to Immortal-level Rank-7! It was midnight when Lin Huang returned to the cultivation room. After bringing out the three God Figurines, he covered all of them with Divine Telekinesis and drew them into his body. The three palm-sized sculptures penetrated Lin Huang''s chest and vanished just like that. Meanwhile, in Lin Huang''s body, the three God Figurines entered a Life Wheel each and were soon engulfed by the Divine Fire that was like a gigantic mountain. A moment later, sensing the Divine Power being sent out from the Divine Fire, the three God Figurines began to absorb Life Power thirstily. Lin Huang was observing the transformation in the Divine Fire quietly. Not long later, a monstrous vortex was formed. The God Figurines stood within the colossal flaming mountain which fire started tens of thousands meters high. The size of Divine Fire began to shrink rapidly. At the same time, the overflowing Life Power in Lin Huang''s Life Wheel was sucked into the vortex completely. It did not only happen to one Life Wheel. The Life Power in the other seven Life Wheels was being drained as if a dragon were chugging water. The four God Figurines that were already formed were releasing Life Power insanely as well, feeding their three new siblings. Lin Huang replenished his Life Power immediately with three Life Power Refill Cards to feed the vortex. He was not worried that the Life Power in his body would be insufficient. Instead, he replenished more so that the evolution process would speed up even faster. Over three hours passed by quickly as all of the Life Power in Lin Huang''s body was absorbed completely. The God Figurines that were in the three Life Wheels vanished completely together with the Divine Fire. Three God Figurines the size of a palm were the only things left. Lin Huang waited patiently with excitement written all over his face. He was not worried about his current condition of not having any Life Power left at all. After ten minutes, the three God Figurines were activated almost at the same time. In Lin Huang''s fifth Life Wheel, the Mysterious Frostwoman, whose top half of her body was human, opened her eyes. Icy-blue flame lit up her eyes. Her body that was sealed with ice began to break out of its constraints. As the frost on her body faded away, a white mist began to linger around her body while she hovered above the ground. In his sixth Life Wheel, a bloody spark lit up in a roaring devil''s eyes. Its body began to turn a little illusory gradually. Soon, it appeared elusive. Its palm-sized body expanded all the way to more than two meters tall. Its crimson pupils could make panic blossom in one''s heart. There were a few skulls that were the size of a fist hovering around its body, wailing devastatingly. Meanwhile, a plant was growing rapidly in his seventh Life Wheel. Surprisingly, it turned into a bush. Although it looked inconspicuous, its lush ''leaves'' were very lively. Lin Huang could sense the tremendous amount of life hidden in each leaf clearly. The three God Figurines began to repay Lin Huang''s body the second they were activated. Circles of energy waves spread out in his body. The drained Life Wheels in Lin Huang''s body were rapidly replenished with Life Power. It began from the three Life Wheels where the three God Figurines occupied, then the fourth, the fifth Until all ten Life Wheels were filled, Life Power began to throb through his meridians, muscles, bones, and soul. Lin Huang could feel Life Power in his body transforming clearly. The cells in his body and soul were experiencing a transformation at the same time. He also felt his combat strength begin to rise without stopping. In less than a minute, he elevated from immortal-level rank-4 to immortal-level rank-7. No one, not even the people in the ancient times, could ever surpass such a terrifying speed of combat strength elevation. "I''m finally on high-level immortal-level!" Lin Huang could not help but smirk gleefully. He looked into his body and checked through the information in Bai and the rest''s cards. As expected, they had elevated to imperial-level crimson gold-rank! "I''ll elevate to immortal-level rank-9 as long as I sell the other god relic in the next auction. Then, I''ll just be one step away from getting to imperial-level." Lin Huang was sure that it would be pretty impossible for the god relic to be bought in during the next auction. That would not happen as long as the demigods got out of the ruins in Division 1. Him elevating to immortal-level rank-9 was a sealed deal; it was just a matter of time. "I''m just wondering when exactly will the Royal Trials begin." After a slight distraction, Lin Huang recalled what he should be doing. Although the three God Figurines were activated, he still had to visualize his True Spirit Guide to consolidate the Combat Souls. That was his top priority at the moment. Looking at the time, it was already past three in the middle of the night. Lin Huang did not begin the visualization right away. Instead, he went to bed and slept. Visualization was a strenuous thing to do. Even with the Epiphany Card, it was exhausting. Hence, although he was not sleepy, he decided to have a good rest. Lin Huang slept all the way past noon and was completely recharged when he woke up. In reality, one to two hours of sleep a day was definitely sufficient for an immortal-level powerhouse. After washing up and having some snacks, Lin Huang then sat on the cushion and began communicating with the stone tablet. "Rocky, which True Spirits that suit my three new God Figurines should I visualize?" After communicating many times, Lin Huang was pretty familiar with the stone tablet and finally christened him with an obvious name: Rocky. Yes, he ignored the stone tablet''s objections completely. "The Mysterious Frostwoman belongs to the frost attribute as well as the yin attribute. There are actually a few True Spirits that are compatible with her, but personally, I''d pick the Enchanted Fairy. The Enchanted Fairy''s also called the Moon Fairy. It''s a spirit-type and happens to go well with your Divine Sun Tree which has the yang attribute. "The Yasha Ghost''s an undying species which has a special skill in Reincarnation Dao that makes it suitable to cultivate in. However, I''d suggest the Undead Styx. The Undead Styx is a formidable True Spirit. Finding a compatible god with it is difficult and coincidentally, the Yasha Ghost happens to be compatible. This is an opportunity that''s hard to come by, so it''s best that you don''t miss it. "Meanwhile, the Tender Vanilla''s a healing monster that doesn''t have much battle strength. The most compatible True Spirit for it would be the Withered Flower. The Withered Flower is a True Spirit that can control life energy. It can release life energy for healing as well as absorbing various living beings'' life energy. A powerful Withered Flower can even meddle with the rules of life and death whereby it can revive a dead person." "Sure, I''ll take your advice." After hearing the stone tablet''s explanation, Lin Huang found an Enchanted Fairy in the True Spirit Guide immediately. The Enchanted Fairy in the True Spirit Guide was a human lady who looked like a fairy. She was wearing a white dress and her beauty was exceptional. Lin Huang summoned Bloody to be on watch before he crushed an Epiphany Card. He then began to visualize. Time passed by soon. The epiphany this time lasted for 12 days before it was completed. The Mysterious Frostwoman in his Life Wheel was finally reproduced in the appearance of the beautiful fairy. After resting for a day, Lin Huang crushed another Epiphany Card and began to visualize the Undead Styx. It took a consecutive 15 days for this visualization to be completed. Lin Huang took another day of rest after visualizing the Undead Styx. He then crushed the third Epiphany Card and began to visualize the Withered Flower. He took 11 days to complete it this round. He spent a total of 39 days to finally complete the visualization of the three God Figurines''s Combat Souls.Yang as in Yin and Yang 930 A List of Powerhouses Who Could Become A Virtual God Within Three Years After Lin Huang was done visualizing the three God Figurines, he lay in the cultivation room and slept for the entire day. When he woke up the next morning, Bloody spoke to him directly just when he sat up on the bed before he could even speak, "The opening of the grade-7 ruins isn''t over yet. The demigods are still in there. There''s been no news on the Royal Trials from Dynasty. Also, Yi Yeyu has successfully joined the Heaven Alliance. Yi Zheng went for his mission a few days ago and sent you a message. He asked you to look after his sister when he''s not around." "Hmm, alright." Lin Huang stared blankly at the floor with his head down. "It seems like that grade-7 ruins in Division 1 is opened for at least two months, maybe even be three months. I suppose Dynasty''s Royal Trials will only open when the demigods have returned." After the soft murmuring, Lin Huang put on his slippers and walked to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink, trying to comb his hair that was as disheveled as a bird''s nest. He began chatting with Bloody. "What did Chan Dou say about Yi Yeyu''s application?" "He didn''t say much. He just sent you a message saying, ''I''ve handled it''." "Is there anything else?" "No." "Has there been any news?" "It''s been quiet lately. Apart from the god relic being bought in at the Wanbao Auction that was a hot topic for a while, there''s been nothing else." After chatting for a while, Lin Huang stopped combing his hair that could not be tamed no matter what. He began to brush his teeth and shower. Then, he changed and paid the bill at the front desk with Bloody. He then made his way to another hotel. The reason why he stopped staying in the cultivation room was that all cultivation rooms were enclosed. There was not even a window in there, so it was definitely not an ideal place for one to stay. It could only be used for cultivation. Moreover, a cultivation room was usually only over ten square meters. Apart from cleanliness and full amenities, it was worse than the cheapest room in ordinary chain hotels. However, the price was a few times more expensive than an executive suite in a luxury hotel. Apart from cultivation needs, nobody would be willing to spend the money to stay in such a place. After breakfast, Lin Huang checked into the hotel and sat on the couch to browse through the news for a while. He looked through the topics slowly. Indeed, just like what Bloody said, the recent news on Heart Network was insignificant. There was no topic that captured his attention at all. "Hasn''t it been a little too quiet recently?" Lin Huang frowned as he thought it was very peculiar. Division 3 was a messy place, and a few incidents would happen almost every month, but it had been over a month since the Wanbao Auction had passed, yet nothing interesting happened after that. "Maybe the powerhouses with top combat strength are in Division 1''s ruins," Bloody explained. Lin Huang thought about it and opened the Hunter Association forum with his personal Emperor''s Heart Ring. Mr. Fu had gotten him the privilege from the last trade since his account in the union organization was a permit for demigods which was exclusive for him. After opening the forum, he saw a hot thread immediately. The title was ''A List of Powerhouses Who Could Reach Virtual God Within Three Years''. The thread''s title caught Lin Huang''s attention, and he looked at it right away. He squinted after spending a few minutes reading the thread all the way to the end. According to the thread, the Union Government provided ancient cultivation methods to a minority of imperial-level powerhouses from the internal department of the union organization. The methods did not contradict the cultivation system existing in their bodies; it was just like learning another method all over again. Throughout the two months or so, some of the imperial-level powerhouses who received the methods had cultivated to mortal transformation-level. They were on holy fire-level for the time being. The list posted on the thread was a list of imperial-level powerhouses who had made an impressive improvement in the ancient cultivation methods throughout the two months. "No wonder it''s been so quiet!" A minority of the imperial-level powerhouses were cultivating the ancient methods while the rest were trying to get their hands on the methods. They did not have time to mess around out there. Moreover, the demigods had reached the Division 1 ruins. The remaining ones were on the immortal-level, so there was nothing much that they could do. "It seems like one must have high compatibility with the methods as well as great talent and potential to be able to cultivate the ancient methods to achieve mortal shedding-level in two months. However, this bunch of people is underestimating the ancient methods" Lin Huang was not only cultivating the Twisted Fate Scripture, but he had also done cultivation simulations of hundreds of the ancient methods. He knew very well that the further one cultivated into those methods, the more difficult they were. Powerhouses who managed to elevate their combat strength to imperial-level with their current cultivation system possessed talent and abilities of a genius-level. That was how they managed to cultivate the ancient methods with half the effort. Perhaps it was easy to cultivate during the early stages, but it would only get more and more complicated later on. Just like it was easy to learn primary school-level mathematics, it would get more and more difficult when one got to junior high, senior high and university levels. Moreover, the ancient cultivation system was completely different from the current cultivation system. There were no references the imperial-level powerhouses could depend on at all when they were cultivating the ancient methods. Just like one who had mastered playing the piano and was beginning to learn art, the journey was unrelated. One could only say that the union organization had a great idea, but they were over-optimistic. Lin Huang scanned through the list. There were only 11 people on the list. Those people had the potential of breaking through to virtual god-level within three years. However, to him, only two among the 11 could make it. One was Fu Minghan while the other was Qi Hao. Both of them had broken through to mortal shedding-stage within a month. One spent 23 days while the other spent 27 days. In the cultivation of the ancient methods, the duo''s talents were ridiculous. Meanwhile, the other nine fared much worse. The fastest one among the nine spent 38 days. "Fu Minghan and Qi Hao might be able to break through to Virtual God in two to three years," Lin Huang analyzed based on various situations. "However, these cultivation methods are only spread across on a small-scale. If they''re spread to more people, there might be more people who have talents that are on par with the duo or are even more powerful. We can''t rule out the possibility of people breaking through to virtual god-level within two years. "However, if everything goes as expected, I''ll definitely elevate to imperial-level within this year. Nevertheless, I can''t be completely sure about the elevation after imperial-level." Lin Huang did not dare to say that he could definitely elevate to virtual god-level within two years, but he had his goal set. "Apart from the people''s transformation, the changes happening to the Abyss Brink poses a bigger risk." Lin Huang felt the burden on his shoulders becoming extremely heavy all of a sudden. No matter whether it was the changes to the people or to the Abyss Brink, both changes were bad news to him and Mr. Fu. It could even bring catastrophe. The only thing that he could do was to strengthen himself continuously. He had to improve to the point where he had the right to speak to the prominent Union Government. 931 Chan Dou’s Call Lin Huang was in a long silence after closing the window of the Hunter Association forum. The appearance of the duo, Fu Minghan, and Qi Hao gave him extra pressure. Both of them were not considered outstanding among imperial-level powerhouses, but they had extraordinary talent in the cultivation of the ancient methods. He knew that there would be more Fu Minghans and Qi Haos in the future. Inevitably, there would be people who were even more powerful than the duo. Lin Huang''s emotions calmed down after a moment of silence. He clicked into the Genius Union and logged in. He had been on checkpoint 55 the last time he logged out, and he remained on the same checkpoint when he logged in now. Looking at the gigantic plants around him, Lin Huang knew he was still in the Secret Forest. After confirming his direction, the internal communication line in the Genius Union rang all of a sudden when he was ready to kill. He opened the communication page and realized it was Chan Dou who was calling. Lin Huang pressed the button to pick up. "Yes?" "You''ve finally logged in! I haven''t seen you here since over half a year ago." Chan Dou was wearing a white shirt like he always did and a pair of black slacks. He gave people the impression that he came from a wealthy family. "I''ve been busy." "I heard that your combat strength has had a major elevation. So, which checkpoint do you plan to get to this time?" Chan Dou asked excitedly. "My goal''s checkpoint 63, but I''m not sure which checkpoint will I be able to get to," Lin Huang said while smiling. "It''s great that you have a goal. Just work towards it," Chan Dou gave him words of encouragement. "I don''t suppose you called just for this?" Lin Huang faintly sensed that Chan Dou had something else to say. "You saw through me." Chan Dou chuckled. "Nothing much. I just want to tell you that I''m going to elevate to imperial-level." Naturally, Lin Huang knew what that meant. Elevating to imperial-level would mean quitting the Genius Union automatically. It would mean that Chan Dou would lose his chief position in the Heaven Alliance. "That''s sudden. Did something happen?" Chan Dou''s unexpected decision surprised Lin Huang indeed. "Actually, I''m almost done with the early preparations," Chan Dou said with a grin, "Indeed, something that made me choose to elevate now has happened." Lin Huang blinked his eyes and roughly guessed the reason. "You''d find out about this sooner or later, so it wouldn''t hurt for me to tell you now." Chan Dou did not plan to hide anything. "The Union Government got a bunch of ancient cultivation methods from somewhere earlier. It was said that cultivating those methods could elevate a person to virtual god-level. Many organizations and clans are in discussion with the Union Government about this. "However, the Union Government''s still unwilling to open the methods to more people at the moment. They''re planning to get imperial-level powerhouses to test the methods out for two years and the quota for each organization is limited. Our clan was given a few slots and one of them is reserved for me. I can only cultivate them officially when I''ve elevated to imperial-level. "Initially, I didn''t want to rush into it since there''s already a quota reserved for me. After all, I could wait for a year or more before elevating to imperial-level. However, there was a piece of news that broke from the Hunter Association that gave the elderly members in our clan a sense of danger. It was said that there are two people who have cultivated to holy fire-level in less than a month. They think that these two might elevate to Virtual Gods a year later. Hence, they''re urging me to elevate to imperial-level so that I can cultivate the ancient methods." Lin Huang was speechless upon hearing that. He could not believe that even Chan Dou, one of the Five Princes, could not escape being controlled by his family. He could tell that Chan Dou was not ready to elevate to imperial-level yet. Perhaps he had yet to find a Life Base monster that was perfectly compatible, or maybe he had found it but had no confidence to defeat it. Although such a situation in which his family rushed him into things seemed minor, in the long run, it was unfavorable for Chan Dou. Although he was the Fourth Prince who was above all immortal-level powerhouses, if he did not choose the right Life Base monster, he would lose his title when he achieved imperial-level and might not even be in the top ten with people of the same level. "I think it''s better that you drag it out as long as you can. Don''t mess up your own rhythm." Lin Huang could only give him that piece of advice. Although he thought that Chan Dou''s clan behavior of ''killing the goose that lays golden egg'' was not encouraged, he was just an outsider after all. It was not his place to comment on other people''s business within the family. "I''ve been dragging it out for almost two months now. There''s nothing else that I can do." Chan Dou forced a smile helplessly. Naturally, he knew what the consequences entailed. "Never mind. Let''s not talk about me." "Try to get to checkpoint 63 this time. If you succeed, my recommendation to make you the Heaven Alliance''s deputy chief will have an 80% success rate." "What?!" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. "Since Tang Lang left before the New Year, the position for deputy chief has been vacant. You were already on my waiting list. Tan Lang came looking for me later on and told me that your combat strength has elevated to immortal-level rank-3. That''s how you''re the first on my list now. If not for your rather low combat strength, I''d even want to relinquish my position as chief to you." Chan Dou could not see Lin Huang''s current combat strength because Lin Huang had covered it from being displayed on the Genius Union. "Oh right, actually, what''s your combat strength now? Immortal-level rank-4?" Chan Dou could not help but ask. "Something like that." Lin Huang was afraid that he might scare Chan Dou if he told the truth, so he decided to hide it. Worried that Chan Dou would ask further, he changed the topic immediately. "Forget about the position. I''m very lazy. It''s pretty awesome being an ordinary member." "Man, don''t reject me. I''ve decided on this." Chan Dou had made up his mind to drag Lin Huang into this no matter what. "It''s just a featherbed. You''ll only have to put in effort when it''s necessary. The chief and the other deputies will handle the usual stuff." "Alright then" Lin Huang agreed unwillingly anyway. He knew if he disagreed, Chan Dou would definitely dwell on it. "When do you plan to elevate?" "Within this month, I guess. I can no longer drag it out." Chan Dou forced a weak smile. "Great. All the best." "Thanks, brother! The Heaven Alliance will depend on all of you in the future!" Lin Huang felt sorry for Chan Dou after hanging up the call. If Chan Dou elevated his combat strength following his own rhythm, he should be the best of the best among Virtual Gods when he elevated to that level in the future. However, the cultivation now would mess up his rhythm. It might be difficult for him to achieve his peak performance. "There''s a Golden-armored Swine King approaching!" Bloody warned through voice transmission all of a sudden. Lin Huang turned to look at the direction the monster was coming from. The radius of his Territory skill had expanded to 7,000 meters, so he sensed the swine''s movement since the beginning. "Then, let''s begin hunting!" Lin Huang snapped his fingers and summoned Bai and the bunch of imperial monsters. 932 The Big Boss Has Returned! Lin Huang was in the Secret Forest at checkpoint 55 on the Stairway Tree. Bai, Lancelot and the other imperial monsters were killing all kinds of monsters along the way towards checkpoint 56. In reality, the Secret Forest was not a monster level. It was just an area with special rules. Under normal circumstance, the difficulty of this stage would be just the horrible living environment. However, due to the special rules, many monsters from the monster hordes decided to stay. Since their size was shrunk by 1,000 times, the surface of this level was equivalent to being enlarged a million times, which was huge. The local plants and monsters that were regular-sized seemed gigantic to them whereby the various resources available were unusually rich. One could say that the total number of monsters on this level was much more than the real number of monsters on the initial checkpoint 56. However, due to the vast surface, the monsters were scattered. Lin Huang did not waste his time killing monsters here because he had already passed this stage. No matter how many monsters he killed, he would not obtain any points. Even the God Figurines'' Combat Souls in his body would not obtain any spiritual energy. As long as it was a level that the player had already passed, being on the same level again would not reap him any benefit. It would be the same if the player died on the Stairway Tree and began from the first level again. Using Lin Huang as an example, his highest record on the Stairway Tree was checkpoint 56. If he died for some reason on the Stairway Tree, he would fall back to checkpoint 1. He would not gain any benefit during the arduous process of climbing from checkpoint 1 to checkpoint 55. However, the difficulty of each checkpoint would still remain. The horrible living conditions would be the same as well as the laborious monster hordes. There was no benefit going through the checkpoints again. Hence, many people would not make it to the same checkpoint they died after putting in so much effort to be at a certain checkpoint. Not surpassing the checkpoint where one failed before would mean no benefit for them. That was the reason why many feared to die on the Stairway Tree. Only a handful of powerhouses who possessed absolute ability were not scared of death because they had the ability to get to the checkpoint they died at. After spending over an hour passing through the Secret Forest, Lin Huang brought his imperial monsters to checkpoint 56. This checkpoint was a monster level and there were monsters called the Combat Hornetdemons all over the place. Lin Huang only dared to attack a hornets'' nest the last time. Then, he had not wanted to create a big commotion in fear that the hornets'' nests around would surround him. He was frightened that the hornet queen and hornet guardians would sense him, which would spell trouble for him. However, he was fearless this time with his bunch of imperial-level crimson gold-rank imperial monsters. Those Combat Hornetdemons were just high-level immortal-levels and could not even break through the defenses of Bai and the rest since they were on imperial-level crimson gold-rank. They were no threat to them. Lin Huang smirked slightly when he saw the first hornet nest not far away as soon as he stepped out of the Secret Forest. "Apart from Bloody, everyone, scatter. Each of you will handle one hornets'' nest. Clear them as soon as you can," Lin Huang ordered, "The first three who clear the nest first will get rewards when we get out of here." The eyes of Lancelot, Tyrant and the rest lit up as soon as they heard about the potential rewards. Under Bloody''s guidance, Bai and the other 12 monsters soon scattered and began the one-sided massacre after finding a hornets'' nest each. All of the imperial monsters that had demigod relics with them were much faster at killing compared to the time they were in the Fallen God Land. At the moment, Bai was mainly cultivating towards the direction of a sword cultivator. Lin Huang shared almost all of his Sword Dao inheritance with Bai. For this mission, Bai intentionally fell back on the better swords while he picked a mid-grade demigod battle sword relic. Among the 13, he had the slowest killing speed because he was using those Combat Hornetdemons to practice his sword skills. Tyrant, who initially fought with his fists, picked up a pair of demigod-level battle axes this time. The two battle axes were mid-grade demigod relics and soon, he was killing the Combat Hornetdemons with the swing of the axes like he was slicing fruits. The Malachian Fiend looked through the pile of hammer axes and eventually chose an enormous mace. The mace had a solid grip whereby the Combat Hornetdemons would turn into a pile of mush whenever he swung it. Fortunately, the monsters that were killed on the Stairway Tree would disappear directly and would not affect anything since there were no carcasses to be collected. The battle sword that Killer held was the supreme-grade demigod relic that Lin Huang had just obtained. Many Combat Hornetdemons were killed immediately as soon as the sword was brandished. It was no different from cutting chives. Lin Huang had yet to be on imperial-level for now, so he was unable to use that supreme-grade battle sword. Killer, who was also a sword cultivator, was lucky to be using the sword instead. Meanwhile, for Lancelot, it took Lin Huang a while to gather 19 demigod sword relics for him and his 18 sword servants. Luckily, their performance was up to expectations whereby their killing speed was the fastest among the 13 teams. The Evil Dominator could not turn into an imperial-level human due to the restriction on the Stairway Tree. He turned his appearance into Killer again. However, he was only using an expert-grade demigod battle sword relic while his killing speed was slightly slower than Killer. The two knights picked a mid-grade demigod spear each. Their combat strength elevated to imperial-level yellow gold-rank even when they remained in their original knight form without merging. No monster could survive the first swing of their spears. Initially, Lin Huang planned to get Grimace and the Imp, who possessed telekinesis, demigod-level telekinetic weapons. However, he had none with him, so he could only lend them two sets of ancient-level telekinetic flying daggers. Nevertheless, with their imperial-level crimson gold-rank telekinetic power, their killing speed was pretty remarkable while they mastered their own set of ancient-level telekinetic flying daggers. Among the 13 groups of imperial monsters, the one who was fastest at killing would be the Warlord. Although Lin Huang did not get him any demigod relics, apart from reserving the scarce materials, he basically gave all the materials that he had obtained to Warlord to come up with his mechanical army. Not only was the mechanical army boosted to 300,000-strong now, but their quality also experienced a major improvement compared to before. The Warlord was winning in quantity and he could clear a hornets'' nest within a few minutes. Under Bloody''s guidance on the map, all the hornets'' nests on checkpoint 56 were exterminated. As the massacre went on, the combat strength of the three new God Figurines'' Combat Souls was skyrocketing. Iron-level, bronze-level, silver-level, gold-level, holy fire-level Instead of using the ancient-level soul crystal directly, he replenished the spiritual energy for the three God Figurines by killing monsters because it was rather easy to elevate the combat strength of the God Figurines before they reached imperial-level. To be exact, elevating the combat strength of the God Figurines would not be very difficult before they reached imperial-level yellow gold-rank. The soul crystal could definitely be reserved until it was difficult for them to elevate just by killing monsters. Lin Huang had yet to use the demigod-level soul crystal for now. He could not make up his mind about which Combat Soul he should elevate to imperial-level purple gold-rank first. The other thing that was skyrocketing together with his God Figurines'' combat strength was his points on the Stairway Tree. One must know that there were usually 20,000 to 30,000 Combat Hornetdemons in one hornets'' nest. Some of the population could even go up to 50,000. Moreover, all the Combat Hornetdemons were high-level immortal-level. Even if they were just on immortal-level rank-7, killing one would earn him 640 points while killing an immoral-level rank-9 Combat Hornetdemon would earn him 2,560 points. Apart from the Warlord and Lancelot who were using an army of their own, the rest of them had a similar killing speed whereby they cleared one hornets'' nest within approximately half an hour. Even Bai, who was practicing his sword skills by killing the monsters, only spent over 40 minutes to clear one hornets'' nest. Lancelot, on the other hand, spent less than ten minutes. He could clear one nest within seven to eight minutes. The Warlord was even faster whereby he could clear one within two to three minutes. This also caused Lin Huang''s points to skyrocket to over hundreds of millions despite only staying on checkpoint 56 for less than 20 minutes. He became No. 1 on the Stairway Tree leaderboard once again. The sudden appearance of Lin Xie made everyone''s jaws drop again. People had forgotten the name since it had been half a year since it last appeared. Not only did it appear out of nowhere, but it also landed in the No. 1 spot on the leaderboard without anyone seeing it coming. Every Genius Union member who was online recalled how terrifying this name Lin Xie was on the leaderboard last year. The big boss had returned half a year later! 933 The Hornet Queen "He obtained hundreds of millions of points and got No. 1 directly. It''s so insane!" "His speed''s scary! The points are rising by tens of millions almost every minute!" "Damn, he''s killing monsters like it''s a game to him." "He''s clearly cheating!" Some people were not surprised that Lin Xie was slaying on the leaderboard again, but there were still some sour grapes who reported him for cheating. Soon, the Genius Union members who were online spread the word about Lin Xie achieving No. 1 on the Stairway Tree leaderboard out of nowhere. Many members who were offline logged in to see it for themselves after hearing the news. After logging in, many members from various organizations lifted their head to look at the number on the first place of the leaderboard that was skyrocketing continuously. "It''s increasing by tens of millions in a minute. Could it be a system glitch?" The happiest people had to be the Heaven Alliance members. They could not help but cheer looking at Lin Huang returning with a bang half a year later. The fame of the Heaven Alliance was boosted once again. At a corner on the Stairway Tree, Yi Zheng, who found some time to log in after hearing the news, looked at the first name on the leaderboard. He was silent for a long time as he looked at the number that was continuously increasing before muttering softly, "So, this is your real ability, eh?" On the other corner on the Stairway Tree, Yi Yeyu had just logged in too. She was in slight disbelief when she saw the name Lin Xie on the leaderboard. "Did this fella cheat at all?" The Heaven Alliance members watched on the Stairway Tree''s checkpoint 63. Ever since Lin Huang had logged in, Chan Dou had been following the changes in Lin Huang''s points. He was the only person to witness Lin Huang''s entire progress of achieving No. 1 on the Stairway Tree leaderboard all of a sudden. "He''s worthy of being the man I, Chan Dou, look up to the most!" The high management of the major organizations who were online including the Hong Alliance and the Tang Alliance began to discuss this absurd turn of event. "Initially, I thought that the Heaven Alliance would fall since Chan Dou''s leaving, but now Lin Xie''s rising." "Lin Xie was only on golden flame-level at the end of August last year. It has only been less than eight months. The most he could''ve achieved would be immortal-level rank-2. Even if he''s on immortal-level rank-3, he''s still very far away from getting to immortal-level rank-9. No matter how talented he is, it would take at least a year and a half to two years to really grow." "We shouldn''t look at his personal combat strength. No matter what he''s relying on, which one of you could kill tens of thousands of Combat Hornetdemons within a minute? Those Combat Hornetdemons are all on high-level immortal-level, but he''s killing them like he''s chopping vegetables." "Indeed, it''s beyond terrifying if we''re talking about combined abilities. I''m afraid that even Chan Dou can''t do that." "No matter what his personal combat strength is now. His combined abilities have far surpassed ordinary immortal-level rank-9 powerhouses. It''s just a matter of time for him to possibly become the second Chan Dou and even surpass the man himself!" "It''s unfortunate that Chan Dou has taken such an extraordinary bud." A chief and three deputy chiefs gathered in one of the Divine Alliance meeting rooms. It was an emergency meeting. The Divine Alliance chief, Zhong Liyan, sat in the main seat as he glanced at the other three. "I''ll begin since everyone''s here. The reason for gathering all of you here is because of that fella named Lin Xie from the Heaven Alliance. All of you should''ve already seen the Stairway Tree leaderboard. I think that fella could be our next target." "He''s on checkpoint 56 now. Looking at his speed, indeed he''s a great sacrifice. He''s nothing less than that Chan Dou." The bald man on Zhong Liyan''s left was the first to voice his opinion. "Killing tens of thousands of high-level immortal-level monsters within a minute That''s pretty amazing." The only lady among the four chuckled softly. "He''s only on immortal-level no matter how powerful he is. Even Chan Dou has to run away from imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses. He''s no match for powerhouses of such combat strength." The last who spoke was a fair, sinister-looking man. "So, should we make him our next target?" Zhong Liyan glanced at the three again. "I agree." The bald man was the first to vote. "I''ve no comment on that as long as we don''t miss." The lady twirled her hair while looking at her crimson nails with her head held low like it did not concern her. "I''ve no comment too.'' The fair man nodded and proceeded to speak, "But I suggest that we only talk about the details after we''ve captured the current sacrifice target before capturing Lin Xie. Our main focus should be on the current sacrifice now. After all, the current target isn''t even an easy one." "Sure, so we''re set on the next sacrifice. We''ll talk about the details again. That''s all for today." Zhong Liyan stood up as soon as he was finished. He held his fist and placed it on his heart confidently. "Glory to the Lord!" The rest stood up immediately and posed the same way. "Glory to the Lord!" Lin Huang had no idea about what happened at all. Even if he did, he would not take it to heart. He had been practicing his demigod-level sword skills while Bai and the rest were hunting since he had nothing else to do. There were at least tens of thousands of hornets'' nests on the Stairway Tree''s checkpoint 56. At their speed, they could clear 40 to 50 nests within an hour if they tried hard enough. Even if they hunted for 24 hours without stopping, they could clear just over 1,000 nests a day at the most. Moreover, the Stairway Tree would refresh the monsters every day. After clearing 1,000 hornets'' nests today, another 1,000 nests would appear out of nowhere tomorrow. They could never clear all of the hornets'' nests. Lin Huang was only planning on killing the monsters as he made his way up as he just wanted the points. After spending over an hour killing Combat Hornetdemons, Bai and the rest had killed more than millions of monsters in total. The three new God Figurines'' Combat Souls in Lin Huang''s body had finally elevated to imperial-level black gold-rank. His points had surpassed 800 million and were close to one billion. However, Bloody spoke through voice transmission while smiling all of a sudden, "The hornet queen has noticed the unusualness and is coming our way." Bloody projected a surveillance image as it spoke. In the projected image, there was a conglomerate of hundreds of hornets'' nests with up to tens of millions of Combat Hornetdemons sweeping like locusts. There were over 300 Combat Hornetdemons in the middle of the swamp of hornets that were clearly different from the rest. Their size was much smaller whereby the length of their bodies was only five to six meters. Meanwhile, most parts of their body were golden and they looked much more elegant. However, one should not underestimate those Combat Hornetdemons that seemed a little different. They were the hornet queen''s guardians. Each of them had combat strength of peak immortal-level rank-9 and all of them were triple mutated. They were not afraid of death when they battled and they had distinguished abilities. There was a huge hornet queen in the middle of the hornet guardians. She was much bigger than an ordinary Combat Hornetdemon. Her body was more than 100 meters long. While the top part of her abdomen looked normal, ger bottom looked extremely swollen. She looked eight to nine months pregnant. In addition to that, it could not fly, so it depended on the 200 hornet guardians carrying it. The remaining 100 or so hornet guardians were responsible for the safety around it. "It has to be carried when it''s out. How high and mighty!" Lin Huang teased while grinning. 934 Fight! Fight! Seven to eight months ago, Lin Huang did not have the absolute confidence to break through checkpoint 56 since Bai and the rest of his imperial monsters were only on immortal-level rank-9. They would have to bypass the hornet queen and her guardians if they encountered them and try to avoid them as much as they could. However, Lin Huang''s personal combat strength was on immortal-level rank-7 now while all of his imperial monsters had elevated to imperial-level crimson gold-rank which was two ranks above the hornet queen and her guardians. There were seven God Figurines'' Combat Souls Lin Huang''s body, four of which had a combat strength of imperial-level white gold-rank. They were practically invincible. Even though the hornet queen and the hornet guardians were advancing with an army of tens of millions of Combat Hornetdemons, they were just free meat to Lin Huang now. He even wanted the hornet queen to bring her entire army. If that happened, the God Figurines'' Combat Souls in his body might elevate to imperial-level purple gold-rank without him even using a demigod soul crystal. "I love those monsters who have self-awareness and lay themselves across my doorstep." Lin Huang grinned as he watched the majestic Combat Hornetdemon army that Bloody projected. "This is going to save so much of my time!" "In reality, Chan Dou could only run away if he was to encounter such a large-scale bug horde." Even Bloody could not help but pity the hornet queen. "Too bad the hornet queen has made an enemy out of us." Although there was a massive amount of Combat Hornetdemons coming, Lin Huang''s imperial monsters had the upper hand. One of the reasons for the one-sidedness was the suppression of combat strength. The Combat Hornetdemons could not even break the defenses of Bai and the rest. The other reason was that Lin Huang had an endless supply of Life Power, giving his imperial monsters infinite strength to show their trump cards without having to worry about straining themselves. If Bai and the rest had their hands tied, Lin Huang would get his God Figurines'' Combat Souls to fight. This bug horde were dead fishes on his chopping board. There was no way for them to turn the tables around. The hornet queen was coming close to where Lin Huang was at with her Combat Hornetdemon army. There were Combat Hornetdemons streaming out of the hornets'' nests along the way, joining the army. Around half an hour later, the hornet queen finally arrived. The Combat Hornetdemon army had grown from 10 million to 50 million along the way. Watching the arrival of the bug horde, Lin Huang recalled all of the Monster Cards that were fighting out there in a relaxed manner. He then summoned the monsters who were more suitable for mass battling. "This horde should earn me tens of billions of points." The Combat Hornetdemons did not attack right away without the hornet queen''s order. Instead, they opened a path, letting the hornet guardians escort their queen out. Lin Huang did not rush into things since the hornet queen did not attack immediately. He wanted to know what she was up to. After being escorted out by the hornet guardians like it was sitting atop a mini hill, the hornet queen first glanced through the summoning beasts before Lin Huang with its compound eyes before finally resting them on Lin Huang. "Human, if I''m not mistaken, these imperial-level monsters should be your summoning beasts, am I right?" A voice came into Lin Huang''s ears out of nowhere. She sounded like a matured lady. "Yes. Is there a problem?" Lin Huang raised his brow, surprised that the hornet queen had spoken. It was the first local monster that had ever vocalized anything among all the 56 checkpoints Lin Huang had been on. "Your summoning beasts killed many of my children just now. How do you want to settle this?" The hornet queen asked. "How do you want to settle this?" Lin Huang asked her back. "There''s a human phrase that goes ''a murderer must pay with his life''. Give your summoning beasts to us, then we''ll forget about what you did. To remedy the loss of your summoning beasts, I''ll give you a pass through checkpoint 56." The hornet queen named her request. "What if I don''t agree to that?" Lin Huang asked. "I admit your summoning beasts are very powerful but do you really think your dozen summoning beasts are a match for my million-strong army? You must be dreaming then!" The hornet queen cackled and reminded Lin Huang, "You must know that there''s an end to one''s Life Power even if you''re an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse." "The reason why you didn''t attack immediately is that you sensed my imperial-level aura and you daren''t be hasty. You''re negotiating terms with me calmly because you know you''ll lose badly if you fight me since you found out that all of my summoning beasts are imperial-level crimson gold-rank powerhouses. You just want to take my trump cards that can fight you away, so you''re advising me to surrender my summoning beasts as well as offering me a pass through the checkpoint. As soon as I agree to that and give you my summoning beasts, you''ll definitely break your promise right away and kill me. "In reality, the terms that you gave aren''t convincing to me at all. I don''t need your permission to pass through checkpoint 56 of this Stairway Tree. Also, I''ve been waiting for your great Combat Hornetdemon army for a long time. I won''t have to waste my imperial monsters'' time to go for the nests one by one since you''ve brought them over. You''ve saved much of my time and I really want to thank you for that." "Outrageous!" The hornet queen was completely enraged even before Lin Huang was done speaking. He did not take the hornet queen or her Combat Hornetdemon army seriously. "Since you''re rejecting my kind advice, then we''ll fight! When all of your Life Power has been drained, I''ll inject a toxin into you myself and watch you die slowly!" The hornet guardians retreated while carrying the hornet queen as soon as she was done speaking. The sea of Combat Hornetdemons was charging at Lin Huang like a wave. Meanwhile, Lin Huang shouted at the hornet queen that was already drowned out by the hornets, "I forgot to tell you one thing. Indeed, an imperial-level purple gold-rank would have his Life Power drained, but not me!" As soon as Lin Huang declared that, Bai and the rest began fighting with the Combat Hornetdemons. The Warlord could finally release all of his mechanical army without holding back. His 300,000-strong mechanical army fired violently and the Combat Hornetdemons fell onto the ground without having the strength to fight back at all. It was an imperial-level crimson gold-rank mechanical army after all. Even an imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouse would have to avoid them, let alone the Combat Hornetdemons that were only on immortal-level. The tremendous mechanical army was like a gigantic meat grinder on the battlefield. Everything was killed wherever it passed by. Apart from the Warlord, Bloody finally controlled its parasitic armies to battle. One of the parasitic armies was made of tens of thousands of triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters while another consisted of thousands of imperial-level monsters. Bloody named them his immortal army and his imperial army. Under the battle formations, the two armies turned into two enormous beasts that rampaged among the bugs. They were invincible. Meanwhile, Charcoal''s killing speed was nothing slower than Bloody''s armies. Even the imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters dared not touch its Dragon Flames. The immortal-level Combat Hornetdemons died as soon as they came in contact with the flames. Unfortunately for the Combat Hornetdemons, they were like moths drawn to flames and turned into dust one after another. Bing Wang fought with all he had as well. The land turned into ice wherever he passed while countless Combat Hornetdemons turned into crystal-clear ice sculptures. As Bloody Robe''s red robes fluttered, volcanoes appeared out of thin air one after another. Fiery lava was spreading everywhere like water and all of the Combat Hornetdemons were drowned everywhere the lava flowed. Thunder, on the other hand, flapped its wings while a ferocious gleam sparkled in its eyes. Gray thunder clouds were forming in the sky rapidly and they soon covered half of the sky. Countless purple lightning bolts struck like punishment raining from God, taking out countless Combat Hornetdemons. Lancelot and the Sword Dominator unleashed their Sword Manipulation to the peak, making countless swords fly among the bugs. The Combat Hornetdemons were pierced one after another continuously. Grimace was doing a similar thing whereby he was controlling the telekinetic flying daggers to destroy the enemies at lightning speed. His speed was nothing less than Lancelot''s. Meanwhile, the Imp summoned meteorites that fell one after another rapidly like nuclear explosions. The thumb-sized Eclipse Boa opened its mouth which was like a bottomless black hole. Many Combat Hornetdemons lost control of their bodies and were sucked into its mouth. The Combat Hornetdemons were shrinking at an alarming speed and eventually, they turned into black spots that were the size of sesame seeds before they were eaten. The Malachian Fiend used Megamorth to boost his body to hundreds of meters tall. It walked around among the bugs like a massive tank. The Herculean King regained his original size of over 2,000 meters tall. He was a few times bigger than the Malachian Fiend and could kill a bunch of Combat Hornetdemons with one single slap. Tyrant, who had regained its original size, was more than 20,000 meters tall. Even the great, lush mountain became a tiny slope before him. It was Lin Huang''s first time seeing Tyrant''s original size since it became triple mutated. Many Combat Hornetdemons were smashed into powder as soon as he stomped his feet. Bai also held nothing back at all. He had fallen into a frenzy. There was a layer of bloody mist surrounding his entire body. The bloody mist had vine-like tentacles extending out of it and they pierced through the Combat Hornetdemons one by one. The attacked hornets'' bodies soon shriveled up as if any liquid in them had been sucked dry. Meanwhile, the bloody mist around Bai''s body was getting thicker and its coverage was getting wider. More and more tentacles extended out of the bloody mist. 935 The Hornet Queen’s New Order Lin Huang''s points saw a hike by tens of folds on the Stairway Tree leaderboard ever since the hornet queen arrived with her army. Bloody and the rest fought with all their might as soon as the imperial monsters were replaced with those that were great in mass killing. They had no concern about draining their Life Power. Naturally, their killing speed was faster than before. Lin Huang''s points were rising by 300 to 400 million per minute on the Stairway Tree leaderboard. The countless Genius Union members who were online were dumbstruck as they watched the numbers fly by. "What''s happening? His points have risen by close to 400 million within a minute!" "It must be a system malfunction! Maybe Lin Xie''s points increased too quickly, causing the Stairway Tree leaderboard to become faulty." "The tens million points per minute earlier was scary enough and now it''s a few hundred million per minute, so was he warming up just now?" "He has to be cheating! Even if all the monsters that he''s killing on checkpoint 56 are on immortal-level rank-9, 400 million points would be somewhere around 156,000 monsters if we''re talking about 2,560 points for each monster. How could anyone possibly kill 150,000 monsters within a minute?!" However, the truth was that there were more immortal-level rank-7 monsters in the Combat Hornetdemon army while there were only some on immortal-level rank-9. Lin Huang''s imperial monster army was killing more than 500,000 monsters a minute. Lin Huang had no idea that the surge of his points had become a hot topic among everyone in the Genius Union once again. Compared to before, most of the people thought his speed this time was fake because it was just extremely unusual. Hence, many people reported Lin Huang this time. In the Heaven Alliance residence on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree, Chan Dou had been following Lin Huang''s progress in points. He figured what happened roughly. "His points are skyrocketing once again. I suppose he encountered the bug army led by the hornet queen!" "This Lin Xie dares to fight on just like that. One must know that it''s a bug horde consisting of tens of millions of Combat Hornetdemons." Chan Dou was sure that he himself would not have such guts. It might be difficult for him to escape as soon as he was drowned by the bug horde. Even if he had an ancient armor relic, each attack would drain his Life Power and he would be dead if his Life Power was completely exhausted. "The Combat Hornetdemons on checkpoint 56 are just on high-level immortal-level. Obtaining 300 to 400 million points each minute would mean that he''d have to kill 400,000 to 500,000 Combat Hornetdemons per minute. His speed of killing is just terrifying! How the hell is he doing it?!" Chan Dou did not think that Lin Huang was cheating, but he could not figure out how he was achieving that. The high management of the Hong Alliance and the other organizations were having the same doubts. They also roughly figured that Lin Huang was fighting with the hornet queen on checkpoint 56 of the Stairway Tree. However, they could not figure out how Lin Huang had managed to achieve such a killing speed no matter how hard they cracked their heads. Meanwhile, the battle was on-going at checkpoint 56 of the Stairway Tree. The Combat Hornetdemons were dying by batches just like moths drawn to a flame. It was tragic and devastating. The hornet queen that was sure that it would win in the beginning was completely dumbstruck as it watched the performance of Lin Huang''s summoning beasts. They seemed to have cheat codes in them whereby they threw their trump cards continuously as if their Life Power cost them nothing. "Is he giving it his all since he knows he can''t run?" The hornet queen could not understand that but she pitied its children. Even she had to admit that the speed of Lin Huang''s summoning beasts was terrifying. Over 500,000 of its children were dying every minute. Looking at the rate things were going, the 50 million-strong army would be decimated within an hour and a half. However, the hornet queen had no plan of retreating at all. "I want to see how long you guys can take it!" As time went by, she began to regret a little. The battle had been one-sided since the beginning. Initially, she thoughts she had the upper hand in numbers whereby she could drain Lin Huang and his summoning beasts'' Life Power. As soon as their Life Power was drained, that would spell death for Lin Huang and the rest. How could she have known that those summoning beasts were still fighting with all their might after 20 minutes had passed as if their Life Power was endless? "Can their Life Power really be infinite?" Suddenly, the hornet queen thought of what Lin Huang said earlier. "Indeed, an imperial-level purple gold-rank would have their Life Power drained but not me!" The thought only stayed in the hornet queen''s head for a flash before it was forgotten. "How is it possible for one to have endless Life Power? There must be a limit no matter how much Life Power one has!" With that thought, the hornet queen chose to fight Lin Huang head-on. "I don''t believe I can''t drain all of your Life Power!" Soon, another 20 minutes passed by. Lin Huang''s summoning beasts were having fun throwing their trumps cards like before. None of them looked tired. The hornet queen was finally shaken. Among the 50 million Combat Hornetdemons that she had brought, more than 20 millions of them had been killed, which was almost half of them. "Could their Life Power really be endless?" Lin Huang had been hovering mid-air, not involving himself in the battle from the beginning. Bloody did not let any of the Combat Hornetdemons go, so there was no chance for Lin Huang to fight at all. The 40 minutes that had passed not only boosted his points on the Stairway Tree leaderboard, but the combat strength of the three new God Figurines'' Combat Souls in his body elevated to imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Initially, he thought the three new God Figurines'' Combat Souls would only get to imperial-level yellow gold-rank after receiving sufficient spiritual energy when he reached checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree. How could he have thought that he would achieve it earlier than expected? Noticing that the hornet queen had given him a massive gift, Lin Huang could not help but begin to like her even now. "Now, it doesn''t seem as ugly as it was before. Maybe this hornet queen''s the type whereby the more you look at it, the prettier she becomes!" However, the hornet queen felt the complete opposite about Lin Huang. In the beginning, she thought Lin Huang and his summoning beasts were just sitting ducks. She thought that by just sacrificing some Combat Hornetdemons, she would drain this human and his summoning beasts to their deaths sooner or later. Unfortunately, now, she was tempted to retreat with its remaining army. If Lin Huang''s summoning beasts were to proceed to kill like this, the 50 million Combat Hornetdemons that she brought would be destroyed completely within an hour. "No, I can''t let them kill like this!" The hornet queen was panicking and her eyes soon stared at Lin Huang who had yet to fight since the start. The intent to kill was rising in her eyes. As long as he died, his summoning beasts would be gone too! As she thought about this, the hornet queen communicated with the hornet guardians secretly, issuing an order to assassin Lin Huang. The 100 or so hornet guardians formed a team and scattered away. They rejoined the battle from all directions as individual hornet guardians. They looked like they were new additions to the battlefield on the surface, but in reality, they were targeting Lin Huang. The hornet guardians hid among the bugs and approached him stealthily.In reality, killing the Imperial Censor would not kill his summoning beasts. They would just lose their contract with the Imperial Censor. However, under the Stairway Tree''s rule, the summoning beasts would die with the Imperial Censor as soon as he was killed 936 Congratulations, Yousve Passed Through the 56th Checkpoint! Of course, Lin Huang could clearly see what the hornet guardians had done. The radius of his territory had expanded to seven kilometers, so he could sense everything that happened within the region covered by his territory. The odd movements of the hundreds of hornet guardians were visible like lights in dark. Bloody, who was in charge of the overall situation, noticed that as well. Just as it was about to instruct the army of puppets to launch an attack, Lin Huang stopped it. "Let them come. It''s time for me to practice with my sword." Lin Huang chuckled. "If you aren''t going to give them any chances, the hornet queen might bail out and escape with the team." As soon as Bloody heard what he said, he reluctantly allowed a few of the hornet guardians to enter. Although it knew that Lin Huang had terrifying abilities, only three of them were allowed to enter. Right after they managed to break through their defense, they rushed towards Lin Huang who was ever ready to fight. Both parties were locked in the battle and it was an interesting fight. All the hornet guardians were on immortal-level rank-9 and had completed their third mutations. In fact, they were not weak at all. They were just slightly weaker compared to the Herculean King when it was on immortal-level rank-9. When Lin Huang had been on immortal-level rank-1, he was capable of fighting an immortal-level rank-9. Since he was currently on immortal-level rank-7, in addition to his Sword Dao achieving Level-6, he could even fight a yellow gold-rank. He was capable of killing a crimson gold-rank with ease. It seemed like they were locked in a fight. However, he was just practicing his sword skills with them. He was afraid that if all the hornet guardians were killed within seconds, the hornet queen would bail out of the battle. Watching Lin Huang being engaged in an intense fight from afar, the hornet queen was worried but felt exhilarated. She was worried because the hornet guardians failed to attack Lin Huang and they were unable to kill the human Imperial Censor. However, she was smug that the Imperial Censor was not that strong and they might probably win the fight. However, the fight was miserable for the few hornet guardians. They could tell how powerful he was. His sword controlled them and they became his puppets. The only thing they could do was follow the movements of his sword skills. Otherwise, they would die in the next second. Their opponent seemed to have isolated them from the outside world whereby they were unable to contact the hornet queen to report their actual situation. Bloody then allowed more hornet guardians to enter. Lin Huang only let himself be surrounded by about three hornet guardians. If there were more than that, he would begin to take them out. The hornet queen then panicked while the number of Combat Hornetdemons reduced drastically every minute as they were slaughtered by Bai and the rest of the imperial monsters. The people seemed to have gotten used to the rapidly increasing points on the leaderboard of the Stairway Tree. Lin Xie''s points increased by about 300 million every minute and the growth in his points lasted for an hour. The total points which he had accumulated exceeded 20 billion. What could 20 billion points buy? The price of a god relic or a god item would start from 10 billion points in the Stairway Mall. Lin Xie''s current points were sufficient to exchange for two basic god items or god relics! The slaughter continued on the 56th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. Hundreds of hornet guardians that attacked Lin Huang were killed. The hornet queen then realized that she was being fooled by the human. Among the 300 hornet guardians, a third of them had died. Initially, there were 50 million Combat Hornetdemons, but about 30 million of them were killed. The hornet queen then knew that it would lose the fight. The Life Power of her opponent''s imperial monsters was inexhaustible. They could unleash their powerful skills with ease. Moreover, the difference in the combat strength between them was too huge. They were unable to break through the defense as their opponent was extremely strong. If it persisted, 50 million Combat Hornetdemons would eventually be killed. Although she was annoyed, the hornet queen soon managed to calm down. A peculiar buzz from the hornet queen could be heard. Soon after, there was a sudden change in the formation of the Combat Hornetdemons. Millions of Combat Hornetdemons got into a defensive position and many of the Combat Hornetdemons began to move backward, heading towards the hornet queen. "They''re about to retreat!" Bloody, who was monitoring the situation of the battle all the while, immediately noticed that something was off. It knew what the hornet queen''s intention was. "Do you want to retreat? It''s not that easy!" Lin Huang glowered. "Bloody, parasitize them!" After receiving Lin Huang''s instruction, millions of Leech Pods were cast on the Combat Hornetdemons'' bodies. The Combat Hornetdemons that were parasitized began to attack their companions all of a sudden. In an instant, the army of Combat Hornetdemons was in chaos. Just as the hornet queen wondered what was happening, one of the Leech Pods had secretly parasitized her body. She could immediately sense it and the Leech Pod was quickly destroyed. "Eh?!" Bloody was shocked when it failed to parasitize the hornet queen. Soon, it noticed that the hornet queen could probably be a pseudo-mythical-level monster. It transformed into a purple glow and secretly appeared on top of the hornet queen. Before she could respond, a tentacle was extended towards her head. The hornet queen struggled for a while. Soon, a purple glow flashed through her eyes. She saw Bloody but did not launch an attack. Opening her mouth wide, a buzz could be heard again. A massive amount of bugs soon flipped out and began to bite their companions. 20 million Combat Hornetdemons were all exterminated in less than 10 minutes. The efficiency of Bloody''s parasitizing could be compared to the fight by the rest of the imperial monsters that took half an hour. Again, Lin Huang witnessed how terrifying the Leech Pods were. After the battle, only the hornet queen that was being parasitized by Bloody remained alive. All the hornet guardians had died and none of them managed to survive the battle. None of the living beings could leave the Stairway Tree. "Do you want to let the hornet queen gather more Combat Hornetdemons?" Bloody did not kill the hornet queen because it wanted to ask Lin Huang whether if he still wanted to collect points. Just as Lin Huang nodded his head in agreement to earn more, the Emperor''s Heart Ring that he was wearing suddenly vibrated and he received a pop-up notification. "Congratulations, Lin Xie, you''ve passed checkpoint 56!" Lin Huang frowned. The Stairway Tree could not take it any longer and allowed him to complete that checkpoint. That being said, he could no longer get any rewards if he were to stay at checkpoint 56. Of course, Bloody saw the notification. It then laughed. "It seems like that''s just too much." "We''ve just collected about 30 billion points." Lin Huang pouted. "It''s okay. There are checkpoints with monsters later on," Bloody assured. Not far away from them, the hornet queen''s head exploded. The headless corpse soon collapsed into bits and disappeared. Since nobody could take a living puppet away from this place, there was no need to keep it alive. Lin Huang was upset because he did not receive any notification that he had obtained a complete set of monster cards. "It''s too bad that I can''t get a complete set of monster cards from the hornet queen." If he happened to obtain a complete set of monster cards, Lin Huang might have trained it. Since the hornet queen was a pseudo-mythical-level monster, she could form an army of Combat Hornetdemons. It took them more than an hour to butcher 50 million Combat Hornetdemons. The three new God Figurine''s Combat Souls in Lin Huang''s body were nurtured by a large amount of spiritual energy and all of them upgraded to white gold-rank. Lin Huang decided to insert the remaining spiritual energy into the Ninetails Lynx''s body. However, it was not sufficient for the Ninetails Lynx to advance to purple gold-rank. Lin Huang''s points on the Stairway tree leaderboard finally stopped increasing. 937 I Feel Like Kicking Him Out! Lin Huang did not expect to be expelled from checkpoint 56 by the Stairway Tree. However, as he thought about it carefully, there was nothing strange about it. The Stairway Tree became out of balance due to his existence. Other than the demigods, none of them could fight 50 million immortal-level rank-9 monsters, not even a purple gold-rank would be able to do so. The combat strength of the members of the Genius Union was restricted to immortal-level rank-9. As for immortal-level rank-9s, even a supreme genius like Chan Dou could only fight a yellow gold-rank at his best. Having Lin Huang in the Genius Union was like the existence of a programming error. If it were not because of his combat strength only being on immortal-level rank-7, he would have long been expelled from the Genius Union. Since he could no longer earn any rewards on checkpoint 56, Lin Huang did not stay there any longer. Recalling Bai and the rest, he then summoned the Herculean King and continued to climb. What he did not know was that he stirred issues up again as soon as his Stairway Tree points stopped increasing. On the leaderboard, Lin Xie who ranked first had accumulated more than 35 billion points. "Take a look at Lin Xie''s points. They''ve stopped increasing!" "The points have stopped increasing. Did the system just lock it because he cheated?" Just as the majority of them thought that Lin Huang''s points had been locked, the points that he had accumulated changed. However, only the last four digits changed. That then put a stop to these rumors. The change in points was because the Herculean King had encountered a lonely Combat Hornetdemon as it climbed up and gave it a hard smack. After a short while, people noticed that the checkpoint where Lin Huang was at had changed. "Lin Xie has gotten to checkpoint 57!" After less than five minutes, again, there was a change in the checkpoint where he was. "He''s on checkpoint 58 now!" Many of them were amazed. "He managed to break through checkpoint 57 in less than five minutes!" He now encountered the Devil Swamp on checkpoint 57 of the Stairway Tree. Most people had to be extra careful when they reached this checkpoint. Since creatures from the outside were not allowed to fly when they were on the Stairway Tree, they would sink if they happened to step into the swamp. The swamp had a very strong magnetic force and could engulf humans. Moreover, most of the plants in the swamp had offensive abilities and would attempt to attack the humans who tried to get through that checkpoint. Normally, in order to get through this checkpoint, one would have to carefully look for a landing point and be cautious of each step they took. However, Lin Huang aggressively summoned the Herculean King straight away. An ice road was built in the middle of the swamp. Under normal circumstances, if humans attempted to pave the road this way, it would be destroyed by the plants around. However, the Herculean King was on crimson gold-rank. The ice it made caused the plants surrounding it to freeze-up. Right until the Herculean King and Lin Huang had left checkpoint 57, the plants on both sides had not thawed. In fact, even if these plants did not freeze up, it would be difficult for them to destroy the ice road that had been paved by Herculean King. Checkpoint 58 was also a checkpoint with monsters. The Mutated Serpent occupied this checkpoint. More than half a year ago, when Lin Huang was in the Secret Forest, he had encountered this monster. The Mutated Serpent was a very special type of serpentine monster which would undergo a genetic mutation once in its early phase of life. This mutation caused each of them to be very different from the rest of the Mutated Serpents. Some of them were huge, some could secrete toxin, some were extremely fast, and there were even those that had control over elemental forces. Even twins would be completely different after the mutation. As for ordinary humans, they would have a headache if they encountered monsters like these because before the Mutated Serpent launched any attack, they would have no idea what abilities it would possess at all. However, Lin Huang did not mind whether he knew what their abilities were or not since he was capable of defeating them. When he got to the 58th checkpoint, Lin Huang summoned Bai and the rest of the imperial monsters again. Then, he instructed them to hunt separately. The reason why he entered the Stairway Tree this round was not to obtain points. His main purpose was to obtain spiritual energy because one could rarely find a place with a dense monster distribution in the real world. Due to limited resources, most of the monsters on holy fire-level and above would not live in groups. Apart from the monster horde from which Lin Huang could obtain spiritual energy, he could hardly find anywhere else he could gather spiritual energy in such a convenient way. Therefore, even though he was kicked out of checkpoint 56, he still decided to hunt for monsters as soon as he reached checkpoint 58. He did not mind being kicked out again after this wave of the monster horde as the Stairway Tree had no way of overriding the spiritual energy which he had obtained. Bai and the 13 other imperial monsters left, guided by Bloody. They then began to look for the lair of the Mutated Serpent. The living habits of the Mutated Serpent on the 58th checkpoint were somewhat similar to that of the Combat Hornetdemons on checkpoint 56. Tens of thousands of Mutated Serpents formed a group, digging a huge serpents'' den underground. They lived and multiplied together. There might be about 20,000 Mutated Serpents in the smaller den while there could be about 200,000 of them living together in the larger den. The capacity of the underground serpents'' den was much larger than that of the Combat Hornetdemons''. Following Bloody''s instructions, Bai and the rest sneaked into the serpents'' den and wiped them out. On the leaderboard, Lin Xie''s points began to rise again. Seeing Lin Xie''s points increasing again, the members of the Genius Union who were online had gotten used to it by now. "Do whatever makes you happy since we''re just the audience." That was what ran across most of their minds. While Lin Huang continued obtaining points on checkpoint 58, the Genius Union finally responded to the reports that were made. A message was instantly sent to everybody''s communication devices. "Since many of you have raised your objections to the rise in Lin Xie''s points and have reported him for cheating, the union has repeatedly looked into this matter. From the final results of the investigation, it turns out that Lin Xie did not cheat. Lin Xie managed to obtain a massive amount of points because he killed all the monsters in a proper way. The data of the points are valid and they aren''t false data. "Other than that, many members have suspected that there could''ve been a system glitch. The system has been both self and externally inspected. The final inspection results show that there''s nothing wrong with the system of the Stairway Tree. Please take note of the above." As soon as the message was received, the Genius Union members began to kick a fuss about it. "F*ck! He isn''t cheating even though he has collected hundreds of millions of points in a minute?! How strong can Lin Xie be?!" "Lin Xie isn''t cheating and there aren''t any system glitches. The conclusion is that Lin Xie is cool!" "Is Lin Xie the son of the Genius Union?" "He might be an investor of the Genius Union." If there were human emotions in the Genius Union system, their inner voice might have been saying, "Lin Xie''s playing by the rules. What can I do? I''m in despair! He has almost ruined the system!! Damn it, I feel like kicking him out!" 938 The Stairway Trees New Rules The Mutated Serpents were densely distributed in the underground serpents'' den. It made it much easier for Bai and the rest to perform the slaughter. Their efficiency was much higher than when they were trying to clear the hornets'' nest. Despite the fact that it could not be compared to their efficiency during the arrival of the army of Combat Hornetdemons, Lin Huang managed to earn about 50 million Stairway Tree points every minute. If they were to go further up to checkpoint 58, the next checkpoint with monsters would be checkpoint 61. However, considering that there were not that many Luna Beasts on checkpoint 61, Lin Huang did not choose to pass checkpoint 58 and go further up. Instead, he decided to stay on this checkpoint and continue hunting for monsters. It lasted for more than seven hours until the sky turned dark. The system did not force Lin Huang to leave either. Bai and the rest had killed more than 40 million Mutated Serpents in the last seven hours. The total Stairway Tree points Lin Huang had gained had increased by more than 25 billion. However, despite a large amount of spiritual energy being inserted into the Ninetails Lynx''s God Figurine, still, it did not manage to level-up to purple gold-rank. "According to its progress, it seems like if I were to upgrade a God Figurine from white gold-rank to purple gold-rank by absorbing spiritual energy alone, it''s going to take up to hundreds of millions of points." Lin Huang knew that the spiritual energy required by God Figurine would increase later on. However, he was surprised by the consumption of a purple gold-rank. "That being said, there are nine Combat Souls and I''ll need to kill at least 900 million high-level immortal-level monsters. However, that''s only an upgrade from a white gold-rank to a purple gold-rank. The consumption by one rank up" Right while Lin Huang was secretly calculating this, Bloody''s voice was suddenly heard. "The sky is turning dark soon. Shall we go offline? Or shall we deal with the next wave of monsters?" "Let''s stay for the next wave of monsters." Lin Huang raised his head, gazing at the sky. In fact, dusk was falling and it would probably turn completely dark in less than half an hour. "Let''s make it through the night. We go further up tomorrow and there''s no need to stay on the 61st checkpoint. The Luna Beasts aren''t densely distributed there and it''s going to waste a lot of our effort. Let''s go straight up to checkpoint 63. We can then go offline and rest." "Alright!" Bloody did not mind at all since its combat strength was already on imperial-level. There would not be much effect on it even if they were not going to sleep for months. It had asked so because Lin Huang would sleep every day and rarely stayed up all night. The main reason why Lin Huang did not like to stay up all night was that he had gotten used to pulling all-nighters when he was on Earth. However, it would be fine for Lin Huang to stay awake for one night. If an ordinary person did not sleep for the whole night, one would only feel tired the next day. An immortal-level might probably feel tired after not sleeping for a month, but they would definitely feel nothing after staying awake for the entire night for a day. After 6 p.m., the sky gradually turned dark. The members of the Genius Union had either gone offline or returned to their stopping point on the Stairway Tree. However, Lin Huang stayed on checkpoint 58. Seeing the images Bloody projected, the monster horde was about to begin. He had recalled all the monster cards and quickly returned to the starting point of checkpoint 58. He then summoned all the imperial monsters that were adept at killing in a group, patiently waiting for the arrival of the monster horde. At about 6.30 p.m., it was pitch black. That was when the monster horde appeared! On the 58th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, all the Mutated Serpents that were hiding underground during the daytime swarmed out, heading towards checkpoint 55. After several moments, the first wave of Mutated Serpents bumped into Lin Huang. Because Lin Huang the rest were blocking their way, they triggered the Mutated Serpents'' rage. They could clearly sense human aura which they really despised. Sensing the existence of Lin Huang, the Mutated Serpents went berserk and pounced towards him. However, before they could approach him, they fell into a variety of traps set by Ghastly. Although the imperial monsters had yet to launch an attack, all the Mutated Serpents were trapped and died on the spot. The Mutated Serpents had no fear at all. Instead, they became more aggressive and dove for them. The effect of Ghastly''s trap was quite impressive. Since there were a limited number of traps, they were all used up very soon. Bai and the rest finally launched an attack and began their slaughter. The abilities of the Mutated Serpents on checkpoint 58 were not as strong as that of the Combat Hornetdemons that occupied checkpoint 56. The only difference was that they possessed a wide variety of skills. When they encountered Bai and the rest that were on crimson gold-rank, it was a one-sided fight. The arrival of the monster horde led to a sudden rise in Lin Huang''s points. His performance had reached its peak as if he was on checkpoint 56 again. His points increased by about 300 million every minute. "I wonder how long the system of the Stairway Tree will allow me to earn points. According to the speed of Bai and the rest, if I''m allowed to hunt until the next morning, I''ll obtain about 200 billion Stairway Tree points. Moreover, at least three or four of my God Figurines will elevate to purple gold-rank." Just as Lin Huang did his calculations, he could vaguely feel that things would not go so smoothly. He knew that he had already disrupted the balance of the system. If the Genius Union allowed him to collect 200 billion points a day, perhaps he would be able to earn sufficient points to buy all the gold relics and god items at the Stairway Mall very soon. Lin Huang could confirm that the Stairway Tree system would do something to restrict him. However, before a restriction rule was triggered, he would surely earn as many points as he could! With this thought in mind, Lin Huang continued to hunt for monsters gleefully. He did not know that other than the Heaven Alliance, the Divine Alliance, and hundreds of other organizations had requested to restrict the points Lin Xie could earn. According to them, even though Lin Xie did not cheat, the number of points which he had earned had caused the Stairway Tree system to tip out of balance. If Lin Xie was allowed to collect hundreds of billions of points a day, it simply meant that he could own everything available at the Stairway Mall. It was unfair to the rest of the members! A few of Lin Xie''s "criminal evidence" had been provided in the joint request, stating that it would lead to serious consequences. Chan Dou who was from the Heaven Alliance would, of course, receive the message as well. He made another request on behalf of the Heaven Alliance. However, he knew that it would not help much because Lin Xie did really cause the Stairway Tree system to go out of balance. Even if the people from the Divine Alliance did not bring this issue up, the Stairway Tree system would still put a limit on Lin Xie. It was just a matter of time. Lin Huang was allowed to accumulate points freely for about five hours and by then, his Stairway Tree points had increased by more than 110 billion. The number of Mutated Serpents and Luna Beasts Bai and the rest had killed during the monster horde had exceeded 200 million monsters. Lin Huang managed to collect a large amount of spiritual energy and he could finally upgrade the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth from white gold-rank to purple gold-rank. However, at midnight sharp, an announcement suddenly popped up on Lin Huang''s communication device. "Announcement: two new rules have been added to the Stairway Tree system. "One, the maximum number of points allowed to be collected on each checkpoint is limited to 100 billion. Once the number of points accumulated on each checkpoint has reached its limit, the member will be able to get through the checkpoint. The member won''t receive any further rewards on that checkpoint. "Two, each member is only allowed to collect a maximum of 10 billion points a day. Regardless of which checkpoint on the Stairway Tree and what methods have been used to collect the Stairway Tree points, each member is only allowed to collect 10 billion points at the most. Once the member has collected more than 10 billion points, the member will not be rewarded any longer on that particular checkpoint on the Stairway Tree." Lin Huang immediately checked the points he had collected as soon as he saw the two new rules being implemented. He was afraid that out of all the points he earned that day, he would only be rewarded 10 billion. Soon, he was relieved when he saw that there were no changes in the points he had accumulated. Apparently, the points which he had obtained before the new rules were introduced would not be impacted. Although it was within his expectations, Lin Huang was still depressed. "Why are they being so mean? Only 10 billion points are allowed in a day? I can only play for half an hour!" 939 Arriving at the 63rd Checkpoin As soon as the new Stairway Tree''s rules were imposed, everybody at the Genius Union was excited. They all knew that this rule was made because of Lin Xie. Other than Lin Xie, nobody could possibly collect 10 billion points in a day in the Genius Union. Perhaps only Lin Xie could earn 100 billion points on one checkpoint. Although there seemed to be only two new rules, he was actually highly restricted. Not each of the checkpoints would have monsters. Going up 10 checkpoints further from checkpoint 58, only checkpoints 61, 63, and 67 had monsters there. That being said, including checkpoint 58, if Lin Huang were to earn points by killing monsters, he could only gather 400 billion points at the most. In addition to only earning 10 billion points a day, that indicated that it would take him 40 days to gather 400 billion points. If he were not being restricted, he would only need two nights to gather 400 billion points. When the new rules were announced, the Divine Alliance and the rest of the organizations that had submitted the request were exhilarated. Regardless of how cool you were, we can still restrict you with the rules! Don''t expect to get the benefits that we can''t! Other than the Divine Alliance and the rest of the organizations, the majority of the members from the Genius Union were enjoying the show. Lin Xie was never close to me, so why should I help him? He had gained so many points. If that continued, it would seem like the Genius Union actually belonged to him. Since the two rules were restricting something that no one could ever achieve, they all thought that they should just watch the show. Only the Heaven Alliance members and a small number of people felt sorry for Lin Huang. "Lin Xie must be upset since he''s suddenly being restricted." Chan Dou smiled, shaking his head helplessly. If the Genius Union came up with two rules just to restrict him, he would definitely feel annoyed about it. After a moment of hesitation, Chan Dou sent a message to Lin Huang. "Are you okay?" Soon, Lin Huang replied, "I''m okay. I''ll go offline later and go to bed." On checkpoint 56, Lin Huang frowned after going through the two new rules. He did not deem them as a restriction. Instead, he said with a smile, "They changed the rules just because of me which means that I''m pretty cool." Lin Huang could still vaguely remember when he was on Earth, China''s table tennis players were extremely formidable. They would emerge as champions every time they participated in an international competition. As a result, the international competition revised their rules again and again because of them. "Should we log out of the system?" Bloody asked when it saw the announcement. "Let''s stay on for another half an hour. We can collect 10 billion points today," Lin Huang declared with a smile. It took them another half an hour to earn 10 billion points. As soon as he confirmed that Bai and the rest would not be rewarded even if they continued to hunt for monsters, Lin Huang then exited the Genius Union. At the hotel, Lin Huang was sitting on the sofa, checking his rewards. Five out of seven God Figurines were on white gold-rank while the other two had advanced to purple gold-rank. The Stairway Tree points he owned had exceeded 190 billion. He had reaped huge rewards. "I wasn''t allowed to stay up all night," Lin Huang sighed, shaking his head. "With the new rules that have just been implemented, it''s not worth going straight up to checkpoint 63," Bloody reminded, "We have a chance to obtain 100 billion points on checkpoints 58 and 61. Once we manage to pass through that checkpoint, we''re giving up our chance to collect points on the two checkpoints. "However, if we don''t, we have to stay at the two checkpoints for 20 days. There''s no need to waste our time there." Lin Huang shook his head. "I won''t remain on immortal-level for too long. The points that we''re going to miss out on the two checkpoints can be earned back later on. We must first arrive on checkpoint 63 before the Royal Trials begins. We have to hunt for the Queen Mother''s monster card!" Lin Huang was rushing to checkpoint 63 because on that checkpoint itself, there was a monster that looked somewhat like a mythical-level Queen Mother which was from the Bug Tribe. The Queen Mother had a dozen bug guardians that were proven to be on pseudo-mythical-level. All of the 13 monsters were monster cards that Lin Huang wanted to own. Especially the Queen Mother that was much stronger than the Hornet Queen on checkpoint 56, Lin Huang was determined to hunt for her. "With the new rules, we can only collect 100 billion points on each checkpoint. We must kill as few monsters as possible on checkpoint 63 and go right after the Queen Mother and the bug guardians. The lesser points we obtain, the higher the chances we can hunt for the Queen Mother," Bloody reminded. "Let Ghastly use its illusion skill to control part of it and the rest shall be controlled by your parasites. Try to reduce the number of monster deaths." Lin Huang put a plan together. "Leave immediately after killing the Queen Mother and her bug guardians." Most people would want to collect as many points as possible. It was ironic that Lin Huang was afraid of overkilling and exceeding the maximum number of points allowed. After chatting with Bloody for a while, Lin Huang then went to the bathroom and washed up. When he returned to his bedroom, he lay on the bed and read the news for a while before falling asleep. The next morning, Lin Huang returned to his room again after breakfast and tapped open the Genius Union webpage. After midnight, he had collected 10 billion Stairway Tree points. If he were to log in now, regardless of how many monsters were killed, he would not be rewarded. Still, Lin Huang logged into the system. When he logged into the Genius Union again, Lin Huang was on checkpoint 58 of the Stairway Tree. He was still where he had been when he exited the Genius Union yesterday. The monster horde had cleared out after last night''s killing spree. The Mutated Serpents on checkpoint 58 had returned to their underground serpents'' den as well, so all was peaceful. Lin Huang then summoned the Herculean King and headed toward checkpoint 59. Half an hour later, the Herculean King made it through from checkpoints 58 to 61 along with Lin Huang. "Aren''t we going to stay here for a day?" Bloody asked. "No. There are only 10 billion points here. We''ll be able to earn them later." Lin Huang shook his head. He then patted the Herculean King''s neck, instructing him to go further up. After spending another 20 minutes, the Herculean King finally arrived at checkpoint 63 with Lin Huang. Checkpoint 63 was the highest checkpoint that all the Genius Union members could ever achieve. Even Chan Dou was stuck on this checkpoint and was unable to go further up. It was also a checkpoint with monsters. However, compared to the abilities of the monsters on checkpoints 58 and 61, they were a few levels higher. All the monsters were no long on high-level immortal-level. Instead, they were all on immortal-level rank-9. In addition to that, about a tenth of them were triple mutated immortal-level rank-9 monsters. The most troublesome part was that there was a Queen Mother that seemed to be on mythical-level and 12 incredibly strong pseudo-mythical-level bug guardians. The 12 bug guardians could be compared to Lancelot and the Regal Sword Killer that were on the same rank. Despite the fact that one bug guardian alone would not threaten Chan Dou, if he were besieged by three to four of them, he would barely escape from them. As for Lin Huang, the reason why he stayed on checkpoint 63 was to obtain the monster cards of the Queen Mother and her bug guardians. 940 Meeting Chan Dou Again Since there were not many changes on the Stairway Tree leaderboard and few people were online in the Genius Union, nobody noticed Lin Huang breaking through to checkpoint 63. He noticed that Chan Dou was online when he arrived on checkpoint 63. Lin Huang recalled the Herculean King and headed straight to the Heaven Alliance foothold. Just when he got into the range of the Heaven Alliance foothold, Chan Dou welcomed him, dressed in a white suit. After taking a good look at Lin Huang, Chan Dou said in surprise, "Your combat strength" "I''m already on immortal-level rank-7 now." Lin Huang nodded. There was nothing to hide since those Heaven Alliance members would find out sooner or later. "The elevation rate of your combat strength is terrifying!" Chan Dou had found out from Tan Lang that Lin Huang was only on immortal-level rank-3 when they came out of the Fallen God Land before the New Year. It had only been less than three months since they got out of the Fallen God Land and he had already elevated four ranks so quickly! Though surprised, Chan Dou knew it was Lin Huang''s private matter, so he did not ask further. The duo chatted while walking towards the office. "How do you know I''m here?" Lin Huang asked. "My communication device notified me when you logged in. I realized you were breaking through the checkpoints rapidly. You spent less than an hour getting to checkpoint 63." Chan Dou flashed a thumbs up. Lin Huang had just recalled that he added Chan Dou as a friend on his communication device whereby there would be notification whenever a friend came online. He only had Chan Dou as his friend in Genius Union, he had countable friends overall including Yi Yeyu. Since he was often offline, he seemed to have never heard the notification tone and almost forgotten about it. "Since you''re already on checkpoint 63, it means you''re eligible to run as the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance. I''ll find time to gather everyone within these few days to officially recommend you as our deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance. I''ll let you know once I''ve fixed the time, but you must be present by then." Chan Dou brought up the notion of nominating Lin Huang as deputy chief again. Lin Huang had already promised him earlier, so he did not bother rejecting him this time. All he did was remind Chan Dou, "I won''t stay too long on immortal-level. I''ll definitely elevate to imperial-level within this year." Chan Dou nodded a little helplessly wearing a smile. "I could see that. It''s my mistake. I thought you were still far away from elevating to imperial-level, but it''s alright. Just help us whenever you''re still the deputy chief." "Are you really ready for your elevation?" Lin Huang could not help but ask when both of them arrived at the entrance of the office. "So what if I''m not ready? The situation''s more powerful than I as a person." Chan Dou forced a smile and shook his head. He pushed the office door open. "The Union Government''s rules are set. Those below imperial-level aren''t eligible to obtain the methods." Lin Huang walked into the office too. After taking the cup of tea Chan Dou handed him, he sat on the couch and fell into silence for a while with his head held down. He put the tea down and lifted his head to look at Chan Dou. "What if I have my ways to get you the methods?" Initially, Lin Huang was unwilling to involve Chan Dou in this because his identity might be exposed as soon as the ancient methods spread out. Although Chan Dou would not sell him out, the Union Government would find out about him if they put enough effort in. However, he thought about it and realized that Chan Dou had been taking care of him all this while. He had a kind personality too. It would be unfortunate if he ruined his future just for the ancient methods. Moreover, Mr. Fu did not say that the Union Government prohibited him from spreading the methods around. Even if the Union Government were to find out about Lin Huang and his identity, they would not look for him about that matter. Most importantly, two of Lin Huang''s God Figurines'' Combat Souls had elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank and had the ability to fight demigods. He had sufficient power to take on any powerhouse''s challenge now. Chan Dou, who sat across the couch, was first stunned by what Lin Huang said, but subsequently shook his head immediately. "Stop fooling around. Even if you manage to get it, the risks are just too high. The Union Government isn''t any other organization, you''ll be doomed on the entire continent as soon as you offended them." "I''m not stealing intelligence from them. I don''t think they would come for me just for that," Lin Huang said with a smile, "I''ll ask you again. Do you want it?" Chan Dou had a complicated expression on his face and he finally nodded after some struggle. "Yes! I owe you one." "These methods can''t be transferred through data, so I can only give you the method via jade slip in person. Are you getting someone to pick it up from me in Division 3 or do you want me to send it to you?" Lin Huang asked. "I''ve been tied up here recently. Otherwise, I would''ve taken it from you myself." Chan Dou thought about it. "I think Tan Lang''s in Division 3 these few days. Give it to him. I''ll get him to bring it back." Although Tan Lang had ''graduated'' from the Genius Union, they had been good friends for years and knew each there even before joining the Genius Union. Chan Dou had no concern getting him to help. "Sure, I''ll arrange the time to meet him." Lin Huang nodded. He had Tan Lang''s contact number. "If your family asks about the methods" "Don''t worry about it. I''ll insist that I obtained them from the black market without deliberately looking for them. I won''t involve you in it." Chan Dou already had an explanation prepared. In reality, even if the Chan Clan did not believe that explanation, they would not investigate further into it. The possibility of them helping Chan Dou to keep the secret was even higher. "Don''t rush into elevating to imperial-level. Break through after you''ve done all the preparations." Lin Huang did not want to see Chan Dou ruin himself, which was the reason why he wanted to give him the methods. "I know." Chan Dou grinned while nodding. He then took a long look at Lin Huang. "To be honest, I can no longer tell how powerful your ability is." "It''s just immortal-level rank-7. That''s two ranks lower than you," Lin Huang said humbly. "Hey, I can''t obtain 100 billion points on the Stairway Tree." Chan Dou waved and grinned immediately. "Unfortunately, I can''t do that now." Lin Huang was rather annoyed as he thought about that. "What plans do you have now? Are you going up further?" Chan Dou asked. "No, I''ll stay on checkpoint 63 for now." Lin Huang shook his head and looked at Chan Dou while raising his brow. "Are you so sure that I can break through checkpoint 63?" "I think you can." Chan Dou picked up the tea and sipped it slowly. "I heard the bug guardians and the Queen Mother are very powerful. Have you fought them before?" "I''ve no idea about the Queen Mother. I''ve never seen her fight, but the bug guardians are indeed formidable. Their abilities alone are much more powerful than triple mutated monsters. They might be quadruple mutated. Their abilities are on par with mine if three of them fought together. I''d have to run away if four of them attacked me at once," Chan Dou shared his battle experience. "Is that so?" Lin Huang was a little disappointed not to have learned anything about the Queen Mother''s ability. "I think you could take three of them down at once. Try it." Chan Dou attempted to persuade Lin Huang while smirking. "Not today. I''ve reached my limit before dawn." Lin Huang shook his head while returning the smile. "I''ve almost forgotten that you didn''t obtain any points all the way from checkpoint 58 to checkpoint 63." Chan Dou just recalled that Lin Huang''s points remained the same since he had logged in earlier. Just when Lin Huang and Chan Dou were chatting happily in the Heaven Alliance office, someone finally noticed that Lin Xie had made it to checkpoint 63 on the Stairway Tree leaderboard. "Lin Xie has arrived on checkpoint 63!" Soon, the news spread in the Genius Union. Many powerhouses who stayed on checkpoint 63 stopped treating Lin Huang as a junior ever since they heard the news. They began treating Lin Xie as being on the same level as they were. 941 Bug Tribe After speaking with Chan Dou for a while, Lin Huang did not stay in the Genius Union and logged out right away. He spent a day practicing his sword skills in the hotel and only logged in again the next morning after breakfast. The levels between checkpoints 63 to 72 on the Stairway Tree were filled with monsters with immortal-level rank-9 combat strength. The level of difficulty was different from the monster levels before checkpoint 63. The strategy that people left behind was very simple: rush through without holding back. However, bug guardians would appear as soon as one passed through half of checkpoint 63. According to the strategy, as soon as one passed through the 12 bug guardians defense individually, they would not encounter any bug guardians later on. The probability of the Queen Mother appearing was then extremely low. Someone asked if they could form a team. The rest of the teammates could pass through as long as a few people stopped the bug guardians. In reality, that would not work. The level of difficulty on the Stairway Tree would progress according to the number of players that entered. If one person entered, he would encounter 12 bug guardians at the most. If two people formed a team, they would encounter 24 bug guardians at the most. A three-man team would encounter 36 bug guardians, and so on and so forth. Moreover, these bug guardians would not attack based on personal reasons. Everyone would be assigned the same number of bug guardians to fight with. If someone in the team died, the number of bug guardians would not change. Instead, they would be allocated to the remaining team members. Some even speculated that the number of Queen Mothers on this level would be affected by the number of players who entered. Naturally, nobody verified that because everyone stopped trying since they realized the level of difficulty would increase when they entered in teams. Bloody began releasing Leech Pods as soon as Lin Huang stepped into checkpoint 63 to look for the bug guardians and the Queen Mother''s coordinates. Lin Huang sat at the starting point, waiting for Bloody''s search results patiently. A monster appeared in his field of vision not long after he sat down. It was a monster with many legs similar to a centipede with a body of at least ten meters long. Its upper body was raised two to three meters high while eight of its front legs looked like they were equipped with black spiked bayonets that were half a meter long. A layer of black shell extended from its head all the way to its tail and there was a black scythe on the end of its tail. From the looks of it, it was a monster that lived to fight. Before the monster attacked, Bloody was done casting parasites with his Leech Pods and commanded the monster to leave. "There''s a Bug Tribe here?!" The stone tablet''s voice came into Lin Huang''s ears all of a sudden. "What''s so odd about that? Weren''t those Combat Hornetdemons on checkpoint 56 earlier a Bug Tribe too?" Lin Huang did not find that peculiar. "No, the Bug Tribe that you know is different from the one I''m talking about," explained the stone tablet, "The Bug Tribe that I''m talking about is a galactic race. In this world, the Bug Tribe''s overall abilities are no less than a Protoss. "The Combat Hornetdemons that you encountered on checkpoint 56 earlier were just a tiny branch of the Bug Tribe even hundreds of thousands of years ago. Furthermore, from the long course of evolution, the Combat Hornetdemons could basically be removed from the Bug Tribe branch. "The real Bug Tribe''s a race that''s gravely predatory and destructive. In this world, anywhere the Bug Tribe passes by will turn into barren land. They swallow other beings and planets'' resources to strengthen their race continuously. They would do anything for the sake of expanding and for the longevity of their race. "Just like most living things such as humans having a stable gene sequence, a tribe''s overall evolution depends mainly on reproduction to produce a variety in generations. They also use knowledge for the inheritance of civilization which is a long cycle. "However, the Bug Tribe''s different from most beings when it comes to this. They have an extremely unstable gene sequence which causes mutation easily. Not only that, it''s a controllable mutation. Perhaps the genetic mutation of a Bug Tribe will create an evolution that''s on par with human evolution throughout hundreds of years after a battle has ended. Such a mutation makes them grow stronger continuously as well as gives them a formidable adaptive ability to the environment. They can survive in extreme environments that most beings can''t. "The Bug Tribe has gone through billions of years of evolution. They''re just as powerful as the formidable Protoss in this world now. They''ve evolved to perfection individually. Almost every tissue and every part of the Bug Tribe fighters'' bodies were made to fight. They never need any external tools. To them, their body is the best weapon. "Each Bug Tribe fighter has a powerful combat ability, defense and battle will. They have no pain receptors, so they can maintain extremely high battle power even if their bodies are severely injured. They''re fearless to fight anyone and they won''t stop until they''re dead." Lin Huang found the stone tablet''s explanation unbelievable. He thought that the Protoss was already powerful enough, so he did not expect the Bug Tribe to be just as mighty. Lin Huang was even more interested in the Queen Mother now after listening to it. "Since the Bug Tribe''s so powerful like you said, wouldn''t it mean that the Queen Mother''s even more powerful?" "There are many varieties in the Bug Tribe. This one on the Stairway Tree is only one of them. It''s called the Queen Mother species," clarified the stone tablet further. "If the Queen Mother evolves to its ultimate form, naturally, it''ll be extraordinarily powerful. It can even mass produce true god-level Bug Tribe fighters. However, this one on the Stairway Tree''s clearly a baby. It''s even been weakened a few times. "Under normal circumstance, even a baby Queen Mother will be on true god-level. The Bug Servants that it produces would have a combat strength of at least virtual god-level and there would be at least hundreds of them. However, this one on the Stairway Tree isn''t even on imperial-level. The combat strength of the bug guardians didn''t only drop to immortal-level rank-9, but their grade also dropped and there are only 12 of them." The stone tablet was clearly looking down on the weakened Queen Mother on the Stairway Tree. "That''s already not bad. I could train it slowly if I really get the Monster Card." Lin Huang was getting excited about the prospect of his battle loot. "If it''s not weakened, I''ll have to avoid it if I encounter it." "I''m in no place to comment about how powerful Xiao Hei actually is, but there''s something that I must remind you." The stone tablet seemed to feel negative about this plan. "The Bug Tribe isn''t easily controlled." "The Bug Tribe master isn''t an individual but is the will of the bug horde. It''s an extremely compelling conglomeration of will. It essentially connected to each Bug Tribe member''s brain and consciousness. "The Queen Mother is the node creature of the will of the bug horde, just like branches that are derived from a tree trunk. Under normal circumstances, it should be able to sense if the Queen Mother were to be controlled by another being. "Of course, the Queen Mother has a powerful control ability as a node creature. The children that she gave birth to would take her orders no matter what, no questions asked. Hence, if you manage to control a Queen Mother, it would mean that you have yourself a Bug Tribe army. In a nutshell, risk and opportunity coexist in this situation." "How powerful is that will of the bug horde that you mentioned?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "It''s the top existence in the world whereby the level of life is far above the True Gods. It''s much more powerful than my master who, by the way, is dead." It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing the stone tablet acknowledge someone as being more powerful than his ex-master. "I''m not sure if the will of the bug horde will sense you changing the Monster Card. However, I''ll be able to sense it immediately if there''s anything unusual that happens during the change of Monster Cards. Just destroy the card if necessary," Xiao Hei voiced its opinion. "Sure, let''s do that then!" Although there were risks, Lin Huang was unwilling to give up on making the Queen Mother his target. 942 May I Know What Kind of Service Do You Need? "Found it!" After close to an hour of searching, Bloody finally found where the Queen Mother was. It then marked the coordinates on the map. Lin Huang enlarged the map but all he could see was a flatland. "The Queen Mother and the 12 bug guardians'' coordinates are underground. It''s a complicated maze hive down there. There are a total of eight entrances and exits. Apart from the Queen Mother and her bug guardians, there are at least over three million Bug Tribe monsters in the hive," Bloody explained immediately. "Is the exit far from where the Queen Mother is?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s some distance away. The nearest one is over 20 kilometers away and the farthest is over 100 kilometers away." "Eight entrances and exits" Lin Huang frowned a little. He was worried that the Queen Mother would escape in the chaos when it found out that something was off. "Actually, no matter how many entrances there are, they won''t be able to run because we''re fast enough. We can get to them before they can even respond." Bloody knew Lin Huang was considering guarding the entrances, so it gave him the solution right away. "You''re right." Lin Huang nodded. After summoning the Herculean King, Lin Huang headed straight to the entrance that Bloody pointed at. They encountered many Bug Tribes along the way. Bloody cast parasites on the monsters while Bloody controlled them to leave Lin Huang alone. Around ten minutes later, the Herculean King finally brought Lin Huang to the entrance of the hive. The entrance was the closest one to the Queen Mother and her bug guardians among the eight entrances. It looked like a naturally formed cave with an irregular shape. However, the narrowest entrance was over three meters and the widest was more than five meters wide. Lin Huang recalled the Herculean King and summoned Grimace. He talked Grimace through the mission via voice transmission. Seeing Grimace''s ignorant behavior, Lin Huang thought he would use material wealth to motivate him instead. "If you perform well this time, I''ll get you a demigod-level telekinetic weapon relic." "Deal!" Grimace had a change of expression immediately. Grinning, he was extremely friendly as he offered, "Boss, may I know what kind of service you need?" ''Damn, the change of expression could win Grimace an Oscar!'' Lin Huang could not get used to Grimace''s sudden change of attitude. ''Indeed, if you have money, you can make the devil push the millstone for you. People in the past were right about this.'' "Do you remember what I said?" Lin Huang asked while raising his brow. "I do. Bring the Bug Tribe monsters out using illusion and minimize casualties as much as I can." Although the minimization of casualties sounded odd to him, Grimace did not ask about it any further. He was not interested in the mission to begin with; he only agreed to it for the demigod-level telekinetic weapon relic. He would just follow Lin Huang''s orders. After he was done speaking to Grimace, Lin Huang spoke to Bloody, "Bloody, assist Grimace in his mission. Try not to create conflict with the monsters in the hive." "Understood." Bloody nodded in agreement. It had actually discussed this plan with Lin Huang yesterday. Since the delegation was done, the human and the two monsters began moving immediately. Grimace opened a path before Lin Huang. An illusion forcefield was formed automatically around Grimace''s body, cloaking both Lin Huang and himself. The inside of the cave was dark and damp, and there was a stench lingering in the air. Lin Huang went further into the cave, following Grimace. The long cave entrance was winding and it gave him a feeling that they were walking down a slope towards the underground. The deeper they went, the worse the stench became. The stench smelled like rotten eggs during the summer, disgusting Lin Huang. After passing through a long path, they arrived thousands of meters below the ground. Grimace finally brought Lin Huang into a vast underground space which looked like an underground cave that was formed naturally. It was massive. In his field of vision, Lin Huang saw tens of Bug Tribe fighters in deep sleep. Grimace walked towards them nonchalantly while Lin Huang followed him immediately. The Bug Tribe fighters did not seem to notice the duo as they continued sleeping. When they walked closer to one of the bug''s heads, it twitched its nose and looked at Lin Huang. Just when Lin Huang was ready to pull his sword to kill, it turned around and returned to its slumber. "My illusion shields the outsiders'' sense of us. These bugs can''t see us, hear us, or smell us. That single bug just now must have a sensitive sense. It could felt the unusualness faintly but didn''t find out about us. There''s nothing to worry about. "My illusion might be limited if we encounter monsters with a combat strength above imperial-level crimson gold rank, but it''s impossible for these low intelligence immortal-level bugs to see through my illusion. It''s impossible for them to sense us as long as we don''t activate any energy," Grimace explained through voice transmission upon noticing Lin Huang looking at the bug with his guard up. Nodding lightly, Lin Huang did not doubt Grimace''s ability at all. After all, Grimace could walk around immortal-level rank-9 monsters with the help of illusion when he was on immortal-level rank-9. Then, he managed to play a fool on the monsters on the same level, what more now that he was already on imperial-level crimson gold-rank. The bug''s response earlier just made him panicked a little. He was relieved after confirming Grimace''s illusory effect while following him deeper into the cave. The wet ground began to turn sticky. Mugginess stuck on the sole of his shoes with every step he took. They would see piles of yellow or green semi-transparent goo on the ground occasionally. You guessed it right. Those were a discharge of the Bug Tribe. "It''s hard to imagine a tribe that has their shit all around is a tribe that''s as powerful as a Protoss," Lin Huang could not help but comment. "To be exact, these aren''t actually shit, or rather, they''re not complete shit." The stone tablet could not help but reveal, "The secretion produces a massive amount of microorganisms that make the environment around more liveable for the Bug Tribe. In addition to that, the microorganisms will dissolve rapidly so there''s no need to get rid of them. The few piles that you saw earlier should have been discharged today. "Also, the stench you smelled doesn''t come from the Bug Tribe''s secretion. It is the stench produced during the fermentation of the microorganisms." Lin Huang was speechless by the stone tablet''s pretty useless information. He still thought that gooey stuff was disgusting. To avoid vomiting, he put up a shield to block out his ability to smell directly. "Go to the one on the second left when you come to the six forks in front." At that moment, Bloody''s voice piped up all of a sudden. "You''ll reach your destination after going approximately five kilometers on the path. The Queen Mother and her bug guardians have yet to notice anything unusual, so we should be able to get them without them realizing!" 943 Congratulations, You’ve Obtained Bug Tribe Queen Mother Card Pieces x2 Grimace headed all the way, following the route Bloody had given him while Lin Huang followed a few meters behind him. One must say that Grimace''s illusory forcefield was useful. Lin Huang was not attacked even once all the way to their destination. Some bugs sensed the unusualness a couple of times, but they proceeded to sleep since they saw nothing after looking around. Lin Huang had finally seen how the Queen Mother looked like from a distance when they arrived in the area of their destination. He revealed a shock expression. The Queen Mother looked like a human child of five or six years old. She wore no clothes as her naked body curled up and hovered in the air. Her eyes were shut tightly and she seemed to be in a deep sleep. The only difference from a human was her tailbone. There was a long, white tail that extended out with a white webbing that was connected to the end of her tail. The webbing looked like it was made of countless gigantic spider webs. It was a solid structure made of various angles and it took up half of the cave. There were white cocoons of all sizes around the web. Lin Huang glanced over to notice tens of thousands of them. Just when he was observing the Queen Mother quietly, in her little girl-form, she opened her eyes out of the blue. Her black pupils rolled slightly until they landed two kilometers away from Lin Huang. ''Are we busted?!'' Lin Huang was horrified. At the moment, Grimace stopped walking. Seriously, he spoke to Lin Huang and Bloody through voice transmission, "That fella''s something else! She could see through my illusion. Plus, there''s a powerful spiritual energy that''s meddling with my illusory forcefield. She must be the one behind it." "The closer, the better. If the illusory forcefield is broken, Bloody will take care of the rest," Lin Huang ordered Grimace. Then, he spoke to Bloody through voice transmission, "Start casting the parasites." Grimace nodded and brought Lin Huang forward. Seeing that Lin Huang and Grimace were not retreating, black rays lit up in the Queen Mother''s eyes all of a sudden. Grimace scoffed and grabbed Lin Huang''s arm to dash forward. When they were almost 100 meters away from the Queen Mother, Grimace spat a mouthful of blood out suddenly and fell. "I can''t go on with the illusory forcefield" Before he even had the time to check on Grimace, Lin Huang noticed the 12 bug guardians around the Queen Mother lift their heads out of nowhere and glare at his direction. Lin Huang responded immediately without even thinking. He recalled Grimace while crushing seven Monster Cards that he had been hiding in his sleeve with the other hand. He also crushed a Lucky Card and a Double Reward Card. Lancelot, Killer, the Evil Dominator, the two knights, and the two Dark Crescent Snakes appeared before Lin Huang out of thin air. "Kill the 12 bug guardians and that Queen Mother. Let Bloody take care of the rest." The seven imperial monsters attacked without hesitation as soon as Lin Huang ordered them. Lancelot summoned the 18 sword servants directly while he went after two bug guardians on his own. His servants formed a sword formation and went after another two bug guardians. The Evil Dominator changed his appearance into Killer and went after two bug guardians with his sword. The two knights merged with the Dark Crescent Snakes. Their combat strength skyrocketed to imperial-level white gold-rank right away as they went after three bug guardians. Killer was left with the Queen Mother. He sensed the Queen Mother''s threat. Although she looked like a child and her combat strength was only on immortal-level rank-9, he dared not be careless at all. He showed his trump card as he dashed, not holding back at all. Seeing Killer coming at her, a layer of black fluid began spinning on the Queen Mother''s body, forming a black armor. She held a black whip in her hand. Surprisingly, the Queen Mother attacked before Killer even got to her. She swung the whip in her hand, and the lash created shadows in the air. Countless spiritual serpents came out from the end of the whip, blocking Killer''s way completely. Killer lifted his sword and swung it over and over again. It collided with the whip shadows in the air. The result of the collision was out of Lin Huang''s expectations. A tie?! The two-level difference in combat strength did not give Killer any upper hand at all. Clearly, although pseudo-mythical-level was only a step away from mythical-level, the difference in ability was huge. After multiple collisions, Killer, who was on imperial-level crimson gold-rank, did not get anything out of the immortal-level rank-9 Queen Mother. On the other side, Lancelot and the rest were close to the end of the battle. Since Lancelot and the Evil Dominator were on pseudo-mythical-level, the two-level difference made it easy for them to kill the bug guardians. Although the two knights were not on pseudo-mythical-level, their combat strength was on imperial-level white gold-rank after merging. Their ability was just as impressive as Lancelot and the Evil Dominator''s. Meanwhile, the sword formation of the 18 sword servants had an overall ability that was on par with Lancelot. Killing two bug guardians was a piece of cake for them. The first to finish the battle with the bug guardians was Lancelot. He took less than a minute to kill both of them. He glanced through everyone on the battlefield and joined Killer in the mission to destroy the Queen Mother without any hesitation. The Queen Mother''s stress levels doubled when Lancelot joined the battle. Initially, she was fighting Killer who had a similar overall ability with her and now another powerful opponent of the same level had advanced. The Queen Mother looked around. Apart from her remaining six bug guardians that were still fighting, she was surprised to find that the other bug fighters were just watching aside and ignored the battle she was involved in completely! Under Bloody''s parasitization, apart from the Queen Mother and the 12 bug guardians, the other bugs were actually under Bloody''s control. The Queen Mother soon noticed the weird situation. She glanced at Lancelot and Killer that she was fighting with and eventually her eyes stopped on Lin Huang. After some observation, she ended up staring at Lin Huang''s left hand. Bloody, who was in a cloud form, attached itself on Lin Huang''s left arm at the moment while controlling the battle. Nobody knew how the Queen Mother figured out that it was Bloody who was the culprit. She flicked the whip hard to make Killer and Lancelot retreat. As she staggered hundreds of meters back, she lifted her head suddenly and released an ear-piercing chirp. It sounded like a high-frequency buzz which was so high that it was almost beyond one''s audible limit. Bloody spat a mouthful of blood out all of a sudden as soon as the sound blared. The bugs that it was controlling with its Leech Pods began to go out of control. "She took out all of my Leech Pods!" Bloody gasped to Lin Huang through voice transmission immediately. Lin Huang frowned upon noticing that the bugs around were regaining their consciousness. He knew they would be drowned in the bug horde if he dragged it on further, so he then summoned the Ninetails Lynx instantly. The white little cat sat on Lin Huang''s shoulder, locking on its target as it glanced through the scene. It vanished in the next second. "You''ve obtained Bug Tribe Queen Mother''s Card Pieces (Mythical-level) x2! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a complete Bug Servant Card (Pseudo-Mythical-level) x14" In the next second, Xiao Hei''s notification rang in Lin Huang''s ears. When the Ninetails Lynx returned to Lin Huang''s shoulder, the Queen Mother was not the only one that turned into card pieces but so did the few remaining bug guardians. 944 It’s My Fault but I’m Not Owning Up! After killing the Bug Tribe''s Queen Mother, Lin Huang almost drowned in the bug horde that went chaotic. He depended on the Ninetails Lynx''s dimensional portal to escape the underground hive. He logged out of the Genius Union as soon as he left the hive. As he sat on the couch in the living room of the hotel room, he began to summarize the battle. ''I underestimated the Queen Mother''s ability. I didn''t expect it to not only break through Grimace''s illusion, but it even removed Bloody''s parasites. I was caught off guard. If I didn''t manage to summon the God Figurine''s Combat Soul in time, I''m afraid I wouldn''t have been able to kill it today.'' ''The Queen Mother''s combat power was out of my expectations as well. It didn''t die when both Lancelot and Killer attacked it. I shouldn''t be careless no matter what kind of enemy I encounter.'' After coming up with the conclusion, Lin Huang looked at the reward he had obtained this time. There was no complete Queen Mother card even though the Lucky Card was activated. However, he had more of the bug guardians'' complete cards. Among the dozen bug guardians that were killed, seven of them had turned into complete cards. With the Double Reward Card, Lin Huang obtained 14 pseudo-mythical-level bug guardian cards. One must know that a pseudo-mythical-level monster''s individual ability was just as powerful as Lancelot and Killer who were on the same level. Moreover, now that they had turned into Monster Cards, their combat strength was affected by Lin Huang whereby they were now on imperial-level crimson gold-rank. They were so much more powerful than they were on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree now. Lin Huang tapped on the bug guardian''s cards accordingly to look at the details. "Monster Card: Unnamed "Rarity: Pseudo-Mythical-level "Monster Name: Queen Mother''s Bug Servant (Saber Warrior) "Type of Monster: Saber Bug / Bug Tribe "Combat Level: Imperial-level Crimson Gold-rank "Major: Saber "Major Skills: Bug Saber, Saber Dao''s Gene Extraction "Minor Skills: Bug Steps "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Passable." "Monster Card: Unnamed "Rarity: Pseudo-Mythical-level "Monster Name: Queen Mother''s Bug Servant (Firearms Warrior) "Type of Monster: Firearms Bug / Bug Tribe "Combat Level: Imperial-level Crimson Gold-rank "Major: Firearms "Major Skills: Biogun, Ultimate Fire "Minor Skills: Bug Steps "Summon Authority: Activated "Card Remarks: Passable." ''Although I didn''t get any complete Queen Mother cards, 14 pseudo-mythical-level bug guardians aren''t bad either.'' Lin Huang put away all the 14 Monster Cards after looking through the card details. The reason he did not summon them was that he recalled the stench in the hive earlier. If the bug guardians that he summoned emitted the same stench, the other hotel guests on the entire floor would surely complain about him. He proceeded to practice sword as soon as he put away the cards. The monsters on the Stairway Tree would refresh daily, so he would have to wait until tomorrow to begin the second round of killing. The sword skill that Lin Huang was practicing now was called the Buddha Killer. It was a pseudo-mythical-level sword skill that he had obtained from the Fallen God Land. He had been practicing it for a couple of days on and off. All in all, he had put in more than 20 hours. Even with the guidance of the Sword Spirit in his body, learning a pseudo-mythical-level sword skill was much slower than learning a legendary-level sword skill. This was because not only were the sword skill card pieces lesser every time he practiced, but he also required many more card pieces for a pseudo-mythical-level sword skill. Usually, a legendary-level skill would need at least 10,000 skill card pieces while the better ones would need more than 30,000 card pieces. Meanwhile, pseudo-mythical-level skills basically required more than 300,000 card pieces. That was the reason why he had only learned two new pseudo-mythical-level sword skills at the moment after learning thousands of legendary-level sword skills. This was the third one that he was acquiring. However, he had already accumulated over 200,000 Buddha Killer skill card pieces. He was confident that he could complete the cultivation of the third pseudo-mythical-level sword skill that day and turned it into a complete Skill Card. Lin Huang practiced from nine something in the morning until past four in the afternoon. He was so immersed in practicing his sword skills, totally forgetting to check the accumulation of the card pieces. When it was almost 4.20 p.m., a notification came from Xiao Hei out of the blue. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained pseudo-mythical-level sword skill Buddha Killer card pieces x 300,000. Would you like to merge them into a complete Skill Card?" "Yes!" Lin Huang answered without delay. After a moment of silence, Xiao Hei''s second notification soon came. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a complete Sword Skill Card Buddha Killer (pseudo-mythical-level) x1" Lin Huang looked at the time after he was done cultivating the third pseudo-mythical-level sword skill. Noticing that it was not the time for dinner yet, he began looking at the fourth pseudo-mythical-level sword skill in his memory. Early the next morning, Lin Huang logged into the Genius Union right after he had breakfast. As soon as he got to the Stairway Tree, Bloody began looking for the Queen Mother and bug guardians'' coordinates that had been refreshed. Meanwhile, Lin Huang looked at the Genius Union internal news. A headline soon grabbed his attention. The title of the article was ''Why Did The Monster Horde Break During the Day on The Stairway Tree?'' Lin Huang clicked on the article which said that bugs rushed out of their hives all of a sudden yesterday morning and attacked the human foothold on checkpoint 63. Many of the members were killed by the bug horde that came out of nowhere and fell back to checkpoint 1 on the Stairway Tree. After their deaths, some of them lost half of their points that they had been accumulating for years. "The bug horde broke out at 9 a.m. yesterday. It was almost the same time I killed the Queen Mother and logged out." Lin Huang roughly figured out the reason for the bug horde during the day. It should have been caused by him killing the Queen Mother. The death of the Queen Mother caused the bug fighters to lose their minds and falling into chaos. Without the Queen Mother''s control, their destructive nature was revealed. Hence, they attacked the human foothold, causing a series of devastating events. However, the author of the article had no idea about that. Instead, he came up with an analysis from his personal view and listed some possibilities. Unfortunately, he did not hit the point; it was far from the truth. The author would not expect the culprit of the incident to be the death of the Queen Mother because even Chan Dou, the top powerhouse, did not possess the ability to kill the Queen Mother. The non-disputed opinion became the author''s blind spot, causing him to fail to get an accurate answer. "Seems like it''s really my fault," Lin Huang teased himself while grinning. He had no plan to own up to his mistake although it was him who caused it. "Since nobody knows about it, let''s make it a secret." 945 I Didn’t Know Everyone Love Fighting Monster Hordes With the previous killing experience, Lin Huang''s second kill was very successful. Bloody found the newly refreshed coordinates for the Queen Mother and bug guardians on the Stairway Tree. Lin Huang used the old way of getting Grimace to open a path with his illusory forcefield. However, the difference this time was that he crushed a Lucky Card and a Double Reward Card when they arrived two to three kilometers away from the Queen Mother without her even noticing Grimace. He then summoned the Ninetails Lynx directly. The imperial-level purple gold-rank Ninetails Lynx had an ability that was nothing less than a demigod''s. It suppressed everyone as soon as it appeared. With its suppression, Bloody did not even need to control with its Leech Pods. All of the bugs within a radius of 100 kilometers, including the Queen Mother, could not move at all. Upon witnessing that, Grimace, who was standing before Lin Huang, could not help but have envy flash through his eyes. The Ninetails Lynx stepped forward silently and disappeared all of a sudden. Almost at the same time, Lin Huang saw the Bug Tribe Queen Mother and the 12 bug guardians being sliced into pieces. Before he managed to blink, he noticed that the Ninetails Lynx had returned to his shoulder without him even realizing. It licked its paws with its little pink tongue. Until then, the Bug Tribe Queen Mother and the 12 bug guardians'' sliced bodies began to turn into pieces and faded a few kilometers away. Xiao Hei''s notification came into Lin Huang''s ears. "You''ve obtained Bug Tribe Queen Mother (Mythical-level) Card Pieces x2! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Bug Servant (Pseudo-mythical-level) complete card x12 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Bug Tribe Incubator(Mythical-level) x2" Noticing the bugs becoming chaotic since they lost the Queen Mother, Lin Huang pressed down his urge to look at the Bug Tribe incubator card. He recalled Grimace and Bloody, then said to the Ninetails Lynx, "Bring me back!" The Ninetails Lynx tapped on Lin Huang''s shoulder, and the human and the cat vanished from the hive in the next second. Without the suppression of the Ninetails Lynx''s aura, the bugs that lost their Queen Mother fell into a complete frenzy and rushed out of the hive''s exits in madness. Lin Huang, who had logged out of the Genius Union, sat in the living room of the hotel room and took out the two Bug Tribe incubator cards. "What the hell are these two cards?" Doubtfully, Lin Huang began studying the cards. There was a three-dimensional spider web with white cocoons hanging on it on the front of the both of the cards. He recalled the similar web that connected the two Queen Mother''s tails when he saw that. "So, this isn''t a part of the Queen Mother''s body" Initially, Lin Huang thought that the web was part of the Queen Mother''s body. Now, it seemed like this item called an incubator existed in the name of the Queen Mother. Lin Huang turned the card around and began to read the details. "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Bug Tribe Incubator "Incubation Direction: Cold weapon "Starting Level: Imperial-level Crimson Gold-rank (affected by the owner''s combat strength) "Insertable Data: Various cold weapon battle data "Starting Skill: Cold Weapon''s Gene Extraction, Bug Steps "Application Authorization: Passive. "Card Remarks: Pretty good special item. "Remarks: Only for the use of the Bug Tribe Queen Mother" "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Bug Tribe Incubator "Incubation Direction: Hot weapon "Starting Level: Imperial-level Crimson Gold-rank (affected by the owner''s combat strength) "Insertable Data: Various weapon battle data "Starting Skill: Hold Weapon''s Gene Extraction, Bug Steps "Application Authorization: Passive "Card Remarks: Pretty good special item. "Remarks: Only for the use of the Bug Tribe Queen Mother" "Only the Bug Tribe Queen Mother can use these? So, I can''t activate these two cards before I get the complete Queen Mother card" Lin Huang was speechless after he finished looking at the card details. However, he roughly knew what the function of the two cards was. Those were indispensable special items to make a Bug Tribe army. He was determined to hatch Bug Tribe Queen Mothers with this. Lin Huang only glanced through the 12 Bug Servant cards quickly and put them aside. Together with the 14 that he had obtained earlier, he had 26 pseudo-mythical-level Bug Servant cards now. Looking at the current progress, he would be able to build a pseudo-mythical-level bug guardian army soon. However, the Bug Tribe Queen Mother''s complete card seemed far-fetched at the moment. Lin Huang put the cards away and pushed his messy thoughts aside. He took out the wooden sword and began practicing his sword skills again. On the checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree, a bug horde broke out again since Lin Huang had killed the Bug Tribe Queen Mother and her bug guardians. Without the Queen Mother''s control, the hundreds of millions of Bug Tribe fighters streamed out of the underground hive like water. They headed down the branches below on checkpoint 63. In less than an hour, Bug Tribe fighters of various forms took over half of the human foothold. The people did not panic as they did before since they had experienced the same thing yesterday. They soon formed a defense, blocking the bug horde. One must say that those who made it to checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree were the best of the best in the Genius Union. They had compelling personal ability whereby they basically had the ability to fight fairly with imperial-level black gold-rank powerhouses. Compared to other checkpoints, the powerhouses on this checkpoint had high self-esteem. Most people on any checkpoint below this would choose to avoid involving themselves if they encountered a monster horde. Only a minority of them who were desperate for points would stay at night to fight the monster horde. However, the people on checkpoint 63 were cultivated by major organizations as candidates with the potential to get to the core circle. They did not lack any resources, hence, they were not desperate for points on the Stairway Tree and did things based on personal interest. To most people on checkpoint 63, a monster horde during the day was something interesting. One must know that they had never encountered a monster horde during the day since the climb from checkpoints 1 to 63. It was only natural for them to join the fun since this happened out of nowhere. Many of them who were offline logged in immediately to fight the monster horde after hearing the news of the monster horde breaking out during the day. Meanwhile, those powerhouses who were caught off guard on the first day of monster horde were in agony. Some of them were killed by the monster horde right away since they were unprepared. They could not even last for a minute and ended up being the laughing stock of their organization. They were eager to return and show their real ability off in the monster horde. Lin Huang heard the news from the Heaven Alliance group chat. They were discussing the monster horde on checkpoint 63 enthusiastically. Some of the Heaven Alliance members were pumped up after hearing the news and logged in just to join the monster horde. They even sent live videos to the group chat. The expression on Lin Huang''s face was weird after he read the messages in the group chat. "I didn''t know that everyone loved fighting monster hordes during the day. Very well then, I''ll kill the Queen Mother every day for all of your sadistic killing pleasure." 946 16 Queen Mothers Checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree was crowded today. There were usually very few people on this checkpoint. There were usually less than 80 people online during the day. However, due to the monster horde, there were more than 400 people online during the day this time. The quiet checkpoint 63 where one normally would not bump into anyone else had become extremely crowded now. Many major organizations formed teams to fight the bug horde eagerly. Some of the minor organizations on checkpoint 63 with few members formed teams too. As they fought the bug horde, the power of hundreds of powerhouses skyrocketed together on the Stairway Tree leaderboard. The absurd change on Stairway Tree leaderboard grabbed the attention of all members on different checkpoints. Knowing that a breakout of a monster horde on checkpoint 63 was rare, most of them were dumbstruck to see the skyrocketing points of the hundreds of people. "What are these people doing? Why are their points skyrocketing during the day?" "Were they triggered by Lin Xie?" "Wait, their points are skyrocketing during the day. Did these people discover Lin Xie''s secret to obtaining points?!" "I want Lin Xie''s secret to obtaining points too!!" After some hot discussion in the forum, somebody finally revealed the truth. "There''s a bug horde on checkpoint 63 during the day. All of the big bosses on checkpoint 63, fighting the bug horde together." Another hot discussion broke out after the truth was revealed. "They''re worthy of being called big bosses! They''re even fighting a monster horde during the day." "Why do I have the odd feeling of being envious of such reckless behavior?" "I, too, am envious of them. I don''t usually feel like participating in fighting monster hordes at night. Could it be that the timing of the monster hordes breaking out has gone off?" "Is this the Stairway Tree''s new activity? I want to join too!" "I want to join this new activity too. Please promote this!" The bug horde on checkpoint 63 lasted until the sky was almost dark. It was finally gone. The last defense on checkpoint 63 remained standing in the end. However, a new round of monster horde came after less than ten minutes. This time, besides the bug horde, the monsters from checkpoints 67 and 71 joined too. The overall scale of the monster horde was twice as large as the one during the day. "Again!? Is there something wrong with the Stairway Tree?" "There are 24 hours a day and there''ve been 22 hours of monster hordes now. How are we supposed to go on?" "Could it be the Stairway Tree system urging us to break through checkpoint 63 as soon as possible?" Many of the members on checkpoint 63 were exhausted after fighting the bug horde during the day. However, figuring that it might be the trick the Stairway Tree system was playing, most of them chose to stay fighting the monster horde. Even some of them who went offline logged in again. The majestic monster army charged once again. Many powerhouses on checkpoint 63 bit the bullet and fought the monster horde head-on. Naturally, Lin Huang had no idea that he had caused such a thing. He went to sleep directly after washing up as he was done practicing his sword skills until past 11 at night. He did not follow what was happening in the Genius Union. If the Genius Union system had human emotions, it would definitely be complaining right now. The fight on checkpoint 63 went on until 6 in the morning the next day. It was disastrous. Among the 388 participants, only 31 people made it to the end. The rest were sent back to checkpoint 1 of the Stairway Tree. Some of them climbed up again after they died and fell back to checkpoint 1. Some did not only make it back but even joined the monster horde fight again. Among the 31 survivors, less than ten of them survived along the way while the rest clambered their way back from checkpoint 1. The monster horde was finally gone as they watched the sun rising in the distance. The bunch of powerhouses were either sitting or lying on the ground, no longer caring about their image. "It''s finally over!" "I know. I''m exhausted!" "Damn it! I died in the monster horde. This is my first time dying on the Stairway Tree ever since joining the Genius Union." "Well, I''ve died twice and I''m not complaining." "I''ve never experienced such a tiring battle in my life. I have a sudden realization that it''s good to be alive." "Should we find out the reason why there''s a bug horde during the day in checkpoint 63 since there''s no monster horde now?" Someone suggested all of a sudden. Everyone went silent upon hearing the suggestion. A moment later, the chief of the Hong Alliance, Zhu Hong, broke the silence. "I think it''s a great suggestion. There''s definitely a reason why the bug horde broke out. We''ll have to log out in our current condition if another bug horde happens again two hours later. I think we should take a look since there''s no bug horde now." "I agree with Sister Hong''s suggestion. Instead of waiting for things to happen, we should take the initiative to tackle it." The chief of the Tang Alliance, Zhang Xiaoshan, nodded to show his agreement. "We have approximately two hours to look around since there''s no bug horde now." "Of course, I''m not forcing everyone to participate in the investigation. After all, we''ve been fighting for over 20 hours, so everyone must be exhausted now." Zhu Hong knew some of them were unwilling to participate. "Those who are joining, please raise your hand." Zhu Hong was the first to raise her hand while Zhang Xiaoshan was the second without thinking much. Some raised their hands later on. They were all members of the Hong Alliance and the Tang Alliance. The chief of the Heaven Alliance, Chan Dou, had been offline. The deputy chief Jian Fei hesitated for a moment and raised his hand in the end. "I''m in, too!" The other three from the Heaven Alliance raised their hands immediately upon seeing that. Divine Alliance''s chief Zhong Liyan smiled and said while shaking his head, "I''m lazy to join, I''m too tired. I''ll head home to sleep." Since the four from Heaven Alliance raised their hands, the chiefs from two minor organization raised their hands too. Just like that, Zhu Hong and the rest gathered 15 people into a group forcefully and headed towards the Stairway Tree''s main branch on checkpoint 63. Around an hour and a half later, Lin Huang logged onto Genius Union after he had breakfast. He summoned Bloody to get the new Queen Mother''s coordinates again while he looked at the internal news on Genius Union''s website. A headline title got his attention again. ''The Big Bosses on Checkpoint 63 Are Crying!'' Lin Huang was not sure to laugh or cry when he clicked in and read the article. What happened was that the bug horde broke out together with a monster horde, causing the monster horde yesterday lasted for 22 hours. Most of the people on checkpoint 63 who thought it was an activity created by the system were fighting forcefully for the entire day. The situation was horrible whereby only 31 people left among the over 400 who participated. "Do they have to do that?" Bloody suddenly spoke as Lin Huang was done reading the news. "I found a human team of 15 people. Because of them, the number of Queen Mother had a boost. I did a rough search earlier and already found a few. Including you, I''m speculating there should be 16 Queen Mothers on the Stairway Tree this time" "What?" Lin Huang could not help but stunned for a bit hearing the news, "Is that possible?!" 947 16 Consecutive Kills "16 people would mean 16 Queen Mothers, so 100 people would mean 100 Queen Mothers" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard Bloody''s investigation results, but soon he fell into deep thought. "I wonder why did they come into the monster stage. If they come in as a team every day, I''ll be able to kill many Queen Mothers and bug guardians, but how do I make them come in everyday?" "It''s easy. Find something that''s irresistible to them and lure them in by putting it somewhere unreachable." Bloody could not help but gave Lin Huang a suggestion in response to his soft mutter. "In that case, they''ll try to get that item every day." "Something that''s irresistible A god relic should be a great choice." Lin Huang soon had a plan in his head after hearing Bloody''s suggestion. "An unreachable place The most unreachable place on checkpoint 63 should be where the Queen Mother is, deep in the hive." After coming up with the two most important points, Lin Huang figured how to implement this plan to bait right away. Not long later, Bloody had located the coordinates of all the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers. As expected, there were a total of 16 Queen Mothers. Lin Huang headed toward the first target immediately as soon as they located the closest hive. When they arrived at the entrance of the hive, he used his old way again. He got Grimace to open a path with his illusory forcefield to get deep in the hive''s central zone. They stopped when they were two to three kilometers away from the Queen Mother and her bug guardians. This time, Lin Huang did not summon the Ninetails Lynx right away. He summoned the Nightmare Tapir instead, telling it what he wanted through voice transmission. The Nightmare Tapir nodded and hovered mid-air, emitting a squeal with its head up like the sonar roar of a whale. A circle of invisible sound wave spread out like water and soon covered the entire hive. With the Nightmare Tapir''s imperial-level white gold-rank combat strength, he could even make imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters fell into a deep sleep with one roar, let alone these immortal-level rank-9 Bug Tribe monsters. The Bug Tribe that was already sleepy fell into a deep sleep without any ability to fight back after hearing the Nightmare Tapir''s hypnotizing sound wave. Lin Huang smirked and took out a god relic sword from the storage space in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. It was a sword that was completely black. There was a faint, black mist lingering around it, giving people a terrifying feeling even from a distance. In reality, the sword was not cursed or anything. The swordsmith must have made that intentionally to give it a cool appearance. Lin Huang thought the sword was perfect as bait since many people on the Stairway Tree were talking about the monster horde incident during the day on checkpoint 63. With this item, it could coincidentally mislead the people, letting them connect the unusual turn of events on checkpoint 63 to the sword. Lin Huang appeared next to the Queen Mother that was in deep slumber as he moved. He pierced the god relic sword into the ground before the Queen Mother so that only half of the sword was showing. After setting it up, Lin Huang retreated almost three kilometers away and activated the video recording function in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He did not speak during the course of the video recording. All you could hear was his soft breathing. The video began with a glance through the situation inside the hive and panned where the Queen Mother and her bug guardians were. After the image was focused on the Queen Mother and the bug guardians, he zoomed in and focused on the black sword before the Queen Mother. The image of the black sword lasted for less than a second. Then, Lin Huang got the Nightmare Tapic to wake one of the bug guardians up from its sleep. It opened its eyes slowly and soon stared at Lin Huang''s direction. Lin Huang shook the video a little, then it became a black screen after that. The bug guardian that noticed Lin Huang just got a look of him before it felt an intense hit of drowsiness. It fell asleep again without even being able to fight back. After shooting the video, Lin Huang looked at the recording while standing where he was. He then walked to the Queen Mother and pulled out the black sword and put it away into his storage space after making sure the video was good to go. He retreated two to three kilometers away before he crushed a Lucky Card and a Double Reward Card. He then summoned the Ninetails Lynx. In the next second, the Bug Tribe Queen Mother and the 12 bug guardians turned into pieces and disappeared. Lin Huang heard Xiao Hei''s notification almost at the same time. After recalling the Nightmare Tapir, Lin Huang projected the map of checkpoint 63. He pointed at the coordinates Bloody had marked; it was the area where the second Queen Mother was. "Ninetails, bring us to the area directly. You don''t have to be accurate with the exact coordinates. Just bring us to the area." The Ninetails Lynx placed its claws on Lin Huang and Grimace''s shoulders. In the next second, including Bloody that was in Lin Huang''s sleeve, the human and the three monsters vanished from the hive. What he had no idea about was that the bugs that were in deep sleep in the hive slowly awoke after the Nightmare Tapir disappeared for close to half an hour. As the Ninetails Lynx brought them to the area near the second hive, Lin Huang found the entrance in less than two minutes. He went into the hive in the same way he always did. When they arrived in the area where the second Queen Mother was, he did not summon the Nightmare Tapir this time. Instead, he got the Ninetails Lynx to attack directly. Immediately, it completed the harvest. Lin Huang then told the Ninetails Lynx to send them to the area close to the hive where the third Queen Mother was. After spending almost two and a half hours, Lin Huang finally killed 16 Queen Mothers and 192 bug guardians. Apart from spending some time shooting the video in the first hive, he spent most of the time traveling from the entrance of the hive to the Queen Mother. Lin Huang completed the journey on foot due to the complicated hive structure and the Ninetails Lynx''s inability to teleport them to the exact coordinates since it had never been there. He was not terribly pleased after completing the 16 consecutive kills and signing out of the Genius Union because the 16 Queen Mother kills did not get him any complete Queen Mother Monster Card. "You''ve obtained Bug Tribe Queen Mother Card Pieces (Mythical-level) x32! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Bug Servant Complete Card (Pseudo-mythical-level) x384 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Bug Tribe Incubator (Mythical-level) x4 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Bug Tribe Genetic Optimizer (Mythical-level) x6 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Gene Extractor (Mythical-level) x2!" After glancing through the notification from Xiao Hei, Lin Huang took out the eight new cards and studied the details. "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Bug Tribe Genetic Optimizer "Function: Performing genetic optimization on Bug Tribe fighters using the most compatible genes in the gene database following the direction of the chosen genetic evolution. "Application Authorization: Passive "Card Remarks: Pretty good special item. "Remarks: Only for the use of the Bug Tribe Queen Mother" "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Gene Extractor "Function: As long as there''s sufficient flesh, it can be used to extract the respective genes as well as detaching the gene the user desires and put it into the genetic database. "Application Authorization: Passive "Card Remarks: Pretty good special item. "Remarks: Must be used in compliance with the genetic database." 948 A Thread That’s Straying Off Topic When Lin Huang killed the 16 Queen Mothers at once, he caused a mob of bugs from the 16 hives to break out on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree. A supermassive bug horde made up of more than five billion of bugs burst out. The bug horde was like a flood pouring down the branches of the Stairway Tree. The Zhu Hong team that was investigating the reason for the bug horde on the main branch of the Stairway Tree came in contact with the bug horde less than five minutes after it broke out. Under the chaotic attack of the bug horde, the 15 team members braced the onslaught painfully for more than three hours. In the end, all of their Life Power was worn out and they were soon dead. Less than five hours later, the other members on checkpoint 63 who were online were dead too. Apart from a minority of them who managed to hide in defense barriers, the rest of them were sent back to checkpoint 1. The entire checkpoint 63 had fallen. Even the defenses of all the organizations on the branches were attacked by the bug horde in a frenzy. The news of checkpoint 63 falling soon spread through the entire Genius Union. People called it Doomsday. On the front page of the Genius Union news was all about Doomsday. Everyone was talking about the same topic even in the forums. "Did you hear? Checkpoint 63 has completely fallen! They can''t even log in now." "Yeah, I heard the scale of the bug horde was super scary this time. There were billions of monsters, and it surpassed the normal monster horde at night by folds!" "I heard the team led by the chiefs of the Hong Alliance and the Tang Alliance has fallen too. Someone saw them on checkpoint 21." "That''s nothing. I heard that all the big bosses on checkpoint 63 are dead apart from those who didn''t log in and a minority of them who managed to hide behind the defense barrier in time. All of them fell back to checkpoint 1!" Lin Huang was speechless when he read the popular thread in the forum. He knew the monster horde would come after him for killing their Queen Mothers, but never had he thought that the number of Bug Tribe fighters would have multiplied as well. However, now that he thought about it, it made sense since there was an increase of hives. People who experienced the bug horde complained in the forum, saying that everyone had died on checkpoint 63. One even posted a video of the bug horde breaking through their defenses. In front of the defense barriers, Bug Tribe fighters crawled all over. Each and every one of them was attacking the defense under their feet insanely like they had lost their minds. Everyone was worried as they watched the video. To their relief, the defense remained intact at the end of the video. Lin Huang felt a little guilty after watching the video. "Will this bug horde traumatize the people?" However, his guilt only lasted less than a minute. He then revealed a smirk. "So many of them are talking about the reason for the bug horde breaking out. I shall seize this opportunity to tell them the ''truth''!" Lin Huang set his account to anonymous status and created a thread entitled ''The Truth of the Bug Horde Breaking Out on Checkpoint 63''. He then uploaded the video that he had recorded earlier. After submitting it, he waited for almost ten minutes until the thread went through a review. The thread grabbed the attention of many Genius Union members as soon as it appeared. Many of them clicked on it suspiciously because there was no description in the thread. There was only a video. Everyone then watched the video directly and were shocked after finishing it. The thread created a stir right away. "This has to be fake! The Bug Tribe Queen Mother is a little girl? Who''d buy that?!" "The Bug Tribe Queen Mother really does look like that. Although I''ve never seen the real thing, I saw the strategy for checkpoint 63 and there were photos. It''s almost the same as the one in the video." "The Queen Mother, her bug guardians, and the bug beasts are real. The details of the hive''s real too. This video''s legit. What I''m curious about is who took this video? The person went really deep into the hive." It was the chief of the Hong Alliance, Zhu Hong, who posted that. Zhu Hong used her personal account instead of going incognito. The forum went into a frenzy all of a sudden. "Pleased to meet the goddess!" "Sister Hong, please reply to me!" "Please let me ride on your fame, Almighty!" Another big boss replied to Zhu Hong''s comment, "Sister Hong, what do you think about this video?" The person who commented was the chief of the Tang Alliance, Zhang Xiaoshan, who had used his personal account to comment too. People were agitated again as soon as Zhang Xiaoshan appeared. No matter if it was Zhu Hong or Zhang Xiaoshan, both of them were the top bosses in the Genius Union. They were in the top five among the people at the same level. Zhu Hong replied when she saw that it was Zhang Xiaoshan who had asked the question, "It looks more like a prank, but we can''t rule out the possibility of it being authentic. What I want to know most is how did he go so deep into the hive?" "It''s actually easy for someone who has powerful spiritual energy. They can use an illusion to isolate themselves to do this," Zhang Xiaoshan replied. "Brilliant! I know roughly who posted this thread now that you say that." Many people asked who the person was as soon as Zhu Hong commented, but she did not reply. Zhang Xiaoshan also disappeared as soon as Zhu Hong was gone. However, people on checkpoint 63 soon began to analyze Zhu Hong''s comment. "Sister Hong should be talking about the Divine Alliance''s Zhong Liyan. Chief Zhong''s a psychic and he has extraordinary spiritual power. It''s possible that he''s mastered illusion skills too. Looking at it now, on the entire Stairway Tree, he''s the only person who could possibly shoot the video so close to the Queen Mother." The people in the thread soon began to talk about the Queen Mother after the analysis. "So, that''s what the Queen Mother looks like! It''s so cute." "I want to keep one!" "Here''s a question. If you brought the Queen Mother home and had sex with it, would the children the Queen Mother gave birth to be a human or a bug?" "There won''t be any children because you can always use precaution. Thank me later!" "I''ve reported inappropriate content." As Lin Huang read the comments, the thread was straying off topic. Only a minority of people talked about the god relic sword, and he felt helpless. "These people are just here for the fun. They don''t care about the reason for the bug horde breaking out at all." "It''s natural that they don''t care since it doesn''t concern them. They''ll definitely be desperate for answers if the bug horde spreads below checkpoint 63," Bloody grinned while explaining, "Most people on checkpoint 63 who saw this video should have opinions about the god relic sword. It''s just that they didn''t comment on what they think. Be patient. We should be able to see how many people exactly show interest in the god relic." 949 Obtaining the Bug Tribe Queen Mother Card! Lin Huang had no idea that although the thread he posted was straying off topic, the video he posted had stolen the attention of many organizations on checkpoint 63. Although Zhu Hong had said in the comment that it was surely a prank, she forwarded the video to the Hong Alliance group chat on checkpoint 63 to instruct them to form teams to investigate this as soon as she got off the thread. Zhang Xiaoshan also began to gather people as soon as he closed the forum page. Most of the other organizations began working too. A majority of the people on checkpoint 63 could tell that the video was real because many of the details could not be staged. Although they had no idea how the person who shot the video managed to go so deep into the hive, they had little doubt about the authenticity of the video. There were some organizations that hired professionals to conduct verification exercises. Naturally, the final consensus was that the video was authentic. No special effects were used in the video. To verify the video source, Zhu Hong even went out of her way to contact Zhong Liyan, asking if it was him who had recorded the video. Naturally, Zhong Liyan denied it. Some suggested that it might be Lin Xie because he was the only person on the Stairway Tree who could afford to get god relics with his points. However, after some investigation, they realized that all of the god relics were still there in the Stairway Mall. They then ruled out the suspicion on Lin Huang. Although nobody could find the video source, the authenticity was verified. This caused the people on checkpoint 63 to think that the bug horde was related to the god relic that had appeared out of nowhere. This also proved the existence of god relics in the hive. Many organizations began forming teams with the mission to obtain the god relic. Since nobody could log into checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree because it was invaded by the bug horde, Zhu Hong of the Hong Alliance held a video conference call right away. "Soldiers are valued by courage, not in numbers. This is the motto of our mission this time. Since it''s a stealth mission, we need people who have mastered stealth techniques, illusion skills, stealing techniques or those who are simply fast. Each team will have one person responsible for hiding, one for stealing the god relic and one more with detective techniques. Each team will have two to three people. Three is the maximum because the more people there are, the higher the risk of exposing ourselves." The Tang Alliance and the Divine Alliance carried out similar implementation whereby they formed a few teams that were skilled at carrying out stealth missions. Those who were great at battling and not suitable for stealth were excluded. Naturally, Lin Huang received the messages that the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance, Jian Fei, had sent in the group chat. It was definitive that he would not participate in such a mission. Eventually, the Heaven Alliance only managed to gather 11 people who formed four teams. "The Heaven Alliance is almost done with their preparation. The other organizations are also almost ready." Lin Huang was secretly elated. The Heaven Alliance alone had gathered 11 people, so there would be more than 16 people participating in the search tomorrow. At past six in the morning the next day, the monster horde on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree was nowhere to be seen. Lin Huang was still in bed while the organization members who were participating in the search had logged into the Genius Union and began the congregation. Apart from the major organizations including the Heaven Alliance and the Hong Alliance that managed to form four to five teams, a few other organizations gathered a couple of teams. Some of the minor organizations that had insufficient members came together and form a few teams themselves. Before it was even 6.30 a.m., one after another, the 36 teams climbed onto the main branch of the Stairway Tree from different starting points. Lin Huang only got out of bed when it was almost 7 a.m. After washing up, and washing his breakfast down with a cup of coffee, he logged onto the Genius Union leisurely when it was almost 7.30 a.m. Soon, Bloody was summoned and it found the teams sent from the various organizations. "There are a total of 36 teams participating in the search this time. There are 91 people." "Only 91? That''s lesser than I expected." Lin Huang raised his brow. "I thought there would be more than 100 people no matter what." "There are only two to three people in each team. It seems like they''re using our way of sneaking in, so they must''ve selected those who are great at stealth. It''s actually not bad for them to have gathered 91 people among less than 500 people." Bloody figured out what was Zhu Hong and the rest''s plans by looking at the allocation of the team members. "Moreover, the sky will turn dark in 11 hours. If we take our efficiency of ten minutes per hive yesterday as a baseline, the most we can clear today would be 66 hives. We must speed up to seven minutes and 15 seconds if we want to clear all 91 hives." "Understand. Then, let''s not chat unnecessarily as soon as we enter the hive. Just tell me which fork Grimace and I should head to directly." Lin Huang nodded. "Let''s begin with the first hive now. We don''t have to wait for the whole search to be done. My search won''t be affected in the hives." Bloody stopped speaking and projected the map for Lin Huang. It then pointed out the coordinates of the first hive. Lin Huang summoned the Ninetails Lynx and got it to send them to the coordinates immediately. When they arrived at the entrance of the hive, he crushed a Lucky Card and a Double Reward Card. He then summoned Grimace and told him the accelerated mission plan through voice transmission. Grimace nodded and grabbed Lin Huang''s wrist. "Turn second left at the first fork." Grimace had disappeared from where he was while grabbing Lin Huang as soon as Bloody was done speaking. They entered the first fork in less than two seconds. "Turn first right at the second fork." "Turn third left at the third fork." "Then, at the fourth fork" In less than two minutes, Grimace brought Lin Huang to where the first Queen Mother was. The Ninetails Lynx killed her right away and brought Lin Huang and Grimace to the second hive later on. Subsequently, Grimace grabbed Lin Huang along and dashed into the hive at full speed. The hunting efficiency experienced a few folds of improvement. Initially, Bloody suggested speeding up the hunt to achieve one hive within seven minutes and 15 seconds, but now they had improved to doing so within three minutes. Lin Huang only spent less than five hours clearing all 91 hives. Only five teams among the 36 retreated to the starting point after noticing the unusualness in the area while the remaining 31 teams perished in the hives. None of their members survived. Meanwhile, Lin Huang logged out of the Genius Union after he was done with the hunt. He did not care about the breaking out of the bug hordes on the Stairway Tree at all because he finally heard the notification that he had been waiting for when he was clearing the 53rd hive. He tamped his urge down and finished clearing all the 91 hives. As he sat on the couch in the living room of the hotel room, Lin Huang tapped Xiao Hei''s notification box open with a shudder of excitement. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained complete Bug Tribe Queen Mother Monster Card (Mythical-level) x2 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained complete Bug Servant Monster Card (Pseudo-mythical-level) x2,184 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Bug Tribe Incubator (Mythical-level) x4 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Genetic Database (Mythical-level) x2 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Genetic Modification Editor (Mythical-level) x2 "Congratulations, you''ve obtained Biomaterial Decomposer (Mythical-level) x2" "Yes! I''ve finally gotten the complete Bug Tribe Queen Mother card after working on it for so many days!" 950 Another New Rule is Added "Monster Card: Unnamed "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Bug Tribe Queen Mother "Type of Monster: Mother Bug / Bug Tribe "Nickname: None "Combat Level: Imperial-level Crimson Gold-rank / Virtual God (Immature) "Major: Spear Dao, Lightning Element "Major Skills: Bug Center, Breeding Mother, Genetic Evolution "Minor Skills: Bug Tribe Army, Total Control "Summon Authority: Denied (To be activated when you reach imperial-level) "Card Remarks: Great personal ability but encouraged to be cultivated as an army." Lin Huang looked through the skills one after another and eventually had his eyes on the Bug Center. "Bug Center: Special ability exclusively for high-tier Bug Tribe. A Bug Tribe that possesses such an ability will be able to hear the voice of the bug horde''s will. Only Bug Tribe members that possess such an ability can build their own quantum consciousness network to control the Bug Tribe army. "Remark 1: The bug guardians will only possess an intelligence close to a human''s as well as having learning abilities under that premise when they''re connected to the Bug Center. The intelligence of bug guardians that aren''t connected to the Bug Center will be oppressed to its minimum whereby they will have almost zero self-consciousness. They will just be puppets that listen to orders blindly. "Remark 2: The more bug guardians are connected to the Bug Center, the more powerful the Bug Center will grow and the more Bug Tribe fighters it can contain. "Remark 3: The Bug Center can be taken away by other high-tier Bug Tribes that possess a Bug Center. It can be shared with other high-tier Bug Tribes that possess a Bug Center too. "Remark 4: The Queen Mother can retrieve information from all the members in the Bug Center network. It can also control the information access of the other members as well as setting their intelligence level." The first thought Lin Huang had after glancing at the skill description was that the Queen Mother would renegade. However, he realized that the skill was extremely crucial for the entire Bug Tribe army after reading the many remarks below. Without the skill, the bug guardians and the Bug Tribe fighters would just be a plate of sand. They would not be worthy of being called an army at all. Moreover, after reading the skill remarks, Lin Huang noticed that the thousands of pseudo-mythical-level bug guardians that he got earlier were just a bunch of stiff battle puppets if they were not connected to the Bug Center. The reason he did not summon the bug guardians was that he was worried about the stench on the bug guardians which would affect the other hotel guests. He could not help but crush a bug guardian card after reading the description of the Bug Center. A ferocious bug guardian with six arms made of sabers consolidated before him. He was relieved that there was no odor coming from the bug guardian. When it was summoned, the bug guardian that was over three meters tall stood motionlessly where it was. Lin Huang waved before its eyes and it showed no response as if it could not see. "Speak. Just say something," Lin Huang ordered. The bug guardian looked at Lin Huang with its head held low and said nothing. "Has its intelligence been oppressed so much that it can''t even master a language?" Lin Huang frowned deeply. "This should''ve been installed in its settings to prevent bug guardians from other tribes from acquiring it and using it as a weapon or to obtain important information. Disconnecting them from the Bug Center would result in their intelligence dropping rapidly whereby they can''t even perform basic communication," Bloody speculated. After carrying out some tests, Lin Huang realized that the bug guardian could only take simple orders. Furthermore, it would attack a specific target with all its might when it was given a slightly complicated order such as ''attack''. It would not be able to avoid the opponent''s attacks and carry out an effective defense at all. "This is so backward. The upper hand of a pseudo-mythical-level is being compromised by its intelligence." Lin Huang shook his head in dissatisfaction. "If they''re put in a battle, Bai could fight five to six of them alone at once." "Luckily, I''ve got the Queen Mother Card. Otherwise, those bug guardians would just be your puppets," Lin Huang smiled while saying to Bloody. "I might not be able to cast parasites on them since they''re on the same level as I am, which is pseudo-mythical-level." Bloody was taken aback. Lin Huang shook his head without saying much. After all, he could not summon the Queen Mother yet and those bug guardians could not be connected to the Bug Center. They were pretty useless to Lin Huang now since they had such low intelligence. He could only put them aside at the time being. After recalling the bug guardian card, Lin Huang looked at the few new cards that he had just obtained. "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Genetic Database "Function: Database storing various genetic data "Application Authorization: Passive "Card Remarks: Good stuff "Remarks: Must be used in compliance with biomaterial decomposer and gene extractor." "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Biomaterial Decomposer "Function: Decomposes flesh of living beings into various materials as well as separating gene fragments for genetic modification "Application Authorization: Passive "Card Remarks: Not bad "Remarks: Can''t be used to decompose living beings." "Special Item Card "Rarity: Mythical-level "Item Name: Genetic Modification Editor "Function: Modify living beings'' genes "Application Authorization: Passive "Card Remarks: Good stuff. "Remarks: Must be used in compliance with biomaterial decomposer and gene extractor." Lin Huang put all of the cards away after reading the card details and realized that he could not activate them due to the authority restriction. He then began practicing his sword skills. Meanwhile, it was chaotic in the Genius Union once again. A bug horde had broken out on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree like never before since Lin Huang had killed 91 Bug Tribe Queen Mothers. This time, the big bosses on checkpoint 63 hid behind the defense barrier right away after learning their lesson earlier when they saw the bug horde sweeping toward them. With the experience from the day before, very few of them chose to stay to fight head-on this time. Everyone clearly felt that the bug horde this time was even more terrifying than the day before whereby there were folds of increase in the number of bugs. Can you imagine tens of billions of bugs in various forms occupying all the buildings with no gaps in between? One must know that even those bugs which were smaller in size were over two meters long while the bigger ones were hundreds of meters long. Imagine the space that almost 30 billion of those monsters could occupy! Almost every inch of the ground on the entire checkpoint 63 was covered with bugs. Even the defenses on all of the human residence buildings had bugs crawling all over them. Some even had layers of bugs writhing on them. It was chilling to watch. Some people took videos and photos of the situation and posted them on the forum. People from other checkpoints began talking about it. Lin Huang only found out about it when he looked at the Genius Union forum before he went to bed. As he was reading a few minutes into the thread, a notice came from the Genius Union all of a sudden. "Notice: A new rule has been added to the Stairway Tree system! "A player will pass the checkpoint as soon as he kills the boss! "Every Genius Union member will pass the checkpoint right away as soon as they kill the final boss in the monster stage of the respective checkpoint. The player will not obtain any benefits on the respective checkpoints after the final boss is killed. "We hope everyone acknowledges this notice." Almost every Genius Union member who received the notice at midnight were dumbstruck. "What happened? Why did such a notice appear like that?" Lin Huang was the only one who realized that the system was directed at him again. "Luckily, I''ve already gotten the Bug Tribe Queen Mother!" 951 I Killed Another Queen Mother Since I Was Bored The new rule from the Genius Union that came out of nowhere broke the midnight peace. It was chaos on the forum all of a sudden. "What happened? Why is there a new rule out of nowhere?" "The two new rules earlier were caused by Lin Xie''s killing spree on the Stairway Tree. Could it be him who''s caused this again?" "If someone''s really doing something, looking at the new rule, there should be someone killing the boss on some level. Killing the boss is much more difficult than passing through the level. Who is insane enough to kill the boss over and over again?" "If someone''s killing the boss over and over again, I think the killing machine Lin Xie has the highest possibility of doing that." "Don''t look at Lin Xie so highly. Indeed, he''s pretty skilled at killing small monsters, but he''s on checkpoint 63 now. Do you guys know how scary the boss on checkpoint 63 is? That Bug Tribe Queen Mother could be a quadruple mutated monster while her 12 bug guardians have the ability that surpasses triple mutated monsters. It''s not that I look down on Lin Xie''s ability, but in reality, even Chan Dou the Fourth Prince would have to avoid those bug guardians if he ever encountered more than three of them." "Maybe a rookie on a lower checkpoint is killing the boss repetitively but we didn''t notice." ... Lin Huang realized that a minority of people suspected it was him who had caused this while most people ruled out the possibility of him doing it. A few big bosses on checkpoint 63 were analyzing how terrifying the Queen Mother and her bug guardians'' abilities were. He received a message from Chan Dou on his communication device just when he was ready to sleep after closing the forum. "Is this new rule about you again?" Lin Huang thought about it and gave a short reply while smirking. "Take a guess." "No wonder there are bug hordes on checkpoint 63 every day. You''re killing Queen Mothers like it''s a game for you. That''s insane!" Chan Dou sent a thumbs-up emoticon at the end of his message. "You haven''t been logging in these few days. What have you been up to?" Lin Huang changed the subject. "I''ve been shopping around black markets these few days. I have to live up to the act since I''m doing it," Chan Dou replied, "I even asked Tan Lang to go to you a few days later." "No wonder he isn''t here. I''ve been waiting for him." "I''ll log in tomorrow at eight in the morning. Come log in too. Let''s settle the deputy chief thing." Chan Dou sent another message. "Eight in the morning? That''s a little early." "It''s all your fault! There are monsters all over the entire checkpoint 63 for more than 21 hours before it''s even 9 a.m. every day. We can only log in between 6 a.m. to 7 a.m." "Sure, eight it is." The next morning, Lin Huang woke up early. After breakfast, he logged onto the Genius Union leisurely. "It seems to be way too early." After logging in, Lin Huang raised his brow upon realizing it was only 7.23 a.m. "I can seize the opportunity to kill the last Queen Mother then." Lin Huang moved immediately as soon as he made up his mind. Bloody used less than two minutes to locate the Queen Mother. Zhu Hong and the rest had yet to give up on looking for the god relic, so they came in teams earlier in the morning. Although there were fewer people compared to the day before, there were still over 70 of them. However, with the new rule, Lin Huang would pass the checkpoint as soon as he killed one Queen Mother despite there being more than 70 Queen Mothers. He would not gain any benefits after killing one Queen Mother. Lin Huang did not use the old way of getting into the hive this time. Instead, he made a grand entrance by summoning the Destructive Divine Mammoth. The Destructive Divine Mammoth suppressed everyone with its aura, and they ambled in without any obstacles. Since he would pass the checkpoint after killing the Queen Mother, Lin Huang thought he of obtaining the 10 billion point limit for the day right away. As the Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped its feet, the Bug Tribe monsters turned into dust. None of them even managed to get closer. They only used approximately five minutes to get to the core zone of the hive. The Queen Mother and her 12 bug guardians knew they were no match for the Destructive Divine Mammoth as soon as they saw it. The 12 bug guardians and an insane amount of bugs dashed towards the Destructive Divine Mammoth. Meanwhile, the Bug Tribe Queen Mother disconnected its tail that was connected to the incubator and fled immediately. Unfortunately, it underestimated the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s abilities. The Destructive Divine Mammoth lifted both of its feet high and stomped onto the ground hard. A circle of black energy wave spread out rapidly. The bug horde, the bug guardians and the Queen Mother Everything turned into dust instantly wherever the wave passed. Xiao Hei''s notification came into Lin Huang''s ears at that moment. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained complete Bug Tribe Queen Mother Monster Card (Mythical-level) x2! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained complete Bug Servant Monster Card (Pseudo-mythical-level) x10!" Lin Huang was stunned for a second when he heard the notification about him obtaining complete Bug Tribe Queen Mother Monster Cards. He had never thought he would be so lucky in that single kill to obtain complete Bug Tribe Queen Mother Monster Cards. He did not expect such a thing to happen when he came in this time. After all, he only got the complete Queen Mother Monster Card after killing up to a hundred Queen Mothers. Lin Huang left the hive happily after getting two Bug Tribe Queen Mother Monster Cards and 10 billion points. Not long after he left, the remaining bugs in the hive swarmed out as a bug horde. As he returned to the Heaven Alliance residence on checkpoint 63, Lin Huang finally met their deputy chief, Jian Fei, for the very first time. Although he had seen his photo before, he did not expect the real person to be fatter in real life. ''I think he''s at least 300 pounds! He should be slaughtered and eaten during the New Year,'' Lin Huang thought to himself. Naturally, Jian Fei recognized Lin Huang as the notorious No. 1 on the Stairway Tree leaderboard. He welcomed him immediately, knowing the reason why Chan Dou had gathered them today. "Brother Lin Xie, I''ve heard so much about you. We finally meet." "Chief Jian, I''ve heard so much about you from the chief. It''s nice to finally meet you too." Lin Huang was being polite as well. "The chief isn''t here yet. Let''s go into the meeting room." Jian Fei brought Lin Huang into the meeting room. There were already eight people sitting in the meeting room. They lifted their heads to look at Lin Huang when he walked in. The eight of them were the high management of the Heaven Alliance. Although their abilities were not the top in the Heaven Alliance, they were talented. It was their first time seeing Lin Huang, so they were very curious about this young man who ranked No. 1 on the Stairway Tree leaderboard. "Hi, everyone, my name''s Lin Xie," Lin Huang introduced himself. Although everyone knew who he was, he had to show basic courtesy. "Your combat strength" A short-haired lady among the eight could not help but exclaim all of a sudden. Jian Fei and the rest just realized that as well and they had shock written on their faces. "Yes, I''m on immortal-level rank-7 now," Lin Huang confirmed. He could not lie about such a thing since they were meeting face-to-face. Although he could use his disguise demigod relic to conceal that, he thought it was unnecessary. ''What terrifying combat strength elevation speed!'' Although none of them said that out loud, they glanced at each other and knew everyone had the same thought in their heads. Jian Fei introduced the eight of them to Lin Huang one by one before sitting down. Since Lin Huang the rookie was there, the rest held back on their topics as it might be inappropriate. They began talking about the god relic that had appeared in the hive recently. Lin Huang pretended not to know much about it and listened to them talking patiently. Finally, Chan Dou showed up when it was 8 a.m. sharp. "Yo, everyone''s here. Does everyone know who Lin Xie is already?" Chan Dou strolled into the meeting room and walked straight to the main seat. He did not chat much after taking his seat and went right to business. "I suppose everyone knows why I''ve gathered all of you here today." All of them nodded. "I shall recommend Lin Xie officially to be deputy chief of our Heaven Alliance." Chan Dou glanced through everyone. "Those who agree, please raise your hand. Those who don''t, please name the reason for your dissent." Chan Dou raised his hand as soon as he was done speaking and the deputy chief Jian Fei was the second to follow suit while chuckling. The remaining eight of them raised their hands as well. Nobody disagreed. Lin Huang could not help but raise his brow. He could tell that Chan Dou was great at ruling. "Alright, since its unanimous, let''s sign our names," Chan Dou spoke and projected an appointment agreement. He projected it to Jian Fei after he signed his name. Jian Fei did not hesitate and signed it right away followed by the remaining eight. After everyone had signed it, Chan Dou walked to Lin Huang and projected the appointment agreement. "Please sign your name on the agreement." Lin Huang nodded and signed it. After confirming that everyone had signed it, Chan Dou saved the document. He then put it away in the attachment and sent an appointment notice as the chief of the Heaven Alliance. "Heaven Alliance member Lin Xie is officially appointed as the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance effective today!" The notice was sent to every Heaven Alliance member''s communication device. Besides those who were on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree, all the Heaven Alliance members in the Genius Union received the notice almost at the same time. "Huh? Lin Xie''s now a deputy chief? Didn''t he just break through to immortal-level not long ago?" "No matter whether he''s on holy fire-level or immortal-level, getting to checkpoint 63 is proof of his ability." "I must admit that the killing machine has the ability to be where he is now." As the Heaven Alliance members were in a hot discussion, someone posted the notice on the Genius Union forum. The other organizations buzzed with the news as well. "I think Lin Xie''s just on beginner-stage immortal-level now at the most. Is Chan Dou training the next Heaven Alliance chief?" "It seems like the next Heaven Alliance chief has been decided." "I think Lin Xie won''t be anything less powerful than Chan Dou. As he grows, the Heaven Alliance will rise even higher!" "With Lin Xie, Heaven Alliance''s No. 1 position is even more unshakable now." Although the meeting in the meeting room of the Heaven Alliance residence had ended, Jian Fei stopped both Chan Dou and Lin Huang who were going to log out of the Genius Union. "Chief, it''s rare that you''re here today. Since the new deputy chief is here too, let''s discuss obtaining the god relic." Chan Dou turned to look at Lin Huang with a rather helpless expression on his face. After confirming that the breaking out of the bug horde was related to Lin Huang, naturally, he knew that the god relic was not real. However, he did not expose Lin Huang instantly because he was not sure if Lin Huang was willing to reveal his abilities. "Alright, let me explain." Lin Huang took over the subject. Jian Fei and the remaining people looked at him with an odd expression. "The god relic''s fake. I took the video. It was just a prank," Lin Huang told the truth without flinching at all. "Huh?" Jian Fei and the rest were dumbstruck by what he said. "If the god relic doesn''t exist, what''s up with the bug horde?" Jian Fei could not help but ask. "That''s the side effect of the prank." Lin Huang felt his lips becoming dry. "Chief Lin, could you explain further about that?" One of them asked. "Ugh, sure." Lin Huang nodded rather helplessly. "In reality, I''ve been killing Bug Tribe Queen Mothers these few days. In turn, I caused the bug hordes." "Huh?!" Everyone was stunned hearing that. Even Chan Dou was shocked when Lin Huang admitted that himself. When it became awkward in the meeting room, a harried knock came at the door followed by someone opening the door subsequently. "Chief Jian, there''s a bug horde again!" Later on, everyone saw the crowded bug horde attacking the defense barrier through the meeting room windows. Chan Dou and the rest turned to look at Lin Huang. "Um I had time before coming to the residence, so I killed another Queen Mother since I was bored." 952 Deadly Ruins Deadly Ruins After logging out of the Genius Union, Lin Huang, who was sitting on the hotel couch, felt relieved. He thought he would be beaten up by Jian Fei and the rest if he told the truth. How could he have thought that everyone would say politely that it was great to know the truth? However, he heard that Jian Fei died six times on the Stairway Tree on the first day the bug horde broke out while the other eight of them died at least three to four times. Meanwhile, the other Heaven Alliance members who participated in the bug hordes died at least twice. How could he have thought that his ability to kill the Queen Mothers like they were insignificant monsters to be so powerful? Even if Jian Fei and the rest were to attack him at once, they would be beaten and dragged on the ground. Jian Fei and the rest would only dare to curse him secretly. They would not really do anything to him. However, Lin Huang''s abilities truly shocked everyone. Jian Fei and the rest thought that Lin Huang would only reach the level that the Five Princes, including Chan Dou, was on when he reached immortal-level rank-9. They never thought that although he was only on immortal-level rank-7, he would have surpassed the Five Princes. He even beat Chan Dou and became the well-deserved No. 1 powerhouse in the Genius Union. Naturally, under Chan Dou''s order, the nine of them present chose to keep it a secret. They did not mention that to anyone, even keeping it from the other Heaven Alliance members. After all, the more people knew, the more they would talk about it. It was hard to guarantee that nobody would slip it out. As he looked through the Genius Union forum, the No. 1 hot topic was ''Guess Who is The New the Heaven Alliance Deputy Chief?''. The threads that were discussing the bug hordes these few days were pushed down to second place. After reading the comments on the thread, Lin Huang was surprised that not many people raised questions about him being the Heaven Alliance deputy chief. On the contrary, most of them supported him. "Look at the fame I''ve obtained from killing monsters!" Lin Huang forced a smile helplessly after reading those supportive comments. Despite there being people questioning him, there were not many of them. The sceptics basically raised the same question: was Lin Xie''s combat strength not too low? However, most people were alright with his low combat strength as long as he had sufficient abilities. After quitting the forum, Lin Huang proceeded to practice his sword skills. He did not log into the Genius Union until the next day since he agreed to meet Tan Lang. Naturally, no bug horde broke out on checkpoint 63 since he did not kill any Bug Tribe Queen Mothers. Many people found it odd that the bud horde came to a halt all of a sudden after happening for a few days consecutively. As a result, the halt of the bug horde became a hot topic on the forum. It replaced the topic of Lin Xie becoming the Heaven Alliance deputy chief the day before and got bumped up to become the No. 1 topic. However, Lin Huang did not follow up on that. After practicing his sword skills in the morning, he met Tan Lang at a seafood restaurant nearby for lunch. Tan Lang seemed to be the same as usual, dressed in a black, slim-fit trench coat with the collar standing up. He was skinny as always. Apart from his aura that was slightly more powerful compared a few months ago, there seemed to be no changes in him. However, Tan Lang was shocked when he saw Lin Huang. He could tell that Lin Huang''s combat strength was on immortal-level rank-7 as soon as he saw him. "Isn''t the elevation rate of your combat strength terrifying?! I think it''s only been less than three months since we came out of the Fallen God Land, but you''ve already elevated by four ranks!" "That''s just my luck!" Lin Huang laughed. "I guess you''ll surpass me very soon," Tan Lang teased while smiling. "It won''t be that easy." Lin Huang smiled while shaking his head. "Oh yeah, I heard from Boss Chan that you''re now a deputy chief, eh?" Tan Lang asked rather curiously. Although his combat strength had elevated to imperial-level, Tan Lang still respected Chan Dou and addressed him the same way. "Yep, I was appointed yesterday. It''s just a title." "Congrats, congrats!" Tan Lang exclaimed while cupping his hands with a wide grin. Although he knew that Lin Huang had become the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance, Tan Lang did not mention anything about the bug hordes and the god relic in the Genius Union. Lin Huang had no idea if he was avoiding the topic intentionally or if Chan Dou had not told him. They only began ordering after chatting for a while. Tan Lang only began getting down to business when they were almost done with lunch. "Boss Chan asked me to pick up something from you. He was so mysterious about it and didn''t even tell me what I''m picking up from you. He told me not to ask. He even asked me to drag our meeting on for a few days" Lin Huang took out the jade slip while nodding with a smile. Mr. Fu figured that Lin Huang might have friends who needed those methods, so he made a few copies that were password-protected for him. Lin Huang said while smiling showing the two-fingers wide jade slip to Tan Lang, "This is it." "A piece of jade?" Taking it, Tan Lang studied it for a while. He did not find anything after inserting his Life Power and spiritual power in. "Are you sure this is what he wants?" Tan Lang could not help but begin suspecting that Lin Huang had made a mistake after his failed attempt to find out more about the jade slip. "Don''t worry, this is it. There''s no mistake." "Why didn''t you just courier this?" Tan Lang complained while pouting. Subsequently, he recalled something all of a sudden. He turned and looked at Lin Huang to ask, lowering his voice, "Does Chan Dou have a lover here in Division 3? Is this a love token?" "That''s what you said. I didn''t say that," Lin Huang raised his brow and replied while smiling. "I didn''t expect that that bushy brow would do something secretive like this. He even hid it from his brother, me!" Tan Lang smirked. "I''ll look for him for some hush-up money when I get back!" ''Just wait for Chan Dou to beat you up if you do that!'' Lin Huang thought to himself. After sending Tan Lang away, it was almost 2 p.m. when Lin Huang returned to the hotel. He took out the wooden sword and proceeded to practice. He only looked at the Hunter Association forum for news when he was in bed at night. A top headline grabbed his attention immediately. ''More Than Half of the Demigods Died in the Deadly Ruins!'' The news was published at 10 a.m.. Lin Huang had not looked at the forum the entire day and only saw that more than ten hours later. He could not help but frown after clicking on the topic and reading the article. According to the news, the ruins that opened in Division 1 was extremely dangerous. There were even living virtual god-level monsters in it. Only 58 among the 117 demigods who went in to explore made it out alive. "Living virtual god-level monsters exist?!" Lin Huang was pretty surprised about that. Theoretically, a ruins was usually a place with order that had completely collapsed. Nothing could survive in it, let alone breed new lives. Therefore, only spirits and undead monsters could survive in most ruins. However, due to the lack of order, it was almost impossible for those spirits and undead monsters to elevate their combat strength. It was even more impossible for them to grow to virtual god-level. The Virtual Gods in this ruins must not have elevated at the latter stage. Instead, they existed before the ruins collapsed. There was a high chance that they were severely injured in wars and hid away, going through hibernation until now. Those demigods had unintentionally interrupted them and woke them up during their exploration since the ruins opened. Lin Huang winced slightly after closing the forum page. He was not interested in the ruins which was somewhere more than 50 demigods had died. It was not a place he could explore now. However, the return of the demigods from the exploration of the ruins meant something else to him. ''The Dynasty''s Royal Trials should begin soon!'' 953 Master Chan is the Best! After killing the Queen Mother and passing through checkpoint 63 on the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang had not logged into the Genius Union since then. While he could block his combat strength on the Stairway Tree leaderboard, everyone could see it on the Stairway Tree checkpoints. Everyone in the Genius Union would know that his ability surpassed Chan Dou''s if he was to go further up. He was not interested to log into the Genius Union after all. Apart from practicing his sword skills every day, he was watching the news and waiting for Dynasty''s Royal Trials to begin. He had accumulated pseudo-mythical-level sword skill card pieces throughout these few days and merged them into two complete cards. Therefore, he now possessed a total of seven pseudo-mythical-level sword skills including the Almighty Surgical Knife, the Killer, the Void Sword, the Instantaneous Slash, the Buddha Killer and the two assassination sword skills that he had recently mastered - Moonlit Night and Silent Snow. In the Genius Union, checkpoint 63 on the Stairway Tree regained its usual order without Lin Huang killing the Bug Tribe Queen Mother. There was no bug horde during the day. Since the halt of bug horde happened the next day the Genius Union announced the new rule, many people made the connection between the break out of the bug horde with the new rule. Many people were discussing the topic on the forum. The most popular one was a thread posted anonymously. The author gave a series of speculations that were very close to the truth. The title of the thread was ''Was It A Coincidence or Did Someone Do It?". These were the main points: "The Genius Union announced the new rule the day before the bug horde on checkpoint 63 came to a halt. Was that a coincidence? "Think about it guys. When did the Genius Union ever announce a new rule not because of the order was severely broken? This is the only time the Genius Union did that. You guys mustn''t have noticed that. The Genius Union announced a new rule out of nowhere, whereby one would pass through the checkpoint as soon as the player kills the final boss. The player no longer gains any benefits on the same checkpoint on the day itself. "Some said they didn''t notice that at all. Some said maybe it was caused by new people coming in and stayed on the lower checkpoints of the Stairway Tree, killing the final boss over and over again while getting the attention of the Genius Union system. I''d like to ask if killing the final boss on the lower checkpoints continuously will affect the balance of the Stairway Tree system? "Everyone knows that the two new rules that were announced were directed at Lin Xie. We were limited to a number of points daily and on each checkpoint because Lin Xie''s behavior in obtaining points had severely affected the balance of the Stairway Tree point system. "Killing the final boss on the lower checkpoints were inefficient to affect the balance of the Stairway Tree system, so how was it supposed to get the Genius Union''s attention? The answer is that the Genius Union system doesn''t care about such a thing at all! "The reason the Genius Union system announced the new rule was because of a new behavior that affected the balance of the Stairway Tree system. The behavior was someone killing the Bug Tribe Queen Mother on checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree! "Many people had been asking before this. Why would bug hordes break out during the day on checkpoint 63? Many people concluded that it was caused by the god relic that came out of nowhere. However, I personally suspect that the so-called god relic was just a lie. Of course, I''ve no proof of that. I just want to voice my speculations here. "I think the real reason for the bug horde was because someone killed the Bug Tribe Queen Mother. Once the Queen Mother died, the bugs would lose control and go wild. That was how the bug hordes came about. "The bug hordes that broke out one after another during the day caused checkpoint 63 to lose its balance of order completely. That was the reason why the Genius Union announced the new rule that one would pass through the checkpoint as soon as the final boss was killed. "Finally, I''d like everyone to think about it following my speculation. Did you realize that the bug horde stopped breaking out the next day when the rule was announced? Everything makes sense now. The fella who had been killing the Queen Mothers had killed the last Bug Tribe Queen Mother that could reap him benefits. He then stopped hunting for Queen Mothers, hence putting an end to the bug hordes." The comments in the thread were filled with a 50-50 mix of supporters and routers. Some supported the thread because the speculations were totally logically while those who doubted them asked a realistic question, "Who could kill the Bug Tribe Queen Mother alone on the Stairway Tree?" Everyone knew that even Chan Dou, one of the Five Princes, could not do that. Someone asked the anonymous author directly in the thread who he thought could possibly do such a thing. This was the author''s reply: "Looking at the ability of all the members on the Stairway Tree that we know, nobody could''ve possibly done it. But if you insist that I give a name, I''d say that it''s most possibly Lin Xie." The author''s response caused a stir once again. "Author, just admit that you''re Lin Xie himself. You posted this thread just to brag!" "Verification checked: The author''s Lin Xie''s fangirl!" "You''re parading Lin Xie''s name so highly. How about Chan Dou, our Master Chan?" "I support Master Chan. He''s handsome, plus he has long legs and powerful ability!" "May I ask the commenter above me if Lin Xin is handsome? Are his legs long? Is his ability powerful?" Lin Huang saw the thread too and replied with Lin Xie''s account, "I support Master Chan. He''s the most handsome, has the longest legs and the most powerful ability!" Chan Dou saw Lin Huang''s response too and replied, "Thanks for your support, my Master Deputy Chief." Zhu Hong from the Hong Alliance must have been bored, so she posted below, "I think I smell some serious PDA going on here" The interaction of the trio caused a stir in the forum again. Time flew by and three days passed since then. As Lin Huang was having breakfast, he finally saw the news that he desired when he clicked into the Hunter Association forum. The headline of the Hunter Association forum was ''The Once-in-A-Decade Royal Trials is Beginning Soon!'' Lin Huang smirked after reading the news. "It''s officially beginning on the 5th of May. It''s the 28th of April today, so that''s one week away. I''ll do some preparations beforehand these few days." After breakfast, Lin Huang logged into the Stairway Mall again. He picked two demigod-level telekinetic weapons he had his eyes on initially and put them into his shopping cart. The two telekinetic weapons were ultimate demigod relics. One cost five billion points, so they added up to 10 billion points. As the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance, he could enjoy a 40% discount, so he only needed to pay six billion points. Lin Huang had always wanted demigod-level telekinetic weapons. However, he could not use them at the moment. He bought them beforehand mainly for Grimace and the Imp who had mastered telekinesis. Apart from the two telekinetic weapons, Lin Huang picked a demigod puppet that cost 18 billion points. The puppet was for Grimace as well. Only Bloody and Grimace, who possessed Supreme Intelligence, could master such a complicated tool completely within a short period of time by. Grimace''s telekinetic power was the perfect fit with a puppet-type battle weapon. With such a puppet, Grimace could fight face-on even if he were to encounter an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. Enticed by the 40% discount, he spent a total of 16.8 billion points on the three items. After summoning Grimace and the Imp, Lin Huang distributed the three new pieces of equipment. "The both of you will have a telekinetic weapon each," Lin Huang said and delivered the demigod puppet into Grimace''s hands. "This is your reward for helping me in the hives throughout the past few days." The Imp was envious as he watched while Grimace''s eyes light up. After recalling the two imperial monsters, Lin Huang purchased all 11 pseudo-mythical-level sword skills and three mythical-level sword skills. They cost a total of 128 billion points but he only paid 76.8 billion points with the 40% discount. Hence, he spent almost half of his 200 billion points which in turn, tampered with his plan to purchase demigod-level soul crystals to elevate his remaining five Combat Souls to imperial-level purple gold-rank. He planned to put his remaining Stairway Tree points aside for a rainy day so that he would not be able to trade god battle sword and god armor relics that he desired with the god relics that he possessed. 954 The Royal Trial Has Begun! Time sure flew. A week soon passed. Lin Huang thought the token he had would attract covetous members from Dynasty whereby they would send people to take it away from him. He was prepared to fight anytime, but it had been peaceful for the past week. Nothing happened at all. He wondered if something had happened to Dynasty that caused them to not put the extra effort in to get the token back. He did not log into the Genius Union for the past week. He was basically doing three things every day: eat, sleep and practice sword skills. He managed to merge the card pieces into two complete pseudo-mythical-level sword skills. Early morning on the 5th of May, Lin Huang returned to the hotel room after breakfast. He then took out the Dynasty trial token from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. The token was completely golden and was almost half the size of a palm. The word ''Dynasty'' was imprinted in the middle of it with complicated sigils around it. According to the notice Dynasty posted, the trials would officially begin at 9 a.m. However, the sigils on the token glowed with a golden stream that lit up when it was 8.30 a.m. It was like lava flowing slowly. Approximately 20 minutes later, the beam lit up all of the sigils on the token and spread towards the ''Dynasty'' word. When it was 9 a.m. sharp, the golden stream flowed all over the ''Dynasty'' word, lending a bright golden ray to surround the entire token. It was like a mini sun hovering before Lin Huang. Even he could not help but narrow his eyes. He witnessed the golden ray expand rapidly and transform the small token into golden double doors that were approximately three meters tall. The golden ray only faded away quickly as soon as the doors were completely formed. Lin Huang was puzzled when he noticed that the golden doors were still shut after the golden ray faded. However, he soon found out that there were two palm dents in the middle of the two doors. "Do I press my palms on those dents?" Lin Huang stepped forward in puzzlement and pressed both of his palms on the dents. Soon, two golden rays shot out of the dents and covered both of his palms. At that moment, Lin Huang heard a lady''s voice in his ears. "The verification of candidate has begun "The candidate''s current location is No. D000857142. "Rank-D "Recording candidate''s identity "Name: Lin Huang "Gender: Male "Age: 18 "Combat Strength: Immortal-level Rank-7 (Candidate''s cultivation system is eligible for the trial). "Qualification Assessment: Grade-A "Assessment Result: Passed preliminary selection, official qualification - Rank-D "Binding of trial token has begun Binding successful! "Candidate, are you to going into the trial space now?" "Yes." Lin Huang nodded without any hesitation. In the next second, the golden rays that were initially covering both of his palms spread all over his body and covered his entire being in it. Lin Huang, who turned into a sphere of golden ray, penetrated the closed golden doors right away and vanished. A moment later, the golden doors disintegrated and disappeared. As his body was covered in the golden ray, Lin Huang felt like he was riding on a high-speed rail and moving swiftly with it. It only took a moment before it stopped. The golden ray before his eyes faded slowly and was then replaced by a dense jungle. Lin Huang turned his head to look around. Trees and bushes covered his field of vision. Even the sunlight above his head was covered by the dense trees. The jungle seemed a little dim because of that. There were different smells around, including the earthy scent of the soil and the fragrance of flowers. Lin Huang felt lost at that moment. He had zero ideas about the trial conditions here and it was an open-style environment as he glanced around. "Do I kill monsters in this trial since I''m put in such an environment?" He speculated that that would most likely happen. At that moment, he just realized that the golden token had returned to his hand without him even realizing it. A page was projected from the golden token all of a sudden as soon as he spoke. There were rows of information displayed. "The trial setting: unlimited hunting. "The trial condition - kill every living thing that you see! "There are two identities in the trial setting. One will be the convict while another will be the candidate. "You''ll obtain points according to the convict''s combat strength that you kill. "Single kill point system: 1 point for imperial-level black gold-rank, 3 points for imperial-level crimson gold-rank, 10 points for imperial-level yellow gold-rank, 30 points for imperial-level white gold-rank, 100 points for imperial-level purple gold-rank. "You''ll obtain all of the points the candidate possessed if you kill one. "Candidate can crush the trial token as a sign of surrender. He or she would then be sent out of the trial space. The points will be awarded to the candidate who witnesses the surrender and is the closest to the person who surrenders." "Trial candidates: 10,000 people. Convicts: 100,000 people." "Trial Period: 1 month. "The candidate who survives the trial and obtains the highest points will win a Dynasty citizenship. "Last warning: this trial isn''t a virtual game. Dying in the trial means death in reality. Please use the trial token when necessary." "There are 10,000 people participating in this?!" Until then only did Lin Huang realize that there were so many people in this trial space apart from himself and the people from Dynasty. "Convict Looking at the description, the convict stated shouldn''t be monsters but humans." Lin Huang calmed himself down and began focusing on the information provided. "So, candidates kill continuously in this trial to obtain points. Not only are the convicts preys, but so are the other candidates too. "Looking at the description of the condition, all of the convicts seem to be on imperial-level. The lowest one would be on imperial-level black gold-rank while the highest would be on imperial-level purple gold-rank. Furthermore, the ratio of convicts to candidates is 10:1. Also, a candidate who survives at the end of the one-month trial meets the prerequisite to winning the final eligibility. It shows that the candidates in this trial aren''t the predators, but the prey." Lin Huang narrowed his eyes slightly. "The condition didn''t mention that collaborating is prohibited. Those organization members who participate in this trial would most likely choose to collaborate in the hunt with people from the same organization. Although I''ve no idea what''s up with the convicts, I think they should be collaborating in groups. If people don''t come from the same organization, there might be teams with many people in it." Lin Huang did a detailed analysis of the conditions. Clearly, this trial was much more difficult than it appeared to be. If one were to read the description of condition on the surface, he would most probably die if he went after the convicts without thinking much about it. Lin Huang summoned Bloody calmly after reading the conditions. "Bloody, as usual, show me the map." 955 The Skinny Man and the Big Guy <p>After Bloody had released the Leech Pods for less than ten minutes, it then said to Lin Huang all of a sudden, "I''m afraid it''s hard for the Leech Pods to get wide coverage of the place."</p><p>"What''s wrong?" Lin Huang asked.</p><p>"Many of the Leech Pods are killed when they''re spread less than 1,000 kilometers away. There are many living things in this space that have formidable sense and alertness," Bloody explained while feeling helpless.</p><p>It was the first time that Lin Huang could not get a complete map from Bloody. Seeing its gloomy expression, he did not panic at all. Instead, he rubbed Bloody''s head affectionately. "Then, let''s not try getting the map. It''s unfair to other people for us to always use a map. Let''s participate in the trial like everyone else and see if we can get first place."</p><p>The radius of Lin Huang''s territory expanded to seven kilometers wide since he elevated to immortal-level rank-7. Using his senses, he detected no living thing within the territory coverage.</p><p>He stood where he was and thought for a moment. Instead of asking Bloody which way to go like he usually would, he summoned Lancelot instead.</p><p>Lancelot, who had elevated to imperial-level crimson gold-level, had expanded the radius of his territory to 40 kilometers. That was more than five folds of what Lin Huang possessed.</p><p>Lancelot habitually took out some dried vegetables as he was summoned. Just when he was ready to munch on it, Lin Huang snatched it away.</p><p>He turned to look at Lin Huang pitifully.</p><p>"If you do a great job, I''ll give you a month''s worth of extra snacks," Lin Huang offered and tossed the snack pack to Lancelot.</p><p>Hearing there was a snack reward, Lancelot nodded immediately. "What''s the mission?"</p><p>"Determine which direction in your coverage has living things and how far they are."</p><p>Lancelot put away his dried vegetables unwillingly. He opened his eyes again after shutting them for merely a moment. "I see four human-form beings. They''re most probably humans."</p><p>"How far away is the closest to us?" Lin Huang asked.</p><p>"Approximately 19 kilometers. He''s at our 2 o''clock," Lancelot spoke and turned his body toward the direction where the human was.</p><p>"Lead the way. Let''s check it out."</p><p>Lancelot nodded and dashed while Lin Huang followed close behind him.</p><p>However, as they were halfway there, Lancelot said to Lin Huang through voice transmission out of the blue, "He noticed us and is running away!"</p><p>"Is he that alert?!" Lin Huang raised his brow, feeling surprised. "Go after him!"</p><p>Lancelot charged at his top speed upon hearing that order and dashed toward their target.</p><p>Lin Huang used the pseudo-mythical-level Wander God flying method, following close behind Lancelot. He did not lose sight of him at all.</p><p></p><p>A silhouette was racing the tree branches at high speed.</p><p>It was a skinny man who seemed sick. The skin on his face was so shriveled that he looked like a corpse with sunken cheeks. His slender arms were all bones and were half the size of a normal adult''s.</p><p>One would wonder how long since he had last washed the torn clothes he was wearing which were a mottled color. His obvious ribs and sunken abdomen could be seen through his shredded clothes clearly.</p><p>One could barely tell what he was wearing on his bottom. It was a pair of jeans which was completely covered in soil and dirt. The lower part of his jeans was heavily damaged. It had been chopped off so much that it looked more like a pair of capri pants now.</p><p>Further down was a pair of bare feet. There were no socks or shoes on those bony feet.</p><p>Although he looked like a refugee who had been suffering in a famine for a long time, he had a smirk at the edge of his lips at the moment.</p><p>"I didn''t expect to have such great luck to be luring two pieces of meat this day! I should be able to enjoy a feast." As soon as he was done speaking, he pulled a piece of talisman out of nowhere. The sigils and seal script began lighting up as soon as he inserted his power.</p><p>"Big guy, I''ve brought two pieces of meat to your territory. Get ready," said the skinny man to the talisman that lit up.</p><p>"Great! Seems like I''ll be able to feast today!" A thick voice came from the talisman.</p><p>As he put the talisman that was becoming dim away, the skinny man sped forward at an accelerated speed.</p><p></p><p>Two silhouettes followed the skinny man five to six kilometers behind. They were Lin Huang and Lancelot.</p><p>"He accelerated all of a sudden!" Lin Huang could sense the person with his Territory skill now.</p><p>"He seems to have found his partner. He''s guiding us to that person," Lancelot replied through voice transmission.</p><p>"Go after him. See what kind of trick he''s playing." Lin Huang smirked slightly. He used his Divine Telekinesis to sense for a bit as soon as the person entered the range of his territory.</p><p>Although the person looked like a corpse, the skinny man was clearly very alive. Lin Huang sensed the vitality in the man''s body. However, his combat strength was nothing to shout about since he was only on imperial-level black gold-rank.</p><p>Such a level of combat strength was nothing to Lancelot. Even the Herculean King could kill with a single slap.</p><p>As for the man''s assistant, Lin Huang would treat him as a buy-one-free-one promotion.</p><p>Perhaps to other candidates, this trial area was extremely dangerous. The candidates'' combat strength was only allowed to be on immortal-level after all. Even if one had an ability that was as powerful as Huang Wuji of the Five Princes, people on immortal-level rank-9 would lose more than they would win whenever they encountered an imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouse. They would have to flee far away if they were to encounter imperial-level white gold-rank or imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses, let alone others.</p><p>However, to Lin Huang, this area was a place for rookies.</p><p>The highest combat strength of a convict in this trial space was only imperial-level purple gold-rank. No matter how powerful the convict''s ability was, it was impossible for the convict to defeat his God Figurine''s Combat Soul. Hence, he was not stressed at all.</p><p>The skinny man stopped after less than ten minutes of pursuit.</p><p>Lin Huang and Lancelot caught up to him in less than three seconds. They stood still less than 20 meters away from the skinny man who stood with a big guy, rooted to the ground. Instead of running, they began observing Lin Huang and Lancelot.</p><p>The big guy was over three meters tall. However, like the skinny man, he was also thin although not as gaunt as the skinny man. One could clearly tell that the big guy had been suffering from starvation for a long time just like the skinny man. They were both malnourished. His combat strength was higher than the skinny man''s which was on imperial-level crimson gold-rank.</p><p>Their eyes were almost sparkling when they saw Lin Huang. Unable to help themselves, they began drooling in extreme desperation for food.</p><p>However, both of them calmed down when they saw Lancelot. They looked at each other knowingly. It was clear that they could tell Lancelot was an imperial monster.</p><p>Just when Lin Huang was ready to ask a question, the two silhouettes before them began moving all of a sudden.</p><p>The big guy dashed toward Lancelot while the skinny man raced toward Lin Huang at an even higher speed.</p> 956 The Prison’s Food Source <p>Clearly, it was not their first time doing such a thing, so they moved after exchanging looks having distributed the specific tasks.</p><p>Realizing that Lin Huang was an Imperial Censor, both of them had a simple strategy.</p><p>The big guy would take down the imperial monster Lancelot who had the same combat strength as he did, which was imperial-level crimson gold-rank, while the skinny man would attack the Imperial Censor Lin Huang whose combat strength was only immortal-level rank-7.</p><p>To them, the battle would officially end as soon as the imperial monster was held back for a moment while the Imperial Censor was destroyed within a short period of time.</p><p>Alas, dreams were always beautiful but the reality was cruel.</p><p>As they fought, the big guy and the skinny man''s dreams were crushed completely.</p><p>Just when Lin Huang was going to pull his sword out, Lancelot flashed his trump card right away. Ten of thousands of black swords appeared in the air in an instant and transformed into a two-headed boa thousands of meters long. It swallowed both of them, opening its huge jaws.</p><p>"Keep one of them alive!" Lin Huang shouted immediately.</p><p>The main reason he chased the skinny man was to ask for information, not to obtain points.</p><p>Under Lancelot''s Sword Manipulation attack, Lin Huang heard a brief devastating shriek in the air and soon, the entire world fell into complete silence.</p><p>As the black swords faded one after another, two bodies appeared. The skinny man had lost his life and turned into a corpse.</p><p>Although the big guy was still alive, he was unconscious. His body seemed to be torn apart.</p><p>"Bloody, go for it," Lin Huang said while looking in the big guy''s direction.</p><p>Bloody hovered over to the big guy and extended two tentacles. One went for the big guy''s head while another went for the skinny man who was already dead.</p><p>A moment later, the big guy opened his eyes after Bloody recalled its tentacles.</p><p>Seeing Lin Huang and Lancelot standing before him perfectly fine while the skinny man''s corpse lay limply on his left, the big guy wanted to run, but he realized he could not move at all.</p><p>"Don''t even try. Running is futile," Lin Huang said to the big guy while grinning.</p><p>Bloody cast its parasite on the big guy but his consciousness was not wiped. His body was in Bloody''s complete control. Unable to get up to run, he would need Bloody''s permission to even move a finger.</p><p>"Now, let''s play a game. This game is called ''I''ll ask and you''ll answer''. First question, who are you?"</p><p>"I" The big guy wanted to curse, but he realized what he said would become the answer to the person''s question. "I''m the convict of this prison."</p><p>"Prison?" Lin Huang was rather puzzled.</p><p>"Yes, this enclosed space''s a prison. There are convicts like me in this prison," explained the big guy against his own wishes.</p><p>On the other hand, Lin Huang raised his brow. "So, this Royal Trials made a prison its trial venue. What a great way to save money! Who put you guys in there?" Lin Huang was curious about that.</p><p>This time, the big guy answered the question willingly, "Who else? Of course, it''s those people from Dynasty."</p><p>"What''s the reason for you being captured here?" Lin Huang asked again.</p><p>"Because I love eating human bone marrow." The big guy smiled while observing Lin Huang. "Do you know what kind of bone marrow is the most delicious? It''s the kind where you chop off the person''s limbs when he''s still alive and smash a hole in the bone after slicing the flesh away slowly. Poke a straw in and suck it directly while the human warmth is still swimming in the bones. It''s like drinking tea. You''ve got to enjoy it slowly. After you''re done with the first limb, go for the second one. Don''t cut them open at once, or else, the bone marrow will turn cold"</p><p>"Seems like you deserve to be put in prison." The big guy stopped talking as soon as Lin Huang spoke.</p><p>Bloody knew that Lin Huang did not want to hear that kind of story, so it made the big guy shut his mouth right away.</p><p>"Next question, what''s with this trial?"</p><p>"Such a trial happens every decade or so. There''s no fixed period for the trials to begin. It happens every 20 to 30 years if it''s short, and up to 100 years if it''s long," the big guy told the truth without being able to control himself. "Each trial''s a joyous festival to us because we can hunt for candidates as we like for the entire month. They become our limited food source."</p><p>"Cannibalism?" Lin Huang just grasped the meaning of the way the two men had looked at him earlier.</p><p>"It''s very normal to do that here. There''s no food or water in this space. The people from Dynasty only send food and water once a year while we''ll have to fight for other resources on our own. To us, the candidates are undoubtedly the best food."</p><p>Hearing what the big guy said, cannibalism was a norm, not his personal habit.</p><p>Initially, Lin Huang was hesitant to kill people who had nothing to do with him. However, now it seemed like those people in this space had completely lost their conscience.</p><p>"So, why don''t you guys kill and each other? From what I know, there are a total of 10,000 people in this prison," Lin Huang pointed out.</p><p>"Because Dynasty has a condition whereby there have to be at least 10,000 people in this prison. Apart from this special period when they carry out such a trial, if the population dips below 10,000 people on a normal day, they''ll clear everyone in this prison without any exceptions. We must guarantee the population so that we can live."</p><p>"So, everyone follows the rule just like that? What if someone loses their mind and carries out a massacre to drag everyone down?" Lin Huang raised a brow inquisitively.</p><p>"There are three chiefs in this prison who are the top among the imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. There are more than ten regional chiefs under the three chiefs. All of them have imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength. Together with the deputy regional chiefs, there are at least three to five imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses managing each region. A person who has lost his mind will be reported right away whichever region he''s from, and he will then become food. Everyone''s more than happy to report such a person because the person who''s reported will be given food."</p><p>"There are chiefs and regional chiefs who take care of different regions, and there''s a reporting system as well." Lin Huang was a little speechless that the convicts here had come up with such a simple social structure.</p><p>"Do you guys have the map of this prison and the distribution of population?" Lin Huang asked again.</p><p>"I don''t, but the regional chiefs and chiefs should have."</p><p>"I suppose you should know the map in this region and the distribution of population."</p><p>"Yes, basically the area within 300 to 400 kilometers," confirmed the big guy.</p><p>"I''ve retrieved the information." Bloody took over the conversation.</p><p>"Alright, my questioning ends here." Lin Huang nodded at Bloody. He turned around. As he moved two to three steps away, the big guy''s head exploded right away. He slumped on the ground as a headless body.</p><p>Bloody extended its tentacles into the two corpses and soon found two communication talismans.</p><p>"They have some Emperor''s Heart Rings and ancient relics where they live. Should we go for it?"</p><p>"Of course, those are the loots!" Lin Huang exclaimed like he deserved it.</p> 957 A Plot to Bai <p>"According to their memory, there are 42 convicts within 400 to 500 kilometers. There are 11 of them on imperial-level black gold-rank, 23 imperial-level crimson gold-ranks, and 8 imperial-level yellow gold-ranks. There are no imperial-level white gold or purple gold-ranks," Bloody came up with the data and spoke subsequently, "Figuring that killing them one by one would waste too much time, I thought of a way to attract them to us instead."</p><p>"I was thinking of the same issue earlier. Killing them one by one''s too slow. Moreover, those fellas have high alertness. They wanted to run away as soon as they noticed something off." Lin Huang nodded. "Tell me what you have in mind."</p><p>"Aren''t they lacking food? I have hundreds of immortal-level rank-9 people in my parasitical army. We could use them as bait." Lin Huang had a rough idea of what Bloody was planning as soon as he heard that.</p><p>After some detailed discussion, both of them began carrying out the baiting plot.</p><p>Bloody handed the communication talisman it had found from the skinny man over to Lin Huang. "The first target Ge Nan."</p><p>Lin Huang took the talisman and inserted Life Power into it. Then, the script and sigils on the talisman lit up rapidly.</p><p>Bloody spoke as soon as Ge Nan picked up. Its voice sounded exactly like the skinny man''s. "Boss Ge, I have a piece of excellent news."</p><p>"Be specific." A voice came soon from the other side.</p><p>"Sure, I''ll tell you right away." Bloody looked at Lin Huang and smiled before proceeded to speak, "I found a team of over 20 candidates."</p><p>"Skinny Monkey, you do know the consequences if you deceive me, don''t you?" said the talisman after a moment of silence.</p><p>"Boss Ge, how would I dare to deceive you? I wouldn''t dare even if I have 18 guts!" Bloody was on-point with the skinny man''s tone. Even Lin Huang flashed it a thumbs-up, looking rather surprised.</p><p>"It''s only been less than an hour since the trial has begun and you''re telling me that there are more than 20 candidates forming a team. How is that not a lie?" The voice sounded rather mad. "The candidates are sent in randomly each trial. It''s been less than an hour since the trial started. Don''t talk about gathering a team of 20. The chances of two candidates who know each other meeting are so low."</p><p>"Was it Tao Peng who asked you to lie to me so that he could attack me?"</p><p>"It''s really not what you think. I really saw a team of candidates. There are more than 20 of them. I''m also curious about how they managed to gather so fast," Bloody proceeded to explain with the skinny man''s voice, "If you don''t believe me, just pretend that I never contacted you. I''ll look for somebody else. I provided this piece of information because I know I can''t finish all of the flesh, so I thought of sharing with someone else. It doesn''t really matter who I share it with."</p><p>The person fell into a moment of silence before speaking again, "How much do you want?"</p><p>"Three of them," Bloody requested.</p><p>"No, you''ll only get one."</p><p>"We''ll both take a step back to meet in the middle. Give me two!"</p><p>"One and a half!"</p><p>"One and a half then." Bloody sounded a little unwilling.</p><p>"Give me the address."</p><p>"I''ll send it to you right away."</p><p>"Also, this will only be a secret between you and me. I don''t want a third person to know about it. If you tell someone else about it, I guarantee that you won''t get anything!"</p><p>"Understood." After hanging up with Boss Ge, Bloody turned to say to Lin Huang, "Second target Zhao Kui."</p><p>Bloody spoke using the skinny man''s voice again as soon as the talisman was connected.</p><p>"Boss Zhao, I''m Skinny Monkey. I''ve got great news for you. I called you as soon as I got the news."</p><p>"Oh, it''s Skinny Monkey. What''s up?" A casual voice came from the other side of the talisman.</p><p>"I found a team of candidates with more than 20 people." Bloody lowered its voice.</p><p>"The trial has just begun. Are you sure you got it right?"</p><p>"Definitely. How could I be wrong about candidates? All of them have soft flesh like a little girl. I''m drooling just looking at them." Bloody copied the skinny man''s style completely while Lin Huang, who was listening aside, was speechless.</p><p>The person fell into silence for a moment before replying, "How much do you want?"</p><p>"I want three."</p><p>"Three is too much., I''ll give you two at the most," Zhao Kui bargained right away, "I''m bringing my people there. I''ll need to share with them."</p><p>"Sure. You''re such a straightforward man, Boss Zhao. I won''t bargain with you further," Bloody said casually, "I''ll send you the address later."</p><p>After ending the call with Zhao Kui, Bloody lifted its head and said to Lin Huang, "Next one Shen Hong."</p><p>The talisman in Lin Huang''s hand soon lit up once again.</p><p>Just like that, Bloody contacted six imperial-level yellow gold-rank people and spread the news about the bait. Apart from one who insisted on not believing it about the team and called Bloody a liar, the rest agreed to bring people there. After all, a team of candidates was extremely tempting. It was food that was hard to come by.</p><p>However, the five of them realized that the rest were also recruiting while they were doing so.</p><p>Ge Nan was the first to contact Bloody with the talisman to question it after finding out. Bloody gave a bunch of excuses while Ge Nan ended the call, enraged.</p><p>After Ge Nan, there were another two who questioned it. Naturally, Bloody gave the same excuses.</p><p>Although they were angry, the few of them who found out that the skinny man had spread the same news to others did not cancel their plans to come up with their hunting teams. Instead, they moved faster in the attempt to complete the hunt before everyone else.</p><p>The person, who was initially skeptical, contacted Bloody immediately to ask for the address after hearing the others arranging the hunt. He decided to believe the news eventually.</p><p>Bloody asked for two bodies, and the person agreed on one and a half after some bargaining. It then sent the address over.</p><p>"Six imperial-level yellow gold-ranks Each of them will bring at least 10 people or even more. We''ll have at least 60 convicts this round." Lin Huang''s eyes lit up radiantly.</p><p>"This is the first reward. The subsequent ones will be even higher. Those imperial-level yellow gold-rank people will definitely have their ways of contacting imperial-level white gold-rank people or even ways to contact the regional chiefs. After killing the regional chiefs, our reward will be boosted even more." Bloody had already formed a complete plan of their move after this.</p><p>After spreading the news out with the communication talisman, Bloody picked 25 immortal-level rank-9 human parasitical puppets from the pet space.</p><p>Lin Huang blended in as well and did not even recall Lancelot. He wanted the convicts to think there was an Imperial Censor in the team, enhancing the authenticity of the team.</p><p>As it was done with the arrangements, Bloody hid in Lin Huang''s sleeve while he moved forward, leading the team. Patiently, they waited for the fishes to be hooked.</p> 958 Ge Nan and Li Li <p>Since hanging up the call with the skinny man, Ge Nan frowned as he lay in his bed. He had a blanket covering the part below his waist while his upper body was completely naked.</p><p>"That brat Skinny Monkey''s mischievous. He daren''t go against my word in the past and now he''s spread the news of the candidates right after promising not to tell anyone about it."</p><p>"Perhaps he''s out of his mind from the hunger. After all, it has been 50 years since Dynasty opened this Royal Trials. I guess it''s been 50 years since he had any food. It''s normal for him to contact a few others so that he can get more food," A lady lay naked next to Ge Nan. She glided her fingers with nails that were painted red along Ge Nan''s tummy and headed southward tenderly.</p><p>Ge Nan held onto that soft hand without saying anything for a while. "Are you trying to suck me dry, you little devil?"</p><p>"Don''t you want that, you handsome thing?" whispered the lady softly into Ge Nan ear as she leaned closer to him.</p><p>Ge Nan felt ticklish and his body responded to the lady''s irresistible words.</p><p>Noticing the changes in Ge Nan''s body, the lady snickered and sat on top of him. Her busty breasts bounced and she leaned forward toward him while seducing him. "Are you sure you don''t want it?"</p><p>Ge Nan gulped and took a deep breath in to calm himself down. "Oh no, I really can''t do it now. Let''s finish our business first and talk about this later."</p><p>"This is business too," said the lady while pouting.</p><p>"Come on. Stop teasing me," Ge Nan patted the lady''s butt cheekily. "Skinny Monkey spread the news across. The person who moves faster will have the highest opportunity to get the entire team of candidates. We must gather people now. We can''t afford to lose any more time."</p><p>"Hmph!" The lady shifted away from Ge Nan discontentedly. Slyness flashed through her eyes. "I want one more body then!"</p><p>"Sure, you can have anything you want." Ge Nan shook his head helplessly.</p><p>Getting up from the bed, Ge Nan slapped the lady''s butt again. "Get dressed now and follow me. I can''t get you anything if you don''t go with me. Or you could just stand there. That''s better than nothing."</p><p>The lady got up to put her clothes on reluctantly.</p><p>When the duo was dressed, they headed to the appointed place immediately. There were already 12 people waiting for them when they arrived.</p><p>"Boss Ge, Sister Li" The bunch of people greeted them.</p><p>Ge Nan took a glance at the people. "Since everyone''s here, let''s go!"</p><p>He waved and led the team of people towards the coordinates Skinny Monkey had provided.</p><p>As they were approximately 40 kilometers away from the coordinates, Ge Nan sensed their target in the range of his territory.</p><p>"Found them!" Initially, he was worried that the information Skinny Monkey had given might be wrong. Now that he sensed the target, the doubt he had all vanished. "A total of 26 people and an imperial-level crimson gold-rank summoning beast. Looking at the current situation, we should be the first team to get here. We''ve got pretty great luck."</p><p>Ge Nan could not help but peep at Li Li who was next to him as he spoke. He was secretly relieved that they did not delay much.</p><p>"I''ll handle the summoning beast. The rest of you will fight two people each. Li Li, you''ll handle the rest." Ge Nan completed the assignment as soon as he identified the exact location of the target. "Remember to do it quickly and don''t drag it out. Zhao Kui and the other few teams might come anytime. We must finish the fight before they arrive!"</p><p>"What if we don''t manage to end the fight in time? Do we fight with Zhao Kui and the rest?" A fierce gleam flashed through Li Li''s eyes. Zhao Kui had raped her before. The reason she had gotten together with Ge Nan who loved her dearly was in the hopes that he could kill Zhao Kui one day.</p><p>"Don''t fight with anyone no matter which team they come from." Ge Nan glanced at Li Li. Naturally, he knew what she was thinking about. "Our main mission this time is to hunt the candidates in order to obtain more food. If another team comes later, there might be a second and a third team coming after that. By then, it''ll be much more difficult for us to get food."</p><p>"What if they attack us just for the sake of food? Do we not fight as well?" Li Li asked while feeling hesitant.</p><p>"If something like that really happens, I''ll inform the regional chief." Ge Nan remained rational.</p><p>Li Li glared at him sourly but she chose to keep quiet eventually.</p><p>She was a wise lady. She never liked quarreling with men. She knew men''s weaknesses very well too. She knew when to fight for what she deserved, to get the men to compromise with her willingly. She knew that although Ge Nan loved her, he was not an idiot who would follow whatever a lady said. That was what she liked the most about him.</p><p>"I know what you have in mind. I, too, want to kill Zhao Kui, but this is not the right time," Ge Nan spoke through voice transmission secretly, "As soon as I find the right timing, I promise you that I''ll kill Zhao Kui to avenge you!"</p><p>Li Li calmed down a little after hearing Ge Nan''s voice transmission.</p><p>Indeed, now was not the best time to punish Zhao Kui.</p><p>Ge Nan was relieved that he calmed Li Li down. In reality, he was worried that Li Li would embarrass him earlier. Although their relationship was not a secret, it was a shame to be embarrassed in front of his bunch of juniors. Fortunately, Li Li stopped the nonsense in time instead of embarrassing him.</p><p>"Since we''re here, attack at once as soon as we get there instead of beating around the bush!" Ge Nan led the team and dashed towards the team of candidates that was less than 40 kilometers away from them as soon as he was done speaking.</p><p>It only took a moment for Ge Nan and the gang to get to the team of candidates.</p><p>"Attack!" Ge Nan shouted as soon as they met without uttering anything else. The bunch led by Ge Nan sped toward Lin Huang and the rest.</p><p>However, a little white cat appeared on Lin Huang''s shoulder at that moment. In the next second, it disappeared from Lin Huang''s shoulder and in less than 0.1 seconds, it appeared on the other side of Lin Huang''s shoulder. It squatted there while licking one of its front paws.</p><p>Meanwhile, Ge Nan and the 13 of them turned into headless bodies. Their bodies were dismembered into a few parts too.</p><p>As the parasitical puppets were collecting the loots, Bloody was done retrieving information from the 14 heads.</p><p>Bloody shook its head helplessly, looking at Li Li''s eyes that seemed like she did not die in peace. "What a poor thing, but you can die in peace now because I''ve avenged you. The fella who took your virginity and raped you many times died 15 minutes ago."</p><p>After shutting Li Li''s eyes, Bloody passed the head to one of the parasitical puppets. "Retrieve all the loots before burying it."</p> 959 Acting Skills Thatsre Off The Charts! In less than half an hour since Bloody spread the news to bait, disguised as the skinny man, six different teams of convicts came one after another. All of them were killed before they managed to attack efficiently. "A total of six rounds with 87 people. There are 7 people on imperial-level yellow gold-rank, 51 imperial-level crimson gold-ranks, 29 imperial-level black gold-ranks." Bloody shared the data. "Looking at these people''s memories, none of them could contact the regional chief directly and none of them have the regional chief''s coordinates. However, there are a few imperial-level yellow gold-rank people who knew imperial-level white gold-rank and imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. We''ve confirmed that those people have the contact information of the regional chief and his deputy." "Also, there isn''t much stuff on these 87 people. They only have some armors and weapons, but they don''t have any storage equipment. I''ve gotten my imperial-level parasitical puppets to search the place they stayed in. The search should be done within half an hour." "We''ll just wait then and carry out the next plan after we''re done with the search." Lin Huang nodded. The armors and weapons that the convicts had were just ancient relics, so they were worthless to Lin Huang. What he desired the most was storage equipment such as Emperor''s Heart Rings that were put away where they lived. Although those local convicts could not open them, he could unlock them when he got out of there. One must know that many candidates died in every trial. Although those geniuses who participated in the trial including the Princes from Dynasty had a low combat strength of mere immortal-level, they would definitely have many resources in their storage equipment. They might even have some unique treasures. After waiting for over half an hour where they were, Bloody''s parasitical puppets brought back the loots one after another. They handed over the temporary storage rings that did not require any password to Bloody one by one. Bloody was satisfied with the loots they acquired this round after calculating. "We''ve obtained 137 storage rings, 26 other storage equipment, and some other miscellaneous stuff." "So, what do we do next?" Lin Huang nodded and asked. Bloody took out Ge Nan''s communication talisman and handed it over to Lin Huang. "There''s a person named Shi Qiang in the contact book whose combat strength''s on imperial-level white gold-rank. He was put in this prison the same day as Ge Nan was. They''re very close. He''s a great breaking point. Most importantly, he knows where the regional chief lives." "Got it." Lin Huang took the communication talisman. As the talisman lit up, Bloody disguised as Ge Nan''s voice. "Brother Qiang, something happened. Li Li''s dead!" "What happened?" The person on the other side of the talisman sounded rather shocked. "A bunch of candidates attacked us earlier and I managed to escape, but Li Li and the rest were killed. I want to take revenge!" "Please calm down and tell me the details. The bunch of immortal-level rank-9s attacked you and Li Li? Were there many of them?" Shi Qiang proceeded to ask. "There were at least 100 of them. I''ve no idea how they managed to gather. Theoretically, it''s only been more than an hour since the trial officially began. The probability of two candidates who know each other and meeting is low, let alone 100 of them. This bunch of people might have cheated in their own way," Bloody proceeded to speak, "Furthermore, the key isn''t the number of people. They have an Imperial Censor among them with a couple of imperial-level yellow gold-rank imperial monsters. Each of them has an ability on par with mine." "They should be members from some major organization since they managed to gather 100 people in the beginning. They must''ve used some special item for this trial." Shi Qiang''s voice soon came. "The Imperial Censor that can control imperial-level yellow gold-rank imperial monsters whom you mentioned is most probably the seed player that''s fighting for the Protoss quota from a major organization. These people are putting in so much effort to obtain the Protoss quota." "Brother Qiang, I''m suspecting that they''ve killed the imperial-level yellow gold-rank people around. I tried contacting Tao Yu and Ji Dong, but I couldn''t find them." "It can''t be" Shi Qiang was in disbelief when he heard that. "Give me a minute. I''ll get someone to contact them." Not long later, Shi Qiang''s voice came again. "We''ve basically confirmed that there are five imperial-level yellow gold-ranks around your area with whom we''ve lost contact. There are some imperial-level crimson and black gold-ranks with whom we''ve lost contact at the same time. We haven''t confirmed the number at the moment. "It seems like this team of candidates have formidable ability and high speed! You''re fortunate that you managed to escape alive." "I might''ve been dead if they didn''t attack Li Li first." Bloody sounded bummed. Its acting skill was off the charts. "Stop blaming yourself. Find a safe place and hide. I''ll assemble my people here and attack those candidates." It was clear that Shi Qiang had completely fallen for the lie Bloody came up with. "Brother Qiang, I''d like to join too. I want to avenge Li Li!" Bloody proceeded to showcase its best act. Shi Qing fell into silence for a moment before nodding. "Alright then. but you must promise me not to act on impulse and follow my orders!" "I promise!" "I''ll send you the assembly point later." The communication talisman dimmed as soon as Shi Qiang was done speaking. "Your acting skill''s getting better." Lin Huang gave Bloody a thumbs-up. "It''s actually easy to act. I have Ge Nan''s memory, so I know his speaking habit and tone. In addition to the experience of playing other six characters before, I got into character easily this time." Bloody smiled as it spoke. "But the main reason Shi Qiang believes in me is because of the close relationship he has with Ge Nan. Instead of saying he believes in me, it''s more like he believes in Ge Nan. I merely used his trust." "I was thinking that you put too high a number when you mentioned over 100 people and I wondered if he would suspect that." Lin Huang nodded with a smirk. "Never had I thought that he''d find a reasonable explanation for how the 100 people gathered around based on the trust he has for Ge Nan." "Indeed, I didn''t have any explanation for that, so I mentioned that I had no idea how so many people gathered at the beginning of the conversation." Bloody nodded too. "So, now we''ll wait for Shi Qiang''s news. We''ll attack once we have the assembly time and coordinates instead of waiting for them to come." Everything Shi Qiang said was included in Bloody''s plan. Even the revenge it mentioned at the end was to obtain the assembly coordinates so that they could initiate the attack. Approximately half an hour later, Shi Qiang sent the assembly time and coordinates over. It was clear that he already gathered his men. "Assembly time 11.30 a.m. Assembly point Shadow Canyon entrance" 960 I’m Behind You Guys The Shadow Canyon was approximately 150 kilometers away from where Ge Nan lived. The reason this place was called Shadow Canyon was because of its unusual magnetic field that caused dark clouds to form above the canyon all year long. There was hardly any sunlight; the place seemed to be eternally hiding in the shadows. Due to the special magnetic field, the area within the canyon would weaken detective abilities such as the Territory skill. Even imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses would find that their territory was heavily interfered with or even blocked if they were to investigate this area from tens of kilometers away. Shi Qiang picked this place as the assembly point on purpose to prevent exposing their trail of the hunt this time, preventing any candidates from escaping. At approximately 11.20 a.m., Shi Qiang arrived at the entrance of the Shadow Canyon. He was ten minutes early. More than 40 people gathered at the entrance. Their combat strength ranged from imperial-level black gold-rank to imperial-level yellow gold-rank, and most of them were talking to familiar faces. Upon seeing that Shi Qiang was there, they greeted him with a smile. Some of them began voicing their doubts after greeting him. "Brother Qiang, could you tell us exactly what''s going on?" "Brother Qiang, does this have something to do with the candidates since you''ve gathered so many people this time?" Shi Qiang glanced through the people there. He had greeted at least 50 people. The bulk of them were present although there were still 11 of them who had yet to arrive. Looking at the time, he did not rush things since there were still ten more minutes to the agreed time. "Don''t worry. I''ll tell you what''s happening when everyone is here." The other ten arrived one after another not long later. Two imperial-level white gold-ranks were the last to arrive. They did not seem to want to be there earlier than the agreed time. However, Shi Qiang frowned slightly after the two arrived because his good buddy Ge Nan did not make it. "Old Shi, I guess everyone''s here, hmm?" asked a bald man, glancing at the time and raising his brow. He was one of the two imperial-level white gold-rank people who arrived last. "One more person isn''t here yet" Shi Qiang shook his head. "But he''s the one who provided the information anyway, so we can talk about the mission first. "It''s Ge Nan who provided the information this time. Perhaps some of you know him. He contacted me this morning all of a sudden, saying that a team of candidates attacked him. He told me that he might not be the only one who was attacked. From my investigation, indeed, there are five other imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses in his area who have lost contact. They might''ve been killed by the candidates. "According to the information he provided, there are more than 100 people among this bunch of candidates. There''s an Imperial Censor who is leading them, and he has a couple of imperial-level yellow gold-rank summoning beats." "More than 100 candidates?! How is it possible that they gathered so fast? I thought it''s only been half a day since the Royal Trials began." The bald man raised a question, "How could you believe this kind of ridiculous news?" "That''s not entirely impossible. After all, the Royal Trials are connected to hundreds of worlds if not 1,000 at the moment. Maybe they''re connected to some huge organization from some massive world that''s willing to spend on training Dynasty members." "To some major organizations, it''s easy for them to get a god-level or even true god-level group dimensional portal to transport them to the targeted coordinates. Moreover, an immortal-level Imperial Censor who can cross ranks and control imperial-level yellow gold-rank imperial monsters must be the best of the best among Imperial Censors. If I''m in the high management of that organization, I''d be willing to spend to train such a person." The other man with almond-shaped eyes who was standing beside him offered a different opinion. He had a combat strength of imperial-level white gold-rank, which was the same as the bald man. After expressing his opinion, the man with the almond-shaped eyes looked at Shi Qiang. "But, Old Shi, are you sure you can trust that information provider called Ge Nan?" "Don''t worry. He won''t lie to me," Shi Qiang said very firmly. He was even willing to share the reason why he trusted Ge Nan. "Alright then. Since you said that, there''s nothing more I''d like to ask," concluded the man while spreading his hands. "From what you said, I suppose this team of candidates should be moving around. So, how do we locate them?" The bald man did not dwell on the question earlier and asked another question. "That''s the hunting plan that I''m going to share." Shi Qiang nodded. "I''ve already informed some of the imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses who are around the area where the attackers were. They''ll inform us as soon as they''re attacked. Apart from that, the three of us will lead a team each to search in this area. As soon as any team finds the target, they must inform the other two teams immediately. Our top priority is to kill the entire candidate team instead of wanting the reward to ourselves because we''ve no idea what other techniques that Imperial Censor has." It was almost 11.50 a.m. after they were done with the discussion. Shi Qiang frowned slightly. It had been almost 20 minutes since the agreed time passed, but Ge Nan had yet to arrive. "Ge Nan isn''t here yet. Maybe something''s really wrong." The bald man looked at the time and could not help but mutter to himself. "Maybe he''s stuck. Let me call him." Shi Qiang took out the communication talisman. The call was picked up immediately as soon as he dialed Ge Nan''s number. "Ge Nan, are you coming or not?! It''s almost 20 minutes past the agreed time!" "I''m sorry. Ge Nan isn''t coming." A young man''s voice was heard on the other side of the talisman. It was clear that it was not Ge Nan. "Who are you?!" Shi Qiang was stunned to hear that unfamiliar voice and demanded immediately. However, he already knew the answer as soon as he asked the question. "I suppose you''ve already guessed who I am," said the young voice with a smile. "Where''s Ge Nan? What did you do to him?" Although he guessed the answer to the question, Shi Qiang wanted to confirm if what happened was really as bad as he thought. "I activated his communication talisman, so what do you think?" asked the voice on the other side. Shi Qiang looked extremely aghast to hear that. There were only two possibilities when the communication talisman was activated. One was that the owner of the talisman had wiped his own seal away while the other was that the owner was dead and the seal had faded on its own. Clearly, it was impossible that Ge Nan would wipe the seal away from his talisman. Only the second possibility remained. "Where are you? Do you dare to reveal your coordinates?" Shi Qiang held his fists tightly and asked while clenching his teeth. "I''m at the canyon behind you guys. Now, the question is, do you guys dare to come in?" retorted the young voice, "If you guys don''t dare to do that, I''ll come to you guys instead." Shi Qiang was stunned for a moment, but he did not fall for it. "Then, you can come to us. Don''t worry. I won''t kill you so easily. I''ll break every bone in your body and leave you to die slowly in sheer agony." "Save your nursery-level threat." The young voice sounded fearless. "But since you asked me to come to you, I''ll fulfill your wish then." A silhouette walked out of the canyon entrance before the voice was even done speaking. The people present were stunned to see the person''s face. There was only one person who looked younger than 20 years old. A monster that looked like a scimitar-toothed cat with an elephant trunk ambled beside him. "Keep the three imperial-level white gold-ranks for interrogation and kill the rest." The young man extended his hand and patted the head of the monster with the elephant trunk. The monster lifted its trunk up high and let out a screech as waves that were tenfolds faster than the speed of sound rippled out. All of the convicts collapsed wherever the waves spread out. Shi Qiang and the other two imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses were the only one standing where they were. They had completely lost focus in both their eyes. 961 Hat Mountain Shi Qiang and the other two men were on imperial-level white gold-rank. Their combat strength exceeded Bloody''s ability to cast its parasites on them. However, it was no trouble for Lin Huang. His God Figurine''s Combat Soul Nightmare Tapir had a hypnotizing ability. Although the Nightmare Tapir''s combat strength was only imperial-level white gold-rank, its ability was sufficient to control imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. As Bloody was attempting to retrieve the memories of the imperial-level powerhouses lying on the ground, Lin Huang began the hypnotizing interrogation on Shi Qiang and the other two. "What''s your name?" "Shi Qiang." "Why did you come to the Shadow Canyon?" "To kill the candidates." "Who told you about the candidates?" "Ge Nan did." "Who is Ge Nan? Why did you trust him?" "Dynasty sent us into this prison on the same day. Maybe because we went through the same thing, we clicked as soon as we talked. We then became good friends. He''s one of the very few people who I could talk to in this prison, and he''s also one of the people with whom I could let my guard down." After confirming that the hypnotization was working by asking what he already knew the answers to, Lin Huang then began cutting to the chase. "I heard that you''re close to Pang Bing, the regional chief here. Is that true?" "We''re not close. I''ve only seen him three times." "Does Pang Bing value you?" "Yes, he thinks that I can break through and he hopes to train me as his underling. He wants me to be the regional deputy chief after I break through imperial-level purple gold-rank and work for him." "You should know where Pang Bing lives then." "I do, I''ve been there once." Lin Huang was pleased to hear that. "Where exactly does Pang Bing live?" "On top of Hat Mountain," Shi Qiang proceeded, "He doesn''t live alone. He lives with his six wives. Two of them are on imperial-level white gold-rank while the remaining four are imperial-level yellow gold-ranks." "What? Does he live such a happy life in prison?! Six wives?!" Lin Huang widened his eyes after hearing that. "The regional chief is only a position surpassing the chief. The resources they obtain can''t compare with ordinary imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. These women must''ve gone to him for the resources. After all, resources are scarce in the Dynasty prison. They might not have food if they don''t depend on a powerhouse." Bloody heard this and explained, "I''m sure that apart from the six of them in his harem, there are more women who desire to climb into his bed in this prison." "What else do you know about Pang Bing?" Lin Huang returned to the topic after a moment of being astounded and proceeded with the interrogation. "In reality, Pang Bing''s ability is considered mediocre among the imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. However, he has two demigod-level types of equipment with him. One is a defense armor while another is a battle saber. The reason he managed to be the regional chief is mainly because of these two items. Apart from that, I heard he''s a relative of Chief Liang''s and they were put into this prison together. Nobody knew how true that is." After some interrogation, Lin Huang and Bloody gained a rough understanding of regional chief Pang Bing. Lin Huang then proceeded to question the other two. The duo knew nothing much about Pang Bing. However, they knew another regional deputy chiefs each. As a result, Lin Huang gained information that he was not expecting about the two regional deputy chiefs. Bloody was already done the integration after retrieving the memories way before Lin Huang was done with the interrogation. "We''re currently in Zone 17, which is Liang Jin''s territory. The regional chief is Pang Bing, and there are three regional deputy chiefs who all have imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength. Apart from these four, there are two idle imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses who didn''t accept Liang Jin''s recruitment. There are a total of over 3,000 convicts in the entire zone. Among them are six imperial-level purple gold-ranks, 43 imperial-level white gold-ranks, and 367 imperial-level yellow gold-ranks." "So, what''s the plan next? We already have Pang Bing''s coordinates. Do we go to him directly?" asked Lin Huang, "Or do we use our old trick to bait them?" "We can no longer use the old plan." Bloody shook its head. "In reality, there was a high probability that we might''ve failed when we were tricking Shi Qiang earlier. Fortunately, Shi Qiang trusted Ge Nan so much and didn''t suspect a thing. Otherwise, they definitely wouldn''t fall into our trap. The chances of failing are too high if we continue to use the same plan on Pang Bing." "So, do you mean that we should kill Pang Bing immediately this time?" "We kill Pang Bing after gathering information from him. We''ll kill the three regional deputy chiefs one after another later," Bloody advised. "Do we give up on all of the convicts?" Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard that. "Of course not." Bloody shook its head, wearing a smile. "Killing the regional chief and the regional deputy chiefs is the first step. We can only carry out our next plan after killing them." Bloody then shared the plan eventually and Lin Huang kept nodding while listening. "That''s such a great idea! If everything goes well, we can sweep everything in Zone 17 today." Lin Huang patted the Nightmare Tapir''s head while watching Shi Qiang and the other two standing there looking lost. "You can kill them now." The Nightmare Tapir''s eyes turned black like they were dyed with ink. A moment later, Shi Qiang and the other two fell to the ground. Life oozed out of them quickly. The 50-odd people who fell unconscious earlier were killed as well. However, their bodies had no wounds on their bodies at all. They did not look like they were dead. Instead, they looked more like they had fallen into a deep sleep. "Bury them. They''re human just like me after all. It''s brutal to just abandon their bodies in the wild." Lin Huang had no sympathy for the convicts, but he thought he should respect the dead by burying them. It would not take too much time anyway. Bloody summoned its hundreds of parasitical puppets and spent less than ten minutes digging holes. They then buried all of the corpses underground. "Let''s go to Hat Mountain now." Lin Huang summoned Thunder when he noticed that Bloody was done on its side and had recalled all of its parasitical puppets. Riding on Thunder''s back, they headed towards Hat Mountain. Hat Mountain was approximately 2,000 kilometers away from Shadow Mountain. With Thunder''s current speed, they arrived at the destination in less than 15 minutes. They encountered two rounds of convicts who attacked them along the way. Thunder accelerated to dodge them and they lost the convicts like a piece of cake. When they saw Hat Mountain in the sky, Lin Huang realized why the mountain had such a common name. The entire mountain looked like a conical hat. It resembled exactly the same as those pointed hats that witches always wore in fairytales. The only difference was that it was green. The entire mountain was covered in trees, and the sloppy tip stood tall in the sky. Compared to the mountains around it, this mountain stood out, which was how Lin Huang recognized it at first glance. "Hat Mountain lives up to its name!" Looking at the lush green mountain, Lin Huang thought that Pang Bang had an impeccable taste for choosing to live on such a mountain. 962 He’s A Manstress He''s A Manstress There was a palace perched on top of Hat Mountain that reached the clouds. It looked like the tip of a giant hat. Lin Huang patted Thunder''s neck. "Get down there." Thunder withdrew its wings and fell rapidly. It spread its wings again when they were about to land and hovered in the air. They landed at the entrance of the palace safe and sound. Lin Huang got off its back and recalled Thunder. He then summoned the Nightmare Tapir and pushed open the palace doors. He saw a steamy scene as soon as the door was pushed opened for a second. Six naked women surrounded a man who was also bare, licking the man everywhere. In a glance, Lin Huang saw the thing between the strong man''s thighs who lay reclining on the chair. He could not help but comment while smiling, "No wonder he could marry six wives. This fella can afford to do that." Bloody''s voice came into Lin Huang''s ears at that moment. "He''s not Pang Bing. He''s the regional deputy chief, Wang Xing." "Ugh" Lin Huang suddenly thought that the greenery in this Hat Mountain was perfect for the situation. Wang Xing stood up immediately upon seeing the door open all of a sudden. He widened his eyes and looked at the newcomers. The six women screamed as they hurriedly picked up their bras that were scattered all over the floor and covered their lady bits. Wang Xing had sensed Thunder''s existence earlier, but he did not care. Since Thunder''s imperial-level crimson gold-rank aura masked Lin Huang''s immortal-level aura completely, he did not notice that there was a human on Thunder''s back. In this prison, there were initially many local monsters. Since a supply of never-ending convicts was added in, most of the local monsters almost went extinct as a result of the convicts eating them. The chief back then noticed the severe food shortage and prohibited the hunting of local monsters. For the sake of maintaining the food source in the long run, they allowed those monsters to move around and breed. They would only hunt once a year. Although they would hunt annually, the hunting of baby monsters was prohibited. Therefore, Wang Xing did not care when he sensed Thunder''s existence. He thought it was just an ordinary monster passing by. How could he have guessed that Thunder would dash down directly when it arrived above Hat Mountain? It only took less than one second when Lin Huang opened the palace door. It was too late when he reacted as he was distracted, enjoying the six women''s attention. Compared to the women''s panic, Wang Xin soon calmed down upon sensing Lin Huang and the Nightmare Tapir''s aura. He did not even bother to look for clothes to cover his body as he stood up and shouted at Lin Huang, "Are you seeking death, candidate?!" "I''m sorry to interrupt your interesting activity." Lin Huang spread his arms wide. "I''d be happy to wait until you guys were done if I weren''t in such a hurry." "Don''t be sorry. Just suffer the death penalty." A sword aura shot out from Wang Xing''s hand that was lifted as soon as he was done speaking. It arrived in front of Lin Huang''s face directly. However, his eyes turned blank right away while the sword aura that shot out faded in the air. The attack stopped and his body could not move at all as if he was a puppet that was being controlled. At the same time, the six women, who were putting on their clothes in a panic, fell onto the ground. They seemed to be have fallen into a deep sleep. "Put on your clothes." Lin Huang lay on the chair and waited for Wang Xing to put his undergarments on before he began the interrogation. "Who are you?" "My name''s Wang Xing. I''m the regional deputy chief of Zone 17." "Why are you in Pang Bing''s home?" "The Royal Trials commenced today. The regional chiefs are holding a meeting. He''s not home, so his six wives invited me here." "Don''t you have to join such a meeting since you''re a regional deputy chief?" Lin Huang asked rather confusedly. "We only need to get our clone to go to most meetings. My clone went to the meeting this time as well." "Now that he''s being hypnotized, will his clone be affected?" Lin Huang asked the Nightmare Tapir. The Nightmare Tapir shook its head and sent a thought into Lin Huang''s head. He understood the Nightmare Tapir''s explanation right away. When a person was hypnotized, he would be in a kind of slumber while the clone was moving independently. Even if the person himself was in sleeping mode, it would not affect the clone. Furthermore, the clone would not sense whatever that was happening to the person. On the contrary, the person would be aware of whatever that was happening to the clone. Lin Huang was finally relieved after confirming that and proceeded with the interrogation. "Does Pang Bing know about your relationship with his six wives?" "He doesn''t. The six wives and I know his whereabouts very well, so we''re not afraid of being busted." "How long have you guys maintained this... relationship?" "It''s been 23 years." "It''s fine if you''re with one or two of his wives, but why do you do this with all six wives?" Lin Huang could not understand that. "Wife No. 6 is actually the spy that I asked to be with Pang Bing. Realizing that Pang Bing''s terrible in bed, she connected all of us together and it slowly developed into the relationship that we have now." "This female spy''s powerful. Not only did she give him five women for free, but she also threw herself into his embrace as well," Lin Huang mumbled softly. "Maybe this female spy has liked him since the beginning." Bloody''s voice came out of his sleeve. After some gossip, Lin Huang finally came to the serious stuff. "Where''s Pang Bing now?" "He''s at Sky Pillar Mountain, hosting the trial meeting." "Apart from you, who else is at the meeting?" "Another two regional deputy chiefs." "Are they using clones too?" "No, they went as themselves this time." "When does the meeting end?" "Looking at the current progress, I''m afraid it''ll only end at 1 p.m. or after 1.30 p.m. if it takes longer." "So, that means I can kill all of them this time without having to look for them one by one!" Lin Huang was elated to hear that. After asking a couple of questions, Lin Huang got the Nightmare Tapir to retrieve the memories of all seven of them directly and share the information with Bloody. Soon, Bloody came up with the detailed plan that they should carry out next. "There''s no need to keep these six women around, but we can''t kill Wang Xing just yet. His clone will disappear as soon as he''s dead. Pang Bing and the rest will know something''s off right away." "Moreover, there are many defensive measures at Sky Pillar Mountain. We''ll alert the enemy if we get in with Thunder by force. It''ll be much easier to get Wang Xing to go with us." "However, I''m afraid it''s hard to bring someone in since this is a meeting that''s strictly for regional chiefs." Lin Huang thought he might be suspected even if he followed Wang Xing. After all, Bloody''s initial plan was to invade the abodes of the regional chief and the deputies to kill them one by one. That would not be happening now. Bloody grinned to hear Lin Huang''s doubts. "Don''t worry. I have my way. Not only will Pang Bing and the rest not suspect your identity, but they''ll also get Wang Xing to invite you to the meeting!"The author is describing ñ (literal meaning: someone put a green hat on his head), meaning a person whose wife cheated on him. means green, hence the ''greenery is perfect for the situation''. 963 A Successful Invasion In the meeting room at Sky Pillar Mountain, an old man with silver hair sat on the main seat. The strong Wang Xing and a fat man with small, beady eyes sat on his left while a poker-faced man who looked mediocre sat on his right. The four of them were the regional chief and regional deputy chiefs of Zone 17. Wang Xing, who sat on the old man''s left, suddenly spoke as he waited for the old man to finish speaking, "Regional chief, my body says that he would like to discuss a deal with all of you." "A deal?" Pang Bing raised his brow upon hearing that. "What deal is that?" "A candidate came to my body approximately half an hour ago. He said he brought many food resources and he would like to make a deal with us," Wang Xing explained, "My body has checked the food that he''s providing. Apart from meat, there are also vegetables and fruits, and even drinks like alcohol. This candidate clearly came prepared." Food was the scarcest resource they lacked in this space. Ever since they entered this world, they were basically eating only meat. Neither was there any vegetables nor fruits around. Due to the barren land, they could not plant those at all, let alone brew drinks such as alcohol. The other three could not help but gulp when they heard that. "This prison''s barren. What does this candidate want?" Although Pang Bing was moved, he remained rational. "He said all he wants are that storage equipment that we can''t unlock," Wang Xing announced the condition of the deal. "He''s out of his mind to be asking for storage equipment in exchange for food. Any of that storage equipment could trade food that could pile into hundreds of Sky Pillar Mountains if he unlocks them." The poker-faced man scoffed. It was clear that he was extremely discontented with the condition. "You can''t say that, Old Ning. Although the storage equipment is valuable out there, they''re just a pile of trash since we can''t unlock them in this prison. They''re just trash even if there are god relics, god items or god-level methods since we can''t retrieve them! Food is the scarcest resource this prison lacks. Exchanging a bunch of trash with scarce resources, why can''t we do that?" The fatty sitting next to Wang Xing gave a different opinion. The poker-faced man scoffed and said nothing back. "What do you think, Old Wang?" Pang Bing turned his head to look at Wang Xing''s clone. "I agree with what Huyan said. We can''t unlock that storage equipment anyway, so it''s useless to keep them. Some of them have been here for thousands of years and we still can''t unlock them. Even if there''s something amazing in them, it''s futile since we can''t retrieve them. Why not just exchange them with food?" Wang Xing shared the same opinion as the fatty. "Why didn''t your body catch that fella directly and force him to hand over all of the food?" The poker-faced man asked Wang Xing. "I thought the same too, but that fella said he has a team who wants to work with us for the long term when we met. He''s the only one who brought food at this time since it''s the first time. He wants to see if we can collaborate. As soon as the first collaboration goes smoothly, they''ll bring in tens of members with food every time the trial opens and the amount of food will be more than tenfolds compared to this deal. Moreover, we can give them a list of the food that we need in the future," Wang Xing''s clone reiterated his body''s explanation. "Collaboration, my as*! Nobody knows how long until the next Royal Trials will take place in this space. You believe him just because he said he would have a long-term collaboration with us?! Don''t you know that everybody can make empty promises?!" The poker-faced man, on the other hand, had disdain written all over his face. "Wouldn''t we know if he''s making empty promises after he takes Huyan''s test?" Wang Xing turned his head to look at the fatty next to him. "Sure. It''s just testing an immortal-level which doesn''t require much effort," said the fatty while spreading his arms. "Then, that''s set. Old Wang, ask your body to send the candidate here directly. We''ll get Huyan to test him. We''ll discuss further if he passes the test. If he fails, we''ll kill him directly." Pang Bing eventually decided after the trio''s discussion. The poker-faced man crossed his arms and looked away with a dour expression, but he did not object any further. Thousands of kilometers away, Wang Xing''s body still seemed to have blank eyes while reiterating the clone''s discussion. "They''ve agreed to the deal, but before discussing it officially, they''ll do a test on you to make sure that the long-term collaboration you said is true. If not, they''ll kill you directly." "Test? Something like a hypnotizing interrogation?" Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard this, roughly guessing what the test was. "Something like that. There''s a regional deputy chief called Huyan Zhuo who is an expert in illusion whereby he can easily get the answer to what he wants to know," Wang Xing added, "Apart from the collaboration, they''ll seize the opportunity to ask information about the world that you''re from." "I understand now. Lead the way then." Lin Huang nodded, wearing a smile. Pang Bing and the rest were plotting against him, so was he not too? Approximately 15 minutes later, Lin Huang arrived at the core zone of Zone 17, Sky Pillar Mountain, with the guidance of Wang Xing. The mountain was the highest among all of the peaks in Zone 17. It was also where Wu Bin, the first chief of this Dynasty prison lived. Tens of millions of years ago, this prison had four chiefs and Wu Bin was one of them. It was those four who had implemented the orders in this prison which resulted in the stable development now. To show respect to Wu Bin, nobody ever lived in Sky Pillar Mountain. The palace that used to belong to Wu Bin slowly became the Zone 17 office. In midair faraway, Lin Huang saw many guards around Sky Pillar Mountain. There were at least 30 to 40 of them. Most of them had imperial-level yellow gold-rank combat strength and a few were on imperial-level white gold-rank. He was not surprised to see that since he had heard about it from Wang Xing earlier. As they landed on Sky Pillar Mountain, Lin Huang followed behind Wang Xing and entered the palace right away. Nobody stopped him. The guards did not even bother to look at him and ignored his existence completely. Lin Huang figured it must be Pang Bing who notified them before their arrival. Otherwise, it was impossible for him for step foot in this palace even though Wang Xing was there. After entering the palace, Lin Huang realized the palace was a demigod relic. The demigod relic palace looked brand new even though tens of millions of years had passed. Of course, apart from the accumulation of energy for generations, the credit must go to the people who managed it often. As Lin Huang stepped into the palace, the door closed automatically. In the hall, the gray-haired Pang Bing sat on the main seat while Wang Xing and the other two sat on both sides. However, Wang Xing''s clone faded immediately when Wang Xin himself arrived. He took big strides and sat where his clone had been before. Lin Huang stepped forward slowly. When Pang Bing was ready to ask his questions, the Nightmare Tapir had released the Ninetails Lynx from its alternate dimension. The Nightmare Tapir''s eyes turned completely black when a little white cat landed on Lin Huang''s shoulder sturdily. Pang Bing and the rest stared blankly. They could not move as they sat on the chairs. 964 The Disclosure of Dynasty As soon as the Nightmare Tapir activated its ability, Pang Bing and the rest were hypnotized without being able to fight back at all. After reading their minds for less than a minute, the Nightmare Tapir sent the information that it had read to Bloody. Bloody spend three to four minutes selecting and categorizing the information before snapping back to its senses. "So, is there any useful information?" Lin Huang, who was standing aside, asked. "There are quite some information about this prison and something about Dynasty. I think you should take a look," said Bloody and extended one of its tentacles, pressing it to his forehead. A moment later, the sea of information Bloody selected and categorized rushed into Lin Huang''s head. Lin Huang took close to half a minute to digest the information as he shut his eyes after Bloody was done with the transfer and had retrieved its tentacle. "Dynasty is that powerful?!" That was the first thing Lin Huang said after he opened his eyes again. In reality, Lin Huang already got some of the killed convicts'' memory from Bloody this morning. He found out quite some information about the other worlds. He gained a rough understanding of Dynasty after he got Pang Bing and the rest''s memory. He also had a preliminary understanding of the gravel world, the mini world, and the great world. The gravel world was a mini world with an incomplete order. It could be a mini-world that was growing or one that had fallen. The world that Lin Huang was currently in was a gravel world. Furthermore, judging from the current situation, it should belong to the latter category. In a gravel world with incomplete order, it was impossible to have True Gods in it. Even elevating to Virtual God was extremely difficult. A mini world was a complete gravel world. Such a world had complete order where True Gods could be born. There might be heavenly god-level powerhouses that surpassed True Gods who were born in a minority of powerful mini worlds due to some special reason or opportunity. Some people would call this kind of world a medium world, but in reality, the nature of such a world was still a mini world. A great world was the ultimate version of evolution in a world. In such a world, even lord-level powerhouses could be born. They could end a mini world with the flip of a hand. There were countable Lords even in the great world with many tribes and talented geniuses. According to Pang Bing''s memory about great worlds, Dynasty was not a tribe, but a special organization outside a great world. There was a division founded in the big world. However, such a division had a Lord guarding them. In the great world, their combined ability ranked No. 3 in all the organizations. Dynasty had an extremely high acceptance rate to be a member. Apart from the minority Bug Tribe and Abyssal Tribe, they treated almost all tribes equally without discrimination. They would recruit members from all the worlds every now and then. No matter whether the person came from a gravel world, a mini world, or a great world, they could be a Dynasty member as long as they passed the trial. The biggest advantage of being a Dynasty member was that they could trade resources they desired in the Dynasty market no matter which world they were in. Due to the massive number of Dynasty members in every world with the existence of many gods, one could purchase almost anything that one thought of. God relics and god items aside, one could even get methods to cultivate to become a Lord. "It seems like Dynasty''s a little bit like an upgraded Genius Union, but they have a higher demand for personal ability. Only one person passes in the end among the 10,000 supreme geniuses compared to Dynasty''s Prince," Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. "According to Pang Bing and the rest''s memory, even without me, powerhouses such as Huang Wuji of the Five Princes have less than a 10% chance of passing the trial looking at the candidates who''ve passed in history. "But the fact that I can trade different resources in various worlds is worth the effort to fight to be a Dynasty member." Lin Huang was sure that he wanted to be a Dynasty member after learning a little bit more about Dynasty. "Only the person who obtains the highest points in this trial will be accepted as a Dynasty member. Although it''s easy to achieve No. 1 on the leaderboard under normal circumstances, we can''t be sure about what special techniques the others have. We can''t see their points after all. To be safe, I suggest that we eliminate all of the participants first." Bloody offered a bold suggestion. Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. He had never thought Bloody would make such a suggestion. Bloody added after noticing that Lin Huang did not speak for a while, "Judging from the memory of Pang Bing and the rest, most of them who are participating in the trial came from a mini world while some of them came from a great world. The similarity is that those people came from major organizations. Some have True Gods in their organization while some even have Heavenly Gods. The seed players those organization sent should have formidable trump cards with them. We can''t rule out the possibility that they can harm you. The easiest way to eliminate those threats is to eliminate them right away." Lin Huang could not argue with what Bloody said at all. "So, you''re saying that we won''t be following our initial plan of going for the three chiefs? Instead, we''re going for the participants?" "We''re still implementing our initial plan as a whole, but we''re not clearing Zone 17." Bloody shook its head. "Because we need those convicts to hunt those participants." "You''re saying that we''re using the local convicts'' strength to eliminate all of the participants?!" Lin Huang understood what Bloody meant now. "That''s right," Bloody confirmed, wearing a smile, "The efficiency is too low if we do it ourselves. The trial is only opened for a month. It might not be sufficient for us to kill all of the participants hiding everywhere within a month. Using the convicts will be much faster. They''re more familiar with the terrain and the number of them is tenfolds more than the participants. It shouldn''t take too long for them to eliminate all of the participants if all of them hunt together. We can prevent the risk of the participants from attacking using their trump cards if we get the convicts to kill them for us." "So, what do we do next?" Lin Huang asked, "Do we find the three chiefs, hypnotize them and order them to hunt for the participants?" "Something like that, but we can''t order them to hunt just like that. Those convicts aren''t as obedient after all. Most of them won''t be enthusiastic about carrying out the order if we ask them to hunt right away." Bloody shook its head while smiling. "They''ll be more enthusiastic plotting a plan that makes them think them they''ll benefit," Bloody voiced its concern after telling its plan. "There''s another thing. The three chiefs are the top among imperial-level purple gold-ranks. Looking at Pang Bing''s memory, they might be supreme geniuses. The Nightmare Tapir''s combat strength''s only imperial-level white gold-rank, so I''m a little concerned that the hypnotizing might fail." Lin Huang took out a demigod-level soul crystal from his storage space, smiling after hearing that. "I''ve been putting this aside. Now, I can finally use it." He fed the demigod-level soul crystal to the Nightmare Tapir. After some ten minutes, it digested the soul crystal successfully and elevated from imperial-level white gold-rank to imperial-level purple gold-rank. It was Lin Huang''s third imperial-level purple gold-rank God Figurine''s Combat Soul! Within the ten minutes, Lin Huang got the regional chief Pang Bing to bring out all the treasures around Sky Pillar Mountain in Zone 17. "Shall we depart now?" Lin Huang could not wait to go ahead with the next plan after noticing that the Nightmare Tapir''s elevation was completed while he had the loots in his hands. 965 The Clearing Plan Takes Off Lin Huang got the Nightmare Tapir to go easy on the hypnotizing so that although Pang Bing and the rest were now semi-hypnotized, it seemed nothing out of the ordinary to outsiders. After that, Lin Huang left Sky Pillar Mountain and headed toward where Chief Liang Hao lived. Liang Hao was one of the three chiefs in the current Dynasty prison who actually had a secret identity. He was Pang Bing''s nephew. Liang Hao had a formidable ability and was worthy of being called a supreme genius before elevating to imperial-level. In the great world, he was considered a person with extraordinary talent. Unfortunately, he did not come from a powerful family and had rather bad luck. He grew up in a minor organization that Pang Bing had founded. However, someone attacked the organization when Liang Hao was still on immortal-level and the organization was completely destroyed. Since then, he had been following Pang Bing, living a life full of swindle. Ever since Liang Hao elevated to imperial-level, both of them founded a minor organization in the great world to con the rookies in the main city. They even killed the rookies after conning them to prevent from being exposed. Relying on those immoral resources, Liang Hao and Pang Bing cultivated their skills all the way to imperial-level purple gold-rank. However, the good old days did not last long. They eventually offended a Dynasty member one day. While the organization was destroyed, Liang Hao and Pang Bing were thrown into this prison. Ever since they arrived in the prison, Liang Hao soon realized that his ability made him a dominator in this space. He challenged the previous chief and killed him. Naturally, he became the new chief since then. Lin Huang learned about that information from Pang Bing''s memory. Lin Huang did not doubt Liang Hao''s ability. Liang Hao used to be a supreme genius after all. Perhaps his ability was nothing less than a pseudo-mythical-level monster since he elevated to imperial-level. His ability should be even more powerful now ever since he became the new chief. Besides having a full set of demigod relic equipment, he even got himself a god sword relic. However, Lin Huang did not think Liang Hao had the upper hand if he were to fight his God Figurine''s Combat Souls of the same combat strength. After spending more than half an hour, Lin Huang arrived where Liang Hao lived Dragon Pond Mountain. He sensed the aura of more than 100 imperial-level powerhouses in the Dragon Pond Mountain area when he was far away midair. Most of them were on imperial-level yellow gold-rank while a minority of them were on imperial-level white gold-rank. The latter should be the guards. He also saw a gigantic building on top of Dragon Pond Mountain. It was clearly another demigod relic palace. The aura inside the palace was blocked entirely, so he could not sense anything inside at all. However, he knew that everyone in the palace sensed his presence since the beginning. Apart from the people in the palace, even all the guards on Dragon Pond Mountain lifted their heads and pointed at the sky cautiously. Liang Hao, who was sitting on a brass throne, raised his head slightly. "A participant?" "Boss, do we catch him alive?" There were four other people in the palace hall, three men and one woman whose aura was clearly on imperial-level purple gold-rank. The four of them were Liang Hao''s personal bodyguards. "He''s only on immortal-level rank-7 Has Dynasty lowered its standards in the trial?" mumbled Liang Hao softly and shook his head, smiling. "Ignore him. The guards out there will take care of him." Before he was even done speaking, he faltered and soon looked aghast. The reason being was the young man, who appeared below 20 years old, summoned a monster which attacked all the guards on Dragon Pond Mountain until they slumped to the ground. They seemed to have been attacked by an invisible curse. In the next second, the young man grabbed the token hanging on the waist of an entrance guard and opened the palace door. Lin Huang and the Nightmare Tapir walked into the palace hall as soon as the door opened. He had a faint smile on his face while he glanced past the five of them present and his eyes eventually stopped on Liang Hao. "Who are you?" Although Liang Hao was asking Lin Huang, he had his eyes trained on the Nightmare Tapir. His instinct told him that this little beast that appeared rather small was life-threatening to him. "Hi, Chief Liang," Lin Huang introduced himself while grinning, "It''s your humble servant, Lin Huang, the participant. The reason I''m here is to let you have a good sleep." "Go!" Liang Hao shouted all of a sudden before Lin Huang could finish. The five of them left their seats almost at the same time, racing toward Lin Huang and the Nightmare Tapir like an arrow leaving its bow. At the moment, the Nightmare Tapir lifted its snout up high while releasing a loud roar from its muzzle. The sound wave spread almost 100 times faster than the speed of sound, and the five of them stopped moving. The four of them had their eyes looking blank while Liang Hao managed to struggle for less than 0.1 seconds before he became a hypnotized puppet too. After it was done reading their minds, the Nightmare Tapir sent the information to Bloody again. The Nightmare Tapir put all five of them into a semi-hypnotized mode once the searching of the loot was done. Lin Huang then headed toward where the second chief lived. It was close to four in the afternoon after spending close to an hour and a half hypnotizing the second and third chiefs as well as completing the search for the loot. Lin Huang stopped moving around. Instead, he stayed in the house of the third chief, Liu Hong. "We can commence our plan now that all three chiefs have been hypnotized." "Yes, we can get the Nightmare Tapir to make the three chiefs announce the hunting of the participants at the same time now," Bloody confirmed. "The notice must make the hunting rule clear. Those who manage to find the participants and provide accurate information will be given 10% of the prey. Those who manage to kill the participants will be given 50% of the prey. "Among the 35 regions, all of the members in the top three regions will be given 30%, 20% and 10% of the prey they hunt respectively as a reward. Regions that rank from No. 4 to No. 10 will have a 5% reward on the prey that they hunt. The regions that rank No. 33, No. 34 and No. 35 will have 10%, 20% and 30% of the prey that they hunt taken away respectively. "In the top three major zones, everyone in the major zone that ranks No. 1 will have 10% reward of the prey that they hunt while the No. 3 region will have 10% of the prey that they hunt taken away. The region that ranks No. 2 won''t have any reward or punishment." The notice was sent to the talismans of all the convicts in the prison around four in the afternoon simultaneously. They were excited and could not wait to commence the hunt as soon as they saw the notice. Under normal circumstances, the convicts would have to submit 50% of the preys that they hunted. 20% would go to the chiefs while 30% would go to the regional chief and regional deputy chief. The convict could only keep half of their prey. However, they would be given 10% as soon as they found the participants. Together with the 50% that they obtained from killing the participants, they would be given 60% of the harvest. If their region and major zone ranked No. 1, they would be given another 40%. That would be mean that they would get 100% of the harvest. Naturally, the regional chiefs were displeased to see the notice because their benefits would be taken away because of the new rule. Just when the regional chiefs were complaining, another notice was sent to all of the regional chiefs and deputy chiefs. "For the remaining bodies in this hunt, the three chiefs will only be given 5% while the remaining 95% will be given to the top 10 regional chiefs and deputy chiefs. The region that ranks No. 1 will be given 30%, No. 2 20%, and No. 3 10% while No. 4 to No. 10 will be given 5%." Everyone shut up as soon as the notice went out. The regional chiefs and deputy chiefs from the 35 regions gathered people to hunt for the participants immediately. 966 The Gravel World’s Dangerous Situation Huang Chenyu hid carefully in the branch of a big tree. He leaned closer to the branch and stopped breathing entirely. His heartbeat was so weak that it almost came to a halt. It was a disguise ability that he had mastered, giving him the ability to blend in with the environment rapidly so that nobody could sense his presence. With his current imperial-level crimson gold-rank combat strength, he could even hide being detected from imperial-level yellow gold-rank powerhouses'' Territory skill. He assassinated three local convicts throughout the day with the same ability. One of them was an imperial-level black gold-rank and two were imperial-level crimson gold-ranks. However, as the Second Prince of Dynasty, he was not hunting. Instead, he was avoiding himself from being killed. He hid on top of the tree for over ten minutes without moving. Midair, the search teams went by one after another. He was relieved to sense the aura of the two teams getting further and further away. "What exactly happened? It was fine during the day. Why did these convicts become so hardworking with their large-scale search for participants before the sky turned dark?" mumbled Huang Chenyu softly. "That''s because the three chiefs ordered them to hunt." A voice came from above Huang Chenyu. Stunned, Huang Chenyu did not look at the person at all as he hurried on tip-toe rapidly into the dense jungle. A skeletal gray silhouette followed closely behind him. He was getting closer and closer. Soon, his voice went into Huang Chenyu''s ears clearly. "This stealthy disguise ability of yours isn''t too shabby. You might be able to hide from me if your combat strength is a rank higher, but now you''re like a firefly in the dark. You can''t hide no matter where you go. Instead of wasting your strength running away, why don''t you just fight me? At least, you could die with dignity." Huang Chenyu said nothing as if he had not heard what the person said. He traveled through the dense jungle, twisting and turning in an attempt to get rid of the person. Both of them tore through the dense jungle for a couple of minutes. One was running away while the other was in pursuit. The gray silhouette seemed to be afraid of attracting attention and did not attack. However, a black gleam flashed diagonally at his front all of a sudden. Huang Chenyu was shocked, but it was too late when he tried to avoid it. The black gleam pierced through his chest and his heart burst into pieces. Huang Chenyu''s aura disappeared on the spot while he fell onto the ground. They gray silhouette behind halted immediately and revealed a tall, skinny man. He condemned in rage, "Who dares to take my prey? Come out now!" At the moment, a skinny silhouette walked out of the dense jungle slowly. He wore a white robe with disheveled long hair. He lifted his head and looked at the tall, skinny man as a challenge. "Do you have any comment on this?" "N-No comment." The tall, skinny man waved his hand immediately as cold, dense sweat dripped down his forehead. "I found this meat first. Get out," said the white-robed man casually as if he was telling the truth. "Yes, yes, yes I didn''t see anything!" The tall, skinny man turned around and immediately fled. He only stopped running when he was tens of kilometers away. He wiped the sweat on his forehead away. "Scared the sh*t out of me! Even the white-robed lunatic is participating in the hunt this time. Isn''t this fella a lone wolf whereby even the regional chief means nothing to him?" At the same time that Huang Chenyu was killed, a large-scale hunt for the participants took off everywhere. Many participants could not understand it until the final seconds when death loomed in front of them. Why did all of the convicts in the trial space go nuts and began seeking and killing participants when they had just skimmed the surface by killing two to three convicts? What they had no idea about was that someone had the entire space figured out while the rest were combing the trial space carefully. This person was the culprit who drove all the convicts nuts. As the hunt for the participants got heated out there, as a participant himself, Lin Huang was sitting on the couch in Chief Liu Hong''s home, studying the memory Bloody had selectively sent him. "Ahh, the so-called Virtual God and True God are just how the Protoss addresses them" According to the great world, virtual god-level was called destiny-level and was the level to consolidate Life Columns. There would be nine transformations in the Life Columns. Each transformation would be called a rotation, so there would be a total of nine rotations on destiny-level. In this level, a territory that was initially invisible would form a mini world because of the Life Columns. It was called a God Territory, which the Protoss called "Kingdom". After the nine rotations in the Life Columns were completed while the Divine Fire was lit, one would reach god order-level when they learned the orders and sequences, which was what they called true god-level. There were nine sequences in the god order-level. One would master a level of the order of the world every time they broke through a sequence. A complete sequence chain would be formed once the person mastered the order up to the ninth sequence. A powerhouse who achieved Supreme Godly Right covering the entire God Territory would be said to have achieved god sequence-level. Since the Godly Right could not be rebelled against and was formidable, the Protoss called the level heavenly god-level. The ranks were divided into five titles according to the intensity of the Godly Right and the God Territory which were duke-rank, marquess-rank, earl-rank, viscount-rank, and baron-rank. Moving up, Absolute Godly Right would be formed when one consolidated nine or more god sequence chains. A powerhouse who elevated his God Territory to Supreme Kingdom would be on what they called supreme god-level, which the Protoss called lord-level. Strictly speaking, only the God Territory of a supreme god-level could be called a real Kingdom. Even though a powerhouse had just entered supreme god-level, the Kingdom would already be fully opened and contain up to 1,000 mini-worlds. On this level, he could build an enormous Kingdom of his own easily. However, that was all the chiefs understood about the combat strength. Liang Hao and the rest had no idea how supreme god-level or lord-level were divided exactly, let alone the existence of other levels above supreme god-level. Nevertheless, the current information was sufficient for Lin Huang. He had yet to reach imperial-level now, so virtual god-level was far away from him, let alone the higher levels. Apart from learning about combat strength, Lin Huang had a rough idea about the tribes and the distribution of the organizations now. In the great world, the most powerful tribe would be the Protoss. The second would be the Bug Tribe and the third would be the Immortal Tribe. The fourth would be the foreign Abyssal Tribe and the fifth was the Dragon Tribe. Humans ranked No. 6, which was the lowest among all. The Dragon Tribe which ranked No. 5 was the only tribe in the top six that was not a prominent tribe. In reality, the ability of their top powerhouse was no less than a Protoss''. Just like the Dragon Tribe, the other tribes were less in quantity compared to the great tribes. Overall, they were not as powerful as the Dragon Tribe so they ranked after human. However, that did not mean they had no powerhouses. "Looking at the situation of the gravel world that we''re in, our world''s most probably within the range of power under the Protoss''s organization. Those that have been invading our world has always been the Protoss and the God Servants!" Out of the blue, Lin Huang noticed that after having a rough idea of the distribution of the tribes. "I think it''s more possible for us to be at the intersection of the Protoss and the Abyssal Tribe''s territories," Bloody added, "Many abyssal living things in the Abyss Brink should come from the Abyssal Tribe''s territory." "What you said makes it sound like the situation''s actually worse now." Lin Huang shook his head while forcing a smile. "It''s pretty bad. It''s usually just a copy for the Protoss to gain experience whereby they''d leave after they''re done with it. As soon as the Protoss and the Abyssal Tribe go to war, it won''t be just a one-off incident. The entire gravel world might even be destroyed." "Waiting for the Protoss to come and defend them then won''t be a solution. Even if the defense works in the end, it doesn''t solve the root problem." Lin Huang scowled to hear what Bloody said. "We must find ways outside of gravel world to solve it completely!" "I''m planning to break through to imperial level as soon as I can after I leave this trial space. I''ll leave the gravel world after settling some stuff!" 967 Number of Remaining Trialists: 1 It was midnight. A silhouette dashed at high speed in the dense jungle. Up to a hundred skinny silhouettes followed closely behind him Huang Wuji was running for his life like a mad man. Before entering this trial space more than ten hours ago, he had never imagined that such a thing would happen to him. As the Fifth Prince, he was well-prepared before coming to the trial. He even hired an Imperial Censor to sign a contract with three imperial-level monsters for him to bring them into this trial space. He obtained a Life Base as soon as he entered the trial space and elevated all the way to imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Initially, he thought elevating to imperial-level yellow gold-rank would give him the ability to fight most imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses head-on, making him the overlord in this trial space. Never had he thought that he would break the beehive after killing a few convicts and end up being chased by a bunch of local convicts who had lost their minds like he was a dog. ''Seriously? All I did was killing a few of you and up to a hundred people are chasing me for more than 5,000 kilometers. Plus, there are more and more people! Could one of the people I killed come from a powerful background? Am I that ill-fated?'' Huang Wuji sensed a few powerful aurae advancing toward him swiftly as he was thinking to himself. There were four of them and their combat strength was clearly on imperial-level purple gold-rank. Their aura was much more powerful than the usual imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. "Sh*t! These four must be the regional chiefs and the deputy chiefs of this region. Are people of such a level out hunting too?" Huang Wuji was hesitating as to whether to leave the trial now. He tried deviating his direction a little, but the people that were approaching him changed their flight trajectory immediately and headed toward him. "I''ve been targeted!" There were obstructions before him and people chasing behind him while he was surrounded on both sides too. Knowing that it was impossible for him to escape, Huang Wuji did not choose to give in. He went forward to the few imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses before him, clenching his teeth. Soon, both parties met. Huang Wuji glanced at the four of them. Instead of targeting the one who had the weakest aura, he had his eyes fixed on the one who had the most powerful aura. His intention to battle was skyrocketing. "If I''m not mistaken, you should be the regional chief. Do you dare to take my challenge?" "Boss, this kid''s interesting," said a shorty standing next to him while grinning. "You have excellent eyes." The man with facial paralysis, who was challenged, smirked. "Let''s play then." Huang Wuji tossed the golden combat spear in his hand as soon as the man was done speaking. The spear spun rapidly like an arrow in the air and a golden line reflecting the moonlight arrived before the man''s face. At the same time, he raced towards the man. The man with facial paralysis had no expression. He pointed his right hand in the air as he lifted an eyelid, pointing at the tip of the golden spear. The golden gleam at the tip of the spear disappeared. It expanded rapidly and exploded. Countless golden rays shot out everywhere as if a sun had just exploded. The blast sounded like tens of millions of thunders rumbling at the same time and the area within a radius of tens of kilometers turned into ruins. In the next second, the man with facial paralysis pointed in the air again as his eyelid twitched. A silhouette went from being invisible to turning visible. His body shot out like a cannonball as he spat a mouthful of blood out. "You''re worthy of being called the regional chief! You sure are compelling!" Huang Wuji realized how far apart his ability was from the person in that instant. The regional chief should have been a supreme genius even before he elevated to imperial-level. "Eh, he''s still alive?" The man with facial paralysis raised his brow faintly. Just when he lifted his hand in an attempt to attack again, he did not expect to hear the participant across him. "I''ll surrender since I''m not a match for you. You guys don''t have to send me off." Huang Wuji crushed the trial token without hesitation as soon as he finished speaking. His body was covered in a golden glow in an instant and it turned into a golden sphere. He then shot into the sky at the speed of light and disappeared in the clouds in the blink of an eye. Some seed players from other organizations who were sent in experienced a similar encounter with Huang Wuji. All of them came in with full confidence with the expectation of showcasing their abilities to win themselves a place in Dynasty. However, they were treated like dogs not even a day into the trial. Those who were slightly lucky like Huang Wuji managed to escape by crushing the trial token in time. Those who were unlucky could not even escape and were killed by a bunch of convicts who collaborated. Early the next morning, since the trial began, 90% of the 10,000 participants were disqualified, so only less than 1,000 remained. Looking at the calculated data the trial system conveyed, Lin Huang could not help but admire the convicts'' terrifying hunting efficiency. "It''s only been a day and 9,081 people have been disqualified. Including me, there are only 919 participants left now. Looking at the progress, they''ll clear all of the participants within one or two days." "I don''t think it''ll be that quick." However, Bloody gave a different opinion. "The reason the first hunt had a high efficiency is that the participants were caught off-guard since they didn''t expect the convicts to be hunting them. They had no upper hand since they''re unfamiliar with the terrain. "Those who managed to survive the first hunt should have top-notch abilities among those participants. Furthermore, after a night of escaping, they should''ve gained a certain understanding of the terrain. Although the number of convicts has the absolute upper hand, it''d take at least a week to kill all of the participants." "What you said makes sense." Lin Huang figured that he was thinking too shallowly after hearing Bloody''s explanation. "Seems like we can only wait patiently." Lin Huang spent the next few days practicing his swordsmanship. Time flashed by and a week had passed. Among the 10,000 participants, three people survived. Apart from Lin Huang, the other two had been playing hide-and-seek of all sorts with the convict army. According to the messages the convict army sent back, the two participants were imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouses. The ordinary imperial-level purple gold-rank could do nothing for them since they would only be afraid of masters such as the regional chief. Just when Lin Huang was cracking his head, pondering how to kill the two people, the number of remaining participants dropped to 2 all of a sudden. It was clear that someone had either been killed or disqualified. "There''s this one last man left. The Dynasty member quota will be mine as soon as he''s dead," Lin Huang muttered softly at the number 2. Soon, two days had passed and the number of remaining participants stayed unchanged at 2. Even Lin Huang was considering if he should hunt the person himself. After lunch, a maidservant walked toward Lin Huang with a plate of fruits. She turned her head after placing the plate on the coffee table and realized that Lin Huang was looking at her smiling. "Don''t go since you''re here." Lin Huang grabbed the lady''s wrist. "Are you sure about that, Master?" The lady leaned in while smiling sweetly. "Of course I am." Lin Huang released her arm and pulled her into his embrace. At the moment, the lady grinned and grabbed a short blade from her sleeve. She shoved it rapidly and pierced it through Lin Huang''s head. However, the lady had a slight change of expression at the same time. She stepped back quickly because she saw Lin Huang''s penetrated head being crushed into pieces and fading away. "There are two things that I didn''t expect. One is that you''d be a lady and secondly, I didn''t expect you to come to my doorstep." Lin Huang stood at the entrance of the palace and looked at the lady in a maid''s uniform as he leered. "Perhaps I couldn''t do anything to you if you were to hide properly for a short period of time, but now" "I didn''t expect it to be an immortal-level who managed to create such a stir in Dynasty''s trial space and get everyone disqualified." The lady''s body gradually transformed into her original body. She was a beauty, much prettier than the maidservant that she had disguised as earlier. "Can I ask you a question? How did you find out about me? I thought I disguised myself perfectly as this maidservant. There shouldn''t be any flaws at all." "I hypnotized everyone in this palace, but you''re the only one who isn''t under the spell." Lin Huang knew this lady was the last participant that he was looking for as soon as he laid his eyes on her. "Since you''re done asking, do you want to leave by yourself or should I send you out?" Lin Huang asked while smirking. "Aren''t I the one who has the upper hand in such a situation?" It was clear that the lady did not want to give up on the member quota of Dynasty that was just right there. "Some things can''t be seen by the naked eye." Lin Huang smiled while raising his brow. Just when the lady was attempting to launch an attack, she felt a searing pain that spread from her neck out of nowhere. In the next second, her head tumbled from her neck as fresh blood spurted out of her neck like a fountain. Lin Huang''s silhouette was reflected in the eyes of the head on the ground. Without any realizing it, a tiny little cat had appeared on his shoulder. A notification from the trial system popped up before Lin Huang all of a sudden. "Number of remaining participants: 1" 968 The Hongmen Feas On the tenth day since the Royal Trials began, apart from Lin Huang, all 10,000 participants were disqualified. By then, Lin Huang had completed a significant part of the goal of his journey in the Royal Trials. Glancing away from the notification coming from the trial system, Lin Huang observed the headless lady''s body. A ball of black liquid appeared on the left side of him. It then turned into a black stream and headed towards the lady''s headless body and her decapitated head. Approximately ten seconds later, the black liquid vanished completely. The lady''s severed head was reconnected with black threads. As if she had merely faked her death, the lady stood up from the ground. Her aura was still the initial imperial-level white gold-rank aura. Apart from her eyes that were now all black without any white irises, nobody could tell there was anything off about her. "Master." The lady bowed respectfully to Lin Huang slightly as she fixed her eyes on him. Lin Huang raised his brow. The ball of black liquid was his God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Undead Styx. He roughly knew that it could resurrect the dead. Furthermore, the person who was resurrected would be immortal. Because the lady before him had a terrifying ability when she was alive, he suddenly had an idea of trying the Undead Styx''s resurrection ability. "Does this resurrection preserve her ability and memory from when she was alive?" "Yes. As long as the soul''s intact, complete preservation is possible," replied the lady with a nod. "Even if the brain''s been destroyed?" Lin Huang asked rather surprisedly. "That doesn''t matter. It won''t affect anything whether it''s destroyed or rotting because I retrieve information from their soul." "How many people can you control at once?" Lin Huang asked again. "According to my inherited memory, there shouldn''t be a limit on the quantity." The Undead Styx''s answer was rather out of Lin Huang''s expectations. "Wouldn''t it burden you if the number is too high?" "No. The soul and body I devour will become part of my body, so it''ll only strengthen me." "What about the limit to the resurrection combat strength?" "The highest I can resurrect will be imperial-level purple gold-rank. I can''t resurrect people on demigod-level and above due to the Divine Power in their bodies. However, since my combat strength''s only on imperial-level white gold-rank now, it''ll take a longer time for me to resurrect an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse. The more powerful the soul is, the longer it''ll take." "How long does it take for you to resurrect an imperial-level purple gold-rank then?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Usually around three minutes. I''ll need at least ten minutes for those who''ve elevated from supreme genius. If the person''s comparable to a quadruple mutated monster, it''ll take at least two hours. Due to the combat strength restriction, I can''t resurrect many imperial-level purple gold-ranks at once currently. I can only resurrect one at a time. I won''t have this problem if my combat strength is elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank. Then, the speed of my resurrection will experience a boost by tenfolds too." Lin Huang asked a couple more questions and achieved a better understanding of the Undead Styx''s abilities. After recalling the Undead Styx, he realized that the resurrected lady had disappeared as well. "With the Undead Styx''s ability, it won''t take long for us to build an undead army," Bloody declared while smiling in envy. "You don''t have to be envious of its ability. All it does is resurrect dead beings while you can cast parasites and control all living things," Lin Huang comforted. Bloody did not dwell on the topic. It then focused on the important thing at hand. "Now that all of the participants have been cleared, we''ll have to clear the convicts next." "Do you have any idea how to gather these convicts together?" Lin Huang had been thinking about it for these past few days, but he could not come up with a solid plan. "It''s simple. We''ll organize a Hongmen feast!" Bloody told him how to carry out the next plan in detail. Both of them discussed until late at night until they had nailed down all the details of the Hongmen Feast. When it was almost 10 p.m., Lin Huang got the Nightmare Tapir to issue the order to the three chiefs. They announced a new notice together when it was 10 p.m. sharp. "The participant-clearing collaboration has officially ended!" "Congratulations, everyone! It''s the first time we''ve cleared all the Dynasty participants in our territory." "The three chiefs are officially inviting all regional chiefs, regional deputy chiefs and all members in this prison to have a feast tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the foot of Tongtian Peak." "By then, please submit all the meat that everyone has hunted this time. We will calculate and rank the three zones and regions based on the number of prey. After the ranking is done, we will distribute the meat according to the rule that was set earlier." "The three chiefs will come to your doorstep if anyone doesn''t attend the feast at the said time and if you hide the meat. All the meat will be confiscated and you won''t be given any food and water for a hundred years. Those who refuse to surrender the meat when the three chiefs visit will be killed on the spot!" Those who were planning on playing tricks eliminated their plan as soon as the notice went out. Nobody wanted the three chiefs to come to them and they were far from willing to give up on a hundred years of food and water. Although the notice was filled with harsh words and it was rather odd to demand everyone to be there, not many people suspected the authenticity of the notice. A similar incident had happened before; it was not the first time the three chiefs were doing such a challenge. Besides that, the trio had announced the notice together, proving that they had discussed this before, so the probability of it being fake was almost zero. Nobody would be able to figure that the three chiefs were being controlled without them even realizing it. Since the notice went out, many of them departed directly to Tongtian Peak. A minority of powerhouses who were not in the organization under the three chiefs frowned slightly when they saw the notice. They communicated with each other immediately. "I''m sure you guys saw the notice Liang Hao and the rest sent, didn''t you?" "Yes, it''s obvious that they''re pointing at us." "Didn''t we just got a few bodies when we followed the crowd? It''s so petty for them to want us to submit all the bodies." "It has nothing to do with the meat. The trio is just seizing the opportunity to flaunt their power." "Do we go? I''m guessing they might really come to us if we don''t. Since they''ve already announced that, they wouldn''t want to look bad." "Of course we''re going. They''ll have something to hold against us if we don''t. We''ll just play by their rules. If they ask for trouble even if we obey, we''ll kill them together. Let''s see who''ll die then!" "Let''s see what kind of trick they''re pulling off." Clearly, this notice had extremely high oppressive power. Even those who were usually rebellious did not dare to say anything this time. Even a minority of them, whose abilities were comparable with Liang Hao and the rest, chose to compromise. After all, they would not be able to take Liang Hao and the rest on since they had more people on their side no matter how powerful their personal ability was. If they really were to fight, the upper hand was not theirs. Lin Huang and Bloody waited patiently for the next day to come after sending the notice out. 969 We Should Be Humble Instead of Being High on Pride Tongtian Peak was the interception of the three zones. It had also been the fixed venue for all of the collaborative activities of the three zones for tens of thousands of years. It was past nine in the morning, but the foot of Tongtian Peak was already congested with people. Most of them made it there last night and they had been waiting at the foot for a night. Apart from the minority of them who had been killed by the two days ago, basically 99% of the 100,000 convicts in the entire prison were here. Lin Huang, on the other hand, arrived at the place leisurely after having some light breakfast early in the morning. However, he was hiding in the Ninetails Lynx''s alternate dimension where nobody could see him. Everyone was relaxing while chatting with people they knew since the chiefs were not there yet. Even some of the regional chiefs were talking about the feast this time. "Why do you guys think the three chiefs are doing this? If they''re going to divide the meat according to the rules that they''ve set, they won''t be getting much meat." "I guess they just want to torture us since they''re bored." "What else? They just want to show off! Remember the Octodecathlon last time?" "Don''t talk about the Octodecathlon anymore. Ugh, I get so pissed whenever someone mentions this!" "Oh yeah, your region came in last for the Octodecathlon last time. What? Are you fighting for the last place again this time?" "F*ck! Can''t you say something more auspicious? Boss Zheng will kill me if we get last again." "Do you guys think the people in Dynasty will go insane since we''ve cleared all the participants in the Royal Trials this time?" "I don''t think so since we''re only one of the tens of thousands of trial venues. Moreover, it''s normal for participants to fail. It''s not like there''s always an implicit condition whereby the participant who gets the most points must obtain at least 1,000 points." "I don''t think so either. This is only a Rank-D trial space after all. The participants will only get a Rank-D authorization even if they pass this trial. There are at least millions of Dynasty members with Rank-D authorization. They wouldn''t care whether they have one more or one less Rank-D member." Liang Hao and the other two arrived at the scene when it was approximately 9.55 a.m. Everyone who gathered at the foot of the mountain fell into a hushed silence as soon as the three showed up. They then shuffled back to their own teams. "I won''t beat around the bush. Regional chiefs, do a headcount and see who isn''t here yet. Hand me the list of absentees. Cross the names of those who made it before 10 a.m. off the list. We''ll handle those who arrive after 10. Their meat will be confiscated and they won''t be given food and water for 100 hundred years!" Many regional chiefs looked solemnly at the other two chiefs, Zheng Tu and Liu Hong. Both of them nodded to the regional chiefs under their wings. "Follow what Chief Liang said." The regional chiefs and regional deputy chiefs began working as soon as the two spoke. Many of them who made it just on time looked guilty, they were secretly relieved that they were not late. When it was almost 10 a.m. sharp, four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse whose aura was nothing less than Liang Hao and the rest arrived just in time. They way they looked at Liang Hao and the rest two was a little provocative. However, Liang Hao and the two did not do anything about that since they were under the Nightmare Tapir''s control. Liang Hao spoke again as soon as time passed ten. "Those who haven''t arrived will be given the punishment that was set last night." Around some ten minutes, only three among the 35 regional chiefs handed the list. Everyone in the remaining regions made it there. There were only four names on the three lists. Among the four names, one of them made it to Tongtian Peak but he was approximately three minutes later. The people who knew him turned to look at him when the three chiefs read out his name. Most of them had teasing expression on their faces, only a minority of them had sympathy flashed through their eyes. "Chief Zheng, please give me one more chance. I could''ve made it on time but I was chased by a monster when I was on the way. I took a big round and that''s why I''m late" Zheng Tu, who was short and muscular, spoke without an expression on his face, "You''re an adult. Adults should pay for their mistakes. There''s nothing to complain about. No matter what the reason is, it''s a fact that you''ve broken the rule that we''ve set. If I let you go this time, we''ll set precedence. In the future, everyone will think that they can break the rule that we''ve set. Just accept the punishment obediently and stop complaining. I''ll kill you if you continue to complain!" The man, who still wanted to argue, shut up immediately. He dared not utter another word. "We''ll visit the remaining three who haven''t made it here until now after the feast has ended." Zhang Tu glanced at everyone when he said that. Many people had goosebumps from that warning of his. "Alright, we''ll begin with the submission of the meat. All the members of each region will hand all of the meat to your regional deputy chiefs. The regional chiefs will be responsible for registering and calculating the data. Pass the data to your chief when you''re done with the calculation. The three of us will confirm the number. Don''t cheat. All the meat from the entire region will be confiscated if we find out that anyone has cheated on the data!" All of the regional chiefs who were planning to cheat began the registration obediently when they heard the last sentence. Lin Huang stayed in the alternate dimension until past noon. Seeing that everyone surrendered the thousands of participants'' bodies they had hunted and put them into 35 piles, he got the Ninetails Lynx to release him. Everyone looked puzzled when he appeared next to the three chiefs. Many of them reacted immediately upon realizing that he was a foreign participant. However, what puzzled them was that the three chiefs seemed to be ignoring him. "Get good sleep, all of you." Next to him, the Nightmare Tapir released a loud roar as Lin Huang snapped his fingers. The sound wave spread at a speed that was close to 100 folds faster than the speed of sound. Many of the convicts fell onto the ground wherever the sound wave passed by. The few imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses who had similar abilities with Liang Hao and the rest had the fastest reaction. They sped toward Lin Huang in an attempt to attack him. However, they lagged far behind the Nightmare Tapir''s sound wave attack no matter how fast they were. All of them fell midair as the sound wave spread. In less than a second, at least 100,000 convicts fell into the Nightmare Tapir''s dreamland. After spending more than an hour reading everyone''s minds, the Nightmare Tapir made everyone fall asleep in the dreamland forever. Lin Huang then summoned the Undead Styx to take over the loose ends. The Undead Styx that was initially the size of four basketballs turned into a flowing black river. It devoured all of the convicts apart from the imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. In less than an hour, more than 4,000 participants and 100,000 convicts, who were deep in the dreamland, woke up again. However, their eyes were now pure black as if they were dyed with ink. The Undead Styx spent almost a day and night to devour all the remaining over 180 imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses before resurrecting them. The three chiefs took the longest whereby it spent more than half an hour resurrecting them. Lin Huang was beaming with pride as he looked at his imperial-level army that was close to 110,000 people. "Such an army should be enough to clear any organizations in a gravel world." However, Bloody soon ruined his imagination. "I''m afraid it''s not sufficient yet. Even though the imperial-level powerhouses'' numbers surpass any organization''s, we''re still lacking the peak combat strength demigod!" "In an organization such as the Union Government, they would have at least 15 demigods. The Hunter Association would have more than ten. I''m afraid that even Dynasty would definitely have more than five. And that''s conservative speculation." Lin Huang''s pride was torn as Bloody practically splashed a bowl of cold water onto him. "Hmm, I think we should be humble instead of being high on pride then." 970 He Took All the Corpses With Him The Undead Styx that had a 110,000-strong army under its wing controlled the undead army to go their old lair respectively as Lin Huang ordered. They then searched for loots in the lair. Although most of them had no space for equipment, the Undead Styx could turn into liquid and devour all the items to store them inside its body temporarily. Whilst the undead army was searching for loots, the Undead Styx shared the memory of its army members with Bloody. After some selecting and arranging, Bloody shared the useful bits with Lin Huang. More than an hour later, the undead army came back when Lin Huang was still digesting the sea of memories in his head. They handed all of their stored items to Lin Huang without holding back. Apart from their items, the treasuries of the 35 regions were emptied too. Also, the over 4,000 participants'' storage equipment became Lin Huang''s loots too. Lin Huang only left each of them a set of weapon and armor equipment. After the search of loots, Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to let go off the three convicts who did not come to the feast. He made the Undead Styx control the three chiefs to lead and form three teams consisting of the regional chiefs and deputy chiefs to kill the remaining three. When the three convicts, who were thousands of kilometers away, died eventually, a notification from the system popped out in front of Lin Huang immediately. "Number of Remaining Participants: 1 "Number of Remaining Convicts: 0 "All of the convicts are killed, the trial has officially ended! "Calculating trial result "Participant: Lin Huang "Gender: Male "Age: 18 "Combat Strength: Immortal-level Rank-7 (Candidate''s cultivation system is eligible for the trial) "Qualification Assessment: Grade-A "Basic Points: 552,831 "Reward Points (Killing Regional Chiefs): 780,000 "Reward Points (Killing Chiefs): 300,000 "Total Points: 1,632,831 "Qualification Result: Total points exceed one million points, trial result Perfect. "Congratulations, participant, you''ve obtained a Perfect qualification in the trial and won yourself a Rank-A Dynasty member authorization! "The trial has officially ended! "Do you want to be sent out of the trial space right now?" Lin Huang selected "no" immediately. "Reminder: Please handle the loose ends as soon as you can. The trial space will shut down automatically 24 hours later. You can leave anytime within the 24 hours. At the last minute before the trial space shuts down, you will be sent back to your world by force whether you''re willing to leave or not." No more notifications popped out from the system after the reminder. Lin Huang stood there looking a little lost. He had yet to digest the sea of information Bloody had sent earlier and the system issued such a reminder all of a sudden. It caught him by surprise. Theoretically, he would not obtain a million points after killing all of the convicts. However, after studying the two reward points closely, he realized that he was given 10,000 reward points for killing each regional chief and 5,000 reward points for killing each regional deputy chief. As for each chief, he was awarded 100,000 reward points. As a consequence, he accumulated a total of over 1.6 million points. What he was even more confused about was that he was given a Rank-A Dynasty member authorization albeit having participated in a Rank-D trial. "What''s happening? Could the Dynasty member authorization have something to do with the trial points?" "Indeed, it''s related to the trial points." Although Bloody could not see the system notification Lin Huang read, it took over the subject anyway. "Liang Hao and the rest have a related memory on this. The participants will only pass if they obtain more than 1,000 points. Otherwise, it''s futile even if they get first place in the trial after staying for a month in the trial space. However, the participants who pass the trial will only be given Rank-D Dynasty member authorization. "As the points go up, the trial qualification will be classified ''Good'' as long as the points exceed 10,000 and a Rank-C Dynasty member authorization will be granted. Those who obtain even higher points will qualify for ''Outstanding'' as long as the points exceed 100,000 and the person will be given a Rank-B Dynasty member authorization. "However, nobody knows if one would attain higher authorization if they obtain more points than that. The highest Liang Hao and the rest have in their memories is Rank-B authorization." The related information appeared in Lin Huang''s head after Bloody reminded him. Although the three chiefs had no information about the Rank-A authorization, it was easy for him to figure the reason he had obtained the Rank-A authorization from the available information. It should be the reason he accumulated more than 1 million points and was graded Perfect. After solving his doubt, Lin Huang put aside the Dynasty member authorization temporarily while proceeding to digest the information Bloody had sent. The three chiefs returned with glory a few minutes after he was done digesting the information. They brought back the dead bodies and loot of the three men who refused to join the feast. "The three of them are on imperial-level purple gold-rank. Two of them have similar abilities with the regional chiefs while one has an ability that''s comparable to the chiefs," reported the Undead Styx through Liang Hao. "It''s a good thing that the undead army has three more outstanding fighters now!" Lin Huang nodded while smiling and putting the loots away in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. The Undead Styx spent some time to resurrect the three imperial-level purple gold-ranks one after another. By then, all of the convicts were dead and had become members of the undead army. "We should''ve already done everything we need to in this trial space. There''s nothing that we left out. Am I right?" Lin Huang held his head down and asked Bloody that was in his sleeve. He could not think of anything that had not been done. "You''re the only participant left and all the convicts have become part of the undead army." Bloody thought about it and said, "As for the plunder, we''ve searched through all the accommodation of the 4,000 participants and 100,000 people. We didn''t leave anything behind in the treasuries of the regions and zones. Even a few mini treasuries that a few regional chiefs squirreled away didn''t escape from the Undead Styx''s mind-reading. We''ve got everything." "If we have to look for things that we haven''t searched, we''re left with the hundreds of local monsters. Most of them are baby beasts with limited combat strength. Moreover, they''re all carnivorous monsters with little potential to elevate." Bloody had learned about the local monsters from Liang Hao and the rest''s memory. It knew every single detail of each monster. "Which means there are no more benefits that I can gain from this place." Lin Huang pouted when he heard that. He had little interest in those monsters that had low combat strength and little potential to elevate. "Then, there''s no longer any reason for us to stay," Lin Huang declared and he recalled the Undead Styx before recalling Bloody back to card form after that. As the crowd at Tongtian Peak foot vanished all of a sudden, Lin Huang was the only person left at the empty place. "Send me out then." Lin Huang''s body was wrapped in a ring of golden light as soon as he said that. The golden sphere then shot into the clouds at the speed of light and vanished completely. Not long after Lin Huang disappeared, a tremor shook the trial space out of the blue. Two silhouettes, one skinny and one plump, walked out of a crack. The duo had a rather perplexed expression on their faces as they scanned through the entire trial space with their Divine Telekinesis. "What''s happening? Where are the convicts?" "There''s not even a single participant either." "Is there surveillance?" "There used to be, but it was removed later on. It was said that a female leader came to check on the trial space many years ago, and the higher management was afraid that she would see obscene things, so they removed many surveillance cameras in the prison. They didn''t put it back after that." "So, how are we supposed to find out what that participant Lin Huang did in this trial space?" "Looking at the current situation, we can report that he killed all of the participants and convicts, then took all of the corpses with him." "It doesn''t sound credible at all" "Why don''t you make something up then?" "Err, let''s just report what you said then." 971 Was Chan Dou Attacked?! Lin Huang realized he was still in the hotel in Wanbao City when he opened his eyes after getting out of the trial space. The trial that should have gone on for a month ended early. It only lasted for 12 days. Although he did not experience any elevation in his combat strength at all, Lin Huang was satisfied with the trial results. The biggest reward was none other than the 100,000-strong undead army and the information about the tens of thousands of mini worlds and great worlds retrieved from the undead army''s souls. The various cultivation methods were the second best. The information in the memories broadened Lin Huang''s view greatly. It made him realize that the gravel world he was currently in was just the equivalent of a rookie village in a game. "I wonder if Yang Ling can unlock the space equipment from other great worlds and mini-worlds. If he can''t, I''ll have to get someone from the great world to unlock them." Lin Huang thought that the journey into the trial space was worth it as he thought about the hundreds of thousands of space equipment that were waiting to be unlocked in his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He put the Dynasty member matter aside at the moment. Within less than ten seconds after he returned from the trial space, the Emperor''s Heart Ring in his hand began vibrating as soon as he reconnected to the network and signal. He clicked on the communication page and immediately took a look. "Why did Jian Fei call me?" Lin Huang saw a couple of call requests and messages the Heaven Alliance deputy chief Jian Fei had sent a week ago as soon as he opened the communication page. He began reading the messages one after another. The first two messages were about Jian Fei asking Lin Huang to contact Chan Dou since his attempt was to no avail and he was busy working on something. The two messages sent following that were links and screenshots from some news. He even asked Lin Huang to contact him as soon as he saw his messages. Lin Huang''s pupils shrunk when he saw the few screenshots of the news. "Chan Dou has been attacked? Someone abducted him! Nobody knows if he''s still alive" "Who did this? Why did they attack Chan Dou?" Lin Huang''s expression was rather grim after reading the news via the links. Chan Dou had been taking care of him all this time, so Lin Huang treated him as a friend. Otherwise, he would not have shared the ancient cultivation methods with him. "Could the cultivation methods have leaked and the Union Government sent people to do this?" Lin Huang shook the idea off a moment after it flashed through his mind. Knowing Chan Dou''s character, there should not be anyone who would find out that he had obtained the cultivation methods apart from Lin Huang. It was quite impossible for the Union Government to find out about it within such a short period of time. Furthermore, the Chan Clan was a powerful family in Division 1. Even if the Union Government found out, the possibility of them attacking Chan Dou directly was low. The most they would do was just to prod the Chan Clan for that. Lin Huang thought about it and called Jian Fei back eventually since he could not figure anything out. Jian Fei picked up the phone as soon as the video call request only went on for two rings. "I''ve finally reached you!" Looking at his face that was initially plump, Jian Fei had lost weight. "I''ve been doing closed-door cultivation and just got out today." Lin Huang nodded. "I''ve read about the chief. Is there any updates about his attack from your side?" "I''ve been getting everyone to search for related information, but we haven''t found many useful ones. We only know it was two white-robed men who attacked him." "White robes? Could it be the Saints?" Lin Huang thought of the Saints right away when he heard about the white robes. "Shouldn''t be them. They had no cross on their faces." Jian Fei shook his head. "Moreover, the Saints'' headquarters isn''t in Division 1. They wouldn''t have the guts to offend Chan Clan in Division 1. The Chan Clan has demigods guarding their home and many members who are working for the Union Government. Underground organizations that aren''t stupid won''t offend them easily." "You said they have no cross on their faces, so did anyone see the attackers'' faces?" Lin Huang asked again. "The chief was attacked at Sun City''s black market. Although the attack was shielded with a demigod relic, two people from the Genius Union happened to be at the black market before it happened. They know the chief and just when they were going to greet him, they saw the two white-robed men walking towards him before the three of them disappeared. A few minutes later, the chief was nowhere to be seen when the two white-robed men reappeared." "The Union Government''s intelligence system retrieved the two white-robed men''s facial recognition outline and matched their databank, but they couldn''t find anyone that matches the face." "It''s obviously a plot. They must''ve disguised themselves before they attacked." Lin Huang nodded after he listened. The possibility of finding the attackers based on the two faces was low. "Oh yeah, why did you look for the chief earlier? Is it solved yet?" Lin Huang asked again. "Jiang Rui has elevated to imperial-level. His deputy chief position is vacant now. I wanted to discuss picking another deputy chief with the chief," Jian Fei told Lin Huang what he had been dragging out for a week. Jiang Rui was one of the Heaven Alliance deputy chiefs but Lin Huang had never seen him before. The latter happened to be in a ruins in Division 1, attempting to break through to imperial-level when Lin Huang was promoted to deputy chief. Chan Dou and the rest could not find him, so he did not join the meeting during which Lin Huang was promoted to deputy chief. Lin Huang nodded as he listened. Chan Dou had mentioned Jiang Rui to him before. "The chief suggested that Gu Fei replace Jiang Rui as deputy chief earlier. Although Gu Fei''s a supreme genius, she''s only on immortal-level rank-8 now. I''m a little concerned that she can''t convince the people." Chan Dou had told him about Gu Fei before. The reason she was stuck on immortal-level rank-8 was that she was a psychic, so it was even more difficult for her to look for Life Lamp monsters to elevate herself. However, when it came to abilities, she was just as powerful as other immortal-level rank-9 Heaven Alliance supreme geniuses. "I think we should follow what the chief said. Gu Fei has a powerful ability. Her elevating to immortal-level rank-9 is just a matter of time." Lin Huang gave his opinion. "Moreover, her appointment as deputy chief could unite the current female Heaven Alliance members. It could attract more female members to join too. It''s a good thing for the Heaven Alliance''s development in the long run." "The other organizations such as the Divine Alliance are watching us. We can''t drag this new deputy chief appointment any longer. Gu Fei isn''t a rookie. Getting a headstart as a deputy chief should fast track her faster than me. They can come to me if they think she''s not convincing." "Also, since the chief isn''t around now, I think based on Brother Jian''s experience, he is the best to take the chief position temporarily. We should spend some time closing the decision of the appointment of the acting chief and new deputy chief these few days. I''ll support you in your work with all my might." "Great, I''ll contact the rest and organize a meeting as soon as I can. I''ll let you know once I''ve gotten the confirmed date." Jian Fei nodded immediately. He did not expect Lin Huang to be so easy that he handed the acting chief position to him directly. Lin Huang smiled while shaking his head after ending the call with Jian Fei. To Lin Huang, who was in touch with all sorts of information about Dynasty, the Genius Union was just a place for kids playing the most. Apart from its resources that were not too shabby, the benefit of it was its people relation. The position as the chief of the Heaven Alliance position was similar to a kindergarten class monitor to him. He knew Jian Fei wanted to be the acting chief. He was not interested in being deputy chief, so he might as well just release the position and get Gu Fei to take the place as deputy chief. He knew nothing about Gu Fei, but he believed Chan Dou''s taste. Moreover, without the newly appointed deputy chief, he figured Jian Fei would disturb him every few days. For the development of the Heaven Alliance and him being more relaxed with their responsibilities, it was necessary for him to get Gu Fei who Chan Dou had made positive comments on to take the position. 972 Love Makes Us Blind After settling Jian Fei''s matter, Lin Huang noticed that Tang Xu from the Wanbao Auction had called him twice on the communication page. He also sent Lin Huang two messages. From the messages he skimmed through, Tang Xu wanted him to contact his "demigod master" for him. He took out the Emperor''s Heart Ring that he always used to contact Tang Xu while disguising himself as a demigod. A couple of notifications chimed as soon as he took out the Emperor''s Heart Ring. He opened the communication page to see four missed calls and three messages from Tang Xu. He could not help smirking after reading them. Two demigods went to the Wanbao Auction separately ten and eight days ago, stating their interest in the god relic Ba Huang that had been auctioned earlier. They were willing to trade that with God Figurines. However, Tang Xu had returned the god relic to Lin Huang, so he could not sell it even if he wanted to. Feeling helpless, he called Lin Huang to get the inventory. However, he failed to contact him since he happened to be in the Royal Trials. "I''ll finally have the last two God Figurines!" Lin Huang disguised as the demigod as usual immediately and called Tang Xu after making sure that everything was fine. "Sir, I''ve finally managed to contact you!" Tang Xu exclaimed in excitement as soon as the call was connected. "I brought my disciple into the ruins, so I''m calling you back a few days late." Lin Huang nodded expressionlessly. "No wonder I couldn''t contact the both of you." "Noted on Ba Huang. I''ll get my disciple to bring it to you within two days. You can contact him directly after the deal is done." After hanging up the call with Tang Xu, Lin Huang used Lin Xie''s identity to send Tang Xu a message. "I''ll bring the god relic to the Wanbao Auction tomorrow morning." Tang Xu replied seconds after the message was sent. "Thanks, Brother Lin. I''ll arrange the sale of the god relic as soon as possible and I''ll contact you as soon the deal''s closed." Lin Huang was elated after talking to Tang Xu. He could not wait to get the God Figurines. As soon as he obtained the two God Figurines, he would be able to elevate to immortal-level rank-9 and would be just one step away from achieving imperial-level. After calming himself down a little, Lin Huang recalled that there was still one more thing he had yet to do. He opened his contact book and found a name after some browsing. It was Yang Ling. Without hesitating, he pressed the "call" button. The video call was connected in less than a single ring. Lin Huang was stunned to see Yang Ling who was dressed in a neat suit and looked clean-shaven. He even combed his hair which was shining. "Yang Ling?" He asked rather unsurely. One must know that Yang Ling always looked messy according to Lin Huang''s memory whereby he did not care how he looked at all. He had seen Yang Ling butt naked in video calls more than once. He even saw him having sex with women before. He could not get used to seeing him dressed so smart and dapper. "Don''t I just look handsome?" Yang Ling asked rather proudly. "Did you get plastic surgery?" Lin Huang teased while smiling. "Why the f*ck would I need plastic surgery? Take a good look! These are real." Yang Ling inched closer to the screen and squeezed his chin, then his nose. "I''m an authentic, handsome man." "Alright, alright. Which part of your body have I not seen? Don''t come so close. I can see your nose hair. It hurts my eyes." Yang Ling retreated a distance away and projected his own screen to check his nostrils out. "Alright, stop messing around. Are you still with Ms. Hong?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. He still remembered seeing Hong Zhuang by Yang Ling''s side the last time. "Ms. Hong? You won''t be calling her that for long. Ahem, you should call her Madam Yang soon." Yang Ling grinned joyfully. "I''m thinking of proposing to her next month on an auspicious day." "You''ve only known her for a few months, am I right? Are you sure you want to marry her?" Lin Huang was almost speechless. He knew Hong Zhuang''s past very well. Although Yang Ling was a traveler like him, he was afraid that he was no match for this woman when it came to manipulation. "I''m sure and I guarantee it!" Yang Ling nodded vigorously. "I''ve never had such a certain feeling with any woman in my life. This is my first time wanting to spend the rest of my life with a woman. If I miss this opportunity, I might not have such a feeling for any other women in the future." "But do you know enough about her? What if she has a past that nobody knows about?" Lin Huang began hinting vaguely. However, Yang Ling did not notice that at all. "Who doesn''t have a past? My past isn''t clean either. We''ll let whatever happened in the past pass. Why should we dwell on it? I like her now, and that''s enough." Lin Huang did not want to say more since Yang Ling was so determined to be with Hong Zhuang. "Alright then, let''s get down to business." "Tell me how many rings do you have this time?" Yang Ling asked directly. "The situation now''s a little different" Lin Huang lowered his voice. "I want to ask if you can unlock storage equipment from other mini worlds?" "What?" Yang Ling was stunned and demanded immediately, "How did you get those stuff?" "Don''t ask that. I''m asking you if you can unlock them. It''s okay if you can''t." "I''ve never done this before. I can only tell you when I see the item," replied Yang Ling after some thought. He proceeded to ask right away, "How many are there? Are there many?" "Quite a number," Lin Huang confirmed. "Sure, bring them to me and I''ll try if I can do it when I come back the month after next." "The month after next? Where are you now?" Lin Huang asked confusedly. "I''m traveling with the future Madam Yang in Division 3 now. The earliest I can get back to Division 7 will be the month after next," Yang Ling said while looking proud. "I''m in Division 3 too. Send me your address. I''ll go to you in two days." Lin Huang did not expect Yang Ling to be in Division 3 too. "That works too." Soon, Yang Ling sent his address after they hung up. "No. A17 foothold Crow City? That''s the Purple Crow''s territory!" Reading the address Yang Ling sent, Lin Huang could not help but frown. "What''s Hong Zhuang trying to do?" Lin Huang thought of reminding Yang Ling to be careful. After all, both of them were travelers from Earth and they had known each other for more than two years now. He could not watch him just fall into trouble like that. However, he eliminated the plan after thinking about it. Now that Yang Ling was high on pheromones and had completely lost his mind, he would not listen to him no matter what he said. On the contrary, he would suspect that Lin Huang was sowing discord between him and Hong Zhuang. Love did not only make a woman stupid; the same applied to men. They would be even more foolish than women. In Yang Ling''s eyes now, Hong Zhuang was beautiful and in the right no matter what she did. He could not see what she was hiding, or rather, he chose to ignore the existing problems she might have. "Forget it. I''ll see what to do when I meet him in two days. I''ll only tell him about Hong Zhuang if it''s necessary. Whether he believes or not, that''s not out of my control." 973 Done Deal After breakfast the next morning, Lin Huang departed for the Wanbao Auction leisurely. Just when he entered the entrance, a female attendant, who had outstanding features, welcomed him with a wide smile. "Mr. Lin, my boss asked me to bring you to the guest lounge. Please follow me." Lin Huang nodded and followed her. They passed the crowd toward the guest lounge. At the entrance of the lounge, she swiped her work pass which was projected onto the wall and opened the door. "Mr. Lin, my boss will be here right away. Would you like tea, coffee, or something else?" Lin Huang noticed a coffee machine in the guest lounge. He said carelessly, "Black coffee, please. Thanks." "Sure, please give me a minute," she said to Lin Huang while her hands moved to make the cup of coffee. "The fruits just came in this morning and we''ve just washed them." "Oh." Lin Huang just noticed a basket of fruits on the coffee table with seven to eight different varieties. He sat on the couch and picked up a sour cherry, then popped it into his mouth without paying much attention. Sour cherry was a fruit that looked a little like a cherry, but its color was purple like an eggplant. It was seedless and tasted like a combination of cherry and blueberry. There was a faint sourness in the juicy sweetness. Such a fruit was very expensive to ordinary people as one would cost hundreds of credit points. However, it was affordable to cultivators. When Lin Huang had just popped two sour cherries into his mouth, Tang Xu opened the door and walked to Lin Huang with a grin. "Brother Lin, sorry to keep you waiting." "Not really, I''ve just arrived." Lin Huang stood up and shook his hand while smiling. As they sat down, Tang Xu peeped in the direction where the attendant was without talking about the god relic right away. Instead, he began talking about Lin Huang''s daily life. "Brother Lin, it''s only been two months and you''ve already achieved a boost in your combat strength!" "My Master should own the credit." Lin Huang brought up his fake identity again. "That''s right. I''m envious you have a demigod-level Master!" Tang Xu''s longing on his face was authentic. Although he came from a wealthy family, he only had one demigod who was a few generations away from him at home. He did not receive any lessons from the demigod. "I heard from your Master that you guys went into the ruins earlier?" "That''s right, my Master encountered this private ruins by accident. We went in for a month and just came out yesterday." Lin Huang confirmed what the demigod he disguised as had said to Tang Xu in detail. "Having a demigod to train you himself is a treatment that we don''t even dare to dream about." The attendant served the coffee that she made to Lin Huang after they chatted for a while. Smelling the wonderful aroma, Tang Xu ordered one for himself. The attendant only left the guest lounge after serving Tang Xu''s coffee and shutting the door. Seeing that the attendant had left, Tang Xu could not help but ask while lowering his voice, "Brother Lin, did you bring the god relic?" Lin Huang smiled and put the coffee mug in his hand down, then took out the god relic spear, Ba Huang, from his storage space. Tang Xu could not help himself but become excited when he took the god relic. He caressed it softly. Although it was not his first time seeing Ba Huang, Tang Xu''s eyes would still light up whenever he saw a god relic. "How do you plan to sell it this time?" Lin Huang asked because he wanted to get the God Figurines as soon as possible. If Tang Xu was planning to organize another auction, the fastest he would be able to obtain the God Figurines would be a month later. "I can''t do an auction this time since the two buyers are in a hurry to get this. Furthermore, we don''t have much good stuff in our inventory. I''ll just invite the two buyers to talk about it. The buyer who offers the highest price will get it," Tang Xu said, feeling a little helpless. He was more eager to organize an auction to boost his fame, but the situation did not allow him to. Under normal circumstances, to organize a massive auction like the Wanbao Auction, they would need two to three months or even half a year to collect the items. Even a small-scale auction would require more than a month to prepare the preliminary work. "I''ve scheduled to meet them tomorrow morning. We should be able to close the deal before noon if everything goes as planned. I''ll contact you right away by then." Tang Xu''s arrangement was exactly what Lin Huang wanted. "Oh right, did your Master mention if there''s anything specific that he wants for the trading items apart from God Figurines?" Tang Xu asked out of the blue. "He mentioned it once casually. He said the best would be demigod-level soul crystals. If there are none, demigod relics will suffice," Lin Huang thought about it and answered. "No problem. I''ll tell the buyers later." Tang Xu nodded. "Wait for my good news tomorrow." Lin Huang returned to the hotel after the successful discussion with Tang Xu. As he calmed himself down, the Emperor''s Heart Ring on his hand vibrated all of a sudden just when he was going to practice his sword skills. He opened the communication page and realized that it was a message from Jian Fei. "The meeting date has been set at 9.30 a.m. the day after tomorrow. The venue will be the meeting room at checkpoint 63 of the Stairway Tree. Please be there on time!" Lin Huang replied, "Got it", and began to practice his sword skill. His mind was occupied with selling the spear, Ba Huang, after breakfast the next morning. He could not even focus on practicing. He put the practice aside directly and looked at the news on the Heart Network and the Hunter Association forum. An inconspicuous thread on the Hunter Association forum grabbed his attention all of a sudden. The title of the thread was ''What''s The Purple Crow Doing?''. Due to the mention of the Purple Crow on the title, Lin Huang could not help but click on it. The thread was written by a Hunter Association member. He happened to be on a mission in Division 3''s No. A17 foothold. He noticed many Purple Crow members who possessed powerful combat strength showing up in the foothold as a group. Furthermore, more than one group who were on the go, so almost all the members with powerful combat strength were out. There were less than ten replies on the thread. Basically, nobody took the matter seriously. However, Lin Huang thought of Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang right away when he saw the thread since both of them were in No. A17 foothold right now. It was clear that Hong Zhuang must have known something about this, there must be an objective that she chose to be in No. A17 foothold now. "What''s that lady thinking?" Lin Huang frowned slightly. He was almost sure that Hong Zhuang''s appearance in No. A17 foothold definitely had something to do with the Purple Crow. Just when Lin Huang was thinking about that, a message popped out suddenly from the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. Seeing that it was Tang Xu who sent it, he opened the message immediately. "I''ve closed the deal. The final price was three God Figurines and two demigod-level soul crystals." Lin Huang was stunned to see the message. ''I have one more God Figurine now?!'' Nonetheless, he accepted the result happily. No matter whether it was God Figurines or demigod-level soul crystals, those were the items that he urgently needed now. "Got it. I''ll drop by later." After replying Tang Xu''s message, Lin Huang closed the webpage and forum that he was surfing. To show that he was not eager, Lin Huang did not go to the Wanbao Auction right away. Instead, he went to a cafe near the hotel. He ordered two cups of coffee and snacks that were prepared on the spot. He spent approximately half an hour to finish them and headed to the Wanbao Auction slowly. Although he took his time, Tang Xu said to him with a smile when he arrived at the auction, "You''re quick. I thought tomorrow after lunch would be the earliest you''d come." "Oh well, my Master''s urging me." Lin Huang used the demigod who did not exist to defend himself. Tang Xu took out the three God'' Figurines and two demigod-level soul crystals, then handed them to Lin Huang. He did not forget to remind him, "I hope that Brother Lin and your Master will support us in the September auction." "Don''t worry, my Master loves working with people he''s familiar with." Lin Huang smiled while putting the God Figurines and demigod-level soul crystals away. "Our Wanbao Auction welcomes regular customers like Brother Lin and your Master too." 974 Overthrowing All You Ever Knew Leaving the Wanbao Auction, Lin Huang could not wait to take the three God Figurines out to observe as soon as he returned to the hotel room. The first of the three God Figurines was a monster carrying a coffin. The monster was completely red with muscles bulging all over its body. Its form looked like a fully skinned bullfrog that had just been served from a spicy hotpot. It had faint black sigils on its body and seemed rather human-like since it walked on both feet. However, it had fangs and two horns on its head like a buffalo''s. Unlike a human, however, it had hoofs on both feet and sharp claws on its hands like a devil. There were two thick, black chains on the back of its shoulders that were tied to a black coffin. The coffin was clearly heavy, making its back seem a little crooked from the pressing weight of the coffin. "This monster is called the Coffin Carrier. It''s an Abyssal Protoss that fell from its kind. It''s a ninth-rank True God that has mastered the Death Rule," introduced the stone tablet. "I never expected an Abyssal Protoss to turn into a God Figurine when it dies." "What kind of True Spirit should I visualize?" Lin Huang could not help but inquire. "There are actually many True Spirits that have mastered Death such as the Death Knight, the Black-robed Death God, the Golden Skeleton, the Immortal Tombstone, the Tabooed Black Coffin, the Crimson-eyed Crow, and the Grimacing Baby Puppet. Although they''re all extremely powerful, I personally think the one that has the most spirit and is also the most unique goes to the Death Butterfly." "The Death Butterfly guards the Yin Yang Gate, and it''s the only True Spirit that can travel between the material realm and the spiritual realm freely when it''s on true god-level. As long as your soul''s still intact, the Death Butterfly can guide you from the spiritual realm back to the material realm." "Of course, it has flaws too. Its beginner combat strength is no match for True Spirits such as Black-robed Death God and Golden Skeleton. However, its growth potential is outstanding among all True Spirits because it''ll be more powerful each time it comes out of its cocoon." "The Death Butterfly then." Hearing the stone tablet''s introduction, Lin Huang decided to pick the Death Butterfly. He had too many God Figurines'' Combat Souls that were experts in combat. It would not affect him at all if he had one less. After confirming the first True Spirit, Lin Huang then looked at the second God Figurine which took on the form of a lady. The lady wore a thin, purple dress that was almost transparent. She hovered in the air barefoot and she had a beautiful body. However, she had no face or features, only black hair on her head. Her hair was swaying in the air like countless little snakes that were alive and looked like they were going to attack. "This monster''s called the Hair Demon. It''s an evil spirit type of Protoss which was an eighth-rank True God when it was alive. She mastered the Sealing Rule, and her ability''s similar to the sealing chains your red-robed skeleton imperial monster has, but she''s much more powerful. "Among the True Spirits that have mastered the Sealing Rule, the one that has the highest compatibility with this Hair Demon would be the Shackle Serpent. The Shackle Serpent''s a formidable True Spirit. Among the Protoss, the Medusa Tribe which possesses the most powerful sealing ability obtained their sealing ability from the Shackle Serpent. "Legend has it that the most powerful Shackle Serpent could imprison the world forever with just one look, freezing the time and space, making it a specimen." "That''s so powerful!" Lin Huang could never imagine any sealing ability to be so powerful that it could do that. He always thought that a sealing ability was just an aiding combat ability. After settling the second True Spirit, Lin Huang looked at the third God Figurine. This God Figurine looked like a toy doll with short and small limbs. It also had the face of a clown. The most unique thing about it was its tummy. It was not made of blood and flesh, but a mechanical clock. Besides the hour hand, the minute hand, the second hand, and the timescale could be seen clearly. Even the big and small gear wheels within were clear. "What an odd creature!" Although Lin Huang had seen all kinds of monsters, the peculiarity of this monster could make the top three because it did not look like a living thing at all. It appeared more like a puppet. "This is a Time Spirit. It''s a unique species among the Protoss with a limited number. It was an eight-rank True God when it was alive and it mastered the Time Rule. It could control the flow of time in a specific area and even stop time." "Doesn''t that mean that True Spirits which master the Time Rule are even mightier?" Lin Huang was very interested in this God Figurine. "Yes, the Creation Clock is a True Spirit of the same kind. Legend has it that such a True Spirit is the Creation Clock''s stopwatch. It could control the life and death of all creations by changing the hour hand on the clock. It could even target the entire world and destroy it. "Apart from controlling life and time as well as the flow of time, the most powerful Creation Clock in the legend had terrifying abilities including stopping time, turning back time, freezing time and time traveling." "That sounds compelling!" Hearing the stone tablet''s description, Lin Huang suddenly thought that all the three God Figurines were desirable and he could not get rid of any of them. "What should I do? I want all of them, but I''m only two God Figurines away from elevating to immortal-level rank-9." The extra God Figurine now became a burden for Lin Huang and he was having difficulty choosing now. "Which one should I give up?" "Why do you have to give up?" At the moment, the stone tablet''s voice came to Lin Huang''s ears. "I only need two God Figurines to get to immortal-level rank-9. What else can I do with the extra one if I don''t give it up?" Lin Huang retorted back rather confusedly. "Everyone else can only have nine Combat Souls in one Life Wheel. You have ten Life Wheels. Even if one Life Wheel can only keep one Combat Soul, you could have ten of them, am I right?" asked the stone tablet. "Err" Lin Huang could not rebel against the stone tablet''s logic at the time being. He thought about it seriously and found that it kind of made sense. "But my combat strength will elevate a rank up whenever I absorb one God Figurine. Looking at the current situation, my combat strength will reach the limit of immortal-level after absorbing two God Figurines. I''m not sure what will happen if I absorb one more." Lin Huang thought about it and decided to raise his doubt. "Maybe I should put it this way. The cultivation system in the world you''re currently in has its flaws. The limit that you are thinking about isn''t the limit if you''re looking at it from higher ground," said the stone tablet while smiling. "Do you mean that immortal-level rank-9 isn''t the limit for immortal-level and that there''s space to elevate even more?" Lin Huang was stunned and asked immediately. "I mean there might not be space for elevation in the past, but it''s possible under various conditions." The stone tablet fell into silence after that. It did not talk no matter what Lin Huang asked later on. "There''s still immortal-level rank-10 after immortal-level rank-9." What the stone tablet said completely overthrew Lin Huang''s knowledge of the current cultivation system. He fell into deep thought. ''My body''s different from others. My God Figurines are all True Spirits that I have visualized. True Spirits are a formidable existence. It''s impossible for them to share territory with another True Spirit. Therefore, my Life Wheels can''t contain many Combat Souls like the rest whereby each Life Wheel can only contain one True Spirit at the most. Even if I were to calculate it based on this, I''d be able to take ten True Spirits in given that I have ten Life Wheels. ''Judging by this logic, it''s definitely possible for me to elevate to immortal-level rank-10!'' 975 Heaven Alliance’s Meeting Although he was not 100% sure that he could elevate to immortal-level rank-10, Lin Huang thought it was 80% possible after comparing the cultivation system from other worlds in his memory. After confirming that, he regretted not using a few more Life Wheel Storage Cards when he had reached life wheel-level back then. If he had done that back then, he could have obtained a few more Life Wheels with Flawless Cards and he might have been able to elevate to immortal-level rank-20 now. Recalling that he would be joining the Heaven Alliance meeting tomorrow, Lin Huang put aside his urge to place God Figurines into his Life Wheel at the moment, he put away all three God Figurines. He quieted his mind down and began practicing his sword skills. The next morning, Lin Huang only logged onto the Genius Union when it was almost 9.20 a.m. after breakfast and short sword practice. He was at the Heaven Alliance foothold the last time he logged out, and he now arrived the same place this time. It only took a couple of steps to get him to the meeting room. Jian Fei was already there when he went into the meeting room. There were six Heaven Alliance higher management members and a lady whose combat strength was only immortal-level rank-8. Lin Huang nodded to Jian Fei and the rest, but he had his eyes on the lady. It was clear that the lady was the deputy chief candidate that Chan Dou had recommended, Gu Fei. To be honest, Gu Fei did not look as pretty as Lin Huang imagined. He thought that Chan Dou would recommend a beauty but Gu Fei could not consider a beauty. Her body looked like a man. She was at least 1.85 meters tall and her frame was slightly bigger than Lin Huang''s. She was practically the most muscular one among all nine of them in the meeting room at that moment. Her face was not considered ugly, but it was squarish. If that face had been on a man, it looked pretty charming, but when it was on a lady, it was a little too manly. Most importantly, she shaved her hair so short that one could see her scalp. If not for her stunning breasts, Lin Huang might not have recognized her as a lady at once. Noticing that Lin Huang was observing her, Gu Fei stood up to greet him immediately, "Chief Lin, my name''s Gu Fei." "Hi." Lin Huang extended his hand to shake hers. "You can sit down. There''s no need for such courtesy." Jian Fei did not take the main seat. Instead, he sat on the left of the main seat while Lin Huang sat across him directly. As he took his seat, the remaining two higher management came in. Since everyone had taken their seats in the meeting room, Jian Fei did not beat around the bush and went right into the subject. "We hold this meeting today mainly is to solve two issues." "The first issue would be that some matters that require decision in Heaven Alliance are put aside since the chief went missing. They come to a halt at the moment, the entire Heaven Alliance might be affected if this goes on." "The second issue would be deputy chief Jiang Rui''s elevation to imperial-level. His position''s vacant now, we must find someone to take the position as soon as possible. It''s something that could affect the organization''s operation as well." "Voice out your opinions right away if you have any." A young man in the white shirt was the first to speak as soon as Jian Fei was done speaking. "The chief''s just missing, his death isn''t confirmed yet. I personally think his position should be vacant. If there are matters that require a decision, the three deputy chiefs would take responsibility by then." "Xiao Fan, your suggestion''s just a short-term solution. It wouldn''t work if there''s no news of the chief for a long time while his position is vacant. Many organization are watching us Heaven Alliance. My suggestion would be picking an acting chief. If we do that, at least we would have someone in charge," A tanned skin middle-age man voiced a different opinion. "I agree on Old Xia''s opinion. Pick an acting chief doesn''t mean that the person would replace the chief. If the chief is back, the acting chief would just resign from his position." "I understand your point Xiao Fan but you have to consider how realistic the issues are. If the chief''s just missing for a short time, indeed, Heaven Alliance could maintain its usual operation with your suggestion but that''s not a solution to the issue. What if the chief''s away for a long time? Wouldn''t this issue be dragged and not solved?" The fatty sitting next to Lin Huang raised comments on the two people''s suggestions. The man in the white shirt frowned slightly but he did not object further. "I agree with Old Zhang''s suggestion. Looking at Heaven Alliance''s current condition, it''s necessary that we pick an acting chief to take over," It was the short-haired lady next to the fatty who spoke. She was the only lady among the eight higher management. The rest remained silent and said nothing. "Is there anyone else who has a third solution?" Jian Fei asked seeing nobody spoke. It was silence that responded him. "Then let''s vote on the two proposals. The first proposal would be three deputy chiefs taking the acting chief''s responsibility. The second proposal would be picking an acting chief." "Now those who support the first proposal please raise your hand." The man in the white shirt was the first to raise his hand as soon as Jian Fei was done speaking. Although he could not convince others, he was firm on his choice. However, nobody raised their hand apart from him. "Alright then, those who support the second proposal please raise your hand." Jian Fei was the first to raise his hand. Later on, six out of the eight higher management raised their hands. Lin Huang was the last to raise his hand. Jian Fei looked at the man in glasses who did not raise his hand both times. "I pass." The man in glasses shrugged. "Gu Fei, are you giving it a pass too?" Jian Fei turned his head and looked at Gu Fei who sat at the far end of the long table. "Do I have the right to vote?" Gu Fei asked rather surprisedly. "Of course you do since you''re sitting here." Jian Fei nodded. "Then, I''ll choose the first one." "Alright, it''s 2 versus 10. The second proposal wins!" Jian Fei announced the final result. Among the 11 people present, the two deputy chiefs had two votes while the rest only had one. Gu Fei only had one vote since she had yet to become a deputy chief yet. "Deputy chief Lin, we''ll put the acting chief matter aside at the moment. Let''s decide on the third deputy chief so that''s it''s fairer for the newly appointed deputy chief." Jian Fei skipped to the second issue of the meeting directly and looked at Lin Huang. Lin Huang nodded to show his agreement. Jian Fei turned his head to look at everyone and spoke leisurely, "Our previous deputy chief Jiang Rui has elevated to imperial-level, so his position''s vacant now. Following the usual procedure, we should submit the list of eligible deputy chief candidates on checkpoint 63, wait for a review and eventually vote. "However, Chief Chan Dou recommended Gu Fei as Jiang Rui''s replacement since the very beginning and Jiang Rui has agreed to it. Therefore, after discussing with deputy chief Lin, we''ve decided to skip the usual procedure and carry out the chief''s order. "Since Gu Fei''s the only deputy chief candidate now, let''s vote whether she should take this position. She will pass if the votes surpass half. If the votes are less than half, the third deputy chief''s position will only be vacant temporarily. We will recruit other candidates publicly later on for them to go up against Gu Fei for this position. "Let me make this clear. You have no right to vote this time, Gu Fei," Jiang Fei emphasized intentionally. Gu Fei nodded without any expression on her face, so Lin Huang could not tell whether she desired the position or not. "Now, let''s vote. Those who agree, please raise your hand!" 976 She Really is A Powerful Lady As soon as Jian Fei was done speaking, Lin Huang was the first to raise his hand while Jian Fei followed suit. After the two deputy chiefs raised their hands, the eight higher management hesitated and looked at each other. The short-haired lady looked at Gu Fei who sat at the far end of the long table and raised her hand. Since then, the tanned, middle-aged man and the fatty next to Lin Huang raised their hands too. The remaining five people did not move. "Since we''re done with the voting, I''ll announce the result then. Jian Fei glanced at everyone. "7 voted yes while 5 objected. More than half have agreed!" After announcing the result, Jian Fei looked at Gu Fei with a grin. "Congratulations to Gu Fei for becoming the Heaven Alliance''s third deputy chief!" Gu Fei stood up to show her gratitude while smiling. "Since we''ve selected our third deputy chief, now it''s time to go back to our first topic: picking the acting chief! "We have three deputy chiefs now, which means there are three candidates. Now, everyone will vote among the three candidates to select the acting chief. "There are 11 people here. Everyone gets one vote, and the same goes to the deputy chiefs. Three candidates can vote for themselves and vote for others." "Let''s write the candidate''s name that we''re picking down on the paper. Those who don''t want to be part of this can submit an empty paper to show that you''re giving your vote up," said Jian Fei and gave everyone a piece of white paper the size of a palm. "Don''t peep at the name others are writing down and no discussion is allowed. Write the name of the candidate that you hope to be the acting chief. Those who are done, fold the paper and don''t let anybody see what you have written. We will announce the result after everyone has submitted the slip. The name that appears the most will eventually be selected as the acting chief." Everyone, including Lin Huang, picked up the piece of white paper in their hands and scanned it with their Divine Telekinesis. They found out that this paper blocked detection out to a certain level. Apart from that, there was nothing wrong with the paper. After confirming that the paper was fine, Lin Huang inserted Life Power into the paper and scrawled Jian Fei''s name on it. He then folded it and put it on the table before him. Jian Fei, who was sitting across Lin Huang, wrote a name without much hesitation and folded it. In less than half a minute, all 11 of them had written their chosen name down and folded the paper one after another. "Deputy Chief Gu, please collect everyone''s vote for us," Jian Fei instructed Gu Fei since everyone was done. Gu Fei nodded and picked up her paper before collecting the remaining slips quickly. She then passed them to Jian Fei. Jian Fei passed the slips to Lin Huang who was sitting across him. "Deputy Chief Lin, you''ll announce it." Lin Huang was a little surprised, but he nodded anyway. He picked up the bunch of slips and stood up. It was his name when he opened the first folded slip: Lin Xie. "Lin Xie, 1 vote." Lin Huang presented the opened slip to the people then placed it on the table. He saw his name again when he opened the second folded slip. "Lin Xie, 2 votes." He then presented the opened slip to the people again then placed it on the table. Upon opening the third slip, he could not help but frown when he saw the name. It was his name again. "Lin Xie, 3 votes." After putting the stack of opened slips on the table, he picked the fourth one up while scowling slightly. Finally, it was not his name this time. There was finally a slight relief in his expression. "Jian Fei, 1 vote." Since then, Jian Fei''s name came up more often. "Lin Xie, 4 votes." "Jian Fei, 5 votes." Jian Fei''s votes finally surpassed Lin Huang''s when it came down to the last three slips. Lin Huang was much more relieved. He really did not want to take the responsibility as the acting chief, and he did not have the time to look after the Heaven Alliance. However, his name appeared again when he opened the last second slip. "Lin Xie, 5 votes." Lin Huang was a little surprised that it was 5-5 which was a tie. He had only been a deputy chief for less than a month and hardly did anything usually. He did not even log onto the Genius Union. He had no idea why would so many people vote for him. Jian Fei looked a little nervous too. It seemed like he did not expect so many people to vote for Lin Huang as well. Everyone was taken aback by the result too. Naturally, they knew that Lin Huang had not cheated because they could recognize their own handwriting. They were left with the last vote that had yet to be revealed. Apart from the person whose slip that was, the rest were anticipating the last reveal with bated breath. Lin Huang exhaled in relief when he picked up the last slip and saw the name on it. "Jian Fei, 6 votes!" He showed everyone the last slip after he spoke, "It''s 6-5!" "Congratulations, Chief Jian, for being the acting chief of the Heaven Alliance!" "Thank you, thank you!" Jian Fei exhaled in relief after seeing the result. He stood up with all smiles and shook Lin Huang''s hand. He then thanked everyone. Although close to half of them had voted for Lin Huang, he accepted the final result anyway. Nobody was surprised that the newly appointed deputy chief Gu Fei had zero votes. After a brief conclusion, Jian Fei ended the meeting. In the meeting room, Jian Fei and the eight higher management logged out one after another. Just when Lin Huang was going to log out, Gu Fei stopped him. "Deputy chief Lin, can I get your contact details, please?" "Sure." Lin Huang nodded to agree immediately. He had recommended Gu Fei so that she could share the burden of the Heaven Alliance. They would be communicating with each other on many matters in the future. After getting his contact details, Gu Fei asked while smiling, "Why didn''t you want to be the acting chief, Deputy Chief Lin?" "Did I say that?" Lin Huang raised his brow. "I saw that you were in great relief when you opened the last slip," said Gu Fei with a chuckle. "Haha, you saw that!" Lin Huang did not bother to deny it. "Maybe I''m a little lazy." "But I think the Heaven Alliance might advance further if you were to become the acting chief," Gu Fei expressed while smiling. "You''re thinking too highly of me. The reason the Heaven Alliance has achieved what it has today depended on the generations of chiefs managing it as well as the shared effort from the past Heaven Alliance members throughout the hundreds of years. It can''t be changed just by relying on one person''s ability. If Chief Chan Dou can''t do it, neither can I." Lin Huang shook his head. "Moreover, I''ve never planned to stay on immortal-level since the beginning." "Shallow water can''t keep a real dragon submerged. I understand now." Gu Fei smiled and did not dwell on the subject. "Let''s keep in touch. I''ll log out now." As he watched Gu Fei logging out, Lin Huang shook his head and said with a grin, "She really is a powerful lady. Chan Dou''s taste really is something!" 977 Elevating to Immortal-level Rank-10! It was almost noon when Lin Huang returned to the hotel room after logging out of the Genius Union. "Since we''ve solved the matter of the acting chief while Gu Fei should know the reason why I supported her very well, I shouldn''t be meeting anyone from the Heaven Alliance within a short period of time." Lin Huang took three God Figurines out from his storage space as he thought about this. "It''s about time I elevate my combat strength now." Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis turned into three tentacles and latched onto the three God Figurines. After covering the three of them completely, they were pulled into his inner body. As soon as they were drawn in, the three God Figurines turned into three streams of light without the guidance of his Divine Telekinesis. They then entered the last three Life Wheels and went into the Divine Fire. The giant Divine Fire mountain in the Life Wheels experienced tremors as soon as the God Figurines entered. They turned into three giant vortexes almost in the blink of an eye while the Divine Fire shrunk rapidly. At the same time, Lin Huang''s Life Power that was initially full in his Life Wheels was absorbed into the vortex. This did not only happen to the three brand new Life Wheels where the God Figurines were, but the other seven Life Wheels also had their Life Power sucked in like a dragon was drinking water greedily. Approximately an hour passed, and all of the Life Power in Lin Huang''s body was sucked dry while the three spheres of Divine Fire penetrated the three God Figurines completely. A moment later, the three God Figurines seemed to be awoken whereby they had black Divine Fire spurting out of their opened eyes. Their bodies began growing rapidly and they grew from the size of palm to regular size. By then, the God Figurines'' eyes were shut again as if they had fallen into a deep sleep. Circles of Life Power seemed to be spreading out following the three God Figurines'' breathing momentum. They began compensating the Life Wheels. After filling all ten Life Wheels up, Life Power began flowing into Lin Huang''s meridians, muscles, bones, and soul Lin Huang could clearly feel his combat strength growing quickly. It skyrocketed from the initial immortal-level rank-7 to immortal-level rank-8, and he elevated to immortal-level rank-9 in less than one second. When he reached the peak stage of immortal-level rank-9, he elevated again almost without any obstacle. "Immortal-level rank-10! I can''t believe I can really elevate to immortal-level rank-10!" While he was shocked to see his combat strength stepping into a level that nobody had ever reached, Lin Huang was more than a little excited. Initially, he thought something that was theoretically possible was not necessarily practical. He was still doubting whether he could elevate to immortal-level rank-10 the very second before he achieved it. However, it seemed like the cultivation system in this world indeed was like what the stone tablet said flawed. "I told you." Naturally, the stone tablet sensed Lin Huang''s change in combat strength. "How are you feeling now?" "I''m feeling great! I feel powerful like never before!" Lin Huang growled shamelessly while swinging his fists. "I knew what you told me is true." The stone tablet was stunned for a moment before replying, "You''re so shameless!" In reality, elevating to immortal-level rank-10 was not a full elevation to Lin Huang. He would only consider himself having completed his elevation after visualizing the last three True Spirits and consolidating them into God Figurines'' Combat Souls. However, he did not go for closed-door cultivation to visualize the True Spirits right away. "There''s no rush to visualize the True Spirits just yet. I need more than a month to visualize all three True Spirits. There are some matters that I''d like to settle before this." After taking a shower and having lunch, Lin Huang returned to the hotel room and opened the communication page leisurely. He looked for the name Hu Lu and tapped the video call button. Soon, the video call was connected. A lady in her early 30''s whose body was slightly voluptuous appeared in the video. She was Hu Lu from Sweep City''s black market. "How''s the progress of the items that I asked for?" Lin Huang did not make any small talk with the lady while diving into the topic right away. "Mr. Lin, the materials that you asked for are rare. Although you''ve made your order a few months ago, we''ve only collected almost half of them. There are a few items that we''ve no idea what they are up until now. I''m not sure if we can collect everything on your list by this year," Hu Lu admitted helplessly. "Then, give me the list of the materials that you''ve already gathered. I''ll drop by your place these two days to pick up the stuff." Lin Huang added, "Also, give me a list of materials that you guys think are most difficult to find. I''ll find my own way." "Sure, I''ll send it to you later after sorting it out." Hu Lu nodded. She knew there were things that she could not force to happen. After hanging up the call with Hu Lu, two message notifications came consecutively some ten minutes later. Lin Huang opened the communication page. The two messages only had titles and attachments. There was nothing else in the messages that were both sent by Hu Lu. Lin Huang summoned Bloody that had already elevated to imperial-level yellow gold-rank and opened the message titled ''List of Materials Collected''. The human and monster examined at least 100 materials on the entire list thoroughly. Lin Huang could not help but ask Bloody, "Are the materials enough to make a complete set?" "Our luck isn''t that bad. There are enough materials to make two complete sets," Bloody responded while smiling. "They''re for Charcoal and the Herculean King." "Our luck isn''t bad indeed." A smile was revealed at the corner of his eyes that he could not hide. "I thought we might not even be able to make one." Apart from using five Advance Cards, some rare materials were needed for a legendary-level Monster Card to elevate to mythical-level. Lin Huang had begun collecting those materials before the New Year, but the progress was slower than he expected since more than three months had passed. "Is there any set that isn''t lacking too many materials?" asked Lin Huang again. "Tyrant lacks two items while Bai lacks four. The rest lack more. I''m figuring it''s difficult to collect all of them within such a short period of time." Bloody knew that Lin Huang had asked so so that that he could find other ways to collect the materials. "What do Tyrant and Bai lack?" "Tyrant lacks a star core and a god relic ax. Bai lacks a ton of demigod''s blood and ten demigod souls." "I remember the two items that Tyrant lacks are available on the Stairway Mall of the Genius Union. Meanwhile, among the four items Bai needs, there should be three items available on the Stairway Mall too, including the demigod''s blood. For the demigod''s soul, I''m afraid we can only obtain that from killing demigod-level monsters." Lin Huang raised his brow as he rattled on. After closing the first list, Lin Huang tapped open the second. There were not many items on this list only over 30 of them. The demigod souls Bai needed was included too. Lin Huang thought about it and sent the list to Tang Xu from the Wanbao Auction after removing a minority of items that could be found on the Stairway Mall. "Help me get as many of these items on this list as you can." Tang Xu replied the message almost immediately, "Some of them are difficult to get while the rest are doable, but I need time." "Sure, just collect as many as you can," Lin Huang replied. Tang Xu replied with a ''no problem'' emoji immediately. The reason why Lin Huang did not send the full list to the Wanbao Auction was that the level of confidentiality at the auction was not as high as the black market. Moreover, the list Lin Huang had given the black market was not the full list to begin with. Bloody had taken a portion of the material that could be found at the market out while only listing those that were difficult to find. They only formed half of the total items needed. The reason it did that was that Lin Huang was not sure if those materials could elevate his monsters without using the Advance Cards. The list was sufficient to make all the organizations on the entire continent to go wild even if it could elevate legendary-level monsters to pseudo-mythical-level. That was something Lin Huang wanted to avoid the most. 978 Returning to Sweep City Again Soon, Lin Huang found the few items that Tyrant and Bai needed for their elevation as he browsed the Stairway Mall. He put them into the shopping cart one after another. The god relic ax that Tyrant needed was the most expensive one. Its original price was 80 billion Stairway points, but luckily for Lin Huang, he had a 40% discount because he was the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance, so he purchased it at 48 billion points. The second most expensive item was the ton of demigod''s blood Bai needed which was originally priced at 50 billion Stairway points. The third most expensive was the star core which originally cost 30 billion Stairway points. He purchased everything at a 40% discount, spending a total of 105 billion Stairway points. By then, he was only left with slightly more than 20 billion Stairway points. "It''s almost time I drop by Sweep City." Since Lin Huang had gathered the two items Tyrant lacked, it meant he would have three complete sets for elevating after he collected the materials at the black market. As he arrived at Sweep City after passing through the dimensional portal, Lin Huang flew into the sky and headed toward the black market. It took him a couple of minutes to get to the black market and he headed to the store where Hu Lu was. He spoke before the attendant could ask, "I''m looking for Hu Lu." "Please follow me." The attendant soon brought Lin Huang to the entrance of the room Hu Lu was in. "This is Sister Hu Lu''s office." "Thanks." Lin Huang went in directly. Hu Lu was stunned to see Lin Huang come in. She clearly sensed that he had had a significant boost in his combat strength. A gleam of surprise flashed through her eyes, but soon she looked normal again and greeted while smiling, "Mr. Lin, you''re here so soon. I thought you''d only be here tomorrow at the earliest." "I happen to be free in the afternoon, so I came," Lin Huang explained. He did not plan to continue the small talk and went right into the topic. "Are the stuff ready?" "It''s ready. Please check." Hu Lu nodded while smiling. She took a temporary storage ring out from her Emperor''s Heart Ring and handed it to Lin Huang. Lin Huang took the ring and scanned it with his Divine Telekinesis. Soon, he checked and confirmed that the list was correct. "The materials are correct. How much are they?" "The total is one trillion, two hundred thirty-seven billion and one hundred million. We''re giving you a 20% discount which makes it 989.68 billion. We''ve also rounded it up for you, so the final price is 980 billion," Hu Lu mentioned the price leisurely, "I''m sending you the detailed price list right now." Lin Huang received the message just when she was done speaking. He just looked at it roughly after opening the message instead of going through it thoroughly. He knew that Hu Lu would not fake something like this since he was a valuable client here. Moreover, they had been serving him for some time now and would not do something so petty to him. After transferring the amount by scanning the code, Lin Huang put the temporary storage ring with the materials away into his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Please continue to gather the remaining materials. I''ll drop by again to pick them up when I have the time in the future." "Sure, we''ll inform you as soon as we''ve gathered all materials." Lin Huang nodded and stood up in an attempt to leave, but Hu Lu stopped him. "Mr. Lin, there''s one more thing." Lin Huang turned around in surprise. "What''s the matter?" "About the attack on the Heaven Alliance chief Chan Dou that you asked us to check a few days ago, we have news that'' might not really be considered news." Hu Lu lowered her voice. "What do you guys have?" Lin Huang turned around and placed both his hands on the back of the chair he was sitting on earlier. "According to our intel, the one who attacked Chan Dou isn''t any major organization that we already know. It should be a new, unknown organization. It might''ve been founded these few years. It could also be a minor organization that disguised themselves well in the past. We''ve no idea who exactly did it, so this news is complimentary for you. "However, it''s not the first time. A similar case has happened almost three years ago. Chan Dou''s case is already the eighth case. All victims have the same characteristic as Chan Dou whereby all of them are high-level immortal-level supreme geniuses with stunning combat ability." "You guys have no clue about this organization at all?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Not at all. If it has been done by any of the organizations that we''re familiar with, we could tell with the tiniest trace. All major underground organization members have different behaviors, so it''s easy for us to identify them. Especially imperial-level powerhouses, we know all of them from the different organizations as well as their techniques, so it would be futile no matter how they disguise themselves. To outsiders like you, it might be hard for you to tell someone apart as soon as they change their face and body shape, but to us who are in underground organizations, we can tell who that is in one glance. "However, the organization that attacked Chan Dou isn''t from any of the organizations that we know. They''re hiding very well. Moreover, looking at the ability they''ve revealed so far, they possess at least a first or second-rate ability." "Thanks for the information you''ve provided." Lin Huang nodded to show gratitude. Clearly, Hu Lu did not know much, so she only provided him a rough direction. Hu Li spoke to him through voice transmission as Lin Huang turned around and walked to the stairs. "Please be extra careful too, Mr. Lin. Following the conclusion that we currently have, you fit the predator''s target condition entirely. You might be on their hunting list." Lin Huang stopped walking and thanked Hu Lu. Then, he walked out of the premise with a faint smirk on his lips. He only mumbled to himself while smiling as he walked out of the store, "I can''t wait for those people to come to me." Lin Huang summoned dimensional portal after walking out of the black market alley and stepped into it. The other side of the dimensional portal was not Wanbao City but the entrance to the second layer of the Abyss Brink. He went right into the entrance, allowing his body to fall freely. Approximately ten minutes later, he finally arrived at the second layer of the Abyss Brink. He went there because of the major commotion elevating triple mutated monsters to quadruple mutated would bring. The elevation of Charcoal and the rest would not gain any attention from humans if it was done in forbidden lands such as the Abyss Brink and the Peaceful Ocean. The condition of the Peaceful Ocean was too complicated whereby there might be demigod-level monsters hiding in the ocean at all times. It was not a viable place for the monsters to elevate. Even though Lin Huang was not afraid of demigods now, he might not be able to protect them from being attacked if the elevation aura of Charcoal and the rest attracted a couple of demigod-level monsters. Meanwhile, it was a different story for the second layer of the Abyss Brink since the most powerful monsters here were only imperial-level yellow gold-rank which was the same as Charcoal and the rest. It was nothing to Lin Huang; he could handle them no matter how many came his way. Moreover, like the Peaceful Ocean, this was a dangerous place where nobody would come. Even if somebody sensed their aura, they might avoid them as far as they could. "Bloody, pick a place that''s far away from areas populated by humans." Lin Huang summoned Bloody as soon as his feet touched the ground of the second layer of the Abyss Brink. 979 Three Golden Eggs Over an hour later, Bloody sent its Leech Pods to cover the entire second layer of the Abyss Brink. "Looking at the whole second layer of the Abyss Brink at the moment, I could only find 35 people while most of them are in the southern region. I don''t see anyone within thousands of kilometer radius around the northwestern side close to the third layer of the entrance. There are a few imperial-level monsters over there, but they''re no threat to us. I think that''s the best place for Charcoal and the rest to elevate." "We can''t do it in the northwestern side." However, Lin Huang rejected the suggestion right away. "It''s too close to the third layer of the entrance and there might be human imperial-level powerhouses entering and exiting any time. They might come to check it out if they sense the commotion." "Then, we''re only left with the northeastern side, but there''s a team of five hunting over there now. They''re all high-level immortal-levels," Bloody explained the reason why it had not picked the northeastern region earlier. "It''s alright. We can get Grimace to cover up the commotion of the elevation with his illusion if they''re only on immortal level." Lin Huang already thought of a plan. "Let''s go for the northeastern region then." "There''s a valley that''s not bad in the northeastern region." Bloody marked the coordinates down as it spoke. Although he could not set the coordinates with his Emperor''s Heart Ring at the Abyss Brink, the third layer of the Abyss Brink had been explored countless times and he could purchase a detailed map with money. Studying the coordinates Bloody had marked, Lin Huang summoned Thunder right away and sat on its back with Bloody. He patted Thunder''s neck. "To the northeastern region." Thunder flapped its wings and rose into the sky rapidly. It brought Lin Huang tens of thousands of meters above the sky in the blink of an eye. It then flapped its wings again in the sky and sped toward the northeastern region at high speed like an arrow. Though Thunder was quick, it took half an hour for it to bring Lin Huang to the valley Bloody had marked. Under Bloody''s guidance, Thunder landed deep in the valley. Hopping off Thunder, Lin Huang patted Thunder''s beak affectionately. "Do whatever you want now, even hunting, but don''t create trouble with the humans. Also, don''t go too far. I need you later." Thunder nodded right away. It was so sick of being in card form. Naturally, it was elated to have the opportunity to move freely. It flapped its wings, rose into the sky and disappeared in the next second as if it was afraid that Lin Huang would back out on his words. Seeing Thunder disappear, Lin Huang shook his head and smiled before summoning three Monster Cards including Charcoal, Tyrant, and the Herculean King. The three imperial monsters showed themselves as soon as the cards were crushed. Charcoal glanced around after being summoned and asked rather curiously, "Where are the enemies?" Tyrant and the Herculean King were puzzled too. "Are you giving us any snacks?" Charcoal leaned its big head toward Lin Huang. Lin Huang caressed Charcoal''s head and said casually while smiling, "I didn''t let you guys out to fight or give snacks out this time, but I''m going to do something that you guys have been waiting for." "Ice cream?!" Tyrant was the first to answer. He was practically drooling as soon as he said that. "Grilled fish?!" Charcoal was stunned for a moment and asked while widening its eyes. The Herculean King hesitated and asked with a little uncertainty, "Is it durian?" "I''ve told you guys it''s not snacks," Lin Huang said helplessly while covering his face. The three monsters clearly had disappointment written on their faces when they heard Lin Huang emphasizing that he was not giving snacks out. "You guys are elevating to quadruple mutation." Bloody that was standing aside finally could not help but blurt it out. The three imperial monsters were astonished to hear that. "Are we really elevating?" Charcoal became excited all of a sudden. "I''ve only gathered enough materials for elevation for the three of you, so I''m elevating you first instead of gathering all materials." "But, Master, you''re still on immortal-level. Wouldn''t you be unable to summon us after we''ve elevated?" Tyrant asked immediately. They knew Kylie had been sealed since her elevation. "It''s alright. I''m already on peak-stage immortal-level now, so it shouldn''t take long for me to break through to imperial-level," Lin Huang explained, "Xiao Hei''s authorization will be activated as soon as I elevate to imperial-level. I think I will take two to three months at the most." "Don''t worry about it. I''ll be the last to elevate, so I''ll take good care of Master," Bloody knew what Tyrant was worried about, so it comforted it. "You guys elevating to quadruple mutation and mythical-level will be a great help for me. I personally hope that I can elevate all of you to mythical-level while I''m still on immortal-level. If that happens, all of you would have your combat strength boosted as soon as I elevate to imperial-level. I won''t have to spend more time collecting materials. So, let''s not drag it out further. Go ahead with the elevation when we have the materials instead of waiting for me to get to imperial-level. Understand?" "Understand!" Tyrant and the rest chanted in unison. The three of them objected no further after hearing what Lin Huang said. "Alright then, Tyrant, you will go first." Lin Huang waved at Tyrant. Tyrant saw his signal and walked over. Following the condition at the back of the card, Lin Huang took the materials for elevating and five Advance Cards out. "Hold the god relic ax. Put this star core into your heart and drink this bottle of Spirit Lava." Although the order sounded suicidal, Tyrant followed Lin Huang''s order to a T without hesitation. After waiting for Tyrant put all the materials into his body more than half an hour later, Lin Huang crushed the five Advance Cards in his hand and pointed at Tyrant that was kneeling on the ground, shaking. The five Advance Cards turned into five golden beams and entered Tyrant''s body which calmed quickly while the god relic ax in his hand was absorbed into his body as well. He sat leaning against a huge mountain peacefully as his body began to grow rapidly. In the blink of an eye, he regained his normal size whereby his height reached over 30,000 meters. Even though he was sitting down, he was more than 10,000 meters tall, two folds taller than the mountain behind him. Later on, he seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep while he shut his eyes slowly. A golden cocoon layer soon consolidated on the surface of his body. As the cocoon was completely consolidated, Tyrant turned into a colossal golden egg. The entire process went on for over an hour. Lin Huang was relieved when the golden egg was formed. "Seems like the condition for elevating that Xiao Hei gave is pretty reliable." "Looking at Tyrant''s reaction, this elevation process might be uncomfortable. Please bear with it as much as you can." Lin Huang turned around to look at Charcoal and the Herculean King. Charcoal retracted his head as Lin Huang smiled upon seeing his fear and waved at the Herculean King. "Herculean King, you''re up next." The Herculean King nodded and walked up to him. Lin Huang took out the materials for the Herculean King. "First, put the Titan Heart into your heart. Secondly, drink the entire bottle of demigod-level Dragon Whale''s blood." After spending over half an hour putting all the materials into the Herculean King''s body, Lin Huang crushed another five Advance Cards. They turned into five golden beams and penetrated the Herculean King''s body. Soon, the Herculean King''s body began to grow insanely. It regained its usual height of 3,000 meters and turned into a golden egg too. Charcoal was a little worried watching Tyrant and the Herculean King going through the process of putting the materials into their body. However, figuring that he would elevate after a moment of torture, he went up anyway. "The first step, integrate this Star Fire into your body. Secondly, eat these 36 fire-element crystals." Lin Huang took the materials out for Charcoal one after another. What surprised it was that he did not feel like the process was torturous, just that some of them made him want to throw up. Before it could experience any other feeling, Lin Huang had crushed five Advance Cards and they went into his body. Soon, Charcoal regained its usual size, growing to more than 30,000 meters long. It fell asleep leaning next to Tyrant on the mountain. It was almost four hours later when Charcoal turned into a golden egg. Night had fallen in the Abyss Brink. Noticing that the sky had turned dark, instead of resting, Lin Huang summoned two God Figurines'' Combat Souls, the Divine Sun Tree, and the Enchanted Fairy as well as Grimace. "Grimace, shield the area around here with your illusion skill. Divine Sun Tree and Enchanted Fairy, both of you will guard the trio''s elevation. I''ll be away for one to two days to hunt for Bai''s demigod''s soul." After coming up with the arrangement, Lin Huang summoned Thunder and hopped onto its back. "Go to the northwestern region, the third layer of the entrance to the Abyss Brink!" 980 Python-belly Poison Frog It was midnight in the underground of some luxurious mansion in Division 1. A big, muscular man watched a naked man whose limbs and neck was bound with thick shackles in a room through a transparent window. If anyone from the Heaven Alliance was there, they should be able to recognize this person who was tied up in one glance. He was the chief of the Heaven Alliance who was attacked and had gone missing earlier, Chan Dou. He was fully naked and almost every inch of his skin was wounded. It was clear that he had been tortured in an unimaginable way recently. There was a black gooey monster clinging to his head at the moment. It looked like a pile of swamp mud that had come alive. Nobody knew what it was doing to Chan Dou. No matter what, it was stuck to Chan Dou''s head and could not be get rid of. Chan Dou was struggling with all his might in the room. The veins on his neck and forehead were bulging and he was shrieking in devastation as if he was suffering extreme pain that was unbearable for humans. The big man had no change of expression on his face as he watched Chan Dou struggling in pain. He turned his head to look at the old gray-haired man that was working on a device aside. "I''ve given you guys half a month. How much more time do you need to fully purify him?" "We''ve used up all the techniques that we have, but this fella has an extremely strong will. Moreover, there''s a god that''s clinging onto his will in his body. There are only two ways to destroy his will completely. One is to wear his will out slowly while the other is to destroy that god." "I asked how much more time do you need?" A ferocious gleam flashed through the big man''s eyes. "Three months. Looking at the current progress, we''ll need at least three months." The gray-haired old man gave a time limit immediately. "Three months, that''s what you said." The big man glared at the old man. "If you haven''t done it in three months, all of you will be sacrificed." He then turned around and left right after he was done speaking. Just when he walked out of the room, the Emperor''s Heart Ring on his left middle finger vibrated. He saw a message when he opened the communication page. "Someone saw Lin Xie in the second layer of the Abyss Brink. Should we do it?" The big man grinned slightly and replied with six words: "Find him and bring him back!" Lin Huang had no idea that his whereabouts had been exposed and that he was being targeted. However, he had stepped into the third layer of the Abyss Brink at the moment. "There are too many monsters with a combat strength above imperial-level yellow gold-rank in this layer. My Leech Pods will be discovered easily. There''s no way that I could use the map here," Bloody voiced its helplessness once they stepped into the third layer of the Abyss Brink. "But we could hunt for imperial-level monsters first. The local imperial-level monsters should know which area has demigods." Lin Huang nodded and sensed what kind of monsters were available with his Territory. Ever since he elevated to immortal-level rank-10, the range of his Territory had expanded to 10 kilometers. However, he found nothing after a while of sensing. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang summoned Lancelot. Ever since Lancelot had elevated to imperial-level yellow gold-rank, the range of his Territory had expanded further to 80kilometers now. Since he was on pseudo-mythical-level, the range of his Territory was on par with other imperial-level white gold-rank monsters. Lancelot soon found a few targets as he heard the commotion after sensing around for a while. "There are three monsters in the range of my Territory. Two imperial-level crimson gold-ranks and one imperial-level yellow gold-rank." "Where''s the imperial-level yellow gold-rank?" Lin Huang asked, ignoring the presence of the two imperial-level crimson gold-ranks. "In our 11 o''clock. It''s approximately 60 kilometers away from us." "Let''s go!" Lin Huang moved toward the target as soon as Lancelot reported the location. Lancelot caught up to him right away. In less than half a minute, Lin Huang arrived before the imperial-level yellow gold-rank monster Lancelot mentioned. It was a Crimson Scorpiodemon. Its body was at least 100 meters long and was completely maroon in color. The monster exhibited a mysterious beauty under the radiance of the moonlight. "Looks like food sent themselves here." The Crimson Scorpiodemon was drooling upon sensing humans invading its territory. However, its mind went blank while its eyes turned black in the next second. In less than three seconds, Bloody cast its parasite on this gigantic Crimson Scorpiodemon and turned it into a puppet. Bloody spoke leisurely after spending a few minutes reading everything in the Crimson Scorpiodemon''s head, "There''s a demigod monster in the swamp approximately 2,000 kilometers from here in the southeastern direction. It''s a Python-belly Poisonous Frog." Lin Huang had seen the Python-belly Poisonous Frog in the monster guide before. Such a monster was usually only imperial-level whilst its most powerful two abilities were poison and devouring. Their poison could easily kill all monsters on the same level. Moreover, they ate almost everything and could digest anything. Almost anything that went into this monster''s belly would be washed with poison and turned into liquid in a short period of time. Apart from that, the attack speed of their tongue was pretty terrifying. It could pierce through most bodies of monsters on the same level. Naturally, such monsters would have even a more powerful ability if it elevated to imperial-level. However, Lin Huang smirked when he heard about the Python-belly Poisonous Frog. "It seems like we''re in luck." If it were anyone else encountering such a monster, even though the person was a demigod-level powerhouse, they would run as far as they could. It was very possible for the demigod-level powerhouse to be attacked and eaten by the Python-belly Poisonous Frog as soon as he was poisoned as his ability would be weakened. In reality, the Python-belly Poisonous Frog was considered the overlord in the third layer of the Abyss Brink. Although it was not as powerful if it were to be compared with other demigod monsters'' abilities alone, the outcome of the battle was outstanding given that its ability was combined with poison. Three human demigods had been killed by it throughout the hundreds of years while two had run away. Two demigod-level monsters that attempted to fight for its territory eventually became its food. Another one ran away alive but died halfway due to the poisonous attack while only one that managed to escape and survived. That was the reason why almost no human demigod was willing to offend it while the other demigod monsters allowed it to occupy the third layer of the Abyss Brink''s southeastern region. However, Lin Huang had no idea about all that. He did not even look at the information about the third layer of the Abyss Brink. It was also his first time entering the third layer of the Abyss Brink. Otherwise, he would just look at the map for demigods as soon as he entered. The territory of each demigod-level monster was marked clearly on the map of the third layer of the Abyss Brink. The reason why Lin Huang said that he was fortunate to encounter the Python-belly Poisonous Frog was that the God Figurine''s Combat Soul''s body was on par with a Protoss. Neither could they be poisoned, nor would the poison enter their bodies. It was perfect to challenge the Python-belly Poisonous Frog''s two most powerful abilities. After recalling Lancelot back into card form, Lin Huang took Bloody along towards the Python-belly Poisonous Frog''s territory. 984 Die, Titan Boa! The Titan Boa was slightly stunned when its spiritual suppression did nothing to the immortal-level human before it. Although it was not a monster expert in spiritual skills, even an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse among demigods could not ignore its spiritual suppression. It had killed imperial-level white gold-rank humans in the past in the same way. However, it could clearly sense that the human before it ignored its spiritual suppression completely. He hovered into the sky like a tough coral in the wave of its spiritual suppression. He could not be affected at all. In the next second, it saw Lin Huang summon a monster with an elephant trunk and the body of a leopard. The Titan Boa was shocked to sense the monster''s aura. It could sense that the monster''s combat strength was only on imperial-level purple gold-rank, but there was an odd aura that caused it to be instinctively fearsome. "The chill that strikes my spirit" Soon, the Titan Boa noticed that the chill was a form of suppression that came from its opponent''s level. "This fella is on mythical-level!" Its eyes were filled with fear when it looked at the Nightmare Tapir. Compared to the Python-belly Poisonous Frog, it dared not underestimate its mythical-level opponent. The Nightmare Tapir with an elephant trunk and the body of a leopard was only less than three meters long. It was like a mere ant before it. However, at that very moment, it treated the Nightmare Tapir as its deadly rival that it had never encountered before. Thousands of meters away, the Nightmare Tapir''s eyes turned completely black all of a sudden. The Titan Boa jolted before it attacked without thinking twice. Its body that was lying down shot out of nowhere. Its tail that was like a gigantic mountain range whipped through the air and appeared where the human and beast were in the blink of an eye, drowning the both of them. The strong wind and energy wave coming from the end of its tail plowed a fan-shaped area which radius exceeded 800 kilometers on the ground. The trees and flowers within the entire area turned into dust. The attack was practically the most powerful attack the Titan Boa could launch without using its Divine Power. However, it was not elated at all despite having released all it had. Instead, it had a slight change of expression because it clearly sensed that its attack had landed on nothing. "Where is he?" The Titan Boa sensed all the surrounding areas within its range of its territory with all its might in an attempt to detect Lin Huang''s whereabouts. Just when it sensed something, it jolted again and shot forward all of a sudden. However, a sharp claw mauled its neck at the moment, leaving a few massive wounds that were at least 20 meters long on its neck. Its scales with powerful defensive abilities seemed to have zero defenses against the opponent''s sharp claws. Bearing the pain, the Titan Boa turned its head to look at the Nightmare Tapir. Its initial shock calmed down a little. If it were to dodge the attack earlier a millisecond later, its head might have been torn off and smashed into mush. "You won''t be that lucky next time," said the Nightmare Tapir through voice transmission while grinning coldly. "I admit that you''re powerful, but there''s something that I have that you can''t compare to." The Titan Boa released a deafening sound. "You have no Divine Power in you!" "I can still kill you without Divine Power!" The Nightmare Tapir raised its head and whipped its elephant trunk as soon as it was done speaking. The elephant trunk swept through the air like a whip. As if it were a giant scimitar that sliced through the air, everything it passed by was sliced into half. The long whip arrived before the Titan Boa in a flash, going straight to its vital point. The Titan Boa lashed its tail madly again without thinking twice. This time, it inserted almost half of its Divine Power into it. The massive mountain-like snake tail collided with the long elephant trunk which diameter was less than 15 centimeters long. At the moment, a golden flare that was as glaring as the sun lit up the collision point. The golden flare was growing brighter just as its size was growing rapidly too. It grew into a sphere that was thousands of meters in diameter within a few breaths. Eventually, the golden sphere did not seem to be able to withstand the rapidly expanding speed and exploded entirely. White light shot out all over the place. In that second, the entire night sky was lit up. The area within thousands of kilometers turned into day. Endless energy waves and wind pressure swept towards all directions with the collision point as the epicenter. The area within 2,000 kilometers turned into ruins. All the plants turned into dust while most imperial-level monsters were either injured or killed. Only a minority of them managed to escape with their injured bodies away from the energy waves like rabid animals. From a distance, Lin Huang, who hovered mid-air, saw that the Titan Boa''s eyes had turned completely black long ago. The Divine Power in its body experienced a tremor, and its aura fell away a while later. He could not help but swivel his head to look at the Nightmare Tapir next to him. "What exactly did he dream about?" "Fighting me," replied the Nightmare Tapir, turning its head and smiling. "Close-distance combat?'' "Yes." "Aren''t you lousy at close-distance combat?" Lin Huang asked in confusion. "It thought I''m good at it, so I made it think so on purpose. I made my close-distance combat ability super powerful." The Nightmare Tapir could not help but chuckle out loud. "Not only do I have the Ninetails Lynx''s speed and claws, but I also have a defensive ability on par with the Destructive Divine Mammoth. It was beaten up real good." "Oh wow, that''s so powerful!" Even Lin Huang could not help himself and gave the Nightmare Tapir a thumbs-up. He could only wonder if he would be invincible if the Nightmare Tapir integrated all nine True Spirits'' most powerful abilities into his body in his dream. The remaining Divine Power in the Titan Boa''s body went through another tremor when the duo was chatting. A moment later, its aura dropped rapidly and it was soon dying. The Titan Boa looked devastating in the dream world. It laid in the ruins while its body had hundreds of thousands of wounds like it had been cut with a sharp blade. There was no flesh in pristine condition from its head to its tail as if it went through slow slicing execution. Its scales and tough flesh did not seem to be able to defend it at all. Each wound on its body was at least tens of meters long. Its red flesh could almost be seen from its scales that were torn open. Some wounds were so deep that they went into its organs. The cuts were bleeding continuously with no sign of healing. Blood spilled from the Titan Boa''s mouth like a stream. "I lost" There was no yielding in its voice. "This is the toughest battle I''ve ever had in my life. It''s also the battle in which I was suppressed entirely. The power and defensive ability that I''m proud of were like babies to you. Even my most powerful ability, the Star Engulf, can''t do anything to you. "Although I never underestimated you since the beginning, never had I thought that a mythical-level would be so much more terrifying than I imagined!" "I think there''s something that I must tell you." The Nightmare Tapir that was hovering mid-air looked at the Titan Boa in a condescending way. It finally spoke, "I''m not on mythical-level. I''m on a level that''s even higher than mythical-level!" However, the Nightmare Tapir kept something a secret. It was still a child now. "Is that so? I didn''t lose in vain then" The very last wisp of breath in the Titan Boa finally faded when it learned the ''truth''. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a complete Titan Boa Card (Legendary-level) x2!" "The system has detected a demigod soul and Godhead (broken). Would you like to retrieve them?" 985 Secret Skill - Stealthy Snake Lin Huang was rather surprised to see Xiao Hei''s notification about acquiring a complete Titan Boa Monster Card. Under normal circumstances, the chances of obtaining a complete Monster Card from killing a monster was extremely low. According to Lin Huang''s past experience, the chances of it occurring was definitely much lower than 1%. Sometimes, he might only obtain a few hundred complete Monster Cards after killing millions of monsters. However, he obtained a complete card after killing the second monster. "Seems like my luck''s great today!" Lin Huang put away the gigantic monster carcass into his storage space after retrieving the demigod soul and Godhead. On the other hand, the Nightmare Tapir shared the memory it had retrieved with Bloody. "How is it going? Do we have the other demigod monsters'' coordinates?" Lin Huang only asked Bloody when he saw the Nightmare Tapir detach its elephant trunk from Bloody''s head. Bloody nodded in confirmation. "Almost there. Apart from the two that we''ve killed, there should be another 14 demigod-level monsters on this layer. The one that''s closest to us is the Ghastly Spider Lady that I told you about earlier. It''s approximately 3,500 kilometers from us in the southwest. Apart from that, there''s a Ghoul Lynx at least 5,000 kilometers north." The Ghoul Lynx was a spirit monster. There were not many recordings of it in the monster guide because most people who saw such a monster were dead. This monster was immune to most physical attacks. One could only harm it on a spiritual level. However, it was an expert in soul-type of attack techniques, illusions, and hypnotization. "They''re hard to handle no matter if it''s the Ghastly Spider Lady or the Ghoul Lynx." Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment. "Let''s go for the one that''s closest to us. Plan the route, Bloody." "Alright." Bloody soon plotted the route. "We''re heading west now. After killing the Ghastly Spider Lady, we''ll head northwest, then go north. If we follow this route, the Ghoul Lynx will be our last prey." "Sure!" Lin Huang had no objection. To him, there was no difference whoever they killed first. After all, he did not plan to spare any of the remaining 14 demigod-level monsters. After putting the demigod soul and the Godhead away as well as recalling the Nightmare Tapir into his head, Lin Huang made his way to the Ghastly Spider Lady''s territory with Bloody. Approximately 20 minutes later, they arrived at the Ghastly Spider Lady''s territory. Lin Huang crushed a Lucky Card and summoned his chosen fighter to go against the Ghastly Spider Lady the Ninetails Lynx. He only had three imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters with him at the moment. They were the Destructive Divine Mammoth, the Ninetails Lynx, and the Nightmare Tapir. The rest of them were on imperial-level white gold-rank and while they might be able to fight demigods, they could not suppress them easily. As for the three God Figurines that he had just obtained, he had yet to visualize them until now since their Combat Souls had yet to be consolidated. The Destructive Divine Mammoth, the Ninetails Lynx, and the Nightmare Tapir were the only ones that he could use at the moment. Theoretically, among the three God Figurines'' Combat Souls, the Nightmare Tapir should be the most suitable to fight a monster like the Ghastly Spider Lady. The Nightmare Tapir was the best expert in dragging his opponent into dreamland without them realizing and draining him to death there. No matter how intricate the Ghastly Spider Lady''s ability was, she would be controlled by the Nightmare Tapir in the dreamland. There was no way that she could turn the tables. One reason Lin Huang chose the Ninetails Lynx was that the latter was eager to fight after watching the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Nightmare Tapir''s battles earlier. On the other hand, he wanted to watch the fight against the demigod-level powerhouse himself. He had not witnessed the fight between the Nightmare Tapir and the Titan Boa earlier. What he had no idea about was that the Nightmare Tapir could actually pull him into dreamland to watch the fight. Since he did not mention it, the Nightmare Tapir did not know that he intended to watch it. The Ghastly Spider Lady locked her sights on Lin Huang who was coming at her at a rapid speed. In reality, she noticed this human who intruded her territory when he was hundreds of kilometers away. Her hunting instinct taught her patience, so she waited for her opponent to reveal his flaws in order for her to kill it in one blow. However, what puzzled her was that this human, whose combat strength was obviously only immortal-level, did not show any flaws at all. Even though he was moving at a high speed, he still maintained his high alertness, ready to take any attack from all directions at any time. "This human''s an expert. It''s too bad his combat strength is too weak. If he has the same combat strength as I do, I''m afraid he''ll be a difficult opponent." That was the first impression the Ghastly Spider Lady had of Lin Huang. She smirked when she noticed Lin Huang advancing to her soon. A couple of strands of hair were waving like they were living things. Gradually, they faded and turned invisible. They were like poisonous snakes hiding in the dark, slithering their way to Lin Huang. There was no sound or trace left behind everywhere they passed. That was her assassination secret skill, the Stealthy Snake. Such a secret skill attack was not only invisible, but it also blocked out the ability to sense one''s territory. The Ghastly Spider Lady had killed countless preys with this secret skill. Up until the moment they were dead, many preys had no idea what attacked them. Lin Huang frowned suddenly when he was still more than 20 kilometers away from the Ghastly Spider Lady. Using his Divine Telekinesis, he found out that there were over 30 strands of hair that could not be seen with the naked eye coming toward his direction rapidly. What surprised him was that even his Territory skill did not sense the hair. It did not sense anything out of the ordinary. "It seems like this is a powerful one. Without my Divine Telekinesis, I''m afraid I''d have been dead right now." Lin Huang summoned the Ninetails Lynx right away. He knew he could not go up against such a demigod-level attack without having his trump card to boost his combat strength. "Do you sense the invisible hair?" Lin Huang asked through voice transmission. The Ninetails Lynx nodded. "This stealthy technique isn''t too shabby. There''s a unique shield layer on the surface of the hair that blocks out a large chunk of the sensing ability of the Territory skill. Unfortunately, the hair occupies space no matter how small it is. In the range of my territory, anything in the material world that occupies space can''t escape from me." It saw through the structure of the shield on the hair in one glance. Lin Huang was completely relieved when he heard what the Ninetails Lynx said. He was thinking of getting the Nightmare Tapir to fight again if the Ninetails Lynx could not sense the hair. The Nightmare Tapir could pull the opponent into dreamland so that there was no way it could fight at all. At least 30 strands of hair slithered less than 100 meters from Lin Huang using the Stealthy Snake when the human and cat were just done talking. The little cat returned to Lin Huang''s shoulder, seeming like a white shadow that flashed in the air. At that moment, Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis just sensed that the 36 strands of hair that were attempting to attack him were now sliced into pieces. The Ghastly Spider Lady that was 20 kilometers away let out a deep groan. The pair of eyes on her pale face shifted slowly. She was now staring at the little white cat on Lin Huang''s shoulder 20 kilometers away. She flashed her white teeth with a devilish smile. "So, he has an assistant." 986 She Becomes Bald but No More Powerful The missed hit made the Ghastly Spider Lady shift her attention to the Ninetails Lynx on Lin Huang which was even more threatening. The Ninetails Lynx looked at her from far away too. As they locked eyes, the Ghastly Spider Lady clearly noticed that her soul was shaking. At that moment, she realized that it was on a higher level of suppression. "It''s on mythical-level?!" The moment the Ghastly Spider Lady was stunned, the Ninetails Lynx on Lin Huang''s shoulder disappeared again. Almost at the same time, a white streak appeared before the Ghastly Spider Lady without warning. It was too late when she noticed that. Before she managed to do anything, the white streak had pierced through her body. In the next second, the white streak appeared hundreds of meters behind the Ghastly Spider Lady, revealing itself gradually. It was the Ninetails Lynx that had been on Lin Huang''s shoulder earlier! Lin Huang only noticed that the little white cat on his shoulder was no longer there when he saw it appear behind the spider lady. By then, he had arrived less than five kilometers from the Ghastly Spider Lady. He was stunned when he saw her naked body sliced into tens of pieces. He recalled something all of a sudden and spoke to the Ninetails Lynx through voice transmission immediately, "She''s an undead monster. You must cut all of her hair off to kill her!" The Ghastly Spider Lady''s body was healing rapidly at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye as soon as the voice transmission was heard. Her head turned 180 degrees directly, and her black eyes on her pale face glared deadly at the Ninetails Lynx. Her long hair began dancing like snakes. "Die!" A devastating shriek came from the Ghastly Spider Lady''s throat. Clearly, she was extremely furious that she was attacked. She had gone into a frenzy, not caring whether the opponent was on mythical-level at all. At the same time that she shrieked, her long hair swept towards the Ninetails Lynx like an ocean wave. Her black, long hair turned into bunches of black threads and swept through heaven and earth. It was like flood flushing out of a broken dam. Nonetheless, the Ninetails Lynx was fearless, its eyes turned a little red as it charged like a white streak again. Not only did the white streak not run away, but it also entered the flood formed by the black strands of hair. The white streak was sparkling mid-air. At the same time, sharp air blades formed from the white streak attacked the hair again and again. The bunches of black hair was like hair being cut whereby they broke off easily wherever the scimitar-like sharp blade passed by. None of the hairs managed to touch the white streak at all. "Didn''t they say that the Ghastly Spider Lady''s hair is as powerful as a demigod relic?" Lin Huang began to suspect whether the information recorded in the monster guide was true. According to his observation, the Ghastly Spider Lady''s hair seemed to be no different from an ordinary human''s hair whereby it was easily snipped off. "The information in the monster guide should be verified," Bloody voiced its speculation, "There should be two reasons why the hair can be cut so easily." "One is that the Ninetails Lynx is extremely powerful, and its attack contains the slicing of space. The second reason is that the Ghastly Spider Lady''s hair''s attribute isn''t the highest defense mode at the moment, but is her most powerful attack mode." In the short couple seconds of battling, the Ghastly Spider Lady who had a third of her hair gone realized that her opponent was much more powerful than she imagined. She calmed down gradually. "No, I''ll definitely lose if this goes on!" She noticed that her opponent would cut a great amount of her hair easily whenever it mauled her with its claws. Although she had no idea how it did it, she knew that she would be defeated sooner or later, so she changed her strategy immediately. Her black hair scattered all of a sudden and turned into thin threads. They swept towards the Ninetails Lynx from all directions. In the blink of an eye, the Ninetails Lynx seemed to have fallen into a trap whereby it was covered completely by countless strands of hair. Furthermore, its space was shrinking. "Let''s see how you''re going to run!" A sense of disdain flashed through the Ninetails Lynx''s eyes when it noticed that. In the next second, it flashed away while the prison made of the long hair suddenly became empty. The Ghastly Spider Lady jolted upon realizing that the Ninetails Lynx was gone. Almost at the same time, the Ghastly Spider Lady''s head was left with a round and naked scalp. She looked similar to a middle-aged man who suffered from baldness. Yes, she was bald. However, no, she did not become more powerful. Instead, her aura was dropping rapidly. The Ninetails Lynx''s attack almost made her lose two-thirds of her hair. Lin Huang was not sure to laugh or cry when he witnessed that mid-air. The Ninetails Lynx had made its opponent bald! It was clear that the cat had done that on purpose. Perhaps because she thought the top of her head was a little chilly, so the Ghastly Spider Lady could not help but touch her head. Her expression turned terrible when she found out that she was bald. Her pallid face was even paler now. The expression on her face was gravely ferocious. Clearly, she was extremely mad. "I''ll kill you! Kill you! Kill you!" Anyone could not help but have goosebumps when the devastating shriek that reflected despair spread hundreds of kilometers away into the night. The Ghastly Spider Lady fell into a complete frenzy later on. She lost her calm and ditched her strategy entirely. She consolidated her remaining hair into a long whip, even inserting Divine Power into it while lashing everything around her madly. The Ninetails Lynx did not bother to fight her and dodged with sparkles continuously. It even had the time to grab Lin Huang and send him into the alternate dimension to prevent him from feeling the impact. The Ghastly Spider Lady was even more enraged now that the Ninetails Lynx could still take care of others under its attack. She increased the frequency of her lashes. However, apart from destroying everything within hundreds of kilometers, her attack did not even touch a hair on the Ninetails Lynx. By going into a rage, the spider lady revealed all of her flaws to the Ninetails Lynx. The flaws that kept spilling made the Ninetails Lynx assault her scalp over and over again. When it attacked for the sixth time, it removed the very last strand of hair behind the Ghastly Spider Lady''s head. By then, the Ghastly Spider Lady became completely bald. Her shiny scalp reflected the bright moonlight. The Ghastly Spider Lady, whose hair was completely removed, looked like she had turned into a rock. She stood frozen where she was while her eyes lost spirit slowly and all signs of life were fading rapidly. Xiao Hei''s notifications came one after another on Lin Huang''s side. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained complete Ghastly Spider Lady Card (Legendary-level) x2! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained demigod soul crystals (Pseudo-mythical-level) x2 "The system has detected a demigod soul and a Godhead (broken). Would you like to retrieve them?" 989 Herculean King, Quadruple Mutated Lin Huang found out from the two white-robed men''s minds that Chan Dou was still alive, but the duo had no idea where he had been sent to. The God Bless organization was massive whereby there were a couple of branches in each safety zone and each branch in the same zone served different purposes. The white-robed men only knew what was happening at their branch, but they knew nothing much about the other branches and the headquarters. They did not even know where were the exact locations of those branches and headquarters. Although Lin Huang found out about the location of their branch as well as there being a demigod there from the duo''s memory, he did not plan to alert the enemy just yet. Bloody shared the same opinion. "Looking at the current situation, it''s easy for us to destroy this branch that we know of. However, the people from God Bless will be even more cautious as soon as the branch is destroyed. It will only bring our further investigation a bigger obstacle, so we can''t do anything to this branch just yet." "I think so too, but the current issue is that we can''t obtain more information to deepen the investigation if we don''t drop by this branch." "We don''t have to do the investigation ourselves," Bloody said and looked at the two white-robed men who were still wandering in dreamland. "We can send two spies in." Lin Huang''s attention shifted to the two white-robed men. He stared at them for a while and turned his head to ask the Nightmare Tapir, "Can you do it?" "It shouldn''t be a problem. I can imprint a part of me in their bodies. As soon as they fall asleep, I can retrieve the information from their heads no matter the distance. Furthermore, nobody will find out about that including themselves," said the Nightmare Tapir, nodding, but he raised a question, "But there''s one problem. Many things they experienced in the dreamland can''t be explained properly. If we let them go just like that, there''d be many loopholes when someone were to question them. They''d find out about it sooner or later. I''m afraid they''d know we did something to them by then." "Tell me about what they went through. I''ll make you a new script." Bloody took up the responsibility. Bloody saw everything in their heads a moment later. "I get it now. I might need your help to delete the beginning portion of their memory. Start from the Midnight Unicorn illusion they saw when they came to the canyon. Change it to them seeing a male Midnight Unicorn which ran away when it saw them from far away." Soon, two days had passed. The two white-robed men returned to the second layer of the Abyss Brink from the third layer. "I''ve already told you that he''s definitely not on the third layer. We wasted two days for nothing," the short one complained, feeling irritated. "It seems like Lin Xie has left the Abyss Brink," the tall one ignored the short one''s complaint while speaking to himself, "Since he''s not on the second and third layers, I think we should take a look at the first layer." "Go by yourself. I don''t have the time to play along with you. I''m going back to report myself now." The short one did not bother the tall one and rushed to the exit of the second layer right away. The tall one frowned slightly. Seeing the short one disappearing from his field of vision, he followed, feeling helpless. Over half an hour later, the duo got out of the second layer exit of the Abyss Brink one after another. They returned to the land. Just when they returned, the duo summoned a Dimensional Portal and stepped into it. In Division 3, Magical Sky City. In a tall office building, there was a well-lit office with three transparent membrane walls. An old, gray-haired man in a ponytail who was sitting at a meeting table was looking at the two white-robed men standing before the office table through the frameless glasses on his nose bridge. One of the two white-robed men was short and the other, tall. The tall one was at least 1.9 meters tall. His skin was unhealthily pale. The short one was less than 1.7 meters tall. His skin was tanned, and one could see the pores on his nose from a couple of meters away. The old man placed his elbows on the table while crossing both of his hands as he listened to the two men talking. "Do you mean the both of you have browsed through the second and third layers of the Abyss Brink but you didn''t find any trace of Lin Xie?" "Yes, boss. We didn''t only browse through the hunting zones this time. We also went through every inch of the land from the south to the north, from the east to the west, but we didn''t find Lin Xie,'' added the short one. The old man did not look at the short guy. Instead, he turned his head to look at the tall one and asked, "You didn''t miss out any place?" The tall one nodded. "Yes, we didn''t miss out an inch on the second and third layers." "So, you didn''t browse the first layer?" The old man frowned slightly. The short one nudged the tall one next to him with his elbow. "See, I told you that we should browse the first layer, but you insisted that it''s impossible for Lin Xie to go to the first layer and you said we must come back to report ourselves right away." "You" The tall one was enraged to hear that. Just like that, the short one turned the tables around! "Never mind. It doesn''t matter if you didn''t browse through them. Indeed, it''s pretty impossible that Lin Xie would go to the first layer." The old man waved to stop the duo''s fight. "Alright, both of you may leave now. Be on standby and don''t go too far. There will be a mission soon." "What mission, boss?" the short one asked rather curiously. "Something from the Purple Crow. Don''t ask about the detail. I''ll tell you guys by then." The old man waved to get them to leave directly. Lin Huang had been staying in the second layer of the Abyss Brink. He had been guarding the four golden eggs while practicing his sword skills every day. At midnight on the ninth day, one of the golden eggs finally hatched. Lin Huang put the wooden sword in his hand away immediately hearing the cracking of the shell. He looked at the few golden eggs and soon realized that it was the Herculean King''s golden egg that was cracking. The crack seemed to have formed automatically. It was just a hairline crack in the beginning at only over ten centimeters. Soon, it turned into the size of a thumb while its length expanded to hundreds of meters. The crack spread out, and there were more and more cracks. Approximately half an hour later, cracks of all sizes filled the entire egg. All of a sudden, countless golden rays shot out of the cracks. Subsequently, the entire shell broke and turned into pieces. The tens of thousands of eggshell pieces turned into golden dots sparkling in the air. It looked like stars in the night sky. Lin Huang saw the giant golden ape covered in the sparkles. The giant ape opened its eyes slowly as if it was waking up from a deep slumber. At the moment, the golden dots went through a tremor out of the blue. They turned into a golden stream and penetrated the giant ape''s chest. After a long time later, the golden gleam faded completely. The giant ape stepped forward, shrinking with every step it took. Its height shrunk to three meters when it appeared before Lin Huang. With the help of a bonfire, Lin Huang saw the Herculean King''s transformed appearance. His long hair was short now. He looked more like a human when he was standing up. The biggest difference was that many parts of his body were covered with a layer of golden armor. He even had an exquisite golden headband on his head and golden flames burned in his eyes. ''The Monkey King bar is the only thing you''re missing to be the Monkey King!'' Lin Huang thought to himself upon seeing the Herculean King''s transformation. 987 Bai Agrees to Elevate Before hunting the Ghastly Spider Lady, Lin Huang used a Lucky Card intentionally but never had he expected that complete Ghastly Spider Lady Monster Cards would come out. Besides that, there were even demigod soul crystals. After retrieving the Ghastly Spider Lady''s demigod soul and Godhead in her body, Lin Huang put the carcass away and said to Bloody in his sleeve with his head down, "Where to next?" "There''s a Golden Venom Silkworm 6,800 kilometers in the southwest." "Let''s go!" Lin Huang hovered into the sky directly after putting the Ninetails Lynx away and headed straight southwest. Past 10 a.m. the next morning, Lin Huang finally returned to the second layer from the third layer of the Abyss Brink. He had spent the entire night killing all 16 demigod-level monsters in the Abyss Brink. With the effect of the Lucky Cards and Double Reward Cards, his night full of reward was pretty handsome. He obtained a total of six compete Monster Cards, four demigod soul crystals, four demigod relics, 32 demigod souls, and 32 broken Godheads. The six complete Monster Cards were two Titan Boas, two Ghastly Spider Ladies, and two Ghoul Lynxs. Although they were all demigod-level monsters, due to the restriction of Lin Huang''s combat strength, they were just like Bai and the rest whereby their combat strength was only on imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Lin Huang also obtained 16 cross-ranking rewards. Since he had killed demigods, he would receive 80 card draws each time he killed one. With the Double Reward Cards, he obtained a total of 2,560 draws. Lin Huang summoned Bai when he returned to the land where Tyrant and the rest were elevating. Bai was rather puzzled when he saw the three golden eggs. However, he soon sensed the aura that he was familiar with inside the eggs. Tyrant and the rest were in there! Lin Huang only explained upon seeing Bai glaring at the golden eggs, "I elevated Tyrant and the other two to mythical-level since I''ve gathered sufficient materials for them." A sense of envy flashed through Bai''s eyes when he heard that, but soon he hid his emotions. "You don''t have to be envious because I''ve gathered the materials for you too. You can elevate now." Lin Huang took out the materials one after another while speaking. "You can''t summon me after I elevate, can you?" Bai asked. "It''s alright. That''ll just be temporary," Lin Huang explained while smiling, "I''ve found a way to elevate to imperial-level, so I should complete the elevation soon." Bai fell into silence for a moment before asking again, "Your Combat Souls Are they much more powerful than us?" It was Lin Huang''s turn to fall into silence when he heard the question. He nodded a while later. "There are three of them who can kill demigods now while the remaining four should be able to fight demigods face-on." "I get it now. Let''s elevate then." Bai nodded firmly after hearing the answer. "Let''s begin then." Lin Huang handed the materials to Bai one after another for the integration following the instructions on the cards. The integration process was extremely torturous, especially integrating the demigod blood and demigod soul. The expression on Bai''s face was so distorted that he looked like something else now. Usually, it only required the integration of a ton demigod blood and ten demigod souls. However, the instruction at the back of the card said the more, the better. Bai integrated a total of three tons of demigod blood and 32 demigod souls. He said nothing throughout the entire process whereby he stood where he was while blood gushed out of the pores all over his body. Even Lin Huang, who stood aside, was frowning hard when he saw this grisly scene. He did not stop Bai. Instead, he crushed five Advance Cards. Bai''s pain finally faded when the five Advance Cards turned into five golden glows which penetrated his body. Just like Tyrant and the rest, his body began turning into a golden egg too. Lin Huang released a long exhale of relief upon seeing Bai enter the elevation mode. "This round of elevation is finally done." Since he had completed the core goal of elevating the four imperial monsters, Lin Huang turned his head and looked at the two God Figurines'' Combat Souls beside. He then summoned all four of his imperial-level white gold-rank God Figurines'' Combat Souls. The Divine Sun Tree mastered the Fire Rule. Everything would be inflammable when it elevated to its peak in order to strengthen itself. The Enchanted Fairy mastered the Ice Rule. It could freeze the entire world from revolving when it was elevated to its peak. The Undead Styx mastered the Spirit Rule. When it elevated to its peak, it could turn any living thing into its loyal worshippers as it wished, building countless undead armies. It could also retrieve countless inheritances from the numerous souls and own them. The Withered Flower mastered the Life Rule. It could revive the dead on a large scale when it elevated to its peak. It could also engulf all living things in the world and turn it into a dead, barren land. All four Combat Souls had abilities no less than the Ninetails Lynx and the rest. It was just that they were one rank lower in terms of combat strength. Initially, Lin Huang could not decide which Combat Soul he should use the two demigod soul crystals that he had obtained from auctioning the god relic Ba Huang on. However, he had obtained another four during the hunt this time, so it was sufficient now. After summoning the four God Figurines'' Combat Souls, he took out four demigod soul crystals and threw them towards the four Combat Souls that grabbed the demigod soul crystals without thinking twice and swallowed them. The God Figurines'' Combat Souls completed their breakthrough merely over ten minutes later. All of them had elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank, and their aura was just as strong as the Destructive Divine Mammoth. Lin Huang made the Undead Styx stay to guard the premises as he put the three God Figurines'' Combat Souls away. He began practicing on his own. The Undead Styx had hundred thousands of imperial-level armies in its body whereby it had close to 200 imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses alone. Even if it did not fight by itself, the hundred thousand-strong armies were sufficient to fight two to three demigods. Furthermore, it was under the premise of no battle formation. In reality, Lin Huang got Bloody to share all of its battle formation knowledge to the Undead Styx ever since it formed its undead army. What he had no idea about was how well the Undead Styx mastered the battle formation now. Two white-robed people rushed through the second layer of the Abyss Brink, ignoring any monsters'' aura around completely. In reality, there was nothing that they should worry about since both of them were imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. They did not hide their aura at all. All of the monsters along the way would hide when they sensed the duo''s aura. They were afraid that they would be discovered. The most powerful monster in the second layer of the Abyss Brink was only on imperial-level yellow gold-rank after all. Picking a fight with anyone whose combat strength was two ranks higher was definitely asking for death. "We''ve searched through the few usual hunting zones on the second layer, but we didn''t find Lin Xie''s trace at all. Could he not be in the hunting zone?" "There are only two possibilities. He''s either in the hunting zone or he''s gone to the third layer." "Why did he even come to the Abyss Brink if he''s not going for the hunting zones?" "Who knows? We can only search following the map. We can''t let go of even a single zone!" 990 The Imperial Monsters that Hatched Lin Huang sensed clearly that the Herculean King''s aura was much more powerful than before. It was at least 100 times more powerful now. The golden flames in the Herculean King''s eyes faded slowly when he saw Lin Huang. He walked to Lin Huang before speaking, "Master, you must take care of yourself when we''re not around." "I will. Don''t worry. You guys just wait for me to elevate to imperial-level." Lin Huang patted the Herculean King''s arm. "Your new style isn''t too shabby. You''re quite handsome!" The Herculean King smirked when he heard the compliment. His body turned into orange pieces before he could say anything more as he converted into an orange card before Lin Huang quickly. Lin Huang extended his hand and the card was drawn to his palm. The card was completely orange with the Herculean King''s image on it. He was waving at Lin Huang in there. Lin Huang smiled and flipped the card over to look at the details. "Monster Card: Herculean King "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Super Strength Battleape (Fire attribute) "Type of Monster: Demon God-type (Pure Blood) / Ancient era Mighty Ape Tribe) "Nickname: None "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Martial Dao "Major Skills: Superhuman Strength, Undefeatable Warrior, Unbending Will, Unrestrained Divinity "Minor Skills: Demon God Armor, Demon God Shield "Summon Authority: Denied (To be activated when you reach imperial level) "Card Remarks: The second Monster Card that you can show off. "Demon god-type" Seeing that description on the card, Lin Huang recalled the introduction of such a tribe in his memory of the great world. During the ancient era, the demon god and god''s blood were the two major tribes of almost of the same rank. They were glorious. The reason they were fallen later on was mainly because the demon gods needed to maintain pure bloodline in each subgroup while most subgroups had low reproduction. Eventually, that caused the tribe members to drop and soon they were fallen. Putting away the Herculean King''s card into his body, Lin Huang gave his undivided attention to practicing his sword skills. He waited for the remaining three golden eggs to hatch patiently. In the next afternoon, the second golden egg hatched when the sun was glaring the hottest in the middle of the sky. It was Charcoal that hatched from the golden egg this time. Charcoal''s body shrunk to approximately 30 meters, but its appearance was at least a grade higher now. The current Charcoal had shiny scales all over its body like a coat of piano shellac that reflected Lin Huang''s image clearly. The scales were like shiny black mirrors. Not only had it shrunk, but its body was also slenderer now. It lost the clumsiness it had before and seemed rather elegant now. Although it did not look as suppressive as before, Lin Huang clearly sensed that the aura the current version of Charcoal had was so powerful that it was terrifying. Charcoal disappeared just when Lin Huang saw it hatch out of the shell. It then appeared before Lin Huang, rubbing its head against him. Lin Huang staggered from the slight scare. He did not see the dragon''s trajectory of movement at all which shocked him a little. "His speed''s a few folds faster than Kylie before she elevated!" He patted Charcoal''s head. "Your strength''s different from before now. Please behave." "Hehe, I''m more powerful now! Soon, I''ll be able to fight." Charcoal grinned. "It''s still far away from that. Stay in your sealed form patiently." Charcoal''s body began to turn into a card as soon as Lin Huang was done speaking. Lin Huang flipped the card in his hand directly to look at the detailed information on the back. "Monster Card: Charcoal "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Demon Flame Dragon (Fire attribute) "Type of Monster: Dragonkin (Pure Blood) / Ancient Era Demon Dragon Tribe) "Nickname: Flame Lord "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: True Dragon Dao "Major Skills: Evil Flame, Dragon Power, Dragon Breath, Draconic secret skill, Dragon Realm, Dragon Flame "Minor Skills: Elemental Immunity, Divine Regeneration, Physical Reflection "Summon Authority: Denied (To be activated when you reach imperial level) "Card Remarks: Trainable!" Lin Huang proceeded with his sword practice after putting Charcoal''s card away. On the morning of the 11th day, Lin Huang heard the cracking of an eggshell when he had just washed up and was having a snack. He looked up and saw a crack that was so subtle that it was almost invisible to the naked eye on the giant golden egg which was so colossal that it was touching the sky. Since he had experienced the same thing twice, Lin Huang proceeded to munch on the dried meat in his hand while waiting for Tyrant to break out of the egg patiently. Almost 20 minutes had passed when he finished his breakfast in leisure. By then, Tyrant finally hatched from the egg. Tyrant''s height that was over 30,000 meters tall was shrinking rapidly. He only stepped out and appeared before Lin Huang when he shriveled to approximately two meters tall. "Master." Lin Huang began taking a closer look at Tyrant that looked almost similar to a human now. He was over two meters tall with huge muscles bulging all over his body while his skin was its usual bronze color. He had blonde hair now while his pupils were black. The beard on his face was cleanly shaven. He looked like a handsome hunk who was 25 years old at the most. The once-dark gold armor that was attached to his body was pitch-black and it flaunted his body even more now. Lin Huang sensed the explosive power coming inside of Tyrant''s body unquestionably. Although he was only two meters tall, his real flesh was tens of thousands of meters tall. His power was condensed in each cell of his body. "Not bad! You''re much more powerful now." Tyrant smirked while scratching the back of his head, feeling bashful. "I''m sorry that I''ll have to seal you guys for a while. I''ll release all of you as soon as I''ve elevated to imperial level." Lin Huang patted Tyrant''s shoulder. Tyrant''s body soon began to fade and turned into a card. Lin Huang looked at the back of the card in his hand right away. "Monster Card: Tyrant "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Genie Combat God "Type of Monster: Archaic-type (Pure Blood) / Celestial Giant Tribe "Nickname: Combat God "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Combat God Dao, Martial Dao "Major Skills: Combat God Technique, Combat God Power, Combat God Rage, Combat God Ax "Minor Skills: Divine Regeneration, Physical Immunity "Summon Authority: Denied (To be activated when you reach imperial level) "Card Remarks: Trainable!" Lin Huang put the card back into his body after reading Tyrant''s card description. He turned his head and looked at the last golden egg far away for a while before glancing away. "Bai won''t complete his elevation so soon. The materials he digested were a few times more than the standard amount so it will delay the digesting time," Bloody explained while smiling upon noticing Lin Huang''s behavior. "I know." Lin Huang nodded. He said nothing more. In reality, he was rather worried that Bai would elevate abnormally. The reason being was that he had asked Xiao Hei a couple of days ago if there would be any side effects if Bai used too many integrated materials. Xiao Hei said that the material amount recommended by the system was the best suggestion. Too much or too few might cause the elevation to fail. Time passed by and another week passed. It was the 18th day since Lin Huang entered the Abyss Brink. Early in the morning, he finally heard a soft crack. 991 Bai Who Has Elevated Before Lin Huang managed to wash up, he got out of the tent immediately and looked at the very last golden egg hearing the cracking noise. He confirmed what he heard was not an illusion upon noticing a tiny hair-line crack on the golden egg. After washing up, he took his time to finish his breakfast and put the tent that he had been sleeping in for more than half a month away. He then sat on the rocks while waiting for Bai to complete his elevation patiently. Nobody knew if it was the eggshell that was extra hard or some other reason, but the cracking of Bai''s golden egg was significantly slower than Tyrant''s and the rest. The golden eggshell finally broke completely and turned into beams of light that penetrated into Bai''s body a full three hours later. Bai took a step forward and arrived before Lin Huang after he completed his elevation. He did not undergo a major change in terms of appearances. His hair remained white but his eyes were completely bloody red now. There was a red crystal in between his brows that was the size of a thumb while a thin layer of bloody mist lingered around his body. The black robe he was wearing changed from pure black to crimson patterns that looked like divine patterns. The crimson patterns looked like living things as they were flowing slowly. Bai''s bloody eyes turned back to black when he trained his eyes on Lin Huang. The blood crystal in between his brows sunk back into his skin automatically, disappearing. The bloody mist lingering around his body also faded quickly. Even the crimson patterns on his black robe stopped flowing as if they were just ordinary patterns now. What puzzled Lin Huang was that he did not sense a powerful aura from him like Tyrant and the rest had. To be exact, he did not sense any cultivator''s aura from Bai. It was as if he was just an ordinary person without any cultivation. "What happened to your aura?" Lin Huang asked while thinking how odd it was. "I''m hiding it," Bai explained while smiling, "The effect of elevation this time is so amazing that it''s out of my expectations." What he said puzzled Lin Huang even more in the end. Just when he wanted to probe further, Bai''s body began collapsing. Soon, he turned into a golden card hovering mid-air. Lin Huang was stunned to see the color of the card. A mythical-level Monster Card was orange in color but Bai''s card was golden. From what Lin Huang knew, only a supreme god-level Monster Card would be gold in color. He stretched out to pick up the card and turned it over to read right away. "Monster Card: Bai "Rarity: Supreme God-level (Pseudo) "Monster Name: Vampire King "Type of Monster: Fallen God''s Blood (Pure Blood) / Blood Demon Tribe "Nickname: Vampire "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Blood Bond "Major Skills: Almighty Vampire Particles, Blood Moon, Blood Demon secret skill, Blood Demon Realm "Minor Skills: Flesh Regeneration "Summon Authority: Denied (to be activated when you reach imperial level) "Card Remarks: Recommended to train with maximum effort!" Lin Huang was a little dizzy just looking at the hundreds of skills in Bai''s skill slots. There were quite a number of skills that made him envious when he took a glance at them. "Almighty Vampire Particles "Function 1: Evolved from Vampire Particles. It can imitate any form as well as constructing any form from one''s imagination as long as it doesn''t defy the law of physics. "Function 2: The owner of the skill can read all information about another living thing on the gene level from their blood. It gives the owner of the skill the ability to imitate the subject perfectly (unable to imitate living things possessed by high-level owners) "Function 3: The owner of the skill with the living thing''s blood can influence and assimilate the subject, and turn it into his Blood Servant. The maximum efficiency would be assimilating a living thing of the same combat strength as the owner of the skill. "Blood Moon: A Blood Moon can be consolidated from Blood Power and Divine Power coming from the owner''s body. Every living thing that the moon shines on within the territory will turn into Blood Servants (only applicable to living things with combat strength and level lower than the owner of the skill)" "Flesh Regeneration: As long as the owner of the skill has 1% of flesh left on his body, he can be resurrected using the remaining portion of flesh." Apart from these skills, there were a couple more in the Blood Demon secret skill that made Lin Huang envious. "Blood Demon Embodiment: An Embodiment made of Blood Power and Divine Power. The embodiment will possess 80% of the owner of the skill''s abilities and most of the owner''s skills. As long as the owner''s Blood Power and Divine Power are available, the embodiment can be consolidated over and over again no matter how it is killed. "Blood Power Extraction: The owner of the skill with any injuries at all can use this skill to extract all living things'' blood within his territory and turn it into Blood Power for healing (only applicable to living things with a combat strength and level lower than the owner of the skill) "Bloody Sacrifice: The owner of the skill can use this skill to sacrifice a massive amount of living things within his territory to acquire temporary level elevation (the sacrificial lives must have a combat strength and level lower than the owner of the skill. The maximum elevation with this skill is one level higher) "Stealthy Blood: Hide all life aura and transform oneself into a drop of blood to go completely stealthy". "What''s wrong? Any there issues on Bai''s elevation?" Bloody could not help but ask when it saw Lin Huang staring at the card silently for a long time. As his summoning beast, it could not see the card. However, it knew Lin Huang was looking at Bai''s card details. "Nothing." Lin Huang just snapped back to his senses. He put Bai''s card away and shook his head while smiling. "Bai elevated to pseudo-supreme god-level directly. Some of his skills are very impressive." "He elevated to pseudo-supreme god-level directly?!" Bloody gasped. It was clearly surprised. "Man, I''m envious!" "There''s no need to be envious of him. All of you will elevate to supreme god-level as long as you follow me. It''s just a matter of time," Lin Huang assured with full confidence. "A mythical-level quadruple mutated monster is already a legendary figure. It''s a little hard for me to imagine how powerful would a quintuple mutated supreme god-level monster be." Bloody was in awe. Lin Huang thought it was funny as he watched it. Bloody was usually extremely rational, so it was rare for it to take that much interest in something. Since the mission of elevating his summoning beasts was completed, Lin Huang''s goal of coming to the Abyss Brink this time had come to a perfect end. He could even say that it was more than what he bargained for. Apart from learning about God Bless which was considered to be bad news, overall, the trip was rewarding. Not only did he obtain a massive amount of cross-ranking kill rewards and six complete legendary-level Monster Cards, but he even acquired sufficient demigod soul crystals to elevate seven of his God Figurines'' Combat Souls to imperial-level purple gold-rank. Lastly, he learned how to elevate himself to imperial-level and even obtained 32 broken Godheads that could be used as elevation material. Lin Huang called out to Bloody after recalling Grimace who was in charge of setting up the illusion and the God Figurine''s Combat Soul Undead Styx that was in charge of guarding, "Let''s go!" Bloody snapped back to its senses and returned to Lin Huang''s sleeve immediately. Lin Huang then summoned a Dimensional Portal and stepped into it. 988 God Bless Two white silhouettes, one tall and one short, were flying north at high speed in a dense jungle in the northeast of the second layer of the Abyss Brink. "This is the last zone. If we can''t find Lin Xie here, it means that he has either gone to the third layer or he''s left the Abyss Brink," said the tall one without any expression on his face. "I think there''s one more possibility." The short one had disdain written all over his face. "That brat named Lin Xie might not even come to the Abyss Brink at all. The news that we got might be fake since the beginning." "This possibility is low." The tall one shook his head expressionlessly. "So, what do we do if we don''t find him in the last zone?" asked the short one, "It''s been two days and one night since we last rested." "We can only search the third layer if we can''t find him in this layer." The tall one could not help but frown as he spoke. "I think this is a complete waste of time," the short one objected immediately. "He''s on immortal-level. He''s not stupid. How is it possible that he''d go to the third layer? Wouldn''t he be looking for death if he does that? We''ll forget it when we''re done searching through the second layer. Why should we torture ourselves?" "Master asked me to team up with you on purpose because he knew you''d give up fast. Don''t you ever think of slacking" "Stop!" The short one spoke through voice transmission and interrupted the tall one from speaking further. "What?" The tall one looked confused. "Shh!" The short one made a shushing gesture and pointed to his right. "Do you see something?" The tall one spoke through voice transmission this time. "Someone set up an illusion in the canyon on the northeast side. I''m suspecting it might be Lin Xie." The short one became a little excited now. "Let''s go take a look." Both of them hid their aura immediately as soon as the tall one was done speaking. They lowered their flight and rushed toward the zone the short one detected. Lin Huang, who was practicing his sword skills in a canyon more than 100 kilometers away, smirked all of a sudden. "They''re finally here." Yesterday, when Lin Huang returned from the third layer of the Abyss Brink, Bloody found out about these two imperial-level purple gold-rank men in white robes since its Leech Pods filled the entire the second layer of the Abyss Brink. When Bloody informed Lin Huang about the duo''s whereabouts, he connected the dots to the two people who had captured Chan Dou and were wearing white robes too. He suspected that they were the same people. How could he have known that that they would be coming for him now? Lin Huang summoned the Nightmare Tapir. "Don''t kill them yet. Remember to read their minds. Find out which organization they''re from and where they brought Chan Dou to. Is he still alive? Also, find out how many demigods are there in their organization and where their headquarters is." The Nightmare Tapir nodded. Sensing the duo approaching at high velocity, it raised its head and flipped its trunk instantly while releasing an ear-splitting shriek. The screech spread a hundred times faster than the speed of sound. It reached the two white-robed men in the blink of an eye. The two white-robed men slowed down all of a sudden. "Did you hear that?" asked the short one. "I did. I wonder what kind of monster''s shriek was that?" The tall one nodded. "It seems to be coming from that canyon." The short one seemed timid now. "No matter what it is, the highest its combat strength will only be is imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Monsters of a higher combat strength can''t enter the second layer at all." The tall one remained calm. "Oh yeah, I forgot about that." The short one was relieved now. The duo soon passed through more than 100 kilometers and arrived deep in the canyon. An ungulate monster with black scales all over and a horn on its head lay on the ground of a cave. It was breastfeeding two of its babies. "It''s a Midnight Unicorn?!" The tall one raised a brow when he saw that creature. "It seems like that fella set this illusion up. We''ve wasted our efforts again." Disappointment remained all over the short man''s face. "Our luck''s awesome! The Midnight Unicorn is a rare spirit-type monster that''s expert in illusions. It happens to have two babies, so we''ll have one each." The tall one killed the mother monster quickly as he was speaking. He grabbed the two baby monsters and passed one of them to the short one. "None for me. I''m not a fan of keeping pets," the short one rejected right away. "What do we do now? We''re already done searching the last zone, but we didn''t find any traces of Lin Xie." "What else can we do? We can only go to the third layer. We can''t go back without even taking a look at the third layer. Am I right? Or do you think that you can get away from Master''s questioning?" The short one fell into silence for a moment and eventually nodded unwillingly. "Let''s go to the third layer then, but you''ll search on your own if want to do it at night. I''m going to sleep." "Sure, let''s take a rest tonight. Let''s take a look at the third layer together tomorrow," the tall one agreed directly. Lin Huang began observing the two white-robed men when they appeared before him. The tall one was skinny. He was at least 1.9 meters tall like a bamboo stick. His skin was rather fair. He seemed to have taken on an unhealthy pallor as if he had been staying indoors for a long time without getting any sunlight. The short one was obviously less than 1.7 meters. Perhaps, he was only 1.6 meters at the most. He was plump and tanned while the pores on his nose were huge with many blackheads. The white robes they were wearing were pure white without any labels. Lin Huang only found two Emperor''s Heart Rings on them; they had nothing else. After he was done observing them, the Nightmare Tapir transferred all of the information it had retrieved to Bloody. "How is it? Are they the ones who took Chan Dou?" Lin Huang asked immediately upon seeing Bloody looking at him. "Yes," Bloody confirmed. "Is Chan Dou still alive?" "He''s still alive, but this is so much more complicated than we imagined!" Bloody had no idea how to put it into words. "They''re from an organization called God Bless. It''s not a new underground organization, but it''s been hiding under the radar for over 800 years. They''ve even joined the organizations founded by the Union Government and the Hunter Association. Their people have penetrated the higher management of organizations including the Union Government and the Hunter Association Apart from the Union Government organization, they''ve occupied almost all the major underground organizations'' higher management." "I''ll transfer the memory after I''ve arranged them. Take a look for yourself." Bloody extended a tentacle that slithered to Lin Huang''s forehead after speaking. A sea of information rushed into his head rapidly. Lin Huang only opened his eyes a long time after Bloody recalled its tentacle. He was frowning hard. "No wonder these people dare to capture the direct descendants of the Chan Clan who have demigods guarding their clan. They basically control all the major organizations in this world." "It should be them who attacked Master that time! Only they could do it. They used the Union Government name to set the trap for Master and destroyed the evidence perfectly." "Now, the most troublesome thing is that there''s no way we can identify who is from God Bless and who isn''t," Bloody voiced the biggest existing conundrum. Lin Huang, who had just digested the new information in his head, looked serious now. Making enemies with God Bless was no different from making enemies with all the organizations in the world. 992 Bronze Crow City Lin Huang returned to Wanbao City as soon as he came out of the Abyss Brink. However, he did not stay in a hotel this time. Instead, he headed straight to the Wanbao City dimensional portal. He had lunch and waited for almost two hours before entering the dimensional portal heading to Bronze Crow City. No. A17 foothold, Bronze Crow City, was one of the two grade-A footholds which the underground organization Purple Crow terrorized in Division 3. The reason he went there was that he had a massive amount of storage equipment that he needed Yang Ling to unlock for him. Since he had storage equipment from the great world and other mini worlds, Yang Ling could not unlock them for him from a distance because he would need the storage equipment with him. As a result, Lin Huang could only make the trip to get it done. He informed Yang Ling that he would visit when he had just gotten out of the Abyss Brink more than two hours ago. A middle-aged man walked toward him not too far away just when Lin Huang opened the map after coming out of the dimensional portal. "Brother, do you need accommodation?" asked the man who smirked while speaking through voice transmission, "We offer our special services." Speechless, Lin Huang did not expect this world to have such a soliciting technique too. "It''s alright. I''ve already booked a hotel." "We have everything here. Young ladies or mature women, pick anyone you like. You definitely won''t have such service at those usual hotels," continued the man through voice transmission. "Thanks, I don''t need that." Lin Huang waved to reject him outright. However, just when he was going to key in the name of the hotel on the map, the man spoke through voice transmission again, "If you don''t like girls, we have men too. Young boys and old men, you can pick anyone you like. 16 to 60 years old, we have everything." Lin Huang blocked the voice transmission speechlessly while keying the hotel name in. After setting the coordinates, he hovered into the sky directly, leaving an explosion as he took off. The middle-aged man turned around after watching Lin Huang leave. He shook off the wretched expression on his face and walked into an alley. He dialed a number after clicking the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "I saw Lin Xie. He''s going to the Phoenix Hotel now." A voice came behind him as soon as he was done speaking. "Are you talking about me?" The middle-aged man turned around stiffly and realized that it was Lin Huang behind him. "You" "I already knew that you''re not some motel owner as soon as I saw you, let alone some pimp," Lin Huang said while smiling. The reason he said that was because the Nightmare Tapir who mastered spiritual force could clearly sense bad intention from anyone. The moment the man locked eyes with Lin Huang, the Nightmare Tapir in his body sensed his evil intentions and informed him immediately. Subsequently, Lin Huang released the God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Nightmare Tapir, to pull the man into dreamland. Everything was just an illusion, from him speaking to Lin Huang to seeing him leave and informing his senior about Lin Huang''s arrival. In reality, the man had just taken a step toward Lin Huang''s direction whereby he had yet to even speak to the latter. Naturally, him speaking to Lin Huang at the moment was an illusion too. It was the Nightmare Tapir who projected the dreamland for Lin Huang, giving him the opportunity to participate in the dreamland. In the dreamland, the plot went on. "If I''m not mistaken, you must be someone from God Bless." The middle-aged man''s heart jolted when he heard what Lin Huang said. He did not expect his organization to be exposed. ''No, I must send out the news about Lin Xie knowing about the organization. I''ll get the higher management to kill him immediately!'' He covered his sleeve with his hand while composing a message using telekinesis secretly in his sleeve. He was relieved when he noticed that Lin Huang did not seem to realize he was sending the message out. However, he had no idea that whatever he was doing in the dreamland was futile. "You must be a professional intel to be playing tricks before me!" Even Lin Huang admired the man''s professionalism when he noticed the man''s secret trick. "So what if you''ve found out? I''ve already sent the message out. You can''t change the truth even if you killed me." The middle-aged man seemed to be fearless of death at all. His eyes were filled with disdain when he stared at Lin Huang. "Thanks for making me understand something. I can''t underestimate anyone in God Bless." Lin Huang assigned the man the death penalty as soon as he was done speaking. "You may rest in peace." A flying dagger shot out of his sleeve as soon as he concluded with that sentence. It pierced through the man''s head, penetrating the air tens of times faster than the speed of sound. The head of the middle-aged man, whose combat strength was only mid-level immortal-level, exploded like a watermelon. He did not have time to respond at all. When he was pulled out of the dreamland back to reality, the middle-aged man collapsed onto the ground all of a sudden and he was pronounced dead. Lin Huang walked past the body without stopping at all, as if the person''s death had nothing to do with him. However, he secretly used his Divine Telekinesis to steal the Emperor''s Heart Ring on the person''s finger silently. Many people surrounded the body after he took a few steps away. He left the crowd without any reaction and walked to an alley hundreds of meters away. The Nightmare Tapir transferred the information it had retrieved to Bloody in the alley. Bloody then shared the information to Lin Huang after it was done organizing the data. Lin Huang could not help but frown after looking at the middle-aged man''s memory. "Why did the people from God Bless come to Bronze Crow City?" From the middle-aged man''s memory, all he could see was that most of the higher management from both God Bless branches in Division 3 came to Bronze Crow City two days ago. However, since the middle-aged man was just a normal spy with extremely low authorization, he had no idea what the two branches were doing in the city at the same time. His responsibility was just to monitor the situation around the dimensional portal. "If I''m not mistaken, it must be something to do with the Purple Crow. You can take a look at the underground organization forum whether the Purple Crow has been up to something recently," Bloody speculated. Lin Huang looked at the forum immediately and saw a piece of news that the Purple Crow posted a few days ago. He came to a realization after reading it. ''So, the Purple Crow is electing its Crow Spirit!'' Lin Huang was familiar with the Crow Spirit. He had learned from Hong Zhuang earlier that the Crow Spirit was the Purple Crow''s Holy Son or Virgen on the surface, but in reality, they were the Crow God''s vessel in the world. Among the candidates, the Crow Spirit who was eventually selected would have his or her consciousness wiped away by the Crow God. The Crow God would take the body and make it its puppet completely. ''So, Hong Zhuang is here to elect the Purple Crow''s Crow Spirit?'' Lin Huang could not help but think of that possibility. He could not figure out why she would come to Bronze Crow City that was not considered a tourism city instead of any other foothold in Division 3. ''Forget it, I don''t care. What that lady does has nothing to do with me. I''m just here to get Yang Ling to help me unlock those stuff. I''ll leave right after that instead of causing trouble.'' Lin Huang shook his head and pushed the thought out of his head. He turned off the webpage on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and hovered into the air. Then, he flew toward the Phoenix Hotel. 993 Meeting Hong Zhuang Again Getting to the 81st floor using the elevator, Lin Huang walked along the corridor on his right. He stopped when he arrived at Room 023. Then, he knocked on the door. A moment later, the door opened. It was a familiar person at the door Hong Zhuang. Hong Zhuang had a short, chin-length bob while her fringe grazed above her brows. There was not much makeup on her face and she looked 20 years old at the most. She was at least five years younger compared to the time when Lin Huang saw her for the first time. She dressed very casually in a white t-shirt and a pair of blue and white jeans. The bottom of her jeans was rolled up, showing her fair ankles. She wore a pair of blue and white sneakers. Even Lin Huang was doubting whether this lady was Hong Zhuang at a first glance. However, she clearly did not recognize him. "You''re the client Yang Ling mentioned, aren''t you? I''m Yang Ling''s friend. Please come in," Hong Zhuang greeted him in a friendly manner. Lin Huang had just snapped back to his senses and quickly spoke to cover his looking lost earlier, "I can''t believe that guy managed to find such a beautiful girlfriend." All Hong Zhuang did was smile, and she did not respond to what he said. "Yang Ling''s working on something in the reading room. Please take a seat. Can I get you a drink?" "Tea will do. Thanks." Lin Huang sat on the couch on his own. Soon, Hong Zhuang came back with a cup of tea. Lin Huang put it on the coffee table after accepting it from her. He dared not drink the tea Hong Zhuang made. Who knew what that lady would do to him? "Do you mind if I look around?" "That''s fine. Please go ahead." Hong Zhuang nodded and flashed a kind smile. ''This lady has acting skills that can win her an Oscar,'' Lin Huang thought to himself. He stood up and walked towards the balcony outside the living room. The al-fresco balcony was vast. It was at least 15 meters long and three meters wide. There were two sun beds and a small coffee table on the left. There were also a huge sun umbrella and a swing on the right. Lin Huang stood on the balcony and peered around. The sceneries within tens of kilometers filled his eyes; there were all tall buildings farther away. He recalled that the hotel was not in the center of the foothold but was more than 100 kilometers to the west of the center. As he was staring far away while standing on the balcony, Yang Ling was finished with his thing and returned to the living room. He walked out and noticed Lin Huang on the balcony. "What are you looking at?" "The sceneries aren''t too shabby. It''s just that the hotel''s a little far away," Lin Huang turned around and commented to Yang Ling with a smile. Yang Ling was dressed neatly like the last time Lin Huang saw him in the video call. He wore a white t-shirt with dark blue slacks. On his feet, he wore a pair of shiny, black leather shoes. His hair was much shorter now. It reached his earlobes and he even donned a cool hairstyle. If Lin Huang had not seen how he used to look like, it was hard for him to imagine how messy and lazy this guy''s old life was. "Hong Zhuang doesn''t like crowded places." Yang Ling walked next to Lin Huang and looked into the distance. "How''s the progress now?" Lin Huang asked while smiling. "She rejected my proposal." Yang Ling shook his head while forcing a wry smile. "Now, we''re just friends. That''s the farthest we can go." "How did she reject you?" Although Lin Huang expected that, he wanted to know how Hong Zhuang rejected Yang Ling. "She said she''s someone horrible and that she''s no match for me. She told me that she only approached me so that I could help her to look for someone." "Who is she looking for? Can you tell me?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. Yang Ling glanced at Lin Huang and took out a packet of cigarettes. He shoved one into his mouth. "She''s looking for her brother." Lin Huang perked a brow. He recalled Hong Zhuang mentioning her brother, but he thought it was just something that she made up. However, now it seemed like it might really be the truth. "So Did you find him?" "No. If I had, we wouldn''t have come to Bronze Crow City." Yang Ling shook his head. "Is there a clue that her brother is here?" "No clue, but there''s something here that could possibly help us look for her brother," Yang Ling said before adding "I can''t tell you what it is exactly." "Alright then." Lin Huang did not proceed to ask. "Did you bring the stuff?" Yang Ling changed the subject directly. "Yep." Lin Huang took the temporary storage ring that he had prepared earlier out. He had been putting the storage equipment that required unlocking which he had collected over the course of time in the temporary storage ring. There were various coded storage equipment from the great world and the mini-worlds as well as Emperor''s Heart Rings from the gravel world. "They''re all inside?" Yang Ling took the temporary storage ring. "They''re all in there," Lin Huang confirmed. Yang Ling could not help but raise his brow after taking a quick look. "That looks like more than plenty." "There are a total of 413,628 storage rings and a total of 827 different types of storage equipment," Lin Huang reported the data. Naturally, it was not him who calculated that, but it was Bloody that did. "You''re so detailed in calculating." Yang Ling grinned but become serious later on. "There''s something that I must clarify with you. At least half of these storage equipment you brought are old. There are even some antiques that have existed for millions of years. Even if I manage to unlock them, I think there is nothing useful in them. However, I''ll definitely charge the unlocking fee according to the number and types of items. The most I can do is to waive the commission if the unlocked items are useless. Of course, I can give you a 20% discount for all the items. You''re my old client, after all." "No problem." Lin Huang nodded to show that he understood, but subsequently voiced his doubt, "However, I have a question. How do you tell that these storage equipment coming from the great world and other mini-worlds are old? How do you manage to distinguish that some models are over millions of years?" "Well" Yang Ling rolled his eyes around in a cheeky way and said while smirking, "Of course, I have my ways." Yang Ling beating around the bush made Lin Huang think that he might have been to other mini worlds and even to the great world. However, since he was unwilling to share more, it was meaningless for him to proceed with the question. "Roughly when can you get it done?" "I''ll try my best to finish them within a few days." "Alright then. I''ll only leave when you''re done." Initially, Lin Huang thought of returning to Wanbao City first if Yang Ling needed a long time to unlock the storage equipment. He thought of finding a cultivation room to visualize the True Spirits. He would go back to Yang Ling when he was done visualizing the last three God Figurines'' Combat Souls. However, since Yang Ling said he could get it done in a few days, Lin Huang thought he would just stay for a few days and leave when Yang Ling was done with the unlocking. "Just treat this as a vacation and travel around for a few days," Yang Ling said with a grin, "I''ll inform you as soon as I''m done with them." "Sure." Lin Huang nodded in a straightforward manner. "I shan''t disturb you guys then." He patted Yang Ling''s shoulder and turned around to head to the living room. Suddenly, Yang Ling''s voice came from behind when he was arriving at the door. "Bronze Crow City might be a little chaotic lately. Please be careful." Lin Huang stopped walking when he heard that warning. He thought of Hong Zhuang and the Purple Crow. Hong Zhuang happened to walk out of the bedroom at that very moment. Seeing that Lin Huang was leaving, she said with a smile, "You''re leaving already? Be careful on your journey." Her tone was so gentle that she sounded like someone else. Lin Huang turned around to take a glance at her. Since he could not see any flaws on her face, he nodded while smiling. "I will." He then opened the door and left. 994 A Chance Encounter The Phoenix Hotel was located in a rather remote area whereby there were no decent shopping malls around. Lin Huang thought about it. He figured that he would be staying there for a few days since it would be more convenient for him to stay somewhere more crowded. Eventually, he did not stay at the same hotel as Yang Ling did. Instead, he found a hotel in the central zone of the foothold a hundred meters away. The hotel that he picked was called the Homing Hotel. It was located in the most bustling zone of the Bronze Crow City. The biggest business district of the city was just downstairs. There was everything from food to entertainment, and it was crowded. Lin Huang did not enjoy the crowd; he just wanted convenience. Although he would most probably stay in the hotel to practice his sword skills these few days, he did not want to rule out the sudden urge to take a look outside. Moreover, even if he was going to order delivery in, the choice of food around the Homing Hotel was much wider compared to the hotel Yang Ling was staying at. Just when he had checked in at the front desk, he could not help but raise his brow when he saw the people who were walking out of the elevator. He turned around naturally and began talking to one of the guests in an attempt to be friendly. "Uncle, your jacket is pretty cool. Where did you get it?" The man was an uncle who looked over 60 years old and was dressed rather fashionable. He was excited to hear Lin Huang ask about his attire. "You''ve sharp eyes, kid. I designed and made it myself" Lin Huang nodded and smiled as he listened to the uncle ramble on about the story and process of making clothes. He only interrupted the man''s story when the people who walked out of the elevator left the hotel and were nowhere in sight. "I''m sorry, uncle, I thought of something that I need to do all of a sudden. I''ll talk to you some other time." "Our old man can''t stop talking whenever he talks about making clothes. Ignore him, kid. Go do your stuff." The woman who looked like she was in her 50''s next to the uncle patted her companion''s shoulder, signaling him to stop talking. "It''s great that you have something you''re passionate about," Lin Huang said while smiling. He walked to the elevator after saying goodbye to the couple. When he walked into the elevator, he squinted slightly. "Never would I have thought that I''d be staying at the same hotel with the people from God Bless. Hmm, this is interesting." The few people who walked out of the elevator earlier were God Bless members. The reason Lin Huang recognized them at first glance was that there had been tons of information about them in the memory of the middle-aged man who was monitoring the dimensional portal, including their appearances. Lin Huang picked the room on the 188th floor, which was the top floor of the Homing Hotel. The elevator finally arrived at the 188th floor after traveling upward for almost half a minute. Soon, he found his room and entered after swiping the key card. He called out to Bloody right after he shut the door, "I saw people from God Bless." "Me too," Bloody said after coming out of Lin Huang''s sleeve, "A demigod and two imperial-level purple gold-rank members." "The demigod is called Shen Yu. He''s the person-in-charge of God Bless''s second branch in Division 3. The other two imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses are members from the second branch too. According to the man''s memory, there were one demigod and four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses from the second branch this time. There should be another two imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses guarding at the hotel." "I think we can eavesdrop on what exactly they''re up to in Bronze Crow City." Lin Huang grinned. "I thought you didn''t want to create trouble." Bloody could not help but ask, "Didn''t you say that you''d leave right after Yang Ling was done with the unlocking and that you wanted nothing to do with this?" "Since we''re staying in the same hotel, it doesn''t matter if I eavesdrop conveniently." Lin Huang replied righteously, "Since I''m bored these few days, I''ll just treat it as story time." "Do it your way then. They''ll find out about my Leech Pods," Bloody said feeling a little helpless. "They wouldn''t find out about us as soon as we cast parasites on them." Lin Huang smirked. "What do you mean? Did you find out which rooms they''re staying in?" "I scanned the two imperial-level purple gold-rank members who are guarding in the hotel with Divine Telekinesis." Since Lin Huang knew how the duo looked like, he found out about their coordinates simply with his Divine Telekinesis. "They''re staying in the king suite on the 100th floor. There''s a huge viewing aquarium in the living room with quite a number of fish monsters in it." "Indeed, they won''t find out about the parasites if we cast them on the fish monsters. The energy wave in the monsters will mask the Leech Pods'' energy wave," Bloody explained, "But the problem is, they''ll find out about my Leech Pods in the process of casting the parasites. You must know that the radius of an imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse''s territory is over 100 kilometers. They can clearly sense it whenever there''s an energy wave that''s out of the ordinary within the range of their territory." The Territory skill was slow in detecting idle objects, they would simply appear as clouds of black silhouettes. Including human and monsters, their faces could not be seen; only their shapes could be projected. However, a moving object''s trajectory course could be easily captured. Including energy waves, it was as glaring as a beam of light in the dark when the Territory skill was unleashed. The reason Bloody could not use its Leech Pods was that they contained a tiny amount of energy. Though tiny, they drew attention just like fireflies within a powerhouse''s territory. Bloody could block the detection if the person''s combat strength was lower than itself. However, they were going up against imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses. The powerhouses would definitely find out as soon as Bloody released its Leech Pods. "If we can''t do direct parasitization using Leech Pods, we might be able to do it another way." Lin Huang squinted slightly. "For instance, through the hotel staff I remember you have an infectious parasite ability, don''t you?" "I think I know what we should do now." Lin Huang''s suggestion made Bloody''s eyes light up as it came up with a plan immediately. After discussing through voice transmission, Lin Huang activated his Emperor''s Heart Ring and called the front office of the hotel. "Hi, Mr. Lin. May I know if there''s anything that we can assist you with?" sang a sweet front desk attendant''s voice. "The toilet in my bathroom is clogged. Please get someone to fix it now," Lin Huang answered while sitting on the couch. "Is your room number No. 188021?" "Yes." "Sure, I''ll make the arrangements right away." "Thanks." In less than three minutes after the conversation with the front desk attendant, someone rang his door. A young man asked with a smile after Lin Huang opened the door, "Hi, are you Mr. Lin? Did you call about the clogged toilet?" "Oh, yes. Please come in." Lin Huang nodded and extended his hand. The young plumber was stunned, but he shook Lin Huang''s hand anyway. While they shook hands, Bloody''s tentacle stretched from his sleeve and tapped on the plumber''s palm lightly. The plumber turned into a parasitical puppet right away. Then, Bloody controlled the plumber to stroll into the living room while Lin Huang closed the door. It only took a moment for Bloody to read all of the plumber''s memory. "The virus parasite that I''m using is a microbial-level parasite. There''s no energy reaction, but it can only be contracted through skin contact," Bloody explained to Lin Huang through voice transmission, "I can control this young man to infect the other hotel staff he knows. The parasite''s pathogen will spread continuously from him, so it should take less than an hour to infect all of the staff in the hotel." "Yes, the first step has been very successful. Let''s proceed with the rest of the plan that we discussed." Lin Huang nodded. He could not help but secretly be in awe with how terrifying the parasite species of monster could be. 995 Infected In the staff toilet at the Homing Hotel, a middle-aged man lit up a cigarette for himself at the urinal. He unzipped his pants slowly and began peeing. At the moment, a young man walked in. It was the plumber who had just left Lin Huang''s room not long ago. "Brother Wang, you''re smoking in the toilet again." The plumber greeted him with a wry smile and stood at the urinal on the right of the middle-aged man. "Well, I can''t smoke anywhere else," the middle-aged man responded unclearly while dragging on the cigarette. "Give me a puff," said the plumber who turned his head while smiling. "Didn''t you quit?" Although the middle-aged man asked that, he passed the cigarette from his mouth anyway. "I told Xiao Wen that I quit, but how could I ever quit?" The plumber took the cigarette and accidentally touched the person''s finger The security officer walked out of the toilet and walked toward the security room. A bunch of young men in the security room projected the pages of their Emperor''s Heart Rings. Some were playing games, some were watching videos while some were binging on dramas. They shut their Emperor''s Heart Ring pages in panic when Old Wang entered. "You bunch of bastards sure are lazy. It''s working hours, yet all you guys care about is having fun!" Old Wang slapped their heads lightly one after another. A young security guard walked toward the front desk in the hotel lobby while a female attendant was flushed upon seeing him walking over. The rest of the female attendants were waiting for a good show to begin. "Why did you come? It''s working hours now," said the female attendant softly when she saw the security guard arrive before her. "They''ve just started to sell red plums on the market. I got you some and I''ve already washed them." The security guard took a box of red plums out from under his shirt and handed it to the female attendant. "I wanted to pass it to you after work, but I remembered you didn''t really eat at lunch. I brought it to you, figuring you might be hungry later." "I have snacks here. I can eat them to fill my stomach if I''m really hungry. Don''t come here during working hours again. It''s inappropriate if the manager sees us." Flustered, the female attendant accepted the fruit box. The security guard pinched her hand mischievously and only let go a moment later. At the front desk, the female attendant Xiao Li watched her security guard boyfriend leave while blushing. "Xiao Li, I bought you red plums and they''re washed," a female attendant ridiculed her by imitating the security guard boyfriend''s tone earlier. "You''re showing off much earlier than usual today," the other female attendant teased while smiling. "I want a boyfriend too. I want one who''d send me food every day," whined a female attendant with a puffy face while looking envious. "Let''s try how these fresh red plums taste." Xiao Li opened the box and grabbed a few for everyone. She passed them around by wrapping the red plums in serviettes. In the hotel room No. 188021, Bloody nodded to Lin Huang half an hour after sending the plumber out. "Over 90% of the staff are infected now. We''ve completed the preliminary work, so we can go on with the next step now." "Let''s do it." Lin Huang nodded. A moment later, Xiao Li the female attendant called a number using the hotel line at the front desk. The Emperor''s Heart Ring of a God Bless man with a buzz-cut began vibrating all of a sudden. He tapped the communication page open and picked the call up, seeming a little puzzled after realizing that it was the hotel front desk calling. "Hi, this is the front desk. May I know if you''re the guest from Room No. 100003?" "What''s up?" asked the man while frowning a little. "Oh, it''s just a small matter. Today is the day we do our monthly aquarium cleaning for the king suites. Our staff will go to your room later to change the water in the aquarium. The process might take approximately 20 minutes. I hope that it won''t disturb you. If you''re not okay with this, we can transfer you to another room with a clean aquarium." "What''s wrong?" asked the short, buff man next to him. "The front desk said they''re coming to change the aquarium water. It''s the official aquarium-cleaning day today," replied the man with the buzz-cut. "Oh, no wonder I sensed staff going into a couple of rooms on this floor earlier." The man with the buzz-cut recalled sensing something like that within the range of his territory earlier. He said to the front desk, "We don''t need to change rooms, but please be quick with the cleaning." "Sure, we''ll make the arrangements right away. It''s our pleasure to be at your service." Approximately two minutes later, the doorbell of Room 100003 rang. The man with the buzz-cut only let his guard down when he opened the door and sensed no cultivator''s energy wave from the two young hotel staff in uniform. "Please clean the aquarium quickly. My boss has a bad temper. He doesn''t like being disturbed. It''s best that you get it done by seizing the opportunity since he''s not here." "Sure, we''ll get it done as soon as we can." The man with the buzz-cut closed the door and walked to the balcony for a puff. However, he was facing the living room to watch the two young men work. The staff used a net and another used his hand to scoop the fishes out one after another before putting them into a temporary tank. These fish monsters seemed to have gotten used to such a routine, so they did not struggle at all. After scooping all the fishes out, the duo removed the plug at the bottom to release the water. Later on, they began cleaning the inside of the tank with tools such as the water gun. The man with the buzz-cut lost his interest when he watched them to this point. He turned around and looked outside the hotel. Approximately 15 or 16 minutes later, the aquarium was filled with water again as the fishes were slipped back in one after another. The duo put the tools away and wiped the floor completely dry. They then informed the man with the buzz-cut that they were done and left. "There''s nothing to be nervous about. The two of them are just ordinary people. They were just doing their job all the way and they did not do anything else," reported the short, buff man as he walked into the living room with a grin. "Look, the water in the aquarium is so much cleaner now." "I wasn''t nervous. I was just being cautious." The man with the buzz-cut snubbed the cigarette out with his fingers and walked straight into the living room. He shuffled into the kitchen, took out a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and popped it open with his thumb. Then, he took a big gulp with his head up. "Old Lei, we''ve known each other for say, over 20 years. Don''t you think I can''t tell whether you''re cautious or nervous?" teased the short, buff man while smiling. The man with the buzz-cut was quiet. "You escaped from the Purple Crow. The Boss brought you here on purpose. This is a mission against the Purple Crow. He''s giving you an opportunity to prove yourself, so don''t do anything foolish," the buff man proceeded. "I''ve told you countless times. I didn''t escape. I went in as God Bless''s spy since the beginning," explained the man with the buzz-cut while frowning. "The reason why I was unwilling to come isn''t that I still have feelings for them, but I know how scary the Crow God is" In Room No. 188021 on the top floor of the hotel, Lin Huang was smirking as he sat on the couch while Bloody projected what was happening in Room No. 100003. In the projection, the conversation between the man with the buzz-cut and the short, buff man was crystal clear. 996 The Crow God’s Eye Shen Yu brought the people back to the hotel when the sky was turning dark. The man with the buzz-cut and the short, buff man wanted to ask him something, but they decided to keep quiet upon noticing his extremely grim expression. Shen Yu walked past the living room directly to the balcony. After taking a few deep breaths in, he turned around and headed back to the living room. He asked the few of them, "Tell me, which part of me, Shen Yu, is less than that person surnamed Feng? I''ve been with God Bless longer than he has and I''ve gone for more missions than he has. If he didn''t obtain a massive amount of God Bloods by kissing as*, I would''ve beaten him up to the point his mother can''t even recognize him!" The four imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses dared not speak. All they did was listen while standing. Even the man with the buzz-cut hid the beer bottle in his hand behind his back secretly. "F*ck! He made my team bait while his team went for the loot. Who the hell does this Feng Li think he is?! He''s just good at kissing as*! They even asked him to lead the mission this time!" The four of them listened to Shen Yu vent for over ten minutes without saying anything. Until he had released everything and returned to his room, the long-haired man who came back with Shen Yu asked the man with the buzz-cut and the short, buff man, "Old Lei, Old Cui, have you guys had dinner?" "Not yet, we were waiting for you guys to come back," The man with the buzz-cut who was addressed as Old Lei took another sip of beer. "Let''s order take-out. I''m sure Boss doesn''t want to eat out." The long-haired man glanced at the remaining three of them. "What do you guys feel like eating?" The few of them named what they craved. He walked to Shen Yu''s room after jotting them down. Old Lei then waved at the bald man who came back with Shen Yu. He asked while lowering his voice, "What exactly happened, Old Wei?" Old Cui came closer after hearing Lei An''s question. Old Wei peeped at Shen Yu''s room. Noticing that Shen Yu did not stop them with the question, he spoke quietly, "Boss Feng is the captain of the mission this time." A cough came from Shen Yu''s room as soon as he spoke. It clearly came from the long-haired man. Old Wei changed what he was going to say immediately. "As the captain of the mission this time, Feng has three demigods and 20 imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses in his team. He asked our team and Master Li''s team to be the bait to get the Purple Crow''s attention. As the third team, they''ll be hiding in the dark all this time and will only show themselves to get the target in the very last moment. Moreover, he asked both of our teams to be their backups." "In other words, we''re just the bait and they''ll take the credit." Old Cui raised his brow. "There''s nothing that we can do. Feng has a good relationship with higher management. They made him the captain of this mission." Old Wei spread his arms while feeling helpless. "Furthermore, we''re not the only bait. I''m guessing except himself, everyone else, including the team that he''s leading, are the bait too." "Don''t worry about it. Him wanting to go for the target himself is a good thing for us. Believe me. That thing is a curse as soon as you touch it." Old Lei took another sip of his beer. At the moment, Shen Yu flung the door open all of a sudden. "Lei An, what exactly do you know about the Crow God''s Eye?" "I''ve already reported whatever I know to the headquarters, but the higher management only sees the benefit and ignored the risk of the item. I emphasized the risk on purpose, but they said I''m just being an alarmist and they ignored me completely!" Lei An had helplessness written all over his face. "Tell me everything you know." Shen Yu took a step out and appeared before Lei An. "Sure," Lei An nodded, "I''ll give you guys a rough explanation." "The Crow God of the Purple Crow is a true Protoss. He''s on a completely different level from the fake Protoss that attacked us 800 years ago. His combat strength is at least True God-level or even higher." "Legend has it that the Crow God has a total of 108 eyes with different abilities in each of them. The one that the Purple Crow has is called the Detective Eye. It can see through lies and reveal the truth. It''s an extremely rare god item. "To the Purple Crow, the main function of the Detective Eye is to pick out the Crow Spirit. At other times, it''s hardly used apart from in special situations. Only the No. 1 Crow Leader in the Purple Crow''s headquarters has the authorization to use it. The rest have very limited knowledge about this god item. "The reason I said it''ll be a curse to the person who takes this item is that the Detective Eye isn''t a stand-alone god item. It''s connected to the Crow God''s will. Although this item isn''t necessary the Crow God''s eye, it''s tightly connected to the Crow God. Cutting off such a connection might trigger the Crow God himself. That''s what has been bothering me recently. "Although it''s impossible for the Crow God to come himself, the fury of a True God or higher existence isn''t something that we can handle. Nobody knows if the Crow God has an attack tactic that could cross to another realm among the over 100 abilities he possesses. "Apart from the Crow God''s Eye, the Crow Spirit is a gravely dangerous existence too. "Each Crow Spirit that''s been selected from the candidates using the Crow God''s Eye will be transformed by the Crow God in an extremely short time. The Crow Spirit will possess a body and spirit that''s as powerful as complete-stage demigod-level as well as the Crow God''s inheritance. The transformation only takes a few mere minutes. "The transformed Crow Spirit will possess complete-stage demigod-level abilities. They can even unleash virtual god-level ability when necessary." "Therefore, if we''re still going for the second target which is the Crow Spirit, the only time to do it is the few minutes when the Crow Spirit is being transformed. If we''re too early, the Crow Spirit might not be elected yet. If we get there late, the Crow Spirit will become a great obstacle in our mission. "If we really can''t do it, we can only give up the second target. The first target which is the Detective Eye is our first priority," Shen Yu said without thinking twice. "If we only focus on the first target, indeed, the difficulty of the mission will drop by heaps." Lei An looked at Shen Yu while frowning. "But would Feng agree to this? Judging by his character, I guess it''s pretty impossible for him to give up the second target." "That dumbas*, he might be killed by the Crow God''s hand in this mission," Shen Yu condemned, "I really don''t understand which part of him does the God''s Messenger like." In Room No. 188021 on the 188th floor, Lin Huang watched the entire discussion the few God Bless members had while sitting on the couch. He heard everything the five members said without missing anything. "So, the Purple Crow''s electing the Crow Spirit" Lin Huang only found out about the reason why God Bless came to Bronze Crow City. He also found out that God Bless had more than two teams. There were three teams in total while one team was in hiding. "If I''m not mistaken, Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang must be coming for the Detective Eye too!" Soon, Lin Huang recalled Yang Ling telling him that there was something that could help Hong Zhuang find her brother. Looking at the current information he had, the Detective Eye was most probably it. 997 I Bet You’ve Never Seen An Immortal-level Who Managed to Kill Demigods Lin Huang heard quite a number of secrets through the fish monsters in the hotel room. He thought he just happened to bump into people from God Bless and was curious about what they were up to. Never had he thought that it would have something to do with the Purple Crow and even involved Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang. "So, do we stick our noses in this?" Bloody turned its head to ask Lin Huang after they were done eavesdropping on the God Bless members. "I''m not interested in the Purple Crow''s Crow Spirit and that Detective Eye. It doesn''t hurt for me to stay to watch the show if time permits." Lin Huang''s purpose of going to Bronze Crow City was just to look for Yang Ling to unlock the storage equipment. He planned to return to Wanbao City as soon as he collected the unlocked items so that he could perform closed-door cultivation to visualize the last three True Spirits. However, he never thought that he would encounter such a matter during his trip to Bronze Crow City. Lin Huang did not mind staying just to watch if the election of the Purple Crow''s Crow Spirit was just a few days away from Yang Ling completing the unlocking. Witnessing a demigod battle was rare. Furthermore, he wanted to know what exactly Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang possessed in order to be fighting for the same target with an organization that was guarded by demigods. Apart from that, he wanted to confirm whether the Crow God, the existence which combat strength was at least as powerful as true god-level, could really attack by crossing realms. However, if the Purple Crow delayed their election of the Crow Spirit, he did not plan to waste his time there. He was eager to elevate his combat strength and ability since he found out about the condition of the gravel world in the great world as well as the existence of God Bless. No matter how excellent the show was going to be, it would serve no purpose to the elevation of his ability. "On the other hand, I''m pretty interested in the Detective Eye," Bloody said while smiling, "I''ve been thinking how it''ll work theoretically when the man with the buzz-cut was describing the Detective Eye earlier. The more I listened to him, the more I thought that the thing is more like a medium instead of a god item that comes with detecting functions." "What do you mean?" Lin Huang''s interest was piqued after hearing what Bloody said. "God items usually form naturally and usually come with only one ability. Even if it contains various abilities, the nature of the abilities are in-line." "According to that man with the buzz-cut who fit Lei An''s initial description, the function of the Detective Eye should be exposing lies and revealing the truth. It makes sense to use this to elect the Crow Spirit. "However, he mentioned later on that the Crow Spirit that''s been elected through the Detective Eye will be transformed by the Crow God. The Crow Spirit will even obtain the Crow God''s inheritance. That''s strange because the Detective Eye will now become the medium connecting the Crow God and the Crow Spirit. "This medium function has nothing to do with the detection ability at all. It''s two different abilities on the other side of the spectrum." "It''s impossible for a natural god item to possess two completely different abilities. Therefore, I''m suspecting that the so-called Detective Eye doesn''t possess detective ability but rather a medium item." ''So, you''re saying it''s the Crow God who is electing the Crow Spirit instead of the Detective Eye? The Detective Eye''s real ability is just a disguised medium?'' Lin Huang thought to himself carefully and figured it might be possible. ''So, the Crow God''s transformation of the Crow Spirit and the passing on of the inheritance by crossing realms is made possible with this medium too?!'' "The so-called Crow God''s Eye should be a gimmick the Purple Crow came up with to disguise the Detective Eye''s real function." Bloody nodded. "If I got it right, God Bless''s motive of taking this Detective Eye is valid." "They want to use this medium to connect the great world organization behind them!" Lin Huang declared the motive out loud. The entire thing went through a painstaking analysis. The more Lin Huang thought about it, the more he thought that Bloody''s speculation might really be the truth. "So, Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang" Now that he basically confirmed the Detective Eye had no detection function, Hong Zhuang would not be able to find her brother even if Yang Ling and she were to obtain the god item. Lin Huang could not help but frown a little when he thought about this. Bloody''s voice came through voice transmission at the moment. "I''m not sure about Yang Ling, but I think Hong Zhuang most probably knew about the truth about the Detective Eye. That lady Hong Zhuang was a core member of the Purple Crow. She escaped from the Purple Crow because she found out about the truth of the Crow Spirit. It''s highly possible that she knows the real function of the Detective Eye." "So, are you saying she''s just messing with Yang Ling when she told him that she''s looking for her brother so that she could earn his sympathy?" Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. He thought he was becoming more and more clueless about Hong Zhuang now. "It''s possible, but maybe she''s a team with Yang Ling. I can''t figure that out at the moment," said Bloody, "But I suggest that it''s best you don''t trust Yang Ling entirely. He has most probably been to the great world and other mini-worlds." Lin Huang frowned even deeper now. When Yang Ling recognized the age of the storage equipment from the other worlds, Lin Huang figured he must have been to the great world and the other mini-worlds. Although Yang Ling had zero cultivator''s aura from him and seemed like a completely ordinary person, Lin Huang knew very well that Yang Ling was a traveler who possessed a Goldfinger like he did. Since Yang Ling came from Earth just like he did, he always felt close to Yang Ling since they came from the same hometown. Though he had his guard up, he never thought that they would be enemies. Lin Huang was even more puzzled now. He was not even sure if Yang Ling was with Hong Zhuang out of love or if both of them had intentions of their own and were just acting. "Also, whether Yang Ling knew about the real function of the Detective Eye or not, he''s in the same boat with Hong Zhuang now. Knowing the truth or not doesn''t change this fact." Lin Huang thought the entire thing was getting more and more complicated as he delved deeper into it. In Room 081023 of the Phoenix Hotel more than 100 kilometers away, a couple was having a chat. "That client of yours with the surname Lin who came earlier looks familiar. I wonder if I''ve seen him before." Hong Zhuang stood at the reading room and chatted with Yang Ling, pretending to be casual. "It''s not odd that you find him familiar. His name is Lin Xie and he''s the No. 1 supreme genius on the Genius Union leaderboard for two years consecutively." Yang Ling gave a short response while working. "That name It''s a fake identity you made for him, isn''t it?" "Yes," Yang Ling confirmed. He seemed like he was unwilling to reveal his client''s confidential information. "Have you seen his real face before?" "I haven''t. He looked like that since we first met." Yang Ling lifted his head to look at Hong Zhuang while speaking in a rather jealous tone, "Are you interested in him?" "Stop overthinking. I just find him a little familiar. I''m worried that he''s from the Purple Crow," Hong Zhuang explained while smiling. "Don''t worry about it. The Purple Crow won''t be able to train such an outstanding guy like him." Yang Ling felt relieved and shook his head with a smile. "He''s just on immortal-level no matter how powerful he is." Hong Zhuang pouted. Clearly, Yang Ling included her in his earlier reference. Yang Ling raised his brow and thought to himself secretly, ''I bet you''ve never seen an immortal-level who has managed to kill demigods.'' "Oh yeah, I almost forgot about this. The Crow God Ceremony of the Purple Crow will officially take place at 12 a.m. in three days. Are you ready?" "I''m all set." 998 Exposed Ability It was the second day since Lin Huang arrived in the Bronze Crow City. "I''ve unlocked all of the storage equipment. Are you coming to get them now or are you coming over tomorrow?" It was past 11 at night and Lin Huang had just finished practicing his sword skills and was planning to go to bed. A message popped up on his Emperor''s Heart Ring all of a sudden. Naturally, it was Yang Ling who had helped him to unlock the storage equipment and sent him the message. "I''ll be there right away." Lin Huang summoned a dimensional portal as soon as he replied to the message. He then stepped into it. As he walked out of the dimensional portal a moment later, he arrived at the entrance of Yang Ling''s hotel room. He rang the doorbell and Yang Ling, who was dressed in pajamas, opened the door a while later. He was surprised to see Lin Huang standing at his doorstep. "How did you come so quickly?" "I set the coordinates of your hotel room the last time I came." "Come in then." Yang Ling gestured him to enter. Lin Huang did not see Hong Zhuang when he entered. However, he sensed someone lying in the bedroom within the range of his territory. He thought to himself, ''She has such a healthy lifestyle!'' "Hong Zhuang is already sleeping. Let''s talk in the reading room," Yang Ling lowered his voice and led Lin Huang straight to the reading room. The reading room was a little messy, but it was clearly much better than where Yang Ling used to work. Lin Huang glanced through the room without missing anything. He thought Yang Ling had undergone a significant change compared to the past. No matter whether it was his state of mind or personal lifestyle, it was undoubtedly much healthier now. Looking at those details, it did not seem like he was putting on an act. Relating to Yang Ling''s messy life in the past and the changes he had made since meeting Hong Zhuang, Lin Huang was more convinced that Yang Ling had no idea about Hong Zhuang''s real intentions. Naturally, Lin Huang''s guard remained up since Yang Ling hid the fact that he had been to the great world. After closing the door to the reading room, Yang Ling passed Lin Huang the temporary storage ring he had given him earlier. "There are a total of 413,628 storage equipment, 133,186 of which can''t be unlocked although I''ve unlocked the rest for you. "Why can''t you unlock them?" Lin Huang asked rather confusedly. "A minority of them are too old. A part of the storage equipment has decomposed, causing its insides to collapse. As for the rest that failed to be unlocked, it''s basically because the deceased''s immediate family logged out of the account and transferred the items out. The respective organizations collected the empty storage equipment back." What Yang Ling said confirmed Lin Huang''s suspicions that he had been to the great world even more. Otherwise, it was impossible for him to know about such a log-out process so clearly. However, Lin Huang did not question him any further. "Thanks. I''ll take a look at them when I get back and I''ll pay your commission later." "Lin Xie, I have a favor to ask," Yang Ling hesitated before saying all of the sudden. "What is it?" "There are over 300 storage rings among the pieces of storage equipment that come from the great world. I would like one, any one of them. I only want the ring. I don''t want anything in it," Yang Ling finally voiced his request, "I can give you a 20% discount on the commission." "Can you tell me the reason why you want the storage ring?" Lin Huang thought about it and asked directly. "I can''t tell you that. All I can tell you is that it''s related to my privacy. It won''t harm anyone." Yang Ling stared at Lin Huang as he gave him an explanation that could not really be considered a reason. Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment and eventually nodded. "Alright then." To him, it did not hurt to lose one of those storage rings. Furthermore, Yang Ling did not specify which one he wanted whereby Lin Huang could just pick any for them. Even if Yang Ling wanted a specific one among all of them, the probability of him having it was less than 1/300. Lin Huang used his Divine Telekinesis to detect his temporary storage ring and casually picked a male storage ring. He handed it to Yang Ling after retrieving its contents. Yang Ling had no objection, so he put the ring on his finger as soon as he took it. He smiled and nodded at Lin Huang. "Thanks." "I''ll make a move now if this is all." Lin Huang put the temporary storage ring away and looked at Yang Ling. "When do you plan to leave Bronze Crow City?" "Within these two days. What''s up?" "Nothing. It''s just that it''ll be chaotic in Bronze Crow City lately, so it''s best if you can leave as soon as possible to prevent from yourself from getting into trouble." There was a hidden message in Yang Ling''s words as he looked at Lin Huang hintingly. "I don''t usually create trouble, but I''m not afraid of trouble." Lin Huang locked eyes with Yang Ling while speaking cryptically. "If some bastard insists on coming at me, it''s his bad day then." The two of them looked into each other''s eyes for a moment and smiled. "I''m leaving!" Lin Huang waved and summoned a dimensional portal before stepping into it right away. A moment later, the dimensional portal closed and Lin Huang disappeared. However, Yang Ling mumbled to himself with a sigh as he watched Lin Huang vanish, "I hope this guy won''t stick his nose into this" Lin Huang sat on the couch and remained silent for a long time when he returned to the hotel room. He knew that his ability was now exposed. What Yang Ling said earlier clearly meant to urge Lin Huang not to interfere with what was going to happen in Bronze Crow City. It also meant that Yang Ling knew Lin Huang had the ability to interfere. "How did I expose myself?" Lin Huang took out the temporary storage ring and looked into it with his Divine Telekinesis. He looked through the storage equipment in it one after another. He soon found out what the problem was. There was Divine Power left behind in some of the storage equipment. Bringing out the storage equipment, he soon found out the reason of Divine Power remnant was because of the blood on them. In reality, many storage equipment would have blood on them and Lin Huang basically would not clean them. Nobody knew how long it would take to clean hundreds of thousands of storage equipment one after another. He would usually retrieve the loots and sell the storage equipment on the black market. The black market would clean the storage equipment themselves when they received the storage equipment. However, the blood on the storage equipment was clearly not regular monster blood. Instead, it was demigod blood, hence the remnant of the Divine Power. "That''s strange. How would these storage equipment have demigod blood? I used the temporary storage ring to keep the storage equipment temporarily. I put those demigod-level monsters carcasses that I killed in Abyss Brink away straight into my Emperor''s Heart Ring." Lin Huang thought it was a little odd. Bloody knew what happened as soon as it heard Lin Huang''s soft mumble. "You must''ve gotten the blood from the Emperor''s Heart Rings you obtained from killing the demigod-level monsters on the third layer of the Abyss Brink. You put the hundreds of Emperor''s Heart Rings away in there too. I figured there might be rings used by demigods before and Yang Ling would see through your ability, so I took the time to pick them out before sending them for unlocking. Never did I think I would''ve overlooked the blood." It was normal for storage equipment to have blood on them. Even Bloody overlooked it when it handled them, thus it did not think of the remnant of the Divine Power. Such remnant from demigod blood would not last long and would vanish a month later the most. It was easy for Yang Ling to figure that the blood was left behind after killing demigod-level monsters. "Forget it. Let it be if he finds out." Lin Huang did not want to dwell on it since it had come to this point. "The Crow God Ceremony is beginning in two days. He must be putting all of his focus on it instead of watching me." 999 There’s More Than One God in This World! Time flew by and soon two days had passed. Lin Huang spent the past two days in the hotel room practicing his sword skills. He even handed the task of eavesdropping on the God Bless members to Bloody which relayed the important messages to him. Apart from learning about the time and venue of the Crow God Ceremony, he did not only learned about the mission this time, but he even heard many God Bless secrets. The founder of God Bless was called the Master God and his combat strength and ability were unknown. He had been in hiding for hundreds of years and had just come back to take over God Bless again. That was also the reason why God Bless was active lately all of a sudden. Below the Master God were four God''s Messengers whose combat strength was unknown as well. However, judging from Shen Yu''s respect towards the God''s Messengers, the four of them might most probably be virtual god-level powerhouses. Shen Yu was a demigod himself, after all, and only Virtual Gods could make a demigod fear for them. Then, there were Commanders below the four God''s Messengers. The Commanders were in charge of all of the branches in the entire safety zone. Some safety zones had one Commander while some had a main Commander and a Deputy Commander. The guy with the surname Feng whom Shen Yu mentioned earlier was Commander Feng Li. He was currently leading God Bless in Division 3, and he managed all three branches in Division 3. The reason Shen Yu despised him was that the latter who had more experience was supposed to be appointed as the new Commander since the past Division 3 Commander was re-assigned. Never had he thought that Feng Li would appear out of nowhere. Not only Feng Li was given a massive amount of god''s blood and elevated to perfect-stage demigod-level despite only going on very few missions, but he was also assigned to be the Commander of Division 3. Since Shen Yu secretly had the most complaints towards Feng Li, Bloody knew a lot about him. Almost half of the Commanders from God Bless had the same combat strength as Feng Li whereby they were on perfect-stage demigod-level. Perfect-stage demigod-level would mean that 100% of the Life Power in the demigod-levels'' bodies could transform into Divine Power. On a certain level, such a person was close to Virtual God. Powerhouses on perfect-stage demigod-level would have their flesh and soul washed completely with a sea of Divine Power, practically reaching Virtual God standard. Their ability was comparable with a virtual god-level rank-1 who had just elevated. People would easily mistake their combat strength as a virtual god-level powerhouse by sense. However, the broken Godhead in their bodies made the construction of God Territory impossible. They could not produce Divine Power naturally, and could only replenish it from external sources. Below Commanders were the Captains of each branch, which was Shen Yu''s current position at God Bless. All of the Captains of God Bless had demigod-level combat strength; that was the mandatory condition of being a Captain. God Bless had a couple of branches in the three core safety zones. For instance, Division 3 had three branches while Division 1 and Division 2 had more. After the Captains came the normal members. God Bless did not have many members. They were basically on high immortal-level and imperial-level. Each branch had few members with only 20 to 30 members or over 100 members at the most. Comparatively, God Bless might have more spies allocated in each organization than their members. Naturally, the spies followed another system that was entirely different from the system Shen Yu and the rest followed. Even the intel branches of each division were unrelated. Shen Yu only chatted about that with his few underlings once and it was just a short conversation, so Bloody obtained very limited information from that. Lin Huang frowned when Bloody was telling him that information. "Are you sure those four God''s Messengers are Virtual Gods?" That was the first question Lin Huang asked after hearing what Bloody said. "It''s confirmed. Shen Yu has no respect for this perfect-stage demigod-level Feng Li. Him taking Shen Yu''s position aside, Feng Li is just a demigod to him even though he''s on perfect-stage demigod-level. He''s not as powerful as Shen Yu who could easily get to perfect-stage demigod-level as long as he obtains sufficient god''s blood. Therefore, he has no respect for Commanders. "However, he''s always calling God''s Messengers ''Master God''s Messenger'' and dares not cross the line. He clearly respects them. It''s impossible for Shen Yu to fear perfect-stage demigod-levels. "However, according to the cultivation system in our gravel world, it''s impossible for someone to elevate to Virtual God." Lin Huang was very much aware of the current cultivation system''s flaw. Indeed, just like what the stone tablet said, it was impossible for someone to elevate to Virtual God. "The current cultivation system can''t do that, but what if they''re cultivating using the old cultivation system?" Bloody voiced its opinion, "Or maybe they''re like Mr. Fu whereby they''re Virtual Gods who survived the ancient era?" "According to historical records, many powerhouses'' bodies weren''t found during the battle 800 years ago. Perhaps most of them were eaten by monsters but we can''t rule out the possibility that there were some Virtual Gods who hid and healed from the battle." Lin Huang could not argue about what Bloody said because it was indeed possible. "I personally think that these Virtual Gods elevated by integrating Godheads," the stone tablet voiced its opinion out of the blue. "Why would you say that?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Otherwise, where did the Godheads of Gods who died during the ancient era go when their bodies were found?" The stone tablet was calm as it posed the question. What the stone tablet said terrified Lin Huang. There might be millions of Gods that died during the ancient era. Even if most of them remained unfound, as long as a minority of the Godheads were found by major organizations, they could manufacture many Gods from there. "Judging from what you said, it''s very possible that the Master God of God Bless is a True God." Lin Huang thought his view of the world was now completely shaken. He had always thought Mr. Fu was the only God in this gravel world. However, now it seemed like this gravel world was much more dangerous than he imagined. "If that''s the case, fighting God Bless is much more difficult than I expected." Lin Huang looked helpless. "I was thinking why would God Bless have to be secretive in their missions if they really had such power, especially when Bloody mentioned they might have four Virtual Gods? They could totally wipe out all the organizations in the entire world under the sun, making them the overlord of the gravel world. "However, now it seems like organizations such as the Union Government and the Hunter Association might have more hidden god-level powerhouses. God Bless doesn''t announce their power not because they can''t, but because they know very well that there are even more powerful organizations that exist in this world." Lin Huang soon connected the dots after the stone tablet reminded him about it. "These god-level powerhouses haven''t shown up for hundreds of years. They might''ve come to an agreement with all the organizations not to reveal themselves. Just like the game theory of deterrent forces that all the countries applied on Earth" 1000 Ten Candidates Late at night, two round red and purple moons hung in the sky like a pair of gigantic beast''s pupils in different colors. The maroon moonlight shone on the blue ocean. Combined with the rumbling of the waves, the layers of mysterious colors rippled. It was the Tranquil Ocean, a sea that branched out from the east of Peaceful Ocean 5,000 kilometers to the northeast of Bronze Crow City. At the moment, there were four massive pitch-black airships above the Tranquil Ocean. They were flying towards the central zone of the Tranquil Ocean. If one were familiar with airships, he would be able to recognize these four airships that looked exactly the same. They were demigod-level supreme motherships the Midnight God. The fuselage of the airship was flat while its rear looked like a flatland. Its length exceeded 12,000 meters, making it seem like a supermassive aircraft carrier hovering in the sky. As a demigod-level supreme mothership, the Midnight God could be sold at a price similar to a god item in the market. The four airships flew in sequence and soon arrived at the central zone of the Tranquil Ocean. They landed less than 100 meters above the ocean. Subsequently, the four airships began transforming. Their rears turned into a 90-degree fan-shaped form and connected together perfectly. As the four massive motherships became one, they formed a round platform that was more than 24 kilometers in diameter. There were over 4,000 dense cannons below the platform that stretched out of the platform, pointing in 360 degrees. After the transformation was done, more than ten silhouettes in black trench coats appeared on the round platform at the back of the mothership in a flash. There was a white circle in the middle of the black trench coat where a purple crow perched on a dry branch. Soon, the 13 of them began working. One of them waved and opened a midnight-black dimensional portal. A moment later, a gigantic black sharp claw reached out of the portal. The claw alone plugged the entire portal. "Stop clogging the portal. Come out now," shouted the man who summoned the portal at the monster that stretched its claw out. The black sharp claw shrunk at a rapid speed as a pitch-black dragon-like creature came out of the portal. It glared at the person who shouted at it, feeling crossed, then looked around. "There''s no fight here, Lu Dong. Why did you summon us?" The second monster crawled out of the portal as soon as he was done speaking. It was a green giant with countless lumps all over its body. Its height was approximately seven to eight meters tall, and it had bulky muscles all over. "How many times do you want me to tell you not to call me by my name, Big Black? You''re my imperial monster. You should have some basic respect toward your master," Lu Dong said with arrogance on his face. He would usually let it go, but many of his colleagues were around to witness the scene. "Respect, my as*. Since there''s no fight here, I''m going back to sleep." The dragon creature named Big Black snorted, turning the air into ice in the next second while the temperature on the platform plunged. He glared at his master and turned around in an attempt to leave. "Dracaena!" Lu Dong shouted immediately upon seeing him leaving. Big Black stopped right away while a hint of slyness flashed in his eyes. He swung his head. "300!" "200! Go back to sleep if you don''t want any." "Deal!" Big Black then turned around. "Barbecue!" The green giant looked at Lu Dong with a grin. Clearly, he was going to lock a deal down. "Two tonnes, nothing more!" Lu Dong announced grimly. The giant nodded immediately. Another four monsters came out of the portal at the same time and they were grinning at Lu Dong. Lu Dong glanced at them and looked even gloomier now. However, he said while gritting his teeth, "Give me everything you have today. Those who slack will have their reward taken away!" Although they put on an amusing show whereby the master was bullied by his imperial monsters, Lu Dong''s colleagues did not make fun of him. All six imperial monsters clearly had demigod-level aura, and it only proved Lu Dong''s power as an Imperial Censor. Moreover, there was a demigod who had teased Lu Dong after seeing a similar situation and he was beaten up by Lu Dong and his six imperial monsters to the point that he was bedridden for half a month. Given such a severe warning, nobody dared to make fun of Lu Dong. The six demigod-level imperial monsters began working immediately. Apart from the two that stayed by Lu Dong''s side, the remaining four scattered. Two of them flew into the air while another two jumped into Tranquil Ocean to hide. After the preparations, Lu Dong sat with his legs crossed while watching his 12 colleagues building the altar nearby patiently. Approximately half an hour had passed. An altar that spanned a kilometer in diameter was erected on the platform at the rear of the airships. It was 11.50 p.m. by then. "The power of the Divine Stone is enough to hold up the airship''s defenses, isn''t it?" The leading middle-aged man glanced at the time and said to the lady next to him, "We''ll bring in the Crow Spirit candidates when the defenses are activated." The lady nodded and disappeared right away. Soon, a semitransparent defensive layer formed quickly the air above the airship platform, engulfing the entire area. Looking from far away, the platform at the back of the airships was not the only covered area. There was also a semitransparent membrane overlaying the bottom of the airships without the cannons. Approximately two to three minutes after the shield was formed, the lady who disappeared and the other man brought ten young people in white robes in through the elevator. The muscular man who had just arrived was clearly a demigod judging by his aura. Meanwhile, the young people in white robes were of mixed genders and had different combat strength auras. Six of them were on imperial-level, and the one with the highest combat strength was on imperial-level purple gold-rank. The other three were on high immortal-level. The last one was on holy fire-level, having just stepped into white flame-level. The leading middle-aged man glimpsed through the bunch of young people in white robes and began speaking, "Being selected as a Crow Spirit candidate is an honor. However, only one among you will be elected as the Crow Spirit, the Crow God''s representative in this world. We won''t know who''ll be elected until the very last moment. The election has nothing to do with your combat strength or ability. The will of the Crow God will determine the final decision. "For those who aren''t selected, don''t give up. You''re an irreplaceable Purple Crow member. Be diligent in cultivating. You''ll still have the opportunity to go for my position as Crow Leader." The middle-aged man held his head down and looked at the time after he was done speaking. "It''s almost time now. Let''s begin." 1001 Lurker Lin Huang hid in the alternate dimension and watched everything that was happening on the platform of the airships through the semitransparent defensive shield far away. Despite the defensive layer through which he could not see the people''s faces, he could sense each of their combat strengths clearly. "How many demigods are there in the Purple Crow?!" The Purple Crow had 14 demigods, which shocked him. He initially thought the Purple Crow would only have four to five demigods at the most. However, the reality was three times more than he expected. "I suppose the demigods from each zone are gathered here. Wow, they''re really going all out!" Bloody said while smiling, "But the number is really so much higher than we expected." "Seven among the 14 demigods just elevated these recent months." The stone tablet''s voice came all of a sudden. "A few of them haven''t even had their demigod aura stabilized completely." Lin Huang smiled casually after hearing what the stone tablet said. "I see I suppose they know they''re short-handed since the Crow Spirit election is happening this year. They picked a few of the imperial-level purple gold-rank members who are hopeless to elevate to Virtual Gods and elevated them to demigods." Although Bloody could not hear the stone tablet''s voice transmission, it figured Lin Huang must be speaking to something inside his body and could not help but to interrupt, "What you said is highly possible. The Purple Crow''s all set for the Crow God Ceremony this time, so they definitely are ready for any interference. Elevating demigods at the very last minute before the Crow God Ceremony is indeed the best way to fortify the number of members with top combat strength in the organization." "But I can''t figure out their standard of Crow Spirit candidates." Lin Huang raised another doubt. "Theoretically, the higher the combat strength is, the better it is for the Crow God''s body because a high combat strength would mean a stronger flesh and soul. That should be the best Crow Spirit candidate. I think it''s best for them to pick a demigod as the Crow Spirit. However, not only did they pick a couple of immortal-level candidates, but there''s even a holy fire-level among them." "What you said is merely your subjective judgment." The stone tablet could not help but point out through voice transmission again after hearing Lin Huang''s observation. "The most important thing when it comes to picking the right body isn''t the strength of flesh and soul but the compatibility." "To powerhouses who are on true god-level or above, imperial- and holy fire-levels are no difference to them; they''re just ants. To them, the difficulty of transforming a holy fire-level''s flesh and soul is no different from transforming an imperial-level. The most would just be the slight difference in the time spent." "What you said about demigods being the most suitable vessel is so wrong on all levels." "Unless there''s no other option, no True God would want a demigod to be their vessel. The reason being, the broken Godhead in a demigod''s body would be a great limitation. Using a demigod as their vessel would mean that the maximum combat strength of the vessel can only be perfect-stage demigod-level. On the other hand, the True God could possibly train the candidate to virtual god-level or even true god-level if he picks an imperial- or immortal-level candidate with outstanding potential." While Lin Huang was in a heated discussion with the stone tablet and Bloody in the alternate dimension, the world out there was tossed into chaos as well. Below the sea level of the Tranquil Ocean, the people from God Bless hid in a demigod relic space a couple of kilometers away from Lin Huang''s alternate dimension. The demigod relic was disguised into a liquid droplet and rippled following the waves on the Tranquil Ocean. The people in the droplet observed everything that was happening on the airship not far away. Two people in the space were fighting. "Commander Feng, I think we should give up on the second target of our mission which is the Crow Spirit. As soon as the Purple Crow takes the Detective Eye out, we''ll snatch it immediately. We don''t have to wait for the Crow God Ceremony to begin so that we can avoid unnecessary trouble," Shen Yu suggested directly. "Shen Yu, Master God''s Messenger gave us two missions. You''re asking us to give up on one mission before we''ve even begun. What are you trying to do here?" Commander Feng looked at Shen Yu in contempt. "So, let me say this to your face. Your suggestion has been rejected. I''m the commander and it''s my call. I want both of the mission targets! We''re not giving up on any of them!" "Feng Li, it only takes a few minutes to transform the Crow Spirit''s body. If you want to capture the Crow Spirit, you can only do that within those few short minutes. It undoubtedly raises the difficulty of the mission by heaps. If we fail to capture the Crow Spirit within the given time, we''ll be fighting an opponent who is comparable to perfect-stage demigod-level or even virtual god-level when the integration of the Crow Spirit and the Crow God is completed! By then, we might not even complete any of our missions!" "Then, we''ll capture the Crow Spirit within the few minutes of transformation!" Feng Li insisted while glaring at Shen Yu. "You mother" A young man gripped Shen Yu''s shoulder and shook his head when Shen Yu almost cursed out loud. It was the other Division 3 captain, Li Qing. "Shen Yu, if you insist on disobeying my order like this, I''ll talk to Master God''s Messenger and send you out of Division 3 when the mission is over." "I don''t need you to talk to him. I''ll do it myself. You as*-kisser, I''ve been tolerating you for way too long! I''ll report your misguidance if this mission fails!" In his rage, Shen Yu shook Li Qing''s hand off from his shoulder and began screaming. Lei An and the other three who stood aside turned pale from the scare. Even Captain Li Qing smacked his forehead, feeling helpless about the situation. "Shen Yu, are you asking for death?!" The intention to kill flashed in Feng Li''s eyes. "Alright, alright. Let''s take a step back. We''re on a mission now. Both of you can solve the conflict between you guys after the mission is over. Don''t interfere with the mission." A tall and big fatty walked past Feng Li and stood between both of them. "If Master God''s Messenger finds out that the mission failed because of your internal conflict, I''m sure you guys will be in grave trouble! Moreover, we''ll be affected too. Please don''t hurt the innocent. I''m begging the two of you. Can we do that? I don''t want to be sent to God-knows-where for hundreds of years." "Brother Fatty is right. Don''t hurt the innocent." Another female demigod stood out and grabbed both of them. The duo finally stopped fighting after hearing the fatty mention the God Messenger. They knew very well that being benched was not the only thing that would happen to them if they really caused the mission to fail because of their internal conflict. They might even have their cultivation abolished and be asked to leave God Bless. Just when they stopped arguing, they soon saw ten Crow Spirit candidates in white robes surrounded the altar in a circle, flanked by empty space on the airship deck. Subsequently, the ten of them removed their white robes and revealed their naked bodies. 1002 Young Man, Tell Me Your Name A black altar seemed to have grown in the middle of the massive platform made out of the four airships. It integrated with the pitch-black platform, appearing out of place. Ten naked young men and women sat in a circle surrounding the altar with space between each other. Lu Dong and the other 12 demigods and two demigod-level summoning beasts hovered above the altar. They surrounded the ten Crow Spirit candidates and the altar in order to protect them. Clearly, they had rehearsed the formation many times. They were in position without even speaking to each other. The entire process took less than a minute. The Crow Leader hovered into the air above the altar and looked at the time on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. Lin Huang, who was watching in the alternate dimension far away, could not help but glance at the time too. "11.58 p.m." The Crow Leader crossed his arms in front of his chest and shut his eyes. He waited for the time to pass patiently. A moment later, it was 12 a.m. sharp. He opened both of his eyes as a gigantic Imperial Palace solidified rapidly above his head. It was a massive black city. The city walls alone were 100 meters tall and spread tens of kilometers. It was a few folds bigger than the platform made of the four airships. Two majestic city gates that soared 200 meters high were in the middle of the city wall. They stood even taller than the city walls. There was a purple crow with its wings spread wide open carved in the middle of the two massive gates. The crow''s eyes seemed to have two huge red rubies mounted on them, sitting on each gate. It was the Purple Crow headquarters, the Crow Leader Yan Ping''s Imperial Palace the Crow City! As soon as the Imperial Palace appeared, Yan Ping''s aura was completely released without him hiding it. He was clearly on perfect-stage demigod-level and was a terrifying existence comparable to a Virtual God. The air around seemed to have frozen as the massive black city hovered in the sky. Even Lin Huang could not help but exclaim out loud, "What a gigantic Imperial Palace!" This was the biggest Imperial Palace he had ever witnessed in his life. "Although a demigod can''t form a God Territory, an Imperial Palace possesses a certain God Territory characteristic. It''s usually much bigger than an ordinary Imperial Palace," the stone tablet explained. Just when Lin Huang was musing about the reason Yan Ping summoned the Imperial Palace, Yan Ping began controlling the Crow City. The eyes of the purple crow on the massive black city gates seemed to light up with a red glow. Two glaring sparks burned all of a sudden. A rumble broke the sky a moment later. The two massive gates of the Crow City seemed to be pushed open by a pair of invisible hands. As soon as the gates were opened, black silhouettes poured towards the altar in a frenzy. They were like a black waterfall drowning the inside of the altar. The black silhouettes in the altar became rowdy, seeming to seek escape. However, they appeared to be shackled by an invisible force. "That soul power wave" Lin Huang frowned as he watched. He sensed what the black silhouettes were faintly, but he could not be sure. "It''s his soul. Due to the Imperial Palace, it became visible to the naked eye," the stone tablet explained, "Seems like he''s using soul sacrifice to summon the Crow God." "What a Crow God!" Lin Huang''s expression became serious as he watched countless souls being poured into the altar and gradually turning into a black liquid. The pouring lasted for over ten minutes. Yan Ping only recalled his Imperial Palace when the black liquid in the altar turned into a whirlpool. He took a box from his storage space out. The box was only the size of a fist. It was the color of blood with black sigils covering it. Yan Ping performed a complicated hand seal quickly and the black sigils on the box soon began to flow rapidly. Later on, the sigils on the box cover faded and it opened automatically. There was a crimson eyeball in the box. Yan Ping seemed not to dare to touch it. When he flicked it through the air, the crimson eyeball flew out of the box and dropped into the whirlpool within the altar below. A while later, the crimson eyeball began expanding at a high speed. It grew from normal human-size to a giant sphere of approximately three meters in diameter half a minute later. It hovered from the altar slowly and hung in the air about ten meters from the altar. The eyeball had completely transformed by now. There were red and purple blood vessels all over it and many blood vessels dangled like vines from it. They connected to the whirlpool in the altar below. The eye now had a red iris and a pitch-black pupil. An ominous aura spread across the space, lingering in this broken mini world. Even Lin Huang felt a slight suppression as he watched everything far away in the alternate dimension. He had goosebumps all over and his scalp tingled numbly. He did not find the eye scary, but rather it was the Crow God''s aura that spread out which gave him a physiological reaction. The people who had the same reaction at the same time were the God Bless members and Hong Zhuang who were hiding in the dark. "This is scary. The aura alone gives someone a sense of despair. It can almost make someone lose their will to fight," Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. "Apart from a True God''s Holy Power, this Crow God should have some other suppressing power that exudes such spiritual oppression that''s so much higher than others who are on the same level as he is!" explained the stone tablet. On the deck of the airships, everyone including the Crow Leader Yan Ping, the other 13 demigods and the two demigod-level imperial monsters fell from the air onto the deck due to the Crow God''s Holy Power. The ten naked men and women at the border of the altar were quivering. They were not afraid, but it was a physiological terror that made them lose control of their bodies. All demigods had Divine Power in their bodies, so they had a certain resistance to such Holy Power. However, people below demigod-level who had zero Divine Power in their bodies were like naked humans in the snow whereby they could not resist the Holy Power''s suppression at all. Yan Ping, who hovered above the air, spoke as soon as the eyeball had completed its transformation. "Master God, we''ve picked ten Crow Spirit candidates. You may select the Crow Spirit." The eyeball peeped at Yan Ping and subsequently glanced through the ten naked men and women below one after another. Less than ten seconds later, the eyeball stared at the fifth person all of a sudden after it had just glanced through five of them. Yan Ping and the rest held their breaths. ''He''s done picking so soon?'' The eyeball was staring at the young man who had the lowest combat strength among the ten candidates. The young man looked only 17 or 18 years old. He was skinny and stood less than 1.7 meters tall. Despite his tanned skin, he was not considered good-looking. There was a circle of black, complicated sigils on the left side of his chest which looked like a black tattoo. There was a massive amount of black fog billowing out of the eye, forming a massive black silhouette before the young man. The black shadow looked like a crow spreading its wings, and there were 108 red pupils on the black silhouette''s head like a sky full of stars. "Young man, tell me your name." The black silhouette''s head came less than a meter before the young man and asked for the young man''s name. Its voice was overlapping; it sounded like more than 100 men and women talking at the same time. The young man''s shivering body surprisingly calmed down as he looked at the black silhouette''s 108 pupils that looked like stars. He told his name without hesitation, "My My name is Xiao Mo" 1003 A War Has Begun! When the Crow God asked for the young man''s name, Yan Ping and the rest of the demigods knew very well that the Crow God had basically decided on the Crow Spirit. However, Lu Dong and the rest were a little confused. Among the ten candidates, the Crow God had gone for the one with the lowest combat strength. Furthermore, he went for the most inconspicuous person. Almost everyone thought the young man who had just broken through to white flame-level recently was just a stand-in for the Crow Spirit candidate. Even Xiao Mo himself thought the same too. However, never had he thought that the Crow God would select him right away. The black silhouette which was the incarnation of Crow God asked in a deep voice, "Xiao Mo Are you willing to be my Crow Spirit?" His voice remained overlapping. "I do!" The young man nodded vigorously. "The deal is done!" As soon as the Crow God was done speaking, crimson beams of light shot out of the 108 pupils at the same time. It was as if a bloody sun was shining with an endless glow, causing everyone to shut their eyes. The red glow only went off for a second. As soon as their vision recovered, they saw Xiao Mo hanging mid-air and the Crow God''s black silhouette entering his body at a high speed by turning into a black fog and entering through his mouth and nose. Xiao Mo''s body hovered into the air without him controlling it. His flesh and bones were disintegrating. Subsequently, his body was reforming at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. However, the process was clearly an unpleasant one. While Xiao Mo''s flesh was flying all over in the air, the remaining nine candidates were frowning slightly as they witnessed the horrible scene while hearing his devastating shriek. ... In a droplet disguised beneath the Tranquil Ocean, Commander Feng Li put on a golden mask and ordered without hesitation upon seeing Xiao Mo being wrapped within the Crow God, "Let''s go!" As soon as the order was issued, Shen Yu and the other three demigods who wore their masks got out of the droplet space. A thousand-meter high wave rumbled on the peaceful the Tranquil Ocean, advancing toward the airship. Four white silhouettes were riding on top of the massive wave. The four had a majestic aura, clearly exhibiting their demigod status. Furthermore, one of them even had the same combat strength as Yang Ping which was perfect-stage demigod-level. The Crow Leader Yan Ping narrowed his eyes as he watched the wave coming. "Lu Dong, bring the nine candidates with you! Leave the imperial monsters behind!" Lu Dong had no objection upon hearing the order. He was different from Lin Huang whereby he was purely an Imperial Censor, and his combat ability lagged far behind compared to his imperial monsters. Although he was a demigod, he might lose if he encountered an imperial-level who was experienced in combat. "All candidates, follow me!" Lu Dong knew he would be a burden if he stayed, so he obeyed the order directly. The nine of them stood up immediately. They did not even take the white robe lying on the ground and ran toward Lu Dong with their naked bodies. They had rehearsed such a crisis multiple times before. They followed Lu Dong into the elevator without saying anything. On the massive platform, only 13 demigods, two demigod-level imperial monsters and Xiao Mo, who hovered in the air taking in the Crow God''s transformation above the altar, were left. The giant wave collided with the giant airship''s defenses almost at the same time that Lu Dong brought the nine candidates away in the elevator. Shen Yu and the other three demigods attacked at the same time as the collision. Shen Yu held a demigod battle saber and swung it across the sky. A crescent-shaped black glow charged out and collided with the defensive layer. Li Qing held a blue sword weapon in his hand. A dazzling white glow shone when the tip of the sword struck the shield. Meanwhile, the female demigod held a silver sword in her hand. The tip of the sword also smashed into the defenses as she swung it across, and a silver glow exploded like fireworks. However, the one who had the most powerful combat strength was the tall and big fatty. Just like Yan Ping, he had perfect-stage demigod-level combat strength and he held a giant dark blue spear in his hand. The giant spear was five meters long and the body was in a spiral form. When the fatty laid his palms at the bottom of the spear handle, the giant spear shot out into the air. Everywhere the tip of the spear passed by became distorted, including the air. Yan Ping and the other Purple Crow demigods had a dramatic change of expression when they saw the power coming from the spear. "Is that a god relic?!" Meanwhile, Lin Huang who was hiding in the dark was shocked. "Is that the Ba Huang spear?!" The Ba Huang spear was the god relic spear that Lin Huang had auctioned off at the Wanbao Auction earlier which turned out to be a bought-in. Someone bought it with three God Figurines and two demigod soul crystals later on. Never had he thought it would end up with God Bless. Soon, the Ba Huang spear tip hit the defensive shield formed by the four demigod airships. An endless golden light exploded from the collision while strong winds spread from the center. A tsunami was set off on the peaceful Tranquil Ocean. The four Midnight God airships went through a slight tremor as a result of the hit, and they even sank close to a meter lower. Finally, a spider web-like crack appeared on the defensive shield formed from the Divine Power coming from the Divine Stone above the airships. Yan Ping and the rest of the Purple Crow demigods were frowning as they watched. They knew very well that the defenses would not last any longer. "Such a tough tortoise shell!" The fatty smirked. He was a little worried that the defensive layer might not have any damages from the attack. If that was the case, they would have to spend a lot of time breaking the shield and might miss the opportunity to capture the Crow Spirit. Now, it seemed like the concern was unnecessary. Soon, the fatty swung the spear for the second time, and the third time After-shadows were drawn in the sky one after another. Meanwhile, the two demigod imperial monsters above the airships and the other two in the ocean attempted to stop the fatty from breaking the defensive layer. However, they were hindered by the other three demigods. The airships'' defenses finally collapsed when the tip of the spear struck the same spot for the third time. It broke like a piece of glass, collapsing and fading away. Finally, everything on the platform was clearly exposed to the outside world. Lin Huang could finally see how the young man who was selected as the Crow Spirit looked like. In the alternate dimension, he was clearly stunned when he saw the face of the young man who was hovering above the altar. "Isn''t that Xiao Mo?!" The person had been his roommate back at the Purple Crow training camp. Lin Huang almost forgot his name. Never had he thought he would see him again at such an occasion. Xiao Mo had had few changes to his appearance. He was slightly taller now, but his skin remained tanned. What made Lin Huang recognize him right away was the bunch of complicated sigils on the left of his chest. That was not some tattoo, but the mark of the Descendants of the Sin. Nobody would get a slave mark as a tattoo at their own will. As Xiao Mo hovered above the altar, not only were his flesh and bones reforming, but even his combat strength was elevating at a terrifying speed. He elevated a rank almost every few seconds. White flame-level! Crimson flame-level! Blue flame-level! In a short burst of time, his combat strength broke through to immortal-level directly. At the same time, Yan Ping and the rest charged toward Shen Yu and the other three on the platform. 1004 I Just Want to Watch As soon as the defensive shield above the airship collapsed, the Purple Crow and God Bless began fighting. They wasted no time with words. The Purple Crow Leader Yan Ping held a three-foot golden sword in his hand and went after the fatty who had the most powerful combat strength. The sword in his hand was like a golden arrow burning in golden flame. It only took a second to arrive less than ten seconds before the fatty. Within no time, it was pointing between his brows. The fatty grinned. The spear in his hand shrunk and turned into a sharp seven-foot spear. The tip of the spear turned into a sharp blade that was close to 30 centimeters long. He looked at his opponent in a condescending way as he swung the spear like an agile dragon. A dark-blue fire burned on the dark-blue spear, making it look like a meteor shooting toward the golden sword. The two god relics collided in the next second. As soon as the tips of the sword and the spear met, the two perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouses did not hold back as they inserted all their Divine Power into the god relics in their hands. A golden sun formed at the point of the collision when the god relics and Divine Power clashed intensely. Subsequently, the golden sun above the airship began to expand rapidly like a balloon as the duo inserted their Divine Power into the weapons. The glaring golden glow began to spread all over. The terrifying impact of the duo''s impact soon made everyone in the fight step back immediately. Only two the Purple Crow demigods remained to hold the defense above the altar up, covering Xiao Mo and the altar within. However, a white silhouette shot out of the ocean at a high speed that very instant. As opposed to the rest who retreated, the white silhouette was going after the altar. The ten Purple Crow demigods reacted one after another. They attempted to stop the white silhouette, but it was terrifyingly quick. It dodged the attacks easily like a loach. The white-robed man was the same as the rest of them in white robes. He wore a golden mask on his face and his right hand had a black glove over it. He arrived at the altar within the span of a breath. Then, with his gloved hand, he pressed his right palm on the shield built by the two demigods. The defenses broke almost immediately. The pupils of the two Purple Crow demigods shrunk slightly. The glove was clearly a god relic! The duo ground their teeth and attacked the man with the glove almost at the same time. Instantly, black and purple Divine Power charged out. The man with the glove scoffed while his perfect-stage demigod-level aura exploded. He pointed two fingers outward and two black streaks flicked from his fingers like bullets. They broke through the two Divine Power attacks like a piece of cake. Shock flashed through their eyes and they stepped back immediately. The man with the glove did not go after them. Instead, he grabbed Xiao Mo''s shoulder with his left hand and tossed him away with immense strength. At the same time, a couple of the Purple Crow demigods who were far away arrived before him. A couple of white silhouettes came out of the ocean all of a sudden. They were going after Xiao Mo who was falling although their combat strength was only on imperial-level. A giant tentacle that was hundreds of meters long shot out of the ocean, entangling around Xiao Mo before the white silhouettes could get to him. Meanwhile, more than 20 imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses came out of the ocean again. They were hacking at the tentacle by constructing a battle formation. "Xiao Mo" Lin Huang frowned slightly as he watched Xiao Mo becoming the target of the battle. He was hesitating if he should get involved in the fight. After all, Xiao Mo would live a torturous life if he ended up with God Bless. However, he would turn into the Crow God''s shell completely if he stayed with the Purple Crow. He would also have his consciousness wiped away. No matter which organization he ended up with, Xiao Mo''s fate was set to be miserable. Just when Lin Huang was hesitating, a crimson pupil on the Crow God''s black silhouette lit up all of a sudden. A loud, overlapping voice drifted across the ocean. "Are you asking for death?!" The Crow God was enraged! The sound wave spread out hundreds of times faster than the speed of sound. Tens of God Bless imperial-level powerhouses in white robes had zero resistance to that and they exploded right away. Even the tentacle of the monster that stretched above the ocean towards Xiao Mo turned into dust. The demigod monster beneath the ocean let out a devastating shriek and burrowed deep in the ocean immediately. All the demigods above the airship spat mouthfuls of blood out. Even the two perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouses who were fighting held their breaths. The golden sun between their god relics that had been maintaining its balance shattered. The duo stepped back immediately because they knew very well that the explosion caused by the collision should not be underestimated. However, Feng Li, who was wearing the glove, did not leave the airship deck just yet. A ferocious gleam flashed through his eyes. He held his right fist with the glove tightly with Divine Power rushing into it. He was punching the Detective Eye. "You''re asking for death!" A furious voice came from the Detective Eye at that moment. The eyeball shifted its focus and glared at Feng Li. A powerful spiritual suppression was released from the Detective Eye just then. Even Lin Huang, who was in the alternate dimension a couple of kilometers away, felt his heart sink. Bearing the brunt, Feng Li froze completely as if he was entrapped in a spell. In reality, apart from him, nobody knew what had just happened. He saw a real crimson eye through the Detective Eye. The second he saw the eye, his soul went through an intense tremor like an earthquake. Fortunately, a golden glow came to suppress the tremor. His soul was stabilized and he narrowly escaped having his soul destroyed. However, his eyes shattered instantly. While it was the price to pay for an ordinary person to look at a True God, it was also the lowest price one could pay. Although he escaped death from the soul-type god relic in his soul which he prepared ahead, the power from the True God''s eye struck the god relic, so it still rang intensely in his head. He lost all of his senses at the moment, and his Divine Power retreated back to his body. He could not even feel that his eyes were now blinded. Just when everyone was wondering what happened to Feng Li, a pitch-black arrow shot through the air. The strike tore the air and nobody saw the arrow''s flight trajectory. The arrow that came with black fog collided right into the Detective Eye. There was no thud or collision noise. When the black arrow hit the Detective Eye, it turned into a lump of black liquid that spread rapidly as if it was alive. In the alternate dimension, Lin Huang raised his brow. He knew another party had attacked. It must be Hong Zhuang and Yang Ling if he was not mistaken. However, Lin Huang was unsure if they had any help. "I can''t believe they''re using the Abyssal Demon Curse to contaminate a god item. Under normal circumstances, such a disposable curse arrow can only be used in battles in the other world. Also, it isn''t something that''s available in this world," said the stone tablet''s voice calmly, "Seems like your friend who has been helping you to unlock storage equipment is familiar with the other world." Just when Lin Huang was chatting with the stone tablet, the black silhouette, which the Crow God had taken the form of, was completely mad. "Come out now, all of you bastards who are hiding!" The voice diffused more than a hundred times faster than the speed of sound. Everyone who was hiding in the dark within 1,000 kilometers was forced out. Even Lin Huang was squeezed out of the alternate dimension by a mighty force after sensing a tremor. The Ninetails Lynx that was sitting on his shoulder looked solemn like it had never before as it watched the Crow God which had taken on the black silhouette form. "What''s wrong? I just want to watch." Lin Huang looked aggrieved when he saw many members from the Purple Crow and God Bless staring at him. 1005 Yang Ling’s Trump Card Lin Huang really did not want to stick his nose in the bickering the Purple Crow and God Bless were in. He came here this time to see the fight between demigods. After all, it was hard for such a level of battle to come by. Apart from that, he was rather curious about what God Bless was trying to do. On the other hand, he wanted to know what Hong Zhuang was up to. Never had he thought that he would be forced out of the alternate dimension by the Crow God''s projection. "Lin Xie?" Among the God Bless members, Li Qing and the rest soon recognized him. The division that Li Qing was in had issued the order to capture Lin Xie. That was how they identified him as soon as they saw him. Although not many demigods from the Purple Crow knew him, they had heard his name before. After all, he was the young supreme genius who ranked No. 1 on the Genius Union leaderboard for two years consecutively. Everyone more or less heard about him. Lin Huang was calm despite realizing that he had been recognized. He waved while smiling. "I just happened to pass by, so I thought I''d stay to watch. Please proceed. Just pretend that I''m not here." The demigods were rather speechless. However, noticing that his combat strength was only on immortal-level and figuring that he was not a threat, they shifted their focus. They clearly had a greater threat on the other side with ten demigods including Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang. Even Lin Huang was a little surprised to see the ten demigods behind the duo. "Smart Puppets? Interesting" The stone tablet''s voice came out of the blue. "I suppose this guy who helped you unlock those stuff is a traveler too?" "How could you tell?" Lin Huang thought it was rather peculiar. "Also, what''s a Smart Puppet? Are you talking about those demigods?" "It''s simple. What he''s doing isn''t something that someone is capable of doing in this world," the stone tablet explained, "The genetic technology in this world is advanced, but the artificial intelligence technology is almost non-existent. The modification he made to those demigod bodies can''t be found in this world." "Demigod bodies?" Lin Huang took a closer look but did not see anything off. "How come they don''t look like dead bodies to me? They look quite real." "They look real, but in reality, he used artificial intelligence to replace the vanished souls in these bodies. Only very few people in the great world can do this. Since he managed to come up with these products, it only proves that he''s an expert in this field." "So, how''re these demigods different from dead puppets?" Lin Huang asked again. "It''s a major difference!" The stone tablet laughed. "Dead puppets only have the remnant of battle will whereby they depend mainly on their battle instincts or require a master to control them. Their abilities are far behind what they possessed when they were alive. However, these Smart Puppets that he made have bodies of a demigod with battle data installed. The puppets can perform calculations on the spot during the battle and the speed of their calculation surpasses the human brain by heaps. If I''m not mistaken, these ten puppets'' abilities should be much more powerful than when they were still alive." "Look, the puppets all have god relics in their hands. We can tell who''s going to the biggest winner of this battle," the stone table spoke while smiling. "But I think the Crow God''s projection is scarier." In comparison, Lin Huang was more afraid of the Crow God''s projection. He figured that the projection''s capacity was on at least virtual god-level. "Although the Crow God''s projection is powerful, the medium, which is the Detective Eye, has been contaminated by the Demon Curse. When the medium is completely contaminated, that will be when the Crow God loses contact with this world. By then, the Crow God''s projection will fade automatically." However, the stone tablet disagreed with the notion that the Crow God''s projection was a threat. "Lin Xie, you came after all." Yang Ling let out a soft sigh when he saw Lin Huang. "Must you interfere with this?" "I said that I''m just here to watch. Just go ahead and ignore me. Just pretend that I''m not here." Lin Huang smiled while spreading his arms. Standing aside while observing Lin Huang, Hong Zhuang asked all of a sudden, "Did we meet somewhere before?" "The last time, I went looking for Yang Ling to unlock the stuff at the hotel. It was you who opened the door," Lin Huang replied naturally, "Don''t you remember that?" "That''s not it. I mean before that. Did we meet somewhere else?" Hong Zhuang proceeded to ask. "I don''t think so. I''d definitely remember you if we had met before," Lin Huang denied directly. He did not want to have any association with Hong Zhuang at all. Just when Hong Zhuang wanted to say something, she was interrupted by the Crow God''s projection. The 108 crimson pupils on the gigantic black projection stared at Hong Zhuang and the rest. "I''ll keep your dead bodies in one piece if you give me the anecdote!" The overlapping voice was as if 100 men and women were talking at the same time through everyone''s ears. "I''m sorry. I''d like to live, so I''ll reject your offer." Yang Ling took a step back. Lin Huang sensed no cultivation aura on Yang Ling, but he had no idea why he seemed like he was standing on the ground when in reality, he was standing in the air. "Go to hell then!" As soon as the Crow God''s projection was done speaking, a black thread stretched from its projected body at a terrifying speed hundreds of times faster than the speed of sound. It pierced through Yang Ling''s body in the next second. The hit was so fleet that even Lin Huang did not manage to react in time. He saw Yang Ling''s body being stabbed by a black thread and he was pitched high into the air. "Yang Ling" Lin Huang frowned but soon something shocking happened. Yang Ling''s body that was tossed into the air like a ragdoll disintegrated into cubes rapidly and soon vanished. However, countless cubes reformed next to Hong Zhuang in the next second. To Lin Huang''s fascination, Yang Ling''s body seemed completely unharmed. "Crow God, you can''t kill me with your projection alone." Yang Ling seemed like he was narrating a fact expressionlessly. "Hmph!" Another black thread stretched out after the scoff, piercing through Yang Ling''s body again. As his body disintegrated into cubes, more black threads extended from the Crow God''s projection to attack the thousands of cubes. However, the cubes that were attacked merely broke into smaller cubes instead of being destroyed completely. Just like that, the thousands of cubes broke into smaller cubes again and again. Eventually, they broke into millions of tiny cubes that were almost invisible to the naked eye. By then, the Crow God recalled the black threads grudgingly. In the next second, Yang Ling''s body consolidated next to Hong Zhuang again. This time, it took slightly longer than before. "No wonder you''re so arrogant before me. It seems that you''ve mastered the Rule Bending Power," the Crow God''s projection spoke calmly. It clearly knew what Yang Ling was doing. "You''re worthy of being called the Crow God." Yang Ling grinned. "Let''s make a deal." 1006 Rich is the Word Lim Huang was dumbstruck as he watched Yang Ling, who he thought had zero cultivation, remain unharmed after being attacked by the Crow God''s projection twice. He was even more shocked when he heard the conversation between the Crow God and Yang Ling. "The Rule Bending Power? Isn''t that something that can only be mastered by a True God? Could Yang Ling be a True God? Has he been hiding his aura? Is this why I can''t sense it?" "He didn''t hide his aura. He really has zero cultivation." The stone tablet''s voice soon came into Lin Huang''s ears. "Then, why did the Crow God say he mastered Rule Bending Power?" Hearing the question, the stone tablet fell into a moment of silence before answering, "Maybe he used to be a True God or even a more powerful being." The stone tablet''s answer made Lin Huang stare at Yang Ling in awe. At that moment, Yang Ling began talking to the Crow God. He showed no respect to the Crow God, using a tone that he usually spoke to the neighbors with. "Let''s make a deal. I''ll remove the curse on your eye and let you complete the Crow Spirit transformation. The condition is that you''ll give us the eye." "Who do you think you are? It was you who cast the curse but you''re using that against me now?" The Crow God''s projection rejected the condition directly. He was clearly disgruntled judging by his tone. Yang Ling fell into silence for a moment with his head down. He then lifted his head to look at the Crow God''s projection. "I''ll owe you a favor. I can do one thing for you when I get to the great world as long as it''s something that doesn''t cross the line." Yang Ling''s offer made the Crow God fall into silence. He seemed to be thinking about whether the deal was worthy or not. He seemed to have come to a final decision a moment later. "I decline. Although you might be a True God or even a more powerful existence before, you have zero cultivation now. It''s simple to determine from your aura that you''ve been staying in this broken world for a long time, but you''ve remained cultivation-less. It proves that something is very wrong with your body or maybe something is wrong with your cultivation base. "No matter what''s wrong with your body, judging from your current condition, the probability of you getting back to your initial combat strength is almost zero. I''d accept the deal you made without hesitation if you were at your peak, but now, your favor means nothing to me." "Hundred-eyed Dark Crow, think carefully. If you reject my suggestion now, you might not have the opportunity to come to this gravel world again in the future." Yang Ling called out the Crow God''s tribe name directly. He clearly knew about the tribe very well. "Are you threatening me now?" The Crow God knew that his projection would be destroyed as soon as the medium was completely contaminated. Furthermore, if Yang Ling obtained the medium, he would definitely disconnect the eye with the Crow God''s consciousness. It would be almost impossible for the Crow God to project himself into the world in the future unless the people from Purple Crow managed to find another god item to connect him from the other realm. "I''m just hoping that you can think this through." Yang Ling''s tone remained calm. "I''ve thought it through." The Crow God''s projection looked ferocious. "All of you, go to hell!" Hundreds of black threads shot out of the projection in a frenzy immediately. They were flying toward Lin Huang and Yang Ling. Before Lin Huang could react, the Ninetails Lynx pulled him into the alternate dimension. Two black threads shot like an arrow where Lin Huang and the Ninetails Lynx were initially standing almost the moment when the human and cat disappeared. Lin Huang looked gloomy as he watched this in the alternate dimension. "Why did he attack me? I''m not in the same team as them!" "Maybe he just did it for the convenience. Looking at the overall direction, we were in the same direction as Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang." Bloody that was in Lin Huang''s sleeve explained, "Look, he didn''t attack the other direction where God Bless was." "Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang are such burdens." Lin Huang was not sure to laugh or cry when he realized the Crow God certainly did not attack the people from God Bless. One must know that the people from God Bless initiated the fight. However, the Crow God ignored them completely. Yang Ling''s words earlier clearly crossed the line and caused Lin Huang to get into trouble. While Lin Huang managed to dodge the Crow God''s attack, Yang Ling and the rest did not. They seemed to have no plan of evading since the beginning. The ten demigods stepped forward to protect Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang behind them. They charged their Divine Power directly. Ten god relics lit up with the divine glow of various colors at the same time, going after the black threads. What ignited at the same time were the battle armors on them. Lin Huang was completely shocked to witness that because he just realized that all ten demigods had perfect-stage demigod-level combat strength. "Damn, Yang Ling is so rich! His ten perfect-stage demigod-level puppets have 20 god relics! He''s indeed a whale!" Naturally, Yang Ling did not hear Lin Huang teasing him in the alternate dimension. The black threads soon collided with the god relics in the hands of the ten perfect-stage demigod-level puppets above the Tranquil Ocean. The dark night sky seemed to have lit up with hundreds of mini-suns coming from the impact. The area within thousands of kilometers looked like it turned into day for a second. The impact of the Divine Power spread out after the red glow came. The entire Tranquil Ocean seemed to have endless boiling waves rumbling. Within 10,000 meters from the sea level, countless monsters were crushed directly from the tremor. Only a minority of them that had a combat strength above imperial-level were harmed but they survived as they ran for their lives deep into the sea. Soon, the Tranquil Ocean was dyed red. The entire ocean seemed to have turned into a bloody sea in the blink of an eye. Even the four demigod-level giant airships a couple of kilometers away began rocking as if they had been hit by an earthquake. The platform at the back of the giant airships seemed like it had been drowned in countless bloody waves like a waterfall. It turned into a swamp right after that. The demigods from the Purple Crow and God Bless had to put their fight into a halt. They held up their own defenses to fight the impact of the Divine Power coming from the Crow God and Yang Ling. "So, this is how a virtual god-level collision looks like!" Lin Huang could not help but exclaim as he watched the force. " How terrifying!" "I''d like to see how many blows the Divine Power all of you have can take!" The Crow God''s projection''s voice soon spread out. Lin Huang did not see what happened to the fight under the glaring red glow caused by the collision. However, judging from what the Crow God said, the latter did not get what he wanted from the first strike. Hundreds of black threads shot out of the black silhouette. Not only were there more threads this time, but the attack speed was also much faster now. However, the Crow God ignored Lin Huang and the Ninetails Lynx that were hiding in the alternate dimension this time. He clearly made Yang Ling and the rest of the team his main killing target. The black threads danced around the ten demigods just when the Crow God was done speaking. The Divine Power in the ten demigods'' bodies went through a tremor again. They held their god relics and charged fearlessly. 1007 Lin Huangs Inteference The collision from the ten demigods and the Crow God''s projection was like countless of nuclear bombs setting off consecutively above the Tranquil Ocean. It seemed as if massive, bloody suns lit up the entire ocean as if it was daytime. Countless lives in the Tranquil Ocean were crushed from the impact, dying the entire ocean red. The sea seemed to be like a washing machine that was set on turbo mode, only a hundred times faster. Endless giant waves rumbled and poured down like a waterfall. Water vapor evaporated in the high temperature, causing the sea level of the Tranquil Ocean to drop at a worrying rate. The fight between the Purple Crow and God Bless had since moved away from the area to tens of kilometers away. Apart from Yang Ling and his team as well as the Crow God''s projection, Lin Huang, Bloody, and the Ninetails Lynx in the alternate dimension and Xiao Mo whose combat strength remained elevating were the only ones left. Although they were in the middle of the battle, the Crow God''s projection did not stop the transformation process on Xiao Mo. The black fog continued to penetrate Xiao Mo''s mouth and nose. His combat strength aura had elevated all the way from white flame-level to imperial-level. However, the speed of his elevation had clearly slowed down. Nobody knew if it was caused by the Crow God''s projection being distracted in the fight or Xiao Mo''s elevation on imperial-level. Within a mere few seconds, the Crow God''s projection collided with the ten demigods more than a hundred times. However, the Divine Power in the ten demigods'' bodies was yet to be drained. Even Lin Huang thought it was rather odd. Theoretically, demigods could not generate Divine Power in their bodies. The Divine Power in their bodies would dwindle whenever they used it. Naturally, the Crow God noticed that too, but he did not plan to stop attacking just yet. "I didn''t tell you earlier, but the Divine Power in these demigod puppets'' bodies can''t be drained. I want you to experience it yourself." Yang Ling''s voice came behind the demigod puppets, "After all, you''ll only believe it after experiencing it." The Crow God''s projection scoffed and he did not slow down on his attack at all. "Do you know why the Divine Power in these puppets'' bodies can''t be drained?" Yang Ling''s voice soon came again. "Because I installed the True God''s Divine Fire in their bodies. The Divine Power in their bodies are bottomless, they can never finish it." "You''re lying. A demigod''s body can''t handle the True God''s Divine Fire at all unless the True God gave it up willingly," the Crow God finally responded. "What if I made the Divine Fire myself?" Yang Ling asked. The Crow God fell into silence at that moment. "I spent hundreds of years studying the Godhead and Divine Fire, so I''ve finally managed to come up with the Divine Tinder more than a hundred years later. After that, I spent decades figuring out a way to integrate the Divine Tinder. Unfortunately, I''ve not experienced a breakthrough in studying the Godhead. Otherwise, you would see more than just demigods today," Yang Ling explained while smiling. "Give it up. The speed of the Divine Power supply in these puppets'' bodies is comparable with a True God''s. It''s impossible for you to defeat them by draining the Divine Power in their bodies," Yang Ling proceeded to advise the Crow God, "The suggestion I gave still stands. As soon as you give us the eye, we''ll remove the contamination immediately so that you can complete the Crow God Ceremony." The Crow God turned his head to look at the Detective Eye, 80% of which had black goo dripping all over it. Only a small portion was untouched. "You''re running out of time." Yang Ling peeped at the direction of the Detective Eye and bent his head down to look at the time on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Looking at the current progress, the eye will be completely contaminated within 30 seconds at the most. You won''t be able to complete the transformation of your Crow Spirit. As soon as the eye is completely contaminated, you will lose contact with this world entirely and you''ll disappear right away." "Really?" The Crow God''s projection laughed all of a sudden. His crimson eyes shifted away from Yang Ling and subsequently stared at Hong Zhuang. "I suppose this lady is very important to you, isn''t she?" "What are you trying to do?" Yang Ling frowned slightly. "You''re too amateur to be playing tricks with me." As soon as the Crow God''s projection spoke, a black thread that was the width of a hair revealed itself on Hong Zhuang''s neck. The black thread wound around her neck, sinking into her skin a little. The Crow God had placed the black thread there secretly during the fight earlier. He hid its aura intentionally as well as its trace. "Remove the contamination on the eye if you want this lady to live." The Crow God''s projection chuckled cunningly. "You''re a True God and you''re threatening me, an ordinary human with a lady. Do you think this is right?" Yang Ling taunted. "Quit your nonsense. Do you want her to live or do you want her to die?" The black thread that was the width of a hair on Hong Zhuang''s neck tightened slightly now. "Release her. You have my word!" Yang Ling scowled and fell into silence for a moment. Eventually, he made up his mind. "Don''t give him what he wants!" Hong Zhuang shook her head at Yang Ling. "You better be quiet, lady." The thread the Crow God had tied on Hong Zhuang''s neck tightened even more now. Blood was flowing from the cut on Hong Zhuang''s neck. The Crow God then looked at Yang Ling. "Remove the contamination! I''ll release her as soon as you do that." "I don''t trust you. Release her first!" "It''s not your choice whether to trust me now." The Crow God''s projection smiled. "This is the only option you have. I don''t plan to give you another option." "Alright then. I hope that you''ll do as you promised." Yang Ling decided to compromise in the end. A demigod puppet with a battle bow in his hand soon walked out among the ten puppets. Clearly, he was the one who had shot the arrow at the eye to contaminate it earlier. He moved and appeared next to the eye above the airship in the next second. He touched the battle bow in his hand to the eye. The black goo that occupied close to 80% of the eye began fading away and flowed towards the battle bow in the demigod''s hand. Lin Huang, who was in the alternate dimension, raised his brow as he watched that. He asked the Ninetails Lynx, "Can you cut his thread?" "It''ll take some effort but it''s doable," the Ninetails Lynx confirmed. "Then, cut the thread on Hong Zhuang''s neck," Lin Huang ordered. "Are you sure you want to do that?" This would mean we''re involved in this fight." Bloody''s voice came out of his sleeve. "Don''t worry. The Crow God has no time for us. Yang Ling won''t give him the opportunity to do anything to us," Lin Huang assured with a smile. In the next second, the little white cat disappeared from Lin Huang''s shoulder. Lin Huang saw the black thread on Hong Zhuang''s neck being snipped off, then the little white cat returned to his shoulder. Yang Ling was stunned for a second and reacted immediately. He controlled the demigod puppet to recall the absorption of the Demon Curse on the battle bow. As a result, the Demon Curse began to contaminate the eye again. The Crow God''s projection noticed something off right away. The 108 pupils stared at where Lin Huang and the Ninetails Lynx were hiding. Without a doubt, the Crow God was enraged. 1008 Raider Lin Huang saved Hong Zhuang not because he knew her and Yang Ling. He did it because he did not hope to see the Crow God complete the Crow God Ceremony which would remove Xiao Mo''s consciousness and take over his body. Moreover, Lin Huang thought that the Crow God threatening Yang Ling by taking Hong Zhuang as a hostage was shameless. He could not help himself but get involved in the fight. He was not afraid of the Crow God''s projection because it was limited to the eye whereby it could not leave the latter too far away. If he wanted to run, the Ninetails Lynx could always take him away. Another reason was that the Crow God would be attacked by the enraged Yang Ling since Hong Zhuang was no longer a hostage. Furthermore, the eye would soon be completely contaminated. The Crow God had no time for Lin Huang at all. As expected, the Crow God only glared at Lin Huang as he extended tens of black threads out, sweeping toward the demigod who held the battle bow. He wanted to take the battle bow in his hand to remove the curse cast on the eye. Yang Ling noticed that and got help right away. A couple of demigods attacked the Crow God''s projection and Xiao Mo from a distance. Feeling helpless, the Crow God could only spend some effort to build a defensive shield. The war between the two parties began again. Nobody knew what technique Yang Ling performed when he sent Hong Zhuang away by merely a wave of his hand. He was the only one left watching the battle. This round of fighting was completely different from before. To protect Hong Zhuang earlier, the ten demigods stood guarded in front of her. Even if they attacked, they did so from a distance. However, a couple of demigod puppets charged straight at the Crow God''s projection and Xiao Mo as soon as the battle took place. The Crow God''s projection felt more pressure than before. Infinite large, bloody suns lit up in the air when the demigods collided with the Crow God''s projection. The sky above the Tranquil Ocean and the water turned red. It looked like Doomsday was coming. Circles of Divine Power swept in all directions in the form of endless wind while the entire Tranquil Ocean rumbled with waves. "Thanks for helping me earlier." Yang Ling''s voice transmission came into Lin Huang''s ears all of a sudden while he was in the alternate dimension. He turned his head to look at Yang Ling immediately, and he saw the latter smiling at him while nodding. "You can see me?" Just when Lin Huang asked that out loud, he recalled he was in the alternate dimension, so Yang Ling was unable to hear him. However, Yang Ling soon replied through a voice transmission, "Not only do I see you, but I can also hear you." "This Combat Soul of yours isn''t too shabby," Yang Ling proceeded to say while peeping at the Ninetails Lynx on Lin Huang''s shoulder. "So, you''re really a True God? Or you were a True God before?" Lin Huang asked immediately. Only a True God or powerhouses above the true god-level could see the Ninetails Lynx''s alternate dimension. "The Hundred-eyed Dark Crow''s speculation is basically correct," Yang Ling agreed, "It''s just that he underestimated my combat strength during my peak." "Were you a Heavenly God?" Lin Huang asked immediately. Seeing Yang Ling grin without saying anything, he proceeded to ask, "Were you a Lord?!" "It''s all in the past now." Yang Ling shook his head without giving a final answer. "So, you really have no cultivation now?" Lin Huang asked in confusion. "I don''t." "Then, how did you resurrect your abilities and were able to see the alternate dimension?" Lin Huang was a little curious about that. Yang Ling smiled at Lin Huang upon hearing that question. He only spoke after a while, "It''s the remaining ability from my Goldfinger." "A Goldfinger?!" Lin Huang''s heart jolted when he heard that. He knew Yang Ling was hinting something in his quirky smile. "Yes, a Goldfinger. Don''t you have two with you?" Yang Ling said while smiling, "My homeboy from Earth" Lin Huang was completely shocked. He did not expect to be exposed. It seemed like his identity had been buried long ago. "Don''t worry. I''ve no ill intentions." "How did you find out?" "I knew that when I first saw you three years ago. I sensed the Goldfinger in your body. That''s how I knew you''re a traveler." "Also, you showed flaws the moment you saw the football I made. You hid it well on the surface, but your heartbeat, your breath, the reaction of your pupils and the bioelectricity in your body told me that you knew what a football is. Apart from that, you told me that your name was Ye Xiu. I read the novel too, alright," Yang Ling explained while smiling. "Three years ago..." Lin Huang frowned. He was using the identity as Lin Huang when he first met Yang Ling three years ago instead of his current identity as Lin Xie. He only assumed the new identity when he came to the core zone more than a year ago. "Yes, Mr. Lin Huang," Yang Ling called out Lin Huang''s real name while smiling. "So, has my disguise been redundant to you?" Lin Huang was almost speechless. "No matter what you disguise yourself as, your Goldfinger''s aura won''t change," Yang Ling said while smiling. "Why didn''t you expose me earlier? And why are you telling me all these now out of nowhere?" "I didn''t expose you because it was unnecessary. I have many clients who have multiple identities. You''re not the only one. People disguise themselves because they don''t want me to know who they really are, so why should I expose them?" "I''m telling you all these now because there''s no need to hide it any longer. If everything goes as planned, I''ll be going to the great world really soon. We won''t be seeing each other often anyway, so I thought I would be honest now. It''s rare to meet a fellow traveler from Earth. It''ll be more awkward to talk about this if we bumped into each other in the great world in the future." Lin Huang felt really uncomfortable now. Yang Ling took the initiative to change the subject just when he had no idea how to proceed with the conversation. "You''ve pretty much grown now. You won''t take very long to get to the great world. Since we''re from the same hometown, I''ll give you a few pointers." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "Firstly, never tell anyone what''s the core ability of your Goldfinger. If you can, it''s best that you don''t reveal anything about your Goldfinger. Even your parents, siblings, partner and all other travelers! Especially not other travelers!" Yang Ling continued speaking looking at Lin Huang''s doubtful expression. "Not all travelers are friendly to other travelers. Most of the travelers come from different worlds. There are very few travelers who come from the same planet as we do, and it''s even rarer to meet another traveler on the same planet. Even if you met another traveler from Earth, you must have your guard up and not trust the person completely. "There''s this group of people among the travelers called the Raiders. They especially hunt travelers to take their Goldfingers. Such travelers are extremely dangerous. They''ve no morals at all and they''re capable of doing anything at all for the sake of obtaining other Goldfingers. "I was cheated by a powerful Raider before. That''s how I ended up like this. He attacked me and took my Goldfinger away. I would''ve been dead if I didn''t escape with my very last gush of a soul from self-explosion at the very critical moment. "I thought I could start over again, but never had I thought that my cultivation base was destroyed because my soul remnant was severed. Moreover, I was left with less than 10% of ability in my Goldfinger. It''s difficult for me to go down the cultivation path again, let alone obtain the combat strength I had back then." "So, have you found the way to cultivate again?" Lin Huang could not help but ask because he heard Yang Ling mention that he would go to the great world soon. "Pretty much." A slyness flashed through Yang Ling''s eyes. "If I succeed" 1009 The Little Elephant Swings Its Trunk Above the Tranquil Ocean, the Crow God''s projection and ten demigods clashed again and again. The entire ocean thundered. The transformation the Crow God was performing on Xiao Mo did not stop just yet. His combat strength had entered imperial-level white gold-rank and was still elevating. However, the Detective Eye above the altar was 95% covered in black goo. It would be completely contaminated soon. Naturally, the Crow God noticed that as well, so he was panicking. Lin Huang and Yang Ling, who were chatting a couple of kilometers away while watching the fight, felt something happening on the battlefield out of nowhere. A terrifying red glow lit up the 108 pupils on the Crow God''s projection as if a blood-colored laser was shining in the dark. At that moment, the ten demigods stopped moving as if a spell was cast upon them. A black thread turned into a long whip as it shot into the air. It lashed through a demigod''s right arm in the blink of an eye, severing the muscular limb right away. Blood spurted out from the wound. In the next second, the black thread wrapped around and grabbed the battle bow from the severed arm directly. It then pressed the battle bow onto the eye that was almost completely contaminated now. As soon as the battle bow touched the layer of black goo, the sticky goo began to rush toward the battle bow as if it was alive. The black goo that was covering the eye began fading slowly. Subsequently, hundreds of black threads came out of the black silhouette which was the Crow God''s projection in a frenzy. They were going after the ten demigods who were unable to move. Noticing that the threads were going to pierce through the demigods'' bodies, Yang Ling raised both of his arms suddenly and moved all ten fingers. The ten demigods who were unable to move seemed to have their mobility recovered in flash. They activated the gold relic in their hands to strike the black threads. Even the demigod whose arm was severed had his limb grow back soon. He held a golden arrow in his hand, tossing it out after covering the entire arrow with Divine Power. A golden glow flew into the air. As the golden glow flashed, it pierced through the black thread that was wound around the battle bow. The black thread was torn into a few parts as a result of the attack. A silhouette flew across the sky at a high speed. He stretched his hand and picked up the battle bow to stand hundreds of meters away. It was the demigod whose arm had been severed earlier. At the moment, the eye that was initially 95% contaminated was left with 80% corruption since the Crow God''s projection used the battle bow to remove the curse. Although the actions of the Crow God''s projection earlier did not remove the eye''s contamination entirely, it bought him some time. A couple of seconds later, Xiao Mo''s combat strength finally arrived at imperial-level purple gold-rank. He had reached the preliminary stage to qualify as the Crow God''s vessel. The Crow God began inserting Divine Power into his body to transform him further. Consequently, his combat strength, body, and soul proceeded to heighten. To a Crow God, a qualified vessel must have a minimum combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank. If the vessel was to be used for a long time, its body and soul must be strong enough to take in the draining of Divine Power. The more thorough the transformation of body and soul with Divine Power was, the longer the vessel could be used. A perfect vessel that was transformed entirely with Divine Power could even last for more than 100 years. The Crow God''s Divine Power penetrated into Xiao Mo''s body again and again. It was the beginning of the body transformation. Each and every cell in his body was destroyed at a high speed wherever the Divine Power passed by. Right after that, the Divine Power would work on the recovery. The cycle repeated over and over again, and the cells in his body would become stronger from the repeated cleansing. However, Xiao Mo who was being transformed was feeling a pain that was tens of times more intense than before. Although a tsunami was rumbling on the Tranquil Ocean, Lin Huang could faintly hear his devastating shriek. Lin Huang frowned slightly and looked toward Xiao Mo, hesitating if he should help. Judging from the current situation, the Crow God was buying time in an attempt to finish Xiao Mo''s transformation. As soon as Xiao Mo''s transformation was completed, he would turn into the Crow God''s projection''s shell. By then, the Crow God''s projection would not need to use the Detective Eye to maintain his existence. Even contaminating the eye completely would do nothing to him. Therefore, Lin Huang knew very well that the Crow God would definitely attack him as long as he helped Xiao Mo. The Crow God might even give up on fighting Yang Ling''s ten demigod puppets and come for him instead. Although Lin Huang was very confident in his God Figurines, he had no faith in fighting a True God''s will projection that was comparable with a Virtual God''s. During the few seconds Lin Huang hesitated, the contamination level of the eye above the altar went above 90% again. It would take ten seconds at the most to corrupt it completely. Right at that moment, the battle took a turn again. A golden beam shot through the sky like a meteor. It was going after the demigod puppet who was holding the battle bow. The Crow God''s projection knew he had help now. He attacked the ten demigods with more black threads now, none of them had managed to fight back. The golden beam soon arrived like a flash and crashed hard into the muscular demigod who held the battle bow in his hand. When the golden beam froze after the collision, Lin Huang managed to see who invaded the battlefield. It was the Purple Crow Leader, Yan Ping. He was fighting a demigod who was exactly like him with a combat strength of perfect-stage demigod-level and holding a god relic in hand filled with Divine Power. They crashed. The demigod blocked the tip of the sword that was pointing between his brows with the crescent-shaped battle bow. A golden glow lit up in the air when the god relics collided. It was initially just a golden glow that was smaller than the size of a thumb. It began expanding rapidly at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye like an expanding balloon. A golden sun that was nothing less than a blood sun appeared out of nowhere within the span of a few breaths. It grabbed everyone''s attention again. The other demigods wanted to help, but they were stopped by the black tentacles. They could only watch the large, golden sun growing in the sky and subsequently exploded. A silhouette shot out among the golden light. However, another silhouette passed through the exploded golden glow and went after the silhouette that shot out after turning into a golden flash. Yang Ling appeared serious. Although his demigod puppet was no weaker than Yan Ping in all aspects, Yan Ping was a legit sword cultivator. A sword cultivator was best in close-range combat. Meanwhile, the demigod puppet that was attacked was an arrow cultivator when he had been alive. He was best in mid-range combat. He could not perform at his full ability in close-range combat. Meanwhile, the other demigods were obstructed by the Crow God''s projection at the moment so they could not help. Lin Huang squinted slightly as he watched the demigod puppet who was going to killed by the golden glow''s sword and have its battle bow taken away. Just when Yan Ping was going to swing his sword, a silhouette came between the duo. It was a little elephant whose body was less than two meters long! Everyone was stunned to see the monster that invaded the battlefield out of nowhere. Even Yan Ping stopped moving. However, his expression soon turned cold. He wielded his sword in an attempt to kill the little elephant before him. The little elephant swung its trunk like a whip and collided with the golden sword glow. What happened next shocked everyone. An invincible force rushed toward the god sword relic in Yan Ping''s hand. As it struck, the bones in his right arm that was holding the sword were broken immediately. Later on, a powerful impact spread through his body and he shot out without having the ability to control himself. He shot out tens of kilometers away within the span of a breath and fell into the Tranquil Ocean. The little elephant that swung its trunk at the god relic flew back a few kilometers away. It stood still and shook its head. There was not even a cut on its trunk. 1010 The Projection Collapsing The Destructive Divine Mammoth''s sudden appearance was beyond everyone''s expectations. What shocked everyone even more was that this little elephant that cannonballed the perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouse far away only had a combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank. Furthermore, it suffered no injury after colliding with a god relic head-on. Apart from Yang Ling, nobody else could tell it was just a Combat Soul. Many people shifted their focus onto Yang Ling; they thought it was him who released the summoning beast. The Crow God''s projection was stunned for a moment and turned his eyes on Lin Huang''s direction. Rage filled his eyes. He knew it was Lin Huang who had done that because it was the Ninetails Lynx that sent the Destructive Divine Mammoth out of its alternate dimension. Clearly, it came from the same person who was Lin Huang hiding in the alternate dimension. However, the Crow God''s projection merely glared at Lin Huang and subsequently stretched many tentacles out that went after the demigod with a battle bow who had just stood still in the air. At that moment, the Detective Eye above the altar was close to being 95% contaminated. Xiao Mo''s transformation had still yet to be completed, and the Crow God was only left with ten seconds. He needed to seize all the time he was left with, so he had no time for Lin Huang at all. Lin Huang dared to take the risk to stop the attack and buy Yang Ling some time since he knew that the Crow God''s projection would not come for him. He gave the Ninetails Lynx a signal as he watched the Crow God''s projection go after the demigod with the battle bow again. In the next second, the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth disappeared almost at the same time. When the Destructive Divine Mammoth appeared again, it blocked the demigod right in front while the Ninetails Lynx returned to Lin Huang''s shoulder again. Lin Huang dared to fight the Crow God''s projection this time because he was sure that the latter''s attack could not break his God Figurine''s defenses. He wanted to see if the Destructive Divine Mammoth had the ability to fight a real virtual god-level powerhouse head-on. After all, Yan Ping, who had a god relic earlier, had an ability no less than a Virtual God''s. However, there were different levels of Virtual Gods. It was certain that the Crow God''s projection was much more powerful than Yan Ping. Otherwise, it was impossible for him to suppress ten perfect-stage demigod-level puppets with god relics at the same time. Seeing the Crow God''s tentacles coming toward it, the Destructive Divine Mammoth dared not underestimate its opponent at all. It lifted its front feet high and stomped in the air. An invisible force spread out like a ripple. As a result, everything it passed was destroyed and turned into dust. Within a couple of kilometers of the Tranquil Ocean, the sea bed collapsed directly. A giant bowl-shaped sinkhole was formed, and its diameter was expanding continuously. Tens of black tentacles shot out like arrows, colliding with the invisible force in the blink of an eye. The tentacles were shredded at a high speed. However, there were black cracks in the invisible force at the same time and it seemed like the air was cracking. It seemed like it was a tie among the duo, surprising Lin Huang as he watched. "Not bad. This God Figurine''s Combat Soul''s ability is slightly more powerful than a Virtual God rank-2''s. It''s close to a Virtual God rank-3 standard now, but it''s impressive that it manages to do this when it''s still a child." The stone tablet''s voice came into Lin Huang''s ears all of a sudden. "It''s close to Virtual God rank-3 now? Then, how about the Crow God''s projection? Which rank is he on? How about those demigod puppets with god relics?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "The Crow God''s projection is Virtual God rank-3. Those demigod puppets are comparable with Virtual God rank-1," the stone tablet answered immediately. "So, they''re two ranks away from each other? Theoretically, shouldn''t the Crow God''s projection be able to suppress the ten demigod puppets easily?" Lin Huang could not understand that. "The Crow God can''t use most of his abilities when he projects his will by crossing realms before he integrates with his vessel. Moreover, the Hundred-eyed Dark Crow isn''t good at fighting physical monsters. Its physical attack technique is considered low among Protosses of the same combat strength. Furthermore, those demigods have god armor relics defending them. It''s a limitation to the Crow God. It also causes him to be able to only perform 20 to 30% of his ability," the stone tablet gave a detailed explanation. "I see." Lin Huang just realized that it was not the Crow God''s projection that was weak, but his abilities were limited too. "Judging by the current situation, this Destructive Divine Mammoth of yours is limiting him gravely. The Destructive Divine Mammoth happens to be best at long-distance combat and defense while its ability is nothing weaker than the Crow God''s projection. If they were to fight head-on, the Crow God''s projection might not have the upper hand," the stone tablet smiled while saying. "I''ve always thought that my Combat Souls'' ability is just slightly more powerful than demigods or maybe on par with perfect-stage demigod-levels." Lin Huang realized that he had been underestimating his God Figurines'' abilities. "How can it be? Your Combat Souls are all true spirit-level monsters. If you really want to measure them by rank, they''re far ahead of mythical-levels. Even a mythical-level monster that has a combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank would have an ability comparable to Virtual God rank-1, let alone monsters of a higher rank," the stone tablet told another piece of common sense. "To a mythical-level monster, this is a huge divider. As soon as they arrive at this rank, their ability that''s comparable with an ultimate evolution (legendary-level) will be boosted exponentially. There is no comparison between the two." As Lin Huang and the stone tablet chatted, the battle turned intense like it never had before. The Crow God''s projection attempted to pass by the Destructive Divine Mammoth to attack the demigod holding the battle bow directly. However, the Destructive Divine Mammoth did not back off at all. It would stop the Crow God as soon as he stretched his tentacles out. The Crow God''s projection was furious now. Seeing that the eye was going to be completely contaminated by the black goo, he finally could not help but use his trump card again. A crimson glow shot out of the 108 pupils, freezing the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the demigods present. They could not move at all. The only ones that remained unaffected were Lin Huang in the alternate dimension and Yang Ling who was watching on the side. "This attack must be draining for him!" Lin Huang could not help but comment. "This is his gifted ability. It''s also one of the limited abilities he can use in the form of projection. However, he can only use this ability three times at the most when he''s in projection form. By then, his projection will collapse entirely," the stone tablet explained. "Three times only No wonder he hasn''t been using it." After freezing all of his opponents, the Crow God''s projection did not even bother to look at Lin Huang and Yang Ling. He stretched his tentacle towards the demigod who had the battle bow in his hand again, taking it away. Before Yang Ling could control his demigod puppet again, the tentacle that grabbed the battle bow retreated rapidly. The Crow God''s projection could not wait to remove the curse on the eye to buy himself some time. However, Lin Huang signaled the Ninetails Lynx again at that moment. The little white cat disappeared in the next second and appeared by the eye''s side. The little white cat scratched the air as it watched the black tentacle advancing. In the next second, the tentacle that was grabbing the battle bow was ripped. A white silhouette flashed in the air, and the battle bow was now in Lin Huang''s hand who was in the alternate dimension. The little white cat returned to his shoulder once again. The Crow God''s projection glared at Lin Huang in the other dimension. His eyes were so ferocious that they seemed as if they were going to bleed. However, he only glared at the eye''s direction and looked away without thinking twice. He turned his body into a cloud of fog and went into the nostrils and mouth of Xiao Mo who had yet to complete the transformation. At that second, only a thumb-sized area of the eye was uncontaminated. It would take less than three seconds for the eye to be completely corrupted. A silhouette appeared behind Xiao Mo right just then. The silhouette held a golden talisman and pressed it to the back of Xiao Mo''s head. It was the leader of the God Bless mission this time, Feng Li! As soon as the golden talisman stuck to the back of Xiao Mo''s head, it turned into a golden glow and penetrated his head. In the next second, a furious shriek came through the air. After having a small part of his body go into Xiao Mo''s body, the Crow God''s projection stopped moving. His 108 bloody pupils glared deadly at Feng Li. "You''re asking for death!" Almost at the same time, tens of black tentacles flew out after Feng Li in an attempt to kill him. However, Feng Li was smirking at the same time. "You''re running out of time. We''ll gladly accept your Crow Spirit." A giant shield appeared before him as he spoke. It turned into an enormous metal wall dazzling with a golden glow, blocking the tentacles'' attack. Since the first attack failed, the Crow God attempted to attack again in his rage. However, his body began to turn into a fog that billowed out of control. The crimson pupils were dimming one after another, and they soon turned black. He looked up to see the eye above the altar being covered in the black curse completely. There were no gaps in between. As soon as the eye was completely contaminated, it only took a couple of breaths for the Crow God''s 108 crimson pupils to dim completely. His body that was turned into black fog faded rapidly and disappeared as his raging condemnation echoed. 1011 The End As the Crow God''s projection faded away, Feng Li pressed his hand to Xiao Mo''s shoulder in an attempt to take him away. However, he sensed a silhouette flash by at a high speed. In the next second, he felt his left arm that he stretched out go numb. He realized that the portion below his left elbow had been severed and blood was spurting out of the wound. Almost at the same time, the Crow Spirit in his hand disappeared. Feng Li was only stunned for a moment but he soon snapped back to his senses. Instantly, he knew who had done this to him. "Lin Xie!" He sensed everything within the range of his territory in an attempt to look for Lin Huang. However, a voice came behind him. "Are you looking for me?" Lin Huang appeared less than 20 meters behind Feng Li. He hovered above the rumbling Tranquil Ocean with a little white cat sitting on his shoulder. The little elephant that had fought head-on with the Crow God''s projection earlier was on his left while the Crow Spirit version of Xiao Mo, whom he had taken away from Feng Li earlier, was on his right. At the moment, Xiao Mo was unconscious while his body hovered in the air. Lin Huang held onto his shoulder to adjust his posture. "Lin Xie, give me the Crow Spirit!" Feng Li did not attack right away. He was even a little terrified of the Ninetails Lynx that had severed his arm earlier. He did not really care for the Destructive Divine Mammoth because he did not see it fighting the Crow God''s projection head-on earlier, so he had no idea that this God Figurine''s Combat Soul was as dangerous. "I''m sorry, he belongs to me now." Lin Huang waved his hand and the Ninetails Lynx sent Xiao Mo into its alternate dimension. "I''m telling to you to give him to me. Trust me. You don''t want to mess with us." Feng Li''s severed arm was regenerating at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. However, his eyes that exploded from looking at the Crow God through the Detective Eye did not have any signs of regenerating. Under the golden mask, his eyes were hollow and bleeding. "What? You don''t even dare to say your organization''s name?" Lin Huang did not care about the regeneration at all. "The Commander of God Bless''s Division 3 branch, Mr. Feng Li." Feng Li frowned under the golden mask. He did not expect his identity to be exposed in such detail. Not only did the person he was speaking to know about God Bless, but he also knew his position and name. "You know too much." After a moment of silence, Feng Li lifted his head slightly while aiming for where Lin Huang was with his hollow eye sockets that were filled with blood. In the next second, he pointed his fingers in a black god relic glove and launched his attack on Lin Huang. He was charging with full Divine Power as the black force coming from his fingers shot out like bullets but tens of times faster. The force that was almost 100 times faster than the speed of sound arrived before Lin Huang in the blink of an eye. At the moment, the Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped in the air. An invisible force pushed out, annihilating the force coming from Feng Li like a rumbling wave. The Tranquil Ocean below seemed to be hit by a meteorite whereby massive waves rumbled and tumbled like a waterfall. When the water fell, the explosion coming from the collision of the force faster than the speed of sound echoed like a clap of thunder. Feng Li''s expression turned grim beneath his mask when his test attack was destroyed right away. Lin Huang''s ability was beyond his expectations. Meanwhile, Lin Huang who stood across him summoned his third God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Nightmare Tapir. He then gave his order, "Don''t kill him. We''ll see what to do after retrieving his memory." As he issued the instruction, the Ninetails Lynx on his shoulder disappeared. The Destructive Divine Mammoth took action as well, leaping and charging at Feng Li. The Nightmare Tapir stayed by Lin Huang''s side. He would only take care of the battle when Feng Li was crippled. Although Feng Li was on perfect-stage demigod-level, he was still a demigod after all, so the Nightmare Tapir would be able to penetrate his soul and read his memory when he was beaten and exhausted. The collaboration of the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls made the defeat a piece of cake no matter how many god relics Feng Li had with him. He completely became the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls'' toy. It was a repeated game of the Ninetails Lynx scratching him while the Destructive Divine Mammoth whipped him with its trunk. They were having so much fun. In less than three minutes, the Divine Power in Feng Li''s body was completely drained. He could not even summon his god relic armor any longer. Noticing that, Lin Huang stopped the duo from playing and got the Nightmare Tapir to take over. The Nightmare Tapir extended its trunk and pressed it against Feng Li''s head. Without any strength to fight back, he was dragged into dreamland. In less than a minute, the Nightmare Tapir had retrieved everything that could be read in his memory. He then nodded at Lin Huang. "Kill him." Lin Huang responded to the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth. The Ninetails Lynx stretched its claws and severed Feng Li''s head in one fell swoop. Almost in the next second, the Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped and turned Feng Li into mush. A few god relics that he had refined came out. There were a black glove, a battle armor, and a shield. With a wave of his hand, Lin Huang put the three god relics that were now ownerless away. He also conveniently took the Emperor''s Heart Ring on Feng Li''s finger. Yang Ling, who was watching from far away, said nothing. He did not even ask for the god relic battle bow from Lin Huang. Instead, he appeared directly before the Detective Eye that was completely contaminated above the altar. "You''ll take the person and I''ll take the eye. Deal?" "Sure." Lin Huang shrugged. The people from the Purple Crow and God Bless were still fighting kilometers away. They did not notice that the battle on the main battlefield had ended and even the loots had been distributed. Just when Yang Ling stretched his hand to retrieve the eye, he noticed a silhouette shoot out of the ocean into the air. The silhouette had a golden sword in its hand and was coming after him. At the same time, ten silhouettes appeared before Yang Ling and charged at the incoming silhouette. Within the short two to three minutes, the Purple Crow Leader Yan Ping was killed by the ten demigods and died on the spot. Yang Ling then retrieved the eye while watching a demigod puppet pilferage for loot on Yan Ping. At the moment, Lin Huang flashed and appeared on the airship platform. A couple of demigod puppets immediately blocked him before Yang Ling with their guard up when they looked at Lin Huang. "Step aside. He''s my friend," Yang Ling ordered, so the demigods obeyed. "Do you have anyone to recommend me for unlocking services in the future?" Lin Huang asked while smiling. "I do know a girl who has a great character and skill. I can send you her contact. Just tell her that I gave you her contact, but don''t look for her if you''re unlocking storage equipment from other worlds. She can''t do it," Yang Ling said with a smile, "I''ll send you my number in the great world as well. I can only contact you with the communication device from the great world." "I have one more question." Lin Huang nodded as he listened but he could not help but raise a doubt, "Do you really have feelings for Hong Zhuang? Or were you just acting?" "You can consider it real." Yang Ling fell into silence for a moment before giving his answer. "I really like her, but I know she has no feelings for me." "Perhaps I shouldn''t talk behind people''s back, but Hong Zhuang isn''t as simple as you think. You''d better watch out if you plan to spend a long time with her." After some hesitation, Lin Huang could not help but warn Yang Ling. However, Yang Ling smiled when he heard that. "She''s actually a very simple lady. You guys only see what''s on the outside." Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard his response, but he did not bother arguing. The duo chatted for a while before summoning a dimensional portal and stepping into it one after another. Just a giant airship platform and a bloody Tranquil Ocean which sea level had dropped by 1,000 meters remained. After a long time, a monster''s head popped out of the Tranquil Ocean below the airship platform all of a sudden. It stared toward the direction where the duo disappeared. The monster that looked like a sea snake was Lu Dong''s demigod-level imperial monster. Its body was severely lacerated but a bloody light flashed through its four pupils. It flew towards the airship. A moment later, Lu Dong opened the airship door as he sensed the imperial monster''s aura that survived. He let it into the airship. "Ah Hai, you''re still alive. That''s great!" Lu Dong was excited. He previously sensed that three of his four imperial monsters had lost contact. Never had he thought that the Sea Demon who had lost contact a long time ago would appear all of a sudden. Lu Dong hugged the Sea Demon''s head with a thrill. At that moment, a bloody glow flashed in the Sea Demon''s four pupils again. A gush of black fog came out of its body, entering Lu Dong''s mouth and nose quietly. In the span of a couple of breaths, a red glow flashed through Lu Dong''s eyes. He let go off the Sea Demon''s limp carcass while his face looked ferocious. "I, the Majesty, will remember the both of you. You wasted my massive amount of Divine Power and forced me to use a demigod who has no elevation potential to be my vessel!" 1012 Counting the Loo Lin Huang returned to Wanbao City and checked into a hotel. Only then, he got the Ninetails Lynx to release Xiao Mo from its alternate dimension. However, Xiao Mo was still unconscious. Although his combat strength remained on imperial-level purple gold-rank, his aura was close to demigod-level. Fortunately, his aura did not extend very far, so only people within 100 meters could sense it. As a result, he did not cause chaos. Looking at Xiao Mo who was lying on the couch, Lin Huang summoned the Nightmare Tapir again and got him to transfer the information he had retrieved from Feng Li''s head to Bloody. A moment later, Lin Huang asked when Bloody was done arranging the memories, "Is his consciousness still there? Or has it been replaced by the Crow God?" "Looking at Feng Li''s memory, the talisman he used on this young man was a disposable soul-type god relic whereby it can block the user''s soul for a short period of time. This god relic must''ve blocked the outside of his soul. That''s why the Crow God''s projection did not take over his body completely. After all, the god relic held up a defense which even the Crow God''s projection''s ability could not penetrate within a short period of time. That was why he was so mad in the end." "So, why is he still unconscious?" Lin Huang asked rather confusedly. "Feng Li activated a double shield to make the capture easier. Not only does it block the Crow God''s projection from taking over the body, but it also locked the young man''s consciousness in the soul space," Bloody explained, "However, this disposable god relic will only work for a maximum of 24 hours. Even if it''s not being attacked, it will break on its own in 24 hours. This young man should wake up automatically by then." Lin Huang was relieved to hear the answer. He was still a little worried that the Crow God might have done something else to Xiao Mo. "Is there anything useful in Feng Li''s memory? Is there anything about Chan Dou?" Lin Huang pried again. "There''s nothing about Chan Dou. We know about the capture more than he did. He only knows that it was done by people in the Division 1 branch," Bloody proceeded to say, "There''s nothing much that''s useful. The core information about Division 1 branch is blocked by some unique seal. It''s a technique of at least virtual god-level. Even the Nightmare Tapir can''t break it. "Nevertheless, the mission this time is quite informative. Feng Li and the rest wanted the Detective Eye for their Master God who''s like the Crow God whereby they need a representative for the former. This young man became their second target because they think he must be special since he''s been chosen by the Crow God. He can be the Master God''s representative candidate too. "We also learned about the eye''s function. This thing isn''t only a communication tool but also a temporary teleportation tool. The eye allows us to communicate with powerhouses in the great world which crosses realms. The powerhouses from the great world can even create a projection of their will and stay here temporarily through the eye. "The higher the combat strength of the projection of their will, the more sacrifice it''ll take to maintain the opening of the eye and the shorter it can stay. Therefore, most powerhouses will keep the combat strength of the projection of their will at beginner-stage virtual god-level which is Virtual God ranks-1 to 3. Keeping it at Virtual God rank-3 drains four times more energy than Virtual God rank-1. However, if one were to project mid-stage virtual god-level which is above Virtual God rank-4, it would drain at least ten times more than onVirtual God rank-3. High-level virtual god-level which is Virtual God ranks-7 to 9 will drain even more energy at least ten times more than Virtual God rank-6. "Also, as soon as a projection of their will enters the eye, the combat strength can''t be changed. Changing the combat strength will only cause a disruption in the energy wave, causing the temporary tunnel to collapse. Therefore, one can only perform the combat strength adjustment before putting a projection of their will through the eye." "I see. I thought the Crow God''s projection''s combat strength is only Virtual God rank-3 because his combat strength is low." Lin Huang just realized that they managed to beat the Crow God''s projection over and over again because he did not even show his real ability. "Apart from that, the temporary tunnel the eye builds can teleport items both ways, even living things. It''s possible as long as the energy wave of the items or living things that are being teleported don''t exceed the tunnel''s load limit," Bloody continued, "In other words, Yang Ling can go to the great world through the eye as long as he manages to build the tunnel." "It can be used as a dimensional portal as well?!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard that revelation. After they were done talking about the eye, Bloody proceeded to give a short description of the rest of the useful information and shared the memory that it had categorized with Lin Huang directly. Lin Huang looked through the memory in his head. After a short discussion with Bloody, he then put aside the matter about God Bless. He used his Divine Telekinesis to carry Xiao Mo and put him in one of the guest rooms. Then, he returned to the living room and began looking through the loot he gained this time. First was the four god relics a black glove, a battle armor, a shield, and a battle bow. Apart from the battle bow that came from Yang Ling which he had shamelessly taken, the other three came from God Bless''s Division 3 branch Commander, Feng Li. However, Lin Huang deserved Yang Ling''s battle bow. If he had not extended help twice, Hong Zhuang would have definitely died while Yang Ling might not have been able to obtain the eye. It was him who helped during the critical times and turned the tables around. Yang Ling clearly gave him the god relic battle bow to reward his assistance. Trading a god relic for an eye that he desired, Yang Ling was not considered to have lost anything in this deal. Apart from the four god relics, Lin Huang also got a demigod-level golden mask which he had grabbed from Feng Li''s face. As soon as one put on the mask, it could block the user''s aura completely and even prevent a demigod-level from detecting it. It was a magnificent item. As for Feng Li''s Emperor''s Heart Ring, although Lin Huang had yet to open it, there were many useful stuff in there according to Feng Li''s memory. There were at least two god relics and more than ten demigod relics. After all, he was the Commander in God Bless''s Division 3 branch so he would have much more inheritance compared to the ordinary demigods. What he possessed was comparable with a prominent family''s inheritance through generations. Apart from the loot he got from Feng Li, he had the storage equipment that he had asked Yang Ling to unlock earlier. Among the over 280,000 storage equipment that could be unlocked, over 50,000 of them had nothing useful in them since it had been too long. Lin Huang gave the remaining demigod relics, ancient-level relic equipment, and materials to the Warlord to make and modify his mechanical army. Among the over 220,000 pieces of storage equipment, Lin Huang found over 100,000 demigod relics and equipment, minerals, and spirit stones of many varieties, elixirs, elixir materials, equipment materials, various methods, a massive amount of miscellaneous items that could not be identified, and currencies from mini worlds and some from the great world. Yang Ling even helped Lin Huang transfer the accounts that had stored information and currencies into a great world storage ring. Apart from the sea of stored information from various worlds, Lin Huang also obtained over 80 million Divine Stones in total. They were worth eight trillion Life Crystals in a gravel world. Those excluded the currencies from up to a hundred mini-worlds. After all, they came from hundreds of thousands of supreme geniuses and were sufficient to purchase up to a hundred expert-grade god relics. Among the loot, the methods were the ones that Lin Huang had the most interest in. Supreme geniuses from all major organizations cultivated the most prominent methods in the cultivation systems of their worlds. There were tens of thousands of methods in the storage equipment and stored information. There were up to 1,000 sword skills alone whereby each of them was above legendary-level. More than 100 pseudo-god-level sword skills and seven god-level sword skills were also among the sword skills he obtained. They greatly enriched Lin Huang''s sword skill inventory. 1013 Xiao Mo Awakens Wanbao City was chilly in the middle of the night. It was June and it was early in the summer in Wanbao City. It was almost 27 degrees Celsius during the day but the temperature dropped to 20 degrees at night. Nonetheless, it was a comfortable kind of coolness for most people. In a hotel room, the balcony door that was facing the living room was completely open, so the breeze blew in with fresh air. The light in the living room was still turned on. A young man with short, puffy hair in a white printed t-shirt and thin beige linen pants sat on the couch barefooted while crossing his legs. He seemed to have just taken a shower as his hair was still damp. A pair of bright, black eyes peered out from under the few strands of wet hair. A square screen was reflected in the eyes at the moment. There was a little white cat sleeping on the young man''s shoulder. Only half of his back was leaning on the couch while his body was leaning forward slightly as he looked down at the projected page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. There was a monster that looked like a young sharp-toothed tiger sleeping on the couch on his left. With a pillow under its head, its trunk leaned on the young man''s thigh. Naturally, the young man was Lin Huang. However, he did not disguise as Lin Xie at the moment; he was in his own skin now. He would usually sleep in the room after he was done practicing his sword skills and had taken a shower. However, it was past 12.30 a.m. now and he was still reading the news on the living room couch. There was no other reason why he was doing that. The 24-hour period of Xiao Mo being unconscious was coming to an end and he would awake anytime soon. He had the Nightmare Tapir and the Ninetails Lynx with him mainly to defend Xiao Mo just in case his consciousness was replaced by the Crow God. Lin Huang smirked all of a sudden when it was 12.42 a.m. He sensed Xiao Mo''s finger moving a little in the living room within the range of his territory. A moment later, Xiao Mo opened his eyes slowly. The surroundings changed from blurry to clear as he looked around in confusion. "Where is this place? Aren''t I being transformed by the Crow God?" Xiao Mo soon recognized that he was in a hotel room. Moreover, it looked like an expensive, luxurious hotel and he guessed that he was not in the master bedroom. ''Could the transformation be completed and I''m officially the Crow God''s Crow Spirit now?'' The thought flashed in Xiao Mo''s head after he sensed that his body had improved many times while his combat strength had elevated to perfect-stage imperial-level purple gold-rank. However, he dismissed the thought a moment later because he did not sense the slightest hint of a Crow God''s will remnant in his body. He looked horrified. "Could the final integration have failed?!" He shot to his feet immediately. He just realized that he was wearing beige pajamas and had a significant change in his height and body size. He took a step and arrived before the full-sized mirror to see a completely different self. The young man in the mirror was approximately 1.85 meters tall with a slender body. Although he was still a little skinny, he could clearly see the lean muscles on his arms. The biggest change was on his face. His old face that was once so ordinary that one would not notice him among a crowd had sharp features now. It complemented his rather tanned skin and he now looked like a tough, mature man. He even had stubble growing on his cheeks and above his lips. Xiao Mo touched his own face in excitement. "Is this me? Man, I''m so good-looking now!" Looking at the muscles on his arms, he could not help but pull his pajamas up. He soon saw eight packs bulging in the mirror. "Is this really me?" Xiao Mo thought it was a little unbelievable. All of a sudden, he seemed to have recalled something. He pulled his pants down even further while flushing a little. When he looked down between his legs, he could not help but exclaim, "Gee, it''s huge!" Xiao Mo, who was a little upset because of the failed integration with the Crow God, soon became happy again after seeing that his body had undergone a significant change. "Delighted, are we?" A voice came to Xiao Mo''s ears all of a sudden as he was drowning in joy. He turned his head immediately to see a young man in slippers looking at him while leaning against the cabinet at the door. He had his guard up as soon as he saw the person. However, his expression subsequently changed to one of surprise. He recognized Lin Huang immediately even though three years had passed. "Lin Huang?!" "It seems like you still remember me, little guy." Lin Huang smiled while nodding. "Aren''t you dead?" Xiao Mo soon snapped back to his senses and could not help but take a step back. He looked terrified as he stared at Lin Huang. "You''re Lin Huang''s ghost" Lin Huang could not help but chuckle out loud. He did not expect Xiao Mo to have such a reaction. "If I''m a ghost, would I have a shadow?" Xiao Mo held his head down immediately and looked at the ground. He noticed Lin Huang''s shadow. "There''s a shadow! So, you''re really not a ghost?" Although he saw the shadow, Xiao Mo was still unsure. "You''re on imperial-level now. Although you still have no Life Palace yet, you should have Territory sense now. Sense with your Territory, then you''ll know whether I''m a human or a ghost," Lin Huang continued. Xiao Mo got familiarized with his body and soon expanded the range of his territory. He sensed Lin Huang and the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls. He then widened his eyes as he looked at Lin Huang. "You''re really still alive?!" "I didn''t die. I faked my death so that I could leave the Purple Crow," Lin Huang confirmed while smiling. Xiao Mo walked to him slowly but he still had disbelief written all over his face. Lin Huang knew he was unsure, so he stretched his hand. "You''ll know whether I''m alive by shaking my hand." Xiao Mo walked to Lin Huang hesitantly. He stretched his hand out slowly, scared and ready to bolt anytime. As Lin Huang held his hand, he felt how real and warm his palm was. He was very relieved. "So, do you believe me now?" Lin Huang let go of his hand and asked while smiling. Xiao Mo then nodded. "I know you have many questions. Let''s talk in the living room." Lin Huang turned around and brought Xiao Mo to the living room. Xiao Mo looked around anxiously when he arrived in the living room. "Where''s this place?" "It''s the hotel that I''m staying at." Lin Huang gave a short explanation. "Where are the rest of them from the Purple Crow? Where''s Master Crow God?" Xiao Mo knew he and Lin Huang were the only ones in the hotel room. "The Purple Crow''s Crow Ceremony failed and the Crow God''s will projection collapsed. Crow Leader Yan Ping is dead. I suppose the rest of them have returned to the Purple Crow headquarters," Lin Huang explained, "I''ll tell you more about the details of what exactly happened later." Xiao Mo was overwhelmed with anxiety when he heard what Lin Huang said. He had never thought the Crow Leader would be dead or that the Crow God''s will projection would have collapsed. "You''ve been unconscious for a day. Let''s get some food. We''ll talk later." Lin Huang brought Xiao Mo to the couch. 1014 Pillow Talk It was almost 1 a.m. and all the food delivery services were basically closed. Lin Huang took out the instant food the hotel had prepared in the refrigerator and heated it up. He got Xiao Mo a drink too. Lin Huang only asked when Xiao Mo was done eating, "Do you feel anything off in your body?" "The Crow God transformation is pretty successful to me. My height and body have undergone a major change. My body and soul have elevated so much that it''s unbelievable. Even my combat strength has attained perfect-stage imperial-level purple gold-rank now. I feel like I can even fight a demigod!" Xiao Mo was excited as he talked about this after he was fed. "Do you feel any Crow God''s will remnant in your body?" Lin Huang picked up the cup and drank the tea while asking casually. "No, that''s what I find strange. According to what the Crow Leader told me, the Crow God''s will remnant should be integrated with my consciousness when the integration is done. However, I don''t feel any Crow God''s will remnant in my body, not even a tiny bit," Xiao Mo said while frowning, "You told me that the Crow God Ceremony failed. Did the integration fail because the Crow God''s will remnant isn''t compatible with my body?" ''Seems like the Crow God''s will remnant is really dead'' Lin Huang thought to himself. Then, he explained to Xiao Mo, hiding the truth, "Yan Ping lied to you. To the Purple Crow, the Crow Spirit''s existence is just to be the Crow God''s vessel. He transformed your body so that you can take in the Crow God''s will remnant. As soon as the transformation is completed, the Crow God''s will be integrated into your body. Meanwhile, your consciousness will be wiped away and your body will be taken over. Your body will be his temporary shell. There''s no such thing as sharing your consciousness with him." What Lin Huang said was completely the opposite of what Xiao Mo had been told earlier. He had been taught by the Purple Crow all this while that being the Crow Spirit and sharing his body with the Crow God was the highest honor. Never had he thought this would be the truth about being a Crow Spirit. "The Crow God Ceremony failed not because you aren''t compatible with the Crow God, but because the eye that he used to project his will was contaminated. The teleportation tunnel was cut, so his will projection collapsed automatically." "I was worried that a portion of his will remnant might have been left in your body and he would take over your body whenever he can. It seems like he completely disappeared before he could do anything to you." "Are you telling the truth?" Hearing what Lin Huang said, Xiao Mo looked at him solemnly. "You can spend some time verifying it if you don''t believe me." Lin Huang arched his brow. "The upper echelon of the Purple Crow and many other underground organizations know about the Crow Spirit. This isn''t a secret at all. Also, the Purple Crow isn''t the only one among the underground organizations that are doing this. I heard the Saints also perform a similar vessel ceremony too." Xiao Mo stared at Lin Huang''s eyes to see if he was lying. However, he soon realized that what he said was most probably the truth. "I have a question. Why am I in your hotel room?" Xiao Mo finally asked the enigma that had been bothering him since the beginning. "The people from God Bless wanted to take you away when the Crow God''s projection disappeared. I took you away from them," Lin Huang said and he proceeded to tell him what happened earlier. Xiao Mo was in disbelief when he heard that. "So, they wanted to take me as their vessel too?" "That''s my speculation, but only people from God Bless''s headquarters in Division 1 will know what the exact use is." Lin Huang nodded. "Can you tell me more about this God Bless?" Xiao Mo asked. Lin Huang did not hide anything and told him everything he knew about God Bless, including their plan to take the eye and Xiao Mo. He also told him about them blending in other organizations, capturing Chan Dou and so on After Xiao Mo listened, he thought the Purple Crow was nothing compared to God Bless. "This organization is so scary! They''ve got the ability to plot all these and blend in secretly. I suspect they''re also in the Purple Crow''s upper echelon. Otherwise, it''s impossible for them to have known the exact coordinates of the Crow God Ceremony." "Speaking of the Purple Crow, you definitely can''t go back judging by your current situation," Lin Huang reminded, "I advise you not to return. Although the eye has been taken away, the Purple Crow might have some other backup communication tool. If you go back, you might face the Crow God Ceremony for the second time. By then, you would have your consciousness wiped completely and you''ll become the Crow God''s vessel." Xiao Mo fell into silence again. He only lifted his head to look at Lin Huang. "But where can I go if I don''t return to the Purple Crow?" Now that Lin Huang thought about it, he remembered that Xiao Mo was not only an orphan, but he was also a Descendant of the Sin. None of the union organizations would accept a sinner from the Descendants of the Sin. Xiao Mo could only join other underground organization if he did not return to the Purple Crow. Furthermore, he would be homeless if he did not join any underground organizations. If Xiao Mo was still on white flame-level like he was before, he could do no harm to other people if he was left alone. However, he now had the ability close to a demigod''s and he had the potential to elevate to Virtual God. He could join any underground organizations he liked. By then, he might be a larger threat to this gravel world. Lin Huang made up his mind after some pondering. "Why don''t you stay with me? You can be my bodyguard for the time being. Later on, we''ll find an organization of our own and I''ll ask some trustable friends of mine to join." Lin Huang had discussed establishing an organization with Bloody before. It was Bloody''s idea. This was especially because fighting organizations like God Bless alone would be impossible. Moreover, no matter how powerful he was, his ability was limited. It would be better to start a team and get everyone to perform what they were best at. As a God himself, even Mr. Fu could not fight the Union Government which was a big organization. If he had founded an organization of his own back then, he would not be in the rut that he was in right now. The people from God Bless might not dare to attack him through the Union Government. Mr. Fu''s situation was the reason why Lin Huang was determined to establish his very own organization. Xiao Mo''s eyes lit up when he heard that Lin Huang wanted to establish his own organization and even invited him. Indeed, he dared not go back to the Purple Crow after learning the truth about the Crow Spirit. Facing a bunch of strangers by joining other underground organizations would only make him uneasy. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was someone that he was familiar with. He had even saved him before. To him, joining Lin Huang''s organization gave him a sense of relief more than joining other organizations. "I''ll stay if it''s no trouble for you." "It''s just one more mouth to feed," Lin Huang smiled as he said. After all, he had the money to feed one more person. After confirming where Xiao Mo would go, the duo began talking about their experiences throughout these years. Lin Huang could tell that Xiao Mo''s life was a tough one. After Lin Huang faked his death, Xiao Mo was treated the same old way whereby he was bullied almost every day in the Purple Crow training camp. However, he did not allow that to continue. He fought back again and again and stood up over and over again. Though slow, he toughened up firmly. After he graduated from the training camp, he had been placed in an awkward position. His teammates would put him on the bench time and time again. However, he did not give up just yet. He spent more time practicing battle skills when he had insufficient cultivation resources. Slowly and surely, he finally proved himself in the Purple Crow. Since he elevated to transcendent-level, his sinner''s nature was activated. He obtained a memory inheritance of his bloodline. He had also activated his gifted superhuman strength and powerful defensive ability. In a short span of time, he managed to elevate his ability to supreme genius, hence he was selected as a Crow Spirit candidate. Meanwhile, Lin Huang told him about some minor events. Even so, Xiao Mo indulged in his stories, envious of his experiences. Just like that, the two old roommates talked until the next morning. 1015 Two Missions It was the beginning of summer and the sun rose in the east of Wanbao City before 6 a.m. Watching the sky turn bright outside the window, Lin Huang and Xiao Mo realized that it was already morning. "Let''s take a walk outside and have breakfast," Lin Huang suggested after looking at the time and realizing it was not even 6 a.m. and since both of them were not sleepy at all. "There''s this breakfast place nearby that''s run by a couple. They have really good fried buns and fried dumplings that are absolutely delicious and really popular. There''ll be people queuing past 7 a.m. every day. They begin the preparations at 6 a.m. Let''s wash up and it''ll open when we arrive." Naturally, Xiao Mo had no objection to that. He hardly had the opportunity to go out. As a Purple Crow member, he would basically stay in when he had no mission. He would focus on the mission whenever he was out, so he had no time to enjoy the view outside at all. Now that his identity was different and it was his first time in Wanbao City, it was only natural for him to be so excited with all the fresh and new sights. After quickly washing up, Lin Huang brought along the Nightmare Tapir, the Ninetails Lynx, and Bloody when they headed out. Many cultivators brought their pets out in Wanbao City. Most of them were not Imperial Censors; they merely spent money to buy pets that had already been tamed. The two God Figurine''s Combat Souls that Lin Huang brought along did not catch any attention. However, Nightmare Tapir''s rather unique appearance would attract some occasional stare. The breakfast place that Lin Huang talked about was less than a kilometer from the hotel that he was staying at. They arrived in a couple of minutes as they conversed along the way. The couple had just opened the store. Even the pots had just been put on the stove. They had worked out their specific responsibilities. One was filled the buns while the other wrapped the dumplings. Lin Huang picked an al-fresco table casually outside the store and sat down. He and Xiao Mo were their first customers. "Why are you so early today, young sir?" greeted the lady boss while smiling. Lin Huang was clearly a regular here. "Oh yeah, we woke up early today." Lin Huang smiled and nodded. "You brought a friend today." The lady boss peeped at Xiao Mo. She smiled happily when she noticed that it was a handsome man. "That''s right. I told him that you guys have delicious fried buns and fried dumplings, so I brought him here." "You guys are too early today. You might need to wait for a while," said the boss, feeling a little bad. "Don''t worry about it. We''re not in a rush." Lin Huang chatted with the couple for a while after he ordered. Then, they began cooking. Xiao Mo lowered his voice and asked while feeling a little confused, "The boss and lady boss are ordinary people, am I right? Do you usually talk to them like this?" "More or less. They usually have many customers. It''s rare for us to talk so much today. We usually only make small talk," Lin Huang answered, "Is there anything wrong?" Xiao Mo fell into silence for a moment before speaking again, "We basically don''t talk to ordinary people." Lin Huang recalled that they did indeed teach the members of the Purple Crow training camp that they should keep their distance and not communicate as much as possible. "The Purple Crow limits the members'' contact with the outside world except when they''re on a mission. It''s mainly to prevent the members from being influenced by the outside world to have their perceptions changed. Now, what you need most is to change your perception. You don''t have to tie yourself down with the Purple Crow''s values." "But most of the information you get from talking to them is largely useless." Xiao Mo habitually analyzed and categorized the information from the conversation following the Purple Crow standard. "If people only speak 100% useful information with nothing unnecessary, how boring would it be?" Lin Huang said while smiling, "The useless information makes the conversation colorful and warm. It makes people''s relationships rich and interesting." Xiao Mo was confused about what Lin Huang said. "How is that interesting to you?" "You''ll be living and working with other people from now on. Don''t decline communication. If you don''t know what to say, then listen to what they''ve got to say. It''s good to be a listener. Slowly, you''ll learn the fun in communicating." Lin Huang patted Xiao Mo''s shoulder. The lady boss served them three plates of fried buns and two plates of fried dumplings while chuckling as the duo chatted. She then brought them two bowls of porridge. The serving was not considered large with ten pieces per portion. The fried dumpling was crispy while the fried bun was filled with juicy soup. Lin Huang, the Nightmare Tapir, and Bloody preferred the fried buns but Xiao Mo and the Ninetails Lynx preferred the crispy fried dumplings. Lin Huang only ate half the portion of the fried buns and left the rest for Xiao Mo, Bloody, and the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls. Xiao Mo had four servings of fried dumplings alone and was a little embarrassed when he was done. Seeing his expression, the lady boss said while smiling, "You''re still growing, young man. It''s normal to eat a lot, so don''t be embarrassed." "The lady boss is right," Lin Huang teased with a grin. After they were done with breakfast and had paid, Lin Huang brought Xiao Mo to the park nearby. It was almost 6.40 a.m. at that moment. There were some aunties and uncles exercising at the park. Lin Huang ambled down the little path with Xiao Mo toward the park. Xiao Mo thought that the weird exercise the aunties and uncles were executing was rather new to him. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction upon noticing his curious expression. He strolled in the park with Xiao Mo. Soon, there were more and more people in the park. Xiao Mo began to feel uncomfortable as he was still not used to crowded places. They walked around until approximately 7.30 a.m. before returning to the hotel. Lin Huang asked Xiao Mo when they returned to the hotel room, "How do you feel after that stroll in the park?" "I felt uncomfortable, especially when it''s so crowded, but there''re some things that are pretty interesting," Xiao Mo answered. Lin Huang was basically satisfied with his answer. He was a little worried that Xiao Mo might not have the interest to blend into normal life. Now, to his relief, it seemed like he was not as close-minded as he thought he would be. "I''ll begin my closed-door cultivation from today onwards. It might last for more than a month. Within this one month or so, I''ve got two missions for you. I hope that you can complete them. "As the first mission, I''ll give you a brand new method. I hope that you can build a whole new cultivation system in your body with this method. This method can help you break through from imperial-level purple gold-rank to virtual god-level. My request is that you cultivate this brand new cultivation system with this method as much as you can until you reach holy fire-level." Xiao Mo was rather anxious to hear the mission. He thought it would be difficult since he spent three years to break through from iron-level to white flame-level. Naturally, Lin Huang noticed his concern and added immediately, "You already possess a powerful cultivation base now. You should be quick in building a new system. Don''t worry too much about your progress. You can ask Bloody if there''s anything that you don''t understand. I''ll leave it to accompany you." Lin Huang shook his left hand as he spoke, then Bloody came out of his sleeve. Xiao Mo was astonished to find out that Lin Huang had a summoning beast hidden in his sleeve all this time. Lin Huang proceeded to speak after giving a simple introduction on Bloody, "The second mission is to go to the park that I brought you to earlier every day. You''ll have to spend at least an hour there. Also, you''ll need to talk to at least three people every time, even if it''s just one sentence. You can go there anytime between seven in the morning to seven at night, but you must spend an hour there. If you don''t do it, you''ll have to spend double the duration on the next day and double the number of people that you talk to. Bloody will monitor your progress during that period. This is a basic lesson for you to learn to communicate with your future partners. I hope that you''ll take this seriously." Xiao Mo looked even more nervous now after hearing the second mission. He thought this mission was even more difficult than the first one. 1016 Perfect-Stage Immortal-Level Rank-10! Of the two missions Lin Huang assigned to Xiao Mo, the first one might have been very difficult for ordinary people, but Lin Huang figured it should be easy for him. Although he was assigned to cultivate a different cultivation system, to an imperial-level powerhouse, it was easy to elevate to transcendent-level. The difficult thing was to break through transcendent-level. Getting him to cultivate a brand new cultivation system was a practice for him to master his power again. After all, he did not get to his current combat strength by himself. He needed a certain time to familiarize with his power. As for the second mission, Lin Huang noticed through their conversation that most of Xiao Mo''s values influenced by the Purple Crow. The one that influenced him the most was interacting with people. If Xiao Mo were to maintain the old habits he had when he was with the Purple Crow, it would be a disadvantage no matter whether it was to him as a person or to the organization Lin Huang would be establishing in the future. Therefore, Bloody suggested Lin Huang do this. He could get Xiao Mo to talk to harmless, ordinary people to give him a brand new view to learn about this world and break the strange values the Purple Crow had instilled in him. The reason why Bloody suggested that was because it had actually gotten the Nightmare Tapir to read Xiao Mo''s memory secretly. It had done so earlier to take precaution against this unknown little guy who might be dangerous. After learning about Xiao Mo, Bloody realized that this kid had a naive nature because he had been living in a terrible environment which affected him. However, Bloody hid the fact that it had checked on Xiao Mo earlier from Lin Huang. The ancient cultivation method Lin Huang gave Xiao Mo was called the Unrivalled Combat God. It was a combat cultivation method which happened to be compatible with Xiao Bo''s body. Moreover, there was a combat skill set called Unrivalled in it. Apart from this method, Lin Huang also picked thousands of close-range combat skills in his head and shared them with Xiao Mo. "You''ll be focusing on the Unrivaled Combat God throughout this month. Of all the combat skills, just focus on Unrivaled. The remaining battle skills are mainly for your reference. You can learn them if you come across any that you''re interested in, but know what to prioritize." After Lin Huang was done making the arrangements, he left Bloody and the Ninetails Lynx behind while he got to a cultivation room to focus on his closed-door cultivation. He had gotten the last three God Figurines much earlier and even completed the integration. However, considering that the visualization would take a long time, he had been putting visualizing the last three God Figurines into True Spirits aside. He finally had some time to do this. The first among the three God Figurines was the Coffin Carrier. This monster was entirely red with bulky muscles all over. Its body looked like a skinned bullfrog that had just been scooped out of a spicy hot pot. It looked slightly humanoid but its head appeared like a combination of a dog and a bull. It had sharp fangs and two buffalo-like horns on its head. Its feet had hooves but its hands had sharp claws like a devil. It had two thick, black chains behind its shoulders, and a black coffin was tied at the very end of the chain. The coffin was clearly heavy since its back was hunching a little from the weight. The monster was a fallen Abyssal Protoss. Even the stone tablet was a little surprised when it saw this monster manage to form into a God Figurine. It was the stone tablet''s first time seeing a dead Abyssal Protoss being consolidated into a God Figurine. The stone tablet had explained the True Spirit''s choice to Lin Huang earlier. He decided to follow the stone tablet''s suggestion which was to visualize this Coffin Carrier as a Death Butterfly. The Death Butterfly mastered the Yin Yang Gate. Only such a True Spirit could travel freely within the material and spirit realms when it was on true god-level. Although its beginning combat strength was not considered powerful compared to other True Spirits, it had great potential for growth. According to the stone tablet, it was one that was worth training among the True Spirits that mastered the Death Rule. After finding the Death Butterfly in the True Spirit Guide, Lin Huang crushed an Epiphany Card and soon fell into visualization mode. Lin Huang finally visualized the Death Butterfly successfully after 13 restless days. By then, he had officially consolidated his eighth God Figurine. After a day of rest and adjusting himself, Lin Huang went into the second round of visualization. The God Figurine took on the form of a lady. The lady wore a thin purple dress that was almost semi-transparent while hovering in the air barefooted. Her jade-like skin that was vaguely exposed underneath the thin, purple dress made her seem like she had a great figure. However, she had long, black hair that touched her waist but no face or features. She was horrifying to look at. Her long, black hair that looked like countless little snakes with their own consciousness were writhing in the air. They were moving without any wind and they looked gravely menacing. This monster was called the Hair Demon which was an evil spirit among Protosses and mainly mastered the Sealing Rule. According to the stone tablet, the monster that had the highest compatibility was the Shackle Serpent. It was a formidable sealing-type of True Spirit. Legend had it that the ancestor of the Medusa Tribe, who had the most powerful sealing ability among the Protoss, obtained the ability from a Shackle Serpent. Soon, Lin Huang found the Shackle Serpent in the True Spirit Guide. He crushed an Epiphany Card and went into visualization mode immediately. The visualization went on for a total of 12 days before it was completed. After a day of rest, Lin Huang looked at the last God Figurine in his body. This God Figurine looked like a toy doll. It had short limbs and its face looked like a clown with makeup on. Its tummy was made of a mechanical clock. Not only the hour hand, but the minute hand, the second hand, and the timescale that could be seen clearly, and even the big and small gear wheels within were also clear. It was a Time Spirit, a unique species among the Protoss with a limited number. This monster mastered the Time Rule and it would control the flow of time in a specific area and even stop time. The True Spirit Lin Huang wanted to visualize through this Time Spirit was called the Creation Clock. Legend had it that such a Creation Clock was the world''s stopwatch. By changing the hour hand on the clock, It could control the life and death of all creation. Such a True Spirit could even control the speed of time. The Creation Clock was on the first page of the True Spirit Guide. Lin Huang had seen this True Spirit information more than once when he flipped through the guide. Now, he finally had the chance to officially visualize it. As he crushed another Epiphany Card, Lin Huang soon went into visualization mode. The visualization of the third True Spirit lasted for a total of 18 days. It was the True Spirit that took the longest time to complete the visualization among the ten True Spirits that he possessed. Lin Huang let out a long sigh of relief when he saw the tenth God Figurine''s Combat Soul that had finally consolidated into a True Spirit. However, the consolidation of ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls was not the end. Lin Huang took out a sea of soul crystals and began feeding his last three God Figurine''s Combat Souls. He spent almost half a day to finally feed them until they reached imperial-level white gold-rank. Since he was unsure if the remaining soul crystals could elevate an imperial-level white gold-rank Combat Soul to imperial-level purple gold-rank, he put aside the elevation of Death Butterfly that was poor in battles compared to the rest. He took out the last two demigod-level soul crystals he had and fed the Shackle Serpent and the Creation Clock respectively. The duo then elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank. Subsequently, Lin Huang fed the remaining soul crystals to the Death Butterfly. When the sky was turning dark, the Death Butterfly finally elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank after digesting a massive amount of soul crystals. At the moment, less than 1,000 soul crystals were left in Lin Huang''s storage space. At that point, all ten of his God Figurine''s Combat Souls had elevated to imperial-level purple gold-rank while he had finally arrived on perfect-stage immortal-level rank-10. 1017 Xiao Mo’s Challenge It was the first day since Lin Huang went into closed-door cultivation 45 days ago. Xiao Mo was reading the Unrivalled Combat God in his head. The method was a completely new cultivation system. After flipping through it roughly, he realized it should be an ancient cultivation method. According to Lin Huang, this method should allow him to cultivate all the way to virtual god-level. With excitement and anxiety thrumming in him, he began the level-1 of the Unrivalled Combat God''s cultivation. This method was special whereby the first three levels were about integrating the power into his body, strengthening his flesh, organs, and bones to its maximum capacity for a human. On level-4, the method would begin using the sea of power to break through his body limit. If that was successful, it would mean that he would get to holy fire-level and become transcendent. Xiao Mo cultivated level-1 of the Unrivalled Combat God following the Life Power in his body. It was much more successful than he imagined. Under normal circumstances, not many people could complete the level-1 full rotation in the first cultivation. However, he spent less than three hours completing one full rotation. It was just a trickle in the beginning and it accumulated into an energy stream when the first rotation was done. A complete circle was formed. Just like that, he built the foundation of the level-1 energy like a piece of cake. Even he found it a little unbelievable. After he completed level-1''s cultivation, Xiao Mo did not begin level-2 just yet. Instead, he proceeded to rotate level-1, adding more energy from his Life Wheel into this new energy circle. The stream was growing while the speed of the flow was accelerating. Xiao Mo was performing the rotation with his energy over and over again at an accelerating speed. The next morning, he shortened the rotation time to within a minute. The initial energy flow was so powerful that it was now a massive surging river. "I''m pretty much done with the level-1 cultivation for now." Xiao Mo pulled his senses out of his body and realized that it was the next morning now. Bloody''s voice came loud and clear at the moment. "It''s almost seven now. Although Master said you can pick any time within 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. to complete your mission of interacting with people for an hour, I personally suggest you go there after breakfast." "Would there be any difference if I go at a different time?" Xiao Mo asked rather confusedly. "Morning is usually the new beginning of a day. After a good night''s sleep, people have the best energy in the morning and they''re happiest in the morning too. Therefore, that''s the time most people are friendliest to others," Bloody explained while smiling. Xiao Mo thought to himself and realized he did have the best mood after getting out of bed in the morning. "It seems like it." "Go wash up now. We''ll take a walk in the park after breakfast. After strolling for an hour, you''ll return to cultivate with an ease of mind." Although Xiao Mo was unwilling to go to the park, he nodded anyway. He got up and washed up in the bathroom. It was almost 7 a.m. when he was done. He then went out with Bloody and the Ninetails Lynx. Bloody transformed itself into a little cat and sat on Xiao Mo''s shoulder just like the Ninetails Lynx always did. Meanwhile, the Ninetails Lynx walked on its own, refusing to interact with anyone else except Lin Huang. Xiao Mo had no idea what to eat, so he went to the fried bun store Lin Huang brought him to yesterday. It turned out there was already a queue there. Just when he was going to leave after seeing the fully seated tables and the crowd at the queue, the lady boss saw him and called out to him, "Young sir, you''re here!" Xiao Mo stood where he was feeling awkward, but he nodded at the lady boss. "You''re not late today. There are only two people queuing before you," the lady boss updated while smiling. "Just give me a moment. It''ll be your turn very soon." Xiao Mo nodded, feeling helpless, and he queued behind a man and a woman. Soon, it was his turn. He ordered two servings of fried dumplings for himself and two servings of fried buns and fried dumplings for Bloody and the Ninetails Lynx. However, he realized there was no vacant seat when he turned around after he placed his order. He stood where he was, clueless about what to do. At that moment, Bloody hopped off his shoulder and jumped onto a seat that had just been vacated. However, there was a girl sitting at the table. Xiao Mo had never shared a table with any strangers before. He was stunned to see what Bloody did. Bloody''s voice came to his ears at that moment. "Sit here. We can only share tables now. There''ll be more people later if you don''t take this seat now. It''s still early now, so we can leave as soon as we''re done eating." Xiao Mo walked to the seat Bloody reserved without having a choice. Meanwhile, the Ninetails Lynx hopped onto the bench and glanced at the girl across it. It did not go to the table. The girl, who was eating a fried bun, asked in excitement when she saw Xiao Mo with two cats sitting across her, "Such beautiful cats! Are they yours?" Xiao Mo felt troubled when the girl talked to him. He wanted to prevent such a situation, which was the reason why he was unwilling to share the table with a stranger. Just when he was going to ignore the girl''s question, Bloody''s voice came to his ears again. "Don''t reject interaction. I''ll teach you if you really don''t know what to say. I''ll say it and you''ll repeat after me." Xiao Mo looked at Bloody and nodded lightly. He spoke a moment later, "No, they aren''t mine. They belong to my friend." "Oh, really? Can I touch them?" The girl asked in excitement. Xiao Mo looked at Bloody before answering, "You can touch the one on the table. The one on the bench bites." The girl began caressing Bloody after getting his permission. Bloody went along with it while squatting on the table, not dodging at all. It considered sacrificing itself to solve Xiao Mo''s communication problem. Soon, the lady boss came with a few plates of fried dumplings and buns. "Isn''t the young sir joining you today?" Xiao Mo peeped at Bloody again and answered, "He''s been busy recently." "Oh, enjoy your meal then." The lady boss nodded while smiling. She then turned around to go on with her work. Seeing the lady boss serve six plates of fried buns and dumplings, the girl across looked surprised. "Can you eat so much?" "The both of them will help," Xiao Mo answered. While the girl across was still in surprise, Bloody and the Ninetails Lynx soon finished a whole serving. They were no slower than Xiao Mo. The girl across was shocked when she watched the two cats finishing two plates of fried buns and dumplings on their own. "These two cats have such big appetites!" There was a long queue at the breakfast store when they were about to leave. Xiao Mo paid the bill quickly and walked to the park. Fortunately, to his relief, there were lesser people at the park. Soon, he was surrounded by a bunch of students who were on their way to school. They were obviously attracted to the two cats. Before the students came around, the Ninetails Lynx took a step out and disappeared. It was tens of meters away when it appeared again. "Brother, this cat is so cute. Is this yours?" "Brother, may I touch it?" Xiao Mo had no idea what to do at the moment. He glanced at Bloody immediately, hoping to get help. However, Bloody''s voice came to his ears. "This is the park. You''ll have to depend on yourself from now on. I can only give you one advice don''t reject interaction." His face turned gloomy but he did not choose to run away in the end. Instead, he answered in a shy manner, "Y-You can touch it. It''s my friend''s cat." Xiao Mo let out a long sigh of relief after he watched the little kids leaving happily. However, he suddenly realized that interacting with strangers was not as difficult as he imagined. "You''ve completed the mission of speaking to three people today. All you have to do now is to stay here for an hour," Bloody reminded out of the blue. Xiao Mo''s face turned morose again. 1018 Exposed Identity Xiao Mo''s Unrivalled Combat God cultivation went unusually well beyond his imagination. In merely five days, he completed level-3 of cultivating. He built three energy circles in his body and spent three days to complete level-4. Then, he built a bigger circle in his body that connected the three smaller circles together without any bottleneck at all. He also completed the one-month mission Lin Huang assigned him, which was breaking through to mortal transformation-level (holy fire-level) successfully. After that, he spent approximately ten days completing level-5 and level-6 cultivation. He had arrived at perfect-stage mortal transformation-level. Since then, his cultivation speed had finally slowed down. He spent a full week to break through whereby he got to level-7 of the Unrivalled Combat God while his combat strength had elevated to the ascendance-level (immortal-level). Even though he slowed down, he only spent a total of 25 days to get from having no cultivation to ascendance-level now which was on par with immortal-level. What Xiao Mo had no idea about was that Fu Minghan and Qi Hao were the fastest people who cultivated the ancient method a few months ago. One of them spent 23 days while another spent 27 days to get to mortal transformation-level. Meanwhile, Xiao Mo only took eight days to break through to mortal transformation-level. Cultivating the Unrivalled Combat God did not give Xiao Mo any pressure at all. Instead, he gained a lot more confidence from it. Bloody was satisfied with his progress at the park too. Although Xiao Mo still did not like crowded places, he began to get used to making small talk with strangers throughout the past 20 days or so. Furthermore, since he had to stay there for an hour, he began to observe the people''s daily lives at the park when he had nothing to do. Exercising, playing chess, drinking tea, dancing, singing Although he could not understand most of the things as they seemed like a waste of life to him, he began finding the fun in it. He even tried to participate in a minority of activities after Bloody encouraged him. After getting used to it, he heard many stories of other familiars from some talkative aunties and uncles. It was something that he had never heard before and he found it fresh. Early in the morning, Xiao Mo saw an old man with gray hair and a beard walking toward him not long after he arrived at the park following breakfast. The old man looked slightly skinny and was approximately 1.8 meters tall. He walked toward them in a pair of mossy green shoes. The Ninetails Lynx that walked in front stopped all of a sudden while glaring deadly at the old man that was walking toward them. Soon, Xiao Mo stood still on the bridge. He instinctively sensed a threat from the person, so his heart was racing. On the other hand, Bloody sensed nothing, perhaps because of its low combat strength. The old man walked slowly to Xiao Mo and asked while smiling, "Kid, do you know Lin Xie?" Bloody''s guard shot up right away when it heard that. Aside, the Ninetails Lynx was in a position to attack anytime. Xiao Mo''s eyes became sharp now since he knew about Lin Huang''s other identity. "Don''t worry. I''ve no ill intentions. I just need to ask Lin Xie something." "I''m sorry. You''ve got the wrong guy," Xiao Mo answered with a stony face following Bloody''s voice transmission, "I don''t know any Lin Xie." "How about Lin Huang?" asked the old man without giving up. Even Bloody''s pupils shrunk upon hearing Lin Huang''s name. The person clearly came prepared. He had even done a background check on Lin Huang and found out his real identity. "I don''t know him. I''ve never heard of that name." Bloody got Xiao Mo to decline directly. "Alright then." The old man nodded while feeling a little disappointed. "Sorry that I behaved absurdly." The old man stopped his questions as soon as he was done speaking. He walked past Xiao Mo and shuffled away like a normal person. Xiao Mo only let out a long sigh of relief when the person left his field of vision. "I think that guy''s at least a demigod. He might even be on perfect-stage demigod-level." "He''s here for Master, but he doesn''t look like he has ill intentions for now." "How are you sure that he has no such intentions?" Xiao Mo could not help but probe. "Do you think a person who manages to find out who Master really is wouldn''t find out who checked in to our hotel room?" Bloody asked him back, "He gave up noticing that we have our guard up. He didn''t expose our lie. He''s actually proving his pure intentions." "So, do we tell him the truth?" "No need. He''ll definitely come back if there''s something urgent. If not, we can wait until Master comes out of his closed-door cultivation." Bloody did not take that meager episode to its heart. Xiao Mo stayed at the park for an hour like he usually did. He talked to a few people and returned to the hotel after he was done with his mission. Then, he began cultivating again. To Bloody''s surprise, the old man with gray hair and the beard checked into the suite next door with another middle-aged man in the afternoon. It felt helpless about their actions. Fortunately, the two demigods did not do anything apart from checking in next door. The most they would do was to greet them when they bumped into each other. They stopped asking about Lin Huang. Time flew by. Xiao Mo spent 17 days to break through two levels in the method and arrived on level-9 of the Unrivalled Combat God. His combat strength had reached peak-stage ascendance-level which was on par with immortal-level rank-9. On the fourth day when Xiao Mo broke through to level-9 of the Unrivalled Combat God, Lin Huang finally returned to the hotel when the sky was turning dark. A white silhouette flashed before his eyes when he opened the door. The Ninetails Lynx was then sitting on his shoulder. As he was cultivating, Xiao Mo stopped what he was doing and looked at Lin Huang. "You''ve cultivated to level-9 of the Unrivalled Combat God?!" Lin Huang was in slight disbelief upon sensing Xiao Mo''s aura. "He performed well at the park too. He completed his mission every day without slacking off and missing anything," Bloody added. It was still in its cat form at the moment. It hopped off from the coffee table and walked toward Lin Huang. "But there are two strange men looking for you during this period. I''ve no idea what they''re up to. Both of them are demigods and they''ve been staying next door for close to 20 days. They didn''t do anything, so I don''t think they come with ill intentions." As soon as Bloody was done speaking, the doorbell rang all of a sudden. Lin Huang sensed clearly with his Territory skill that there were two men standing at the door at the moment. One was tall and strong while the other was skinny. The latter was the one who rang the doorbell. Lin Huang turned around immediately and opened the door. The old man was stunned when he saw Lin Huang in his own skin. He then asked in a testing manner, "Are you Lin Huang?" "That''s right. Are you looking for me?" Lin Huang raised his brow as he looked at the duo. 1019 Dynasty’s Visi Lin Huang connected the dots as soon as he saw the two strangers standing at the door. The duo should be the two people Bloody had just mentioned. He observed the duo without saying anything. The old man with gray hair and a beard standing before him was the one who had rung the doorbell. He looked like he was in his early 60''s. Despite his gaunt figure, he was in high spirits. There was a muscular hunk behind him on the right who looked like he was in his 40''s. He was approximately 1.9 meters tall with a muscular body and he had stubble on his face. He was taking a careful look at Lin Huang when the latter was studying him too. The man was judging him. "Come on in." Sensing no ill intentions from these two, Lin Huang daringly invited them into the room. "May I get you a drink?" "Tea will be good." The old man glanced around and sat down on the couch. The muscular hunk sat quietly by his side, without speaking a word since the beginning. However, he glanced at Lin Huang, Xiao Mo, and the Ninetails Lynx. Soon, Lin Huang served the tea. The muscular hunk took the teacup and placed it on the coffee table. He clearly had no intention to drink it. The old man, on the other hand, was at ease. He took a sip of the tea right as soon as he accepted it. "Is there anything that I can help you with?" Lin Huang asked casually after the old man drank the tea. The old man glanced at Xiao Mo as he put the teacup down. "Young sir, can we have some privacy?" Xiao Mo looked at Lin Huang who nodded at him. Xiao Mo put on his earphones and turned on the music on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He spun around and walked to the balcony, closing the glass door. The old man then began talking about his intention to visit gradually. "My name is Huang Tianpu. This is Huang Tufu. We''re both from Dynasty. We''re visiting you today to inquire about something. We also have a favor to ask." Lin Huang jolted when he heard the duo''s name as he had heard of them before. Dynasty''s First Grand Duke, Huang Tianpu who was also the current leader of Dynasty. Not only did he handle everything at Dynasty''s headquarters in Division 1, but he was also the current supreme leader in Dynasty who was on par with the Union Government president. Meanwhile, the muscular hunk next to him was Huang Tufu. He was the Third Grand Duke of Dynasty, the current leader of the Dynasty branch in Division 3 and he managed all of Dynasty''s matters in Division 3. Throughout the decades, he made the Dynasty branch the most powerful underground organization in Division 3. He was the one who created the rivalry with the Union Government branch in Division 3. The duo were the legendary underground bosses! Hearing the duo''s identity, Lin Huang''s first thought was that they must have found out he killed the Duke and Prince of Dynasty. However, what Huang Tianpu said later on made him realize that it was not the case. He suddenly realized that the duo might be here for his participation in the Royal Trials earlier. "Ask whatever you have in mind, Old Man Huang. I''ll answer you as best as I can." "Then, I won''t beat around the bush." Huang Tianpu nodded while smiling. "Did you participate in the Royal Trials earlier?" Lin Huang fell into a moment of silence upon hearing that question. He thought about it carefully. Since they were here for him, they must have found out about it in their own way. It would be futile for him to hide the truth, so he admitted with a nod instantly, "Indeed, I did." "I think you passed the assessment in the end, didn''t you?" Huang Tianpu proceeded to ask. "That I did," Lin Huang confirmed. "Allow me to ask you this did you obtain Royal Authorization in the end?" "I got a Rank-A if I recall correctly," Lin Huang thought about it and answered. Since he had been busy after the Royal Trials, he immediately set aside the fact that he obtained Royal Authorization. He did not even look at the Royal Market once. Now that Huang Tianpu brought it up, he just recalled that he had many points that he had yet to redeem. "Rank-A?!" Shock flashed through the eyes of both Huang Tianpu and Huang Tufu, who was sitting aside. "Are you sure you got a Rank-A?" Huang Tufu could not help but finally question. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "Kid, could you show us your trial token please?" On the other hand, Huang Tianpu did not raise any doubt. Instead, he asked to see the trial token. Lin Huang nodded and took the trial token out. The trial token was registered under his name, so it would be futile for Huang Tianfu to snatch it away unless he killed Lin Huang. However, if the owner of the trial token died, the accumulated points in the trial token would be wiped away and the initial authorization rank would be downgraded automatically too. After producing the trial token, Lin Huang noticed that it seemed to be different from before. The original trial token had been golden with the word ''royal'' imprinted in the middle and was filled with complicated sigils all over. However, although the token was still golden in color, the word ''emperor'' was imprinted in the middle now. Furthermore, the back of the token, which was initially filled with sigils, had a capital ''A'' in the middle now. Lin Huang did not notice when the token transformed as such. When Huang Tianpu took the token and saw the letter at the back, his hands began shaking. "It''s true!" "He really has Rank-A authorization." Even Huang Tufu, who had been cold, turned emotional when he saw that. Huang Tianpu then returned the token with both hands after the both of them gave a detailed observation on it. Lin Huang picked it up casually and tossed it back into his storage space. When they noticed that, the duo had an odd expression on their faces. However, Huang Tianpu soon spoke again, "Kid, what do you think of Dynasty?" ''Are they trying to get me to join them?'' Lin Huang thought to himself when he heard the question. He did not find it odd as soon as he recalled the result he had obtained in the Royal Trials. After all, he achieved what nobody in Dynasty had in over 5 centuries passing the trials. It made sense if they wanted to get him to join them. Lin Huang answered after a moment of silence, "Dynasty is very powerful. Its branch alone is the most powerful underground organization in Division 3 at the moment. It''s on par with the Union Government branch in Division 3. Dynasty''s overall ability ranks at the top in the entire continent too. Among all of the underground organizations, Dynasty''s combined ability ranks No. 3, so it''s undoubtedly the underground giant. Moreover, the First to the Third Grand Dukes are the top powerhouses in the gravel world. If I''m not mistaken, apart from the three of you, Dynasty has at least ten demigods or even more. "To be honest, I admire the fact that you guys could gather so many powerhouses and develop the organization to what it is today. However, I don''t admire the way and style of how you guys do things. Therefore, I''m sorry that I''ve no plans to join Dynasty." He rejected their invitation before they could even extend a formal invitation. "Kid, we''re not here to invite you to join Dynasty." Huang Tianpu shook his head with a grin "We''re here today hoping that you would be the second Emperor of Dynasty!" 1020 Emperor "Emperor?" It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing that term. However, he could tell it was a high position. "Emperor is the highest title we have in Dynasty. It''s not just a title, but the Emperor is a leader who has the real power, possessing the highest authority to control the entire Dynasty. Including the First to Third Grand Dukes like us, all the Dukes, Princes, and Dynasty members, we must all listen to the Emperor," Huang Tianpu explained in detail. "I don''t understand this. Why are you guys getting yourself a superior? Aren''t you just giving yourself a hard time?" Lin Huang raised his doubt as soon as he was done listening. "Without the Emperor, isn''t it great for the First to the Third Grand Dukes in reign?" Huang Tianpu shook his head and forced a smile when he heard that. "This has something to do with the rules that were passed down from Royal during the establishment of Dynasty. "My master, who is the founder of Dynasty, Mr. Huang Tianyu, was Dynasty''s very first Emperor. He founded Dynasty back then in an attempt to build a tremendous empire like the Union Government. He came up with the title ''Emperor'' because it''s the equivalent of the ruler of a kingdom who possesses the highest authority. "My master was Royalty. He needed a massive amount of resources to build Dynasty, so he signed an agreement with Royal to make Dynasty the affiliate organization under the latter. Because of the identity as an affiliate organization, Dynasty developed quickly and very soon rose in this gravel world. It never stopped growing. "However, there''s a problem in the agreement. It clearly states that only Dynasty members have the right to inherit the Emperor title." "Since Master passed away, none of our Dynasty members are eligible to inherit the title. Royal contacted us and gave us two options. "The first option is to detach from Royal to become an independent organization. If we choose that, we won''t be getting any resource support from Royal from that day onwards while all the ruins won''t be opened to us. Furthermore, Dynasty must pay the compensation for all the expenses Royal has spent on building and training us for the past 5 centuries. The annual compensation will be 50% of our annual income. "The second option is to continue being Royal''s affiliate organization. Since we don''t have an Emperor, we''re only assigned the lowest supply of resources from them. We''d also only be given the lowest authorization for all the ruins. There''s also a request. We''ll need to find a Royalty to be the new Emperor within 3 centuries. As soon as the Emperor goes on duty, all the resources will be recovered following the Emperor''s privileges in Royal. "However, if we can''t find a new Emperor within 3 centuries, Royal will send their people to take over the affiliate organizations. By then, the entire organization will belong to Royal, including the members and items. Everything would become Royal''s private property. "We heard about that through some intel. As soon as we become their private property, it''d be equivalent to losing our human rights. We''d be no different from being a slave. Moreover, it would mean losing the potential to elevate on certain levels for demigods. There''s a high possibility that they might be given the slave imprint and sold to powerhouses in the great world." Lin Huang understood why they looked for him right after hearing Huang Tianpu''s detailed explanation. "So, you guys went for the second option?" Huang Tianpu nodded while forcing a smile. "It would''ve been stupid to choose the first option back then. We had gotten used to having Royal supporting us, it was hard to imagine what would happen to us without their support. Furthermore, we were very confident that we could train a Royalty within these 3 centuries." "However, never had we thought that we wouldn''t have even trained a single Royalty when the 3-century deadline is coming to an end. Even Huang Wuji, who we rooted for, was sent out on the second day of the trial." "How long more to the 3-century deadline?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "In 11 more years, but the Royal Trials will only happen in 100 years. We''ve lost our only hope." "Since there are still 11 years, why don''t you just leave Dynasty? If you leave now, I don''t think they''d come after all of you one after another in 11 years?" Lin Huang asked. "We can''t do that. As soon as we joined Dynasty, our names were on the register of the Royal affiliate organization. Since Master died, Royal automatically recorded all the new Dynasty members'' details. As long as our names are on the list, the people from Royal will definitely find us. It''s futile for us to hide anywhere in the world. "There''s only one way to leave Dynasty, which is to get the Emperor to remove the members from the list with his Royal Authorization." "What if you dissolve Dynasty directly?" Lin Huang suggested. "There''s no way to do that," Huang Tianpu shook his head feeling helpless, "Dynasty is Royal''s affiliate organization, so Royal has the ownership. As long as Royal disagrees with that, we can''t be dissolved. To dissolve an affiliate organization, the affiliate organization''s Emperor must send an application into Royal''s headquarters." "So, you guys have locked yourself in a dead-end." Lin Huang was rather puzzled to hear that. "We only have one solution now, which is to find a new Emperor." "I''ve got a question." Lin Huang thought about it before speaking again, "Are you guys sure that the first Emperor is dead?" Huang Tianpu nodded almost without thinking. "We''ve confirmed it. Master went to the great world a few years after breaking through to virtual god-level 3 centuries ago. Royal announced his death less than 10 years following his departure." "Didn''t you guys see the body?" "There was no body but it shouldn''t be fake news," Huang Tianpu explained, "The Royal identity token is locked with the particular person. It will only be unlocked when the person dies. As soon as the token is unlocked, Royal would have their record down automatically." "Do you guys have no other candidates apart from me?" Lin Huang asked rather helplessly. "No. From what we know, you''re the second person who has obtained the Royal Authorization throughout 5 centuries apart from Master. It was the first time Royal contacted us to tell us about you passing the Royal Trials." "What if I reject this offer?" Lin Huang asked raising his brow, "Are you guys going to kidnap me? And force me to take the position?" "I would love to do that," Huang Tufu mumbled softly. "If you reject us, we''ll stay by your side until you agree." Huang Tianpu smiled lightly. "We''ll follow you no matter where you go, including the bathroom, the shower, when you go to sleep We''ll guard you by your side all the time to show our sincerity." "Aren''t you being a gangster now?" Lin Huang became speechless right away. Huang Tianpu became serious after cracking the joke. "We really have no other option. If you don''t like our way and style of doing things, we can implement a reformation in the entire organization. Although it''s quite impossible that we could be as clean as the Union Government or the Hunter Association, it shouldn''t be a problem to be as neutral as the Heretics. We promise to cooperate with you with all our might, transforming Dynasty into a brand new organization." Lin Huang was really moved hearing what Huang Tianpu said. He had been wanting to establish his own organization for some time now. Although Dynasty, who sent themselves to his doorstep, was different from what he expected, joining them would be a shortcut to fight God Bless. Furthermore, with his identity as a Royalty, it was pretty impossible for Dynasty to turn their backs on him. To establish an organization that truly belonged to him, he could do so by building a core circle within Dynasty. When the circle developed, it would not be too late for him to part independently from Dynasty. Moreover, he could use Dynasty''s resources and the people''s relationship to develop his core circle. "Since you''re so sincere, I shan''t hide this from you. I''m planning to visit the great world after breaking through to imperial-level. If it''s soon, I might leave this year. I''ll leave next year if I take a longer time. Therefore, your Emperor will soon be going away if you get me to be your Emperor," Lin Huang shared his plan honestly. "Don''t worry about it. As long as the Emperor is still alive, it won''t affect us whether you''re in this gravel world or not. Furthermore, you can assign a representative before you leave and give a portion of your authority to the representative. By then, just get the representative to handle matters that involve authority. About going to the great world, I''ll bring a few demigods to go with you for safety purposes." Huang Tianpu seemed to have considered everything in Lin Huang''s shoes. "If that''s the case, I agree to be your Emperor." Lin Huang finally acquiesced. "I''m a lazy person, so I won''t interfere much with your management. However, I''ll monitor you guys since you agreed to a reformation. I hope to see the results." "Just trust us with the management, but you''re welcome to monitor us." Huang Tianpu finally flashed a smile of relief on his face. Even Huang Tufu, who was sitting aside, was greatly relieved to hear Lin Huang agree. "Master Emperor, would you prefer a grand or a low-key appointment ceremony?" Huang Tianpu changed how he addressed Lin Huang as soon as he agreed to be the Emperor. "Low-key, I guess. Only Dynasty has to know about it. There''s no need to let the world know." "It''s already the 26th of July today. Should we fix it on 1st August? It happens to be an auspicious day." Huang Tianpu even determined the date. "So soon?" Lin Huang was not prepared at all. "Since you want a low-key one, we don''t have to inform the world. We''ll only have to decorate Dynasty a little. It won''t take long," Huang Tianpu said delightedly, "There''s nothing that you need to prepare. We''ll prepare everything for you. If you have guests you''d like to invite, just tell us their names and contact details. We''ll get people to pick them up when they arrive in Division 1. You don''t have to stay in this hotel. You can do whatever you want and go wherever you want. Just send me your coordinates a day ahead. I''ll pick you up by then." "Sure, arrange everything for me then." Hearing Huang Tianpu''s arrangement, Lin Huang could not help but secretly exclaim to himself how meticulous this person was. He did not miss anything in his arrangements and was an all-rounded, talented manager. "Master Emperor, I shan''t stay any longer. I''ll leave now to make the arrangements." Huang Tianpu stood up after he was done speaking. He then turned his head to say to Huang Tufu next to him, "You''ll stay in the room next to Master Emperor. Stay with him to assure his safety within these few days." "Master Emperor, just do what you like and pretend he''s not there. He''ll only follow you when you go out. He won''t disturb you other than that unless you ask him to." "There''s no need for that. Just go ahead with your own thing. Since I''ve agreed, I definitely won''t run away." Lin Huang shook his head kindly. "It''s my honor to protect you, Master Emperor." Huang Tufu agreed to the mission. Lin Huang stopped rejecting him since he said that. Soon, Huang Tianpu summoned a dimensional portal and left. Meanwhile, Huang Tufu did not stay in Lin Huang''s room and returned to the room next door. Seeing the duo leave, Xiao Mo then returned from the balcony to the living room and asked about the duo rather curiously. 1021 Arriving at Division 1 The conversation with Huang Tianpu was better than what Lin Huang expected. Clearly, Dynasty had no other choice than begging him, an outsider, and even agreed to implement reformation. To Lin Huang, taking over Dynasty would actually do more merit than harm. Although he knew very well that the agreement he had with Huang Tianpu was promising, a reformation of Dynasty would not happen overnight. He might even experience many obstacles along the way. However, as long as he had his identity as a Royalty, most people in Dynasty would not turn their backs on him. He could use Dynasty''s power to fight God Bless and conveniently build an organization that belonged to him. After Huang Tianpu left, Lin Huang visited the Wanbao Auction and the black market in Sweep City disguised as Lin Xie. He counted the elevation materials that he had gotten them to collect for the past two months or so. There were quite a number of materials that were enough to elevate five imperial monsters. They were enough to elevate Grimace, Bloody Robe, the Eclipse Boa, the Death Knight, and the Fallen Knight. He was only lacking a few materials to elevate Bing Wang and the Witch. Figuring that the Emperor installation ceremony would be happening soon, Lin Huang put aside elevating Grimace and the rest. After all, he would need at least ten days to elevate his imperial monsters while the installation ceremony would happen in a few days. Throughout the few days, Lin Huang had nothing else to do. He stayed in the hotel room to practice his sword skills. Huang Tufu was a Sword Dao expert as well and he had also reached level-6 Sword Dao. Initially, he thought it was impossible for Lin Huang to have a deep comprehension of Sword Dao given that he was rather young. He thought he could seize the opportunity to dole out advice on Sword Dao in order to have a close relationship with the soon-to-be Emperor. Never had he thought that he would be shocked to see Lin Huang practicing his sword skills for the first time. This soon-to-be Emperor was only 19 years old and his combat strength was only on immortal-level, but his comprehension of Sword Dao was no lower than his. He stopped underestimating him and began discussing Sword Dao with Lin Huang like he was talking to someone of his own level. He even took to practicing with him by suppressing his combat strength. Meanwhile, Xiao Mo had been sitting in his room with his legs crossed these few days to practice the Unrivalled Combat God. He did not find it boring at all. Three days soon flew by. Huang Tianpu returned early in the morning on the 30th of July. The hard rock in his throat disappeared when he saw Lin Huang. He had been a little worried that Lin Huang might back out in these few days. "We''ve done with the preparation. All we have to do now is to wait for the installation ceremony tomorrow. Don''t you want to invite your friends to watch?" he asked since he had not received Lin Huang''s guest list these few days. "No need. Let''s go." Although the siblings Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu were currently in Division 3, Lin Huang thought there was no need to invite them. After all, he would be an underground organization boss soon while the Yi siblings were born into the Union Government''s military department with a clean record. If they were to work in the military, witnessing the installation ceremony of Dynasty''s Emperor might stain a black ink in their clean records. Meanwhile, Leng Yuexin and Li Lang were offsprings of notable families. They had no interest in underground organizations, so Lin Huang did not bother to inform them. He only brought along Xiao Mo and stepped into the demigod-level long-distance dimensional portal together with Huang Tianpu and Huang Tufu. When he snapped back to his senses, Lin Huang realized he was in a luxurious palace. Looking at the palace that was even more sophisticated than those in the movies, the first thought that popped into his head was, ''How much did they spend building this?!'' Lin Huang was not the only one who was astounded. Next to him, Xiao Mo was in complete shock. It was the first time in his life seeing such a grandiose building. "The first Emperor designed this. We''ve done almost nothing to it ever since I moved in." "Master Emperor, your palace is the one in the east." Huang Tianpu pushed open a window with a smile and pointed at an even more majestic palace hundreds of meters away. "That''s the Emperor''s Palace. It''s a legit god relic." "That''s crazy luxurious!" Lin Huang could not help but exclaim out loud as he looked at the tall palace that was close to 50 meters away. On the other hand, Xiao Mo was so dumbfounded that he could not speak. "Unless there''s a special occasion, the Emperor''s Palace is usually closed. Only the Emperor can access it," continued Huang Tianpu, "Let''s take a look." Huang Tianpu opened the palace doors as he spoke while escorting Lin Huang and Xiao Mo into the Emperor''s Palace. There were two imperial-level purple gold-rank guards standing at the palace entrance. The duo bowed courteously when they saw Huang Tianpu. "First Grand Duke, Your Highness!" They then secretly observed Lin Huang, clearly very curious about this newly appointed Emperor. Lin Huang glanced at the two guards too. They had a solid aura. He figured they might have powerful abilities when they fought people of the same combat strength. "There were usually no guards before this because there was no Emperor while the Emperor''s Palace is a god relic itself," Huang Tianpu said honestly. "In reality, there''s no need for guards." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "They look like guards since they''re asked to stand at the entrance, but their real responsibly is to take care of the Emperor''s needs. Just tell them whatever you need and they''ll arrange for you. They''ll inform me if there are things that they can''t do and I''ll handle it." "Can we go into the palace now?" Lin Huang asked since he saw the door being closed. "Yes, this god relic has a weapon spirit. The palace doors will open automatically as soon as you take your Royal Token out," Huang Tianpu acknowledged, "The main control of the Emperor''s Palace is on the throne in the palace. You''ll have to spend some time registering your identity." Lin Huang took the Royal Token out after he heard that. As told, the door opened automatically right away. Huang Tianpu stood still at the entrance for a while and only followed behind them after Lin Huang and Xiao Mo entered. Gazing around, Lin Huang felt that the interior of this palace was many times bigger than what he saw outside. He saw almost neither the end of the building when he looked left and right nor the ceiling above his head. All he could see was a dark sky and countless stars. It gave Lin Huang the feeling that it was not a palace, but more like a micro world. "Master traded this Emperor''s Palace at the Royal Market. I heard he integrated many Space Rule pieces into this. It''s a relic close to true god-level. This space is almost endless when talking about its capacity," Huang Tianpu explained with a proud grin upon noticing Lin Huang looking around. Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard the explanation. A relic that could integrate rule pieces indeed was a relic close to true god-level. Lin Huang walked ahead and soon saw the throne Huang Tianpu was talking about. It was located on a pure golden platform. There was a staircase covered in a red carpet leading to the platform. There were a total of 36 steps on the stairs. The entire platform was close to 20 meters long, and five to six meters in length and width. The throne was placed in the middle of the platform, over a meter away from the highest step. The throne was completely golden while the surface of the chair was so huge that even a three-meter tall muscular hunk would not feel suffocated sitting on it. The back of the chair was almost three meters tall and the sigils all over it formed a unique pattern. There was a sunken decorative wall behind the throne. It was approximately ten meters tall like a city wall. The sunken wall was in an arc shape surrounding the throne while the rest of the wall stretched all the way to the end of the platform. Lin Huang walked all the way up the stairs to the platform. He sat on the throne as if he belonged there. "This throne is pretty majestic but it''s a little too big." "You can change the size of the throne. This size is suitable for the ceremony tomorrow. Master Emperor, you can adjust the size as you wish after that." Lin Huang nodded and inserted his consciousness into the throne for the palace to recognize him. After confirming Lin Huang''s identity as a Royalty, the weapon spirit of the Emperor''s Palace did not repel him at all. Instead, it took the initiative to register him and completed it in less than three minutes. Due to the restriction of authority, Lin Huang did not get Xiao Hei to seal the Emperor''s Palace into a card yet because as soon as the palace was sealed into a card, he would be not able to summon it. Huang Tianpu only spoke after noticing that Lin Huang had completed the recognition process. "Master Emperor, there''s something that I''m not sure if I should inform you about in advance." "Although we didn''t invite any other organizations out there for the Emperor installation ceremony tomorrow, there''ll still be some media representatives coming." "So, the news of me being Emperor will still be known to the outside world?" Lin Huang''s frown deepened when he heard this. "If you really don''t want to expose your identity, you can put on a mask to hide your face. We will keep your identity a secret." "You''re only telling me this now on purpose so that I''ll agree to take the position, am I right?" Lin Huang asked Huang Tianpu while stared at him. "I did it because it''s the last resort. I''m willing to accept the punishment if you''re going to punish me, Master Emperor." Huang Tianpu looked down immediately. "Forget about the punishment. I hope such a thing won''t happen in the future." Lin Huang waved and only spoke again after a moment of thought, "There''s no need for a disguise. It''s only a matter of time that my identity will be exposed. Me revealing my identity myself is better than being exposed. At least, I''m in control." "Your sister?" Huang Tianpu started. "Bring me to her. We''ll bring her to Division 1." 1022 Black Swamp Frog At White Capital in Division 7, an old man and a young man appeared at the Martial Hunter College''s entrance. The young man had black, short hair and bright eyes. He wore a white t-shirt on top with blue and white jeans. He was dressed very casually. There was a little white cat sitting on the left of his shoulder. Meanwhile, the old man next to him wore a gray Chinese suit and a pair of black canvas shoes on his feet. He was skinny, he looked like a powerful Taoist devotee. The duo who looked like grandfather and grandson only lingered at the Martial Hunter College entrance for a moment. They turned around and left. "She''s not at school." Lin Huang did not sense the Witch, and he did not find Lin Xin with his Divine Telekinesis either. It was the end of July and it was summer break at the Martial Hunter College. Lin Huang did not find it surprising that Lin Xin was not there. Beside him, Huang Tianpu did not seem to find it strange either. Lin Huang called Lin Xin''s number and she picked up the video call immediately. Lin Huang noticed the mud specks on her face as soon as the call connected. Her hair was a little messy and she seemed clumsy too. He could not help but frown but he soon realized it was a jungle behind her. "Where are you now?" "The Fiendish Swamp Jungle." "Why are you there?" Lin Huang''s eyebrows knotted even more now. He was familiar with the Fiendish Swamp Jungle. It was a moderate danger zone. Not only were there immortal-level monsters, but there were also many poisonous monsters too. "It''s the school holidays now, so I got myself a mission." Lin Xin''s voice was getting softer. She knew Lin Huang would react like this if he found out that she went to the Fiendish Swamp Jungle. "Where''s the Little Witch?" he asked again. "At the hotel." As soon as Lin Xin spoke, a shadow appeared like a black fog all of a sudden. Soon, the Witch''s head solidified and hovered next to Lin Xin''s head. "I''m here." "Why are you doing this, Little Witch? You promised not to come!" Lin Xin was surprised to see the Witch and she soon began to complain. "Good job!" Lin Huang, on the other hand, gave a completely different comment. "You guys wait where you are. Don''t move around. I''m coming over." "Ah? Are you back in Division 7, brother?" Lin Xin panicked at that moment. "I''m at the Martial Hunter College entrance." Lin Huang shifted the camera a little and showed the entrance behind him. "I haven''t completed my mission. Don''t come. I''ll return in a few days after I''ve completed my mission. You can stay in White Capital City." "I''ve something to do tomorrow. I''m coming to you now." Lin Huang hung up the phone right away. Lin Xin looked gloomy as she watched the video turn black. "Why is this happening to me? I haven''t done my mission. If I give up now, it''ll affect my mission completion rate." "Why don''t I help you before Master comes?" the Witch suggested. "No, I don''t believe I can''t even catch one Black Swamp Frog by myself!" Lin Xin did not want to give up just yet. Over ten minutes later, Lin Huang appeared before Lin Xin. She was hovering above a swamp at that moment, less than ten minutes away from the ground. She looked even slovenlier than she did in the video call earlier. Although she was mad when she saw Lin Huang, she did not stop hunting. "So, you''re hunting for the Black Swamp Frog?" Lin Huang finally realized what she was doing after observing her for a moment. Lin Xin glared at Lin Huang, clearly upset that he had interrupted her mission. "Do you want me to help?" Huang Tianpu turned his head and asked Lin Huang. "No, let her do it." Lin Huang shook his head and said to Lin Xin, "There are three difficult points about capturing the Black Swamp Frog. "The first one, Black Swamp Frog usually lives with the Fiendish Swamp Alligator. You could be attacked by a Fiendish Swamp Alligator easily when you''re catching a Black Swamp Frog." From the mud on her body, he knew Lin Xin had experienced that. "The second one is that the Black Swamp Frog has the ability to disguise. It''s hard to be seen with the naked eye as long as it''s completely still. "The third one is that the Black Swamp Frog has explosive reflexes. It can easily escape when you catch it with normal techniques. Furthermore, it has an explosive speed for short distances. It''s much more powerful than monsters and people of the same level when it comes to this. "The first point is still manageable, but it''s tough for you to catch them if you don''t overcome the other two points." Lin Huang did not help her. Instead, he analyzed the difficult details about capturing the Black Swamp Frog. Lin Xin was stunned when she heard him. She began mumbling the second and third point Lin Huang told her, "Hard to be seen with the naked eye, explosive reflexes" "If it''s hard to be seen with the naked eye, I can use another sensing technique. If it has explosive reflexes, I''ll have to figure it''s movement trajectory!" Lin Xin soon found the solution. She hovered mid-air and closed her eyes slowly. She spread her senses wide and soon sensed the swamp below her feet. Although she could only sense a rough outline of it, she was very happy to be able to do that. In reality, almost all transcendence-levels possessed a sensing ability. However, people who had no telekinesis would hardly use it because looking with one''s eyes was much more effective than using the blurry sensing ability. However, Lin Xin did not need a clear picture. All she needed was to discern the Black Swamp Frog and mud apart. Under the sense, life energy would be detected as white fire spots which were completely different from the dark-green swamp. Soon, Lin Xin sensed the Black Swamp Frogs'' coordinates just a couple of meters away. "There are so many of them!" Through her sensing ability, she sensed many Black Swamp Frogs around her. When she opened her eyes, she targeted a Black Swamp Frog''s coordinates and swung her sword without hesitation toward it. As a black silhouette came from thin air, Lin Xin''s sword landed onto nothing. "You must think carefully about how to defeat your opponent that has better speed and reflexes than you do." Lin Huang did not give her a straightforward answer. Instead, he guided Lin Xin to figure out how to do it herself. She soon had her answer. She targeted another Black Swamp Frog but did not attack just yet. Instead, she held her sword while waiting for the sure-hit opportunity. All of a sudden, she stomped and a wave shot toward the Black Swamp Frog. The moment the Black Swamp Frog appeared, a silver glow flashed through the air. The creature that had just revealed itself was sliced into half. Lin Xin was filled with joy since her single hit killed the Black Swamp Frog. "Alright, you''ve completed your mission. Can we leave now?" Lin Huang walked to her while grinning proudly. "I have to kill ten of them." Lin Xin looked bitter when she heard the word ''mission''. "So, that was only your first?" Lin Huang could not help but raise his brow when he saw Lin Xin''s expression. He figured that she must have gotten nothing for the past few days. Lin Xin said while flushing, "I''ll be done in a minute." "It''s already done." As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, a telekinesis thread skewered ten Black Swamp Frogs like a stick of candied fruit and was presented before Lin Xin. "I''ll catch one for you when we get back. You can practice all you want by then." 1020 Dynasty’s Visi Lin Huang connected the dots as soon as he saw the two strangers standing at the door. The duo should be the two people Bloody had just mentioned. He observed the duo without saying anything. The old man with gray hair and a beard standing before him was the one who had rung the doorbell. He looked like he was in his early 60''s. Despite his gaunt figure, he was in high spirits. There was a muscular hunk behind him on the right who looked like he was in his 40''s. He was approximately 1.9 meters tall with a muscular body and he had stubble on his face. He was taking a careful look at Lin Huang when the latter was studying him too. The man was judging him. "Come on in." Sensing no ill intentions from these two, Lin Huang daringly invited them into the room. "May I get you a drink?" "Tea will be good." The old man glanced around and sat down on the couch. The muscular hunk sat quietly by his side, without speaking a word since the beginning. However, he glanced at Lin Huang, Xiao Mo, and the Ninetails Lynx. Soon, Lin Huang served the tea. The muscular hunk took the teacup and placed it on the coffee table. He clearly had no intention to drink it. The old man, on the other hand, was at ease. He took a sip of the tea right as soon as he accepted it. "Is there anything that I can help you with?" Lin Huang asked casually after the old man drank the tea. The old man glanced at Xiao Mo as he put the teacup down. "Young sir, can we have some privacy?" Xiao Mo looked at Lin Huang who nodded at him. Xiao Mo put on his earphones and turned on the music on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He spun around and walked to the balcony, closing the glass door. The old man then began talking about his intention to visit gradually. "My name is Huang Tianpu. This is Huang Tufu. We''re both from Dynasty. We''re visiting you today to inquire about something. We also have a favor to ask." Lin Huang jolted when he heard the duo''s name as he had heard of them before. Dynasty''s First Grand Duke, Huang Tianpu who was also the current leader of Dynasty. Not only did he handle everything at Dynasty''s headquarters in Division 1, but he was also the current supreme leader in Dynasty who was on par with the Union Government president. Meanwhile, the muscular hunk next to him was Huang Tufu. He was the Third Grand Duke of Dynasty, the current leader of the Dynasty branch in Division 3 and he managed all of Dynasty''s matters in Division 3. Throughout the decades, he made the Dynasty branch the most powerful underground organization in Division 3. He was the one who created the rivalry with the Union Government branch in Division 3. The duo were the legendary underground bosses! Hearing the duo''s identity, Lin Huang''s first thought was that they must have found out he killed the Duke and Prince of Dynasty. However, what Huang Tianpu said later on made him realize that it was not the case. He suddenly realized that the duo might be here for his participation in the Royal Trials earlier. "Ask whatever you have in mind, Old Man Huang. I''ll answer you as best as I can." "Then, I won''t beat around the bush." Huang Tianpu nodded while smiling. "Did you participate in the Royal Trials earlier?" Lin Huang fell into a moment of silence upon hearing that question. He thought about it carefully. Since they were here for him, they must have found out about it in their own way. It would be futile for him to hide the truth, so he admitted with a nod instantly, "Indeed, I did." "I think you passed the assessment in the end, didn''t you?" Huang Tianpu proceeded to ask. "That I did," Lin Huang confirmed. "Allow me to ask you this did you obtain Royal Authorization in the end?" "I got a Rank-A if I recall correctly," Lin Huang thought about it and answered. Since he had been busy after the Royal Trials, he immediately set aside the fact that he obtained Royal Authorization. He did not even look at the Royal Market once. Now that Huang Tianpu brought it up, he just recalled that he had many points that he had yet to redeem. "Rank-A?!" Shock flashed through the eyes of both Huang Tianpu and Huang Tufu, who was sitting aside. "Are you sure you got a Rank-A?" Huang Tufu could not help but finally question. "Yes." Lin Huang nodded. "Kid, could you show us your trial token please?" On the other hand, Huang Tianpu did not raise any doubt. Instead, he asked to see the trial token. Lin Huang nodded and took the trial token out. The trial token was registered under his name, so it would be futile for Huang Tianfu to snatch it away unless he killed Lin Huang. However, if the owner of the trial token died, the accumulated points in the trial token would be wiped away and the initial authorization rank would be downgraded automatically too. After producing the trial token, Lin Huang noticed that it seemed to be different from before. The original trial token had been golden with the word ''royal'' imprinted in the middle and was filled with complicated sigils all over. However, although the token was still golden in color, the word ''emperor'' was imprinted in the middle now. Furthermore, the back of the token, which was initially filled with sigils, had a capital ''A'' in the middle now. Lin Huang did not notice when the token transformed as such. When Huang Tianpu took the token and saw the letter at the back, his hands began shaking. "It''s true!" "He really has Rank-A authorization." Even Huang Tufu, who had been cold, turned emotional when he saw that. Huang Tianpu then returned the token with both hands after the both of them gave a detailed observation on it. Lin Huang picked it up casually and tossed it back into his storage space. When they noticed that, the duo had an odd expression on their faces. However, Huang Tianpu soon spoke again, "Kid, what do you think of Dynasty?" ''Are they trying to get me to join them?'' Lin Huang thought to himself when he heard the question. He did not find it odd as soon as he recalled the result he had obtained in the Royal Trials. After all, he achieved what nobody in Dynasty had in over 5 centuries passing the trials. It made sense if they wanted to get him to join them. Lin Huang answered after a moment of silence, "Dynasty is very powerful. Its branch alone is the most powerful underground organization in Division 3 at the moment. It''s on par with the Union Government branch in Division 3. Dynasty''s overall ability ranks at the top in the entire continent too. Among all of the underground organizations, Dynasty''s combined ability ranks No. 3, so it''s undoubtedly the underground giant. Moreover, the First to the Third Grand Dukes are the top powerhouses in the gravel world. If I''m not mistaken, apart from the three of you, Dynasty has at least ten demigods or even more. "To be honest, I admire the fact that you guys could gather so many powerhouses and develop the organization to what it is today. However, I don''t admire the way and style of how you guys do things. Therefore, I''m sorry that I''ve no plans to join Dynasty." He rejected their invitation before they could even extend a formal invitation. "Kid, we''re not here to invite you to join Dynasty." Huang Tianpu shook his head with a grin "We''re here today hoping that you would be the second Emperor of Dynasty!" 1021 Emperor "Emperor?" It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing that term. However, he could tell it was a high position. "Emperor is the highest title we have in Dynasty. It''s not just a title, but the Emperor is a leader who has the real power, possessing the highest authority to control the entire Dynasty. Including the First to Third Grand Dukes like us, all the Dukes, Princes, and Dynasty members, we must all listen to the Emperor," Huang Tianpu explained in detail. "I don''t understand this. Why are you guys getting yourself a superior? Aren''t you just giving yourself a hard time?" Lin Huang raised his doubt as soon as he was done listening. "Without the Emperor, isn''t it great for the First to the Third Grand Dukes in reign?" Huang Tianpu shook his head and forced a smile when he heard that. "This has something to do with the rules that were passed down from Royal during the establishment of Dynasty. "My master, who is the founder of Dynasty, Mr. Huang Tianyu, was Dynasty''s very first Emperor. He founded Dynasty back then in an attempt to build a tremendous empire like the Union Government. He came up with the title ''Emperor'' because it''s the equivalent of the ruler of a kingdom who possesses the highest authority. "My master was Royalty. He needed a massive amount of resources to build Dynasty, so he signed an agreement with Royal to make Dynasty the affiliate organization under the latter. Because of the identity as an affiliate organization, Dynasty developed quickly and very soon rose in this gravel world. It never stopped growing. "However, there''s a problem in the agreement. It clearly states that only Dynasty members have the right to inherit the Emperor title." "Since Master passed away, none of our Dynasty members are eligible to inherit the title. Royal contacted us and gave us two options. "The first option is to detach from Royal to become an independent organization. If we choose that, we won''t be getting any resource support from Royal from that day onwards while all the ruins won''t be opened to us. Furthermore, Dynasty must pay the compensation for all the expenses Royal has spent on building and training us for the past 5 centuries. The annual compensation will be 50% of our annual income. "The second option is to continue being Royal''s affiliate organization. Since we don''t have an Emperor, we''re only assigned the lowest supply of resources from them. We''d also only be given the lowest authorization for all the ruins. There''s also a request. We''ll need to find a Royalty to be the new Emperor within 3 centuries. As soon as the Emperor goes on duty, all the resources will be recovered following the Emperor''s privileges in Royal. "However, if we can''t find a new Emperor within 3 centuries, Royal will send their people to take over the affiliate organizations. By then, the entire organization will belong to Royal, including the members and items. Everything would become Royal''s private property. "We heard about that through some intel. As soon as we become their private property, it''d be equivalent to losing our human rights. We''d be no different from being a slave. Moreover, it would mean losing the potential to elevate on certain levels for demigods. There''s a high possibility that they might be given the slave imprint and sold to powerhouses in the great world." Lin Huang understood why they looked for him right after hearing Huang Tianpu''s detailed explanation. "So, you guys went for the second option?" Huang Tianpu nodded while forcing a smile. "It would''ve been stupid to choose the first option back then. We had gotten used to having Royal supporting us, it was hard to imagine what would happen to us without their support. Furthermore, we were very confident that we could train a Royalty within these 3 centuries." "However, never had we thought that we wouldn''t have even trained a single Royalty when the 3-century deadline is coming to an end. Even Huang Wuji, who we rooted for, was sent out on the second day of the trial." "How long more to the 3-century deadline?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "In 11 more years, but the Royal Trials will only happen in 100 years. We''ve lost our only hope." "Since there are still 11 years, why don''t you just leave Dynasty? If you leave now, I don''t think they''d come after all of you one after another in 11 years?" Lin Huang asked. "We can''t do that. As soon as we joined Dynasty, our names were on the register of the Royal affiliate organization. Since Master died, Royal automatically recorded all the new Dynasty members'' details. As long as our names are on the list, the people from Royal will definitely find us. It''s futile for us to hide anywhere in the world. "There''s only one way to leave Dynasty, which is to get the Emperor to remove the members from the list with his Royal Authorization." "What if you dissolve Dynasty directly?" Lin Huang suggested. "There''s no way to do that," Huang Tianpu shook his head feeling helpless, "Dynasty is Royal''s affiliate organization, so Royal has the ownership. As long as Royal disagrees with that, we can''t be dissolved. To dissolve an affiliate organization, the affiliate organization''s Emperor must send an application into Royal''s headquarters." "So, you guys have locked yourself in a dead-end." Lin Huang was rather puzzled to hear that. "We only have one solution now, which is to find a new Emperor." "I''ve got a question." Lin Huang thought about it before speaking again, "Are you guys sure that the first Emperor is dead?" Huang Tianpu nodded almost without thinking. "We''ve confirmed it. Master went to the great world a few years after breaking through to virtual god-level 3 centuries ago. Royal announced his death less than 10 years following his departure." "Didn''t you guys see the body?" "There was no body but it shouldn''t be fake news," Huang Tianpu explained, "The Royal identity token is locked with the particular person. It will only be unlocked when the person dies. As soon as the token is unlocked, Royal would have their record down automatically." "Do you guys have no other candidates apart from me?" Lin Huang asked rather helplessly. "No. From what we know, you''re the second person who has obtained the Royal Authorization throughout 5 centuries apart from Master. It was the first time Royal contacted us to tell us about you passing the Royal Trials." "What if I reject this offer?" Lin Huang asked raising his brow, "Are you guys going to kidnap me? And force me to take the position?" "I would love to do that," Huang Tufu mumbled softly. "If you reject us, we''ll stay by your side until you agree." Huang Tianpu smiled lightly. "We''ll follow you no matter where you go, including the bathroom, the shower, when you go to sleep We''ll guard you by your side all the time to show our sincerity." "Aren''t you being a gangster now?" Lin Huang became speechless right away. Huang Tianpu became serious after cracking the joke. "We really have no other option. If you don''t like our way and style of doing things, we can implement a reformation in the entire organization. Although it''s quite impossible that we could be as clean as the Union Government or the Hunter Association, it shouldn''t be a problem to be as neutral as the Heretics. We promise to cooperate with you with all our might, transforming Dynasty into a brand new organization." Lin Huang was really moved hearing what Huang Tianpu said. He had been wanting to establish his own organization for some time now. Although Dynasty, who sent themselves to his doorstep, was different from what he expected, joining them would be a shortcut to fight God Bless. Furthermore, with his identity as a Royalty, it was pretty impossible for Dynasty to turn their backs on him. To establish an organization that truly belonged to him, he could do so by building a core circle within Dynasty. When the circle developed, it would not be too late for him to part independently from Dynasty. Moreover, he could use Dynasty''s resources and the people''s relationship to develop his core circle. "Since you''re so sincere, I shan''t hide this from you. I''m planning to visit the great world after breaking through to imperial-level. If it''s soon, I might leave this year. I''ll leave next year if I take a longer time. Therefore, your Emperor will soon be going away if you get me to be your Emperor," Lin Huang shared his plan honestly. "Don''t worry about it. As long as the Emperor is still alive, it won''t affect us whether you''re in this gravel world or not. Furthermore, you can assign a representative before you leave and give a portion of your authority to the representative. By then, just get the representative to handle matters that involve authority. About going to the great world, I''ll bring a few demigods to go with you for safety purposes." Huang Tianpu seemed to have considered everything in Lin Huang''s shoes. "If that''s the case, I agree to be your Emperor." Lin Huang finally acquiesced. "I''m a lazy person, so I won''t interfere much with your management. However, I''ll monitor you guys since you agreed to a reformation. I hope to see the results." "Just trust us with the management, but you''re welcome to monitor us." Huang Tianpu finally flashed a smile of relief on his face. Even Huang Tufu, who was sitting aside, was greatly relieved to hear Lin Huang agree. "Master Emperor, would you prefer a grand or a low-key appointment ceremony?" Huang Tianpu changed how he addressed Lin Huang as soon as he agreed to be the Emperor. "Low-key, I guess. Only Dynasty has to know about it. There''s no need to let the world know." "It''s already the 26th of July today. Should we fix it on 1st August? It happens to be an auspicious day." Huang Tianpu even determined the date. "So soon?" Lin Huang was not prepared at all. "Since you want a low-key one, we don''t have to inform the world. We''ll only have to decorate Dynasty a little. It won''t take long," Huang Tianpu said delightedly, "There''s nothing that you need to prepare. We''ll prepare everything for you. If you have guests you''d like to invite, just tell us their names and contact details. We''ll get people to pick them up when they arrive in Division 1. You don''t have to stay in this hotel. You can do whatever you want and go wherever you want. Just send me your coordinates a day ahead. I''ll pick you up by then." "Sure, arrange everything for me then." Hearing Huang Tianpu''s arrangement, Lin Huang could not help but secretly exclaim to himself how meticulous this person was. He did not miss anything in his arrangements and was an all-rounded, talented manager. "Master Emperor, I shan''t stay any longer. I''ll leave now to make the arrangements." Huang Tianpu stood up after he was done speaking. He then turned his head to say to Huang Tufu next to him, "You''ll stay in the room next to Master Emperor. Stay with him to assure his safety within these few days." "Master Emperor, just do what you like and pretend he''s not there. He''ll only follow you when you go out. He won''t disturb you other than that unless you ask him to." "There''s no need for that. Just go ahead with your own thing. Since I''ve agreed, I definitely won''t run away." Lin Huang shook his head kindly. "It''s my honor to protect you, Master Emperor." Huang Tufu agreed to the mission. Lin Huang stopped rejecting him since he said that. Soon, Huang Tianpu summoned a dimensional portal and left. Meanwhile, Huang Tufu did not stay in Lin Huang''s room and returned to the room next door. Seeing the duo leave, Xiao Mo then returned from the balcony to the living room and asked about the duo rather curiously. 1022 Arriving at Division 1 The conversation with Huang Tianpu was better than what Lin Huang expected. Clearly, Dynasty had no other choice than begging him, an outsider, and even agreed to implement reformation. To Lin Huang, taking over Dynasty would actually do more merit than harm. Although he knew very well that the agreement he had with Huang Tianpu was promising, a reformation of Dynasty would not happen overnight. He might even experience many obstacles along the way. However, as long as he had his identity as a Royalty, most people in Dynasty would not turn their backs on him. He could use Dynasty''s power to fight God Bless and conveniently build an organization that belonged to him. After Huang Tianpu left, Lin Huang visited the Wanbao Auction and the black market in Sweep City disguised as Lin Xie. He counted the elevation materials that he had gotten them to collect for the past two months or so. There were quite a number of materials that were enough to elevate five imperial monsters. They were enough to elevate Grimace, Bloody Robe, the Eclipse Boa, the Death Knight, and the Fallen Knight. He was only lacking a few materials to elevate Bing Wang and the Witch. Figuring that the Emperor installation ceremony would be happening soon, Lin Huang put aside elevating Grimace and the rest. After all, he would need at least ten days to elevate his imperial monsters while the installation ceremony would happen in a few days. Throughout the few days, Lin Huang had nothing else to do. He stayed in the hotel room to practice his sword skills. Huang Tufu was a Sword Dao expert as well and he had also reached level-6 Sword Dao. Initially, he thought it was impossible for Lin Huang to have a deep comprehension of Sword Dao given that he was rather young. He thought he could seize the opportunity to dole out advice on Sword Dao in order to have a close relationship with the soon-to-be Emperor. Never had he thought that he would be shocked to see Lin Huang practicing his sword skills for the first time. This soon-to-be Emperor was only 19 years old and his combat strength was only on immortal-level, but his comprehension of Sword Dao was no lower than his. He stopped underestimating him and began discussing Sword Dao with Lin Huang like he was talking to someone of his own level. He even took to practicing with him by suppressing his combat strength. Meanwhile, Xiao Mo had been sitting in his room with his legs crossed these few days to practice the Unrivalled Combat God. He did not find it boring at all. Three days soon flew by. Huang Tianpu returned early in the morning on the 30th of July. The hard rock in his throat disappeared when he saw Lin Huang. He had been a little worried that Lin Huang might back out in these few days. "We''ve done with the preparation. All we have to do now is to wait for the installation ceremony tomorrow. Don''t you want to invite your friends to watch?" he asked since he had not received Lin Huang''s guest list these few days. "No need. Let''s go." Although the siblings Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu were currently in Division 3, Lin Huang thought there was no need to invite them. After all, he would be an underground organization boss soon while the Yi siblings were born into the Union Government''s military department with a clean record. If they were to work in the military, witnessing the installation ceremony of Dynasty''s Emperor might stain a black ink in their clean records. Meanwhile, Leng Yuexin and Li Lang were offsprings of notable families. They had no interest in underground organizations, so Lin Huang did not bother to inform them. He only brought along Xiao Mo and stepped into the demigod-level long-distance dimensional portal together with Huang Tianpu and Huang Tufu. When he snapped back to his senses, Lin Huang realized he was in a luxurious palace. Looking at the palace that was even more sophisticated than those in the movies, the first thought that popped into his head was, ''How much did they spend building this?!'' Lin Huang was not the only one who was astounded. Next to him, Xiao Mo was in complete shock. It was the first time in his life seeing such a grandiose building. "The first Emperor designed this. We''ve done almost nothing to it ever since I moved in." "Master Emperor, your palace is the one in the east." Huang Tianpu pushed open a window with a smile and pointed at an even more majestic palace hundreds of meters away. "That''s the Emperor''s Palace. It''s a legit god relic." "That''s crazy luxurious!" Lin Huang could not help but exclaim out loud as he looked at the tall palace that was close to 50 meters away. On the other hand, Xiao Mo was so dumbfounded that he could not speak. "Unless there''s a special occasion, the Emperor''s Palace is usually closed. Only the Emperor can access it," continued Huang Tianpu, "Let''s take a look." Huang Tianpu opened the palace doors as he spoke while escorting Lin Huang and Xiao Mo into the Emperor''s Palace. There were two imperial-level purple gold-rank guards standing at the palace entrance. The duo bowed courteously when they saw Huang Tianpu. "First Grand Duke, Your Highness!" They then secretly observed Lin Huang, clearly very curious about this newly appointed Emperor. Lin Huang glanced at the two guards too. They had a solid aura. He figured they might have powerful abilities when they fought people of the same combat strength. "There were usually no guards before this because there was no Emperor while the Emperor''s Palace is a god relic itself," Huang Tianpu said honestly. "In reality, there''s no need for guards." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "They look like guards since they''re asked to stand at the entrance, but their real responsibly is to take care of the Emperor''s needs. Just tell them whatever you need and they''ll arrange for you. They''ll inform me if there are things that they can''t do and I''ll handle it." "Can we go into the palace now?" Lin Huang asked since he saw the door being closed. "Yes, this god relic has a weapon spirit. The palace doors will open automatically as soon as you take your Royal Token out," Huang Tianpu acknowledged, "The main control of the Emperor''s Palace is on the throne in the palace. You''ll have to spend some time registering your identity." Lin Huang took the Royal Token out after he heard that. As told, the door opened automatically right away. Huang Tianpu stood still at the entrance for a while and only followed behind them after Lin Huang and Xiao Mo entered. Gazing around, Lin Huang felt that the interior of this palace was many times bigger than what he saw outside. He saw almost neither the end of the building when he looked left and right nor the ceiling above his head. All he could see was a dark sky and countless stars. It gave Lin Huang the feeling that it was not a palace, but more like a micro world. "Master traded this Emperor''s Palace at the Royal Market. I heard he integrated many Space Rule pieces into this. It''s a relic close to true god-level. This space is almost endless when talking about its capacity," Huang Tianpu explained with a proud grin upon noticing Lin Huang looking around. Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard the explanation. A relic that could integrate rule pieces indeed was a relic close to true god-level. Lin Huang walked ahead and soon saw the throne Huang Tianpu was talking about. It was located on a pure golden platform. There was a staircase covered in a red carpet leading to the platform. There were a total of 36 steps on the stairs. The entire platform was close to 20 meters long, and five to six meters in length and width. The throne was placed in the middle of the platform, over a meter away from the highest step. The throne was completely golden while the surface of the chair was so huge that even a three-meter tall muscular hunk would not feel suffocated sitting on it. The back of the chair was almost three meters tall and the sigils all over it formed a unique pattern. There was a sunken decorative wall behind the throne. It was approximately ten meters tall like a city wall. The sunken wall was in an arc shape surrounding the throne while the rest of the wall stretched all the way to the end of the platform. Lin Huang walked all the way up the stairs to the platform. He sat on the throne as if he belonged there. "This throne is pretty majestic but it''s a little too big." "You can change the size of the throne. This size is suitable for the ceremony tomorrow. Master Emperor, you can adjust the size as you wish after that." Lin Huang nodded and inserted his consciousness into the throne for the palace to recognize him. After confirming Lin Huang''s identity as a Royalty, the weapon spirit of the Emperor''s Palace did not repel him at all. Instead, it took the initiative to register him and completed it in less than three minutes. Due to the restriction of authority, Lin Huang did not get Xiao Hei to seal the Emperor''s Palace into a card yet because as soon as the palace was sealed into a card, he would be not able to summon it. Huang Tianpu only spoke after noticing that Lin Huang had completed the recognition process. "Master Emperor, there''s something that I''m not sure if I should inform you about in advance." "Although we didn''t invite any other organizations out there for the Emperor installation ceremony tomorrow, there''ll still be some media representatives coming." "So, the news of me being Emperor will still be known to the outside world?" Lin Huang''s frown deepened when he heard this. "If you really don''t want to expose your identity, you can put on a mask to hide your face. We will keep your identity a secret." "You''re only telling me this now on purpose so that I''ll agree to take the position, am I right?" Lin Huang asked Huang Tianpu while stared at him. "I did it because it''s the last resort. I''m willing to accept the punishment if you''re going to punish me, Master Emperor." Huang Tianpu looked down immediately. "Forget about the punishment. I hope such a thing won''t happen in the future." Lin Huang waved and only spoke again after a moment of thought, "There''s no need for a disguise. It''s only a matter of time that my identity will be exposed. Me revealing my identity myself is better than being exposed. At least, I''m in control." "Your sister?" Huang Tianpu started. "Bring me to her. We''ll bring her to Division 1." 1023 Black Swamp Frog At White Capital in Division 7, an old man and a young man appeared at the Martial Hunter College''s entrance. The young man had black, short hair and bright eyes. He wore a white t-shirt on top with blue and white jeans. He was dressed very casually. There was a little white cat sitting on the left of his shoulder. Meanwhile, the old man next to him wore a gray Chinese suit and a pair of black canvas shoes on his feet. He was skinny, he looked like a powerful Taoist devotee. The duo who looked like grandfather and grandson only lingered at the Martial Hunter College entrance for a moment. They turned around and left. "She''s not at school." Lin Huang did not sense the Witch, and he did not find Lin Xin with his Divine Telekinesis either. It was the end of July and it was summer break at the Martial Hunter College. Lin Huang did not find it surprising that Lin Xin was not there. Beside him, Huang Tianpu did not seem to find it strange either. Lin Huang called Lin Xin''s number and she picked up the video call immediately. Lin Huang noticed the mud specks on her face as soon as the call connected. Her hair was a little messy and she seemed clumsy too. He could not help but frown but he soon realized it was a jungle behind her. "Where are you now?" "The Fiendish Swamp Jungle." "Why are you there?" Lin Huang''s eyebrows knotted even more now. He was familiar with the Fiendish Swamp Jungle. It was a moderate danger zone. Not only were there immortal-level monsters, but there were also many poisonous monsters too. "It''s the school holidays now, so I got myself a mission." Lin Xin''s voice was getting softer. She knew Lin Huang would react like this if he found out that she went to the Fiendish Swamp Jungle. "Where''s the Little Witch?" he asked again. "At the hotel." As soon as Lin Xin spoke, a shadow appeared like a black fog all of a sudden. Soon, the Witch''s head solidified and hovered next to Lin Xin''s head. "I''m here." "Why are you doing this, Little Witch? You promised not to come!" Lin Xin was surprised to see the Witch and she soon began to complain. "Good job!" Lin Huang, on the other hand, gave a completely different comment. "You guys wait where you are. Don''t move around. I''m coming over." "Ah? Are you back in Division 7, brother?" Lin Xin panicked at that moment. "I''m at the Martial Hunter College entrance." Lin Huang shifted the camera a little and showed the entrance behind him. "I haven''t completed my mission. Don''t come. I''ll return in a few days after I''ve completed my mission. You can stay in White Capital City." "I''ve something to do tomorrow. I''m coming to you now." Lin Huang hung up the phone right away. Lin Xin looked gloomy as she watched the video turn black. "Why is this happening to me? I haven''t done my mission. If I give up now, it''ll affect my mission completion rate." "Why don''t I help you before Master comes?" the Witch suggested. "No, I don''t believe I can''t even catch one Black Swamp Frog by myself!" Lin Xin did not want to give up just yet. Over ten minutes later, Lin Huang appeared before Lin Xin. She was hovering above a swamp at that moment, less than ten minutes away from the ground. She looked even slovenlier than she did in the video call earlier. Although she was mad when she saw Lin Huang, she did not stop hunting. "So, you''re hunting for the Black Swamp Frog?" Lin Huang finally realized what she was doing after observing her for a moment. Lin Xin glared at Lin Huang, clearly upset that he had interrupted her mission. "Do you want me to help?" Huang Tianpu turned his head and asked Lin Huang. "No, let her do it." Lin Huang shook his head and said to Lin Xin, "There are three difficult points about capturing the Black Swamp Frog. "The first one, Black Swamp Frog usually lives with the Fiendish Swamp Alligator. You could be attacked by a Fiendish Swamp Alligator easily when you''re catching a Black Swamp Frog." From the mud on her body, he knew Lin Xin had experienced that. "The second one is that the Black Swamp Frog has the ability to disguise. It''s hard to be seen with the naked eye as long as it''s completely still. "The third one is that the Black Swamp Frog has explosive reflexes. It can easily escape when you catch it with normal techniques. Furthermore, it has an explosive speed for short distances. It''s much more powerful than monsters and people of the same level when it comes to this. "The first point is still manageable, but it''s tough for you to catch them if you don''t overcome the other two points." Lin Huang did not help her. Instead, he analyzed the difficult details about capturing the Black Swamp Frog. Lin Xin was stunned when she heard him. She began mumbling the second and third point Lin Huang told her, "Hard to be seen with the naked eye, explosive reflexes" "If it''s hard to be seen with the naked eye, I can use another sensing technique. If it has explosive reflexes, I''ll have to figure it''s movement trajectory!" Lin Xin soon found the solution. She hovered mid-air and closed her eyes slowly. She spread her senses wide and soon sensed the swamp below her feet. Although she could only sense a rough outline of it, she was very happy to be able to do that. In reality, almost all transcendence-levels possessed a sensing ability. However, people who had no telekinesis would hardly use it because looking with one''s eyes was much more effective than using the blurry sensing ability. However, Lin Xin did not need a clear picture. All she needed was to discern the Black Swamp Frog and mud apart. Under the sense, life energy would be detected as white fire spots which were completely different from the dark-green swamp. Soon, Lin Xin sensed the Black Swamp Frogs'' coordinates just a couple of meters away. "There are so many of them!" Through her sensing ability, she sensed many Black Swamp Frogs around her. When she opened her eyes, she targeted a Black Swamp Frog''s coordinates and swung her sword without hesitation toward it. As a black silhouette came from thin air, Lin Xin''s sword landed onto nothing. "You must think carefully about how to defeat your opponent that has better speed and reflexes than you do." Lin Huang did not give her a straightforward answer. Instead, he guided Lin Xin to figure out how to do it herself. She soon had her answer. She targeted another Black Swamp Frog but did not attack just yet. Instead, she held her sword while waiting for the sure-hit opportunity. All of a sudden, she stomped and a wave shot toward the Black Swamp Frog. The moment the Black Swamp Frog appeared, a silver glow flashed through the air. The creature that had just revealed itself was sliced into half. Lin Xin was filled with joy since her single hit killed the Black Swamp Frog. "Alright, you''ve completed your mission. Can we leave now?" Lin Huang walked to her while grinning proudly. "I have to kill ten of them." Lin Xin looked bitter when she heard the word ''mission''. "So, that was only your first?" Lin Huang could not help but raise his brow when he saw Lin Xin''s expression. He figured that she must have gotten nothing for the past few days. Lin Xin said while flushing, "I''ll be done in a minute." "It''s already done." As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, a telekinesis thread skewered ten Black Swamp Frogs like a stick of candied fruit and was presented before Lin Xin. "I''ll catch one for you when we get back. You can practice all you want by then." 1024 The Emperor is Born It was hot at the end of summer in July in Emperor City. The temperature almost always maintained above 35 degrees Celsius. However, hundreds of thousands of people were coming to this foothold that was not a popular summer resort. Those people were not tourists but Dynasty members from all divisions. Naturally, the hundreds of thousands of people from Dynasty gathering at the Emperor City in Division 1 attracted attention from other organizations. Many people were discussing it on all the forums. "What''s Dynasty been doing recently? Why are so many of them returning to Dynasty''s headquarters in Division 1 all of a sudden?" "That''s right. All the hotels in Emperor City have been fully booked these few days. Many of them have booked their rooms until the 1st of August." "It''s been hundreds of years since Dynasty last had such a huge event. Why exactly are they doing this time?" "Are they at war with some organization?" A minority of them heard the news. "I heard the Emperor is born." However, most people thought it was fake. There were even people who retaliated against the news with their own reasons. "The Royal Trials happen every century and it''s open for a month each time. Following the opening date which was on the 5th of May, the Royal Trials ended on the 5th of June which was two months ago. The First Prince, Huang Wuji, whom Dynasty was rooting for, was disqualified at the beginning of May and he returned to Dynasty. This isn''t a secret to most organizations. "Furthermore, even if other Princes passed the trial, Dynasty would''ve announced it in a grand celebration when the trial ended in June. Dynasty has always been high-key. If they have indeed chosen an Emperor, how is it possible that they were so quiet for the past two months and only enthrone their Emperor now?" Soon, the very true and similar exposs drowned in all sorts of fake news after some heated discussions. As the fiery discussions went on, time flew by and the 1st of August finally came. Early in the morning, people crowded the massive square at Dynasty''s headquarters. Everyone was very curious about this newly appointed Emperor since Huang Tianpu and the rest did not reveal anything about Lin Huang to their members. Apart from a minority of people from Dynasty''s headquarters who knew about Lin Huang''s identity, the rest did not even have any idea whether this newly appointed Emperor was a man or a woman. Naturally, apart from the curiosity they had about the newly appointed Emperor, many people came for a more realistic reason. They wanted to know what benefits this newly appointed Emperor would bring to Dynasty. Basically, Dynasty''s upper echelon knew that an Emperor must be a Royalty. The arrival of the newly appointed Emperor would definitely bring benefits for Dynasty. Since the first Emperor died, Dynasty had been receiving the lowest benefit available from Royal for the past hundreds of years. It was almost equivalent to the minimum living security on Earth. Having a newly appointed Emperor would definitely improve that by heaps. Their minimum could be boosted up to the equivalent to a social security standard. The installation would take place at 10 a.m. However, almost all the Dynasty members arrived even before it was 9 a.m. The people were chatting to their own cliques at the square as they waited for the ceremony to begin. At 9.30 a.m., airships were ascending above Dynasty''s headquarters one after another as the people beneath exclaimed in astonishment. A dozen demigod-level airships which were tens of thousands meters long each flew in the air, covering the sun. Many media representatives snapped photos of the scene immediately. As the 12 airships ascended one after another, a larger pitch-black airship ascended. The jaws of countless people dropped when the airship appeared. It was at least 50,000 meters long and was almost on par with a massive city on Earth. Most people from Dynasty had heard of this airship, but almost all of them were seeing it for the first time. "It''s the legendary Star Titan!" "The Star Titan! One of the three god-level airships in the entire continent! I can''t believe we''re seeing it today!" "I think this airship is deemed as the most supreme treasure in the entire world. I heard its main cannon can kill a Virtual God in one blow!" Everyone''s eyeballs were drawn to this massive airship. The Star Titan was Dynasty''s most supreme treasure they had in store. There were only a total of three airships of the same level in the entire continent. As the Star Titan ascended slowly, it hovered with the 12 demigod-level battleships in the air. Thousands of cannons stretched out in combat mode. Even countless media representative was stirred. It was the Star Titan''s first appearance in public for hundreds of years. Many organization members who were watching outside the square just realized that something significant was really happening in Dynasty when they saw the Star Titan. As the Star Titan ascended into the air, four Midnight God motherships among the 12 demigod-level airships formed a giant round platform with a diameter that exceeded 24 kilometers. Meanwhile, the remaining airships retreated a few kilometers away from the Midnight God motherships. They surrounded the platform from eight different directions and extended up to 1,000 of cannons. They were in combat mode just like the Star Titan. A voice came out of the Star Titan out of the blue when the airships were in position. "All Dynasty members, you can begin boarding the platform now! Members who are not transcendence-levels, please stand in the middle of the square and wait for the airship to pick you up. Please don''t board just yet, our dear media friends. You''ll only come up to the airship platform after the Dynasty members are done with their registration." Up to 1,000 transcendence-level members boarded the airship platform that had docked as soon as the voice rang out. Meanwhile, the remaining hundreds of thousands of regular members stood in the middle of the square and waited for their pick-up patiently. A moment later, a halo blossomed from the Star Titan and covered everything standing in the middle of the square. Subsequently, lights bathed everyone within the halo-like searchlights. The people ascended into the sky under the lights. In less than five seconds, everyone on the square was sucked into the Star Titan. A while later, another halo shone from the Star Titan and glistened on the platform formed by the four Midnight God motherships. Lights illuminated the area again while the people landed in the middle of the platform one after another. Many of them looked excited when they landed on the platform. "I can''t believe I took a ride in the Star Titan!" "It''s the first time in my life I''ve ever ridden on a god-level airship. I''m over the moon!" "You should be. This might be the one and only time you can do this in your entire life after all." "The most climatic one second in my life. I don''t think there''s anything that can top that!" "Dukes of all branches in each division, get your branch members to queue according to their safety zone codes and branch codes." After the Star Titan gave the new order, everyone on the platform began searching for their own troops. They soon gathered into a square formation under the Dukes'' arrangement. As things were getting busy on the platform, four demigod-level palaces ascended into the air slowly. They hovered in a line between the Star Titan and the 12 demigod-level airships. There was a three-kilometer-wide gap in the middle. After the four demigod-level palaces were in position, the even more majestic Emperor Palace then ascended into the air slowly and landed between the space that was emptied by the four demigod-level palaces. Many Dynasty members were emotional to witness the majestic Emperor Palace hovering midair. They were even more emotional than when they saw the Star Titan earlier. By then, all the media representatives finally confirmed that the Emperor was really born this time! 1025 Where’s the Underground Boss They Promised?! Although the Emperor''s Palace was not as massive as the giant Star Titan airship, it attracted even more attention as soon as it appeared. Besides the Dynasty members, almost every other organization knew that the Emperor''s Palace represented the Emperor himself. Under normal circumstances, the palace gates were hardly opened. Even the three Grand Dukes such as Huang Tianpu and Huang Tufu dared not simply step in. The Emperor was the only one who could pass the recognition and control it. At the moment, the Emperor''s Palace was hovering midair. Clearly, someone was controlling it and the people could guess who. "It seems like the Emperor has really been born. Otherwise, the Emperor''s Palace wouldn''t have such a huge event." "They brought out the Star Titan and the Emperor''s Palace. The Emperor''s birth is the only explanation for such a huge event." "Who will be the newly appointed Emperor? Could it be Huang Wuji? Or maybe the other Princes passed the Royal Trials!" Attendees from all the organizations were discussing among themselves. The appearance of the Emperor''s Palace made many organizations that had doubts over why Dynasty had such fanfare out of nowhere realize what was really going on the Emperor was born! Countless eyes were staring at the Emperor''s Palace gates in anticipation to see who exactly the Emperor was. Everyone knew that Dynasty''s newly appointed Emperor was right behind the gates at that very moment. Meanwhile, Lin Huang who was in the Emperor''s Palace had changed into a yellow robe with lively golden dragon patterns embroidered on it. This robe had not been tailored in a rush within these few days. Instead, it was made of the battle armor god relic that the first Emperor had left behind. Apart from defensive abilities, the battle armor god relic had a unique decorative function which was to change the attire to whatever style one wished. It could even be separated into a different top and bottom. After the recognition process was completed, Lin Huang could not activate the defense system since he had no Divine Power. However, the battle armor''s decorative function could be activated by inserting Life Power. Naturally, it was not him who came up with the design of the yellow robe. It was Huang Tianpu and the rest who had commissioned a master designer to create it. Lin Huang then activated the god relic according to the design on the drawing. On the platform, hundreds of thousands of people soon formed a neat square formation under the monitoring of each division''s person-in-charge. They stood on both sides of the Emperor''s Palace, leaving a berth that was close to 100 meters wide. By then only were the media representatives allowed in. All of the media representatives were cultivators instead of commoners. Although they were cultivators, most of them had only heard of Dynasty, the top underground organization. They had never interacted with Dynasty members before. Most cultivators in their right mind would stay as far away as they could when they bumped into underground organization members, let alone Dynasty that was such a ruthless organization. Most people had only heard of them but not seen them. Therefore, most of them were very curious about this top underground organization. A couple of media representatives were live streaming. The audiences would be looking at where the camera was pointing. Many audiences were stunned to see the neat formation. If not for the fact that they were not garbed in military uniforms, many of them would have mistaken the Union Government as performing a parade. Many of them secretly exclaimed how disciplined the underground organization was. The media representatives soon began reporting, providing the people who were seeing Dynasty for the first time with a better understanding. Everyone was impressed by the appearance of the 12 demigod-level airships, a giant god-level Star Titan airship, four demigod-level palaces, and a god-level Emperor''s Palace. Many audiences who had little understanding of Dynasty were thrilled to see the newly appointed Emperor after hearing the media representatives'' explanation and seeing the grandeur of the parade. Not that they liked the newly appointed Emperor who had yet to show himself, most of them were just purely curious. They wanted to see how this legendary underground boss looked like. Soon, it was 10 a.m. The installation ceremony finally began officially. A white glow shot out of the Star Titan and a majestic silhouette landed slowly. Many Dynasty members felt emotional when they saw the silhouette. All of them recognized the person as soon as he appeared. As the silhouette stood still in the middle of the airship platform and the Star Titan''s glow went away, the majestic silhouette''s thick voice soon spread. "Yours humbly, I''m Dynasty''s Third Grand Duke, Huang Tufu! Representing the three Grand Dukes, I''d like to welcome all Dynasty compatriots here! Welcome, all media friends, for supporting us too. "I''m sure many of you are familiar with my name but I''m not the highlight of today. It''s someone else. Before welcoming the main character of the day, I''d like to take some time to say this. "It''s been 659 years since our first Emperor, Master Huang Tianyu, founded Dynasty. However, Dynasty has been dormant since Master Tianyu departed to the great world more than 300 years ago. I hereby announce that our dormant days are officially over from now on! The reason being, we have a new Emperor!" As Huang Tufu said that, the hundreds of thousands of Dynasty members on the platform shouted while raising their arms, "The Emperor is invincible. Long live the Emperor!" "Now, let''s open the stage to our main character of the day!" Huang Tufu declared loudly, "Our Emperor!" "The Emperor is invincible, long live the Emperor" As the Dynasty members screamed the slogans repeatedly, the gates of the Emperor''s Palace finally opened slowly. Everyone shifted their focus to the gates. Three silhouettes who walked out; one walked ahead while the other two followed behind. The leading young man wore a yellow robe with dragon patterns. He looked very young and handsome. Meanwhile, the men in yellow vests flanked behind him on his left and right. On the left was an old man with gray hair and a beard. He was skinny but exuded tremendous power. On his right was a middle-aged man with a sound aura. One could tell that he had been pretty good-looking when he was young, but he looked elegant now. Naturally, the leader among the three was the newly appointed Emperor, Lin Huang. The other two were Dynasty''s First Grand Duke, Huang Tianpu, and Second Grand Duke, Huang Wunan. Many of the audience members were stunned when they saw Lin Huang because he was using his own face, so he obviously looked below 20 years old. The first thought that flashed in most people''s minds when they saw Lin Huang was, ''Isn''t he too young?!'' Even the countless audiences who were watching the livestream could not help but tease. "I thought it''s the underground boss''s installation? Did the little kid next door go to the wrong set?!" "So, anyone who is good-looking can be the Emperor of Dynasty?" "I must say, this newly appointment Emperor has impressive looks that nobody can beat. With his face alone, I think he can rub the faces of all the other organizations'' leaders in the entire continent into the ground. "The other organizations'' leaders are uncles and aunties. Some are even grandpas and grandmas. Dynasty has finally started a whole new genre. I like this! I hope other organizations will promote this genre too." "I''ve got a sudden urge to join Dynasty. Man, what should I do?" "I share the same sentiment as the commenter above." "+100 million to the commenter above!" "With my heartthrob looks, I think I can be the Emperor of Dynasty too. If I can''t be the Emperor, I should be able to be crowned as Deputy Emperor" "F*ck off to the commenter above!" "F*ck off +100 million!" "F*ck off +1 billion!" "F*ck off +10 billion!" 1026 Coronation of the Emperor! Lin Xin and Xiao Mo sat in the pilot''s cabin of the giant Star Titan airship and watched everything that was going on down there through a screen. If one were to ask where was the safest place in the entire Emperor City at the moment, apart from the Emperor''s Palace, it was in the giant Star Titan airship. Lin Huang did not get Lin Xin to accompany him to the Emperor Enthronement mainly because there would be media representatives. If Lin Xin showed herself, she would definitely appear in photos and even appeared in the live streams. By then, she might become the target of some jokers from the Union Government. Dynasty was an underground organization giant. As the underground boss, Lin Huang would definitely attract hatred from the Union Government members who were Dynasty''s rivals. After all, there were many keyboard warriors on the Internet. They could say whatever they wanted on the Heart Network since it was impossible for Dynasty to kill them. the Emperor of Dynasty was an important person after all, and it would make big news if they managed to dig his ugly past up. If nobody managed to find any, it was only a matter of time for them to make one up. It was just something that people did to make themselves happy and famous, so why not? Meanwhile, Lin Huang did not want Xiao Mo to reveal himself because of the Purple Crow. Xiao Mo used to be a Crow Spirit. Although he experienced a major change in appearance, there was a high probability that the people from the Purple Crow might recognize him. Lin Huang was fearless of the Purple Crow. After all, he had fought the Crow God''s projection before. He just thought it would be too troublesome. He was too lazy to handle that, so the less trouble, the better. Lin Xin and Xiao Mo had their eyes locked on the screen before them. They watched Lin Huang and the two Grand Dukes walk out of the gates of the Emperor''s Palace and stood on the platform at the entrance. The Emperor''s Palace then descended slowly and landed firmly on the airship platform. The hundreds of thousands of people present looked at the young silhouette standing on the platform, not for any other reason, but because he was the newly appointment Emperor! It was Lin Huang''s first time having so many people watching him. He was secretly a little nervous. However, he gave nothing away on his face and hid his emotions well. Moreover, he soon adjusted his breathing and calmed himself down. Apart from the two Grand Dukes around him, nobody else noticed anything off. Seeing Lin Huang''s face, everyone who was watching was shocked by how young Lin Huang was. He obviously looked below 20 years old. Many Dynasty members were also shocked since they knew how Dynasty''s Princes looked like. However, this newly appointed Emperor was none of the Princes they knew. Nonetheless, Huang Tianpu and Huang Wunan standing beside Lin Huang were proof. Many of them suppressed the doubts they had. This newly appointed Emperor clearly had the support of the three Grand Dukes. Furthermore, it was impossible for the three Grand Dukes to support a newly appointed Emperor for no reason. As Lin Huang stood still on the platform, he glimpsed at the people who stood in the first two rows. He saw more than 15 demigods (apart from the Third Grand Duke) and at least 100 imperial-level Dynasty Dukes in one glance alone. There were at least 1,000 people on immortal-level and more than 10,000 people on holy fire-level. Dynasty was really a terrifyingly powerful organization! As Lin Huang glanced at the people from Dynasty, Huang Wunan, who stood on his right, spoke, "There''s no other reason why we''re gathered here today than celebrating this major event! Let''s witness the birth of our new Emperor together!" The people from Dynasty began exclaiming in one accord as soon as he was done speaking, "The Emperor is invincible. Long live the Emperor!" Huang Tianpu only signaled them to quieten down after the people chanted for a while. Soon, everyone from Dynasty went silent and Huang Tianpu began speaking, "Without further ado, the coronation of the Emperor has officially begun!" After saying that, Huang Tianpu took out a golden crown that he had prepared ahead from his storage space. The crown did not look sophisticated. Instead, it was rather crude. It looked like it was made of vines, the ends of which were made of mini sharp blades. The Emperor''s Crown was not an ordinary crown but a god relic. To be exact, it was a soul-type defense god relic. It could defend a massive number of soul-type attacks and weaken the intensity of soul-type attacks. Just like the royal robe and the giant Star Titan airship, the first Emperor Huang Tianyu had traded this the Emperor''s Crown at the Royal Market. Huang Tianpu held the Emperor''s Crown in both hands as he turned around and walked to Lin Huang. Then, he put it on Lin Huang''s head in all seriousness. Though crude, the Emperor''s Crown did not look absurd on Lin Huang''s head at that moment. It even complemented the yellow robe on his body. After putting the crown on Lin Huang, Huang Tianpu returned to his left. Meanwhile, Huang Wunan, who was on Lin Huang''s right, held a short saber with a scabbard with both his hands. He stepped forward and held the saber over Lin Huang''s head while the latter was down on one knee. The short saber was approximately a foot and eight inches long. It was completely black with 12 vertical golden dragon patterns carved on it. The scabbard, however, was the complete opposite. It was golden with huge black dragon patterns carved on both sides. Lin Huang stretched both arms and took over the short saber together with the scabbard. Huang Wunan then returned to where he was. The saber was called the Emperor''s Saber. Although it was also a god relic, it was more of a decorative item than a practical one. The first Emperor Huang Tianyu had only traded this at the Royal Market back then just because it looked appealing. He thought it would look great hanging on his waist as an accessory. In reality, he was not a saber cultivator but a combat cultivator. The short saber became an accessory ever since he purchased it. It almost never got out of the scabbard, let alone harm anyone. Lin Huang was a sword cultivator. Moreover, he already had a god battle sword relic. He would not be using it even if he elevated to virtual god-level. However, looking at the items left behind by the previous Emperor, Lin Huang could tell that Huang Tianyu was definitely a master at showing off. One with a crown on his head, a yellow robe with dragon patterns and a short saber with dragon patterns on his waist. Lin Huang faintly felt like he was the king of all generations with all the get-up. After hanging the Emperor''s Saber on the right side of his waist, he lifted his head up again and glanced at the people. This time, Lin Huang''s imposing manner was completely different from before. Many people could clearly sense that his combat strength was only on immortal-level. However, looking at him fully equipped, they felt like they were watching a mighty Emperor who had been sent down to the world. Lin Xin''s eyes lit up as she watched Lin Huang through the screen in the Star Titan. "Brother is so handsome!" Even Xiao Mo, who was sitting aside, nodded too. "He looks so cool!" Following the schedule Huang Tianpu had given him earlier, Lin Huang knew it was his turn to speak after he was fully equipped. He looked at the people beneath him and his voice vibrated from his chest. It soon spread through the venue. "Welcome, everyone. My name is Lin Huang." "From today and from this moment onward, I''m officially the Emperor of Dynasty!" 1027 Who’s Lin Huang?! The birth of the Emperor of Dynasty soon created a stir among the cultivation world. Dynasty, which had had no Emperor for the past 300 years, had progressed to the top three underground organizations. Now that they had an Emperor, one could imagine how prosperous would Dynasty''s future be. Lin Huang''s name became the headlines of all the cultivation media on the day itself. The photos of him with the yellow robe, the crown on his head and a short saber hanging from his waist spread through Divisions 1 to 12 in less than half a day. More than 90% of the people in the cultivation world had seen his face by now. On that day, the top three topics on all the forums were related to Lin Huang. The topic that was the most popular was the same question who was Lin Huang?! A young man whom nobody had heard of was crowned the Emperor of Dynasty and became a legendary underground boss all of a sudden. Countless people were curious. Who exactly was this young man? A minority of them even wanted to study if they could copy and apply this young man''s way of succeeding to themselves. Who was Lin Huang? Not only everyone wanted to know the answer to this question. The next second when Lin Huang announced his name in the livestreams, the intel units of all the organizations began their frantic search, browsing for every information that was related to his name. From Divisions 1 to 3, many organizations in the three core zones found up to 1,000 pieces of information about Lin Huang within the core zones. They then spent a whole day comparing notes but found out that none of the faces matched Lin Huang''s. On the next day, the range of the search expanded. It spread to Divisions 4, 5 to Division 12. The data of more and more people who had the same name as Lin Huang were collected by all organizations. As all the organizations were busy searching Lin Huang''s identity, some friends who knew him saw the related news one after another. Even if they did not see the livestreams, they would see his name and face plastered all over the place on that day. It was hard to miss. Almost everyone who knew Lin Huang was shocked to see the news. They doubted if the media had made a mistake. However, seeing that many other media were spreading the same news and that the videos were going viral online, they finally confirmed the authenticity of the news. Just when the installation ceremony ended, Lin Huang saw a couple of missed calls on his communication page. It was from the siblings Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu, and Li Lang and Leng Yuexin. He was going to call them since he had the time now, but his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated suddenly. It was his master who was calling this time, so he picked the video call up right away. In the video call, Mr. Fu was relaxing on a beach chair while squinting. He asked right away when Lin Huang picked up the call, "My disciple, is Dynasty giving you a hard time?" "No, they even gave me a bunch of god relics," Lin Huang said while smiling and shaking his head. "But I can''t use them just yet." "This Emperor thing, you can tell me if you''re doing this against your will." A ferocious gleam flashed through Mr. Fu''s eyes. "I''m doing it pretty willingly. If I can be honest, we''re just using each other. They need me to be their Emperor to solve a crisis while I need their power to achieve a goal." Lin Huang was alone in the Emperor Palace, so he was not afraid that others would overhear what he was saying. "Solve a crisis?" Mr. Fu was skeptical. "Master, you remember that I told you about secretly participating in the Royal Trials a few months back, don''t you? In reality, Dynasty is just an affiliate organization of Royal from the great world," Lin Huang told him the story of Dynasty and Royal. Mr. Fu only spoke slowly after a moment of silence, "So, there''s a big, great world out there" "With the identity as a Royalty, they daren''t do anything to me even if I disagree to be their Emperor, let alone now that I''m crowned their Emperor." "Your identity is indeed shocking to them. It''s brilliant to have an organization to depend on, but beware, don''t let Dynasty mess you up," Mr. Fu advised in relief. "Master, now that I have the ability to protect myself, can you tell me about what happened to the Virtual Gods of this world?" Mr. Fu lifted his head and glanced at Lin Huang upon hearing the question. "Seems like you''ve found out about something." "I only know apart from you, there are many people who''ve elevated to Virtual Gods through the integration of Godhead. That''s all I know." Lin Huang nodded. "Since you asked, I''ll tell you everything today." Mr. Fu sat up from the beach chair and crossed his legs before speaking again slowly, "Indeed, I''m not the only Virtual God in this world. I''m just the last Virtual God on the surface. "Through the past 800 years since the new era began, the change of the cultivation system has boosted hundredfolds of cultivators compared to our time back then. "The increased number of cultivators also increased the exploration of the ruins by heaps. A sea of resources was excavated, including war remnants, God''s corpses, Godheads, god relics and even a small amount of true god-level items from the ancient times. "Since the new cultivation system caused no one to be able to kill virtual god-level monsters with their imperial-level combat strength throughout centuries, many people began looking for ways to break through. Integrating Godheads was one of them. "Since the first person found out that integrating Godheads could elevate them to Virtual God, Godheads became a hot item. Countless people followed suit but only a minority of them succeeded while most people died from the explosion. After thousands of people experimented it by themselves, everyone realized that there were many issues with elevating to Virtual God via the integration of the Godhead. "First of all, which is the most unacceptable reason, would be that one''s combat strength wouldn''t be able to elevate if they achieved virtual god-level via integration of the Godhead. No matter how high the compatibility of the Godhead was with the person, it wasn''t a Godhead that one consolidated by themselves after all. "The second one would be the compatibility of the Godhead with the integrator. Not all Godheads can be integrated, so it''s easy for one to die from an explosion during the integration with poor compatibility. "Thirdly, the grade of the Godhead affects the success of integration. A Godhead has a total of nine grades from grade-1 to grade-9. Grade-1 has the highest success rate of integration. The higher the Godhead''s grade, the lower the success rate. Due to one''s body and intensity of the soul, the success rate of integration above grade-3 is almost zero. Even very few people have succeeded in integrating with a grade-3 Godhead. From what I know, all the integrators who used Godheads above grade-3 died of self-explosion; none of them survived. "The fourth would be the will remnant of the Godhead. Many Godheads would have the will remnant of the original owner. Such a Godhead is extremely dangerous. As long as the integration is completed, there''s a high chance that the will remnant might take over the body. However, such a will remnant would usually lie in hibernation mode before it''s activated, so there''s no way of detecting its existence. "The fifth would be the mutation from a monster''s Godhead. Since many Godhead sources can''t be identified, some people integrate a monster''s Godhead unintentionally as they have a very similar aura to a human''s Godhead. A monster''s Godhead usually has low compatibility with humans whereby it always ends up in death from self-explosion. However, there were a few successful cases. However, all of them had mutations without any exceptions. All the integrators'' bodies would turn into beasts on a certain level. It would even affect one''s soul slowly, causing the integrators to lose their human nature gradually. "The sixth issue would be that as soon as the foreign integration of the Godhead is successful, there''s no way of removing it or replacing it with another Godhead. "Because of all these disadvantages, the integration of the Godhead to get to virtual god-level only blew up for a while and people soon stopped trying. However, many organizations got quite a substantial reward for this experiment when they made over 20 virtual god-level powerhouses." "Only over 20 people succeeded out of the thousands of people who tried?" Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard that revelation. The success rate was incredibly low. "Apart from the integration of the Godhead, some organizations found another way to make Virtual Gods. They interacted with True Gods from another world and got the True God to send his will to modify potential cultivators with Divine Power. They would elevate the cultivator''s combat strength to perfect-stage imperial-level purple gold-rank directly and modify their bodies and souls so that they could take in the Divine Power. They would then break through by cultivating with god-level methods. "This is just like how Saints and the Purple Crow do it! But it then became a technique for True Gods to obtain a puppet. "No matter what, there are around 30 people who have reached virtual god-level with all sorts of techniques. However, their combat strength basically stayed within Virtual God rank-3. They''re just kids to me." 1028 A Story of the Pas "The new era that you guys are currently in is so much more fortunate than our time. During the old era, cultivators had to figure things out blindly on their own. Aside from killing monsters to elevate, only the elite class of society had the opportunity to get their hands on the most basic methods. "I was in great luck back then. Due to my extraordinary talent, I was recruited into a special unit when I joined the army and I was taught the Army Attack Tactics. That was how I set foot on the cultivation path. However, most people had no such opportunity during my time. "Methods were only promoted widely over 1,000 years since the old era began. Due to more and more sects and increasing competition of sources, many sects changed the disciple model they had because of the increasing need for new blood. They began releasing their very own sect cultivation methods for beginners within the range of their territory, taking young people who passed the requirements into their sect. However, although the methods from the ancient ruins were simple, there were certain requirements which are high. "Even though the catastrophe that happened over eight centuries ago was the peak of the old era, the number of cultivators was just 1% among the ordinary people. There were much fewer cultivators and even fewer peak-stage powerhouses in the past compared to now. "This has also caused the exploration efficiency in all the sites to be much lower than before and there are few resources that can be gained. Moreover, there was no ruins back then. It was a by-product of the opening of Virtual Eye. "The old era existed for over 5,500 years and only less than 30 Virtual Gods were born. Almost half of them entered the ruins after breaking through to Virtual God and they never came back. I was the leader of a major organization back then and in 1,000 years, I cultivated all the way to Virtual God rank-6, but I couldn''t find a descendant that I''m satisfied with. I encountered little Mo Kui later on and didn''t make it to the ruins. "Your senior brother, Mo Kui, was gifted. He spent less than 200 years cultivating from an ordinary person to virtual god-level. I spent about 15 times longer to become a Virtual God compared to him. Later on, he spent less than 50 years getting to Virtual God rank-6. Fortunately, I learned quite some stuff from training him. I''d elevated to Virtual God rank-8 when he got to Virtual God rank-6. Otherwise, he almost surpassed me. "Many Virtual Gods went to the ruins in order to break through further. Your senior brother was tempted to go as well when he had just broken through to virtual god-level. I told him that he could only go if he surpassed my combat strength. He began cultivating diligently, but in the end, he didn''t surpass my combat strength. "Back then, nobody knew that Godheads which were left behind by ancient powerhouses could be integrated. Even if they had known, nobody would have performed the integration. Although many people powerhouses failed the Godhead consolidation and were downgraded to demigods, the chances of breaking through to virtual god-level was not as slim as it is now. "Furthermore, since half of the Virtual Gods have gotten to the ruins, only very few local Virtual Gods were left. Only 13 Virtual Gods participated in the war over 800 years ago, including your senior brother and I. And among the 13 Virtual Gods who participated in the war, I was the only one who survived," Mr. Fu shed the story of the past slowly. That also made Lin Huang understand how a virtual god-level God''s Servant and a few virtual god-level God''s Subordinates managed to turn the entire world upside down with merely a drop of True God''s blood in their body. The old era that Mr. Fu had been in should not have developed to its peak. The most it did was to develop to early middle-stage. Moreover, half of the top powerhouses were away, causing their battle power to dwindle. The catastrophe over 800 years ago coincidentally happened when the world was at its weakest. In turn, many cultivators to die while the cultivation system that the era had just built not long ago collapsed completely. Lin Huang asked about some details after Mr. Fu finished with his story. He thought of God Bless all of a sudden and could not help but ask, "Master, have you heard of God Bless?" "I''ve heard of it a long time ago. There was indeed such an organization when we were just building the three core zones. I didn''t hear about them later on. I think maybe they were dismissed a long time ago. Why do you ask?" "God Bless isn''t dismissed," Lin Huang told Mr. Fu the information that he heard, "I suspect that they used the Union Government''s name to attack you guys in the ruins." "If it''s really as you said, and the Union Government really has been penetrated, it''s really possible that they did it. No wonder the two Virtual Gods who fought us had an unfamiliar aura. I had no idea who they were at all." "Two Virtual Gods attacked you back then?!" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that revelation. He remembered Liu Ming telling him that Mr. Fu had been attacked by a few demigods. "Do you think that demigods have the ability to harm me? No matter what, my combat strength is on Virtual God rank-8 after all. Even though I''ve lost everything now, I''d at least maintain a Virtual God rank-6 standard. If I didn''t have to seal that God''s Servant back then, almost draining all of my Divine Power, I would''ve killed the two Virtual Gods who attacked me sneakily as easy as pie! "I told Liu Ming I was attacked by demigods because you guys didn''t know there are other Virtual Gods in this world at all. It was unnecessary to tell you guys that." "In this world, don''t even mention demigods, but I''m not even afraid of those people who''ve elevated to Virtual God using a Godhead. The most they can get is just Virtual God rank-3. What I''m afraid of are the Saint''s god and the Crow God of the Purple Crow''s True God substitutes. The reason is that their substitutes could grow to Virtual God rank-6 or even higher." "Don''t worry about the Crow God. The Crow God Ceremony which happened earlier failed. Someone took the eye and the Crow Spirit away. Nobody knows when the Crow God''s will come again," Lin Huang said while smiling. "Where did you hear about this? From Dynasty?" Mr. Fu was rather surprised. "I was there when it happened. I took the Crow Spirit but someone else took the eye." Lin Huang smirked. Mr. Fu was rendered speechless. He did not expect his disciple to turn out so extraordinary. "I''ll use Dynasty''s intel system to check on God Bless. Dynasty has two Virtual Gods, which are a secret, so you don''t have to worry about me." After he was done chatting with Mr. Fu, Lin Huang contacted Yi Yeyu and his other old friends. He also contacted Tan Lang and his other acquaintances at the Heaven Alliance from back then. They were surprised by Lin Huang''s new identity. However, they were just merely surprised. They did not comment on anything in the union organization''s shoes. Instead, they just teased him, calling him the underground boss, and asked about the reason for his new identity later on. Lin Huang only gave them a simple explanation. He did not mention Royal and only said that the Royal Trials was Dynasty''s special assessment to choose their Emperor. He passed the trial and became the Emperor which was out of everyone''s expectations. After all, Royal was a secret that only Dynasty''s upper echelon knew about. Learning about that was not beneficial to Yi Zheng and the rest. If he told them and they spilled the beans accidentally, Dynasty might come after them. After chatting with his old friends, Lin Huang found out that Huang Tianpu had been waiting outside the Emperor''s Palace without even realizing it. He sat back onto the throne and waved as the doors of the Emperor''s Palace opened and Huang Tianpu walked in slowly. 1029 Congratulations, You’ve Obtained An Affiliate — Dynasty Huang Tianpu walked to Lin Huang slowly. "Master Emperor, about Royal''s affiliation" "Alright, I''ll activate the authorization now," Lin Huang responded. Ever since the first Emperor died, Dynasty had always been in inactive mode on Royal''s affiliation list. He took out the Royal Token and clicked on the affiliates'' page. When he found Dynasty on the page, Lin Huang clicked on the ''activate'' button. "Are you sure you want to activate the grade-1 organization No. D000857142? After it''s activated, the organization will become your affiliate automatically." "Yes!" Lin Huang clicked on the button right away. "Grade-1 organization No. D000857142 Dynasty has been activated. Congratulations, member Lin Huang, you''ve obtained an affiliate Dynasty. You can learn more about the affiliate by clicking into the affiliate option on your personal page." Just when Lin Huang was done with that, a notification popped up on Huang Tianpu''s Emperor''s Heart Ring all of a sudden. He opened it immediately to see a notification from Royal. "Grade-1 organization No. D000857142 Dynasty, your affiliate, now belongs to Rank-A member Lin Huang! "Congratulations, Dynasty! Your affiliate''s authority level has been advanced from Rank-C to Rank-A!" Almost at the same time, the same notification was sent to Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring too. He could not help but arch his brow when he skimmed through the message. "Oh, wow! I can''t believe it''s connected to my Emperor''s Heart Ring!" In reality, all of Dynasty''s upper echelon received the same notification at the same time when both of them did. Not only was the affiliate''s authorization activated, but it was also boosted from Rank-C to Rank-A, much to the relief of Huang Tianpu and the other demigods. Apart from the three Grand Dukes who knew about Lin Huang''s authorization rank, the rest of the upper echelon were excited to see the boost of an affiliate''s authorization. "Thank you, Master Emperor, for solving Dynasty''s burning crisis!" Huang Tianpu thanked him immediately. "Dynasty is my affiliate now. I won''t shortchange you guys of a single credit point in regards to the benefits you deserve. However, I hope that you guys can give all of your efforts. Don''t do anything that I don''t want you to do behind my back." Lin Huang gave Huang Tianpu an earful again. Huang Tianpu nodded all the way and left after that short speech. After he left, Lin Huang tapped on the token to project his personal page. "Member: Lin Huang "Gender: Male "Age: 18 (turning 19 after the 8th of August) "Authorization: Rank-A "Qualification Assessment: Grade-A "Combat Strength: Immortal-level Rank-10 (candidate''s cultivation system''s standard) "Personal Trading Points: 1,632,831 "Affiliate Organization: Dynasty (Grade-1) "Remarks: You accumulated more than a million points in the Rank-D Royal Trials and attained a perfect qualification in the assessment. You''re given Rank-A Royalty authorization!" The information on the personal page was simple. Lin Huang only glanced through it roughly and clicked the affiliate option open. Another page popped up. "Dynasty (Owner: Lin Huang) "Organization Grade: Grade-1 "Organization Authorization: Rank-A "Member List: Huang Baiyu, Huang Haoyang, Huang Tianpu, Huang Wunan, Huang Tufu" Lin Huang studied the details immediately when he saw the organization grade. "The organization grade is only grade-1? How does the grading system work?" "Organization Grades "Grade-0: No Virtual God. "Grade-1: Has one or more Virtual Gods and less than 100 Virtual Gods. "Grade-2: Has one or more True Gods. If there''s no True God, grade-2 is assigned if there are more than 100 Virtual Gods. "Grade-3: Has one or more Heavenly God. If there''s no Heavenly God, grade-3 is assigned if there are more than 100 True Gods. "Grade-4: Has one or more half-step Lords and above 20 Heavenly Gods." "Grade-5: Has one or more Lords." Lin Huang was speechless after reading it. "Alright then, so there are no grade-2 organizations in this world at all at the moment if they grade it like that." "Huang Baiyu, Huang Haoyang?" Lin Huang proceeded to read. He was surprised to see the first and the second names on the list, but he soon found out who the duo was. "I guess this list goes by one''s combat strength." Although he heard Huang Tianpu mention Dynasty having two Virtual Gods, he did not specify their names. Now, it seemed like the duo was Huang Baiyu and Huang Haoyang who were on the list. Lin Huang began reading the duo''s personal details immediately. "Huang Baiyu (Real Name: Bai Yu) "Gender: Male "Age: 721 "Qualification Assessment: Grade-B "Combat Strength" Virtual God-level (rank-3) "Organization: Dynasty (Grade-1) "Personal Trading Points: 3,581 "Biography (click here for details)" "Huang Haoyang (Real Name: Zhou Haoyang) "Gender: Male "Age: 811 "Qualification Assessment: Grade-C "Combat Strength" Virtual God-level (rank-2) "Organization: Dynasty (Grade-1) "Personal Trading Points: 2,317 "Biography (click here for details)" "They''re really on virtual god-level!" Lin Huang confirmed his speculation when he saw the duo''s combat strength. However, he was confused. "Why do they have trading points as well?" He clicked on the points and saw the explanation. "The owner of the organization will obtain commission points from points affiliate members have obtained in missions or hunts in the trial zones. "Condition for commission: 5% for Rank-D members; 10% for Rank-C members; 20% for Rank-B members; 30 for Rank-A members (The commission comes from extra points and doesn''t affect the affiliate members'' points) "Remarks: The points affiliate members have obtained can only be used to trade in the affiliate market and not in the Royal Market. The reward points the organization owner obtained won''t be restricted to the source of the points. The points can be used in the Royal Market." Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he read the conditions. "Not only will I be able to earn points, but I can also get my organization members to earn points for me too! Although the most I can get from each of them is 30%, it''ll be a lot when hundreds of thousands of them add up together. If that''s the case, wouldn''t it be better if I have more organizations under me?" "If I''m not mistaken, Royal should have a limit on the number of member affiliate organizations." Bloody stretched its head slowly to peek out of Lin Huang''s sleeve. Lin Huang nodded and went back to his personal page. Then, he began reading the restrictions. Soon, he found the description of the affiliate organization. "Number of affiliates allowed for Rank-D members: 1; Number of affiliates allowed for Rank-C members: 3; Number of affiliates allowed for Rank-B members: 10; Number of affiliates allowed for Rank-A members: 30. "As expected, there''s a limit on the number. That''s why the Royalties prefer to train affiliate organizations of a higher rank. The higher the rank of the affiliate, the more points they can earn." After reading the description of the affiliate, Lin Huang began reading other restrictions that applied to him. 1030 Lin Huang, I’ve Finally Found You! "Royalties of different authority levels are allowed to enter the trial zones as follows: "Rank-D members: Permission to enter any grade-0 trial zones, 100 grade-1 trial zones, and 10 grade-2 trial zones. "Rank-C members: Permission to enter any grade-0 and grade-1 trial zones, and 50 grade-2 trial zones. "Rank-B members: Permission to enter any grade-0 to grade-2 trial zones, and 30 grade-3 trial zones. "Rank-A members: Permission to enter any grade-0 to grade-3 trial zones, 30 grade-4 trial zones, 10 grade-5 trial zones, and 10 great world trial zones." "Royalties of affiliate organizations of different authority levels are allowed to open the trial zones as follows: "Rank-D members: Permission to open 20 grade-0 trial zones and 5 grade-1 trial zones. "Rank-C members: Permission to open 50 grade-0 trial zones, 15 grade-1 trial zones, and 3 grade-2 trial zones. "Rank-B members: Permission to open 100 grade-0 trial zones, 30 grade-1 trial zones, 10 grade-2 trial zones, and 3 grade-3 trial zones. "Rank-A members: Permission to open any grade-0 trial zones, 80 grade-1 trial zones, 20 grade-2 trial zones, 10 grade-3 trial zones, 3 grade-4 trial zones, 1 grade-5 trial zone, and 1 great world trial zone." "The so-called Royal trial zone is what we usually call the ruins and war sites. Looking at the trial zones they own, this organization is terrifyingly massive. No wonder Dynasty developed so rapidly!" Lin Huang finally found out the root reason of how Dynasty managed to rise to become an underground organization giant after reading the information. The first Emperor Huang Tianyu had Rank-C authority which meant that Dynasty could open 50 grade-0 trial zones, 15 grade-1 trial zones, and three grade-2 trial zones. During his time, the Union Government had just been founded for less than three centuries while many other organizations had just started. The number of trial zones might exceed the number of ruins and sites that were opened by all the organizations added up in the entire gravel world back then. "If Huang Tianyu stayed put 300 years ago to develop Dynasty obediently instead of getting himself killed in the great world, Dynasty might''ve replaced the Union Government and become the No. 1 organization in the entire world." Now that Lin Huang had become the Emperor, the benefits that he brought Dynasty was tens of times more compared to during Huang Tianyu''s reign. He could open any grade-0 trial zone. In addition to that, the number of trial zones he could open was way more than all the ruins and sites that were now open in the entire gravel world. He could open 80 grade-1 trial zones while there were only ten grade-6 forbidden areas in the entire world which were on the same level as a grade-1 trial zone. Meanwhile, the 20 grade-2 trial zones that he could open were comparable with grade-7 forbidden areas in the gravel world. There were merely four grade-7 forbidden areas known to the public at the moment. "You''ll gain more benefits as a Royalty. The number of trial zones that you''re permitted to enter has exceeded the number of trial zones you can open by heaps." Bloody also saw the content projected by Lin Huang''s identity token. After spending some time studying his authority, Lin Huang then tapped open the affiliate organization option and began browsing through the member list. He was not kidding when he said he wanted to lead a reformation in Dynasty earlier. The details of each members'' lives on the list provided by Royal were out of his expectations. He could learn everything about everyone, including what they had done each year. The list even contained details of when they wet their bed, when they had intercourse for the first time, how many girlfriends they had in the past Everything was recorded in detail. Lin Huang was wondering how they recorded such odd information when he first read it. Later on, the stone tablet reminded him and made him realize that there were some detective god items with terrifying capacities. Looking at the list, Lin Huang did not just find out who the other organization''s spies were easily, but he even found out who lost their humanity completely and did some inhumane things. As Lin Huang and Bloody were arranging the information of the Dynasty members, a bruised corpse was staring at the Heart Network headlines in a dark room far away in Division 2. His face turned gravely ferocious when he saw Lin Huang''s young face. "Lin Huang, I''ve finally found you! So, you''ve been hiding in Division 1! I''ll go to Division 1 now. I''ll find you, capture you alive and slice every inch of your skin with a knife. I''ll chop off your limbs and marinade them. After I''m done with the physical torture, I''ll take your soul out and torture it every day." The bruised corpse stood up after he smashed the coffee table before him to dust. He was over three meters tall and the aura from him was so powerful that it was terrifying. A middle-aged man in a black suit who was dressed as a housekeeper saw everything happening in the room through a transparent one-way glass outside. He called a number after opening the communication page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "Grandmistress, he saw Lin Huang''s news." "Hold him down. I''ll be right there." A lady''s voice came from the other side of the communication device. "Let me go, housekeeper. I''m going Division 1 to look for Lin Huang!" The corpse punched the glass as he knew that the housekeeper was just behind the glass. "Young master, please be patient. Grandmistress will be right here." The expression on the housekeeper''s face was calm. He did not seem worried that the person would break the glass at all. "Let me go!" The bruised corpse banged on the one-way glass even harder now as ripples spread like water on the surface of the glass. "Young master, there''s no rush. Grandmistress will be right here. You can tell her that you''re going to Division 1." "I''ll tell you one more time, housekeeper. Let me go!" The bruised corpse stopped banging temporarily while his bloody eyes glared dangerously at the housekeeper on the other side of the glass. Although the housekeeper knew he could not see him, he could not help but take a step back. "Young master, you know I can''t do that." "Then, I''ll kill you! I''ve despised you since the beginning!" The corpse punched the glass frantically again and again. Within a moment, he released up to 1,000 blows. The continuous punches on the glass made the surface ripple like ocean waves. It was not the effect of the glass. Although the glass was extracted from a demigod-level monster, the restrictive layer covering the glass was what made the glass highly defensive. It was the grandmistress who had set it up herself. The housekeeper frowned slightly as he watched the layers of waves undulate on the surface of the glass. The strength of the bruised corpse went beyond his expectations. In the span of a few breaths, the bruised corpse punched the glass up to ten thousand times. The waves on the defense layer were getting more and more frequent. Suddenly, a soft crack echoed. A tiny fissure appeared on the one-way transparent glass. The bruised corpse paused what he saw that and he let out a ferocious grin toward the housekeeper on the other side. He then continued to strike. A lady''s voice came out of thin air as spider web-like cracks appeared on the glass. A purple silhouette appeared next to the housekeeper silently. "Shan Er, you''ve disobeyed me again!" 1031 Killing and Fighting Doesnst Suit My Elegance "Mother" The bruised corpse stopped moving and hitting the transparent glass. At the moment, the door opened slowly while a lady in lilac walked in. The lady looked like she was in her early 30''s and she carried the immature vibe of a young girl. The door closed automatically as soon as she stepped in. The bruised corpse seemed fearful when he looked at the lady. He hesitated for a moment and mustered his courage to speak, "Mother, you promised that you''ll release me to take revenge on Lin Huang when I''ve integrated with this spirit''s body. Now that I''ve perfectly integrated this body and found where Lin Huang is, I must go to Division 1 to take my revenge!" "Shan Er, I did promise you that." The lady in lilac sat down at the couch and patted the seat next to her, gesturing to her son to sit. The bruised corpse took a step out and soon reached the couch. He sat on the couch and turned his head to look at the lady in lilac, waiting for her response. "But the situation is different now compared to the past," the lady continued to speak, "Lin Huang was nobody back then. Even if he was talented and gifted, he couldn''t do anything significant alone. "But now he''s the Emperor of Dynasty. He''s an underground boss that many respect. He has two god items which are the Emperor''s Palace and the Star Titan as well as two Virtual Gods who are secretly protecting him. Killing him is as difficult as reaching for the stars. "Moreover, the mission in Division 3 earlier failed. Now, the Purple Crow is looking for me because of God Bless. It''s not the time to be stirring things up and gain another powerful enemy." "God Bless isn''t afraid of Dynasty and the Purple Crow anyway. What can they do even if the two organizations are to team up?!" The bruised corpse was still reluctant to give in. "The Purple Crow and Dynasty aren''t as simple as they look. The Purple Crow has its Crow God. Although the Crow God is just a True God, he has the Hundred-eyed Dark Crow tribe supporting him. The organization behind Dynasty is even more complicated. They have Royal, the top organization in the great world, supporting them. Even Master God is afraid of them." "So, Mother, are you saying I can''t take revenge on Lin Huang who killed me and my daughter, Lily?" The bruised corpse balled his fists. "I''m just asking you to be patient for now. When Master God returns later, that will be the time God Bless rules the world! By then, no matter whether it''s the Purple Crow, Dynasty or even the Hunter Association and the Union Government, they will just be meat on our chopping board!" "Mother, I was being reckless." The corpse calmed down after listening. After they chatted for a while, the lady in lilac set up the restrictions in the room again before leaving. She closed the door and walked to the window. She looked at her son through the glass with a cold expression. "Monitor him. Let me know immediately as soon as he loses control." "Yes." The housekeeper nodded with a calm face on. The bruised corpse sat on the couch while looking at the floor with his head down in silence. After the lady in lilac left a long time later, a ferocious gleam flashed through his eyes. "Looking at the personal information details, there are a total of 11 people who are spies from other organizations. Two of them came from God Bless. "A total of 23 of them lost their humanity. They killed and carried out massacres for fun. These 23 people are extremely sick with severe tendencies against humanity. Even their mindset has derailed from an ordinary human''s mindset. Rules and punishments alone can''t fix them. "Following the Union Government''s criminal standards, there are 12,583 people who have committed two or more felonies. Although they''re more or less sick, they''re still treatable. I personally suggest rehabilitating them with rules, punishment, and rewards. "There are 21,418 people who have committed a felony once. Most of them are fine while a majority of them regretted what they did. "The rest are just people with tiny issues, including some mutants who are pretty much alright. We can train these bunch of people right away." "Categorize the list for me. You might be working a lot in the next few days to come up with rules and regulations as well as a reward and punishment system for Dynasty." Lin Huang delegated the responsibility directly. "Tell me what you need and I''ll get it for you!" "The list will be completed immediately. I need the Union Government, the Hunter Association, Adventurer Paradise, the Heretics and Dynasty''s full rules and regulations as well as their rewards and punishments systems. Also, I need Grimace''s help." Bloody dragged Grimace into it gleefully. "Oh yeah, I need mint candy and chocolates too." "Sure." Lin Huang snapped his finger and summoned Grimace. Upon hearing that Lin Huang wanted him to help Bloody with Dynasty''s new conditions, Grimace scowled. "Why do I have to do clerical work? Isn''t Bloody enough for the job?" "I''ll elevate you right away when you''re done helping Bloody with this." "Deal!" Grimace agreed almost without hesitation. "To be honest, clerical work is my favorite. Killing and fighting don''t suit my elegance at all." Lin Huang called the guards at the entrance of the Emperor''s Palace after arranging work for Bloody and Grimace. "Master Emperor, are there any orders for us?" "I need the Union Government, the Hunter Association, Adventurer Paradise, the Heretics and Dynasty''s full rules and regulations systems. Also, a tonne of chocolate and a tonne of mint candy. It''s best if you can gather all that today." Lin Huang distributed the list of materials that he needed to elevate his imperial monsters as he was done speaking. "This list of materials too. Gather as many of them as you can for me. You don''t necessarily have to get this by today, but the sooner, the better." The guards were stunned for a moment as they skimmed through the copy of the list. They nodded immediately. "We''ll get it done for you right away." Within less than half an hour after the guards left, the chocolates and mint candy that Bloody had asked for were served. Huang Tianpu sent the rules and regulations as well as the reward and punishment system from the selected organizations over. In the meantime, Bloody and Grimace began working. Meanwhile, Lin Huang summoned four imperial monsters including Bloody Robe, the Eclipse Boa, the Death Knight, and the Fallen Knight. He found a place in the Emperor''s Palace and began the elevation of his four imperial monsters with Advance Cards and the materials he had gathered. Soon, the four imperial monsters turned into four golden eggs. Although it was the Emperor''s Palace where nobody could come in theoretically, Lin Huang summoned his God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Divine Sun Tree, to guard them anyway after he left. In the middle of the night at Division 2, a bruised corpse sat on the couch in a dark room. He grinned abruptly. "That damn housekeeper has finally left!" He stood up slowly and looked at the middle-aged man sitting in the observatory through the glass. Although he could not see anything on the other side of the glass while the room had restrictions on his Territory skill, nobody knew he had comprehended Divine Telekinesis which allowed him to detect everything out there. The middle-aged man experienced goosebumps when he saw the bruised corpse stand up and stare at him. When he took a step to his left, the corpse''s eyes moved to the left too. He took two steps to the right and the corpse''s eyes followed. "Didn''t the housekeeper say this transparent glass is one-way? Why does it feel like he can see me?" The middle-aged man frowned slightly. A voice came to his ears when he was going to report the odd event to the housekeeper. "Look into my eyes" As if he was hypnotized, the middle-aged demigod lifted his head and locked eyes with the bruised corpse. Circles of waves seemed to be activated in the bruised corpse''s eyes as the man seemed lost as he froze. "Open the door for me," the bruised corpse ordered. The middle-aged demigod walked to the door like a zombie and opened the door with a key. The corpse opened the door and revealed a ferocious grin. He pressed his hand against the middle-aged demigod''s head. With a tight squeeze, the middle-aged demigod''s head exploded like a watermelon tossed from the sky. White and bloody mush splattered all over the wall. The bruised corpse withdrew his hand and licked his palm that was filled with blood and brain juice. "Delicious!" After licking his palm clean, he charged ahead and crushed layers of ceiling plaster before vanishing into the sky. The housekeeper appeared silently next to the headless body whose head had exploded. He revealed a smirk with a calm face as he looked at the broken ceiling. He fell into silence for a moment while squinting. He turned his communication page on and dialed a number. His expression and tone turned frantic as he panted, "Oh no, Grandmistress, Young Master has escaped!" 1032 Implementing New Rules Lin Huang''s identity was exposed on the second day of the coronation. He came from Division 7 and was 19 years of age (not calculated according to his actual date of birth). He was the direct disciple of a virtual god-level powerhouse, Mr. Fu. Apart from that, he was both a sword cultivator and an Imperial Censor. He joined the Purple Crow training camp for a short time and escaped by faking his death. He was not educated, but he was once a teacher at Martial Hunter College''s Sword Dao in the White Capital City of Division 7. He had a sister whose name was Lin Xin. Ever since she dropped out of a foundation institute, she had been missing for close to three years. According to reliable sources, Lin Xin had a fake identity called Ling Xue. She used to study at Martial Hunter College in the White Capital City of Division 7. She graduated with perfect scores and became the college firearms teacher. She went missing again a few days ago. Looking at Lin Xin''s situation, Lin Huang most probably had a fake identity too. Besides Lin Huang, Lin Xin''s identity was exposed too. Even her fake identity was exposed since she did not disguise herself. Because Lin Huang disguised as Lin Xie with another appearance, that identity of his had yet to be exposed at the moment. People were talking about the exposed information on Lin Huang on the Heart Network. "It seems like Lin Huang isn''t that special apart from being a Virtual God''s disciple. Maybe Dynasty gave the Virtual God face, so they appointed Lin Huang as the Emperor." "Looking at the record, his sister is even better than him. At least, she''s educated. She even graduated from college with perfect scores." "I''ve got a better record than he does. At least, I went to college!" "He didn''t even go to college. How dare he work as a teacher at the Martial Hunter College? I bet he must''ve gone in through the back door!" "This newly appointment Emperor is horrible. He even joined the Purple Crow before? And faked his death to escape? I bet he was kicked out for his incompetence!" Lin Huang did not even look at the comments on the Heart Network as he had been busy the past few days. Within two days, Bloody and Grimace worked together and came up with brand new rules and regulations as well as a reward and punishment system based on the systems of other organizations. Dynasty''s original system was ditched while the new one was based on the Heretics'' system as the framework. Many contents and details were added in after Bloody and Grimace put almost everything into consideration. Most of the added contents were based on the Hunter Association. Lin Huang wanted to create a neutral organization similar to the Heretics but with a better system. It resembled the Hunter Association too but with more freedom and variety. The new rules and regulations fit Lin Huang''s requirements perfectly. Apart from the rules and regulations, there was a set of policies, especially for punishments and rewards. The set of policies was comprehensive too. One of them was the trial zone leaderboard that happened once a month. Those who ranked on top would be given different rewards. The leaderboard was set up to encourage everyone to obtain points in trial zones as much as they could. Also, Bloody copied the Hunter Association and set up an exclusive mission zone. There would be specialists looking after the mission zone whereby people could accept and even create missions. The more difficult and higher the level of mission, the more effort the challengers needed to put in as well as the more rewards they would obtain. Apart from that, Bloody even set up a trading market in Dynasty. There, Dynasty members could trade the extra resources they had with Royal points. They could trade Life Crystals or other items too. After reading everything Bloody prepared, Lin Huang provided very few suggestions for amendment before sending the brand new rules and regulations and reward and punishment system to Huang Tianpu. Initially, Huang Tianpu thought Lin Huang''s new system would be strict. However, he realized there was even more freedom compared to the old Dynasty rules. He only applied some restrictions on killing. Moreover, the details of each rule and regulation were comprehensive whereby almost every possibility was listed. No thinking was needed in applying the punishment in the system since each offense stated the handling details. If not for the traces of the Heretics and the Hunter Association''s rules in the system, Huang Tianpu might have thought that Lin Huang copied this set of policies somewhere. Meanwhile, Huang Tianpu''s eyes lit up when he saw the reward and punishment system, especially the trial zone leaderboard which rewards were handsome. He then looked at the mission zone and trading market Bloody had suggested setting up. A shiver of delight ran up his spine to see that. He was a little worried that Lin Huang might mess things up after he was appointed. However, he realized that Dynasty would grow even stronger with all the new setup. He gathered Huang Wunan, Huang Tufu and the other upper echelons of Dynasty for a meeting. They spent the afternoon reading the new system Lin Huang provided thoroughly. None of them had any objections. All of them nodded and agreed to the new system. They could not help but exclaim, "It seems like we''ve really found a great Emperor!" The new system was announced right after the approval of the upper echelons. The mission zone and the trading market were set up immediately too. As for the points leaderboard, Lin Huang linked Dynasty''s leaderboard data directly and opened another leaderboard from that. The leaderboard appeared in the Emperor''s Heart Ring''s projected page option of all the Dynasty members. After he was done setting up the leaderboard, he then sent the list of 11 spies and 23 psychos Bloody had compiled for him to Huang Tianpu. He attached a note. "The 34 names on the list are all spies. Kill all of them and send their bodies to me." Huang Tianpu only glanced at the list and knew Lin Huang wanted to take the opportunity to get rid of the spies and those who had lost their humanity altogether. He said nothing and cascaded the order down. Before the sky turned dark, the 34 bodies were sent to the Emperor''s Palace. Lin Huang summoned the Undead Styx and refined the 34 bodies into corpse puppets right in front of the person who sent the bodies over. The person who sent the bodies was a demigod. He was Huang Tianpu''s trusted subordinate. After watching that scene, his back was drenched in cold sweat. He told Huang Tianpu about it later on in confidence and the latter only smiled about it. "Follow what Master Emperor said and spread the news. Tell people that Master Emperor has refined 34 spies into corpse puppets." "Spread the news Wouldn''t Master Emperor come after me?" "No, he did it in front of you on purpose so that you would spread it out to scare those guys who are against the new system. This is why he only gave me the name list after announcing the new system." Huang Tianpu knew how Lin Huang thought. "Understood." The person who sent the bodies nodded and left. In less than half a day, the news of Lin Huang refining spies into corpse puppets spread through the entire Dynasty, terrifying many. "He killed them and even refined them into corpse puppets. This new Emperor of ours is merciless!" "I''m afraid not all 34 of them were spies!" "It seems like Master Emperor is determined to implement the new system!" Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction hearing that the news spread out. "Huang Tianpu and the rest support this with full enthusiasm. With the warning, I think there won''t be many obstacles in implementing the new system." 1033 Dynasty’s Treasure After Grimace helped Bloody with the rules and regulations as well as the reward and punishment system for Dynasty, Lin Huang fulfilled his promise and elevated Grimace with the materials and Advance Cards that he had prepared beforehand. Looking at the golden egg protecting Grimace, Lin Huang looked at the remaining Monster Cards he had. "Since Grimace and the rest have elevated, including Kylie, Tyrant and the rest as well as the four Bug Tribe Queen Mothers which are on mythical-level since the beginning, I have 14 summoning beasts that I can''t use at the moment. Out of the monsters I can use, I only have a total of 18 imperial monsters which are Lancelot, Killer, the Evil Dominator, Thunder, the Fiend, the Imp, Warlord, Bloody, Bing Wang, the Witch, the two Dark Crescent Snakes as well as the two Titan Boas, the two Ghastly Spider Ladies and the Ghoul Lynx (excluding the thousands of Bug Servants) that I''ve obtained earlier. They''re enough for now." Initially, Lin Huang thought he would elevate the Viridian Wolf and the rest to make up the quota if he had insufficient imperial monsters. It seemed like there was no need to do that for the time being. He only had 15 summoning slots. Naturally, 18 imperial monsters were enough. However, after he gathered the materials and elevated his next batch of imperial monsters, he would have less than 15 imperial monsters to summon. It would not be too late to consider elevating the Viridian Wolf and the rest by then. After putting the bunch of Monster Cards in his hand away, Lin Huang looked at his 32 broken Godhead Cards. He had extracted them from the demigods he had killed in the third layer of the Abyss Brink earlier. Initially, he thought that those broken Godheads were useless. He began collecting them since the stone tablet told him that they could be refined into Life Palaces with Divine Fire. "Old Rocky, how many broken Godheads do you think I need to refine the Life Palaces?" "I''m not too sure about that since nobody has ever refined broken Godheads into Life Palaces before. I can''t advise you if there''s no historical data that I can refer to. However, I think you''ll just have to use the same amount of broken Godheads to refine the same amount of Life Palaces until your body is full," said the stone tablet after a moment of silence. "Are you sure there won''t be any issues as a result?" Lin Huang was slightly skeptical after hearing that nobody had ever done that before. "It shouldn''t be a problem theoretically," added the stone tablet after it was done speaking, "But if something really happens, I can extract those broken Godheads from your body." "Alright then." Although it sounded unreliable, Lin Huang decided to take the risk. "If that''s the case, the more I gather, the better. Dynasty''s treasure hold must have quite a number of those. I must take a look." Lin Huang contacted Huang Tianfu immediately as he thought of this. He requested to visit the treasure hold. Huang Tianfu had no objection and agreed right away. In less than three minutes after the call ended, Huang Tianfu arrived before the Emperor''s Palace. Lin Huang waved his hand to open the door while Huang Tianfu walked in. "Aren''t we going to the treasure hold?" Lin Huang was surprised. "Our treasure isn''t in Emperor City but in an alternate dimension," Huang Tianfu smiled while explaining, "Master bought it from the Royal Market especially as a coded storage space." Lin Huang was even more astonished to hear that. There was treasure available at the Royal Market?! And it was coded?! "So, how do we get there?" "The entrance is approximately 3,000 meters right beneath the throne," Huang Tianfu explained further, "Master set the entrance beneath the Emperor''s Palace intentionally for safety purposes." "I can understand that." Not only was it coded, but the entrance was also located beneath the Emperor''s Palace, which provided double protection. "So, how do we get there?" he repeated his question. He understood that but he had no idea how would they go underground. "Just give the weapon spirit of the Emperor''s Palace your order directly. Tell him that you''re going to the treasure hold and he''ll send us there." "I see." Lin Huang interacted with the weapon spirit immediately. "Send us to the treasure hold." The platform under the throne experienced a tremor. Huang Tianfu stepped out and stood on the platform too. In the next second, the entire platform began dropping rapidly like an elevator. After over a minute of being plunged into darkness, with a resounding thud, the platform finally landed on a flatland deep underground. Lin Huang saw massive golden doors looming less than 100 meters from the platform. The doors were completely a dark amber shade and were approximately 10 meters tall but they were locked with golden shackles as thick as a human thigh. "Do you have the key?" Lin Huang turned around and looked at Huang Tianfu expectantly. "Under normal circumstances, we''d need to apply to visit 24 hours ahead. The application has to be sent by the three Grand Dukes with less than three minutes'' gap in between the visits. After the application has been sent, the three of us would receive a different code. The next day after the 24 hours have passed, the three applicants would have to arrive at the entrance of the treasure hold at the same time and key in the accurate codes. The dimensional portal would verify our identities automatically, and the dimensional portal would only open if our identities are accurate. If the number of people, the identity verification or codes are inaccurate, the doors won''t open. "However, since you''re the new Emperor now, all you need to do is show your Royal Token. Your identity token has bound all the authority you have with Dynasty. The coded space is a part of Dynasty too, so you have the authority. The dimensional portal will scan your identity as soon as you show your token and your entry will be granted," Huang Tianfu explained in detail. "That''s really strict!" Lin Huang could not help but tease. He then took out his Royal Token. As soon as the token was revealed, the thousands of sigils on the amber doors began swirling rapidly. They consolidated into an eye within the span of two to three breaths. As the eye opened, a white glow shot out and covered the token in Lin Huang''s hand. The token then hovered in the air automatically. A moment later, a golden glow darted from the token into the eye. The eye closed slowly as if it was falling asleep. The amber doors turned to become dazzling gold as if they were fully charged. The shackles that were tied around the doors began fading one after another. A moment after the shackles vanished, the sigils on the doors transformed again and there were now two arms on the left and the right doors respectively. Subsequently, the doors opened slowly. They seemed to be pushed by a pair of invisible hands slowly. As the doors opened completely, the identity token turned into a golden stream of light and landed back into Lin Huang''s hand. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang put the token away and walked in slowly. Huang Tianfu followed closely behind him. As the duo walked in single file, the doors closed again slowly. The pair of hands solidified on the doors and turned back into the sigils like before while the shackles locked the doors again. If this throne platform did not stay in this underground space, nobody would know someone had been there before. 1034 An Unexpected Gain Lin Huang was surprised to see how the treasure hold looked like as he entered the amber doors. The alternate dimension where the treasure hold was located was very different from what he imagined. He thought Dynasty''s treasure hold was a massive warehouse when Huang Tianfu had told him that it was in an alternate dimension. In his imagination, the alternate dimension would be a space with nothing but all sorts of treasures. However, what he saw was completely different from his thoughts. Shiny and sophisticated palaces hovered in the air like islands in the sky. When Lin Huang gazed farther away, he saw all palaces but no treasure. It was not hard to guess that Dynasty''s treasures were stored in the palaces. ''Building palaces in an alternate dimension for storage! How free was this Huang Tianyu exactly?'' Lin Huang was a little speechless about Huang Tianyu''s egotistic behavior. Naturally, he did not say that in front of Huang Tianfu. After all, Huang Tianyu was not only the first Emperor, but he was also Huang Tianfu''s master. However, Huang Tianfu seemed to read Lin Huang''s mind, so he explained immediately, "These palaces weren''t built. Master created them in this alternate dimension purely with his imagination. As long as the owner is willing, any storage structure can be created in this alternate dimension but the storage capacity remains the same." Lin Huang realized that he was overthinking earlier. He then changed the subject, feeling embarrassed. "There are so many palaces! Are the contents inside all different?" "Yes. Weapons, tools, methods, elixirs, all sorts of minerals and miscellaneous items are stored separately," Huang Tianfu responded. "Which palace stores items such as Godheads?" Lin Huang asked. "In the Mysterious Item Palace. Some rare god items and a minority of special items that can''t be categorized are stored in the Mysterious Item Palace." Huang Tianfu pointed at a palace far away. "Do we go there now?" "There''s no rush. Let''s just look around since we''re here." Lin Huang looked at the palace Huang Tianfu was pointing at and shifted his focus to the few palaces nearby. "It''s your first time here. It''s great for you to familiarize yourself." Huang Tianfu nodded in agreement. The duo hovered in the air and soon arrived before the first palace. The huge characters ''God Weapon Palace'' were written on the sign above the entrance of the palace. Lin Huang knew what was stored in this palace just by looking at the name. "This palace is called the God Weapon Palace. All the weapons Dynasty has been collecting throughout the centuries are basically stored here. Sabers, spears, swords, halberds, axes, hooks... Basically, every weapon that you can think of are available here," Huang Tianfu explained, "The lowest grade of weapon that we have in here are demigod relics. There are also six god relics. In total, there are over 500 weapons in here." "Let''s take a look." Lin Huang raised a brow when he heard about the collection. A palace alone had hundreds of demigod relics and six god relics! Dynasty''s collection was abundant. "The palace doors can only be opened with your identity token," Huang Tianfu added, "If we were to open it, all three Grand Dukes need to show our Dynasty identity token at the same time." Lin Huang took out his token and a golden glow radiated from the token and covered the entire palace doors. A moment later, a rumble echoed while the golden doors opened slowly. He then put his token away and walked in with Huang Tianfu. The interior of the palace was sophisticated with detailed murals on the ceiling. Clearly, Huang Tianyu had put a lot of thought into this. Lin Huang could not help but gush over how exquisite the design of the palace was. However, although it was a palace, its function remained the same. There were different weapons placed in separate rooms in the palace. Sabers and swords were placed in individual rooms. The rooms for larger collections of sabers and swords were bigger while collections with lesser items were placed in smaller rooms. Among all the weapons, the sabers occupied the biggest space. Over 60 sabers were arranged on the weapon racks one after another. There were intersecting paths in between that took up over 300 square meters of space. The second weapon that took up the most space was the sword room. There were over 40 demigod-level battle swords. Lin Huang did not stop at the sword room. Just like how he skimmed over the other weapons, he only peeped at the entrance and left. What made him stay the longest was the room with telekinetic weapons. There were only four telekinetic weapons in Dynasty''s treasure hold, and only one of them was in the form of a flying dagger in which he was the most interested. Lin Huang glanced through the God Weapon Palace like he was window shopping. Apart from stopping at the room with telekinetic weapons, Lin Huang only went into the room with the six god relics. In that room, there were two sabers, a sword, a spear, a bow, and a giant hammer. Lin Huang only picked the sword up and took a good look at it in silence before putting it back where it was. Lin Huang walked out of the God Weapon Palace empty-handed. He then headed to the God Armor Palace with Huang Tianfu. "You can take the telekinetic flying dagger and god battle sword relic if you like," Huang Tianfu suggested to him as they walked out of the God Weapon Palace. "I can''t use it yet with my current combat strength. Don''t worry. I won''t be shy when I need it and am able to use it in the future." Lin Huang did not reveal that he already had a god relic battle and a few sets of demigod-level telekinetic flying daggers. Huang Tianfu began to rattle an introduction off again as they walked into the God Armor Palace. "There are four rooms in the God Armor Palace. There''s one room with full demigod battle armors, one with all sorts of shields and other defense tools, one with incomplete armors and another room of god relics. There are three god relic armors, two god relic shields, and over 300 demigod-level defense tools." Lin Huang nodded and began to look through the rooms. He was not interested in the demigod battle armors and he merely glanced through the incomplete armors as well. Instead, he stopped at the room with the shields and other defense tools. Apart from the shields, he saw many peculiar little items in this room. There were cloaks, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and even hair pins and hair bands. The stone tablet spoke to him all of a sudden when he felt dizzy looking around. "There''s a blue gem on your left. It''s the best item that you can take with you." Lin Huang looked down and saw a blue gem that was around the size of his little finger in the shape of a water drop. He picked it up with two fingers and asked Huang Tianfu, "What''s this?" "We''re not too sure either. We hired a couple of appraisers but none of them knew what this is. We only know that this gem can block all sorts of detective techniques." "Do you mind if I take it back to study?" "You can take it if you want since it''s just sitting here." Huang Tianfu nodded with no expression on his face. He felt that Lin Huang probably knew what it was but he did not expose him. Lin Huang spoke to the stone tablet quietly after putting the blue gem into his storage space, "So, what exactly is this gem? Can you tell me now?" "It''s a soul jewel that was formed naturally from spiritual energy that aligned with the Spirit Rule. The spiritual energy belonged to a dead true god-level cultivator who mastered the Spirit Rule." 1035 The Sorcerer Goddess Awakens "Can you be specific? What does this thing do?" Lin Huang was still clueless even after hearing the stone tablet''s explanation. "This item is equivalent to a natural spirit-type god relic. It''s even a true god-level Spirit Rule god relic," the stone tablet proceeded to explain. "Won''t there be a True God''s will remnant in there? It''s a True God who mastered the Spirit Rule, so it should be easy for it to do that, shouldn''t it?" Lin Huang asked rather cautiously. "No, a soul jewel is made of spiritual energy naturally with the guidance of the Spirit Rule. The item will only be created when the spirit-type True God is completely dead. In the process of creation, the soul jewel will remove all information of the dead spirit automatically because according to the Spirit Rule, that information is just impure and redundant. The existence of a soul jewel is purely a natural spirit-type Spirit Rule god relic," the stone tablet gave an even more detailed explanation. "This is a dream for many spirit-type true god-level powerhouses because a soul jewel is a god relic which is mainly made of Spirit Rules. It''s the best Spirit Rule god relic out there whereby it boosts their attack and defense techniques by heaps!" Lin Huang stopped walking all of a sudden when the stone tablet was halfway through his explanation. He felt Wu Mo''s True God''s blood in his body went through a tremor. "Master Emperor" Huang Tianfu was a little surprised to see Lin Huang stop walking. "Give me a minute." Lin Huang closed his eyes while standing where he was. He was checking what was happening in his body. Sorcerer Goddess Wu Mo''s body flew out of the drop of Sorcerer Goddess''s blood in his body. She said as soon as she saw Lin Huang, "I''m feeling the aura of a soul jewel around." "Sister Mo Mo, do you need a soul jewel?" Lin Huang was taken aback. "Although it''s not something that can restore my combat strength, I can use a soul jewel to host my consciousness. If that happens, I won''t stay in a deep slumber like I always have before. Apart from that, a soul jewel doesn''t only make my soul grow, but I can also use its soul power to fight for a short period of time when necessary. Although there are many techniques that I can''t use as my ability might only be 1% compared to my peak, it should be helpful to you," Wu Mo explained. "I''ll give you the soul jewel then." Lin Huang took the soul jewel out from his storage space. In the next second, Wu Mo waved her white sleeve and the soul jewel appeared in her palm. Her body turned into gushes of white mist and penetrated the soul jewel. The drop of True God''s blood also infiltrated the soul jewel. "I''ll use this soul jewel of yours for the time being." Wu Mo''s chuckle that sounded like a silver bell came into his ears. Clearly, she was very thrilled about not having to sleep any longer. "Don''t worry about it. Just take it." Lin Huang thought of making the best out of this natural Spirit Rule god relic by giving it to Wu Mo since he could not use it anyway. The boss inside his body was once a powerful True God during the middle era. Although her remnant ability was less than 1%, she was not to be underestimated. As Wu Mo penetrated the soul jewel, Lin Huang snapped back to reality and opened his eyes slowly. "Master, is everything alright?" Huang Tianfu asked immediately. "I''m alright. Let''s carry on." Lin Huang shook his head and headed to the next room. After spending a couple of minutes looking around the God Armor Palace, Lin Huang headed to the third palace with Huang Tianfu. "This is Dynasty''s Secret Method Palace. To put it simply, it''s a library. However, all the methods and secret skills in here are at least pseudo-mythical-level, so there aren''t many of them. There are only a total of over 200 methods, and only five god-level methods and secret skills." "Are there any sword skills?" That was what Lin Huang was most interested in. "There are one god-level sword skill and 17 pseudo-mythical-level sword skills," Huang Tianfu confirmed. Lin Huang headed to the section where the sword skills were placed as soon as he entered the Secret Method Palace. He memorized the sword skills in his head one after another. It was almost evening when they left the Secret Method Palace. Lin Huang got Huang Tianfu to bring him to the palaces one after another leisurely. He even found two materials that Wu Mo needed along the way. He informed Huang Tianfu and took the materials. Huang Tianfu said nothing about that. To him, the items that Lin Huang took were nothing compared to Dynasty''s massive treasure hold. Eventually, the duo arrived at the Mysterious Item Palace where the Godheads were. "There are some rare god items and a minority of special items that can''t be categorized in the Mysterious Item Palace. At the moment, there are over 200 items with over 70 varieties." Lin Huang visited the rooms one after another, but he merely glanced into them without stopping. He only stopped walking when he saw the room with a few Godheads. "Only four Godheads?" Lin Huang frowned slightly. "How about demigods'' broken Godheads?" "We didn''t collect those." Huang Tianfu shook his head and looked at Lin Huang, feeling confused. However, he explained patiently anyway, "We usually pack the broken Godheads we obtained from killing demigod-level monsters to send to trading companies together with the monster carcasses. Nobody wants that. Unlike Virtual God''s Godheads, all organizations would fight for it every time it appeared." "You guys didn''t collect them?" That was out of Lin Huang''s expectations. Initially, he thought broken Godheads were considered demigod-level items and that Dynasty''s warehouse should have at least 70 to 80 pieces, if not 100 pieces. He was astounded to find they had none. "Forget it. Let''s call it a day." Lin Huang could only forget about not getting what he most desired. The sky had turned completely dark when the duo got out of the treasure hold and returned to the Emperor''s Palace. Lin Huang looked at the time. It was already past 10 p.m. "You must be very exhausted after walking around with me for the entire day. Go back to rest." "It''s my job," Huang Tianfu assured while smiling. Wu Mo peeped after Huang Tianfu left and asked rather curiously, "Why do you need demigods'' broken Godheads?" Lin Huang told Wu Mo about the plan of refining the broken Godheads into Life Palaces like what he discussed with the stone tablet. Wu Mo voiced her opinion after listening. "It seems like the cultivation system of your era is indeed problematic. You''ve Divine Fire in your body, so refining broken Godheads shouldn''t be a problem. On a certain level, your new way of building your foundation is very attainable. Moreover, if it''s successful, there''ll be a dramatic transformation in your ability. You might be as powerful as a Virtual God by then." Lin Huang was even more determined to carry out his plan of refining broken Godheads into Life Palaces after getting Wu Mo''s affirmation. He requested to purchase broken Godheads from the black market in Sweep City and the Wanbao Auction. He also got Huang Tianfu to issue an order to collect broken Godheads. Subsequently, he began browsing all the business section in the forums to see if anyone was selling broken Godheads and other materials that he needed. It was almost one in the middle of the night. He only went to bed feeling helpless after his effort of browsing through all the forums was to no avail. 1036 The Dynasty Cour The next morning, Lin Huang left the Emperor''s Palace after washing up. He got the Divine Sun Tree to stay in the palace to guard the elevation of Grimace and the rest. He had been busy for two days consecutively since the coronation. He finally had time to get some fresh air out there, so he asked Lin Xin and Xiao Mo to go along too. Lin Xin had roved everywhere in the headquarters of Dynasty for the past few days while Xiao Mo stayed by her side as her bodyguard. If not for Lin Xin, Xiao Mo would have rather stayed in his room to cultivate. The duo was more than happy to join upon hearing that Lin Huang was going to visit Emperor City. Lin Xin was happy to head out because she had explored every cranny of Dynasty''s headquarters. She would have headed out on her own within these two days if Lin Huang had not asked her along. Meanwhile, Xiao Mo was elated because although he had agreed to be Lin Huang''s bodyguard earlier, Lin Huang had been spending most of his time in the Emperor''s Palace for the past few days. Even if he was not in the Emperor''s Palace, Huang Tianfu and the rest would be around him. Therefore, being Lin Xin''s bodyguard became his main responsibility. Now that Lin Huang was heading out, he would naturally take up the responsibility of being his bodyguard. Apart from Lin Xin and Xiao Mo, Huang Tufu of the three Grand Dukes went along too. As a perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouse, he had abilities that were close to a virtual god-level''s. He was also the person in charge of Dynasty''s guard. Now that the Emperor was crowned, he naturally became his main bodyguard. Lin Huang had no objection about Huang Tufu coming along. Since he was familiar with Emperor City, he could use him as a tour guide. "Which are the biggest trading companies in Emperor City at the moment?" "The biggest one would be our own Dynasty Court at the moment. We have anything and everything. The second biggest would be the Union Government''s Union Trading Company. Just like us, they sell everything. Next would be the Ouyang Clan''s Divine Armor Pavilion which sells mainly weapons and defense equipment. The Li Clan''s Elixir Pavilion has all sorts of elixirs while the Lu Clan''s Precious Treasure Den has all sorts of peculiar miscellaneous and luxury items," Huang Tufu introduced the major trading houses in the foothold one after another. "Let''s take a look at the Dynasty Court first then. It''s our own place after all." Lin Huang thought about it and decided to visit the Dynasty Court first. "Actually, all the stores are located in the same business district, so it doesn''t really matter which we go first," Huang Tufu said and took out a black dimensional portal. He opened the door after setting the coordinates. Lin Huang and the other two walked into the door one after another. Huang Tufu only walked in after letting the three in first. The dimensional portal closed slowly after the quad entered. A moment later, Lin Huang and the rest of them arrived in a crowded business district as soon as they stepped out of the dimensional portal. The crowd did not stop moving. There were people walking, flying, or riding on pets and all sorts of strange equipment. "It''s so crowded here!" Lin Huang exclaimed while smiling. "This is the Dynasty Court''s headquarters." Huang Tufu stretched his arm out and pointed at a sophisticated building that looked like a palace next to them. Lin Huang turned his head to see a building that looked similar to the Emperor''s Palace. It looked completely like a palace where a king lived. There were four massive buildings at the crossroads. Although the three other buildings were taller, they were nothing compared to this one. No matter who was standing at the crossroads, they would definitely lock their attention on the Dynasty Court''s headquarters as soon as they gazed up. "It''s sophisticated as usual" Lin Huang had no idea what else to comment. "Master Tianyu built the Dynasty Court himself. He was the one who designed this headquarters too," Huang Tufu explained. "Let''s take a look." The two security guards at the entrance recognized Lin Huang and Huang Tufu when they arrived at the entrance. "Master Tufu, Master Emperor." Huang Tufu was one of the three Grand Dukes, so almost every Dynasty member had seen him before. Besides the fact that this was the Emperor City, he had also been to the Dynasty Court''s headquarters more than once. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had been appearing in all the news and media for the past few days as Emperor, hence almost all the cultivators knew how he looked like. Him being crowned as the Emperor of Dynasty had been the hot topic in all the forums on the Heart Network for the past few days. "I''m just looking around. Don''t alert anyone," Lin Huang told the two security guards. The four of them soon blended in with the crowd as they entered the Dynasty Court. Lin Huang was not in a rush as he browsed through the counters one after another with the three of them. The products that took up the most space and counters were relics including weapons, defense tools, and assisting equipment. There was an impressive variety. Not only did they have everything mainstream on the market, but they even had some rare and modified models. However, the most crowded counters were on the other side selling elixirs. Such consumables had high demand whereby people would purchase them every day. Powerhouses could use one specific relic that they had bought for decades as long as their combat strength stayed on the same level. Meanwhile, elixirs were consumed and needed to be purchased again. Lin Huang could not help but ask Huang Tufu after seeing the large crowd at the two counters, "Why don''t these customers go to the Divine Armor Pavilion and the Elixir Pavilion for relics and elixirs? Aren''t they more professional when it comes to that?" "It would be the same where you buy the default relics and usual elixirs. To prevent vicious competition, we made it compulsory for all default relics and usual elixirs to be priced the same as the market price. We sell the same thing at the same price, thus naturally, there''s no need for the consumers to go to the specific stores," Huang Tufu explained. "If that''s the case, doesn''t that mean the Divine Armor Pavilion and the Elixir Pavilion have no upper hand?" "The Divine Armor Pavilion has customized relics while the Elixir Pavilion has elixirs with special functions that other stores don''t. The other organizations have no way of fighting them when it comes to that, so there''s no need to waste their efforts." "I see." Lin Huang could not help but nod when he heard that. The differentiation business gave everyone the opportunity to make a living. Everyone would lose money if they viciously competed to sell the same thing at a different price. "So, what''s the Dynasty Court''s upper hand?" "Firstly, the Dynasty Court is duty-free in Emperor City. It''s the benefit that other organizations don''t get. Secondly, we''re the first trading company that has a membership system. Although we have the same price with other organizations, members can enjoy promotions which were the unique selling point in the beginning. Thirdly, we''ve got a comprehensive selection. Apart from some special modification requirements, we basically have everything the customers need," Huang Tufu explained in detail. Lin Huang nodded after hearing about the Dynasty Court''s modus operandi. He proceeded to visit the remaining counters. However, he had no idea that he was being targeted by a pair of bloody eyes as soon as he stepped out of Dynasty''s headquarters. 1037 Why Donst You Get Out Firs Wei Shan wore a pair of sunglasses and walked casually around the store across the Dynasty Court. He looked many times smaller than his initial body after the disguise. He was only 1.8 meters tall with a skinny frame. He was disguised as someone inconspicuous to avoid people noticing him because he must stay low-key before completing something. Since Lin Huang killed him three years ago for kidnapping Lin Xin, he had been thinking of taking revenge every second for the past three years. The hatred he bore for Lin Huang grew by the day. For three full years, his soul had been stuck in a skull. Apart from being able to speak, he almost could do nothing else. He could not drink or eat, move, let alone flirt with women. His soul finally shifted to this spirit''s body after it was restored a few months ago. This body was much more powerful than what Wei Shan expected. He knew that this virtual god-level body was one of the most precious collections his mother had. He heard it had been excavated from a grade-6 war site. The God''s corpse had signs of preliminary decomposition when it was found and was turning into a spirit. Fortunately, his mother disconnected the consciousness by force before it could form entirely. She then made it into a puppet and put it into her collection. Wei Shan had to beg her many times to use this most powerful item to become his body. Since obtaining this body, apart from familiarizing with his body every day and doing some check-ups with his mother for the past few months, he had been collecting information about Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang seemed to have vanished over a year ago, so he could not find any information about him. His sister Lin Xin also went missing even earlier than Lin Huang did. Three days ago, Wei Shan finally saw the face that he had never forgotten for the past three years in the headlines on the Heart Network. The hatred that had been expanding every second for the past three years finally exploded completely. Although Lin Huang had become the high and mighty Emperor of Dynasty while his mother advised him to be patient again and again, his hatred and rage crested when he saw Lin Huang''s face. There was nothing else in his head apart from revenge. As soon as he escaped from his mother''s institution, he contacted Old Huang that his mother had hired to be his bodyguard earlier. He had no idea who else he could trust. Fortunately, Old Huang did not betray him. Instead, he arranged a disguise demigod relic for him and got someone to put him in a pet enclosure, sneaking him into the Emperor City in Division 1. However, Wei Shan had no idea that it was not Old Huang who had arranged all that for him. It was someone else. Wei Shan had been lurking around Dynasty''s headquarters for the past two days since he got into Emperor City. No one in Dynasty was alerted to his existence since the Emperor had just been crowned and many organizations had assigned many spies around Dynasty''s headquarters. The number of tourists was also a few folds compared to before. Wei Shan had been squatting at the entrance of Dynasty''s headquarters for two days when he finally saw Lin Huang coming out early in the morning. As Lin Huang and the rest stepped into the dimensional portal, he used his Divine Telekinesis and soon found out their destination coordinates. Then, he followed them secretly. ''Two bodyguards, one perfect-stage demigod-level and one imperial-level purple gold-level. That perfect-stage demigod-level one guy is tough, but I don''t have to fight him. I''ll just make him stay back. Then, I can kill Lin Huang and his sister as long as I''ve bought myself a moment.'' Wei Shan began visualizing the fight in his head and planned it out quietly. He would attack as soon as Lin Huang and the rest came out of the Dynasty Court. Lin Huang had no idea that he had been targeted. After walking around the Dynasty Court, Lin Huang bought nothing else apart from a modified DevilEagle17 for Lin Xin. He bought a demigod relic for Xiao Mo earlier, so there was no need to purchase any other equipment. Lin Huang asked the staff when he arrived at the miscellaneous items counter, "Do you have any demigods'' broken Godheads?" The staff was stunned for a moment and subsequently shook his head. "No. Broken Godheads have very low profit. Our Dynasty Court usually doesn''t take in such a product. Even if our staff has it, we''d sell it to the Lu Clan''s Precious Treasure Pavilion directly. It''ll be sold at a much more expensive price after the Lu Clan has made it into decor while we take a commission from their sales." The staff noticed that Lin Huang looked rather familiar after answering him. Subsequently, he saw Huang Tufu standing behind Lin Huang and recognized the duo right away. He almost shouted out loudly while widening his eyes. "Don''t you dare yell. Don''t alert anyone," Lin Huang said to him through voice transmission. "Master Emperor, Master Tufu" "We''re just looking around. Go on now." Lin Huang nodded and turned around with Lin Xin and the rest in an attempt to leave. "Master Emperor, you can tell me directly if you need broken Godheads. I can get someone to purchase them from other trading companies." "I know. I''ve already told Tianfu that. I''m just out walking around and see if there''s any," Lin Huang nodded. "We''re almost done with the Dynasty Court now. Let''s go to the next one. Which trading company is the closest to the Dynasty Court?" "That would be the Union Trading Company," Huang Tufu said immediately, "The Union Trading Company is just close to the Dynasty Court. Their main branch in the Emperor City is just on the right." "Let''s go to the Union Trading Company then!" Lin Huang walked to the entrance with them. Before he arrived at the entrance, the Nightmare Tapir in his body spoke to him through voice transmission, "There''s someone with intense hostility against you outside. You might be attacked as soon as you step out." Lin Huang raised a brow. He could not believe that someone would dare to attack him in the Emperor City, even more so when Huang Tufu was just next to him. He stood where he was and turned his head to say to Lin Xin, "Xin Er, go get me a drink. Get me the one that you told me about that''s tasty. We''ll wait for you at the entrance." "Oh" Although Lin Xin was surprised, she agreed to it right away. As soon as Lin Xin left, Lin Huang signaled Xiao Mo, commanding him to follow her. "Let''s go. We''ll wait at the entrance." Lin Huang and Huang Tufu then walked out of the Dynasty Court. Lin Huang sensed a killing intent materialize, charging at him as soon as he stepped out of the door. Huang Tufu sensed something off almost at the same time. He stepped out and blocked the front of Lin Huang. A black silhouette appeared in a flash in the next second and collided with Huang Tufu. An explosion blasted out at the same time as if tens of thousands of thunders struck while ripples of energy waves followed. They spread toward all directions like ripples on the surface of the water. The marketplace had barriers set up, so the people in the marketplace were not affected at all, but it was a different story for the people on the streets. Almost everyone was killed when their organs exploded as the ripples of energy waves spread out. Naturally, the Ninetails Lynx pulled Lin Huang into its alternate dimension as soon as that happened. Huang Tufu looked extremely terrible. The person had attacked so swiftly that he did not have enough time to charge the Divine Power in his body. He absorbed the attack filled with the Divine Power the person had been charging by force. He only braced the attack for a moment, then his body completely drowned in the person''s bloody Divine Power. He then plummeted underground like a cannon. "This guy is pretty powerful!" It was not difficult for Lin Huang to guess that the person should be a virtual god-level powerhouse. Although his combat strength was not on virtual god-level, his ability should be on par with virtual god-level. "Get the hell out, Lin Huang!" Wei Shan looked around and realized that Lin Huang was already gone. Naturally, he was not naive enough to think that Lin Huang had been killed by the impact earlier. A silhouette appeared slowly at the entrance of the Dynasty Court. The young man had a little white cat sitting on the right of his shoulder and a tiger with a long trunk on his left. There was a little elephant whose body was less than two meters long blocking his front. "Why don''t you get out first?" Lin Huang grinned. 1038 Did You Mistake Me for Someone Else? "Lin Huang, do you remember me?" Wei Shan removed his sunglasses and transformed into how he looked like three years ago using the demigod relic. He wanted to see Lin Huang''s reaction upon realizing he had come back alive. "I''m sorry. I really don''t remember who you are." Lin Huang shook his head right away without hesitation. He faintly thought that he had seen that face before, but he did not bother to try to recall who that person was. He was the Emperor now, so every cultivator in the world had seen his face. It was normal if rivals from some organization came for him since he had offended quite a number of them before. "You bastard!" Wei Shan was so mad at how Lin Huang responded. He had been missing Lin Huang all day and all night for the past three years. He thought Lin Huang would recognize him as soon as he showed up today. Never had he thought that he would not remember who he was at all! He felt like he had swung his fist with all of his might but all he punched was nothing but thin air. "You''re lying. You''d definitely remember me! My name is Wei Shan!" Wei Shan shouted his name to Lin Huang unwillingly. "That name" Lin Huang frowned a little and thought about it. Subsequently, he lifted his head and looked at the person. "I''m sure your name doesn''t ring a bell. Did you mistake me for someone else?" "You" Wei Shan was so irate he almost puked blood. ''Mistake you for someone else?! Your name has been on my mind every second for the past three years, how could I possibly mistake you for someone else?!'' he thought to himself. "If you have mistaken me, I suggest you figure it out properly before you go looking for the right person," Lin Huang added. "Again, how could I possibly mistake you for someone else?! Three years ago, I kidnapped your sister on the Demonic Crystal Spaceship in Division 7. Then, you summoned your imperial monster to kill me. My soul has been trapped in a soul-fostering device for the past three years. I spent every day and every night thinking about how to take revenge on you. Your face would appear in my head whenever I closed my eyes every day. I''d recognize you even if you turned into ashes. How is it possible that I mistook you for someone else?!" "I remember it now that you said that." Lin Huang finally recalled who the person was after his detailed reminder. "You''re the pedophile that I killed three years ago!" Wei Shan looked extremely terrible. Although his target recalled who he was, he was no different from a pedestrian to Lin Huang apart from being a pedophile. The intention to kill was rising in Lin Huang''s body after verifying the person''s identity. "I killed you three years ago and I can kill you today too! I won''t hold back since you sent yourself all the way here." The Destructive Divine Mammoth swung its trunk as soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, initiating the fight. "Aren''t you embarrassed to show an imperial-level summoning beast off before me?!" Disdain filled Wei Shan''s face upon seeing the Destructive Divine Mammoth attack. Its trunk swept like a giant pillar in the air. Even the air where the giant lead-colored pillar solidified from Life Power became a vacuum when it passed by. The disdain on Wei Shan''s face soon turned into fear after sensing the impact from the attack. He attempted to run but it was too late, so he could only stand in a defensive position and bore the attack forcefully. Bang! The trunk slammed into Wei Shan, creating an intense explosion. The impact of the attack was even more powerful than the attack Wei Shan had sneakily launched on Huang Tufu earlier. At the moment of collision, a circle of lead-colored energy wave spread like a ripple. The entire business district shook under the attack. Half of Emperor City could feel a clear tremor as strong winds blew in Emperor City''s streets and alleys, forcing countless of people to take cover in buildings. Wei Shan only felt an invincible, massive power overwhelming him the moment he was hit. His body that was comparable with a Virtual God''s never experienced any damages throughout the hundreds of tests for the past few months. However, his left arm that he used to defend the attack with was completely crushed. The bones in his forearm were smashed into at least ten pieces while his upper arm was fractured too. Not only was his entire arm was broken now, but even his left chest had taken a certain level of impact. He fractured a couple of ribs on the left, and his organs were jarred as well. If his body had only been on demigod-level, the blow might have taken his life. Wei Shan staggered hundreds of meters back as he gaped at the Destructive Divine Mammoth with fear on his face. "What exactly is this thing? Its combat strength is only on imperial-level purple gold-rank, but how is it so powerful?!" As the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s attack shot Wei Shan away, Huang Tufu, who was sent into the ground, clambered out of the rubble. Although he stumbled clumsily, he did not seem hurt. "Damn you, sneaky assaulter!" Huang Tufu looked ferociously at Wei Shan with a battle sword in his hand. This person had embarrassed him before the newly appointed Emperor! Lin Huang called out to him when he was going to fight Wei Shan, "Maybe you should just watch." Huang Tufu noticed that Wei Shan''s left arm was distorted in an abnormal way. However, soon he was not looking at them at all. Instead, he was staring at the little elephant not far away from him. ''Wait, what''s that?'' Huang Tufu was stunned when he saw the little elephant. Subsequently, he noticed another two animals around Lin Huang. There were a white cat and a normal-sized tiger with sharp teeth and a trunk. ''Are those Master Emperor''s imperial monsters?'' He recalled that Lin Huang''s profile stated that he was an Imperial Censor. Huang Tufu also did not recognize that those were merely Combat Souls because Lin Huang''s Combat Souls had the body of God Figurines whereby they looked just like ordinary living things. They were completely different from the ordinary Combat Souls. The Destructive Divine Mammoth did not plan to let him go just yet after the successful blow. It chose to launch its winning strike again. This time, Wei Shan was fully aware. His left arm was healed in the blink of an eye, but that did not mean he could hurt himself again carelessly since recovering would drain his Divine Power. The Destructive Divine Mammoth swung its trunk again. This time, Wei Shan''s hands turned into bloody sharp claws that mauled at the elephant trunk. All of a sudden, the trunk turned into a divine whip. Its offense became more flexible and agile. Wei Shan''s sharp claws tore black lines in the air and collided with the trunk again and again. The duo collided up to a thousand times within the span of a couple of breaths. The entire Emperor City could hear deafening bangs that were thousands of times louder than thunder. Almost all the buildings in the city felt the tremors that seemed like an earthquake rumbling. Lin Huang was enjoying the duo''s battle in the beginning. However, he soon noticed that buildings were collapsing far away. He realized that letting the two powerhouses that were comparable with Virtual Gods fight inside Emperor City was not a wise move. Not all the buildings were protected with a barrier like those in the business district. "You''re up. Don''t waste any time," Lin Huang ordered the Nightmare Tapir. 1039 Travel A Thousand Miles to Bestow A Head, A Small Gift May Be A Token of Profound Friendship If they were not in the city, Lin Huang was more than happy to watch the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s brutal fight with Wei Shan. After all, a battle between powerhouses that were comparable with Virtual Gods was rare. However, many buildings collapsed and civilians were killed just as they were at the beginning of the battle. If they went on, nobody knew how many more people in Emperor City would die. Therefore, Lin Huang got the Nightmare Tapir to join the battle to get it over with as soon as possible. Under normal circumstances, people who were experts at close combat would be weak when it came to soul battle. Since the Destructive Divine Mammoth managed to strike him within a short period of time, it meant there was a high possibility that he would be controlled by the Nightmare Tapir. Naturally, the Nightmare Tapir knew that too. It nodded after hearing Lin Huang''s order. It took a step out and swung its trunk while releasing a deafening shriek. An invisible sound wave spread out up to a hundred times faster than the speed of sound. It reached Wei Shan in the blink of an eye. Wei Shan had his guard up when he saw the Nightmare Tapir moving all of a sudden. However, the sound wave swept him up in the next second. Halting abruptly, he was unable to move. "What''s happening? He''s hit just like that?" Lin Huang was stunned to see that. "Isn''t this guy a Virtual God?" Initially, Lin Huang thought of getting the Nightmare Tapir to join the battle merely to interfere with Wei Shan''s battling rhythm. However, Wei Shan was pulled into dreamland as soon as the Nightmare Tapir charged at him. He completely lost his battle strength. "His soul is weak. It just reached imperial-level purple gold-rank," the Nightmare Tapir explained, "I suspect he took over this consciousness-less body with his soul by force. "Why is he not moving?" Huang Tufu had confusion written all over his face. "Maybe something went wrong with his body." Lin Huang gave a feeble excuse. At that moment, Wei Shan''s disguise was removed since he fell into the dreamland. He regained his bruised corpse look again. Huang Tufu was completely shocked when he saw him turning into a monster. "I don''t think it''s as simple as something having gone wrong with his body!" Even Lin Huang looked lost. "Wait, what?" He even suspected it might be an unknown side effect of being dragged into the Nightmare Tapir''s dreamland at first. "This should be how he really looks like. Since I pulled his consciousness into my dreamland, it caused the demigod relic that he was using to lose its function and it retreated back into his body," the Nightmare Tapir explained. "I can''t believe he turned into a monster!" Lin Huang thought it was unbelievable. It was hard for him to imagine what exactly this guy had gone through for the past three years. As Lin Huang was watching Wei Shan with Huang Tufu, Wu Mo, who was in Lin Huang''s body, peeped her head out of the soul jewel. "Can you give me this monster''s body?" "Sure, I can''t do anything else to it apart from selling it anyway." This bruised corpse was obviously on virtual god-level. Since the Undead Styx could not resurrect it, there was no reason for keeping it. "Although this body is much weaker compared to a true god-level body, it shouldn''t be a problem to use it as a host for a short period of time," Wu Mo explained the purpose of her wanting the bruised corpse, "I can use it for the time being so that I won''t have to stay in your body." "When I''ve gathered all the materials for my own body, I''ll make this corpse into a puppet for you. That will be my rental dues," Wu Mo declared while smiling. She was a Sorcerer Dao True God, so making puppets was a piece of cake to her. "Sure." Lin Huang accepted that suggestion right away. Meanwhile, Wei Shan was in a tough fight in the dreamland. The little elephant could almost suppress him, and now there was another tiger with sharp teeth and a trunk. Every time the tiger mauled with its sharp claws, it was powerful enough to tear through anything. Although Wei Shan had a terrifying defensive ability, the Nightmare Tapir managed to lacerate deep wounds on his body, exposing his bones whenever he mauled. There were more and more wounds on Wei Shan''s body as the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls worked together. The Divine Power in his body was draining rapidly and even the speed of his body recovery had dropped significantly. Wei Shan managed to hold on for a whole day and night. Eventually, he was out of Divine Power. "Why is God doing this to me?! I came back alive after three torturous years just to take revenge on him. Why is God treating him so well, giving him such powerful imperial monsters?!" He knelt on the ground while complaining about his horrible destiny. "There''s no other reason than that you deserve to die!" Nobody knew when Lin Huang appeared less than ten meters before Wei Shan. "Also, allow me to correct you. They''re not ''some'' imperial monsters. They''re my combat souls." The Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped its feet as soon as Lin Huang was done speaking. Wei Shan''s body turned into dust right away and was blown away with the wind. While the tough battle in dreamland went on for a whole day, only less than a minute had passed in reality. Lin Huang even took the time to enter dreamland to witness Wei Shan''s final death. The bruised corpse who was standing there was losing his vital signs quickly. Before Lin Huang managed to put him away, a blue glow shot out between his brows. In the next second, Wu Mo dragged the bruised corpse into Lin Huang''s body. Lin Huang shook his head while smirking. "She''s so impatient." "So, that guy died just like that?!" In shock, Huang Tufu sensed Wei Shan''s vital signs fading all of a sudden too. He peeped at the Nightmare Tapir and the Ninetails Lynx, faintly sensing that this should have something to do with the two monsters. He shivered fearfully at Lin Huang. He knew very well how powerful that monster Wei Shan was, but Lin Huang had destroyed him like a piece of cake. "Do a calculation on how many houses were damaged and how many people died." Lin Huang had no idea what Huang Tufu was thinking as he turned his head to speak to him, "Compensate those who have families. As for those who have none, arrange their burials." "Sure, I''ll get it done." Huang Tufu obeyed immediately. If he had merely been fearful of Lin Huang''s identity earlier, he was beginning to fear Lin Huang as a person. He only had a combat strength of immortal-level, but he had techniques to kill a Virtual God. It was a little hard for him to imagine how terrifying he would be in the future. "Also, whatever you saw today, just let it be. I don''t want the media to spread the word out," Lin Huang ordered him, "Exposing my ability is a small matter but Dynasty will become a public target. It''s bad for Dynasty''s development in the long run." Huang Tufu figured that he had to think of a way to muffle this incident too. If Lin Huang''s true ability was really exposed, everyone would know that Dynasty had an Emperor who had ridiculous abilities. By then, many organizations might collaborate to fight Dynasty because no organization would hope to have a second Union Government in this continent to suppress them. 1040 The Grandmistress’ Identity Lin Huang was in too glum a mood to even look at the destroyed buildings and houses not far away from the business district. There were even devastating cries echoing faintly. Needless to say, Lin Xin and Xiao Mo lost their moods as well. After ordering Huang Tufu to take care of the damages, Lin Huang got Xiao Mo to bring Lin Xin back to Dynasty''s headquarters ahead of time. Meanwhile, he summoned the Warlord and got him to engineer thousands of robots with no combat ability to be involved in the rescue work. Not long later, many Dynasty members from the headquarters came to the rescue. Apart from Dynasty, the Union Government armies who were guarding Emperor City, the Hunter Association and the Adventurer Paradise''s branches, as well as two local families, came to help with some other Royalties. Emperor City was Dynasty''s territory, so it would be understandable even if these organizations did not help when something happened to the city. However, they decided to help and got involved in the rescue without hesitation. The rescue went on for a whole day. Basically, everyone who was still alive was rescued the very next morning. Above all, the Warlord''s robots played a big part in the rescue operation. Some underground areas that human could not access were examined by the robot dogs the Warlord had made. They dug holes to lead the people out after they were rescued. The robots he made came with civil structure knowledge so they could analyze possible collapse sites and safe zones, and subsequently find the suitable route for excavation. "Master, the rescue work is almost done now. You should head back to rest." Huang Tianfu came as soon as he was done with his errands yesterday. He stayed with Lin Huang for the entire night. "That''s right. Go back to rest. We will monitor the follow-up work," Huang Tufu assured in agreement. "Sure, thanks for helping with the rest," Lin Huang expressed. The rescue work was basically done, so what remained would be the rebuilding. However, that would take time to complete. "Tufu, follow Master Emperor back," Huang Tianfu turned and ordered Huang Tufu who recalled that he possessed the identity of a bodyguard. After recalling the Warlord into card form, Lin Huang followed Huang Tufu back to Dynasty''s headquarters. Lin Xin came to him as soon as he returned. "Brother, how''s the rescue work?" "It''s pretty smooth. We''ve basically rescued all the survivors. There are no other incidents such as further collapsing." "I''d like to help," Lin Xin suggested. She wanted to stay to help yesterday, but she did not interrupt upon seeing that everyone was busy, including her brother. Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment. "You can go but don''t give anyone any trouble. You must know that this isn''t a game. Also, ask those who know when you aren''t sure about something. Don''t be reckless." Lin Huang agreed to let her help because the rescue work was basically done. Even if she were to make a mistake, there were no major consequences. Moreover, it was a great opportunity to train Xiao Mo who had grown up in the Purple Crow. "Understood!" Lin Xin left joyfully after getting Lin Huang''s explicit permission. Xiao Mo followed her immediately. The first thing Lin Huang did when he returned to the Emperor Palace was to summon the Nightmare Tapir again. He got the Nightmare Tapir to share Wei Shan''s memory with Bloody. Apart from a disguise demigod relic, Wei Shan had nothing valuable on him, not even an Emperor''s Heart Ring. In reality, he could not even activate an Emperor''s Heart Ring in his monster form. However, what Lin Huang wanted the most were not the treasures on him, but the memories in his head. He clearly remembered that fatty Yin Hangyi''s death two years ago was related to the Grandmistress behind Wei Shan. The so-called Grandmistress sent Lily to kill him. In the end, fatty suffered the undeserved tragic consequences and was killed by her. Lin Huang always remembered that. He thought it would be difficult to find out who the mastermind behind it was since Lily died. Never had he expected Wei Shan to send himself here this time. It only took a moment for the Nightmare Tapir to complete the sharing of Wei Shan''s memories. "How is it? Is there anything about the Grandmistress in his memory?" Lin Huang asked immediately after seeing Bloody open its eyes. "Yes, the Grandmistress you''re talking about is Wei Shan''s birth mother," Bloody clarified while smiling, "Also, I found a lot of unexpected information in his memory." "Unexpected information?" Lin Huang could not help but raise his brow. Now, he was even more eager to know Wei Shan''s background. "Apart from being the head of the Wei Clan in Division 2, Wei Shan''s mother, who is the Grandmistress, has another identity" Bloody paused to pique Lin Huang''s interest before proceeding to speak, "She is God Bless''s God''s Messenger!" "She''s one of the four God''s Messengers?!" Lin Huang''s eyes flew wide open. God''s Messenger was the position after the Master God in God Bless. Also, there were only four God''s Messengers in the entire God Bless. According to the discussion Lin Huang had with Bloody earlier, they were almost sure that God Bless''s four God''s Messengers were possibly virtual god-level powerhouses. After verifying Wei Shan''s mother''s identity, Lin Huang considered that Wei Shan''s enhanced combat strength that came out of nowhere and his turning into a monster was not odd. After all, God Bless''s Master God most probably came from the great world. Perhaps Wei Shan''s mother acquired the technique of fusing his soul into the monster''s body from the Master God. "Looking at Wei Shan''s memories, his mother mainly manages the entire God Bless''s finance," Bloody continued, "The Wei Clan, the biggest merchant in Division 2, became God Bless''s money laundering tool since centuries ago. Furthermore, under the leadership of Wei Shan''s mother, almost all of the outstanding Wei Clan descendants joined God Bless. The rest pretty much became God Bless''s outer members even if they didn''t join the organization officially." "So, you''re saying we''ll be getting handsome loots soon?" Lin Huang could not help but smirk after hearing that. "It might be a little difficult for you to fight the Wei Clan directly. The Wei Clan only has two demigods on the surface, but in reality, they already have five and all of them are on perfect-stage demigod-level. Apart from that, Wei Shan''s mother has an unfathomable housekeeper who is at least on perfect-stage demigod-level. "Meanwhile, Wei Shan''s mother''s ability is even more powerful than his. We''re almost sure that she''s on at least Virtual God rank-2 or even Virtual God rank-3." "So, that''s three Virtual Gods and six perfect-stage demigod-level. This bunch is rather powerful indeed, but I should be able to handle them." Lin Huang made some simple calculations and thought it should not be a problem for him to handle them. "The Wei Clan''s ability isn''t the biggest obstacle. Instead, it''s the Union Government," Bloody voiced its concern. "The Wei Clan is located in No. 2A1 foothold of Fengtian City in Division 2. It''s also where the Union Government''s headquarters in Division 2 is located. The Union Government office building is just less than 30 kilometers away from the Wei Clan." 1041 There is No Time Like the Presen The Wei Clan was the biggest merchant in Division 2. It was impossible that the Union Government would not take action if they were attacked. Even if the Union Government knew the Wei Clan had something to do with God Bless, they still held the responsibility of protecting the Wei Clan as long as there was no solid proof. The Union Government would definitely interfere if Lin Huang attacked the Wei Clan. Moreover, the Union Government''s office was just less than 30 kilometers from the Wei Clan. Demigods could reach it within a few seconds as easy as pie while Virtual Gods could reach it in the blink of an eye. No matter how powerful Lin Huang''s ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls were, it was impossible for him to kill the entire Wei Clan within a few seconds. Lin Huang fell into silence after hearing Bloody''s concern. Ever since he found out there were over 30 Virtual Gods in this world, he realized how massive the Union Government was. Attacking the Wei Clan head-on would not be a wise choice. "Indeed, it''ll spell big trouble if the Union Government interferes." Lin Huang scowled. He spoke after a moment of silence, "We can''t just remove the Wei Clan as a clue. Avenging fatty is just one of the reasons. Since Wei Shan''s mother is a God''s Messenger, she would definitely know where Chan Dou is. If he''s still alive, this is the only clue for us to find him at the moment." "But the Union Government is too close. They''ll definitely interfere as soon as we attack the Wei Clan." Bloody hoped that Lin Huang could hold back for now. "By then, we''ll be attacked by two organizations. Although your God Figurine''s Combat Souls have abilities comparable to a Virtual God''s, the battle will be a tough one if they were to fight the Wei Clan and the Union Government at the same time." Once again, Lin Huang fell into silence and subsequently proposed, "How about we declare war with the Wei Clan directly? Let''s say that the Wei Clan sent Wei Shan to assassinate me. To Dynasty, assassinating the Emperor isn''t tolerable. We''ll use Dynasty''s name to declare war with the Wei Clan. "It''s futile. Wei Shan''s body looks completely like a monster now. There''s nothing on him that can prove his identity. Then, the Wei Clan can totally say that we''re framing them. Moreover, even if we can prove that he''s Wei Shan, the Wei Clan can argue that it''s a personal choice that has nothing to do with the clan. "If they''re smarter, they can even seize the opportunity to make a story up. They might say that Wei Shan turned into a monster due to some incident, causing him to lose his mind. He''s been locked in a room for a long time while his mother has been feeding him all these years. However, Wei Shan escaped from his home recently and the family couldn''t find him. Then, they would get Wei Shan''s mother whose son has just died to apologize to us while crying in front of the media, looking sincere and saying that she should''ve watched her son instead of letting him out." Lin Huang was speechless after hearing that. "By then, people will only talk about how I killed their son and stirred things up with the Wei Clan." "If the Wei Clan isn''t that smart and denies it no matter what, it''ll cause conflict for both parties. The Union Government would definitely do something if we were to fight. They''d probably ask us to put an end to this by convincing the Wei Clan to compensate us. "As long as the Union Government is around, we only have two options. We either do nothing or fight the Union Government as well," Bloody announced its final conclusion. "Is there really no other way around this?" Lin Huang frowned. He was secretly calculating how would he fare if he were to include the combat power of the Union Government''s headquarters in Division 2. "There''s really no other way." Bloody shook its head, feeling helpless. "The only possibility of avoiding the Union Government interfering with us is to hide the fight from them completely." "They''re just less than 30 kilometers away. How is it possible that they won''t find out as soon as we fight?" Lin Huang thought that Bloody''s suggestion was totally useless. "I''ve got an idea about that." A voice went into Lin Huang''s ears all of a sudden. Lin Huang was stunned as he watched a green glow streaming out between his brows and turning into a person. He could not help but raise his brow when he saw the bruised corpse before him. "Sister Mo Mo?" "This new body isn''t too shabby. In fact, it''s better than what I expected," Wu Mo said while grinning ear-to-ear. "That''s great to hear." Lin Huang smiled while nodding and he proceeded to ask, "Sister Momo, you said you''ve got an idea about that. What do you mean?" "Don''t you want to fight the Wei Clan but are afraid that the Union Government might interfere?" Clearly, Wu Mo overheard the entire conversation between Lin Huang and Bloody. "Do you have a solution to that?" "It''s simple. I can help you move the entire the Wei Clan thousands of kilometers away. If I do that, the people from the Union Government won''t feel any battle impact. Am I right?" It sounded extraordinarily simple when Wu Mo said that. "Move the entire the Wei Clan thousands of kilometers away? Is that possible?" It was the first time Lin Huang had ever heard of that. "I asked you to learn the Witchcraft Runes but you just wouldn''t listen." Wu Mo placed her hands on her hips. "I created a set of combo runes called the Perfect Switch. The rune can move things away and replace it with an illusion. In the beginning, this rune can only move small items. I was having fun with it at first. Later on, I realized that the rune is actually very useful, so I took a few months to fix and perfect it. As time went by, I could move mountains and lakes." "Can it move living things as well?" Lin Huang was a little surprised. "Yes. In reality, the nature of the rune is moving space by force. As soon as I pick the size of the space and draw a line around it, I can move the entire space away together with the living things within it." Wu Mo was worried that Lin Huang might not understand her. Therefore, she explained using a more relatable analogy, "You can imagine the space you want to move to as a potted plant. This rune can move the plant and soil in the pot into another pot without asking the permission of the plant in the pot. At the same time, you replace a plant illusion in the original pot." "I get it now." Lin Huang nodded and thought to himself, ''It''s much easier to understand when you put it like that.'' "What''s the farthest distance you can go if we''re moving the entire the Wei Clan?" Bloody asked a new question immediately. "It depends on the size." Bloody soon browsed through Wei Shan''s memory and calculated the rough surface and size of the entire the Wei Clan then reported to Wu Mo. "With the current Divine Power that I can use to move things, I can safely say that it shouldn''t be a problem to move a place of the said size 2,000 kilometers away." Wu Mo soon provided an answer. "But if you need, I can try to move it further away as much as I can." "And how long can the substitute illusion last?" "That also depends on the size. From what you told me, it should be able to last half an hour." Bloody nodded and downloaded the map of Fengtian City in Division 2 and the areas around for Lin Huang. He pointed at the canyon in the north of Fengtian City after looking at it carefully and asked Wu Mo, "Can you move the Wei Clan to a specific location, namely inside this canyon 2,300 kilometers to the north?" "It shouldn''t be a problem, but I''ll need to set the coordinates," Wu Mo responded. "Sure." Bloody turned its head to look at Lin Huang. "When do you plan to do this?" "There is no time like the present. Let''s do it today." 1042 A Girl Should Be Reserved But Not Too Conservative "You want to go to Division 2?!" Huang Tianfu frowned slightly. He was almost speechless that Lin Huang, who had just been crowned Emperor four days ago, was requesting to go to Division 2 all of a sudden. "There''s something that I need to settle over there. You don''t have to send anyone to follow me," Lin Huang responded, "Also, I would need to borrow the Star Titan." Huang Tianfu frowned even deeper now. He was really afraid that Lin Huang was going to run away. Although Dynasty was now Royal''s affiliate again while they had regained all benefits and they were doing even better than before, their fate lay in Lin Huang''s hands after all. As long as he was willing, he could remove Dynasty from the affiliate list of organizations anytime he wanted. That was the reason why Huang Tianfu had been so obedient to him. Clearly, Lin Huang knew Huang Tianfu''s concern, so he said while feeling helpless with a smile, "Don''t worry that I''ll run away. I''ll leave my Royal Token here and I''ll be back right after I''m done with my business." Lin Huang took his Royal Token out and handed it over to Huang Tianfu after he was done talking. The reason he handed out his identity token was simply that he was the only one who could use the Royal Token (anyone could claim ownership of trial token, but a token with an official member identity could not be altered). To others, it was no different than a brick. Nobody could even see the basic information, let alone use it. Huang Tianfu hesitated and did not take the token. "You don''t have to do this, Master Emperor. Go ahead with your thing. The rest of the Dynasty members and I believe that you won''t leave us behind." He declined because he knew very well that it was redundant for him to have the token if Lin Huang was determined to run. Apart from the Royal Token holder, nobody else could use the token. The other reason was that the holder could reapply for the Royal Token if one lost it. To Lin Huang, applying a new identity token would merely take two to three days. "I won''t be bringing my sister and Xiao Mo this time since I''ll be back within one or two days. Please take care of them and don''t let any troublemakers enter Emperor City again." Huang Tianfu was completely relieved upon hearing what Lin Huang said. He knew that Lin Huang would definitely not run away and leave his sister behind. "Don''t worry, Master Emperor. Tufu has been getting people to protect your sister secretly." "Also, this is a private matter. I hope that no one will see this. Don''t send anyone to follow me," Lin Huang emphasized again. "But the Star Titan needs a professional pilot," Huang Tianfu pleaded helplessly. "I have my way of flying it. I don''t need a pilot." Lin Huang''s imperial monster, the Warlord, was a professional mechanic. There were no mechanical items that he could not handle. Naturally, the same applied to the Star Titan. "Alright then. So, when do you plan to head out, Master?" Huang Tianfu asked again. "Right now!" Lin Huang had come to Huang Tianfu just to inform him that and borrow the airship. Huang Tianfu was speechless at that moment. He removed a pitch-black ring on his right middle finger and handed it to Lin Huang. "This is the Star Titan''s miniature ring. As the Emperor of Dynasty, you have access to activate it. The airship will expand automatically as soon as it''s activated, so it''s best to only activate it when you''re somewhere spacious enough." Huang Tianfu reminded him about some matters that he should take note of after handing the Star Titan''s miniature ring over to him. Lin Huang left Dynasty alone quietly after getting into the Star Titan. He headed to Division 2. No. 2A1 foothold of Fengtian City was the core zone of the entire Division 2. It was even more bustling than the Magical Sky City in Division 3. After entering the city, Lin Huang found a safe place and summoned Wu Mo from his pet spatial ring. She could be kept in a pet spatial ring in the form of a bruised corpse as long as she did not fight it. That was how Wei Shan had entered Emperor City earlier. Since Wu Mo was summoned, she performed a few hand seals and turned herself into a young, beautiful lady. She wore a white dress and did not even use any disguise demigod relic. They looked very much like a beautiful couple when she strolled with Lin Huang. Many people could not help but stare at her. Even Lin Huang could not help but ask, "Sister Mo Mo, is this how you really look like?" "What do you think?" Wu Mo asked playfully. "I think so." Wu Mo smiled without saying anything. In the end, she still did not answer his question. Soon, the duo found the Wei Clan on the map. To prevent the Wei Clan from noticing them, Lin Huang put on a disguise demigod relic mask to give himself a new face. He then pretended to be a couple with Wu Mo while approaching the area where the Wei Clan was located. As the biggest merchant in Division 2, the Wei Clan''s castle was sophisticated which, in turn, made it a tourist attraction in Fengtian City. There were many tourists all around the world visiting on normal days and occasionally, among those tourists were cultivators. It was a luxurious ancient castle that had existed for centuries after all and was not something that one saw everywhere. Lin Huang and Wu Mo did not spend much effort to blend in with the tourists. Due to Wu Mo''s energetic character, the duo even made friends with quite a number of tourists. "Young man, listen to your old man. Don''t ever let go of such a great lady or you''ll regret it for the rest of your life." "Girl, this guy isn''t too shabby. He''s handsome and he makes you happy. You must seize the opportunity if you like him. A girl should be reserved but not too conservative. Also, when you guys are together, you can complain occasionally but not too much. You will scare men away if you did." Many uncles and aunties even tried match-making the both of them. Some even imparted knowledge based on their experience. Lin Huang had been in the sales line when he was on Earth, so he was a natural when it came to handling people like these. Wu Mo did not shy away at all. Instead, she asked those aunties questions in all seriousness despite her being so much older than them. The duo followed the tourists and walked around the Wei Clan''s ancient castle for over an hour. They even took photos everywhere like the tourists did, sometimes even taking photos with other tourists. In between, Lin Huang was eager to ask about the setting of the coordinates for a few times through voice transmission. However, he swallowed what he was going to say after recalling that Wu Mo had specifically asked him not to do that as the Wei Clan''s Virtual God might cut him off. After the tourists scattered while Wu Mo bade goodbye to the uncles and aunties enthusiastically, she chirped to Lin Huang though voice transmission, "All done! We can leave now. Also, someone from the Wei Clan has been checking up on us using Divine Telekinesis. They must''ve suspected us to be dupe tourists. Don''t talk to me through voice transmission at least 1,000 kilometers within the Wei Clan''s home. It''s better to talk after we leave this foothold. I''ll speak to you. Virtual Gods can''t cut me off but demigods might be able to do that if you speak to me through voice transmission. "Next, we''ll go anywhere crowded. We''ll have to stay for at least an hour and leave after the person has completely given up checking on us with their Divine Telekinesis." Lin Huang said nothing. Being suspected as a fake tourist was totally within his expectations. The Wei Clan did not care about ordinary tourists but they would look out for cultivators who occasionally visited just for safety purposes. He opened the map and found a large shopping mall nearby. He then brought Wu Mo there and they began to shop. They initially planned to shop for an hour, but Wu Mo shopped for over five hours happily. They then left Fengtian City reluctantly and headed to the canyon in the north of Fengtian City. 1043 The Wei Clan’s Grandmistress Soon, Wu Mo set up the dimensional coordinates deep in the canyon 2,300 kilometers to the north of Fengtian City. After observing the process, Lin Huang asked while feeling confused, "Sister Mo Mo, why didn''t I see you drawing these runes around the Wei Clan this morning?" "Are you dumb? I used an illusion to cover my movement. Of course, you couldn''t see it." Wu Mo scoffed as if that was common sense. Lin Huang was speechless right away upon hearing that answer. With Wu Mo''s comprehension in Sorcerer Dao, she could indeed deceive him using an illusion without him even realizing it. Clearly, Wu Mo did not exclude Lin Huang when she performed the illusion. Therefore, all Lin Huang saw was the illusion Wu Mo wanted people to see unlike Grimace and the Nightmare Tapir which would exclude Lin Huang when they performed the illusion. "I''ve completed the setup of the coordinates. I''ll put up a space barrier around the entire canyon and I''ll activate it when I move them here later to avoid them escaping using a dimensional portal or some other way." Wu Mu began setting up the space barrier after she was done with the coordinates. "How long does it take for this dimensional rune to move the Wei Clan over?" Lin Huang asked. Wu Mo thought about it before giving her answer, "One to two seconds. Don''t worry. They won''t have time to react. The commotion of this teleportation is very insignificant. Even though they might feel a slight tremor, the teleportation will be done by the time they react." "You can prepare whatever you need before the battle officially begins since I''m still working on the space barrier now." "There''s nothing to prepare actually." Lin Huang lifted his head and looked at the sky above the canyon. "All we need is to cover the top." Lin Huang flew above the canyon as he spoke and activated the Star Titan airship''s miniature ring. In the next second, the ring turned into a black glow and shot toward the area Lin Huang targeted. Then, it began to expand rapidly. Within less than three seconds, it expanded to a terrifying, giant airship more than 50 kilometers in length. The giant airship hovered above the canyon like a massive floating city in the air. Subsequently, Lin Huang crushed the Warlord''s card. A black metal egg which was a meter in diameter was summoned. Soon, the monster stretched his limbs and opened his eyes. "Is there any order for me, Master?" The Warlord''s machine voice rang out as he looked at Lin Huang. "I''ll give you the control access to the Star Titan. You''ll just have to wait for my order and shoot the target." After passing the authorization, the Warlord commanded the Star Titan to emit a light stream while he was sucked into the pilot''s cabin right away. As he got into the airship, the Warlord spent less than two seconds to manage the operating system and successfully controlled the entire airship. "Point the cannons to where I''m standing." Lin Huang stepped out and stood in the middle of the teleportation zone that Wu Mo had just set up. Up to a thousand cannons of all sizes on the Star Titan shifted and pointed to where Lin Huang was standing. "Lower the airship a little. Don''t leave such a big gap between the canyons." "Shut down the entire canyon''s communication system and Internet signal." The Emperor''s Heart Ring on Lin Huang''s finger soon lost its signal as soon as he issued the order. "Alright, I''m done with my prep work." Lin Huang stepped out of the teleportation zone and looked at Wu Mo while beaming. Wu Mo lifted her head and glanced at the Star Titan. "Are you preventing them from escaping above? I can just set up another defense barrier." "Isn''t this more threatening?" Since Lin Huang did not plan to let anyone live, he did not care if the people from the Wei Clan saw the Star Titan or not. "As long as you''re happy." Wu Mo shrugged. More than ten minutes later, Wu Mo had finally set up the space barrier around the entire canyon. She then nodded at Lin Huang. "I''m done setting up the space barrier. When do you need me to send it over?" "Do it now then." At the same time that Lin Huang spoke, apart from the Divine Sun Tree that was guarding the elevation of Grimace and the rest in the Emperor''s Palace, Lin Huang had summoned all his nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls. Wu Mo had seen those God Figurine''s Combat Souls in his body before, so it did not impress her. As she snapped her fingers, the silhouette of a castle appeared in the transportation zone that she set up. Approximately a second later, the silhouette soon materialized and became a solid castle. The entire Wei Clan''s ancient castle, including the three-story basements, were moved to the coordinates Wu Mo set without missing a single detail. Everyone in the Wei Clan''s ancient castle felt a tremble under their feet. ''What happened? Was it an earthquake?'' That was the first reaction almost everyone in the Wei Clan had. However, Grandmistress Wei, some demigods and imperial-level powerhouses who were staying in the Wei Clan felt that something was off. Their surroundings were different. A minority of them looked at the changes outside through the windows and exclaimed out loud. "Look outside! All of the houses are gone!" "How come it looks like the wilderness outside?" However, what was done could not be undone. By the time the people from the Wei Clan noticed that, Wu Mo had moved the entire the Wei Clan''s ancient castle to this canyon that was 2,300 kilometers from Fengtian City. "Who dares to invade the Wei Clan?!" Two demigods appeared as soon as the deafening scream came. They hovered above the ancient castle and stared at the Star Titan above their heads fearfully. Then, they glared at Lin Huang and Wu Mo. The two demigods had gray beards and hair. They were the famous two demigods from the Wei Clan. At that moment, Lin Huang removed the disguise and revealed his original face. The two demigods recognized him as soon as they saw him. In reality, it would be redundant for him to disguise himself. There was only one the Star Titan in this entire gravel world. It was not one of the Grand Dukes from Dynasty who was flying the airship now, so his identity was obvious. "So, it''s the Master Emperor of Dynasty. I wonder why have you brought our Wei Clan here." Although they recognized Lin Huang, their fear faded because Lin Huang''s combat strength was only on immortal-level. They did not even bother about the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls around him. Instead, they glanced at Wu Mo twice because they could not sense her combat strength at all. However, they knew that it was impossible for Lin Huang to bring an ordinary person here. "Why am I here? Don''t you guys know what you''ve done?" Lin Huang simpered at the demigod old men. "We''ve no idea why you''ve come all the way here to stir things up with our Wei Clan. Even if we''ve really offended you unintentionally, you could''ve totally come to us. Don''t you think it''s a little too much to have moved our abode here out of nowhere?" "Stop acting, the both of you. Get your Master here," Lin Huang said and contacted the Warlord secretly. A thousand cannons on the Star Titan inched and pointed at the two demigods. The two demigods'' faces turned pale upon seeing the Star Titan''s cannons pointing at them. "Seems like Master Emperor is here for me." A lady''s voice sang all of a sudden. A lady with a stunning figure hovered into the air. There were four people following behind her. One of them who was in a suit had an unfathomable aura while the other three were clearly on perfect-stage demigod-level. Their aurae were evidently more powerful than the two old men who were also on perfect-stage demigod-level. 1044 Lin Huang Must Die! Lin Huang ignored the rest while looking at the lady. After two years, he finally met the mastermind who had sent Lily to kill fatty the legendary Grandmistress of the Wei Clan. This lady only looked 25 or 26 years old at the most with her make-up on. She was dressed in a rather fitting dress while the front showed off her ample bosom. The plunge neckline ran from her neck all the way to her belly button. Even a third of her fair-skinned breasts were showing. There were two long slits at the bottom of the dress, revealing her long legs that were as fair as jade. The dress showed everything attractive about her body like her big breasts, tiny waist, shapely butt, long legs, and that beautiful face. "So, you''re the Grandmistress of the Wei Clan in this generation?" Lin Huang asked despite knowing the fact. Nobody could imitate this lady''s charisma. Lin Huang could tell she was definitely the Grandmistress of the Wei Clan without having to sense her combat strength at all. "I am. I wonder why you''re visiting my Wei Clan from so far away, Master Emperor?" Grandmistress Wei unveiled a smile, not showing her impatience at all. "I guess Wei Shan is your son, isn''t he?" Lin Huang did not bother to beat around the bush and asked directly. Grandmistress Wei, on the other hand, was stunned to hear the question. However, she was well-trained, so she nodded lightly. "I do have a son named Wei Shan." "It''s great that you admit to that. He attacked me in Emperor City, so I killed him on the spot." Lin Huang stared at Grandmistress Wei, eager to see her reaction to that. "You killed him?" Grandmistress Wei did not seem surprised in the least. Lin Huang could not even see any grief on her face. "You don''t seem to be surprised at all." Lin Huang raised his brow and asked, "Or your did your Wei Clan know that he was going to attack me?" "You''re overthinking, Master Emperor. We''re not surprised because it isn''t his first time attacking people," Grandmistress Wei explained, "Due to an accident, Shan Er turned into a monster three years ago. We were afraid that he might scare people, so we''ve been locking him up as a prisoner for the past three years. This caused him to be easily triggered and he attacked easily. He even experienced paranoia. Throughout the three years, he ran away more than once. He ran away a few days ago, but we didn''t expect him to flee to Division 1. Since he''s been killed for attacking you, Master Emperor, that''s his destiny. There''s nothing to complain about." "You mean this has nothing to do with the Wei Clan and that it''s all his personal behavior?" Lin Huang scoffed. "Then, how do you explain him taking the long-distance dimensional portal across the Union Government territory and entering Emperor City, a grade-A foothold? "Without help from the Wei Clan, could he have done that? Him crossing the safe zone as a monster aside, he even went into a grade-A foothold in Division 1. If he really did that on his own, our 13 safe zones would''ve been crushed by monsters since the beginning!" "Master Emperor, no matter whether you believe me or not, this has nothing to do with the Wei Clan. I suspect that our rival found out that Shan Er escaped and helped him along the way to create conflict between Dynasty and the Wei Clan," Grandmistress Wei clarified, "Please think about it. You''re the almighty Emperor of Dynasty. Our Wei Clan has nothing to do with you all this while. Why would we ask Shan Er to attack you? Wouldn''t we be making an enemy for our clan?" "Are you sure that your Wei Clan has nothing to do with me?" Lin Huang said while smirking, "With your intel sources, you should know that I was the one who killed Wei Shan three years ago, don''t you?" "Of course, we know that, but that''s the personal conflict you had with Shan Er. It isn''t severe enough to drag our clan into a conflict with an organization. If we get into conflict with a related organization when any of our clan members are killed, the Wei Clan would be rivals with at least 100 organizations throughout these hundreds of years. We''re sensible business people. Won''t we lose our business if we can''t even maintain a good relationship?" "In the Wei Clan, there are at least 30 people who are the same age as Shan Er and are more talented than him. I allowed him to do whatever he wanted in Division 7 back then because he couldn''t cultivate. I hope that he would live a normal life just like everybody else. Never had I thought that he would bring trouble upon himself and do something so unforgivable. He could only blame himself for getting killed. Nobody else should be blamed." "So, him trafficking underaged girls has nothing to do with the Wei Clan?" "Of course, it has nothing to do with us. If the Wei Clan were to do such business, do you think the Union Government would do nothing about it?" Grandmistress Wei pushed the responsibility of human trafficking away completely. "It was Shan Er who did all that out there using our clan''s name. We only found out about that after his death." Lin Huang did not expect Grandmistress Wei to push all the responsibilities onto her son and get a clean slate for the Wei Clan. "According to what you said, wasn''t it your plan to send the girl Lily to assassinate me after your son''s death?" "It was my plan indeed," Grandmistress Wei admitted immediately because she knew very well that Lin Huang knew exactly what had happened since he asked. Instead of denying, she would rather be honest. "I was devastated when I heard that Shan Er was dead. As a mother, it''s only natural that I''d want to avenge my son. Master Emperor, you were a nobody back then, so your death won''t matter," Grandmistress Wei said as if she was right and was not the one to blame. "Now, that I''ve killed him again, don''t you want to avenge him?" Lin Huang looked at Grandmistress Wei while scoffing. "Master Emperor, I''m the master of the Wei Clan. Shan Er''s death is nothing compared to the development of the Wei Clan. If you''re a nobody, as a mother, I would still send someone to assassinate you without hesitation, but you''re an Emperor now. Assassinating you would mean making enemies with Dynasty. I know that personal grudges are nothing when it comes to the big picture. Assassinating the Emperor while risking becoming Dynasty''s deadly rival? I wouldn''t do such a stupid thing." "Shan Er attempted to assassinate you and you killed him instead. As his mother, I shall just accept his death. I hope that you won''t listen to what the others said in the attempt to sabotage us, Master Emperor. Let''s end this personal grudge here. There''s no need to continue stirring this conflict. After all, our Wei Clan has many collaboration possibilities with Dynasty in the future." "Such a powerful lady. She''s pretty convincing," Wu Mo said through voice transmission secretly. "Grandmistress Wei, do you know that Lily killed my friend when you sent her to kill me?" Lin Huang changed the subject after a moment of silence. Grandmistress Wei frowned lightly and fell into silence. She said nothing. "My friend was named Yin Hangyi and he was a fatty. His biggest dream was to become a food hunter, but you sent Lily to kill me and dragged him into it. She ended up killing him instead." "Master Emperor, just tell me what you want directly," Grandmistress Wei spoke again after a moment of silence. "Do you think I came to your Wei Clan just for money?" Lin Huang raised his brow. "Isn''t that it?" Grandmistress Wei stared at Lin Huang expressionlessly. "Why would I move you guys here if money is all I wanted from you? I could''ve brought my people from Dynasty to visit you in front of the Union Government. I would be sipping tea while chatting happily in your living room. Isn''t that more relaxing?" "So, Master Emperor, are you saying you don''t want to settle this peacefully?" Grandmistress Wei narrowed her eyes lightly. "Can I ask why? I don''t think it''s as simple as avenging a friend." "If you insist for a reason I think killing a God''s Messenger of God Bless would give me quite some core information about God Bless. What do you think, Master Messenger of the Third God?" Lin Huang looked at Grandmistress Wei while grinning. Grandmistress Wei had a dramatic change of expression. She had been holding back earlier because God Bless was still in preparation before officially revealing themselves. They had to stay low for now. Therefore, she wanted to end the trouble and was willing to compensate him instead of stirring conflict with Dynasty. Never had she thought that Lin Huang would find out about the relationship between the Wei Clan and God Bless. He had even found out about her identity. Whether he had solid proof or not, as long as Lin Huang spread the news of the Wei Clan and God Bless out, many organizations including the Union Government would find the proof sooner or later. By then, not only was it the end of Wei Clan, but God Bless that had been in hiding would also be completely exposed. ''Lin Huang must die! This secret must die in the cradle!'' Grandmistress Wei made up her mind after a quick assessment. "Master Emperor, I must say, you know too much. So much that I can''t let you leave this place alive." "What a coincidence! I didn''t plan to let any of you from the Wei Clan leave this canyon alive either!" 1045 Fighting Demigods Both parties were on bad terms as the event unfolded. The five Wei Clan demigods had their eyes fixated on Lin Huang and killing intent was rising in their bodies. They were no longer hiding their perfect-stage demigod-level aurae as they released it one after another. The majestic aurae were like suns hanging in the sky, radiating towards all directions. It was rare to see a demigod in Division 1 on normal days, but there were five of them in the small Wei Clan. Moreover, the five were all on perfect-stage demigod-level with terrifying Divine Power emanating from all over their bodies. The five demigods'' existence alone was sufficient to make the Wei Clan the top organization in this gravel world. "Five perfect-stage demigod-levels It seems like your Wei Clan has indeed obtained significant cultivation resources from God Bless throughout the years." Lin Huang did not move a finger as he watched. He had found out about the Wei Clan''s rough situation from Wei Shan much earlier. Grandmistress Wei squinted lightly. She faintly sensed that Lin Huang was not pretending to be fearless before the five perfect-stage demigod-levels. He really seemed to be holding several trump cards in his hands. ''What trump cards exactly does he have?'' Grandmistress Wei was doubtful as she glanced through the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls before Lin Huang and eventually stopped at Wu Mo. ''Could this lady be his trump card?'' Grandmistress Wei could not even sense what her combat strength was. However, the doubt only stayed in her head for a moment. It did not stop her from issuing her order. "Kill him!" The five demigods almost charged at the same time when Grandmistress Wei gave her order. They rushed toward Lin Huang with full Divine Power in their bodies without holding back at all. The fastest one was a middle-aged sword cultivator. The sword in his hand was a thin sword less than two fingers wide and merely 70 centimeters long. Looking at the size alone, it gave one the feeling that it was more suitable for a female sword cultivator. However, it looked out of place in this middle-aged man''s hand. His massive hand almost covered the entire sword handle, but the way he slid the sword out from the scabbard was ferocious. This thin sword that seemed like a piece of decorative item was undoubtedly a killing machine in his hand. The tip of the sword tore through space as soon as it came out of the scabbard. He seemed to have skipped the process of swinging the sword completely. The person who was the second fastest was a saber cultivator with a ponytail. This saber cultivator appeared to be in his early 30''s. He wore a gray Taoist robe and had a ponytail flowing down from the back of his head. The saber was placed back into the scabbard almost at the same time of drawing of saber. The Saber-Drawing Slash was the fastest saber technique he had. At the same time of drawing the saber, a crescent saber energy was released from the saber, slashing all obstacles out of the way. Almost all of the opponents he had ever encountered in his life died by this saber technique because before they could react, they were slashed to death. The third fastest was a spear cultivator who was a cool lady. She wore silver armor and had short hair. She dressed rather androgynously. Her height was approximately 1.8 meters tall. She was no shorter than the four men when she stood among them. However, the spear in her hand was even taller than her. It was at least two meters long. The spear was completely silver. Apart from the sigils on the spear, there were no other colors or patterns on the entire shaft at all. She held the end of the spear and swung it like a flying dragon. Divine Power rushed from the tip of the spear. It turned into a spiral arrow that sailed through the air, coming between Lin Huang''s brows. The slowest ones were the two old men with gray hair and beards who had attended to Lin Huang in the beginning. One had swords in both hands while the other gripped a long staff. The staff the old man was holding looked like it was made of rock. The staff looked like an arm is his hand, whereby it had become an extension of his body completely. He held the end of the long staff with both hands and charged. Divine Power turned into a black whip silhouette that advanced toward Lin Huang''s direction. Meanwhile, the old sword cultivator had a large, wide sword that was 1.2 meters long in his hand. His appearance itself exuded a terrifying vibe. He held the sword handle with both hands as if brandishing the sword alone would drain all of his energy. He was the slowest. They were charging almost at the same time, but the swinging of his sword was slower than the rest. As Divine Power rushed out after the sword was whirled, the other four charges were getting closer to Lin Huang. Five different colors from the different attack forms came almost at the same time. Lin Huang remained smiling lightly since the beginning. The attacks were nothing to him. He did not even move a finger when the attacks were going to smack him right in the face. At that very moment, the Destructive Divine Mammoth before Lin Huang released a long shriek while a circle of sound waves spread out. The invisible energy wave spread again and again. Each time it rippled, the five demigods'' attack would experience an obvious fading in color. The attack speed was getting slower too. As the energy wave rippled, the group''s attack was getting weaker and completely vanished eventually. It sounded slow but in reality, it happened in the blink of an eye. The five perfect-stage demigod-level attacks vanished completely as if it had been a fire put out by ocean waves. Not only were the five who attacked stunned to see that, but even Grandmistress Wei and the housekeeper next to her were also stunned. On the other hand, the people who were watching in the Wei Clan''s ancient castle froze. Their jaws dropped. The five perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouses attacked with their Divine Power without holding back at all. However, their attacks were crushed by an imperial-level purple gold-rank summoning beast''s shriek! What exactly was that?! People in the Wei Clan''s ancient castle were discussing among themselves. "Is that a quadruple mutated mythical-level monster?!" "He used an imperial-level purple gold-rank against demigods! It even defeated five opponents on its own. It has to be the legendary quadruple mutated monster!" "Being an Imperial Censor is such an admirable occupation!" Grandmistress Wei soon snapped back to her senses after a moment of being stunned. "So, this is what you''re counting on A mythical-level imperial monster. It''s indeed powerful to be fighting with demigods when it''s only on imperial-level purple gold-rank. I''ve never expected your Imperial Censor talent to be so outstanding whereby you can even control a quadruple mutated mythical-level monster." Lin Huang did not bother to correct her. The nine little ones before him were not his imperial monsters, but his God Figurine''s Combat Souls. "Nevertheless, a quadruple mutated monster is hard to come by. This imperial monster of yours is considered the best that you have. I''ll take good care of this quadruple mutated imperial monster after I''ve killed you." "Let''s see if you have the ability to take my stuff away from me then," Lin Huang teased her. If he really died, the Combat Souls would vanish naturally. The God Figurine was the only thing that would be left. What imperial monster was he going to take care of by then?! "You''ll soon find out whether I''ve got the ability or not." Grandmistress Wei waved her hand as she smiled. Two silhouettes appeared before her. Their aurae was so powerful that it was suffocating. If the five demigods'' aurae were like suns, these duo''s aurae were like a powerful black hole with gravely threatening vibes. "So, those are the two virtual god-level puppets?" Lin Huang finally looked serious for the first time. 1046 Lady in the White Dress The two silhouettes'' aurae suppressed the battle as soon as they appeared beside Grandmistress Wei. The one standing on the left was a humanoid monster. He seemed like a 3.5-meter tall giant wearing impenetrable silver armor. Even his face was completely covered by the helmet. His flaming blue eyes were the only thing that was showing. This monster carried a massive, wide sword on his back. Excluding the sword handle, the sword was at least three meters long, appearing like a door. Meanwhile, the one standing on the right was a monster completely covered in red hair. Its body was skinny and small, and it stood at approximately 1.6 meters tall. It had a hyena''s head and yellowish fangs in its jaws. It had four upper limbs armed with sharp claws and four highly agile lower limbs. This monster was hideous. Its body looked like an experiment gone wrong instead of a natural born beast. To be honest, Lin Huang had never seen these two monsters in the monster guide. However, that did not affect his judgment of the two monsters. "They seem like they''re skilled in close combat. If I''m not mistaken, the armored monster should be adept in strength while the dog-headed monster should be skilled at explosive agility." "The armored-monster is a monster called the Temple Squire. Indeed, it''s a strength-type monster that''s skilled in close combat, but it has powerful defense and tolerant abilities too. This monster is pretty balanced in all aspects without any obvious flaws. Its only flaw is that it has no special combat technique. Its attack and moving speed is mediocre. This one before us should have had Virtual God rank-3 combat strength when it was alive, but at the most, it''s now on just Virtual God rank-1. "You should beware of that dog-headed monster instead. This dog-headed monster is a type of mutant Abyssal Hyena. Though small, its power is no weaker than that Temple Squire. Moreover, no matter agility or speed, it''s much better than the Temple Squire. Its overall ability can defeat a Temple Squire of the same level. This one that you''re looking at was also on Virtual God rank-3 when it was alive, but its ability is now somewhere around Virtual God rank-2," the stone tablet could not help but remind. ''No wonder Wei Shan said the two puppets'' abilities are nothing less than the bruised corpse''s.'' Lin Huang could not help but study the dog-headed monster again. Soon, the two virtual god-level puppets began moving according to Grandmistress Wei''s command. The Temple Squire was the first to move. Instead of attacking from a distance, he stomped out rapidly like a cannonball that had just been fired, charging at the Destructive Divine Mammoth. The Destructive Divine Mammoth looked fearless. It was like a giant wall standing and waiting for the opponent''s attack to come patiently. The Temple Squire finally began its attack when he arrived approximately ten meters away from the Destructive Divine Mammoth. He held the giant sword with both hands and swung it hard. With the help of the impact from the onslaught, the sword was almost as fleet as he was. A silver sword glow accelerated in the air. The bright silver sword seemed to have teleported passing through the distance in the blink of an eye and it arrived before the Destructive Divine Mammoth. It went right for his left eye. The Destructive Divine Mammoth finally shifted at that moment. Instead of stepping backward, it chose to face it head-on. Its actions were not clumsy at all. Instead, it was extremely agile. It lifted both its forefeet high and stomped hard. In the next second, the bright silver sword glow collided with the black giant feet. The silver and black glow exploded immediately, occupying half of the sky. A moment later, a dazzling white glow expanded in the middle of the collision. Soon, it drowned the duo. Circles of white energy waves rippled toward all directions. The canyon ground trembled under the duo''s collision as the mountains within the radius of tens of kilometers collapsed as if there was an earthquake. As the duo was locked in their intense battle with many eyes watching, the dog-headed monster next to Grandmistress Wei moved all of a sudden. Its four lower limbs charged and appeared before Lin Huang without any warning. As the giant dog-headed monster opened its mouth filled with fangs to chomp Lin Huang''s head off, it noticed a little white cat sitting on his shoulder. The little cat showed human-like disdain at the dog-headed monster, stunning it. The cat gripped its claws on the dog-headed monster''s head. In the next second, the dog-headed monster sailed out like a cannonball and crashed hard into a mountain far away. Grandmistress Wei was clearly flabbergasted to see that. "That cat It''s also a mythical-level monster?!" "How exactly does he do that? How does he manage to master two quadruple mutated mythical-level monsters?!" Grandmistress Wei glanced at the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx. She then looked at the couple of God Figurine''s Combat Souls. A ridiculous thought crossed her mind. ''Can the remaining seven mythical-level monsters be on mythical-level too?'' However, the thought only flashed through her mind and she soon shook it off. "These two mythical-level monsters must just be a coincidence. It''s impossible for all the remaining seven of them to be on mythical-level!" Grandmistress Wei turned her head and said to the five perfect-stage demigod-levels through voice transmission, "I''ll get a puppet to hold that cat down later. You guys find the opportunity to attack Lin Huang." The dog-headed monster soon climbed out of the mountain it crashed into. It looked terrible. It was already hideous enough, but it now had a couple more deep lacerations that showed its bones on its face. The attack almost ruined half of its face. If not for its Virtual God rank-3 body, the Ninetails Lynx''s slap earlier would have crushed its head into pieces. The Ninetails Lynx was talented at space slicing. Even though its current attack contained no Rule Bending Power, it was destructive enough for a Virtual God. However, the dog-headed monster that had been turned into a puppet was fearless. Its body was just an empty shell which Grandmistress Wei was controlling. Grandmistress Wei did not react much upon seeing the dog-headed monster''s devastating stage. She controlled the dog-headed monster to charge toward Lin Huang again right away. However, its target was not Lin Huang this time, but the Ninetails Lynx. Challenged, the Ninetails Lynx hopped off Lin Huang''s shoulder. Just when it was ready to fight with the dog-headed monster, it chickened out at the last minute and ran away. The Ninetails Lynx did not think twice and chased it. As the Ninetails Lynx was carried away, the five perfect-stage demigod-levels had no qualms about attacking Lin Huang like madmen. The fastest one was still the middle-aged sword cultivator. The thin sword in his hand appeared before Lin Huang almost in the blink of an eye. It penetrated between Lin Huang''s brows without any obstruction since he was unprepared. However, his body broke like glass in the next second. A lady in a white dress smiled at the middle-aged man and released a puff of breath from her mouth. The breath turned into white fog, covering the middle-aged sword cultivator entirely. Within the white fog, the middle-aged sword cultivator''s devastating and terrified shriek resounded. 1047 Enchanted Fairy The white fog spread out slowly. Everything it passed froze into white frost, including the air. The devastating and terrifying shriek coming from the middle-aged sword cultivator drowned in the white fog only lasted less than the span of three breaths. It stopped entirely and the air turned dead silent. The four demigods who were lagging behind had their guards up when the white fog drowned the middle-aged sword cultivator. Their hearts sank when they heard his devastating shriek that came later on. The four stopped charging forward and attempted to step back. However, it was too late for the ponytailed saber cultivator. He charged even faster than before, trying to attack before the middle-aged sword cultivator could since he had been one step behind earlier. Although he rushed with all of his might to prove himself before the master of the clan, he was still slower than the middle-aged sword cultivator. In the next second, the middle-aged sword cultivator drowned in the white fog, and he went into the white fog too. Before the middle-aged sword cultivator''s devastating shriek was cut off entirely, the man with the ponytail shrieked even more devastatingly. Among the remaining three demigods, the female spear cultivator in silver armor looked gravely pale. She would have been covered in the white fog if she inched two meters forward, so she was fortunate to be stopping in time. However, before she managed to step back, the white fog spread toward her. Her pupils shrunk all of a sudden while she lifted her spear up without hesitation. She activated her Divine Power and shot out at the white fog, trying to scatter it. The white fog retreated a little when the silver glow rushed out of the tip of the spear. However, the silver glow was soon engulfed. The silky white fog was flowing toward the spear from the tip. White frost spread from the tip of the spear at a terrifying speed that could be seen with the naked eye. It reached to the silver-armored lady''s arm in a flash. At that very moment, the silver-armored lady felt a death threat. Determination flashed through her eyes as she turned her left hand into a saber and severed her right arm that was holding the spear. She channeled energy into both of her feet and stepped back quickly without thinking twice. The white fog was coming after her like maggots eating a dead body. She looked despair as she watched the white fog that was touching her ankle. At that moment, the old man with the long staff swung it like a whip. The whip filled with Divine Power aimed at the white fog. The speed of the white fog that had accelerated halted. The other old man picked the silver-armored lady up by her remaining left hand with his big, calloused hand. He then tossed him to the other side of the white fog. The silver-armored lady was finally saved during the most critical time. She looked at the two old men who helped her with immense gratitude. The white fog stopped expanding. It seemed to know it would not be able to chase her. Instead, it retreated slowly back into the body of the lady in the white dress. Meanwhile, the middle-aged sword cultivator and saber cultivator with the ponytail, who drowned in the white fog, had turned into two crystal-clear ice sculptures. They were dead. The remaining three demigods had fear written all over their faces as they looked at the lady in the white dress. She looked very beautiful but her abilities were gravely terrifying. The blow alone killed two out of the five perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouses while one was severely injured. The combat power of the team dropped by half. "Another mythical-level monster!" Even Grandmistress Wei looked aghast now. Never had she thought that Lin Huang would have a third mythical-level imperial monster. The one who attacked was a lady in a white dress. It was not Wu Mo. Instead, she was the Moon Fairy whom Lin Huang visualized from the Mysterious Frostwoman''s God Figurine back then. She was also called the Enchanted Fairy who mastered the Ice Rule. The Enchanted Fairy was a formidable fairy whose ability was just as strong as the Divine Sun Tree. The white fog that could almost freeze air was the Moon Frost that she was born with. It was on the same level as the True Sun Fire in the Divine Sun Tree''s body. Although there was no rule power in it at the moment, it could freeze the charging of Divine Power. One would not be able to escape from it as soon as it touched the person. Even Virtual Gods dared not touch it simply, let alone demigods. "Don''t go over anymore, the few of you. Activate your God Figurine''s Combat Soul!" Grandmistress Wei said to the remaining three demigods through voice transmission directly. "Can the God Figurine''s Combat Soul fight the white fog?" asked the old man holding the staff immediately. "Should be. That white fog has no rule power, so it shouldn''t be able to break through the God Figurine''s body." Grandmistress Wei was not sure herself. She had no idea what the Enchanted Fairy was, let alone the white fog. "Let me try. Worse comes to worst, I''ll just lose a God Figurine." The old sword cultivator contacted the Combat Soul in his body. A moment later, a monster with bulky muscles shot out between his brows. It was a monster over five meters tall. It had three heads and six arms with bulky muscles all over its body. It looked gravely ferocious. He only had a total of three God Figurines, but this one had the most powerful defense ability. After summoning his God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the old sword cultivator controlled the Combat Soul to go after Lin Huang. "They''re even using their God Figurine''s Combat Soul now, so I guess they''re beginning to show their trump card, huh?" Lin Huang was still calm. He knew the difference between ordinary people refining God Figurine''s Combat Souls and the Combat Soul that he refined after visualizing the True Spirit much earlier. It was the stone tablet who had told him that. Although these demigods or Virtual Gods could activate God Figurines with Divine Power due to the absence of Divine Fire in their body, they were restricted to controlling only two types of God Figurines. One of them would insert their consciousness into the God Figurine in order to control it to fight. Another would integrate the Combat Soul in their bodies into the God Figurine. However, due to compatibility issues, using even 30% of the God Figurine''s combat strength was commendable. It was far from using it as a puppet directly. Moreover, their God Figurine was restricted by their own combat strength. Since they had demigod-level combat strength, their God Figurine would only have demigod-level combat strength. If the person was a Virtual God, the God Figurine would only have virtual god-level combat strength. Unlike Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Souls, they could easily surpass his combat strength. Most importantly, using a God Figurine drained a massive amount of Divine Power. A normal perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouse could only last no more than half an hour to activate a God Figurine with Divine Power. That was just the draining of Divine Power to activate the God Figurine alone. If they were to charge a powerful skill, the draining of Divine Power would multiply while the period during which the God Figurine would last would be gravely shortened. In comparison, Lin Huang refined the God Figurines with Divine Fire completely and obtained perfect control over them instead of simply activating them. Moreover, the True Spirit that he visualized was perfectly compatible with his God Figurines. It was equivalent to giving the God Figurine''s Combat Soul a complete consciousness of their own. That was the reason why everyone thought those were Lin Huang''s imperial monsters when they saw those God Figurine''s Combat Souls. They did not think those were God Figurine''s Combat Souls because they looked like individuals with their own minds, which gave one the feeling that they were more like imperial monsters. Moreover, Lin Huang''s combat strength was only on immortal-level, so nobody thought he could activate God Figurines. The naked three-headed monster appeared before Lin Huang in a heartbeat. The Enchanted Fairy seemed to realize her frost could do nothing to a God Figurine''s Combat Soul with a true god-level body, so she did not fight this time. The rest of the God Figurine''s Combat Souls also did nothing. However, the little black snake wound around Lin Huang''s right arm lifted its head all of a sudden. Golden glows shot out of its eyes. In the next second, black shackles flew out of the three-headed monster''s body as if the shackles were alive. It was tied up like a dumpling in the blink of an eye. The God Figurine then fell onto the ground as if it had fallen asleep. 1048 A Death Butterfly Thats Terrible In Comba The little snake that was wound around Lin Huang''s right arm was naturally his God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Shackle Serpent. He visualized it from a True Spirit with sealing ability, the Hair Demon''s God Figurine back then. Legend had it that the Medusa Tribe among the Protosses which possessed sealing ability obtained the ability from a Shackle Serpent. The Shackle Serpent on Lin Huang''s arm was just a baby whereby its body could only loop a little more than one round of his arm. Under normal circumstances, an imperial-level purple gold-rank Shackle Serpent possessed no ability to seal demigods or Virtual Gods. After all, demigods and Virtual Gods had Divine Power in their bodies. However, it was a different case for a God Figurine''s Combat Soul. A God Figurine''s Combat Soul that was activated by demigods or Virtual Gods could only be counted as a puppet. The Shackle Serpent''s sealing could forcefully block the interaction between the God Figurine and its master whereby the energy supply for the God Figurine''s Combat Soul would be cut off. That was how the bizarre event happened. The three-headed God Figurine that was being tied up lost contact with the old cultivator for a moment. It slumped onto the ground since the energy supply was cut off. Far away, the old sword cultivator looked lost. He was suspecting if his God Figurine had obtained some new skill when he saw shackles growing on the three-headed monster''s body. He only realized that it was attacked when it fell onto the ground. His effort was to no avail no matter how he tried contacting it. The connection he had with the God Figurine seemed to be cut off completely by the shackles that had grown on its body. The rest of them, including Grandmistress Wei, was stunned to see that. She looked at Lin Huang with a terrified expression now. ''That''s already the fourth mythical-level imperial monster he possesses! It seems like all of Lin Huang''s nine imperial monsters are on mythical-level and they possess abilities that are on par with virtual god-level!'' The few demigods were petrified as they thought to themselves. ''You''re already so overbearing when you''re only on immortal-level. How much more overbearing will you be when you elevate to Virtual God in the future?!'' The old sword cultivator was tempted to curse as he watched Lin Huang putting his three-headed God Figurine away in his own storage space while grinning. "Don''t use your God Figurine''s Combat Soul. The snake on his arm has sealing ability! I can''t even recall my God Figurine now," the old sword cultivator reminded the rest of them while looking grim. ''How are we supposed to fight him now?!'' The few demigods felt troubled. They would probably be frozen by that imperial monster in white if they were to fight by themselves. They could not use their God Figurine''s Combat Soul either since it would be sealed by Lin Huang directly and he would even claim ownership to it. Grandmistress Wei felt horrible. Her two puppets were completely suppressed by her opponent''s two imperial monsters. Her all-out effort and her few underlings fighting at full force not only did nothing to Lin Huang, but two of her underlings had died while one was severely injured. Just when she was thinking of what to do next, the Ninetails Lynx slapped the dog-headed puppet that it was fighting towards Lin Huang. The Shackle Serpent''s eyes lit up once again while black shackles began to grow on the dog-headed puppet too. It was wrapped like a dumpling in the next second and it fell immediately. Before the Destructive Divine Mammoth could react to it, the Ninetails Lynx appeared above his head and slapped the the Temple Squire''s face hard. The Temple Squire, whose body was over three meters tall, flew out like a spiral and landed less than 20 meters from Lin Huang with a crash. Before he could get up, the golden glow in the Shackle Serpent''s eyes lit up again and the Temple Squire was wrapped like a dumpling. He fell onto the ground and stopped moving. "What''s the deal with the Ninetails Lynx slapping others'' faces?" Lin Huang glanced at the Ninetails Lynx and mumbled softly. He then looked at the two puppets before him in satisfaction. As he picked them up with his Divine Telekinesis in an attempt to put them away in his storage space, he heard a ferocious scream coming from Grandmistress Wei. "Lin Huang, don''t you dare! They''re my collection!" Lin Huang raised his brow and put them away in his Emperor''s Heart Ring without hesitation. "Well, they''re mine now." "Lin Huang, I''m warning you. Nobody can simply take my things away from me." Grandmistress Wei''s face turned ferocious. "Try me. Why don''t you summon some more puppets and I''ll show you whether I can take your things away from you?" Lin Huang snickered in a teasing manner. "If that''s what you want, I''ll grant your wish. Let''s see how many times that imperial monster of yours can perform the sealing ability in a day!" Grandmistress Wei shook her sleeve after she was done speaking. Monster puppets of all forms crowded the place. There were thousands of them and most of them had a combat strength of imperial-level and there were over 20 demigods. Anyone would have a dramatic change of expression when they saw such a formidable monster army. However, Lin Huang remained calm. "An army? That''s rather few of them," Lin Huang mumbled to himself softly. He had armies too but the Undead Styx''s 100,000-strong army alone was tens of folds more than Grandmistress Wei''s army, let alone if he compared it with Bloody and the Warlord''s armies. "Your arrogant bastard!" Naturally, Grandmistress Wei heard his comment and glared coldly at him. At the same time, she secretly spoke to the three demigods and the housekeeper next to her through voice transmission, "Find the opportunity to kill Lin Huang when things get messy later! Leave the rest to me." As she was done speaking, Grandmistress Wei then controlled the puppet army to advance toward Lin Huang. Just when Wu Mo was going to involve herself in the battle, Lin Huang stopped her by stretching out his arm. "Sister Mo Mo, just watch." An inconspicuous blue butterfly on Lin Huang''s collar flapped its wings all of a sudden when he was done speaking. In the next second, a black wave spread out like a ripple. All the puppets stopped moving wherever the wave passed by. Besides those imperial-level puppets, even those 20-odd demigod-level puppets stood still abruptly. No, it was not only the puppets, but Grandmistress Wei, the housekeeper, and the remaining three demigods stopped moving too. In the next second, Grandmistress Wei and the housekeeper spat a mouthful of blood out. They looked petrified at the blue butterfly on Lin Huang''s collar. Meanwhile, the thousands of puppets and the three demigods turned into dust as if their bodies had turned into sand. The wind blew, taking the dust far away as if they never existed. "That''s death spirit energy from the spirit realm Who exactly are you?!" Grandmistress Wei had fear written on her face as she looked at Lin Huang again. Even Lin Huang was a little shocked to see that himself. Initially, he thought it should be easy for the Death Butterfly to handle those imperial-level puppets while he might need to get the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the rest to kill the remaining demigods. Never had he thought that a single flap of the Death Butterfly''s wings alone would have killed the demigods altogether. "Didn''t you say that the Death Butterfly isn''t good in battle?" Lin Huang could not help but ask the stone tablet. "I was just relatively speaking when I said it''s not good in battle. All monsters that master the Death Rule are compelling. Compared to True Spirits such as the Black-robed Death God and the Golden Skeleton, the Death Butterfly''s combat ability indeed considered weak," the stone tablet explained. "Alright then." 1049 Agency EA Lin Huang visualized the Death Butterfly from the Coffin Carrier''s God Figurine which was an Abyssal Protoss. Since there were quite a number of True Spirits that mastered the Death Rule, Lin Huang was having a hard time choosing which to visualize. Eventually, he chose the Death Butterfly which combat ability was relatively weak because it guarded the Yin Yang Gate. It could travel between the material realm and the spirit realm when it reached true god-level. Lin Huang did not know much about the spirit realm. He only knew that it should be the place spirits went to after they died. Naturally, he had no idea what the death spirit energy Grandmistress Wei was talking about was at all. He could not help but ask the stone tablet when he heard Grandmistress Wei mention it, "What exactly is that death spirit energy she was talking about?" "The death spirit energy is actually a special spiritual energy only possessed by spirits in the spirit realm. The unique fact about the death spirit energy is that not only does it possess a spiritual attack attribute, but it also contains a death attribute. Most of the living things will be dead as soon as they touch it. The reason how the two Virtual Gods survived is that they''ve Godheads protecting them inside their bodies. Moreover, this Death Butterfly of yours has a low combat strength. The death spirit energy it can use is on a low level." "This lady knows about the existence of death spirit energy and the spirit realm. She must know many things about the great world too," the stone tablet reminded. "It proves that she''s in contact with the great world." Lin Huang nodded, but doubts rose within him at the same time. ''According to the information we got earlier, God Bless''s Master God should''ve been born in this gravel world and he should be in this world at the moment. Why are they still in contact with the great world then? Could it be that Master God is just like me, a member from some organization from the great world?'' Lin Huang looked at Grandmistress Wei while smiling as the thought flashed in his mind. "You know quite a lot. You even know about the spirit realm?" "Who exactly are you?! It''s impossible for this gravel world has so many quadruple mutated mythical-level monsters. Even if there are, they wouldn''t be captured by you so easily." Grandmistress Wei looked at Lin Huang grimly. "Didn''t you collect every piece of information about me? I''m just a normal person from Division 7," Lin Huang said while smiling, "Well, about the imperial monsters, I just got lucky. Is it so hard to believe?" "Even a dummy won''t believe what you said. I think you''re more like an old devil from the great world who took over Lin Huang''s body," Grandmistress Wei expressed what she felt. Lin Huang raised his brow when he heard that. He was surprised that Grandmistress Wei could have guessed something right about him. It was just that he was not some old devil, but a little guy with conduit. "I''m quite curious about the Master God you guys are talking about. Which organization is he from in the great world exactly?" "Why would I tell you such a secret?" "You don''t even dare to reveal the organization name. It seems like it''s just an insignificant organization." Lin Huang showed disdain on his face. "Look at our Dynasty, we tell everyone that Royal is behind us. Even the Purple Crow dares to reveal that the Hundred-eyed Dark Crow Tribe is behind them. However, you don''t even dare to mention the organization that''s behind you guys. It only proves that the organization is an unrated organization." "I think you guys can consider to join me. I''ll be in Dynasty which is Royal''s affiliate organization. Leave your so-called Master God behind. What I can give you guys is so much more than what he can offer!" "Lin Huang, you don''t understand how powerful the Master God is!" Grandmistress Wei remained firm. "Stop wasting your efforts. I''ll definitely kill you today!" Grandmistress Wei''s hair began floating as soon as she was done speaking. The aura she had been hiding finally revealed itself. It was Virtual God rank-3 as suspected! Naturally, she did not break through to this combat strength herself. Instead, she had gotten it from integrating with a Godhead. However, it proved that this lady was compelled to be able to integrate Virtual God rank-3 Godhead successfully. The housekeeper next to Grandmistress Wei revealed his aura too. He was on Virtual God rank-2. Clearly, he had gotten the combat strength from integrating Godhead too. ''One Virtual God rank-2 and one Virtual God rank-3. I guess the coming battle won''t be as easy as before'' A surprising turn-of-events happened on the battlefield just when that thought popped into Lin Huang''s mind. The housekeeper in the suit attacked Grandmistress Wei. The narrow blade in his hand pierced through Grandmistress Wei''s back directly while the tip of the blade pierced through her chest. However, Grandmistress Wei seemed to have sensed the attack coming in the moment of the attack She managed to dodge the attack from her heart, whereby the housekeeper''s narrow blade was over an inch toward the right. As the sneak attack took place, the housekeeper pulled the blade out and stepped back immediately. "Grandmistress Wei turned around in rage and questioned him fiercely, "How could you betray me just to save your own life?!" "You misunderstood. I didn''t attack you to save my life. I''ve never been loyal to you and the Wei Clan, so I''m not betraying anyone here." The housekeeper removed the hat on his head while his suit turned into a military uniform gradually. He bowed to Lin Huang from a distance. "Your humble one is Guan Zhong, the Union Government''s Agency EA member. Code name: Housekeeper." "I hope that Master Emperor will work with the Union Government to capture the Wei Clan master whether it''s capturing her alive or dead! Of course, it''s best if we can capture her alive. We need information about God Bless from this lady''s mouth." "How do I verify your identity? With this uniform that I''m not sure is even legit?" Lin Huang raised a brow. In reality, he knew that the person''s identity was mostly true. It was just that he was unhappy by the fact that the Union Government did nothing to the Wei Clan all this time. He could not help but suspect the person''s identity. "You''re welcome to verify my identity after we''re done with the Wei Clan," Guan Zhong said, showing neither inferiority nor superiority. Lin Huang initially had two virtual god-level opponents and now he was only left with one. Not only that, he had gotten himself an assistant now. To him, the situation became more optimistic now. "Madam Wei, it''s best that you surrender. You''ll be at a loss if we really fight," Guan Zhong advised her. "You bastard, you''ve been plotting against me!" Grandmistress Wei was getting more enraged after hearing his advice. Lin Huang did not even plan to give her the chance to surrender. He got the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth to attack right away. The Ninetails Lynx appeared above Grandmistress Wei''s head as it moved. It slapped Grandmistress Wei''s face. If the attack happened, Grandmistress Wei''s entire face might be disfigured. Meanwhile, the Destructive Divine Mammoth followed closely behind. He swung his trunk like a whip, so it swept towards Grandmistress Wei who was extremely pale. Although she dodged her vitals from being annihilated by Guan Zhong''s attack earlier, her body was severely hurt by the god relic. The most she could perform was only 50% of her ability. Not only that, but she was attacked by two monsters whose ability was nothing weaker than hers. She was also targeted by Guan Zhong like a hiding poisonous snake who would attack her anytime as well as seven terrifying imperial monsters that were just waiting to attack. Grandmistress Wei felt she had no chance of winning at all. Guan Zhong attacked again after seeing Grandmistress Wei dodge the two imperial monsters'' attacks clumsily. He appeared next to her without warning, and the narrow blade added an injury to her left arm. A ferocious gleam flashed through her eyes upon seeing that she had no chance of even grasping for air as the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth were coming at her again. ''You guys made me do this!'' A crystal appeared between her fingers on her right hand as the thought flashed by. She crushed the crystal in her hand as she watched the Ninetails Lynx coming. "Save me, Master God!" 1050 Master God Has Come A black vortex formed rapidly in the air as the Grandmistress screamed. Lin Huang''s expression was grim now as he could feel a gravely terrifying aura lingering in the entire canyon. Before the person within the vortex appeared, he clearly sensed that the person''s aura was scarier than all the powerhouses that he had ever encountered in his life. He secretly contacted the Warlord who was in the Star Titan airship. In the next second, the thousand of cannons on the Star Titan shifted their direction and pointed to where the vortex was. A hand stretched out of the pitch-black vortex slowly. It looked as fair as snow but it was obviously a man''s hand. He pressed his palm to the edge of the vortex as if he was pushing something solid. He then stretched half of his body out of the vortex. At that second, above the canyon, the Star Titan began firing. The thousand naval cannons of all sizes fired almost at the same time. They targeted the man who was coming out of the vortex. One must know that the naval cannons were charged with Divine Power. The one with the lowest power was comparable with a God Crasher from the gravel world while the powerful one could kill Virtual Gods. The man who had extended half of his body out of the vortex drowned in the golden cannon fire together with the vortex in the next second. Divine Power spread through all directions as the fire went on. The entire canyon looked like Doomsday was coming. The ground was shaking violently under the fire as if it were fearful of the Star Titan''s compelling power. Within hundreds of kilometers around the canyon, the rivers evaporated while the mountains collapsed, turning into dust. Grandmistress Wei, who was closest to the attack zone, stepped back immediately. At the same time, she released her Divine Power to fight the impact of the Divine Power. Meanwhile, the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth that was chasing her were not that affected. Instead, they seized the impact of the Divine Power to go after Grandmistress Wei who had lost a portion of her strength to run. On the other side, the Wei Clan''s ancient castle which was a demigod relic was trembling from the impact. It looked like an ordinary house that was at the mercy of an earthquake at that moment. On Lin Huang''s side, naturally, the seven God Figurine''s Combat Souls were all fine. After all, they possessed true god-level bodies. They would not be harmed even if they were attacked by the Star Titan head-on, let alone the impact. Lin Huang was covered in a transparent sphere Wu Mo made with Witchcraft Rune. He defended the impact easily. While for Wu Mo, Lin Huang did not even see her making the defense sphere for him. the impact of the Divine Power disappeared automatically when it arrived approximately 20 meters from her. She was not affected at all. Wu Mo noticed Lin Huang looking at her curiously so she explained while smiling, "This bruised corpse isn''t too shabby, its combat strength was already Virtual God rank-6 when it was alive. It''s just that its consciousness was disconnected by force when it was decomposing and taken over by Wei Shan later on. Its combat strength dropped to only Virtual God rank-2 or Virtual God rank-3. Since Wei Shan has low ability, he couldn''t showcase the best the bruised corpse has. That''s why he was killed by your God Figurine''s Combat Soul." "I refined it with Wu Tribe''s corpse refining technique when I got this body and enhanced it to Virtual God rank-9. I''ve also imprinted a lof of runes to make this body slightly more usable." Lin Huang went speechless right after he heard that. She enhanced the body to Virtual God rank-9 and even imprinted a lot of Witchcraft Runes on it?! Would it not mean that this body was even more powerful than Virtual God rank-9 now?! "Witchcraft Runes can be imprinted on the body too?" Lin Huang was shocked and could not help asking subsequently. "Only a minority of them can be imprinted on living things," Wu Mo nodded and explained further, "But this corpse is already a puppet. It''s equivalent to a tool, and basically all tools can be imprinted. It''s just that we have to be careful with the type of runes to use to prevent the puppet from collapsing which happens easily." "Refining corpse puppets is also one of our Wu Tribe''s combat techniques. However, people use it less as time goes by because it''s unethical. Imprinting runes on puppets is just a part of refining corpse puppet. Our Wu Tribe has come out with a complete system of which rune suitable for which type of corpse puppet. I can teach you if you''d like to learn when we get back." "Sure," Lin Huang was already visualizing refining a Sword Dao corpse puppet for himself after hearing what Wu Mo said. At the moment, his ability had been restricted due to his combat strength. If he could master a virtual god-level Sword Dao corpse puppet, he might be able to fight virtual god-level powerhouses. As they were chatting, a tremor of aura came all the sudden from the vortex that was covered in smoke. Lin Huang and Wu Mo both turned their heads towards the vortex. The aura of the young who man walked out of the vortex was rising rapidly. He was clearly even more terrifying than before. Lin Huang who was initially a little grim when he sensed the aura became a little playful as he looked at the vortex now recalling what Wu Mo said. "You guys are asking for death" a raging sound came within the smoke. However, just when he said the word ''death'', up to 1,000 golden bolts of lightning exploded again before he could finish the word. The man''s voice halted all of a sudden. "Bang" As the gold glows came, intense bangs as if tens of thousands of thunders exploded at the same time spread out. It was the Star Titan that was above the canyon began firing again. Lin Huang gave the Warlord a secret thumbs up, ''Hmm, I''ll give him some metal materials as his snacks when we get back.'' On the other side, Grandmistress Wei was affected by the Star Titan''s attack Divine Power impact and ran even slower now. Her hair was so messy like she was a crazy person, her clothes were messy too. She had wounds all over her body. She even recalled the god relic armor back to her body, she only dared to use demigod relic armor to defend the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls'' attack. The reason being she was worried that she would drain too much Divine Power which would cause her to die even faster. In reality, the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth were not playing with their opponent. Grandmistress Wei''s ability was indeed great whereby she managed to survive while the duo chased after her until now. However, there was not much Divine Power left in her body when the second wave of Divine Power impact came. She still had two monsters whose ability was more powerful than hers coming behind her. Knowing that there was no way that she could escape, a ferocious gleam flashed in her eyes as she turned her head to look at the smoky area where the Star Titan had attacked earlier. She put on the god relic armor and shifted her direction, heading toward the middle of the attack zone quickly. "Save me, Master God!" Grandmistress Wei shouted while heading towards the attack zone. She then went into the smoke. Lin Huang did not bother stopping the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth from going after her. He knew that his God Figurine''s Combat Souls would be fine even if they could not defeat their enemy since they had true god-level bodies. However, Guan Zhong did not go after her. Instead, he stepped back and stood next to Lin Huang. Just when the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth went into the smoky area, two chimes rang from within the smoke. Subsequently, a white and a black silhouette shot out. They were hurtling toward the direction where Lin Huang and the rest were tens of times faster than the speed of sound. Next to Lin Huang, Wu Mo lifted her arm lightly. As if the two silhouettes had fallen into a swamp, they slowed down immediately. They managed to stop when they arrived approximately a meter before Lin Huang and the rest, landing on the ground slowly. The two silhouettes were the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth. The Destructive Divine Mammoth seemed to feel a little dizzy, and it sagged onto the ground as soon as it landed. Meanwhile, the Ninetails Lynx appeared on Lin Huang''s shoulder in a flash, appearing exhausted too. "Are you guys alright?" Lin Huang asked while feeling shocked. "They''re fine. It was just a little tremor," Wu Mo smiled while saying. At that moment, a voice conveyed from within the smoke, "I never thought there''d be high-level Virtual Gods in this gravel world. No wonder you dare to provoke us, God Bless!" A man walked out of the smoke slowly. In his left hand was Grandmistress Wei who was some kind of coma as if he was holding a chick. He then tossed her onto the ground carelessly. 1051 Wu Mo Fights The man who stepped out of the smoke had sustained no wounds on his body at all. Clearly, the Star Titan''s power was not threatening in the least to him, which only proved how powerful he was. The Warlord, who was in the Star Titan, seemed to have noticed this, so he stopped firing. Instead, he contacted Lin Huang secretly to ask if he should proceed with the attack. Lin Huang told the Warlord to stop the assault. Since he already knew the attack could not do anything to the man, it was not necessary to waste the Divine Stones. Seeing that the airship above his head had stopped firing, the man scoffed and looked at the two people across him. A Virtual God rank-9, an immortal-level, and nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls?! The man glanced past the duo across him. He stopped when he saw Lin Huang and soon found out this immortal-level young man was one of the leaders of this battle. ''He''s controlling God Figurine''s Combat Souls to fight a Virtual God rank-3 powerhouse. This guy is really something. It''s unfortunate that his combat strength is too low which limits his ability.'' He did not care much about the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls and skipped his eyes over them. Instead, he had his eyes on Wu Mo. He realized something after some careful observation. ''I was wondering where this Virtual God rank-9 came from. Nevertheless, she''s nothing but a vase. A soul remnant that''s using a Virtual God rank-9 monster''s body as a host.'' As the man was observing Lin Huang and Wu Mo, they were scrutinizing him as well. Lin Huang finally saw how this man looked like then. He had golden armor all over his body and was approximately 1.9 meters tall. His body was the kind that would look skinny in clothes and his muscles were lean instead of bulky. It was the kind of body that most girls appreciated. His hair was slightly shorter than Lin Huang''s, but his face was the most attractive part of him. His face was drop dead gorgeous. It was not the feminine kind of beautiful, but a pretty boy sort of beautiful. His face was one that could get attention from the opposite sex easily. If a picture of his face and body was posted on a dating app on Earth, he probably had up to 1,000 girls talking to him in every city he went. Even Lin Huang was a little envious the moment he saw his face. "I''m sure he can get as many ladies as he wants with that face!" However, Wu Mo, who was standing next to Lin Huang, asked while thinking otherwise, "Is he handsome?" "Don''t you think he''s handsome?" Lin Huang was surprised by Wu Mo''s judgment of beauty. "He''s as skinny as a bean sprout. You''re more handsome," Wu Mo commented out loud instead of using voice transmission. However, she added through voice transmission next, "Our Wu Tribe men have muscular bodies just like this corpse that I''m using at the moment. To us, this is 10,000 times better-looking than that guy." Lin Huang finally understood why Wu Mo wanted the bruised corpse to be her shell after hearing that. He thought to himself, ''Did this girl do anything to this bruised corpse secretly?'' He looked peculiar when he looked at Wu Mo as he thought about this. The man looked disgusted upon noticing the duo ignore him completely and even discuss his features out loud. Most importantly, the lady had announced that he was not handsome. As the Master God of God Bless, he had never been treated so coldly before. "So, it''s the both of you who are provoking my God Bless." "To be exact, we aren''t provoking since we''re already here." Lin Huang thought about it and suggested another term, "I think ''challenging'' is more accurate.'' ''What challenge?! Do you think this is a dojo?!'' Even the Master God wanted to scream at him. Although the man''s identity was obvious since Grandmistress Wei had called out to him twice earlier, Lin Huang asked anyway, "So, you''re the Master God of God Bless?" "Yes, I''m the Master God of God Bless," the man confirmed. "You''re only on virtual god-level and you dare call yourself Master God," Lin Huang mumbled softly hearing the answer, "I''ve always thought the Master God of God Bless would be a True God from some organization in the great world. Alas, you''re not even a True God! I guess there''s nothing impressive about your background. No wonder even your God''s Messenger is unwilling to reveal anything about you. It''s too embarrassing." The man was enraged to hear Lin Huang''s mumbling. "This is just a clone I left behind in this gravel world. I''m a ninth-rank True God!" "Ah, so it''s just a clone." Lin Huang looked like realization dawned upon him. "Although this is just a clone, it''s enough to kill you guys!" The killing intent of the Master God''s clone rose. "I''m not sure about that," Lin Huang shook his head while saying with a smile. "What? Do you think you''re invincible because of your nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls?" Naturally, the Master God''s clone saw through the God Figurine''s Combat Souls'' secret. "If I were to kill you, these God Figurine''s Combat Souls alone can''t save you!" "You can''t kill him in my presence," Wu Mo, who had been standing aside, finally spoke. "You?" Master God''s clone scoffed. "I didn''t have a proper look at you earlier and thought you were a high-rank Virtual God. Now that I see you up close, you''re just a soul remnant living in a puppet. Your life is in my hand. Where did you get the idea that you can defend this brat?" "Won''t you find out if you fight me?" Wu Mo grinned. "Great idea. This brat will be left with nothing after I''ve killed you." A playful expression flashed through Lin Huang''s eyes when he heard what the Master God said. The two silhouettes almost disappeared at the same time when the battle invitation was extended. A glaring golden glow lit up in the air before Lin Huang could react. The golden glow that came out of nowhere was tens of times brighter than the sun at noon. Almost the same time when the first golden glow appeared, the second, the third, and the fourth golden glow radiated. Blinding golden glows came one after another. In less than a few seconds, there were over 100 golden glows shining in the air. Lin Huang tried his best to look, but he could not see the duo''s fight at all. Apart from the explosive golden glows that came from the collision, he saw nothing else. Flash grenades seemed to be set off flash grenades set off in each and every corner of the entire canyon. If there were ordinary people here, they would not be able to see anything at all. All they would be able to see was the golden lights that filled their field of vision. If not for the Star Titan covering the top of the canyon, Fengtian City that was thousands of kilometers away might have been able to witness the phenomenon clearly. The canyon was collapsing as a result of the duo''s intense battle. Almost all the mountains, trees and plants up to a 1,000-kilometer radius that was bathed in the golden light collapsed. The canyon could no longer be called a canyon since all the mountains were now flattened. Even the crust of the earth was trembling and giant cracks could be seen. Most of the terrain collapsed deep underground, forming a massive sinkhole which seemed bottomless. Even the gigantic the Star Titan was trembling. The Warlord even turned the airship''s defense system on to prevent the airship from being damaged. However, the Wei Clan''s ancient castle that was initially rooted to the ground was not in so much luck. After all, the ancient castle was only a demigod relic. Moreover, the entire ancient castle would soon break down without Grandmistress Wei being conscious. It collapsed completely from the impact of the Divine Power that struck again and again. The people in the Wei Clan''s ancient caste vanished as a consequence of the shining golden lights immediately. The same happened to the people in the basements. None of them survived. The battle between the two Virtual God rank-9 powerhouses was incredibly intense. Even the high-temperature radiation caused by the collisions could hurt a demigod-level powerhouse severely, let alone the impact coming from their Divine Power. Grandmistress Wei, who had passed out on the ground, was similar to Lin Huang whereby she had a thin, semi-transparent sphere around her. Without that shield, she might have been killed by the battle impact earlier. Naturally, Lin Huang was watching the battle safe and sound. The defense sphere that Wu Mo had made herself allowed him and Guan Zhong to watch the battle at a close distance although Lin Huang could not see anything the duo was doing. However, beside him, Guan Zhong watched in rapture while staring at the sky. He did not want to miss a thing. 1052 Beaten Up So Hard that Even His Mother Doesnst Recognize Him The battle between the duo was growing intense in the air. The impact of their collisions was accumulating since they had been colliding for up to a thousand times. The Master God''s clone was looking more and more serious because Wu Mo''s ability was much more powerful than he expected. The duo''s fight lasted for five to six minutes. All of a sudden, Wu Mo backed off after her punch landed on the Master God''s clone, creating a distance between them. The Master God''s clone hesitated for a moment. Instead of going after her, he teased her from a distance, "It''s only been a couple of minutes but you can no longer take it? You''re just a sliver of a soul remnant. Why must you show off?" "You''re overthinking. I''m just not used to fighting in this disguise," Wu Mo responded and she removed her disguise. She revealed the bruised corpse with bulky muscles that was over three meters tall. "The disguise earlier had a vast difference in terms of height and arm length. It''s odd to fight in that disguise." Seeing Wu Mo reveal the bruised corpse in the air, Lin Huang looked rather sympathetically at the Master God''s clone. He knew Wu Mo was serious about fighting now. The disguise earlier was terribly different from this bruised corpse, causing Wu Mo many mistakes in battle sensing ability. For instance, the bruised corpse''s arm should have been able to reach the opponent, but in her previous disguise, there was a larger distance for her arm to get to the opponent. The bigger difference in the body size, the costlier the mistakes in such senses which affected her battle performance more. Wu Mo''s female disguise was almost four times different from the bruised corpse she was now using. She probably could not even use 50% of her ability in the previous disguise. Even Lin Huang knew that, so it was only natural that the Master God''s clone knew that too. He turned grim again. Now that Wu Mo had regained her original form, she must have experienced a boost in her abilities. He had no choice but to be more careful now. "Ah, it''s liberating to use this body." Wu Mo stretched her neck to her left and right as a crisp crack rang out. She then gazed down on the Master God''s clone who was across her. "We shall begin the second round if that''s okay with you." Before the Master God''s clone could answer whether he agreed with that, Wu Mo stomped into the air with her bare feet and shot towards her opponent like a cannonball. The Master God''s clone''s pupils shrunk all of a sudden. "That''s crazy fast!" Wu Mo''s speed was more than twice as fast than before. Knowing that he would not be able to dodge her attack, the Master God''s clone could only defend the attack forcefully by crossing both arms in front of his chest. Almost the second when he did that, Wu Mo arrived before him. She grinned at him and swung a punch which landed hard on both of his arms that acted as a defense. The Master God''s clone could only feel an invincible force coming from his arms that were wrapped in a god relic and were crushed right away. The force even penetrated his chest plate and reached his fragile chest. Not only did his ribs collapse, but even his organs experienced a tremor. The Master God''s clone sailed out like a golden comet. He slumped hard onto the ground hundreds of kilometers away. The single punch alone was terrifying! "I think that was too much" Wu Mo blinked twice after seeing what her punch did. She glanced down at her own fist. The bruised corpse that she was currently using seemed to be almost comparable with a true god-level body after the enhancement which included refinement and runes inscriptions. That was the reason why Lin Huang did not panic at all when she was fighting the Virtual God rank-9 Master God''s clone. Lin Huang, who was watching beneath, knew what happened as soon as he saw the golden glow while Wu Mo remained standing there. "Don''t let him get away!" "Don''t worry. He won''t be able to do that." Wu Mo disappeared from where she was as soon as she said that. Lin Huang was hesitating if he should go after her to watch the battle upon seeing Wu Mo go after the Master God''s clone. However, another golden glow shot through the sky before he could make up his mind. The golden glow landed less than three kilometers from him with a crash. Wu Mo had hurled the Master God''s clone back! She appeared again almost when the golden glow landed. Before the Master God''s clone managed to get up from the ground, she stepped on his lower abdomen, causing him to fly out. However, Wu Mo did not wait for him to land this time. Instead, she arrived before him like a twinkling star and swung a punch at his face. The Master God''s clone flew toward another direction without the ability to control himself. Once again, Wu Mo appeared in front of him without waiting for him to land. She attacked his recovering chest with her elbow. Wu Mo did not use any fancy techniques at all. Even her close combat skills left no chance for the Master God''s clone to fight back at all. He was almost always in an airborne state whereby he could not even manage to stand still. Just like that, the Master God''s clone remained airborne for over ten minutes. He finally could not take it any longer and summoned a God Figurine''s Combat Soul. He managed to stand still as he got the God Figurine''s Combat Soul to confront Wu Mo''s attack. He stared at Wu Mo while his face was drenched in blood. Lin Huang could finally see the Master God''s clone''s face now. His face was completely deformed. He bet that even his birth mother would not be able to recognize him now. If that had been an ordinary person, he must have been so marred that even the wounds on the face could not recover since all the bones on his face were crushed. However, a cultivator had powerful recovery ability. They could recover if they were given ample time as long as they were still alive, let alone virtual god-level powerhouses. Apart from his face, his whole body was injured. His chest was now sunken and both his arms and legs were distorted in an irregular way. Seeing that his crotch was still bleeding, Lin Huang even suspected that Wu Mo had destroyed his ''third leg'' too. Lin Huang was surprised to see his appalling condition. He could not really understand how Wu Mo managed to attack his flesh directly and bypass the god relic''s defenses. Theoretically, the Master God''s clone would not have been beaten up so drastically as long as he provided sufficient Divine Power to his god relic. Unfortunately, it seemed like he had fought Wu Mo without any god relic on. Besides Lin Huang, even the Master God''s clone himself also could not understand why the god relic did not defend him when Wu Mo was beating him up. "Do you think this little guy can stop me?" Wu Mo smirked as she looked at the Abyssal Dragon Turtle''s Combat Soul that was growling at her. Even though the God Figurine''s Combat Soul had a body like a mini hill and was hundreds of meters along, it was just a little chap to Wu Mo. "Maybe one of them can''t do anything to you, but what about nine?" the Master God''s clone replied with his hoarse voice. He summoned the remaining eight God Figurine''s Combat Souls as soon as he was done speaking. The nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls had the same combat strength as he did whereby all of them were on Virtual God rank-9. All of them were the size of mountains, the Abyssal Dragon Turtle being the smallest. "Aren''t you talented at combat skills? I''ll get my God Figurine''s Combat Souls to compete in that with you." The Master God''s clone scoffed when he saw Wu Mo being surrounded by his God Figurine''s Combat Souls. "Sister Mo Mo" Lin Huang wanted to get his God Figurine''s Combat Souls to help. Even though they were no match for the opponent''s God Figurine''s Combat Souls, at least they could be obstacles to buy Wu Mo some time. However, Wu Mo interrupted him when he spoke, "I can handle this. Just enjoy the show where you are." 1053 Allow Me to Let It All Out on You To be honest, Lin Huang was worried when he saw the Master God''s clone summoning nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls. After all, all the God Figurine''s Combat Souls had true god-level bodies. They were the best at fighting close-combat powerhouses. The combat skill that Wu Mo was using earlier was outranked entirely. However, upon hearing Wu Mo''s reassurance that she could handle it, he recalled she was not the best at combat skill, but at Witchcraft Runes. His concern was lifted right away, and he proceeded to watch the battle in relief. The Master God''s clone was secretly jolted when he heard Lin Huang''s offer to help. Although Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Souls had a great difference in combat strength compared to him and he was no match to him at all, Lin Huang could stall the battle. After all, Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Souls too had true god-level bodies. Even though they were no match for him, they could fight his God Figurine''s Combat Souls head-on. The Master God''s clone was secretly relieved to hear Wu Mo asking Lin Huang not to interfere. He did not think that Wu Mo who was expert in combat skills could get away while being surrounded by his nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls. In the gravel world, the body of a God Figurine''s Combat Soul could be considered invincible. However, he had no idea that combat skills were just one of Wu Mo''s extra abilities. The nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls surrounded Wu Mo in the air. The Master God''s clone was watching the battle amusedly while letting his body recover outside the battle ring. He was already visualizing his nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls trampling Wu Mo''s bulky body at ease. Wu Mo did not seem nervous at all despite being surrounded by nine Virtual God rank-9 God Figurine''s Combat Souls. She glanced at the Master God''s clone who was outside the ring through the gap between the God Figurine''s Combat Souls. "This guy''s not paying attention at such a moment, huh?" Wu Mo smirked when she saw the Master God''s clone outside the zone. The Master God''s clone was only distracted for a moment. He issued his order to the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls when he snapped back to his senses. "Kill that bulky man!" The nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls moved as soon as they heard the order. The first to attack was a giant red-haired ape. It was up to 1,000 meters tall and it held a giant hammer in its hand. It smashed the weapon toward Wu Mo without hesitation. The crash of the giant hammer felt like a mountain was collapsing. The second to attack was a spotted leopard. Compared to the rest of the God Figurine''s Combat Souls, it was the smallest at only approximately five meters long. It stretched its foreclaws and mauled Wu Mo. Black cracks formed in the air. A red sparrow was the third to attack. It had red wings and red feathers along its back. Only its crest and tail were black while its abdomen was white. It was over 300 meters long when both of its wings spread open. It flapped its wings in the air, shooting tens of thousands of bloody feathers at Wu Mo like a hailstorm. The Abyssal Dragon Turtle was the last to attack. The Master God''s clone had summoned it to block Wu Mo from chasing him earlier. Although the Abyssal Dragon Turtle was best at defending, it had a pretty powerful attack ability too. Black flames were rushing out of its mouth as it opened its muzzle wide. The flames were pouring out like a pitch-black waterfall. The nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls attacking at the same time was almost no different than nine Virtual God rank-9s striking at once. The Master God''s clone, who was outside the battle ring, could almost see the bulky man being smashed into mush after the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls attacked him together. However, in the middle of the battle ring, Wu Mo was at ease. She stretched her hand out and summoned the Book of Sorcerer Dao. She then activated a few runes one after another in the air. The set of runes appeared together in the air rapidly. They turned into nine little thumb-sized snakes, slithering towards the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls. It was too late for the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls to dodge them by then as the nine little black snakes penetrated their bodies easily. Almost at the same time, the nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls froze. The Master God''s clone was bewildered at that moment as his nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls fell onto the ground and stopped moving. He had completely lost contact with them and could not even recall them back now. "What did you do?! Why can''t I sense my God Figurine''s Combat Souls any longer?!" "Nothing much. I''m just applying what I''ve just learned. I used some technique to block the interaction you have with your God Figurine''s Combat Souls," Wu Mo smiled while explaining. She had learned that from Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Shackle Serpent. "You''ve lost all of your God Figurine''s Combat Souls now, so just throw everything you have at me now," Wu Mo taunted, "If not, just be a punching bag and allow me to let it all out on you. It''s been a long time since I''ve fought anyone." The Master God''s clone looked aghast. All of his nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls which were his trump cards had just been beaten, and he could no longer use them. An idea flashed through his mind after some complicated expressions flitted across his face. "Come into my God Territory if you dare!" A black vortex formed out of thin air as he roared. The Master God''s clone walked into it and provoked Wu Mo by asking her to come with his finger. "Sister Mo Mo" Lin Huang attempted to advise Wu Mo to not go. After all, every Virtual God had a different God Territory ability. Entering another person''s God Territory was highly risky. Although Wu Mo''s overall ability was much more powerful than the Master God''s clone, it was a different story once she entered his God Territory. Some people had very odd God Territories. However, Wu Mo turned her head and smiled at him. She then spoke to him through voice transmission, "Don''t worry. I''ve encountered all kinds of opponents on the battlefield back then. I might not have entered others'' God Territories 50 times, but I''ve gotten in at least 20 to 30 times. I know how to handle this." Wu Mo went into the vortex in a flash as soon as she was done speaking. The vortex disappeared slowly, taking the duo along with it. Lin Huang frowned upon seeing them vanish. He did not know much about God Territories. He had only heard about it from the stone tablet. A God Territory was a product of a Life Palace. It had Godhead as its core, which was why it usually inherited the Life Palace''s abilities. Nonetheless, the God Territory''s abilities could be enhanced and used in every part of the entire God Territory. A God Territory was very effective on an opponent who had a slightly weaker ability. The weaker one''s ability was, the easier the person would be taken into the God Territory by force. Especially when the opponent had a much weaker ability, one could open his God Territory and drag the opponent into it. However, when both of them had the same combat strength, dragging the opponent into one''s God Territory had a high failure rate. The more powerful the opponent''s ability was, the more difficult it would be for the opponent to be taken into one''s God Territory. The Master God''s clone had provoked Wu Mo into his God Territory to fight him because the failure rate of taking her in by force was very high. "I wonder what is the ability of the Master God''s clone''s God Territory exactly?" Lin Huang felt slightly insecure that he could not watch the battle although he could not see Wu Mo and the Master God''s clone''s fight earlier at all either. Meanwhile, in the Master God''s God Territory, Wu Mo and the Master God''s clone had begun fighting again. 1054 Killing the Master God The God Territory of the Master God''s clone was a chilly snowfield. Wu Mo felt a little lost when she saw the snowy land. She thought she returned to her Wu Tribe''s floating land. However, she snapped back to her senses a moment later and looked confusedly at the Master God''s clone. When they were fighting out there earlier, the Master God''s clone did not show any frost attribute abilities at all. However, his God Territory manifested such a scene, which proved that he definitely had a frost attribute Godhead. The only explanation for him to not use frost attribute Godhead when he was fighting out there was that he did not refine this Godhead himself and it was not entirely compatible with him. Since it would not be effective when used in common battles, he put it aside entirely. However, it was a different story in this God Territory. The God Territory was equivalent to an independent mini world while the Master God''s clone was the ruler of that world. Even though he had low compatibility with the Godhead, he could perform almost 100% of the Godhead''s ability. ''This guy didn''t refine his own Godhead?'' More doubts rose within Wu Mo. Seeing that Wu Mo looked skeptical, the Master God''s clone thought she was shocked by his Godhead''s attribute and began teasing proudly, "I haven''t been using the frost attribute ability out there because I''ve got low computability with it. However, that issue doesn''t exist in this God Territory. This place will be your burial ground." "I''m very curious. How did you manage to integrate a Virtual God rank-9 Godhead? Theoretically, Godheads above Virtual God rank-3 should have an integration success rate so low that it''s beyond the imagination." Wu Mo ignored what he said and expressed her biggest doubt. "This body is already on Virtual God rank-9, but there weren''t any Godheads in it. I happened to find a frost attribute Virtual God rank-9 Godhead, so I used the Ice Rule to suppress the frost attribute ability in it for integration. Without the ability going haywire, it was much easier to integrate." "Unfortunately, my body has low computability with this Godhead and I couldn''t find any materials to boost the compatibility in this gravel world. I just had to deal with it," the Master God''s clone told her right away since he did not think it was a secret. "So, you''ve been in this gravel world before?!" Wu Mo thought it was rather unbelievable. She was merely a sliver of soul remnant now and she could faintly sense the gravel world''s rejection. The difficulty of a ninth-rank True God coming to this gravel world should be no less than a person cultivating to attain Virtual God rank-9. Even if one were to travel via a normal dimensional gateway, one would feel the rejection from the world at all times. Furthermore, the rejection would build day by day. "I came from this gravel wor-" the Master God''s clone realized he had revealed too much information when he was speaking halfway. "Our little chat will end here." Although he did not finish what he was saying, Wu Mo guessed what he was going to say. She even wanted to ask if his body was left behind in this gravel world but the Master God''s clone refused to talk further. "Following me into my God Territory will be the biggest mistake you''ve ever made in your life." The Master God''s clone waved his hand after saying that to Wu Mo from far away. Chilly wind and snow swept toward Wu Mo. The whistling chilly wind sounded like a lion''s roar. Even the air turned into frost wherever it passed. The entire God Territory''s temperature seemed to have dropped tens of degrees Celsius. The low temperature the Master God''s clone performed was even lower than the Moon Frost Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Enchanted Fairy, had used to freeze the demigods earlier. The sweeping chilly wind would not only turn demigods into frost immediately, but it might even freeze high-rank Virtual Gods including Virtual Gods rank-8 and rank-9. A layer of frost began to form on Wu Mo''s body as the chilly wind and snow drowned her. It was just frost on different body parts in the beginning, but it began spreading rapidly. Toward all directions and eventually wrapped her entirely. In less than half a minute, Wu Mo had turned into an ice sculpture. With the snowstorm, the layer of frost covering Wu Mo was getting thicker and thicker. She was sealed within. Sensing that Wu Mo''s aura had vanished, the Master God''s clone waved his right hand again. The snowstorm then faded away. He stepped forward slowly upon seeing that Wu Mo had turned into an ice sculpture. "So what if you have powerful close-combat ability? In my God Territory, you wouldn''t even have the opportunity to fight" Before the Master God''s clone could finish talking, Wu Mo, who had turned into an ice sculpture, opened her eyes all of a sudden and grinned at the Master God''s clone. Almost at the same time, the ice that was wrapping her body exploded. A fist the size of a sandbag punched the Master God''s clone, who appeared before Wu Mo, hard. The Master God''s clone flew out in a spiral. Wu Mo then spoke to him through voice transmission, "Did you really think you froze me? I was just messing with you!" The Master God''s clone, whose head was spinning while he was airborne without having the slightest ability to control himself, was so mad that he almost spit blood when he heard that. Wu Mo recalled the rune back beneath her skin when the Master God''s clone attacked her in the beginning. It caused the layer of frost to seem like it was covering her skin, which resulted in her appearing like she was frozen. She took the attack by force just to see what the Master God''s clone could do in his God Territory. In the end, she realized she had overestimated him. Or rather, the set of runes that she had inscribed on this bruised corpse was too powerful. No matter what, she felt no chilliness penetrating the defenses of the rune at all although the frost was stuck to her skin. "How is that possible?!" The Master God''s clone took some effort and finally managed to stand still hundreds of kilometers away. Although his face was sunken from Wu Mo''s punch, the emotional damage he had experienced was more severe than the damage on his face. "Isn''t it simple?" Wu Mo appeared less than 20 meters across the Master God''s clone directly. Her expression seemed like everything was pure common sense. "Don''t force it when the compatibility is low!" "Those who have sufficient compatibility and might not be able to perform 100% of their ability out there after integrating a Godhead can perform at least 80% of their ability. In their God Territory, they might be able to perform 150% to 200% or even 300% of their ability. However, in your God Territory, you can only perform at 100% by force. That''s the difference. "You think a God Territory would be the remedy for the low compatibility. However, to others, God Territory isn''t merely a remedy, but a tool to perform beyond 100% of your ability." Naturally, the Master God''s clone knew that. However, he was unwilling to accept it. He waved both hands, controlling the snow storm in his God Territory to travel toward Wu Mo''s direction. Giant snowy mountains that were thousands of meters tall slammed toward Wu Mo. A hard punch from her alone crushed the mountains into pieces. Icicles shot out like flying daggers. A slap was all that was needed to form an invisible shield before her. She blocked all the icicles from touching her body. Icy mist blew at her, but it did not stop her at all. She waved casually, and an invisible forcefield took the icy mist away directly. Iced walls solidified one after another, blocking Wu Mo from moving forward. They exploded right away upon her pointing her fingers. The Master God''s clone did everything he could but he failed to stop Wu Mo from approaching him. He had just realized a fact then and exclaimed out loud, "You''re not a Virtual God, but a True God!!!" "You got it right on a certain level." Wu Mo smiled without denying it. "Since you''re a True God, you''ll have to go to the great world sooner or later. If you kill me, my real self won''t forgive you. My real self is a ninth-rank True God, so you are definitely no match for me even if you recover to your peak." "Are you threatening me?" Wu Mo scoffed. "If you let me go now, I''ll guarantee that my real self won''t do anything to you when you get to the great world in the future." The Master God''s clone''s tone was rather soft. "Even dummies won''t believe what you''re saying. Do you think I''d believe you?" If Wu Mo had a clone, she would definitely not forgive a clone who bullied her and destroyed her people. "My real self left a trump card in this body. You wouldn''t be able to live if you killed me." Wu Mo had a slight change of expression hearing what the Master God''s clone said. She was not sure if he was telling the truth. However, looking at the Master God''s clone''s behavior, it seemed to be true. She was only a third-rank True God at her peak. If the Master God''s clone''s real self was really a ninth-tank True God, the trump card that he left behind should not be underestimated although he was in another world. Wu Mo made up her mind after a short reflection. If she let him live now, he might contact his real self in the future and it would bring her bigger trouble by then. She would rather destroy his organization now and get rid of him at the same time to prevent any consequences in the future. No matter what trump card he left behind, as long as her soul remnant survived, she would have the opportunity to recover in the future. Soon, Wu Mo made up her mind after the thoughts flashed by in her mind. Killing intent rose in her eyes. "It''s too risky to spare your life. I choose to take the bet." Wu Mo pierced her hand through the Master God''s clone''s chest as soon as she was done speaking. A cold blue Godhead appeared between her fingers a moment later. Fear was written all over the Master God''s clone''s face. He only managed to utter a single word, "You" His body froze and turned into a corpse falling onto the ground. The massive snowy God Territory began fading automatically since the Master God''s clone was killed. It was not collapsing but fading away on its own due to the lack of a master controlling it. Wu Mo and the Master God''s clone''s corpse were finally visible again as the God Territory faded away. At the moment, Grandmistress Wei had just woken up. She was slightly stunned when she saw the golden-armored silhouette falling from the sky. She lifted her head to look up immediately and saw Wu Mo hovering alone in the air. "Has the Master God lost?" Grandmistress Wei fell into devastation completely. She had never imagined that the Virtual God rank-9 Master God would lose. Lin Huang could not help but smirk when he saw Wu Mo hovering alone in the air. However, he had goosebumps all of a sudden while his body turned stiff. His nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls moved almost at the time, blocking him in a flash. Their guards were up like never before. They locked their eyes on the corpse that had just landed. A terrifying aura was rising slowly from the Master God''s clone''s corpse 1055 I Think I’m Invincible Now! Never would Wu Mo have expected the Master God to leave a dimensional god relic that was similar to the Crow God''s Eye in his clone. It even had a higher grade than the eye, so she figured it was a true god relic. This gateway built by the dimensional god relic did not only come with the Master God''s third-rank True God attack, but it even provided the tools to create a new clone. After blasting Wu Mo off with a finger, the Master God noticed Grandmistress Wei as the ready-made vessel. He then began making his clone by transforming Grandmistress Wei''s body right away. Although he sensed that Wu Mo was still alive, he did not care and all he did was glance at her direction because he knew very well that she had lost her walking ability. Fighting aside, she could not even run if she wanted to. He did not even bat an eyelid about Lin Huang who was hiding in the alternate dimension up to 1,000 kilometers away. To a ninth-rank True God like him, Lin Huang, who was below virtual god-level, was no different from an ant. Naturally, his existence was deemed nothing compared to making a clone. Wu Mo spoke to Lin Huang through voice transmission, asking him to run since the Master God was busy making his clone. She had lost her ability to fight completely. The collision with the massive blue finger had drained all of the Divine Power in her body. She did not even have the strength to get rid of the frost on her body, let alone fight. Lin Huang was only on immortal-level after all. The Master God might not even bother to attack him, thus his chances of escaping were very likely. However, a slight wave came next to her as she spoke through voice transmission via the Leech Pods. Lin Huang appeared right next to her. "You" She was very tempted to scream at Lin Huang when she saw that he did not run away and had come to save her instead. "Are you dense? You had the chance to run. Look what you''ve done! We''re going to die here. Nobody will avenge any of us in the future." "He''s already found out about me. Do you really think I can run?" Lin Huang lifted his head and glanced at the direction of the dimensional gateway. "This brat is right. Although he''s just an ant, he might have the potential to grow. I''d never leave anything behind. He''d be a dead man now had he chosen to run earlier." The Master God''s voice rumbled in the air eerily. He sounded like he was chatting with a friend. Lin Huang shrugged at Wu Mo. "You heard him." "It''s my fault. I shouldn''t have spoken to you. If I hadn''t done that, he wouldn''t have found you." Wu Mo felt a little guilty. "Stop saying all that." Lin Huang squatted down. "How are you feeling now?" "My Divine Power is drained, and my right arm is gone while my body is frozen. Apart from my head, I can''t move most of my body now," Wu Mo said out loud instead of using voice transmission. She wanted to let the Master God know that she was no longer a threat. It might be able to buy her some time. Lin Huang frowned when he heard her admission. He looked down and began thinking. Then, he secretly contacted Xiao Hei. "Is there any card that we can use to solve this crisis now?" "You can use the Escape Card which can send you out of the opponent''s sensing range randomly within a second, but it''s hard for you to do that if you''re bringing Wu Mo with you. Wu Mo has the opponent''s remnant energy on her, so he can locate her right away no matter where she is." "Do you have another suggestion?" "Nothing else works apart from running away." "Your combat strength is too low. The opponent is at third-rank True God at the moment. There''s no card that can solve the current crisis." Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment. Suddenly, his eyes lit up as he looked at the bruised corpse. "The bruised corpse is on Virtual God rank-9. Can we use the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card to boost the bruised corpse''s combat strength? I remember the card has no restriction on the user''s combat strength." "Indeed, the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card has no restriction on the user''s combat strength, but it can only be applied on you, your Monster Cards, your clones, puppets, or special items such as the Combat Souls. "There are two conditions to apply the card on a specific target. One is that the target must have combat strength. The second is that the host must own the target." "So, you mean the card is applicable as soon as I own the bruised corpse?" Lin Huang found a solution right away. Xiao Hei only replied after a moment of silence, "Sure." Lin Huang had a plan as soon as he got the answer from Xiao Hei. He looked at Wu Mo again. "Sister Mo Mo, you can''t use this bruised corpse for now. Please remove yourself from it." Just when Wu Mo was surprised by Lin Huang''s request, he winked at her. She was stunned. Although she had no idea what Lin Huang was thinking, she agreed while nodding anyway. She left the bruised corpse and retreated her consciousness back into the soul jewel by penetrating between Lin Huang''s brows. Naturally, the Master God saw that but he did not care. He thought Lin Huang was attempting to run, so he warned him, "I told you that you''ll die even faster if you run. If you stay here obediently, you''ll at least live until I''m done with my clone." Lin Huang spread his arms. "I''m not running. I just want to study this corpse." He pressed his palm to the bruised corpse''s head, inserting his consciousness and Divine Telekinesis. A moment later, he took over the body and owned it entirely. Just like Wu Mo said, this body was severely damaged whereby most of it was frozen. Apart from the head, almost every part of the body was unable to move. "Xiao Hei, is it possible to fix this body?" Lin Huang asked while frowning. "The sea of Divine Power will replenish this body when the combat strength is boosted. It''ll recover automatically by then." Lin Huang was determined after hearing that answer and he gave his order right away, "Use three Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Cards! The bruised corpse will be the target!" Three golden glows that only he could see penetrated the bruised corpse as soon as he issued his order. As the golden glows penetrated the corpse, the frost that covered the body began fading rapidly. Flesh grew on the damaged right arm at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. At the same time, the bruised corpse''s combat strength was skyrocketing. It broke through its initial Virtual God rank-9 to true god-level in a heartbeat! However, that was not all. The bruised corpse''s combat strength was still rising after getting to true god-level. First-rank! Second-rank! Third-rank! It only stopped when it elevated to the third-rank. The entire transformation happened within the span of a breath. Just when the Master God noticed the odd aura coming out of the bruised corpse, Lin Huang had already controlled the recovered bruised corpse to stand up from the sinkhole. His consciousness that was controlling the bruised corpse felt like there was no limit to this body. Lin Huang even had an illusion. ''I think I''m invincible now!'' 1056 Hehehe… "What exactly did you do, brat?" The Master God sounded rather shocked and mad. Never had he thought that a kid who was not even on virtual god-level would do something like that in his presence. He could not understand what Lin Huang had done at all. He could not understand how he managed to transform a Virtual God rank-9 virtual god-level puppet to a third-rank True God. One must know that the gap between Virtual God to True God was vast and achieving it was not easy. However, Lin Huang completed the three-rank boost in less than the span of a breath. It seemed even easier than drinking water. He even doubted that a heavenly god-level, which was the equivalent of god sequence-level, could do that. Lin Huang had no idea what the Master God was thinking about at that moment. He felt like he was invincible in his brand new puppet. "This puppet even masters the Champion Strength Rule under the Strength Rule?!" "A powerhouse can only elevate to god order-level (true god-level) when he masters a rule of any kind. Although the card only provides a provisional combat strength boost, it''ll automatically apply a rule that''s most compatible with your puppet to get it to god order-level instead of merely an upgrade in Divine Power." Lin Huang gave Xiao Hei a thumbs-up secretly after hearing its explanation. "Awesome!" The bruised corpse lifted his head and looked kilometers away after building himself a layer of Divine Power defense. He was looking at the black vortex. This puppet possessed third-rank True God combat strength. Although the card could only last for an hour, he was a legit third-rank True God at that moment. Meanwhile, the Master God arrived via the dimensional god relic. He was merely a projection. Although his combat strength was also on third-rank True God, Lin Huang had the confidence to beat him. He stretched his neck and shoulders to his left and right, revealing a cunning grin on his face. In the next second, the bruised corpse disappeared from where he was without warning. He appeared next to Grandmistress Wei directly. He swung his muscular arm at the cold, blue silhouette''s face. Lin Huang held nothing back. The punch was fuelled with Divine Power as well as the Champion Strength Rule. His entire arm was covered in a layer of ominous red glow as if it contained boundless terrifying power. Space would be torn wherever the punch passed by. The true god-level power had exceeded what this gravel world could attain. His punch had truly rent the space. It was not the illusion that was caused earlier on. Terrifying spatial turbulence spread from the torn space, engulfing everything around it. Even Grandmistress Wei flew towards the crack, unable to control herself. The Master God frowned when he saw that. He picked Grandmistress Wei up and flew out. Meanwhile, he swung his other hand at Lin Huang''s punch. His palm turned cold blue immediately as if it was made completely of ice. Everything the palm passed by was frozen. The ground, dust, wind and even the air turned into white frost. Clearly, he dared not underestimate the current version of Lin Huang whereby he performed his Ice Rule without hesitation. He did not hold the Divine Power in his body back at all. The attack this time was at least ten times more powerful than the finger attack that had defeated Wu Mo earlier. The punch and the palm collided together in the air in a flash. In that second, red and cold blue glows occupied half of the sky like a clearly divided river. The Ice Rule that had drowned the bruised corpse easily earlier could not do anything to the bruised corpse at that moment. Although it was ice and snow, there was nothing that it could do to such a powerful ability. However, the match that resulted in a tie only lasted less than three seconds. In the air, the red glow grew and suppressed the blue completely. In the blink of an eye, it drowned the blue silhouette entirely. Almost at the same time, a blue silhouette shot out like a comet and smashed hard into the ground a couple of kilometers away. Although both of them had third-rank True God combat strength, the Master God''s projection was slightly inferior. He was just a projection, after all, so his ability was provided by his real physique that was currently in the great world. Meanwhile, Lin Huang''s corpse puppet was on the peak of third-rank True God at the moment. He had boundless Divine Power while the Champion Strength Rule definitely provided an upper hand in close combat. The superiority was clear when it came to the comparison. Lin Huang''s confidence skyrocketed as he suppressed the Master God''s projection with merely a punch. "What kind of Master God are you? You''re not impressive in the least!" "You''re seeking for death, brat!" The Master God rose from the gravel slowly. Another thing that was rising at the same time was his killing intent that was as sharp as a blade. He began performing rule sigils with both of his hands a couple of kilometers away. The temperature was dropping rapidly in the entire land. Within a few seconds, the area within a 1,000-kilometer radius turned into a snowy land. Dark clouds filled the sky and black snowflakes tumbled down. Lin Huang frowned slightly when he saw that. He had no idea what the black snowflakes were, but he knew it was definitely bad news. He stepped into the air and flew towards the Master God was like a lightning bolt. However, the Master God waved as soon as he approached. A giant, crystal ice wall was formed and blocked Lin Huang who swung a punch without even thinking. The ice wall turned into dust right away. Subsequently, forming in front of him was the second wall, the third, the fourth More and more giant walls were formed and connected. Lin Huang was too lazy to go around the walls. He swung his punch, again and again, turning all the ice walls into dust. He was finally irritated after smashing many ice walls. However, the Master God behind the ice walls was smirking. Lin Huang just noticed that he had many black snowflakes stuck on him. The black snowflakes had penetrated his body and began engulfing the Divine Power in his body. He did not notice that in the beginning, but he now picked it up since his Divine Power started to drain. "Seems like you''ve noticed that." The Master God''s voice came from behind the ice walls. "Each of my Inked Snowflakes will engulf the Divine Power in your body and transfer them to my body. The more Inked Snowflakes stick to you, the more Divine Power will be drained. As long as I stall enough time, all the Divine Power in your body will be drenched. I''ll win without even having to fight." Lin Huang scowled when he realized the snowflakes would still engulf his Divine Power even if he covered his body with a layer of Divine Power. He put a god relic armor on, but it was futile. The black snowflakes penetrated the battle armor and got to his body. "It''s useless. The snowflakes will penetrate even if you put a hundred battle armors on," announced the Master God proudly. Wu Mo''s voice came into his ears just when Lin Huang was going to ignore his draining Divine Power and crash through anyway. "Why are you so dumb? He modified this technique from our Witchcraft Rune. The black snowflakes will penetrate through your soul, but they''ll turn into merely physical corrosion when they get into your body. It''s very easy to break. Just add a layer of spirit defense with the Witchcraft Rune on your body. They won''t be able to penetrate your body by then." Lin Huang came to a realization after hearing Wu Mo saying that. He then summoned the Book of Sorcerer Dao and activated a couple of runes. Three layers of spirit and physical shields were formed on his body. He then put the Book of Sorcerer Dao away. He stretched his hand out and grabbed a snowflake. As expected, the black snowflake did not penetrate his body. Lin Huang then crushed the snowflake and grinned at the Master God who was ten meters away. The grin gave the Master God goosebumps. "You''d better run now. If I catch up to you, hehehe" 1057 The Real Ultimate Move Pale blue ice crystal walls erected in the air, blocking Lin Huang and the Master God. Lin Huang was too lazy to walk around the walls, so he swung his punch one after another instead. The sky was shaking from all the blows. The giant ice crystal walls were collapsing. They broke into pieces and turned into dust. The speed of the collapsing walls was just as fast as them solidifying. The giant walls would collapse almost as soon as they were formed. The Master God, who initially wanted to depend on the black snowflakes to beat Lin Huang, soon noticed that something was off. There was no more Divine Power filling his body. As the Master God''s projection spread his Divine Telekinesis, he realized the peculiar phenomenon going on in Lin Huang''s body. The black snowflakes could no longer penetrate his body. "What''s happening?!" "Do you find it strange? I''ve seen through your technique," Lin Huang mocked with a grin, "It''s a soul-penetrating method, but you changed the effect to physical energy corrosion, making me think that it''s a physical attack, so I failed to find the way to break it. Not anymore!" The Master God''s expression turned grim upon hearing what Lin Huang said. Never had he thought that his almost sure-win technique would be broken by Lin Huang so soon. The upper hand from the Inked Snowflake soon faded, and the Master God''s projection fell to the losing side. His energy source came from his real self in the great world. Sending energy via the dimensional tool was draining to him. Most importantly, the duration that the dimensional gateway could stay open was limited. Furthermore, the more energy it provided, the shorter the dimensional gateway could be opened. Looking at the current energy transmission, he figured that the dimensional tool could only stay open for less than ten minutes. The Master God stopped Lin Huang from coming closer while coming up with a plan. ''I''ll need at least five more minutes to transform my vessel to Virtual God rank-9. The problem is, even if I get the five minutes and successfully create the clone for my projection to stay here, my clone will just be on Virtual God rank-9, which is no match for him at all. ''Therefore, I''ll have to kill this brat first before I''m done with the clone. In other words, I only have less than five minutes of battle time.'' The Master God was thinking quickly. He looked at Lin Huang''s real body behind the bruised corpse all of a sudden and came up with a plan. Naturally, Lin Huang noticed the Master God looking at him and he added a couple more defense runes on his real body. The Master God scoffed while his blue projection waved his hand. A pale blue vortex soon appeared in the air like a gigantic blue pupil hanging in the sky. "God Territory" Lin Huang frowned slightly. He did not want to enter this God Territory that his opponent had summoned. However, as soon as he had that thought, his body hovered into the sky out of his control. He was sailing toward the vortex at an alarming speed. He controlled the bruised corpse to hold onto his real body immediately. However, they were both pulled towards the vortex anyway. He realized what the opponent''s plan was at that instant. As a God Territory could engulf any living thing that had lower combat strength than itself, the Master God''s projection used this to suck Lin Huang in. If the bruised corpse clone did not follow, Lin Huang would be killed soon even with the shield. Under such circumstance, the bruised corpse clone could only follow suit, which meant that they were entering the opponent''s stage. Although Lin Huang knew nothing much about the God Territory, he knew that it was the opponent''s stage. The opponent''s ability would definitely be much more powerful in the God Territory. He had no other option since the Master God did this. He could only allow the Master God to pull him and the bruised corpse into the God Territory. In a flash, Lin Huang and the bruised corpse turned into two bright gleams and shot into the blue vortex, disappearing altogether. Seeing them vanish, the Master God''s projection followed behind and entered the vortex. As the three of them entered the blue vortex, the color of the vortex in the sky began fading and it disappeared eventually. The God Territory of the Master God was a chilly snowfield. Lin Huang could feel the cold faintly although he had double protection from the physical and spirit shields. The bruised corpse stood there waiting for the Master God to show up patiently. He appeared again a moment later. His form was no longer the cold blue human form whose features were unclear earlier. He was a complete human in this cold snowfield. He looked almost the same as the clone that Wu Mo had killed earlier. "This is my stage and it''s also your burial ground." "So, you admit that you can''t defeat me unless you''re in here?" Lin Huang teased. "The God Territory has always been a battle technique." The Master God''s projection scoffed. "In reality, you wouldn''t be able to defeat me under normal circumstances. That''s why you used this stupid trick to pull me in. I can''t do anything else apart from following you to fight on your stage. Naturally, it''d have been better if I don''t come in. You''d be able to kill my real body like a piece of cake," Lin Huang told the truth directly, "Isn''t this your plan?" "No matter how eloquent you are with your words, you won''t be able to change your destiny of dying here." The Master God''s projection did not bother to fight back. "You''re thinking too much. I can still kill you in here!" Lin Huang launched his attack first as soon as he was done speaking. He stomped hard with his feet, forming a massive sinkhole in the thick snow on the ground. He charged himself at the Master God''s projection like a lightning bolt. The Master God''s projection grinned in a teasing manner. He waved the sleeve of his white robe as hundreds of similar silhouettes appeared. Lin Huang could not tell which was real and fake since there were hundreds of Master Gods that appeared before him. The hundreds of Master Gods performed hand seals rapidly. Tens of thousands of ice blades of all forms consolidated in the air, aiming for Lin Huang like a storm on a summer. Lin Huang stomped both his feet and squatted in a firm stance. He inhaled deeply and opened his mouth all of a sudden. The Divine Power that combined the voice in his lungs spread out. Roar!!! A loud roar made the land tremble. Countless ice blades were crushed into dust as a result of the deafening roar. Even the fake Master Gods disappeared like melting snow. Naturally, Lin Huang did not come up with the lion-like roar. It was a technique that was already in the memory of the bruised corpse. Lin Huang performed that with the activation of just his simple Divine Power. The Master God was dismayed to see that his technique was ruined again almost immediately. "It seems like you''re no more powerful on your stage than you are out there." Lin Huang laughed while looking at the Master God''s projection. A ferocious gleam flashed in the Master God''s eyes. "There are some techniques that I didn''t plan to use on a brat like you, but since you''re so full of yourself, I''ll show you my real ultimate move!" 1058 A Gory Repression The Master God''s projection began performing a hand seal quickly as soon as he finished speaking. The entire snowy God Territory looked like it turned from day to night within the span of a short few breaths. The sky turned completely dark. The ground under Lin Huang''s feet that were covered in snow began shaking intensely as if there was an earthquake. Lin Huang and the bruised corpse puppet hovered from the ground immediately. ''This stance really looks like an ultimate move,'' Lin Huang thought to himself. Just when he was going to interrupt, blue ice sculptures that seemed alive began rising from the ground. There were a total of 12 ice sculptures. Three of them took on human forms while the remaining nine looked like monsters. Lin Huang had never seen the nine monster-form ice sculptures in the monster guide before. Clearly, they were not from this gravel world. ''What''s all this?'' Just when doubt rose in Lin Huang, the Master God''s projection was almost done with the hand seal. The 12 ice sculptures were formed completely. The 12 ice sculptures opened their eyes almost at the same time when the Master God''s projection performed the last hand seal. Their cold, blue bodies began transforming into flesh and blood. Combat strength aura started flowing out of their lifeless bodies. Lin Huang narrowed his eyes slightly when he saw that. All of the 12 ice sculptures had third-rank true god-level aura! "These 12 ice sculptures are my collectibles. I love collecting powerhouses that I''ve killed, then refine them with God Territory and make them a part of my God Territory when they''re dead. They are my slaves. These 12 ice sculptures before you were on third-rank true god-level when they were alive." "Initially, only ninth-rank true god-level powerhouses would see this move of mine. If not for me being in such a rush today, I wouldn''t even use this on you. Pal, dying by this move is an honor for you." The Master God''s projection waved his hand as soon as he was done speaking. The move seemed to be a way of him giving his order, whereby the 12 ice sculptures shifted almost at the same time. A feline monster with stripes charged like a streak of lightning. It appeared before Lin Huang in a flash and mauled the air with its sharp, blade-like claws. The mauling left black traces in the God Territory''s space. Lin Huang was no slower than it. He dodged to the side slightly and avoided the attack that could tear his body open. He swung a hard punch like a cannon at his opponent''s abdomen. Knowing that these 12 ice sculptures were tough, Lin Huang did not hold back at all. He used all of his Divine Power, and the Champion Strength Rule turned his entire arm red. The feline monster dodged immediately after sensing the life-threatening danger. It was extremely agile. A teasing gleam flashed through Lin Huang''s eyes just when the feline ducked his punch. His fist turned into a sword, and he swung it at the monster. The crescent-like sword glow glided through the feline monster''s soft, white abdomen. Red blood spurted out of the wound. Lin Huang hovered into the air and got closer to the cat. His hand turned into claws and he reached deep into its abdomen through its wound. With a hard yank, out came all of its intestines. "That''s the first!" Just when he had gotten rid of the feline monster, a monster that looked like a T-Rex charged at him with its mouth wide open. It attempted to devour him alive. Sharp teeth like steel filled the space between its jaws, and there were hundreds of them. If he was really bitten, he would probably turn into mush. Lin Huang did not want to test how powerful the opponent''s bite was. He swung both his fists at the opponent''s muzzle and threw hundreds of punches in the blink of an eye. With the help of the Champion Strength Rule, Lin Huang could launch the Master God, who was a third-rank True God, out with merely a punch. One could imagine how powerful the consecutive hundreds of punches were. Hundreds of red fists fell like raindrops, breaking the sharp-toothed monster''s head open right away. Lin Huang rushed forward and appeared behind its broken head. "And the second one." Just when Lin Huang muttered that, a sword glow came toward his neck directly. His eyes lit up when that happened. He pointed his finger into the air, and a red glow in the form of a finger collided with the sword glow''s weakest point. It wiped out the white sword glow like a piece of cake. "This one uses a sword?!" Lin Huang was elated when he found out there was a sword cultivator among his enemies. As a sword cultivator himself, fighting another sword cultivator opponent was what he desired most. He lifted his head and looked at the sword cultivator. It was a young man who looked distant. With mediocre features, he exuded a cold aura that was rather intimidating. As he took his time observing the sword cultivator, the fourth attack came. It was a Bug Tribe monster with three pairs of scimitar-like sharp blades. It had grayish-black bug armor over its slender body and it was swift in its attack. Six blade arms sliced up to 1,000 razor traces in the air. They were sweeping toward Lin Huang like a spider web. "Out of my way!" Lin Huang yelled. He was upset that the bug had interrupted his battle with the other sword cultivator. He gazed up, holding his fist and swinging his arm with the momentum from his spine. Then, he threw the punch with all of his strength! Bang! An intense detonation exploded, and the web-like blade glow broke like glass under Lin Huang''s punch. Lin Huang charged and passed through the gap of the blade glow. His hand seemed to have torn through at a speed no one could imagine and grabbed the Bug Tribe monster''s neck. A crack followed by a tear shattered the air as green blood shot into the sky like a fountain. The Bug Tribe monster turned into a headless monster. "The third" As Lin Huang was tearing the Bug Tribe monster''s head off, a sharp spike pointed at Lin Huang''s back. The attack was as quick as a lightning bolt and was silent without warning. The sharp pitch-black spike was hard for one to catch sight of in this dark God Territory that appeared like it was night. Just when the spike arrived less than 20 centimeters behind Lin Huang, a hand appeared out of nowhere. It grabbed the weapon that was going to pierce through Lin Huang''s heart, preventing it from being unable to move an inch closer. Subsequently, Lin Huang turned around slowly and grinned at the dark. "A female monster with a scorpion''s tail? I wonder how she tastes like." He stretched his other hand out after mumbling to himself. He grabbed onto the other side of the scorpion''s tail and crushed it. Crack! A devastating groan came almost at the same time. The arm that was in the form of a scorpion''s tail was crushed directly. Pale white liquid shot out of the wound and spilled all over the place. The lady with the scorpion''s tail was dragged over beyond her control as Lin Huang crushed her tail. Even though the lady had a bombshell body, he had no sympathy in his eyes at all. He threw a punch which penetrated her fragile chest directly. "That''s the fourth one!" 1059 Actually, I’m A Sword Cultivator Crack, crack After breaking the red dragonkin''s wings, Lin Huang stepped on the giant dragonkin''s back that was falling onto the ground. The second before the dragonkin created a sinkhole on the ground, Lin Huang leaped high with hammers in both of his hands. He then smashed them on the dragonkin''s head. Bang! The bruised corpse''s silhouette hopped off almost at the same time that the dragonkin landed. The dragonkin''s whimper that sounded like a stray dog came to a halt merely a second later. "The eleventh one!" Lin Huang, who had blood splattered all over his body, wiped his face while glaring at the black silhouette that flashed through the air. "You''re the only one left!" Lin Huang stood on the dragonkin''s head that had turned into mush while patiently waiting for the perfect timing. It was the last monster and although it was not powerful, it was great at hiding and running. Lin Huang decided to handle it last because he was worried that it would take too much time for him to find it and kill it. However, Wu Mo''s voice came into his ears two to three seconds later. "Right now!" Lin Huang stretched his arm without hesitation, grabbing the air. Almost at the very moment he did that, a black silhouette appeared and collided against his palm. Lin Huang held onto the black silhouette and squeezed hard without thinking twice. A devastating shriek was released as the black silhouette in his palm exploded. He threw the black silhouette onto the ground casually. Looking at the mushy black carcass, he guessed that it was a bird monster. "Twelfth one!" In less than half a minute, Lin Huang completed a dozen kills. The process was terribly gory. In the beginning, he was surprised by where this brutality came from. Soon, he found out that it came from the bruised corpse. Not only were his emotions affected, but even his battle mode was also influenced by the bruised corpse''s overwhelming battle instinct. This bruised corpse was a born warrior. As Lin Huang snapped back from the battle, he turned his head to look at the Master God''s projection and revealed a teasing smile. He leaped from the dragonkin''s squashed head and walked towards the Master God''s projection slowly. "Your little pets are all gone. If I''m not mistaken, you shouldn''t be able to summon any ice sculptures that are more powerful, should you? Otherwise, you wouldn''t have summoned ice sculptures that are merely on third-rank true god-level." Lin Huang guessed that the items which the opponent summoned must have been restricted by his current combat strength. Otherwise, he would have summoned ice sculptures on fifth or sixth-rank which could totally suppress Lin Huang if ninth-rank was a no-go for him. Seeing Lin Huang approaching, the Master God''s projection''s face remained calm. There was no change in his emotions at all despite Lin Huang destroying his 12 collectibles. Instead, he spoke to Lin Huang smoothly, "Do you really think you''ve killed my collectibles?" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that question. He spread his Divine Telekinesis around and realized that the 12 carcasses that were initially there were all gone. "I forgot to tell you something earlier." The Master God''s projection grinned mockingly. "In my God Territory, these collectibles can''t be killed." The blue ice sculptures rose from the ground around him slowly as soon as the Master God''s projection said that. The ice sculptures looked alive. They were the 12 third-rank True Gods that Lin Huang had just killed. They opened their eyes when they were completely formed. Subsequently, their bodies began turning into blood and flesh. Lin Huang thought that entire scene was familiar. "Isn''t this what happened when he first summoned the 12 ice sculptures earlier? It''s exactly the same!" Lin Huang looked at the Master God''s projection, feeling a little speechless after his redundant ridiculing. "I''ve already killed these 12 pets of yours. Can''t you be more creative?" The Master God''s projection looked at Lin Huang calmly and said nothing. "So, you''re just stalling me?" Lin Huang scowled in disdain. "I''m just getting them to buy me some time for me to prepare my next move to kill you." The Master God''s projection stepped back immediately. Almost at the same time he did that, his 12 collectibles began attacking Lin Huang. "Ugh, this is boring!" Lin Huang pouted and took a god relic battle sword out from his storage space. The bruised corpse grabbed the battle sword and filled it with Divine Power. He then went after the 12 third-rank true god-level opponents. Divine glows of various colors lit up in the air, illuminating the entire God Territory. However, they turned dim one after another. Only a red sword glow remained eventually. Lin Huang spent less than 20 seconds eliminating the dozen third-rank true god-level monsters this time. What he had no idea about was that there was a silhouette standing on a cliff hundreds of kilometers away. Each time he killed an ice sculpture monster, the soul of the monster''s God would appear before the Master God directly. They were then swallowed by him. The Master God''s projection''s aura peaked after swallowing 12 third-rank true god-level God''s souls. Although he was still on third-rank true god-level, his aura was close to perfect-stage third-rank true god-level. Even Lin Huang sensed the odd aura almost immediately. ''How did the Master God''s projection''s aura boost all of the sudden?'' Just when Lin Huang felt the skepticism twist in his stomach, the Master God''s projection in a white robe appeared less than 20 meters from him. "Lin Xie, I really don''t want to use this move, but you left me with no choice." Lin Huang raised his brow. "Did it cost you?" "That''s right. This move cost me my third-rank true god-level collectibles forever." The Master God''s projection nodded lightly, not seeming to be in a rush to attack at all. "But it''s alright. It''s worth it because I''m trading them for a collectible like you. To me, your value is much higher than theirs." "So, it sounds like you''re confident that you can defeat me, eh?'' Lin Huang smirked in a teasing way. "My combat strength has reached the peak of third-rank true god-level. I even have all of the powers and talents the 12 collectibles have mastered at the moment. Furthermore, this is my stage. There''s no way that you can run." "Why should I run? Isn''t the peak of third-rank true god-level still third-rank true god-level?" "I killed your 12 little pets. In fact, I killed them twice. Do you think I''m scared of their abilities? Moreover, this has always been your stage. Wait, from what I remember, you''re the one who has been running from your life clumsily." The Master God''s projection could not argue with Lin Huang because he was telling the truth. There was no way that he could fight back. "We''ll find out who will be running for his life very soon. I''ll suppress you with close combat that you''re best in!" "I think you''ve mistaken. I didn''t master close combat. I''m a sword cultivator!" Lin Huang corrected him in all seriousness. 1060 Killing A God! An ice battle armor soon formed on the Master God''s body. He was just a will projection when he came here. He had no weapon or armor. However, apart from the Ice Rule, this battle armor that was created in the God Territory at the moment had a defensive ability that was even more terrifying than an ordinary god relic''s. Tens of meters away, Lin Huang''s bruised corpse puppet remained with no armor on. He was only holding a bright silver god relic sword in his right hand. He wanted a god relic with rule power of a higher grade (true god relic). Due to the rule power in rule power god relic, it could not be compared with an ordinary god relic. However, a sword was the only rule power god relic Lin Huang had at the moment. Meanwhile, the god relic battle sword in the bruised corpse''s hand was just an ordinary god relic. It was also the only god relic battle sword that Lin Huang owned at the moment. He had many demigod relic battle swords, so many that he auctioned them off. However, he only had that one and only god relic battle sword. Nevertheless, although it was just an ordinary god relic, it could kill a True God since Lin Huang had covered it in rule power. The silver battle sword was soon covered in a bloody glow. It was the sign of the Champion Strength Rule engulfing the sword. Lin Huang had used this battle sword to kill the 12 third-rank True Gods earlier himself. And now, the sword tip was finally pointing at its real enemy the Master God''s will projection! In endless time and space away, the ninth-rank True God in the great world projected its will onto this gravel world. His only attempt was to destroy the guy who had killed his clone, then get himself a new clone. Theoretically, it should be two things that were extremely simple. Never had he thought that he would have encountered an obstacle that he had never come across before. This little guy that was as insignificant as an ant in this gravel world attacked with an ability that was no less powerful than its will projection, forcing him to show his trump cards one after another, just like the move that he was currently performing. He was engulfing the God''s souls in his God Territory to give him a temporary boost in ability. Many ninth-rank True Gods had never come to such a predicament that they were forced to do this. ''What a scary brat!'' The Master God could not help but exclaim secretly. Lin Huang''s performance piqued his interest greatly. In the air, the two silhouettes finally collided. Covered in ice battle armor, the Master God threw a hard punch out. Due to the Ice Rule, boundless chilly wind blew, going after Lin Huang at a critically low temperature. Lin Huang''s eyes were clear and bright. There was no fear in those eyes at all, only enthusiastic battle intent that raged like fire. Red flames lit up on the bloody sword. As the sword was swung in the air, the fountain of flames burning even brighter. It grew so brilliant until it collided with the giant fist. The battle sword in Lin Huang''s hand turned into a bloody sun, tearing through the sky with endless heat and power. A cold blue and a bloody red glow occupied hundreds of kilometers in the pitch-black sky. A moment later, a white glow lit up in the middle of the collision. As if a star had exploded, a glaring glow spread and covered the entire God Territory in the blink of an eye. The white explosion grew rapidly. Soon, it engulfed the two colors in the air, taking the two silhouettes that were battling along with it. The icy crystal ground that was as tough as steel collapsed like a piece of glass wherever the white glow passed by. The entire land trembled as if it was whimpering in cowardice. A big hole burned in the pitch-black sky, turning the entire God Territory from night to day. Lin Huang retreated hundreds of kilometers back and smashed hard onto the crystal ground. A sinkhole that was tens of kilometers wide gaped in the ground as if an asteroid had struck. He knew very well that the attack was a tie. His opponent was just as powerful as he was. "It''s a shame that I haven''t perfected my sword skills. I suppose I''ll need to break through to level-6 Sword Dao which is Sword Dao Divinity to be able to kill a True God with this sword!" Lin Huang''s soft mumble showed his secret ambition. Meanwhile, on the other side, the Master God, who lay in a sinkhole hundreds of kilometers away, could not help but exclaim, "That brat wasn''t kidding! His Sword Dao is really close to divinity!" Climbing out of the sinkhole, the Master God looked at the ice glove covering his palm. There was a crack even thinner than a strand of hair on his cold, blue glove. It was so tiny that it was almost invisible to the naked eye. "It sure is worthy of being a sword cultivator, one of the most powerful occupations in attacking." Cold, blue mist flowed out of his palm. As the Master God stretched and wiped the crack on the glove, the crack disappeared almost immediately as if it had never been there before. Lin Huang, on the other hand, shifted about after climbing up from the sinkhole. He checked if his body was severely impacted. He spread his Divine Telekinesis directly and targeted the Master God who was standing in the sinkhole hundreds of kilometers away. In a flash, he disappeared. A white glow sparked in the next second. The two silhouettes separated as soon as they came in contact, but they collided again in the next second. Lin Huang swung his sword again and again while the Master God threw his punches one after another. Dazzling white glows lit up like fireworks in the sky and disappeared rapidly. Billions of deafening bangs echoed in the sky. Terrifying Divine Power spread everywhere. Even if there was a ninth-rank True God there, he might not be able to fight it head-on. Space was torn where the duo collided while the cracks were like spider webs. The God Territory was repairing itself at its best speed, but it could not catch up with the duo''s damaging rate. There were more and more cracks in the space, causing turbulence all around. Up to 1,000 kilometers in the air, wherever the duo passed became danger zones. Even a True God dared not go any closer. The entire God Territory was trembling from their collision that exploded one after another. It felt like it might collapse anytime. Naturally, Lin Huang was enjoying the battle. After all, an opponent which he could prove his ability entirely was hard to come by. It gave him the opportunity to perfect his sword skills at true god-level. However, the Master God did not look very well. Although he was just as powerful as Lin Huang at the moment, it was his God Territory. He only had such ability in the God Territory. As soon as the God Territory collapsed, his temporarily boosted ability that came from his secret skill would be taken away. On the other hand, Lin Huang would not be affected at all since he would still be just as powerful then. ''No, I can''t let this go on. I''ll lose if I do!'' The Master God thought to himself while locking his Divine Telekinesis on Lin Huang as a ferocious gleam flashed through his eyes. He turned his spirit power into a few arrows and shot it at Lin Huang''s spirit. Lin Huang''s expression changed slightly. The spiritual attack came out of nowhere, so the bruised corpse did not have time to react at all. The few spiritual arrows collided against the spiritual defense made of Witchcraft Runes one after another. The arrow would penetrate a layer of defense every time it shot before it vanished. Three arrows later, the three layers of defenses that Lin Huang had built were destroyed entirely. Seeing that the last few arrows were going into his spirit, a blue gem that looked like a droplet shot out between Lin Huang''s brows all of a sudden, blocking the last remaining arrows head-on. The blue gem-like soul jewel had cracks all over it. With a loud crack, the soul jewel was broken. "Sister Mo Mo!" Lin Huang could not help but yell out loud. However, a weak white glow shot in between Lin Huang''s brows in the next second. "I''m alright. My soul is just severely hurt now" Wu Mo murmured weakly and fell into a deep sleep as she penetrated the Sorcerer Goddess''s blood. "You''re asking for death!" Lin Huang was completely enraged now. The bruised corpse puppet swung the sword again. Divine Power and rule power stretched out with each swing of the sword. The Master God dodged clumsily. The spiritual attack earlier had drained a lot of his strength. He would lose his chance to turn the tables around as soon as he missed the attack. A loud bang exploded a few breaths later. The God Territory finally could not take it any longer, and it began to collapse. The Master God''s aura was dropping at an alarming rate. Losing the support of his God Territory, not only did his secret skill lose its effect, but his ability also went back to normal. Lin Huang did not care what was happening to the God Territory at all. He brandished the sword continuously, not giving the Master God a chance to breathe. The Master God, whose ability was dropping, could not take Lin Huang''s intense attack at all. He was defeated after trying to hold it up strenuously for merely a few haggard breaths. Lin Huang''s killing intent was boiling as he mercilessly swung the sword like a lightning bolt. Blood spurted out of the headless corpse. "Congratulations, you''ve killed a True God. You''ve won the title Godslayer!" "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a rule power God-slaying Power!" 1061 Dirty Business Ignoring Xiao Hei''s notifications, Lin Huang glared coldly at the Master God''s projection that was turning into a cold, blue mist and vanishing. The dimensional gateway that seemed like a black hole was shrinking rapidly. A thunderous deafening roar came from the other side of the black hole. "I''ll remember you, brat!" Almost at the same time that the voice came, a blue ferocious glow shot out the black hole. The blue glow was extremely fast as it penetrated Lin Huang''s body almost at the same time it detached from the dimensional gateway. Lin Huang saw a black mark appearing on his chest when he snapped back to his senses. A giant tentacle made of black fog appeared out nowhere in his body. It looked like a gigantic black boa that attached itself to the blue glow that penetrated his body. It then tugged hard. Soon, the blue glow was crushed and vanished right away. The Master God exclaimed from the dimensional gateway that was closing, "What did you do?!" In a surprise, Lin Huang looked into his body to see what exactly the Master God had done to him. However, he did not see anything odd in his body. Even the black mark on his chest had disappeared on its own accord as if it had never been there. As he snapped back to reality, Lin Huang happened to see the dimensional gateway close completely. It turned into a bronze token hovering in the air. The bruised corpse stepped forward in a flash and grabbed the token, putting it away in Lin Huang''s storage space casually. He then shifted his focus onto Grandmistress Wei who was not far away. Since the Master God''s projection was dead, the defense around Grandmistress Wei dropped automatically. However, she was still unconscious. Lin Huang lifted her up by grabbing her neck before he injected a gush of Divine Power into her body to wake her up. Grandmistress Wei was in despair when she saw the bruised corpse before her. She had no idea that the Master God''s will projection had been there. The last thing she saw before she passed out was the bruised corpse killing the Master God''s clone. One must know that the Master God was her god. Upon witnessing her god collapse before her, she lost all strength to fight Lin Huang. "Look into my eyes," commanded Lin Huang as he lifted Grandmistress Wei''s chin. As if a pebble was tossed into the water, a ripple spread in her bloody pupils. Grandmistress Wei lifted her head without fighting back, locking eyes with Lin Huang. She froze in the next second. All she could feel was that she had fallen into a bloody sea. She was deep in the water and could not get out of it. The bruised corpse''s eyes had continuous ripples spiraling within then. In less than two minutes, he retrieved all the information in Grandmistress Wei''s head. After retrieving everything in her head, the killing intent in Lin Huang surged even more. Wei Clan had done many dirty jobs for God Bless. Human trafficking, smuggling young girls, and drug trafficking were just the tip of the iceberg. Under Grandmistress Wei''s control, every business the Wei Clan had ever transacted became God Bless''s source of income. They would do anything that could get them money since there was no moral baseline for them at all. Almost everyone in the Wei Clan was involved in dirty business. ''All of you deserve it,'' Lin Huang condemned secretly peeping at the Wei Clan''s ancient castle that had turned into ruins. He then shifted his focus back to Grandmistress Wei. In torn clothes, she actually looked pretty attractive. However, Lin Huang was disgusted by her face. The bruised arm stretched out and pierced through Grandmistress Wei''s chest. A moment later, a Godhead appeared between Lin Huang''s fingers. At that second, Grandmistress Wei snapped back to her senses. She stared terrified at the black Godhead in Lin Huang''s hand as her vital signs faded. She heard the bruised corpse talking to her before she lost consciousness completely, "Since little fatty died by your order, you''ll pay for his life with yours." After removing Grandmistress Wei''s Emperor''s Heart Ring and picking up the god relic battle armor and sword, Lin Huang tossed her corpse aside casually. Lin Huang summoned Bloody and the Warlord, getting them to summon their armies to clean up the battlefield. In less than 20 minutes, the two armies swept all of the loots. They did not let go of the buried items in the Wei Clan''s ancient castle which had collapsed. After putting the loots and the Monster Cards away, Lin Huang got the Ninetails Lynx to release Guan Zhong from its alternate dimension. Guan Zhong could not help but gulp after glancing at Grandmistress Wei and the Master God''s clone not far away as well as Lin Huang who appeared unharmed and the bulky bruised corpse next to him. He was sent into the Ninetails Lynx''s alternate dimension when the Master God''s clone showed up. He did not see what happened in the battle later on. However, Lin Huang, who stood intact before him, and the dead bodies scattered on the ground proved the result of the battle. "Master Emperor" Although he was the vice president of the Union Government''s Agency EA, who was on the same rank as the leaders of many organizations, he could not help but hang his head down in shame before Lin Huang at the moment. "I''ve taken the loots. Do you have anything to say about that?" Lin Huang looked at Guan Zhong and spoke calmly. "Nothing. So, the bodies" "Since you''re investigating God Bless, I''ll leave the bodies to you while I take the Godhead. Also, I''ll leave the Wei Clan''s information for you guys. You''ll have to find out the rest on your own." "Thank you, Master Emperor!" It was Lin Huang who had killed the people after all. He did not even manage to cheer for him earlier. Even if Lin Huang took the bodies with him, there was nothing he could say. After all, Lin Huang had the power and ability, hence there was no reason for him to give the Union Government any face. Lin Huang knew that Guan Zhong must have a high-ranking position in the Union Government since he was a Virtual God, so he said, "Also, I hope that you can tell the Union Government not to interrupt my next mission." "Could you reveal what your next mission is?" Guan Zhong asked immediately. "I''ll head over to Division 1 to kill the other two God''s Messengers directly and destroy God Bless''s headquarters. You guys can''t do anything to them without any valid reason. Am I right? I''ll do it for you guys then." "That''s against the rules" Guan Zhong looked aghast. "It''ll be days later by the time you guys are done getting the shreds of evidence. The news of the Wei Clan being destroyed will definitely spread today. If we don''t get rid of God Bless''s headquarters right now, their people will definitely destroy all the evidence when they hear the news. By then, it''ll be difficult for the Union Government to do anything to them. "In order to eradicate a cancer such as God Bless, you sacrificed your time to spy on the Wei Clan for so many years. Isn''t this what you want? You guys just have to turn a blind eye and let me handle this. You guys will only be responsible for cleaning up later. I don''t see why not! "Furthermore, this is the last time I''ll get involved in this. You guys will handle their divisions after I get rid of the headquarters. I don''t have the time for that." Guan Zhong fell into silence for a moment and nodded eventually. "Sure! We''ll do as you say, Master Emperor." 1062 Blessing Trading Group The sky had turned dark when Lin Huang returned to Division 1. He did not have the time to look at the loots or to go through Xiao Hei''s notifications properly. Instead of returning to Emperor City, he went straight to where God Bless''s headquarters was the Golden City. Lin Huang knew that the news of the Wei Clan being destroyed would get to God Bless''s headquarters very soon. He had to seize every second. The No. 1A8 Golden City was a grade-A foothold under the Union Government''s territory. It was also one of the most prosperous footholds in Division 1. The main reason for the Golden City''s development was that this foothold was the only grade-A foothold that allowed businesses to be run by underground organizations. In the Golden City, the Union Government would turn a blind eye to underground businesses as long as it did not do anything against the Union Government''s laws publicly. In other words, the Union Government would ignore the businesses as long as they did not do anything inappropriate openly. Perhaps many did not believe that there was such a shady foothold in Divison 1, but it was the truth. It was an agreement between the underground organizations and the Union Government. The Golden City sounded like a wonderland filled with gold, but in reality, it was a dirty land with a clean surface. There were all sorts of corrupt and unbearable events secretly happening every day. In the Golden City, God Bless was called the Blessing Trading Company on the surface. Its main business covered all sorts of genetic elixirs manufacturing and sale. Apart from that, they covered hospitals, medical equipment, and health products. They had land in the middle of the expensive Golden City and it occupied approximately 800,000 square meters of space. According to Grandmistress Wei''s Memory, God Bless''s headquarters was hidden under the land. Lin Huang saw the Blessing Trading Company''s building tens of kilometers away as soon as he stepped out of the dimensional portal. The Blessing Trading Company''s headquarters that was more than 800 meters tall was the third tallest building in Golden City. It stood out even in the middle of Golden City. One could see it clearly from far away. "Master Emperor, please wait for approximately 20 minutes. I''ll prepare the energy shield to prevent the battle impact from reaching the people," said Guan Zhong who came with Lin Huang as soon as they stepped out of the dimensional portal. Lin Huang nodded by way of permission. God Bless was his target, thus it was unnecessary to harm others. The entire Golden City might be destroyed if he were to allow his God Figurine''s Combat Souls to fight as they fancied without any energy shields. Most people below demigod-level might not be able to take the first impact of a battle among Virtual Gods. Seeing Guan Zhong summon a dimensional portal and step into it, Lin Huang flew in a flash toward the Blessing Trading Company''s building. He arrived in a business district two blocks from the Blessing Trading Company''s land in the blink of an eye. Since he promised Guan Zhong that he would wait for 20 minutes, he did not want to alert the enemies before that. After all, his face was familiar to the people from God Bless. He would be detected easily with Divine Telekinesis if he got too close. Meanwhile, the business district before him was a place that many cultivators frequented. Even if he was within the sensing range of the two God Bless God''s Messengers, the duo would not use to Divine Telekinesis to scan for nothing. As he walked into the crowded business district, Lin Huang soon blended in with the people, appearing like a tourist who had just arrived. He arrived at a sophisticated-looking medicine store when he was halfway through the street. He could not help but lift his head to look at the sign. The word ''Blessing'' was written on it. Lin Huang hesitated. A silhouette came out of nowhere in the alley next to the store just when he was thinking if he should go in. "Brother, are you looking for genetic elixirs?" A voice came into Lin Huang''s ears all of a sudden. He turned his head and looked to see a skinny, middle-aged man waving at him in the alley next to Blessing''s store. He walked to the middle-aged man with a raised brow. "Do you sell genetic elixirs?" "That''s right. It''s Blessing''s elixir, but it''s 30% cheaper than the store." The middle-aged man took out a few tubes of elixirs in various colors from his storage space. "It''s so much cheaper. It has to be fake!" Lin Huang raised his suspicion. "I can guarantee that they''re all authentic. It came from Blessing''s production line directly. They''re cheap because there''s no tax and operating fees. To be honest, the profit I''m making from selling to you at a 30% discount is even higher than selling them in the store." "You said they came from the production line. How would I know if they''re authentic?" Lin Huang questioned suspiciously. "We support product authenticity verification. The store is just next door, so you can verify them after purchasing the product." "You''ll be gone after I''ve paid and gotten the product. How can I possibly find you if they happen to be fake after the verification?" Lin Huang stood his ground. "How about this? I''ll bring you to Blessing''s production line to collect the stuff if you''re buying in bulk. They have to be authentic that way, right?" the middle-aged man said. "So, how many do I have to purchase to be able to collect them from the production line?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "At least 100 tubes." The middle-aged man named his number. "100 is a little too much How about 80? I don''t have that much money." Lin Huang looked troubled. "Alright then, 80. Follow me!" The middle-aged man nodded right away and waved at Lin Huang. He then turned around and walked into the alley. Lin Huang followed him immediately. He wanted to see what the man was doing exactly. He did not believe that Blessing had such a sales model. Although the tax and operating fees were high, the daily traffic at the store would be so much higher than the man soliciting sales that way. It was impossible for Blessing to make such low-efficiency sales for the sake of a measly profit. In the beginning, Lin Huang thought the man was not someone from Blessing. He must be someone who had Blessing''s products for some reason and was selling them secretly. However, he just realized it was not as simple as he thought while he walked to Blessing''s building with the man and entered the factory. The man was clearly from Blessing. However, theoretically, it was impossible that Blessing would do such soliciting. The only possibility was that the middle-aged man had another purpose of getting him into Blessing! What surprised Lin Huang was that the man really did take him around the production line. His act was thorough. As they were done visiting the production line, the middle-aged man smiled and said to Lin Huang, "What do you think? I told you that I work at Blessing and you didn''t believe me. Do you believe me now?" "Yes, yes, I believe you," Lin Huang assured immediately, "So, how do we go about the deal? "The goods in the production line haven''t been sent to the warehouse yet. Follow me to the underground warehouse. We''ll deal there. If you''re still unconvinced after the deal, you can bring them to test at the store since it''s nearby," the middle-aged man said. "Sure!" Lin Huang agreed right away and followed him to the elevator. The middle-aged man pressed ''B1'', but the elevator was still moving after descending for half a minute. Lin Huang figured that something odd was happening. "Isn''t it B1? Why is it taking so long?" Lin Huang asked on purpose. Anyone else would definitely be suspicious if it took so long. "Due to the cargo demands, this elevator is a little slow. Our underground warehouse is massive, so it takes a long time to get there. Don''t worry. We''ll arrive soon." The elevator finally stopped just when the middle-aged man was done speaking. Lin Huang walked out of the elevator behind him. He looked around to find that it was empty. It was clearly not a warehouse. "Didn''t you say we''re going to the warehouse? This can''t be the warehouse." "Of course, this isn''t the warehouse." The middle-aged man turned around and grinned maliciously. At that moment, a silhouette sneaked up behind Lin Huang. Almost at the same time, a burgundy silhouette with a sword appeared behind Lin Huang out of thin air. When the man swung his sword, the sneaky assassinator was killed from the attack that came without warning. His body was sliced into half and he fell onto the ground. The man in burgundy armor holding a sword then turned around and stood next to Lin Huang. He looked at the middle-aged man before him smugly. "So, can you tell me why you''ve brought me here now?" Lin Huang put both of his hands into his pockets and revealed a harmless smile. 1063 Sneaking In "This room in the underground is exclusively for people to take care of those who they''ve deceived. When people are lured here, they''ll be beaten until they''re unconscious, then their clothes and Emperor''s Heart Ring will be taken away. They''ll be sedated, cleansed and sterilized. Eventually, they''ll be given a Life Power inhibitor shot and put into custom-made cages as test subjects. "The people who are captured can''t fight back at all since they''ll be given a Life Power inhibitor shot every day. Moreover, the cages are made of monster bones and metal. Even an imperial-level powerhouse could hardly break it. "The stubborn ones who fight back will be killed in front of the rest. The rest of them will feel numb eventually and give up fighting, accepting their fate of being test subjects." Lin Huang finally found out the middle-aged man''s real purpose after getting Bloody to read his mind. There was a specific bunch of people in the Blessing Trading Company who would use the excuse of selling genetic elixirs at cheaper price as bait. The victims who were lured would be trapped by the company like lab rats, allowing them to run all sorts of tests on them. Naturally, the baiting act was not the Blessing Trading Company''s main supply of test subjects. Their main test subjects came from the human trafficking business through black markets. They would look for sources from other channels if the black markets had insufficient supply. The con job Lin Huang encountered was merely one of the supply channels. The killing intent in Lin Huang spiked after finding that out. Just when he was going to kill the middle-aged man before him, Bloody''s voice came into his ears through voice transmission all of a sudden. "Don''t destroy him just yet. The God Messengers'' territory will definitely sense something off if you kill too many. We should think of a way to get to the B2 floor to save Chan Dou before our identity is exposed." Bloody''s urging soon calmed Lin Huang down. He put the battle sword in his hand away after taking a glance at the middle-aged man who looked blank before him. Bloody then began explaining to him through voice transmission, "According to this middle-aged man''s memory, there are a total of three floors in the underground of the Blessing Trading Company. "The first floor is the one that we''re currently on. It''s mainly for experiments and the modification of living things. The main purpose is to create human warfare weapons that will obey orders. The second floor is a prison for living materials. Not only is it a prison for humans with special skills, but there are also some unique monsters. The third floor is the core floor where God Bless''s headquarters located. All major God Bless meetings are held here and all the core information are also stored in this floor. The Master God''s clone and the two God Bless God''s Messengers live here too. "Looking at Grandmistress Wei''s memory, Chan Dou should be kept on the second floor. Only a handful of people in the entire the Blessing Trading Company has access to the second floor." "Can''t I just go there in specter form?" Lin Huang asked. "You can''t. The Master God set up many barriers in the entire underground. Besides blocking out the Divine Telekinesis detection coming from the ground, each underground level is blocked. Specter''s spirit form can''t pass through these barriers. Furthermore, the two God''s Messengers who control the barriers will sense it as soon as you touch the barrier. The only way of not getting exposed is through the regular channel, which is the elevator." "So, we need someone who has access to the second floor? And go there with his identity?" Lin Huang figured Bloody''s plan out. "Yes, there happens to be someone like that on this floor." Lin Huang nodded and agreed after hearing Bloody''s plan. After putting the body on the floor away, he recalled Lancelot into its card form. Bloody controlled the middle-aged man, who was parasitized, to get a white coat for Lin Huang. As Lin Huang put on the face mask, his eyes were the only thing that was showing, so nobody knew how he looked like. He walked out of the room just like that. He turned left as he came out of the room and walked straight along the corridor. He stopped walking when he arrived at the end of the corridor before a room on his right. He said to the people inside, "Is Sir Chen here?" "He went to the cage room," a man in white coat replied casually. "You need an ID card to enter the cage room," Bloody reminded him through voice transmission. "Oh, thanks." Lin Huang thanked him while smiling. He stretched his Divine Telekinesis out and stole the person''s ID card from his chest secretly. He then turned around and walked to the cage room. The Sir Chen that he mentioned was the person-in-charge of the current floor they were on. He was also the only person who had access to the second floor. Apart from that, he was also the disciple to the person-in-charge of the second floor, Wang Lao. The cage room the man in the white coat mentioned was the lab to test living things on the first underground floor. Soon, Lin Huang arrived at the entrance of the cage room according to the middle-aged man''s memory. After he scanned the ID card he stolen on the sensor at the door, the door to the cage room opened automatically. He walked in and clipped the ID card on his chest casually. The room was massive with endless black metal cages stacked in the room. There were at least 10,000 cages in his field of vision. Most of the cages were empty. Only a quarter of them had living things in them. The living things captured in the cages were riled up when they heard someone coming in. It was the cage room on the first underground floor. Apart from the regular eating and shitting time twice a day as well as the occasional lab test, these test subjects were kept here at all times. As Lin Huang scanned through the cages with his Divine Telekinesis, he found out that there were over 3,000 living things in there. Most of them were in human form, and some of them even retained their human parts. He saw a few female monsters who obviously had pert breasts. Some of the monsters clearly had human faces and skin, making them appear like humans with abnormal growth. However, most of them had lost their human characteristics. Furthermore, the living things in those cages seemed to have experienced severe intelligence deterioration as they moved like wild beasts. All of them looked like they had an instinct to attack. "None of these living things in the cages are in the monster guide. They''re most probably new species modified from humans," Bloody voiced its speculation. "God Bless!" Lin Huang clenched his fists angrily. Although he had heard of such organizations in the Golden City much earlier, he was boiling in rage when he witnessed these modified monsters with his own eyes. At that second, a silhouette walked out of the darkness not far away. Lin Huang contained his emotions and walked up to the person. He called out before the person spoke, "Sir Chen, you''re here." "You are?" A man wearing golden-framed glasses looked at Lin Huang in confusion. Although Lin Huang was wearing a mask, his voice and face were unfamiliar. However, he did not figure that an outsider had invaded. Instead, he was trying to figure out who the person was. Lin Huang arrived in front of him just when he was contemplating to himself. Bloody stretched a tentacle from Lin Huang''s sleeve and wound it around his neck. In the next second, it released its tentacle. The man in the glasses froze. Lin Huang removed his face mask and took out a golden mask from his storage space. When he put the mask on, his appearance soon looked exactly like the man in the glasses. Lin Huang removed the man''s golden-framed glasses and put them on. He then removed the ID card on the man''s chest and clipped it on himself. Just when he was done with the disguise, Bloody stretched a tentacle out and put it on his forehead. It transferred the man''s memory to Lin Huang after arranging it. The door to the cage room opened a moment later. A man in glasses wearing a white coat walked out and headed towards the elevator. 1064 Your Master God is Doing Great Down There After entering the elevator, Lin Huang scanned the ID card, then verified his fingerprints and irises of both eyes. The elevator descended to the second floor. He was relieved to have passed through all the verification processes. Approximately ten seconds later, the elevator arrived at the second underground floor. Lin Huang then walked out of it. Following the memory of the man in the glasses, Lin Huang walked towards the observation room where Chan Dou was captured. He bumped into a few men in white coats along the way. Lin Huang followed the man in the glasses'' habit whereby he ignored them directly. He saw an old man with gray hair and two middle-aged men working on something as he walked into the observation room. "Sir," Lin Huang greeted the old man and turned his head to look at the room behind the observation glass. There was a naked, muscular man who had all his limbs bound by black shackles in the room. Even his neck was locked. There were all sorts of wounds on his body. He had clearly gone through inhumane torment. There was a black monster that looked like mud stuck on his shaved head. It seemed to be hurting him, causing him to struggle and groan. Lin Huang''s eyes turned bitter upon seeing Chan Dou''s devastating state. "Why did you come today?" Wang Lao''s voice echoed behind Lin Huang. He sounded pretty surprised. "The new toxin lab report is out. I went to your office earlier, but you weren''t there, so I figured you should be here." Lin Huang swiveled around while smiling. "How is it so far? Is there any progress?" "It''s progressing really slowly. The god item in his body is very powerful and has been protecting his consciousness, preventing him from collapsing. I''ve been getting the Rotten Soul Beast to insert all sorts of spiritual toxins into his body. However, with that god item, the corroded part of his soul has been regenerating each day. "But I heard the new spiritual toxin that you guys have developed has a pretty astounding effect. I''ll take a look at the report later and see if I can add it in." "I''ll send you the report," Lin Huang responded and walked to Wang Lao while grinning. Bloody stretched a tentacle from Lin Huang''s sleeve all of a sudden when he stood still before the old man. It turned into a pile of gooey mess stuck on his face directly. It sealed his mouth and nose, stopping him from releasing any sound. Wang Lao stood at an angle where his back was facing the two other people in the lab. He blocked Bloody''s action completely, so the two researchers who were not cultivators did not notice anything off at all. After casting a parasite on Wang Lao, Lin Huang walked past him and headed toward the two people in the lab. He patted their shoulders while smiling. "Thanks for your hard work." Almost at the same time, Bloody stretched its tentacle again and completed the parasitization. The reason Bloody used close-range parasitization instead of Leech Pods was that Leech Pods could be detected within the territory of powerhouses above imperial-level. To prevent their identities from being exposed, Bloody could only perform close-range parasitization which was slightly more troublesome. The parasitized Wang Lao opened the door to the room where Chan Dou was captured under Bloody''s control. Lin Huang followed behind him. Almost at the same time that the duo walked into the room, the Rotten Soul Beast extended its tentacles toward the both of them. However, it was immediately swallowed by the Undead Styx that Lin Huang had summoned. Lin Huang removed the shackles on Chan Dou''s body and took a blanket out from his storage space to cover his body up. He then got the Ninetails Lynx to send him into its alternate dimension. The Rotten Soul Beast was dead, but the remnants of the spiritual toxin in Chan Dou''s body did not vanish right away. It would take time for it to get out of his system, so Chan Dou would be unconscious for a while. A voice came out of nowhere just when Lin Huang sent Chan Dou into the alternate dimension. "I thought some rat came to our base. I didn''t know it''s someone so important!" Lin Huang did not expect to be exposed, but he was not entirely surprised. The person must have done something to Chan Dou and found out that something was off as soon as Chan Dou disappeared. Lin Huang did a quick check on himself with his Divine Telekinesis and found that his disguise was perfectly fine. Two silhouettes soon appeared not far away from him. One of them had a muscular body with a stiff expression and a strong aura. The other looked sullen with an unfathomable aura. Lin Huang soon found out about the duo''s identity through Grandmistress Wei''s memories. The muscular one was called Gao Ming while the sullen one was called Qi Shihan. The duo had a combat strength of Virtual God rank-3 which was even more powerful than Grandmistress Wei. "If I''m not mistaken, you should be the Emperor Dynasty, aren''t you?" Qi Shihan''s tone sounded like he was taunting Lin Huang. "Why are you here in my Blessing Trading Company in the middle of the night?" "Ah, it''s great that you recognize me. I can save time introducing myself." Lin Huang had to stall since Guan Zhong had yet to come back to him. Clearly, he was not done building the energy shield. "Did you ask why I''m here in the Blessing Trading Company in the middle of the night? I didn''t want to come, but it was your staff who invited me here. I saw a store in the business district earlier, and I wanted to go in. There was a guy in the alley next to the store who told me that he''s your staff and that I could get 30% off on the elixir if I buy it from him. He even enthusiastically invited me to visit your production line. In the end, he brought me underground after the visit was done. Someone even attacked me, so I killed the person. I couldn''t find the exit for a long time and ended up on this floor for some reason." "It seems like both of you are the Blessing Trading Company leaders. You guys should know how do I get out of this horrible place. Am I right?" The duo looked dumbfounded after being mocked by Lin Huang. They finally found out how he had sneaked in, and they also knew that he was playing dumb. "He''s stalling. He might have partners," Gao Ming spoke through a voice transmission, "His partners might have blended in with the staff, so it''ll take time for us to check one by one." "Lock the place down to prevent them from escaping. I''ll bring him up to lure his partners out! His identity is rather sensitive. We must kill everyone who came with him. Spare nobody''s lives!" Qi Shihan replied through voice transmission. The voice transmission ended with them merely locking eyes. Gao Ming disappeared right away while Qi Shihan forced a smile. "I see. Let me send you out, Master Emperor." Qi Shihan brought Lin Huang to the elevator as he spoke. With plans of their own, Qi Shihan and Lin Huang remained silent in the elevator. None of them spoke again. Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated all of a sudden when the elevator arrived on the first floor and they walked out. It was a message from Guan Zhong whom he just added into his contact list. There were only two words in the message: ''It''s done!'' Next to him, Qi Shihan peeped at the screen. He did not understand what the two words meant. However, he had a bad omen upon seeing the smirk on Lin Huang''s lips. At that moment, Lin Huang turned around and looked at him. He smirked. "Your Master God asked me to send his regards. He wants to tell you that he''s doing great down there, but he''s lacking two strong men to serve him." 1065 Fighting Virtual Gods Again Qi Shihan and Gao Ming were petrified when they heard what Lin Huang said. Both of them knew that the Master God''s clone had left to handle something not long ago, but they had no idea where he went. They did not think of much when they saw Lin Huang. However, they were concerned when they heard him mention their Master God. The Master God had just left less than 20 minutes ago and Lin Huang came to them coincidentally. Besides exposing the existence of God Bless and the Master God, he even knew where Chan Dou was captured. They could not help but suspect that something had happened to the Master God. ''Could Mr. Fu be the one who attacked?'' The duo looked at each other with the same thought flashing through their minds almost at the same time. They knew that the Master God''s clone had a combat strength of Virtual God rank-9, and there were very few powerhouses in this gravel world who could fight him. Among those countable powerhouses, Mr. Fu, who was Lin Huang''s master, was the only person who was related to him. The duo spread their Divine Telekinesis as they thought of this detail. They were searching for all the possibilities. Naturally, they could not detect Mr. Fu from the hunt. However, Guan Zhong and the other two Union Government Virtual Gods were completely exposed. Qi Shihan and Gao Ming were getting more and more concerned after sensing three Virtual Gods hiding nearby. Lin Huang summoned three God Figurine''s Combat Souls which were the Destructive Divine Mammoth, the Ninetails Lynx, and the Enchanted Fairy as soon as he was done speaking. However, what Lin Huang did next confused Qi Shihan and Gao Ming. ''Is he using his few imperial beasts as bait? I guess the three Virtual Gods hiding nearby will attack us as soon as we move an inch.'' The duo saw through Lin Huang''s plan like a piece of cake. They had their guard up against the three Virtual Gods hiding nearby, and they did not want to attack first. Lin Huang had no idea that Guan Zhong and the rest were exposed. He felt puzzled when the two God Bless God''s Messengers did nothing to him despite what he said earlier. The confused thought flashed by his mind and vanished. Lin Huang then gave the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx his orders right away. He could unleash hell since Guan Zhong had completed the setup of the energy shield. The Ninetails Lynx could no longer wait and disappeared in a flash as soon as it heard the order. The Destructive Divine Mammoth did not go after it. Instead, he stood where he was and lifted his front feet high. He stomped hard after releasing a long, deafening shriek. The gigantic feet came from the sky like two pillars, they were stomping above the two God''s Messengers'' heads. Until then, Qi Shihan and Gao Ming, who initially ignored the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls, had a dramatic change of expression. The duo clearly sensed the intense danger coming from the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s attack. Just when they were about to dodge, they realized they could no longer move. It was the effect of the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s power. As long as the opponents were not more powerful than him, they basically could not break away from the seal. As the grayish-black gigantic feet that seemed like pillars consolidated in the air, a white silhouette passed by the duo. Almost at the same time, Qi Shihan and Gao Ming''s clothes were all torn. The god relic battle armors in their bodies were revealed automatically, protecting their bodies. Divine Power was rushing into their god relic battle armor as the deafening noise of thousands of dense metal colliding roared. The armor blocked the attack head-on. The attack that came out of nowhere jolted the both of them, and their backs were drenched in sweat. They only saw a white silhouette pass by, but they did not see how it attacked at all. What was even scarier was that the silhouette''s single blow had drained close to a fifth of the Divine Power in their bodies. The white silhouette that zoomed by was naturally Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Ninetails Lynx. Clearly, the little white cat was upset that its maximum effort attack was obstructed by the god relic battle armor on their bodies. It wanted to defeat them before the Destructive Divine Mammoth did. The Ninetails Lynx manifested itself in the air when its attack was to no avail. It had hair as white as snow, and it was only the size of a palm. It looked like a cute, harmless animal that any animal lover would want to pet. However, Qi Shihan and Gao Ming had no intention of petting the cat at all. They looked terrified and worried when they looked at this cute, little creature. Just when the duo was shocked by the Ninetails Lynx''s ability, two giant pillars came from the sky. They stomped above the duo''s heads, and it was as if an elephant was trampling on two ants. The grayish-black silhouette came down like a mountain collapsing. The duo''s Divine Power rushed out and collided with the two gigantic legs above their heads. The enormous legs collided with their sword glows in the blink of an eye. Two dazzling white glows lit up at the collision point. The impact of the Divine Power and Life Power spread towards all directions as endless wind energy blew all around. The buildings within the Blessing Trading Company''s property were crushed into dust. However, thanks to a layer of energy shield outside the land, nothing else was impacted at all. Meanwhile, a white crystal arc wall consolidated around Lin Huang''s body that was situated in the middle of the battlefield. All the impact of the energy and the wind were blocked. It was naturally the Enchanted Fairy next to him who had done that. The jaws of the two Virtual Gods, who were responsible for holding up the shield, dropped as they witnessed the battle outside the shield. Never had he thought that the two imperial-level purple gold-rank imperial beasts could fight two God Bless Virtual God rank-3s head-on. Furthermore, they clearly had the upper hand. Watching the battle aside, Guan Zhong had a rather complicated expression on his face. He had witnessed Lin Huang destroying the Wei Clan before. Although he did not watch the battle with the Master God, he did witness the ability of Lin Huang''s ''imperial beasts''. He was shocked to watch the ''imperial beasts'' fight again as an outsider. Apart from that, he secretly exclaimed about how Dynasty had played their cards right by getting Lin Huang to be their Emperor. Although he did not want to see Dynasty rising in the Union Government''s shoes, that was almost a sure case. He just hoped that Lin Huang could take everyone into consideration as an Emperor because he did not want a war to break out among the people. For the sake of building a solid relationship with Lin Huang, he ignored the Union Government''s rules and allowed Lin Huang to carry on with his mission secretly. He even became an accomplice, getting people to help build the energy shield. If the Emperor was just a mediocre person, prohibiting the mission aside, it would be nice of him not to put the person into the Union Prison. In the battlefield, Lin Huang was not sure if he should laugh or cry. The opponents were Virtual God rank-3s after all, which was the reason why Lin Huang had gotten both his God Figurine''s Combat Souls, the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth, to fight them. His initial plan was to get them to fight one-on-one. In the end, the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls chose to fight both of them. In addition to that, they went all out as soon as they attacked. Qi Shihan and Gao Ming''s performance rendered him speechless. Their jaws dropped upon seeing the two imperial beasts'' ability at the beginning of the battle. Almost half of their Divine Power was drained after merely one match. "We can''t be slacking like this. The duo is clearly quadruple mutated mythical-level monsters. Their abilities are too terrifying. Our Divine Power will be completely drained if they attack again! We must kill Lin Huang as soon as we can!" Qi Shihan hissed to Gao Ming in a panicked tone through voice transmission. "There''s another monster guarding him. It''s probably also a quadruple mutated monster. I''m afraid it''ll be hard to kill." Gao Ming frowned, seeming rather beaten. Both of them never expected Lin Huang''s imperial beasts to be so powerful. "I''ll distract the guard and lure the three imperial beasts to attack me. However, you''ll only have one chance to attack. I won''t have any Divine Power left to defend the next attack if you fail. They won''t be lured the second time." Qi Shihan''s expression was extremely grim as he warned him. "Understood!" 1066 God Bless Has Fallen The two dazzling white glows dimmed gradually. The two God Bless God''s Messengers did not look like they were in the best shape. The two God Figurine''s Combat Souls'' single attack had drained almost half of their Divine Power. Qi Shihan moved before the white glows faded completely. He was going after Lin Huang. Although the Enchanted Fairy was guarding the front of Lin Huang, the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth left Gao Ming behind anyway and went after Qi Shihan in an attempt to stop him. Qi Shihan shook his body and released hundreds of clones that charged at Lin Huang from different directions. The Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth attacked the hundreds of clones one after another, but they did not find Qi Shihan himself. The Enchanted Fairy waved her sleeve upon seeing that the clones were arriving before Lin Huang. The area hundreds of kilometers before Lin Huang turned into a snowfield. The clones turned into ice sculptures, and only one silhouette broke out among the ice sculptures. It was running away quickly in the opposite direction, appearing to flee. The Enchanted Fairy went after it without hesitation. Right at that moment, a muscular silhouette appeared behind Lin Huang. The battle sword in his hand turned into a bloody glow and aimed towards Lin Huang''s waist. The bloody sword glow froze all of a sudden when it was approximately a meter away from him. Then, he stepped out and flashed hundreds of meters away. Only then did the frozen red glow penetrate where Lin Huang was originally standing. Lin Huang, who was completely unharmed hundreds of meters away, turned around slowly with a smirk at Gao Ming who had attacked him sneakily. "Did you really think I didn''t take my personal safety into consideration? You thought I only got the Enchanted Fairy to protect me, didn''t you?" Lin Huang stretched his palm out as he spoke. A golden clock hovered above his palm. It was Lin Huang''s God''s Figurine''s Combat Soul, the Creation Clock. He did not actually just summon the Creation Clock. Instead, he had summoned it at the same time when he summoned the Ninetails Lynx in the beginning. It was just that he got the Ninetails Lynx to send the Creation Clock into its alternate dimension. The Creation Clock had been watching the battle in the alternate dimension. When it saw Gao Ming attack, it penetrated the alternate dimension with the Ninetails Lynx''s paw print and blocked the attack. Due to restriction on its combat strength, the Creation Clock could not use many of its powerful abilities at that moment. However, its limited abilities could constrain many powerhouses. The technique used to defend Gao Ming was called the Time Gully. It targeted the area behind Lin Huang and slowed time down by a million times. That was the reason why the sword glow froze in the middle of the action. After Lin Huang dodged the attack, the Creation Clock removed the effect, so the sword glow went back to its normal attack speed. Naturally, Lin Huang would not mention the Creation Clock''s secret to his opponent. Just when Gao Ming was going to attack again due to his missed shot, the Ninetails Lynx began attacking him. It slapped his face hard and shot him out. Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Qi Shihan, whose Divine Power was drained, was completely frozen into an ice sculpture by the Enchanted Fairy. Although he was not dead yet, his vital signs were deteriorating. His earlier attack was fancy as he had released the clones first to pretend to attack Lin Huang and pretended to run to lure the Enchanted Fairy away. As he was chased by the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls, he managed to summon his God''s Figurine''s Combat Soul in time. He defended himself from the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls'' fierce attack, preventing his death on the spot. However, his fancy technique did not stop the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls from suppressing him together. His Divine Power drained eventually and the Enchanted Fairy turned him into an ice sculpture. After tossing the frozen Qi Shihan at Lin Huang''s feet, the Enchanted Fairy followed behind the Ninetails Lynx and the Destructive Divine Mammoth to join in the fight against Gao Ming. Gao Ming ran for his life looking troubled. He knew that the battle on Qi Shin''s side had ended when he saw the Ninetails Lynx. Qi Shihan merely held on for less than three seconds under the duress of Lin Huang''s three imperial beasts. Without even thinking, Gao Ming gave up the thought of fighting Lin Huang and fled immediately. However, in the next second, he realized that the area around the Blessing Trading Company had been sealed. The layer of shield killed his last hope of running for his life. He swung his sword at the shield, appearing ferocious as he attempted to shatter the shield to run for his life. As the sword glow powered up, the shield went through a tremor as if there was an earthquake. However, it did not shatter. Gao Ming''s eyes lit up when he saw that. So, the shield was not as powerful as he thought. Just when he was going to swing his sword to break the shield again, a giant pillar locked onto him from the sky. The Destructive Divine Mammoth in the black armor that was not far away stared at him coldly. It then stomped both its feet. At the same time, the Ninetails Lynx and the Enchanted Fairy tore forward at the same time. The god relic armor on Gao Ming''s body merely held on for approximately a second and went back into his body. His Divine Power drained out and he turned into an ice sculpture from the white crystal-like snow. In less than three minutes, Lin Huang had killed two Virtual God rank-3 powerhouses. Watching this, Guan Zhong forced a smile. The two Virtual Gods, who were responsible for holding the defense up, were shocked. In the beginning, they thought Gao Ming was weak since he had been suppressed by three imperial beasts. However, the sword Gao Ming charged earlier proved that he was definitely one of the top powerhouses in this gravel world. The shield was made of a god item. The duo was only responsible for maintaining it by inserting Divine Power. However, Gao Ming''s single swing of his sword drained half of the Divine Power in their bodies. One could imagine that his ability surpassed the duo by heaps. However, such a powerhouse could not even hold on for a minute when facing the three imperial beasts. Looking at the two ice sculptures that were tossed in front of him, Lin Huang summoned the Warlord. "Grab the loot." The Warlord released thousands of mechanical puppets and began searching for loots. Meanwhile, Lin Huang took the bruised corpse out and synced his consciousness with it. The bruised corpse soon opened its bloody eyes and pressed the frozen Gao Ming''s head. The white ice melted right away, exposing the head. Gao Ming heard a voice in his ears as his weak consciousness just woke up. "Look into my eyes." In the next second, his consciousness was completely drowned in a bloody sea. A moment later, Lin Huang stretched his arm out, penetrating the ice directly. He pierced his hand into Gao Ming''s chest and took a gray Godhead out. As he let go of his hand that was squeezing Gao Ming''s head, the half-frozen body collapsed to the ground. The bruised corpse then turned around and held onto Qi Shin''s head, pulling it up. After repeating the same steps, he let go of his hand and tossed Qi Shin''s body onto the ground. Lin Huang spread his Divine Telekinesis out after getting the Enchanted Fairy to defrost both bodies. He took out the duo''s Emperor''s Heart Rings and god relic battle armors that came out. He picked all of the weapons up and put them away in his storage space. A Virtual God outside the shield could not help but ask Guan Zhong, "I''ll turn a blind eye to him killing everyone, but how are we supposed to get the information from the God Bless God''s Messengers if he''s taking the Emperor''s Heart Rings?" "I''ve already discussed this with the Emperor. He''ll take the loot while we''ll have the information. He''ll send us the information after the unlocking is done," Guan Zhong explained, feeling rather helpless. He had no authority in the matter at all, so he dared not ask for it even if Lin Huang refused to give him the information. The Virtual Gods said nothing else after hearing that. 1067 Saved A Sum of Processing Fee Saved A Sum of Processing Fee Destroying God Bless''s headquarters was much easier than Lin Huang imagined. After all, Wu Mo and he had gotten rid of the biggest trouble in the battle back in Division 2, which were the Master God''s clone and the Master God''s will projection. The most powerful beings at God Bless''s headquarters were just the two Virtual God rank-3 God''s Messengers. Their ability was pretty similar to the Grandmistress. Naturally, it was easy for Lin Huang to kill them. Meanwhile, the Blessing Trading Company and God Bless''s headquarters were completely destroyed as a result of the virtual god-level battle. Not only did the Blessing Trading Company''s building which was the third highest in Golden City collapse, but the other buildings around also turned to dust. Even the three levels deep in the underground were completely destroyed. The God Bless members in the buildings were killed by the impact of the battle. Lin Huang scanned the structure with his Divine Telekinesis, but he did not find a single living thing around the entire property. Approximately half an hour later, Guan Zhong only walked in after seeing that Lin Huang was done searching for the loot and had even recalled his imperial beasts. "Like always, I''ll take the loot and you can have the bodies and the information." Lin Huang nodded at Guan Zhong. He knew Guan Zhong was fulfilling his promise since he only walked in after he was done searching for the loot. "God Bless only has their branch broken at the moment, but their roots are much deeper than we can ever imagine. It''s not news that they''re scattered in all of the other organizations with their influence. It''s best that you guys check your Union Government departments and get rid of the spies. We''ll have to eradicate everyone in God Bless, or else, they''ll bounce back again. "God Bless''s ultimate goal is to bring their Master God back. Their Master God is a ninth-rank True God, so it''ll definitely be a deadly catastrophe for us if he really comes. Even if he''s rejected by this gravel world, he should be able to stay until he has killed all the rebels." Guan Zhong responded to Lin Huang''s reminder. "We''ll take note of whatever Master Emperor said but is it possible if you provide us some help?" "What kind of help do you need?" Lin Huang asked while raising his brow. "The spies name list." Guan Zhong did not bother to beat around the bush and told what he most desired. "I suppose you''ve retrieved the memories of the three God''s Messengers before you killed them, haven''t you? If I guessed correctly, there should be a list of spies who went into the Union Government in their memories." "Won''t you retrieve their memories when you brought back the bodies? Is it necessary to get a list from me now?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s necessary indeed." Guan Zhong nodded while explaining in all seriousness, "It takes time to break into a corpse''s memory. There might be a loss of information during the process of memory retrieval. In comparison, the memories that you read are much more complete." "I''m just worried what those spies will do when they hear about God Bless being destroyed." "Will you believe the list that I give you? Aren''t you afraid that I''ll give you a fake list to sabotage the Union Government?" Lin Huang asked while grinning. "We''ll verify it. It''s impossible for us to execute with one name list alone," Guan Zhong explained honestly. "Alright then. I''ll give you the list but it''s not free," Lin Huang said and named his condition, "After you guys are done investigating God Bless, send me a complete copy of the report. I want the report with the highest authorization." "That shouldn''t be a problem. I can promise you that," Guan Zhong agreed. "I''ll send you the list after I''ve sorted it out." "So Shall we take over the rest now?" Guan Zhong asked Lin Huang. "Please take over," Lin Huang replied. Just when he was summoning his dimensional portal to leave, he stopped walking out of the blue and turned his head to ask Guan Zhong, "The intel department of your Union Government should be able to unlock Emperor''s Heart Rings. Am I right? Can you unlock a batch of rings for me for free?" Guan Zhong looked puzzled upon hearing the request. He thought to himself, ''Do you really lack money to pay for the processing fee?'' However, it was merely a thought. Guan Zhong still promised to do that for him. Unlocking Emperor''s Heart Rings was not difficult, and the Union Government would do it once almost every month. It was no different adding Lin Huang''s batch to the monthly activity line-up. Lin Huang was delighted to hear the firm answer. He had gotten quite a number of Emperor''s Heart Rings from God Bless this round, and there should be a load of good stuff in them. After all, those were everything God Bless had accumulated for hundreds of years. The processing fee would definitely be high if he got someone to unlock them for him. Getting the Union Government to do it for him for free would mean him saving a hefty sum of processing fees. "I won''t disturb your work. Remember to contact me to unlock the Emperor''s Heart Rings when you''re done with your stuff," Lin Huang said and summoned a dimensional portal which he stepped into. Guan Zhong only called out to the two Virtual Gods after seeing that Lin Huang had disappeared, "You guys can remove the energy shield now. Change it to an illusion shield to prevent people from coming in. Also, the longer the shield can maintain, the better. Don''t tell anyone about God Bless being destroyed. Just drag it out as long as you can." "Then, get people to clean this ruins as soon as possible and sort out the information from here." Guan Zhong then fell into busy mode. It was midnight when Lin Huang returned to Emperor City. Huang Tianfu was relieved to see him finally return after having gone missing for a day. However, he looked rather surprised when he took the Star Titan''s ring from Lin Huang because the Star Titan was damaged pretty badly. However, since it was a god relic airship, it would fix itself as long as sufficient Divine Power was provided. Huang Tianfu was not upset that the airship was damaged. He was just surprised and wondered what kind of opponent Lin Huang had encountered which resulted in such destruction. He did not know that the Star Titan was not attacked since the beginning until the end. It was just ''baptized'' by the impact of the two true god-level powerhouses'' battle. After returning the airship filled with Divine Stones to Huang Tianpu while feeling sorry, Lin Huang turned around and returned to his Emperor Palace. The first thing he did as soon as he sat on the throne was neither to look at the loot nor glimpse at the card. Instead, he got the Ninetails Lynx to release Chan Dou from its alternate dimension. Lin Huang frowned slightly after seeing that Chan Dou, who was wrapped in a blanket, was still out of it. "Is Chan Dou going to be okay?" "His soul has been corroded by the Rotten Soul Beast''s spiritual toxin for a long time. Judging by the speed of his recovery, it''ll take at least half a month for him to wake up. Moreover, due to his soul that''s so severely damaged, he might suffer from a certain level of memory loss," the stone tablet''s voice came calmly. 1068 The Fourth God’s Messenger "Memory loss" Lin Huang scowled. "Can it be recovered?" "I''m not sure about that. Soul damages are rather complicated. If the memory root is affected, it''s impossible to fix no matter what. "Theoretically, it can be fixed if it''s just the projection of memory root in his consciousness, but determining how long it would take to recover depends on his body and the level of damage. Maybe a few days if it''s short and decades if it''s long. It could even go up to 100 years." Lin Huang fell into deep thought after hearing the stone tablet''s uncertain answer. He gave up the thought of sending Chan Dou home. He figured there might be God Bless spies in the Chan Clan when Chan Dou had been attacked back then. Now that he was in a coma, it would mean that he had lost the ability to protect himself. If Lin Huang were to send him back just like that, Chan Dou would be at risk, so it would be safer to keep him in Dynasty instead. Lin Huang had made up his mind to place Chan Dou at Dynasty for the time being. He would decide if he should send him home when he woke up. He then asked two guards to come after glancing at the man wrapped in the blanket with a filthy face. "Clean him up and bring some clean clothes. The fewer people know about this, the better." The reason why Lin Huang added the last sentence was that Chan Dou''s face was familiar to many. If too many people saw him, the news might spread outside Dynasty. By then, Chan Dou''s presence in Dynasty would be exposed and it might even cause many to think it was Dynasty who had captured him. However, the two guards had no idea about that at all. They realized it was a man wrapped in the blanket and he obviously was not properly dressed. They gawked rather awkwardly at Lin Huang. After getting the two guards to bring Chan Dou away, Lin Huang thought about it and asked Xiao Mo to come. As he chatted with Xiao Mo for a while, the guards brought Chan Dou, who was cleaned up and dressed, back to the Emperor Palace. Lin Huang only said to Xiao Mo after getting rid of the guards, "You''ll be responsible for this guy''s safety for the next half a month or so. I don''t trust anyone else to do that." Xiao Mo turned his head and looked at Chan Dou who was lying on the stretcher. He was stunned when he saw the man. He asked doubtfully, "Is he Chan Dou?!" Lin Huang nodded. "You know him too?'' "Of course, I do. He''s one of the Five Princes, the most powerful powerhouse among the young generation. Everyone in our generation knows him, and many of the Purple Crow''s female members are fans of the Five Princes. Many of them are Chan Dou''s fans," Xiao Mo explained while smiling. "But I heard he went missing a few months ago. It created a stir on the Heart Network. Why is he in Dynasty?" "God Bless took him, but I''ve just rescued him today." Lin Huang waved his hand as he spoke after noticing Xiao Mo was going to ask more, "We''ll talk about this in the future when there''s time." "This guy''s soul is damaged, thus he might only wake up at least half a month later. It''s not entirely safe to bring him back to the Chan Clan. I thought about it and thought it''s better to keep him in Dynasty and figure out what to do next when he wakes up. His identity is rather sensitive, so I don''t trust others to take care of him and I''m afraid that the news might leak. I only trust you to take care of him. I''ll leave him in your hands for the next half a month." "Sure, I''m on it," Xiao Mo responded and promised right away. "Notify me as soon as Chan Dou wakes up." "Also, I''ll get Xin Er to cultivate properly during this period of time and we won''t disturb you. Somebody else will take care of her safety," Lin Huang added. "It''s alright. I can take up more responsibility." Xiao Mo saw Lin Huang taking a careful look at him while smiling as he spoke. The entire Emperor Palace fell into a dead silence. He could not help but gulp nervously. "I think Sister Xin should really spend more time on cultivating." "Alright, that''s settled." Lin Huang patted Xiao Mo''s shoulder in satisfaction. After sending Xiao Mo off with Chan Dou, the doors of the Emperor Palace were shut. Lin Huang summoned Bloody and shared the memories he had retrieved from the three God''s Messengers with it. It was a little unfortunate that he did not manage to read the Master God''s memory. When the Master God''s clone was killed, its will projection arrived before Wu Mo could read his memory. Later on, when the will projection was killed, it faded into energy and vanished. Wu Mo fell into a deep sleep while the bruised corpse could only read a living being''s mind through their eyes. Therefore, Lin Huang did not retrieve the Master God''s memory. Fortunately, there was quite some information on the three God''s Messengers'' memories. It covered almost every secret about God Bless. Soon, Bloody sorted out the list of spies and shared the complete list with Lin Huang. Fulfilling his promise, Lin Huang sent the list of the spies in the Union Government to Guan Zhong after adding encryption to it. Approximately five to six minutes after he sent the list over, his Emperor''s Heart Ring began to vibrate. It was Guan Zhong calling. As the video call connected, Guan Zhong''s upper body was projected clearly. His expression was rather grim. "Master Emperor, are you sure that everyone on the list is a God Bless spy?" "That''s the complete list I compiled after reading the three God''s Messengers'' memories. Of course, I only gave you those who are in the Union Government. I guarantee you that all the names on the list came from the three God''s Messengers'' memories. I made none of them up." Lin Huang gave a firm answer. "I know you''re in disbelief that your superior, the president of Agency EA, who is also its founder, is a God Bless spy. However, I must tell you that this is the truth. The man named Zhuge Feifan has been a God Bless member since 700 years ago. He received the Master God''s order directly to become a spy in the Union Government. He founded Agency EA later, which was also the Master God''s order." "I''m sure it''s not hard for you to guess what Zhuge Feifan''s position is." Guan Zhong fell into silence for a moment and spat two words out forcefully, "God''s Messenger." "That''s right. He''s the most secretive God''s Messenger in God Bless whereby only the Master God and the other three God''s Messengers know his name in the entire organization." "He''s my master" Guan Zhong clenched his fists so hard that they were going to bleed. He had been working with Agency EA for years, so he had read through everything about Lin Huang ever since he became the Emperor of Dynasty. He knew how Lin Huang was like, and he also knew that it was impossible for Lin Huang to do such a thing. "You guys can verify and check through the authenticity of the list. No matter what, everything that happens next is on the Union Government. I won''t be interfering unless you want me to." "I''m happy to kill a God''s Messenger again. I''ve already killed three after all, and I won''t be at peace if the last one is still alive." The reason why Lin Huang did not go after this fourth God''s Messenger after ending God Bless'' headquarters was that this particular God''s Messenger had a sensitive identity. There was no way that he could kill him recklessly. "There''s no need to trouble you, Master Emperor. We''ll handle it on our own. It''s the Union Government''s internal conflict after all." Guan Zhong''s heart sank. He hung the phone up after some small talk. Lin Huang could not help but say after sighing as he hung up. "I hope the Union Government will execute this guy as soon as possible so that he won''t be able to do anything disastrous." 1069 God-slaying Power and Origin Gods Hear Lin Huang glanced at the time after his call with Guan Zhong ended. It was almost 9 p.m. He shook his head while forcing a smile, feeling helpless. He did not even have the time to go through Xiao Hei''s notifications due to his busy day earlier. Now, he finally had the time to look at the notifications that had popped up earlier. "Congratulations, you''ve killed a True God. You''ve won the title of Godslayer!" "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a rule power the God-slaying Power!" "Congratulations, you''ve obtained a god item the Origin God''s Heart!" Killing humans did not earn any cross-ranking reward. There was an extremely low probability of the deceased''s items falling off including their skills, secret skills, divine abilities, divine skills, items, equipment, and cards. However, Lin Huang had terrible luck this time. He did not even obtain a single Skill Card or Equipment Card from killing a True God, three Virtual Gods (excluding the puppets) and at least 20 demigods who were killed by the impact of the battle. Apart from the two notifications Lin Huang had seen earlier, he realized he had obtained a god item which he considered a reward. He ignored the new notification and asked Xiao Hei the question that he had been wanting to, "What''s this title thing?" "You''ll be given a relevant title after achieving a certain special condition. Different titles have different effects. Some give you the ability to master a rule power, some might be a divinity ability, and some might allow you to comprehend a certain true meaning besides some other special effects. "For instance, for those who have extraordinary luck, they may obtain the title of Destiny''s Child and the world will take care of them. Not only will they encounter all sorts of fortuitous circumstances, but they can also get out of any threats. Basically, they won''t die no matter what they do. Furthermore, there''ll be a spillover effect on the people around them and they''ll become lucky." "I''m envious of him!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up when he heard that. However, he knew that he was born to have bad luck. Although his luck had gotten better since he traveled there, he was far behind from getting extraordinary luck. He would never win a title such as Destiny''s Child in this life. If he did, he would be able to draw any cards he wanted from Xiao Hei. He would not have to spend endless cards to trade them for a specific card he desired. "So, what''s the effect of this Godslayer title that I''ve received? Did I obtain the rule power of God-slaying Power?" Lin Huang could not help but ask upon observing that the second notification seemed to be related to the first. "Yes, the title Godslayer means that you''ve obtained the God-slaying Power. The God-slaying Power is a god rule under the Kill Rule. It''s an attack rule power that''s suitable for battles. Under normal circumstances, god rules are rule powers that are only mastered by True Gods. However, since you''ve obtained the title of Godslayer, it means that you''ve mastered the rule power in advance." "Does that mean I''ve got the ability to kill True Gods now?" Lin Huang felt a current of excitement run through him. "Of course not. Theoretically, you possess the ability to harm True Gods, but you''re still far from having the ability to kill god order-level (True God) powerhouses. "The vast difference in speed and strength aside, it''s hard for you to break a True God''s defense even if he were to stand still and allow you to do so because god rule power can be charged from both sides. Those True Gods obtain god rule power as well just like you do. "Furthermore, there''s almost no way for you to elevate your God-slaying Power before you get to god order-level. You''ll stay on level-1, which is the lowest level. The other true god-level powerhouses will block you like a piece of cake." "Then, how about killing Virtual Gods? It shouldn''t be a problem, should it?" Lin Huang continued to ask, "Don''t talk about the difference in strength and speed." "Without taking the difference in strength and speed into consideration, killing Virtual Gods is child''s play. God rule power falls under the rule power. To virtual god-level powerhouses who don''t the master god rule power, they won''t be able to defend your attack just like ordinary people who can''t defend against steel, blade or swords cutting into their body. Of course, that''s based on the premise that your opponent has no rule power god relic on. "It''s good enough to kill Virtual Gods. Killing True Gods is something too farfetched. There''s no need to worry about it at the moment." Hearing Xiao Hei''s explanation, Lin Huang was pretty satisfied with the god rule power he had obtained. He then looked at the third notification. "So, what''s this Origin God''s Heart?" "The Origin God''s Heart is a Protoss''s heart. Owning this god item will give you a Protoss''s body. Due to the combat strength restriction before, you can''t use Divine Power while the power created from the Divine Fire in your body is merely Life Power. Although your Life Power has a higher quality than the rest due to the refinement of Divine Fire, it''s still Life Power after all. It''s nothing compared to the real Divine Power. To describe it as you would back in your hometown, the difference between Life Power and Divine Power is almost the difference between coal and nuclear energy. "After integrating the Origin God''s Heart, being able to use Divine Power isn''t the only advantage. Due to the Protoss''s body that you''ve been given, though restricted to a combat strength whereby your body will be far behind the real Protoss, you''ll be much more powerful than anyone who is on the same level as you. Your strength, mobility speed, and attack speed will break through the limits that you possess at the moment. "The abilities of your God Figurine''s Combat Souls will also be transformed further. All of them have perfect power systems in their bodies. However, in reality, their abilities have been restricted due to the power you''ve provided. They haven''t been showing what they really have got. Now that there''s Divine Power, their abilities will be recovered by heaps." "So, are you saying that I''ll obtain Divine Power and the god power rule with my current combat strength which is immortal-level rank-10? In other words, I''ll become a True God whose combat strength is only immortal-level rank-10. Is that right?" Lin Huang could not help but tease Xiao Hei after hearing its explanation. "You''ve no Godhead or God Territory. You haven''t even refined your Life Base. Your god rule is only on level-1, which is the lowest level. You can''t even break a True God''s defense" Xiao Hei corrected him honestly, which was rare. "Alright then, I was full of myself. Thanks for popping my bubble." Lin Huang became a little depressed after his two-second bout of excitement. "Would you like to activate the title of Godslayer?" After Ling Huang had read through the notifications and Xiao Hei had explained everything to him, another notification popped up. "Activate!" Lin Huang nodded without hesitation. "Activating Godslayer!" "Activating god rule God-slaying Power!" Lin Huang raised his brow as he realized there was no significant change to his body after the two notifications echoed in his ears. He gathered the Life Power in his body onto his palm. His Life Power was now mahogany in color like molten lava. He gazed into his body immediately. He realized that the ten Divine Fires that were pitch-black like ink were now mahogany. An unknown power was hiding within the Divine Fires. Lin Huang could only feel the power faintly but could not catch it clearly. He knew that it should be the legendary god rule power. A golden card appeared in his hand when he snapped back to reality. There was a heart that looked like a golden gem in the middle of the Origin God''s Heart card. He flipped it over to look at the details. It was the same as what Xiao Hei said but more detailed. Lin Huang crushed the card after reading the description. "Activating god item Origin God''s Heart!" "Beginning integration: 1%, 2%, 3%" As soon as the integration began, Lin Huang could feel the changes in his body obviously. Until the ''integration completed'' notification came, he felt much more powerful now. Almost each and every cell in his body had transformed. The feeling was more intense compared to the time he had elevated from holy fire-level to immortal-level, crossing a whole new level. It felt more like the time he had elevated to transcendent-level back then which was a transformation in his life level. He looked through his body immediately as soon as the integration was completed. He realized he did not transform to level-3 on the life level. "As expected, it was just an illusion" "Actually, it wasn''t an illusion. Your body indeed transformed deep down in your core, but it''ll only show when your combat strength fulfills the transformation condition," Xiao Hei explained. "Alright then." Lin Huang accepted the fact begrudgingly. "But my ability has indeed elevated. Before this, with my immortal-level rank-10 combat strength, I should have the ability on par with an ordinary imperial-level white gold-rank powerhouse when I had no combat strength boost technique. I could fight them head-on, but it was hard to defeat them. Now, I should have the ability on par with an ordinary imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouse even without using the Divine Power and the god rule power." Lin Huang thought of a question all of a sudden after the Origin God''s Heart integration was completed. "Xiao Hei, isn''t the Origin God''s Heart something in a Protoss''s body? I didn''t kill any Protoss today, so where did this Origin God''s Heart come from?" "The system retrieved it randomly from the Master God when you killed the Master God''s will projection." "Isn''t the Master God human? Where did he get the Origin God''s Heart?" "Perhaps it''s a treasure he stored in his storage space." 1070 Loot Inventory Lin Huang called out to Bloody that was in his sleeve after activating the card reward on Xiao Hei''s side. "Bloody, what''s the loot today like?" Bloody reported the data it had compiled calmly, "We''ve gotten a total of 3,021 Emperor''s Heart Rings, 20 god relics, 34 demigod relics, two god-level puppets, 11 demigod-level puppets, 74 God Figurines, four Godheads, and 23 broken Godheads." "That many God Figurines?" Lin Huang was stunned. He had spent some effort obtaining God Figurines earlier and ended up accumulating ten, which was not an easy feat. However, now he had just obtained 74 God Figurines in merely a day. "The God Figurines fell off when the Virtual Gods and demigods were killed. The Master God''s clone alone had nine. Seven from Grandmistress Wei, and five and six respectively for the other two God''s Messengers. Meanwhile, the 20 or so demigods basically had one or two God Figurines refined for emergencies while a few of them even had three," Bloody explained. The Warlord had compiled the data for it when he was gathering the loot. "Seems like I went to the wrong places before. So, the fastest way to obtain God Figurines is by killing human demigod-level and virtual god-level powerhouses. Too bad it''s a tad bit late that I''ve only found out about this now," Lin Huang mocked himself. As he visualized his God Figurines into True Spirits, all of them possessed a strong sense of territory, resulting in one Life Wheel being able to only contain one God Figurine. Now that he had surpassed the life wheel-level, the number of Life Wheels were fixed to ten. Ten Life Wheels would mean he would only be able to contain ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls, so it would be redundant to have more God Figurines. ''I''ll get Sister Mo Mo to pick one of these God Figurines to be her vessel when she wakes up. Apart from that, it seems like I can only use them as battle puppets.'' Lin Huang thought about it thoroughly and figured there was nothing better that he could use them for. He asked Bloody after setting the God Figurines'' matter aside, "Are there any sword and telekinetic weapons among the 20 god relics?" "There''s a battle sword among the god relics but no telekinetic weapons. However, there are two sets of telekinetic weapons among the 34 demigod relics." Lin Huang nodded and mumbled to himself, "I can give the puppets to Grimace and the Witch as their toys. For the four complete Godheads, I''ll refine them together with the broken Godheads. I wonder if I could build a Life Palace after this round of refining." In order to build a Life Palace, Lin Huang had been refining the broken Godheads in the demigods'' bodies with Divine Fire, mainly because it was cheap to purchase broken Godheads and rather easy to refine them. Meanwhile, a complete Godhead was expensive and the price to performance ratio was low. Moreover, with the speed of the Divine Fire in his body, refining a complete Godhead had extremely low efficiency. The time taken to refine a complete Godhead would be hundreds of folds more than refining broken Godheads. Due to the various reasons, he had never thought of refining complete Godheads before this. Now, he happened to have four complete Godheads whereby three of them were on Virtual God rank-3 while another was on Virtual God rank-9. Although it would take a long time to refine all of them, the refinement by Divine Fire was automatic. It would not affect Lin Huang in any way, so it would be a waste if he did not do so. Lin Huang took action instead of hesitating any longer as he thought about this. He tossed the four Godheads into his body together with all of the broken Godheads that he had been accumulating. Then, he began to refine them by activating his Divine Fire. As the Godheads entered his body, the ten Life Wheels in his body began shaking at the same time out of nowhere. The Godheads seemed to be pulled by an invisible force and all of them gathered together in his body. Subsequently, the ten Life Wheels formed a circle rapidly and surrounded the Godheads in the middle. Divine Fire was shooting out of the Life Wheels, drowning the Godheads completely. Approximately an hour later, cracks were showing on the broken Godheads. As time went by, the cracks on the broken Godheads expanded. Around two hours later, the first broken Godhead finally turned into tiny, dark gray gravel. Since the first broken Godheads disintegrated, the second one soon followed suit, then the third The broken Godheads disintegrated one after another. Now, all of them had taken the form of tiny, dark gray gravel. The gravels formed a cloud of mist as if they were alive and floated within the ten Life Wheels. Lin Huang had been observing the process until past midnight. He watched the last broken Godheads disintegrate and become one with the cloud of mist. The four complete Godheads experienced no changes from the beginning until the end. He felt helpless and snapped back to reality. Just when he was going to wash up and sleep, his Emperor''s Heart Ring vibrated out of the blue. He checked and realized it was Guan Zhong who was calling. When he peeped at the time, he frowned. It was already 12.41 a.m. It was definitely bad news for Guan Zhong to be calling him at such an hour. He figured what Guan Zhong was going to say roughly as he clicked the pick-up button. Guan Zhong''s upper body was projected when the video call was connected. He clearly looked terrified. "Master Emperor, Zhuge Feifan has escaped. I''m calling you just to tell you to be careful. He found out that it was you who ended God Bless all by yourself, so he might seek revenge." Lin Huang had already guessed what Guan Zhong was going to tell him when he saw him calling. He grimaced upon hearing the news. However, he did not mention the Union Government and Guan Zhong''s neglect of duty. Instead, he asked, "Can you tell me more about it?" "It''s my fault. After you destroyed the Wei Clan, I sent a brief to Agency EA to give a short report on the situation. Perhaps he found out that his identity was exposed when he saw the brief. "I contacted the Union Government president as soon as you gave me the list of spies. He had also given me the search warrant immediately. However, just when I was going to search for him as soon as I got the warrant, he disappeared. "Everything in his office was cleared and the surveillance was wiped. His few accommodations were completely burned down, so there was no evidence left. Even his Emperor''s Heart Ring''s account was deleted and his messages were reformatted. A special virus, which destroyed all of the information he stored in the cloud, was planted."= "Since I couldn''t find anything from him, I thought I''d go for the people who are close to him on the list. I later found out that everyone on the list you gave me were all dead overnight. All of them were killed as a result of their brains having exploded. I can''t even retrieve any information in their heads. "The autopsy shows that these people died almost at the same time. The cause of death is an energy bomb that was installed in their heads going off. That should be some special ability that Zhuge Feifan has never revealed to anyone." "So, you guys have zero clues on where he might be hiding now?" Lin Huang concluded after what Guan Zhong told him. "That''s right," Guan Zhong admitted that feeling helpless. "Maybe I''ll drop by the Union Government tomorrow. Perhaps I might be able to help," Lin Huang suggested. "I think that''s alright. It''s a mess over here. You won''t be able to help with anything if you come. Let''s not complicate things." "What if I tell you that I have a secret image playback skill that shows what happened within 24 hours?" Lin Huang initiated assistance because he would feel uneasy as long as the fourth God''s Messenger was still alive. He was not afraid to be assassinated, but he had a sister and he did not want Lin Xin to be dragged into this for no reason. Guan Zhong was stunned to hear Lin Huang''s offer. "Do you really have such a secret skill? It''s not the right time to joke now." "Do I look like I''m joking?" Lin Huang raised his brow and asked him back. "It''ll be great if you weren''t. When can you come?" Guan Zhong asked rather frantically after confirming that Lin Huang indeed had such an image playback ability. "I''ll drop by after breakfast tomorrow morning." Guan Zhong was speechless and mocked him secretly, ''You still have the mood for breakfast!'' 1071 We’re Going to the Union Government? Arenst We Walking Right Into the Trap? "What? Where did you say you''re going?" Huang Tianfu thought he was experiencing a hallucination when he saw Lin Huang greet him early in the morning and say he would drop by the Union Government headquarters. "I''m going to the Union Government headquarters." Lin Huang thought it was odd. Was he not being clear earlier? "Why are you going to the Union Government headquarters?" Huang Tianfu was rather irritated as he glared at Lin Huang''s face as if it was not odd that he was going to the Union Government headquarters. He remained calm on the outside, but he thought to himself secretly, ''Why do you put it like you''re buying groceries? Do you think the Union Government headquarters is a supermarket? Since when does our Dynasty have such a great relationship with the Union Government?!'' In reality, Huang Tianfu could not be blamed for having such a stirred reaction at the moment. Dynasty was a top underground organization, and the two parties were completely against each other. Especially in Division 3, the opposition was gravely severe. Furthermore, almost all of Dynasty''s core members were on the Union Government''s blacklist. One would win a handsome reward for capturing them. If the relationship was put in an Earthly context, the Union Government was the equivalent of a country''s government while Dynasty would be a massive terrorist group. Lin Huang going to the Union Government headquarters as the Emperor of Dynasty was almost the same as a terrorist group visiting the White House. However, Lin Huang sounded like he was going shopping. "Something happened at Agency EA and they asked me to help" "Agency EA?!" Naturally, Huang Tianfu knew what that agency was. A thought flashed through his mind when he heard the name. ''Could Lin Huang be a part of the Union Government''s Agency EA?'' He got rid off the ridiculous thought a second later and asked Lin Huang, "Master Emperor, how did you come to know people from Agency EA?" "I just got to know one yesterday." Lin Huang waved. "I''ll tell you the details when I get back. I''ll have breakfast and I''ll go straight to First City." Huang Tianfu wanted to say he would follow out of habit, but he jolted when he realized they would be going to the Union Government. He changed what he was going to say instantly. "Master Emperor, it''s not safe for you to go alone. Why not I get Tufu to go with you?" "Alright then, ask him to come to me at the breakfast place, the one with the soup dumplings. He knows where it is." There was a food street called Huangfan''er less than a kilometer from Dynasty''s headquarters in Emperor City. This food street was crowded from morning until night because there were night markets and many breakfast stalls. The one that Lin Huang most frequented on the street was the plump aunty''s soup dumpling place. The owners of the stall were a plump couple. The husband was a fatty who was at least 200 pounds in his early 40''s. His wife, on the other hand, was at least 160 pounds and looked 35 or 36 years of age. One could tell that she was a beauty when she had been slimmer. The couple was just ordinary and they were always beaming no matter who they met. Not only were they friendly, but they also had amazing cooking skills too. Lin Huang''s favorite was their crab meat soup dumpling. The main ingredient of the soup dumpling was a type of exclusive soft shell crab which was only the size of an adult thumb. The soup and crab roe would spill at the same time as soon as one took a bite after dipping the dumpling with soft shell crab with a little vinegar. Every bite of the chewy texture of the pork and crab meat within as well as the tantalizing taste from the vinegar was heaven on earth for Lin Huang. Soon, he inhaled the serving of dumplings. Lin Huang could not help but order another serving. Huang Tufu arrived when the second serving of dumplings came. "Boss, give me ten servings of crab meat dumplings," Huang Tufu called out to the owner as he sat across Lin Huang. The plump owner ran over, feeling rather bad. "Sir, we only have five servings that are ready for now. You''ll need to wait for ten minutes if you want ten servings." "I''ll have five servings then." Huang Tufu thought about it and figured he should not let Lin Huang, the Emperor, wait since he had something to do. If not, he did not mind waiting for ten minutes at all. "Do you usually eat that much?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "In reality, demigods basically don''t have to eat, especially perfect-stage demigod-level powerhouses. We can live even if we don''t eat or drink for a year. We only need to replenish ourselves with Divine Power," Huang Tufu explained while grinning, "So, I only eat something that I want and I''ll only stop when I''m satisfied." The plump owner served the dumplings as they chatted for a short while. Huang Tufu could not resist shoving a dumpling into his mouth immediately. He asked inaudibly while chewing, "Where are we going later?" "To the Union Government headquarters." "Pu!" Huang Tufu spat a mouthful of dumplings out just when Lin Huang was done speaking. Fortunately, Lin Huang reacted in time and held up the Dark Mirror as he moved his finger slightly. The dumpling Huang Tufu spat out bounced back onto his face. Huang Tufu wiped his face with a paper towel, looking speechless. He then looked at Lin Huang in confusion. "Why are we going there? Aren''t we walking right into the trap?" Huang Tufu expressed what Huang Tianfu thought honestly. "Remember I told you guys about God Bless before?" Lin Huang swallowed the dumpling in his mouth and said calmly, "The Union Government found out that the founder of Agency EA is God Bless''s spy last night. He''s missing now, so they''ve asked me to help them find him." "Why are you helping them? Is it related to you?" Huang Tufu was even more confused now. "It was me who told them that the guy is a spy." Lin Huang picked up a dumpling and dipped it in the vinegar sauce. "I''m a little worried that he might seek revenge, so it''s better that I find him as soon as I can and kill him." ''Couldn''t you have just not exposed him from the beginning?'' Huang Tufu thought to himself, ''That guy wouldn''t have gone looking for trouble if you didn''t expose him.'' He had no idea that Lin Huang had destroyed God Bless''s headquarters. Even if he did not expose that guy, it was only a matter of time the guy would seek revenge. "Must we go?" Huang Tufu looked petrified. He was really reluctant to go to the Union Government. "I can go by myself if you don''t want to.," Lin Huang did not mind if Huang Tufu decided not to follow him. "Will the people from the Union Government attack us, seizing the opportunity since we are going to them?" "I''m not sure if they''ll attack you but I didn''t do anything to them, so why would they attack me?" Lin Huang thought he was a moral citizen who obeyed the law. "You''re the Emperor of Dynasty. If they manage to capture you, it''s enough for the people from the Union Government to boast about it for centuries," Huang Tufu said with a pout. "You''re overthinking. They don''t have the time to bother whether I''m the Emperor or not." Lin Huang shoved the last dumpling into his mouth. He then asked Huang Tufu after swallowing the dumpling and putting the chopsticks down. "So, you aren''t going? I''ll go by myself if you''re not." Huang Tufu thought about it and agreed while clenching his teeth. "I''ve never been to the Union Government headquarters in my life. I''ll visit them today with Master Emperor then!" "Wait, I haven''t finished my dumplings" 1072 The Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon The No. 1A1 foothold in Division 1 was the very first city the humans built outside the Land of Origin since the new era. Therefore, the Union Government named this foothold the First City. The First City was the oldest city among the 12 safety zones in the human world. It had expanded and developed throughout 800 years, it was the city with the biggest surface now. Its population exceeded 1.8 billion people and it occupied 80 million square kilometers of land. This massive city even surpassed half of the surface area of Earth. The Union Government''s headquarters in Division 1 was located in the middle of this foothold. Before 8 in the morning, Lin Huang and Huang Tufu passed through the dimensional portal and arrived in First City. Lin Huang did not stop looking around as soon as they walked out of the dimensional portal. "I heard there''s a stall that sells pretty good pancakes near First City''s dimensional portal, but I don''t know the exact location." "Shouldn''t we get to the Union Government now?" Huang Tufu asked. "I think the government organization here isn''t opened yet." Just when Lin Huang was done speaking, two men walked towards him. Both of them had demigod-level combat strength. Huang Tufu, who was standing next to Lin Huang, had his guard up as soon as he saw the duo. "We''re Silver Fox and Viper from EA.4. It''s our pleasure to meet Master Emperor and Mr. Tufu." The duo introduced themselves as they approached. Huang Tufu let his guard down when he heard that. He looked puzzledly at Lin Huang, clearly in disbelief that people from the Union Government had come to escort him. The duo who came were two demigod-level powerhouses. "So early? What time did you guys get here?" Lin Huang knew Guan Zhong must have sent the duo to pick him up. "We''ve just arrived too," responded the gray-haired young man, who called himself the Silver Fox, while smiling when he saw the Viper attempt to speak. Naturally, Lin Huang noticed that but he did not dwell on it. "Do we go there now? It''s not even 8 a.m. I suppose your office building isn''t opened yet, is it?" "I think you''re talking about the office building that''s opened to the public. Our real office building runs almost 24 hours every day. We''ll have people in each department at night handle unforeseen circumstances," the Silver Fox explained while smiling. "24 hours every day? That''s dedication right there!" Lin Huang raised a brow. "Bring us there then." Seeing the Viper bring out the dimensional portal, Lin Huang could not help but say, "Since you guys are here, I want to ask something. I heard there''s a pancake place that everyone talks about. Where''s the exact location?" "You must be talking about the pancake place runs by an uncle, Master Emperor. His pancake is amazing indeed." The Silver Fox pointed at an alley not far away. "Walk into that alley. You''ll see it when you walk about 200 meters to the left." "Thanks, I''ll go when I have the time." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction after getting the exact location. "You can buy some now if you''d like. We''ll just wait here. It''s a stall by the street and it''s only available in the morning. The owner is pretty capricious. He runs his business according to his mood. He sometimes closes his stall for a few days when he''s having a bad mood. He would close after 10.30 a.m. even if he''s supposed to be open. You might not see him when you come the next time." "Alright then. Please wait for us here. We''ll go over to buy some pancakes. We should try the pancakes since we''re here," said Lin Huang and he ran towards the alley with Huang Tufu. A moment later, Lin Huang saw the stall the Silver Fox had mentioned after passing the alley. The stall owner was an uncle who had a beard and looked rather messy. He did not look in the best of health as though he did not get enough sleep. For some reason, Lin Huang thought of the plump uncle and aunty at the dumpling stall earlier. He figured the uncle before him must be single. "Boss, give me a pancake. I''d like to add an egg, pork tenderloin, sliced cucumber, lettuce, pickles. No parsley, no sweet sauce. Make it a little spicy." Lin Huang was actually full, but he just wanted to try how the pancake tasted like. "Give me five. I want to go all out since I''m eating." The gluttony Huang Tufu, who was standing next to Lin Huang, was obviously not full from eating five servings of dumplings earlier. "I want two servings of eggs, two servings of pork tenderloin with sliced potatoes, pickles, bean curd skin, and green onions. Oh, more parsley. Put as much as you can. I want garlic sauce and make it super spicy. Put all of that on all five pancakes." Lin Huang thought to himself after hearing Huang Tufu''s order, ''I''ll stay away from him later.'' Since Huang Tufu ordered five pancakes, it took some time for the order to be done. The Silver Fox and the Viper came to them since they did not see them return after waiting for a while. Huang Tufu''s order happened to be ready just when the duo passed through the alley. The duo thought that Huang Tufu had packed the pancakes for them. They were slightly touched. However, Huang Tufu did not give them the pancakes when he walked up to them. They then realized they were overthinking. "We can go now." Lin Huang did not plan to waste any more time since they were done buying the pancakes. After all, they had made the two people who were picking him up wait for quite some time. The Viper summoned the dimensional portal again. The four of them walked into the dimensional portal one after another. They arrived at the Union Government headquarters building when they appeared again. Lin Huang did not even bother with mocking when he saw the building that looked similar to a toilet bowl. "Master Emperor, do you think the shape of the building looks a little like a toilet bowl in the late era?" Huang Tufu honestly said what Lin Huang had in mind. The Silver Fox and the Viper, who was standing aside, looked horrified when they heard that. "This is our office building that is open to the public. The office for internal staff is the block at the back." The duo brought Lin Huang and Huang Tufu around the toilet bowl building and walked towards the real office building. However, Lin Huang was even more speechless when he saw the building. Meanwhile, Huang Tufu spat the pancake from his mouth as laughter consumed him. He cackled to the point that he almost could not stand straight. "Doesn''t this office building''s shape look like a male?" "Eat your pancake," Lin Huang interrupted Huang Tufu directly. Huang Tufu recalled that this was the Union Government''s territory as he was interrupted by Lin Huang. He finally shut his mouth. However, he was still stifling his laughter while eating the pancakes. The Silver Fox and the Viper looked extremely embarrassed now. The office building not far away was divided into three parts. The section in the middle was tall while the two buildings next to it were spherical. Looking at the building, Lin Huang could not help but recall a joke he had heard on Earth back then. ''Isn''t this the legendary Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon? The resemblance is astonishing!'' Lin Huang only thought to himself and did not say that out loud. "Follow me. Our Agency EA office is the short building on the left." The Silver Fox ignored Huang Tufu, who was trying his hardest to hold back his laughter and changed the subject. 1073 Oh My God, That Smell! Lin Huang and Huang Tufu were greeted by eye salutation when they followed the Silver Fox and the Viper into Agency EA''s building. People did not recognize Lin Huang and Huang Tufu, but because the Silver Fox and the Viper were the bosses of EA.4, almost everyone in the agency knew them. The people could not help but peep at Lin Huang and Huang Tufu twice as they were brought in. They wanted to know who were the duo both the bosses had escorted in themselves. Even Huang Tufu who had been there done that, felt a little uneasy as he walked into Union Government office building. One must know that he was the Third Grand Duke of Dynasty. Furthermore, since Dynasty was against Division 3''s Union Government, his name was on top of the Union Government''s blacklist. He had never thought that he would walk into the Union Government headquarters leisurely during this lifetime. He was glancing around as he walked to the point that he even forgot to eat the pancakes in his hands. Lin Huang, on the other hand, was not nervous at all. He strolled while eating the pancake, seeming so relaxed like he was walking in a night market. Nobody knew that the current thought he had on his mind was, ''This pancake''s really great!'' The people in Agency EA began discussing among themselves after the four of them walked away. "The two men are EA.4''s Silver Fox and Viper, am I right? Why do the two people who were walking with them look so familiar?" "If I''m not mistaken, the young man is the newly appointed the Emperor of Dynasty. His face was all over the headlines two days back." "You got it right! The young man is the current the Emperor of Dynasty, Lin Huang. Meanwhile, the muscular man next to him is the Third Grand Duke of Dynasty, Huang Tufu." "Am I dreaming? I think I saw the Emperor of Dynasty and Third Grand Duke walked into our Union Government office building leisurely!" Apart from the Agency EA''s upper echelon, nobody else knew that Zhuge Feifan had escaped. They were working on their own stuff as usual. In reality, the upper echelon above EA.4 was in a messy situation. Soon, the news of the Emperor of Dynasty visiting the Union Government spread through the entire Agency EA. Lin Huang, who was the newly appointed underground boss, had been the most talked about person in the cultivation world. Almost all the media headlines were about him these few days and almost every cultivator had heard of his name. Many Agency EA members let their imaginations run wild since this the Emperor of Dynasty visited the Union Government all of a sudden after merely a few days since his coronation. Many girls tried to approach him, dying to see if this legendary Emperor was as good-looking as they had seen on the news. One of them even took a sneaky photo of him. In the photo, Lin Huang was eating a pancake with his mouth wide open. The photo was taken at the perfect moment when he had just shoved the nicely folded pancake into his mouth and was just going to bite into it. The girl sent the photo to Agency EA''s group chat. It was then forwarded and shared by up to 1,000 people. Lin Huang had no idea that a picture of him eating a pancake had created a stir on the Internet. Soon, they arrived at the top floor, which was the 99th floor with the guidance of the Silver Fox and the Viper via the elevator. The duo was brought into an office as they walked out of the elevator. Then, the Silver Fox and the Viper walked away as soon as they were done with their duty. In the office, Guan Zhong was chatting to a middle-aged man on the couch. He stood up as soon as he saw Lin Huang and Huang Tufu walk in. "Master Emperor, you''re finally here!" Guan Zhong smiled while greeting them. "This is Qian Rui, our Vice President. His code name is Fortune God." "Hi, Fortune God," Lin Huang responded, "I suppose everyone knows this person next to me, the Third Grand Duke, Huang Tufu." Huang Tufu clearly sensed that the duo were virtual god-level powerhouses. He walked up and greeted them immediately. "Take a seat." The four of them took their seats after some small talk. Lin Huang threw the packaging of the pancake into the trash can casually. He had finished it before getting out of the elevator. Huang Tufu ate faster than he did, having already wolfed two and a half pancakes down. He finished the other half pancake when he walked into the room and put the remaining two away. "How''s the investigation going?" Lin Huang asked directly as Guan Zhong poured him some tea. "The same as last night. Nothing much." Guan Zhong shook his head and served the tea to Lin Huang. Qian Rui, who was sitting next to him, could not help but pipe up, "Zhuge Feifan is thorough in destroying all of his traces. We hit a dead end after investigating through a few sources." "Aren''t you guys Diviners? Can''t you tell where he is?" In reality, Lin Huang had been curious about that when he heard the news last night. "The most powerful Diviner in our Union Government is Mr. Ke Lai who only has a combat strength of demigod-level. It''s extremely difficult for him to tell the fortune of a Virtual God. He tried three times last night, and he''s still unconscious until now. He didn''t get Zhuge Feifan''s exact location, but he told us that he''s in a safe place." "How is that different from not fortune telling at all?" The straightforward Huang Tufu pointed out with a wry smile. The garlic and onion smell in his mouth wafted towards the duo''s faces, making the two vice presidents nauseous from the smell. Oh my god, that smell! On the other hand, Lin Huang was much smarter. He shut his breathing system directly when he heard Huang Tufu speaking next to him. He breathed internally instead. The duo, who were sitting across them, had not gotten any sleep all night. Piling up with anxiety, they did not feel great. It took them some time to snap out of their nausea as they stopped breathing immediately while looking pale. "He has erased the surveillance. Is there any other way to track him?" Lin Huang asked again. "We''ve tried every tracking method that we have but it''s useless." Guan Zhong shook his head helplessly. "Don''t laugh at us but 70% of the materials we''ve been using for hundreds of years came from him. He knew each and every method we have very well." "Zhuge Feifan aside, it''s as difficult as reaching the sky for us to capture anyone in EA.4 who has escaped. We know our tracking methods like the back of our hands. We can perform all sorts of anti-tracking methods like a piece of cake," added Qian Rui who was sitting next to him. "Since he knows all of our methods, we''ll need help from people outside of Agency EA or even outside of the Union Government to be able to do it because he won''t be taking precautions on tracking methods that he doesn''t expect." "I thought of that all of a sudden last night. That''s the reason why I''ve decided to ask for your help." Guan Zhong lifted his head and looked at Lin Huang and asked in all seriousness, "Master Emperor, that ability of yours Does it have any restriction on the target''s combat strength?" "No restriction. The ability is just a reflection of the playback of a specific space on what exactly happened. It has nothing to do with people," Lin Huang added after he was done speaking, "Of course, what we see might be disrupted if there''s a True God, who has mastered the Time God Rule or Space God Rule, interferes with the image playback with the rule power." ''What are you guys talking about? How come I understand nothing suddenly? What ability are you guys talking about? Can anyone tell me?'' Huang Tufu looked lost. 1074 Image Playback "This is Zhuge Feifan''s office." After chatting in Guan Zhong''s office for a while, Guan Zhong and Qian Rui brought Lin Huang and Huang Tufu to Zhuge Feifan''s office. The entire office was empty. There was no desk, couch, or coffee table. There was not even a bookcase that was usually used as decoration. "It was already like this when we came last night. To avoid missing out any pieces of evidence, Zhuge Feifan moved the entire office," Guan Zhong explained upon seeing Lin Huang and Huang Tufu appearing so shocked. "It looks like he just moved house. The floor tiles are the only thing that he didn''t bring with him," Huang Tufu could not resist throwing a joke in. Lin Huang glimpsed at Huang Tufu. This guy used to be a quiet man. After they had gotten more familiar with each other, Huang Tufu had become a different person. However, his description was on-point. Apart from the hanging lamp and the floor tiles, there were only four walls and the windows in the barren room. Basically, everything that could be moved had been moved. "Do you guys know roughly at what time did he go missing?" Lin Huang summoned the Book of Sorcerer Dao while asking Guan Zhong and Qian Rui. "Someone saw him coming in yesterday morning. He came to the office around 8 a.m. but nobody saw him leave. He must have summoned a dimensional portal and left right as soon as he moved his office," Qian Rui told him. "Who was the first to find out that this happened to his office? And at roughly what time?" "It was I who found out about that. I came back to the office when I got the list from you last night, then I realized that his office was locked when I got here. I thought I would look for evidence, seizing the opportunity since he wasn''t here, but I saw this when I opened the door. The exact time was approximately 9 p.m.," Guan Zhong replied. Lin Huang was speechless to hear what the duo said. He had posted the two questions to confirm the time Zhuge Feifan had gone missing. The duo turned out to give two different timings ranging from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. which was such a wide gap. "Never mind. I''ll just set the time at 8 a.m," Lin Huang said and soon activated a couple of runes on the Book of Sorcerer Dao. As soon as the runes were activated, they shot out of the Book of Sorcerer Dao while golden beams of light radiated midair. These sparkly, golden glows soon integrated and broke away all of a sudden, filling the entire room. A moment later, the golden glows disappeared. 3D videos began to manifest in the room like a projection. An office desk, a couch, a teacup, a bookcase Everything that was gone in the office reappeared. Huang Tufu reached out to touch the bookcase, but his finger penetrated it directly. Even Guan Zhong, who was standing aside, could not help but exclaim, "These videos are exactly the same as the real thing!" However, Lin Huang said nothing. Although the videos in the room replayed what the office looked like, there was no one in the office. Lin Huang adjusted the time flow to fast-forward the videos. When it was approximately 8.15 a.m., a young man, who looked like he was in his early 20s at the most, walked in. Was this Zhuge Feifan? Lin Huang glanced at Guan Zhong in a questioning manner. Understanding what he meant directly, Guan Zhong nodded at him. Zhuge Feifan looked really young at 22 or 23 at the most. He had a ponytail and wore a white robe that made him looked like a saint. In his hand was a paper fan. To label him quite negatively, he was extremely pretentious. "Does he usually dress like this?" Huang Tufu turned his head and asked Guan Zhong and Qian Rui. Guan Zhong nodded to him, feeling helpless. "No matter whether men or women, if anyone were to dress like this in Emperor City at night, he or she would definitely wake up naked in some alley. Besides that, he or she would likely have a painful butthole," Huang Tufu said in all seriousness. Were the customs in Emperor City so rough?! Apart from Guan Zhong and Qian Rui, even Lin Huang exclaimed that secretly. Zhuge Feifan sat on the couch in the video projection and began performing a tea ceremony on his own. The four watched it for a while and felt really bored, so Lin Huang began to fast-forward the video again. Until he fast-forwarded it to past 4 in the afternoon, Zhuge Feifan did nothing serious in the office at all. He drank some tea, took a nap, watched videos, and played games. A message popped up on his Emperor''s Heart Ring 4 p.m. He fell into deep thought while sitting on the couch after checking the message. Then, he began packing his stuff. "I finally found the time he escaped!" "What was the message he received?" Qian Rui asked immediately. Standing next to him, Guan Zhong looked puzzled. "If I''m not mistaken, it was I who sent the message. I sent a brief to the headquarters when the Wei Clan was destroyed, and he must''ve read it." "The Wei Clan is destroyed? The Wei Clan in Division 2?" Huang Tufu repeated, seeming surprised. "Do you know who did it?" "Didn''t your Master Emperor tell you that?" Guan Zhong asked him back. Huang Tufu looked at Lin Huang in confusion. "I destroyed the Wei Clan," Lin Huang admitted casually as if he had done something insignificant. "Oh" Huang Tufu did not expect Lin Huang to give such a simple answer. He flashed Lin Huang a thumbs-up. "You bada*s!" He knew how powerful Lin Huang was since the beginning. "Can you pause the projection and enlarge the message he received?" Qian Rui insisted on finding a new clue. "I can pause it, but I can''t change the size of the projected video. This skill of mine can only view what was recorded. If you''d like to read what the message was, you can walk closer after I''ve paused it," Lin Huang said and played the video back to the moment when Zhuge Feifan received the message. The projection paused in the next second the message popped up. Zhuge Feifan, who was sitting on the couch, froze. Qian Rui walked up to read the projected message while Lin Huang and Guan Zhong followed behind him. Huang Tufu, on the other hand, took out the half pancake he had kept earlier and munched on it. The entire room soon stank of onion and garlic. The three of them soon confirmed that the message Zhuge Feifan had received did indeed come from Guan Zhong. "As expected, I exposed the whole thing." Guan Zhong speculated that Zhuge Feifan had seen the message he sent and escaped because he was worried that his identity might have been exposed. Guan Zhong felt immensely guilty to find out that it was him who had caused that. After confirming that, Lin Huang continued the projection which began playing again. In the room, Zhuge Feifan first opened the drawer of the desk and took a few documents out to put into his storage space. He froze suddenly. He seemed to have figured something out in the next second as he pressed his hand against the desk and put the entire desk away into his storage space. As the first big item was tossed into the storage space, Zhuge Feifan then put away the couch, the teacup, the bookcase, and so on. Everything went into his storage space as he put everything that could be moved away. After putting everything in the room into his storage space, Zhuge Feifan then checked the room. He made sure that did not miss anything out, then he summoned a dimensional portal and stepped into it. 1075 I Must Eat A Pancake to Get Over the Shock! The empty room fell into dead silence as soon as the projection ended. Apart from watching everything Zhuge Feifan did from moving his possessions to leaving via the dimensional portal eventually as well as finding out his reason to escape and the exact time of escaping, they seemed to have learned nothing more. "Are there any clues?" Lin Huang turned his head to look at Guan Zhong and Qian Rui. Guan Zhong shook his head helplessly. "Not really, but he didn''t set the coordinates when he took the dimensional portal out in the end. Instead, he just stepped into it right away. It shows that those are the default coordinates, so it should be coordinates that he frequents. We can go back to the places that he usually goes and perform the video playback one after another to see if we can find more clues." "Can''t the Union Government get the usage data from the dimensional portal? Can''t you just get his last teleportation coordinates?" Huang Tufu interrupted unclearly while munching on the pancake. "The dimensional portal data system was only set up 36 years ago. We only have data backup for dimensional portals that were produced since the data system was set up. We''ve no data backup for those that were produced prior to that, so we can''t find out anything about it," Qian Rui shook his head as he explained, "Zhuge Feifan has been using this dimensional portal for over 100 years. We can''t find any related data in most of our databases." "But don''t all dimensional portal companies have a data storage record before the database was set up? Can''t we retrieve anything from them?" Lin Huang remembered seeing some related information at the library back them. He had been slightly interested since it was related to dimensional portals, so he had taken a peek. Guan Zhong glanced at Lin Huang, not expecting Lin Huang to know such a thing so well. He added on to what Qian Rui said earlier, "Indeed, we can retrieve dimensional portal data from the dimensional portal company that produced it. However, the one he''s using is a model that was produced over 100 years ago. Plus, we''re not sure which company produced it. There are up to 100 companies that produced dimensional portals 100 years ago. Today, only three companies with the biggest model in the entire continent are left while most of the rest went bankrupt. Those that were fortunate would''ve been bought over and there might''ve been data that was left behind while those that were unfortunate would''ve lost their data long ago." "Even if we''re lucky enough to get the dimensional portal data and find the coordinates, it can''t be Zhuge Feifan''s final hiding place. With his stealthy character, he definitely won''t use the particular dimensional portal again," Qian Rui continued. "But no matter how many dimensional portals he has, we can only search following this clue since we''ve no other hint at the moment." "Do you guys want to look at the playback again? Or do we go to the next location?" Lin Huang asked both of them without giving any other opinion. After all, anyone from Agency EA would be more professional than him in tracking. He had no other option on his side. "Let''s take a look again then," Qian Rui said without thinking twice, "We can skip the front part. Start from the time when he saw Guan Zhong''s message until he left." Lin Huang nodded and performed the video playback again. He set the playback time to past four in the afternoon when Zhuge Feifan got the message until he stepped into the dimensional portal a few minutes later. "Pause here. Let me take pictures of this dimensional portal," Qian Rui shouted immediately. Lin Huang paused the video. Qian Rui walked up to it and took pictures of every side and every detail of the dimensional portal. He did not want to miss a thing. He only nodded at Lin Huang after he took a few minutes to finish. "I''m all done. Sorry for the trouble." "Don''t worry about it." Lin Huang waved and put the Book of Sorcerer Dao away into his body. Qian Rui, on the other hand, sent out the photos and called a number. He got his underling to check the details about the dimensional portal. As everyone was done working on their own thing, Huang Tufu happened to finish the last pancake. "Do we go to the next location now?" Lin Huang asked Guan Zhong and Qian Rui. Guan Zhong then summoned a dimensional portal in which they stepped in one after another. Lin Huang had no idea that within less than two hours, all the social media applications were having fun with the picture in which he was guzzling the pancakes. The topic of ''Dynasty''s Newly Appointed Emperor'' which had just cooled off was now a hit again. The topic now became ''Stickers of the Emperor Eating Pancakes''. It was more popular than the topic ''Everyone in the Wei Clan Has Gone Missing'' which ranked No. 1 and ''The Blessing Trading Company Explosion'' ranking No. 2 that morning. Even the comments of the next two top topics were related to pancakes. "Supernatural stuff happened to the Wei Clan? It''s so scary! I must eat a pancake to get over the shock!" "I heard THE Blessing Trading Company exploded! It''s so scary. I must eat a pancake to get over the shock!" "The commenter above, stand there and don''t move. I''ll go get you a pancake." "The commenter above, buy fish head biscuits from me. 18 servings with massive fish heads. That will be a big portion to fill your tummy. It only costs 998 life crystals! You''ll be losing out if you don''t get it at 998 life crystals. You''ll regret if you don''t get it at 998 life crystals. You deserve it!" Even Lin Xin, who was far away in Emperor City, saw the picture of Lin Huang eating pancakes. She shrieked so hard in laughter when she saw the stickers, and she downloaded them immediately. Naturally, everyone in Dynasty saw that too. They downloaded the sticker pack without hesitation. Even people in some group chats began making the Emperor''s stickers into emoticons. They were having so much fun. Just when Lin Huang passed through Guan Zhong''s dimensional portal, his Emperor''s Heart Ring began vibrating. He opened his communication page. Then, he clicked it immediately after seeing that it was a message from Lin Xin. He thought something had happened to her. He realized she had sent him a comic. It was him eating pancakes in the comic with a sentence, ''I must eat a pancake to get over the shock!'' Lin Huang had a bad feeling when he saw the comic. He figured out roughly what had happened. He opened the Heart Network and saw the ''Emperor''s Sticker Pack'' on the No. 1 daily topic. There were over 300 million clicks on it. Lin Huang clicked the topic, feeling speechless. Soon, he saw over 30 versions of his pancake-eating stickers. One of the versions had more than 100 million downloads while another had over 80 million downloads. Seeing that Lin Huang was checking his communication page, Guan Zhong and Qian Rui looked away. They did not want to stick their nose in his business. On the other hand, Huang Tufu peeped over Lin Huang''s shoulder and saw the projected content. He could not help but chuckle out loud when he saw Lin Huang''s stickers. Lin Huang turned his head and looked at him without an expression on his face. "What are you laughing about? You''re a part of it too." He then showed Huang Tufu his stickers. His stickers were even more interesting than Lin Huang''s since he ate more pancakes than Lin Huang did. He was simply not as popular as Lin Huang, so there were much fewer downloads. However, there were over ten million downloads for his most-downloaded sticker pack. Huang Tufu looked horrified when he saw his stickers. "I was just eating pancakes. Why are these people so mean?!" Lin Huang did not dwell on it and closed the Heart Network. He had seen many such cases back on Earth. No matter how popular the sticker packs were, it would only be a hit for a few days. People would forget about it after the heat was over, thus it was unnecessary for him to think too much about it. Seeing that Lin Huang closed the Heart Network page, Guan Zhong then pointed at a small villa that was completely burned over ten meters away. "This is a property Zhuge Feifan owns in the First City. It''s also one of the accommodations he most frequented." "Let''s take a look." Lin Huang nodded and walked straight into the charred house. 1076 He Has Properties Everywhere In the villa that was completely incinerated, almost everything in it had turned into piles of ashes, so nobody could tell what they were initially. Even the walls were distorted as a result of the high heat. The temperature when the house was burned was clearly higher than a normal fire. "The fire was obviously done by humans. The speed of the burning was extremely fast. It almost burned the entire house down within merely a couple of minutes. It became this when the firefighters arrived," Guan Zhong explained to Lin Huang. After observing the inside of the house for a while, Lin Huang summoned the Book of Sorcerer Dao again. Guan Zhong and the rest quieted down and retreated behind Lin Huang while watching him performing witchcraft runes. They had no idea that those were witchcraft methods that came from the middle era. They thought it was some secret skills that Lin Huang had obtained. Meanwhile, they thought the Book of Sorcerer Dao in his hand was some mysterious god item. The Union Government knew that Dynasty had an organization from the great world behind them and the Emperor of Dynasty was capable of performing any methods. That was the reason why Guan Zhong and Qian Rui did not find it surprising. Meanwhile, Huang Tufu had seen Lin Huang fought, hence he knew Lin Huang''s ability and was no longer surprised by his methods. The runes of the video playback projected into the air and soon the video appeared just like it had before. The villa that had turned into ruins seemed like it was restored entirely at that moment. The ceilings, walls, and floors were so clean like they were brand new. The furniture was also perfectly restored. "I''ve set the time to 4.12 p.m. yesterday." Lin Huang set the time when Zhuge Feifan stepped into the dimensional portal. However, Zhuge Feifan did not appear after they waited for two minutes. "It seems like this wasn''t the first place he dropped by." Lin Huang looked at Guan Zhong. As Zhuge Feifan''s disciple, Guan Zhong should know best where Zhuge Feifan frequented. Guan Zhong frowned slightly. "He has three other properties in First City, but from what I know, he usually stays here and hardly goes to the rest." "The first place he teleported to shouldn''t be anywhere else but First City," Qian Rui could not help but speak up, "If I were escaping, I''d clear my office and get home to clear the most important evidence. Since he didn''t come here right away, it proves that the most important evidence isn''t here. "Moreover, the sequence of clearing should be from the most important to the less important and closer to further. Therefore, the first place he teleported to should be in First City. He wouldn''t have gone to other cities and come back here." "So, it means there''s a high possibility that he went to the other property right away," Lin Huang concluded. "Not necessarily. Maybe he has other properties that you don''t know about. You guys wouldn''t be able to find out as long as he didn''t register in his own name," Huang Tufu voiced a different opinion. "What you said is possible too, but we can only search using the available clue now." Guan Zhong did not deny the possibility Huang Tufu expressed. Lin Huang fast-forwarded the video 10 times faster. A black dimensional portal appeared when it was almost 5 p.m. A person walked out of it when the portal opened. It was Zhuge Feifan. "Pause right here!" Qian Rui shouted all of a sudden. The dimensional portal was clearly different from the one before. Lin Huang paused the video while Qian Rui walked up and took pictures of the details of the portal. He nodded to Lin Huang after he was done taking the pictures. The paused projected video proceeded. Zhuge Feifan put the dimensional portal away after walking out of it. He then walked to the study room, opened the drawer of the desk and began putting things away. "You guys take a look and see if there are any clues in the drawer." Lin Huang slowed down the speed of the playback and got Guan Zhong and the rest to take a look. Zhuge Feifan took the items out quickly and put them away into his storage space. However, Guan Zhong and Qian Rui saw everything crystal clear since Lin Huang slowed it down. After putting the few items from the drawer away, Zhuge Feifan then turned around to clear the bookcase. He put all the books and decor into his storage space. When he was done with the study room, Zhuge Feifan got up and walked to his bedroom. He put some sex toys on his bedhead away into his storage space. Subsequently, he walked to his wardrobe and put away all his clothes and shoes. He looked around to confirm he had missed nothing. A flicker of blue flames appeared on his palm. He moved his finger slightly, and gushes of blue flames shot all over the place. At that very moment, the curtains, the bed, the bookcase, the table, the chairs, the couch, the coffee table Almost everything that could be ignited was kindled. They began to burn rapidly. Zhuge Feifan did not leave right away. He only summoned a dimensional portal and stepped into it after waiting for the fire to spread. It was another dimensional portal that he summoned this time. Qian Rui walked up and took pictures of the third dimensional portal immediately. Lin Huang played the video after Qian Rui was done with the pictures. The dimensional portal closed slowly, disappearing from where it was. As Lin Huang fast-forwarded the remaining video ten times faster, the entire villa soon turned into a burned structure. The fire in the house was extinguished entirely when the firefighters arrived. It was unnecessary to keep watching from then on. Lin Huang removed the projection and turned to Guan Zhong and Qian Rui. "Did you find any clues?" "There''s nothing important in his drawer actually. I guess he cleared that just in case he missed something out. The books and decor on the bookcase were nothing special, let alone the clothes and the shoes." Clearly, Guan Zhong was dissatisfied with what they had gotten out of this trip. "He used two different dimensional portals when he came and left. I''ve sent the detailed photos to my underlings to check thoroughly to see if there are any clues to that." Qian Rui had sent the pictures over when Guan Zhong had been speaking. He was clearly a person who did things quickly and decisively. "Do you guys want to look at it again?" "No need. Let''s go to the next one." Qian Rui shook his head. Guan Zhong said nothing and summoned the dimensional portal. They walked into it and disappeared after he set the coordinates. Zhuge Feifan''s second and third property were both villas. The locations were getting more and more luxurious. However, in the two villas, Zhuge Feifan lit up the houses after merely putting away his clothes and stuff just like before. The only thing they got out of the footages was Qian Rui being able to take pictures of the two different dimensional portals again. "We''re left with the last property. If we can''t find anything there, we can only wait for the dimensional portal user data." Lin Huang felt incompetent. After all, the only help he could provide was a replay of the video. Agency EA would have to depend on their own apart from that. 1077 Sister Jing At a small area by the lake in the new eastern district of First City. "This is his fourth property. It''s just a residential building where ordinary people live. Everyone living in this building is a common civilian. I''ve no idea why he bought this place back then," Guan Zhong said while leading the few of them into the elevator. The four of them arrived on the 33rd floor via the elevator. They saw the distorted door of Room 3301 as soon as they walked out of the elevator. The door was scorched black. Without even thinking, Lin Huang knew that was Zhuge Feifan''s unit. He stretched his Divine Telekinesis to open the door before the four of them then walked in. The unit was considered spacious with almost 140 square meters. To ordinary people, it was considered a rather neat place. However, it was nothing to cultivators. Just like the three villas before, everything in this house had been moved out as well. No clothes or shoes were left behind. Everything else including the furniture had been reduced to ashes. Guan Zhong and Qian Rui found nothing after rifling through the house. They then nodded at Lin Huang who summoned the Book of Sorcerer Dao, projecting what had happened to this house yesterday. He set the time to 4.12 p.m. again. Soon, the room seemed to be restored to how it was like through the runes. What surprised Lin Huang and the rest was that this time, not only were the furniture and the rest projected, but there was also a woman sitting on the couch. It was a woman who looked around 30 years old. She did not look outstanding but she had a quiet charisma. She was folding clothes languidly on the couch. Just when Lin Huang wanted to ask Guan Zhong who the woman was, the dimensional portal appeared out of nowhere and Zhuge Feifan walked out of it. At that moment, Lin Huang and the rest were secretly relieved. They finally confirmed the first location Zhuge Feifan had escaped to. They were surprised to find that he had escaped to this inconspicuous apartment. Guan Zhong looked puzzled. Given his understanding of his master, it was hard for him to imagine how important this place was. "Feifan, you''re home!" The woman sitting on the couch greeted him while smiling as if she was welcoming him out of habit. "Why did you come back so early today?" Zhuge Feifan did not seem to be surprised that she was at his place. He walked to the woman with a complicated expression on his face after putting the dimensional portal away. "Sister Jing" "What''s wrong? Why do you look so troubled?" The woman whom he addressed Sister Jing smiled and stopped what she was doing. She lifted her head coyly and looked at Zhuge Feifan. "What''s wrong? Did somebody bully you?" Sister Jing stretched her arm out to him and asked softly while holding his hand after Zhuge Feifan did not respond. "Tell me if you were wronged. You''ll feel better." "Sister Jing, will you hate me if I''m a bad person?" Zhuge Feifan asked all of a sudden after falling into silence for a while. She kept quiet for a few heartbeats as she bit her lip before speaking again, "I don''t know if you''re a good person or a bad person, but I know you''re good to me. That''s enough. Even if you''re a bad person to everyone in the world, to me, you''ll forever be the best man in the world." Seeing that Zhuge Feifan had fallen into silence again, Sister Jing put the clothes that she was folding halfway aside and got him to sit down. "Stop overthinking. Let''s eat your favorite boiled sliced pork later." She stretched her arms out to pinch Zhuge Feifan''s cheeks like she was talking to a child. Lin Huang and the rest could tell that they clearly had an extraordinary relationship. Sister Jing was obviously a commoner. Her real age might not even be 1/20 to Zhuge Feifan''s. However, they looked like a couple since Zhuge Feifan called her ''sister'' and did not resist her pinching his cheeks. Nonetheless, Lin Huang and the rest were curious. This woman called Sister Jing appeared very normal. Even to ordinary people, she only looked mediocre and was not pretty in the least. To Zhuge Feifan, with his appearance, wealth and power, he could easily find a woman who was hundreds of times more beautiful than Sister Jing. So, why did he go for such an ordinary woman? Zhuge Feifan who sat on the couch in silence for a long time finally spoke again, "Sister Jing, I got into some trouble." "What kind of trouble? Do you need my help?"Sister Jing asked immediately, "If you need money, I''ve some savings here. You can use it first. Settle your thing and return the money to me whenever you can in the future." "Sister, listen to me," Zhuge Feifan interrupted Sister Jing, "I got into some trouble involving cultivators. Nobody knows about our relationship at the moment, but they''ll find this house sooner or later. They might talk to you then." "Don''t worry. I won''t tell them a thing," she assured immediately and added in all seriousness, "I won''t say a thing even if it means death for me!" "It''s not as simple as you think. They have methods that are beyond your imagination. Some people can even read your mind directly." "Read my mind?" Sister Jing realized that Zhuge Feifan had offended people who were out of the ordinary as she heard this. "We can hire an assassin or we can get the Union Government" "Those people who are coming after me are from the Union Government," Zhuge Feifan interrupted Sister Jing again and placed both hands on her shoulders. "I''m not a good person. They''re right to come after me. "To avoid dragging you into this, the only way now is to erase everything about me in your head. That''s the only way to get you off their list." "Erase my memory?" Sister Jing seemed a little lost at that second, but she snapped back to her senses a while later. "Does that mean that... I''ll forget you forever?" Zhuge Feifan fell into silence for a while before nodding slowly. Sister Jing held her head down and only lifted it up again after staying quiet for a long time. She looked at him earnestly. "Feifan, will you truly be safe if my memory''s erased? They''ll no longer come after you?" Zhuge Feifan remained silent. His heart was breaking apart as he looked at the anticipation in her eyes, but he nodded eventually. "Alright then, go ahead and erase my memory." Sister Jing forced a smile, but tears did not stop rolling from the corner of her eyes. "Erase it and don''t worry about me. I won''t remember you in my head, but I''ll never forget you in my heart." "Sister" Zhuge Feifan pulled the woman into his arms and placed his chin on her shoulder. The tears he had been holding back finally burst out as he smelled the familiar fragrance of her shampoo. The duo was locked in an embrace tightly just like that. Approximately five to six minutes later, Zhuge Feifan let go of his arms. He had dried off his tears with Divine Power by then. He wiped the tears off Sister Jing''s face and looked at her with a bright smile. "Sister, meeting you is the happiest thing that has ever happened to me." "Me too." Sister Jing stretched her arms and touched Zhuge Feifan''s cheeks gently. Zhuge Feifan took a deep breath in and pointed a finger between her brows as she then closed her eyes slowly. Tears were still pouring from the corner of her eyes, but she beamed with happiness. "I''m sorry" As a white glow lit up at his fingertip, Sister Jing''s body soon went limp and she fell onto the couch. 1078 It’s Getting Cold, Put on Some Clothes A moment later, the white glow faded away. Zhuge Feifan put Sister Jing down onto the couch slowly. He opened her Emperor Heart Ring communication page and soon found all of the conversation records he had had with her. This foolish woman had given him her Emperor Heart Ring''s access when she could not even find information about a TV series that she was binging on. Instead of deleting the messages, Zhuge Feifan read them one by one. "My name''s An Jing, what''s your name?" "You''re only 23. You''re not that young compared to me. I bet you''re only five or six years younger than me." "Xiao Feifan, someone broke up with me again. Come drink with me, your sister!" "Are you sure you want to date me? I''m already 30!" "Of course, I''ll promise you that, but you''ll have to call me Sister Jing for the rest of your life!" "It''s raining now, so it''s a little cold. Remember to put on a jacket when you come back." "I''ve made your favorite boiled sliced pork today. Come back soon!" "Feifan, I got you a trench coat. You''ll look good in it. Try it on when you come back from work." Without realizing it, tears streaked all over his face as he finished reading the last message. After erasing all of the records, he turned off the Emperor''s Heart Ring communication page and turned his head to stare at An Jing for a long time. He then stood up and began clearing the house. Some ten minutes later, Zhuge Feifan carried An Jing out of the house after he cleared the place. Lin Huang expanded the projection range immediately, wanting to see where he was going. In the end, Zhuge Feifan carried An Jing to Room 3302 next door. Immediately, he opened the door with a key. So, they were neighbors! Lin Huang and the rest were astounded. Lin Huang paused the video as Qian Rui used his telekinetic power to get into Room 3302 to open the door. They sensed that there was nobody in the house at that moment. After walking into Room 3302, Lin Huang expanded the projection range again so that he included the entire unit. After that, he played the paused video again. They saw Zhuge Feifan carry An Jing into the bedroom and put her down on the bed gently. Then, he tucked her into the blanket. He then began to clear everything that was related to him in An Jing''s room. Their photo on the bedhead, the photo hanging in the living room, the photo pasted on the refrigerator His clothes and shoes in the cabinets, his toothbrush and the towel in the bathroom He spent merely ten minutes to wipe away each and every trace of him in An Jing''s life. After confirming that he had missed out nothing, he returned to the bedroom and stared at An Jing who was sleeping for a while. He walked up and kissed her forehead. "You''ll find your love since you''re such a good woman," he mumbled softly before standing up. Then, he left without even turning his head. Zhuge Feifan returned to his house after closing the door to Room 3302. After some thorough investigation later, he lit up the entire house after making sure he had not missed out on anything. Lin Huang only removed the projected video after Zhuge Feifan summoned a dimensional portal and left. "I thought he''s a cold-blooded person who has no feeling at all." Guan Zhong shook his head and forced a smile after watching the video replay that was over half an hour long. "In reality, he didn''t trust me since the beginning." "Don''t overthink it. This woman must''ve walked into his life by accident." Qian Rui patted his shoulder, knowing that Guan Zhong must be feeling terrible now. Guan Zhong might not have too many emotions if Zhuge Feifan had been cold to everyone. However, Zhuge Feifan had shared an extraordinary relationship with this woman called An Jing. Guan Zhong felt horrible about it. "If Zhuge Feifan trusted you, would you have betrayed the Union Government with him?" Huang Tufu asked all of a sudden. "No!" Guan Zhong answered without hesitation, "Although he''s my master, it doesn''t mean that I''ll support everything that he does unconditionally." "So, what difference does it make whether he trusted you or not?" Huang Tufu challenged while smiling. Guan Zhong was stunned and subsequently forced a smile while nodding. "That makes sense. I''ve been standing on the other side since the beginning, so he didn''t dare give me too much of his trust. I can''t blame him for using me as his chess piece." "Can we find out anything from An Jing?" Lin Huang changed the subject directly to get Guan Zhong to work. It was more useful than any consolation. "Although her memory of him is erased, we can use her since we know about their relationship." Qian Rui looked like he already had a plan. "I suspect that Zhuge Feifan didn''t go very far. He might be secretly watching An Jing." "If I were Zhuge Feifan, I definitely wouldn''t leave before I make sure the woman I love is safe. I wouldn''t even let her leave my field of vision." Huang Tufu agreed. "So, are you guys planning to use An Jing as a bait?" Guan Zhong frowned slightly. "She''s just an ordinary person. It''s inappropriate to do that." "What''s inappropriate about that? It''s not dangerous to use her as bait, more so since Zhuge Feifan won''t kill her." Huang Tufu begged to differ. "What I''m saying is that this is a matter between cultivators. We shouldn''t drag an ordinary person into this." Guan Zhong thought the idea was out of line. There were some regulations in the Union Government whereby it was prohibited to involve ordinary people into cultivators'' matters. The most that they could do to ordinary people was to interrogate them, but they could not carry out other measures on them. However, it was a gray line whereby it mainly depended on how the individual handled the case. "An Jing might be the biggest key to find Zhuge Feifan. We can''t give up just like that. We might be able to find useful information if we can retrieve the part of memory that was erased. We don''t necessarily need to use her as bait." Qian Rui could only take a step back for now. "We''ve gotten a lot more information this time. I''ve taken pictures of the interaction Zhuge Feifan shared with An Jing. I even took pictures of their photos that Zhuge Feifan put away. I''ll see if we can find anything useful when we get back later." "Should we take a look at the properties he owns in other footholds?" Lin Huang asked. "Theoretically, it''s pretty impossible for him to have left First City since An Jing is here." Qian Rui thought it was unnecessary. "So, is our job here done?" Huang Tufu asked immediately. He could not wait to head back to Emperor City. "I think we should take a look at his properties in the other footholds. What if there are clues over there?" Guan Zhong still hoped to find more evidence. "I''ll go with the Emperor. You''ll stay back to look around here." "Alright then, remember to take pictures." Qian Rui patted Guan Zhong''s shoulder. Guan Zhong spoke again after they sent Qian Rui off, "Apart from First City, I know Zhuge Feifan has five properties in other footholds at the moment. Apart from two properties in Heaven City, he has one in Ice River City, one in White Castle City, and one in Thousand Lake City. The property in Thousand Lake City is the getaway that he frequents most. I''ve been there thrice with him." "Let''s go then." Lin Huang did not mind going to the rest of the properties since he would treat it as a sight-seeing trip. Moreover, he was eager to get rid of Zhuge Feifan, who was trouble, as soon as possible. 1079 Emperor’s Hear Emperor''s Heart After spending over an hour, they were finally done checking Zhuge Feifan''s remaining five properties. It was almost 11 p.m. when they returned to the Union Government headquarters in First City. "Are there any new clues?" Qian Rui asked immediately upon seeing them coming back. "No, we only saw him packing his stuff and burning the houses down." Guan Zhong shook his head helplessly. "But he changed a couple more dimensional portals, of which I''ve taken pictures." "This guy has so many dimensional portals," Huang Tufu could not help but ridicule. They had seen nine dimensional portals so far and Zhuge Feifan would change one everywhere he went. "I''ve sent the pictures. Did you get anything on your side?" Guan Zhong queried Qian Rui immediately. "We''ve gotten An Jing''s details. Indeed, she''s just an ordinary person. She''s 32 this year and is teaching literature at the Hunter Reserve College in the new eastern district. She has no criminal records and is immensely popular at school. She has excellent relationships with her colleagues and the students. "There''s nothing wrong with her identity. We still haven''t figured how exactly Zhuge Feifan got to know her for now. Zhuge Feifan must''ve bought the unit in the small area after knowing her." "The timeline you mentioned fits. I still remember that it was two years ago when he bought the unit. I was confused about why he would buy a property in such a small area back then. Now that I thought about it, he must''ve done that to woo An Jing." Guan Zhong recalled when Zhuge Feifan bought the place and he confirmed Qian Rui''s speculation. "We''ve also found out where Zhuge Feifan and An Jing took the pictures. Three of them were taken in First City, two at Lakeside Park in the new eastern district, and one at Heart Ocean in the central district. The remaining four were taken in different footholds." "Where''s An Jing now?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s the summer break, so she''s been giving extra classes to her students. It seems like her memory is indeed erased. I haven''t sent anyone to monitor her at the moment because I figure that Zhuge Feifan might be around and he''ll be warned easily." Qian Rui was afraid to alert Zhuge Feifan. At that moment, Zhuge Feifan had no idea that his relationship with An Jing had been exposed. He thought that to the Union Government, An Jing was just a regular neighbor, so they would not take note of her. Zhuge Feifan would definitely find out if they were following her. "I guess we''re off the mission now, eh?" Huang Tufu asked. "Thank you so much, Master Emperor. You''ve helped us a lot this time. If not for you, we wouldn''t have found out about his relationship with An Jing." Qian Rui thanked him while smiling graciously. "Thanks for all the trouble, Master Emperor." Guan Zhong was also being grateful. "Hey, what about me?" Huang Tufu looked annoyed from being completely ignored. "Mr. Tufu, too! Thanks for your hard work," said both of them while smiling. "Master Emperor, do we head back to Emperor City?" Huang Tufu glared at both of them and asked Lin Huang. "There''s no rush. We''ll head back in two days. It''s not every day that we get to come to First City. Shouldn''t we do some sight-seeing since we''re here?" Lin Huang, on the other hand, was not in a rush to head back. "Moreover, Mr. Guan has yet to fulfill the condition that he promised me earlier." "What condition?" Guan Zhong was stunned to hear that. Qian Rui peeped at him, worried that Guan Zhong might have promised to do something that he should not have. "The complimentary Emperor''s Heart Ring''s unlocking service. Did you forget?" Lin Huang glanced at Guan Zhong with his brow raised. "Oh, I''ve almost forgotten about that!" Qian Rui was relieved to hear that that was the condition Lin Huang meant. "Complimentary unlocking service? Can you count me in? I also have some Emperor''s Heart Rings that need to be unlocked," Huang Tufu requested immediately when he heard that the service was complimentary. "Sure," Guan Zhong agreed right away. There was no difference for him to provide service for an extra person. "I''ll bring you guys over now," declared Guan Zhong and he summoned a dimensional portal. The three of them stepped in one after another and soon disappeared from where they were. Lin Huang realized they were in an underground cave when they walked out of the dimensional portal. "Just put the Emperor''s Heart Rings that you guys want to unlock into the tree hollow over there." Guan Zhong pointed at the giant sphere that appeared like it was made of layers of roots not far away. There were tiny, round holes on the surface. "So, is this the Emperor''s Heart?" Lin Huang walked up skeptically. He then placed more than 3,000 Emperor''s Heart Rings into one of the holes. Huang Tufu followed behind and took out a handful of Emperor''s Heart Rings and put them into the other hole next to it. He could not help but steal a peep at Lin Huang. To his shock, he saw a sheer amount of rings that almost filled the entire hole. "So many Emperor''s Heart Rings! How long have you been saving those, Master Emperor?" "I basically got them yesterday." Huang Tufu was even more shocked when he heard that revelation. He recalled that Lin Huang had not been in Emperor City yesterday. Did he rob the entire organization?! Meanwhile, Guan Zhong, who stood tens of meters away, did not find it strange. He had witnessed almost Lin Huang''s entire battle yesterday. Naturally, he knew very well where those rings came from. As both of them placed the Emperor''s Heart Rings into the holes, roots stretched out of the tree hollow slowly and grabbed all of the rings. Lin Huang took a few steps back and turned his head to ask Guan Zhong softly, "Approximately how long does the unlocking take?" "It''ll be done in no time." Just when Guan Zhong was done speaking, the roots brought the 30-odd rings back to where Huang Tufu had placed them earlier. Huang Tufu was stunned when he saw that. "That''s it?" "When they''re sent back, It means the unlocking is done," Guan Zhong confirmed. Huang Tufu then extended his arm to pick all of the Emperor''s Heart Rings up. He checked them one after another with his Divine Telekinesis. A moment later, he put away all of the rings into his storage space happily. Perhaps because there were too many, the rings that Lin Huang wanted to get unlocked took slightly longer. However, the roots sent all the Emperor''s Heart Rings back in less than a minute. Lin Huang picked up all of the Emperor''s Heart Rings immediately, but he only checked one. After making sure that it was unlocked, he did not even look at the rest. Just when he was ready to leave after putting the Emperor''s Heart Rings away, Xiao Hei''s voice came into his ears. "I sense a Goldfinger in him. It''s very powerful!" "You mean the Emperor''s Heart?" Lin Huang peeped at the sphere in surprise. "That''s right. You''re not looking at his real form. This is just a part of him." "Are you sure it''s not a mistake?" Lin Huang secretly panicked. If the Emperor''s Heart were a Goldfinger, it would mean there were other travelers behind it. Lin Huang could not help but put his guard up towards other travelers after learning about the existence of Raiders from Yang Ling. "It can''t be a mistake. If I''m not mistaken, he must''ve found out about me and the stone tablet by now." Lin Huang thought it was too risky to stay all of a sudden. He got Guan Zhong to summon the dimensional portal immediately and stepped into it. He was finally relieved when the dimensional portal closed. He had no idea that the sphere made of roots had transformed into a human face after he left via the dimensional portal. The face had complete features and looked like a bearded man. The bearded man stared at the spot where Lin Huang had just disappeared and mumbled to himself softly, "Why does that kid have two Goldfingers in his body?" 1080 Traceless In a luxurious suite on the 181st floor of the Star Dome Hotel, Lin Huang was watching the news while sitting on the couch in the living room. On the other hand, Bloody was calculating the loot in the Emperor''s Heart Rings. Huang Tufu, who was in the next room, was reading a novel, sprawled on the couch. This Star Dome Hotel was one of the properties under the Hunter Association. The Union Government was a part of it too. The hotel was merely three kilometers away from the Union Government office. The largest business district in the central zone of First City was just below the building, and it was extremely crowded. Naturally, the hotel was expensive. Since it was Guan Zhong who had made the arrangements, Lin Huang and Huang Tufu did not have to spend any credit points on it. Ignoring the ''Emperor''s Stickers'' topic that ranked No. 1 on Heart Network, Lin Huang looked at the topics that ranked No. 2 and No. 3. "The incidents of the Wei Clan going missing and the Blessing Trading Company''s explosion had spread through the entire cultivation world since this morning." Lin Huang noticed that the two topics already had over 100 million views. Everyone knew the Wei Clan in Division 2 was a clan that had been passed down for centuries. They were also the wealthiest family in Division 2, and they even had two demigods that were known to the public. Many cultivators were concerned about the ancient castle of the Wei Clan vanishing together with the people of the Wei Clan out of nowhere. The other clans in Division 2 were worried that they might be the next target. One must know that the incident happened in Division 2''s No. 1 foothold. Theoretically, the foothold should be the safest foothold in the No. 2 safety zone. However, such a thing had happened. Many people pointed fingers at the few top underground organizations. They verbally attacked the top underground organizations including Dynasty because they figured that only these organizations were capable enough of destroying a clan that had demigods, hence leaving no traces behind. However, none of the top underground organizations including Dynasty responded to the incident. Even the Union Government had been quiet. They did not even say anything officially, merely confirming that the destruction of the Wei Clan was the truth. Naturally, Lin Huang knew that the Union Government did not say anything because they wanted to expose what the Wei Clan did after they got rid off God Bless completely. However, all the clans in Division 2 had no idea about that. They pressured the Union Government for the sake of their personal safety. ''It''s still under investigation'' was the only response they got from the Union Government. As for the Blessing Trading Company in Golden City being destroyed, it would not usually attract any attention from cultivators. The main thing was that the entire land around the Blessing Trading Company collapsed, causing the terrain to change on a certain level. Clearly, a battle had broken out between powerhouses who were on at least demigod-level. Many people knew that the Golden City was filled with shady companies, but never had they thought that there would be a battle between demigod-level powerhouses. The two incidents happened on the same day, which made many people''s imaginations run wild. Some of them said the two incidents might be related, but the speculation was soon refuted because it was a piece of cake for them to find out that the Blessing Trading Company had nothing to do with the Wei Clan at all. They did not even have any business collaboration. Lin Huang went through some forums and scrolled through social media sites for a while. By then, Bloody finally calculated everything in the Emperor''s Heart Rings. "There are a total of 3,022 Emperor''s Heart Rings. We''ve obtained 2.12 million Divine Stones, 11 god relics, 56 demigod relics, three God Figurines, eight Godheads, 17 broken Godheads, and 123 ancient-level relics. There are also up to 10,000 relics of other grades, hundreds of billions of Life Crystals, all kinds of minerals, materials, and miscellaneous items. "There are over ten types of rare minerals in them. There are six rare metals that are very valuable in the metallic materials." "Is there any weapon that I can use?" Lin Huang asked "There''s one battle armor among the god relics. There are two sets of telekinetic weapons, five battle swords, and nine battle armors among the demigod relics. There are three sets of telekinetic weapons, 16 battle swords, and 21 battle armors among the ancient relics." After confirming the exact number of loots, Lin Huang put whatever he had gotten Bloody to sort out back into his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "There''s something that I need to tell you. I think it''s best that we can find Zhuge Feifan before the Union Government does," Bloody could not help but tell Lin Huang through voice transmission. "Zhuge Feifan is the founder of Agency EA and he''s been the president of the agency for hundreds of years. We can say that he''s the person who knows most of the secrets in this gravel world. If we can read his mind, not only can we obtain more information about God Bless''s Master God, but we can also even obtain all the secrets of the Union Government throughout more than 700 years directly." "That''s the reason why I stayed," Lin Huang revealed. In reality, he initiated help to Guan Zhong with this intention since the beginning. The reason why Agency EA had agreed to get Lin Huang''s help was that they were eager to find Zhuge Feifan. The longer Zhuge Feifan stayed missing, the higher the chances of some of the Union Government''s secrets leaking. Moreover, Guan Zhong and the rest hoped that Lin Huang would return to Emperor City soon. They made the hotel arrangements for Lin Huang when they heard he was staying in First City mainly because they wanted to monitor Lin Huang, preventing him from stealing Zhuge Feifan away from them. Lin Huang knew very well that although Guan Zhong seemed honest, he was buttering him up. However, this guy was definitely not capable enough to be able to be the Vice President of Agency EA. Although the Vice President of Agency EA held a lower position than the Vice President of the Union Government, his authority might even be higher than the latter. "Do you have any way to find Zhuge Feifan?" Lin Huang asked. "It''s not difficult to find him if we expand the search territory," Bloody replied, "He''s definitely not far away from An Jing." "Looking at his behavior in the projection, he has a special bond with An Jing. He definitely won''t leave First City until he''s ascertained her safety." "But there''s no way of finding his exact location. He''s at least on Virtual God rank-3, so he can monitor An Jing from thousands of kilometers away using Divine Telekinesis. He might be in a cafe thousands of kilometers away drinking coffee while monitoring her with Divine Telekinesis. The range is just too wide." Lin Huang shook his head, feeling helpless. "If we don''t mind crossing the line, it''s not difficult to find him. The easiest way is to kidnap An Jing. As soon as something happens to An Jing, Zhuge Feifan will definitely reveal himself." In reality, everyone had the same idea as Bloody. Besides Lin Huang, even the Union Government shared the same idea. They were not using because there was an unspoken line among cultivators whereby they would not drag an ordinary person into their battle. Every cultivator knew that. The line was even written in the Union Government''s regulation, and it had become their law. "We can''t do anything to An Jing unless it''s the last resort." Lin Huang shook his head after a moment of silence. "Do you have any other idea?" "I haven''t thought of anything at the moment." Bloody shook its head feebly. "There are too many powerhouses in First City, I can''t use my Leech Pods. They''ll find my Leech Pods as soon as I use them. Moreover, even if I could use them, the possibility of finding him is slim. As the leader of the spies, Zhuge Feifan has all sorts of stunning disguise methods. A simple disguise can get him to look like anything he desires if he wants to hide. In a big city such as First City, he''s totally traceless like a drop of water falling into the ocean." 1081 Monitoring "I wonder if the Union Government managed to get more clues. Agency EA already stated that they don''t want me to interfere further. They''ll find out that I''ve got a plan of my own if I ask for more information from them." Lin Huang was rather helpless that the investigation had come to a dead end. "I think they''ll still use An Jing as bait sooner or later," Bloody said with a grin. Lin Huang recalled the conversation between Guan Zhong and Qian Rui earlier. He figured that Qian Rui seemed to be eager to use An Jing as bait since the beginning but Guan Zhong refuted the idea. "There''s nothing I can do if they really get their people to kidnap An Jing." Lin Huang frowned slightly. He said to Bloody all of a sudden after a moment of silence, "We must find a way to monitor An Jing. Otherwise, we wouldn''t even know if someone has taken her away." Bloody exhibited a projection, still smiling. The projection showed an open-style kitchen and living room. Lin Huang thought it seemed rather familiar. "Is this An Jing''s house?" Bloody nodded while smiling. "When did you spread your Leech Pods? Won''t anyone find out about that?" Lin Huang asked in surprise. "I secretly dropped a Leech Pod when we entered An Jing''s house," explained Bloody, "There''s a frozen crystal in the refrigerator with energy waves radiating out of it. Furthermore, it runs for 24 hours, which covers the Leech Pod''s weak energy wave perfectly." "Her house has an open-style kitchen. The refrigerator''s facing the living room. The surveillance happens to cover a large part of the living room." The creak of the door opening came from the living room all of a sudden while Bloody was speaking. Although the surveillance could not pick up the side of the wall where the door in the living room was, it could still pick up sounds. The door opened a moment later followed by the quiet shutting of the door. A while later, having changed into house slippers, An Jing finally appeared in the surveillance range of the Leech Pod. She was dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt. Her back was drenched as she walked straight into the bathroom. Early August was the hottest season in First City. The temperature was almost 38 to 39 degrees Celcius and the sun showed no mercy. It was normal for an ordinary person to sweat under such high temperatures. Soon, the splashing of water came out of shower head from the bathroom. Perhaps because she was living alone, An Jing did not close the bathroom door. However, the surveillance did not broadcast anything but the bathroom door. Some ten minutes later, the water stopped and An Jing walked out with a towel tied around her waist. However, the top half of her body was naked. Lin Huang glanced away after a peek. He was not shy. After all, he was an experienced man and he used to have girlfriends before. However, he was monitoring the person at the moment, and it was immoral to be peeking at someone taking a shower. With the towel tied around her waist, An Jing walked into the bedroom while drying her damp hair. Soon, she returned to the living room wearing black underwear and a towel covering the top half of her body. She was still naked, but the towel covered most of her body. Until then, Lin Huang just noticed that she had a svelte figure, leaning towards the likelihood that she worked out. She had long legs and a tiny waist. Her breasts and butt were not considered voluptuous, but she had an appealing figure as a whole. An Jing seemed to look sexier than usual when she had just taken a shower with her hair still half-wet. Just like that, she sat on the couch with her little underwear and the towel on her body. She lay on a pillow while placing her legs on the table. Then, she began reading on the Heart Network. "This little miss is pretty easy-going." Lin Huang could not help but smile. However, seeing that she was at ease being herself, he confirmed that Zhuge Feifan had erased her memory. It was impossible that she would behave like that if she had retained her memory and she had just lost the love of her life. There was no way that this could be all an act. "Watch her. Inform me if something happens." Lin Huang had no time to watch this lady go on with her daily life. Lin Huang returned to his room after delegating the task to Bloody. He then took out the Godheads and broken Godheads that had just been sorted out from his storage space. He put all eight Godheads and 17 broken Godheads into his body and began refining them. The refinement zone formed by the ten Divine Fires seemed to be welcoming as they swallowed all of the Godheads and broken Godheads. Time flew by and a couple of hours soon passed by. Huang Tufu came knocking on his door when it was past 5 p.m. They had dinner at a restaurant that was wildly popular downstairs and took a stroll along the business district. It was past 9 p.m. when they were done with their stroll. Nonetheless, Huang Tufu was not done walking around. He was not really shopping; he was checking the ladies out. There were just too many beautiful ladies in this business district. After some had walked by, even more would come by. It was a feast for the eyes. Moreover, most of the ladies in First City dressed up rather well. They were more pleasing to the eye compared to the ladies in Emperor City. Huang Tufu felt a little dizzy just watching all of the beautiful ladies at that moment. If not for Lin Huang who wanted to head back to the hotel, he might have been sitting in the middle of the business district until midnight. Huang Tufu lost his mood as soon as they returned to the hotel. He sprawled on the couch in the living room like a salted fish again and proceeded to read his novel. Lin Huang, on the other hand, continued to speed up the refinement of the Godheads in his body as he returned to his room. The speed of refinement that he initiated with his Divine Fire was a few times faster than automatic refinement. Even though that was the case, the eight complete Godheads showed no signs of being refined at all. There was not even a crack on them. Over two hours soon passed by. The eight complete Godheads in Lin Huang''s body remained unchanged. He was going to shower and sleep upon realizing it was almost midnight. However, Bloody''s voice came all of a sudden just when he stood up and arrived at the bathroom door. "Something''s happening to An Jing!" Bloody then projected the surveillance footage. An Jing''s house was pitch-black at the moment, but it did not affect Lin Huang''s vision. He saw a spiral of black smoke appear out of nowhere in the middle of the living room. It happened to be within the surveillance range of Bloody''s Leech Pod. A moment later, the black smoke expanded rapidly into an irregular cloud with a diameter of two meters. It looked like a muscular hunk who was two meters tall. The silhouette stepped out and went into An Jing''s bedroom in a flash as soon as it formed. In the next second, he walked out of the bedroom with An Jing who was either sleeping or in a coma. He then stepped out and passed the living room like a shadow before going onto the balcony. 1082 The Kidnapper Beyond Expectations Lin Huang and Bloody clearly saw what happened in An Jing''s house. When he saw An Jing being taken away by the silhouette, Lin Huang frowned slightly. "I''ve never thought people from Agency EA would take action so soon!" The reason Lin Huang was sure that it was Agency EA who did that was that apart from him and Huang Tufu, only people from the agency knew about An Jing''s real identity at that moment. "I thought they wouldn''t do this so soon because they didn''t want to cross the line. Never had I thought they''d be so decisive!" The person''s quick action was indeed out of Lin Huang''s expectations. "Perhaps they''re afraid there might be changes to the situation." Bloody knew Agency EA''s behavior very well. "The Union Government must''ve hoped that they could capture Zhuge Feifan before the news of him escaping spread. As soon as the news spread, perhaps the few top underground organizations will go after him. It''s the best time to obtain the Union Government''s top secrets." "That makes sense. I''ve underestimated Zhuge Feifan''s value." Lin Huang nodded and said, feeling helpless, "It''s even more troublesome now that we''ve lost An Jing." "I''ve foreseen this would happen, so I left a positioning pod behind in An Jing''s body," Bloody admitted with a grin. "Won''t anyone find out about the pod?" "They won''t. It''s just a pod with a positioning function without any energy waves. It''s impossible that anyone will find out about it as long as they don''t observe it with methods on the same level as Divine Telekinesis. This is because the pod is just the size of a cell." Bloody had mastered hundreds of types of parasitization methods, some of which could not even be tracked. Lin Huang was relieved after realizing that they had An Jing''s coordinates. "So, where is that guy who took An Jing again?" "He''s gone to the south. He''s not using a dimensional portal. He''s been maintaining a high-speed flight and he''s clearly luring Zhuge Feifan to come out." "The south" Lin Huang projected the map from his Emperor''s Heart Ring. "It''s the Hopeless Cliff on the south and the grade-6 forbidden area, Hell Canyon, is further up. It seems like they''re going to fight at Hell Canyon." "It''s just over 1,000 kilometers away from First City. It seems a little too close, but the terrain of the Hopeless Cliff can bear the impact of the fight when it reaches First City. That guy who took An Jing away must''ve picked that place for this reason," Bloody analyzed while looking at the map. Bloody could not see what was happening exactly at the moment. It could only sense that the positioning pod had not stopped moving. Lin Huang did not go after the person right away. Instead, he remained patient while waiting for the person to stop. Some ten minutes later, Bloody sensed that the positioning pod had stopped. As expected, it stopped at Hell Canyon. Lin Huang stood up and went out to knock on Huang Tufu''s door. "Anything that I can help you with, Master Emperor?" Huang Tufu opened the door puzzledly. "Do you want to have some skewers? We can enjoy a drink too." "Sure!" Without hesitation, Huang Tufu agreed to go as soon as he heard there was something to eat. They walked out of the hotel and realized that the business district downstairs was still crowded. Huang Tufu exclaimed, "First City lives up to its name. It''s still so crowded when it''s already midnight. Our business district in Emperor City doesn''t even have this many people at 10 p.m." "Isn''t comparing First City with Emperor City silly?" Lin Huang smiled. "I remember seeing some recommendations on the Internet. There''s a barbecue place over there that looks yummy. Let''s go to that one." Lin Huang blended with the crowd as soon as he was done speaking. Huang Tufu followed behind Lin Huang immediately. Before Huang Tufu caught up with him, Lin Huang put on a golden mask and transformed his face. At the same time, he crushed a Cloning Card and cloned himself. In the next second, he left Huang Tufu''s field of vision, blending in with the crowd. He walked out of the business district leisurely and went to an empty space. Then, he summoned a dimensional portal and stepped into it. When he stepped out of the dimensional portal in the next second, he arrived at Zhuge Feifan''s villa. The villa was located in the south of First City. It was up to 1,000 kilometers away from the Union Government. Lin Huang had set the coordinates when they came to investigate Zhuge Feifan earlier. After getting out of Agency EA''s radar, Lin Huang crushed a Transformation Card and transformed into Thunder. He flapped his wings and flew toward the south. Approximately five to six minutes later, Lin Huang passed by the Hopeless Cliff to the south of First City and entered the grade-6 forbidden area, Hell Canyon. "Is An Jing still there?" "She''s still there. She''s around 280 kilometers from where we are now. Just go all the way east following the cliff." "We''re already so close, but we haven''t heard any signs of battle. Could Zhuge Feifan not have taken the bait?" Just when Lin Huang asked Bloody that question through voice transmission, an intense battle wave spread from the direction Bloody specified. Given that the cliffs were blocking it, the Divine Power was weak as it spread over there hundreds of kilometers away. However, the strong wind that came from the energy wave was like a tornado sweeping past Lin Huang''s face. He flapped his wings and ascended quickly to avoid being blown away by the strong wind. Virtual god-level battle impact would not harm him. Nevertheless, he chose to avoid it to prevent Zhuge Feifan and the other guy from noticing him. After spending less than a minute to travel more than 200 kilometers, Lin Huang finally saw the duo who was battling far away. He did not go any closer. Instead, he landed at the back of a cliff. Naturally, the two Virtual Gods noticed him. However, they only treated him as a dumb bird that had invaded their battle, so they did not care to bother. Lin Huang looked at the duo''s battle with his head peeping out. Compared to when he was on immortal-level, his combat strength had elevated to imperial-level yellow gold-rank after using the Transformation Card. He had an ability comparable with a Virtual God, which allowed him to capture the two Virtual Gods'' movements in the battle. In the air, the two silhouettes were twinkling like flashes of black and white lightning. All monsters in the forbidden area were reeling in fear. Some were even so terrified that they froze instead of running away. Sparks burst from the collision and lit up in the middle of the duo''s battle, illuminating the night sky. The flowers and trees around them turned into ashes as a result of the high temperature. In the blink of an eye, they were gone with the wind. The cliffs in all directions collapsed, creating gullies and sinkholes in the ground. It was so close to being a bottomless abyss. Meanwhile, the mountain kilometers away, where Lin Huang was, was collapsing from the intense earthquake. Lin Huang pretended to be hurt and fell into the collapsed gravel. Despite the tumultuous chaos, he proceeded to watch the battle through the gaps. He had been watching for a while now, but he could not see who exactly Zhuge Feifan was fighting with. However, his doubts were soon answered. A voice that Lin Huang was familiar with boomed in the air. "Master, please come with me. I''ll definitely fight for a lenient punishment for you." "Guan Zhong, you disappoint me. I''ve taught you countless times to not show mercy to any enemies. I''m your enemy now, not your master. If you haven''t come to a realization to kill me, then I''ll end your life here!" Lin Huang was shocked to hear the duo''s conversation. "Guan Zhong kidnapped An Jing!" 1083 Please Stay, My Friend Initially, Lin Huang thought Guan Zhong was the unlikeliest to have kidnapped An Jing. After all, Zhuge Feifan was his master while An Jing was considered his mistress on a certain level. Moreover, when Qian Rui suggested kidnapping An Jing, he refuted the suggestion right away. In the end, he kidnapped An Jing when it had just been half a day, forcing Zhuge Feifan to reveal himself. Battling, the duo was screaming at each other in the air. "You brought me up since I was young. I''ve known you for over 600 years! To me, you''re my master as well as a father. I''ve always respected you. I''ve always thought that you''ve never loved me because you''re born a cold person. I told everyone that you''re that way. I''ve just learned that you weren''t born a cold person yesterday. For more than 600 years, I''ve just been an insignificant chess piece. I''m not even a person to you!" "I''m the God''s Messenger of God Bless. I''ve been taking on the identity of a spy since the first day I stepped into the Union Government. Everyone in the Union Government is a chess piece to me. You''re not the only one," Zhuge Feifan said expressionlessly. "I''m not in the mood to talk about old times with you. Hand An Jing over!" "I''m curious. Which part of this woman attracts you? You''ve only known her for two years, but she''s more important to you than the Union Government that you''ve been working for over 700 years!" Guan Zhong demanded, feeling more and more pissed off. He had dragged An Jing into his God Territory before the battle began. "She''s an ordinary person. You shouldn''t have dragged her into this." Zhuge Feifan shook his head, feeling helpless. "I''ve told you. I''m a God''s Messenger under the Master God before joining the Union Government. No matter whether it''s been 700 years, 7,000 years or 70,000 years that I''ve stay in the Union Government, my real identity remains as God''s Messenger of God Bless. The Union Government has never been important to me, so technically, I didn''t betray them." Naturally, that answer was not what Guan Zhong wanted to hear. "I wonder what magic potion that Master God got you to drink!" "Master God is a real god. You can''t imagine how great power a ninth-rank True God possesses!" Zhuge Feifan''s tone really sounded like he was a fanatic who had been brainwashed. Lin Huang was eager to ask when he heard his response, "Do you know there''s Heavenly God and Lord above True God?" However, he remained lying in the gravel in Thunder''s form without moving as if he had lost the ability to move. Zhuge Feifan and Guan Zhong treated him as a dumb bird that had been injured badly from the fallen rocks coming from the battle impact. Naturally, they did not bother about him. "Zhuge Feifan, you''ve met fanatics before. Don''t you hear yourself? You''re being brainwashed! Follow me back to the Union Government. We''ll try everything we can to remove that bullsh*t from your head!" Finally, Guan Zhong called out Zhuge Feifan''s name instead of calling him his master. "Stop your nonsense, Guan Zhong. I''ll give you two choices now. You can give me An Jing. Let me take her away and I''ll pretend the kidnapping never happened. If not, I''ll kill you and take An Jing with me." Guan Zhong did not panic at all when he heard the warning. "You should know very well that you''ve no chance of winning if you were to fight me. Your combat strength is a level lower than mine. I taught you everything you know, including the provisional combat strength elevation method." "Zhuge Feifan, since you''re so stubborn, I won''t waste anymore effort on you," he said and swung his right hand, invoking 18 silhouettes to appear before him at the same time. "Back-up support?!" Lin Huang was stunned to see the silhouettes. He subsequently recognized those things. "No, they''ve got no vitals. They should be corpse puppets!" Zhuge Feifan also experienced a slight change of expression when he saw the 18 corpse puppets. To everyone''s bewilderment, a blood-colored formation flag suddenly appeared in Guan Zhong''s hand. He glared at Zhuge Feifan seriously. "You taught me this puppet formation as well, but I''ll beat you with this today!" Guan Zhong lowered the formation flag in his hand to point forward as soon as he was done speaking. The 18 corpse puppets charged at Zhuge Feifan like wild beasts that were hungry for blood. The corpse puppets clearly had a combat strength of Virtual God rank-3. Their individual abilities were nothing below Guan Zhong or Zhuge Feifan''s. With the control of the formation flag, the onset of 18 corpse puppets combined would be even more powerful. Zhuge Feifan was indeed suppressed at the moment. As he watched the battle beneath, Lin Huang hesitated if he should help. Initially, he planned to kill Zhuge Feifan on his own when he ran away. If that happened, he could avoid engaging people from the Union Government. Guan Zhong had seen Lin Huang in the bruised corpse''s form before, so he would recognize him right away. However, he was a little worried that Guan Zhong would take Zhuge Feifan away now. Taking Zhuge Feifan away from Guan Zhong and killing Zhuge Feifan halfway were two completely different concepts. The former was almost equivalent to declaring war with the Union Government. Just when Lin Huang was thinking to himself, in the midst of the battle, Zhuge Feifan''s combat strength sky-rocketed. From his initial Virtual God rank-3 combat strength, he broke through Virtual God rank-4, Virtual God rank-5, and even stepped into Virtual God rank-6. The three-rank elevation made his ability rise greatly. He crushed the heads of two corpse puppets and got out of the puppet formation with blood smeared all over his body. Zhuge Feifan''s body underwent a strange expansion as his pupils turned bloody. His height grew to two to three meters as his body bulged with muscles. Even his top was shredded from the transformation. "I''ve already told you that you don''t understand how powerful the Master God is!" Zhuge Feifan revealed a ferocious grin. Instead of charging at Guan Zhong, he turned around and advanced into the puppet formation. He punched and kicked, destroying all of the corpse puppets one after another like he was smashing toys. The entire process took less than three seconds before all 18 corpse puppets were killed. Soaked in blood, Zhuge Feifan then turned his head to look at Guan Zhong. Guan Zhong was completely astounded. He thought his plan of bringing his corpse puppets there to capture Zhuge Feifan was a seamless one. Never had he thought that Zhuge Feifan would have such a ridiculous combat strength elevation method whereby he could elevate three ranks at once. The corpse puppets that he brought were all killed in mere seconds. They were torn and became dead remains on the ground. Just when he was rooted in shock, Zhuge Feifan zipped forward and arrived before him in the next second, grabbing his neck to haul him up. "Give me An Jing or you''ll die!" "Come into my God Territory and bring her out yourself if you dare!" Guan Zhong remained stubborn. Zhuge Feifan smirked. "Sure, let''s play!" He released Guan Zhong as he spoke. Almost at the same time, a black vortex appeared out of thin air. Zhuge Feifan stepped into it without hesitation while Guan Zhong followed behind. The duo''s aura vanished completed together with the vortex. Lin Huang waited patiently. To him, Guan Zhong definitely would not be able to defeat Zhuge Feifan. After all, their combat strength was just too far apart. Approximately a minute later, an ear-piercing screech came. The massive God Territory showed its illusive projection. Then, it collapsed in the air. A silhouette fell onto the ground from mid-air. At the same time, another silhouette marched out of the projection. As Lin Huang expected, Zhuge Feifan was the victor. He held An Jing in his arm, his elevated aura was calming down. Naturally, Guan Zhong was the one who had fallen onto the ground. His vitals were still there, but he was clearly in a coma now. Zhuge Feifan hesitated as he peeked at Guan Zhong''s direction. In the end, he did not kill him. He summoned dimensional portal with the flourish of a hand as he glanced down at the lady in his arm. However, a black glow came at the moment, crushing the dimensional portal. "Please stay, my friend!" 1084 Please Be Happy To prevent leaving any flaws behind, Lin Huang had held back earlier and only commanded the bruised corpse to reveal itself now. Guan Zhong had seen the bruised corpse before. Had he still been conscious, Lin Huang would have to fight him before stopping Zhuge Feifan. However, now that Guan Zhong was out of it, Lin Huang had one less concern. He then controlled the bruised corpse to stop Zhuge Feifan. "Bruised corpse..." Zhuge Feifan squinted when he saw the corpse. His voice echoed in all directions, "Master Emperor, there''s no need for you to hide." He put An Jing into his God Territory to protect her as he spoke, "This bruised corpse is from that lady, Wei Ping''s collection. She used it as her son''s host later on. You got this bruised corpse when that kid Wei Shan attempted to take revenge, but you killed him instead." Kilometers away, Lin Huang removed Thunder''s form and scrambled out of the gravel. Zhuge Feifan was stunned to see him. "So, you disguised as that dumb bird, Master Emperor. This method is pretty remarkable. I didn''t realize that at all." He also noticed that Lin Huang''s combat strength was no longer on immortal-level, but on imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Although Lin Huang had removed the disguise, the combat strength still remained. "It''s nothing worth mentioning." Lin Huang looked at Zhuge Feifan while smiling. "You, Mr. Zhuge Feifan, on the other hand, managed to elevate your combat strength three ranks higher which turned the tables around. Wow, I was shocked." "Master Emperor, you''re saying all these just to get the confidential information in my head. Am I right?" Zhuge Feifan asked. However, Lin Huang shook his head. "That''s just a itty-bitty part of the reason." "What''s the main reason then?" "The main reason is that I don''t wish to see the Master God coming to this gravel world. Therefore, God Bless needs to end, and you, the Master God''s loyal slave, must die too!" Lin Huang growled without holding back. Zhuge Feifan glared at him with hostility. "So, Lin Huang, you''re persistent to go against God Bless then?" He even addressed Lin Huang by his full name instead of calling him Master Emperor now. "No, I''m persistent to end the entire God Bless," Lin Huang corrected him. "If that''s the case, please go to hell then!" At the same time Zhuge Feifan said that, he disappeared from where he was. He arrived before Lin Huang when he appeared again. With his palm wide open, he was going after Lin Huang''s head. If that really happened, Lin Huang''s head might explode right away. Lin Huang stood where he was as if he did not manage to react in time. Just as he thought his attack was going to succeed, Zhuge Feifan felt an intense sense of danger spread behind him. It felt like the God of Death was standing behind him. He dared not even look back and gave up on the attack right away. Retreating, he stepped into the air and turned toward the other direction. While dodging to his right, he adjusted his body to whip around, intending to see what exactly exuded such a sense of danger. Just when he spun around, he saw a bruised silhouette getting close to him at an alarming speed. "Bruised corpse?!" Zhuge Feifan was shocked. To his knowledge, the bruised corpse that had been made into a corpse puppet could remain at Virtual God rank-2 or rank-3 at the most. However, it was not the case at the moment. Its speed was clearly a few folds faster than when he had elevated to Virtual God rank-6. In the blink of an eye, the bruised corpse arrived before Zhuge Feifan. Zhuge Feifan attacked directly without hesitation. He dared not slow down at all as he threw his punches continuously. He held nothing back, releasing every bit of Divine Power in his body through every punch. However, the bruised corpse opened his palm wide and waved seemingly in a casual manner. A black palm print shot out and expanded in the wind. It grew to the size of a small mountain and collided with the glows of the punches like comets landing one after another. The glows of the punches were crushed as soon as they collided with the giant palm. They turned into stardust like melting snow. The giant palm arrived before Zhuge Feifan in a heartbeat. Compared to before, its color had faded a little. Zhuge Feifan was secretly petrified. He retreated quickly while swinging his punches carelessly in an attempt to block the palm from Lin Huang. However, his hard work was to no avail. The bruised corpse pressed his palm in the air. Soon, the black palm print accelerated and crushed into Zhuge Feifan''s body. As the giant palm collided against his body, all Zhuge Feifan could feel was an invincible force spreading throughout his body. It felt like an entire planet had crashed into him. His right hand with which he was throwing punches was smashed into dust by the great force. Even his god relic armor had tiny cracks from the intense collision. It drained close to half of the Divine Power in his body just to defend the attack. Although the god relic armor defended the direct attack of the palm, the intense impact crushed his organs. Zhuge Feifan flew deep into the remnants of the mountain a hundred kilometers away. The mountain collapsed as if it exploded, accompanied by the blast as Zhuge Feifan''s body crashed into it and stopped completely. Lying in the gravel, Zhuge Feifan was so shocked that he was speechless. That single attack made him realize that the bruised corpse''s combat strength was at least two ranks higher than his. He even suspected the bruised corpse had true god-level ability. In reality, since Wu Mo had modified the bruised corpse, it had surpassed an ordinary Virtual God rank-9 powerhouse. Although the body had yet to reach True God, it was close. The three-rank difference was too powerful for Zhuge Feifan. Until then, Zhuge Feifan who was in the gravel just remembered the three God Bless God''s Messengers who had been killed. "He''s invincible The three of them must''ve felt this despair before they took their last breath." The single collision made Zhuge Feifan lose his confidence to fight completely. Bearing the pain that throbbed all over his body, he stood up from the gravel and summoned a dimensional portal without even thinking. However, a bruised silhouette came the moment he summoned the dimensional portal, landing directly on top of it. He looked at Zhuge Feifan who was attempting to escape in a condescending way, then crushed the dimensional portal into dust with a mere slight force under his feet. Without waiting for Zhuge Feifan to react, the bruised corpse arrived before him in a flash. He pressed his palm against Zhuge Feifan''s chest at a neutral speed. The protective armor sucked all the Divine Power in Zhuge Feifan''s body to defend the single attack. With the Divine Power''s support, the protective armor retreated back into his body. His expanded body went back to his original size while his Virtual God rank-6 combat strength fell back to Virtual God rank-3. Zhuge Feifan was in despair as he looked bitter. He did not even have the Divine Power to summon a dimensional portal now. "Look into my eyes," commanded the bruised corpse. Zhuge Feifan could not help but lift his head to look at him. In the next second, his consciousness was drowned in a bloody ocean. From where Lin Huang was watching, all he could see was a tall and a short silhouette that seemed to have turned into two sculptures. They stood still. However, the frozen scene only remained for a moment. The bruised corpse then plunged his hand into Zhuge Feifan''s chest. When he pulled his bloody hand out from Zhuge Feifan''s body, there was a brown Godhead between his fingers. By then, Zhuge Feifan''s consciousness had just returned to his body. However, his aura was plummeting. An Jing, who was pulled into his God Territory, was rejected from it. She lay on the ground not far away from Zhuge Feifan. Zhuge Feifan peeked at her direction, trying his very best to stay awake as he crawled toward her. He could hardly move. Lin Huang sighed slightly upon seeing that tragic scene. He got the bruised corpse to carry Zhuge Feifan and put him next to An Jing. Zhuge Feifan stretched his arm strenuously and held An Jing''s hand pitifully. He then turned his head and spat a word out at Lin Huang, "Thanks" His consciousness collapsed soon after saying that. However, he insisted on turning his head back to look at An Jing. "Please be happy" Zhuge Feifan managed a weak smile as he watched the love of his life quietly until his world turned completely dark. 1085 Hun Upon stepping out of the dimensional portal to arrive in front of his hotel, Lin Huang''s clone had just finished having supper with Huang Tufu. They were paying and were about to leave. Lin Huang blended into the crowd and walked toward the barbecue stall. His clone walked out of the barbecue stall and left Huang Tufu behind, he blended with the crowd too. Before waiting for Huang Tufu to catch up, his clone disappeared into the crowd. Meanwhile, Lin Huang stood where the clone had been. "The dessert here looks great. I''ll buy some for Xin Er. She''ll love it." Lin Huang lifted his head to look at the dessert stall next to him upon seeing that Huang Tufu was advancing. Huang Tufu shrugged in an indifferent manner since he did not like dessert. "You should buy this fresh. They won''t be fresh anymore if you buy them now and only bring them back a few days later." "Then, we''ll go back tomorrow morning since we''ll leave right after breakfast," said Lin Huang and walked towards the dessert stall. "Didn''t you say before that we''re waiting for Zhuge Feifan?" "How''s Zhuge Feifan more important than my Xin Er?" Lin Huang replied while smiling and raising his brow. It was past 1 a.m. when they headed back to the hotel after buying a whole lot of dessert. Lin Huang shared Zhuge Feifan''s memory with Bloody as soon as he returned to his room. He got it to analyze it and sort it out while he went to take a shower. When he returned to the living room after the shower, Bloody had sorted out Zhuge Feifan''s memory and compared as well as analyzed it together with the other three God''s Messengers'' memories. "Zhuge Feifan was the first to follow the Master God. Combining the three God''s Messengers'' memories, I basically know the construction and development of the entire God Bless. God Bless was founded over 700 years ago by the Master God that Zhuge Feifan and the rest talked about." "So, the Master God is really a cultivator from this world?!" In reality, Lin Huang knew that earlier, but he did not believe it. "Yes, but there are tons of suspicions about this Master God. It was said that the Master God was one of the first batches of imperial-level powerhouses in the new area. However, he became a true god-level powerhouse as a result of some opportunity that came all of a sudden. "This part is already suspicious. Theoretically, even if he successfully integrated the Godhead, the most he could get would be Virtual God rank-3. It''s impossible for him to get any more powerful. However, his combat strength seemed to have surpassed virtual god-level directly and arrived at true god-level. From what I know, among the known techniques in this gravel world at the moment, no technique can possibly elevate one''s combat strength so drastically. "Also, God Bless was founded after the Master God elevated to true god-level. Zhuge Feifan, Wei Ping and the rest were the most outstanding and talented young people back in that generation. Their combat strength was only on holy flame-level back then. The Master God trained up to a hundred people after the search for talent, but Zhuge Feifan and the other three were the only ones who survived. "According to their memories, the Master God spent most of his time exploring ruins and sites. He would only return to God Bless two to three times annually to check on the four''s cultivation progress and the organization''s development. "The Master God didn''t stay long in the gravel world. He was only here for less than a hundred years. After leaving the gravel world, he left a Virtual God rank-9 clone behind. His clone also explored ruins and sites but he got stuck in a grade-7 ruins more than 300 years ago because he didn''t make it out in time. He only got out when the ruins was reopened a few years back. He then returned to the gravel world. "What I find strange is that since the Master God''s clone returned, he has been looking for ways to get his real life to return to the gravel world for the past few years. He didn''t explain why he''s doing that. All he told Zhuge Feifan and the rest was to find ways to bring his real self back." "It sounds like he''s found some treasure in the ruins, but the clone is incapable of retrieving it. Therefore, he''s hoping that his real self can come back to retrieve the treasure." Lin Huang offered his speculation. "I think it goes deeper than that." Bloody shook its head. "Of course, what you said is possible too." "Another thing that I don''t understand is that with the Master God''s ability 700 years ago, he could''ve defeated all the powerhouses in the entire gravel world on his own and rule the cultivation world with God Bless. "The new era had just begun at that time. Apart from Mr. Fu and a handful of demigods, there were very few imperial-level powerhouses. All the organizations had just been founded, so he could totally defeat them easily. However, he chose to use God Bless to work secretly, placing many spies into other organizations. Not only did they not interfere with the organizations, but the spies were also helping the other organizations grow. "Over 700 years ago, apart from the Land of Origin, Division 1 was just built. Maybe he thought that harvesting back then wouldn''t be an accomplishment to him and figured he would harvest what he sowed years later." Lin Huang thought about it and decided that the Master God might have had such a mindset back then. "That''s possible," Bloody agreed, "It''s like finding a bunch of baby Swine Beasts on the streets. Eating them all would be a waste, so one would rear them and eat them when they get bigger." "Did you learn anything else about God Bless and the Master God?" "I found out about Mr. Fu being attacked although we know what exactly happened now. It was Zhuge Feifan who arranged that. He and Qi Shihan did it. They were the two God''s Messengers who had the most powerful abilities in God Bless. The reason why Mr. Fu couldn''t find any evidence was that Zhuge Feifan cleared all evidence as soon as the mission failed. "Also, it was God Bless''s doing the time when close to half of the demigods and a few Virtual Gods were killed in the grade-7 ruins in Division 1. Moreover, it was the Master God''s clone who did it himself. They thought of sacrificing a massive amount of demigods and Virtual Gods as a medium for the dimensional god relic to build a stable gateway by force. Their intention was to get their Master God to come. However, it failed eventually. "That''s everything about God Bless and the Master God. There''s no need to talk about the details. I''ll share the memory that I''ve sorted with you, so you can look at the details when you have the time." "How about the Union Government? They should have quite some secrets too, don''t they?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "There is more information about the Union Government," Bloody confirmed while smiling. "You wouldn''t have thought that the Union Government and the Hunter Association are in contact with the great world. Furthermore, the two organizations have the same mastermind. Their mastermind is an organization called the Hunt in the great world." "No wonder the Union Government is so close to the Hunter Association! I''ve never heard them falling out throughout the past 800 years." Lin Huang came to a realization. "The Hunt isn''t considered the top organization in the great world. They don''t even have a Lord. Compared to Dynasty behind you, they''re not worth mentioning at all. However, that organization is a powerful giant to the gravel world. "The reason why the Union Government and the Hunter Association stand out among other organizations and emerged as the boss today is that the Hunt has been helping them secretly. "However, the Union Government wasn''t the Hunt''s affiliate organization since the beginning. Instead, their members passed a trial organized by the Hunt that took place in a ruins over 700 years ago." 1086 Anyone Capable Will Be the Grand Duke Before 7 a.m. the next day, Lin Huang knocked on Huang Tufu''s door that was next to his room. Huang Tufu opened the door in his shorts, appearing like he had just woken up. In reality, not sleeping for a whole year would not pose a problem to him since he had reached that level. However, he did drink with Lin Huang last night and had fallen asleep with the help of alcohol in his body. "Go take a shower now. We''re going for breakfast." Lin Huang frowned slightly upon sniffing the alcohol stench wafting from Huang Tufu''s body. "So early?" Huang Tufu yawned. The aroma of the pancakes and the barbecue swept towards Lin Huang. Lin Huang felt a little suffocated at that moment. He never expected to get this since he managed to dodge it yesterday. He added after shutting down his breathing system, "Remember to brush your teeth." After Huang Tufu washed up, both of them arrived at the ground floor of the hotel by the elevator. Then, they checked out at the front desk directly. "So, are we really going back to Emperor City?" Huang Tufu could not help but ask as they walked out of the hotel. "Why? Don''t you want to leave?" Lin Huang teased while smiling. "No, but Zhuge Feifan" "Zhuge Feifan is already dead." Lin Huang threw that out directly. He proceeded to speak before Huang Tufu could react, "Let''s see if the uncle selling pancake is opened today." Huang Tufu''s eyes lit up when he heard about pancakes. "I want ten this time!" However, when they returned to Emperor City, Huang Tufu looked bummed. The uncle selling pancakes did not open his stall today. As usual, he was capricious. Although they had gone there on purpose, they got nothing. Feeling helpless, they settled their breakfast at a random noodle stall next door. Lin Huang, on the other hand, felt nothing. It did not matter if they did not get to eat the pancakes. As soon as they returned to the Dynasty headquarters, Lin Huang asked Huang Tufu to gather Huang Tianfu and Huang Wunan at the Emperor Palace. At the Emperor Palace, Lin Huang and the three Grand Dukes of Dynasty got together. Lin Huang only asked after waiting for the three of them to take their seats, "How''s the business district restoration going?" "The ruins has been cleared entirely and we''ve sent the survivors for treatment. We''ve also sent out a massive amount of compensation. We''ve informed the family members of the dead that we found to arrange for their burial. We gave a handsome pension to the family members. Besides that, we''ve arranged temporary accommodation for those who lost their houses, and we''ve also built a community. The rest that we have to do will be the rebuilding work. We estimate that we can rebuild the entire area within half a year." "You must have encountered some obstacles, didn''t you?" Lin Huang figured those family members of the deceased must have their piece to say. "Those are minor ones. We''ve already settled that," Huang Tianfu said casually. Clearly, it was not his first time encountering something like that. "That''s great." Lin Huang nodded. "Then, I''ll move on to the main agenda." "Firstly, I''d like to say that I have a document in my hand. It''s the list of God Bless spies in all the organizations. I''ll give you guys this list, so you guys can use the resources and relationships you have to sell this list to people who need it in exchange for the resources Dynasty needs. "Do this quickly because the Union Government might get this list soon. It''ll be difficult to sell it at a good price by then. "I''ll send you guys a material list later on. I hope that you guys can look for these materials from the money you obtained from selling the list. Of course, collect as much as you can. There''s no pressure. I do this mainly for you guys to obtain resources." "Master Emperor, how credible is this list that you''re talking about?" Huang Tianfu asked. "100%. It came directly from the God Messengers'' heads." Lin Huang chose to be honest about him killing God Bless''s four God''s Messengers since there was no need for him to hide from them. Huang Tianfu did not ask further after hearing that. He said, "Understood. We''ll try our best to sell this piece of news out." "Secondly, I''ve some ancient cultivation methods with me. They can be used to build a brand new cultivation system to get to virtual god-level. "Apart from the Princes and Dukes, I hope that you guys can select immortal-level and holy fire-level young people who are talented and have the potential for me. I''ll teach them the cultivation methods then." The three Grand Dukes secretly felt helpless hearing that. They were already demigods, so they had no chance of elevating. With Lin Huang''s cultivation methods, many people might elevate to virtual god-level which would surpass the three of them. The three of them did not suspect Lin Huang might have lied about having the cultivation methods. "Thirdly, I''ll open the Dynasty trial zones continuously before I leave this gravel world for you guys to obtain the resources and points from going in. The demigod who has the highest points in the trial zone leaderboard will win God Blood from me as a reward and elevate to perfect-stage demigod-level." The three Grand Dukes experienced a slight change of expression hearing that. "When do the three of you think is the best time to open the trial zones?" Lin Huang asked. "Anytime is fine, to be honest. It''s just that we might need some time to prepare ourselves," Huang Wunan replied. "We''ll only need one or two days to prepare. If you want them to go into the trial zone as soon as possible, Master Emperor, you can launch it in three days. It shouldn''t be a problem." Huang Tianfu gave a detailed reply. "We''ll do it three days later then. By then, I''ll open a grade-1 trial zone for imperial-level and demigod-level powerhouses. I''ll send the details of the trial zone that I''ve picked to your guys later." "So, these are the three main things that I want to say" "We''ll make a move," Lin Huang called out to them just when Huang Tianfu and the rest were leaving. "I''ll try my best to find ways for you guys break through demigod-level. I''ll get it done for you guys as long as it''s available in the great world." "Just you thinking of getting us that is kind enough," Huang Tianfu said while smiling, but a gleam of helplessness flashed by his eyes. Bloody''s voice came after the three of them left the Emperor Palace. "You''re recruiting fresh blood so openly. Aren''t you scared that they might leave?" "No, the three of them are smart. They know they can''t be replaced easily. Even if new demigods elevate to perfect-stage demigod-level, there will be differences in their abilities. Otherwise, the last Emperor wouldn''t have selected the three of them. "For the juniors who might elevate to virtual god-level, they won''t be able to break through virtual god-level within such a short period of time. "What they need to do is to prove they have enough value to maintain their position of the three Grand Dukes before those juniors grow. They must prove that they''re irreplaceable!" "I''ve already told them what I want. I hope to grow Dynasty, so my core team must be able to support Dynasty that''s going to be more powerful in the future. The three of them know very well that they have to improve with time. I believe that they can prove their value." "What if the three of them don''t meet your standards?" "Then, we''ll replace them with someone else. Whoever is capable will be the Grand Duke!" 1087 Alibi At the Union Government headquarters in First City in Division 1. Guan Zhong sat on the couch without any expression on his face. He was quiet. When he woke up approximately half an hour earlier, the first thought that flashed through his mind was that Zhuge Feifan must have escaped with An Jing. However, he saw two silhouettes lying on the ground not far away when he got up from the dusty ground. Looking closely, they were Zhuge Feifan and An Jing. An Jing was in a deep sleep but Zhuge Feifan was dead. His head was a mess ever since he found Zhuge Feifan''s body. Until now, he had still yet to figure what exactly had happened. "I''ve sent An Jing home. She won''t remember a thing when she wakes up. However, I must tell you that you''ve crossed the line this time." Qian Rui marched into the room. "I''ve got someone to check through Zhuge Feifan''s body. Can you tell me what exactly happened now?" "I''ve no idea." Guan Zhong shook his head forlornly. "I was defeated, but he didn''t kill me. He was already dead when I woke up." Guan Zhong was just a confused witness. His head was a mess and he was in a state of shock and sadness. After all, Zhuge Feifan was his master who had brought him up. "So, did someone interfere after you?!" Qian Rui came to an understanding. A third person must have interfered. Guan Zhong just snapped back to his senses and nodded. "I think so." "Apart from Zhuge Feifan''s Godhead being taken away, everything else was still there, even his Emperor''s Heart Ring," Qian Rui continued, "The person was clearly after the information in his head. He must''ve successfully obtained all of Agency EA''s secrets throughout the centuries." "His Godhead was taken?" Guan Zhong lifted his head to look at Qian Rui in horror. "Is the Emperor still around?" "He left with the Third Grand Duke early in the morning." Qian Rui heard from the hotel staff that Lin Huang had left early in the morning. "It must be the Emperor who did this! He has the ability and the motive, and he happened to be in First City." Guan Zhong was connecting the dots in his head quickly and pointed out the culprit. "He ran back to Emperor City early in the morning. Clearly, he''s guilty of his actions." "It''s futile for you to say anything without any evidence." Nonetheless, Qian Rui remained calm. "Get the surveillance! He definitely left the hotel!" "He left the hotel for some time with Huang Tufu last night indeed, but they had barbecued food and enjoyed some drinks in the business district. They went back to the hotel after that," Qian Rui explained. "I know about this because my intel told me that they left the hotel in the middle of the night. I used my Divine Telekinesis to monitor them. I watched them going into the barbecue stall until they left after paying. They never left my Divine Telekinesis range at all." "So, you mean he has an alibi?" Guan Zhong shook his head. "He can fake one." "But I didn''t see any loopholes. Even if it was a disguise, it''s an alibi after all since he can do it such an extent that we can''t find any loopholes." Qian Rui did not argue about the authenticity of the alibi with Guan Zhong, but he stated the deeper truth. "I want to see the surveillance!" Guan Zhong was persistent. "I''ve gotten someone to get the hotel surveillance. In the business district, not all stalls had surveillance. Only a part of them do. I''ve gotten them to bring it over as well." Qian Rui did not decline Guan Zhong''s request. He had already gotten someone to bring the surveillance footage. Approximately half an hour later, the people came with the footage. In the office, a Surveillance Mosquito that contained all the surveillance data projected the images. Guan Zhong and Qian Rui watched the footage one after another and found no flaws at all. They watched the footage from Lin Huang and Huang Tufu leaving the hotel room to the time they returned. Apart from being away from the surveillance range approximately 20 to 30 meters away along the business district, Lin Huang and Huang Tufu seemed normal all the time. The barbecue stall that Lin Huang and Huang Tufu had gone to for skewers happened to have surveillance too. It showed the footage of Lin Huang and Huang Tufu eating skewers and drinking. Both of them did not even go to the washroom throughout the meal, let alone anywhere else. After watching the footage, even Guan Zhong began to doubt if he had made a wrong assumption. "See, I told you that his alibi has no loopholes at all." Qian Rui spread his arms helplessly. "How is it possible?" Guan Zhong could not understand that. "There are two possibilities. One is that the method he used to create the alibi is too outstanding, so outstanding that we can''t find any loopholes. Another possibility is that his alibi is real and someone else killed Zhuge Feifan." Qian Rui provided the two conclusions. "If he didn''t do it, why did he return to Emperor City the first thing in the morning?" Guan Zhong questioned. "Maybe something really came up in Dynasty. That''s a possible coincidence too." Qian Rui was not helping Lin Huang, but he believed evidence more. Guan Zhong fell into silence for a moment with his head hanging down. He spoke again a while later, "Let''s contact Lin Huang to get him to do a video playback to find the culprit. If he''s willing to help, it proves that it wasn''t him who did it and we can find the real culprit. If he refuses to help, he''s most probably the one who did it." "Call him then." Guan Zhong called Lin Huang''s number, and the video call request was soon picked up. In the video projection, Lin Huang was in the Star Titan pilot cabin. "Anything, Old Guan?" "I''ve just returned to the Union Government and found out that you''ve gone back to Emperor City early in the morning. Why did you leave so soon? You didn''t even say goodbye," Guan Zhong asked while smiling. "Something came up in Emperor City, so I came back earlier," Lin Huang explained briefly. "But there''s a new development in our investigation this morning. We need your help." "I really can''t go anywhere now, but you can tell me about the development. I can help analyze for you," Lin Huang said passionately. "Zhuge Feifan is dead!" Qian Rui answered directly before Guan Zhong could proceed to test Lin Huang. Lin Huang appeared stunned. "Dead? Did you guys find him?!" "We didn''t kill him. We only found his body," Guan Zhong added. "Do you guys know who did it?" "We don''t." Guan Zhong shook his head again. "We''ve no idea what exactly happened yesterday, that''s why we''re asking for your help. We''d like to watch last night''s video playback." "I''d like to help you guys, but I really can''t leave these few days." Lin Huang refused to help them. Guan Zhong and Qian Rui peeked at each other secretly and stopped insisting. "If that''s the case, sorry to trouble you. We''ll think of something else." Guan Zhong looked determined after hanging up the call. "Lin Huang is definitely the culprit." "So what if you found that out? Do you have evidence? If you don''t, he can totally say that you''re slandering him." Qian Rui patted Guan Zhong''s shoulder while smiling weakly. "Just let it go. At least, he left the full body for us. He even left behind Zhuge Feifan''s Emperor''s Heart Ring." 1088 The Trial Zone Opens Lin Huang knew that his actions had been exposed as he hung up on Guan Zhong''s call. However, he no longer cared about that. Guan Zhong and Qian Rui took the initiative to call him to test him, but that already proved that they could not find any reliable evidence. They were not sure if he was the one who killed Zhuge Feifan. However, him rejecting to carry out the video playback for them was equivalent to admitting he was the murderer. Nevertheless, he could only decline the request. If he agreed to do that, Guan Zhong would recognize the bruised corpse right away when they saw the playback. He would be giving the Union Government a piece of solid evidence. Although Guan Zhong and Qian Rui were sure that it was him who did it, they had no solid evidence to go after him. In reality, Lin Huang was very careful about this. All he did was to retrieve Zhuge Feifan''s memory and he left no traces behind. Not only did he leave Zhuge Feifan''s body behind for the Union Government, but he also did not even take his Emperor''s Heart Ring away. He only took the Godhead that was insignificant to the Union Government. The confidence he had added with the fact that he had not left any traces behind gave the Union Government no way of coming after him. On the Union Government''s side, since they had no solid evidence, they could only let it go eventually. Time flew by, and three days soon passed. Throughout the three days, apart from celebrating Lin Xin''s official 19th birthday on the 8th August which was on the second day, Lin Huang spent most of his time in closed-door cultivation to refine the Godheads in his body. The demigod-level broken Godheads only took a while to be refined under his burning Divine Fire. However, the 13 complete Godheads that he had just obtained recently were much slower to refine. He calculated the speed of refinement roughly. A demigod-level broken Godhead only took one to five minutes to be completely refined. Almost none of them took longer than ten minutes. However, the Virtual God rank-1 Godhead took approximately ten continuous hours to be refined. Meanwhile, the Virtual God rank-2 Godhead took almost 20 hours while the Virtual God rank-3 Godhead took almost 40 hours. The refinement time would double for almost every rank higher. Lin Huang also calculated the time to refine a Virtual God rank-9 Godhead. It would take around 2,560 hours which translated into at least over a hundred days even if the person refining it did not sleep or rest. Throughout the three days, he refined 12 out of the 13 Godheads. However, the refinement speed for the Virtual God rank-9 Godhead he had gotten from the Master God''s clone was a painful one. On the fourth morning, Lin Huang walked out of the Emperor Palace. Those Dynasty Dukes who had earned the eligibility to participate in the trial had arrived. Apart from a handful of them who were working on something else, basically all the imperial-level and demigod-level Dukes applied. However, Huang Tianfu only approved less than two-thirds of them. He needed the rest to guard the Dynasty headquarters and branches. In the end, only 67 of them passed the assessment, including the Third Grand Duke Huang Tufu, Huang Wuji, and the rest of the Princes who had elevated to imperial-level. Before it was even 8 a.m., all of them had gathered in the meeting room. All of them stood up when they saw Lin Huang walking into the meeting room. "Take a seat." Lin Huang walked onto the podium after he gestured for them to sit. "The trial zone that I picked for you guys this time is just a grade-1 trial zone in the great world. However, it''s a grade-6 forbidden area in this gravel world. There are a few virtual god-level monsters. Therefore, please don''t take it lightly judging by its low grade. "I''ve already gotten Mr. Tianfu to send all of you the information of the trial zone two days ago. Please inform me if you haven''t gotten it right now." Lin Huang waited for a while, but nobody spoke. "I believe all of you have studied the information and you should''ve done the preparation beforehand. I don''t need to waste everybody''s time to repeat what''s written in it. Let me brief you on some of my expectations. "Firstly, no sabotaging! As soon as you enter the trial zone, no matter whether you''re exploring on your own or whether you''re forming a team, please don''t fight your own people! "I don''t care what kind of conflicts you guys have had before or what disputes you guys come up with in the trial zone. If I find out about it, I''ll kill those who attack their own people! I opened the trial zones and set up a reward system to encourage you guys to grow, not to instigate internal conflicts. "You guys can solve the conflicts you might have after the trial has ended. Don''t play tricks in the trial zone! You can come to look for me or look for the Third Grand Duke if you can''t solve it, and we''ll help. "For those who are dissatisfied with your trial results, you can join the second or third trial to prove your abilities! "Secondly, I hope that all of you survive. Each and every one of you here is a powerhouse with top combat strength in Dynasty. All of you are Dynasty''s pillars of support. No matter who we lose, it''s a great loss to Dynasty, to me, and the Third Duke. "I hope that all of you can survive each trial, to grow stronger and to walk further together with Dynasty! "In the trial zone, don''t be blinded by pride. Surviving is the most important thing that you need to do. If you encounter something that''s beyond your capabilities, dodge or run if you have to. Don''t take it forcefully. You guys should know that you guys can obtain more points as long as you survive. Then, you''ll obtain more rewards and become more and more powerful. "Thirdly, obtain as many points as you can. After you''ve accomplished the first and second points, try your best to reap as many resources as you can in the trial zone. Ignore whether the competitor is someone from a major organization in the great world. Take what you fight for, and kill when it''s necessary. It''s alright even if you''ll have to kill the Royalties. In the trial zone, the Royalties can be the prey in proper battles as well. Don''t blame anyone if you get killed." Lin Huang listed the three points briefly. The people who were listening were resting their minds. When it was 9 a.m. sharp, Lin Huang opened the trial zone''s dimensional portal with his Royalty authorization. A golden dimensional portal opened in the meeting room. The 67 participants queued and walked into it one after another. When all of them had entered, the golden dimensional portal closed slowly and faded slowly before vanishing completely. Huang Tianfu sighed softly upon seeing the trial dimensional portal vanishing. "I hope for minimum casualties in this trial." Lin Huang patted Huang Tianfu''s shoulder. He wanted to say something to comfort him but said nothing after thinking to himself. "I''m thinking of trading the few Godheads in the treasure for god relics of the same value." Lin Huang voiced his request after a moment of silence. "Nobody is using the few Godheads anyway, so just take them, Master Emperor." Huang Tianfu waved his hand. "Let''s just trade them with items of the same value. They''re the property of Dynasty after all." Lin Huang felt bad for taking them without anything in exchange. He had already taken a soul jewel for nothing earlier. ''Isn''t Dynasty your property too?'' Huang Tianfu thought to himself but he dared not say it out loud. "Throughout the month while the trial is going on, I might be spending most of the time in closed-door cultivation. Please gather as many materials, Godheads, and broken Godheads as you can. I''ll pay you in advance later. Please take note of soul jewels if there''s any around, and inform me if there''s news as soon as you hear it. Don''t worry about interrupting my closed-door cultivation," said Lin Huang and he projected the blue teardrop soul jewel that he had obtained from Dynasty''s treasure chest earlier. 1089 Leaving Closed-door Cultivation Lin Huang went into closed-door cultivation after arranging the opening of the first trial zone and traded the four Godheads in Dynasty''s treasure chest as well as the 30-odd broken Godheads Dynasty had found throughout the few days with god relics and demigod relics. Although a month was far from him refining the Virtual God rank-9 Godhead, he could at least shorten the time to elevate to imperial-level within this period of time. If he did not focus on the refinement in closed-door cultivation and let the Divine Fire refine it on its own, it would take more than a year for the Virtual God rank-9 Godhead to be completely refined. Needless to say, Lin Huang could not wait that long. Since he went into closed-door cultivation, he spent 24 hours every day refining the Godhead with his Divine Fire. Initially, he planned to rest every ten days to maintain his peak performance. However, Bloody Robe and the Eclipse Boa completed their elevation on the fourth day. Lin Huang calculated the time. It had been the 11th day since the Eclipse Boa and the rest went into elevation mode. Bloody Robe and the Eclipse Boa that had been elevated soon turned into cards. Then, they were sealed. Lin Huang was busy activating the Divine Fire in his body, so he did not study the cards thoroughly. He only peeked and proceeded with the refinement, knowing that it was Bloody Robe and the Eclipse Boa who had completed the elevation. On the fifth day of closed-door cultivation, the Death Knight and the Fallen Knight also completed their elevation. They became quadruple mutated mythical-level Monster Cards. As usual, Lin Huang merely peeped at them. In the evening on the eighth day, Grimace had finally completed his elevation. As he was working on Dynasty''s new regulations with Bloody back then, he went into elevation two days later than the Eclipse Boa and the rest. Nevertheless, he spent a total of 13 days completing the elevation. By then, the batch of five imperial monsters had elevated to mythical-level Monster Cards. However, they were sealed and could not be summoned at the time being. Lin Huang did not check the five Monster Cards since they elevated. He had been following the plan that he set for himself, not even wasting a minute to refine the Godhead. When it was the tenth day of the closed-door cultivation, Lin Huang went to bed at midnight sharp as planned and he set the alarm clock on his Emperor''s Heart Ring to wake him up at 10 a.m. He would sleep every ten days and for ten hours each time to maintain his peak performance for the refinement. On the 11th day at 10 a.m., Lin Huang guzzled a bottle of water after he was woken up by the alarm clock. He then began his closed-door cultivation again. Just like that, he spent 24 hours every day activating the Divine Fire in his body to burn without stopping. He would sleep every ten days and drink a bottle of water. He did not even eat or spare a second to waste. The strict closed-door cultivation that could be deemed to be close to self-harm lasted for 30 days. Lin Huang finally loosened after that. When the 30th day ended, he slept for more than 20 hours before walking out of the Emperor Palace. It was almost past 10 a.m. when he got out of the Emperor Palace. The first thing he did was to head out for food. He had ten servings of dumplings at the fat aunty''s stall, blowing the fat couple''s minds away. He then returned to the Dynasty headquarters in satisfaction. As soon as he returned, he went straight to Huang Tianfu to ask about the trial results. Huang Tianfu saw Lin Huang from far away and went to him. "Master Emperor, I saw you left right after you came out of the closed-door cultivation. Was it something urgent?" "Nothing, I was just too hungry." Lin Huang took out a bottle of water and drank it before asking, "The one-month trial should''ve ended yesterday. How''re the results? Is the death toll high?" "The result isn''t bad at all. In fact, it''s even better than I expected. The death toll is lower than expected. Out of the 67 participants, only two didn''t return. The two of them who didn''t make it back are on imperial-level. None of the demigods died." Lin Huang was pretty satisfied with the results because it was impossible to have a 0% death rate. They only lost two people out of the 67 participants, so the death rate was less than 3% which was considered extremely low. After all, the trial zone was comparable with a grade-6 forbidden area whereby there were virtual god-level monsters. "That''s not bad. Do you have the ranking yet?" "We''ve already sorted it out. I''ll send the list to you right now, but it was Tufu who ranked No. 1. He doesn''t need God Blood." "Those who don''t need God Blood can trade for god relics or god items." Lin Huang expected that to happen. "Apart from the champion, those who rank No. 2 and No. 3 should be rewarded too. You guys can discuss the proper reward." "Apart from that, I think we can set up a leaderboard for the top ten participants on the list and publish it on Dynasty''s forum. Let everyone see the names and points obtained to encourage more people to go into the trial zone." "That''s a good idea." Huang Tianfu agreed to that right away. "Let me know when you guys are done setting the reward and the next trial opening time. I won''t be participating in the discussion." Lin Huang planned to focus on elevating to imperial-level. "Sure, we''ll try to do it by today or tomorrow." Huang Tianfu acknowledged. "How''re the sales of the spy list?" "It''s not too bad. It was quite a failure in the beginning because not many people believed in the list. Then, someone bought it and investigated following the list. The news spread, so it became a hit. However, we''ve only managed to sell over ten copies before the Union Government published the list." "Since the list came out, all the organizations have been looking for internal spies throughout the past month. Not only were all the God Bless spies killed, but many of the spies coming from other organizations were also exposed. The innocents were dragged into this." "Nobody knew who God Bless was before, but they''re famous overnight now. They''ve become public enemies now." "I must say that their behavior is terrible indeed. Apart from getting their people to be spies, they''ve even gotten the spies to penetrate into all the organizations. Some of them might have even ended up being the upper echelon. If not careful, the entire organization might end up becoming God Bless''s affiliate organization." "They did this to themselves." Lin Huang had no sympathy for God Bless. They would not be killed if they had not done what they had. They had the ability to rule the entire continent, but the Master God was greedy. Besides wanting to rule the world, he even got the spies to penetrate other organizations and even helped the organizations grow. His plan to grow the organization killed him eventually. "Did the Union Government look for me?" Lin Huang asked again. "No. After you went into closed-door cultivation, they spread the news that the Agency EA''s founder ran away and was killed a few days later. They must be busy with the rebuilding of Agency EA throughout the month." As Bloody expected, the Union Government took the blame themselves. They could only take up the responsibility of killing Zhuge Feifan. Otherwise, outsiders would make fun of them for not even being able to capture a traitor themselves. The Union Government taking up the responsibility would mean that it was the end of the incident, making Lin Huang secretly relieved. "Is there anything that I need to know about?" "That''s about it." Huang Tianpu thought about it. He did not seem to miss out anything. "How about the materials that I asked for before going into closed-door cultivation? How much did you guys manage to collect?" "We''ve collected half of the materials, seven Godheads and 83 broken Godheads. As for the soul jewel that you mentioned, we didn''t find anything that''s similar at all." "Send me this batch first. Continue to look for the remaining materials, Godheads, and broken Godheads. Take note of the soul jewel too." Lin Huang nodded. "Are you going into closed-door cultivation again?" Huang Tianfu asked, raising his brow. "Yes, but not now. I''ve something else to deal with today." 1090 Grimace’s Elevation Lin Huang left Emperor City first thing in the morning and headed towards Division 3. He visited Sweep City''s black market and the Wanbao Auction. He only returned to Emperor City after getting his hands on the materials that he had asked for earlier. On Dynasty''s end, although they were also helping to collect materials, they were using their own sources. Meanwhile, the black market in Sweep City was the Heretics'' source. For the Wanbao Auction, it came from the noble families. Naturally, using three different sources to look for the materials he needed was more efficient than using a single source. After returning to the Emperor Palace, Lin Huang got Huang Tianfu to bring out the materials they collected. Amassing them together with the materials he had purchased from Division 3, he asked Bloody to help sort them out. On the other hand, Lin Huang finally had the time to look at the cards of Grimace and the rest who had just elevated to mythical-level. The front of Grimace''s card was completely different now. He looked like a 20-year-young man. He wore black and red tones of clothing and had a black cap on his head, complete with a monocle on his left eye. Half a white mask adorned the right side of his face. There was nothing on the minimalistic mask at all, not even a swirl of pattern. He held a short, red walking stick in his right hand which appeared a little like Harry Potter''s magic wand. After studying it for a while, Lin Huang soon turned the card around to look at Grimace''s detailed information. "Monster Card: Grimace "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Mysterious Duke "Type of Monster: Mysterious-type / unidentified tribe "Nickname: Mystic "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Control "Major Skills: Mask Domination, Puppet Domination, Fraud Game, Illusion Master "Minor Skills: Supreme Intelligence, Divine Telekinesis, Trap Master, Magic Mirror "Summoning Authority: Denied "Card Remarks: Recommended to train with maximum effort!" Grimace already wielded similar skills such as the Mask Domination, the Puppet Domination, the Illusion Master and the Trap Master before, so Lin Huang already knew the approximate effects of those skills were after merely taking a glance. However, there were two skills that he did not really understand what the exact effects were. He tapped them open to read the details. "Fraud Game: The legendary Mystic will invite you to play a game in which the Mystic will have total control of the contents and rules. The final winner can ask the losers to do one thing without any conditions. No matter what the request is, the losers cannot reject. "Remark 1: The Mystic has a choice not to reveal all the game rules and contents to the invitee. The Mystic can bluff in the game. "Remark 2: As soon as the game rules and content are set, there''s no way of changing it in the middle of the game. "Remark 3: A maximum of three people can be invited per day, but the same person can only play the game once a day. "Remark 4: As soon as the game results are announced, no matter how far apart the winner and losers are, the losers must complete the winner''s request within a given period of time. The losers will have to give up what the winner specifies if the losers don''t manage to complete the request in time. The specified item can be soul, flesh, feelings, lives, or anything at all." "Magic Mirror: One random unique ability will be given each day such as the Dimensional Mirror, the Mirror Clone, the Mirror Seal, the Mirror Reflection "Remark 1: The assigned ability is totally random and cannot be controlled. "Remark 2: You can only use one mirror a day. "Remark 3: The effective time of each ability is 24 hours." "The Fraud Game is a little similar to the Rule Bending Power while the Magic Mirror has high uncertainty. If I''m lucky, I''ll get a great skill, but if my luck is bad, it might backfire." Lin Huang did not dwell further on the two skills after he was done looking at them. Instead, he proceeded to check the other four cards. "Monster Card: Eclipse "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Solar Boa (originally Eclipse Boa) "Type of Monster: Ancient Epoch-type / Mutated Serpent Tribe "Nickname: Engulfer "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Engulf "Major Skills: Sun and Moon Engulf, Splitting Flesh, Body Control, Endless Engulf, Energy Exchange "Minor Skills: Negative Energy Immunity, Toxin Immunity, Seraphic Speed, Superhuman Strength "Summoning Authority: Denied "Card Remarks: Trainable!" "Monster Card: Bloody Robe "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Skeleton Lord "Type of Monster: Spirit-type / Skeleton Tribe "Nickname: Conqueror "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Death "Major Skills: Sealing Chains, Hellish Fire, Dead Heart, God of Death''s Stare "Minor Skills: Undead Reincarnation, Mount Activation "Summoning Authority: Denied "Card Remarks: Trainable!" "Monster Card: Death (Death Knight) "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Death Lord "Type of Monster: Spirit-type / Hellish Knight Tribe "Nickname: Deceased "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Death "Major Skills: Immortal, Spirit Army, Dead Eye, Death Punishment "Minor Skills: Disastrous Ring, Death Ring "Summoning Authority: Denied "Card Remarks: Trainable!" "Monster Card: Fallen (Fallen Knight) "Rarity: Mythical-level "Monster Name: Fallen Lord "Type of Monster: Undying species / Hellish Knight Tribe "Nickname: Immortal "Combat Level: Imperial-level Yellow Gold-rank "Major: Undead "Major Skills: Nonuple Inferno, Undead Army, Fallen Infection, Life Assimilation "Minor Skills: Cursed Ring, Death Ring "Summoning Authority: Denied "Card Remarks: Trainable!" All five cards gave a great boost in ability since the elevation. Furthermore, the number of skills was even multiplied. Some of the main skills had new branch skills emerging from them. The different elevation direction in abilities was clearer to him now. After reading the details of the five cards, Lin Huang could not wait for the day he elevated to imperial-level. "Their combat strength should elevate to perfect-stage imperial-level purple gold-rank. By then, they should be able to fight Virtual God rank-1s with their imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength." As he put the five cards away, Bloody finished sorting out the materials. "We''ve gathered a substantial amount of materials this time. We''ve gotten enough elevation materials to elevate six imperial monsters, namely Bing Wang, the Witch, the Imp, the Malachian Fiend, Thunder and me. The elevation materials for the Warlord and the two Dark Crescent Snakes are almost there too. However, I won''t be elevating now. Let''s see after you''ve elevated to imperial-level." "Alright, thanks for the trouble." Lin Huang nodded, feeling a little sorry. Indeed, he needed Bloody to be by his side for now. As soon as Bloody elevated, it would be sealed due to his authorization. Then, Lin Huang would not be able to summon it. In reality, Lin Huang also kept the few pseudo-mythical-level monsters including Lancelot, the Evil Dominator, and Killer with him. They did not need materials to elevate since they could be upgraded to mythical-level with merely an Advance Card. Compared to legendary-level Monster Cards, being on pseudo-mythical-level, they were still good enough to fight at the moment. They could at least fight imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses with imperial-level yellow gold-rank combat strength. The main reason why Lin Huang had been holding back on their elevation was that he wanted to have a few imperial monsters with him for battles. That way, he could prevent fighting on his own if he encountered some trouble along the way. 1091 Chan Dou Wakes Up Lin Huang summoned the Divine Sun Tree to look after the giant golden eggs which Bing Wang, the Witch, the Imp, the Malachian Fiend, and Thunder had turned into at the corner of the Emperor Palace. He then returned to the middle of the palace. He took out Godheads and broken Godheads in a myriad of colors. Among the 12 Godheads, Dynasty had collected seven of them while the remaining five came from the black market and the Wanbao Auction. Meanwhile, among the 181 broken Godheads, 83 of them came from Dynasty while the remaining 98 came from the Division 3 black market and the Wanbao Auction. Lin Huang shoved all of them into his body without any hesitation. He then began a new round of refinement. He remained extremely disciplined with himself whereby he would refine them 24 hours without stopping and rested every ten days. On the 11th day, Bing Wang, the Imp, and the Malachian Fiend completed their elevation to mythical-level. On the 12th day, Thunder and the Witch completed their elevation one after another. As usual, Lin Huang did not check the five Monster Cards that had elevated. He fully focused on the refinement. Throughout the month, Huang Tianfu and the other two implemented Dynasty''s new regulations at full force. Up to a hundred newbies who were talented and full of potential were selected to begin cultivating the ancient methods. The newly built mission zone and the Royal Market began running too. There would be people announcing new missions each day whilst many members fought for those missions. the Royal Market was even more crowded. Everyone traded the unused items in their storage for resources that they needed. Many of the people refreshed the Royal Market''s page a few times per day to see if there were any items that they needed. Apart from that, the Dynasty leaderboard was out. The complete ranking was projected on the Emperor''s Heart Ring''s page for the Dynasty members who participated in the trial. The Dynasty internal forum also published the top 10 names and pinned the thread on top. Every Dynasty member, including the trainees, could see it. The participants who ranked the top 3 received the relevant rewards, including Huang Tufu who was the Third Grand Duke. Throughout the past month, Lin Huang had been in closed-door cultivation. He planned to refine the Virtual God rank-9 Godhead before coming out, but he was interrupted by a message that came all of a sudden. It was Xiao Mo who had sent the single-line message: "Chan Dou is awake and he has elevated to imperial-level." Lin Huang chose to come out of the closed-door cultivation as soon as he received the message. He walked out of the Emperor Palace and went to Xiao Mo''s place immediately. As he walked into the place after knocking on the door, he saw Chan Dou who was dressed in white pajamas, holding a cup of noodles. He seemed lost sitting on the couch in the living room. There was a red chili in soup printed on the cover of the cup noodles. It was a commercial print with only a few noodles on it. "Red Chili Noodles (Super Duper Spicy!!!)" was written on the picture with flames as an effect. "He''s been in a coma for over two months. I thought maybe he shouldn''t eat solids just yet," Xiao Mo explained. "So, you gave him cup noodles?" Lin Huang was speechless. It was extremely spicy noodles! Could a person who had just woken up from a coma two months even digest that? "It tastes pretty good except it''s a little spicy." Xiao Mo did not seem to find it odd. "Go change. I''ll bring you out for some proper breakfast." Lin Huang took the cup noodles away from Chan Dou who snapped back to his senses by then. He lifted his head and looked puzzledly at Lin Huang. "Who are you?" "Go change first. We''ll talk later." Lin Huang patted Chan Dou''s shoulder and turned around to look at Xiao Mo. He spoke after observing him, "Go and get changed as well. We''ll go together." "But my cup noodle" Before Xiao Mo could finish speaking, a Viridian Wolf appeared in the room out of nowhere. It gobbled the cup noodles Xiao Mo had placed on the coffee table with its jowls wide open. It swallowed the plastic cup as well before it turned its head and gobbled Chan Dou''s cup noodles up too. The Viridian Wolf licked its lips, feeling unsatisfied although it was done eating. It then walked to Lin Huang, wagging its tail. Lin Huang patted the Viridian Wolf''s head and lifted his head to ask Xiao Mo, "What cup noodles?" Xiao Mo was dumbstruck. After the duo was done changing, Lin Huang recalled the Viridian Wolf and brought the two of them straight to the fat aunty''s dumpling stall. Apart from dumplings, the fat aunty made little wontons that tasted heavenly. Lin Huang took a seat at an empty table. He ordered a bowl of wontons for Chan Dou and two servings of dumplings for Xiao Mo and himself. Chan Dou, who had been looking around along the way, finally figured out where he was. "This is Emperor City in Division 1. We just came out of the Dynasty headquarters earlier. Who are both of you? Why am I here?" "What do you remember before you got into a coma?" Lin Huang asked. "I remember being captured in a room and someone torturing me with all sorts of ways every day. They even stuck a black monster that was like mud on my head, injecting disgusting toxins into my soul" "That was a Rotten Soul Beast." Lin Huang was relieved. "Theoretically, people who were attacked by the Rotten Soul Beast might experience a certain level of amnesia since their souls would''ve been affected by a massive amount of spiritual toxins, but your memory seems to be alright," he said and changed his appearance with his disguise skill. He transformed into Lin Xie, even changing his voice. "I bet you know who I am now, don''t you?" Chan Dou blinked his eyes twice and looked lost. "Who are you?" Lin Huang was shocked. "I''m Lin Xie. Don''t you remember me?" "Lin Xie?" Chan Dou frowned. "This name sounds familiar, but I don''t remember anything about you." Lin Huang transformed back to how he looked like, feeling a little helpless. "It seems like I had a premature bout of excitement earlier. It seems like your memory has been affected after all." "I''m sorry. I really don''t remember who the both of you are," Chan Dou said guiltily. "You don''t have to apologize to him. You never knew him," Lin Huang corrected him. Xiao Mo, who was sitting aside, nodded immediately. "Mr. Chan Dou, you didn''t know me indeed, but I''ve heard of your name much earlier." "Apart from being tortured, what else do you remember?" Lin Huang asked again. "I remember going to the black market. I bumped into two imperial-level powerhouses who attacked me. Then, I was captured and tortured." "How about before that? Before going to the black market?" "My family urged me to elevate to imperial-level. They told me that the Union Government was providing ancient cultivation methods." "Do you remember what happened before you went to the black market and your family urged you to elevate to imperial-level?" Lin Huang proceeded to ask. The part of the memory happened to be related to him because he was the one who had given Chan Dou the ancient cultivation methods and gotten him to pretend to have obtained them from the black market. Chan Dou thought about it and shook his head eventually. "I don''t remember." "You should remember the people and the turn of events that happened at the Heaven Alliance." "The Heaven Alliance?" Chan Dou looked perplexed again. "What''s that?" 1092 The Amnesia of Chan Dou Lin Huang''s expression was rather grim after they were done with breakfast. Chan Dou''s amnesia was much more severe than he expected. Not only had he forgotten who Lin Xie was, but he also did not even remember the Heaven Alliance. He could not even remember his teammates Tan Lang, Jian Fei, and Shen Tao who he knew for years. That was not the most serious one. What was the most serious was that he had even forgotten everything about the Chan Clan. Apart from knowing that his name was Chan Dou and that he was from the Chan Clan, he did not even remember what were his father and mother''s names or how they looked like. He could not even remember where the Chan Clan estate was. Lin Huang thought of using a Healing Card on him since his amnesia had been caused by a damaged soul. He took out a Healing Card as soon as he returned to the Dynasty headquarters. A notification from Xiao Hei''s system popped up after he aimed it at Chan Dou. "The target is healthy. It can''t be the healing target." "What?" Lin Huang was puzzled after seeing the notification. He used another Healing Card, but the same notification popped up. "Xiao Hei, is there a bug in the Healing Card?" Xiao Hei fell into silence for a while and soon responded, "I''ve run a check. The card is fine." "Then, why can''t I use it on Chan Dou?" "The card detects no signs of flesh or soul damage on the target." "His soul isn''t damaged?" Lin Huang was even more bewildered now. "Then, why is he suffering from amnesia?" "I''ve no idea. The Healing Card shows that his flesh and soul are currently healthy." "If Xiao Hei''s detection is right, Chan Dou might''ve locked himself down, causing his amnesia." The stone tablet''s voice came all of the sudden. "Do you mean he might''ve locked his own memory?" "Yes, the human brain has a self-preservation setting. To avoid certain information from being exposed, he might''ve locked this part of information deep in his memory during the torture," the stone tablet explained. Lin Huang thought the explanation made sense. "What you said actually explains why he doesn''t remember important people and things. He only remembers the insignificant things." "If he''s really locked his memory, what can I do to recover it?" Lin Huang asked again. "There''s nothing that you can do. You can only wait for him to release the memory by himself." The tablet had no other better idea to offer. Lin Huang was concerned about bringing Chan Dou back to the Chan Clan in such a condition. Moreover, his combat strength had elevated to imperial-level black gold-rank out of nowhere. Lin Huang thought of bringing him back to the Heaven Alliance. He might recall something when he got there, but it was futile to do that now. "Rest well for the time being. Get your health back and don''t burden yourself too much. Don''t force it if you can''t remember something," Lin Huang comforted, "I''ll contact Tan Lang, Shen Tao, and the rest these two days and see if they have the time to visit. Maybe you might remember something when you see them." "I''ll put you in the room next to Xiao Mo. Just look for him if there''s anything you need. If Xiao Mo is busy, you can come to me directly. You have my number on your Emperor''s Heart Ring. My name is Lin Xie." After sorting things out with Chan Dou, Lin Huang talked to Huang Tianfu about Chan Dou for a bit. In reality, as one of the three Grand Dukes, nothing in Dynasty''s headquarters could be hidden from him. He already found out there was someone else in Xiao Mo''s room the night when Lin Huang brought Chan Dou back, and he knew that the person was the chief of the Heaven Alliance, Chan Dou. He knew very well that Lin Huang also bore another identity called Lin Xie who was the current the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance. Therefore, he was not surprised when Chan Dou appeared. Apart from telling him about Chan Dou, Lin Huang had also obtained a new batch of elevation materials, Godheads, and broken Godheads from Huang Tianfu. After he returned to the Emperor Palace, Lin Huang did not go into closed-door cultivation right away. Instead, he disguised as Lin Xie and contacted Tan Lang who was the closest to Chan Dou. Tan Lang was surprised to see Lin Huang calling. However, he picked up the video call request immediately. "Lin Xie, it''s been a while. Hope everything is good on your side." Tan Lang wore a black trench coat, and seemed to be more muscular than before. He had shaved his beard clean, making him look much younger now. His stiff character turned much gentler upon seeing Lin Huang''s familiar face. "I''ve been pretty good. You look like you''ve gained weight," Lin Huang teased while smiling. "Whoa, and you''ve shaved your beard. Do you have a girlfriend now?" "We just got engaged recently," Tan Lang confirmed with a nod. "We haven''t fixed the date yet, but I''ll inform you guys when the date is set." "Sure! How does she look like? Remember to send her picture to the group chat so that we know how she looks like," Lin Huang reminded while smiling. "Sure!" Tan Lang nodded in a straightforward manner. "I''m sure you have something to tell me." "I''ve found Chan Dou." "He''s still alive?" Tan Lang asked carefully, afraid to hear what he did not want to. "He''s alive," Lin Huang responded. Tan Lang was relieved to hear those two words. "But something''s happened to him," Lin Huang continued, "He''s lost a part of his memory." "Is it serious?" "He doesn''t remember me or you. He doesn''t remember the Heaven Alliance or anything about the Heaven Alliance, including the members. Apart from that, he''s also forgotten anything about the Chan Clan. He doesn''t even remember what his parents'' names are." Tan Lang fell into silence for a moment and asked with his head lifted up, "Where are you guys? I''ll go over as soon as I can." "There''s no rush. Please contact friends that Chan Dou is more familiar with. Since he doesn''t remember you and me, it''d be great if he can recognize one of his friends," Lin Huang suggested. "Sure, I''ll do that. Send me your address, and we''ll try to visit today." "The address is Emperor City in Division 1. You guys can come straight to the Dynasty headquarters." "The Dynasty headquarters? You''re a Dynasty member?" Tan Lang asked incredulously. He had never heard of a Lin Xie among the Princes of Dynasty. "Lin Xie isn''t my real name. It''s just a nickname to avoid my rivals." Lin Huang no longer hid his identity and he announced, "My real name is Lin Huang." Lin Huang''s disguise faded as he spoke. He looked younger as he regained his original appearance a moment later. Tan Lang was completely shocked when he saw Lin Huang''s real face. He could not speak at that very moment. After a while, he asked with a dry throat, "You''re the Emperor of Dynasty?!" Lin Huang nodded silently. "We''ll talk about me when we have time in the future." He did not explain his identity further. As he hung up the call with Tan Lang, Lin Huang sat on the throne in the Emperor''s Palace and figured that it had been a while since he last logged into the Genius Union. "It seems like I must drop by the Heaven Alliance before elevating to imperial-level." 1093 Tan Langs Visi When it was almost past 2 p.m., Tan Lang brought a bunch of people to Emperor City. Lin Huang heard the news immediately and instructed Huang Tianfu to invite them to the Dynasty headquarters. Lin Huang greeted them wearing a white t-shirt. There were a total of 13 people visiting this time, and Lin Huang knew five of them. Apart from Tan Lang, Shen Tao, Jian Fei, Gu Fei, and the Bug Master Li Jia came along too. He knew Shen Tao before knowing Tan Lang. Meanwhile, he was familiar with the current chief of Heaven Alliance, Jian Fei and the deputy chief, Gu Fei. About Li Jia, he only got to know him when they went into the Fallen God Land. Lin Huang only learned from the True God consciousness Gong Sun that Li Jia possessed Divine Telekinesis like he did after Tan Lang and the rest left the Fallen God Land. Not only that, his Divine Telekinesis was even more powerful than Lin Huang''s but he chose to hide it all the way. Although he only had a combat strength of immortal-level rank-9 and barely looked threatening at all, his ability could not be measured by his combat strength. However, Lin Huang did not behave differently and he treated him like his friend. He paused when he looked at Tan Lang and the other four of them. Although Tan Lang had told everyone that Lin Xie''s true identity was the Emperor of Dynasty Lin Huang, they found it a little hard to believe when they saw Lin Huang in real life. "Are you really Lin Xie?" Shen Tao asked looking in disbelief. "It was a disguise," Lin Huang said and used disguise skill to transform his face looking like Lin Xie. He then taped open Lin Xie''s Emperor''s Heart Ring and called Shen Tao''s number, "A person can disguise into someone else but I guess you can''t get a fake Emperor''s Heart Ring?" Each Emperor''s Heart Ring had an exclusive code of its own. Moreover, it would be locked to the person as soon as ownership was claimed. Even if it were unlocked, one could only open the storage space. As long as the original host was not detected, the Emperor''s Heart Ring network and communication signal would remain shut. Such a setting on the Emperor''s Heart was to prevent others from using the identity to carry out crimes. For hackers who created fake identities such as Yang Ling, he would reformat the ownerless Emperor''s Heart Rings to its default setting whereby everything in the ring would be erased, including the serial number. A new serial number would be assigned which was no different from a brand new one that came fresh from the factory. Lin Huang could use Lin Xie''s Emperor''s Heart Ring to prove that his identity was real. Initially, Tan Lang and the rest were a little concerned. They thought Lin Huang might have kidnapped Lin Xie and forced him to get them here. Now, it seemed like they had been overthinking. "Mr. Fu was attacked by virtual god-level powerhouse before I came to the core zone. It has something to do with the Union Government which knew very well that I''m Mr. Fu''s disciple. Apart from that, I offended some underground organizations such as the Purple Crow, the Saints, the Heretics, and more when I was in Division 7. My ability was too weak for me to be able to protect myself, so I disguised as Lin Xie for safety purpose. Since then, I''ve been using Lin Xie''s identity in the core zone," Lin Huang explained briefly while smiling. They looked shocked when they heard this revelation. They never thought that Lin Huang would have had such a difficult past. Not only did he have to avoid the Union Government, but he would also have to avoid the top three underground organizations at all times. If he showed any flaws before he grew powerful, he might have faced disaster. "Fortunately, you managed to hold on. Now that you''re the Emperor, the Union Government will have to think twice before doing anything to you, let alone those underground organizations." Tan Lang patted Lin Huang''s shoulder. Jian Fei looked rather awkward. He was worried that Lin Huang might call him out for being the acting chief of the Heaven Alliance. Now, it seemed like Lin Huang did not even care about being the chief of the Heaven Alliance. If the Heaven Alliance were to be put on Earth, it could only be considered as the top university. However, Dynasty would be one of the top companies in the world if it were put on Earth. Why would a director from a top company want a place as the President of student affairs in a university? Li Jia, on the other hand, seemed normal. He behaved just like an ordinary member of the audience enjoying the story just like everybody else. However, Lin Huang had no idea what he was really thinking about. Lin Huang glanced through everyone, saying nothing while smiling. Only he knew that he had the confidence to reveal his identity. He was not depending on his identity as the Emperor of Dynasty, but on his own abilities. Just like two months ago, the Union Government had to let him go despite knowing that it was he who killed Zhuge Feifan not because he was the Emperor, but they knew his real abilities. If they came after him and ignored the consequences, they would definitely lose a bunch of top powerhouses. Lin Huang knew that his identity was just a name. His ability was what set him apart from everyone else. No matter how high a person''s position might be, he would lose everything that came with his identity when he lost it one day. Just like the presidents of some countries on Earth, their glory days were just the mere few years during their term of office. Their glory would fade as soon as they were done with their appointment. Some would even continue their lives like an ordinary person and were worse off than a wealthy man. Naturally, a high position brought many benefits. You would not have to do many things on your own since you can get people to do it for you. A high position could even bring people connections and resources. Many people would come to you for your position to give many advantages. A high position brought huge influence to a person. When a person''s position was powerful enough, whatever the person did or said might gain the world''s attention. However, no matter how powerful a person was, there was a limit. That was the reason why Lin Huang accepted the position of Emperor. Assuming such an identity gave him access to Dynasty''s power. He could accomplish what he wanted to do which would take a massive amount of time and effort to do in the past like a piece of cake now." "Let''s go. We''ll visit Boss Chan now." Lin Huang was unwilling to dwell on his identity and power. He led them towards where Chan Dou was staying. On the way there, Tan Lang could not help but finally ask, "How did you find Chan Dou?" Everyone kept their ears peeled as soon as he asked that. "I suppose all of you have heard about the organization called God Bless which everyone has been talking about these past two months, haven''t you?" Lin Huang asked. "I think everyone knows about this recently. Looking at the notice the Union Government sent out, it''s indeed a terrifying organization. They''ve been hiding from this world from over 700 years and nobody knew about their existence. Moreover, they''ve so many members who''ve penetrated so many organizations and some even became their core members and upper echelon." Shen Tao took over the conversation. The Union Government had published a notice about God Bless''s existence two months ago, so everyone present was familiar with the organization. "They were the ones who took Chan Dou away." Lin Huang was half fibbing when he said that. "Their people attempted to assassinate me. I captured them and managed to ask them all about this unintentionally." "I spent some time getting into where Chan Dou was captured. I managed to save him, but he had been in a coma and only woke up this morning. After I spoke to him, I realized a big part of his memory was lost." 1094 I’m Sorry, I Don’t Remember You Guys Lin Huang told his half fib to the people as they walked. Soon, they arrived at the courtyard where Chan Dou was staying. Lin Huang had arranged for Chan Dou to stay in the guest room where Dynasty hosted their guests. There were three three-story tall villas in the small courtyard. The one that Chan Dou was staying in was just next to Xiao Mo''s. Both villas were less than 20 meters away. The two of them were the only ones staying in the courtyard at the moment while the last villa was empty. Chan Dou was checking the news on the Heart Network when Lin Huang and the rest walked into the courtyard. Hearing Lin Huang''s chatter, he realized that Lin Huang had brought people to visit him. He turned off the Heart Network immediately and walked out of the room, eager to know if he could recognize any of the visitors. Tan Lang and the rest saw Chan Dou from far away as they stepped into the courtyard. Without a hitch, they accelerated towards Chan Dou. They walked to him while Lin Huang said, "See if there''s anyone among them that you remember." Chan Dou nodded and glanced through the 13 of them one after another. However, he soon turned to look at Lin Huang and shook his head sadly. "I don''t remember any of them." "Boss Chan, I''m Shen Tao. Don''t you remember me?" Shen Tao asked with rather stirred emotions. "Shen Tao" Chan Dou frowned a little and glanced down to think. Eventually, he shook his head mournfully. "This name sounds familiar, but I really can''t remember anything about it." "Boss Chan, do you remember me? My name is Tan Lang," Tan Lang spoke calmly. Chan Dou then turned his head to look at Tan Lang. He shook his head after looking at him for a while. "This name is a little familiar as well, but I don''t remember a thing." "We first met when you were 16. We went to a mission organized by the Hunter Association. I thought I was the youngest one in the mission at that time, but you were two years younger than me. You were less than 1.7 meters tall. "I look mature, so no senior hunters troubled me. However, you looked like a kid and you were short, so a few senior hunters teased you. They said you were a baby and that you were a burden to them. "I thought you would tolerate it, but in the end, you beat them up real good. Then, you walked to me and invited me to join your team, to be one of your teammates since I didn''t tease you." Tan Lang recounted the story of how he met Chan Dou as if everything had just happened yesterday. Even Lin Huang indulged in the story. Among all the visitors, Li Jia remained calm from the beginning until the end. He fell into deep thought with his head hanging down after confirming Chan Dou''s condition. After Tan Lang was done telling the story, Chan Dou looked at him sadly. "Your story sounded like it indeed happened, but I''m really sorry that I don''t recall anything that you just told me." Tan Lang nodded, feeling helpless. "It''s alright if you can''t remember now. Take it easy." Lin Huang patted Tan Lang''s shoulder. "If you guys have the time, you can stay for a few days to talk to Boss Chan. You might help him remember something. I won''t keep any of you from doing your own things," Lin Huang said to Shen Tao and the rest. "I''ll stay since I''ve nothing much going on lately." Shen Tao was the first to respond. "I''ll stay too," Tan Lang responded immediately. "Aren''t you busy with your wedding?" Lin Huang asked. "We haven''t set the date yet. Moreover, this won''t take too long." "Alright, keep track of the time yourself," Lin Huang answered. "I won''t be staying. I have something to do," Li Jia said guiltily. "Those of you who have something to do, go ahead. Don''t feel obliged to stay," Lin Huang repeated. "I''m not staying either," Jian Fei said to Lin Huang. "Go ahead. I''ll take some time to log into the Genius Union these two days." Lin Huang did not say anything further. Among the 13 of them, eventually, only four of them stayed. Jian Fei and the other eight left one after another. "The four of you will stay at villa No. 3 next door." Lin Huang pointed at the vacant villa as he spoke, "There are three rooms on the second floor and two rooms on the third floor. You guys can decide on your own. I''ll get someone to send you guys the daily necessities." "Sure! Thanks." Tan Lang showed his appreciation and pulled Lin Huang aside before asking through voice transmission, "What are you going to do about Boss Chan? Looking at his current condition, I''m afraid it''ll take some time for him to recover his memory." "I think it''s better for him to stay with me before his memory recovers. At least, his safety is guaranteed at Dynasty," Lin Huang expressed his opinion. "Why don''t you just send him back to the Chan Clan?" Tan Lang asked, perplexed. "Do you think it''s safe at the Chan Clan?" Lin Huang asked. Tan Lang fell into silence before nodding. "Oh yeah, many things have been going on at the Chan Clan for the past few months. Ever since Boss Chan went missing, none of the younger generation among the lineal descendants have the ability to replace him. On the other hand, three supreme geniuses among the other direct line descendants have been shining without Boss Chan. The entire Clan is in a mess. It''s fine if Boss Chan''s memory is intact, but in his current condition, he shouldn''t head back indeed." Lin Huang then voiced his concern, "It was most probably someone from the Chan Clan who revealed Chan Dou''s whereabouts on purpose, resulting in him being taken away at the black market." Lin Huang said that because from the memory of the God Bless''s God''s Messenger that he had obtained earlier, someone had revealed to them that Chan Dou was at the black market. That was how God Bless knew his location back then. Now that Lin Huang heard about the Chan Clan''s internal conflict from Tan Lang, he figured that the other disciples might have exposed the information. "Hmm, it seems like he really shouldn''t head home." Tan Lang frowned slightly. He never thought the people of the Chan Clan would do something like that. "His combat strength has elevated to imperial-level. He can no longer log into the Genius Union and return to the Heaven Alliance. He doesn''t recognize any of his friends or remember where he used to live," Lin Huang continued, "In his current condition, it''s the best for him to stay in Dynasty. Of course, I won''t force him to stay if he chooses to leave." After the chat with Tan Lang, Lin Huang did not stay at the courtyard. He returned to the Emperor Palace after bidding goodbye to them. The first thing he did when he returned to the Emperor''s Palace was to take out the materials that Huang Tianfu had passed him earlier. He got Bloody to sort them out. Soon, Bloody was finished. "The elevation materials for the two Dark Crescent Snakes and the Warlord are ready." Lin Huang nodded and put the materials away. He then began the elevation for the Dark Crescent Snakes and the Warlord. As he saw the three golden eggs consolidate completely, he did not proceed with his closed-door cultivation to refine Godheads this time. Instead, he sat by the golden eggs with his legs crossed while clicking on the Genius Union page. 1095 He Hardly Logged into the Genius Union Anyway It had been a few months since Lin Huang last logged into the Genius Union. He had logged in back then to nominate Gu Fei as deputy chief. He remained at the Heaven Alliance when he logged in again, and his name on the leaderboard lit up automatically. Many people on the Genius Union noticed his log-in immediately. He had been ranked No. 1 on the annual leaderboard after all, so it was hard for anyone not to notice him. His log-in attracted a stream of discussion. "Come have a look, everyone. The Monster Killer is back!" "Did he just recall that there''s a place that gives out points such as the Stairway Tree?" "I''d like to mourn for the monsters on the Stairway Tree for three seconds in advance!" "Guys, please inform the monsters on the Stairway Tree not to head out at night." At the Heaven Alliance headquarters on the 63rd checkpoint, Jian Fei, who had just logged in a few minutes ago, noticed Lin Huang''s log-in immediately. Before he could react, Lin Huang had appeared at his office door. "Come in, I''ve just logged in too," Jian Fei invited Lin Huang in. "It''s just been a few months and your combat strength has already reached immortal-level rank-9. Your elevation speed is terrifying." "Nah, I just happened to have good luck." Lin Huang sat on the couch and lifted his head to look at Jian Fei. He went straight to business. "Chan Dou has elevated to imperial-level, so he has automatically detached from the Genius Union. It''s time for you as acting chief to assume your position.'' "This is just a child''s game to you." Jian Fei shook his head while forcing a smile. He was worried that Lin Huang would fight him for the position of the chief of the Heaven Alliance back them. It was only today that he just realized Lin Huang did not even care about the position. "Even if it''s just a game, you''ll have to bear the responsibility as a chief and take this seriously." Lin Huang, on the other hand, was serious. "I will. Don''t you worry about that. Although I have limited abilities, wherever I am, I know what sort of people to trust." Jian Fei knew that he was not considered the best in the Genius Union no matter his ability or power. However, he was skilled in people relationships. Otherwise, Chan Dou would not have nominated him as the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance back then. "I logged in this time mainly just to say hi to you guys. I should elevate to imperial-level soon, so you guys should prepare to pick a candidate to replace my position as deputy chief," Lin Huang told him the purpose of him logging in this time. "Approximately when will you elevate?" Although Jian Fei had seen this coming, he felt like he came from a different world from Lin Huang when he heard the latter say that. "A month at the soonest. 40 to 50 days should be enough if it takes longer," Lin Huang announced his estimated time. He had the feeling that the day the Virtual God rank-9 Godhead in his body was refined completely would be the day he elevated to imperial-level. "So soon?!" Jian Fei could not help but exclaim out loud. Lin Huang smiled without saying anything. He was the only one who knew that he had been stuck on immortal-level rank-10 for months now. "Make the arrangements as soon as possible. It''s best to pick a suitable candidate before I elevate." "Is there anyone that you''d like to recommend?" Jian Fei asked. If Lin Huang recommended someone, the person would have top priority since he or she would be replacing Lin Huang. The first person who popped into Lin Huang''s mind was Li Jia when he heard Jian Fei''s question. However, Lin Huang erased the name from his list immediately. It would be too risky to nominate a person who even he could not see through to be the deputy chief of the Heaven Alliance. "No, I don''t know many Heaven Alliance members. Those with whom I''m slightly familiar with have basically elevated to imperial-level. I''ve worked with some whom I''ve met, but I don''t know them very well, so I''m not sure about their characters and abilities." "How about I bring Gu Fei and the rest here? Since you''re here today, maybe we could set the candidate''s eligibility terms," Jian Fei suggested. "You guys go ahead to discuss this. I won''t participate." Lin Huang rejected immediately because he knew such a meeting would take a long time. If he joined them, he might spend his entire day there. "Just send me a copy of the list when you guys are done the discussion." "Alright then," Jian Fei responded weakly. Theoretically, as deputy chief, Lin Huang must be present when nominating a replacement. However, there was nothing that Jian Fei could do since he wanted to push the responsibility away. Moreover, Lin Huang was the Emperor of Dynasty. Jian Fei thought about it properly and realized it would not make much of a difference whether Lin Huang was there or not. Since he did not know much about the candidates, he could not voice his opinion. He would only be a passive member of the audience even if he were to be there. "There''s one more thing that I need to tell you. Don''t tell the other the Heaven Alliance members about Chan Dou''s return just yet," Lin Huang requested that all of the sudden. "Why?" Jian Fei asked immediately. "The Chan Clan will find out about it as soon as the news spread. They''ll definitely come to Dynasty for him by then. The Chan Clan is in a mess with internal conflict rife at the moment. It''s fine if Chan Dou hadn''t lost his memory. However, since he''s lost a big chunk of memory, the Chan Clan isn''t a good place to be in at the moment," Lin Huang explained. Jian Fei went silent for a moment and nodded eventually. "I won''t tell but Li Jia also knows about this." Lin Huang could not help but knit his eyebrows when he heard Li Jia''s name. "I''ll speak to him later." After chatting with Jian Fei for a while, Lin Huang browsed through the Heaven Alliance member list online. It showed that Li Jia was offline. He soon found Li Jia''s number and called him. The tone only rang once before the video call was connected. Li Jia was sitting on a couch, and he seemed to be inside a huge villa looking at the background. "Should I call you Master Emperor or Master Deputy Chief?" Li Jia teased while smiling. "Up to you," Lin Huang did not care what he was addressed. "Alright then, Master Deputy Chief. Anything that I can help you with?" Li Jia chose to call him Master Deputy Chief eventually. "I hope that you tell no one about Chan Dou''s return," Lin Huang did not bother to beat around the bush. To his surprise, Li Jia nodded without any hesitation. "Sure, I''ll keep the secret for you." Lin Huang, who was prepared to spend some effort convincing Li Jia, fell into silence at that moment. He did not expect his attempt to be so successful. "Anything else?" Li Jia''s projection in the video call asked while smiling. Lin Huang thought about it and shook his head. "That''s all." He almost wanted to ask how did Li Jia obtain his Divine Telekinesis. However, he dismissed the idea after thinking it through. After hanging up the call with Li Jia, Lin Huang said goodbye to Jian Fei. Nonetheless, he did not log out just yet. Instead, he climbed toward the trunk of the Stairway Tree through the branches. He hardly logged into the Genius Union anyway, thus it made sense for him to obtain some points before leaving! 1096 A Man Should Be Able to Bear Failures Lin Huang had broke through the 63rd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree a couple of months ago after killing the last Bug Tribe Queen Mother. Neither would the monsters attack Lin Huang, nor would he obtain anymore points if he were to kill them. Without the attack of the Bug Tribe, Lin Huang spent less than a minute to pass through the 63rd checkpoint on the the Stairway Tree and stepped into the 64th checkpoint. The 64th checkpoint on the Stairway Tree was called the Inhibition Waterfall. According to the records left behind by the Heaven Alliance seniors, more than half of the powerhouses who had passed through the 63rd checkpoint could not step foot onto the 72nd checkpoint because they were stuck on the 64th checkpoint. Breaking through the Inhibition Waterfall was almost impossible because the impact of the waterfall was immensely powerful. The speed of its flowing water was thousands of times faster than the high pressure water jet that could be used to cut metal pieces on Earth. Ordinary immortal-level rank-9 powerhouses would be torn into pieces if they stepped in without any armor. Even if they had ancient relic armor on, it would strip their Life Power away. Such a checkpoint was purely to test a person''s physical strength and Life Power intensity. Moreover, the rule prohibited Life Power from being replenished. Everyone who went through the checkpoint would not be able to replenish their Life Power. There was simply no way around it at all. However, such a checkpoint was an easy stage for Lin Huang. He smirked slightly as he watched the misty, white waterfall before him. He did not even summon any imperial monster or God Figurine''s Combat Soul. All he did was to put on black battle armor and dive into the waterfall. The terrifying waterfall flow splashed on the demigod relic armor, but none of the impact touched Lin Huang. It was as if he was taking a stroll after a meal as he walked towards the source of the waterfall. After integrating the Origin God''s Heart, all of the Life Power in Lin Huang''s body had turned into Divine Power. He even had ten Divine Fire glowing and providing endless Divine Power in his body. Supplying the demigod god relic armor to work smoothly was a piece of cake. However, although the relic armor bore most of the impact, the remaining force was still rather tough for Lin Huang and he could not move quickly. He felt as if he was walking against a strong gale. He looked like he was walking at a normal speed at that instant, but in reality, it was the fastest he could go as he fought the resistance. After spending approximately half an hour passing through the 64th checkpoint, the next checkpoints were easy-peasy. He slowed down when he encountered monsters again on the 67th checkpoint. He summoned the Destructive Divine Mammoth and gained ten billion points which was the maximum points he could achieve per day. Just like that, he arrived on the boss stage of the checkpoint. He then went all the way up to the monster stage on the 71st checkpoint. Figuring that he had gotten the maximum points he could obtain per day, he stopped and logged out of the Genius Union since it would mean that he would be giving up ten billion points if he passed the 71st checkpoint now. Lin Huang had no idea that almost all the online members were watching him tearing through the checkpoints since the 64th checkpoint. He gained more and more audience members as the checkpoints Lin Xie hit only got higher and higher. The friends of those offline got them to log in to witness whatever miraculous turn of events that was happening. Many people thought Lin Xie might make history this time. However, his checkpoint number halted at ''71'' on the first place of the leaderboard. It then dimmed. Many of them thought it was a pity when they saw Lin Huang logging out. "He''s so close to stepping onto the 72nd checkpoint and breaking the record!" "It seems like the monsters on the 71st checkpoint are much more powerful than we thought." "It''s really a pity that he failed this checkpoint. I wonder when Lin Xie will come back again." Most of the people thought Lin Huang had failed to pass the checkpoint. According to the limited records, it was a challenge to clear the monsters on the 71st checkpoint. The monsters on this checkpoint came from the Ant Tribe. Although their ability was just on immortal-level rank-9, the sheer number of them was insanely terrifying. It was at least ten times more than the amount of Bug Tribe members on the 63rd checkpoint back then. If the Inhibition Waterfall on the 64th checkpoint made half of the powerhouses who passed through the 63rd checkpoint stuck, then the Ant Tribe on the 71st checkpoint would put all the remaining half to a halt successfully. Only a handful of people had ever passed through the 71st checkpoint and arrived on the 72nd checkpoint throughout the entire history of the Stairway Tree. Only Lin Huang knew that the 71st checkpoint was no threat to him at all. He could break through it anytime he wanted. He logged out because he did not want to lose the ten billion points that were on his fingertips. Just when Lin Huang gave up and logged out, he received messages from Yi Yeyu and Yi Zheng almost at the same time. The duo''s messages were rather simple. Yi Yeyu: Holy sheet~~~ (typo)! Yi Zheng: Oh wow, you''re worthy of being called Dynasty''s Master Emperor! Clearly, both of them had logged into the Genius Union to watch Lin Huang clearing the checkpoints. Lin Huang merely shook his head while smiling without giving a hint of response. He did not reply because he did not think it was necessary. However, his Emperor''s Heart Ring began vibrating all of a sudden merely two to three minutes later. It was Yi Yeyu calling. He raised his brow and picked up the video call. The first thing he saw were two long legs that were as fair as radish as soon as the video was projected. He only saw Yi Yeyu''s face after she stepped back a distance away later. "It''s mid-autumn now. Aren''t you cold?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. "It''s none of your business!" Yi Yeyu hissed madly. "Didn''t you send me a message earlier? Why are you calling me now?" "You didn''t even reply to my message. Can''t I call to talk to you?" "The message you sent was pretty meaningless. I didn''t think it was necessary to reply," Lin Huang mumbled softly. "What did you say?!" "Nothing." Lin Huang changed the topic immediately upon seeing Yi Yeyu getting out of control. "Are you with your brother?" "No." Yi Yeyu pouted. "We logged onto the Genius Union at the same time because you were breaking through the checkpoints." "Oh, I thought you guys are together since you guys sent the messages almost at the same time." "I don''t think you know the Genius Union has been crowded today because of you breaking through the levels continuously. You went all the way to the 71st checkpoint, and broke the the Stairway Tree record that''s been there for a hundred years. I heard from my brother that the highest checkpoint recorded is the 64th checkpoint which was achieved a hundred years ago." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "The 64th checkpoint is rather difficult indeed." "Is the 71st checkpoint difficult too?" Yi Yeyu could not help but query. "It has a difficulty of its own." Lin Huang thought about it and nodded eventually. "Don''t give up if you didn''t break through. You might just do it the next time," Yi Yeyu comforted him thinking that he had failed. Lin Huang nodded while smiling, not bothering to explain. "Yeah, I think I''ll succeed the next time." "Keep up the spirit! Even if you fail the next time, you can try again. A man should be able to bear failures!" Lin Huang was not sure whether to laugh or cry as he hung up the phone. Yi Yeyu thought he was upset because he failed the checkpoint, hence she called to comfort him! 1097 I Bet Lin Xie Breaks Through This Checkpoin As people in the Genius Union were discussing Lin Huang, he had begun his new round of refining Godheads and broken Godheads. He shoved all six Godheads and 71 broken Godheads that Huang Tianfu had collected for him throughout the month. He only went to sleep after he refined until midnight. He did not push it this time and just maintained his regular daily routine. The next morning, Lin Huang headed out for breakfast before it was 7 a.m. The first thing he did after breakfast was to log into the Genius Union when he returned to the Emperor Palace. Since he logged out at the 71st checkpoint last time, he remained where he was when he logged in again. According to the very limited records left behind by the seniors, although the 71st checkpoint was a monster stage, the most difficult thing was the same as the Secret Forest on the 55th checkpoint whereby all the players would be shrunk to a thousandth of their actual body size. Lin Huang, who was 1.83 meters tall, shrank rapidly to less than 2 millimeters as he entered this checkpoint. Meanwhile, the Ant Tribe was native here, so their bodies would remain the same size. All of the Ant Tribe members had combat strength of immortal-level rank-9 while their core members were triple mutated legendary-level. However, among the legendary-level monsters, they ranked the highest when it came to strength and defense abilities. Even with an ancient relic, an ordinary immortal-level rank-9 powerhouse might not be able to break their defenses easily. There were very few pseudo-mythical-level monsters whereby their ratio was approximately one to a million ant monsters. However, since there were tens of billions of ant monsters, there were quite a substantial number of pseudo-mythical-level ant monsters. Apart from that, there were at least ten mythical-level ant queens. Each of them were more skilled in battle than the Queen Mothers on the 63rd checkpoint. Those reasons were why this checkpoint was a tough one to break through. However, all sorts of monsters on different stages was the easiest to Lin Huang. No matter how many there were, he could kill them all as soon as his God Figurine''s Combat Soul was out. There was no exception. ''According to the current rule of the Stairway Tree, I''ll pass this checkpoint right after I kill an ant queen. The chances of obtaining an ant queen''s complete card is almost zero. However, there are up to ten thousands of pseudo-mythical-level ant guardians, so I should be able to obtain some complete cards from there.'' Lin Huang knew that the possibility of obtaining a complete ant queen''s card was low, so he set his target on the pseudo-mythical-level ant guardians instead. Those ant guardians had ability nothing lower than the ant queen, they were even slightly more powerful than ant queens. Naturally, Lin Huang was happy to take the pseudo-mythical-level cards that were sent to his doorstep. After crushing a Double Reward Card, Lin Huang summoned the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Nightmare Tapir. All of the ant monsters went into a deep sleep whenever the human and two monsters passed by. Lin Huang did not get the Destructive Divine Mammoth to attack right away. Instead, he instructed the Nightmare Tapir to clear the path. His plan was simple: to kill all of the pseudo-mythical-level ant guardians without a single blunder. As he was searching for ant guardians on the checkpoint, his log-in attracted many Genius Union members to watch him play. "The Monster Killer has logged in again today!" "Is he trying to break through the checkpoint today since he failed yesterday?" "I think Lin Xie is rushing into it. He can totally wait for a few months and try again when his combat strength has elevated." "Looking at the information left behind by the seniors, the difficulty of the 71st checkpoint has multiplied compared to the 63rd checkpoint. Lin Xie might fail again this time." Almost everyone in the Genius Union was pessimistic about his attempt. After all, there were tons of examples before this. In the history of the Genius Union, only a total of 13 people arrived at the 71st checkpoint. However, only three of them managed to break through the 71st checkpoint and get to the 72nd checkpoint. However, a handful of the audience thought Lin Huang might be able to make it. Unfortunately, their voices were drowned in the others'' ridicule and scorn. Lin Huang''s log-in this time caused many of the Genius Union members to log in again. Some even seized the opportunity to open a bet. Some daring ones even open a 1:100 bet to attract people to place their wagers that Lin Xie would break through the 71st checkpoint. "I bet 100,000 points that Lin Xie will break through the 71st checkpoint." A lady in a ponytail walked to the maker who set up the wager to be as high as 1:150. Her long legs and voluptuous breasts made many men gulp in a mix of lust and nervousness. However, soon everyone saw a handsome man following not far behind her. "Milady, are you sure you want to bet on him? You won''t be getting back a single point if you lose all 100,000 points," a gambler next to her reminded out of kindness. "Are the odds 1:150 here?" Yi Yeyu confirmed with the maker again. "That''s right." "Then, I bet 100,000 points that Lin Xie will break through this checkpoint!" As soon as Yi Yeyu was done speaking, Yi Zheng walked up behind her. "I''ll bet 300,000 points that Lin Xie will pass this checkpoint." The maker glanced at the siblings and muttered to himself before accepting their transfer, "Idiots!"'' Lin Huang, on the other hand, had no idea that him postponing his decision to break through the checkpoint had drawn so much attention. He even made the entire betting business of the Genius Union boom. It was not that the Genius Union did not have such betting before, but it had never escalated this big. After hanging up the call with Yi Yeyu yesterday, Lin Huang began the new round of Godhead refinement right way. He did not look at the Genius Union forum at all. Naturally, he had no idea about everything that was happening. After spending over half an hour locating all the pseudo-mythical-level ant guardians, Lin Huang got the Nightmare Tapir to put over 10,000 pseudo-mythical-level ant guardians into a deep slumber quietly. Notifications from the system popped up one after another as soon as the massive amount of ant guardians were killed. "Congratulations, you''ve obtained complete ant guardian Monster Card (pseudo-mythical-level) x2! "Congratulations, you''ve obtained ant guardian Monster Card pieces (pseudo-mythical-level) x2!" After getting rid of the ant guardians, Lin Huang patted the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s butt. "You can clear the scene now. Don''t do anything to the ant queen yet. Otherwise, I''ll lose the points." The Destructive Divine Mammoth began its killing spree as soon as Lin Huang ordered it. It stomped both its feet one after another, crushing all the ant monsters. Lin Huang''s points on the annual leaderboard skyrocketed again! In less than ten minutes, his points experienced a boost by ten billion points, which was the daily maximum. Seeing that his points had stopped growing, Lin Huang controlled the Destructive Divine Mammoth to kill an ant queen and he tore through the 71st checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. As expected, there was no complete Monster Card after killing the ant queen. Although he saw it coming, he could not help but feel a little disappointed. He wasted no time on the 71st checkpoint and headed off to the 72nd checkpoint while sitting on the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s back. 1098 The 72nd Checkpoin "He broke through! Lin Xie broke through!" "Sh*t, the checkpoint number has changed. It''s really the 72nd checkpoint now!" "He''s insane! The 72nd checkpoint is already the highest record in history. Does it mean he has matched an equal record now?" "Did you guys notice that Lin Xie has gotten another ten billion points today? I''m suspecting that he didn''t fail yesterday but postponed it on purpose and did it today for the sake of the ten billion points." "That''s something terrifying to hear. If what the commenter above said is true about Lin Xie killing monsters as just a game to obtain points, his real ability is indeed nerve-wrecking." Just when Lin Huang arrived on the 72nd checkpoint, the entire Genius Union was in a heated discussion. Not only were there a few folds more online members now, but even the entire Genius Union forum was also crowded. All the hot topics were related to Lin Xie, and there were even more compared to yesterday. Naturally, Lin Huang had no idea about all that. At that moment, he was putting all of his focus on the 72nd checkpoint before him. According to the very limited records from the people who had broken through in the past, it was an endless ocean on the 72nd checkpoint. Lin Huang''s shrunken body from the 71st checkpoint remained the same. He was still in a micro body size which was a thousandth of his original size. The 10,000-meter wide ocean before him became an ocean that was 10,000 kilometers wide since his body had shrunk by 1,000 times. However, the difficult part of this checkpoint was to cross the 10,000 meters of water. Looking at the countable records, there were three difficult points about the 72nd checkpoint. The first was that this ocean had extremely low water density, and there was no skill that one could use to walk on it. Since flying was prohibited on the Stairway Tree, the only way to cross it was to swim. The second point was that this ocean had many monsters with the lowest combat strength being imperial-level black gold-rank. Moreover, most of them existed in groups. The third one was that as long as players came in, sea monsters would sense the players easily from a certain distance. As soon as they sensed players coming, they would advance immediately to attack. Theoretically, the longer the player stayed in this ocean, the more imperial-level monsters he would attract. The most powerful players on the Stairway Tree all failed this checkpoint because they attracted numerous sea monsters not long after getting into the water. Furthermore, the arrival of the low combat strength sea monsters would attract all sorts of sea monsters of higher combat strength to swarm forth. They would almost always encounter imperial-level white gold-rank monsters every time they were swimming halfway. There were even terrifying imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters. However, those players'' combat strength was limited to immortal-level rank-9, so they could not escape from such monsters at all, let alone fight them. ''This ocean is totally the sea monsters'' stage. No wonder those seniors couldn''t break through it.'' Lin Huang knew what the difficulty of this checkpoint was. ''Even if a person with compelling abilities could fight imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters with their immortal-level rank-9 combat strength, they could handle if there was only one monster. However, they would have to flee if they encounter ten or 20 of them.'' Watching the calm ocean surface standing at the border of the coastline, Lin Huang was well aware of the danger lurking beneath the peaceful water. However, at that instant, to Lin Huang, such danger was no threat to him at all. He stepped out after summoning the Enchanted Fairy. Perhaps he could not walk on the ocean, but he could easily solve it. All he would have to do was to build a bridge. That was precisely what he was going to do. As the Enchanted Fairy walked on the surface of water, everywhere she passed by turned into a path of ice. Lin Huang followed behind her and walked on the frozen water. The both of them stepped on the ocean which began to tremble intensely. The ocean that was peaceful seemed to have turned into a rave party. Waves that were thousands of meters high were sloshing towards the duo one after another. The Enchanted Fairy then activated her Territory skill. The temperature of the entire place plummeted as white mist lingered above the ocean. The terrifying waves turned into giant icebergs of all shapes as soon as they touched the mist. They looked like they had been erected for hundreds of thousands of years. Less than half a minute after overcoming the tsunami, the monsters beneath the ocean smelled Lin Huang''s aura and came rushing in droves. This proved that the monsters in the sea could still sense the players'' existence even though there was no water around Lin Huang. The first round of monsters were a group of Fiendish Piranhas with sharp teeth. There were tens of thousands of them. These Fiendish Piranhas were as long as an adult arm. They had black scales and fangs in their mouth that looked like countless shape blades. The damage was estimated to be just as devastating as an ancient relic. Although these Fiendish Piranhas had rather low combat strength whereby they were only on imperial-level black gold-rank, there were many of them. Had some other immortal-level rank-9 powerhouse encountered this wave of attack, he or she might have been devoured with no flesh left. Even Chan Dou, who was at his peak, could only choose to escape because he would not be able to fight at all. Naturally, Lin Huang sensed the Fiendish Piranhas coming. However, he did not worry at all and proceeded to run behind the Enchanted Fairy. Sensing that Lin Huang was moving quickly above the ocean, the Fiendish Piranhas accelerated beneath the surface of the water. Observing the ice above them, the Fiendish Piranhas collided into the ice directly. They knew that smashing the ice would make the target fall into the sea and become their prey. Bang, bang, bang! The Fiendish Piranhas smashed into the ice one after another. Muffled thuds came from the clashing of the almost indestructible fish heads against the bottom of the ice. Subsequently, the Fiendish Piranhas'' heads were deformed from the bashing. Some of their heads even cracked and brain juice flowed out. Although they were in a devastating state, their attack did nohing to the ice at all. Sensing the fishes'' commotion with his Territory skill, Lin Huang merely glanced at them with his Divine Kinesis. He saw a massive amount of fish monsters bashing the ice and turning into sorry-looking carcasses. They sank to the bottom of the sea slowly and he soon ignored them. He expected this, so he was not concerned at all. One must know that even a demigod could not fight the Enchanted Fairy''s frost, let alone these imperial-level black gold-rank dumb fishes. The Fiendish Piranhas'' suicidal move caused all of them to die. However, it was just the first round of attack. Nobody knew if it was Lin Huang''s aura or the dead Fiendish Piranhas'' flesh, but the second round of monsters came as soon as the Fiendish Piranhas died. This round of monsters were fish monsters of a bigger size. They also had sharp teeth, but they were over a meter long and there were two subtle scarlet stripes on their dark green scales. It was a fish monster called Scarlet, and they were thirsty for blood. Compared to eating flesh, they prefer to drink blood. After this round of monsters noticed Lin Huang, they looked like they were charmed and they struck the ice fearlessly. However, the same fate that befell the Fiendish Piranhas happened to them too. In less than a minute, the entire group of fishes were killed. Subsequently, the third, the fourth, and more rounds of monsters came attacking. Apart from a minority of them who survived as a result of having tough heads, almost all the rest were killed. Those that survived escaped immediately, no longer daring to come after Lin Huang. 1099 Salted Fish As Lin Huang was running on the surface of the frozen water, the ocean beneath was filled with all sorts of sea monster carcasses. All of them had died from the continuous bashing into the ice. "Are these sea monsters on Ecstasy? Why are they so crazy?" Lin Huang looked puzzled as he watched the sea monsters under the ice that were killing themselves over him. He could clearly sense with his Divine Telekinesis that those sea monsters under the ice seemed to have lost their mind when they bashed into the ice. They ignored the ice blocking their way as well as their friends that were dead. "I think the system set the monsters in this stage to go into a frenzy," said Bloody that was in his sleeve through voice transmission, "Maybe they only have one order in their head when they sense players, which is to attack them. They seemed to be hypnotized. "Although they have imperial-level combat strength, monsters on this stage aren''t gifted with normal intelligence. They''re even dumber than the bugs that we encountered in some of the checkpoints. I suspect it''s the Stairway Tree''s system that set it that way on purpose to lower the difficulty." "Why do I feel it''s actually increasing the difficulty?" Lin Huang could not help but voice his opinion. "They go into a frenzy as soon as they sense the players and attack the players as if they''ve lost their minds. Moreover, during the frenzy, their speed and attack strength experience an obvious boost. They even gave up on attacking sea monsters of other tribes that were in their territory, whereby the players became their sole target. Isn''t that more difficult?" "It''s more difficult on the surface, but in reality, the difficulty level is lower," Bloody shared a different opinion. "Look at these sea monsters. Under such a frenzy, their attack mode is the same. They know they can''t break the ice wall, but they don''t even try to figure another way around it. This stage is purely to test one''s ability to break through it head-on. If these sea monsters have ordinary intelligence, they would''ve had more advanced techniques when going after the players compared to what they''re doing now. "Let''s use the simplest strategy as an example. They don''t even need to attack the players strenuously now. All they have to do is to find a key location where the player will definitely pass by and gather everyone there. The player will then fall into the trap automatically." Lin Huang just realized that he did not think it through earlier after hearing what Bloody said. As they chatted, a gigantic black silhouette was approaching rapidly beneath the ocean. Terrifying waves rumbled on both sides of the ice just when Lin Huang sensed that something was wrong. The waves were up to 10,000 meter high now. The Enchanted Fairy merely waved her sleeves, and the insane waves turned into two massive icebergs. Meanwhile, the giant beast beneath the ocean had its mouth wide open as soon as the waves came. It was going to swallow Lin Huang together with the icy path beneath his feet. However, the massive waves on both sides of the ice path turned into gigantic icebergs just when it opened its mouth, and it happened to bite into them. Lin Huang heard cracks before gory blood gushed out of the sea king monster''s mouth like a waterfall. Even a few of its teeth cracked and fell, creating turbulent waves on the sea. What made Lin Huang not sure whether to laugh or cry was that this sea king monster''s mouth was then filled with the two icebergs. Its upper and lower jaws were opened to the widest. Since the bottom of the icebergs were much bigger than the top, it could not even spit them out now. At the moment, the gigantic sea king monster seemed to have two giant weights shoved into its mouth. It fell into an awkward situation whereby it could not bite into it, close its mouth and neither could it not swallow the icebergs. Since the ice path beneath Lin Huang''s feet was connected to the two icebergs, the sea king monster''s entire head was stuck. It could not move despite attempting a few times by whipping its body about, but its effort was to no avail. The sea king monster''s eight big, googly eyes were staring at Lin Huang. It looked like it was going to cry. Nobody knew whether it felt wronged or if it was hurting. Lin Huang even sensed that it was revealing a human expression of awkwardness and embarrassment. He was not sure if that was an illusion. After chuckling at it without showing any sympathy, Lin Huang thought he should snap a photo of such a scene that was hard to come by for memory''s sake. He activated the camera on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and took more than ten high-resolution digital photos of this sea king monster that looked like a crocodile. He even posed in many selfies with it as the background. After taking the photos, Lin Huang left the sea king monster behind and ran towards the 73rd checkpoint behind the Enchanted Fairy. He decided not to kill the sea king monster mainly because the funny incident would make him laugh for the entire day. It gave color to his rather boring checkpoint breakthrough. Naturally, he would not let it go. It was fortunate that the Enchanted Fairy did not turn it into an ice sculpture. Such a monster would not die even if it did not eat or drink while being stuck where it was. As for regaining its freedom, it depended on when the ice path beneath Lin Huang''s feet melted. Eating normally again would depend on when it could spit out or swallow the icebergs in its mouth when they melted. The monsters Lin Huang encountered since the imperial-level purple gold-rank sea king monster were getting more and more powerful. It proved that the closer one was towards the 73rd checkpoint, the more powerful the monsters became. After he broke through half the checkpoint, almost all of the sea monsters he encountered were above imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Especially when he was left with a tenth of his journey, almost all of the sea monsters that attacked him were on imperial-level purple gold-rank. However, these sea monsters were not as fortunate as the sea king monster. The Enchanted Fairy turned them into ice sculptures immediately as soon as they approached the ice path. Lin Huang spent over two hours to finally complete the ice path that was 10,000 kilometers long to him since he could not fly and his body had shrunk. As he stepped out of the ice path and entered the 73rd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang turned back to his original body size in the blink of an eye. He stood on a field and turned around to look at the 72nd checkpoint that he had just passed. He saw a white icy line that was only as thick as his finger. There were ice sculptures of all sizes and forms on the both sides of the icy line, seeming like exquisite art pieces. Lin Huang tried his very best to see through the clouds above the ocean, peering at the sea king monster, whose mouth was still stuck, far away. It was still there and it had gave up struggling completely. Just like that, it was hanging on the white icy line like a salted fish an aunty was drying on a clothesline. Lin Huang chuckled and turned around to enter the dense jungle on the 73rd checkpoint. 1100 The No.1 Young-Generation Powerhouse "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 73rd checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record! "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 73rd checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record! "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance Lin Xie for entering the 73rd checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record!" As soon as Lin Huang stepped onto the 73rd checkpoint, every active Genius Union member received the same three messages whether they were online or not. The messages were about Lin Xie breaking historical record. The three messages that were like full-service notification in games were sent by the Stairway Tree system to all active members as soon as Lin Huang broke through the checkpoint without any exceptions. Lin Huang''s mind-blowing feat spread all over the Genius Union. The entire union was stirred. One must know that everyone thought that the 72nd checkpoint was the final destination when Lin Huang arrived on the 73rd checkpoint. Whoever managed to make it to the checkpoint was already deemed to have achieved a grand victory. After all, there were only four people in history, including Lin Huang, who had ever arrived at the checkpoint. Everyone in the Genius Union knew how powerful Lin Xie''s ability was. Furthermore, he might even be Chan Dou''s successor. However, almost nobody thought Lin Huang could broke through the 72nd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree today. Now that he had broken through the impossible limit in the form of the checkpoint, everyone was floored. "The Monster Killer has broken the record. Holy shit!" "I must admit that the Monster Killer totally slayed today!" "Everyone thought he was cheating when he obtained eight million points back then. When he obtained 100 million points, people still insisted that he cheated. When he obtained 100 billion points, the voice of doubt faded. He hardly logs in now, but he broke through the checkpoint that nobody has ever passed in a hundred years. Lin Xie has proved himself again and again that he doesn''t need to cheat at all!" "From today onwards, the most powerful young generation is no longer the Five Princes. There''s only one name, and that name is Lin Xie!" On the 21st checkpoint of the Stairway Tree, Yi Zheng was standing at the assembly point while looking at the first name on the projected leaderboard. His emotions were stirred. "What? Are you envious of him?" Yi Yeyu walked to him from behind and tilted her head while asking with a smile. "A little," Yi Zheng admitted while smiling with a nod. "We kind of watched him grow up." Yi Yeyu also lifted her head to look at the first name on the leaderboard. "To be exact, we can testify for his growth," Yi Zheng corrected her. "Who would''ve thought this insignificant little guy would grow so powerful?" Yi Yeyu shook her head while smiling. "Not only is he the No. 1 powerhouse of the young generation, but he''s also the Emperor of Dynasty." "Whether he''s the No. 1 powerhouse of the young generation or the Emperor of Dynasty, these identities won''t be the last of him. He will go further and grow even more powerful." Yi Zheng knew very well that Lin Huang would not just stop there. "Brother, until which checkpoint do you think he will get to?" Yi Yeyu could not help but probe. "I think he''ll get to whatever checkpoint that''s available on the Stairway Tree," Yi Zheng added after he was done speaking, "Of course, he might not succeed today. He might do so tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or next month If I have the talent and ability that he does, I''ll definitely do whatever I can to pass through all the checkpoints on the Stairway Tree." Just when Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu were discussing, the other Genius Union members were talking about a similar topic too. Compared to the time when very few people thought Lin Huang could pass the 72nd checkpoint, now most people thought he might advance even further. The question was that nobody was sure which checkpoint he would get to. A minority of them was not on board with that. They argued that there was absolutely no reference about the checkpoints later on compared to the 72 checkpoints before. Without any references and strategies, everything was a completely new discovery. The difficulty of breaking through the following checkpoints would be relatively multiplied. In fact, just like what these people expected, Lin Huang had no reference since nobody had ever gotten to that checkpoint before. He had no idea what was coming for him. As soon as he entered the dense jungle on the 73rd checkpoint, Lin Huang realized he could no longer activate his Territory skill. He could not even spread his Divine Telekinesis and had lost all his detective techniques altogether. Feeling helpless, he summoned Lancelot and got him to be the herald, opening the path for him. Although Lancelot only possessed imperial-level yellow gold-rank combat strength, his ability was nothing less than imperial-level''s. With his powerful defensive skill such as the Dark Mirror, he could handle most threats on the Stairway Tree. Lin Huang notificationd that something was a little off after following Lancelot for a couple minutes. "It''s a little strange that we haven''t encountered any monsters on this checkpoint. We haven''t even encountered any obstacles at all. Looking at the speed, we''ll break through the checkpoint after this." "This is a maze stage," Bloody spoke all of a sudden. "A maze?" "I just notificationd that there are a few trees that are exactly the same as the ones before us. At first, I thought they''re just trees that look alike, but later on, I notificationd they aren''t the only ones," Bloody voiced its observation. "I then tried releasing four Leech Pods. Using me as the center point, they flew straight toward four directions, namely the front, the back, the left and, the right. However, I sensed that the four Leech Pods began to deviate from the original route as they flew less than ten meters away. They only deviated a little at first, but it got worse. They''re circling at a specific point in the end." "Although they''re circling where they are, the surroundings where the four Leech Pods are observing are changing, providing an illusion. If not for my ability to sense their exact location, I might''ve been deceived by the illusion too." "So, we''ve been in an illusion as soon as we stepped into this checkpoint?" Lin Huang squinted and instructed Lancelot to stop moving. Lin Huang looked around his surroundings. He did not see anything out of the ordinary within his field of vision. Since he could not use his Divine Telekinesis and Territory skill, it was hard for him to realize it even if he really was in an illusion. An idea popped into his head, and he summoned the Nightmare Tapir directly. As soon as the Nightmare Tapir was summoned, there was some chirping not far away. The Nightmare Tapir looked around, swinging its long trunk and opening its mouth. In the next second, the images around it were sucked into the Nightmare Tapir''s muzzle like a tornado. When the illusion was removed, the real surroundings were revealed. It was a dense jungle, but not a typical one because there were no trees or bushes in this dense jungle. There were only white mushrooms with black human faces. These mushrooms were of various sizes whereby some of them were two to three meters tall and some were only the length of a finger. The only similarity was that the faces on these mushrooms seemed to be asleep at the moment. "So, was it these mushrooms that performed the illusion earlier?" Lin Huang looked shocked. "I think they''re the Demonic Mushroom from the abyss. It''s an evil spirit type of monster that''s an expert at casting illusion and hypnotization!" Bloody explained, "But these are just the stems, which are equivalent to clones. The main stem must be hiding." "I don''t think there''s such monster in the monster guide, is there?" Lin Huang asked in confusion. "Indeed, there''s no such record in the monster guide. I saw it once in some other documents unintentionally," Bloody explained in response. "Let''s go then! Onward to the next checkpoint." Since the illusion had been removed, Lin Huang thought he would not waste any more time clearing these mushroom clones. All he wanted to do was to break through this checkpoint as soon as possible to see what was next. 1101 Record-breaking Reward "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 74th checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record! "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 74th checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record! "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 74th checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record!" After removing the illusion, Lin Huang spent less than five minutes and successfully broke through the 73rd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. The record-breaking notifications popped up on all the Genius Union members'' Emperor''s Heart Rings. "Damn, he broke the record again. It''s been less than ten minutes!" "I''ve just posted a thread on the forum saying it''s impossible for him to break through the checkpoint within a short period of time. I feel like my whole face is burning up. (ЩЩnЩ)3" "The commenter above, is your face swollen now? (?)" "There, there. I''ve gotten used to getting a slap in the face from Lin Xie. My face is thicker than the corner of the city wall now. ()a" "I think the commenter above is giving out some strange vibes" A few minutes after the discussions went on, another three Stairway Tree notifications chimed again. "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 75th checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record!" "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 75th checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record!" "Congratulations to the Deputy Chief of the Heaven Alliance, Lin Xie, for entering the 75th checkpoint and breaking the Stairway Tree record!" Everyone was speechless now. The three notifications about Lin Xie in the morning flooded everyone''s screens nine times. Moreover, it was a system notification from the Stairway Tree which one could not block. Even if they were to log out of the Genius Union, they would receive the notifications on their Emperor''s Heart Rings, so they were forced to look at the notifications. Those who insisted that it was impossible for Lin Xie to pass the higher checkpoints again went completely silent after seeing the notifications. However, Lin Huang logged out again after realizing that the 75th checkpoint was a monster stage. The people in the Genuis Union thought it was strange for him to log out all of a sudden. Most of them had the same thought pop into their head. ''Did Lin Xie fail?'' The first thing Lin Huang did after logging out was to look at his Emperor''s Heart Ring to check the reward for breaking the reward. He glanced through the nine public notifications and scrolled down. Then, he finally saw the rewards for breaking the record. "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a bizarre seed." "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a God-level soul crystal (Virtual God rank-3)" "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a God-level soul crystal (Virtual God rank-3)" "A bizarre seed and two God-level soul crystals. Not bad at all," Lin Huang murmured in satisfaction. The bizarre seed was comparable to a unique god item. Lin Huang had obtained a Sword Spirit the last time he integrated one. He had no idea what he would get from the one that he had just obtained. Meanwhile, he knew exactly what could the two God-level soul crystals do. "With Virtual God rank-3 god-level soul crystals, one should be able to boost one God Figurine''s Combat Soul to Virtual God rank-1. I can boost two of them with the two soul crystals." Just when Lin Huang was going to summon his God Figurine''s Combat Souls for elevating the combat strength, his Emperor''s Heart Ring began vibrating. It was the acting chief of the Heaven Alliance, Jian Fei, who was calling. Although Lin Huang thought it was a little odd, he accepted the video call request anyway. "What''s up?" Lin Huang asked directly upon seeing the projection of Jian Fei''s chubby face. "Deputy Chief Lin, congratulations for breaking the Stairway Tree record!" Jian Fei stepped back and revealed half of his body as he congratulated while smiling. "It was just luck." Lin Huang smirked. "Luck is just a part of ability. You''re the only one in the Genius Union who made it. This proves your ability," Jian Fei proceeded to compliment. "Just tell me whatever you''re going to say, Chief Jian." "Well, not only do the people from the Genius Union know about you breaking the record today, but it''s spread to the entire cultivation world. Some media representatives contacted me, in hopes of interviewing you" Lin Huang got a rough idea of what Jian Fei was trying to say before he was done speaking. He wanted to seize the opportunity to boost the publicity of the Heaven Alliance with Lin Huang''s fame. "I''ll agree to the interview, but I''ll only do it with one media representative. There''s no need to say the same thing to different media representatives. It''s a waste of my time and others who are watching the news." "Sure, I''ll make the arrangements." Although Lin Huang had strict conditions, Jian Fei accepted it anyway. "Where should we hold the interview?" "The venue..." Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to do it in Emperor City. He had been gaining too much attention lately, which was something he did not want more of. "Let''s do it at First City in Division 1 then." "There''s a Stabubucks Coffee in southwest of First City''s Union Square. Let''s do the interview there." "Sure, the media hopes to do the interview today. Do you have time today?" "Yes, but the earlier, the better. I have something else to do after I''m done with that." "I''ll discuss with the media and I''ll call you as soon as the time is set." Jian Fei hung up immediately. Soon, he sent a message over. "The time has been set at 1 p.m. We''ll meet at First City''s Stabubucks Coffee. The media that''ll be interviewing you is The Pioneer." "I''ll be there on time." Lin Huang gave a simple reply. Naturally, Lin Huang knew about The Pioneer. Although the media did not provide the most publicity, it was the Union Government''s official publication. They rarely interviewed people who were not Union Government members. However, it was beneficial to Lin Huang. At least, such an official media would not ask awkward and strange questions whenever they questioned people. Seeing that there was still time, Lin Huang took out the two god-level soul crystals that he had just obtained. He then summoned the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx. Then, he put the two soul crystals into their bodies. The two God Figurine''s Combat Souls began refining the soul crystals immediately. On the other hand, Lin Huang set his alarm clock and began a new round of refining Godhead. He did not integrate the bizarre seed that he had just gotten right away because he was not sure how long it would take for it to activate. He had too much on his plate right now, so he could only put it aside at the moment and figure out what to do about the bizarre seed after he was done with his stuff. Soon, over two hours had passed and it was almost 12.30 p.m. The alarm clock on Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring began ringing, stirring him from his Godhead refinement. He opened his eyes and realized that the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls had yet to refine the soul crystals completely. He then left the both of them behind at the Emperor Palace, and summoned the Divine Sun Tree to watch both the God Figurine''s Combat Souls before walking out of Emperor Palace. He headed towards First City. 1102 The Five Princes Are An Era Lin Huang stepped into the dimensional portal after disguising as Lin Xie with a demigod-level mask. He arrived at First City in Division 1. He arrived at the southwestern side of Union Square immediately and found the Stabubucks Coffee that he had been once before. After ordering a cup of coffee, he found an empty table under a gigantic sun umbrella. He browsed through the Genius Union forum while drinking his coffee. Suddenly, he realised that almost all of the topics were about him. He opened a few trending threads and read the contents. Compared to the judgmental comments before, most of them complimented him. Lin Huang even saw a few familiar user names who used to condemn him frequently, but they were teasing themselves for having misjudged him now. As he was reading the threads, a man wearing black leather shoes walked straight to his table. Lin Huang lifted his head. He could not help but raise his brow upon seeing the guest. It was the vice president of Agency EA, Guan Zhong. "May I sit?" Guan Zhong asked. "Suit yourself." Lin Huang closed the Genius Union forum page while looking at Guan Zhong. "Master Emperor, I never thought you''d come to First City with this identity of yours." Guan Zhong exposed Lin Huang''s identity as soon as he sat down. Clearly, Agency EA had already found out that Lin Xie was Lin Huang himself. "I''m just meeting someone here." Lin Huang took a sip of coffee while holding the cup with both hands. "You don''t have to look at me like I''m a thief." "I''ve heard about you breaking the record," Guan Zhong said while smiling. "Congrats." "It''s just a child''s play," Lin Huang raised his brow, "Is there anything that you need from me?" "We''ve decoded most of God Bless''s information. I''ll send it to you within these two days after I''ve sorted it out," Guan Zhong spoke while smiling. "Did you come all the way here just to tell me this?" "I just happened to bump into you. I came here to have a cup of coffee." Guan Zhong smiled while explaining, "I''m a regular here." "Alright then. Is there anything else?" Guan Zhong thought about it and could not help but say, "I have a personal question that I''d like you to answer." Lin Huang roughly knew what he was going to ask right away. "Did you kill Zhuge Feifan, Master Emperor?" As expected, Guan Zhong asked what Lin Huang was expecting. "Why? Are you going to take revenge?" Lin Huang asked while smiling. "No, I just want to know the truth." "The truth doesn''t matter. Zhuge Feifan is dead now and you''re alive. This should be the end of the story," said Lin Huang to Guan Zhong while staring at him. Guan Zhong was stunned to hear that and nodded in relief. "Thanks." He had already obtained the answer from Lin Huang. Apart from him and Qian Rui, nobody else other than Zhuge Feifan''s killer knew that Guan Zhong made Zhuge Feifan show himself the other day. ''Zhuge Feifan is dead now and you''re alive.'' Lin Huang''s answer was precisely what Guan Zhong wanted to hear. Guan Zhong stood up and left right after thanking Lin Huang. Just when he stood up, Jian Fei and the media representative doing the interview, Xu Qingya, arrived at the same time. Xu Qingya recognized Guan Zhong right away. A shocked expression flashed through her eyes when he saw Lin Huang who was sitting there nonchalantly drinking his coffee. Seeing Guan Zhong leave with his takeaway coffee, Xu Qingya and Jian Fei walked straight towards Lin Huang. "Hi, Mr. Lin. My name is Xu Qingya. I''m the reporter from The Pioneer." Xu Qingya walked to the table and introduced herself. "Please take a seat." Lin Huang lifted his head and observed her in silence. Xu Qingya had neat, short hair. She looked very experienced. She did not dress very formally or too casually. It was just right. Jian Fei, on the other hand, dressed in a formal suit. He looked like he was getting married. Lin Huang would definitely tease him any other day, but he thought about it and said nothing since Xu Qingya was next to him. After Xu Qingya and Jian Fei took their seats, they ordered two cups of coffee and the interview began. "I''d like to start the interview by congratulating Mr. Lin for breaking the Stairway Tree record. Today is the biggest historical moment the Genius Union has ever had since it was founded." "Thanks." Lin Huang nodded courteously. "Mr. Lin, can you tell me your current combat strength?" Xu Qingya went into working mode. "Immortal-level rank-9. Many people in the Heaven Alliance know about this." Naturally, it was impossible that Lin Huang would say that he was on immortal-level rank-10. Since he had immortal-level aura anyway, nobody could tell if he was on rank-9 or 10. "You''ve gotten to immortal-level rank-9 so soon? From what we know, Mr. Lin, you were only on holy flame-level last year. Am I right?" Xu Qingya had been wanting to ask that for a very long time. She could finally ask him face-to-face now. "Indeed, my combat strength elevation speed is faster than the rest. If you want a solid reason, I can only say that I have rather good luck." Lin Huang created an excuse for himself. In reality, Xu Qingya was dissatisfied with the answer. However, since he clearly did not want to answer the question, she gave up instead of dwelling on it, figuring it might be his cultivation secret. "Mr. Lin, since you''re already on immortal-level rank-9, you''re close to imperial-level now. When do you plan to elevate?" "I just told Old Jian about this a few days ago. I''ll take at least a month or at the most, 40 to 50 days. I''m almost done with the preparation," Lin Huang told her directly. "Does that mean you''ll withdraw from the Genius Union and the Heaven Alliance automatically a month later?" Although Xu Qingya was not a Genius Union member, she had studied the system before. "Yes." Jian Fei took over the conversation as soon as he heard that. "Deputy Chief Lin did indeed discuss his elevation with us a few days ago. We''ve already come up with a new Deputy Chief candidate list together. However, even though he''s leaving the Genius Union, Deputy Chief Lin will be a part of our the Heaven Alliance forever. Chief Chan has said this before. Every Heaven Alliance member is family. It''s a fact that will never change even if someone were to leave the Genius Union." "I heard Mr. Lin and Mr. Chan are pretty close in private. Is that true?" "We''re pretty close," Lin Huang confirmed while grinning. "Boss Chan is a charming man with character. He''s always cared for me. I''m fortunate to be working with him." "Many people on the Internet say that the Five Princes are out of date now. They say there''s only one name among the most powerful young generation, and that name is Lin Xie. What do you think of that?" "First of all, I don''t think I''m the No. 1 powerhouse of the young generation. All people see is the number of checkpoints I''ve broken through on the Stairway Tree. I don''t think it means anything." "''Powerful'' is a word with broad meaning. Having powerful ability is just a part of it. Some people might be more powerful than me on the inside, some people might be more intelligent than me, some people might have willpower that''s stronger than mine. Being called a powerful person is just a shallow title." "About the Five Princes, I don''t think the Five Princes are just about Boss Chan and the other four. They''re the sign of a new era, one that encourages us to look up and fight. This era is one it itself, irreplacable. 1103 Ten Billion Points Are Still Points The interview with Xu Qingya went on for over two hours. The entire thing was more relaxed than Lin Huang expected. Opposed to what Lin Huang was expecting, although Xu Qingya was very young in her early 20s, she was careful with her words. The entire interview sounded more like a chat with a new friend. He had no idea that he surprised her even more. She initially thought that Lin Xie was all about theories and might not have deeper a opinion on things. She took on this interview because Lin Xie was the trending topic in the entire cultivation world. However, throughout the interview, Xu Qingya realized not only did he have powerful abilities, but he also had deeper knowledge and more insightful opinions than she expected. Even Jian Fei''s jaw dropped from the many things that Lin Huang said. At the end of the interview, Xu Qingya finally went back to the initial topic. "Many people wondered on the Internet if you have techniques for killing monsters? Can you share that with us a little?" "Techniques of killing monsters? Doesn''t everyone do the same thing where we just annihilate them? Maybe I''m an Imperial Censor, so I''ve got the upper hand in this aspect. After all, I have very powerful imperial monsters and I can summon quite a number of them." "How about your technique of breaking through checkpoints? Is there any strategy that you can recommend us?" "I really don''t. Boss Chan and the rest know that I never look at the checkpoint-breaking strategies. I almost never looked at the contents of the checkpoints before the 56th checkpoint, and I never looked at the strategies either since the 63rd checkpoint. However, figuring that it might be difficult to break through the checkpoint, I checked the contents from the 63rd to the 72nd checkpoint in advance." "Why don''t you look at the content and strategies?" "Because I think it''s unnecessary. Breaking through the checkpoints itself is a process to test one''s abilities. To me, breaking through checkpoints with strategies can''t test my personal ability. Perhaps I want different things than the rest. I personally hope to enjoy the process instead of treating it as a challenge. If breaking checkpoints is no fun to me, I''d rather not do it." "So, why did you quit when you got to the 75th checkpoint today? Is it because the 75th checkpoint is more difficult?" "No, the 75th checkpoint is a monster stage. I''ve already gotten the maximum points on the Stairway Tree today, so I''ll have to do it tomorrow. After all, ten billion points are still points." Lin Huang answered while smiling. "So, you logged out when you were on 71st checkpoint earlier for the same reason too?" "Yes," Lin Huang said honestly. "So, Mr. Lin, which checkpoint do you think you can get to? Is it possible that you''ll surpass the entire the Stairway Tree?" Xu Qingya asked her last ultimate question. "I''m not sure about that because I''ve no idea about the checkpoint contents and difficulty after this, so I can''t speculate. However, I personally hope to break through the entire the Stairway Tree before I elevate to imperial-level," Lin Huang responded while smiling, "In reality, I''d really like to know what will happen after I''ve broken through the entire Stairway Tree." "I''ll congratulate you for breaking through successfully in advance then. Smash through the entire the Stairway Tree!" Xu Qingya extended her arm while grinning at Lin Huang. "I''ve actually asked questions that I shouldn''t have asked in the interview today. Nonetheless, your response has gone beyond my expectations. I''ve got a feeling that this might not be last time I''ll be speaking to you. I hope to interview you again in the future for a nice chat." "Thanks, I hope for that day to come too." Lin Huang extended his arm to shake her hand. He thought time had flown by quickly after the interview that lasted for over two hours ended. Watching Xu Qingya leave with Jian Fei, he stepped into the dimensional portal and returned to Emperor City. When he arrived at the Emperor Palace, the two God Figurine''s Combat Souls, the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx had refined the god-level soul crystals completely and elevated to Virtual God rank-1. Meanwhile, Lin Huang went into his Godhead refinement mode again. The next morning, he logged into the Genius Union after breakfast. Lin Huang''s body shrunk 1,000 times again at the monster stage of the 75th checkpoint. His Divine Telekinesis and Territory were also blocked. The entire checkpoint looked like a peaceful, golden desert in his field of vision. He did not even see a single monster. In reality, the monster on this checkpoint was a type of desert spider. Lin Huang had never seen a completely golden desert spider in the monster guide before. Therefore, he had no idea what its exact name was. All he knew was that such a spider would usually hide under the gravel. They would attack whenever they sensed movement in the ground. At the same time while attacking, they would spit webs out to capture their prey. The reason why Lin Huang knew that was that he had been attacked when he stepped into the checkpoint yesterday. A spiderweb had gotten stuck on his face. However, the spider that was merely on imperial-level white gold-rank suffered even more than he did as he sliced it into 18 pieces with his sword. "I can''t fly on the the Stairway Tree, so I can only walk on the sand. I can''t use my Divine Telekinesis and Territory, so I can''t predict if the spiders are hiding under the sand. This checkpoint is risky to most whereby they might fall right into the mass of spiders if they''re reckless, but this is a totally easy one for me." Lin Huang summoned the Divine Sun Tree this time. Although he could not use his Territory, the Divine Sun Tree stretched its branches out one after another hundreds of meters away. His tens of branches shot out like long whips, shooting golden sparks out in the desert wherever they passed by. The sparks were dense, and there was one almost every meter. As the sparks lit up, the spiders that were burned shrieked devastatingly. Some of them got out of the sand and rolled on the ground. They attempted to put out the fire, but their efforts were futile. Most of the spiders were burned to death before they made it out in time. The rest were obliterated to ash after struggling for less than three seconds upon getting out of the sand. "Let''s go all out today. Killing an imperial-level white gold-rank monster earns 10,000 points, so we have to kill a million of them in order to obtain ten billion points although not all the monsters are on imperial-level white gold-rank in this checkpoint," Lin Huang gave his order to the Divine Sun Tree. The Divine Sun Tree went all out hearing that order. One must know that each monster it killed would turn into spiritual energy for it to absorb. Lin Huang, on the other hand, followed behind the Divine Sun Tree and waited for it to obtain the maximum points for the day on the Stairway Tree patiently. 1104 This Girl is So Tough After approximately two and a half hours, Lin Huang practically flitted through the 75th checkpoint to the 79th checkpoint. Realizing that the 79th checkpoint was a monster stage, he logged out again. Although it had been the second day that he broke the record, everyone in the Genius Union was still in a mad hype since he had passed another four checkpoints again. Due to his record-breaking feat for two days consecutively, the amount of members online multiplied. Even members who hardly logged in were online. Almost the entire forum was discussing Lin Xie. After logging out, Lin Huang checked the Genius Union forum. He wanted to see if there was any new topic apart from discussions about him. In the end, he realized that all the topics were related to him after scrolling through a few pages. The hottest thread of all was ''Exactly How Many Checkpoints Can Lin Xie Break Through?'' People were guessing any number under the sun. Many even said he would pass a few thousand or tens of thousand of checkpoints. Some gave a detailed analysis whenever they commented. Lin Huang chose to ignore them after having a good chuckle about the responses that he read. Some threads were wordy as if the content was useful, but Lin Huang realized that some of the responses were not even about him. After logging out of the Genius Union forum, he then looked at the news page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring. He realized that his photo was on the headline. To be exact, it was a photo of Lin Xie''s face. The title of the news articles was ''Lin Xie: The Five Princes Are An Era!'' Lin Huang knew who the writer was the second he saw the title. He clicked on the article. As expected, it was Xu Qingya who had written it. In the article, she only wrote a portion of what they talked about. She wrote everything about him saying the Five Princes were an era without changing a single word. Although she tried her very best to be objective throughout the entire article, she could not help but reveal the admiration she had for Lin Huang. Her article made many see the other side of Lin Xie, the No. 1 genius that was lesser known to the people. Many people had the same impression as Xu Qingya did. They thought that such a powerful man would usually be dumb and think he was the best. However, Lin Huang was humble throughout the interview, especially when it came to the comment on the Five Princes. Many were impressed by his humility. Naturally, many people condemned that Xu Qingya had written all those just to butter Lin Xie up. Some even said some horrible things and tried stirring things up by saying that Xu Qingya and Lin Xie were messing around. Lin Huang frowned a little when he read that, but he soon saw Xu Qingya fire them back with her own identity. "I didn''t butter Lin Xie up. You''ll find out about that in the video interview that I''ve just posted on my account. As for those malicious slander and rumors spread around affecting my reputation, just you wait for my lawyer''s letter! I''ve already screenshot the evidence, so it''ll be futile even if you guys delete your posts." "This girl is so tough!" Lin Huang smiled while shaking his head. He had somewhat seen the other side of Xu Qingya. After turning off the news page, Lin Huang opened his social media app and soon found Xu Qingya''s account. He saw a video that she posted approximately half an hour ago. It was the raw video of her interviewing him for more than two hours interview. After playing it, Lin Huang fast-forwarded the entire video and realized that it was indeed unedited. He realized he performed pretty well in the video. Although the video had just been posted half an hour ago, there were positive and encouraging comments below it despite the fact that it was impossible for anybody to have finished watching the two-hour video by then. Clearly, many of them finished the video by fast-forwarding it just like Lin Huang did. "I was just a passerby, but now I''ve been converted to a fan. I thought Lin Xie was just a tough man. Never would I''ve thought he''s intelligent on the inside too!" "Little Sister posted the uncut interview to prove herself. She''s very sincere about it! I support her!" "I knew someone was trying to stir things up! Is it so hard to admit that someone is outstanding? People, I urge you to be kind!" "I''m a converted fan right after watching this video. Master Lin Xie, you''re the best!" "Little Sister, you''re the best! I support sending those jokers your lawyer''s letters! Teach them a lesson!" Lin Huang thought about it and liked Xu Qingya''s video using Lin Xie''s account. He picked nine pictures of the sea king monster having icebergs stuck in its mouth that he had taken on the 72nd checkpoint of the Stairway Tree and posted a collage of nine pictures. Eight of the nine pictures consisted of the sea king monster''s various angles. Meanwhile, the other one was a picture of Lin Huang with the sea king monster in the background with icebergs sticking out from its mouth. The caption of the collage picture was ''72''. Since one''s social media account was tied to their Emperor''s Heart Ring, him doing that would mean verifying his identity. Lin Xie usually did not have any notifications on this social media account, but he gained more than ten million fans that day. People started discussing as soon as the photo was posted. "What does ''72'' mean?" "This special effect of the sea king monster isn''t too shabby. It looks so real." "As a pro who has been Photoshopping photos for eight years, these nine pictures are real. Believe me." "This sea king monster looks so embarrassed and innocent! Why do I feel like laughing?" "Did Master Lin Xie shove the two icebergs into its mouth? Err Why do I feel like he should''ve shoved them somewhere else?" "The commenter above, please mind your words. There are kids here." Merely a couple of minutes later, the picture Lin Huang posted garnered tens of thousands of comments and over 80,000 likes. After reading the comments for fun, Lin Huang turned off the app upon realizing there were more and more comments flooding in. He stopped checking the notifications. He then opened the notification page on his Emperor''s Heart Ring and looked at the record-breaking rewards after scrolling past the numerous notifications. "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a set of god relic telekinetic weapon. "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a God-level soul crystal (Virtual God rank-3) "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a Godhead (Virtual God rank-9)" "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking the Stairway Tree record. You''ve been rewarded with a Godhead (Virtual God rank-9)" Lin Huang checked his storage space as soon as he read the notifications. Soon, he saw the set of telekinetic weapon rewards. It was a set of dark-silver flying daggers. He played with it for a while, and took a fancy to it. He took out the god-level soul crystal after putting the flying daggers away. He thought about it and summoned the Nightmare Tapir. He put the soul crystal into the Nightmare Tapir''s body while waiting for it to finish the refinement patiently. As for the two Virtual God rank-9 Godheads, Lin Huang sensed clearly that the number of Godheads he could contain in his body was now at full capacity. He could only set them aside for now since he could not put any more in at the moment. After sorting out the few rewards that he had just obtained, he began a new round of refining Godheads. 1105 The 80th Checkpoin Stepping onto the 79th checkpoint on the Stairway Tree, Lin Huang''s body shrunk to 1/10,000 his regular size. He was even smaller than the size he had shrunk to before. He had done a preliminary investigation when he entered the checkpoint yesterday. There were no imperial-level black gold-rank and imperial-level white gold-rank monsters on this stage at all. All the monsters had a combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank. Moreover, compared to other monster stages, this checkpoint had various monsters everywhere instead of only a single kind of monster. Lin Huang had already seen more than ten different monsters from the simple investigation yesterday. Fortunately, this stage did not impede his territory or his Divine Telekinesis. "Since my body has shrunk to 1/10,000 of my original size, it would mean that the initial 10,000 meters that I have to pass have now become 100,000 kilometers. In other words, I''ll need to pass 100,000 kilometers that are filled with imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters to break through this checkpoint. Furthermore, imperial-level purple gold-ranks can sense my existence simply with their Territory." Lin Huang was stunned by this round of assessment. "I''ll just have to bite the bullet then. Perhaps, the designer of this checkpoint doesn''t want anyone to pass through his final assessment. I won''t be able to break through if I''ve got no God Figurine''s Combat Souls." Lin Huang''s current combat strength was immortal-level rank-10. Without his God Figurine''s Combat Souls and imperial monsters, his ability would be the equivalent of a normal imperial-level purple gold-rank monster whereby nobody could tell who would win. However, he basically had to run away if he encountered a pseudo-mythical-level monster. The success rate of passing 100,000 kilometers filled with tens of millions or even up to hundreds of millions of imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters was almost zilch. All of the monsters here would be able to sense his existence easily. As soon as a fight started, the other monsters around would flood the place, and he would not be able to run by then. The settings of this checkpoint made it almost impossible for normal immortal-levels to break through. It would be rare for even imperial-level purple gold-rank powerhouses to pass. Lin Huang only grinned but said nothing after that. He then summoned the Divine Sun Tree directly and ran through the checkpoint without using any fancy tricks. The devilish Ant Tribe was burned to death! The Golden-backed Centipedes were burned to death! The Flying Grasshoppers were burned to death! The Blood-striped Toads were burned to death! Whatever encountered the Divine Sun Tree would be ignited and charred black. None of them even got the chance to get close to Lin Huang. Even though that was the case, he took a day to arrive at the destination after passing through the 100,000 kilometers. He only broke through the checkpoint when it was close to midnight. As he stepped onto the 80th checkpoint, he realized everything before him was different. "This isn''t the Stairway Tree." Lin Huang looked around and realized he was in a city now. People strolled on the streets. He spread his Divine Telekinesis and realized they were real humans. "Is this an illusion?!" Lin Huang was confused. The first reaction he had when he saw the city streets and humans was that he might be in an illusion. However, Divine Telekinesis was always accurate unless the person who created this illusion was much more powerful than he was and deceived his own Divine Telekinesis. "This checkpoints seems to be different from the earlier ones. Be careful," Bloody that was in his sleeve reminded him. "Don''t tell me I have to kill people in this round of assessment!" Lin Huang peered around and frowned a little. At that moment, a black crack appeared in the sky all of a sudden. Lin Huang sensed that something was off and lifted his head to gaze into the sky. He saw the crack was expanding at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. Abruptly, his expression changed dramatically. "Is that a Virtual Eye?!" It had been more than three years since Lin Huang came to the gravel world. He had seen news of various Virtual Eyes opening on the Heart Network, but he had only encountered them a few times himself. The people in the streets noticed the strange phenomenon that was happening in the sky. They began to panic. Although he was temporarily teleported to this city, Lin Huang flew into the sky and summoned the Enchanted Fairy as well as the Divine Sun Tree at the same time. He had no idea where he was. Whether this city was a foothold in the gravel world or not, the people here were real. Lin Huang did not think too much about that. He just thought he should not ignore whatever that was happening. Before the Virtual Eye in the sky could completely form, the Enchanted Fairy moved according to Lin Huang''s command. A gush of chilliness came out of her body and spread around. The water in the air froze wherever the chill passed by. Within merely some ten seconds, the Enchanted Fairy created a giant ice barrier that was 1,000 kilometers in diameter. Although it did not cover the entire city, it protected the area that was closest to the Virtual Eye. Just when the Enchanted Fairy was done with building the defense, the Virtual Eye in the sky finished forming. There seemed to be a pitch-black pupil in the sky that was watching the world. As soon as the Virtual Eye was formed, a mission box popped out of Lin Huang''s Emperor''s Heart Ring all of a sudden. "The Stairway Tree''s 80th trial has officially begun! "Trial Mission: Protect the foothold. "Mission Requirement: Protect the foothold for 24 hours. The number of deaths must be no more than 80 million people. "The mission will be deemed to have failed if the time is less than 24 hours or the number of deaths exceeds 80 million people!" Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the mission box popping out. He did not expect the Stairway Tree to have a new model. Nevertheless, he read everything in the mission box carefully. Just when he was done reading the last word in the mission box, monsters came rushing out of the Virtual Eye like a torrent. There were monsters of all sorts but all their combat strengths were on imperial-level black gold-rank. Almost when the monsters came racing out, the Divine Sun Tree shook its branches a little. In the next second, all monsters were lit in golden flames. They were soon drowned in the flames and turned into ashes. Although the Divine Sun Tree did not miss out any monsters, Lin Huang looked rather grimly at the Virtual Eye. Usually, weaker monsters would come out of the Virtual Eye first and the subsequent monsters that came out later would be more powerful. However, the first batch of monsters that came as soon as the Virtual Eye opened was already on imperial-level. Although they were only on imperial-level black gold-rank, Lin Huang had a hunch that there might be demigod-level or even virtual god-level monsters appearing later. Time was ticking. The Virtual Eye kept sending imperial-level black gold-ranks out. This went on for four hours and Lin Huang finally saw the first imperial-level crimson gold-rank monster advancing. Subsequently, the second, the third... More and more imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters were rushing out of the Virtual Eye, replacing the first batch of imperial-level black gold-rank monsters. Upon seeing that, Lin Huang had a preliminary guess of the Virtual Eye''s monster pattern. "The imperial-level crimson gold-rank monsters only came out four hours later. This pattern might continue later. If this is the case, demigod-level monsters may emerge during the last four hours, which is about 20 hours later!" 1106 Waiting for It to Come Ou Lin Huang''s head was clouded with thoughts as he watched the monsters that were rushing out of the Virtual Eye like a flood. This round of assessment had reached a point where it was getting ridiculous. If monsters streamed out for 24 hours continuously, it would mean that he would have to protect the foothold round the clock without stopping. Judging from the current number of monsters and frequency, even a demigod-level powerhouse''s Life Power would be drained in less than ten hours. If not for the Divine Fire in his body that was supplying endless energy for his God Figurine''s Combat Souls, there was no way that he could bear it for 24 hours. Moreover, looking at the pattern of the Virtual Eye at that instant, there would be more than just one demigod-level monster emerging during the last four hours. Even if he had sufficient Life Power, a demigod-level powerhouse might not be able to push through the last four hours. Under normal circumstances, only virtual god-level powerhouses might have hopes of passing this checkpoint. This confirmed what Lin Huang was thinking earlier even more. Perhaps the person who designed this checkpoint on the Stairway Tree never wanted anyone to break through. Lin Huang looked at the sky again as he shook off all sorts of thoughts that were bothering him. Since earlier, he noticed that he had not been gaining any points despite the Divine Sun Tree killing the monsters on the checkpoint. However, this gave him another benefit. The Divine Sun Tree could slay monsters endlessly and replenish his spiritual energy. Moreover, the killing would give him complete Monster Cards and Monster Card pieces. In other words, apart from not obtaining any points on the Stairway Tree, he had at least 20 chances to kill monsters and receive the rewards. The deal was a great one for Lin Huang. After all, he could only obtain ten billion points at the most each typical day. Time flew by, and another four hours passed. Just as Lin Huang expected, all of the monsters in the third batch were on imperial-level yellow gold-rank. He was sure of his speculation earlier after seeing imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters swarm out of the Virtual Eye one after another. "Just like I expected, the monster''s combat strength will increase by a rank every four hours. If that''s the case, demigod-level monsters will definitely come out in the last four hours." Hundreds of monsters would come out of the Virtual Eye each second, but none of them escaped the Divine Sun Tree''s flames. All the monsters began burning as soon as they stepped out of the Virtual Eye. They then turned into ashes within a few breaths. There was no exception. With Lin Huang supplying endless energy, the Divine Sun Tree was not tired of killing at all because it could clearly sense its spiritual energy being replenished every time he killed. It was getting closer and closer to breaking through his combat strength. The massacre soon passed for four hours, and the fourth batch of monsters finally came. The batch of monsters experienced an increase in their combat strength. After the imperial-level yellow gold-ranks, imperial-level white gold-rank monsters now raced out. However, such a boost in combat strength was nothing to the Divine Sun Tree at all. It shook its branches lightly and the imperial-level white gold-rank monsters would be ignited without exception and turn into ashes. Perhaps, their time of death was merely one to two seconds slower than the imperial-level yellow gold-rank monsters before. At that point in time, half of the 24-hour protection period had passed and the Divine Sun Tree never let any of the monsters go at all. However, Lin Huang had yet to relax. He was not worried about the first 20 hours. He was bothered about what would come out in the last four hours. Time flew by and two to three hours passed again. Just when Lin Huang thought they were steadily dealing with this monster horde, a tremor came from the Divine Sun Tree. "Is it elevating to virtual god-level?!" Lin Huang merely sensed it when he noticed something off and he knew what was happening. The Divine Sun Tree had killed so many monsters that it had accumulated enough spiritual energy to elevate to virtual god-level. That was beyond Lin Huang''s expectations. However, Lin Huang was delighted to see that. After recalling the Divine Sun Tree, Lin Huang glanced through the other eight God Figurine''s Combat Souls apart from the Enchanted Fairy. He had his eyes fixed on the Death Butterfly, so he summoned it. The little blue butterfly that was smaller than half a palm flew slowly into the sky. It looked so harmless and even looked kind of cute. However, such a cute thing turned the imperial-level white gold-rank monsters into skeletons with merely a light flap of its wings. The skeletons then turned into ashes and disappeared. It seemed like everywhere it flew through became hell. Even Lin Huang was shocked and terrified every time he watched the Death Butterfly attack. It would take a life away each time it attacked, and death would always be the result. It was even more overbearing and ridiculous than the Divine Sun Tree''s flames. At least, the Divine Sun Tree''s flames would take some time to kill the opponents, but the Death Butterfly killed without anyone even seeing it advance. Every living thing would turn into skeletons and ashes. Seeing Death Butterfly attacking, Lin Huang recalled what the stone tablet had said before. The Death Butterfly had a weaker combat ability compared to the other True Spirits that mastered the Death Rule. Lin Huang could not help but feel curious about how powerful the other True Spirits that mastered the Death Rule were. Over an hour soon passed after he summoned the Death Butterfly. The fifth batch of monsters finally approached. As Lin Huang expected, this batch of monsters all had imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength. However, none of the monsters could do anything when the Death Butterfly was around. All the imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters turned into skeletons as soon as they stepped out of the Virtual Eye. They turned into ashes completely less than a second later. The entire process was no slower than killing the batch of imperial-level white gold-rank monsters earlier. Lin Huang waited for the four hours to pass slowly. The wait was agonizing. He had finally come to the last four hours of the 24-hour protection period. He slowed his breathing down while looking at the changing Virtual Eye in the sky without blinking. Approximately half a minute passed. The monsters that were coming out of the Virtual Eye were all on imperial-level purple gold-rank just like before. None of them were on demigod-level. Lin Huang glanced down to check the time. After confirming that the time was right, he looked even more puzzled now. The time passed by on the 80th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree. Lin Huang waited for almost an hour. The monsters that were coming out of the Virtual Eye had imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength. It remained the same as it had been four hours before. "So, I guessed it wrongly?" Lin Huang mumbled to himself softly. Just as he said that, a powerful aura extended out of the Virtual Eye. He quickly lifted his head to look. "This aura It''s clearly a demigod-level monster!" A gigantic monster stretched one of its pitch-black claws out of the Virtual Eye. The claw was completely covered in a layer of black scales. The nail on the claw was 20 to 30 meters long. The Death Butterfly was going to attack it before it could get out of the Virtual Eye. However, Lin Huang stopped it from doing so. "There''s no rush. We''ll wait for it to come out. It might retreat its claw immediately if you attack now." 1107 Do You Agree to Go to the Last Checkpoint? A pitch-black claw with black scales stretched out of the Virtual Eye. Subsequently, a giant head poked through. It was a massive dragon head that looked like it was made of black metal casting. It seemed cold and ferocious. It was a dragonkin! It had six screw-like horns on its head while its four eyes lit up like golden lightbulbs. Before it crawled out of the Virtual Eye completely, its four eyes were locked onto Lin Huang. It snorted in disdain after realizing that Lin Huang''s combat strength was only immortal-level rank-9. The Death Butterfly landed on Lin Huang''s shoulder slowly, glaring fatally at the dragonkin. It looked like it was staring its prey down. After more than two hours of killing, it realized that the spiritual energy in its body had been filling up. Meanwhile, this demigod-level dragonkin before them looked like it had an even more powerful spiritual energy than those imperial-level monsters that it had destroyed. In other words, the dragonkin looked delicious to the Death Butterfly. Unfortunately, the dragonkin did not notice that it was practically being drooled over. After announcing its arrival with a roar, its entire body came out of the Virtual Eye slowly. From the looks of it, Lin Huang figured this monster was at least up to 10,000 meters long. It opened its jaws wide after getting out. Then, it released a roar that quaked the world as though it was announcing its arrival. The Death Butterfly looked at Lin Huang, seeming to ask whether it could attack yet. Lin Huang nodded tersely at it. In the next second, the blue Death Butterfly flapped its wings. An invisible wave seemed to ripple in the sky. The dragonkin''s roar was cut short all of a sudden. Its four big, golden lightbulb eyes dimmed while its body that seemed to be formed of metal casting was rotting at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. Merely three to four seconds later, its flesh vanished. Only a massive black skeletal frame remained. However, the frame lasted less than five seconds before turning into ashes and disappearing with the wind. The demigod-level dragonkin did not even have the chance to attack and was killed without even realizing what hit it. Lin Huang could only witness how terrifying the Death Butterfly was. After the demigod-level dragonkin came out, the Virtual Eye became normal again. Imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters started coming out of it again. The monster horde came one after another like a flood. "So, imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters are appearing again. Judging from the current pattern, the occasional demigod-level monsters will come out in the last four hours. I''m just not sure if an hour will be the right interval." Lin Huang was rather relieved to see that the monsters that were coming out were imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters. He was a little worried that many demigod-level monsters would appear. After all, demigod-level monsters were different from imperial-level monsters. When encountered some with a unique ability, his God Figurine''s Combat Souls might not be able to kill them in one hit. Moreover, they had a higher chance of breaking Enchanted Fairy''s defense with their Divine Power at full force. As soon as the defense was broke, a demigod-level attack alone could cause a major scale of death if it landed in the foothold. As soon as the number of deaths surpassed the mission limit, he would fail the stage. That was what Lin Huang was most unwilling to see happening. However, Lin Huang''s concern was unnecessary since no more demigod-level monsters emerged. Time flew by, and another half an hour passed. A powerful aura came out of the Virtual Eye again. Lin Huang lifted his head and looked at the Virtual Eye''s direction in the sky. He frowned slightly. "This aura" He was wondering whether a demigod-level monster would come out every hour in the last four hours since the first one came out an hour later. However, that was not the apparent pattern at all because only half an hour had passed and a demigod-level monster''s aura was coming out of the Virtual Eye again. What surprised Lin Huang even more was that the aura this time seemed to be coming from more than one demigod-level monster. A moment later, a dark-purple head came out of the Virtual Eye. The dark-purple body came out of the Virtual Eye completely before Lin Huang could take a good look at it. Lin Huang looked closely to see a giant indigo centipede. It was thousands of meters long with three pairs of barely-there wings on its back. Two indigo feelers at the top of its head moved in the air as it seemed to be sniffing out for aura. Brutality exuded from its three pairs of ruby-like bloody eyes on both sides of its head. Its mouth that looked like a scimitar below was twitching slightly, giving out chilling insecurity. After the centipede came out, a gigantic spider crawled out of the Virtual Eye slowly. The spider was bigger than any arachnid that Lin Huang had ever seen in his life. It was completely grayish-brown and had legs that were thousands of meters long. Its entire body seemed like a moving mountain supported by eight pillars. Its head was filled with dense black eyes of all sizes. There were at least 30 to 40 of them. People with trypophobia would have goosebumps if they saw this creature. The two monsters'' aurae were clearly demigod-level. Lin Huang could not help but scowl when two of them came at once. It was not that he could not handle two, but the pattern was unfathomable. The first time a demigod-level monster came out was an hour since the new batch of the monster horde. Now, there were two demigod-level monsters half an hour later. The interval and quantity were unpredictable now. Just when the two monsters locked their eyes on Lin Huang and the Enchanted Fairy as soon as they appeared, the blue Death Butterfly on Lin Huang''s shoulder flapped its wings all of a sudden. In the next second, the two demigod-level monsters'' bodies began to disintegrate while they stared at it in shock. They looked like corpses being dissolved by all sorts of microorganisms with a fast-forward button. In less than ten seconds, the two demigod-level monsters turned into ashes. The enormous bodies left ashes all over the ground. After the second batch of demigod-level monsters came, the third wave rushed forward merely ten minutes later. There were three of them this time. However, the fourth wave came merely a minute after the Death Butterfly killed the third batch of demigod-level monsters. Then, there were five monsters. Seeing the batch of monsters coming, Lin Huang could not help but frown again. If the intervals shortened and the number of monsters was growing like this, there was a possibility that he would really fail this time. Fortunately, Lin Huang''s concern did not happen. The pattern finally stabilized whereby five demigod-level monsters emerged from the Virtual Eye every one minute. The pattern persevered and the last four hours ended. Lin Huang was finally relieved the moment when the Virtual Eye closed entirely. Before he recalled his two God Figurine''s Combat Souls, two notifications popped out from his Emperor''s Heart Ring consecutively. "Congratulations, Lin Xie, for breaking through the 80th checkpoint of the Stairway Tree!" "Do you agree to go to the last checkpoint on the Stairway Tree?" "The last checkpoint?" Lin Huang was stunned for a second but soon made up his mind almost without thinking. "I agree! Take me there!" 1108 The Last Checkpoin Lin Huang had no idea exactly how many checkpoints there were on the Stairway Tree before reading the notification about the last checkpoint challenge that the Stairway Tree system sent. After all, throughout the centuries, the highest checkpoint on the Stairway Tree anyone had ever arrived on was the 72nd checkpoint. However, now he knew that there were only a total of 81 checkpoints on the Stairway Tree and he had arrived at the last one now. Although it had been two days since he last slept, Lin Huang accepted the assessment without hesitation. Upon agreeing to the assessment, both of Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Souls and Bloody in his sleeve retreated into his body. Then, he shifted and appeared in the ruins. He looked around to see building remnants everywhere. The land that he was standing on seemed to have been a bustling city back then. However, it was now a ruin where traces of war were left behind. After taking a simple observation of his surroundings, Lin Huang summoned Bloody and Lancelot immediately. "Lancelot, use your Territory skill to check if there''re any living things around. Bloody, release your Leech Pods after confirming with Lancelot and construct a preliminary map." Lancelot checked through the area with his Territory skill merely a moment later. "There''s no living thing within my territory range. Not only are there no humans, but there aren''t even any monsters around." Just when Bloody was going to release its Leech Pods after hearing that, a crack appeared in the sky all of a sudden. The human and the two imperial monsters lifted their heads to gaze up immediately. "Is the Virtual Eye opening again? Is it the same trick as before?" Lin Huang was rather surprised. However, a second, a third, and a fourth crack appeared in the sky just when he said that. There were cracks almost everywhere in the sky. He was astounded to see at least hundreds of them. Furthermore, the cracks were expanding at an alarming rate that could be seen with the naked eye. This reminded Lin Huang of the story when the gravel world was attacked 800 years ago. It was said that 3,000 Virtual Eyes opened all over the world when the gravel world was attacked back then. Although that was way more than the number of Virtual Eyes he was looking at right now, the density of it then definitely could not compare with what was in front of his eyes. "Alright then. I admit that I was wrong. This is a new set of tricks." Lin Huang felt like he had just received a resounding slap on his face having thought that this checkpoint was the same as the previous 80. In the air, the cracks were expanding into the Virtual Eyes one after another at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye. They looked like hundreds of pupils of all colors and forms in the sky, staring at Lin Huang who was as tiny as an ant. Lin Huang dared not be reckless this time. He recalled Lancelot and got Bloody to hide in his sleeve. He then summoned all ten of his God Figurine''s Combat Souls, including the Destructive Divine Mammoth, the Ninetails Lynx, the Nightmare Tapir and the Divine Sun Tree that had elevated to virtual god-level. A mission notification popped up on his Emperor''s Heart Ring just when he summoned his God Figurine''s Combat Souls. "The 81st trial of the Stairway Tree has officially begun! "Trial Mission: Survive. "Mission Requirement: Survive the 24-hour monster horde. "Remarks: The mission will be deemed to have failed if you die within the 24-hour monster horde!" At the same time when Lin Huang finished reading the notification, a deep voice shook the entire sky. "The trial has begun!" Gigantic bug monsters began flying out of the Virtual Eyes that looked like pupils in the air. The bugs looked like airships. The bug monsters were over 10,000 meters in length but they came in all forms. Some of them looked like enormous whales that had been enlarged by a thousand times with thick bio-armors covering them. Others seemed like deep-sea jellyfish that had been enlarged by 10,000 times with countless tentacles that looked like strands of hair, making it chilling to look at. Some had turtle-like shells that looked indestructible. Those gigantic monsters exuded terrifying perfect-stage demigod-level aura, and there were over 300 of them in his field of vision. Nonetheless, he found it weird that those huge monsters did not attack him directly. They just hovered in place after getting out of the Virtual Eyes and did not come any closer. Just when Lin Huang thought it was strange, a sea of bug monsters streamed out of the gigantic monsters one after another. There were so many of them that they covered the entire sky. "Sh*t! Are those Bug Tribe battleships?!" Lin Huang reacted right away and ordered immediately, "Fight!" All of his ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls joined the battlefield as soon as he issued the command. The Divine Sun Tree went through a major change after elevating to virtual god-level combat strength. Initially, it was merely a little sapling that was approximately a meter tall. Now, it had transformed into a ten-meter-tall tree with lush leaves. It stretched his branches one after another. Everywhere the branches passed would turn into a sea of fire. The hundreds of gigantic bug monsters that resembled airships were burned and turned into ashes immediately. The Destructive Divine Mammoth also had a change in its form after elevating to virtual god-level. Its black armor was thicker now while there was even armor growing on its trunk. At ten meters tall, it lost all of its cuteness it had before this. It charged into the monsters and clashed with them all the way. Wherever its metal legs passed, it crushed all of the monsters into mush. Since the Ninetails Lynx elevated to virtual god-level, it grew from a little white cat which was the size of a palm to a little white cheetah with slender limbs and a body just slightly longer than a meter. It was fearless as it stood among the monsters. All of the monsters were sliced into pieces wherever it sprinted. The Nightmare Tapir that had elevated to god-level, on the other hand, did not experience many changes. Only the patterns on its body changed. It lifted his trunk and released soundless wave energy. The invisible wave spread out intensely at a speed that was 1,000 times faster than the speed of sound. All of the monsters were dragged into dreamland as the wave enveloped them. They fell into a deep sleep within a few seconds. Those monsters that had yet to elevate to god-level were no less powerful. All the monsters turned into ashes whenever the Death Butterfly flapped its wings. Whenever the Withered Flower shook in the wind and spread its fragrance, the monsters grew old and turned into skeletons. A gush of chillness spread out whenever the Enchanted Fairy waved her sleeve, and countless bug monsters transformed into ice sculptures. The Creation Clock slowed down its second hand. Many of the monsters seemed like they had fallen into a swamp, whereby their movements were a hundred times slower now. The Life Power in the monsters'' bodies would stop working whenever the Shackle Serpent''s eyes lit up, and they would fall from the sky. The Undead Styx smothered the sea of monster carcasses with its body. Then, the monster carcasses stood up again with their eyes pitch-black. The tens of thousands of terrifying monsters in the horde were blocked by the ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls forcefully. The battle was one-sided, and almost none of the monsters survived for more than half a minute. 1109 Jaw-Dropping In the sky, the giant demigod-level Bug Tribe airships flew out of the Virtual Eyes that resembled pupils one after another. Each of the giant airships had tens of thousands of Bug Tribe monsters which had imperial-level combat strength. As the giant airships containing countless Bug Tribe monsters entered this world that looked like ruins, they leaped and charged toward Lin Huang as if they only had one target in their eyes. Millions of monsters leaped from the sky almost every second. They were like a locust plague that blanketed the sky. Nevertheless, the ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls were extraordinarily courageous whereby they were almost suppressing the situation. However, Lin Huang was not optimistic about breaking through this checkpoint since the battle was so intense as soon as it began. One must know that the mission had begun for less than three minutes and there were already over a hundred million of monsters coming out of the Virtual Eyes. Moreover, all of them were on imperial-level and ranged from imperial-level black gold-rank to imperial-level purple gold-rank. According to Lin Huang''s speculation, this checkpoint should be the same as the one before whereby the longer the duration, the more difficult it would be. The monsters'' combat strength would elevate later on and the frequency might increase. Whether he could break through the checkpoint or not, Lin Huang thought he must seize the opportunity since he had a little faith. Just like the checkpoint before, he crushed 24 Double Reward Cards secretly which resulted in the reward adding up to 24 hours. He also crushed a Lucky Card. Subsequently, a massive number of notifications about card pieces and occasional complete cards came through. Monsters did not stop coming out of the Virtual Eyes, so the ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls did not get to rest for even a second. The Bug Tribe airships seemed to have a unique spatial technique installed in them. Even though the Bug Tribe airships were destroyed, the Bug Tribe fighters within them did not seem to be affected much. Instead, they shot out of the airships directly, saving their time of leaping out of the cabin door. The Virtual Eyes had been sending Bug Tribe airships out at the same frequency, so a new batch of Bug Tribe airships would arrive almost every ten seconds. Again, the ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls did not get to rest for even a heartbeat. Soon, four hours had passed. As Lin Huang expected, the frequency of the Virtual Eyes sending the Bug Tribe airships increased. One airship would be sent out of a Virtual Eye approximately every 20 seconds. However, after the four-hour interval, the frequency shortened to ten seconds. Furthermore, Lin Huang also realized that not only did the frequency multiply but even the combat strength of the monsters that were originating from the airships changed. There were monsters on imperial-level black gold-rank to imperial-level purple gold-rank initially. However, there were no longer any imperial-level black gold-rank monsters this round. The lowest combat strength of bug beasts that participated in the battle was imperial-level crimson gold-rank. The number of monsters from each airship was pretty much the same as before, but the minimum combat strength had increased. Nevertheless, such frequency and increase in combat strength did not affect the God Figurine''s Combat Souls at all. Most of the ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls were attacking in a large range of area. However, they did not widen their attack range or increase their attack power. Only the frequency of the attacks multiplied. The battle remained one-sided. Although countless bug beasts were pouring like rain, they could not break through the Divine Sun Tree and the rest whose killing speed would destroy a large area. However, the Death Butterfly experienced a tremor not long after the second wave of monsters came. The spiritual energy in its body had been filled, and it was elevating to virtual god-level. Lin Huang recalled it back to his body without hesitation to allow it to complete its elevation. Without the Death Butterfly''s contribution, the remaining nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls became slightly busier, but it did not affect their winning streak much. Soon, another four hours passed. There was a change in the third wave of the monster horde. The interval of the Bug Tribe airships being sent shortened again. From the initial ten seconds, it was cut down to five seconds now. Moreover, the minimum combat strength of the Bug Tribe fighters coming out of the airships this time had increased again. It increased from imperial-level crimson gold-rank to imperial-level yellow gold-rank. Among the bug beasts that were rushing out of the giant airships, there were no longer any imperial-level black gold-ranks and imperial-level crimson gold-ranks to be seen. The lowest combat strength was imperial-level yellow gold-rank. As soon as the third round of monster horde came, the Death Butterfly completed its elevation. Lin Huang summoned it again and sent it back to the battlefield. The blue butterfly that was initially only the size of half a palm had minimal changes to its appearance. It remained the same size but its solid form had turned into a blue semitransparent spirit form, appearing as magical as an illusion. Its ethereal form felt otherworldly. In fact, it looked like a lousy Earth-made film effect which seemed fake. However, the Death Butterfly experienced an obvious boost in its ability no matter what. A great number of demigod-level Bug Tribe airships turned into ashes from a slight flap of its wings. The entire process took less than three seconds, it was a few times faster than the killing speed of the Divine Sun Tree. The remaining nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls were much more relaxed as soon as it joined the battle again. As usual, the third round of Bug Tribe attack went on for four hours. Subsequently, the same thing happened to the fourth and the fifth rounds of monsters. When the fourth round came, the Enchanted Fairy followed the Death Butterfly''s footsteps as she had accumulated enough spiritual energy to elevate to virtual god-level. When the fifth round of monster horde came, the interval of the Bug Tribe airships coming out of the Virtual Eye shortened to a second. Furthermore, the tens of thousands of monsters in each airship were on imperial-level purple gold-rank. There was not even a single imperial-level white gold-rank monster. Soon after that, the fifth round came. The Enchanted Fairy successfully elevated to virtual god-level and was summoned again. The Enchanted Fairy that had been upgraded had few changes to her body. She was still wearing a white dress, and her skin was as white as snow. She was beautiful as usual. However, her black hair was now a piercing icy blue. Furthermore, her ability was even more terrifying now. The air would turn into ice with a single glance of hers. Apart from that, the Undead Styx had accumulated enough spiritual energy to elevate to virtual god-level when the fifth monster horde came. Lin Huang recalled him back to his body. As the Death Butterfly and the Enchanted Fairy''s combat strengths elevated, the pressure that was ever-increasing from the Virtual Eyes did not cause any solid threat to Lin Huang. The battle still remained one-sided. One must know that Lin Huang''s God Figurine''s Combat Souls were powerful existences made of Protoss''s figurines as their base besides being visualized from True Spirits. Each of them far surpassed quadruple mutated mythical-level monsters. They could fight fairly with Virtual God rank-3 powerhouses given that they had imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength. Naturally, suppressing these imperial-level bug beasts was a piece of cake for them. Now that some of his God Figurine''s Combat Souls had elevated to virtual god-level, their abilities were advancing intensely. They did not even have to use 1% of their abilities when fighting those imperial-level bug beasts. Another four hours flew by. The 24-hour period to pass the checkpoint was down to the last four hours. The sixth round of monster horde came as expected. Before the monster horde came, a low rumble echoed from the other side of the Virtual Eyes. Lin Huang looked at the sky in puzzlement when he heard the sound. His jaw dropped when he saw the first giant that emerged! "F*ck! How is this possible?!" 1110 The Arrival of the Bug Tribe Immense things in irregular forms floated out of the Virtual Eyes in the sky. Each of them was at least 10,000 times bigger than the Bug Tribe airships earlier. Some of the giant forms were slightly rounder, resembling potatoes. Some seemed like human molars or front teeth that had fallen off while some looked like peanuts. They had forms of all kinds. However, the similarity they shared was that all of them had dense holes on their surfaces. These holes had various shapes and sizes. Some were round, some were triangular, and some were even hexagonal. However, the shapes and sizes of the holes were the same for each giant. They were clearly not made by Mother Nature. In reality, Lin Huang could tell what were those at a first glance. The strangely shaped matters were all Bug Tribe hives from different tribes. "Are they relocating house? They moved the entire hive here!" The 300-over hives of all forms covered the entire sky like hovering giant cities. It was Lin Huang first time seeing such a majestic scene in his life. If an ordinary person witnessed 300 beehives hanging above their heads, the first reaction would be to run. However, it was a different story for Lin Huang. He gave a command before waiting for any of the monsters to fly out the hives, "There''s no need to hold back. Do your best to attack the hives and see if you can destroy them or not." The Ninetails Lynx was the first to attack as soon as he spoke. Its agile body turned into a white beam and shot through the sky. It pulverized tens of hives and returned where it was without anyone even seeing it. Then, it shook its head at Lin Huang. After a while, rumbles that sounded like mellow thunder came from the sky consecutively. Slices were made on the tens of hives consecutively. There were giant gullies that were hundreds of meters on the hives. However, the gullies were less than ten meters at the most and could no longer go any deeper, so they made no solid damage to the hives. "The Ninetails Lynx has the most powerful attack ability among your ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls. If this is what it can do, it proves that the materials that are used to make these hives are pretty tough. Using other physical attacks shouldn''t have much effect on them." Bloody that had been hiding and observing the situation in Lin Huang''s sleeve provided him such an analysis immediately. "Get the Nightmare Tapir to try using his spiritual attack then." The Destructive Divine Mammoth and the rest attacked when Bloody was done speaking. However, just like Bloody speculated, physical attacks did almost nothing to the hives. Even the Divine Sun Tree and the Enchanted Fairy''s elemental attacks could not penetrate the hives. The most they could go was a few meters into the holes. The Nightmare Tapir attacked as well. Even though he had elevated to virtual god-level, he could only drill some ten meters in after penetrating into the hives with his psychic energy. He was blocked by powerful psychic energy and could no longer go any further. "I tried, but I was blocked by a powerful psychic energy. The most I can go is 13 meters and I can''t go any further," the Nightmare Tapir spoke to Lin Huang and Bloody through voice transmission. "A powerful psychic energy? Could there be virtual god-level monsters guarding the inside of these hives?!" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. The stone tablet''s voice came slowly at the moment. "Stop overthinking. The hives do not only have resistance against physical attack, but they''re also invincible when it comes to resisting spiritual energy because each hive is being protected by the Bug Tribe''s will. Even a true god-level or even heavenly god-level powerhouse can''t stick spiritual energy into the hives to try and damage it at all. The Nightmare Tapir could penetrate more than ten meters because there''s only an oxidized protective shell on the surface of the hives. The shell isn''t even the hive''s real defense. It''s not even included in the protection range of the Bug Tribe''s will." Lin Huang came to a realization after hearing the stone tablet''s explanation. "If what you said is true, then attacking the hives must be a stupid thing to do, isn''t it?" "You said that yourself." The stone tablet smiled and explained further, "The standards of the Bug Tribe''s construction are much higher than the standards you humans have when building your skyscrapers." "Under usual circumstances, the hives with Virtual Gods inside are built with core construction material which is the same material as a true god relic. Only a powerhouse with the combat strength of at least heavenly god-level can destroy them completely." "Even in hives with only a demigod inside, the core material used for the construction would be at least a god relic. They''re basically indestructible if the opponent isn''t on a minimum of true god-level." "I think there''s no need for you to waste your efforts attacking the hives at all. Just wait for the bugs to come out." "The hives are their base camp, so their queens will basically be in there. If I don''t destroy the hives, the queens in those hives will produce more bugs to join the battle. It would mean that I''d have to clear the bugs that are created in the hives over and over again." Lin Huang told the tablet the reason he had gotten his God Figurine''s Combat Souls to attack the hives. "Why don''t you just seize the opportunity to kill more bugs since there''re only four hours left? No matter how many bugs these hives are producing, to you, it''s merely four hours of battling." The stone tablet went completely silent right after saying that. Lin Huang realized that he was overthinking it. He kind of forgot that the 20-odd hours of battle was just a trial. He subconsciously treated this ruins as a place in the gravel world. His mind was so occupied on clearing the hives forever to prevent the bug beasts from coming out. He recalled that it was just a trial upon hearing the stone tablet''s reminder. He would be teleported out of this place as soon as the time was up. No matter whether this place was real or fake, whatever happened after this was none of his business. Lin Huang shook his head to push the thoughts out of his head as he lifted his head to look at the sky again. In the sky, there was an insane amount of bugs in countless forms standing at the surface of the giant hives. Buzz Buzz Buzz A low buzzing from more than 300 sources came almost at the same time. The noise seemed to be coming from deep in the hives. They sounded like a signal that had been lowered. Each hive would have a slightly difference in key, but they did not conflict with each other and even harmonized perfectly. The long and low buzzes echoed through the entire place. At the same time, the countless bug monsters seemed to have received their leader''s order. They leaped out of the hives where they were queuing and charged at Lin Huang. 1111 Suppressed By Great Power Bug beasts of all forms were rushing out of the holes on the surface of the hives. All of them had a combat strength of imperial-level purple gold-rank, and there were over 300 hives. Among the over 300 types of bugs, the first thing that Lin Huang noticed was a batch of giant beetles. These giant beetles seemed like they had been enlarged up to a hundred times. They looked like heavy armored vehicles with many legs, and one could tell that their defensive ability was terrifying by a glance alone. In reality, Lin Huang had seen such a beetle in the monster guide before. It was a monster called the Gigantic Armored Beetle. Its defensive ability was so powerful that it could be ranked top ten among all the monsters recorded in the monster guide. If their vitals were not attacked, the effort of killing such a bug monster might be futile even for an ordinary demigod. To kill them in one blow, only a demigod saber cultivator or sword cultivator who had compelling attack ability with a god relic fuelled with Divine Power might be able to do it. The second type of monster that attracted Lin Huang''s attention was a colorful flying bug that resembled a long-legged spider with butterfly wings. Not only were the two pairs of wings colorful, but so were their body and the hair on its legs that were as tough as steel nails. It looked like a painter had accidentally spilled ten types of colors onto them. What surprised Lin Huang even more was that the colors on their bodies morphed, so it looked like it had a disco ball shining on it. "I advise you not to let those colorful bug monsters get close to you." The stone tablet''s voice came all of a sudden. "Because they''re poisonous?" Lin Huang guessed why the stone tablet said so. "This bug is called Ten Colors, and it''s a poisonous bug monster. They have up to 1,000 different toxins in their bodies which they''re producing and releasing at all times. Some of the toxins can be spread through the air while some can even penetrate through the pores straight into one''s body. You can never see it coming," the stone tablet explained, "I suppose you saw that their bodies are always changing colors. The changing of colors is caused by the changing of toxin ratio in their body as they produce and release toxins." The third type of monster Lin Huang noticed was a bug beast with four wings that could not be found in the monster guide. It had four oval semi-transparent wings that it flapped thousands of times per second. It would accelerate every time it flapped its wings, lending a great boost in its speed. Although Lin Huang could fight fairly with imperial-level purple gold-rank monsters now, he could only catch the flapping shadow of the bug beast''s wings with his eyes. Although the speed of the bug monsters was incomparable with Kylie who was on imperial-level purple gold-rank, they could surpass most of the flying monsters in the monster guide. Among the 300-odd types of bugs on the battlefield, apart from the minority of them that were described in the monster guide, most of them did not have any record. Lin Huang looked far away and realized that he could not recognize over 90% of the bug monsters. A minority of them even had a structure that was beyond his understanding, which made him think they were ridiculous after observing them. For instance, there was a bug beast that was called the Ugly Thing. It had its ass on its mouth, and seemed to use the same part to eat and excrete. There was another bug beast that had no face on its head, but only had a mouth on top of its head and it lived on other bug monsters'' bodies as a parasite. Neither did Lin Huang have any idea what were the names of most of the bug monsters there, nor did he know what kind of ability they possessed. However, none of those were important to him. His nine God Figurine''s Combat Souls fought at full force without hesitation. Under the Creation Clock''s slowing down of time and the Shackle Serpent''s sealing, the massive number of bug monsters became sitting ducks. It had been a few minutes since the battle started, but the Undead Styx had completed his elevation to virtual god-level. Lin Huang summoned him again to join the battlefield. Although the Divine Sun Tree and the Death Butterfly did not leave behind any carcasses, the Nightmare Tapir, the Enchanted Fairy, and the rest left carcasses behind, which then became the Undead Styx''s undead puppets. Seeing the Undead Styx''s undead army growing to over a hundred million, Lin Huang thought it was wasted effort instead of feeling happy. He had summoned the Undead Styx to try turning the monsters on the Stairway Tree into undead puppets to see if he could bring them back to reality. Sadly, it was proven to be impossible. The monster carcasses on the Stairway Tree would disintegrate as soon as they left. However, although he could not bring them back, he could use them there directly. The Undead Styx controlled the undead monster horde to collide with the monsters that were advancing from the hives fearlessly. Even if they were killed in the battle, the Undead Styx would revive soon them. Moreover, he was turning more carcasses into his puppets, growing his undead army. Lin Huang was relieved to see the first round of hive attack being suppressed by his ten God Figurine''s Combat Souls perfectly. He was concerned even though he was confident in his God Figurine''s Combat Souls as he figured that the batch of the monster horde was just too big. However, he was relieved to see the performance of his God Figurine''s Combat Souls. The hundreds of hives released monster hordes one after another. Countless bug monsters came swarming like waves but they were suppressed by the God Figurine''s Combat Souls again and again. Time flew by, and three hours passed. The hives went through a tremor almost at the same time, emitting a strange buzzing again. This time, it did not sound low. It sounded more like the finish of a ringing bell. Almost at the same time the sound came, all of the hives stopped sending bug monsters out. Lin Huang lifted his head to look at the sky. In reality, he figured that the last hour might not be easy. As expected, the hives experienced some changes. The strange buzzing noise lasted for three minutes and stopped completely. As the noise stopped, the hundreds of hives transformed almost at the same time. Lin Huang was shocked when he saw a hive that looked like a potato explode from its core. It looked like someone had sliced the potato into half and pulled the two halves of hive open slowly, exposing its center. It was like a potato that was sliced and pulled apart, then stuck with invisible tape. The other hives were also changing. Some of them were sliced into half directly while some had a giant hollow cylinder in the middle. The transformation lasted for less than a minute before being completed. At that moment, Lin Huang sensed the aura that was coming out of the hives. He could not help but appear rather grave now. "Are they only on demigod-level? Why do I feel like something''s off?" 1112 Tough Battle The bug beasts'' aura in the hives were indeed only on demigod-level but Lin Huang thought something was off. Buzzing noise came again as soon as the over 300 hives had done with their transformation. "Buzz" "Buzz" "Buzz" The over 300 hives released noises of different frequency as if they were announcing the battle again. This time, the buzzing only went on for approximately ten seconds and stopped. Subsequently, Lin Huang saw bug beasts rushing out the cracks or holes in the middle of the hives. Lin Huang had only confirmed that the round of bug beasts only had a combat strength of demigod-level when he saw the bug beasts officially. However, he soon saw a shocking scene. In the sky, the over 300 monster hordes seemed to be commanded by something whereby they gathered and formed gigantic, ferocious beasts after rushing out of the hives in sequence. The ferocious beasts were at least 10,000 meters long, their aura was many times more powerful than the individual bug beasts. "Is this a battle formation?!" Lin Huang finally knew why he thought something was off when he saw that. So the demigod-level bug beasts had formed their battle formations in the hives earlier. That was why the 10,000 bug beasts gave out a strange vibe. "To be exact, it''s a bug formation. Of course, battle formation is correct too since bug formation is also a type of battle formation," the stone tablet corrected him, "A bug formation made of 10,000 bug beasts have an overall ability that can fight fair with Virtual God rank-3. In other words, you''re fighting over 300 Virtual God rank-3 monsters now." "Are these bug formations really that powerful?" Lin Huang could not help but frown. "You''ll see soon." As soon as the stone tablet was done speaking, the gigantic beasts formed of the bug formations had collided with Ninetails Lynx and the rest. Ninetails Lynx turned into a white silhouette that was blinking as it mauled at a couple of bug formation beasts. Ninetails Lynx was too quick, they did not have time to react with effective defense or dodging the attack. They were hit directly. Theoretically, Ninetails Lynx who was now on Virtual God rank-1 should have an ability that was nothing weaker than Virtual God rank-5. However, its attacks that landed on the bug formation beasts did not kill them directly. Even worse, none of the bug beasts in the bug formations was killed. Lin Huang found that puzzling. "What''s happening? The bug formation didn''t disintegrate after being attacked by Ninetails Lynx head-on? Ninetails Lynx''s maul alone should be able to kill a Virtual God rank-3 powerhouse in one hit!" "The bug formation can transfer the damage. It''s not that the bug formation beasts aren''t hurt at all, they shared the damages with the 10,000 bug beasts that formed the bug formations, which weaken Ninetails Lynx''s attack effect." "The bug formation beasts didn''t disintegrate not because they''re more powerful than Virtual God rank-3 powerhouse. In reality, these giant beasts are made of Divine Power. The Divine Power would be drained as soon as they attacked. The 10,000 demigod-level bug beasts provide rather sufficient Divine Power to fuel the formations." What the stone tablet said calmed Lin Huang a little. "In other words, I''ll have to attack them a few more times if I can''t kill them in one hit. I''ll get rid off these bug formation beasts by draining the Divine Power in their bodies." "That will work." Other collisions on the battlefield went on as Lin Huang chatted with the stone tablet. Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped his gigantic feet on the bug formation beasts'' heads. However, the bug formation beasts were not crushed at all. Theoretically, Destructive Divine Mammoth should have an ability similar to Ninetails Lynx. His stomp of feet should be able to kill a bunch of demigod-level bug beasts. However, due to the damage transfer and sea of Divine Power maintaining the bug formation, the bug formation beasts did not suffer any solid damages. The same happened to Death Butterfly. It could usually kill a bunch of demigod-level bug beasts with a single flap of wings. None of the demigod-level bug beasts could survive its attack. However, the many bug beasts that were formed into bug formations were doing good after the attack. The God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls that had elevated to virtual god-level fell into an awkward position since they failed to kill those bug beasts. Undead Styx must be the most awkward one. His undead army only had imperial-level combat strength. They had no ability to defend the bug formation beasts at all. Each time the bug formation beasts attacked, a bunch from the undead army would be crushed. Even though Undead Styx managed to revive them repetitively, all that it did was to put the bug formation beasts'' approach to a halt for merely a moment. They could not stop the bug formation beasts at all. The three God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls that had yet to elevate to virtual god-level were even more awkward. Withered Flower retreated from the battlefield voluntarily after swallowing a bug formation beast. It seemed to be digesting the food that had just gone into its stomach. Creation Clock and Shackle Serpent retreated from the battlefield directly. Their ability could only work on living things that had no Divine Power in them. For instance, Creation Clock could only control the time flow to affect a person. However, it could not do anything to demigods with Divine Power in their bodies. The same applied to Shackle Serpent, its sealing ability could only work on living things that had no Divine Power in their bodies. Moreover, both of them were not good at close combat. Lin Huang thought about it and figured it was unnecessary for them to stay on the battlefield any longer. The seven virtual god-level God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls felt helpless to be taking on the battle on their own. They were fighting among the over 300 bug formation beasts. The busiest one was Ninetails Lynx that had the highest speed. It was rescuing its comrades almost all of the time. There were just too many bug formation beasts, and they were hard to kill. Destructive Divine Mammoth and the rest had to handle over 40 bug formation beasts each to make sure that those bug formation beasts would not break their defense. However, there were bug formation beasts breaking the defense and headed where Lin Huang was occasionally when the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls were stuck. Ninetails Lynx would have to stop what it was doing to block those bug formation beasts that had broken the defense whenever it happened. It would give them big slaps on their faces, smashing them back to where they were before. Although Ninetails Lynx and the rest knew very well that Lin Huang could solve it himself even if the bug formation beasts got to him, they were determined to stop the bug formation beasts from breaking the defense. The battle was the toughest one the bunch of God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had ever encountered. They had always been suppressing the battles but they could not kill the opponents they encountered in one hit this time. Moreover, there were more opponents than the comrades they had on their side. The stagnant situation went on for over ten minutes and Ninetails Lynx finally broke the formation with its mauling. Finally, the very first bug formation beast disintegrated due to the draining of Divine Power from Ninetails Lynx''s mauling 1113 One More Trial, Please! The 300 over bug formation beasts were made of up to 10,000 demigod-level bug monsters each that contained powerful Divine Power. The battle lasted for over ten minutes and finally, the Divine Power of one of the formations was drained as a result of the Ninetails Lynx''s mauling. The bug formation disintegrated as soon as their Divine Power was drained. The formation that was made of up to 10,000 bug monsters disintegrated immediately. Before the Ninetails Lynx could attack, the Divine Sun Tree swung its few branches into the sky, sweeping through the direction where the bug formation disintegrated. In the next second, the bug monsters that lost their formation protection were lit up by golden flames, and they became 10,000 fireballs in the sky. The fireballs merely burned for less than ten seconds before turning into ashes completely. "What a waste!" Lin Huang did not expect the Divine Sun Tree to attack so quickly. He initially wanted to get the Nightmare Tapir to attack so that he could keep the bug monsters'' carcasses for the Undead Styx to transform into puppets. A sea of spiritual energy rushed into Lin Huang''s body and it was filtered by the Divine Fire since the 10,000 demigod-level bug monsters were killed. Under Lin Huang''s control, the wave of spiritual energy was inserted into the Creation Clock. Without Lin Huang''s control, the spiritual energy would usually go into the few God Figurine''s Combat Souls with the lowest combat strength and it would be distributed evenly. However, the spiritual energy in the Creation Clock''s body was filled according to Lin Huang''s control. It was on the brink of breaking through to virtual god-level. Sensing the Creation Clock breaking through soon, Lin Huang recalled it back to his body immediately. The breaking of the first bug formation gave the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the rest confidence in the battle. Initially, even Lin Huang was not sure how long would these bug formation beasts last. He was torn watching his seven God Figurine''s Combat Souls in the battle fail to kill the opponents. Furthermore, there were so many opponents. However, the morale of the seven God Figurine''s Combat Souls was boosted since the first bug formation broke. They were in high spirits now. The Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped its feet one after another at an even higher frequency than before. Approximately less than two minutes since the first bug formation broke, the second one finally split. It was the Destructive Divine Mammoth that crushed it with its feet this time. It stomped its gigantic pillar-like feet from the sky, killing 10,000 saber-wings bug monsters completely. The saber-wings bug monsters that had Divine Power in their bodies were drained immediately after they lost the protection from the disintegrated formation. Then, they were soon turned into ashes by the merciless Death Butterfly. Clearly, the God Figurine''s Combat Souls who been tolerating their failure to break the formations were releasing their rage on the bug monsters. They were using the first-mover''s advantage. "You guys are attacking too fast!" Lin Huang was confounded. After this round of harvesting, another sea of spiritual energy rushed into Lin Huang''s body. He gave it to the Shackle Serpent this time. Lin Huang recalled it back to his body since the spiritual energy it needed to elevate to virtual god-level was almost full now. After the second bug formation beast ''died'', the Destructive Divine Mammoth crushed the third one with its trunk in less than a minute. The 10,000 bug monsters that had lost their formation were crushed into a pile of mush as a consequence of the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s vicious stomping. The other God Figurine''s Combat Souls did not even have a chance of attacking. Another wave of spiritual energy rushed into Lin Huang''s body, and he gave it to the last God Figurine''s Combat Soul, which was the Withered Flower. Lin Huang recalled it back into his body since it was on the brink of elevating to virtual god-level. Although he could not obtain any Stairway Tree points, he was very pleased with the rewards he obtained from this checkpoint. Excluding the falling of the cards, the battle alone elevated all of his God Figurine''s Combat Souls although three of them had yet to complete their elevation. Nonetheless, the result surpassed his expectations. He was considering purchasing many soul crystals after this checkpoint ended to push all of his God Figurine''s Combat Souls to virtual god-level as quickly as he could. Before the checkpoint even ended, the plan was completed in advance. As the three bug formations were ''killed'' consecutively, more and more of them disintegrated after losing their Divine Power. In less than five minutes, at least 100 out of the 300-odd bug formation beasts were killed. They were destroyed by the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the other six God Figurine''s Combat Souls. Another sea of spiritual energy rushed into Lin Huang''s body, which he transferred into the Ninetails Lynx''s body. The Ninetails Lynx''s combat strength skyrocketed from Virtual God rank-1 to Virtual God rank-3. Since it was not an elevation as major as imperial-level purple gold-rank to virtual god-level, the elevation was natural to the Ninetails Lynx because there were no physical changes at all. It was smooth and was completed within merely seconds. As the Ninetails Lynx completed its elevation, it mangled the remaining 200 over bug formation beasts to death in less than a minute. The ability of the millions of demigod-level bug monsters that had lost their protection plummeted since their Divine Power was drained. Within less than five minutes, the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the rest killed all of them. Lin Huang gave the sea of spiritual energy to the Destructive Divine Mammoth and Nightmare Tapir, elevating the both of them to Virtual God rank-3. As for the remaining spiritual energy, Lin Huang gave them to the Undead Styx, the Shackle Serpent, and the Creation Clock. It was sufficient to get them to Virtual God rank-2. In less than half an hour, the bug formations coming out of the hives were crushed by the seven God Figurine''s Combat Souls. It was clearly beyond the expectations of the person who designed the checkpoint. Despite there being millions of demigod-level bug monsters, Lin Huang eliminated all of them within less than half an hour. The mission of the checkpoint was set for the player to only survive in the monster horde. The designer never thought that anyone would possibly clear the monster horde to the point that there was not even a single monster left. Lin Huang, on the other hand, had no idea what the checkpoint designer was thinking. He was doubtful since nothing was happening to the hundreds of hives after waiting for one to two minutes. The entire trial space fell into silence for a moment before a man''s voice echoed all of a sudden, "You''ve passed the trial. Please be patient and wait for the half-hour to pass. The trial result will only be revealed after the 24-hour trial period has come to an end." "So, is this the end of the trial? Don''t I have another half an hour?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. He was not sure if the person could hear him or not. The man only spoke after a moment of silence, "This trial is fixed for 24 hours. You have an extra half hour before you pass it in advance." "I''ll be bored having to wait for half an hour. Can you extend the trial?" Lin Huang asked in anticipation. He had won sweet rewards from the monster hordes and did not want to waste the last half hour of killing monsters. Lin Huang seemed like an eager genius at school. ''There are too few questions in the exam paper. Can I have a few more? 150% is insufficient to show my ability. Can you add more questions to the paper so that I can achieve 250%?'' "M-More of the trial?!" Clearly, the man did not expect Lin Huang to come up with such an absurd request. He only spoke again after a moment of silence, sounding rather odd now, "If that''s what you want, I''ll fulfill your wish by giving you another round of trial. I hope that you won''t regret it." 1114 A Massive Galactic Hive The scene before Lin Huang changed dramatically as soon as the voice came from the sky. The ruins beneath his feet disappeared completely, and so did the Virtual Eyes and hives above his head. They were replaced by vast starry space. Lin Huang was hovering in the air without having anything to hold onto. To his utmost relief, the seven God Figurine''s Combat Souls were still there with him. He was amazed to be in space for the first time. He had never left Earth before he traveled there. Apart from seeing how outer space looked like in films, he had never had any outer space experience at all. In reality, apart from professional astronauts, nobody else on Earth had the qualifications to explore space. After a fleeting moment of amazement, Lin Huang soon snapped back to his senses and recalled that he was still in a trial. "So, what''s this additional trial going to be?" Lin Huang looked around skeptically. Apart from a few planets of various sizes not far away and some stars that had different levels of brightness in the distance, there was nothing else around. The entire space was quiet and peaceful. Although that was the case, Lin Huang knew something was up. Just when he was going to ask the voice a question, a nearby1 planet was orbiting slowly towards his direction. Since there were no stars around and the distance of the planet was not that far away, all Lin Huang could see was a giant silhouette ball coming his way. When the gigantic planet got closer, Lin Huang saw what it really looked like. He was in shock at that very moment. He could not estimate the size of the ''planet'' since there was no standard reference around. However, he felt it was definitely bigger than Earth. However, the ''planet'' was actually a gigantic hive. Lin Huang could even see the dense holes which looked like brood boxes that filled the entire surface of the hive clearly. It was a little hard for him to imagine exactly how many bug monsters could such an enormous hive contain. There were two smaller hives like satellites that hovered on both sides of the giant hives. Lin Huang estimated they were similar to the size of the moon. "I''ve never thought that I''ll see a galactic hive in such a trial." The stone tablet''s voice came gently. "A galactic hive?" It was Lin Huang''s first time hearing that name. "A galactic hive is a giant hive that travels in the galaxy," the stone tablet explained, "Just like the one right in front of you. "Apart from its gigantic size and the ability to travel in a galaxy, how is it different from an ordinary hive?" Lin Huang asked. "Most ordinary hives are built by bugs that have been given birth to and are led by a queen. Therefore, each hive is made of one type of bug monster. Even though they have different responsibilities in the hive whereby they even have different physical structures, they''re the same type of monster by nature. "However, it''s a different case for galactic hives. The galactic hive is made of at least five types of bug monsters to carry out a detailed streamline to form a complete ecological system. This is also why the galactic hive can travel in space for thousands or even up to 10,000 years without any supplies. "Each galactic hive is a mobile gigantic battle fortress. They even have military divisions specializing in setting battle strategies. They also have Bug Tribe generals who are experts in leadership, whereby even fighters of different tribes will work together instead of killing each other." "Different tribes living in the same hive? Won''t they fight?" Lin Huang asked, feeling puzzled. "Moreover, the tribe leaders such as the mothers and queens are usually extremely territorial. How could they allow leaders of other tribes to stay in the same hive?" "Fights are inevitable. It''s allowed as long as they don''t cross the line. After all, most Bug Tribe members are rough, and they need to vent when there''re no battles for them to fight." "As for the territorial nature you mentioned, all tribe leaders definitely have that, but these Bug Tribe leaders are smarter than you think. Not only is their intelligence higher than an ordinary person''s, but it''s even slightly higher. They know very well that working together brings great benefits. They also know the importance of collaboration, so naturally, they put their territorial nature aside. Moreover, the galactic hive is massive. Compared to before, their territory didn''t shrink. Instead, it''s bigger now. It''s just that other tribes are closer to them. That''s all." "What about the smaller hives on both sides? Are those galactic hives too?" Lin Huang had his eyes trained on the size of the mini hive of the moon now. "Those are the affiliate hives. Galactic hives grow from going into battles of all kinds, and they fight each other sometimes. The tribes whose abilities are recognized can join the main hive and own a place there. Those that aren''t recognized will be enslaved. The tribes that are enslaved can''t be added to the main hive. They can only stay in the affiliate hives. "In every battle, the tribes in the affiliate hives will be the leading soldiers sent to test their opponents'' abilities. In other words, they are cannon fodders." "They have social classes too?!" Lin Huang could not believe it. "Of course, the Bug Tribe has very clear ranks and each rank is extremely solid. Their identities are made permanent almost as soon as they were born. Some are born mothers, some are born queens, some are fighters while some are born to be merely handymen." "They''re even crueler than humans!" Lin Huang could not help but exclaim, "At least, humans can learn from reading and personal development to remedy the deficiencies they are born with in order to improve their personal situations and destinies. However, the physical structures and intelligence of different social classes that the Bug Tribe monsters are born with are hard to change from their hard work that comes later." The stone tablet smiled and stopped dwelling on the topic of social class with Lin Huang. He proceeded to speak, "The galactic hive is the ultimate mode of a hive. For such a hive, even the lowest level has at least virtual god-level powerhouses guarding it. Moreover, under normal circumstances, the bigger its size, the more tribes there are. The more affiliate hives they own, the more powerful the hive''s overall ability is." "Judging by the size of the galactic hive before you, it''s just a mediocre level-one. The most powerful bug monster that''s guarding it inside shouldn''t exceed Virtual God rank-9." Lin Huang and the stone tablet''s consciousness seemed like they were discussing many things, but in reality, the conversation only took a second or two. Just when he was done talking with the stone tablet, the giant hive before Lin Huang stopped near him. The two moon-sized affiliate hives moved forward slowly, blocking the space between Lin Huang and the giant hive. As Lin Huang watched them calmly, a sea of monster armies rushed out of the two affiliate hives at an alarming speed. 1Author''s Note: The distance here is calculated by the relative distance between each planet in space. For instance, the distance between the Earth and the moon is 384,400 kilometers on average. 1115 Fight! @@ Lin Huang saw monster armies being released by the two affiliate hives. All of them had a combat strength of imperial-level, and there were at least a million of them. "The standard of these cannon fodder is pretty high," Lin Huang hollered while watching the scene. The stone tablet had just told him that the affiliate hives were cannon fodder for the galactic hives. Every time when there was a battle, they would be the first batch of soldiers to fight, testing the enemy''s abilities. However, the testing soldiers already had similar standards as the second last monster horde on the 81st checkpoint. They were just fewer in quantity. Even Lin Huang had to admit that this galactic hive had a pretty terrifying ability as a whole. The two Bug Tribe armies that were sent from the affiliate hives had completely different bug monsters. One had mossy green heavy armor on their bodies, and they looked similar to stag beetles, but they were actually giant beetles @@ 1116 This Must Be Gotten Rid Of! @@ The Divine Sun Tree''s flame was being blocked by the blue humanoid bug''s maximum defense. The spider beast attacked almost at the same time. Tens of white threads shot out at the end of its abdomen, becoming intersected webs in the air and charging at the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls like a trap. The Divine Sun Tree stretched its branches out again, penetrating the spider webs directly. Golden flames spread on the web rapidly, burning it into ashes. Meanwhile, the Death Butterfly flapped its wings before the giant bug formation beasts attacked again. An invisible death wave spread through the three giant bug formation beasts like a ripple. The blue, translucent bubbles that were covering the three of them began to crack. The Enchanted Fairy also seized the opportunity to attack as she charged with her palm. A bone-piercing chill swept through the three giant bug formation beasts like an ocean wave. A layer of frost appeared on the blue, translucent@@ 1117 Oh Wow, You’ll Be Killed Soon! @@ Tens of thousands of black metal chains were cast out of the metal bug''s body. They were coming at the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls like a web. As they were about to be drowned by the sea of chains, the Enchanted Fairy acted before the chains got even closer. She charged her palm, spreading white frost out and freezing the black chains into ice sculptures one after another. The frozen chains seemed to have lost their mobility whereby they could no longer go any closer. A black beam of light shot over just when the Enchanted Fairy attacked. It appeared before her in the blink of an eye, targeting the space between her brows.Find authorized novels in Webnovelfaster updates, better experiencePlease clickfor visiting. It was the muscular bug beast that was responsible for attacking who struck this time. It initially held two spears in both hands, but it only had the one in its left hand now. It tossed the other one less than a meter before the Enchanted Fairy immediately. The Enchanted Fairy stretched her arm out before her body and poi@@ 1118 Top-notch Deploymen @@ There were only seven bug monsters in the second round of battle. Each of them had a combat strength of Virtual God rank-6. Compared to the three Virtual God rank-3 bug monsters earlier, this team of bug monsters had a substantial improvement in their deployment of members. Out of the seven bug monsters, there were two assistants, two controllers, and three responsible for attacking. Three of the God Figurine''s Combat Souls, namely the Divine Sun Tree, the Enchanted Fairy, and the Death Butterfly, were on Virtual God rank-1, but their abilities were enough to suppress Virtual God rank-5, which was slightly weaker than this batch of bug monsters. With their powerful bodies, the three God Figurine''s Combat Souls could stall the three bug monsters responsible for attacking by force.Find authorized novels in Webnovelfaster updates, better experiencePlease clickfor visiting. The Virtual God rank-2 Undead Styx was caught in a fight with a control bug monster. Although he had the upper hand, he did not seem like he could destroy it within a short period.Virtuoso>Saber9. More precisely, Lin Huang and Virtuoso were the only ones who were a threat to him. Saber9 could almost be ignored. Naturally, he did not completely overlook Saber9. After all, a saber cultivator was theoretically the cultivator with the most powerful attack abilities. Perhaps Saber9 was intentionally hiding his ability, waiting for the perfect opportunity to surprise Nine Gloom Chapter 1588 - Just Fight, Regardless! To Lin Huang and the other two, Nine Gloom standing in front of them now was the most powerful enemy they had ever faced. Although he appeared to be somewhat clumsy, Lin Huang and the rest sensed no signs of his energy waning. This meant that he had not suffered any substantial physical harm. Lin Huang was sure that the deflected attack from Mirror had surpassed his own strongest attack at least three times over. Despite the intensity and power of the attack, it had merely given Nine Gloom a few superficial injuries. What was even more frightening was that Nine Gloom had taken Virtuosos attack head-on. He had had no time to evade, nor had he been able to utilize any methods of defense. He had directly taken the hit armed only with his Divine Power and his physical body. Under their mask, Virtuosos expression became rather weighty. For their attack earlier, they had copied Lin Huangs Mirror completely. As the replicator, they knew very well how powerful and terrifying Lin Huangs attack was. They had reached their limits in terms of psychic-level capacity, just from replicating that attack. One could say that the attack was practically at half-step lord-level already. Initially, Virtuoso had anticipated that Nine Gloom would definitely be hurt even if he were not severely injured since he had taken the attack without being prepared for it. However, what surprised them was that Nine Gloom was stronger than they had expected and had not sustained any substantial physical damage at all. This also meant that it would be impossible to kill Nine Gloom even if he were hit two, even three times when his guard was down. Furthermore, at Virtuosos current ability, they could only replicate images of such intensity three times, at most. Just as Lin Huang and Virtuoso were trying to figure out how to turn the tables on Nine Gloom, Saber9 attacked again unhesitatingly. As a saber cultivator, his fighting style was usually to fight first and think later. Whether he won or not was another matterbut he had to take action first. Only after taking action would he decide whether or not to exercise his brain based on the battle situation. One just had to fight, regardless! Watching the nine saber formations consolidating again in midair and the golden saber gleams condensing into being at lightning speed, Lin Huang and Virtuoso knew that it was time for them to attack. Countless saber gleams filled the sky, but Nine Gloom did not look at Saber9. He did not even bother to lift his head to look at the sky full of saber gleams. His gaze was fixed on the direction where Lin Huang and Virtuoso were. He was not intentionally looking down on Saber9; this was because he could sense Saber9s attack was similar to the one from earlier. Nine Gloom could easily tell from the intensity of the wave of Divine Power. An attack like this would not be able to breach his defenses at all. However, to Saber9, this was undoubtedly a form of disdain, as well as a provocation. The million-over saber gleams consolidated in the air almost immediately. The next second, they came hurtling down on Nine Gloom like a rainstorm. Countless saber gleams surged at Nine Gloom from all directions. Nine Gloom had no interest in this current wave of attack. When he saw the incoming saber gleams, he already knew that Saber9s attack was no different from the last round. He did not even bother to waste effort evading it; he merely enveloped his body with a layer of Divine Power as a defense. At present, he already possessed Silver Armors defense abilities. Given the vast amount of Divine Power within him, Saber9s attack fell far short of being able to penetrate his defenses. Observing that Nine Gloom had now set up his defenses, the corners of Saber9s mouth abruptly twitched up in a smirk. A second later, the golden saber gleams collided with Nine Glooms defense layer and exploded, taking away a portion of his Divine Power. YesSaber9 had no intention of breaching Nine Glooms defenses at all with this attack. Once he became aware that his attacks were not powerful enough to cause any physical harm to Nine Gloom, he swiftly changed his battle strategy and designated himself as combat support. The nine saber formations seemed no different from the last round. In reality, though, Saber9 had secretly made tiny tweaks to the formations, increasing the explosion, absorption, and interference traits. Every time the saber gleams exploded, they would absorb around threefolds worth of Divine Power as well. They would also release this portion of Divine Power to create interference waves that would obstruct Nine Glooms senses and his Divine Telekinesis probing. This time, Saber9s purpose in attacking was not only to drain Nine Glooms Divine Power but also to create an opportunity for Lin Huang and Virtuoso to deal some severe damage to their opponent. In reality, most saber cultivators did indeed prefer to fight blindly and think lessthe reason being, their ability was sufficient to crush their opponents. They did not have to think most of the time. However, as a saber cultivator with extensive battle experience whose Primordial form was also an Almighty, Saber9 did not really have to think much after his first round of attack had failed. The strategy came to him automatically. This was why he had attacked without hesitation while Lin Huang and Virtuoso were still considering how to turn the tables. Not only did he give Nine Gloom the impression that he was a reckless hothead, even Lin Huang and Virtuoso thought the same. However, Lin Huang and Virtuoso realized what was going on the instant they saw Saber9s saber gleams explode. Without hesitation, they attacked once more. Lin Huang charged at Nine Gloom again, slashing at him with twelve levels of compounded god sequence chains combined with Sword Dao heavenly rule. Unlike his previous assault, the compounded twelve levels of god sequence chains he added this time were not for attacking but for absorbing and draining Divine Power. After he saw Saber9s attack, he had the same inspirationto fight Nine Gloom by draining him! This was because he was clearly aware that even his most powerful blow was not even one-third as powerful as the deflected wave from before, so it was difficult for him to cause any substantial physical harm to Nine Gloom. Standing off to one side, Virtuoso took on the responsibility for this round of attack. As they performed complicated hand seals, over a dozen figures that looked exactly like Lin Huang appeared in the air once again, a mirror swiftly consolidating in front of each of them. After that, terrifying, intersecting red and black shockwaves shot forth! It was one of Virtuosos biggest secretsthey could replicate an imaginary image over and over again. After replicating Lin Huangs deflected shockwave the first time, Virtuoso could utilize it for themselves in the future. As long as they had sufficient Divine Power within their body and a strong enough psychic capacity, they would be able to use it. Even Lin Huang could not help raising his brows when he noticed that his attack was being replicated again. He was a little envious of Virtuosos ability now. Nine Gloom, currently swamped by countless exploding saber gleams, was not feeling very good at the moment. True, the assaults had not breached his defenses. However, the glaringly bright explosions were interfering with his vision. Furthermore, the Divine Power waves being released were also disturbing his sensing ability and Divine Telekinesis. He could sense two powerful attacks coming from not too far away. However, given the interference, he could not determine the direction or the angle of the attacks with any accuracy. After a moment of consideration, he soon came to a decision. Countless vines surged forth from both his hands, turning into two giant half-spherical shields in the blink of an eye. As he gave both arms a slight shake, the two half-spheres integrated, creating a complete sphere that completely enveloped his body within it. Just when Nine Gloom had practically completed forming the shield, two attacks landed at almost the same time, striking the giant spherical shield. Lin Huangs blood-red sword attack landed on the giant shield. It did not penetrate through; instead, it began to absorb the Divine Power that covered the shield. Virtuosos shockwave struck the massive shield violently from another angle. After a few seconds of being eroded, traces of cracks finally began to appear on the shields surface. However, Lin Huang and the other two noticed that more vines were extending to fill in the cracks. This contest lasted for some two to three minutes before the shockwaves finally dissipated. The surface of the giant shield was now covered with cracks and pitted with holes. However, in the end, it still did not collapse Chapter 1589 - Rats In A Trap? Within the giant spherical shield made of vines, the silver-armored Nine Gloom had not suffered any injuries to his body at all. However, at the moment, he felt exceedingly gloomy. True, Lin Huang and the other twos round of attacks had not caused him any harm. However, this time his Divine Power had been depleted much more than in the first clash earlier. This was for no other reason than Lin Huang and Saber9s use of techniques that absorbed and drained his Divine Power, thus depleting it significantly. Although Nine Gloom had managed to defend himself against Virtuosos shockwaves, overall, the drain on his Divine Power had increased. He had exhausted almost one-third of his full store of Divine Power. On top of the Divine Power loss from that first battle, he had lost over half of his Divine Power just from these two rounds of attacks. As far as Nine Gloom was concerned, this was not good news at all. No matter how powerful his abilities, without Divine Power, he could do nothing. Realizing that Lin Huang and the other two had targeted him, Nine Gloom rapidly began thinking of counter-strategies. Meanwhile, although Lin Huang and the rest were aware that this wave of assault was insufficient to cause Nine Gloom any harm, they were still satisfied. They had no idea what percentage of Divine Power loss Nine Gloom had suffered, but they had a rough idea of how much Divine Power would have been absorbed and drained in the attack just now. If one round were not enough to drain Nine Glooms Divine Power completely, they would merely repeat the process several times. Eventually, his Divine Power would run out. Nine Gloom was clearly aware of this. More than half the Divine Power within his body had been drained just from these two rounds of attack. If he were to allow them to continue their onslaughts, he could only sustain two more rounds at most before his Divine Power depleted entirely. Once this occurred to him, he initiated an attack the moment the shockwaves dissipated. The giant spherical shield abruptly split apart and proliferated. Countless vines extended in the direction where Lin Huang and the other two were, blotting everything out. The three of them hastily dodged, slicing away tendrils as they evaded the attacks coming at them from the vines. However, the wave of incoming vines was endless. Every time vines broke off, they would regenerate within the blink of an eye and continue to attack the three of them. As there were too many vines, the three of them could only struggle to cope. They could only defend passively; they did not have the energy to initiate any more attacks. Nine Gloom finally had the upper hand in this round of battle. However, Lin Huang and the other two did not panic at all. They were even communicating secretly through voice transmission. Has this fellow gone insane? Why is he suddenly pulling out all the big moves?! Saber9 could not help grumbling. It proves that our previous two rounds of attacks drained his Divine Power significantly. He dare not drag things out any further, so hes eager to take control of the battle in order to end it quickly. Virtuoso saw through Nine Glooms plan right away. Youre right about that, but not entirely. Lin Huang, on the other hand, raised his head to look at the sky. Apart from the vines that were attacking the three of them, there were considerably more vines that had grown past their heads and were now extending even further toward the distance. The ranged attack is just a smokescreen. His real goal is to shift the battlefield! As soon as Lin Huang finished speaking, the all-encompassing vines had already rapidly surrounded them, completely blotting out heaven and earth. The next instant, Lin Huang and the other two emerged in a world full of vines. An overwhelming curtain of vines surged toward them in an onslaught. Were in trouble nowweve been dragged into his God Territory Saber9s expression instantly changed to one of dismay. Although the three of them had powerful abilities, their combat strength was still only at true god-level after all. Their God Territories were nowhere near as strong as Nine Glooms; they had no way of defending themselves against being swallowed up by his God Territory. In his God Territory, Nine Gloom was practically the god of this world. His Divine Power was almost limitless. Therefore, the plan that Lin Huang and the other two had come up with earlier was more or less utterly useless here. If they continued to drain Nine Glooms Divine Power, they might very well drain themselves to death. What the hell do we do now?! Saber9 looked at Lin Huang and Virtuoso. Virtuoso said nothing. They still seemed to be thinking about counter-strategies. Lin Huang spoke up right away, There are only two ways to get out of a God Territory. One is to forcibly eradicate the God Territory; the other is to kill the God Territorys master. Given the current level of our attack power, naturally, we cant achieve the former, so we can only go for the latter. One could only eradicate a God Territory by force if the power of their attack exceeded the limits of what the God Territory was able to withstand. Given Nine Glooms ability, destroying his God Territory was something perhaps only half-step lord-level powerhouses would be able to achieve. Clearly, Lin Huang, Virtuoso, and Saber9 did not possess such capabilities. Therefore, the option of eradication by force was not viable. However, upon hearing Lin Huang saying that only the second option was available to them, Saber9 could not help curling his lips slightly, secretly critical within his heart. If they could not even eradicate a God Territory with force, could they kill Nine Gloom, who was now within his own God Territory?! From Lin Huangs tone, it sounded as if killing Nine Gloom was a piece of cake. Lin Huang is right. If this had been before Nine Gloom activated his God Territory, we would still have had optionsif we were no match for him, we could have abandoned the battle and fled straight away. However, we have no choice now. Well only be able to get out of this God Territory if we kill him, Virtuoso finally delivered his verdict after pondering for a moment. Saber9 looked helpless when he heard this. The problem is, how do we kill him?! If we were outside his God Territory like before, we could still drain his Divine Power slowly. However, now that were in his God Territory, the Divine Power within his body is limitless. If we continue trying to exhaust his Divine Power like we did before, well be the ones who die in the end. Virtuoso glanced at Saber9 after hearing him out and said calmly, Thats why we have to bring out some actual trump cards now, or the three of us really will die here. Saber9 went completely silent upon hearing what Virtuoso had to say. Virtuoso did not press him either. They waited patiently for Saber9s response as they continued to dodge Nine Glooms vine attacks. They were waiting to hear what Saber9 had to say because they were worried that their own trump card might not be able to kill Nine Gloom in one go. If they attacked with Saber9, their chances of succeeding would increase significantly. Therefore, they did not dare make any rash moves before getting a response from Saber9. Saber9 was silent for a long time. Finally, he made up his mind. Alright, Ill go first! If I dont end up killing him, you finish him off. The reason he made this decision was that he knew the situation would only get worse if they dragged things on. By the end of it, he might not have sufficient Divine Power to even use his trump card. Naturally, Nine Gloom was aware that the three of them were discussing counter-strategies. However, he could not hear any concrete details, nor did he pay attention to what they were saying. As far as he was concerned, the three of them were like rats caught in a trap. They had nowhere to run. He even did not bother wasting effort to launch powerful attacks at the three of them. After all, their abilities were not weak; a strong assault might not gain him much in the way of advantages. Therefore, he opted for the strategy the three had used earlier, which was to use vine attacks to wear down their Divine Power. Once their Divine Power had been completely depleted, the three of them would naturally become sitting ducks; he could do whatever he wanted with them. Unfortunately, he did not know about Virtuoso and Saber9s backgrounds. If he had had any inkling at all, he would definitely have killed the three of them as swiftly as possible to prevent anything unforeseen from happening. However, it was this tiny bit of misinformation that created an opportunity for Lin Huang and the rest. Chapter 1590 - Saber9’s Trump Card High up in the air, Saber9 stood tall. Sword gleams circled around his body like schools of swimming fish, easily fending off wave after wave of vine attacks. He began to perform rapid hand seals, and the aura radiating from him started to become peculiar. Naturally, Nine Gloom noticed this transformation as well, but he did not really pay that much attention to it. After the two rounds of previous attacks, he already had a rough understanding of Saber9s level and felt that Saber9s attacks were not much of a threat. His attention was focused more on Lin Huang and Virtuoso. He did not completely ignore Saber9 either. Instead, he sent out more vines to counter Saber9s assault, and also increased the frequency of the vine attacks, attempting to hamper Saber9s moves. However, the sword gleams swimming around Saber9 seemed to be alive. Not only did they increase in number along with the vines, but their movement also sped up in response to the increased frequency of the attacks. Then again, Saber9s hand seals were also completed very rapidly. The instant he was done, both his eyes suddenly lit up with a golden sword glow. About a meter in front of him, a golden sword gleam consolidated at a speed visible to the naked eye. There was only one sword gleam, which gradually elongated to approximately one meter in length. It did not look very different from the millions of sword gleams that Saber9 had consolidated earlier. However, only Saber9 knew that this sword gleam was completely different from the ones consolidated previously. The essence of this particular sword gleam was a sword formation that Saber9s Primordium had left behind. Furthermore, a sliver of energy was inserted into it. This sword formation was originally meant to ensure Saber9s survival. The moment Saber9 died, it would be activated passively, releasing an attack that was on par with a lord-level assault. Naturally, the effect that Saber9 activated was much weaker than that. Firstly, this was because Saber9 had yet to master this particular sword formation and thus could not fully unleash its power. The second reason was that he had activated it himself, which meant that the sliver of energy inserted by his Primordium could not be used. The driving force for this formation was entirely Saber9s own Divine Power. Although on the surface it was impossible to detect the sword gleams peculiarity, Lin Huang and Virtuoso clearly sensed that terrifying energy was concealed within it. However slow on the uptake Nine Gloom might be, he was still able to sense the threat emanating from the sword gleam. The sense of danger coming from it was even slightly more pronounced than that of the two shockwaves Virtuoso had replicated previously. Naturally, Nine Gloom had no idea about the background of Saber9s sword gleam. However, this did not stop him from treating it as a formidable attack-type secret skill. It seems I really have underestimated this saber cultivator! In reality, he had never actually looked down on the three opponents he was facing. However, he had not expected to have miscalculated Saber9s ability quite so much. Nine Gloom was on full alert as he watched the sword gleam consolidate completely within the mere blink of an eye. The instant the golden sword gleam materialized into being, it transformed into an electric arc and shot forward. Thats fast! Nine Gloom was not the only one who thought soeven Lin Huang and Virtuoso could not help secretly exclaiming to themselves. The strike was so swift that Lin Huang felt it might even be the fastest attack he had ever seen since he started down the path of cultivation. He was unable to follow the attack at all by sight. Even when he used Divine Telekinesis, he was only able to make out the trajectory left behind by the blow. What a move If I were his opponent, I might be dead before I even had time to use Mirror, Lin Huang sighed secretly in his heart. He could imagine that the attack would be outstandingly powerful as well as fast. After all, it was the trump card left by an Almighty! As the clone of an Almighty as well, Virtuoso was able to see much more than Lin Huang. At a glance, they realized that Saber9 had not unleashed the full power of the trump card in this attack. Virtuoso was able to roughly guess at the reason for it. As expected, the attack is much weaker when he activates it himself, Virtuoso thought to themselves, cupping their chin, Its also far less powerful an attack of this intensity very likely wont kill Nine Gloom. Virtuoso began to plan the next step without waiting for the results of the attack. Meanwhile, confronted by this attack, Nine Gloom was under extreme duress. This attack was incredibly fast. Even Nine Gloom could only catch a glimpse of the sword gleam. It was fortunate that he possessed powerful Divine Telekinesis and could sense the sword gleams complete trajectory. The moment Nine Gloom caught sight of the sword gleam, he attacked without hesitation. The vines multiplied in countless numbers, surging toward the golden sword gleam. He no longer held out any high expectations of being able to block the attack. He only hoped that he could use the vines to wear down the power of Saber9s assault. When the golden sword gleam locked onto Nine Gloom, it had actually completely broken free of Saber9s control. Faced with layer upon layer of obstructing vines, it had no intention of circumventing them. Instead, it pierced straight through them. Wherever it passed, destruction followed in its wake, leaving only dust behind. The vines could not stop the sword gleam at all. They were crushed into dust as soon as they got within ten centimeters of it. However, Nine Gloom did not panic when he saw what was happening. The sword gleam did not seem to dim at all, but Nine Gloom was very certain that each time it came in contact with his vines, it would weaken by just a fraction. This time, he utilized the technique that Lin Huang and Saber9 had used to counter him earlierhe secretly infused all the vines with the ability to absorb and drain Divine Power. The sword gleam would not weaken very obviously after colliding with the vines two or three times. However, what if they collided a hundred times or even a thousand times? What if they collided over ten thousand times?! Even Nine Gloom had not anticipated being able to apply this method so soonusing his opponents own techniques against them. It was not long before Lin Huang and the rest noticed that something was off. Although Lin Huang did not know what Virtuosos expression was under their mask, he saw Saber9 frowning slightly. Lin Huang was not sure whether Saber9 was unsatisfied with his attack or if he was upset that Nine Gloom had used his own technique against him. However, under his mask, Lin Huang looked rather helpless. He had never expected that the trick he and Saber9 had played on Nine Gloom would be used against them now. In the void, countless vines besieged the golden sword gleam. The golden sword gleam was still moving like a hot knife through butter with no hint of any slowing down. It pierced through the multiple layers of obstacles and reached Nine Gloom within the blink of an eye. Nine Gloom did not bother evading, knowing that it was fruitless to even try. He had no way of dodging this attack. Therefore, he chose to counter it full force. He extended countless vines to fortify his defenses, forming a complicated structure of giant curved silver shields in front of him. In short order, eighteen of these massive shields were formed. They were like eighteen city walls acting as a barrier in front of Nine Gloom. On each of the massive shields were entwined close to twenty thick god sequence chains of various colors. Those were the concrete, physical manifestations of sequence power. In the time it took for a mere breath, the golden sword gleam collided with the giant shields. Golden and silver divine rays abruptly flared up, immediately blotting out the heavens. At that instant, it seemed as if gold and silver were the only colors remaining in the world. Even the two spectators, Lin Huang and Virtuoso, could not help squinting slightly. However, apart from the gold and silver rays, neither of them could see anything at all. A moment later, the two rays gradually faded, and Lin Huang and Virtuoso were finally able to see the state of battle at the moment. The eighteen thick, massive wall-like shields had been completely pierced through, leaving a hole as big as a water barrel. Meanwhile, Nine Gloom, who had been sheltering behind the shields earlier, was now nowhere to be seen. Nine Gloom is dead?! Lin Huang was skeptical. Chapter 1591 - Virtuoso’s Trump Card Saber9s attack could not be considered weak by any means. Although this was the less powerful version, from Lin Huang and Virtuosos point of view, it was at least at the level of a half-step Lord. Seeing that Nine Glooms figure had utterly vanished and even his aura was no longer present, the first reaction from Lin Huang and the others wascould Nine Gloom finally be dead at last?! However, a moment later, the three of them had a change of expression almost simultaneously. All of them looked at a spot on the ground not too far away. A new vine tendril suddenly extended from the surface of the earth, then a second and a third Within the blink of an eye, they consolidated into a humanoid figure. It was Nine Gloom, clad in the silver armor from earlier! I almost died The silver-armored Nine Gloom could not help exclaiming as his body regenerated. As expected, I most certainly underestimated you. His gaze finally alighted on Saber9 now. However, I dont suppose you have any remaining strength to attempt a second attack like the one you just pulled off. Nine Glooms speculation was because he could sense Saber9s aura slowly decreasing. This was a phenomenon that would only happen when ones Divine Power was drained. Nine Glooms guess was absolutely correct. In fact, Saber9s actual condition was even worse than Nine Glooms initial speculation. Drawing on the life-saving saber formation left by his Primordial form had resulted in a definite backlash for Saber9. Currently, not only had he suffered a drain on his Divine Power, his spirit and physical body had been taxed to the limit. He was on the verge of collapsing entirely. Fortunately, apart from discovering that Saber9 had no more strength left to fight, Nine Gloom did not sense any further anomalies. As for Lin Huang and Virtuoso, they had no idea that Saber9 was in such a dire condition after his attack. However, before he made his move, Saber9 had already informed both of them that he could only launch a single attack. Whether or not it killed Nine Gloom, he no longer had the strength to fight anymore. When Virtuoso saw the look that Saber9 sent them, they needed no words to understand what it meant. Saber9 had completely lost his capacity to fight. The only chance for killing Nine Gloom now depended on their own trump card. At this point, Virtuoso spoke to Lin Huang through voice transmission, If Im not able to kill him after using my trump card, run as far away as you can. Dont bother about the two of us; we both have means of survival. When he heard this, Lin Huang knew that the other two had not considered that he himself might have a trump card or two. However, upon thinking about it, he let it pass. After all, the pair had trump cards left to them by Almighties who far surpassed lord-level. From their point of view, if their trump cards could not kill Nine Gloom, then none of Lin Huangs trump cards would be very effective. However, in his heart, Lin Huang could not help grumbling, This is Nine Glooms God Territory. Even if I really wanted to flee, where would I go anyway?! At that moment, Virtuoso added, Our means of survival might very well affect you. Only then did Lin Huang realize that Virtuoso was not asking him to flee from Nine Glooms pursuit but to get away from the effect that would result from the pair using their trump cards. After this exchange with Lin Huang, Virtuoso then turned their attention back to Nine Gloom. This enemy that they were facing had certainly far exceeded their expectations in terms of difficulty. Initially, Virtuoso had thought that even if Saber9 activated his trump card on his own, it might still be sufficient to kill this wretched fellow in front of them, despite the attack being significantly less powerful. Even if it failed to kill Nine Gloom, it might still injure him severely. However, from the looks of things, Nine Gloom appeared to be completely fine. They wondered what sort of special technique he might be using. Despite having been on the receiving end of Saber9s nigh half-step lord-level attack, even Nine Glooms aura showed no signs of weakening at all. Virtuoso was not at all sure if their trump card would be able to kill him. A great many thoughts passed through their mind within just that brief period. They lifted their head and looked at Nine Gloom again, then attacked without hesitation. They performed rapid, complicated hand seals with both hands. At the same time, the mask covering their face swiftly began disintegrating, turning into points of starlight that consolidated speedily above Virtuosos head. In some astonishment, Lin Huang raised his head and looked over at what was forming above Virtuosos head. To some degree, he could make out that it was a human face with both eyes tightly closed at present. Very soon, the massive, seemingly illusory face floating in midair had consolidated completely. Lin Huang could not help staring at that face. It was utterly flawless; each detail could be considered exquisite. Even if it were magnified over a hundred times, not a single defect would be found. However, Lin Huang still could not be certain if the master of the face was female or male. As soon as the gigantic face consolidated fully, its eyes finally opened slowly. Those eyes were dark blue. The moment they opened, Lin Huang felt as if he could see the entire universe revolving within them. However, when he blinked and looked at them again, those eyes displayed no signs of vitality; they looked supremely indifferent. At the same time, they seemed to transcend everything else. The instant the eyes opened completely, a golden glow suddenly flared up in the darkness of the void right in front of them. The golden glow was approximately the size of a piece of gravelperhaps even smaller. The light it gave off was very weak; it could even be considered dim. It gave one the impression of a fireflys glow on a summer night; perhaps even fainter than that. Lin Huang could not even feel any energy waves from that tiny golden gleam. However, he instinctively felt that it was dangerous and that he should stay as far away from it as he could. Saber9s reaction was even more straightforward. He seemed to be aware of the potential of this attack; unobtrusively he teleported to hide behind Virtuoso. Nine Gloom obviously sensed the danger posed by this attack. Countless vines surged wildly toward Virtuoso and the golden glow, attempting to hamper the attack. However, the strange thing was, his vines went through Virtuoso and Saber9s bodies easily. They pierced through the golden glow as well, but nothing happened. It was as if Virtuoso, Saber9, and the golden glow were just projections that did not really exist. Given the futility of the attempt, Nine Gloom did not try to attack Lin Huang after that. Something seemed to occur to him, and he hurriedly performed a series of hand seals with both hands. Countless black vines transformed into white fog, encasing him in multiple layers. Within the blink of an eye, he had become a giant white cocoon. There was no telling how many layers he was enveloped in. A spiritual defense technique?! Under his mask, Lin Huangs brows shot up. He finally knew why he had not sensed any Divine Power waves from the golden glow earlier. Virtuosos attack was a purely spiritual attack technique! Nine Gloom had sensed this, so he had set up a heavy spiritual defense without hesitation. By the time Nine Glooms cocoon had fully formed, Virtuosos golden glow had also fully consolidated. The golden glow slowly drifted like a firefly and lightly penetrated the giant white cocoon Naturally, the slowness was a visual illusion experienced by Lin Huang and Saber9. In reality, this attack was impossible to dodge. Everything happened within the blink of an eyefrom Virtuoso using voice transmission to tell Lin Huang to run, to them using their trump card to consolidate that massive face; then to the golden glow shooting out and Nine Gloom extending countless vines in an attempt to stop Virtuosos attack, to Nine Gloom using his spiritual defense technique to complete his cocoon. Subsequently, Lin Huang saw a dazzling golden ray of light rising from the giant cocoon. In the beginning, it looked like sunlight piercing through the cracks of an eggshell, except that these were rays shining through gaps in the cocoon. However, a moment later, the giant cocoon swiftly began to collapse, and countless golden rays began to shine through even more gaps. Finally, the giant cocoon collapsed entirely, and all of earth and heaven were illuminated by that dazzlingly bright golden light! This time Nine Gloom has to be dead, right?! Lin Huang squinted in the direction of where the golden light had burst forth. He could no longer sense any remnants of Nine Glooms aura. Chapter 1592 - Lin Huang’s Tiny Trump Card In the void, the dazzling golden glow released a burst of ultimate brilliance for an instant, then gradually began to dim. Lin Huang could sense that as the golden glow released its burst of light, Virtuosos aura was obviously weakening. Noticing his scrutiny, Virtuoso spoke through voice transmission rather weakly. Im finemy Gods soul is slightly drained, thats all. However, I dont have any strength left to fight for the short term, not after that attack. Lin Huang nodded slightly and glanced at Saber9 a short distance away, who was also in the same weakened condition. Dont worry; Ill protect the two of you until you recover your combat strength. The moment Lin Huang finished speaking, the three of them almost simultaneously turned their heads to look in the direction where the golden glow had just released its rays. Saber9s expression was indescribable. Meanwhile, Virtuoso spoke to Lin Huang through voice transmission right away, Run as far as you can! Dont bother about us! However, Lin Huang remained where he was without moving. He squinted slightly, staring at the spot where countless vines now extended out of thin air. Nine Gloom was still alive! In reality, the most shocking thing about the whole matter was that the trump card Virtuoso had used just now was a spiritual attack. Furthermore, they had sensed beyond all doubt that Nine Glooms Gods soul had been utterly wiped out in the attack. The death of the spirit was different from the death of the physical body. Generally speaking, for many powerhouses who were proficient in the art of spirit cultivation, the death of the physical body was a minor matter. As long as their spirits remained intact, there were many ways for them to revive and resurrect themselves. If a spirit cultivators spirit was wiped out, that meant he was truly dead. It was virtually impossible for them to have a method of resurrection. However, Nine Gloom had managed it. His spirit had been completely eradicated during the attack, but he had resurrected himself. Not only that, he seemed completely unharmed. Such a technique was simply incredible! Naturally, Nine Gloom noticed how shocked Lin Huang and the others were. He spoke again, his body as yet not fully consolidated. Your trump cards are certainly powerful. However, each of you can only use them once at most. If the three of you each kill me once, youll still only be able to kill me three times At this point, Nine Gloom was smiling extraordinarily happily as he spoke, But I have far more than three lives! The three of you should just stop your futile struggles; it will all be in vain. Whats the point of it anyway? When Saber9 heard that, his expression became truly awful indeed. Virtuoso shot a glance at Lin Huang. Noticing that Lin Huang had not run away, they were about to speak to him through voice transmission again, asking him to leave. However, they noticed that Lin Huangs aura was skyrocketing. Within the mere time it took for a breath, he had elevated from true god-level to heavenly god-level right away. His aura was over ten times more powerful now. Nearby, Saber9 noticed Lin Huangs transformation as well and was rather startled. He had seen people using specific techniques to elevate their rank, but he had never seen anyone who had elevated an entire level. After all, there was an immense gap between ninth-rank True God and first-rank Heavenly God. However, Lin Huang had elevated just like that, as if it were as easy as breathing. Lin Huang was the only one who knew that he was not using some secret skill to elevate his combat strength. He had merely used a Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card. Once he had crushed the card, elevating his combat strength was a piece of cake. He went straight from ninth-rank true god-level to first-rank heavenly god-level. (This is not a bug. The Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card cannot create a tenth-rank true god-level. It can only directly elevate Lin Huang to heavenly god-level based on the normal standards for combat strength.) Lin Huang could clearly sense how powerful he had become. Each particle in his physical body and soul seemed to have undergone a qualitative transformation. He merely took a step forward and completely disappeared from Virtuoso and Saber9s view. They could no longer perceive Lin Huangs movements by sight. Even their Divine Telekinesis was unable to track his motion trajectory. Nine Gloom, whose physical body had only just fully consolidated, was feeling exactly the same as Virtuoso and Saber9. Under his silver armor, his burning pupils contracted slightly. He forced himself to calm down, laughing maniacally. Ive told you, even if you kill me again, its futile. Ill just resurrect once more In that case, Id love to see exactly how many times you can resurrect! A voice suddenly spoke, and a specter-like figure appeared in front of Nine Gloom. The next instant, a blood-red arc cut Nine Gloom in half at the waist, killing him. Lin Huang sheathed his sword back into its scabbard and hovered in midair. His aura was terrifying and overwhelming; it showed no signs of decreasing either. He remained on the spot where he had killed Nine Gloom; it did not seem as if he were going to move. Clearly, he was going to guard Nine Glooms corpse. Virtuoso and Saber9 were relieved when they noticed that Lin Huangs aura remained at heavenly god-level instead of dropping. However, they were a little curious about exactly how powerful Lin Huangs earlier attack had been. This was because he had moved and attacked far too swiftly, so they had not been able to get a clear view. They merely saw Lin Huang vanish. When he reappeared again, the blood-red arc had already slaughtered Nine Gloom. The two of them had not even been able to sense the Divine Power wave in the attack, let alone the sequence power contained within it. In no time at all, Nine Gloom resurrected on the spot once again. Lin Huang did not make his move immediately. Instead, he waited patiently for the others body to fully consolidate. That was a sneak attackhow shameless of you! Nine Gloom spit furiously at Lin Huang as soon as he regained consciousness. You were too slow. Lin Huang gave a mocking laugh. Despite noticing that Nine Gloom was rapidly mobilizing his vines to form a shield, Lin Huang did nothing to stop him. He merely stared at Nine Gloom as if he were a complete idiot. Once Nine Glooms figure had fully consolidated, more than a hundred tiers of massive shields had already formed. Are you done with all those tiers? Lin Huang enquired. Nine Gloom ignored him. Instead, he seized every second to continue forming layer upon layer of shields. When Lin Huang saw this, he did not bother waiting any longer. Grasping his sword hilt, he unsheathed the blade in an instant. This time, the sword gleam shot forward like a bolt of lightning, aiming right at the center of all those massive shield layers. A second later, all the shield layers shattered into fragments. It was like a bullet easily traveling through layers of thin glass. The hundreds of massive shield layers were instantly pierced through without a single trace of difficulty. The red lightning bolt-like sword hardly slowed down at all after it went through all the massive shields. It pierced straight through Nine Glooms body, leaving a hole that was the size of a small bowl. The instant the hole appeared, Nine Glooms body cracked like glass and disintegrated into fragments. His thriving life force immediately dispelled. Within the time it took for a mere two to three breaths, Lin Huang had easily killed Nine Gloom twice. As they watched what was happening, Virtuoso and Saber9 had no idea what to say. Although they knew Lin Huang was powerful, they had treated Lin Huang as a powerhouse of the same level despite their prodigious backgrounds. However, at that very moment, both of them finally witnessed Lin Huangs true trump card. Although the strength of each of his attacks was not as powerful as that of their trump cards, the frightening thing about Lin Huangs trump card was that it was not a one-time-only affair. Once his combat strength had elevated to heavenly god-level, he was able to overwhelm Nine Gloom repeatedly. This sort of lasting endurance was the most terrifying thing about his trump card. Chapter 1593 - Nine Gloom Surrenders Impossible! Shrieks of rage came from the countless regenerating vines. Within the blink of an eye, they consolidated into the silver-armored Nine Gloom again. Under his helmet, his eyes were now scarlet in the extreme. That giant shield I formed was compounded with eighteen levels of sequence power. Given the number of sequences youve mastered, it ought to be impossible for you to shatter it! Nine Gloom said this because he was utterly unable to figure out how Lin Huang could deliver such a powerful attack. Although he had no way of finding out Lin Huang, Saber9, and Virtuosos exact combat strength, he had more or less figured out the number of sequence chains the three had mastered, based on the previous battle. He also knew that Saber9 and Virtuoso had been able to kill him earlier because they had utilized unique methods for their trump cards. Therefore, those could not be considered part of their inherent power. However, Lin Huangwho was right in front of himhad merely elevated his combat strength and breached Nine Glooms defenses just like that, relying only on his own abilities. To Nine Gloom, this was unimaginable. That was because, theoretically, this sort of provisional combat strength elevation technique could only elevate the amount of ones Divine Power and its intensity. It could not give someone mastery over more sequence chains. If an individual had only grasped comprehension of one sequence chain, even if they could temporarily elevate their combat strength from first-rank heavenly god-level to ninth-rank heavenly god-level, they would still only have mastery over one sequence chain. The number of sequence chains would not increase. However, judging from both Lin Huangs attacks, he did not appear to have elevated only his combat strength. The number of sequence chains he mastered had increased as well. Theoretically, what you said is correct, Lin Huang responded, smiling faintly, However, thats based on your cognitive limits. Lin Huangs mastery of sequence chains did not come from however many sequence chains he could grasp and comprehend. It actually depended on how many sequence chains his physical body and spirit strength could sustain, because he could borrow all the sequence chains his sword servants had mastered. When he was still only at ninth-rank true god-level, he could sustain a limit of thirteen god sequence chains (twelve sequence chains including Sword Dao heavenly rule). Now that he had elevated to first-rank heavenly god-level, this number had tripled to become thirty-nine sequence chains. Based on pure numbers alone, this was at least twice what Nine Gloom had mastered. Such compounding of sequence power was not a simple math equation. Each time a level of sequence power was mastered, it had the advantage of being able to offset flaws that were difficult to remedy in other areas. The number of sequence chains Ive mastered is far beyond what you expect! Lin Huang smiled at Nine Gloom, who was frantically forming shield layers. He knew that his opponent was buying time to create more such shield layers. Furthermore, this time, the massive shields had a completely different form from the last round. They were embedded into the ground and seemed to be a deflection technique. This did not bother Lin Huang at all. He patiently waited until Nine Gloom had formed over a hundred shield layers. Only then did he ask, smiling, Are you done layering your defenses this round? Lin Huang charged forward with his sword again as soon as he finished speaking. This move was still a stab, but it was completely different from his attack earlier. The sword gleam thrust forward almost gently. It pierced through the multiple layers of massive shields as easily as slicing tofu. It did not make any great noise or commotion. It merely left a gash smaller than a thumb on all the shield layers. When the sword gleam finally pierced through all the hundred-over layers of massive shields and impaled the silver-armored Nine Gloom right between his brow, all the shields did not collapse. They remained as they were. Only a moment later, when Nine Glooms aura dispelled completely, did all the giant shields gradually vanish once their source of Divine Power had been lost. Upon seeing that, Saber9 could not help exclaiming, That attack of his is already bordering on the threshold of Heavenly Dao. There were three levels to Sword Dao heavenly ruleHeavenly Sword, Heavenly Heart, and Heavenly Dao. Even a heavenly god-level sword cultivator would be in the top tier among Heavenly Gods once he crossed the threshold of Heavenly Dao. A single sequence chain alone would have an attack effect comparable to over ten levels of compounded sequence power. This was where the strength of sword cultivators and saber cultivators lay. However, Virtuoso noticed something else. The way he combines and applies the various sequence powers doesnt look as if hes only just mastered them at all. Ive a slight feeling that what hes just displayed might be far from the limits of his true abilities. Saber9s pupils contracted slightly at this point. He glanced intently at Virtuoso, then fixed his eyes on Lin Huang again, his expression inscrutable. Even though Nine Gloom had still resurrected after being killed three times in a row, Lin Huang did not panic in the least. He merely waited patiently for Nine Gloom to finish regenerating. Lin Huang did not seem to mind at all what kind of methods Nine Gloom still had up his sleeve. No matter what, he could still suppress him with brute strength. Im pretty sure you cant sustain this state for too long, can you? Nine Gloom took the initiative to talk to Lin Huang again even before his body had fully consolidated, However many times you kill me, its no useI can regenerate. All I have to do is to hang on until this state of yours comes to an end; sooner or later, the three of you will become my trophies! Oh, really? There was a hint of derision in Lin Huangs tone, Even if your substitution technique really has some connection to all of the Nirvana Trees here, you can only die and resurrect 300 times. Even if you factor in the time I wait for you to resurrect and set up your defenses, Id only need three to five seconds at most to kill you each time. Even if we calculate it as five seconds per resurrection, Id only need half an hour at most to kill you 300 times. Furthermore, I can sustain this state for more than half an hour The first time Lin Huang had killed Nine Gloom earlier, Xiao Heis push notification had popped up, notifying him that he obtained a Nirvana Tree card fragment. He was confused for a moment but immediately realized that Nine Gloom was using a substitution technique. Furthermore, it was connected to the Nirvana Trees. Lin Huang had not bothered to expose Nine Glooms secret earlier as it did not really matter. However, when Nine Gloom brazenly pretended to his face that he could not be killed, Lin Huang could not stand it any longer. Therefore, he chose to reveal his insights into the true facts of the matter which he had gained from the very beginning. Nine Gloom went dead silent as soon as Lin Huang said this. He had never expected that Lin Huang would see through his technique. Virtuoso and Saber9, who were watching off to one side, finally came to a sudden realization. In truth, Virtuoso had already speculated about this possibility when he saw that his trump card had not killed Nine Gloom. However, such a substitution technique was rare and unusual. Not only that, almost all of Nine Glooms substitution techniques were different. Therefore, Virtuoso could not be absolutely certain. They only confirmed their earlier speculation when Lin Huang made his revelation. Saber9, on the other hand, genuinely had no idea what technique Nine Gloom had been using all this time. He had not considered that Nine Gloom might be using a substitution technique either. However, although he had never come in contact with this type of substitution ability, he had heard of it. Once Lin Huang revealed the truth, he immediately understood. When Nine Gloom saw that his greatest secret had been exposed, his confidence immediately plummeted. Initially, he had thought that he would be able to bluster at the three of them and get them to retreat after discussing terms. Never had he thought Lin Huang would expose him right away. An incredibly powerful technique like substitution also had severe limitations. In reality, he was not connected to each of the three hundred-over Nirvana Trees at all. At his current spirit strength, he had already reached his limit connecting to only eleven trees. In other words, including his own life, he only had twelve lives. At present, he had already been killed five times consecutively by Lin Huang, Saber9, and Virtuoso. At the rate Lin Huang had killed him offas fast as slicing and dicing vegetables Nine Gloom felt that he would truly die at Lin Huangs hands in merely half a minute. All kinds of thoughts flashed through Nine Glooms head at lightning speed. After weighing things up again and again, in the end, he chose to surrender. How about thiswe come to a compromise. All of you want the castellans seal. I can give it to you and release you from my God Territory as well. However, in return, youre not allowed to attack me any further! When you obtain the complete castellans seal, you cant obliterate my existence either. That was as far as he could go in terms of compromise. Even Virtuoso and Saber9 were rather swayed when they heard this. However, Lin Huang outright rejected this proposal. Without hesitation, he slashed down with the battle sword in his hand. After we kill you, we can obtain the castellans sea tool! Chapter 1594 - Nine Gloom’s Demise There were two reasons why Lin Huang refused to accept Nine Glooms surrender. The first was that by killing Nine Gloom three times, he had obtained two Nirvana Tree card fragments and a complete Nirvana Tree card. He felt that he would be able to gain more by killing Nine Gloom. The other reason was that he was unsure if Nine Glooms surrender was just a strategy for a temporary compromise. He could give in briefly just to save his life and give them the castellans seal fragment. He could also take back his words once he was safe, after Lin Huang and the other two had departed, and mobilize the entire inner world to kill the three of them. From Lin Huangs point of view, letting Nine Gloom go was a risky choice. Furthermore, he disliked trouble. Therefore, he made a safer, simpler decision. A slash of his sword and Nine Gloom was dispatched once more. The minute he revived, Nine Gloom immediately upbraided Lin Huang. Lin Huang did not bother wasting words and merely killed him again with yet another slash. Nine Gloom revived once more a moment later. This time, he finally realized that his insignificant life was completely within Lin Huangs hands. He had completely changed his attitude now, pleading desperately. Just tell me what you want from me. Theres no need to be so ruthless Ive only achieved what I have now after cultivating for millions of years. Cant you let me go? He had no choice but to admit defeat, as he had already used his substitution technique seven times. Including his own life, he was only left with five lives now. However, Lin Huang was merciless. He killed him again, his face expressionless. When Nine Gloom regenerated this time, he begged Virtuoso and Saber9 for mercy, attempting to plead for his life through the other two parties. However, Virtuoso and Saber9 were not greenhorns. Naturally, it was impossible for them to pity him. Moreover, both of them had considered the possible risks if they let Nine Gloom go. They remained silent throughout and continued watching as bystanders. When Nine Gloom revived for the ninth time, he knew that it was futile for him to beg. As soon as his body consolidated, he manipulated countless vines, sending them surging at Lin Huang. Lin Huang thought that Nine Gloom was going to fight back. However, he was not expecting Nine Gloom to swiftly retreat and flee toward the distance the moment he attacked. Haha A cold chuckle escaped Lin Huang. With one slash of his sword, countless vines were annihilated. A blood-red gleam shot out from his sleeve. The blood-red gleam was as fast as lightningmany times faster than the fleeing Nine Gloom. Within the time it took for a breath, the gleam caught up with him and pierced right through his silver armor. The moment Nine Glooms silver-armored body toppled to the ground, the blood-red gleam retreated and shot back into Lin Huangs sleeve. Although Virtuoso and Saber9 had not been able to see the blood-red gleams attack too clearly, they knew it was Lin Huangs telekinetic flying dagger the moment they saw the lightning arc shooting out from his sleeve. Nine Gloom evidently had no idea that Lin Huang possessed such a technique. After his tenth death, Nine Gloom revived again for the eleventh time. He attempted to utilize a strategy of attack, defense, and escape both times. However, Lin Huang managed to counter this each time and kill him again. Currently, Nine Gloom had completely used up his substitution chances. He was left only with his original life now. Before his physical body even consolidated completely, he swiftly formed another shield. The layers stacked up one over the other on the shield. By the time Nine Glooms physical body had fully consolidated, the massive shield already had over a hundred layers on it. At the same time, a Dimensional Whirlpool swiftly formed behind him. Clearly, since his multiple attempts at escape were futile, he planned to flee via dimensional teleportation. Lin Huang merely raised his brows slightly and slashed out with his sword, piercing through the massive shields multiple layers easily. Nine Gloom had only taken half a step through the Dimensional Whirlpool in mid-air when his body was impaled. At that moment, a vine that looked like a tiny black snake escaped from the shadow below Nine Glooms silver-armored foot. His aura shrank to almost nothing, and he wriggled toward the Dimensional Whirlpool. Lin Huang gave a cold snort, and countless blood-red lightning arcs shot out violently from his sleeve. The moment the tiny black snake entered the Dimensional Whirlpool, the entire Whirlpool was punctured with so many holes it looked like a sieve. This included that tiny black snake, which was torn to shreds. A moment later, the Dimensional Whirlpool collapsed, and the tiny black snakes decimated body fell out of it. The pieces gradually but swiftly assumed Nine Glooms original countenance againa demonic face thickly overgrown with vines. In the very last moments of his life, the glare he fixed on Lin Huang was seething with rage and resentment. In this last battle, Nine Gloom had chosen to discard the silver-armored body that had integrated perfectly with him since his rebirth. He thought he could attract Lin Huangs attention with this silver-armored physical body while he slipped away in secret. As long as he got as far away as he could from the battlefield, he could then utterly confine Lin Huang, Virtuoso, and Saber9 within his God Territory. He could then attack them with endless vines until Lin Huangs elevated mode had worn off. At that point, he would be able to turn the tables on them. Never had he thought that his escape plan would be discovered by Lin Huang, after all. At the very last moment, his life had been ended by a telekinetic flying dagger. In the end, the demonic face was unable to leave any last words. Every single one of the vines charred rapidly, turning into ashes that filled the air The formidable, longest-lived character in the inner world had now fallen! Lin Huang stood where he was, seemingly staring at Nine Glooms gradually disintegrating corpse. In reality, he was looking at the push notification that had popped up in front of him. Congratulations, host. Youve obtained a complete Monster CardSilver-Armored Nine Gloom (Supreme God) Monster Card: Silver-Armored Nine Gloom Rarity: Supreme God Monster Name: Not named yet Type of Monster: Unique-type / Unknown Tribe Bloodline: Death Spring Combat Level: Ninth-Rank Heavenly God (Ninth-Rank heavenly god-level) Major: Control, Combat Cultivator Summon Authority: Activated Card Remarks: Worth training! Remarks: An extremely rare and special symbiotic creature type! Lin Huang had not at all expected to obtain a complete Monster Card from killing Nine Gloom. Thats a delightful surprise. He merely cast a quick eye over the card information and closed the page in front of him. He then turned around to look at Virtuoso and Saber9. Has he really been killed for good this time? Saber9 asked immediately. He had a full-blown case of paranoia, thanks to Nine Glooms resurrection ability. Dont worry, he definitely wont revive now. Lin Huang was absolutely certain of this. After all, he had now obtained a complete Monster Card. Naturally, it was impossible for Nine Gloom to revive anymore. Substitution is a truly powerful technique, but it also has severe limitations. Im guessing eleven substitutions was his limit. Virtuoso nodded in agreement. Also, given he regenerated so many times, it was possible to tell that he could only be revived on the spot where he died. He couldnt change the coordinates of his regeneration, nor could he control the interval between each revival Since he isnt regenerating where he fell, it proves hes well and truly dead this time, Saber9 interjected before Virtuoso could finish speaking. Lets not waste any more time. Wed better hurry up and collect any loot, then leave as soon as we can, Lin Huang urged, raising his head to glance at Nine Glooms God Territory, which was now collapsing. The battle fluctuations from earlier would certainly have attracted the attention of other powerhouses in the inner world. As soon as Nine Glooms death was confirmed, it was very likely that many others would swarm out of the woodwork to gain a share of any loot. Given Lin Huang and the other twos current situation, getting embroiled in that would be extremely problematic. Clearly, Virtuoso and Saber9 realized this as well. Ignoring their bodily weakness, they swiftly joined in to collect the battle spoils. Chapter 1595 - Elevating to Tenth-Rank! Within a minute, Lin Huang and the other two had completely looted Nine Glooms lair. As for the two hundred-over interconnected Nirvana Trees that covered the area, they transferred them all into Lin Huangs God Territory. Once they had finished collecting the spoils of battle, the three of them did not linger, swiftly departing from Nine Glooms territory. The battle fluctuations have stopped An Argus Bug Beast poked its head out of the ground, peering from a distance in the direction of Nine Glooms territory. This creatures territory was located closer to Nine Glooms, so it sensed the battle fluctuations between Nine Gloom and Lin Huangs group almost right away. It was even able to distinctly sense the aftermath of the battle. However, because Nine Gloom was such a powerful entity, it dared not risk probing with its Divine Telekinesis. In the end, it finally could not restrain itself any longer and spread its Divine Telekinesis roughly about twenty minutes after the battle fluctuations had stopped. When it saw the destroyed, desolate ruins that used to be Nine Glooms lair, the Argus Bug stared for a long time, not even blinking. W-What happened?! A moment later, it was more than absolutely certain that Nine Glooms aura had been utterly obliterated after it had scanned the entire area with Divine Telekinesis a few times. Someone killed Nine Gloom?! As it came to this conclusion, a film of secretion resembling cold sweat seeped out of its carapace. As Nine Glooms neighbor, it was naturally aware of how powerful Nine Gloom was. However, someone had still managed to kill such a powerful entityone could imagine just how incredibly strong that individual was. After dithering where it was for a while and making sure with Divine Telekinesis that there were no auras of other powerhouses around, the Argus Bug Beast finally made up its mind to head over and investigate Nine Glooms territory. At that moment, apart from the Argus Bug Beast, several other monsters around Nine Glooms territory sensed the anomaly in Nine Glooms territory as well. They decided to visit the area too and see for themselves. While these powerhouses were making their way to Nine Glooms territory, Lin Huang and the other two had long since left via teleportation. The three of them stepped out of the Dimensional Whirlpool at an abandoned building in the inner world, which was located an extremely long way from Nine Glooms territory. These were the return coordinates they had set before they embarked on their mission. There were no heavenly god-level monsters around as this was a wasteland that spanned thousands of kilometers. As soon as they stepped out of the Dimensional Whirlpool, Virtuoso retrieved a crystal from their space storage and activated the formation rune on it. The next second, a virtually transparent barrier formed almost immediately, enveloping the entire building. Under this barrier, the auras of all three of them were completely cut off from the outside world. They would not be sensed now. In our current condition, the two of us definitely cant leave the Abyss. If were attacked on the way back, well just be a burden to you, Virtuoso put the formation crystal down and turned around, saying to Lin Huang, So for the next few days, the two of us will have to temporarily stay here and recuperate. Well leave together when weve more or less recovered our ability. Approximately how long will that take? Lin Huang asked. Im guessing at least ten days to half a month, Saber9 was the first to answer this question, The trump cards that we forcibly used earlier have definite repercussions. We need sufficient time to nurse our physical body and spirit so that the backlash wont leave behind any unseen injuries. Beside him, Virtuoso nodded slightly, We might need to trouble you to protect us for this period of time. Of course! Lin Huang agreed right away, Lets divide the loot first. Once he finished speaking, Lin Huang brought out all the loot he had collected earlier, including all two hundred-over Nirvana Trees. In this battle, even though the both of us did contribute our efforts, youre the one who deserves the most credit. Not only that, you killed Nine Gloom, Virtuoso said while bringing out the spoils they had collected, If we go by contribution, the two of us actually have no right to take anything. Saber9, who was standing by, said nothing. He also brought out all of his loot and piled it onto the ground. The two of you killed Nine Gloom once each, respectively, and exhausted your trump cards as well. Lin Huang in no way felt that he should take everything. Lets do it this way. Apart from the Nirvana Trees, all the other loot is yours, Virtuoso took a moment to think, then proposed a distribution plan, You take half of the Nirvana Trees, while Saber9 and I share the remaining half. However, we wont take them for free. Well trade you for them at the universes market price. I agree. Saber9 indicated his consent. Lets not talk about market price. You can just divide the Nirvana Trees between you, Lin Huang said generously. Do you know how much a Nirvana Tree costs in the universe? Virtuosos tone was rather odd. How much is it? Now that Virtuoso had brought the matter up, Lin Huang was rather curious. A heavenly god-level Nirvana Trees starting price at auction would be that of a top-notch god sequence relic, Saber9 revealed, smiling. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard this, upon which he hurriedly changed his mind. I think its a great idea then, trading them at the market price One must know that Virtuoso and Saber9 would get over a hundred trees if they were to share. The value would be on par with over one hundred top-notch god sequence relics. Although Lin Huang was not petty, a profligate gesture like giving away over one hundred top-notch god sequence relics for free was something he would never be able to do. Would you like Divine Crystals or something else? Virtuoso asked. I dont want Divine Crystals. Lets trade with other resources then. I havent figured out what I want yet, though, Lin Huang said after giving it some thought. We owe you then. Tell me when youve thought of what you want. Ill inform Saber9 at that point. Virtuoso nodded. Alright! After the three of them had discussed things, they very soon divided up the loot. Virtuoso and Saber9 each sat down cross-legged and began recuperating from their injuries. Lin Huang watched for a while. After pondering for a little, he left behind a clone, then exited the building. Virtuoso and Saber9 would need over ten days at least for their recovery this round. He could not possibly keep waiting here the entire time. Apart from helping Virtuoso to obtain the castellans seal of Phantom City, Lin Huangs purpose for entering the Abyss this time was to elevate his combat strength. To do this, he needed to plunder a massive amount of Rule Bending Powers. Furthermore, in the Abyss, there were massive numbers of heavenly god-level monsters that could be slaughtered. It was the perfect place for plundering. After leaving the building where Virtuoso and Saber9 were recovering, Lin Huang used his Divine Telekinesis to search for heavenly god-level monsters nearby. He then began a gory massacre. Within a mere day, he had slaughtered hundreds of mid-level and high-level Heavenly Gods. He successfully plundered over one hundred million Rule Bending Powers and over one thousand sequence powers, successfully elevating to ninth-rank true god-level. After elevating to ninth-rank, Lin Huang could distinctly feel that this was not the end of true god-level yet. After his elevation, he could still plunder more Rule Bending Powers by killing Heavenly Gods. His body had not yet reached satiety in its ability to contain Rule Bending Power. Therefore, for the next few days, he chose to continue his plundering. For one, he wanted to see how much Rule Bending Power his body could actually contain. For another, he wanted to know if there was a tenth-rank after ninth-rank. Lin Huang ran into some small problems over the next few days. The reason was that the powerhouses in the inner world soon noticed that heavenly god-level powerhouses were disappearing en masse. Some hid completely in the surface world, while some teamed up in groups. However, this did not significantly affect Lin Huangs hunting. Very quickly, four days went by. The limit on the number of Rule Bending Powers that Lin Huang could plunder reached a new high. He achieved another breakthrough in his combat strength once he obtained almost six hundred million Rule Bending Powers. He had broken through from ninth-rank to a rank that nobody had ever reached beforetenth-rank true god-level! After he had achieved a breakthrough in his combat strength, Lin Huang noticed that his bodys capacity for containing Rule Bending Powers increased once again. For the next ten days or so, he continued hunting and plundering. However, he discovered that the efficiency of his plundering rapidly began to plummet. There were fewer and fewer Heavenly Gods in the inner world. Given that Heavenly God powerhouses had several times formed groups to fight him, and all of them had been consecutively massacred, almost all of the remaining Heavenly Gods had fled out of the inner world. For almost ten days after that, the number of Rule Bending Powers he mastered merely broke through to 1.3 billionfar from even reaching his upper limits. However, Saber9 and Virtuoso had now come out of their closed-door cultivation one after the other. Lin Huang had no choice but to stop his hunting. Although they had spent close to half a month cultivating, the pair had yet to regain peak condition. They had recovered to around ninety percent at most. However, both of them knew that they would need several times the duration they had spent to be restored to their peak. Therefore, they decided not to hold things up any further. As soon as Lin Huang himself returned to the building, Saber9 and Virtuoso spoke almost simultaneously the moment they saw him. Youve gotten more powerful again?! Although Lin Huang had hidden his combat strength, they were very familiar with his aura from the time they had spent together. Even if the change was very subtle, they were able to sense it. Youve broken through to heavenly god-level?! Saber9 could not help asking. It doesnt really seem like hes broken through to heavenly god-level Beside him, Virtuoso repudiated Saber9s speculation. Ive only broken through to ninth-rank, Lin Huang explained, smiling. He did not reveal the rest, which was that he had then broken through to tenth-rank. The pair did not pursue the matter further after hearing that. After all, whatever chance encounters Lin Huang ran into were his own private affair. They did not continue probing. How are you both? In reality, Lin Huang could sense that the duo had yet to regain peak condition. He could also roughly guess why they were in a hurry to get out of closed-door cultivation. He only asked what he did to find out if they were prepared. Were not in too bad a shape. Virtuoso nodded. Yes, we cant drag things out any further. Saber9 nodded as well. The expedition of conquest that the powerhouses from the great world were carrying out in the Abyss was just a small-scale operation that was impossible to maintain for an extended length of time. If Lin Huang and the others delayed any further, it would be hard for them to leave the Abyss when the lord-level powerhouses from the great world had left. If by chance, the three of them were targeted by half-step lord-level or lord-level powerhouses, they would not be able to leave at all, even if they wanted to. Lets go then! Lin Huang said nothing more Virtuoso put away the formation crystal and summoned the Dimensional Whirlpool again. The three stepped into it, one after the other, without hesitation. Chapter 1596 - Going Back The Way They Came After getting out of Phantom City, Lin Huang and the other two quickly contacted Lan Ling and Tu Tong. Within half an hour, the five of them finally met up together again. Lan Ling and Tu Tong were obviously somewhat moved upon seeing that Lin Huang, Virtuoso, and Saber9 all appeared to be in one piece and that nobody was missing. Did you find the Phantom City?! Tu Tong asked, restraining his emotions. We did. Virtuoso nodded. Did you get the stuff? Tu Tong hastily followed up with this. Yes, we even managed to obtain it a little more smoothly than anticipated, Virtuoso replied, smiling. I thought all of you wouldnt be coming back As Lan Ling spoke, tears welled up in her eyes. This girl has been crying goodness knows how many times over the last couple of days, Tu Tong said, somewhat at a loss for words. Silly girl, stop crying. Look, arent we all here now in one piece? Lin Huang comforted her rather helplessly. Although age-wise, he was the youngest within the group, he was considered on par with Virtuoso and Saber9 in terms of ability. Naturally, he thought of Tu Tong and Lan Ling as his juniors. He also knew that Virtuoso and Saber9 were not the types who would comfort people. He had no choice but to step into the breach himself and help Lan Ling calm down as soon as possible. All of you have been missing for over twenty days. To be honest, when you didnt return on the third day, I guessed that you might already have gone ahead and entered Phantom City right away. You didnt come back either as the days went by, which further confirmed my speculations. There was a powerful guardian at Phantom City. We went in directly, after considering that you might not make it past the guardian, given your level of ability, Virtuoso explained. In reality, this was just an excuse. The real reason was that right after passing the guardians test, the three of them had been so impatient to get inside Phantom City that they had hurried through the gates, completely forgetting about Tu Tong and Lan Ling. It was not until after they had passed through the gates into Phantom City that they belatedly recalled there were two remaining members of the group who had not entered yet. Therefore, the three of them discussed the matter and came up with this explanation. Fortunately, Tu Tong and Lan Ling believed the explanation and did not dwell further on it. Tu Tong said very frankly, To be honest, by the time both of us had waited until the fifteenth day, we were sure that all of you had perished in Phantom City. But this girl was unwilling to leave; she insisted on waiting some more. She told me to wait for another fifteen days and see. If you hadnt come out by then, she would leave with me and say nothing more about it. I couldnt sway her, so I had no choice but to wait with her. Honestly, we didnt really hold out much hope. I cant believe that we did actually wait until you came back Of course, we havent been idle all this time either. Weve been cultivating while hunting the monsters that are nearby When Tu Tong saw that Lan Ling still could not calm down, he had no option but to describe in detail what they had encountered in the last twenty or so days. By the time he finished speaking, Lan Lings emotions had finally settled down at last. Under questioning from the pair, Lin Huang and the other two also gave a brief account of what had transpired in Phantom City. At the end, when they heard how Lin Huang had killed Nine Gloom, Tu Tong and Lan Lings gazes were filled with admiration when they looked at him. The five of them conversed for a while, then Virtuoso finally got down to business. Ive obtained the castellans seal of Phantom City, so my objective for this trip has been achieved. Do the rest of you have anything you want to do in the Abyss? If there is, do speak up if you need help so we can work together and finish it as soon as possible. If not, then lets get ready to leave. As he spoke, Virtuoso glanced around the rest of the group, his gaze lingering on Lin Huang very briefly. Everyone shook their heads. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, he had already elevated to tenth-rank. Although he had yet to reach peak tenth-rank, there was no need for him to finish this in the Abyss. Furthermore, the most urgent matter at hand was to get Virtuoso and the rest out of here. After all, Virtuoso and Saber9 were not in the best of conditions. As for the rest, Virtuoso had invited them to come along and help, so they did not have any other objectives. Virtuoso nodded slightly after seeing that Lin Huang did not say anything. Alright then, lets go! Lan Ling immediately said, Weve already worked out our return route. Previously in Phantom City, everything was cut off from the outside world. Therefore, Lin Huang, Virtuoso, and Saber9 had dared to use dimensional teleportation techniques. However, they did not dare do so now that they were back in the Abyss. This was because there was a definite chance of the spatial fluctuations attracting the attention of half-step Lords or even Lords. The safest way of returning was to go back the way they had come. Fortunately, since Lan Ling and Tu Tong had had nothing to do for the last few days, they had already figured out part of the return route. With Tu Tong leading the way, all five of them rose slightly into the air. They set off in the distance, flying low the entire way. Along the way, they did encounter obstacles in the form of Night Demon Firs and Dead Spirit Vines in the dense forest. These were instantly dispatched by Lin Huangs flying daggers. Virtuoso and the rest did not even have a chance to attack. After getting out of the Demonic Fir Forest, the five continued hurrying along. On the way, Lin Huang easily killed off any monsters that attacked them. None of the creatures required a second flying dagger to dispose of them. Virtuoso and Saber9 initially thought they would be able to help if any of the creatures got away from Lin Huang. They had not expected that Lin Huang would not even give them a chance to do so. Secretly, they were grateful when they saw this. They thought that he had taken all the fighting upon himself as he was worried about their injuries. In reality, however, Lin Huang was grabbing all the monsters for himself only so he could plunder more Rule Bending Powers. In less than half an hour, they had returned to the familiar toxic fog swamp. Sensing that Tu Tong was slowing down in the lead, Lin Huang immediately said via voice transmission, Theres no need to slow down. Ill get rid of all the monsters we encounter along the way. Just prepare to defend yourselves in case. If it were anyone else, Tu Tong might have hesitated. After all, the toxic fog swamp was different from other places. The Fiendish Swamp Monsters and Poison Arrow Frogs were extremely skilled at ambush and stealth killings. Not only that, they were immensely poisonous. However, after hearing the story of how Lin Huang had killed Nine Glooma ninth-rank lord-level powerhouseand after seeing him kill the Night Demon Firs and Dead Spirit Vines in one hit, Tu Tong chose to believe Lin Huang with barely any hesitation. The five of them continued flying at full speed over the toxic fog swamp. Almost immediately, the Fiendish Swamp Monsters ambushed them. Lin Huang sent his telekinetic flying daggers shooting out, easily slicing through all the tentacles that besieged them. Not only that, the flying daggers impaled the Fiendish Swamp Monsters one after the other. The initial ambush instantly turned into a massacre. Lin Huang had originally planned on killing his way through. He had not expected, however, that before all of them had even gotten halfway over the swamp, there would already be very few monsters trying to ambush them. It was not that there were no hidden monsters in the toxic fog swamp. It was just that they saw how forcefully Lin Huang suppressed their attacks and did not dare try anything more. This proved that even monsters with low intelligence had survival instincts as well. After passing over the toxic fog swamp, the five of them found themselves out of the foggy area at last. If we proceed any further, well come to the Disaster Abyss Land. Tu Tong and Lan Ling were still a little worried about such a place. Not only did the Disaster Abyss Land have many different Disasters, but the various extreme negative emotions were also frighteningly infectious. It would be extremely problematic if any of them were contaminated. Dont worry. Now at least we can basically confirm that were only in the middle layer of the Abyss. The highest combat strength of the Abyssal creatures here is only ninth-rank heavenly god-levelno higher than that. Its the same in the Disaster Abyss Land as well, Lin Huang was very casual when saying this, Just head back using our original route. Although he sounded indifferent, the other four could tell that he did not take ninth-rank Heavenly Gods seriously at all. When they heard this, Tu Tong and Lan Lings worries immediately settled, almost miraculously. The two of them proceeded to lead the way and swooped into the Disaster Abyss Land with practically no slowing down. Chapter 1597 - The Bug Queen Has Awakened?! The Disaster Abyss Land still had that familiar stench and was filled with an air that made one extremely uneasy. Lin Huang and the rest chose to return by their original route. Under Tu Tong and Lan Lings guidance, the five of them entered the Gluttons territory first. Compared to before, the five of them progressed through the area more than a few times faster now. Within less than an hour, they had navigated through the Gluttons territory. However, in this short one hour, Lin Huang killed over 200 Gluttons. His efficiency in slaughtering them was certainly no lower than in the beginning when he spent a full day doing so. After going through the Gluttons territory, they continued on their original route from before, passed through the territories of the Greeds, Jealousies, and Furies one after the other. The number of god rules that Lin Huang had plundered increased steadily. Over four hours later, the five of them finally left the Disaster Abyss Land. Following the route in her memory, Lan Ling soon located the Demonic Bug Maze the five of them had entered when they first arrived in the Abyss. Tu Tong and Lan Lings expressions were somewhat uneasy as they stared at the Demonic Bug Maze from a distance. Nobody in the Abyss would willingly take the initiative to enter the Demonic Bug Maze. One reason was that there were many Bug Tribe beasts within the Maze. One could exhaust oneself to death just by fighting them. Another reason was that as soon as one entered the Maze, it was extremely difficult to find an exit and come out alive. Fortunately, Lin Huang and the rest did not need to locate an exit. All they had to do was to find the coordinates that the five of them had been teleported to inside the Demonic Bug Maze. There were many dimensional weak points in the Abyss that connected to various other worlds. Virtuoso had also recorded down many dimensional weak points just in case. However, the problem was that something had happened to the coordinates when they were teleported in. As a result, they had been sent to an area outside the map that Virtuoso was familiar with. Apart from the dimensional weak point the five of them had entered through, they had no idea at all where another weak point like that might exist. Even if they discovered another dimensional weak point, they would not dare to use it, as they had no idea what kind of world that particular weak point might lead to. Therefore, their only option was to return to the spot where they had entered. That spot just happened to be the Demonic Bug Maze ahead of them. This time, they did not forcibly break in. The Demonic Bug Maze was different from other places in that the sheer number of creatures alone would be sufficient to exhaust them all to death from the fighting. Moreover, the Demonic Bug Mazes internal structure was extremely complex. If they alerted the enemy and were pursued by the Bug Tribe, it would be difficult for them to find the initial coordinates if they happened to panic and go down the wrong tunnel. Based on the plan they discussed along the way, the five of them used Virtuosos illusion to camouflage themselves as five Bladefoot Worms. The Bladefoot Worms were fairly ordinary patrol groups in the Demonic Bug Maze. My illusion has a limited effect on ninth-rank Heavenly Gods. Lets hope were lucky, Virtuoso warned them beforehand. After the five had finished camouflaging themselves, they headed into the Mazes entrance one by one. Were quite lucky. Tu Tong sighed with relief when he realized that there were no bug beasts around. This way. Lan Lin made certain of their direction and rapidly led the team forward. Despite their sense of urgency, the five of them did not dare to reveal any flaws that might give them away. They could only move ahead slowly at the Bladefoot Worms normal patrol speed. Over half an hour went by; so far everything had gone smoothly. They ran into some bugs along the way, and they even passed by a few of the bugs gathering areas, but they were not discovered. However, when they encountered a decaying giant beetle, Virtuoso suggested that they hide inside it. Along the way, they could not guarantee that the group would not bump into bug beasts with powerful psychic powers that might expose their disguise. It would be safer to hide within the decaying giant beetles body. The five had no objections to this suggestion. Actually, the five of them remembered that they had also hidden in a decaying giant beetles body over a month ago when they had just entered the Demonic Bug Maze. This poor decaying giant beetle suffered the same fate as its predecessor. After Virtuoso had taken control of the creature via their illusion skills, Lin Huang cut an opening on its abdomen. The five of them blocked their sense of smell and enveloped themselves in Divine Telekinesis. They then wriggled into the beetles body one after the other, retracting their auras as much as they could. Under Virtuosos control, the decaying giant beetle turned around and slowly moved in the direction from which the five of them had come. These decaying giant beetles were not particularly welcome in the Maze. They possessed low intelligence, and they moved very slowly. An intense rotten stench emanated from their bodies, and they were poisonous as well. Basically, no bugs were willing to get close to them. The Demonic Bug Maze accepted the decaying giant beetles presence because they would eat the trash the other bugs left behind. They were the scavengers of the entire Maze. They would wander among the various Bug Tribes daily in search of food remnants. No matter where the decaying giant beetle went, all the bugs would not find anything unusual about that. It was not the first time that Lin Huangs group had hidden in a decaying giant beetles body; they found it much easier this time around. It was still the same familiar stench and the same familiar sticky feeling. Now that they were in a familiar place, Lin Huang even had an absurd thought cross his mind. If not for the intense stench of decay, the corrosive toxin, the infectious Abyssal energy particles, and the stickiness, this fellow could actually be considered quite a good mode of transport. At least it walks steadily; it doesnt jolt at all. All five members of the group fell silent for a long time in the decaying giant beetles abdomen. Apart from Lan Ling, who would speak occasionally as she pointed out the way, the rest did not say a word. In an environment like this, everyone lost their desire to converse. All they wanted was to arrive at their destination as soon as possible so that they could get out of these filthy conditions. What plans do the rest of you have after we get out of here? Lin Huang could not help breaking the silence as he sensed the atmosphere was rather oppressive. Go into closed-door cultivation to refine the castellans seal, then elevate to heavenly god-level. Virtuosos answer was simple. Seeing that Virtuoso did not plan to say anything more, Tu Tong was the next to take up the subject. Ill go into closed-door cultivation so I can break through to heavenly god-level as soon as possible. Me too. From where she was off to one side, Lan Ling gave an even simpler answer. Ive been rather enlightened, this trip into the Abyss, Saber9 glanced at Lin Huang as he said this, Im preparing to go into closed-door cultivation for a while to digest things. Ill think about elevating my combat strength only after that. Do you still plan on remaining with Death Sickle? Virtuoso suddenly asked Lin Huang. I think Death Sickle is pretty good, Lin Huang answered with a smile, They have resources, and theyre reliable. I dont have to worry about anything. Are you interested in visiting the Club to look around? Virtuoso used voice transmission to ask this. Lin Huang was startled when he heard that. Immediately, he asked through voice transmission, Does the Club have a branch in the great world? Of course it does. There are branches in all the worlds where there are Club members. After saying this, Virtuoso seemed to feel that they had not been cautious enough, so they added, There are a handful of worlds that have only one or two members, so there arent any branches there. The number is too low. How many members does the branch in the great world have? Lin Huang asked. Including you and I, there are five who are presently still alive, Virtuoso went on to explain, There are two who are like youtheyre locals. Theres one who is like me, a reincarnated beings clone. What are their combat strengths like? Lin Huang probed a bit further. Apart from both of us, theyre all Lords. Virtuosos answer made Lin Huang fall silent. After a moment of consideration, Lin Huang shook his head. For now, I wont contact the other three yet. He could not be certain whether or not there were spies from the Raiders among those three. In reality, although he had developed a sort of friendship with Virtuoso from their trip into the Abyss, he had yet to trust Virtuoso completely and exclude them from being a Raider. Furthermore, before he had sufficient ability to protect himself, he did not wish to reveal himself and attract the Raiders attention, especially lord-level Raiders. Very well, I can understand that. Virtuoso seemed to see through Lin Huangs caution. If you dont personally meet them, however, I cant reveal their identities to you. I hope you can understand why. I understand. Lin Huang nodded. The voice transmission conversation between the two only took a moment. Saber9 and the rest did not notice anything. Now that Lin Huang had initiated things, all five of them engaged in desultory, somewhat forced conversation. After approximately two hours or more, there had been some scares along the way, but nothing had happened. Finally, the decaying giant beetle brought the five of them to the spot they had set coordinates for when they initially entered the Abyss. After Virtuoso had alerted everyone, all five of them exited the decaying giant beetles body one by one. Virtuoso remained cautious and did not remove the illusion that camouflaged the five of them as Bladefoot Worms. They glanced at the decaying giant beetle; in the end, they did not kill it. Instead, they let Virtuoso wipe its memory and send it on its way. Not long after the decaying giant beetle had left, Virtuoso brought out a space-time flying shuttle the size of a human palm and rapidly performed complicated hand seals. A moment later, the space-time flying shuttle tore open a Dimensional Whirlpool in the void. At almost the same time, the entire Demonic Bug Maze began to vibrate intensely. A terrifying aura rose at alarming speed from deep under the ground. The Bug Queen has awakened?! Lin Huang and the others immediately stepped into the Dimensional Whirlpool without hesitation, fearing it might already be too late. The instant the Dimensional Whirlpool closed, a sharp claw pierced through the layers of space and landed right on the spot where the Whirlpool had vanished. Right after that, a shriek of pure rage echoed through the entire Demonic Bug Maze. Chapter 1598 - The Immeasurable Calamity Fire In the Great Heaven Palace, Lin Huang patiently sorted out the rewards he had obtained from this trip into the Abyss. Above all else, the biggest gain was that his combat strength had broken through two ranks. He had elevated from eighth-rank true god-level to tenth-rank. Although he had yet to achieve peak tenth-rank, he had mastered over 1.5 billion types of rules in his inner world. Based on the precedents established previously, Lin Huang guessed that he might have to accumulate up to 1.8 billion to reach his limit. This was not a difficult task for Lin Huang. It was just a matter of time. In truth, he could now actually start thinking about how to elevate to heavenly god-level. However, he put that problem aside for now and resumed checking over his gains. Over the past one month of killing various heavenly god-level monsters in the Abyss, apart from plundering Rule Bending Powers, he had also plundered over twenty thousand god sequence chains. The god sequence chains in the God Territory within him had surpassed thirty thousand in number. He had obtained over five thousand God Territory Shell Remnants. In general, most people would not dare to refine the God Territory Shell Remnants of Abyssal creatures, as there would still be a great deal of Abyssal energy remaining within. Such energy was an extremely virulent contaminant. However, this was not a problem for Lin Huang. The Eternal Fire left by Qi Muxiongs Goldfinger could absorb and convert all sorts of energy, including Abyssal energy. Others would be terrified of Abyssal energy, worried that they might be contaminated by it. However, to the Eternal Fire, the Abyssal energy was delicious. All Lin Huang had to do was wait for the Eternal Fire to completely devour the Abyssal energy. Then he could start to refine and integrate the five thousand-over God Territory Shell Remnants. Apart from these resources that he could directly utilize, Lin Huang had also obtained a massive amount of materials from Abyssal creatures. Not only that, most of these were heavenly god-level materials. A lot of these were superb research materials. Many others could also be used to refine weapons and medicines. Based on the amount and the quality of materials he now possessed, Lin Huang felt certain that he would be able to get a handsome price for all of them. Naturally, the gains he obtained this round also included the hundred-over Nirvana Trees, but Lin Huang did not plan on selling them. Virtuoso had given Lin Huang some information on the function of the Nirvana Trees. All it took was a mere glance at this, and he immediately realized how precious the trees were. If he were not forced into an absolute last resort, he would not part with them at allnot a single one of them! Apart from these surface gains, Lin Huang had managed to obtain several Skill Cards and over a dozen complete Monster Cards from Xiao Hei due to the multitude of Abyssal creatures he had slaughtered. Among the dozen-over Monster Cards, apart from the supreme god-level Silver-Armored Nine Gloom, who was at ninth-rank heavenly god-level, there were two pseudo-supreme god-level Monster Cards. They were Greed from the Ascetic Buddhist Tribe and a humanoid female Jealousy. Both of these possessed high combat strength, and they were both seventh-rank heavenly god-level. After spending half an hour or so to sort out all of his gains, Lin Huang finally retrieved from his space storage the item with the highest value that he had obtained from this trip to the Abyss. This object was a red, irregularly-shaped thumb-sized crystal. Its color resembled a ruby illuminated by the sun, but its form was like a leftover fragment from a large piece of glass that had been crushed. This small, inconspicuous crystal that did not emanate even a single trace of Divine Power waves was Virtuosos payment to him by way of thanks at the end of the tripa Soul seal fragment. A Soul seal was a remnant of a crushed Dao seal after a spirit-cultivating Lord had died. Since a Dao seal might be crushed into fragments that varied in number and quantity, each fragment would contain different information. An example would be the Sword seal fragment that Lin Huang obtained from Virtuoso previously. In reality, not all Sword seal fragments contained Sword Dao Inheritances. Some might contain complete Sword Dao Inheritances, while some might contain incomplete Sword Dao Inheritances. Then again, some might only contain sword skills or memory images about cultivation. Simply put, refining a Dao seal fragment was like opening a mystery box. Those who were lucky might obtain the complete skill inheritance from the Dao seal Lords main cultivation path. Those who were unlucky might only be able to see some worthless information in images. As soon as Lin Huang had returned to the great world, he could barely wait to enter the Great Heaven Palace. Apart from sorting out his loot, his main objective was actually to open the mysteryno, to refine this Soul seal fragment. He scrutinized the ruby-like Soul seal fragment in his hand carefully. The bright red light within the crystal looked like flowing lava; it also resembled a burning charcoal fire. Lin Huang had a rough idea of what the main cultivation path of this Lords Elemental Dao might be. Without any hesitation, he extended his Divine Telekinesis and wrapped it around the Soul seal fragment, drawing it between his brows. Under the guidance of Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis, the Soul seal fragment fell like a meteor, heading toward Lin Huangs spiritual dimension. The moment it dropped into his spiritual dimension, the crystal began to burn intensely, radiating endless sparks. At the same time, countless golden divine patterns lit up on the crystals surface, the light from it growing more and more intense. After the divine patterns lit up, the entire crystal began showing traces of hairline cracks. Not only that, as the divine patterns grew brighter, the bigger the cracks became. In the end, the crystal disintegrated completely, turning into blood-red stars that masked the divine patterns. Meanwhile, the divine patterns were spinning wildly like tiny golden snakes as they hurtled toward Lin Huangs Sword Soul. They turned into golden streams of light that penetrated the middle of the Sword Souls brow. Almost at the same time, Lin Huang felt an upheaval in his mind, and endless strange messages immediately surged in. He quickly did a scan with Divine Telekinesis to see if there were any cultivation method inheritances. However, he did not find any Gods soul cultivation methods. Instead, he only found a fire element cultivation method inheritance called the Immeasurable Calamity Fire. Just when Lin Huang was feeling a little disappointed, he saw a spark light up on the Sword Souls brow. Thisthis is the Immeasurable Calamity Fires tinder?! The inheritance messages were transmitted into Lin Huangs head immediately. After the spark lit up, it swiftly began spreading from the Sword Souls brow at alarming speed. Within the time it took for a breath, it had set the entire Sword Soul alight. Whats happening?! Lin Huang was shocked when he saw this. He was even a little dumbfounded. The intense pain and burning sensation that was transmitted from the Sword Soul caused him such agony he felt as if he might die. This burning was targeted at his Gods soul. However, he soon saw an even more terrifying scene. The flames from the Calamity Fire not only spread throughout the Sword Souls entire body but even began spreading to areas outside the Sword Soul. Days passed. In endless agony, Lin Huang watched the flame burning every single place within his body. The flame even spread outside his body until his physical flesh began to burn. Even his telekinetic threads were on fire, every single one of them. The intense burning sensation spread through every nerve in Lin Huangs body. He could not think of any way to douse the fire. However, a phrase flashed through his head suddenly. The true spirit doesnt die, it revives in countless calamities! In his confused, blurred state, Lin Huang could not even remember where he had seen this phrase. However, he gradually began to calm himself. He set aside all distracting thoughts and held fast to his true spirit, completely entering a state of emptiness. The burning body in the Great Heaven Palace was losing its life force bit by bit. One day, two days, three days A hundred days, two hundred days, three hundred days A thousand days, two thousand days, three thousand days The flame burned for an entire three thousand and thirty-three days before finally extinguishing itself gradually. On the spot where Lin Huang had initially been sitting cross-legged, there remained only a pitch-black scorched body. Even its features were completely unrecognizable. After an unknown length of time, a surge of life force arose from the blackened body. The scorched corpse that had been sitting with its legs crossed suddenly opened its eyes Chapter 1599 - Lin Huang Versus Sword1 Lin Huang had utterly not anticipated that the benefits he obtained from this Soul seal fragment would so greatly surpass his expectations. Although there was no Soul Dao inheritance in this Soul seal fragment, there was an Immeasurable Calamity Fire tinder concealed within it. As soon as it had been integrated, the tinder was swiftly set ablaze. Not only had the flame grown, but it had also fully cleansed Lin Huang inside out. Lin Huang checked carefully and discovered that the benefits he had reaped were considerable. His physical strength had originally been merely at ninth-rank heavenly god-level, but now it had achieved peak ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Ninth-rank heavenly god-level combat cultivators aside, his physical body was in no way weaker than any other top-tier ninth-rank powerhouse. His Gods soul was also strong enough to reach peak ninth-rank heavenly god-level, which might possibly be second only to a ninth-rank heavenly god-level Soul Dao cultivator. Even the speed of Seamlesss normal revolutions had increased approximately threefold. The number of telekinetic thread divisions per hour had elevated to nine thousand threads. His Divine Telekinesis had also reached peak ninth-rank heavenly god-level strength. If he were to use only telekinetic weapons, he would still be evenly matched against most top ninth-rank heavenly god-level powerhouses. The Sword Souls strengthening by the flame had caused Lin Huangs Sword Heart to become even more intensely luminous. He had only just elevated to Heavenly Heart Sword Dao not long ago, and now he was already at the peak of Heavenly Heart. Aside from that, the size of his entire God Territory had increased almost onefold. It had to be said that the benefits Lin Huang had reaped from the Immeasurable Calamity Fire far surpassed what he would have gotten by directly obtaining a Soul Dao Inheritance. Anyway, in truth, Lin Huang did not lack for Soul Dao Inheritances. He had yet to digest the half-step lord-level telekinesis inheritance he had obtained from God Capital previously. The inheritance had come from a half-step lord-level Divine Telekinesis Master, and Lin Huang felt it was a better fit for his specialization. Not only that, the nameless Divine Telekinesis visualization images from the inheritance had come from an unknown civilization in the ancient era. According to Lin Huangs inherited memory, this half-step Lord had not completed visualizing them either. Out of one hundred and eight visualization images, Lin Huang had only visualized eighty of them at present. As it took too much time to visualize the later images, he could only put them aside for now. Lin Huangs thoughts drifted for a while before he looked at the red flame burning in his palm. The Immeasurable Calamity Fire This was a flame that could aid in cultivation. Its main purpose was to assist in Soul Dao cultivation, but it could be used to aid in physical cultivation as well. Since the Immeasurable Calamity Fire came with unique attributes, it could consume any sort of flame. It could also replicate all the characteristics of the flames that it consumed. It could even imitate all sorts of Fire God Rules and god sequence chains However, Lin Huang was thinking about something else as he stared at the ever-changing form of the Immeasurable Calamity Fire in his palm. Did Virtuoso know that there was this Immeasurable Calamity Fire hidden in the inheritance?! One had to be aware that Lin Huang had almost been killed by the Immeasurable Calamity Fire earlier. This inheritance appeared to have helped him progress. In reality, however, it concealed an infinitely murderous intent. If Virtuoso had known prior to this that the Immeasurable Calamity Fire was concealed in the inheritance, it proved that they had intended to dispose of Lin Huang and wanted to seize the opportunity to kill him. However, upon careful consideration, Lin Huang felt it was not very likely that Virtuoso would know about the Immeasurable Calamity Fire. After reaching an agreement with Virtuoso regarding the Abyss trip, Lin Huang had used Death Sickles channels at the first possible chance so that he could check for information about the Dao seal fragment he had received as pre-payment. Through Odyl, half-step Lords and lord-level powerhouses could indeed discover the attributes of various Dao seal fragments and some other general information. However, they would not be able to tell what information was contained within the seal. Only by refining could one discover in detail the contents of the Dao seal fragment. Furthermore, each Dao seal fragment would be imprinted in the refiners body after refinement. It could not be extracted unless the refiner died. There was also another reason why Lin Huang felt fairly sure that Virtuoso knew nothing about the Immeasurable Calamity Fire. When Virtuoso initially invited Lin Huang to enter the Abyss with them, the proposed condition was to first pay Lin Huang the Soul seal fragment, with the Sword seal fragment to be paid upon completion of the deal. It was Lin Huang who had requested for the Sword seal fragment first and the Soul seal fragment at the end of the trip. If both of them had gone by Virtuosos original arrangement, Lin Huang would have obtained the Soul seal fragment first. If he had died at that point, it was of no benefit to Virtuoso when going into the Abyss. Lin Huangs excessive caution was not because he lacked trust in his friends. It was just that after hearing Yang Lings story, he could not help but be extremely vigilant. A Raider could masquerade as Yang Lings brother, lying low around him for over ten thousand years just for the opportunity to plunder the Goldfinger within him. It was entirely possible for them to disguise themselves with any identity, just to get close to Lin Huang. In truth, Lin Huang did not really trust the Clubs headquarters, much less one of their small branches. After all, everything about the Club that he learned, including their stance against the Raiders, had been revealed by the Club members themselves. He had not been able to find out anything at all about the Club on other channels. Fortunately, this time it was all smoke and no fire. Not only had he not died, but he had also advanced even further in his abilities. He was sufficiently confident in himself at present. Apart from lord-level and half-step lord-level entities, he did not fear being challenged by any other powerhouses. Lin Huang put away the fire in his palm, his eyes gleaming brightly. He got up and pushed open the doors of the Great Heaven Palace. When he saw that Lin Huang had come out of closed-door cultivation, Sword1 hurriedly stood up from his cross-legged position at the doors. It did not matter if Lin Huang was at the Great Heaven Palace or notSword1 never abandoned his role as a guardian. Day and night, he kept watch at the doors of the Great Heaven Palace. When he sensed Lin Huangs aura, delight flashed through Sword1s eyes once more. You seemed to have improved again during this round of closed-door cultivation, Lord Swordmaster. A little bit. Lin Huang nodded lightly and took a few steps forward. He suddenly turned his head to look at Sword1. Sword1, come to the arena with me. I want to see what the level of my actual combat skill is now. Of course, Lord Swordmaster, Sword1 agreed without hesitation. He was also eager to find out how powerful Lin Huang was now. One reason why Lin Huang chose Sword1 to be his sparring opponent was that he was the nearest in proximity. Another reason was that Sword1s ability was considered to be the best among all the Heavenly Godsclose to half-step Lord even. Lin Huang wanted to know if his abilities had reached the same level as Sword1. If not, he wished to find out how far apart they were. The two of them entered the arena and fought intensely for one full day before finally ending the battle. In truth, approximately half an hour after the battle began, Lin Huang already knew that his abilities were lacking in comparison with Sword1. Going by just the number of sequences that each of them could use, Lin Huang was already outclassed. Although the Immeasurable Calamity Fire had made Lin Huang stronger, his physical body and spirit strength could only sustain eighteen god sequence chains at most. As a rank-5.5 super genius, Sword1 had mastered thirty-one god sequence chains. Even though he had suppressed his ability to match Lin Huangs level, only using eighteen god sequence chains, his familiarity with sequence power and his combat experience were things that Lin Huang could not compare with by far. To Sword1, the final sparring result was a draw. However, Lin Huang himself knew that he had lost. In the great world, Sword1s ability would certainly be ranked as one of the top three powerhouses below half-step lord-level. Being able to face a powerhouse like this on equal footing was sufficient proof of Lin Huangs own abilities. As Sword1 had screened off the sparring session, none of the other Sword Servants witnessed it. However, the next day after Lin Huang had left, some Sword Servants still managed to find out about the spar and that Lin Huang and Sword1 were evenly matched in battle. The news immediately spread like wildfire to all the Sword Servants. All of them were in a state of disbelief when they first heard this, but after that, their admiration for Lin Huang knew no bounds. Only Sword1 remained seated at the doors of the Great Heaven Palace, cross-legged and eyes closed, looking as if nothing had happened. However, if anyone were to look closely, they would see that the corners of his mouth had quirked up in the tiniest of smiles. Chapter 1600 - We’ll Rent The Devil Hunter Star Zone To You When Lin Huang left the Great Heaven Palace, a mere three and a half days had passed in the outside world. Lin Huang took a quick look at the date, then stepped through the dimensional portal and returned to the Devil Hunter Star Zone. He had chosen the Devil Hunter Star Zone as his temporary station mainly because it was sufficiently far from the human worlds core zone and not under the jurisdiction of any major organizations. Moreover, it had sufficient resources and was quite suited for future development. Another important reason was that the Sword Servants under Lin Huangs command were mainly Protoss or members from other tribes. There were less than ten humans in total. If their identities were discovered by any major human organizations, things would become slightly problematic. In no time at all, Lin Huang managed to locate the gathering place for Lin Xin and the others through a Divine Telekinesis scan. This was a series of connected palaces constructed on a high mountain. Lin Huang passed through multiple sword formations in a flash and entered the palace courtyard. Almost as soon as he appeared, the Sword Servants sensed his aura and immediately hurried over to welcome him. Only four Sword Servants had remained at this station; they were led by Sword12. Lin Huang noticed that Sword12 had disguised his combat strength as first-rank heavenly god-level, while the other three Sword Servants had disguised theirs as high-rank true god-level as well. Lin Huang was taken aback at first but then immediately realized the reason for them doing so. Welcome back, Lord Swordmaster! This gathering point that youve found isnt bad at all, Lin Huang commented, looking around and smiling. The Sword Alliances headquarters naturally has to be at least a bit more impressive, Sword12 answered with a chuckle, his bald head gleaming. Youve set up the Sword Alliance? Lin Huang raised his brows at this. Although he did return to the Devil Hunter Star Zone occasionally, over the last few months he had been busy with his own affairs. He had initially intended to found the Sword Alliance when he had time to spare since it was not urgent. He had never expected Sword12 to have already set it up. He did recall mentioning this to Sword12 during a casual chat previously, about wanting to set up the Sword Alliance in the Devil Hunter Star Zone. I thought Id set it up first, so I registered at the Hunts station, then bought this piece of land as our headquarters, Sword12 explained immediately, In the end, because I was registered as heavenly god-level, the Hunt certified the Sword Alliance as a grade-4 organization right away Lin Huang continued nodding as he listened. Once his combat strength had elevated to tenth-rank, the Sword Servants combat strength had been unsealed to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Their abilities had almost been restored to their previous peak. However, to prevent attracting unwanted attention, on the surface Sword12 only displayed first-rank heavenly god-level ability. When he set up the Sword Alliance, the other Sword Servants also hid their true strength. Since Sword12 was human, as well as a heavenly god-level powerhouse, it was a piece of cake for his application to be approved. After doing some background checks, the staff from the Hunt had even approached Sword12 with the suggestion that he take up the post of the Devil Hunter Star Zones guardian. (Of course, they did not fully relinquish all the rights and authority.) Every ten years, the Hunt had to reassign a Heavenly God to guard this remote zone; furthermore, nobody was willing to come here. If it were not a border that had to be guarded, the Hunt would have given up on this area long ago. Although the entire star zone was considered to be fairly prosperous, the actual annual income was low, as half of the gross profit was to be given to the guarding Heavenly God. Now, suddenly, a Heavenly God who was going to set up an organization there had shown up. The Hunt was more than happy to rent out the piece of land. At least they would have a big part of the burden taken off their shoulders. Sword12 agreed to this after some consideration. The reason was that if he became guardian, it would be of the greatest benefit to the Sword Alliances development in the Devil Hunter Star Zone. To a grade-6 top organization like the Hunt, a small organization of less than ten members formed by a first-rank Heavenly God would be limited, no matter how much they expanded. They were not sufficiently powerful to become a threat. The biggest beneficiaries of the Hunts generosity were Sword12 and the Sword Alliance. This had even attracted a considerable number of true god-level powerhouses to try and join the Sword Alliance, but they had all been excluded by the test that Sword12 had set up. No wonder the other organizations on this planet are all gone Lin Huang finally understood why the handful of organizations that had been guarding the planet previously were no longer there when he had done a Divine Telekinesis scan earlier. Clearly, they had given way to the grade-4 Sword Alliance organization and moved out. Just when Lin Huang was done chatting with Sword12, Lin Xin appeared before Lin Huang in a flash. She too had sensed his aura. Big brother! Lin Huang lifted his eyes. Lin Xin was completely clad in form-fitting black training wear that set off her figure admirably. He also noticed that her forehead and neck were beaded with tiny sweat drops. She must have been sparring with someone earlier. Lin Xuan showed up right after Lin Xin arrived. Obviously, Lin Xin had been sparring with Lin Xuan earlier. Lin Huang only needed a glance to ascertain their combat strength. Lin Xin had broken through to first-rank true god-level, while Lin Xuan had elevated to third-rank. Not bad, you two have broken through to true god-level. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. I just broke through two days ago. Lin Xin was over the moon at Lin Huangs compliment. In truth, even without her explaining, Lin Huang could also see this from her aura waves. Youve improved a lot too. Its only been a few months, and youve elevated two ranks. Lin Huang looked at Lin Xuan. He had come back here a few times over the last few months, but Lin Xuan had almost always been in the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss, so Lin Huang could not tell how his cultivation progress was going. Ive still got a long way to go compared to you. Lin Xuan could vaguely sense the immense power concealed within Lin Huangs body. As of right now, he regarded Lin Huang as the ultimate role model to pursue. Where are Chan Dou and Xiao Mo? Lin Huang inquired. His Divine Telekinesis had not picked them up on the scan. However, he guessed the answer as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Where else can they be? Lin Xin pursed her lips in a little moue. From beside her, Lin Xuan explained, Xiao Mo said he wont leave the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss until hes achieved Virtual God rank-9. Chan Dou said he wants to elevate to true god-level as soon as he can. Huang Wuji went with them. Its not a bad thing for them to be so ambitious. Lin Huang nodded, smiling. Right after that, he asked, How about Old Fu? Ever since Mr. Fu elevated to second-rank true god-level, he felt that his cultivation progress had begun to slow down. Subsequently, he had gone traveling after bidding farewell to Lin Huang and the others. However, there was a Sword Servant secretly following him. For one, it was to covertly ensure his safety. For another, it was to report on Mr. Fus recent activities. Everything has been going well lately, Sword12 disclosed the information that he obtained, He recently entered some ruins with a new acquaintance. Its just a ninth-rank true god-level ruin left behind by a Heavenly God who failed to elevate. Its not particularly dangerous. Lin Huang nodded after hearing that. To him, Mr. Fu was not merely his teacher, but family as well. After reporting everything to Lin Huang, Sword 12 left with the other three Sword Servants. Once the Sword Servants left, Lin Xininquisitive child that she washung around Lin Huang, wanting to know what had been happening to him lately. Lin Xuan did not display any desire to leave either. He quietly walked behind the siblings, who were chatting while walking, and followed them into Lin Huangs courtyard. Chapter 1601 - The Moment He Made A Move, His Opponent Would Lose After sending Lin Xin and Lin Xuan off, Lin Huang sat alone in the courtyard and checked on the status of his Monster Cards. It had been close to five months since he had released his imperial monsters to obtain their own cultivation resources. Since then, he had practically never reviewed Bai and the others cultivation progress. Now that he finally had time, he began to check through the cards one by one. The first Monster Card he saw was Kylies. She was already at Pure Spirit rank-6 and was, without a doubt, the strongest powerhouse among all the imperial monsters. Four months ago or so, Kylie had already elevated to heavenly god-level. Now, in just these four short months, her combat strength had gone up to sixth-rank heavenly god-level. This sort of advancement speed could practically be considered terrifying. Lin Huangs combat strength elevation was already rapid enough, but in the past five months, he had merely elevated from sixth-rank to tenth-rank. Furthermore, he had elevated to sixth-rank before Kylie went into closed-door cultivation for advancement to heavenly god-level. However, he felt at ease again after doing some careful thinking about it. Kylie was already Pure Spirit rank-6. She also had the full support of a top grade-6 organizationthe Nephilic Judge Tribe. If she needed any cultivation resources, she only had to ask. Moreover, based on the situation at present, the Nephilic Judge Tribe was probably hoping that Kylie could elevate her combat strength to ninth-rank heavenly god-level as soon as possible so she could protect herself with absolute certainty. After all, the abilities of a Pure Spirit rank-6 ninth-rank Heavenly God could at least compare with those of a half-step Lord and might even, in fact, be more powerful. As for any concerns about a weak cultivation foundation, such a problem did not exist for a Pure Spirit rank-6 being. If a being were inherently Pure Spirit rank-6, they would be born as a lord-level living being. Although Kylie had only elevated after birth, she did not need any sort of foundation before she advanced to become a Lord. At most, she merely needed some actual combat experience to familiarize herself with the exponential increase in various aspects that had resulted from her rapid rise in combat strength. Lin Huang was extremely satisfied with Kylies improvement. At the rate shes going, this girl will elevate to ninth-rank within three months at most After reviewing Kylies information, Lin Huang then turned his attention to Bloodys. As expected, Bloodys combat strength had soared as well. She had now elevated to fifth-rank heavenly god-level. Obviously, she had benefitted from associating with Kylie. Her combat strength elevation most likely had been achieved through the Nephilic Judge Tribes resources. As Kylies best friend, at present, Bloody was probably being treated like a princess as well by the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Lin Huang was not worried that something would go wrong with Bloodys foundation. After all, she had elevated to supreme god-level rank-5. (TN: We believe the author may have made an error since it is mentioned earlier that Bloody has elevated to fifth-rank heavenly god-level, but we have chosen to translate it as written.) All she needed to do was to strengthen her foundation a little when she got to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Once he had checked out Bloodys progress, Lin Huang looked at the other imperial monsters who were supreme god-level rank-5. The three supreme god-level rank-5 imperial monstersKiller, Blackscale (Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain), and Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son)had elevated to fourth-rank heavenly god-level. This did not surprise Lin Huang. The three of them were already heavenly god-level even before he released them. Furthermore, they had teamed up when they were given the freedom to choose their own teammates. Since all three of them were class-5, their combat strength was heavenly god-level as well. This meant that their abilities far exceeded that of the other imperial monsters, so they were unable to team up with the rest. As expected, once they had formed a group, their improvement over the last few months was very evident. After he had checked on the progress of Killers group, Lin Huang then looked over Bai and Teng Ran. Since Bai and Teng Ran had been class-4.5 at the time, they spent a month elevating to supreme god-level rank-5 after Lin Huang had used the Advance Cards on them. Therefore, the two had to hunt for resources a month later than the other imperial monsters. Nevertheless, Bai and Teng Ran had also advanced to fourth-rank heavenly god-level, which meant they had caught up with Killers group in terms of progress. There was no need to say anything about Teng Ran. He had already been first-rank heavenly god-level before elevating to supreme god-level. (TN: We also believe that the author might have made an error here with the levels, given that supreme god-level has already been established as lower in rank than heavenly god-level. However, we have opted to translate it as it, out of respect for the author.) However, Bai was truly something else. Before elevating to supreme god-level, he had only been ninth-rank true god-level. (TN: As with the above paragraph, we believe that the author may have made an error in the order of the levels. Again, we have chosen to translate it as written.) In other words, he had used less than four months to level up through five ranks of combat strength. This included advancing by a full level. Lin Huang could almost imagine how much work Bai had put in to catch up with Kylie and the rest over the past few months. After turning his attention from Bais card, Lin Huang then checked on Grimace, whose combat strength was second only to Bais. This fellow Lin Huang was stunned when he saw Grimaces card. He was shocked that Grimace had already elevated to class-4.5. Grimace was not the only oneLancelot and Charcoal had elevated to class-4.5 as well. He cast his mind back carefully and recalled that the three of them had teamed up during that time. It seemed as if they had managed to encounter some great stroke of fortune, for their rankings all to elevate by half a class. Moreover, the elevation of all threes combat strength was by no means slower than Bais progress. They had all advanced to third-rank heavenly god-level. One must know that five months ago, they were only seventh-rank and eighth-rank true god-level. They had not even reached ninth-rank yet. The ones who had elevated just as rapidly were several of the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers. Just like Grimace and the other two, they had elevated to third-rank heavenly god-level. However, Lin Huang was not that surprised at the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers advancement. They had an entire tribe of bugs to support them. Furthermore, apart from the Queen Mothers, several of the Bug Kings had elevated to second-rank as well. There were even a thousand-over bug beasts that had elevated to heavenly god-level. This number far surpassed Lin Huangs expectations. After looking over the bug beasts progress, Lin Huang then turned his attention to the remaining imperial monsters. Although Tyrant, Thunder, and Witch had not elevated as rapidly as Grimace, Bai, and the others, their progress was not too shabby either. They had steadily advanced to heavenly god-level. Lin Huang was beyond satisfied with the progress of his imperial monsters cultivation. Although Kylie, Bai, and the rest could not participate in battles of his level at the moment, given their progress, they would not take long to elevate to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. When the time came, sooner or later, they would become his most powerful assistants. The imperial monsters still needed time to develop, but it was not as if Lin Huang did not have subordinates he could utilize. Since elevating to tenth-rank true god-level, almost all of his Sword Servants combat strength had been fully unsealed. They had been completely restored to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Apart from Swords 1 to 10, whom he could not utilize just yet, he had a total of over three hundred Sword Servants. All of these three hundred and fifty-eight Sword Servants were ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Not only that, there were even twenty-five class-4.5 powerhouses and two class-5 powerhouses among them. Sword11 and Sword12 were the two class-5 powerhouses. In the great world, their abilities would certainly rank right at the top. In fact, they might be second only to peak powerhouses like Buried Heaven. Lin Huang reviewed his own abilities as well. Without the use of a trump card, he might just be on the same level as Sword11 and Sword12. There was still a fine line between himself and the ultimate Heavenly God powerhouses like Sword1 and Buried Heaven. In reality, such power was already enough to dominate all the grade-5 organizations in the entire great world. However, this was not sufficient for Lin Huang. The more powerful he became, the more he realized how terrifying half-step lord-level and lord-level powerhouses were. He was also more fearful of the Raider organization. Lin Huang had never been a coward, nor had he ever been intimidated by any of his opponents. However, it was his habit to properly prepare before making a move against his enemies, even outclassing them if possible. When he felt the time was ripe, he would even take the initiative to attack, annihilating his opponents. However, if he were not sufficiently powerful, he would lie low patiently, waiting for the opportunity to strike. Just like in a game of Go chess, the moment he made a move, his opponent would lose! Chapter 1602 - How Many Can I Trade Them For? After returning to the Devil Hunter Star Zone, Lin Huang did not go into closed-door cultivation right away. Throughout the last few days, apart from handling some trivial matters, he had been thinking of how to break through to heavenly god-level. Ever since early on, while elevating from virtual god-level to true god-level, his method of advancement was already completely different from everyone else. Others elevated by killing True Gods and igniting their Divine Fire. However, Lin Huangs Divine Fire had already been ignited since virtual god-level. Therefore, he had taken a giant leap when he elevated to true god-level by consolidating a Godly Right with a massive amount of God Rule Power. Under normal circumstances, individuals only constructed Godly Rights when they elevated from true god-level to heavenly god-level. Thus, Lin Huang had sabotaged himself by rendering this usual method for advancement completely useless. Back then, I constructed my Godly Right through accumulating God Rule Power. In all honesty, it cant be considered a genuine Godly Right. Based on the situation now, once my capacity for absorbing God Rule Power has reached satiety, I should be able to enter the second stage of a Godly Right and begin accumulating sequence powers. Therefore, if I want to elevate to heavenly god-level, I just have to wait for the Godly Right to absorb enough God Rule Power, then I can advance to the second stagesequence power integration Lin Huang very quickly discovered the way forward for his breakthrough, but he was rather unsatisfied with this method. In that case, the amount of sequence power a Godly Right can hold is the same as its capacity for God Rule Power. Theres a limit Is there a way to increase my Godly Rights capacity so it can hold more sequence power, or else make its capacity infinite?! Lin Huang went back and read through the inherited memories of Great Heaven and the Sword Servants. Very soon, he found what he suspected might be an answer. So the Godly Rights maximum capacity is related to the strength of ones God Territory! From the inherited memories, Lin Huang realized that the more powerful the Heavenly Gods killed when constructing the Godly Right, the more powerful the integrated God Territory would be. Not only that, its capacity for containing sequence powers would also be greater. Apart from the fact that he could consolidate a staggering number of god sequence chains far beyond what ordinary folk could manageforty-two in totalGreat Heaven was powerful also because the Godly Right he constructed was sufficiently mighty. From first-rank to ninth-rankfrom the first time he constructed his Godly Right until the endhe integrated ninth-rank heavenly god-level God Territories during each Godly Right elevation. This bolstered his Godly Right by an increase of eighty-one times its power. In his God Territory, the maximum number of god sequence chains he could invoke while using his Godly Right was a staggering 3,402 god sequence chains. His might was sufficient to be a threat to many half-step lord-level powerhouses. Lin Huangs cultivation path was already completely different from Great Heavens. He did not need to use his Godly Right for amplification as he had already fully integrated his Godly Right and his God Rule Power. In the future, he would also be integrating god sequence chains. In other words, this meant he could invoke all of the sequence chains in his God Territory, no matter how many there were. However, there was a limit to the number of god rules and god sequence chains that a Godly Right could integrate. For instance, the Godly Right in Lin Huangs body could integrate a maximum of 1.8 billion god rules. He had accumulated 1.5 billion now; it was fast approaching its limit. Based on this, Lin Huang could foresee that the number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could integrate in the future would have a limit as well. However, from the inherited memories of Great Heaven and the others, Lin Huang saw that the Godly Rights strength could be increased and intensified. However, from first-rank to ninth-rank, there were only nine chances for his Godly Right to achieve advancement. In other words, by elevating his Godly Right, he could increase the upper limits of its capacity for integration. However, my God Territory has already integrated half-step Lord God Territories. If I want to elevate my Godly Right, using lower-level God Territories wont work. The only way is to integrate the God Territories of more half-step Lords Step by step, Lin Huang rapidly came up with the solution to his problem. However, he soon ran into another headache. At his current ability, he was unable to kill half-step Lords. Therefore, the only way to obtain their God Territories was through purchasing them or trading resources. Half-step Lord God Territories were definitely expensive. In auctions, they were usually sold at the same price as Pseudo-Dao Weapons. Even if Lin Huang pawned everything he had, he would not be able to afford even a few. After thinking for a while, he turned on his communicator and called Virtuosos number. After a mere moment, Virtuosos figure projected itself in front of Lin Huang. You contacted me just in time. Im officially going into closed-door cultivation tomorrow. Virtuoso sounded happy; they seemed to be in a good mood. Is anything the matter? How many half-step Lord God Territories would I be able to trade for the Nirvana Trees that I divided between you and Saber9? Lin Huang did not bother with small talk and got down to business right away. Virtuoso was stunned upon hearing that, and their tone became rather odd. How many? You might not even be able to get one. The price will more or less be considered the starting bid at auction. Lin Huang frowned slightly at that. He did not want to pour resources into purchasing a God Territory. After all, if that were only the starting bid, the final auction price would go up several times overperhaps even by several dozen times. Dont tell me you want to refine the God Territories of half-step Lords to boost your Godly Rights amplification? Virtuoso saw through Lin Huangs intention right away. Let me tell you, its useless. A half-step Lord is still, in essence, a ninth-rank Heavenly God. Not just in the universe, but even in the great world where we are now, countless people have tried that. After refining half-step Lord and ninth-rank heavenly god-level God Territories, a Godly Rights amplification remains the same. Not only that, the refinement takes more than a dozen times longer than refining ninth-rank heavenly god-level God Territories. You have sufficient authorization now to do a quick search and find at least several hundred threads on Death Sickles forum regarding this matter. Its common knowledge among Heavenly God and many True Gods. If you really want to refine God Territories, Saber9 and I can help you gather nine ninth-rank ones. That will be sufficient to last you until you get to ninth-rank Virtuoso said a great deal more, but Lin Huang let it go in one ear and out the other. Naturally, he was aware of this common knowledge. However, with his bodys current state, he could only refine half-step Lord God Territories. Ninth-rank ones were of no use to him at all. If not, I dont mind Abyssal half-step Lord God Territories either, Lin Huang interrupted Virtuosos continuing flow of conversation. Are you sure you only want half-step Lord ones? Virtuoso paused, then asked in all seriousness. I am. Lin Huang nodded resolutely. Alright then Virtuoso did not pursue the matter further. After all, everyone had their own secrets. As long as theyre half-step Lord God Territories, that will do. Abyssal ones will work tooif they havent been cleansed, thats not a problem either. Even those that have had their sequence powers sucked dry and are merely an empty shell are fine as well Lin Huang extrapolated on his requirements, Just get me as many as you can. Very well, Ill think of something. Virtuoso nodded and added, The same goes for Saber9 as well? Yes. Lin Huang nodded. After ending the call, he felt slightly relieved. Fortunately, Virtuoso had not asked any sensitive questions, so Lin Huang had no need to fob him off with the answers he had prepared. However, at least his heart was finally settled. Abyssal half-step Lord God Territories would be much cheaper, especially those that had yet to be cleansed. He should be able to trade one with the hundred-over Nirvana Trees. At the very least, he had prepared the most essential component of elevating to heavenly god-level. Chapter 1603 - Yang Ling is Dead?! August was the hottest month on the Pfister Star; it was also the dry season that hardly rained. During the day, the average temperature was above 40 degrees Celcius, but it would drop to approximately 20 degrees Celcius at night. Even for ordinary folks, it was more comfortable at night, let alone cultivators. Moreover, all one had to do was look up, and they would see a starry sky; it was rare that there were no stars. The main reason why Lin Huang and his subordinates had chosen to station the Sword Alliance here was that this planet was closest to the teleportation point connecting the gravel world to the great world. Lin Huang lay on the rooftop, silently watching the unfamiliar starry sky overhead. It did not taking him very long to identify the other planets around the Devil Hunter Star Zone, as well as the planet where he suspected the teleportation point was. That particular planet was in the same galaxy as the Pfister Star. Although it was just a dwarf planet that was slightly further from the other stars and reflected a much weaker light, it was very close to the Pfister Star. One could still see it with the naked eye. Right as Lin Huang was about to use Divine Telekinesis to confirm that the teleportation point was located on the planet he had spotted, his communicator device suddenly began vibrating. He tapped on the communication page. It was a message sent from an unfamiliar number. Are you in the Devil Hunter Star Zone now? Lin Huang was stunned when he read this. The image of a particular skinny figure immediately came to mind. Yang Ling?! The only person he could think of who liked using unfamiliar numbers to contact him and who was also able to locate his coordinates was Yang Linga traveler just like himself. Just when he was about to reply to the message and ask if this was Yang Ling, another message came. It was from another unfamiliar number. Dont reply. The previous message was just to confirm your current location. Almost at the same time, a message came in from yet another unfamiliar number. See you tomorrow morning. Well talk when we meet. (Dont reply) Lin Huang frowned slightly after closing the communication page. From the looks of things, Yang Ling had run into some serious trouble, or he would not be this cautious. He still distinctly remembered the last time Yang Ling had sent him a messagethat had been four months ago or so. Lin Huang had been in closed-door cultivation back then and had only seen the message around two months later. When he had called back, the number was already out of service. What caught his attention back then was that Yang Ling had only sent a short messageTake care of Hong Zhuang for me At the time, he already suspected that something might have happened to Yang Ling. Fortunately, he had finally received a message from Yang Ling after four months or more. Lin Huang was slightly relieved that at least he had received some form of communication. It proved that Yang Ling was at least safe for the time being. Ill find out what exactly happened tomorrow when we meet, Lin Huang mumbled to himself. When he checked the time, it was already past one oclock in the wee hours of the morning. He swiftly slipped into his bedroom, took a quick shower, and went to bed. In reality, at his current level of ability, his physical body would not get dirty, nor did he need sleep. It was just that he was used to doing these things. When he was not cultivating, he still retained his normal habits of eating, sleeping, and showering. The next morning, Lin Huang woke up early. By the time he finished his morning ablutions, it was not even 6 a.m. yet. One of the reasons he woke up so early was that in the early hours of the morning previously, he had agreed to meet Yang Ling. For another, he wanted to try breakfast at one of the small shops. This little breakfast place was extremely busy, even in the morning. Lin Huang was unwilling to queue for a place, so he decided to just wake up early instead. Once he had finished getting himself ready, he made an area sweep with Divine Telekinesis and discovered that the breakfast place had just opened its doors. In a flash, he immediately appeared at the entrance. He ordered two trays of the shops signature buns and a bowl of plain congee. He then sat down and waited patiently for the buns to be served. A figure appeared out of nowhere less than two seconds after he had taken his seat. Lin Huang was utterly stunned when he saw who it was. It took him a moment to regain his composure. How come youre here? Wheres Yan Ling? The person who had come to meet him was Hong Zhuang! Lin Huang scrutinized her from head to toe. She was different from before; her personality had undergone a drastic change. Not only was her previous alluring air conspicuously absent, but she was also no longer wearing red. Instead, she wore a plain green blouse, and a faint trace of worry creased her brow. Yang Ling hes dead Hong Zhuang hesitated for a moment but decided to say it anyway. Yang Ling is dead?! Lin Huang found this rather hard to believe. He squinted at Hong Zhuang. Then who sent me those messages after midnight? I did. As Hong Zhuang spoke, screenshots of the three messages popped up. The screenshots confirmed that she had indeed sent those messages. How did you find my coordinates then?! My communicator devices location has been turned off, Lin Huang voiced his suspicions again. From what he remembered, Yang Ling was the only one who could do that. It was no use even if his communicators location had been turned off; Yang Ling could still locate him. He transferred his Goldfinger to me before he died. While Hong Zhuang was explaining, Lin Huang kept staring at her. However, she did not look as if she was lying. Lin Huang knew about Yang Ling and Hong Zhuangs relationship. However, he did not think that Yang Ling would reveal his identity as a traveler and the matter of his Goldfinger to Hong Zhuang. After all, Yang Ling had been betrayed before, so it was very hard for him to fully trust anybody. However, what Hong Zhuang said convinced Lin Huang a little further. This was because Yang Ling might have planned for the future once he realized he was marked for death. To prevent the Raiders from obtaining his Goldfinger, it sounded like it was something that Yang Ling would do transfer his Goldfinger to someone else in advance. Furthermore, the recipient of the Goldfinger was Hong Zhuang, which was completely logical as the two of them were already in an intimate relationship. Theoretically speaking, only travelers could use Goldfingers. However, Yang Lings Goldfinger was not whole. Moreover, with his intelligence and capability, it was entirely possible that he had found a method of transferring his Goldfinger to Hong Zhuang. He asked me to look for you. Hong Zhuang made no move to avoid Lin Huangs scrutiny. He also said that in this world, youre the only traveler he trusts. Lin Huang became very thoughtful after he heard this. What Hong Zhuang said sounded rather cheesy, but it certainly seemed to be something that Yang Ling would say before he died. Hong Zhuang probably did not make this up. How did he die? Lin Huang asked again after sorting out his thoughts and feelings. We were actually targeted by Raiders as soon as we arrived in the great world. Yang Lings Goldfinger was just a remnant, but the individual capable of plundering his Goldfinger could sense its rough location. Weve been on the run these past few years in the great world because of that. About four and a half months ago, the person who plundered Yang Lings Goldfinger personally made a move. It was a Lord who easily located our hiding place Yang Ling sensed that all the layers of security measures he put in place had been breached. He knew our enemy was coming, so he transferred both his Goldfinger and the secret information in his mind to me before sending me away. So you didnt actually see Yang Lings death with your own eyes? Lin Huang persisted. I didnt see him die, but Im sure of it, Hong Zhuang explained patiently, I can sense that his aura remnant has been completely obliterated from his Goldfinger. You dont need to worry that the Goldfinger within me might attract that particular Lord. Yang Ling reset the Goldfinger entirely when he transferred it to me. Although the reset made the Goldfinger lose most of its functions, it has cut off any connection with the original Goldfinger. Otherwise, I would have been captured over four months ago. Lets talk somewhere else, Lin Huang shot a glance at the buns that were now ready and got the lady proprietress to pack them for takeaway. With breakfast in hand, Lin Huang led Hong Zhuang to the Sword Alliances headquarters. Chapter 1604 - : The Name That Cannot Be Mentioned Again Lin Huang had initially thought he would be reuniting with Yang Ling; he had never expected Hong Zhuang to be the one who showed up instead. Not only that, the woman had brought news of Yang Lings death. Lin Huang was familiar enough with Hong Zhuanghe had met her the first year he had traveled to the gravel world. Back then, he had just started on his cultivation path. Since that time, the two of them had crossed paths more than once. However, as far as Lin Huang was concerned, his interactions with her could not be considered pleasant. From the very beginning, he had never understood this woman. If he only took into consideration their past interactions, Lin Huang would not be willing to have too much contact with her. However, due to her position, he could not ignore her request for help. She was Yang Lings girlfriend. Furthermore, Lin Huang had considered Yang Ling a true friend. Although on the surface it seemed that many of the interactions between the two over the last few years had been limited to business transactions involving disguising identities, Yang Ling and Lin Huang were both travelers from Earth. As a result, they were able to relate to many of the things that each encountered respectively. They were both strangers in a strange land. Both of them came from the same place; both also had similar experiences as travelers who were now strangers residing in strange lands. In truth, they could sympathize with each other. Lin Huang had even considered that when he had time, he would chat with Yang Ling about things that had happened on Earth. However, he would never have the opportunity to do so now. After a detailed talk with Hong Zhuang, he found out what had happened to her and Yang Ling. The pair were almost constantly hiding from the Raiders pursuit. Many times, they had to resort to hiding in various gravel worlds and mini worlds. Yang Ling had also mentioned that he wanted Hong Zhuang to leave him so she could avoid being dragged into this matter. However, she rejected his suggestion and had remained with him, on the grounds that she could help Yang Ling handle many things where it was not convenient for him to reveal any traces of his existence. The ill-fated couple had not lived a good life for the past few years. The resources they managed to obtain were also extremely limited. According to Hong Zhuang, Yang Ling had only managed to restore his combat strength to ninth-rank true god-level before he died. Meanwhile, she had elevated to first-rank true god-level. In Yang Lings own words, he had given her more resources to prevent her from becoming a burden. As for the Goldfinger Yang Ling had transferred into Hong Zhuangs body, in reality, it could not be considered a real Goldfinger by far. Lin Huang could only vaguely sense that there were energy remnants in the Goldfinger within her. Yang Lings Goldfinger had been incomplete ever since it had been plundered. Now that he had reset it and transferred it to Hong Zhuang, it might not be capable of even one-tenth its previous function. Although Yang Ling had me look for you, he didnt expect you to avenge him. As Lin Huangs thoughts ran rampant, Hong Zhuang suddenly spoke again, pulling him back from his woolgathering, He even asked me to tell you to stay as low profile as you can. If you cant, at least disguise yourself. Before youre sufficiently powerful enough, try not to attract the Raiders attention. In the memories he left for me, there are some things that he stressed I must pass on to you. The first thing is that, among the Raiders, the Primordium of the Lord that plundered Yang Lings Goldfinger has departed for the universe. However, he left a clone in the great world. This clone has the ability of a Lord as well. Not only that, he wears a surveillance device that the Lords Goldfinger left behind. The surveillance device monitors the information of any suspected travelers. The second thing is that due to the existence of this surveillance device, when were somewhere with surveillance equipment or if were on the internet, we cant mention these two keywordstraveler and Raider. This includes the intranet of some organizations, as well as encrypted devicesits best not to bring up the keywords, as theres no way of guaranteeing complete safety. Thirdly, in front of all surveillance equipment or if youre on the internet, never mention the name Yang Ling again, or anything at all regarding Yang Ling. Whether its via text or voice recording, dont do it at all. Its best not to mention my name anymore as well, since its most probably connected with Yang Ling already. Ive given myself a new nameViolet. From now on, just call me that. Ill change my appearance and physical body too. As Hong Zhuang spoke, her body began rapidly transforming into a young lady with short purple hair. She looked only about fifteen or sixteen years old and had a scattering of tiny freckles on her face. She was at least ten centimeters shorter than before. Lin Huang raised his brows as he watched Hong Zhuangs transformation. She had used a disguise god sequence relic that could practically deceive most heavenly god-level powerhouses. As for Lin Huang, whose spirit strength had reached peak heavenly god-level, he had seen through her disguise right away. However, it was entirely sufficient for use on a daily basis. After patiently listening to the precautions that Hong Zhuang had mentioned, Lin Huang felt only a faint sense of sorrow. Yang Ling was already dead, but his name could not even be mentioned From this, the tyranny of the Raiders could be seen. Not only did they want to take every good thing from an individual, but they also wanted to wipe out every trace of ones existence. This was viciousness of the highest order! Lin Huang fell silent for a long time, looking at Hong Zhuang. Her form had changed completely now, and she had purple hair. There was almost no trace to be seen of the former Hong Zhuang. This woman had truly changed a great deal. The old Hong Zhuang had been stubborn, untamed, and free. However, in place of that, Lin Huang now saw grief, steadiness, and a strange determination. Even after hearing her story, it was hard to imagine the things she had gone through over the last few years. I definitely have to avenge him Lin Huang suddenly spoke. Hong Zhuang was stunned when she heard this and stared blankly at Lin Huang. She had initially thought that this man would be fearfulafraid that she would bring disaster upon him. She had never expected him to react in this manner. Yang Ling was my friend. Even without him, its only a matter of time before I would be targeted by Raiders. Lin Huang fixed his gaze on Hong Zhuang and continued, Sooner or later, Ill have to settle the grudge between the Raiders and myself. However, now isnt the time to do so. Im not powerful enough at the moment. One day, though, Ill be so powerful that those people will tremble! When the time comes, Ill take that mans head to console Yang Lings spirit in heaven! Although what Lin Huang said sounded like a tall tale, Hong Zhuang was not sure why she found it extremely convincing. She could be considered someone who had witnessed Lin Huangs growth. She still remembered that when they had met for the first time, he was only an insignificant bronze-level. Now, however, Lin Huang had grown into a formidable individual capable of establishing an organization of his own in the great world. You can settle down in the Devil Hunter Star Zone with peace of mind. Although this is a remote location, the resources here are sufficient for you to cultivate to heavenly god-level. Yang Ling is already dead, and you need time to mourn as wellbut dont stay mired in your emotions. Spend more time on cultivation. When humans are busy, theyll naturally have fewer distracting thoughts. In your free time, if you really dont feel like cultivating, getting Lin Xin and the others to go shopping with you for some distraction wouldnt be a bad idea either. Lin Huang got up slowly after he finished speaking. Ill show you around first and then introduce you to everyone. Chapter 1605 - Death Sickle’s Missions Yang Ling had genuinely liked Hong Zhuang. However, Lin Huang was not sure if Hong Zhuang had reciprocated Yang Lings affections. In any case, he did not wish to probe further into the matter. However, as Yang Lings friend, he would fulfill Yang Lings dying wish, which was to take care of Hong Zhuang for him. After getting Hong Zhuang settled in, Lin Huang began sorting out his thoughts. Yang Lings death gave him an even more acute sense of impending danger. The Raiders were much more powerful than he had expected, as well as more despicable. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, the best way to rid himself of this overhanging sense of danger was to elevate his ability. Let me max out the number of god rules for my Godly Right integration first, as soon as possible. That way, as soon as I get the half-step Lord God Territories from Virtuoso, I can refine them right away and elevate to heavenly god-level! Although there were other channels he could use to elevate his ability, Lin Huang decided to fill up his god rules to capacity first after some consideration. His Godly Right had already integrated 1.5 billion god rules; in truth, he was fast approaching his limit. Moreover, this was not a difficult undertakingit could be achieved by killing Heavenly Gods. However, Lin Huang wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Therefore, he pulled up the missions page on the Death Sickle forum and began looking for missions. Although obtaining god rules would be a little slower when hunting down mission targets, he would be able to gain some handsome rewards from the missions themselves. To Lin Huang, who needed a massive amount of resources to trade many times for half-step Lord God Territories, everything counted, however small. After all, most peoples wealth was accumulated bit by bit like this. If one did not take on any missions today or tomorrow, when would they be able to accumulate the money needed to purchase a half-step Lord God Territory? It would be great if I could take out a mortgage Id get one that lasts for a million years so I could pay it back slowly! When he thought of just how expensive half-step Lord God Territories were, Lin Huang began yearning a little for the mortgages on Earth. He collected his thoughts somewhat and looked at the missions page again. The level of difficulty for Gold Sickle missions was fighting Heavenly Gods. Generally speaking, either the assassination targets would be Heavenly Gods, or he would come into conflict with heavenly god-level powerhouses while carrying out the mission. Lin Huang glanced through the missions list and realized that the missions were arranged by the time of publication. The ones that were published later would be listed further up on top. He changed the sorting order right away, opting to list the missions with the most handsome rewards first. The missions list changed immediately. Lin Huang looked over everything again and realized there were very few changes in which missions were listed first. The mission in the top spot was still the same one, which was to kill a half-step heavenly god-level Bug Tribe Queen Mother. It was published over eight thousand years ago. In eight thousand years, nobody had ever managed to complete this mission. Lin Huang skipped over it after a mere glance at the heading and continued scrolling down. He did not even look to see what the reward was. Killing a half-step heavenly god-level powerhouse was still a tall order for him to pull off in a short time. Furthermore, this was a half-step heavenly god-level Bug Tribe Queen Mother that might have heavenly god-level guards by her side. Lin Huang looked at the second mission on the list after skipping over the first one. It was still a familiar heading, also about killing a Bug Tribe Queen Mother. To be exact, the mission was to kill a fallen Queen Mother that resided in the Abyss. This fallen Queen Mother possessed half-step heavenly god-level combat strength too. Lin Huang skipped over this as well and looked at the third mission. It was the exact same mission as previouslykilling the half-step heavenly god-level Succubus Mia. He shook his head helplessly and quickly scanned down the list. He skipped past a dozen or more missions for killing half-step Heavenly Gods and looked at those that had ninth-rank heavenly god-level targets. Killing God Capitals King Kong King Kong, saber cultivator, suspected to be class-5.5, ninth-rank heavenly god-level combat strength The first mission listed was to kill King Kong. Lin Huang was familiar with King Kong. He was the most powerful of all the Heavenly Gods in God Capital, with abilities that might be no less than those of Buried Heaven. He was an overbearing entity who could directly take on half-step heavenly god-level powerhouses in a fight. Previously, when the Great Heaven Territory had been opened, King Kong had been the leader of God Capital. Lin Huang had met him once at the time. This fellows abilities might very well be on par with Buried Heavens. Among the Heavenly Gods in the God Territory, his abilities are definitely in the top three ranks. At present, Lin Huang did not think he would be able to fight a battle with King Kong on equal footing. After skipping over the mission to kill King Kong, he saw yet another familiar name. Kill Peerless Overlord from the Combat God Temple Peerless Overlord, spear cultivator, suspected to be class-5, ninth-rank heavenly god-level combat strength Peerless Overlord, King Kong, and Buried Heaven were all powerhouses of the same level. The three of them were already at peak heavenly god-level and had been cultivating at ninth-rank heavenly god-level for years in order to break through to lord-level in one fell swoop. Although a target like this offered extremely handsome rewards, Lin Huang did not consider the mission for the time being. He resumed scrolling down and finally found a suitable target. Killing God Capitals Shen Jue Shen Jue, saber cultivator, class-5 supreme god-level, ninth-rank heavenly god-level combat strength Reward for completion of mission: Pseudo-Dao Weapon x1 Lin Huang had heard of this Shen Jue individual before. He ranked No. 7 on the God Territorys Heavenly God Leaderboard. However, Lin Huangs familiarity with him was not because of the Leaderboard, but because Shen Jues name frequently appeared on Death Sickles forum. This fellow was an utter racist. He had been born into the largest pure blood clan in the God Territorythe Shen family. Not only that, he was a direct descendent of the Shen family. Therefore, since childhood, he had always possessed a superiority complex, regarding everyone else as beneath him. His looks were unparalleled, but in character, he was brutal and extreme. To him, all living beings that were not pure blood Protoss were nothing but animals. They were only fit to be slaves. What he loved most was to buy slaves of various races and subject them to abuse and torture. After he was done, he would then kill them using various methods. Unfortunately, due to his status and his abilities, everyone else could not say anything. They could only fume in silence. This jerk is also on the missions list. Lin Huang raised his brows. His abilities should be on par with mine now After some consideration, he accepted the mission. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, accepting easily achieved missions with generous rewards was a matter of course. However, he also felt that more challenging missions afforded him the opportunity to improve. Besides, this Shen Jue fellow certainly deserved to die! After accepting the mission to kill Shen Jue, Lin Huang resumed scrolling down the list and came across yet another familiar name. Killing God Capitals Shen Yu Shen Yu, saber cultivator, class-5 supreme god-level, ninth-rank heavenly god-level combat strength Reward for completion of mission: Pseudo-Dao Weapon x1 Shen Yu was Shen Jues older sister by birth; the pair of them were twins. Brother and sister had grown up together, and their characters were so similar it was as if they came from the same mold. She and Shen Jue were constantly up to no good, and they would even exchange slaves so that they could torment them further. Rumor was that Shen Yu had been the one who had first given Shen Jue his taste for slave torture. Her own abilities were also powerful. She was ranked No. 11 on the God Territorys Heavenly God Leaderboard and could be considered extremely talented. Without hesitation, Lin Huang accepted that mission too. After that, he continued perusing the list and accepted over 20 missions at once before closing the missions page. Chapter 1606 - Mixue Ice-Cream And Tea’s Sweetness Tea (TN: The title comes from the name of a famous Chinese bubble tea brand, Mixue Ice-cream and Tea) Mixue Planet was located in the Milky Star Zone. It was a planet covered in snow all year round, and it produced ice honey. The plants here were extraordinarily resistant to cold, and most of them could bloom even at -80 degrees Celsius. On this planet lived a very special species of beethe Ice Beethat had unique ice crystal scales on its body. They were impervious to cold weather of even -200 degrees Celsius, and the honey they made was remarkably delicious. The weather and this specialty product were what gave the planet its name. The most bustling city on Mixue Planet was Ice City. Currently, Lin Huang was at one of the bubble tea shops there. While patiently waiting for his target to appear, he sipped on an iced tea called Sweetness Tea. He had accepted twenty-six missions from Death Sickle all in one go and had also marked out all the mission targets coordinates one by one. He had then planned out his route based on how easily accessible the location was, from the easiest to the hardest. Milky Star Zone was less than thirty thousand light-years away from the Devil Hunter Star Zone. A dimensional portal would take him straight there. Therefore, the target on Mixue Planet naturally became the first on Lin Huangs list. This round, his target was Este, the governor of Ice City, who was also the master of the entire Milky Star Zone domain. His main cultivation path was ice elemental truth. In terms of abilities, he was ranked No. 97 on the God Territorys Heavenly God Leaderboard and could be considered a powerhouse. He had a particular obsession for freezing living people into ice sculptures which he then displayed in his showroom. In his ice sculpture collection, there were not only Protoss and humans but also beings from many other tribes. He had over a thousand of these sculptures. As a result, he took great pride in his collection and had designated himself an ice sculpture artist. Lin Huang wrapped himself in a heavy trench coat, not because he was cold, but because everyone else was wearing thick clothes. He sipped on his iced tea, waiting patiently for Este to show up. According to the information he had received, Este would come to this shop to get iced tea every morning. Halfway through his drink, Lin Huang slowly glanced up and saw his mission target gradually coming closer. A faint smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. A red gleam suddenly flared at the opening of his sleeve. The next instant, the ice-blue bearded Este suddenly stopped in his tracks and toppled to the ground immediately after. Nobody noticed that the storage ring on Estes finger had quietly disappeared without a trace, along with the God Territory in his body. At the same time, Lin Huang had also vanished into thin air. The powerhouse who was ranked No. 97 on the Heavenly God Leaderboard was disposed of within seconds, just like that. In all honesty, Lin Huang would have certainly found it difficult to kill Este in a direct confrontation. However, he had used a telekinetic flying dagger to launch a stealth attack. At such close proximity, given the flying daggers speed, Este had been unable to dodge at all. Furthermore, Lin Huang had compounded this telekinetic flying daggera top-grade god sequence relicwith eighteen levels of sequence power and Sword Dao heavenly rule. Even if it had been Buried Heaven or King Kong, they might not have had time to react either if they encountered a stealth attack like this from such close proximity. After taking care of the first target, Lin Huang immediately withdrew and left without any hesitation. Second target, Gu Ming After killing his first target, Lin Huang had no plans to rest. He immediately headed to the location of his second target and began his second hunt On the first day after accepting the missions, he successfully killed seventeen targets within a short twenty-four hours. Each target was killed by a single telekinetic flying dagger strike. Lin Huang did not have to use a second telekinetic flying dagger on any of them. He killed seventeen ninth-rank Heavenly Gods within a day; thirteen of them were also in the top one hundred rankings on the Heavenly God Leaderboard. Lin Huang killed all of them within seconds! This made all the major organizations panic. Many grade-5 and even grade-6 organizations felt as if they were confronting a mortal enemy and were afraid that their organizations would be targeted. After all, ninth-rank Heavenly Gods possessed the highest combat strength within their organizations. Losing these Heavenly Gods would be a crippling blow. All the major organizations were speculating as to who this assassin might be. Naturally, the news spread to Death Sickle as well. Very soon, the members in Death Sickle discovered that someone had accepted many difficult missions on the missions list. Furthermore, the seventeen people who had died were all targets of these particular missions. The missions had yet to be submitted, though, so they had no idea who exactly might be behind them. However, many people in Death Sickles inner circle suspected that Buried Heaven was responsible. This was because thirteen of the targets were in the top one hundred ranks on the Heavenly God Leaderboard, and they had been killed almost instantly. As far as everyone knew, out of all Death Sickles Gold Sickles, Buried Heaven was the only one who could pull this off. After a busy first day, Lin Huang did not slow down on the second day either. He rapidly disposed of his eighteenth, nineteenth, and other subsequent targets. By dawn of the third day, Lin Huang had completed twenty-four missions. Only two targets remainedShen Jue and Shen Yu. The twins territory was located within the core zone of the God Territorya fiefdom that God Capital had allocated to them. This was also the most difficult thing about the mission. God Capitals headquarters was guarded by a Lord. Not only that, there were several half-step Lords who were stationed across God Capitals various territories. Shen Jue and Shen Yus fiefdom was not far from the territory of one of God Capitals half-step Lords. Therefore, the greatest difficulty in killing the pair lay not in their inherently powerful abilities but in the fact that Lin Huang had to dispatch them swiftly and then escape from God Capitals territory. Based on the information provided by Death Sickle, Lin Huang had to kill both Shen Jue and Shen Yu within three seconds and then teleport out in order to successfully complete this mission. If not, the half-step Lord from the next territory would hasten to the scene. Furthermore, once the half-step Lord had sprung into action, the Lord who was guarding God Capital would send his consciousness over right away. In other words, even if the half-step Lord powerhouse were the one making a move, Lin Huang would die on the spot if he were unable to escape in time. I only have one chance to attack. Whether I manage to kill them or not, I have to leave immediately. Upon entering Gemini, Lin Huang had gone into complete seclusion and was now cracking his head over how to complete this mission. He was also aware that his two-day killing spree had alerted the various major organizations, including God Capital, which was a grade-7 organization. After all, the ones killed were all ninth-rank heavenly god-level, and most of them were well-known figures on the Heavenly God Leaderboard. Not only that, they had been instantly killed and completely unable to defend themselves. The several grade-7 organizations were rather worried that their young potentials would be targeted. After all, individuals who had been singled out for nurturing all had the potential to become Lords and were immensely talented. The siblings, Shen Jue and Shen Yu, happened to be young potentials of this sort. God Capital was a gathering ground for pure blood Protoss, and most members looked down on other tribes. Theoretically, they did not think that there was anything wrong with the twins. At most, they thought their behavior was rather cruel; no one disciplined them either. God Capitals upper echelons were not unaware of the things the pair had done behind their backs. They merely turned a blind eye and acted as if they saw nothing. This was why over the years, the siblings had become increasingly unreasonable and ruthless. However, as far as Lin Huang was concerned, the duos behavior was completely unforgivable. Chapter 1607 - : Gemini Gemini was where siblings Shen Jue and Shen Yu were stationed. Since many ninth-rank geniuses on the Heavenly God Leaderboards ranking list had been killed one after the other, the twins movements had been curtailed by God Capitals upper echelons. The siblings had been unable to leave Gemini for the past few days. God Capitals upper echelons thought it would be the safest for them to stay on Gemini. The minute something went awry, the half-step Lord would be able to get there at once. Not only that, God Capital was now regulating all entries and departures from Gemini. Any powerhouses above heavenly god-level who wished to enter Gemini would have to submit a complete set of identification documents for review; they would only be allowed entry if they passed. For high-level Heavenly Gods and half-step Lords, the process was especially stringent. However, none of this had anything to do with Lin Huang. No matter what, he still looked like a True God. In God Capitals eyes, he was the completely harmless type. Lin Huang disguised himself prominently as a tourist over the next few days and visited various tourist attractions. In reality, though, he was secretly gathering information while waiting patiently for the chance to carry out the assassinations. Seven days passed as he waited In the Gemini God Palace on Gemini, a lady in a white dress and purple stilettos was standing on the back of a muscular Protoss. The Protoss retained his human form and was at least three meters tall. His body was knotted with muscles, and he was clad only in a pair of underpants. At the moment, he was crawling on the ground on all fours like a dog, letting the lady stand on his back as she pleased. Around his neck was a collar with a black chain attached to it. The lady was holding the other end of the chain. Three Two Six, go to Shen Jues courtyard. The muscular Protoss immediately began crawling, going as fast as the wind. Judging by his speed alone, his abilities were definitely those of a heavenly god-level powerhouse. However, this powerful being was not only chained like a dog, but he was also submitting to the ladys orders. It only took a moment for the Protoss to arrive at a particular courtyard, bearing the lady on his back. However, once he got to the entrance, he stopped and prostrated himself on the ground. The lady in the white dress stepped forward on her stilettos and trod on his head, taking her time to hop down slowly. She then casually fastened the chain around the neck of a stone sculpture at the entrance, then went through the gate. After seeing the lady in the white dress through the gate, the muscled Protoss glanced at the length of the chain between him and the stone sculpture. It did not seem long enough for him to sit up, so he crawled two steps forward to try and shorten the distance. When he saw that the chain had loosened significantly, he slowly got up and tried to sit down. However, before he could be fully seated, the chain tightened completelyit was not long enough. He hurriedly stopped trying to get up, worried that he might accidentally break the chain. Once again, he lay down and prostrated himself helplessly on the ground. In reality, the chain was looped around the stone sculpture several times. He could absolutely have unwound the chain twice, and it would be sufficient length for him to be able to sit. However, he did not dare to touch it at all. The lady in the white dress and purple stilettos went into the courtyard and slipped quickly into a large palace. In the deep recesses of the palace was a naked lady tied to a metal stand. She had seven foxtails growing from her lower backshe was obviously was a member of the Nine-tailed Fox Tribe. The Nine-tailed Fox Tribe was part of the Protoss. A nine-tailed lord-level powerhouse had even emerged previously, and they had attained the rank of a grade-7 organization. However, since the death of that particular Lord, the Nine-tailed Fox Tribe had been utterly reduced to a grade-6 organization. Not only that, for thousands of years, they were ranked at the bottom of all the grade-6 organizations. Despite their decline, theoretically, members of the Nine-tailed Fox Tribe should not have been reduced to the level of slaves. Clearly, this nine-tailed fox had not been obtained via legal channels. What? Its been over a month now, and this girl still hasnt yielded? The lady in the white dress seemed to be enjoying the show. She was watching a man who bore ninety percent resemblance to her whipping the nine-tailed fox lady with a whip imbued with a thunder god sequence chain. Not only was the lady in white devoid of sympathy, but she also seemed eager, as if she would like to have a go with the whip herself. Her Gods soul is already ninth-rank, and she has immense force of will. Ive tried countless ways over the past few months, but the results are insignificant. All I can do is torture her slowly. Upon hearing that, the man wielded the whip twice more before stopping. He turned around and looked at the lady in the white dress, However, there will come a day when Ill make her kneel on the ground and lick my toes willingly and obediently. In appearance, he was extremely handsomehe could even be considered pretty. If he were on Earth, he would certainly outshine all the young, pretty-boy celebrities. The white suit he wore set off his charisma, making him look extraordinarily refined. However, those who were acquainted with him knew that although he looked good on the surface, there was nothing else good about him. He was rotten on the insideeven more odious than the Disasters in the Abyss. Why did you come here today? Youre my brother. Cant I visit you when I have nothing to do? The lady in the white dress said with a smile. If youre not here for anything in particular, Ill resume what Im doing, the man in the white suit said and raised the whip in his hand. Arent you bored after being confined for a week? The lady in the white dress asked in exasperation. The old geezers wont let us go out. What can I do? The man in the white suit more or less guessed the purpose of his older sisters visit. I heard therell be good stuff at the auction tonight, the lady in the white dress commented. What you think is good might not be something I find acceptable. The man in the white suit feigned indifference. Do you think I dont know your taste? Dont worry, there are things that will suit you. Only then did the man in the white suit turn around and look at his sister. What about the old geezers? Its not like were leaving Gemini. We cant stay in all the time. Its been a week! The lady in the white dress sounded rather annoyed as she spoke, Do they think were pet birds they can lock in a cage?! Thats true. Its been a week, and theres been no more news about other Heavenly Gods being assassinated. I wonder what those old geezers are worried about. The man in the white suit was not very happy either. Who would be foolhardy enough to barge into God Capital territory to kill someone?! Thats right! The lady in the white dress agreed, The minute the half-step Lord shows up here, the Lord would sense it. The assassin wouldnt even have a chance to attack. If they were heavenly god-level and we joined forces to fight, even if were no match for Buried Heaven and King Kong, it wouldnt be hard to drag things out for a couple of hours. Besides, it will only take three to five seconds for the half-step Lord to get here. The man in the white suit abruptly fell silent. Naturally, he knew that his sister was exaggerating their abilities. He had seen King Kong fight; he was very much aware that they would not be able to hold out for an hour even if he joined forces with his sister. In fact, it would be hard to last for even half an hour. However, he also felt it should not be a problem for them to hold out until the half-step Lord arrived. Given how vigilant that bunch of old higher-ups is, they probably arent going to let us out for at least a month. The man in the white suit thought this over. If we want to go out, well have to sneak out. I think so too. the lady in the white dress nodded in agreement, Anyway, were not leaving Gemini. Even if they find out later on, at most, theyll just give us an earful. Alright, thats set then. After dinner, well each leave a clone behind to cover up for our absence, then well meet up directly at the entrance to the black market. The man in the white suit officially finalized the plans for their outing. Chapter 1608 - The Joys Of The Rich Lin Huang headed straight to the black market after dinner. There was an underground auction there tonight. He had heard that there would be slaves of various tribes among the items up for bid. Lin Huang knew that the siblings, Shen Jue and Shen Yu, would be there. It had been a week since the consecutive killings of the Heavenly Gods who were on the Heavenly God Leaderboards ranking list. Throughout the week, this incident had stirred heated discussions everywhere. At first, most people speculated that Buried Heaven was responsible. However, someone confirmed that Buried Heaven had gone into the Abyss with an expedition of troops and had not come out yet. There were also several people who thought it might be Xiu Mu from Death Sickle, who had risen to fame recently. However, others quickly shot this speculation down. After all, although Lin Huang had obtained the highest combat results under the guise of Xiu Mu a couple of months ago, he had only killed third-rank heavenly god-level powerhouses. Furthermore, he was only a True God. Many of the dead victims were geniuses from various organizations and had been on the Heavenly God Leaderboards ranking list. Anyone who could make it into the Heavenly God Leaderboard rankings was the cream of the crop among ninth-rank Heavenly Gods. Their abilities were beyond those of any ordinary ninth-rank Heavenly God. Any individual who could kill these people almost instantly had to be either a half-step Lord or a peak heavenly god-level powerhouse like Buried Heaven. Many people had no doubts about Xiu Mus ability once he elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level in the future. They even felt that he might surpass Buried Heaven. However, logically speaking, it was less than half a year since Xiu Mu had first shown his face in public. No matter how talented he was, it was impossible for his combat strength to advance a whole level within such a short time and elevate to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. The name Xiu Mu merely came to everyones mind for a second and was then immediately buried and forgotten. Anyway, there were other assassin organizations in the God Territory as well, apart from Death Sickle. Not only that, but the assassin might also be from outside the God Territory. After several days of enthusiastic discussion, Lin Huangs temporary pause in the killings caused the popularity of the topic to gradually die down. On the internet, with its constant information explosion, everyone had short memories. They were easily distracted by new things as well. This was what Lin Huang wanted because he knew that if the topic grew more popular, it would only make it more difficult for him to kill his last two targets. After entering the auction grounds, he quickly found himself a seat. After sitting down, he began looking around. This sort of illegal underground auction happened from time to time with no fixed schedule. Each time, the venue would either be temporarily erected, or rented to avoid the event being reported. The auction venue in Geminis black market was not very large and could only hold three thousand people. There was no VIP room either. It was just an open hall with thirty rows of seats in total, with one hundred seats per row. Lin Huangs seat was in the last rowthe thirtieth rowand was beside the walkway, closest to the door. One of the reasons why he picked this seat was that if anyone were sitting behind him, they would notice something unusual if he made any moves, however small. Another reason was that this was the most convenient seat for leaving the hall. He chose to carry out the assassination inside the venue, as there were many uncertain factors if he were to attempt the killings while his targets were on their way to the auction. If the two targets did not depart at the same time, he could only kill one of them and would have to give up on his second target. No such issue existed if the assassination took place in the venue itself because the siblings would meet there sooner or later. All he had to do was to wait patiently for the two of them to appear. Moreover, during this period when everyone was jittery, Shen Jue and Shen Yus status and potential in God Capital meant they would certainly have powerful guardians covertly following them. In a place with a crowd, it would also be easier to distract these guardians. Lin Huangs arrival at the venue was considered relatively early; after he went in, more people began showing up rapidly. Seeing that the first row was fast filling up, Lin Huang became increasingly uncertain whether or not Shen Jue and Shen Yu would come. After all, the guest list was completely confidential, and he was only guessing that they would make an appearance since there were slaves at the auction this time. He was not one hundred percent certain that they would. Right as the auction was about to officially start and the auctioneer was waiting to go on stage, two figures finally showed up late. These two individuals were a lady in a white dress and a man in a white suit. Both of them looked ninety percent similar to each other. In face and form, they were so utterly perfect that no one could find anything to nitpick. Their appearance soon attracted the attention of everyone in the venue, including Lin Huangs. These two were no other than the targets he intended to killthe siblings Shen Jue and Shen Yu! Despite having attracted everyones attention as soon as they showed up, the twins expressions betrayed no signs of surprise, as if they were already used to such reactions. Shen Yu held onto Shen Jues arm, and they slowly made their way to the last two seats on the first row. They occupied the two best seats in the entire auction. However, nobody objected. On Gemini, even tourists were aware of who the siblings were. Lin Huang smirked faintly. He might well be the happiest person in the venue to see the brother and sister. The thing he had been most worried about for his plan this time was if the pair did not make an appearance. If they did not come, he would have wasted his efforts. Not only that, he had no idea when he would have another opportunity to make his move. To Lin Huang, the twins showing up now was the equivalent of completing half his assassination mission. Lin Huang did not attack right away when he saw the siblings taking their seats. Instead, he waited patiently. The auction had yet to begin, so there was no one to distract the crowds attention from him. It was not the best time to attack. After Shen Jue and Shen Yu entered, the auctioneer checked the time, then made his way on stage. After some opening remarks, the underground auction officially began! Lets look at the first item we have up for bids today! As the auctioneer spoke, he pulled off the red cloth that covered the item, revealing a suit of golden armor. Lin Huang could not see what was so special about this item. It was just a top-grade god sequence relic, and the craftsmanship could not be considered particularly exquisite. He had no idea why it would be sold as part of an underground auction. However, he noticed that many people seemed to be interested in this suit of armor. Just when he was having doubts, the auctioneer finally began introducing the item. Im sure many of our guests can tell that this is a suit of Generals Armor from the Combat God Temple. Even in the Combat God Temple, only the top Heavenly Gods have the right to purchase it. Under normal circumstances, something like this would be prohibited from being displayed anywhere outside of the Combat God Temple. Therefore, in the entire God Territory, apart from the Combat God Temple, its said that only three people own such a collectible. I wonder which of our guests will be able to obtain this collectible and become the legendary fourth person to own one After listening to the auctioneers description of the item up for bid, Lin Huang suddenly realized that the suit of armor was contraband goods from the Combat God Temple. Some powerful organizations possessed exclusive equipment that was strictly for their own internal use. This set of armor was clearly one of these items. As such, it was no longer a god sequence relic but a limited edition collectible. As potential purchasers kept shouting bids continuously, the price skyrocketed. Within ten seconds, it had gone up to triple the price of regular top-grade god sequence relic battle armor and was still getting increasingly higher. All Lin Huang could say was that the joys of the rich were things one could not even begin to imagine. Chapter 1609 - Here’s My Chance I believe many men here will be interested in the second collectible we have today The auctioneer removed the red cloth covering the display case. Within the transparent case was an exquisite bottle the size of a human palm. Lin Huang stared at the bottle for a little bit. It was nothing specialjust a regular jade bottle. The patterns carved onto it added to its aesthetics, but they were actually divine patterns for sealing off its aura. However, Lin Huang could obviously sense that many of the men present began to breathe more heavily once they saw this collectible. They must be coveting whatever the bottle contained. Right as Lin Huang was puzzling over this, the auctioneer finally announced the name of this collectiblethe Desire Elixir! Lin Huang still looked confused after he heard the name of the item. He had never heard of such a thing before. Fortunately, the auctioneer seemed to have taken into consideration that there might be people who knew nothing about the items provenance or its use, so he launched into an explanation. The Desire Elixir is a rare and very special potion. This bottle that you see before you came into the auction houses hands by chance. There are no reliable channels for obtaining it. There are two main reasons for this elixirs rarity. One is that there are very few apothecaries who know the formula. At present, in the entire God Territory, there are perhaps only two or three individuals who can formulate this potion. The other reason is that its main ingredient is the blood of Abyssal Desires, which is extremely difficult to obtain! Lin Huang was stunned when he heard Abyssal Desires being mentioned. A Desire was a type of Disaster derived from extreme desire and Abyssal energy. Can we really use an elixir made from the blood of something like that? Lin Huang had already guessed the so-called Desire Elixirs general function without the need for further explanation from the auctioneer. No matter how thoroughly the apothecary had purified the elixir from Abyssal energy and negative emotions, its ingredients alone meant that it could not be auctioned or sold legally. It could only be put up for bid at underground auctions. A short while later, the auctioneer began describing the elixirs powers after he had finished boasting about its rarity and how difficult it was to produce. He added many exaggerated embellishments, but they were not too far from Lin Huangs speculations. This potion was an extremely powerful aphrodisiac with strong hallucinogenic properties. The auctioneer even admitted that it could be slightly addictive. However, the word slightly made Lin Huang scoff. If this could cause even half-step Lords to become addicted, one could imagine how tremendously habit-forming such a thing could be for less powerful Heavenly Gods and True Gods. Even if one did not take into account the main ingredients and focused only on the elixirs function, it was inconceivable that the various major organizations would allow this to be sold legally through the proper channels. What made Lin Huang speechless was that Shen Jue and Shen Yu also joined in the bidding wars, even bidding against each other a few times. In the end, the two seemed to come to some sort of agreement and stopped bidding against each other. Shen Jue managed to obtain the Desire Elixir at a high price, equivalent to that of a Pseudo-Dao Weapon. This made Lin Huang greatly covet the storage rings the twins were wearing. He knew that they were definitely wealthy, based on their extravagant bids. After the second item sold, the auction continued. The subsequent items that were put up for sale made Lin Huang realize why this was an underground auction. Among the auction items were limbs of unpurified Abyssal creatures, exclusive items obtained from major organizations, including grade-7 ones, as well as strange, peculiar cursed items. There were even the remains of half-step Lords from sources unknown The entire auction went on in a heated frenzy, with endless bids being shouted out. To avoid suspicion, Lin Huang bid numerous times as well. He bid on exclusive items from the Combat God Temple and Death Sickle, two cursed items, and the remains of three half-step Lords. In truth, he was genuinely interested in the remains of the three half-step Lords. This was because, according to what the auctioneer had said, the God Territories within their bodies were intact and had not been stripped away. However, in the end, all his bids were unsuccessful. He was completely unable to go up against the others. As for the remnants of the three half-step Lords, Shen Jue bought the female remains, while Shen Yu bought those of the two males. Both of them bid so high it was ridiculous. The female half-step Lords remains were eventually sold for the price equivalent of seven Pseudo-Dao Weapons. Shen Yus bid was the price equivalent of six Pseudo-Dao Weapons for the two male remains. Everyone else could not compete with them at all. Watching the pair and their starting bids, Lin Huang could not help exclaiming secretly in his mind, Are Pseudo-Dao Weapons worth so little this year?! After the remains of the three half-step Lords had been sold off, the auction finally entered the next sessionthe auction of living creatures. As soon as it began, a huge case was brought on stage. The auctioneer removed the red cloth, revealing an inky-black monster sealed in a transparent crystal cylinder. Lin Huangs pupils contracted slightly upon seeing this. He had come across such a monster in the Abyss not long ago. It was an abyssal monster called the Ink Killer. Its combat strength was usually that of a high-level Heavenly God, and its main cultivation path was Shadow Elemental Truth. It was extremely proficient in the art of killing by stealth. Although the one on stage had been sealed within the crystal, its aura was still able to seep through faintly. It was obviously still alive. Lin Huang could sense that this Ink Killers combat strength was only seventh-rank. Although its combat strength was low, in the Abyss, this creature could severely harm even a ninth-rank heavenly god-level powerhouse if it managed to successfully ambush them. A living creature like this was most certainly a dangerous item! Lin Huang felt that anyone who wished to purchase this would be just asking for death. Even an Imperial Censor could not tame this creature. That was because a monster like this harbored only murderous intent within its mind, and it possessed only partial consciousness. All living things were its prey. However, Lin Huang had not expected that there would be successive waves of bids, even after the auctioneer had introduced the item. Subsequently, he watched, somewhat speechless, at the abyssal monsters being auctioned off one by one. He had no idea what those people were going to do with the creatures they had purchased. Do they have nothing better to do except purchase Abyssal creatures, then feed themselves and their families to them? Lin Huang could not help secretly ridiculing the bidders. After the auction of Abyssal creatures ended, the auction of living creatures went on. It was already the early hours of the morning now, but the auction did not seem like it would be ending any time soon. Lin Huang continued waiting patiently. In truth, there were a few times when he had wanted to make his move, but he had restrained himself in the end. This was because even when the remains of the half-step Lords came up for auction, there was no upsurge in the twins emotions. If he attacked under such circumstances, it might alert the siblings. He wanted to wait for an opportunity when the pairs attention was fully focused on the item up for bids. Since Lin Huang had withheld making his move, the auction proceeded smoothly to the last session at around one in the morningthe auction of slaves! Lin Huang noticed that even before the session began, Shen Yu and Shen Jues behavior was clearly different from before. Even their sitting posture was no longer indolent. Heres my chance Lin Huangs lips curled up in the slightest of smirks. Chapter 1610 - An Unexpected Fight That Benefits A Third Party Many of those present started breathing heavily when they saw the auction item that was being brought on stage. A lot of them had come to this underground auction specifically for the slaves. The siblings Shen Jue and Shen Yu were two such individuals. They had bid on other things just because those items happened to be there. On stage, the auctioneer quickly removed the red cloth from the crystal display case. Sealed inside the crystal was a living female being with a snakes tail. Her upper body was no different from that of a human female and extremely impressive to boot. She was completely naked, with only a line of sigils encircling her neck. This was for controlling slaves and was concealable. The auction house had intentionally revealed it to show the guests that this slave was under restriction and controlled. What primarily caught Lin Huangs attention was that the snake ladys tail was golden. They managed to capture something like this as well? He could not help giving vent to a secret exclamation about how capable the auctions organizers were. The item being auctioned this round is a snake woman, the auctioneer said calmly upon seeing how stirred the crowd was, Im sure all our guests have noticed that this isnt an ordinary snake woman, but a class-5 supreme god-level Golden-scaled Snake Woman. Theres a secret in the Snake Woman Tribe that most of the guests here might not be aware of. That is, the Snake Queen of each successive generation in the Tribe is selected from among the princesses. How then are these princesses selected? The auctioneer paused and looked around. He only answered the question, smiling, after seeing that nobody volunteered a reply. Theres only one selection requirement for the princesses in the Snake Woman Tribethey have to be class-5 supreme god-level! It has nothing to do with their combat strength or their clan. As long as theyre class-5 supreme god-level, they will acquire the title of Princess right away and become a candidate for succession to the Snake Queens throne. If the Snake Queen dies and theres only one princess, she doesnt even have to go through any selectionshell directly inherit the position of Snake Queen. In other words, were auctioning off a princess of the Snake Woman Tribe. Who knows, she even might be the future Snake Queen! Lin Huang felt he had learned something new when he heard this. It was also his first time hearing the selection rules for choosing the Snake Queens successor. The crowd went absolutely wild. Everyone understood the underlying meaning of what the auctioneer was saying. If they could obtain this Snake Woman princess and come up with a suitable planfor instance, killing off the Snake Queen and the other Snake Woman princessesthey could have their slave inherit the Snake Queens position. This would give them control over the entire Snake Woman Tribe. Although the population of the Snake Woman Tribe was low and they were not considered a major tribe in the God Territory, there might just be a half-step Lord in the tribeperhaps even more than one. Gaining control of a tribe like this would be the equivalent of controlling a top grade-6 organization. Naturally, Lin Huang caught the hidden meaning behind the auctioneers words. However, he was not thinking about the affairs of the Snake Woman Triberather, he was considering the situation in the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Ever since Kylies elevation to class-6, she had become the queen of the entire Nephilic Judge Tribe. In actuality, this also meant that Lin Huang secretly controlled the fate of the entire Nephilic Judge Tribe. The Nephilic Judge Tribe was much more powerful than the Snake Woman Tribe. Among the numerous pieces of information she had passed on to Lin Huang, Kylie had conveyed a specific detail to him once. There were only three visible half-step Lords in the Nephilic Judge Tribe, but the actual number might be double that. Furthermore, there might also be still-living lord-level patriarchs; it was just that they had not made an appearance in this era. The abilities that this tribe displayed publicly were just the tip of the iceberg. This was also why Lin Huang had dismissed the idea of using a summons to compel Kylie to return. Instead, he had agreed to Bloodys plan, which was to have Kylie remain with the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Thanks to the auctioneer stirring up the crowd, the bidding for this first slave was extraordinarily intense. The siblings Shen Yu and Shen Jue were bidding continuously. However, they were not the only wealthy ones present at the auction. There were also several others who kept bidding against the twins and were not willing to give up. One lady even raised the bid to the price of a Dao Weapon, scaring off a few competitors. It was not just the people present who were puzzled; even Lin Huang was confused at this. A price like that was enough to buy a half-step lord-level slave. This Golden-scaled Snake Woman was only third-rank heavenly god-level, after all. However incredible her potential, one would still need to invest in resources to train her. As for what the auctioneer had said about controlling the entire Snake Woman Tribe through her, it was utterly ridiculous. The Snake Queen of the present era was a half-step Lord. According to the succession rules for the Snake Queen that the auctioneer had described, the Snake Queen currently in power should be at least class-5 supreme god-level. The abilities of a class-5 supreme god-level half-step Lord would certainly be outstanding even among half-step Lords. How could she be assassinated so easily? Those who did possess the ability to kill the Snake Queen would not covet the Snake Woman Tribe either. Lin Huang could understand why Shen Yu and Shen Jue were bidding. After all, the pair loved to collect slaves. However, he could not understand why the lady sitting in the same row as him was bidding so furiously. Could it be that this lady had the same interests as the sibling? However, in terms of wealth, in the end, it was still the twins who were more solid financially. When the lady saw that the siblings were still bidding after she had raised the price to that of a Dao Weapon, she dropped out and did not continue. The siblings seemed to have come to a quick agreement, and Shen Jue raised the bid for the Golden-scaled Snake Woman to the price of a Dao Weapon and two Pseudo-Dao Weapons. Just when the auctioneer was about to announce that the bid had been successful, an incident suddenly occurred in the venue. The lady in the same row as Lin Huangthe one who had been biddingsuddenly made a move. She thrust a hand out and made a snatch at the crystal that contained the Golden-scaled Snake Woman. Even Lin Huangs pupils contracted when he saw her claws. She was clearly a half-step Lord. At that moment, a hand extended out of thin air on the stage and swung a punch at the ladys sharp claws. It was another half-step Lord! Right as everyones attention was focused on the two half-step Lords, Lin Huang immediately went into action without any hesitation. Two blood-red gleams shot out from his sleeve like faint, almost imperceptible electric arcs, heading straight for Shen Jue and Shen Yu. The two half-step Lords immediately became aware of the covert assassin within their midstLin Huang. The lady ignored him, while the man who held her in check wanted to attempt a rescue. However, seeing that the lady wanted to seize the opportunity and circumvent him, he withdrew the hand he had extended. The two half-step Lords started fighting once more. Since everyone present was focused on the two half-step Lords, nobody else had noticed Lin Huangs attack at all. Shen Yu and Shen Jue were craning their necks to watch the battle as well. By the time death threatened them, even if they had wanted to react, it was already too late. This time, within Lin Huangs eighteen compounded levels of sequence power, not only were there multiple speed-type powers but there were also two concealment-type powers. Only when the attack presented itself right before Shen Jue and Shen Yu was its murderous intent revealed. Two telekinetic flying daggers with eighteen compounded levels of sequence power and Sword Dao heavenly ruleboth weapons on par with top-grade god sequence relics pierced through the siblings heads like lightning bolts. Almost at the same time, Lin Huang immediately appeared in a flash beside the two bodies. He extended multiple telekinetic threads, picking up the two headless corpses so he could put them in his storage space. However, at this point, the half-step Lord at the auction finally had a moment to strike at Lin Huang with his palm. You stay right where you are! However, Lin Huang smirked, You cant make me. The next instant, he suddenly crushed a card. A golden saber gleam consolidated out of thin air before him. It was only a meter long and looked nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, the saber gleam was not Lin Huangs technique; he had replicated it using a Skill Card. It was the last trump card Saber9 had used when he killed Nine Gloomthe attack that had been triggered using the survival measures left behind by his Primordium. Since the power of the attack remained below lord-level, the grade-5 Skill Card authorization that Lin Huang possessed happened to be able to replicate it, so he did just that. In actuality, aside from Saber9s attack, Lin Huang had also replicated the attack from Virtuosos survival measures. He had done that to prevent a situation like this from happening. He had never thought it would actually be put to use. The golden saber gleam collided with the half-step Lords palm print, stirring up a terrifying energy storm. Is this fellow a half-step Lord as well?! Amid the two half-step Lords astonishment, Lin Huangs figure had already vanished with the two headless corpses Chapter 1611 - Maligned Even After Death After killing the siblings Shen Yu and Shen Jue, Lin Huang randomly located a Death Sickle branch and submitted the missions. After that, he returned to the Devil Hunter Star Zone straight away. As soon as he arrived at the Devil Hunter Star Zone, he immediately passed the storage rings he had obtained over the last few days to Hong Zhuang so she could unlock them. Most of the great worlds storage equipment technology was copied from the human world. The God Territory was no exception. Even if the Goldfingers capabilities had been significantly reduced, to Hong Zhuangwho had inherited Yang Lings Goldfingerunlocking dimensional equipment like this could more or less be considered the easiest task of all. In less than half an hour, she had unlocked all thirty-four storage rings. Throughout the entire process, Hong Zhuang did not once use her Divine Telekinesis to discover what exactly these storage rings contained. She knew that her current position was awkward in the extreme. After all, the few occasions she had met Lin Huang in the past were probably not entirely pleasant as far as he was concerned. Now that she was under his protection, it was only natural that she wanted to show her worth. She genuinely did not covet the items in the storage rings. She knew that she would not lack for cultivation resources at all, now that she was staying in the Devil Hunter Star Zone. Therefore, she did not so much as even glance at whatever these valuable storage rings might contain. After receiving the unlocked storage rings, Lin Huang returned to his own courtyard. Here, a quaint, antique house with three floors had been designated for his exclusive use. In terms of interior size, it did not seem very bigthe three floors only added up to three hundred square meters or so. In reality, however, this was a top-grade dimensional god sequence relic. It was just that the interior and exterior had been decorated to look like a Chinese villa. Lin Huang entered the house and sat down on the sofa right away. He took out all thirty-four storage rings and placed them on the coffee table. He then began checking through them one by one. As he did so, the expression on his face became increasingly peculiar. This was not because he had gained very littleit was because the profits obtained from this round of missions were far too astounding! Of the twenty-six targets he had killed, eighteen of them were ranked on the God Territorys Heavenly God Leaderboard. The eight of them who were not on the Leaderboard were either from major organizations or were members of major clans. The value of the items in almost every storage ring far surpassed Lin Huangs expectations. I thought Shen Yu and Shen Jue were extra wealthy because they were direct Protoss descendants in God Capital. I had no idea even grade-5 and grade-6 elders would have such an extensive array of collectors items! Naturally, out of all the storage rings, it was the siblings collections that were the most astonishing. Lin Huang felt that the twins net worth might even have surpassed some half-step Lords. Since the Gemini auction did not require immediate payment per item, and a lump sum would be paid after the entire auction had ended, the siblings had not paid for the items they had successfully made a bid on. In the twins storage rings, Lin Huang saw not one, but two Dao Weapons and close to thirty Pseudo-Dao Weapons. There were also over two hundred top-grade god sequence relics that was not even counting the staggering piles of Divine Crystals and various other energy crystals. What shocked Lin Huang the most was that there was also a half-step lord-level Gods Dead Body Puppet in Shen Jues storage ring. This seemed like it might be a treasure that God Capital had given the siblings as a life-saving measure. Unfortunately, at the auction earlier, Shen Jue had been killed instantly before he even had time to use it. While Lin Huang returned to the Devil Hunter Star Zone and leisurely inventoried his loot, the entire God Territory was already in an uproar. The news of the twins Shen Yu and Shen Jue being killed in Gemini by a half-step Lord spread like wildfire throughout the entire God Territory in less than half an hour. One must know that the siblings were powerhouses who were high on the ranking list of the God Territorys Heavenly God Leaderboard. One was ranked No. 9, the other No. 11. They could almost be considered peak entities among those at heavenly god-level. However, these two powerhouses had been instantly killed. Not only that, they had been assassinated as a half-step Lord tried to intervene. Rumor had it that the individual responsible was a half-step Lord saber cultivator. The incident had even galvanized God Capitals Lords into action! Furthermore, God Capital was offering a substantial reward for capturing the killer. According to the rules of the God Territory, Lords and half-step Lords could not simply attack Heavenly Gods where and when they pleased. This was also to prevent confrontations between those of ultimate combat strength within the God Territory. After all, if conflict of this level broke out, the God Territory might end up with dead half-step Lords or even Lords. It would be an immense loss for the entire God Territory. Furthermore, preventing Lords and half-step Lords from attacking Heavenly Gods was considered something of a safeguard for top heavenly god-level powerhouses. This would allow the God Territory to gain more half-step Lords and even Lords in the future. In reality, to powerhouses who had mastered Dao seal power, combat sans the use of Dao seal power was childs play to them. No matter how many conflicts they had with each other, those were just minor flare-ups that would not harm the God Territory at all. Although all the major organizations had an assassination list, the Lords or half-step Lords basically would not involve themselves personally. This was also why there were many missions on Death Sickles Gold Sickle missions list that remained uncompleted, even after so many years. It was not that Death Sickle lacked capable individualsit was that the handful of Blood Sickle members with the ability to complete these missions could not take part. However, Lin Huangs emergence shattered this trend. As a Death Sickle insider, he completed the missions easily. Not only that, he made everyone else think that an outsider was interfering. This was the real reason why God Capitals upper echelons were so furious. They thought someone had broken the rules of the gamethat a half-step Lord had personally stepped in and assassinated Shen Yu and Shen Jue. Lin Huang, however, was completely unaware of the checks and balances that God Capitals upper echelons had imposed. He had borrowed the use of Saber9s attack at the time because, for one, his own inherent ability was definitely insufficient to counter the half-step Lords attack. For another, he truly did wish to confuse everyone else to prevent them from connecting the incident to him. However, he had not expected that his ploy would cause such a massive chain reaction. Practically the entire God Territory was discussing the matter of Shen Yu and Shen Jues death. On the internet, many people were applauding Lin Huangs actions. There was nothing new under the sun, and in this era of internet access, news spread with extraordinary rapidity. Shen Yu and Shen Jue had already been rendered notorious many years ago when their torturing and killing of slaves had come to light. Countless netizens had criticized them. Although God Capital had quickly suppressed the matter, many people still remembered it. Now that the twins were dead, their dark pasts were once more dragged into the open. Both were now being maligned on the internet. Unfortunately, the siblings were unable to witness this. As Shen Yu and Shen Jues dark pasts were exposed, netizens very quickly discovered that the twenty-six individuals who were killed during this time all had skeletons in their closets. The collective power of netizens was mighty indeed. Within less than a day, the remaining twenty-four individuals dark pasts were dug up one after the other. Therefore, everyone started another round of flogging the dead on the internet. Not a single one of the twenty-six individuals that Lin Huang had killed escaped this fate. Chapter 1612 - Buried Heaven’s Return After sorting out his loot, Lin Huang dropped by Death Sickles headquarters and entrusted them with the handling and disposal of all the items he did not need. After all, there were certain unique items among his battle spoils. If he gave them to Sword12 to handle, Sword12 might be targeted by people with ill intentions. By comparison, it was much simpler to have Death Sickle dispose of all these items. After all, they were a top grade-6 organization, and they also had their own channels within the black market. At the same time that he entrusted Death Sickle with the disposal of his loot, Lin Huang also requested their help in purchasing half-step Lord God Territories. For the next few days, he was able to relax completely. He was waiting for the outcome of Death Sickles disposal of his loot, as well as the end result of the purchase of half-step Lord God Territories. He was also waiting for news from Virtuoso. Three days went by just like that. Early in the morning of the fourth day, Lin Huang suddenly received a call request on his communicator. When he raised his wrist for a look, he discovered it was Buried Heavens number. Once he clicked the answer button, the figure of a young man with white hair was immediately projected into the room. Have all of you returned from the Abyss? Lin Huang asked as soon as he saw Buried Heaven. Yes, weve come back one by one over the last two days. Buried Heaven nodded. He was not surprised that Lin Huang knew about this. After all, Lin Huangs Xiu Mu identity had Gold Sickle-level authorization and could check on information about this expedition into the Abyss. How was it? Lin Huang asked once more. Naturally, he was not about to tell Buried Heaven that he and Virtuoso had gone into the Abyss as well and come out with significant gains. Overall, it wasnt bad at all. Buried Heaven already regarded Lin Huang as a peer when conversing with him. This time when we went, the timing was a little more ideal. The Abyss is in its dormant season, so the powerhouses in the deep reaches were all in hibernation. The journey went very smoothly, and we were able to withdraw in a timely fashion as well After a brief account of their journey, Buried Heaven realized he had gone slightly off-topic, so he immediately brought the conversation back on track. I contacted you this time because Im going into closed-door cultivation, and it might take longer this time. Are you going to try breaking through to lord-level? Lin Huangs eyes lit up. This was the level that he had targeted as well. Yes. I managed to obtain some good things from the Abyss this time, so I think this may be my chance for a breakthrough, Buried Heaven admitted generously; he did not hide anything. From this, it was clear that he treated Lin Huang as someone he could trust. If it were anyone else, he definitely would not have admitted anything. Then let me convey my wishes in advance for a smooth breakthrough and a successful elevation to lord-level! Youll lead Death Sickle to new heights! Lin Huang said with a mischievous smile. Theres one more thing Buried Heaven paused, then continued, The siblings Shen Yu and Shen Jue, as well as the twenty-four others on the missions boardthey were all killed by you, am I right? Yes. Lin Huang had submitted the missions anonymously. However, the several Blood Sickle members, including Buried Heaven, would have the necessary authorization to check. If Buried Heaven wanted to, he would be able to look up the information, so there was no need for Lin Huang to conceal this fact. So what exactly are your abilities now? Buried Heaven was aware of Shen Jue and Shen Yus abilities. They were definitely the cream of the crop among the Heavenly Gods in the God Territory. However, Lin Huang had killed them both instantly; this puzzled Buried Heaven a little. Currently, I ought to be slightly weaker than you and King Kong, Lin Huang readily admitted, I was able to kill the twins because I had the advantage of a sneak attack. The latter half of what he said was true as well. Buried Heaven fell silent for a moment and did not inquire further about Lin Huangs combat strength. He had always thought highly of Lin Huang, but he had never expected that the young man would be able to reach this level in such a short time. This kind of ability is enough for you to protect yourself in the great world, he exclaimed softly. The caveat being, as long as I dont tempt death, Lin Huang added. Buried Heaven was bereft of speech when he heard Lin Huangs addendum. As far as he was concerned, Lin Huang assassinating Shen Yu and Shen Jue was absolutely tempting death. Just treat the entire matter as if it never happened. Death Sickle will take care of the aftermath, dont worry, Buried Heaven reassured Lin Huang, then resumed. I also looked at the consignment list you submitted; the gains were certainly substantial. However, Im a little confused about the purchasing list. What do you want with so many half-step Lord God Territories? I want to strengthen my God Territory. Of course, Lin Huang could not disclose that his elevation method was different from everyone else. Alright, then Buried Heaven did not pursue the matter any further. He knew that Lin Huangs answer was not the truth. I have one that Im unable to refine. Ill just give it to you. Later Ill have someone send it over to you along with the God Territories that have already been traded in. Thank you very much. Lin Huang gladly accepted the others kindness. Even though Buried Heaven had said nothing about it, Lin Huang knew that in the future, he would have to return the favor. After ending the call with Buried Heaven, Lin Huang began to feel some anticipation about his impending breakthrough. He was not exactly worried about Buried Heavens elevation. One must know that Buried Heaven could almost be considered No. 1 among all the Heavenly Gods in the entire God Territory. If a powerhouse like that failed to elevate to lord-level, then hardly anyone in the entire great world would be able to become a Lord. If Buried Heaven elevates to lord-level, theoretically, Death Sickle would also be elevated to a grade-7 organization Lin Huangs thoughts drifted slightly, and he soon thought of even more things. Will the existing veteran grade-7 organizations allow him to elevate? Although he was not sure what kind of protocols and balances the major organizations in the God Territory had, Death Sickles rise would definitely affect the God Territorys original setup. No one had any idea what attitude the several grade-7 organizations and some grade-6 organizations would take regarding this matter. At this point, Lin Huang suddenly felt that Buried Heavens elevation might not be as smooth as he had predicted earlier. Naturally, Buried Heavens individual ability was sufficient to elevate him. However, if there were external factors affecting him, then it would be hard to say. One must know that back in the day, Great Heaven was even more powerful than Buried Heaven was currently. However, Great Heaven was also ambushed by Raiders when he was elevating to lord-level. In the end, he was unable to escape and died as a result. After a moment of consideration, Lin Huang sent Buried Heaven a message advising him not to reveal his plans to go into closed-door cultivation to achieve a breakthrough before he had done so. In the afternoon, the delivery person that Buried Heaven sent showed up. Once Lin Huang had received the storage ring, he immediately checked through it. There were six half-step Lord God Territories inside the ring. One was a gift from Buried Heaven, while the remaining five were the ones Death Sickle had acquired for him through trading. Of course, it was not that his resources were only sufficient to be exchanged for five half-step Lord God Territories. Rather, it was because he had requested that the half-step Lord God Territories be sent to him first. As for the rest of the resources, he could wait until all the items had been sold and then have everything delivered to him together. Virtuoso is so slow! Lin Huang could not help sighing secretly as he looked at the storage ring he had just received. A few days had passed, but there had been no news from Virtuoso. Lin Huang did not bother to hurry them either. He took the six half-step Lord God Territories currently in his possession and entered the Great Heaven Territory. After all, it would take only a few days to refine all of them as the time flow within the Great Heaven Territory was a thousand times faster. He would just go into closed-door cultivation for a few days when the God Territories from Virtuoso arrived. After entering the Great Heaven Territory, Lin Huang greeted Sword1 and went straight into the Great Heaven Palace Chapter 1613 - Elevating to Heavenly God-Level! In the Great Heaven Palace, Lin Huang adjusted the time flow once more to be one thousand times faster than the outside world. He then brought his mind into a calm, meditative state and sat down cross-legged. He retrieved the headless corpses of the twins Shen Yu and Shen Jue, then began refining the God Territories within their bodies. In all honesty, he did not care how many god rules he could plunder from them. Previously in the Abyss, he had already obtained over five thousand God Territory Shell Remnants. The Eternity Fire had already devoured all the Abyssal energy remaining in this earlier batch of God Territory Shell Remnants. Lin Huangs main objective in killing Shen Yu, Shen Jue, and the other twenty-four targets was actually to plunder resources and obtain the mission rewards. Plundering God Territories was just a habit. After all, in order to trade for half-step Lord God Territories, one required a massive amount of resources. What Lin Huang had not expected was that the net worth of all twenty-six people he had assassinated was far beyond anything he could have possibly imagined. The loot that he obtained from this round of assassination was enough to allow him to elevate to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Within merely half an hour, Lin Huang had fully completed the refinement of Shen Yu and Shen Jues God Territories. The pair contributed a significant number of god rulesadded up together, they numbered over two million in total. He had already refined the God Territories of the other twenty-four targets one by one and plundered their god rules when he had been lying low in Gemini, waiting for a chance to carry out his assassinations. None of the twenty-four targets possessed more than a million god rules each. When the god rules were all added up together, they came to a total of less than 15 million. After refining Shen Yu and Shen Jues God Territories, Lin Huang opened his eyes and glanced briefly at the two headless corpses in front of him. Casually, he produced two blood-red flames and immediately burned the bodies to ash in no time at all. After disposing of the bodies, Lin Huang did not give them a second glance. Instead, he closed his eyes and resumed refining the five thousand and more Abyssal God Territory Shell Remnants within his body. Time passed in the Great Heaven Palace. When Lin Huang opened his eyes again, one week had already gone by. The Godly Right in his body had already reached the maximum number of god rules it could contain, but he persisted and refined all five thousand-plus God Territory Shell Remnants. As for the extraneous God Rule Powers, Lin Huang put all of them into the mainland area where the gravel world was. By now, he had plundered many thousands of God Territories. There were complete gravel worlds or mini worlds in many of these God Territories; there were even a considerable number of living beings in existence. Lin Huang had preserved everything. On some level, these living beings in the refined worlds were his all people. Essentially, this was no different from the gravel world. It was just that he possessed a certain affection for the gravel world that he had grown up on, so he took special care of its inhabitants. By the time his god rules had reached the limit of what his Godly Right could hold, Lin Huangs combat strength had finally elevated to full tenth-rank true god-level as well. After he achieved this stage, he could clearly feel that his physical body and spirit strength had grown stronger once more. He experimented a little and discovered that his body could now sustain twenty levels of compounded sequence power. Theoretically, in this present state, he could break through to heavenly god-level entirely. However, Lin Huang did not do that. Instead, he closed his eyes again and sent his mind into his inner world. He then began to visualize the nameless Divine Telekinesis visualization images. Before going into the Abyss, by the time he had visualized the 80th image, he had reached the limit his Gods soul could sustain. His visualization efficiency had plummeted. Now, his combat strength had elevated to full tenth-rank true god-level. Not only that, his Gods soul had been refined by the Immeasurable Calamity Fire, and his God souls strength was at least a hundred times more powerful than before. He felt that it was the right time to visualize this set of inheritances again. Before elevating to heavenly god-level, he wanted to raise his Gods souls strength even further. This was because he knew that each level of advancement was an opportunity for transformation. The stronger his foundation, the better his transformation results would be. Now that he was visualizing this set of inheritances again, Lin Huang was absolutely certain that it was progressing much faster than before. Based on his current Gods souls strength, he would still need two years of outside world time to completely visualize the 81st to the 90th visualization image, despite time being sped up a thousand times. However, he merely used around six years to fully complete the visualization this time. Less than two and a half days had passed in the outside world. The visualization this time had gone so quickly because apart from his Gods soul becoming stronger, his innate understanding had also increased after being refined by the Immeasurable Calamity Fire. After he was done visualizing the 90th visualization image, Lin Huang realized that his Gods souls strength had broken through the limit for Heavenly Gods. Although he had not reached lord-level yet, he supposed he was already at the level of a half-step lord. As his Gods soul became stronger, Seamless separation of telekinetic thread accelerated again. The automatic hourly separation had now increased to thirty thousand threads. Seeing that he still seemed to have energy left, Lin Huang looked at the 91st visualization image. He tried to visualize it for a little bit; it did not take him long to calculate the visualization speed. Given his current state, approximately a month would pass in the outside world for him to visualize all the way to the 100th image. Lin Huang felt that this was an acceptable period of time. He then entered another round of closed-door cultivation and began to visualize the rest of the visualization images. Eighty-one years passed by as he did so. Although the time flow in the Great Heaven Palace was one thousand times faster, almost a month passed in the outside world still. When Lin Huang opened his eyes again, he felt that his Gods soul had once again become stronger. He did not know if it had reached lord-level strength, but he could clearly sense that it was more than a few times more powerful than a month ago. He did not continue trying to visualize the last eight images. This was because he knew that it would take several dozen times, perhaps even several hundred times, longer. For now, he did not have that sort of time. Now that he had pushed his Gods souls strength to its limit, Lin Huang finally let out a long sigh. After this, Ill just follow my original plan for my breakthrough. A thumb-sized purple crystal appeared in his hand. It was the God Territory Shell Remnant of a half-step Lord. Lin Huang flicked his fingers and sank the crystal into his brow. He then activated the Divine Fire in his body to refine it. This round of refinement was not considered very longit only took around three hundred days or so to complete both the refinement and integration. The moment the integration was fully complete, Lin Huang sensed waves of new energy emanating from his God Territory and feeding back into his body. He observed carefully for a while before discovering that these were sequence powers issuing from countless god sequence chains. Although he was familiar with sequence powers and had even successfully consolidated god sequence chains, Lin Huang had only borrowed sequence powers in the past. The cells in his body were still full of God Rule Power. However, at this very instant, countless sequence powers started surging into every cell and particle of his body, beginning another round of cleansing his entire physical body as well as his Gods soul. He could clearly feel that his physical body was transforming. Even his Gods soul was undergoing a further change. His entire body was being continuously fortifiedfrom each strand of hair on his head down to his skin, his bones, his inner organs, and every particle that made up his body. The process lasted a full twelve days before finally coming to an end. Lin Huang sensed things out carefully; he felt that he was now so powerful, he was practically invincible. To test his limits, he rapidly began stacking and compounding layers of sequence power onto his fingertips. Ten layers! Twenty layers! Thirty layers! Eighty layers! Ninety layers! One hundred layers! Once he had stacked and compounded one hundred layers, Lin Huang finally began to feel that his body was being burdened. He did not go on, as he already had a rough idea now of his limits. One must know that going from twenty layers to one hundred layers was not just a simple matter of fivefold multiplication. Each additional layer of stacked and compounded sequence power would result in a surge of potential ability. Right now, I think I might be able to defeat Buried Heaven with one hand, Lin Huang mumbled softly, Of course, the caveat is that he hasnt broken through to lord-level yet. Lin Huang was only saying this, of course. He knew that he was more powerful than Buried Heaven if he were to base this solely on the number of sequence powers he could compound. In that regard, he was even more powerful than Great Heaven, who had dominated an entire era back in the day. However, he was not sure what would happen if he really were to attack. After all, Great Heaven could massacre half-step lord-level powerhouses back then, while Buried Heaven had a record of battling half-step Lords as well. I genuinely would like to know how powerful a half-step lord-level powerhouse is! Chapter 1614 - The Secret of the Great Heaven Palace When Lin Huang successfully elevated to first-rank heavenly god-level, not only had his physical body broken through Heavenly God limits, but it had also reached a level comparable to that of a half-step Lord. His Gods soul had broken through as well, officially crossing the threshold to lord-level. Apart from that, the original limit of twenty god sequence chains that he could borrow had now increased to a hundred chains. It could be said that he was invincible among Heavenly Gods now. He even suspected that he might have the ability to fight a half-step Lord if he encountered one. This was still based solely on brute force alone. In terms of mastery and skill, all of his God Weapons had been upgraded due to his elevation. His combat sword, combat armor, telekinetic weapons, and one of his offense and defense Soul Weaponsa total of four God Weaponshad successfully been elevated to level-4. They had directly leveled up from god sequence relics to Dao Weapons. This set of equipment could fully raise his abilities by another level. Apart from these personal changes, Lin Huang could sense many other changes as well. His successful elevation had fully unlocked authorization for the Great Heaven Territory. He could now put the Great Heaven Territory into his God Territory and leave with it. The authorization to accelerate time by ten thousand times had also been unlocked. Apart from that, Lin Huangs authority over Swords1 to 10 had finally been unlocked as well. Not only that, but he could also bring the Great Heaven Territorys living beings out of the Great Heaven Territory now. After checking over the authorization for the Great Heaven Territory, Lin Huang soon noticed that the Great Heaven inheritance in his mind had finally been fully unsealed. He immediately began an in-depth exploration. Given that Great Heaven had been a supreme powerhouse who had dominated an entire era, his cultivation experiences were naturally a valuable reference. Within these fully unlocked memories, Lin Huang very soon came across information that utterly shocked him. It seems the Great Heaven Palace isnt just a top-grade god sequence relic?! Great Heaven had deliberately sequestered this secret within the deepest reaches of his memory, and now it had finally been unsealed. The Great Heaven Palaces real name was unknown. It was a damaged treasure that Great Heaven had obtained from a ruin in the universe. These ruins were an ancient battlefield. It was said that there had been Almightiesentities above lord-levelwho had died there. Lin Huang had thought all along that the damage in the Great Heaven Palace was due to Great Heavens unification. Only now did he find out that this treasure was already over 80% damaged when Great Heaven obtained it. Not only that, the treasures original form was a cauldron. It was Great Heaven who had camouflaged it into a palace, so the form had been in use until the present day. Ive always said that a function like the time accelerator doesnt seem to be something that a god sequence relic could possess. Lin Huang had always thought the Great Heaven Palaces functions were too overblown. Even if it contained Time Sequence, being able to accelerate time tenfold is already impressive enough. Not only that, it can affect the flow of time in the entire Great Heaven Territory In the meantime, the authorization for accelerating time in the Great Heaven Palace had increased exponentially from one thousand times to ten thousand times now. Lin Huang could not help wondering if it would affect the flow of time in his God Territory if he were to put the Great Heaven Territory in there. After all, his God Territory was much bigger than the Great Heaven Territory. If he were able to do that, once the time flow was ten thousand times faster, he would be able to train up a significant number of powerhouses. Lin Huang gave it a shot and attempted to move the Great Heaven Palace into his God Territory. However, the attempt failed. The Great Heaven Palaces deeply slumbering weapon spirit transmitted a wisp of consciousness, indicating that it was unwilling to be moved out of the Great Heaven Territory. In that case, if I refine the Great Heaven Territory completely, that would be alright, wouldnt it? Lin Huang asked in some frustration. After a moment of silence, the weapon spirit gave its consent. Lin Huang immediately began refining the Great Heaven Territory. It was only during the refining process that he discovered just how vast the Great Heaven Territory was. It even extended beyond the half-step Lord God Territories that he had just finished refining. Furthermore, as there were many living beings, the benefits that the Great Heaven Territory brought to Lin Huangs God Territory were on par with those of a half-step Lord God Territory. ImpressiveI cant believe this is equivalent to refining a half-step Lord God Territory, Lin Huang could not help exclaiming. This time, the refinement process lasted more than four hundred days. It took even longer than refining the half-step Lord God Territories previously. Refining the Great Heaven Territory had also caused the number of living beings in the God Territory within Lin Huangs body to increase more than threefold. However, when the refinement process was complete, he felt something was lacking when he compared this with refining half-step Lord God Territories. He tested the effects of using time acceleration and discovered that not only did the effect extend to the area outside the location of the Great Heaven Territory, but it also spread through his entire God Territory. This was good news, no doubt about it! Lin Huang thought for a moment, then retrieved a half-step Lord God Territory and proceeded to refine it. Time passed. A year went by swiftly. Lin Huang felt an obvious difference when refining this God Territory. He sensed his God Territory had really absorbed the nutrients. So it has to be a half-step Lords God Territory? He still did not elevate, but he knew this was because his God Territory had not yet reached its limits. Consequently, he retrieved another half-step Lord God Territory and began another round of refining. Close to one year passed, and the second God Territory was now completely refined. Lin Huangs combat strength finally advanced a notch and elevated to second-rank heavenly god-level. The number of half-step Lord God Territories required for elevation has increased?! Judging from the situation, the number required might very well keep getting higher and higher Lin Huang had initially thought that once he had reached heavenly god-level, he could elevate a rank every time he refined a half-step Lord God Territory. From the looks of things now, he had been entirely too na?ve. After elevating to second-rank, he did not bother wasting time. He resumed closed-door cultivation to refine the remaining three half-step Lord God Territories. This round of closed-door cultivation went on for three years before Lin Huang finally managed to completely refine all three God Territories. However, he still had not achieved a breakthrough. He remained stuck at second-rank heavenly god-level. He could more or less sense that he should be able to elevate if he refined one more half-step Lord God Territory. Its true thenthe number of half-step Lord God Territories required increases for every elevation in rank. One for first-rank, two for second-rank, four for third-rank If the numbers keep doubling according to this pattern, I wonder if therell be enough half-step Lords in the entire great world for me to kill. Lin Huang felt rather frustrated. Naturally, this was just a joke. One must be aware that in the entire great world, half-step Lords were the ones who had the highest combat strength, second only to Lords. They were respected entities in every major organization. Whether it was in the God Territory, the human world, or in other tribes, fighting between Lords and half-step Lords was basically prohibited. The reason was that they were the ones with the highest combat strength in the great world. Losing even one would be a great loss for the entire tribe, equivalent to damaging their foundations. If anyone with nothing better to do took it upon themselves to kill a half-step Lord belonging to any of the tribes, they would only end up becoming the tribes common enemy. The entire tribe would pursue them. This no longer had anything to do with which organization the half-step Lord belonged to. Naturally, if they killed Abyssal creatures or the Bug Tribes half-step Lords, the other tribes might applaud them for it. There were only two ways for Lin Huang to obtain half-step Lord God Territories. One was to go into the Abyss or enter the Bug Tribes battlefield. Another was to trade a massive amount of resources for them. He could not kill the half-step Lords in the God Territory because even Death Sickle might turn against him directly if he did so. Chapter 1615 - Returning To The Great World When Lin Huang came out of the Great Heaven Palace, only a month had passed in the outside world. Sword1, who had been guarding the door, immediately rose and hurried over to him. Lin Huang nodded slightly at him, then walked down the steps. He extended his arms toward the two pure gold sculptures on both sides of the steps. The bodies of both three-legged Golden Crows rapidly blazed up with pure gold flames. The flames melted the metal on the surface of their bodies. They turned into two giant blazing birds that flapped their wings and rose into the air. These two three-legged Golden Crows were archaic legacies. They were comparable to class-5 Supreme Gods. Furthermore, they possessed peak heavenly god-level combat strength. If they were to join forces and fight together, their abilities might be on par with Sword1! When Sword1 saw this, he realized immediately that Lin Huangs authorization had increased again. His spirits rose. Ive refined the Great Heaven Territory into my God Territory. My authority over all of you is also completely unsealed now. Lin Huang looked at Sword1. From now on, Swords 1 to 10 no longer have to guard the Great Heaven Palace. Ill bring all of you back to the great world. Lord Swordmaster may command us as you please. Sword1 immediately cupped his hands together in respect and spoke to Swords 2 to 10 through voice transmission. The swordmasters ten guardians all gathered at the palace a moment later. All of you will leave the Great Heaven Territory with me today. Once youve reached the great world, you can discuss arrangements for any specific matters with Sword12. Once Lin Huang finished speaking, he said to Sword1, Summon Sword11 and Wu Hao here. Sword1 nodded slightly and contacted Sword11 right away. Not too long later, the red-haired Sword11 brought a handsome young man to the palace. Lord Swordmaster! Master! Both of them greeted Lin Huang as soon as they saw him. Lin Huang shot a glance at Sword11, then transferred his gaze to Wu Hao and scrutinized him from head to toe. Wu Hao was the disciple that he had accepted in the Great Heaven Territory. In fact, he suspected all along that this boy might be Great Heavens reincarnation. It had been over half a year since they last met. Wu Hao was taller now, close to 1.7 meters in height. His skin was considerably fairer compared to when they had first met. Lin Huang could still remember when he first met Wu Hao; he had thought the boy seemed like a scared little creature. Looking at him again now, Wu Hao carried himself like an elegant young master. He did not seem flustered at all, even in the presence of so many seniors. The only thing that had not changed was his raven-black eyes. They had always shone brightly, flashing with intelligence. Not bad. Youve grown considerably taller, and your combat strength has improved significantly. Lin Huang could tell from a glance that Wu Haos current combat strength was already at Virtual God rank-9. He was just half a step away from crossing the threshold to elevate to True God. What surprised and delighted him the most was that Wu Haos comprehension of Sword Dao had reached the level of Sword Dao true meaning. Not only that, he had made a leap from True Martial Level and advanced to the second level of Sword Dao true meaningTrue Meaning Level. He had suspected all along that the boy was Great Heavens reincarnation. Now, upon seeing the outstanding progress of Wu Haos Sword Dao, he was even more certain of that. You can participate in some actual combat now. Lin Huang patted Wu Haos head. Master, where are we going? Wu Hao asked in some curiosity. Were leaving the Great Heaven Territory today to go to the great world. Lin Huang did not plan on leaving the boy in the Great Heaven Territory. Wu Haos eyes lit up at this. Naturally, he had heard about the great world from Sword11 and the others and was aware that it was a world countless times larger than the Great Heaven Territory. Young men had the instinctive desire to explore the vast universe. From now on, Swords 1 to 10 will be your teachers, just like Sword11. If Im away, you can ask them any questions you might have. Lin Huang glanced at Sword1 and the rest. Although Swords 1 to 10 had no idea who Wu Hao was, they felt an inherent kinship with him. Moreover, he was the swordmasters disciple. Naturally, they would not dare to neglect him. Sword11 had no objections to Lin Huangs arrangement. The boy had long since exhausted most of his personal resources. Furthermore, the materials he used to instruct Wu Hao had basically been provided by Lin Huang; he was just instructing the boy on Lin Huangs behalf. Sword11 was very much aware that at his level of skill, he would only be able to be Wu Haos teacher for a time. Although he felt a measure of reluctance, he knew he would have to let the boy go when he grew up. Wu Hao seemed to notice that Sword11 felt a little down. He comforted him through voice transmission, Uncle 11, youll always be my teacher. That wont ever change. At that moment, Sword11s eyes became slightly wet. Naturally, everyone present could hear Wu Haos voice transmission loud and clear. After all, he was just a Virtual God, while everyone else present was a peak heavenly god-level being. No one said anything; they merely felt that this boy was very sweet. Sword1 and the others immediately liked him even more now. Alright, if theres anything that you havent brought with you, Ill give you another five minutes to sort it out. Well meet here in a moment. Sword1 and the rest did not move after Lin Huang finished speaking. Sword11 was the only one who disappeared on the spot in a flash. Meanwhile, Wu Hao moved closer to Lin Huang and asked, Master, will we be coming back here in the future? All of you can come back anytime you want. Lin Huang nodded. Wu Hao nodded only after hearing that. He disappeared in a flash as well to pack his belongings. In a short while, Sword11 came back first. Not long later, Wu Hao managed to make it back in the nick of time. Lin Huang did not ask the two what they had brought with them. Straight away, he gestured with his hand and activated the dimensional gateway. With Sword1 in the lead, they went in, single file. A moment later, the dozen over people appeared directly in the Devil Hunter Star Zone. Sensing the dense population of the Pfister Star, Sword1 and the rest were rather stunned. Apart from Sword11, it had been many thousands of years since the swordmasters ten guardians had come into contact with outsiders. Even Sword11 was moved. Although he had lived and mingled in the Great Heaven Territory for years, it had been several hundred thousand years since he had returned to the great world. Wu Hao was the only one who looked excited and adventurous. Ever since he started cultivating with Sword11, he had remained on the Golden Crow Mountain for this entire year or so. He had never returned to the Great Heaven Territory after that. The Pfister Star he saw before him was much more lively and bustling than Heavenly Sword Planet, where he used to live. The population was on an entirely different level in terms of numbers. Moreover, although the Pfister Star was not considered a flourishing territory in the human world, there were still tall buildings clustered everywhere. The tallest building on Heavenly Sword Planet would be considered merely ordinary if it were placed here. Wu Hao was not the only one who had never seen a place packed with tall buildings. Even a few of the swordmasters guardians were also curious. These buildings are so tall. Are they all accommodations for powerhouses? Sword8her hair in two ponytailscould not help asking. Lin Huang glanced at the girl. Throughout this year, apart from her ability being restored to its peak, her appearance had remained practically unchanged. She had been as tall as Wu Hao over a year ago, but Wu Hao was now a full head taller. No, theyre just normal residential buildings, Lin Huang explained. Ill get Sword12 to show all of you around in the next few days so you can familiarize yourselves with this new environment. While Lin Huang was speaking, he led them all into the Sword Alliances territory. Chapter 1616 - I Would Be Able To Elevate All The Way to Ninth-Rank! Sword12 stepped forward as soon as Lin Huang and the group entered the Sword Alliance. In fact, he had sensed familiar auras the moment they teleported here. Lord Swordmaster, Master Guardians, Sword12 greeted. For the next few days, help them familiarize themselves with this new environment. Of course, Lord Swordmaster! Sword12 responded immediately. Did anything happen during the month or so that I was away? Lin Huang asked. Although he was an absentee leader, he would still occasionally ask about recent developments. The delivery person who came from Death Sickle the last time dropped by again two days ago. He gave me an encrypted ring, saying that the exchanges for the items you wanted have all been completed. Everything is in the ring. He also left a note inside, Sword12 answered and brought out two storage rings. Theres another encrypted ring as well. A man in a mask delivered it over a month ago. He said his name was Virtuoso, but he didnt say very much more. He only asked me to tell you to inform him when you returned. Alright, Ive got it. Lin Huang casually took the rings from Sword12. He already had a rough idea of what was probably in them. The storage rings were encrypted because they had not been sent to Lin Huang directly but through someone else. It was not that Virtuoso or the delivery person from Death Sickle did not trust Sword12. It was just a regular procedure for items when a middle person was involved. As for the encryption password, it would usually be sent directly to the receivers communicator. Lin Huang had not had the chance to check his communicator yet. After assigning Sword1 and the others to Sword12, Lin Huang returned to his courtyard again. He tapped on the communicators contact page and soon found the passwords that Virtuoso and Death Sickles delivery person had sent. Lin Huang entered the two passwords into the rings accordingly and unlocked the two storage spaces. Inside the ring that Virtuoso had sent were the God Territory Shell Remnants of five Abyssal half-step Lords. Not only that, the Abyssal energy in all five God Territory Shell Remnants had been cleansedsomething Lin Huang had not expected at all. It was very clear that the hundred over Nirvana Trees were insufficient to be exchanged for five cleansed and purified Abyssal half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. The only logical explanation was that Virtuoso had found someone else to handle this for them after obtaining the God Territory Shell Remnants. Virtuoso really is considerate. Lin Huang could not help giving a quiet sigh. In reality, he would have preferred if God Territory Shell Remnants were not cleansed, as the Abyssal energy was a rare delicacy to the Eternity Fire in his body. After setting down the ring that Virtuoso had sent, Lin Huang checked the other ring. There were many items in this second ring. There were twenty-one half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants alone, as well as a considerable number of various rare materials. Lin Huang very soon saw the note that the delivery person had left for him. He immediately picked it up to read. The rough gist of the note was that Death Sickle had tried their best to collect half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants for him. However, twenty-one was the most they could gather. It was probable that in the entire God Territory, there would not be half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants on the list of commodities in the immediate future. This was because Death Sickle had purchased all of the available ones. The remaining exchange items had been traded for various rare materials to substitute for the God Territory Shell Remnants. All the half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants on the God Territory market have been purchased?! This piece of news was something Lin Huang was not expecting. However, after thinking it through carefully, he realized that it was nothing unusual. Half-step lord-level powerhouses hardly had any opponents. In all probability, since the founding of the God Territory, the number of deceased half-step Lords could likely be counted. Even if this were expanded to include the entire great world and the total number of deceased half-step Lords from every tribe were tallied up for every battle throughout history, it would not come to very many at all. For Death Sickle to collect the God Territory Shell Remnants of over twenty half-step Lords within a month or so was already no small feat. The number of God Territory Shell Remnants Death Sickle had managed to gather had completely surpassed his expectationsthat was what Lin Huang felt, even. It was just that he now had a slight problemhow to gather more half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants later. Only when he had taken all the items out from the two rings and put them away in his storage space did Lin Huang turn on his communicator and call Virtuosos number. A moment later, the video call connected, and Virtuosos figure was projected into his room. Its been over a month, and youre only contacting me now. How was it? Did you get the items? Virtuoso was still wearing their mask, and their expression could not be seen. However, Lin Huang could tell from their tone that they were in a good mood at the moment. Yes, I did, thank you very much. Lin Huang nodded. I specifically looked for someone to cleanse them for you, Virtuoso added. Yes, I noticed. That was very considerate of you, Lin Huang expressed his gratitude again. Thats all you have to say? Let me tell you, the value of these God Territory Shell Remnants has increased at least tenfold after the cleansing, Virtuoso emphasized. Actually I do have a method of cleansing them, Lin Huang had no alternative but to be forthright. Alright. Apparently, I poked my nose in where I shouldnt have, Virtuoso said in a huff. Have you finished refining the Phantom City? Lin Huang changed the subject rather stiffly. I have. Ive also elevated to first-rank heavenly god-level now. Virtuoso sounded rather smug at this point. They thought that since Lin Huang had just elevated to ninth-rank true god-level, it was unlikely that he would advance to heavenly god-level in such a short time. Oh, Ive elevated to second-rank, Lin Huang returned expressionlessly. What?! Virtuoso was stunned when they heard this. I said Ive elevated to second-rank heavenly god-level, Lin Huang repeated for emphasis. You only elevated to ninth-rank true god-level over a month ago, didnt you? Virtuoso was completely bereft of speech. Youve advanced to heavenly god-level so quickly, arent you afraid that your foundation wont be stable?! My foundation is very stable. If I had enough resources, I would be able to elevate all the way to ninth-rank. What Lin Huang said was very true. However, to Virtuoso, this was clearly bragging. I dont want to listen to you anymore. If theres nothing else, Ill hang up. Wait a moment. Lin Huang stopped Virtuoso, who was about to terminate the call. If youve got anything else to say, hurry up and say it! Virtuoso snapped irritatedly. Do you know if theres any way to obtain a large number of half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants? Lin Huang asked. Why do you want so many half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants for? Virtuoso was getting more and more puzzled. Oh, thats right, when I got out of closed-door cultivation a few days ago, I received news that Death Sickle has been gathering God Territory Shell Remnants lately. Were they helping you collect them, then? Just tell me how to obtain them, thats good enough. Naturally, Lin Huang was unwilling to reveal his secret. How else would you go about it? Youd have to trade resources for them. Virtuoso was practically speechless. Of course I know that. What I mean is, do you know if there are any channels to do so? Lin Huang persisted. What, arent Death Sickles channels enough for you? The words were barely out of Virtuosos mouth when they suddenly froze for a moment, then snapped back to their senses and stared at Lin Huang, eyes wide. Youve cleaned out the God Territorys resources?! Thats right Thats why I asked you about other channels, Lin Huang had no alternative but to admit it. Youre really something! Virtuoso gave Lin Huang a thumbs up; his feelings were convoluted. How do I say this? Things like half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants arent regular items. For one, the demand is very low, so not many people specifically supply these commodities. Not many people collect these things, even at the Club, so even if you send out a request there, youll probably only be able to obtain a few. After all, compared to all those major organizations in the universe, the Club has too few members. After they finished speaking, Virtuoso cupped their chin and pondered for a while. Theres an organization called Royal here in the great world. Its a branch of Royal in the universe. It seems low profile in the great world, but its combined strength is actually on par with any grade-7 organization. Its said they have a special channel that can bring in resources from the universe and other worlds. Thats why many major organizations collaborate with them. I think you could go talk to them. Royal?! If Virtuoso had not brought it up, Lin Huang would have almost forgotten that he also had Royalty status. Chapter 1617 - The Royal Market Lin Huangs official arrival in the great world after resolving the crisis in the gravel world had, in fact, only been nine months ago or sonot even a year. Most of his time had been spent in cultivation. As for cultivation resources, most of them came from Death Sickle. All this while, the resources he had obtained from Death Sickle via exchange had been sufficient for his needs. Therefore, he had also never contacted Royal this entire time. It was not until Virtuoso brought the matter up earlier that Lin Huang remembered his existing status as a Rank-A member of Royal. From being a nobody in the gravel world to becoming Royals elected Emperor, all this had come about because he had passed Royals trial and became an official Royalty. However, ever since he arrived in the great world, he had set aside this identity. After ending the call with Virtuoso, Lin Huang took out Royals identity token. Based on the information that Virtuoso had provided, he now had a new understanding of Royal. In the great world, Royal was just a branch; their headquarters were located in the universe. All the major organizations in the great world knew about Royals background. Although they were not certain what exactly Royals standing was in the universe, they knew that Royals branch was guarded by a Lordmore than one, in fact. That told them all they needed to know. As a grade-7 organization with lord-level powerhouse guardians, Royal was very low profile in the great world. Royalties hardly ever stirred up trouble. Furthermore, most of them were outstanding suppliers of resources. Businesses and auctions in the great world loved working with Royal. Even grade-6 and grade-7 organizations of different tribes had established partnerships with them. Virtuoso had suggested that Lin Huang go to Royal because the number of half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants that he needed was just too high. After all, Lin Huang had snapped up all the available ones in the God Territory, and the amount still proved to be insufficient. Royal was perhaps the only channel in the great world that could provide him with enough half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. Lin Huang had never expected that his status as a Royalty would come in handy at such a time. Using his Royal identity token, he was able to log into the Royal market very quickly. After glancing at the list of goods, Lin Huang did a direct search for the keywords half-step Lords God Territories. An instant later, the list changed to show only the God Territory Shell Remnants of half-step Lords. Lin Huang glanced through the list. There were not manyonly twenty-eight available in total. He then looked at what trading for them required. None of them could be exchanged for Divine Crystals; they all required cultivation resources or Pseudo-Dao Weapons. Lin Huang felt rather frustrated. Death Sickle had traded in just about all of his battle spoils. Apart from the two remaining Dao Weapons, all the Pseudo-Dao Weapons had been exchanged for rare materials. Moreover, he could not trade in those materials either, as they were for his imperial monsters to elevate from Class-5 supreme god-level to Class-6 Pure Spirit. Although he had said that he wanted the imperial monsters to be independent, he also knew that it was hard to obtain some of the rarer materials. If the imperial monsters were to collect these themselves, they probably might not be able to gather all the necessary materials to elevate to Class-6 even after hundreds and thousands of years. He even somewhat regretted not checking out the Royal market sooner. At least he could have obtained this batch of God Territories first and then given Death Sickle the remaining loot to trade. That way, Death Sickle would have been able to get around twenty half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants in exchange. By doing that, he would have obtained at least twenty God Territories, but he would have considerably less rare materials. After looking through the trade-in list for a while, Lin Huang felt rather aggravated. However, he quickly noticed the auction option on top of the page. Auction? After pondering for a moment, he clicked on it. There was a stunning array of items up for bids; Lin Huang was dazzled by just the sight of them. However, he merely gave everything a cursory glance, then searched for the keywords Dao Weapon. Previously, he had given Death Sickle practically all his loot for disposal. He had only retained Shen Yu and Shen Jues two Dao Weapons and their half-step Lords Dead Body Puppet. He had kept the half-step Lords Dead Body Puppet so he could use it to mask his actual abilities. As for the two Dao Weapons, he did not intend to keep them for his own use. His four God Weapons had now been elevated to Dao Weapons, which were good enough for him. Besides, one of the Dao Weapons was a saber, and the other was a suit of battle armor. Lin Huang could not use the saber. As for the suit of battle armor, its function was a repetition of his own God Weapon battle armor. One of the reasons he had not given these to Death Sickle for trading in was because the value of his other battle spoils was considerableenough to be used in exchange for the materials he desired. Therefore, he was not in a rush to sell them. For another, he was also worried that Death Sickle would not be able to get a good price for them. However, now that he had access to Royals trading channel, he felt that he could definitely put them on the market now. After typing in the keywords Dao Weapon, hundreds of related pieces of auction information appeared on the list. They were all about various types of Dao Weapons. Lin Huang went through these pieces of information one by one. After scrolling for a long time, he finally gained some insight into Dao Weapons. In reality, Dao Weapon was just a general term. Weapon-type Dao Weapons were usually called Dao Weaponry, while armor-type Dao Weapons would usually be called Dao Armor Furthermore, Dao Weapons were divided into grades, namely low-grade, intermediate-grade and expert-grade from low to high. Low-grade Dao Weapons would usually be inscribed with single-digit Dao tattoos and would not exceed ten tattoos in total. Intermediate-grade Dao Weapons would usually be inscribed with anywhere from between ten to a hundred Dao tattoos. Meanwhile, expert-grade Dao Weapons would have anywhere from one hundred up to one thousand inscribed Dao tattoos. There was also a handful of supreme-grade Dao Weapons with more than one thousand Dao tattoos inscribed. As there were so few of these, they were not considered an official grade. In all honesty, Lin Huang did not even need to think about it to know that the two Dao Weapons he had were low-grade ones. If they were intermediate-grade or expert-grade, they would certainly not have come into Shen Yu and Shen Jues possession. He took out the two Dao Weapons and checked them with Divine Telekinesis. The sword was inscribed with only two Dao tattoos. However, apart from Dao tattoos, there were also many engraved divine patterns. As for the suit of battle armor, it had three Dao tattoos inscribed and was also engraved with many divine patterns. It had to be said that the quality of both Dao Weapons was lower than Lin Huang expected. Among low-grade Dao Weapons, they could only be considered ordinary goods. Lin Huang checked out two or three Dao Weapons of similar quality to see the final price they had fetched in the auction. He then uploaded pictures of both Dao Weapons. His condition for trade-in stated, Will only accept half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. As for the starting bid, Lin Huang filled in 50 half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants for both Dao Weapons. This number was actually the final successful bid that other people had used to purchase Dao Weapons of similar quality. Although the market price of half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants and Pseudo-Dao Weapons were similar in the great world, Lin Huang knew that if price were the sole consideration, then Pseudo-Dao Weapons possessed higher value. After all, Pseudo-Dao Weapons were in higher demand, while half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants were hardly in demand under normal circumstances. Therefore, Lin Huang set 50 half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants as his starting bid. As for the auction period, Lin Huang filled in Ten days. He knew that the serious bidders who frequented Royals auction would come on almost every day to check on item information. Even if they were busy and unable to log in for a few days, they would certainly log in whenever they had the time. In reality, it did not matter very much if he set the auction period for ten days or even a month because the ones who would bid were always the same group of individuals. Finally, Lin Huang wrote a quick note in the Remarks section. Remark: All half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants from every tribe will be accepted, including those of the Bug Tribe and the Abyssal Tribe. Theres no need to cleanse them. Chapter 1618 - Chapter 1618 After listing his items for auction on Royals page, Lin Huang did not intend to waste the ten days. Instead, he entered the Great Heaven Palace once more. He adjusted the time flow to be 10,000 times faster than the outside world and began another round of closed-door cultivation. Of course, Lin Huangs main objective was to refine the twenty-six half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants that Death Sickle and Virtuoso had contributed. This time, his closed-door cultivation took over nine thousand days or so. At the end of it, he had completely refined all twenty-six half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. His combat strength had also soared all the way from second-rank to fifth-rank heavenly god-level. As he had anticipated, the number of half-step Lords God Territories needed for refining doubled every time he elevated a rank. He only had to refine 1 God Territory when he elevated to first-rank, then 2 for second-rank, 4 for third-rank all in all, it would require 256 to elevate to ninth-rank. Furthermore, this was only the number of half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants required to elevate from eight-rank to ninth-rank. If he started counting from first-rank to ninth-rank, he would need a total of 511. If one Dao Weapon could only be exchanged for 50 half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants, then he would need 11 Dao Weapons to be able to obtain enough half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants to elevate to ninth-rank. When Lin Huang opened his eyes, he did not feel at ease in the least. Although he seemed to be elevating faster than other people at the moment, he required a hundred or a thousand times more resources than they did. After pushing these convoluted thoughts to the back of his mind, he checked through the changes that had taken place. His physical body and Gods souls strength had seen significant advancement. His Divine Telekinesis was also considerably more formidable. Most importantly, the number of god sequence chains that he could borrow had skyrocketed from 200 to 1,600. I think I should be much more powerful than many half-step Lords now, Lin Huang roughly gauged his ability. However, he did not think that he could call himself a half-step lord-level powerhouse at the moment. After thoroughly checking over his current status, his expression soon became rather odd. I cant believe that a genuine sword cultivator like myself is currently being held back by Sword Dao cultivation Since he had been busy elevating his combat strength, he had barely spent any time at all practicing his swordsmanship for the past half a year. As a result, his Sword Dao had been stagnant at level-2 of Sword Dao heavenly ruleHeavenly Heart. Although he had reached the pinnacle of Heavenly Heart quite some time ago, he had not been able to experience a breakthrough. It hasnt even been a day in the outside world, and the auction will only end in another nine days. In the Great Heaven Palace, that would be more than ninety thousand days. Lin Huang had no intention of wasting the remaining nine days. Ill seize the opportunity to focus on cultivating my Sword Dao then. It did not take Lin Huang very long to list out, one by one, all of the Sword Dao inheritances that he had obtained. He then began to practice by simulating them in his mind. Days passed in the Great Heaven Palace. Lin Huang began simulating the Sword Dao inheritances one after the other, starting with mythical-level, then going to supreme god-level (including Rule Bending Power), and onto Pure Spirit (including sequence power). There were not only inheritances he had obtained from the many sword cultivators in the Great Heaven Territory, but also endless inheritances from the Sword Scripture. After all his Pure Spirit sword skills had been simulated for practice, a Sword Dao general outline consolidated swiftly in his mind. This Sword Dao general outline had a core of over thirty thousand Pure Spirit sword skills, millions of supreme god-level sword skills as its frame, and more than ten million god-level sword skills to flesh it out, as well as hundreds of millions of transcendent sword skills as its outer covering. As soon as the Sword Dao general outline had consolidated, Lin Huang did not even have time to amend and streamline it before his Sword Dao achieved a breakthrough right away. It elevated from level-2, Heavenly Heart to level-3, Heavenly Dao! After this Sword Dao breakthrough, Lin Huang did not stop. He merely glanced at it and resumed amending his Sword Dao general outline. Days passed in the Great Heaven Palace, as well as in the outside world. When Lin Huang opened his eyes again, twenty-one days had passed in the outside world. He had never thought that this round of closed-door cultivation would take so long. After looking at the progress of his Sword Dao, he felt satisfied. Although his Sword Dao had not yet achieved a breakthrough and he still remained at Heavenly Dao level, he had already come to complete-stage Heavenly Dao. Only an opportunity separated him from a Sword Dao breakthrough and the consolidation of a Sword seal. This period of closed-door cultivation also gave him a complete understanding of what a sword cultivator would have to do in order to become a Lord. It was very simple; all one had to do was to consolidate a Sword seal. Of course, this was easy to say, but in reality, not many people could do it. Lin Huang knew very well that he would be able to do so, and it would work. However, he had no intention of going down this path since someone else had already done it. Even if he were more powerful than other sword cultivators, it was difficult for him to surpass the essential gap in abilities. He wanted to use his method to achieve complete-stage in all aspects that nobody could surpass, and then go onto become a Lord! It was not until he came out of the Great Heaven Palace that Lin Huang discovered twenty-one days had passed in the outside world. The amount of time needed for this round of closed-door cultivation had taken far longer than he had anticipated. Once he returned to the Devil Hunter Star Zone, he checked his Royal identity token immediately. The auction had already ended eleven days ago. When he saw the amount of the final bid, Lin Huang was clearly stunned for a moment. The bidding went up to such a high price?! The final bid for the saber Dao Weaponry was 112 half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. The battle Dao Armors final price was even higher127 half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. Lin Huang doubtfully looked at the God Territory Shell Remnants within his identity token; the exchanges had been fully completed. The traded items from both the Royal market and the auction would be stored in both parties identity tokens respectively. There were no extra logistics procedures required. This was also a Space Rule inherent in a Royal identity token. Both batches of God Territory Shell Remnants had been automatically moved into Lin Huangs identity token eleven days ago upon completion of the trade. With doubts in his mind, Lin Huang looked through them with Divine Telekinesis. It only took a moment for him to understand why two such low-quality Dao Weapons could be sold for such a high price. Among the total of 239 God Territory Shell Remnants, seventy percent of them were from Abyssal half-step Lords, while thirty percent of them were from Bug Tribe half-step Lords. None of them had been cleansed Lin Huang could even faintly smell a pungent stench of blood and a disgusting reek. Clearly, some of these half-step Lords had been killed very recently. Abyssal God Territory Shell Remnants were hardly worth anything as they were contaminated by Abyssal energy. Cleansing them required considerable effort. Furthermore, only Lords and powerhouses above Lords had the ability to cleanse half-step lord-level Abyssal God Territory Shell Remnants. As for the Bug Tribes God Territory Shell Remnants, nobody wanted them as they were just too incompatible. Bug Tribe powerhouses obtained god sequence chains by inheriting or plundering them, so the interior of their God Territory was extremely disorderly. The expulsion rate from God Territories of other living beings was very high; they were also highly difficult to refine and integrate. Compared to other God Territories of the same rank, refining Bug Tribe God Territories of that rank might well take several dozen times longer or more. Not only that, the Bug Tribe God Territories might be expelled as well. Not only would one be unable to strengthen their personal God Territory, but it might also cause problems for their own God Territory. However, none of these things were problems for Lin Huang at all. Chapter 1619 - Elevated to Eighth-Rank! After putting Royals identity token away, Lin Huang tapped open his communications page. Very soon, he saw two missed call requests. One was from Lin Xin half a month ago. Another one was from eighteen days ago; it was Sword12 who had called. He did not call back right away. Instead, he opened up his message page and checked it. As expected, he saw the messages that Lin Xin and Sword12 had sent. There was also a message from Buried Heaven, as well as an unfamiliar number. With some curiosity, he tapped on Lin Xins message first. Only after reading the message did he breathe a sigh of relief. Initially, he thought Lin Xin might be calling him about some urgent matter. It turned out she was entering the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss with Xiao Mo and the rest and only wanted to inform him of this. Lin Huang then opened the message from Sword12. It was nothing too urgent either. Sword12 was merely informing him that he had sorted everything out for Sword1 and the others. Sword12 also mentioned that he had turned over everything regarding the Sword Alliance to Sword1, and he would now be assisting Sword1 instead. Lin Huang had anticipated that such a thing might happen. From Great Heavens inheritance memories, he had realized that Swords1 to 10s functions were more complicated compared to those of the other Sword Servants. Apart from guarding the swordmaster, they were also involved in combat, as well as managing and coordinating all the other Sword Servants. All of that was included in their job scope. Naturally, the girlSword8was excluded. As for the Sword Servants after Sword11, they were actually only combat personnel. Lin Huang had previously assigned Sword12 to be responsible for the Sword Alliance as he had been training Wu Hao back then, and Sword12 had the highest authority among the Sword Servants. Sword12 had no inherent work experience of this kind, so he was thrown entirely into the deep end with something far beyond his skills. Since the swordmaster had requested it, he had no choice but to take up the task regardless. Now that Sword1 and the others had taken over, he was more than happy to be a backseat boss. After reading over Sword12s message, Lin Huang thought about it and decided to send a brief reply back to him. After that, he glanced at the topmost message, which was from Buried Heaven. He skipped it for now and opened the message from the unfamiliar number. The communicator he had was different from mobile phones on Earth in that there were hardly any messages that were advertisement-related. When Lin Huang saw the strangers number, the name that flashed through his mind immediately was, without question, Yang Ling. However, on second thoughts, he remembered that Yang Ling was now dead. He opened the message with some misgivings. Only after quickly glancing over the message was he able to ascertain the sender. It was not Yang Ling but Sword1. This unfamiliar number was Sword1s new communicator number in the great world. Sword1 was not the only one; in fact, Swords 1 to 10 all had their own respective communicators. Sword1 had sent the message to give Lin Huang a brief update on their current situation. He and the other swordmasters guardians had taken over management of the Sword Alliance. Sword12 remained a member of the management team, but no longer had any real authority. Sword1 also gave a brief description of the future development plans he had drawn up for the Sword Alliance. Apart from that, he also indicated to Lin Huang that whenever the swordmaster was out, he had to have guardians with him at all timesat least two each time. His position required a show of prestige, after all. Lin Huang was rendered slightly speechless upon reading this, but he did not directly reject it. Naturally, he knew that Sword1 meant well. After reading Sword1s long message, Lin Huang gave it some thought, then replied as well. He suggested promoting Sword11 and Sword12 to become swordmasters guardians. After all, be it ability or prestige among the Sword Servants, both were imminently qualified. Sword1 replied almost immediately after the message was sent. Ill arrange it accordingly. Lord Swordmaster does not need to worry. Only after replying to Sword1 did Lin Huang look at the message from Buried Heaven. It had been sent just a day ago. Upon opening it, he only saw two brief sentences. Ill officially perform unification in ten days time. If youd like to witness the ceremony, you can come and watch. The message came with a star map attached that had coordinates marked on it. It had to be said that Buried Heaven trusted Lin Huang implicitly. The process of a Heavenly Gods unification for elevating to become a Lord was very risky. The slightest mistake might see one forever doomed. Under normal circumstances, one would only invite ones closest friends to witness a Heavenly God unification ceremony. Furthermore, the ceremonys coordinates were secret and not disclosed to the public. This was to prevent any disruptions when one was performing the unification. One must know that if by chance the unification failed, the most minor consequence would be the individual failing to consolidate their Dao seal and being unable to elevate to lord-level forever. The worst-case scenario was that their Dao seal would collapse, and they would immediately disintegrate into smoke and ash. Lin Huang knew that one of the reasons Buried Heaven had invited him was because he trusted Lin Huang. For another, he thought highly of Lin Huang, so he had specially given him an opportunity to observe the ceremony. After all, Lin Huang would certainly have to elevate to lord-level in the future, so he would have to go through the unification process as well. He sent this yesterday, so I still have nine more days. Lin Huang checked the date and replied to Buried Heaven right away. Ill definitely be there! Let me express my wishes in advance that Master Buried Heaven will succeed in this unification and become a Lord! Buried Heaven replied immediately as well after Lin Huang replied. Thank you! After closing the communications page, Lin Huang scanned his Royal identity token with Divine Telekinesis to check the number of God Territories within. He then came up with a rough time estimate. There should be enough time He gave this some thought, then set a date reminder on his communicator. After that, he did not waste any more time but teleported straight back to the Great Heaven Palace in a flash. After entering the palace, he adjusted the time to be 10,000 times faster than the outside world again. He then retrieved the half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants one after the other Time went by in the Great Heaven Palace. As Lin Huang had expected, the refining of all the God Territories was extraordinarily successful. It did not matter if it was the Bug Tribes chaotic half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants or the half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants contaminated with Abyssal energy. There was no hindrance to his refining process at all. This round of closed-door cultivation went on for over eighty-five thousand days. During this time, he fully refined a total of two-hundred and thirty-nine half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. His combat strength elevated from its initial fifth-rank heavenly god-level all the way to eighth-rank heavenly god-level. Sensing the number of god sequence chains that he could borrow had skyrocketed to twelve thousand eight hundred chains, Lin Huang had a vague feeling that he might possess sufficient ability to challenge a Lord now. He raised his brows after looking at the time on the communicator. Eight and a half days have passed in the outside world. This was not too far from what he had anticipatedperhaps a little slower, that was all. Lin Huang stood up immediately and spent a few minutes familiarizing himself with his massive increase in both power and his Gods souls strength. He did not go in-depth, nonetheless, and opened the doors of the Great Heaven Palace. Since he had given Buried Heaven his word that he would be present at the ceremony, of course, he was not going to break his promise. Moreover, watching Buried Heaven performing unification would be beneficial to him. In the future, he would definitely have to do the same to become a Lord. Watching anothers unification procedure could be considered a preview of what he would be doing. Lin Huang did not waste even a second and teleported out of the Great Heaven Palace. On the way, he activated the spatial dimensional gateway and hastened to the coordinates marked on the star map. Chapter 1620 - Meeting Blood Sickle Members For The First Time In a vast, silent sky full of stars, a giant black hole invisible to the naked eye rotated slowly. It was mercilessly devouring everything around itstars, meteorites, dust, and even light Right now, however, a figure stood before this black hole, seemingly unaffected by gravity at all. If one were to observe from up close, they would see that this was a young man. He looked to be thirteen or fourteen at most and was less than 1.6 meters tall, but he had a head of short white hair. He hovered before the black holes great mass just like that. His hands were in his pockets, and his eyes were slightly lidded as if he were waiting for something. Not too far from the white-haired young man stood six figures of various shapes and sizes. If any senior Gold Sickle members from Death Sickle were here, they would be able to identify these six as Death Sickles Blood Sickle members. Six out of the seven Blood Sickle members were present. Clearly, they were guarding Buried Heavens unification ceremony to prevent anyone from interfering. When Lin Huang traversed the void and showed up, the six Blood Sickle members immediately had their guards up. Fortunately, from quite a distance, Lin Huang had sensed the presence of seven people and had revealed himself. Otherwise, he might really have been attacked by the six Blood Sickles. Sensing Lin Huangs arrival, Buried Heaven slowly opened his eyes and nodded at him. Lin Huang nodded slightly in response, then turned his head to study the six Blood Sickle members. He had never seen the Blood Sickles before. However, judging from the intensity of their auras, all six were half-step Lords. Furthermore, among half-step Lords, they would be considered powerhouses. Meanwhile, the six Blood Sickle members were weighing Lin Huang up as well. Over the course of this year, they had naturally heard many stories about Lin Huang, this exceptional newly-emerged genius. Whether in his identity as Xie Lin or Xiu Mu, he had left behind a stunning record of battle exploits in Death Sickle. Not long ago, Lin Huang had anonymously accepted twenty-six missions. They knew about his consecutive killing of the geniuses on the Heavenly God Leaderboard in the God Territory, as well as how he had managed to successfully assassinate Shen Yu and Shen Jue despite a half-step Lord attempting to stop him. Right now, this young man had finally appeared before them. Naturally, the Blood Sickle members could not help giving him a second look. However, the more they studied him, the more apprehensive they felt. In fact, a moment later, their expressions revealed bewilderment. Although Lin Huang had concealed his aura instead of letting it show through, powerhouses did not need to sense a fully released aura to gauge the standard of their opponentjust a trace would do. The six Blood Sickle members only had one word come to mind after sensing the aura emanating from Lin Huangs personimpenetrable! Due to this peculiar feeling, two of the six could not help but try probing with Divine Telekinesis. Naturally, the probe attempts ran into a snag. Lin Huangs current Gods souls strength was already at the level of a regular Lord. Not only that, he had a spirit-type Dao Weapon within him that easily blocked any attempts at Divine Telekinesis probes from the outside world. The two Blood Sickle members who could not resist probing had both their strands of Divine Telekinesis snuffed out easily by the Dao Weapon. After the failure of their attempts, the two gave an involuntary exclamation at practically the same time. After the remaining four asked about it via voice transmission, they could not help trying to probe as well. They encountered the same issue. All six Blood Sickles were looking at Lin Huang in an increasingly odd manner. Naturally, Lin Huang had sensed the six of them probing one after the other. However, it did not particularly bother him; he then took the initiative to greet them. Xiu Mu greets the six Blood Sickle seniors! Young Xiu Mu, weve heard many things about you throughout this year, and now were finally able to meet you in person today. The first person to greet Lin Huang was a tall, thin old man. He was fully three meters tall and then some, while his body was as gaunt as a withered corpse. His skin was pale, and he looked almost bloodless. Although Lin Huang had never met any of the Blood Sickle members before, Death Sickles Gold Sickle authorization gave access to a limited amount of information regarding the seven Blood Sickle members. The man in front of him was one of Death Sickles founders. His name was Boundless Blood. He had been born into the Blood Protoss Tribe, which was considered a major tribe in the God Territory, and had a large population. Truly, the younger generation has surpassed their elders! The second person to speak was a long-legged woman of alluring beauty. Her body was almost no different from that of a human. However, several flame-like red tails undulated beneath her skirt. Lin Huang recognized at a glance that this was the only female among the seven Blood Sickle membersHu Xianer of the Nine-tailed Fox Tribe. The Nine-tailed Fox Tribe had been considered prominent for a time in the God Territory. At their peak, they had been regarded as one of the most powerful tribes in the God Territory. However, they had experienced a significant decline since then. The rest of the Blood Sickles did not speak, but Lin Huang saw one of them nodding slightly at him. This was a saber cultivator who was roughly about the same height as Lin Huang. In appearance, he looked no different from a human, with no distinguishing features to set him apart from an ordinary human being. It was only after Lin Huang had been promoted to Gold Sickle-level and obtained authorization to look at information about the Blood Sickles that he found out there was a human among the seven Blood Sickle members. The man standing before him was evidently this individual. Although only a few brief pieces of information were disclosed, Lin Huang knew that this Blood Sickle was called Gao Ming, and he was a saber cultivator. Lin Huang was aware that the reason he had been able to progress so smoothly as a human within Death Sickle was in no small part due to Gao Ming. It was because of Gao Minga human within the Blood Sicklesthat such a massive organization in the God Territory like Death Sickle had never discriminated against humans. Furthermore, they had always accepted human members. Lin Huang nodded back at Gao Ming as well, indicating that he knew the others identity. As for the anomaly they sensed from Lin Huangs being, the Blood Sickles did not ask about it. Every supreme genius possessed inherently matchless destinies and incredible luck. These were things others might envy but never achieve. In reality, the six Blood Sickles had vaguely guessed that Lin Huang might have a soul-type Dao Weapon on him. Very soon, the Blood Sickle members came forward one by one to chat for a while. The atmosphere was not as awkward as Lin Huang expected. He had initially expected that since the Blood Sickle members had higher status and were all half-step Lords, they would definitely be haughty in front of him, a mere junior. However, this was not the case. They seemed to sense that his ability was no weaker than theirs. All six Blood Sickle members did not treat him as a junior, nor did they put on airs. When selecting a venue for the unification ceremony, is there anything particular that one must pay attention to? Why did Buried Heaven choose this place? After they had become a little more familiar with each other, Lin Huang soon brought up his concerns. From a long way off, he had already sensed the giant black hole behind Buried Heaven. As he had heard a great deal about black holes during his past life on Earth, he still regarded this celestial phenomenon with some awe. The process of unification releases massive amounts of energy, and one also has to battle raptors. It would cause destructive harm to the entire star zone. Naturally, one cant select a region with a dense population, Gao Ming explained, Moreover, theres an advantage to performing unification near a black hole. It can absorb massive amounts of energy waves, which will significantly lower the possibility of being sensed by other powerhouses. I see. So thats why. Lin Huang had evidently learned something. After that, he asked some questions about unification, and the Blood Sickle members answered him one by one. Several hours passed by in this manner. When they sensed Buried Heavens aura beginning to emanate from him, Lin Huang and the others immediately stopped talking and turned in Buried Heavens direction. They knew that Buried Heavens unification was about to begin! Chapter 1621 - Buried Heaven’s Unification Buried Heavens figure hovered in front of the black hole, like a particle of dust facing a giant black whirlpool. He appeared infinitely small in this vast starry sky. However, his aura kept skyrocketing. Within the blink of an eye, Buried Heaven seemed to transform into a ferocious, unrivaled beast even more terrifying than the black hole. God sequence chains of various colors extended out of his body like tentacles. They were no longer invisible like they usually were to ordinary people but had materialized into actual chains. As the god sequence chains extended, Lin Huang was finally able to see the number of god sequence chains that Buried Heaven had masteredtwenty-seven in total. Compared with Lin Huang, this was not considered very many. However, in the entire great world, this number was already the ultimate limit. After all, Great Heaven, who had dominated an entire era in the great world, had only mastered forty-two god sequence chains. Although Lin Huang could control over ten thousand god sequence chains, most of them were borrowed and were not ones he had comprehended himself. In all honesty, the number of god sequence chains that he had comprehended was far less than Buried Heaven. Lin Huang did not find it that impressive, but the six Blood Sickle members were clearly envious. The more god sequence chains a Heavenly God had mastered, the more powerful the Dao seal would be after unification. From this standpoint, Buried Heavens foundation was enough to suppress most Heavenly Gods. They might elevate to become Lords, but Buried Heaven would undoubtedly be more powerful than the rest after elevation. Furthermore, he would only become even more powerful after elevating to become a Lord. The number of god sequence chains used in the first Dao seal would determine the maximum number of god sequence chains all the subsequent Dao seals could hold. In other words, two Lords who started with different numbers of god sequence chains would see an increasing disparity in their abilities as they consolidated more and more Dao seals. Buried Heaven, for example, had consolidated a Dao seal that could hold 27 god sequence chains. If he consolidated two Dao seals, they would be able to contain 54 god sequence chains. However, if another Lords Dao seal could only hold 9 god sequence chains from the start, then they would only have 18 god sequence chains when they consolidated two Dao seals. Even if the two Lords had the same combat strength, the gap between their abilities would only grow wider as the number of consolidated Dao seals increased. Although the number of god sequence chains that Buried Heaven had mastered did not unduly surprise Lin Huang, he was still fully focused on watching the entire unification process without so much as a blink. In the void, the god sequence chains moved threateningly in a frenzy as if they were completely out of control. Amidst his uncertainties, Lin Huang saw a scene that shocked him even more. The god sequence chains detached from Buried Heavens body one by one and began coiling together in the air above his head. They seemed to be possessed of some form of sentience. The feeling they gave off was one of dissatisfaction each with the other and wanting to fight until a winner finally emerged. Is this normal? Lin Huang could not help asking the Blood Sickle members. This is the first stage of unificationpsychic communication, Gao Ming was the first to explain, During this stage, the god sequence chains in the body gain a measure of intelligence. Therefore, theyll vie with each other, with none willing to surrender. This stage is also called the chaotic sequence period and is a very dangerous state. If ones Gods soul is not strong enough to suppress the god sequence chains, the unification will fail right away, the Nine-tailed Fox off to one side added with a smile, The best-case scenario would be ones Gods soul being severely injured and losing their god sequence chains. If theyre unlucky, their Gods soul might be impaled by the berserk god sequence chains, resulting in immediate death. Shouldnt this be happening within his body? How come we can see it? Lin Huang brought up the point that was puzzling him. Its happening in the God Territory within his body, certainly. Were only seeing the Heavenly Daos projection, Gao Ming explained again, The exact reason is unknown, but the great worlds will appears to hope that this process will be noticed by the outside world. Therefore, it projects the process of the Lords unification. Very soon, Lin Huang saw Buried Heavens Gods soul drifting out and engaging the god sequence chains in battle. The god sequence chains had transformed into mutated monsters of all kinds, releasing all sorts of different sequence powers. Within a moment, half the nearby star zone had turned into a battlefield. However, Lin Huang and the rest did not retreat. As this was just a projection, it would not interfere with reality. Nevertheless, they could all fully witness the intense battle in Buried Heavens God Territory. The resilience of a combat cultivator was no exaggeration. Buried Heaven was completely fearless in the face of the multitude of sequence powers, inflicting heavy blows on them. Within half an hour, he had forced all twenty-seven god sequence chains to surrender. Only at that moment did the god sequence chains gradually consolidate into line after line of Dao tattoos. All twenty-seven Dao tattoos swiftly coiled together, forming a Dao tattoo in the void. However, right at this moment, the Dao tattoo began frenetically radiating endless Divine Power. At the same time, Buried Heavens God Territory materialized before them at last. It was like a phantom galaxy suspended in front of them. Before Lin Huang could ask, Gao Ming immediately explained right away. This is the second stage of unificationunification. Simply put, its the god sequence chains turning into a Dao tattoo and consolidating into a Dao seal. This process is also the one that has the highest failure rate in Heavenly God unification. In the past, over 80% of individuals failed at this stage of unification. Since the process of consolidating god sequence chains into a Dao seal releases terrifying energy, its a triple test of the individual performing the unification in terms of their physical body, their Gods soul, and their God Territory. The energy released from consolidating god sequence chains into a Dao seal impacts the individuals God Territory first. At the same time that the God Territory is affected, there will be a measure of energy seeping out that will impact the individuals physical body and Gods soul. If either the individuals God Territory, physical body, or Gods soul is unable to withstand the impact, the unification will fail straight away. Lin Huang kept nodding as he listened. He immediately thought of the nuclear fusion of hydrogen bombs on Earth. The process of nuclear fusion was the collision of two atomic nuclei, causing polymerization and producing atomic nuclei with heavier substances. At the same time, it would trigger a large number of electrons and neutrons into releasing massive energy. This process was exactly like consolidating god sequence chains into Dao seals. It was also the first time Lin Huang realized that apart from a strong physical body and Gods soul, one also needed a powerful God Territory to perform unification. However, he was aware that he himself was unusual. From the very beginning, his God Territory had been at imperial-level, which was already different from everyone else. From that time on, he could already refine and integrate the God Territories of others. As for later on, he could already directly integrate massive amounts of half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants after he had only just elevated to heavenly god-level. However, for normal cultivators, the number of God Territories they could refine and integrate was limited. The intensity of the refining process was severely restricted as well. Great Heaven was so powerful that he had dominated an entire era and mastered forty-two sequence chains. Yet even he only dared to refine nine ninth-rank Heavenly Gods God Territory Shell Remnants from first-rank all the way to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. That was the limit his God Territory could sustain. Although Buried Heaven was powerful, the strength of his God Territory was certainly weaker than Great Heavens. Fortunately, the number of god sequence chains he had mastered was lower than Great Heavens. Therefore, there was significantly less pressure during his unification. Chapter 1622 - Raptors Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Through the Heavenly Daos projection, the scene inside Buried Heavens God Territory was clearly displayed. At the moment, the Dao seal that had been consolidated from the twenty-seven Dao tattoos was like an intensely blazing star suspended above the God Territory, radiating endless awe-inspiring power. ? The glaring white light had almost spread to every corner of Buried Heavens God Territory. Wherever it passed through, it left scorched earth in its wake. Lin Huang could even see countless planets inhabited by living beings, all burning fiercely. Some even crumbled immediately. Almost all the living creatures in the God Territory were killed; none were spared. Does this happen to the God Territory of everyone who performs unification? Lin Huang asked the handful of Blood Sickle members with some misgivings. This process is almost inevitable. Living beings will die, stars will collapse, and even galaxies will fall apart Gao Ming answered, nodding, However, as soon as unification is completed successfully, time in the God Territory will revert to the moment before unification started. The destroyed galaxies will be restored to their original state, while the living beings that were killed will be revived where they were. Furthermore, all their memories of having died will be removed. The God Territory might seem the same as before, but in reality, once unification is successful, the entire God Territory will evolve to a new stage. Realms, rules, and sequences will be reconstructed, creating a fully complete internal circulatory system and forming an independent universe. Only then can the God Territory truly be called a Kingdom. It sounds very much like a system being upgraded and restarted Lin Huang thought to himself. As the Dao seal released its energy, the God Territory within Buried Heavens body became riddled with craters in the mere span of a few breaths. Practically none of the star zones remained whole. Even the area of space around the entire God Territory was starting to quake, and cracks began appearing in the air. Lin Huang and the others could clearly feel a terrifying energy wave being transmitted from Buried Heavens body. The God Territory within his body can directly interfere with the material realm were in?! At this moment, Lin Huang finally became aware that the energy produced from the unification process was utterly beyond what he had expected. Off to one side, Gao Ming could hear the misgivings in Lin Huangs question. He then immediately explained, The energy produced from unification isnt energy from the Dao seal itself but from the consolidation of the Dao tattoos. During this process, the energy released from the Dao seal might be dozens, even hundreds of times more than what the Dao Seal itself inherently contains. This caused Lin Huang to think about nuclear fusion again. If ones God Territory isnt strong enough and cant sustain this process, it will immediately collapse, causing the unification to fail, Gao Ming added. At that moment, Buried Heaven suddenly gave a low groan. A trickle of fresh blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. When the energy from unification breaks through the God Territorys restrictions, it will impact the individuals Gods soul and physical body. This is also the second most difficult stage in the unification process. If either ones physical body or ones Gods soul cannot sustain this process and collapses, unification will fail. Then does this mean that if ones God Territory is strong enough, they can directly suppress the force coming from the unification process and prevent it from impacting their physical body and Gods soul? Lin Huang could not help asking. Theoretically, that should be the case. Gao Ming glanced at Lin Huang, then continued, However, nobody has managed to achieve this yet. No ones God Territory has ever been so powerful that it can directly suppress the process of unification. Lin Huang was not paying attention to the last part of Gao Mings words. At the moment, he was wondering whether he could strengthen his God Territory sufficiently to completely suppress the energy released from unification ifat his current pacehe were to integrate more half-step Lords God Territory Shell Remnants. Buried Heaven, who was not too far off, had his eyes tightly closed, but he seemed to be very much aware of his current condition. A layer of battle armor automatically began appearing on his body. At the same time, a golden glow lit up between his brows, protecting his Gods soul. These two pieces of equipment were clearly Dao Weapons. Once this equipment appeared, Buried Heavens aura very clearly calmed itself. Not long later, the white rays of light released from the Dao seal suspended mid-air in his God Territory gradually began to diminish at last. The expressions of the watching Blood Sickle members finally relaxed slightly. I think we can consider him as having made it through this stage, Nine-tailed Fox Hu Xianer said with a smile. Lin Huang was slightly relieved as well. He could sense that the crest of energy released by the Dao seal had passed and was beginning to wane. Buried Heaven making it past this crest meant that half the unification process was already complete. In a little while, the white glow radiating from the Dao seal faded entirely. Buried Heaven finally opened his eyes and exhaled long and slow. Without hesitation, he retrieved a handful of elixirs from his storage ring and gulped them down one after the other. The most difficult stage is coming up next! Gao Ming said softly. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. His first reaction was to wonder, Didnt they say earlier that consolidation of the Dao seal had the highest failure rateover 80%? Why is the next stage the most difficult one? However, he quickly revised this first impulse. The most difficult stage did not mean that it had the highest failure rate. This was because 80% of the candidates had not made it past the consolidation of the Dao seal. Therefore, less than 20% would make it to the next stage. Whats the next stage? Lin Huang could not help tilting his head and asking. The third stage of unification, which is also the last stageDao plundering! When a Dao seal has been properly consolidated through unification, it will attract the attention of raptors who covet and desire it. Raptors? This was not Lin Huangs first time hearing this term. However, he had only heard it; he did not really understand what it meant. Thats right. Were not sure where the raptors come from. We only know they dont belong to the material realm. Each raptor is unbelievably powerful. They only appear they sense a Dao seal, and they always show up without warning. These raptors will steal the Dao seal of the individual performing unification. The individual must defeat the raptor to officially gain control of their Dao seal. If the individual is defeated and the raptor takes the Dao seal, what will happen then?! Lin Huang asked curiously. When an individual performing unification loses their Dao seal, theyll lose all of their cultivation abilities and become an ordinary mortal, if the consequences are light. Severe consequences would mean immediate death, Gao Ming explained patiently, As soon as the raptors obtain the Dao seal, theyll refine it almost immediately and arrive in the material realm as a Lord. This would result in an utter catastrophe. Ive read related records from historical data where a raptor in the ancient epoch took someones Dao seal during unification. When the raptor arrived in the material realm, the Lords could not kill it immediately, and it was able to escape. It caused a terrible disaster. That raptor devoured many Heavenly Gods, half-step Lords, and Lords within a short few years, causing it to become extraordinarily powerful. In the end, the Almighties above lord-level had to take a hand before it was finally suppressed for good. As he listened to this story, Lin Huang had already started pondering. In the event Buried Heaven failed his unification, and the raptor took his Dao seal, arriving in the material realm, Lin Huang wondered if he should show his hand and reveal his true abilities. Just when Lin Huang was still turning the issue over in his mind, a change happened in Buried Heavens God Territory. Not far above the Dao seal, an irregular space rift began to form at a speed visible to the naked eye. Within less than the time it took for a breath, the rift had expanded to the maximum. It looked like a malevolent eye. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the rift. Isnt that the Virtual Eye from the gravel world?! 1 Chapter 1623 - Buried Heaven Versus The Raptor Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Lin Huang was slightly dazed when he saw the space rift in Buried Heavens God Territory. It was as if he had returned to the gravel world and was seeing the Virtual Eye opening in the heavens. From the very beginning, he had already known the truth about why the gravel world had been invaded by the Virtual Eye. It was a result of the Emperors Heart performing modifications to the gravel world in order to train the native residents. ? Seeing the space rift that preceded the raptors arrival, Lin Huang immediately understood that this must be the inspiration for the Emperors Heart in creating the Virtual Eye. The space rift above the Dao seal split apart like an eye opening. In the black, fathomless void, a massive, muscled arm suddenly extended out of nowhere, reaching right through the space rift and into Buried Heavens God Territory. Immediately after, a head poked through as well. The head had a face that looked human. It was bald, and there was a single eye on its forehead, while a huge mouth occupied almost half its face. The creatures inky-black eye swept its gaze over Buried Heavens God Territory and finally alighted on Buried Heaven. It opened its huge mouth, revealing a maw full of sharp, shark-like teeth. So this is the unification raptor Lin Huang mumbled softly. He did not verbalize the second part of the sentence, which was, It doesnt look very powerful. Off to one side, Gao Ming heard Lin Huang muttering and explained earnestly, The raptors form isnt fixed. The fact is, the people who performed unificationthe ones we know aboutencountered different raptors. None of them were the same. However, the one thing were certain of is that the raptor has a specific connection to the individual. Almost all saber cultivators will encounter a saber cultivator-type raptor. Almost every sword cultivator will encounter sword cultivator-type monsters. Buried Heaven is a combat cultivator, so the raptor hes encountering this time is clearly a combat cultivator like him. What if its someone like me, who is a sword cultivator and a psychic? Lin Huang asked rather curiously. Ordinarily speaking, the raptor you encounter at that point will most likely be a sword cultivator-type monster. After all, sword cultivation is your main cultivation path. There were Lords in the great world who were in the same boat as you. In essence, they encountered raptors that cultivated the same path. There doesnt seem to have been anyone whos encountered a raptor that cultivated their secondary path, Gao Ming answered after giving this some thought. During Gao Ming and Lin Huangs conversation, the raptor had fully emerged from the space rift and intruded into Buried Heavens God Territory. Only now were Lin Huang and the others finally able to see the monsters full appearance. It was a one-eyed giant that was at least a hundred meters tall. It looked like a skinned, deformed human. The surface of its body was enveloped in a layer of blood-red energy that did not give off the feel of Divine Power; it was another type of energy. An indeterminate aura radiated from its entire being. Its single eye had practically never left Buried Heaven. What a powerful flesh-and-blood aura. Youre definitely delicious. Just catching a whiff of the scent on you from far away has already increased my appetite As the one-eyed raptor spoke, it extended its long tongue to lick its lips. It did not seem to care what an ugly, drooling spectacle it made. Ive made up my mind. Im going to devour you first, then refine your Dao seal! The one-eyed raptor had only just finished speaking when Buried Heaven attacked from his end. Even though the raptor was unbelievably arrogant and aggressive, right now Buried Heaven did not fear it in the least. One must know that this was his God Territory. He had full advantage on his turf. Moreover, his Dao seal had already been consolidated, which also gave him absolute confidence in his abilities. As Buried Heaven was illuminated by the Dao seals light, a Dao tattoo that was exactly the same as the Dao seal formed on his forehead. At the same time, golden Odyl began flowing through his entire body. At that moment, it was as if he had transformed into a golden-armored combat god. Within the blink of an eye, his figure darted forward like lightning. Landing in front of the raptor, he landed a heavy blow on it. He did not bother testing this blow at all; he launched into it full force. A combat cultivators physical body was already formidable. In addition, this basic punch had been compounded with all the sequence powers that Buried Heaven could borrow in his God Territory. In fact, its sheer power could be considered earth-shattering. The six Blood Sickle members watched with wide eyes. Clearly, the force of Buried Heavens blow was way beyond anything they had expected. Even Lin Huang could not help raising his brows. Hes compounded over one thousand eight hundred levels of sequence power Is this the Godly Rights effect in his God Territory then? Through his inherited memories, Lin Huang had discovered that powerhouses who elevated to heavenly god-level by the usual methods couldwithin their God Territoryboost their Godly Right by using Rule Bending Power. An example was Great Heaven, who had only mastered forty-two god sequence chains. However, from first-rank all the way to ninth-rank, he had integrated ninth-rank heavenly god-level God Territories when he first constructed his Godly Right and during every subsequent elevation. This had given his Godly Right a full eighty-onefold boost. This meant that in his God Territory, he could allocate a maximum of 3,402 sequence powers when using his Godly Right. As for Buried Heaven, he had mastered twenty-seven god sequence chains. He could compound one thousand eight hundred levels of sequence power in his God Territory because his Godly Right had clearly given him a sixtyfold boost. Lin Huangs Godly Right, however, was completely different from theirs. His Godly Rights maximum limit was far beyond that of Buried Heaven and Great Heaven, and not just in terms of numbers. In his God Territory, he could freely borrow all of the sequence powers it contained. If his God Territory absorbed a million or even ten million god sequence chains, then he could use a million or ten million sequence powers. However, under normal circumstances, a Heavenly Gods Godly Right would only work in their own God Territory. It could not be used in the outside world. Only by consolidating a Dao seal, becoming a Lord, and making their Dao seal the vehicle of the Godly Right could the Godly Right be used in realms outside the God Territory. This would result in the Lord benefitting from the boost in their god sequence chains. It was the equivalent of having one hundred million in fixed assets; if it could not be converted into cash, it could not be used at all. However, if one had one hundred million in cash, they could use it where and when they pleased. That was the reason why the disparity in ability between Lords and Heavenly Gods could not be bridged. Buried Heaven had yet to complete the entire process of unification. Naturally, his abilities could not be reflected in the outside world. Fortunately, the current battle was happening inside his God Territory. This was his turf, which meant he could allocate his Godly Rights boost as he wished. On top of that, he had successfully consolidated his Dao seal, so the flow of Odyl throughout his entire body right now made him no different from an actual Lord. The punch he threw at the one-eyed raptor at that moment was undoubtedly the most powerful blow he had ever thrown in his life! The heavy blow was imbued with a dazzling golden layer of Odyl and sent straight at the raptors face. It was unbelievably fast. However, just as the punch was about to strike the raptors face, the raptor suddenly grinned at Buried Heaven. The next second, its hand shot out, transforming into eagle-like talons that stopped Buried Heavens attack midway. With its other hand, it curled its fist and sent an even faster punch at Buried Heaven. Boom! The six Blood Sickle members had not even been able to see very much of the exchange of blows between the two when they heard the loud boom. Dust and smoke rose from every corner of the God Territory after that, obscuring the figures of the two combatants. Lin Huang was the only one who could see everything clearly, and he could not help but frown slightly. This raptors physical strength is even more powerful than Buried Heavens. Not only that, its far more familiar with using its body than he is Im afraid Buried Heaven might have a difficult time in this battle. Chapter 1624 - Leave It Here Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Smoke and dust rose from every corner of Buried Heavens God Territory. This first clash between Buried Heaven and the raptor was extraordinarily spectacular. ? However, Lin Huang was frowning slightly as he watched. Buried Heavens situation was not exactly ideal. Whether it was physical strength, power, or speed, the raptor was still a cut above. Furthermore, its battle style was based more on instinct. Even when encountering techniques that it had never seen before, it could react accurately in time. As for Buried Heaven, even though he displayed great initiative and did not withhold any of his martial arts skills, he was gradually losing the upper hand. His tempo of battle was also beginning to be affected by his opponent. Buried Heavens expression was gradually becoming more serious as well. From the very beginning, he had not made the mistake of underestimating the raptor. However, after they had exchanged blows, he realized that the raptor was more powerful than he had expected. The six Blood Sickle members could only see the two fighting within the smoke and dust; they seemed to be equally matched. However, Lin Huang saw what was going on more clearly than the rest. The raptors overall ability was certainly more powerful than Buried Heavens, but its ability also had its limits. Buried Heavens advantage was that the God Territory was his turf. The drain on his Divine Power was minimal there. As long as he stood his ground and fought steadily without making mistakes and did not allow his opponent to affect his tempo of battle, he would, in essence, be undefeatable. The raptor was only able to remain in the material realm for a limited time. The longer the battle took, the more it would be at a disadvantage. Lin Huang had initially thought that Buried Heaven would be aware of this logic. However, he had never expected that Buried Heaven might fall prey to rashness right from the start, to where his battle rhythm now was affected by the raptor. If this went on and the raptor gained full control of the tempo of battle, Buried Heaven would completely lose his chance to turn things around. As a bystander, Lin Huang felt somewhat anxious for him as he watched. However, Buried Heavens physical body was currently in his God Territory at the moment. He could not sense anything in the outside world. If not for the Heavenly Daos projection, Lin Huang and the rest would not be able to see anything at all either. Within the God Territory, the battle between the two combatants was growing increasingly worrying. Buried Heaven was gradually beginning to lose the upper hand, to where the six Blood Sickle members could clearly see that something was off. They began an anxious discussion. Just now, it was very clear he held the advantage; why has the raptor gained control of the tempo of battle all of a sudden? This raptors ability is more powerful than Buried Heavens, to begin with, and now its seized control of the tempo of battle. If this goes on, Im afraid Buried Heavens unification will fail this time. It has nothing to do with how powerful the raptor is. Buried Heaven was too impulsive and gave his opponent an opportunity. The truth is, hes always held the advantage because thats his turf. He could defeat the raptor just by stalling it. After all, the onlookers were able to see the situation in a much clearer light. The Blood Sickle members estimation of the situation was roughly the same as Lin Huangs previously. Unfortunately, Buried Heaven could not hear these discussions. While the few of them were still in a heated debate, the first clash between the two in the God Territory came to an end at last. Buried Heaven was sent flying by the one-eyed raptors heavy blow, shattering dozens of planets. The discussion among the Blood Sickle members stopped as soon as they saw what was happening in the projection. They stared at the projection with worry in their eyes. Lin Huang was the only one who raised his brows. Buried Heaven had lost this first encounter. However, as far as Buried Heaven was concerned, this might just be a chance for him to regroup. Lin Huang clearly noticed that while Buried Heaven seemed to have been sent flying, in reality, he had put up a defense at the very last moment and had not suffered any physical harm. Furthermore, he had utilized the impact of his opponents attack to exit the battlefield temporarily. Perhaps he wanted to buy himself some time to replay the battle mentally and find out what the issue had been in the previous encounter. Lin Huang had always regarded Buried Heaven as a true powerhouse. A true powerhouse not only had to have formidable abilities but also extreme mental fortitude. Lin Huang felt that Buried Heaven possessed such qualities. Just like Lin Huang had thought, Buried Heaven was indeed rapidly replaying the battle in his mind. The truth was, he had succumbed to his opponents blow on purpose. He merely wanted to get out of this battle temporarily, so he could utilize the viewpoint of a bystander and see where his problem lay. It only took a moment for his mind to replay the entire first round of battle. He instantly realized his problem after watching the entire battle as an observer. I was in too much of a rush to defeat him Buried Heaven grinned slightly after discovering the root of the issue. He felt that in the next round of battle, he would definitely be able to emerge victoriously. The raptor had no idea what Buried Heaven was thinking. It merely assumed that it held the upper hand. It did not intend to give Buried Heaven a chance to recoup at all. Right after it had sent Buried Heaven flying, it leaped into the air and pursued its opponents falling body. The minute it caught up and was preparing to deal a heavy blow to the other party, it noticed Buried Heavens calm smile as well as the kick that he had been preparing for some time. In a flash, millions of golden rays shot from Buried Heavens right toe, aiming straight for the one-eyed raptors single eye. The angle of the attack was extremely tricky; it was also swift, accurate, and savage! The raptor immediately used its hands to block the attack. It was then sent flying by Buried Heavens kick. Almost simultaneously, countless golden chains emerged like undulating boa constrictors, sweeping toward the raptor. Buried Heaven had now fully understood that this was his turf and he possessed not just combat cultivator techniques. He had consolidated these chains by invoking the use of his Godly Rights sequence powers. He did not need the chains to cause any harm to the raptor. All he needed was for them to obstruct its movements just a little, which would be enough to affect the entire battle situation. Watching as the raptor tried to free itself from the chains, Buried Heaven was in no hurry to take the initiative and engage in hand-to-hand combat. Instead, he consolidated more chains to interfere with it, then looked for an opportunity to attack. Within a few short seconds, he had already taken control of the entire tempo of battle. Things should be stable from now on. Lin Huang gave a slight nod. Sure enough, Buried Heavens performance was now completely different after adjusting his mindset. The six Blood Sickle memberswho had initially felt somewhat worriedwere now overjoyed and their spirits lifted. It was as if they could see that Buried Heavens elevation to lord-level was not far off. However, just when the situation in the God Territory had improved and Buried Heaven was taking control of the battle, an abnormal wave of energy came from the nearby black hole. Lin Huang sensed the anomaly at once and immediately looked in that direction. He saw a Dimensional Whirlpool appear inside the black hole. It had almost completely integrated with the black hole so that it appeared as one with it and was extremely hard to see with the naked eye. Right as Lin Huang looked over, he saw a fair, flawless palm extend itself from the Whirlpool. Imbued with immeasurable force, it hurtled toward the Heavenly Daos projection of Buried Heavens God Territory. As soon as the palm appeared, the six Blood Sickle members instantly attacked without hesitation, intending to block the assault. Thanks to the broken Dao seals effect, the power of the six Blood Sickles attacks far surpassed that of Heavenly Gods. The attacks were compounded with over one hundred levels of sequence power. The minimum was over four hundred levels, with a maximum of over seven hundred levels. As the six joined forces, a vast and mighty momentum struck the massive palm in succession. However, the palm breached the six Blood Sickle members attacks one by one. Its speed merely decreased slightly; it was still determinedly heading in the direction of Buried Heavens God Territory. Since you dont seem to want this hand anymore, you may as well leave it here! Lin Huang muttered softly as if he were talking to himself. An instant later, a long, narrow-bladed battle sword had appeared in his handwhen, no one could tell. He returned the sword to its scabbard slowly. In the distance, a blood-red sword gleam had already swept over the massive palm. The unstoppable palm halted its advance as if time had stopped that very instant. Chapter 1625 - Buried Heaven Elevates The individual who had attacked so suddenly was clearly a Lord. The six Blood Sickle members were not able to block the assault even though they had joined forces. If the massive palm struck Buried Heavens God Territory, it might wreck the God Territory altogether. Once Buried Heavens God Territory was damaged, the unification raptor would certainly escape. Since the God Territory was Buried Heavens turf, for the raptor, the only fair place to do battle was outside the God Territory. As soon as the raptor escaped out of the God Territory, Buried Heaven would lose his home ground advantage. Although his Dao seal had already consolidated, and he could invoke the boost from his god sequence chains outside his God Territory, the Divine Power within his body would not be inexhaustible like it was within his God Territory. In his God Territory, at least he could exhaust the raptor to death. However, outside his God Territory, the raptor would most likely wear him down instead. Furthermore, once the raptor escaped, Buried Heaven would have no choice but to follow it out. Once he did so, he would become the target of the Lords attack. That was why Lin Huang and the rest wanted to stop that massive palm. Although the onslaught of the six Blood Sickle members was halted, Lin Huang made his move in the nick of time, stopping the enemys attack. In truth, he was rather unwilling to display his real ability in front of the six Blood Sickles. After all, he was not familiar with any of them. He knew nothing of their characters, nor did he know if there were any Raider spies among the six. However, he had no choice. If he did not show his hand, there was a high possibility that Buried Heavens unification this time would fail. Within the Dimensional Whirlpool inside the black hole, the Lord powerhouse who had attempted the stealth attack withdrew its arm, turned around and made good their escape after the attack failed. They did not even retrieve their severed hand. From that one clash alone, they knew that they were not Lin Huangs match. In fact, they feared that Lin Huang would kill them on the spot. Its certainly fleeing very quickly. Naturally, Lin Huang immediately sensed the other party escaping far away. He did not pursue it either. For one, he was worried that the opponent might be creating a diversiononce he left in pursuit, another Lord would attack Buried Heaven. For another, he felt that he might not be able to catch up. The black hole inherently possessed a spatial distortion effect. Even if he followed the other via teleportation, the tiniest variance would result in the dimensional coordinates being completely different. Lin Huang knew that it was only a matter of time before his true ability was revealed. He could hide it for a time, but he could not hide it forever. Compared to before, now, he no longer shied away from his identity being exposed. After all, he already possessed the ability to fight on equal footing with Lords. Watching the severed hand hovering in the air, the six Blood Sickle members only snapped back to their senses a moment later. They all turned to look at Lin Huang. They knew Lin Huang was a genius with astounding ability. After all, he had previously assassinated the twins, Shen Yu and Shen Jue. However, in their eyes, this young fellow named Xiu Mu could only be regarded as a mere junior. At most, he was just a slightly bigger fish in the pond. After all, no matter how powerful a Heavenly God was, their Godly Right would only be effective in their own God Territory. Outside the God Territory, it would be useless. However, at that very moment, the six of them finally realized just how much of a mistake they had made. Lin Huang had suppressed a bona fide Lord on his own! If not for the fact that their attacks had been easily countered, the six might even have had doubts about the ability of the stealth attacker. However, they had attacked full force earlier, yet they had failed to stop their opponent by even a fraction. Lin Huang, however, had not only stopped the stealth attack, but he had even severed the others hand. The disparity in ability was extremely obvious. Your cultivation base is at lord-level?! Gao Ming could not help but ask. Actually, this was the speculation of the remaining five Blood Sickles as well. After all, the preconception they had was that only Lords could fight Lords. Not yet. Lin Huang shook his head. He did not mention exactly which rank he was at; he did not think this was necessary. How is that possible?! Boundless Blood was in slight disbelief. A Heavenly Gods Godly Right can only be used inside their God Territory. The sequence powers theyve mastered in the outside world wont gain a boost. Your attack earlier likely had over ten thousand levels of compounded sequence power. How is it possible that it wasnt a boost?! Why do I need that? Cant I have mastered up over ten thousand types of sequence power? Lin Huang retorted at once. The six Blood Sickle members present thought Lin Huang was spouting nonsense. One had to be aware that individuals with a normal heavenly god-level aptitude would need tens of thousands of years to master one god sequence chain. Even if it were a one-in-a-million talented genius, they would need hundreds of years at least to master a single god sequence chain. They would need tens of thousands of years to accrue mastery for over ten thousand god sequence chains. Moreover, Lin Huang was a newly-emerged genius. According to Death Sickles investigation, he might not be even a hundred years old. Naturally, he could not possibly have mastered ten thousand god sequence chains. It was even more unlikely that he had already elevated to Lord! The six Blood Sickle members rapidly calmed down when they remembered Lin Huangs identity information. All six had practically the same speculationLin Huang must have used some special technique, such as borrowing an Almightys power. That was how he had managed to stop the Lords massive palm. Indeed, logically speaking, that was the most reasonable explanation. In addition, Lin Huang had also stopped a half-step Lords attack previously during Shen Yu and Shen Jues assassination, and the technique he had used then was very obviously not inherently his own. This made the few half-step Lords even more certain of this pointLin Huang had a powerful survival trump card left to him by an Almighty. Only after they had thought this out did the Blood Sickle members come out of their shocked state and regain their composure. Seeing that Lin Huang was stubbornly denying any use of an Almightys technique, they did not pursue the matter further. Lin Huang, on the other hand, had no idea what the Blood Sickle members were thinking. Since they had stopped asking, he also did not bother to explain further. He extended a telekinetic thread and coiled it around the severed hand. He then put the hand away in his storage space. Only then did he turn his head to watch the projection of Buried Heavens God Territory. The six Blood Sickle members did not speak any further. They looked over at the projection of the God Territory in silence and continued observing the fight. In the God Territory, the battle between Buried Heaven and the raptor was becoming more and more intense. Buried Heaven had also gotten increasingly into the zone and had taken control of the entire battle now. Every attack was delivered full force without holding back. Even in defense, he was only protecting crucial body parts. He was like a mad demon now. Lin Huang and the rest could not help exclaiming in admiration to themselves. This was the best way to do battle in the God Territory. There was no need to worry about the drain on ones power or be concerned about getting injured. On the other end, the Divine Power in the raptors body was nearing critical levels. When the raptor entered the material realm, it was restricted by the realm itself. Before obtaining the Dao seal, they could not replenish their power from the material realm at all. The more they used the energy in their bodies, the more it would decrease. The battle between Buried Heaven and the raptor lasted for almost three days and three nights before coming to an end at last. The powerful raptor was finally drained to the point of collapse, and Buried Heaven slaughtered it in his God Territory. After the raptors death, Buried Heavens Dao seal absorbed the raptors true spirit automatically, making it part of the Dao seal itself. Only then was Buried Heaven considered to have completed his unification. A moment later, he strode out of his God Territory and his aura was now completely different. Chapter 1626 - Headquarters Was Attacked Buried Heaven, your successful unification can be considered something that we havent managed to achieve. Thats awesome! Youve become a Lord todayafter this, youll soar to new heights! Congratulationslets have a celebration party when we return to headquarters! The six Blood Sickle members immediately hastened forward to congratulate Buried Heaven. Seeing that Buried Heaven was surrounded by Blood Sickle members, Lin Huang did not join them. Instead, he waited till they had finished chatting, and Buried Heaven was making his way over before he delivered his congratulations, grinning. Congratulations, boss Buried Heaven, for succeeding in your unification and becoming a Lord! Dont forget to protect me, boss. You little rascal Buried Heaven smiled and scrutinized Lin Huang for a while. He noticed the anomaly in Lin Huangs aura as well but was still able to vaguely sense his combat strength. Given the current progress of your cultivation, it wont be too long before youre at this level. Dont rush into things after achieving ninth-rank. Build your foundation and only break through when youre confident, Buried Heaven added, I have a feeling that your ability might far exceed mine after you become a Lord. When that time comes, it wont be me protecting you anymore. Clearly, Buried Heaven had no idea that a Lord had attempted a stealth attack outside his God Territory earlier, nor was he aware of Lin Huangs true ability. He genuinely thought that right now, he could protect Lin Huang. The expressions on the faces of the six Blood Sickle members were rather odd. In their minds, they were thinking that this young fellows background was much more complicated than Buried Heaven had imagined. He had an Almighty above lord-level protecting him. Why would he need the protection of a low-level Lord who had just elevated? Lin Huang did not intend to reveal his abilities for the moment. He nodded with a smile. Alright, when I become a Lord in the future, Ill protect you! The two of them chatted for a little bit before Buried Heaven was dragged away by the Blood Sickles for the celebration party. They invited Lin Huang along as well. Initially, Lin Huang wanted to decline since he was not familiar with the Blood Sickle members. However, after giving it some careful thought, he realized that nobody had mentioned the Lords attempted attack earlier. He felt that he should find some time to tell Buried Heaven about it. The Lord had attempted to attack during Buried Heavens unification, but this did not mean they would not try again after Buried Heavens elevation to lord-level. Everyone went through the dimensional portal and returned to Blood Sickles Shelter right away. However, everyone sensed something odd right after they went through the dimensional portal. The guardian half-step Lords aura was gone. Not only that, there was no trace of any life force in Death Sickles headquarters. Lin Huang did a sweep with Divine Telekinesis. Everyone in Death Sickles headquarters was dead! Buried Heaven and the six Blood Sickles looked grim. Evidently, they had just discovered the situation at headquarters. Buried Heaven vanished right away in a flash. The next instant, he appeared in the cultivation room on the highest floor of headquarters. Lin Huang and the rest hurriedly followed suit. Subsequently, Lin Huang saw a middle-aged man quietly sitting on a meditation cushion in the cultivation room. His head was sunk low, and any signs of vitality were completely absent. Lin Huang immediately identified the man; he was one of the seven Blood Sickle members, Sun Zhan of the Heavenly Ape Tribe. According to the information Death Sickle had made public, Sun Zhan was a combat cultivator and the powerhouse with the most powerful physique in Death Sickle. Of course, this was based on the rankings before Buried Heaven had elevated to lord-level. Old Sun! The Blood Sickle members exclaimed involuntarily. Dont get close yet. Check with Divine Telekinesis to see if someones left any sort of booby trap on him. Lin Huang immediately stopped them, seeing that they were about to hurry forward and lift the body. It was not that Buried Heaven and the other Blood Sickle members had not thought of this; it was merely that concern had made them lose their heads. In comparison to Buried Heaven and the rest, Lin Huang was the least familiar with the deceased. In fact, it was his first time seeing Sun Zhan. Naturally, he was also the most vigilant. The others halted immediately upon hearing Lin Huangs reminder. They began carefully checking the deceased over with Divine Telekinesis. They only went forward a moment later after finding nothing amiss. There are no traces of battle, and Old Sun doesnt have any wounds on him, Gao Ming said after checking the corpse, It should be that his Gods soul was obliterated right away by a lord-level powerhouse. It has to be the same group of people as that fellow who launched a stealth attack at Buried Heaven, Hu Xianer said venomously. What? Someone tried to launch a stealth attack at me?! Buried Heavens expression was full of disbelief. During your unification, a Lord tried a surprise attack. He wanted to damage your God Territory. However, Xiu Mu stopped him Gao Ming gave a brief summary of what had happened. Buried Heaven looked at Lin Huang with an utterly astonished expression. You severed the Lords hand?! Ive got some special techniques. Lin Huang did not deny anything, but neither did he admit that he possessed this level of ability. The six Blood Sickle members were now even more certain about their previous speculation when they heard this. Lin Huang had to have borrowed the technique that an Almighty had left for him. Can you show me the hand? Buried Heaven asked. Lin Huang immediately retrieved the severed hand and passed it to Buried Heaven. Buried Heaven took the severed limb and sent his Divine Telekinesis into it. A second later, there was a low grunt, and the hand tore free from Buried Heavens grasp. It then charged in Hu Xianers direction as if it had come alive. However, at that moment, Lin Huang extended a few Divine Telekinesis threads and entangled the hand in them. He then pulled it back forcefully. If you dare try moving again, Ill obliterate you! Lin Huangs battle sword came out of its scabbard once more. The point of the sword lightly rested on the back of the hand and pierced down about a centimeter or so. Blood began oozing from the severed hand. It seemed to be able to understand Lin Huangs threat and did not dare to move again. Nearby, Hu Xianer was still in a state of shock. Earlier, she had thought she was going to die. The others were staring at Lin Huang in amazement. At that moment, Buried Heaven spat out a mouthful of blood. He gave Lin Huang an inscrutable glance after coming back to his senses, then said, This persons abilities are more powerful than mine. Although hes also a low-level Lord, hes definitely consolidated more Dao seals than I have. Hes mastered at least five thousand god sequence chains. As to how Lin Huang had managed to sever the hand, Buried Heaven did not pursue the matter further. For now, well leave the suppression of the hand to you; in a few days, when we need it, well come to you then. From the looks of things now, Old Suns death and the attempted attack on me ought to be related. Moreover, its no surprise that the same group of people is likely responsible. Thats because it cant possibly be a coincidencetwo such events happening at the same time. Buried Heaven did not dwell further on the issue of the hand. They sent two Lords to suppress Death Sickle. Thats unbelievably brazen. Boundless Bloods eyes narrowed slightly. The attack might not really be directed at Death Sickle, Lin Huang could not help speaking up at that point, They might have a personal grudge against Buried Heaven, or Old Sun and the rest of you Blood Sickle members. Killing everyone in Death Sickle might just have been in passing. Its also possible that they targeted some other Death Sickle members rather than all of you Lin Huang thought of the Raiders when he said that. Of course, Im just stating other possibilities; theyre not necessarily correct, Lin Huang added. The things youve mentioned are certainly possible, Buried Heaven was the first to agree. Right now, my thoughts on the matter are that we should look at Lords specializing in Gods soul cultivation first. Thats the biggest lead. Secondly, we should look for a Lord who has recently had his hand severed. The hand Xiu Mu severed isnt something that can be regenerated within a short time. The third thing is that the Lords who attacked might not have come from the God Territory but from somewhere else. We can check the God Territorys entry records for Lords. Lord-level powerhouses have to report to the authorities when visiting other territories Buried Heaven rapidly sketched out his investigation plan. Chapter 1627 - A Suspected Killer As soon as Lin Huang returned to the Devil Hunter Star Zone, he activated the communication transfer function on his communicator and transferred it to Sword1s communicator. He also authorized access for Sword1 to enter and exit the Great Heaven Territory freely. Furthermore, he let Sword1 know that if he received news from Death Sickle or any other important information, he could come into the Great Heaven Territory and knock on the door of the Great Heaven Palace. After making these arrangements, Lin Huang entered the Great Heaven Palace again and went into closed-door cultivation. As for the matter of Death Sickles headquarters being attacked, he did not participate any further in subsequent discussions. In reality, his presence did not really matter since Buried Heaven and the Blood Sickle members were there. In terms of resources and connections, Death Sickle most certainly had more of them than he did. Lin Huang did not want to waste his time by joining in. Of course, if they needed his help with anything, he would not say no either. Since the two Death Sickle incidents, all he wanted now was to become as powerful as possible. This was because he felt that it was only a matter of time before he was noticed by Raiders. He even suspected that he might already have been targeted by Raiders. Inside the Great Heaven Palace, Lin Huang sat down cross-legged and began to list out, one by one, the methods for making himself more powerful. First of all, for my combat strength, Ill need 256 half-step Lords God Territories to elevate from eighth-rank to ninth-rank. Although there are an extra 17 God Territories left from elevating to eighth-rank previously, I still need 239 more to elevate. In the interim, it will be extremely difficult to obtain so many half-step Lords God Territories. All I can do is obtain more resources later on to trade for half-step Lords God Territories. Secondly, my Sword Dao is already at a critical boundary. Whether or not I can go a step further and break through from Sword Dao heavenly rule to Sword seal will depend on chance. Looking at things now, the possibility of achieving a breakthrough in the short term isnt very high. Thirdly, the maximum number of god sequence chains that I can borrow is already at twelve thousand eight hundred chains. If I want to increase that number, I have no choice but to use combat strength to achieve a breakthrough. Of course, in the long run, I need time to comprehend those borrowed god sequence chains and transform them into my own. However, I cant strengthen my ability by comprehending god sequence chains from scratch. I can definitely wait on this until Ive elevated to ninth-rank or tenth-rank. Number fourtheres still room for improvement in my Divine Telekinesis. I still have the last eight images of the unknown Divine Telekinesis visualization set that I havent visualized yet. This is a way for me to elevate my abilities at present. Number fivethe Gods Figurines Combat Souls strength is lagging far behind my current abilities. This is actually also something that can be elevated. However, should I refine a new batch of half-step Lord dead bodies or use Advance Cards right away to elevate the original Gods Figurines? For now, I havent figured that out yet The sixth thing would be elevating the imperial monsters abilities. Theyll mainly have to rely on themselves for this. After all, I cant help with elevating their combat strength. Ill help when they need to advance a level. However, apart from Advance Cards, its quite impossible to expect them to accumulate materials. Im guessing that for rare elevation materials, Ill still need to find a way to gather them Number seventheres room for improvement in the Sword Servants abilities as well. The swordmaster guardians like Sword1 and Sword2 in particular; they have the ability and the accumulated experiences necessary to break through and become Lords. However, this cant be rushed. I still need to give them enough time to prepare themselves. For the rest of the Sword Servants, their potential has almost been exhausted. Not many of them will be able to elevate to lord-level Lin Huang analyzed every aspect of his current situation. After a moment of thought, he calmed his mind and began to visualize the 101st unknown Divine Telekinesis visualization image. He chose to strengthen his Divine Telekinesis since this was the fastest way for him to elevate at present and would not cost him anything extra. All he had to do was to invest time and effort. Very soon, Lin Huang entered a visualization state. Time passed, day by day, in the Great Heaven Palace. In the outside world, three days had passed. However, in the Great Heaven Palace, it had been over thirty thousand days. Lin Huangwho had been sitting, legs crossed, like a piece of deadwoodfinally opened his eyes today. After spending over thirty thousand days, he had finally visualized the 101st image successfully. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he did was check the date. When he realized he had only used thirty thousand days or so, he felt quite happy. This was because he knew that the visualization would become increasingly difficult after the 100th image. Based on his estimation, if he had tried this when his Divine Telekinesis was not at lord-level yet, he would need over three hundred thousand days to visualize just the 101st image. In other words, approximately a month would pass by in the outside world. Now, however, the efficiency of his visualization had increased significantly. He could clearly sense that his Divine Telekinesis had also become more powerful. It looks like the origin of this set of visualization images might not be so simple after all. Lin Huang had only now realized that the improvement in his Divine Telekinesis brought on by the visualization images had far surpassed his expectations. Seeing that Sword1 had not come to awaken him, Lin Huang decided to quiet his mind again and seize the time to visualize the 102nd visualization image. Six days went by in the outside world. In the Great Heaven Palace, however, over sixty thousand days had passed, since time was accelerated ten thousand times. When Lin Huang opened his eyes again, he had already visualized the 102nd visualization image. He only needed a cursory check to discover that his Divine Telekinesis strength was now at peak lower-rank lord-level. He had initially supposed that his Divine Telekinesis strength would elevate to lower-rank lord-level after visualizing all one hundred and eight visualization images. However, he now discovered that this had been achieved even though he had only visualized the 102nd image. If I continue the visualizing, dont tell me my Divine Telekinesis strength might achieve a breakthrough to middle-rank lord-level?! Lin Huang was rather astonished. Seeing that there was still no news yet from Sword1, Lin Huang calmed his mind again and continued to visualize the 103rd visualization image. However, this time, he had only been visualizing for a few days before a series of knocks sounded on the door of the Great Heaven Palace. Lin Huang immediately came out of his visualization state. It looks like news has probably come from Death Sickle. He gestured, and the door of the Great Heaven Palace opened. Sword1 was standing there, clad in a long green robe. Lord Swordmaster, news has come from Buried Heaven. Ive already informed him that youll reply to him in a little while. Alright. Lin Huang nodded slightly and strode out of the Great Heaven Palace. A moment later, the two teleported back to the Devil Hunter Star Zone. Lin Huang returned alone to his courtyard and called Buried Heavens number. In just a little while, the video call connected. Buried Heavens white-haired, youthful figure projected into the courtyard. How is the investigation going? Lin Huang asked right away, without bothering about niceties. Weve located someone whom we suspect might be the owner of the hand you severed. Buried Heaven paused and took stock of Lin Huang. But I need you to bring the severed hand over to verify it. Not a problem. Where do we meet? Lin Huang agreed readily. Lets meet at headquarters, Buried Heaven said, a ferocious gleam flashing through his eyes, After that, well both go and pay a visit to the Combat God Temple! Chapter 1628 - The Combat God Temple’s Temple Master Kratos Star Zone was a galaxy supercluster with a diameter of over 180 million light-years. If it were viewed from sufficiently far away, the shape of this star zone looked a little like a battle-axe. This was also the location of the Combat God Temples headquarters. It was Lin Huangs first time setting foot on this star zone. It was also his first time at the Combat God Temples headquartersthe Combat God Shelter. Looking at the massive palace in front of him that seemed to be built for giants hundreds of meters tall, Lin Huang was somewhat bereft of speech. The door alone measured at least five hundred meters in height. The Combat God Temples headquarters is a Dao Weapon left behind from the ancient epoch. Its said to be the palace of the Giant King of the ancient epochs Giant Tribe, Buried Heaven explained off-handedly as if noticing Lin Huangs confusion. Both of them made their way slowly to the door. A warrior in silver armor, who was guarding the door, quickly went to announce their arrival. A moment later, the warrior returned and said to them respectfully, Please follow me. Led by the silver-armored warrior, Lin Huang and Buried Heaven made their way into the palace. After all, this was the Combat God Temples headquarters. It would be imprudent for them to invade the place before they had ascertained the facts of the matterthat would be equivalent to a complete falling out with the God Combat Temple. Therefore, Buried Heaven led Lin Huang through the usual visitation procedures. Right after they stepped into the Combat God Temple, many people in the palace turned their gazes toward them. Not many were able to identify Lin Huang as Xiu Mu, but almost everyone recognized Buried Heaven. Of course, Buried Heaven was not using his youthful Primordial form right now, but the muscular form that he displayed to the outside world. In the crowd, countless people whispered among themselves. Is that fellow Buried Heaven? Why is Buried Heaven here at the Combat God Temple? I heard a rumor a few days back that Buried Heaven succeeded in unification and elevated to become a Lord. I saw the gossip thread online too. Whats strange is that Death Sickle didnt deny it, nor did they give a definitive answer. I think thats got to be fake news. If I were Death Sickles upper echelons and Buried Heaven really did successfully undergo unification to become a Lord, Id trumpet it with a foghorn everywhere I went. Id want everyone in the entire God Territory to know. Whats there to hide?! Thats right. Death Sickle has been so low-key lately. It doesnt look as if they have a new Lord. Naturally, Lin Huang and Buried Heaven heard the gossip among the crowd as clear as could be. Lin Huang felt rather puzzled. He had thought the news about Buried Heavens elevation to lord-level had been circulated much earlier. That was because good news like this would usually be announced right away. Furthermore, it was also considered a boost for Death Sickles reputation. The news of your successful unification hasnt been announced? Lin Huang asked rather doubtfully through voice transmission. Not yet. Buried Heaven shook his head. As soon as its announced, well have to temporarily shelve the investigation. Thats because the God Territory gaining a new Lord is no small matter. All the major organizations would take turns to congratulate us, and wed need to host a banquet out of courtesy and invite them It would be at least half a month before things settle down. Lin Huang immediately understood Buried Heaven and the few Blood Sickle members points of view. The longer the two cases dragged onthe attempted attack on Buried Heaven, as well as the massacre at Death Sickles headquartersthe more difficult it would be to find the murderer. Buried Heaven and the others had prioritized investigating the truth over Death Sickles honor to find the perpetrator as soon as possible. The warrior in silver armor led Buried Heaven and Lin Huang through the crowd. They ascended a floating staircase and soon came to a cultivation room. Please go in, both of you. The two opened the door and went in. Lin Huang realized that the cultivation room was completely bare. There were no furnishings; even the walls, ceiling, and floor were like those of the most rudimentary unfinished house. There was only a woolen blanket on the floor in the middle of the room. An old man with white hair sat upon it, cross-legged. Lin Huang identified the man at a glance. This was the Combat God Temples current Temple MasterZhan Guang! Lin Huang had seen his picture on the internet more than once. Zhan Guang opened his eyes when the two of them entered, then locked his gaze on Buried Heaven. Only after observing him for a good while did he venture, So you really have succeeded in unification and elevated to become a Lord, young fellow. I knew I wasnt mistaken in you. Senior Zhan Guang, you praise me too highly, Buried Heaven said respectfully. Zhan Guang was a veteran Lord. Even the few Blood Sickle members from Death Sickle would have to address him as their senior. This is Zhan Guang then turned his gaze to Lin Huang. It was not long before he discovered that there was something odd about the young man. This humble junior is Xiu Mu. Its a pleasure to meet you, senior. Lin Huang went forward and offered his greetings. No matter what, they were still not enemies for now and should not skip the usual formalities. Zhan Guang scrutinized Lin Huang again and realized that he was still unable to read this young man. He could not help exclaiming, The younger generation has certainly surpassed the old! Please take a seat. Zhan Guang casually brought out a teapoy and arranged the tea service, taking his own time. Peerless told me theres something important that youd like to speak to me about in person? What is it exactly? The Peerless mentioned was the Combat God Temples Peerless Overlord, whose rank was on par with Buried Heaven. During this juniors unification, a Lord attempted a stealth attack on me Buried Heaven took his seat directly across from Zhan Guang; Lin Huang followed suit and sat beside Buried Heaven. Such a thing actually happened?! Before Buried Heaven could finish speaking, Zhan Guang paused in the middle of what he was doing. Frowning, he asked, Do you suspect that this was someone from the Combat God Temple?! Buried Heaven did not answer this question. Instead, he continued, Almost the same time as the attempted assault on me, Death Sickles headquarters was attacked. Old Sun, who was standing guard, was killed. Besides him, there were also five hundred and thirteen lives lost. Nobody was spared. Zhan Guangs expression was one of utter shock when he heard this. Old Sun, the combat cultivator?! How did he die? There were no traces of battle at all in Death Sickles headquarters, nor did Old Sun have any wounds on him. His Gods soul was instantly obliterated, Buried Heaven explained. This must have been done by a Lord whose main cultivation path is Gods soul! Zhan Guang said with certainty, None of the four Lords from the Combat God Temple are experts in Gods soul techniques, let alone specializing in Gods soul cultivation. I know that. However, its impossible for there not to be a connection between the two attackers. Its just too much of a coincidence. Buried Heaven nodded. So what youre saying is that the Lord who tried to attack you is from the Combat God Temple. And he collaborated with another Lord to destroy your headquarters? Zhan Guang looked at Buried Heaven with a displeased expression. Although he had always thought well of this junior sitting in front of him, Zhan Guang would definitely turn violent if Buried Heaven dared to slander the Combat God Temple. I only suspect this is so; nothing has been confirmed yet. Buried Heaven stared right back at Zhan Guang as well. He had no intention at all of backing down. The two of them locked gazes for a long time before Zhan Guang finally spoke, Tell me the reason for your suspicions. If its not legitimate, Ill have no choice but to ask you to leave. A few days back, the Combat God Temple discovered the battlefield of a Lord. Your Lords were preparing to explore it. However, there was someone who cited closed-door cultivation as a reason and declined to join in Buried Heaven abruptly changed the topic of conversation as soon as he finished speaking. The Lord who attempted to attack me was wounded. Are you suspecting that it was Zhan Zhuo who tried to attack you? Zhan Guangs eyes narrowed slightly at this point. What means do you have to verify your suspicions? He left behind a severed hand, Buried Heaven stated very calmly. Chapter 1629 - Meeting A Raider For The First Time Zhan Gang fell silent. Buried Heaven had the stealth attackers limb. As soon as the limb approached its body of origin, it would immediately sense this. It was a reaction that could not be faked. If the individual responsible for the covert attack really was Zhan Zhuo, he would be exposed as soon as he met Buried Heaven. Zhan Guang had no intention of shielding the murderer. It was just that he felt Buried Heavens request to verify whether or not Zhan Zhuo was the perpetrator would not look good for the Combat God Temples reputation. What if hes not the perpetrator? Zhan Guang finally broke the silence after a long while. Ill publicly apologize to the Combat God Temple, as well as compensate Zhan Zhuo with a Dao Weapon, Buried Heaven said unhesitatingly. Clearly, he had prepared his mitigations before he came here. If he really is the perpetrator, though, I hope that the Combat God Temple will seek justice for myself and Death Sickle. Buried Heaven stared fixedly at Zhan Guang, waiting for his response. Zhan Guang pondered for a moment, then nodded. If he is truly the attacker, the Combat God Temple definitely wont shield him. Not only that, well give Death Sickle our full support to help find the wretch who destroyed Death Sickles headquarters! As a member of the God Territory, attacking a person performing unification in the God Territory violates the God Territorys joint pact. Slaughtering a grade-6 organizations entire headquarters makes them a public enemy of the God Territory! Senior is wise! Buried Heaven complimented immediately. If somethings not right with Zhan Zhuo, hell definitely sense something is off if I asked him to come here. He might even flee straight away. I think its best I take you over to see him. Zhan Guang gave this some thought and took a sip of tea before standing up. Lin Huang and Buried heaven immediately got up as well. They followed Zhan Guang and left the cultivation room. As soon as they stepped out of the door of the cultivation room, Zhan Guang summoned a Dimensional Whirlpool with a flick of his wide sleeve and led the other two into it. A moment later, they exited the Dimensional Whirlpool. The three of them had arrived directly on another planet. This was a barren, desolate place. Lin Huang did not sense any traces of life force at all. He only saw an ancient palace not too far away. Zhan Guang arrived in front of the great palace in just a few steps. He pounded on the door heavily with his fist. Zhan Zhuo, Buried Heaven from Death Sickle wants to ask you about something. However, despite knocking for quite a while, the massive doors of the palace remained closed. Lin Huang and Buried Heaven glanced at each other. Both of them felt that the chances of Zhan Zhuo showing his face were low. He most likely would pretend that he was away to avoid this meeting. However, after knocking for a long time without a response, Zhan Guang decided to shout at the top of his lungs. Zhan Zhuo, Im here today to give you the chance to explain yourself. However, if you refuse to see us today and Buried Heaven and his people make trouble for you later, the Combat God Temple wont intervene on your behalf. Also, according to the God Territorys joint pact, the Combat God Temple will join forces with the other grade-7 organizations to aid in your capture! Lin Huang had never expected Zhan Guang to go this far. Initially, he thought that at most, Zhan Guang would only bring both of them here and would not bother whether Zhan Zhuo was willing to see them or not. After all, Zhan Zhuo was part of the Combat God Temple. Even if Zhan Guang could not display favoritism openly, there was nothing that they could do if he privately decided to let Zhan Zhuo get off scot-free. However, Buried Heaven did not seem surprised. Evidently, he knew Zhan Guangs character very well. This was also why he had met with him directly in person and confided in him about what had happened to Death Sickle. After Zhan Guangs shout, the door of the ancient palace finally opened a moment later. Come in. A voice came from within the palace. Lin Huang was expressionless, but Buried Heaven frowned slightly. Zhan Zhuos ancient palace was clearly a Dao Weapon. If they went in, they would be in his territory altogether. Zhan Guang turned his head to glance at Buried Heaven and Lin Huang. He seemed to notice Buried Heavens hesitation. Dont worry, Im here after all. As soon as he finished speaking, he took the lead and entered the ancient palace. Buried Heaven did not hesitate any further. Following behind Zhan Guang, he went into the palace with Lin Huang. As soon as the three of them stepped inside, the door of the ancient palace closed with a loud thud. They walked straight through into the deeper recesses of the palace and saw a young man sitting upright on a prayer mat. This mans appearance was extremely eye-catching. His countenance was handsome, his eyes were like stars, and he gave off a sense of standing out from the common crowd. Lin Huang immediately looked in the direction of the young mans right hand. The limb was whole. However, this did not explain away anything. For Lords, physical regeneration of the body was a simple task. However, Lin Huang had not just simply severed the attackers hand; he had also severed a quantity of Odyl. If this was a regenerated hand, Odyl could not possibly circulate smoothly in the short term. Obviously, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang also looked at Zhan Zhuos hand at once. Ive been in closed-door cultivation for the last few days. Is there something I can help both of you with? Zhan Zhuo did not even ask Buried Heaven who Lin Huang was at all. However, although Zhan Zhuo did not so much as glance at him, Lin Huang sensed that he had surreptitiously used Divine Telekinesis to look him over. Buried Heaven took a step forward and said bluntly, A few days back, was it you who attempted a covert attack on me during unification?! Beside them, Zhan Guang raised his brows when he heard that. He had not expected Buried Heaven to be so straightforward. I have no idea what youre talking about. Zhan Zhuos eyelids twitched as he looked at Buried Heaven, his expression quite displeased. Have you considered the consequences of accusing a Lord like this? Oh, really? Buried Heaven turned his head to nod at Lin Huang. Bring it out. The minute Buried Heaven gave the word, Lin Huan retrieved the severed hand from his storage space. Almost as soon as the severed hand was taken out, it began struggling intensely, eager to go to where Zhan Zhuo was. However, several of Lin Huangs telekinetic threads secured it in a death grip, forcibly suppressing it. Zhan Guangs brow furrowed tightly when he saw what was happening. Although he had already been mentally prepared, feeling that Buried Heaven would not have come here without a strong case, he still found it hard to accept the evidence of his eyesthat the severed hand was clearly Zhan Zhuos. Do you have any other explanation for that? Buried Heaven stared at Zhan Zhuo coldly. Zhan Zhuo did not answer the question, nor did he continue feigning ignorance by asking what the hand was. Instead, he turned his head to look at Zhan Guang. You shouldnt have come. Covertly attacking an individual during unification is behavior that violates the God Territorys joint pact! Zhan Guangs expression was severe.Why did you do that?! The God Territorys joint pact? Zhan Zhuo gave a snort of laughter. Why would I bother obeying a childs game? Zhan Zhuo had completely revealed his true colors now. His gaze had finally settled on Lin Huang as well. I never thought that wed actually manage to lure you here, even though we were just attacking to test the waters. Lin Huangs heart sank when he heard that. Youre a Raider?! Zhan Zhuo smirked suddenly. I was merely guessing just now, so I used that simple sentence to test you. Who would have thought that you would betray yourself? Lin Huang frowned. Only travelers were aware of the Raiders existence. His question earlier had completely exposed his identity as a traveler. Youve not lived this life in vain, seeing that youll have two Lords as your burial companions. As soon as Zhan Zhuo finished speaking, the hand seals that he had been secretly performing within his sleeves suddenly took effect. The relief carvings on the bronze pillars in the palace seemed to come alive. Every single one of their auras was lord-level! Chapter 1630 - The Raiders’ Creed Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang frowned when they saw what was happening. Zhan Zhuo, are you out of your mind?! Zhan Guang realized that Zhan Zhuo was going to kill him as well. I already said you shouldnt have come. Zhan Zhuo turned his head to look at Zhan Guang, his eyes set with killing intent. After you brought them here, you could have just given an obligatory show of courtesy and left after you knocked and the door didnt open. You should have just let them figure something out. But no, you had to make threats, demanding I open the door so you could force me into confronting them. Senior Zhan Guang, you neednt indulge in wishful thinking anymore. From the moment this fellow opened the palace door, he already knew that his deeds would be exposed. From that instant as well, he never intended to leave any of us alive. Lin Huang did not use voice transmission; his voice resounded through the great palace. Youre absolutely right, Zhan Zhuo admitted frankly after hearing what Lin Huang said. I began setting up the palace ever since you teleported here. I opened the door because I had completed my preparations. What a pity all of you were so foolish as to step right into my carefully-prepared trap. One by one, the relief-carved monsters on the bronze pillars came alive and materialized in the palace. There were a full twenty to thirty of them, and the intensity of each of their auras was obviously lord-level. Buried Heaven and Zhan Guangs expressions were rather odd. Both of them could clearly sense that the monsters auras were very similar to that of the unification raptors. These dozen-over monsters soon split into three groups and charged at Lin Huang and the other two, respectively. When Zhan Guang saw this, he did not hold back any longer. He made a sweep with the Dao Weaponry spear in his hand, aiming at the monsters surrounding him. On the other end, Buried Heaven was frowning hard. He wanted to go to Lin Huangs rescue, but he was blocked by several monsters. Although he had roughly guessed that Lin Huang had severed Zhan Zhuos hand using his own inherent abilities and not some unique technique, he did not dare guarantee that his speculations were correct. If Lin Huang had indeed previously used the trump card that an Almighty had left for him, then what he faced now under the current circumstances was certain death. However, the next instant, Buried Heaven saw dozens of blood-red gleams shooting out from Lin Huangs sleeves. They shot through the air like dozens of lightning bolts. A moment later, the monsters charging at Lin Huang all toppled to the ground and did not get up again. Not only that, even the monsters that surrounded Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang all fell to the ground. When Buried Heaven took a closer look, he realized that all the monsters heads had been instantly impaled, and their Gods souls removed. This is your carefully prepared setup? Lin Huang took a step forward and asked Zhan Zhuo calmly. The flying daggers he used earlier were his elevated Dao Weapon-rank telekinetic god weapon. Each of the daggers had up over ten thousand levels of compounded sequence power. One could say that the power of each attack far surpassed Zhan Zhuos inherent full-force attack, what more the relief-carving combat spirits he had conjured up. For a moment, it was difficult for Buried Heaven to regain his composure. Although he had guessed long ago that Lin Huangs abilities might be astounding, Lin Huangs attack earlier had startled him a little. He could clearly sense that if he had been attacked by any of the flying daggers earlier, there was a very high chance that he would have been killed instantly. Nearby, Zhan Guang was dumbfounded. He had never expected that the heavenly god-level junior Buried Heaven had brought along possessed such terrifying abilityhe was powerful enough to suppress Zhan Guang himself. Zhan Guang had no idea what to say at the moment. Zhan Zhuos expression, on the other hand, was not very pleasant. Initially, he had thought he would win through numbers by draining the threes Divine Power. He had never expected that the first phase of his setup would be destroyed completely in just the first encounter. Although he had intentionally given Lin Huangs abilities as high an estimate as possible, Zhan Zhuo could not believe he had still underestimated him. Its too early for you to celebrate yet. Zhan Zhuo gave a cold snort. Lin Huang and the other two could clearly sense that more auras were rapidly awakening in the shadows all over the palace. The auras were similar to the twenty-over monsters, but they had doubled in number now. When they sensed the monsters auras again, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang were finally able to confirm that these monsters were unification raptors. They did not know what method Zhan Zhuo had used to summon so many unification raptors and seal them within the relief carvings of the ancient palace. What he had done subsequently was merely to unseal the carvings and release these raptors. In reality, the unification raptors were not very powerful in terms of ability. The most powerful one had only mastered less than two thousand god sequence chains. Most of the others had only mastered a thousand or so god sequence chains, which was on par with a new Lord who had just succeeded in unification. The trouble was that there were far too many raptors. If Lin Huang had not intervened earlier, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang would definitely have been sucked into a grueling battle that drained large quantities of their Divine Power. A subsequent second round would certainly have exhausted them to death. However, Lin Huang was now a variable within the ancient palace. The second round of monsters rapidly emerged from the relief carvings on the walls of the ancient palace and surrounded Lin Huang and the other two. Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang looked tense. There were over a hundred unification raptors surrounding them this time. Just the sheer numbers alone were enough to cause them psychological stress. However, Lin Huang remained calm. He shook his sleeves, and over a hundred telekinetic flying daggers turned into blood-red streams of light that traveled through the palace like fishes swimming. It was the mere work of a moment before the hundred or so unification raptors toppled to the ground. Their wounds were in the same placethe flying daggers had directly impaled their heads. After that, the bodies gradually blurred, then vanished. If thats all you have, stop wasting time continuing to fight. Surrender your partner willingly, and Ill make sure to give you a quick death. Lin Huang withdrew the telekinetic flying daggers and turned his head to look at Zhan Zhuo. From off to one side, Zhan Guang spoke as well, Stop persisting in the error of your ways! Do any of you know the nature of the raptors? Zhan Zhuo suddenly asked with a smirk. Lin Huang and the other two thought it ridiculous of Zhan Zhuo to ask such a thing out of nowhere. The world the raptors inhabit is called the virtual realm. What we know as raptors are actually the resident living beings of this virtual realm, Zhan Zhuo explained, heedless of anyone but himself. Do you know what the virtual realm is? he asked again. Lin Huang, Buried Heaven, and Zhan Guang had even more misgivings now. They could not figure out what Zhan Zhuo was trying to say at all. The virtual realm is the reflection of the material realm. The size of the material realm will be the size of the virtual realm. Its not just the whole universeit stretches even beyond that All of you are just ants with no idea of how vast this world truly is. The boundless great world that you see is essentially a speck of dust. Death Sickle, the Combat God Temple, the God Territory What of them, theyre just dust within the dust! To us Raiders, every living thing, every item, all the power, all the worldsin fact, everything that there istheyre targets for plundering as long as they bring us benefits! To me, the three of you will forever be mere targets to be plundered! As soon as Zhan Zhuo finished speaking, three Virtual Eyes opened in the vault of the heavens. They were like living eyes staring at Lin Huang and the other two. Chapter 1631 - The Voids Enjoy the big gift that Ive prepared for the three of you! The three Virtual Eyes in the void opened slowly, while Zhan Zhuos figure became increasingly indistinct as well, vanishing a moment later. Were in his God Territory. Buried Heaven frowned slightly. After undergoing unification just a few days ago, seeing the Virtual Eyes opening once again gave him a vague sense of unease. He must have shrouded the entire ancient palace with his God Territory before we entered. Zhan Guang seemed to have noticed this as well. However, I have no idea how he managed to do it and spontaneously open a passage to a virtual zone within his own God Territory. Under normal circumstances, the consolidation of a Dao seal during a Heavenly Gods unification would attract raptors. This process would be initiated by the raptors opening a passage from the virtual zone to come into the material realm. However, Zhan Zhuo had currently used some unknown method to spontaneously open a passage to the virtual zone on his own. As to what methods Zhan Zhuo had used, Lin Huang had a vague suspicion that it might be connected to the other partys Goldfinger. That was because he could not figure what other methods Zhan Zhou could have used to do this. Furthermore, ever since the beginning of the fight until now, Zhan Zhuo did not seem to have displayed his Goldfingers ability. If that were the case, it was entirely possible that communicating with the virtual realm was his Goldfingers ability. The auras emanating from the Virtual Eyes were becoming increasingly powerful. Lin Huang could even clearly sense that the aura radiating from one of the Virtual Eyes was already a threat to him. Zhan Guang and Buried Heaven looked grim as well. Both of them also clearly sensed that the monsters within the Virtual Eyes this time were much more powerful than those that Lin Huang had killed earlier. In particular, as the aura of the strongest monster began permeating through, both of them experienced the suffocating feeling that preceded death. Although they had seen Lin Huangs display of ability earlier, they did not think that he stood a chance of defeating this creature at all. Im mainly responsible for both of you ending up in this situation. I shouldnt have brought you in here, Zhan Guang apologized with a wry smile. He knew that if he had not led them in, Lin Huang and Buried Heaven would certainly not have entered the ancient palace recklessly, and they would not have fallen into Zhan Zhuos trap. Right now, we should be thinking more of how to deal with the impending threat. Buried Heaven glanced at Zhan Guang. Although he did not think they had very much chance of winning at all, he still had no intention of giving up just like that. In the Virtual Eyes, the figures of three monsters began to coalesce. If Im not wrong, these few monsters should have the same nature as the raptors; theyre attracted by our auras. Therefore, even if theyre more powerful than we are, they wont be that much more powerful. This ought to be a rule limitation when arriving from the virtual realm, Lin Huang ventured a guess. The reason for his speculation was that he sensed the strength of the three monsters auras, which was similar to their own auras. However, Lin Huang had been hiding his aura all along, so Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang could not sense it. That was why they had erred in supposing that his ability was much weaker than the most powerful monster of the three. In reality, if Lin Huang were to fully unmask his aura, it would not be very much weaker than that of the monster. So the most powerful one was attracted by your aura? Zhan Guang came to a sudden realization. I think so. Lin Huang nodded. Are you confident enough to fight the strongest monster? Buried Heaven turned his head to ask Lin Huang. If I dont use my trump card, maybe about fifty percent confident, Lin Huang admitted after thinking about it. Buried Heaven really wanted to follow up by asking, What if you used your trump card? Seeing Lin Huangs calm expression, however, he felt there was not much point to the question. Within the Virtual Eyes, the forms of the three monsters rapidly materialized. One was a giant ape monster, one was a black-armored cavalry soldier, and one looked almost entirely like a human. The one whose aura was so powerful it gave Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang the shudders was the humanoid fellow. His appearance was that of a handsome young man who looked to be in his early 20s. His hair was pulled up in a man bun, and he was clad in white. His build was slim, and his fingers were long and slender. If he were on Earth, this man would definitely be a top celebrity. Be it appearance or charisma, he made a definite impression. He was certainly the sort of person one would be unable to forget after merely meeting them once. The handsome mans gaze immediately fixed on Lin Huang. He did not even give Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang so much as a glance. The man smirked slightly after that. With one stride, he passed through the Virtual Eye and appeared not too far from Lin Huang. Youre human? The man in white asked Lin Huang directly. His tone was calm, without a trace of killing intent at all. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. He had previously determined that the enemies the three of them were about to face ought to be entities similar to raptors. However, this fellow in front of him did not look like a raptor no matter what. Not only that, he was even engaging in small talk with Lin Huang. Thats right. However, Lin Huang quickly regained his composure and asked immediately, Youre human too? Upon hearing that question, the expression in the mans eyes altered slightly. Human I was considered one in the past. How about now? Lin Huang followed up by asking. Now, Im a Void, the man in white answered with a smile, as if he felt this was nothing to be ashamed of. Li Huang became quite curious upon suddenly hearing the term Void. Are all living beings in the virtual realm called Voids? Your understanding is not wrong. The man in white nodded. You said you were human beforeso how did you become a Void? Lin Huang asked curiously. The smile on the man in whites face became rather mysterious upon hearing that question. Do you really want to know? I dont mind letting you experience it. Theres no need for that, Lin Huang declined at once, Can you explain what the virtual realm is like? Theres no color in the virtual realm. Everything is black and white. The man in white did not elaborate further. Black and white, and barren. Its not like your material realmrich and colorful and vibrant The man in white clearly displayed a look of yearning. Its so wonderful! Do you want to stay in the material realm? Lin Huang inquired. More precisely, I want to return to it. The man in white eyed Lin Huang and corrected him, All Voids wish to return to the material realm! Return This term caught Lin Huangs attention. Do you mean to say all of the Voids used to be living beings in the material realm? The man in white smiled when he heard Lin Huangs question. Some things are secrets that only Voids know. Are you sure you want to hear them? Lin Huang smiled awkwardly and without mirth when he heard the mans reply. During their conversation, the two monsters from the other two Virtual Eyes rapidly emerged as well. Seeing that, Lin Huang finally set aside his curiosity and got down to the subject matter. How were you able to enter the material realm this time without someone consolidating their Dao seal during unification? Someone opened the passage for us and offered the three of you to us as sacrifices for free. Lin Huang could not help frowning slightly when he heard the man in whites answer. At that moment, the two other monsters passed through the Virtual Eyes almost simultaneously. Their eyes locked onto Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang, respectively. Chapter 1632 - Dark Sword Both the monsters fully unleashed their auras as soon as they stepped out of the Virtual Eyes, targeting Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang respectively. Buried Heaven and Zhan Guangs nerves were also were taut. Both could clearly sense that the two monsters in front of them were no weaker in terms of ability. Right as both parties were on the verge of beginning a massive battle, the man in white suddenly turned his head to look at his two partners. A black battle sword suddenly appeared in his hand, and he swung out with it immediately. A circle of faint black fog seemed to spread through the air, piercing straight through the bodies of the two Voids. An instant later, both Voids were sliced in two. Immediately after that, their bisected bodies burst apart on the spot. Lin Huang, Buried Heaven, and Zhan Guang were stunned to see him attack. Lin Huang raised his brows. He could see that the man in whites Sword Dao attainment was higher than his own. This fellow must have consolidated a Sword seal and become a Lord. After their initial shock, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang felt goosebumps rising on their skin. The two monsters as powerful as themselves had been easily disposed of by the man in white. Not only that, he had killed both of them instantly with just one slash. This meant that the man in white possessed the fearsome ability to kill them both in one attack as well. I dont like being interrupted in a fight. The man in white calmly slid his sword back into its scabbard, as if what he had just done was something not worth mentioning. These words made Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang tense up. The man in white seemed to guess their thoughts. He smirked lightly. Dont worry, I have no interest in the two of you. However, if this fellow loses, after I kill him, I dont mind taking both of you as well so you can be his escorts. Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang were bereft of speech when they heard this. The two of them were overlord-rank personages in the God Territory. They had never expected to be reduced to someone elses escorts once they arrived here. However, after witnessing the man in whites display of ability, they did not dare to refute his words. After all, he was a terrifying entity who could kill both of them immediately. Lin Huang, on the other hand, did not seem to be shocked by the man in whites ability at all. I have another question. Lin Huang gestured to the spot where the two Voids had been killed. Their corpse remains had vanished completely. Do Voids die after theyre killed? Or do they return to the virtual realm? The man in white smiled when he heard Lin Huangs question. Voids can only be expelled from the material realm. They cant be killed. Then after a person undergoing unification kills a raptor, whats the true spirit that gets left behind? Thats the price to pay for accepting a Dao plundering contract, the man in white paused, then elaborated more in detail, Under normal circumstances, Voids must pay a price to enter the material realm. To plunder a unification Dao seal, they must sign a Dao plundering contract. The minute the plundering fails, theyll be stripped of a portion of their Origin Energy. Its rather appropriate that you call it true spirit. This is whats known as Heavenly Dao balance. When theres a catastrophe, there will be good fortune also. Every gain has its price. Just like how Im answering your questions and helping all of you expel those two VoidsIm actually paying a price first. Although on the surface it seems as if it cost nothing for me to come to the material realm this time, I know that if I kill all of you without paying something, therell be a bigger price for me to pay later. Lin Huang was somewhat speechless after hearing what the man in white had to say. Naturally, he was aware of the gain some, lose some theory. However, the man in white seemed to wholeheartedly regard it as an absolute law by which things worked. All along, Lin Huang had been curious why the man in white was so easy to talk to and why he answered almost everything Lin Huang asked. It turned out that the other party had drawn up this set of peculiar rules that governed his behavior. In that case, what if I kill you instead? Lin Huang asked mockingly, Wouldnt you have paid that price in vain then? If thats the case, Id be even happier. The man in white smiled. You would expel me back to the virtual realm so I wouldnt gain anything this time. In that case, Id definitely be able to gain even more at some point in the future. Lin Huang was speechless when he heard the man in whites perfect circular logic. Do you have any more questions? If not, lets begin as soon as possible. After all, the time I have here is limited. The man in whites tone remained amiable; he did not display any trace of enmity at all toward Lin Huang. One last question. Lin Huang thought about it and felt he had asked almost everything necessary. If he asked any further about the virtual realms secrets, the man probably would not answer him either. How do I address you? You mean my name? The man in white did not answer the question right away. Instead, he lifted his head to look at the ceiling of the ancient palace as if he were trying to recall something. I dont remember anymore Names have no meaning in the virtual realm. We simply give ourselves a codename. My codename isDark Sword. Lin Huang looked at the black sword that the man in white held. He guessed that this black sword must be the source of his codename. Alright, I have no more questions. An inky-black, narrow-bladed sword coalesced in Lin Huangs hand as soon as he finished speaking. An excellent sword! Dark Sword could not help complimenting Lin Huang when he saw the God Weapon in Lin Huangs hand. Yours isnt too shabby either. Lin Huang could tell that Dark Swords blade was a Dao Weapon also. Almost at the same time that Lin Huang finished speaking, both their figures vanished immediately on the spot. Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang could only catch two afterimages, even after boosting their vision to its limit. Their Divine Telekinesis was able to capture the movement trajectories of the two figures, but their speed had clearly far exceeded the speed of Buried Heaven and Zhan Guangs reactions. The two figures clashed immediately. Two black swordsone narrow and long, the other broad and thickunleashed Divine Power full force once they clashed together. At the moment of impact between both parties Divine Power, Odyl began to spread. It was like two waves rippling together, causing mutual interference. Violent winds sprang up endlessly from all four directions. Lin Huang had yet to consolidate a Dao seal, but he had a complete Sword seal within him. This Sword seal was what the Sword Scripture from before had transformed into. In the past, Lin Huang could not activate the Odylic Force within it. However, as his Gods souls strength elevated to lord-level, he realized that he could borrow the use of the Odylic Force within the Sword seal. At the level of his previous battles, though, he had been able to resolve things easily without resorting to the use of Odyl. Now that he was facing a strong enemy like Dark Sword, he could no longer conceal his strength. He could clearly sense that if he continued to do so, he might end up being killed by his opponent. Buried Heaven was utterly shocked when he saw Lin Huang using Odyl. He knew that Lin Huang was only heavenly god-level and had not undergone unification yet. Theoretically speaking, one could not have a Dao seal within them without undergoing unification, which meant that it was impossible to spawn Odylic Force. However, Lin Huang was now using Odylic Force in front of Buried Heavens very eyes. Zhan Guang did not know any of this. Since witnessing Lin Huangs attack, he had thought all along that Lin Huang was a Lord, just like him. He thought Lin Huang was merely feigning heavenly god-level combat strength. However, Lin Huang was the only one who knew that he was only borrowing the use of Odylic Force. Not only that, due to the limitations of his physical strength, he could not sustain this borrowed usage for very long. After all, the hardiness of his physical body was merely near lord-level right nowit was still not at lord-level yet. In this battle, he had to kill his opponent as quickly as possible! The longer things dragged on, the worse it would be for him. Chapter 1633 - Have You Seen Enough Yet?! Inside the massive palace, the two figures clashed ceaselessly. Black and red electric arcs intersected continuously. Every time they collided, they generated terrifying Divine Power aftermath. Even two Lords like Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang could barely watch the battle at close quarters in the face of such intense Divine Power aftermath. They were forced to retreat over ten kilometers away. After a mere two to three minutes of fighting, Lin Huang and Dark Sword had clashed hundreds upon thousands of times over. These hundreds upon thousands of encounters gave them insight into each others abilities. In terms of Sword Dao attainment, Dark Sword was more powerful. However, Lin Huang could borrow the use of more sequence powers than Dark Sword. These pros and cons balanced out the abilities of both combatants to the same level. However, Lin Huang knew very well that Dark Sword surpassed him in terms of Sword Dao skills. After all, he was a lord-level powerhouse who had consolidated a true Sword seal. Lin Huang did not feel pressured by that. To him, battling an opponent who was also a Sword Dao powerhouse like himself was the perfect opportunity to study and test everything he had learned. On his part, Dark Sword was roughly able to determine Lin Huangs level. Based on Sword Dao alone, Lin Huang was no match for him. However, Lin Huangs overall ability was by no means inferior to his own. Despite the hundreds and thousands of encounters, he had not been able to gain the upper hand at all. After a moment of thought, he began to change his style of fighting. He used his sword and forced Lin Huang to retreat. However, this time, he did not engage in a direct confrontation with Lin Huang. Instead, he thrust from a distance with the point of his sword. An instant later, countless crystal blades swiftly began to form in front of him. This assault no longer utilized pure Sword Dao alone. Instead, it was powered mainly by the Odylic Forces of both Ice Element and Sword Dao. Lin Huang knew right then that the warm-up had ended. He only had one Sword seal within him, as well as merely level-1 Odyl. If he were to counter Dark Sword purely by using Sword Dao, that would be biting off more than he could chew. He shook his sleeves, and over ten thousand telekinetic flying daggers shot out like blood-red lightning bolts, colliding with the white crystal blades. The intensity of his Divine Power was already at peak lower-rank lord-level. With the addition of Sword Dao Odyl and over ten thousand compounded levels of sequence power, he shattered the crystal sword gleams easily. Dark Sword had initially thought he could suppress Lin Huang with that attack. He had never expected that Lin Huangs attack would catch him by surprise. Seeing that blood-red lightning bolts were besieging him from every direction, Dark Sword did not dare to hold back anymore. He attacked with water, fire, wind, and lightning Odylic Forces all at once. Compounded with Sword Dao Odylic Force, they formed swathes of Sword Energy swirling with Dao tattoos. The aura of each swathe was so powerful that Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang shuddered as they watched from the sidelines. They could almost imagine that if they were the ones on the battlefield, they might have died countless times already. In the void, over ten thousand swathes of terrifying Sword Energy formed in just the blink of an eye. However, this number seemed to be the limit of what Dark Sword could consolidate. After all, this trump card was an extreme drain on his Divine Power. The swathes of Sword Energy shot forth at an even more terrifying speed than before. They were also multiple times more powerful. As they collided with Lin Huangs telekinetic flying daggers, the daggers ricocheted off them. Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows when he saw what was happening. Dark Swords current attack was compounded with level-5 Odylic Force. In comparison, Lin Huangs telekinetic flying daggers were enveloped in level-1 Odylic Force; they could not give him any sort of advantage. Watching the swathes of Sword Energy surging toward him after causing his telekinetic flying daggers to ricochet, Lin Huang did not panic at all. More telekinetic flying daggers shot out from his sleeves. Each of them was compounded with Sword Dao Odylic Force and over ten thousand levels of sequence power. Within the blink of an eye, the telekinetic flying daggers in the void had multiplied to over one million in number and continued to increase. They did not seem as if they would stop anytime soon. Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang were somewhat stunned as they watched what was happening. The sky was filled with blood-red electric arcs that almost blotted out the heavens. How many telekinetic flying threads can this fellow divide his Divine Telekinesis into?! Thats not the only issue eitherhis telekinetic Dao Weaponry can split into far too many flying daggers! As Lin Huangs opponent, Dark Sword experienced a similar shock. He could tell that Lin Huangs telekinetic weapon had evolved from a God Weapon. He was not surprised at all by the number of flying daggers, but he was indeed shocked by the number of telekinetic threads Lin Huang was able to divide his Divine Telekinesis into. In general, lord-level powerhouses could certainly divide their Divine Telekinesis into over a million units. However, to be able to achieve what Lin Huang was doing was bizarre. Not only could he divide his Divine Telekinesis into such a vast number of telekinetic threads, but he could manipulate each thread like fingers. Apart from the three people present, there was also someone else secretly watching the battle, who was utterly astounded as well. After leaving his God Territory, Zhan Zhuo had actually been covertly watching the battle happening inside his God Territory. When Dark Sword displayed his true ability, he thought that Lin Huang would be defeated. He had never expected that Lin Huangs ability would be on par with Dark Sword. This round of battle completely turned everything he had imagined upside downeven more than before. Dark Sword had already compounded his attack with level-5 Odylic Force. However, using merely level-1 Odylic Force, Lin Huang had found his own way to forcefully suppress Dark Swords lethal attack by countering with sheer numbers of flying daggers. Lin Huang had certainly used that rationale. Since he only possessed level-1 Odylic Force, which was not enough to defeat Dark Sword, he would overpower him by sheer numbers. If he could not drain Dark Swords Sword Energy in one clash, then he would clash with him ten times, a hundred times, even a thousand times! He wanted to whittle down the layers of Sword Energy one by one! That was what he was doing by using the telekinetic flying daggers to surround the swathes of Sword Energy and besiege them. Very soon, the Odyl on the Sword Energy was stripped away one layer at a time and eventually destroyed altogether. In contrast, Lin Huangs flying daggers had not decreased at all. Instead, they had now accumulated to over ten million in number. One needed to be aware that these flying daggers were a bona fide Dao Weapon. Even if the outer layers of Odylic Force and sequence power were destroyed, the Dao Weapon itself would not be damaged. Watching himself surrounded by over ten million flying daggers, Dark Sword knew that he had lost the battle. The attack earlier was already his lethal move; it had drained ninety percent of the Divine Power within him. Lin Huang had successfully countered Dark Swords assault; the Void no longer had the capacity to fight. Dark Sword did not bother to try and mount a defense. Instead, he slid his sword back into its scabbard and looked at Lin Huang with a smile. Ive lost this battle. I feel well probably encounter each other again, though. I hope youll have become even more powerful when we next meet! If we do have a chance to meet again, I also hope that Ill be able to defeat you with my sword! Lin Huang nodded slightly. The minute he finished speaking, all ten million or more telekinetic flying daggers shot forth at almost the same time. They turned into an endless blood-red lightning storm that utterly swallowed up Dark Swords figure. A moment later, the last Virtual Eye in the sky gradually closed, then vanished from sight. Lin Huang lifted his head and looked at the sky. Zhan Zhuo, have you seen enough yet? Almost simultaneously, Lin Huang attacked again. The ten million or more telekinetic flying daggers hurtled toward the heavens. In an instant, the entire world seemed to be deluged with lightning raining down from the sky. In just the time it took for a few breaths, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang saw that the ceiling of the massive palace had split open immediately. Chapter 1634 - Holding Zhan Zhuo Captive Lin Huang, Buried Heaven, and Zhan Guang were preparing to fly through the crack in the ceiling, but suddenly the view in front of them began shaking violently. Zhan Zhuo had directly teleported them out. Clearly, he was worried that Lin Huang would really destroy his Kingdom, so he teleported all of them out with no hesitation at all. The three of them had only just managed to find stable footing when they immediately felt an intensely powerful suction force pulling at them. Instantly, they could not stop themselves from shooting backward toward the door of the massive palace. Zhan Zhuo was evidently manipulating the ancient palace into ejecting them. Lin Huang made a prompt decision. His telekinetic flying daggers turned into a blood-red stream of light that surged toward Zhan Zhuo in an attack. He knew that if they were really ejected out of the ancient palace, it would be hard for them to act against Zhan Zhuo again. A Dao Weapon ancient palaces defenses like these were not something Lin Huang would be able to breach on his own. Not only that, there was usually a teleportation function. As soon as the three of them left the dimension that the ancient palace was in, Zhan Zhuo would certainly activate the ancient palace and flee immediately. It would be extremely difficult to find him again. Zhan Zhuo did not dare hold back any of his abilities after seeing Lin Huangs ten million or more telekinetic flying daggers coming at him. The Dao Weaponry in his hand formed countless saber gleams that charged toward the telekinetic flying daggers. Each saber gleam was compounded with level-3 Odylic Force, as well as over five thousand levels of sequence power. Although they were not as numerous as the telekinetic flying daggers, they sent Lin Huangs telekinetic flying daggerswhich were almost completely drained of Divine Powerricocheting away with ease. Lin Huangs telekinetic flying daggers this round were the same ones he had used to battle Dark Shadow earlier. Even the Divine Power on them had basically been completely stripped away, let alone any Odylic Force. Now that he was encountering an attack from Zhan Zhuo, who was at his peak, it was inevitable that Lin Huang seemed somewhat tired. Seeing that the three of them were about to be forcibly driven to the door of the palace, Lin Huang smirked without a trace of panic. His fingers moved slightly after that. The next second, Zhan Zhuos movements were suddenly halted. Right after this, his figure flew in Lin Huangs direction at a speed more than several times faster. However, his movements were peculiar no matter how one looked at them. He seemed to be tied up by something and could not move a muscle. Not only that, it was very evident that he was hurtling toward Lin Huang entirely not of his own volition. It looked more like something was pulling him over. At first, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang were stunned, but subsequently, they realized that Lin Huang had done this using telekinetic threads. Although his telekinetic flying daggers had ricocheted away, the telekinetic threads had secretly entangled themselves around Zhan Zhuos body one by one without him realizing it at all. At the very last critical moment, Lin Huang was finally able to close the net on his opponent. Even if Zhan Zhuo had regrets, it was too late now. Against his will, his body was pulled along by Lin Huangs telekinetic threads as he too was driven out of the ancient palace by its force of repulsion. He looked at the swiftly-closing great door of the ancient palace as well as his feet at the bottom of the palace steps, then at the three people who were watching him like a hawk. Zhan Zhuo felt a little like crying, but he could not muster up the tears. He could only blame the ancient palace for being too intelligent and immediately carrying out the ejection order he had given. By the time he was able to react and wished to cancel and amend his order, Lin Huang had already dragged him out of the massive palace. Its a little late now for you to think of escaping. As Lin Huang spoke, the narrow blade in his hand was already against Zhan Zhuos neck. The razor-sharp sword sliced a faint, bloody wound across his neck. Zhan Zhuo could clearly sense the pain and the faint trace of coldness emanating from his neck. Who is your partner who attacked Death Sickles headquarters? Buried Heaven asked immediately, seeing that Zhan Zhuo was now being held captive. Zhan Zhuo glared at Buried Heaven with no small amount of disdain. Do you think Im going to tell you? Ill slaughter you if you dont! The battle sword in Lin Huangs hand pushed down two centimeters deeper, cutting into the flesh of Zhan Zhuos neck. Blood began to flow from the wound. Zhan Zhuo could even clearly sense the warm blood slowly trickling from his neck to his collarbone. It continued to drip down. At this point, Zhan Guang finally spoke as well. You should be very aware how our Combat God Temple interrogates traitors in our midst. Zhan Zhuo was evidently swayed from his stubbornness by what Zhan Guang had said. I dont know who he is, only that hes not from the God Territory. There arent that many Raiders in the great world. For safety, we dont know each others real identities. The only thing we know is each others codenames. That fellows codename is Babble. I only know that his abilities should be higher than mine. If you dont know each others identity, then how do you get in contact? Lin Huang asked with a slight frown. All our missions are assigned by a superior, and he assigns our collaborators as well, Zhan Zhuo continued after he finished, For this mission, both of us worked separately. We actually had no contact with each other at all. Our superior set a time for us and told us to go into action at the same time. So you can only contact your superior? Lin Huang asked again. He can contact me, but I cant contact him. Zhan Zhuo shook his head. What if something major happens and you need to contact him? Generally, we try to resolve any problems ourselves. However, if its something really major, Spy would know, and theyd contact a superior. Thats Spys specific duty; its not part of our job scope. Is Spy someones codename? Or is it the job title of a group of people? Lin Huang pursued the matter further. Im not too sure about this. I think both are possible, Zhan Zhuo replied after thinking for a moment. Can you contact Spy? I cant, only he can contact me, Zhan Zhuo finished speaking, then added, I think we should skip any discussion of him. Ive had a vague feeling all along that hes more dangerous than my superior. Spy knows everything. He might be watching everything that were doing now. Lin Huang narrowed his eyes slightly at this point. He vaguely thought of someone. Tell me about the inner organization of the Raiders, such as the members ranking, their combat strength, their job scopes The members ranking system is very simple. Its grade-1 to grade-5, from lowest to highest. Its mainly related to their combat strength. Lower-rank Lords are basically grade-1, middle-rank Lords would be grade-2, upper-rank Lords would be grade-3, and ultimate-rank Lords would be grade-4. Above that would be grade-5 for individuals who are above the level of Lords. From what Ive heard, grade-5 is the highest rank. As to whether they have any higher rankings than that, this Im not sure about. After all, theres a lot of information that I cant see with my grade-1 authorization. So your superior is grade-2, as well as that Spy entity? Im not sure about Spy, but my superior is at least grade-2. Otherwise, it wouldnt be possible for him to be in command of all matters in the entire great world, Zhan Zhuo said with absolute certainty. How many members are there in our great world? Lin Huang asked again. I dont know the exact number. There are four people with different code names whom Ive worked with. So, including myself, my superior, and Spy, there are at least seven of us. However, my guess is that there wont be more than ten, Zhan Zhuo hazarded a guess. Chapter 1635 - Killing Zhan Zhuo Lin Huang tried his best to milk Zhan Zhuo for any information regarding the Raiders. Zhan Zhuo seemed to have given up as well and answered as best as he could. However, Lin Huang soon realized that what Zhan Zhuo told him did not get to the core of the Raiders. Clearly, he was restricted by authorization and only had access to superficial information. He only knew the codenames of the four people he had collaborated with. As for the rest, he did not know anything more. Tell me about the mission you were given this time. Also, why did you attack Buried Heaven and Death Sickle? Seeing that he was not able to gain any more information about the Raiders, Lin Huang switched topics and began asking about the details of this recent mission. This mission was actually a one-off affair to test the waters. Attempting to kill Buried Heaven and destroying Death Sickle was just something incidental along the way. This whole thing came about because previously, someone had assassinated powerhouses consecutively on the Heavenly God Leaderboard. We suspected the individual in question was a traveler. Zhan Zhuo glanced at Lin Huang at this point. Clearly, he already knew that the one responsible for the killings was Lin Huang, the one standing before him now. In the process of investigating this travelers identity, we came across Death Sickle and inadvertently discovered that Buried Heaven was about to perform unification soon. We felt that it was an opportunity to kill several birds with one stone. For one, if we got rid of Buried Heaven and nipped things in the bud, it would be the equivalent of destroying Death Sickles chances of elevating to a grade-7 organization. Once Death Sickle elevated to grade-7, there would be a significant increase of difficulty in many of the missions targeting them. For another, we discovered that you were the one who killed the powerhouses on the Heavenly God Leaderboard previously. Furthermore, youre close to Buried Heaven. If he died, you would lose your backing, which would make it easier for us to move against you. Thirdly, we wanted to weaken Death Sickle and decrease their popularity. This would benefit us in our covert scheme to take over Death Sickle in the future. For you to accurately obtain Buried Heavens unification coordinates, it ought to have been one of the Blood Sickle members from Death Sickle who leaked the information, right? Who exactly was your informant?! Lin Huang continued to pursue the matter. This, I dont know. However, I suspect that the coordinates being leaked has something to do with Babble. He might very well have used some sort of technique on one of the Blood Sickle members. Im not sure exactly what he did. So you found out about my identity through the Blood Sickle authorization, including the fact that I accepted Death Sickles missions anonymously to kill those fellows on the Heavenly God Leaderboard. Lin Huang had actually long since suspected that his identity had already been exposed. However, he had not expected that Zhan Zhuo would verify this. Yes. It was only after discovering your identity that we began to suspect you might be a traveler. However, it was merely an unconfirmed suspicion. Our initial plan was to kill Buried Heaven first and move against you after that. Didnt you intend to confirm my identity as a traveler first, then directly attack me? Lin Huang was rather confused. There s no need for any confirmation. Xhan Zhuo shook his head. If you were truly a traveler and we disposed of you right away, that would be equivalent to eradicating any future problems. If you werent a traveler, wed just be killing a Heavenly God by mistake. As far as were concerned, wed rather kill the wrong person than let the chance slip by! You really treat lives like nothing at all. Lin Huang could not help sneering when he heard that. Why did you murder Old Sun then? Lin Huang raised a new point of doubt. Im not sure exactly what mission Babble was entrusted with. Sun Zhan was no threat to us at all. I think Babble might have killed him because he was alone and an easy target. Naturally, we cant rule out the possibility that Sun Zhan was the spy that Babble set up. If so, he was killed to silence him. Buried Heaven was simmering with rage at this point. Since they had both been combat cultivators, he and Sun Zhan had gotten along very well all this time and had often sparred with each other. It could even be said that out of the seven Blood Sickles, Sun Zhan had been the one closest to him. In reality, Sun Zhans death was what had upset Buried Heaven the most, even more so than being covertly attacked. Based on what youve said, your main target this time was actually me. So how far did your investigations go, and what did you find out? Lin Huang glanced at Zhan Guang; he did not mind that the man was standing on the sidelines and listening to what was being said. We know everything that a Blood Sickle member of Death Sickle would know. We know that you have two identities in Death Sickleone is Xiu Mu, and the other is Xie Lin. We also know that youre actually a human. Your real name is Lin Huang, and you come from an unknown gravel world. We suspected that you were most probably a traveler because the rate of your combat strength elevation is just too astounding. Furthermore, the abilities youve displayed are also very unusual. However, all along, there hasnt been enough evidence to prove this. Even when you severed my hand during Buried Heavens unification, at the time, I merely thought that you had a trump card left to you by an Almighty. I didnt think you were using your true ability. It wasnt until I tricked you into admitting it in the palace earlier that I was able to officially confirm that youre a traveler. So the others dont know the latest news? Lin Huang raised his brows at this point. Zhan Zhuo heard the underlying killing intent concealed in Lin Huangs words. Honestly, it doesnt matter whether we verify your identity or not. When we found your real identity information on Death Sickle, you were already put on the Raiders list of individuals who were marked for death. It doesnt matter if youre a reincarnated being, a traveler, the chosen one, the reincarnation of an Almighty, or something else entirely. It wont change the fact that youre already on the death list. Since Im your target and youve already discovered my identity, why didnt you attack me directly? Lin Huang voiced out the biggest point of confusion he had up to this point. We didnt know your coordinates. Someone with Blood Sickle authorization wiped out your mailing addresses completely. Even your sender information was deleted as well. We couldnt find out who the senders were. Thats why we changed our target to Buried Heaven instead. We thought wed kill him first, then wait for you to show yourself. I was the one who deleted your mailing information and sender information, Buried Heaven could not help speaking up at this point, Not long after I elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level, a few of the Blood Sickle members gave me Death Sickles Blood Sickle-level authorization access. Very few of the Blood Sickle members knew about this. Ive been continuously deleting your mailing address and sender information because one of the Blood Sickle members is rather biased against humans. He complained about your hidden identity during meetings more than once. I was worried that hed stir up trouble for you, Buried Heaven explained. No wonder I had to fill in my address and contact number every time I accepted missions. I thought Death Sickles forum deleted them automatically for confidentiality purposes. I figured everyone had to do the same This was something Lin Huang had not expected. Buried Heavens actions had certainly protected Lin Huang and the Sword Alliance, but it had brought disaster upon himself as well as Death Sickle. Lin Huang also realized that Death Sickle had indeed taken the fall for him. After Lin Huang had asked Zhan Zhuo almost everything that he wanted to know, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang took turns to interrogate him. Zhan Zhuo was also very much aware of the situation he was in and answered everything that he could. He cooperated with them also because he wanted a chance to stay alive. After Zhan Guang finished his interrogation, he looked at Lin Huang. Young Lin, will you let us handle Zhan Zhuo? He belongs to the Combat God Temple, after all. We can compensate you accordingly. Its not that I dont want to hand him over to you alive. Lin Huang looked at Zhan Guang, his expression very serious. But if you bring him back to the Combat God Temple, youll only bring disaster upon yourselves. The Raiders would never allow any of their members to be captured alive. You heard it yourself earlier. There are at least seven Raiders in this great world were in right now. Each of them possesses abilities that are on par with Zhan Zhuo; in fact, theyre even more powerful. Not only that, theres at least one middle-rank Lord. Zhan Guangs lips moved, but in the end, he did not raise any objections. Indeed, he had not thoroughly thought things through earlier. He felt that since Zhan Zhuo was a member of the Combat God Temple, it only made sense that the Combat God Temple should handle the matter. Lin Huangs analysis made him break out in a cold sweat. The trouble Zhan Zhuo would bring down upon their heads would far exceed what the Combat God Temple could handle. Zhan Guang was not sure if there were any middle-rank Lords left in this great world. However, he knew that there were none in the Combat God Temple. All the Raiders had to do was send a middle-rank Lord; they could easily annihilate the entire Combat God Temple. Protect the traitor Zhan Zhuo, or protect the Combat God TempleZhan Guang rapidly made his decision. Seeing that Zhan Guang was not saying anything anymore, Lin Huang smirked and looked at Zhan Zhuo. You cant kill me Zhan Zhuo had not even finished speaking before a blood-red sword gleam sliced across his neck. An instant later, one generation of the Combat God Temples Lords had his head severed. A grayish-black stream of light silently escaped from between Zhan Zhuos brows and directly penetrated into Lin Huangs body. However, Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang did not notice this at all. I wont leave you his corpse either. Lin Huangs tone did not sound like he was going to discuss this with Zhan Guang. He put Zhan Zhuos corpse and its head into his storage space. If someone from the Raiders comes to look for you, tell them that I killed Zhan Zhuo, and I took his body away. After seeing to the body, Lin Huang did not bother with any niceties. He looked at Zhan Zhuos ancient palace and headed straight for it. Zhan Zhuo was dead. Naturally, this ancient palace had no owner now. However, Zhan Guang had no intention of fighting over this. For one, he was certainly no match for Lin Huang. For another, it was Lin Huang who had killed Zhan Zhuo, so it was only fitting that he collected the spoils. After subduing the ancient palace, Lin Huang did a sweep with Divine Telekinesis and made sure that nothing had been left behind. Only then did he bid farewell to Buried Heaven and Zhan Guang. Chapter 1636 - My Suggestion: Just Run Away! Death Sickles headquarters, inside Buried Heavens office. Buried Heaven blocked the room off from the outside world as soon as he got there. What exactly are these Raiders, travelers, and reincarnated beings that you and Zhan Zhuo were talking about earlier? Although Buried Heaven had heard Zhan Zhuo speaking about many secrets earlier, he did not really understand what exactly these entities known as Raiders, travelers, and reincarnated beings were. Right now, I cant explain any of this to you in detail. Moreover, the more you know, the more problems you may bring down upon yourself. Lin Huang had no intention of elaborating much further. I can only tell you that the Raiders are an evil organization. Any and all outstanding genius powerhouses are their targets. This group of people will do anything to become more powerful. I even know of Raiders who are willing to wait for tens of thousands of years to be able to gradually get close to their target, disguising themselves as their victims best friend just to plunder a treasure they possessed. Buried Heaven felt a chill run down his back when he heard this. After a moment of silence, he could not help asking a question. Do you really intend to fight these fellows on your own? If its like you saidthat the other Raiders possess abilities on par with Zhan Zhuo or are perhaps even more powerful than himI dont think youll be able to go up against them at your current level of ability. My current abilities arent powerful enough to go up against them, thats true. However, my abilities will elevate. Not only that, Im not alone. In reality, Lin Huang had already roughly put together a counter-strategy. Why didnt you get the Combat God Temple fully involved? Buried Heaven asked again, As long as you turned Zhan Zhuo over to Zhan Guang, the Raiders first target would definitely be the Combat God Temple. The Combat God Temple would have had to think of a way to deal with the Raiders, no matter what, when the time came. Furthermore, the Combat God Temple is a veteran grade-7 organization in the God Territory. Given their reputation and the right price, it would be no trouble at all to get Lords from the other grade-7 organizations to help. They might even be able to contend with one or two Raiders. If I did turn Zhan Zhuo over to the Combat God Temple alive, the end result would more likely be the Combat God Temple coming to an agreement with the Raiders. Theyd give Zhan Zhuo back instead of fighting them. Lin Huang shook his head at that. A middle-rank Lord is just too powerful a threat. The Combat God Temple wouldnt make an enemy of a middle-rank Lord just for one Zhan Zhuo. Thats true. The great worlds resources arent sufficient to support a middle-rank Lords cultivation. Most of the Lords in the major organizations head to the universe after consolidating a level-7 or level-8 Dao seal, what more those middle-rank Lords who consolidate level-10 Dao seals. Buried Heaven nodded slightly, frowning. Ill find my own solution to this matter of the Raiders. If I really cant handle them, I can always hide, Lin Huang continued after that, You and Death Sickle shouldnt involve yourselves with this anymore. Buried Heaven looked a little displeased, but he knew what Lin Huang meant. Lin Huang was a lone ranger. If he were truly unable to fight the Raiders, he could still go on the run. However, Death Sickle was an organization with many members. If they were really targeted by Raiders, they would not be able to escape. In the next few days, you need to quickly announce the news of your elevation to lord-level and make Death Sickle a grade-7 organization as soon as possible. Once Death Sickle becomes a grade-7 organization, theyll be in the limelight, at least for the immediate future. Under the circumstances, the Raiders wont risk becoming a public enemy of the God Territory by openly attacking Death Sickle. As for Old Sun, dont continue with your investigations. Let me handle it. Ill definitely avenge him for you. Also, there has to be a spy who leaked the coordinates for your unification. Not only that, it must be one of the seven Blood Sickle members. There might even be more than one spy. Whether Old Sun was killed by the spy or not, the remaining six of you need to be on your guard, Lin Huang issued a reminder. I know. Buried Heaven was still frowning. Lin Huang only left after he had chatted for a while with Buried Heaven regarding matters in Death Sickle. Upon his return to the Pfister Star in the Devil Hunter Star Zone, Lin Huang had Hong Zhuang unlock Zhan Zhuos storage ring at the first available opportunity. He then put Zhan Zhuos ancient palace up for bid on Royals auction site. The requirement for trading was still half-step Lords God Territories regardless of type. As for the auction period, it would only be listed for 24 hours. The Raiders might hunt him down at any time. This timeframe was the longest he could wait. After he settled these matters, he went to Sword1 and had him organize the Sword Alliances members so they could begin evacuating all of the Pfister Stars residents. Lin Huang had already told Buried Heaven not to resist and to just tell the Raiders where he was if they went to Death Sickle and demanded to know his whereabouts. It was only a matter of time before the Raiders would find this place. As soon as the war began, anyone below lord-level would basically die. Initially, Sword1 wanted to ask for more details. However, seeing that Lin Huang was unwilling to explain further, he refrained in the end. He had a vague feeling that this had to be related to the Raiders. Sword1, who had all along been supremely confident in his own abilities, was aware of how terrifying the Raiders were. He also knew that he could not be of much help until he elevated to become a Lord. After returning to his courtyard, Lin Huang sat down on a stone bench in the pavilion. He turned on his communicator and looked for Virtuosos name on the message page. After staring at Virtuosos name and pondering for a little while, he composed a message and sent it. Ive been targeted by Raiders. A moment later, a sudden video call request came in from Virtuoso. As soon as Lin Huang connected the call, Virtuosos masked figure was projected into the pavilion. What happened?! How did you manage to offend the Raiders out of the blue? I killed one of their members. Theyre likely to catch up with me soon, Lin Huang said with a chuckle. Are the Raiders in this world so weak? Virtuoso was rather confused. From what I know, they usually wont recruit members below lord-level. I killed a Lord, Lin Huang explained. He did not really mind revealing a little bit of his ability in front of Virtuoso. This was because, in a few days, he would be elevating his abilities again. Virtuoso was clearly stunned for a second. They asked immediately, What level is your combat strength now?! Im currently at eighth-rank. Lin Huang did not hide the fact. So fast?! Virtuoso exclaimed involuntarily, A Goldfinger that can elevate your combat strength at lightning speed Id like to have one too! Virtuoso was obviously under the mistaken impression that the abilities of Lin Huangs Goldfinger focused primarily on combat strength elevation. To be able to kill a Lord at eighth-rankyoure quite something, Virtuoso complimented. Dont just keep flattering me; help me think of a solution, Lin Huang said, smiling, If I cant resolve this current threat, its very likely Ill be a cold corpse in a few days. I think you can probably get those few fellows from the Club to help, Virtuoso suggested after some thought. Out of those three people in the Club, are any of them middle-rank Lords? Lin Huang asked immediately. He was not actually afraid of most of the Raiders members. The ones he was worried about were that grade-2 member and the one named Spy, who was suspected to be grade-2 as well. This Im not too sure about, but my guess is no. Middle-rank Lords generally go to the universe instead of staying here. Virtuoso shrugged, then looked at Lin Huang. Are you sure theres a middle-rank Lord among this worlds Raiders? Theres definitely one for sure, and theres another who might be. Lin Huang did not hide this from Virtuoso. Virtuoso fell silent for a moment after hearing that, cupping their chin in their hand. Only after a long moment did they lift their head. If youre really not able to handle them, youd better run. Head to the universe with your current abilities, youll more or less be able to protect yourself anyway. Lin Huang was rendered speechless upon hearing this suggestion. Chapter 1637 - The Gate of All Realms After Lin Huang ended his call with Virtuoso, Virtuoso very quickly sent over three other Club members numbers. Lin Huang saved the three numbers and composed a message which he then sent to the three of them. Greetings, respected seniors. Im the Clubs new member, Xiu Mu. I killed a Raider by the codename of Mr. Gate, so Ive been targeted by them. If you happen to be interested, I can be the bait, and we can hunt the remaining Raiders together. Less than ten seconds after the message was sent, one of them replied. How much do you know about the Raiders? This individuals codename at the Club was Epic Player. According to the information Virtuoso had provided, this individual was like Virtuosohe was also a clone left by a reincarnated being. In the universe, his Primordium was an Almighty who was higher than lord-level. Lin Huang thought about it for a while and decided to reveal some information in the end. There are at least seven Raiders in this great world at the moment. The one with the most powerful ability is a middle-rank Lord, as well as an individual with the codename Spy, who is suspected of being a middle-rank Lord as well. The rest are lower-rank Lords. He was not worried about whether or not Epic Player was a Raider spy because this information was more or less meaningless to the Raiders. On the other hand, revealing the information about middle-rank Lords would allow him to estimate what exactly Epic Players abilities were. If his abilities were not powerful enough to fight a middle-rank Lord, he would not reply after receiving that piece of news. So there are middle-rank Lords. Sounds interesting, count me in! Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. My codename is Epic Player, a reincarnated being, lower-rank Lord. Although Im a lower-rank Lord, Im very interested in hunting middle-rank Lords. Epic Player replied with two messages in a row. Lin Huang smiled slightly after reading the message. At least he had found a comrade in battle. Although he was just a lower-rank Lord, judging by his replies, his abilities ought to be powerful. Of coursewelcome! To prevent information from being leaked, Ill keep my coordinates a secret for the time being. Im estimating that theyll find me in two or three daysfive at most. When the time comes, Ill send my coordinates immediately. Please come as soon as possible. He did not directly send his coordinates to guard against the possibility of this individual being a Raider spy as well. Furthermore, he wanted to seize the opportunity to elevate his abilities again in the next few days before the Raiders showed up. After Epic Player, another individual sent a message not too long later. Thats not a bad proposal at allwhat are your coordinates? The person who sent the message had the codename Steel Fist. However, after reading the message, Lin Huang had some suspicions about whether or not this individual was a spy. They had agreed right away to hunt the Raiders without asking a single question and were asking for his coordinates as well. Im keeping my coordinates a secret for the time being. Ill send them to you two days later. Lin Huang thought about it and decided to reply to the message. Ive confirmed that theres a middle-rank Lord among the Raiders, and theres another whos suspected of being a middle-rank Lord. Are you sure you want to come? By this great worlds rating, the Raiders wont too powerful even if they have a middle-rank Lord as a guardian. He definitely wont have a Dao seal above level-20. Even if were no match for him, I have sufficient means to survive. You, on the other hand, are a rookie. Dont underestimate other Raiders just because youve killed one. Youll die very quickly if you have such a mindset. Thank you for your reminder, senior. Ill take note. When Lin Huang saw this reply, he was not angry at all. Although the others words were hard to swallow, what they said was spot on. Lin Huang could even tell by this that the other was most probably not a Raider spy. Upon reading the others first message again, he felt that it was actually reasonable. Steel Fist had replied in such a straightforward manner because he knew the limits of the highest combat strength level for the Raiders in the great world. Any other information was extraneousthey did not need to ask about it. Lin Huang was in an excellent mood after obtaining two battle comrades. He waited for a while but did not see a reply from the third individual. He felt this was nothing out of the ordinary. It was completely understandable for someone to be unwilling to take part in something related to the Raiders. This individual might also be in closed-door cultivation, in a ruin, or in a secret zone where they were unable to receive news from the outside world. This individual might also be a spy for the Raiders and could be currently reporting to the other Raiders about Lin Huang asking for help. There were many possibilities. After turning off his communicator, Lin Huang quickly set aside his delight. His partners from the Club were external forces. It was hard to say exactly how much help they would be. Lin Huang was very much aware that his ability was the only thing he could rely on. If he could fight off a middle-rank Lord using his own abilities, he would not have to worry at all about the Raiders finding him. After turning off the communication page, Lin Huang got up and went through the garden. He then headed into the living room. After closing the door of the villa, he sat down on the sofa right away, then closed his eyes and checked within his body. After he killed Zhan Zhuo, a grayish-black stream of light had entered his body. He had known immediately that it was Zhan Zhuos Goldfinger. As a Goldfinger could only lodge in a travelers body, there were only three things that could happen to it once the traveler died. One was that it directly escaped, one was that it lodged itself in the closest travelers body, and the last was that it might be forcibly refined by another traveler to become a source of nourishment for other Goldfingers. Zhan Zhuos Goldfinger seemed to have sensed that there were many Goldfingers coexisting in Lin Huangs body. From this, it was aware that Lin Huang was not the type who was fond of refining other Goldfingers to serve as nutrients, so it chose to surrender without hesitation. This proved that not all travelers had a close rapport with their Goldfinger. Lin Huang sank his consciousness into his body and soon saw the extra Goldfinger insidea grayish-black metal door. He communicated with his consciousness and soon received a brief piece of feedback. Gate of All Realms This Goldfinger was called the Gate of All Realms. Its function was just like its nameit could open passages to different realms. The most special among these realms was the virtual realm. Previously, Zhan Zhuo had actually displayed this ability. He had managed to open three passages to the virtual realm at the same time to release the Voids. However, what piqued Lin Huangs interest was not this function but another one. The Gate of All Realms could construct a virtual body for its host to enter the virtual realm and hunt. Not only that, this virtual body currently had three lives per day. In other words, Lin Huang would have three chances to explore the virtual realm every day. Based on what Dark Sword had said, Voids could not be killed in the material realm. They would merely return to the virtual realm after death. However, Lin Huang managed to learn something else from the Gate of All Realms. Voids could be killed in the virtual realm. Not only that, as soon as they were killed, all of their Origin Energy would be left behind and could be absorbed by virtual bodies. The Origin Energy absorbed by a virtual body would be reflected in the actual body that resided in the material realm. Lin Huang was extraordinarily excited to see this information. He knew that he had found another way to increase his ability! Chapter 1638 - Entering the Virtual Realm for the First Time Lin Huang tried to communicate with the Gate of All Realms. The Gate of All Realms did not seem to have a very high intelligence; it could only transmit some simple thoughts. Nevertheless, Lin Huang managed to gain some information from it. After Mr. Gate obtained the Gate of All Realms, he had used it almost solely as a dimensional portal. Naturally, using it in such a manner was also very convenient. The Gate of All Realms could entirely disregard distance in space and transport the host to any place they had traveled to before. When Mr. Gate killed a raptor during his unification, the Gate of All Realms had gained the Origin Energy left by the raptor. Only then had it been able to connect a passageway to the virtual realm. After this, Mr. Gate had been recruited by the Raiders and had also been given two Goldfingers in succession. The Gate of All Realms was able to open three passageways into the virtual realm only after it had absorbed the two Goldfingers. Previously, it could only consolidate a virtual body once a daythis had now been increased to three times a day. Once the Gate of All Realms had connected a passageway to the virtual realm, Mr. Gate had used a virtual body to enter the virtual realm many times at first. However, he was killed almost every time he encountered any Voids. After that, he completely abandoned any thoughts about killing Voids and used the Gate of All Realms in the opposite mannerto summon Voids. According to the information provided by the Gate of All Realms, the virtual realm was a very unique place. What caught Lin Huangs attention most was the time rule within it. Under normal circumstances, the flow of time in the virtual realm was the same as that of the material realm. However, if one entered the virtual realm using a virtual body, no matter how long they stayed in the virtual realmwhether it was one day, one year, ten years, or a million yearstime would not change when one returned to the material realm. It was as if time in the material realm froze when the virtual body entered the virtual realm. Once he had ascertained this, a thought instantly flashed through Lin Huangs mind. I can cultivate in there! After all, any benefits obtained by his virtual body had would be reflected in his actual body. Therefore, theoretically, the virtual realm was undoubtedly a utopia for cultivation. However, after a more detailed study of the information that the Gate of All Realms provided, Lin Huang rapidly became rather vexed. He could enter the virtual realm with a virtual body, but he could not bring items from the material realm into the virtual realm. Earlier, he had thought that if he cultivated in this place, he would be able to rapidly refine his half-step Lords God Territories. However, now he discovered that he could not bring those half-step Lords God Territories into the virtual realm all. He even considered hiding the items in his God Territory so he could retrieve them when he got to the virtual realm, or else he could hide himself in his God Territory. However, he soon abandoned this idea as well. A God Territory consolidated in the material realm was an inherent integration of time and space. There were many celestial bodies, all kinds of living beings, and other material substances in it. In the virtual realm, all of them would be completely masked off, and one would not be able to sense them at all. After a moment of fruitless thinking, Lin Huang had no other option but to ask Xiao Hei for help. Are there any sorts of dimensional cards that would allow me to bring half-step Lord God Territory Shell Remnants or other items into the virtual realm? Bringing them in is useless, you cant retrieve them for use. Xiao Heis response stunned Lin Huang. He immediately realized that it was not enough even if he could bring items in. He had to find a way to be able to use them. After all, the virtual realm rejected material substances. Even if he were to use some special dimensional technique to bring items in, by the rules of the virtual realm, he would not be able to retrieve them either. He thought for a moment and asked again, Then is there any way to create an independent space in the virtual realm thats isolated from the influence of the virtual realms rules, allowing me to bring in items from the material realm for cultivation? Although the Gate of All Realms has shared information on the virtual realm with us, I must still go and experience it myself to determine whether or not I can create such a card. Can my virtual body bring all of you in? Naturally, Lin Huang meant the Goldfingers within him when he said all of you. Based on the information provided by the Gate of All Realms, Goldfingers are probably not restricted. Lin Huang nodded as soon as he heard that. Then lets go in and check things out. He communicated with the Gate of All Realms again as soon as he finished speaking. A moment later, with Lin Huangs consent, his consciousness was drawn out of his body by the Gate of All Realms. Subsequently, a new body was rapidly formed. To Lin Huang, this virtual body was practically no different from his physical body. However, it was a figure that had no substance at all. It could not be seen or touched; even Lin Huangs peak lower-rank lord-level Divine Telekinesis could only be sensed as the vaguest of traces. However, Lin Huang could clearly sense that his power was still there. He could still use his Divine Power, as well as all kinds of Rule Bending Powers and sequence powers. He could also clearly sense the presence of the Goldfingers within him. Right as Lin Huang was still adapting to his new body, the Gate of All Realms opened a gate that looked like the Virtual Eye. Seeing that the Virtual Eye-like gate was rapidly forming in front of him, Lin Huang asked with some concern, The Voids wont be released, will they? However, he soon received feedback from the Gate of All Realms consciousness. The gate this time was a one-way gate. One could only enter from the material realm into the virtual realm, but nothing could exit the virtual realm. Lin Huang was relieved when he heard that. When the Virtual Eye had fully consolidated, the Gate of All Realms transmitted a trace of consciousness. Lin Huang understood right away. In a flash, he controlled his virtual body to step into the Virtual Eye. After stepping into the Virtual Eye, he did not feel anything special. An instant later, he passed through the Virtual Eye and arrived in the legendary virtual realm. This was a black and white world; there were no other colors. For a moment, Lin Huang felt as if he had become colorblind. However, it only took him a moment to adapt to this new environment; he then began looking around. The world had become black and white, but nothing seemed to have changed in his surroundings at all. He was still in his living room as before. The furniture and decorations in the house had not changed at all. Lin Huang got up and opened the door. The arrangement of the courtyard was entirely the same as in the material realm. All the plants were there. The only difference was that they were now black and white. In a flash, Lin Huang appeared right away in the air above the courtyard. Very soon, he saw the Sword Alliances entire headquarters. It was no different from the material realm at all. Apart from the colors having become black and white, perhaps the only difference was that there were entirely no signs of life. The entire station was quiet. After looking down at the Sword Alliances headquarters for a while, Lin Huang swiftly flew higher and released his Divine Telekinesis to scan the entire Pfister Star. The result of the scan showed very obviously that there were no living beings on the entire planet. However, Lin Huang did not want to give up. He sent his Divine Telekinesis out, spreading it further away. One lightyear, two lightyears Ten lightyears A hundred lightyears One thousand lightyears Very soon, he had scanned the entire star zone with Divine Telekinesis, but to no avail still. The planets in the material realm with myriads of humans living on them were nowhere to be foundthere were no traces of them here at all. Just when Lin Huang was preparing to retract his Divine Telekinesis, the faraway area where the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss was located suddenly transmitted an overpowering surge of Divine Telekinesis in Lin Huangs direction. Chapter 1639 - The Apocalypse Dragon Python Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Theres a Void?! Lin Huang lifted his eyes immediately to look in the direction of the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss. At the same time, he used Divine Telekinesis to make a sweeping scan. Very soon, he saw the Voids full appearance. It was a gigantic python with horns on its head similar to that of a dragon. Half of its body occupied a star. Although the star was ablaze, the massive python remained completely unharmed. The upper half of its body was raised high and was more than seven to eight times longer than the stars diameter. The black bat wings on its back were only slightly unfurled and were already more than several times larger than the surface area of the star. The eight crimson eyes on its head spewed lava-like sparks. Each of its eyeballs was far bigger than the other surrounding stars. It was, without a doubt, a colossus. Is this the legendary Apocalypse Dragon Python?! Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows. Although the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss only allowed powerhouses below heavenly god-level to enter and hunt, in the earliest times, it was actually the main battlefield of a fight between a Dragon Tribe Lord and an Abyssal Lord. Back then, the Abyssal Lord was an Apocalypse Dragon Python that had been killed here by the Dragon Tribe Lord. The information that Lin Huang had read about this fight in the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss was by no means detailed, and much of the information was unclear. However, he managed to guess at a glance that this creature ought to be the Apocalypse Dragon Python that had been killed. Upon seeing the Apocalypse Dragon Python, Lin Huang immediately realized why there was not a single Void in the entire star zone. This Apocalypse Dragon Python had most likely eaten all the Voids, not just in the Devil Hunter Star Zone, but probably in the several other star zones near the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss as well. While Lin Huang was scrutinizing the Apocalypse Dragon Python, it was weighing him up as well. It found it rather peculiar that this human had appeared without warning. However, its thoughts were soon occupied by its appetite. The aura coming from this human in front of it was deliciousmuch more so than all the Voids it had consumed before. From the time it sensed the aura emanating from Lin Huang, it had been drooling involuntarily. Naturally, Lin Huang became aware of why the other was drooling and could not help raising his brows. You think Im as big a prize as the elixir of immortality?! At that moment, the Apocalypse Dragon Python suddenly flapped its wings. Its gigantic figure leaped forward and swooped toward the Devil Hunter Star Zone where Lin Huang was. Lin Huang smirked and shook his sleeves. Countless God Weapon flying daggers shot out furiously, forming a giant dragon in the starry dome of the heavens, which then charged toward the Apocalypse Dragon Python. That was one of the advantages Lin Huang had, unlike Zhan Zhuohis God Weapons could be brought into the virtual realm. This was because God Weapons were different from ordinary equipment in that they became entirely part of the body after they were refined. They would be considered bones or organs by the virtual realm, so they would not be restricted. The Apocalypse Dragon Python was furious when it saw the dragon beast that suddenly appeared in the void. Although it had long since lost any memories from when it was alive, it would still become enraged for no reason whenever it saw dragon beasts now. In reality, Lin Huang had done this on purpose to irk it. Although the size of this dragon beast formed from over a million God Weapon flying daggers could not compare to the Apocalypse Dragon Python at allit was not even as big as one of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons eyesLin Huang was very confident about his attack. In the starry sky, endless black rays radiated simultaneously from the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons eight eyes, as if eight massive shockwaves were attacking the blood-red dragon beast made from the God Weapon flying daggers. The dragon beast scattered into countless lightning arcs immediately and spread in all directions, easily dodging the others attack. It then re-formed, charging toward the Apocalypse Dragon Python. By the time the Apocalypse Dragon Python wanted to react, it was a little too late. Powered by the Dao seal and compounded with over twelve thousand levels of sequence power, the blood-red dragon beast went through one of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons eight eyes immediately and exited through another eye. Within the blink of an eye, it had destroyed two of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons eyes. On his part, Lin Huang did not dodge the attack that the God Weapon had evaded. He hovered above the Pfister Star and raised eight Mirrors at the same time. Each Mirror had a surface bigger than the Pfister Star. They immediately met the incoming eight black rays shooting out of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons eyes. Practically the instant Lin Huang raised the Mirrors, eight black shockwaves hit them almost simultaneously. With not even a pause of 0.0001 seconds, the black shockwaves were deflected back straight away. The eight shockwaves changed direction without stopping, aiming straight for the Apocalypse Dragon Python. Before the Apocalypse Dragon Python could recover from the pain of losing two eyeballs, the eight black shockwaves were already approachingand were coming straight at its face. Amid its shock and consternation, the Apocalypse Dragon Python hurriedly attempted to dodge, but it was already too late. Although it managed to evade slightly, four of its remaining six eyes were destroyed. In an encounter that lasted barely the time it took for a breath, the Apocalypse Dragon Python had lost six of its eight eyes. Very likely, it still had not managed to figure out what exactly had just happened. This fellow has powerful defenses. Not only that, the area around its head seems to utilize a special defense technique. Lin Huang felt it was a pity that he had failed to kill the creature in his earlier attack. His purpose in having the God Weapon flying daggers evade the others attack and then re-form was so he could use the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons eyes as the breaching point to destroy its head directly. He had never expected that after the God Weapon flying daggers penetrated its eye, there would be another shielding layer protecting its head. Lin Huang had no choice but to retreat and settle for the next best optionmanipulating the God Weapon flying daggers to pierce through its second eyeball. The deflected attack seemed to have hit it directly in the face and destroyed four of its eyeballs. In all honesty, Lin Huang had not expected that to happen. He thought the creature would be able to react in time and shield its eyes since they were such vital points. Perhaps it had been too long since it had encountered a powerful opponent, so its actual combat abilities had weakened. Perhaps it had been momentarily careless, or whatever other reason, allowing the attack to achieve unexpected results. Although Lin Huang had gained the upper hand in this encounter, he did not dare to underestimate the creature in the least. After all, it was a bona fide Lord, and its physical strength might already be near middle-rank lord-level. Eyes were indeed crucial to ordinary people. However, to lord-level powerhouses, eyes did not have a significant effect. This was because lord-level powerhouses rarely relied solely on their vision to capture their opponents movements in battle. They depended on Divine Telekinesis most of the time. Lin Huang destroying his opponents six eyes at the beginning of the battle did not have any substantial effects on the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons abilities. At most, it had only taken away one of its attack methods, but it had also made the creature more cautious now. After this, Lin Huang controlled the God Weapon flying daggers, intending to try and destroy the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons remaining two eyes. However, it was clearly more alert now and did not give him so much as a chance for that. This fellow has such thick skin. Im afraid this battle is going to consume a considerable amount of time. Lin Huang tried attacking the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons other body parts. After a moment, he could not help frowning slightly. Chapter 1640 - Lin Huang’s Killing Move After merely one clash, Lin Huang already had some gener insight into the ability of the Apocalypse Dragon Python that he was facing. This was a Lord with five Dao seals that had mastered a total of some ten thousand god sequence chains. Overall, its ability was similar to Dark Sword, whom he had encountered previously. However, Dark Sword was a sword cultivator, after all, and more proficient in attacks; his techniques were also more varied. In comparison, the Apocalypse Dragon Python had a more powerful physical body and stronger defenses. For Lin Huang, the Apocalypse Dragon Python was more difficult to deal with compared to Dark Sword. Its physical body was almost perfectly integrated with its Dao seals, and the surface of its scales was completely covered by Dao seal layers. For Lin Huang, who only had a level-1 Sword seal, it would be very difficult for him to breach the creatures defenses. Whenever the blood-red dragon beast formed from the God Weapon flying daggers struck the body of the Apocalypse Dragon Python, there would be the ringing sound of metal striking against metal. Sometimes, there would even be sparks. Even if that happened, however, the daggers only left faint scratches on the creatures scales at most. This definitely wont do if I go on exhausting myself. Given the current strength of my attacks, its able to defend itself without expending that much Divine Power at all. In his mind, Lin Huang was rapidly thinking through all sorts of countermeasures. I have to increase my attack power! While Lin Huang was still considering combat tactics, the Apocalypse Dragon Python had swiftly regrouped from its earlier injuries. Losing six of its eyes did not make it fear Lin Huang. Instead, the injury had aroused its ferocity. As far as the Apocalypse Dragon Python was concerned, Lin Huang was just a Lord with one Dao seal who had managed to injure it earlier through sheer luck. It lowered its head, its two remaining crimson eyes staring fixedly at Lin Huang. However, this time, it did not dare to release any more shockwaves. Instead, it opened its enormous mouth and spewed out endless black flames. The flames were like a flowing galaxy. Within the blink of an eye, they had spread over a distance of several dozen lightyears, surging toward Lin Huang. Even a small part of the Devil Hunter Star Zone was swallowed up. Although it was not particularly intelligent, the Apocalypse Dragon Python had clearly learned its lesson from earlier. It did not plan on giving Lin Huang a chance to deflect the attackit used a ranged attack right away. Lin Huang smirked slightly. He had no intention at all of fighting the tsunami-like inferno that was surging toward him. In a flash, he vanished on the spot. When he reappeared, he was already outside the area that the black flames covered. As for the Pfister Star, he would not feel psychologically burdened at all if such a barren planet was destroyed in the material realm, much less in this virtual realm. After dodging the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons black flame attack, Lin Huang began to perform hand seals rapidly. In the starry sky, the million or more God Weapon flying daggers swiftly began changing shape. In an instant, they transformed into over a million swords. The dragon beast form dispersed completely as well, rapidly forming a massive sword formation in the air. This was the killing move that Bloody had left for Lin Huang the last time they met. In total, there were twelve sets of ultimate sword formations. Bloody had derived these ultimate killing formations using her own spirit strength and computational skills. Based on what Bloody had mentioned at the time, if Lin Huang were able to use them, it should not be difficult for him to kill a half-step Lord. The abilities Lin Huang displayed currently were at least a hundred times more powerful than before as well. It was also his first time using this type of sword formation in actual combat. He could clearly sense that as the countless battle swords returned to their places in the sword formation and resonated with each other, the formations power was also continuously increasing. In less than the time it took for a breath, the formations power had shot up to its peak! Its almost the equivalent of compounding two additional Sword seal levels Lin Huangs eyes lit up. The power of his compounded Sword seal far exceeded the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons level-5 Dao seal. This was because his level-1 Sword seal contained the power of over twelve thousand god sequence chains. By compounding another two levels, this gave it the equivalent power of thirty-six thousand god sequence chains. The Apocalypse Dragon Pythons compounded level-5 Dao seal, however, had only amassed the power of some ten thousand god sequence chains. Although Lin Huang did not have as many Dao seals as the creature, he could completely overwhelm it in terms of the volume of sequence power. Once the sword formation was complete, the Apocalypse Dragon Python clearly sensed the threat radiating from it. Its massive snake tail lashed out, intending to smash the newly-consolidated sword formation to bits. In the time it took for a breath, the enormous snake tail had traversed a distance of several dozen lightyears. At the same time, the huge sword formation began spinning furiously as Lin Huang controlled it with his mind. The million or more battle swords in the sky transformed into a single giant sword. It slashed toward the snake tail at an even faster speed. Boom! In an instant, both attacks collided in the starry heavens. The boom even pierced through the limits of the vacuum of space, transmitting in all directions. It spread toward the distance at a speed that was hundreds of times faster than the speed of light. At the same time, what the collision producedenergy waves, overwhelming Odylic waves, all sorts of sequence powers and Rule Bending Powers, as well as Divine Power that had dispelledwas sweeping in all directions. Suddenly, all the planets in the entire Devil Hunter Star Zone exploded one after another and were then completely reduced to dust. Even stars and black holes were no exception. They were crushed to powder by the escaping energies caused by the two combatants. This, then, was the Holy Power of lord-level powerhouses. They could destroy the entire galaxy in the time it took to turn one hand over! At that moment, one of the main culprits in this attackLin Huangremained where he stood, unmoving. He watched the Apocalypse Dragon Python across from him with calm, clear eyes. The tail that the Apocalypse Dragon Python was so proud of now sported a massive wound so deep the bone could be seen. It was very evident who the winner of this encounter was. The corners of Lin Huangs mouth quirked up slightly when he saw the wound. It was at least one thousand kilometers long and was still bleeding. He had finally breached the creatures defenses! Although it was a far cry from directly severing its tail, the fact that he had broken through its defenses and had been able to cause such a massive wound was already good news. Lin Huang finally felt completely relieved when he saw the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons wound. Only now was he sure that he had a chance of winning. Roar! The Apocalypse Dragon Python released a terrifying roar at Lin Huangwhether from anger, pain, or whatever other reason was unknown. Endless black flames accompanied the roar. This time, the Apocalypse Dragon Python spewed considerably more black flame than previously. If it had been just a river bursting its dams before, it was now truly a surging tsunami. It flung its head and spurted flames in every direction. It clearly wanted to seal off all possible escape routes for Lin Huang. However, in face of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons behavior, Lin Huang merely shook his head and smiled. This was nothing more than a child throwing a tantrum after losing a game. It would not affect the final outcome of the game at all. Lin Huang did not even bother to evade this time. As he moved his fingers slightly, Mirror consolidated in front of him immediately. It then turned into a sphere over two meters in diameter, entirely enveloping his body with no neglected areas in his defenses at all. At the same time, he used his mind again. In the distance, the sword formation made from the God Weapon flying daggers transformed into a giant, blood-red sword once more and slashed at the Apocalypse Dragon Python. This time, the target of its attack was the creatures vital parts! Chapter 1641 - Xiao Hei’s Secret Approximately half an hour later, Lin Huang looked at the severed carcass of the Dragon Python. He then recalled the innumerable God Weapon battle swords that were gliding around like a school of fish. The Apocalypse Dragon Pythons carcass hovered in the starry heavens, its body full of wounds both deep and shallow. What had finally killed it, however, was most certainly the wound on its vital parts, which had completely sliced it in two. Naturally, a mortal wound like that had not been caused by just a single attack. It was the result of Lin Huang releasing more God Weapon flying daggers, utilizing fully eight sword formations, and spending more than half an hour to finally kill it. The Apocalypse Dragon Python was undoubtedly the most powerful opponent that Lin Huang had ever encountered. As he sensed the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons life force dissipating entirely from not too far away, Lin Huang suddenly raised his brows involuntarily. This was because the Dragon Pythons carcass was disintegrating gradually into grayish-black points of light. They swiftly consolidated together and transformed into a grayish-black cloud of mist that was merely the size of a soccer ball. This ought to be the Voids Origin Energy, right? Lin Huang extended his hand with some curiosity. The cloud of mist not only did not reject his advances but seeped into Lin Huangs body through his fingers. Lin Huang did not sense any threat at all. He sent his consciousness into his body and discovered that the sphere of energy had immersed itself in the God Territory within him. After using his consciousness to seek it out, countless memories began wildly surging into his mind. Lin Huang finally opened his eyes again after a long time. So thats how it is full Origin Energy contains everything there is to know about a Void From the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons memory, Lin Huang rapidly obtained all sorts of information about Origin Energy. As long as he fully refined this mass of Origin Energy, not only would he obtain the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons memory and inheritance, but he would also gain everything that it had ever accumulated. This included the Dao seals it had mastered, its sequence powers and Rule Bending Powers, its God Territory it even included everything the Apocalypse Dragon Python had obtained from refining other Origin Energies in the past. However, Lin Huang soon noticed something odd. After killing the Apocalypse Dragon Python, although a fatality notification had popped up from Xiao Hei, there was no notification at all about any rewards. There was not even a piece of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons card fragment. Why isnt there even a card fragment this time after I killed the Apocalypse Dragon Python? Lin Huang directly asked Xiao Hei. After a moment of silence, Xiao Hei very soon responded. Youve already gained all of its Origin Energy, so theres no need for me to take a portion of its Origin Energy to create a card. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard this, but he instantly realized what Xiao Hei meant. Do you mean to say that when you created cards previously, you converted a portion of the deceaseds Origin Energy to do so? Your understanding is essentially correct. So the level and quantity of the cards you can create is dependent on the Origin Energy that you take and has no actual connection with my combat strength?! Something suddenly occurred to Lin Huang, and his expression immediately became rather peculiar. Xiao Hei fell silent again for a moment but answered anyway a little while later. That is indeed the case. However, restricting the number of cards you can obtain per combat strength level is also to prevent you from exploiting the cards and relying too much on the cards functions. So youve appropriated a great deal of the Origin Energy for yourself from the monsters Ive killed? The number of monsters Lin Huang had killed far exceeded the maximum number of cards he had obtained. For each monster he killed, Xiao Hei would secretly take a portion of Origin Energy. However, only a small fraction of the Origin Energy was used to create cards for Lin Huangmost of it was hoarded by Xiao Hei. This time, Xiao Hei fell into a long silence. Dont pretend you cant hear me. And dont think you can deceive me about this matter, Lin Huang prodded, seeing that Xiao Hei did not reply for a long time. The Goldfingersthe stone tablet, Eternity Fire, Yin Yin, and the newcomer, the Gate of All Realmswere watching the drama unfold. In reality, it was common for a Goldfinger to sneak benefits from its host. However, not very many of them had been caught red-handed. I do admit that Ive appropriated a great deal of Origin Energy. However, my restricting your rewards is not because I wish to withhold any of the Origin Energy. Even if I only used one-tenth of the Origin Energy to create all kinds of card rewards for you, the number of cards you would obtain will be several dozen times over what you have now. That does not benefit your development in any way. Lin Huang knew that Xiao Hei was telling the truth. He had been prodding himself to become stronger all this while; to a certain extent, this was also because of Xiao Heis restriction on the number of cards he could obtain. Since the number of cards he could gain per level of combat strength was limited, he had no option but to elevate his combat strength quickly so he could obtain more card rewards. If Xiao Hei truly did lift its restrictionsif it merely used one-tenth of the Origin Energy to make him all sorts of card rewards, as it had mentioned earlierhis motivation to elevate his combat strength would likely drop significantly. Moreover, there was a high possibility of him relying on the cards functions and slacking in his personal cultivation. He was almost certain that he would definitely not have the ability he possessed now. I wont bring up whats already in the past. However, right now, I think we can apportion the ratio of Origin Energy all over again. Xiao Hei had admitted its problem, and Lin Huang did not want to dwell on the matter. He had brought up the Origin Energy issue not to blame Xiao Hei but to allocate the ratio of resources anew. No problem. Xiao Hei agreed with alacrity, then suggested a ratio. I can allocate thirty percent to you. Given your current ability, Im no longer worried that youll exploit the cards. Lets make it fifty-fifty. Its fairer if each of us has half. It was not that Lin Huang wanted more, but he knew that Xiao Hei had appropriated Origin Energy in the past because the Origin Energy was most certainly beneficial to him. Ill store my fifty percent with you for now and let you know when I need it. You can use it whenever you want. Also, theres no need to portion out the Origin Energy that you appropriated. It still belongs to you. Deal! Xiao Hei thought about it for a moment and very quickly agreed. After all, Lin Huang was currently making an extremely big concession with his current proposal. It knew that it would be very difficult for it to fight for an even higher ratio. After the two had discussed the apportioning of Origin Energy, Lin Huang looked at the mass of grayish-black Origin Energy from the Dragon Python. Whats the most powerful card you can create with this kind of lord-level Origin Energy? I can create a Lord Elevation Card. What?! Lin Huangs eyes widened, thinking he had misheard. By using this card, one can directly elevate to become a Lord?! Of course, its not as easy as that. Theres a caveat to be able to use it. One has to be ninth-rank heavenly god-level, and ranked no lower than Class 5.5 Pseudo Pure Spirit. Theres no need to go through unification?! Lin Huang still thought such a function was rather incredible. No. Unification will be achieved right away when the card is used. The user will directly elevate to become a Lord, and no raptors will be attracted. There arent any side-effects? Lin Huang questioned further. No. Its the same as a successful, normal unification. Lin Huangs eyes lit up after hearing that. He was beginning to imagine what the scenario might be if he built an army of lord-level imperial monsters. Chapter 1642 - The Virtual Realm Cabin Is there any way to bring in items from the material realm? That was the main reason why Lin Huang had brought Xiao Hei into the virtual realm this time. After putting together the situation in the virtual realm and the information that the Gate of All Realms shared, it shouldnt be a problem. As soon as Xiao Hei finished speaking, a card rapidly began to coalesce on Lin Huangs right palm. He picked up the card and looked at it. A Virtual Realm Cabin Card? Lin Huang checked the information on the back of the card. This was a cabin that could exist in the virtual realm. The duration of its existence would depend on the cabins interior capacity, how many items were placed inside, and the influx of Origin Energy. With an influx of Origin Energy, the smaller the capacity of the cabin and the fewer the items, the longer the cabin would be able to exist. Anything from the material realm could be stored in this cabin, except living beings. Naturally, this meant living beings from the material realm, excluding Lin Huangs virtual body. Why is there a restriction on living beings? Lin Huang could not help asking when he saw that particular caveat. Without this restriction, the Origin Energy required to build this cabin would be at least a hundred times more than whats currently needed. Lin Huang nodded once he heard the explanation. I think thats a pretty good restriction. In truth, he had not given this much thought earlier; he was just asking a casual question. In reality, it would not affect him significantly whether or not the virtual realm cabin could contain living beings from the material realm. Moreover, even if the cabin were able to contain living beings, they would not be able to leave the cabin and enter the virtual realm. Does it require a lot of Origin Energy to maintain the cabin? Lin Huang asked again. As long as you dont make the capacity of the cabin too extreme and store too many items inside, the daily consumption is practically negligible. Thats good then. Lin Huang could finally be at ease. He did not ask Xiao Hei about how to use the cabin, as it was clearly stated on the information on the back of the card. In one move, Lin Huang teleported to a nearby planet that had not been damaged. He then crushed the Virtual Realm Cabin Card in his hand. A second later, the card turned into countless golden points of light that rapidly formed into a small cabin in front of Lin Huang. The exterior was the default form of the card and could be altered by the card user. However, Lin Huang did not want to bother thinking about a concept, so he left it on the default setting. The cabin looked as if it had less than ten square meters of surface area. This did not bother Lin Huang; he pushed the door open and went in. Upon entering, he realized that the interior was even smallerprobably only six or seven square meters. The cabin could only hold one bed and a set of tables and chairs at most, and it would already be thoroughly cramped inside. This even reminded Lin Huang of the house on Earth he had rented with a few others after graduating from university back in the day. The partitioned room he lived in back then was similar to the size of this cabin. Lin Huang looked around. There was nothing in the room at all except for a stone floor, four snowy-white walls, and a triangular roof. He made some mental calculations. The highest part of the roof was approximately 3.5 meters. If he were to calculate using the surface area of the interior, the maximum capacity of this cabin at present was no more than 25 cubic meters. He did not increase the capacity of the interior, nor did he alter the structure of the house. He merely opened the door and left. From what he saw, the current surface area was fully sufficient for his needs. If it were not enough, he could still change it when the time came. This was also a unique characteristic of the virtual realm cabin. The interior capacity of the cabin, its structure and exterior appearance, as well as the interior decorations, could be changed at any time. Lets return to the material realm and test this function then. Lin Huang had barely finished speaking before the Gate of All Realms opened a Virtual Eye. He stepped into it. When he reappeared, he was already in the material realm. However, his real body was not on the Pfister Star but on the barren planet where his virtual body had arrived earlier. After returning to the material realm, Lin Huang checked the time immediately. It was exactly the same as when his virtual body had left the material realm. Not even one second had passed. He turned around and looked in the direction of the virtual realm cabin. The Virtual Realm Cabin Card within his body that had become blurred and out of focus was suddenly illuminated by points of light. A moment later, the form of the Virtual Realm Cabin Card that he could see gradually began to solidify into being. It was exactly the same as the one in the virtual realm. Not only could he see it, but even his Divine Telekinesis could perceive it. However, he knew that it was a projection of the virtual realm cabin into the material realm. As the user of the card, only he could perceive it; others could not. Lin Huang pushed the door open and went in right away. The interior of the house was exactly the same, with no changes whatsoever. He retrieved a storage ring from his storage space. After placing some items in the ring, he put it on the floor. He turned around and left after opening the door. Lets go to the virtual realm again, Lin Huang told the Gate of All Realms. Very soon, a Virtual Eye appeared before him. His virtual body consolidated immediately, which he then stepped into. After passing through the Virtual Eye, Lin Huangs virtual body appeared in the virtual realm again. He glanced at the cabin nearby, then pushed open the door and went in again. Upon entering the house, he saw the storage ring on the floor right away. He picked it up and sent his Divine Telekinesis into it. Nothing was missing inside. Lin Huang then tried taking out the items in the storage ring one after the other. Divine Crystals, god sequence relics, minerals, herbs, monster carcasses He was able to retrieve every item he had brought from the material realm without being restricted by any of the virtual realms rules at all. Lin Huang even tried absorbing a Divine Crystal. There were no issues at all. At this point, he was finally sure that the virtual realm cabin functioned perfectly. Its like a cabin in which time has stopped. If I have sufficient resources and cultivate inside for over a hundred million years, not even a second of the material realms time would pass! Lin Huang thought the virtual realm cabin was the most valuable treasure in cultivation. Of course, the caveat was that he would not be interrupted by any Voids. However, according to the memories he obtained from the Apocalypse Dragon Python, most of the Voids in the virtual realm could only move around within a specific area. They could not distance themselves from a particular region. This was just like the Apocalypse Dragon Python that could not go too far from the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss. He could only move around a few nearby star zones at most. Furthermore, he could not leave the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss for too long, or he would be teleported back by force. Lin Huang had some speculations about this unique characteristic of the Voids. It was possible that the Voids were unable to leave the place where they had died or the place where their corpses were in the material realm. However, such a restriction was not absolute. According to the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons memories, some powerful existences could break such restrictions. However, Lin Huang gauged that the only ones who could do that would be super powerhouses above lord-level. Therefore, he was not worried about being disturbed when he cultivated in the virtual realm cabin. After all, the only Void nearbythe Apocalypse Dragon PythonChad been killed by him. If he were truly so unfortunate as to encounter a Void that could break this restriction, he would just have to admit defeat. However, if that did happen and worse came to worst, it was only the destruction of a virtual body. Besides, the Gate of All Realms could currently create three virtual bodies per day. Chapter 1643 - Tenth-Rank Heavenly God-Level After dispelling the virtual realm cabin, Lin Huang returned to the material realm again. He had already thought about how he was going to elevate his ability over the next few days. Just before the sky darkened into night, Hong Zhuang returned Zhan Zhuos unlocked storage ring to Lin Huang. He immediately checked through Zhan Zhuos battle spoils. After a cursory scan with Divine Telekinesis, the items in the storage ring caused Lin Huang to exclaim in admiration at how wealthy a lord-level powerhouse could be. Zhan Zhuo had eleven Dao Weapons alone, as well as two lord-level dead bodies. He also had three sealed Origin Energy spheres, hundreds of inherited crystals, storage rings of various shapes piled high in a small mountain, as well as innumerable Divine Crystals and various minerals Lin Huang guessed that many resources in Zhan Zhuos storage ring might not have come from the great world at all. It was very possible that they had been obtained from other Raiders in exchange and had come from other worlds or universes. As for the three Origin Energy spheres, they were obviously lord-level. Zhan Zhuo must have obtained them from killing Voids in the virtual realm. As to why Zhan Zhuo had not absorbed the spheres, Lin Huang speculated that either he had encountered a temporary bottleneck and could not absorb them, or he had intentionally kept them. Perhaps he wanted to use them as goods to trade for resources with other people. After making a detailed inventory of Zhan Zhuos loot, Lin Huang did not post the eleven Dao Weapons on Royals auction. This was because he had previously calculated that the number of half-step Lords God Territories he could get in exchange for selling Zhan Zhuos ancient palace ought to be sufficient. He retrieved the small mountain of storage rings inside and passed them all to Hong Zhuang again. Whatever the ability of the original owners of those rings, he would let Hong Zhuang unlock them all first before he decided on what to do. It was still better than nothing, however small. After seeing to all these matters, Lin Huang did not enter the virtual realm again, nor did he enter the Great Heaven Palace for closed-door cultivation. Instead, he waited patiently for the result of the ancient palaces auction. At noon the next day, the alarm clock Lin Huang had set went off as soon as the twenty-four hours for the auction was up. He immediately took out his Royal Token and accessed the Royal auction page. The auction showed that the ancient palace had sold for 1,274 half-step Lords God Territories. This number had far surpassed what Lin Huang required. When he saw the auction results, his mood grew increasingly cheerful. After confirming the transaction, the 1,274 half-step Lords God Territories were entered into his account immediately and stored within his Royal Token. He took out all of them right away and put them in his storage ring. Now that he had possession of these half-step Lords God Territories, Lin Huang did not delay any further. He had Xiao Hei create another Virtual Realm Cabin Card and walked to the courtyard with it, then crushed it immediately. The card turned into golden points of light again and consolidated into a virtual cabin that only Lin Huang could see. He went inside, removed his storage ring, and placed it on the floor. After opening the door and exiting, he had the Gate of All Realms create a virtual body for him. He then stepped into the virtual realm. When he entered the virtual realm again with his virtual body, Lin Huang immediately saw the cabin in the nearby courtyard. He strode over, pushed open the door, and entered. After picking up the storage ring on the floor, Lin Huang collected his thoughts and sat down with his legs crossed. A moment later, after his mind was completely calm, he took out the half-step Lords God Territories from the storage ring one by one and began to refine them. Days passed in the virtual realm. In no time at all, sixty thousand days had passed. When Lin Huang refined the two hundredth and thirty-ninth God Territory, his combat strength successfully broke through to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. (During his elevation to eighth-rank, he had refined 17 extra God Territories.) Just as he had expected, he could clearly sense that his heavenly god-level had yet to reach satiety, so he continued to refine more God Territories. Nearly one hundred and twenty thousand days passed. When he refined the seven hundredth and fifty-first God Territory, his combat strength achieved another breakthrough, and he elevated to tenth-rank heavenly god-level. At this point, Lin Huang finally sensed that his God Territory was full. He could no longer absorb any more half-step Lords God Territories. Only now did he descend into his mind and begin checking over the current state of his body. His combat strength had elevated to tenth-rank heavenly god-level. After undergoing the baptism of combat strength elevation twice, his physical strength had officially achieved lord-level. Naturally, his Gods souls strength had also broken through to middle-rank lord-level. Apart from that, his Godly Right had grown significantly stronger as well. The number of god sequence chains it could contain had increased to over fifty thousand. In his God Territory, the total number of god sequence chains had skyrocketed to at least one hundred and eighty thousand, while the number of god rules was immeasurable. These two consecutive elevations in rank had undoubtedly increased Lin Huangs ability significantly. However, he did not exit closed-door cultivation just yet, or halt his cultivation. Instead, he looked at the unknown Divine Telekinesis visualization images. He had set these aside earlier mainly because he genuinely did not have the time to visualize them. Even though time flow in the Great Heaven Palace had been accelerated ten thousand times, to Lin Huang, it was still insufficient. However, the elevation of his combat strength this time had increased the strength of his Gods soul to middle-rank lord-level. Without a doubt, his visualization speed was much faster now. Moreover, he had the virtual realm cabin, which was the ideal place for cultivation. Naturally, Lin Huang intended to take advantage of it. After letting his mind submerge into his inner body, he soon began a new round of Divine Telekinesis visualization. He spent twenty-seven years (approximately ten thousand days) visualizing the 103rd visualization image. He then spent fifty-five years (over twenty thousand days) visualizing the 104th visualization image. At this point, the strength of his Divine Telekinesis had also skyrocketed to the limits of middle-rank lord-level. However, Lin Huang did not stop just yet but continued with his visualization. He spent more than five hundred full days (over two hundred thousand days) to visualize the 105th visualization image. He spent over a thousand years to finally complete the visualization of the 106th visualization image. As for the 107th visualization image, Lin Huang merely glanced at it and completely abandoned any further attempts at visualization. If he continued to visualize at his current Gods souls strength, he might have to spend over ten thousand years to complete the 106th visualization image successfully. He felt that he could certainly wait until his Gods soul had another breakthrough before proceeding with any more visualization. He was fairly satisfied with the current strength of his Divine Telekinesis. After all, it was already at the peak of upper-rank lord-level. After setting aside the visualization image, Lin Huang looked at the Gods Figurines Combat Souls within him again. The combat strength of the ten original Gods Figurines Combat Souls had remained stagnant at ninth-rank true god-level. There was no reason other than they were restricted by the Gods Figurines innate limitations. Lin Huang stared at the ten Gods Figurines and thought for a moment. After that, he soon made up his mind. Xiao Hei, elevate all ten Gods Figurines to Pure Spirit! Certainly. Let me have all of the Apocalypse Dragon Pythons Origin Energy from previously, and supplement me with one more sphere of Origin Energy. Deal! Lin Huang agreed with alacrity, then took out an Origin Energy sphere and gave it to Xiao Hei. Lord-level Origin Energy was a class-6 material. To elevate from class-5 to class-6, he would need a grade-5 Advance Card, which was a class-5 material. Furthermore, Lin Huang had requested to elevate ten Gods Figurines and had not provided any other materials, so Xiao Hei would need to provide all of the Origin Energy. Therefore, this deal was still relatively fairin fact, Lin Huang had even taken advantage of it. After all, his ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls were only class-4. They would need to elevate from rank-4 mythical-level to rank-5 supreme god-level. A moment later, Advance Cards appeared one by one in Lin Huangs hands. Lin Huang crushed them one at a time and inserted them into the ten Combat Souls bodies, respectively. Very soon, the ten Combat Souls elevated to Pure Spirit rank-6 one after the other. After this, Lin Huang communicated with the Eternity Fire so it could imbue the ten original Combat Souls with Gods soul energy. After being infused with Gods soul energy from the Eternity Fire, the ten Combat Souls combat strength kept skyrocketing. First-rank, second-rank, third-rank After a mere few minutes, they had elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. However, that was not the end of things yet. The Gods Figurines Combat Souls combat strength merely paused at ninth-rank heavenly god-level for a moment, and then the next breakthrough occurred. They had been elevated to lord-level! Many inherently Pure Spirit rank monsters were born as Lords. Even the weakest ones would automatically elevate to become Lords when they grew to adulthood. However, the Gods Figurines Combat Souls were only dead bodies. After elevating to Pure Spirit rank-6, their combat strength elevation only required that their Gods souls be replenished. Once their Gods souls had been replenished to lord-level, they would naturally elevate to lord-level. This was why Lin Huang had decided to expend Advance Cards to perform this round of elevation. Compared to nurturing imperial monsters and Sword Servants, it was much faster to elevate his Gods Figurines Combat Souls and far more convenient. However, the Eternity Fire halted the infusion of Gods soul energy after elevating the ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls to lower-rank Lords. Although the Eternity Fire could theoretically produce an infinite amount of energy, creating ten Lords at once was a great strain on it. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, he could still make use of ten lower-rank Lords, albeit grudgingly. He retrieved an Origin Energy sphere from his storage space to compensate the Eternity Fire. After that, he sat down again with his legs crossed and began another round of visualization. However, this time he visualized the True Spirit Guide instead. He was preparing to completely visualize the ten Pure Spirit Gods Figurines Combat Souls into the forms that were in the True Spirit Guide Chapter 1644 - I’ll Kill You!!! Upon his return to the great world from the virtual world, Lin Huangs ability had undergone yet another significant increase. Not only had he elevated from eighth-rank to tenth-rank, but his abilities in all aspects had leveled up in a manner that could even be described as terrifying. After a full day, the evacuation of the residents of the Pfister Star and the several other habitable planets in the Devil Hunter Star Zone was finally entering its last stages. Lin Huang did a scan with his Divine Telekinesis; the Sword Servants were still busy. After using Divine Telekinesis to sense out Sword1, Lin Huang communicated directly with him via voice transmission, Inform the other Sword Servants to leave the Devil Hunter Star Zone and the nearby regions as soon as the evacuation is complete. Remember to bring Lin Xin and the others with you. There might be a lord-level battle later on; Im not sure how far-reaching the impact will be. Seeing that Sword1 wanted to say something, Lin Huang continued, I know that all of you have powerful abilities, but when faced with a bona fide Lord, it still wont be enough. If you stay, that would only be more of a distraction to me. He added after this, Im confident about this battle. You dont need to worry. Only then did Sword1 nod. This humble subordinate understands. After finalizing these arrangements, Lin Huang thought for a moment, then sent his coordinates directly to his two allies from the ClubEpic Player and Steel Fist. In reality, he did not really need assistance now. However, since he had requested their help earlier and they had agreed, he sent his coordinates over as promised. Lin Huang did not enter cultivation mode after that. Instead, he waited patiently for the Raiders to come. Sword1 and the rest finished evacuating the population of the entire star zone by the next morning. They took Lin Xin and the others along and departed far away from the Devil Hunter Star Zone. Epic Player and Steel Fist arrived the next evening. Epic Players appearance was that of a young man in his early twenties. Tall and lanky with short blue hair, he was dressed in casual attire. Steel Fist, on the other hand, was not quite what Lin Huang had expectedthey turned out to be female. She looked about twenty-five or twenty-six and was clad in form-fitting sports attire. Her shoulder-length hair was tied into a ponytail, and her skin bore a healthy tan. Her limbs were long and elegant, and she had a good figure. At a glance, one could tell she worked out frequently and was the type who loved outdoor activities. Hello gorgeous, its been a while! Epic Player went forward to greet Steel Fist upon her arrival. Steel Fist merely shot him a glance, then turned her head to look at Lin Huang. So youre Xiu Mu? She did a scan with Divine Telekinesis and discovered Lin Huang was the only person left on this planet, so naturally, he ought to be Xiu Muthe one who had invited the two of them here. Yes, I am. Hello, Senior Steel Fist. Lin Huang maintained the necessary courtesies. Although he might already be more powerful than both of them in terms of ability, his combat strength was not yet at lord-level after all. Moreover, he had joined the Club later than the two of them, and he was definitely younger than they were. Before I came here, I thought you were just bragging about having killed a Raider. From the looks of it now, you probably do possess that sort of ability, Steel Fist said bluntly; her personality had always been like this. She had been suspicious of Lin Huang previously because there was an insurmountable gap between Lords and non-Lords. Moreover, his opponent was a Raider who had a Goldfinger. The level of difficulty in killing them would be even higher. She had even suspected that Lin Huang was just bait for luring the Club members into a trap. She had come this time because, for one, she had sufficient confidence in her abilities. Even if she could not fight the Raider, she could run away. For another, she was worried that Lin Huang might be telling the truth. If this turned out to be a genuine situation and Lin Huang was killed by the Raider, it meant the Club would lose a new member. However, after seeing Lin Huang, her suspicions about him decreased significantly. At the very least, she had no doubts about his abilities now. This was because she could faintly sense danger signals emanating from his person. She would only experience a feeling like this if she were facing someone no weaker, or even more powerful, than herself. Actually, I felt the same way you did. I was skeptical of his ability before I came here, Epic Player said with a smile after Steel Fists comments. But after meeting him, I think its probably true that he killed Mr. Gate. Only then did Lin Huang realize that, just as he had mistrusted them initially, they had also been wary of him, keeping their guards up. They had been worried that he was merely bait the Raiders had set up. Seniors, since you both have admitted as much, I may as well be truthful. In reality, I had to think twice before asking for your help because I couldnt rule out the possibility that the Club might harbor Raider spies as well. I was worried that Id be inviting trouble for myself. Thats why I didnt send my coordinates to you right away, Lin Huang also expressed his thoughts on the matter. Arent you worried now? Epic Player asked playfully. Not at all, Lin Huang said, shaking his head with a smile. Is it because you feel were reliable after meeting us? Epic Player persisted. Steel Fist looked at Lin Huang too, appearing rather curious about his answer to this question. Its because of another reason. Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. He secretly added in his heart, Because my current ability is sufficient to handle every threat there is. He did not say it out loud because it sounded too pretentious and would not be very amicable to his two allies. Seeing that Lin Huang was unwilling to say anymore, the two did not pursue the matter further. After interacting for a while, Lin Huang became a little more familiar with both of them. He invited them into the courtyard and served them tea. The three of them sat in the pavilion and began chatting in a relaxed manner. It was mainly Steel Fist and Epic Player asking Lin Huang how he had managed to offended the Raiders. They also asked for some details about the killing of Mr. Gate. Lin Huang answered their questions one by one. The three of them chatted in this manner for over two hours. Suddenly, Lin Huangs communicator began to vibrate. He looked down and saw that it was a voice call from an unknown number. After a moment of consideration, he answered the call anyway. Once the call was connected, a voice that appeared to come from a synthesizer spoke before Lin Huang could ask who it was. Ive found you! Lin Huang Lin Huang narrowed his eyes slightly. Is this Spy?! This individual had not only managed to find out his number but had also called him by his real name. Lin Huang immediately thought of the Raider with the codename Spy. Dont hang up yet. I have a question for you. Hearing the other fall silent, Lin Huang continued, Were you the one who killed Yang Ling?! So you were the one who wiped out Yang Lings information! Over this period, his lady friend probably has been hiding with you all this time. Despite the synthesized nature of the voice, Lin Huang could hear the excitement in it. All that looking high and low, and I stumble upon her whereabouts by sheer blind luck! Lin Huang, more and more Im beginning to look forward to meeting you. Im looking forward to meeting you too Lin Huangs tone suddenly turned icy, And then Ill kill you!!! Chapter 1645 - The First Round After Lin Huang ended the call with Spy, Steel Fist and Epic Player looked at him. Was that Spy from the Raiders that you were talking to? Steel Fist asked immediately. It was. Lin Huang nodded. Based on the information you provided, that fellow is indeed a bigger threat. Since he was able to find out your contact number and verify your real identity, it proves that he might be able to find out our real identities too. He might even be able to locate our coordinates through our communicators. Epic Player frowned slightly. If hes a middle-rank Lord, itll be hard for us to kill him. As a close combat powerhouse, Steel Fist particularly disliked encountering this kind of opponent, who possessed showy abilities. Let me handle Spy, Lin Huangs tone was calm as if he were talking about something insignificant. Although Epic Player and Steel Fist still had some doubts about Lin Huang being able to kill a middle-rank Lord, they could tell from the conversation between him and Spy earlier that both had an irreconcilable grudge. They did not delve further into the subject. Since hes already discovered your contact number and your real identity, it shouldnt be hard for him to locate your coordinates, Epic Player added. I reckon it wont take him long to get here. I wonder how many people theyll send this time. Steel Fist looked serious; she could not relax at all. If they dont know that both of you are here, they probably wont send too many people. I anticipate that therell only be three or four people at most, Lin Huang put forward his speculations, But if the news that I requested your help has been leaked, theyll definitely send quite a few peoplemaybe even all the members they have. They certainly wont let a perfect opportunity to kill three Club members slip by! What Lin Huang said made Epic Player and Steel Fist look even grimmer. All this while, they had never considered the possibility that there might be a mole in the Club. After all, apart from Lin Huang, who was a new member, everyone had known each other for years. However, they did not refute what he had said either. They were also not entirely sure whether or not there were any moles in the Club. Well see when the time comes, but hopefully the situation wont be so dire. Epic Player sighed lightly. Lin Huang poured the two of them more tea and began leading the conversation in a lighter direction. In no time at all, it was already early next morning. The stars had just risen on the Pfister Stars horizon when Lin Huang sensed powerful auras approaching the Devil Hunter Star Zone. Epic Player and Steel Fist lifted their heads and looked in the same direction almost simultaneously. Their expressions were both extremely grave. There were nine powerful auras! Lin Huang had been right after all. If the Raiders had wanted to capture only Lin Huang, even if they were to take him alive, there was no need for all of them to make an appearance. Both of them exchanged glances and read the message in each others eyesthere was a mole in the Club after all! Almost the next instant after all three sensed the presence of the Raiders, a series of formidable shockwaves surged through the void at practically the same time. Epic Player and Steel Fist dodged immediately. In the blink of an eye, they appeared outside the Pfister Stars atmosphere. Just when they had found stable footing, they realized that Lin Huang had not dodged at all. At the same time, both of them saw a curtain of black light rising from the Pfister Stars surface. It spread across half the planet almost immediately and just happened to obstruct the direction the shockwaves were coming from. There are nine of themhe cant possibly defend himself against all of them! Steel Fist muttered softly. This Xiu Mu fellow Epic Player looked extremely grim. He had never expected Lin Huang to do something so risky the minute he showed his hand. This was an attack with the combined forces of nine Lords. Not only that, there were two auras that were clearly middle-rank Lords. Even a middle-rank lord-level powerhouse would be forced to dodge an attack of such power. However, right as they thought Lin Huang was definitely going to die, the nine shockwaves struck the curtain of black light at almost the same time. A second later, Epic Player and Steel Fists eyes widened. The shocked expressions on their faces seemed to have frozen in place. What did I just see?! The two of them had the same thought at almost the same time. Only a moment later were they able to confirm that what they had seen earlier was not an illusion. The nine shockwaves of various colors were immediately deflected when they struck the curtain of black light. Not only was the black light curtain not perforated, but the entire Pfister Star remained intact and whole. What kind of defense technique is that?! Steel Fist and Epic Player were immediately dumbfounded. On the other end of things, the nine Raiders who had attacked looked even more stunned. When the nine of them saw Lin Huang using the curtain of light to envelop the Pfister Star earlier, they all thought that Lin Huang was signing his death warrant. They could almost imagine what would happen next. The curtain of black light would shatter the moment the shockwaves hit it, and the entire planet would be crushed into dust, including Lin Huang. However, what they had imagined was completely different from reality. The nine of them had the same reaction when they saw the shockwaves being deflectedthey thought they had been ensnared in an illusion. However, they immediately realized the truth a second later. This scenario was by no means an illusionit had actually happened! Seeing that the deflected shockwaves were going to reach them in merely the time it took for a breath, all of them braced to take the impact head-on. Suddenly, the man leading the team and another middle-rank Lord shouted a warning at the same time, Get out of the way! Both of them had obviously sensed the peculiarity of the deflected shockwaves. All nine Lords hastily scattered immediately in an attempt to avoid the incoming shockwave attack. However, at this point, a black kitten the size of a human palm appeared out of nowhere. Its nine tails were proudly raised high like swaying serpents, while its black eyes were full of disdain. As soon as the kitten appeared, the nine Lords sensed that their bodies had frozen in place. The two middle-rank Lords freed themselves from this restraint at the first possible moment and immediately attacked the kitten. Clearly, they realized it was the kitten that was causing this mischief. However, the black kitten merely shot them a glance and vanished instantly, rendering their attacks futile. At this point, the shockwaves had already approached. Of the remaining seven Lords, only three managed to forcibly free themselves from their unseen bonds, barely dodging the shockwave attacks. However, the other four Lords were killed instantly. Just this one encounter alone had caused their side to lose half of their members. The three lower-rank Lords who had barely escaped felt themselves break into a cold sweat over their entire bodies. If they had not broken free of their spatial bonds at the very last minute, they might not have been able to escape death. The middle-rank Lords were pale. They had not expected Lin Huangs abilities to be this powerful. Naturally, this encounter had been clearly witnessed by Epic Player and Steel Fist, who were hovering in the air. They were utterly dumbstruck; even after a few minutes, they could not recover their composure. When the two of them had first met Lin Huang, they sensed faintly that Lin Huangs abilities were not weak at all. However, they had never expected him to be this powerful. Just one attack earlier, and he had easily disposed of four lower-rank Lords. The two of them, at least, could not do this. This fellow is really ruthless! Epic Player could not help exclaiming. We underestimated him Steel Fist did not know what she was supposed to say now. Chapter 1646 - Pure Spirit “Imperial Monsters”?! As Lin Huang petted the Ninetails Lynx that had landed on his shoulder, he looked toward the distance in the direction the Raiders were coming from. He was quite satisfied with the results of this first clash. After all, this Ninetails Lynx was only a lower-rank Lord with a level-10 Dao seal. It was extremely difficult for it to use its space barrier abilities to restrain middle-rank lord-level powerhouses. Moreover, it was attacking nine Lords at once this round, so it made sense that some were able to break free. Furthermore, the three lower-rank Lords who had broken loose all had powerful abilities and more than six Dao seals. However, the Ninetails Lynx seemed to be rather dissatisfied with the result. It sat on Lin Huangs shoulder, its pitch-black eyes staring at the two middle-rank Lords in a somewhat unfriendly manner. If these two Lords had not attacked it, the three lower-rank Lords would not have been able to break free of their restraints so easily. A rank-6 imperial monster?! The appearance of the Ninetails Lynx attracted Steel Fist and Epic Players attention immediately. The two of them could only roughly gauge its ability, but they did not pick up on the fact that it was one of Lin Huangs Combat Souls. This was because, ordinarily speaking, nobody would cultivate their Gods Figurines Combat Souls to lord-level in a fit of idleness. If they had the resources, it would be far better to utilize those resources themselves. A rank-6 imperial monster with a main cultivation path in spatial rule. Thats rare. Epic Player looked envious. As a clone of a reincarnated being, he had obtained a few fairly excellent imperial monster cubs from his Primordium and had raised them himself as well. The one with the highest combat strength was already at lord-level too. However, compared to the Ninetails Lynx on Lin Huangs shoulder, there was a big gap in their abilities. A single direct confrontation had killed almost half their members in one attack, but the remaining Raiders did not give up on their pursuit. Instead, they immediately entered the Devil Hunter Star Zone and arrived in the starry sky not far from the Pfister Star. Lin Huang, it seems weve truly underestimated you. The leader was a man with the codename Black Mountain. His build was stocky, and he was over three meters tall. He only gave Steel Fist and Epic Player a glance before turning his gaze toward Lin Huang, who was on the Pfister Star. In a flash, Lin Huang disappeared from where he was and reappeared next to Steel Fist and Epic Player. Its not that youve underestimated me; its that youve overestimated yourselves, Lin Huang replied calmly. He merely gave the middle-rank Lord leader a glance, then turned his gaze toward the other middle-rank Lord. He was a man of very ordinary appearance with an inconspicuous face; he was not even one point eight meters tall. He looked thoroughly harmless. You must be Spy, yes? Lin Huangs tone grew colder. The man lifted his head, and the smile on his face became increasingly bizarre. He then spoke in a synthesizer-like voice, Thats right, Im Spy who killed Yang Ling. Give me Yang Lings girlfriend, and Ill allow you a quick death. Unfortunately, I dont intend to give you a quick death! Lin Huang turned his gaze from Spy and looked at the team leader again. Are these all of the Raiders in this great world? Almost. Black Mountain gave a bland smile. Whatare you going to kill us all? Im certainly planning on it, Lin Huang answered bluntly. Youre young in years but certainly not small in your boasting. As soon as Black Mountain finished speaking, he signaled one of the lower-rank Lords with a glance. The lower-rank Lord moved his fingers slightly. No one knew at which juncture he had managed to set up Divine Telekinesis threads that twined around Steel Fist and Epic Players arms, pulling them away from Lin Huang. At the same time, the other two lower-rank Lords advanced on Steel Fist and Epic Player, respectively. Lin Huang watched this happening, completely expressionless, but did not try to prevent it. In reality, he had already noticed the lower-rank Lords maneuvers earlier and had guessed their battle strategy. They wanted to separate his allies from him, then muster the two middle-rank Lords to dispose of him first. All they had to do on Steel Fist and Epic Players side was to stall them, preventing them from coming to his rescue. The abilities of the two aides youve summoned here are indeed quite excellent, but unfortunately, they cant help you now. A ferocious grin appeared on Spys face. Youre not really thinking the two of you can definitely take me out, are you? Lin Huang remained extremely calm. He did not betray any traces of the anxiety and fear that ordinary people would have when facing two middle-rank Lords. You restrain that cat; Ill get rid of him, Black Mountain told the nearby Spy, not bothering to conceal his words. He was not worried about Lin Huang hearing him. After all, to him, Lin Huang was already a dead man. However, Lin Huang smiled when he heard that. I think youve made a mistake about one thing. What Ive rearedisnt just a mere cat. As soon as Lin Huang finished speaking, the remaining Gods Figurines Combat Souls appeared almost simultaneously. These were the Divine Sun Tree, Enchanted Fairy, the Destructive Divine Mammoth, Nightmare Tapir, Undead Styx, Withered Flower, Creation Clock, Shackle Serpent, and Death Butterfly! Each of them was a lower-rank Lord with a level-10 Dao seal. This was the result of Lin Huang spending countless years visualizing in the virtual realm. Only then were the ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls able to consolidate level-10 Dao seals and achieve lower-rank lord-level. Even middle-rank Lords Black Mountain and Spy had a change of expression when they saw the ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls appearing all at once. The two battlefields nearby also rapidly became aware of the anomalies happening on this end. The three lower-rank Lords looked rather pale. After all, the Ninetails Lynx had displayed its abilities earlier for all to see, and the three of them had almost been killed. Meanwhile, Steel Fist and Epic Players faces bore rather strange expressions. Both of them had initially been worried about how long Lin Huang would be able to face down the two middle-rank Lords on his own. Now they saw that Lin Huang did not just have one aide in combathe had an entire group of them. That aura strengthall ten of them are rank-6 monsters! Epic Player could not help secretly exclaiming to himself. He had reared imperial monsters before, and could tell at a glance that Lin Huangs Gods Figurines Combat Souls were all terrifying Pure Spirit rank-6 entities. Steel Fist, on the other hand, could not identify the imperial monsters ranks, but she could clearly sense that the aura of these imperial monsters was no lower than her own. No wonder this fellow was so confident from the start. Although a lower-rank Lord with ten seals had not yet elevated to middle-rank lord-level, they more or less possessed the ability to fight a newly-elevated middle-rank Lord. Ill stall these imperial monstersyou look for an opportunity to kill him! Black Mountain changed his strategy right away. As a combat cultivator, he had more powerful defensive abilities. Under these circumstances, it was natural that he was more suited to drawing fire from the imperial monsters. If he allowed Spy to draw fire from the imperial monsters instead, Black Mountain was slightly worried that all ten of them would finish Spy off before he himself managed to kill Lin Huang. Clearly, Spy was aware of this as well. He did not put forward any objections. Lin Huangs expression remained calm as if he were not really bothered about whatever battle strategy his opponents were going to use. As soon as he gave his order, the Gods Figurines Combat Souls immediately went into action. The Destructive Divine Mammoth led the way, lumbering toward Black Mountain with its steel hooves Chapter 1647 - Yang Ling? Although the Destructive Divine Mammoth was massive, it did not slow it down at all. It reached Black Mountain in no time and its steel hooves lashed out without holding back. Black Mountain did not dodge when he saw what was happening. He was a bona fide combat cultivator who would not retreat at all when encountering opponents with powerful physical bodies. This was the pride of every combat cultivator. Faced with the Destructive Divine Mammoths steel hooves, he attacked with both fists, throwing heavy punches. Two forceful beams of black and yellow light enveloped in layers of Dao seals collided with a loud, resonating boom. An instant later, rings of Odylic Force shockwaves imbued with god sequence power rippled outward. Wherever the shockwaves passed, countless planets exploded one by one. In the end, even the Pfister Star was not spared. The impact completely shattered it into cosmic dust. As the two combatants clashed, the Destructive Divine Mammoths body was sent flying backward. It only managed to stop after being flung back a hundred kilometers or more in the star-filled heavens. In comparison, Black Mountain had merely been thrown back less than ten meters. The disparity in ability between the two was very evident. However, Black Mountains expression was rather grim. Although he held the upper hand during this collision, he could clearly sense that his attack had not breached the Destructive Divine Mammoths defenses at all. One must know that he had held nothing back earlierthe attack was practically full-force, without the boost of a trump card. However, the assault had not made a dent in the Destructive Divine Mammoths defenses at all. Furthermore, there were still nine more monsters of similar ability in his opponents camp. This encounter made him wonder for the first time whether or not he had made the right decision in spearheading a team to kill Lin Huang. Amid Black Mountain and the Destructive Divine Mammoths mighty collision, Spy, on the other end, was targeted by the other Gods Figurines Combat Souls. The Ninetails Lynx attacked first, disappearing from Lin Huangs shoulder directly without so much as an overt move. A second later, it appeared behind Spy, slashing out with its sharp claws. In the void, layer upon layer of spatial blades attacked, surging toward Spy like an all-encompassing net. Spys sense of danger immediately skyrocketed. Hurriedly, he fled. These waves of assault were no ordinary spatial blades but terrifying attacks compounded with level-10 Dao seals. However, right as Spy moved, Withered Flowers frost and Creation Clocks time freeze were unleashed at almost at the same time. Although he was prepared for the Ninetails Lynxs time freeze abilities, he was caught off guard by the attacks from the other two Combat Souls. Under the effects of two sets of restraining powers compounded with level-10 Dao seals, Spys body froze involuntarily for a fraction of a second. At that very instant, his figure was completely swallowed up by countless waves of spatial blades. Lin Huang stared fixedly in the direction of Spys besieged figure. The countless God Weapon flying daggers in his sleeves were at the ready. That was to prevent Spy from escaping this fatal scenario. However, a moment later, Lin Huang frowned hard. He could sense that the Ninetails Lynxs attack had failed. The countless spatial blades did not seem to have hit anything concrete. He escaped?! Lin Huang was suspicious. He had clearly sensed earlier that Withered Flowers frost and Creation Clocks time freeze had scored hits on Spy. Spy had definitely been struck by the attacks. Even if he had only been restrained for a second, he would not have been able to escape the Ninetails Lynxs net of spatial blades. Lin Huangs brain kept churning as he thought of all the various possibilities. A moment later, an image of Virtuosos body becoming insubstantial suddenly appeared in his mind. Could it be that this fellow has a technique similar to an obscuring technique? If Spy had really mastered such an ability, he might actually be able to evade the Ninetails Lynxs attack even while under restraint. This was just like Virtuosoalthough their body had been put under restraint, they could still use their obscuring skills. As soon as their body became illusory, almost all attacks on the material plane could do nothing to them. Not long later, the Ninetails Lynxs spatial blades dissipated, and Spy was still where he was, completely unharmed. He flashed an irritating smile at Lin Huang. The survival technique I used earlier was retrieved from Yang Lings memory. I must say that its pretty useful. Youre dead meat! Lin Huangs killing intent soared. What Spy said made him recall that Yang Ling had indeed possessed such a technique. It seemed as if it turned his body into something digital to dodge material attacks. However, Spys words also enraged Lin Huang. Previously he had not been sure all along whether Yang Ling was really dead or not. After all, he had only learned the news from Hong Zhuangs story and had not seen any concrete proof. Now that Spy had mentioned extracting something from Yang Lings memory, he was now fundamentally sure that Spy had really killed Yang Ling. I love seeing that expression on your faceso desirous of killing me and yet totally helpless. Spys smile grew more and more savage. I dont mind telling you that since mastering Yang Lings technique, even an ultimate-rank Lord might not be able to kill me. Youre just too inexperienced At that moment, the Ninetails Lynx abruptly attacked again. However, it did not use spatial blades this time but a spatial bind. Withered Flower and Creation Clock attacked simultaneously as well. As the three binding techniques struck Spy, Shackle Serpentwhich had concealed itself in the darklaunched an attack. Countless black shackles wrapped around Spys limbs and neck. Ive told you its useless Spys laughter stopped abruptly because he sensed that the Dao seals in his body had been disconnected. Not only that, the god sequence powers, Rule Bending Powers, and even the Divine Power within him were vanishing. Wh-Whats happening Spy was now in a complete state of panic. Now that it had elevated to lord-level, Shackle Serpents sealing abilities were no longer restricted to merely Divine Power. Dao seals, god sequence chains, Rule Bending Powers, Divine Power, God Territories, and all kinds of god skills and divine abilities it could seal off just about anything. Although the sealing duration for a lower-rank Lord sealing off the abilities of a middle-rank Lord was extremely short, it was enough for Lin Huang. A second later, countless blood-red electric arcs shot like lightning out of Lin Huangs sleeves. Over ten million God Weapon flying daggers surged through the air. The Sword seal imbued over fifty thousand levels of sequence power crushed Spys body to dust immediately. An ultimate-rank Lord might not be able to kill you, but that doesnt mean I cant, Lin Huang commented indifferently as he looked in the direction of Spys dissipating body. However, as soon as he finished speaking, something odd occurred at the spot where Spys body had dissipated. A figure rapidly began to form at a speed visible to the naked eye Eh? Lin Huang raised his brows and looked confused. Xiao Heis push notification had popped up, stating that he had successfully killed Spy. Naturally, Spy could not possibly be still alive. Now there was a body consolidatingwhat on earth was happening?! Lin Huang did not rashly launch into an attack, halting the Gods Figurines Combat Souls attacks as well. A moment later, the figure finally consolidated fully. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw its face. Yang Ling?! Although Yang Ling looked much more mature now and his physique was more muscular, Lin Huang recognized him at a glance. Chapter 1648 - Yang Ling’s Revival I genuinely never thought that youd be able to kill Spy. Yang Lings expression was also full of astonishment as he stared at Lin Huang. After that, he unhurriedly fashioned a set of illusory garments and put them on. It was not the first time Lin Huang had seen him naked anyway. Lin Huang could tell that the person in front of him was really Yang Ling. However, this was not his actual physical body but a digital projection. Hong Zhuang told me you had been killed by a Raider and that your connection with your Goldfinger had been completely wiped. Whats going on now? Lin Huang was rather confused about Yang Lings current state. Yang Ling sighed when he heard Hong Zhuang being mentioned. After a brief moment to settle his emotions, he began relating what had befallen him. I wasnt killed at all. Theoretically, it could be considered being captured alive After sending Hong Zhuang off the other day, I digitized my consciousness as I knew I was no match for Spy. After that, I separated my consciousness into nine layers from the core to the surface, setting a password for each layer to seal them off. The deeper the layer, the harder the password. I set a group of passwords on the last layerthe corethat would definitely change randomly. I knew that given Spys character, he would certainly try to decode them. Thats because all along, hes wanted to surpass me in every aspect. I left passwords that ranged from easy to difficult, firstly to prevent him from becoming humiliated and angry at being unable to decode the password and immediately destroying my consciousness data. For another, I wanted to buy myself more time to stay alive. I knew very well that with Spys intelligence, he would easily discover my plan. However, I was also aware that he would most certainly take up my challenge and fall into my trap. Apart from setting up passwords, Id also made other preparations for my return. One of them included Spys death. I made his death a trigger condition. As soon as he died, my consciousness data would automatically be unsealed. Now that youve killed him, youve successfully triggered the conditions for my revival. Simply put, thats the entire process. As for the disconnection from my Goldfinger, that ought to have been caused by my consciousness being sealed. Well talk about the details later after we get back. After Yang Ling had given a quick summary of what had happened to him, he immediately switched to the topic which concerned him most. Oh yes, is Hong Zhuang alright? Shes doing pretty well. Lin Huang nodded slightly. After you were captured alive, she located me approximately four months later, and I set her up safely in the Devil Hunter Star Zone. A few days ago, in anticipation of the Raiders showing up, I arranged for her, Lin Xin, and the others to move to another star zone. They have peak lord powerhouses guarding them now, so their safety is definitely guaranteed. Thats great. Yang Ling could at least finally be fully at ease. You should stay in digital form for the time being. Well talk more after I settle these fellows. Lin Huang could tell that Yang Ling was still in his digitized form. His body was not a materialized physical entity but a virtual projection. If not, he would have been pulverized by the aftermath of the battle between the Destructive Divine Mammoth and Black Mountain earlier since his cultivation base was not yet at heavenly god-level. Yang Ling nodded and turned his head to look at where the Destructive Divine Mammoth and Black Mountain were. At his current level of eyesight and Divine Telekinesis strength, he could not catch any of the battle proceedings at all. He could only rely on his eyes to see the sparks from the encounter. Although he was only a digitized form now, he could faintly sense the shockwaves rippling from the collision between lord-level powerhouses. The terrifying aftershocks even interfered slightly with the digital world. Lin Huang merely transmitted a thought, and all ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls joined in to besiege Black Mountain. At that moment, Black Mountain was endlessly bemoaning his current predicament mentally. When Lin Huang had killed Spy earlier, he already had decided to pull out from the battle. After all, he knew Spys abilities. Although Black Mountain was a combat cultivator with powerful defense abilities, Spy had far surpassed him in terms of survival abilities. However, Spy, who had claimed that even ultimate-rank Lords could not kill him, had been disposed of by Lin Huang in less than ten seconds. Black Mountain was not even really able to fathom how Spys digitized physical body had been decoded. That made him even more fearful of Lin Huang now. We can consider this hunt an utter failure this time. Black Mountain gave Lin Huang a long, hard look and merely hesitated for a moment before he made up his mind. His opponent had ten imperial monsters. If the battle continued, Black Mountain would exhaust his Divine Power sooner or later. Moreover, the other two people on Lin Huangs side had abilities that were close to middle-rank lord-level. Meanwhile, on Black Mountains side, apart from himself who still could fight, it was only a matter of time before the three remaining lower-rank Lords were killed. If he did not pull out now, he might not have the chance to do so later. Black Mountain did not even spare a glance for his three partners. He forced the Destructive Divine Mammoth, Divine Sun Tree, and the other Combat Souls back with an attack, then immediately retreated as fast as he could. As a combat cultivator, the speed of his retreat was really quite astonishing. When Lin Huang saw what Black Mountain was doing, his mouth twisted in a sneer of disdain. A second later, a black kitten blocked Black Mountains way. Beside the kitten was a dark blue butterfly flapping its wings. Move! Black Mountain did not slow down; he charged right at the two little creatures. Naturally, the Ninetails Lynx was not used to his temper. It slashed continuously with its sharp claws, and countless spatial blades surged forth torrentially like a violent storm. A ferocious gleam flashed through Black Mountains eyes. He made no move to dodge at all. Instead, he used his Dao seal to raise a heavy shield in front of his body to counter the spatial blades that were raining down on him. He did this because he knew that the other imperial monsters behind him would catch up if he stopped for even a second. At that point, he would only be surrounded by more imperial monsters. That was why he was willing to risk injury and meet the Ninetails Lynxs attack head-on. Only by breaking out from the circle of imperial monsters that surrounded him would he stand a chance of survival. He did not even spare a glance to see how the battle was going for his three partners. To him, all three were just cannon fodder for attracting the attention of Lin Huang and the others. The heavy shield was soon dented and scarred from being slashed by the spatial blades. Some spatial blades even pierced through the shields defensive layer, slicing bloody wounds on Black Mountains body. Black Mountain did not pause at all. He did not even fight back only because he wanted to reserve enough Divine Power to escape. Just as Black Mountains figure approached the Ninetails Lynx, Death Butterfly abruptly stirred its wings from beside the kitten. An instant later, a colorless, formless wave began to ripple outward. The already heavily damaged shield began to collapse inch by inch under the rippling of the wave. The moment Black Mountains muscular frame was exposed, his body appeared to be sliced by countless thin blades and began spurting copious amounts of blood Chapter 1649 - Killing Another Middle-rank Lord! Black Mountain did not slow down at allin fact, he completely ignored the wounds on his body. He was a combat cultivator, so his physical body was more resilient than ordinary Lords. Death Butterflys attack seemed terrifying, but in reality, it only caused him superficial wounds rather than any actual damage. After taking the brunt of this attack with his physical body, Black Mountain bypassed the Ninetails Lynx and Death Butterfly, his body entirely covered with blood. Although both the creatures were within arms reach, he still did not retaliate by attacking them. This was because he knew even a seconds delay might cause him to be trapped by the encircling imperial monsters. Although he had never before in his life experienced this injustice of being unable to fight back despite being attacked, Black Mountain chose to use reason to suppress his fury. He knew very well that he might die here if he made even the slightest mistake. What he did not notice was that just as he bypassed the two imperial monsters obstructing his way, Lin Huangs mouth curled up in a faint smirk. A second later, Black Mountain saw blood-red arcs of light surging toward him in quick succession. His mind instantly panicked because he had seen this move previouslyin fact, Spy had been killed by this technique. Do I brace for it, or do I dodge? Both choices flashed through Black Mountains mind for only a moment before he twisted his body aside without hesitation. The reason he chose to dodge so decisively was that his body was instinctively sending out furious warning signals. If he met this attack head-on, even if he were not killed, he would definitely be severely injured. In truth, his instincts were not wrong. Although Lin Huang had currently only mastered a level-1 Sword seal still, this level-1 Sword seal was not compounded with ten thousand levels of sequence power like before, but with over fifty thousand levels. This attack exceeded most middle-rank Lords with twenty seals in terms of powermore so even than many middle-rank Lords with thirty seals. The instant Black Mountain moved, he did not dare stop. Instead, he diverged from his current direction and tried to escape. When he lifted his head, he saw countless bloody-red arcs raining down on him like a torrential storm. He switched directions again without hesitation. However, the other end was also blocked by blood-red arcs like a sky full of stars. Naturally, Lin Huang was the one who attacked first. The ten million or more God Weapon flying daggers were like a giant hemispherical wall that covered the entirety of the starry heavens, blocking Black Mountains way forward. Black Mountain scanned with Divine Telekinesis and realized it impossible for him to keep forging ahead. He steeled himself and turned around right away, charging in the direction of the several Gods Figurines Combat Souls. The way forward was blocked, so he could only escape by turning back. He was also taking a gamble! He was betting on Lin Huang not having more telekinetic flying daggers, or not being able to control more telekinetic flying daggers. However, he did not see that the instant he turned around, Lin Huangs smile became more pronounced. Ignoring the Ninetails Lynx and Death Butterflys fresh wave of attacks, he passed the two of them again. At that moment, the remaining eight Gods Figurines Combat Souls arrived in succession. Divine Sun Tree compounded ten levels of Holy Fire Dao seal, its branches lashing at Black Mountains body. This attack practically caused Black Mountain to feel that his physical body had reached its capacity for enduring high temperatures. Even as a middle-rank lord-level combat cultivator, his body was shriveling. It felt as if all the moisture and fat content in his body were being squeezed out by the intense heat. Enchanted Fairys assault hit him a moment later. That terrifying chillway below zero degrees celsiuscould even freeze time and space. Frost climbed up Black Mountains body immediately. Even the speed of his movement slowed down. At that moment, Creation Clock attacked as well. It utilized a time-stopping skill, and added the power of pausing timeas strong as shackles and compounded with a level-10 Dao sealto Black Mountains body. Black Mountains body suddenly ground to a halt. When he saw Shackle Serpent appear, however, his pupils contracted suddenly. This was the imperial monster that had immobilized Spys body earlier when he had been killed. Black Mountain roared in fury and forcibly shook off Enchanted Fairy and Creation Clocks layers of restraints. The instant Shackle Serpent attacked, Black Mountains body expanded to several times its size. He threw heavy punches with both fists in Shackle Serpents direction. At that moment, the Destructive Divine Mammoth trumpeted and lashed out with two feet at Black Mountains fists, taking the brunt of the attack. However, the Destructive Divine Mammoth was sent flying thousands of kilometers away when it collided with the attack. Lin Huang raised his brows when he saw Black Mountains body enveloped in vital blood energy, eyes spurting blood-red flames. He used a fire element Dao seal to ignite vital energy, blood, and Divine Power? In terms of strength alone, that earlier punch was at least six or seven times more powerful. After sending the Destructive Divine Mammoth flying with one hit, Black Mountain did not continue fighting. Instead, he launched into the air with both legs and fled several times faster than before. His initial speed was already very swift. Now that it had increased several dozen times, apart from the Ninetails Lynx, the rest of the Gods Figurines Combat Souls could not catch up with him. The Ninetails Lynx had not been able to do anything to Black Mountain when it had joined forces initially with Death Butterly; now, on its own, it was doomed to fail. However, Lin Huang did not intend to let Black Mountain go just like that. He shook his sleeves lightly, and blood-red electric arcs shot out in quick succession. In an instant, they had amassed to over ten million in number. They surged toward Black Mountain again, intercepting him and immediately blocking his way, forcing him to turn back. The Gods Figurines Combat Souls caught up in pursuit once more. The Ninetails Lynx, which was the first to arrive, cast a spatial bind without hesitation. It knew its attack had a limited effect on Black Mountain, so it chose to use its control skills to prevent him from escaping again. However, Black Mountainhaving ignited his vital energy, blood, and Divine Powerhad increased more than a level in terms of ability. In an instant, he had freed himself from Ninetails Lynxs spatial bind. He was intending to flee again when the Destructive Divine Mammoth attacked in a rage. It was livid at being sent flying in the attack earlier. It displayed almost one hundred and twenty percent of its power in this attack, charging toward Black Mountain. Black Mountain threw a punch again, and the Destructive Divine Mammoth was sent flying once more. However, the distance was clearly less this time. It only shot back some two hundred kilometers. After being momentarily impeded by the Destructive Divine Mammoth, Black Mountain was surrounded again by the remaining nine Gods Figurines Combat Souls. Under the continuous siege from Divine Sun Tree and the rest of the Combat Souls, Black Mountain rapidly became exhausted from fighting back. He kept his gaze fixed on Shackle Serpent to prevent himself from falling victim to its technique. As for the other Combat Souls, he countered them as much as possible, trying his best to reserve Divine Power for his escape. Black Mountains several attempts to break free were futile. However, the Gods Figurines Combat Souls could not do anything to him even after taking turns to attack him. Both sides fell into a stalemate. Now that the battle on Steel Fist and Epic Players side was in its last stages, Lin Huang finally stopped merely watching from the sidelines. It was not that he was deliberately toying with Black Mountain. He was just using him as a means of gauging the current abilities of his ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls. At this point, he had basically seen everything necessary, and he already had an idea of their capabilities. It was useless for the battle to continue like this. Lin Huang finally took a hand in the proceedings. Dozens of telekinetic flying daggers found their way through the fighting to the scene of battle where Black Mountain and the Gods Figurines Combat Souls were. Black Mountain immediately became nervous and did not dare to delay any further. To Black Mountain, the pressure from the thirty-odd telekinetic flying daggers far exceeded the pressure from all ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls taken together. The reason was that he knew Lin Huang was his most powerful enemy here. Although he did not quite understand why Lin Huang did not activate all of his telekinetic flying daggers at once, he did not dare underestimate him in the least. He did his best to dodge whenever he saw the telekinetic flying daggers coming. If he were unable to evade them, he threw heavy punches to knock them aside. After several rounds, the thirty or more telekinetic flying daggers had failed to gain even an inch of ground. Right as Black Mountain was considering how he might find an opportunity to escape, he suddenly felt a tightening around his four limbs. A second later, even his neck was entwined by threads. He panicked. Only after a careful scan with Divine Telekinesis did he discover that his limbs and neck were now bound by telekinetic threads. He had not noticed this earlier at all. He tried hard to struggle free, but he could not move at all. One must know that Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis strength was already at peak upper-rank lord-level. As soon as they saw Black Mountains body abruptly stop as if he were tied up and dangling in midair, the Gods Figurines Combat Souls immediately knew that it was Lin Huang who had done that. This time, Shackle Serpent finally found an opening to attack. It was the first to launch an assault and did not hesitate at all. Black shackles began forming out of thin air on Black Mountains body. As the black shackles appeared, Black Mountain could only sense his Divine Power fading rapidly, including even the secret skills he used in the battle earlier. His body reverted to its original form. At the same time, he realized that he could no longer sense the Dao seals within his body, his god sequence chains, his God Rule Powers, or even his God Territory. That very instant, he finally realized why Spywho had claimed that even ultimate-rank Lords could not kill himhad been killed. In that split second, he felt utter despair. He knew that he was finished. An instant later, he saw the attacks of the imperial monsters coming at him in succession, and his consciousness went dark immediately. He did not even know which attack finally killed him. Chapter 1650 - Die, Babble! Lin Huang put away Black Mountain and Spys corpses and turned his head to look at the other battlefield. The fight between the three Raiders, Steel Fist, and Epic Player was coming to an end. Two of the three Raiders were severely wounded. A lady assisting in the battle was clearly a cultivator whose main path was Gods soul and Divine Telekinesis. She had been using telekinetic flying daggers to interfere with Steel Fist and Epic Player. Not only that, she would launch spirit attack maneuvers every now and again. Lin Huang immediately guessed the other partys identity. She was most probably Babble, the one who had invaded Death Sickle and killed Sun Zhan. Of the team Black Mountain had brought this time, this lady was the only one whose main cultivation path was Gods soul. As if she sensed that the other fight over there had ended, Babble glanced at the battlefield on Lin Huangs end and saw him weighing her up. Not only that, Black Mountain, Spy, and the other two middle-rank Lords were nowhere to be seen. A layer of cold sweat suddenly sprang up on her back. She took only a moment to come to a decision and abandoned both her teammates without hesitation, beating a rapid retreat to try and escape the battlefield. At that moment, the corners of Lin Huangs mouth curled up in a faint smirk. If the other party had not tried to run, it would have been rather impolite for him to interfere. After all, she was Steel Fist and Epic Players enemy. However, now that she was fleeing, it gave him an excuse to attack. It was not for the sake of plundering one more Goldfinger, but because she had killed the people in Death Sickles headquarters. Lin Huang felt that bringing her corpse back to Death Sickle would be a more fitting final destination for her. If she had not fled and had ended up being killed by Steel Fist or Epic Player, it would have been awkward for him to ask for the body. Babble moved at full speed. She only wanted to be able to escape the battlefield before the others noticed and then summon the dimensional portal. However, before she had retreated less than a thousand kilometers away, a voice drifted to her ears. Where are you going? As soon as the voice finished speaking, a black cat appeared elegantly before her, blocking her way. Its nine tails undulated like snakes, swaying in the starry sky. At the same time, Babble felt herself pausing abruptly. Her body seemed to be restrained by an invisible force. It was exactly like when they had just landed on the Devil Hunter Star Zone earlier. A spatial bind?! Babble felt a sudden chill in her heart, and her pupils suddenly turned pitch-black. A second later, the Ninetails Lynxs body shuddered suddenly, and the spatial bind was removed, just like that. Interesting! Lin Huang raised his brows as he watched. She had actually controlled the Ninetails Lynx for a second using a Gods soul secret skill. One must know that the Ninetails Lynxs current Gods souls strength was already at peak lower-rank lord-level. In terms of Dao seal level, the Ninetails Lynx had reached level-10, while Babble had only consolidated a level-7 or level-8 Dao seal at most. After freeing herself from the spatial bind, Babble did not dare to stop in her bid for escape. The reason was, she knew that Lin Huang had more than one imperial monster. Not only that, Black Mountain had been killed by this group of imperial monsters. She did not have sufficient confidence to confront enemies that even the two middle-rank Lords, Black Mountain and Spy, could not defeat. However, she did not have Black Mountains speed. She had not fled very far before she encountered a combined attack from a few of the Gods Figurines Combat Souls. The Ninetails Lynx that Babble had controlled attacked in a rage. Its sharp claws slashed out, sending countless spatial blades surging toward Babble like a net. Almost simultaneously, Death Butterfly attacked as well. Its wings stirred slightly, and an invisible death wave spread through the starry heavens, fanning out toward Babble. This was followed immediately by attacks from the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the other Combat Souls. Babbles pupils turned pitch-black again, and black blood began trickling from her eyes. She released another Gods soul attack that rippled through the starry sky like waves of water. The attack stunned almost all the Gods Figurines Combat Souls into a trance as it passed them. However, when the Gods soul attack reached Nightmare Tapir, Nightmare Tapir suddenly released a shriek. Babble immediately spat out a mouthful of blood. At the same time, the remaining Gods Figurines Combat Souls regained their senses. Lin Huang clearly sensed the full process of the Gods souls colliding this time. Nightmare Tapir already possessed the combat strength of a peak lower-rank Lord, and its Gods souls strength was peak lower-rank Lord as well. However, it specialized in Gods soul power and was able to wield its Gods soul attacks to yield middle-rank lord-level results. In reality, Nightmare Tapir and Babble were on par with each other in the earlier collision between Gods souls. However, Babble had too many targets to attack, so the strength of her assault was reduced. Thus, she was injured by Nightmare Tapirs counterattack. If they were to fight one on one, Lin Huang felt the chances of Nightmare Tapir defeating Babble would be fifty-fifty. Although this woman, Babble, was only a lower-rank Lord, her overall abilities were by no means very much weaker than Spys earlier. Lin Huang attacked mercilessly. At the same time, he found it rather amusing to see his Gods Figurines Combat Souls being repeatedly embarrassed. Dozens of electric arcs resembling blood-red lightning shot out from his sleeves. Sensing the incoming threat, Babble did not dodge. Instead, she used the same skill, turning her head to look directly at Lin Huang. Her black pupils bled without stopping as her Gods soul attack surged toward Lin Huang. Her idea was simple. Since she was unable to escape from the encircling imperial monsters, she would directly attack the imperial monsters master. Even if she failed to kill Lin Huang, the master, injuring him severely could increase the chances for her escape. However, Babble released a devastating shriek a second after she released the Gods soul attack. At the same time, her eyes immediately burst, eye sockets becoming two bloody holes. Her Gods soul attack had backfired instantly. After all, Lin Huang currently possessed Gods soul strength at peak upper-rank lord-level. He was only half a step away from becoming an ultimate-rank Lord. Not only that, he had a spirit-level God Weapon in his Gods souls space that could increase the strength of his Gods soul. Babble attacking head-on with a lower-rank Lords Gods soul strength was utterly ineffectual. Right as Babble shrieked in agony, her Gods soul nearly shattering, a blood-red electric arc flashed through the air and pierced right through the middle of her brow. The several Gods Figurines Combat Souls looked at Lin Huang with mixed emotions on their faces. The ten of them had surrounded Babble and attacked but failed twice. However, with just a single blow, Lin Huang had killed this powerful spirit cultivator. After using Divine Telekinesis to retrieve Babbles corpse and put it away in his storage space, Lin Huang glanced over in the direction of the other battlefield. Steel Fist and Epic Players fight had come to an end in quick succession, with the two lower-rank Lords being slaughtered on the spot. Their battle appeared to have taken a long time, but in reality, less than ten minutes had passed. It felt much longer because the battle on Lin Huangs side had ended far too rapidly. After putting their acquired loot away, Steel Fist and Epic Player approached Lin Huang. Their faces bore extremely complicated expressions as they looked at him. Although they had not seen the full proceedings of Lin Huangs battle when the two of them had been fighting, they had taken moments to observe. Therefore, they had caught the instance when Lin Huang had killed the two middle-rank Lords and Babble. Having discovered that the new Club member had such terrifying abilities, they were not too sure what to say at the moment. Lin Huang, however, initiated the conversation when he saw how awkward both of them felt. Thank you so much for your aid. If theres anything you need help with in the future, Ill definitely help out if its within my power to do so. Dont say that. The two of us didnt help at all. Were just here to freeload off the loot. Epic Player gave a wry smile. With your abilities, you dont need our help at all. I dont understand why you asked both of us to come. Steel Fist looked as if she had been stunned by a blow. I didnt know their exact abilities after all, so I asked for your help just in case, Lin Huang only disclosed part of the truth. He did not tell them that his abilities had skyrocketed after he had requested their presence. Although the answer sounded a little like prevarication, the two of them believed it regardless. What are your plans after this? Are you going to the universe? Steel Fist could not help but ask. I doubt Ill be leaving the great world for the foreseeable future. There are still a great many things I need to settle here. Lin Huang shook his head. Which means to say we can still be in contact? Epic Player said with a smile. Of course, were colleagues at the Club. Lin Huang smiled and nodded. Speaking of colleagues Steel Fists expression turned a touch colder. I think theres an eighty percent chance that brat Cunning Rabbit is the Raider spy! What eighty percent chanceits one hundred percent that its him! Epic Player scoffed, Otherwise, how would the Raiders know to send all their members to hunt the three of us?! The two of them had already found out from Lin Huang that he had only sent the three of them a request for help. Cunning Rabbit was the only one who had not replied. Therefore, Cunning Rabbit had to be the one who had leaked the information to the Raiders. Does Cunning Rabbit have a permanent address? Lin Huang looked at Steel Fist and Epic Player with a beatific smile. I know of a foothold he uses, but Im not sure if theres where his permanent residence is, Steel Fist replied with a smile. I think we can pay him a visit and surprise him. Lin Huang looked at the two of them with a smile. I think we can do that! I think its a great idea too! Chapter 1651 - Bigger Trouble After putting Yang Ling into his God Territory temporarily and recalling the ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls, Lin Huang concealed his aura and disguised himself. After that, he departed with Steel Fist and Epic Player. After passing through the dimensional portal, Lin Huang appeared directly on the rooftop of a tall building. He could not help frowning slightly when he saw the never-ending stream of crowds, vehicles, and horses below. A place like this was not ideal for a fight. Is this the Ricky Star?! Epic Player asked at once after he swept his gaze over his surroundings. Clearly, he was familiar with this planet. The Ricky Star in the Coyne Star Zone? Lin Huang had heard of this planet as well. The Coyne Star Zone was in the core zone of the God Territory. It was one of the top three commercial trade star zones. Furthermore, the Ricky Star was the richest of the several planets in the God Territory. Anyone who had been in the God Territory for some time would have probably heard the sayingRicky Star, Ricky Star, Divine Crystals everywhere! Thats right. Steel Fist nodded slightly, confirming Lin Huangs suspicions. This isnt a good place for a fight, Epic Player verbalized what Lin Huang was thinking, looking rather helpless. Lets confirm first whether hes here or not. Lin Huang did not say much. To keep from alerting the enemy, the three of them concealed their auras and even disguised their appearances. They certainly could not use Divine Telekinesis either. Lin Huang had given the matter some thought and decided on his plan. If Cunning Rabbit were really hiding on this planet, he would summon Shackle Serpent to seal off his Dao seal immediately and take him somewhere safe before dealing with him. Follow me. Steel Fist was now in a black leather dress, and her charisma was considerably more beguiling. In a flash, she vanished on the spot. Lin Huang and Epic Player immediately followed suit. A moment later, the three of them appeared in the air above a bar. They no longer had to hide their auras once they had arrived at this location. Cunning Rabbit opened this bar. The private room in the furthest part of the basement is his, Steel Fist communicated to the other two via voice transmission. The two of you stand guard here; Ill check it out. Lin Huang nodded slightly. In a flash, he appeared directly at the door of the room that Steel Fist had mentioned. The room seemed to have a unique barrier in place. Even Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis could not penetrate it. Not only that, there was a defense barrier as well. Lin Huang drew his sword and shattered the door with one slash. He then stepped inside. The private room was actually a luxurious suite, but it was empty at the moment. Lin Huang scanned through once with Divine Telekinesis; however, he did not find anything of note. He only contacted Steel Fist and Epic Player with Divine Telekinesis after he left the room to summon them both down here. The two of them scanned the room with Divine Telekinesis as well after entering. They then began a physical search of the place. After approximately ten minutes or so, the three of them gathered in the living room after a fruitless search. This room has quite evidently been cleared out. Even most of the furniture has been taken away, Steel Fist said with a frown. Apart from a few paintings on the living room walls, nothing remained. Even the wardrobe and bed in the bedroom had been removed. The entire suite appeared vacant. Im guessing he used some method to find out about Black Mountain and the others being killed. Lin Huang turned his gaze to Steel Fist. Furthermore, he was very much aware that you knew about this foothold of his, so he rushed back to clean everything up and avoid exposing his tracks. Unfortunately, I only know about this foothold of his. Steel Fist frowned slightly. Now that this lead has fizzled out, itll be hard to find him again. His running away is further proof that hes the spy. Lin Huang did not show very much emotion. He had already anticipated that this might happen. Lets send the information about him being a spy to headquarters first, Epic Player said and looked at Lin Huang. Since he already knows the result of our battle earlier, hell definitely transmit information about you to the Raiders headquarters the first chance he gets. Once youve come to the attention of the Raiders headquarters, the Raiders in the universe will most certainly send even more powerful Raiders to hunt you. Black Mountain and Spy were middle-rank Lords, so the Raiders they send next will definitely be more powerful than both of them combined. They might even send upper-rank Lords! Lin Huang could not help frowning at this point. He had never imagined that the aftermath would bring so much trouble. Thats why we must send the information about him being a spy to the Clubs headquarters right away. Then well tell them about your situation in detail and request headquarters for backup. But even if the powerhouses from headquarters can defeat the Raiders from the universe, your troubles might not be over yet, Epic Player continued, There might be more Raiders who will accept the mission to kill you. What youve just said makes me want to kill Cunning Rabbit even more now, Lin Huang said with a smile, seemingly unconcerned. In reality, he already felt a sense of danger. Initially, he had thought he was already powerful enough. However, from the looks of things now, this was entirely not the case. With the threat of the Raiders hanging over his head like a huge mountain, Lin Huang just could not feel completely at ease. Thats why I asked if you were planning to go to the universe, Steel Fist could not help commenting from where she was. As soon as you enter the universe, it will be difficult for the Raiders to find you since its so vast. However, if you stay in this great world, it will be much easier for them to find you. Lin Huang shook his head still. There are matters in the great world that I havent sorted out, so I cant leave just yet. What do both of you intend to do next? Well have to hide for a while in the universe. Epic Player gave a wry, resigned smile. If the Raiders really do send upper-rank Lords over, both of us cant fight them. From beside him, Steel Fist did not raise any objections. The three of them went their separate ways after chatting for a while. Lin Huang had fully anticipated failing to capture Cunning Rabbit. He did not dwell further on the matter. After returning to the Devil Hunter Star Zone, he glanced at the near-total destruction wrought on the area and did not linger. He appeared on a planet in a nearby star zone. Ignoring the bustling crowds of people, Lin Huang pushed open the door and entered a particular courtyard. Lord Swordmaster! A figure welcomed him immediately. It was Sword1 in a purple robe. Is everyone on this planet? Lin Huang asked immediately after a faint nod. Not at all. To be safe, were scattered over five different star zones. Sword1 shook his head. Is there a problem? The danger isnt fully past yet. Lin Huangs expression remained tense. Summon all of them here, please. Less than five minutes later, everyone from the Sword Alliance had gathered in the courtyard. For a while in the future, there might be more powerful Raiders from the universe coming to attack. The great world isnt safe, in particular the areas around the Devil Hunter Star Zone. For safety, Ive decided to place all of you in the God Territory within me After this brief explanation, everyone present did not raise any objections at all. Lin Huang then put all of them into the God Territory within him. Once he was done, Lin Huang looked toward a specific direction in the distant heavens. It was where the Nephilic Judge Tribe was Chapter 1652 - Six Goldfingers Those who have already elevated to rank-5 and those who have prepared the materials for elevation to rank-5, or who have already elevated to rank-4.5 can come to the Ricky Star in the Coyne Star Zone. Ill elevate you immediately to Supreme God rank-5 and Pure Spirit rank-6. Those who havent completed collecting materials, send me a detailed list of the materials you havent managed to obtain yet. Ill help you gather them. Once Ive completed gathering everything, Ill notify all of you, then follow it up with your elevation in rank. Also, please inform me as soon as youve elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Therell be a pleasant surprise at that point. Lin Huang sent these three messages to all his imperial monsters through telepathic voice transmission. Now that Xiao Hei had lifted its restrictions, as long as it was supplemented with Origin Energy, it could create Advance Cards in batches to elevate all the imperial monsters to Pure Spirit rank-6. When the imperial monsters received the voice transmission messages, their first reaction was to wonder was if Lin Huang had made a slip of the tongue. They were all aware that Xiao Hei could elevate monsters. However, from mythical-level rank-4 onward, each advancement required a massive amount of materials. It was very clear what Lin Huangs voice transmission message meantthey only required materials for rank-5 to be able to elevate two ranks and advance to Pure Spirit-level. Dont we need materials to elevate to rank-6? The first one to ask a question through voice transmission was Bai. This time, he did not choose to message Lin Huang privately via telepathic voice transmission. Instead, he asked his question publicly so the rest of the imperial monsters could hear him. No, Lin Huang gave a straightforward, public answer, Due to some specials reasons, you dont need materials to elevate from rank-5 to rank-6. When all the imperial monsters heard Lin Huangs reply, their expressions were full of surprise and delight. This was fantastic news for all of them. After all, they had already exhausted their efforts collecting elevation materials for just rank-5 alone. The difficulty in gathering materials for rank-6 would only increase. At that moment, Kyliewho was with the Nephilic Judge Tribe far awayspoke up as well. Whats the surprise when we elevate to ninth-rank? Kylie had already elevated to rank-6. Moreover, her combat strength had advanced to eighth-rank heavenly god-level. She was only a step away from ninth-rank. Naturally, what she cared more about now was the reward for elevating to ninth-rank. Lin Huang did not answer her question. Instead, he asked through voice transmission, Would it be convenient for you to leave the Nephilic Judge Tribes star zone? I have ways of not being found out. Kylie nodded. Thats perfect. Let me know as soon as you elevate. Lin Huang said this because it was impossible for him to keep tabs on the changes in his Monster Cards at all times. As for the surprise, youll find out then. I definitely wont disappoint all of you. Lin Huang still kept things a secret in the end. He glanced over Kylies cardher combat strength was eighth-rank now. He knew that she would probably break through to ninth-rank in less than a month. Grimace spoke as soon as the two of them had finished conversing. Are you on the Ricky Star now, Master? I am, Lin Huang responded immediately. When he went to the Ricky Star with Steel Fist and Epic Player earlier, he had secretly used the Gate of All Realms to program the coordinates. After making sure everyone from the Sword Alliance was settled, as well as Lin Xin and the rest, he had teleported here at once. Then well sort out a few matters at hand and come by later. Were not far too far from you, Grimace said at once. Where are you guys? Lin Huang asked, slightly puzzled. Were in the Kash Star Zone. The Kash Star Zone was also in the core zone of the God Territory. Just like the Coyne Star Zone, it was one of the richest star zones in the God Territory. Grimace had said they were not too far away. In actual fact, there were three star zones in between. Taking into account the distance of the void as well, they were over five million lightyears away. However, this was certainly not considered very far in the vast God Territory. Although he was curious why Grimace and his group had gone to the Kash Star Zone, Lin Huang did not delve further into the matter. Alright, just come over later then, Lin Huang agreed quickly. The other imperial monsters listened enviously. They already knew that Grimace and his group had elevated to rank-4.5 Pseudo-supreme God-level. It was completely in accord with the elevation conditions that Lin Huang had mentioned. After informing the imperial monsters about the matters pertaining to their elevation, Lin Huang glanced at the hotel room he was in. There would be barriers in such a high-end hotel. Moreover, they would have been put in place by heavenly god-level powerhouses. It could easily block the probing of most Heavenly Gods. However, it was still not sufficient for Lin Huang. He set up several barriers himself and isolated the entire room from the outside world. He then sat down again with his legs crossed to look through the spoils he had obtained from killing the group of Raiders. The only whole corpses he had obtained were those of Black Mountain, Spy, and Babble. As for the three people he had killed using Mirrors reflection, their corpses had been blown into bits. Not only were the defense Dao Weapons on the three incomplete bodies damaged, but there was only one storage ring that remained intact. If I had known this was going to happen, I wouldnt have shown off with Mirror, Lin Huang sighed helplessly. He felt he had lost far more than twenty million. He felt grateful that Black Mountain and the other twos storage rings had been preserved in perfect condition. Ill give these bodies to the Queen Mothers to use as materials. They should be able to nurture rank-6 Bug Emperors or Queen Mothers However, the prerequisite is that I need to advance the Queen Mothers to rank-6 first, then directly elevate them to lord-level. After staring at the bodies for a moment, Lin Huang very soon came up with a way of dealing with them. He withdrew his Divine Telekinesis from the storage ring and sank his mind into his inner world. When he killed the group of Raiders, he had simultaneously obtained their Goldfingers as well. Those were the most valuable of all his loot. Earlier, he did not have time to check them through in detail. Now that he was free, he could finally take some time to look at them. The first one was Black Mountains Goldfinger. It was a tiny golden man the size of a human palm. A Goldfinger that strengthens ones physical body?! Lin Huang used Divine Telekinesis to scan the Goldfinger and found out what its functions were. This Goldfinger could plunder the physical energy and Divine Power of all living things that the host killed, as well as inherit their combat cultivation inheritance, rules related to combat cultivation, sequence powers, and Dao seals. Lin Huang raised his brows after checking it through. As far as he was concerned, this Goldfinger was not very powerful, but it could remedy his shortcomings at this stage. His biggest shortcoming at the moment was that his physical body was not strong enough. His Gods soul was already at the strength of a peak upper-rank Lord, but his physical body was merely at the standard of a lower-rank Lord. Once he refined this Goldfinger, he could inherit Black Mountains physical body right away, and the strength of his own body would directly advance to peak middle-rank lord-level. After this, Lin Huang looked at the second Goldfinger. It was a piece of meat shaped like a brain. Lin Huang scanned it with Divine Telekinesis and soon found out the Goldfingers function. This isnt bad at all, a Gods soul-type Goldfinger Without a doubt, this had to be Babbles Goldfinger. The main function of this Goldfinger was to plunder their opponents Gods soul and strengthen the hosts Gods soul. It could also read their opponents Gods souls memory and replicate inheritances It was certainly a very useful Goldfinger. After putting the second Goldfinger away, Lin Huang looked at the third Goldfinger. It was a gold metal piece the size of a little finger and similar in shape to the chip inside an electrical device. Lin Huang scanned it with Divine Telekinesis and obtained a rough idea of what the Goldfingers function was. This was Spys Goldfinger. Although its functions were quite outstanding, he did not intend to keep it. Instead, he planned to give it to Yang Ling. After all, Spy had plundered Yang Lings Goldfinger back in the day, and Yang Ling had been pursued by Spy for hundreds and thousands of years all this while. Giving him the Goldfinger would help him gain closure. Moreover, the usage and utilization of this Goldfinger was extremely complicated. Lin Huang did not plan to waste time and effort on it. As far as he was concerned, Yang Ling was perhaps the only person who could best exploit the Goldfingers functions. The remaining three Goldfingers held no attraction for Lin Huang. Their functions could basically be replaced by Xiao Hei and the other Goldfingers. Moreover, their effects were nothing like those of Xiao Hei and the rest. Chapter 1653 - I’ll Follow You In the living room of the hotel, Yang Lings digitized body gradually materialized. Lin Huang tossed him a set of god sequence relics for defense right away. Yang Ling caught them and acknowledged ownership of them by putting them on. To be honest, when Hong Zhuang found me, I thought all along that you couldnt really be dead. Lin Huang watched Yang Ling fashion a set of illusory casual attire with the defense relics, before stating calmly, Until Spy fought me and I saw him digitizing his physical body while telling me that he had extracted that skill from your memory, only then did I believe you were truly dead. Yang Ling sat on the armchair to Lin Huangs left and took a sip of the tea on the coffee table. Only then did he slowly explain, To prevent him from damaging my digitized body right away, I divided my consciousness into nine parts. Apart from the core, the remaining eight layers actually had information hidden within them that he wanted. One of them was the technique of digitizing the physical bodyhe was dying to get his hands on it. I intentionally placed the digitization of the physical body in the first layer to create the illusion that the deeper the layer, the more valuable the information. In the end, over the past half a year or so, he was only able to decode three layers of passwords. That was much slower than I expected. Initially, I thought Id set up nine layers of passwords to buy myself as much time as possible. Although I harbored a very faint wish that Hong Zhuang might grow and avenge me, I didnt hold out much hope. I knew very well it was only a matter of time before I was well and truly dead. My purpose in transferring the Goldfingers remaining power to her was so that she could grow quickly, and have the ability to protect herself in the great world. I asked Hong Zhuang to look for you only because I was thinking of her safety. I never expected you to avenge me. After all, apart from you and me, she doesnt know anyone else in the great world. Furthermore, youre the only person I trust. What I didnt expect was that youd grow so fast, and to this extent! Yang Ling subjected Lin Huang to a long, in-depth scrutiny. He was quite astounded at Lin Huangs cultivation speed. Definitely a little faster than most normal people, Lin Huang replied humbly with a faint smile. Yang Ling could not even find the words to poke fun at this statement. Alright, lets just skip all the sentimental stuff. Seeing that Yang Ling wanted to say more, Lin Huang interrupted him, Weve known each other for so many years. You took good care of me in the past and helped me a lot. You can consider me killing Spy as returning the favor. After he finished speaking, Lin Huang took out a gold metal piece that was the size of a little finger. He flicked it toward Yang Ling with one finger. Im giving back your Goldfinger. What Yang Lings expression was somewhat torn. Since Spys Goldfinger was Lin Huangs loot, technically, Yang Ling ought not to take it. However, this Goldfinger had devoured his own Goldfinger beforethere were even remnants of a familiar aura. He was rather unwilling to relinquish it. When Lin Huang saw the expression on Yang Lings face, he knew what was going through his mind and spoke up again. Stop dilly-dallying. This Goldfinger belongs to you by right; I cant use something so complicated. It will only be able to display its full abilities when its with you. Anyway, I have quite a number of Goldfingers now, so it doesnt matter if I lose one or gain one. If you really feel guilty about it, then dont charge me when I go to you to unseal Goldfingers and check information. Yang Ling was finally relieved upon hearing that. Alright, just treat it as if I borrowed it. In the future, when I get hold of other Goldfingers, Ill give them to you in exchange. Not a problem. After some consideration, Lin Huang did not decline. This was because if he rejected Yang Lings proposal, Yang Ling might not accept the gift. Since youre just borrowing it, why dont you choose one or two more? As Lin Huang spoke, he took out the three Goldfingers that did not interest him. Yang Ling was stunned when he saw this. Immediately he asked in astonishment, How many Raiders did you kill?! He had only awakened after Lin Huang killed Spy, so he had seen him kill Black Mountain and Babble later on as well. However, he had no idea what had happened in the earlier stages of battle. Including Spy, I killed six of them, Lin Huangs tone was utterly calm as if he were talking about something insignificant. There are two Goldfingers that will be fairly helpful to me, so I retained them for myself. The remaining three arent very useful as far as Im concerned. See if you can make use of them. If you can, take them with you. You can return them to me later on in the future. Lin Huang was being so generous mainly because travelers were the only ones who could use Goldfingers. Even if he kept the extra Goldfingers, he would not use them. At most, he could only use them as materials for refining. Of all the people he was close to, aside from Lin Xin, Yang Ling was the only one who could use a Goldfinger. Yang Ling was rendered speechless at Lin Huangs casual tone as if he were merely selling cabbages at the market. However, he scanned the Goldfingers with Divine Telekinesis anyway and checked them out in detail. Regardless of whether it was one, two, or three items, he would still be borrowing them. Since he was already indebted to Lin Huang, a few more debts would not matter. If he really were to encounter Goldfingers that were suitable for him and could boost his abilities or remedy his shortcomings, he would be able to grow more powerful much more rapidly if he obtained them now. At this point, he decided not to stand on ceremony any longer. He picked one of them after thoroughly checking them all with Divine Telekinesis. Ill take this Gods soul-type Goldfinger. The strength of my Gods soul has a significant impact on my abilities. Sure. Lin Huang tossed Yang Ling the Goldfinger that he had chosen and put away the remaining two. He had already thought of what to do with the remaining Goldfingers. What do you intend to do after this? Lin Huang asked as he watched Yang Ling putting away the two Goldfingers. I dont have any plans Yang Ling thought for a moment, then lifted his head to look at Lin Huang. I might as well follow you now. Spy is dead, and I dont have any goals at present. If youre willing, Hong Zhuang and I will stay on and work for you. I can forgo a salary, but I do need to have time off. Of course, Lin Huang agreed immediately, If you stay on with me, itll be more convenient if I need to get hold of you. Theres no need for you to work for me, though. You can just be an honorary professor. Both of you arent my subordinates, and you wont be bound to me. Youll have absolute freedom as well. You can leave any time you want. Alright, its settled then. The two of them were in accord! As far as Lin Huang was concerned, Yang Ling was an assistant who was hard to come by. For unsealing storage rings, forging identities, and some tasks involving the retrieval of secret information, Yang Ling was undoubtedly the best candidate. He needed Yang Ling. Meanwhile, for Yang Ling, his purpose in staying on was actually mainly to repay Lin Huang for what he had done. Not only had Lin Huang saved his life, but he had also killed Spy for him and even gave him Spys Goldfinger. These three things were, without a doubt, significant favors. Now that he had been avenged, he genuinely did not have a clear goal any longer. Since it did not matter to him where he went, he would just stay on for the time being to help Lin Huang. After he had repaid the favors or when he finally had a clear goal, it still would not be too late for him to leave. Therefore, the two of them came to an agreement very quickly. Chapter 1654 - The Threat That The Soul-controlling Tablet Sensed Chapter 1654: The Threat That The Soul-controlling Tablet Sensed Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation After agreeing to work together with Yang Ling, Lin Huang sent him back to the God Territory within him. Unlike before when he had casually put Yang Ling back into the God Territory, this time, Lin Huang sent Yang Ling directly to the planet where Lin Xin and Hong Zhuang were. He even sent him directly to the courtyard entrance where Hong Zhuang was. When Yang Ling opened the door and emerged before Hong Zhuang, she was utterly stunned. She stared in Yang Lings direction and stood in a daze for a good while before she rubbed her eyes. She thought she was seeing an illusion. When she opened her eyes again, Yang Ling had already come over to stand right before her. Hong Zhuang could not control the tears from welling up in her eyes. I thought you were truly dead this time I definitely almost died. Yang Ling pulled Hong Zhuang into his arms, smiling. Hong Zhuang hugged Yang Ling tightly as if she were afraid that he would disappear again. Her tears kept flowing as if a dam had broken. The two of them did not say anything else. They remained where they were, holding onto each other, and stayed thus for a long time. When Hong Zhuang finally stopped crying, she wiped away her tears and finally let go of Yang Ling. He reached out and brushed away the tear stains on her face. It must have been hard on you all this while. Im alright. Hong Zhuang shook her head then asked curiously, How did you manage to escape? I didnt escape at all, Yang Ling explained with a smile, Lin Huang killed Spy Yang Ling very quickly related the events that had unfolded later. Lin Huang had no idea what was going on in his inner world. After sending Yang Ling into the God Territory within him, he began busying himself with his own affairs. The Goldfingers I have now are Xiao Hei, the Soul-controlling Tablet, the Eternity Fire (Qi Muxiong), Yin Yin (Great Heaven), the Gate of All Realms (Mr. Gate), the Tiny Golden Man (Black Mountain), and the Brain of the Soul (Babble), as well as these two extra ones In truth, strictly speaking, Yang Ling was the only traveler that Lin Huang knew very well. Although Lin Xin had a Goldfinger, the Emperors Heart, Lin Huang had not spoken with her at all regarding the matter of travelershe had kept this from her all along. However, he felt that it was probably time they talked about it now. Lin Huang greeted Lin Xin with his consciousness via voice transmission, then teleported her out of his God Territory. Lin Xin was delighted to finally meet her brother face to face again after not seeing him for such a long time. Come sit down, silly girl. Lin Huang poured Lin Xin a cup of tea as he spoke. He was thinking of how to bring the matter up. Lin Xin sat down obediently. Noticing the tense expression on Lin Huangs face, her initial happiness was now marred by a touch of anxiety. Big Brother, has something happened? Lin Huang fell silent for a moment, then looked straight at her and said, Emperors Heart, please come out. What Lin Xin was shocked when she heard this. She had never expected Lin Huang to find out her secretthat she had a Goldfinger. Not only that, he knew its name. Just as Lin Xin was somewhat at a loss, a three-dimensional projection shone from the communication ring on her finger. It was a lady who looked almost exactly like Lin Xin. Only two things were differenther hair was purple, and her eyes were golden. Lin Huang was slightly taken aback when he saw what the Emperors Heart projected. He knew that this was how Lin Xin had looked in her past life. Since the Emperors Heart had appeared in this form, it clearly had not told Lin Xin about her past life. Is anything the matter? The Emperors Heart looked at Lin Huang in a rather unfriendly manner. Before it had acknowledged Lin Xin as its owner, it had come to an agreement with Lin Huang. It would keep his identity as a traveler secret, and Lin Huang would keep the Emperors Hearts past a secret from Lin Xin. However, now that Lin Huang had suddenly summoned it like this, it suspected that Lin Huang might be intending to break their agreement. Both of you know each other? Lin Xins face was full of confusion. Initially, she thought that her possession of this Goldfingerthe Emperors Heartwas a secret from her brother. She had never expected that her brother seemed to know her Goldfinger. Ive seen it a few times before you claimed ownership of it, Lin Huang explained immediately. He still did not wish the Emperors Heart to expose his identity as a traveler. After all, his soul had traveled into another body, so theoretically, he was not Lin Xins brother. He was not sure how Lin Xin would react if she found out about that. Weve only met two or three times, so were not well-acquainted. Emperors Heart nodded in agreement with Lin Huang. It turned its head to look at Lin Huang after it finished speaking. So tell mewhats going on, that you insist on summoning me out? Lin Huang sorted out what he wished to say first before stating, You know that I have a Goldfingerin fact, I have more than one. More specifically, Ive obtained two more of late that I wont be able to use. I think Xiao Xin can take a look and see if she might be able to make use of them. Lin Huang took out the Goldfingers that he did not need as he spoke. Surprise flashed through the Emperors Hearts eyes, but it did not say anything. It could more or less guess how he had managed to obtain the two Goldfingers. You can have more than one Goldfinger? Lin Xin was stunned to hear that. Yes, you can. Its just that its something rather rare, so its difficult for an ordinary person to possess even one. Lin Huang nodded. Lin Xin turned her head to look at the Emperors Heart after she heard this. It seemed to matter to her how the Emperors Heart felt. The Emperors Heart, however, was not bothered at all and nodded. Yes, take a look at them. If theyre suitable, you can take them. After all, every Goldfinger has somewhat different functions. Some of the functions might just be the ones you need. Only then did Lin Xin nod and direct her Divine Telekinesis toward the two Goldfingers on Lin Huangs palm one after the other. A moment later, she raised her head and looked at Lin Huang. Both of them seem like alright to me. Although the Emperors Hearts functions were powerful, they emphasized more on various aspects of online networks. The immediate boost to Lin Xins combat abilities was insignificant. Of the two Goldfingers on Lin Huangs palm, one had energy storage and conversion abilities, which was equivalent to a weaker version of the Eternity Fire. The other one contained the ability to create mechanical devices. They were completely useless to Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang seemed to be very interested in both Goldfingers. She had even begun to conceptualize designing firearms and weaponry with this ability to create mechanical devices. Take both of them then. Lin Huang tossed both Goldfingers to Lin Xin. Lin Xin did not stand on ceremony this time and caught both of the Goldfingers. Thank you, Big Brother. Lin Huang chatted for a little bit with Lin Xin after having settled the matter of the two extra Goldfingers. He then transported her back to the God Territory within him. Right after he had sent her back, a voice came from within him all of a sudden. Lin Huang, Ive thought it through Lin Huang instantly identified that this was the Soul-controlling Tablets voice. He said in some astonishment, What have you thought through? All this while Ive been obsessed with becoming the hosts only Goldfinger. However, its only now that Ive realized its not very likely that true powerhouses among travelers would own merely one single Goldfinger. Back in the day, the Soul-controlling Tablet had requested that Lin Huang replace Xiao Hei before it would follow him because a traveler could only have one primary Goldfinger. This primary agreement was completely fair, whereby the primary Goldfinger was bound to the host for good or ill. As for the Goldfingers that made agreements with the host later, theirs would be more of a master-slave relationship. Back then, Lin Huang had been unwilling to replace Xiao Hei. The Soul-controlling Tablet did not force the issue either. Instead, it had left a clone in Lin Huangs body, letting Lin Huang find it a new host. However, over the last few years, Lin Huang had hardly met any trustworthy travelers. Therefore, he had not been able to find the Soul-controlling Tablet a suitable host all this time. The Soul-controlling Tablet had not been in a rush either. Since it was a Goldfinger, its lifespan was much longer than most living beings. Now, however, it saw the ease with which Lin Huang obtained multiple Goldfingersso many, in fact, that he could give them away as he wished. At last, it was beginning to realize that it was not so rare and unique after all. Do you want to make me your host? Lin Huang immediately understood what the Soul-controlling Tablet meant. Thats right. The Soul-controlling Tablet fell silent for a while before continuing, But currently my primary form is still in damaged condition If you truly acknowledge me as your master, of course Ill help to restore you fully, Lin Huang promised readily. Then its a done deal. The Soul-controlling Tablet was finally able to be at ease after hearing confirmation from Lin Huang. In reality, it had been worried that Lin Huang might reject its request. After all, it had rejected Lin Huang initially. Lin Huang had not expected that giving the Goldfingers away would make the Soul-controlling Tablet feel threatened, causing it to be willing to acknowledge a master. In a flash, he returned to the God Territory within him and appeared right away in front of the cliff where he had found the Soul-controlling Tablet. He approached the cliff wall and passed through it, emerging in the void that the Soul-controlling Tablet had created. After a glance at the huge stone tablet, which was more massive than all the stars, Lin Huangs figure appeared on top of it in a flash, standing on it. Have you thought it through thoroughly? Lin Huang asked, looking down. I have! The Soul-controlling Tablet did not hesitate any longer. The next instant, a black stone tablet as big as a human palm sank into the giant stone tablet beneath Lin Huangs feet. This was the clone the Soul-controlling Tablet had previously left behind in Lin Huangs body. A moment later, the giant stone tablet began to shrink rapidly. In the time it took for a breath, the huge stone tablet shrank from the massive size of a star to the size of a palm. It transformed into a stone tablet full of cracks and penetrated through Lin Huangs brow. Chapter 1655 - The Imperial Monsters Return After dinner that evening, Lin Huang went strolling around the night market. The Ricky Star had an abundance of nightlife. Even the night market was on a much bigger scale than any Lin Huang had been to on other planets. This night market was the size of an Earth cityat least a few times bigger even than Wulin Town in the gravel world where he used to live. There were thirty to forty intersecting streets, both big and small. The longest street stretched fully ten meters or more and was densely packed with hundreds upon thousands of stalls. There were even more people than that strolling through the streets, however. Although their shoulders did not touch, the crowd could be considered an endless stream of moving figures. As the sky darkened gradually, warm lights began to light up one by one above the night market, a decorative touch that made the place seem even lovelier. As the lights came on, more people began showing up at the night market. Lin Huang relaxed and strolled around aimlessly. Along the way, he saw countless weird and wonderful snacks, as well as many local crafts. For a while, he was dazzled by the sheer amount of things to look at. He also rapidly discovered that the night market on the Ricky Star must have been inspired by humans. Aside from the larger scale, the types of items for sale were generally the same. There were all sorts of snacks, drinks, tidbits, crafts, little trinkets, and childrens toys After strolling around for almost an hour, Lin Huang suddenly sensed the auras of Grimace and his group. Only then did he return to his hotel room in a flash. A moment later, the three imperial monsters found him by following their contract sense. As soon as Grimace, Lancelot, and Charcoal appeared in front of Lin Huang, they were subjected to a Divine Telekinesis scan. All three of you have improved quite a lot. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction after the scan. The three of them were already at eighth-rank heavenly god-level now; they were almost as fast as Kylie in terms of advancement speed. Furthermore, the three of them had successfully elevated to Pseudo-supreme God-level rank 4.5. At this level of rank and combat strength, as long as they did not encounter half-step lord-level or lord-level powerhouses, they would be practically invincible in the God Territory when the three of them joined forces. Grimace gave a faint smirk when he heard Lin Huangs compliment. Lancelot was expressionless; Charcoal was the only one who was so happy that his tail began undulating. We worked really hard the past few months! Charcoal immediately wanted to show off. Grimace took us However, Grimace, who was standing to one side, coughed lightly once. Charcoal glanced at him and swallowed the rest of his words with an effort. What did Grimace take you all to do? Lin Huang raised his brows. He had a vague sense that it was probably something illegal. Otherwise, Grimace would not have purposely interrupted Charcoal. Well Charcoal failed to respond for a while. At this point, Grimace finally spoke up from where he was standing off to the side, I just took them along to collect a few treasures, then exchanged those for money. Lin Huang eyed Grimace. He knew that this fellow was certainly lying. If that were really the case, there would have been no need for him to stop Charcoal at all. At that moment, Lancelot spoke up as well from beside them, Can you truly elevate us directly to rank-6 this time? This fellow was obviously helping to change the subject. When did the three of you get so close? Lin Huang teased, looking at Lancelot and Charcoal. Both of them looked in other directions immediately. They did not dare meet Lin Huangs gaze. I dont care how you obtained your resources, but theres a bottom line you cant cross. Lin Huang glanced over the three of them, Youre not allowed to do things that will do harm or commit atrocities. Lin Huang did not extrapolate on the subject after he finished speaking. He opened the door to his God Territory with a wave of his hand, then gestured at the three of them. Come with me. Lin Huang appeared directly in front of the Great Heaven Palace together with the three imperial monsters. If one wanted to talk about the safest available place, it would undoubtedly be the Great Heaven Palace. Therefore, Lin Huang chose to elevate his imperial monsters here. When Charcoal saw the two guardian beasts at the door, he involuntarily shrank back slightly. The two three-legged Golden Crows were Combat Souls of archaic descent. Not only were they supreme god-level rank-5, but their combat strength was also peak heavenly god-level. Charcoal, whose main cultivation path was the fire element, could clearly feel the sense of oppression emanating from the two guardian beasts. He could also sense even more that he was no match for both of them. However, what he did not know was whether even King Kong and Peerless Overlord would be able to hold the advantage if these two three-legged Golden Crows were to join forces. Naturally, Lancelot and Grimace also sensed how powerful the two guardian beasts were, but they could not sense it as clearly as Charcoal could. Both of them could not help warily eyeing the two sculpture-like three-legged Golden Crows. The two three-legged Golden Crows observed the three of them for a while as well, only withdrawing their gaze when they saw Lin Huang bringing the group over to the steps. The three imperial monsters followed Lin Huang and arrived at the Great Heaven Palaces entrance only after going up the steps. The three became nervous again upon seeing the two palace doors. The eyes of the two relief-carved Archaic Fire Dragons on the doors slowly began moving round and round, then fixed their gaze on Charcoal and the other two imperial monsters. The two Archaic Fire Dragons merely gave Lancelot and Grimace a glance, then turned their eyes upon Charcoal to check out this member of their tribe. They were not scrutinizing Charcoal. As pure blood Dragon Tribe members, naturally, the two were more curious about this junior who possessed the same bloodline. Charcoal felt an immense pressure bearing down on him at that moment. He could clearly sense how powerful the bloodlines of the two Dragon Tribe members were. He merely gave the relief carvings a glance, then lowered his head and did not dare to look at them again. Only after Lin Huang pushed open the Great Heaven Palaces doors and the two Archaic Fire Dragons closed their eyes once more did Charcoal feel that the pressure had lifted. Hurriedly, he caught up with Lin Huang and slipped into the palace. Grimace and Lancelot also released a sigh of relief almost simultaneously. Although they had not been singled out by the Archaic Fire Dragons, the pressure from the Dragons aura was still tangible. Lin Huang led the three imperial monsters deep into the palace. He only stopped when he arrived at the dais where the throne was. Sit down first, all three of you, and settle your state of mind. The three of them sat down immediately with their legs crossed when they heard this and began to regulate their breathing with their eyes closed. In all honesty, their auras had been affected by their emotions since meeting up with Lin Huang and had been continuously fluctuating. When they saw the three-legged Golden Crows and the Archaic Fire Dragons, especially, it was hard to calm their auras under such immense pressure. Lin Huang had sensed this, which was why he had asked the three of them to regulate their breathing to calm themselves. After a moment, sensing that their emotions had gradually stabilized and their auras were no longer fluctuating, Lin Huang contacted Xiao Hei and requested for consolidation of all the rank-5 and rank-6 Advance Cards. You dont have to open your eyes. Just feel the sensation of being elevated, thats good enough. As soon as Lin Huang finished speaking, he targeted the three intended card users and crushed the cards in his hands. The six cards turned into golden points of light that entered the bodies of the three imperial monsters, respectively. The golden points of light had barely been in their bodies for a few seconds before cocoons rapidly began forming over their figures at a speed visible to the naked eye. Chapter 1656 - The Mysterious Gift Days passed in the Great Heaven Palace. Soon, the days turned into months. Given that time had been accelerated ten thousand times, less than twenty minutes had passed in the outside world. Lin Huang returned from the God Territory within him to the Ricky Star. He poured himself a drink that the hotel had prepared and slowly walked to the hotel balcony. He sat on a deckchair, sipping his drink. As he looked up at the starry sky, his thoughts were already drifting. He had almost finished his drink when he felt a sudden premonition. Lancelot and the other two had awakened one after the other in the Great Heaven Palace. Lin Huang put down his drink. He returned to the God Territory within him in a flash and appeared in the Great Heaven Palace. He saw all three imperial monsters, now out of their cocoons, and their auras were quite different from before. They were also countless times stronger. The three of them were checking through their own transformations in delight. Meanwhile, their cards had popped up in front of Lin Huang. Monster Card: Charcoal Rarity: Pure Spirit Monster Name: Black Flame Dragon Forefather Type of Monster: Archaic Dragon (Pure Blood) Nickname: Flame Forefather Combat Strength: Ninth-Rank Heavenly God Major: True Dragon Dao Major Skills: Power of the Dragon Forefather, Archaic Dragon Flame, Ancient Dragon Breath, Ancient Secret Draconian, Dragon Forefather Kingdom Minor Skills: Elemental Immunity, Physical Reflection, Cell Immortality, Immortal Dragon Soul Summon Authority: Activated Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this! Monster Card: Grimace Rarity: Pure Spirit Monster Name: Mysterious Lord Type of Monster: Absolute Mystery Nickname: The King of Secret Techniques Combat Strength: Ninth-Rank Heavenly God Major: Control Major Skills: Mask Control, Puppet Domination, God of Deceit, King of Divine Illusion Minor Skills: Supreme Intelligence, Divine Telekinesis, Mysterious Trap, Mysterious Mirror Summon Authority: Activated Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this! Monster Card: Lancelot Rarity: Pure Spirit Monster Name: Ruthless Sword Master Type of Monster: Holy Blood Nickname: Killer Combat Strength: Ninth-Rank Heavenly God Major: Sword Dao Major Skills: Supreme Sword Master, Darkest Sword Spirit, Sword Dao Holy Method, Sword Kingdom Minor Skills: Sword Steps, Dark Mirror Summon Authority: Activated Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this! The three cards clearly showed that the three of them were Pure Spirit rank-6 now. Not only that, their combat strength had advanced as well. They had been directly elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Lin Huang made a thorough check through the other information changes on the cards. Their skill panels were already densely packed. For main cultivation path skills alone, there were already over one hundred of them listed on the main skill branch. As for supporting skills, altogether they came to almost a thousand. Their secondary cultivation path skills were even more numerousthere were over one hundred and fifty core skills on the main skill branch and two to three thousand supporting skills. Lin Huang only discovered after checking through the skill descriptions that the main skill branch was comprised of the main skills derived from the god sequence chains that Lancelot and the others had fully mastered. In other words, the three of them had mastered over two hundred god sequence chains. One must know that someone as powerful as Great Heavenwho had dominated the great world for an entire erahad only mastered forty-two god sequence chains at ninth-rank heavenly god-level back in the day. Even Buried Heaven, who had recently elevated to become a Lord, had only manifested twenty-seven god sequence chains during his unification. The number of god sequence chains the three imperial monsters had mastered at present was almost tenfold the number that Buried Heaven had mastered. One could well imagine that if their abilities were placed within the great world, the three of them would be able to subdue all enemies who were under lord-level. Lin Huang was rather shocked as he stared at the three cards. He was not shocked by the number of god sequence chains they had mastered but by the effect of the Advance Cards. Previously, he had not paid too much attention to the connection between Rule Bending Powers and sequence powers in the main branch of the imperial monsters skill trees. Only now was he finally able to see the connection clearly. It turned out that the Advance Cards could simultaneously bestow terrifying inheritances upon the imperial monsters during their elevation, including Rule Bending Powers and god sequence chains. That was also why Lancelot and the others did not need to spend time consolidating god sequence chains. Their god sequence chains had skyrocketed to over two hundred in number from just the initial twenty or so god sequence chains that they had mastered. After ascertaining this, Lin Huang was even slightly envious of this group of imperial monsters. What a great thingto be able to immediately become so powerful without needing to cultivate! Naturally, Lin Huang could only think such a thing in secret; it would not be very nice to verbalize it. It would hurt Lancelot and the other twos self-esteem if he said it out loud. How are you feeling? Lin Huang asked, smiling faintly. I feel invincible! Charcoals eyes lit up. He looked like he was eager to find someone to spar with. Thats merely an illusion caused by your abilities skyrocketing. Lin Huang poured cold water on this notion at once. Charcoals moment of enthusiasm was immediately doused. Im so much more powerful now. I probably can battle a half-step Lord if I encounter one, Lancelot thought about it and gave his opinion. Lin Huang shook his head still after hearing what Lancelot said. All of you still havent grasped the disparity between Heavenly Gods and Lords. A Heavenly Gods Godly Right can only be used within his own God Territory. However, a Lords Godly Right has been integrated with a Dao seal, so it can be used outside the God Territory and still have a boosting effect. Right now, youve mastered over two hundred and fifty god sequence chains. In the God Territory, with the addition of the Godly Right, that would be an effect of an eighty-onefold boost. In other words, the actual effect would be equivalent to over twenty thousand chains. This number certainly surpasses that of all half-step Lords and most lower-rank Lords. However, youd only have two hundred and fifty or so chains outside the God Territory. Although those Lords and half-step Lords havent inherently mastered as many god sequence chains as you have, they can use their Godly Right outside their God Territory. With the Godly Rights boosting effect, theyll far exceed your abilities. Which means all weve got to do during battles is to drag the opponent into our God Territory, then well be invincible. Grimace gave an eerie grin from where he was standing off to the side. You could look at it that way. Lin Huang glanced at Grimace and added, But dont underestimate any enemy. Those half-step Lords and Lords certainly arent going to let you drag them into your God Territory so easily. Lin Huang chatted with the three of them for a little, and the subject soon expanded to include talking about the gift for elevating to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. Boss, all of us have elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level now. Whats this gift that you said would definitely delight us?! Charcoal asked, his face full of anticipation. Although Lancelot and Grimace said nothing, their ears had obviously perked up, worried that they might miss out on something. Lin Huang glanced at the three of them and thought they looked rather comical. He decided not to keep it a secret any longer and directly told them what it was. The gift is to directly elevate you to become Lords! The three of them were stunned when they heard this. They thought they had misheard or that Lin Huang was just joking with them. Boss, please dont joke about such a thing. Charcoal gave two forced laughs and stared at Lin Huang in a shifty manner. He did not believe Lin Huang but still harbored some faint hopes. Who says Im joking? Lin Huang raised his brows. You arent joking?! Charcoal bellowed at the top of his voice. He was so thrilled he almost overturned the roof. Can you really do that? Grimace also found this hard to believe. Isnt this kind of elevation considered to be forcing things to happen before were ready? Lancelot asked. He was the calmest of the three. After all, it had not even been a day since the three of them had elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. He felt that elevating his current abilities again would be proceeding too quickly. Dont worry, there wont be any side effect. The certainty of Lin Huangs tone set the three imperial monsters at ease. At least up until now, Lin Huang had never yet disappointed his imperial monsters. You can go into closed-door cultivation with your minds at ease. When you finish, youll be my right-hand men. When Lin Huang finished speaking, three Lord Elevation Cards had already appeared in his hands. He crushed the cards an instant later. The three cards turned into three streams of light and penetrated through the brows of the three imperial monsters Chapter 1657 - Lord-level Imperial Monsters Chapter 1657 : Lord-level Imperial Monsters Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation After returning once again from the God Territory within him to the Ricky Star, Lin Huang poured himself another drink. This time, he did not go to the balcony. Instead, he sat on the sofa in the living room and began pondering, his gaze not focused on anything in particular. He had previously questioned Xiao Hei about directly elevating his imperial monsters ranks and combat strength. Xiao Heis response was that there would not be any side effects. Only after persistent questioning had Xiao Hei finally explained why there would be no side effects. All the cards that Xiao Hei created were derived from Lin Huangs energy. The difference between creating Monster Cards and Item or Function Cards was that Monster Cards possessed a cognizance of self. This consciousness could not be created out of nothing, so Xiao Hei had to divide out consciousness seeds to be implanted into the cards. However, after the consciousness seeds had entered into the bodies of various Monster Cards, they would grow into all kinds of individual characters after absorbing the essence of memories and inheritances. Essentially, all of the Monster Cards that Xiao Hei created through capturing Origin Energy were its clones. To be exact, whether it was Bai, Lancelot, Kylie, or Charcoal All of them were projections of Xiao Hei on the material plane with different concrete, individual characters. Therefore, Bai and the others could elevate without having to follow regular elevation and advancement rules. They could inherit myriads of god sequence chains and Rule Bending Powers without incurring a burden. As long as there was sufficient Origin Energy and Xiao Hei had sufficient authorization, they could even be elevated to terrifying entities higher than Lords, and there still be no side effects. Lin Huang was soon pulled out of his reverie by energy waves within the Great Heaven Palace. Thanks to the time flow being accelerated ten thousand times, Lancelot and the other two had completed their elevation to Lords one by one after less than five minutes had passed in the outside world. 1 Recalled to his senses, Lin Huang returned to the Great Heaven Palace in a flash. Only after sensing that the auras of all three imperial monsters were undoubtedly lord-level did Lin Huang finally set his mind at ease. He checked their card information again. All three had successfully consolidated Dao seals. Although they had only consolidated level-1 Dao seals, there were over twenty thousand Dao tattoos on their Dao seals. This was comparable to many lower-rank Lords who had compounded level-10 Dao seals. It also meant that ability-wise currently, all three were almost invincible among lower-rank Lords. If they were to encounter a lower-rank Lord with a level-10 Dao seal, even if the three of them could not defeat the Lord, they had the ability to go head-to-head with them. However, to prevent the three of them from becoming arrogant, Lin Huang concealed the truth from them. Your current abilities are at lower-rank lord-level now. Thats already considered fairly powerful. However, in the great world, there are Lords with seven or eight Dao seals, so dont think that youre invincible now. Charcoal nodded immediately after hearing that. Beside him, Lancelot said nothing, while Grimace, on the other hand, seemed excited to try out his new abilities. After the three of them had elevated to lord-level, the inheritances within them had been unsealed even further. They were also aware of the divisions within lord-level cultivation. They knew that they had only consolidated one Dao seal, so their abilities were definitely nothing compared to Lords with more Dao seals. However, what they did not know was that the Dao seals they had consolidated were much more powerful than the Dao seals consolidated by others. Dont stir up trouble after all of you return to the God Territory. Lin Huangs gaze lingered on Grimace intentionally when he said this. You can gather more high-level resources during this period. Youre going to need a huge amount of resources to support your cultivation when we go to the universe in the future. After giving them a few reminders, Lin Huang led the three of them out of the Great Heaven Palace. This time, the three imperial monsters could sense very clearly that the Archaic Fire Dragons on the doors and the three-legged Golden Crows at the bottom of the steps were no longer threats to them. Charcoals expression was proud as he walked past the several guardian beasts. He even raised his tail high like a male peacock who had defeated a rival in love. Lin Huang eyed Charcoals childish behavior, but he did not stop him. Instead, he waited for Charcoal to finish showing off before bringing all three of them back to the Ricky Star. After returning to the Ricky Star, Lin Huang gave them reminders again. He also specifically sent Lancelot a voice transmission, asking him to keep tabs on Grimace and prevent him from stirring up trouble. Only then did he let them leave. Lin Huang frowned slightly, looking in the direction where they had vanished. He had no idea why, but he kept having a nagging feeling that Grimace would cause trouble. After sending the three of them off, Lin Huang thought for a moment, then asked the Gate of All Realms to open the passage to the virtual realm. Before setting up the virtual realm cabin so he could cultivate later, he first had to clear the Voids nearby. He stepped through the passage with his virtual body and entered the virtual realm. As soon as he teleported through, he sensed intense battle fluctuations being transmitted over. He lifted his head to look and was immediately rather stunned. Battling it out were Black Mountain and Spy whom he had killed previously, while Babble and the other three lower-rank Lords stood on the sidelines, trembling. Why have they showed up on the Ricky Star? Lin Huang felt rather puzzled. Could it be because their corpses are with me? But why would they suddenly fight among themselves? Lin Huang was even more confused by this. However, his sense of confusion had not lasted for very long before he discovered he was being targeted. Sensing Lin Huangs aura, the battle between Black Mountain and Spy stopped abruptly. Both of them looked right at him. Lin Huang did not know why but he could clearly sense the ill intent emanating from these few Voids. It was not just Black Mountain and Spyeven Babble and the rest who were watching the battle nearby had obvious murderous intent in their eyes when they looked at him. Right as Lin Huang sensed the Voids malicious intent, Black Mountain and Spy attacked almost simultaneously. This time, their target was Lin Huang. Lin Huang gave a cold snort and shook his sleeves. Countless blood-red electric arcs shot out in a burst. There were millions of electric arcs. Each of them was guided by the Sword seal and imbued with over fifty thousand levels of sequence power. Black Mountain and Spy made a lightning retreat when they saw that. However, Babble and the other three lower-rank Lords nearby failed to dodge in time. They were impaled by so many blood-red electric arcs that they were practically turned into sieves, and died on the spot. Spy digitized his body in an instant and avoided Lin Huangs attack this round. Black Mountain, however, evaded the attack and used his overwhelming defense techniques to defend himself. As expected, its still rather difficult to kill a middle-rank Lord instantly. Lin Huang was also very much aware of his own abilities. The next second, he did not hold back any longer and summoned his ten Combat Souls right away. Although the Gods Figurines Combat Souls had the physical form of a Gods Figurine, in essence, they were Combat Souls and part of Lin Huangs body. Naturally, he could bring them into the virtual realm. As soon as the Gods Figurines Combat Souls were summoned forth, Lin Huang could sense even more clearly that Black Mountain and Spys killing intent grew increasingly intense. I thought Voids dont possess their memories from the material realm? Lin Huang did not really understand. However, he suddenly realized why Black Mountain and Spy were fighting. In the virtual realm, both of them had no memory of each other. Now that they were in the same space, it was only natural that they would fight for territory. As soon as the ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls joined the battle alongside Lin Huangs millions of God Dao Weapons, Black Mountain was immediately subdued with no trouble at all. After Black Mountain had been disposed of, Spy was soon captured and sealed by Shackle Serpent. He was killed on the spot. Within less than two minutes, Lin Huang had managed to obtain six portions of Origin Energy. Among them were two that were middle-rank Lord in strength. The rewards he obtained this round were handsome indeed. Chapter 1658 - Lin Huang’s Conjecture After killing Black Mountain and the others who had turned into Voids, Lin Huang spread his Divine Telekinesis to scan through the several nearby star zones. Unexpectedly during the scan, he discovered another Void. He did not know if Black Mountain and the other Voids had not managed to discover it when they were fighting earlier or if they had noticed its presence but chosen to ignore it. When Lin Huang appeared in a flash, the lower-rank lord-level Void was still trembling. Its ability could not be considered particularly powerful. Lin Huang estimated that it had only consolidated four or five seals. Its eyes brightened when it saw Lin Huang, and it stopped trembling. Clearly, what it feared was the battle fluctuations from earlier. However, it was not in awe of Lin Huang, whose ability it was unable to probe. Sensing the others intent to kill, Lin Huang did not wait for it to attack but made his move first to gain the advantage. A red gleam shot out of his sleeve and immediately pierced through the Voids head. A moment later, he obtained yet another portion of Origin Energy. Lin Huang spread his Divine Telekinesis again in the Voids location. After discovering that there were no more Voids in the surrounding star zones, he returned to where the Ricky Star was. The Coyne Star Zone in the virtual realm had been almost completely destroyed by the massive battle between Black Mountain and Spy. The Ricky Star had long since been turned into a mass of cosmic dust. Lin Huang glanced around him and very soon picked a planet that had not been destroyed. It was a neutron star with an extraordinary gravitational force. In the material realm, it was highly improbable that there would be any living beings on it. It was one of the most uninhabitable stars in the universe. Lin Huang appeared on the surface of the planet in a flash, then crushed a Virtual Realm Cabin Card. He summoned the Gate of All Realms and returned to the great world only after making sure that the virtual realm cabin had fully consolidated. After returning to the material realm, Lin Huang was still in the same initial location he had been at when on the neutron star. He pushed open the door and entered the virtual realm cabin. He removed his storage ring from his finger and placed it on the floor of the room. Then he turned around, opened the door, and left. Lin Huang summoned the Gate of All Realms again after leaving the virtual realm cabin and entered the virtual realm once more. As soon as he entered the virtual realm, he pushed open the door immediately and entered the virtual realm cabin. He picked up the storage ring on the floor. He had decided to cultivate in the virtual realm cabin this time because he had a new conjecture about the next step in his cultivation, and he was quite eager to verify it. When he crossed the threshold of ninth-rank heavenly god-level, the Godly Right in his body seemed to have reached satiety and had stopped absorbing any half-step lord-level god sequence chains. This had also led to the number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain reaching its upper limit of fifty-one thousand two hundred chains. Although the total number of god sequence chains in the God Territory within him had surpassed one hundred and eighty thousand chains, due to the limits imposed by the Godly Right, he could only compound fifty-one thousand two hundred god sequence chains outside his God Territory. Lin Huang had been considering whether or not to elevate to lord-level in this condition; in fact, he had been thinking about the matter for days. However, for the past few days, he had a vague sense that his Godly Right ought not to be completely satiated yet. Sitting in the virtual realm cabin with his legs crossed, Lin Huang took out a Lords body. This body belonged to a lower-rank Lord in Black Mountains group. It was one of the three lower-rank Lords whom Lin Huang had killed with Mirror. To be honest, Lin Huang could not tell exactly which one among the three it was. After taking out the body, Lin Huang pressed his hand against its abdomen and soon retrieved its God Territory. Before giving this Lords body to the Queen Mothers to use as material, he decided to make full use of it first. Looking at the illusory crystal in his hand that was smaller than half his palm, he hesitated no more and pushed it between his brows with a smack. The next second, the illusory crystal sank into Lin Huangs brow and disappeared. He followed suit with his consciousness and sank into his inner world immediately. As soon as he entered the God Territory within him, he felt the entire God Territory shaking as if the whole universe were quaking. A moment later, Lin Huang saw a piercingly bright light unfolding in the far-off starry sky. After a long time, the white light that had illuminated everything as bright as day finally began to dim. At the same time, Lin Huang sensed that the God Territory within his body had expanded again. It was successful?! Lin Huang was over the moon. He checked his Godly Right immediately. As he had expected, the limit for god sequence chains in his Godly Right had finally been triggered. It increased to 51,201 chains, then 51,202 chains, 51,203 chains The entire process was slow and steady. Lin Huang finally completed refining the Lords God Territory after goodness knows how long. The number of god sequence chains that the God Territory in his body could contain had skyrocketed to over two hundred and thirty thousand chains. (The number of god sequence chains in an ordinary Lords Kingdom within them far exceeded the number he could invoke using his Dao seal.) Furthermore, the limit for god sequence chains that the Godly Right in his body could contain had doubled instantaneously. It had skyrocketed to one hundred and two thousand four hundred chains. However, he could clearly sense that he had not reached his limit yet. He realized that his previous conjecture was completely accurate. Lin Huang took out the second Lords Gods corpse without hesitation and extracted its God Territory from its body. He then began a new round of refining. He did not know how long this round of refining took either. However, the total number of god sequence chains in the God Territory within him had skyrocketed to over two hundred and seventy thousand. The limit for god sequence chains that his Godly Right could contain had also increased. It had skyrocketed to one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred chains. Lin Huang subsequently refined the God Territories from the remaining two lower-rank Lords bodies one after the other. The unknown lower-rank Lord boosted the total number of god sequence chains within Lin Huangs body to over sixty thousand chains. As for the lower-rank Lord with the codename Babble, her God Territory was considerably more powerful. It added another one hundred and twenty thousand god sequence chains to the existing ones within Lin Huangs body. At this point, the god sequence chains within Lin Huangs body had reached over four hundred and sixty thousand in total. However, Babbles God Territory did not boost Lin Huangs Godly Right; it remained at fifty-one thousand two hundred chains. Refining the two lower-rank Lords God Territories had also resulted in the number of god sequence chains that Lin Huangs Godly Right could contain increasing to two hundred and fifty-six thousand chains. Compared to previously, this was a fivefold increase. Looking at the remaining two middle-rank Lords bodies, Lin Huang did not hesitate any further and extracted their God Territories. However, he was unable to refine the God Territories after they entered his body. Instead, they occupied a corner of the God Territory in Lin Huangs body and went into hiding. He tried twice, and the result was still the same. Lin Huang guessed that the middle-rank Lords rankings were probably too high, which caused the refining to fail. Feeling helpless, he had no choice but to give up. However, he did not come out of closed-door cultivation just yet. Instead, he retrieved the remaining five hundred and twenty-three half-step Lords God Territories from his storage ring. He absorbed all of them into the God Territory within him and began a new round of refining. After a mere moment, Lin Huang smiled wryly and shook his head. As I expected, half-step Lords God Territories cant boost the Godly Rights containment limit any longer. However, Lin Huang did not stop refining this time, as the god sequence chains inside his God Territory were still increasing. This new round of refining made Lin Huang lose the concept of time entirely. He was focused heart and soul on the refining process and completely forgot about the passing of time until he had refined all the half-step Lords God Territories. Although there were no changes to his Godly Right at all, this round of refinement boosted the total number of god sequence chains in his God Territory to over six hundred and thirty thousand chains. When Lin Huang opened his eyes again, he gave a very long exhale. It seems Ill need to use a large number of resources to trade for lower-rank Lords God Territories next! Chapter 1659 - I Don’t Understand Your Sense of Aesthetics After returning to the great world from the virtual realm, Lin Huang immediately contacted Steel Fist and Epic Player from the Club. He was not sure if there were Lords Kingdoms in other peoples possession, but he knew that his two colleagues from the Club who had just been in a battle with him definitely would have some. The reason was that the two of them had just killed three Raiders together. Moreover, the two of them had been Lords for many years, so they might also have killed other lord-level powerhouses in the past. Within ten minutes, Lin Huang had come to an agreement with both of them. He would trade three Lords bodies for three Lords Kingdoms. It was a pity the two of them did not have more Lords Kingdoms. They had long since refined the Kingdoms of the Lords that they killed in the past. Epic Player even stated frankly that if Lin Huang had not managed to contact them in time, both of them might have decided to refine the Kingdoms. For lord-level powerhouses, refining other Lords Kingdoms did not have any boosting effects on their abilities. At most, this would just further strengthen the foundations of their own Kingdom and expand their Kingdoms size slightly. The reason was that the number of god sequence chains their Dao seals could control was limited. Moreover, under normal circumstances, the number of god sequence chains in their Kingdoms would already have exceeded the limit their Dao seals could manage. Even if they refined more god sequence chains, they could not convert them into abilities. However, having three Lords Kingdoms was certainly better than having none at all. After sealing the deal, Lin Huang turned off the communication page and took out his Royal Token. He then opened the trading page. After keying in the keywords lower-rank Lords Kingdom, he instantly saw information on hundreds of sellers who had this item up for bids. He quickly clicked on them one by one. Lin Huang felt rather frustrated after spending over half an hour reading all the information. Most of these people were trading for rare and unusual items. There were even some Lin Huang had never heard of before. Clearly, there were many things in the universe that the great world did not possess. After thinking about it, he decided not to trade Black Mountain and Spys Gods corpse for now. Although he knew he could definitely trade middle-rank Lords Gods corpses for many lower-rank Lords Kingdoms, he made up his mind that he would only decide after unlocking Black Mountain and the others storage rings. He had only passed the four storage rings to Yang Ling recently. In Yang Lings current condition, he would probably not need very long to unlock them. If there was nothing valuable in their unlocked storage rings, Lin Huang would have no option but to trade the two corpses for Lords Kingdoms. If there were many valuable items that could be used in exchange for a sufficient number of Lords Kingdoms, naturally, he was more willing to keep the Gods corpses as materials for the Queen Mothers. At this point, Lin Huang could not help sending his consciousness into the God Territory within him. He communicated to Yang Ling through voice transmission, Please remember to notify me as soon as youre done unlocking those few storage rings. Ill be done with them latest by tomorrow afternoon, Yang Ling replied immediately. Lin Huangs spirits instantly lifted when he heard that. As for Death Sickle, his other channel, Lin Huang had initially not planned on contacting them. After all, prior to Buried Heaven, no Lords had emerged from Death Sickle before. The possibility of them having Lords bodies and Kingdoms was low. However, after thinking about it, Lin Huang still sent Buried Heaven a message anyway to ask about the matter. On the off-chance that they did indeed possess such items, he did not want to miss out. However, as Lin Huang had expected, Buried Heavens answer was no, and he replied instantaneously. After turning off the communication page, Lin Huang sat on the sofa in the hotel room. He browsed through Death Sickles forum while sending part of his consciousness into the God Territory within him. He observed the Dao seals with their various colors, all of them like eternal stars. There were currently thirty-one Dao seal stars like that in his body. He had obtained them from refining the Kingdoms of Zhan Zhuo, Babble, and the rest. However, he could not refine these thirty-one Dao seals, nor could he use them. Unlike the Sword seal, they were consolidated within Lin Huangs body from Dao seal fragments. These were Dao seals that had originally been whole. Although their initial Will Imprint had been erased, they were still in a self-sealed, unactivated state. Lin Huang had tried using many ways in the virtual realm but failed to communicate with them still. He conjectured that he might only be able to refine these Dao seals and use them for himself after he had elevated to become a Lord. Lin Huang turned his gaze from the Dao seals and looked at the Dao seal fragments that dotted the void like stars. He had obtained these from refining the half-step Lords God Territories. For the time being, he had not figured out how he ought to deal with these thousands of Dao seal fragments. After a moment of consideration, he decided not to think about it for now. He sent his consciousness deep into his God Territory, where two giant spheres hovered in the void. They were like two giant eggs floating in the sea. These two spheres were the Kingdoms of the two middle-rank Lords, Black Mountain, and Spy. Even though they were in a self-sealed state, their size was still comparable to a star zone. They existed in a form like this within Lin Huangs God Territory and had not become a part of it because Lin Huang could not refine them. He had no option but to leave them as they were for the time being. Anyway, since their wills had been erased, the two God Territories were now in an ownerless state. They would cause no harm hovering in the air like that. After withdrawing his consciousness from his inner world and feeling rather helpless, Lin Huang slowly began thinking of other ways to strengthen his ability. Time passed; the night proved uneventful. Public security on the Ricky Star was so well-maintained it was uncanny. After all, this was the territory of Precious Treasure Pavilion, the grade-7 organization. Even though there were no Lords guarding the place, there were still half-step Lords. Furthermore, there were a great many organizations here as well, with multitudes of heavenly god-level powerhouses coming and going daily. Naturally, there were not very many people who would dare to cause trouble here. Lin Huang, too, enjoyed the peace and quiet. The next morning, not long after Lin Huang had finished breakfast, a visitor came calling. It was Epic Player from the Club. He was still in casual attire, but his originally blue hair was now dyed a shade of manure-like yellow. Furthermore, it had been cut into an asymmetric style with one side short and the other long. The fringe on the long side curved down from his forehead, not only covering his entire right eye but also extending all the way to his lips. Lin Huang could not even bring himself to compliment the aesthetics of Epic Players hairstyle. He merely glanced at it and hurriedly averted his gaze from Epic Players head. Steel Fist said something came up at the last minute and asked me to help her handle the exchange. Lin Huang nodded, Ive just received her message. He did not tell Epic Player that Steel Fists message had been, I wont be coming with Epic Player this round. His hair annoys me every time I see it. He even discussed hairstyling tips with me for agesit took me forever to get rid of him What do you think of my new hairstyle? Epic Player suddenly pointed to his head and asked. Its pretty nice. It suits you. What else could Lin Huang say? I think its pretty nice too. Can you believe that girl Steel Fist actually said its hideous?! Epic Player said in puzzlement, She also told me that even if I shaved my head, Id look better than I do now. Im not One Punch Man, I wont become more powerful if I shave my head I really dont understand womens sense of aesthetics Lin Huang secretly added to himself mentally, I dont understand your sense of aesthetics either. Chapter 1660 - Bai and Teng Ran, Now Elevated to Become Lords After seeing Epic Player off, Lin Huang eagerly entered the virtual realm again and refined the three Kingdoms he had just obtained. After this round of refining, the number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain went up to one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred chains. The total number had increased to four hundred and nine thousand six hundred chains. As for the total number of god sequence chains in the God Territory within him, they had increased significantly from over six hundred and thirty thousand chains to seven hundred and eighty thousand chains. Lin Huangs abilities also received another round of boosting. After returning from the virtual realm to the great world, he patiently waited for Yang Ling to unlock the storage rings. To kill time, for lunch that afternoon, he specifically picked a restaurant with excellent reviews and which required queuing up for entry. The queuing alone took up one and a half hours. Lin Huang returned to his hotel room after lunch. Just as he was about to take a nap, he suddenly sensed familiar auras approaching. The instant Lin Huang sensed this, someone knocked on the hotel room door the next second. When he opened the door, he saw it was Bai and Teng Ran. What surprised him was that Bai and Teng Ran had already elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. They had even surpassed the speed of Kylies combat strength elevation. The speed of your combat strength elevation We entered the Abyss, Teng Ran said, his expression rather helpless. He even specifically glanced at Bai, who was standing beside him, before he made his reply. Lin Huang was utterly bereft of speech. Both of you really have some nerve. One must know that even Lin Huang would not go into the Abyss as he pleased despite his current level of ability. We were only hunting in the middle layer, and if we sensed any unusual fluctuations in the Abyss, we retreated immediately, Bai explained calmly as if it were something not worth mentioning. Naturally, Lin Huang was aware of Bais anxiety. Bai had been trying his best to catch up with Lin Huang in the hopes that he could be Lin Huangs right-hand man. However, the gap between their abilities had kept increasing to the point where the imperial monsters could no longer battle Lin Huangs enemies. However, Lin Huang also knew it was sheer luck that Bai and Teng Ran had managed to come back safely. Based on the timeframe that Bai and Teng Ran had elevated to supreme god-level rank-5, they must have entered the Abyss earlier than Lin Huang. Their exit from the Abyss ought to have been around the same time as Buried Heaven and his group. During that period, the Abyss just so happened to be in a state of hibernation. The fact that both of you survived at all is pure luck alone. Lin Huangs tone contained a hint of reproach. The Abyss happened to be in a period of hibernation. The God Territorys earlier expedition to the Abyss probably awakened many Abyssal powerhouses. When the two of you get out of closed-door cultivation this time, dont go to the Abyss again. Monster Paradises revival function has limitations. If the two of you are killed by Lords, youll really die. No wonder the number of monsters in the Abyss suddenly started increasing Teng Ran muttered quietly. From beside Teng Ran, Bai remained silent. It was not clear if he had taken Lin Huangs words to heart or not. Alright, come with me. Lin Huang summoned up the door to the God Territory with a mere gesture after he finished speaking. He led both the imperial monsters into the Great Heaven Territory. When they arrived in front of the Great Heaven Palace, Teng Ran looked left and right, scrutinizing his surroundings. Bai, on the other hand, remained silent. He merely glanced at the three-legged Golden Crows, then turned his gaze away. After pushing open the door and entering the Great Heaven Palace, Teng Ran could not help questioning Lin Huang when he noticed that there was no one inside. Master, hasnt Lancelots team come yet? This was a subject that obviously mattered to Bai as well. Theyve completed their elevation and already left some time ago. When he said this, Lin Huang deliberately stole a glance at Bai to see his reaction. As expected, Bais change of expression indicated that he was definitely affected by the news. However, this was only visible on his face for a brief moment before he erased all traces of it from his expression. So soon?! Teng Rans expression was full of confusion which he did not bother to conceal at all. The Great Heaven Palace has the power to accelerate time. Time flow in here can be sped up to ten thousand times faster than the outside world, Lin Huang explained patiently, According to the time flow in the outside world, the two of them used approximately twenty minutes or less to elevate from rank-4 to rank-6. How about their combat strength? It shouldnt be higher than both of ours, right? Teng Ran persisted. Before they elevated, it was definitely lower than yours, Lin Huang said with a smile. The penchant for men making comparisons with each other was vividly on display at the moment. Teng Rans lips curled slightly. Theyve elevated to ninth-rank now after their advancement? The three of them have already broken through to lord-level now, Lin Huang told them the truth straight away. Teng Rans expression froze abruptly. As for Bai, a mixture of emotions including shock and astonishment flickered over his face. Although Bai tried his best to hide his expression, Lin Huang still caught that look very clearly. Lin Huang observed the interesting expressions on his imperial monsters faces, then smiled and said, Dont worry. Both of you will be able to elevate to become Lords later on too. You mean the surprise? Bai immediately recalled something after hearing what Lin Huang said. Youll find out in a while. Lin Huang preserved the secret for now. Since it was a surprise, naturally, he did not wish to reveal it in advance. After asking the two of them to sit with their legs crossed and regulate their breathing to its ideal state, Lin Huang crushed two Advance Cards, which entered into Bai and Teng Rans bodies, respectively. The Advance Cards he used at present were slightly different from the ones he had used on Kylie previously. When he elevated Kylie, he had used five grade-5 Advance Cards. Actually, Xiao Hei had set restrictions on the cards to limit the imperial monsters abilities and to make Lin Huang work harder to obtain cards. In reality, the functions of five Advance Cards could entirely be integrated into a single card. Once the authorization limits were lifted, naturally, he no longer needed to use five cards. It was also after the restrictions were removed that Lin Huang had discovered how much he had been exploited. After he observed the two cards turning into stars and entering Bai and Teng Rans bodies, and their forms rapidly becoming swaddled in cocoons, Lin Huang activated the time flow acceleration in the Great Heaven Palace to ten thousand times once more. He then departed from the palace and returned to the Ricky Star. This time, he only waited for about ten minutes at most. He had only sat on the sofa for a little while, watching the news, before he sensed tremors coming from Great Heaven Palace. He then returned to the Great Heaven Palace again. After seeing that Bai and Teng Ran had broken out of the cocoons and their auras were vastly different now, Lin Huang did not bother checking through their card information. Straight away, he told the two of them, Now you can receive your surprise. When he finished speaking, the two Lord Elevation Cards in his hand had already turned into two streams of light that entered Bai and Teng Rans bodies, respectively. Lin Huang only began looking through Bai and Teng Rans cards after he returned to the Ricky Star from the Great Heaven Palace. Monster Card: Bai Rarity: Pure Spirit Monster Name: Blood Demon Monarch Type of Monster: Vampire King Nickname: Vampire King Combat Strength: Ninth-Rank Heavenly God Major: Blood Bond Major Skills: Supreme God Blood Factor, Blood Galaxy, Blood Demon Forbidden Code, Blood Demon Nation Minor Skills: Particle Immortality Summon Authority: Activated Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this! Monster Card: Teng Ran Rarity: Pure Spirit Monster Name: Archaic Teng Snake Type of Monster: Archaic Mutated Serpent Nickname: Snake Forefather Combat Strength: Ninth-Rank Heavenly God Major: Spear Dao, Wind Elemental Truth, Water Elemental Truth Major Skills: God-Slaying Spear, God-Crashing Storm, Galactic Frost Minor Skills: Illusory World, Fright Summon Authority: Activated Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this! Before Lin Huang had the time to look through the cards thoroughly, more tremors came from the Great Heaven Palace. Bai and Teng Ran had elevated to become Lords! Chapter 1661 - Ten Percent Ability When Lin Huang returned to the Great Heaven Palace, Bai and Teng Ran were checking out in detail the changes that had taken place within them. Lin Huang did not rush them; he waited patiently for them to finish their examination. After some time, Teng Ran was the first to withdraw his consciousness from within him. When he saw Lin Huang, he could not help smiling as he said, I truly never thought that I would be able to achieve this in my lifetime. Nobody knew whether he was talking about elevating to Pure Spirit rank, or lord-level, or perhaps even both. This is still a far cry from what all of you will be able to achieve in the end, Lin Huang responded with a smile. As they were chatting, Bai had finally withdrawn his consciousness from within him as well. How are you feeling? Lin Huang asked with a smile. I feel very powerful. All along, Bai never did have a boastful personality. Im under the illusion that Im in control of everything. Im under the same illusion too, Teng Ran said with a smile from where he was standing off to one side. However, after speaking, Bai was now scrutinizing Lin Huang closely. He shook his head a moment later, Unfortunately, Im still not powerful enough. At present, I still dont have sufficient abilities to protect Master. From where he stood on the sidelines, Teng Rans expression was full of confusion when he heard Bai say this. I thought Master hasnt yet elevated to become a Lord? Clearly, he had not sensed the abilities that Lin Huang was concealing. As expected, our Xiao Bai saw through me, Lin Huang teased with a smile, Teng Teng, you should learn from Xiao Bai. What sort of nonsense nicknames are these? Teng Ran covered his face with one hand. Standing where he was to one side, Bai remained expressionless from beginning to end. Would you like to experience the gap between our abilities? Lin Huang looked at the two of them with a cheeky grin. For one, he was truly bored, and for another, he did not want these two to enter the Abyss again without being aware of their own abilities. When he heard Lin Huangs invitation, Teng Rans expression was full of puzzlement. Even Bai, who had always been impervious to strong emotion and desires, displayed some interest. He was the imperial monster who had been with Lin Huang the longest; this was not the first time Lin Huang had invited him to spar. However, it had been a long time indeed since he had last sparred with his master. You can both attack together. Also, under no circumstances must you hold back at all. If you dont give it everything youve got, theres a chance I might kill you right away. Lin Huang chuckled, and the Great Heaven Palace instantly transformed into a sky full of stars. Bai and Teng Ran locked eyes for a moment, then went into action at practically the same time. They had developed this rapport over the last few months. A blood-red mist shrouded the area behind Bais figure almost immediately. An instant later, countless blood-colored tentacles shot out of the blood-red mist like lightning, aiming straight at Lin Huang. On every blood-red tentacle was a complex bright red Dao seal. Over twenty thousand Dao tattoos swirled on each bolt of lightning like hot molten iron. There were over a million tentacles. Meanwhile, on the other side, Teng Rans entire body was enveloped in golden scales. Golden battle spear in his hand, the pair of wings on his back stirred suddenly, and he charged forward at a speed faster than even that of the tentacles. On the point of the golden spear was a shining Dao seal as well, with over twenty thousand Dao tattoos swirling on it. He was like a golden star hurtling at Lin Huang head-on. Lin Huangs lips quirked up very faintly. He raised both hands slightly, and two blood-red arcs of lightning shot out. One of them seemed to have a consciousness of its own, moving furiously through the sea of blood-red tentacles. The tentacles were destroyed wherever it passed through. The sensation was that of plastic being scorched by high heat, melting quickly and vanishing. The other lightning arc collided directly with Teng Rans spear. With a loud boom, Teng Rans body was flung backward at a speed over several times faster than before. Bais pupils contracted slightly because he noticed that Teng Rans body was now headless as it hurtled backward. Teng Rans head had exploded in the collision with the flying dagger. His powerful life force was instantly annihilated. Only at that moment did Bai realize that Lin Huangs ability was much more powerful than he had expected. Bai was only distracted for a moment but immediately sensed an immense threat coming his way. He lifted his eyes and saw the flying dagger that had crushed Teng Rans head turning around and coming straight at him. Bais expression changed slightly, but his hand movements were not slow in the least. He performed hand seals rapidly with both hands. A blood-red shield with many layers consolidated instantly. The giant shield had twelve layers and was three meters tall. Like an iron city gate, it formed a barrier between Bai and the flying dagger. There was a lava-like Dao seal carved on each layer of the giant shield. Over twenty thousand bright red Dao tattoos filled almost every corner of the shield. A second later, the blood-red lightning arc collided with the shield. Subsequently, like the point of a needle piercing through a sheet of paper, the lightning arc easily pierced through all the layers of the giant shield. The Divine Telekinesis flying dagger did not slow down in the least. It pierced right through all twelve layers of the shields defenses and shattered Bais head. The illusory scene in the Great Heaven Palace faded quickly as the headless body toppled to the ground. In the Great Heaven Palace, Bai and Teng Ran stood where they were, faces pale, unable to speak for a long time. Although they had only been fighting in an illusory simulated battle earlier, both of them knew that it was no different from what would happen in actual combat. In the illusory simulation, Lin Huang had killed the two of them instantly. In the real world, he would be able to do the same thing. Master, have you truly not elevated to lord-level yet? Teng Ran asked with a gloomy expression. He felt that Lin Huang was concealing his combat strength from them. I definitely havent elevated to lord-level yet. Lin Huang nodded and smiled. You didnt use full force earlier, did you? Bai, on the other hand, lifted his head to look at Lin Huang. Id like to know how much of your actual ability you did use. Approximately ten percent or so, Lin Huang answered after giving this some thought. In reality, he had only used a Sword seal compounded with thirty thousand levels of god sequence chains. This was not even one-tenth the number that his Godly Right contained. He had only used middle-rank lord-level Divine Telekinesis to power the two flying daggers. Overall, that was far less than ten percent of his actual ability. However, he was genuinely worried that he would crush Bai and Teng Rans confidence. Im more of a special case though, Lin Huang added, In reality, both of you arent considered weak at all among lower-rank Lords. With your current ability, apart from the Abyss, you can explore most of the regions of the great world. Despite what Lin Huang said, Bai and Teng Rans moods did not improve very much. Dont be so gloomy; its not embarrassing to have lost to me. Come on. Ill take you both for some good food. Lin Huang put his arms around their shoulders and teleported back to the Ricky Star. He then treated the two moody imperial monsters to a sumptuous meal. Although Bai and Teng Ran were not in high spirits, they could not resist when they saw good food. After the meal, they were clearly less upset now. Lin Huang reminded them not to go to the Abyss again before sending them off. It was already past 3 p.m. when he saw Bai and Teng Ran off. Right as Lin Huang returned to his hotel room, he sensed a message being transmitted from Sword1. Lord Swordmaster, Yang Ling is asking to see you. As messages from the communicators were unable to be sent to Lin Huang from the inside of Lin Huangs God Territory, Yang Ling had no option but to go to Sword 1 and get him to send a telepathic voice transmission message. Lin Huang was aware of this as well. After receiving Sword1s voice transmission, in a flash, he returned to the God Territory within his body straight away. Chapter 1662 - Black Mountain’s Background When Lin Huang returned to the God Territory within him and saw Yang Ling again, he could obviously tell that Yang Lings mental state had undergone significant improvement. It was not clear if this was because Spys death had eliminated the pressure or if it was because Yang Ling had now reunited with Hong Zhuang. Lin Huang did not enquire further into this. He merely smiled and commented, You look much better now. Yang Ling had a cheeky grin on his face. Exercising is beneficial for your mind. Ive been exercising more. Err I can tell, Lin Huang was rather speechless. As expected, this fellow had once more resumed his lecherous nature Sensing Hong Zhuang glancing in his direction from not too far off, Yang Ling hurriedly contained his grin. He took out all six storage rings and passed them to Lin Huang. Theyve been unlocked. Theres lots of good stuff inside. Is there anything that youd like? Lin Huang asked with a smile after taking the rings. No. Yang Ling shook his head, But there are a few things that Id like to talk to you about. Go ahead. Lin Huang nodded at once. Havent you put together an organization in the great world? I think you can start an internal trading platform so the members can enjoy some preferential treatment. I can do that. Actually, we also did that in the gravel world previously, and it was quite a success, Lin Huang agreed to this suggestion immediately. If youre willing, you can lead this project. If you need help from other people at any point, just let Sword1 know upfront. On my side, Ill take some time to sort things out and put in the resources I dont need. For Lin Huang in his current state, any treasures below Dao Weapon grade were completely useless to him. Moreover, within the loot he had obtained previously, there were many god sequence relics and sequence items which he had disposed of directly at the black market. It would actually be better to let his own people benefit instead. Also, I checked the previous communication logs in these rings. Some of this information ought to be useful to you, Yang Ling continued. Lin Huang nodded and did not interrupt, implying that Yang Ling should carry on. Firstly, Black Mountain, Spy, and that lady called Babble have powerful connections in the Raiders. Black Mountain has the backing of an ultimate-rank Lord in the universe. This Raiders codename is Lonely Peak. This Lonely Peak is reportedly only half a step away from the level above Lord, and his abilities are fairly terrifying. Is he close to Black Mountain? Lin Huang asked this because some superiors did not even know the names of their subordinates. Based on the information records that I managed to find, these two have an extremely complicated relationship. Both of them became brothers after transmigration. Black Mountain was the elder brother, around five years older than Lonely Peak. It seems Black Mountain transmigrated here earlier than Lonely Peak did. However, Lonely Peaks Goldfinger is more powerful, and hes also more talented. After transmigration, his ability soon surpassed that of Black Mountain. When Lonely Peaks brilliant talents came into prominence, he soon received an invitation from the Raiders to join their organization. It was Lonely Peak who recommended Black Mountain for membership later on. In other words, the relationship between these two is practically no different from that of actual biological brothers. Lin Huang frowned when he heard this. If thats the case, then as soon as the news of Black Mountains death gets out, Lonely Peak will very likely come to the great world to hunt me down The situation wont become as dire as you think. Yang Ling shook his head. I only found out that there are countless great worlds in the universe after reading Black Mountain and the others communication logs. These great worlds are divided into regions and are managed by organizations in the universe. The great world were currently in falls under Royals jurisdiction. Since the highest level of local combat strength in this great world is only lower-rank lord-level, to avoid upsetting equilibrium, other organizations are only allowed to send middle-rank Lords as guardians if they want to settle here. Not only that, guardians cant be middle-rank Lords who are too powerful. If something goes wrong with the branch organization thats settled here, their headquarters will need to apply to Royal for authority to investigate. Not only that, they will have to conduct the investigation under Royals surveillance. If something happens to a lower-rank Lord, the highest possible combat strength allowed for the investigator is middle-rank lord-level only. If something happens to a middle-rank Lord, then the highest possible combat strength allowed for the investigator is upper-rank lord-level only. This is expressly stipulated in the universes oath of alliance. This rule alone puts paid to the possibility of Lonely Peak coming here in person. When Lin Huang heard this, he was finally able to be a bit more at ease. He was very much aware of his current abilities. If he worked harder, he should be able to go head-to-head in a direct confrontation with an upper-rank Lord. However, if he wanted to fight on equal footing with an ultimate-rank Lord, he would not be able to do thisat least not in the immediate future. However, the Raiders wont send only one upper-rank Lord to investigate this time, Yang Ling elaborated again, Now lets talk about Spy and Babbles backgrounds. Babbles background is still much simpler. She has a lover in the universe, and this lovers codename in the Raiders is Rose. A female? Lin Huang raised his brows. Thats right, shes an absolute beauty. However, shes also an upper-rank Lord with overwhelming abilities. Shes successfully consolidated a level-1000 Dao seal already and is only one step away from achieving ultimate-rank lord-level. Rose has many lovers both male and female; she has at least a thousand lovers, including flings. However, she doted on Babble, who was definitely on her top five list of lovers. Reportedly, this is because Babble had the divine ability to enter ones dreams. Nobody can replace that. So she might come to the great world to avenge Babble? Lin Huang asked. Its possible, but the chances of her arriving here in her Primordial form arent high. After all, her ability is too close to that of an ultimate-rank Lord. The chances of obtaining an investigators ID and passing Royals assessment are extremely low. I think theres a higher chance of her sending a lover here to investigate the matter for her. However, Ive no idea which one shed send. How about Spys background? Lin Huang asked immediately. Spys background is much more complicated Yang Ling paused and only continued after organizing his thoughts. First of all, hes a member of the Electronic Tribe, a mechanical species. This tribe possesses powerhouses above lord-level. In the universe, theyve conquered practically the entire information industry, occupying an almost seventy percent share of the market. Naturally, Spy isnt anyone important in the Electronic Tribe. However, hes still a middle-rank Lord who has now died. The chances of the Electronic Tribe coming to investigate are quite high. However, we have no way of ascertaining to what extent the Electronic Tribe will pursue this matter. Compared with his identity as a member of the Electronic Tribe, though, whats even more problematic is that Spy was Lonely Peaks treasury designer and gatekeeper. He has the key to the treasury. So hes no less important to Lonely Peak than Black Mountain is? Lin Huang was even more puzzled when he heard this. Then why did Lonely Peak send two such essential people to our great world? Because Lonely Peak was preparing to achieve a breakthrough in secret. On the surface, he wanted the two of them to believe that they were going to the great world to plunder loot. In reality, he was worried that if the breakthrough failed, he would die and bring disaster down upon Black Mountain. He also probably did not want the collections that he had spent years amassing to wind up in someone elses possession, Yang Ling put forward his conjecture. So thats why this time it wasnt just meyou were Lonely Peaks target too! Lin Huang finally realized why Yang Ling was discussing the matter with him so seriously. Yang Ling nodded, unsure whether to laugh or cry, I have the key to his treasury now Chapter 1663 - A Little Trick Lonely Peaks treasury Can it be accessed with just the key? Or does the key have to be used at specific coordinates to open it? Lin Huang gave a malicious smile. The space isnt anchored to a set point; anyone can open it as long as they have the key, Yang Ling explained, a touch resignedly. Right now the key is bound to Spys Goldfinger. Apart from necessary items, Lonely Peak seems to have put almost all of his collections in there. I have a feeling he might not be very confident about achieving a successful breakthrough. Thats why he left a back door for himself. As soon as the breakthrough failed, he would reincarnate immediately, then have Black Mountain and Spy locate his reincarnation. By doing this, his reincarnated self would be able to directly inherit everything he left behind once he obtained the key. He also wouldnt need to expend a great deal of effort to specify a particular set of coordinates. Which means to say we can directly access his treasury right now? Lin Huangs eyes lit up. We could, but Yang Ling was clearly concerned. No buts, just open it right away. Listen to me first. Yang Ling still felt he needed to explain exactly where the problem lay. First of all, Lonely Peak very likely has some sort of setup on the treasury or the key. At the very least, if the treasury is accessed, hed definitely sense it. Otherwise, if Spy stole something, he wouldnt even know. He wont have let his guard down entirely with Spy. Secondly, theres almost certainly a safeguard mechanism in the treasury. We have absolutely no idea what kind of traps Lonely Peak might have left in there. However, given his personality, whatever methods he used ought to be able to kill an upper-rank Lord easily. Lin Huang nodded slightly to express his agreement. The first problem you mentionedLonely Peak sensing someone opening the treasuryisnt a problem at all. Weve already killed Black Mountain, and weve obtained Lonely Peaks treasury key. Thats already a grudge. Whether or not he knows weve accessed his treasury wont affect his determination to kill us. In the face of Lin Huangs rebuttal, Yang Ling was rendered somewhat speechless. Since Lonely Peak already had a grudge against the two of them, one more thing would not affect matters in the least. Stealing one of his treasures would certainly not make any difference. As for the traps he left in the treasury, thats certainly a problem, but its not something that cant be solved An idea suddenly popped into Lin Huangs mind. You can use a clone to try instead of going in yourself, but its not entirely safe either. Yang Ling saw that Lin Huang had stopped speaking and guessed that he might have been intending to use a clone. Lonely Peak is sure to have thought of every possible situation, so he probably wont have overlooked this. Whatever he set up might be able to kill ones Primordial form directly through its clone. I think the wisest thing to do is to leave this great world temporarily and avoid the arrival of the Raiders investigators, Yang Ling paused and put forward his suggestion anyway. Even though he knew Lin Huang possessed sufficient ability to kill Black Mountain and Spy, Yang Ling still felt he would not stand a chance if he were to face down the Raiders investigators. Dont get so worried first. If, as you say, the universes oath of alliance has sufficient restrictions to prevent ultimate-rank Lords from coming here, then I have ways to deal with things. What ways? Are you going to get the Clubs upper-rank Lords to help? Yang Ling persisted Seeing that Lin Huang did not reply, he continued. I kept rejecting the Clubs invitation back in the day because I knew there were spies in their midst. Furthermore, there are a considerable number of them. Dont put too much trust in any assistance from the Club. If you really do ask them to help, we have no way at all of confirming whether the assistants we get are Raider spies or not. I have another plan that has nothing to do with the Club. Lin Huang was very much aware that Yang Ling had a great deal of psychological trauma regarding the Raiders. Even though Spy was now dead, the crippling fear he felt for the Raiders had not receded by very much. Seeing that Lin Huang was still unwilling to disclose his plan, Yang Ling did not pursue the matter any further. After all, with his current ability, he could not participate in lord-level battles at all. If Im absolutely certain my plan wont work, Ill consider your suggestion and leave this great world. Lin Huang patted Yang Lings shoulder. After their conversation ended, Lin Huang returned to the Ricky Star again. He sat down on the sofa in the hotel living room and took out the six storage rings that belonged to Black Mountain and the others. He then checked through each of them. It did not take him long to make a list of the items he could upload onto Royals auction platform. The first thing he noticed in the storage rings were dead bodies. This was because what he needed most now was the Kingdoms in the bodies of Lords. However, most of these bodies were carcasses of heavenly god-level monsters. There were only ten or so Lords, and only two of them had not had their God Territories removed. Lin Huang immediately put away the two Lords bodies in his storage ring. Apart from corpses, there were a total of forty-eight Dao Weapons. Of these forty-eight, thirty-seven were low-grade Dao Weapons, and only eleven of them were intermediate-grade Dao Weapons. There was not a single expert-grade Dao Weapon. Although Lin Huang was slightly disappointed, he had expected this. Dao Weapons were different from god sequence relics. They were the same in that the higher the grade, the more powerful they were. However, the more Dao tattoos there were, the greater the consumption of Odylic Force to activate the Dao Weapon. With Black Mountain and the rests ability, since they had only consolidated twenty to thirty Dao seals, intermediate-grade Dao Weapons were fully sufficient for their use and were the most convenient weapons to utilize. Not only would more powerful expert-grade Dao Weapons accelerate Odylic Force consumption significantly, but their power would also not experience a significant boost. Within the storage rings were also hundreds of bottles of elixirs with different effects. They were exclusively used by lord-level powerhouses. There were some elixirs that could temporarily boost ones Gods souls strength and some that could increase the ferocity of ones Odylic Force There were also some precious mineral stones and medicinal materials. Lin Huang even noticed quite a few elevation materials for his imperial monsters. Apart from these, the rest were miscellaneous items. Among these miscellaneous items, Lin Huang even discovered several runes. These runes had temporary Dao seals sealed within them. When they were activated, one could temporarily utilize the Dao seals power. Lin Huang considered for a moment, then uploaded all thirty-seven low-grade Dao Weapons on the auction page. The trading condition he set was, Only accepting lower-rank Lords God Territories, including God Territories of Abyssal tribes, the Bug Tribe or any other tribes. The auction was set for a duration of 24 hours. Based on what Yang Ling had said, the Raiders would have to expend some time going through the necessary processes required by Royal so they could send their investigators here. However, if the process was swift, it could be completed in one or two days. He could not afford any delays. After setting up the list on Royals auction page, Lin Huang did not waste any more time. He passed through the gate to the virtual realm and entered the virtual realm cabin once more. This time, his main objective for entering the virtual realm was not to refine the God Territories he had retrieved from the two Lords bodies earlier. After sitting down in the middle of the virtual realm cabin with his legs crossed, he took out the Nirvana Trees one by one from the God Territory within him. This was the loot he had obtained from the Abyss with Virtuoso and the others. The Nirvana Trees were derived from the death spring. Once they were refined, they would be able to appropriate massive amounts of cultivation resources from the death spring. Previously, Nine Gloom had used the Nirvana Trees as filters to appropriate the energy of the death spring. However, that was not Lin Huangs purpose this time in bringing out the Nirvana Trees. Instead, he planned to refine these trees into his clone by using the secret skill he learned from Nine Gloom. If he were killed, the clone could be used as a death substitute. This was the little trick he had only just thought of using for exploring Lonely Peaks treasures. Chapter 1664 - The Death Spring Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation "What is this place?! Wasn''t I refining the Nirvana Trees earlier?" Lin Huang stood naked on a blood-red beach, confusion filling his face as he looked at the golden sea not far away. He tried to spread his Divine Telekinesis but discovered there was no response at all even though it was peak upper-rank lord-level. It was as if something had completely sealed off his Divine Telekinesis. It was not just his Divine Telekinesiseven the Divine Power in his body could not be used at all, much less his god rules, god sequence chains, and his Sword seal. Lin Huang tried to communicate with his Goldfingers like Xiao Hei and the Soul-controlling Tablet within his body, but they displayed no response either. At this point, Lin Huang was really somewhat panicked. It was his first time encountering something like this since his transmigration to the gravel world. It was as if he had completely turned back into an ordinary person. "What''s happening?! Is this an illusion?" After taking a moment to calm down, Lin Huang looked around. No matter what had transpired, there had to be some clues in his surroundings. At the very least, he needed to find out where he was. Not far away on the blood-red beach were massive trees, their branches swaying in the wind. "Are those Nirvana Trees?!" As soon as Lin Huang saw the Nirvana Trees, he vaguely recalled something and immediately turned his head to look at the golden sea. Only upon looking this time did he realize that it was not a golden sea at all. It was an enormous river formed by countless particles that were enveloped in golden light. It stretched as far as the eye could see and seemed to have no end. From afar, it looked like a massive sea. A small number of golden particles were stirred by the surging waves and the strong winds. They drifted toward the Nirvana Trees, and were caught by the trees'' branches, turning into nutrients Lin Huang had a vague sense that the aura coming from the golden particles was familiar. Only upon a closer look did he discover that the particles were tiny fragments of Origin Energy Unlike the Origin Energy spheres in the virtual realm that were still whole, the golden particles here seemed to be crushed fragments of Origin Energy. Lin Huang harbored a faint suspicion that the reason these Origin Energies were in particle form was most probably from continuously colliding with each other as they swirled along in this powerful current. "Nirvana Trees a massive golden river" Lin Huang stared at the "sea" and muttered quietly, "Is this the death spring?!" The minute he uttered the words "death spring", the entire world suddenly began quaking. Countless massive waves seemed to roil and churn in the death spring. A feeling of helplessness arose in Lin Huang''s heartthe sort felt by mankind in the face of nature''s power. At the same time, his consciousness blacked out suddenly, and his naked figure gradually faded. The next second after Lin Huang''s figure faded, a golden eye formed in the air above the golden river, staring at the direction where Lin Huang had disappeared. An ancient divine tone resonated above the death spring. If one could understand what it said, it would translate to, "What a strange little brat, descending upon my Kingdom in the form of a true spirit. (curious)" After the divine tone faded, the golden eye looked at the stretch of Nirvana Trees not far away. A few ancient syllables could be heard after it stared at the forest. This translated to, "Interesting. (happy emotion)" As soon as the syllables were heard, endless golden waves emitted golden points of light, as if a golden mist had covered the entire forest Obviously, Lin Huang did not know what had happened after he left. When he regained consciousness, he realized he had returned to the virtual realm cabin. "Did that happen because I''m refining the Nirvana Trees? I actually saw the legendary death spring" In truth, Lin Huang still could not really understand exactly what had happened. "The death spring''s persona is certainly above lord-level. My power was actually sealed in the face of an entity like that; I couldn''t even contact my Goldfingers" Lin Huang still felt a trace of fear when he thought about it. He sank his consciousness within his body again and very quickly sensed the existence of his Goldfingers. Divine Power, Divine Telekinesis, Dao seal, god sequence chains, God Rule Powers all of them were back. "Xiao Hei, did all of you sense an anomaly earlier?" Lin Huang could not help asking. Lin Huang was rather surprised at Xiao Hei''s response. "Didn''t the rest of you sense it either?" Lin Huang asked the other Goldfingersthe Soul-controlling Tablet, Yin Yin, and the rest. "We didn''t sense anything unusual," the Soul-controlling Tablet and Yin Yin replied, their tones filled with confusion. The rest of the Goldfingers'' simple responses were the same. "Didn''t all of you sense that we were disconnected for a while earlier? Or that you were temporarily sealed off by some force?" Lin Huang pursued. "Not at all," Xiao Hei responded without hesitation. "Haven''t you been sitting here this whole time refining those Nirvana Trees?" Yin Yin asked Lin Huang. "In any case, nothing unusual happened at all in my sensory perception," the Soul-controlling Tablet said with absolute certainty. The rest of the Goldfingers gave the same answer as well. "So the Goldfingers didn''t sense any anomalies when that entity sealed the Goldfingers in my body?!" Lin Huang frowned slightly. The Goldfingers'' answers caused him to feel that the death spring was even more terrifying now. He did not think that he had encountered an illusion earlier. If it were truly an illusion, the Goldfingers would instantly sense an anomaly in his God''s soul fluctuations. Therefore, the only logical explanation was that the death spring used some specific method to block his Goldfingers'' senses. Lin Huang did not dare dwell any further on a matter like this, which kept getting more frightening the more he thought about it. After calming himself down a little, he set these distracting thoughts aside and checked the refinement state of the Nirvana Trees within him. The minute he checked, he was immediately somewhat startled. The Nirvana Trees in his inner world seemed to have been galvanized by some force and had unexpectedly broken through to lord-level. Not only that, their auras were still increasing significantly. As he watched the Nirvana Trees growing into giant trees comparable in size to stars, their branches swaying like massive living beings gliding in the galaxy, Lin Huang was so stunned his mouth was left hanging open for a long time. He only came back to his senses after a long while and discovered that the two hundred over Nirvana Trees only slowed down their combat strength elevation speed finally once they had reached upper-rank lord-level. Only when they had achieved peak upper-rank lord-level did they completely halt their combat strength elevation. Impressively enough, the Nirvana Trees'' God''s soul strength had now reached the same level as Lin Huang''s God''s soul. Lin Huang connected his God''s soul to the Nirvana Trees, and a massive volume of information surged into his head like waves The feeling was exactly the same as when he was refining the Origin Energy from the virtual realm and had obtained its inheritances. He closed his eyes, rapidly digesting and sorting all of it out. The volume of information was truly enormous, at least several hundred times more in total than the information he had obtained previously when refining the Apocalypse Dragon Python''s memory. However, it was also very disorganized and jumbled up. It was as if there were countless memory fragments belonging to different people. However, each fragment had a different length. Some were short, some were long, but all of them were complete segments of memory. It took Lin Huang fully half a day before he finally managed to sort out all the memories. Unlike the inherited memories he had previously obtained from the virtual realm that had no memory images of the material realm, the memories Lin Huang obtained this time had a massive number of images from the material realm. He saw countless scenes from various great worlds, as well as the beauty of untold galaxies. Of these memory fragments, the weakest was only true god-level, while the most powerful was peak ultimate-rank lord-level. He even saw numerous tragic scenes of some ultimate-rank Lords'' attempts to break through to the next level When his consciousness returned to his body, he silently recorded these inheritances down in detail, whether they were strong or weak.. He felt that these legacies needed to be inherited by a successor. Chapter 1665. Consolidating A Sword Seal! After sorting out the inheritances, Lin Huang looked through them one by one. Very quickly, he discovered that within all these inheritances were at least several hundred Sword Dao Inheritances. Some of them were merely a single sword skill, while some might only be a little bit of cultivation knowledge. Naturally, there were also a small number of complete Sword Dao Inheritance. Although these Origin memories had been crushed into particles, each inheritance had not lost its information. They were complete; the only difference lay in the quantity of information they harbored. What surprised and delighted Lin Huang even more was that more than half of these hundreds of Sword Dao Inheritances were lord-level inheritances. He checked them carefully one by one, from the weakest level to the strongest. After digesting a mere two hundred or so Sword Dao Inheritances below lord-level, he already felt that they had truly opened his eyes. Subsequently, Lin Huang did not hesitate at all and began to digest the lord-level inheritances. Out of three hundred or more lord-level Sword Dao Inheritances, only three of them were fully complete. Of these three complete inheritances, two were lower-rank lord-level, while the third was upper-rank lord-level. Most of the remaining inheritances only contained one sword skill. However, as far as Lin Huang was concerned, that was good enough. Lord-level sword skills were all activated by a Sword seal. Perhaps non-sword cultivators could only see the utilization of the surface-most sword skills. However, a sword cultivator like Lin Huang could see more than that. He could easily tell from the other partys sword skills how many Sword Dao sequences their Sword seal had consolidated. It was also not difficult for him to determine the effects of each Sword Dao god sequence chain, as well as how to use them, and how to combine them with other Sword Dao sequences In the virtual realm cabin, there was neither day nor night nor any seasons. Lin Huang studied these Sword Dao Inheritances, heedless of time. He also corroborated everything that he had learned. After goodness knows how long, an ethereal emptiness abruptly filled his mind. All of a sudden, his comprehension of Sword Dao seemed to have broken through its initial ceiling to reach new heights. All the Sword Dao Inheritances and sword skills that he had ever obtained and or learned had now reached a new level of understanding. Lin Huang paid no attention to what had happened and seized the opportunity to madly absorb the nutrients of all the inheritances. All the different inheritances and sword skills were automatically stripped out and separated into the most basic Sword Dao elements. They were then rearranged, inferring countless new sword skills and inheritances. Within his body, the Sword Dao god rules and Sword Dao sequences were now furiously being built up, as if an accelerator had been pushed to speed time up. It was unclear how much time had passed before he finally came out of cultivation mode. Only then did he realize that his Sword Dao had achieved a breakthrough. He had advanced from the initial complete-stage Sword Dao heavenly rule to Heavenly Dao. Not only that, a brand new Sword seal had been consolidated within him. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the Sword seal. He immediately checked his body and discovered to his surprise that he had not elevated to lord-level. Theoretically, a Sword seal was also a type of Dao seal. Most sword cultivators would elevate to become Lords right away through the consolidation of a Sword seal. The peculiar thing was that Lin Huangs combat strength remained at tenth-rank heavenly god-level. No breakthrough had happened in that area. He was not sure if it was because he did not go through the process of unification, or for some other reason. However, Lin Huang actually felt relieved. The truth was, he had not planned on achieving a breakthrough to lord-level at the moment. The reason was that he knew that he was still very far from reaching the limits of a Heavenly God. If he broke through to lord-level right away at this point, it would be the equivalent of undermining his potential. A Dao seal consolidated from nine god sequence chains and a Dao seal consolidated from ninety god sequence chains were utterly different levels of ability and future potential. Lin Huang could clearly sense he was far from reaching the maximum number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain. If he wanted to achieve a breakthrough, he had to achieve that limit! This was the condition he set for himself. However, Lin Huang was still satisfied with the new Sword seal that had been consolidated. Not only did this give him a sense of achievement from his Sword Dao breakthrough, but it also gave him a boost in ability. An additional Sword seal means that the god sequence chains I can invoke outside my body will be doubled! Lin Huangs eyes lit up. Due to the limit on the number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain at the moment, right now there were less than forty-one hundred thousand chains. Naturally, in the past, he could also only invoke less than forty-one hundred thousand god sequence chains through his Sword seal. However, he had two Sword seals now. This meant that the number of god sequence chains he could use outside of his God Territory had effectively doubled. This was the boost effect of the Dao seal on the Godly Right. However, this sort of boost would be restricted by the total number of god sequence chains in the God Territory. Theoretically, the maximum number of god sequence chains that Lin Huang could use at present with his two Sword seals was eight hundred and nineteen thousand two hundred chains. However, even with his newly obtained Sword Dao god sequence chains, the number of god sequence chains in his body at the moment was less than eight hundred thousand. For Lin Huang, this was not a problem at all. As long as he refined a sufficient number of God Territories, the total number of god sequence chains in his God Territory would definitely exceed the limit of the Dao seal boosts. The newly consolidated Sword seals boost effect on the Godly Right had, without a doubt, tremendously strengthened Lin Huangs abilities. This is a real surprise. Lin Huang had actually never expected to be able to consolidate a Sword seal. His main purpose for entering the virtual realm cabin this time was to refine the Nirvana Trees so he could set up a death substitute method for himself. He had never expected to receive consecutive surprises. After calming himself down, Lin Huang finally began inspecting the connection between his Gods soul and the Nirvana Trees. However, before he had the chance to check on the status of his death substitute setup, he noticed that the two hundred or more Nirvana Trees were still absorbing massive amounts of information resources from the death spring, even though they had stopped elevating in combat strength. It felt as if someone were forcibly flooding the Nirvana Trees with all this information. Fortunately, each of the Nirvana Trees combat strength was at peak upper-rank lord-level now. Their Gods souls could sufficiently hold this vast quantity of information resources, so they could still contain it all without anything overflowing into Lin Huang. When others obtained Nirvana Trees, their main intention was to use the Trees like a water pump to draw the death springs information resources into their heads. However, on Lin Huangs end, the two hundred or so Nirvana Trees were more like a giant dam and reservoir, preventing information resources from flooding Lin Huang. This made Lin Huang suspect that something might be wrong with the way his Gods soul connected to the Nirvana Trees. He had read Nine Glooms memories previously, and the situation Nine Gloom had encountered was completely different from what Lin Huang was experiencing. Every time Nine Gloom drew an inheritance from the death spring, it would take several years at least. Some inheritances with more information could take up to dozens, even hundreds of years. Throughout this process, spiritual energy had to be channeled to the Nirvana Trees every day to maintain the trees consumption. Despite this, the problem was that very often, the information resources the Nirvana Trees drew were not even heavenly god-level, which was not exactly useful to Nine Gloom. Since Lin Huang knew what Nine Gloom had encountered in the process, he had not considered the Nirvana Trees ability to draw information resources from the death spring an effective technique. Therefore, he had chosen to use the Nirvana Trees as the object for his death substitute. However, the situation he was encountering now was completely different from what Nine Gloom had experienced. This made him take the Nirvana Trees ability to plunder information resources more seriously. As far as he was concerned, whether something went wrong with the way his Gods soul connected to the Nirvana Trees or not, at the very least, the end result was still positive for the time being. Chapter 1666. Going Into Closed-Door Cultivation Again Since Lin Huang had no idea whether the anomaly in the Nirvana Trees connection to the death spring would be temporary or permanent, he did not dare let the opportunity slip by just like that. He immediately focused his entire being and received the massive volume of information resources furiously. He was afraid that if he bypassed this round of benefits and the connection channel returned to the state that Nine Gloom had encountered, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. However, Lin Huang did not look over all this information in detail this time. Not only did he not look through it in detail, but he only preserved lord-level information resources. Any information resources below lord-level, he stored in memory crystals. To prevent redundant information in his mind, he completely sealed all of the information resources lower than lord-level after they had been transferred to the memory crystals. Days passed in the virtual realm cabin. After an indeterminate amount of time, Lin Huang had accumulated tens of thousands of lord-level inheritances in his mind. The Nirvana Trees retrieval of information resources from the death spring still showed no signs of drying up at all. Not only that, the absorption speed did not slow down in the least. Only now was he basically able to confirm that the unusual connection between the Nirvana Trees within him and the death spring was most probably not a temporary one. Although he had no way of being sure whether it was permanent or not, he felt that it would not stop in the immediate future. He did indeed feel that the information resources he had retrieved were more than sufficient. More importantly, the thousands of memory crystals in his storage rings were all full. Lin Huang put aside the information transfer from the Nirvana Trees for now. He did not bring out the bodies of the two Lords in his storage ring to refine their Kingdoms. Instead, he got up right away and left the virtual realm cabin. As soon as he returned to the Ricky Star, he contacted Bloody through telepathic voice transmission. He transferred all of the inheritances to Bloody through telepathic voice transmission, including the lord-level inheritances. As the load of information was massive, even with telepathic voice transmission, Lin Huang spent a full day and a half to complete transferring all the information resources. After delegating the task of sorting out the information to Bloody, he returned to the God Territory within him in a flash. He gave the entire batch of memory crystals to Yang Ling so he could digitize the information and sort it out for storage. After seeing to the matter of the memory crystals, Lin Huang returned to the Ricky Star again. Now he finally had the time to take out his Royal Token to check on the auction status of the Dao Weapons. The final bid for the thirty-seven low-grade Dao Weapons surprised Lin Huang once more. One hundred and one lower-rank Lords Kingdoms?! Based on his initial expectations, it would be incredible if he could trade the thirty-seven low-grade Dao Weapons with thirty lower-rank Lords Kingdoms. That would be an astonishing number already. He had never expected that he would be able to get one hundred and one of them. He clicked into the trading details to check and soon saw the description of the traded items. As expected All hundred and one of them are Abyssal Lords Kingdoms In reality, Lin Huang had already speculated this might be the case when he saw the unusually high number of items traded. However, he had not expected that all hundred and one Lords Kingdoms would be Abyssal. None were from other tribes. Lin Huang had always known that the God Territory Shell Remnants of Abyssal half-step Lords were not valuable, but it had never occurred to him that the Kingdom Shell Remnants of Abyssal Lords were equally worthless as well. What he did not know was that for many people, cleansing God Territories was an exceptionally troublesome task. He had within him the Eternity Fire, which could easily devour all of the Abyssal energy in the Abyssal God Territories. However, for most other people, the cost of cleansing Abyssal God Territories was extremely high. First of all, only powerhouses who were middle-rank lord-level or above could cleanse a lower-rank Abyssal Lords Kingdom. Moreover, an ordinary lower-rank Abyssal Lords Kingdom would take a middle-rank Lord hundreds of years at least to fully cleanse it. If the Kingdoms size was slightly larger, or if it possessed more living beings, the time required for cleansing would be even longer. Unless they were in dire straits of poverty, no Lords would waste their time cleansing Abyssal God Territories. Therefore, such a thing would usually be sold at a cheap price. Furthermore, Dao Weapons were hard currency in the universe. Divine Crystals were hardly used for trading between Lords. Bartering was basically the common practice now, and Dao Weapons were practically the equivalent of currency. Conversely, Abyssal Lords Kingdom Shell Remnants and Abyssal Lord bodies were items that were harder to sell. The Lords from Royal were more than willing to trade Abyssal Kingdoms for hard currency like Dao Weapons as long as the price was not too outrageous. This had made Lin Huang the biggest beneficiary in the exchange. After transferring all hundred and one Abyssal Lords Kingdom Shell Remnants from his identity token to his storage rage, Lin Huang returned to the virtual realm cabin again. The investigators from the Raider would be coming soon; he did not have much time to waste. Therefore, the minute Lin Huang obtained these Kingdom Shell Remnants, he wanted to convert the Kingdom Shell Remnants into abilities as soon as possible after obtaining them. He picked up the storage ring in the virtual realm cabin and took out the two Lords bodies. He retrieved their Kingdoms and began to refine them. At the same time, the Eternity Fire began to cleanse the one hundred and one other Kingdoms. When the refinement of the two Kingdoms was complete, the Eternity Fire had cleansed all of the Kingdom Shell Remnants. The vast quantity of Abyssal energy was a rare delicacy for the Eternity Fire. This round of Abyssal energy consumption had advanced it another level; it was even more powerful now. As for Lin Huang, he did not stop refining the Kingdom Shell Remnants at all. Days passed. He worked day and night refining Kingdom Shell Remnants without taking even a second or a minute of rest. As he was refining the thirteenth Kingdom, he finally sensed that the Godly Right within him had now come to satiety. The number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain had reached its upper limitone million god sequence chains! At present, the number of god sequence chains in the God Territory within his body had skyrocketed to one million eight hundred and sixty thousand chains. Although his Godly Right was now at its upper limit, Lin Huang did not stop refining Kingdom Shell Remnants. Without hesitation, he chose to continue refining them. The number of god sequence chains in his God Territory kept increasing, just like previously. After an indeterminate length of time, he finally managed to fully refine all the remaining eighty-eight Kingdom Shell Remnants. The number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain was still one million but the total number of god sequence chains in his God Territory had increased to seven million one hundred and sixteen thousand chainsan increase of more than several times over. Lin Huang did not come out of closed-door cultivation even after his ability had increased significantly. Instead, he sat with his legs crossed and his eyes closed and began inferring god sequence chains again. One must know that the god sequence chains he currently possessed were borrowed from the God Territory in his body. He had not truly mastered them. Excluding the Sword Dao heavenly rules that he had comprehended from consolidating the Sword seal earlier, in reality, he had mastered very few god sequence chains. However, inferring god sequence chains was easier than comprehending god rules himself and then elevating them into god sequence chains. After all, he had used those god sequence chains before and possessed an in-depth understanding of the sequence power within them. Lin Huang crushed an Epiphany Card and rapidly immersed himself, heart and soul, into inferring god sequence chains The god rules in his body swiftly began to consolidate and assemble into god sequence chains The speed at which the god sequence chains consolidated exceeded what everyone else generally understood about god sequence chains. Chapter 1667 - That’s More Like It! Lin Huang completely lost track of time in the virtual realm cabin. He had no idea whether a hundred years had passedmaybe a thousand years, even ten thousand years perhaps even longer. The god sequence chains in his body consolidated one by one from nothingness. Only at the end when they reached one million god sequence chains did Lin Huang finally open his eyes. The number of god sequence chains had skyrocketed to one million, which was the maximum number his Godly Right could contain. He instinctively sensed that the number of god sequence chains he could consolidate had reached its limit as well. He even tried to consolidate the one million and first god sequence chain, but it failed at the very last second of its consolidation. He only gave up trying after three consecutive failures. So if I want to elevate my abilities any further, the only thing I can do is consolidate a Dao seal, I suppose Lin Huang considered for a moment. He seemed to have reached the true limits of heavenly god-level at present; he could not go any further. In order to advance his abilities even more, his only option was to consolidate a Dao seal and become a Lord. Do I want to consolidate the Dao seal now? Lin Huang thought about it and felt that he did not really have much reason to continue procrastinating. However, he soon ran into a problem that troubled him. All raptors are Voids. If I consolidate the Dao seal in the material realm, the process should be similar to Buried Heavens. The biggest difference will probably be the strength of the raptor. But what if I consolidate the Dao seal in the virtual realm with my virtual body? Will I attract more raptors? Lin Huang was considering whether or not he wanted to seize this opportunity to bait and lure large numbers of Voids over to kill them. It doesnt matter even if this virtual body dies anyway. My virtual body has three lives every day Lin Huang hesitated no longer at this point. He got up right away and stepped out of the virtual realm cabin, returning it to card form. Although he was not very sure if the virtual realm cabin could be destroyed, he did not wish to experiment and find out. Watching the still, dead black and white world before him, Lin Huang calmed his state of mind slightly. The aura of his entire being began to rise. This time, he did not suppress his strength at all. He released the full power of the god sequence chains one by one. His body began to detach from the neutron star and its terrifying force of gravity, gradually floating into the starry heavens. In this boundless black and white universe, he was as tiny as a particle of dust. However, his aura had shrouded all the stars around him completely. If there had been other living beings present in the surrounding star zones, even an ordinary person with no cultivation base would have been able to clearly sense the Holy Power of a god spreading through the entire galaxy. Lin Huang closed his eyes, his body completely relaxed. On his body, god sequence chains of various colors surged out from within him like endless tentacles. These god sequence chains were no longer invisible to the eyes of ordinary folkthey had materialized into actual chains. If onlookers were to witness this scene, they would certainly be shocked by the number of god sequence chains surging out of Lin Huangs body at present. There were a million god sequence chains. This terrifying number was beyond all common logic. One must know that when Buried Heaven had elevated to become a Lord previously, he possessed only twenty-seven god sequence chains. Furthermore, he was already the top powerhouse among Heavenly Gods in the great world. Even Great Heaven, who had subdued the great world for an entire era, had only mastered forty-two god sequence chains at the time of his unification. This was no longer a simple disparity in numbers; it was one of magnitude. The more god sequence chains a Heavenly God mastered, the more powerful his Dao seal would be after unification. The reason was that the number of god sequence chains would be equivalent to the number of Dao tattoos. This was common knowledge among all Heavenly Gods. Furthermore, the number of Dao tattoos on the Dao seal consolidated during each Lords first unification would determine the number of Dao tattoos on all subsequent Dao seals. The Dao seal consolidated during unification would determine a Lords foundation. Two Lords who started with a different number of Dao tattoos would have a bigger gap between their respective abilities in the future as they consolidated more and more Dao seals. Naturally, the greater the number of Dao tattoos, the greater the difficulty in consolidating the Dao seal. It would also take much longer. Therefore, Lords with fewer Dao tattoos were not entirely at a disadvantage. They would be able to elevate much faster. However, for Lin Huang, elevation speed was not a problem at all. His cultivation speed had never been slow. Now that he had the Gate of All Realms, which enabled him to enter and exit the virtual realm whenever he wished, he did not have to worry about the amount of time he spent on cultivation at all. He had enough resources to do what others could not do. If this were someone else, even if they had sufficient talent and potential to consolidate millions of god sequence chains at heavenly god-level, they could not afford to expend that amount of time to do so. Possibly by the time they had consolidated millions of god sequence chains, their opponent would have long since elevated to become a Lordmaybe even a middle-rank or upper-rank Lord. Moreover, hardly any cultivators of the same level had God Territories as powerful as Lin Huangs, which could contain so many god sequence chains. Lin Huangs time resources, his constitution, as well as his Gods soul, God Territory, and his talent and potential No ordinary individual could compare in practically every single one of those aspects. All these factors combined were what gave him such terrifying abilities. In the void, after the god sequence chains had extended themselves out of Lin Huangs body, they rapidly began weaving around menacingly, as if each of them had a consciousness of their own. Not long later, the god sequence chains started to detach from Lin Huangs body one by one, beginning to dance riotously above his head. They even unleashed all sorts of sequence powers and began to fight. It seemed as if none of them wanted to submit to each other, and all were trying to gain the upper hand. Lin Huang, however, did not panic at all. He had known about this already from watching Buried Heavens unification previously. This was the first stage of unificationpsychic communication. Moreover, when he obtained the Lords inheritances from the death spring earlier, he had looked through some information regarding unification as well. He was now very experienced in how to handle each stage of unification. During the psychic communication stage, the god sequence chains would gain a measure of intelligence. Therefore, they would battle amongst each other, all vying for supremacy. This stage was also called the chaotic sequence period and was a very dangerous state. If ones Gods soul were not powerful enough to subdue the god sequence chains, the unification would instantly fail. It was even possible that ones Gods soul might be crushed by the berserk god sequence chains, and the individual would die on the spot. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, solving the issues involved in this stage of the process could not be easier. As soon as his peak lord-level Gods soul was unleashed, myriads of Divine Telekinesis threads shot out, tightly binding the strange creatures that the god sequence chains had become and forcing them to blow up! The entire process ended in less than three seconds and was extremely violent. Lin Huang watched as the creature manifestations of the one million god sequence chains blew up one by one to reveal the original forms of the god sequence chains. They retreated back into his body, crestfallen, and Lin Huang nodded, displaying a satisfied grin. Thats more like it. Chapter 1668 - Unification The first stage of unificationpsychic communicationwent by easily, just like that. Inclusive of the time the god sequence chains took to manifest as creatures, the entire process only lasted less than half a minute. After the god sequence chains withdrew into the God Territory within Lin Huangs body, they consolidated into lines of Dao tattoos in the heavens above his God Territory. Once the millions of Dao tattoos were fully consolidated, they began releasing an endless frenzy of Divine Power. At the same time, Lin Huangs God Territory finally manifested on its own around him. The size of his God Territory was like a boundless universe that had descended into the virtual realm. Lin Huang himself did not know at present exactly how many star zones it covered. However, he could clearly sense that many Voids were contained within his God Territory. Fortunately, he did not sense the existence of anything threatening. After all, he was in the great world right now, not the universe. At present, the great world did not even have a publicly visible middle-rank Lord. Fewer still had died and become Voids. Even back in the ancient era, when resources in the great world were ample, not many upper-rank Lords would stay in the great world, so very few of them had died in the great world and become Voids. This was also the main reason why Lin Huang dared to try unification in the virtual realm. However, he was by no means certain if the unification would attract powerful entities from the universe. Lin Huang ignored the Voids contained within his God Territory. He focused his entire attention back on the process of unification. This was the second stage of unificationunification. Simply put, this was the transformation of god sequence chains into Dao tattoos, which would then consolidate into a Dao seal. This stage was also the one with the highest failure rate in the process of a Heavenly Gods unification. Over eighty percent of individuals had their unifications fail at this point. This was because the process of god sequence chains consolidating into a Dao seal would release terrifying energy, somewhat similar to a nuclear fusion reaction. It was a triple test for the physical body, Gods soul, and God Territory of the individual performing the unification. The energy released from the god sequence chains consolidating into a Dao seal would impact the individuals God Territory first. At the same time, some of the energy would leak out and impact the individuals physical body and Gods soul. The unification would instantly fail if either the individuals God Territory, physical body, or Gods soul failed to sustain the impact. Therefore, for most cultivators in general, this was a very dangerous stage. However, Lin Huang was different. Even as early as imperial-level, his God Territory had been different from that of everyone else. Back then, he could already refine and integrate others God Territories. As for later on, despite being newly elevated to heavenly god-level, he could integrate many God Territory Shell Remnants of half-step Heavenly Gods. He could even refine the God Territories of lower-rank Lords right away. For ordinary cultivators, there were limits on the number of God Territories each individuals God Territory could refine and integrate. Not only that, there were severe restrictions on refinement strength. They could not increase their strength limitlessly like Lin Huang could. Great Heaven, who was powerful enough to subdue an entire era, had mastered forty-two god sequence chains. However, from first-rank heavenly god-level to ninth-rank heavenly god-level, he only dared to refine nine Heavenly Gods God Territory Shell Remnants. That was already the limit his God Territory could take. Lin Huang, on the other hand, did not merely have a powerful God Territory. The strength of his Gods soul was peak upper-rank lord-level now. Although his physical body was slightly less powerful, he was still on par with a peak middle-rank Lord. In the void, the millions of Dao tattoos rapidly consolidated into a golden Dao seal. The Dao seal was like an intensely burning star suspended above the God Territory, releasing endless energy in all directions. The piercingly bright golden light spread to practically every corner of the God Territory. Any place it passed through was immediately reduced to scorched earth. Without hesitation, Lin Huang immediately invoked more god sequence chains from within his God Territory to envelope the Dao seal in layers. One must know that only a million god sequence chains were required to consolidate this Dao seal. However, there were over seven million god sequence chains in Lin Huangs God Territory. Excluding the one million god sequence chains used to consolidate the Dao seal, there were still over six million of them remaining. Under Lin Huangs control, these six million and more god sequence chains swiftly enveloped the Dao seal like a giant cocoon. Although the divine rays released from the Dao seal were powerful, they could not break through a barrier several times more powerful than themselves. The divine rays released from the giant god sequence chain cocoon were now less than ten percent of what had previously been released. This level of energy was no longer sufficient to cause any shakeups in Lin Huangs massive, boundless God Territory. As time passed by, the golden rays released from consolidating the Dao seal soon faded entirely. The one million god sequence chains had fully consolidated into a golden Dao seal. From beginning to end, Lin Huangs God Territory did not experience even a tremor. The unification stage had passed. He did not even sense any of the three challenges other Lords faced in the unification stage. Most of the energy released from consolidating the Dao seal had been absorbed by the giant cocoon formed from the six million and more god sequence chains. It did not shake Lin Huangs God Territory in the slightest, much less bleed through into his God Territory and impact his Gods soul and physical body. The second stage of unification was now completein fact, far more smoothly than Lin Huang had anticipated. In reality, he had been a little worried that his physical body might not be strong enough and had wondered if it would be crushed by the energy impact resulting from consolidating the Dao seal. However, from the looks of it, this was an entirely extraneous worry. The second stage of unification had now finished, and the Dao seal had been formed. The next would be the third and last stage of unificationDao plundering! Once the Dao seal had been formally consolidated, it would attract covetous raptors. A raptor would then come to the material realm and attempt to snatch away the Dao seal. Only through defeating the raptor, protecting the Dao seal, and letting it absorb the raptors Origin Energy would the Dao seal truly be successfully consolidated. However, this stage was the most difficult in the entire process of unification. This was because raptors were attracted by the Dao seals aura, and their abilities would usually be on par with the individual performing unification. The problem was that raptors were all lord-level powerhouses. They were far more familiar with using a Dao seal than the individual performing unification. Furthermore, both raptor and individual would be in different states of mind. The individual would mostly desire to protect the Dao seala more passive state of mind. The raptor, however, would be in a predatory state of mind, which was more active. Raptors would definitely have the upper hand in terms of combat experience and state of mind. Naturally, the individual performing the unification was not entirely at a disadvantage. At least they had the advantage of home ground, as the battlefield would be within the individuals God Territory. Despite this, throughout the ages, individuals performing unification would lose to raptors in battle more often than not. If the second stage of unification was extremely dangerous, then the third stageDao plunderingwas akin to burning ones bridges. If one managed this stage successfully, they would be reborn and become a Lord! If they could not navigate this stage, they would fail, and all their efforts would be for naught. Lin Huang was no stranger to Dao plundering. Several months back, he had witnessed Buried Heavens Dao plundering and had fought a raptor more than once after that. Many raptors (Voids) had died at his hands as well. However, Lin Huang could not help but feel rather anxious at this moment. This was because, from what he knew, everyone performed unification in the material realm. He had absolutely no idea what kind of raptors he would attract now that he was performing unification in the virtual realm. Chapter 1669 - A Being Above Lord-Level In the virtual realm, Lin Huangs God Territory spread far and wide, enveloping an untold number of star zones. The shining golden Dao seal hung like a large golden sun above the God Territory. It radiated countless golden beams into the far reaches of the starry heavens, and its overwhelming aura spread in all directions like a wave. To the Voids senses, the aura released by a Dao seal in the material realm was like an incomparable delicacy that made them drool. In the virtual realm, the first to sense Lin Huangs Dao seal aura were the Voids contained within his God Territory. They were like sharks that had scented blood, rushing in a frenzy to Lin Huangs location. Since this was happening in his God Territory, he could clearly sense the Voids movements. Lin Huang did not panic at all. Instead, he felt rather excited. The reason was that he clearly sensed over ninety percent of these hundreds of Void auras were lower-rank Lords. The small number of remaining Voids were middle-rank Lords. Not only that, they were only at the level of an ordinary middle-rank Lord. For Lin Huang, no matter how many there were, they were insufficient to be any kind of threat to him. Practically the next second after the Dao seal had formed, the first Void appeared in front of Lin Huang. It was a humanoid monster wielding blades. It was of a burly build, and its body was clad in a full suit of armor. It had a white mask over its face. Each of its six arms wielded a weapona saber, a spear, a sword, a polearm, a hook sword, and a shield. Five weapons and one piece of defensive equipment could be considered a fairly comprehensive array. A White-faced King Kong Lin Huang recognized the monster at first glance. The White-faced King Kong that had become a Void targeted Lin Huang and took a step forward. Right as it was about to attack, a blood-red gleam flashed through the air, swift as lightning, and instantly pierced right between its brows. The White-faced King Kongs burly body froze. A second later, its body disintegrated at once and turned into a cloud of mist, seeping into the shining golden Dao seal. After being infused with this Origin Energy, Lin Huangs Dao seal seemed a little brighter, although this was barely perceptible to the eye. The White-faced King Kong had only just been killed when the second and third Voids landed at almost the same time. One was obviously a pure blood dragonkin. Its whole body was covered in golden dragon armor, and its size was so massive it could compare with a star. The other one was a curly-haired baboon. Although it was much smaller than the dragon beast, it was still as big as a mountain and was tens of thousands of meters tall. Once the two Voids landed, they targeted each other instead. As if they were rivals, they utterly ignored Lin Huangs existence. If this had happened under normal circumstances, Lin Huang would have been more than happy to watch them fight. After seeing the two monsters tear each other apart, he would simply gather the spoils. However, he was in the process of unification right now. The longer things dragged on, the more unforeseen circumstances might happen. Therefore, he did not wait for the two monsters to fight. He attacked at once, bringing an end to what might have been a very interesting battle. Two blood-red electric arcs easily took the two Voids lives. After the two Voids were killed, they also turned into two cloud-like spheres of Origin Energy which were then absorbed by Lin Huangs Dao seal. Lin Huang could not help raising his brows as he watched the Dao seal absorbing three Lords Origin Energies one after the other. Id like to see how much you can take. As soon as Lin Huang spoke, a third wave of monsters landed. This time it was another two monsters as well He attacked and killed them both right away without hesitation, letting his Dao seal continue to absorb their Origin Energies. Right after that, Voids began arriving continuously one wave after another. Lin Huang easily killed all of them. Within less than three minutes, he had killed hundreds of Voids. His Dao seal was like an infinitely alluring bait, attracting a frenzy of Voids one after the other. When the Dao seal had absorbed the Origin Energies of one hundred Voids, it was finally satiated and began to retract its aura. Lin Huang felt slightly relieved only after he saw this. On a certain level, only now could he be considered to have officially succeeded in unification. However, within the range of his God Territory, he could still sense that there were Voids rapidly heading for his location. As the Dao seal retracted its aura, the God Territory spread out around Lin Huang swiftly began to collapse. This was not because it was damaged but because it was ending its manifestation. A gleam flashed through Lin Huangs eyes when he saw the Voids that were still heading toward him in a frenzy. Dozens of blood-red electric arcs shot out from his sleeves at lightning speed, furiously attacking the monsters that were heading his way. He had initially thought to use the Dao seal as bait to lure many Voids over. Once he had killed them, he would obtain large quantities of Origin Energy. He had never expected that the Origin Energy of the Voids he killed would basically be completely absorbed by his Dao seal. This resulted in him not gaining any extra benefits at all. Seeing that his God Territory was collapsing, he did not want to let this hunting opportunity pass. He attacked without hesitation. At the very least, he managed to kill twenty-eight Voids before his God Territory collapsed completely. He then used Divine Telekinesis threads to collect the twenty-eight Origin Energy spheres. However, a second before the God Territory that Lin Huang manifested collapsed completely, a black Dimensional Whirlpool suddenly appeared above the Dao seal, swiftly beginning to form. Lin Huang fixed his eyes on the Dimensional Whirlpool. Before it could even consolidate fully, an extremely terrifying aura was transmitted through from the other side. Lin Huangs danger instincts began sounding an alarm. Goosebumps ran down his spine, and his back was drenched in cold sweat. It felt as if there were a terrifying being staring at him from the side of the whirlpool. He instinctively sensed that the power of this entity was far beyond anything he could imagine. Before it, he was just an insignificant ant. A being thats above lord-level The thought suddenly popped into Lin Huangs mind. It was as if someone had cast an immobilizing spell on him; he could not move his body at all. He could only watch the Dimensional Whirlpool swiftly forming in front of him. The only thing he could do was to hope that the God Territory he had manifested would collapse even more swiftly. He wanted it to collapse totally before the whirlpool had fully formed so the space anchor points would be erased. Only if that happened would he have a chance of survival. Lin Huang felt as if ten million years had passed right at that moment. However, a golden ray of light suddenly cut through the air from some unknown direction and beamed into Lin Huangs collapsing God Territory. Not only that, it landed with extreme accuracy right on the black Dimensional Whirlpool. The still-forming Dimensional Whirlpool instantly exploded. At the same time, a furious shriek came from its other side. The shriek even passed through the Dimensional Whirlpool right away and surged toward Lin Huangs God Territory. Everywhere it passed was instantly crushed into nothingness. Its subjugation speed far exceeded the speed of light. Watching as the sound wave surged toward him, Lin Huang could imagine himself being pulverized into a bloody splatter. At that moment, a thunderous sound overwhelmed the destructive mystic sound! Get lost! The mystic sound stopped abruptly Chapter 1670 - Lin Huang, Now Elevated To Lord-Level What happened? Lin Huang stared in a daze at the peaceful black and white sky in front of him. He could not really understand what on earth had just happened. Just an instant before his God Territory collapsed, there seemed to be a being above lord-level that had sensed his Dao seal and tried to cross over to snatch it away. Right as this other party was about to get their hands on the Dao seal, another unknown entity had attacked and instantly destroyed the Dimensional Whirlpool. The being above lord-level had used a mere mystic sound to penetrate through space and had almost killed Lin Huangs virtual body. The unknown entity had spoken then and obliterated the mystic sound. After the danger had been resolved, Lin Huangs God Territory collapsed completely soon after, and the unknown entity had not revealed themselves either. He did not know whether it was because the space anchor points had been erased when his God Territory collapsed so they could not lock onto his coordinates, or because they did not wish to meet him. Looking at the still, calm sky spread out before him, Lin Huang even had a moment of doubt, wondering whether everything that had just happened was merely a figment of his imagination. That voice Why do I feel like Ive heard it before? That Get lost! was uttered in a clear, cold female voice. Lin Huang had a vague sense that it was somewhat familiar, but he was not able to connect it with any of the girls that he remembered. Perhaps Im over-thinking this. Lin Huang shook his head with a wry smile. He felt it was not very likely to be a girl he knew. The reason for this was that his cultivation speed had been very swift all along, far outstripping all of his friends. It was highly unlikely that there would be a girl whose cultivation speed was faster than his, who could cultivate into a being above lord-level within a short few years. Lin Huang felt that even if it were another traveler with a Goldfinger, it was also highly unlikely that her cultivation speed would outstrip him by so much. After setting aside these jumbled thoughts, Lin Huang released his Divine Telekinesis and scanned his surroundings but did not find anything. He had a feeling that the girl who had saved him was probably nowhere nearby. However, he cupped his hands in a respectful fist-palm salute toward the sky and bowed. Thank you, Senior, for saving me! If theres anything you require from me at all, Ill try my best to fulfill it for you. Lin Huang purposely waited for a few seconds after saying this. However, he did not receive a response. He had expected this, but one should show proper respect to ones seniors after all, especially since this individual had intervened and saved his life twice. After retracting his Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang checked on the state of things within his body and nodded in satisfaction. Only then did he summon the Gate of All Realms and return to the material realm. As soon as he returned to the material realm, he began looking over the state of his body in detail. The first thing he noticed was an inexplicable surge in the number of god sequence chains within his God Territory. Before, there had only been a total of 7.16 million god sequence chains in his God Territory. However, there were now 14.71 millionmore than double the previous amount. Lin Huang thought back on this carefully and realized that it was a result of his Dao seal devouring a massive amount of Origin Energy in the last step of unification, the Dao plundering. Furthermore, his successful consolidation of a Dao seal during the unification process seemed to have caused his Godly Right to undergo a transformation as well. Now Lin Huang could borrow not only the god sequence chains from his God Territory but also the Dao seals that he had refined from those Lords. An example would be the Dao seals that he had absorbed and refined from the Origin Energy of the Voids he killed this round. There were over eight hundred seals. Although all of them did not have the same number of Dao tattoos, when added up together, their Dao tattoo power was comparable to the compounding of over one point two million levels of god sequence chains. Together with the level-3 Dao seal within Lin Huangs body, this Dao tattoo power that could inherently fuel three million god sequence chains was the equivalent of compounding four point two million or more levels of Dao tattoo power. It looks like I need to consolidate more Dao seals Lin Huang knew that the most direct way to elevate his ability would be to consolidate Dao seals. The total number of god sequence chains in his body had already come to over fourteen million chains. Furthermore, including the Dao seal power that he could borrow, he could only invoke four point two million god sequence chains, which was less than one-third of the total amount. To use more Dao tattoo power, it was necessary to consolidate even more Dao seals. Apart from the changes in his Godly Right authorization and his god sequence chains, the massive volume of Divine Power in Lin Huangs body had transformed entirely into Odyl. Odyl was considered the high-level form of Divine Power that could perfectly integrate Dao seals and Dao tattoo power. With this surging spread of Odyl, Lin Huangs physical body and Gods soul were strengthened even further. Currently, the strength of his physical body was now at the level of an upper-rank Lord. His Gods soulinitially peak upper-rank lord-levelhad achieved a further breakthrough and was now at ultimate-rank lord-level strength. His overall abilities had undoubtedly received a transformative boost. However, Lin Huang was not the only one who had gotten stronger. The God Weapons within him had also leveled up, following the elevation of his combat strength. They had broken through from low-grade Dao Weapons directly to supreme-grade Dao Weapons. This was, without a doubt, another round of external enhancement. Lin Huang even felt that his current ability ought to be sufficient for him to go head-to-head in battle with some newly elevated ultimate-rank Lords. An ultimate-rank Lord would have consolidated thousands of Dao seals at the very least. However, even if one were to use Buried Heaven as a benchmark, a level-1 Dao seal could only invoke the Dao tattoo power of one thousand eight hundred or so god sequence chains. A level-1000 Dao seal could only invoke the Dao tattoo power of less than two million god sequence chains. At present, Lin Huang only dared to go up against a newly-elevated ultimate-rank Lord. An ultimate-rank Lord with more powerful abilities would have consolidated at least three thousand Dao seals and above. Lin Huangs abilities were not yet sufficient to fight back. However, Lin Huang was in no hurry. He knew that as the number of Dao seals in his body increased, he would only become more and more powerful. It was incredibly difficult for the ultimate-rank Lords in the universe to further elevate their abilities. At my current level of ability, I should be able to handle the investigators that the Raiders send. The threat present in Lin Huangs mind abated slightly after he checked his body thoroughly. According to the information Yang Ling had provided, Royal would not allow ultimate-rank Lords to enter the great world, which was their territory. Therefore, the most powerful investigators that the Raiders could send would only be upper-rank Lords. For Lin Huang at present, upper-rank Lords no longer posed any kind of threat to him. However, he did not plan to just wait passively for the investigators to arrive. Although the investigators were no longer a threat to him, he had no intention of ending his cultivation just yet. After mulling over the possibility that his coordinates in the virtual realm might have been exposed, for safety purposes, Lin Huang opened the Gate of All Realms and directly teleported himself to an uninhabited planet in the human world. This place was millions of star zones away from the Ricky Star in the God Territory. After arriving at this new location, Lin Huang summoned up the virtual realm cabin again. He took out his storage ring and put it in the cabin. After that, he opened the Gate of All Realms and stepped into the virtual realm again. Upon entering the virtual realm, Lin Huang spread his Divine Telekinesis and noticed three lower-rank lord-level Voids within the perimeter of the dozens of star zones nearby. After using his God Weapon flying daggers to dispose of the Voids without hesitation, Lin Huang was finally able to be at ease and enter the virtual realm cabin. He picked up the storage ring from the floor, then sat down with his legs crossed. Chapter 1671 - Coming Out Of Closed-Door Cultivation Lin Huang raised his head and looked toward the deep reaches of space in the Kingdom within him. Two giant spheres hovered in the air there, like two massive eggs suspended in the ocean. These two spheres were the Kingdoms that had been extracted and refined from the two middle-rank LordsBlack Mountain, and Spyafter Lin Huang had killed them. Although they were sealed at the moment, the size of both spheres was comparable to a star zone. They existed in a state like this within Lin Huangs Kingdom and had not yet become a part of it, because Lin Huang had been unable to refine them previously. Although their wills had been erased, the two Kingdoms were currently ownerless. Lin Huang had been unable to refine them, so he had had no choice but to set them aside for the time being. However, now that he had elevated to become a Lord, he was fully certain that his current self would not encounter any hindrances when refining middle-rank Lords God Territories. He immediately set about the matter with barely any hesitation. All it took was a mere thought, and endless blood-red Divine Fire seemed to appear out of nowhere. It enveloped the two giant eggs instantly and began the refining process. Days passed in the virtual realm cabin. After an indeterminate amount of time, the two Kingdoms were finally fully refined. They then became part of Lin Huangs Kingdom. Including forty-eight Dao seals from Black Mountain and Spy, three hundred thousand god sequence chains, and a massive number of god rules also became part of Lin Huangs Kingdom. After successfully refining the two Kingdoms in their entirety, Lin Huang lifted his head once more to gaze at the heavens of his Kingdom. There were still five hundred and forty-one Dao seal stars there, moving around in disorderly fashion. Apart from the ones he had obtained from killing Babbles group of lower-rank Lords, there were also those that Lin Huang had extracted and refined from the Kingdoms of the lower-rank Lords he had obtained from trading on Royals auction. As his Godly Right could not control Dao seals previously, he had not refined these Dao seals. He could only let them drift around in the starry heavens. Now, however, he could refine them at last. Lin Huang summoned up a thought, and blood-red fire blazed up again in the Kingdom, enveloping all of the Dao seal stars that were not under any control. Time did not exist in the virtual realm cabin; Lin Huang did not know exactly how long this round of refining had taken. Regardless, after the refinement was complete, the number of Dao seals in his possession had exceeded one thousand four hundred in total. Including the three Dao seals within his body, he could now invoke over five point five million Dao tattoos (previously it had been god sequence chains.) The Dao tattoos in Lin Huangs Kingdom had also increased exponentially from the initial fourteen point seventy-one million to eighteen million. After refining all the Dao seals in his Kingdom, Lin Huang looked at his three Dao seals again. He took a moment to consider whether or not he should continue consolidating more Dao seals. After all, for every Dao seal he consolidated, the number of Dao tattoo powers that he could invoke would increase by one million. However, after some thought, he set that aside for now. He was not sure if he would attract the attention of the previous being above lord-level if he were to consolidate more Dao seals. If that entity showed up again, he might not be able to count on a second chance of survival. After all, the lady who had intervened to save him before was also a being above lord-level. Lin Huang did not think that she would be watching over him constantly and protecting him at all times. Moreover, he now owed her a considerable favor. It would be embarrassing for him to owe her another one. Lin Huang abandoned the idea of continuing to consolidate more Dao seals and immediately came out of closed-door cultivation. He put the virtual realm cabin away and stepped back into the material realm. After glancing at the barren planet where he was, he summoned the Gate of All Realms again and returned to the Ricky Star. As soon as he returned to his hotel on the Ricky Star, Lin Huang took out his Royal Token and uploaded the eleven intermediate-grade Dao Weapons onto the auction page. His conditions for the auction were as follows. Trading in exchange for middle-rank Lords God Territories that have fifty seals and above. The more Dao seals, the better. No restrictions on the Dao seal type; Abyssal and Bug Tribe seals are fine as well. This time, Lin Huang set the duration of the auction for ten days. For one, the trading conditions he had set out were more exacting. If the duration was too short, the Dao Weapons would not go for a good price. For another, obtaining the God Territories of Lords was not a matter of urgency for him. At his current level of ability, he was more than able to face down any investigators the Raiders would send. There was no need to be in a hurry to refine more God Territories to advance his abilities. Lin Huang had a lot of free time in the next few days. He had already used up whatever resources he could currently utilize. If he wanted to elevate his abilities any further, he had to wait for Royals auction to end. Fortunately, there were many trading markets on the Ricky Star and within the Coyne Star Zone. Lin Huang just happened to be able to use them to pass the time. At his current level of ability and experience, there were far fewer items that caught his interest. Therefore, he browsed more and purchased very little. After strolling around all sorts of marketplaces for a few days, Lin Huang was finally able to gain new awareness about the pricing of various items. All along previously, he had busied himself with cultivation and had not actually made a note of what resources he did not need. Apart from that, he had only just discovered that there were grades of marketplaces in the God Territory. For instance, heavenly god-level powerhouses would usually shop at Precious Treasure Pavilions Heavenly Treasure Pavilion. The Heavenly Treasure Pavilion basically did not sell any items below the level of god sequence relics. Not only that, the quality of all their items was assured. However, item prices were much more expensive compared to the black market. It was normal for some rare items to be priced three to five times higher. Virtual Gods and True Gods, however, usually shopped at the Precious Treasure Market, which was also a Precious Treasure Pavilion site. This market was almost the size of a town. However, it was rented to various stall owners, and the goods were all provided by the various owners themselves. It was said that Precious Treasure Pavilion had a Secret Treasure Pavilion that only lord-level powerhouses could enter. Rumor was that the collections were all treasures such as Dao Weapons and the like. However, Lin Huang had only heard about it; he had never been there either. Although he was a Lord now, he did not want too many people to know about his abilities. He was quite interested in the Secret Treasure Pavilion, but he did not think that the items would be anything that Royal would not have. After all, Royal did have beings above lord-level in their midst; they also had countless Lords under their command. A minor organization like Precious Treasure Pavilion could not compare with that. For the past few days, Lin Huang had strolled around various markets large and small while waiting patiently for the investigators from the Raiders to arrive. Unlike his previous state of mind when his abilities were insufficient, now he hoped more and more that they would show up earlier. The sooner they arrived, the sooner he would be able to resolve the issue. Furthermore, he hoped that they were more powerful and that there would be more of them. After all, he was severely lacking in lord-level God Territories. Moreover, the more powerful the investigators were, the more Dao seals and Dao tattoos he could refine. As for whether he might be subsequently targeted by even more powerful Raiders from the universe, this no longer mattered to Lin Huang. This was because as long as he showed his face anywhere, it was just a matter of time before he would be targeted by Raiders. That is, unless he kept his head down for the rest of his life until he was more powerful than everyone in the Raiders. Lin Huang felt he could not do that. By nature, he was not someone who wanted to stand out and was willing to keep a low profile in the process of his development. However, if he were truly to encounter certain situations, he would make a stand if he had to. That was his character. An example would be now, with the Raiders sending investigators over. Lin Huang could actually flee if he wanted to, but he did not wish to run. Instead, he chose to work hard to become more powerful, then directly confront his enemy. Chapter 1672 - Wanted by the Whole World? Lin Huangs wait lasted three days. At the black market that day, as he was going past a shop that specialized in selling intel, he suddenly saw information on a wanted individual being projected on the shop wall that directly faced the entrance. Mission: Manhunt Target: Lin Huang Gender: Male Race: Human Age: Unknown Combat Level: Unknown Targets Information: Joined Death Sickle previously under the identities of Xie Lin and Xiu Mu. His main cultivation path is in sword skills, with a secondary cultivation path in Divine Telekinesis. Carries disguise equipment on his person and could be disguised as anyone of any appearance. Mission Request: If you see this man, all you have to do is provide his coordinates, and you will get a top-grade god sequence relic or another item of the same value. If any lord-level powerhouses assist in the capture, they will be rewarded with an expert-grade Dao Weapon or another item of the same value. Remarks: This mans abilities are not known, but he is extremely dangerous. It is not recommended that cultivators below lord-level confront this individual. Apart from this textual information, there were also several holographic projections of his various identities beside it. Lin Huang could not help raising his brows after he finished reading. The group of investigators has finally shown up. He immediately went into the store and asked, pointing at the projection, Can this mission be taken on by just anyone? Before he had arrived for his temporary stay on the Ricky Star, he had disguised himself with a new form. He had also gotten Yang Ling to create a new identity for him so he was not worried that he would be recognized. Thats right. Anybody can take up this mission; there arent any restrictions, the female staff responded with a professional smile. Clearly, she did not recognize Lin Huang. Alright, Ill give it a shot. Lin Huang grinned and scanned the info code at the bottom right corner of the projection. Almost immediately, he received the black market mission that the store had sent. He made a show of looking around and glanced at some of the other missions. After listening to almost everyone in the store talking about him, he left the black market unhurriedly. After returning to the hotel, Lin Huang pulled up the mission information and read it over in detail. It had to be said that the information the Raiders had on him was quite complete. Practically all the identities he created since coming to the great world had been exposed. Furthermore, his real identity as Lin Huang and his identity as a human had been revealed as well. This was not surprising in the least. After all, Spy had done some digging into Lin Huangs identity before; it would have been very difficult to keep that information concealed from him. From the looks of things now, he must have put Lin Huangs information on file at the Raiders headquarters. In other words, if Lin Huang used any of these identitiesLin Huang, Xie Lin, Huang Mu (Xiu Mu)and was discovered by anybody in the black market, they would definitely report him. After closing the black market mission, Lin Huang checked Death Sickles forum. He logged in with Xiu Mus identity using incognito mode, which would not attract any attention. However, if he used his Blood Sickle member authorization, anyone on the systems backend would be able to see his login status. He used Xiu Mus identity because it had Gold Sickle authorization in Death Sickle. This meant he could see more information using that identity. However, as soon as he logged in, he saw that forums main page was practically swamped with discussions about him. There were also all sorts of strange headings. Xie Lin, Xiu Mu, cant tell them apart Xiu Mu (Xie Lin)s true identity exposed Xiu Mu, the human spy who sneaked into the God Territory! A boss is still a boss no matter how many identities hes switched My night with that sleaze Xiu Mu Lin Huang could not help clicking into a few threads to read the contents. The ones exposing his identity were all wild guesses. There were a few conspiracy theories saying that he was a human spy, but none of them provided a shred of solid evidencethey all insisted on laying the blame for various matters at his door. As for the threads that proclaimed he was a sleaze, Lin Huang did not click into those stories at all. However, he glanced at a few of the posters accounts. They were all men Given the state of the forum, Lin Huang did not even need to think about it to know that everyone from Death Sickle must have seen the manhunt information which listed him as its target. He clicked into the mission section. As expected, the first mission pinned on top was the mission to hunt him down. Furthermore, the thread was authorized for public viewing. Even reserve members could see it. Lin Huang did not think there was anything untoward in Death Sickle posting the mission about the manhunt. He knew that Death Sickle had had no choice but to do it, under pressure from the Raiders investigators. It not, they would be destroyed in the investigators fury. There would be at least one upper-rank Lord among the investigators; Death Sickle would not be able to contend against this at all. Death Sickle might have a backer behind the scenes in the universe, but in the great world, it was just a small branch organization without a guardian Lord (Buried Heaven had elevated on his own later on). If Death Sickle truly did enrage the upper-rank Lord and they were wiped out, at most, the Raiders would compensate their backer in the universe out of courtesy. It was highly unlikely that there would be more serious consequences. Although he had already faked his death to sever any ties to Death Sickle, the Raiders investigators most certainly would not allow any possible clues on Death Sickles end to slip through their hands so easily. However, Lin Huang did not know how much contact the investigators had had with Death Sickle, or if they had been in touch with Buried Heaven. Given Buried Heavens character, Lin Huang was rather worried he might bring down trouble upon himself by protecting Lin Huang. Currently, seeing the mission that Death Sickle had posted actually helped him feel slightly less worried. At the very least, Death Sickles compromise meant that they had not been wiped out. After closing Death Sickles forum, Lin Huang checked out the forums of a few grade-7 organizations by logging in as a guest. Based on the situation in Death Sickles forum, any news in the grade-7 organizations should also be accessible to the public. Just as he expected, the discussions on all the forums of the grade-7 organizations were entirely about him. Most of the topics were discussions about his identity as a human, while most of the threads had nothing good to say. Of all the discussions, the ones on God Capitals forum were the worst. It was almost entirely one-sided abuse, using the most derogatory of terms. After all, God Capital was an organization of pure blood Protoss. They even looked down on those of their own kind who were not of pure blood. Naturally, they looked down on humans even more. Lin Huang ignored these vituperative threads and looked at the mission section. The five major grade-7 organizationsthe Combat God Temple, God Capital, Precious Treasure Pavilion, Xeno, and Divine Clapnethad published the mission about the manhunt. Not only that, it was accessible to the general public; even guests could view it. It was the Combat God Temple and God Capital that puzzled Lin Huang a bit more. One must know that these two grade-7 organizations never accepted external missions. However, not only had they accepted the mission this time, but they had even made the mission public. Lin Huang then checked on news from the humans side. It turned out that they were discussing him as well. The three Saints and seven sectsDaluo Temple, Sanctuary, Leiyin Temple, and the rest had also posted up the mission about the manhunt. The time of the missions publication was even several hours earlier than the organizations in the God Territory. This alone had shown Lin Huang how powerful the Raiders were. It did not matter if the investigators went door to door requesting the organizations cooperation, or whatever other reason. All of this was sufficient to prove how afraid of these investigators the organizations in this great world were. Just as I expected, force wins the day. Lin Huang smiled and shook his head. If this had occurred before he had performed unification and become a Lord, he might have panicked a bit upon seeing this news. After all, the situation made one feel as if the entire world were against them. However, right now, Lin Huang merely found it amusing. Chapter 1673 - The Arrival Of Unwelcome Guests The God Territory, Blood Sickle Shelter, Death Sickles headquarters. In the conference room, the expressions of Buried Heaven and the several Blood Sickle members were not very pleasant. Sitting across from Buried Heaven at the conference table was a red-haired man with a red beard. He rested both his legs on the table, his upper body practically slouched on the chair. He had a cigarette in his mouth and was blowing a cloud of smoke; his tone of voice sounded rather indifferent. Ill give all of you a bit more time to think over whether or not you want to ask Lin Huang to show himself. However, I suggest that you make up your minds soon, as my partners arent going to ask so nicely. Seniors, Lin Huang hasnt made an appearance since he entered a secret Heavenly God territory as Xiu Mu over two years ago. If not for your mentioning him, wed have thought all along that he had already died, one of the Blood Sickle members said, looking helpless. The red-haired man blew out a puff of smoke and fixed his gaze on Buried Heaven. Mr. Buried Heaven, Ive heard that personally, you got on fairly well with Lin Huang, and you took good care of him in the past. Hasnt he contacted you since then? No, Buried Heaven responded expressionlessly, I took good care of him in the past because he had extraordinary talent and incredible potential. I felt he was a worthy young successor and decided to train him up. After he went missing, I tried contacting him, but to no avail, so I just left it at that. Anyway, Ive been busy with pre-unification preparation work for the past two years. I certainly havent had time to spare any thoughts for a person whos most probably dead. Buried Heavens reply was fully convincing, but the other party clearly did not believe him. The red-haired man flicked away his cigarette ash and glanced at Buried Heaven. His tone remained casual. To be honest, Im a lazy individual. Whenever I encounter an issue, I always hope to be able to resolve it in the easiest manner. Distinguishing whether a person is lying or not isnt my strong suit. However, some of my partners specialize in this. I hope that what all of you say remains consistent when they show up. Otherwise, the consequences might be extremely serious. Alright. Ill end my questions here. The red-haired man glanced at his cigarette, which was already down to its end, and stubbed it into the ashtray. He then lit another cigarette and said rather indistinctly to Buried Heaven and the rest, You wont mind if we borrow your conference room for a moment, will you? Not at all. Please go ahead, seniors, one of the Blood Sickle members returned immediately. Just as Buried Heaven and the rest were getting up to leave, they heard the red-haired mans voice again suddenly. Oh yes, later on, when our partners arrive, you can just bring them up here straight away, and that will do. After Buried Heaven and the others departed, the only ones left in the meeting room were the red-haired man and two other men seated on his left and right, who had not said much the entire time. The man on the left was extremely cadaverous, practically skin and bones like a mummy. The one called Buried Heaven was clearly lying. Why didnt you detain him directly and force him to contact Lin Huang? If we directly read his memories, perhaps we might find something useful. The one on the righta tall, lean individual over three meters tallnodded as well in agreement. Do the two of you really think we can do as we please in the great world just because weve applied to Royal for an investigation permit? The red-haired man glanced casually at the two people on either side of him. This is Royals affiliate territory. Everything we do is constantly under Royals surveillance. Furthermore, the top organizations of the universes affiliated territories are usually under the protection of the organizations in the universe. Judging by how the organizations in this great world are graded, Death Sickle belongs in the top categorytheyre a grade-7 organization under Royals protection. If we want to move against Death Sickle, we must have a solid reason. Otherwise, Royal will very likely intervene. The red-haired man took a deep drag of his cigarette, blowing the smoke out after he had finished speaking. Its not worth coming into conflict with Royal over something so insignificant. Then what do we do now? The cadaverous man asked again. We wait, the red-haired man responded simply. Buried Heaven and the rest looked grim as they walked out of the meeting room. Although this time only three individuals from the universe had come to call, all three were Lords. Buried Heaven was unable to discern the red-haired leaders combat strength at all. However, he could clearly sense that the two who hardly spoke were middle-rank Lords. He was vaguely conscious of the deadly threat emanating from these two myrmidons. As for the red-haired man, Buried Heaven could only hazard a guess that he was an upper-rank Lord. The crux of the matter was that more than three of them had arrived in the great world. Given that the veteran grade-7 organizations like the Combat God Temple and God Capital had posted the orders for Lin Huangs capture under coercion from the red-haired mans partners, Death Sickle had no choice but to post the mission regarding Lin Huang as well. The red-haired man had made it very clear. If they did not cut ties with Lin Huang now, he could regard Death Sickle as accessories in the death of his Raider partners. If they could not find Lin Huang, they would have no choice but to take revenge by killing all of his Death Sickle teammates. No matter how close Buried Heaven was to Lin Huang, he could not sacrifice all of Death Sickles members just to protect him. Besides, it was merely posting a manhunt mission. They were not being asked to move against Lin Huang. It was an expedient compromise. Buried Heaven believed that Lin Huang would understand their situation if he saw the mission that they had posted. What do we do now? Blood Sickle Gao Ming asked Buried Heaven via voice transmission, his brow furrowed tightly. Buried Heaven fell silent upon hearing the question. He did not know what he could do at the moment either. Right now, the only thing he could do was to try his best to keep Lin Huangs hiding place a secret. He had no idea that Lin Huangs previous hiding placethe Devil Hunter Star Zonehad already been reduced to ruins. I think that red-haired fellow isnt lying. His partners are likely to be even more dangerous. As soon as they show up at our headquarters, we might run into even bigger problems, Boundless Blood voiced his concerns from where he was standing when he saw Buried Heaven remaining silent. So what youre saying is that we should betray Lin Huang for Death Sickles sake? Buried Heaven shot a dismissive glance at Boundless Blood. All along, he had harbored a deep respect for this senior who had participated in the founding of Death Sickle. However, right now, Buried Heaven felt that Boundless Blood was being selfish. Buried Heaven, Senior Boundless Blood definitely doesnt mean that. Beside them, the Nine-tailed Fox Hu Xianer hurriedly smoothed things over. I think we should at least discuss a plan on how to respond. It doesnt matter what we plan; once we make our move, our odds of winning are zero. Buried Heaven shook his head helplessly. As a Lord, he was the most capable of intuitively sensing the gap in abilities between himself and the three Raiders. What if we collaborate with the Combat God Temple and the other organizations? Wouldnt that work? Hu Xianer followed up with another question. Why do you think the Combat God Temple and God Capital made an exception and posted a reward for capturing Lin Huang? Why do you suppose they made the mission public as well? They havent made their missions public for a few eras now, Buried Heaven asked in return. Because theyve been threatened by these outsiders from the universe? Hu Xianer answered rather uncertainly. Let me put it this way. That red-haired fellow in the meeting room could easily destroy all the grade-7 organizations in the entire God Territory on his own. What Buried Heaven said stunned the several Blood Sickle members. For a while, they had no idea what to say. Right as the atmosphere turned chilly, almost to freezing point, Buried Heavens communication ring suddenly began vibrating Chapter 1674 - Where Are You? By the time Lin Huang finished perusing one round of information on the internet, the sky was beginning to darken on the Ricky Star. He thought for a moment, then called Buried Heaven. When Lin Huang heard the ring tone being cut off before it had even rung halfway, he smiled. This was because it meant Buried Heaven was still alive. If the communicator sensed the hosts death, it would be locked and shut down within less than a minute. If one called, they would get a message saying, The number you have dialed cannot be reached. He ended the call in such a hurry Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. That means the investigators are still at Death Sickle. Now that he had ascertained this, Lin Huang composed a message and sent it off. If investigators arrive at Death Sickle, just give an honest answer to whatever questions they ask. Theres no need to cover up for me. If they want my contact, just give it to them right away. All of you cant handle these people from the Raiders. Dont put up any resistance; let me deal with them Buried Heaven merely glanced at the communication page and ended the call immediately. Beside him, Boundless Blood and the others glimpsed the name of the callerXiu Mu! The atmosphere became even weightier now. At that moment, a voice suddenly came from in front of them. Why didnt you answer the call? It was not clear when the red-haired man had shown up in front of them. Smiling, he barred Buried Heaven and the others way. Almost at the same time, two figures appeared behind the Blood Sickle members. They were the subordinates who had not spoken at all in the conference room earlier. Buried Heaven and the few Blood Sickle members looked extremely grim. However, at that moment, Buried Heavens ring vibrated again. The vibration was slightly gentler this time and only sounded once. It was clearly a message notification. The red-haired man smiled at Buried Heaven. Take a look and see. Maybe its Lin Huang? Buried Heaven kept his head down and did nothing. He knew that he would die if he were to attack. He would not be able to escape either, even if he tried. Please open your communication page. The red-haired man smiled as he looked at Buried Heaven, his tone still mild. This isnt a suggestion, by the way. Buried Heaven knew that he would die if he did not obey the order! He raised his hand rather stiffly and tapped open the communication page. A new message notification popped up instantly. The sender was Xiu Mu! The entire corridor instantly went silent. The Blood Sickle members faces turned ashen when they saw the senders name. Even Buried Heaven had some difficulty swallowing. His mind was rapidly churning as he tried to find a counter-strategy, but nothing occurred to him. Ooh, what a coincidence! Isnt this the friend were looking for? The red-haired man smiled and walked over to Buried Heaven, then put an arm around his shoulders. Why are you hesitating? Open it and see what he says. We can read it together. Feeling the weight on his shoulders, Buried Heaven tapped opened the message helplessly. The moment the message popped up, everyone focused their eyes on it. There were only a few short lines in the message. Practically everyone finished reading it almost at once. After reading the message, Buried Heavens mind was a tangle of confusion. Since matters had come to this point, he no longer knew what he should do afterward. The red-haired man next to him patted his shoulder with a smile. This young fellow is certainly very loyal and self-sacrificing to suggest on his own that you should give him up. I think its not a bad suggestion at all. What about the rest of you? The red-haired man tilted his head and stared at Buried Heaven. Buried Heaven kept his head down expressionlessly and did not answer. Clearly, despite matters coming to this, he was still unwilling to betray Lin Huang. Observing that Buried Heaven said nothing, the red-haired man kept on smiling. Mr. Buried Heaven, Xiu Mu already sent you a message. Isnt it rather rude not to reply? He paused, then shook his head. You should call him back right away. I think a video call would be even more polite. Buried Heaven remained motionless. He used silence to indicate his defiance. However, he suddenly felt as if his body had lost control of itself. His right hand lifted on its own. Not only that, his finger extended and pressed the senders name above the message on the communicator display. He then pressed the video call request in a practiced manner You Buried Heaven stared at the red-haired man beside him, appalled. Since youre unwilling to betray your friend, I had no choice but to give you a little help. The red-haired mans tone remained mild. Eh? Hes calling back? Has he found a safe place to talk then? Seeing the sudden video call request from Buried Heaven on his communicator, Lin Huang did not give it another thought and accepted the call. After that, he saw Buried Heaven and another persons projections appearing simultaneously in front of him. A red-haired man had his arm around Buried Heavens shoulders in what seemed to be a very friendly manner. However, Lin Huang caught the stiff expression on Buried Heavens face at first glance and instantly guessed the red-haired mans identity. If Im not mistaken, you ought to be one of the Raiders investigators? Amazing, Mr. Lin! It seems youve guessed my identity with just one look. The red-haired man gave a thumbs-up sign. Youre certainly worthy of being the man who destroyed our branch. Lets talk, shall we, Lin Huang returned calmly with a smile. The red-haired man had obviously not expected Lin Huang to be so calm. However, he nodded immediately. Very well then, lets talk. How many of you came this time? Can you tell me? Lin Huang asked, still smiling. His tone sounded as if he were catching up with a friend. Are you scouting out the enemys position? The red-haired man asked with a smile. I just want to make sure beforehand so I can prevent any fish slipping through the net when the time comes. Lin Huangs reply stunned the red-haired man for a moment. Clearly, he had not anticipated such a reply. He then laughed. I never thought that you would be such a fascinating person. Since youre so interested, I can answer your question. Nine of us have come this time. Of these nine, three are upper-rank Lords, and six are middle-rank Lords. The red-haired man stared at Lin Huang as he was talking, as if he wanted to see the shock on Lin Huangs face. Unfortunately, from beginning to end, Lin Huang did not display any trace of being disconcerted in the least. Thats more or less what I anticipated. Lin Huang nodded, smiling. However, Buried Heaven found it hard to stay calm. He had earlier guessed that the red-haired man was an upper-rank Lord, but he had not expected that there would be two more upper-rank Lords on the way. The Blood Sickle members behind Buried Heaven all displayed shocked expressions. They knew that the red-haired man and the rest were powerful, but they had not expected that there would be upper-rank Lords coming. You asked me a question, so now I can ask you a question? Its only fair this way, the red-haired man smiled and asked Lin Huang. Sure, ask away. Lin Huang nodded with a smile. I want to ask The red-haired man continued after a moment, Where are you right now? Buried Heavens pupils contracted slightly as soon as this question was asked. The rest stared fixedly at Lin Huangs video projection as well. Chapter 1675 - I Can’t Leave A Single One Of You Out Upon hearing the red-haired mans question, Lin Huang smiled. What, youre so anxious to meet me? Thats right. The red-haired man was smiling too. If we dont meet you, wed even lose our appetites. Its not that I cant tell you where I am. Lin Huang glanced over the three investigators. But only three of you are here; its no fun with so few of you. I prefer more people to liven things up. Well talk about it when the rest of you arrive. Youre not afraid to disclose your location, are you? The red-haired man said with a smile, trying to provoke Lin Huang. Im just worried that after I kill off the three of you, the other six wont dare to come here. Since nine of you arrived, I ought to send all nine off together. I cant leave a single one of you out. Buried Heaven and the rest of the Blood Sickle members felt their hearts quake when they heard what Lin Huang said. They had not expected Lin Huang to be this unyielding when confronted by an upper-rank Lord. What made them speechless was that they felt Lin Huangs tough attitude did not seem to be an act at all. He genuinely appeared to be that confident. The red-haired man was furious, but he smiled instead. Youre the one who said it. Id like to see if youll still dare to share your coordinates once all of us have shown up! Dont worry, Im a man of my word, Lin Huang did not forget to issue a reminder, Dont forget to send me a video call request as soon as everyone on your side has arrived. As soon as he finished speaking, Lin Huang immediately ended the call. The video projection of him instantly faded. The red-haired man stared at the spot where the video projection had faded and growled in irritation, This fellow It had been years since he last lost a verbal fight to anyone. However, in his conversation with Lin Huang this time, he had not managed to get the upper hand at all. Lin Huang had even ended the call before he had, which also made him feel extremely out of sorts. Might there be an ambush? The cadaverous man asked. Would an ambush even work? Judging by the entry restrictions Royal has set, this great world has no upper-rank Lords at all. Besides, we have three upper-rank Lords on our side. Whats more, Master Nine Snake is a peak upper-rank Lord. Even if this fellow could get help from hundreds of middle-rank Lords, he wont be able to turn the tables. The tall, thin man had full confidence in the teams abilities. He was just pretending to be calm earlier in the video call. When all of us have arrived later on, Im sure he wont accept the video call request. The red-haired man said nothing. However, he clearly felt that Lin Huang was merely putting on an act in the video call earlier. The reason for this was that he could not figure out what sort of methods Lin Huang might be able to use to extricate himself from this situation. The investigators were not bothered by the fact that Buried Heaven and the rest were right there during their discussion. It seemed that as far as the investigators were concerned, there was no need to conceal anything. The several Blood Sickle members kept their heads low and pretended not to hear anything. In their hearts, they were silently hoping that this band of murderers would leave Death Sickle as soon as possible. Buried Heaven, on the other hand, looked depressed. He put himself in Lin Huangs shoes right now and tried to think of a counter-strategy. However, he could not come up with any way at all to turn things around. This was a hopeless situation! He could not help feeling sad for Lin Huang. Send word to Nine Snake and the others, and have them come here as soon as theyre done with their missions, the red-haired man ordered his two subordinates. He then patted Buried Heavens shoulder. Good job, all of you. After that, he headed straight for the conference room where they had been earlier. The cadaverous man and the tall, thin man immediately followed suit. Lin Huang could not help giving a faint smirk after ending the call. I was originally wondering how to contact all those investigators. I never thought that they would show up at my doorstep on their own. Initially, he had only wanted to ascertain the situation with Buried Heaven and Death Sickle. If the opportunity presented itself, he would ask about the investigators movements. He had not expected that there would be investigators standing guard at Death Sickle. What was more, they had used Buried Heaven to contact him. Not only that, the entire exchange could be considered fairly pleasant. So in that case, after this, where should I set my battlefield? Lin Huang tapped open the star map and began choosing suitable battlegrounds. In the evening, a man with snake eyes showed up in the conference room of Death Sickles headquarters. As soon as he arrived, the six remaining people in the conference room immediately came to their feet. Master Nine Snake. The snake-eyed man nodded slightly, then turned his gaze to the red-haired man. Scarlet Fox, why dont you tell me the specifics of the conversation all of you had with Lin Huang. The snake-eyed mans codename was Nine Snake. His position in the Raiders was higher than the other two upper-rank Lords. This was because he was a direct subordinate of the ultimate-rank Lord, Lonely Peak. He had even been called Lonely Peaks right-hand man. As for Lonely Peak, he was only half a step away from surpassing lord-level. Among the Raiders, he was one of several Lords with the most potential. He had already received the message that Scarlet Fox and the others had sent, so he had a rough idea of what had transpired during the video call with Lin Huang. The red-haired manScarlet Foxnodded and began to recount the conversation he had had with Lin Huang. He did not leave out even the slightest detail. Scarlet Fox had been dispatched here by Rose. To be exact, he could not be considered Roses underling; in fact, he was her lover. Of course, Rose was not his only girlfriend; he had hundreds of other girlfriends and boyfriends. His tribe was rather uniquethey could change their genders whenever necessary. Nine Snake narrowed his eyes slightly after listening to Scarlet Foxs account of what happened. He directed an inquiry at Scarlet Fox only after falling silent for a moment. Do you think hes pretending to be calm, or is he genuinely calm? He didnt look as if he were pretending to be calm, but I think his acting skills are excellent. I couldnt see any flaws, no matter what, Scarlet Fox admitted truthfully after thinking things over for a moment. However, I did consider things for a good long while. If I were in his place right now, I wouldnt be able to find a way out at all. Nine Snake turned his gaze to the cadaverous man and the tall man. What do both of you think? I think hes just putting on a show, the cadaverous man said expressionlessly. As far as Im concerned, he was clearly pretending to be calm, the tall man was even more certain of his answer. Nine Snake gave a slight nod and did not dwell any further on the matter. He turned his head and looked at the only metal robot present. This was a bright silver humanoid being. In appearance, he looked like a human formed from metal. His skin, as well as the clothes and shoes on his body, was bright silver like metal. Silver, will you be able to pin down his coordinates when we call his number later? Only if the call is answered. Silvers voice sounded like it had been electronically synthesized. He was a mechanoid. Although he was not from the same Electronic Tribe as Spy, he had taken the initiative to apply for the mission. His purpose for doing so was naturally to obtain Spys Goldfinger. As an upper-rank Lord, he was also one of the three investigation team leaders. After the call is picked up, how long do you need? Nine Snake followed up with another question. Given the size of this great world, I can lock down his coordinates in five seconds at most. The closer he is, the less time Ill need, Silver answered with complete certainty. What if he doesnt pick up? Nine Snake asked. Then theres no way we can locate him, Silver said very frankly. Nine Snakes expression immediately darkened. Find a way even if theres none! The meeting room instantly went silent. Alright, get Buried Heaven in here, and lets give Lin Huang a video call! Chapter 1676 - I Don’t Like Meeting Tardy Dates Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Ill pick this one. Lin Huang spent over half an hour before finally deciding on a battleground that he felt was suitable. He immediately felt much happier. After that, he stepped through the Gate of All Realms. It was almost an hour or so later before his communicator finally vibrated again. Lin Huang clicked into the communication page and saw that it was Buried Heaven who had sent the video call request. The corners of his mouth quirked up slightly, and he clicked on the answer button. As soon as the video call connected, the red-haired man and the others immediately appeared in the projected image. . The few of them sat around a long table, but Lin Huang did not see Buried Heaven. He was most likely on the other side of the table. Good evening, Mr. Lin Huang, red-haired Scarlet Fox greeted with a smile. In truth, he was rather confused right now, just like everyone else present. They had thought that Lin Huang most likely would not answer the call. They certainly had not expected him to pick up before the first ring. As Nine Snake watched the projection of a clearly relaxed Lin Huang, his own expression was obviously rather stiff. Now that he was seeing Lin Huang for himself, he, too, felt that the others ease of manner was not faked. Its noon over here, Lin Huang responded with a smile, then asked, Is everyone there? Of course. All nine of us are here. As he nodded, Scarlet Fox shifted the camera angle slightly to include all nine people in the conference room in the shot. You can make good on your promise now, cant you? Scarlet Fox asked with a smile. However, up until now, he still did not think that Lin Huang would truthfully disclose his coordinates. Silver had begun trying to locate Lin Huang as soon as the video call connected. Of course. But before that, I need all of you to promise me something. Lin Huang swept a glance over the nine people in the shot. Scarlet Fox glanced at Nine Snake when he heard that. Go ahead, Nine Snake said expressionlessly. I hope that all nine of you will come together without leaving anyone behind. Lin Huang stared at Nine Snake, smiling. Can you do that? Nine Snake stared back at Lin Huang and fell silent for a moment before responding, Very well. In that case, Ill tell you my coordinates now. Please make careful note of it since Ill only say it once, Lin Huang emphasized, smiling. The Ten Thousand Bug Maze in the Queen Mother Star Zone Are you messing with us? Nine Snakes eyes were cold. Way before coming here, they had gathered information on this great world, including information from star maps. They had noted down some key landmark regions as well. The Queen Mother Star Zone was the core star zone of the Bug Tribes territory. What was known as the Ten Thousand Bug Maze was actually the Bug Tribe mother hive in this great world. Practically all the Queen Mothers lived there. By giving this location, Lin Huang clearly intended to make use of the Bug Tribes advantage in numbers to deal with his opponents. Nine Snake was not the only one who thought this; almost all of the investigators at the scene did so as well. However, right at this point, Lin Huang switched the camera angle to the other side. Very soon, Nine Snake and the rest saw that Lin Huang was really in a hive. Im definitely not kidding. Lin Huang switched the camera angle back, smiling as he looked at Nine Snake and the rest. Do you think that will stop us ? Nine Snake remained expressionless. I just thought it would be more fun if I chose this place, Lin Huang answered with a smile. Ill be here for one hour waiting for you. If you dont make it here within that hour, Im very sorry, but well have to meet again next time. Im the sort of person who doesnt really like meeting tardy dates. The countdown starts Lin Huang extended his hand and tapped open the timer. He raised his brows at Nine Snake and the rest and pressed the timer button without hesitation. Now! The minute he finished speaking, the video projection in Death Sickles conference room instantly vanished. Only Nine Snake and the others were left, staring at each other. What a nasty character. Scarlet Fox could not help growling in disgust. Nine Snake looked at Silver right away. Have you locked down his coordinates? Silver projected the star map at once. A set of red coordinates was blinking on it. The location was right in the Bug Tribes territory in the Queen Mother Star Zone. So hes really in the Queen Mother Star Zone! Scarlet Foxs eyes widened, and he immediately pulled himself together. This fellow definitely intends to take advantage of the Bug Tribes numbers to drain our Odyl. Nine Snake looked grim. He turned his head and looked at Buried Heaven. Get out. Buried Heaven stood up and left without hesitation after hearing this. Although this was Death Sickles territory, he felt no sense of security in this conference room. He was also aware that the affairs of these investigators were not things that he could listen in on. As soon as he heard anything that he should not be privy to, there would only be one end for himdeath! Nine Snake only spoke after he saw Buried Heaven leaving and closing the conference room door. I dont think this affair is as simple as it seems As soon as he said this, everyone in the conference room looked at him. He didnt seem like he was pretending to be at ease. I think there are two possibilities. The first is that he doesnt fear death. Therefore, it doesnt matter how many of us are here or how powerful we areit doesnt bother him at all. The other possibility is that he genuinely has a trump card to go up against us. Whats more, hes very confident that he can kill all of us with it. Thats why he requested that all nine of us show up there, without leaving anyone behind. He might be trying to confuse us by choosing the hive for a showdown so he can conceal his true objective. Of course, theres another possibility, which is that he needs the help of the Bug Tribe to unleash the trump cards effects. Should we change the meeting point, then? Scarlet Fox asked immediately, Or else we can just wait for an hour and let him suggest a change of location. Hes not going to let the advantage fall into our hands, so he most certainly wont agree to our meeting point suggestions. Nine Snake shook his head, As for waiting for an hourif we really do that, I suspect hell use even more vicious methods to take revenge. Its highly likely he might instantly go incommunicado rather than picking another location like we want. Our position would be even more passive then. After all, as investigators, our time in this great world is limited. So, what do we do now? Scarlet Fox asked again. We get to the coordinates hes given as soon as possible. Nine Snakes murderous intent flared up instantly. After that, we join forces to consolidate a battle formation and kill him at once! We wont give him a chance to attack at all! Clearly, he had come up with a strategy. No matter what Lin Huang had up his sleeve, things would be fine as long as they disposed of him fast enoughbefore he had sufficient time to initiate whatever he had in store. After all, Lin Huang was someone who was not even lord-level yet. Even if he possessed methods that could kill upper-rank Lords, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to pull them off instantly. He probably needed a certain amount of time to prepare. Nine Snake and the rest did not have any inkling at all that Lin Huang had already elevated to become a Lord. Are all of us really going to go? Scarlet Fox frowned slightly. He felt that if Lin Huang truly did possess methods of killing them instantly, they would be going straight to their deaths if all of them went. The more people, the more powerful the battle formation, Nine Snake gave his opinion, The power of a battle formation created by all nine of us is comparable to that of an ultimate-rank Lord. Even if he does manage to initiate whatever special methods he has, we should be able to handle him. Scarlet Fox did not raise any further objections after hearing that. Silver, plan the route. Well get there as fast as possible! Chapter 1677 - Dog Eat Dog After ending the call, Lin Huangs figure gradually transformed into a Mantis King. His level of disguise was already no longer mere simple camouflage but a transformation resulting from a card contract. This sort of transformation allowed him to take on the appearances of all of the Monster Cards he owned. Furthermore, he would also be able to fully inherit all of the relevant Monster Card skills. The Mantis King that he had currently transformed into was one of his Monster Cards. As long as he did not remove the disguise, he could maintain it indefinitely, and no one would be able to see through the ruse. At the very least, lord-level beings would certainly not be able to see through his disguise. Hiding in the biggest Bug Tribe mother hive in this great world as a Bug King was practically equivalent to being in the safest place in the entire great world. However, Lin Huang was not concealing himself here for safety. He knew very well that in this mother hive, be it Queen Mothers or Bug Queens, even their most powerful abilities would not exceed middle-rank lord-level. It was only a matter of time before Nine Snake and the other two upper-rank Lords would annihilate this hive once they had joined forces. At most, it would only drain a small fraction of their Odyl. However, as far as Lin Huang was concerned, this was not his goal. It was merely a small supplemental benefit. Initially, when he had begun choosing battlefields, he had been considering barren regions. This would allow him to avoid casualties. In the great world, there were actually quite a few regions that met this condition. After looking at several of these places, Lin Huang suddenly discovered a region that was in the core zone of the Bug Tribe. It surrounded the Ten Thousand Bug Maze in the Bug Tribe mother hive. This was an empty zone constructed by the Bug Tribe specifically to protect the mother hive of the Ten Thousand Bug Maze and had been specially cleared out for this purpose. However, any living beings that dared to enter this empty zone would be surrounded by the Bug Tribe army immediately. Lin Huangs discovery of this empty zone was what had led him to transfer his sights to the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. He suddenly felt that his previous way of thinking had been wrong. The Ten Thousand Bug Maze was clearly a better battlefield. The Bug Tribe had wreaked havoc in the great world for countless eras. They now occupied a small, distant plot of land and had become one of the most powerful Tribes. Furthermore, given the Bug Tribes reproductive ability, this entire great world might have become their empire if not for the fact that various parties had joined forces in eras past to limit the Bug Tribes numbers through occasional wars. The Ten Thousand Bug Maze was the largest Bug Tribe hive in the great world. Throughout the eras, the hive had continued expanding. Currently, it already encompassed more than twenty star zones. Over 50% of the Bug Tribe in the great world lived in this giant hive. What was more, there were at least ten Bug Tribe Lords guarding it. Lin Huang had intentionally chosen this place as his battlefield primarily to draw upon the group of Raiders powers to destroy this hive, thus removing a grave threat to humans in the great world. Secondly, he could attack without holding back in here and not worry about harming innocents. Thirdly, killing mass numbers of Bug Tribe monsters would mean he would definitely be able to obtain many complete bug beast Monster Cards and card fragments. He could use these to expand the numbers of his Bug Tribe army. Fourthly, all of the Bug Tribe Lords that died here would enter the virtual realm. Lin Huang would subsequently be able to harvest another round of benefits there. This could be considered killing four birds with one stone. Compared to other barren regions, this was undoubtedly the better battlefield. Lin Huang, in his Mantis King disguise, hid himself in a bug cave and patiently waited for the Raiders to arrive. An hour practically flew past just like that. Just as Lin Huang was about to start his countdown, Nine Snake appeared above the giant hive of the Ten Thousand Bug Maze with the eight investigators. As they were too quick, the Bug Tribe could not stop them in time. However, since enemies had appeared right before their eyes, the Bug Tribe responded immediately without hesitation. A massive horde of bugs swarmed furiously at the nine invaders. Naturally, Nine Snake and the others did not take the bug horde seriously. Only one middle-rank Lord attacked. It was a white-robed Priest. He struck at the air with an open palm. In an instant, frightening white rays of light like those of an exploding star lit up the entire Ten Thousand Bug Maze. The swarming bug horde rapidly melted like accumulated snow under a bright sun. Within three seconds, the tens of billions of bugs in the first bug horde wave were completely annihilated. This was suppression resulting from an absolute gap in abilities. Naturally, Lin Huang was able to observe everything happening in the outside world using Divine Telekinesis. Even he could not stop nodding as he watched this subduing of the bug horde. However, the second bug horde wave arrived merely a moment later. A massive number of bug beasts surged in a frenzy from various hive exits. Almost in the time it took to breathe, hundreds of billions of them had gathered. This time, the bug hordes were no longer coming at their opponents in a frontal assault. Instead, they swarmed toward the nine Raiders from every direction. Not only that, the number of bug beasts joining the battle kept on increasing. This did not surprise Lin Huang at all. The Bug Tribe was an extremely ferocious Tribe. They would not easily negotiate with their enemies. What surprised Lin Huang was that Nine Snake and the rest did not seem as if they were intending to negotiate with the Bug Tribe either. Instead, they were planning to die in here with the Bug Tribe. He realized why after thinking about it carefully for a moment. The Bug Tribe was inherently enemies with every other Tribe in the universe. The Raiders must have slaughtered countless Bug Tribes in the universe as well. Now that they had arrived in the great world, the Raiders looked down on these native Bug Tribes even more. Although they knew Lin Huang was merely drawing on the might of the Bug Tribe, the nine Raiders attacked the Bug Tribe without hesitation anyway. This antagonism was also what Lin Huang was most desirous of seeing. Like a tsunami, massive numbers of bugs surged from all directions toward the nine Raiders hovering in midair. Nine Snake and the rest did not panic in the least. The three upper-rank Lords were even calmer; they did not look like they were going to attack at all. Just a split second before the wave of bugs was about to swamp all nine of them, the white-robed Priest took action again. He tapped the air with a finger. A silver gleam the size of a needle point seemed to slowly drift above their heads. Suddenly, it seemed to freeze in midair. The next instant, endless silver gleams spread out in all directions. Not a single spot was overlooked. Wherever the gleams passed through, all the bug beasts were charred to ashes and dissipated in the air The silver gleams even found their way through the bug hordes and struck the surface of the Ten Thousand Bug Maze, creating a loud buzzing sound. Priest smiled faintly. This hives defenses are pretty good. Its at least as powerful as an intermediate-grade Dao Weapon. Red-haired Scarlet Foxs interest seemed to have been piqued. He turned his head and looked at Nine Snake beside him. Let me have this hive. Ill trade it with something of the same value. Nine Snake did not even look at Scarlet Fox. He merely stared at the hive. Up to you. When Nine Snake said this, disappointment clearly flashed through the eyes of the few middle-rank Lords present. Within their midst, the white-robed Priest betrayed a slight change of expression as well. However, he did not dare to argue with Scarlet Fox over this matter. He even had some regrets about the words that had slipped out of his mouth earlier. He wondered if Scarlet Fox would have coveted the hive if he had not brought up the power of its defenses. Naturally, Scarlet Fox noticed all these microexpressions. However, he merely smiled and ignored them. Chapter 1678 - This Ought To Be Fairly Worth Seeing Lin Huang lay quietly inside a cave deep within the hive, happily using Divine Telekinesis to observe the battle in the outside world. Since elevating to become a Lord, his Divine Telekinesis strength had broken through to ultimate-rank lord-level. Furthermore, he was only using its sensing function to do peripheral spying, so he did not need to worry about being discovered. After two rounds of futile attempts, the Bug Tribe still had no intention of negotiating. Instead, they were becoming increasingly frenzied. Watching the trillions of Bug Tribe fighters swiftly gathering to consolidate a bug formation outside the hive, Lin Huang could more or less understand the Bug Tribes fury. This was their stronghold. It was also the temporary dwelling of tens of thousands of Queen Mothers, as well as many Bug Queens that had not yet grown to full maturity. Any living beings who barged in were not only showing utter disrespect to the Queen Mothers, but they were also an immense threat to the Queen Mothers, the young Bug Queens, and even the future of the entire Bug Tribe. A hive was sacrosanct to the Bug Tribe. The Ten Thousand Bug Maze was the most sacrosanct of all sacrosanct objects to the Bug Tribe in this great world. It was understandable that they seemed to have abandoned all reason, wanting to drive out Nine Snake and the others. Nine Snake and the team had possibly been aware of this since the beginning, so they had not made any overtures to negotiate at all. They did not even bother to explain why they were here. They were also aware that Lin Huang was certainly secretly watching the drama unfold at the moment. However, they had no choice but to play things according to what Lin Huang had scripted out. Even as they watched the bug formation consolidating in the air, Nine Snake and the others made no move to stop it in the least. A one-sided massacre was indeed rather boring. It was much more interesting to see ones opponents struggle on occasion. With that attitude in mind, Nine Snake and the rest patiently waited for the bug formation to finish consolidating. The formation created from trillions of bug beasts had Heavenly Gods as its core and True Gods as auxiliary support, consolidating into a gigantic celestial beast. Its massive size exceeded many of the surrounding stars. This was a Galactic Titan Bug, a mutated bug from ancient times. Back in ancient eras, the Galactic Titan Bugs consumed stars, absorbing the metal mines within them to strengthen their bodies. When they were young, their size could compare to a planet. As they consumed more and more stars, they would continue to increase in size. The biggest ones were comparable to a star zone and consumed star zones as food. As they looked at the Galactic Titan Bug that had been consolidated from the bug formation, Nine Snake and the rest remained calm. For a moment, nobody was willing to make a move, even. Seeing the Galactic Titan Bug charging over like a tank, a muscular brawler finally stepped forward. He was short, only around one point six meters tall, but his entire body was terrifyingly muscled. From where he was watching in the distance, Lin Huang felt that the thickness of this fellows arms might be at least twice the size of his thighs. He thought the mans pectoral muscles were even bigger than his own head. As for the mans legs, the word bucket was insufficient to describe how thick they were. More precisely, they were as thick as water tanks. Lin Huang stared at the mans bald head and secretly gave him a nicknameShort, Burly Baldy. He abbreviated this to Short Baldy. After Short Baldy walked out, his body swiftly began to crystallize. Instead of transforming into a white crystal, he changed into a red crystal. He seemed to have been entirely transformed into a short, burly, bald ruby in human form. He glittered under the light of the nearby stars. Lin Huang noticed that the crystallization was not just a superficial change on the surface of the mans skin but a transformation of the cells in his body. Every single one of his cells seemed to have transformed into crystalline structures from the inside out. He looks pretty tough, Lin Huang commented casually. The second his body completely crystallized, Short Baldy grinned ferociously. Suddenly he sprang forward to confront the Galactic Titan Bug, throwing a punch. An instant later, the blood-red crystal fist collided with the Galactic Titan Bugs head. Boom! A violent boom shook the entire galaxy, even transcending the restrictions of a vacuum and spreading in all directions. A second after colliding with that fist, the Galactic Titan Bugs head instantly exploded. Immediately after, the punchs power continued to spread deep into the formation itself. The Galactic Titan Bugs body rapidly began to disintegrate like the collapse of a large building triggered by building implosion. That single punch easily tore through the bug formation made up of trillions of bug beasts. More than half the bug beasts were killed or injured. Nine Snake and the team watched the entire scenario expressionlessly. They did not display any traces of surprise or delight. It was as if everything went without saying. Lin Huang, watching the battle from afar, was not surprised at all either. Although this bug formation was powerful, the consolidated Galactic Titan Bug was only lower-rank lord-level. However, the short, burly bald man was a bona fide middle-rank Lord as well as a combat cultivator. It was not surprising that the bug formation had been shattered by a single punch. This third round of assault has been countered as well Lin Huang was rather curious what the Bug Tribes reaction would be next. Honestly speaking, the Bug Tribe should have had a fairly accurate gauge of the abilities of Nine Snakes team after the three rounds of testing. If nothing else, they could determine that these arrivals had the abilities of at least middle-rank Lords Logically speaking, at this point, they ought to have abandoned resistance and considered making peace with their opponents instead. After all, given that all nine arrivals were middle-rank Lords, all these Bug Tribe beasts in the Ten Thousand Bug Maze had no chance of winning at all. This was not yet taking into consideration that there might be beings above middle-rank Lords among these nine. The problem was that the Bug Tribe could not maintain rationality once someone had laid hands on their sacrosanct object. Lin Huang felt the situation was hard to predict. However, a moment later, he witnessed the answer to this question. A massive number of Bug Tribe beasts swarmed out of the hive. Among them were even ten lower-rank lord-level Bug Queens, as well as a middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen. Lin Huang was quite surprised to see this battle array. It had to be said that the number of Lords in the Ten Thousand Bug Maze was indeed frightening. Not only that, this was clearly not everyone in the hive because not a single lord-level Queen Mother had revealed themselves yet. Lin Huang knew that there was at least one lord-level Queen Mother in the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. The eleven lord-level Bug Queens immediately gathered, creating a bug formation. One by one, they consolidated into the form of ferocious mutated bugs from the ancient era. Each bug formation was made up of a lord-level Bug Queen as the core, with tens of billions of Bug Tribe Heavenly Gods and trillions of True Gods as auxiliary support. Within the time it took to breathe, eleven bug formations had consolidated. The mutated bugs in the heavens were comparable to a star in size. Their aura was skyrocketing. The weakest aura was middle-rank lord-level, while the aura of the bug formation created by the most powerful Bug Queen had definitely reached upper-rank lord-level. The team from the Raiders was clearly stirred when they saw that. Nine Snake was the only one who remained expressionless. His emotions did not display any changes whatsoever. This ought to be fairly worth seeing. Deep in the hive, Lin Huang stared with great interest at the battlefield where both parties were. If not for the fact that he was worried the other bug beasts would smell it, he almost felt as if he wanted to bring out the popcorn. Chapter 1679 - Whats the Bug Tribe Best At? This time around, the Bug Tribe finally began taking things seriously. Without any further testing of the waters, the eleven lord-level Bug Queens marshaled their bug formations, assembling eleven ancient mutated bugs of various forms in the air. The mutated bug formed by the leading middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen was a Divine Magic Winged Bug. This was a mutated bug beast that possessed extremely powerful overall abilities back in archaic times past. It had one hundred and eight pairs of wings, and each wing was a heavyweight killing weapon. Every single scale on the wing surface could transform at will into weapons and defense equipment of all kinds. Not only did the bug possess powerful attack capabilities, but its speed was also top-notch among monsters of the same level. The Divine Magic Winged Bugs one hundred and eight pairs of wings slowly unfurled. After that, it let out a high-pitched shriek. The shriek was like a bugle sounding the charge. The remaining ten mutated bugs immediately went into battle mode and besieged Nine Snake and the others. The Raiders did not dare delay their response. The white-robed Priest and the remaining six middle-rank Lords attacked almost simultaneously, charging at the ten mutated bugs. However, the three upper-rank LordsNine Snake, Scarlet Fox, and Silverwatched quietly from the sidelines and did not attack. For one, they thought it was not necessary. For another, they wanted to reserve their Odyl to fight Lin Huang later. On the Bug Tribes side, the Divine Magic Winged Bug with its upper-rank lord-level combat strength did not attack either. In reality, the middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen that controlled the bug formations had only sensed Nine Snake and the other twos real combat strength after consolidating the bug formation. The three of them had not attacked before this, nor had they intentionally released their auras. With the hive in between, the Bug Queen could not sense how unusual these three were. Not until the bug formations had been consolidated and the hive was no longer separating them did the Bug Queen finally become aware that the sense of danger Nine Snake and the other two gave off was still extremely threatening. This also made it somewhat reluctant to attack. The reason was that it knew once it acted, at least one of the three individuals opposite would definitely take a hand. Not only that, there was the worst-case scenario of all three of them joining in the fight together. The Bug Queen was very much aware of its own abilities. It was not so arrogant as to think it could battle three upper-rank Lords just because it had assembled a bug formation. The truth was, the three Raiders did not attack because they saw that the Divine Magic Winged Bug across from them had not made a move. As a spectator of the battle, Lin Huang was actually the most qualified to voice an opinion. If Nine Snake and the other two fought, this battle would lose all its suspense. It might even be over completely in just a few seconds. After all, Nine Snake was a peak upper-rank Lord. Once he attacked, he could easily destroy the entire hive on his own. As for the Divine Magic Winged Bug assembled from the bug formation, the strength of its aura was upper-rank lord-level. However, if someone who had mastered a level-101 Dao seal was an upper-rank Lord, so was someone who had mastered a level-1000 Dao seal. The disparity in ability between the two could almost be considered an insurmountable gap. Nine Snake was clearly the latter. As for the Divine Magic Winged Bug, it was not that much more powerful than the former. In terms of the combat strength of the middle-rank Lords in both parties, Lin Huang did not even need to look to know that the Raider team was more powerful. Although the Bug Tribe had more bug formations, their numbers were far from sufficient to compensate for the disparity in ability. However, all along, the Bug Tribes strong suit had never been their abilities. Rather, it was their teamwork in battle. At least judging by the Bug Tribes team deployment this time, Lin Huang anticipated that victory would not be so easy for the six Raiders. Therefore, this round of battle was sure to be interesting. The battle between both parties swiftly began in the starry heavens outside the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. As their massive size was not an advantage in this current battlesince this would only result in them become giant targetsthe ten mutated bugs consolidated from the bug formations shrank themselves from the size of a planet to the size of a regular bug beast. The first group of formations spearheading the charge on the frontlines consisted of three heavily armored mutated bugs. One was a Sacred Beetle that looked as if it were made entirely from gold, one was a Demonic Jumbo Bug that seemed as if it were carved from obsidian, and the last was a Dragon-scaled Beetle with scales that enveloped its entire body. The second group of formations consisted of three attack-type mutated bugs. These were a Six-winged Golden Cicada, a Flying Centipede, and a Demonic Armored Mutant. They were superb fighters in terms of speed and attack capabilities. The third group of formations was comprised of three control-type mutated bugs. These three were an Archaic Demon Spider, a Devilish Sonic Cicada, and a Black Abyssal Demon Bug. The formation bringing up the rear was a Shadow Bug that specialized in stealth attacks. On the Raiders side, the short, burly bald man enthusiastically faced down the attack from the three heavy-armored mutated bugs. The first target he chose was the dazzlingly glittering golden Sacred Beetle that was as tall as himself. Two golden rays of light collided in the starry heavens. Just that one collision sent the Sacred Beetle flying backward. However, it was evident that its defenses had not been breached. However, just as the Sacred Beetle was sent flying, the Six-winged Golden Cicada suddenly attacked. Both its wings stirred in the air, and countless colorless sabers were sent flying at the short, burly bald man. In a mere instant, tens of thousands of saber gleams shot through the air. The short, burly bald man was immediately swallowed up in the colorless saber gleams. The five remaining Raiders made no move to act. They knew how powerful the short, burly bald mans defense capabilities were. The might of the Six-winged Golden Cicadas attack was not enough to breach his defenses at all. However, a devastating shriek sounded an instant later from where the short, burly bald man was. Even Nine Snake and the other two upper-rank Lords looked over in his direction with some confusion. A moment later, Nine Snake looked across the void with his snake eyes. His gaze fell on a mutated bug at the back. It was the Devilish Sonic Cicada! At present, a faint light was radiating from its entire body, and it was muttering softly as if it were chanting. The short, burly bald mans physical defenses were indeed still intact. However, the Devilish Sonic Cicadas mystic tone had infiltrated his mind and was directly attacking his Gods soul. Lin Huang, watching the battle in secret, was able to observe this even more clearly. The Devilish Sonic Cicada was extremely adept at seizing opportunities to attack. It had taken advantage of when the short, burly bald man was defending himself against the saber gleams. The bald man had thought that his opponents attack would not breach his defenses, so he had relaxed his guard for just an instant. It had to be said that the Bug Tribes collaborative efforts were indeed splendid this time. The remaining five people on the Raider team soon noticed the anomaly. Muscle Overlord, you missed this time, the white-robed Priest teased, pointing all ten of his fingers in the air. Countless golden beams of light shot in the Devilish Sonic Cicadas direction like bullets being fired continuously. In less than the time it took for a breath, the golden beams already numbered over ten thousand.themselves The white-robed Priest was not only attacking the Devilish Sonic Cicada, but also the nearby Archaic Demon Spider and Black Abyssal Demon Bug. However, the Demonic Jumbo Bug suddenly let out a high-pitched cry. The sound wave rippled and formed a black mirror in the air, shielding the Devilish Sonic Cicada and the several mutated bugs. It devoured all of the golden beams of light; not a single one escaped. The white-robed Priest raised his brows when he saw what happened. This is quite interesting. At that very moment, a bewitching sound suddenly arose in his head, and his gaze abruptly became vacant. At the same time, a tall, thin humanoid figure rapidly consolidated within his shadow. An inky-black, sharp arthropod leg stabbed toward the back of the white-robed Priests head. An instant before the Priests head was about to be impaled, the arthropod leg suddenly froze in its tracks. Blood-red threads wound themselves around the Shadow Bugs body. The red-robed womans voice was charming. Ive got you now Before she finished speaking, the body bound by the blood-red threads gradually faded, as if what had been captured earlier was merely a phantom. The white-robed Priest struggled free from the illusion at the same time. He was panting hard. Damn it, I nearly failed at something so easy! Chapter 1680 - This Guy is Really Lucky! Watching the Bug Tribes beautifully timed cooperation over and over again, Lin Huang could not help cheering for them. He suddenly realized that the battle was much more interesting than he had initially anticipated. On the Bug Tribes side, there were tanks, strikers, controllers, and even covert killers. The ten mutated bugs had their own duties. They worked together seamlessly in practically every round of battle. Clearly, they had trained countless times before this. However, the six individuals on the Raiders team obviously had no rapport. Even with the few rescues that had been enacted, Lin Huang could still clearly see how hastily they had been carried out. If they had been just a second late, the white-robed Priest would have been killed by the Shadow Bug. Even a layman could tell by a glance that the six of them had definitely never worked together before. Lin Huang even had some suspicions that among all six, some might have been meeting their partners for the first time because of this mission. With that in mind, it made total sense that some of them had no sense of rapport at all. The fight between both sides was still going on in the starry heavens. Their several embarrassing performances caused the six individuals from the Raiders to begin taking things seriously. The Bug Tribes camp, however, was orderly and methodical. They were old hands at working together. Their plan remained the samethree defense mutated bugs, two assault bugs, and one mobile defense that was ready to take the attacks for the other mutated bugs at all times. The three high-damage dealing mutated bug strikers attacked in a frenzy as soon as they decided on their target. The three control-type mutated bugs were ready to take control of the battlefield at any time. They were watching for any chances to create an opportunity for the mutated bug strikers to fight. As for the Shadow Bug proficient in stealth attacks, it was watching the entire battle situation attentively. It would attack immediately as soon as it found an opportunity to do so. Whether or not it managed to kill its target, it would slip away immediately after its attack without lingering. The ten mutated bugs worked together in a practically flawless manner. Lin Huang could almost imagine the extremely strict training these bug beasts had gone through in private to be able to perform so competently on an actual battlefield. In comparison, the Raiders side messed things up completely despite having superior abilities. As the ten mutated bugs fought steadily, the six middle-rank Lords from the Raiders camp were gradually split up. The courageous short, burly bald mans heavily muscled, resilient physique was useless at present. As soon as he came back to his senses in the slightest, the Devilish Sonic Cicada and Black Abyssal Demon Bug would take turns to attack his Gods soul. He could only strive to protect his Gods soul. He did not have the strength to attack at all. The white-robed Priest, who possessed the fastest attacking speed, was being targeted by the Shadow Bug. It would attack him whenever it could seize the opportunity to do so; he was completely unable to defend himself against this. The few control-type mutated bugs would attack him once in a while as well. After almost being killed two or three times in a row by the opportunistic Shadow Bug, his mental state completely went under. He could only unleash less than fifty percent of his ability. Meanwhile, the red-robed woman who used the blood-red threads had been targeted by the Demonic Armored Mutant. The blood-red threads she unleashed were easily cut through by the Demonic Armored Mutants blade-like legs. In addition, the several control-type mutated bugs had been controlling the battlefield, so she was practically being subdued the entire time. She felt as if the Demonic Armored Mutant was pursuing her to her death. There was also a plump man who specialized in violent damage dealing, but his defense capabilities were nowhere near those of the short, burly bald man. However, his ability to deal damage as an individual was probably the most powerful of all six Raiders. He had almost killed the six defense-type mutated bugs in the beginning. However, the Bug Tribe had very soon found a counter-strategy. The Flying Centipedethe most mobile of the mutant bugsconfronted him, with the Six-winged Golden Cicada acted as auxiliary support and the Archaic Demon Spider controlling from a distance away. Under the effects of the Flying Centipedes toxin, the plump mans condition very evidently deteriorated. The space between his brows was already gradually beginning to turn jet-black. Watching the entire battle via Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang noticed that even the plump mans Gods soul had been contaminated by the Flying Centipedes toxin. However, the plump man himself did not seem to notice this at all. Instead, he continued to deal out massive damage, venting his fury. Judging by how fast the toxins contamination was spreading, Lin Huangs best guess was that the plump man could only last for another half an hour at most. After half an hour, even an upper-rank Lord would not be able to be revived. Lin Huang saw from the surveillance image that the two middle-rank Lords were obviously not in good condition at this point. From a distance, the Six-winged Golden Cicadas colorless saber gleams targeted the cadaverous man by kiting him. As soon as he went after the Cicada, however, he would inevitably be blocked by the Archaic Demon Spiders spider webs. His defense capabilities were second only to the short, burly bald man. Therefore, the Bug Tribes strategy was to restrain him instead of treating him as the main hunting target. However, the plump man was worn out from the Six-winged Golden Cicadas interference. Not only that, he would occasionally be hampered by spider webs and did not have extra energy at all to go to anyone elses aid As for the tall, thin man, the situation was worse. He specialized in Gods soul attacks. However, this ability was not very useful when he was faced with the bug formations. This was because a portion of his Gods soul attack was filtered off by the bug formation. The load of attack power that passed through the bug formation would be disseminated among the massive numbers of bugs in the bug formation. One must know that there were trillions of bug beasts. After the bug formation had filtered the attack and the Bug Queen Lord at the core of the formation had taken the brunt of the impact, the shared load of the Gods soul attack that each bug beast bore would be somewhat minimalized. After sensing his condition, the Bug Tribe immediately put him on the list of those that absolutely had to be killed. The tall, thin man was the one with the highest rate of interference from the three control-type mutated bugs. Not only that, he was the main target of the Six-winged Golden Cicadas kiting. He was also the Shadow Bugs primary target. Within just a short few minutes, he almost died several times. Lin Huang broke out in a cold sweat for the tall, thin man as he watched, giving a running commentary. Hey, he hasnt died yet! That still didnt kill him?! This fellow may just have used up a lifetime of luck in this battle. Right as the Shadow Bug ambushed the tall, thin man once more, and Lin Huang felt that he was truly doomed this time, a blood-red electric arc shot into the air, crushing the Shadow Bugs newly consolidated shadowy figure. It was Scarlet Fox who had attacked. Unable to restrain himself anymore, the upper-rank Lord had finally been moved to act. Nine Snakes expression displayed no signs of joy or sadness. Silver, whose whole body seemed to be made of metal, showed no trace of emotion on his face either. However, the irritation on Scarlet Foxs countenance was clear for all to see; he did not conceal it at all. Scarlet Fox had been annoyed ever since the battle started, and he saw the six Raiders falling into the tempo of battle the Bug Tribe had set. However, since Nine Snake had not said anything, he had forced himself to tolerate things until now. At this point, he could take it no longer and finally made a move. This was because he knew the tall, thin man he had brought along would die if he did not do so. The ten mutated bugs from the Bug Tribes side swiftly fled the battlefield as soon as Scarlet Fox attacked. The six disgraced middle-rank Lords from the Raiders side did not pursue them. Instead, they returned to their camp. The intervention of an upper-rank Lord was a signal that the fighting was about to escalate. The warm-up battle had ended, and the second stage was about to begin! As he watched both sides stop fighting at the same time, Lin Huang felt as if he were left wanting more of that excitement. Tsk, tsk. That tall, thin fellow escaped death again. This guy is really lucky! Chapter 1681 - First Display Of Ferocity As soon as Scarlet Fox attacked, he entirely disrupted the initial balance of the battlefield. Both parties began the next stage of battle proper. With regards to this stage, Lin Huang felt there would be no real suspense to it. After all, there were three upper-rank Lords in the Raiders group. What was more, one of these was Nine Snake, who was a powerhouse nearing the level of an ultimate-rank Lord. However, Lin Huang still continued to watch the battle with great interest. On the Raiders side, after Scarlet Foxs attack, Nine Snake remained expressionless and silent throughout. Silver remained where he was. He did not have any intention of taking a hand. Scarlet Fox rubbed his nose and had no choice but to step forward. After all, he was the one who had intervened earlier, not Silver or Nine Snake. On the Bug Tribes side, the middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen that was the core of the Divine Magic Winged Bug felt slightly relieved when it saw Scarlet Fox standing out there on his own. When it saw him attacking earlier, its biggest concern was that a war would fully break out, and the three upper-rank Lords would attack together. Fortunately, such a situation had not happened. Seeing Scarlet Fox coming forward, it immediately controlled the Divine Magic Winged Bug to shrink it down to a smaller size. My apologies, I was curious. I was wondering if I could experience for myself how powerful your bug formation really is. Scarlet Foxs tone remained polite. The Divine Magic Winged Bug said nothing; instead, it immediately made its move. Its one hundred and eight pairs of scale-covered wings vibrated at high speed. Countless blade-like rays rained down like a storm, deluging the entire area in an instant. They filled the sky as far as the eye could see, and all of them surged toward the lone figure of Scarlet Fox. Although Nine Snake and the rest were standing not far behind Scarlet Fox, the Divine Magic Winged Bug still did not dare to include them in its attack. It only dared to target Scarlet Fox alone. It knew very well that if it dared to attack anyone other than Scarlet Fox, it would definitely be met by combined suppression from the three upper-rank Lords. It was not even sure if it could defeat Scarlet Fox, so of course, it was unwilling to face the combined forces of all three Lords. Scarlet Fox watched as the blade-like rays that filled the whole sky headed toward him. Remaining utterly calm, his figure moved continuously, forming tens of thousands of shadows in the air. For a while, the spectators had some difficulty differentiating which figure was real and which was false. This fellow is definitely something. Lin Huang was also staring at Scarlet Foxs display of movement skill. This was a lord-level movement skill that clearly combined shadow rule and illusion rule. Cultivators who had weaker Gods soul strength than Scarlet Fox were entirely unable to counter movements like this because there was no way at all to differentiate the real from the false. On the outer perimeter of the battlefield between the two combatants, the eyes of the six middle-rank Lords in the Raiders team widened at this point. On the Bug Tribes side, the ten lower-rank Lords who were the core of the mutated bugs looked completely dumbfounded as well. The truth was when ones movement skill had reached this level, the shadows were not totally illusorythey were clones that could be made tangible. Not only that, Lin Huang could tell that Scarlet Fox was probably even able to switch his own position with that of the shadows as he pleased. This set of movement skills was so subtle and exquisite that even Lin Huang felt a slight urge to learn it. In a little while, Scarlet Foxs figure and the tens of thousands of shadows were completely swallowed up by the massive torrent of blade-like rays. Any of the spectators watching with Divine Telekinesis could clearly see that the illusory figures were rapidly destroyed by the attacking blade-like rays. However, many more illusory figures consolidated to take their place. Eventually, when all the blade-like rays had faded, Scarlet Foxs figure was still standing where it had been all along as if it had not moved at all from the beginning until the end. This round at least has some sort of standard to it. Thumbs up for you, Lin Huang commented, smiling. Naturally, he had clearly seen that Scarlet Fox did actually move, switching his position with the shadows at least ten times. However, in the end, he had gone back to his initial position on purpose. It was just that he had performed all of this with extreme subtlety. If not for the fact that Lin Huang possessed a more powerful Gods soul than Scarlet Fox, it would have been hard for him to notice this. Since the first round of attack had failed, the Divine Magic Winged Bug launched a second assault without hesitation. It did not know what kind of rules its opponent had mastered or what kind of abilities Scarlet Fox possessed. Therefore, it chose to attack first to subdue him and not give him a chance to attack. The one hundred and eight pairs of scale-covered wings on the Divine Magic Winged Bugs back mutated abruptly, spawning countless tentacles which surged toward Scarlet Fox like a tsunami. However, on the other side of the battlefield, Scarlet Foxs hair swiftly grew out at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. In an instant, it had already reached his waist. As Lin Huang watched in shock, Scarlet Foxs chest began to expand like an inflating balloon, and the lines of his facial features began to soften One by one, fiery red, furry tails rapidly sprouted from his coccyxnine in total. Whats happening?! Lin Huangs expression was full of shock. This was a scenario he had obviously not anticipated at all. Lin Huang was not the only oneon their side, the Bug Tribe was rather stunned as well. Even on the Raiders side, the eyes of the six middle-rank Lords widened too. Clearly, it was their first time seeing this as well. Some of them might have heard about Scarlet Foxs abilities and were aware that he could change gender whenever he wished. However, this was the first time they were seeing it with their very own eyes. Even Nine Snake, who had been calm all this while, had a faint, startled expression flash through his eyes upon seeing Scarlet Fox in a female body. The only one who remained unmoved was Silver, the mechanoid. To him, gender was quite obviously something completely immaterial. After the transformation, it was very evident that Scarlet Foxs aura was no longer the same. It was much more ferocious now. Her nine tails transformed into nine bright red flames. They increased dramatically in size in the face of the opposition and attacked the tsunami of tentacles surging toward her. This time, she did not dodge the attack at all, meeting it head-on instead. Lin Huang kept his gaze intently on Scarlet Fox. This fellows character seems to have changed as well after the transformation. Is that a different personality? It was not just Scarlet Foxs aura that had changed. Even his style of fighting and his demeanor were completely different from before. Previously, he had always given the impression that he was indolent, unable to rouse up much enthusiasm to do anything. His style of fighting had also always seemed to concentrate on frontal attacks. However, right now, he was very clearly on the warpath and full of energy. His current style of fighting was full of animosity as if he had swallowed dynamiteeager to fight tens of thousands of rounds to vent his internal rage. After observing him for quite a while, Lin Huang was almost certain that this was Scarlet Foxs second personality on display. His personality changed after he transformed I wonder if he would display more personalities and fighting styles if he transformed into other appearances When Lin Huang was delving into this issue, someone from the Raiders camp was thinking about matters outside the battlefield. Lord Rose is so lucky On the battlefield, the clash between both parties swiftly produced an outcome. Scarlet Fox was obviously more powerful. She attacked continuously with her nine tails, inexorably vanquishing the tsunami-like wave of tentacles and subduing her opponents by direct confrontation. Not only that, her figure continuously flickered from point to point as she approached the Divine Magic Winged Bug, attempting to fight it at close range. The Divine Magic Winged Bugs one hundred and eight pairs of wings finally displayed their ferocity as well. One by one, the pairs of wings began to transform into different Dao Weapons for attack, control, and defense The single mutated bug abruptly transformed into a team formed from hundreds of mutated bugs Even Lin Huangs eyes lit up as he observed how it utilized its abilities. He rapidly began thinking about how he could construct a similar fighting style. Chapter 1682 - This Bug Formation Is Quite Powerful Clearly, everyone present did not expect the Divine Magic Winged Bug to suddenly display such a move. Everyone knew that its wings could transform into various forms. However, nobody knew that they could transform into Dao Weapons, let alone that they could possess the abilities of those Dao Weapons. Twelve of the wings turned into massive bells. As they rang loudly, circle upon circle of formless ripples began spreading out. Scarlet Fox''s rapidly approaching figure was dozens of times slower now as if he had suddenly fallen into mud. Another forty-eight of the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s wings transformed into sabers, spears, swords, and halberds, seizing the opportunity to attack Scarlet Fox. When Scarlet Fox saw this, his form immediately altered again. This time, he transformed into a muscled strongman standing more than two point five meters in height.. His build was even wider than that of the short, burly bald man. At the same time that his transformation completed, his body immediately turned a bronze color, its surface entirely covered with Odyl. Inexorably, he faced down this wave of attack. Lin Huang particularly noticed that the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s attacks did not leave any wounds on Scarlet Fox''s body at all. ''A transformation like this probably isn''t a rule power; it''s his Goldfinger''s ability,'' Lin Huang rapidly conjectured as he watched Scarlet Fox laughing arrogantly at the Divine Magic Winged Bug. ''What''s the principle behind his Goldfinger''s function? It likely isn''t as simple as being able to transform when he sees someone. Could it be that after he kills someone, he''s able to transform into that person and gain all of their abilities ''His personality seemed to have changed again after this transformation So the price for using his Goldfinger is that he gains a personality each time he obtains a new transformation privilege?'' In his heart, Lin Huang silently speculated about this. ''If gaining split personalities isn''t the cost of utilization, then this Goldfinger''s abilities can probably be considered extremely powerful.'' After his transformation into the muscular strongman, Scarlet Fox''s fighting style had clearly become increasingly crazed. He began making his way closer to the Divine Magic Winged Bug, disregarding everything else. Snarling and roaring as if he had lost his mind, he ignored all his opponent''s attacks. The Divine Magic Winged Bug possessed considerable combat experience. Immediately, it changed its battle strategy. Its wings transformed into more massive bells to restrict its opponent''s movements. On another front, its initial attack weapons also instantly transformed into spiritual attack Dao Weapons. They transformed into ghost heads. The dozens of ghost heads simultaneously uttered piercing shrieks, spreading circle after circle of God''s soul attacks. Not only was it hard for Scarlet Fox to move forward, but there was an excruciating stabbing pain in his head. He felt as if his God''s soul was being bitten by tens of thousands of ghosts. This time, Nine Snake finally could not stand it any longer and took a hand. His tongue darted out like an electric arc and coiled around Scarlet Fox''s waist, dragging him out of the battlefield. "Rest for a while." Seeing that the heavily-muscled Scarlet Fox was still holding his head in pain, Nine Snake immediately gave an order and signaled to Silverwho was standing beside himwith his eyes. Naturally, Silver did not dare to refuse. He turned into a silver ray of light and closed in on the Divine Magic Winged Bug. Despite noticing that it suddenly had a different opponent, the Divine Magic Winged Bug remained calm. The battle with Scarlet Fox earlier had clearly boosted its confidence. It used the same technique from just now on Silver. Although Silver''s movements did slow down considerably, the God''s soul attack did not seem to work on him at all. When the Divine Magic Winged Bug saw this, the ghost heads instantly turned into Buddha statues. The Buddha statues were striking wooden fishpercussion instruments made from hollow blocks of wood while chanting scriptures. For a while, there was chanting in the air accompanied by the percussion sounds of the wooden fish and the ringing of bells. Lin Huang felt as if he had been transported into a temple. The only thing lacking was a stick of burning incense. This technique involving Buddha statues was still a God''s soul attack; it merely used a different method to do so. However, apart from his body being slightly dented, Silver remained unaffected by the God''s soul attack. Only then did the Divine Magic Winged Bug realize that its opponent''s God''s soul might be anomalous, making it immune to God''s soul attacks. Without hesitation, it decisively changed methods. One by one, the Buddha statues transformed into sabers, spears, swords, and halberds again, as well as a comprehensive variety of other weapons. It only did this so it could test which kind of weapon would be most effective on its opponent. However, all the weapons comparable to expert-grade Dao Weapons could only cause light scratches less than one centimeter deep when they struck Silver''s body. Silver was even able to repair those light scratches instantly. They did not remain on his body for any longer than one second at most. "A powerful mechanical species with dual defense capabilities" Lin Huang fell into deep thought as he stared at Silver. He was considering how he would respond if he encountered an opponent like this, and he could not use force to break their defenses. Silver was practically immune to God''s soul attacks because he was a purely mechanical being that did not have a God''s soul at all. His consciousness was stored in a mechanical tinder somewhere within his body. Naturally, God''s soul attacks would not work on him in the least. If one wanted to kill Silver with God''s soul attacks, one had to possess a God''s soul so powerful that it could break into the tinder within his body and erase his consciousness by force. The Divine Magic Winged Bug''s God''s soul had obviously not reached such a level yet. Even Lin Huang was not really sure if he himself could do that. After all, the other party was an upper-rank Lord. Silver was clearly top-notch in terms of physical defenses. Purely mechanical beings were top-notch in physical defense capabilities even if these abilities were transplanted into the universe. Not only did they have powerful defense capabilities, but they were also immensely strong. They were by no means inferior to many ferocious combat cultivator-type beasts from the ancient epoch, even. To kill an individual with such powerful physical defense capabilities, the best method was still subjugation via might. Either one mastered Dao seal power that was much stronger than that of the other party, or else one could use Dao Weapons that surpassed the opponent''s physical strength. However, the Divine Magic Winged Bug clearly possessed neither of these. Lin Huang even envisioned putting himself in the Divine Magic Winged Bug shoes for a moment and imagined himself fighting, using the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s current level of abilities. He ran a simulation in his head and realized it would still be difficult to breach his opponent''s defenses, despite being a sword cultivator with powerful attack ability. "Now that''s quite difficult." Lin Huang glanced at the Divine Magic Winged Bug with a touch of sympathy. Any attack methods that the Diving Magic Winged Bug could use had been completely suppressed by Silver. Apart from control-type skills that were still effective, spiritual and physical attacks had very little effect. Just when Lin Huang thought the Divine Magic Winged Bug had exhausted its bag of tricks, an unusual change abruptly occurred on the battlefield. The Divine Magic Winged Bug let out a shriek, and the ten mutated bugs not far behind moved almost simultaneously. One by one, they began to integrate with the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s bug formation. As the mutated bugs integrated one by one, the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s aura began to skyrocket extremely quickly. Its aurainitially early upper-rank lord-levelsoon rose to peak upper-rank lord-level at a speed that could seen with the naked eye. "This bug formation is quite powerful." Lin Huang could not help raising his brows when he saw what was happening. When the bug formation was fully integrated, the strength of the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s aura was only a step away from that of a Lord. Nine Snake had preserved his calm all along, but when he saw the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s transformation, a grave expression flashed through his eyes. The bug formation''s elevation in power was enough to make him feel threatened. Chapter 1683 - The Formidable Nine Snake After the Divine Magic Winged Bug had integrated with the remaining ten mutated bugs, its abilities were boosted significantly. Due to the vibrations from the giant bells that the Bug''s wings had transformed into, Silver seemed as if he had fallen into a bog. He could barely move forward and was practically a target now. The Divine Magic Winged Bug seized the opportunity without hesitation. It charged at Silver again after transforming its remaining wings into all manner of weapons such as sabers, spears, swords, and halberds. This round, the attacks were clearly much more powerful than before. Almost all of the Dao Weapons that the wings had transformed into left deep wounds on Silver''s body. Silver could do nothing except to protect his vital body parts and attempt to retreat out of the area that was under the giant bells'' control. However, the wounds on his body were increasing significantly almost every second. One, ten, one hundred, one thousand Very soon, there was an obvious decline in how swiftly his wounds recovered. Silver, who had almost entirely subdued the Divine Magic Winged Bug earlier, was now the one being subdued completely. He did not have the strength to fight back at all. The Divine Magic Winged Bug was aware that it would be very difficult to kill Silver, but it was trying its best to drain the Odyl within his body. Nine Snake, who had been observing the battle all along from not too far away, hesitated for a moment before finally deciding to take a hand. He hesitated because he knew that Silver had yet to use his trump card. Nine Snake was deliberating on whether Silver might still have a chance to turn the tables. However, after a moment of consideration, he decided to attack anyway. This was because he felt that under such circumstances, it meant little if Silver used his trump card and won the battle. It would be better for him to save his strength to fight Lin Huang later. After all, their biggest enemy was not the Bug Tribe in front of them, but Lin Huang, who was somewhere watching secretly. A shadow suddenly sprang out from behind Nine Snake. It turned into a dark ray of light that wound around Silver''s body, then swiftly pulled him back. Nine Snake could not help frowning slightly when he sensed the massive resistance that came from the giant bells. He had originally brought the entire team of Raiders here to forcefully subdue the Bug Tribe and display the Raiders'' might in front of Lin Huang. He had never expected that matters would escalate to this point. Scarlet Fox and Silver had been defeated one after the other. He had no option but to take the initiative to rescue them. He had intended to punish the Bug Tribe as a warning to his enemy, but his plan had backfired, and he was now being laughed at. After pulling Silver back to the Raiders'' camp with his snake tail, Nine Snake turned a cold-eyed gaze toward the Divine Magic Winged Bug, whose aura strength was now not that much weaker than his own. Naturally, he was confident that he could defeat his opponent. However, if he were going to fight, then he had to win the battle decisively and in style. The Divine Magic Winged Bug did not take the initiative to attack him. The Bug Queen in the core had a fearful expression on its face. Naturally, it knew that this leader with the vertical pupils was the most powerful of the nine intruders. The Bug Queen had known this after watching Nine Snake save his teammate earlier. Although it had fortified itself to this extent at present, the dozens of massive bells still did not seem to decrease Nine Snake''s speed by much. "To be honest, even I find it quite admirable that all of you have managed to get to this level." Nine Snake took a step forward. The aura around his whole body began to skyrocket. "But let''s end this nonsense now." As soon as he finished speaking, a giant shadow suddenly appeared above his head. It was a giant snake monster. Black scales covered its entire body, which was wreathed in black mist. A pair of solid gold snake eyes with vertical pupils stared fixedly at the Divine Magic Winged Bug. An instant later, the black snake tail lashed out like a long whip that also resembled a full moon scimitar, attacking the Divine Magic Winged Bug. The arc-shaped black ray was extremely fast, reaching the Divine Magic Winged Bug almost at once. The Divine Magic Winged Bug was completely unable to dodge the attack. It could only try its best to transform its wings into massive shields to block the front of its body. Almost at the same time that all these layers of shields consolidated, the arc-shaped black ray collided with them. The Divine Magic Winged Bug felt a burst of immense power the second the collision happened. Its entire body was sent flying back, completely out of control. It then crashed hard into the hive. The attack dented a large crater at least three meters in diameter on the hive. Even the entire Ten Thousand Bug Maze shook slightly, emitting a dull rumble. Deep in the hive, even Lin Huang clearly sensed the tremor. "Truly worthy of a being who''s almost an ultimate-rank Lord." Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis traversed the void, allowing him to clearly see that practically all the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s wings that had reverted to their original form had faint cracks on them. He could also distinctly sense that the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s aura had slumped significantly. However, what he could not see was that the bodies of many True God fighters in the bug formation had instantly ruptured from the impact of the earlier attack. A small number of Bug Tribe Heavenly Gods also died at the same time. Nine Snake could be considered to have held almost nothing back in this attack. The strength of the assault had obviously exceeded what the bug formation could sustain in terms of force. This impact, which was over the limits of what the bug formation could sustain, automatically spread through the inner sections of the formation, killing many Bug Tribe fighters. However, Nine Snake did not seem to be fully satisfied with the result of this attack. He could not help frowning slightly when he saw that the bug formation had not been destroyed by the assault and that the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s aura had only decreased slightly. "I''d like to see how many more hits you can take!" Nine Snake attacked again as soon as he finished speaking. The giant python shadow over his head locked onto the Divine Magic Winged Bug as its target, and the inky-black snake tail lashed through the air again. This time, the Divine Magic Winged Bug did not dare delay its response to the attack. It flapped all one hundred and eight pairs of wings suddenly and swiftly moved. It had witnessed how powerful Nine Snake was and did not dare meet the attack head-on. However, right at that moment, the black snake tail abruptly split into countless snake heads, hurtling like a giant net toward the Divine Magic Winged Bug to try and encompass it. The Divine Magic Winged Bug speeded up to its limits to try and escape. However, the snake heads frenziedly divided over and over again until, at last, they enveloped the Bug''s body entirely. Its one hundred and eight pairs of wings turned into sharp blades, slicing at the snake heads that had divided multiple times. Sparks flew as the blades sliced down, leaving no trace behind at all. Currently, the Divine Magic Winged Bug had been reduced to a bird in a cage. However, the cage kept on getting smaller. The snake heads continued shrinking; in the end, everything was swallowed up entirely. Right at that moment, the Ten Thousand Bug Maze suddenly began to shake. Lin Huang thought the Bug Tribe had more tricks up its sleeve and wanted to mount a rescue. However, he soon sensed a wave of immense dimensional power. "They''re trying to escape?!" Lin Huang was stunned for a moment but realized why an instant later. This move seemed ruthless, but it was actually a wise one. They were no match for their opponent; the entire hive would fall into enemy hands if the battle dragged on. Naturally, the best choice was to sacrifice a proverbial pawn to save the queen. Before the Divine Winged Magic Bug was completely annihilated, they would seize the opportunity to escape! The hive immediately tore open a space rift and headed straight for the deep reaches of the heavens. Clearly, they had made escape preparations much earlier. However, fleeing was not going to be as easy as it seemed. Before Nine Snake stepped in to fight, he had communicated with Scarlet Fox and Silver through voice transmission, telling them to watch the hive. He wanted to prevent it from escaping. He had crossed paths with the Bug Tribe in the universe numerous times and had seen them playing similar tricks many times over. Since Scarlet Fox and Silver had lost their battles, naturally, they did not dare neglect Nine Snake''s order. On the surface, it looked as if they were fully concentrating on watching the battle. In reality, they had never stopped covertly observing the hive with Divine Telekinesis. As soon as the hive made the slightest move, both of them noticed and intercepted it immediately. As the two upper-rank Lords joined forces, the space rift that the hive had torn open was instantly obliterated. Half the hive that had initially made it through the rift into space was sent rebounding right back. The escape plan was considered a total failure! Chapter 1684 - Ding, The Fighters Have Been Credited To Your Account! Watching as the hive was intercepted, Lin Huang, who had been hiding deep within it, was relieved. He had genuinely been worried earlier that the hive would flee, which would be the equivalent of him failing to keep his appointment with Nine Snake''s team. The crux of the matter was that they might make trouble for Death Sickle if they were stood up. This was what Lin Huang did not wish to see happen at all. Naturally, he did not know that as a grade-7 organization, Death Sickle was protected by Royal in this great world. If the matter was not a direct conflict, Royal would expel the Raiders if they were to take action against Death Sickle. Lin Huang had cut ties with Death Sickle in name by faking his death previously. The conflict between him and the Raiders could be said to have little connection with Death Sickle. That was why Scarlet Fox and the rest had mounted guard at Death Sickle, but they had not forced Buried Heaven''s group to hand Lin Huang over to them.. If not for Lin Huang contacting Buried Heaven of his own volition and Scarlet Fox finding out, the Raiders might have needed to take a great many more twists and turns to find him. Deep in the hive, Lin Huang had been observing the changes in the outside world through Divine Telekinesis. However, he was unable to probe the state of things inside the hive. Now that their escape plan had failed, the Queen Mothers in the Ten Thousand Bug Maze were in despair. The Divine Magic Winged Bug''s bug formation outside had amassed practically all the forces of the entire hive. Currently, only the old and the weak, the Queen Mothers, a small number of young Bug Queens, and many unhatched eggs remained in the hive. The Divine Magic Winged Bug''s defeat in battle was the equivalent of the entire hive''s defeat. If they wanted the hive''s legacy to live on, their only recourse was to escape. However, that solution was now a dead end. The space tunnel that the hive opened up had now been destroyed by Scarlet Fox and Silver. It was no longer just the two upper-rank Lordseven the short, burly, bald man and the other five middle-rank Lords were watching the hive now. They were standing guard in case of any unexpected moves. Escape was definitely not possible now. Not too far off, the Divine Magic Winged Bug had been taken captive by Nine Snake. However, it was still resisting stubbornly. Any discerning person could tell that it would not be able to last long. The bug formation itself was a method that gained its immense strength through putting pressure on the participants in the bug formation. The more powerful the bug formation, the heavier the burden on the host in the core. In one respect, all of the bug beasts that participated in the bug formation would have constant pressure applied to the Divine Power, God''s soul, god rules, sequence powers, and even Odyl within their bodies. On the other hand, the longer the bug formation lasted, the more the damage inflicted on the God''s soul and the physical body of the host in the core. As a result, the formation could only be sustained for a limited amount of time. Now that it was imprisoned by the snake tail, the Divine Magic Winged Bug could not even dodge anymore. It could do nothing except forcefully resist the snake tail''s continuous shrinking and strangling. However, each time it resisted, this would result in the death of many bug beasts in the bug formation. This was caused by the Odyl shockwaves that were beyond what the bug formation could bear. This also resulted in a decline of the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s ability. The middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen controlling the core was coming under more and more pressure. A scant few moments after being imprisoned by the snake tail, the entire bug formation was already at the point of collapse and could fall apart at any time. Nine Snake remained expressionless from beginning to end. As far as he was concerned, he was merely defeating a bunch of hillbilly bug beasts. It was no cause for happiness. From the very beginning, he had not taken these bug beasts seriously. If not for Scarlet Fox and Silver''s consecutive defeats, he would not have wished to take a hand at all. Lin Huang watched Nine Snake''s one-sided subjugation of the Divine Magic Winged Bug from faraway. He had already begun counting down to the moment when he would show himself. After all, there were eleven lord-level bug beasts in the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s bug formation. Among them were at least ten Supreme God rank-5 Bug Queens. Lin Huang even suspected that the middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen might be Pseudo Pure Spirit rank-5.5. He was not about to let Nine Snake have these creatures. Ever since Xiao Hei had released authorization, card fragments no longer dropped whenever Lin Huang killed monsters. As long as he agreed, Xiao Hei could consolidate complete Monster Cards right away. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, the eleven Bug Tribe Lords were already his. Naturally, he was not about to let Nine Snake kill them. However, Nine Snake did not know what Lin Huang was thinking. He only wanted to dispose of the Divine Magic Winged Bug as soon as possible, then kill Lin Huang and bring his body back to the universe. That would signal the successful completion of his mission this time as an investigator who had arrived in this great world. After his snake tail imprisoned the Divine Magic Winged Bug, he began using it to violently strangle the Bug. He could even distinctly sense that the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s bug formation was weakening drastically. Practically within the time it took for a few breaths, it plummeted to initial-stage upper-rank lord-level. In another few more breaths, the Divine Magic Winged Bug''s combat strength nosedived significantly again, dropping to middle-rank lord-level. Almost at the same time, the bug formation rapidly began to collapse. Nine Snake felt a slight frisson of happiness. ''It''s finally going to end!'' Once the bug formation was crushed, it would be much easier for him to kill this horde of bug beasts. However, blood-red lightning bolts abruptly lit up the sky. They filled the heavens; in almost an instant, they had reached the area where he was. Shock flashed through Nine Snake''s eyes. Simultaneously he abandoned the bug beasts and beat a frantic retreat. A second later, the area where he was standing was deluged by endless blood-red lightning bolts. Scarlet Fox, Silver, and the others stared at the blood-red lightning bolts with utterly shocked expressions. They could distinctly sense how terrifying the lightning bolts were. If those lightning bolts were to swallow them up, there might not even be dregs remaining. More terrifying was the fact that from start to finish, they had not even seen where this attack originated from. Even Nine Snake was frowning hard. He had spread his Divine Telekinesis earlier but had not found anything at all. His gaze finally landed on the hive. There was no powerful aura within the periphery of the dozens of surrounding star zones. In that case, the individual who had attacked was most likely in the hive that was right in front of them. As to whether it was Lin Huang hiding in the hive or other beings within it, he was not very sure yet. However, an instant later, he sensed that the auras of the bug beasts which formed the bug formation were rapidly being obliterated. Nine Snake swiftly came to a conclusion and his gaze grew even keener as he stared at the hive. "Lin Huang, are you brave enough to come out and face me in battle?" His voice rumbled like thunder and spread toward the hive. Scarlet Fox and the rest looked utterly confused. "It was Lin Huang who attacked?!" Currently, Lin Huang was indulging in the joy of having obtained the bug beasts'' cards. After using a dimensional secret technique and his Divine Telekinesis flying daggers to kill all the bug beasts that formed the Divine Magic Winged Bug, he had Xiao Hei consolidate eleven complete Bug Tribe Lord Monster Cards. As he had expected, of the eleven Bug Queens, the ten lower-rank Lords were Supreme God rank-5, and the middle-rank Lord was Pseudo Pure Spirit rank-5.5. He was thrilled to have obtained eleven Bug Tribe fighters out of the blueones he could immediately utilize, even. When he heard Nine Snake''s deliberately provoking comment, he was not angry at all. "The show that all of you put on was even more interesting than what I had imagined. I was so engrossed in watching that I didn''t really have the heart to interrupt things." At the same time that this voice was heard, Lin Huang''s figure slowly materialized outside the hive. With a faint smile, he looked at Nine Snake and his team. Chapter 1685 - Lin Huang Versus Nine Snake Nine Snake did not display any delight when he saw Lin Huang reveal himself. He could not help frowning slightly either when he realized that he could not read this young man in front of him. He was unable to sense how powerful Lin Huang''s aura was, but his instincts told him that the young man before him was extremely dangerous. Scarlet Fox and Silver, who were nearby, had similar reactions. However, they could not sense things as distinctly as Nine Snake; they were only able to get a vague sense of the threat emanating from Lin Huang. Under normal circumstances, powerhouses who had elevated to lord-level usually had very acute preternatural senses. For a while, the three upper-rank Lords fell silent, quickly trying to think of a plan. Perhaps because the disparity in their abilities was too great, the short, burly, bald man and the remaining five middle-rank Lords did not sense the danger. They even thought that Lin Huang''s aura was less powerful than their own.. Seeing that Nine Snake and the other two remained silent, the few middle-rank Lords assumed they wanted them to test Lin Huang''s abilities. The short, burly, bald man who had full confidence in his defense capabilities took the lead and spoke first, "So you''re Lin Huang?" "That''s right, I''m Lin Huang." Lin Huang turned his head to look at the short, burly, bald man, smiling. He continued after that, "Your defense capabilities aren''t bad. I want them!" The moment he finished speaking, a blood-red arc pierced right through the short, burly, bald man''s forehead, leaving a hole that was as big as two fingers. Everyone else present could distinctly sense that the short, burly, bald man''s life force seemed to have been instantly snuffed out. His face still retained its arrogant expression, but he had already become a corpse. It was obvious that he had utterly failed to defend himself against Lin Huang''s attack. Upon seeing the short, burly, bald man''s sudden demise, practically everyone present felt their hair stand on end. The three upper-rank Lords, including Nine Snake, were no exception. Although they could not consider themselves close with the short, burly, bald man, they knew that he was a formidable combat cultivator. Among the Raiders'' middle-rank Lords, his defense capabilities were in the top three ranks. Scarlet Fox and Silver were secretly making some assessments. At their current upper-rank lord-level combat strength, it would be very difficult to kill the short, burly, bald man in a direct confrontation, much less kill him instantly. Nine Snake also had a general idea of the abilities of the current team that he had brought with him. He knew that at his present level of ability, it would not be difficult for him to subdue the short, burly, bald man, but killing him would take some effort. Although he could kill him instantly like Lin Huang had, it would require the use of some trump card techniques. He had to admit that the attack Lin Huang had used to kill the short, burly, bald man was no less powerful than if he himself used a trump card. He did not even have enough confidence to pull off a move like that. However, he did not know whether Lin Huang had merely launched an offhand attack or if he had used a trump card to intentionally intimidate them. Only Lin Huang himself knew that his attack earlier had been an offhand one. His God Weapon flying dagger was inherently already a supreme-grade Dao Weapon. Even if he were to encounter ultimate-rank Lords, he could easily breach his opponents'' defenses without utilizing any defensive techniques at all. The short, burly, bald man, on the other hand, only had the physique of an upper-rank Lord at most. Even with maximum compounding of defense techniques, at best, he would still only achieve peak upper-rank lord-level strength. Naturally, Lin Huang''s God Weapon flying dagger had easily impaled him. Furthermore, Lin Huang had compounded two Dao seals onto the flying dagger in this attack. However, any single one of Lin Huang''s Dao seals was different from everyone else''s because it was constructed from millions of Dao tattoos. Compounding two such Dao seals was comparable to the Odylic Force released by two million Dao tattoos simultaneously. Moreover, under normal circumstances, even an ultimate-rank Lord possessing over a thousand Dao seals would have less than two million Dao tattoos in total, even if they were all added up. On top of that, Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis was ultimate-rank lord-level in terms of strength, so even though he had not unleashed his full power, it was a legitimate ultimate-rank lord-level attack. It was no wonder that the short, burly, bald man had been killed instantly. The short, burly, bald man being killed instantly was a scene so shocking to everyone that nobody dared to stop Lin Huang when he collected his victim''s Goldfinger and corpse. Lin Huang calmly put away the man''s Goldfinger and his corpse. Only then did he turn his gaze to everyone else present. However, no matter where he looked, practically everyone kept their heads down and did not dare to meet his eyes. Nine Snake was the only one who stared at Lin Huang, his expression betraying mixed emotions. Initially, he had thought that coming to a great world in a corner of nowhere and apprehending a local brat would be an easily accomplished task. After all, according to the information Royal had provided on this great world, there were only three middle-rank Lords here. He had not anticipated that his target would have hidden his abilities so well. ''The information Royal gave us has caused us a great deal of trouble'' Nine Snake cursed secretly in his heart, then rapidly began thinking of a counter-strategy. What he did not know was there was actually no error in the information Royal had given. In the great world under Royal''s jurisdiction, every powerhouse who elevated to become a Lord would be registered and reported to the relevant authorities as soon as the staff in the great world found out about it. Royal''s headquarters would then enter the information on the Lord and file it on record. The issue was that Lin Huang had only elevated to become a Lord three days ago and had not displayed his abilities since his advancement. Therefore, Royal had no idea that he had elevated to lord-level. Naturally, this information was also not on record. Nine Snake made up his mind immediately after only a few moments of consideration. His voice transmission spread to the remaining Raiders. "Don''t be scared by him. He may have used a special technique to attack just now, so his subsequent attacks might not be as strong. His defense capabilities might not be that powerful either. Let''s attack together! I''ll be responsible for dealing with him; the rest of you find opportunities to deal some lateral damage!" What Nine Snake did not know was that Lin Huangwhose Divine Telekinesis was significantly more powerfulhad intercepted the voice transmission loud and clear. However, Lin Huang''s expression did not change outwardly at all. He continued smiling faintly. He calmly observed the figure of the giant python above Nine Snake''s head as it abruptly grew a second and third snake head. Immediately after that, more snake heads began sprouting one after the other. Within a blink of an eye, a massive nine-headed python had fully consolidated. The strength of its aura was infinitely close to that of an ultimate-rank Lord. The instant the giant nine-headed python finished consolidating, Nine Snake initiated an attack without hesitation. This time, he held nothing back at all, utilizing an ultimate move with the strongest attack power. The giant nine-headed python''s heads opened their mouths at practically the same time. Black electric arcs rapidly consolidated in their maws. The next second, nine black shock waves shot forward almost simultaneously at maximum speed. Practically an instant later, they were right in front of Lin Huang and were about to swallow him up. However, Lin Huang extended a finger into the void and a mirror so black it could swallow up everything consolidated, blocking the shock waves like a massive wall. He could not help but sigh faintly when he saw the nine shock waves being swallowed up by the Mirror. "Why do all of them like releasing shock waves as soon as they attack?" As soon as he finished speaking, nine blood-red shock waves shot out from the Mirror, aiming straight at the giant nine-headed python above Nine Snake''s head Chapter 1686 - Annihilated En Masse The nine blood-red shock waves shot through the void like lightning, more than several times faster than the shock waves Nine Snake had released. Lin Huang secretly added two Dao seals to this round of deflection. The blood-red shock waves immediately shot through the void. Before Nine Snake could even fully react, they had struck the shadow above his head. The next instant, the giant nine-headed python''s nine heads exploded almost all at once. Immediately after that, the shadow swiftly disintegrated, transforming into countless black points of light and fading away. Below, Nine Snake abruptly spat out a mouthful of blood. Although Lin Huang had not directly attacked Nine Snake''s actual person this round, Nine Snake had still suffered a backlash. Nine Snake''s technique was powered by his God''s soul and had integrated Divine Power, Odylic Force, and Dao seal power. Since his technique had been shattered by violence, naturally, his God''s soul was impacted. Fortunately, he managed to withdraw his Divine Power in time, so he only suffered the aftermath of the impact. However, in order for the giant nine-headed python to absorb Lin Huang''s attack, he had drained an immense amount of the Divine Power and Odylic Force within his body. Almost one-third of the Divine Power and Odylic Force within him was stripped away by the attack. He had no choice either because by the time he could respond, the nine shock waves were already practically in his face. There was no way he could evade them at all, so he was forced to take the brunt of the attack head-on. If he did not do that, his God''s soul would have been instantly annihilated. Nine Snake thought that Lin Huang must surely have seen through the nature of this technique, which explained why he had not attacked Nine Snake''s physical body, instead launching an assault on the giant nine-headed python above his head. However, the truth was that Lin Huang had not made a study of Nine Snake''s technique at all. The Mirror''s deflection angle could be adjusted as necessary to attack whatever target he wanted. However, he had not bothered to make any adjustments. The giant nine-headed python was massive and obviously a target that would be easier to hit. Moreover, crushing an energy being like this would definitely drain a great deal of his opponent''s Divine Power and Odylic Force. This was something one would know even without even needing to study the technique. The first clash between both of them began abruptly and ended just as abruptly. Scarlet Fox and the others watched, dumbfounded. As upper-rank Lords, Scarlet Fox and Silver could distinctly sense the giant nine-headed python''s terrifying aura, which was already almost as powerful as that of an ultimate-level Lord. An off-hand attack could easily kill any powerhouse at the scene, let alone if all nine heads were to attack at the same time. As for the handful of middle-rank Lords, although they did not have such a clear perception of Nine Snake''s technique, they were still able to sense how terrifying it was when the giant nine-headed python spat out its shock waves. The aftermath alone made the hearts of all six quail. Initially, almost everyone present thought there was a ninety percent chance that as soon as Nine Snake attacked, Lin Huangwho was opposite himwould die. After all, the attack was already as powerful as that of an ultimate-rank Lord. However, they had never expected the actual situation to turn things upside down. Not only had Lin Huang suffered no harm, but he had also confounded Nine Snake''s attack immediately. The rest of the Raiders initially thought they might individually have a chance to bag Lin Huang as a trophy if Nine Snake''s attack did not kill him. However, after witnessing what happened, the eight of them felt cold chills running through them. Even Silver, the mechanoid, displayed fear. His silver physical body turned dark red at a speed discernible to the naked eye. This physical state was a reaction that would automatically be triggered whenever Silver sensed life-threatening danger. It would temporarily raise his physical constitution by a level. Under normal circumstances, Scarlet Fox would certainly not have been able to restrain himself from asking questions if he saw Silver changing color like this. However, he was entirely in no mood to do so right now. He had already begun rapidly plotting an escape plan. All of them would certainly die if they fought someone that even Nine Snake could not defeat. Their only chance of survival was to seize the opportunity and flee. Lin Huang did not even look at Scarlet Fox and the others. Right now, among the nine of them, Nine Snake''s ability was the only one that drew his attention, albeit reluctantly. As for the rest, he would not even need to use a second God Weapon flying dagger to kill them. "If you hadn''t used that move earlier, perhaps you might have been able to last a little longer." Lin Huang smiled at Nine Snake. Nine Snake said nothing, but his expression was indescribable. He had certainly not expected things to turn out this way. "Since you attacked first earlier, it''s my turn now." As soon as Lin Huang finished speaking, countless electric arcs shot out of his sleeves like blood-red lightning bolts that filled the heavens as far as the eye could see. Nine Snake''s pupils contracted slightly when he saw this. However, the blood-red electric arcs suddenly disappeared. A second later, Nine Snake saw the blood-red electric arcs covering the entire area densely, fully three hundred and sixty degrees without a single gap Things looked entirely different from where Scarlet Fox and the others were standing. They only saw the electric arcs shoot out and cover the distance almost instantly, forming a blood-red sphere of light around Nine Snake to completely envelope him This was a new technique that Lin Huang had devised after seeing how the Divine Magic Winged Bug used its wings. He integrated teleportation into the Divine Telekinesis flying daggers'' use. The moment the millions of Divine Telekinesis flying daggers shot out, Lin Huang teleported them to surround Nine Snake, then envelop him entirely. In less than the time it took for three breaths, Scarlet Fox and the rest sensed that Nine Snake''s life force had been completely obliterated. Scarlet Fox did not need to think at all. Without hesitation, he hid behind Silver in a flash and summoned a dimensional portal. However, the instant he called up the portal, he saw a red beam of light in his peripheral vision. Immediately after that, everything went black, and he completely lost consciousness. Only then did Lin Huang''s gaze shift from the area surrounded by the lightning bolts. He then turned his head to look at where Scarlet Fox and the others were. The seven people left alive were still in shock. They only reacted when Scarlet Fox made his move; all of them immediately chose to flee. All Lin Huang did was glance over, and a red electric arc flashed across the distance, killing the six of them instantly. "Eh?" Suddenly, Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. Out of the seven Raiders, one of them was surprisingly not killed at once. The Divine Telekinesis flying dagger had not gone completely through his body. It had merely left a wound. This individual was Silver, whose body was now dark red. He looked like a metallic being entirely covered by rust. However, this form was the state in which his defenses were at their most powerful. This peak mode would only be triggered when his subconscious sensed lethal threats. His original physical constitution was already at peak upper-rank lord-level. Now that he had practically elevated a full level, his constitution was comparable to that of a peak ultimate-rank Lord. This was why Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis flying dagger had not been able to completely breach Silver''s defenses. However, Lin Huang knew that this mode could not be sustained for long. With a touch of interest, he looked across the distance at the fleeing Silver. He manipulated more Divine Telekinesis flying daggers to attack Silver for a second time, then a third time, and a fourth When the flying daggers attacked Silver for the eleventh time, they finally impaled his body all the way through. It was not that his defenses had been breached; instead, the Divine Power and Odylic Force within his body had been totally drained. He no longer had the strength to maintain this mode. In the end, all nine Raiders were wiped out en masse after being subjugated by Lin Huang''s show of force.. Only after a glance at Silver who eventually toppled to the grounddid Lin Huang turn around unhurriedly. He looked in the direction of the colossal edifice behind himthe Ten Thousand Bug Maze! Chapter 1687 - Royal Supervisor Lin Huang''s face was expressionless as he faced the colossal edifice in front of him. He remained where he was, wondering how to deal with this batch of Bug Tribe monsters. Suddenly, a spatial fluctuation began spreading out. Lin Huang immediately turned his head to look in the direction of the spatial fluctuation and was instantly on guard. He had not requested for any assistance. Therefore, anyone who showed up now might well be the Raiders'' reinforcements. A figure slowly stepped out of the Dimensional Whirlpool. It was a fairly well-dressed man who was even wearing a top hat. He looked to be in his early twenties, handsome in appearance and possessed of rather extraordinary charisma. Although the other did not release his aura, Lin Huang''s pupils contracted involuntarily the instant he saw the newcomer. He immediately went into a state of combat readiness. He could sense that the person in front of him was an ultimate-rank Lord. "Don''t worry, Lin Huang. I don''t belong to the group that you''ve just disposed of." The man removed his hat, revealing neatly slicked-back hair, and gave Lin Huang a faint nod. "Let me introduce my humble self. I am Liu Fu, Rank-S Royalty. I''m also the Supervisor for this investigation." "Supervisor?" It was the first time Lin Huang had heard of such a position. Although he was Royalty as wella Rank-A member even he knew almost nothing about Royal''s internal organizational structure. Liu Fu had obviously read Lin Huang''s file and knew that he had had practically no contact with other Royal members. As a result, his knowledge of Royal was very limited. Patiently, Liu Fu proceeded to explain. "You probably know that this great world is Royal''s affiliate territory. Organizations from the outside world have to submit an application to Royal for entry, and they are only allowed to enter if we approve. "However, if the applicant''s ability exceeds the highest combat strength of our affiliate territory''s local population, our assessment will be extra strict. The applicant needs to have sufficiently legitimate reasons, or we''ll completely deny them entry. "However, what many outsiders don''t know is that if the applicant''s ability exceeds the highest combat strength of our affiliate territory''s local population and their application is approved, Royal will secretly arrange for a Supervisor to observe the applicant''s every move. "In Royal''s internal department, a Supervisor isn''t a positionit''s a mission codename. "Any time Royal is in need of a Supervisor, they will publish the mission. Whoever accepts the mission will be the Supervisor of the mission in question. "Of course, there are requirements that must be met when one accepts a Supervisor''s mission. The Supervisor''s ability must be more powerful than that of the applicant seeking entry. If there are many applicants, the Supervisor must possess the ability to keep all of the applicants under control. "When this group of Raiders applied for entry, I happened to see the Supervisor''s mission and accepted it, so I became the Supervisor for this matter." Lin Huang more or less understood what Liu Fu was saying. The Supervisor would be the one who kept the investigators'' movements under surveillance to prevent them from behaving as they pleased in Royal''s affiliate world. "You''re here now because I''ve stirred up trouble by killing the Raiders'' investigators?" Lin Huang asked, his gaze fixed on Liu Fu. "You''re over-thinking matters." When he heard this, Liu Fu shook his head, smiling. "It''s very common for investigators to die during the course of their investigations. Royal won''t make trouble for its members just because of an outsider. "However, if the Raiders demand an explanation from us, we might just send them the video showing the entire process of you killing all those nine investigators. After all, the Raiders are a top organization in the universe; we can''t refuse to give them an explanation." Lin Huang''s expression altered slightly at this point. He did not wish to be targeted by Raiders in the universe who were even more powerful. He had now killed a peak upper-rank lord-level powerhouse like Nine Snake. If the Raiders saw the video, the next time they would send at least an ultimate-rank Lord to kill him. They might even send a supreme powerhouse above lord-level. When Liu Fu noticed Lin Huang''s change of expression, he continued. "You don''t have to worry about that. Even if we do send the video, as long as you hide in this world, the Raiders can''t do anything to you. "This is because the most powerful combat strength of the local population in this world is only that of a middle-rank Lord. The highest rank that Royal will allow into this world is an upper-rank lord-level powerhouse. Anyone more powerful than that is barred from entry. Even if they do send more investigators, it should be no problem at all; your current ability is sufficient for you to protect yourself." "I can''t hide like a coward in this great world forever." Lin Huang shook his head when he heard this. To become more powerful, he would have to leave this great world. "You''ve made your presence known just to tell me this?" Lin Huang fell silent for a moment, then abruptly asked Liu Fu, "Or is there something else?" "Actually, all members of Royal are under Royal''s protection. Even if Rank-A members offend lord-level powerhouses, Royal will still protect them. However, if they offend powerhouses above lord-level, Royal will hand over this member without hesitation. That''s because it isn''t worth offending a powerhouse above lord-level for the sake of a Rank-A member. "However, Royal will protect a Rank-S member with everything they have, even if that member offends a dao-level powerhouse above lord-level" Liu Fu paused at this point and smiled, looking at Lin Huang. Lin Huang locked eyes with Liu Fu for a moment. Seeing that Liu Fu did not continue, he could not help but ask, "How does one become a Rank-S member?!" "It''s very simple. As long as you possess Rank-S potential and talent, you''re eligible." Liu Fu smiled and continued, "To be more specific, you only need to kill an upper-rank Lord by using lower-rank lord-level combat strength. That will be sufficient." "So I can be upgraded to Rank-S, then?" Lin Huang felt slightly more at ease at this point. Although he usually disliked being dependant on any organization, based on the current situation, Royal was undoubtedly his best refuge. "What do you want?" Lin Huang calmed down very quickly, then looked at Liu Fu. He knew that Liu Fu had to have some sort of motive for disclosing so much information to him. "I can recommend that you be upgraded to Rank-S. What''s more, your chances of successfully being upgraded are very high," Liu Fu smiled as he spoke, "What I want is simple. When the time comes, just write my name in the referral column, and that will be enough. "When a member is upgraded to Rank-S or when there''s a new Rank-S member, the referrer gains a handsome reward." "There aren''t any other requirements?" Lin Huang was quite surprised. "No." Liu Fu shook his head with a smile. "I''m a mere half step away from breaking through to lord-level. There isn''t anything I want from a junior just yet. "I''m recommending you be upgraded because you do indeed possess the ability. For one, I happen to be able to do a good deed. For another, the reward I''ll obtain from recommending that you be upgraded to Rank-S might just increase my chances of a breakthrough by that much." "I understand. Thank you, senior." Once Lin Huang realized that the other was not imposing any further demands on him, he relaxed his guard slightly. Liu Fu left after they had chatted a little. Lin Huang only turned around after seeing Liu Fu off and focused his attention back on the hive in front of him. Chapter 1688 - Die Once Lin Huang hovered before the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. In contrast to the massive hive, he was as tiny as a particle of dust. However, he was not afraid at all in the face of this colossal edifice. Instead, he was very sure that the many Bug Tribe beasts in the hive ought to be filled with respect for him at the moment. For a while, he did not do anything at all. He was thinking of how to deal with the hive and the remaining bug beasts within it. He had no sympathy at all for the Bug Tribe. This was because the tribe destroyed every place they went to. They would frenziedly plunder various resources in the great world to strengthen their Tribe. After exhausting all the available resources, they would migrate to the next world in a carefree manner, leaving the dead world behind. They would then repeat the same process as before. They did this to such an extent that the ancient legends of many Tribes even called the Bug Tribe a bug plague. In essence, they regarded the Bug Tribe as a type of calamity. It did not matter what kind of sci-fi work Lin Huang had seen on Earth in his past life, the games he had played, or the knowledge he had obtained from being in contact with the gravel world later on. They all contributed to his distaste for the Bug Tribe. His first thought was to kill all of the hives in the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. However, he soon encountered a problem. The material that the hive was made from could obstruct all sorts of energy transmission to a great extent. This not only included Divine Power and Odyl, but it also included the transmission of God''s soul power and Divine Telekinesis. Therefore, he could not control his telekinetic flying daggers so that they would penetrate through the hive and kill his enemies. It was also a problem locating the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers in such a massive hive. If he wanted to kill the Queen Mothers in the hive, he could only do it the hard way, which was to go deep into the hive and hunt for them one by one within the hive passages. This would definitely be an extremely time-consuming process. Naturally, there was another way, which was to destroy everything, hive and all. If the hive was crushed into smithereens, the Queen Mothers in the hive would not be able to escape, much less the rest of the bug beasts. However, Lin Huang still had some reservations about that. He really wanted to preserve the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. After all, he had his own Bug Tribe army. Furthermore, since the several Queen Mothers were creating more and more Bug Tribe armies, his original hive would be at full capacity soon. The Ten Thousand Bug Maze in front of him was massive enough for the Queen Mothers under his control to use for a very long time. Even if he obtained more Queen Mothers in the future, it should still be sufficient for their use. Right as Lin Huang was at a loss, a tremor shook the hive, and a voice came from it. "Senior, we''re willing to surrender." "Eh?" Lin Huang was rather surprised. He had not expected that the Bug Tribe would choose to compromise. What he did not know was that after he had killed Nine Snake, the group of Queen Mothers in the hive had actually been discussing what to do next. All of the top-ranking elite fighters in the entire hive had been killed in action. The highest combat strength left in the hive was a lower-rank lord-level Queen Mother, a group of heavenly god-level Bug Queens, and around a dozen heavenly god-level Queen Mothers. The rest were old, weak, or infirm. They knew very well that even if all of their remaining comrades were to go into battle, as far as this human male was concerned, he might very well be able to kill them all off with a single attack. Resisting was futile. It would only increase their chances of dying. What about escape? They had already seen what had happened to Scarlet Fox and the rest. After observing and learning from the others'' mistakes, they knew very well that running away would only hasten their deaths. Therefore, after the discussion, the Bug Tribe finally made a decisionthey would surrender! This was because only surrender would guarantee them a chance of survival so their Tribe would be able to continue its legacy. Lin Huang narrowed his eyes slightly and pondered for a long time after hearing the Bug Tribe''s offer of surrender. He definitely intended to accept their offer. After all, this would mean that he would be able to obtain a perfectly intact Ten Thousand Bug Maze. He was now considering how he should deal with this group of Bug Tribe beasts after accepting their surrender. A moment later, he finally nodded in agreement. "Very well, I accept your surrender. Come into my Kingdom first, then." The hive fell silent for a brief while, but it did not take them long to agree to this. Lin Huang opened up his Kingdom, enfolding the dead bodies of the Raider team into it along with the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. From any outsiders'' point of view, Lin Huang had probably done this so he could have better control over the hive. However, the truth was that he did not want Liu Fu to see what would happen next, even though he had no idea whether or not the man was still covertly watching his actions. "Come out now, all Queen Mothers and Bug Queens rank-5 and above." Lin Huang''s voice drifted above the hive after he saw that it had entered the Kingdom in his body. "I don''t wish to see anyone left behind." Not long after he spoke, the bug beasts began crawling out of the hive one by one. Leading them was the lord-level Queen Mother. Its upper body was almost the same as a human. Even to human aesthetic senses, it was definitely an enchantingly beautiful woman. However, although the faulds of its armor covered most of the area below its waist, its striped abdomen characteristic of the Bug Tribe was still visible. There were a dozen over Queen Mothers who followed their leader out. All of them were in half-human, half-bug form. This was not what they looked like in reality. Instead, knowing that Lin Huang was human, they had intentionally taken on this form. There was also a group of fairly powerful rank-5 Bug Queens who came out of the hive together with the Queen Mothers. These were the Queen Mothers'' bug guardians. However, the highest combat strength in their midst was only a half-step Lord; most of them were only high-level Heavenly Gods. In actual fact, the abilities of this group of bug guardians were already considered powerful in the great world. However, they were nothing compared to Lin Huang. After that, the early intermediate-stage Heavenly God Bug Queens, as well as the Bug Queens and Queen Mothers that were not yet heavenly god-level, came out of the hive one by one as well. Lin Huang was actually a little shocked to see how many of them there were. There were over forty Supreme God rank-5 Queen Mothers alone. There was one lower-rank Lord and fourteen Heavenly Gods, while the remaining thirty-one were not yet heavenly god-level. The youngest of them all appeared to have been born very recently; it was only a first-rank True God. There were even more rank-5 Bug Queensover three hundred of them. However, most of them had yet to achieve heavenly god-level. Apart from the Queen Mothers'' group of bug guardians, the heavenly god-level Bug Queens had basically been killed on the battlefield earlier. There were close to four hundred rank-5 bug beasts in total. This was the number of the old, the weak, and the infirm that remained after the defeat just now. Lin Huang could almost imagine how powerful this Bug Tribe had been before the battle earlier. He felt rather glad that his unintentional action had resolved a massive threat to the great world. Lin Huang observed the rank-5 bug beasts standing before him with their heads lowered. His eyes narrowed slightly, and his mouth twitched up in a faint smile. He had already decided how he was going to subdue these bug beasts. "If all of you wish to submit to me then you should die once first" Hundreds of blood-red arcs shot out as the Bug Tribe beasts all displayed shocked expressions. The arcs pierced through the heads of all the Queen Mothers and Bug Queens present. Lin Huang glanced at the hive, aware that all the other bug beasts in the hive were watching what was happening. He casually gathered up the bug carcasses scattered all over the ground and put them away in his storage space. He then crushed the cards that Xiao Hei had just consolidated. Close to four hundred Queen Mothers and Bug Queens suddenly reappeared, as if the group of newly slain Queen Mothers and Bug Queens had been resurrected. Chapter 1689 - Returning To The Human World After gaining control over the Queen Mothers and Bug Queens, Lin Huang let them all go. He had them lead him into the core of the hive, where he then assumed control over it and had Xiao Hei turn the core into a card. If he had not subdued this group of Queen Mothers and Bug Queens, he might have needed to spend several months just to find the core. However, to save Origin Energy, Lin Huang did not ask Xiao Hei to produce a simulation of the entire hive. Instead, he turned the hive''s core into a card and assumed control of the core itself. After all, as long as he controlled the core, it would be equivalent to controlling the entire hive. When he had finished with these matters, Lin Huang had Xiao Hei transfer the contract relationships of all the Queen Mothers and Bug Queens to the hive''s core, except for that of the lower-rank lord-level Queen Mother. This way, they would no longer occupy his summoning quota. Although Xiao Hei had entirely abolished the limit on Lin Huang''s number of summoning cards, the more bug beasts he summoned, the greater the burden on Xiao Hei''s functions. Transferring the contract relationship to the hive meant less pressure on Xiao Hei. Furthermore, at present, Lin Huang found it almost unnecessary to summon beasts below lord-level anymore. The reason he had killed those Queen Mothers and Bug Queens, then turned them into Monster Cards, was only so he could assume total control of the entire hive. After all, each Queen Mother and Bug Queen had a definite influence in the hivethey each had their own supporters. The more powerful their abilities and the higher their rank, the more influence they had in the hive. If Lin Huang did not have complete authority over the hive and any of the Queen Mothers'' combat strength elevated to lord-level, or any of the Bug Queens elevated to Pure Spirit, it would affect his control. Therefore, he decided to turn all of them into Monster Cards to put an end to this risk once and for all. Not only that, after transferring the contracts of multiple rank-5 bug beasts and the hive''s core, Lin Huang had the Queen Mothers decree that all the other bug beasts in the hive must establish a new contract with the hive''s core within the next few days. This would ensure that he would have control of all the bug beasts in the entire hive. There would be no chances for betrayal at all. After completing all these matters, Lin Huang put away his Kingdom and let the hive out. Standing before the colossal hive, he considered for a while. In the end, he decided not to conquer the other hives once and for all. According to the memories Shasha (the lower-rank Lord Queen Mother) had shared with him, apart from the Ten Thousand Bug Maze, there were still three super hives in the great world. The Queen Mothers of two of these hives were Shasha''s twin sisters. Both were half-step Lords. The last hive had Queen Mothers that were peak heavenly god-level twins. They were Shasha''s two daughters. These three super hives all had lord-level bug guardians protecting them. In scale, those hives were as massive as the Ten Thousand Bug Maze. Lin Huang thought it over once more but still abandoned the idea of trying to capture Shasha''s family in the end. First of all, he had little interest in half-step lord-level Queen Mothers, much less the twins who were only heavenly god-level. Naturally, if the twins elevated to become Lords, he did not mind making a trip to establish a contract with the two of them. Secondly, Shasha had taken the initiative to surrender, so he had been able to swiftly establish a contract and assume control of the hive. If the Queen Mothers of the three other hives refused to surrender regardless, then he would have no choice but to destroy them together with their hives at that point. If he wished to keep the entire bug horde intact, he would need to spend a couple of months playing hide-and-seek with the Queen Mothers in the hive. After settling the matter of the hive, Lin Huang summoned the Gate of All Realms and stepped directly through it. This time, he did not return to the Ricky Star but to the human world. He emerged right away in the Demon Eye Star Zone in the human world. The Demon Eye Star Zone was so named because this super star zone made up of hundreds of star zones of various sizes had the biggest Abyssal rift in the human world. From afar, the entire super star zone looked like a gigantic closed eye. Furthermore, this dangerous area was also an exceptionally flourishing location, second only to the core zone of the human world. Lin Huang was planning to establish a branch of the Sword Alliance in this region. This was because land in the core zone was scarce and expensive, and practically every star zone was already occupied by major organizations. Although he was powerful, he could not bring himself to occupy someone else''s territory by force. However, the Demon Eye Star Zone was different. Criminal elements and good people mingled; danger and opportunities coexisted. Practically every day, organizations were destroyed, and new organizations were built up. The most flourishing star zone in the Demon Eye Star Zone was called Heaven Island. In this star zone, the three most prosperous and bustling planets had been respectively established by three grade-7 organizationsDaluo Temple, Leiyin Temple, and Sanctuary. On the surface, these planets appeared to be the territory of the three Saints. In reality, the seven sects had also established branches on these three planets. In a flash, Lin Huang appeared on the Eastern Cruise Planet in Heaven Island. This was Leiyin Temple''s territory. Temples could be seen everywhere. There were not just humans on this planet, but many other Tribe members as well. Lin Huang also sensed the aura of many Protoss. This proved that humans were still very tolerant. They did not display hatred or hostility toward other Tribes. Lin Huang strolled around for a bit before he found a hotel where he could stay. In the hotel room, he let Sword1 and the others out from his Kingdom. "Lord Swordmaster, has the crisis been resolved?" Sword1 asked as soon as he saw Lin Huang. "Yes, it has." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. However, Sword1 and the team still looked somewhat gloomy. The Sword Servants knew very well that with their current abilities, they could not help their swordmaster. In fact, they were even beginning to slow him down. Lin Huang could tell what his Sword Servants were thinking and patted Sword1''s shoulder. "All of you have actually helped me a great deal. What''s more, there are many matters later on that I''ll need your help with." Lin Huang then brought up the matter of establishing a branch of the Sword Alliance. After that, he held a discussion with the entire group of Sword Servants until nighttime, setting out the preliminary plans for the formation of another Sword Alliance. For one, he wanted to found a Sword Alliance in the great world to complete Great Heaven''s dying wish. For another, he wanted to set up a bigger territory so the people in the gravel world could better establish themselves. Although the gravel world was currently in Lin Huang''s Kingdom and resources were much more abundant than before, there was still a definite disparity when compared with the great world. Lin Huang also hoped that more talented geniuses would emerge from the gravel world. This was because as far as he was concerned, the more powerhouses produced in his Kingdom, the more powerful his Godly Right would become. Even if these powerhouses left his Kingdom, they would still essentially be his people. As they became more powerful, it would still result in a reciprocal effect for his Kingdom. Lin Huang was anxious to train up more Lords from his Kingdom. He had even considered using Combat Strength Upgrade Cards to elevate Sword1 and the rest directly to Lords. However, Xiao Hei had vetoed his suggestion at once. Cards like the Combat Strength Upgrade Card and the Advance Card could only be used on Monster Cards. After pondering for a moment, in the end, Lin Huang gave up on the idea of converting Sword1 and the rest into card monsters. If he converted them into card monsters, their contract relationship with Lin Huang''s Kingdom would be automatically be dissolved. In other words, even if he elevated them to Lords, it would not strengthen his Kingdom at all. Therefore, it would be useless to convert them into card monsters. For another, Lin Huang certainly could not bring himself to kill Sword1 and the rest, even if doing so would merely translate them into another form of existence. Chapter 1690 - Three Goldfingers After seeing his Sword Servants off, Lin Huang set up barriers in the hotel before he began making an inventory of the spoils he had obtained from his earlier battle. First on the list were the nine bodies of the Raiders'' investigators. There were three upper-rank Lords and six middle-rank Lords. Unfortunately, Cunning Rabbit was not among them. It was not clear whether his identity as a spy had been exposed and he was afraid of retribution from the Club, or for some other reason, but Cunning Rabbit had not come to the great world with Nine Snake and the other investigators this time. However, Lin Huang had committed his codename to memory. If not for this spy, the Raiders might not have taken notice of Lin Huang for a very long time. Now that the Raiders'' team of nine investigators had been completely wiped out, the Raiders'' headquarters in the universe would certainly have made note of Lin Huang''s name, even if he was under Royal''s protection. Lin Huang had initially intended to stay under the radar as long as he could and try to develop himself further while trying his best to avoid being noticed by the Raiders. After all, there were many powerhouses among the Raiders and no lack of terrifying entities above Lord-level. Even though Lin Huang possessed the abilities of an ultimate-rank Lord, he was still afraid of this organization. After removing the equipment and storage rings from the nine corpses, Lin Huang checked through the bodies carefully, then extracted the Kingdoms from all of them. Only after doing all this did he begin to examine the Goldfingers he had managed to plunder. Regretfully, out of the nine, only three possessed Goldfingers. The reason was that only three of them were travelers. Nine Snake, the most powerful of them all, was not a traveler. Instead, like Virtuoso''s Primordium, he was a reincarnated being. As for the rest, they were reincarnated beings and regenerated beings. Even Silver, the upper-rank Lord, was a mechanoid. Respectively, the three Goldfingers came from the short, burly, bald man, the white-robed Priest, and the plump man who was the most powerful damage dealer. The short, burly, bald man''s Goldfinger was a drop of golden liquid. He had named it Pure Golden Blood. As for its effects, it integrated blood from various sources, extracting the body''s energy from within the blood itself to strengthen his physical body. The more types of blood integrated, and the higher the rank and level, the more effectively the physical body could be strengthened. For Lin Huang, this was actually quite useful. Currently, his physical body was his weakest aspect. Although he had refined Black Mountain''s Goldfinger, the Tiny Golden Man, his current physical strength was only upper-rank lord-level. After understanding the information on the Pure Golden Blood, Lin Huang did not take long to come up with how he subsequently wished to operate it and utilize it. The second Goldfinger came from the white-robed Priest. His Goldfinger was a golden particle of light which he had named the Holy Light. The sense that the Goldfinger gave off to Lin Huang was one of nothingness. He observed it with Divine Telekinesis for a while and realized that it was actually a photon. He did not know what mysterious changes had occurred to transform it into a Goldfinger. This Goldfinger''s function was also very extreme. The photon could convert all kinds of energy into the form of light, which would then give them the properties of light. This included Divine Power, Odyl, and even Abyssal energy the Goldfinger could absorb and convert them all. It could be considered a highly unconventional Goldfinger. Lin Huang felt that this Goldfinger was an extremely simplified version of the Eternity Fire within him. Practically all of this Goldfinger''s functions could be fulfilled by the Eternity Fire. As far as Lin Huang was concerned, it was of no use to him at all. After setting the Holy Light aside, Lin Huang looked at the third Goldfingerthe one from the plump Lord. This Goldfinger was a metal hammer the size of a human palm. It was dark purple and covered with sigils. Lin Huang casually picked it up and checked it out with his God''s soul. He could not keep the hint of a smile from showing on his face. "This is good stuff!" Despite having plundered so many Goldfingers from the Raiders, this was the first time he had given an evaluation like this. Although the Goldfinger was shaped like a hammer, it was not a weapon. Its function was to generate random critical hits. However, this Goldfinger was actually not very useful in the initial stages of utilization. In the first stage, its effect could range from 0 to 10 times the damage. The critical index might very well randomly appear as 0, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 any of these were possible. In other words, not only would the Goldfinger not generate a critical hit, but it would also weaken or even nullify the user''s attack. It could weaken the strike to one-hundredth or one-thousandth of its regular damage or even reduce the damage to absolute zero. Furthermore, the smaller the index, the higher the probability of this happening. Therefore, at this stage, the Goldfinger was a massive resource sink. When it got to the second stage, its effect would increaseit would now range from 1 to 20 times the damage. At this stage, the Goldfinger would finally stop being such a massive resource sink. The plump Lord had cultivated this Goldfinger to stage three. Its current effect was 2 to 30 times the damage. In other words, critical hits of at least two times the damage would be generated in each attack, with the maximum effect being thirty times the damage. That was why the plump Lord''s ability to deal damage was the most powerful among the six middle-rank Raider Lords. Having this Goldfinger in his possession completely dispelled Lin Huang''s initial disappointment at only being able to obtain three Goldfingers. This Goldfinger had only boosted the plump Lord''s close-range damage-dealing abilities by just a little. However, with Lin Huang, it was an entirely different story. Each of his hundreds upon millions of Divine Telekinesis flying daggers would be boosted with critical hits. Hundreds upon millions of Divine Telekinesis flying daggers all attacking en massejust the thought of it was terrifying. Most importantly, this Goldfinger still possessed space for continued upgrades. All he had to do was to refine more Goldfingers. This also piqued Lin Huang''s interest in hunting Raiders. Setting the two other Goldfingers aside, Lin Huang immediately began refining the hammer-shaped Goldfinger. With the Goldfinger''s cooperation, he completed the refining process in less than ten minutes. Lin Huang then turned his attention to the drop of Pure Golden Blood and rapidly refined this second Goldfinger as well. As for the "Holy Light", he gave the matter some thought and ultimately decided to feed it to the "Critical Hit Hammer". After all, this item was too extreme. If he gave it to Lin Xin, it might cause her cultivation path to deviate. After the Critical Hit Hammer integrated with the "Holy Light", it immediately went into deep sleep mode. Lin Huang had not anticipated this at all. If nothing else, the critical hit effect he wanted could not be achieved while the Critical Hit Hammer was in deep sleep. He had no choice but to wait for it to finish digesting. He then checked on the status of the drop of Pure Golden Blood in his body and discovered that it did not clash with the Tiny Golden Man. Not only that, it was rapidly strengthening his physical body. Not very long later, Lin Huang''s initial ordinary upper-rank lord-level physical strength elevated all the way to peak upper-rank lord-level. However, it stopped at upper-rank lord-level and refused to elevate any further. Lin Huang raised his eyebrows lightly. This was entirely within the realm of his expectations. After all, the short, burly, bald man''s physical strength had only been peak upper-rank lord-level before receiving a complete boost. Furthermore, Lin Huang had already decided on how to elevate his physical strength after this. Chapter 1691 - Dao-Level Although Lin Huang had only obtained three Goldfingers, he was fairly satisfied with matters. Once the Critical Hit Hammer had completed the digestion process and its function began formally taking effect, his abilities would gain another round of significant boosting. This Goldfinger could be considered the perfect match for his Divine Telekinesis flying daggers. With several hundred million flying daggers attacking en masse, even if there were only one chance in ten thousand for a thirtyfold critical damage hit, there would still be several dozen thousand flying daggers with the statistical probability of generating this thirtyfold critical hit effect. Just this one Goldfinger alone made Lin Huang feel that this round of killing Raiders had been extremely profitable. After putting away the nine corpses, he summoned the Gate of All Realms again. He planned to begin a second round of harvesting so he could obtain another batch of True Spirits. After stepping through the Gate of All Realms, Lin Huang emerged in the virtual realm once more. As soon as he teleported over, he sensed intense battle fluctuations. He probed with his Divine Telekinesis and discovered that, apart from Nine Snake and his eight team members, there were also over a dozen other figures present. There were six auras that clearly belonged to the Abyssal Tribe. Out of these six auras, two were from upper-rank Lords, and four were from middle-rank Lords. There were seven other aurashuman, Protoss, and a member of the Dragon Tribe. One of the humans and the one member of the Dragon Tribe were upper-rank Lords, while the rest were all middle-rank Lords. From the looks of things, Nine Snake and his team had disrupted the initial equilibrium after their arrival, and this had caused an uprising among the residents. Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis even noticed that there was a handful of remaining Bug Tribe beasts scattered across the battlefield; they were fleeing for their lives. Their numbers consisted solely of Heavenly Gods and True Gods. These were most likely the Bug Tribe fighters that had formed the Divine Magic Winged Bug Lin Huang had killed earlier. Since Xiao Hei had captured the lord-level Bug Queens'' True Spirits and turned them into card monsters, only these remaining Bug Tribe fighters had shown up in the virtual realm. In their leaderless state, they could not even consolidate a bug formation. Without a doubt, the True Spirits of these Heavenly Gods and True Gods were delicious delicacies to lord-level True Spirits. As soon as the trillions of Bug Tribe fighters showed up, a group of Lords immediately devoured them. When they had almost eaten all of the bug beasts, the Lords'' True Spirits very quickly got into a free-for-all skirmish. As a result, they had not noticed Lin Huang''s arrival at all. ''I didn''t expect there to be surprises still.'' When Lin Huang saw what was happening, he felt happy all over again. He had previously thought that there might be lord-level True Spirits remaining in this area since it had been the largest ancient battlefield for humans and the Abyss. However, he had not expected such a startling number of them. After ascertaining the number of True Spirits, Lin Huang did not bother continuing to watch them fight. He shook his sleeves, and millions of God Weapon flying daggers shot out at lightning speed, enveloping the entire battlefield instantly. In less than the time it took for a breath, True Spirits began to die one after the other, turning into Origin Energy spheres one by one. Within ten seconds, the entire battlefield had fallen completely silent. The twenty-two lord-level True Spirits that had just been fighting a fierce battle to the death were now all transformed into Origin Energy spheres of various colors. As Lin Huang looked over these twenty-two Origin Energy spheres, the expression on his face was rather peculiar. Of these twenty-two spheres, two had unusually powerful auras. Although they were currently sealed, the faint auras that managed to seep out from the two Origin Energy spheres made Lin Huang''s hair stand on end. "What on earth is this?!" Now that he possessed ultimate-rank Lord abilities, he could distinctly sense that the power of the energy contained within the two Origin Energy spheres most definitely exceeded lord-level! Amid his confusion, the Soul-controlling Tablet suddenly spoke up. "These two spheres ought to be Origin Energies that were converted from the True Spirits of regenerated beings." "Is there anything special about the True Spirits of regenerated beings? Why is their Origin Energy so powerful?" Lin Huang was even more confused now and immediately pursued the matter further. "You''ve come to the right person for answers, at least. One of the previous masters I served happened to be a regenerated being, so I''m familiar with such matters. "A regenerated being''s True Spirit is innately powerful. That''s a prerequisite for becoming a regenerated being. "After a regenerated being dies, their True Spirit retains its awareness of self when it returns to the virtual realm. This also allows them to advance faster than other True Spirits in the virtual realm, in terms of becoming more powerful. They''re more acute at sensing the fluctuations of Dao seals and reincarnation gateways in the material realm. "However, no matter how many times they''re reborn or how powerful their abilities in any of their reincarnations, after they die, the True Spirits of regenerated beings possess only the abilities they attained in that particular life right before their deaths. "After a regenerated being''s True Spirit is destroyed, however, the resulting Origin Energy that they are converted into is the sum total of all the accumulated energies of every previous reincarnation of the host. "There are two possibilities as to why these two Origin Energy spheres are so powerful they exceed lord-level. "Onethey''ve reincarnated multiple times, and their abilities in many of those lives were fairly powerful. Therefore, upon accumulation, their True Spirit''s Origin Energy has exceeded lord-level in terms of power. "The other possibility is that in one or more reincarnations, their combat strength exceeded lord-level, so their True Spirit''s Origin Energy has now exceeded lord-level as well. "Whichever reason it is, you''ve gained an incredible benefit. "It''s the equivalent of killing an upper-rank Lord and a middle-rank Lord, but obtaining two Origin Energies that exceed lord-level." "You can tell who these two Origin Energies belong to?" Lin Huang asked in some surprise. "That''s not hard. After all, I''m an expert in God''s soul." The Soul-controlling Tablet seemed to be purposely making an insinuation at the Brain of the Soul with this comment. It then continued, "The black one exuding dark red mist belongs to the middle-rank lord-level woman in the red robe. The purple one with its surface shrouded in faint red mist belongs to the upper-rank Lord named Scarlet Fox." "Which one is Nine Snake''s?" Lin Huang asked immediately. He had no real reason to doubt the Soul-controlling Tablet''s identification. However, he initially thought that one of them ought to be Nine Snake''s. After all, Nine Snake possessed the most powerful abilities of the nine Raiders. "The one with black mist shrouding its surface and a blood-red interior is Nine Snake''s." The Soul-controlling Tablet pointed it out without a pause. Lin Huang looked at the Origin Energy sphere indicated. He did not think that this sphere was very much more powerful than the silver one. As if it had noticed Lin Huang''s doubts, the Soul-controlling Tablet continued. "After a True Spirit dies, the Origin Energy''s power isn''t entirely connected to ability. It''s mainly related to combat strength and God''s soul''s strength. As long as one''s combat strength and God''s soul are similarly powerful, the Origin Energy will be somewhere around that level as well. "However, in the material realm, one''s actual combat ability is tied to many external factors. "It''s like that upper-rank Lord named Nine Snake. His abilities are powerful mainly because he''s a reincarnated being. He gained many benefits from the reincarnation dimension. Furthermore, he often battled different enemies in different worlds, which also allowed him to rapidly accumulate actual combat experience. "In truth, his God''s soul''s strength and the number of Dao seals he mastered isn''t that much higher than that of the other two upper-rank Lords." "So that''s what it is." "At your current God''s soul''s strength, you''ll be able to absorb these two minor dao-level Origin Energies, albeit with difficulty. However, my personal suggestion is that it''s best if you absorb them only when you''ve elevated to peak ultimate-rank lord-level. After all, the chances of your God''s soul''s strength breaking through to lord-level and achieving minor dao-level within the immediate future are fairly low, but it''s certainly possible for you to get to peak lord-level. "Only absorb them when you''ve elevated to peak lord-level. For one, the burden on your God''s soul during absorption will be far less taxing. For another, your absorption efficiency will also be much higher." Lin Huang gave a slight nod, then asked curiously, "I''ve heard of dao-level before, but what''s this minor dao-level that you''ve mentioned?" "The level above lord-level is dao-level, which is divided into minor dao-level and major dao-level. "Using three thousand Dao seals to establish your own Divine Dao is called minor dao-level. Using thirty-six levels of minor dao-level to consolidate Divine Dao twicethat''s called major dao-level. "That''s why there''s a saying in the universe that goes, "Three thousand minor dao, one hundred thousand major dao". "Is there a level that''s higher than dao-level?" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up. "There ought to be" The Soul-controlling Tablet coughed twice in a slightly embarrassed manner. "However, I''ve only heard about minor and major dao-levels. I''ve never seen powerhouses as strong as that before. As for anything higher, that would have to be a level that I previously couldn''t reach." "Alright, then" Lin Huang thought it was a pity, but he was still delighted. This conversation with the Soul-controlling Tablet had not only allowed him to gain a great deal of new knowledge, but it had also given him even bigger hopes for the future. Ultimate-level Lord was far from the limit. The universe was certainly considerably more vast than that! Chapter 1692 - It’s Time In the virtual realm cabin, Lin Huang went into closed-door cultivation again. This time, his main objective was to refine the Kingdoms of Nine Snake and the other Raiders. In the cabin, days went by. Lin Huang completely lost all concept of time as he immersed himself fully in the refining process. It was unclear how much time had passed when he finally managed to refine all nine Kingdoms completely. On average, the short, burly, bald man and the other five middle-rank Lords had contributed approximately 80 Dao seals, which had given Lin Huang an increase of 483 Dao seals. His Dao tattoos had also shot up to over two million in number. Nine Snake and the other two upper-rank Lords had added 2,728 Dao seals to Lin Huang''s existing total, and his Dao tattoos had increased to over twelve million in number. This brought the total number of Dao seals in Lin Huang''s Kingdom to 4,618 and significantly increased his Dao tattoos to over 33 million. It could be said that this had exceeded the limits for an upper-rank Lord. However, this was merely the limit of the power that he was able to use within his Kingdom. In reality, outside his Kingdom, his ability was still restricted by the strength of his God''s soul. Apart from being able to invoke the three million levels of Dao tattoo power from his three Dao seals, at most, he could only borrow the Dao seal power of the 1,000 Dao seals in his Kingdom to give himself a further boost of 1.8 million levels of Dao seal power. As long as he did not encounter a top-notch ultimate-rank Lord, he could fight anyone at all. However, if he descended into his Kingdom, the total number of Dao seals currently within it was enough to defeat all ultimate-rank Lords. This round of ability boosting was something entirely within the realm of Lin Huang''s expectations. After refining the Kingdoms of the nine Raiders, he did not proceed with the absorption of the twenty-two Origin Energies. Aside from the two minor dao-level Origin Energies, he fed the remaining twenty spheres to Xiao Hei. This was because Xiao Hei needed Origin Energy to create various cards. Lin Huang needed Xiao Hei''s help to create a lot of Advance Cards and Combat Strength Upgrade Cards so he could elevate the imperial monsters under his control to a level where they could be useful. Furthermore, to Lin Huang at present, lord-level inheritances were not of very much use to him, even if there were Sword Dao cultivators and Lords with cultivation paths that specialized in God''s soul. For those that were truly useful to Lin Huang, Xiao Hei could also use a small amount of Origin Energy to create Inheritance Cards, so there was no need for Lin Huang to absorb all of the Origin Energies. As for the two minor dao-level Origin Energies, Lin Huang decided to keep them for the time being. He would use them when he was finally able to do so. He was not in a hurry to elevate his ability at present anyway. The twenty Origin Energies that Xiao Hei had absorbed were sufficient to elevate all of his imperial monsters to Pure Spirit rank-6 Lords. As soon as he returned from the virtual realm to the Demon Eye Star Zone, Lin Huang summoned Yang Ling and passed him the storage rings from Nine Snake and the other Raiders. Yang Ling immediately sensed the anomaly when he received the dozen or more storage rings. With some curiosity, he scrutinized them. "This batch of storage rings isn''t from our great world, right?" Yang Ling asked off-handedly as he carefully checked the rings. "They''re from the universe." Lin Huang nodded with a smile. Yang Ling paused what he was doing when he heard that, and raised his head to look at Lin Huang. "Raiders?" "That''s right." The smile on Lin Huang''s face did not change. "You handled all of them?" Yang Ling pursued the matter further. "Not a single one was left." Lin Huang nodded again. "Didn''t they send any upper-rank Lords?" Yang Ling was rather puzzled. Theoretically speaking, since a middle-rank Lord had been killed, there had to be upper-rank Lords among the investigators sent by the Raiders'' headquarters. Yang Ling felt that Lin Huang''s abilities were likely not enough to handle the investigators that the Raiders sent this time. "Yes, three came. One of them had abilities that weren''t bad at all," Lin Huang commented with a smile. "You killed all three upper-rank Lords?!" Yang Ling looked utterly shocked. "I happened to achieve a small breakthrough before they arrived. I can only say that they were unlucky." Yang Ling was rendered speechless. After quite a while, he could not help asking, "What exactly is your level of ability now anyway?" In reality, he had been wanting to ask this question for a long time and finally could no longer resist the urge. "It''s almost the equivalent of an ultimate-rank Lord." Lin Huang silently added, ''If I don''t go into my Kingdom.'' "Your elevation speed in terms of ability is just too frightening for words," Yang Ling exclaimed involuntarily. He could be considered someone who had witnessed Lin Huang''s development as it progressed. When Yang Ling first met him, Lin Huang was only at bronze-level. He had seen Lin Huang''s combat strength elevate significantly along the way until lord-level, encountering practically no bottlenecks at all. All this time, Yang Ling had even suspected that Lin Huang''s Goldfinger had a connection to the elevation of his combat strength. After passing the storage rings to Yang Ling, Lin Huang wanted to let Lin Xin and the others out from his Kingdom. After all, for the time being, the threat from the Raiders was resolved, and he felt much more at ease about their safety. Moreover, under the Sword Servants'' covert protection, nothing would happen as long as they did not offend any half-step Lords or Lords. However, Lin Xin rejected his suggestion when he brought it up. Her reason was very simple. She wanted to become more powerful and did not want to be a burden. Lin Xuan, Xiao Mo, Chan Dou, and the rest also declined to return to the great world. Lin Huang had previously been worried that they would be bored staying in his Kingdom, so he had selected a hive and duplicated it for them so they could kill time through combat training. It turned out they had become rather addicted to killing monsters in the duplicate hive. They could train their combat skills and elevate their combat strength as wellthere was no need to waste time moving to another place. The reactions of Lin Xin and the others actually surprised Lin Huang a little. He guessed that most likely, the move back into his Kingdom this time had caused them some pressure as well. Naturally, they felt that they ought to become stronger. Even if they could not fight enemies of the same level as Lin Huang, at the very least, they would not hold him back, nor would they give him trouble. Lin Huang had to admire this sort of attitude, however. It was a good thing for one to have a desire to improve. In truth, he had been concerned that Lin Xin and Lin Xuan might become too sheltered and over-protected under his aegis. However, for a time after that, he had also felt that as long as he was a sufficiently powerful guardian, it would not matter if his siblings were sheltered. Allowing them to have a stable life was by no means a bad thing. However, from the looks of things, Lin Xin, Lin Xuan, and the others had never lost their enterprising spirit. All along, they had hoped to be able to share the burden with Lin Huang. It was just that their abilities were not yet up to par. Seeing that Lin Xin and the rest had made up their minds, Lin Huang chose to respect their decision. He merely informed them that they could return to the great world any time they wished. Lin Huang was smiling as he withdrew his consciousness from his Kingdom. The decision that Lin Xin and the others had made gave him a great deal of comfort. After only a moment of letting his mind wander, Lin Huang soon communicated through his consciousness with the contract within him. He then spoke to his imperial monsters through voice transmission. "All of you can stop gathering resources for now. Return to the Demon Eye Star Zone in the human world as soon as possible." The smile on Lin Huang''s face grew increasingly brighter after he sent the message. "It''s time to build my lord-level rank-6 imperial monster army...." Chapter 1693 - The Return Of The Imperial Monsters Within less than a day of Lin Huang sending the message, the imperial monsters returned one by one. This included not just Tyrant, Thunder, and the others who were waiting for advancement and elevationeven Bai, Grimace, and those who had already elevated to the level of Pure Spirit Lords came back as well. Naturally, what surprised Lin Huang the most was Bloody''s return. The group of imperial monsters gathered in the meeting room of the hotel. Lin Huang smiled at Bloody, who was clad in a red dress, and commented, "I honestly didn''t expect you to be able to come this time." "Didn''t you say there would be a surprise when I elevated to ninth-rank heavenly god-level? I wanted to see just what sort of surprise this is." Bloody''s smile was bright and blossoming like a flower. Lin Huang felt she was distinctly more feminine now compared to before. "Don''t worry. My surprise this time definitely won''t disappoint all of you," Lin Huang answered, smiling. To maintain the mystique of the surprise, he even intentionally asked Bai and the others, who had elevated to lord-level, to disguise their combat strength to ninth-rank heavenly god-level. "Since you''ve elevated, that means Kylie has as well, right?" Kylie was the only one absent from the gathering of imperial monsters this time. Lin Huang could understand this. Given her current identity and position, it was indeed quite difficult for her to leave the Nephilic Judge Tribe. "She elevated a day earlier than I did," Bloody said, grinning. "She wanted to come too. However, she''s the Queen of the Nephilic Judge Tribe now, so she has to have a half-step Lord covertly guarding her wherever she goes. Since this gathering is our private meeting, after all, it would be extremely inconvenient to have an outsider along." "It seems we''ll have to visit the Nephilic Judge Star Zone when we have the time." If he let Kylie cultivate on her own, it would definitely be extremely difficult for her to break through to lord-level within the immediate future. It might take a few years or even a few dozen years. After all, some Heavenly Gods would only dare to attempt a further breakthrough after staying at ninth-rank heavenly god-level for tens of thousands of years, or even several hundred thousand years. Lin Huang felt that he might break through to dao-level in a few years. At that point, it would be quite meaningless for Kylie and the rest to elevate to Lords. His purpose for elevating his imperial monsters'' ranks and combat strength this round was so they could catch up with him and take some of the burden off his shoulders. His imperial monsters were also very willing to take on these burdens. "Why did all of you come back this time?" Lin Huang looked at Bai and the others who had completed their advancement and combat strength elevation. "I suggested it," Bai answered bluntly. "To join in the fun." There was no emotion in Lancelot''s voice at all. "I just felt it''s been a long time since we all gathered together. We''ve nothing to do anyway. I thought we may as well come back to visit our old partners and meet some new friends while we''re at it," Grimace said, casting a surreptitious glance at Silver Armor, Nine Gloom, and the several Bug Queens led by Queen Mother Shasha, all of whom were sitting in a corner. At his current level of ability, he could easily sense that the group of Bug Tribe beasts were all lord-level powerhouses. The truth was, Grimace was not the only oneBai, Charcoal, and the rest of their group had also noticed that the new additions were already lord-level. Meanwhile, the newcomers such as Shasha and the others were rather curious about Lin Huang''s several existing Queen Mothers and Bug Queens. Lin Huang took the entire group of imperial monsters for a meal. After that, he opened the door to the Kingdom and had them all go in. This time, their teleport destination was right in front of the Great Heaven Palace. Lin Huang grandly led the group of imperial monsters into the Great Heaven Palace. He then used Advance Cards and Combat Strength Upgrade Cards on them one by one. In the palace, cocoons of various colors and sizes rapidly began forming. Bai and the rest watched this familiar scene in silence; they did not interrupt at all. It was not until all of the imperial monsters had completely transformed into cocoons that Bai could not help asking a question. "There''s a middle-rank Lord in that group of bug beasts?" "Yes, there is. Its name is Xia Ke, a rank-5.5 middle-rank lord-level Bug Queen." Lin Huang nodded, smiling. Bai and the rest fell silent immediately. Clearly, they felt the force of the pressure emanating from this newcomer. "It''s innately well predisposed, but it doesn''t mean that it will always be more powerful than all of you." Lin Huang patted Bai''s shoulder. "On the path of cultivation, the person you must compete with is yourself. There''s no need to compare yourself with others." Bai hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "Actually, meeting up with everyone isn''t our main purpose for coming back this time" "What''s your main reason, then?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. He knew Bai''s character and Grimace''s even better. He was aware that they would not specially come back just to meet up for a gathering. "We want to become more powerful!" Seeing that Bai did not continue his sentence, Grimace took the initiative and finished it off for him. "We don''t want to immediately become powerful with the help of the cards. We want to fight in actual combat to strengthen ourselves for real," Bai added. "I don''t mind becoming more powerful right away with the help of the cards," Grimace protested innocence immediately. "It''d be best to elevate me to ultimate-rank Lord instantly; I''d become powerful without even having to lift a finger." "You wish." Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. Xiao Hei had the ability to do this, but it would drain far too much Origin Energy. Lin Huang felt that elevating his imperial monsters'' abilities was something that could be done when necessary. However, under the current circumstances, there was no need to do so. Grimace''s abilities were fully sufficient for now. Elevating his combat strength again would be a complete waste of resources. Moreover, if they depended on Xiao Hei to elevate their combat strength every time, in the future, his imperial monsters might not be willing to work hard on cultivation. If not for the fact that Lin Huang felt his imperial monsters'' abilities were too far behind his own, he would not have had Xiao Hei do a collective elevation for them this time. Naturally, Lin Huang knew that Grimace was only half-serious when he said this. "A way to elevate your abilities quickly" Lin Huang thought quietly for a moment. In reality, he had already been thinking about this matter. However, before this, he had not been sure if he wanted to carry out his plan. However, now that Bai and the rest had requested it, he felt he could satisfy their needs. "Let''s go outside and talk about this." Lin Huang accelerated the time flow in the Great Heaven Palace to be 10,000 times faster than the outside world, then led Bai and the rest back to the Demon Eye Star Zone. Once he had returned to the hotel room, Lin Huang summoned Mr. Gate (the Gate of All Realms) immediately. "Behind this door is a place called the virtual realm. You can enter using a virtual body, take part in battles, and obtain Origin Energy. However, only three people can enter per day. Furthermore, once you die, you can''t enter for 24 hours" Actually, Lin Huang had initially thought about sharing the virtual realm with his imperial monsters. After all, at their current level of ability, Bai and the others could hardly find any opponents in the great world. By letting them into the virtual realm to hunt on their own, they could elevate their actual combat ability, for one. For another, they could also obtain Origin Energy. Moreover, the virtual realm was within the boundaries of the great world, and most of the Lords were lower-rank and middle-rank. For Bai and the rest, they were actually the most ideal combat opponents. However, Mr. Gate was currently limited to the creation of three virtual bodies a day. In other words, only three imperial monsters could enter every day. They would have to take turns. Furthermore, as soon as Lin Huang entered to go into closed-door cultivation, it would occupy a slot as well. However, to upgrade Mr. Gate any further, he had to refine other Goldfingers. For the time being, there was no way to solve the entrance limit. Chapter 1694 - Entering The Virtual Realm For The First Time "Is this the virtual realm? It doesn''t look that different from the material realm." Charcoal, who had shrunk himself in size, perched on Bai''s shoulder and looked around. "Are you color blind, Little Charcoal?" Grimace had a snide smile on his face. "Can''t you tell that the world is black and white?" "You''re the one who''s color blind!" Charcoal retorted instantly. "Then tell me, what''s the color of my sock?" Grimace pulled up his right pant leg and revealed a sock with alternating yellow and red stripes. Charcoal merely scoffed, "I don''t want to answer your childish question." "Stop wasting time. Let''s quickly locate a target and finish the hunt as soon as possible," Bai interrupted the conversation between the two at once. Grimace finally curbed his tongue. His Odyl rapidly began forming a star map in front of him. Before they had come here, Lin Huang had shown the three of them the star map and gotten Grimace to record it. "This is the Demon Eye Star Zone where we are right now" Grimace circled a region on the star map that was similar to a closed eye. "This is the biggest Abyssal rift in the human world. "Based on what master has said, he''s already cleared this star zone cluster. "If we want to hunt Voids, we''ll have to leave the Demon Eye Star Zone cluster far behind and go to the other surrounding star zones. There might not be any suitable prey within close range." "What are you trying to say?" Bai asked bluntly. "We actually have a hidden choice" Grimace''s lips curled up in a slow grin. "We can go deep into the Abyss and hunt there! "Although master didn''t mention it, I''m pretty sure he didn''t go deep into the Abyssal rift." Bai fell silent for a moment. Charcoal, on the other hand, agreed with the suggestion immediately, "I think that works. Instead of wasting time going to other star zones looking for targets, we might as well go straight to the Abyss. We might be able to kill over ten Voids in the Abyss in the time we spend looking for a Void in other star zones." Bai hesitated for a moment but ultimately agreed in the end. "We can go to the Abyss, but first, let''s get this straight. The two of you must behave when we go in." "That''s fine by me," Grimace agreed right away and looked at Charcoal. "Why are you looking at me? I always listen to Bai Bai." Charcoal''s expression was that of an angelic little child. After ascertaining their target, the three of them quickly made their way to the Abyssal rift. As soon as they entered the Abyss, they distinctly sensed a malicious intent approaching. "We seem to have been targeted by someone through Divine Telekinesis," Charcoal commented to Bai and Grimace. This advance notice was also for the other two to give instructions for what to do next. "That proves we''ve found the right place." Grimace not only displayed no signs of panic, but he was also thrilled. "Don''t get reckless. This is the Abyss, after all." Bai was much more cautious. Theoretically speaking, True Gods and Heavenly Gods would also enter the virtual realm after they died. However, if there were lord-level Voids in the surrounding star zones, they would end up being food. This was also why most of the Voids Lin Huang had seen were lord-level. Based on the information Lin Huang had provided, it was not hard to determine that most of the Voids in the Abyss ought to be primarily lord-level. The reason was that there were many Lords inherent in the Abyss. Over the years, there must have been a considerable number of them who had died there. A Lord occupied one single region, and each region ranged in size from several star zones to dozens of star zones. The Heavenly Gods and True Gods basically had very little space to live. "The Divine Telekinesis strength is normal; it shouldn''t be hard to handle." Grimace swiftly evaluated the opponent. After all, he was also a powerhouse who specialized in God''s soul. He could roughly gauge the strength of an individual''s Divine Telekinesis strength by mere contact. "Maybe I should try first?" "We''ll let you have the first target then, and we''ll take turns after that. The three of us can fight one each in turn. If we run into something we can''t handle alone, then we''ll fight it together." Bai nodded slightly. Grimace had no objections to this. He took a step forward and vanished on the spot. When he reappeared, he was already hundreds upon thousands of lightyears away. Grimace frowned imperceptibly as he studied the deformed monster, which looked like a skinned human with its entire body shrouded in black mist. "What a truly hideous creature." The skinned, deformed monster seemed to understand what Grimace had said. It was clearly quite enraged. With a shriek, it pounced at Grimace in a flash. Immediately, golden sigils appeared in Grimace''s eyes. An instant later, the skinned, deformed monster''s body suddenly froze where it was and did not move at all. It had obviously been hit by Grimace''s illusion. Within a mere moment, the skinned, deformed monster''s life force swiftly weakened. Eventually, its life force faded away completely, and it turned into a grayish-black Origin Energy sphere. From beginning to end, Grimace had remained where he was. He was the only one who knew what exactly had transpired in the illusion. "Is this Origin Energy?" Grimace flung out his hand and grabbed the grayish-black Origin Energy sphere. He could clearly sense that this human fist-sized sphere contained terrifying energy and a massive amount of information. He hesitated for a second. Instead of absorbing it right away, he returned to Bai and Charcoal in a flash with the Origin Energy sphere in his grasp. "So fast?!" Charcoal exclaimed involuntarily. "The target was more or less what I had anticipated. It was only a lower-rank Lord with five Dao seals and mediocre abilities. It wasn''t proficient in God''s soul technique either, so it got hit by my illusion right away," Grimace gave a brief account of the battle earlier, "The one thing we need to beware of is not to be contaminated by Abyssal energy." "Is this Origin Energy, then?" Bai gave a sidelong glance at the Origin Energy sphere in Grimace''s hand. "It should be." Grimace nodded. In actual fact, they had never seen what an Origin Energy sphere looked like. They only had a rough idea from Lin Huang''s description. "The energy it contains is truly very terrifying." Bai nodded slightly. "This thing will definitely elevate our combat strength very quickly. I wonder if there are any restrictions on its use?" "It doesn''t just contain energy; there''s a great deal of information stored within it," Grimace corrected him from where he was standing to one side. "Are those redundant memories or inheritance information?" Bai asked again. "I think it might be both." "Try refining it," Bai urged. "I think that even if there''s inheritance information in there, it won''t be of very much use to me. I''m too different from that guy." Grimace shook his head. "I thought I''d keep it first and swap with both of you when you come across anything that''s more compatible with my personality." "I think that''s a great idea," Charcoal expressed immediate agreement, "That way, we can obtain the inheritances we really want to a much greater extent, instead of obtaining a lot of inheritances that aren''t useful to us." "I think that''s a feasible idea too." Bai nodded as well. "My suggestion is that we can first refine those that we think are most suitable for us and leave the rest. Not only can we trade among the three of us, but there''s also Lancelot and the others after this. Later, there''ll be the group that''s currently undergoing advancement in the Demon Star Zonewe can exchange with all of them as well. When more people are involved, it''ll be easier for us to obtain the inheritances we want most." Bai only turned his head to look at Charcoal after watching Grimace put away the Origin Energy sphere. "You can take the next target." "No problem.." Charcoal immediately got excited and got into combat-ready mode almost at once. Chapter 1695 - Xia Ke Breaks Out Of Its Cocoon In the material realm, Bai and the others stood where they were, momentarily dazed, before regaining their senses. Although Lin Huang had told them beforehand that the flow of time in the virtual realm was quite abnormal, he could still see that Lancelot and Teng Ran''s expressions were thoroughly confused. However, the more puzzled one was Lin Huang. "Didn''t the three of you find any monsters to target?" Lin Huang asked this because he sensed that the auras of all three did not seem to have changed much in terms of strength. "We found quite a few. It''s just that we didn''t absorb the Origin Energy." After saying this, Bai brought up their idea of the three of them exchanging Origin Energy spheres. After listening to what they had to say, Lin Huang approved as well, "I think that''s actually even better. Using it to its full potential will allow for higher overall utilization of the Origin Energy. "I have another idea. If there are any Origin Energy inheritances that aren''t suitable for you, pass them to me. I''ll feed them to Xiao Hei directly." Bai and the rest had no objections to that. After all, Xiao Hei could only create higher grade Advance Cards if it had stored sufficient Origin Energy. They had now elevated to Pure Spirit rank-6, but they did not think that rank-6 was the ultimate end. "After going in for a while, how do you feel?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. "The virtual realm is truly an amazing placethere are many battles we can take part in!" Charcoal was the first to give an assessment as if the virtual realm were an instance dungeon in a game. "There are a lot of powerhouses there. It also made me realize that lord-level is just a stop on the cultivation path, not the ultimate destination," Bai sighed ruefully. Grimace, on the other hand, was all smiles. "It''s an awesome hunting ground!" "How long did you stay there?" Lin Huang inquired further into the matter since this was something he really could not gauge at all. This was because even if they stayed in the virtual realm for hundreds upon thousands of years, only a moment would have passed in the outside world. "We only stayed for less than five months, and we encountered a middle-rank Lord with around thirty Dao seals. We joined forces and almost defeated it. Unfortunately, that Death Fiend suddenly generated a burst of power and destroyed our virtual bodies" Charcoal had barely finished speaking before Bai and Grimace''s expressions turned somewhat grim. "Death Fiend? You went to the Abyss?" Lin Huang frowned slightly. "Not Death Fiend, Charcoal made a slip of the tongue. It was a Four-winged Fiend," Grimace corrected hastily. "A Four-winged Fiend was able to cultivate to lord-level?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows and looked at Grimace. "Or was it a middle-rank Lord?" "We went to the Abyss," Bai admitted frankly. "I forbade all of you from going to the Abyss because there are a great many powerhouses there. Furthermore, the Abyss is gradually entering its waking season, and it''s an extremely dangerous period. Even though I currently possess the ability to kill ultimate-rank Lords, I still wouldn''t dare go to the Abyss during this season whenever I liked. I''ve prohibited you from going because I''m worried that you might die there. "However, the situation in the virtual realm''s Abyss ought to be slightly better. At the very least, there won''t be as many monsters. Not only that, since all of you entered using virtual bodies, even if you died, your consciousness would directly return to the material realm. "Therefore, I won''t prohibit all of you from going into the virtual realm''s Abyss. However, keep in mind that as soon as you die, your hunt in the virtual realm will come to an end. You''ll just have to wait for your turn again. "You can see right now that only the five of you have completed advancement and elevation to lord-level. However, half an hour later, Tyrant and the rest will advance to Pure Spirit rank-6, and their combat strength will elevate to lord-level as well. You''ll have to wait for at least ten days or so before it''s your turn again. "So my suggestion is to stay for as long as you can once you enter the virtual realm. As for whether or not you want to go into the Abyss, that''s entirely up to you. "I genuinely forgot about that group. I thought it would be Lancelot and the rest''s turn tomorrow, and then it would be our turn again the day after tomorrow." Grimace covered his face with one hand. "I told you not to provoke that Death Fiend, but you refused to listen" Charcoal looked upset. "We could have just bypassed him and hunted more Voids." "That guy''s ability was only so-so. We would definitely have won if it hadn''t generated that burst of power in the end!" Grimace was still somewhat dissatisfied. "It better not get killed by the other teams in the interim. We''ll go back the next round and finish him off !" "We''re doing it again next round?!" Charcoal was clearly somewhat reluctant. "Challenging powerhouses is also a way to cultivate." Surprisingly, Bai also approved of the idea. "You''ll just have to think it through carefully since whatever choice you make, you''ll have to bear the consequences." Lin Huang did not offer any suggestions. "The two of you can go for the second round tomorrow. You can choose another teammate from the imperial monsters that have elevated this round." Lin Huang looked at Lancelot and Teng Ran. There were only two of them, one less than the required team of three. Lancelot barely hesitated at all. "I choose Bloody." Teng Ran, standing off to one side, had no objections. He knew that as a veteran, Lancelot had a much better in-depth understanding of the others. "That''s a great choice." Lin Huang nodded, smiling. Lancelot''s choice this time was indeed very wise. Of all the imperial monsters under Lin Huang, Bloody was the one with the highest intelligence, perhaps even more so than Grimace. It could even be said that her overall planning skills and other abilities had far surpassed Grimace. With her as a teammate, they practically did not need to think at all. All they had to do was follow her. Furthermore, Lancelot was a powerful striker, so he was not in need of a teammate with those sorts of abilities. Therefore, Bloody was an excellent choice. "You can try inviting Bloody. However, it''s up to her whether she''s willing to join you all or not," Lin Huang said with a smile, "If she disagrees, you''ll just have to look for another teammate." "I want to be in a team with Bloody too" Charcoal muttered from where he was off to one side. "Little Charcoal, you have me and Baiisn''t that enough?" Grimace turned his head and asked in all seriousness. "Um" For a moment, Charcoal did not know how to answer this question. "Let me see the results of your hunting." After sorting out the second round of team members who would enter the virtual realm, Lin Huang turned to look at Bai and the other two. The three of them immediately took out the Origin Energy they had stored in his Kingdom. There were a total of twenty-seven Origin Energy spheres. Twenty-five of them were from lower-rank Lords, and two were from middle-rank Lords. Lin Huang was satisfied with these results. The number of targets was fairly acceptable. After all, the God''s souls of all three had just broken through to lord-level very recently. Their Divine Telekinesis coverage was limited, so their efficiency in searching for Voids was much lower than his. He gave the twenty-seven Origin Energy spheres a cursory examination. From the sense of the auras, most of the inheritances ought to be useful to the imperial monsters. The group of them had not chatted for very long in the Demon Star Zone before Lin Huang sensed imperial monsters were breaking out of their cocoons one after the other. As Lin Huang had anticipated, the first one to emerge from its cocoon was the Bug Queen Xia Ke. It had previously already been at Pseudo Pure Spirit rank-5.5. In addition, its innate combat strength was middle-rank lord-level, and it did not use a Combat Strength Upgrade Card. Its elevation time, therefore, was the shortest of them all. However, right as Xia Ke broke out of its cocoon, it suddenly sent Lin Huang a message through telepathic voice transmission. Lin Huang could not help frowning when he saw the message it had sent. Chapter 1696 - Bug Hordes Will There was only a single sentence in the telepathic voice transmission that Xia Ke sent. "I sensed the prying of the bug horde''s will during my elevation." Lin Huang fell into a moment of silence after hearing that. He teleported Xia Ke from the Great Heaven Palace to where he was. Xia Ke, in the black bug shell, was clearly one-fold larger now. There were no changes in its combat strength. It was still a middle-rank Lord, but its aura was clearly more powerful than before. "You said that you sensed the prying of the bug horde''s will. What does that mean exactly?" Lin Huang ignored the fact that Bai and the rest were next to him and asked directly. Xia Ke organized its thoughts before speaking, "The bug horde''s will is our Bug Tribe''s supreme will. Its authority is even higher than the Queen Mother''s will. All Bug Tribe creatures are unable to disobey it." "I sensed the prying of the bug horde''s will, but maybe He was just glancing casually. However, as soon as He notices me, there''s no way I will be able to disobey any orders that He gives me. That''s the thing that I''m most worried about." "Have you never sensed the bug horde''s will prying or watching you in the past?" Lin Huang continued to ask. "No." Xia Ke shook its head, "Only rank-5 Bug Tribe Queen Mothers are blessed by the bug horde''s will once they are born." "Then how did you know that it was the bug horde''s will?" Lin Huang was rather confused. "Because the will was extremely majestic. It gave me the feeling that I couldn''t disobey it at all. It far surpassed the bloodline pressure coming from the Queen Mother that gave birth to me. Although it was just a glance, it gave me the feeling that it could tear the contract between master and I easily." Xiao Hei suddenly spoke as well once Xia Ke was done speaking. "I sensed that too. That unknown will was unusually powerful." "Is it really possible for it to break our contract?" Lin Huang asked instantly. "It''s highly possible. After all, my ability is restricted by your combat strength. The strength of the contract I established for you is only enough to constrain dao-level powerhouses." "This is a powerhouse above dao-level. It''s entirely possible that it could tear apart someone else''s contract." Lin Huang squinted slightly and only spoke up after a moment of thought. "If it''s not an accident that you sensed the bug horde''s will when you elevated to Pure Spirit rank-6, it proves that there''s a high chance of Queen Mothers being noticed by the bug horde''s when they elevate to Pure Spirit rank-6. Can I interpret things this way?" Xia Ke nodded without hesitation. "The chances of Queen Mothers being noticed when they elevate would definitely be higher." "You''re from the Bug Tribe. What do you think the bug horde''s will do as soon as it finds out about the Queen Mothers'' elevation?" Xia Ke fell into a moment of silence. It gave an answer soon after. "I''ve no idea what He exactly would do but, if He really noticed the elevation of the Queen Mothers, He definitely won''t allow anyone to bind them with a contract." "So, will He destroy the contract?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. "Not only will He destroy the contract, but He will also send His wrath to punish the contractor." Xia Ke corrected him. "What''s the punishment?" "I don''t know, but it won''t be as simple as destroying the contract." Xia Ke was sure. Lin Huang nodded lightly and he looked at Bai and the rest. They were listening as they stood aside. They heard the conversation between Lin Huang and Xia Ke loud and clear. "Do you have any decent suggestions to address this situation?" "My suggestion is simple. Just kill all the imperial monsters that might potentially be a hidden threat. Wouldn''t it be the same if you used the extra resources on others?" Grimace was the first to speak while smiling. "Moreover, the slots to get into the virtual realm are limited. We won''t have to wait as long in the queue if a batch of imperial monsters are gone." What he said clearly crossed the line a little bit. Even Charcoal who was standing next to him took a few steps to distance himself. "You" Xia Ke was so mad that it temporarily could not speak up. If not for the fact that Lin Huang was here, it wanted to hit Grimace directly. "I think we can monitor the situation first. If there''s really an issue, you can seal the imperial monsters back to their card forms and then come up with a solution later." Bai thought about it and gave his suggestion as well. "I agree with Bai." Charcoal flapped its wings instantly and leapt onto Lin Huang''s shoulder. Its size had shrunk intentionally at this moment. It was approximately the size of a magpie currently. Lancelot and Teng Ran did not voice their opinions at all. They merely listened as they stood to the side. "I''m worried that it''ll be too late if we wait for the issue to present itself. I think it''s better to nip the problem in the bud immediately." Grimace persistently advocated his perspective. Lin Huang glanced at Lancelot and Teng Ran. The two of them still did not seem like they were going to voice their opinions on the matter. He turned his head to look at Xia Ke. "What do you think?" "I''m not sure whether it was an accident that I attracted the attention of the bug horde''s will, therefore, I don''t know what exactly will happen when the Queen Mothers complete their elevation. However, I don''t think you should decide to kill us just like that." "I hope that you''ll monitor the situation first, master. If something is wrong with the contract, seal us. I''ve no objections to that. You can figure out a solution to handle us when that happens." Naturally, Xia Ke agreed with Bai''s suggestion. It could not think of a better way to go about things. "Let''s do it according to Bai''s suggestion." Lin Huang made the final decision. Xiao Hei''s voice suddenly chimed in after Lin Huang had made up his mind. "The bug horde''s will showed itself again. He didn''t try to destroy the contract. He retreated after leaving an imprint on Shasha." Lin Huang could sense that Queen Mother Shasha had completed the elevation. He immersed his consciousness into the Kingdom in his body and teleported Shasha before him directly. Shasha, who had just completed the elevation, was stunned momentarily. It only snapped back to its senses when it saw Lin Huang and Xia Ke. "Greetings, Master." "Shasha, do you feel anything amiss after completing the elevation?" Lin Huang asked directly. "The bug horde''s will showed itself. He watched me for a moment and left a blessing imprint on me." An imprint was revealed on Shasha''s waist as it spoke. It was a complicated black sigil. It looked similar to a tattoo. Lin Huang stared at it for a while, but could not make heads or tails of it. "Do you know the exact effect of this imprint?" Lin Huang asked further. Shasha did not lie. That was a good thing at least. "It''s just a blessing imprint. It''s similar to the blessing that we were given when we were born, but more powerful," Shasha explained. "This imprint provides us longevity, a more powerful body and improves our chances of producing high-grade offspring Those are the effects of the blessing." Shasha looked like it was telling the truth, but Lin Huang did not trust it entirely. "Is it possible that the bug horde''s will can influence the Queen Mother''s thoughts directly?" Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei secretly. "The possibility is low, but we can''t rule it out completely. After all, we don''t know what kind of techniques and abilities the beings above Lord-level possess." "As such, we can only observe if the remaining few Queen Mothers encounter similar things when they complete their elevation and make our judgment based on what they say." Lin Huang felt rather troubled. He did not expect to have such a situation arising out of nowhere.. He had initially been waiting happily for his lord-level imperial monster army to emerge from their cocoons. Chapter 1697 - The Imperial Monsters’ Competition As the Great Heaven Palace accelerated time by 10,000 times, the imperial monsters soon broke out of their cocoons one by one. Lin Huang teleported them over as the few Queen Mothers completed their elevations one after the other. After questioning them, he found out that they had encountered the same thing as Shasha did. The bug horde''s will left a blessing imprint on their bodies too. Lin Huang did a detailed comparison by scanning them with Divine Telekinesis. The sigils of the imprints were completely different. Each imprint looked similar, but there were subtle differences. The Queen Mothers had the same understanding as Shasha regarding the imprints. They thought it was a blessing imprint. On the surface, Lin Huang could not see any problems in these Queen Mothers. He checked them thoroughly with Divine Telekinesis again, but failed to find anything out of the ordinary. Given that Xiao Hei did not sense any issues with the contracts, Lin Huang eventually decided to put the few Queen Mothers onto his watchlist for the time being. He did not seal them into their card forms. Instead, he got Xiao Hei to watch these Queen Mothers'' cards'' conditions at all times. As soon as it noticed anything off, it would seal them instantly. To Lin Huang, no matter what the bug horde''s will did, as long as nothing happened to the contract, these Queen Mothers would still be under his control. Moreover, Xiao Hei would seal them as soon as any situation occurred. It would only take a second. After settling the unforeseen circumstance that arose from the elevations of the few Queen Mothers, Lin Huang questioned and investigated the few Bug Queens, excluding Xia Ke for safety purposes. In the end, the investigation result was that, apart from Xia Ke, all of the other Bug Queens did not sense the prying of the bug horde''s will. They did not have a blessing imprint left on their bodies, nor did they experience anything unusual. Lin Huang guessed that it was perhaps because Xia Ke was the first to elevate, thus gaining the attention of the bug horde''s will. Clearly, a Pure Spirit rank-6 still did not deserve the bug horde''s will''s attention. Not only that, he could tell that as beasts of the same rank, which was rank-6, a Queen Mother''s status was much higher than that of the Bug Queens. Lin Huang thought about it carefully. He could understand why the Queen Mothers'' status was higher. Queen Mothers had a certain chance of breeding offspring that were a rank higher than they were. Theoretically, a rank-6 Queen Mother might give birth to a rank-7 offspring. Although the chances were extremely low, it was not impossible. Moreover, even in the universe, a rank-7 being could definitely be considered as somewhat heaven-defying. After handling the Bug Tribe''s emergency, all of the imperial monsters in the Great Heaven Palace had broken out of their cocoons and completed their advancement and elevation. Lin Huang''s lord-level rank-6 imperial monster army had finally been established. He began to check the Monster Cards one after the other. "Monster Card: Bloody" "Rarity: Pure Spirit" "Monster Name: Wise Goddess" "Type of Monster: Super Wisdom-type" "Nickname: The Wise One of the Era" "Combat Level: Lower-rank Lord (level-1 Dao seal)" "Major: Intelligence" "Major Skills: Perfect Parasitism, Total Control, Heart of Knowledge, Inheritance Duplication" "Minor Skills: Memory Administration, Immortal Tinder, Consciousness Transfer" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this!" "Monster Card: Tyrant" "Rarity: Pure Spirit" "Monster Name: Genie Combat Saint" "Type of Monster: Celestial Giant Tribe" "Nickname: Combat Saint" "Combat Level: Lower-rank Lord (level-1 Dao seal)" "Major: Combat God Dao, Martial Dao, Combat Cultivation" "Major Skills: Combat Saint Technique, Galactic Power, Combat God Ax" "Minor Skills: Immortal Being of the Galaxy" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this!" Bloody, Tyrant, Thunder, Bloody Robe, Fiend, Imp, Witch, Death Knight, Fallen Knight, Warlord, Herculean King, Bing Wang, Eclipse Boa, Dark Crescent Snake, Killer, Evil Dominator, Abyssal Fountain (Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain), Nine Gloom (Silver-armored Nine Gloom) as well as Shasha, Xia Ke and the bunch of Bug Tribe beasts Lin Huang looked at the cards one by one. None of the Mythical-level rank-4 and Supreme God rank-5 Monster Cards from before were left behind. All of them had been elevated to Pure Spirit rank-6. Not only that, apart from Kylie, all of the remaining members had been elevated to lord-level. Naturally, Lin Huang only got Xiao Hei to consolidate a Dao seal for them. The imperial monsters would have to do the rest on their own. After all, consolidating a Dao seal would drain a great deal of Xiao Hei''s Origin Energy. Moreover, Lin Huang had helped his imperial monsters to cross the most difficult hurdle. He did not want his imperial monsters to slack off and get lazy. The imperial monsters guessed what Lin Huang had in mind. After all, they would have to gather materials to elevate each time before. If not for the fact that they were slowing him down too much, he would not be in such a rush to skip the step of getting them to gather materials. Lin Huang glanced through the many imperial monsters present. He was planning to give them some pressure. "Since everyone is here today, I''d like to be frank about something. "The resources that I provided to elevate everyone to lord-level is almost the limit I can bear at my current level." "You guys will have to depend on yourselves for the next combat strength elevation." "Also, the resources required for your elevation to the next rank, which is rank-7, will be tens or even hundreds of times more than the amount used this time. I''m not sure if I can gather enough resources to elevate all you guys by then when we get to that stage." "I''ll be honest now. If the resources are insufficient at that point, then I''ll most probably prioritize elevating those who have a higher level of combat strength." "Also, I''m aware that your combat strength has just received a boost at this moment, and that you''re quite proud of yourself, but I''ll let you in on a secretLord-level is far from the end." "Above the lord-level, there is the minor dao-level, major dao-level and levels that are even higher than those." "I''m not sure how far I can go, but I hope that you guys can work hard enough to keep up with me." They thought that they were invincible since they had just been elevated to Lords, but instantly felt pressure by Lin Huang''s words. When they looked around again and realized they all had the same combat strength and that they were on the same starting line, the pressure they felt became even greater. Although they knew what their master said was to add a sense of pressure on purpose, they understood that they definitely required even more resources to elevate to rank-7. If their master really had insufficient resources at that point, then he could only choose to elevate a portion of his imperial monsters. If their performance was not as outstanding as the other imperial monsters, they might stay at rank-6 forever. To the imperial monsters who had just felt how powerful Pure Spirit rank-6 was, that was definitely something that was hard to accept. Moreover, there were more levels above lord-level. To most of the imperial monsters present, it was like a bombshell had been dropped on them. They had not been aware of this previously, and a sense of ambition was slowly growing within them Lin Huang was secretly relieved seeing the imperial monsters beginning to develop a competitive mentality. ''As I thought, only competition can boost their will to fight!'' Chapter 1698 - The Application Of The Pure Golden Blood "You guys don''t have to worry too much about obtaining resources." Lin Huang looked at them and calmly told them about the virtual realm. "From now on, I''ll send three of you into the virtual realm each day to hunt Voids and obtain Origin Energy. You can absorb the Origin Energy you obtain if you deem it suitable for you. If it''s not suited to you, you can swap it with others." "As there''ll be three in a group each time, you guys can come up with your own teams. Also, I''ve given the slots today to Bai, Charcoal and Grimace. The second team that will go tomorrow will be Lancelot''s team." "Therefore, after all the teams have entered once, you guys will follow the current order in the future to enter for the second, third cycles" "If one of the team members of the team that''s supposed to go in has an emergency or cannot make it, you guys can discuss with the other teams to propose a change in the order of entry. Of course, the member who had something come up must communicate with the other two members to reach an agreement beforehand." "Also, I''ll inform all of you in advance if I need to use the virtual realm. The team that is supposed to go in will have to delay their turn to the next day." "You guys can ask Bai, Charcoal and Grimace regarding the exact situation regarding the virtual realm." "You guys can discuss the swapping of Origin Energy too." "Lastly, I want to tell you something that might upset you guys a little. I''ll be taking 30% of the Origin Energy you guys obtain in the virtual world." Lin Huang mentioned the distribution ratio after explaining the rules roughly. "I''ll tell you the reasons why I''m taking a portion." "Firstly, you guys are actually taking up my hunting slots to enter the virtual realm. If I didn''t give you the slots, I could go into the virtual realm three times a day. Not only that, my hunting efficiency is much higher than yours." "Secondly, Xiao Hei requires a huge amount of Origin Energy to make all sorts of cards, which includes the accumulated energy required to create the higher level Advance Cards later on. Most of my share of the Origin Energy will eventually be used on you guys." "My personal suggestion to you guys would be that, after you''ve obtained Origin Energy from the hunt, you should consider prioritizing keeping the Origin Energy that suits you and the Origin Energy that''s suitable for swapping. Let me handle the Origin Energy that''s not suitable for trading." Indeed, Lin Huang suggested taking a share from them because, after giving these slots to enter the virtual realm to the imperial monsters, it would mean that Xiao Hei would lose its source of Origin Energy replenishment. After taking that into consideration, Lin Huang had been repeatedly thinking about a solution and eventually decided to "exploit" the portion of the deficit from his imperial monsters. Most of the imperial monsters were quite dumbstruck when they heard about the arrangement in the beginning. It was not that they were unwilling. It was just that they did not understand why Lin Huang would suddenly come up with such an arrangement. However, they thought it made perfect sense after hearing his explanation. "I have a tiny request before you all start teaming up." Lin Huang''s lips curled into a smirk. "I need all of you here to provide me with a drop of your blood essence." Lin Huang did not elaborate on this matter any further. Although they did not understand why exactly Lin Huang wanted their blood essence all of a sudden, none of them objected. They went forward one by one to provide their blood essence. Bloody did not ask when she saw that Lin Huang was unwilling to tell them the reason. She went forward as well to give her blood essence. Lin Huang only spoke again after gathering all of the imperial monsters'' blood essence, "Alright. That''s all I have to say. All of you can pick your teams now. Report your teams to Bloody when you''re done." "Regarding the order of teams going into the virtual realm, let''s follow the sequential numbering of the teams. Bai''s team will be No. 1, and Lancelot''s will be No. 2. Whichever team that reports to Bloody first will be No. 3. That''ll be the order." Lin Huang came up with such an arrangement with the goal of preventing them from wasting too much time picking their teams. Although it did not actually make much difference by nature if it was done a few days earlier or later, everyone would have been occupied with thoughts of fighting for the first place. They were unwilling to be placed further behind in the sequence. Within five minutes, all of them had come up with their teams. Bloody had also given the sorted list to Lin Huang. He listed down the sequence and dates and made the information public to indicate his fairness. All of the teams jotted down the dates their team would be going into the virtual realm instantly. "You guys can stay in the Demon Eye Star Zone for the time being. You can do whatever you want as long as you make it back in time to enter the virtual realm officially." Lin Huang gave them their freedom after he was done speaking. The imperial monsters surrounded Bai, Charcoal and Grimace immediately and began to ask about the virtual realm. Lin Huang flashed and returned to the Great Heaven Palace. The first thing he did when he returned to the Great Heaven Palace was to adjust the time flow. He then sat with his legs crossed and dripped the blood essence onto the Goldfinger Pure Golden Blood one by one. The function of the Pure Golden Blood was to absorb different varieties of creatures'' blood and extract their energy to strengthen the host''s physical body. The more types of blood that were integrated, and the higher the rank and combat strength of the creatures, the better the effect of strengthening his physical body. The quantity of blood did not really matter, as the Pure Golden Blood only needed a drop of blood to extract its primary substance. After doing that, it could duplicate the substance on its own. Lin Huang had already thought about how he would use it as soon as he obtained the Goldfinger earlier. After all, he had many imperial monsters under him. Although Bai and the rest only had lower-rank lord-level combat strength, their current rank was Pure Spirit rank-6. The nutrients in their blood essence might have surpassed many ultimate-rank Lords. As Lin Huang expected, after the Pure Golden Blood absorbed the first drop of blood essence, his physical strength began to undergo a new round of strengthening. The level of his peak upper-rank Lord''s physical body began to loosen. After absorbing the third drop of blood essence, Lin Huang''s physical strength finally broke through again, stepping into the realm of ultimate-rank Lord. As the Pure Golden Blood continued absorbing the blood essences, Lin Huang''s physical strength skyrocketed. In the end, after absorbing all of the blood essences, his physical strength grew to peak ultimate-rank lord-level, just shy of the upper limit. Initially, physical strength had been his biggest shortcoming. However, his physical strength had now surpassed the strength of his God''s soul. In reality, this result was not really what Lin Huang had expected. He initially thought that, even if he absorbed all of the blood essences, the physical strength boost coming from the Pure Golden Blood would be limited. After all, Bai and the rest only had the combat strength of lower-rank Lords. He had previously estimated that it would be good enough if his physical strength could break through to ultimate-rank Lord. He did not anticipate that he would break through all the way to peak ultimate-rank Lord at all. "This round of strengthening is pretty great." Lin Huang was very satisfied with the overall results that far exceeded his expectations. The truth had proved that the Goldfinger Pure Golden Blood''s effect was much more powerful than he initially thought. Under the accelerated time flow in the Great Heaven Palace, merely a moment had passed before Lin Huang returned to the Demon Eye Star Zone. The imperial monsters were still surrounding Bai''s team to ask about all sorts of information regarding the virtual realm. Lin Huang was the only one who knew that he had become much more powerful after that fleeting moment in time. As the disparity between the imperial monsters'' abilities and his were too vast, they did not sense any changes from him at all. Chapter 1699 - Upgraded To Rank-S Over the next few days, one after the other, the imperial monsters entered the virtual realm everyday to hunt for Void beasts. Bloody joined Lancelot and Teng Ran''s team on the second day. After the hunt ended, she created a clone to return to the Nephilic Judge Star Zone. Given her current identity and status, although Kylie was definitely safe with the Nephilic Judge Tribe, Bloody was still a little worried about leaving her alone with them for long periods of time. Bai, Grimace and a small number of imperial monsters left the Demon Eye Star Zone after getting out of the virtual realm. However, most imperial monsters chose to stay. Lin Huang would obtain a 30% share of the Origin Energy collected by the imperial monsters'' daily. Although it was not much, it was better than nothing at all. He did not remain idle over the past few days either. He received the Nine Snake team''s storage rings that had been unsealed from Yang Ling. The items in there had far surpassed Lin Huang''s expectations. Among them, Nine Snake''s collection was the most shocking. As a reincarnated being, Nine Snake could not refine Goldfingers. However, there were three Goldfingers in his storage ring. Clearly he had obtained these after killing travellers, and had not had the opportunity to trade them. Lin Huang checked the three Goldfingers. Almost all of them were of the lowest grade and had mediocre functions. He placed them into the Gate of All Realms to refine them. After spending a few days refining them, the number of virtual bodies the Gate of All Realms could create increased to six. Lin Huang increased the daily allocations for the imperial beasts to enter the virtual realm from one team to two. Apart from three Goldfingers, Nine Snake''s storage ring contained all sorts of reincarnated beings'' tools and medicines. Even Lin Huang coveted some of these tools and medicines. However, these were exclusively for reincarnated beings. Others could not use them at all. Not only that, some of the tools and medicines could only be used in the reincarnation dimension. Lin Huang could not get into the reincarnation dimension, and therefore could not use them. He could only post them on Royal''s auction to sell them. He did not have to worry about people bidding on them by mistake since he included a remark stating that these items were exclusively for reincarnated beings. There were many powerhouses in Royal, which meant that there were definitely entities such as travellers and reincarnated beings. In reality and in the universe, reincarnated beings, travellers and regenerated beings were not a secret to powerhouses at the lord-level and above. Though Lin Huang could not use the reincarnated beings'' tools and medicines, there were other more valuable items in Nine Snake''s storage ring. There were tens of Dao Weapons alone. Moreover, most of them were expert-grade Dao Weapons. There were even two supreme-grade Dao Weapons. To Lin Huang who possessed God Weapons, these were valuable items that could be traded. The person who had the second most valuable collection was the upper-rank Lord, Scarlet Fox. Scarlet Fox was a regenerated being, which was probably why he knew some of the ancient secret zones and ruins that outsiders were unaware of. There were hundreds of Dao Weapons in his collection. However, these were mostly intermediate-grade Dao Weapons, amounting to a total of about 60 intermediate-grade Dao Weapons. There were over 20 low-grade and expert-grade Dao Weapons. There was one supreme-grade Dao Weapon. Apart from Dao Weapons, there were other luxury items such as precious stones in his storage ring as well. These were not just accessories. Most of them were engraved with complicated sigils and could boost one''s capabilities to an extent similar to that of Dao Weapons. Lin Huang was not too sure whether they were gifts he received or if they were items he planned to give away as gifts. There were hundreds of these luxury items. He speculated that the price of each luxury item was on par with some of the Dao Weapons. The one who had the third most valuable collection was not the upper-rank Lord, Silver, but rather the middle-rank Lord, the mummy-like man. He was a regenerated being too. The number of Dao Weapons in his storage ring was only second to Scarlet Fox. There were over 80 Dao Weapons. However, most of them were intermediate-grade Dao Weapons. There were only five expert-grade Dao Weapons. Lin Huang also received a surprise gift from his storage ring. There were over a hundred bottles with a variety of lord-level beings'' blood essence. Lin Huang immediately thought of feeding the Pure Golden Blood again. There were no surprises to Lin Huang on what the remaining Raiders had in their storage rings. The value of their contents was similar to what he had anticipated. The one that disappointed him the most was Silver''s storage ring. As an upper-rank Lord, apart from a Goldfinger, there was almost nothing that Lin Huang could use in his storage ring. He thought there would be mechanoids who would be interested in those items if he auctioned them on Royal''s auction. The Goldfinger, on the other hand, was of the lowest grade. Lin Huang gave it to the Gate of All Realms to absorb without much hesitation. After that, the Gate of All Realms could create seven virtual bodies daily. After briefly sorting out spoils, Lin Huang posted the items that could be sold on Royal''s auction. He evaluated the valuable ones and decided that they could only be traded with upper-rank Lords'' and ultimate-rank Lords'' God Territories. Those that were not valuable could be traded with middle-rank Lords'' and upper-rank Lords'' God Territories. Naturally, he did not forget to include the remarkThere was no limit to the type of God Territories. Bug Tribe and Abyssal ones were also acceptable. As he was not in a hurry, Lin Huang set the auction duration to last a month. The next morning, after doing an inventory of the spoils and posting more of them on the auction, his Royal Token suddenly vibrated. He thought something had gone wrong with his trades, so he took out his identity token immediately. However, a call request popped up directly as he spread his Divine Telekinesis over it. Lin Huang looked at the name. It was Liu Fu. He was stunned for a second, before he clicked the answer button shortly after. The next moment, Liu Fu''s image projection appeared not far from Lin Huang. "Congratulations, Brother Lin Huang!" Liu Fu congratulated him with a smile on his face as soon as his image was projected. "From today on, just like me, you''re a Royal Rank-S member." In reality, when Lin Huang saw Liu Fu''s name on the call request, he had already guessed that he would be calling about this. Nevertheless, he was still slightly surprised. "Is the Royal Rank-S evaluation that easy?" It had only been less than three days. Not only that, nobody came looking for him for assessments of any sorts. After all, as a job seeker on Earth in the past, you would have to go through at least one round of interview after sending in your resume before being selected. The company would only get them to start working after meeting the job seeker and deeming the person suitable for the job. However, there was not even an "interviewer" from Royal for the Rank-S evaluation this time. Lin Huang thought that the process was a little too easy. "Was it easy? Royal''s headquarters receives tens of hundreds of applications to upgrade the members to Rank-S almost every year. There might not be even one person who passes the application over tens of years." Liu Fu looked at Lin Huang with a smile. "The passing rate is so low?" That fact indeed surprised Lin Huang. "What do you think?" Liu Fu continued, "Your application passed so quickly because I recorded the entire battle between you and Nine Snake''s team. Your ability, talent and potential were shown completely. After the superiors saw it, they passed your evaluation unanimously. Nobody voted against you." "Aren''t they worried that the video might be fake? Shouldn''t they at least send someone to verify the applicant''s ability?" Lin Huang raised his doubts anyway. "Firstly, I recorded that battle video as a Supervisor. I used tools exclusive to Supervisors to record the video. The video was saved immediately, and was recorded into Royal''s network database directly. The video can''t be edited." "Secondly, I saw the entire battle with my own eyes. The superiors asked about you as well. I''m a Rank-S member, so I have a certain amount of credibility in Royal. I wouldn''t lie for the sake of a newbie. Moreover, some of these entities would be able to tell if I''m lying at glance." "To put it simply, your brute force proved your qualifications. You even surpassed the average Rank-S member''s standard. Therefore, it was easy for your application to be approved." Liu Fu explained in detail. "What''s the difference between a Rank-S and Rank-A member?" Lin Huang stopped dwelling on the difficulty of being upgraded and asked about something else instead. "The difference is quite significant. Rank-S members are considered to be Royal''s core members. There''s a great upgrade in your authority, as well as all sorts of rights." "Rank-S members can apply for resource subsidies annually. There are also the convoy quotas. Convoys will enjoy Rank-A member''s treatments in Royal. The number of affiliate organizations under you increases too. The authority relative to that has been upgraded as well. Also, you won''t have to pay any handling fees to participate in Royal''s auction" Liu Fu said a bunch of things. "I won''t go into the specifics. You can check the details and description yourself." "To put it simply, Rank-S members are Royal''s biological sons, while members below Rank-S could only be considered their illegitimate children." Chapter 1700 - Kylie’s Decision After hanging up on Liu Fu, Lin Huang checked his current account authorization status instantly. "Member: Lin Huang" "Gender: Male" "Authorization level: Rank-S" "Qualification Assessment: Grade-S+" "Combat Strength: Lower-rank Lord-level" "Affiliate Organizations: Dynasty (Two-Star), Misery (Two-Star)" "Remarks: He killed Raider''s peak upper-rank lord-level powerhouse Nine Snake with his lower-rank lord-level combat strength." As expected, his personal information page was altered to Rank-S, and there was an update on his related information as well. He looked at the exact contents of the Rank-S authorization status in detail. He found out that it was indeed as Liu Fu said, Rank-S members were almost considered to be Royal''s biological sons. Firstly, Rank-S members could conduct trades of all kinds in Royal without having to pay the handling fees. This authorization perk was not only useful in Royal, but was also applicable to all of Royal''s affiliate organizations. As long as it was registered under Royal, he would not have to pay their handling fees. To Lin Huang, this was the perfect time to use his new Rank-S authorization status. He could seize the opportunity to list a bunch of items on the auction. The Rank-S authorization would save him the handling fees. Not to mention, the money-saving authorization perk was only considered an insignificant benefit among the many authorization perks included in the upgrade. Among all of them, Lin Huang thought that the most practical perk was the one that gave him complete access to all trial zones. He could not help but compare it to the description of his previous authorization status. "Rank-A Authorized Member: Access to any grade-0 to grade-3 trial zones, 30 grade-4 trial zones, ten grade-5 trial zones and ten great world trial zones." "Rank-S Authorized Member: Unlimited access to any trial zones (a small number of forbidden areas are excluded from this clause)." One must know that the trial zones were either ruins or secret zones. In reality, it was equivalent to one instanced dungeon. It would mean that Lin Huang had countless instanced dungeons available for him to grind. The resources he could obtain would not be limited to the great world he was currently in. Even the authorization status for the members of his affiliated organizations received a qualitative upgrade. "Rank-A Authorized Member: Access to any grade-0 trial zones, 80 grade-1 trial zones, 20 grade-2 trial zones, ten grade-3 trial zones, three grade-4 trial zones, one grade-5 trial zone and one great world trial zone." "Rank-S Authorized Member: Unlimited access to trial zones of any grades, any great world trial zones and most public trial zones in the universe." Theoretically, the treatment Royal provided was enough for their Rank-S members to train and cultivate a batch of lord-level subordinates. Lin Huang thought for a moment and registered the Sword Alliance as an affiliate organization under him. Considering that Sword1 and the rest were at the heavenly god-level, he registered the Sword Alliance as a grade-4 organization. After passing the Royal headquarters'' assessment, he could send anyone and everyone from the Sword Alliance into the trial zones'' instanced dungeons that best suited their levels. Lin Huang glanced through the remaining authorization perks. Very soon, he saw one that he was interested inthe convoy authorization. Rank-S members could set up their own convoys. The total quota of such convoys was ten. As soon as the setup process was completed, all his convoys would possess Royal''s Rank-A membership identity. They would enjoy all of the Rank-A member authorization perks that Royal provided. Rank-S members could add, change or remove a convoy as they wished, as long as the quota requirement was met. Seeing this authorization perk, Lin Huang thought of Bloody and Kylie first. The both of them would possess Royal''s Rank-A membership identity if he assigned them a convoy quota. He could totally grow the Nephilic Judge Tribe as an organization under him. He only dwelled on this thought for a second before telling his idea and the information regarding Royal to Bloody and Kylie via telepathic voice transmission. Later on, he proceeded to examine the remaining authorization perks. "Resource subsidies" Lin Huang soon noticed an authorization perk that had not existed prior to this. "Rank-S members can apply for an annual resource subsidy once per year. They can choose a subsidy with a value equivalent to a supreme-grade Dao Weapon" "The subsidy authorization perk can be accumulated and stored without being claimed over the course of many years. The value of the subsidy would stack cumulatively" "This means if someone sets it aside and doesn''t claim it for tens of thousands of years, they can apply to claim a subsidy that''s equivalent to tens of thousands of supreme-grade Dao Weapons?!" Lin Huang widened his eyes. One had to say that Royal was generous indeed. A Rank-S member''s annual benefit was comparable to a supreme-grade Dao Weapon. To his surprise, this benefit could even be accumulated. However, when he thought about it carefully, Lin Huang figured that such a reward would be inconsequential to other Rank-S members. The reason being that, as Liu Fu had said, most Rank-S members in Royal were at the dao-level. There were only a few members who were below the dao-level. A supreme-grade Dao Weapon would look pretty valuable from the perspective of a lower-rank Lord. However, to dao-level powerhouses, supreme-grade Dao Weapons would not interest them at all. When he thought up to this point, Lin Huang instantly understood the reason why Royal set up a subsidy system that could accumulate over time. To Lin Huang, the accumulation would not mean much either. It had only been a few years since he started cultivating. Tens of thousands of years aside, he even had no idea what level he would be at after cultivating a hundred years from now. Naturally, he would choose to claim it every year. Apart from resource subsidies, there was another reward that made Lin Huang happy. The reward he would receive from being upgraded to Rank-S was a dao-level item. Just when Lin Huang was thinking about what kind of dao-level item he should pick as his upgrade reward, Kylie and Bloody seemed to have arrived at a conclusion from their discussion and replied to his telepathic voice transmission. "We''ve decided to accept the convoy quotas." Kylie sent a couple of voice transmissions consecutively. "I only came to this decision after much thinking. At first, my concern was that I couldn''t decide things for the Nephilic Judge Tribe as I wished. The reason being that they might not be willing to become dependent on Royal. However, what Bloody said makes sense. I''m also one of the Nephilic Judges. I can try my best to change the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s fate. "This is the only Nephilic Judge Tribe left in this great world. There are only a mere hundreds of individuals left, and their fertility rate is extremely low. Although it''s a top grade-6 organization that looks majestic from the outside, in reality, they''re barely scraping by among all the other organizations that are their equals". "Perhaps getting them some backing is the best choice to change the entire tribe''s fate. Although it sounds demoralizing to depend on Royal and become an affiliate organization, this great world is Royal''s territory after all. All grade-7 organizations are protected by Royal. It doesn''t make much difference for us to become an affiliate organization." "Moreover, the abundant resources Royal provides could get the Nephilic Judge Tribe out of their current predicament" Lin Huang thought about it and replied to Kylie via voice transmission. "Do you want to make the Nephilic Judge Tribe an organization under you when you receive the convoy status? You guys can decide that yourselves. If you''re certain that you want to do that, I''ll give you and Bloody full authority regarding management in the future.. I won''t intervene." Chapter 1701 - Its Not Too Late For A Gentleman To Take Revenge In Two Years Lin Huang would be completely free over the next few days. Royal''s auction had yet to end, so he did not want to go into closed-door cultivation for the time being. However, he was not a person who could stay idle. Thus, he got Kylie to help gather information regarding the Myriad Tribe Palace. "The Myriad Tribe Palace is a top grade-6 organization in the God Territory. Its overall ability is almost only second to the five grade-7 organizations with Lords guarding them. There''s a rumor in the God Territory that their Palace Master and Vice Palace Master are supreme powerhouses at half-step lord-level. They have thousands of Heavenly Gods and countless True Gods under them" Lin Huang had many thoughts floating about in his head as he read about the Myriad Tribe Palace. The Myriad Tribe Palace was the culprit behind why the gravel world''s cultivation civilization was destroyed over and over again. The Thousand Snake Sect that attacked was just a pawn of theirs. If he did not kill the Thousand Snake Sect''s intruders himself, and moved the gravel world into the Kingdom in his body, the gravel world''s cultivation civilization might continue to be destroyed over and over again. Nobody knew how long it would suffer through this endless loop. Just over two years ago, the Myriad Tribe Palace was a giant that Lin Huang could not afford to offend. Since arriving at the great world, he had disguised himself, taking on many different identities over and over again as he was afraid that the Myriad Tribe Palace would find him. He initially thought that this large mountain would hinder him for a long time. He never imagined that, in less than three years, he would arrive at a point where exterminating the Myriad Tribe Palace was a viable option. "Since I''m free these few days, I should seize the opportunity to solve this matter once and for all." Lin Huang thought it was almost time to put an end to this grudge. He did not have the ability nor the time to do so in the past, but this was no longer the case in the present. However, Lin Huang did not plan to fight them on his own this time. As he spread his Divine Telekinesis out, he realized that Lancelot, Tyrant, Charcoal and the rest were nearby. He communicated via voice transmission to his imperial monsters, excluding the Bug Tribe, directly, "Gather everyone. We''ll drop by the God Territory for some training." Almost the next second after the voice transmission was sent, Charcoal landed on Lin Huang''s shoulder in a flash. "Are we going to fight?!" Charcoal had a look of excitement etched all over its face. It had initially wanted to get Bai and Grimace to bring it out of the Demon Eye Star Zone, but they rejected it, claiming that they had some personal matters to deal with. Charcoal had been upset for the past two days because of that. Lin Huang figured that they probably went to the Abyss and refused to bring Charcoal along, worried that it would let slip their plans and tell him where they went. He did not stop them. As long as they were not killed by dao-level powerhouses, his Kingdom could actually revive the imperial monsters under him. Given Bai and Grimace''s current abilities, the places they could go to in the Abyss were rather limited, and there was a high probability that there were no dao-level powerhouses in those places. Lin Huang hit Charcoal''s head. "You''re always thinking about fighting. Why don''t you give some thought to elevating your combat strength quickly?" "Can''t I elevate my combat strength by fighting?" Charcoal buried its head and quibbled softly. "You''re speaking as if you''re very powerful in actual combat." Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. "Do you want to spar with me?" "No!" Charcoal rejected decisively. It happened to see Thunder showing up, and hid behind Thunder in a flash. It merely popped its head out and refuted, "Sparring with you isn''t actual combat training, but being abused instead." The next second, Charcoal felt its body tighten. Subsequently, beyond its control, its body landed back on Lin Huang''s shoulder. "Where do you think you''re going?" Lin Huang flicked Charcoal''s head before releasing the Divine Telekinesis thread. Thunder shrunk its body silently as it watched that. It shrunk to the size of a sparrow and landed on the other side of Lin Huang''s shoulder. It secretly peeped at Charcoal after managing to stay absolutely still. After Thunder arrived, Lancelot, Tyrant and the rest arrived one after the other. Charcoal, Thunder, Lancelot, Tyrant, Bloody Robe, Fiend, Scarlet Imp (Imp), Witch, Eclipse (Eclipse Boa), Crescent Moon and Dark Moon (the two Dark Crescent Snakes), Death (Death Knight), Fallen (Fallen Knight), Warlord, Herculean King, Bing Wang, Killer, Evil Dominator, Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son), Blackscale (Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain) and Nine Gloom (Silver-armored Nine Gloom). Lin Huang felt a sense of achievement as he looked at the 21 imperial monsters before him. It would be an immense fortune for any imperial censors in the great world to have even one Pure Spirit rank-6 lord-level imperial monster. He had more than 21 imperial monsters standing before him; part of the imperial monster army that he had built. Lin Huang even speculated that, even if there were imperial censors with such high-level imperial monsters in the universe, they definitely would not have as many imperial monsters as he did. He soon snapped back to his senses after falling deep into thought. "I gathered you guys this time mainly because I have some grudges to settle with an organization from before. I happen to have time to deal with it these few days, so I thought I''d train all of you." "The target this time is a grade-6 organization in the God Territorythe Myriad Tribe Palace." "On the surface, this organization has at least three half-step Lords. The actual number should be more than that. There''s also a very low chance that they have a Lord guarding them." The imperial monsters'' excitement clearly dropped when they heard that. Their current abilities were enough to fight middle-rank Lords. They had little interest in fighting half-step Lords. Lin Huang guessed that they would have such a reaction. "To increase the difficulty of the mission for you guys, the task this time is to capture all of the half-step Lords and Lords at the Myriad Tribe Palace alive, especially the one named Zos. No matter what his combat strength, he must be captured alive." Zos was the individual from the Thousand Snake Sect that the Myriad Tribe Palace had given their orders to. Lin Huang only knew the name of this individual. He did not know how the person looked like and what the person''s combat strength was. Lin Huang wanted Zos alive mainly because he wanted to learn about the truth from Zos. He wanted to know why Zos repeatedly ordered the destruction of the gravel world''s cultivation civilization. Teng Ran and the rest from the Thousand Snake Sect had their guesses. However, those were still guesses and not proven to be the truth. Naturally, keeping Zos alive was just a temporary arrangement. After Lin Huang obtained the truth, no matter what role Zos played in this matter, as he was the person who directly issued the order, it was impossible for Lin Huang to let him go. As for the Myriad Tribe Palace, regardless of how many people were involved in this matter, Lin Huang did not plan to let this organization continue to exist. The reason being was that it was impossible for the Myriad Tribe Palace to not have any idea about Zos giving out such an order. However, the upper echelons of the Myriad Tribe Palace chose to indulge him and ignore it. They allowed Zos to order the Thousand Snake Sect to destroy the gravel world''s cultivation civilization over and over again, repeatedly massacring the cultivators in the gravel world. Throughout the eras, there were at least tens of billions of gravel world''s cultivators who died innocently under the hand of the Thousand Snake Sect. The Myriad Tribe Palace had to pay the price for allowing such atrocities to occur! "I''ve already told you guys about the mission and target. I won''t say anything further. Let''s depart directly." As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, he summoned the Gate of All Realms and set its coordinates to the Myriad Tribe Palace Chapter 1702 - Love-Hate Relationship The Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters was located within the Pilgrim Star Zone within the God Territory''s core zone. It was less than three million lightyears away from the Combat God Temple''s headquarters. They could be considered fairly close to each other. Unlike the Nephilic Judge Tribe, whose growth and strength was restricted by its population, the standing of the Myriad Tribe Palace could be described as being like the sun at high noon. Among the top grade-6 organizations, their overall strength ranked steadily within the top three. Although on the surface they only had three half-step Lords with top-notch combat strength, the Myriad Tribe Palace had members everywhere. They had at least three times the number of members than Death Sickle had. Before Buried Heaven was elevated to Lord, and before Death Sickle was upgraded to a grade-7 organization, in the eyes of everyone in the God Territory, the Myriad Tribe Palace''s overall ability was actually no lower than Death Sickle''s. That was the reason why Lin Huang had never dared to use his real identity over the past few years since arriving in the great world. Clearly, his growth rate was pretty stunning throughout his period of incognito living. The current Lin Huang was so powerful that he could end the Myriad Tribe Palace with a flip of his hand. Leading a bunch of imperial monsters through the Gate of All Realms, Lin Huang''s team appeared directly above Pilgrim Star Zone, the planet where the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters was. The few half-step Lords guarding the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters sensed their arrival immediately. "Who are you?" A half-step Lord''s Divine Telekinesis voice transmission sounded out. Although they could not sense Lin Huang''s team''s exact strength, what they sensed was enough to tell that their appearance meant trouble. The few Myriad Tribe Palace guardians became tense as if they were facing their mortal enemies. However, even now, they had no idea who exactly they offended. "You guys can attack now. Don''t hurt the innocent." Lin Huang did not waste time and gave out the order directly. He specifically reminded them not to hurt the innocent because there were quite a few non-cultivators living on the planet where the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters was. Lancelot took the lead to attack the moment Lin Huang issued the order. He stretched his hand through the air. Four half-step lord-level guardians were immediately enveloped by a black sphere. Not to mention Charcoal and the others, even Lin Huang was stunned as he watched the technique unfold. "What an epic technique" Lin Huang realized from a glance that it was Mirror that Lancelot had used. Mirror was usually a skill used as a form of defense to deflect damage. Lancelot used a double-sided black mirror to envelop the few Myriad Tribe Palace guardians this time. Not only would it defend against the exterior attacks, but there was a layer of defense inside as well. He used Mirror as a cage to capture the guardians. After all, Lin Huang had said at the beginning that he wanted them alive. Lancelot executed Lin Huang''s order quite thoroughly. The rest of the imperial monsters were dumbstruck. Less than a second had passed since the battle began, and four half-step Lords from the enemy''s side had been captured alive. What was there left for them?! Just when they were in a daze, a chant came to their ears suddenly. They turned their heads to look. Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son) looked like a Buddha statue with a solemn face. There was a corona that rose above his head. He closed his eyes slightly and performed a hand seal with both hands. A chant with unusual syllables came out of his mouth. Just when the crowd was doubtful of what he was doing, the many cultivators in the Myriad Tribe Palace beneath started flying up. All of them pressed their palms together and looked sincere. They looked like monks who had been in seclusion for years. They were even more dumbstruck now. Who were they going to fight now?! All the cultivators had been captured alive. Naturally, Lin Huang knew what kind of technique Ku Rong used. It was just that he did not expect that he would use such a powerful move in such a place. One must know that such Buddhist precepts were classified as weapons of mass destruction in battlefields. As long as his God''s soul was powerful enough, even bug hordes numbering in the billions would have to yield wherever the chant spread. Ku Rong clearly had locked on to all the targets with Divine Telekinesis first with his technique. It did not affect the non-cultivators on this planet. Everyone, including Lin Huang, did not expect that the battle would end so quickly. Less than a second the battle began, Lancelot and Ku Rong had both attacked consecutively and... They subdued all the enemies instantly. The remaining 19 imperial monsters did not manage to attack at all. They thought that they would show off their skills before their master this time. They felt beaten now. "Lancelot You''re too much!" Charcoal could not help but vent its dissatisfaction to Lancelot directly. "Master wants them alive. This is the best way," Lancelot responded in all seriousness. Lin Huang said nothing. He appeared in the camp of the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters directly in a flash. He glanced through the buildings around that were rather extravagant and walked toward the palace right in front of him. He walked straight to the main seat right across the door. "Bring them here," Lin Huang said to Lancelot and the rest through voice transmission after taking his seat. When Lancelot and Ku Rong heard that, they immediately controlled the many cultivators to land in the palace. The remaining imperial monsters quickly entered the palace too. "Let them out." Lin Huang nodded at Lancelot lightly after glancing at the sphere made of four black mirrors. Ku Rong, who was standing at the side, performed hand seals and chanted scriptures with his eyes shut. Lancelot unsealed Mirror when he saw that. The four half-step Lords saw bright lights before them but, the next second, they heard the chanting of scriptures. Their gaze turned empty all of a sudden. Lin Huang only asked when he saw that, "Which one of you is Zos?!" A middle-aged man with a moustache took a step forward looking in a daze. The remaining half-step Lords looked at him. Lin Huang took a good look at him. He looked like he was in his early forties. He had a mediocre appearance with a moustache above his lips. To be honest, apart from him being 1.8 meters tall, this person''s appearance was unremarkable. "4815162342, you should remember this number, right?" Lin Huang asked expressionlessly. "I do. It''s a mini world''s serial number." Zos nodded with a blank stare. "Why did you order the Thousand Snake Sect to destroy this mini world''s cultivation civilization over and over again?" Lin Huang finally asked the question. "Because this mini world evolved from Alex''s God Territory fragment." "Who is Alex?" Lin Huang asked further. Zos struggled for a second when he heard that question. However, he soon answered the question, "He''s my junior brother" As time went on, Lin Huang and the rest listened to Zos talk about the story of a love-hate relationship between a senior brother and junior brother. Zos and Alex were adopted by a cultivator from a young age. Zos was two years older than him. However, from childhood until adulthood, he had lived in his junior brother Alex''s shadow. He started cultivating over a year earlier than Alex did, but Alex caught up to him within two months. Since then, the gap between their cultivation had grown further and further apart. When the master who adopted them died, Zos was 19. He had yet to step into virtual god-level. Meanwhile, Alex who was 17 at that time was already at Virtual God rank-8. Since their master died, the two of them parted ways (it was Zos who suggested this). Initially, Zos thought he would no longer be in Alex''s shadow after parting ways. Never had he thought Alex would soon stand out in the great world. He appeared on the Virtual God Leaderboard, and then broke through to true god-level not long after. Zos did not expect that Alex''s shadow would grow even larger after they parted ways. He worked hard at his cultivation to catch up with him. However, he could only watch as Alex''s back drifted further and further away. Throughout the tens of thousands of years that passed, Zos would hear Alex''s name every now and then. He watched him being ranked on a variety of leaderboards along the way and accrue praise from the masses. His combat strength skyrocketed all the way to the heavenly god-level. A piece of news suddenly came one day. Alex had failed in his attempt to elevate to lord-level and had died on the spot! At that time, Zos had only managed to achieve heavenly god-level through all manners of hardships. When he heard the news, he locked himself in a room for over a month without stepping out. He was not sure if he was happy or sad. Theoretically, he would no longer have to live in Alex''s shadow since he was dead. He was finally liberated. He should feel happy. However, Zos could not be happy. Nevertheless, he did not shed even a single tear for Alex''s death. On the other hand, the unusual emotions he held inside were festering throughout the month of locking himself in. He hated Alex! He hated the fact that he was more powerful than him in every way. His appearance, charisma, cultivation Every single aspect of Alex was much better than him. He hated that he was loved and respected. He had countless lovers and tens of thousands of followers. He hated that he died young. Which destroyed the possibility of him ever catching up to Alex Not long after Alex died, Zos focused all of his efforts on cultivation completely in order to break through to lord-level. He wanted to surpass Alex''s highest combat strength when he was alive. During his cultivation journey, he made some heavenly god-level friends, and built the Myriad Tribe Palace. Soon after the Myriad Tribe Palace was built, Zos suddenly received a piece of news. When Alex died, his God Territory collapsed. A few remnant fragments did not disintegrate completely. Since then, Zos spent many years trying to find the few remnant fragments. Eventually, he finally found the mini world No. 4815162342, which he suspected was Alex''s God Territory fragment. He was worried that Alex would be reborn in his God Territory fragment. To prevent himself from being surpassed again, Zos made a decision. "I''ll destroy your cultivation civilization over and over again. Even if you reincarnate, you can only watch me surpass your highest combat strength in your past life by elevating myself to lord-level!" However, Zos did not fulfil his wish in the end. Many years later, he failed in his lord-level elevation. He could only go for the second best option, which was to become a half-step Lord Chapter 1703 - Distorted Memory Lin Huang squinted slightly after hearing Zos'' story. He then questioned the remaining three half-step Lords. Two among the three of them were like Zos. They were founders of the Myriad Tribe Palace. They knew about the whole thing from the beginning to the end. The two''s narratives were virtually identical to what Zos had said. However, Lin Huang frowned and fell into silence after hearing their stories.. The reason being the stories they narrated were completely different from what the Emperor''s Heart said. The Emperor''s Heart told Lin Huang previously that gravel world No. 4815162342 was Lin Xin''s God Territory fragment from her past life. The reason why gravel world No. 4815162342 was wiped out over and over again was caused by Lin Xin''s enemy during her past lifean Abyssal Lord. The Myriad Tribe Palace was his vassal. Lin Huang went after the Myriad Tribe Palace in order to find out more information about the Abyssal Lord, as well as the complete story behind the whole saga from them. Never would he have thought such a situation would occur. Although Zos and the rest''s stories had no loopholes, it was completely different from the story he had heard. "Did this group of people have their memories distorted?" Lin Huang thought long and hard about it. That was the only conclusion he could draw. The Abyssal Lord might be the only one who could distort the memories of these few half-step Lords'' so easily. "Remove your control on Zos and let me try again," Lin Huang said to Ku Rong, refusing to give up. Ku Rong nodded lightly and excluded Zos from the chant. Zos very soon snapped back to his senses since he no longer had to listen to the chant. However, when he took a good look at Lin Huang''s face, his eyes fell into a daze once again. He stood where he was without moving. Black sigils appeared in Lin Huang''s pupils. "Tell me the truth about gravel world No. 4815162342." Zos began to narrate instantly without hesitation. However, what he spoke of was still the story of the love-hate relationship between the sect brothers before. It was not that Lin Huang had no faith in the effect of Ku Rong''s Buddhist precepts. After all, Ku Rong was a lower-rank Lord. The strength of his God''s soul was barely that of a middle-rank Lord. It made sense that his technique would not work on the Abyssal Lord''s memory distortion. On the other hand, the strength of Lin Huang''s God''s soul was already at ultimate-rank lord-level. Theoretically, his hypnosis should be sufficient to dismantle the memory distortion technique that was set up by a person whose God''s soul was weaker than his. It was a surprise to him that Zos'' memory remained distorted. Lin Huang listened to Zos'' story patiently. Apart from the additional details, it was basically identical to the story from before. The sigils in his pupils faded. He appeared before Zos in a flash and pointed his finger between his eyebrows. This time, he read his memory directly. Within a mere second, Lin Huang copied all of Zos'' memories. He scanned through the memory images using Divine Telekinesis one by one. Zos'' hundreds of thousands of years worth of memories were revealed in their entirety. However, his memory about gravel world No. 4815162342 was exactly the same as his story. Not only that, Lin Huang was unable to find anything unusual about his memory. He frowned hard. There were only two possibilities in such a situation. One was that Lin Xin''s enemy had a God''s soul that was far more powerful than his. Another possibility would be that the Abyssal Lord might be proficient in God''s soul; an expert in techniques such as tampering with one''s memory. Lin Huang was more willing to accept that it was the latter. At least he might not be defeated if they really were to fight. If it was the former, then things would be quite troublesome. After all, the strength of his God''s soul was at ultimate-rank lord-level now. If the strength of the person''s God''s soul was so much more powerful, then it might even be at dao-level. "It seems like I can only ask the Emperor''s Heart" Now that it had come down to this, the Myriad Tribe Palace was a complete dead-end as a clue. Lin Huang did not plan to leave any loose ends behind. As he activated his Divine Telekinesis, countless God Weapon flying daggers turned into blood-colored electric arcs, penetrating all of the captives'' bodies. Subsequently, he casually tossed Zos and the other three corpses into his storage space. "Clean up this place." Lancelot and the rest were stunned when they heard what Lin Huang said. They thought they could leave after this was over. Never had they thought they would have to clean up. "Don''t you guys think this is a pretty great foothold?" Lin Huang said while smiling when he saw Lancelot and the rest looking stunned. The location of the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters was amazing. Not only that, the surrounding resources were abundant. In reality, when Lin Huang first landed on this planet, he already planned to take it over. After all, with his current ability, he could be carefree in everything he did in this great world. "I''ll need you guys to make a trip later." Lin Huang glanced at the group. "Clear out all of the Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches in the surrounding star zones." Although Lin Huang had taken over the headquarters, he did not want to leave any future troubles behind. He figured he would occupy all of Myriad Tribe Palace''s territories once and for all. This would in turn save him a lot of time in developing the Sword Alliance. Population growth and migration would have been a significant hindrance to his developmental plans. However, by occupying this territory, he could simply take over all the habitable planets the Myriad Tribe Palace initially had, which would solve the problem completely. To most civilians, a change in the guardian organization would not affect their lives much. They would still continue living as they were. As long as the guardian organization''s policy was not overly strict, the civilians would be unlikely to migrate. Similar to the civilians on Earth, life went on when the country had a new president. Migration was a very unlikely scenario for most people. As the takeover plan commenced, Lin Huang could almost foresee the rapid development of the Sword Alliance over the next few years. After clearing out the palace, very soon, Lancelot and the rest left separately. They began purging the Myriad Tribe Palace''s various branches. Charcoal and the rest put in all of their effort in order to prove their capabilities. Many imperial monsters were clearly more competitive in this mission since Lancelot and Ku Rong had stolen the limelight previously. In under 10 minutes, Lancelot and the rest began to return one after the other. All of the Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches in the tens of star zones were cleared out. Many busybodies took videos of the Myriad Tribe Palace being destroyed and posted them onto the internet. In the beginning, many thought it was fake news. After all, the Myriad Tribe Palace was a top organization that was only second to the few grade-7 organizations in the God Territory. The few half-step Lords who guarded the organization were not to be offended. However, as more and more videos surfaced, they could see different Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches being destroyed from different angles in the videos. They finally began to believe that someone had really attacked the Myriad Tribe Palace. There were over 20 Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches that were destroyed in the videos alone. Clearly, it was not a one-time incident. Instead, someone was really dealing the Myriad Tribe Palace a devastating blow. As those threads with videos went viral on the internet, people soon spread rumors and suspicions about the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters being attacked An unprecedentedly heated discussion broke out on the internet Chapter 1704 - The Seventh Grade-7 Organization In The God Territory Lin Huang saw the heated discussions on the internet as soon as they broke out. Throughout the next two to three days, the number of topics discussing the Myriad Tribe Palace increased to an astounding figure. Myriad Tribe Palace became the number one trending topic on all internet platforms, and stayed there for a long time. Not only did the discussions not let up, but rather they continued to intensify. The reason was that a verified account on the internet, specializing in refuting rumors, visited all of the Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches that were in ruins from the videos and proved the authenticity of the matter. In addition, the entire video was broadcasted live. It had provided solid evidence to verify the news of the many Myriad Tribe Palace branches being destroyed. Many busybodies even found their way to the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters. They could only see that the door was shut tight, and that many barriers had been erected to conceal what was happening inside. In reality, it was Lin Huang and the rest who occupied the Myriad Tribe Palace''s headquarters. He was having a meeting with Bloody to decide on the future development pathway of the Sword Alliance. Lancelot and the rest did not stay idle. Throughout those few days, they traveled to the Myriad Tribe Palace''s remaining branches in the star zones further away to clear them out. Meanwhile, Sword 1''s team sent people to start taking over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches that had been cleared. On the fifth day, the matter escalated, just when the discussions regarding the Myriad Tribe Palace on the internet were beginning to die out. Suddenly, a thread appeared early in the morning , quickly jumping to the top of the ranks on all the internet platforms. "Breaking: A Mysterious Organization Has Taken Over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s Stations!" The thread caught every netizens'' attention instantly. Any organization that dared to take over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s stations at such a time would most likely be the one responsible for the destruction of the Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches. The thread did not point out that the organization that took over was Sword Alliance. However, there were a couple of videos and many pictures in the thread that bore witness to the entire process of this mysterious organization taking over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s branches. This had immediately stirred up a frenzied discussion online. Everyone was guessing the identity of this mysterious organization. They were dumbstruck too. The way the Myriad Tribe Palace had been destroyed was just too strange. They guessed that the mastermind behind the whole thing had to be a lord-level powerhouse. However, nobody knew how many Lords there were exactly and the abilities of this newly-risen mysterious organization. Within an hour of the thread about the mysterious organization taking over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s stations being posted, another thread suddenly jumped to first rank on all internet platforms. "Revealing the Mysterious Organization that Destroyed the Myriad Tribe Palace". The thread was posted by a verified account. It was a thread with a video only. In the video, the user shamelessly interviewed a few staff members who had taken over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s stations. Eventually, they learned from the staff members that the organization was called the Sword Alliance. Everyone looked dumbstruck after they watched the video. What grade of an organization was this Sword Alliance?! Why had they never heard of it before? The cultivators in the God Territory had all memorized the names of the grade-6 and grade-7 organizations clearly. Most of them even knew about the rather popular grade-5 organizations as well. However, the name Sword Alliance was completely unfamiliar to them. It was not among any of the grade-6 and grade-7 organizations. Very soon, people began to inquire on the internet. In the end, the result all of them found was the Sword Alliance that Great Heaven founded in the previous era. Many people conveniently found information about Great Heaven. "This person named Great Heaven was so powerful. He was a Heavenly God who suppressed an entire era! Our God Territory aside, none of the Heavenly Gods in the entire great world were his match!" "Do you guys think this dude named Great Heaven is still alive? Did he rebuild the Sword Alliance?!" "The information said that he died during his lord-level elevation. It''s more likely that he reincarnated and cultivated all over again. That''s probably the reason why he has only rebuilt the Sword Alliance after so many years." "You guys are speculating about this and that, but it''s uncertain whether this Sword Alliance has anything to do with the Sword Alliance of the previous era. Perhaps they just happen to have the same name." While the internet was rife with discussions on the topic, the grade-7 organizations, including the Combat God Temple and the others, got into action immediately and began to look for the Sword Alliance''s information. The grade-7 organizations possessed the authorization to check the registration details of the rest of the organizations. However, they could not find anything about the Sword Alliance. The reason being was that, when Lin Huang registered the Sword Alliance in the beginning, he did so in the human world. He did not do it in the God Territory. However, not all organizations were clueless about the Sword Alliance. At least Death Sickle were aware of it. Buried Heaven and the rest already found out much earlier that Lin Huang had built an organization called the Sword Alliance in the human world. In reality, even before the Sword Alliance was exposed, Buried Heaven had suspected that it was Lin Huang behind it all. The reason was that, in the God Territory, only a couple of veteran grade-7 organizations could suppress the Myriad Tribe Palace. Even if Death Sickle, which had just been upgraded to grade-7, wanted to destroy the Myriad Tribe Palace, it was not something that they could do within a short period of time. Meanwhile, other organizations would definitely notice if any large commotion was stirred by the other grade-7 organizations. Therefore, it was impossible for them to have done it. Therefore, Lin Huang became an obvious suspect. Now that the Sword Alliance had been exposed, Buried Heaven contacted Lin Huang directly. He asked about the Myriad Tribe Palace. He said nothing much after Lin Huang gave a simple explanation. After all, the Myriad Tribe Palace was at fault first. Lin Huang did not stir trouble with them for nothing, but was rather taking revenge. Buried Heaven then asked about Lin Huang''s future plans, and Lin Huang gave him a rough idea of what those would be. In order to grow, the Sword Alliance definitely needed an ally. Death Sickle would undoubtedly be a great ally. In reality, this was within Bloody''s plan. Over the next few days, people started to uncover more and more information about the Sword Alliance (it was actually the Sword Alliance that released it secretly). The discussions about the Sword Alliance ranked foremost on all internet platforms. As Lin Huang''s team expected, the Sword Alliance''s popularity was growing by day. The topic was trending for three days. Then finally the Sword Alliance''s representative spoke up. A thread with the title "A Little Something About the Sword Alliance" was soon trending on the entire internet. Naturally, Bloody was the author of the thread. There were not many words in the thread. It merely gave a simple explanation of the grudge between the Sword Alliance and the Myriad Tribe Palace, introducing the organization''s internal structure, as well as declaring their future vision. There was a document at the end of the thread. It was signed by Royal. It was a document recognizing the Sword Alliance as a grade-7 organization. Most people thought it was rather ridiculous when they saw the document at the end. Many netizens had no idea who Royal was at all. However, all grade-7 organizations and a portion of the grade-6 organizations knew the document was authentic when they saw it. The Sword Alliance was a grade-7 organization that Royal legally recognized! Within half an hour of the thread being posted, Death Sickle was the first to extend their congratulations on the internet. They congratulated the Sword Alliance on becoming a new grade-7 organization! Within ten minutes of Death Sickle posting their congratulations, the Nephilic Judge Tribe became the second organization to extend their congratulations. Later on, the Combat God Temple, Divine Clapnet, Xeno and Precious Treasure Pavilion congratulated the Sword Alliance one after the other. Among the six grade-7 organizations besides the Sword Alliance, God Capital was the only one who remained silent. Seeing the six grade-7 organizations extend their congratulations, many grade-6 and grade-5 organizations immediately realized that it was a great opportunity to butter them up. They extended their congratulations as well. The scale of the congratulations had even exceeded the time when Death Sickle had been upgraded to a grade-7 organization not long ago.... Chapter 1705 - Rise To Fame All of a sudden, the name of the Sword Alliance went completely viral on the internet. Almost all the cultivators in the entire God Territory became aware of this new grade-7 organization. Even the few people who did not know about Death Sickle''s upgrade to grade-7 organization knew that the Sword Alliance was the new grade-7 organization. After all, the Sword Alliance''s rise to prominence was quite different to that of Death Sickle''s. The Sword Alliance rose to power by destroying a grade-6 organization, the Myriad Tribe Palace. In addition, due to Royal''s endorsement, apart from God Capital, the other grade-7 organizations in the God Territory all extended their congratulations. With them leading the way, it caused the Sword Alliance to receive far more congratulatory messages from the different organizations than Death Sickle did back then. Naturally, increasing the Sword Alliance''s popularity was part of Bloody''s plan. If Lin Huang''s ability was still insufficient, like it had been before, he would have naturally preferred to grow his strength while lying low. He would have avoided attracting too much attention. However, he now had the ability to stand tall, and he had the backing of Royal as well. He figured that he could totally grow the Sword Alliance in this great world. By increasing their popularity, it would in turn hasten the development of the Sword Alliance. Lin Huang would not have to worry about many issues that would arise when the Sword Alliance was developing. With Bloody as the advisor, and Sword 1''s team as the supervisors, they would only require some time to adapt at most. He would be able to fast-track the Sword Alliance''s development soon. Although the Combat God Temple and the other grade-7 organizations had extended their congratulations due to Royal''s endorsement, they were actually rather confused. The few Lords from the Combat God Temple had even specially requested Peerless Overlord to ask Royal about what exactly happened. As a Royal Rank-A member, Peerless Overlord was considered to possess some connections within Royal. In the end, he only received a one sentence reply"The Sword Alliance''s Chief is Lin Huang, a Royal Rank-S member." Peerless Overlord was stunned after seeing that message. As a Royal Rank-A member who had been a member for many years, he naturally knew what being a Rank-S member meant. He was clearly aware of how difficult it was to become a Rank-S member. In reality, he barely passed his Rank-A membership evaluation. One could even say that, in the entire God Territory in this era, only Buried Heaven and him barely had the right to pass the Rank-A membership evaluation, what more the Rank-S membership evaluation. Moreover, a Rank-S member would be a core member of Royal. As a Rank-A member, Peerless Overlord would gain far more advantages by simply getting close to Lin Huang than he had gained through hard work all these years. "Lin Huang Why is this name rather familiar?" Peerless Overlord frowned slightly. He only recalled a while later, "He seems to be the guy that those bunch of outsiders from the universe came to capture a while ago" Peerless Overlord soon connected the dots after confirming Lin Huang''s identity and his Rank-S membership evaluation. "Don''t tell me this guy has killed those outsiders from the universe?!" He was terrified just imagining it. He had been in contact with the investigators from the Raiders. He could clearly sense that any one of them could kill him easily. Peerless Overlord did not hesitate at all, and immediately informed Zhan Guang and the others about Royal''s response and his speculations. The few Lords from the Combat God Temple fell into a long period of silence after hearing his words. "Indeed, there was no news about the investigators who came" "While it could be a case of having the same name, I think it''s impossible that it''s all a coincidence. It should be the same person." "Unfortunately, the Sword Alliance''s Chief has never shown his face. Otherwise, we could compare it with the image from the wanted order." Zhan Guang could not help but ask, "Overlord, didn''t you find out Lin Huang''s personal information from Royal? Isn''t there a picture at least?" "Rank-S members are Royal''s core members. Their personal information is confidential. I can''t find anything about him with my level of authorization," Peerless Overlord said rather helplessly, "However, I also think that it should be the same person." "He must possess powerful abilities if he''s wanted by a group of middle-rank lord-level outsiders. Even more so since he''s a Royal Rank-S member and destroyed the Myriad Tribe Palace. The possibility of having two powerhouses with lord-level ability with the same name is abysmally low." While Combat God Temple and the other grade-7 organizations were investigating the Sword Alliance and trying to figure out what sort of relationship to have with them, Death Sickle had already finalized all the details of their collaboration with the Sword Alliance. They even signed an agreement and posted the collaboration announcement online. While the bunch of grade-5 and grade-6 organizations were waiting and observing, the few grade-7 organizations had reacted immediately. Death Sickle definitely knew something. They started contacting Death Sickle, wanting to obtain more information from them. Within two hours of Death Sickle posting the collaboration notice, the Nephilic Judge Tribe also posted a collaboration announcement with the Sword Alliance too. After all, unlike Death Sickle where the upper echelons were aware of Lin Huang''s capabilities, Kylie and Bloody had to spend some time before finally convincing the upper echelons of the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Combat God Temple was the third one to publish a collaboration announcement. It was because they had confirmed with Death Sickle that both Lin Huangs were the same person. His Royal Rank-S identity alone was enough for the Combat God Temple to want to cozy up to him. Soon after the Combat God Temple published the notice, Divine Clapnet, Precious Treasure Pavilion and Xeno published theirs in rapid succession. The grade-5 and grade-6 organizations sent negotiation invitations immediately when they saw what was unfolding. All of them wanted to be in the loop as well. Meanwhile, the smaller organizations and some rogue cultivators had a heated discussion on what exactly Sword Alliance was. While the internet was still discussing the Sword Alliance enthusiastically, organizations such as Death Sickle and the Combat God Temple quietly removed Lin Huang''s wanted notice that they had initially posted under the threat of the Raiders'' investigators. The Sword Alliance''s rise to fame also made Lin Huang so busy that he did not have time to enter the virtual realm to cultivate. He had obtained a vast amount of lord-level God Territories from Royal''s auction earlier, but could not spare any time to refine them. He got Sword 1''s team to check and amend the few grade-7 organizations'' terms of collaboration one by one before giving them to Bloody. After Bloody revised the terms, he participated in discussions about them with Sword 1''s team. There were also video conferences of discussions with various organizations such as the Combat God Temple and others Naturally, Lin Huang had only participated in the collaboration discussions with the grade-7 organizations. He gave the authority to Bloody and Sword 1 to handle the grade-6 organizations, excluding the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Apart from new collaborations, Lin Huang got Sword 1''s team to do a selective takeover of the organizations under the Myriad Tribe Palace. Just like what Bloody said, taking over the Myriad Tribe Palace''s organizations would give the outsiders the impression that the Sword Alliance was generous. On the other hand, this could reduce their potential enemies as well. After all, it was possible that the organizations that used to rely on the Myriad Tribe Palace in the past would see Sword Alliance, the one that destroyed the Myriad Tribe Palace, as an enemy after losing the protection of the former. Although the Sword Alliance did not care about that, it would be better to have one more organization under them as opposed to having one more enemy. Furthermore, some of the organizations under the Myriad Tribe Palace were in great shape. There were four grade-5 organizations among them. Though they did not rank amongst the top, the annual "protection fee" they paid was significant. Lin Huang got his Sword Servants to run an evaluation. They basically took over any organization as long as their reputations were not below average. Outside the God Territory, the human world received the news a few days later. Grade-6 and grade-7 organizations contacted the Sword Alliance''s branch in the Demon Eye Star Zone one after the other in an attempt to initiate a collaboration with them. Lin Huang only managed to finally spare some time to enter the virtual realm after he was more or less done with the arrangements regarding the Sword Alliance. He began a new round of cultivation Chapter 1706 - The Illusion Of Becoming More Powerful Lin Huang sat with his legs crossed and entered the cultivation state in the virtual realm cabin. His priority during the closed-door cultivation this time was to visualize the nameless Divine Telekinesis visualization images. Among the 108 nameless Divine Telekinesis visualization images, he was only left with the final two that he had yet to complete. He had put it aside because, back then, he would have had to spend tens of thousands of years to visualize the 107th image alone with his upper-rank lord-level God''s soul. Since elevating to Lord-level, the strength of his God''s soul had reached ultimate-rank lord-level. Given that he had two God''s soul-type Goldfingers in his body now, the Soul-controlling Tablet and Brain of the Soul, the visualization duration would be reduced significantly. After calming his mind, Lin Huang no longer hesitated and entered a state of visualization directly. Days passed by in the virtual realm cabin. He spent less than 200 years to completely visualize the 107th visualization image successfully. The strength of his God''s soul had elevated directly to peak ultimate-level lord-level. He spent over 800 years to complete the 108th visualization image. The strength of Lin Huang''s God''s soul and Divine Telekinesis elevated again when he was done visualizing the last nameless Divine Telekinesis visualization image. They reached the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level. "I''ve finally completed the visualization process!" Lin Huang released a long exhale of breath. Although he did not keep track of the exact duration, he was very sure that he spent a fairly long time visualizing the last two images. Sensing the speedy transformation of his God''s soul within his body, Lin Huang felt an inexplicable sense of achievement, akin to the feeling when he had conquered a stage in the games he used to play. However, the second his God''s soul completed its transformation in its entirety, the set of nameless Divine Telekinesis visualization images were suddenly crushed, turning into sparkles and disappearing. Lin Huang was stunned for a moment, but soon came to a realization. The nameless Divine Telekinesis inheritance had clearly self-destructed as he had already completely mastered the inheritance. "The owner of this inheritance was a decent person. I can''t believe he did that because he was unwilling to have his inheritance being exploited." Lin Huang roughly guessed the mindset of the owner of the inheritance. On one hand, he hoped that there would be a successor for his inheritance. On the other hand, he did not want his inheritance to end up in the wrong hands. Therefore, he set things up accordingly. Since someone had inherited it completely, he would destroy it directly. There was no need for a second successor. Naturally, the risk of doing that was grave. If the person who obtained the visualization images died before completing the visualization, the inheritance might be buried together with the person who died. The possibility of it being inherited would have vanished entirely. Naturally, the owner had to be mentally prepared for this eventuality if he chose to make such a decision. Lin Huang fell into a daze momentarily as he watched the visualization images disappear. He began to worry a little now. There was no way for him to cultivate his God''s soul and Divine Telekinesis in the future. Although the strength of his God''s soul had reached the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level, he did not think that ultimate-rank lord-level was his final destination. He wanted to step into the dao-level; he wanted to achieve an even higher level. However, without a way to cultivate his God''s soul and Divine Telekinesis, he had no idea how he would break through to the next level of his God''s soul. Nevertheless, Lin Huang did not worry or dwell on the problem for too long. His current combat strength was merely at lower-rank lord-level. He still had ample time to figure out how to break through to the next level of his God''s soul. Seeing that there was no way to elevate the strength of his God''s soul, he shifted his focus to his physical strength. He had used the Goldfinger Pure Golden Blood''s function to absorb Bai and the rest''s blood essences earlier. He elevated his physical strength to peak ultimate-rank lord-level. He was only a step away from the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level. In addition, Lin Huang happened to obtain hundreds of Lords'' blood essences from the mummy-like man''s storage space he had killed previously. Although the quality of these blood essences could not be compared with the blood essence he had obtained from Bai and the others, it would be wasteful not to make use of the resources he had obtained. Whether or not they could elevate his physical strength to the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level, that was something he would only find out after absorbing them. With that mindset, Lin Huang fed the bottles of blood essences to the Pure Golden Blood in his body one by one. Very soon, the Pure Golden Blood began a new round of reaction after absorbing the Lords'' blood essences. Lin Huang could sense clearly that his physical strength was increasing slowly. Though slow, the increase was steady. Lin Huang fed it hundreds of bottles of Lords'' blood essences. The Pure Golden Blood extracted the effective substances from them continuously to strengthen Lin Huang''s physical body. Time continued to pass in the virtual realm cabin. Very soon, his physical strength elevated from peak ultimate-rank lord-level to the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level. Although the quality of the blood essences could not compare, there were more in quantity after all. Moreover, Lin Huang''s physical strength had already been a half step away from the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level previously. This round of strengthening had bridged the half-step gap entirely, pushing his physical body to its limit once and for all. The strength of his God''s soul and physical body had reached the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level. In reality, this exceeded Lin Huang''s expectations. However, he did not plan to leave his closed-door cultivation session just yet. Instead, he chose to continue on. For the third round of closed-door cultivation, he chose to refine the Lords'' God Territories. He had busied himself over the Sword Alliance''s matters for a month. The auction to sell the spoils he obtained from Nine Snake''s team had also ended earlier. There were also the 11 intermediate-grade Dao Weapons he obtained from killing Black Mountain and the others. He had traded them for Lords'' Kingdoms on Royal''s auction before. He had been putting these aside until now, and he could finally spend some time to refine them now. This time, he had obtained many Lords'' Kingdoms from trading the spoils. He obtained 648 middle-rank Lords'' Kingdoms alone. There were also 211 upper-rank Lords'' Kingdoms. Finally, he had also managed to obtain eight ultimate-rank Lords'' Kingdoms as well. Naturally, the Kingdoms he obtained this time were the same as before. They were Abyssal and Bug Tribe Kingdoms that nobody wanted. Otherwise, it was impossible that he could have obtained that many. However, the quantity was the only thing that mattered to Lin Huang. No matter what kind of Kingdom it was, the Eternity Fire was able to remove the contaminated energy contained in those Kingdoms. Lin Huang began the refining process directly after doing a rough inventory. There was no concept of time in the virtual realm. Day after day, Lin Huang did not eat, drink, rest or sleep. It was unclear how long it took for him to finally refine all the 648 middle-rank Lords'' Kingdoms. The 648 middle-rank Lords'' Kingdoms provided a boost of over 38,000 Dao seals in Lin Huang''s Kingdoms. The total number of Dao seals increased to 43,161. Regarding the number of Dao tattoos, it provided a boost of over 260 million Dao tattoos; the total number surpassing 300 million. The round of elevation seemed to provide a comprehensive boost to Lin Huang''s ability on the surface. It even seemed like he could fight a minor dao-level entity head-on if he unleashed his Kingdom. However, Lin Huang realized that, though there were many Dao seals in his Kingdom indeed, they seemed to be restricted by the strength of his God''s soul and physical body. Even in his Kingdom, 3,000 Dao seals was the limit he could use. He clearly sensed that there would be a great risk of his God''s soul and physical body collapsing instantly if he was to use even 1 additional Dao seal past his limit. His initial excitement faded away; he felt as if a bucket of cold water had been splashed on his face. Looking at the remaining upper-rank and ultimate-rank Lords'' Kingdoms, he gave up on the plan of continuing to refine them. "I should just obediently refine my god sequence chains to elevate my brute force outside my Kingdom," Lin Huang said, feeling rather helpless. Chapter 1707 - Soaring Combat Strength Lin Huang continued his closed-door cultivation session in the virtual realm cabin. Noticing that the number of Dao seals he could borrow from his Kingdom had reached its limit, he decisively stopped refining more God Territories. Instead, he began developing the god sequence chains that were already in his Kingdom. Lin Huang could borrow all of the god sequence chains in the Kingdom, and had not only used them before, but also studied them before. Therefore, developing them again and transforming them into his own god sequence chains was easier than consolidating god sequence chains from scratch. Days passed by rapidly in the virtual realm cabin. The number of god sequence chains in Lin Huang''s body was skyrocketing. It was unclear how much time had passed, but he had finally consolidated one million god sequence chains. After a moment of hesitation, Lin Huang resolutely chose to perform unification again. He had been attacked by a powerhouse above lord-level the last time he performed unification, and almost failed to fight back. If not for the lady who attacked in the end, his virtual body would definitely have been destroyed. This time, he was not leaving it to chance; on whether such an entity would appear again, nor whether the lady who saved him before would appear again. He was fully prepared. He spread out his Kingdom in its entirety. The God Weapon flying daggers in his sleeves were ready to attack. This time, he was going to fight it head-on. It was not the case of him being arrogant due to his increase in combat strength, but rather he wanted to know how large of a gap exactly there was between his ability and a dao-level powerhouse. On the other hand, he was not worried about being killed. If he died in the virtual realm, all he would lose was a virtual body. Even if a dao-level powerhouse''s technique could affect the material realm, he had other techniques that would allow him to revive. His comprehensive preparations allowed him a measure of confidence and safety in attempting this once again. The path of cultivation, after all, was something in defiance of nature. If he became terrified of powerful enemies due to one failure, he would truly be in a regretful state in future encounters. Lin Huang took action instantly after making up his mind. He performed unification again. It was his fourth Dao Seal. The process of unification was pretty similar to the process before. The first stage of unificationpsychic communication. In this stage, the god sequence chains would start to possess a fragment of intelligence. They would enter a state of chaos and fight for dominance. In Lin Huang''s body, the one million god sequence chains transformed into various forms and entered a chaotic state. This process was very dangerous for a person who was performing unification for the first time. However, it was nothing to veterans. Lin Huang had no expression on his face. He merely used his God''s soul to release some pressure, and the god sequence chains immediately became obedient. The entire process ended in less than a second. The second stage of unificationunification. During this stage, the god sequence chains would change their forms and transform into Dao tattoos to consolidate the Dao seal. This stage was the stage with the highest failure rate for ninth-rank heavenly god-level powerhouses who were performing unification for the first time. The reason was that the process of Dao tattoos consolidating the Dao seal was similar to nuclear fusion. It would release terrifying amounts of energy. The release of such energy would impact the physical body, God''s soul and God Territory of the person performing unification. If any of the three failed to overcome the impact, the unification would abort itself. However, to a powerhouse whose physical body and God''s soul had reached the limits of ultimate-rank lord-level, the energy impact of a lower-rank lord-level unification could not break through his defense at all. His Kingdom was even more sturdy. It could not be moved by the mere unification of a Dao seal. Throughout the unification process this time around, Lin Huang had no expression on his face from the outset. He watched the entire process play out in silence. The energy impact of the unification did not harm his Kingdom at all, nor did it affect his physical body and God''s soul. He was like a spectator, watching a grand display of fireworks in his Kingdom. He watched the fourth Dao seal begin to consolidate quickly. Lin Huang knew that the third stage was coming. Dao plundering! The moment the Dao seal consolidated successfully, the aura that it generated would attract the attention of Raptors, luring them from the virtual realm. Lin Huang was currently in the virtual realm. Naturally, countless Voids would sense the Dao seal''s aura. He lifted his spirit. It was not that he was afraid of the Voids that would come in search of his Dao seal''s aura. Instead, he was taking precautions against the dao-level powerhouse that had attacked him previously. He was ready to go all out at any time. He did not plan to hold back at all. In the virtual realm, Lin Huang''s Kingdom descended. It was unknown how many star zones nearby were enveloped within. The sparkling golden Dao seal that had just been consolidated was like a big, golden sun above the Kingdom. It exuded an endless golden glow and its overwhelming aura spread toward all directions like a wave. To the Voids'' senses, the aura from the Dao seal was similar to the aroma of delicious food that made one drool. They were like sharks that had smelled blood. They began to rush toward Lin Huang''s direction in a frenzy. Lin Huang was expressionless. He clearly sensed the Voids that were intruding into his Kingdom. From his sleeves, blood-colored electric arcs shot forth consecutively, reaping lives mercilessly. This time, he had killed over 50 Voids. The most powerful one even had the combat strength of upper-rank lord-level. Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows as he watched the Dao seal''s glow in the sky dimming slowly. The dao-level attacker from the last time did not come. It was unknown whether it was afraid of that lady who attacked previously or perhaps because of some other reason. Up till the Dao seal''s aura had weakened completely and hidden itself deep in the depths of his Kingdom, Lin Huang did not see the attacker from before. While he did feel a sense of relief, he also felt that it was quite a pity. He put his Kingdom away and turned around. He entered the virtual realm beneath again and started a new round of developing his god sequence chains... Years passed by in the virtual realm. Since the fourth Dao seal had been successfully consolidated, Lin Huang consolidated more and more over and over again. The dao-level attacker never showed up again. Instead, he would reap the lives of many Voids each time he consolidated Dao seals. Just like that, he consolidated ten Dao seals smoothly. The strength of the Dao seals had arrived at peak lower-rank lord-level. However, Lin Huang did not stop just yet. Instead, he chose to consolidate more Dao seals. When the 11th Dao seal was formed, the difficulty of unification had clearly increased significantly. Nevertheless, this did not cause any hindrances to Lin Huang. Even though the number of Voids the Dao seal''s aura attracted was multiplied, it merely increased the number of lives Lin Huang would reap. Lin Huang had yet to halt the development of god sequence chains. The number of Dao seals in his body skyrocketed. 11 12 20 30 90 A hundred! When he consolidated the 101th Dao seal, the difficulty of unification increased again. However, it still did not cause any problems to Lin Huang. Although he knew that he had been in closed-door cultivation for an extremely long time, he did not plan to leave just yet. He chose to continue developing even more Dao seals. The number of Dao seals in his body continued to grow significantly. 101 102 110 120 200 300 1,000 2,000 3,000! Lin Huang reached the limit of 3,000 Dao seals, similar to the amount an ultimate-rank Lord would have, but the dao-level attacker still had not shown itself. However, he finally felt that he had hit a plateau. He could not develop more god sequence chains The god sequence chains that had looked extremely simple to him before felt like they had suddenly been encrypted. Lin Huang tried over ten times, but failed each time. "Perhaps this is the limit before stepping into dao-level" Feeling helpless, Lin Huang could only halt things here and shook his head while forcing a smile. "The duration of this closed-door cultivation session has gone on long enough.. It''s time to leave." Chapter 1708 - Even I’ve No Idea How Powerful I Am When Lin Huang returned to the material realm, barely a second had passed since his virtual body entered the virtual realm. Within that brief second, his overall ability underwent an immense transformation. Before entering the virtual realm, he had only consolidated three Dao seals; Two of the Sword seals were even incomplete. Now that he had gotten out of closed-door cultivation, he had successfully consolidated 3,000 Dao seals. Not only did he complete the two Sword seals that he had in the beginning to the state of having one million Dao tattoos, he had consolidated over 200 new Sword seals. That was under the premise that the number of Sword Dao heavenly rule was limited in his Kingdom which only allowed him to develop over 200 Sword seals. Otherwise, he was more than happy to consolidate all of the 3,000 Dao seals into Sword seals. In reality, Lin Huang was not exactly happy to have reached the limit of ultimate-rank lord-level. He could not figure out what exactly was the issue that he could not consolidate more Dao seals. There was a faint, invisible will that was stopping him from breaking through. It had even intervened with his Kingdom and Godly Right. In his own Kingdom, he could only use the power of 3,000 Dao seals. He could not use any more than that. Meanwhile, outside his Kingdom, he could only use the 3,000 Dao seals that he had mastered. He could not even borrow any more Dao seals from his Kingdom. Lin Huang had a faint feeling that the plateau did not come from himself. It seemed to be restricted by a rule from the outside world. However, he did not get himself stuck in that. On one hand, it was because his ability had risen to an ultimate level. Although he could only master 3,000 Dao seals, he knew that other ultimate-rank Lords who had also mastered 3,000 Dao seals were definitely not his match. The reason being each of his Dao seals was made of millions of Dao tattoos. In the great world, any ordinary Lords would only have over 1,000 Dao tattoos in the Dao seals that they consolidated. Even a genius like Buried Heaven only had less than 2,000 Dao tattoos in the Dao seals he consolidated. Even in the entire universe, it was quite impossible that any Lords could compare him with the number of Dao tattoos in the Dao seals they consolidated. The number of Dao tattoos in Dao seals was not Lin Huang''s only strong suit. There was his physical body and God''s soul. When he had just gotten into closed-door cultivation at lower-rank lord-level, the strength of his physical body and God''s soul had reached the limit of ultimate-rank lord-level. As the number of Dao seals were growing in his body, and that his combat strength was elevating, it had strengthened his physical body and God''s soul over and over again. Although he was not exactly sure if the strength of his physical body and God''s soul had reached dao-level, he was very sure that no matter his physical body and God''s soul, he was definitely more powerful than most powerhouses at the limit of ultimate-rank lord-level. Let alone his Kingdom. Lin Huang''s Kingdom contained over 43,000 Dao seals. That was not even the limit the Kingdom could contain. Lin Huang would not dare to compare other things, but he was certain that his Kingdom would definitely be comparable with dao-level powerhouses. Apart from his brute force, Lin Huang had many Goldfingers, the advantage that others did not have. The Critical Hit Hammer alone that had grown to fourth stage would be torturous enough. Each time he attacked, there would be at least threefold to fortyfold of random critical hit effect. Combined with his vast amount of God Weapon flying daggers, Lin Huang thought he should not have any matches who were under dao-level. Moreover, as his combat strength elevated, the few God Weapons in his body went through a transformation as well. The God Weapons that were initially supreme-grade Dao Weapons had transformed into dao-level spiritual treasures. Even Lin Huang was not sure which rank they had gotten exactly. He was not even sure how powerful his ability was now exactly. He was not sure whether he had the ability to fight a fair battle head-on with a dao-level powerhouse with all of his strength. Lin Huang scanned with his Divine Telekinesis when he returned to the material realm. He soon noticed Charcoal and the rest. However, he was a little confused. The reason being under the senses of his Divine Telekinesis, Charcoal and the rest gave him a feeling that they were matchsticks that were currently burning with unstable flame and sparks. He even had the illusion that he could put out their lives with a blow of breath. The aura of Sword1''s team was even weaker. They were like sparks that might extinguish any time. While the remaining people were like dots of glow. The strength of their aura was not enough to generate heat. Lin Huang was a little worried that he would put out all of the lives in the hundreds of star zones around if he accidentally sneezed. "Is this an illusion coming from the skyrocketed ability? Will I really wipe out everything from a sneeze?" Lin Huang could not help but mutter softly. At that very moment, he suddenly felt something watching him. He spread his Divine Telekinesis and found nothing. The sense of prying vanished instantly. "Is that sense of prying an illusion as well?" Lin Huang frowned lightly. He did not think that anyone in this great world could escape from the detection of his Divine Telekinesis. Even if the person was an expert in techniques that could hide their Divine Telekinesis, it was quite impossible that they managed to do that. After all, the strength of his Divine Telekinesis suppressed everyone below dao-level. He did not think it was an illusion either. He was a little suspicious that the sense of prying came from a Royal''s dao-level powerhouse. That was the only possibility that sounded more reasonable as an explanation. The person might have sensed the aura that he spread unintentionally, so they pried. Lin Huang did not dwell into that. He continued to close his eyes to sense the changes as he returned to the material realm this time. He tried his best to familiarize with his body since the skyrocketed ability. When it was close to night time, Sword1 suddenly sent a message. "The operation of the Sword Alliance is basically on track now. We can prepare for the celebration. Please set a date, Lord Swordmaster." Lin Huang fell into deep thoughts when he saw the message. He had spent too much time in the virtual realm. He had completely forgotten about that since coming out of the closed-door cultivation this time. The celebration that Sword1 was talking about was the celebration of Sword Alliance being upgraded. Naturally, being upgraded to a grade-7 organization was something worth celebrating. All of the organizations would hold a celebration when they were upgraded to grade-7 so that the world would know. Although the Sword Alliance had great exposure on the internet throughout this period of time, where almost all cultivators had heard of them at least, they had never officially shown themselves in the public. They could seize the celebration this time to invite everyone over to launch the Sword Alliance officially! This would be the first time the Sword Alliance would show themselves to the public officially. It would be the perfect opportunity to boost their reputation. "How many days do you guys need to prepare for the celebration?" Lin Huang replied to the message directly. "Actually, we''re almost done with the preliminary preparations. Now we''re left with the official setup, deploying of staff and sending out invitations. I think we can get them done in three days at most," Sword1 replied instantly. "Send the invitations out today and proceed with the preparation for the remaining three days. Set the celebration date three days later." Lin Huang did not hesitate at all.. "Let me send the invitations when you guys are done with it." Chapter 1709 - All Parties’ Reaction The Curse Planet in the Nephilic Judge Star Zone was a planet that was covered in lightning all year round. It was not only the weather, there was a lord-level Odyl lingering above the clouds. It was said that it was a technique that a lord-level senior from the Nephilic Judge had Tribe left behind in the past. It was now being controlled by a half-step Lord through the activation of a Dao Weapon. Even lower-level Lords dared not trespass the territory of this planet. This was where the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s headquarters was. Since Kylie joined the Nephilic Judge Tribe, she spent most of her time on this planet. To be exact, she spent most of her time in the tallest holy tower on the Curse Planet. It was a giant silver tower that was tens of thousands of meters tall. There was a lady with purple hair and in a white dress at the top of the giant tower. She stood before the window, watching the lightning strikes of various colors flash in the rain outside. It was Kylie who had her military uniform removed. "Master has just sent the invitation over" Kylie said while looking outside the window, as if she was talking to herself. "The Sword Alliance he founded has been upgraded to a grade-7 organization. He wants us to join the celebration." "He should have conducted this celebration much earlier. He has dragged it for over a month." A petite yet busty lady with red hair walked over slowly. That was the clone that Bloody had left behind with the Nephilic Judge Tribe. "I chose to stay with the Nephilic Judge Tribe back then because I initially wanted to borrow their strength to help him as much as I could. In the end, I did nothing." Kylie turned around and looked at Bloody. "Indeed, I didn''t expect master to grow to such a level so quickly." Bloody nodded lightly. "I speculated that, even if he didn''t need a hundred years to elevate to lord-level, he would need at least 30 to 50 years, and we could borrow the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s strength to protect him throughout those tens of years of growth." "Turns out he elevated to lord-level within three years. It made all my future plans worthless." "However, that''s not a bad thing. Master becoming powerful saves us a lot of trouble." "How powerful exactly is he now?" Kylie could not help but ask. "I don''t know. No matter what, he''s much more powerful than I am now." Bloody shook her head while smiling. "Don''t you have a rough estimate of his power?" Kylie continued to ask. "No. The gap between our abilities is too great." Bloody continued to smile as she shook her head. "I heard from Charcoal that he defeated Bai and Teng Ran when they fought him together." "After his elevation?" Kylie raised her eyebrows lightly. "Yes. From what Charcoal said, they must''ve fought right after he had elevated and upgraded his rank." Bloody nodded with a smile. "There''s one more thing that might be a better indication of his ability," Bloody continued to say, "If my judgment is correct, he must''ve killed the bunch of Raiders who came from the universe. Otherwise, he wouldn''t have announced the existence of the Sword Alliance in such a high profile manner." "Those guys were middle-rank lords at the very least." Although Kylie had never come into contact with them herself, when the bunch of Raiders assigned someone to send the letter asking the Nephilic Judge Tribe to put Lin Huang on the wanted list, she sensed the aura that they did not bother concealing at all. She could roughly estimate their strength based on their aura. "You can seize the opportunity to test his ability when you visit him this time. You should give it a shot since you''ve elevated to lord-level." Bloody had a playful grin on her face. "Not interested," Kylie turned down the suggestion directly. She knew very well that, even though she had been elevated to lord-level, her combat ability should be similar to Bai who was beaten earlier. Bai and Teng Ran were tortured when they fought him together. It would be impossible that she could be Lin Huang''s match if she was to fight him alone. Moreover, that fight was something that took place close to two months ago. The current Lin Huang would only be more powerful than he had been two months ago. At the Blood Sickle Shelter in Death Sickle''s headquarters, Buried Heaven gathered the couple of Blood Sickle members in the meeting room. "Lin Huang sent us a message. There''ll be a celebration for the Sword Alliance''s upgrade to a grade-7 organization in three days. He invited our Death Sickle to join the celebration." Buried Heaven projected the invitation as he spoke. "I think it''s best that the few of us here attend it. After all, Lin Huang came from Death Sickle, and he was the one who avenged Old Sun." As a human of Lin Huang''s own kind, Gao Ming was the first to voice his opinion. "I think all of us should go too. In the entire God Territory, Death Sickle should be the ones closest to him. We should support him." Hu Xian''er was the second to agree. "I''ve no objections." Boundless Blood nodded lightly. "I even think that we can bring some of Lin Huang''s old friends to join the occasion." "Now let''s proceed to the next topic. What gift should we prepare for the celebration this time?" Without skipping a beat, Buried Heaven broached the second topic. At the Gods Shelter in God Capital''s headquarters, Shen Tu squinted lightly as he sat at the main seat in the meeting room. There were men and women dressed in luxurious clothes on both sides of the long table in the meeting room. They were in flawless human forms. "Tell me what you think about the Sword Alliance''s invitation this time." "I think we can just give them a symbolic gift to prevent outsiders from calling God Capital rude." An old man with white hair sitting on Shen Tu''s left took the lead to voice his opinion. "I think there''s no need to care." A blonde lady cleaned her nails absent-mindedly. "That brat surnamed Lin is just an inferior human. Among the rest of their members, even the outstanding ones are mixed-blood. I don''t want to dirty my shoes going to such a place." "That''s right. I wonder where a lowly human got the guts to build an organization in our God Territory!" A young man with a slicked-back hairstyle went along with the lady''s comment. "Now they''ve even been upgraded to grade-7?! If not for Royal''s endorsement, I''d attack their headquarters and sever his head from his shoulders." "Are there any other opinions?" Shen Tu glanced at the crowd present expressionlessly. "I think we should drop by," the middle-aged man sitting on Shen Tu''s right spoke slowly, "To show our God Capital''s magnanimity. We can conveniently check out how powerful their Chief is and boost God Capital''s reputation in front of everyone as well." "Old Jue''s suggestion isn''t too shabby." The man with slicked-back hairstyle sitting further behind echoed his approval. "The Sword Alliance is very popular lately. They would indeed by a great stepping stone. We don''t have to humiliate them. All we have to do is to suppress them and let everyone know that our God Capital is more powerful than the Sword Alliance. It depends on how the media wants to write about it." All of a sudden, the entire God Territory was discussing the Sword Alliance''s celebration event. Almost everyone who received the invitation was discussing how many people they would send and what gift they should give. Those who did not receive the invitation were waiting eagerly. They were waiting for the live broadcast stream from the media. After all, this would be a celebration even grander than the time when Death Sickle upgraded. Not only that, apart from the grade-7 organizations and the small number of grade-6 organizations who found out that Sword Alliance''s Chief was called Lin Huang, the rest of the organizations and cultivators did not know that the Sword Alliance''s Chief was the person on the wanted list. They were very curious about what exactly the Sword Alliance''s Chief looked like. Chapter 1710 - You Might Die In the Pilgrim Star Zone, the Sword Alliance''s headquarters had become extraordinarily busy. Beautiful lights were lit on the streets of the entire planet. It had a very festive feel. The Myriad Tribe Palace''s buildings had already been extravagant previously. After some renovations and adding a couple of Dao Weapon palaces, the buildings seemed even more luxurious now. Apart from Kylie and the Bug Tribe, everyone under Lin Huang was present. Bai, Grimace, Lancelot, Charcoal and the other imperial monsters were here. They shrunk their size and concealed their combat strength. They did not expose their lord-level auras at all. After all, the number of the imperial monsters here was higher than all of the Lords added up in all of the organizations in the entire God Territory. Lin Huang thought that it would be too high profile if they revealed their combat strength publicly. After all, he had over 300 ninth-rank heavenly god-level Sword Servants under him. The existence of his Sword Servant army was enough to prove the Sword Alliance''s strength. "I''ll prepare a set of Sword Dao inheritances after we''re done with the celebration. You guys can take a look, though you''ll have to depend on yourselves to elevate to lord-level." Lin Huang and the rest had gone to their respective positions early in the morning. Noticing that the guests had yet to arrive, Lin Huang had said those words to Sword 1 who was next to him through voice transmission. "Thank you, Lord Swordmaster." Sword 1 was secretly touched. He watched Lin Huang grow almost throughout his journey in Sword Dao. Lin Huang had consolidated Sword seals and achieved lord-level, yet Sword 1 had yet to consolidate even one Sword seal. However, he knew that Lin Huang had exceeded him and the other Sword Servants in terms of Sword Dao. Moreover, the Sword Dao he cultivated included Great Heaven''s and many other Sword Servants''. Therefore, the Sword Dao inheritances he would prepare for them should be useful for most Sword Servants. Sword 1 was excited to absorb enough from the inheritances in order for him to consolidate Sword seals and become a Lord. "It''s best that you spare some time to focus your energy mainly on cultivation when you receive the inheritances. Let the rest handle other things. I think among the group, from you to Sword 12, the potential you guys possess is enough to elevate to lord-level. Not only that, you have the resources now. You''re only lacking the opportunity to break through." "Meanwhile, Sword 13 and the rest are rather lacking in innate attributes. However, it''s not completely hopeless for them to achieve a breakthrough. It''s just that they will have to depend on their luck" Lin Huang chatted casually. "Is it difficult to elevate to lord-level with rank-4 qualifications?" Sword 1 could not help but ask. "The success rate is close to 50% if one is at rank-4.5. For rank-4, the success rate of achieving a breakthrough is less than 10%," Lin Huang said bluntly, "Therefore, it''s rather difficult for Sword 38 and the rest to break through" Lin Huang knew about the qualifications of the Sword Servants under him from the beginning. Sword 1 to Sword 12 were at rank-5. Sword 13 to Sword 37 were at rank-4.5. The rest from Sword 38 onward were at rank-4. Sword 1 fell into a long period of silence before speaking again, "If they really fail to break through, they can stay in the great world and guard the Sword Alliance for you, Lord Swordmaster." He knew very well that it was impossible for Lin Huang to bring subordinates below lord-level to the universe. The reason was that the difference in the abilities of Lords and non-Lords were as far apart as heaven and earth. They would become a burden if they went along. Therefore, the Sword Servants would definitely be separated into two teams. One team would continue to follow Lin Huang, heading to the universe together. The other team could only stay behind. Sword1 did not really wish for those Sword Servants to be dismissed just like that. Therefore, he took the lead to fight for a position for them. "I think so too. It''s true that we need people to stay and guard this place in the future." In reality, Lin Huang had another plan for those Sword Servants who failed to elevate to Lords. However, he was unsure whether it would work just yet, so he thought he would first agree to Sword 1''s idea. He knew very well what Sword 1 was trying to achieve. The two of them chatted for a little bit, and soon it was time for the guests to enter. Sword 1''s voice spread through the venue quickly. "Death Sickle''s Blood Sickle members Buried Heaven, Gao Ming and Hu Xian''er are here for the celebration!" "The Combat God Temple''s palace master Zhan Guang, vice palace master Zhan Tian and Peerless Overlord are here for the celebration!" "Xeno''s federal president Link and vice president Beth are here for the celebration!" "Divine Clapnet Heavenly Clapnet Lu Shu and Lu Yu are here for the celebration!" "Precious Treasure Pavilion''s pavilion master Jin Dafu is here for the celebration!" "God Capital''s God Emperor Shen Tu, God King Shen Jue and Shen Lu are here for the celebration!" Everyone looked at the entrance when God Capital''s welcome address was announced. They had always been arrogant, believing themselves to be the most powerful ones among the grade-7 organizations. When Death Sickle was upgraded to grade-7 back then, they merely gave a symbolic gift and sent no one to the celebration. However, when the Sword Alliance was upgraded to grade-7, even God Capital''s God Emperor, Shen Tu, had come. He even brought along two lord-level God Kings, Shen Jue and Shen Lu, with him. Many of those present had knowing expressions on their faces. They were from grade-7 organizations themselves, so they knew very well of God Capital''s style. They clearly came with ill intentions. Lin Huang had a light smile on his face, but Buried Heaven who was not far away had a slight change of expression. He secretly spoke through voice transmission, "Watch out. These guys from God Capital might have come with ill intentions." The three Lords from God Capital glanced around. They clearly paused for a moment when they saw the group of Sword Servants. However, as they glanced around Lin Huang, Shen Tu revealed a smile. "Chief Lin, we''ve finally met." "I''ve heard about you too, Lord God Emperor." Lin Huang smiled lightly. No matter what their objective was, he had to abide by the formalities. "Chief Lin, since you''ve heard of our Lord God Emperor, why did you arrange for our God Capital to enter after all of the other grade-7 organizations did?" It was Shen Jue who was trying to stir trouble. He looked like a middle-aged man with a thick moustache above his lips. He had the charisma of a mature man, but his words were sharp. Lin Huang said nothing, while Sword 1 who was standing on the side took over the topic. "The celebration''s guest sequence for organizations of the same grade was decided by order of arrival. Those who arrived first would enter first. We explained this at the back of the invitation." "You''re not even a half-step Lord. What makes you think you have a right to talk to me?!" Naturally, Shen Jue would not listen to Sword 1''s explanation. He scoffed and tried to stir up trouble. Odyl had been secretly fused into his soundwave as it charged at Sword 1 directly. Shen Jue had a mocking smirk at the corner of his lips seeing that Lin Huang did nothing. ''As expected, he''s just a fool who has just been elevated to lord-level. He didn''t even notice my secret attack.'' Just when that thought popped up, he suddenly sensed his sonic attack vanish quietly. He was slightly stunned, but he had cold sweat dripping from his forehead the next moment. A voice was transmitted to his ear instantly. "Old man, you might die if you stir trouble up again" As the soft female voice sounded in his ears, Shen Jue could even clearly feel that the person had blown warm air into his ear. He faintly sensed the warm air penetrate his eardrum and enter his brain. The person secretly left behind some sort of technique in his head. He scanned his head with Divine Telekinesis immediately, but found nothing at all Chapter 1711 - You’re Not Worthy Lin Huang saw Witch''s attack, but he did not stop her. Clearly, apart from him and his group of imperial monsters, the remaining Lords did not notice Witch''s trick. Lin Huang only spoke with a light smile on his face when he saw that Witch had enchanted Shen Jue without him noticing at all. "Sword 1 is my Sword Alliance''s vice chief. It was me who decided the entrance sequence he mentioned earlier. To me, everyone in the God Territory is of the same kind. There''s no difference in status among the grade-7 organizations. The entrance sequence has nothing to do with the strength of the organization at all. However, there must be a sequence for the entrance after all. Therefore, to be fair, I decided that those who arrive first will enter first, while those who arrive later, will enter later." "Can it be that God King Jue thinks that God Capital is in a higher position compared to the other grade-7 organizations? And that everyone should wait at the door until your God Capital has entered before they do?" Although the few of them from God Capital secretly thought that, they dared not nod in agreement under such circumstances. Shen Jue wanted to go on and make a scene shamelessly. He wanted to humiliate Lin Huang. However, he realized that he could no longer speak when he was about to open his mouth. ''What''s happening?!'' He panicked at that moment. Not only could he not speak, he realized that he could not even move his fingers at all. It was as if his body had been taken over by something unknown. He had lost control of it entirely. Shen Tu was waiting for Shen Jue to continue making a scene. However, seeing that he stood where he was and said nothing, he could not help but take over the topic while feeling confused. "You''re overthinking it, Chief Lin. God King Jue has always been straightforward. He doesn''t mean anything ill by his words. The entrance sequence doesn''t make a difference. Our God Capital isn''t particular over such things." At that moment, Shen Lu who was standing on the side started to stir up trouble. "This humble one is Shen Lu, a saber cultivator. I heard that Chief Lin is a sword cultivator powerhouse. I''ve been itching for an opportunity to spar with you. I''ve finally met you today. My Saber Heart is trembling from seeing you. I can no longer hold back my desire to spar with you. I hope that Chief Lin can enlighten me!" "What are you doing, Shen Lu?! Didn''t I tell you repeatedly before coming that you can''t raise such a ridiculous request on such an occasion?!" Shen Tu stopped him immediately. However, people who were wise could tell from a glance that the two of them were just acting out a play. To outsiders, Shen Lu had indeed always been a reckless man who loved challenges. However, on such an occasion, it was ridiculous to assume that he had made such a challenge request without Shen Tu''s permission. The crowd present knew that the few of them from God Capital must have discussed this before coming. They were here to stir up trouble. "It''s just a spar between a saber cultivator and sword cultivator. How can that be considered an unreasonable request?" Shen Lu continued acting like a stubborn saber fanatic. "I believe that, as a sword cultivator, Chief Lin should be excited to spar and exchange moves with a powerful saber cultivator, right? After all, there are not many pure sword cultivators and saber cultivators in this great world." Lin Huang watched the scene play out in silence. He had zero interest in Shen Lu. He was even thinking to himself. ''Powerful saber cultivator? Are you talking about yourself? You sure are boastful.'' The crowd watching said nothing as well. Apart from the few of them from Death Sickle who were worried about Lin Huang, the rest were waiting to see how Lin Huang was going to handle this crisis. In reality, things would be awkward regardless of whether he took Shen Lu''s challenge or not. It would be embarrassing even if he defeated Shen Lu. When faced with such a situation, Lin Huang should not fight personally. If there were other Lords in the Sword Alliance, they could take the initiative to accept the challenge on his behalf. It would not even matter who won. However, as people looked around, there were many ninth-rank Heavenly Gods, close to 400 of them, but Lin Huang was the only one who had the aura of a Lord. Just when everyone thought that Lin Huang would be forced to fight, a figure walked out. It was a man covered in a black armor. A faint black mist lingered on his body. "You''re not worthy of challenging the Swordmaster." As soon as he was done speaking, Lancelot''s aura skyrocketed, revealing his lord-level cultivation directly. "I''ll fight in his stead!" The many Lords present were taken aback. The intensity of the aura meant that this person was at least a middle-rank Lord. Almost everyone had the same thought flashing through their headsThere was such an expert hiding in the Sword Alliance?! Shen Tu could not help but frown. He did not expect a variable like Lancelot to appear. He initially thought that, apart from Lin Huang, everyone else''s aura was at heavenly god-level. When he got here, he thought that he would definitely succeed in stepping on the Sword Alliance to advance God Capital''s status. Never had he thought that someone from the Sword Alliance''s camp had hidden his cultivation base. Shen Lu''s face was slightly pale. He was just a lower-rank Lord. Judging by the aura of his opponent, he knew that he was not Lancelot''s match. However, seeing that Lancelot had taken his sword out, he could only bite the bullet. Lin Huang suddenly spoke when the two of them were about to fight. "Be gentle. Don''t kill him." Lancelot paused slightly. Shen Lu''s eyes lit up. He did not expect the opponent to reveal such a flaw. The saber gleam turned into a silver glow, flashing through the air at its highest speed. However, the black-armored man before him vanished the next second. "You''re too slow." A deep voice came from behind him. Shen Lu had only felt a pain coming from his chest. He lowered his head to look. There was a wound the size of a fist in the middle of his chest. He had no idea how or when it happened. It penetrated through his back. The attack would have crushed his heart directly if it was even a few centimeters off target. Shen Lu was stunned momentarily when he noticed that the wound on his chest was not recovering. He then abruptly realized that the attack from his opponent had drained all of the Divine Power and Odyl from his body. "Are you alright?" Shen Tu seemed to have sensed something off. He flashed and arrived next to Shen Lu, supporting his unstable body. "I''m fine. He held back." Shen Lu shook his head. He was already drenched in cold sweat. If the attack earlier had hit his vital points, it would have easily taken his life. However, his opponent calculated the attack perfectly. He merely drained the Divine Power and Odyl in his body and stopped instantly after that. Shen Tu saw what happened to Shen Lu''s chest when he examined the wound from close distance. He instantly realized what had happened. He glanced at Lancelot in fear. Lancelot said nothing and walked straight back to his seat as if what had happened just now had nothing to do with him at all. Fright flashed through the eyes of the Lords in their seats. The reason was that none of them had seen the trajectory of Lancelot''s sword clearly. It also meant that that sword alone could severely injure all of the Lords present. ''What''s the background of this sword cultivator from the Sword Alliance exactly?!'' Almost everyone present had the same doubts in their minds. Chapter 1712 - Beaten Again Shen Tu''s face was ashen. He did not expect that a guy like Lancelot would appear out of nowhere from the Sword Alliance. His appearance had messed up their plans completely. Seeing that Shen Lu''s wound was not healing at all, he knew that Lancelot had held back. It was enough to prove that his ability had far surpassed Shen Lu''s. He secretly speculated that he was most probably not Lancelot''s match as well. He would just humiliate himself if he continued to stir up trouble with him. He peeped at Shen Jue who was standing still not far away. He secretly cursed him seeing that he was still standing motionless, ''This old thing must''ve been terrified by that sword move earlier.'' He thought that Shen Jue would make a scene by seizing the opportunity that Shen Lu was hurt. Then he could use him as a way out that would not be as awkward as how things were panning out now. However, judging by Shen Jue''s expression, he thought that he had been scared by the sword move, no longer daring to speak up again. "I told you not to cause problems. Have you learned your lesson now?!" Shen Tu helped Shen Lu up to his seat after scolding him. As long as he pushed all of the responsibility onto Shen Lu wanting to challenge the Sword Alliance, the humiliation would have nothing to do with him at all. At least that was what Shen Tu thought. However, the people who were here were part of the upper echelons of grade-7 organizations. None of them were fools. They saw through the trick that they were trying to pull, but none of them bothered to expose them. Everyone was happy to watch God Capital being humiliated. Nevertheless, they just enjoyed the show. There was no need to fall out with God Capital over something like this. Lin Huang said nothing. After all, the Sword Alliance had succeeded in humiliating God Capital. On God Capital''s side, Shen Jue, who had regained control of his body, had a grim look on his face. He took his seat following Shen Tu and Shen Lu. "What happened to you? Why did you become mute all of a sudden?!" Shen Tu''s face turned grim as soon as he took his seat. He asked Shen Jue through voice transmission. Shen Jue glanced at Lin Huang''s direction and glanced at the crowd behind him before speaking softly and carefully. "I think there''s more than one middle-rank Lord in the Sword Alliance. I was affected by a sneak attack. My body was being controlled, and I couldn''t move at all." Shen Tu''s expression changed slightly. He did not expect that to be the reason. What shocked him was the fact that he did not notice that someone had attacked Shen Jue at all. It only proved that the person who attacked Shen Jue was more capable than he was. "It''s impossible for two middle-rank Lords to appear out of nowhere. The only possible explanation is that they came from the universe. Our great world is Royal''s territory. The Sword Alliance''s upgrade to a grade-7 organization was endorsed by Royal. I suspect that this Sword Alliance is a secret pawn that Royal has planted in the God Territory," Shen Jue continued to speak of his speculation. Shen Tu fell into complete silence after listening to those words. At that moment, Sword 1 continued to welcome the organizations that arrived later into the venue. "Nephilic Judge Tribe''s Virgen Kylie, tribe leader Abbott and guest elder Bloody are here for the celebration!" Hearing Sword 1''s announcement, the many people present had interested expressions on their faces. The order of the name list was provided by the organizations themselves. Under normal circumstances, the tribe leader should be ranked first. There could be a few Virgens, so naturally their status was lower than the tribe leader. To the Nephilic Judge, which was an ancient tribe, they would not allow for any mistakes in the rankings of identity. However, the Nephilic Judge Tribe placed Virgen Kylie first this time, and the tribe leader second. This was enough to indicate that Virgen Kylie''s status was higher than the tribe leader. The people could not help but speculate on the exact reason for this. Many of them soon made the connection to the time when the Nephilic Judge Tribe had rejected the match-making efforts of the outsiders with regard to Virgen Kylie back then. The reason they gave was that Virgen Kylie was still young and that they would not consider marrying her off for the time being. Back then, many people thought that the Nephilic Judge Tribe wanted to settle this matter internally and wanted to marry Virgen Kylie off to a young, handsome talent within the tribe to cultivate an even more outstanding next generation. However, it clearly did not seem like that was the case now. Everyone coincidentally sensed that Virgen Kylie must have some hidden secrets behind her status! Lin Huang had been staring at the entrance. It had been close to three years since he had last seen Kylie. Although they had been in contact, and he had been hearing about how she had been doing from Bloody, it had still been close to three years that they had not seen each other. The silver-armored Kylie stepped into the palace entrance with the Nephilic Judge Tribe delegation in tow. She instantly attracted the attention of everyone present. Many men could not tear their eyes away from her figure. Not only was her appearance beautiful, her aura was immensely heroic as well. Bloody was actually right next to her. However, in the presence of Kylie, she appeared to be overshadowed. Given that she concealed her lord-level aura intentionally, it caused many people to overlook her. Lin Huang could not help but smirk seeing that Kylie had not changed much. Kylie glanced around the venue casually. She only locked eyes with Lin Huang for a moment and then looked away. She led the rest of the people from the Nephilic Judge Tribe to their seats. Shen Tu stared at Kylie for a long time before finally looking away unwillingly. After a moment of silence, he suddenly spoke in the presence of the crowd. "The Nephilic Judge Tribe is considered an ancient pure blood tribe within the God Territory. Now that we''ve met today, I''ve noticed how valiant the Virgen is." "My God Capital has countless handsome and talented men, as well as many top-notch pure blood direct descendants. Abbott, I think we can consider a marriage alliance." Abbott, who had a head full of white hair, had a slight change of expression. However, he soon responded with a smile, "Thank you God Emperor for your kind intentions. However, the Virgen calls the shots regarding her own matters. I''m an old man now. I can''t decide for her." Abbott''s reply clearly surprised everyone present. Theoretically, given the fact that the Nephilic Judge Tribe was in an awkward position in the God Territory, they should have agreed instantly to a grade-7 organization taking the initiative to arrange a marriage alliance. However, he rejected their overtures directly. Shen Tu obviously did not expect such a reply from Abbott. He only snapped back to his senses after a moment of disbelief. He then looked at Kylie with a smile. "Virgen, since Abbott can''t call the shots, what do you think?" He secretly exerted pressure on Kylie with his lord-level aura when he spoke. Suddenly, he sensed the pressure he exerted vanish instantly. At the same time, a terrifying pressure emanated from the direction of the Nephilic Judge Tribe. It did not only target Shen Tu, but also enveloped Shen Jue and Shen Lu who were nearby. Under its suppression, the three of them could not move an inch. Never had they thought that they would meet another tough one. "I''m not interested." It was only once Kylie''s cold voice echoed in reply that the pressure finally faded away. The crowd thought Shen Tu would act against the Nephilic Judge Tribe when they heard Kylie''s response. To their surprise, Shen Tu merely chuckled twice. "Since the Virgen has no interest, let''s forget about it." The people who were waiting for a show to unfold had shock-filled expressions on their faces at the moment. Was this still the Shen Tu they knew?! Chapter 1713 - Banquet In reality, Lancelot, Witch, Bloody and the rest were only lower-rank Lords. However, unlike the other lower-rank Lords in the universe, each of their Dao seals had been consolidated with over two million levels of Dao tattoo power. In this great world, even the prodigy Buried Heaven could only use over 1,800 levels of Dao tattoo power from each of his Dao seals. Without using the Dao tattoo power within the Kingdom, the ability of a Dao seal consolidated by Lancelot and the rest would be comparable to when Buried Heaven elevated to middle-rank Lord. Not to mention the imperial monsters who had entered the virtual realm a few times and obtained substantial amounts of Origin Energy, and had basically consolidated two to three Dao seals. The number of levels of Dao tattoo power in the Kingdom had increased significantly. Their ability could not be compared to the time when they had just been elevated to Lords. Meanwhile, due to the limited resources in the great world, a middle-rank Lord would basically head to the universe when they obtained more than 20 Dao seals. Take Shen Tu from God Capital for example. Although he was a middle-rank Lord, he had only consolidated 14 Dao seals. His ability should be roughly the same as the time when Lancelot and the rest had just been elevated to Lords. Zhan Guang from the Combat God Temple was perhaps the most powerful powerhouse here, excluding the people from the Sword Alliance. Yet he had only consolidated 17 Dao seals. His ability was far weaker than the imperial monsters'' under Lin Huang. As Bloody''s aura was only targeted at the three people from God Capital, she did not expose herself at all. This caused the many people present to be confused as to why Shen Tu had suddenly become so amiable. He was secretly cursing inside. ''The Sword Alliance might just be a branch that Royal set up. Forget it, there''s a middle-rank Lord guarding them. Why does the Nephilic Judge Tribe, a dying organization, have such a terrifying guy hiding amongst them?!" He did not think that the "middle-rank Lord '''' who had just released her aura from the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s side came from the universe. He thought that the probability of the person being a veteran survivor from the ancient era was higher. After all, the Nephilic Judge Tribe had existed for far too long. There were many among them who had been elevated to Lords in the previous eras. It was entirely possible that there were one or two of them who had survived until now, and had chosen to guard the tribe instead of heading out into the universe. He could not help but peep at Kylie. He had a faint feeling that the veteran from the Nephilic Judge Tribe came because of this Virgen. He did not notice that Shen Lu, who was sitting next to him, had almost fainted from Bloody''s suppressive aura just now. He had been severely injured by Lancelot and had had all of the Divine Power and Odyl in his body drained. He had just sat down to consolidate some Divine Power and Odyl to heal his wounds. The pressure exerted by Bloody almost exhausted all of the Divine Power and Odyl that he had just accumulated. Shen Jue, who was on the other side, was worried that the person who controlled his body would do it again. He sat motionless where he was obediently. He ignored whatever that was happening around him. Many people noticed the odd reactions from the three people from God Capital. However, everyone could not figure out the reasons behind their odd behavior. They only thought that the three had suffered a blow from Lancelot''s actions earlier. After the little drama between God Capital and the Nephilic Judge Tribe concluded, the banquet soon went on successfully. Without God Capital stirring up trouble, the rest of the organizations dared not cause a ruckus in the territory of the Sword Alliance. After all of the organizations entered, the media arrived as well. The lowest grade of organization that joined this banquet was grade-5, and they ranked amongst the top grade-5 organizations. All of the grade-7 organizations in the God Territory were here. The scale and degree of luxury clearly exceeded Death Sickle''s upgrade celebration ceremony significantly. Lin Huang merely gave a short speech to start the banquet. The members of the media finally caught sight of how the Sword Alliance''s chief looked like. Many of them were shocked as they recognized Lin Huang as the mysterious powerhouse that had been wanted by all the top organizations previously. However, most of the media personnel present knew that the wanted order had been rescinded quietly earlier. They guessed that it had something to do with the rise of the Sword Alliance. After Lin Huang gave his speech, he got Sword 1 to take over the proceedings. Although Sword 1 was not a Lord, he was the Sword Alliance''s vice chief after all. Everyone did not dare to disrespect him. Given that he was very experienced in handling such occasions, he quickly took control of the entire celebration. He began to talk about future collaborations with some organizations. "You''re making everyone envious by being a boss who does nothing." Buried Heaven, who appeared in a form of muscular hunk, walked over to Lin Huang with a glass of wine in his hand. "Aren''t you one as well?" Lin Huang clinked his glass with his. "I''m not like you. You pushed your responsibility away." Buried Heaven shook his head while smiling. "I never had the right to decide anything from the beginning." "Why? Are you not happy at Death Sickle? Do you want to join me?" Lin Huang raised his eyebrows and tried to poach him directly. "It''s not that I''m unhappy. Such problems exist in partnerships. When the upper echelons try to take charge, the people below them will have to pick sides." Buried Heaven shook his head. "Fortunately, I wasn''t a part of your upper echelons. I didn''t notice such a problem," Lin Huang teased with a smile. "In reality, the problem existed even while you were around, just that it wasn''t as serious as it is now." Buried Heaven felt rather helpless. "Since Old Sun and the few others died, vacancies have become available in Blood Sickle, disrupting the balance as the different camps fight for authority. Given that I was elevated to Lord and Death Sickle was automatically upgraded to grade-7, the accumulation of these few matters caused all sorts of problems to surface." "You walked too fast and stubbed your toe." Lin Huang suddenly thought of a classic saying. "What?!" Buried Heaven was stunned. He then understood what Lin Huang meant. "That makes sense, but it''s just so" "I just suddenly recalled that saying," Lin Huang laughed out loud. "Do you have any solutions?" Buried Heaven asked the question anyway after a moment of hesitation. "It can be resolved easily if you''re willing to take charge." Lin Huang smiled as he looked at Buried Heaven. However, Buried Heaven shook his head. "I won''t stay in this great world for long. Moreover, I don''t like having my cultivation held up by trivial matters." "If you don''t take over, the split between the few Blood Sickle members can''t be eradicated." Lin Huang pointed out the main problem. "After all, their ability and talent levels are similar. Nobody is willing to let the other become their boss." Buried Heaven fell into silence. "I think you can take over things in a domineering manner. Solve the big problem first to stabilize Death Sickle''s situation. After that, train a suitable successor from among the Heavenly Gods you already have. When the successor has been elevated to Lord, you can leave everything behind." Lin Huang said those words as if everything was that simple. "Do you think training someone to become a Lord is as easy as cultivating a cactus?" Buried Heaven felt rather speechless. "I''m just giving you an idea," Lin Huang said, as he smiled lightly. He had just realized that training a Lord was actually a difficult thing. Otherwise, there would not only be seven grade-7 organizations in the God Territory, including the Sword Alliance. Buried Heaven only left after chatting for a while. Lin Huang glanced through the crowd and soon saw Kylie and Bloody, who were standing not far away Chapter 1714 - Kylie’s Plan Kylie did not seem like she was planning to mingle at such an occasion at all. She had a cold and intimidating look on her face at all times. She would take a sip of her drink occasionally. Bloody, who was next to her, looked petite and harmless. She seemed to be chatting about something with Kylie while holding a drink. Lin Huang, who was walking over to the two ladies, soon attracted the attention of the crowd. However, nobody assumed that they had known each other for a long time. They thought that he was interested in this Virgen. After all, Kylie indeed had the best appearance and charm among all those that were present. Naturally, Shen Tu noticed him going over as well. He was secretly smirking inside, looking like he was excited to watch a show unfold. ''This guy surnamed Lin will definitely be beaten up later.'' Lin Huang picked up a plate of snacks from the table next to the two ladies and handed it to them. "This stuff is quite good. You guys should try some." The two ladies were stunned, but soon picked up a piece each quickly and tried it. "It''s quite delicious." Bloody nodded continuously. "Not bad." Kylie took a small bite and began to savor it slowly. "This is a rose apple puff, a local delicacy. The filling is made using a type of rose apple that''s the Pilgrim Star Zone''s specialty. There''s nowhere else that seems to cultivate this fruit. The pastry chef is a local as well. He''s been making this snack for over 30 years" Lin Huang introduced the snack, seemingly engaging the two in a casual conversation. Shen Tu, who thought that he would be treated to a show, froze at the sight of the harmonious scene of Lin Huang chatting with the two ladies. ''That hidden powerhouse didn''t attack him?!'' While chatting casually, Lin Huang was speaking to the two ladies secretly through voice transmission. "Did everything go well with your return to the Nephilic Judge Tribe?" "It went quite smoothly. They''re more than happy to have one more Lord to guard the Nephilic Judge Tribe," Bloody said with a smile, "They didn''t enquire in detail regarding my breakthrough in combat strength." "What about you? I suppose the Nephilic Judge Tribe has stopped giving you problems?" Lin Huang looked at Kylie. "Basically nobody has dared to say anything since I elevated to rank-6," Kylie responded while smiling, "It''s just that I have a half-step Lord following me around no matter where I go." "It''s been the same even after Bloody returned?" Lin Huang asked. "They''re worried that I''ll kidnap their Virgen, so they''re even more strict now," Bloody said angrily. Lin Huang smiled when he heard that. He understood the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s mindset. "Did the Nephilic Judge Tribe agree to join Royal?" Lin Huang continued to ask. "They only agreed after hesitating for many days." "They''re just a bunch of stubborn, old people. They want change, and yet they''re afraid of change," Bloody commented harshly. "It is, after all, an ancient tribe that has been passed down for a couple of eras. It''s very difficult to change the many traditions that the older generation has passed down," Lin Huang expressed his understanding, "It''s amazing that they''re even willing to make changes for the tribe''s development." "When do you plan to head to the universe?" Kylie could not help but ask. "When I''ve settled all the things here. I''ll definitely need two to three months." Lin Huang thought about it before answering, "However, it won''t exceed a year''s time." "Therefore, you guys should prepare for the future for the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Don''t let the loss of a Virgen ruin the entire tribe. Come up with a solution for a smooth transition." Bloody was Lin Huang''s think tank, so it was impossible that he would leave her behind when he headed to the universe. When Bloody left, Kylie would be left alone with the Nephilic Judge Tribe. Lin Huang was worried about that as well. Naturally, he wanted to bring both of them with him. However, with Kylie''s current standing in the Nephilic Judge Tribe, as soon as she left, it would definitely cause shockwaves within the tribe. Kylie definitely did not want to see that happening. Therefore, Lin Huang hoped that they could work together to find a solution to the issue. "I have one dependent who is pretty talented. She was elevated to rank-5.5 after I was elevated to rank-6. I can get her to stay and replace me." The dependents Kylie was talking about were the batch of Starlight Beasts she adopted from way back during her time in the gravel world. "However, in order for her to control the group, she''ll have to elevate to Lord first." Bloody looked at Lin Huang. "Are you guys thinking of making her my imperial monster? To strengthen her combat strength?" Lin Huang instantly understood what they meant. Clearly, the two ladies had discussed the plan. "When we return to the Nephilic Judge Star Zone this time, we''ll introduce her as Kylie''s younger sister to the Nephilic Judge Tribe, and then we''ll bring her back to the tribe. She''s just a sixth-rank Heavenly God now. We''ll try our best to increase her combat strength over the next few months. Naturally, you''ll have to step in for the last stage," Bloody continued to say, "As long as her combat strength is elevated to lord-level before we leave, she should be enough to replace Kylie." Lin Huang nodded immediately after a moment of thought. "This solution indeed sounds viable." He really could not do that if this had happened in the past. After all, the chances of him obtaining a complete Monster Card was quite low. However, there were no restrictions on Xiao Hei''s authorization now. All he needed to do was to kill Kylie''s dependent and he could get Xiao Hei to extract her True Spirit to turn her into a Monster Card. It would be a piece of cake to elevate the Monster Card to lord-level. The method was totally feasible. "This drink is sweet, but it actually contains no sugar. The main ingredient is the juice squeezed from licorice The licorice, after a rainy day, will secrete a type of cyclamate. This cyclamate gives it a sweet taste when consumed, but it''s actually not sugar" On the surface, Lin Huang was talking about the green drink in his hand. The crowd present noticed the harmonious scene unfolding on his side. "So the Nephilic Judge Virgen is interested in talking about food and drinks." "They look so happy. It seems like Chief Lin knows well how a girl''s mind works." However, some people were upset at this scene. Shen Tu was secretly cursing. ''I was wondering why they were unwilling to become allies with my God Capital. It seems they already had their eye on the Sword Alliance''s chief from the start. That old thing Abbott sure is vicious. And they were smart enough to fake the Virgen''s cold demeanor. Even this fool surnamed Lin fell for it" Meanwhile, Abbott and the remaining Nephilic Judge Tribe elders, who were not far away, were quite upset. They had been staring daggers at Lin Huang as he stood beside Kylie. The longer the three of them chatted, the grimmer their expressions seemed. They had just joined Royal. With the backing of Royal, they had a more sophisticated outlook now. They currently no longer took a grade-7 organization from the great world like Sword Alliance seriously. They were worried that Lin Huang might kidnap their Virgen. Fortunately, Lin Huang did not continue chatting for too long. He walked away after flicking a Combat Strength Upgrade Card into Kylie''s body. Very soon, Kylie left early with Bloody with the excuse that she was feeling unwell. Chapter 1715 - Little Story Of The Past Just when Lin Huang had taken a few steps, after turning around, he saw a black-haired lady walking toward him. The lady had black hair and black eyes; her features were profound. She also wore a black dress. The intensity of her aura was clearly at lower-rank lord-level. Not only that, she gave Lin Huang the impression that she had just elevated not too long ago. "Chief Lin, I''ve admired you for a long time. I didn''t expect our first meeting to be during such an occasion." The black-haired lady walked over to Lin Huang with a glass of wine in hand. Lin Huang tried to recall carefully, but could not for the life of him figure out who the person was. It was only after seeing the doubt on his face that the black-haired lady introduced herself with a smile. "I almost forgot to introduce myself. I''m Beth from Xeno." "Hi, Miss Beth." Lin Huang recalled that this person was Xeno''s newly-assigned federal vice president. He also recalled that, in the guest information that Sword 1 had sent over, this person was the only one who had no picture attached. The reason was that Beth had been in closed-door cultivation for many years in order to break through to lord-level. Her information was not available on the internet at all. She had only appeared again during recent months. Not only that, she returned to Xeno as a Lord. She was then elected as the vice president directly. "Now that I think about it, our meeting was quite fated, Chief Lin." Beth took a small sip of the red wine. "Fated?" Lin Huang was stunned. He was sure that he had never seen this lady before. Beth extended a finger. A black mist spread out from her fingertip. Lin Huang frowned as he sensed the aura of her Divine Power. The aura was rather familiar indeed. After feeling the aura and running it through his memories quickly, he instantly remembered the imperial monster under himEvil Dominator! "You are" Without waiting for Lin Huang to finish speaking, Beth raised her eyes and whispered into Lin Huang''s ear, "I''m Death Goddess who left behind an imprint on you back then" As soon as Beth was done speaking, she backed off while staring at Lin Huang with her beautiful eyes, waiting for his response. "Your aura is a little different. Not only that, you''re more powerful than her." Lin Huang had a rough estimate of what was going on with this person. "To be exact, Death Goddess is a clone of mine. After I went into closed-door cultivation, I left behind a couple of clones to help me handle matters in the outside world. The Death Goddess was one of them. During the final two to three years of my closed-door cultivation, I recalled all of my clones as I had a feeling that I might be able to perform unification at any moment. Therefore, I absorbed all of my clones'' experiences and memories. Thus, I found out about this part of her memory." "I was wondering why she left an imprint behind when she wasn''t going to stir up trouble with me. I should thank you, then." Lin Huang finally unraveled the entire story when he listened to her explanation up to this point. When he killed Evil Dominator in the gravel world back then, a powerhouse named Death Goddess left an imprint on his body. In reality, after arriving in the great world, he had been a little worried that Death Goddess would stir up trouble with him. The reason for that was because he was sure that the person was at least a high-rank True God, or even a Heavenly God. However, up until he removed the imprint, Death Goddess had not shown up at all. He was actually quite confused about this matter for some time. Only now did he find out that Beth had recalled that clone, which was how he escaped a disaster. "If I knew that you possessed such great talent and potential, I would''ve recalled my clones one to two years later," Beth said with a smile while covering her mouth. Naturally, Lin Huang knew that she was just kidding. If he considered things properly, he should actually thank Beth. He killed the evil spirit type monster back then and obtained a gush of tinder from Beth''s Divine Fire. That was how he managed to light his Divine Fire while only being at imperial-level, at the same time obtaining a cultivation foundation that surpassed everyone else. Although the person had left behind an imprint on him with ill intentions, she did not do anything meaningful later on, nor did she influence his development negatively either. Therefore, he held no ill-will toward Beth. Moreover, given that she was now taking the initiative to tell him all this, she clearly had intentions of reconciling. "No acquaintance is made without a fight, I guess." Lin Huang raised the wine glass in his hand. Beth happily clinked Lin Huang''s glass. "That''s right. It''s just a little story from the past." Although she had been elevated to Lord, she could actually sense that she was not Lin Huang''s match. She did not want to become enemies with Lin Huang. She took the initiative to make this clear as she was worried that Lin Huang would find out about the matter in the future, and that she was the mastermind behind it. After clarifying things, she realized that Lin Huang really did not take the matter to heart. Lin Huang felt warm from the chat he had with Beth. It had been a short few years. The Primordium of an entity, whose clone had been enough to scare him and make him fearful in the past, now had lower ability than he did. He also thought that fate was magical. He could not believe that he had such an encounter with Beth in the past, and that he was now seeing her Primordium on such an occasion. Many saw the scene of the two chatting. As the chat happened through voice transmission, the others could not hear the content of the conversation. They could only come up with their own guesses. They thought Beth was carrying out Xeno''s mission and talking business with Lin Huang. "As expected, Xeno came prepared. I can''t believe they''re using beauty to seduce him?!" "Xeno''s newly assigned vice president is really something. Chief Lin seems to be very interested in her." "I wonder what kind of collaboration will Xeno and Sword Alliance come up with. They seem to be happy from the way things are progressing." Shen Tu had been secretly watching Lin Huang''s movements. He looked down on Lin Huang even more now that he saw him chatting with Beth for a long period of time. "As I expected, he''s a fool. He''s helpless when it comes to women. When a man has money and power, he can have any woman he wants, no?! His flaw is too obvious. He''s too timid in the presence of women" Lin Huang and Beth had no idea that they were being misunderstood by everyone at the scene, who believed that Xeno and the Sword Alliance were talking business when in actual fact they were chatting about some personal matters from the past. Even the few people from Xeno were rather dumbstruck. There were already some organizations trying to find out their intentions in collaborating with the Sword Alliance. However, they had not planned on entering a serious collaboration with the Sword Alliance, and had not given Beth any assignments in this regard. Once Beth returned to the group, the president Link immediately asked through voice transmission, "What have you been talking about with Chief Lin?" "Just some personal matters," Beth said rather helplessly. The banquet was coming to an end when night fell. The preliminary discussion on the collaborations with the various organizations was almost done. Lin Huang and Sword 1 sent the guests out in batches. Most of the guests left directly, while some of them chose to stay in the Pilgrim Star Zone for a few days for vacation. Sword 1 got the Sword Servants to arrange the accommodation for the guests that stayed. After all, it was the Sword Alliance''s territory. They had to do their best as the host. After arranging all that, Lin Huang spared some time to contact Bloody, asking about Kylie''s condition. "She has found a safe place and has begun her breakthrough. I''ll guard her at all times." Bloody''s reply was simple and short, but it made Lin Huang relieved. Chapter 1716 - In Full Swing The media revealed the grand lineup of the Sword Alliance''s banquet on that day itself. Not only were there many photos, but also many videos as well. Everyone was discussing it on the internet at the moment. After all, those who participated in the banquet were the cream of the crop from grade-5 organizations at the very least. Regular people were not worthy of participating. Moreover, there were many bosses present at the banquet. Aside from the top Heavenly God-level powerhouses ranked on the Heavenly God Leaderboard, many half-step lord-level and lord-level powerhouses attended. Including God Capital, all of the leaders of the grade-7 organizations in the God Territory were there. None were absent. It could almost be described as an unprecedented grand occasion in this era of the God Territory. The netizens started a party on the internet and indulged in gossip. The first thread that went viral was posted by a true god-level netizen"The Sword Alliance''s Chief and the Wanted Mysterious Man". There was a sentence in the thread that went, "Don''t you guys think that the Sword Alliance''s chief looks a lot like that mysterious powerhouse called Lin Huang who was wanted by all organizations?!" The thread soon started heated discussions among many netizens. "I thought I was the only one who thought that way." "I thought they looked a little alike when I saw his picture just now, but I didn''t think too much about it." "There''s a high chance that they''re the same person!" "Did you guys notice that the wanted order from before has been silently removed?" "Now that you said it, I suddenly realized that I really haven''t seen that wanted order lately." "Oh, my. It gets scarier the more I think about it!" In the end, an anonymous netizen replied in a thread below. "They''re the same person. The Sword Alliance''s chief is called Lin Huang as well. All organizations removed the wanted order because they found out about his identity." Many netizens replied to the thread, attempting to ask for more information, but the anonymous netizen did not reply further. Within half an hour of the thread being posted, an insider revealed that the Sword Alliance''s chief was called Lin Huang! This had become the first hot topic of the night. Meanwhile, the second hot topic was"Who is That?" As there were many powerhouses who hardly appeared in the media, many netizens had no idea who they were. It had prompted the most frequent question that everyone asked once the photos and videos were revealed"Who is That?". Among those, Lancelot was the one that most people asked about. The reason was because some media personnel who were present leaked the videos of Lancelot beating Shen Jue in one hit. Many knew about Shen Jue from God Capital. They knew that he was a veteran Lord from God Capital, and that he was even the current God Emperor Shen Tu''s senior. Therefore, Lancelot''s performance placed him in the limelight. However, not many could answer that question. Only an anonymous netizen replied to that, "This person is called Lancelot. He''s the Sword Alliance''s chief''s confidant. His details are unknown, and he''s suspected to be a middle-rank Lord from the universe." There was no other information apart from that. The netizens did not really want to give up at the beginning. They wanted to find out more. However, they could only give up since they could not discover anything. They shifted their attention to someone else. Apart from Lancelot, the person who was asked about the most was Xeno''s Beth. Unlike Kylie, who had been the subject of news on the internet before, it was the first time Beth had appeared in public after many years. She had a unique charisma about her. Not only that, she was Xeno''s vice president. She was mysterious and powerful. Naturally, she attracted the attention of the netizens easily. "I''ve never heard about this beauty named Beth before. She was elected as Xeno''s vice president directly. There''s obviously something fishy about this!" "Perhaps she is in an affair with Old Man Link o(*3)o" "Whether that''s true or not, her ability is definitely powerful enough to be able to sit in this position." "Which one of you jerks will find out about it?!" Very soon, someone answered that anonymously. "Beth is a super genius who ranked top three on the Heavenly God Leaderboard when she was a Heavenly God. Many people might not remember her now, but she rose to fame before Buried Heaven and King Kong did. However, she suddenly vanished over 7,000 years ago, and there has been no news about her since then. She only reappeared a few months ago, and her combat strength has broken through to lord-level. As she was Xeno''s core member before, Xeono made her the vice president directly after her return." The person who replied was clearly an insider. "So she''s a lord-level boss. We''ve been rude!" "As I thought, Old Man Link doesn''t deserve her" "A capable beauty, I love her already!" "Sister Beth, please marry me!" After Beth, the person who was being asked about a lot was Sword 1. Many female accounts posted threads to ask, "Who is that handsome man standing next to the Sword Alliance''s chief?!" In reality, the men and women who attended the banquet were quite good-looking. However, Sword 1 managed to attract all of the ladies'' attention among all the men present. Lin Huang was handsome himself. Based on his own aesthetic sense, he rated himself 95 points. However, the impression he had when he first saw Sword 1 was, "He''s more handsome than I am!" Sword 1 was not the kind of soft, feminine man that many ladies liked. He was the handsome and cool kind of man. As many ladies asked about that, someone soon answered them anonymously. "Sword 1, a Sword Servant under Lin Huang and Sword Alliance''s current vice chief. His combat strength is at the ninth-rank heavenly god-level. We have no precise information about him. Judging by his aura, he''s only half a step away from breaking through to lord-level. His ability should not be below King Kong and Peerless Overlord." "So my husband is called Sword 1!" "I''ve made up my mind to cultivate Sword Dao and to join the Sword Alliance!" "Sister, you don''t have to cultivate Sword Dao in order to join the Sword Alliance. Cultivators of other Daos can apply to join as well." "Who said that I''m cultivating Sword Dao to join the Sword Alliance? I''m doing that for my Sword 1!" Sword 1 had never thought that he would gain many female fans overnight. Since the topic "Who is That?" started, the identity of most of the people at the banquet were eventually uncovered by the netizens. The Lords'' and half-step Lords'' pasts were exposed. Naturally, some of this information was true, and some of it was fake. The netizens did not care though. They took each story seriously. "I don''t care. If I think the threads I read are the truth, then they''re the truth." "God Capital''s God Emperor Shen Tu wet his bed when he was 30. True!" "God Capital''s God King Shen Lu can''t get hard. True!" "God Capital''s God King Shen Jue likes young men. This is definitely true!" They discovered many things about all of the organizations. The Sword Alliance was the only one that nobody could find anything about. The most they found out was that Lin Huang was a human, and that he might have the backing of a major organization in the universe. However, there was no useful information about his Sword Servants like Sword 1, nor anything about his imperial monsters like Lancelot. Many were making up stories on the internet, but they were soon criticized by someone from Divine Clapnet. "The tens of thousands of members from Divine Clapnet have been gathering information for over a month, and we didn''t find any information about these people from the Sword Alliance. You guys sure are amazing at making up stories!" Chapter 1717 - Buried Heaven Snapped The Sword Alliance''s fame increased again after the banquet. Lancelot defeating God Capital''s Shen Lu within a second was the equivalent of stomping on God Capital''s reputation. Although Shen Tu and the rest from God Capital were extremely pissed, they could only bite the bullet in silence. After all, they were the ones who had sent themselves to the opponent''s doorstep to be humiliated. Moreover, it was not only Lancelot; the Sword Alliance had a mysterious powerhouse who easily suppressed Shen Jue. They had at least two powerhouses with middle-rank lord-level ability guarding them. God Capital really could not afford to offend them. Furthermore, they speculated that the Sword Alliance had Royal''s backing in the universe. They dared not take revenge on the Sword Alliance. In the cultivation world, countless sword cultivators were anticipating joining the Sword Alliance. After all, it was called the Sword Alliance, and the chief Lin Huang was a sword cultivator. Naturally, countless sword cultivators were keen to join them. It was a grade-7 organization with a sword cultivator leader. If one could join them, they would definitely obtain many good-quality Sword Dao inheritances. Many sword cultivators were inspired by Lancelot''s sword attack. He was a lord-level supreme sword cultivator; a supreme powerhouse who defeated Shen Lu of God Capital within a second. If he could give them some pointers, they would definitely benefit significantly! Apart from sword cultivators, there were many saber cultivators who applied to join as well. Sword cultivators and saber cultivators aside, there were many female cultivators who applied. Many of them came for Sword 1''s good looks. Naturally, a portion of them came for the chief Lin Huang. The applications Sword 1 received daily nearly filled up his mailbox. Lin Huang allowed him to share all of the mails to the other Sword Servants, getting the 300 or so Sword Servants to oversee the preliminary selection. Later on, Sword 1 to Sword 12 would conduct the second round of selection. After the two rounds of selection, they would send the successful applicants to Sword 1, who would conduct the final selection. Initially, Lin Huang thought he would get the 12 Swordmaster''s bodyguards to go into closed-door cultivation as soon as possible after the banquet ended so that they could break through to lord-level as soon as possible. However, seeing the millions of applications daily, he could only put that plan aside. Sword 1 and the rest did not have many complaints. It would not matter if they entered into closed-door cultivation a few days later. As they went through the applications, the Sword Servants very soon reported the millions of applications everyday were just going along with the trend. Lin Huang had only noticed that a viral trend had started on the internet in the past few days. Everyone would show off the application they sent to the Sword Alliance. The most viral thread even obtained hundreds of millions of likes. Apart from some cultivators without an organization, there were some people who already belonged to an organization among the applicants. Some of them were the upper echelons of some top organizations. Even they were going along with the trend. Even Xeno''s vice president Beth showed off the screenshot of her mail application. She even mentioned Lin Huang and the Sword Alliance''s official accounts. Lin Huang replied helplessly, "Even if I dare to accept you, is Xeno willing to let you go?" Xeno''s official account soon gave a weak reply, "We wouldn''t dare (scared emoji)". Although the trend increased the Sword Servants'' workload immensely, Lin Huang and the Sword Alliance''s official accounts did not stop them. They would even interact with them occasionally. Lin Huang and Sword 1 knew very well that they were just having fun. The trend would only last a few more days at most, and it would blow over after that. The netizens who were joining this trend showed that they felt positively about the Sword Alliance at least. Though the trend was ridiculous, it increased the Sword Alliance''s popularity. Though the other grade-7 organizations were envious of the Sword Alliance''s popularity, there was nothing that they could do. God Capital had been humiliated on the spot, and the remaining organizations dared not poke the hornets'' nest. Furthermore, the Sword Alliance was at the peak of their fame at the moment. No matter what the other organizations did, it would be difficult for them to attract the attention of the netizens. Within those few days, things had been heated among the upper echelons of Death Sickle. They had been fighting. It made sense that a couple of Blood Sickle members were jealous of the Sword Alliance taking all of the fame. After all, Death Sickle was a grade-7 organization that had just been upgraded two to three months ago. However, they did not enjoy the similar popularity and fame from the upgrade. Everyone was giving their opinions, and everyone thought their plans were the best. One day, Buried Heaven finally could no longer hold back and called all the Blood Sickle members to the meeting room. Everyone was present at 9am. Buried Heaven, who was in the form of a young man, projected the viral topics that countless netizens had been discussing recently. The Blood Sickle members looked at the various threads discussing the Sword Alliance. They had no idea what Buried Heaven was trying to do. "Are you envious?" Buried Heaven glanced at everyone present. They kept their silence and said nothing. They were definitely envious, but they could not say so out loud. "Do you guys know why the Sword Alliance enjoys the benefits of all sorts of news and traffic when they were upgraded to grade-7, while our Death Sickle didn''t despite upgrading to grade-7 as well?" The couple of Blood Sickle members lifted their heads to look at Buried Heaven. Indeed, they could not understand why that was the case. Death Sickle organized a banquet as well when they were upgraded, and also invited all the organizations. Although they did not have as many participants as the Sword Alliance''s banquet had, it was still a large-scale banquet. Not only that, the number of media groups that came to report was no lesser than those who went to write about the Sword Alliance. However, the discussions around Death Sickle only went on for two to three days. It was not worth mentioning at all compared to the Sword Alliance, who had been trending on the internet for more than a month. "Because we''re a pile of dust!" Buried Heaven did not care that he was humiliating the senior members at all. The Blood Sickle members instantly looked terrible. "Since Death Sickle upgraded to grade-7, all of you insist on having your own opinion on each major decision we make. You guys fight among each other every time, afraid that you''ll receive less credit or lose authority! Not only that, you guys fought for Gold Sickle membership quotas, started your own gangs, and got Death Sickle''s members to take sides. What the hell?!" "Buried Heaven, you gathered us out of nowhere just to tell us this?" Boundless Blood asked with an unfriendly expression on his face. He was one of Death Sickle''s founders. He was the most experienced one. Buried Heaven was only considered a junior in his presence. Naturally, he was rather pissed that he had been scolded by a junior to his face. "Senior Boundless, do you want Death Sickle to grow larger and stronger? If you do, then please, all of you, be patient and let me finish. If any of you feel that your personal interest is more important than Death Sickle''s, you may leave now. I won''t stop you." What Buried Heaven said shut Boundless Blood up directly. The Blood Sickle members all looked terrible, but none of them got up to leave. Buried Heaven glanced around the room and only started speaking again after waiting for a moment. "Seems like everyone still hopes for Death Sickle to grow stronger. At least we have the same vision." "Do you know why the Sword Alliance is so outstanding?" That question got everyone''s attention immediately. "You guys know that I''m quite close with Lin Huang. Therefore, I''ve discussed this issue with him, as well as the problems our Death Sickle has." "I think he''s right. He managed to point out the biggest difference between the Sword Alliance and Death SickleThe current Death Sickle has no backbone!" "While Death Sickle was still a grade-6 organization, although the seven Blood Sickle members had their own gangs, the seven of us still formed the backbone of the organization when we came together." "However, since Old Sun and the rest died, the initial balance has been disrupted. Everyone started to fight for power. Especially since Death Sickle became a grade-7 organization, the infighting got worse." The couple of Blood Sickle members fell silent when they heard his words. "Today, this Blood Sickle member would give an order. Tomorrow, another Blood Sickle member will give another order. The subordinates have no idea who to listen to." "It''s been close to three months since Death Sickle upgraded to grade-7. Let me ask you guys thisHave you come to a consensus on how you''d like to develop Death Sickle in the future? It''s good enough even if there''s only one direction that all of us have come to a consensus on!" "It''s been almost three months, and we''re still stuck in the same chaotic state from when we upgraded to a grade-7 organization back then. We''re in an even worse mess than we were in three months ago." "Do you know how many things the Sword Alliance has done since they upgraded to a grade-7 organization?!" Although the Blood Sickle members were unwilling to admit it, they knew what Buried Heaven said was the truth. "What do you need us to do, then?" After a long silence in the meeting room, Gao Ming was the first to speak. "Firstly, rectify the mess. The few of you must clarify your responsibilities. Distinguish who takes care of what clearly. Don''t intervene in everything. You guys wanting to be a part of everything is making it difficult for our subordinates to work." "Secondly, formulate a detailed follow-up plan for the organization''s development. You guys must reach a consensus on this. Don''t come up with your own plan and then refuse to yield to each other. Use the plan that''s the most effective and beneficial for Death Sickle''s future development. Announce to the public that it was Blood Sickle who came up with the decision." "Thirdly, catch up with the publicity. Try your best to draw attention and news traffic, even if you have to ride on the Sword Alliance''s fame. We must recruit newcomers to join us." "Fourthly, start collaborations with the outside world. Start discussions on which organization to collaborate with, and what kind of collaborations Death Sickle should engage in" Chapter 1718 - Great Expansion Lin Huang and team had been busy recruiting new members for a few days after the upgrade banquet ended. Throughout the entire week, the Sword Alliance had received millions of applications, and the numbers showed no sign of slowing down at all. Fortunately, apart from a small number of the over 300 Sword Servants who were out on their own missions, the rest had joined the assessment team. In reality, it was not only the Sword Servants; Lin Huang dragged Lin Xin and Lin Xuan into the assessment team. Almost nobody in the entire Sword Alliance was idle. Although many applications were obviously just people following the trend, there really were just too many applications. Lin Huang and the rest''s workload was heavy. Even after going through many rounds of filtering, throughout that one week, there were hundreds of thousands of applicants who passed Sword 1 and Lin Huang''s assessment criteria, becoming official members. Some of them showed off the screenshot of their approved applications on the internet when they received the news that they passed. That behaviour sparked yet another viral trend. Almost more than half of the hundreds of thousands of people posted their screenshots. Therefore, "Did You Manage to Join the Sword Alliance Successfully?" became the new hot topic. In less than half a day after that topic went viral, another strange trend appeared on the internet. A bunch of people who failed their applications showed off their screenshots of rejection. Another topic that was even more viral began to trend"Have You Been Rejected by the Sword Alliance Today?" There were even more netizens who posted the screenshots of them being rejected by the Sword Alliance. There were tens of millions of people who posted them. The strange trend made even more netizens begin to send their applications to join the Sword Alliance. For most, their goal was actually just to participate in the screenshot trend. However, this increased the pressure of everyone at the Sword Alliance even more. Not only did the millions of daily applications not decrease a week later, it had shot up to tens of millions of applications daily now. Lin Huang was not sure whether to laugh or cry about that. Noticing the insane workload, he thought about it and decided to make an appeal on the social media platforms. "Thank you all for your love and interest in the Sword Alliance. We''re receiving tens of millions of applications daily. I know that many of you are sincere in joining, but many passionate netizens have joined in the fun as well. This has caused a major increase in workload to us. Throughout the past few days, all of us have pretty much been inundated running application assessments all day." "Let me suggest a little something here. Before applying, think about what you want or hope to gain from joining the Sword Alliance. Can the Sword Alliance give you what you want? If you think we''re suitable for you, then send over your application. If not, you can totally go for other organizations. After all, there are many other outstanding organizations in the God Territory that you can choose from." "I don''t accept your suggestion." "Tens of millions of applications daily is too little. Let us all apply and break a hundred million applications!" "I don''t care if the Sword Alliance suits me or not. I want to apply no matter what. The melon that''s forcibly plucked before it''s matured isn''t sweet, but it sure is thirst-quenching." "It doesn''t matter if the Sword Alliance can give me what I want. The Sword Alliance has Sword 1, and that''s the most important thing!" "I want to apply. Don''t stop me!" As soon as Lin Huang posted the thread, countless comments were posted rejecting his suggestion. He had never expected that his thread to halt the trend would backfire. Throughout the next few days, the applications to join the Sword Alliance multiplied again. The highest number of applications had exceeded 50 million per day. The people at the Sword Alliance were speechless now. Lin Huang did not dare to speak up again. He could only get everyone to remain silent so that the trend would pass faster. As the Sword Alliance was recruiting new members in full swing, the other organizations that were envious rode on the fame and began to recruit their own as well. Grade-7 organizations like the Combat God Temple and Xeno relaxed their recruitment requirements and increased their membership benefits. Death Sickle, on the other hand, issued new policies consecutively. They made some adjustments to the organization''s structure, and then joined the recruitment war as well. Among the grade-7 organizations, God Capital was the only one who did nothing. In reality, they were envious, but their pride did not allow them to lower their recruitment requirements. God Capital had always recruited pure blood Protoss only. That was definitely something that couldn''t be changed. Meanwhile, most of the pure blood Protoss in the God Territory who thought highly of themselves as pure blood had basically already joined God Capital. Most of them who did not join were those who disagreed with God Capital''s philosophy. On a certain level, as long as God Capital was not open to accepting non-pure blood Protoss, it was difficult for them to recruit new members on a large scale in this great world. Also, organizations such as the Nephilic Judge Tribe that operated as a tribe could only watch as the other organizations recruited members in a frenzy. Apart from marriage, it was basically impossible for a tribe like them to recruit members from the outside world through other methods. Moreover, a conservative tribe like the Nephilic Judge Tribe valued the bloodline legacy more. The outstanding bloodline had basically been bred within the tribe. Those who were married off or who had married another tribe were those whose bloodline was not exactly pure. Therefore, the outsiders who joined as a son-in-law or daughter-in-law would not excel in the Nephilic Judge Tribe. It had caused a vicious cycle. Many talented young people with potential were unwilling to marry into the ancient tribe. Naturally, their obsolete concepts had restricted their development. Such restrictions could not be solved by having a lord-level Virgen at all. The vital thing was to change their concepts. Their entire tribe needed to gladly welcome change instead of refusing to adapt to the times. The number of applications finally began to drop after the people at the Sword Alliance had been busy for half a month. Lin Huang and the rest were finally relieved when they saw the number of applications dropping. It had been almost a month, and the number of applications had finally dropped below a million applications daily. Lin Huang could remove himself from the operation entirely and got Sword 1 to handle the remaining application filtering process. Throughout the month, he began feeling the side-effects of the operation. He would now feel sleepy whenever he saw applications However, the Sword Alliance had gained many new members throughout the month. Most of them were sword cultivators and saber cultivators. There were also many female cultivators. Though they went through many rounds of filtering, the number of new Sword Alliance members had increased by over 800,000 people. Among them were over 3,000 heavenly god-level powerhouses. Although the number was not worth mentioning at all compared to organizations such as the Combat God Temple and Death Sickle, compared to the Sword Alliance from before, it had undoubtedly expanded at least thousands of times over. Bloody had done background checks for the over 3,000 heavenly god-level newcomers one by one before passing them eventually. After passing the assessment, they joined the Sword Alliance''s Heavenly God League directly. Lancelot and Killer would train them. Meanwhile, as there were too many members below the heavenly god-level, Bloody could not run a detailed investigation on their backgrounds one by one. Lin Huang used Leech Pods directly to run a mass investigation. Among the 800,000 people, over 1,000 of them were spies from all sorts of organizations. He used Leech Pods to control them to forfeit themselves automatically and leave. The other members did not find it strange that those people quit on their own. The reason being was that they knew many had applied just for fun. However, they did not know that those who had applied just for fun had been eliminated in the first round of the filtering process. Chapter 1719 - Sword 1’s Unification All the affairs were moving forward accordingly on the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s side. Nobody knew that the Virgen who had been frequently participating in the formal affairs during this period of time was not Kylie herself, but one of Bloody''s clones. Meanwhile, Bloody''s clone who was disguised as Kylie had a subordinate with herKina, Kylie''s dependent. Kina was the dependent that Kylie had mentioned to Lin Huang before. Her rank was at Pseudo Pure Spirit rank-5.5, while her combat strength was at sixth-rank heavenly god-level. Under Bloody''s arrangement, not only had Kina joined the Nephilic Judge Tribe successfully, she had recognized "Kylie" as her sister now. She had even become the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s Virgen whose status was only second to Kylie. As Nephilic Judge Tribe''s "Virgen Kylie" moved things along, the Nephilic Judge Tribe soon came to an agreement for an in-depth collaboration with the Sword Alliance. Everything went better than what Bloody expected. Meanwhile, Kylie had turned into a giant cocoon. She had begun her journey of elevation to lord-level. Bloody was standing guard by her side. The people at the Sword Alliance had not been able to stay idle at all. The assessment for new members was ongoing. Although Lin Huang had got himself out of it, he had merely rested for less than two days before becoming immersed in the Sword Alliance''s tasks again. The reason for that was the in-depth collaboration discussions with the Nephilic Judge Tribe and Death Sickle had entered the negotiation stage. Due to the negotiations, Sword 1 got Sword 2 to take over the new members'' assessment entirely. Though Sword 2 was unwilling, he could only take it with a frown on his face. For over one week, Lin Huang and Sword 1 spent most of their time in all sorts of video conferences. It was going alright at Death Sickle''s side. However, the Nephilic Judge Tribe only signed the agreement after it had undergone over ten different versions of amendments. The negotiation with the Nephilic Judge Tribe was very tough. If not for Bloody, who helped to amend the terms and mediated things with Kylie''s status, it might not have been signed even half a month later. Apart from in-depth collaborations, the collaborations the Sword Alliance had with the other grade-6 and grade-7 organizations were developing gradually. They had more intel and trading channels now. Time flew and over a month had passed. The Sword Alliance had been established in the God Territory for three months now, and they were finally getting things on track. They had exceeded a million members. Among them were over 4,000 Heavenly Gods. They would still have new applications everyday, but the number had reduced to over 10,000 applications per day. As Yang Ling had created a smart filtering program, the applications that Sword 1 received was actually less than one-tenth of the applications sent. It reduced his workload significantly. Lin Xin and the rest were excused from the filtering process of new members with the help of the smart filter program Yang Ling created. Though that was the case, they vented their frustrations to Lin Huang. "Brother, I feel like puking whenever I see emails now" Lin Xin looked wronged. "Don''t ask me to do such a thing again." Lin Xuan looked quite terrible too. "Please exclude me as well." Chan Dou looked cold. "You can get me to fight, but administrative work isn''t for me." It was Xiao Mo who said that. "Just pretend that I''m illiterate from now on." It was Huang Wuji who said that. Lin Huang took some time to comfort the few of them and promised that they would never be given administrative work again. He then sent them back into the Kingdom in his body to continue grinding the Bug Tribe instance dungeon. Meanwhile, the imperial monsters like Bai and the rest entered the queue again to go into the virtual realm for cultivation as soon as they were excused from the administrative work. All of them were unwilling to delay their cultivation for even a second. Apart from those who had yet to complete their missions, Lin Huang got the rest of the Sword Servants to join the Heavenly God League. Each of the Sword Servants after Sword 38 was a team leader who led a Heavenly God Squad of nine to ten people. Sword 13 to Sword 37 were the commanders. Each of them led over ten Heavenly God Squads. Sword 11 and Sword 12 were the captains. In the beginning, some of the new members from the Heavenly God League were upset about the group arrangements. They wanted to challenge the team leaders, but were subdued easily. After all, the Sword Servants were at ninth-rank heavenly god-level now. Not only that, sword cultivators were experts in attacking after all. Even if they were fighting someone who had the same level of combat strength, it was hard for them to meet a worthy opponent. Moreover, some of these Heavenly Gods who had joined the Sword Alliance only had low to middle-rank combat strength. Barely over one-tenth of them had high-rank combat strength. There was only one who was at ninth-rank. This person was a rogue sword cultivator before. It was almost the limit to which he could cultivate. Though they had the same combat strength, his ability could not compare with the Sword Servants who had trained with the system. After initiating the challenge, he lost to Sword 38 within a minute. Seeing that he was defeated directly, those who wanted to challenge the team leaders dismissed their plan immediately. Lin Huang did not assign Sword 1 to Sword 10 to the Heavenly God League. Instead, he handed the ten of them the Sword Dao inheritances tailor-made for the Swordmaster''s bodyguards that he spent some time to prepare previously. After that, he sent the ten of them into the Great Heaven Palace, accelerating the time flow to 10,000 times faster. One must know that Lin Huang had consolidated over 200 Sword seals. This meant that he had created his own methods in the over 200 Sword Dao cultivation directions. The Sword Dao he cultivated included Great Heaven and the Sword Servants'' inheritances. He knew very well of each Sword Servants'' capabilities, and which paths they were suited for in terms of cultivation. Since Sword 1 and the rest obtained the inheritances, they immersed themselves in it quickly. Like a sponge soaked in water, they were absorbing the nutrients in the inheritances madly. In the inheritances Lin Huang gave them, he chose at least three cultivation directions for each of them. They could consolidate Sword seals no matter which direction they took and elevate themselves to lord-level. Among them, it was Sword 1 who had the most comprehensive cultivation in Sword Dao, and he was given 12 different directions to consolidate Sword seals in the inheritances Lin Huang had customized. The person who obtained the second most inheritances was Sword 8. She had the most talent and potential among all of the Sword Servants. Lin Huang picked nine ways for her to elevate to Lord. This girl had the purest heart among all of the Sword Servants. To Lin Huang, she might even surpass Sword 1 and go further on the path of cultivation. It was not discrimination for Lin Huang to do so. Instead, he curated it according to everyone''s actual situation. For instance, the Sword Dao Sword 10 cultivated only had three directions at most to consolidate Sword seals if he were to go further. In order to consolidate more Sword seals, he would have to rebuild his foundation all over again and cultivate more sword skills. Therefore, the inheritances Lin Huang gave him only contained the methods to consolidate three Sword seals. Naturally, the Sword Servants knew that the inheritances each of them obtained were different. However, they had no idea the difference would be so great. Lin Huang had also taken the effort to inform them not to share the inheritances they received with the other Sword Servants. The reason being was that each of them had different requirements. The inheritances he provided were customized to each of them. Them sharing amongst each other might result in them misleading one another, holding up each others'' cultivation. Under the 10,000 times accelerated time flow, within half a day, Lin Huang sensed Sword 1''s aura fluctuation. Without any hesitation, he directly teleported Sword 1 from the Great Heaven Palace to the barren star zone in his Kingdom. He did not teleport him to the God Territory because a Lord''s unification would create too big of a commotion. It would still be fine if there were only one or two people performing unification. If ten people were to do that consecutively, people would definitely notice the abnormality of the situation. It was within Lin Huang''s expectations that Sword 1 would be the first one to perform unification. In reality, he had been in the state where he had half his foot in unification this entire time. It was just that he could not find the exact direction that he wanted to venture toward for years. Therefore, he had been staying stagnant in the state prior to unification. When he received Lin Huang''s inheritances, he had actually only glanced at the 12 directions that Lin Huang chose for him and quickly picked out one that he had the most confidence in; that he would succeed in during the unification. He then began to absorb the information madly. Within ten years, he had digested the inheritance of the chosen direction and began the unification process automatically Chapter 1720 - A Strange Feeling Lin Huang suddenly had a strange feeling as he watched Sword 1''s God Territory project out automatically and the god sequence chains spread out of his body. The faint strange feeling came from deep within the Kingdom in his body. The feeling was indescribable, like something in the Kingdom had been awakened by something. It also felt a little bit like something was beginning to crack He spread his Divine Telekinesis instantly in an attempt to discover the source of the strange feeling. However, the effort was to no avail after he scanned his Kingdom over ten times. He could only let it go and continued to watch Sword 1''s elevation in silence. When the 33 god sequence chains spread out of Sword 1''s body, they seemed to control entirely. They began to show their fangs and claws as they fought against each other. They even manifested into mutated beasts and started a chaotic battle. Lin Huang was a little shocked to see the number of Sword 1''s god sequence chains. He had always thought that Sword 1''s ability would be similar to Buried Heaven. He might even be slightly weaker. Now it seemed the number of Sword 1''s god sequence chains at the heavenly god-level was clearly more than Buried Heaven possessed. Buried Heaven had only consolidated 27 god sequence chains. As he thought about it carefully, Lin Huang very soon realized his misjudgement in the past. Sword 1''s Sword Dao attainment was shocking. Among everyone Lin Huang knew, the reserve of sword skills Sword 1 possessed was only second to him and Great Heaven. In reality, it made sense that the number of god sequence chains that Sword 1 consolidated exceeded Buried Heaven with the background he possessed. Watching the god sequence chains'' manifestations fighting, there was no change of emotions in Sword 1''s eyes at all. He had watched this scene play out more than once. Moreover, the inheritance of information Lin Huang gave him had related memories as well. He did not panic at all as he removed the battle sword from its scabbard. He swung it at the beast that was manifested by a god sequence chain closest to him. ''What a firm attack!'' Lin Huang could not help but exclaim secretly when he saw Sword 1''s performance. He was the one that he worried about least among all Sword Servants. It was not because he had powerful abilities, but mainly because he had a very firm character. Lin Huang could even say that it was not an exaggeration to call Sword 1 the calmest guy among everyone he knew. With his background and accumulation, he could have performed unification much earlier. However, he had always thought that he was lacking something, which resulted in him not having sufficient confidence to break through successfully. That was why he delayed things until now. Fortunately, the wait was worth it. He received Lin Huang''s inheritance of information that gave him enough confidence to do it. Within 20 minutes, Sword 1 had subdued all of the god sequence chains. He began the second stage of unification. However, the second he completed the psychic communication stage, Lin Huang suddenly lifted his head and looked into the distance again. He looked deep into his Kingdom. The moment when Sword 1 completed psychic communication, he clearly felt that the strange feeling had intensified. Not only that, the feeling seemed to have multiplied in strength. It was tens of times more powerful now. Lin Huang spread his Divine Telekinesis to look for it again, but it was still to no avail. The feeling felt as if it appeared out of thin air and without a trace. He could only let it be and continue to focus on Sword 1''s unification. The second stage of unification was the consolidation of his Dao seal. This was the stage that Lin Huang was most worried about for Sword 1. The reason being was that, during the process of unification, a terrifying energy would be released when the god sequence chains integrated into the Dao seal. Sword 1 had six more god sequence chains compared to Buried Heaven. The difficulty of unification would definitely be higher than Buried Heaven. However, he remained calm and activated a white pearl to protect his God''s soul. It was a Soul Weapon, which was a low-grade Dao Weapon that Lin Huang lent him. He borrowed it because Lin Huang would basically auction spoils such as Dao Weapons on Royal''s site. His God Weapon was bonded with his God''s soul, so he could not lend him that. This Soul Weapon was the gift God Capital gave the Sword Alliance recently. Lin Huang took it out to let the Sword Servants use it during unification. There was only one, so they could only take turns. It was not that Lin Huang was stingy and unwilling to buy a Soul Weapon of a higher grade. With the strength of their God''s souls, they could only activate low-grade Dao Weapons forcibly. They could not use Dao Weapons of a higher grade at all. It was quite impossible for the low-grade Dao Weapon to be damaged during the process of unification, judging by the intensity of their unification. It was perfect for them to take turns using it. Naturally, there was no guarantee that their God''s soul would be affected at all during unification, even with this Soul Weapon. They were not Lords after all. They had no Odyl in their bodies. They could only activate the most basic defense function. Under the Soul Weapon''s passive defense, it could only absorb 50% of the Odylic Force impact. After protecting his God''s soul, Sword 1 grabbed a handful of Divine Crystals from his storage ring so that he could replenish his drained Divine Power at any time. Lin Huang had the urge to laugh when he saw that. This guy was really cautious to the point that he was worried that his Divine Power would be insufficient. As the stage of unification began, the 33 god sequence chains tangled themselves rapidly. They consolidated into Dao tattoos in the air at a high speed. A moment later, the Dao tattoos gathered into a big, dazzling sun. The glaring golden glow was growing, spreading toward Sword 1''s entire God Territory, releasing a terrifying amount of energy. The instant the Dao seal took shape, the terrifying energy began to collide Sword 1''s God Territory, God''s soul and physical body. The planets were destroyed one after the other in Sword 1''s God Territory. Planets aside, even the stars and black holes began to burn intensely Lin Huang could even feel the remnant energy from the unification penetrating his God Territory. He was finally relieved when he saw no odd fluctuations coming from Sword 1''s God''s soul under the Soul Weapon''s protection, and that the cracks that had appeared, instead of spreading further, were continuously being restored on its own at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. As long as things remained in balance, and he held on until the unification stage ended, he would get through this process. Lin Huang had been waiting patiently. Sword 1 on the other hand was as firm as a log. He would begin to absorb Divine Crystals to replenish the Divine Power in his body without them draining too much. He would maintain at least 90% of his Divine Power capacity at all times. Not only was the Divine Power restoring his physical body quickly, it was also pouring into the Soul Weapon continuously. He did not show any panic at all though the God Territory in his body was heavily damaged. He had been tossing the God Territory Shell Remnants from his storage ring into his God Territory to refine them and to replenish what he had lost. Fortunately, the stage of unification did not last long. Within ten minutes, Sword 1''s Dao seal had been consolidated entirely. The release of energy was weakened. At the same time, Lin Huang could clearly feel that the strange feeling deep in his Kingdom had grown tens of times more powerful than before. He probed by spreading his Divine Telekinesis again. As he expected, it was still to no avail. He began to speculate that this feeling should have come from Sword 1''s unification. However, he could not figure out what it was exactly. He merely had a faint feeling that the answer might be revealed when Sword 1''s unification ended. Chapter 1721 - The Restriction Has Been Lifted? Lin Huang was finally relieved when the unification stage with the highest mortality rate had passed. Theoretically, the most difficult stage of unification was the third stageDao plundering. However, Sword 1 was performing the unification in the Kingdom in Lin Huang''s body. If Sword 1 could not defeat the Raptor, Lin Huang would not mind intervening. He was not worried that his intervention would cause any abnormalities in the unification. After all, he could suppress the situation with this current ability if it really happened, since it was just the unification of a Heavenly God elevating to a lower-rank Lord. The unification stage had been completed in Sword 1''s God Territory, and the Dao seal had been officially consolidated, and had retracted its aura entirely. It hovered in the air quietly, integrating with the God Territory. At that moment, the third stage, Dao plundering, had commenced. In the God Territory, a Dimensional Whirlpool that was like a Virtual Eye was formed at a high speed. A monster with a muscular body walked out of the Dimensional Whirlpool. It was a monster that was over three meters tall. Its lower body looked a little like a praying mantis. It had four powerful insect legs that made it look like the monster had excellent jumping capabilities. There was no head on its upper body, with only a section of spine that seemed to be made of bronze. It had 12 delicate joints that were connected to sword arms. The monster looked like a praying mantis monster that had been mechanically modified. It was also Lin Huang''s first time seeing such a monster. He did not know its name at all. Sword 1 merely observed it momentarily, without a trace of emotions on his face at all. However, he clearly exerted more strength into his right, sword-wielding hand. Lin Huang probed it with Divine Telekinesis. The praying mantis monster''s aura was slightly more powerful than Buried Heaven''s. It was clearly a lower-rank Lord with only one Dao seal. It was just that it had more Dao tattoos than Buried Heaven. Lin Huang guessed that it should have a similar number of Dao tattoos as Sword 1 did. After the mechanical praying mantis monster passed through the Virtual Eye, it locked onto its preySword 1. Almost without hesitation, its body instantly turned into an aftershadow as it jumped hard with its legs. It arrived before Sword 1 almost instantaneously. Its 12 sword arms controlled 12 battle swords, slashing at Sword 1 from different angles. Sword 1 would be dismembered if he was hit by the attack. Sword 1''s pupils could not help but constrict slightly the second he saw its movements. "So fast!" Nevertheless, his body reacted instinctively. While he retreated frantically, he swung his sword consecutively as he used the Odyl that he had yet to familiarize himself with to defend against the praying mantis monster''s attack. His attack was crushed in one hit as expected, but he had managed to dodge the praying mantis monster''s first round of attacks. Lin Huang saw the gap of abilities between the two of them from that one exchange. Sword 1 was significantly weaker in terms of speed. The praying mantis monster was clearly an expert in speed-type attack techniques. Its speed exceeded most Lords with one Dao seal. Not only its movement speed, but its attack speed was stunning too. Its 12 sword arms attacked almost at the same time without any delays in between. It could adjust its attack speed as it wished. These two factors gave it excellent flexibility. Although Sword 1 was no match for it in terms of speed, he had great movement skills to make up for it. In terms of attack speed, his rapid attack technique was no slower than the praying mantis monster. In terms of flexibility, the praying mantis monster was slightly more capable, but it was not to the point where it would have the upper hand in suppressing Sword 1. On the application of Odyl, the praying mantis monster was clearly more familiar with it. It was extremely smooth. Sword 1 was rather new to that aspect. The disparity was obvious. That was the reason why it defeated Sword 1''s few sword attacks easily. However, Lin Huang did not think that it was an issue. With Sword 1''s Sword Dao comprehension, and his abundant battle experience in the past, he should be able to familiarize himself with the application of Odyl in no time. Although Sword 1 was weaker than his opponent at the moment, Lin Huang did not think that he would lose. After all, the two of them were battling in Sword 1''s God Territory. As soon as he familiarized himself with the application of Odyl, he should be able to master using the other god sequence chains in his God Territory rapidly. Just when Lin Huang was still evaluating Sword 1''s probability of winning, the battle between the two had moved on to the second round. Since the first attack had failed to defeat Sword 1, the praying mantis monster tried applying Odyl that the opponent was unfamiliar with. It began its frantic attacks without hesitation. It teleported continuously and took the initiative to attack over and over again. Sword 1 changed his previous strategy of tackling speed with speed. He began to defend instead. At the beginning, Lin Huang was frowning a little bit as he watched. The reason being that pure defense would only accelerate the exhaustion of Divine Power and Odyl. He might drain his Divine Power and Odyl completely right in front of his opponent. However, Lin Huang soon realized that his worry was unnecessary. Sword 1 was very skillful in his defense. He mainly dodged by using teleportation. He would only defend when he really could not dodge the attack. Although almost each of his defenses would be crushed with one hit, he could always dodge the attack that broke through the defense. Not only that, Lin Huang could see that he was becoming more and more familiar with the application of Odyl with each defense. "This guy has such a firm mentality. He didn''t forget to use his opponent to increase his familiarity in applying Odyl at such a time." Fortunately, this Raptor did not seem to be very smart. It did not notice what Sword 1 was doing. It kept attacking over and over again, adjusting its attack angle and speed over and over again. However, it soon realized that its opponent''s defense was getting more and more stable. Lin Huang watched the defensive battle for over half an hour. He had also witnessed the entire process of Sword 1 mastering the application of Odyl. At the moment, Sword 1, who figured that he had gotten familiar with Odyl, finally retaliated. At the beginning, he was only using the Dao tattoo power that was available in his Dao seal. The opponent would still break each of his attacks easily. Slowly, he began to borrow the available god sequence chains in the God Territory in his body. Almost over an hour later, he could finally fight a fair and even battle with the Raptor. He even began to suppress his opponent now, after figuring out the Raptor''s combat tendencies. Lin Huang was finally relieved as he watched up to this point. He knew that it was certain that Sword 1 would succeed in his unification. Less than half an hour later, Sword 1 had finally killed the mechanical praying mantis monster. The Virtual Eye in his God Territory faded quickly. The integration of the Dao seal with his God Territory was completed thoroughly, as if the reset button on the entire God Territory had been pressed. The God Territory seemed like it was going back in time. The planets that were destroyed during the unification had returned to their original orbits. Even the living beings that died in the God Territory were reborn one after the other Sword 1''s God Territory began to expand further, transforming into a legitimate Kingdom. As Lin Huang waited for the changes of the projection of Sword 1''s Kingdom to complete its transformation, he had a faint feeling that the Kingdom inside his body seemed to have had a layer of restriction lifted. This time, he did not spread his Divine Telekinesis to search for the source of the feeling. Instead, he checked the changes within his body directly. Very soon, he could not help but raise his brows slightly. "The restriction of 3,000 Dao seals has been lifted?!" Chapter 1722 - Elevating To Dao-level Lin Huang did not interrupt things when he saw Sword 1 standing where he was, taking the time to feel the changes thoroughly after elevating to Lord. He snapped his consciousness out of his body directly. He glanced at his surroundings, and then got Mr. Gate to open the door to the virtual realm. His virtual body entered in a flash. The virtual realm remained black and white. It was quiet without a sound. Lin Huang scanned his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis. He did not sense any Voids. He then summoned a virtual realm cabin. He entered rather eagerly. He was eager to verify whether the restriction on the 3,000 Dao seals in his body had been lifted. After entering the virtual realm cabin, he sat with his legs crossed immediately. He began to simulate the god sequence chains that had yet to be converted into Dao tattoos in his Kingdom. As expected, the god sequence chains that seemed to be encrypted previously began to revert to their usual state. They could be simulated once again. Without hesitation, Lin Huang began a round of frenzied simulation. He ran a reverse analysis on the god rules and sequences in the god sequence chains. After that, he replicated the entire process in reverse. He converted the god sequence chains from the God Territories he plundered from others to his entirely. It was unclear how many days had passed in the virtual realm cabin. Lin Huang consolidated a million god rules and sequences again and began unification rather anxiously. He was not anxious about the unification process. He was worried that the restriction from before would appear again to obstruct his unification. However, the entire unification process went by smoothly. Psychic communication, unification, Dao plundering. The three stages were completed extraordinarily well. Many Voids coveted his Dao seal during the Dao plundering. Lin Huang killed them easily. Just like that, he consolidated 3,001 Dao seals from the one million god sequence chains. Watching the Dao seal that had just consolidated in the air, Lin Huang felt like he was in a daze at the moment. "Have I broken through to minor dao-level now?!" He knew that many talents and geniuses would be stuck at the limit of ultimate-rank lord-level and had failed to move forward since the beginning of time. There were even many who failed to complete the breakthrough to dao-level before they died. He had been ready to be stuck at this plateau for a long time. However, the fact that he had broken through this plateau seemed a little too easy. He felt the flesh and soul particles in his body were going through a major transformation, as if some restriction had been lifted. Shock filled his face. He did not expect that his physical body and God''s soul would go through such changes just because he had consolidated an extra Dao seal. He could clearly sense that he was becoming more powerful by the second. Even the Nirvana Trees that were connected to his God''s soul were thriving. They were sending the Origin Energy fragments from the death spring into Lin Huang continuously. At the moment, Lin Huang could no longer care about the source of the energy. He shut his eyes tight and immersed himself in the elevation of his physical body and God''s soul completely, feeling the changes within each particle of his body. It was unclear how long had passed when the sense of elevation finally slowed down. The transformation of the flesh and soul particles had finally come to an end. Lin Huang snapped out of his state of immersion. He was sure that he had stepped into dao-level. However, he had no idea exactly how powerful he was. After all, he no longer had a reference point like when he was at the limit of ultimate-rank lord-level before. Now, he felt like he could kill hundreds of his old self within a second. He realized that his physical body and God''s soul had transformed into a whole new state. His physical body and blood cells had been entirely transformed into particles, so had his God''s soul. The two types of particles could be interchanged as he desired. Not only that, he could sense that as long as a particle still remained intact, he would be immortal. Such particles could absorb all sorts of energies from the universe automatically. Including the Divine Power of all attributes, radioactive waves from all materials, all kinds of god rules, sequences and even rule power. Lin Huang was even a little suspicious that his old self at ultimate-rank Lord might not be able to break through his current defense. The reason being was that each of the particles in his body were covered by the natural Odyl radiating from the 3,001 Dao seals. The natural consumption of this was almost equivalent to nothing to the current him. After sensing the changes in his physical body and God''s soul meticulously, Lin Huang very soon noticed the over 200 Nirvana Trees that were still sending Origin Energy fragments into his body. "What''s happening?!" Lin Huang was dumbstruck when he saw the size of the Nirvana Trees. The Nirvana Trees'' initial size had already been comparable to a giant celestial body. Now, each of them had grown to the size of a galaxy. They were even bigger than many star zones in the great world. The over 200 trees could be gathered into a tiny universe when they came together. What surprised Lin Huang even more was that each of the Nirvana Trees'' surfaces were covered by a layer of energy that looked like a golden mist. He examined them closely and found out that the mist consisted of Origin Energy particles coming from the death spring. "I''m afraid the value of these Nirvana Trees is comparable to spiritual treasures now." Watching the Nirvana Trees still generating Origin Energy fragments, Lin Huang checked the inheritance fragments that were inserted into his God''s soul. Through the scanning of his Divine Telekinesis, he found out that among the vast amount of inheritance fragments, there were many that exuded dao-level auras. He did a rough calculation and found that the quantity was close to one-ten-thousandth of the total amount. Though it was only one-ten-thousandth, the total number was a lot. Lin Huang tapped a few of them and checked them out casually. They were minor dao-level inheritances. Some could not even be considered inheritances. They were just some memory images. Lin Huang put those inheritance fragments aside and began to check out the other changes in his body. The few God Weapons in his body had transformed again. When he was elevated to ultimate-rank Lord, the God Weapons had transformed into spiritual treasures. He did not know which rank they had elevated to now. Nonetheless, the God Weapons were covered in Dao tattoos. The aura exuded from them was significantly more powerful than those Nirvana Trees. Lin Huang could almost imagine the effect of him using his Divine Telekinesis to control the God Weapon flying daggers. He controlled the few God Weapons to hide their aura, reducing them to the strength of ordinary supreme-grade Dao Weapons. Later on, Lin Huang examined his body thoroughly and then tried to use the Dao seals in his Kingdom. As expected, the Dao seals that had been seemingly restricted previously, where he could not even borrow even one, could finally be used now. Lin Huang borrowed them one by one carefully. One, two, three Ten A hundred 1,000 3,000 10,000 20,000 30,000 30,001! Lin Huang had finally tested his limit. 30,001! That was the limit of Dao seals he could use outside his Kingdom. It happened to be tenfold of the number of Dao seals he could master. He returned his consciousness into his Kingdom again and began to test the number of Dao seals he could use in the Kingdom. However, he did not manage to test the limit this time. The reason being was that he could use all of the 43,161 Dao seals he owned in the Kingdom. His combat ability had undoubtedly been greatly increased. It was completely incomparable to before. Lin Huang was over the moon. Soon, he calmed his mind and was going to continue to analyze the god sequence chains to consolidate more Dao seals. Just when he was going to try, he could not help but frown. "What''s happening?! Why can''t I analyze them again?!" Something that made Lin Huang speechless happened. The god sequence chains in his Kingdom were once again encrypted. He could not retrieve any information from them at all. It was the exact same situation he encountered when he was elevated to the limit of ultimate-rank lord-level and wanted to consolidate the 3001th Dao seal. Chapter 1723 - Sword2 Got Out Of Closed-door Cultivation Lin Huang scanned through the hundreds of millions of god sequence chains in the Kingdom quickly with Divine Telekinesis. He realized that it was the same case as before; all of the god sequence chains and god rules were encrypted by an unknown power. They could not be analyzed anymore. Feeling helpless, he could only give up on the plan to consolidate more Dao seals. Although he had officially stepped into dao-level from the round of closed-door cultivation, and his ability had received a significant boost, he was quite pissed to be encountering the strange plateau again. He was secretly speculating what the problem was exactly. "I encountered the plateau before because I had reached the limit of ultimate-rank Lord-level. I was only a step away from stepping into dao-level. It was completely normal for the plateau to occur for such a major breakthrough point. But I''ve stepped into dao-level now, so why would the same situation happen again?" Lin Huang began thinking about it from a different angle as his previous line of thought had been to no avail. "The plateau being lifted just now seemed to be caused by Sword 1 consolidating the Dao seal in my Kingdom. Moreover, throughout the entire process of consolidating the Dao seal, there was a strange feeling in my Kingdom. It proved that his consolidation of the Dao seal might have a significant connection to my plateau being lifted." "If I follow this logic, can it be that the lifting of the plateau encourages me to have others consolidate their Dao seals in my Kingdom and become Lords?" Lin Huang made a rough guess. Although he had no idea of the exact theory behind it, he deduced that conclusion following the logic of the earlier incident. "Let''s try that!" Since he came up with that conclusion, it was only natural that he had to verify it. It just so happened that Sword 1 was not the only one going into closed-door cultivation this time. Sword 2 to Sword 10 were all waiting their turn, which meant that he had nine chances to verify his speculation. He left the virtual realm and went back to the material realm. Lin Huang returned to his Kingdom immediately. Seeing Sword 1 who had become familiar with his new powers, Lin Huang appeared next to him in a flash. "Congratulations, you''ve finally broken through to lord-level successfully!" "Lord Swordmaster" Before hearing Lin Huang''s voice, Sword 1 had not sensed his aura at all. He had only snapped back to his senses after being stunned momentarily when he saw Lin Huang standing in front of him. He bowed immediately, "Thank you Lord Swordmaster for training me!" Although he had always respected Lin Huang, the person that he respected the most had always been Swordmaster Great Heaven. He had never expected that he would exceed Swordmaster Great Heaven one day. "I''ve only given you a push. You managed to break through successfully primarily because of your talent and accumulation." Lin Huang patted Sword 1''s shoulder. "Lord Swordmaster, your aura" Sword 1 could not help but raise his doubts anyway. He still could not sense Lin Huang''s aura. "Hmm?" Lin Huang did not notice that his aura had almost been entirely integrated with the surroundings. In reality, he did not do it intentionally. It seemed to be a "special effect" that came with his elevation to dao-level. He had only adjusted his aura after hearing Sword 1''s reminder. He adjusted his aura to what a middle-rank Lord would have. It was only now that Sword 1 could sense Lin Huang''s existence. "I had a tiny breakthrough earlier and didn''t notice the abnormality that occurred," Lin Huang explained with a smile, "You can sense it now, right?" "Yes, I can." Although Sword 1 said that, he was secretly guessing which level exactly the swordmaster was at now. His non-existent aura just now had exceeded the realm of his understanding. "Sword 2 and the rest will be coming out of their closed-door cultivation sessions soon. Do you want to stay and watch their unification or would you like to return to the Pilgrim Star Zone?" Lin Huang asked. "I''ll stay. I can take this time to familiarize myself with being lord-level." Sword 1 made up his mind without hesitation. Although he was a workaholic, he did not want to miss the important moment when his brothers performed unification. Moreover, under the 10,000 times of accelerated time in the Great Heaven Palace, Sword 2 and the rest should have digested the inheritances the swordmaster gave them completely. "I''ll give you a lord-level inheritance. Study it when you have the time." Lin Huang lifted his hand and stretched out a finger as he spoke. A blood-colored gleam flashed through the air instantly like an electric arc. It penetrated Sword 1''s brows. Sword1 did not manage to react at all, and he sensed that the inheritance had integrated with his God''s soul. He shut his eyes to focus immediately. He began to read the copy of the inheritance. Lin Huang had prepared the lord-level inheritance earlier. It was also customized to each Sword Servant together with the inheritance for unification. In reality, he thought Sword 1 and the rest might not have a cultivation direction after they had successfully elevated to Lords. The copy of the inheritance could prevent them from taking many wrong paths when they got to lord-level. Seeing Sword 1 get into cultivation mode, Lin Huang waved to envelope Sword 1 in a layer of transparent defense modified with Mirror. Although he was right next to him, and it was quite impossible for any accidents to happen since Sword 1 was in his Kingdom, he thought he would do that as an additional safety measure and provide Sword 1 another layer of defense. After setting up the defense, instead of interrupting Sword 1, he sat where he was with his legs crossed quietly, patiently waiting for the second Sword Servant to perform unification. Approximately half a day later, a commotion erupted from the Great Heaven Palace again. Sword 2 had come out of closed-door cultivation. Lin Huang scanned him with Divine Telekinesis. Sword 2''s aura was no weaker than Sword 1''s before unification. Clearly, it had been a fruitful closed-door cultivation session. With merely a thought, Lin Huang teleported him over. At that moment, Sword 1 snapped out of his cultivation state when he sensed Sword 2''s aura. He saw the transparent protective layer before him as soon as he opened his eyes. The next second, Lin Huang removed the protective layer directly. Sword 1 nodded slightly at Lin Huang to indicate his gratitude, and then turned his head to look at Sword 2. Sword 2 looked at Lin Huang first and bowed to him. "Lord Swordmaster." He then turned his head to look at Sword 1. Sensing the changes in his aura, he was shocked and happy. "You made it?!" "Yes, I have." Sword 1 nodded with a smile. "You''ll definitely make it too." "I''m counting on your blessing." Sword 2 smiled and looked around before asking, "Did you perform unification here just now?" He could faintly sense the remnant aura in the surroundings. "That''s right." Sword 1 nodded. "I''ll do it here too. I think this is a feng shui treasured land!" Sword 2 laughed out loud. "Even if I fail and end up being buried here, I should be able to bless my descendants." Sword 1 was speechless now. "Can you say something more auspicious?" "I''m just kidding to ease my nerves." Sword 2 chuckled. "There''s no need to worry. The intensity of your aura is no weaker than Sword 1''s before his unification. He almost didn''t encounter any obstacles throughout the entire unification. You should be fine," Lin Huang comforted him. "All you need to do is to get rid of your stray thoughts and focus everything you have on the unification." Sword 1 walked forward and passed the soul jewel and battle sword he had used during the unification to Sword 2. "These two Dao Weapons are amazing. Remember to hand them over to the rest when you''re done." Lin Huang was blushing a little when he saw the embarrassing scene. He could not help but emphasize to them: "I''ll get each of you a complete set of Dao Weapons when you''re done with the elevation." Chapter 1724 - Verifying His Speculation The unification of the rabbit-headed man Sword 2 was a success as well. The number of god sequence chains he mastered was 31. It was only two fewer than Sword 1. The difficulty of his unification process was no lesser than Sword 1. However, he passed through the stages relying on his stunning speed and explosive agility. At the same time Sword 2 elevated to Lord, Lin Huang sensed the plateau in his body being lifted again. "As I thought, my hypothesis was correct!" Lin Huang''s eyes lit up. He had found the way to continue consolidating more Dao seals. "So all I need to do is get more people to consolidate Dao seals and elevate to Lord continuously in my Kingdom. With that, I can unlock the encryption of the god sequence chains over and over again, consolidating more Dao seals." Although he could not understand the theory behind it, all Lin Huang needed to know was that his hypothesis was correct. After elevating to Lord, Sword 2 merely familiarized himself with his increased strength while looking at Sword 1 in excitement. "Let''s spar?" Naturally, Sword 1 was up for the challenge. "Sure, I also want to check out my real combat capabilities." Sword 2''s rabbit ears turned a little red from the excitement. As soon as Sword 1 agreed, he exerted strength into his legs and vanished directly from where he was standing in a flash. His main cultivation direction was extreme speed. The inheritance that Lin Huang had given him contained many extreme speed techniques. Now that he had been elevated to Lord, there was a qualitative transformation of his speed. Given his increased confidence, he could not help but try to challenge Sword 1. What he did not know was that Sword 1 had obtained another inheritance after elevating to Lord from Lin Huang. Although he had only studied it for half a day, his understanding of combat was completely different from before. Though he could not compare to Sword 2 in terms of speed, Sword 1''s attack speed was no slower than his. Not only that, his defense remained flawless. Lin Huang merely glanced at Sword 1 and Sword 2''s conditions and he could already tell that Sword 1 would win. He only had a one-word comment regarding the current Sword 1stable. That one word alone summed up the reason why Sword 1 was basically undefeatable. Although Sword 2 had the upper hand in terms of speed and explosive agility, he was clearly not on the same level as Sword 1 judging by the overall progression of the battle. It was as Lin Huang had expected. After adapting to Sword 2''s speed, Sword 1 very soon started seizing his opportunities to retaliate. The frequency in which he took the initiative to attack was less than one-fifth of the time Sword 2 attacked but, each time he attacked, it would strike where Sword 2 was most uncomfortable. He disrupted Sword 2''s battle rhythm over and over again. Very soon, Sword 2 was dominated by Sword 1. He could hardly showcase his speed and explosive agility as the battle went on. The entire battle lasted less than 20 minutes. Sword 1 took over the rhythm of the battle completely, while Sword 2 lost unsurprisingly. Lin Huang did not leave. He watched the entire battle. It was not that he did not want to consolidate new Dao seals in the virtual realm. Mr. Gate could only make seven virtual bodies everyday. He had given six slots to his imperial monsters, which was why he could only enter the virtual realm once each day. He could only wait for the next day if he wanted to enter the virtual realm to consolidate Dao seals again. "Again!" Sword 2 was unwilling to yield. His pair of rabbit eyes were a little bloodshot from rage. Sword 1 merely smiled and accepted the challenge. He had finally broken through to lord-level. In this great world, his opportunity to fight against opponents of the same level would only decrease. Now that there was a battle opportunity sent to his doorstep, it was only natural that he would not let it slip by easily. Lin Huang shook his head slightly as he watched the two fight again. This time, Sword 2 lost even faster. He lasted less than 15 minutes before being defeated. "Again!" He was still unwilling to yield. Although he had never defeated Sword 1 before, the two spars he had since elevating to Lord-level were the two battles that he lost within the shortest span of time within his personal record. Not only that, he lost terribly in front of the swordmaster. Sword 1 agreed as usual, but Lin Huang interrupted them. "Don''t rush into challenges just yet. Take the time to think about how you lost the previous two battles carefully. You''ll only improve if you review the experience before challenging him again, otherwise you''ll just be defeated in even worse ways." Lin Huang was also worried that Sword 1 would crush Sword 2''s confidence, so he stopped them. Sword 1 understood Lin Huang''s intentions instantly. "Calm yourself down and figure it out. You''ll only lose faster when you''re so emotional." Sword 2 calmed down immediately after hearing what the two said. He sat with his legs crossed in the air and began to mentally replay the two battles from before. He did not overlook any of the details. Not long after Sword 2 started doing so, Lin Huang suddenly lifted his head to look toward the direction of Great Heaven Palace. Sword 3 had exited closed-door cultivation! With a thought, Lin Huang teleported Sword 3 over to where the three of them were. Sensing Sword 3''s aura, Sword 2 snapped out of his state of concentration instantly. The aura of the tall elephant-headed man with a single arm had far surpassed the intensity he had before entering closed-door cultivation. He was close to the edge of unification. "Lord Swordmaster." He merely bowed lightly toward Lin Huang then nodded at Sword 1 and Sword 2 respectively before beginning unification directly. Lin Huang was not worried about him. This guy was trained in force-type. His strong points were physical body and strength. His overall ability was no weaker than Sword 2. Judging by his physical strength alone, the success rate of his unification would only be higher than Sword 2. That was the truth. After obtaining Lin Huang''s inheritance, Sword 3 was even more stable than before. His unification went much smoother than Sword 2''s. Sword 2 could not help but chuckle softly when he saw the damage Sword 3 suffered on his physical body was much lighter than his during the unification process. "A crude man whose brain is made of muscle!" Lin Huang sensed a further unlocking of the plateau in his Kingdom from Sword 3''s successful elevation to Lord. The three consecutive experiments confirmed his previous hypothesis completelyIn order to consolidate more Dao seals, he would have to get more people to perform unification in his Kingdom. As soon as Sword 3 completed his elevation, Sword 2 instigated him to challenge Sword 1. "No. 3, you should spar with No. 1 to familiarize yourself with your increased strength." Sword 3 did not think further and simply looked at Sword 1. Naturally, Sword 1 knew what Sword 2 was thinking. Nevertheless, he did not say no either. He nodded at Sword 3. "Let''s spar. It''s indeed been a long time since we did so." Sword 3 said nothing and charged forward directly after grabbing his sword. The battle between the two soon broke out in the air. It was much more interesting than the battle between Sword 1 and Sword 2. Sword 3 was adept in the extreme force-type. Surprisingly, Sword 1 chose to fight him with force. Naturally, it only seemed like he was doing that. In reality, Sword 1 had used more skills than Sword 3 did. The battle lasted over three hours before Sword 3 was finally defeated. "You must''ve gone easy on him, right?" Sword 2 said to Sword 1 while looking pissed. Sword 3 lasted much longer than he did against Sword 1. It proved that Sword 2''s ability was weaker than Sword 3. "I didn''t, I only changed the mode of response. I didn''t fight him with anything that would suppress him," Sword 1 said while shaking his head. He then turned to look at Sword 3. "Once more?" Sword 3 nodded lightly and attacked without hesitation. This time, Sword 1 changed to a more stable mode of response. He was using a defensive counter-attacking stance this time around. Approximately half an hour later, Sword 3 was defeated again. He chose to halt the challenge after being defeated twice. He walked to the side in silence and began to mentally replay the two battles. Witnessing that, Sword 2 said nothing anymore and began to mentally replay the battles with his eyes closed. Within half an hour, Lin Huang lifted his head again toward the Great Heaven Palace''s direction. "Xiao Ba?" It was Sword 8 who got out of closed-door cultivation this time. Chapter 1725 - New Discovery Among all of the Sword Servants under Lin Huang, the one who had the highest potential was actually not Sword 1, but Sword 8. She was pure and had the least distracting thoughts. That was the best quality for cultivation. She was Great Heaven''s favorite Sword Servant in the past. He doted on her like a sister and had never forced her to cultivate. That had resulted in her mischievous character. She did not take cultivation seriously. Therefore, her ability was incomparable to Sword 1''s, and even worse than Sword 2''s and Sword 3''s. Since Lin Huang taken over the Sword Servants, he had been burying his head in work almost all the time. He had tasked Sword 1 with managing the Sword Servants'' matters. Therefore, he did not focus much on Sword 8. However, Sword 8 got his attention when she exited closed-door cultivation this time. "The intensity of this girl''s aura" He could never have expected that Sword 8, who had just exited closed-door cultivation, would have an aura that was more powerful than Sword 1''s. Lin Huang was in a daze momentarily before he snapped back to his senses. With a thought, he teleported Sword 8 over. Sword 8''s appearance did not change much. She still looked very much like a little girl who had yet to hit puberty. "L-Lord Swordmaster" Her character remained shy and timid. Lin Huang nodded with a smile. "It seems like your closed-door cultivation was quite fruitful this time." "Yes." Sword8''s voice softened instinctively when she saw Lin Huang walking toward her. "There are many things that I didn''t use to understand in the past. I understand them now after receiving the inheritance that Lord Swordmaster gave." At that moment, Sword 1 who was standing to the side spoke up as well, "In reality, Xiao Ba''s talent is better than ours. It''s just that she just can''t settle down." Sword 1 did not criticize Sword 8 for slacking in cultivation in front of Lin Huang. Instead, he merely said that she was often distracted. Lin Huang actually knew his Sword Servants'' characters very well. He did not mind that. "I think Xiao Ba''s character is pretty great. It''d be better if she''s braver." Sword 8''s cheeks blushed a little. At the moment, Sword 3 handed the battle sword and soul jewel to her. Sword 8 looked at the two Dao Weapons in her hands and was stunned momentarily. "You''ll have to use them during the unification process later. Familiarize yourself with them first." Sword 1 who was standing aside explained, "When you''re ready, you can perform unification right away." "Do I do it here?" Sword8 looked around. "Right here." Sword 1 nodded. "Sword 2, Sword 3 and I did our unification here too." "Don''t worry about us. We won''t be affected by your unification," Lin Huang added. Sword 8 only nodded and appeared in mid-air not far away in a flash. After familiarizing herself with the application of the two Dao Weapons a little, she began the unification process without hesitation. As soon as the first stage, psychic communication, began, Lin Huang aside, Sword1, Sword2 and Sword3 stared at the god sequence chains that were spreading out of Sword 8''s body. There were 36 god sequence chains. It had even exceeded the number of god sequence chains Sword 1 had mastered. Not only Lin Huang, even the other three did not expect that. "Has this girl been hiding her ability all this time?" Sword 2 could not help but ask Sword 1 and Sword 3. Sword 1 and Sword 3 fell into silence as the both of them had no idea about the matter as well. Lin Huang spoke right at this moment, "No, she was indeed not as powerful as you guys previously. However, she seemed to have had a major breakthrough during the closed-door cultivation session this time." If Sword 8 hid her ability, Lin Huang would definitely sense it. After all, with his ability, even an ultimate-rank Lord could not deceive him with a concealing technique. There was only one possibility why he had not sensed it, which was that Sword 8 only became more powerful during the closed-door cultivation session. Watching the 36 god sequence chains, the three of them remained stunned for a long time. Lin Huang, on the other hand, noticed that Sword 8 seemed to have elevated half a rank from the closed-door cultivation session this time. She was at rank-5.5 now. He did not think that it was the inheritance he gave her that caused Sword 8''s elevation. The reason being was that his inheritance did not come with such a function. He figured that Sword 8 might have been at rank-5.5 initially, or rather incomplete rank-5.5. Since obtaining the inheritance he gave, she triggered something in her body unintentionally, restoring her to a complete rank-5.5 now. It also explained why even though she was at rank-5 before, just like everyone else, her level of talent was clearly higher than the others. Sword 8''s elevation was a success as well. She went through even the most difficult Dao plundering stage easily. Initially, everyone was a little worried that she could not defeat the Raptor. After all, her combat ability was much weaker when compared to Sword 1, Sword 2 and Sword 3. However, the way she fought the Raptor shocked them. She almost suppressed the Raptor throughout the entire battle. The Dao plundering stage was easier for her than it was for Sword 1. Since Sword 8 elevated to lord-level, Sword 2 attempted to lure her into challenging Sword 1 in the name of familiarizing herself with her newfound lord-level powers. However, Sword 8 shook her head directly to reject his suggestion. Her elevation unlocked the plateau in Lin Huang''s Kingdom further. It had once again verified Lin Huang''s previous hypothesis. After that, Sword 4 and the rest performed unification one after the other within the next two days. From Sword 1 to Sword 10, all of the Sword Servants had successfully performed unification and had all been elevated to Lords. They returned to their initial jobs quietly instead of boasting. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had ten extra Dao seals. The total number had reached 3,010. After that, he was stuck at the plateau again. He did not panic at all when he hit the plateau this time around. The reason being was that he had already found out the way to resolve this plateau. The ten experiments had proved his prior hypothesis completely. In order to continue consolidating more Dao seals, all he had to do was to get people to perform unification in his Kingdom. After confirming that, Lin Huang informed the imperial monsters under him about that. He told them to enter his Kingdom first when they were going to consolidate Dao seals in the future. Over the next few days, Bai was the first one who entered Lin Huang''s Kingdom to consolidate Dao seals. It was his fourth Dao seal this time. The unification went extraordinarily well. After all, he had prior three experiences. After sending Bai out of his Kingdom, Lin Huang entered the virtual realm immediately to start a new round of Dao seal consolidation. This time, he realized that he could continue to analyze more god sequence chains after consolidating one Dao seal. Without hesitation, he began a new round of analysis. Later on, he successfully consolidated the second, third and fourth Dao seal. After the fourth Dao seal was formed, the god sequence chains were encrypted again. "Bai consolidated his fourth Dao seal in my body, which unlocked four Dao seals for me." Lin Huang deduced a new hypothesis. "If that''s the case, I''ll be able to unlock more Dao seals if Lords with more Dao seals consolidate Dao seals in my Kingdom?" Over the next few days, Lin Huang verified his new hypothesis with Grimace and Lancelot, one after the other. The unification of the two imperial monsters gave him the opportunity to consolidate eight Dao seals. Until now, the total number of Dao seals he had consolidated had increased to 3,022. Lin Huang could see the way forward to elevation in the future. "If I invite many ultimate-rank Lords to consolidate Dao seals in my Kingdom, wouldn''t I be given the opportunity to consolidate thousands of Dao seals at once?! If I could invite a hundred ultimate-rank Lords to consolidate Dao seals in my Kingdom, wouldn''t I be able to consolidate 100,000 Dao seals and achieve major dao-level directly?" Chapter 1726 - Extraordinarily Glamorous On The Outside For the next few days, Lin Huang gave Sword 11 and Sword 12 the inheritances first. After they went into closed-door cultivation, they soon succeeded in the unification. After the two of them got out of their closed-door cultivation sessions, Lin Huang spent some time customizing a set of Sword Dao inheritances for the 25 Sword Servants: Sword 13 to Sword 37. The 25 Sword Servants entered closed-door cultivation together. Lin Huang did not have high expectations for this batch of Sword Servants. After all, they were merely at Pseudo Supreme God rank-4.5. With their levels of talent and potential, it was very difficult for them to elevate to Lords. He thought it would be considered pretty good if more than 12 of them were elevated successfully. Under the 10,000 times accelerated timeflow in the Great Heaven Palace, the 25 Sword Servants got out of closed-door cultivation and performed unification one after the other. The final result was rather pleasing to Lin Huang. Among the 25 of them, 18 were elevated to Lord-level successfully. Seven of them failed their unification and could only become half-step Lords. The reason why the success rate was so high was because Lin Huang secretly helped a couple of Sword Servants in the last stage of Dao plundering. Regarding the seven of them who failed, they failed in the second stage, which was unification. Some had a God Territory that was less powerful, while some were lacking in physical strength or the strength of their God''s soul. Lin Huang could not help those who were innately lacking. He could only protect them at the last moment to save their lives, making them half-step Lords. The seven of them were regretful and vexed. They knew that they failed because of their own shortcomings. Lin Huang could only comfort them, "There might be methods to elevate from half-step Lords. Perhaps someone in the universe will have a way to mend damaged Dao seals, elevating half-step Lords to Lords." "You guys don''t have to stop just yet. You should continue cultivating in preparation to mend your Dao seals." In reality, Lin Huang had the Flawless Card that could repair their Dao seals. However, he was not going to tell them that for now. The reason being was that, as soon as he told them that, the Sword Servants might not care if they could succeed in their unification or not; they could elevate to Lords even if they failed. In that case, there was no need for them to spend so much effort in cultivation. With the couple of failed unifications, those Sword Servants who had yet to perform unification would definitely feel the pressure, and would work harder in their cultivation. Regarding the function of the Flawless Cards, Lin Huang would only tell them before heading to the universe. The seven Sword Servants who failed their unifications made Lin Huang realize that failed unifications would not unlock the plateau in his Kingdom further. After the rank-4.5 Sword Servants performed their unifications, Lin Huang spent some time sorting out the remaining Sword Dao inheritances and sent the remaining rank-4.5 Sword Servants into the Great Heaven Palace where the flow of time was accelerated by 10,000 times. Approximately half a month later, all of the Sword Servants had performed their unifications one after the other. With Lin Huang''s help, among the remaining 331 Sword Servants, 91 of them elevated to lord-level successfully. If not for the fact that Lin Huang helped them in the last stage of Dao plundering, less than 20 of them would have been able to break through using their own ability. Most of those who failed were stuck at the unification stage. Only less than 20 of them found themselves stuck at the first stage of psychic communication. Although only less than one-third of them had successfully been elevated to Lords, Lin Huang knew very well that it was a pretty good result. For those who failed their unifications, Lin Huang made them cultivate into half-step Lords. However, he did not tell them about the Flawless Card for now. Among the 368 Sword Servants, 121 of them successfully elevated to Lords, which gave Lin Huang the opportunity to consolidate 121 Dao seals. On the imperial monsters'' side, 11 of them performed unification again to consolidate Dao seals, which gave Lin Huang an additional 37 Dao seals. The number of Lin Huang''s Dao seals increased to 3,158. Compared to the time when he had just consolidated 3,001 Dao seals and had been elevated to minor dao-level, his ability did not undergo a qualitative transformation. However, he knew that as the number of Dao seals increased, it was only a matter of time before the qualitative transformation would happen. Seizing the opportunity, he refined all of the upper-rank Lords'' and ultimate Lords'' Kingdoms that he had yet to refine previously. As he had yet to elevate to minor dao-level at that point, 3,000 Dao seals was the limit that he could use. Even if he was in his own Kingdom, he could not borrow even one additional Dao seal from the Kingdom. Therefore, he had not wasted time refining them. Now that he had been elevated to minor dao-level, the restriction on his Godly Right had been lifted. Not only outside the Kingdom, the number of Dao seals he could borrow was tenfold the number he personally mastered. In the Kingdom, he could use even more Dao seals. He had not even managed to test the limits within the Kingdom. The round of refining 211 upper-rank Lords'' and eight ultimate-rank Lords'' Kingdoms boosted close to 80,000 Dao seals in his Kingdom. The total amount reached 121,163. In reality, the number of Dao seals had exceeded the limit of minor dao-level. However, Lin Huang realized there he could still use all of the Dao seals in his Kingdom. 121,163 Dao seals were still not the limit he could use. In other words, theoretically, he could fight major dao-level powerhouses within his Kingdom. Nevertheless, he did not think that he actually had the ability to fight if he really were to encounter a major dao-level powerhouse. If he really did encounter one, he figured he would most probably be killed by the person directly before his Kingdom had even arrived. However, this round of refining gave Lin Huang a new way of elevating his combat ability. He required an outer force to unlock the restriction of consolidating Dao seals. He could only take things slowly with this method. He hypothesized that there was still a long way to go from 3,000 to 10,000 Dao seals. The only Dao seals he could borrow came from the Kingdoms that he refined. There were over 120,000 Dao seals, yet it had still not reached its limit. There was ample room for an upgrade by elevating with this method of increasing his Dao seals. "It seems that I can refine more Kingdoms to increase the number of Dao seals I can use in my Kingdom. I wonder what''s the limit of this method" Lin Huang returned to the material realm after stepping out of the virtual realm cabin. He began to worry about resources. Apart from necessities, he had exchanged all of the spoils that he obtained earlier for Kingdoms and refined them. He looked like an extraordinarily extravagant grade-7 organization''s leader with powerful abilities on the outside but, in reality, he could not even afford an extra low-grade Dao Weapon. Even the over 300 Sword Servants would have to take turns to use the two low-grade Dao Weapons, the battle sword and soul jewel, for their unification. From Sword 1 to Sword 368, the Dao Weapons were used over 300 times. Fortunately, the Sword Servants were bonded to Lin Huang by a contract. They had an innate respect for him, so they would not gossip about him. If the Sword Alliance''s new members who had no contract with him saw that, they might have criticized him and quit. "This has to change. I must think of ways to make money. If this goes on, it''s going to be difficult to even operate the Sword Alliance." Lin Huang rubbed his temples hard. He needed the resources to trade for Lords'' Kingdoms. Aside from that, the Dao Weapons that he promised to the Sword Servants would cost a significant sum. Moreover, he needed a lot of money for the Sword Alliance''s operations as well It was Lin Huang''s first time worrying about money since stepping on the path of cultivation. Chapter 1727 - Huang League 300 to 400 people sat in the Sword Alliance headquarters'' meeting room in the Pilgrim Star Zone. Since the Sword Alliance was founded, this was the meeting with the most participants. None of the Sword Servants were absent. "I got everyone to be here today mainly to divide and restructure a portion of the Sword Alliance''s departments, which might involve you guys. Take this opportunity to voice out any opinions and suggestions that you might have. We''ll discuss it together." Lin Huang nodded at Sword 1 after he gave a brief opening speech. Sword 1 nodded affirmatively and took over the discussion. "I''ll get down to business directly." "The first item is the restructuring of the Heavenly God League." "As many of you have been elevated to Lords lately, it would be rather odd for you to stay in the Heavenly God League. Therefore, I''ve discussed matters with the Swordmaster to set up an individual department for all of the Lords. The temporary name of the department would be the Huang League. If you guys have a better name, you may suggest one. We can change it if there''s a suitable one." "Sword 2 will be Huang League''s team leader, and Sword 3 will be the deputy team leader. I won''t be reading out the name list. All of the lord-level Sword Servants will be joining the Huang League automatically." "The first mission for the Huang League would be arranging at least two people to guard the Swordmaster. Sword 2 and Sword 3 will select the bodyguards everyday. All you have to do is take turns following their arrangement. If something comes up, inform Sword 2 or Sword 3 at least a day before so that they can replace you with another bodyguard. Don''t swap your duty positions on your own. The reason being is because Sword 2 and Sword 3 will take the two assigned bodyguards'' cultivation direction into consideration. Usually, there''ll be a higher level of efficiency when the two bodyguards are assigned to work together. I hope everyone will be responsible for the Swordmaster''s safety." Lin Huang felt rather speechless as he listened to the mission''s contents. He thought, ''I''ll be responsible for my own safety. You guys take care of yourself." In reality, he did not want a bodyguard. However, he could deny Sword 1 who insisted on arranging that for him. Lin Huang could only compromise. He agreed that the bodyguards could follow him around only when there were outsiders present. When there were no outsiders present, he did not need any bodyguards with him. Most of the lord-level Sword Servants were unusually excited as they listened to the mission''s contents. That was the job of the previous Swordmaster''s bodyguards. Before this, there were only ten bodyguards for the Swordmaster. "The second mission for the Huang League would be for everyone to carry out the Swordmaster''s orders unconditionally." "The third mission, which is also a short-term mission for the time being, is for all Huang League members to be sent into Royal''s instanced dungeon to obtain resources one by one before heading to the universe. You guys can team up on your own. However, before teaming up, I''d suggest that you guys take into account each other''s strengths and how it would complement the team." "I''ll send the details of the missions to Sword 2 and Sword 3 later. They will make the necessary arrangements." "There''s something that I would like to say here. Among the spoils you obtain from Royal''s instanced dungeon, everyone will have to submit 30% to the Sword Alliance." "The Sword Alliance requires a lot of funds for operations and development. Moreover, most of the rewards that you guys obtain later on will be traded from the spoils that you submitted." "The fourth mission" After going over the matters regarding the Huang League, Sword 1 then changed the subject to the Heavenly God League that had been divided. As there were over a hundred Sword Servants who had been elevated to Lords and moved to Huang League, the Heavenly God League had lost many of its group leaders. Lin Huang had thought about this with Sword 1 and decided to restructure the Heavenly God League completely. "As the league has lost many group leaders, we''ve decided to restructure the entire Heavenly God League." "On the Heavenly God League''s side, Sword 11 and Sword 12 will still be the captains." "Sword 11 and Sword 12, you guys will be guarding the Heavenly God League. Under normal circumstances, the Huang League will not assign any missions to the both of you." "The team leaders will be all of the 247 half-step Lords present. All of the Heavenly Gods will be divided equally to join the 247 teams." "Also, all team leaders, please do not showcase your half-step Lord''s combat strength outrightly. Try your best to disguise your aura at ninth-rank heavenly god-level. By doing that, we can prevent spies from other organizations from spreading the news of our Sword Alliance having many half-step Lords." "After the meeting ends, you guys can choose your own teammates, but you can''t force them to join you." "Also, there''ll be Royal''s instanced dungeon mission for the Heavenly God League. The requirement is the same as the Huang League, where you''re required to submit 30% of your spoils." "Apart from the Huang League and Heavenly God League, there''s a new intelligence department that has been newly-founded." "The name of this intelligence department is Heavenly Network." "For the time being, Lin Xin, Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang would be the department heads. Those who are adept in intelligence work are welcome to join." "Also, if any of your subordinates are skilled in intelligence work, you can recommend them to the three department heads as well." The Sword Servants looked at Lin Xin and the other two when they heard that. Naturally, they knew of the Swordmaster''s sister. Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang who had been staying at the Sword Alliance''s headquarters were no strangers to them as well. It was just that they had no idea what Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang''s roles were in the past. Now they finally knew that the two of them were in the intelligence field. Those Sword Servants who were skilled in intelligence work were a little excited now. "If there are any team leaders in the Heavenly God League who are skilled in intelligence work, they can transfer to the Heavenly Network as well. You''ll have the privilege of getting the members under you to join. After all, the Heavenly Network has just been founded, so there''s currently a major talent shortage." At the moment, Yang Ling could not help but speak up, "There''s one thing that I''d like to say. Our Heavenly Network''s main direction is internet data browsing. There''s no spy-related work, so the inherent risk is low. Currently, we need people to conduct information trades with other organizations'' intelligence departments. We warmly welcome those who have related job experience." Sword Servants among the crowd raised their hands one after the other as soon as Yang Ling was done speaking. Great Heaven had trained talents in this field before. There were some ten people among the Sword Servants who were skilled in intelligence work. Lin Huang and Sword 1 did not want to force them to join the Heavenly Network. Therefore, they gave them the opportunity to choose on their own. Very soon, Yang Ling recruited 13 team leaders. Sword 1 would get them to discuss the details on their own later. The meeting went on. Approximately about half an hour later, the Sword Servants left after the agendas regarding them had been discussed. Sword 1 and Lin Huang were the only ones left in the meeting room. "Anything else?" Lin Huang asked. "Hunt and Mysterious Item Pavilion contacted our branch in the human world. They would like to collaborate," Sword 1 said softly. "Sure. We can develop the branch in the human world." Lin Huang agreed to that directly. Hunt and Mysterious Item Pavilion were top grade-6 organizations among the humans. To the Sword Alliance, it was good that they were willing to collaborate. "Do you think we can give in a little bit on the collaboration agreement since they''re the same kind as you, Lord Swordmaster?" Sword 1 could not really decide on such matters. "No need to. Just do it as we usually do." Lin Huang waved. "It depends on their effort as to what they''ll get." "Also, the headquarters has basically been settled now. Should we maintain what we have at the branch in the human world or do we start recruiting to expand further?" "Let''s recruit new members. There should be many worthy successors among the humans." Lin Huang decided without hesitation. "I''ll get Bloody to draft a development plan for the branch within these two days.. Please make the necessary arrangements." Chapter 1728 - The Branch In The Human World The Sword Alliance''s development could be said to be in full swing throughout these few months. They had exceeded three million official members. Among them were over tens of thousands of Heavenly Gods. As they did not openly accept registrations like Death Sickle and the Combat God Temple did, the total number of members they had could definitely not be compared with those two organizations. However, the number of Heavenly Gods they had were on par with the veteran grade-7 organizations such as God Capital and the Combat God Temple. Regarding the number of Lords and half-step Lords, there was no need to compare that with the rest of the organizations. The reason being was that they would be a total bully for doing so. Given that the Huang League and Heavenly God League had entered Royal''s instanced dungeon to obtain a huge amount of resources, the Sword Alliance''s financial crisis was lifted entirely. The Sword Alliance''s headquarters could finally be considered to have stabilized in the God Territory. The different collaborations with the other organizations in the God Territory were progressing steadily. On the other side, the Sword Alliance''s branch in the human world had three Lords guarding it. They were Sword 4, Sword 5, and Sword 6. One-third of the members from the Heavenly God League were assigned there to assist the three of them in managing the branch''s affairs. After stabilizing the operations of the branch, the Sword Alliance soon announced the recruitment notice for new members. A heated discussion broke out in the entire cultivation world among humans as soon as the recruitment notice was published. Only a small number of top organizations among the humans knew that there was a Sword Alliance founded in the God Territory. Regarding the information about the Sword Alliance, fewer humans knew about it. Even fewer people knew that the Sword Alliance''s Chief, Lin Huang, was actually a human. Meanwhile, in the recruitment notice, they revealed Lin Huang''s human identity directly. Naturally, that created a stir. "A human founded a grade-7 organization in the God Territory?! Can you guys use your head before you come up with stories? Will the grade-7 organizations in the God Territory agree to this? What makes you think that a human deserves to found a grade-7 organization in the God Territory?" "This recruitment notice is so exaggerated. Although the internet we have here is different from the God Territory''s, it''s not impossible for us to find news about what goes on in the God Territory. As long as someone inquires, they can even find out what color Lin Huang''s underwear is." "Let''s report this deceiving advertisement. Let''s wait for it to be banned." "Let''s sit down and wait for the insiders from the God Territory to expose the truth." It was a one-sided criticism on the internet. Almost all of the netizens thought Lin Huang''s story was made up and that there was no organization called the Sword Alliance in the God Territory at all. There were a small number of insiders who exposed information about the Sword Alliance, and the netizens treated them as the internet ghostwriters the Sword Alliance hired to make up stories. This went on until the organization Hunt among the three Saints and the seven sects reposted the Sword Alliance''s branch''s recruitment notice. Only a small number of netizens began to suspect that it was real. After Hunt reposted the notice, within two minutes, the Mysterious Item Pavilion reposted it as well. Later on, a couple more grade-5 and grade-6 organizations that were collaborating with the Sword Alliance reposted it too. The trend on the internet began to change. "What''s happening? Why did Hunt and Mysterious Item Pavilion''s official accounts repost that?!" "Are they mocking them on purpose?" Almost at the same time, some netizens who inquired about the matter from the God Territory received replies one after the other. "There really is a new and rising grade-7 organization in the God Territory called the Sword Alliance." "The Sword Alliance''s chief is called Lin Huang. He''s a human Lord." "The Sword Alliance is the most popular organization in the God Territory. They have over 10,000 heavenly god-level members and they are on par with the remaining veteran grade-7 organizations in the God Territory." Some people posted screenshots of the God Territory''s replies on the internet. At first, most of them still did not believe it. As more and more evidence emerged, soon there were more insiders who revealed the information. The trend on the internet had finally changed. "So the Sword Alliance is real, and Lin Huang is also real So the Sword Alliance we have here is really just a branch?" "Crap, is this Sword Alliance an imitation?" "Did they give it the same name just to ride on their coattails?" "This organization is gutsy. Aren''t they afraid that the real Sword Alliance from the God Territory would send someone over to slap them?" Since they found out about the Sword Alliance''s existence, that Lin Huang was real and a human, most of them still thought that the Sword Alliance in the human world was definitely an imitation. After all, similar incidents had happened in the human world before. Lin Huang and Sword 1 were not sure whether to laugh or cry when they learned of the humans'' reactions. As they discussed it, they used the Sword Alliance''s account in the God Territory to post a thread to verify the authenticity of their branch in the human world. The netizens finally ceased their suspicions when someone posted a screenshot of the thread on the human world''s internet. "The Sword Alliance is real, Lin Huang is real, and this branch is real as well. What are you guys waiting for? Let''s apply to join them immediately!" "I thought we''d see a show of someone being humiliated today. In the end, I''m the one feeling embarrassed." "After gossiping the entire day, it turns out everything is real after all." "I have a question. Even if this Lin Huang is a Lord, the other grade-7 organizations in the God Territory have Lords too. How could they just allow Lin Huang to found a grade-7 organization in their God Territory?" "Maybe they can''t beat Lin Huang?" Someone replied to that instantly. Later on, an insider revealed, "God Capital wanted to stir a ruckus at the Sword Alliance''s upgrade banquet, but they were humiliated on the spot. Also, Lin Huang isn''t the only Lord in the Sword Alliance. There''s someone called Lancelot who is suspected to be a middle-rank Lord." As more people revealed information about the Sword Alliance and Lin Huang, everyone was getting more and more curious about them. Many netizens had learned to use VPN to browse for the Sword Alliance and Lin Huang''s information on all the social media platforms in the God Territory. The Sword Alliance''s popularity had just passed not long ago on the internet on God Territory''s side. Many viral threads were found quickly. Among them included threads with detailed notes of the entire process of how the Sword Alliance rose, which were made by some of the organization''s supporters. After reading those threads, the people in the human world suddenly realized that the news that was exposed earlier was merely the tip of the iceberg. This Sword Alliance and its chief Lin Huang were much more powerful than what they had imagined. Very soon, someone had posted a detailed thread with notes on the internet on the humans'' side. After reading the thread, everyone finally realized that there was really someone of their own kind who had been wandering in the foreign land, the God Territory, and hiding his identity just to avoid being killed. He achieved lord-level with his own ability and overthrew his enemythe Myriad Tribe Palace, a top grade-6 organization in the God Territorywho had annihilated his native land. Later on, he founded a grade-7 organizationthe Sword Alliancewith a group of Protoss friends upon the ruins of the Myriad Tribe Palace. Most of the human cultivators admired Lin Huang after learning his story, while a small number of them felt regretful. They thought if Lin Huang teleported to the human world directly back then, then there would be one more grade-7 organization among the humans. Lin Huang''s story was quickly spread among the humans. Many cultivators were inspired after reading the story.. They sent their applications to join the Sword Alliance''s branch in the human world. Chapter 1729 - Mr. Fu Returns Time flew by, and over a month had passed. The Sword Alliance''s headquarters in the God Territory was thriving. The branch in the human world had also begun to take shape. The Sword Alliance''s financial crisis had been solved earlier and, as Lin Huang promised, he got each of the Sword Servants in the Huang League a set of Dao Weapons. Lin Huang even went to the human world and visited the three Saints and the seven sects of the human race. All of the media channels were fighting to report about it in the human world. It resulted in the Sword Alliance going viral in the human world again. The Sword Alliance''s branch among the human race recruited over 300,000 new members. Although that was insignificant in the God Territory, it was still considered a pretty great start. At the Sword Alliance''s headquarters, not only had the Huang League been established, but the new department, Heavenly Network, as well. Under Lin Xin, Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang''s guidance, the Sword Alliance constructed a massive information network. They were primarily collecting information at the moment, but Yang Ling boasted that it was only a matter of time before this network would become the information center of this great world. As the Sword Alliance''s development had been stabilized in all aspects, Lin Huang had become a boss who did nothing. He had placed Sword 1 in charge after all, while all the departments also had a person-in-charge appointed, with Bloody as their adviser. He was not worried about the future of the Sword Alliance''s development at all. No matter what, Sword 1 would inform him in advance if there were important occasions that required him to show himself. Sword 1 would prepare the rest on his side. All he had to do was to show up for the occasion. Meanwhile, Lin Huang would enter the virtual realm every day to refine the inheritance fragments that the Nirvana Trees had sent over from the death spring. He obtained significant information about the universe from those fragments. "So the great world is actually so small" Before this, Lin Huang had heard of the concept of the universe. It was an ocean with many great worlds that were connected to each other. Only once he saw the memories of those powerhouses from the universe did he truly discover how vast the real universe was. The great world that he was in was just an insignificant speck of dust compared to it. In the universe, there were countless specks of dust like this. Most living beings could not leave these specks of dust throughout their lifetimes. One day, Sword 1 sent a message not long after Lin Huang left the virtual realm. "Lord Swordmaster, please come to the small meeting room on the top floor." "What happened?" Lin Huang replied instantly. Sword 1 basically would not disturb him unless it was something important. Therefore, the first reaction Lin Huang had was to think that an issue had occurred. "You''ll find out when you get here," Sword 1 replied immediately. That confused Lin Huang a little. Whenever he needed to show himself, Sword 1 would always tell him the information directly. Not only that, he would get into the details, worried that he would miss out on anything. However, he asked him to go to the meeting room first this time?! Lin Huang did not ask further after seeing Sword 1''s reply. He appeared in the meeting room in a flash. As soon as he arrived at the meeting room, he saw a familiar figure standing at the window. Although it was the person''s back, the expression on Lin Huang''s face softened instantly. "Master?!" The man at the window turned around and smiled at Lin Huang. He took a good look at him. "Your appearance hasn''t changed much, kid, but the air about you has. You really look like a chief now." "You''ve aged at least ten years compared to before, master," Lin Huang teased while chuckling. "I have a beard now. Does it make me look very old? I''ll shave it off later." This person was Lin Huang''s master who had seen him growMr. Fu. After Mr. Fu elevated to second-rank true god-level three years ago, he felt his cultivation progress begin to slow down. Thus, he bid farewell to Lin Huang and traveled alone. In reality, there was a Sword Servant secretly following and protecting him throughout those years. He would report to Lin Huang on Mr. Fu''s condition on a regular basis. However, Mr. Fu had never returned throughout those three years. He had finally returned now. "You''ve really grown a lot throughout the three or so years that I''ve been away." Mr. Fu got Lin Huang to sit down and could not help but exclaim, "I thought no matter how stunning your talents were, you''d require at least 30 to 50 years to stand out in the great world. I thought it''d be perfect for me to return to help you in 20 to 30 years." "Never would I have thought that I would hear about your name in the human world after a short three years." Mr. Fu had joy filling his eyes. "I only found out that the Sword Alliance had been elevated to a grade-7 organization when I saw everyone on the internet talking about you and the Sword Alliance." Naturally, Lin Huang knew that Mr. Fu had been staying in the human world throughout the three or so years, burying himself in travels and cultivation. Due to the restriction and isolation of the human world''s network, Mr. Fu did not know much about what had happened in the God Territory. It was only during the recent month that Lin Huang''s name had surfaced among the cultivators in the human world, as the Sword Alliance began to develop their branch in the human world and recruit new members. Mr. Fu had seen that information and verified that it was him. Only then did he contact the Sword Alliance''s branch. "The Sword Alliance has only been developing for less than half a year here. We''ve been focusing on the one in the Pilgrim Star Zone. Only once things were stable did we develop the branch in the human world to train some human talents. Therefore, we only started to recruit members at the branch in the human world last month." Lin Huang gave a simple explanation. "To be honest, I suspected that it was fake news when I first saw it. I was only less skeptical when I looked through the threads online these past few days and saw the reposts from a few organizations like Hunt and Mysterious Item Pavilion. Later on, I got a guy from the black market to ask around and confirm that the news was real." Mr. Fu was indeed slow when it came to receiving news. "The internet also says that you''ve been elevated to Lord? Is that true?" Mr. Fu asked as if he was gossiping. "I guess." Lin Huang coughed twice. In reality, he had surpassed lord-level now. Mr. Fu had a completely different understanding of what he said. He thought Lin Huang meant that his combat strength had yet to reach lord-level, but that he already possessed lord-level ability. "Actually, there''s one thing that I don''t understand," Mr. Fu raised another doubt, "Why did those grade-7 organizations in the God Territory allow you to establish the Sword Alliance? Don''t tell me they want another grade-7 organization in the God Territory to share their resources? None of them sent Lords to suppress you?" Lin Huang smiled when he heard that question. "Suppress me? They would need to have the ability first." Mr. Fu had a rough understanding of what happened after hearing that. It was not that the grade-7 organizations in the God Territory had allowed the Sword Alliance to rise. Instead, they were lacking in abilities and could not do anything about them. They could only watch the Sword Alliance rise in prominence. "Is the Myriad Tribe Palace you destroyed the organization behind the Thousand Snake Sect you mentioned before?" Mr. Fu continued to ask. "That''s right. The Thousand Snake Sect invaded the gravel world over and over again on the Myriad Tribe Palace''s orders." Lin Huang nodded. He did not tell him about the secret behind the Myriad Tribe Palace. After all, it was futile even if he told Mr. Fu about that. It would only worry him. "Have you cleared them out entirely?" A ferocious gleam flashed through Mr. Fu''s eyes. "I''ve cleared all of them out, including the Thousand Snake Sect." Lin Huang nodded. "That''s great." Mr.. Fu was relieved now. Chapter 1730 - Liu Fu’s Invitation Mr. Fu''s return was undoubtedly great news. In reality, Lin Huang was not the happiest one when they heard the news of his return; rather, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan were. After reuniting with him, Lin Xin held onto Mr. Fu''s arm and asked him not to leave. Lin Xuan, who was usually cold and quiet, revealed a rare smile. Bai and the other imperial monsters were also over the moon to see the old master return home. Mr. Fu felt pretty good seeing so many familiar faces. Although he had never stopped cultivating over the past three years, his combat strength had only elevated by a rank. He was at third-rank true god-level now. He was considered the person with the lowest combat strength among the group, yet everyone loved and respected him. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan had elevated to ninth-rank true god-level much earlier thanks to the vast amount of resources they accumulated throughout the years. Chan Dou, on the other hand, had been elevated to heavenly god-level. Not to mention the imperial monsters that were already on lord-level now. It was not about him being Lin Huang''s master, but rather that his image as a senior had been rooted in their hearts since the beginning. "Not bad, not bad. All of you have had significant growth." Mr. Fu did not have any jealous thoughts. Although everyone had surpassed him in terms of combat strength, he was happy. Three years ago, he resolutely chose to leave as he was worried that he would lose his will to cultivate further if he stayed by Lin Huang''s side. Now seeing these juniors around Lin Huang remain in high fighting spirit, having not lost their determination to improve themselves, it showed that Lin Huang had not spoiled them. He knew that if he were to stay, he would be at least ninth-rank true god-level now. However, he did not regret the choice he made. After all, one would make countless choices throughout one''s lifetime. One should move on after making up their mind about it and move on to doing it. There was no need to look back and regret. Since Mr. Fu''s return, Lin Huang could clearly feel that the atmosphere at the Sword Alliance''s headquarters was much more upbeat now. Even Lin Huang was feeling very relaxed for no reason. He could not help but secretly exclaim that the Sword Alliance finally felt like home with a senior like Mr. Fu around. Over the next few days, Lin Xin clung onto Mr. Fu, afraid that he would run away once again. She was still worried even though Mr. Fu promised repeatedly that he would not leave. Shee would drag Xiao Mo and Lin Xuan to the courtyard Mr. Fu was staying in. Very soon, Lin Huang returned to his initial routine. He spent most of his time immersed in the virtual realm cabin, refining those Origin Energy fragments the Nirvana Trees sent out. When he returned from using the virtual realm cabin a couple of days later, he suddenly sensed a rather familiar aura arriving in the Pilgrim Star Zone. He appeared before that person in a flash. "Liu Fu?" Lin Huang was quite surprised to see that it was Liu Fu. "What is it that requires you to come all the way here instead of just informing me through the Royal Token?" "This isn''t my Primordium. It''s just a clone," Liu Fu explained with a smile. "You''ve broken through?" Lin Huang instantly noticed that the clone''s aura had actually exceeded that of a Lord. It was clearly more powerful than Liu Fu''s Primordium before. "Your senses are so sharp. I can''t believe you noticed that." Liu Fu did not seem to expect that Lin Huang managed to tell from a glance. "I''ve just broken through today. My Primordium is still stabilizing his cultivation base." "Congratulations! You''re a dao-level master now," Lin Huang teased while smiling. He was on dao-level too so, naturally, he did not fear Liu Fu. Liu Fu did not think too much about it and merely said with a smile, "I''m only on the minor dao-level. I''ll be a real master when I achieve the major dao-level one day." "Are there many minor dao-level powerhouses in the universe?" Lin Huang could not help but ask. He did not seem to see many people who had met dao-level powerhouses from the inheritance memories that he had obtained from the Nirvana Tree. Among the small number of dao-level powerhouses'' inheritance memories, there were purely cultivation methods. There were no memories regarding this aspect. "Not many, but not little as well. You should know that the universe comprises countless great worlds, and each great world has an astronomical number of living beings within. The total number of those countless astronomical numbers would make up the number of living beings in the entire universe." "When the number is this great, no matter how low the probability of cultivators breaking through to the minor dao-level, there would still be many of them." "However, as the universe is extraordinarily vast, dao-level powerhouses are scattered around. It''s very hard for such cultivators to run into each other, which is why even more people think that there are only a few dao-level powerhouses in the universe." "I see." Lin Huang kept nodding as he listened. He suspected that there were only a few dao-level powerhouses as there were hardly any recordings about other dao-level powerhouses from the inheritance memories he obtained from the Nirvana Trees. He had only found out about the truth after listening to Liu Fu''s explanation. "With your level of talent and potential, it''s only a matter of time before you achieve minor dao-level," Liu Fu comforted. "Why did you make a clone and come here this time?" Lin Huang circled back to the main subject. "I''m hosting an upgrade banquet to hype things up," Liu Fu added, before saying, "To put it bluntly, I want my new and old friends to see that I''ve broken through past lord-level!" "Indeed, you should let everyone know." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "I came here this time to invite you to join the upgrade banquet." "Sure, I''ll definitely be there," Lin Huang agreed to his request directly. "Here is the invitation." Liu Fu handed over a black card as he spoke. There were golden words engraved on it. "Crush it on the day. A dimensional portal will open automatically and send you to the banquet venue." "There''s such an advanced invitation card?" Lin Huang took the invitation card from Liu Fu''s hand. He began to think of what gift he should get Liu Fu. Liu Fu could not help but speak after handing the invitation to Lin Huang. "I thought that you wouldn''t stay long in this great world since the last time we met. It''s been half a year, and you''re still here. Are you unwilling to leave, or are there any other reasons for this?" "There are some matters that I haven''t settled." Lin Huang gave a perfunctory answer. Liu Fu shook his head, feeling a little helpless. "I suggest that you head out to the universe soon. With your current ability, it''s hard for you to obtain enough cultivation resources in this great world. Meanwhile, there are opportunities and resources everywhere in the universe." "Also, report yourself to Royal''s headquarters as soon as possible when you get to the universe. You''re a Rank-S member, so you can claim a welcome gift" "Focus on your cultivation and try your best to break through to dao-level. Don''t waste time on things that aren''t important." Lin Huang knew that Liu Fu was advising him out of kindness. He merely listened quietly and nodded his head every now and then. Close to half an hour had passed by the time Liu Fu was done speaking. He then bid farewell to Lin Huang. The clone that landed in this great world faded away directly. Lin Huang stood in the air where he was while fiddling with the black card in his hand.. He was thinking whether he should put heading to the universe on his agenda soon. Chapter 1731 - Cannot Afford To Take Him In Almost a week after Liu Fu visited, Lin Huang suddenly sensed movement in his storage space. He spread his Divine Telekinesis within and found that the black card Liu Fu gave him was shining brightly. The golden sigils on the black card lit up slowly, dyeing the entire card sparkly gold. Lin Huang took it out immediately. "Has the banquet started?" He raised his brows. He did not exert Odyl in instantly. Instead, he went to his bedroom in a flash and changed into slightly formal attire. He told Sword 1 through voice transmission that he would be out for some time. He then exerted Odyl into the card calmly. As soon as he did that, the golden card disintegrated quickly and turned into a golden whirlpool before Lin Huang. He did not hesitate at all and stepped right into it. After stepping into the Dimensional Whirlpool, Lin Huang found himself inside a golden palace when he reappeared on the other side. Many people had already arrived in the magnificent palace. Lin Huang''s appearance did not attract much attention from the crowd present. He glanced around and he soon saw Liu Fu chatting with an old man with a head full of white hair. The old man did not reveal his aura, but Lin Huang could tell from a glance that he had also surpassed lord-level. He did not interrupt them. Instead, he got himself a glass of wine from the waiter''s tray and walked around on his own. It was not his first time attending such an occasion and was quite familiar with the proceedings. However, someone called out to him through voice transmission suddenly just as he had just taken a step forward. "Come over, Lin Huang. Let me introduce you to a senior." Naturally, Lin Huang recognized Liu Fu''s voice. He turned around and looked at Liu Fu. He was waving at him. The old man from before stood next to him. Lin Huang nodded at Liu Fu and walked directly over to them. "You brat. You saw me and didn''t come over to say hi," Liu Fu mocked. "I saw that you were chatting with this senior. It wouldn''t be too late if I only came over after you guys were done," Lin Huang said helplessly. "Here, let me introduce you guys. This is our Royal''s seniorMr. He Nanzhi. He''s Royal''s veteran dao-level powerhouse. He''s not far away from elevating to major dao-level." The old man with white hair had a straight back and looked high-spirited. He was checking out Lin Huang. He forced a smile and shook his head when he heard what Liu Fu said. "Stop teasing me, you brat. I''m still far away from major dao-level. It''s uncertain whether I''ll get there at all during this lifetime." "This kid is Lin Huang. He''s a super genius from World No. D3587 that''s under your jurisdiction. He killed upper-rank Lords with lower-rank lord-level combat strength. He just obtained Rank-S member authorization from headquarters not too long ago." "Hello, Old He," Lin Huang greeted immediately. He Nanzhi nodded lightly and then turned his head to look at Liu Fu. "Lin Huang Is he the kid that you submitted the application for earlier?" "That''s right." Liu Fu nodded and smiled. He Nanzhi turned his head over to look at Lin Huang again and said with a smile, "The younger generation will surpass the older." "You''re too kind, Senior," Lin Huang quickly said, humbly. He was a little suspicious that the other party might have seen through his dao-level cultivation base. The technique that he was using to conceal his aura came from the dao-level powerhouses'' inheritance memory that the Nirvana Trees sent over. Liu Fu had just broken through to minor dao-level. He could deceive him with this technique. However, a veteran dao-level powerhouse like He Nanzhi might have consolidated tens of thousands of Dao seals. It was totally possible that he sensed him using that unique technique to conceal his aura. "The great world you''re in is within Old He''s jurisdiction," Liu Fu reminded Lin Huang. "It''s just under my jurisdiction for now. It''s only a matter of time before Fellow Lin breaks through to dao-level himself. According to Royal''s rules, World No. D3587 will be his sooner or later," He Nanzhi said while squinting. Lin Huang could not see the change of emotion on his face. However, he had a faint feeling that he was telling him, "I know you''re at dao-level now." Liu Fu had a shocked expression on his face. "Old He, do you think so highly of this kid? I remember your comment for me from before was only that there was a chance that I''d break through to dao-level." "He has much more talent and potential than you do," He Nanzhi said while chuckling. "I remember that you indeed said that my talent and potential were lacking when I asked you to become my master back then," Liu Fu smiled and said. "You''ve given Fellow Lin such a high compliment. Can it be that you''ve finally decided to take in a disciple now?" He Nanzhi raised his eyebrows as he listened to Liu Fu''s words. He then looked at Lin Huang and said, hinting something while smiling, "I''d love to, but I can''t afford to take him in." "Can''t afford to take him in?" Liu Fu had a confused expression on his face. He thought he would match the two of them up to make them master and disciple. Never had he thought that Old He would have such a reaction instead. However, Lin Huang understood him. This Old He had clearly seen through his concealment technique. As they were both at minor dao-level, it was only natural that Old He did not dare take Lin Huang as his disciple. "You guys can keep chatting. I''ll go chat with Old Wang for a little bit." Old He found himself an excuse and walked toward the direction of another old man with his wine glass in hand. "What does he mean? Why did he say that he can''t afford to take you in?" Liu Fu looked at Lin Huang with a questioning expression. "How would I know?" Lin Huang shrugged. "Sigh, that''s too bad. I thought Old He would be interested in you for your talent and potential." Liu Fu shook his head helplessly. "He''s Royal''s veteran dao-level powerhouse. Someone said that he had consolidated over 80,000 Dao seals many years back." "He''s been looking for a disciple to inherit his legacy. However, he has standards so high that he''s never been able to find a suitable candidate all this time." "I thought of matching you guys up. If you can make him your master, you would be able to accumulate many resources to get to ultimate-level lord-level." "But I have no idea why he rejected that suggestion. Theoretically, he''d be very satisfied with your talent and potential. Otherwise, he wouldn''t have said that it''d only be a matter of time before you''d break through to the dao-level." "Maybe he was just being nice. I''m a junior after all. It''d be terrible for him to put me down." Lin Huang provided a reason that sounded reasonable. "Oh, please. White lies aren''t his thing. He doesn''t care if you''re a junior or not. He has always been a straightforward character. I wanted to make him my master back then, but he rejected me by saying that my potential and talent were lacking in comparison to my face. Among the Royalties, I''m not the only one who received such a comment. There were some ten people who were snubbed directly as well." "Why do you think I invited him this time? I wanted to show him that his remark was wrong and that I''ve elevated to minor dao-level successfully now!" "He''s looking over here" Lin Huang spoke through voice transmission softly. Liu Fu shrunk his neck back in quickly and looked in He Nanzhi''s direction carefully. However, he saw him chatting happily with the other old man. Only then was he relieved, verifying with Lin Huang immediately, "Did he really look at us just now?" "No, I was just kidding." Lin Huang smiled. "Your joke isn''t funny at all. I''m soaked in cold sweat now from that scare. I don''t want that old man to hold grudges against me" Liu Fu clearly feared Old He. Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to tell the truth.. He Nanzhi indeed peeped in their direction just now. Chapter 1732 - Exposed Cultivation Base As Lin Huang and Liu Fu chatted for a little bit, new guests soon arrived, so Liu Fu went over to greet them. Lin Huang was alone again. He began to walk around with a glass of wine in his hand. It was his first time in the universe. Apart from Liu Fu, he knew nobody else here. He had only seen He Nanzhi once. Not only that, he was a senior. It would be inappropriate if he went over to talk to him. Approximately half an hour later, the banquet had finally officially begun as all of the guests Liu Fu invited seemed to have arrived. When the star of the event, Liu Fu, got on stage, he began to tell the story of his "bumpy" road of cultivation to the crowd. Clearly, there were many exaggerations in his descriptions. Even Lin Huang who was not familiar with his past could tell that some parts of his story had obvious signs of "embellishment". The people below the stage could not help but tease him a few times. After all, many of the people present were familiar with his story. Some of them were even part of his story. Lin Huang also noticed that there were actually not that many people who were invited to the banquet. There were about a hundred people or so. Moreover, many of them were good friends with Liu Fu. Otherwise, they would not be teasing him over his elevation to dao-level. If they were regular friends, they would definitely fear him after learning that he had been elevated to dao-level. They would not dare to speak like this. Furthermore, judging by those friends'' reactions, Lin Huang could tell that Liu Fu was a friend that people valued. He had heard of something that he thought made sense on Earth in the past. In order to know a person''s true colors, do not look at what kind of house he lives in, the car he drives, or the clothes and watch that he wears. You should look at what kind of friends he is closest to. If something was wrong with the character of his friends, then there is a high chance that the person is not worth being friends with, because birds of a feather flock together. Liu Fu did not mind their teasing. Instead, he proceeded to tell his story in a tone that was full of emotions. From him starting cultivation, to breaking through to dao-level, he had almost told his entire life story. At first, everyone was a little bored by his story. However, since people began to tease him, they gradually found his story more and more interesting. Close to two hours had passed by the time Liu Fu was done telling his story. The emcee quickly moved on to the next agenda on the list after getting on stage. Liu Fu''s story was too long. It had affected the flow he had arranged for the banquet. Fortunately, guests like Lin Huang did not really mind that. As the emcee continued facilitating the event, nothing went wrong with the banquet. Everything went smoothly. Although the entire banquet was somewhat dramatic, it finally ended on a successful note. Just as Lin Huang was thinking about how to return to the great world when the banquet ended, a voice traveled to his ears. "Fellow Lin, please come over." Lin Huang was stunned. The voice belonged to Old He. He turned around to look in He Nanzhi''s direction. The old man he called Old Wang was standing next to him. He was clearly a dao-level powerhouse. Lin Huang did not ask further seeing that Old He had nodded slightly at him. He walked over directly. "This is Wang Xuanan, whom I address as Old Wang," Old He introduced, "This fellow is the Lin Huang that I mentioned just now." "Hello, Old Wang," Lin Huang greeted immediately. Old Wang looked even older than Old He. He was skinny with obvious wrinkles on his face. If not for the fact that Lin Huang knew that he was a dao-level powerhouse as well, he might have thought that he was just a regular old man if he had bumped into him on the street. Lin Huang was rather doubtful of his condition. Theoretically, cultivators above true god-level would not look old unless they were close to the end of their lives. Perhaps there were a small number of people who would maintain their old appearance. He Nanzhi, for instance, was such a person. However, nobody would show their full-blown aged appearance. The reason being was that nobody liked such a appearance. Therefore, Lin Huang guessed that there was a high chance that this person did not have a strange liking toward such an appearance, but that he was really near the end of his life. However, that made Lin Huang even more doubtful. Theoretically, dao-level powerhouses who had broken through lord-level could live for a long time. It was nothing for them to live for tens of billions of years. So how long exactly had this Old Wang lived for?! As Lin Huang had such thoughts flying about in his head, Wang Xuanan was taking a good look at him. Though his skin was old, his eyes were the only thing that were as clear as a newborn baby. Only after checking Lin Huang out for a while, did he speak slowly, "This kid is quite something. He''s great." "What did you see?" Old He asked. "Do you wish for me to die faster?" Old Wang said angrily, "I can''t be looking at people as I wish like before now." "You said that he''s great, so I thought that you probed into him." Old He scratched his nose in embarrassment. "Is there a need for probing? He merely used a small trick to conceal his cultivation base. You could sense the real strength of his aura as well." Old Wang spoke a little too quickly, which caused him to cough twice. Lin Huang, on the other hand, felt a little awkward. As expected, his concealment technique was useless in the presence of real powerhouses. He could not help but feel humiliated, being exposed on the spot. "Is there any reason why both seniors here are looking for me?" Lin Huang could not help but take the initiative to change the topic. He just wanted to avoid the awkward subject as soon as he could. "There''s no rush. We''ll speak when everyone has gathered." Just when Old He was about to explain things, Old Wang who was standing at the side took over the topic directly. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang could only wait. Old He might have been bored or something, so he began to chat with Lin Huang. "How many Dao seals have you consolidated now?" "Over 3,100" It would be terrible if he were to lie before the two of them since the truth of him being at dao-level had been exposed. "So you''ve just broken through not too long ago," Old He added casually. "Yes," Lin Huang responded. However, he secretly thought, ''It''s not too long indeed. It has only been over half a year.'' Liu Fu brought two people along over to their awkward chat. Lin Huang could sense that the two of them were at minor dao-level too. The strength of their auras was slightly more powerful than Liu Fu''s, but that was about it. Liu Fu was clearly a little confused to see Lin Huang there. "Lin Huang? I thought you went back." "No. Old He was chatting with me." Lin Huang felt rather speechless. He knew that Liu Fu was asking Old He about his presence through voice transmission. The awkward silence went on for a moment. Liu Fu appeared to have learned about Lin Huang''s true combat strength from Old He, after which he looked over at Lin Huang with a shock-filled face. He yelled directly: "You''ve been elevated to minor dao-level as well?!" Lin Huang nodded helplessly. "When did that happen?!" Liu Fu continued to ask further. "Should be around the same time as you did." "Alright. You guys can chat in private regarding whatever you want to talk about later. Let''s talk business somewhere.." Old He interrupted Liu Fu instantly when he saw that he was unwilling to let go of Lin Huang. Chapter 1733 - Private Meeting A group of people sat together in a small, private meeting room. Lin Huang''s thoughts were flying as he sat on the couch. In reality, up until now, he had no idea what this bunch of people wanted to do exactly or why they included him. "Liu Fu, introduce us." He Nanzhi was the first to speak after everyone took their seats. Liu Fu nodded and stood up. "Everyone should already know Old Wang and Old He." Including Lin Huang, all three of them nodded instantly. "This is Qu Yu. We used to be in the same sect when we were in the great world. He''s considered my senior brother." Liu Fu pointed at the man in the blue suit sitting on his right. This person looked much younger than Liu Fu. He was in his early 20s and looked rather handsome. He would be considered eye candy if he was on Earth. Lin Huang could sense a sharp intent emanating faintly from his body. It was an aura that was exclusive to saber cultivators. "I''m a saber cultivator." Ferocious gleams of light exuded from Qu Yu''s fingertips. He introduced himself with that simple sentence. "This is Zhou Ya. We''ve known each other since we were at heavenly god-level. We''ve explored many secret zones and ruins in the past," Liu Fu said while pointing at the lady in the black dress sitting on Qu Yu''s right. "Is it so hard to tell others that I''m your ex-girlfriend? We explored many secret zones and ruins in the past?! We''ve only entered a Lord''s ruins once, okay?" Zhou Ya rolled her eyes at Liu Fu angrily. "Err" Clearly, Liu Fu did not expect Zhou Ya to say that. After criticizing Liu Fu, Zhou Ya stood up in a sporting manner and ignored Liu Fu. She introduced herself to the crowd. "My name''s Zhou Ya. I major in skills of all elements, thought fire element is my area of expertise Indeed, I''ve some grudges with this jerk from back then. However, don''t mind that. I''m very professional when it comes to missions." Liu Fu only spoke again after Zhou Ya was done and had taken her seat. He pointed at Lin Huang. "This young man is Lin Huang. He''s a friend that I got to know earlier. He has stunning talent and potential. Even Old He praised him." Lin Huang nodded slightly at the couple of people. "I major in Sword Dao. I''m also pretty good at some Divine Telekinesis techniques." Liu Fu only looked at Old He and Old Wang after the few of them had introduced themselves. "I''ll pass it over to the two of you now." "Old He, be our host." Wang Xuanan leaned on a couch with his legs crossed. He did not plan to get up at all. He Nanzhi did not reject him. He got down to business directly. "Well, we gathered everyone here to invite you guys to enter a secret place as a team. This secret place is a mystic territory. It will probably open within three years." "As the mystic territory''s scale is rather large, there are some other organizations besides Royal who have received the news. "On Royal''s side, Old Wang and I will be leading the minor dao-level powerhouses. Apart from you guys, we''ll invite other minor dao-level powerhouses from Royal as well. However, you guys will decide whether you want to join or not." "Apart from us, there will be people leading major dao-level and lord-level powerhouses. So if you guys have any major dao-level and lord-level friends, you can get them to join as well." "In principle, dao-level powerhouses can''t attack Lords during the exploration of the mystic territory, nor can major dao-level powerhouses attack minor dao-level powerhouses. However, that doesn''t mean that it''s completely safe. You guys will still run into minor dao-level opponents." "The risk is there, but the resources within the mystic territory should also be abundant. Therefore, you guys can decide whether you want to join or not. Just inform Liu Fu after you''ve made up your mind. He''ll inform us." "You can ask any questions that you might have now," He Nanzhi added in the end. "I''d like to ask, what''s a mystic territory?" Lin Huang was the first to raise his doubts. In reality, he had learned much information about the universe from the inheritance fragments he obtained from the Nirvana Tree, including some information about mystic territories. The reason why he asked that before everyone was because it was his first time in the universe. He had to show them that it was his first time here. Hearing that question, Zhou Ya and Qu Yu were puzzled when they looked at him. Clearly, they thought it was rather strange that Lin Huang did not know what a mystic territory was. "I''ve forgotten that it''s your first time in the universe." Old He was stunned momentarily, after which he then explained patiently. "The mystic territory is a phenomenon that occurs occasionally in the universe." "Usually, it''s a strange dimension that would appear out of nowhere. The dimension is covered in a layer of mist. If someone goes in while it''s misty, they will go missing, including major dao-level powerhouses." "Therefore, in order to explore the mystic territory, we have to wait for the mist to dissipate and for the mystic territory to be revealed completely." "Each mystic territory contains abundant resources, but also contains great danger. The weakest monster in the mystic territory is at lord-level, and the most powerful one might exceed dao-level." "Therefore, Lord is the lowest requirement to explore the mystic territory. Otherwise, it''d be akin to seeking death." In reality, Lin Huang knew that information. However, he was still nodding his head continuously as he listened. After giving a rough explanation on what a mystic territory was, Old He thought he would just reveal the information about the mystic territory they were entering this time. "Judging by the scale and the energy fluctuations radiating from the mystic territory that was found this time, we roughly speculate that there are major dao-level monsters guarding it." "Therefore, we''re not the main force that''s entering this time, but rather the major dao-level powerhouses." "Our main mission is to gather resources, as well as kill any monsters that we can handle while we''re at it." "Naturally, apart from the mystic territory''s local monsters, the explorers from other organizations will be our enemies as well. They''re even more dangerous than the local monsters." Lin Huang was slightly moved as he listened to the information about the scale of the mystic territory this time. Major dao-level powerhouses were supreme powerhouses who had consolidated over 100,000 Dao seals. He learned from the inheritance memories he obtained from the Nirvana Trees that major dao-level powerhouses did not only suppress minor dao-level powerhouses in terms of the number of Dao seals. There would be a qualitative change when they had consolidated a certain number of Dao seals. That qualitative change would transform the particles in their body further. In reality, one could say that major dao-level and minor dao-level powerhouses were life forms of two completely different levels. Just like the transition his life form went through when he was elevated to minor dao-level. He could totally beat up tens of thousands of his old self right now. There would be a similar transition when he got to major dao-level. Therefore, Lin Huang did not think that the current him had sufficient ability to fight an even battle with major dao-level powerhouses. Although there were rules in the universe where major dao-level powerhouses could not attack minor dao-level powerhouses in the mystic territory, in the end, rules were just rules, and there were countless people who would be willing to break the rules given the right incentive. As long as one did it flawlessly without anyone finding out. No matter what, Lin Huang would not entrust his safety completely to an insignificant rule. He was of the opinion that his ability was the only thing he could rely on to protect him. Chapter 1734 - The Vastness Of The Universe Old He and Old Wang answered the questions everyone raised one by one in the small meeting room. However, as it was the first time this particular mystic territory would appear, they had no idea what kind of situations would arise inside. After the meeting ended, everyone soon left on their own accord. Lin Huang was the only one who stayed. He was not exactly sure how he would return to the great world that he was in before. He could not help but tease as he watched Liu Fu sending Zhou Ya off. "Seems like someone hasn''t moved on from his ex completely." "How can that be?" Liu Fu denied instantly, "It''s been over between us for a long time." "Is that right?" Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. "Then why would you invite her to your upgrade banquet since you''ve already moved on?" "I want to show her that I''ve elevated to dao-level as well!" Liu Fu said stubbornly. "As well as inviting her to team up to explore this mystic territory?" Lin Huang smirked playfully. "That''s because I don''t know much about dao-level after all. I only trust her and Qu Yu, so I asked both of them to come along." Liu Fu proceeded to explain. "Alright, then" Lin Huang smiled indifferently. Although Liu Fu could tell that his smile clearly indicated that he did not believe him, he did not want to dwell on this topic. "Say, what''s with you exactly? When did you elevate to dao-level? Or were you disguised as a lower-rank Lord before?" "I wasn''t in disguise when I was at lower-rank lord-level. I really was a lower-rank Lord that time. It has only been a couple of months since I elevated to dao-level," Lin Huang answered with a smile. "So you''re saying that you elevated from lower-rank lord-level to minor dao-level in less than a year?!" Liu Fu looked at Lin Huang with widened eyes. "You can say that." Lin Huang nodded. "I''ll be d*mned if I believe your words! You''re full of nonsense." Liu Fu thought that what Lin Huang said was simply ridiculous. "It''s the truth no matter whether you believe it or not." Lin Huang opened his arms. Liu Fu slowly calmed down when he heard that. He thought of something suddenly, and could not help but say, "I almost forgot that your Goldfinger''s ability specializes in combat strength elevation" Liu Fu covered his mouth as soon as he said that. "Err Pretend I didn''t say that." He had seen Lin Huang''s data from Royal. It recorded that Lin Huang''s Goldfinger was suspected to be specialized in combat strength elevation and, therefore, he could elevate his combat strength faster than others. However, it was naturally inappropriate to mention that before Lin Huang. Lin Huang already knew that many people suspected that his Goldfinger was specialized in combat strength elevation. The reason being was that the speed of his combat strength elevation was indeed unusual. It made sense that Royal''s database included such recordings. On the contrary, he was happy to see such a misleading result. "I can''t believe that you''ve elevated to minor dao-level so quickly." Liu Fu changed the subject immediately. "In reality, I invited you to the banquet with the goal of getting Old He a disciple. I thought that you would be a suitable candidate." "I didn''t expect that you''d disguised yourself so well to the point that I didn''t notice your elevation to dao-level. Now that I think about it, I finally understand what Old He meant when he said that he couldn''t afford to take you in." "I actually didn''t want to reveal my combat strength, but Old He and Old Wang saw through me, so I thought it was better not to lie any further." Lin Huang felt rather helpless. He had merely wanted to attend a banquet. Never had he imagined that he would be invited to join an exploration team into a mystic territory. "Will you be joining the exploration team into the mystic territory?" Liu Fu continued to ask. "I definitely will. I''ve never been in one after all, so it will be a new experience." It had been some time since Lin Huang met a worthy match. Naturally, he would not miss out on the trip to the mystic territory this time. "However, I must prepare myself well before going." After seeing Liu Fu hesitating to speak Lin Huang asked directly, "What is it? Just spit it out." "You might not know much about mystic territories," Liu Fu spoke anyway seeing Lin Huang urging him, "Every time a new mystic territory appears, the first round of exploration is the most dangerous one." "The reason being is that the environment and types of monsters are completely unknown. Moreover, the explorers who participate in the first round of exploration have powerful abilities. Some of the explorers even join in just for the thrill. As soon as they run into people from other organizations, they are ruthless in their attacks. They basically won''t leave anyone alive." "Usually, the exploration period when the mystic territory has just opened is the one with the highest death rate, far more than subsequent rounds of exploration." "So I''m hesitating on whether to join the exploration team this time." Liu Fu expressed his hesitation. "Aren''t you one of the organizers?" Lin Huang felt rather speechless. "Before the meeting, Old He only told me that he''s inviting us to explore a mystic territory together. He didn''t say that it would be the exploration of a new mystic territory." Liu Fu felt quite helpless. "Otherwise, I would''ve rejected him directly. I''ve only just been elevated to minor dao-level." Lin Huang understood now. The old man He Nanzhi might have been worried that many people would refuse to participate if he mentioned that they would be the people exploring the mystic territory for the first time. Therefore, he hid the information about that and only told them that it was an exploration into a mystic territory. No matter how many people end up joining in the end, he would just lure them to the meeting first! It was better than being rejected from the outset. "You can make your own choice. I shouldn''t be making any suggestions regarding such a matter." Lin Huang thought about it and decided not to give him any suggestions. He personally hoped that he would join. It would be more fun to have a person that he was familiar with going with him. However, he would definitely feel a little guilty if Liu Fu listened to his suggestion, joined, and then died in the end. "Oh yeah, how should I return?" Lin Huang changed the subject directly. "Just crush the black card that I gave you. It''ll send you back to the coordinates that you came from before automatically," Liu Fu explained, "This thing works both ways and it''s disposable." Lin Huang took out the card and fiddled with it in his hand for a little bit. He asked seemingly casually, "Who made this teleportation tool?" "I don''t know who exactly made it. There are many teleportation tools like this in the universe. Most of them should come from the Qian family." "The Qian family" Lin Huang learned about this family from the inheritance memories as well. It was the wealthiest family in the entire universe, as well as one of the three wealthiest organizations. He asked about the card because the teleportation card looked a little bit like Xiao Hei''s form when he had just obtained the Goldfinger. He continued to ask after secretly taking note of the Qian family in his head, "Do you have a star map of the universe? I''d like to know where the great world I''m in is." Liu Fu projected the star map directly. "The universe is too vast. The complete star map of the universe lacks many details. You might not be able to find the world you''re in. This is the star map for the Eastern Eight Zone we''re currently in" Liu Fu dragged the star map to the northeast as he spoke. After zooming in tens of thousands of times, he pointed at one of the dense dots. "This is the world that you live in." "These dots are the great worlds?" Lin Huang was shocked. "That''s right. This Eastern Eight Zone star map should be the most complete and most current version. They record and mark the serial numbers of over 98% of the worlds." Lin Huang looked at the dot Liu Fu was pointing at. The serial number D3587 was displayed above it. That was the serial number of the great world he was in. "Can you zoom in even further?" "This is the furthest it will go" Liu Fu said while feeling rather helpless, "If you want to see things closer up, you can only look at the star maps of the smaller zones. I don''t have one now. I''ll get you a copy when I have the time." "I''ll send you this copy first." Liu Fu sent the Eastern Eight Zone star map to Lin Huang directly as he spoke. "Thanks." Lin Huang was still immersed in the shock from before. He knew that the great world was just a drop in the ocean in the universe.. However, he had only realized the universe''s vastness when he saw it laid out on the star map. Chapter 1735 - Three Years On the day Lin Huang returned to the great world from the universe, he gathered Sword 1 to Sword 12 again. In the meeting room, he projected the star map of the universe''s Eastern Eight Zone directly. "What do you guys think this is?" Lin Huang glanced at everyone present. "A star map?" The rest remained silent but Sword 8, who looked like a little girl, said while chuckling. They remained silent as they did not think that the answer would be that simple. "That''s right. Guess where this is on the star map?" Lin Huang continued to ask. This time, Sword 1 was the first to speak after hesitating a little bit, "It doesn''t look like a star map of any known regions of the great world. I don''t even see one star zone that I''m familiar with. Is this a star map of another world?" Lin Huang nodded lightly. "Indeed, this isn''t a star map of our world, but a star map of the universe." "To be exact, this is the star map of the Eastern Eight Zone in the universe, which is the region where our world is at the moment." "So those dots aren''t star zones, but great worlds?!" Sword 3 asked with a shock-filled expression. The rest reacted one after the other. All of them looked shocked. The reason being was that there were at least billions of dots within the projected image. In other worlds, this inconspicuous-looking star map contained billions of great worlds. "Where''s our world then?" Sword 8 could not help but suddenly ask. Lin Huang moved over to the northeast corner of the star map quietly. He kept enlarging the image. He only pointed at one of the dimmed dots after he enlarged it tens of thousands of times. "This one. This is the great world that we''re currently in. World No. D3587." "Can you enlarge it further?" Sword 8 asked the same question that Lin Huang had asked previously in excitement. "This is the furthest it can be enlarged" Lin Huang gave the same answer Liu Fu had given him. "This is the universe. The Eastern Eight Zone alone is already vast and borderless." Lin Huang glanced at them again. He could see the yearning within them. "There are more than three billion great worlds within the jurisdiction of the entire Eastern Eight Zone. Meanwhile, there are over 600 zones like the Eastern Eight Zone in the entire universe." "Three billion great worlds?!" "Over 600 Eastern Eight Zones" The Sword Servants present thought the vastness of the universe was beyond their imagination. "No wonder there are so many powerhouses in the universe Out of the billions of worlds, even if there''s only one famous dao-level powerhouse in 100 million worlds, there would still be tens of thousands of dao-level powerhouses," Sword2 could not help but exclaim. "The number of dao-level powerhouses isn''t as low as that," Lin Huang explained while smiling, "At least judging by the great world''s serial numbers, there are at least millions of dao-level powerhouses in the universe. The reason being is that there are over three million worlds with grade-S serial numbers. Even if a grade-S world only has one minor dao-level powerhouse, there would be over three million of them already." "The alphabet before the serial number is the grade rating of the world?" Sword 1 noticed that nuance instantly. "That''s right," Lin Huang explained in detail, seeing that they were interested in that. "The universe categorized the grades of the great worlds from low to high, namely E, D, C, B, A, S and SS. "Grade-E worlds have no local Lords." "The highest local combat strength of Grade-D worlds is restricted to lower-rank Lords." "The highest local combat strength of Grade-C worlds is restricted to middle-rank Lords." "The highest local combat strength of Grade-B worlds is restricted to upper-rank Lords." "The highest local combat strength Grade-A worlds is restricted to ultimate-rank Lords." "Grade-S worlds have powerhouses that have elevated to minor dao-level." "Grade-SS worlds have powerhouses that have elevated to major dao-level." "The numbers in the serial number mostly represent the sequence in which the worlds were found. However, it might also be the sequence after amendments." "Then why is our world Grade-D? Didn''t we always have middle-rank Lords?" Sword 3 asked, feeling rather confused. "This serial number must''ve been given since our great world was discovered. Perhaps the highest combat strength within our world was only lower-rank lord-level when the serial number was created. Therefore, the grade-D rating hasn''t been amended since then. If you look closely, you''ll notice that the numbers in our world''s serial number are pretty small. The universe should''ve discovered this great world a long time ago." Lin Huang stated his speculation. He saw such a thing happening in the inheritance memories he obtained. "If someone is elevated to ultimate-rank lord-level or dao-level, it should be amended quickly if it is reported to Royal." There were many worlds in the universe, while there were limited staff responsible for the serial numbers and recordkeeping. They could not be monitoring which world had new elevated middle-rank Lords or upper-rank Lords at all times. They would usually rely on report submissions. After the application was submitted, there would be staff in the jurisdiction reviewing the application. The serial number would only be changed if the application passed the review process. The world Lin Huang and the rest were in should not have had anyone submit an application since the serial number was created. Therefore, the serial number had never been amended. "It was said that there were only over 10,000 grade-S worlds in the universe when this system was first introduced. Now that there are over three million of them, most of the grade-S worlds only had their serial number amended when someone successfully elevated to dao-level later on," Lin Huang added on another piece of information. "Are there really great worlds that managed to train dao-level powerhouses?" Sword 2 could not help but raise his doubts. "There are. Great worlds have great differences in their innate environments. The legendary great worlds during the epoch of chaos were born almost the same time the universe was. Each great world was endlessly vast, while the resources found within weren''t inferior to that of the universe. During that epoch, some living beings were born to be dao-level or even more powerful." "Due to wars and other reasons later on, those great worlds during the epoch of chaoss collapsed one after the other and integrated once again, creating new great worlds and forming the great worlds of the primeval epoch" "The great world that we''re currently in was formed by the many disintegrations and integrations of great worlds during the primeval epoch." "However, there are still a small number of great worlds that have portions of star zones remaining from the primeval epoch. The resources available in such worlds are naturally incomparable to other worlds." "Those people who are born in such great worlds are so lucky." Sword 2 had an envious expression on his face. "Not necessarily. While the worlds with many powerhouses seem to have more abundant resources, in reality, the level of competition is more intense. Perhaps many geniuses and talents were killed before they even managed to stand out." Sword 1 had a clearer head. "Sword 1 is right." Lin Huang nodded too. "Such great worlds definitely have levels of competition that are a hundred times more intense than ours. Although those who are selected in the end are definitely talents and geniuses, we don''t know how many others died during their journey. Some may have had sufficient talent and potential, but lacked that little bit of luck and died prematurely. In our world, the death rate of such geniuses is much lower." "Therefore, there''s no need for us to be envious of them. Our world is pretty great. If we''re running out of cultivation resources, we can always head out to the universe. As long as you have sufficient potential and talent, the resources in the universe are sufficient for you to cultivate to dao-level." "Are you showing us this data because you are planning to head to the universe, Lord Swordmaster?" Sword 1 asked quickly. The remaining Sword Servants in the meeting room stared fixedly at Lin Huang. They were eager to know the answer. "Within three years.. Three years would be the deadline," Lin Huang revealed the time limit he had set for himself. Chapter 1736 - Sword 1’s Presumptuous Request "Lord Swordmaster, I have a presumptuous request." Sword 1 suddenly spoke up after a moment of silence after hearing the time limit Lin Huang gave himself to head out into the universe. "Do tell." Lin Huang nodded. "I hope we can make a thorough investigation on the Raiders'' whereabouts again before we leave this great world. I want to see if we can locate that woman from before and avenge Swordmaster Great Heaven. I hope that Lord Swordmaster can give me some time and a certain level of authorization to accomplish this." Sword 1 was referring to the female Raider who had a history with Great Heaven and was suspected to have interfered with his unification process, causing it to fail. "Great Heaven can be considered my teacher. Moreover, the day I received his inheritance, I already promised you that I would help you investigate this matter when the time was right, as well as to avenge him." "However, I''ve already killed all of the Raiders in this world. There was only one guy named Cunning Rabbit who had escaped to the universe. From what I know, he''s a man. He shouldn''t be the person we''re looking for." "Since you want to investigate, I''ll support you. I''ll give you half of the Sword Servants as manpower. After all, the Sword Alliance needs people to run it. If you need, you can get Sword 2 and the rest to help as well." "No need. I need Sword 2 and the rest to hold down the fort when I''m away," Sword 1 rejected the offer, "I''ll pick a group of people from the Huang League." "You can use Heavenly Net''s intel as you wish as well. I''ll inform Yang Ling about it. He was a victim of the Raiders too. He''ll definitely agree to help," Lin Huang added, "Also, you can use the information channels of the other organizations that are collaborating with Heavenly Net." "Thank you, Lord Swordmaster." Sword 1 bowed deeply to express his gratitude. "I only need a year. As soon as a year''s time is up, regardless of whether I discover anything, I won''t bring this matter up again." "It doesn''t have to be a year. I''ll give you three years. You can allocate time to investigate as you wish before we head out into the universe." Lin Huang waved. "Also, if you can''t find her in this world, it means that she might''ve escaped to the universe." "However, no matter where she''s run off to, we''ll find her sooner or later. It''s just a matter of time!" "We must avenge Great Heaven! Even if we spend thousands or tens of thousands of years to find that woman, we must take revenge!" "Thank you, Lord Swordmaster!" The 12 Sword Servants present got up at the same time and bowed deeply. After leaving the meeting room, Lin Huang soon told Lin Xin, Yang Ling and the rest, as well as the crowd of imperial monsters such as Bloody and Kylie, about the three-year time limit. He wanted to get them to settle everything that they had yet to settle in the great world as soon as possible. Within half a minute of him sending the message out, Yang Ling sent a video call request directly. Lin Huang took the call. "What''s up?" "You''re going out into the universe within three years? Why is it so urgent?" "Because I''ve promised my friend from the universe that I''d participate in an exploration of a secret zone at that time." Lin Huang did not say that it was a mystic territory, but rather a secret zone. The reason being was that if he did mention the mystic territory, he would have to explain to Yang Ling what it was. "I thought I''d seize the opportunity this time around and not come back." "Are you saying that you''ll bring us along to the universe?" Yang Ling asked. If Lin Huang did not have such plans, theoretically, there was no need for him to tell them about the three-year agreement. "I''d like to bring you guys along, but it''s still up to you guys to make the final decision. You guys can come along if you want to, or stay if you want to." Lin Huang did not intend to force the decision upon them. Although he thought that Yang Ling''s Goldfinger was very useful, as a friend, he should respect his wishes. "Let''s go then. I''ve never been to the universe." Which man would not yearn to venture out into a whole new world? Naturally, Yang Ling was no exception. "However, there''s some stuff that Hong Zhuang and I need to settle before leaving," Yang Ling added, "I might need to use some of Heavenly Net''s resources to investigate something personal." "You guys have the full authorization when it comes to managing Heavenly Net anyway. Just do as you see fit." Lin Huang did not mind that. "That won''t do. We must separate public use and personal use. If we''re using it for personal matters, we need to inform you beforehand, or we''ll be crossing the line." Yang Ling insisted. "Actually, it''s not a big deal. We mainly want to borrow Heavenly Net''s information channels to inquire into Hong Zhuang''s younger brother''s whereabouts to see if we can find him." "Does she really have a younger brother?" Lin Huang was rather surprised. "Don''t you already know that?" Yang Ling felt speechless. ''Wasn''t that a story that she made up to earn sympathy?'' Lin Huang did not voice his thoughts out loud in the end. He could only keep them to himself. "Alright, I got it. You guys go ahead and use it," Lin Huang agreed without hesitation. After hanging up the call, Lin Huang was still not sure whether Hong Zhuang really had a younger brother. Perhaps she did make up a story and, in order to go all the way, she got Yang Ling to try to find him. No matter what, Lin Huang could not see through this woman. Perhaps only this kind of woman could tame Yang Ling. Not long after Yang Ling hung up the call, Bloody sent a message. "Our arrangement with the Nephilic Judge Tribe over here is almost done. Kina has completely adapted to the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s living environment, while the tribe is showing a high degree of acceptance of her. Not only that, she has been elevated to seventh-rank heavenly god-level. We happen to be waiting for the right time to send her to you to elevate her to lord-level." Kina was the Pseudo Pure Spirit rank-5.5 dependent that Kylie had mentioned to Lin Huang previously. Kylie planned to leave her with the Nephilic Judge Tribe to replace her to prevent the tribe from descending into chaos when she headed out into the universe. Clearly, they had settled Kina down completely over this half a year period. Now they were just waiting for Lin Huang to turn Kina into his imperial monster and use a Combat Strength Upgrade Card to elevate her to lord-level before they headed out into the universe. Lin Huang thought about it and soon replied to Bloody''s message. "There''s no rush for now. All we''ve got to do is to elevate her combat strength before we leave. You guys are needed to push forward the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s development as much as you can within the two to three years. When you guys are gone in the future, it might be difficult for Kina to do that alone. You guys must take that into consideration as well." Bloody replied quickly. "We''ve thought about that. We''ll make the arrangements. In reality, the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s improvement has been much better than we expected in all aspects. Most of the obstacles from before came from the elderly, but the younger generation can easily accept new things. I believe the elderly''s perception will change gradually as new things surface that improve everyone''s living conditions, as well as provide more resources. The Nephilic Judge Tribe''s future will flourish. It only requires time." Lin Huang was relieved when he saw Bloody''s reply. He replied anyway after thinking about it. "I''m just worried that the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s current state might regress after you guys leave." However, he thought about it and deleted the message before he was done typing the sentence. He sent Bloody a new message. "Just make the appropriate arrangements before you guys leave.. They''ll have to depend on themselves in the future." Chapter 1737 - An External Strength Boost Three years was Old He''s estimated timeframe before the mystic territory would open. However, Lin Huang thought there was no need for him to return to the great world if he really were to head out into the universe. After all, with his ability, it was rather meaningless to continue staying in the great world. He would seize the opportunity of the mystic territory''s opening to leave directly. Since he was only left with three years, he would settle everything that he had yet to do in this world as soon as he could. Therefore, he informed everyone about the decision to get everyone to finish what they had yet to finish. Meanwhile, the first thing that Lin Huang thought about was to locate Xue Luo. In reality, he had always remembered that. Xue Luo was the first Protoss that Lin Huang met. Thanks to the impression Xue Luo gave Lin Huang, he never held any disgust toward other Protoss later on. Since coming to the great world, he had never forgotten about finding Xue Luo. It was just that, in the beginning, he did not have the ability to protect himself. As such, he spent most of his time and effort on cultivation. When he became slightly more capable later on, he asked around on the black market, and ran an investigation with Bloody''s assistance by using the Nephilic Judge''s force. However, it was all to no avail. Therefore, he had been putting this matter aside. When he founded the Sword Alliance''s headquarters in the God Territory and suggested that Yang Ling establish the Heavenly Net intelligence department, he actually had an important goal in mind. He wanted to borrow Heavenly Net''s intel network to look for Xue Luo as well as the clan she originated from. The information channels were limited as the Heavenly Net had just been established. However, Lin Huang gave them the mission to look for Xue Luo, her clan as well as her ex-husband. Apart from Xue Luo, the Heavenly Net was also investigating who the mastermind behind Myriad Tribe Palace was exactly. One could say that the Heavenly Net would become the busiest department within the entire Sword Alliance during these three years. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had to start figuring out how he would strengthen himself further. Firstly, the number of Dao seals in his Kingdom was far from the limit he could possess. He could refine more Kingdoms to borrow even more Dao seals. That would require a massive amount of resources. He could only trade all sorts of resources for more Kingdoms on Royal''s trading market. Therefore, he could not rush into things using this method. He could only trade each time he had accumulated a certain amount of resources. Secondly, in order to consolidate more Dao seals, he would need to unlock his Kingdom over and over again. That would require more Lords consolidating Dao seals in his Kingdom. Although theoretically Lin Huang could elevate all of his imperial monsters to the limit of supreme-rank Lord at once, and they would possess 3,000 Dao seals directly, unlocking the major dao-level quota of having 100,000 Dao seals instantly, he did not plan to do so unless it was absolutely necessary. He hoped that his imperial monsters could polish themselves as much as possible instead of obtaining elevation through an external force. It would be more difficult to cultivate Lords in his Kingdom. After all, it was nothing simple for one to achieve lord-level. Even with sufficient talent, potential and resources, one would require sufficient time to grow. After all, there were not many people in the entire universe who possessed cheat codes like he did. The third way of becoming more powerful was to refine more Origin Energy fragments from the death spring. In reality, that method would not strengthen Lin Huang directly. However, there were many memory inheritances within the Origin Energy fragments. If he obtained an inheritance of a powerhouse, it would increase his strength in the form of an ability boost. However, most of the Origin Energy fragments that Lin Huang obtained came from Lords. The probability of receiving minor dao-level powerhouses'' inheritances was low, and even lower for major dao-level. Moreover, most of those dao-level fragments contained redundant information. There were few useful inheritances. Nevertheless, that was out of his control. He could only accept them passively and try his luck. The fourth way was to depend on external augmentations; objects such as spiritual treasures. However, Lin Huang could not afford spiritual treasures. He did not even have enough resources to trade for Lords'' God Territories, let alone expensive spiritual treasures. Fortunately, the few God Weapons he owned had evolved into spiritual treasures now. He did not need to worry about dao-level equipment. Apart from spiritual treasures, Lin Huang very soon thought about his Combat Souls. His ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had only been elevated to lower-rank Lords before, and their elevation had stopped since. Their combat strength was clearly too low at this point. If one optimized their God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls, in reality, they were comparable to clones. However, as they would exhaust a great deal of resources, many would stop using God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls when they got to true god-level. After all, if one had that many resources, they would rather use it on themselves. Nevertheless, there were a small number of Lords and half-step Lords who would cultivate God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. Some Lords who reached a plateau thought that the possibility of breaking through further was low. There were also half-step Lords with no space to improve who thought that spending resources on themselves would be a waste. Therefore, they would start to cultivate their Combat Souls again. God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls that were cultivated properly would be equivalent to having assistants with the same abilities. When encountering enemies, it might become a trump card to turn the tables in battle. Lin Huang thought it would be a little difficult to cultivate the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls to his level, but that it was doable to cultivate them to a certain level to his advantage. Among the four main elevation methods, Lin Huang thought the fourth one was the only one where the result would be instantly noticeable. He did not hesitate and started work. He returned to his Kingdom with a flash. He summoned his ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls and the Goldfinger Eternity Fire. The ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls'' God''s souls were connected to Lin Huang''s God''s souls directly. There was ample space of growth for their God''s souls. Meanwhile, their physical strength was connected to their ranking. Their Pure Spirit rank-6 ranking allowed their physical bodies to bear the limit of supreme-lord level or even more powerful combat strength elevation. After inserting a large amount of Origin Energy into Eternity Fire, it stretched ten golden tentacles out and connected to the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. It shared its energy with them to elevate their combat strength. Lower-rank Lord! Middle-rank Lord! Upper-rank Lord! Supreme-rank Lord! The ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls'' aura only stabilized gradually when they had elevated to the limit of supreme-rank lord-level. However, the sharing of energy from Eternity Fire had yet to stop. It was still ongoing. At the moment, Lin Huang noticed that the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had Dao seals lighting up on them. He was unusually familiar with those Dao seals. Many of them belonged to him, and there were some that were not consolidated by him, but instead were the Dao seals in his Kingdom. Lin Huang widened his eyes. The ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls duplicated the Dao seals in his body directly. After thinking about it carefully, he understood what was happening. By nature, the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls were his God''s soul clones wearing the shell of God''s Figurines. Therefore, theoretically, the Dao seals that his God''s soul could use would be applicable to the Combat Souls as well. Lin Huang had not noticed that before. He had only noticed it now that all of the Dao seals and sequence power that the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls used came from his Kingdom. "It''ll save them a lot of time and effort since they won''t have to consolidate Dao seals all over again," Lin Huang mumbled softly. As approximately half a day had passed, there were 3,000 Dao seals that lit up on the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. They were glowing brightly at the moment. Like ten big suns, they lit up the entire sky. It was only after the golden glow faded that Lin Huang realized that the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had broken through to dao-level. They had 3,001 Dao seals on them, and the Dao seals penetrated their bodies gradually. "I''ll elevate them as much as they can take." Lin Huang proceeded to pour more Origin Energy into Eternity Fire''s body. He had consolidated more than a hundred Dao seals in the virtual realm, and he had encountered minor dao-level Raptors over a hundred times. He had killed thousands of minor dao-level Voids, obtaining enough Origin Energy to make thousands of dao-level God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. As Eternity Fire was receiving more Origin Energy, it boosted the energy transfer for the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. Approximately three days later, the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had duplicated more than 10,000 Dao seals. It was only then that Eternity Fire. "Has it reached the limit yet?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "Not yet." It was the Ninetails Lynx who answered that question, "However, we''re out of Dao seals that we can duplicate." "Apart from the Dao seals that we can''t use, we''ve duplicated all of the Dao seals, god sequence chains and god rules that we can use," Nightmare Tapir who was standing at the side spoke. Lin Huang had only noticed that almost all of the some 120,000 Dao seals in his body had been duplicated by his ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. Each Combat Souls had duplicated tens of thousands of Dao seals. As they had different cultivation directions, the repetition rate of Dao seals they duplicated was less than one-tenth. Therefore, each of them only had some 10,000 Dao seals in their bodies. "Alright, that''s all for this round of elevation." Lin Huang nodded while feeling rather helpless.. He did not expect that he had restricted his Combat Souls from strengthening further. Chapter 1738 - I’ve Avenged You The ten Pure Spirit rank-6 God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had been elevated to minor dao-level. Not only that, each of them had duplicated over 10,000 Dao seals. To Lin Huang, they were undoubtedly a group of amazing assistants. Although they could not compare with him in terms of their abilities, they were sufficient to handle many minor dao-level powerhouses. Lin Huang was satisfied with this boost of external strength. However, he did not give up on his personal strength boost just yet. He repeatedly explored the few conclusions he had explored. Very soon, he found a shortcut to the second strengthening method. "I definitely can''t cultivate Lords in my Kingdom to boost the number of the unlocked Dao seals within a short period of time. However, if time flow is accelerated by 10,000 times, I should be able to significantly shorten the cultivation time of Lords." "Three years would be 300,000 years under 10,000 times accelerated time flow. It shouldn''t be an issue to cultivate a couple of Lords." The Great Heaven Palace could alter time flow. The most it could accelerate time flow in his Kingdom would be 10,000 times faster than the outside world. Lin Huang thought he could use this bug to accelerate the time flow in his Kingdom by 10,000 times to cultivate Lords. He had absorbed countless Kingdoms before. Most of them had local living beings, and there were quite a number of Heavenly Gods among them. He had converted them into a part of his Kingdom together with the other Kingdoms previously. Three hundred years should be enough to elevate some high-rank Heavenly Gods to Lords. He had only applied the time acceleration within the Great Heaven Palace previously, or only the Great Heaven Territory at most. It had never been applied to the entire Kingdom before. He was looking forward to seeing the changes of some of his old friends in the gravel world 30,000 years later under the accelerated time flow. As he sorted through his thoughts, he contacted the Great Heaven Palace directly without hesitation. He adjusted the time flow of the entire Kingdom so that it was 10,000 times faster than the outside world. Lin Huang would enter the virtual realm every day for the next few days. He already had sufficient confidence in his ability to start exploring the Abyss of the virtual realm. At the same time, he was in a frenzy as he hunted Voids in the Abyss. However, his targeted prey were at least supreme-rank Lords. There were even minor dao-level powerhouses. Apart from obtaining a great deal of Origin Energy, the goal of hunting those Voids was also to obtain more Dao seals. Although it would not unlock the number of Dao seals he could possess, it could boost the total number of Dao seals in his Kingdom. It was even faster than refining Kingdoms. Moreover, as the Voids he hunted were of high levels, almost each one he hunted would increase the number of Dao seals in his Kingdom by 1,000. Within a short span of one week, he had hunted hundreds of Voids. The total number of Dao seals in his Kingdom had skyrocketed to over 300,000. However, one day, Lin Huang suddenly realized that he could no longer refine more Dao seals. "315,800 Dao seals seems to be the limit. It happens to be a hundred-fold of the 3,158 Dao seals I own" Lin Huang had previously guessed that there would be a limit to the number of Dao seals his Kingdom could refine. He had finally reached the limit. However, it was clear that the limit could be increased in tandem with the number of the Dao seals he truly possessed. Although it came out of the blue, Lin Huang soon came to terms with the fact. He figured that he would just stop hunting for the time being. The Voids in the Abyss of the virtual realm might not have realized that they had unintentionally escaped death. After Lin Huang stopped hunting, he summoned the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls immediately and got Eternity Fire to strengthen them once again. The God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls that had only duplicated over 10,000 Dao seals before had the number of Dao seals in their bodies increased to some 30,000. Their combat ability increased significantly again. Later on, Lin Huang finally settled down. He only did one thing every day when he entered the virtual realm, which was to refine the Origin Energy fragments coming from the Nirvana Trees. When he returned to the material realm, he would put aside his cultivation completely. He would travel with his mind with his eyes shut most of the time. His Divine Telekinesis turned into clones, wandering through all the planets in the entire great world. This included those planets in his Kingdom; observing the changes in the Kingdom. Sometimes, he would spare some time to give cultivation pointers to Lin Xin and the rest, his imperial monsters and Sword Servants. Time flew by, and close to three years had passed. The current Sword Alliance, including the branch in the human world, held a steady status among the grade-7 organizations. It was not only active within the God Territory, but the three Saints and the seven sects in the human world also collaborated with the Sword Alliance. The Sword Alliance''s headquarters in the God Territory had tens of millions of members now. Meanwhile, the branch in the human world had surpassed eight million members. Although Lin Huang did not fight even once throughout the three years, more than one of the Sword Servants in the Sword Alliance had fought before. A hot discussion would start every time a Sword Servant fought. Not only the God Territory and the human world in the great world, almost all the realms found out that the Sword Alliance possessed at least ten lord-level powerhouses. Lin Huang, the mysterious Sword Alliance master, had become an unfathomable existence to the people. Lin Huang, who had clones all over the place, naturally knew of these matters very well. Throughout these three years, everything that happened in the entire great world, no matter big or small, could not escape his notice. In reality, the Heavenly Net never managed to find news of Xue Luo throughout these three years. Lin Huang had tens of thousands of clones who investigated the matter for three years. The final investigation revealed that there was indeed a small clan called the Xue family in the previous era in the God Territory. However, Lin Huang checked through all of the information he could find. It was proven that the Xue family was not the one he was looking for. It had nothing to do with Xue Luo at all. Not only the God Territory, Lin Huang had even looked through all the regions in the great world, including the human world, Celestial Palace, Buddhist Land, dragon world and more. He did not manage to find anything. It felt as if Xue Luo had never existed, nor was there ever a Xue family. Lin Huang did not find Xue Luo, but he did not have to spend much effort finding information about her ex-husband according to the teleportation coordinates and based on the time spent in the gravel world and the great world. That man called himself a Master God in the great world. He had many believers. However, in reality, he was merely getting by in mediocre grade-5 organization in the God Territory. He was just a regular member. Meanwhile, his combat strength stopped at ninth-rank true god-level. He had not improved in years. On a night when snow scattered across the sky, Lin Huang''s clone barred his path. The man with a head full of silver hair had his guard up as he looked at Lin huang. His hair color seemed to have turned silver white permanently from the influence of Xue Luo''s Divine Fire. However, he still looked cool and handsome. "Do you still remember Xue Ling-er?" Lin Huang stretched his hand out and caught the soft snow that was like sand before him as he asked coldly. The man quivered slightly, but then denied instantly, "You got the wrong person. I''ve no idea who this Xue Ling-er you''re talking about is." "Really?" Lin Huang smirked. At the moment, the silver-haired man''s eyes gradually looked empty. "Xue Ling-er was a woman that I met in the gravel world. I knew that she was a Protoss. I approached her on purpose, deceived her to win her trust, and obtained her Divine Fire" His eyes were focused again a moment later. "What did you do to me?" "I merely let you recall your past." Lin Huang''s tone was calm, but his expression had turned cold. "Since I''ve confirmed that it''s you, I''ll take the thing that you owe Xue Luo on her behalf." As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, the silver-haired man knelt on the ground. His silver hair was turning black quickly at a speed that was visible to the naked eye, but his vitality was fading gradually. "You owe her a life and a Divine Fire, so I''ll take your life and Divine Fire." Lin Huang did not even look at the kneeling corpse. He held the white Divine Fire at the tip of his finger, covering it with a layer of Odyl and then placed it in a box. He put away the box in his space storage. He lifted his head and looked up at the sky. Watching the soft snow falling from the sky, he muttered softly, "I''ve avenged you, Xue Luo" Chapter 1739 - The Arrangement Before Departure The three years agreement was coming to an end. Sword 1 returned as promised. Lin Huang knew the result of the three-year investigation without having to ask. Apart from Sword 1, Lin Huang also welcomed some of his old friends throughout those three years. His old friends from the gravel world, such as Leng Yuexin, Li Lang, the siblings Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu, had broken through to heavenly god-level one after the other. Lin Huang brought them to the great world. Under the 10,000 times accelerated time flow, almost all of the cultivators in Lin Huang''s Kingdom underwent a significant elevation in their combat strength. Some ten Lords were cultivated throughout those three years. They were accepted into the Sword Alliance. Although the 16 Lords only unlocked 16 Dao seals for Lin Huang, he was very satisfied with the result. The Sword Alliance was flourishing in its development. It had the deterrence of being the No. 1 organization in the God Territory. However, Lin Huang finally received news from Liu Fu from the universe. He knew that it was almost time for his departure. A few days before departing, he gathered everyone. Not only all of his Sword Servants, but Mr. Fu, Lin Xin, Yang Ling and the rest as well as his old friends such as Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu were included. Lin Huang only spoke after taking a glance at them. "I''ve received news from the universe that the mystic territory that I''m going to is opening. I''ve decided to depart three days later. I''ll officially head out into the universe. From that point onward, I might not return for a period of time." "I know that most of you here might want to go out into the universe. However, I can''t just leave the Sword Alliance behind. This will still be our training base, as well as the root of our development in the universe. We need the Sword Alliance to stay, recruiting more talents and geniuses. We''ll then send them to the universe to strengthen our organization in the universe." "Therefore, I need a portion of people to stay behind and hold down the fort for me." Lin Huang knew that most of them definitely hoped to head out into the universe. After all, it was a whole new world. Not only that, there would be more opportunities to develop themselves. However, it was impossible that he would bring all of them along. He could not leave the Sword Alliance that he had spent a few years building behind. Apart from commemorating Great Heaven, his initial intention of founding the Sword Alliance was to make it a training base, training more talents under him. As a "training center", the Sword Alliance had a purpose of existence. The room fell into momentary silence after Lin Huang was done speaking. At that moment, Mr. Fu was the first to speak up. "I''ll tell you what I think." The people knew that he was Lin Huang''s master. Although his combat strength was only at true god-level, they dared not neglect him. They paid attention to him. "Everyone knows that I''m nominally Lin Huang''s master. I''ve only taught him cultivation during his earlier years, and he soon surpassed me later on. Throughout the few years in the Sword Alliance, I''ve been accumulating resources, while my combat strength has only elevated to fourth-rank true god-level. After all, my talent and potential are limited. I can''t compare myself with you young ones." "I think, to me personally, this great world is vast enough. Of course, I''d love to go to the universe, but I don''t think it''s for me. At the very least, it''s not suitable for me to live in a place that has Lords everywhere like the universe, where just the impact from a battle alone might kill me. Of course, if it''s just a vacation, I''m more than willing to go." "Therefore, I''ve decided to stay. I''ll stay in the great world. You can see it as retirement or holding down the fort for you. I''d love to settle down here." "Master" Lin Huang did not expect that that would be Mr. Fu''s decision. In reality, to him, Mr. Fu was family. Naturally, he wished to bring him along to the universe. "With your talent and potential, you can go further than anyone. However, not many have the talent and potential to be with you until the very end. It''s not that I don''t want to go with you guys. It''s just that I''m really tired." "You can treat this as your hometown. Just visit whenever you have time. It''s not like we''ll never see each other again." Mr. Fu insisted on his decision. Lin Huang stopped advising him after hearing that. The second who spoke was Chan Dou. "I''ll stay too." It was not only Lin Huang; everyone present who knew him was shocked by his decision. After all, with Chan Dou''s talent and potential, the great world should not be his ideal destination. "Don''t overthink this. It''s not that I want to stay in the great world forever. I just think I owe Lin Huang and the Sword Alliance too much. I think that I have the obligation to stay to do something for the Sword Alliance." "Also, as soon as I''ve succeeded in my unification and am elevated to Lord, I''ll head out into the universe." "Then we''ll stay too. We''ll go to the universe together when we''ve cultivated to lord-level," Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu stated their opinion immediately as well. Lin Huang felt melancholic to see his old friends'' attitude on this matter. In reality, Leng Yuexin, Yi Zheng and the rest had only reunited with him for a short time. Moreover, although they were not considered powerhouses with their heavenly god-level combat strength, they were considered to be of normal standards. Lin Huang interrupted things when he saw the half-step lord-level Sword Servants begin to stand up to speak. "I welcome everyone here who would like to go to the universe with me. I hope that everyone who decides to stay is really willing to stay instead of being forced to stay." "There''s an opportunity for half-step Lords to elevate. I''ve found a way to fix your Dao seals to elevate you guys to Lords. This method doesn''t have any side-effects. You''ll be able to elevate to middle-rank, upper-rank and even supreme-rank lord-level like the others later on. Therefore, there''s no need for you to make the decision of staying to retire because of the lack of elevation potential for half-step Lords. However, it''d still depend on your own hard work as to how far you''ll go in the end." "No matter what, you have to be willing to stay." "I''m staying." The first person who spoke up was someone who nobody expected to again. It was Sword 2. Even Lin Huang was stunned momentarily. "Sword 1 took care of most of the matters in the Sword Alliance before. I hope that I will have his leadership abilities and share a portion of that burden in the future. Also, I''ve figured out that the Swordmaster actually has many helpful people around him. Apart from Sword 1, there are some who have abilities more powerful than mine." "I think, as compared to the rest, the Sword Alliance might need me to stay." "Of course, I won''t stay forever. When the time is right, I''ll get someone to replace me. I''ll then head out into the universe and be by Lord Swordmaster''s side." After Sword 2 spoke, more Sword Servants took the initiative to stay behind. In the end, there were 154 Sword Servants who chose to stay. At that point, Lin Huang finally confirmed the list of the people that he would bring along to the universe. After the meeting ended, the Sword Servants left one after the other. Sword 1, Sword 2, and a bunch of old friends were the only ones left in the meeting room. "Master, you" Mr. Fu was the first person that Lin Huang looked at. "I know what you''re trying to say." Mr. Fu smiled, feeling grateful. "No matter whether I go to the universe with you or not, we''ll always be family." "I really want to stay. I didn''t say that just to save you the trouble. I just thought I''d start the conversation to tell you what I have in mind." Lin Huang nodded lightly and said nothing more. He then looked at his old friends like Leng Yuexin, Yi Zheng and the rest. "Given your current combat strength, it''s actually sufficient to follow me out into the universe. Over there, there won''t actually be lord-level powerhouses everywhere. It''s just an exaggeration. True god-level and heavenly god-level are still the main combat strength levels." "We''ve only been to the great world for less than a year. We haven''t become familiar with this place yet, and you''re bringing us to the universe instead. I don''t want to go. I''d like to enjoy the great world for a few more years." Li Lang was the first to speak. "Although true god-level and heavenly god-level are the main combat strength levels, we''d definitely slow you down if we go." Leng Yuexin spoke the truth. Lin Huang would have liked to say that they would still slow him down even when they had become Lords. However, he only dared to think about those words. It would be terrible for him to say those words out loud and crush their self-esteem. "We think so too." Yi Zheng and Yi Yeyu nodded. "Also, the Sword Alliance''s resources are enough given our level of cultivation now. There''s no need for us to head out into the universe. It''s not too late for us to head out when we get to lord-level and run out of resources." Lin Huang then looked at Chan Dou. "Don''t look at me. I hate owing someone a favor. Consider this to be my way of returning the favor by staying this time," Chan Dou said expressionlessly. Lin Huang stopped encouraging them seeing that they had made up their minds. He then looked at Sword 2. "Gather all of the half-step lord-level Sword Servants.. Bring them over to the big meeting room on the first floor." Chapter 1740 - Frantic Last-minute Closed-door Cultivation After gathering the 247 half-step lord-level Sword Servants, Lin Huang sent them into the Great Heaven Palace before activating the Flawless Card. He only left the Kingdom after watching the Sword Servants transform into big cocoons one after the other successfully. The Flawless Card would not only fix one''s Dao seal, but it would also fix the missing Dao tattoos that had caused the Dao seals to be damaged. Consolidating Dao tattoos was not a short-term process. Therefore, Lin Huang chose to do it in the Great Heaven Palace with the 10,000 times accelerated time flow. Over the next two days, the half-step lord-level Sword Servants got out of their cocoons consecutively and were elevated to lord-level officially. It had unsealed 247 Dao seals for Lin Huang''s Kingdom. After settling the Sword Servants'' matter, he received a message from Sword 1. "The Virgen of the Nephilic Judge Tribe is here." Lin Huang had a secret meeting with Kylie and Bloody in a small meeting room in the Sword Alliance after reminding Sword 1 to keep it a secret. Kina, who was going to replace Kylie to stay with the Nephilic Judge Tribe, came along with the two as well. Surprisingly, the girl looked 60% to 70% similar to Kylie. It was no wonder that the Nephilic Judge Tribe would believe that she was Kylie''s long-lost sister. "Are you guys done with all the arrangements?" Lin Huang asked. "We are." Kylie nodded. "To prevent her from failing to handle everything on her own after we left, we''ve established a small circle of supporters among the Nephilic Judge Tribe throughout these past three years. They''re young people who have the common goal of the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s future development in mind. Although there were not many people, we''ve assigned them to different departments respectively throughout these few years. "In the future, they''ll assist Kina together to continue promoting the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s development." Although Kylie made it sound simple, Lin Huang knew that making progress on this matter must have been difficult throughout these years. The reason being was that it was impossible for the Nephilic Judge Tribe''s upper echelons not to notice the people who were close with the Virgen. "As long as they follow the plan I gave Kina and don''t deviate too much from the development outline, there won''t be any major issues." Bloody was very confident in her plan. "However, we can''t avoid minor deviations from occurring." "I''ll try my best to keep things in line." Kina nodded in all seriousness. Even her tone and demeanor when she spoke was similar to Kylie. "Have you made up your mind?" Lin Huang looked at Kina. "I have." Kina nodded without hesitation. As Kylie''s dependent, she had an innate sense of admiration and adoration for Kylie. To her, replacing Kylie to stay with the Nephilic Judge Tribe was a way to get closer to Kylie. "Alright then." Lin Huang took action instantly after seeing Kina did not have a shred of hesitation at all. A red gleam flashed from his sleeve. Before Kina could react, it had penetrated between her brows, leaving a tiny opening the size of a needle. Kina''s vitality faded instantly. At the last second when her vitality had almost faded entirely, a new Monster Card was consolidated in Lin Huang''s hand. Lin Huang crushed the card casually. Kina''s figure formed quickly. Seeing the corpse with a red gleam between its brows, she was left in a momentary daze. However, she soon snapped back to her senses. She suddenly realized that the man before her felt even closer than Kylie was to her. "Master," Kina called out automatically. "Come with me." Lin Huang waved and brought Kina along into the Great Heaven Palace. In the palace, Kina saw the giant golden cocoons all over the place at a glance. Those were Lin Huang''s Sword Servants that had just had their combat strength elevated not long ago. Before she could react, the Combat Strength Upgrade Card between Lin Huang''s fingers turned into stars and penetrated her body. Her body was enveloped in a golden cocoon at speed that was visible to the naked eye. After completing that task, Lin Huang returned to the Sword Alliance''s headquarters in a flash. Kylie and Bloody remained standing where they were. They only snapped back to their senses when they saw Lin Huang return. "What did the two of you say to the Nephilic Judge Tribe?" Lin Huang asked again. "I left a letter saying that I think my cultivation has reached a plateau, so I''m going to the universe with Bloody. I also mentioned that I entrusted Kina to them." Kylie''s response was simple. "Those stubborn old geezers from the Nephilic Judge Tribe must hate me to their bones," Bloody said rather helplessly. "You don''t owe them a good impression anyway." Kylie did not care about such things. "They have had their guards up against me from the first day, worried that I might kidnap you. In the end, I really did kidnap you. Now those old geezers'' speculations have come true. I''m very upset about that." Bloody was irritated. "You shouldn''t think that way. Instead, you should think that you''re pissing off the old geezers by kidnapping the Virgen under their watch," Lin Huang teased with a smile. Bloody rolled her eyes at Lin Huang. "You definitely can''t hide the news of you going to the universe for much longer. Those from the Nephilic Judge Tribe who aren''t complete fools should connect the dots that you''re going to the universe with their Virgen. Even without proof, they''ll definitely stir up trouble with the Sword Alliance." "Don''t worry, they''ll be the one on the losing end if they stir up trouble with the Sword Alliance." Lin Huang had sufficient confidence in the Sword Alliance''s ability. "I''ll tell Sword 2 not to bully the Nephilic Judge Tribe too much." Kylie and Bloody knew that Lin Huang was telling the truth. They held no doubts regarding the Sword Alliance''s ability. Lin Huang did not stay idle over the next few days after making the secret arrangement with Kylie and Bloody. Considering that there would be major dao-level powerhouses during the trip into the mystic territory, and that it would be dangerous to get his lower-rank lord-level imperial monsters to explore the place, Lin Huang gave the matter some serious thought and decided to gather all of his imperial monsters apart from Bug Tribe. He elevated them all the way to supreme-rank lord-level. Bai, Bloody, Charcoal, Kylie, Grimace, Lancelot, Tyrant, Thunder, Bloody Robe, Fiend, Scarlet Imp (Hellion Imp), Witch, Eclipse (Eclipse Boa), Crescent Moon and Dark Moon (two Dark Crescent Snakes), Death (Death Knight), Fallen (Fallen Knight), Warlord, Herculean King, Bing Wang, Killer, Evil Dominator, Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son), Blackscale (Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain) and Nine Gloom (Silver-Armored Nine Gloom). There were a total of 25 imperial monsters. Lin Huang boosted their Dao seals to 3,000 at once, elevating their combat strength to the limit of supreme-rank lord-level. This unsealed close to 75,000 Dao seals in Lin Huang''s Kingdom. Later on, Lin Huang spent a long time consolidating Dao seals in the virtual realm. When he had consolidated all of the unlocked Dao seals, he had increased the number of his Dao seals to a total of 78,385. With that many Dao seals, he was already considered a powerhouse among minor dao-level cultivators. Meanwhile, each of his Dao seals comprised millions of Dao tattoos. His over 78,000 Dao seals could not be compared to the ordinary minor dao-level cultivators''s 78,000 Dao seals. However, Lin Huang did not stop cultivating just yet. After increasing the number of his Dao seals, he began a new round of refining for the Origin Energy fragments coming from the Nirvana Trees He finally got out of closed-door cultivation officially when he reached the limits of Dao seals his Kingdom could contain, which was 7,838,500 Dao seals, from the Origin Energy fragments. Chapter 1741 - For A Better Reunion When We Meet Again Lin Huang felt much more determined after leaving closed-door cultivation this time. He did not continue to elevate the ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls'' combat strength. He had consolidated over 70,000 Dao seals in the virtual realm and attracted millions of minor dao-level Raptors, which ended up as Origin Energy for him to devour. Although that vast amount of Origin Energy was sufficient to elevate his ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls all the way to major dao-level with Origin Energy to spare, he did not do that after giving the matter some thought. He was primarily considering the trip into the mystic territory that would take place soon. Among minor dao-level powerhouses, God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls with 30,000 Dao seals would not be considered weak. They would be able to help conceal his real ability in the early stages. If the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls attracted even more powerful enemies, he could still handle them without having to expose all of his abilities. However, if he elevated his God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls to major dao-level, they would in turn attract major dao-level enemies. Although, with his ability, he was no longer afraid of major dao-level powerhouses, he hoped that he could stay as low profile as possible instead of standing out. One must know that, in the vast universe, a major dao-level combatant would be considered a powerhouse, but not a top powerhouse. There were more powerful existences above major dao-level. Lin Huang did not hope to be targeted by such an existence. For safety purposes, he chose to take things slowly. The simpler one was, the longer they would live. The death of countless talents and geniuses in the past had verified the truth of this saying. Time flew by. Three days had passed. It was finally the day of departure. All of the Sword Alliance''s upper echelons gathered in the largest meeting room that could hold 1,000 people on the first floor. Lin Huang glanced around at the crowd. Sword 1 was smiling, but Lin Huang knew that he had been feeling down. He had been away for close to three years investigating the female Raider who had caused Great Heaven''s death. However, his efforts over the three-year period were to no avail. On one hand, he blamed himself for not discovering anything useful. He thought that the hope of avenging Swordmaster Great Heaven was slim. On the other hand, he felt guilty for having wasted Lin Huang''s confidence in him. Not only did he not contribute to the Sword Alliance''s development during those three years, he had used much of the Sword Alliance''s manpower and intelligence gathering resources, slowing everyone down. However, Lin Huang did not know that he had been having such complicated emotions all this time. He comforted him twice, but Sword 1 did not seem to feel much better. Later on, Lin Huang assigned him some tasks to keep him busy and prevent him from being mired in his negative emotions. Lin Huang very soon had his eyes on Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang. The two of them had yet to tie the knot officially. Yang Ling claimed that he wanted to find Hong Zhuang''s brother so that he could attend their wedding. Throughout the three years, he had used countless channels and many resources. However, his efforts were to no avail as well. This made Lin Huang even more suspicious that Hong Zhuang''s brother might be fictional. He was not jealous at all when he saw these two showing off their love occasionally. He only thought that Yang Ling was quite pitiful. Such an intelligent man seemed to have been completely bewitched by Hong Zhuang. In the presence of this woman, his intelligence quotient would drop to lower than zero. Lin Huang looked away from the two people that he was rather worried about, and then looked at Mr. Fu who was standing next to him. Mr. Fu still had his mustache. He looked like he was in his 30s now, and had a light smile on his face. Lin Huang had always treated this master of his like family. He personally hoped to bring Mr. Fu along with Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. No matter where they went, they would always be together. However, since Mr. Fu had made up his mind, Lin Huang respected his decision. Just like what Mr. Fu said. Family would be family regardless of whether they were together or not. It was just like many families on Earth. Many kids who grew up in small cities would eventually settle down in big cities. They would get married and have kids in the big cities and build their own families. That did not mean that they were disconnected from their parents. Some were thousands of kilometers away from their parents, but they were still family. Mr. Fu noticed Lin Huang''s gaze. He also seemed to have figured out his thoughts, so he patted his shoulder. "Don''t worry. Visit us when you guys have time." At that moment, Lin Xin, who had been holding onto Mr. Fu''s arm, looked at Lin Huang as well. The siblings looked at each other and smiled. Lin Huang treated her as his real sister. Given that he was a traveler, she could only be considered to be his past life''s sister. Moreover, she had awakened the memory of her past life. She was no longer that same pure Lin Xin either. However, their relationship did not wane. Instead, they cherished each other''s company even more now. Regarding Lin Xuan, the brother that he adopted, Lin Huang had never treated him as an outsider. No matter his form as a child in the past or his current form as an adult, Lin Huang had been trying his best to give him the same treatment as Lin Xin. He tried his best not to treat them differently. Naturally, Lin Xuan felt the care the siblings gave him. He had been giving back in his own way. Although Lin Huang and Lin Xin were bonded by blood, he firmly believed that they were his family. Lin Huang secretly teased himself after looking away from Lin Xuan. ''Perhaps this is the mutual attraction of lonely souls'' He glanced across to his old friends, including Yi Zheng, Yi Yeyu, Leng Yuexin, Li Lang and Chan Dou. He still remembered everything they went through together. He clearly remembered the first time he saw Li Lang. He had an undercut and wore a white suit, as well as a showy red tie. There was only one word to describe his first impression of himShowoff! He also remembered the first time when he participated in the Hunter Assessment; Yi Yeyu was a rather irresponsible, arrogant assessor. It was also his first time coming in contact with transcendent powerhouses, as well as his first time being attacked by transcendent powerhouses. He also remembered the time when he participated in the Hunter Assessment; he would send messages to Yi Zheng to disturb him as he felt bad bothering Yi Yeyu, asking all sorts of cultivation questions and news about the Hunter Association. He remembered the first time he treated Leng Yuexin to a meal. It was street food and her first time eating by the street, but the two had a great time. Lin Huang glanced around at everyone present. He had interactions with most of them. He had more than one interaction with some of them, and had even become good friends with him. He remembered each and every interaction and story, no matter long or short, thrilling or mediocre. However, nothing would last forever. It was time to say goodbye. "I won''t beat around the bush." "I hope that after we leave, the Sword Alliance will continue to grow steadily. You all will fight to grow it bigger and better, recruit more talents and geniuses, and prepare and train more talents for the organization that we''ll be establishing in the universe." "I also hope that we can establish a new organization in the universe and stand out!" Lin Huang paused for a moment as the crowd applauded loudly. He only spoke again when the applause died down. "I''m happy to have known everyone here. Thank you for all of your support throughout this time. I hope that we''ll be able to reconnect again if there''s an opportunity in the future." "Lastly, there''s something I''d like to say to all of you." "Goodbye isn''t the end, but necessary for a better reunion when we eventually meet again." Chapter 1742 - Dongxuan City Dongxuan City was located within the Eastern Eight Zone of the universe. To be exact, Dongxuan City was not a city, but a conglomerate of hundreds of great worlds. The master of the "city" was given the title of Sovereign Xuan in the universe. He was a supreme powerhouse who had surpassed dao-level, as well as one of Royal''s Three Sovereigns. Dongxuan City was the projection of Sovereign Xuan''s Kingdom in the universe. Instead of calling it a projection, it was actually the concretization of its material form. It bore no differences with the real great world. It was the divine ability that a powerhouse who had surpassed dao-level possessed. Even though it was just the projection of the Kingdom, it could interfere with the material realm directly. Lin Huang was shocked when he first heard of Dongxuan City''s origin. He could not tell that anything in this "city" was fake. Everything looked completely real even when he scanned his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis. In a mansion in Dongxuan City, Lin Huang met up with Liu Fu again in a small lounge. "To be honest, I thought you were blowing us off." That was the first thing Liu Fu said when he saw Lin Huang. "The mystic territory will open tomorrow and you only arrived in the universe today. Why didn''t you come a few days earlier to prepare ahead?" "I''m all set," Lin Huang said while smiling. "On the other hand, are you going or not? You should''ve made up your mind by now?" "I am!" This time, Liu Fu nodded without hesitation. "You agreed to it? What changed your mind?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. "I really didn''t want to go initially. After all, I''ve only just been elevated to dao-level not too long ago. Moreover, there will be major dao-level powerhouses partaking in the exploration this time. It''s too dangerous," Liu Fu explained while smiling, "However, perhaps Sovereign Xuan found out that there were too few people who would be participating in the exploration, so he sent out a notice yesterday. Everyone who joined the exploration this time will be exempted from the profit sharing rules. Everything we obtain from the exploration, no matter what it is, will belong to us. There''s no need to give a cut to Royal." "Sovereign Xuan even posted a news article on a social media platform, stating that since the rules of mystic territory exploration are set, everyone should follow them. If there are major dao-level powerhouses attacking minor dao-level powerhouses or dao-level powerhouses attacking Lords, Royal will get to the bottom of it!" "He''s clearly talking about the mystic territory that we''re exploring this time around." "Does it actually make a difference if he posts something like that on the internet?" Lin Huang thought that such a measure would not be effective. "At least he has indicated his stance, which will be a deterrent to some people," Liu Fu said while smiling, "After all, he''s a supreme powerhouse above dao-level." "When powerhouses who are experts in space-time or dream rules thoroughly investigate things, almost no one can escape it." Lin Huang secretly jolted slightly when he heard those words. In that case, he had to be extra careful in the mystic territory. He had to try his best not to expose his true ability. However, he could not help but ask in a testing manner, "Although that''s the case, under normal circumstances, it''s probably impossible for powerhouses like Sovereign Xuan to go that far for a mere exploration member, right?" "Under normal circumstances, he definitely won''t. However, he has made an announcement this time. If someone''s death is rather suspicious, there''s a high chance that he''ll investigate. However, I think the possibility of Sovereign Xuan joining the exploration himself is low," Liu Fu voiced his speculations. "Alright, let''s not talk about this matter. Sovereign Xuan might hear the things that we''re saying." Liu Fu changed the subject quickly. "What?" Lin Huang was stunned to hear that. "This is Dongxuan City. Although it''s only the projection of Sovereign Xuan''s Kingdom, to him, it''s not that different from us actually being inside his Kingdom" Liu Fu gave Lin Huang a signal. Lin Huang instantly realized that the projection of this Kingdom actually had the same characteristics of the real Kingdom. Just like in his Kingdom, he would be able to discover anything that was happening instantly, including everyone''s chatter inside his Kingdom. As long as he wanted to, he could hear them. It depended on whether he wanted to hear what they were saying or not. For Sovereign Xuan, it seemed that his Kingdom''s projection came with such a characteristic as well. Therefore, Lin Huang knew that he had to be careful when he spoke within Dongxuan City. Especially topics regarding Sovereign Xuan, he would avoid discussing them as much as possible. "Are you completely ready? I don''t suppose your great world has spiritual treasures?" Liu Fu asked again. "I have God Weapons that have transformed into spiritual treasures." In reality, Lin Huang did not tell the truth. His God Weapons were no longer spiritual treasures of the universe, but had transformed into higher grade items, which were precious treasures of the universe. He had only found out that his God Weapons had transformed into a level surpassing spiritual treasures of the universe, into precious treasures, when he absorbed a massive amount of Origin Energy fragments in the virtual realm while obtaining the memory inheritances. If spiritual treasures were the equipment of minor dao-level powerhouses, then precious treasures were the equipment used by major dao-level powerhouses. Precious treasure-grade equipment could totally harm major dao-level powerhouses. However, Lin Huang could only hide that from Liu Fu, telling him that his God Weapons were now spiritual treasures. "You''re really something" Liu Fu could not help but give him a thumbs up. Naturally, he knew how difficult the conditions were to fulfil for God Weapons to evolve. "To be able to evolve them into spiritual treasures, I suppose you''ve planted the God Weapons into your body before you got to virtual god-level?" "Something like that." Lin Huang nodded. "If you knew that you could elevate to dao-level, you would''ve planted a couple more, right?" Liu Fu teased while smiling. "That''s right. Four is indeed too little. I think I could''ve gotten wings, gloves and shoes. At least seven or eight of them." Lin Huang nodded to indicate his agreement. "You have four God Weapons that have transformed into spiritual treasures?!" Liu Fu widened his eyes. He thought that Lin Huang only had one. After all, God Weapons were completely useless to high-level cultivators. The reason being was that they could only transform according to the cultivators'' level. However, to low-level cultivators, they were expensive luxuries. In the universe, a God Weapon''s seed had the price that was comparable with heavenly god-level god sequence relics. Not many organizations and families would purchase such luxurious things and plant them into a junior whose combat strength was lower than virtual god-level. The reason was that, as soon as the item was planted, it would bond with the cultivator and could not be sold. Moreover, no matter how high the junior''s talent and potential was, nobody could be sure that he would elevate above heavenly god-level in the future. After all, there were many talents and geniuses dying throughout their journeys of cultivation. Not only that, nobody could tell if the person was a legitimate genius or not before elevating to virtual god-level. Those clans with powerful bloodlines would not need God Weapons. Many of the juniors were born at true god-level or even heavenly god-level. They would not need God Weapons at all. To Liu Fu, Lin Huang planting four God Weapons into his body at once was a complete waste of money. He was a little envious as well. After all, he had only obtained two spiritual treasures, one weapon and one armor. However, he knew that he did not need God Weapons because he was born a True God. Even if he planted God Weapons in his body when he was born, they would only transform into low-grade Dao Weapons, which were completely meaningless. "Do you have a communication ring for the universe?" Liu Fu asked again after calming himself down. "I don''t have one, but there''s no rush. I''ll buy one after we get out of the mystic territory." Lin Huang had indeed forgotten about that. However, he did not think that it was an important matter as there was no signal in the mystic territory. "Rather than that, there''s actually something that I urgently need a solution for.." Lin Huang looked at Liu Fu. "I brought a bunch of subordinates along to join the exploration into the mystic territory this time" Chapter 1743 - Gather Naturally, Lin Huang''s imperial monsters such as Bai and the rest were the ones that he wanted to bring along into the mystic territory. He had elevated their combat strength to the limits of supreme-rank lord-level. They happened to be able to join the exploration into the lord-level mystic territory. Lin Huang did not plan to bring his Sword Servants along. After all, among them, the one who possessed the highest combat strength was Sword 1, and he had only consolidated three Dao seals. They would undoubtedly get themselves killed going into the mystic territory with such limited combat ability. Meanwhile, it was simple to get Bai and the rest to join the exploration. The registration platform on Royal''s side was still open. They were registered under the Sword Alliance, so they were members of Royal''s affiliate organization. As long as they possessed sufficient ability, they were eligible to sign up. Given that Royal was eager to have more people joining the exploration this time, the registration process went over well. Liu Fu did the necessary on the internet and got everything done within ten minutes. However, it made him suspect even more than Lin Huang had a backer in the universe. After all, he had been to the great world Lin Huang was in before. He thought it was difficult to even cultivate a middle-rank Lord in that world. However, for some reason, Lin Huang had 25 supreme-rank lord-level subordinates. Nevertheless, he was wise enough to know that there were things that one should not ask about. He did not ask anything about how Bai and the rest came about. After registering them, Liu Fu made arrangements for Lin Huang''s accommodation passionately. The meeting between the two could be considered to have ended at that time. In the hotel suite, Lin Huang summoned all 25 of his imperial monsters. "We''re going into the mystic territory tomorrow, let me remind you again of the things you should take note of." "We''re going in as Royalty. Therefore, there''s a rule that we must abide by, which is not to attack other Royalties. Even if you form some personal grudge with them, you should only deal with it after you get out of the mystic territory." "We should be randomly teleported when we enter the mystic territory this time, so each of our coordinates will be different. There''s a possibility that you guys might be directly teleported to regions with dao-level monsters. Therefore, please be on guard as soon as you enter the mystic territory. If you''ve really been teleported to the dao-level regions, please don''t try to challenge dao-level monsters. Instead, find a way to escape as soon as you can!" "I know you guys received a boost in your abilities lately, and you must have gained a significant boost in confidence as well. However, dao-level is a completely new life level. Even if the powerhouse has one more Dao seal than you do, he can suppress all of you with a slap. The gap of ability is a great one that can''t be crossed. Don''t try to challenge it." When Lin Huang said those, he had his eyes on Grimace most of the time. Among all of the imperial monsters, Grimace was the only one who was oddly rebellious. He might really seek death by trying to challenge minor dao-level powerhouses. "Rather than the local monsters in the mystic territory, humans are the most dangerous ones. Although theoretically the dao-level powerhouses from the organizations can''t attack Lords, you guys can''t entrust your personal safety to a rule. If you really encounter dao-level powerhouses from other organizations, try your best to avoid them." "Also, during the fights among organizations in the mystic territory, there will indeed be people who are determined to kill. However, not all are like that. Most of them will only plunder and release. Let me give you this advice. Try your best not to kill. Of course, if the person wants to kill you, show no mercy." Regarding the mystic territory, Lin Huang had actually given Bai and the rest a rough explanation before coming to the universe. This included the things they should take note of, and he had actually mentioned some of these points previously. On one hand, he was adding on some reminders that he missed out earlier. On the other hand, he wanted to re-emphasize his points again. "In the universe, White Crystals are the basic trading currency, which are the Divine Crystals we used before. The higher grade of currency is the Scarlet Crystal. We didn''t have this in the great world we were in before, nor do I have it with me now. If you guys need it, you can trade for it at the crystal currency exchange. The exchange rate is one Scarlet Crystal to 10,000 White Crystals." "You can do whatever you want for the remaining time today. Gather at the hotel before 12 am. We''re going into the mystic territory tomorrow, so don''t stir up any trouble." Lin Huang hoped that they could relax a little bit before going into the mystic territory. As soon as he was done speaking, Grimace was the first one to leave in a flash. Bai frowned slightly and decided to go after him. Very soon, there were less than ten imperial monsters left in the hotel. Tyrant sat by the coffee table and opened the snacks on it. He began to enjoy himself. Charcoal shrunk itself and lay on the balcony to soak in the sun. Lin Huang immediately realized that Kylie was feeling down. "Are you still worried about Kina?" "A little bit." Kylie nodded slightly. "Although there are a bunch of old geezers in the Nephilic Judge Tribe, they aren''t fools after all. They won''t trouble Kina. At most, they''ll only be strict as they watch over her," Lin Huang comforted Kylie. "Master is right." Bloody who was standing at the side, walked over. "That bunch of old geezers will only throw tantrums for a few days. It will blow over after a week at most. Not only that, I''ve left Kina some tips. I''ve included all possibilities that might happen. If she really encounters something, she''ll be able to find the appropriate solutions from the information I gave her." Lin Huang said nothing further. He could only wait for Kylie to get over it. Before 12 am, Bai and the rest returned one after the other. None of them were missing. Lin Huang signaled Bai subtly. Seeing that he nodded lightly, he knew that Grimace should not have stirred up any trouble. He was relieved now. Lin Huang slept soundly that night. Early the next morning, he brought his imperial monsters for breakfast and then headed to Liu Fu''s house. Liu Fu dressed in formal wear. He looked like he was heading to an important banquet. He was momentarily stunned when he saw Lin Huang and his imperial monsters. "So these are the supreme-rank lord-level subordinates you told me about?! The strength of their auras are clearly close to dao-level." "Isn''t that still supreme-rank lord-level?" Lin Huang said with a smile. "That makes sense." Liu Fu chuckled after hearing that. "But that''s a good thing. Our team of Lords will have more power now." "Wearing that outfit, you look like you''re about to get married" Lin Huang teased him and laughed. "I just wanted to say that you guys dressed too casually." Liu Fu was rather speechless. "I thought I''d dress more formally to show respect since there will be many dao-level powerhouses there." "Will you change your outfit again after you enter the mystic territory? Or will you be fighting while wearing this?" Lin Huang asked again. "I''ll just change the style." The clothes on Liu Fu changed into something casual as soon as he spoke. He transformed his clothes back into something formal after showing them. "It''s a little past 8 am now. There''s still an hour to go before the mystic territory opens officially. Let''s gather at Old He''s place." Liu Fu waved and summoned a dimensional portal after he spoke. He led Lin Huang and the rest in. Chapter 1744 - Grade-SSS Organizations In The Eastern Eight Zone After stepping out of the teleportation portal, Lin Huang''s team appeared in a meeting room directly. It was a meeting room that could accommodate tens of thousands of people. There were many people who had already taken their seats. Lin Huang glanced over and sensed at least 20 dao-level individuals. Although they were only at minor dao-level, their combat abilities should be more powerful than Liu Fu who had just been elevated. Among them, the most powerful one should have consolidated over 50,000 Dao seals. Apart from that, the remaining 50 or so Lords were upper-rank and supreme-rank Lords. There were no middle-rank and lower-rank Lords at all. Before everyone arrived, Lin Huang had witnessed the tip of the iceberg of Royal''s true capabilities. Their arrival instantly attracted the attention of many in the meeting room. It was not the two dao-level individuals, Lin Huang and Liu Fu, who attracted the crowd''s attention, but the group of Lords. The reason being was that they noticed that the 25 of them were powerhouses at the limit of supreme-rank Lords. The appearance of Bai and the rest had undoubtedly increased the lord-level participants'' overall power. Meanwhile, to them, Lin Huang and Liu Fu were newbies who had just been elevated to minor dao-level. They did not find them special. Lin Huang was happy that nobody saw through his disguise. Soon after they took their seats, more people arrived one after the other. When it was almost 8:30 am, Old He and Old Wang finally showed up. Old He glanced across the room when he arrived. He then spoke directly. "I noticed that almost everyone is here now. The people who know those who aren''t here yet, notify them now that we''re departing right away." Lin Huang was rather confused. The reason being was that, since he and Liu Fu arrived, those who came later on were almost all at minor dao-level. There were almost no Lords. Including Bai, there were only some 80 Lords in the meeting room. Meanwhile, there were more than 150 minor dao-level individuals. "There are so few Lords joining the exploration? The number of Lords are slightly over half of the number of minor dao-level cultivators who are joining." Lin Huang asked Liu Fu through voice transmission. Liu Fu explained while smiling, "Old He and Old Wang are mainly responsible for leading the minor dao-level individuals. There''s someone else who is leading the Lords. Most of the Lords who are joining the exploration are with the person who is leading the Lords. Most of the Lords we have here are just like those guys under you. They were brought along or invited by the dao-level cultivators here." As they were chatting, there were two people who entered almost at the same time. Old He glanced at the two of them before speaking again. "Alright, everyone''s here. Let''s depart now." He shook his sleeve as soon as he was done speaking. A Dimensional Whirlpool appeared in the air in the middle of the meeting room. The people in the meeting room stepped into it one after another. Lin Huang led his imperial monsters and stepped into it as well. After passing through the meeting room, they appeared in mid-air. Lin Huang immediately saw a misty spherical dimension not far away. That should be the mystic territory that had yet to be fully unsealed. After observing it for a moment, he looked away and quickly scanned through his surroundings. Apart from Royal, there were people from a couple of organizations that came. Although Lin Huang did not use Divine Telekinesis, he speculated faintly that some of them among the crowd should have consolidated above 80,000 Dao seals. As he was observing the other organizations'' camps, Liu Fu who was standing at the side began his briefing. He explained to Lin Huang and his imperial monsters through voice transmission. "The organization on our left is called the Snow Kingdom. It''s a grade-SSS organization that has just risen in the Eastern Eight Zone during this era. They''re developing aggressively, especially during the past hundred years or so." Lin Huang glanced at them. The people from the Snow Kingdom were easy to spot as all of them wore white robes. The only differences between them were the patterns, hues and styles of their robes. "The leading old man in the white robe is Shang Yang. Don''t judge him by his old age. He has consolidated close to 100,000 Dao seals. He''s one of the few powerhouses in the Eastern Eight Zone who will most probably elevate to major dao-level." "The organization on the Snow Kingdom''s left is called Star Cluster. They''re one of the veteran grade-SSS organizations. They existed even before Royal did." The people from Star Cluster dressed casually. Almost all of them were dressed differently. However, Lin Huang noticed that their leader was a lady with a piece of White Crystal on her forehead. "The leading lady is called Starfall. She should''ve consolidated more than 80,000 Dao seals. She has another identity, which is the disciple of Star Cluster''s current Star Master." "The organization on Star Cluster''s left is the Longevity Tribe. They''re the local residents of Eastern Eight Zone. They''re also the first grade-SSS organization to exist in the Eastern Eight Zone." "Longevity Tribe" Lin Huang raised his brows. He noticed that all of the members of the tribe were bald, regardless of whether they were men or women. The leader was a muscular bald man with a square beard. "Their leading elder is Li Xiong. He''s a radical with an aggressive character. He''ll usually kill his opponents." "The organization on our right is Infinite. Infinite is the organization with the most sorcery cultivators in the entire Eastern Eight Zone." In reality, Lin Huang had noticed that those people''s auras were odd from the beginning. It might seem alright when they were alone. However, when a group of dao-level sorcerers gathered, even the flow of the various elements and particles in their surroundings would become unusual. "The person who is leading Infinite this time is the young man who is sitting with his legs crossed and eyes shut. His name''s Ao Yu. He has many sorcery techniques, and he has mastered over 80,000 Dao seals. There was an individual who surpassed dao-level that commented that he''s the toughest brat to deal with among the minor dao-level cultivators in the Eastern Eight Zone." Hearing Liu Fu''s description, Lin Huang secretly thought that this guy had definitely mastered more than 80,000 Dao seals. He already had one foot stepped into major dao-level. Lin Huang sensed that Ao Yu had mastered close to 100,000 Dao seals. Not only that, judging by his energy alone, Ao Yu should be the person with the most powerful combat ability among everyone here. He had even surpassed Old Wang from Royal and Shang Yang from the Snow Kingdom. "The organization on Infinite''s right is Deep Space. It''s also a veteran grade-SSS organisation in the Eastern Eight Zone. They have similar qualifications to Royal" Liu Fu continued to brief them about the rest of the organizations. Lin Huang redirected his focus back to Royal that he belonged to. Apart from Old Wang and Old He who were leading, the most powerful person among minor dao-level characters was a female cultivator. She seemed to possess over 50,000 Dao seals. Including Old Wang and Old He, there were a total of 158 minor dao-level powerhouses present. There were many more Lords compared to the time when they were in the meeting room. There were some 500 of them. The leader of the Lords was a young man with blue hair. He had made it here with the team before Lin Huang and the rest arrived. The leader with blue hair had his eyes lit up when he saw Bai and the rest. He did not expect Old He to bring such a surprise on his side, which boosted the quality of their team significantly. He took the initiative to talk to Bai and the rest. When it was almost 9 am, the major dao-level powerhouses from all organizations had finally shown up Chapter 1745 - The Assembly Of Major-dao Cultivators The seven organizations that joined the exploration this time had only sent three major dao-level powerhouses each. Lin Huang heard from Liu Fu''s explanation that it was the decision that the seven organizations had come up with after their discussion in order to be fair. Each organization was only allowed to send three major dao-level powerhouses to join the exploration this time. After all, it was only a preliminary exploration. They were unsure of the danger level of this mystic territory. They only sent three major dao-level powerhouses to the mystic territory in case it became too dangerous which would cause them to lose too many major dao-level powerhouses. In reality, there was also a limit on the number of minor dao-level powerhouses sent, which was 200 people. As there were too few minor dao-level powerhouses joining previously, less than 50 people, Sovereign Xuan removed the profit sharing rule as he could not bear to see such a pathetic amount of participants. As expected, after the announcement, the number of participants grew. There were a total of 158 minor dao-level cultivators participating from Royal. The rest of the organizations had a similar number of participants too. Most of them had more or less 158 minor dao-level cultivators. Star Cluster, which had the most members, only had 180 minor dao-level cultivators participating. Meanwhile, the limit for Lords was 1,000. Including all of the organizations present, the number of participants was far from the limit. Royal only had some 500 Lords, while the rest were more or less the same. Infinite, which had the most number of Lords, only had some 600 Lords participating. After the major dao-level powerhouses from all organizations had arrived, Lin Huang placed almost all of his attention on them. At this very moment, he had finally felt the gap when faced with these major dao-level powerhouses. Even without releasing Divine Telekinesis, he sensed clearly that these people''s auras were much more powerful than the minor dao-level cultivators. If one really had to compare them, it would be similar to the gap between the Sun and Venus. Venus'' night sky was bright too, but it could not compare to the Sun. Indeed, judging based on their life level, they were on a completely different level. However, Lin Huang could sense that, among the 21 major dao-level powerhouses, there were only two who were a real threat to him. One came from Star Cluster. She was the only woman among the three major dao-level powerhouses from the organization. She had dark-red hair that touched her waist. Since arriving, she had been silent. She had not spoken. The other person was the oldest-looking of the three major dao-level powerhouses from the Longevity Tribe. He had wrinkles all over his face. Even his brows were white. Lin Huang paid extra attention to the two of them. Liu Fu, who was standing at the side, continued to introduce these characters to him passionately through voice transmission. "These are the three major dao-level powerhouses from Royal. I''ll introduce them to you." "That hunk with fiery red hair and beard is Yan Jun. Not only is he a combat cultivator, he''s also an Element Master. I heard he''s an expert in the Fire Element Great Dao, and that he''s mastered tens of thousands of Fire Element Dao seals." Lin Huang could not help but check him out again when he heard that he was a combat cultivator. The higher level a combat cultivator cultivated to, the harder it became to strengthen one''s physical body. This guy named Yan Jun was a major dao-level combat cultivator. It proved how stunning his will was. He could not be compared to ordinary cultivators. Lin Huang secretly imagined what would happen if he became his opponent. However, he got his answer instantlythat man would die a devastating death! A combat cultivator could suppress psychics on a certain level. The thing was, Lin Huang was no ordinary psychic. His God Weapon flying daggers were now precious treasures. As long as he inserted sufficient Odyl in them, it would be easy to break through the opponent''s defense. Not only that, he had a cheat code, which was the Critical Hit Hammer that had already evolved to rank-4 now. It would provide a maximum forty-fold boost of power. Naturally, Liu Fu had no idea what Lin Huang was thinking about at the moment. He continued to introduce the others to him. "That bearded uncle with hair that reaches his shoulder is Yue Wu. He''s a sword cultivator like you. I heard that he has consolidated tens of thousands of Sword seals on Sword Dao alone. Among the major dao-level powerhouses in Royal, he ranks within the top three when it comes to attack ability." In reality, Lin Huang could tell that he was a sword cultivator from a single glance. However, he did not really bother with Liu Fu''s introduction. He did not think that it was something impressive for one to have tens of thousands of Sword seals. The reason being was that he had already consolidated over 8,000 Sword seals at the moment. He secretly ran a mental simulation and concluded that Yue Wu''s attack ability was likely to be lower than his. "Lastly, the beauty is one of the three major dao-level female powerhouses in Royal. Her name is Chi Yao. She''s a Soul Master. I heard that her God''s soul is rather unusual. She majors in Soul Dao, but is also proficient in many techniques other than Soul Dao" Lin Huang nodded lightly. He had actually noticed this lady named Chi Yao from the beginning. The reason being was that the threat level Lin Huang sensed from her was only second to that red-haired woman from Star Cluster and that white-browed old man from the Longevity Tribe. Lin Huang had been evaluating her from the beginning. Considering that he had precious treasure-grade God Soul Weapons in his body, if they really were to fight, the threat that this lady presented to him was actually considered low. After introducing the three major dao-level powerhouses from Royal, Liu Fu proceeded to introduce the major dao-level powerhouses from the other organizations passionately. Lin Huang merely listened in silence most of the time. He only asked a few questions regarding topics that he was interested in. He was clearly more serious when he heard Liu Fu start to introduce that red-haired woman from Star Cluster and that white-browed old man from the Longevity Tribe. "That red-haired woman from Star Cluster seems to have only joined Star Cluster around a couple of hundred years ago. I heard she was a rogue cultivator before. Star Cluster didn''t reveal much information about her. Nobody knows her exact background. "We only know that she seems to be proficient in some strange techniques and has killed major dao-level monsters within seconds." "The most powerful person from the Longevity Tribe is that white-browed old man who looks the oldest. Nobody remembers his name, but he has the honorific title of Householder White Brow. All dao-level cultivators in the entire universe know him." "He''s considered the oldest major dao-level powerhouse in the entire universe now. No one even comes close. He had already achieved major dao-level 2.8 billion years ago. He''s the senior of all major dao-level cultivators in the universe." "Sovereign Xuan mentioned him in Royal before, saying that he must''ve consolidated more than 800,000 Dao seals previously. There''s a certain possibility that he will break through and surpass dao-level." The information Liu Fu provided made Lin Huang pay more attention to Householder White Brow now. He had already consolidated more than 800,000 Dao seals previously, so he might have consolidated even more now. This Householder White Brow seemed old, but he was actually quite steady. Lin Huang had a rough guess of what Householder White Brow was up to. He must be lacking in innate talent and potential and, being well aware of his flaws, in order to break through and surpass dao-level, he chose to go forward in the slowest and steadiest way. Billions of years had passed by, and he was still working on it continuously instead of consolidating more Dao seals quickly to break through. He was the classic man who remedied his lack of talent with hard work. Lin Huang admired such a person. He thought the person had quite a terrifying amount of will to be able to polish himself for billions of years. He had more respect for this old man now. Soon, Liu Fu introduced all of the major dao-level powerhouses present. Later on, the spherical dimension in front of the crowd was finally released from its misty state. The mist had faded completely. At that moment, a voice transmission came to Lin Huang''s ears. "We can enter now." Before the voice finished speaking completely, Lin Huang saw that almost everyone from all the organizations had rushed forward to enter. Soon after they went in, their sizes began to shrink rapidly. They transformed into particles of white light and headed toward the spherical dimension at lightning speed. Lin Huang snapped out of his senses after being momentarily stunned. He went after them while leading his imperial monsters forward. Soon after flying in, a strange suction force approached them. He did not resist, and his body was dragged inside immediately Chapter 1746 - Entering The Mystic Territory For The First Time Lin Huang vision blurred. He could not see anything at all. Such a state continued for a few seconds before the pulling sensation disappeared entirely. As he landed on the ground, he could finally see clearly again. Lin Huang knew that he should have arrived in the mystic territory. He looked around. He was currently in a barren valley. Everything around him was black and white, including the sky. Lin Huang was not surprised by this. He had seen the interior of a mystic territory a couple of times in the inherited memories the Nirvana Trees sent over. Some parts of the mystic territory were like the virtual realm, they were black and white. However, there were some regions that were like the material realm, whereby they had regular colors. They were known as the black and white zone and the regular zone. Lin Huang had speculated that the mystic territory should be related to the virtual realm. However, he was not sure as to what the exact connection between them was. The reason being was that he had seen in the inherited memories that, not only were there Voids in the mystic territories, there were also Abyssal monsters, spirit species and undying species. "Black and white zone There must be Voids in here," Lin Huang mumbled softly. He thought about it and decided not to scan his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis. The reason being was that, under normal circumstances, regular minor dao-level powerhouses dared not extend their Divine Telekinesis openly in such a place. He would definitely be seeking death to be doing something like that. If he encountered native major dao-level monsters, he would be targeted instantly. Although Lin Huang had sufficient confidence in his ability to fight major dao-level monsters, and he had the confidence to run away even if he encountered any that he could not fight, he did not want to expose his true ability. He heard from Liu Fu that all organizations took this mystic territory exploration seriously. Sovereign Xuan and the other individuals above dao-level from other organizations would be watching in secret too. Although they could not open up this dimension and probe what was happening inside the mystic territory with Divine Telekinesis, there was a possibility that they had planted moles among their members to spy on the internal situation. There was a certain possibility that he would be found out by individuals above dao-level if he exposed his ability. Even if it was an individual above dao-level from Royal like Sovereign Xuan, Lin Huang could not trust him completely. Naturally, he did not hope that the powerhouses above dao-level would notice him. He only extended his Divine Telekinesis within a region of some a hundred kilometers or so. He stopped expanding his coverage after that. However, he clearly sensed that the Space Rule of this world had a slight abnormality. It significantly limited his movement speed and the range of his Divine Telekinesis probing. The distribution of monsters in this world seemed to be very scattered. Lin Huang did not even sense one living creature within the probing radius of a hundred kilometers. He glanced around his surroundings, and soon had his eyes on the highest mountain peak not far away. Although he did not find anything within the coverage range of his Divine Telekinesis, he tried to see if he could find anything using his vision. He put on a disguise that made him invisible and concealed his aura entirely before appearing on top of the mountain in a flash. Standing at the peak of the mountain, hidden, sigils quickly spread out from Lin Huang''s eyes. The next second, he was looking tens of thousands of kilometers away. He had even seen through countless obstacles. It was a long-distance probing ocular skill. To the current Lin Huang, it was just a small trick. The reason he got on top of the mountain only after concealing himself and his aura was because he was worried that others would have similar probing techniques and spot him. They would conceal themselves after spotting him. It would be tough for Lin Huang to find them if that happened. Very soon, Lin Huang found a target using his long-distance probing ocular skill. After all, it was impossible that there would be nothing within those tens of thousands of kilometers surrounding his current location. Not only did Lin Huang discover tens of Voids, he even found two minor dao-level cultivators from other organizations. Before entering the mystic territory, he had memorized everyone''s appearances. Naturally, he remembered those two. One was a member from the Snow Kingdom. Judging from the aura he sensed at the time, the person should have consolidated some 20,000 Dao seals. Another one was a member from Infinite who had consolidated around 8,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang did not plan to come into contact with those two. To him, killing Voids and other local monsters was far more important than plundering the members from other organizations. Apart from him not wanting to expose his ability, the other reason was that Liu Fu had specially reminded him to transfer his expensive belongings somewhere else. Most of the minor dao-level and lord-level cultivators had transferred their valuables from their storage spaces elsewhere before entering the mystic territory this time to avoid being plundered. That was the unspoken rule that everyone was aware of. Therefore, when they had just entered the mystic territory, even if some powerhouses discovered members from other organizations, it was unlikely for them to plunder them directly. If they had the time, they would much rather hunt more local monsters. However, such a peaceful state would usually last one week to ten days at most. The exploration would only last a month. Plundering others midway through the exploration was something that was definitely inevitable. Ignoring the two explorers, Lin Huang soon headed toward the Void that was closest to him. It was a gigantic Void that was hundreds of meters tall. It had mastered some 18,000 Dao seals. When it saw Lin Huang, it opened its mouth and spat out a jet-black shockwave in his direction. Lin Huang did not attack or defend, nor did he dodge the attack. Instead, he summoned his God''s Figurine''s Combat Soulthe Destructive Divine Mammoth. The Destructive Divine Mammoth swung its trunk agilely and crushed the incoming shockwave directly. Subsequently, it stomped with its hoof, turning the giant Void that was tens of times larger than it into dust directly. The gap between beings that had mastered 30,000 and 18,000 Dao seals was obvious. That Void could not even take one attack from the Destructive Divine Mammoth. After settling the first Void, Lin Huang rode on the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s back and headed to where the second Void was. Later on, he killed the third and the fourth Void All of the 34 Voids that he found using his long-distance probing ocular skill were killed. The Destructive Divine Mammoth killed 28 of them. Lin Huang killed six Voids that had consolidated more than 30,000 Dao seals himself. He killed them by using his telekinetic flying daggers within seconds. He was not worried about exposing his ability at this point as he was very sure that no explorers would notice him. He would notice as soon as there was any probing of Divine Telekinesis, and he would retract his attack in time before being discovered. Moreover, he killed the Voids within seconds. He did not cause any ripples of energy fluctuation at all. There were no battle traces anywhere. Within an hour, Lin Huang had killed 34 minor dao-level Voids. He had even begun the second round of probing and hunting. At that moment, the other minor dao-level cultivators were exploring their surroundings in the mystic territory carefully. Most of them had not even encountered their first local monster As Lin Huang was killing monsters all over the place, he did not know that his partner, Liu Fu from Royal, had just managed to pull off a great escape Chapter 1747 - I Don’t Want To Explore Anymore, I Want To Go Home It was pitch black at the bottom of the sea in the mystic territory. Liu Fu had concealed his aura and disguised himself as a reef. He did not dare to move at all. He had only entered the mystic territory for less than an hour, yet he was already eager to go home. The reason being was that, when he was teleported, he happened to enter the territory of a faceless giant. The abyssal faceless giant had mastered over 10,000 Dao seals. Subsequently, Liu Fu began to run for his life frantically. He had only escaped into the sea after using all sorts of escape techniques. He had even used two of his death substituting puppets. Although he knew that it might be a bigger risk hiding in this sea, he jumped in without hesitation. After jumping into the sea, he concealed his aura and disguised as a reef that sank to the bottom of the sea. He remained in such a state for about half an hour before he confirmed that the faceless giant did not seem to have come after him. However, he noticed a new threat. There was something that was even bigger than the faceless giant from before in this seaA Putrescent Dragon Whale. Its aura was clearly more terrifying than the faceless giant. Liu Fu roughly guessed that this guy had mastered over 20,000 Dao seals. Therefore, he decisively chose to remain in such a state and did not dare to move at all. He looked firm on the surface but, inside, he was screaming, "I don''t want to explore anymore, I want to go home!" He began having all sorts of thoughts in his head. He began to think about how he should divide his inheritance after he died. Also, he was wondering if his corpse would remain in the mystic territory. If it did, would anyone manage to find it and bring it back to the universe He even thought about the newbie Lin Huang who had joined the exploration this time unintentionally thanks to his invitation, ''He might''ve died by now. Even if he hasn''t, he should be like me, either escaping frantically or hiding'' Naturally, he would not know that the current Lin Huang was enjoying the joys of harvesting Origin Energy. Lin Huang sat on the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s back while hugging the Ninetails Lynx in his embrace as he looked around using the long-distance probing ocular skill. He was scanning each region as he passed by. Lin Huang basically got the Destructive Divine Mammoth to attack those that had mastered less than 30,000 Dao seals. For those that mastered around 30,000 Dao seals, Lin Huang got both of the God''s Figurine''s Combat Soulsthe Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynxto fight together. For those that had more than 30,000 Dao seals, they were killed within seconds by Lin Huang''s telekinetic flying daggers. On the first day after entering the mystic territory, he had killed more than 500 Voids. The region he was teleported to had Voids that had mostly consolidated between 10,000 to 50,000 Dao seals. Among them, there were more than 80% of them who had mastered less than 30,000 Dao seals. Therefore, the two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls, the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx, were actually the ones who killed most of the Voids. Meanwhile, the weakest Void that Lin Huang killed had mastered some 36,000 Dao seals. The most powerful one had mastered some 51,000 Dao seals. To him, the two were basically the same. He killed them both within seconds. There was no suspense at all. Throughout his hunting journey today, he came across explorers a couple of times. Most of them had mastered 10,000 to 30,000 Dao seals. The weakest one had mastered some 8,000 Dao seals. When the day of the hunt ended, Lin Huang suddenly thought of Liu Fu. "If Liu Fu was teleported to this region, I guess he would not have been able to survive for a day. However, I don''t think that he''d be that unfortunate. Perhaps he''s been teleported to a region with monsters with less than 10,000 Dao seals." In reality, under normal circumstances, most mystic territories'' teleportation rules might appear to be random, but in actual fact they followed a certain rule. It was basically unlikely for outsiders that had mastered less than 5,000 Dao seals to be teleported to regions with monsters that had mastered over 10,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang speculated that he was teleported to this region because he had actually mastered over 30,000 Dao seals. Even though he was in possession of a great disguise technique that had even deceived many major dao-level powerhouses, the mystic territory had likely detected a portion of his real ability, which was why he was teleported to this region. Meanwhile, Liu Fu had only broken through to minor dao-level not long ago. He had only mastered 3,001 Dao seals. Thus, theoretically, the region he was teleported to should be much safer. After putting Liu Fu''s matter aside, Lin Huang could not help but mumble softly to himself, "I wonder how was Bai and the rest''s day. Theoretically, they shouldn''t be teleported to a region with dao-level monsters. With their current ability, they should be doing pretty well in a region with Lords." Lin Huang decided to communicate with his imperial monsters through telepathic voice transmission directly as he thought about these things. "How was your day?" "Nothing special." The first one to respond was Charcoal. Just when Lin Huang was getting worried, it continued speaking, "I was teleported to a region containing nothing but Abyssal monsters. I can''t eat any of them." "Remember to extract their Kingdoms. I want those," Lin Huang reminded it as he felt rather helpless. "Alright then." Charcoal agreed to the request rather unwillingly. "It''s been pretty great on my side. I was teleported to a black and white zone. I feel as if I''ve gone to the virtual realm," Bloody said while smiling. "I''m so envious of you" Charcoal grumbled. "I''m in a black and white zone too," Bai''s answer was pretty simple. "I''m so envious of you" Charcoal grumbled again. "It''s all spirit species here. I''ve even encountered two sword cultivators today. I made them my Sword Servants," Lancelot responded. "It''s all undying species here. I happened to be able to practice real combat with them," Kylie responded quickly. "I''m also in an undying species zone. I''ve tried a couple of fun things today," Grimace said while chuckling. Lin Huang could not help but frown slightly when he heard that. Grimace would never stop stirring up trouble. It was only their first day in the mystic territory and he already seemed to be causing a ruckus. However, Lin Huang was not too worried about him. After all, considering Grimace''s ability, even if he stirred up trouble, he would only affect the regions with Lords at most. His actions would not affect the entire mystic territory. Lin Huang did not speak to stop him after thinking for a moment. He hoped to maintain each of his imperial monsters'' characters. Even though Grimace had a stubborn side, he did not want to correct him by force. If it was related to something important, he would give a clear order to discipline Grimace''s behavior. If it was necessary, he would even get Bai and the other imperial monsters to keep watch over him. However, they were in the mystic territory now. They could move around freely anyway. Lin Huang thought that he could let him be himself. There was no need to be too strict with him. After communicating with his imperial monsters for a little bit and confirming that they were doing well in the mystic territory, Lin Huang was completely relieved. He then focused once again on the task at hand and began a new round of hunting Chapter 1748 - The Unusualness Of The Black And White Zone Gan Ming thought it was rather strange. It had been a whole day since he was teleported into the mystic territory. Initially, he was over the moon to find that he was teleported to a black and white zone. There were Voids in the mystic territory''s black and white zone. He could obtain Origin Energy after hunting them. That was common knowledge when it came to mystic territories. People who were teleported into the black and white zone were considered to be the luckiest people among the explorers this time. He had mastered 28,000 Dao seals. As long as he was careful, he should be able to hunt many Voids and obtain quite a large amount of Origin Energy. However, now that he had been here the entire day, in addition to probing using Divine Telekinesis, Gan Ming had used all sorts of other probing techniques, but he did not manage to find even one Void. "I''ve flown close to 100,000 kilometers. I haven''t even seen one Void along the way. This is clearly unusual Can it be that something''s unusual about this mystic territory?!" Gan Ming suddenly had his guard up. He even noticed two explorers along the way, but he did not even spot a single native monster. Gan Ming was not the only person who was having the same doubts. Luo Wen was a minor dao-level powerhouse from Star Cluster. She had mastered some 48,000 Dao seals. Although she could not compare with some veteran powerhouses in the universe, she was considered the cream of the crop among those from the younger generation. In reality, it was not her first time going into a mystic territory. This was her fourth exploration into a mystic territory. Therefore, she noticed the unusualness of the black and white zone within an hour. Now that she had not even encountered a single Void the entire day, she already had a faint idea of what was going on, after which she could finally no longer hold herself back and spread out her Divine Telekinesis. In the beginning, she was only doing it within a small range of hundreds of kilometers. She then spread out her Divine Telekinesis further slowly, covering tens of thousands of kilometers. She still did not notice any Voids. However, she discovered something else. In a flash, she appeared in a valley tens of thousands of kilometers away. "As I expected, there are traces of battle" Luo Wen''s eyes lit up. The valley was almost destroyed. Apart from traces of attacks, she even captured some remnants of auras. "Judging by the intensity of the remaining Odyl, this person has some 30,000 Dao seals Not only that, this doesn''t look like a battle between two people, but a two versus one scenario" Luo Wen came to some conclusions based on the traces left at the scene. "So two explorers who know each other worked together? Both of them have around 30,000 Dao seals." However, she soon had more doubts. "It doesn''t really make sense. Theoretically, a person who has mastered 30,000 Dao seals shouldn''t dare to probe by spreading out their Divine Telekinesis in the mystic territory, even if they''re collaborating in the search process." "Not only that, the Void with the highest combat strength in the black and white zone must''ve mastered more than 30,000 Dao seals. They''re not capable of killing a Void that has mastered 40,000 to 50,000 Dao seals." "Someone cleared out the Voids in the entire region, but it''s quite impossible for it to have been done by these two." "This scene might just be a coincidence. There is a high chance that the two of them have a unique communication technique that can be used in the mystic zone. When they realized that they were not far away from each other, they gathered together to combine forces. They might''ve encountered that Void by coincidence and they worked together to kill it." Luo Wen thought that her deduction should be close to the truth. That was, until half an hour later, when something overthrew her deduction. "What is this?!" As Luo Wen spread her Divine Telekinesis probing range to tens of thousands of kilometers, she found seven other locations with traces of battle within half an hour. Among the eight locations, there were two where the two people worked together. There were six battles that were done by a single person. That had completely overthrown Luo Wen''s previous deduction. She initially thought that the two people only found the first Void by accident. Now it seemed like it was not the case at all. It seemed that the two people who had only mastered 30,000 Dao seals had cleared out the entire region. "If these were done by the two of them, then where did those Voids with more than 30,000 Dao seals go?!" Luo Wen was getting more and more confused. "Even if they worked together, it would be impossible for them to kill Voids that have mastered 40,000 to 50,000 Dao seals! I didn''t find any traces of battle left behind by Voids with more than 35,000 Dao seals at all. Where did all those Voids go?!" According to her experiences from entering mystic territories a few times previously, Luo Wen was sure that there were definitely Voids that had mastered 30,000 to 50,000 Dao seals in this region. What puzzled her was that she did not even see one, not even a trace was left behind. "Even if a person who has mastered 70,000 to 80,000 Dao seals was teleported to this region and hunted down Voids with 40,000 to 50,000 Dao seals, it''s impossible not to leave any traces behind It''s impossible that a major dao-level powerhouse was teleported here and he was the one who did all this?!" Luo Wen shook her head. She figured that it would be impossible for the mystic territory''s teleportation rule to have made such a mistake. As she stood there and thought over and over again, she finally chose to retrieve her Divine Telekinesis probing and stopped the investigation. Her sixth sense was warning her faintly that she might encounter a scary individual if she continued to probe further. Since stepping into dao-level, it was the first time her sixth sense had such a reaction. She decisively chose to trust her sixth sense and gave up the investigation. If there was something off about this black and white zone, she would just stay far away from it. The mystic territory was vast. This was not the only black and white zone. Moreover, even if she did not go into the black and white zone, she could hunt monsters in other regions too. She would leave the unknown scary individual to the two fools who had teamed up to hunt. They would have to pay sooner or later for taking advantage of the scary individual. Luo Wen concealed her aura immediately and headed toward the border of the black and white zone that she had just investigated. She did not feel sentimental about this black and white zone at all. However, not everyone had Luo Wen''s stunning sixth sense about this black and white zone, which had sensed the existence of that unknown scary individual in advance. Soon, many people in the black and white zone noticed the traces of battle left behind by the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx one after the other. There were a few people whose combat ability was equal to the two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls who investigated the matter without hesitation. After all, the opportunity to be teleported into the black and white zone was a hard-to-come-by one. They were upset that they were preempted by this team of two who had only mastered 30,000 Dao seals. Meanwhile, Lin Huang very soon noticed the people''s strange movements through his long-distance probing skill. He also noticed that there were even some people who spread out their Divine Telekinesis, which was a gutsy move. Although they only dared to extend it out tens of thousands of kilometers away at most, it had caused a certain level of inconvenience to his operation that he was planning to carry out later. Lin Huang guessed that they must have discovered the traces of battle his two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls left behind. After some quiet probing, he confirmed his speculation. Those people were really looking for the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx. Lin Huang very soon came up with a plan after merely thinking for a moment while holding his chin. Chapter 1749 - I’m So Hungry Lin Huang''s long-distance ocular skill soon locked onto the first target. "Baldy, I''ll fight you first." Lin Huang smirked. Li Hao was totally unaware that he was being secretly targeted by Lin Huang. As a dao-level powerhouse from the Longevity Tribe, given that his elder brother was the leader leading the minor dao-level cultivators from the tribe this time, it was only natural that he was considered pretty powerful as well. He had mastered 46,000 Dao seals and had sufficient confidence in his combat ability. Therefore, he probed his surroundings without hesitation as soon as he noticed the unusualness of the black and white zone. Relying on his somewhat powerful capabilities, he even expanded his Divine Telekinesis probing range to 30,000 kilometers. He investigated his surroundings as he traveled along the black and white zone. He was the closest person to Lin Huang at the moment. "This battle was fought by two people. It''s clearly the same guys" Li Hao was searching for all sorts of details as he extended his Divine Telekinesis over the battle location. "Judging by the remaining traces, they must''ve left less than two hours ago." "Seems like I''m not too far from them." Li Hao was clearly excited now. "Within two days, these two have killed at least 30 to 40 Voids. Unfortunately, they won''t be enjoying the loot, as all the Origin Energy will soon be mine" As Li Hao was picturing himself capturing the two, he suddenly lifted his head. "Hmm?!" The next second, the expression on his face turned wild with joy. He moved instantly. There was no other reason for this than the fact that he had sensed two people entering the probing range of his Divine Telekinesis. When he moved, the two seemed to have sensed his movements as well and began to run away frantically. Li Hao was chasing after them from the rear. Seeing their reaction, he was even more sure that these two were the ones who worked together to kill tens of Voids in the black and white zone. "Do you think you can escape me?!" Li Hao was running at his full speed. He was getting closer. At the same time, his Divine Telekinesis sensed more details about the two. Judging by the strength of their auras, they had approximately 30,000 Dao seals. One was clearly a combat cultivator with stunning explosive agility who could leap large distances with every stride, while the other one was using a dimensional technique. He seemed like he was taking a stroll. Each step he took was comparable to the combat cultivator''s three to five steps. "One is a combat cultivator and another is proficient in Dimensional Dao" Li Hao was getting more and more excited after confirming more information about the two''s identities. The chase lasted for over half an hour. Li Hao was getting closer and closer to them. However, when the distance between them had shrunk to approximately 10,000 kilometers, that rather skinny and weak Dimensional Dao cultivator suddenly grabbed that muscular combat cultivator''s arm. Subsequently, they pulled away as he leaped forward. That one leap alone got them out of Li Hao''s Divine Telekinesis'' probing radius. Li Hao was stunned at first, after which he grinned. "Where do you think you''re going?!" He expanded the probing radius of his Divine Telekinesis directly. From its initial 30,000-kilometer range, it soon expanded to 40,000 kilometers 50,000 kilometers 60,000 kilometers At that moment, his expression suddenly changed. The reason being was that he noticed that a powerful aura had suddenly appeared within his Divine Telekinesis'' probing radius. It was a human-form Void. The strength of its aura had clearly surpassed 50,000 Dao seals. Almost at the same time Li Hao''s Divine Telekinesis discovered the Void, the human-form Void suddenly lifted its head. Its purple eyes gazed into the distance and seemed to locate his whereabouts. Instantly, it spread out its powerful Divine Telekinesis and locked onto Li Hao. Run! Without even thinking about it, Li Hao turned around and ran frantically away from the human-form Void''s direction. Lin Huang saw everything that happened. He smirked. Naturally, this was the plan he had orchestrated. The two cultivators with 30,000 Dao seals were his clones in disguise. He intentionally entered Li Hao''s Divine Telekinesis'' probing radius and then ran away on purpose. He lured him to a region that was not too far away from the human-form Void and faked an escape using a dimensional technique. In reality, he had recalled his clones directly. He baited Li Hao to expand his Divine Telekinesis'' probing radius, which eventually got the human-form Void''s attention. He stayed behind the scenes throughout the entire thing. Nobody knew of his existence and participation in the matter at all. Even when Li Hao was running, he secretly exclaimed that the two were lucky. He did not notice that he had been framed. After chasing Li Hao away, Lin Huang repeated his actions. He borrowed a couple of Voids and, using the same trick, he chased the other few probers out of his region. "It''s quite useful to keep these Voids around." A day and a half had passed. In reality, he and the two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls had killed almost all of the Voids in this black and white zone. There were less than 20 Voids remaining in the entire region. There were a few that were quite capable that Lin Huang happened to be able to use. After chasing those probers away, Lin Huang did not stay. After clearing out the remaining Voids, he left the black and white zone directly and headed off to the next region. Lin Huang finally started seeing normal colors. However, the sky remained gloomy, and the land remained barren. It felt like the black and white zone had become colorful. Apart from the colors, the style of the surroundings seemed unchanged. However, Lin Huang knew where he was as soon as he stepped into the region. The reason being was that he saw the abyssal fog that he was familiar with. The black fog seemed harmless but, in reality, it would penetrate and contaminate the cultivators'' physical body and God''s soul. Almost all normal cultivators would choose to go around it. However, Lin Huang walked directly into the black fog. His body was smothered in it. The abyssal fog was toxic to outsiders. However, to Lin Huang who possessed Eternity Fire in his body, not only was it harmless, but it was even a form of replenishment. The abyssal fog could block one''s Divine Telekinesis probing significantly, as well as most ocular skills. However, there were still some probing techniques that could be used. This time, Lin Huang was using a probing technique that he had learned from the memory inheritances the Nirvana Trees sentProbing of All Creations. On the surface, this technique was one that could probe distant sounds. However, in actual fact, it was more than that. It could even be used to listen to one''s thoughts and inner voice. To Lin Huang, it would be sufficient if he could just hear the sounds at the moment. He closed his eyes and performed a hand seal with both hands, quickly following the steps according to the inherited memory to perform the technique. As soon as the technique was performed, countless noises echoed in his ears. It felt like thousands of people were talking into his ears. There were many layers and they overlapped. After all, it was his first time performing this technique. It took him some time to adapt to it. He could finally hear the voices clearly after adjusting the technique''s probing range and frequency. "I''m so hungry" "I''m so hungry" "I''m so hungry" "What''s happening?! Is that a bug?" Lin Huang was quite confused. There seemed to be a bug with the technique, whereby it kept repeating the same thing, "I''m so hungry" in his ears. Although the voices and tones were all different, there were even men and women, the content was playing on repeat, "I''m so hungry" Fortunately, Lin Huang could still differentiate between the sources of the different voices, which directions they came from and how far away they were from him. With a little bit of doubt, Lin Huang headed to the source closest to him. Chapter 1750 - Let’s Explore Somewhere Else? Only when Lin Huang arrived at the source of the voice and saw the first monster did he find out why he was hearing "I''m so hungry" over and over again. It was a headless monster with a big belly. Its round belly was over two meters in diameter, and there was a big mouth in the middle of the belly. The back of the belly had tens of arms with many joints, and each arm was some ten meters long. Compared to those arms, the legs that were supporting its upper body seemed extremely frail. Lin Huang could tell that it was a Glutton the moment he set eyes upon the monster. Gluttons came in all shapes and forms, but the only thing each of them had in common was their gigantic, round belly. It was fine if they did not have a head, features, arms or legs, but their big belly was necessary. Some of them even came in the form of solely a big belly. Someone joked that the Glutton''s original form had been a big belly. This headless Glutton did not speak. It was the mouth on the belly that was muttering meaningless syllables. When it noticed Lin Huang, its big mouth began to drool. However, Lin Huang heard, "I''m so hungry Food It smells good I want to eat it" "Those are its thoughts?!" Lin Huang instantly noticed what was going on. So what he heard were the Glutton''s thoughts. The "I''m so hungry" he heard from different voices were the thoughts of many different Gluttons! "Did I enter a Glutton''s lair? There are so many minor dao-level Gluttons here" After clearing his doubts, Lin Huang got the Destructive Divine Mammoth to fight it directly. Judging from the strength of this Glutton''s aura, it had only mastered some 20,000 Dao seals. He did not bother to fight it himself. The God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls'' God soul came from him, along with their Divine Power and Odyl. It would not be that easy for them to be contaminated. Even if their physical bodies were contaminated with Abyssal energy and emotional energy, they could be cleansed with Eternity Fire instantly. Seeing the Glutton rushing toward Lin Huang and itself, the Destructive Divine Mammoth stomped on it with its hooves without hesitation. It did not hold back at all, crushing the spherical belly until it exploded. Black, contaminated, blood splashed out, emitting a disgusting smell. Lin Huang dodged while holding the Ninetails Lynx. They were not contaminated at all. Lin Huang flicked his fingers when he saw the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s body begin to be contaminated by the blood. A white spark enveloped the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s entire body instantly. Within a blink of an eye, the contaminated energy in its body was cleared out, along with the blood. The spark that covered its body shrunk at lightning speed. It turned into a flame imprint on its forehead. The Destructive Divine Mammoth immediately sensed that the contaminated energy that came from the surrounding fog, that had seeped into its body slowly, was being absorbed by the flame imprint on its forehead. Noticing the changes on the Destructive Divine Mammoth''s side, Lin Huang pointed at the Ninetails Lynx forehead and left a flame imprint on its forehead too. Naturally, the imprint was not permanent. It was the Eternity Fire''s temporary imprint that Lin Huang could remove as he wished. With the flame imprint, the Ninetails Lynx could clearly sense that the discomfort it felt since entering the foggy area had vanished completely. It felt at ease now. Of course, Lin Huang did not need the imprint; the Eternity Fire was in his body after all. Not only that, even without the Eternity Fire''s cleansing effect, given his current level of ability, contamination of such level could not break through the defense of his body''s particles at all. After leaving the flame imprints on his two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls, Lin Huang put away the Glutton''s carcass and led the two deep into the fog. "Do we go in?" "This fog has strong contamination properties and it blocks Divine Telekinesis. Not only that, the fog comes and goes at random intervals. As soon as we go in, there''s a possibility that we can''t leave. If we''re lost in there for a long time and drained of our Odyl, we''ll turn into an Abyssal creature due to the contamination effect." Two young men in white robes, one tall and another short, were discussing things with hesitation outside the area that was covered in black fog. "Do we go to the sea in the north instead?" The tall young man asked. "That place is clearly more dangerous than dry land." The short young man rolled his eyes at the tall man. "But there are only a few Abyssal monsters outside the fog in this area. They only appear when the fog moves. We''ve only found seven throughout these two days, and other explorers killed four of them. We''ve only killed less than one on average daily throughout these two days." "You''re unwilling to enter the fog, nor do you want to go to the sea. So what do we do now? Do we head to another area?" The tall man looked helpless. If not for the fact that they were friends for many years, and were somehow fated to meet despite the random teleportation, he would have already left him behind. "What if the other areas are more dangerous? Will you retreat, or will you head to other areas?" "The exploration only lasts for a month, and we''ve already wasted two days. If we dawdle further, we''ll end up wasting ten days to half a month" "Aren''t I considering our safety?" The short man retorted mildly. He could tell that this friend of his was quite mad. He immediately added, "Of course, what you said makes sense as well." "We''re here to explore. This isn''t a vacation. Stop being so picky and make up your mind already," the tall man said angrily, "Do we enter the fog or the sea?" The short man frowned and fell into silence for a moment. He only made up his mind after seeing the tall man become quite impatient, and was about to urge him again. "Into the fog!" After spending hours coming to a common agreement, the two did not hesitate this time and entered the black fog area after covering their bodies in Odyl. They were devoured by the black fog instantly Time flew by, two days had passed. In the area covered in black fog, the tall and short white-robed young men sat by a cliff. "It''s been two days, and we haven''t even found a monster. It''s not that our probing techniques aren''t working. We even found some explorers from other organizations. It''s impossible for all of the monsters here to have been killed by explorers from other organizations, right?" The short young man wore a puzzled expression on his face. "Something''s strange about this area" The tall young man frowned lightly. "We can''t use Divine Telekinesis in this foggy area at all, and the black fog limits many probing techniques. Theoretically, there shouldn''t be anyone who can find the coordinates of all of the monsters in this foggy area. However, it''s also impossible for the monsters in this foggy area to disappear out of nowhere" "How about we retreat? Let''s explore somewhere else?" The short man had cold feet again. The tall man glared at him as soon as he said that. "I was just kidding." The short man waved while smiling after noticing his unfriendly glare. "Let''s check more carefully. If it was done by humans, it''s impossible that there aren''t any traces left behind at all.." The tall man thought about it for a moment and decided to stay to find out the truth. Chapter 1751 - Hunter? Lin Huang spent two days in the foggy area to clear out most of the Abyssal monsters. There were quite a few types of monsters in this foggy area. Apart from the Glutton that he encountered in the beginning, he killed at least 20 other types of Abyssal monsters later on. It was unknown whether it was because probing techniques such as Divine Telekinesis were being blocked here, or some other reasons, but the distribution of monsters within this area was quite dense. The closest two monsters Lin Huang had encountered were less than 1,000 kilometers away from each other. One of them was a Glutton that had mastered some 50,000 Dao seals. It had been grumbling about how hungry it was. Meanwhile, the other one was less than 1,000 kilometers away from it. It was a fat Lazy Devil Pig. It had only mastered some 10,000 Dao seals. It was sleeping soundly, not knowing that danger was close at all. To a dao-level powerhouse, a 1,000-kilometer gap was no different than a one-meter gap. However, with the fog blocking most probing techniques, they could not sense each other''s existences at all. Very soon, Lin Huang realized that the fog also blocked energy fluctuations. Even if the Destructive Divine Mammoth that had mastered 30,000 Dao seals fought with an Abyssal monster with the same ability, the commotion they caused could not be felt more than 30 kilometers away. This enabled Lin Huang to kill over 3,000 Abyssal monsters with the two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls unhindered. He did not have to get the Destructive Divine Mammoth and the Ninetails Lynx to conceal their battle auras at all. "This foggy area is the perfect place to grind." Lin Huang was satisfied with his gains throughout these two days. "I wonder if all of the foggy areas in this mystic territory are the same?" According to the inherited memories, Lin Huang knew that some of the mystic territories had denser spots to grind. However, not all mystic territories contained such spots. Even if they did, they might be distributed in any region of the mystic territory. Clearly, Lin Huang had encountered such a foggy area this time. This made him want to verify his speculations in other foggy areas if he had the opportunity to do so in the future. Throughout the two days in this foggy area, apart from the native monsters of the mystic territory, using the Probing of All Creations, Lin Huang discovered the existence of some 20 explorers. The weakest one had mastered over 20,000 Dao seals. The most powerful one had mastered over 55,000 Dao seals. Clearly, those who dared to enter the foggy area were not weaklings. As two days passed by, Lin Huang had killed almost all of the monsters in this foggy area. Just as he was going to wrap things up, and just as he was just going to shut his eyes to focus in order to perform the Probing of All Creations, he sensed an aura running away quickly nearby. The person had mastered approximately 40,000 Dao seals judging by the strength of his aura. However, he seemed to be hurt. Using the Probing of All Creations, Lin Huang heard the thought. ''This is the foggy area. As long as we''re far away, he won''t be able to find me!" A moment later, Lin Huang sensed the aura of the pursuer. The person had mastered approximately 52,000 Dao seals judging by his aura. He was some 3,000 kilometers away from the person before. However, Lin Huang was unsure how he was locking onto the person''s coordinates so accurately. He kept chasing him, and the two were getting close and closer. Lin Huang sensed his thoughts as well. ''You can''t run away from me!'' The former was from the Longevity Tribe. The iconic baldness made him easy to identify. The pursuer was not wearing a uniform, nor did he have anything that would have made him easy to identify. However, Lin Huang recalled that this person was a member of Star Cluster. Although all organizations prohibited their members from killing members from other organizations, if one had a serious personal grudge and happened to run into each other, it made sense that they would seize the opportunity to kill the other person. The foggy area was the perfect place to do that. Even Lin Huang would find it impossible to pass up such an opportunity to kill if he encountered an old enemy in such an environment. Lin Huang did not plan to interfere in this matter as it was none of his business. Moreover, those who would attack another in here most probably had personal grudges. Otherwise, it was unlikely that they would do such a thing out of the blue. Although he was quite curious about what kind of probing technique the Star Cluster pursuer was using, Lin Huang soon turned his attention away from them. He began to look for the remaining Abyssal monsters. Approximately an hour later, Lin Huang had killed some 30 monsters one after the other. When he activated Probing of All Creations again, to his surprise, he noticed another guy who was running away quickly. The person who was escaping this time was a sorcerer from Infinite. He had mastered around 35,000 Dao seals. He was even more injured than the person from the Longevity Tribe earlier. Even his speed was affected. Lin Huang also sensed the thoughts of fear that were repeating. ''Is this guy from Star Cluster out of his mind?! Why is he attacking me out of nowhere?!'' "Hmm?" Lin Huang suddenly frowned slightly. The reason being was that he realized that the man behind the Infinite member had a buzzcut, small eyes and looked to be about 40. He was the pursuer who was chasing after the person from the Longevity Tribe earlier. His aura did not change at all. Connecting the dots with the Infinite sorcerer''s thoughts, Lin Huang had a faint feeling that something was wrong. This time, he was hesitating as to whether he should interfere in this matter. However, before he made up his mind, the buzzcut middle-aged man suddenly accelerated. The 800-kilometer gap suddenly shrunk to 80 kilometers. The buzzcut middle-aged man released a vicious laugh. He drew his saber without hesitation. His aim was extremely accurate, targeting the injured sorcerer. The next second, a black saber gleam flashed and passed through the tens of kilometers in the blink of an eye. It penetrated the sorcerer''s black vest directly. From that one attack, the Infinite sorcerer that was already badly hurt had the remaining Odyl in his body drained. The black Odyl that arrived with the saber gleam spread all over his body quickly, crushing all of the particles in his body. Within half a breath of time, the Infinite sorcerer''s very last ounce of vitality was crushed entirely. He died on the spot. Watching the corpse land on the ground, the buzzcut middle-aged man landed next to it with a flash. As he arrived, a black saber gleam shot forth from his fingertip, severing the sorcerer''s two ring-wearing fingers. He tossed them into his storage space and squatted down to examine the corpse. A moment later, he stood up and spat on the corpse. "Another piece of trash." After putting the corpse into his storage space with a slightly disgusted expression, the buzzcut middle-aged man very soon lifted his head to look into the distance. A moment later, he seemed to have locked on to something and leapt forward. He rushed in that direction without hesitation. At that moment, Lin Huang sensed a thought in the pursuer''s head. ''I''ll choose the two of you as my prey!'' "This guy" At that moment, Lin Huang had a rough idea of what this person was doing. He was not killing his enemies due to personal grudges, but rather hunting the other explorers in this foggy area. Chapter 1752 - I’ll Demonstrate Again Lin Huang was not a nosy person. However, he thought that he should take things into his own hands when encountering people like the buzzcut middle-aged man. Although the target he was hunting had nothing to do with him at all, this guy had broken the rules. Moreover, he might bring about a greater disaster to the entire exploration team. After all, he was already breaking the rules by killing other dao-level explorers. He might take it a step further and go to the regions with Lords to kill the lord-level explorers that were helpless to defend themselves. Thinking about this, Lin Huang recalled his two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls and followed him secretly. Lin Huang did not plan to kill him immediately. He just wanted to further confirm whether he was really hunting other explorers or whether he had misunderstood what had just taken place. Soon enough, the buzzcut middle-aged man appeared some 10,000 kilometers away. Lin Huang could clearly sense that he was going after two Snow Kingdom members. It was the two young men, one tall and one short. They were dressed in white robes. It was very easy to identify them. Judging by the strength of their auras, they should have mastered some 30,000 Dao seals. They were not considered powerful, but they were not weak either. "Something is closing in on us." Suddenly, the short young man turned serious. At that moment, the buzzcut middle-aged man was only hundreds of kilometers away from the two of them. The short young man seemed to have an unique sensing technique that was not hindered by the fog. As soon as he was done speaking, the tall young man grabbed him and ran quickly in the other direction. Almost at the same time the two disappeared, a black saber gleam flashed through the place where they were just standing, leaving a massive crater on the ground. The buzzcut middle-aged man did not feel defeated seeing that the attack had missed them. He licked his lower lip and revealed a happy smile. "They dodged my attack despite only having 30,000 Dao seals. My speculation must be right" The two young men from Snow Kingdom had cold sweat from the scare. They ran away frantically at their fastest speed. "That didn''t seem like an Abyssal monster," the short young man said through voice transmission. "He''s a saber cultivator. He should be an explorer." The tall young man looked rather terrible. "Why did he attack us out of nowhere? Did you make an enemy out there? And he''s here to kill you?" The short young man asked. "Stop finding fault with me at such a time. Think about how we should deal with this," the tall young man said angrily, "Judging by that saber attack, his combat ability should be much more powerful than ours. He might have mastered more than 50,000 Dao seals." "How else can we deal with this? We can only run," the short young man said immediately, "No matter how powerful his probing technique is, it''s impossible for it not to be restricted within this foggy area. As long as we run far enough, we''ll get out of his probing range sooner or later." "What if he''s faster than we are?" The tall young man asked. "Then we''ll go our separate ways. At least one of us will live." The short young man raised his brows at the tall young man. "Go peacefully. I''ll definitely avenge you in the future!" "If one of us is to live, it''ll be me. You have shorter legs, he''ll get to you first," the tall young man retorted. The two had no idea that the hunter was not chasing after them at the moment. Instead, he was being blocked by a figure. "Why are you trying to kill them?" The buzzcut middle-aged man''s expression gradually turned solemn as he looked at the masked man not far away from him. He could not sense his aura at all, it was as if he did not exist. He had never had such a strange feeling from anyone before. "I have a personal grudge with them. Please don''t butt into my business." "Is that so?" Lin Huang scoffed. "If it''s a personal grudge, tell me what their names are?" The buzzcut middle-aged man was stumped at the moment. "What? You don''t even remember your enemies'' names?" Lin Huang continued to ask while smiling. "We only became enemies after entering this mystic territory. It makes sense that I don''t know their names," the buzzcut middle-aged man continued to retort. "What kind of grudge is that then? To make you ignore the exploration''s rules and chase after them directly?" "That is a personal matter between us. I don''t think I have to inform you of such things." The buzzcut middle-aged man was still unwilling to spill the beans. "What about you and that person from the Longevity Tribe? Was that a personal grudge too? And that sorcerer from Infinite, was that a personal grudge too?" Lin Huang asked with a smile, "You should remember their names, right? Or did you only make enemies with them after entering this mystic territory as well? It seems you make enemies easily." "Did you follow me?!" The buzzcut middle-aged man looked rather unfriendly. Although he was not sure of the person''s ability, the rage of having his secret exposed had surpassed his fear, which gave rise to his killing intent against Lin Huang. He was secretly convincing himself that someone who had been teleported here should not have too powerful of a combat ability. He must have used some unique technique to conceal his aura on purpose. That was how he was in this aura-less state. "I wouldn''t bother to do such a thing. I just happened to see you kill the two people from before." Clearly, the buzzcut middle-aged man did not believe what Lin Huang said. He was more convinced that his identity had been exposed, and Lin Huang had been secretly following him to investigate him. "It doesn''t matter what your explanation is. I''m going to kill you anyway, so my secret will stay a secret." As soon as the buzzcut middle-aged man was done speaking, the saber in his hand flashed out. The black saber gleam shot at an unprecedentedly terrifying speed. It was aimed between Lin Huang''s brows. He did not hold back with this attack at all. He even performed it at an unusually high speed. It was at least two to three times faster than the attack that had killed the Infinite sorcerer was. However, his confident attack at full strength that harnessed the power of some 55,000 Dao seals was crushed the second before it landed between Lin Huang''s brows. He did not even notice any signs of Lin Huang defending himself either. It felt as if the attack had been crushed on its own. "How is that possible" The buzzcut middle-aged man was stunned. He could not understand what had just happened before his eyes. "What did you do?!" Even now, he had not noticed that the person before him had abilities that surpassed his. He was more convinced that he had used some sort of illusion technique that made him see things. He must have created this terrifying scene to scare him. "Didn''t you see it?" Though there was a mask covering Lin Huang''s face, the buzzcut middle-aged man could sense the smirk under the mask. "I''ll demonstrate again, then." As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, he lifted his hand slowly. He then stretched out a finger He tapped the air. The next second, the space where the fingertip touched was destroyed The buzzcut middle-aged man had finally seen it clearly now. The finger tap seemed to have been slowed down countless times, but he could clearly feel that he could not dodge such an attack. Lin Huang did not really slow down the finger tap. He merely accelerated the buzzcut middle-aged man''s senses to the point where he could see the finger tap clearly. Sensing Lin Huang''s real ability, the buzzcut middle-aged man''s back was drenched in cold sweat instantly Chapter 1753 - Encountering A Raider Again "My name''s Lu Yi. I''m a traveler. My current combat strength is at minor dao-level. I have mastered 55,683 Dao seals. In reality, when I was only a True God, the Raiders recruited me, and I became one of them. After I was elevated to lord-level, I came to the universe and the Raiders arranged for me to join Star Cluster''s intelligence department. For the past 50,000 years, I''ve been a spy in Star Cluster, providing all sorts of intel for the Raiders" "What''s your mission in entering the mystic territory this time?" Lin Huang asked the key question as he looked at Lu Yi, who had completely fallen into the illusion. "Kill everyone who is suspected to be Club members while trying my best not to leave any traces. I can kill the wrong people, but I can''t let go of anyone who might possibly be a member." What Lu Yi said made Lin Huang frown. That should be the reason why he was hunting all of the explorers. He did not bother to identify them. Instead, he would attack every time he ran into other explorers. "Aren''t you guys worried that someone will find out and that your identity will be exposed?" "This is my last mission as a spy. After this mission, I''ll escape by faking my death and return to the Raiders. Star Cluster would make the follow-up arrangements to prevent my identity as a spy from being exposed," Lu Yi explained in thorough detail. "How many of you came here this time?" Lin Huang continued asking. "I don''t know." "Then how do you contact the other spies?" Lin Huang asked without frowning. "We don''t contact each other," Lu Yi explained further after saying that, "The mission was assigned before we entered the mystic territory. Every one of us has our own task. We''re only responsible to do our own parts after entering." "If there are last-minute changes in the mission or other situations that arise, the higher-up will contact us and give us new orders. We can''t contact our higher-ups, nor do we need to contact our other colleagues." "Don''t you know the other spies'' identities?" In reality, Lin Huang already knew the answer when he asked the question. However, he did not want to give up and asked anyway. "I don''t." Lu Yi shook his head in determination. "Do you know the rough distribution of spies in each organization? I don''t need the specific information, just the rough combat strength level and the number of people," Lin Huang continued to ask. "I don''t know." Lu Yi continued shaking his head. "You''ve been with Star Cluster for many years. You should know those in Star Cluster who are spies from the Raiders like you, no?" Lin Huang asked further. "I don''t. I complete all my missions alone. There''s no need to work or communicate with others. The only contact person is my higher-up. He can contact me, but I can''t contact him." "Then who is your higher-up?" Lin Huang asked immediately. "I don''t know. I only know that he''s also in Star Cluster, and his authorization level is higher than mine in the organization." Lu Yi''s answers gave Lin Huang a headache. He had already mastered some 50,000 Dao seals, yet he was just a pawn among the Raiders who took orders from someone else. He knew nothing about the Raiders'' overall plan or the spies'' name list. Since the hypnosis'' result was subpar, Lin Huang searched his memory using the Soul-Searching Tactic before killing him by pointing between his brows. He then casually put away the corpse into his storage space. The memory he found through the Soul-Searching Tactic was almost the same as the information he spilled while he was hypnotized. However, Lin Huang found more details in his memory. Including some of the things that he had missed out during the questioning process earlier. Lin Huang initially thought that Lu Yi had used some unique probing technique to sense the others'' existence in the foggy area to accurately lock on to his targets. Therefore, he had not cared too much about that factor. However, he suddenly found out from Lu Yi''s memory that it was not as simple as he thought. The reason why Lu Yi could probe the people''s locations in the foggy area was because his higher-up gave him a Secret Imprint Charm and imprinted it on him before he entered the mystic territory. The secret imprint was temporary. It would vanish automatically 30 days later. Its function was that it would suppress a portion of Divine Telekinesis in the mystic territory, as well as conceal his Divine Telekinesis''s aura. Lu Yi did not use any unique probing technique in the foggy area. It was Divine Telekinesis. Even Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis could cover less than 1,000 meters in the foggy area if he was to extend it to its maximum range. However, with the secret imprint on Lu Yi''s body, his Divine Telekinesis''s probing range spread over 50,000 kilometers in the foggy area. The secret imprint concealed the Divine Telekinesis''s aura. That was why Lin Huang could not sense that he was using Divine Telekinesis. After finding out that information, Lin Huang could not help but spread his Divine Telekinesis into the storage ring to examine Lu Yi''s corpse carefully. Finally, he found a black imprint the size of a palm on the left side of his chest. The imprint looked like an image of a monster. However, Lin Huang could not identify what monster it was despite looking at it for a long time. It was completely encrypted, so he could not analyze it at all. After giving it some thought, Lin Huang did not take the risk to use the imprint on himself. One of the reasons was that he did not know the source of this thing, nor did he know its specific function. Although, according to Lu Yi''s memory, its function was to aid his Divine Telekinesis, and allow one to move around more easily in the mystic territory, that was limited to what Lu Yi knew. There might be other functions that Lu Yi had no idea about. Perhaps the creator of the imprint could clearly sense the user''s coordinates. Perhaps the imprint came with the function of sharing senses. Perhaps the creator of the imprint could control him from a distance, transforming the imprint into a curse or some other thing. Perhaps the creator of the imprint could control certain things on him through the imprint Lin Huang had to watch out for those risks. Moreover, he did not lack probing techniques in the foggy area after all. There was no need for him to take the risk to use some unknown thing like this. This secret imprint made Lin Huang think even more that the Raiders had a bigger plot going on during this exploration. "They''re doing so much and don''t mind sacrificing a bunch of dao-level spies. Are they really doing all this just to hunt down Club members?" "The order they gave is outrageous as well. They''d rather kill the wrong people than missing any?! They''re clearly asking the spies to conduct a massacre." "Even if they could escape by faking their death, the resulting death rate within this exploration team would definitely attract the attention of powerhouses above dao-level from all organizations. They would definitely investigate this" Lin Huang frowned. He still could not understand the exact goal of the Raiders'' plot. Moreover, what worried Lin Huang even more was that Lu Yi, who had mastered over 50,000 Dao seals, was nothing but a pawn in this mission. It proved that there must be major dao-level powerhouses participating in the Raiders'' mission. It would also mean that, among the 21 major dao-level powerhouses that entered the mystic territory this time, at least one of them was a spy for the Raiders.. There might even be more than one of them. Chapter 1754 - Leaving The Foggy Area After thinking about it for a long time and figuring out that any effort would be to no avail, Lin Huang could only put aside the matter regarding the Raiders. "I can only tackle the problem when it arises." He could not think of any feasible solutions anyway. There were seven organizations from the Eastern Eight Zone that participated in the exploration this time. There were some 4,700 explorers in total, including both lord-level and dao-level. Moreover, the 4,700 or so people were randomly distributed in various regions. To find the Raiders'' spies among these bunch of people was no different than looking for a needle in a haystack. Not only that, there was no communication signal in this mystic territory. Lin Huang could not contact Old Wang, Old He and the rest. Another thing was that he could not confirm entirely whether Old Wang and Old He were the Raider''s spies either. Even if he had a way to contact them, he could not discuss the matter with them. The reason being was that he might expose himself to the Raider''s higher-ups. He did not want to be targeted by people above dao-level. Therefore, he could only play it by ear passively. However, Lin Huang informed the bunch of imperial monsters under him about this matter. After all, he did not have to worry about his imperial monsters being spies. After the imperial monsters received the news, they would have to be even more careful during the exploration from now on. Meanwhile, Lin Huang put the matter aside and went back into hunting mode. Within half a day, he killed all of the Abyssal monsters in this foggy area. Throughout the journey, he came across the brothers that Lu Yi was chasing after earlier. The two of them had traveled over hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. They must have stopped running after realizing that nobody was going after them. However, it was unknown why these tall and short brothers had yet to leave the foggy area. Apart from them, Lin Huang conducted a simple investigation on the ten or so explorers in this foggy area secretly. He did not discover any one of them to be the Raiders'' spies. He did not continue to waste time staying there and instead left the foggy area. In the foggy area, the tall and short brothers from Snow Kingdom did not realize that they were being watched at all. "I can''t believe that that guy didn''t come after us. I thought one of us would definitely die today." The short man sat on a rock and took out a packet of meat jerky from his storage space. He began to eat on his own. The tall man stretched his hand to ask for one when he saw that. "Didn''t you bring yours?" "I''m too lazy to take it out," the tall man responded expressionlessly. "There''s not even bird poop in this lousy place and we were even chased after by a lunatic. I shouldn''t have come in with you," the short man complained while chewing on the meat jerky. "It was you who picked the foggy area," the tall man retorted calmly. "Didn''t I pick it because you left me no option?" The short man rolled his eyes as heard the tall man''s comments. The two fell into a moment of silence. Only the sound of the chewing could be heard at the moment. "How about we leave," the tall man took the initiative to speak a moment later, "If that man is still in the foggy area, he might come after us again. His probing range is larger than ours. We''ll be at a disadvantage if we stay in the foggy area." This time, the short man did not argue with him. He only asked after falling into a moment of silence, "Are you sure you want to leave this place?" "It''s been almost three days since we came in. We''ve only seen a few monsters. Moreover, that man wanted to attack us for no reason. I think this area is just too strange." The tall man nodded. "Where do we go then?" The short man asked. The tall man fell into silence for a moment before speaking again, "Let''s go to the sea." "It might be even more dangerous over there," the short man said to the tall man while staring at him. "But there will definitely be sufficient monsters for us to hunt." The tall man seemed to have made up his mind. "It''ll be alright as long as we''re more careful and avoid those that we can''t kill." "Alright then." The short man nodded after thinking for a little bit. "But it''s your choice. If something happens again, you''ll have to take responsibility." "Sure!" The tall man agreed to that directly. North of the foggy area was a vast sea. When Lin Huang was investigating those explorers in the foggy area, he had heard about the existence of the sea. Therefore, he chose it as his next hunting ground. Usually, a sea of that size would definitely contain more monsters. Lin Huang thought that it would likely be a great place to hunt. He summoned the Shackle Serpent as he looked at the vast and endless black sea before him. It would be a little absurd to be riding the Destructive Divine Mammoth in the sea. Therefore, Lin Huang decisively changed his mount to the Shackle Serpent. Apart from the Shackle Serpent, he had also summoned the Enchanted Fairy that had mastered the Moon Power. The Enchanted Fairy had certain advantages in and around water. The two of them rode on the Shackle Serpent''s back and submerged into the depths of the sea silently. Lin Huang still did not spread out his Divine Telekinesis. He remained low-key as he concealed his aura. This time, he chose the long-distance ocular skill as his probing technique of choice once again. Countless Dao tattoos consolidated into an eyeball the size of a fist before him, observing everything within hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Within three seconds of the long-distance ocular skill being performed, Lin Huang suddenly frowned and turned his head in a particular direction. "Liu Fu?!" He did not expect to run into Liu Fu in this mystic territory. Although Liu Fu had already concealed his aura entirely and disguised himself as a passing reef, Lin Huang''s long-distance ocular skill not only had the ability to probe at long distances, but also could see through illusions and disguises. Given Liu Fu''s ability, it was only natural that he could not escape his probing. Lin Huang sensed him instantly. "Seems like this guy is stuck in the sea" Naturally, Lin Huang noticed that the area Liu Fu was in was a Putrescent Dragon Whale''s territory. Judging by the Putrescent Dragon Whale''s aura, it should have mastered some 23,000 Dao seals. As soon as Liu Fu moved, it would definitely sense him. Lin Huang speculated that Liu Fu must have invaded the Putrescent Dragon Whale''s territory by accident and had been trapped there ever since. Lin Huang thought for a moment when he discovered Liu Fu. He decided not to meet up with him. One of the reasons was that he did not want to expose his ability. As soon as they met up, Liu Fu would definitely suggest that they team up. Teaming up would bring many inconveniences to him later on. Another reason was that he was unsure as to whether Liu Fu was the Raiders'' spy. Although Liu Fu had been pretty nice to him up to this point, from what Lin Huang knew about Raiders, if Liu Fu really was one, he definitely would not show mercy to him when they fell out. Yang Ling was the perfect example of this. Lin Huang gave the Shackle Serpent an order while he stayed in place with the Enchanted Fairy. He watched Shackle Serpent head toward Liu Fu''s direction. It was simple to solve Liu Fu''s current crisis. He just had to kill the Putrescent Dragon Whale. Meanwhile, the Shackle Serpent looked like an aquatic monster.. It was nothing out of the ordinary for it to hunt the Putrescent Dragon Whale. Chapter 1755 - Black Sea It was already the fifth day since Liu Fu entered the mystic territory. For the whole five days, he had been disguised as a reef and had not dared to move at all. The reason for that was the Putrescent Dragon Whale wandering in the area nearby. He had escaped death since the monster was not proficient in probing techniques. However, he knew that as long as he moved an inch, it would definitely notice him instantly. Therefore, he could only remain in his motionless state for the past five days. He secretly hoped that the monster would leave on its own accord, or that other explorers would come here and kill this monster. However, as time went by, he felt his hopes were gradually getting slimmer as he watched the Putrescent Dragon Whale wandering nearby happily everyday. There were less than 5,000 people from the seven organizations participating in the exploration this time. They had been randomly teleported, and there were definitely only a few people who were teleported to the same area as he was. Even if there were people teleported to the same area, they might not be this Putrescent Dragon Whale''s match. They might have gone around the Putrescent Dragon Whale after sensing its aura from far away. Naturally, it would be impossible for them to notice him, given that he had concealed his aura. Moreover, the exploration would only last for a month. If he failed to escape within a month, the chances of him dying here would be high. The reason being was that, under normal circumstances, the first time each mystic territory appeared, the dimensional anchoring had yet to stabilize completely. Its appearance would not last for long. If he did not retreat with everyone else, the fog might cover this mystic territory once again. By then, even if he was a major dao-level powerhouse, he would not be able to return. Even if he managed to live, he could only wait until the mystic territory''s second anchoring for a chance to return. That process might be a couple of years if short, or tens of thousands of years or even hundreds of thousands of years, if long. The mystic territory might not even have a second anchoring. He could even be stuck in this mystic territory forever. As Liu Fu knew those rules regarding the mystic territory, he thought that the chances of him surviving were extremely slim. However, just when Liu Fu was about to despair, he suddenly heard a familiar roar. It was the sound of the Putrescent Dragon Whale! He had heard this sound countless times throughout the past five days. However, it seemed to be a little different this time. There was fear and horror in its roar. It even sounded somewhat like it was begging. Nevertheless, the sound only lasted a moment before suddenly stopping. Liu Fu did not even sense any battle energy fluctuations. "What happened?" Liu Fu looked in the direction of the source of the sound. He still did not dare to not spread out his Divine Telekinesis or use other probing techniques. A moment later, he saw a giant monster swimming over slowly. It was a giant snake that was completely black, whose size was no smaller than the Putrescent Dragon Whale. Its aura was even more powerful than the dragon whale. As Liu Fu was checking it out, he suddenly saw the giant snake peeking at the place where he was hiding. He suddenly had goosebumps from the scare. He closed his eyes immediately and concealed his aura completely. "Oh no, oh no I''ve been discovered As I expected, I can''t escape death" He did not even have the intention of fighting and escaping. Given the gap between him and the monster, he would only die a more painful death if he tried to fight back or escape. However, he did not sense himself being attacked at all after closing his eyes for a long time. He could not help but open his eyes after some hesitation. He realized that he was still where he was and still in one piece. That snake monster was gone. "It didn''t notice me?!" Liu Fu was overjoyed. This was not the ending that he had expected. When that snake monster peeped in his direction, he really thought he was going to die. A casual peep from the monster''s had startled him. "Seems like the snake monster killed the Putrescent Dragon Whale. Otherwise, it''s impossible that the snake monster would be wandering around its territory with such ease." Liu Fu had a rough estimation of what happened. "But the battle ended a little too fast. The Putrescent Dragon Whale didn''t seem to struggle much before being killed. There weren''t even battle energy fluctuations." "So what exactly was that snake monster''s ability level then?" Liu Fu did not think about running away just yet. Instead, he analyzed the Shackle Serpent''s ability. The reason being was that monsters usually fought over territory. Since the Putrescent Dragon Whale was killed, it meant that this area had become the snake monster''s territory. Liu Fu thought the snake monster would most probably occupy this area for a long time. The chances of him escaping might be even slimmer now. The Shackle Serpent returned to Lin Huang after it completed the assigned task. Lin Huang noticed that Liu Fu did not seize the opportunity to run. He shook his head helplessly. He guessed that Liu Fu might not know that the Shackle Serpent had already left the area, and that his crisis had been lifted. After all, he dared not spread Divine Telekinesis to probe. However, Lin Huang did not want to tell him that. He had already done what he had to do. Liu Fu would have to depend on himself now. He only hoped that Liu Fu would find out about it soon before other sea monsters came to occupy the area. After solving Liu Fu''s crisis, Lin Huang and the Enchanted Fairy rode on the Shackle Serpent''s back and began a new round of hunting. There were many monsters in this sea. Most of them were undying and spirit species. Although the monster density was lower than the foggy area, the number of monsters in the sea was a few times more than the foggy area. Lin Huang''s hunt came along much easier than before. It was mainly because the sealing power the Shackle Serpent had was useful. Even if the Shackle Serpent could not seal a creature whose number of Dao seals surpassed it completely, it could suppress it using its ability. It worked together with the Enchanted Fairy. It would usually control the monster while she would attack. In water, the Enchanted Fairy''s Moon Power was rather useful too. Each attack came with an extreme freezing effect. The two of them could almost kill the enemies that had mastered some 40,000 Dao seals or so instantly when they worked together. This meant that Lin Huang''s hunting rate only dropped by less than 10%. He did not have to fight most of the monsters at all. The Shackle Serpent''s sealing power was indeed useful. Most of the battles ended before any energy fluctuations were leaked. Within a day of entering the sea, Lin Huang and the other two had killed over 1,800 monsters; most of these monsters had mastered between 10,000 to 40,000 Dao seals. Throughout the day, Lin Huang had personally attacked less than 15 times. Apart from finding Liu Fu in the beginning, Lin Huang had also seen a few more explorers in the sea. One of them was Royalty. He chose to avoid them decisively. He would just hunt while keeping a low profile.. It was unnecessary for him to interact with those people. Chapter 1756 - Good Friends Whose Fate Clashed For the next two days, Lin Huang stayed in the sea to hunt. He almost forgot about his encounter with the Raider earlier throughout those two days. However, he encountered the tall and short brothers from the Snow Kingdom once again on the third day. They were running away frantically. It was not some sea monster that was chasing after them, but a member from the Snow Kingdom in a white robe just like theirs. Without having to think about it, Lin Huang knew what was happening. As colleagues from the Snow Kingdom, they definitely would not attack members from the same organization, even if they really had a grudge against each other. Clearly, the pursuer should be the same as Lu Yi, a Raider spy. After making sure that there were no other explorers around, Lin Huang put away his two God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls. He put on a mask and a white robe, and appeared in front of the pursuer in a flash, blocking his way. "If I''m not mistaken, you should be a spy for the Raiders, right?" As soon as Lin Huang said that, the pursuer turned around to run immediately. He had not sensed how Lin Huang appeared at all, which proved that Lin Huang''s combat ability was greater than his. Not only that, he exposed his identity directly. Therefore, he chose to run away without hesitation. Even Lin Huang was stunned momentarily. He did not expect that the person would run away so straightforwardly without even fighting back. However, no matter how quick he was, it was impossible that he could run faster than his Divine Telekinesis. A Divine Telekinesis thread tied the man in white robe into a dumpling, sealing his God''s soul, Odyl and Divine Power. Lin Huang then pulled the person toward him. A minor dao-level powerhouse who had mastered some 50,000 Dao seals was like a newly-hatched chick in front of Lin Huang. Lin Huang did not bother to talk to him. He invaded his God''s soul directly to search his memories. That white-robed man''s name was Bai Rong, who was, as expected, a spy that the Raiders planted within the Snow Kingdom. He had the same mission as Lu Yi did, which was to hunt down Club members. However, his hunting strategy was different from Lu Yi''s. He made a list before entering the mystic territory. He listed all of the people who were suspected to be Club members from the seven organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone. There were people from lord-level to minor dao-level. He had also recorded down their information and tallied them with the people he investigated. He would directly skip those who were not on the list. However, if he ran into people on the list, regardless of whether they were Club members or not, he would attack without hesitation. The brothers he attacked were on his list too. Bai Rong was even sure that the two of them were Club members. Therefore, he attacked them without hesitation despite the fact that they were colleagues from the Snow Kingdom. After all, nobody would know that it was him who killed them. Moreover, following the plan, he would escape by faking his death as well. He would not return to the Snow Kingdom. Naturally, that was out of his concern. After reading Bai Rong''s memory, Lin Huang killed him casually and put his corpse away into his storage space. That was the second spy from the Raiders. However, Lin Huang still had no clue as to what the Raiders were really trying to achieve. Going by Bai Rong''s memory, he did not know any more than Lu Yi did. "I''ve run into the Raiders'' spies twice now." Lin Huang frowned lightly. "This shouldn''t be a coincidence at all. It only proves that they have planted many spies." His instinct told him that the Raiders'' goal was definitely not as simple as killing Club members. That was probably just a disguise or facade on the surface for something else. These people definitely had other intentions. It was just that he did not know what those were. Not only that, there was no way for him to find out the Raiders'' mission assignment. Lin Huang knew that there was only one enemy, but he could not do anything about it. That aggravated him greatly. He had almost forgotten about the incident with Lu Yi over the past two to three days. Now that Bai Rong had appeared out of nowhere, his rage was triggered once again. "Since that''s the case, I''ll visit all of the regions. I want to see how many spies you guys have planted!" At the border of the sea, two figures, one tall and one short, finally stopped running. "He seems to have stopped chasing us." The tall one released a ragged breath. "Why do you think Bai Rong wants to kill us?" The short one suddenly asked after a moment of silence. "The two of us have no grudge with him. There''s only one possibility remaining if that''s the case." The tall one clearly understood things now. "Are you saying he''s a Raider?! And he found out about our identities?" The short one reacted instantly. "Do you think there are any other possibilities aside from that?" The tall one asked in reply. "We''re colleagues from the Snow Kingdom. Notwithstanding any grudges which, even if we had bad blood with him, according to the rules, he shouldn''t have attacked us during the mystic territory''s exploration." "So do you think that the guy who attacked us in the foggy area was a Raider too?" The short one suddenly connected the dots to them being attacked a few days ago. "I don''t think we have grudges with anyone among the people participating in the exploration. That man attacked us out of nowhere as well." "That''s possible." The tall one nodded after thinking for a moment. "However, there''s a possibility that he''s purely a lunatic who loves to kill as well. He might have nothing to do with the Raiders at all." "There''s another thing that I find very strange" The short one raised another question. "Why did they give up on killing us? Bai Rong especially, given that he had already discovered our identities. Theoretically, it''s impossible that he would let us live. As long as we survive and get out of here, we''d definitely report him. Not only that, Bai Rong has mastered more than 50,000 Dao seals. If he really came after us, it''s unlikely that we can successfully escape." "I don''t understand that point as well." The tall man shook his head. "Bai Rong definitely wouldn''t let us live. The only reasonable explanation I can think of as to why he didn''t come after us is that something is holding him up." "What about that guy from before? Was he held up too?" The short one asked. "I don''t know." The tall one could not understand the situation either. "I wonder if we''re having a bout of bad luck lately." The short one thought further. "Think about it. We didn''t encounter many monsters in the foggy area, and we were chased after by a lunatic. It''s the same case now that we''re here in the sea as well. We didn''t encounter many monsters and we were chased yet again. Misfortune keeps befalling the both of us since entering this mystic territory." "I''ve always been quite lucky previously. Maybe your bad luck is rubbing off on me," the short one said, feeling annoyed. "Or perhaps we''re not suitable to be in a team, and our fates clash with each other?" The short one suddenly said. The tall man fell into silence momentarily while lowering his head. He seemed to be thinking, after which he spoke again. "I suddenly recalled that we seemed to have encountered many situations when we teamed up for the first time in the ruins when we were at heavenly god-level. We almost died there." "Um I think that happened." The short one recalled and soon nodded. "It wasn''t exactly smooth sailing when we entered other secret zones and ruins a couple of times later either." "If this trend continues, maybe it''s best for us to explore alone," the tall one suggested. "I think that''s a great idea." The short one agreed. They instantly came to an agreement as they locked eyes. Chapter 1757 - An Unexpected Raider Lin Huang stayed for another two days in the sea. This time, he did not clear out all of the monsters. He merely cleared out approximately 80% of the total monster population. However, he did not leave behind any monsters that had mastered over 30,000 Dao seals. Up until now, one-third of the 30-day exploration duration had passed. After crossing the sea, Lin Huang arrived at a mountain range. He came after discovering the auras of even more powerful powerhouses. Through his ocular skills, he found many auras above 50,000 Dao seals in this mountain range. As soon as he arrived at the mountain range, he went into hunting mode. He did not summon his God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls since the monsters here had surpassed their combat abilities. Instead, he disguised himself and began to hunt. He disguised his God Weapon battle armor as a pure white robe. Meanwhile, he wore a golden mask which was transformed from a God Soul Weapon. The two precious treasures were enough to shield him from all probing techniques. He even disguised his attack techniques. He converted the form of his God Weapon flying daggers to sabers. The new identity he gave himself was a white-robed saber cultivator. For the next two days, Lin Huang wandered around the mountain range, looking for the explorers in the region while hunting local monsters. He initially thought that it was an unrealistic plan to actively look for Raiders. It would be difficult for him to detect them if they hid their identities. Moreover, he did not really want to expose his true ability either. However, he could no longer hold back after seeing the Raiders hunting the other members several times without bothering about their identities being exposed at all. Since they had exposed themselves, he would not show mercy, killing them wherever he found them. His plan was to travel through each region and kill as many as he could. ''I don''t care what your plan is. As soon as you expose their identity, you''ve bought your ticket to hell.'' ''Each one I kill is a gain for me.'' ''For those who have great disguises that I can''t identify, you better lay low like a good boy and not create a commotion.'' ''I''ll investigate as much as I can with regards to the Raiders'' plan. However, I won''t force the issue.'' ''My top priority is to kill.'' Lin Huang chose the most overbearing way to handle things. As he was actively looking for Raiders, within a day, he found one in the mountain range. Even he had never expected this person to be a spy. He was Infinite''s minor dao-level leaderAo Yu! Lin Huang had a distinct impression of Ao Yu. As he was Infinite''s minor dao-level leader, Liu Fu had provided a detailed introduction of him before they entered the mystic territory. Not only that, Lin Huang had sensed that Ao Yu had mastered way beyond 80,000 Dao seals that he revealed on the surface before they entered the mystic territory. Instead, he had mastered close to 100,000 Dao seals. He was on the cusp of major dao-level. He was also the one with the most powerful combat ability among all minor dao-level powerhouses from the seven organizations. He had even surpassed Royal''s Old Wang and the Snow Kingdom''s Shang Yang. To be honest, if Lin Huang did not see Ao Yu killing Infinite''s own member with his own eyes, he would not have figured out that Infinite''s leader was a Raider. It proved that Infinite had been infiltrated by the Raiders. Deep in the dense forest in the mountain range, Ao Yu was cleaning up the remaining blood stains. As he was going to put the corpse away into his storage space, he suddenly sensed a figure appearing not far away from him. He lifted his head and looked over immediately with his guard up. He saw a man in white robe and a golden mask on his face. He sensed nothing at all after trying to probe him with Divine Telekinesis. He was fully alert now. "I''ll give you a chance to explain. Why did you kill him?" Ao Yu looked calm and responded anyway as he secretly prepared to attack, "We had some prior grudges and happened to run into each other. I wanted to ignore him initially, but he came after me and couldn''t stop criticizing me. He thought I wouldn''t dare to attack him seeing that we''re in the middle of the exploration, so he used terrible words. I killed him by accident out of rage." "Oh?" Lin Huang raised his brows beneath the mask. "You''re the No. 1 minor dao-level powerhouse in Infinite with the potential to elevate to major dao-level, Ao Yu. Instead of buttering you up, someone is so foolish as to make you an enemy? That aside, instead of avoiding you, he even came after you to criticize you after entering the mystic territory?" "Should I call this person an idiot, or you who made up the story an idiot?" In reality, Lin Huang saw everything that happened. The Infinite member who was killed had just killed a monster and was about to leave. Ao Yu showed himself when he noticed him and greeted him passionately before attacking the member out of the blue. The deceased had never said anything terrible throughout the entire thing. He was even quite respectful toward Ao Yu. Ao Yu frowned lightly as he realized that he had failed to fool Lin Huang. He guessed that Lin Huang must have seen the whole thing unfold. However, he was still unwilling to tell the truth. "I''m telling the truth. It''s up to you whether you want to believe it or not." "I think something''s wrong with you as well. You''re wearing a mask to hide yourself. If you''ve got nothing to hide, take off your mask and talk to me," Ao Yu retorted. "Your capability to distort the truth is more powerful than your actual ability." Lin Huang laughed. "If nothing''s wrong with you, why are you wearing a mask instead of showing your true colors? If you don''t take off your mask, I can''t help but suspect that you''re a spy that another organization has planted in the Eastern Eight Zone," Ao Yu continued to accuse Lin Huang. He insisted that something was wrong with Lin Huang as he was actually worried that there were major dao-level powerhouses watching in secret. "Why don''t you directly say that I''m a spy the Raiders have planted?" Lin Huang exposed his identity while smiling. "Are you worried that if someone found out, they would be alerted of the Raiders'' mission this time?" What Lin Huang said almost made Ao Yu break his character. His pupils constricted, and he even fell into a daze momentarily, causing him to fail to retort directly. Indeed, he did not expect Lin Huang to know about the Raiders'' plan. He was startled by that. However, he responded immediately, "Do you think you can distract me and escape suspicion by spewing nonsense?" Meanwhile, he was thinking to himself, ''This guy must''ve found out something. He definitely can''t be allowed to live!'' "I have my suspicions now that the Dao seal you''re most proficient in is the mouth escape method." Lin Huang was getting more impressed by his ability to distort the truth. Though Ao Yu did not really understand what "mouth escape method" meant, he knew that Lin Huang was definitely mocking him. "Alright, I don''t want to talk further with you. I''ll reach the same result by killing you and reading your memories." Lin Huang did not bother to talk further with him seeing that he was going to speak even more nonsense. The God Weapon flying daggers consolidated into a million golden saber gleams in front of him instantly. As he did not want to expose his identity, not only did Lin Huang disguise himself as a saber cultivator, he even intentionally disguised the color of his Odyl and Divine Power. "You''re a saber cultivator?!" Ao Yu looked serious now. Chapter 1758 - Killing Ao Yu Not many people could see through Lin Huang''s saber cultivator disguise. One of the reasons was indeed that not many saber cultivators used telekinetic weapons like he did. Another more important reason was that Lin Huang had truly mastered thousands of Saber seals. They were consolidated from the unlocked god sequence chains in the Kingdom in his body. Most of the god sequence chains in his Kingdom came from his refining of other Lords'' Kingdoms. Meanwhile, it was impossible for most powerhouses who had cultivated to lord-level and dao-level to not have touched Saber Dao at all, even if they were not legitimate saber cultivators. After all, there were quite a few low-level powerhouses below lord-level who cultivated Saber Dao. Many people had to turn to another direction later as they were lacking in talent. Therefore, there were many Saber Dao heavenly rules in the Kingdoms he refined. There were more than onefold compared to that of Sword Dao. Lin Huang did not cultivate Saber Dao on purpose. It was just that there happened to be many Saber Dao heavenly rules in the god sequence chains he unlocked. He thought he would conveniently analyze them and consolidate them into Saber seals. As time went by, he consolidated quite a number of them, almost 1,000 Saber seals. Apart from that, the Saber seals that were refined in his Kingdom were close to 100,000. Therefore, when he attacked with saber gleams and Saber seals, nobody would doubt his identity as a saber cultivator. Judging by Lin Huang''s saber cultivator attack and the terrifying suppression of his aura, he was clearly a major dao-level powerhouse. Ao Yu instantly realized that was not his match. Names were flashing through his head quickly as he tried to identify him. There were only 21 major dao-level powerhouses from the Eastern Eight Zone who entered the mystic territory this time. There were only four saber cultivators among them. They were White Brow from the Longevity Tribe, Han Zhongjun from the Snow Kingdom, Xing Wuchen from Star Cluster and Jian Xin from Infinite. He considered himself quite close with Jian Xin, so he was sure that Lin Huang was not Jian Xin. Apart from Jian Xin, Ao Yu had never seen the other three fight. However, he had heard of their stories. Judging from the stories that he had heard alone, this man in the white robe and mask before him did not seem to be one of those three people. However, since Lin Huang had put on a mask to avoid exposing his identity, he must have disguised his saber techniques as well. "Are you White Brow, Han Zhongjun or Xing Wuchen?!" Ao Yu shouted instantly as he watched the saber gleams arriving in front of him. Naturally, he did not remain idle. He activated his precious treasure armor that sparkled with Dao seals instantly. The precious treasure wings on his back had six wings opened. They flapped frantically and, together with the spiritual treasure battle boots on his feet, he dodged the attacks over and over again. Lin Huang was envious of his equipment. ''This guy is loaded!'' What Lin Huang had no idea about was that Ao Yu had not purchased the precious treasure wings. If one were to really purchase a wing-type precious treasure, its price would be at least tenfold that of a weapon or defensive precious treasure. Even regular major dao-level powerhouses might not be able to afford that. Ao Yu specifically borrowed it from Infinite''s treasury this time. He said he wanted to prevent himself from being attacked by major dao-level powerhouses in the mystic territory. In reality, he was ready to escape by faking his death. He did not have the intention to return the item that he borrowed at all. With the support of both precious treasures and spiritual treasures, Ao Yu''s body was as slippery as a loach. The saber gleams poured down like rain, but he dodged them though each was a close call. Even if he encountered attacks that he could not dodge at all, he would disperse them by using a water element technique to cover his precious treasure wings and block the remaining attacks by covering his precious treasure armor with a layer of ice. The Odyl that actually penetrated his body was less than one percent of the full attack. Surprisingly, he did not suffer any substantive harm from the attack. This was outside of Lin Huang''s expectations. Although he did not use all of this strength in the attack, he speculated that it should have been enough to kill Ao Yu instantly. He did not expect that this would happen. "This guy has some great tricks up his sleeve" Even Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. To prevent exposing his identity, he did not use the Dao seals that he consolidated, nor did he activate his Divine Telekinesis or the Critical Hit Hammer''s critical hit effect. Instead, he used the 120,000 Dao seals in the Kingdom in his body and attacked with a saber technique. However, the standard of the attack was truly a legitimate major dao-level attack. Nevertheless, Ao Yu was not hurt by the attack. Lin Huang knew that, apart from Ao Yu''s exquisite movements, he was actually the one to blame. The reason being was that he had almost never used saber techniques in the past. Naturally, it was not as handy as using Divine Telekinesis, nor was it as smooth as controlling Divine Telekinesis. However, it was also true that he had underestimated his opponent. In reality, Ao Yu was a little surprised that he was not killed by that first attack. Nevertheless, he did not have the mentality that he would escape death by relying on luck again this time. The attack earlier was sufficient proof that Lin Huang was a major dao-level powerhouse. He managed to escape death by relying on the set of precious treasure wings that he had just obtained. On the other hand, Lin Huang might not have performed the skills that he was most proficient in to conceal his identity. In reality, there were a couple of times that he thought he might be hurt if Lin Huang''s attacks deviated by merely a few centimeters from their initial trajectory. It would have been impossible for him to dodge them so easily in that case. After confirming that the opponent was a major dao-level powerhouse, Ao Yu turned around to run away without hesitation. He pushed his precious treasure wings to their maximum speed and escaped toward the distance. He knew that he was still alive because Lin Huang was reckless. If he did not run now, he would definitely be killed by the second round of attacks. A ferocious gleam flashed through Lin Huang''s eyes when he saw Ao Yu running away. The number of saber gleams in front of him began to increase. Within a blink of an eye, they increased to ten million saber gleams. Meanwhile, the number of Dao seals he borrowed from his Kingdom increased to 200,000. Countless saber gleams shot at Ao Yu, who was running away at speed at least tenfold that of when he was dodging the first round of attacks. Lin Huang still refrained from using Divine Telekinesis in this attack. Instead, he borrowed Dao seals from his Kingdom. However, regardless of whether it was the number of Dao seals, saber gleams or attack speed, they were on a higher level compared to the first attack. As soon as the saber gleams were shot out, Ao Yu could clearly sense numerous fatal threats coming from his rear. He dared not turn his head around. Instead, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis quickly behind him to sense the energy fluctuations from the saber gleams. He knew that he was doomed. Even if he was hit by one the saber gleams, he would be killed instantly. Dispersing the attack? Dodging the attack? It was impossible. In the presence of absolute power, his skills were useless. "Have mercy, senior!" Ao Yu could not help but shriek in terror as he watched the endless saber gleams engulf him. The only way to survive now was if the opponent showed mercy. Naturally, Lin Huang would not show sympathy. He could only read his memories after killing him. Ao Yu''s authority in the Raiders might be higher than the two people from before. He might know more of the Raiders'' secrets. Right before Ao Yu was going to be swallowed up by the saber gleams, the endless saber gleams suddenly vanished completely, as if they had been engulfed by darkness. Almost at the same time, a figure appeared before Ao Yu Chapter 1759 - Red-haired Lady It was a lady whose red hair reached her waist. She had a cold expression on her face. Lin Huang could not help but frown under his golden mask. Naturally, he recognized this lady. Liu Fu had mentioned before that her name was Xia Bing. She was a rogue cultivator who had only joined Star Cluster during the past hundred or so years. The reason why Lin Huang had a distinct impression on her was that, among the 21 major dao-level powerhouses who entered the mystic territory this time, this lady''s ability could definitely rank within the top two. White Brow from the Longevity Tribe and her were the only two people who he could sense a threat from. Now that Xia Bing had suddenly appeared here, he could not help but suspect that she was on the same side as Ao Yu. After all, she was from Star Cluster, while Ao Yu was from Infinite. Theoretically, they should not be in contact at all. However, now that Ao Yu was in danger, she was the first one to come to his rescue. It made Lin Huang suspect her identity. "What are you doing?" Xia Bing stared fixedly at Lin Huang. Her tone was cold. Just when Lin Huang was thinking about how to respond to that question before he could confirm her identity, Ao Yu answered instead. "Senior Xia, there''s a high chance that this person is the Raiders'' spy. He put on a mask intentionally to hide his identity and then attacked me for no reason. If not for the fact that he''s not using the battle techniques that he''s proficient in, as he''s worried about exposing his identity, he might''ve already killed me." As soon as Ao Yu said those words, the way Xia Bing looked at Lin Huang turned more and more unkind. What he said made Lin Huang even more confused about Xia Bing''s identity. On one hand, if she was also a Raider, what Ao Yu said was basically telling her that Lin Huang had discovered the Raiders'' plan and he was getting her to kill Lin Huang. On the other hand, if Xia Bing was not a Raider, Ao Yu was making him a scapegoat in an attempt to mislead her intentionally to generate conflict between him and Xia Bing. "You can really distort the truth to suit your purpose." "If you say that he''s distorting the truth, I''ll give you a chance to explain then," Xia Bing spoke while frowning. "However, if I''m not happy with your explanation, I can only treat you as a spy and act accordingly." "Don''t give him a chance to defend himself!" Ao Yu instantly shouted as he stood aside. Xia Bing merely glanced at him and ignored him. In reality, before confirming her identity, Lin Huang was unwilling to fight her. It was not that he was worried that he would not be her match, but rather that he would have to expose his true ability if they really ended up fighting. He would most probably have to reveal his Sword Dao and Divine Telekinesis techniques. Moreover, given their abilities, the energy fluctuations caused by the battle would definitely be felt even far away. It would definitely attract the probing of ill-intentioned people. Meanwhile, such probing would mean that there would be a high chance that the Raiders would find him after the mystic territory exploration ended. Discovering the threat that his ability elevation speed posed, he was almost sure that the Raiders would send powerhouses beyond dao-level to kill him as soon as they locked on to him. Lin Huang nodded anyway as hundreds of thoughts flashed through his mind. "I chased after him because I saw him killing an Infinite colleague with my very own eyes. I didn''t attack him for no reason. Instead, I questioned him. I only attacked him after confirming that he''s a spy that the Raiders planted in Infinite." "Nonsense! Don''t believe him, Senior Xia! He''s framing me because I exposed his identity," Ao Yu retorted immediately. He soon pinpointed Lin Huang''s weakness. "If he''s not a spy, why is he wearing a mask to conceal his aura, not daring to show his real face?!" "Explain your mask," Xia Bing said. "I wear a mask because I have some grudges with the Raiders in the past. I think I''m most probably on their blacklist now. I don''t want to be targeted by them again because of this exploration. They''ll send individuals above dao-level to come after me," Lin Huang explained casually. "I''m suspicious of your identity too, and I hope that you can explain yourself. How can a Star Cluster member like you get here so quickly when an Infinite member is in danger? I have reason to suspect that you''re his accomplice." "Let me answer your question." Xia Bing slowed down her tone. "My goal in entering the mystic territory this time is to investigate the Raiders'' plan. In order to prevent Raiders from causing too much of a harm during this mission, I left an imprint on a couple of minor dao-level powerhouses I targeted." "I can sense them as soon as there''s odd fluctuations in the Odyl in their bodies, as well as locate their coordinates." "That''s why I came here immediately as soon as something went wrong with him." Indeed, Lin Huang could not find any flaws in Xia Bing''s explanation. "Now, I have a question for the both of you." Xia Bing looked at Lin Huang and Ao Yu as she spoke. "What proof do you guys have to show that the other is a Raiders'' spy?" Clearly, she did not believe either Lin Huang or Ao Yu entirely. Ao Yu was stunned when he heard the question. He indeed did not have proof to show that Lin Huang was a spy. However, he was much more relaxed as he thought that Lin Huang also did not seem to have any proof that he was a spy as well. However, what Lin Huang said next made his heart race. "If you want proof, I secretly recorded a video when I questioned him. Although he did not directly admit to being a spy in the video, it''s enough to prove that he was lying when he told you that I attacked him for no reason." Lin Huang projected the video that he had recorded not long ago as he spoke. However, he remained on guard against Xia Bing throughout the entire thing. Very soon, the video started to play. The beginning of the video displayed the scene of Ao Yu cleaning up the blood stains on the ground and preparing to put away the corpse. Although there was blood on the corpse''s mouth and nose, his face could be seen clearly. A major dao-level powerhouse could recall a person''s face from their memory just by taking a glance. This person was an Infinite member. Ao Yu''s face turned pale when he saw that. Lin Huang began his questioning in the scene after that. He asked Ao Yu why he had killed his colleague from Infinite. The lie Ao Yu made up was pretty poor. Later on, when the term "the Raiders'' spy" was mentioned, panic clearly appeared on Ao Yu''s face for a second. Although he disguised it well at that time, whereby he concealed his panic instantly, Lin Huang paused the video on his panicked expression directly. After watching the video to this point, Xia Bing seemed to think that it was unnecessary to continue watching. She turned her head and looked at Ao Yu directly. Her eyes were cold. "So do you have anything to say for yourself now?" Lin Huang too looked at Ao Yu while smiling.. "I''d like to see how you are going to distort the truth again." Chapter 1760 - Strange Lin Huang and Xia Bing took turns to read Ao Yu''s memories. They killed him after confirming his identity as a Raiders'' spy. "Let me handle the corpse," Xia Bing suggested. "To be honest, I don''t trust you," Lin Huang said directly, "Until now, you still can''t prove that you''re not a Raiders'' spy. If I give the corpse to you, you might destroy it without a trace, causing future investigation to become even more difficult." "If I''m really a Raiders'' spy, there''s no need for me to put up an act like this with a junior who has the potential to achieve major dao-level. I can totally silence you directly," Xia Bing said as she felt helpless. Lin Huang thought about it and realized Xia Bing did not seem to be aware of his true ability. After all, he had only used 200,000 Dao seals in the attack he targeted Ao Yu with. Meanwhile, the red-haired lady before him had mastered at least 800,000 Dao seals. Even among major dao-level powerhouses, she absolutely ranked at the top. She could totally silence him judging by the level of ability that he had revealed. "Moreover, for a guy who is still unwilling to show his real face until now, it''s considered great that I didn''t suspect your identity." "It doesn''t matter whether I wear a mask or not. The video from before proves that I''m not from the Raiders," Lin Huang said while staring at Xia Bing. "Speaking of the video you recorded, I''m still a little suspicious," Xia Bing said directly, "In the video, why were you so sure that Ao Yu was a Raiders'' spy instead of some spy from another organization?" "Because he was the third Raider I encountered. I''ve killed two others before him," Lin Huang explained without hesitation, "To be honest, I have two other videos. I recorded them when I killed the other two Raiders. "They include the entire process of me interrogating them under hypnosis. They admitted that they were Raiders when they were hypnotized." "If you can prove that you''re not a Raider, I can show you the two videos." Lin Huang insisted on confirming her identity. Xia Bing nodded slightly after hearing that. She only spoke again after falling into silence and thinking about it for a moment. "I can give you the proof, but you must send me those two videos." "Sure," Lin Huang agreed to that immediately while nodding. "These are the few Raiders that I ran into in the mystic territory over the past few days." Xia Bing took out a memory crystal from her storage space and tossed it at Lin Huang. "Check it yourself." Lin Huang sent a wisp of consciousness inside. However, he kept his guard up against Xia Bing. After spending a couple of minutes looking through it, Lin Huang frowned lightly as he retrieved his consciousness. The memory crystal stored the images of four minor dao-level powerhouses. Without a doubt, the four of them were spies that the Raiders had planted in the seven organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone. "As I''ve left an imprint on those geniuses, I''ll sense it as soon as something odd happens to them. Throughout these ten days, my senses have activated five times in total." "Apart from you chasing after Ao Yu this time, the other four times people were being chased after by the Raiders too. Among those four, I''ve only managed to save three, and I failed to save one in time. However, I killed the four Raiders, as well as read their memories." "Did you already discover that something''s off with the people among the explorers this time before coming into the mystic territory?" Lin Huang''s question was rather sharp. Xia Bing left imprints on some people in advance before entering the mystic territory. She had clearly foreseen that something would happen during the mystic territory exploration this time. "That''s right." Xia Bing nodded and continued to explain, "Throughout these recent years, apart from the Eastern Eight Zone, the frequency of mystic territories appearing in the entire universe has increased. Not only that, there are some zones that are fighting against each other due to the conflict that took place during the mystic territory exploration." "A small number of people noticed that there were people quietly adding fuel to the flames, but no one could show any evidence." "Throughout these recent three years, this is the fourth time we''ve had a mystic territory opening in the Eastern Eight Zone. The previous three were the reappearance of mystic territories that had been explored before. As everyone has designated regions they''re responsible for, nothing much happened throughout those three exploration quests. However, this time is slightly different, as this is an exploration of a brand new mystic territory." "Almost all of the conflicts that occurred in the few regions happened during new explorations." "Before the mystic territory opened this time, we speculated that there''s a high chance that something would go wrong." "If that''s the case, apart from your Star Cluster, the rest of the organizations should''ve come prepared." Lin Huang figured that it would be impossible for Star Cluster to be the only one who possessed this information. "Yes, theoretically they are, but we can''t rule out that there are higher-ups of some organizations that aren''t as sensitive and didn''t really do anything about the information. Moreover, we have no idea as to what arrangements the other organizations made." Xia Bing nodded. "Take a look at the videos I recorded then." Lin Huang thought for a moment and projected the two videos that he recorded previously. As there was no network in the mystic territory, he could not send the videos to her at the moment, so they could only watch it on the spot. The two videos finished playing soon, after which Xia Bing reminded him, "Send them to me when you get out of here." "Don''t worry. I won''t go back on my words since I''ve given you my promise." Lin Huang nodded. "Is that all that you''ve discovered so far? Do you have more about their plans for the exploration this time from reading their memories?" Xia Bing continued asking. "That''s all I have. The content I obtained from reading their memories is basically identical to the information I managed to get from hypnotization." Feeling helpless, Lin Huang shook his head. "Their authorization level is low. They don''t know what the real plan is. Including Ao Yu. He doesn''t know any more than what the other two knew." "Ao Yu is already reaching the major dao-level. Therefore, I suspect that there are definitely major dao-level powerhouses among the Raiders'' spies that are participating in the exploration this time!" Lin Huang speculated. "What about you? Did you find anything that''s different from my discovery?" Lin Huang continued asking. "The four Raiders I killed are at minor dao-level, and what they know is the same as the memories you retrieved. They don''t know the full mission." "But connecting the dots from the explorations in other zones, I suspect their main goal is to create conflicts by seizing opportunities during the exploration this time, breaking the seven organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone apart," Xia Bing informed him of her speculation. However, Lin Huang frowned lightly and voiced his opinion, "I don''t think it''s that simple. They can totally achieve that by using more secrecy if their goal is purely to create conflict. They could''ve done it without leaving any traces like they did in the other zones. However, this time, we discovered the Raiders'' actions rather easily." "To be honest, I thought it to be rather strange as well." "Now that you''ve mentioned it, I suddenly feel that this isn''t the same style as their previous interferences in the other zones," Xia Bing could not help but agree after hearing his words. Chapter 1761 - Abyssal Zone After exchanging information, Lin Huang and Xia Bing still did not come to an accurate conclusion despite spending some time discussing. They could only speculate that the Raiders had a very clear goal of creating conflicts, seizing the exploration opportunity this time to stir up trouble. They wanted to break up the major organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone. The two of them could not really figure out why their actions were so radical this time. "So what do you plan to do next?" Xia Bing asked. "What else? I''ll continue to hunt and conveniently kill Raiders if I run into them," Lin Huang answered directly without even thinking about it. "Do you want to team up with me to conduct a follow-up investigation?" Xia Bing suddenly invited him. Lin Huang was momentarily stunned, after which he subsequently realized the reason why she invited him. Although there was a gap between his ability and Xia Bing''s on the surface, no matter what, the combat strength he revealed indicated that he was a minor dao-level powerhouse who had mastered 200,000 Dao seals. Moreover, Xia Bing had confirmed that he had nothing to do with the Raiders. Who would not be happy to have a major dao-level teammate? Nevertheless, Lin Huang rejected her directly without even giving it a thought. "I''ve gotten used to working alone. Furthermore, given your ability, I''d only slow you down if we run into trouble." Naturally, he rejected her not because he had a lower level of ability, but because he thought that such an arrangement was inconvenient. If he teamed up with Xia Bing, she would be watching each and every movement of his. The risk of him exposing his identity would undoubtedly be higher. Even though he had confirmed that she was not one of the Raiders, he did not know too much about her. He was unwilling to expose his true identity and ability to her. "I thought that the efficiency of the investigation would be higher if there was one more person. Indeed, I didn''t take what you said into consideration," Xia Bing agreed to what Lin Huang said after giving it some careful thought, "Let''s work separately then." "You can contact me if you run into any trouble." Xia Bing took out a jade charm that was the size of a thumb and handed it to Lin Huang as she spoke, "This is a voice transmission charm that I made. You can leave a message by using your Divine Telekinesis on it." "Thanks." Lin Huang took the jade charm and probed it with Divine Telekinesis right in front of her. He only put it away after making sure that nothing was wrong with it. Xia Bing did not say much when she saw that. On the contrary, she did not find his actions strange at all. After all, even if Lin Huang had confirmed that she was not a Raiders'' spy, he did not let his guard down and remove his mask. "Alright then. Bye," Xia Bing said with a smile, "I hope when I see you again, you''ll have your mask removed." Lin Huang understood the underlying meaning behind her blessing"I hope that you''ll still be alive when I see you again. Not only that, I hope that you will have solved your crisis by then and no longer need to hide your identity." "Thanks." Lin Huang nodded lightly. He added a few words when he saw Xia Bing was getting up to leave, "You can contact me too if you encounter something that you can''t solve in the future." Xia Bing smiled, but responded anyway, "I''ll remember what you said." She vanished as soon as she was done speaking. Lin Huang knew that she definitely did not take his final words seriously. After all, it would be a long journey for one to get from mastering 200,000 Dao seals to 800,000 Dao seals. It was not a gap that one could catch up to within a short period of time. Under normal circumstances, no matter how talented a person was, one would spend at least tens of years to consolidate a single Dao seal. The gap of hundreds of thousands of Dao seals would require at least millions of years or even tens of millions of years to catch up. Naturally, Lin Huang did not care about what Xia Bing thought. No matter what, he had already said what he should. He did not stay where he was after watching Xia Bing leave. Instead, he went back into hunting mode immediately and began a new round of hunting. Over the next two days, Lin Huang killed over 3,000 monsters that had mastered 60,000 to 80,000 Dao seals. He killed all the monsters that had mastered more than 60,000 Dao seals before heading off to the next zone. It was a bottomless abyss deep in the mountain range. Lin Huang could sense the auras of many major dao-level monsters clearly as he stood at the entrance of the abyss. This should be the core zone of the entire mystic territoryThe abyssal zone. Most of the major dao-level powerhouses like Xia Bing should have been teleported here directly when they entered the mystic territory. Lin Huang did not hesitate at all, leaping inside instantly. Very soon, he landed in the first level of the abyssal zone. The first level was the shallowest. Most of the monsters distributed here were minor dao-level monsters that had mastered more than 80,000 Dao seals, and there were also a small number of major dao-level monsters around. However, basically all of them had just been elevated not too long ago. The God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls were completely useless in such a place. Lin Huang could only depend on himself. Even if ten God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls with 30,000 Dao seals were to attack together, any of the monsters here would kill them instantly. As Lin Huang stepped into the abyssal zone, he sensed a strange energy field in here that could cause a certain level of encumbrance and suppression on one''s physical body and God''s soul. Although it would not seal one''s Divine Telekinesis completely like in the foggy area, he could sense clearly that his Divine Telekinesis'' probing distance had been reduced significantly. He even suspected that if a minor dao-level powerhouse came here, they might be able to visually see further than their Divine Telekinesis could extend. Nevertheless, that made sense to Lin Huang. He had used his probing technique in a place like that foggy area, in which Divine Telekinesis was sealed completely, and managed to hunt as he pleased, so this place would be no different. Without hesitation, he activated the long-distance ocular skill again and soon gained a rough understanding of the hundreds of thousands kilometers surrounding him. The first level of the abyssal zone was much vaster than he expected. He had yet to probe to the very end of the place despite probing a radius of hundreds of thousands kilometers. Not only that, the number of monsters were much more plentiful than what he speculated. Lin Huang found thousands of monsters within his probing range using the long-distance ocular skill that had just been activated. Most of them were at minor dao-level with 80,000 to 100,000 Dao seals. There were also two at major dao-level that had just been elevated not too long ago. They had less than 120,000 Dao seals. He also discovered three explorers. They were minor dao-level powerhouses who had mastered more than 80,000 Dao seals. There was even one person that he was familiar withHe Nanzhi from Royal. Lin Huang was not surprised to see Old He. Before entering the mystic territory, he had sensed He Nanzhi''s ability. He had mastered approximately 95,000 Dao seals. It made sense that he was teleported here. Although he did not have any ill feelings toward his colleague Old He, he marked him just like how he did the other two explorers, with the ocular skill, observing their movements at all times. After all, he could not completely rule out the possibility that He Nanzhi was a Raiders'' spy. After leaving ocular skill marks on the three of them quietly, Lin Huang officially began a new round of hunting. Chapter 1762 - Wang Xuanan’s Last Chance Time flew by and another three days passed. Only half of the 30-day exploration period remained. Lin Huang spent three days exploring the entire first level of the abyssal zone. He killed over 3,000 monsters. In reality, he was not focused on hunting monsters this time. Instead, he was focused more on probing explorers. He was only conveniently killing local monsters while doing that. He had explored every corner of the first level of the abyssal zone throughout these three days. He had found a total of nine minor dao-level explorers. They were basically the leaders of most of the minor dao-level powerhouses. Initially, Lin Huang thought that Old Wang from Royal would be on this level too. However, he did not find him throughout his period of exploration. Although he was not sure if they were skilled at concealing themselves or that none of those nine were the Raiders'' spies, Lin Huang thought it was unnecessary for him to continue wasting time here after the fruitless three-day observation period. Before dawn on the fourth day, he headed over to the second level of the abyssal zone. As soon as he entered, he activated his long-distance ocular skill again and probed his surroundings. The result was similar to what he expected. All of the monsters on this level had the combat strength of major dao-level powerhouses. The number of Dao seals they had mastered was basically between 100,000 to 200,000. Lin Huang chose a direction casually and began planning his hunting and probing route. He killed over 1,200 monsters on the first day. He had also discovered four explorers. They were the major dao-level powerhouses from the seven organizations. On the second day, he killed over 1,300 monsters. He discovered five more explorers. Among them, four of them were at major dao-level. The fifth person was the leader of Snow Kingdom''s minor dao-level powerhouses, Shang Yang. On the third day, Lin Huang had explored the entire second level and killed over 1,100 monsters. He discovered another four explorers. Among the four of them, the only minor dao-level powerhouse was a person he was familiar withWang Xuanan from Royal. Lin Huang thought that it made sense for Old Wang and Shang Yang to be here. The two of them actually were already halfway into major dao-level. Lin Huang could sense that the number of Dao seals the two of them mastered was not the rumored 100,000. Instead, they had reached the limit of minor dao-level, 180,000 Dao seals. They were at the edge of a breakthrough. They were only one step away from breaking the threshold and achieving major dao-level. Their objective of coming to this level was clear. They wanted to force themselves to break through by immersing themselves amidst the pressure of the major dao-level monsters here. Since they had insufficient potential, they wanted to squeeze out all of their potential through a life-and-death crisis. Though it was dangerous, it was theoretically possible. In reality, since the beginning of time, there were many people who had indeed forced themselves to achieve something impossible through this method. Lin Huang disagreed with Old Wang''s actions, but he understood why he did so. He also knew that, for some reason, Old Wang was close to the end of his life. If he did not break through to major dao-level, he would die soon. To him, the opening of the mystic territory this time was undoubtedly a chance to fight for his life. He could only wait for death if he did not fight for his life. He chose to go all out without hesitation. Meanwhile, Shang Yang''s condition was much better than Old Wang. He should still have the time and the chance to break through. Perhaps he thought it was a great opportunity when the mystic territory opened this time and wanted to seize the opportunity to try breaking through. Naturally, it would be good news if he made it. If not, he would try again next time. Lin Huang roughly speculated that Old Wang was here this time with the intention of confronting the danger of death himself and fighting to live, while Shang Yang most probably had the mentality of testing himself. He admired their courage. However, Lin Huang did not exclude the two of them from his ocular skill marking this time. Instead, he marked all 13 explorers. Three days soon passed by. None of the 13 did anything out of the ordinary. Lin Huang thought for a long time and decided to stay for another day to observe. There were plentiful monsters in this level anyway. There was no need for him to rush to the next level. Throughout these three days, he focused more on Old Wang. It was not that he suspected that something was going on with him, but rather that he was the clumsiest among the 13 explorers. Throughout the three days, Old Wang challenged over ten monsters, but failed to kill all of them. Lin Huang could tell that he specialized in ocular skills. Compared to that, his close combat ability and long distance attack ability were really mediocre. Lin Huang became nervous whenever he watched. His ocular skill was indeed powerful. He could even temporarily control monsters that had just been elevated to major dao-level to make them fall into an illusion when he was only at minor dao-level. The thing was that the strength of his God''s soul was insufficient. Each control attempt could only last for a short moment. His ocular skill attack could wound major dao-level monsters too. However, due to the restriction of the strength of his God''s soul, the harm done to those monsters was rather minimal. This caused the major dao-level monsters that he challenged to struggle free of his illusion in the end and chase after him. Fortunately, he could use his illusion to control those monsters again and escape in one piece. "His ocular skill inheritance is actually pretty powerful. It''s a pity that it''s restricted due to his innate talent and potential," Lin Huang could not help but exclaim after observing him for three days. However, throughout these three days of observation, he now admired Old Wang. This old man really would not give up. His hair would be disheveled from being chased after by monsters. Nevertheless, he would only catch his breath for a little bit after escaping and then begin his next search for prey instantly. He had powerful ocular skill probing ability that allowed him to accurately avoid all the monsters that had mastered over 120,000 Dao seals. He could also locate monsters with less than 120,000 Dao seals that were closest to him accurately. Even if he was being chased after by monsters, he always successfully controlled them in the end and escaped. Throughout these three days, Lin Huang could truly feel Old Wang''s desire to achieve major dao-level to prolong his life. At approximately 2 am on the fourth day, Wang Xuanan locked onto a monster that was within his hunting parameters again. He adjusted his condition a little bit and headed over to the route that he had planned immediately. He was elated when he saw the monster with his ocular skill. It was an Autarch. Autarchs were monsters with powerful physical bodies. They were proficient in close combat and did not like defense. However, they had a weakness, whereby they had frail God''s souls. They might be killed instantly if they ran into an opponent with a powerful God''s soul. Meanwhile, most of Wang Xuanan''s ocular skills were activated using his God''s soul. Therefore, he had the most confidence in this hunt compared to any of the prior hunts. He even had the feeling that he might be able to break through to major dao-level at once after this hunt was successful. However, what he did not know was that Lin Huang, who was millions of kilometers away, was frowning lightly at the moment. Chapter 1763 - He Died Just Like That? Lin Huang frowned because he found out that, at the same time Old Wang locked onto his target prey, there was another person who was targeting the same monster too. This person was not a stranger to Lin Huang. He was a major dao-level powerhouse from RoyalYan Jun! Before entering the mystic territory, Liu Fu specially gave a detailed introduction on the three major dao-level powerhouses from Royal. Yan Jun was a combat cultivator, as well as an Element Master of the fire element. To be honest, apart from being slightly interested in the fact that he was a combat cultivator, Lin Huang did not have much of an impression of him. The reason being was that he was the weakest among the major dao-level explorers from Royal. Judging by the strength of his aura, he had only mastered some 300,000 Dao seals. He had not mastered more than 350,000 Dao seals. Such combat ability was not within Lin Huang''s range of consideration at all. In reality, he found it rather strange seeing Yan Jun on this level. Apart from himself, Yan Jun was the only person on the second level who had more than 250,000 Dao seals. Not only was he the only one among the explorers, he was the only one after including all of the monsters on this level. Theoretically, with his ability, there was a higher chance that he would have been teleported to the third level instead of the current second level. Lin Huang did not know if he was teleported to this level by accident or if he had come here on his own. If he was teleported to this level by accident, it would have made more sense if he had gotten to the third level much earlier instead. There was no need for him to stay on this level for this half a month period at all. If he came here on his own, that in itself proved that something was up with this guy. However, throughout the three-day observation, Lin Huang indeed did not find anything off about him. He decided to stay one more day on this level because he wanted to watch this guy a little longer. Never had he thought that he would see such a scene before dawn. As Lin Huang had many thoughts flying through his mind, Wang Xuanan reached the Autarch first. He activated his ocular skill at once without hesitation. As expected, the Autarch fell into his illusion. While the Autarch was still struggling in Wang Xuanan''s illusion, Yan Jun arrived. In reality, he had sensed Wang Xuanan''s presence when he was still far away. However, he chose to approach him sneakily. He did not show himself while watching Wang Xuanan and the Autarch. Instead, he hid to the side and observed the battle in silence. Time passed as the Autarch was still stuck in the illusion. Wang Xuanan had sweat dripping from his forehead, but he was still holding on. He knew that this might be the only chance for him to kill a major dao-level monster. If he missed this opportunity, he might not have another chance. Meanwhile, Yan Jun, who was still hiding in the dark, did not attack either. He did not fight for the monster with Wang Xuanan, nor did he attack him. Even Lin Huang was quite curious about what exactly he had in mind at the moment. Time went by as another ten minutes passed. The Autarch''s aura suddenly plummeted, and its vitality was fading. There was a light in Wang Xuanan''s eyes, even as his back was drenched in sweat. He knew that he had made it! The moment he recalled his ocular skill and relaxed, a red spark lit up in the sky out of nowhere. It shot toward his head as quickly as lightning. It was too late when Wang Xuanan reacted. He had drained a significant amount of God''s soul energy from his activation of the ocular skill. He was in his weakest state at the moment. He had no strength to handle an attack like this that had come out of nowhere. However, at that moment, he suddenly saw another red gleam shoot over at an even higher speed, crushing the spark completely. Almost at the same time, a figure in white robe appeared before him. "Get out!" As a shout thundered from the golden mask, a figure was forced to show himself clumsily from the red gleam. Wang Xuanan was clearly stunned when he saw the figure. "Senior Yan Jun?!" Yan Jun, who had a head full of red hair looked terrible at the moment. "Explain yourself. Why did you attack your colleague from Royal?" Lin Huang asked in a cold tone. "I didn''t see clearly who he was. I thought that he was an explorer from another organization. I attacked in order to steal his loot." Wang Xuanan seemed to be only half-convinced by the explanation that Yan Jun gave. However, what the white-robed man said next made Yan Jun put his guard up instantly. "Really? You''ve been watching him in the dark for over ten minutes, yet you didn''t recognize that he''s your colleague from Royal?" Sarcasm filled Lin Huang''s tone. "I''ll be honest with you then. I''ve been watching you for four days." Yan Jun looked rather grim. He thought that Lin Huang only happened to run into them just now. Never had he thought he had been watching his movements, and he had not sensed it at all. "Who are you exactly?!" "I''m a person who has a history with the Raiders like you," Lin Huang answered with a smile. "I don''t know what you''re talking about." Panic clearly flashed through Yan Jun''s eyes. Although he concealed it instantly, it did not escape Lin Huang and Wang Xuanan''s eyes. "You''re the Raiders'' spy?!" Wang Xuanan instantly realized his identity. "That''s slander." Yan Jun glared at Wang Xuanan. "Whether it is slander or not, we''ll find out if you let me read your memories," Lin Huang suggested while smiling. "That''s hilarious. Would you dare to allow someone else to read your memory?" Yan Jun scoffed. "I''m not asking for your permission." Countless saber gleams were consolidated in front of Lin Huang as soon as he was done speaking. This time, he activated the 400,000 Dao seals from the Kingdom in his body. Sensing the fluctuation from the Dao seals, Yan Jun turned around to run without hesitation. Facing a saber cultivator who had more Dao seals than he did, he knew that a partial combat cultivator like him did not stand a chance of winning at all. Each of the millions of saber gleams would easily break through his defense. Wang Xuanan widened his eyes too. He could clearly sense the terrifying power within each of the saber gleams. They could kill him easily and instantly. A question appeared in his head right away, ''Who is this saber cultivator senior?!'' There were only 21 major dao-level powerhouses who participated in the exploration this time, and there were only four saber cultivators among them. They were White Brow from the Longevity Tribe, Han Zhongjun from the Snow Kingdom, Xing Wuchen from Star Cluster and Jian Xin from Infinite. Meanwhile, this white-robed man in front of him did not seem to be any of them. As he held his doubts in his mind, Yan Jun''s devastating shriek suddenly echoed over the distance. He was completely drowned in the blood-colored saber gleams that were like a sky full of lightning before he could run very far away. The devastating shriek lasted for less than ten minutes before stopping suddenly. The sky full of blood-colored saber gleams faded completely, revealing a corpse with almost no flesh intact. "Yan Jun died just like that?!" Wang Xuanan found it unbelievable when he saw the corpse. A major dao-level combat cultivator with unparalleled defense was killed by someone so easily. He did not manage to fight back at all throughout the battle. Lin Huang ignored Wang Xuanan''s reaction and arrived next to the corpse in a flash. He grabbed the head and began to read the memories Chapter 1764 - Strange Black Energy Lin Huang grabbed Yan Jun''s head with one hand and read the remaining memories quickly. Skipping through the images of his endless and long growth, he browsed for evidence of him being a Raider and the information related to the mystic territory swiftly. Very soon, he found the portion of information that he was looking for. He began to carefully examine the information. Yan Jun had joined the Raiders a long time ago. He was discovered when he had just been elevated to heavenly god-level, and was invited to join. The reason why he joined the Raiders was simple. He was a regenerated being, and had been at minor dao-level in his past life. He failed to elevate to major dao-level, so he chose to reincarnate to cultivate once again. After the Raiders found him, the first condition they gave was to guarantee that he could definitely elevate to major dao-level. He joined almost without hesitation. After elevating to Lord, he was assigned to enter Royal, and he stayed there until now. Nobody had discovered his spy identity all this while. His mission in entering the mystic territory this time was simple. He would hunt for explorers while trying his best not to expose his identity. In reality, Wang Xuanan was not his first prey. Before Wang Xuanan, he had killed a major dao-level and minor dao-level powerhouse in the second level of the abyssal zone. He did it discreetly and nobody had found out. Just as Lin Huang was going to probe further regarding the real purpose of the Raiders in the mystic territory this time, Yan Jun''s head seemed to have been triggered by something suddenly. A pitch-black strange energy appeared out of thin air, spreading out like ink. It spread throughout all of his memories quickly. The memory images began to carbonize at a terrifying speed, and then collapsed. After destroying all of the memory images, the strange black energy even started to spread toward Lin Huang''s God''s soul energy through Yan Jun''s memory images. Realizing something was off, Lin Huang removed his God''s soul energy immediately. However, he was too late. His God''s soul energy was tangled up by a strand of black thread shot out by the accelerated black energy. Within a blink of an eye, the black energy enveloped an area of his God''s soul energy and began to crawl up, attempting to infest Lin Huang''s entire God''s soul. He could even clearly sense that, not only did the black energy come with strong corrosive ability, it contained powerful assimilation capabilities too. It could absorb the remaining Odyl left in Yan Jun''s body and Lin Huang''s God''s soul energy to strengthen itself. Sending the abnormality, Lin Huang borrowed the Dao seals in his Kingdom immediately in an attempt to chase it out of his body. He used 500,000 Dao seals at once to activate a vast amount of Odylic Force. However, he looked extremely terrible in the next second. The Odylic Force he borrowed from the Kingdom merely reduced the momentum of the infection of the strange energy. However, as the assimilation continued, the ink-like black energy began to grow at a high speed, and had even begun to infect more Odylic Force. ''What exactly is this?!'' Lin Huang could not help but exclaim secretly. After hesitating for a moment, he used his own Dao seals to activate Odylic Force. The Dao seals that were consolidated with millions of Dao tattoos clearly could not be compared to the Dao seals borrowed from the Kingdom. As the Odyl was activated this time, the ink-like strange energy infection speed finally slowed down. It seemed to be suppressed actively. Lin Huang also realized that his Odyl could not be infected and assimilated by that black energy. The problem was, his Odyl could not do anything to the black energy as well. It could not chase it out of his body. The black energy seemed to have consciousness of its own. It was fighting with his Odyl. After the futile effort of struggling with the black energy by controlling his Odylic Force, he had finally activated the Eternity Fire in his body. A golden flame attacked the black energy swiftly. This time, the black energy finally began to show signs of being defeated. Although it was still absorbing energy slowly, the Eternity Fire was clearly its nemesis. It would dodge wherever the flame passed by. As Lin Huang''s Odyl blocked its way, Eternity Fire finally engulfed the invading energy completely after some time. Lin Huang released a long exhale of breath. He retrieved his consciousness out of his body and realized that Yan Jun''s corpse had turned into a pile of ash. He carefully recalled the information he retrieved from Yan Jun''s memory at the very last moment. There seemed to be only two termsBlack Abyss and sacrifice. "Black Abyss Sacrifice" Without other corresponding information, Lin Huang was at a loss as to what those two terms meant exactly. After restraining himself from pointless overthinking, Lin Huang recalled that Wang Xuanan was still beside him. He turned his head to look at Old Wang. There was clearly admiration in Wang Xuanan''s eyes when he looked at him. "Senior" Wang Xuanan was really clueless as he watched the white-robed man with a mask looking at him. He did not know what Lin Huang would do to him at all. In the outside world, merely a moment had passed as Lin Huang fought with the contaminated energy inside his body. However, Wang Xuanan had clearly sensed the 500,000 Dao seal power that he used as well as the energy fluctuations from the Dao seals he activated later on. The first round of Dao seal power he borrowed from his Kingdom had stunned Wang Xuanan, much less the energy fluctuations coming from the Dao seals he used later on. At the moment, Wang Xuanan had completely placed Lin Huang in the same category as White Brow. He even suspected that Lin Huang was Householder White Brow. However, no matter who he suspected Lin Huang to be, he dared not call out Lin Huang''s identity directly. After all, the senior disguised himself because he did not want to be recognized. Lin Huang was rather speechless when he heard Wang Xuanan calling him senior. This old man was so much older than he was. However, since he had exposed a portion of his ability in front of him, he could only accept him calling him senior. After nodding lightly at Old Wang, Lin Huang suddenly thought he should know many things that he did not since he had been around the universe for years. He decided to ask after thinking about it for a moment, "Do you know what the Black Abyss is?" Wang Xuanan was stunned when he heard the question that had come out of nowhere. He thought for a while before shaking his head. "No idea. I''ve never heard of it." "However, if you need the information, I can check for you after the exploration ends," Wang Xuanan continued to say, worried that he might offend the "senior" in front of him. "No need." Lin Huang waved. "Pretend I never asked. About Yan Jun" Before Lin Huang could say anything further, Wang Xuanan squeezed out a smile and took over the conversation, "I didn''t see him, nor do I know whether he''s dead or alive." "No, tell Royal that Yan Jun is a Raiders'' spy when you return. Get Royal to search for the remaining spies!" Lin Huang shook his head and urged. "This humble one will do so." Wang Xuanan nodded immediately. "About Yan Jun''s death" "Say it was a white-robed man who killed him." "Got it. This humble one will relay the message." Wang Xuanan bowed. When he lifted his head again, the white-robed man in front of him had vanished completely. Chapter 1765 - What Is Black Abyss? "What is that strange black energy exactly?" Lin Huang asked Eternity Fire. Eternity Fire conveyed its thoughts quickly, "It''s the Abyssal energy a powerhouse left behind" "An Abyssal energy that''s so active and has such powerful contamination ability hiding in a major dao-level powerhouse''s body silently. I''m afraid only an entity that surpasses dao-level can do something like that," Lin Huang mumbled softly to himself. If not for his powerful Dao seals and the suppression from Eternity Fire, he would be infected and turned into an Abyssal creature after struggling for three days at most. Xia Bing''s face flashed through Lin Huang''s mind as he thought up to this point. If that girl killed other major dao-level Raiders and retrieved their memories like he did, she might end up in trouble as well. After hesitating for a moment, he took out the voice transmission charm Xia Bing gave him and left a voice transmission by inserting Divine Telekinesis into it. "If you discover major dao-level Raiders, don''t read their memories rashly after you kill them. You''d trigger a strange energy that''s incredibly infectious. It can turn a major dao-level cultivator into an Abyssal creature." "Got it. I haven''t discovered any at the moment. Have you?" Xia Bing replied almost immediately. "Yan Jun from Royal," Lin Huang answered anyway after a moment of hesitation. Xia Bing''s question was the reason why he hesitated. The reason being was that Yan Jun had mastered over 300,000 Dao seals. With the level of ability that he revealed to her, he was not Yan Jun''s match at all. Xia Bing fell into silence for a moment, but soon sent over another message. "You triggered that strange energy that you mentioned?" Lin Huang fell into a long period of silence when he saw the reply. He guessed that Xia Bing had actually asked three questions when she sent that message. The first oneDid you kill Yan Jun? The second oneDid you read Yan Jun''s memories? The third oneDid you trigger the contamination of the strange energy? "I did trigger it, but I wasn''t infected." Lin Huang''s answer was smart. It contained many different meanings as well. The first oneI killed Yan Jun. The second oneI read Yan Jun''s memories. The third oneI triggered the strange energy, but I was not infected. Xia Bing fell into a moment of silence again. "That''s great. What did you obtain?" She did not dwell on how Lin Huang had killed Yan Jun or how he had handled that contaminated energy. Lin Huang thought about it and decided to tell her. "From his memories, I''ve verified his identity as a Raider. I saw him killing a major dao-level and a minor dao-level explorer. However, I didn''t obtain much information about their mission this time." "I''ve only discovered that his authorization level was higher than Ao Yu and the rest, and he indeed knew their real objective for this trip into the mystic territory." "Just as I was going to probe the objective, the strange energy was triggered. It destroyed all of the memory images in Yan Jun''s head almost instantly, and it infected me through my God''s soul energy." "I''ve only retrieved two keywords in the endBlack Abyss and sacrifice. Do you have any ideas regarding these two terms?" Xia Bing only replied much later after reading through Lin Huang''s messages carefully. "I''m not too sure about the sacrifice portion, but regarding the Black Abyss That''s what we call the deepest part of the abyss. The reason being is that the deepest part of the abyss is pitch-black. The kind of darkness that strips away all of your senses. All of the probing techniques and Divine Telekinesis are useless there. However, I''m not sure if the Black Abyss that you''re talking about is the same thing. It might mean something else." After reading Xia Bing''s reply, Lin Huang suddenly had a bizarre thought after processing the information for a moment. "Connecting what you said with the keywords, is it possible that they want to offer a sacrifice to the monsters in the Black Abyss?" "There is a legend of an Abyssal Lord in the Black Abyss. Indeed, the legend has spread across the universe, but nobody knows what exactly is in the Black Abyss. The reason for that is that everyone who attempted to explore the Black Abyss in the past ended up staying inside until now. No one has come out alive." Although Xia Bing did not deny Lin Huang''s bizarre line of thought directly, what she said actually showed that she did not believe that there was such a thing as an Abyssal Lord. "Oh yeah, can you give me a thorough description of the strange energy in Yan Jun''s body?" It was unknown whether Xia Bing wanted to change the topic or whether there was some other reason behind it when she suddenly asked that question. Lin Huang replied directly, "It was an active black liquid with a high level of contamination ability. It could corrode all kinds of forces, including Odylic Force, spiritual energy and telekinesis, as well as assimilate them to strengthen itself. Not only that, it had a certain level of consciousness. It was difficult to remove it I suspect that it was an Abyssal energy, but it was more infectious than Abyssal energy." "Judging by your description, it seems to be a more powerful energy," Xia Bing replied quickly. "That''s why I suspect that the energy in Yan Jun''s body was left behind by a powerhouse that surpasses dao-level. Not only that, there''s a high chance that the powerhouse came from the abyss," Lin Huang told her his speculation. "There''s a certain logic to your speculation." Xia Bing had finally agreed with Lin Huang''s speculation this time. However, she soon asked a question that Lin Huang was unwilling to answer, "Do you have a technique to avoid the contamination of the energy?" Seeing that Lin Huang fell into silence, Xia Bing instantly realized that he did not really want to answer that question. "I don''t mean to pry. I just want to know if you can help me read their memories if I run into major dao-level Raiders over the next few days." Lin Huang did not stay silent this time. Instead, he answered quickly, "I can, but I can''t guarantee the amount of memories I can retrieve. I''ll just give it my best shot." "Don''t push yourself, just retrieve as much as you can, even if you only obtain one more keyword," Xia Bing continued, "About the Raiders'' spies, the chances of getting to the bottom of it during this trip in the mystic territory are low. Just do your best." The two chatted for a little while more before Lin Huang put away the voice transmission charm. What he was grateful for was that Xia Bing did not dwell on many things throughout the entire conversation. For instance, how did he defeat Yan Jun and how did he avoid the invasion of the strong energy She would stop appropriately if there was something that she was suspicious of instead of prying further. However, she chose to believe him and was willing to trust him to retrieve the memories of those she found later on. Initially, he only wanted to remind her not to read the major dao-level Raiders'' memories rashly. Never had he expected to get much more useful feedback through the communication.. They had even agreed to collaborate. Chapter 1766 - Something Happened You can read the novel fast updates at novelhall.com or NovelTeam.Net After ending the chat with Xia Bing, Lin Huang did not stay on the abyssal zone''s second level. On one hand, he had killed many monsters on this level. On the other hand, he had found a major dao-level Raider on this level. Based on probability, the chances of a second Raider appearing here was low. The first thing Lin Huang did when he arrived at the third level of the abyssal zone was to activate the long-distance ocular skill to probe. The ability levels of the monsters on this level were similar to what he had expected. Most of them had mastered between 200,000 to 400,000 Dao seals. After probing for a little bit, he soon went into hunting mode. Two days passed as time flew by. Lin Huang merely used two days to complete the probing of this entire level. It was not that the level''s area was small, but rather that he had given up on half of the hunting opportunities. He would basically give up on hunting monsters that would require him to deviate from his planned route by more than 30 degrees. Throughout those two days, he had basically figured out the situation on the third level. There were much fewer explorers on this level compared to the second level. There were only three of them. Throughout the two-day observation period, he did not notice anything off about them. Considering that there was not much time left for the exploration, Lin Huang did not continue to stay. He went over to the fourth level on the third day before dawn. On the fourth level of the abyssal zone, most of the monsters had mastered between 400,000 to 600,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang hunted for two days again and then probed the entire fourth level. The number of explorers on the fourth level was the same as the third level. There were only three of them here as well. One of them was Lin Huang''s colleague from RoyalYue Wu. As Yue Wu was a sword cultivator as well, Lin Huang had actually focused on him throughout these two days. It was not that he suspected him, but he wanted to see how powerful a major dao-level sword cultivator was. Yue Wu had mastered some 600,000 Dao seals. Therefore, he had a suppressive upper hand over almost all of the monsters on this level. As a sword cultivator had powerful attacking capabilities, he attacked face-on when he ran into sword-type monsters with 600,000 Dao seals a few times. Not only that, he suppressed them the entire time they fought. The other monsters had no way of defeating him when they ran into him. As soon as they approached him, they basically had no chance of fighting back at all. Including Yue Wu, the three of them did not show any unusual behavior throughout the three days of observation. Lin Huang did not hesitate further and went straight over to the fifth level. Most of the monsters on the fifth level had mastered 600,000 to 800,000 Dao seals. In reality, among major dao-level characters, monsters that had mastered such a large number of Dao seals could be considered powerhouses. Lin Huang found a total of five explorers on this level. As there were more people, and given that there was one week left until the end of the exploration, he stayed for three days on this level. However throughout the three-day observation period, the five explorers did not show any unusual signs as well. Lin Huang did not plan on wasting his time so he went to the sixth level directly. The monsters on this level had mastered more than 800,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang knew that the limit of Dao seals a major dao-level cultivator could master was a million and 80,000. He merely probed a little bit and thought that this level should be the last level of the abyssal zone. The reason being was that he sensed a couple of monsters whose strength of aura had surpassed a million and 80,000 Dao seals. Moreover, this mystic territory was not opened to entities above dao-level. Therefore, it was quite impossible that local monsters that surpassed dao-level would exist here. However, throughout the two days of probing the entire sixth level, Lin Huang had only discovered two major dao-level explorers. One of them was a colleague from RoyalChi Yao. What made Lin Huang suspicious was that Xia Bing was not on this level. He could understand that, among the 21 major dao-level explorers, some of them might not have been teleported to the abyssal zone. However, he knew that Xia Bing was teleported here since the beginning. Furthermore, when he contacted her last time, she was still in the abyssal zone. If she had left, theoretically, she would tell him. After all, they had agreed to work together. However, Lin Huang strolled through the entire sixth level over the past two days, yet no trace of Xia Bing was found. "Don''t tell me something happened?" Lin Huang frowned as he took out the voice transmission charm. He left a message by inserting Divine Telekinesis into it. "Where are you?" Lin Huang stood where he was and waited patiently after sending the message. However, one minute, two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes Over an hour passed by, but he did not get a reply. "Did something really happen?!" Lin Huang''s heart sank gradually. The voice transmission charm would vibrate every time it received a message. It would vibrate even if it was kept in the storage space. When there was motion in the storage space, the carrier would sense it instantly. Therefore, theoretically, it was quite impossible for Xia Bing not to see the message he had sent. Judging by Xia Bing''s reply speed, she would reply after three minutes at most; she would even reply instantly most of the time. However, there was no response after an hour. Clearly, something was off. Two possibilities flashed through Lin Huang''s head. One was that Xia Bing was killed! The other one was that for some reason she did not see the message on the voice transmission charm. No matter which possibility it was, it was bad news. Lin Huang soon made a hypothesis regarding the two possibilities. When he was considering the first possibility, a figure appeared in his mindHouseholder White Brow from the Longevity Tribe! Before entering the mystic territory, among the 21 major dao-level powerhouses, Lin Huang only had a deep impression of two people. One was Xia Bing, while the other was Householder White Brow. The reason being was that the two of them mastered more than a million Dao seals. They gave him a clear sense of threat. To him, among all of the explorers, Householder White Brow might be the only one who had the capability to fight Xia Bing. More importantly, Lin Huang indeed had not seen Householder White Brow in the abyssal zone. That made Householder White Brow even more suspicious. However, he did not rule out other suspects completely because of that. The reason for that was that perhaps some people managed to conceal their abilities or even avoid his senses. Lin Huang was eliminating names one after another in his head quickly. Excluding himself, there were only a total of 21 major dao-level powerhouses who entered the mystic territory this time. Among them, seven were on the second level, three on the third level, and also three each on the fourth and fifth level. There were a total of 16 people. He saw them in the abyssal zone, as well as observed them. The other one was killed by Yan Jun before he came into the abyssal zone. Theoretically, what happened to Xia Bing should have nothing to do with the 17th person. After eliminating the 17 people, the last three were suspicious. Householder White Brow from the Longevity Tribe! Jin Feng from Snow Kingdom! Hu Shan from Star Cluster! Read novel fast updates at novelhall.com or NovelTeam.Net Chapter 1767 - Which Fool Is That? Read novel online free fast updates at novelhall.com or NovelTeam.Net To a cultivator like Lin Huang, having photographic memory was a given. Although he did not have much impression of Jin Feng and Hu Shan, he could recall their identities from memory easily. Jin Feng was a major dao-level powerhouse from Snow Kingdom. Lin Huang sensed that he should have mastered some 700,000 Dao seals, or at most 750,000 Dao seals. Meanwhile, Hu Shan was a major dao-level powerhouse from Star Cluster. He should have mastered some 800,000 Dao seals. At least from what Lin Huang sensed, these two did not have the ability to stir up trouble for Xia Bing. Even if they were to work together, there was a high chance that they would be killed by Xia Bing instantly. Naturally, this was limited to what Lin Huang sensed. There was a possibility that one of them concealed their ability to a point where it could escape Lin Huang''s senses. However, among the three of them, Lin Huang thought the one who was most suspicious was still old man White Brow from the Longevity Tribe. Before the mystic territory opened, Lin Huang clearly sensed that his ability was no weaker than Xia Bing''s. If she was really attacked by the Raiders, Lin Huang thought that White Brow was the most likely suspect. Nevertheless, Lin Huang did not rule out other possibilities. Perhaps Xia Bing did not run into the Raiders at all, but was attacked by powerful local monsters. Perhaps she was not attacked at all, but was merely stuck in an area that was outside of the voice transmission charm''s signal range. No matter what scenario it ended up being, Lin Huang still thought that he should look for Xia Bing as soon as possible. The reason being was that there were only two days left before the end of the exploration of the mystic territory. The exploration period was the safe estimation of the opening of the mystic territory. Under normal circumstances, the mystic territory would definitely open for longer than the exploration period. However, if someone did not leave after the mystic territory had closed, there was a high chance that the person would die inside. Even if one did not die, the person might not be able to return to the universe forever. The reason being was that some mystic territories would only appear in the universe once and never again in the future. "I have two more days left. I can only try my best to look for her. If I really can''t find her, I can only leave." After all, Lin Huang and Xia Bing had only met by chance. They only collaborated with each other, but they were not friends. Naturally, it would be impossible for Lin Huang to risk his life for Xia Bing. After analyzing Xia Bing''s situation, Lin Huang quickly reviewed his memories to see if there were any unusual areas on the sixth level of the abyssal zone. The images of the different areas were replayed swiftly in his mind. He would examine the details carefully when he noticed traces of battle. However, he found nothing after spending close to three hours looking through his memories several times. "I didn''t sense Xia Bing''s aura anywhere I found traces of battle" Lin Huang frowned lightly. "Can it be that she didn''t go missing on this level?" Lin Huang took out the voice transmission charm again and checked it by inserting Divine Telekinesis into it. He still had not received any replies. After thinking to himself for a little bit while standing where he was, he soon decided to probe through the rest of the levels. After exiting the sixth level of the abyssal zone, Lin Huang headed straight to the fifth level. This time, he activated his long-distance ocular skill to its maximum range. It covered the entire abyssal zone level. He spent more than three hours looking through each corner carefully. After confirming that there was nothing unusual, he headed to the fourth level. Then the third, second and first level Lin Huang scanned each level using his long-distance ocular skill a few times, but he still failed to find anything unusual. It was close to midnight after all the repetitive hard work. There was only one day left to explore. At that moment, 20 hours had passed since Lin Huang sent Xia Bing the message. There was still nothing from the voice transmission charm. "One day left" Lin Huang still did not want to give up. "I definitely won''t have enough time to probe other areas. I''ve already flipped through the entire abyssal zone, yet I didn''t find anything" Suddenly, a thought flashed through his mind as he thought up to this point. "Theoretically, it''s impossible for my ocular skill to have missed out on anything. Is it possible that there''s something hidden somewhere that the ocular skill can''t probe?" Lin Huang had a fresh perspective all of the sudden when he thought of that. He did not hesitate at all and spread out his Divine Telekinesis directly. Terrifying Divine Telekinesis radiated directly, scanning through the entire first level of the entire abyssal zone. At that moment, no secrets on the first level could escape his sight. This time, he probed the entire level carefully within ten minutes. He then recalled his Divine Telekinesis and headed quickly to the second level''s entrance. When Lin Huang arrived at the second level, he scanned through it with Divine Telekinesis again swiftly. After that, he rushed to the third level almost without stopping at all. Later, he went to the third, fourth and fifth level Lin Huang scanned each level with his Divine Telekinesis one level after another. What he did not know was that almost everyone was shaking when the Divine Telekinesis with a strength that was close to the peak of major dao-level spread over their bodies. "Judging by the strength of this Divine Telekinesis, this person has mastered at least 800,000 Dao seals!" "Who offended this person to the point that he''s searching frantically using his Divine Telekinesis like this!" "I think someone''s doomed when Divine Telekinesis of such strength has been released like this." Lin Huang used his Divine Telekinesis to scan from the first to the fifth level. However, he did not find anything. Without hesitation, he returned to the sixth level again directly. The monsters on the sixth level of the abyssal zone had mastered more than 800,000 Dao seals. Monsters with such levels of ability would not be scared of Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis. He even knew that there was a high chance that the monsters on this level would locate him once he spread out his Divine Telekinesis. He only hesitated momentarily before releasing his Divine Telekinesis again. This time, within three seconds, there were already a couple of Divine Telekinesis probing him and located his coordinates. Lin Huang ignored that and summoned his Kingdom to cover the surrounding hundreds of kilometers. (It was not the maximum range of coverage of the Kingdom, but it had been shrunk to only cover that range.) Later on, he continued to release his Divine Telekinesis to probe areas that were further away. However, after less than a minute of doing so, he was greeted with a couple of uninvited guests. A couple of local monsters came over one after the other. They surrounded the area hundreds of kilometers outside the Kingdom. They did not hide their auras at all. The one with the weakest aura had more than 850,000 Dao seals, while the most powerful one had close to a million Dao seals. It was not only the local monsters who sensed Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis, there were two explorers too. Chi Yao from Royal could not help but mumble out loud, "Which fool dares to spread out his Divine Telekinesis on this level?!" You can read the novel online free at novelhall.com or NovelTeam.Net Chapter 1768 - All Of You Should Stay On the sixth level of the abyssal zone, Lin Huang''s action of scanning with his Divine Telekinesis was like a pebble being tossed into water. He exposed his coordinates instantly. As his Divine Telekinesis continued to spread far and wide, more and more local monsters located Lin Huang''s coordinates using their own Divine Telekinesis. There were many that were coming toward Lin Huang one after the other. Within a minute, seven monsters had arrived outside of his Kingdom. These monsters naturally sensed that Lin Huang had activated his Kingdom. They did not rush in rashly. Although judging by his aura, he was the weakest creature on the sixth level, who had merely mastered 800,000 Dao seals at most, all the monsters knew that he would have the upper hand in his Kingdom. His ability might be multiplied inside it. Time continued passing. More and more monsters surrounded the area outside Lin Huang''s Kingdom. However, he ignored those monsters completely and continued to spread out his Divine Telekinesis'' probing range to scan through the entire area. Such a state lasted for some ten or so minutes. Close to a hundred monsters had already gathered around. There were monsters trying to launch attacks from far outside the Kingdom, but they were blocked by Lin Huang''s telekinetic flying daggers. The stagnant state of affairs was finally broken when the first monster that had mastered over a million Dao seals arrived. It was an Abyssal monster with countless tentacles. Its entire body was like that of an irregularly-shaped, blue-black rotten ball of meat with numerous dark purple spores on it that were enlarged many times. When its rotten aura arrived, the other monsters instinctively stayed far away from it, worried that they might accidentally be targeted. However, none of them dared to run away. The reason being was that they would definitely become its prey if they moved at this time. Nevertheless, this meat monster did not even glance at the many monsters outside Lin Huang''s Kingdom. It targeted him with its Divine Telekinesis straightforwardly. The tentacles were clearly flailing about faster now. They even began to secrete dark purple juices. It merely stopped for a moment when it arrived outside Lin Huang''s Kingdom. It then floated into his Kingdom without hesitation. The moment it stepped into the Kingdom, Lin Huang finally had to shift his focus and recall his Divine Telekinesis probing. Seeing that he was looking at it, the tentacles all over the meat monster''s body flailed about even more vigorously. There was a snickering sound coming from some unknown source. It sounded like it was laughing. Lin Huang raised his brows and attacked without hesitation. Millions of God Weapon flying daggers shot out from his sleeves like a lightning storm. He used millions of Dao seals from his Kingdom directly, adding level-1,000,000 Odyl on the flying daggers. At the same time, he had even unsealed the Critical Hit Hammer''s function, providing a randomized threefold to fortyfold critical hit chance to each of the flying daggers'' attacks. Facing an Abyssal monster that had mastered over a million Dao seals and was close to the limit of major dao-level, Lin Huang did not dare to delay his actions at all. The meat monster seemed to have not expected Lin Huang to be so decisive in his attack and to be so fast, so it was drowned in the blood-colored lightning storm completely before it reacted. Many monsters that were watching outside the Kingdom were rather terrified by the attack. Naturally, they sensed the power of the attack clearly. Lin Huang still looked tense after the attack successfully landed. The reason being was that he could obviously feel that the meat monster was still resisting stubbornly within the blood-colored lightning storm. Although it reacted a little too slowly, it had still managed to react once it was drowned by the blood-colored lightning storm. Countless black tentacles stretched out frantically, each of them containing level-1,000,000 Odyl. They were strands of dark purple lightning collided with the blood-colored lightning. At that moment, the intertwined dark purple and red lightning lit up Lin Huang''s Kingdom. The meat monster''s defense capabilities were pretty powerful. It''s defense was almost airtight. Only a small amount of blood-colored lightning with over tenfold critical hit chance crushed through its first layer of tentacle defense. However, they were soon blocked by the second layer of liquid defense that covered its body. The layer of liquid defense was like a layer of dark green pus. The liquid was secreted from the roots of the tentacles, almost covering its entire body. The layer of liquid contained a vast amount of Odylic Force. Under the protection of the double-layered defense system, Lin Huang''s first attack failed to cause any substantial harm to it. Although it was just a test attack, Lin Huang was quite surprised to find that it was not effective at all. After confirming that the first attack was futile, he attacked a second time without hesitation. He shook his sleeves again. Another cloud of endless blood-colored lightning was shot out. He added level-2,000,000 Odyl in this attack directly, while the number of God Weapon flying daggers used skyrocketed to five million. This time, the meat monster did not dare to take this second attack lightly, as it watched the attack arrive. It activated its Kingdom within Lin Huang''s Kingdom. The entire space transformed into a strange-looking sky all of a sudden. Lin Huang could even see planets faintly. There were sarcomas that were alive. With the help of its Kingdom, the meat monster''s aura increased instantly, while the number of the Dao seals it had mastered seemed to have at least doubled. The strange sky enveloped the sky that was full of blood-colored lightning the moment they clashed. Subsequently, the tentacles threw out the God Weapon flying daggers. With the meat monster activating its Kingdom, the effect of Lin Huang''s second attack was worse than the first. Just when Lin Huang was thinking about whether he should use his trump card, the meat monster took the initiative to attack. The countless planets in the sky in its Kingdom seemed to have come alive. They stretched forth numerous tentacles toward Lin Huang. Almost each tentacle was superimposed with more than three million Dao tattoos. There were at least a hundred million tentacles. Lin Huang hesitated no further after seeing the disgusting tentacles coming his way from all directions in the sky. He superimposed level-5,000,000 Dao seals directly. The hundreds of millions of God Weapon flying daggers in his sleeves turned into a sky full of divine lightning. All of a sudden, blood-colored lightning spread throughout the entire Kingdom. The dark purple tentacles were turned into dust the moment they touched the lightning. It was the most powerful attack that Lin Huang had ever used. Each God Weapon flying dagger was superimposed with five million Dao tattoos. A casual hit would be enough to kill most major dao-level powerhouses. Although the meat monster was powerful, its tentacles were crushed without any suspense. Meanwhile, the layer of pus secreted by its body did not last too long as well before being destroyed completely, revealing its weak physical body within. Lin Huang''s third critical attack only lasted less than 20 seconds. The meat monster''s devastating shriek that came from somewhere unknown stopped abruptly, as its vitality faded away completely. Before its Kingdom collapsed entirely, Lin Huang lifted his head and glanced at the many monsters that were still watching the battle from outside his Kingdom. Many of them turned around quickly in an attempt to run away when they met his gaze. However, it was too late. Suddenly, Lin Huang''s Kingdom expanded and enveloped the thousands of kilometers of his surroundings directly. All of the monsters that were watching were caught inside. "All of you should stay behind since you loved watching the show!" Lin Huang could not help but grin when he saw that all of the monsters had been enveloped by his Kingdom and that none were left out. Chapter 1769 - Hidden Space Within three minutes, Lin Huang had suppressed all of the monsters in his Kingdom. He could borrow close to eight million Dao seals from his Kingdom, which was a hundredfold of the Dao seals he had mastered himself. Even if the monsters fought with the help of their own Kingdoms, it would only provide them a two to threefold boost at most. Almost none of them could use over three million Dao seals. With the addition of the critical hit effect from the Critical Hit Hammer, the nearly hundred monsters or so were killed instantly before they could activate their Kingdoms. There were only a small number of them who successfully activated their Kingdoms, but they were also killed easily after a brief struggle as they had their Odyl exhausted by the God Weapon flying daggers. Seeing the carcasses littered all over the ground, Lin Huang shrunk his Kingdom directly and put away the nearly hundred or so carcasses in his Kingdom. His harvest this time was undoubtedly great. Almost all of the nearly hundred or so monsters had mastered more than 800,000 Dao seals. There would only be more Dao seals that were hidden in their Kingdoms. Lin Huang could almost foresee how many Kingdoms he would be able to refine thanks to this, and how many Dao seals he would gain for his Kingdom after leaving the mystic territory. However, he also knew that there might be other monsters coming over to challenge him later on. The reason being was that almost all the monsters on this entire level had watched the whole battle earlier using all sorts of probing techniques, including Divine Telekinesis. Initially, everyone expected that this battle would end with this explorer, who spread out his Divine Telekinesis so carelessly, being killed by the numerous monsters directly. However, the ending surprised everyone. The nearly hundred or so peak major dao-level monsters were killed within three minutes. Naturally, the two explorers witnessed it too. They were shocked. Chi Yao, who was from Royal, fell into deep thought for a long time, "Who exactly is this white-robed man?! He doesn''t seem to be White Brow" After settling this round of troublemakers, Lin Huang soon focused once again on his probing efforts with his Divine Telekinesis. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis further away, probing every detail on this level carefully. Some ten minutes later, his Divine Telekinesis finally arrived at the fringes of the level. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, "Found it!" Under the probing of his Divine Telekinesis, he found a hidden spatial fluctuation at the northern fringe of the level. It was a cliff that he had probed using his long-distance ocular skill before. He did not notice anything amiss when he examined it with the ocular skill previously. However, he had finally discovered the abnormality under the probing of his Divine Telekinesis. Although he was not sure if this place had anything to do with Xia Bing''s disappearance, he planned to check it out. Very soon, Lin Huang appeared at the cliff. Seeing the tall cliff, he soon had his eyes locked onto a wall. He hovered and arrived in front of the wall. This was the place where his Divine Telekinesis had detected the abnormality. However, he still did not see anything strange despite observing it from less than two meters away. He pressed his palm onto the wall in a testing manner. As expected, his hand penetrated the wall directly. It felt as if his hand had fallen into quicksand. After giving it a thought, Lin Huang stepped into it. His eyes dimmed. A moment later, all of his senses were back to normal. "Where is this" Lin Huang widened his eyes. It was clearly the cliff that he was on earlier, but the scene that he was looking at seemed to have turned black and white. Just as Lin Huang wanted to verify his suspicions of whether it was the virtual realm, he sensed strong battle fluctuations coming from the distance. The intensity of the energy fluctuations was definitely of the standard of top major dao-level powerhouses fighting. "Is that Xia Bing?!" Lin Huang clearly sensed that one of the auras belonged to Xia Bing. He rushed over to the source of the energy fluctuations in a flash without even thinking about it. Some ten minutes later, he finally made it to the area where the battle fluctuations were. The entire sky was almost fully covered in silver saber gleams and black icicles. It took Lin Huang some effort to finally see the situation clearly. Among the two in the battle, one was the Xia Bing he was looking for, while the other was White Brow from the Longevity Tribe. Xia Bing was being faintly suppressed. Meanwhile, White Brow''s state also seemed to be a little strange. He clearly looked much younger compared to before he came into the mystic territory. His silver hair was completely white now, while his initially white eyebrows had turned completely black as well. The two who were in the fight instantly sensed Lin Huang''s appearance. "Why are you here? Get out now!" Xia Bing said through voice transmission immediately. To her, Lin Huang did not have the ability to participate in this battle. His current appearance would totally hinder her instead of help her. However, he ignored her voice transmission. Countless God Weapon flying daggers that were disguised as golden saber gleams shot out of his sleeves directly. There were tens of millions of them. Superimposed with level-800,000 Odyl, they were consolidated into a saber formation in the air instantly and charged at White Brow. He had borrowed the maximum number of Dao seals from his Kingdom for this attack. It was the most powerful attack outside his Kingdom under the premise of not using his actual Dao seals. The reason being was that he knew that the opponent was White Brow who had mastered over a million Dao seals. He had to take him seriously. White Brows teasingly said while smiling when he saw Lin Huang, "Hey, your lover is here." As soon as he was done speaking, the countless silver saber gleams swept toward Lin Huang''s God Weapon flying sabers. Loud noises continuously echoed in the air at the moment. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had found the chance to get close to Xia Bing with a flash. "What''s going on?" Xia Bing was finally relieved a little bit when she saw Lin Huang''s real ability. Although he could not fight White Brow head-on with his ability, he could provide support to her rather than slowing her down. "I found this space by accident a few days ago and thought I''d come in to investigate. Inside I saw White Brow sitting on an altar with a layer of black abyssal mist covering him. When he noticed my presence, he attacked me directly" Lin Huang had just noticed that there was indeed an altar not too far away. There were a few human-shaped mummified corpses on the altar. Lin Huang could faintly recognize that the two whose faces were facing up were Jin Feng from Snow Kingdom and Hu Shan from Star Cluster! The key word he read from Yan Jun''s head back then popped upSacrifice! Connecting the dots that White Brow, who was in front of them now, clearly looked younger, he instantly understood the meaning of "sacrifice". He had a rough hypothesis now. "After absorbing that black mist, his appearance has obviously become younger. He doesn''t seem to need to refine the black mist himself. Even while he''s fighting with me, it''s automatically absorbed and modifies his physical body and God''s soul continuously" What Xia Bing said verified Lin Huang''s hypothesis. "Also, that altar is very strange.. It seems to be absorbing energy from outside of this space. I can''t destroy it" Chapter 1770 - Xia Bing’s Trump Card Lin Huang had a rough understanding of the situation after hearing Xia Bing''s explanation. He only began speaking after that. "Today is the last day of the exploration period. If we don''t kill him, we might not be able to leave this space in time. We might be stuck here forever." He was only telling the truth by reminding her. In reality, he was not too worried about being trapped inside as he had the Gate of All Realms. He could return to the universe any time he wanted. However, he did not want to expose this Goldfinger unless it was the last resort. "The time flow here is the same as the outside world" Xia Bing mumbled softly, "At least that''s not bad news." In reality, she had been wanting to find out about the time flow in this space. She had finally found the answer she was looking for from Lin Huang. She had actually been counting the entire time. When she saw Lin Huang''s appear, she knew that the exploration period outside had not ended, after which she was relieved. However, she secretly hoped that the time flow in here was faster than that of the outside world. If that was the case, she would have more time to deal with White Brow. However, Xia Bing now knew that they had to end this today when she found out that the time flow was 1:1, and it was the final day of the exploration. She merely thought for a moment before sending Lin Huang a voice transmission. "We don''t have time to let this drag on, I can only use my trump card. However, promise me that you won''t share this with anyone no matter what you see later." Lin Huang nodded immediately to agree to her request. It was better for her to be willing to use her trump card than for him to expose his. Moreover, what she requested made sense. Nobody was willing to make their trump card public. Xia Bing hesitated no further after receiving Lin Huang''s promise. Her Kingdom was activated directly. It covered that entire space within its range. Lin Huang realized that he was currently in a land that was snowing. Despite his physical ability, he could feel the stinging chill penetrating the particles in his body continuously. He knew that it was not an attack Xia Bing targeted at him, but rather simply the attribute of her Kingdom. "Kingdom of ice and snow" White Brow, who was enveloped in the Kingdom, laughed instead of feeling surprised. "This should be Snow Kingdom''s technique? So you''re also a Snow Kingdom''s spy planted in Star Cluster!" Lin Huang only came to a realization after hearing that. This was the reason why Xia Bing asked him not to share this information with anyone. However, she merely scoffed and did not retort. She performed hand seals with both hands quickly. Within her Kingdom, ice coffins of all sizes emerged from the ground. Subsequently, they shattered consecutively and the ice corpses within were unsealed. Lin Huang glanced at them. The tens of thousands of ice corpses were major dao-level powerhouses. Judging by their auras, the weakest one had mastered more than 500,000 Dao seals, while the most powerful few had even mastered over a million Dao seals. He was quite curious about how Xia Bing managed to obtain such a terrifying number and grade of ice corpses. White Brow squinted. "Endless ice coffins What''s your relationship with the Ice Queen?!" Even Lin Huang became rather curious when he heard that question. He had heard of the Ice Queen. She was a legendary entity that surpassed dao-level, as well as Snow Kingdom''s founder. "You ask too many questions." Xia Bing''s expression was as cold as ice. "Forget it. No matter what your relationship is with her, you have to die anyway!" White Brow glanced at Lin Huang after he was done saying that, "I''ll bury this guy with you as well." Lin Huang thought to himself, ''You guys go ahead and chat. Why drag me into things?'' As soon as White Brow was done speaking, the endless white saber gleams before him transformed into countless light streams. They shot forth, sweeping toward the ice corpses. Almost instantly, the tens of thousands of ice corpses were drowned in the saber gleams entirely. When the saber gleams faded away, the tens of thousands of ice corpses stood where they were, seemingly not to have been substantially harmed. Only a few of them fell to the ground, yet the corpses were strangely intact instead of being crushed by the saber gleams. Just when Lin Huang was feeling confused, he witnessed an even stranger scene. The few ice corpses that fell down got up slowly. Their wounds were recovering automatically at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Even their auras had not fallen either. ''Does her Kingdom come with a function that provides defense to the ice corpses? It can even revive them?'' Lin Huang speculated following his observation. ''That''s crazy!'' One had to know that White Brow did not hold back at all in his attack. Each of the saber gleams was superimposed with level-1,000,000 Odyl. Theoretically, his attack would have been sufficient to kill 99% of the ice corpses before him. Perhaps only the few ice corpses with over a million Dao seals would not be killed. However, the reality White Brow was seeing in front of him was that his attack, which had encompassed all the ice corpses in saber gleams, nearly did not break through their defenses. Most of the ice corpses did not even have a trace of a wound on them. Even the few that were killed with great effort were revived. Their wounds were recovering quickly. White Brow, who was on the other side, frowned. Clearly, he did not expect this to happen after he attacked. However, he knew very well what had taken place. The surface of the ice corpses'' bodies were covered with a layer of strange ice. It was unknown how many layers of Odyl were superimposed on that layer of ice, which had forcefully blocked his saber gleams. To be exact, his saber gleams had not broken through the defenses of those ice corpses. Meanwhile, those that fell had actually only exhausted their Odyl from the many attacks of his saber gleams, thus losing the protection of the layer of ice. It wouldn''t be too much of a problem if they were only competing in regard to who was going to exhaust their Odyl first. All he needed to do in that case was to exhaust the Odylic Force in these tens of thousands of ice corpses'' bodies in order to kill them. The problem was that, after they were killed, they were revived This presented quite a headache to White Brow. The reason being was that if these ice corpses could be revived repeatedly, without a doubt, the one who would have their Odyl exhausted would be him. White Brow responded after merely a moment of thought. Watching the countless ice corpses rushing at him, he did not perform a ranged attack with saber gleams this time. Instead, he took up a defensive stance. The saber gleams transformed into a cloud of protective lightning, crushing the attacks that were targeting him. Then, he focused his attack on the few ice corpses that he had killed just now when he had the opportunity. Very soon, he managed to kill them a second time. However, within ten seconds of the ice corpses falling to the ground, they got back up. The wounds on them recovered at speed that was visible to the naked eye again. Nevertheless, White Brow did not want to give up yet. He remained in his defensive position and continued to attack the few ice corpses that were killed just now. Judging by his actions, Lin Huang could guess that White Brow wanted to test the revival mechanism in Xia Bing''s Kingdom. He wanted to see how many times exactly the ice corpses could be revived. Naturally, Xia Bing noticed that too. She smirked and performed another complicated set of hand seals. The second the hand seal was completed, the tens of thousands of ice corpses began to go out of their minds. They went into berserk mode. The frequency of White Brow being attacked rose. The ice corpses even broke through his saber gleam defense a few times. He did not manage to modify his attack before a couple of ice corpses in melee distance charged at him. He scoffed when he knew that he could no longer hide behind his defense. Though unwilling, he activated his Kingdom anyway Chapter 1771 - Lin Huang Attacks White Brow''s Kingdom appeared in the form of an ancient saber tomb. The saber tomb had all kinds of sabers all over the place. As a sword cultivator, Lin Huang felt an intense sense of uneasiness the moment White Brow''s Kingdom descended. It was not that he despised saber cultivators, but a place filled with Saber Dao Odyl would cause an instinctive feeling of rejection for a sword cultivator. Holding back the impulse to initiate the descent of his own Kingdom to get rid of the uneasiness, Lin Huang chose to observe instead. He would definitely fight when it was necessary, but now was not the time. Watching White Brow''s Kingdom descend, the expression on Xia Bing''s face did not change at all. The ice corpses'' attacks did not slow down at all. Lin Huang could not help but exclaim when he saw this. ''She has such a stable mentality!'' Her battle rhythm was not affected by the descent of White Brow''s Kingdom at all. The very next second after White Brow''s Kingdom appeared, a few of the close combat ice corpses approached him. White Brow did not dare to delay his actions at all. When his Kingdom appeared, a saber gleam was consolidated in front of him from thin air again. Just after the silver-white saber gleam finished consolidating, those few ice corpses attacked. However, this round of fierce attacks did not break through the saber gleam''s defense like before. Lin Huang, who was watching the battle from a distance, could clearly sense that White Brow had borrowed a massive amount of Dao seals from his Kingdom to consolidate this saber gleam. He had mastered over a million Dao seals himself. However, the Odyl fluctuation coming from the saber gleam clearly indicated that it had been superimposed with over two million Odyl. Without hesitation, White Brow retaliated after instantly resolving the threat coming from those few close combat ice corpses. The defensive saber gleam shot forth as soon as it was done with its defensive duties. It targeted the heads of those few of the ice corpses. The few close combat ice corpses failed to dodge the attack. Their heads were pierced instantly. This time, Lin Huang finally managed to see it clearly. The instant the saber gleam touched the heads of those ice corpses, there was a layer of ice that began to form rapidly on their foreheads. However, the layers of ice did not have two million Dao seals superimposed into them. Therefore, it''s defense was broken through by the saber gleam easily and pierced through. Lin Huang''s eyes lit up as he watched the battle between the two. Clearly, White Brow and Xia Bing had yet to reveal their real trump cards. Although their Kingdoms had descended, they kept their borrowing of Dao seals from their Kingdoms under control. They did not borrow the maximum number of Dao seals for their trump cards. White Brow could not help but show joy on his face, seeing that his attack was successful. He immediately decided to consolidate more silver-white saber gleams that covered the sky to suppress the ice corpses. He wanted to kill those ice corpses before Xia Bing managed to adjust the defensive capabilities of the layers of ice. A torrent of silver saber gleams drowned the ice corpses instantly. Watching this unfold, Lin Huang became faintly worried about Xia Bing. If the ice corpses were killed, he was not sure whether she would have other techniques available to fight White Brow. Xia Bing''s cultivation direction clearly relied more upon techniques. In order for a technique cultivator to fight a sword or saber cultivator with powerful cultivation methods, she had to have sufficient control-type techniques. If she did not, there would not be any suspense in the result of the battle if the enemy approached her in close combat. If Xia Bing''s ice corpses were killed, and she did not have a better control-type technique to fight White Brow, Lin Huang would have to intervene in the next round of combat. Just as Lin Huang was getting ready to fight, when the silver saber gleams faded, it turned out that almost none of the ice corpses were killed Lin Huang was stunned momentarily, after which he could not help but reveal a smile. How would Xia Bing not know what White Brow had in mind? When the first close combat ice corpse''s head was pierced through, she made her adjustments immediately, boosting the amount of Odyl in the layers of ice defense. It was just that White Brow''s attack had been too fast initially. The few close combat ice corpses failed to adjust in time, so they were killed instantly. However, White Brow was clearly too late in his subsequent attack. The silver-white saber gleams that covered the ice corpses did not break through most of their defenses. When White Brow recalled his saber gleams, those few close combat ice corpses were already getting up from the ground. The wound on their heads was recovering at a speed visible to the naked eye. Lin Huang was finally relieved when he saw the situation unfold. Compared to intervening when it was the last resort, he hoped that he could strike unexpectedly and catch White Brow unaware after discovering his weakness and kill him when he attacked. If he exposed his true ability before he performed a sneak attack, White Brow would definitely be prepared. Fortunately, Xia Bing had a stable plan to deal with this attack. He did not have to expose his true ability in advance. The battle returned to its previous stagnant state. Lin Huang was quite curious about what the two would do next. White Brow frowned. Xia Bing''s ice corpses were too difficult to handle. If he did not kill them, he had no way to focus his attacks on Xia Bing at all. The reason being was that as long as she was controlling the ice corpses, she could interfere with his battle rhythm at any time. Even if he used the saber gleams to protect himself, and the ice corpses could not break through the saber gleams'' defense, each attack of the ice corpses would exhaust his Odyl. That was the reason why he insisted on killing those ice corpses first. Meanwhile on the other side, Xia Bing clearly knew what he was thinking. Thus, she had been focusing on controlling the ice corpses. She was a cultivator who focused more on techniques. In order to defeat cultivators with powerful attacks like saber and sword cultivators, she definitely could not fight them head-on. The battle fell into a stagnant state again. In reality, both of them were quite worried. The reason being was that it was the last day of the mystic territory''s exploration period. If they failed to get out in time, they would be trapped in this mystic territory. No matter whether it was Xia Bing or White Brow, that was the last thing they wanted to see happening. However, the current state of things tested the two''s patience. Clearly, White Brow was not as patient. The silver-white saber gleams in front of him suddenly lit up brightly, and their auras increased. Almost at the same time, the endless saber gleams transformed into countless bolts of silver lightning, enveloping the ice corpses. This time, the superimposition of Dao seals on those saber gleams had multiplied by at least onefold. The auras of the saber gleams contained at least level-5,000,000 Odyl. Meanwhile, Xia Bing was prepared as well. The second White Brow did that, she strengthened the ice corpses'' defenses. The saber gleams enveloped all of the ice corpses. Just when everyone had their focus on the collision between the saber gleams and the ice corpses, Lin Huang''s pupils suddenly shrunk. His Kingdom descended instantly. It covered everything present in the endless sky. At the same time, a golden saber gleam shot forth from his sleeve rapidly. It was targeted at where Xia Bing''s coordinates were. Xia Bing''s back was drenched in cold sweat at the moment. Never had she thought that Lin Huang would turn around and attack her suddenly. However, the saber gleam arrived before her instantly, whereby she did not have time to react at all. Just when she thought that she would definitely die, the golden saber gleam exploded before her, transforming into 10,000 golden gleams. It was only then that Xia Bing saw a black saber gleam that had no Odyl fluctuations, that was less than two meters in front of her, collapse slowly. There was a faint abyssal aura remaining in the air Chapter 1772 - Let’s Work Together To Kill Him White Brow''s expression looked extremely terrible when his sneak attack was blocked by Lin Huang. He had specifically used a sky full of saber gleams just now to distract Xia Bing and perform a sneak attack on her. He even used a hidden abyssal technique to conceal the attack''s aura fluctuations. He had almost 100% confidence that the attack would definitely severely injure Xia Bing or even kill her instantly. Never had he thought that the masked white robed-man, that he had never bothered with earlier, would be able to stop his sure-kill attack at the critical moment. In reality, since Lin Huang entered the space, White Brow had never taken him seriously. The reason being was that Lin Huang''s first attack had exposed his ability level. He had only mastered less than 800,000 Dao seals. To Xia Bing and himself, powerhouses with such ability levels could only provide auxiliary assistance at best. He had never actively attacked Lin Huang directly. On one hand, he did not really take him seriously. On the other hand, he did not want to force him to attack, which would interfere with the battle rhythm between him and Xia Bing. Never had he thought that the white-robed man before him had concealed his true ability. He had not held back with that saber sneak attack he performed earlier. There was close to level-6,000,000 Odyl superimposed in it. He was even sure that even if Xia Bing noticed it at the very last second, she would definitely be injured severely if she was to hastily defend against it. However, the attack that he had poured all of his strength into was casually stopped by that white-robed man with the unknown identity. "Who exactly are you?!" White Brow could not help but yell out. He rummaged through all of the information on the major dao-level powerhouses who participated in the exploration this time in his mind a couple of times. None of them corresponded to this person in front of him. He even suspected for a split second that Lin Huang was a native of the mystic territory. However, he denied that possibility instantly. The reason being was that, judging from Xia Bing and this man''s interaction, they clearly knew each other. This made him even more suspicious of Lin Huang''s real identity. However, what he had no idea of was that Xia Bing herself did not know exactly who Lin Huang was. They knew each other simply because they happened to meet in the mystic territory. Hearing White Brow questioning his identity, Lin Huang pointed to his mask. "Why do you think I''m wearing this mask?" At that moment, Xia Bing had finally calmed down. She said to Lin Huang through voice transmission, "Thank you!" Sensing Xia Bing had released her Divine Telekinesis entirely and the possibility of another successful sneak attack was close to zero, Lin Huang nodded lightly at her and said, "Let''s work together to kill him as soon as possible." Since his Kingdom had descended and his ability level had been exposed, Lin Huang knew that White Brow would definitely have his guard up against him. It was quite impossible to discover his weaknesses and kill him instantly like he initially planned at this point. Therefore, he chose to work with Xia Bing directly to suppress White Brow head-on. Xia Bing nodded and agreed to work together without hesitation. She knew that it would be extremely difficult for her to kill White Brow on her own given her ability. With their similar ability levels, it was uncertain who would win when they revealed their trump cards. Just like before, if Lin Huang had not interfered, she might have been killed by that sneak attack. Even if she was lucky to have survived that, she would have definitely been injured severely. Now that she had the chance to fight White Brow alongside Lin Huang, it was only natural that she would not let the opportunity slip by. This might be the only way to defeat White Brow in a short period of time. Lin Huang took the lead in attacking as soon as they came to an agreement. Endless golden saber gleams shot forth from his sleeves frantically. Almost each one of them was superimposed with level-5,000,000 Odylic Force. They were no less powerful than White Brow''s silver-white saber gleams. White Brow did not dare to delay his attack at all when he saw Lin Huang strike. The silver-white saber gleams that were attacking the ice corpses shifted like ocean waves. They shot forth toward the golden storm on Lin Huang''s side. At the same time, more silver-white saber gleams were consolidated in front of White Brow. They joined in the fight with the golden storm immediately after. At that moment, the sky was filled with frantic collisions as the silver-white and gold storms converged. Endless golden and silver-white gleams exploded in the air. While Lin Huang and White Brow fell into an intense battle, Xia Bing instantly controlled the ice corpses to attack White Brow. Although her ice corpses were hit by White Brow''s attacks superimposed with level-5,000,000 Odyl, they did not fall. Moreover, those that had fallen were revived immediately. They got back up and joined in the battle. Despite the fact that White Brow had shifted his attention to Lin Huang, he did not dare to ignore Xia Bing at all. Countless protective saber gleams consolidated in front of his body. However, they were no longer attacking the ice corpses actively, but rather defending against the close combat ice corpses that were attacking and the other ice corpses'' long-distance attacks. He knew that he could not kill these ice corpses within a short period of time, so he figured that he would go with a defensive strategy. The situation of the entire battlefield was completely different from before. Lin Huang, who was initially observing the battle, had become the main person attacking White Brow. Xia Bing, who was evenly matched with White Brow earlier, was now playing the role of an auxiliary assistant. However, Xia Bing was undoubtedly an outstanding auxiliary assistant. A battle bow appeared in her hand instantly when she realized that the ice corpses could not do anything to White Brow for the time being. She placed her jade-like fingers on the string, and an arrow made of crystal was condensed instantly. It was filled with Dao tattoos and dazzled with a white glow. The next second, the arrow left the bowstring. It turned into a comet streaking through the air, aimed at White Brow. Subsequently, the second and third arrows were shot forth consecutively. Within a split second, Xia Bing had released hundreds of arrows. Each of them was no less powerful than Lin Huang''s "flying sabers". White Brow had not expected Xia Bing to possess such a technique. Watching the incoming arrows, he did not dare to delay at all. He rapidly condensed more saber gleams to stop them. However, the moment the silver-white saber gleams collided with the white arrows, the arrows exploded directly. White Brow was stunned to see this strange scene. However, he was being forced to retreat by Lin Huang''s "flying sabers". He retreated frantically. The reason being was that, after the white arrows exploded, they transformed into white fog, enveloping White Brow like a spider web. Even his protective saber gleams were frozen when it came into contact with the passing white fog. White Brow''s pupils shrunk slightly. He escaped immediately. The attack was no longer just merely Frost Dao. Xia Bing''s arrow attack contained the Odylic effect of stopping time. He might be affected even if he came into contact with the white fog in the slightest bit. He might even be killed if he was stopped for a second during a battle with experts. Naturally, Lin Huang sensed the unusualness of Xia Bing''s arrows right away. His eyes lit up at the same time. He performed a hand seal with both hands quickly and converted the Dao seals that were superimposed on the "flying sabers" into Dao seals that majored in space, time and seal. The countless flying sabers were no longer intended for attacking; they avoided head-on collisions with White Brow''s saber gleams as much as they could. Instead, their main objective was to restrict and seal White Brow''s movements instead. Lin Huang''s change of battle strategy instantly made White Brow feel even more troubled. Chapter 1773 - White Brow’s Trump Card Lin Huang and Xia Bing changed the pattern of the battle, after which they began to take control of the battle. In the air, there would be white arrow gleams intersected with the golden saber gleams. At this moment, White Brow was only able to defend and dodge the attacks forcefully. He knew that he would not only be hurt if he came in contact with any of the attacks, but also that his movements would be directly affected as well. He might slip into a fatal situation instantly if his movements stopped for even a second during such a high-level battle. He could only try his best to control the saber gleams to defend himself and dodged the remaining attacks carefully. He tried his best to avoid making any contact with the two''s attacks. As he responded to the two''s attacks, he was quickly thinking of a strategy to resolve his current predicament. Although defending and dodging might be enough to keep him alive against the two for now, he knew that he would definitely suffer a loss if this dragged on. The reason being was that he was alone. He definitely could not compete with the two in terms of the rate of Odyl exhaustion when the two of them were working together. Meanwhile, Lin Huang and Xia Bing were very patient. After attacking for a few rounds, they were gradually getting more and more in sync. Lin Huang''s God Weapon flying sabers transformed into a web that covered the sky, while Xia Bing''s arrows transformed into ferocious beasts that chased after White Brow. The ferocious beasts went after their prey over and over again, forcing him to fall into the web of golden saber gleams. White Brow was not a pushover. He was like a slippery loach and always somehow managed to escape at critical moments. The stagnant situation lasted for over ten minutes. Suddenly, Lin Huang performed a hand seal again to adjust the superimposed Odylic Force on the God Weapons. He boosted a portion of his God Weapons with speed-shifting Dao seals, while a portion of the God Weapons were superimposed with Dao seals that allowed Space Warp and Shadow Warp At the moment, the telekinetic flying sabers'' trajectories became at least ten times more complicated than before. They were either slow or fast, their trajectories were either visible or concealed White Brow felt even more pressure now. Xia Bing, who was on the other side, also noticed the changes that Lin Huang had made. Her eyes rolled a little bit, and then the Dao seals that were superimposed on the arrows in her hand instantly changed as well. Each of the arrows was different now. The pressure on White Brow increased again. The changes performed by the two during this round of attack had undoubtedly brought White Brow a great deal of trouble. He had just adapted to their battle rhythm, but he had yet to reach the state where he could fight them at ease. The round of changes had messed up his rhythm directly. He was under great pressure once again. Lin Huang and Xia Bing did not give him any chance to catch a breath at all. Seeing that his rhythm was messed up, they immediately pressed their advantage and sent out even more attacks. This made White Brow fall into a panicked state. He was stretched thin. Within ten seconds, he finally revealed a flaw. One of Lin Huang''s space flickering God weapon flying sabers penetrated the gap of the saber gleams defense formation. Although White Brow dodged at the very last second, avoiding his chest from being pierced by that saber gleam, Xia Bing saw her opportunity. A white arrow nearby exploded instantly, accurately predicting and covering the location in which White Brow had dodged toward. Once he noticed that, he wanted to dodge by using teleportation again, but he was too late. A frosty fog had tainted his sleeve. The second his movements paused, the sky full of golden saber gleams and white arrows cascaded down upon his location. White Brow''s pupils shrunk slightly. That one second of stagnancy had turned into his biggest flaw. It was too late to dodge, and it was too late to defend. However, he still had a trump card! Just before the endless saber gleams and arrow gleams got to him, the entire air surrounding him turned black. A strange black fog began to appear around White Brow rapidly. At the same time the black fog rushed out of his body, his hair and brows that were initially turning black faded quickly. They were white now. Meanwhile, the black fog instantly consolidated into a set of black armor on his body, receiving all of the attacks by force. "It''s Abyssal energy!" Xia Bing exclaimed softly. Meanwhile, Lin Huang said nothing as he stared at the lingering black fog around White Brow. He was familiar with the aura. It was the energy that had attempted to contaminate him when he retrieved Yan Jun''s memories back then. The aura exuded by White Brow''s body was almost exactly the same as the black liquid from back then. "Be careful. The Abyssal energy on his body is exactly the same as the energy in Yan Jun''s body," Lin Huang said to Xia Bing through voice transmission. Xia Bing''s face turned solemn after hearing that. Naturally, she remembered Lin Huang telling her that he accidentally triggered a strange black energy when he was reading through Yan Jun''s memories. The black energy was highly infectious, and had almost contaminated Lin Huang. "I didn''t want to expose this secret of mine, but you guys left me with no choice," White Brow said rather hatefully. "So you''ve finally admitted that you''re a spy from the Raiders, and you''re colluding with the Abyss!" Lin Huang exposed him ruthlessly. White Brow''s state seemed rather weird. He laughed directly when he heard that. "The Raiders? I''m not the same as those old geezers." What White Brow said confused Lin Huang and Xia Bing a little. "The people from the Raiders are close-minded, and they''re pompous. They''re nothing but dust." White Brow smiled as he looked at Lin Huang and Xia Bing. "They honestly should''ve been eliminated by the times since the beginning." "If you''re not a Raider, then who are you?" Xia Bing could tell that his mental state did not seem to be very stable. She wanted to seize this opportunity to obtain more information. White Brow looked at her with a smile and said nothing. His smile was getting creepier. "If I''m not mistaken, you''re probably from the Black Abyss?" Combining the only two keywords Lin Huang got from Yan Jun''s memories, and the fact that White Brow could borrow the Abyssal energy, he made a bold speculation. The smile on White Brow''s face turned stiff, after which he looked closely at Lin Huang. "Seems like you know more than I expected." Xia Bing began to think of many things after Lin Huang''s speculation was confirmed. "So it was you guys who have been stirring troubles in the mystic territories all over the universe? And you guys blamed it on the Raiders on purpose?!" "It seems like you came prepared. Although those old geezers at the Raiders are dumb, they''re not so foolish as to be making enemies everywhere they go. Moreover, no matter how good they are at clearing their traces, someone will find clues eventually," White Brow explained like a madman. "Then are you guys sure that people would look for the Raiders instead of investigating the Black Abyss directly?" Lin Huang asked another key question. "You''ve asked the right question to the right person" White Brow placed a finger in front of his lips and lowered his voice as he spoke, "Let me tell you guys a secret.. Don''t tell anyone. The Black Abyss actually hides deep among the Raiders" Chapter 1774 - Worship Me White Brow, who had Abyssal energy lingering around his body, seemed be mentally unstable. He even revealed the secret of Black Abyss hiding deep among the Raiders to them, while at the same time speaking of Black Abyss putting the blame on Raiders out loud. After hearing that, Lin Huang and Xia Bing looked at each other almost simultaneously. They could see the shock and surprise in each other''s eyes as they locked gazes. They had not expected to hear of such a secret from White Brow. Lin Huang spoke again after they signaled to each other. "I have another question. Who are you worshiping in this space?" As soon as Lin Huang asked that question, White Brow froze instantly, and his expression turned serious, "I''m worshiping the ruler of all things, the source of the starsAza" Lin Huang and Xia Bing looked at each other again, and they immediately understood what the other had in mindThey both had never heard of it. Aza Black Abyss Abyssal energy Lin Huang connected the dots quickly and asked further, "Does that Aza you mentioned have anything to do with the Abyss? Is he the god of the Abyss?" "In the presence of my lord Aza, the Abyss is just a dream fragment, while the universe is just dust. He has surpassed the ultimate entity. Ordinary people can''t understand how mighty he is at all" To Lin Huang, those were totally empty words. He even wanted to tease him, did he know exactly how big the universe was? He went so far as to call it dust? How big was this Aza exactly? At that moment, Xia Bing spoke, "Then why are you worshiping him in a place like this mystic territory?" "The mystic territory is the bubble of His dreamland. Bursting the bubble will accelerate His awakening" White Brow seemed to have stabilized his mental state a little as he spoke up to this point. He stopped talking immediately and looked at Lin Huang and Xia Bing fiercely. "The two of you shouldn''t know about these things" White Brow suddenly laughed hysterically as he spoke, "But it''s fine even if you do, since you both won''t be alive after today Hahaha" At the same time, a vast amount of saber gleams consolidated in front of him. The saber gleams no longer exuded the silver-white color from before. Instead, there were clouds of black fog surrounding them. Not only that, the number was increasing. Within the blink of an eye, hundreds of millions of saber gleams had been consolidated. The strength of the auras that each saber gleam exuded had exceeded the superimposition of eight million Dao seals Xia Bing''s face turned pale instantly. Those saber gleams, each bearing such intense power, were almost at the limit of what she could handle. Even if she was hit once, she would definitely be severely injured if not killed. Lin Huang looked serious. He knew that he could no longer hide his true ability any longer. Red gleams shot forth from his sleeves. In an instant, hundreds of millions of God Weapon flying daggers had been consolidated. Xia Bing was slightly stunned when she saw his God Weapon flying daggers. Confusion flashed across her eyes, but she soon looked away from Lin Huang, concealing the fact that she was stunned by him. Facing the pressure of White Brow''s saber gleams, Lin Huang could no longer pretend to be a saber cultivator. The Odylic Force superimposed in those God Weapon flying daggers had reached the maximum number of Dao seals that Lin Huang could borrow from his Kingdom7,838,500 Dao seals! The Critical Hit Hammer''s limits of authority was released completely. The next second, Lin Huang''s God Weapon flying daggers and White Brow''s saber gleams moved almost at the same time. Suddenly, the black and red storm in the air were like two giant beasts occupying the sky as they fought against each other frantically. At the moment, the endless black and blood-colored electric arcs were intertwined crazily in the sky, tearing everything around them apart. The entire space was shaking with the intense roars that were a million times more powerful than lightning. The collision of the saber gleams and flying daggers released terrifying energy fluctuations. At the moment, if there was a major dao-level powerhouse witnessing this battle, he would have felt like a lonely boat drifting in the ocean, weathering through a grade-30 tsunami. Even Xia Bing, who was a powerhouse of the same level, also felt uneasy as if she was being pushed aside by the waves on the ocean. To prevent herself from being harmed by the impact from the battle, she even had a layer of ice enveloping her body, and had also superimposed the maximum amount of Odylic Force in it. Meanwhile, all of the ice corpses had turned into mush within ten seconds of the battle between Lin Huang and White Brow commencing. The level of power displayed by the attacks during this round of battle was completely on a different level compared to the previous rounds with White Brow before. Xia Bing was not in a rush to activate the revival ability of her Kingdom to revive the ice corpses. Although her Kingdom came with the revival ability, it would drain her Odyl every time she activated it. If she revived the ice corpses now, apart from having her Odyl drained, it would not help with anything. Therefore, she chose to watch quietly. It was not that she did not want to participate in the battle. She had no chance of interfering in a head-on battle. The type of battles that she was good at was completely different from the type of battle that the two were engaged in currently. If she was to interfere forcefully, she might end up affecting Lin Huang''s battle rhythm. Therefore, she decisively chose to watch from the side. She had her eyes on White Brow the entire time. She would attack to obstruct his movements and actions occasionally. She had completely become an auxiliary assistant. However, very soon, Xia Bing suddenly frowned lightly. She saw there were black spots of light appearing on Lin Huang''s flying daggers. She reminded him instantly through voice transmission. "His attack is imbued with contaminating properties. Many of your flying daggers have been contaminated now!" Lin Huang turned his head to glance at her and nodded lightly to show that he was aware. In reality, he had noticed it earlier. White Brow''s saber gleams were imbued with contamination properties. Although it was not as powerful as the black liquid in Yan Jun''s head, they could corrode his Odyl and contaminate his God Weapon flying daggers. If it had been someone else, it would likely have created a really tough battle situation to overcome. The reason being was that the longer this went on, the more God Weapon flying daggers would be contaminated, and it would gradually get more and more serious. Meanwhile, the contamination of such an Abyssal energy was very difficult to deal with. One would need to expend much more Odyl than the Abyssal energy to cleanse it. Naturally, White Brow noticed the two''s exchange. He even eavesdropped on the voice transmission Xia Bing sent Lin Huang. He said out loud with a smirk after hearing it, "It''s too late seeing that you''ve only found out about it now!" He performed a hand seal as soon as he said that. The black saber gleams suddenly began to change form. They were no longer simple saber gleams, but tentacles made of black fog that were like slime starting stretching out of them. Those tentacles would attach a part of themselves on the God Weapon flying daggers each time they collided with the God Weapon flying daggers. The rate of contamination suddenly accelerated! The God Weapon flying daggers that were only less than one-fifth contaminated initially were half-contaminated within the blink of an eye Xia Bing was worried for Lin Huang as she observed the situation unfold. She said to Lin Huang through voice transmission directly, "This can''t go on. Let''s think of a way to leave this space first." However, Lin Huang replied calmly, "Don''t worry, I have a way to deal with it." For an ordinary person, there was almost zero possibility to turn this situation around. They would only be slowly drained to death by White Brow. However, Lin Huang was not someone ordinary. He had Eternity Fire in his body. Eternity Fire could even absorb the liquid black energy in Yan Jun''s body previously, let alone this Abyssal energy in fog form now. As soon as he spoke, Eternity Fire''s function was activated instantly. The black fog that had contaminated the God Weapon flying daggers began to fade quickly at speed that was visible to the naked eye "How is this happening?! How is that possible?!" White Brow''s face was filled with disbelief when he saw what was taking place. Even Xia Bing was in a daze. Lin Huang merely smiled faintly.. "Stop worshiping that Aza. You should worship me instead!" Chapter 1775 - White Brow Dies White Brow was in disbelief when he first saw the Abyssal energy could not contaminate Lin Huang''s God Weapon flying daggers. However, his expression suddenly turned strange a moment later. He looked like a starving stray dog who had suddenly seen a pile of delicious meat. He began to mumble softly as he stared at Lin Huang. "Thank you almighty Aza for sending me the gift I desire" Although he was speaking softly, Lin Huang and Xia Bing heard him loud and clear. Xia Bing''s face was filled with shock when she heard his words. Meanwhile, Lin Huang felt goosebumps all over his body. Just when Lin Huang was beginning to have suspicions about the old man''s approach, more black saber gleams were consolidated in front of White Brow at a rapid rate. A hundred million, 200 million, 300 million Over 800 million saber gleams were consolidated within the blink of an eye. There was more than level-15,000,000 Odylic Force superimposed on each saber gleam. The number of saber gleams was not why Lin Huang had a change of expression, nor was it the level of Odyl superimposed on them, but the powerful saber formation that was quickly formed by those saber gleams "This saber is called Dazzling Galaxy." White Brow was like a crazy demon. There was even blood dripping from his mouth and nose, but his tone of speech had begun to calm down. Lin Huang''s pupils constricted slightly, while endless blood-colored electric arcs shot forth from his sleeves. Instantly, there were over a billion electric arcs gathered. He did not dare to hold back when facing such an attack. Not only did he borrow the maximum amount of Dao seals from his Kingdom, he also did not hold back on the close to 80,000 Dao seals that he consolidated himself as well. Xia Bing, who was not far away, knew that she could no longer hide her ability either. Her hands turned into shadows as she performed a complicated hand seal rapidly. The moment she was done with the hand seal, snow began to fall in her Kingdom. Almost at the same time, White Brow pointed at Lin Huang from a distance. The saber formation comprising endless black saber gleams turned into a swirling galaxy, enveloping Lin Huang and Xia Bing instantly. Suddenly, Lin Huang and Xia Bing seemed to have really envisioned a whirling galaxy. The saber gleams were like black stars rotating in the universe, crushing everything that was swirling around it into the galaxy. At that moment, Lin Huang''s God Weapon flying daggers were triggered instantly. Destructive lightning! The over one billion God Weapon flying daggers turned into a sky full of lightning, which exploded in the middle of the galaxy. Suddenly, it was as if a bright red lightning flower had bloomed at the center of the galaxy. The destructive lightning flower and the black galaxy that was swirling at an unstable frequency fell into a stagnant situation. On the surface, the Dao seals Lin Huang used were indeed quite little. However, each of the Dao seals he consolidated himself contained a million Dao tattoos. It was at least a hundred times more than the amount other dao-level powerhouses had. The power exuded by the close to 80,000 Dao seals at the moment was no less powerful than the eight million Dao seals he borrowed from his Kingdom. Although there were disparities in their techniques, he took White Brow''s most powerful hit forcefully. In reality, the number of Odyl superimposed between the two of them had surpassed Xia Bing''s limit. Nevertheless, she attacked without holding back. Under the superimposition of her Kingdom, snow suddenly began falling over the battlefield, and it gradually started to snow more heavily. The battlefield was covered entirely by a strong wind and snowstorm almost instantly. Each of the frosty snowflakes that landed on the black saber gleams would seal one to two levels of Odyl. As the density of the snowflakes increased, their speed was increasing too. White Brow clearly felt the gradual increase of the suppression of Abyssal energy on his body as the snowflakes fell on him. However, the snowflakes transformed into a superimposition when they landed on the God Weapon flying daggers. Although there was only one to two levels of Odyl in each snowflake, the effect was significant as they gradually accumulated. Through the waning and waxing, the battle situation that was initially stagnant had finally lost its balance. The lightning flower was blooming more and more dazzlingly, while the black galaxy began to collapse slowly White Brow wanted to turn the terrible situation around when he saw what was going on. He controlled the swirling galaxy and changed its forms a couple of times. However, it was all futile. The boundless black galaxy could not overcome the lightning flower in the end. It could not hurt Lin Huang and Xia Bing at all. Through the endless snow, wind and saber gleams, Lin Huang saw that White Brow''s seven orifices began to bleed, and his hair started turning white and thin. Even his skin was rapidly aging at a speed that was visible to the naked eye The Abyssal energy that had allowed him to regain a little bit of his lifespan as well as his youth earlier was currently engulfing his vitality, of which not much remained. ''You brought this upon yourself. You should die!'' Lin Huang commented deep within his heart. Through the endless lightning, snow and wind, White Brow saw the way Lin Huang was looking at him. It was the kind of gaze one had when looking at someone pathetic. "I''m unwilling Why" White Brow seemed to know the consequences of his attack failing well. "I thought I could obtain the treasure in your possession after killing you and wouldn''t have to worry about the corrosion of Abyssal energy again" Under the collision of the flying daggers and saber gleams, White Brow''s voice was as soft as a buzzing mosquito, but Lin Huang heard it loud and clear. He had finally realized that White Brow had been eyeing the Eternity Fire in his body. Him removing the Abyssal energy just now had exposed the function of Eternity Fire. White Brow''s physical body was aging quickly, and even his vitality was fading fast. The Dazzling Galaxy would soon collapse. In the galaxy, the saber gleams began to fade away quickly as if they had lost their energy supply. They faded into nothingness. The entire galaxy collapsed within ten seconds. It gradually faded. The current White Brow was so skinny that he was only left with skin and bones, like a dried corpse. His Odyl had faded almost entirely, and he was only left with a sliver of vitality. He did not have the strength to fight anymore. Lin Huang and Xia Bing halted their attacks on their own when they saw his decrepit state. "Do you still think that guy named Aza will still take care of you?" Lin Huang asked expressionlessly. White Brow no longer had Abyssal energy left in his body. He was dying, but he remained conscious. However, he could no longer speak. He merely nodded lightly, while tears were streaming down his face continuously. Lin Huang wanted to say more but, as he was about to speak, he sensed that White Brow''s vitality had collapsed entirely. "Let''s see if I can retrieve any useful information," Lin Huang said to Xia Bing who was next to him, and pressed his hand on White Brow''s forehead, of which all that was left was but a layer of thin skin. He began to read the remaining memories in his mind as he spread Divine Telekinesis inside. A moment later, he retrieved his hand. Xia Bing asked quickly, "How was it?" Lin Huang shook his head. "Look at it yourself." Xia Bing nodded and took a step forward too. She pressed her hand upon White Brow''s corpse. She retrieved her hand merely a moment after as well. "As expected, all the information regarding the Black Abyss has been removed" "Fortunately, he revealed quite a lot verbally during the battle." Lin Huang did not think that they had been left empty-handed. "His Kingdom is still here. You can put away his corpse," Xia Bing said casually. Just as Lin Huang was about to put the corpse away, he seemed to have suddenly thought of something, after which he turned his head to look at Xia Bing. "You know who I am?!" Chapter 1776 - The Strange Altar The reason why Lin Huang suspected that Xia Bing had discovered his identity was because she said "his Kingdom is still here". Not just anyone could refine Kingdoms as they wished. There was a limit to everyone''s Kingdoms'' territories. It depended on the foundation when one consolidated their Kingdom in the beginning. Therefore, there was a limit to the Kingdom that one could refine and integrate. Meanwhile, White Brow''s Kingdom was close to the strength limit of major dao-level powerhouses. Most major dao-level powerhouses could not refine such a Kingdom at all. To a powerhouse like Xia Bing, although she could refine it, she had to have refined many Kingdoms to have been able to cultivate to this level, so her Kingdom should have reached its limit and she could no longer integrate any more Kingdoms. Therefore, to most people, White Brow''s Kingdom was useless. Lin Huang on the other hand, was a unique case. His Kingdom''s foundation was more powerful than everyone else''s. Refining other people''s Kingdoms was one of the main ways to elevate his strength. However, only people who knew him or people he was close with knew that fact. Xia Bing mentioning it made him suspect that she knew him. Not only that, he thought that she had guessed his real ability judging from his God Weapon flying daggers. Xia Bing was stunned. A subtle panic flashed through her eyes, but her expression remained calm. "How would I know? The mask you''re wearing has shielded your real aura entirely. Maybe you should remove your mask and see if I know you?" Lin Huang stared at Xia Bing for a moment and did not see anything unusual. He figured that he was overthinking things. "It''s impossible for me to remove my mask. Stop thinking about such things." He intentionally adjusted his mask with his hand as he spoke. Only after that did he put away White Brow''s corpse into his storage space. After dealing with the corpse, Lin Huang turned around to look at the altar that was covered in black fog not far away. "Did you say that the altar couldn''t be destroyed?" Xia Bing looked at the altar with a rather worried expression. She nodded. "I''ve tried it. I don''t think a major dao-level powerhouse can destroy it." "Let me try it," Lin Huang attempted it directly as he spoke those words. His Kingdom descended instantly, enveloping the altar. The next second, endless electric arcs formed by the one billion God Weapon flying daggers enveloped the space where the altar was. He borrowed all of the Odyl outside his Kingdom for this attack. He almost did not hold anything back. After all, he had exposed his true ability to Xia Bing. There was no need for him to continue hiding things now. Under the superimposition of the Critical Hit Hammer''s effect, the God Weapon flying daggers unleashed terrifying power. Any one of them was sufficient to kill a peak major dao-level powerhouse. However, such an attack seemed to have fallen into a swamp as soon as it entered the area covered by the black fog where the altar was. As the flying daggers continued moving, inch by inch, the Odylic Force covering them would detach and dissolve rapidly. The remaining attack power was next to nothing by the time the flying daggers hit the stone platform. His attack did not cause any damage to the stone platform at all. Not even a stone chip was dislodged. Lin Huang could not help but frown slightly when he saw the outcome of his attack. While controlling the God Weapon flying daggers to continue attacking, he covered the entire altar with his Divine Telekinesis, trying to discover where the problem lay exactly. Although the black fog was corroding the Divine Telekinesis that was being spread out quickly, indeed, Lin Huang soon discovered something unusual. There were many runes "carved" onto the altar. Lin Huang had initially thought they were carvings. Observing through his Divine Telekinesis, he discovered that the black runes were made from Abyssal energy in liquid form. Not only that, the Abyssal energy was flowing continuously. It was just that the rate of flow was rather strange, giving people the illusion that it was completely still. That was what caused Lin Huang to initially think that the runes were carved. He also discovered that every time his God Weapon flying daggers hit the stone platform, the Abyssal energy within the runes would exude a faint black glow. Lin Huang guessed that there was a high probability that those runes were the reason why the stone platform remained perfectly unscathed by his attack. After seeing his futile attack, Xia Bing who was standing at the side could finally no longer take it. "Forget it, stop wasting your strength. Let''s leave it if we can''t get rid of it, since this mystic territory won''t appear again within a short period of time. Our priority now should be to bring back the news about the Black Abyss." Lin Huang thought for a moment before speaking again, "Let me try again." He recalled his Kingdom and God Weapon flying daggers directly after saying that. In a flash, he dove into the black fog and appeared on the altar directly. Xia Bing wanted to stop him when she saw that, but it was too late. "You" Although White Brow had died, the altar that he had activated remained active. Xia Bing had only dared to attack it from a distance previously, as she was afraid that she would be tainted by the Abyssal energy surrounding the altar. Never had she thought that Lin Huang would take the initiative to jump inside the black fog. It was an action that was equivalent to asking for death had it been performed by an ordinary person. White Brow was the best example of what would happen when one was contaminated by Abyssal energy. However, Xia Bing soon calmed down. On one hand, she recalled that Lin Huang had a unique technique to cleanse the Abyssal energy. On the other hand, she saw that Lin Huang, who was standing on the altar, did not show any signs of being contaminated by the Abyssal energy at all. In addition, he looked more like he was absorbing the Abyssal energy. In reality, that was indeed what Lin Huang wanted to do. He went straight to the altar and activated Eternity Fire to absorb the Abyssal energy frantically. As Eternity Fire absorbed the Abyssal energy wildly, the black fog surrounding the altar soon became thin. Very soon, it faded entirely. Meanwhile, Eternity Fire started the second round of absorption. The black runes on the altar began stretching out threads, that were like inverted tornadoes, into Lin Huang''s body. It was not that Lin Huang was being attacked, but rather an effect caused by Eternity Fire''s absorption. On the altar, as Eternity Fire absorbed the ink-black runes, they rapidly started fading at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. At this moment, Xia Bing could finally see the possibility of this altar being destroyed. Time was passing by inside this virtual realm space. Over half an hour later, Eternity Fire had finally completely absorbed the last bit of liquid Abyssal energy. However, the second it was absorbed, Lin Huang suddenly felt a shudder inside his body. The next second, he noticed that his physical body, God''s soul, Odyl, Kingdom, Divine Power, Divine Telekinesis, and the Goldfingers in his body Everything seemed to have been blocked. He was only left with his consciousness, which was being pulled by an irresistible force. It was falling continuously Not knowing how long he had been falling, Lin Huang only felt that his surroundings were getting darker and darker. When it became so dark that even his consciousness could not sense anything around him, he faintly sensed that the pulling sensation had finally stopped. He tried his best to sense everything around him, but there was only darkness. However, he soon heard a faint, long breathing sound that was coming from extremely far away. Not knowing why, Lin Huang felt an unknown fear sprout inside him when he heard that sound. The feeling was indescribable. If he had to describe it, he could clearly sense the source of the breathing sound. It was a powerful entity that he did not know of. Even if He did nothing and merely existed, it was enough to make one tremble. Lin Huang tried to maintain his very last strand of rationality to resist this great and unknown fear. After an unknown period of time had passed, an intense dizziness suddenly hit him. When he looked around again, he realized that he had returned to the altar His physical body, God''s soul, Odyl, Kingdom, Divine Power, Divine Telekinesis, and the Goldfingers in his body Everything had become normal again. Chapter 1777 - The Mystic Territory Collapses As Lin Huang''s consciousness returned to his body, the first thing he did was to contact Xiao Hei and the rest of the Goldfingers in his body. "Did you guys feel anything strange just now? Like you guys had lost connection with me or something?" "No." Xiao Hei answered almost without any hesitation. The Soul-controlling Tablet, Eternity Fire and the rest of the Goldfingers gave the same answer. In reality, Lin Huang had expected that answer, but he insisted on asking anyway just in case. Just as he was about to ask further, the entire altar suddenly began to crack and collapse. Not only that, the entire space started to tremble intensely. It looked like it was at risk of collapsing anytime. "Let''s go!" Lin Huang said to Xia Bing. At the same time, he arrived at the teleportation entrance which they had used to come in earlier directly in a flash. Xia Bing arrived almost at the same time. The two of them stepped through the entrance one after the other. Just as the two of them returned to the sixth level of the Abyss from the teleportation entrance, the entrance began to collapse rapidly before they could even turn around. Within three seconds, the entrance vanished completely. Lin Huang and Xia Bing were slightly relieved. At that moment, the surface of the mystic territory''s sixth level began to tremble as well. The two of them locked eyes. They moved again almost at the same time. They went toward the fifth level''s entrance without any hesitation whatsoever. When they had arrived at the entrance, the surface of the sixth level had begun to collapse. They merely turned around to take a glance before heading straight to the fifth level. Without waiting for anything to happen on the fifth level, they headed straight to the fourth level''s entrance. When they arrived at the fourth level''s entrance, the surface of the fifth level began to tremble violently. The two of them locked eyes and headed straight to the fourth level. When they got to the fourth level, they headed straight to the third level''s entrance frantically before waiting for anything to happen to the fourth level. Later on, they headed to the second level, and then the first, all the way until they had gotten out of the Abyss. It was only then that they stopped running. "I wonder if it''ll affect the places outside of the Abyssal zone." Xia Bing stood at the entrance of the Abyss and looked below. "No matter what, this will be the end of the exploration this time." Lin Huang looked at Xia Bing. He hesitated for a while, but could not help but ask, "Did you feel anything strange, even for the slightest moment, when I was on the altar?" Hearing the odd question, Xia Bing recollected the scene carefully and then shook her head in confirmation. "There was nothing strange. I only saw you absorbing that Abyssal energy and then the altar collapsed. After that, the entire space collapsed." "At any moment, did you suddenly not sense my aura anymore?" Lin Huang continued to ask. Xia Bing shook her head in slight confusion. "No, why are you asking that? Did you sense anything strange?" Lin Huang thought about it and decided to not tell her for the time being. "Nothing. I thought I''d just ask." Xia Bing did not want to give up and wanted to ask further, but more people were running out of the Abyss consecutively. The conversation between them ceased. Most of the powerhouses who ran out headed straight toward the sky and left the mystic territory soon after. Only a small number of them stayed behind. "I''m leaving too. Only a few hours remain until the end of the exploration period. It''s pretty meaningless to stick around." Lin Huang headed toward the sky in a flash after saying that. Xia Bing hesitated no longer and caught up to him in the sky when she saw him move. It was simple to leave the mystic territory. All they had to do was to fly upward. After they arrived at a certain height above the ground, they would leave the mystic territory automatically. Very soon, Lin Huang left the mystic territory. He had once again returned to the boundless sky. He removed his mask and disguise after leaving the mystic territory. He was now wearing the clothes and the look he had before entering the mystic territory. Xia Bing got out less than three seconds after Lin Huang did. After she got out, she glanced through the crowd of faces quickly. She looked away without stopping when she glanced at Lin Huang. Lin Huang was relieved. She did not seem to recognize him. There were a bunch of dao-level powerhouses who had escaped from the abyssal zone who came out almost at the same time as they did. Most of the powerhouses from the different organizations did not leave immediately. Instead, they began a discussion in the air outside the mystic territory. "What happened to the abyssal zone? Why did it collapse suddenly?!" "That''s right. The exploration hasn''t ended yet. Theoretically, the mystic territory shouldn''t close so soon." "The closing of mystic territory never involved it collapsing directly. Instead, it should have been gradually enveloped by the fog." "Yes, such a collapse makes it look like it was caused by someone. Perhaps someone triggered something in the abyssal zone" Lin Huang felt a little guilty when he heard the crowd''s discussion. Although he did not do anything bad, the collapse of the abyssal zone was caused by him absorbing the Abyssal energy at the altar after all. As the crowd was still discussing, more and more people teleported out of the mystic territory consecutively. Lin Huang saw many people that he was familiar with as well as those that he had met when he was disguised as the white-masked man. Old Wang and Old He from Royal, Chi Yao and Yue Wu, as well as the tall and short brothers from Snow Kingdom. Soon, Lin Huang heard more news. After the abyssal zone collapsed, it very soon spread to the ground, the sea and other zones. With the abyssal zone as the core and starting point, the collapse and disintegration spread outward in all directions throughout the entire mystic territory. The people who initially ran out were only powerhouses who were hunting in the abyssal zone. As the collapse spread, almost all the survivors escaped one after the other. This included Liu Fu who had just been elevated to minor dao-level. He saw Lin Huang as soon as he got out. He arrived before him in a flash and gave him a hug directly. "You''re alive as well, bro. This is amazing!" After letting go of Lin Huang, he began to whine incessantly, describing the tragic encounters he went through over the past one month. Lin Huang could only listen in silence, while responding occasionally. Most people chose to stay. They were chatting with the people they were familiar with as well. Only a small number of them chose to leave immediately. More and more people gathered in the sky outside the mystic territory. Some ten minutes later, the mystic territory collapsed into fragments and then vanished quickly before the crowd''s eyes. Nothing was left in its place. However, at that moment, someone came to a realization that the major-dao level powerhouses from their organization had not come out. "Where''s Master White Brow? Why isn''t he out?!" There was a clamor on the Longevity Tribe''s side. The other organizations slowly fell into chaos, including Royal. Chi Yao glanced through the crowd and asked loudly, "Did anyone see Yan Jun?" The people from Royal were shocked. Yan Jun was most probably dead if he had not managed to get out. He was a major-dao level powerhouse! Lin Huang looked at Wang Xuanan secretly. He had not told Chi Yao through voice transmission that Yan Jun was a spy. Lin Huang guessed that he might not trust Chi Yao completely. She could only move on since nobody answered her question. After all, even White Brow was missing. Not only that, she had sensed a powerhouse scanning with Divine Telekinesis on the sixth level of the abyssal zone earlier. It was possible that Yan Jun had been killed. As the organizations counted their members, they soon left the sky. Lin Huang did not stay any longer. Instead, he headed over to his first stop in the universe directlythe Feister Star Zone! Chapter 1778 - Feister Star Zone The Feister Star Zone was located in Dongxuan City in the Eastern Eight Zone of the universe. It had the highest trading volume among the three trade zones within Dongxuan City. The reason Lin Huang chose this as his first foothold in the universe was because Dongxuan City was Sovereign Xuan''s territory. His safety was guaranteed. On the other hand, he was attracted by the rapid development of the trading market here. He could deal with many of his spoils here conveniently. Not only that, most of the resources he needed could also be found here. As soon as Lin Huang arrived in the Feister Star Zone, the first thing he did was to buy a property. In the Feister Star Zone, where land was scarce and expensive, property prices were high. Naturally, that was only true for regular cultivators. To Lin Huang, a dao-level cultivator, it was not even worth mentioning. He merely used an ultimate-grade god sequence relic to purchase a compound that was over 30,000 square meters in size in the busiest part of the Feister Star Zone. After completing the transaction procedures within ten minutes, Lin Huang directly moved in. He also released Lin Xin, Lin Xuan, his Sword Servants and the rest of them out of the Kingdom in his body. "From today onward, this is our first foothold in the universe." "This is the Feister Star Zone. It''s under the jurisdiction of Dongxuan City in the Eastern Eight Zone. Theoretically, safety is definitely guaranteed here. The Feister Star Zone is one of the three trade zones in Dongxuan City. You guys can check it out over the next few days to familiarize yourself with the surrounding environment." Lin Huang took out a storage ring and passed it to Sword 1 as he spoke. "There are communication rings that I got for everyone inside. Register and activate them when you guys put them on." Sword 1 handed out the communication rings to everyone quickly. They knew that they were no longer in the great world, but the universe. They could no longer use the communication rings they had been using before. "There''s no need to rush to establish the Sword Alliance for the time being. Familiarize yourself with the surrounding environment first and learn the basics about the universe." In reality, Lin Huang himself needed to use some information channels to understand the universe''s current situation. Although he had learned a lot about the universe and many great worlds through the True Spirit fragments from the Nirvana Trees, most of the information fragments were outdated, and there were many that were from the past era. Much of the information was obsolete now. That was the reason why he did not sort the information into usable data and share it with them. Back on Earth, a country could go from being impoverished to wealthy in 30 to 50 years. Perhaps within ten years, a change in industry would produce many wealthy people. Perhaps the rise of a new industry would give rise to the success of a bunch of young people within two to three years Naturally, the changes within the universe would not be as rapid. However, there were definitely many changes that had taken place after hundreds to thousands of years, or even an era. "I''ll drop by Royal to resubmit the application for Sword Alliance a few days later after we''ve settled in. Once that''s done, everyone can take on the missions published by Royal on their information channel." Sword 1 and the rest left one after the other after Lin Huang gave them a simple reminder. He was not exactly worried about the Sword Servants'' safety. The reason being was that the Sword Servants were already Lords. Although their ability was not considered top-tier in the universe, they were already considered powerhouses. However, he was still worried about Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. After the Sword Servants left, he turned around to look at Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and Xiao Mo. "Your ninth-rank true god-level combat strength isn''t considered weak in the great world. However, it''s rather weak here in the universe. Those who are below heavenly god-level can only be considered reserve members within the major organizations in the universe. Heavenly god-level is the first threshold before becoming an official member of many major organizations." "You guys can slack off a little bit these few days to familiarize yourself with the new environment, but you''ll really have to cultivate seriously after that. You guys don''t have to care about anything else. I''ll only give you one mission, which is to break through to heavenly god-level!" They nodded in silence. They did not want to slow Lin Huang down. "Although Dongxuan City is theoretically safe, it''s not definite. You guys should still be careful when you familiarize yourself with the surrounding environment these few days. Stay as low profile as you can." Lin Huang got them to pick their own rooms after giving them simple instructions. Meanwhile, he walked toward the main building through the courtyard. Including the main building, there were a total of 18 buildings in the compound. They were three-story buildings. Among them, the main building was the largest. Excluding the courtyard, the surface area was some 1,200 square meters. The main building was the tallest too; each story was at least 3.5 meters high. To many, such a building was sufficiently luxurious. To Lin Huang though, it was quite plain. When he was Emperor in the gravel world, any of the god relic palaces was gigantic here. The space inside could easily contain a planet. After stepping into the main building, Lin Huang scanned through the place with Divine Telekinesis instantly. He had looked through the transaction details earlier. He wanted to examine it thoroughly now. He scanned through each and every corner of the entire building with Divine Telekinesis, then he extended his scan toward the other directions from the courtyard. He saw Lin Xin and Lin Xuan each picking the buildings close to him, while Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang were staying in one building. Xiao Mo, Huang Wuji and Wu Hao also decided to stay in the same building. They did not sense his Divine Telekinesis scanning at all. Very soon, he had scanned through each and every corner of the entire compound and did not find anything out of the ordinary. He recalled his Divine Telekinesis and then summoned Bloody. Such a large compound came with its own defense and shield formation. All he had to do was to activate them, and they would block probing attempts from the outside world. However, such formations were usually not too powerful. They were standard formations created by a heavenly god-level formation master, which would only block the probing of heavenly god-level cultivators. Therefore, many lord-level, or even more powerful cultivators, would get their friends to revise the formations, or even do it themselves. Lin Huang summoned Bloody primarily to get her to set the formations again. Bloody was a limit lord-level powerhouse now. Not only that, her attainments in formations and shields were more powerful than her actual cultivation base. However, Lin Huang did not want to attract any unwanted attention. He only got her to set a shield formation that had the strength of limit lord-level. After Bloody received the order, she soon went into working mode. Some ten minutes later, she had completed the new setting for the formations. "I''ve only set up one layer for the shield formation. It can block all of the auras in the entire compound, and its strength is within limit lord-level." "I''ve set a 68-layer defense formation, with each layer being at limit lord-level. If the first layer is damaged, it will trigger the activation of the second layer. If the second layer is damaged, the third layer will be activated. If the third layer is destroyed, the remaining 63 layers of the formation will be activated instantly, integrating into a minor dao-level defense formation. It''s sufficient to defend against a full-force attack of a powerhouse who has just been elevated to minor dao-level." "Apart from that, I''ve also created a hidden maze. When a cultivator below dao-level falls into it, he definitely won''t be able to escape." "I''ve thought about adding an attack-type formation, but in the end I didn''t set one up. The reason being was that I thought that, if someone could ignore the maze and destroy the defense formation, an attack-type formation would be rather useless. Moreover, maintaining these formations at all times would require the continuous expenditure of Divine Crystals. We can spend less money by having one less formation." Bloody gave a thorough explanation of her work. "Thank you." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction, and then explained, "You guys can rest for the time being. I''ve just arrived in the universe and I haven''t understood the situation entirely. I''ll release you guys when the time is right." "Got it." Bloody nodded lightly. She knew that a limit Lord was considered a powerhouse in the universe. They might attract other powerhouses'' attention from the star zone if over 20 of them suddenly appeared at once. Chapter 1779 - Bountiful Gain Lin Huang sat with his legs crossed in the living room of the main building after activating the formations Bloody had set up. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis into his storage space and began to check the spoils he obtained from the trip into the mystic territory. His first gains were from the Voids that he had killed when he entered the black and white zone in the mystic territory. There were approximately 1,800 of them. However, he only obtained Origin Energy from killing those Voids. There were no carcasses left behind. Fortunately, Origin Energy was quite useful. It could be used to elevate his imperial monsters'' combat strength and the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls'' abilities. The second pile of spoils were from the Abyssal creatures that he had killed when he entered the foggy area. Including the Gluttons, Lin Huang had killed over 20 types of Abyssal creatures there. There were over 3,000 Abyssal creatures. They were at minor dao-level. The third pile of spoils were from the sea monsters Lin Huang killed in the sea. There were over 9,000 of those sea monsters that had basically mastered between 10,000 to 40,000 Dao seals. The fourth pile of spoils naturally came from the abyssal zone. There were already some major dao-level monsters on the first level of the abyssal zone. The monsters that Lin Huang killed had basically mastered between 80,000 to 100,000 Dao seals, and he managed to kill more than 3,000 of them. He killed over 3,500 monsters on the second level of the Abyss. On the third level of the Abyss, he only killed some 2,500 monsters, and then 2,000 monsters on the fourth level of the Abyss. He then killed over 3,000 monsters on the fifth level. When he got to the sixth level, there were actually not many monsters left in the abyssal zone. Given that Lin Huang was in a hurry to search for Xia Bing, he did not take the initiative to hunt. He only killed the hundred or so monsters that were attracted by his Divine Telekinesis probing. Nevertheless, the prey that had sent themselves to him were of high quality. They had basically mastered over 800,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang quickly scanned through the Kingdoms left behind on the monster carcasses with Divine Telekinesis one after the other. However, he could not help but frown soon after. Most of these monster carcasses'' Kingdoms were complete, but most of them were dead Kingdoms. Less than one-tenth of the Kingdoms had living beings remaining, much lesser Lords in them. Lin Huang soon realized the reason after thinking about it for a moment. Many of the monsters in the mystic territory were spirit species and undying species. They had died many years ago. The resources in the Kingdoms were exhausted, so they could not cultivate powerhouses. Many cultivators and non-cultivators died when their time was up. There were some Abyssal creatures that contained a high amount of Abyssal energy in their Kingdoms. Normal creatures could not survive in it at all. They were either contaminated, turning into Abyssal creatures, deformed or dead. Meanwhile, most Abyssal creatures were only left with survival skills. They did not have the motivation or method to cultivate on their own. Very few of them had been elevated above Lords. Lin Huang calculated carefully. Among the close to 33,000 monsters he killed, only some 700 or so of them had Lords and cultivators above lord-level surviving in their Kingdoms. Among them, there were some 500 minor dao-level cultivators and approximately 200 major dao-level cultivators. Combining all of the Kingdoms, there were some 110,000 Lords and some 700 dao-level powerhouses. That meant that the number of Lords in Lin Huang''s Kingdom would skyrocket if he refined those Kingdoms. There would even be dao-level powerhouses. These Lords and dao-level powerhouses would undoubtedly unseal many Dao seals within Lin Huang''s Kingdom. "I''ll refine those that can be refined, and then I''ll find time to deal with the remaining carcasses. I''ll trade them for dao-level Kingdoms with Lords inside or some other resources" Lin Huang very soon clarified his thoughts. After calculating the number of monster carcasses, Lin Huang laid his eyes on the few Black Abyss members'' corpses. The first one was Lu Yi, who was a spy within the Star Cluster. He had mastered over 55,000 Dao seals. The second one was Bai Rong, who was a spy within the Snow Kingdom. He had mastered some 52,000 Dao seals. The third one was Infinite''s minor dao-level team leader, Ao Yu. He was also a spy from Black Abyss. He had mastered over 100,000 Dao seals. The fourth one was the Black Abyss'' major dao-level spy hiding within RoyalYan Jun. He had mastered some 330,000 Dao seals. The fifth one was Householder White Brow, who was hiding within the Longevity Tribe. The number of Dao seals he had mastered had reached the limit of major dao-level, which was 1.08 million Dao seals. There were also two corpses that were not killed by Lin Huang. They were the dried corpses that he picked up from the space where the altar was located. They were Jin Feng from the Snow Kingdom and Hu Shan from the Star Cluster. They were both major dao-level powerhouses. They had mastered some 740,000 Dao seals and 800,000 Dao seals while they were alive. However, Lin Huang was not planning on retrieving their Kingdoms to refine them. Instead, he was going to return them to the Snow Kingdom and Star Cluster. The reason being Xia Bing asked him to return the corpses through voice transmission before leaving the mystic territory. The rewards he would obtain would not be lower than the value of looting the corpses. Although he could only refine the remaining five people''s Kingdoms, the quality of their Kingdoms was very high. Lin Huang examined their Kingdoms through Divine Telekinesis. There were a total of over 4,000 people in their Kingdoms. There were some 180 dao-level powerhouses within them. Apart from these corpses, there had to be great stuff hiding inside their storage rings. He also noticed that there were no longer rings on Jin Feng and Hu Shan''s fingers. They should have been taken away by White Brow after he killed them. Lin Huang did not plan to return the two''s storage rings. They were taken by White Brow anyway, not him. Meanwhile, White Brow''s carcass was his loot. He had done his best in returning the corpses! Apart from the storage rings of the five Black Abyss spies, there were actually a small number of storage rings from the human-form monsters in the mystic territory. There were almost 30 rings in total. Lin Huang did not have high hopes for these 30 rings. After all, most of them were old; some even been around for more than an era. Even if there was good stuff in the past, perhaps most of it had decayed. The storage space did not come with a time-stopping function. It merely blocked the air from the outside world from entering. However, although it isolated the decaying effects of oxidation, most of the items could not resist the decaying effects of time. Over an hour had passed by the time he was done calculating all of the spoils he had obtained from the trip to the mystic territory. Lin Huang took out the 41 storage rings and called Yang Ling over. He gave all of the rings to him to unlock. After Yang Ling left with the rings, Lin Huang summoned Bai. "I''m going into the virtual zone. Stay in the house and don''t let anyone disturb me." Although going into the virtual zone would only take a moment, Lin Huang summoned Bai to guard him as a safety precaution. Bai nodded and walked out of the main building directly. He closed the door and stood there with his hands crossed over his chest. Lin Huang summoned the virtual body and virtual realm cabin in the living room directly. He placed the storage ring in the virtual realm cabin. He then contacted Mr. Gate to open the gate to the virtual zone. His virtual body hesitated no further as he stepped into it directly. Chapter 1780 - Major Dao-level?! As soon as Lin Huang stepped into the virtual realm, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis instantly. There were no Voids in the few surrounding star zones. He then entered the virtual realm cabin in relief. After getting into the cabin, he picked up the storage ring on the floor and sat with his legs crossed. He adjusted himself mentally and took out the first monster carcass, after which he began to extract its Kingdom without hesitation. The ones that he chose to extract were naturally those whose Kingdoms still had living beings and Lords. It only took him a moment to extract the Abyssal monster''s Kingdom. He tossed the carcass back inside his storage space casually and activated Eternity Fire to cleanse the Abyssal energy in the Kingdom. Very soon, Eternity Fire had engulfed all of the Abyssal energy in the Kingdom. Lin Huang then began to refine the Kingdom directly. As his ability was close to peak major dao-level, the speed at which he refined Kingdoms was much faster than before. He merely used about a week to refine the minor dao-level Kingdom. There were five Abyssal Lords who survived in this Kingdom. Among the five Lords, four of them were lower-rank Lords, and only one was a middle-rank Lord. However, the five of them unsealed 53 Dao seals for Lin Huang. Apart from that, the Kingdom contained over 60,000 Dao seals. They had now become a part of his Kingdom. The extraction and refinement of the first Kingdom was unusually successful. Lin Huang released a sigh of relief and very soon started the second round. The second Kingdom still belonged to an Abyssal minor dao-level monster. The entire handling process was almost identical to the first one. Meanwhile, there were more Abyssal Lords left behind in this Kingdom; eight of them. Among them, six were lower-rank Lords, and two were middle-rank Lords. The eight Abyssal Lords unsealed a total of 181 Dao seals for Lin Huang. This Kingdom also added over 90,000 Dao seals to his Kingdom. Later on, Lin Huang got the hang of things and managed to familiarize himself with the extraction and refinement process. The third Kingdom The fourth one Very soon, he extracted and refined most of the Kingdoms. The Dao seals in Lin Huang''s body were unsealed over and over again, while the number of Dao seals in his Kingdom was skyrocketing. There was no concept of time inside the virtual realm. He did not know how long had passed, but he had finally extracted and refined all of the 561 minor dao-level monsters'' carcasses. The 561 minor dao-level monsters'' Kingdoms undoubtedly brought a huge elevation in strength to him. Some 180,000 Dao seals were unsealed in Lin Huang''s body, while the total number of Dao seals in his Kingdom had been increased by over 85 million (not the number of Dao seals he could use). After refining the minor dao-level Kingdoms, Lin Huang examined his body briefly before quickly extracting and refining the 198 major dao-level monster carcasses. Days went by as Lin Huang stayed in the virtual realm. He spent over a hundred days to refine the first major dao-level Kingdom. Nevertheless, the gain was undoubtedly a bountiful one. There were close to a hundred Lords living in this Kingdom alone. Among the hundred Lords, there was only one ultimate-rank Lord and close to ten upper-rank Lords. Placing this batch of Lords and the dao-level Kingdom into his Kingdom, it unsealed over 4,000 Dao seals for Lin Huang. The refinement of the Kingdom increased the number of Dao seals by over 300,000 in Lin Huang''s Kingdom. He did not stop at all. He merely glanced at the growing numbers and quickly extracted and refined the second major dao-level Kingdom. After that, he continued the process for the third one, the fourth one The monster carcasses he extracted later on had mastered more Dao seals. The time spent to refine them was getting longer and longer. This caused Lin Huang to lose track of exactly how long he spent to finally refine all of the 198 Kingdoms. As soon as he refined all of them, he checked the numbers again. He was rather shocked as a result. The gains he had obtained from the 198 major dao-level Kingdoms was so much more than the over 500 minor dao-level Kingdoms he had refined before this. The unsealed Dao seals alone had surpassed 15 million. In his Kingdom, the number of Dao seals had increased by over 300 million. After refining all of the carcasses he obtained from the mystic territory, Lin Huang cast his eyes on the five Black Abyss members'' corpses. He spent some time extracting and refining those five Kingdoms. Although Lu Yi and Bai Rong were merely minor dao-level powerhouses who had mastered some 50,000 Dao seals, there were more Lords in their Kingdoms, more than most of the major dao-level Kingdoms from the mystic territory. Combining their Kingdoms, there were five ultimate-rank Lords and over 30 upper-rank Lords. Ao Yu, who was at peak minor dao-level, had more Lords in his Kingdom than the two of them combined, not to mention Yan Jun who was on major dao-level. The number of powerhouses in White Brow''s Kingdom was far beyond Lin Huang''s imagination. Not only were there some ten minor dao-level powerhouses, there was also a major dao-level powerhouse who had just been elevated not long ago. There were over 3,000 Lords too. The five''s Kingdoms unsealed over 3.7 million Dao seals for Lin Huang. Meanwhile, there were more than 48 million Dao seals added to his Kingdom. After refining all of the dao-level Kingdoms, Lin Huang made some calculations. This round of closed-door cultivation unsealed approximately 19.5 million Dao seals, while more than 440 million Dao seals were added to his Kingdom. However, the unsealing of Dao seals only meant that Lin Huang had a larger quota to work with now. It did not mean that he had mastered the Dao seals directly. He would need to analyze the Dao seals, speculate the Dao seals'' synthetic process and then consolidate them into his own Dao seals. To Lin Huang, refining those Kingdoms was only the first stage. The consolidation of Dao seals after this would take even more time, and it would be even more boring. Lin Huang merely glanced at the number of Dao seals that he had unsealed and got Xiao Hei to create an Epiphany Card without hesitation. After crushing it, he went into realization mode and immersed himself in the consolidation of Dao seals. Fortunately, the Epiphany Cards Xiao Hei created now would not be exhausted when the first realization was completed. Instead, each Epiphany Card allowed Lin Huang to remain in realization mode for a year. Meanwhile, throughout the year of realization mode, his comprehension and speed in sorting information would be accelerated by tens of thousands of times. This meant that using an Epiphany Card was comparable to 10,000 years of cultivation. Lin Huang had only used one Epiphany Card and managed to consolidate over 100,000 Dao seals in his body successfully. He was officially at major dao-level now. By the time he had exhausted the 10th Epiphany Card, he had finally mastered 1.08 million Dao seals. Theoretically, this number should be the limit of a major dao-level powerhouse. However, what puzzled Lin Huang was that this did not seem to be his limit. He continued to use Epiphany Cards to continue consolidating more Dao seals. One million eight hundred thousand! One million nine hundred thousand! One million one hundred thousand! One million five hundred thousand! Two million! Three million! The number of Dao seals skyrocketed to ten million! Initially, Lin Huang thought ten million would be the upper limit. The strange thing was that it was somehow not the limit yet. He continued to use the Epiphany Cards, while more and more Dao seals were consolidated. It still had yet to reach its limit even after he had reached 19.5 million Dao seals, which was the Dao seal quota he had unsealed. Lin Huang was confused when he looked at the 19.58 million Dao seals consolidated in his body and all of the 450 million Dao seals that he could borrow from his Kingdom (They could be multiplied a hundredfold within the Kingdom). "Am I at major dao-level now or have I broken through major dao-level?" Chapter 1781 - Above Dao-level After calculating the number of Dao seals, Lin Huang examined the changes in his body carefully. His physical body and God''s soul had gone through three rounds of transformation in total throughout the closed-door cultivation session. The first transformation happened when the consolidated Dao seals broke through 18,000. The first round elevated his physical body and God''s soul to major dao-level officially. The second transformation happened when the consolidated Dao seals broke through 1.08 million. The round of transformation caused his physical body and God''s soul to break through major dao-level, reaching a new height. The third transformation happened when the consolidated Dao seals broke through 10.8 million. This round caused a leap in the state of his physical body and God''s soul again. Even Lin Huang had no idea how powerful his physical body and God''s soul were exactly. However, he could sense clearly that each particle in his physical body and God''s soul was covered in level-10 million Dao tattoos. He was sure that even if he did not use an Odylic defense at all, with such a level of Dao tattoo coverage, even a limit major dao-level powerhouse would not possess the strength to break through his defense. As he had never come in contact with powerhouses above major dao-level, he could not speculate on their level of strength. What surprised Lin Huang the most was that his Divine Telekinesis seemed to be able to divide itself endlessly when it reached such a level. It was no longer restricted. In addition, his God Weapon flying daggers seemed to be able to divide themselves endlessly as well. One had to know that the set of God Weapon flying daggers in his body transformed together with his physical body and God''s soul. Now that his physical body and God''s soul had transformed three times, the set of God Weapon flying daggers in his body had also transformed three times. He did not know what grade his God Weapons, that were initially precious treasures, were now. He only knew that exotic treasure was the grade above precious treasure, but he did not know what the grade above exotic treasure was. No matter what, he could definitely kill a major dao-level powerhouse in a single hit judging by the strength of the God Weapons in his body. He had refined all of the Kingdoms during this round of closed-door cultivation, and obtained a great leap in strength that he had never experienced before. Lin Huang knew that it was time to head back. He looked around after walking out of the virtual realm cabin. At the same time, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis again, yet he did not find even one Void. In reality, he was quite suspicious of this situation. The reason being was that whenever he came into the virtual realm to consolidate Dao seals, every time a Dao seal was consolidated, it would attract Voids who coveted his Dao seals. However, he had consolidated close to 20 million Dao seals this time, yet not even one Void came knocking at his door. He would even wait for a moment intentionally after he had just consolidated a Dao seal at the beginning. He did that as he was worried that there would be Voids coming to interrupt his next round of consolidating Dao seals. However, the truth proved that he had been overthinking things. Not even one Void came even after he had consolidated 19.5 million Dao seals. Although Lin Huang could not understand why that was so, he soon let it go. After scanning his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis, he put away the virtual realm cabin and concealed his aura. He then returned to the material realm. Almost as soon as he returned, he sensed a powerful aura. The intensity of the aura had clearly surpassed the limit of major dao-level. "This aura should belong to Sovereign Xuan." Lin Huang instantly made some guesses about this person''s identity. He also came up with a rough evaluation soon after. "The intensity of his aura is roughly the same as when I had mastered six million Dao seals" (The number of Dao seals does not directly reflect one''s ability) "So my current level of ability should''ve surpassed dao-level?!" Comparing the strength of auras, Lin Huang came to a rough judgment of his ability. "It seems like I must find out what the level above dao-level is as soon as I can." Lin Huang thought and spread out his Divine Telekinesis through the entire star zone. Initially, he only wanted to see what Lin Xin and the rest were doing. However, from the scan, he was surprised to find out that the star zone he was in was a little similar to the virtual realm. However, it was weaker. He even had the feeling that he could easily tear this world apart. "Is this the projection of a Kingdom? It''s quite weak." Lin Huang had just recalled that Liu Fu had mentioned that the entire Dongxuan City was the projection of Sovereign Xuan''s Kingdom. After merely a glance, he instantly understood the theory behind such a projection. Its true nature was that of the state of the half-descended Kingdom. He connected the materials in his Kingdom to the material realm, yet his Kingdom did not descend into the material realm completely. After understanding the theory behind it, Lin Huang knew that he could do that too. He could not help but think that he could actually find a barren sky and build such a nation when the Sword Alliance was established in the universe. On one hand, everyone from the Sword Alliance would have their safety guaranteed. On the other hand, it would not affect their communication and exchanges in the universe. Lin Huang did not try to tear this world apart after recalling his Divine Telekinesis, although he was quite curious about what would happen if he did. However, he knew that Sovereign Xuan would instantly sense it as soon as he tried it. Indeed, his current ability had far surpassed Sovereign Xuan''s, but he did not want to expose his true ability. After putting the virtual realm cabin away, Lin Huang opened the door and saw Bai still standing there. That one glance alone gave him the sudden feeling that Bai was too weak. In his eyes, Sovereign Xuan''s aura was like the sun. When compared, Bai''s aura was like a dim spark that could be put out by a mere, simple press of his finger. ''I should spare some time to elevate the imperial monsters'' abilities'' ''As well as the God''s Figurine''s Combat Souls'' Bai was a little frightened to be stared at by Lin Huang. He finally could no longer hold back a moment later and asked, "What''s wrong?" He did not sense the changes in Lin Huang from the closed-door cultivation session at all. After all, the gap between their abilities was just too great. "Nothing. I just thought I should spare some time to elevate you and the rest''s ability," Lin Huang said honestly. Bai was stunned when he heard, after which he nodded to agree with him. He also knew that they had been completely left behind in the dust by their master now. After recalling Bai into card form, Lin Huang summoned Sword 1 through voice transmission. "Let''s take a walk to familiarize ourselves with the local markets." Sword 1 agreed to his request without hesitation. He initially planned to spend some time during these two days taking a stroll through the markets. Lin Huang wanted to check out the markets mainly to familiarize himself with the prices in the universe, to better compare them with Royal''s market. There were many dao-level carcasses that he wanted to sell in his storage ring. If the Feister Star Zone paid higher than the auction on Royal''s side, he did not mind handling them here directly. They walked over to the closest market. After a simple stroll, they headed to another few markets. The day was soon gone as they strolled about. Over the next few days, Lin Huang and Sword 1 had visited almost all of the markets in the Feister Star Zone. Eventually, Lin Huang went back to Royal''s auction page and posted the dao-level carcasses on it. The reason being was that he realized that there were actually not many dao-level powerhouses in Dongxuan City after doing the comparison. He would not get a good price for all sorts of dao-level resources. Therefore, it made sense to purchase dao-level resources here, but it would not be worth it to sell them here. Chapter 1782 - Speaking To Xia Bing After posting all of the dao-level monster carcasses on Royal''s auction page, Lin Huang thought about it and decided to contact Xia Bing using a temporary communication device. Knowing that he did not want to expose his identity, she left him a contact number before leaving the mystic territory. After putting on his God Weapon mask and white robe, Lin Huang called Xia Bing''s number. The video call was connected a moment later. Xia Bing''s image, which sported a head-full of red hair, was projected on the screen. She was sitting on a couch; she looked like she was at home. "I didn''t expect you to take the initiative to contact me so soon." Xia Bing looked at Lin Huang with a smile. Her condition was completely different compared to when she was in the mystic territory. She was clearly much more relaxed at the moment. "How''s the development on your side?" Lin Huang did not bother to make any small talk and asked directly. Naturally, Xia Bing knew what he was asking about. "I''ve done everything that I should. I''ve informed all of the organizations involved, and I''ve submitted all of the evidence I have." Although she said that, she clearly looked quite helpless. "It''s chaos between the higher-ups these days in the Star Cluster. We held meetings every day. We''re preparing ourselves for an internal investigation, including me, the person who reported the case." "What about the other organizations?" "From what I know, they''re almost in the same situation." Xia Bing hesitated for a moment after saying that. She glanced at Lin Huang and decided to tell him, "However, the Longevity Tribe requests that I hand over White Brow''s body. Not only that, they don''t believe the authenticity of the video evidence that I recorded. The reason they gave is that I could''ve faked the video." "I thought I''d hand them the body. Now that you''ve mentioned that, there''s no need to do so anymore." Lin Huang grinned under the mask. "The Longevity Tribe has been known to conceal their members'' faults. Their tribe is huge, and there are many powerhouses. The tribesmen are used to being spoiled. I actually expected their reaction. They responded like that to an outsider like me in order to protect White Brow''s reputation. They must be investigating internally as well." "The entire Eastern Eight Zone is looking for moles now. Even if they want to protect White Brow, it''s impossible for them to go against the flow." "If you need more evidence, I can give you the bodies of Yan Jun and the rest. Of course, that excludes White Brow''s body." Lin Huang had added the Longevity Tribe to his ''hate list''." "That''s great, I''ll have ample evidence then. After all, there are techniques to retrieve the memories that are left behind." Xia Bing nodded in agreement. She did not say much about Lin Huang refusing to hand White Brow''s body over. "If you hand over Jin Feng and Hu Shan''s bodies, I''ll try my best to request some resources for you," Xia Bing continued to speak. "Thanks." Lin Huang nodded. "Let me know when you have time and we''ll conduct the handover." "I''m in the Sky Mirror Star Zone in Starshine City. I have a meeting at 9 am tomorrow. Try your best to give them to me before that, so that I can submit those bodies as evidence." Xia Bing thought about it and scheduled the meeting time. "Sure." Lin Huang nodded. He had a lot of time anyway. It would mainly depend on Xia Bing as to when they would meet. "There''s one more thing" Xia Bing hesitated for a moment and decided to speak eventually. "Can you show yourself if they want you to act as a witness?" Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment and shook his head. "They''re not lacking in witnesses. Apart from you and me, there''s Wang Xuanan from Royal and the others who were also chased after. There are at least six to seven people in total. There are definitely enough witnesses. Not only that, it''s easy to find these witnesses through their memories. I don''t think it''s necessary for me to show myself." "Moreover, they will definitely be suspicious of my identity if I show up looking like this. As long as the aura''s strength is similar, anyone could put on a mask and white robe to disguise themselves as me. It''s easy to get a peak dao-level powerhouse in the universe. Apart from creating more suspicion, I think my appearance won''t be beneficial for the investigation of evidence later on. The reason being is that they will definitely come back to me to prove the authenticity of the evidence." "Of course, I''m quite selfish too. Unless it''s absolutely necessary, I don''t want to show my face or expose my real identity." "Actually, I suggested that mainly because I''m worried that there would be people disguising themselves as you and providing fake evidence to mess things up," Xia Bing said while looking rather helpless. "If there really are people pretending to be me, you can use our video call to expose them," Lin Huang said mercilessly. The communication devices in the universe came with an automatic recording function. No matter video call or voice call, they would be recorded automatically. It would store the recordings for a year by default, and they would be destroyed automatically after a year. "I''d like to declare in all seriousness that my real identity is confidential. Apart from me, nobody in the entire universe knows who I am, nor does anyone know my contact information. Including Xia Bing, nobody can contact me in any way. For this video call, I used a temporary encrypted communication device to call Xia Bing myself. After this call ends, the contact number and all of the information will be destroyed automatically." "You guys have sufficient witnesses and evidence. I don''t think it''s necessary for me to show myself, nor will I attend any of the meetings of the organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone. If anyone shows up as me, it must be a person disguised as me from the Black Abyss. The person who invited the imposter, no matter who he is, which organization he''s from, or how high his status is, is definitely a spy from the Black Abyss!" Lin Huang smiled at Xia Bing after he was done saying all that in a serious tone. "If anyone shows up as me, you can expose them using the declarations." "I have a faint feeling that this might actually come in handy." Xia Bing nodded with a smile. "Is there anything else? If not, I''ll see you tomorrow," Lin Huang asked. "One more thing When you come and leave tomorrow, it''s best that nobody sees you and that you''re not captured on camera. The reason being is that people might create rumors using that information, saying such things as I met you and asked for your contact details or something like that. If such a thing happens, your credibility will drop," Xia Bing reminded him. "I think that should be all. I''ll think about what I might''ve missed out on later. If there is anything else, we''ll talk about it when we meet tomorrow." "Got it." Lin Huang nodded in agreement. After hanging up on the call with Xia Bing, the temporary encrypted communication ring in his hand began to burn rapidly. Within three to five seconds, it had turned into ashes completely. He knew that the details of the call with Xia Bing just now had been wiped. Only she would have the archive on her side. He lowered his head to check the time on a communication device and counted the hours until he had to meet Xia Bing. "Eleven more hours to go" Chapter 1783 - Fantasy Island There were not many powerhouses above dao-level in the Eastern Eight Zone. Almost each and every of them would project their Kingdom in the Eastern Eight Zone to build their own city. Among these cities, there were dimensional portals that would teleport one over directly. As long as Lin Huang paid enough Divine Crystals, he could get from Dongxuan City to any city in the Eastern Eight Zone. He could even leave the Eastern Eight Zone and go to the other zones nearby. However, to go to Starshine City this time, he did not choose to teleport from Dongxuan City directly. Instead, he disguised his identity and bought a ticket with a disposable Star Crystal Card. He teleported from Dongxuan City to another cityYuangong City. He changed his identity again, and then he bought another ticket with a disposable Star Crystal Card to a second cityTianfu City. From Tianfu City, he used his third identity to teleport to his real destinationStarshine City. Naturally, he was still using a disposable Star Crystal Card to pay for the third teleportation. The three Star Crystal Cards were destroyed as soon as they were used. After he arrived in Starshine City, Lin Huang secretly compared the abilities of the three divine cities'' city governors. Judging by the strength of their auras, the levels of strength of the three divine cities'' city governors was similar to that of Sovereign Xuan from Royal. "The weakest one has an aura similar to mine when I had four million Dao seals, while the most powerful one is on par with when I had eight million Dao seals" After drawing those conclusions, Lin Huang had a clearer idea of his true abilityThe few cities'' city governors were not his match. Naturally, the thought merely flashed through his mind. Very soon, he focused his thoughts elsewhere and used a disposable Star Crystal Card to buy a star map. He then found the exact location of the Sky Mirror Star Zone, as well as figured out the route to get there. This time, he did not put on a new disguise for the fourth time. Instead, he went to the dimensional portal directly with his third disguise and teleported to his final destinationthe Sky Mirror Star Zone. After arriving in the Sky Mirror Star Zone, Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis silently. Very soon, he found Xia Bing''s whereabouts. She did not sense his probing at all. She was taking a bath in a relaxed manner. Lin Huang recalled his Divine Telekinesis instantly when he saw that. He appeared at a breakfast spot he had found when he was probing with his Divine Telekinesis earlier in a flash. He ordered breakfast and ate it slowly. After finishing it, Lin Huang flipped through the news and the few mainstream public information platforms in the universe. It was almost 8.30 am when he checked the time. He then turned off the device and appeared in the living room of the hotel room where Xia Bing was in a flash. The moment he appeared, the mask made from his God Weapon was put on automatically. At the same time, he changed into a white robe. Meanwhile, Xia Bing happened to be sitting on the couch in the living room. She looked at Lin Huang, who had appeared out of nowhere. "Take a seat." At the same time Lin Huang took his seat, she waved her hand to activate a shield formation to block themselves from the outside world. As soon as he took his seat, he took out a storage ring directly and put it on the coffee table. "Apart from White Brow, the rest are in there." Xia Bing did not take the ring directly. Instead, she asked with a calm expression, "Are you really planning to keep White Brow''s body?" "I can sell it." Lin Huang raised his eyebrows under the mask. "I think many people would want a limit major dao-level powerhouse''s body." "You''ll offend the Longevity Tribe completely then." Xia Bing rolled her eyes at Lin Huang. "I''m not afraid of them. If they want it, they can join the auction," Lin Huang added. "I wouldn''t have told you about the Longevity Tribe''s reaction if I knew this would happen." Xia Bing looked rather helpless. In reality, she knew that Lin Huang was only saying that. Even if he wanted to sell it, nobody in the Eastern Eight Zone would dare to take White Brow''s body. The Longevity Tribe had been known to conceal their members'' faults. Nobody in the Eastern Eight Zone dared to offend them simply. Naturally, if he insisted on selling it, he could definitely do so outside of the Eastern Eight Zone. Xia Bing did not dwell on the topic. Instead, she extended her arm to take the ring. She started examining its contents. A moment later, she lifted her head and looked at Lin Huang. "You removed Jin Feng and Hu Shan''s rings as well?" "It wasn''t me. It was White Brow who did it." Lin Huang pushed the responsibility away immediately. Xia Bing shook her head and said nothing more. Naturally, she knew that White Brow''s ring had become part of Lin Huang''s spoils, and he should have his own way of unlocking those storage rings. "Is there anything else you''d like to say?" Lin Huang asked when he saw Xia Bing putting the storage ring away. Xia Bing thought about it and decided to add further. "If you really want to get rid of White Brow''s body, don''t do it in the Eastern Eight Zone. Nobody in the Eastern Eight Zone would dare to take it, including the black markets. If you dare to display the dead body in any markets in the Eastern Eight Zone, someone will definitely report it to the Longevity Tribe." Lin Huang nodded after hearing that. "Got it. Anything else?" "That should be it. However, there should be more developments after the meeting today. How do we stay in contact after this?" Xia Bing knew that Lin Huang would not give her his contact number. "How long before you think they will have a result?" Lin Huang thought about it and asked. "Should be soon. After the new evidence has been submitted, all of the organizations should respond on the same day. I speculate that there''ll be a preliminary conclusion after a week at most," Xia Bing said after a moment of thought. "I''ll contact you in a week then." Lin Huang nodded. Realizing that it was time to bid farewell, Xia Bing lowered her head to check the time. "Is there anything that you''d like to ask or request?" Lin Huang hesitated for a moment and asked eventually. "I''d like to get the information regarding the level above dao-level. The more detailed, the better." "You''re breaking through?!" Xia Bing had shock written all over her face. Lin Huang had guessed that she would have such a reaction. He did not explain, but continued talking, "It will be fine as well if you know any channels where I can obtain the information." "I can send you a simple overview. However, only the few top organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone have the exact details of that, and one would need a high level of authorization to get their hands on it. Unless you''re willing to expose your real ability and increase your authorization in your own organization, you won''t be able to obtain it." "However, it''s not a dead-end. There''s a black market called Fantasy Island outside the Eastern Eight Zone. You can purchase most things that you can''t find in the other zones. It''s just that many things are sold at a premium price. Fantasy Island should have the information you''re looking for." "Nobody knows who the owner of Fantasy Island is. We only know that it''s an ionized dimension. It''s open irregularly once or more every year. They''ll usually send the old clients the invitation before opening." "I happened to receive this year''s invitation a few days ago. Fantasy Island will open two days later in the evening. There''s nothing that I want to trade, so I can transfer the invitation to you." Xia Bing took out a card the size of a palm from her storage space and passed it to Lin Huang as she spoke. Lin Huang took the card and examined it. It was a card with golden edges. There were complicated Dao tattoos engraved on the back, and there was only a colored pattern on the front that looked like an island. "You''ll find out Fantasy Island''s exact opening time when you spread your Divine Telekinesis into it. When it''s time, insert your Odyl into it, and you''ll be teleported to Fantasy Island directly. It''s the same when you want to come back, just insert your Odyl. You only get one two-way teleportation with each invitation, and it''ll be destroyed automatically after that." "Got it. Thanks." Lin Huang nodded.. He put the card away in his storage space after spreading his Divine Telekinesis into it to look for the opening time. Chapter 1784 - Hush The first thing Lin Huang did after returning to the Feister Star Zone was to send Xia Bing a message with a new temporary communication device. Very soon, she sent a simple overview of the information above dao-level. Lin Huang downloaded it instantly and examined it as soon as he received it. The information was rather basic, with a total word count of less than 1,000. However, it did give him a preliminary understanding of the level above major dao-level. The level above major dao-level was called heavenly dao-level. As major dao-level powerhouses could no longer consolidate more Dao seals when they were at limit major dao-level, and their Kingdoms were so full that they could no longer increase their ability, someone thought of a solutionconsolidating more Kingdoms to increase their ability. Therefore, the cultivation of heavenly dao-level was spread out gradually. There were a total of nine ranks for heavenly dao-level, from rank-1 to rank-9. Each time a Kingdom was consolidated, it meant that the person''s rank would be elevated. When nine Kingdoms were consolidated, it would be rank-9. Lin Huang was in a daze as he read up to this point. The reason being was that this was not his method of cultivation at all. He had consolidated close to 20 million Dao seals in his Kingdom and himself personally, yet it was far from his actual limit. The data that Xia Bing sent only had a rough explanation about it. There were no further detailed descriptions on the nine ranks, nor did it mention how to consolidate one''s second Kingdom. "Seems like I must pay Fantasy Island a visit" Two days passed by quickly. In the evening, Lin Huang put on a mask and held onto the invitation card. The moment Fantasy Island opened, he inserted his Odyl within. The next second, he and the invitation card vanished at the same time. When he snapped back to his senses, he realized that he was now in a sunny town. It was quite different from what he had expected. He thought that, although its name was Fantasy Island, its nature should still be that of a black market. A black market should be discreet. Never had he imagined the bright, sunny scene in front of him. "This dimension seems to be the projection of a heavenly dao-level powerhouse''s Kingdom as well" Lin Huang lifted his head to look into the sky. He could sense that the Fantasy Island''s size was many times smaller than Sovereign Xuan and the rest''s Kingdoms. It was approximately the size of a normal city on Earth. Although the dimension was much more powerful, its nature was still that of a projection of a Kingdom. Sensing that the number of people around him was growing, Lin Huang soon put his thoughts aside and began to observe the guests who had arrived like he did. Everyone more or less had a disguise. There were many who were wearing masks like he was. He sensed their levels roughly. Among those who were in his field of vision, the weakest one was a Lord, and there were minor and major dao-level powerhouses everywhere. As he thought carefully, he understood what was going on. One would need to insert their Odyl to activate the invitation card. Not many people below lord-level could consolidate Dao seals in advance. To avoid attracting unwanted attention, Lin Huang had disguised himself as a major dao-level powerhouse, while his aura fluctuations were maintained at approximately 500,000 Dao seals. Although it was sunny, and it seemed calm and harmonious here, Lin Huang knew that this was just on the surface. He did not forget Xia Bing''s reminder. "Find out which shops conduct information transactions." Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis directly. In reality, Xia Bing reminded him that he should try his best not to use Divine Telekinesis, as people would assume that he was probing or provoking them. However, the strength of his Divine Telekinesis had far surpassed dao-level, so the possibility of being noticed was low. As he scanned with Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang saw over ten shops that conducted information transactions. He chose the one that occupied most space and had the most sophisticated furnishings. To him, having such a large space in this place and not being worried about the jealousy and envy of their peers, proved that the boss was someone capable. Lin Huang lifted his head and glanced at the sign as he appeared at the shop entrance in a flash. One word was carved in black on the signHush. Nobody knew if it was the shop''s name or the boss'' calligraphy work. After stepping into the door, a pretty female attendant welcomed him instantly. "May I know if you''d like to sell or obtain information?" "Obtain." Lin Huang merely spit out one word. "Please follow me to Room 10" The female attendant suddenly paused and surprise flashed through her eyes as she looked once again at Lin Huang. However, she adjusted her emotions quickly. "Please follow me to Room 1." She brought Lin Huang into the elevator as she spoke. Naturally, Lin Huang had noticed her odd behavior, as well as the change in room number at the very last minute. However, he said nothing and followed her to the fifth floor. The female attendant brought Lin Huang to the entrance of a room on the fifth floor before stopping. "We''re here. Please go in, sir." Lin Huang noticed that, apart from him and the female attendant, there was not even a guest or another attendant on this floor. Nevertheless, he did not care and walked into the room directly. There was a tall counter behind the door. A rather hunched old man checked out Lin Huang subtly before speaking in a hoarse voice. "Sir, may I know what kind of information you need?" Lin Huang smiled as he stared at the hunched old man. "Stop pretending. You must be the boss?" Seeing that the man said nothing, Lin Huang added with a smile, "To be exact, you should be the boss of this Fantasy Island." The moment he entered, he sensed that the old man''s aura was at least at the peak of heavenly dao-level, even though he did not release his aura at all. That was the senses between powerhouses. He also knew that the old man should have sensed his real ability too. Therefore, the old man had arranged for this meeting specially. "I can''t believe I''ve been exposed so easily" The hunched old man waved his hand. The entire room changed significantly. The rather dim consultation room suddenly transformed. It was now a bright, small meeting room. The hunched old man revealed his real appearance as well. He was a middle-aged man who looked to be in his early 50s. He seemed outstandingly charismatic. One could tell that he was a powerhouse who had been sitting at the top for a long time. "Take a seat." The middle-aged man sat on the leather couch on his own and lifted his head to look at Lin Huang with great interest. Lin Huang was not shy at all. He sat across from the man with a coffee table between them. "I''m curious about why a powerhouse like you would conceal his combat strength and come to my Fantasy Island," the middle-aged man smiled as he asked while serving Lin Huang a cup of tea. Lin Huang took the tea casually and displayed a faint smile. "If I say I''m just here to obtain some information, would you believe me?" The middle-aged man stared at Lin Huang for a moment and nodded while smiling, "I would." "So what kind of information are you looking for exactly?" He only asked after falling silent for a moment. "I want information regarding heavenly dao-level and above heavenly dao-level. The more detailed, the better.." Lin Huang only spoke after hesitating momentarily. Chapter 1785 - Dominator-level! The middle-aged man sitting across the coffee table glanced at Lin Huang with an odd expression, but he was not nosy enough to ask further. Instead, he nodded directly and said, "I can provide that information for free. Is there anything else that you need?" Lin Huang fell into silence momentarily before lifting his head to look at the middle-aged man. "Do you have information about the Black Abyss here? As well as information about Aza" The middle-aged man had a slight change of expression as he listened up to this point. He interrupted Lin Huang instantly, "It''s better that you avoid mentioning that person''s name as much as possible." "Regarding the Black Abyss'' information, we can provide it to you as long as you pay enough. However, about that entity, we can''t provide you with any information." "I can only tell you that, if it wasn''t for the fact that He was in hibernation, the simple action of you mentioning his name earlier would be enough to contaminate you and turn you into an Abyssal creature." Lin Huang frowned slightly, but he was still unwilling. "Then can I ask if He''s the god of the Abyss?" "Yes, and no." The middle-aged man looked rather troubled, but he answered anyway, "If you must delve deep into this, I''ll provide you with an ancient preceptThe Abyss is just His dream." The precept the middle-aged man provided was almost identical to what White Brow had said. However, Lin Huang still could not really understand if that was just a simple statement, or whether there was a deeper meaning behind it. "If you have a dispute with the Black Abyss, you will only need to learn about them. Don''t go looking for information about Him," the middle-aged man hesitated for a moment and advised him anyway. "Aren''t the people from the Black Abyss His believers?" Lin Huang asked in slight confusion. "Will a God care for the worship of ants?" The middle-aged man raised his brows. Lin Huang instantly came to a realization and nodded. "I get it now. The conflicts I have with the Black Abyss stays with the Black Abyss." The middle-aged man seemed to be relieved. "Anything else?" Lin Huang fell silent for a while before speaking again, "I''d like to know about the information outside the universe" "I can provide that to you for free as well." The middle-aged man nodded. "Of course, it''ll just be the basic information." "That''s good enough." Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. "Thanks." "Do you need anything else?" The middle-aged man asked again. Lin Huang thought for a moment and shook his head. "That''s all for now. "However, I have my doubts." Lin Huang lifted his head and said to the middle-aged man as he stared at him, "Why are you giving me this information for free?" The middle-aged man smiled when he heard that question. "I''m a businessman. It''s only natural for me to befriend a potential client. Although I have clients who are beyond heavenly dao-level like you, there aren''t many of them. Although this current transaction might be small, there might be larger ones and more opportunities in the future." "Moreover, the information I''m providing you for free is public information in many places outside the universe. I don''t want you to find out that I received money from you for such free information when you leave the universe." Lin Huang nodded with a smile after hearing his words. "Sure. I look forward to a great transaction opportunity in the future." "Oh yeah. My name''s Qian Shisan, let''s be friends." The middle-aged man stretched out his hand toward Lin Huang. "Lin Xie." Lin Huang gave him his pseudonym. In reality, he knew that with the man''s capabilities, no matter whether he told him his name or not, it would be easy for him to find out who he was. He did not give his real name to indicate his stance that he did not want people to know his identity. He did not provide a ridiculous pseudonym as that would have been too insincere. Therefore, he gave him the pseudonym that he had used before. After sharing each other''s names and chatting for a little bit, they conducted the official transaction. Lin Huang spent some money to purchase information about the Black Abyss. Very soon, Qian Shisan gathered the few information pieces he was providing for free, as well as the information about the Black Abyss, and sent them to Lin Huang''s temporary communication device. He then saw him off. Watching Lin Huang''s figure gradually disappear, Qian Shisan smirked lightly and mumbled softly, "I believe that we''ll meet again soon enough" Lin Huang downloaded the information Qian Shisan sent him as soon as he returned to the Feister Star Zone. He then began to examine them in all seriousness. The first thing he looked at was the information about heavenly dao-level and beyond heavenly dao-level that Qian Shisan had provided for free. This document was undoubtedly much more detailed than the one Xia Bing had provided. The so-called heavenly dao-level was the level evolved from when one''s Kingdom in their body was full and could no longer consolidate any more Dao seals. In reality, there was an important threshold to this level, which was to consolidate a Heavenly Dao in their Kingdom. All of the Dao seals would be consolidated into a Heavenly Dao! As soon as they achieved that, their Kingdom could be considered full. That was the foundation needed to consolidate the second Kingdom. However, the process of consolidating a Heavenly Dao was extremely dangerous. The process of consolidating a Heavenly Dao from Dao seals was similar to consolidating god sequence chains into Dao seals. Energy as terrifying as nuclear fusion would be released as well. The energy impact would be released by the consolidation of millions of Dao seals The impact on the Kingdom was over a hundred million times more powerful than the time when one consolidated god sequence chains into Dao seals. Even if it was just the aftermath, it was powerful enough to destroy most limit major dao-level powerhouses'' physical bodies and God''s souls. That was why there were many Lords and dao-level powerhouses in the universe, but there were very few heavenly dao-level powerhouses. There were not even 30 heavenly dao-level powerhouses in total in the entire Eastern Eight Zone. Meanwhile, for the nine levels of heavenly dao-level, the difficulty of each new Kingdom consolidation and Heavenly Dao would be multiplied. The reason being was that Kingdoms would repel each other. Not only that, the Heavenly Dao was something that could not coexist. Each time a new Heavenly Dao was consolidated, the old Heavenly Dao in the previous Kingdom would stir up a riot. Therefore, the higher the rank of heavenly dao-level, the more difficult it would become. If one was careless, they might have their Kingdoms destroyed and Heavenly Daos collapse. The least serious consequence was having one''s level drop, but they might also have their Kingdom and Heavenly Dao crushed entirely and fall back to major dao-level. There would be no hope in leveling up in their entire lives from then on. The most serious case would be having their Kingdom explode, and their physical bodies and God''s souls turning into ashes instantly! Lin Huang could not help but exclaim as he read up to this point, "Heavenly dao-level is so dangerous!" After reading every word listed in the information about heavenly dao-level, Lin Huang soon proceeded to read further. He finally saw the level above heavenly dao-leveldominator-level! The so-called dominator-level was to collide and integrate the nine Kingdoms to consolidate a supreme Kingdom when one had reached complete-stage heavenly dao-level rank-9! This process was tens of thousands of times more dangerous than consolidating a Heavenly Dao to get to heavenly dao-level. The reason being was that integrating nine Kingdoms into one would mean that the nine Heavenly Daos would collide with each other. One would then crush the nine Heavenly Daos into fragments and consolidate them once again! Not only would that require one to be fearless, possess great perseverance, but it would also require a physical body and God''s soul that was sufficiently powerful. Furthermore, this process was even more dangerous than consolidating a Heavenly Dao to achieve heavenly dao-level. The reason being was that the slightest mistake would result in the Heavenly Daos and Kingdoms being destroyed, erasing one''s physical body and God''s soul completely. Moreover, one could integrate chaotic cosmoses that were like the universe as soon as they elevated from heavenly dao-level to dominator-level, becoming a dominator that controlled many chaotic cosmoses! Chapter 1786 - Infinite Universe "Chaotic cosmos" Lin Huang looked at the information that detailed what was outside the universe with his eyes wide. According to the description, just like the universe, the complicated dimension that contained countless great worlds, mini worlds, gravel worlds and regular universes was called the chaotic cosmos. Meanwhile, there were similar countless chaotic cosmoses outside the universe. The countless chaotic cosmoses made up the chaotic ocean. Some called it the ocean of chaos, some called it the infinite universe, some called it the only universe, while some called it the supreme universe The reason why the chaotic ocean had so many names was because it was boundless and constantly expanding. Everything in the world was created there; everything was included. Its existence was the starting point of time, as well as the starting point of space Before its appearance, everything was nothingness. Since it appeared, its existence was eternal. The chaotic cosmoses it contained were not only boundless in quantity, they were also endless in time and space. No matter how many parallel universes were split off from a chaotic cosmos, no matter which timeline a chaotic cosmos was on, from the beginning to end, one could find it in this chaotic ocean any time. It did not only contain all material planes, it also contained the dreams, imaginations, and the split-second thoughts of all the living beings on the material plane All of the writers, artists, playwrights, creators of all sorts All of the living beings, non-living beings, tangibles, non-tangibles, souls, thoughts and information that could be imagined Everything was contained within this boundless cosmos. It could derive everything within a second. Lin Huang had always speculated that there was a broader world outside the universe. Never had he thought that it would be such a supreme cosmos. After reading about the chaotic ocean, Lin Huang looked back at the system of dominator-level. The combat strength categorization of dominator-level was very simple and straightforward. One would be at dominator-level rank-1 when they refined one to ten chaotic cosmoses. One would be at dominator-level rank-2 when they refined 11 to a hundred chaotic cosmoses. One would be at dominator-level rank-3 when they refined 101 to 1,000 chaotic cosmoses. One would be at dominator-level rank-4 when they refined 1,001 to 10,000 chaotic cosmoses. One would be at dominator-level rank-5 when they refined 10,001 to 100,000 chaotic cosmoses. The strength of one''s Kingdom when they broke through to heavenly dao-level was the main factor in deciding how many chaotic cosmoses one could refine. Due to the restriction of the strength of one''s Kingdom, most dominator-level powerhouses would usually stop at dominator-level rank-1 and could no longer move on. The ratio almost surpassed 80% among the dominator-level powerhouses. The higher the rank, the fewer the people. There were only a couple of dominator-level rank-5 throughout the history of the entire chaotic ocean. Not only that, according to all of the data records, since there was a history record of the chaotic ocean, nobody had even broken through past dominator-level rank-5. "The legendary Aza should be at rank-4 at least. He might even be at dominator-level rank-5" Lin Huang frowned as he speculated. It was only after he came across this information that he finally believed what White Brow said back then. To Aza, the universe was just a speck of dust. To powerhouses at dominator-level rank-4 and dominator-level rank-5, the universe was just a regular chaotic ocean, and it was merely one-ten-thousandth of the Kingdoms in their body. Indeed, they could destroy it with a mere flip of their hand. Although Lin Huang speculated roughly how powerful Aza was, he was not exactly shocked. Instead, he thought that, compared to the chaotic ocean, a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse was not as shocking to him. "The highest combat strength is just dominator-level rank-5 due to the restriction of the strength of one''s Kingdom" Lin Huang had tens of thousands of thoughts running through his mind when he read that. "The foundation of my Kingdom is countless times more powerful than powerhouses of the same level. Is it possible that I can break through past dominator-level rank-5?" Lin Huang merely fantasized for a moment, before discovering a realistic problem. "One would need to consolidate nine Kingdoms to get to heavenly dao-level. How can I consolidate a second Kingdom of the same strength now?!" He could not help but feel troubled as he thought up to this point. He got his Kingdom completely by chance. It was almost impossible to build a Kingdom that was of the same strength. After some fruitless thinking, Lin Huang shook his head to get rid of the messy thoughts he had. "Forget it, I won''t think about it for now. I''ll fill my Kingdom with the maximum number of Dao seals it can contain, after which I''ll finally think about what to do next." He then looked at the third document. He paid for this document. Qian Shisan asked for an exotic treasure, and Lin Huang had given him White Brow''s corpse. Since he did not plan to return the corpse, this was the best possible use for it. Moreover, the corpse was with Qian Shisan now. He did not have to worry that it would end up with the Black Abyss or the Longevity Tribe. Lin Huang checked the document thoroughly after opening it. He had finally found out details regarding the Black Abyss. The Black Abyss originated from the Raiders. It was a heavenly dao-level Raider, who had accidentally triggered a clone Aza left behind deep in the Abyss while he was hunting in the Abyss. He was contaminated by the clone and became Aza''s believer. However, the contamination did not turn him into an Abyssal creature, but instead he hid among the Raiders by remaining in his original form and mental state. Later on, the heavenly dao-level powerhouse used all sorts of techniques to lure many Raiders to join him. There were even some powerhouses at peak major dao-level who were elevated to heavenly dao-level with the power Aza''s clone provided. There were a total of seven official Black Abyss members. There were all heavenly dao-level powerhouses. The most powerful one among them was suspected to have reached heavenly dao-level rank-9. The seven of them had many dao-level reserve members under them. At the moment, at least one-third of the Raiders had been contaminated by Aza''s power and had become members of the Black Abyss Lin Huang could not help but frown lightly after reading that information. Naturally, he did not like the Raiders at all, as they had been his enemies from the beginning. However, he indeed did not expect that they had been contaminated by the Black Abyss internally to this extent. He did not have any sympathy for the Raiders'' situation, nor did he have any good feelings about the Black Abyss. To him, the conflict between the Black Abyss and the Raiders was merely part of this dog-eat-dog existence. Nevertheless, Lin Huang did not really want to see the Raiders being fully converted into Black Abyss members. The reason being was that the people in the Black Abyss were basically Abyssal creatures by nature. If he had to compare which was more evil, the Black Abyss was definitely more evil compared to the Raiders. The reason being was that their hunting targets were not limited to Club members and other travelers. To them, all cultivators, and even regular people, were viable targets. To them, everyone only had two options. They either had to accept the contamination of Aza, or die. Therefore, to be exact, the Black Abyss was the public enemy of the entire universe in the truest sense! Chapter 1787 - Imperial Monsters Elevating To Major Dao-level After returning from Fantasy Island, Lin Huang had been waiting for the results of the auction from Royal''s side. Naturally, he did not stay idle. Considering that Bai and the rest of his imperial monsters'' combat strength was indeed holding him back, and that they would take forever to cross the threshold of major dao-level if they were to cultivate on their own, he thought he would use the Combat Strength Upgrade Cards directly. Apart from the Bug Tribe, he elevated his 25 imperial monsters from lord-level all the way up to major dao-level. However, he merely elevated them to major dao-level and stopped there. This was mainly because it would exhaust Xiao Hei''s Origin Energy if he elevated them any further. Moreover, major dao-level combatants were considered powerhouses in the universe. As long as they did not stir up trouble for themselves, they usually would not encounter anything too dangerous. After he elevated all of them to major dao-level, Lin Huang released them. Apart from Bloody, who stayed by his side, the rest of the 24 imperial monsters formed groups of two to three to explore the universe on their own. "You''ve elevated our combat strength to major dao-level directly, then your current level of ability" Bloody could not help but ask. "I''m not exactly sure whether I''m at major dao-level or heavenly dao-level." Lin Huang shook his head while forcing a smile. "What do you plan to do next then?" Bloody continued to ask. "Let''s establish the Sword Alliance first. We might need to settle some matters regarding the Raiders and the Black Abyss, as well as some grudges." Lin Huang thought he would have to establish a foothold first. His ability was not weak, but the Sword Servants under him, as well as Lin Xin and Lin Xuan''s abilities, were far from sufficient. "Inform Sword 1 that I''ll participate in every Sword Alliance meeting." Bloody nodded. "We''ll talk about the rest after setting up the Sword Alliance." "You''ll take charge of the Sword Alliance''s matters during this period of time. I''ll get Sword 1 and the other Sword Servants to work with you." Naturally, Lin Huang believed in Bloody''s ability. Bloody only left after the two were done talking about business and had chatted for a little while. For the next few days, Bloody pushed the Sword Alliance''s development forward resolutely, putting the Sword Alliance officially on track in the universe. Meanwhile, Lin Huang spent some time entering the virtual realm to consolidate all of the Dao seals that were unsealed from his imperial monsters'' elevation. He had gained over 2.6 million Dao seals this time. He had officially consolidated a total of 22.2 million Dao seals, breaking through the 20 million mark. He could clearly sense that the number was still far from the limit that his body could contain. He received the storage rings that Yang Ling had unlocked as soon as he left closed-door cultivation. He examined them carefully as soon as he received them. The first one was White Brow''s storage ring. The first thing he saw was seven Goldfingers as he spread out his Divine Telekinesis into the ring. White Brow was not a traveler, so he could not integrate Goldfingers at all. He must have obtained the seven Goldfingers after hunting Club members. He left them behind to trade with the other travelers inside the Raiders. However, Lin Huang had now come into possession of these Goldfingers. Apart from the Goldfingers, there were a bunch of reincarnated beings'' tools and elixirs. White Brow, a reincarnated being, could use these things, but Lin Huang could not. He could only get rid of them at auctions or by trading other resources for them with people at the Club. Apart from Goldfingers, and those special items such as reincarnated beings'' tools, there were two exotic treasures and some ten precious treasures. There were a few precious treasures that were suitable for his imperial monsters that had just been elevated to major dao-level. Those were the only things that Lin Huang was interested in. What he thought was a pity was that he did not see any dao-level powerhouses'' corpses and Kingdom Shell Remnants in White Brow''s storage space. After checking White Brow''s ring, Lin Huang checked out Yan Jun''s. As a major dao-level powerhouse as well, there were surprisingly few items in his storage ring, which was pathetic. There were Goldfingers in his storage ring too, but there were only two. As he was a regenerated being, there were no reincarnated beings'' tools and elixirs in his ring. Apart from the two Goldfingers, there were only four precious treasures that Lin Huang was interested in. Among the four precious treasures, there was only one armor that the imperial monsters under Lin Huang could use. Later on, he checked Jin Feng and Hu Shan''s storage rings. He obtained two exotic treasures and some ten precious treasures. The remaining 30 or so storage rings basically belonged to minor dao-level powerhouses. There were only a total of five Goldfingers, over ten precious treasures, and some 20 dao-level God''s corpses that Lin Huang thought were useful. There were also hundreds of spiritual treasures that were valuable. Meanwhile, for the remaining miscellaneous items, the 40 or so storage rings could probably be traded for two to three precious treasures. After calculating the spoils, Lin Huang retrieved all of the Goldfingers. The Goldfingers were basically grade-1. Not only did he think that he would not use them, he thought they were quite useless to Lin Xin and Yang Ling as well. Therefore, he chose to let his Goldfingers devour them. The first one he retrieved was the grade-3 Goldfinger, Critical Hit Hammer. It devoured six grade-1 Goldfingers consecutively, elevating it from the fourth stage to the tenth stage, which was the limit. The Critical Hit Hammer''s critical hit effect increased from the lowest ninefold to the highest one hundredfold! The second Goldfinger Lin Huang retrieved was the grade-4 Gate of All Realms. After letting the Gate of All Realms devour three Goldfingers, the number of virtual bodies it could create increased from seven to ten. However, that was not its limit. Sensing that a grade-2 Goldfinger was needed for the Gate of All Realms to create more virtual bodies, Lin Huang fed it the only grade-2 Goldfinger in this batch of spoils. After the Gate of All Realms devoured it, the limit of virtual bodies it could create increased from 10 to 20. Lin Huang then put the Gate of All Realms away in his body. He fed the remaining four grade-1 Goldfingers to the grade-4 Soul-controlling Tablet directly. After feeding his Goldfingers, Lin Huang sorted out his storage ring. He summoned Sword 1 after retrieving every resource that was useful to him, and he gave the remaining spoils to Sword 1. "Handle these miscellaneous items as you wish. You guys can do whatever you want. You can trade them for Dao Weapons or other resources. They should be enough to fund the Sword Alliance''s preliminary operations." Although those miscellaneous items were nothing to Lin Huang, they were items in legitimate dao-level powerhouses'' storage rings. To the Sword Servants who had just been elevated to Lords, some of these items could be traded for a couple of supreme-grade Dao weapons each. Shock clearly flashed through Sword 1''s eyes when he received the ring, but he soon regained his composure. He was already used to Lin Huang''s surprises. He no longer thought it unusual no matter what this Lord Swordmaster could do. He even held the faint belief that there was nothing that this Lord Swordmaster could not do! Lin Huang dwelled on his thoughts for a long time as he watched Sword 1 leave. "The Sword Servants'' abilities are indeed quite weak. Perhaps the only way to elevate them quickly is to rely on the Kingdom''s accelerated time, which is dumb" Chapter 1788 - Two Possibilities Lin Huang, Bloody and Sword 1 gathered in the lounge. "How is it going with the Sword Alliance lately?" Lin Huang took the lead in asking. "We''ve already completed the registration process at Royal, and we''ve started to accept missions." Sword 1 paused as soon as he was done speaking. He sneakily lifted his head to peep at Lin Huang before continuing to speak, "We''ve also spread the news of us recruiting new people but nobody is applying." "There are many who inquired, but they aren''t even willing to come for the interview after finding out about us." "What do you guys think the issue is?" Lin Huang raised his brows. In reality, he expected such a situation to happen. Bloody said nothing when she heard that question. Instead, she looked at Sword 1 quickly. Sword 1 felt his throat dry up and gulped before speaking again, "I think we''re too weak at the moment. We''re not good enough to attract new members to join." "In the universe, heavenly god-level combatants make up an organization''s basic battle strength, and there are Lords everywhere. Although your name is in the spotlight as the Lord Swordmaster, and we''ve also mentioned that you have dao-level combat strength, apart from you, we''re all lower-rank Lords." Bloody finally spoke up when she listened up to this point. "Should we join the Sword Alliance?" Bloody looked at Lin Huang. The "we" she was referring to were naturally the imperial monsters. "I don''t think that it''ll be helpful." Lin Huang shook his head after giving it a moment of thought. "Even if you guys joined, there will be a large strength gap in between. The new members will soon notice the issue after they join." "Also, the Sword Alliance would definitely be investigated if you guys joined with your current levels of ability. At that point, my real ability would definitely be exposed." Lin Huang turned his head to look at Sword 1 after falling silent for a moment. "How many people do we need to maintain the operations of the Sword Alliance?" Sword 1 was momentarily stunned before he responded instantly, "There are actually only three things running as part of the daily operations now." "The first one is sorting out items, including spolis and rewards, as well as distributing the materials." "Another is handling the transactions of items." "The last one is obtaining information about the outside world and relaying messages." Only approximately ten people were needed in total. "Almost all of them are busy with the missions that Royal posted." Lin Huang nodded after hearing that. "How about this? We''ll keep 20 people in the universe who will be responsible for the Sword Alliance''s daily matters. The rest will go into the Kingdom in my body to work hard on their cultivation." "The 20 people will only need to stay there for a year. They will go into my Kingdom to cultivate the year after. They will replace the 20 people in the Kingdom at that point. They''ll be rotated in and out every year from then on." "We''ll draw lots to decide on who will stay. To be fair, those who have stayed put will be removed before we draw lots for the next batch randomly," Lin Huang added after thinking about it. "Also, those who stay put will be given tenfold of the items and rewards during the year in which they are on guard duty as compensation." "I''ll go ahead and make the necessary arrangements." Sword 1''s eyes lit up when he heard Lin Huang''s words. Naturally, he knew how much benefit there would be should they be given the opportunity to go into Lin Huang''s Kingdom. Apart from the 10,000 times accelerated timeflow, there were also countless monsters of different tribes to be hunted in there. The elevation speed of their combat strength and ability would be at least 10,000 times faster. The three of them discussed some details in the meeting room before Sword 1 left in a flash. He began to sort out the matters that Lin Huang tasked him to do. On that day itself, all the Sword Servants gathered together. Including Sword 1, 214 Sword Servants drew lots in front of Lin Huang and Bloody. The 20 people who ended up having to stay behind looked terrible. Apart from Sword 2, who stayed behind in the great world, among the 11 initial Swordmaster''s bodyguards, only Sword 8, who looked like a little girl, drew the lot to stay put. In reality, she did not understand what the purpose of the draw was at all. Sword 1 took the initiative to voice out when he saw that. "I''ll trade with Xiao Ba. She doesn''t know anything about the Sword Alliance''s operations. I''m worried that she''ll only mess things up if she stays behind." "I don''t think that''s necessary. I can teach her whatever she doesn''t know," Bloody spoke directly before waiting for Lin Huang to agree to her suggestion, "Moreover, apart from Xiao Ba, the remaining 19 people know what they should do." Lin Huang nodded to agree to what Bloody said after hearing that. "Don''t worry, Sword 1. The Sword Alliance has me. Don''t waste your gift. Focus on your cultivation for the next 10,000 years!" Seeing that Lin Huang had spoken as well, Sword 1 could only nod in agreement. "Alright. Those who drew the lot to stay behind, don''t be sad. You''ll take their places next year. As compensation, I''ll customize a set of cultivation methods to get to major dao-level for you guys exclusively!" The 20 people who drew the lot to stay behind became excited after hearing what Lin Huang said. Now those who were going into the Kingdom looked envious instead. Over the next few days, after Lin Huang sent the Sword Servants into his Kingdom, he had been kept busy developing cultivation methods for the Sword Servants. He then gave the cultivation inheritance to the 20 Sword Servants who stayed behind one by one. Bloody got Sword 8 to stay by her side. She did not participate in handling the Sword Alliance''s matters. In reality, the remaining 19 people were sufficient to run the Sword Alliance for the time being. After Lin Huang was done with the Sword Servants'' matters, the appointment he scheduled with Xia Bing a week ago was due. He changed to another temporary communication device and called Xia Bing again. A moment later, she accepted the video call request. Xia Bing, who had a head full of red hair, was smoking as she leaned on the railing on the balcony. There was a sky full of dark clouds behind her. "You look like you''re in a bad mood." Lin Huang did not expect Xia Bing to be in such a state. "Does this have anything to do with the situation?" "Uh-huh," Xia Bing responded and put out the cigarette. She puffed out the smoke before speaking while frowning slightly, "I suspect that the Longevity Tribe is completely on the Black Abyss'' side." Lin Huang could not help but furrow his brow when he heard that. Indeed, he had not thought of such a possibility at all. He thought that the Longevity Tribe would only have spies among them like White Brow. He soon calmed down after the shocking revelation. "Can you tell me more about it?" "After I submitted the corpses, all the organizations came to the Star Cluster to bring the corpses back immediately. Later on, all of the organizations should''ve done a thorough investigation and obtained some information." "Two days ago, the seven organizations held another video meeting. In the middle of the meeting, the Longevity Tribe''s patriarch suddenly spoke out. He said that you had contacted the Longevity Tribe yourself and used White Brow''s corpse to threaten them to provide you with resources. They even showed video evidence" Lin Huang was speechless when he heard that. "That''s ridiculous. Why would I want their insignificant resources?!" "I recorded the video, I''ll send it over to you later. No matter what, the video that they came up with was quite impressive. The person in the video wore the exact same mask and clothes as you did. It''s no different from the video taken in the mystic territory. That person imitated your voice too, and it''s exactly the same. Even White Brow''s corpse looked exactly the same." "After they played the video, they even said that we were accomplices. I couldn''t take it anymore, so I played the video of our conversation that I recorded directly." "After your declarations were made public, the Longevity Tribe''s patriarch and the two deputy patriarchs looked terrible, as if they had eaten flies." "What happened later on?" Lin Huang could not help but laugh as he listened up to this point. "They were even more determined that we were accomplices. They said that we were the spies from the Black Abyss and had framed White Brow. They even said their fake video was an act that you had put up intentionally to slander them." "I think there are two possibilities regarding this situation. One is that something is definitely wrong with the Longevity Tribe. The other possibility is that someone really disguised themselves as me to mislead them in order to create chaos." "I think the second possibility might be more plausible" Lin Huang fell into silence momentarily before voicing his opinion. Chapter 1789 - Great Void Mirror "If something is really wrong with the Longevity Tribe, then there are even more reasons why they wouldn''t speak out easily like that, especially to the point of making a fake video to frame me and saying that I blackmailed them. This lie can be exposed too easily. If I attended the meeting myself and confronted them, their lie would be exposed directly, which would be equivalent to them revealing their identity as spies." "Although there''s nothing to like about the Longevity Tribe, I don''t really believe that their entire tribe belongs to the Black Abyss," Lin Huang provided his own hypothesis. "If what you said is the truth and that someone is framing the Longevity Tribe on purpose, then it''d be even harder to get to the bottom of things." Xia Bing frowned slightly. "So what happened after you guys argued? What else did they talk about?" Lin Huang continued to ask. "Later on, those few people from the Longevity Tribe and I were asked to leave the meeting room. Before they find out whether something is wrong with White Brow, we can no longer participate in future meetings," Xia Bing said while looking annoyed. "There''s nothing wrong with handling it this way," Lin Huang mumbled softly. However, as soon as he said those words, he saw Xia Bing glaring angrily at him in the projection. He explained immediately, "What I meant is that they''re being pretty fair." Xia Bing harrumphed. "I''m clean anyway, so I''m not afraid of them. Let them go ahead and investigate me!" Lin Huang fell into silence for a long time, after which he could not help but ask, "How can they investigate? Are they going to trigger the Abyssal energy by reading their memories?" "You''re overthinking things. How is it possible that such a method exists?!" Xia Bing shook her head and explained in all seriousness," Star Cluster''s Star Masters went over to summon the Great Void Mirror." "The Great Void Mirror treasure?" Lin Huang was stunned when he heard the name. He retrieved the related memories within the Origin Energy fragments from the Nirvana Trees. "This thing really exists?!" Legend had it that the Great Void Mirror was a treasure that contained terrifying power. Lin Huang had always thought that it was only a legend. Never had he thought that it really existed. "The Great Void Mirror has always existed, but it has been in hibernation during this era." Xia Bing nodded. "Only Dominators who surpass heavenly dao-level can use this treasure normally. It''d be too taxing for a heavenly dao-level powerhouse to use it by force. Not only that, the treasure will enter hibernation after each usage." "What''s the function of the Great Void Mirror? Can it tell the truth?" Lin Huang asked rather curiously. "The Great Void Mirror''s innate function is to study all things. To put it simply, it can see the nature of all substances. Not only that, its probing range extends to anywhere in the entire universe, including all of the great worlds, mini worlds, gravel worlds, ancillary dimensions and planes within the universe. "It will fail to study things under three conditions. The first is if its target is a dominator-level powerhouse. The second would be the target has a barrier-type treasure of the same level. The third would be that the target is in a dominator-level powerhouse''s Kingdom." "Star Cluster would definitely not only investigate me and the people from the Longevity Tribe when using the Great Void Mirror. They will probably investigate you too. I think you definitely can''t hide your identity any longer." Xia Bing gave a simple explanation of the uses of the Great Void Mirror and reminded Lin Huang about what was likely to happen as well. Lin Huang raised his brows slightly beneath his mask. In reality, judging by what Xia Bing said, he was not exactly worried that his real identity would be exposed. The reason being was that the God Weapons in his body were treasures as well. Especially that Soul Weapon, blocking God''s soul was just one of its basic functions. He did not think that the Great Void Mirror''s probing could penetrate the barrier effect of the Soul Weapon in his body. Naturally, he could not say that to Xia Bing. He merely fell into a period of momentary silence before speaking again, "If they can investigate me, then there''s nothing that I can do. However, if they do find out my real identity, they''d find out that I''m not a member of the Black Abyss." "The entire Eastern Eight Zone is in chaos right now. All the organizations are overwhelmed now. Even if they really found out your identity, as long as you''re not associated with the Black Abyss, nobody will have the time to stir up trouble with you," Xia Bing comforted him. "Indeed, the regular members of the seven organizations are busy. However, if my real identity is exposed to the Black Abyss or the Raiders, it''s only a matter of time before they come looking for me," Lin Huang voiced his concern after hearing what Xia Bing had said. She thought for a moment and soon spoke again, "I''ll speak to the Star Master later. If they really find out your identity, they won''t expose it. As long as they confirm that there''s nothing wrong with your status, there''s no need to reveal your information to other people." "Thanks," Lin Huang thanked her with a nod. The two of them chatted for a little bit more and ended the video call after scheduling another call a week later to learn about how the situation would develop. Three days later, four Star Masters, three male and one female, gathered at the Stargazing Pavilion. The four of them locked eyes, and the lady in the black dress asked, "Are you guys ready?" The three men nodded slightly. "Then let''s act as planned. I''ll stand guard and the three of you will summon the Great Void Mirror." The lady appeared above the Stargazing Pavilion''s rooftop in a flash directly as soon as she was done speaking. She waved and set up a starlight barrier to envelop the entire Stargazing Pavilion within. Almost at the same time she moved, the three men sat with their legs crossed and performed several complicated hand seals. At that moment, the entire Stargazing Pavilion seemed to have fallen into a magical state. It began to shimmer, appearing partly hidden and partly visible at the same time. A moment later, the Stargazing Pavilion that was some 1,000 meters tall suddenly vanished into thin air. The female Star Master was the only person remaining, as she hovered in the air with her eyes somewhat closed. She seemed to not find the situation strange at all. Meanwhile, the vanished Stargazing Pavilion appeared in a dazzling sky full of stars in another dimension. The Star Cluster''s three Star Masters sat in a triangle at the center of the first floor of the Stargazing Pavilion. They had completed their hand seals. A quaint bronze mirror formed slowly mid-air between the three Star Masters. The three of them then transferred Odylic Force to the bronze mirror through the air. About half an hour later, the bronze mirror had finally consolidated completely. A voice as loud as a bell spread throughout the entire Stargazing Pavilion. "Tell me, who or what do you want to find out to have woken me up this time?" Among the three Star Masters, the one who was the most muscular spoke first, "Senior Great Void, there''s an organization called the Black Abyss that appeared in our Eastern Eight Zone recently. They seem to be Aza''s followers. They planted many spies within all of the organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone. We''d like to ask you to check on a few people to see if they''re spies or not." "Who are they?" The bell-like voice did not seem to bother asking for further details and went straight to the heart of the matter. Another Star Master said nothing, but projected images of Xia Bing, the patriarch and the few deputy patriarchs from the Longevity Tribe, as well as the remaining leaders from the seven organizations. The last image who was projected was Lin Huang in his mask and white robe. Merely a moment later, a white light shone on Lin Huang''s image projection. The bell-like voice spoke in a rather upset manner, "I cannot find out who this person is." The three Star Masters were stunned when they heard that, and they could tell from the Great Void Mirror''s tone that it was upset. Nevertheless, they dared not ask why it could not find out Lin Huang''s identity. About two to three minutes later, three glaring red gleams shone on three projections. A gush of faint black mist gradually appeared on the top of their heads. "The three of them have high-grade Abyssal energy remaining in their bodies." After saying that, the bronze mirror that was hovering in the air faded away rapidly. Chapter 1790 - The Star Cluster Under Attack When the Great Void Mirror disappeared completely, the three Star Masters finally stopped transferring Odylic Force. The short two to three minutes the Great Void Mirror was activated had drained a significant amount of Odylic Force within the three''s bodies. They only had one-third of their Odyl remaining compared to the time when they were at their peak. Fortunately, nothing went wrong in between. They were relieved. Apart from that man in white robe and mask, they had gotten the answers they needed about the rest. The three of them were satisfied with the results from using the Great Void Mirror. They stood up one after the other in the Stargazing Pavilion. "What do we do next? Should we reveal the three spies'' identities first? Or should we keep the matter under wraps and get the three organizations they''re from to handle it themselves?" The Star Master who was the most muscular asked the other two. His name was Zhao Ji. He was the only combat cultivator among the four Star Masters from the Star Cluster. To be exact, he majored as a combat cultivator as well as a spear cultivator. When one was at heavenly dao-level, it was rare for one to be a pure combat cultivator. They would basically have another main cultivation direction to match their current cultivation. In the entire Eastern Eight Zone, including him, there were only three heavenly dao-level combat cultivators. "I think you''re overthinking things. The three people who knew that we were going to use the Great Void Mirror must''ve escaped from the beginning." A young Star Master who looked like he was only in his 20s shook his head whilst smiling. "Although we only said that we''d investigate Xia Bing and the Longevity Tribe during the meeting, anyone who''s not too dumb would know that we definitely wouldn''t miss the chance to conduct a thorough investigation while using the Great Void Mirror this time." "The more time we waste now, the more time those three will have to hide. We should make the information public now directly and release a joint manhunt order. They''ll be caught off guard!" The Star Master who looked the youngest among the three was called Guan Yi. In reality, he was the oldest one among them. He remained in his youthful form because he did not like appearing old. "However, it''s not nice to make the investigation results from the Great Void Mirror public directly without informing the three organizations." The middle-aged man who looked to be in his early 40s finally spoke. His name was Wan Peng. He looked the oldest, but he was actually the youngest among the three, and he had the least experience. He was the last to join Star Cluster among the four Star Masters. "We definitely can''t reveal the information directly. It''d be too disrespectful." Zhao Ji frowned slightly for a moment before speaking again, "We''ll inform the decision-makers, excluding the three organizations and the three people, via text. We''ll also inform them that we''ll be making the information public instantly to avoid letting the three people escape. All of the seven organizations will arrest those three people!" "I think that''s a good idea." Wan Peng nodded immediately. "Up to you guys. I''m too lazy to text anyway." Guan Yi flung his sleeves and appeared outside the Stargazing Pavilion in a flash. "How was it? Did you guys get any results?" As soon as Guan Yi got out, the Star Master in a black dress above the Stargazing Pavilion could not help but ask out of curiosity. Her name was Xing Ling''er, one of the Star Masters of Star Cluster. She was also the founder Xing Wuji''s daughter. "It can be considered successful. Apart from that guy in a mask whom we didn''t find any information about, we found out the identity of those few spies from the Black Abyss." Guan Yi nodded and looked around before asking, "Nothing unusual happened here, right?" "Would I be sitting here so casually if something had gone wrong?" Xing Ling''er appeared next to Guan Yi in a flash while smiling. "Who are the three spies? Can you tell me?" Zhao Ji and Wan Peng exited the Stargazing Pavilion in a flash as soon as Xing Ling''er spoke those words. Guan Yi peeped at the two of them. Seeing that Zhao Ji was writing the text with his head lowered, Wan Peng did not deny her request and spoke slowly. "The Longevity Tribe''s" Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Just as Guan Yi had spoken, four black arrow gleams shot out with terrifying speed. Their targets were the four Star Cluster''s Star Masters! They arrived before the four of them almost instantly. The four of them shrunk their pupils almost at the same time. Guan Yi failed to dodge. He could only tilt his body slightly to avoid the attack from penetrating his heart. The black electric arc hit his chest instead. His entire body was thrown out uncontrollably and hit hard against the Stargazing Pavilion. The starlight barrier Xing Ling''er had set up, which enveloped the entire Stargazing Pavilion, collapsed instantly. After Guan Yi''s body penetrated the barrier, he slammed into the Stargazing Pavilion. In reality, the Stargazing Pavilion''s nature was that of a spiritual treasure. Its toughness was evident, but it was still broken when Guan Yi smashed into it. Among the other three, Zhao Ji was a combat cultivator, and had the fastest speed among the four Star Masters. However, he was busy writing the text. It was already too late by the time he reacted. He could only avoid the attack hitting his vital points. Still, the arrow took his left arm. Wan Peng and Xing Ling''er were the only ones who managed to dodge the attack and remained unscathed. Nevertheless, the two of them looked terrible. Never had they thought that they would be attacked at the Star Cluster''s headquarters. Not only that, Zhao Ji who had the most powerful ability among the four of them was injured badly by that one attack. Guan Yi''s aura had also clearly dropped. It was uncertain as to whether he could participate in the battle. "Old Guan! Are you alright?" Although Zhao Ji was hurt, he shouted at Guan Yi immediately. "I''m not dead!" Guan Yi yelled in reply, but he said the second half of his sentence to the three of them through voice transmission, "I can''t join the battle within a short period of time." At that moment, four figures in black robes and masks appeared suddenly. The four of them looked almost the same. They were covered in black robes from head to toe; only their masks were different. One looked like an inexperienced youth, one looked like a fiend, one had a swollen face and one wore a mask of a fox. Xing Ling''er scoffed. "Don''t think we don''t know who you guys are! Do you think you can hide yourselves just by wearing a mask?!" The four of them said nothing and attacked directly. The man with a mask that looked like an inexperienced youth pounced at Xing Ling''er directly. The person with the swollen face mask pounced at Wan Peng. Meanwhile, the fiend-faced masked man pounced on Zhao Ji, who had lost an arm. The last person in a fox mask charged toward the collapsed Stargazing Pavilion, targeting Guan Yi who had lost much of his combat strength. "How dare you?!" Zhao Ji shouted in rage when he saw that. He shook his spear and forced the fiend-faced masked man to retreat. He attacked the person in the fox mask. The person in the fox mask went forward instead of retreating. Just when the two were about to collide, a blue glow lit up within the pupils of the person under the fox mask. Zhao Ji stopped moving at that very second. However, at that moment, a black electric arc shot forth. It took advantage of Zhao Ji''s split-second pause and penetrated his eye directly. The black electric arc shot through his head "There''s an archer hiding!" Wan Peng exclaimed immediately. They thought that the archer had been hiding among the four masked people earlier.. Never had they thought that there would be a fifth person hiding. Chapter 1791 - The Second Star Master Dies! Zhao Ji''s vitality was vanishing quickly Although he was a combat cultivator, he was helpless when faced with two heavenly dao-level powerhouses with abilities no weaker than his. He was hit by the fox-face''s God''s soul at first, which froze his body''s movements, and then ambushed by an archer that caught him off guard. Not only that, the arrow was imbued with Aza''s lingering Abyssal energy as well. It devoured Zhao Ji''s remaining consciousness just from that slight contamination. The fox-face chuckled when he saw Zhao Ji die. "He fell into the trap so easily." He merely gazed in the direction of the broken Stargazing Pavilion before ignoring Guan Yi completely. He joined the rest in besieging Wan Peng in a flash. "He''s only left with less than one-third of his Odyl. Let''s work together to kill him first!" He did not bother to use voice transmission to say those words at all. The three people from the Star Cluster heard him loud and clear. The fiend-faced masked man charged at Wan Peng after hearing that. "You guys are shameless!" Xing Ling''er shouted in rage. She wanted to save Wan Peng, but the person with the mask that looked like an inexperienced youth blocked her path. "Don''t try to save someone else. You can''t even protect yourself." Almost at the same time, a pitch-black arrow shot through the air, blocking Xing Ling''er''s way. It was only now that she realized that there was one more archer watching from the darkness. If she did not handle this situation carefully, she might end up dying even before Wan Peng did. Wan Peng instantly realized that it was a certain-death situation as he was besieged by three heavenly dao-level powerhouses on his own. The fox-faced and fiend-faced masked men surrounded him, while the man in the swollen face mask had an ability level that was no weaker than his! "Run!" He shouted to Xing Ling''er through voice transmission directly without any hesitation. He did not even manage to inform her of the three spies'' names before his God''s soul was suppressed by the fox-face''s blue eyes. At that moment, the black arrow that arrived like a god of death caught his split-second delay without hesitation and shot through the air like lightning. However, Wan Peng''s God''s soul was slightly more powerful than the combat cultivator Zhao Ji. He snapped back to his senses after being briefly dazed. He turned his head rapidly and barely escaped the sure-kill arrow. Though he avoided having his head crushed, he did not manage to dodge the attacks from fiend-face and swollen-face. The fiend-face''s spear did not lose out to the speed of the black arrow. Almost at the same moment Wan Peng avoided the arrow, the spear penetrated his chest directly. At the same time, the swollen-face''s sword gleam cut across Wan Peng''s waist. His vitality was fading quickly, and he spat out a mouthful of blood. It turned into a bloody mist enveloping the three people in masks not far away. Realizing that something was off, the three of them retreated frantically. However, fiend-face was surprised when he realized that the spear that he had stabbed into Wan Peng''s chest could not be removed. Just as he was wondering whether he should let go of the spear in his hand and retreat, a chilly gleam emerged from the bloody mist. A silver gleam shot out and landed between the fiend-face''s brows directly. The fiend-face had not expected that this person would be capable of such an attack on the verge of death. He did not manage to dodge it at all. A ringing sound was heard, and the silver gleam hit the mask. It merely stopped for a moment before continuing to penetrate past the mask. However, fiend-face was a heavenly dao-level powerhouse after all. He reacted during that short moment of his mask blocking the attack. He let go of the spear directly. At the same time, while retreating at a high speed, he covered his forehead with both palms. A moment later, he escaped out of the bloody mist. His palms were dripping with blood, dyeing the entire mask red. The silver gleam faded eventually. "F*ck, I almost failed!" Fiend-face vented in rage. "So close" Half of Wan Peng''s body fell to the ground. He knew that, were it not for the fact that he drained too much Odylic Force from summoning the Great Void Mirror earlier, he would have definitely killed that man with that attack." Were it not for the fact that the Great Void Mirror exhausted too much of their Odylic Force, it would have been impossible for Zhao Ji to have been killed in one hit, and Guan Yi would not have been severely injured so easily However, all these were just "ifs". Wan Peng was helpless. He could sense his vitally fading and his life ending. Nevertheless, he used the last vestiges of his strength to turn his head in Xing Ling''er''s direction. He spoke to her one last time through voice transmission, "Run now" Before he completed his message, his vitality faded away completely. "Wan Peng!" The two of them were less than 1,000 meters away from each other. She sensed it the moment Wan Peng died. She released a shriek of rage. The green saber gleam that she released out of fury forced her opponent to retreat temporarily. However, almost at the same time, she saw the other two men arrive beside him. She was focused instantly and secretly said to Guan Yi, who was in the collapsed building, through voice transmission directly, "Senior Brother Guan, run! Seize the opportunity since they haven''t noticed you. You must spread the news about the spies! I''ll buy you as much time as I can!" She did not bother to wait for Guan Yi''s response and her Kingdom descended without hesitation. She enveloped the area tens of thousands of kilometers around her. She did not only cover the four men in masks before her, but also the archer who was hiding in the darkness as well. "Do you think you can buy time for that man with the surname Guan just by enveloping us in your Kingdom?" The man in the inexperienced youth''s mask chuckled softly. Xing Ling''er''s pupils shrunk slightly when she heard those words. She did not expect him to see through her plan. "It''s unfortunate You''ll find out soon enough why it''s futile for you to buy him time," the man added. "I''d like to see how you guys are going to behave atrociously in my Kingdom!" Xing Ling''er scoffed. Green gleams lit up throughout the entire Kingdom. Countless saber formations of various sizes were activated almost at the same time. At that moment, there were green saber gleams everywhere in the entire Kingdom. At that very second, those five people''s Kingdoms descended almost at the same time! Before Xing Ling''er could attack, her Kingdom was already trembling. Blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth, but she was still holding it back. "Stop trying to outdo yourself. You might have been able to live for a little longer had your Kingdom not descended. You''ll only die faster by doing this. Even if we don''t attack now, your Kingdom won''t be able to hold on for half a minute." There was mockery in the man''s tone. If their Kingdoms were of equal strength, a Kingdom could contain another Kingdom. However, it could not interfere with the rules of the Kingdom it enveloped. However, if a Kingdom contained two other Kingdoms of the same level, it would be taxing. It would only drain the owner of the Kingdom''s Divine Power and Odyl even further. If a Kingdom contained three other Kingdoms of the same level, it would collapse quickly. The reason being was that the three Kingdoms that were enveloped did not have to do anything, and they could crush the Kingdom they were in just by releasing their volume and weight. Now, Xing Ling''er had enveloped five opponents of the same level at the same time by herself. Their five Kingdoms descended at the same time. As soon as they released the volume and weight of their Kingdoms, they could crush hers like a piece of cake. Nevertheless, Xing Ling''er wiped off the blood from the corner of her lips and scoffed. "I finally know who the five of you really are!" Chapter 1792 - Kill Me If You Dare The expressions of those five people changed slightly when they heard her words. Their Kingdoms each had the characteristics of their own. They were almost unique in nature. Even if Xing Ling''er had never fought against the five of them, nor had she seen the Kingdoms of those five people before, including the veterans who had retired, there were not that many heavenly dao-level powerhouses in the Eastern Eight Zone. Even if she did not know some personally, she had definitely heard of them. Judging by the characteristics of the five people''s Kingdoms now, she guessed their real identities almost instantly. "Two of you are even the seniors my father used to respect" Xing Ling''er looked at swollen-face and the archer who was wearing a mask with a child''s face. "You guys betrayed the universe and become slaves of an Abyssal creature. Aren''t you ashamed of yourself?!" The two people looked away from Xing Ling''er slightly. "Xing Ling''er, we choose our own destinies and where we stand. You have your own too. Nobody is superior or inferior to another," the man in an inexperienced youth''s mask explained when he saw their reaction. "Stop wasting your breath on her." The fox-face stopped the two''s argument directly, "Get it over quickly." As soon as he said that, the five of them accelerated the expansion of their Kingdoms. Xing Ling''er''s Kingdom began to collapse quickly. She did not even manage to attack. She could only maintain the activation of her Kingdom by force. This collapse was not referring to calling the descended Kingdom back into her body, but rather that her Kingdom was collapsing substantially. No matter what, it was impossible for five Kingdoms to expand at the same time within a Kingdom of the same level. Meanwhile, Xing Ling''er was holding on and doing her best not to recall her Kingdom just to buy more time for Guan Yi. It was a definite fact that her Kingdom would collapse. As Xing Ling''er''s Kingdom collapsed, her aura started fading away rapidly. Even her combat strength had signs of faltering. A Kingdom was the cultivation foundation of powerhouses at lord-level and above lord-level. Having one''s Kingdom collapse meant that their cultivation foundation was damaged, so it was normal for their combat strength to drop in tandem. Of course, Xing Ling''er was aware of this. However, she already had the determination to sacrifice herself when she saw Zhao Ji and Wan Peng die one after the other. Naturally, she did not care whether her Kingdom collapsed and whether her combat strength fell. At that moment, she only had one thought, which was to trap the five of them for as long as possible so that Guan Yi could run away as far as he could. Nevertheless, she only lasted for less than a minute even though she kept her Kingdom activated with all of her might. It collapsed completely in the end as the five Kingdoms descended and expanded. The moment Xing Ling''er''s Kingdom collapsed, and when she returned to the universe, her facial expression changed drastically. The reason being was that she sensed Guan Yi''s aura had remained where it was. He had not made use of the time she bought him to run at all. At that moment, a voice echoed casually. "Do you know why we''re not in a hurry to attack you in your Kingdom, but merely expanded our Kingdoms to make yours collapse?" It was the man in the inexperienced youth''s mask who spoke. "Because we''re not worried about Guan Yi running away at all." Xing Ling''er realized something instantly when she heard those words. Her face turned pale suddenly. At that moment, a sigh came from the collapsed Stargazing Pavilion. A figure walked out of the ruins. It was Guan Yi. However, he did not look like he was badly injured at all. "Must you guys expose my identity before her?" Guan Yi furrowed his brows slightly. "Isn''t this more interesting?" The guy who was wearing the fiend mask said and chuckled softly. "Guan Yi You''re really a spy from the Black Abyss?!" Xing Ling''er remained in disbelief. Seeing that Guan Yi did not answer that question right away, the fiend-face continued to speak while smiling, "Not only is he the Black Abyss'' spy, he''s one of the seven people who founded the Black Abyss." "Otherwise, how would we know the exact time you guys chose to activate the Great Void Mirror this time? We managed to pull off this ambush when the three Star Masters were weakened because your Senior Brother Guan tipped us off secretly." "Oh yeah, to prevent Zhao Ji from finding out if there were moles in Star Cluster, he even specially donned a treasure a few days ago." "Guan Yi, I want you to answer the question!" Xing Ling''er had fury fill her face. Although she knew what that man said should be the truth, she was still unwilling. She wanted to hear the answer from Guan Yi himself. "I''m sorry, I have my reasons." Guan Yi hesitated for a moment before admitting to it anyway. "I''ll kill you!" Xing Ling''er became frantic when she heard the answer. She did not even care that she was badly injured from her Kingdom collapsing, and also ignored the fact that her combat strength had dropped as she wielded the long saber in her hand. Countless green saber gleams attacked Guan Yi. Guan Yi merely dodged instead of fighting back. "Do you think that you''re a good person just because you''re not fighting back? You have the guts to turn traitor, but you don''t dare to kill me?!" Xing Ling''er shrieked while attacking insanely without proper form or techniques. "Kill me if you dare!" Xing Ling''er''s curses were getting more animated, "You traitor! My dad shouldn''t have adopted you back then! Ingrate, animal" Though that was the case, Guan Yi did not fight back anyway, nor did he argue back. He merely said to the remaining five people, "I don''t want to attack her. You guys do it." Some of them were enjoying the show, while some were just watching out of curiosity. Seeing that the four others did nothing, fox-face scoffed. "Since you guys won''t do it, allow me!" He performed several hand seals with both hands rapidly as soon as he was done speaking. A couple of black chains shot forth at Xing Ling''er at high speed. Xing Ling''er, who was already nearly out of her mind, did not manage to react at all, and the chains wrapped around her arms and body. Very soon, a strange thing occurred. Her God''s soul was dragged out by the chains forcefully. It was pulling it toward the gigantic shadow above fox-face uncontrollably. Guan Yi''s expression changed slightly when he saw the shadow. Merely a moment later, Xing Ling''er''s God''s soul was pulled toward the shadow. A hand grabbed onto it. She struggled hard, but it was futile. Guan Yi closed his eyes quietly as he observed up to this point. He no longer wanted to watch. However, the remaining people were watching in glee. After Xing Ling''er''s God''s soul was grabbed, the shadow shoved it into its mouth directly and began munching on it. At first, Xing Ling''er''s God''s soul screamed in pain and devastation. However, after a few munches, only silence remained. After swallowing Xing Ling''er, the shadow faded away quickly. It turned into black mist and penetrated fox-face''s body. Only then did Guan Yi finally open his eyes. He glanced at Xing Ling''er''s body, which was on the ground, and then turned his head to glance at Zhao Ji and Wan Peng''s bodies which were not far away. His face soon turned cold again. He stretched out his hand and put on a red devil''s mask. A cold voice came from beneath the mask, "Let''s go." Chapter 1793 - Star Cluster Being Removed From The List The Star Cluster had been attacked. Among the four Star Masters, three were dead and one was missing. Lin Huang did not learn the explosive news from Xia Bing. Instead, he saw it on the news the morning after it happened. After scrolling through all sorts of gossip about it on social media platforms, he took the initiative to contact Xia Bing. When the video call connected, Lin Huang could clearly see that she looked worried. "I just saw the news. What exactly happened?" Lin Huang asked as soon as the video call connected. "It''s just as the news reported. Three of Star Cluster''s Star Masters died, and one is missing. Nobody knows if he''s dead or alive," Xia Bing told him the truth rather helplessly. "Can you tell me the details?" Lin Huang continued to ask. "The four Star Masters gathered yesterday. They must''ve done so to summon the Great Void Mirror in order to find out who the Black Abyss'' spies were. The people from the Black Abyss likely attacked them after they awakened the Great Void Mirror. As awakening the Great Void Mirror drains a large amount of Odylic Force, the few Star Masters who used the mirror would be in a weakened state. Therefore, the heavenly dao-level powerhouses from the Black Abyss seized the opportunity to kill them." "Did those few Star Masters manage to send over any messages?" Lin Huang asked more. "Not that I know of." Xia Bing shook her head. "Since the people from the Black Abyss were prepared to kill them, they must''ve shielded messages from being sent out to prevent the investigation results from the Great Void Mirror from leaking out." "Killing them while taking advantage of their weakened state, as well as preventing information about their spies from leaking out. That''s a great plan that kills two birds with one stone." Lin Huang squinted his eyes. "Are the bodies and Kingdoms of the three Star Masters who died intact?" Lin Huang asked again. "Their bodies are intact, but one of their Kingdoms is gone." Xia Bing glanced at Lin Huang and answered anyway. "So the Star Master who is missing should be the Black Abyss'' spy" Lin Huang mumbled to himself softly. "Not necessarily. Perhaps he''s been captured alive." In reality, Xia Bing guessed the same as well, but she was unwilling to believe that it was the truth. "If I was the ambusher, I would definitely take the bodies with me instead of leaving them behind. After all, heavenly dao-level powerhouses'' bodies and Kingdoms can be traded for a couple of exotic treasures. The bodies remaining intact proves that someone is feeling guilty about his betrayal," Lin Huang spoke of his speculation. "Can it be that they left the bodies behind on purpose to indicate their stance?" Xia Bing asked. "It''d be very obvious if they wanted to indicate their stance. There would be clear signs left behind on the scene so that people could tell from a glance that it was done by the Black Abyss." Lin Huang shook his head. "From the images of the scene shared on the internet, I didn''t see any signs like that left behind." "If he''s really running away due to the betrayal, there''s no need for him to disappear like that, right? Doesn''t his absence mean that he''s basically admitting that he''s a spy from the Black Abyss?" Xia Bing was still unwilling to believe that Guan Yi was a traitor. "If he stayed, how could he explain the three Star Masters being killed? Also, as the only survivor, wouldn''t the remaining six organizations suspect him and investigate him anyway? If he stayed, it would only be a matter of time before his identity as a spy was exposed. Unless he''s really not a spy and doesn''t mind being investigated by the six organizations in order to clear his name." "Also, to him, it was the best opportunity to escape. He wouldn''t be able to run even if he wanted to when Royal and the other organizations started to investigate him." Lin Huang thought that the fact that the person was missing was basically tantamount to him admitting to being a spy. "Could it be a set-up done by people from the Black Abyss to make us think that he''s a spy?" Xia Bing still did not want to give up and spoke of the last possibility she could think of. "I don''t think that''s necessary." However, Lin Huang shook his head to deny that possibility. "Star Cluster no longer having any heavenly dao-level powerhouses is equivalent to them being removed from the ranks of the seven grade-SSS organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone directly. Who that missing Star Master is exactly, or whether he''s alive or not, is no longer important to the remaining six organizations. There''s no substantial meaning in assuming that he''s a spy." Xia Bing could not find any other explanations to refute him after hearing his reply. "Now that the Star Cluster has no more Star Masters, is there anyone else who can use the Great Void Mirror?" Lin Huang asked again after a moment of silence. "No. Only the four Star Masters were at heavenly dao-level in Star Cluster. At least two to three Star Masters would need to work together to activate the Great Void Mirror each time. There''s nobody who can activate it now." Xia Bing shook her head, feeling helpless. "Can''t the heavenly dao-level powerhouses from other organizations use it?" Lin Huang asked again. "The Great Void Mirror is a treasure. It has a consciousness and a level of intelligence equal to our own. It stayed in Star Cluster because it was a relic of the first-generation Star Master''s father. Apart from the people from Star Cluster, other heavenly dao-level powerhouses can''t activate it, let alone use it. If they want to use it by force, they''d have to be dominator-level at least," Xia Bing explained while shaking her head. "Which means that it''s basically impossible to find out who the spies are within the remaining six grade-SSS organizations." Although Lin Huang said that, he was thinking about the possibility of him activating the Great Void Mirror. After all, his current level of ability had far surpassed heavenly dao-level. "That''s right. This is basically a dead-end." Xia Bing shook her head, feeling helpless. "We can only wait and see if the remaining six organizations have any solutions." "How''s Star Cluster doing?" Lin Huang suddenly asked. "It''s in turmoil. There are even many people who are thinking of leaving. The rest of the organizations are coveting Star Cluster''s territory. Maintaining a grade-SS organization aside, I guess we might even lose our grade-S status in a few months," Xia Bing told the truth with a helpless look on her face. "What do you plan to do next?" Lin Huang continued to ask. "It''s pretty pointless for me to stay in Star Cluster. There''s nothing that I can do if I stay, so I''m thinking of heading to Snow Kingdom. I have a friend there," Xia Bing hesitated and decided to tell Lin Huang anyway. "I think it''d be better if you stayed with Star Cluster. The current Star Cluster is the safest place in the entire Eastern Eight Zone." Lin Huang provided her with a different suggestion directly. "On one hand, Star Cluster is no longer a threat to the Black Abyss, and you guys can longer participate in the fight among heavenly dao-level powerhouses. On the other hand, the Black Abyss'' ambushes won''t stop here. Ambushing Star Cluster is only the beginning. The Eastern Eight Zone will become more and more chaotic, especially for the remaining six grade-SSS organizations, who will become the primary targets of the Black Abyss'' ambushes." "You going to Snow Kingdom will only put yourself in greater danger. If you stay with Star Cluster, although other organizations would harass you guys, the level of threat is way lower than facing those people from the Black Abyss directly." "Do you think my level of ability isn''t powerful enough to participate in the battle against those people from the Black Abyss?" Xia Bing was a little pissed. "What I mean is that, before the Black Abyss shows themselves, don''t put yourself in their field of vision. I''m not asking you to watch from the sidelines when the war officially begins." Lin Huang added after that, "Before the war starts, try your best to elevate your ability as much as you can.. The more powerful your ability is, the longer you can survive on the battlefield." Chapter 1794 - Half-step Dominator After hanging up on Xia Bing, Lin Huang fell into deep thought. Initially, he thought he would move on with his own initiatives after Xia Bing released the outcome of the investigation on the spies. Never had he thought that this would be the outcome after he had planned everything. Even he had to admit that the Black Abyss executed this scheme perfectly. Not only did they solve the problem of having their spies exposed, they even managed to remove the threat of a grade-SSS organization. The seven organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone were now only six. However, Lin Huang knew that it was just beginning. Judging by the current situation, the Black Abyss had yet to develop to their peak, but already had the ability to put an end to a grade-SSS organization. As they recruited and gathered more Raiders and members from other organizations, they would only grow more powerful. Meanwhile, getting Star Cluster removed from the ranks of the grade-SSS organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone was an impressive feat for the Black Abyss. Although this battle would attract the attention of many powerful organizations, and alert them to the existence of the Black Abyss, to Lin Huang, their success would attract more subversive people to join them and cause them to grow rapidly. Not only that, he had a feeling that preventing their spies from being exposed might not be the primary reason behind why the Black Abyss acted so radically. A few days later, the deaths of the Star Cluster''s Star Masters were no longer trending on the internet. Most of the cultivators who loved to gossip had gone on with their lives. Only a small number of top organizations began to gather information about the Black Abyss through various channels. Even some of the star zones around the Eastern Eight Zone put their guards up regarding the Black Abyss. Many organizations began to investigate their own members. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had finally received the results from the auction. He received over 2,000 minor dao-level Kingdoms and some 800 major dao-level Kingdoms for the over 18,000 minor dao-level monster carcasses, and over 11,000 major dao-level monster carcasses, as well as some miscellaneous items. The reason why the trade ratio was so low was because Lin Huang requested that all of the Kingdoms had to be complete with living beings inside. The reason being was that he would gain more Dao seals unsealed only when there were Lords, or even dao-level powerhouses, in the Kingdom. In reality, Lin Huang had set the trade to be opened to different zones. The members of other organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone aside from Royal could also participate in the auction. The reason being was that he knew from the very beginning that he required a large amount of Kingdoms. The internal members of Royal would not have sufficient stock at all. That was how he finally received the final auction results after over half a month. As soon as Lin Huang obtained the Kingdoms, he entered the virtual realm without hesitation and went into closed-door cultivation. He had no idea how many years he spent in the virtual realm during this closed-door cultivation session. Nevertheless, he was rather satisfied with the growth in his level of ability. The over 2,000 minor dao-level Kingdoms unsealed close to 800,000 Dao seals for him. Over 350 million Dao seals were added to his Kingdom. The over 800 major dao-level Kingdoms unsealed over 70 million Dao seals. He increased the number of Dao seals in his Kingdom by 2.2 billion. Up to this point, Lin Huang had personally gathered 96.28 million Dao seals, while he had over three billion Dao seals in his Kingdom. What Lin Huang found unbelievable was that although he had consolidated close to a hundred million Dao seals, he had yet to see or feel his limit. It was even more ridiculous when it came to his Kingdom. It contained over three billion Dao seals, but had yet to reach its saturation point as well. What he felt was a pity was that, although his ability had increased significantly, the closed-door cultivation session did not result in any transformation of the God Weapons in his body. What pained Lin Huang even more was that the closed-door cultivation session had almost exhausted him of his spoils. He could almost be considered a poor man if he excluded the necessities he had on him. "I must think of a way to make money again" Once again, Lin Huang felt the pains of being poor. After concealing his aura as much as he could, he left the virtual realm. The moment his virtual body faded, his consciousness returned to his body. He clearly sensed how powerful he was. As he was feeling and examining the changes his body had gone through, he suddenly felt a unique sense probing him. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis without hesitation. It shot forth through the air. Suddenly, he entered an unknown dimension. There was nothing there except a giant face with different appearances that were constantly changing. The face almost covered the entire world. Sometimes ''It'' was a child. At other times, ''It'' was an adult man, a lady, or some other creature. "You can see me?" The giant face asked Lin Huang with a slightly shocked expression. "It would be ridiculous if I didn''t notice such a big face." Lin Huang, who was in his Divine Telekinesis form, looked rather helpless. He could sense that the giant face had no ill intentions, but he did not know what kind of entity ''It'' was exactly. He could only sense that ''It'' was extremely powerful. It might even be more powerful than he was. "Were you watching me?" Lin Huang asked again, realizing that the giant face was observing him curiously and had said nothing. "I sensed your aura, so I took a peek," the giant face explained, feeling embarrassed. "My name''s Lin Huang, a human." Lin Huang took the initiative to introduce himself. "Are you a creature of this universe?" Lin Huang was quite curious about the giant face''s identity. "I''m not a creature. I''m Heavenly Dao," the giant face explained. "Heavenly Dao?" Lin Huang was slightly stunned, but instantly understood ''Its'' identity. "I''m the Heavenly Dao of this universe or, in another form of address, I am the consciousness of the universe." The giant face thought about it and added, "You can see me as the universe. After all, my relationship with the universe is almost the same as the relationship between humans'' consciousness and their physical bodies." In reality, even without having ''It''s'' explanation, Lin Huang had already learned some information about Heavenly Dao from Qian Shisan. The Heavenly Dao of the chaotic cosmos was different from the Heavenly Dao in a heavenly dao-level powerhouse''s Kingdom in their body. The Heavenly Dao in a heavenly dao-level powerhouse''s body was man-made, a combination of the consolidated Dao seals inside their Kingdom. To be exact, it was a tool a heavenly dao-level powerhouse made to control the Kingdom in their body perfectly by imitating the chaotic cosmos'' Heavenly Dao. Meanwhile, the chaotic cosmos'' Heavenly Dao was what it had been born with. Since the Heavenly Dao was born, ''It'' had consciousness of its own. All living chaotic cosmoses would possess Heavenly Dao, no matter whether they were powerful or weak. Lin Huang also learned from Qian Shisan''s information that all dominator-level powerhouses would integrate with the Heavenly Dao''s nature, which was done by communicating with the chaotic cosmos'' Heavenly Dao to integrate with their own Heavenly Dao. At that moment, Lin Huang had many thoughts running through his mind. "In reality, this wasn''t the first time I peeked at you," Heavenly Dao suddenly added, "I noticed you before you even came to the universe." "Before I came to the universe?" Lin Huang was quite confused. "That''s right, while you were still in the great world," Heavenly Dao smiled and said, "Your energy fluctuations happened to reach the point where I could sense them. I peeked because I thought your energy fluctuations were unique." Lin Huang suddenly recalled feeling a strange sense of probing at the time he reached the limit of lord-level during the closed-door cultivation session in the great world. However, it was only that one time. He had thought that it was an illusion. "I''ve been watching you secretly since you came to the universe. Not only that, I realized that I''m getting more and more attracted to your aura. The feeling is somewhat like butterflies being attracted to the fragrance of flowers" Lin Huang''s expression turned weird as he listened up to this point. "That aura came from your Kingdom. I have a faint feeling that I will gain an unprecedented opportunity to transform if I integrate with your Kingdom" Lin Huang was a little excited when he heard that. He could not believe that Heavenly Dao would take the initiative to integrate with his Kingdom! "However, I haven''t thought it through, on whether I really want to do it or not, because I''m not sure what will happen after the integration" What Heavenly Dao said calmed down Lin Huang''s excitement. He fell into silence for a moment before speaking up again. He did not urge ''It''. Instead, he nodded to indicate that he understood Heavenly Dao''s hesitation. "It''s alright. After all, this matter involves your future. Take your time to consider. I can accept it no matter what the outcome is." "Thanks for your understanding." Heavenly Dao''s giant face revealed a kind smile. "I have a question. Is my current Kingdom powerful enough to perform the integration? Or do I need to become more powerful?" Lin Huang could not help but ask a question. "It''s powerful enough. Although your Kingdom isn''t the most powerful one I''ve ever seen, it''s growing continuously This is what attracts me." Heavenly Dao nodded with determination. "I have another question. You should know the strength of my true ability. Do you think my aura has reached the standard of dominator-level?" This was what Lin Huang was eager to find out. His cultivation method was different from others, which caused him to not have a benchmark or reference that he could compare himself to. Heavenly Dao smiled as ''It'' answered when ''It'' heard that question. "You''re still far from dominator-level. A legitimate dominator-level is a supreme powerhouse who has mastered the power of an entire chaotic cosmos at least. You''re somewhere between heavenly dao-level and dominator-level at most now. You can almost be considered to be a half-step Dominator." Although the answer was not what Lin Huang wanted to hear, he had at least gained an objective understanding of his ability now. After the two chatted for a little while, Lin Huang tried to obtain some information about the Black Abyss from Heavenly Dao, but he was denied any information. Heavenly Dao''s reason for rejection was simple. ''It'' did not want to interfere with anyone''s destiny in the universe. It indicated directly that Lin Huang had to solve this with the Eastern Eight Zone and the organizations in the universe. Watching Heavenly Dao fading away on ''Its'' own, Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis form returned to his physical body. "So I''m only at half-step dominator-level? Seems like I''m still not powerful enough!" Chapter 1795 - Move After communicating with Heavenly Dao, Lin Huang was finally clear about the level of his ability. He also found out that he did not actually have to use the standard heavenly dao-level cultivation method at all. All he had to do was to follow his current method and refine more Kingdoms. In order to have further substantial breakthroughs, he would need to integrate a chaotic cosmos. Moreover, his Kingdom could integrate a chaotic cosmos directly. There was no need to do what most heavenly dao-level powerhouses had to go through. The reason why other cultivators needed to experience that was because their Kingdoms were not powerful enough. They could only choose to use another method, which was to collide, integrate and rebuild their ten Kingdoms in order to transform their Kingdoms and make them powerful enough to integrate the chaotic cosmos. Lin Huang''s Kingdom was powerful enough to integrate the chaotic cosmos directly. He was even sure that, if he integrated a chaotic cosmos now, he could elevate himself to dominator-level right away. He did not urge the universe''s Heavenly Dao to integrate with him. The reason being was that, to him, both sides had to be willing parties for the integration to happen. He did not want to force Heavenly Dao to do something that it had yet to fully think through. On the other hand, the universe''s chaotic cosmos was never the only option Lin Huang had. He would leave the universe in the future and head into the chaotic ocean. There were countless chaotic cosmoses there to choose from. Moreover, he learned how to leave the universe from Heavenly Dao. Lin Huang looked at the sky outside the window as his Divine Telekinesis returned to his body. He sensed that the projection of Sovereign Xuan''s Kingdom had become weak. He even felt that he could break it apart by simply using his finger. In reality, the strength of Sovereign Xuan''s aura did not change. However, to Lin Huang, it no longer presented a threat to his current self. He fell into deep thought for a moment after looking away. He then called Bloody. Barely a moment passed before Bloody accepted the video call request. "You''ve left closed-door cultivation?" Bloody asked as soon as the video call was connected. "Yes, I have." Lin Huang nodded while smiling. "I''ve become poor again." "Do you need me to transfer the funds?" Bloody asked immediately. "No need. Your funds are just a drop in the bucket to me." Lin Huang smiled and shook his head before asking, "How is the gathering of information about the universe coming along?" "We''ve gathered all the public information. Yang Ling even infiltrated some of the organizations'' internal information databases and collected some private information. However, just to be careful, he didn''t touch the grade-SS and grade-SSS organizations. After all, the top-grade organizations in the universe might have powerhouses who possess something similar to a Goldfinger." "We can try infiltrating the grade-SS and grade-SSS organizations. I''ll handle things if we really end up offending them," Lin Huang said almost without any hesitation. "Sure. I''ll tell Yang Ling that." Bloody knew that since Lin Huang had said that, it showed that he had enough confidence in his ability. "Get Yang Ling to watch out for information about the Black Abyss and the Raiders. Let me know as soon as he obtains any information about them," Lin Huang added. To him, the Black Abyss and the Raiders were targets that had to be removed. Not only that, killing their members would provide him massive amounts of useful spoils. "I''ll tell him that too." Bloody nodded. "Find out for me which mystic territories, dao-level ruins or other secret lands will be opening as well. Everything from minor dao-level to heavenly dao-level, sort them out for me according to when they will open. The more detailed, the better." Lin Huang gave Bloody another mission. "In the Eastern Eight Zone or" Lin Huang answered before Bloody could finish asking, "The entire universe." "Got it. I''ll send the information to you after I''ve sorted them out." Bloody nodded and took the initiative to ask, "Should I send you live updates of the remaining six organizations'' movements?" "Do that too." Lin Huang thought about it and nodded. "Also I think Royal isn''t very safe now. That Sovereign Xuan is one of the Black Abyss'' main targets. Should we move out of Dongxuan City for the time being to prevent unnecessary conflict?" Lin Huang thought for a moment when he heard Bloody''s suggestion. He nodded. "We can move out. After all, I won''t be always guarding this place. I will be entering mystic territories and other secret lands occasionally. I can''t guarantee everyone''s safety during that time. However, the entire Eastern Eight Zone is in turmoil now. There doesn''t seem to be a place that''s absolutely safe" "I have a pretty great option," Bloody said while smiling. "Do tell." Lin Huang raised his brows. "I think the safest place in the entire Eastern Eight Zone now is Star Cluster''s core residential area," Bloody voiced her opinion with a smile. "Although Star Cluster has no Star Masters now, they''ve been removed from the Black Abyss'' list of targets. Even if they are in a turmoil internally, and other forces might be fighting for their territory, their core residential area is definitely safe for the time being. No matter how much chaos there is among their higher-ups, it wouldn''t affect the residential area too much. Moreover, no matter how many external forces are fighting for their territory, they won''t be able to claim the core residential area." "I said something similar to Xia Bing from Star Cluster previously." Lin Huang did not expect that Bloody would have the same thoughts as he did. "It''s a great choice to move to Star Cluster. Xia Bing can protect you guys while I''m away." In reality, he had just been considering whether to put Bloody and everyone from the Sword Alliance into his body directly during this period of time. However, if he did that, Yang Ling and the rest''s information gathering operations would have to be halted temporarily. Without Yang Ling and Bloody''s help, Lin Huang would have to do everything himself. His efficiency would drop significantly. After all, no matter how powerful a person was, collaborative work conducted by a team was far better in many aspects. Lin Huang thought about it and realized that Bloody''s suggestion was the best choice. The Sword Alliance would continue to operate in a different place. The various trades would go on, as well as the information gathering operations. Bloody and the rest could provide Lin Huang with any help he needed any time. "I''ll tell Sword 1 and the rest about the move. You''ll be in charge then." Bloody initially thought that she would need some time to convince Lin Huang. She thought he might even reject the suggestion. She had not thought that things would move along so smoothly. After the two came to an agreement, Lin Huang began to chat about daily life, "How are Bai and the rest doing? Have they contacted you?" "They shouldn''t have encountered any troubles. They''ve basically been asking for some information every time they contacted me. I reminded them about what happened to Star Cluster a few days back. I told them that the Eastern Eight Zone is in chaos recently and told them to stay watchful," Bloody said with a calm expression on her face. Lin Huang nodded lightly. Judging by the cards'' condition, his imperial monsters were safe at the moment. In reality, he was eager to toss them into the Kingdom in his body so that they could cultivate in the 10,000 times accelerated timeflow environment. The problem was that the most powerful cultivator in his Kingdom was only at minor dao-level. It was not challenging enough at all for his imperial monsters that were already at major dao-level now. He could only let them seek challenges in the universe on their own. Bloody left after they chatted for a little while longer. Within half an hour, Lin Huang received the information that Bloody had sorted through. Chapter 1796 - Frequently Appearing Mystic Territories "On 28th December, a mystic territory is estimated to open in the Eastern 23 Zone. Strength of the mystic territory: Major dao-level. Jurisdiction: Agency Zero, a grade-SSS organization in the Eastern 23 Zone" "On 13th January, a mystic territory is estimated to open in the Southern 61 Zone. Strength of the mystic territory: Suspected to be heavenly dao-level. Jurisdiction: Under the collective jurisdiction of six grade-SSS organizations in the Southern 61 Zone" "On 30th January, a mystic territory is estimated to open in the Northern 58 Zone. Strength of the mystic territory: Minor dao-level. Jurisdiction: None (The mystic territory will open in a barren land)" "On 14th February, a mystic territory is estimated to open in the Western 119 Zone. Strength of the mystic territory: Major dao-level" "The dates follow the Universe Calendar. Converting it to Dongxuan City''s local time, a mystic territory in the nearest Eastern 23 Zone will open in three days." "The appearances of mystic territories are too frequent" Lin Huang was pretty shocked to see the list that Bloody had sorted through. The entire list included almost all of the mystic territories, ruins and other types of secret zones that were opening within the next three years. There were a total of 113 of them. Meanwhile, among the 113, 105 were regarding the opening of mystic territories. Mystic territories occupied over 90% of the list. Lin Huang could even clearly see the obvious trend of the accelerated openings of mystic territories. At first, there would be one every half a month. However, in the second year, that interval shrunk to 11 to 12 days. In the third year, the interval was shortened even further to approximately a week. There would be mystic territories appearing in the universe almost every week from then on. Some had appeared before, while many others were newly formed foggy areas that had never been opened before. Lin Huang could not help but frown slightly after browsing through the list. He suddenly thought of what White Brow had saidthat the mystic territories were just bubbles in Aza''s dreams. The higher the frequency of mystic territories appearing, the sooner Aza would be awakened. At first, he thought that White Brow had just been trying to scare him. However, after meeting Qian Shisan and learning of the existence of dominator-level, he believed even more that Aza really existed, especially since his own ability had surpassed heavenly dao-level. He even suspected that this Aza was a powerhouse at dominator-level rank-4 at the very least. He might be even more powerful. If Aza was an existence that had mastered thousands, or even tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses, his dreams might be able to create dimensions like the mystic territories. When Lin Huang thought about the fact that such an existence would be waking up soon, he felt the level of pressure on his shoulders increase. He was the Black Abyss'' enemy, and that very same Black Abyss had such a big boss behind them. Although Qian Shisan mentioned that an existence of Aza''s level would not concern himself with a minor organization like the Black Abyss, Lin Huang had a faint feeling that he would end up meeting Aza sooner or later. After he got rid of the insecurities in his mind, he began to plan out his schedule quickly. "28th December. The mystic territory in the Eastern 23 Zone will open three days from now. I don''t think I''ll make it in time if I submit my application to Agency Zero now. Seems like I''ll have to see if I can sneak in instead" "13th January. The mystic territory in the Southern 61 Zone is suspected to be at heavenly dao-level. I must enter this one! Judging by the aura fluctuations described in the document, even if it''s not a heavenly dao-level mystic territory, there is definitely a lot of good stuff inside. It''ll only open half a month later, so I still have time to apply. I''ll just do that first, regardless of whether or not the application will be approved. If I''m denied access, I''ll just sneak in" "30th January. The mystic territory in the Northern 58 Zone is only at minor dao-level. I can skip this one and stay in the mystic territory in the Southern 61 Zone for half a month longer." "I can go to the one in the Western 119 Zone that''ll open on 14th February after getting out of the one in the Southern 61 Zone. I''ll have one day to rest to buy some materials" Lin Huang marked down all of the secret lands that he wanted to enter. He basically only chose major dao-level and heavenly dao-level secret lands. He only picked out two minor dao-level secret lands. The reason being was that there were really no major dao-level and heavenly dao-level secret lands opening during that period of time. He picked 46 out of the 113 secret lands on the list. Among them were 41 major dao-level secret lands, three heavenly dao-level secret lands as well as a secret land that was suspected to be at heavenly dao-level. The remaining two were minor dao-level secret lands. His schedule was almost packed full for the entire three years. Although he might not be able to enter all of them, it was better to plan it all out in advance. As soon as he finished planning his schedule, Lin Huang contacted Bloody again. He got her to apply for the permits to enter the 42 secret lands he picked out. Apart from the mystic territory in the Eastern 23 Zone, which would open in three days, as well as the few mystic territories that were in the zones that were not being administered, which would not require an application, Lin Huang got Bloody to submit the applications to the governing forces of the 42 secret lands. Naturally, he applied using his Royal identity in the Eastern Eight Zone. Lin Huang thought that he would disguise himself as a minor dao-level cultivator and enter as an official member of Royal if his permit was approved. If he was denied a permit, he would sneak in. He would sneak into the secret land when it opened. After all, it was quite impossible for him to be exposed if he hid himself in the presence of heavenly dao-level powerhouses given his current level of ability. If there were half-step dominator-level powerhouses present who could sense his existence, he would ask permission to enter shamelessly. They would be unlikely to give him the cold shoulder and reject him. There were no dominator-level powerhouses in the universe after all. The most powerful ones were probably the few half-step Dominators who had failed to elevate to dominator-level. Lin Huang also believed that no half-step Dominators would simply offend other half-step dominator-level powerhouses for no reason. "There''s nothing that can''t be solved with shamelessness." Lin Huang smirked. Two days after Bloody submitted the applications, they received the responses one after the other. Among the 42 applications, 28 were directly approved, 12 were rejected, while two were still pending a response. They only responded that they had never received an application from the Eastern Eight Zone before and that they did not know much about Royal, so they needed some time to consider the application. What pissed off Lin Huang a little bit was that the governing organization of the mystic territory that was suspected to be at heavenly dao-level in the Southern 61 Zone had denied his application. The reason they gave was that it was the first time that the mystic territory was opening, and that it was of high grade. There were sufficient applicants from the Southern 61 Zone, so they rejected all of the applicants from other zones. However, they mentioned that if it was opened again in the future, they welcomed the other zones to submit their applications. Although they were polite with their response, Lin Huang was dissatisfied with it. "Since you guys won''t let me in, I''ll sneak in!" Lin Huang pouted. "No matter what, I''m definitely entering this mystic territory!" Chapter 1797 - Entering A Mystic Territory Again In Year 401802021 of the New Era, 28th December on the Universe Calendar, six grade-SSS organizations, 18 grade-SS organizations and 42 grade-S organizations gathered in the Eastern 23 Zone early in the morning. They gathered because the major dao-level mystic territory before them was about to open. Lin Huang hid in the darkness and observed everything silently. Among the over 60 organizations, the six grade-SSS organizations were clearly the most powerful. Their leaders were four major dao-level powerhouses, of which two of them were peak major dao-level cultivators who had mastered over 800,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang glanced through the 24 people and then spotted the guy who he had hypnotized to ask about the mystic territory''s coordinates last night. He could not help but smirk. Apart from major dao-level powerhouses, each minor dao-level team comprised a standard 200 people. There was not one extra, and not one less. There were 1,000 people in each of the lord-level teams. Meanwhile, the 18 grade-SS organizations only had one major dao-level powerhouse leading them. Most of them only had some 40 minor dao-level powerhouses, with only two organizations having 50 minor dao-level powerhouses. He could tell that 50 was the limit for each team. Meanwhile, there were 300 to 400 Lords who participated. Lin Huang guessed their limit should be 500 people. For the grade-S organizations, their leaders were two minor dao-level powerhouses. However, they had a similar number of Lords with the grade-SS organizations, which was about 300 to 400 Lords. Lin Huang could tell from the participants that the people from the Eastern 23 Zone were much more radical than the people from the Eastern Eight Zone. They dared to bring so many people to explore an unfamiliar mystic territory that was opening for the first time. It was unknown whether this was due to the cultivators from that zone being brave or because many had been forced to participate due to the pressure from the higher-ups of their organizations. Naturally, Lin Huang only thought about such things. Such matters had nothing to do with him. He had come here just to sneak into the mystic territory. He would leave after killing many major dao-level powerhouses. He would only stay for half a month at most in this mystic territory. The reason being was that he would have to go to the heavenly dao-level mystic territory next. The fog covering the mystic territory had finally faded a little after 10 am The organizations began to bring their teams inside in an orderly manner. The six grade-SSS organizations entered first, followed by the grade-SS organizations, and finally the grade-S organizations. Lin Huang disguised his aura as a minor dao-level cultivator and sneaked in after almost everyone from the grade-S organizations had entered. He was finally relieved when he saw the sky above him after being teleported into the mystic territory. In reality, before coming in, he was a little worried that the mystic territory would discover his real combat strength or sense something unusual and deny his entry. After all, speaking of his current ability, he was already a half-step dominator-level powerhouse. Fortunately, his cultivation method was different from other heavenly dao-level cultivators. He did not possess the aura of a heavenly dao-level cultivator, making his disguises as minor dao-level and major dao-level cultivators much easier. Not only that, there were the God Weapons that were treasures shielding his aura. With those two safeguards, he managed to deceive the mystic territory''s recognition system and entered safely. However, Lin Huang knew that he had only passed the first stage. The number of Dao seals he would use in this mystic territory later on had to be the limit of major dao-level at most. If he went beyond that, the lightest consequence would be him being expelled from the mystic territory. The mystic territory might even collapse. "I can only use a million Dao seals, but that should be sufficient." Even if he had to control the number of Dao seals he would use, Lin Huang had absolute confidence in his ability. "I should adjust the strength of my Divine Telekinesis as well" It was a mystic territory that had opened for the very first time. There was no map at all. Therefore, the first thing the explorers did after entering the mystic territory was to basically use all sorts of probing techniques apart from Divine Telekinesis to search their surrounding environment and the distribution of monsters. The reason they were not using Divine Telekinesis to probe was because most mystic territories had suppressed the probing range of Divine Telekinesis. Not only that, anyone using Divine Telekinesis to probe would be easily detected by the local monsters, which would attract danger. However, Lin Huang did not have that concern. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis directly. The reason why he used Divine Telekinesis was because Divine Telekinesis was the most comprehensive method and the probing technique which could probe the furthest. Moreover, he was not worried in the slightest that monsters would besiege him. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis directly, but he did not release it at full strength. He was only probed using the strength of minor dao-level. At first, his Divine Telekinesis was only at minor dao-level, with the strength of having mastered over 3,000 Dao seals. He used this level of strength for a couple of seconds before increasing it to the level of one who had mastered 4,000 Dao seals. He did that for a couple of seconds again and then increased the level of strength again. He increased the level of strength of his Divine Telekinesis to the standard of having mastered 5,000 Dao seals He kept repeating this process by adding 1,000 Dao seals each time. When he increased it to the level of strength of a person who had mastered 10,000 Dao seals, he began to increase it by 10,000 Dao seals each time. He finally stopped the test when he reached 100,000 Dao seals. Within a short period of one minute, he had adjusted the strength of his Divine Telekinesis perfectly. It was so accurate that each Dao seal would change the strength of his Divine Telekinesis as well as change its probing range. After that, Lin Huang increased his Divine Telekinesis to the standard of having mastered one million Dao seals, as well as releasing the full extent of his probing range. Instantly, he had scanned the entire level of the mystic territory. From the scan, he discovered that this mystic territory had almost the same structure as the Abyss. The entire level was filled with minor dao-level monsters. There were no Lords, nor were there any major dao-level monsters. He appeared at a volcanic crater in a flash. He sensed a more powerful aura being released faintly from the volcano. He knew that it should be the entrance to the next level. He leapt inside without hesitation. He fell into the lava crater directly. Lin Huang found something strange as soon as he fell into the lava. It was no ordinary lava, but more like an ocean of Odyl compounded from 18,000 fire element Dao seals. If a powerhouse weaker than major dao-level came in, it would mean death as soon as they touched the lava. Lin Huang dove all the way in. As expected, he soon saw skeletons. The lower he went, the more skeletons there were. Most of them were skeletons of various monsters. There were also a couple that were clearly outsiders. Those monster skeletons were clearly monsters from the level where the minor dao-level monsters were. They had wanted to travel to the next level through here, but had ended up staying in the lava forever. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the few skeletons of the outsiders. Subsequently, he quickly realized what had happened. Although this mystic territory had opened in the universe for the first time, it had to have landed in other chaotic cosmoses before. Therefore, there were outsiders who had died here. Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis transformed into threads, collecting those skeletons along the way. The storage rings and Kingdoms of those skeletons had definitely been ruined by the lava, but he could still trade these bones for resources when he got out. Chapter 1798 - The Hunt Begins Traveling through the thousands of meters of Odylic Lava, Lin Huang finally saw a Dimensional Whirlpool at the bottom of the volcano. He stepped into it. The next second, he found himself in another world directly. There was no sun in the dim skies. There were only some stars. There was a faint rancid smell that lingered in the air. "As I thought. It''s the rancid smell of the Abyss." Lin Huang wrinkled his nose. He was familiar with this smell since he had been to the Abyss many times. After glancing around and observing his surroundings for a little while, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis directly. This time, he controlled it accurately. It was exactly at the limit of major dao-level. His Divine Telekinesis spread out like a ripple, scanning through the entire level of the mystic territory instantly. Although the Divine Telekinesis'' strength was at the limit of major dao-level in terms of probing, as his God Weapons came with a concealing effect, nobody noticed his actions at all. Local monsters aside, even those major dao-level explorers from the Eastern 23 Zone did not notice him at all. Within a short span of time, Lin Huang obtained an overview of the entire level of the mystic territory. This level was categorized into four layers. The innermost layer was an irregular zone that was shaped somewhat like a circle. There were monsters that had mastered over 800,000 Dao seals in there. Lin Huang called this layer the ''core'' layer. There was a zone that looked like a ring covering the core layer. He called that the ''inner'' layer. Another ring-like layer covered the inner layer. The monsters in there had mastered 300,000 to 500,000 Dao seals. He called it the ''surface'' layer. Outside the surface layer was another ring-like zone. Its size was the largest, but the ability of the monsters here was the weakest. They had mastered between 100,000 to 300,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang called this layer the ''superficial'' layer. He also noticed that he was currently located at the southeastern point of the superficial layer. "The most optimal route now is to go all the way north" He soon came up with a plan regarding his route. "There''s actually no need for me to actively hunt monsters in the superficial layer and surface layer. I''ll just kill the monsters I find along the way. I can take a few detours in the inner layer and kill some of them that are close to my route. However, I must enter the core layer within two days. I''ll have around two weeks to wrap things up after that. It''ll be enough for me to kill everything in there." Lin Huang headed all the way north after spending a couple of seconds planning his route. To prevent monsters from running away from his aura, he even disguised his aura as someone who had just reached major dao-level, who had mastered 108,000 Dao seals. He even adjusted his traveling speed to that of a typical major dao-level beginner. He had completely disguised himself as a rookie who, on the surface, looked like he had just entered major dao-level. He even concealed his aura a little on purpose, so as to look cautious like how a major dao-level beginner would behave. One might not be able to sense his ''clumsy'' concealment from far away, but those local monsters that were closer could sense it easily. In reality, he acted this way in order to lure those local monsters to come to him themselves. He did not want to bother wasting time looking for monsters in the superficial layer and surface layers. Therefore, he used that method to lure them to him. As expected, a monster took the bait within three minutes of his departure. A dark-purple scorpion beast that was hiding underground attacked him. However, a red gleam penetrated the ground when just half of its three snake-like scorpion tails had surfaced. The red gleam penetrated the monster''s head that had yet to surface from underground. The three-tailed scorpion turned into a carcass after appearing for less than 0.01 seconds. Until its death, it did not know that Lin Huang had already sensed its existence with his Divine Telekinesis while it was still hiding underground. Lin Huang did not slow down at all. He picked up the carcass with a Divine Telekinesis thread and put it away into his storage space directly. After flying for some two minutes, another monster came to him. It was a pitch-black dark crow this time. Lin Huang had actually noticed it from the beginning. Judging by the strength of its aura, it had mastered approximately 270,000 Dao seals. It easily ranked within the top ten of the superficial layer. Therefore, it was flying around fearlessly in the area. Even if it met someone that was more powerful than it was, it could easily escape with its speed. In reality, Lin Huang had not expected to meet this monster. The reason being was that it was still pretty far away from him a few minutes ago. It must have flown nearby unintentionally while hunting for prey. It attacked Lin Huang without hesitation after sensing his aura. Something tragic was going to happen Watching the dark crow charging at him with bright eyes, Lin Huang knew that it treated him as delicious food. The next second, a red gleam slashed out at a speed countless times faster than the dark crow. It shot through the crow''s head. It was another headshot. The dark crow failed to react in time. It merely saw a red gleam sparkling faintly before its consciousness faded away completely. Before its carcass fell to the ground, Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis thread picked it up and put it away into his storage space. From that point on, Lin Huang would be attacked almost every three to five minutes, and he would naturally obtain a beast carcass after each instance. Approximately five hours later, he had collected close to 80 carcasses before finally traveling through the superficial layer to reach the surface layer. After entering the surface layer, he adjusted his disguised combat strength a little. He adjusted it to the lowest combat strength of the monsters in the surface layer300,000 Dao seals. He also adjusted his speed accordingly. His aura remained in the same ''clumsy'' concealed state, and he continued to play the "baiting" game. The outcome was as he expected. The monsters in the surface layer were no wiser than the monsters in the superficial layer. His technique still worked in the surface layer. The monsters'' attacks were even more frequent. The reason being was that competition here was even more intense than the superficial layer. There would be a round of monster attacks almost every two to three minutes. However, Lin Huang killed all of the monsters that attacked him easily without exception, and their carcasses became his spoils. The size of the surface layer was actually similar to the superficial layer. Nevertheless, Lin Huang was flying extremely fast, so he traveled through this layer within two hours (It is not that 300,000 Dao seals is two times faster than 100,000 Dao seals. Lin Huang not going at full speed is taken into account in the time difference. He slowed down to invite sneak attacks, while the attacks on this layer were more frequent). When Lin Huang stepped into the third layer, the inner layer, he quickly adjusted his aura again. He adjusted his combat strength aura to the lowest standard that the monsters in this layer had, which was 500,000 Dao seals Chapter 1799 - The Official Hunt Begins Lin Huang only had his interest in hunting piqued somewhat when he entered the inner layer. It was not the monsters'' level of ability that piqued his interest, but rather the fact that monster carcasses that had mastered over 500,000 Dao seals could be sold at a higher price. He no longer made a beeline for his destination, but instead chose to kill all of the monsters within a certain range of his chosen route. The range he set for himself was 10,000 kilometers to the right and left of his route, which acted as the datum line. He would actively kill monsters as long as they were within that range. In reality, to Lin Huang who had mastered telekinetic God Weapons, there was almost no difference between 10,000 kilometers and one meter. There was not much difference even for further distances. He only decided on that range as he was worried that he would waste too much time in this layer and delay his hunting in the core layer. After all, his previous plan was to make it to the core layer within two days. The hunting began the moment Lin Huang stepped into the inner layer. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis according to the preset range of 10,000 kilometers quickly. At the same time, he locked onto all of the monsters within the probing range of his Divine Telekinesis. The next second, God Weapon flying daggers were shot out. By the time those monsters sensed the probing of his Divine Telekinesis, their heads had been penetrated. It was a one-sided massacre. There was no suspense at all. Although Lin Huang''s disguised aura was at the standard of a person who had mastered 500,000 Dao seals, there was actually Odyl superimposed with one million Dao seals on the flying daggers. Though he did not use the Critical Hit Hammer, it was completely sufficient to kill these monsters that had only mastered between 500,000 to 800,000 Dao seals instantly. Lin Huang hunted while flying at a high speed. After crushing those monsters'' heads, the Divine Telekinesis threads dragged those carcasses to him and put them away into his storage space. Almost three hours later, Lin Huang had traveled through the inner layer faster than he imagined. Meanwhile, he had killed over a hundred monsters in the inner layer. "My initial plan had been two days, but I arrived at the core layer within half a day" Lin Huang looked rather helpless. His progress was much faster than he expected. Nevertheless, he did not plan to stay longer in the inner layer. "Since I''m here, I''ll commence the official hunt directly." This time, Lin Huang concealed his aura entirely. He even used the Soul Weapon to shield his aura, preventing all major dao-level powerhouses from detecting him. With the Soul Weapon shielding his aura, the probing techniques of those major dao-level powerhouses, even if they were limit major dao-level powerhouses, would fail to detect him. As long as they did not see Lin Huang with their own eyes, they would not notice his existence at all. In reality, he could even deceive their five senses with the Soul Weapon. Even if he stood less than a meter in front of the person, they would not be able to sense his existence even if they touched him. However, he thought such measures were unnecessary and only shielded his aura. Then, he commenced the official hunting process. His Divine Telekinesis spread out with him at the center. All of the monsters within a radius of a million kilometers were locked onto instantly. The reason why he did not spread it further was because this mystic territory greatly suppressed one''s Divine Telekinesis. One million kilometers was the strength of Lin Huang''s God''s soul disguised as a limit major dao-level powerhouse. It was already the maximum distance that Divine Telekinesis could work properly in this mystic territory. It could extend even further, but then his God Weapon flying daggers would not operate as accurately. Not only that, their power would be decreased significantly. If he was purely using his Divine Telekinesis to probe, it would have been enough to cover the entire layer of the mystic territory. In the air, the blood-colored God Weapon flying daggers shot forth from Lin Huang''s sleeves like lightning. They shot through the air like sparkling electric arcs, directed at all of the targets he had locked onto. All of the flying daggers were superimposed with a million Dao seals. This time, Lin Huang even superimposed the Critical Hit Hammer''s effect. He did that because he was a little worried that he might not be able to kill limit major dao-level monsters instantly. Under the effect of the Critical Hit Hammer at its full tenth stage, all of the flying daggers were superimposed with a random chance of dealing between nine to a hundred times their damage. Lin Huang did not think that any major dao-level monsters could survive such superimposition. The reality was as he expected. Under the attack of the blood-colored God Weapon flying daggers, all of the monsters within a million kilometers were killed in a flash. There were monsters that attempted to run away after sensing the unusualness of the situation. However, their actions were completely futile as they had been locked onto by Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis in advance. In this round of attack, he killed 21 peak major dao-level monsters that had mastered over 800,000 Dao seals. The entire process took less than three seconds. After killing all of the monsters within a million kilometers, Lin Huang picked up the carcasses with Divine Telekinesis threads slowly and put them into his storage space. They were all worth money. Almost ten minutes had passed by the time he had put away all of the carcasses. After all, the size of the carcasses were countless times larger than the Divine Telekinesis threads. Moreover, there would be all sorts of obstacles during the process of collecting them. The speed of recalling his Divine Telekinesis threads was not on par with the attack speed of his God Weapon flying daggers. Compared to attacking with his God Weapon flying daggers, collecting those monster carcasses from far away was far more troublesome, and more time-consuming too. Lin Huang continued heading north after gathering up all of the carcasses. He appeared two million kilometers away in a flash. Without much hesitation, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis to probe once again. He then commenced the second hunt As always, it was very successful. After that, he chose to continue heading north. He repeated the process and commenced his third and fourth hunts. He obtained between 10 to 30 monster carcasses during each hunt. Naturally, he knew that there would be many zones in between that he would miss out on when hunting with this probing technique. His plan was to clear the entire core layer once first using this method. For the remaining zones in between, he would clear them out when he hunted again. Time flew by. Very soon, a day had passed. Lin Huang made a rough calculation. Throughout the half a day since he had entered the core layer, he had conducted 63 hunts. He killed a total of about 1,000 monsters in the core layer. It had to be said that the density of major dao-level monsters in this mystic territory far surpassed the mystic territory he had entered in the Eastern Eight Zone. In reality, throughout the half day of hunting, explorers from the Eastern 23 Zone had sensed his Divine Telekinesis probing twice. The two explorers had spread out their Divine Telekinesis too, attempting to discover Lin Huang''s location. However, their efforts were to no avail as Lin Huang had the Soul Weapon shielding him. He had even gone around them intentionally when he moved the carcasses with the Divine Telekinesis threads, which delayed him a little. Chapter 1800 - Infinite Eliminated Lin Huang spent a week grinding in the core layer. He spent a whole seven days and finally covered the entire core layer. The total number of major dao-level monsters he killed throughout those seven days had surpassed 13,000. All of those monsters had mastered over 800,000 Dao seals. However, completing this did not mean that he had cleared the entire core layer. He had hunted within circles measuring one million kilometers in diameter each in the core layer; there were still gaps between those circles. Therefore, after the first round of hunting was completed, Lin Huang soon commenced the second round of hunting. This time, he headed to those gaps in between his previous hunting zones and started clearing them out. This entire process took four days. Throughout those four days, he killed over 3,500 major dao-level monsters. He had cleared out almost all of the monsters in the entire core layer. Up to that point, Lin Huang had stayed in this mystic territory for 11 days. "I''ve only spent 11 days here. It''s more than half a month shorter than I expected." Lin Huang thought about it and decided to stay in the mystic territory longer to continue hunting. After all, the mystic territory in Southern 61 Zone would only open six days later. If he left now, it would mean that he would have to wait six more days in the Eastern Eight Zone. He thought he could totally stay in the core layer and continue hunting for one more day. However, once he had cleared out the core layer, he could only target the inner layer outside of the core layer. Although the monsters in the inner layer had mastered between 500,000 to 800,000 Dao seals were worth money as well, the prices they would fetch were definitely not as high as the monsters in the core layer. One day passed like a flash, and Lin Huang returned to the inner layer. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis again and scanned a million kilometers of his surroundings. He began a new round of hunting. Over the next five days, he killed over 10,000 monsters in the inner layer. He had finally stopped when his alarm clock went off. Were it not for the mystic territory in the Southern 61 Zone opening, the one that was suspected to be at heavenly dao-level, he would have been unwilling to stop hunting. After turning off the alarm clock, Lin Huang checked the time on the Universe Calendar. It was 00:00, 12th January. Without hesitation, he concealed himself and left the mystic territory at full speed. When he returned to the Feister Star Zone in the Eastern Eight Zone, he realized that the courtyard that had been initially crowded was now empty. He recalled that he had gotten Bloody and Sword 1 to arrange the move before he headed over to the mystic territory. It seemed that all of the people from the Sword Alliance had moved away. He turned on his communication device and saw the missed calls from Bloody and Sword 1 ten days and a week ago respectively. He then checked his messages and saw a message from Sword 1 that had been sent a week ago. He clicked on it and looked it through. The message Sword 1 sent was long, but the summary was pretty straightforward. The Sword Alliance had completed the move. Everyone had moved to the core zone of Star Cluster. Considering that Lin Huang would return to the Feister Star Zone, the courtyard in Feister Star Zone was not sold. The new Sword Alliance was stationed in the Sunrise Star Zone in Star Cluster''s core zone. Sword 1 even sent him the coordinates at the end of the message. Lin Huang thought about it and decided to reply. "I saw your message. I still have stuff to do, so I won''t be going over for the time being. Settle down properly. Your first mission would be to gather information. You guys should remain cautious, as Star Cluster isn''t absolutely safe either. Also, send me news about anything that has taken place over the past half a month." Lin Huang walked over to the bathroom to wash up after sending that message. Although there would not be a trace of dust on his body, he still maintained some of the habits of a normal human. He soaked himself in a tub filled with hot water. He felt his body, that had been in a tense state for half a month, finally relax. He sat up straight in the tub and glanced at his communication ring. Sword 1 had replied earlier. He merely replied, "Sure", and attached a document. Lin Huang clicked into the document and browsed through it. However, he could not help but frown after doing so. "Infinite''s Mountain Master and the two Mountain Guardians are missing" Infinite''s headquarters was a gigantic mountain range, and its size was comparable to that of a great world. Therefore, their leader was called Mountain Master, while their deputy leaders were called Mountain Guardians. The three of them were heavenly dao-level powerhouses, but they had gone missing mysteriously a week ago. People had only realized this when nobody from Infinite showed up during the union meeting in the Eastern Eight Zone a week ago. Upon investigation, the peak of Infinite''s mountain range, where the Mountain Master and Mountain Guardians were stationed, showed signs of battles. "There''s a high chance that there''s a spy from the Black Abyss among those three people from Infinite." Very soon, Lin Huang had come to a conclusion. On one hand, if they attacked the organizations in which they planted their spies, they could recall their spies and prevent their identities being exposed by the investigation being conducted in the Eastern Eight Zone. On the other hand, Infinite was like Royal, in the sense that they had three heavenly dao-level powerhouses. Compared to the remaining organizations, their combat strength was indeed the weakest. If there were spies among them, they were an easy target. However, Lin Huang frowned even harder as he thought up to this point. The reason being was that it seemed that Royal was at high risk too. Now that Infinite had been eliminated, Royal was the weakest one among the remaining grade-SSS organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone. No matter whether there was a spy in Royal or not, among the five remaining organizations, Royal was the most likely target that would be attacked by the Black Abyss next. Naturally, there was another possibility. Among the four grade-SSS organizations, excluding Royal, there were probably spies from the Black Abyss. The Black Abyss might attack the organizations where their spies were placed first. This was because, the longer things continued, the more likely it was that those spies would be exposed. A spy being exposed did not only mean that the Black Abyss would lose one heavenly dao-level member, it would also mean that plenty of information about the Black Abyss might be revealed. The reason why the Black Abyss could make so many organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone feel helpless was primarily because they were shrouded in mystery. Nobody knew who their members were and where their headquarters was. They had nowhere to start the investigation at all. If they knew, those few grade-SSS organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone would have worked together to attack them earlier. They would not be stuck in a passive position like now, where they could only hold meetings to exchange intel in order to get very limited information about the Black Abyss. "I''ll enter the mystic territory tomorrow, and I''ll be there for a month. I wonder if Royal will still be around when I get out, and what state the Eastern Eight Zone would be in." Lin Huang felt helpless about the current situation. He could not assist with anything at all. The Black Abyss was too skilled at hiding.. In reality, if he knew where their lair was, he could destroy them on his own. Chapter 1801 - Sovereign Xuan Attacked Early in the morning, after breakfast, Lin Huang walked over to the nearby market for a stroll. He did not need to buy anything. He merely wanted to kill time, since he would be entering a mysterious territory tomorrow. It was rare for him to have a day to himself, so he figured that he would walk around the market to see if he could find anything that would surprise him. The morning went by as he strolled around, but he did not even purchase one thing. There was nothing that interested him at all. After all, with his current level of ability, anything that could pique his interest had to be an exotic treasure at the very least. When it was almost 12 noon, he walked into a restaurant that was rather crowded despite not being hungry. He ordered a couple of their signature dishes. Food served at crowded restaurants would usually be palatable at least. Lin Huang thought he would try them out since he was already here. Very soon, the restaurant waiter served the first dish. It was savory egg custard. It was not a chicken egg, but rather an egg from a local bird in the Feister Star Zone called the Vivid Feather. Such birds were similar in size to pigeons. They had beautiful, colorful feathers on their bodies, especially on their tails. As they were pleasant to look at and could not fly very high, many people in the Feister Star Zone kept them as pets. Such birds laid eggs too, but there would usually only be one egg each week. Therefore, this savory egg custard was expensive. Although Lin Huang knew that it was a local specialty dish, it was his first time eating it. He raised his brows as he scooped it up and put it in his mouth. The dish''s texture felt like pudding. It was even more chewy than he thought, but it was delicious. It even whet his appetite a little bit. After multiple scoops, he finished the dish. Lin Huang thought that the savory egg custard would taste even better if Fatty had made it. Such an ingredient was considered outstanding among the food ingredients that regular people were familiar with. He was even considering whether to get a batch of these eggs for Fatty. As he was considering this, the waiter served the second dish. It was a steak, fresh from the pan. The recipe was similar to beefsteak. It looked similar to beefsteak too, but it was bigger and had a richer fragrance. Lin Huang glanced at the dish''s introduction on the menu. It was an Eastern Eight Zone''s specialtyGrass Hog. This hog''s size was similar to that of rhinoceroses on Earth. They were herbivores that could be found in large numbers in many of the almost uninhabited grass-field planets in the Eastern Eight Zone. Their annual yield was high, and so were the sales numbers. Lin Huang had tried this dish before. However, different chefs would definitely cook the same steak differently. Looking at the color of the steak, which was pan-fried, and the fragrance wafting out, he cut a slice eagerly. He suddenly frowned slightly after putting it into his mouth. He lifted his head to look at the sky above the restaurant as he chewed on that piece of steak slowly. At that moment, the ground suddenly shook. Someone outside the restaurant screamed immediately, "Earthquake!" However, Lin Huang knew that it was not an earthquake, but rather that someone had attacked Sovereign Xuan, causing the entire Dongxuan City to be shake violently. "This steak is wasted now" Lin Huang sighed softly helplessly and disappeared from where he was the next second. Xuan Palace in Dongxuan City was completely protected by a layer of shielding. To everyone below heavenly dao-level, Xuan Palace looked the same as always. However, Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis penetrated the layer of shielding and observed the situation within. A black-robed spear cultivator in a fiend mask was fighting against the white-robed Sovereign Xuan. A person in a fox mask stood not far away. He did not attack. Sovereign Xuan specialized in both light and fire elements. His movement speed and attacks were extremely powerful. However, that fiend-face had powerful close combat capabilities. His speed was no slower than Sovereign Xuan''s. Moreover, the size of Xuan Palace was limited. Sovereign Xuan tried his best to dodge and attempt to put some distance between them, but he could not get rid of his opponent in the end. Apart from that, he would have to spare his attention to guard that man in fox mask that had yet to attack at all times. He knew that the other person was not just watching, but instead waiting for him to reveal his flaws. He did not know what abilities the man in the fox mask possessed, but he was sure that the person would not hesitate to join the fight as soon as he revealed any flaws. Lin Huang who was hiding, and watching the battle unfold, could see the battle situation even clearer. Sovereign Xuan was not hurt yet, but it was only a matter of time before he would be defeated. The reason being was that everyone knew what the three Royal''s Sovereigns were specialized in. Therefore, the ambushers they arranged should have extremely powerful abilities that targeted their opponents'' weaknesses. The two of them sealing Xuan Palace had already limited Sovereign Xuan''s mobility significantly. Sovereign Xuan was an Element Master. He was expert at medium-range attacks. However, he could only maneuver in a small, confined range now. Meanwhile, that spear cultivator had rather subtle movement skills. He was clearly specialized in high-speed movement skills. His speed in moving in a small range was not inferior to Sovereign Xuan. Not only that, he was a spear cultivator. As soon as he approached Sovereign Xuan, one hit might be all it took for Sovereign Xuan to be injured severely. Regarding the fox-face that had yet to attack, Lin Huang could guess that he had definitely mastered control-type abilities. The reason being was that only control-type abilities would complement the abilities of that spear cultivator and ensure a sure-kill situation. He had yet to attack until now in order to appear more intimidating. On the other hand, it was also to prevent his techniques from being exposed, which would give Sovereign Xuan the opportunity to take precautions against him. Lin Huang knew that the fox-face was waiting for the chance to attack. It would be a sure-kill situation as soon as he attacked. Lin Huang thought that Sovereign Xuan basically did not have the chance to turn the tables around in this battle. He had been plotted against comprehensively even before the battle began. Lin Huang frowned slightly as he stared at the unfolding battle. The Black Abyss definitely did not only target Sovereign Xuan alone in launching their attack. The other heavenly dao-level powerhouses of Royal, or the non-spy heavenly dao-level powerhouse of Royal, were definitely being attacked right now as well. When he saw the news of Infinite being attacked earlier, he had predicted that the Black Abyss would attack Royal next. Never had he thought he would be around to witness it. He might be able to save Sovereign Xuan, but he likely would not make it in time to save the others even if he rushed over to the other two battlefields. When Lin Huang was briefly distracted, fox-face finally attacked. He seized the moment after Sovereign Xuan had just completed his teleportation. His eyes beneath the mask lit up with a blue glow suddenly. Sovereign Xuan fell into a daze and, at that moment, his body froze too. The fiend that had been working in-sync with fox-face approached without hesitation. He thrust the spear between Sovereign Xuan''s brows The tip of the spear was less than three centimeters away from Sovereign Xuan when something happened. Sovereign Xuan seemed to be pulled by a great force and retreated frantically. At the same time, the fiend felt as if his spear had hit something hard. He could not pierce through the obstacle. The blue glow in fox-face''s eyes, who was standing not far away, faded away instantly.. He saw a man in white robe slowly consolidating before the tip of the spear. The white-robed man was using a finger to stop the fiend''s sure-kill spear attack Chapter 1802 - These Two Are My Loot The pupils under the fiend mask shrunk when he saw the masked white-robed man appear in front of him without any warning. He knew very well how powerful his spear attack was. It represented his full force that was superimposed with seven million Dao seals. Not only that, the spear in his hand was a supreme-grade exotic treasure. It was a weapon that was only second to a supreme treasure. However, such a spear attack had been stopped by that man''s finger so easily. The fiend felt his scalp turn numb when he saw that. The reason being was that it was impossible for even a heavenly dao-level rank-9 powerhouse to do something like that. It only took a second for him to come to the conclusion that this person was a half-step Dominator! The person who came to the same conclusion as him was the man in the fox mask who was watching the battle from not far away. As the fiend''s long-time partner, he understood his partner''s ability very well. He also knew that the spear attack was the fiend''s most powerful killing technique. He was so shocked that his ocular skill was canceled automatically when he saw Lin Huang use his finger to stop the fiend''s attack. He made up his mind instantly. He said to the fiend through voice transmission, "Retreat!" The reason why he chose to retreat without hesitation was because an unforeseen event that they had not seen coming had occurred. The mission of killing Sovereign Xuan had become something that was almost impossible. On the other hand, he was also terrified of Lin Huang''s ability. He knew very well that if the two of them did not leave right away, they might not be able to do so later. A half-step dominator-level powerhouse was not an existence that heavenly dao-level powerhouses could fight evenly with. "Since you''re already here, what''s the rush?" Clearly, Lin Huang had heard fox-face''s voice transmission. He flicked the finger that stopped the tip of the spear. The fiend only felt a great force spreading out from the tip of the spear. The next second, the spear left his hand entirely, and the bones in his right hand that had been holding it were crushed. From his palm to his shoulder, his entire arm distorted instantly, like a towel that had been squeezed dry. Before he even had time to feel the pain, the fiend shot out spiraling as a result of the terrifying force of that finger flick. "I seemed to have used too much strength" Considering that the man was at heavenly dao-level rank-7 and had mastered seven million Dao seals, Lin Huang used eight million Dao seals in this attack. He even suppressed his attack speed. However, he forgot that his physical body strength was already at half-step dominator-level as well. With such strength, even though he only used eight million Dao seals in his attack, the force of the attack had far surpassed the full force of a heavenly dao-level rank-9 powerhouse. "Fortunately, he didn''t die instantly." Lin Huang could sense that the man''s Odyl and Divine Power had almost been drained completely by his attack. He fell unconscious immediately, but still had vitality left. He did not wish to kill him just yet. After all, there were many things that he wanted to ask him. If he killed him accidentally and tried to retrieve his memories, there was a high chance that it would trigger the Abyssal energy in his head, which would destroy all of the useful information. The man in the fox mask did not hesitate at all and turned around to escape when he saw the fiend being thrown out like that with a simple flick of a finger. He did not seem to plan to save his partner at all. Instead, he hoped that this white-robed man that appeared out of nowhere would focus on the fiend for a little while longer so that he could run away. However, just as he moved, he sensed an intense threat coming from his back. He turned his head slightly and saw a red electric arc in his peripheral vision, traveling at a speed that was ten million times faster than him. The instant he glimpsed the red gleam, he felt a chill on his back. The very next second, he felt that red gleam penetrate his chest. "It didn''t hit my heart" The man in the fox mask was secretly elated. However, he soon realized that the Odyl and Divine Power in his body had been drained. He looked terrible now. The man had left him alive on purpose Sensing the pain coming from his chest, fox-face felt weak and fell to the ground. He had defeated two heavenly dao-level powerhouses from the Black Abyss with two attacks. The entire battle took less than one second. Sovereign Xuan, who witnessed the entire thing, was dumbfounded. He only snapped back to his senses when he saw fox-face falling to the ground. He went forward and cupped his hands at Lin Huang immediately. "Thanks for saving me, senior!" Lin Huang merely glanced at him before appearing next to fox-face in a flash. His Divine Telekinesis threads were spread out. They removed the two rings on his hands and the mask on his face directly. The face of an androgynous handsome man could be seen under the mask. His face was very small, and the shape of his face actually looked a little bit like a fox. It was not that Lin Huang wanted to see what he really looked like. After all, he would not recognize him even after seeing his face. He removed his mask simply because the mask was transformed from a Soul Weapon, which was an exotic treasure. After removing the mask, Lin Huang did not leave right away. Instead, he stretched out his hand toward the man''s brow. "Save your effort. You won''t be able to retrieve any useful information" The man''s expression suddenly changed drastically, as he began to speak, "You" The reason being was that he saw that Lin Huang was not trying to read his memory at all. Instead, he was dragging his Kingdom out by force. "Stop it" The man panicked. If he lost his Kingdom, heavenly dao-level aside, even maintaining his major dao-level ability might be a problem. Lin Huang ignored him completely. It merely took a moment for him to remove the man''s Kingdom from his body. Fox-face, whose Odyl had been drained, did not have the strength to resist at all. He could only watch as his Kingdom left his body. Without his Kingdom, he instantly felt his combat strength plummeting. Within a few breaths of time, his combat strength dropped out of heavenly dao-level''s baseline and into major dao-level. After dropping to major dao-level, although the rate at which his combat strength was dropping had slowed down significantly, it was still falling. "My years of cultivation are all gone" The man lifted his head in an attempt to scream at Lin Huang, but he was long gone. After retrieving fox-face''s Kingdom, he appeared before the unconscious fiend in a flash. After using Divine Telekinesis threads to remove the storage ring on his finger and the mask on his face, he did the same thing as before, and began to remove the Kingdom from his body by force. Sensing something wrong, the fiend woke up gradually. However, by the time he opened his eyes, he saw that the white-robed man before him had retrieved his Kingdom. "You" Right after saying a word, anger and rage rushed through his body and he ended up fainting again. Sovereign Xuan cupped his hands again when he saw Lin Huang walking toward him after retrieving the two Kingdoms. "Senior" "Don''t let these two kill themselves. Bring them to the union meeting alive as soon as you can to see if you can get any information out of them. Don''t use God''s soul techniques to read their memories. Their heads contain high-grade Abyssal energy that, when triggered, will wipe away their memories directly and even contaminate the person who retrieved the memories." "Give me your contact number. I''ll contact you a week from now. Give me a copy of the information if you find anything useful. Also, these two are my spoils. After you guys are done with the interrogation, return them to me." Lin Huang did not use voice transmission when he said that. Fox-face looked extremely terrible when he heard those words. Sovereign Xuan took out a piece of paper right after hearing that. He wrote down his contact number and handed it over to Lin Huang. Lin Huang glanced at it. "Zhao Xuan" It was only now that he found out Sovereign Xuan''s real name. "May I know how to address you, senior?" Sovereign Xuan asked immediately. "Do I look like I want to expose my identity?" Lin Huang pointed at the golden mask that he was wearing. Sovereign Xuan was stunned when he heard that. He dared not ask further. "From now on, you''re the only heavenly dao-level powerhouse in Royal remaining. You should consider whether you should continue managing Royal or leave." Sovereign Xuan was stunned once again when he heard that. However, he instantly realized that he was not the only target of the attack this time. His expression dimmed significantly at the thought that two of his colleagues might have died in battle. When he lifted his eyes after that brief distraction, that white-robed man was long gone. Chapter 1803 - I’m Too Late As I Thought The reason why Lin Huang left the two Black Abyss members to Zhao Xuan of Royal was because he did not have a method to interrogate them. If he read their memories, it would trigger the Abyssal energy in their heads. The outcome would be the same if he hypnotized them. The reason being was that hypnosis'' nature was also a psychic technique. They could only interrogate those two, getting them to voluntarily reveal the information in order to avoid triggering the Abyssal energy in their heads. Regarding techniques of that nature, Lin Huang was definitely not as well-versed as the professionals. Secondly, he left the two behind intentionally; he had also left an imprint on their bodies. He figured that there was a high chance that the Black Abyss would send heavenly dao-level powerhouses to rescue the two of them. After all, the Black Abyss did not know that he had removed the Kingdoms in their bodies and that their combat strength had plummeted. To the Black Abyss, they would lose two heavenly dao-level powerhouses with powerful abilities if they left them alone. If someone from the Black Abyss came to their rescue, he could hunt more Black Abyss members. However, it would definitely not be Lin Huang''s Primordium who would stop them at that point, but his mirror clone. The mirror clone was the clone Lin Huang had made using the Mirror Dao seal. The mirror clone had the exact same level of ability as Lin Huang''s Primordium. Apart from the Goldfingers, the clone had almost perfectly copied his abilities, including his Kingdom and Dao seals. Leaving the clone behind would be sufficient to handle the Black Abyss'' rescue operation. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was still going forward with his original plan, which was to enter the heavenly dao-level mystic territory in Southern 61 Zone. A heavenly dao-level mystic territory was rare. If not for the unusually frequent appearance of mystic territories during recent years, the entire universe might not even see a single heavenly dao-level mystic territory opening in millions of years in the past. Since it was rare that he got the opportunity to enter a heavenly dao-level mystic territory, it was only natural that Lin Huang was unwilling to pass it by. After all, a clone would be enough to handle things in the universe. After leaving Xuan Palace, Lin Huang headed straight to Yuan City in the Eastern Eight Zone. Yuan City was Sovereign Yuan''s Kingdom projection, who was one of Royal''s three Sovereigns. Although Lin Huang knew that it would be definitely too late for him to go over now, he still held onto a little hope as he made his way to Yuan City. However, he confirmed that he was indeed too late as soon as he arrived at Yuan City. The reason being was that the entire Yuan City was gone. Although the planets where Yuan City''s people lived were not greatly affected, Sovereign Yuan''s Kingdom projection was gone. Lin Huang scanned the area with Divine Telekinesis and did not find Sovereign Yuan and the remaining heavenly dao-level powerhouse''s auras. He only saw that Yuan Palace, which was covered with a layer of shielding, had completely collapsed. Clearly, an intense battle had taken place here. Lin Huang merely took a glance and did not examine the traces carefully. He headed straight to his next destinationTian Capital. Tian Capital was Nangong Tian''s Kingdom projection, who was one of Royal''s three Sovereigns. He went to Tian Capital last because it was the furthest from Dongxuan City. Nangong Tian had the most powerful abilities among the three Sovereigns. He was also one of Royal''s founders. Lin Huang had previously sensed that he had mastered close to nine million Dao seals. When he made it to Tian Capital, just like Yuan City, it was gone. Meanwhile, the Tian Palace that Nangong Tian resided in was damaged even worse than Yuan Palace. Almost the entire ground had been upended by all sorts of attacks. Not even one inch of the ground remained untouched. It seemed like the attack Nangong Tian encountered was even more terrifying than the attack Sovereign Yuan had been through. Lin Huang scanned his surroundings with his Divine Telekinesis. He did not find anything as well. There was no sign of Nangong Tian, nor were there any other heavenly dao-level powerhouses left behind. "I was too late as I expected" Although Lin Huang had seen this coming, he thought that it was quite a pity. Saving people was his second priority in rushing here. His main objective was actually to kill the Black Abyss'' heavenly dao-level powerhouses. If he could stop the three attacks, he would have obtained at least six heavenly dao-level Kingdoms, or even more. After scanning through Tian Palace with Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang returned to the Feister Star Zone without looking thoroughly. He did not have the time to investigate the exact situation of the two battlefields. He knew that the Grade-SSS Union in the Eastern Eight Zone would definitely investigate it. At that point, he would just read the investigation report. There was no need for him to waste his time on it. When he returned to the Feister Star Zone, the tremors in Dongxuan City had subsided completely. However, the people were discussing it. Many even guessed that Sovereign Xuan had been attacked. Lin Huang clicked into a couple of information platforms on his communication ring. The reports of Tian Capital and Yuan City being destroyed were flooding in. He speculated that topics related to Royal being attacked would be trending on all of the information platforms in the Eastern Eight Zone within half an hour. Perhaps it would not be limited to the Eastern Eight Zone. Even the other zones might see the news as well. However, the news of Sovereign Xuan surviving would definitely be revealed soon as well. The Black Abyss would probably quickly find out that their ambush mission here had not been successful. The reality was just as Lin Huang expected. The people from the Black Abyss only found out that the ambush targeting Sovereign Xuan had failed when they read the news on the internet. The Black Abyss members usually would not convene after the mission was completed, nor would they provide feedback on the situation. All they usually needed to do was submit a simple report on the outcome of the mission within 24 hours of the mission being completed. They would communicate issues immediately if something happened during the mission. However, such a situation hardly occurred. This time, the fiend and fox-face were defeated by Lin Huang too quickly. They did not have time to communicate anything. Not only that, Lin Huang removed their communication rings, so they could not communicate with others anyway. Given that they had prepared adequately beforehand for the Black Abyss'' ambush mission this time, and that the arrangements were perfect, the mission should have encountered no difficulties. Theoretically, the success rate of the ambush was 100%. There was hardly any chance of failure. It caused the remaining members to assume that the fiend and fox-face had completed the mission to ambush Sovereign Xuan successfully. They only found out that something had gone wrong when they read news on the internet that only Tian Capital and Yuan City were destroyed, and that there was no news of Dongxuan City being destroyed at all. There was only news discussing the earthquake in Dongxuan City. A few of them attempted to contact the fiend and fox-face but failed. Only then did they confirm that their mission had failed. The people from the Black Abyss were rather confused about the failure of the mission. However, they did not head over to Dongxuan City rashly. Instead, they began to use their numerous spies to gather intelligence. Within half a day, the Black Abyss had finally heard news from their spies. The fiend and fox-face had been captured alive! The person who did it was a mysterious white-robed man whose level of ability was suspected to be at half-step dominator-level! They were completely shocked when they heard the two pieces of news. They held a meeting among the higher-ups without delay. Meanwhile, the culprit, Lin Huang, headed over to Southern 61 Zone early the next day after resting for a day. He left a mirror clone behind to guard the Feister Star Zone in Dongxuan City. Chapter 1804 - He Might Die Lin Huang hid himself outside the mystic territory in Southern 61 Zone. Nobody noticed him with the Soul Weapon shielding his aura. He briefly observed the mystic territory that was covered in gray fog for a little bit, after which he could already tell that it was most definitely a heavenly dao-level mystic territory. The reason being was that, even though the fog had yet to fade, the aura coming from the mystic territory through the gray fog was more powerful than any mystic territory he had seen in the past. After looking away from the gray foggy area, Lin Huang began to observe the exploration teams from the Southern 61 Zone this time. At this moment, there was still plenty of time before the mystic territory opened. The exploration teams had yet to fully gather. Lin Huang noticed that all of the organizations did not bring any Lords with them this time. He fell into a slight daze, but instantly understood the reason behind this arrangement. After all, a heavenly dao-level mystic territory was too dangerous. Lords might be even weaker than the smallest of monsters in there. They were not qualified to participate in this exploration. As there were no Lords, the number of exploration teams from the Southern 61 Zone this time had been reduced. Among the 14 teams that had arrived at the moment, there were three organizations with guardian heavenly dao-level powerhouses. Each of them had sent two heavenly dao-level powerhouses. The three organizations were clearly grade-SSS organizations from the Southern 61 Zone. Lin Huang even did his homework yesterday. There were a total of five grade-SSS organizations in the Southern 61 Zone. The other two most likely had yet to arrive. He found the information from the documents he had gathered in the Eastern Eight Zone. He roughly recognized the three grade-SSS organizations, and the few heavenly dao-level powerhouses among them, who had arrived. Apart from heavenly dao-level powerhouses, the three grade-SSS organizations deployed the same number of major dao-level and minor dao-level powerhouses. They had 30 major dao-level powerhouses and 200 minor dao-level powerhouses. Although no Lords were participating, one could see how important this exploration was for these grade-SSS organizations from the Southern 61 Zone. Apart from the three grade-SSS organizations, the remaining 11 teams were from grade-SS and grade-S organizations. The differences between the two were quite obvious. The grade-SS organizations each had three major dao-level powerhouses in charge. They had 50 minor dao-level team members. Meanwhile, the grade-S organizations only had two minor dao-level powerhouses in each team. When it was close to nine in the morning, the rest of the exploration teams finally arrived one after the other. As expected, none of the five grade-SSS organizations from the Southern 61 Zone were absent. The five grade-SSS organizations had a total of ten heavenly dao-level powerhouses. Among them, the most powerful one was a bald man. He was a powerhouse at heavenly dao-level rank-9. His ability could be considered to be outstanding in the entire universe. Among those ten people, the weakest one was at heavenly dao-level rank-5. Including the five grade-SSS organizations, there were a total of 71 exploration teams. There were 18 grade-SS organizations, while the remaining were grade-S organizations. There were a total of 48 of them. This time, all of the explorers who participated were at dao-level. The total number came up to 2,210 people. This number was actually pretty low. However, compared to the exploration teams in the Eastern 23 Zone that Lin Huang had entered, their overall ability was at least onefold more powerful. At 9:20 am, the gray fog that was covering the mystic territory finally faded completely. The many organizations from the Southern 61 Zone did not stir up a commotion. Instead, they headed toward the mystic territory in an orderly manner. The first teams to enter were from the grade-SSS organizations, followed by the grade-SS organizations and, finally, the grade-S organizations last. When almost everyone had entered the mystic territory, Lin Huang disguised his aura and sneaked inside. His sneaky entry was also very successful. He sensed the teleportation activating, and soon found himself inside a brand new world. After taking a brief look around, he could not help but furrow his brow. "Is this the Abyss?" Although Lin Huang could clearly sense the aura of the Abyss in the few mystic territories he entered into, this one gave off the exact same feeling as the Abyss. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis after a moment of hesitation. However, he suppressed it to the strength of a limit heavenly dao-level powerhouse. He frowned even more after the scan. As he thought, all of the monsters on the entire level of this mystic territory were Abyssal creatures. Not only that, his Divine Telekinesis scanning could reach the borders of this level of the mystic territory. There seemed to be something more beyond the border, but it appeared to be blocked by something. He also found the entrance to the next level, from which he sensed more powerful auras. The structure of the entire mystic territory was exactly the same as the Abyss. It was like a miniature version of it. Lin Huang could not help but recall what White Brow had said onceMystic territories were just bubbles in Aza''s dreams. Even the Abyss was just a dream to Aza. He shook his head to get rid of the errant thoughts. Lin Huang headed straight to the entrance to the next level. Almost all of the monsters where he was currently at were at minor dao-level. It matched his disguised combat strength. Nevertheless, he did not plan to waste any time here. This was a heavenly dao-level mystic territory. The value of killing heavenly dao-level Abyssal monsters would be countless times higher than killing minor dao-level monsters. Initially, his goal of entering this mystic territory was to kill heavenly dao-level monsters. After all, a heavenly dao-level monster carcass was worth thousands of times more than major dao-level monsters, let alone minor dao-level monsters. Very soon, Lin Huang appeared at the entrance to the next level. He went straight in without hesitation. After passing through the entrance, he appeared at the level where major dao-level monsters were congregated. As he expected, the internal structure of the mystic territory was almost exactly the same as the real Abyss. It was just that it gave off the feeling that it was many times smaller. Lin Huang did not stay on the major dao-level level either. He found the entrance to the next level quickly and stepped into it again. After passing through the entrance of the Abyss, he appeared within the new level directly. On this level, the sky had almost dimmed completely. Not only was there no moon, there were not even stars. There was an eerie, faint red glow on the clouds in the sky. The entire world was dark-red. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis again. Of course, he was very careful. When he spread out his Divine Telekinesis, he used his Soul Weapon to superimpose a layer of shielding. After the scan, Lin Huang''s expression suddenly changed. The reason being was that he found out that there was a small area that his Divine Telekinesis could not penetrate. This was not a shield technique to prevent someone from probing. It was an area of close to a hundred kilometers, in which his Divine Telekinesis seemed to be devoured by something as soon as it entered its vicinity. The feeling was like a black hole devouring light. Lin Huang instantly had his guard up when he sensed that strange feeling. Initially, he thought this mystic territory would not contain anything that could threaten him. However, it seemed that he had been too naive. This mysterious area was very dangerous. Driven by curiosity, he tried probing with his Divine Telekinesis again a few times. After figuring out the perimeter of the area roughly, he decisively chose to give up. His instinct told him that he might die if he entered that area! Chapter 1805 - Rank-7—Omniscience After entering the level in the mystic territory, Lin Huang very soon locked onto his first hunting target with Divine Telekinesis. The distribution of Abyssal monsters on this level was unusually sparse. There would basically only be one monster every one million kilometers or so. Therefore, Lin Huang was not picky about his target. He straightforwardly chose the one that was closest to him. It was a heavenly dao-level Abyssal monster with tentacles, which looked similar to a jellyfish. Its body was semi transparent and it floated 10,000 meters in the sky. Its length was around some 30 meters, but its tentacles could stretch out hundreds of kilometers away. The tens of tentacles had countless tiny colorless thread-like tentacles growing out of them as well. They spread throughout the entire sky, covering a radius of hundreds of kilometers. It was like an invisible, giant web set up in the sky, capturing all of the living creatures that trespassed into that area. It hid its aura extremely well. Were it not for the fact that the strength of Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis surpassed it, he might really have overlooked its existence. Though its aura was hidden, he guessed that this jellyfish monster should have combat strength at heavenly dao-level rank-8. It had surpassed most of the heavenly dao-level explorers from the Southern 61 Zone. Given that those thread-like tentacles contained Abyssal energy that would contaminate its targets, if any explorers accidentally invaded its territory, there was a high chance that they would die. To others, it was undoubtedly a dangerous predator. However, Lin Huang was smirking to himself. "I should be able to sell a heavenly dao-level rank-8 monster at a good price" As soon as he was done speaking, he appeared outside the web that the jellyfish monster had set up almost instantly. The semi-transparent monster noticed Lin Huang immediately. It seemed to have an excellent sense of danger. It instinctively sensed a great threat coming from Lin Huang and, almost without hesitation, it recalled its thread-like tentacles directly and tore through space with a tentacle in an attempt to escape. Lin Huang could not help but feel stunned when he saw this. "This guy is running away just like that?" Nevertheless, a couple of God Weapon flying daggers shot forth from his sleeves the next moment. Without waiting for the jellyfish monster to enter the spatial rift, the blood-colored electric arcs penetrated its body. In this attack, Lin Huang used ten million Dao seals. However, with the critical hit effect superimposed from the Critical Hit Hammer, the jellyfish monster did not possess the strength to resist it at all. A large amount of Odyl attacked it, draining it of all the Odyl in its body instantly. It caused the monster, which only required one particle in its body to regenerate itself, to lose its ability to do so. Lin Huang killed it right away. "I think you can train this guy. Do you want to consolidate a complete Monster Card?" Xiao Hei''s notification suddenly popped out before his eyes. It was the first time Xiao Hei had taken the initiative to consolidate a Monster Card. Lin Huang merely thought about it for a moment before nodding in agreement. "Sure." A moment later, Xiao Hei''s notification came again. "Congratulations, host. You''ve obtained a complete Monster Card, Abyssal King Jellyfish (Omniscience) x1" At the same time, a black-bordered card was consolidated in front of Lin Huang. "Omniscience?!" He raised his brows. The level above Pure Spirit rank-6 was Omniscience rank-7. Lin Huang had seen that in some of the documents in the universe. However, it was rare to find an Omniscience monster. According to the recordings, an Omniscience monster would be at least minor dao-level when they were born. There were many that were born at major dao-level. There were even a small number of them born at heavenly dao-level. It was as if they had done a great job in their past lives in order to be reincarnated as omniscience monsters right away. Therefore, the level was called Omniscience. Not only that, an Omniscience monster, no matter if they were born at minor dao-level or major dao-level, would elevate to heavenly dao-level when they grew to adulthood. The Kingdoms in their bodies would become full automatically, and the Heavenly Dao would be consolidated. Lin Huang looked at the card''s information as soon as he obtained the Monster Card. "Monster Card: Not named yet" "Rarity: Omniscience" "Monster Name: Abyssal King Jellyfish" "Type of Monster: Abyssal Jellyfish (Pure Blood)" "Combat Level: Heavenly Dao-level Rank-8" "Major: God''s soul, Divine Telekinesis" "Major Skills: Power of A King, Divine Puppetry, Illusory Dream" "Minor Skills: Death Telepathy, Cell Immortality" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this!" "Power of A King, Divine Puppetry, Death Telepathy" Lin Huang was a little envious when he saw those few skills. Power of A King was an innate deterrence ability that very few monsters possessed. It was similar to Dragon Power, but more powerful. Power of A King was like a sword cultivator and saber cultivator''s sword force and saber force. They could be superimposed on attacks. Divine Puppetry was a puppet control-type secret skill. This skill of the Abyssal King Jellyfish could basically suppress all entities that possessed a weaker God''s soul than itself. In reality, Lin Huang had obtained a similar ability from Bloody and Grimace. However, the Abyssal King Jellyfish''s puppetry ability was undoubtedly even more powerful. Meanwhile, Illusory Dream was an illusion-type toxin ability. The Abyssal King Jellyfish''s skill was performed using the threads on its tentacles, which contained the Illusory Dream toxin. As soon as one was touched by the threads on its tentacles, they would fall into an illusion completely and not be able to get out of it. The longer they were tied up by the threads on the tentacles, the deeper the level of toxin''s contamination, resulting in them being drawn even deeper into the illusion. Therefore, it was almost impossible for any living thing to escape once they were captured by the giant web it set up. Among all of the skills, the one Lin Huang cared about the most was the minor skill Death Telepathy. This skill not only warned its user of danger, but could even predict the scene of them dying beforehand. However, this would only happen under the premise that the entity that would cause the death was within their sensing range. This was the reason why Lin Huang could kill this Abyssal King Jellyfish, because he was only sensed by the monster the second before he attacked. It would have run away earlier if it had sensed his existence beforehand. "No wonder that guy ran away immediately." Lin Huang finally understood why the monster did not fight at all and chose to run away like that after reading the detailed description of the skill. It was because it saw the scene of itself being killed and knew that there was no way it could turn the tables on the situation at all. Among all of the skills that the Abyssal King Jellyfish possessed, Lin Huang undoubtedly desired this skill the most. With this skill in hand, he could definitely avoid many unknown risks. Although his current level of ability was very powerful, he did not think that he was truly invincible yet. There were so many dominator-level powerhouses outside the universe. Any one of them might be able to kill him easily. Fortunately, since Xiao Hei''s authorization had been completely released, Lin Huang inherited all of the abilities of his imperial monsters. As long as he wanted, he could use any of their skills. He tapped open his personal skill slot and soon saw the skills possessed by the Abyssal King Jellyfish. They were included in his personal skill slot now, including the Death Telepathy that he desired most. He was pretty satisfied to have obtained the Abyssal King Jellyfish''s Monster Card this time. Chapter 1806 - Are You Going To Speak? After putting away the carcass, Lin Huang said to Xiao Hei directly, "If we encounter Omniscience monsters or monsters of even higher grade later, convert all of them into Monster Cards directly." "Do you want the Pseudo-Omniscience ones as well?" Xiao Hei asked immediately. Lin Huang hesitated for a second before shaking his head. "Forget the Pseudo-Omniscience ones. I''m sure there are many monsters on this level that are at Pseudo-Omniscience. I''m staying here for a month. By then, I probably would have killed hundreds of them. How would I even have enough resources to train them Also, Pseudo-Omniscience is only half a rank higher than Pure Spirit. I''d rather spend the resources on Bai and the rest." In reality, there was a split-second moment when he thought that he would just build a heavenly dao-level army directly. After all, the monsters on this level of the mystic territory, no matter whether they were Pseudo-Omniscience or Pure Spirit, had combat strength that was at heavenly dao-level. He could use them directly when they were consolidated into Monster Cards. However, after thinking it through, if he really did that, Bai and the rest that he had trained might be put aside completely. After all, the value of those heavenly dao-level monsters would definitely be higher if he gave them the resources, but he had trained Bai and the rest. Not only that, they were his buddies who had accompanied him throughout his journey. Therefore, without hesitation, Lin Huang got rid of the thought of training Pseudo-Omniscience monsters. Compared to training new heavenly dao-level monsters, he would rather use the resources on his old buddies. In the meantime, he would not reject legitimate Omniscience monsters. After all, monsters of that level were considered to be at the top in the universe. He could use them directly. Even if he was in the infinite universe, they would still be considered to have relatively good combat strength. Looking at the new Monster Card in his palm, Lin Huang fell silent momentarily before crushing it directly to summon it. The jellyfish monster consolidated in front of him. The jellyfish monster which had become his imperial monster obediently hid its aura before him. Lin Huang took a good look at it and only spoke after thinking to himself for a moment. "You look a little like a cloud. I''ll call you Bloop then." The Abyssal King Jellyfish had no gender. The name Bloop was more feminine, but quite suitable for it. The jellyfish monster seemed to be very happy when it heard its name. It kept nodding and even released a sound that sounded like "bloop" repeatedly. Lin Huang pointed between its brows after giving it a name. "These are some inheritances on Divine Telekinesis and God''s soul cultivation that I sorted out before. Take a look at them when you have the time. There are many things that you might not be able to use directly, but you can learn them first. Especially the psychic cultivation method Seamless, study it properly. It will have many benefits in elevating your level of ability." When one had reached Lin Huang''s level, one could understand the cultivation method''s theory simply by taking a glance at it. To Lin Huang, the splitting of telekinetic threads in Seamless was actually something basic. However, the idea behind this method was amazing and could be used continuously. Bloop specialized in Divine Telekinesis and God''s soul. Learning the cultivation method would definitely provide it with many benefits. Bloop was stunned at first when it received the inheritances. It then began to look at them. Lin Huang returned it back to its card form directly before waiting for it to finish reading. It could continue to study while in card form. Lin Huang''s Divine Telekinesis very soon locked onto the second target. He then went ahead. The reason why he did not get Bloop to join the battle was because, to him, hunting solo was more efficient. He needed less than a second to end a battle. However, if he got Bloop to fight, it might take hours to finish. Moreover, he was only planning to stay for a month inside this mystic territory. To him, time was a precious resource throughout this one month. Lin Huang''s second target was an Abyssal Saberfiend. This Abyssal Saberfiend was already at heavenly dao-level rank-9. Its overall level of ability was even more powerful than Bloop, plus it had powerful close combat ability. When Lin Huang encountered it, he could not help but put away his God Weapon flying daggers and used his battle sword instead. To be honest, when he saw this human-form monster, he had a fleeting eagerness to make it his. However, considering that it was only at Pseudo-Omniscience, he gave up that thought decisively. Later on, he killed the third, fourth monster As he hunted more monsters, he realized that Pseudo-Omniscience monsters comprised over 90% of this level of the mystic territory. Less than 10% of them were at Pure Spirit, and their combat strength was lower than heavenly dao-level rank-3. Meanwhile, there were even fewer legitimate Omniscience monsters. Throughout the day, Lin Huang killed over a hundred heavenly dao-level monsters on this level. Bloop was the only one that was at Omniscience. As Lin Huang was busy hunting in the mystic territory, it had become chaotic back in the Eastern Eight Zone. Zhao Xuan from Royal had been staying inside Xuan Palace. Not only did he refuse to see anyone, he rejected all calls. On the internet, many rumors were being circulated about the incident of Royal being attacked. There were many discussions, but Royal did not come out to clarify any of the information. Some said that Zhao Xuan had been attacked and injured severely, and that he was dying. Some said Zhao Xuan was already a half-step dominator-level powerhouse from the beginning. The reason why Dongxuan City was alright was because he killed the ambushers from the Black Abyss on his own. Some said that the reason Dongxuan City was secure was because a half-step dominator-level powerhouse secretly stepped in. The half-step dominator-level powerhouse was living in Dongxuan City in seclusion. There was a lot of news, and nobody knew which news was real or fake. There were 20 to 30 versions of each rumor on the internet on the topic of Zhao Xuan staying inside Xuan Palace. Meanwhile, Zhao Xuan had not stepped outside Xuan Palace for a few days since the attack. Deep within Xuan Palace, an exotic treasure tied two people on two stone pillars. They were the two ambushers from the Black Abyss previously. However, at the moment, their combat strength had deteriorated to the threshold of major dao-level, and was still falling gradually. It would only take a few days for their combat strength to drop to minor dao-level. The two of them were stripped naked. It was extremely humiliating. There were burn marks all over their bodies. There was almost no flesh that had not been burnt. "Infinite''s Mountain Master Zang Kong, and one of Deep Space''s founders Elder Wu Ning. I can''t believe that the two of you are the Black Abyss'' spies. What I can''t believe even more is that you guys ended up in my hands." Zhao Xuan squinted. "I specialize in light and fire. I''ve mastered over 300,000 types of Dao seals in these two elements. I''ve only used less than 1,000 types throughout these three days. Spill the information you don''t want to experience more pain." "Just kill us right now if you dare!" Wu Ning, who looked ugly, shrieked with all of his might. "It''s simple if you want to die. I''ll give you a quick death as soon as you spill what you know," Zhao Xuan said while his finger closed in on Wu Ning''s forehead. He smiled. The blue flame on the tip of his finger seemed unstable. Even if the flame only touched him a little bit, Wu Ning could feel an unusual amount of burning pain coming from his God''s soul. "I''ll make you guys suffer more than the day before if you don''t spill the information." Zhao Xuan pressed his finger on Wu Ning''s forehead as soon as he was done speaking. Sizzling noises came from the spot where the blue flame touched Wu Ning''s skin. At the same time, Wu Ning shrieked in devastation while his body trembled intensely. However, Zhao Xuan removed his finger despite the burn having only lasted a moment. The reason being was that he sensed that the Odyl in Wu Ning had been drained again. His God''s soul would collapse directly if such a torture continued. At that moment, Wu Ning had lost consciousness. He was drooling, and he even lost control of his bowels. There was urine and feces all over the ground. Nevertheless, Zhao Xuan seemed to have gotten used to the situation. He turned his head to look at the androgynous Zang Kong, who was also tied on a stone pillar while smiling. "Are you going to speak?" Chapter 1807 - Take Care Of My Loot In a star zone that was not a heavenly dao-level projection in the Eastern Eight Zone, a man in a silver mask sat on a couch in a luxurious hotel. In the living room across him were video projections of a few people in masks sitting upright. "Is there news from Royal?" Silver-face asked in a deep voice. "No, I don''t know what that Zhao Xuan is doing. He has been staying inside Xuan Palace these days. Not only is he rejecting any visitors, he has blocked all calls. Nobody can contact him at all." The man in an inexperienced youth''s mask was clearly a little impatient judging from his tone. "Can we confirm which pieces of information on the internet are true?" Silver-face glanced at the people present and asked. "We can''t. We''re guessing that there is a lot of information that Zhao Xuan got people to spread on the internet as a distraction, and the authenticity of the information online is questionable," the man in the inexperienced youth''s mask answered. "I think that there is a high chance of that one piece of news about a half-step dominator-level powerhouse being true." At that moment, a man wearing a mask with a child''s face suddenly spoke, "Perhaps only a half-step dominator-level powerhouse would be able to capture the two of them alive." Child-face spoke and suddenly turned his head to look at the man in a golden robe and white mask next to him. The remaining people also looked at him. "I only know that Royal definitely doesn''t have any half-step dominator-level ancestors guarding them." The white-mask continued, "As for whether Zhao Xuan is hiding his ability, I''m not too sure about it either." "You''ve been working with him for so many years. Didn''t you sense anything wrong?" Child-face continued asking. "The three of us took care of different things. We''d basically only contact each other through video calls when something happened. We would only meet in-person if we encountered something that required us to gather and work together. It''s been close to 10,000 years since we''ve seen each other," white-face explained, "Therefore, it''s possible that he had secretly elevated to rank-9 and past that to dominator-level." "Now the problem is, regardless of whether it was Zhao Xuan or someone else, the person who attacked Zang Kong and Wu Ning is most probably a half-step dominator-level powerhouse. Also, this person might still be in Dongxuan City." "Zhao Xuan isn''t showing himself on purpose, and the fact that he''s not clarifying any rumors proves that he wants the news to continue developing. Even if our spies have been rooted out entirely, it''s impossible that we wouldn''t be able to find any news on the internet. He knows that and is waiting for us to rescue them. This is an overt plot!" "It also proves that he has someone or something powerful backing him up!" The man in an inexperienced youth''s mask said with certainty. The man in the silver mask fell silent momentarily. "Since that''s the case, I''ll go with you guys. If there''s really a half-step dominator-level powerhouse guarding Dongxuan City, I''ll buy you guys some time. However, it''s impossible for me to fight that person. I can only stall him for you guys for ten minutes at most. If the commotion is too great, we might attract the guardian." "Ten minutes is enough. All of the heavenly dao-level powerhouses of the organizations in the Eastern Eight Zone are under our watch. None of them have headed to Dongxuan City. Apart from Zhao Xuan, there are no other heavenly dao-level powerhouses in Royal." "If Zhao Xuan is at half-step dominator-level, as long as Lord Blackguard can stall him, we can enter right away and locate Zang Kong and Wu Ning. If Zhao Xuan isn''t at half-step dominator-level, as long as Lord Blackguard can stall that half-step Dominator, we only need one to two people at most to keep Zhao Xuan busy. The rest won''t need much time to locate the two of them. As long as Zhao Xuan is hiding them in Dongxuan City, we''ll find their exact coordinates simply by scanning with Divine Telekinesis after entering Dongxuan City." White-face sounded sure. "What if Zhao Xuan hides the two of them in his Kingdom?" Child-face asked in a teasing tone. "Then we''ll kill him!" White-face gave that answer without hesitation at all. "You''re such a cruel man." Child-face''s teasing tone was even heavier now. "Alright, stop the nonsense. To be safe, apart from me, at least three people among us should participate in the mission this time." Silver-face glanced at the people present. "Count me in." Child-face was the first to respond. "I haven''t been to Royal''s headquarters yet." Swollen-face glanced at the remaining people before speaking, "Count me in too." Child-face turned to look at white-face as soon as he heard that, "Didn''t you say you would kill Zhao Xuan just now? What? You can''t bear to do so now?" White face merely glanced at child-face before nodding. "I''ll go too." "Three people should be enough. I''ll stay here and continue monitoring the organizations'' movements. I''ll inform you guys if there''s anything," the man in an inexperienced youth''s mask said. "Alright then." Silver-face nodded lightly. "The three of you will gather at my hotel and we''ll head to Dongxuan City together. We''ll rescue the two of them today." After the discussion ended, silver-face turned off the communication device and waited for the three of them to arrive patiently. Deep in Xuan Palace in Dongxuan City, devastating shrieks echoed throughout the entire palace. Zhao Xuan''s punishments were getting more and more cruel, tormenting Zang Kong and Wu Ning to the extent that they wanted nothing more than to die. However, they did not reveal anything useful. Zhao Xuan frowned deeply. He was getting pissed these past few days. The reason being was that he realized that this was not because his interrogation techniques were not cruel enough, but rather because Zang Kong and Wu Ning believed in that Aza from the Black Abyss too much. In reality, the two''s combat strength had dropped to minor dao-level. They could not handle his heavenly dao-level techniques. They had collapsed from his torture from the beginning, and they had revealed everything personal about themselves. However, Zhao Xuan could not get them to reveal anything about the Black Abyss at all. Now he regretted a little bit that he had tortured them until they had collapsed. Zhao Xuan flung his sleeves in disgust when he looked at the two of them who would shiver and even pee their pants from a mere glare of his. He slowly walked over to his throne. "Maybe I should get a psychic to fix their heads before interrogating them again?" Just as Zhao Xuan was thinking what to do next, he suddenly raised his brows and lifted his head to look into the sky. "So they''ve finally come after holding back for so many days?" Almost at the same time, a figure quickly consolidated inside Xuan Palace. However, that figure exuded no aura at all. If he did not appear within Zhao Xuan''s field of vision directly, he might not have sensed his arrival. Feeling shocked, he cupped his hands immediately. "Senior." The person who came was Lin Huang''s mirror clone. He was dressed just like how Lin Huang was earlier. He was wearing a white robe and a golden mask on his face. Apart from not being able to use the Goldfingers in Lin Huang''s body, the mirror clone was almost identical to him. He even replicated his God Weapons. After all, God Weapons were a part of Lin Huang''s body. Moreover, he had exactly the same Kingdom and number of Dao seals that Lin Huang had mastered. Naturally, Zhao Xuan could not tell the difference. The mirror clone nodded slightly at him, and then said casually, "There are four people here. One half-step Dominator, and three people who have a similar level of ability as you." Zhao Xuan''s expression changed slightly when he heard that. He had been confident because he knew that Lin Huang would come. Never had he thought that the Black Abyss would send a half-step dominator-level powerhouse as well. "Then should we hide for now?" Zhao Xuan hesitated for a second before asking. "No need." Lin Huang''s clone glanced at Zhao Xuan. Naturally, he knew what he was thinking at the moment.. He said in a calm tone, "Just take care of my two spoils." Chapter 1808 - Not Even One Minute Almost at the same time Lin Huang''s clone was done speaking, four figures appeared in Xuan Palace''s courtyard fearlessly. "Seems like only Zhao Xuan''s aura is present." White-face stared at the closed palace doors and said softly, "And he''s at heavenly dao-level rank-6." Child-face and swollen-face seemed to have also sensed the same thing from their probing. Silver-face was the only one who sounded serious. "No, there''s one more guy that you guys failed to sense" Before he was even done speaking, the palace doors suddenly opened. The moment the doors were opened, countless blood-colored electric arcs shot forth frantically like water gushing from a broken dam. The three heavenly dao-level powerhouses did not manage to see what those blood-colored electric arcs were at all, but they sensed the terrifying power within them. Any one of those blood-colored electric arcs could kill the three of them instantly. They would not be able to defend themselves, much less escape. In addition, from just a glance, they could see that there were hundreds of millions of electric arcs. Fortunately, all of the blood-colored electric arcs ignored the three of them and attacked the man in the silver mask. They felt relieved. The half-step Dominator from the Black Abyss looked rather terrible under the silver mask. Perhaps the person was not bothered with the three of them but, because the person did not kill those three heavenly dao-level powerhouses by his side, all of the pressure was on him. He could sense clearly that the power contained within each of those flying daggers was no weaker than his entire full force attack; there were hundreds of millions of such flying daggers. If he were to fight head on, the Odyl in his body would definitely be drained instantly. As he tried his best to dodge, he was waving his saber around to defend himself against the flying dagger attacks that he could not dodge. However, Lin Huang''s flying daggers were controlled by Divine Telekinesis. Under his control, the flying daggers could change their attack trajectories as he wished. Within ten seconds, there were tens of wounds on silver-face''s body. Although they were just surface wounds, they drained him of a massive amount of his Odyl. Silver-face quickly realized that it would only be a matter of time before he would die from being drained if this went on. He merely hesitated for a second before causing his Kingdom to descend directly. A Dominator''s Kingdom was collided and integrated from the ten full worlds in a heavenly dao-level powerhouse''s body. In reality, a half-step Dominator''s Kingdom was somewhat similar. It was just that a half-step Dominator''s Kingdom was a Kingdom whose integration had failed. From a certain perspective, it could be considered as a broken Dominator''s Kingdom that possessed an incomplete internal structure. Whether one was comparing the strength, size or the authority of the Kingdom, it was far from a legitimate dominator-level Kingdom. Therefore, a half-step Dominator would usually be unwilling to have their Kingdom descend. Silver-face did so as his last resort. After all, he had promised the three of them that he would stall the opponent for ten minutes. Inside the palace, Lin Huang raised his brows lightly under the mask when he saw silver-face''s Kingdom descend and cover the entire Dongxuan City. That was it?! From his scanning with Divine Telekinesis, he sensed clearly that the strength of the man''s Kingdom was less than one-tenth of his. After his Kingdom descended, silver-face clearly looked more confident now. The reason being was that there were endless saber gleams hidden in his Kingdom. The ink-black saber gleams collided with those blood-colored electric arcs accurately. The initial pervasive flying dagger attack had been completely suppressed now. It was to the point that there were more saber gleams charging into the palace, targeting Lin Huang. Lin Huang smirked mockingly. The next second, his Kingdom descended too. Not only that, it began to expand continuously. The moment Lin Huang''s Kingdom descended, silver-face sensed something wrong. He had a drastic change of expression under his mask. Naturally, he clearly sensed that Lin Huang''s Kingdom was much more powerful than his own. There was a moment he suspected the man to be a legitimate Dominator. However, that thought was dismissed instantly. The reason being was that the strength of his flying dagger attack had displayed his real ability. If he was at dominator-level, it was completely unnecessary for him to trick him like that. Perhaps his Kingdom was powerful because the degree of integration within his Kingdom was higher. Jealousy flashed through his mind. ''So what if the degree of integration is higher? Aren''t you being defeated now?!'' However, that thought soon faded as soon as Lin Huang''s Kingdom started expanding at a high speed. "This can''t go on. My Kingdom will collapse!" Silver-face instantly understood Lin Huang''s intentions. At that moment, Lin Huang''s mocking voice traveled into silver-face''s ears clearly. "How much of your combat strength do you think you will retain when your Kingdom is destroyed?" Silver-face''s expressions were constantly changing under the mask. He merely hesitated for a second before recalling his Kingdom quickly. At the same time, he said to Lin Huang through voice transmission, "I don''t want to make you an enemy. I only want to take back the two people that you''ve captured." "They''re my spoils. Also, do you really think that I''d release the tigers back into the mountain?" Lin Huang scoffed. "Their level of ability isn''t a threat to you at all." Silver-face continued to attempt to communicate with Lin Huang. He knew that he could not fight him. "They''re not a threat now, but what if they''re lucky and elevate to dominator-level in the future?" Although Lin Huang said that, he was secretly thinking that it made complete sense that they were no longer a threat. They had lost their Kingdoms. They would have to start from true god-level if they were to cultivate again. However, these people from the Black Abyss clearly did not know that he had crippled the two captives. If they knew, they would definitely have regretted their trip here. The reason being was that the two people who had lost their Kingdoms were not worth saving at all. "How can it be so easy to elevate to dominator-level? You''re just like me. We''re both at half-step dominator-level. You should know how difficult it is to get here. The two of them don''t have the necessary talent and potential." Silver-face still wanted to argue his case. "If that won''t work, name your price. We can pay a ransom." He was just saying on the surface, as he secretly thought that such an arrangement would only be temporary. After they saved their men, they would get more people when they returned to headquarters. It would only be a matter of time before Lin Huang had to return everything he took from them. "Alright, stop your nonsense. I won''t release them." Naturally, Lin Huang knew what kind of trick he was trying to pull. It was impossible that people from the Black Abyss would place themselves at a disadvantage. It was always temporary when they surrendered. They were begging now, and they would take revenge later. Moreover, he had taken the two''s Kingdoms. He could not give them back even if he wanted to. "Not only will I not release them, but I think you guys should stay too." Lin Huang attacked suddenly, The God Weapon flying daggers shot forth from his sleeves frantically again. The flying daggers'' attack was tens of times faster, and the power of the attack was increased by tens of times as well. The reason for this was because he superimposed one million Dao seals from his Kingdom in this attack. The attack pierced through silver-face''s chest. It drained all of the Odyl in his body instantly. Lin Huang even avoided piercing his vital parts in this attack. To prevent him from only pretending to have his Odyl drained, Lin Huang pierced other flying daggers in the non-vital parts of his body continuously. After doing that tens of times, silver-face lost his strength and passed out directly. Lin Huang used a Divine Telekinesis thread to pick up the body and dragged him into Xuan Palace directly. The three heavenly dao-level powerhouses from the Black Abyss were dumbstruck when they saw that. Initially, they thought they would head into Xuan Palace to save their men while silver-face stalled Lin Huang. Never had they imagined that silver-face, who had promised to stall Lin Huang for ten minutes, could not even hold on for a minute before being captured alive. Chapter 1809 - I Can Get You Anything You Want The three of them looked at each other. They definitely could not escape even if they tried. The powerhouse who had captured silver-mask still had his Kingdom here, which covered the entire Dongxuan City. If they fought back, they would definitely be seeking death. Even the half-step Dominator who came from the headquarters could not hold on for even one minute and had been captured alive. Even if the three of them were to work together, they probably would not be able to escape the conclusion of being killed instantly. Just as they were wondering what to do, a voice suddenly echoed from the depths of Xuan Palace, "I almost forgot about the three of you." As soon as they heard that voice, they felt a thread crawling up their ankles. It tied them up within the blink of an eye. They knew that it was futile to struggle. Not only that, they could not even get out given their level of ability. They could only watch themselves being dragged into the Xuan Palace. The three heavenly dao-level powerhouses from the Black Abyss had not expected before coming here that this would be the way in which they would enter Xuan Palace. After being dragged deep into the palace, they finally saw the attacker''s appearance. It was a man in a white robe who had a golden mask on his face. If they had not seen this person with their own eyes, they would not have noticed that there was a person standing there at all. That frightened them even more. Very soon, they noticed that silver-face was currently being tied up by five chains on his limbs and neck. His body was floating in front of that white-robed man. He looked like he was performing a backstroke. Lin Huang merely glanced at the three of them before turning his attention once again to the unconscious silver-face. He pressed his hand to silver-face''s forehead and inserted his terrifying Divine Telekinesis into his head. It transformed into large hands and began to pull his Kingdom out of his body. Although silver-face had fainted, his consciousness was awakened instantly from the impact of what Lin Huang was doing. As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw the masked Lin Huang attempting to remove his Kingdom. He immediately struggled frantically. However, it was futile no matter how much he struggled. The Divine Power and Odyl in his body had been drained completely, and even his God''s soul energy was close to exhaustion. Given the fact that the chains Lin Huang had tied him down with were made using God Weapon flying daggers, he probably would not have been able to get out even at his peak condition, let alone now. He soon realized his fate. He began to attempt to persuade Lin Huang after calming down a little bit. "Um Senior, I can get you many Kingdoms if you want. If you let me go, I can get you three Kingdoms at least No, I can get you five half-step dominator-level Kingdoms. "If you take my Kingdom now, it''s no different from killing the chicken to get the eggs. Moreover, the Black Abyss headquarters will target you for revenge" "If people from the Black Abyss'' headquarters dare to come, I''ll capture them alive as well. I''d like to see exactly how many half-step Dominators there are in the Black Abyss." Lin Huang was not affected at all by the man''s words as he continued to pull his Kingdom out. "That''s not what I meant. I know that your ability is outstanding, senior. You''re definitely stronger than other half-step Dominators" Silver-face became a little angry seeing that Lin Huang was not convinced. He was also a little panicky. "What do you want exactly? As long as you''re willing to let me go, I can definitely get you anything you want!" Lin Huang slowed down after hearing that. He said to silver-face, "I want all of the names of the Black Abyss spies in the Eastern Eight Zone. I want the coordinates of the Black Abyss'' branch in the Eastern Eight Zone, as well as the headquarters. As long as you can tell me that information, I''ll let you go." "Um" Silver-face looked troubled instantly. Naturally, he could not spill those things. In reality, he did not plan to fulfill his previous promise either. He had only said those words to be released. "Didn''t you say that you could get me anything you want?" Lin Huang was clearly mocking him. "You can''t even fulfill my small request?" "I really can''t do that" Silver-face rejected Lin Huang decisively. As one of the Black Abyss'' founders, he knew the consequences of betraying the Black Abyss very well. "Oh, really?" Lin Huang stared at silver-face for a moment, and then turned his head to speak to Zhao Xuan, who had almost zero sense of presence, "Show the two of them to him." Without any hesitation, Zhao Xuan released Zang Kong and Wu Ning out of his Kingdom. They were naked and in a daze while drooling. Their auras had deteriorated to minor dao-level. They hid immediately when they saw Zhao Xuan. They squatted behind the stone pillars in the palace and shook in terror. Silver-face was stunned at first when he saw them, after which he then felt a chill run through his entire body. He screamed at the three people in rage, "Didn''t you guys confirm the conditions of the captives at all before asking headquarters to save them?!" He was furious. He could not believe that he was put in this situation for these two pieces of trash. The three people clearly had fear in their eyes when they looked at Lin Huang now. They thought that it was Lin Huang who made Zang Kong and Wu Ning like that. Lin Huang glanced at the three of them before speaking, "As long as you guys are willing to tell me about the Black Abyss, you won''t end up like these two." "I only have a quota for one person. It''s a rare chance. I can give you guys three minutes to think about it." Lin Huang had his eyes on silver-face in front of him after he said that. "It''s not too late for you to change your mind. You''ll lose the opportunity entirely after I remove your Kingdom completely. You should know that the three of them will definitely spill even if you won''t." "Also, you''ve seen the state of the two. You don''t want to be like them, do you?" When Lin Huang spoke to this point, Zhao Xuan cooperatively lit up the flame on his fingertip and turned his head to look at the two hiding behind the stone pillars. They peed directly While they peed, they ran toward the other stone pillars that were further away on all fours. Silver face gulped and only spoke helplessly, "It''s not that I don''t want to tell you, we signed a contract in the name of Aza when we joined the Black Abyss. If we revealed their secrets, our God''s soul would be contaminated with Abyssal energy entirely, while the contract would wipe our consciousness, turning us into an Abyssal monster." Lin Huang squinted slightly. As he was determining the authenticity of the man''s statement, he soon recalled White Brow''s act of revealing much information about the Black Abyss back then. "You''re lying! From what I know, White Brow from the Longevity Tribe revealed plenty of information about the Black Abyss. I found out about the existence of the Black Abyss in the Eastern Eight Zone from him." At that moment, white-face who was tied up not far away spoke up, "White Brow was just a reserve member. He didn''t need to sign the Abyssal contract. Even if he revealed anything, he only knew very little. He didn''t even know where our branch coordinates in the Eastern Eight Zone were. Only official members have to sign the Abyssal contract. We only have seven official members in the Eastern Eight Zone. We all have heavenly dao-level combat strength" "Nangong Tian?!" Before white-face was done speaking, he was interrupted by Zhao Xuan, who had been standing at the side. Zhao Xuan discovered the man''s identity from his voice. He dashed forward in a flash and removed his mask. Lin Huang recognized the face under the mask as well. He was one of the three Sovereigns from Royal who had been reportedly attacked earlierSovereign Tian! Chapter 1810 - I’ll Give You Three Seconds Nangong Tian was one of Royal''s earliest founders. He had only been at minor dao-level when he participated in the founding of Royal. Among the three founders, he was the only one who managed to elevate to heavenly dao-level, becoming the person who possessed the highest seniority in Royal. He was even the one who promoted Sovereign Xuan, Zhao Xuan, to his position. Since Zhao Xuan was promoted to be one of the three Sovereigns, they had taken charge of two different places and hardly saw each other. Despite that, he was utterly familiar with Nangong Tian''s voice. He recognized Nangong Tian''s voice as soon as he spoke. Initially, he thought that Nangong Tian had been killed during the Black Abyss'' attack. Never had he imagined that this guy betrayed the very Royal that he founded and became a member of the Black Abyss. Clearly, Tian Capital being attacked was merely a facade that he erected. He pretended to be killed during the attack and removed himself from Royal. Having his mask removed by Zhao Xuan, the expression on Nangong Tian''s face was clearly uncomfortable. He chose to escape because the Black Abyss had absolute confidence in killing the other two Royal''s Sovereigns. He seized the opportunity to fake his death, so it would be impossible for his identity as a spy to be exposed. He never imagined that a variable, Lin Huang, would appear and save Zhao Xuan. Not only was he alive, but he had even captured the Black Abyss'' two heavenly dao-level members, resulting in the current situation. At that moment, he regretted participating in this mission. Initially, he had been quite unwilling to come. After all, he would have to face his old friend. However, as child-face had instigated conflict, to show his loyalty, he bit the bullet and came along. Even if he was recognized, it would have been difficult for Zhao Xuan to escape death, so it was nearly impossible for his identity to be exposed. He had never thought that things would develop to this state. He spoke out because he knew that it was only a matter of time before his identity would be exposed. The white-robed man or Zhao Xuan would remove their masks sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before their identities would be exposed. He spoke in order to seek a lifeline. After all, he and Zhao Xuan were old friends. He could even be considered half his teacher. Their relationship might be a key factor for his survival. Zhao Xuan was shaking from rage when he saw Nangong Tian''s face under the mask. "Nangong Tian, how can you face Royal?! How can you face the tens of millions of Royal members?! You founded Royal with your own two hands. Are you trying to destroy it yourself now?!" Nangong Tian allowed Zhao Xuan to finish, before speaking slowly, "Royal would still be Royal without the three Sovereigns, only weaker." "Really?! Have you ever thought how many people will leave without heavenly dao-level powerhouses acting as Royal''s guardians, and how much of our territory will remain? Or even how many of the ancillary worlds and resources of all sorts will remain?!" Zhao Xuan continued asking. "My identity might be exposed any time. I just wanted to fake my death and escape, I didn''t think too much about it." Nangong Tian looked away. Clearly, he knew about those consequences, but he did not care for them at all. "Didn''t think too much about it?! What gives you the right to trick me and Li Yang? You don''t mind killing the two of us just to escape?!" Zhao Xuan was red with rage. "I''m sorry, I didn''t have any other options" Nangong Tian did not fight back, he only apologized. He lowered his stance now not because he was really repenting, but purely to ask for sympathy. "You didn''t have any other options?! You could''ve chosen not to join the Black Abyss from the beginning. Then none of this would have had to happen!" Zhao Xuan continued to roar. "If I didn''t join the Black Abyss, I might not have been able to break through to heavenly dao-level for the rest of my life. I might not even achieve half-step dominator-level!" Nangong Tian looked at his old friend in front of him. "I know my own talent and potential. I knew that I was at a dead end." "Do you know the feeling of someone opening a brand new door to you? A door suddenly appeared on the wall of a dead end. After opening that door, you could go forward. Not only will you arrive at the place you desired, you could even go further." "The Black Abyss showed me that door. They gave me the power to surpass the limits of my own talent and potential, breaking through heavenly dao-level and stepping into dominator-level I saw a better future!" Zhao Xuan had no idea how to respond to what Nangong Tian said at that moment. He stood where he was, stunned. At that moment, Lin Huang finally spoke. "You guys are just pathetic. You gave up the most precious things just for an illusory hope that might not even come true. You betrayed your family, people you love, your friends just to hold onto that illusion." "Even if the illusion does come true, is it worth it?! Even if you went beyond heavenly dao-level and stepped into dominator-level, so what? Could you surpass the limits of your talent and potential and go further?" "Don''t worry, I guarantee that that won''t happen. There''ll be a cap to breaking the limits of your talent and potential. Sooner or later, you''ll arrive at your limits again, and meet the same dead end. Not only that, at that point, nobody will open the door for you." "That Aza that you guys worship can''t do that either. The reason for that is because He isn''t infinitely powerful. He''s only at dominator-level rank-4 or rank-5 at most. Also, He has reached his limit." "No, an ant like you doesn''t understand how powerful Aza is." Nangong Tian shook his head immediately to retort. "There''s no entity that''s infinitely powerful. As long as they exist, there must be a limit. The Aza you guys worship is no exception." Lin Huang was very determined when he said those words. However, his words were meaningless to the few people from Black Abyss. Any living beings whose God''s soul had been branded by Aza''s clone were His slaves and fanatics by nature. They would not listen to the "heresies" of the outside world. "Please come to your senses, Nangong Tian." Zhao Xuan could not bear to see Nangong Tian turn into one of Lin Huang''s spoils. "If you''re willing to remove yourself from the Black Abyss today and swear to cut ties with them and all of their members, I can try and beg senior for mercy to spare your life." "Stop wasting your time." However, Lin Huang shook his head. "If I''m not mistaken, the Abyssal contract they signed is Aza''s God''s soul brand. Unless one''s God''s soul is more powerful than Aza''s, nobody can remove that brand at all." "Even if he left the Black Abyss on the surface, his God''s soul would still worship Aza. Also, there are actually ways to remove the contract." As expected, Nangong Tian looked a little uncomfortable when Lin Huang said that. Although he concealed that instantly, Lin Huang and Zhao Xuan sensed that. Indeed, he planned to give his promise to save his life first. About the contract, although it would work on ordinary people, just like what Lin Huang said, he had ways to remove the contract. Nangong Tian''s heart sank instantly when Lin Huang exposed his secret. Although Lin Huang had been distracted as he spoke, he did not stop retrieving the Kingdom at all. Soon, he had almost retrieved silver-face''s Kingdom entirely. "I''ll give you three seconds to tell me about the Black Abyss. You don''t have to be straightforward about it, you can speak indirectly. After all, you''re only betraying the Black Abyss, not Aza." Lin Huang grabbed onto the corner of silver-face''s Kingdom between his brows. He could pull it out entirely just by exerting some force. "Three!" "I" "Two!" "The outcome would be the same no matter how I choose to reveal it" "One!" "I really can''t" "Time''s up!" Lin Huang exerted force without mercy.. With his Divine Telekinesis, the man''s Kingdom was pulled out completely by force. Chapter 1811 - This Guy Is Too Scary! The aura of silver-face''s combat strength was falling. He looked at his Kingdom that had been removed, which was now in Lin Huang''s hand, in a daze. He really did not expect Lin Huang to actually do it. He thought that he was just trying to scare him. Instead, he had really removed his Kingdom. Sensing his combat strength plummeting at speed visible to the naked eye, and that his half-step dominator-level combat strength was dropping below the threshold, he found it all hard to believe at first, after which he quickly fell into a maddened state. "I''ll kill you!!! I''ll kill you" He shrieked in rage. He wanted to attack Lin Huang. However, he forgot that he had been drained of all of the Odyl in his body. Not only that, his limbs and neck were tied. He could not move at all. "You weren''t my match even at your peak, let alone now." Lin Huang mocked him directly, "After I retrieved your Kingdom, you''re just a piece of trash now. Heavenly dao-level aside, it''d be a problem for you to even maintain major dao-level combat strength in the future." Lin Huang suddenly paused as he spoke up to this point. He then leaned in and said softly into silver-face''s ear, "I have a way to give you a certain opportunity to kill me. I wonder if you''ll dare to try it or not" At that moment, silver-face finally stopped shrieking. Instead, he stared at Lin Huang, seemingly wanting to confirm his intentions. "You can tell me the Black Abyss'' secret and activate Aza''s brand to transform yourself into an Abyssal monster. Perhaps that''s your only chance to kill me." Lin Huang sounded like he was telling a secret as he spoke softly. However, he did not use voice transmission to speak at all. Everyone present heard his words loud and clear. "However, you must decide as soon as possible. The reason being is that, the longer you delay, the more your combat strength would drop. If you drop to heavenly dao-level, even if you become an Abyssal monster, it''s impossible for you to be my opponent." "You have to know that this might be the only chance you can take revenge on me." Lin Huang even used thousands of enchantment-type Dao seals to activate his Odyl. Nangong Tian and the other two felt a chill run across their backs when they heard his words. This white-robed man was a devil. Retrieving silver-face''s Kingdom aside, he even tried to persuade him to take the initiative to trigger Aza''s brand. Under the mask, silver-face had a complicated expression on his face. On one hand, he knew that Lin Huang was definitely persuading him on purpose. On the other hand, he knew that no matter whether he triggered the brand or not, he would die. It was impossible for Lin Huang to let him live. If he did not trigger it, he would be humiliated and then killed. He would have his consciousness wiped out by Abyssal energy if he triggered the brand. It would take over his body, turning him into an Abyssal monster completely. However, there was a possibility that he could kill this man before him this way. Seeing that his combat strength was about to drop to heavenly dao-level, silver-face made up his mind eventually. "If you want to obtain information about the Black Abyss from me, keep dreaming!" As soon as he was done speaking, pitch-black Abyssal energy spread from between his brows frantically. It contaminated half of his face within the blink of an eye. Even the silver mask on his face was devoured, and half of his contaminated face began to deform. However, his consciousness had yet to be wiped out completely at the moment. He laughed hysterically as he stared at Lin Huang. "I can still trigger the brand without telling you information about the Black Abyss. Hahaha" At that moment, Lin Huang finally saw that person''s face. His laugh merely lasted for a second before stopping abruptly. The reason being was that the remaining half of his face began to transform quickly as well. After that, the transformation spread downward. His aura that had dropped due to the loss of his Kingdom began to increase significantly. It even surpassed his strength at his peak after a while. Even Lin Huang raised his brows as he watched this scene unfold. He noticed that there seemed to be a Kingdom consolidated in his body again. The Kingdom that had appeared out of nowhere was even more powerful than silver-face''s original Kingdom. Not only that, it released an endless amount of Abyssal aura. Within three seconds, silver-face had transformed into an Abyssal monster completely. He had completely lost the Protoss'' aura he had before. It was a human-form fiend. He was seven to eight meters tall. His body was dark-purple, and there was a black mist that lingered all over him. His aura was at least three times more powerful than silver-face''s was at his peak. Suddenly, the eight eyes on the fiend''s forehead opened. Each of them seemed to have lava flowing inside. The eight dark-red eyes stared at Lin Huang instantly. They turned bright red almost at the same time. "I''m going to kill you!" A shriek came out of the fiend''s mouth. It seemed that silver-face''s lingering obsession was affecting this monster''s mind. However, the fiend could not do as he said after that shriek. The reason being was that he realized that his limbs and neck were still tied up. When Lin Huang saw his transformation, he did not remove the imprisonment. Not only did he not remove it, he even secretly integrated more God Weapon flying daggers and superimposed them with several times the amount of Dao seals to reinforce the imprisonment. As expected, the reinforcement worked. The fiend struggled intensely, but he could not get out of the chains that were made of God Weapon flying daggers. "Never would I have imagined that you would have a new Kingdom consolidated in your body after you turned into a monster from the Abyssal energy" Lin Huang''s eyes under the mask stared intensely at the fiend before him. When Nangong Tian and the rest saw silver-face turn into an Abyssal monster, their hearts skipped a beat. They were staring at the changes happening to silver-face''s body. They thought that if this fiend fought with the white-robed man, they could seize their opportunity amidst the chaos to escape. However, they then saw this fiend, whose aura was clearly a couple more times more powerful than silver-face, fail to struggle out of the chains. At that moment, they heard the obvious joy in the white-robed man''s tone. They instantly guessed what would happen next. As they were thinking to themselves, a couple of blood-colored electric arcs penetrated the fiend''s chest the next second. The Odyl in the fiend''s body drained immediately. After that, the white-robed man pointed between the fiend''s brows. Very soon, a Kingdom covered with black mist and exuding a terrifying aura was pulled out of the fiend''s brows by the white-robed man. "The Kingdom is real!" Lin Huang stared at the Kingdom covered in black mist. His face under the mask was filled with shock. Initially, he thought that the newly-consolidated Kingdom in silver-face''s body was just an illusion. After all, the consolidation process lasted less than three seconds. Never would he have imagined that it was a legitimate Kingdom. It was no different from a Kingdom that a person cultivated. Lin Huang was secretly a little fearful of Aza now. If that person could reconsolidate a Kingdom within seconds, then his level of ability was indeed quite unbelievable. "That''s not right. This Kingdom bears no similarities to silver-face''s original Kingdom. It''s impossible that this is a reconstruction of his old Kingdom" Lin Huang squinted and soon realized what was wrong. "This feels more like an occupation" "This Kingdom should be that fiend''s. Before he appeared, he used his Kingdom to occupy silver-face''s body, giving a false impression that his Kingdom had been reconstructed" What Lin Huang had no idea about was that, when he removed the Kingdom out of the fiend''s body, the fear Nangong Tian and the rest had for Lin Huang was now engraved deeply in their hearts. "This guy is too scary. He turned into an Abyssal monster, yet he still couldn''t escape the fate of having his Kingdom taken away!" Chapter 1812 - Betray The Black Abyss Obtaining the second Kingdom was undoubtedly a surprise to Lin Huang. The second Kingdom was even a few times more powerful than silver-face''s first Kingdom. He could almost imagine how much his ability would increase after refining these two Kingdoms. Before Lin Huang managed to put away the Kingdom he retrieved from the fiend''s body, he saw the fiend''s vitality fading away. His body was melting rapidly, almost as if it had been subjected to high temperatures. Within three seconds, his entire body melted into a pile of mush. "What happened?!" Lin Huang was shocked to see the sudden scene. He thought that he would be able to sell the carcass of Abyssal Fiend for a high price. Never had he imagined that a perfectly fine body would be gone just like that. "He has gone back to Aza." Nangong Tian, who was not far away, explained. "What do you mean?" Lin Huang asked with his eyebrows raised. "As soon as the brand is triggered, we become one of Aza''s belongings. He''ll send a consciousness to take over our bodies. Our consciousness will be wiped out instantly, and that consciousness will transform our physical bodies, God''s souls and Kingdoms according to its own preferences." "If the transformed Abyssal monster dies or encounters a crisis that it can''t handle, the consciousness would give up its occupation of the body directly and return to Aza." "Just like your act of taking His Kingdom. He knew that there would be no way to turn the tables on the situation, so He chose to give up on the new body without hesitation." "So it means this Aza that you guys worship is a person who bullies the weak and fears the strong," Lin Huang teased while smiling. "If I were you, I wouldn''t be in the mood to tease us right now," Nangong Tian continued, "Do you think that there won''t be any consequences for killing Aza''s consciousness clone?" Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. Indeed, he had not thought of the consequences. He only thought about the fact that he had gained one more Kingdom. "The return of the consciousness clone would send its memories back to Aza as well. In other words, Aza will find out everything, including your fight with the consciousness clone just now, the entire process of you taking the consciousness clone''s Kingdom, as well as all the other details," Nangong Tian explained. "So what?" Lin Huang asked while raising his brows. "So aren''t you afraid that He''ll take revenge?" Nangong Tian was slightly confused regarding Lin Huang''s reaction. "I''ve already done it, so what''s there to be afraid of? Just let Him come if He wants revenge. He''s in hibernation anyway. It''s impossible for His Primordium to come." Although Lin Huang said that, he felt a sense of crisis internally. After all, this was a powerhouse who was at dominator-level rank-4 or rank-5 at least. He could destroy the universe with a flip of his hand. There was nothing that he could do if the Primordium really came to fight him. However, Nangong Tian had no idea what Lin Huang was thinking about. He only thought he was being really stubborn to be saying such things. "Since you''ve told me such a secret, why don''t you just betray the Black Abyss directly?" Lin Huang tried to persuade Nangong Tian while staring at him, "The one you worship is Aza, not the Black Abyss. There are hundreds of organizations that worship Aza like the Black Abyss in the infinite universe, if not thousands. You can build one yourself in the future and become the boss." "Also, the one that I''ve been in conflict with since the beginning isn''t Aza, but the Black Abyss. If you betray the Black Abyss, I''ll release you safely. You can just build another organization that worships Aza. Isn''t that a win-win situation for the both of us?" "This offer is not only for Nangong Tian. I think the two of you can consider my suggestion as well." Lin Huang looked at the other two men in masks as he spoke. "Whoever speaks first will walk out of the palace alive. Meanwhile, the remaining two people should already know what will happen to you." The three of them had to admit that what Lin Huang said was indeed persuasive. The people from the Black Abyss had absolute loyalty to Aza, but it did not mean that they had absolute loyalty to the Black Abyss. In the infinite universe, there were indeed many organizations that worshiped Aza. The Black Abyss was not the only one. If they left the Black Abyss, they could still join other organizations that worshiped Aza, or they could build a new one themselves. Not only that, they saw the consequences of keeping secrets. No matter whether it was Zang Kong and Wu Ning being humiliated, or silver-face having his Kingdom removed by force, they saw everything. "I''ll do it." As the two were still hesitating, Nangong Tian took the lead to speak first. Child-face and swollen-face lifted their heads almost at the same time to look at Nangong Tian. Nobody knew if their gazes contained envy, rage or something else entirely. However, Nangong Tian ignored their stares and continued to say to Lin Huang, "I''ll be upfront first. I can only tell things that won''t trigger the brand in my body. I can''t reveal the core information about the Black Abyss to you." "You must promise that I''ll leave this place in one piece after I provide you with the intel." Nangong Tian stared fixedly at Lin Huang, worried that he would reject the conditions he raised. He had even figured out what he should do to compromise if the white-robed man rejected him. Lin Huang laughed after hearing that. He did not give his word right away, but said to him, "How can I be sure of where the line is between what you don''t want to tell me and what you cannot tell me? If there are questions that you can answer but don''t want to, you could totally take me for a ride by saying that you can''t answer that as the brand would be triggered if you did." "Also, I can''t be sure of the authenticity of the answers you give. You can totally make up lies to the questions I ask, misleading us." "You have my promise regarding the first one. I''ll answer whatever I can, no matter whether I''m willing or not. For the second one, whatever I tell you will be the truth. If I hear a question that I can''t answer, I''ll tell you directly. I won''t make up lies to mislead you." "If you don''t believe me, I can take an oath." Nangong Tian had a strong will to live. "However, you have to take an oath too. As soon as I answer all of your questions, you have to release me immediately." "Sure, let''s take an oath!" Lin Huang agreed to his suggestion without hesitation. "Senior" Zhao Xuan wanted to stop him right away. As one of Royal''s three Sovereigns, he could not just release Nangong Tian. "I know what you want to say. Save it, I''ve made up my mind!" Lin Huang signaled to Zhao Xuan after he was done speaking. Zhao Xuan was stunned, but he instantly understood what Lin Huang meant. He merely gave Nangong Tian a meaningful glance and stopped talking. In reality, the moment Zhao Xuan spoke, Nangong Tian was secretly worried. Fortunately, the white-robed man was overbearing and did not let Zhao Xuan speak further at all. After the two of them took an oath quickly, Lin Huang finally began his questioning. Chapter 1813 - War Is Coming "Where''s the Black Abyss'' headquarters? Also, where''s the branch in the Eastern Eight Zone?" Lin Huang asked directly. These were the things he wanted to know the most. "I can''t tell you the exact location. I can only tell you that the headquarters is in the Western One Zone. Regarding the branch in the Eastern Eight Zone, I can tell you the rough location" "Nangong Tian" Child-face wanted to stop him. However, a blood-colored gleam shot forth from Lin Huang''s sleeve, piercing through his chest instantly. His aura faded away quickly. "If the two of you speak again, the punishment won''t be this light." Lin Huang glanced at the two men in masks before turning his attention back to Nangong Tian again. "Please continue." Child face sensed that the Odyl in his body had been completely drained. Lin Huang''s one attack had squeezed out all of the Odyl in his body. He was terrified and did not dare to speak again. As child-face had been made an example of, swollen-face who was standing to the side kept his mouth shut. Nangong Tian glanced at child-face before continuing, "The branch in the Eastern Eight Zone is in the Ancient Abyss Star Zone. However, I can''t reveal its specific location." "The Ancient Abyss Star Zone in the Ancient Abyss ruins?" Lin Huang asked while raising his brows. "That''s right." Nangong Tian nodded. "How many half-step Dominators does the Black Abyss have?" Lin Huang asked again. "Including the one here, there are three on the surface. I don''t know if there are actually more. I can''t reveal the three half-step Dominators'' identities and information." Lin Huang nodded and proceeded to ask, "How many official members are there in the branch in the Eastern Eight Zone? How many reserve members are there?" "There are seven official members and 178 reserve members. I can''t reveal the remaining two official members'' identities. However, I can give you the name list of the reserve members." Nangong Tian displayed absolute cooperation. "There are so few of you guys and yet you still managed to create such chaos within the Eastern Eight Zone. You guys made a fool of the grade-SSS organizations and their tens of millions of members like a toy. You guys are quite something." Naturally, Lin Huang was not exactly praising. He was just stating the obvious. Zhao Xuan, who was standing off to the side, looked gloomy. He seemed to be recalling what Royal had gone through. "How about other zones?" Lin Huang asked again. "I''m afraid I don''t know anything about the other zones. Each zone has their own rulers. Only the headquarters has the full name list. Each zone only has to take care of the matters within their own zone. At the moment, we haven''t had any interactions with the other zones," Nangong Tian explained. "In that case, which zones have branches, and roughly how many people are there? You should know that much, right?" Lin Hung asked again. "We don''t have too many branches. There are only some 30 branches in the universe, with less than 300 official members. Including reserve members, there are some 5,000 to 6,000 people." Lin Huang fell silent momentarily before asking a question regarding something that he was quite confused about, "You guys have stayed dormant for years, so why did you suddenly start attacking everyone frequently recently without caring about the consequences?" This time, it was Nangong Tian who fell into a moment of silence. He only spoke a while later, "Because Aza has entered His awakening period." Lin Huang had a doubtful expression on his face when he heard that. "Can you explain further?" Nangong Tian fell silent for a moment again. He only spoke again after seemingly choosing what he could reveal, "War is coming. The few battles happening across the universe are just the beginning. That''s all I can reveal." "Do you mean Aza will wage war once He wakes up?" Lin Huang continued to ask. Nangong Tian stared at Lin Huang quietly. He did not nod, nor did he shake his head. Lin Huang instantly realized that he could no longer reveal more. "Alright, let me rephrase my question. Why is the universe being chosen as the starting point of the war?" "Because the universe ranked at the top among all of the chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe that are under the coverage of the Abyss. It''s perfect as the Abyss'' barracks," Nangong Tian only answered after a moment of silence. Lin Huang came to a realization when he heard that. "So the Black Abyss'' mission is actually to weaken the universe''s vitality?!" Nangong Tian fell silent once again. He shut his mouth. However, Lin Huang already had his answer. The Abyss was relying on organizations that worshiped Aza, such as the Black Abyss, to weaken the locals'' resistance. In that case, the occupation later on would become significantly easier. "What would the Black Abyss obtain by betraying the universe like this?" Lin Huang asked. "After the Abyss takes over the universe, it will need someone to manage it," Nangong Tian continued speaking, "This includes the chaotic Kingdoms that were taken over, they also would need people to maintain them." After asking a couple of questions about the Black Abyss, Lin Huang finally could not hold back and asked about the Raiders. "Most of the Black Abyss members are from the Raiders. You guys should know where their headquarters is located, right?" "I know where the old headquarters is, but they no longer have one. Since the Black Abyss was exposed, the Raiders'' higher-ups quickly convened a meeting and decided to abandon their original headquarters. All of the communications that happened later on were done via video projections." "There''s nothing now?!" Lin Huang had not expected this. In reality, before the appearance of the Black Abyss, he had been treating the Raiders as his primary foe. He could never have guessed that his primary foe no longer even had a headquarters now. "You can say that." Nangong Tian nodded. "I can send you the coordinates of the Raiders'' previous branches and headquarters." Clearly, he did not hesitate to betray the Raiders at all. "What''s the highest combat strength they have at the moment?" Lin Huang asked again. "They should still have two half-step Dominators. Regarding their heavenly dao-level members, there should be around one hundred of them." Nangong Tian continued to betray the Raiders fearlessly. "Haven''t you guys thought about taking over the Raiders to strengthen your organization?" Lin Huang asked with a smile. "Someone suggested it, but it''s too difficult to make it happen," Nangong Tian explained. "What do the Raiders think of the Black Abyss? Are they enemies?" Lin Huang asked further. "Not entirely." Nangong Tian shook his head. "The Raiders have existed for far too long, resulting in more and more internal conflicts. There were many people who disagree with the philosophies that the Raiders have been implementing all this time. That''s the reason why the Black Abyss could develop within the Raiders." "There are only some old geezers who insist on sticking to the Raiders'' traditional philosophies who see the Black Abyss as an enemy. The rest aren''t exactly against the Black Abyss." Lin Huang nodded. He finally understood that there was really a internal division within the Raiders. Later on, he asked a couple more questions about the Raiders before turning his head to look at Zhao Xuan, who had been listening. "You can ask him any questions that you have too." Zhao Xuan lifted his head to look at Nangong Tian again. Nangong Tian was avoiding his gaze. Chapter 1814 - Paid Off "I only have one question." Zhao Xuan walked slowly over to Nangong Tian. He stood less than a meter away from him and asked while staring at him, "Who are Chu Yuan and I to you?" The Chu Yuan he mentioned was one of Royal''s three Sovereigns, Sovereign Yuan. "We''re friends," Nangong Tian spoke after a moment of hesitation. "Friends?!" Zhao Xuan scoffed when he heard that answer. "So to you, friends are to be betrayed?!" "Perhaps I''m more selfish." Nangong Tian looked sincere. "I''m sorry." "Do you know what you are to me?" Zhao Xuan asked while staring at Nangong Tian. Nangong Tian said nothing. "Before you showed up here today, you were my teacher, brother and good friend. You were the person that I admired most in my life The reason I could become one of Royal''s three Sovereigns was because I have always treated you as my role model and made you my life goal and inspiration." "I even wished that this white-robed senior saved you instead of me when I discovered that you were killed when the Black Abyss attacked. To me, you''re Royal''s rock and foundation. As long as you were around, Royal would definitely rise up once again." "Old Chu even joked with me previously that if there were spies from the Black Abyss in Royal, it would either be him or me, and that it was impossible for it to be you. I even told him that I agreed with what he said." "I truly never thought that you would appear here today. To be honest, I would have been happier if you died when the Black Abyss attacked. At least your status in my heart wouldn''t have changed. You''d still be my teacher, brother and good friend, as well as the person that I admire the most in my life" Nangong Tian remained silent. He understood how Zhao Xuan felt, but now that he actually heard Zhao Xuan saying it, he felt even more guilty. At this moment, he did not know how to respond. "I''m sorry" His apology this time sounded more sincere. Zhao Xuan did not even glance at him. He turned around directly and looked at Lin Huang. "I''m done with what I have to say." Lin Huang looked at child-face and swollen-face. "Is there anything that you two would like to add on to what Nangong Tian has said?" The two of them stayed silent as well. Clearly, they did not plan to betray the Black Abyss. "In that case" Before Lin Huang was done speaking, another blood-colored gleam shot forth from his sleeve. It penetrated swollen-face''s abdomen directly. Just like what happened to child-face, the Odyl in his body was completely drained. When his Odyl was drained, he sensed a strong force pulling him toward the white-robed man directly. Child-face flew along with him at the same time. Almost instantly, they arrived in front of the white-robed man. Their scalps felt numb when they saw him in front of them. They had witnessed what he did to silver-face with their very own eyes. Naturally, they knew what he was going to do to them very soon. However, their bodies were completely tied up by Divine Telekinesis threads. Given that the Odyl in their bodies had been drained, they had no strength to resist him at all. "I''ll give the two of you one final chance. Whoever reveals the Black Abyss'' secrets will have their Kingdom remain and live." Lin Huang''s tone was full of persuasiveness. "Though it has to be something that Nangong Tian hasn''t revealed." The two remained silent. It was not that they did not want to speak up, but Nangong Tian had told him everything there was. The remaining secrets were things that would trigger the brand directly if they were revealed. Lin Huang waited for a moment. Seeing that they did not speak up, he did not bother to waste more time. "Seems like you guys won''t do it." He lifted two fingers. Divine Telekinesis spread out and, from between their brows, soon caught hold of the Kingdoms in their bodies. He began to pull them out. Child-face and swollen-face had no strength to fight back at all in the presence of Lin Huang. They could only watch as he pulled their Kingdoms out. This time, Lin Huang slowed down the retrieval of their Kingdoms on purpose. It was something that would normally only require a couple of seconds, yet he dragged the process until it lasted for over a minute. On one hand, he was torturing them on purpose. After all, each second of this intensely torturous for the two. On the other hand, he was also giving them time to betray the Black Abyss. However, in the end, they did not provide any information about the Black Abyss by the time their Kingdoms had left their bodies completely. Child-face and swollen-face both looked devastated beneath their masks. It was not that they were stubborn and unwilling to reveal any information, but Nangong Tian had prohibited them from doing so by revealing everything so thoroughly. He did not leave any information behind for them. After Lin Huang obtained their Kingdoms, their auras began to plummet. Within the blink of an eye, they had dropped out of heavenly dao-level. Sensing their auras falling, Nangong Tian glanced at them from the corner of his eye expressionlessly. He was secretly rejoicing that he had made the right decision. He could almost imagine that having their Kingdoms removed was only the beginning. They would have to face the torment Zang Kong and Wu Ning went through next. Meanwhile, he would be the only Black Abyss member who would walk out of this palace alive. As he was secretly rejoicing, he suddenly realized that there was a figure before him. It was Zhao Xuan! "What are you doing, Zhao Xuan" Nangong Tian panicked a little. "The senior agreed to let me go in one piece." "I did in fact agree." Lin Huang nodded, but then continued, "However, I can''t do anything about whether he agrees or not." How could Nangong Tian not realize that he had been tricked when he saw a white flame rising in Zhao Xuan''s hand? "Senior, give me a chance to fight fairly at least?" His entire body was tied up with Divine Telekinesis threads right now. Even if his Odyl was at his peak, he could not move his limbs at all. Not to mention fighting back, it was hard for him to even dodge. He had completely target practice for Zhao Xuan. Naturally, Lin Huang ignored Nangong Tian''s request. In terms of combat strength, Nangong Tian was already at heavenly dao-level rank-9. He was three ranks higher than Zhao Xuan. In terms of overall ability, if they were to fight, Zhao Xuan only had a 30% chance of winning. Naturally, it was impossible that Lin Huang would let them fight fairly. Zhao Xuan did not plan to give him a chance at all. His aura skyrocketed. "Stop struggling and I''ll give you a quick death." "Zhao Xuan, for the sake of our friendship, let me go." Knowing that it was useless to beg Lin Huang, Nangong Tian changed the target of his approach. "Did you think about our friendship when you led people from the Black Abyss to kill Old Chu and me?! Since I''m still alive, I must avenge Old Chu!" As soon as Zhao Xuan was done speaking, he slammed the white flame in his palm on Nangong Tian''s chest. Nangong Tian wanted to dodge the attack, but it was futile. Although Lin Huang did not completely immobilize his body, as he was tied up by the Divine Telekinesis threads, he could only exert strength on the tips of his toes. His speed was restricted significantly. Zhao Xuan''s attack targeted the middle of his chest. Nangong Tian could only activate the Odyl in his body to defend it without using any strength. However, Zhao Xuan slammed a second and then a third time More slams came continuously, each harder than the last. As Nangong Tian defended against his attacks passively, the Odyl in his body was dwindling quickly. Within five minutes, his Odyl was drained completely. Nevertheless, Zhao Xuan had yet to stop. He slammed with his full force again. This time, Nangong Tian''s body was set ablaze by the white flame. Without the Odyl to fight fairly, he could only watch his body be enveloped by the white flame. In the end, he was burnt into ashes as he shrieked in rage. Zhao Xuan mumbled softly as he stared at the pile of ashes. "A life for a life.. You''ve paid off the debt you owed Old Chu." Chapter 1815 - Eradicate Although Nangong Tian''s corpse and Kingdom were gone, Lin Huang said nothing. It was him who authorized Zhao Xuan to attack Nangong Tian. He had no qualms about what Zhao Xuan did with Nangong Tian. "I''ll leave these two with you. See if you can get anything out of them." Lin Huang picked up child-face and swollen-face using Divine Telekinesis threads and tossed them in front of Zhao Xuan. At that moment, their aura had already fallen to heavenly dao-level rank-1. Given that they had lost the support of their Kingdoms, they would be able to last even one round in a fight against Zhao Xuan. Lin Huang did not even bother to remove the mask on their faces. After all, Zhao Xuan would inform him if he managed to get any information out of them. "Sure." Zhao Xuan bowed to Lin Huang. He was completely convinced by the white-robed man before him. This man was a supreme powerhouse who could even capture a half-step Dominator alive. "I''ve killed a half-step Dominator from the Black Abyss'' headquarters. I suppose they won''t just let this go. Their mission this time was targeted at Royal, and their headquarters are definitely aware of it. There''s a high chance that the Black Abyss might take revenge later. Given that my identity is unknown to them, they can only take revenge on Royal." Lin Huang paused slightly before continuing to say to Zhao Xuan, "My personal suggestion is that you should seize this opportunity to dissolve Royal. If you can''t bear to lose some old friends, build another organization when the chaos blows over. You can gather your old friends back together then." "Of course, it depends on whether you want to do that. I''m just giving you a suggestion to prevent you guys from suffering a calamity for nothing." "Senior, I have a different opinion regarding the Black Abyss'' response." Zhao Xuan fell silent momentarily before speaking again, "I think the possibility of them taking revenge for the loss of a half-step Dominator is low, at least for the time being." "Oh? Why do you say that?" Lin Huang raised his brows slightly. "Looking at the information Nangong Tian provided, the Black Abyss only has three half-step Dominators on the surface. Even if the real number exceeds that, there won''t be too many of them. Judging from the Black Abyss members'' temperaments, no matter how many half-step Dominators there are, I don''t think they''re that close with each other. They even betrayed their own brothers, so it''s impossible that they''d avenge their friends." "Secondly, the Black Abyss'' main mission is to set up outposts. They likely picked out a couple of zones, which means that the Eastern Eight Zone isn''t the only one. Theoretically, it''s not a 100% must-have territory. Moreover, since a half-step Dominator died in the Eastern Eight Zone, it proves that there''s at least one other half-step Dominator guarding it. To the remaining half-step Dominators in the Black Abyss, compared to other outposts, the Eastern Eight Zone has become much more dangerous. If I was the decision maker, instead of wasting time to chew on this tough bone, I''d rather give up on the Eastern Eight Zone and focus all of my forces on the other outposts." "Thirdly, even if the Eastern Eight Zone is a territory that they must occupy, and they cannot lose this outpost, the people from the Black Abyss won''t waste their time here within this short period of time. If I was the decision maker, I''d bypass the Eastern Eight Zone for now and attack all the other outposts first before focusing all of my forces on the most difficult Eastern Eight Zone. I wouldn''t plan to give up on the plans for the other outposts midway just to attack the Eastern Eight Zone." "Fourthly, the Black Abyss has stayed dormant for so many years and was only exposed when things developed to this point. This proves that their higher-ups are extremely cautious. Moreover, your identity is completely unknown to them. They definitely won''t attack the Eastern Eight Zone rashly before confirming your level of ability." "Fifthly, through this mission, Royal is definitely being watched by the Black Abyss'' headquarters. Me dissolving Royal now would make them think that we''re worried that their headquarters would send people over. On the other hand, if I maintain Royal''s operations as usual, it would make them think that I really have the ability to fight them, and that I''m not afraid of their remaining half-step Dominators coming to fight me." "The way things are, it''s better if I don''t dissolve Royal." Zhao Xuan made a rather thorough analysis on the situation. Even Lin Huang thought it made a lot of sense when he heard his explanation. He could not help but nod lightly. "Your analysis is great, but there are always "what ifs" in everything. What if silver-face has a good friend who is a half-step Dominator who wants to avenge him? What if the Eastern Eight Zone is the most important outpost that they have to conquer first? What if the Black Abyss has Space-time element cultivators who can restore the scene of the entire battle between me and silver face? What if they have people who have even more powerful abilities than I do?" "If that really happens, then we can only blame our bad luck." Zhao Xuan''s eyes remained determined despite hearing that. "However, I still trust my judgment." Lin Huang nodded lightly. "I trust your judgment too." "Don''t send out the name list of the Black Abyss'' reserve members Nangong Tian provided yet to prevent alerting the enemy. You should send it out only after we locate their branch in the Eastern Eight Zone and settle the remaining two official members. We''ll work with the other organizations to capture the reserve members. We must capture all of them!" Over the next few days, the chaos in the Eastern Eight Zone completely stopped. On that day itself, Lin Huang located the Black Abyss'' branch in the Eastern Eight Zone. After all, to him, the Ancient Abyss Star Zone was considered small. He found it easily after scanning the area with his Divine Telekinesis. Not only that, the two official members happened to be waiting for news inside the branch. Lin Huang conveniently captured both of them alive. After he retrieved their Kingdoms, he got Zhao Xuan to take care of them. Later on, Lin Huang followed the information Nangong Tian had provided and headed straight to the Raiders'' headquarters. Just like what Nangong Tian had said, the Raiders'' headquarters and their branch in the Eastern Eight Zone had been dissolved. He went to the two coordinates Nangong Tian had provided, but it was to no avail. After that, he secretly returned to the Feister Star Zone. Meanwhile, Zhao Xuan had been busy with maintaining order in Royal, as well as with interrogating the Black Abyss'' members. After he submitted the Black Abyss'' name list of reserve members, the remaining organizations began to surround and suppress the reserve members. Within a few days, the Black Abyss'' remaining forces in the Eastern Eight Zone were eradicated by the few organizations working together. Just like that, half a month passed by quickly. Just as Zhao Xuan had thought, the Black Abyss'' headquarters did not send any half-step Dominators to take revenge on Royal. The Black Abyss seemed to have even given up on the entire Eastern Eight Zone. The Black Abyss was only left with six official members in the Eastern Eight Zone. Under Zhao Xuan''s interrogation, they basically did not provide any information that was useful. Everything that they said had been revealed by Nangong Tian a few days ago. Lin Huang killed the six of them directly and put away their corpses in his storage space. Just when the Eastern Eight Zone was calming down, Lin Huang and the rest obtained some news of insurrections and infighting happening in a few other zones. Some grade-SSS organizations were attacked consecutively, while many heavenly dao-level powerhouses died. Clearly, the Black Abyss had been focusing on plotting against other outposts and had completely ignored the Eastern Eight Zone. At that moment, Lin Huang''s Primordium was busy hunting in the mystic territory.. He was unaware of the changes that were happening in the outside world. Chapter 1816 - New Imperial Monsters "Congratulations host! You''ve obtained a complete Monster Card, World-ending Spearfiend (Omniscience) x1" It had been sixteen days since Lin Huang started hunting inside the heavenly dao-level mystic territory in the Southern 61 Zone. Throughout that half a month or so, he killed over 1,800 monsters in this mystic territory. Apart from Bloop, which he hunted on the first day, he finally encountered another Omniscience monster today. It was a human-form monster. Its size was identical to humans. It was some two meters tall, and its entire body was covered in bronze armor. Its eyes were pitch-black, and contained no white at all. Its biggest difference compared to humans and Protoss was that it had a layer of semi-transparent black flame lingering on its body. The flame was real, and was a representation of Abyssal energy. It was the Hellish Flame from the deepest part of the Abyss. Even a heavenly dao-level powerhouse would not dare to take it lightly. Were it not for the fact that Lin Huang had Eternity Fire in his body, which made him virtually invulnerable to any contamination of all types of energies, he would have had to be cautious while fighting this World-ending Spearfiend. After turning this World-ending Spearfiend into a Monster Card, he checked the card''s information immediately. "Monster Card: Not named yet" "Rarity: Omniscience" "Monster Name: World-ending Spearfiend" "Type of Monster: Abyssal Fiend" "Combat Level: Heavenly Dao-level Rank-9" "Major: Spear Dao, Fire Element" "Major Skills: Mighty Killer Spear, Infinite Flame" "Minor Skills: Killing Intent, Reincarnation Vision, Hellish Flame" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this!" After reading the information on the card, additional information about the World-ending Spearfiend began to rush into Lin Huang''s head. This World-ending Spearfiend was a pure spear cultivator when it was alive. It had powerful abilities. Since reaching heavenly dao-level rank-9, it had been looking for ways to break through, but to no avail. Eventually, in order to break through to dominator-level, it took the initiative to step into the Abyss and was contaminated by Abyssal energy, transforming into a World-ending Spearfiend. However, despite becoming a fiend, it still did not break through. Its combat strength remained at the limit of heavenly dao-level rank-9. "I''m afraid this guy is probably the monster with the highest level of ability in this mystic territory," Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. With a heavenly dao-level rank-9 cultivation base and Omniscience rank-7, one could say that this World-ending Spearfiend had almost no match at heavenly dao-level. Not only that, when Lin Huang fought it, he could sense that the monster''s ability allowed it to fight against a half-step Dominator head-on. After crushing the card, he took a good look at the World-ending Spearfiend. The more he looked at it, the more satisfied he was. "I''ll call you Old Spear from now on!" "Sure!" Old Spear nodded in agreement expressionlessly. After putting it away, Lin Huang continued with his hunt. Time flew by. Soon, some ten days had passed. When there were only two days left in the one-month exploration period, Lin Huang finally encountered the third Omniscience monster. It was a shadow-type monster. Although its combat strength was only at heavenly dao-level rank-8, its abilities were rather strange. It could even summon hundreds of heavenly dao-level shadow troops. Each of them had abilities similar to heavenly dao-level monsters. Lin Huang even held back instead of killing it instantly. He forced it to reveal all sorts of strange abilities. The things this monster was capable of doing were strange. Its abilities were primarily related to shadows. It could summon shadow creatures, create shadow clones, perform shadow teleportation, and use an item it summoned to substitute itself, devouring the clones and dead items it summoned to create new ones. It could even attack Lin Huang''s shadow directly Apart from shadow-related abilities, Lin Huang also saw many Dark Element abilities. It could create a shield that was similar to a black hole, devouring most of the energy of an impact, reducing the damage dealt to less than 1% of the attack. After spending almost half an hour trying to understand this shadow monster''s abilities, Lin Huang finally killed it. If not for the fact that his abilities could suppress it, he really might have faced some difficulties in killing it. "Congratulations host! You''ve obtained a complete Monster Card, Shadow God (Omniscience) x1" He instantly checked the card''s information that was formed in his hand thoroughly. "Monster Card: Not named yet" "Rarity: Omniscience" "Monster Name: Shadow God" "Type of Monster: Shadow Fiend" "Combat Level: Heavenly Dao-level Rank-8" "Major: Shadow Dao, Dark Dao" "Major Skills: Shadow Creation, Shadow Summon, Shadow Engulf" "Minor Skills: Dark Shield" "Summon Authority: Activated" "Card Remarks: Please spare no efforts in cultivating this!" "Although it''s only at heavenly dao-level rank-8, this guy''s combination of abilities definitely ranks within the top three among the over 3,000 monsters that I''ve killed." Lin Huang had a high praise for the Shadow God. Compared to Bloop which he obtained on the first day, the two Monster Cards he obtained later on had powerful abilities. Lin Huang summoned Shadow God. It looked like a ball of black cloud with dark, black lights sparkling within it. "I''ll call you Shadow then." Lin Huang gave it a plain name after observing it. After recalling Shadow into card form, he finally began to look at his gains. Of the one-month exploration period, 28 days had passed. He had killed over 3,000 heavenly dao-level monsters. Among the 3,200 monsters or so, only three were at Omniscience rank-7. Xiao Hei had turned them into Monster Cards. They had become Bloop, Old Spear and Shadow under Lin Huang''s wing. Apart from obtaining three imperial monsters, the over 3,000 heavenly dao-level monster carcasses were considered a form of wealth to him. Although he did not retrieve their Kingdoms in order to increase his hunting efficiency, if he retrieved and refined the over 3,000 Kingdoms, he could imagine how much of an increase in ability they could have brought him. Apart from the Kingdoms, heavenly dao-level monster carcasses were valuable on their own. They could be traded for a batch of Kingdoms and resources as well. Lin Huang was over the moon as he thought about this, but he was a little worried. "I wonder how many of those Kingdoms I can refine" After getting rid of the messy thoughts plaguing his mind a while later, he checked the date. Only two days were left until the end of the one-month exploration period. He lowered his head and fell into deep thought for a little while. He then lifted his head and looked far away into the north. There was a strange area less than 10,000 kilometers in that direction from where he was standing. He had sensed the existence of that area as soon as he entered this level of the mystic territory. The reason being was that this area, which was less than 100 square kilometers in size, was a black hole in this mystic territory. It blocked all of the probing techniques he used, including Divine Telekinesis. Although his instincts told him that the area was extremely dangerous, his desire to explore the mysterious unknown was like a kitten constantly being teased. "I have two days left. Should I check it out" Chapter 1817 - Curiosity Killed The Cat Lin Huang stood by the cliff and looked at the bottomless Abyss before him. The Abyss was the blind spot that his Divine Telekinesis failed to probe previously. The mysterious area that devoured all sorts of probing techniques. Even though it was just right in front of him, he could not see anything despite maximizing his vision to peer into the depths. Apart from the stone wall ten meters beneath his feet, the area was shrouded in complete darkness after that. The darkness blocked everything, including all forms of probing. Regardless of whether it was Divine Telekinesis, vision or other probing techniques, none of them could probe the depths of the area at all. "This place is a little unusual," Lin Huang mumbled while holding his chin. He had tried all types of probing ocular skills earlier, and he had even superimposed them with Odyl, yet his vision was still obscured by the darkness. Facing this mysterious area, it was only natural that Lin Huang would not jump in rashly and put himself in danger. However, he was also quite unwilling to leave just like that as well. He struggled as he stood where he was. Suddenly, he recalled that he had just obtained Bloop''s ability, Death Telepathy. As the master, he could use all of the Monster Skills of his imperial monsters now. Naturally, this included Bloop''s Death Telepathy. As he thought of this, without hesitation, he activated Death Telepathy. The next second, the image before him changed suddenly. He felt as if he was in a virtual reality game. He sensed his physical body, God''s soul, Odyl, Kingdom, Divine Power, all of the Goldfingers in his body Everything seemed to be blocked. He was falling frantically as if he was being pulled down by an intangible force It was unknown how long he had been falling for, but the pulling sensation finally weakened and gradually disappeared completely. However, at the moment, he seemed to have been completely drowned within the darkness beneath the Abyss. Lin Huang realized that all of his sensing abilities no longer seemed to be working now. He could not see anything, hear anything, or smell anything. No matter whether it was the ground beneath his feet or anywhere that his fingers could touch, it was all nothingness. Apart from darkness, there seemed to be really nothing here. Suddenly, Lin Huang recalled that he had experienced something similar. It was the first time he entered a mystic territory. His consciousness was being pulled into the same darkness when he stood atop that altar. However, this seemed to be different. He could clearly hear someone breathing that time. It sounded as if it had penetrated layers of dimensions. It was somewhere extremely far away, but it invoked terror within him. However, there was no sound at all this time. The entire darkness was dead silent. Suddenly, a strange feeling of fear crept up from above Lin Huang''s head. It felt as if he was being watched by a terrifying entity. He wanted to use his Dao seals, but he realized that his body seemed to be completely sealed. It was not only Dao seals, he could not even use his Divine Power at all. Even his Divine Telekinesis was useless. He could not even summon his God Weapon flying daggers and battle swords. Sensing this, the insecurity that Lin Huang was feeling increased by several times. As he was worried and had no idea what to do, he suddenly saw a red glow light up far away in the darkness However, the second the red glow lit up, he instantly felt a strange change taking place within his body. To be exact, it was not only his physical body, even his God''s soul was going through a strange transformation. "Is this deformation?!" Although he could not see his physical body, he could observe the God''s soul in his body. He realized that his God''s soul had countless tentacles of various thickness and length growing out of it at speed visible to the naked eye. Before he could even react properly, he realized that his consciousness was turning blurry. There seemed to be a terrifying entity wiping away his consciousness and replacing it with a strange entity. Just when his consciousness was about to fade into nothingness, a cracking noise echoed in his ears suddenly. The next second, his consciousness returned to his body. He realized that he was still standing in front of the same cliff from before. "Run!" Xiao Hei and Eternity Fire issued a warning almost simultaneously! Without hesitation, Lin Huang activated the Gate of All Realms and went inside. After coming out of the Gate of All Realms, he had left the mystic territory. He was relieved when he saw the mystic territory floating in front of him in mid-air. At that moment, he saw that fog was surging throughout the entire mystic territory. Almost instantly, it covered the entire mystic territory. The fog even attempted to spread to where he was. Without hesitation, Lin Huang opened the Gate of All Realms again and went inside. This time, he was teleported back to the Eastern Eight Zone. However, he did not dare to return to Dongxuan City right away. He was completely relieved when he realized that the fog did not come after him after he returned to the Eastern Eight Zone. At that moment, Xiao Hei suddenly spoke. "What did you do? Why was the Substitute Card crushed on its own like that?" "Substitute Card?!" Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. He checked his cards immediately, after which he found out that he had really lost one Substitute Card. His back was drenched in cold sweat instantly. If not for the Substitute Card, he would have been dead by now. "I only used Death Telepathy to look at the Abyss, and that entity intervened in reality through the scene I was sensing?!" Lin Huang was scared now. He did not even clearly see what that red glow was at all and he had almost lost his life. Not only that, his actions seemed to have triggered the entire mystic territory. The mystic territory was covered in fog again, entering its sealed mode completely. This meant that the group of explorers from the Southern 61 Zone could not return now. Moreover, judging by the transformation of the mystic territory he triggered, the probability of those explorers surviving was low. Lin Huang was almost certain that he had encountered Aza. He seemed to have escaped last time because Aza was still sleeping, which was why he heard the breathing noises. This time, Aza seemed to have actively attacked him. Perhaps He did not attack consciously. However, a powerhouse like Aza could kill him with just a thought. Before Lin Huang had calmed down completely, a notice was sent from Eternity Fire. "I suddenly sensed an extremely high grade of Abyssal energy deep inside your body just now. Although it only surged for a brief moment, it surpassed the Odyl in your body by at least tenfold." What Eternity Fire said shocked Lin Huang once more. He instantly looked into his body and started observing. However, he did not sense anything unusual after checking three to five times over and over again. He asked, "Are you sure? I don''t sense anything unusual." "I''ve already absorbed all of the Abyssal energy." It was then that Eternity Fire explained the situation. At that moment, Lin Huang felt speechless. He instantly realized that the Substitute Card was not the only reason he survived. A big part of it was because Eternity Fire had absorbed the Abyssal energy. It was because those two took action together that he managed to survive. "Curiosity killed the cat! I''ll definitely go around such a terrible place if I run into one again!" Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. Chapter 1818 - Changing Situations In Plan City of the Eastern Eight Zone. After coming back from the mystic territory, Lin Huang did not return to Dongxuan City. Instead, he stayed in the Longevity Tribe''s territorial city. He was not exactly sure if he was completely out of danger, so he planned to stay here for a day to observe. It was only after checking into a hotel on a densely populated planet that he calmed down mentally and began to go through the gains he had obtained from this trip into the mystic territory. The first one was naturally the three Omniscience Monster Cards. Two of them were at heavenly dao-level rank-8 and one was at heavenly dao-level rank-9. The three monsters'' abilities were ranked among the top even in the universe. They could basically do whatever and go wherever they wanted as long as they did not encounter half-step Dominators. The second thing was the over 3,200 monster carcasses. They were heavenly dao-level powerhouses when they were alive. Each of them possessed complete Kingdoms in their bodies. Although they were Abyssal Kingdoms, which would contaminate others, since Lin Huang had Eternity Fire in his body, those Kingdoms were no different from ordinary Kingdoms. They could even provide more energy to Eternity Fire. Apart from Kingdoms, the value of the monster carcasses themselves was even higher. The Abyssal monsters'' Kingdoms were useless but, to many, their carcasses were outstanding materials. They could be dissected for research, or made into puppets and even clones Their price on the market was no lower than those of other heavenly dao-level powerhouses. After all, heavenly dao-level powerhouses'' bodies were considered rather rare resources even within the infinite universe. Lin Huang felt rather remorseful about his attempt to explore that Abyssal area after he calculated the value of these monster carcasses. If he did not cause the mystic territory to close in advance, he could have hunted for two more days and killed at least another 200 monsters in the mystic territory. It was possible that he would have even encountered one more Omniscience monster and thereby obtain one more imperial monster. However, since it had happened, he did not continue to dwell on it. After he calculated the spoils, he left the hotel and walked around all sorts of markets in Plan City. As cultivators did not need sleep, a couple of the markets were open all night. Just like that, Lin Huang shopped until the next morning. However, nothing interested him as he looked through all of the markets. He had breakfast early in the morning before eventually returning to the Feister Star Zone in Dongxuan City. He recalled his clone as soon as he returned to the Feister Star Zone. He quickly digested the memories the clone had gained throughout the period of close to one month. "I can''t believe so many things happened in the Eastern Eight Zone. I was only gone for less than a month!" Lin Huang was shocked after looking through all the information quickly. His first reaction was to wonder whether his clone had been hypnotized by some powerful entity and fed those fake memories. The mysterious Black Abyss had their entire branch in the Eastern Eight Zone destroyed. Not only were their seven official members killed, almost all of their reserve members had been hunted down by all organizations working together. One could say that the entire branch of the Black Abyss in the Eastern Eight Zone had been completely eradicated. Although the credit mainly belonged to his clone, he still thought that it was quite unbelievable. He instantly examined the details more thoroughly. "These people from the Black Abyss are so nice. They knew that I lacked Kingdoms and Goldfingers so they sent them to my doorstep," Lin Huang teasingly said with a chuckle after reading through everything. He left the two heavenly dao-level Black Abyss members alive as bait, so that he could attract more members. In the end, the Black Abyss really fell for it. Not only did they send over a half-step Dominator from their headquarters, they even got their entire branch in the Eastern Eight Zone destroyed. "However, this half-step Dominator from the Black Abyss wasn''t really powerful." Lin Huang pouted and commented after watching the entire battle carefully. He was getting happier by the second as he looked at the few Black Abyss members'' corpses. There were a total of seven corpses, one at half-step dominator-level and the remaining six at heavenly dao-level. There was a Kingdom that had been removed directly by his clone that had no corpse. It belonged to Nangong Tian. Compared to the gains he obtained from this trip into the mystic territory this time, naturally, these eight Kingdoms were nothing. However, the eight Black Abyss members had storage rings on them. The items in heavenly dao-level powerhouses'' storage rings would definitely be of high value. Apart from that, among the eight of them, four of them were travelers. His clone had removed the four Goldfingers as well. Lin Huang was undoubtedly satisfied with this round of gains. From the clone''s memories, he not only saw the Eastern Eight Zone''s current situation. Although the Black Abyss had given up on the Eastern Eight Zone temporarily, they did not slow down their operations at all as they attacked the other outposts. The Eastern 23 Zone, Southern 61 Zone, Western 119 Zone, Northern 39 Zone Throughout this one month, a total of nine zones were attacked consecutively. Moreover, the attacks were even more violent and scarier than the attacks the Eastern Eight Zone had faced. Almost all of the heavenly dao-level powerhouses in the grade-SSS organizations in nine zones had been attacked. Only a small number of them managed to escape. They were not killed, but they did not dare to show themselves again. Without heavenly dao-level powerhouses sustaining the nine zones, they were soon taken over by the Black Abyss, blocking the transfer of information to the outside world. Nobody knew what had happened since then. Among the zones happened to be the Southern 61 Zone that Lin Huang had just escaped from. He ran away too quickly, so he did not notice any changes to the zone at all. However, he knew that the Southern 61 Zone was probably the zone that offered the least resistance. The reason being was that most of the heavenly dao-level powerhouses from all their grade-SSS organizations had entered the heavenly dao-level mystic territory when it opened. There were only a small number of heavenly dao-level powerhouses left behind. Facing the Black Abyss'' attack, it was only natural that they did not have the power to resist at all. What was even more terrible for the Southern 61 Zone was that the heavenly dao-level powerhouses who had entered the mystic territory were currently stuck inside. Perhaps none of them would survive. Heavenly dao-level powerhouses aside, many major and minor dao-level powerhouses had participated in the mystic territory exploration this time. Perhaps the entire Southern 61 Zone was only left with less than one-fourth of their dao-level powerhouses. They did not have the power to resist the Black Abyss'' attack at all. Judging by the situation, the Southern 61 Zone was undoubtedly the zone that had fallen the fastest among the nine outposts. "The Northern 39 Zone was only attacked two days ago, and the transfer of information was only sealed today. It seems that it only took a few days for them to completely take over that zone." Lin Huang sorted out the information regarding the zones quietly. "I wonder if they''re planning to give up on the Eastern Eight Zone entirely or if they will continue to attack the Eastern Eight Zone to fight for this outpost" He did not think that the Eastern Eight Zone would remain totally safe in the future just because nothing had happened to it throughout this one month. Judging by the character of the Black Abyss'' members, although there was no friendship amongst their members, his clone had thrown them a wet blanket and killed their people. The possibility of them taking revenge was actually rather high. After all, they had already attacked the remaining nine outposts by now. Their higher-ups would definitely be discussing whether to gather their forces to attack the Eastern Eight Zone, which was the last outpost. Chapter 1819 - Breakthrough Coming from the Boost of Ability! After checking through all of the information from the clone''s memories, Lin Huang had a strong feeling that the threat in the Eastern Eight Zone had yet to be resolved completely as he had gained a rough understanding of the universe''s situation throughout this one month. He did not delay further. He crushed the Virtual Realm Cabin Card and summoned his virtual body. He then stepped into the virtual realm. He took out the heavenly dao-level monster carcasses as soon as he entered the virtual realm cabin. He began to retrieve their Kingdoms. As Lin Huang retrieved the Kingdoms of the 3,000 or so monster carcasses, he summoned Eternity Fire to cleanse their Abyssal Kingdoms. A couple of days passed in the virtual realm as he did this. He spent his time mostly on the cleansing of the Abyssal energy of these Kingdoms. He took out the bodies of the Black Abyss members'' after he handled all of the monster carcasses. He retrieved their Kingdoms within minutes. Without wasting any time, he entered closed-door cultivation officially to integrate the Kingdoms after he was done handling them. Judging by the strength of his current Kingdom, it would not take long for him to integrate these heavenly dao-level Kingdoms. He needed approximately an hour to integrate heavenly dao-level rank-1 Kingdoms, around two hours for heavenly dao-level rank-2 Kingdoms, and four hours for heavenly dao-level rank-3 Kingdoms. He needed five and a half days to integrate heavenly dao-level rank-8 Kingdoms. Meanwhile, he needed close to 11 days to completely integrate heavenly dao-level rank-9 Kingdoms. The one that he spent the most time on among the 3,000 Kingdoms or so was the Black Abyss'' half-step Dominator''s Kingdom. He spent some 120 days refining that Kingdom. As the Kingdoms were being refined, Lin Huang''s Kingdom was continuously growing more powerful. Even a heavenly dao-level rank-1 Kingdom would provide his Kingdom with at least two to three million Dao seals. ; As there were many lord-level and dao-level powerhouses who had contract bonds with the Kingdom in the heavenly dao-level powerhouses'' bodies, close to a million Dao seals were unsealed. For the heavenly dao-level rank-8 and heavenly dao-level rank-9 Kingdoms, they provided his Kingdom with over 20 million Dao seals. Close to ten million Dao seals were unsealed. Meanwhile, most of the monsters that Lin Huang had hunted in the mystic territory in the Southern 61 Zone were above heavenly dao-level rank-7. The total number of monsters below heavenly dao-level rank-7 was less than 20%. He only killed them conveniently along his travel route. After refining the Black Abyss'' half-step Dominator''s Kingdom, Lin Huang opened his eyes and released a long exhale of breath. He spent the most time integrating this Kingdom, but the gains were also the most plentiful. Refining just this Kingdom had unsealed 20 million Dao seals. Lin Huang calculated the time he spent roughly. Over 40 years had passed in the virtual realm during his closed-door cultivation session this time. He also sank his consciousness into his body to examine the final results of all that refinement. The refinement of over 3,200 Kingdoms had expanded his Kingdom at least one hundredfold. There was an increase of over 52 billion Dao seals in his body. The total number had skyrocketed to 55.8 billion. It was close to 18 times more than before. Meanwhile, the number of Dao seals unsealed in his body had increased by 18.3 billion. It had increased by close to 200 times! In the past, he thought there would be a limit to the strength of his Kingdom. However, it now seemed that this limit did not exist. He did not know how many of the over 18 billion Dao seals he unsealed could be consolidated into new Dao seals, and whether there would be a limit. Lin Huang did not hesitate at all as the thought only briefly flashed through his head. He crushed an Epiphany Card and began the second round of closed-door cultivationconsolidating Dao seals. Although he was familiar with the entire process of consolidating Dao seals, the speed at which he did so did not increase by much. It was a process of analysis, disintegration, reconstruction, and adding more god sequence chains for the reintegration. Many of the Dao seals that he obtained from integrating these Kingdoms were made of 10,000 to 20,000 god sequence chains. Meanwhile, each of Lin Huang''s personal Dao seals were a consolidation of a million god sequence chains. It was a hundredfold more powerful. It was only natural that the consolidation process was time-consuming. Each consolidation would require at least some ten days or so. There were many god sequence chains in some of the unusual Dao seals that Lin Huang had only seen for the first time. It made sense that he only managed to consolidate one of these in over a month. If Lin Huang was not in the virtual realm, he would need at least a billion years just to consolidate the close to 20 billion Dao seals. Fortunately, the flow of time in the outside world was almost at a standstill while he was inside the virtual realm. It was unknown how long he had been seated down for when he finally consolidated ten billion Dao seals in his body. ; However, he did not feel that he had reached a plateau at all. It seemed that he could consolidate the Dao seals without caring about a thing as long as they were unsealed. As such, he continued unsealing the remaining Dao seals. During this closed-door cultivation session, Lin Huang almost lost all sense of time. He could only feel that he was gradually getting stronger and stronger. After consolidating the over 18.3 billion Dao seals that were unsealed, he had personally consolidated over 18.4 billion Dao seals, which was over 180 times more than before. He could clearly feel that his current self could kill his old self by simply raising a finger. Meanwhile, his old self before the closed-door cultivation session might not be able to hurt the current him at all even if his old self used his trump card. Nevertheless, he was still quite doubtful. "Can I consider myself to have broken through to dominator-level? Or am I still at heavenly dao-level?" He could not figure out which level he was currently on at all. Even without integrating the chaotic cosmos, he felt that his current self should be strong enough to challenge a legitimate dominator-level powerhouse head-on. "Forget it. I''ll just leave first." Since he could not figure it out, he did not bother to think too much. He felt that he had stayed long enough in the virtual realm. He put the virtual realm cabin away and returned to the material realm directly. As soon as Lin Huang''s virtual body had returned, his Primordium instantly felt the terrifying reflection of what he had obtained from the closed-door cultivation session this time. Not only was his Kingdom being strengthened a hundredfold, he was personally strengthened countless times over. He went through three transformations from the consolidation of Dao seals alone. It happened when he successfully consolidated 100 million Dao seals, one billion Dao seals and ten billion Dao seals. These three transformations resulted in Lin Huang experiencing a qualitative change in the particles all over his body; not only the particles in his physical body, but the particles in his God''s soul as well. Although he did not integrate a chaotic cosmos to become a Dominator, he was very sure that his current physical body and God''s soul was no less powerful than a legitimate Dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse. He might be even more powerful. Just when Lin Huang was familiarizing himself with his increase in strength, he suddenly felt a sense probing him. Chapter 1820 Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation ???? ????????????? ???????? ??? ????? ?????? ??? ??? ?????? ??????????? ?????????? ?? ????? ??????? ??? ??????????? ????? ??? ??????? ?? ??????? ?????????? ? ???????? ???? ??????? ??? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ??? ???????? ????????????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ?? ??? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ?? ?????? ?????? ????????? ??? ???????? ??? ?????????????? ???? ??????????????? ???????????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ?? ?????? ?????????? ???? ???? ??????? ?? ??? ??? ???????? ??? ?? ???? ??????? ??????? ??? ???????????????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ????????? ???? ??? ???? ?????? ?????????? ?????? ???????????????????????? ???????????? ?????????? ? ??? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ???? ?? ??? ??????? ?????? ?? ???? ????? ??? ??? ???????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ??? ????????? ??? ????? ?? ????????? ?????????? ???? ???????? ??? ???? ??????? ???? ?? ? ?????????? ??????? ?? ??????? ?? ???????? ??? ????? ???? ???? ? ?????? ???????? ?????????? ?? ???? ????????????????????????? ???????????? ???????????? ?????? ??????????????????????????? ???????? ??? ???????????????????? ???????????? ????? ???? ???????? ??????? ? ?????? ????????? ???? ??????????????? ?? ?????? ?????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????? ?????? ??? ??????????? ??? ????????? ??????????? ???? ??? ??????? ?? ???????? ??? ????? ???????? ?????? ?????????? ?? ?????????? ???? ???????? ??? ????????? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ????????? ???? ??? ??????? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ??????????? ???????? ?? ???? ???? ?? ??? ??? ?? ???? ?? ??? ????? ?? ?????? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ???????? ???? ?????????????????????? ???? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??? ???????? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ????? ??????? ?? ??????????? ???? ??? ??????? ???????? ??? ?????? ???? ?????? ??????????? ?????? ??????? ??? ??????? ??? ???? ?? ?? ????? ??? ?? ??? ????????? ??????? ??? ???????????????????????? ??????? ? ??? ????????? ????????? ????????????? ????? ??????? ???????? ?????? ????? ??????????????????? ??????? 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?????? ?????????????????? ???????????? ??????? ??????????? ??????????? ????????????? ??????????? ????????? ?? ?????? ???? ??????? ?????? ????? ?? ????? ???????? ??? ????? ??? ??? ???? ???????? ???????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ??? ???????? ??? ????? ???? ?????? ??????? ??????? ?? ??? ????????? ??????????? ?????????? ?????????? ????????????? ??? ??? ?????????????????????? ????? ??????? ???????? ?????????? ???? ????? ??? ????????? ????????????? ?????????? ????????????????? ?????????? ???? ?????? ????????????????? ?? ???????? ??? ??????? ??? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ???? ??????? ???? ???? ??? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ????? ?? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ??????? ????? ???? ??? ??????? ?????? ?? ?? ????????????? ?????? ???????????? ???????????? ?????????????? ????????????????? ????? ???? ???? ????????????? ??? ?????????????????? ???????????????????? ??? ???? ????????? ????? ??????? ???? ?????? ?????? ?? ???? ?????? ??? ?????? ??????? ?????? ???? ?????? ???? ??????? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ??????????? ??? ?????? ???????? ???? ???? ????????? ?????????????? ??????????? ?? ???? ???????????????????? ???? ??? ????? ????? ???????????? ??? ???? ??? ??? ??? ???? ?? ??? ???????? ???????? ???? ???? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ???????? ???? ??? ????????? ??????? ?????????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ????????? ??? ?? ??? ???????? ???? ???? ????????? ???? ???? ?????? ?????? ?? ??????????? ??????? ????????????? ???????????? ??????????????????? ??? ???? ?? ??? ???????? ???????? ??? ??? ???? ??????? ????? ????????? ??? ??? ???????? ?????? ??? ????? ??? ????????????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ???????????????? ????? ???????????? ??? ???????????????? ?????????? ??? ??? ??????????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ???? ??? ????? ???????? ???? ?? ??? ??? ??????? ???? ???????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ???????? ????????? ?? ??? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ??????? ????? ????? ???? ?? ????????? ?? ??? ???????? ???????? ????? ??? ?????? ????????????????? ?????? ???????? ?????? ?? ???????? ????????? ?????? ????????? ??? ???? ?????????? ??? ??? ????? ????? ??????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ???? ???????? ???? ??? ??????? ???? ?????? ?????? ?? ??????????? ??????? ????????? ????? ?????? ???????? ??? ??????? ???? ??????????? ??? ??? ???????????????????????????????????????????? ????????? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ????????????????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ????? ??? ?????????? ??? ???????????? ??? ??? ????? ???????? ???? ??? ??? ???? ? ?????? ???????? ???? ??? ??? ??? ?????????? ???? ??????? ??? ????? ??? ????????? ????????? ???? ?? ??? ????? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ??????? ??? ??? ??????? ????? ???????????? ??????????? ????????????????? ????????????????? ?? ???????? ??? ?????????? ?????????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ???? ??????????????????????????????????????? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ???????? ?? ??????????? ??????? ?? ??? ?? ???? ??? ??? ??? ?????? ???? ????? ?????? ??????? ??????????? ??? ????? ???????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ????? ???????? ???? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ??????? ??????????????????? ???????? ????????? ????? ??? ?????????????? ??? ?????????? ??? ????? ??? ???? ?????? ????? ??????? ???? ?????? ??? ?????? ?????? ??????? ??????? ?? ??? ??????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ? ?????? ????????? ???????? ?? ?? ??? ??? ????? ????? ??????? ?? ??? ??????? ????? ????? ???? ??? ??????? ?? ???????? ???? ??? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ???? ??? ??????????? ?? ??? ???????? ?? ??? ???????? ?? ?????? ??????????????????? ????? ?????? ??????????????????? ???? ???????? ???? ?? ???? ??????? ? ????? ?????? ?? ??????????? ????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ???? ???????????? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ????????? ??? ????????? ?? ??? ????? ?? ??? ???? ????? ????????? ???? ??? ????? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ???? ??? ???? ??????????? ??? ??????? ?????? ???? ??? ?????? ????? ???????? ??? ????????????????????????? ????? ????????? ???????????????????? ?? ???? ??????? ????????????????????????????? ?????? ?? ???? ????????????????? ?? ??? ????? ???????? ??????? ?? ???? ???????? ?? ?????? ?????????? ???? ????? ? ????????? ?????? ??? ????????? ????????? ??? ? ?????????? ??? ????? ?????? ? ??????? ???????? ??????? ???????????? ????????????????????? ?????????????? ??????????????? ????? ??? ??? ?? ?????? ??????????? ?????????????????? ???????? ?? ??? ???? ? ??????????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ?????????? ?? ??? ???????? ?? ??? ??????? ??? ??? ?????????? ?????? ?? ??? ????????? ?? ?? ?????? ??? ????? ?? ??? ???? ??? ??? ????????? ??????? ?????? ?? ??? ????????? ?????? ??????????????? ?? ?? ??? ?? ???????? ??????????????????? ???????? ??????????? ??? Chapter 1821 - Skyrocketing Abilities Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation ?????????????????? ??? ?????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????? ??????? ??????????? ??????????????? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ?????????? ???? ??? ????????? ???????? ???? ??? ?????? ???????? ??? ?????? ? ???? ?? ??? ???????? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ?? ????? ?? ???? ?? ??? ???????? ????? ??? ????????? ???? ??????????? ???????????????????? ??????????????? ?????????? ????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ?? ??? ????????? ?? ????? ?????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ?????? ????????? ??? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ?? ??? ???????? ??? ??? ???? ??? ????? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ???????? ????? ??? ??????????? ????? ?????????? ??? ????????????? ??? ???? ???????? ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ????? ??? ??????????? ????? ?????????? ??? ???????????? ?????????? ??? ?? ??? ???? ????? ??? ????????????? ??? ?????????? ????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ??????????? ???????????? ?????????????????????????????? ?? ???? ?????????????? ??????????? ????? ??? ????? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??? ?????? ?????????? ?? ??? ????????? ?? ????? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? ?????? ???????? ????????? ??????????? ????? ???????????????????????? ?????????????????????????? ????????? ?????? ??????? ????????? ??????????????? ??????? ???????????????????? ?? ?????????? ????? ??? ???? ???? ???? ?? ??? ????? ????? ???? ????? ?????????? ?? ??? ????????? ??? ????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ??? ???? ??? ????????? ? ?????????????? ????? ????? ???????? ?? ???????????????? ??????????? ?????? ????? ???????????????????????? ????????????? ???????????????????? ???? ??????? ?????????????????????????????? ??????????? ??? ?????? ??? ?? ?? ????????????????????????? ?? ??? ? ????? ???? ???? ??????????????? ??????????? ?????????? ??? ????? ??? ????????? ????????? ??????????? ????? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ??? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ?????????? ?? ??? ?????????? ??????? ? ????? ????? ??? ? ??????? ????? ?????? ???????? ??????????????????????? ?????????????????????? ???? ?? ????????? ??? ?????????? ??????????????????????????? ?????? ??? ?????? ????? ??? ???? ???????? ??? ????? ????? ?????????? ??? ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??????? ????? ???????? ????? ??? ????????? ?? ???????? ??? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ????? ??????? ?? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????? ?? ??????? ????? ??????????? ?? ?? ?? ?????????? ?????? ?? ?????? ????????????? ? ?? ???? ????? ???????????????????????? ????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????? ?????? ???????????????????????? ??????? ???????? ???????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ??????? ?????????????????? ?? ??? ???? ????????????????? ?????????????? ?????????????? ???????? ??????? ???? ????????? ?? ???? ??? ? ??? ??? ????? ?????????? ????????? ????? ??????? ??????? ??? ??????????? ????? ??????? ?????? ???????? ??? ????????? ??????? ?????? ?? ???????? ??? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ???????? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? ?????????? ??????? ???????????????? ?????? ?????????????????????? ????????? ?????? ????????? ??? ?? ?????????? ????????????? ??? ??????? ?????? ????? ????? ??????????? ??? ?????????? ??? ?????? ?????? ????? ???????????????? ????? ???? ??? ?????????????? ?? ??? ?????? ????? ??? ???????? ???? ??? ???? ????? ????????? ???? ??????????? ???? ???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ???? ????? ??? ???????? ???? ??? ???? ???? ??? ?? ????? ???? ????? ????? ??????? ??????? ??? ?????????????? ???????????? ???? ?????????????????????????????????? ??? ??????? ?????? ??????????? ??? ???? ??????????? ?? ?? ???????? ??? ????? ??????????? ?? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ????? ?? ????????? ?????? ??? ???????? ?? ????? ???? ?????? ? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ???????? ???? ? ??? ???????? ????? ?????????????? ??????????????????????????????? ????????????????? ?????????????? ?? ?????? ?????? ????? ??????????????? ????? ??????? ?? ????? ??? ????????? ?? ??? ?????? ???????????? ??? ???? ????? ??? ?????? ??????????? ????? ?????? ???????? ???? ??? ???????? ?????? ???? ??? ?????? ??????? ????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ??? ?????? ??????????? ??????? ?? ??????? ??? ??? ?????? ?????? ??????? ?? ??????? ????? ????? ?? ???? ??? ??????? ???????? ????? ???? ?? ?????? ??? ???????? ????????????? ??? ?????? ????? ?????? ???? ? ?????? ???????? ????? ??? ?? ?????? ? ??????? ?? ?????? ???? ????????? ??? ??????? ????????????? ???????? ????? ??? ???????????????????? ?????? ???????????? ???????????????? ?????? ?? ???? ??????? ?? ??? ??????? ??????? ????? ??? ??????? ?????? ??? ????????? ???? ???????? ???? ??? ????????? ???? ??? ?? ????? ??? ????????? ????????? ???????? ????????? ?????? ????????? ??????? ????????? ?????? ??????? ????????? ??????? ??????? ???????? ?????????????? ????????? ?? ???????????????????????? ????? ???????????????? ?????????? ????? ????????? ???????? ???????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????? ??????? ???????????????? ???? ??? ??? ???????????????????????? ????? ???????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????? ??????????????? ????? ??????????? ???????????? ?? ???? ???? ?????????????????? ?????????????? ?????????? ???????????????????????????? ?? ??????????????????????????? ?????????? ???? ??????? ??? ????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ??? ???? ??? ??? ??????? ??? ??????????? ???? ?????? ??????? ????????? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ?????????? ??? ????? ????? ?????? ??????? ?????????? ? ??????????? ???????? ??????? ???? ??????????????????? ???? ???????????? ???????????? ??? ???????????????????? ?????????????? ????????? ??????? ??? ????????????? ?? ???? ???????? ???? ?? ??? ??? ????????? ??? ??? ??????? ???? ????? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ???? ?? ???????? ?????? ?? ?????????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ?? ?? ??? ???? ????? ??? ??????? ???? ???? ?? ????? ??????? ?????? ?? ??? ??? ???????? ???? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ??? ???? ???????? ?? ??????????????? ??????????? ????? ??? ??????? ??? ???? ??????????? ???? ???????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ???????? ?? ??????? ??????? ?????????? ???????????? ?????????????? ??????????????????? ???? ?????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ???? ?????????? ??? ????? ????????? ???? ?? ????? ????? ??? ? ???? ???? ??? ????? ???? ??? ??????? ?? ???? ???? ?? ????? ??? ??????? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ??????? ????????? ???? ??? ??????? ???????? ??????????? ???? ?? ??????????????? ???? ???????????????????????????????????????????? ????????? ?????? ?????????????????? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ?????????? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???????? ??? ??????????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ??????? ????????? ?? ???????? ???? ????????? ???? ????? ?? ????? ? ?????? ?? ????????? ???????? ????? ?? ??? ?? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ?? ????????? ? ??????? ?? ????? ??????? ?????????? ?? ????? ?? ???? ?? ??????? ????? ?????? ????? ??????????? ????? ????? ??????? ??? ????? ?????? ??? ??????? ??? ????? ??????? ??????? ????? ????? ?????????? ?? ???????? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ? ?????? ??? ??????????? ????? ?? ???? ??????? ? ??????? ?? ????????? ????? ???? ??? ???? ???? ??????? ?? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ???? ??? ??? ?????? ?????? ????? ?? ??? ????? ???????? ????????????????? ???????????????????????? ??? ?????? ???????????? ??????? ?????????????? ????????? ????????????????? ???????????? ??? ????? ???????????? ???? ???? ???? ???????? ?? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ?? ??????? ??????????? ??? ????? ????? ?????? ???? ?????? ????? ????? ?????????? ???? ?????? ?? ??????????? ????????? ?? ??? ???????? ??? ? ???? ??? ??????? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ??? ???? ??? ??????? ????????? ????????? ? ????????????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ?????????? ??? ?????????????? ???????? ?????????????????? ?????????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ?????????????????????????? ??? ???? ?????????? ??????? ??? ??????? ?????????? ?? ??? ??? ?????? ???? ??? ?????????? ?? ?????????? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ???? ????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ???? ????? ??? ????? ????? ?? ?????????? ??? ?????????? ????? ????? ?? ???? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?? ??? ??????? ??? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ?? ??????????? ???? ?????????????? ?? ?????????? ???? ??????????? ??? ????????? ???????? ?????????????? ?? ??? ????? ????????? ??? ????? ?????? ?? ??????????? ?? ????? ???? ????? ????? ?????????? ?????? ????? ????????? ??? ????? ????? ?????????? ???????? ?? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ???????? ????? ????? ?????????? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ?? ???????? ???? ???? ??????? ?? ??? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ??? ??????? ???????????? ????? ?????? ???????????? ??? ?????? ???????????? ??? ??????????????????????????????? ??? ????????? ?? ???? ????????? ??? ????????????? ???? ?????? ??? ???? ????? ?????????? ??? ????? ?? ?????? ?????? ?? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ????? ????? ??? ?????? ?????? Chapter 1822 - The Joy Only Lasted for a Short Time Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Lin Huang had finally learned many secrets about the Black Abyss from Heavenly Dao. In reality, nothing could escape Heavenly Dao as long as it happened in the universe. Even if they used all sorts of shielding techniques and even supreme treasures to block probing techniques, it was still visible to Heavenly Dao. This gave Lin Huang the opportunity to observe the Black Abyss many internal meetings as an outsider through Heavenly Daos eyes. He finally understood their real objective. The Black Abyss objective was to open up a channel between the Abyss and the universe to allow the Abyssal army passage here, to contaminate the entire universe, and even contaminate Heavenly Dao. In the end, they would get Azas clone to refine Heavenly Dao to master this chaotic cosmos. This refinement was also a forced refinement. If Heavenly Dao was unwilling to cooperate with the integration process, Aza would use His Dominator Power to occupy and assimilate the entire chaotic cosmos, cutting off Heavenly Daos authority over the chaotic cosmos, and then he would refine Heavenly Dao by force. Under normal circumstances, as soon as the first step, which was the assimilation process, was successful, the success rate of the forced refinement later on would be quite high. However, the Black Abyss current plan had clearly been foiled. This was because Lin Huang had integrated the universes Heavenly Dao, becoming the Dominator of the universe. As long as he was alive, even if the entire universe was contaminated with Abyssal energy, Azas clone could not refine Heavenly Dao. Not only that, since Lin Huang had found out about the Black Abyss plan, naturally, it was impossible that he would just watch those people try to contaminate the entire universe. Is that thing really only Azas clone? Lin Huang instantly recalled his two encounters of falling into darkness after looking through everything about the Black Abyss. Especially the second time. The strange red glow merely lit up, and he was killed without even noticing. Were it not for the Substitute Card, he would have died that time. Although the current him could simply use a finger to kill the old him before elevating to dominator-level, it was basically impossible for him to do so without warning. Moreover, even though he had been elevated to dominator-level, he could not figure out what that person did exactly. He had thought that it had been Aza Himself. He had only learned from the Black Abyss now that it was only one of Azas clones. Not only that, according to the information Black Abyss revealed, Aza had tens of thousands of such clones. Some had already awakened in the other chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe. Azas clone in the universe was currently half asleep. He had yet to be awakened completely. Nevertheless, it was clear that the half-asleep clone had a level of ability that was far more powerful than Lin Huang who had achieved dominator-level. He could not help but frown when he realized this fact. He had also learned much information about Azas clone from the Black Abyss. He, who was half asleep, might wake up anytime. There were even some techniques to accelerate His awakening. For instance, many sacrifices. The more powerful the level of ability of the living beings they sacrificed, and the larger the quantity, the more it would accelerate His awakening. Although the Black Abyss had never mentioned it, Lin Huang was a little concerned that the deaths of many Black Abyss members might cause His awakening to accelerate as well. The reason being was that all of their official members had been given the Gods soul brand from Azas clone. The death of those members would trigger the brand to send a signal to the brands creatorwhich was Azas clone, along with the scene of their death. The unusual activation of that many brands would definitely alert Azas clone. On a certain level, it might accelerate the awakening of Azas clone. Lin Huang was also thinking that, if his speculation was right, what he should do exactly in order to face the Black Abyss. After arriving at no solution despite thinking for a while, he figured he would summon Bloody. Bloody affirmed his speculation after he described what was going on with the Black Abyss. According to the information that you provided, your speculation might be right. If the Gods soul brand has some sort of alert mechanism, if too many Black Abyss members died, it might awaken Azas clone directly. So what Im thinking is that Ill take action directly to capture those official members myself. Ill retrieve their Kingdoms and capture them alive, but I wont kill them, Lin Huang told Bloody what he was thinking. Have you considered what might happen if death isnt the only thing that will trigger the brand? For instance, if those people from the Black Abyss were still alive, but not of sound mind. What if that would trigger the brand too? What if sealing them or retrieving the Kingdoms in their bodies would trigger the brand to alert Azas clone as well? You cant ignore such possibilities entirely. Lin Huang was stunned to hear what Bloody said. Indeed, he had never thought of that before. He thought things were more troublesome now that she reminded him. If thats the case, theres nothing that I can do to the people from the Black Abyss at all. Well, its not completely a no go. Bloody lifted her head to look at Lin Huang. She only continued after pausing for a moment, You can still act from behind the scenes. Lin Huang had a rough guess about what she was trying to get at as he listened up to this point, but he still did not understand it entirely. It doesnt matter. As long as I act personally, itd still trigger the awakening of Azas clone if many people from the Black Abyss die or lose their minds. What I mean is that you should hide behind the scenes and not show yourself. Reveal their information to the other grade-SSs organizations and get them to fight the Black Abyss, and have them capture as many of them alive as possible. When that happens, Azas clone wont see or sense you when the brand is triggered. Meanwhile, you can seize the opportunity while the grade-SSS organizations are fighting the Black Abyss to elevate your ability as much as you can. Later on, you can join the fight when Azas clone comes. Lin Huang finally understood her thoughts now. Bloody meant that there was no need for him to waste precious time participating in the early stages of the war. Instead, he should seize the opportunity to elevate his ability as much as he could so that he would be powerful enough to fight against Azas clone. If he did not interfere, the war between the grade-SSS organizations and the Black Abyss definitely would not end within a short period of time. That would provide a buffer before the battle between him and Azas clone would take place. Azas clones ability is at least dominator-level rank-2 or rank-3. Within a short period of time, its still possible that I can break through to rank-2, but its quite difficult to break through to rank-3. Lin Huang had witnessed that clones ability. He thought that the possibility of him catching up within a short period of time was fairly low. Have you ever thought that the final result of the war would actually not be determined by the Black Abyss, but by Azas clone? If we dont remove the clone from the equation, we will still lose this war in the end. According to the information the Black Abyss provided, He is half-asleep and half-awake. Even without stimulation from the outside world, He might wake up anytime. We already learned from all of the revealed information that theres no way to stop Him from waking up. Therefore, theres only one way to solve this issuewhich is to defeat Azas awakened clone! Got it. Il try my best. Lin Huang was quite happy initially to have been elevated to dominator-level. However, the joy only lasted for a short time. He now realized that the responsibility he had to bear was even greater now.. Chapter 1823 - The Public Enemies of the Universe Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation The Eastern 28 Zone in the universe was where the headquarters of the grade-SSS organization, Dragon God Island, was located. A human-form monster with a dragon head, who was wearing a golden robe, suddenly lowered its head and looked at the golden communication ring on its finger. Hmm? A message? From an unknown number Didnt I already block all unknown numbers? The dragon-headed monster checked the message anyway after some slight hesitation. It was stunned as it read the message. The reason being was that the message started with Long Ao is a spy from the Black Abyss. Long Ao was the Dragon God Islands previous Dragon God. The dragon-headed monster continued to read the message. The messages contents provided a detailed description of the Black Abyss invasion plans for the universe, as well as some secrets about Azas clone. There was an attachment in the end. It was the complete list of all Black Abyss official members and reserve members in the Eastern 28 Zone. The dragon-headed monster, who had been doubtful about whether Long Ao was really a spy from the Black Abyss, instantly felt that the message had greater credibility after he finished reading. He hesitated for a moment and called the number of the sender. However, it only displayed a notification that the number did not exist. It was Bloody who suggested Lin Huang to do things this way. The reason being was that he sent similar messages to hundreds of grade-SSS organizations. If he were to take their calls and answer them one by one, it would expend a great deal of his time. Not only that, the people might not believe him. As such, he figured that he would just use a one-time number. He would not accept any calls, and they would be left to investigate the truth of the message on their own. Lin Huang knew that even if the higher-ups of some of the grade-SSS organizations did not believe the contents of the message, as long as one organization in the star zone investigated and found something, the other grade-SSS organizations would do the same too. Throughout the day, almost all of the higher-ups of the grade-SSS organizations in the 20 star zones or so in the universe received similar messages. Apart from the nine star zones that had been occupied by the Black Abyss, Lin Huang had informed all of them, including all of the star zones in which the Black Abyss had set up branches in. He did not limit the information to the grade-SSS organizations, and even informed the higher-ups of the grade-Ss and grade-S organizations that had Black Abyss reserve members spies among their ranks. Throughout that one week, the organizations in the over 20 star zones began to investigate the identities of those spies rapidly. They had soon found issues one after the other, verifying that the message Lin Huang sent was accurate. After capturing those spies, those organizations began to work together and attacked the Black Abyss branches. The nine star zones that had fallen soon noticed the unusual situation. The members from the branches in the over 20 star zones began to escape to the nine star zones that the Black Abyss had occupied. Some of them escaped to the other star zones. However, Lin Huang conveniently reported to the grade-SSS organizations about the people who escaped to the relative star zones on the day itself. Therefore, over ten star zones joined hands and attacked the Black Abyss. At that moment, Lin Huang added fuel to the fire by sending over the Black Abyss plan to all of the grade-SSS organizations in the entire universe. He even gave them detailed information about Azas clone. Within less than 40 days, besieged by all the organizations in the universe, the remaining Black Abyss members hid in the nine star zones they had occupied. The number of their members had dropped. Including the reserve members, they were only left with some 800 people, which was less than one-seventh of their initial members. Throughout the past month, the Black Abyss members had almost constantly been in a daze. They could not figure out how their identities and the Black Abyss plans were leaked. Theoretically, it was only the less than the 300 official members that knew about the real plan. Meanwhile, among those official members, most of them only were in touch with their partners from the same star zone. They had no interaction with other star zones at all. Only the few half-step Dominators possessed the list of all the members, and only the few half-step Dominators could leak intel to such a great extent. Therefore, the remaining few half-step Dominators were all suspicious of each other. The remaining official members now had trust issues when it came to the few half-step Dominators. Most of the official members that escaped to the star zones occupied by the Black Abyss refused to reveal their coordinates. They were even unwilling to join the meeting that the few half-step Dominators organized. In the end, they could only hold an online meeting. During the online meeting, a hot-headed guy even made things difficult for the few half-step Dominators on the spot, directly stating that there was a spy among them who had betrayed everyone. Since someone said it openly, it was only natural that he got himself some supporters. A few hot-headed members worked together to criticize the few half-step Dominators. Since it was an online meeting, the half-step Dominators could not attack them. The few of them vented all they wanted with that in mind. Although the few half-step Dominators were pissed off by the criticism, they could not respond in kind. They could only provide assurance and try to convince them otherwise. The goal of the meeting was to discuss what the Black Abyss would do next. In the end, few half-step Dominators were forced to cross-examine themselves. The meeting ended without any definite outcome. Lin Huang saw it all take place. It was as if the entire universe was inside his Kingdom now. Naturally, whatever happened inside his Kingdom could not escape his eyes. He was watching the chaos unfold happily. Apart from watching the show, he did not actually stay idle throughout that month at all. Firstly, he contacted Qian Shisan from Fantasy Island. He got rid of all of the heavenly dao-level monster carcasses and the couple of Black Abyss members bodies and traded them for a batch of Kingdoms. After refining all of the Kingdoms in the virtual realm, the total number of Dao seals in his body had officially broken through the 20 billion mark. He had 20.2 billion Dao seals now. Meanwhile, the Dao seals in his Kingdom had broken through the 60 billion mark, reaching 61.4 billion Dao seals now. However, Lin Huang was not exactly satisfied with this round of elevation as his ability did not transform during the process. He understood that there was only one way to obtain a transformational elevation in his ability since he got to dominator-level, which was to integrate more chaotic cosmoses. He knew that he had to leave the universe. Before leaving, he gathered all of his imperial monsters apart from the Bug Tribe. After elevating all of them to Omniscience rank-7, he also elevated all of their combat strength to the limit of heavenly dao-level. He also ordered them to capture the Black Abyss members. The bunch of imperial monsters, whose level of ability had been increased significantly, joined the mission to capture the Black Abyss members enthusiastically without hesitation after receiving his order. Apart from the imperial monsters, Lin Huang also elevated his ten Gods Figurines Combat Souls to Omniscience rank-7. Later on, he got Eternity Fire to elevate all of them to the limit of heavenly dao-level. He did not go further as Eternity Fires stored energy was insufficient to elevate any of them to dominator-level. Lin Huang returned to the Great Heaven Territory after he was done with all that. He wanted to see the cultivation outcome of his Sword Servants throughout these few months under the 10,000 times accelerated time flow. Through a scan with his Divine Telekinesis, he grasped the Sword Servants situations clearly. Apart from Sword 1, Sword 8 and a few others who had successfully broken through to upper-rank Lords, the rest of them were only middle-rank Lords. Clearly, even with the help of 10,000 times accelerated time flow, it was difficult for Lords to elevate. As Lin Huang was thinking about how to elevate his Sword Servants level of ability faster, a voice transmission suddenly rang in his ears. Youre at dominator-level now?! Is Left Chapter 1824 - The Palace Spirit Awakens Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Lin Huang was familiar with the voice. Nevertheless, he only remembered where he had heard it before half a second later. He looked at the source of the voice quickly. Apart from the Great Heaven Palaces dome, there was nothing else in the direction in which he was looking. Youve finally woken up Lin Huangs tone sounded slightly emotional. sensed your aura. You seem to have already broken through to dominator-level, an old voice responded. Tonly broke through less than two days ago. Lin Huang nodded. Have I been asleep for a long time? The old voice asked immediately. Not too long. Only a few years, Lin Huang explained while smiling, Its just that the rate of elevation of my ability is rather fast. Is only been a few years and youve already grown to this extent?! There was clearly shock in the old voice. I always thought that, although your talent is better than Great Heavens, you wouldnt be much better. Now it seems I was completely wrong. Lin Huang faked a chuckle and did not explain himself. As the Great Heaven Palaces palace spirit, it made sense that it compared Lin Huang to its previous masters. Since youve elevated to dominator-level now, there are some things that I can tell you. The palace spirits tone suddenly became serious. Actually, Im not a Dao Weapon. Lin Huang wanted to say that he had known that from the beginning, but he did not interrupt the Great Heaven Palace Spirit. My real grade is chaotic supreme treasure. The Great Heaven Palace Spirit seemed to think that Lin Huang was not knowledgeable about the grading system of treasures after saying that, so it explained immediately, There are spiritual treasures, precious treasures and exotic treasures above Dao Weapons. You should know that right? Iknow that there are supreme treasures above exotic treasures, and that there are innate supreme treasures and chaotic supreme treasures above that, Lin Huang answered directly while nodding. He just wanted it to get straight to the point. I also know that chaotic supreme treasures are extremely rare even in the infinite universe. Usually, only dominator-level rank-4 and rank-5 powerhouses can use them. The palace spirit was stunned for a second, after which it felt relieved. Since Lin Huang had already been elevated to dominator-level, it was normal for him to know such information. Alright, please go on. Lin Huang helped it to skip that part. He just wanted to hear the story sooner. The Great Heaven Palace Spirit fell silent momentarily. It seemed to be spending some time sorting out its thoughts before speaking again. My first master was a dominator-level rank-d powerhouse. He created me by refining a chaotic Kingdom when he was at dominator-level rank-1. When I was first refined, I was just an innate supreme treasure with a vague sense of intelligence. After he integrated me with his Kingdom, his combat strength elevated all the way to dominator-level rank-4,. I was elevated alongside that, becoming a chaotic supreme treasure. Unfortunately, an evil supreme powerhouse was born in the infinite universe during the same era. He was at dominator-level rank-5 as soon as He appeared. Before that guy appeared, Dominators would have to consider their compatibility when integrating a chaotic cosmos. If the chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao rejected them, the Dominators usually would not force things. The reason being was that forced integration from the lack of compatibility would reduce the efficiency of the chaotic cosmos energy. However, not only did that guy force the integration of all of the chaotic cosmoses, He would kill other Dominators to take their Kingdoms. He even announced His intention to become the Dominator of the entire infinite universe. The funny thing is that His theory of stealing was sought after by many Dominators, and they became His followers. At that time, the entire infinite universe became chaotic thanks to their actions. As everyone became their prey, it forced the Dominators to work together to fight against them. My first master could only join the war helplessly. After that, the war lasted for many years. The Union Army had finally defeated the army under His wing, and arrived at His lair. Back then, the Union Army was powerful. There were three dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses and 20 or so dominator-level rank-4 powerhouses. Initially, they thought that killing Him would be effortless since they had so many powerhouses with them. However, what everyone didnt expect was that His ability was even more terrifying than they had imagined. At that time, He seemed to have reached the limit of dominator-level rank-5. Not only did he fight three dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses on His own, He had the excess strength to deal with the battle formation set up by the 20 or so dominator-level rank-4 powerhouses of the Union Army. He tore the battle formation apart with an explosion of force. My first master was killed by His attack as he was in the core of the formation. Even his Kingdom was torn apart from the attack. He, who had always been invincible in my eyes, could not even take one attack and was killed instantly At the end of the war, a dominator-level rank-5 Dominator died while two others were injured when they sealed Him. Less than one-third of the Dominators from the Union Army survived. Moreover, those that survived were injured severely. After that, as I was affected by the impact of the battle and was badly damaged, a Dominator retrieved me and restored me to a certain extent. He then sealed me and gave me to a minor dao-level junior. Later on, my condition remained the same. After changing a few masters and being integrated with a few different chaotic Kingdoms, Ive never encountered any dominator-level powerhouse since then Lin Huang quickly asked a question that he had been wanting to ask after listening to the palace spirit telling its story. Is that destroyer who appeared out of nowhere called Aza?! In reality, he had already guessed it when he heard the palace spirit say that the person was already at dominator-level rank-5 when He appeared. The palace spirit was stunned when it heard his question. How do you know?! To a certain extent, I can be considered as having sparred with His clone twice. Lin Huang did not think that those two encounters were happy experiences. You sparred with His clone? The palace spirits tone turned cautious now. Lwas almost killed, so I guess it can be barely considered as sparring. Lin Huang chuckled self-mockingly. The palace spirit just realized that it had misunderstood what Lin Huang had meant. It thought he meant that they knew each other. Very soon, Lin Huang told him about the two encounters he had with Azas clone. The palace spirit exclaimed after listening, Youre so lucky! Youve told me those secrets. Do you need help with something? Lin Huang asked. L would like to integrate with your Kingdom, the palace spirit told Lin Huang of its wish, feeling a little embarrassed after a moment of hesitation. It proceeded to speak before waiting for Lin Huangs answer. My seal can only be removed completely if I integrate with a dominator-level powerhouses Kingdom. Only Dominator Power can restore me completely. The current limit of my time flow acceleration is 10,000 times. When Ive been unsealed, I can provide a time flow acceleration of one million times. Not only that, the range would not be limited to the Great Heaven Territory. Itll cover your entire Kingdom. Apart from that, I can also set different time flows for different zones. I can set nine zones with different time flows at most. You can choose to accelerate or decelerate the time flow within those zones. Also, the time flow acceleration of one million times is just the basic level. As your combat strength elevates, the time flow acceleration effect would elevate further. Its possible to accelerate the time flow in the entire Kingdom to 100 million times faster to cultivate talents. Tcan also suppress All youre mentioning are the benefits. I have only one question. What are the drawbacks? Lin Huang asked after thinking for a moment. There are none. Im a chaotic supreme treasure. The nature of my usage is no different from weapons and armors. Thats great. Lin Huang agreed to his request directly. Chapter 1825 - A Copy of the Star Map Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation After spending a couple of minutes integrating the Great Heaven Palace with his Kingdom, the Great Heaven Palaces aura was clearly growing. Although the strength of its aura had yet to reach the standard of his God Weapons, it was clearly a supreme treasure now. As the integration continued, Lin Huang realized that he could adjust the acceleration of the time flow in his entire Kingdom on his own now. Not only could he accelerate, he could decelerate, as well as set up different time flows for different zones. At first, he adjusted the time flow acceleration of the entire Kingdom to a million times faster. Subsequently, he felt something was wrong, so he set the time flow in the zone where the Bug Tribe was to 100,000 times faster. He did that mainly because the Bug Tribes fertility rate was too terrifying. He was worried that if he became too busy for a while, and did not have the time to oversee the changes in the Kingdom, the Bug Tribe might occupy the entire Kingdom. After all, under a million times of accelerated time flow, even though only one to two days had passed in the outside world, thousands of years had passed in the Kingdom. Throughout those thousands of years, it was enough for one Queen Mother to produce a terrifying number of Bug Tribe troops, let alone the fact that he had more than one Queen Mother in his Kingdom. He suppressed the Bug Tribes rate of development to one-tenth of the other tribes to prevent such an accident from happening. After adjusting the time flow, Lin Huang checked out the other functions the Great Heaven Palace had. Apart from separate time flows in different zones, it also had the function of suppression. It could freeze dimensions or the time of a specific target. However, these two suppression effects were affected by Lin Huangs level of ability. It would be useless against people who could tear Lin Huangs Kingdom apart. Meanwhile, the first thing Lin Huang thought of when he saw this function was not to imprison his enemies, but rather its ability to store items. He figured that he could totally seal the items that needed to be preserved in the Great Heaven Palace. It was much better than storing them in his storage space. Naturally, the palace spirit did not know that he had such thoughts. After familiarizing himself with how to use the Great Heaven Palace for a little bit, Lin Huang scanned through the changes in the entire Kingdom and checked how Lin Xin and the rest had been doing, before retrieving his consciousness out of his body. He thought about the things he had yet to handle and remembered the four Goldfingers his clone had obtained. In reality, he had taken a rough look at the functions of those four Goldfingers previously. They did not suit him, so he had put them aside directly. He took them out to examine thoroughly now. Among the four Goldfingers, three were grade-2, while one was grade-3. The four of them served as auxiliary aids. They could not elevate ones ability and combat strength directly. Also, Lin Huang had no interest in Goldfingers of those grades. After a moment of thinking, he fed all four Goldfingers to Xiao Hei. Nothing seemed to change with Xiao Hei after he fed them to it, so he did not ask anything further. Lin Huang checked carefully after feeding Xiao Hei. Confirming that he probably had not missed anything, he took out a golden card. There was an image of an island on top of the card, while the back of the card was filled with complicated Dao tattoos. Xiao Hei did not consolidate this card. It was Fantasy Islands invitation card. Compared to other invitation cards, which were one-time use items with a definite time limit for entry and exit, the one that Lin Huang was holding was given by Qian Shisan. He could enter Fantasy Island as he wished, and there was no time limit. In reality, Lin Huang had used the Gate of All Realms to record Fantasy Islands coordinates earlier. He did not need an invitation card to enter Fantasy Island at all. However, since Qian Shisan had given it to him, he thought that it would be better if he used the card to teleport him there out of respect. It was like a friend who had given you his house key. Since you could enter his house using the key, there was no need for you to enter through the window. After donning a slight disguise, Lin Huang inserted Odyl into the card in his hand. The next second, he appeared outside the shop Hush on Fantasy Island. He lifted his head to glance at the signboard, and then he walked in directly. Tm looking for Qian Shisan. Lin Huang spoke through voice transmission when he saw a young female attendant welcoming him. The female attendant was stunned for a second, after which she regained her professional smile and said, Please come with me, sir. Very soon, Lin Huang was ushered to the fifth floor like before. He walked in after seeing the room number that he was familiar with. Qian Shisan, who was dressed in formal clothes, sat in front of a coffee table. He waved at Lin Huang. sit down and have a chat. Lin Huang sat across Qian Shisan when he heard that. He could not help but say when he saw him making tea casually, I envy your life. Qian Shisan smiled. This is just a clone of mine. My Primordiums life isnt as good as this. Lin Huang raised his brows. Just as he was about to ask further, Qian Shisan changed the subject directly. He passed the tea that he had just made to Lin Huang, Lets not talk about that. Are you here to trade for items or information? Information. Lin Huang did not ask further when he noticed that. He took a sip after accepting the tea. He could not help but frown slightly. The tea was slightly bitter, but he soon relaxed his frown as sweetness came after the bitterness. He began to savor the sweetness on his tongue. Qian Shisan saw his response clearly. I bought this tea many years ago. I didnt like it after trying it, so I put it aside. I happened to stumble upon it again two days ago. I forgot what it tasted like, so I tried it again. It turns out that I like it a lot after trying it again. Its just that its bitter in the beginning. Lin Huang nodded lightly. Whether it was the sweetness or the flavor, it was good tea. Qian Shisan nodded lightly and took another sip slowly. He put down the teacup and asked, What information would you like? Td like the infinite universes star map. The more detailed, the better. Itd be best if there are unclaimed chaotic Kingdoms marked on it, Lin Huang told Qian Shisan his request directly. Theres no complete star map of the infinite universe, Qian Shisan said as he lifted his eyes to glance at Lin Huang, Because its expanding all the time and producing more chaotic Kingdoms. Theres a star map version thats close to complete. Its a version from some 300,000 years ago. However, this star map version has a ridiculously high price as it covers the largest range, and its copyright is privately owned. Qian Shisan paused as he spoke up to this point. However, I dont recommend that you purchase this version as some 300,000 years have passed. The infinite universe has changed significantly. Many of the unclaimed chaotic Kingdoms have already been refined, and the distribution of organizations has changed significantly too. How much is this star map? Lin Huang asked rather curiously. The price of an innate supreme treasure at least. You might only be able to obtain it by paying the price of two to three innate supreme treasures. Qian Shisan took another sip of tea. Its indeed too expensive, Lin Huang said, feeling quite guilty. Although he had a couple of chaotic supreme treasures, he wanted to use them himself. He could not afford to pay the price of an innate supreme treasure. I think theres no need for you to buy this star map, Qian Shisan continued to say after putting down the teacup, I can give you a star map for free. The zones around the universe are included. The range isnt considered large, but its detailed. Also, its the latest version that came out this year. Lin Huang was quite moved when he heard, but he felt quite sheepish. Qian Shisan seemed to have guessed what Lin Huang was thinking, after which he continued, This star map is made public in the infinite universe. You can download it as long as youre connected to the internet. Naturally, I cannot charge you for it. I took quite a large commission from the last transaction, so Ill give you the communication device for the infinite universe for free. Itll be more convenient for you when you leave the universe. Thank you then. Lin Huang did not beat around the bush. A communication device was worth nothing, but it was much more convenient to get it from Qian Shisan rather than buying it himself after leaving the universe.. Chapter 1826 - Golden Universe Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation After obtaining the star map from Qian Shisan, Lin Huang examined it as soon as he returned to the universe. According to Qian Shisan, the chaotic star zone the universe was located in was called the Golden Universe. In the Golden Universe, there were tens of billions of chaotic cosmoses like the universe. Meanwhile, in the entire infinite universe, there were at least billions of chaotic star zones like the Golden Universe. The Golden Universe was only a small one among the chaotic star zones. Larger chaotic star zones might be able to contain billions of chaotic cosmoses. The star map that Qian Shisan provided was only a star map of the Golden Universe. In reality, this was sufficient for Lin Huang. After projecting the star map, he saw a galaxy that was like a golden river. The dots of light on the star map were not stars, but chaotic cosmoses that were similar to the universe. Lin Huang scanned it using his Divine Telekinesis. There were more than 80 billion light dots on the star map. He understood that it meant there were more than 80 billion chaotic cosmoses in the Golden Universe. There are so many unclaimed chaotic cosmoses?! Lin Huang realized something that shocked him after checking out the information on the star map carefully. He was surprised to find that over 99% of the chaotic cosmoses in the Golden Universe were unclaimed. Initially, he thought all of the Dominators in the infinite universe would integrate them with their Kingdoms with all of their might in order to strengthen themselves. Therefore, most of the chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe should have been claimed by now. However, after giving it some thought, he understood why there were more unclaimed Kingdoms. One of the reasons was that there were a limited number of Dominators in the infinite universe. Compared to the countless chaotic cosmoses, there were too few Dominators, who represented the top level of combat strength in the infinite universe. Although all Dominators in the infinite universe, who were at dominator-level rank-5, had refined tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses, perhaps the number of chaotic cosmoses they refined was less than one-hundredth of the total number of chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe. Not to mention that there had only been a few dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses throughout the history of the infinite universe. Lin Huang very soon thought of the second reason. Compatibility was an important factor for Dominators to integrate a chaotic cosmos. Some chaotic cosmoses Heavenly Daos were even born to resist integration with any Dominators Kingdom. Meanwhile, as the Dominators had sufficient chaotic cosmoses, it was only natural that they were only willing to integrate with chaotic cosmoses that had high compatibility with them. The reason being was that the higher the level of compatibility of the integration, the less time it would take, the more Dominator Power they would obtain, and the faster it was to master the chaotic cosmos. This was also the reason why no Dominators were willing to integrate with many chaotic cosmoses. However, this was undoubtedly great news for Lin Huang. Countless unclaimed chaotic cosmoses would mean that he had the freedom to choose. After checking the universes coordinates and ruling out the claimed chaotic cosmoses, he soon selected a route. He planned to visit the chaotic cosmoses one after the other. Tl choose you as my first chaotic cosmos. Lin Huang stared at the star map in order to memorize the route. Then, he used Dominator Power to project his will on the chaotic cosmos that was closest to the universe. Unclaimed chaotic cosmoses would reject the entry of Dominators from the outside. Their Heavenly Dao would only accept Dominators that were produced by their own chaotic cosmos. Therefore, Dominators from the outside could only project their will if they wanted to enter. Meanwhile, the ability of the will projection had to be within dominator-level. In reality, only dominator-level powerhouses could perform will projection in chaotic cosmoses. The reason being was that such a projection would require a powerful Gods soul. Not only that, one would need to use Dominator Power and the chaotic cosmos dimensional power to carry out the will projection. The more powerful a persons Gods soul, the more chaotic cosmoses he integrated, and the more powerful the Dominator Power and dimensional power he used, the farther the will projection could reach. The current Lin Huang could probably only project his will on the hundreds of chaotic cosmoses around the universe. He could not project it farther than that. He had even considered that he might need to find another solution if there were no suitable chaotic cosmoses among the hundreds around the universe. He would teleport himself out of the universe and project his will farther away to explore. As Lin Huang projected his will on the first chaotic cosmos, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis directly, breaking through space and entering the dimension where the Heavenly Dao was. Whats happening? Nobodys home?! Lin Huang scanned his Divine Telekinesis throughout the entire dimension, but he did not see the Heavenly Dao of the chaotic cosmos. He did not even sense the aura left behind by the Heavenly Dao. It seemed like it had been a long time since the Heavenly Dao had returned home. Whats wrong? Lin Huang was confused. Naturally, he could not communicate with the Heavenly Dao since it was not home. Lin Huang recalled his Divine Telekinesis after thinking to himself for a moment. He then spread out his Divine Telekinesis again, covering all of the star zones and worlds around. Very soon, he found out that the chaotic cosmos was going through a war. The cities inside were at high alert, and there were many Abyssal creatures that were invading. However, Lin Huang had never seen most of the Abyssal creatures that were invading this chaotic cosmos. There was even a slight difference in their auras. Nevertheless, he could tell from a glance that these creatures were contaminated by Aza. Lin Huang had a speculation as he thought to himself. The Abyssal creatures were different, so perhaps the species the chaotic cosmos had were different compared to the universe. Lin Huang merely scanned around and appeared in another star zone in a flash. His objective was to have a chat with the Heavenly Dao. He had no plan to intervene in this chaotic cosmos war. After arriving at the new star zone, Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis again. This zone was in a similar situation as the one before. It was also embroiled in a war. However, this place had fallen even further. They were left with only 30% of their resistance force. Lin Huang teleported himself over ten times, one after the other. By then, he had almost checked out half of the entire chaotic cosmos. He had a rough understanding of the chaotic cosmos. Over half of the chaotic cosmos had been occupied by the Abyss. It was extremely difficult for the locals to turn the tables around. Lin Huang could almost foresee that it was only a matter of time before this chaotic cosmos would be fully contaminated by the Abyss. He chose to ignore that. After all, this was not his chaotic cosmos. It was somebody elses business. If this chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao was willing to integrate with him, he would not mind intervening. However, he did not find any traces of the Heavenly Dao after taking a stroll. He knew that the chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao must have noticed his existence, but It chose not to meet him. He could not force it since It refused to communicate with him. He could only forget about it.. OTE 1 left Chapter 1827 - Heavenly Dao Has a Temper Too Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Failing to communicate with the first chaotic cosmos was completely within Lin Huangs expectations. From the beginning, he already knew that it was difficult to find a chaotic cosmos with high compatibility. Otherwise, all of the Dominators would have integrated chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe to the limits which their Kingdom could take in. However, he did not expect to not even see the Heavenly Dao of the first chaotic cosmos he visited. He thought there would definitely be a certain chance at success as long as they met and communicated. Even if the success rate was only 10%, he would be able to integrate some ten or so chaotic cosmoses if he communicated with hundreds of them. He was a little worried that it would be troublesome if all Heavenly Daos acted his way. If they did not even meet him, it was only natural that they could not communicate. If the situation was the same for all the hundreds of chaotic cosmoses he visited, it was possible that he would not even be able to integrate with one chaotic cosmos. He could only hope that this chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao was an exception. Lin Huang frowned and thought for a moment before recalling his will projection from the chaotic cosmos closest to him. Very soon, he chose the second chaotic cosmos and projected his will again. This time, his will projection did not invade the Heavenly Daos dimension. Instead, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis and observed the internal condition of the chaotic cosmos first. He could not help but frown again as he observed the situation. This chaotic cosmos was similar to the first one, whereby it was being invaded by the Abyss. It was just that its situation was slightly better. Approximately 30% of it had been occupied by Abyssal creatures. It seems the zones nearby might have been targeted by Azas clone. I wonder if its the same clone or a few different ones Lin Huang made a preliminary speculation after observing the situation in the chaotic cosmos. Nevertheless, he could only confirm if his speculation was true after looking at more chaotic cosmoses later on. After exploring this chaotic cosmos a little bit, Lin Huang knew that he had definitely been noticed by this chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao. It was just that It did not take the initiative to communicate with him. Lin Huang decided to take the initiative after thinking to himself for a moment. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis again and broke through space, arriving at the dimension where the Heavenly Dao was. He was secretly overjoyed when he saw a giant face in the air. Its home! The giant face was stunned, after which it yelled furiously and attacked his spiritual body directly. Get out! A sky full of lightning and fire instantly filled the entire dimension. It had gathered the force of the entire chaotic cosmos. Meanwhile, Lin Huang had only sent his will projection that was beneath dominator-level. Feeling helpless, he could only get rid of his spiritual body and remove his Divine Telekinesis from the dimension. The Heavenly Dao would be pissed indeed that I invaded its dimension directly. But how do I communicate with It then After all, breaking through space and invading the dimension with his Divine Telekinesis spiritual body was the equivalent of breaking down someones door and entering his house. Indeed, it was a rather rude behavior. He did that in the universe before because Heavenly Dao had been secretly watching him. Moreover, he was a local inhabitant of the universe, so the Heavenly Dao did not begrudge his behavior. However, he was an outsider in the other chaotic cosmoses. Not only that, he took the initiative to invade their dimensions. The situation was different. Just as Lin Huang was thinking about what to do, the Heavenly Dao suddenly turned into a giant face and appeared in the sky above his head. Before Lin Huang could even feel happy to see the Heavenly Dao showing Itself, It began to accumulate all of the forces of the entire chaotic cosmos. It clearly wanted to kill his will projection. Die, invader! Wait! Lin Huang did not panic. He interrupted It directly, Im not an invader. Im not one of those Abyssal creatures. You can sense my aura properly. Lin Huang stretched out his palm as he spoke. A ball of blood-colored Dominator Power consolidated in his palm. The Heavenly Dao paused when It saw that. Only then did It notice that Lin Huangs aura was indeed different from those invaders. It was behaving irrationally from the rage as It was shocked when Lin Huang used Divine Telekinesis to invade Its dimension. It had not noticed the difference at all. After calming down a little bit, It did not recall Its attack. Instead, It asked, Why did you come here? Clearly, It recognized that Lin Huang was a Dominator, and that he merely sent his will projection over. I just elevated to dominator-level not long ago. Im traveling the infinite universe, looking to integrate with more chaotic cosmoses Lin Huang spoke about his situation roughly. However, Heavenly Dao rejected him directly after listening, Ive no interest in integrating with someones Kingdom. Go look for other chaotic cosmoses. Sure Lin Huang did not plan to force It. I just want to remind you that these Abyssal creatures are difficult to deal with. There seems to be a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse behind them. His clone is waking up. He might send His will projection over to fight you. He might even come Himself. Thats my business. You dont have to worry about it, Heavenly Dao said coldly. Then Ill see you when I see you. At the same time Lin Huang said those words, he recalled his will projection. In the universe, Lin Huangs Primordium sat on the couch in the living room, replaying the events of the visit earlier in silence. Although he had seen the Heavenly Dao during the visit, as well as communicated with It, the Heavenly Dao had obvious enmity toward outsiders. He did not know if that was Its character, or whether It only became like this after the Abyss invasion. If he did not release his aura in time and let Heavenly Dao know that he was different from those Abyssal creatures, his will projection might have been killed directly. Regarding the Heavenly Daos unfriendliness after he revealed his identity, he had no idea if it was caused by his invasion of Its dimension or because It had enmity toward outsiders. Perhaps it was both. Its terrible to invade Its dimension directly. Its kind of like breaking down someones door Lin Huang thought to himself while frowning. But how do I communicate with It if I dont do that? After all, judging by the current situation, the Heavenly Dao did not seem to be willing to show Itself to communicate with outsiders. He would have to be more proactive in order to communicate with It. I can make a Communication Card that targets Its coordinates. You can communicate with It through voice transmission directly. Xiao Hei suddenly spoke after sensing Lin Huangs predicament. Communication Card?! Lin Huang asked further when he heard, Targeted communication would work on Heavenly Dao thats not an entity? It does. Xiao Hei gave an affirmative answer. Lets try that then! Lin Huang became excited now. Almost without hesitation, he selected the third chaotic cosmos and sent out his will projection again.. Chapter 1828 - The Communication Considered to Be a Success? Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation When Lin Huangs will projection arrived at the third chaotic cosmos, he did not communicate with its Heavenly Dao immediately. Instead, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis to observe the internal situation of the chaotic cosmos. What he saw verified his previous speculation. The chaotic cosmoses around the universe seemed to have been invaded by the Abyss. However, this chaotic cosmos situation was better than the previous two. At the moment, only less than 10% of it had been occupied by Abyssal creatures. The local living beings were fighting back enthusiastically. Not only that, this chaotic cosmos overall ability was the most powerful one among the two others. There were nine half-step dominator-level powerhouses, and also some 50 heavenly dao-level powerhouses. Judging by the current situation, the number of powerhouses from the Abyss were less than half the number of the locals. However, Lin Huang did not place high confidence in this chaotic cosmos. Unless the local powerhouses could clear out all of the Abyssal creatures and spies, and get this chaotic cosmos removed from the list of targets of Azas clone, it would end up no different from the chaotic cosmoses that were doing worse than them. As soon as Azas clone woke up, the current upper hand the chaotic cosmos had would disappear instantly. After confirming this chaotic cosmos internal situation, Lin Huang got Xiao Hei to consolidate a Communication Card. After crushing the card, the Golden Card turned into sparks in the sky. A moment later, a notification box popped up before Lin Huang. Heavenly Dao has been targeted. The communication function has been activated. At the same time, the notification box appeared, the user manual for the card was sent into his mind automatically. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis according to the user manual in his mind and locked onto the Heavenly Dao. He then spoke through voice transmission with Divine Telekinesis, Hi, Im a Dominator from another chaotic cosmos. Im currently traveling through the Golden Universe. Tve just arrived with my will projection and found out that your chaotic cosmos is being invaded? Lin Huang did not mention integrating with the Heavenly Dao directly. Instead, he tried to talk about a subject. After all, theoretically, Heavenly Dao would answer his question. If that happened, the first round of communication would succeed. How are you talking to me? Heavenly Dao responded through voice transmission after a moment of silence. It did not answer Lin Huangs answer. Instead, It asked him another question. Nevertheless, to Lin Huang, it was a great start. At least Heavenly Dao did not refuse to communicate with him directly. Lhave my own methods, Lin Huang responded while smiling. The Heavenly Dao spoke again after another moment of silence, You mentioned the invasion Do you know where they come from? Lin Huang raised his brows and secretly thought, How is this guy so sharp?! He thought about it and figured that there was no need for him to lie. Yes. I noticed many chaotic cosmoses undergoing similar situations as yours as I traveled around. Theyve been attacked by similar monsters. To be honest, your level of contamination is the least among all that I saw. From what I know, those invaders come from a place called the Abyss. To be exact, its the dream dimension of a powerful entity. That entity is suspected to be a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse. Its His clone thats controlling these invading monsters. Moreover, His clone is currently half-asleep. He might wake up anytime. As soon as He wakes up, itll be useless even if all of the half-step Dominators and heavenly dao-level powerhouses in your chaotic cosmos work together. Heavenly Dao fell into silence again. It only spoke again a while later. How would I know that youre not trying to frighten me? And how can I be sure that youre not their accomplice? Firstly, its not beneficial to me at all to come up with lies to frighten me. Secondly, my aura is completely different from theirs. You should be able to sense that easily. Having a different aura doesnt prove that youre not one of them. Those guys sent spies to my chaotic cosmos. I cant rule out the possibility that youre not one of their spies based on your aura alone. Lin Huang was rendered speechless by what It said. He could not comprehend how a Heavenly Dao could have such a meticulous sense of logic. Also, dont Dominators like you love to coax chaotic cosmos Heavenly Daos into integrating with your Kingdom? You might be making this up now and then youll make up excuses to work with other powerhouses to fight against the enemies. Your real goal is just to persuade me into integrating with your Kingdom. Its a little too much to call it coaxing Lin Huang could not help but rub his nose. He could not believe that the Heavenly Dao had exposed his true intentions in what It said at the end. Indeed, he wanted to tell It about the dangers of the Abyss before requesting to work together to fight against the enemies and to integrate with his Kingdom. It had said everything that he wanted to say. Since thats the case, I wont beat around the bush. The information about the Abyss I told you about is true. None of it was a lie. However, its also the truth that I want you to integrate with my Kingdom. The reason being is that the chaotic cosmos Im in is also going through the same crisis as you are. Im only at dominator-level rank-1 now. If that dominator-level rank-5 clone wakes up, I wont be His match at all. I must integrate more chaotic cosmos to elevate my ability in order to be able to fight fairly with Him, to the extent that I can even kill Him so that I can solve the crisis in my chaotic cosmos. The Heavenly Dao fell into silence for a long time and did not speak after Lin Huang said that. Just when he thought Heavenly Dao might refuse to continue communicating with him, It finally spoke again. I feel that what you said must be true, but I need time to sort out my thoughts and to think it through. You can check out other chaotic cosmoses first. You dont have to waste your time waiting here. Heavenly Daos response seemed to be out of Lin Huangs expectations. In reality, he was ready to be rejected. However, It did not reject him. Although It did not agree to his request, It had clearly believed in what he said. He could totally understand Its hesitation. Therefore, he did not urge It. Alright, think it through. His clone might wake up anytime, so time is tight right now. Therefore, I cant stay and wait for your decision. I hope you can understand that. Tl come back in a few days. Take these few days to think it through. No matter what your decision is, Ill accept. Alright. See you in a few days, Heavenly Dao responded. Lin Huang did not waste anymore time. He recalled his will projection directly. His Primordium in the universe released a long exhale of breath. He felt that such communication was more tiring than fighting battles. Although the outcome isnt desirable, the communication can be considered to be quite successful.. Also, its not exactly a bad outcome. OTE 1 left Chapter 1829 - Successful Persuasion Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Lin Huang became calm after the three consecutive failed attempts. After all, he expected such an outcome from the beginning. Now that he had been rejected over and over again in reality, it verified his expectations from before. Seems like Ill need to be 101% prepared in order to achieve the one-tenth success rate. Lin Huang calmed himself down. He replayed the communication between him and the third Heavenly Dao earlier, and spent a few minutes organizing his thoughts. Only then did he select the fourth chaotic cosmos and send his will projection over. As Lin Huang expected, the fourth chaotic cosmos was also being invaded by the Abyss as well. The invasion had occupied close to 40% of the chaotic cosmos. He tried to communicate with the Heavenly Dao. He even used his pre-prepared speech that he worked on. However, this time, It pretended not to hear him throughout the entire process. It did not respond to him at all. It made Lin Huang think that something had gone wrong with the Communication Card. He only found out that there was nothing wrong with the cards function after asking Xiao Hei about it. The Heavenly Dao could hear his voice transmission, but It just ignored him. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang could only choose to give up. Theres really nothing that I can do when I run into those who refuse to communicate He knew that he did not need to waste his time when he encountered those who refused to communicate. The reason for that was the cost of convincing It would likely be too high, while the success rate would be abysmally low. After recalling his will projection, Lin Huang projected his will toward the fifth chaotic cosmos without hesitation. The fifth chaotic cosmos was also being invaded by the Abyss. However, the progress of the invasion here was even lower than the third chaotic cosmos, at approximately 8%. This chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao was easy to talk to. It chatted with Lin Huang for a while, it could even be considered to be a joyful chat. Lin Huang thought it would be a definite success after the chat but, in the end, It still hesitated, saying that It needed time to consider it. He then retrieved his will projection and teasingly said while smiling, I thought Id definitely get it This guy It got so much information about the Abyss from me and, in the end, It did this to me! Even he had to admit that the Heavenly Dao that he chatted with this time was just like a human. He also realized that Heavenly Daos had all sorts of characters. Just like humans, each of them had their own characters and personalities. After the exchange ended, Lin Huang replayed the entire conversation in his mind and improved his pre-prepared speech again. Only then did he project his will for the sixth time Then the seventh, eighth and ninth times later on He failed 13 times consecutively. Although he did not feel like a loser, he felt a little exhausted. The reason being was that he had to watch everything he said during such an exchange. Sometimes, he would need to read in between the lines of the Heavenly Daos words. Each time the exchange ended, he would have to replay each and every sentence mentally, and wrack his brain to improve his speech. Fortunately, although none of the 13 exchanges was a success, in reality, only half of them rejected him outright, while the rest needed time to think. After the 13th visit ended, Lin Huang replayed the previous exchange mentally again. He then selected the 14th chaotic cosmos and projected his will over again. He had gotten used to the process now. Firstly, he would spread out his Divine Telekinesis to check out the internal situation of the chaotic cosmos. However, he could not help but frown when he did so this time. He was surprised to find that everywhere his Divine Telekinesis scanned through had been invaded by Abyssal creatures. Lin Huang teleported himself to a couple of locations. He examined the entire chaotic cosmos thoroughly. Tm afraid this chaotic cosmos will fall completely within a few months Under his investigation using Divine Telekinesis, he saw that over 95% of the chaotic cosmos was invaded by Abyssal creatures. Only some locals in the few cities survived. They were having a hard time holding out too. However, these cities had been surrounded by Abyssal creatures. It was only a matter of time before they fell. It was Lin Huangs first time seeing such a situation that was beyond cure. The most serious situation he had seen before had only been 70% occupied by the Abyss. He even hesitated for a second, as he was not too sure if it was necessary for him to even communicate with the Heavenly Dao when the condition was so bad. However, he decided to try after thinking for a moment. After all, such a chaotic cosmos that was heavily contaminated by Abyssal energy was toxic for other Dominators, but it was no different from a normal chaotic cosmos to him. With Eternity Fire, he could even refine a legitimate Abyssal creatures Kingdom. After crushing a Communication Card, Lin Huang did not use his usual speech, nor did he even introduce himself. He said directly, Seems like you dont have much time left. The Heavenly Dao did not respond. Lin Huang waited for a moment before continuing, Do you know where these guys who invaded your chaotic cosmos come from? It still did not respond. Lin Huang waited again before continuing to speak, These guys are Abyssal creatures. They have a powerful dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse behind them. Its said that this Dominator has tens of thousands of clones scattered all over to recruit believers, with the goal of integrating more chaotic cosmos to strengthen Himself. Judging from your chaotic cosmos current condition, it shouldnt take long before it becomes His completely. As soon as the entire chaotic cosmos is fully contaminated by His Abyssal energy, He can refine you. At that point, there will be nowhere for you to run! Who are you exactly?! Heavenly Dao finally responded. Tm the person who is here to help you. Lin Huang smirked lightly after hearing Its response. How can you help me? According to what you said, that person is at dominator-level rank-5, the Heavenly Dao raised Its doubts immediately. The dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses Primordium is still in deep sleep. Even the clones that He has scattered all over are in deep sleep. You actually still have quite a bit of room to maneuver. Tell me then, whats your solution? The Heavenly Dao asked again. Its easy. Integrate with my Kingdom, and Ill help you get rid of these invaders, Lin Huang told It his solution directly. Thats your solution?! Heavenly Dao laughed out of rage. Then let me ask you, why would I integrate with you instead of that dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse? You shouldve sensed how evil the Abyssal aura is. Do you think Hell let you keep your consciousness after He integrates you with His Kingdom? Lin Huang asked in return, However, if you integrate with my Kingdom, I can guarantee that I wont remove any of the Heavenly Daos consciousnesses. The Heavenly Dao fell silent momentarily. That was the reason why many Heavenly Daos were unwilling to integrate with the Dominators Kingdoms. This was especially true when it came to some of the more powerful Dominators. The more chaotic cosmoses they had in their bodies, the stronger the resistance they encountered due to the Heavenly Daos. In order to reduce such resistance and allow the Kingdom to accommodate more chaotic cosmos, some Dominators would remove those Heavenly Daos consciousnesses directly. Although this would not solve the problem of resistance between the chaotic cosmoses entirely, it could reduce it by half at least. Looking at the current situation, you dont have much time. The remaining few cities might not even last two months. Tll just give it to you straight. Im your last hope. I have a unique way to remove the Abyssal energy contamination. Other Dominators cant do that. Even if they could, they might not be willing to waste the time and effort. Heavenly Dao fell into a long period of silence before speaking up again after hearing his words. Can you swear not to remove my consciousness? Sure, Lin Huang agreed to Its request directly. Alright then. I agree to the integration. The Heavenly Dao finally agreed to do it.. Chapter 1830 - Ultimate Heavenly Dao?! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Thanks to the Heavenly Daos cooperation, the integration of Lin Huangs Kingdom and the Heavenly Dao was unusually successful. The entire integration process lasted less than ten minutes. Lin Huang could clearly sense that, once the second chaotic cosmos integrated with his Kingdom, the particles in his physical body and Gods soul underwent a tiny transformation. Many Dao seals were unlocked in his body. Meanwhile, the total number of Dao seals in his Kingdom had been multiplied by a few times. Just as Lin Huang was carefully sensing the changes in his body, something strange suddenly happened to his Kingdom. The Heavenly Dao that had just completed the integration process began to integrate with the universes Heavenly Dao. The two Heavenly Daos tried to resist it by instinct. However, the second the integration process started, the two of them stopped struggling. Do you feel that too? The universes Heavenly Dao asked. Ido. You too? The second Heavenly Dao responded immediately. Can it be that thing from the legend? The second Heavenly Dao asked again. I dont know, but it feels a little like it, the universes Heavenly Dao said. Lin Huang was confused as he listened to their words. He had no idea what the two of them were talking about at all. Can you two explain whats going on? We suspect that your Kingdom is slightly unusual. It can possibly consolidate the Ultimate Heavenly Dao, the second Heavenly Dao explained. Ultimate Heavenly Dao?! It was Lin Huangs first time hearing that term. Its the ultimate form a Heavenly Dao can elevate to, the universes Heavenly Dao explained. Seeing that Lin Huang was still confused, the universes Heavenly Dao continued to explain, In reality, the Heavenly Dao of a single chaotic cosmos like us is the basic form of a Heavenly Dao. The higher grade Heavenly Dao is a Heavenly Dao thats formed naturally after integrating a couple or over ten chaotic cosmoses. It rarely occurs in the infinite universe. However, legend has it that theres an ultimate form of Heavenly Dao. Its formed by integrating innumerable Heavenly Daos. Such a Heavenly Dao could integrate all of the Heavenly Daos endlessly, making them a part of Itself. Its called the Ultimate Heavenly Dao! Is said that only the Kingdom of a powerhouse who has surpassed dominator-level can consolidate such a Heavenly Dao. Then why do you guys think that my Kingdom can do something like that? Lin Huang still could not wrap his head around it. Because after I integrated with your Kingdom, I began to integrate with another Heavenly Dao automatically. Such an integration isnt forced, nor will it wipe away our consciousness. Theres no uneasiness throughout the integration process at all. The both of us still have our consciousnesses, becoming a cluster of consciousness. Although were not sure what a legitimate Ultimate Heavenly Dao looks like, our integration this time gives me the feeling that this might be the legendary Ultimate Heavenly Dao, the second Heavenly Dao explained. Other Dominators wont have their Heavenly Daos integrated like this as well? Lin Huang could not help but ask. After all, he was a rookie Dominator. The information about dominator-level he obtained from Qian Shisan was only surface-level. He only knew that dominator-level powerhouses cultivated by integrating more chaotic Kingdoms continuously. He did not know the details of dominator-level powerhouses cultivation. No. Of this Im aware, the second Heavenly Dao explained further, Many years before my chaotic cosmos was invaded, there was a Dominator who tried to persuade me to integrate with his Kingdom, who told me many things about a Dominators cultivation. Usually, after a Dominator integrated his Kingdom with the chaotic cosmos, each chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao existed on their own, possessing their own consciousness. In the same Kingdom, the Heavenly Daos could communicate with each other on a surface level, but they could not probe the internal condition of other chaotic Kingdoms, nor could they intervene with the other chaotic Kingdoms: internal operations. However, in your Kingdom, not only can we communicate on a deeper level, we are even aware of whatever the other Heavenly Dao is thinking about. We can also probe the other chaotic cosmos internal condition, as well as intervene in its operations. Thats why I think your Kingdom is unusual. If this happens to all the Heavenly Daos that integrate with your Kingdom, I think we might become a cluster consciousness, forming the Ultimate Heavenly Dao that can be strengthened continuously. My Kingdoms consolidation and elevation process are indeed different compared to other cultivators Lin Huang nodded and admitted. However, he did not agree to what the Heavenly Daos said immediately. However, we cant conclude that the Ultimate Heavenly Dao can be consolidated like you said. We must integrate more chaotic cosmoses, and use data to verify this hypothesis. Then what are you waiting for? Quick, lets head to the next chaotic cosmos! The second Heavenly Dao urged. Dont we need to sort out whats happening in your chaotic cosmos first? Lin Huang thought he would do a simple clean-up operation before heading to the next chaotic cosmos. However, the Heavenly Dao continued to urge him, My matter isnt urgent. Its more important to verify your Kingdoms characteristics! Alright then Lin Huang did not expect It to be so impatient. After recalling his will projection, he soon projected his will toward the next chaotic cosmos. The 15th chaotic cosmos was contaminated by the Abyss pretty badly as well. Close to 80% of the chaotic cosmos was contaminated. After scanning through the chaotic cosmos with Divine Telekinesis to get a rough idea, Lin Huang took out another Communication Card again and started a new round of communication with the Heavenly Dao. This Heavenly Dao was fickle-minded. It was hesitating. Lin Huang chatted with It for about ten minutes. It did not reject, nor did it agree. It was simply hesitating and dawdling. At that moment, the second Heavenly Dao could no longer hold back. Let me communicate with It. Lin Huang was stunned for a second before nodding. Sure. Subsequently, he released the second Heavenly Daos consciousness out of his body. As soon as It came out, the two Heavenly Daos began to communicate. Stop hesitating. Look at your chaotic cosmos. Itll probably fall completely within two years. By then, your entire chaotic cosmos would be occupied. Theres nowhere for you to run, and youll end up being integrated by force. After that, your consciousness might be wiped out directly. You might as well come with us! Let me tell you this. Our host has the Supreme Kingdom in his body. Well become the Ultimate Heavenly Dao Lin Huang was speechless after hearing that. This second Heavenly Dao was even better at boasting than he was! He did not know whether the Kingdom in his body could integrate endless Heavenly Daos, yet the second Heavenly Dao said it so confidently, as if it had been confirmed. The chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao was dizzy from the persuasion. In the end, It agreed to the integration while in a daze. The entire communication process only lasted less than five minutes. Lin Huang could not help but secretly give a thumbs up as he watched it take place. Since the Heavenly Dao agreed to it, he soon began a new round of integration. This time, the same situation happened again when the new Heavenly Dao integrated with his Kingdom. The new Heavenly Dao began to integrate with the previous two Heavenly Daos quickly. Just like what the two Heavenly Daos predicted, the three Heavenly Daos very soon became one. Although they possessed their own individual consciousness, the three of them seemed to have become a cluster of consciousness, whereby they could read each others minds. The three chaotic cosmos were no secret to the three Heavenly Daos at all. They could probe each other, intervene with each other, as if the two other chaotic cosmos were theirs. Up to this point, Lin Huang was a little suspicious whether his Kingdom was actually the legendary Supreme Kingdom that could consolidate the Ultimate Heavenly Dao.. Chapter 1831 - Elevated to Dominator-Level Rank-4! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation After the third chaotic cosmos was integrated successfully, the Heavenly Daos integrated again. The three Heavenly Daos seemed to have become one, becoming a cluster of consciousness. Not only did they share their thoughts, the three chaotic cosmos could interact with each other. Lin Huang began to suspect that his Kingdom really had the ability to integrate the Heavenly Daos into the Ultimate Heavenly Dao. Still slightly doubtful, he visited the next chaotic cosmos. It was also being invaded by the Abyss. However, the invasion had only occupied some 40% of the chaotic cosmos. This time, Lin Huang only said a few sentences before the second Heavenly Dao failed to hold Itself back from interrupting, and once again tried to persuade the Heavenly Dao. Very soon, the third Heavenly Dao joined in the persuasion process too. What surprised Lin Huang even more was that the Heavenly Dao was being persuaded so directly this time. The entire process was so smooth that it was beyond his expectations. When his Kingdom integrated with the Heavenly Dao, the fourth Heavenly Dao began to integrate with the other Heavenly Daos. Only then did he fully believe what the universes Heavenly Dao said. Perhaps his Kingdom was really the legendary Supreme Kingdom. From that point on, Lin Huangs visits became more and more successful. As the current Heavenly Daos began to persuade the new ones, and more and more Heavenly Daos joined the persuasion process, the chaotic cosmos Heavenly Daos agreed to integrate one after the other. It was completely different from the continuous rejection Lin Huang faced previously. Since the Heavenly Daos took over the persuasion process, his success rate had even surpassed 95%. His Kingdom did not seem to not need any rest at all. It integrated with chaotic cosmoses one after the other, and it went through transformations one after the other, expanding over and over again. Within just a day, Lin Huang had integrated with over a hundred chaotic cosmoses. He managed to elevate from dominator-level rank-1 all the way to dominator-level rank-3. The particles in his Gods soul and physical body had transformed twice. He had no idea how much his level of ability had increased within that short span of time. Judging by the current rate at which things are progressing, I might only need around ten days to elevate to dominator-level rank-4. Ill do that first! Lin Huang checked the time and teleported his Primordium to the chaotic cosmos that he had just integrated with. Then, he projected his will farther away, beginning a new round of integration. With the Heavenly Daos working together to persuade them, the Heavenly Daos of the chaotic cosmoses seemed to be unable to resist the temptation to become a part of the Ultimate Heavenly Dao. They agreed to the integration directly. Apart from a few Heavenly Daos that insisted on rejecting the integration, the rest of the Heavenly Daos were convinced.1 Just like that, Lin Huangs Kingdom grew quickly as he integrated with up to a hundred chaotic cosmoses per day. His level of ability was skyrocketing. Almost a week later, he had finally integrated more than 1,000 chaotic cosmoses. It was faster than he had expected. Up to this point, Lin Huang had successfully elevated to dominator-level rank-4. He was almost certain that he was the fastest person who had elevated from dominator-level rank-1 to dominator-level rank- in the history of the infinite universe. He was the one and only. He thought about it for a while. Judging by the current rate of integration efficiency, he figured he would need at least two months or so to elevate to dominator-level rank-5, so he decisively made a batch of clones and projected them into the over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses that he had integrated with. The clones began to handle the issues of the chaotic cosmoses being invaded by the Abyss. Meanwhile, his Primordium continued to project his will farther away without wasting even a second. He continued to integrate with more chaotic cosmoses. Although the clone that had returned to the universe did not have a level of ability on par with Lin Huangs Primordium who was at dominator-level rank-4, it was at least at the peak of dominator-level rank-3. His clone ability was countless times more powerful than his Primordium eight days ago. After the clone returned to the universe, he began to sort out the Primordiums thoughts throughout those couple of days. His Kingdom seemed to be unusual indeed. Firstly, his Kingdom seemed to be able to contain an endless amount of chaotic cosmoses. There was no limit in quantity, nor was there a cooldown period. Each time a chaotic cosmos was integrated, his Kingdom would expand. It would expand even larger than the chaotic cosmos it had just integrated with. It did not need to rest from the continuous integrations. According to the information Lin Huang obtained from the Heavenly Daos, he knew that the other Dominators could not do that at all. The reason being was that there was a limit on the number of chaotic cosmoses that Dominators could integrate with. Another reason was that the dominator-level powerhouses Kingdom would enter a period of digestion for a short duration each time a chaotic cosmos was integrated. Even if the Heavenly Dao agreed to the integration, their Kingdom would need time to communicate with the chaotic cosmos on a deeper level. It was like how one would need time to digest after having eaten. The digestion period would take at least a couple of years, if short, and might even last for hundreds to thousands of years, if long. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs Kingdom did not seem to know what a digestion period was at all. Secondly, the Heavenly Daos that integrated with his Kingdom were just like what the universes Kingdom said. They could integrate into a cluster of consciousness automatically. All of the Heavenly Daos could read each others thoughts. There were no secrets at all. Not only that, all of the Heavenly Daos could probe other chaotic cosmoses internal conditions, as well as intervening in their operations. It was exactly the same as the legendary Ultimate Heavenly Dao. Even Lin Huang could not understand why his Kingdom could do something like that. Naturally, this function had brought many conveniences to him. Almost all Heavenly Daos were willing to integrate with his Kingdom after listening to the Heavenly Daos persuasion. This was a treatment that other Dominators would never enjoy. It would be great if other dominator-level powerhouses could get one Heavenly Dao to agree to integrate with their Kingdom after visiting a hundred chaotic cosmoses. With the help of the persuasion team led by the Heavenly Daos, Lin Huangs success rate of integration had almost surpassed 99%. Thirdly, his combat strength had been skyrocketing as the number of chaotic cosmoses his Kingdom integrated with grew quickly. Within eight short days, he had elevated from dominator-level rank-1 to dominator-level rank-4,. He still needed time to adapt to the all-around increase of his level of ability from the elevation. He had to get used to the strength of his Gods soul, physical body, Divine Telekinesis and more Fourthly, the transformation of the particles in his body and Gods soul naturally brought a transformation to the God Weapons in his body as well. Lin Huang was almost sure that his battle sword, armors, Soul Weapons and telekinetic weapon should have surpassed the standards of a chaotic supreme treasure. It was just that he did not know what the grade above chaotic supreme treasure was. Fifthly, his skyrocketed combat strength had actually highlighted his lack of knowledge. His basic understanding of the infinite universe was actually worse than many dominator-level rank-1 powerhouses. He was not even aware of the basic knowledge of the grading system for treasures above chaotic supreme treasure, let alone many other things. He definitely needed to spend some time to remedy this. Lin Huangs clone concluded its thoughts on the information one after the other, and soon transferred the sorted information to the Primordium. After that, he began to focus on the problem of the universe being invaded. Chapter 1832 - Was I Too Harsh?! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Lin Huang had absolute confidence that now his Primordium had elevated to dominator-level rank-4. His clone spent less than half a day since returning to the universe to sneak into a couple of the grade-SS$ organizations without anyone noticing, He visited the people from the Black Abyss who had been imprisoned. After removing the Kingdoms from their bodies, he spent less than half a day sneaking into the nine star zones that the Black Abyss had occupied. He retrieved all of the Kingdoms from the Black Abyss members bodies without anyone realizing. After doing that, he sent messages to Royal and the rest of the grade-SSS organizations to get them to pick up the pieces and clean up. With his current level of ability, he no longer cared whether or not Azas clone came. He had the confidence to fight Him even if he woke Azas clone in advance by retrieving the Kingdoms from those guys bodies. Apart from the universe, similar things happened in the other chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huangs clones invaded the camps under the wing of Azas clones directly. They retrieved all of the half-step Dominators and heavenly dao-level powerhouses Kingdoms. With his clones dominator-level rank-3 ability, the members of those organizations were suppressed easily without having any power to resist at all. Lin Huangs clones did not encounter any obstacles at all throughout the entire process. Just like that, the over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses under him, which were facing an invasion crisis, had their problems significantly resolved within a day. After doing that, Lin Huang did not interfere further. Instead, he got the locals to clean up the remaining mess. However, he accelerated this process. Before this, the Great Heaven Palaces time flow acceleration only reached one million times. Since Lin Huang had elevated to dominator-level rank-4, and integrated over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses in his body, the Great Heaven Palaces functions were transformed over and over again. The time flow acceleration function was increased to a billion times now. This meant that, under the maximum possible time flow acceleration, one day in the outside world would be close to 2.74 million years inside Lin Huangs Kingdom. To be safe, he did not accelerate his Kingdom to a billion times faster rashly. Instead, he accelerated time flow from the initial one million times faster to ten million times faster first. As such, a day in the outside world was 27,000 years in his Kingdom. After accelerating the time flow in the over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses, Lin Huangs clones remained inside, guarding the chaotic cosmoses and watching over their development. The over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses development was soon back on track after the threat of the Abyss invasion was removed. Only a day had passed in the outside world, and the number of cultivators in the over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses in Lin Huangs Kingdom had doubled. His clones did not stay idle. They spent most of their time refining the unlocked Dao seals. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs Primordium in the outside world did not stop integrating chaotic cosmoses. He would integrate at least a hundred chaotic cosmoses everyday. At the same time, he would also produce more clones to guard those newly-added chaotic cosmoses to handle the issue of the Abyss invasion. After handling all of the chaotic cosmoses that were invaded, they would include them in the range of the Great Heaven Palaces time flow acceleration, which would increase their accelerated time flow to 10 million times faster. Just like that, half a month had gone by. The number of chaotic cosmoses in Lin Huangs Kingdom had successfully broken through the 3,000-mark. Although he did not break through to dominator-level rank-5, his level of ability was significantly more powerful compared to half a month ago. However, just as he was happily integrating chaotic cosmoses with his Kingdom, a message suddenly arrived from his clonesomething seemed to be going on with Azas clone. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang could only pause the integration process of the chaotic cosmoses and returned to the universe to check things out. The abnormality was detected within the universe and the tens of chaotic cosmoses around the universe. Nothing happened to the other chaotic cosmoses. That made Lin Huang suspect if groups of tens of chaotic cosmoses were taken care of by the same clone of Aza. The other chaotic cosmoses might be territories under other clones of Aza. Sensing the messages sent by dozens of his clones, Lin Huang soon had a rough understanding of the situation. The Abyss in the tens of chaotic cosmoses had the same unusual event occurring. Countless Abyssal monsters began to rush out of the Abyss. At the same time, the mystic territories in those chaotic cosmoses began to appear frantically. From minor dao-level to heavenly dao-level, there would be up to a hundred mystic territories opening everyday. Even some of the fog outside the mystic territories began to spread out and invade the star zones of the material realm. These signs indicated that Azas clones were waking up! When Lin Huangs Primordium received the news, he returned to the universe instantly and headed straight into the Abyss. After entering, from a glance, he saw Abyssal monsters rushing out from deep within the Abyss like a black wave. They were heading to the universe from a spatial rift connected to the universe. As he hid his existence through Heavenly Dao, it was as if they did not see him at all as those Abyssal monsters continued to rush forward following the orders of the powerhouse that was deep in the Abyss. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis and found out that the entire Abyss had gone berserk. It seemed that all of the Abyssal monsters were controlled by Azas clones. His Divine Telekinesis very soon spread out toward the deepest layer of the Abyss. He sensed a disgusting aura. However, that aura was rather obscure. His Divine Telekinesis seemed to have been blocked by something that prevented him from probing further. He could not get to the source of the aura. He squinted and recalled his Divine Telekinesis after thinking to himself for a moment. He appeared in the deepest layer of the Abyss directly in a flash. It was an area that was completely dark. The darkness took away all of Lin Huangs senses. This feeling was exactly like his two previous trips into the mystic territories before. Not only was his sense of vision, hearing, smell and touch taken away, he also lost sense of space and time. Nevertheless, he did not panic at all. The reason being was, although his senses were taken away, he could see everything in this dark space clearly with Divine Telekinesis. This seemed to be the other entitys Kingdom. It was empty inside. Lin Huang finally saw Him for the first time. He looked like a lump of flesh that was squirming around continuously. There were sarcomas, tentacles and meaty ridges all over His body. His single eye was the only thing that stood out. The red eye, that seemed to have lava swirling inside, opened. It stared fixedly at Lin Huang. He doesnt seem powerful Lin Huang mumbled softly as he commented. The strength of his aura only seemed to be at dominator-level rank-3. He was even weaker than Lin Huangs clone. Naturally, he knew that he could not judge ones level of ability solely by their aura. Therefore, without holding back, he summoned his God Weapon flying daggers. The hundreds of millions of flying daggers were unleashed in three waves. He used the Dominator Power of the over 1,000 chaotic cosmoses, drowning Him entirely. However, Lin Huang had a slight change of expression after merely a second passed. What happened? He died just like that?! Was I too harsh?! Dont tell me this guy is faking his death to trick me? 2 Chapter 1833 - Dominator-Level Rank-5! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Hes really dead?! Lin Huang had a doubtful expression on his face when he looked at Azas clones fading body that was slowly turing into black fog. This clone of Aza was indeed rather weak. His level of ability was even weaker than Lin Huangs clone. The one that I saw in the mystic territory previously shouldnt be this clone. That one felt much more powerful Before Lin Huang became a Dominator, he had stepped into unknown areas hidden in the mystic territories twice before. He was even almost killed once. He had an intuitive feeling about how powerful Azas clones were at that time. Although his combat strength was too low back then, which may have resulted in the feeling he had from the clones ability being amplified, he thought that clone should at least be more powerful than the one that was right in front of him now. As Azas clones faded away, the army of Abyssal monsters in the entire Abyss fell into chaos. Not only did that, they began to attack each other. The entire Abyss descended into war instantly. Lin Huang scanned his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis. The next second, God Weapon flying daggers shot forth like electric arcs from his sleeves. A moment later, the God Weapon flying daggers returned, bringing with them the carcasses of half-step dominator-level and heavenly dao-level Abyssal monsters. Lin Huang put those carcasses in his storage space before leaving in a flash. When he returned to the universe, he saw that those Abyssal monsters that had entered the universe had given up on forming an army and had begun to fight each other. He knew that the crisis of the Abyss invasion of the universe had been basically resolved. He got Heavenly Dao to speak to the grade-SSS organizations through voice transmission, asking them to tie up the loose ends. He left directly to the second chaotic cosmos that had been invaded. Lin Huang headed straight into the Abyss as soon as he entered the second chaotic cosmos. This Abyss situation was almost completely the same as the one in the universe. His Primordium dove directly into the deepest part of the Abyss. As he scanned with his Divine Telekinesis, he saw Azas clone once again in the endless darkness. The clone was exactly identical to the clone that he killed earlier. Not only did He look the same, even His aura was virtually the same. Without hesitation, Lin Huang attacked again. This time, he controlled the force of his attack. He only used dominator-level rank-3 ability. However, he killed the clone easily and instantly again. This time, he was sure that he did not have to use his Primordium at all. His clones were powerful enough to kill Azas clones. After clearing out the half-step dominator-level and heavenly dao-level Abyssal monsters in this Abyss, Lin Huang headed straight to the third chaotic cosmos after he returned. The third clearance went even smoother than the two chaotic cosmoses before. At this point, Lin Huang was absolutely certain that he did not have to go to the chaotic cosmoses that were being invaded using his Primordium. After he returned to the chaotic cosmos, he contacted his remaining clones immediately, sharing the entire process of him resolving the three crises to them. Then he ordered his clones to resolve the Abyss crises in their respective chaotic cosmoses. The clones who were guarding the invaded chaotic cosmoses took action as soon as they received this order. They dove into the Abyss. Very soon, the clones sent messages to inform him that they had completed the clean-up process, and shared the details to Lin Huang. He selectively picked out some of the processes that were shared to him after confirming that the 40 or so chaotic cosmoses that had been invaded by the Abyss were cleared by his clones. Watching the recordings, he observed that everything had gone smoothly. It was almost no different from him handling it himself. His clones killed the clones of Aza they saw instantly. After all, the gap between beginner dominator-level rank-3 and peak dominator-level rank-3 was significant. One had only integrated hundreds of chaotic cosmoses, while another had integrated close to 1,000 chaotic cosmos. After watching those recordings, Lin Huang asked his clones if they had come across anything unusual. He was completely relieved when all of his clones answered no. Ina flash, he appeared at the previous chaotic cosmos and continued to project his will onto another chaotic cosmos to integrate with his Kingdom. Since he discovered that the burden of integrating his Kingdom with chaotic cosmoses had become lighter as his combat strength elevated, he released ten will projections directly to accelerate his efforts at integration. Time passed by and, soon, a week had passed. Throughout the week, the chaotic cosmoses in his body were invaded by the Abyss twice. However, his clones managed to suppress the invasions immediately. The clones of Aza leading the two invasions seemed to have almost been cut from the same mold. All of them were only at beginner dominator-level rank-3. Such a level of ability was usually more than enough to suppress the chaotic cosmos. However, it was weak compared to Lin Huangs clones. Meanwhile, his Primordium had integrated over 10,000 chaotic cosmos with his Kingdom throughout the past week. He had officially stepped into dominator-level rank-5. In the entire infinite universe, dominator-level rank-5 was the top combat strength. After all, the most powerful person recorded in the infinite universes history was only at dominator-level rank-5. However, Lin Huang did not feel that he was at his limit. He could clearly feel that his Kingdom could integrate more chaotic cosmoses. Ten thousand chaotic cosmoses were far from the limit. Nevertheless, he could clearly feel that his ability had gone through a transformation since elevating to dominator-level rank-5. Not only did his Kingdom become more powerful, his physical body, particles in his Gods soul, Divine Telekinesis, Odyl and even Dominator Power All of them were transformed. His level of ability was completely different now compared to over 20 days ago. The transformation of particles in his body had naturally brought a transformation to the few God Weapons in his body as well. Lin Huang even felt that the God Weapons that had been elevated alongside him might be the highest grade of treasures in the infinite universe. The four God Weapons gave him the feeling that there were four terrifying powerhouses living in his body. He was very sure that even chaotic supreme treasures would definitely break under the attack of his God Weapon battle sword or God Weapon flying daggers. Meanwhile, the Heavenly Daos of the over 10,000 chaotic cosmoses in his body were co-existing in harmony. Just like the universes Heavenly Dao said, They had become a cluster of consciousness. Each of them had their own individual consciousness, and yet they could read each others minds as well as access all sorts of information. They could even intervene with the operation of any chaotic cosmos in his body. Even Lin Huang could not understand how this was happening. Nevertheless, he did not become prideful just because he had been elevated to dominator-level rank-5. To him, as long as there was room for improvement, he would work hard toward that goal. Therefore, he did not stop to rest after elevating to dominator-level rank-5. Instead, he continued to project his will to integrate with more chaotic cosmoses. Since the burden of integrating his Kingdom with chaotic cosmoses became even lighter when elevated to dominator-level rank-5, he figured he would release hundreds of will projections and spread them out to speed up the integration of chaotic cosmoses. The effect of the over 10,000 Heavenly Daos persuasion, alongside with the will projection, was undoubtedly stunning. He merely used a day to integrate over 10,000 chaotic cosmoses, doubling the number of chaotic cosmoses and Heavenly Daos in his body. Judging by the speed at which the integration is progressing, perhaps I will elevate to dominator-level rank-6 a week from now. Lin Huang thought to himself with burning desire in his eyes. However, this round of integration only went on for less than three days when something happened to the chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom again Chapter 1834 - The Unprecedented Powerful Enemy! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation In Lin Huangs Kingdom, something happened in the over 40,000 chaotic cosmoses almost at the same time. Regardless of whether it was the range that was affected by the unusual fluctuations, or the aura emanating out of it, it was far greater than Azas clones from before. Can it be that Azas Primordium has woken up?! That thought popped into Lin Huangs mind instantly when he sensed the unusual situation. The spatial rifts in the Abyss in the over 40,000 chaotic cosmoses were expanding frantically. They were spreading and stretching out like vines that seemed to have been doused in growth potion. They were spreading out in every direction. Within the short span of one minute, they had almost occupied over one-third of the over 40,000 chaotic cosmoses. Watching the strange scene unfold, Lin Huang did not enter the Abyss with his Primordium rashly. After all, if Azas Primordium had woken up, he might not be His match. He might be seeking death if he acted rashly. He thought for a moment while frowning lightly, after which he issued his orders. The ten clones that were guarding ten different chaotic cosmoses stepped into the Abyss in a flash without hesitation. Ten of them shared their visions directly, showing Lin Huang what they were seeing in real-time. As his Primordium had been elevated to dominator-level rank-5, his current clones level of ability had reached the peak of dominator-level rank-4. They were considered top powerhouses in the infinite universe. The ten clones entered the Abyss at the same time. However, the second they landed in the Abyss, a red glow lit up. Subsequently, all Lin Huangs Primordium saw was darkness. His pupils shrunk lightly. He sensed that his clones had died. Not only that, all ten clones had died at the same time. His ten peak dominator-level rank-4, clones that had entered at the same time were killed instantly. Although Lin Huang only took a brief glance at it, the red glow gave him a familiar feeling. It was the red glow that had almost killed him when he went into the unknown dimension deep in the mystic territory previously. Were it not for Xiao Heis Substitute Card, his Primordium might have died back then. Dominator-level rank-5?! Lin Huang frowned. The persons level of ability was self-evident, as He could kill ten of his dominator-level rank-4, clones simultaneously. He might be even more powerful than his Primordium. Can it really be that Azas Primordium has really woken up?! He did not think that it was the clones ability. After all, the legend had it that there was no powerhouse that surpassed dominator-level rank-5 in the entire infinite universe. Judging from that, Azas clones would only have dominator-level rank-5 combat strength at most. Lin Huang frowned deeply. After all, Aza was a known supreme powerhouse and had been for a long time. Even though He had fallen into deep sleep, His name was spread throughout a couple of eras. It proved how powerful and terrifying He was. The fact that Lin Huangs ten clones were killed instantly just now proved it as well. He did not have the confidence to win when facing such an opponent. Watching the Abyss spreading out like tentacles, and releasing black fog-like Abyssal energy that was contaminating everything in its surroundings, Lin Huang knew that he could no longer hesitate. The Abyss would cover all of the chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom if he hesitated, contaminating them on a large scale. He might not be able to clear them out even if he had Eternity Fire. If he did not eradicate the source, the over 40,000 chaotic cosmoses in his body might be completely contaminated in the end. By then, the Heavenly Daos would become rootless weeds, and would not have enough strength to resist Azas forced refinement. All of the chaotic cosmoses, including the universe, would belong to Aza. Thinking of the consequences, Lin Huang knew that he had no other choice but to fight! He did not hesitate anymore. He put on his God Weapons and shut his eyes to calm his mind. Ina flash, he returned to the universe. Standing on an Abyssal spatial rift in the universe, Lin Huang looked at the black rift that was continuously spreading out and expanding. He dove right into it. This time, the Abyssal rift had turned into a spatial rift completely. Inside the rift, a complicated and powerful dimensional power was crushing all living spirits that were below dominator-level. The dimensional power was pulling and squeezing toward all directions. It was changing continuously and irregularly. In the dark, there were countless dimensional fragments. The powerhouses below dominator-level might be banished to an unknown place if they accidentally touched them. Nevertheless, Lin Huang had completely ignored the unusualness that was going on in this dimension. He continued to dive deeper. A moment later, he passed through a rift zone and finally entered the Abyss. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis as soon as he arrived in the Abyss. He saw the red glow that lit up from a glance. He moved and appeared hundreds of meters away. He managed to dodge the attack of the red glow. He had also clearly seen that the attack had come from an eye. The attack was a unique ocular skill. It would attack anything it saw directly. The attack could even leap through dimensions, shooting from the eye directly onto the target that it captured within its vision out of thin air. His ocular skill was almost unavoidable to people whose combat strength was lower than His. The reason being was that they could not react in time at all! Lin Huangs clones from before were already considered among the top combat strength in the infinite universe, which was dominator-level rank-4. Their level of ability had even surpassed most top dominator-level rank-4 powerhouses. However, they were killed before they could even see the attack clearly. The eyes master seemed to be confused that the attack had missed. Nevertheless, the confusion only lasted a moment. More attacks came consecutively. Lin Huang saw the red glows light up in the air. He flashed consecutively without hesitation. If one were to watch the battle from far, they would only see blood-colored electric arcs lighting up continuously, like 10,000 lightning bolts striking at the same time, as if there was a heavenly tribulation. Star zones and worlds where they passed through turned into nothingness instantly. Only the two people fighting the battle knew that the speed of the attacks was beyond the speed of light. The blood-colored electric arcs were not the attack trajectories of the blood-colored glows, but rather the afterimages that appeared when the attacks missed during the spatial flickering. In the air, the number of the red glows that were like blood-colored suns continued to grow. The red glows were sparkling even brighter and were far more dense now. However, Lin Huang was moving with ease amidst the endless sparkle of electric arcs. Naturally, he was also using dimensional power. He used spatial flickering in each step he took. It was not limited to dimensional power, he even used the power of time. The attacks that were completely unavoidable to others seemed to be moving in slow-motion to him. He could see the second each attack came, as well as react appropriately and instantly. However, it only seemed easy. Only Lin Huang knew how dangerous this battle was. As soon as the attack touched him, his bodys movements would be obstructed, and he might be doomed.. Chapter 1835 - Give Me Them, Or Die! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation In the air, the number of blood-colored eyes that were like suns was growing continuously. Ten thousand eyes! Twenty thousand eyes! Thirty thousand eyes! Almost within a blink of an eye, the number grew to 99,999 eyes. Endless red glows lit up consecutively, lighting up the entire sky. Blood-colored electric arcs were like lightning streaking across the sky. Everywhere they passed through was turned into nothingness. Lin Huangs body did not stop flickering. He looked like he was taking a stroll amidst the storm, but he did not fight back at all. His Divine Telekinesis was spread out the entire time, carefully counting each time the number of eyes increased during each attack. Once the number of the blood-colored eyes grew to 99,999, it finally stopped increasing. At that moment, Lin Huangs flickering body, that had been passively defending, finally moved to counterattack. He smirked lightly. The next second, he pointed with his finger. A black mirror as thin as a sheet of paper instantly appeared and shielded his body. It quickly spread out in all directions, It grew from the size of a palm to trillions of square kilometers within a blink of an eye. Almost at the same time, the blood-colored electric arcs hit it and were instantly reflected back. They were now aimed at the crimson eyes that were like blood-colored suns in the air. Lin Huang fully prepared himself for this attack. He waited for the eyes to grow to their maximum number before initiating a sudden counterattack. Countless blood-colored electric arcs were reflected back by the black mirror. They then traveled through the air and attacked the crimson suns directly. All of a sudden, a large amount of the crimson suns dimmed instantly. After a moment, only around 30,000 of the close to 100,000 crimson eyes were still shining. The remaining 30,000 blood-colored eyes instantly ceased their attacks on Lin Huang after the counterattack. Clearly, they knew how powerful Mirror was. They knew that they would only suffer if they continued the attack. Watching the opponents attacks halt, Lin Huang did not recall Mirror immediately. Instead, he began to observe the opponent carefully through the black mirror. He finally saw His appearance clearly for the first time through Divine Telekinesis. It was a pile of irregularly shaped meat that was squirming around continuously. Its size was on par with a chaotic cosmos. He could even be considered the biggest monster that Lin Huang had ever seen. His body had sarcomas, tentacles and meat ridges of all shapes and sizes all around it. There were also countless eyes and mouths of different sizes. If a person who had trypophobia saw this monster, they might have goosebumps all over their body instantly. However, Lin Huang was not shocked by the sight. The reason being was that he had seen Azas clone previously, which looked similar. Though the clones size was smaller than the main body, and there were slight differences in their form, overall, he was fully prepared for the sight of Him looking like this. While Lin Huang was still checking Him out, the center of His body began to squirm. A moment later, a giant eye that occupied one-tenth of His body mass opened slowly. Behind it were at least tens of thousands of pupils staring at Lin Huang, who was still standing behind Mirror at this moment. His eyes could even penetrate the Mirror completely, locking on Lin Huangs figure. When He locked onto Lin Huangs figure, His tens of thousands of mouths opened almost at the same time. The next second, complicated and obscure syllables floated into Lin Huangs ears. Although he had never heard such a language before, he immediately understood His message. Who are you? Shouldnt you introduce yourself first before asking someone who they are? Lin Huang asked back. He used the common language in the universe, but he was not at all worried that He would not understand him. As expected, He responded quickly. However, He used the common language in the universe directly this time. Human, Im Azas clone. The Golden Universe is my territory. Why did you kill so many of my clones, interrupting the process of my integration with the chaotic cosmoses? Clearly, those clones had transferred their memories back to Him when Lin Huang killed them. He found out that Lin Huang was the culprit behind this matter. Lin Huang squinted lightly. Youre just Azas clone, not His Primordium? Of course. The power of my Primordium is far beyond your imagination, Azas clone said proudly, but His tone changed quickly, Human, answer my question. Dont change the subject. The reason for me killing your clones is simple. The Golden Universe is my hometown, and youre contaminating It, Lin Huang explained. Azas clone fell into silence for a moment before quickly speaking again, How about this? You can keep that chaotic cosmos of your hometown, but I must take back the rest of the chaotic cosmoses! Lin Huang could not help but laugh after he heard that. Are you joking?! Ive already completed the integration, and you want me to return them to you?! How about this? I want the chaotic cosmos in your body too. You can keep one that you like for yourself, but give the remaining 99,998 to me. Azas clone clearly heard the sarcasm in Lin Huangs tone. The gigantic eye aside, the remaining 30,000 eyes all stared at him as well. His tone was clearly cold now. Give them to me, or die! Lcan say that same thing too, Lin Huang said while smiling. Subsequently, his tone became serious. Give them to me, or die! He took the initiative to attack as soon as he was done speaking. As usual, endless blood-colored electric arcs shot forth like a lightning storm from his sleeves. They targeted the gigantic meatball in the air. With just a thought, the endless blood-colored lightning warped through space and arrived in front of the meatball directly. The giant meatball could not dodge in time, but His reaction was fast. The moment He sensed the God Weapon flying daggers warping through space, His tentacles moved frantically. Each of the tentacles formed more tentacles by splitting. One split to two, two to four, four to eight. Endless tentacles of all sizes collided with the God Weapon flying daggers, trying to defend against Lin Huangs attack. However, a raging voice could be heard the next second. How is this possible?! These are peerless supreme treasures?! The flying daggers that had tuned into blood-colored electric arcs sliced through the tentacles that were acting as His defensive measure without any obstructions when they collided. Only a small number of tentacles and meat ridges, that did not split, were not sliced through during the collision. However, they were still left with gory slash marks on them after the collision. Even Lin Huang was secretly stunned when he saw this. He had not expected for this to happen at all. He initially thought that the battle might go back and forth for some time as his opponent had not panicked when seeing his attack, and had constructed its defense instantly. He had even been thinking about how to follow-up on the attack later on. After all, He mastered twice as many chaotic cosmos as he did. Never had he thought that this would be the outcome of his first attack.. Chapter 1836 - You Almost Killed Me Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Hundreds of millions of blood-colored electric arcs shot forth from Lin Huangs sleeves. With merely a thought, the electric arcs arrived in front of Azas clone directly and broke through the defense of His tentacles easily. However, each time they were damaged, they would regenerate quickly at speed that was visible to the naked eye. Within a short span of time, they had recovered completely. Lin Huang squinted his eyes when he saw that. More blood-colored electric arcs shot forth from his sleeves. One hundred million! Two hundred million! Three hundred million! One billion! Ten billion! Lin Huang only stopped when he had increased the number of his God Weapon flying daggers to ten billion, as well as superimposed them with the effect of the Critical Hit Hammer. He finally saw that the number of tentacles, that seemed to be endless, began to fall significantly. Clearly, the speed of regeneration of Azas clones tentacles could not keep up with his God Weapon flying daggers attack speed. Lin Huang observed the situation on the battlefield calmly. He had his guard up at all times. Although he clearly had the upper hand, seeing that his God Weapon flying daggers had almost suppressed the opponent, he did not think that he would beat Him easily. Even if He was not Azas Primordium, but just a clone, His combat strength was at peak dominator-level rank-5. He had integrated close to 100,000 chaotic cosmoses, which was at least twice of what he had integrated. Moreover, He had yet to show His trump card. Whats this guy trying to do exactly? Lin Huang thought to himself. Theoretically, the longer He defended, the more Dominator Power would be drained. The reason being was that, each time the tentacles regenerated, the Dominator Power that was used would cost at least ten times more than the Dominator Power used in Lin Huangs attack. Under his God Weapon flying daggers attacks, His defense had actually collapsed. Although the tentacles blocked the God Weapon flying daggers attacks, there were many times the God Weapon flying daggers managed to attack His main body when they sliced through the tentacles. His body had been riddled with holes from the attacks of the God Weapon flying daggers. He could only recover His body forcefully. Very soon, Lin Huang had finally noticed something unusual. He could not help but shrink his pupils. Hes adjusting the strength of His physical body?! Lin Huang realized that the damage caused by the God Weapon flying daggers was diminishing. In the beginning, the God Weapon flying daggers could slice through His tentacles easily. Now, it could only wound them. As the tentacles regenerated and broke over and over again, they began to grow stronger and tougher. Dense scales that began to grow on the surface of the tentacles. As Lin Huang observed carefully, he noticed that there were countless defense and dispersion-type Dao seals, as well as Dominator Power, superimposed on the scales. The change was not limited to just His tentacles, the same change occurred to His body as well. The changes on His body only took less than three minutes to complete. Lin Huang frowned slightly. Clearly, after paying the price of getting hurt, His body began to adapt to the attacks that were at the strength of the God Weapon flying daggers. If such strengthening efficiency continued, it would only be a few minutes before He could defend against his God Weapon flying daggers attacks completely. By then, if his God Weapon flying daggers could not break through His defense, Lin Huang thought that it would become difficult for him to turn the tables around. Lin Huang changed his battle strategy without hesitation after thinking things through. More God Weapon flying daggers began to rush out of his sleeves. The tens of billions of God Weapon flying daggers began to gather into sword formations, transforming into long, narrow, giant swords in the air. Each of the battle swords of the sword formations comprised a billion God Weapon flying daggers. As more God Weapon flying daggers rushed out of Lin Huangs sleeves continuously, suddenly, 18 giant swords were formed. Under the control of his Divine Telekinesis, the 18 giant swords looked like they were wielded by 18 dominator-level rank-5 Sword Dao experts. The 18 people attacked the giant meat monster in the air almost at the same time! The attack could be considered to be very destructive. Each of the battle swords was the size of a star zone. The 18 borderless, giant star zones slammed into a body the size of a chaotic cosmos. The power behind the attack was a hundred times more terrifying than hundreds of chaotic cosmoses exploding at the same time. After all, it was not just a simple collision, but the attack contained all of the Sword Dao that Lin Huang had learned throughout his life. The sword formation, the tens of billions of God Weapon flying daggers, as well as the Dominator Power from the over 40,000 chaotic cosmoses; if one was even hit once, it was powerful enough to destroy most of the dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses in the infinite universe. Eighteen red glows lit up almost at the same time. The glaring light spread throughout Lin Huangs entire Kingdom. Even the deepest corners of the Kingdom could see the blood-colored glows suddenly light up deep in the endless sky. They covered the sky and covered the entire world. Countless living beings in the Kingdom were terrified. Most of them hid themselves instantly, while a small number of Gods knelt immediately to pray, believing it to be the Dominators blessing. Naturally, Lin Huang who was in combat mode did not notice that. He had all of his attention on the battlefield before him. The 18 continuous sword swings could definitely be considered the most powerful attack that he had ever launched since he started his cultivation. His goal was to kill the opponent before He had completely adapted to the attack strength of his God Weapon flying daggers. The second the 18 sword attacks landed, he indeed sensed the aura of Azas clones weakened to its limit; He was close to being crushed. However, Lin Huangs pupils shrunk again the next second. The reason being was that he sensed that His aura began to skyrocket. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis to probe. He saw the eyeball of a particle hiding in the dimension begin to expand at a rapid pace. The eyeball had countless bits of flesh growing out of it rapidly, and even had tentacles stretching out of it. There were sarcomas, eyeballs, mouths and tongues growing on it. This guy Lin Huang frowned hard. He could almost guess what the opponent was doing. He must have shrunk his body to its absolute limit the second Lin Huang attacked and hid deep in the sky of the dimension. Although his attack was so powerful that it could tear through the dimension, only the aftermath and ripples of the attack landed on Him. Furthermore, after shrinking Himself into a particle, He had even avoided most of the aftermath. Therefore, when Azas clone descended again, He seemed like He had not suffered any substantial harm. Just as Lin Huang was thinking about how to deal with the battle, Azas clones laugh echoed from far away. Not only have I adapted to your attack strength, Ive adapted to your attack speed as well. If your sword formations were as fast as your flying daggers, I mightve really been killed. Chapter 1837 - Pursuit and Flee Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Lin Huang frowned slightly. The opponents life-saving technique was just too powerful. His overbearing nature of being able to adapt to ones attack strength and speed aside, He even had the dodge technique for dimensions. Lin Huang was in a pickle now. The attack speed of the God Weapon flying daggers alone was fast enough, but they were not strong enough to cause sufficient damage to the opponent. Not only that, it allowed the opponent to adapt to his attack strength and speed slowly. On the other hand, the attack strength of the sword formations were strong enough, but their speed was not sufficiently fast. It gave his opponent the opportunity to hide in the dimension to dodge the attack. Lin Huang controlled the God Weapon flying daggers to continue with the attack while thinking of a strategy. He soon had an idea. More God Weapon flying daggers were rushed out of his sleeves continuously. Sword formations began to form in the air one after another. However, at the same time, the great amount of God Weapon flying daggers attacking Azas clone did not stop at all. Since the sword formations speed was slow, allowing his opponent to escape, Lin Huang decided to use more God Weapon flying daggers. While assembling the sword formations, he maintained his normal attacks using the God Weapon flying daggers so that the opponent could not flee. Azas clone guessed Lin Huangs plan once He saw what was going on. Seeing that the sword formations had yet to be formed, He suffered through the attacks of the God Weapon flying daggers directly without hesitation while His tentacles attempted to tear through the dimension in order to escape. With a thought from Lin Huang, the countless God Weapon flying daggers gathered into a giant wave, besieging the tentacles of Azas clone. The tentacles that were initially difficult to be sliced through were quickly destroyed under the continuous attack of the tremendous amount of God Weapon flying daggers. When Azas clone saw that, without hesitation, He used the rest of the tentacles to try to tear through the dimension to escape. However, how could Lin Huang give Him that opportunity? With a thought, a tremendous amount of God Weapon flying daggers attacked the tentacles again, slicing them off with blinding speed. Azas clone began to panic as He had been obstructed twice while trying to escape, and the sword formations had almost been completely consolidated in the air. This time, He sacrificed his defense almost entirely and stretched out countless tentacles in all directions. All of them began to try to tear through the dimension. As soon as one tentacle managed to tear out a path to escape, He could flee through the dimension and dodge the terrifying attack that would ensue from the sword formations. Lin Huang was expressionless when he saw His reaction. He continued controlling countless God Weapon flying daggers to block him, trying to slice off all of the tentacles that were attempting to tear through the dimension. However, Azas clone used too many tentacles this time. Given that the tentacles defense had been elevated to the point that the God Weapon flying daggers could no longer destroy them easily, Azas clone used His tentacles to tear out a path of escape eventually, suffering countless wounds on His body in the process. His body shrunk instantly and He fled into the rift. Lin Huang did not panic at all as he watched Azas clone flee. He did not even control the God Weapon flying daggers to chase Him into the spatial rift. Instead, he lifted his head calmly and glanced at the 18 giant swords that made up the sword formations. He thought for a second, after which the sword formations began to rapidly shrink, transforming into battle swords that were only about a meter long. The 18 battle swords were like fish entering water as they flew into the spatial rift that Azas clone had fled into earlier. Lin Huang only smirked when he saw the 18 sword formations swimming through the spatial rift. He had used the Leech Pods ability when he attacked with God Weapon flying daggers earlier. They had copied the particles in Azas clones body and penetrated through His wounds. No matter which dimension He fled to, Lin Huang was able to sense His coordinates. Meanwhile, Azas clone had not had time to care about that earlier. He spent most of his energy tearing through dimensions to flee. He even started to recover His wounds after fleeing. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs Leech Pods, which copied His particles, were sealed inside the flesh of His recovered wounds. Azas clone, who was focusing on escaping, did not sense anything unusual at all. After locking onto His coordinates, the 18 sword formations penetrated through the dimensions, going after Azas clone. Just when Azas clone thought that He was slightly safe now after running for some time, He suddenly sensed an intense threat. He found out what was wrong immediately after spreading out His Divine Telekinesis. The battle swords of the 18 sword formations had broken through space and arrived at the dimension that he was in. He also instantly realized that Lin Huang must have used some kind of technique to lock onto His coordinates. However, He did not have time to think about what had gone wrong exactly. Without hesitation, His tentacles tore through space again, escaping further away. He had only started to check for any unusual elements in His body once he started fleeing. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs sword formations chased after Him. To Lin Huang who was already at dominator-level rank-5 now, as long as he locked onto Him, it actually made no difference as to where He ran. The reason being was that, as long as he had His coordinates, his attack could travel through time and dimensions and attack accurately. Naturally, Lin Huang knew that if Azas clone noticed something unusual, He would not take long to find out what was wrong and remove the Leech Pods he had planted in His body. Therefore, his sword formations had to attack quickly before He detected the Leech Pods. The sword formations would lose their target if they were removed. Azas clone was running away frantically. He was scanning His body to find out what was wrong as He fled. However, Lin Huangs Leech Pods hid themselves well. Not only that, they were disguised to look exactly the same as the particles in His body. Hiding and copying were the Leech Pods core characteristics, but Lin Huang had modified and strengthened them further. This caused Azas clone to not be able to find anything wrong from the first scan. On the other side, Lin Huang was controlling the sword formations and began to increase his attack speed. As soon as he lost His trail, it would mean that he would return empty-handed from this battle. Not to mention that it was impossible that he would be able to use the same technique on Him again next time. They both knew very well that time was of the essence in this situation! Azas clone merely thought for a moment and came up with a plan after the first scan failed to discover anything. He began the second round of investigation. He changed the frequency of the particles all over His body. All of the particles synchronized themselves for this change. It was too late when Lin Huang noticed that. Even if Leech Pods frequency lagged behind even for a second, they were easily discovered by the eyes of Azas clone. Found it! A red glow sparked in Azas clones eyes. The next second, all of the Leech Pods were destroyed. At that moment, 18 blood-colored battle swords made by the shrunken sword formations finally landed in the sky above Azas clones head! Chapter 1838 - Absolute Confidence Chapter 1838: Absolute Confidence Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation The 18 sword formations comprising a billion God Weapon flying daggers, each containing powerful Sword Dao, countless Dao seals and Dominator Power of tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses, were swung at Azas clone at Lin Huangs command. At that moment, the entire dimension was almost covered in blood-colored sword gleams from the sword formations. The sword gleams not only destroyed everything they passed through, but also wreaked havoc in the dimensions around them, causing Azas clone to not be able to escape. Lin Huang stared fixedly at the battlefield. He wanted to see what plan Azas clone would come up with to fight back. The next second, he saw that Azas clone seemed to have given up resisting. Not only did He not stretch out His tentacles to fight back, His body began to shrink rapidly. Within a blink of an eye, he shrunk to the size of a particle that was not visible to the naked eye. Then, He began to dodge at high speeds in the form of a particle. Under Lin Huangs observation with Divine Telekinesis, he saw that although the particle had shrunk to the size where it reached Plancks scale, it was still the form of an eye. Not only that, despite His size, Azas clone could even use dimensional power in the microscopic world to teleport. The terribly tiny eyeball was like an agile loach at the moment, dodging amidst the swamp of attacks with all of He had. He would gain the chance to survive if he dodged the sword gleams attack on the material plane. Although the entire microscopic world had been thrown into a mess under Lin Huangs sword formations attacks, they could not hit that crimson eyeball directly. Meanwhile, although the ripples and aftermath of the sword formations attacks affected everything in the microscopic world, crushing everything into nothingness, they could not cause any substantial harm to the eyeball in the end. As Lin Huang observed Him with his Divine Telekinesis, there were no wounds on the eyeball at all. In reality, every time his Divine Telekinesis located Him, it would be bounced off, preventing Himself from being locked on by Divine Telekinesis. Lin Huang tried hundreds of times, but could not lock onto the eyeballs coordinates in the microscopic world. He could not even lock onto it for even a second. In the normal material realm, measurements were not as precise in the microscopic world. As soon as he missed by a millimeter, it would become thousands of kilometers in the microscopic world. It caused Lin Huang to not be able to hit Azas clone head-on. The battle fell into a stagnant state once again. Lin Huang really did not expect that He would escape into the microscopic world after he prevented Him from tearing through the dimension. Instead, the situation had become even more difficult now. Just as he was feeling helpless, an idea suddenly popped into his head. The next second, his figure became ethereal. He had countless thoughts running through his mind. He had a plan now! He did not come up with the plan himself. Instead, he used Bloodys head to come up with it. Now that he had a contract with his imperial monsters, it was a piece of cake for him to turn into any of the imperial monsters under him. It was easy for him to transform his brain into Bloodys. 1 After coming up with the idea, Lin Huang attacked immediately without hesitation. This time, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis again and found Azas clones coordinates. Although his Divine Telekinesis bounced off in the next second, he smirked. Gotcha! In the next second, Lin Huang stretched out his hand to grab the dimension where his Divine Telekinesis found Azas clone. He activated spatial binding on the dimensions hundreds of kilometers around. After scanning with Divine Telekinesis again, as expected, Azas clone was inside the dimension that was sealed. However, the microscopic world was not affected by the seal in the outside world. Even the blood-colored eyeball that Azas clone had shrunk into did not notice that Lin Huang had sealed the dimension. Without hesitation, He bounced off Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis again and teleported. He escaped from the area where He was found by Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis. Lin Huang smirked when he confirmed that Azas clone did not escape from the dimension that he sealed. In the next second, he grabbed at the air. The entire dimension that was sealed began to shrink quickly. The spherical dimension, that was hundreds of kilometers in radius, shrunk into a sphere that was less than 20 centimeters in radius within the blink of an eye. The pitch-black sphere was like a black hole in Lin Huangs palm. Although the microscopic world was in the dimension, the space was not sealed. Nevertheless, in the normal material world, the dimension had been sealed completely, forming an area that was isolated from the outside world. As long as Azas clone remained in His tiny form, it was impossible for Him to get out. There was only one way for Him to escape, which was to regain His normal size, tearing open the sealed dimension. Lin Huang played with the dimension sphere that was sealed for a bit. He could not stop smiling Indeed, he could not lock onto Azas clones coordinates in the microscopic world to attack Him accurately, and His shrunken eyeball form had a hundred-fold elevation in defense, where the sword formations aftermath and ripples could not do any harm to Him at all. However, Lin Huang could compress the entire dimension after sealing it. He would use the sword formations to crush the compressed dimensional sphere directly, turning the dimension and the microscopic world inside into nothingness. The dimension sphere in his hand was still shrinking. Very soon, its diameter had shrunk to ten centimeters. It was the size of a tangerine. At that moment, Azas clone finally noticed that something was wrong. It was not that He had teleported to the border, ten centimeters was an astronomical number on the Planck scale after all, but He noticed something was wrong because He noticed that Lin Huangs attack frequency had dropped slightly. As such, He probed the situation with His Divine Telekinesis. He was shocked after He did. The reason being was that He realized that the dimension He was currently in was in Lin Huangs palm. Meanwhile, the dimension had been completely isolated from the outside world. It was impossible for him to escape in His microscopic form. There was only one way to escape, which was to regain His size. Naturally, Lin Huang noticed Azas clones Divine Telekinesis. The moment he sensed that, he lowered his head to look at the sealed dimension that was the size of a tangerine in his palm. He smiled widely. You should know that you only have two options now. One is to continue to hide. Ill wipe out the entire dimension completely. When that happens, it will be futile no matter how powerful your defense is. You should know the second option, which is to escape by regaining your original size. Fight me head-on with your abilities and trump cards. You might not lose, you know As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, the sealed dimension that was the size of a tangerine in his palm was torn apart. A blood-colored shadow came out, appearing not far away from him. It was Azas clone that was regaining His size quickly. His bloody flesh rushed out of the eyeball at a high speed. The tentacles, eyes and mouths began to grow out of Him once more. All of the eyes stared fiercely at Lin Huang. Why didnt you wipe out the entire dimension directly?! Instead, you gave me the opportunity to escape? Do you really think you have the confidence to win?! I gave you the second option because youd be wiped out too if I wiped out the dimension. Nothing would be left. Lin Huang smirked. Also, indeed, I have absolute confidence in winning.. Chapter 1839 - Butterfly Dance Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, 18 sword formations rushed at Azas clone instantly. The sword formations had been consolidated and had been shrunk to the size of a regular battle sword. Under Lin Huangs control, their speed was no slower than God Weapon flying daggers. Blood-colored electric arcs were shot forth like lightning as the 18 sword formations were swung down. They sealed all of the directions Azas clone could escape in. Lin Huangs goal was clear. He was forcing Him to fight him head-on. Azas clone had nowhere to run this time. The regular dimensions on the material plane had all been sealed by the sword gleams. He could hide in the microscopic world, but it would still be futile. Lin Huang had already figured out a solution. Since he could seal the dimension once, it was only natural that he could seal it twice or thrice. If He shrunk back to His microscopic form, although Lin Huang could not attack Him directly, He would fall into his hands easily. He also believed that if He pulled the trick over and over again, Lin Huang might wipe out the entire dimension directly. There was nothing else that He could do at that point. He could only fight force with force. Countless tentacles grew frantically on the irregular piece of meat. They tangled onto each other, transforming into extremely thick tentacles, looking like tree branches that had been covered in countless vines. Smaller tentacles that were like hair grew out of the thick blood-colored tentacles soon. They densely covered the entire surface of the tentacles. Meanwhile, there were defense-type and dispersion-type Dao seals superimposed on the hair-like tentacles. They even curled into scale-like shields. More and more layers were stacked on top. Within a blink of an eye, the hair-like tentacles had stacked a hundred layers of scale shields on the surface of the tentacles. At that moment, the 18 sword formations attack finally landed. All of a sudden, Azas clone was drowned completely by the endless blood-colored storm. Lin Huangs vision was filled with the blood-colored lightning. However, he saw everything that was happening crystal clear before him under the observation of Divine Telekinesis. The lightning tore the scales made of the layers of hair. One layer, two layers, three layers Ten layers, 20, 30 80, 90, a hundred. At the same time, Azas clone was still releasing more hair-like tentacles continuously to stack more scales. Although the lightning had torn through a hundred layers of scales, there were more new scales stacked underneath them. This first round of attack by the 18 sword formations still did not do any substantial harm to Him. Lin Huang did not expect that this would be the outcome of the first round of attack. Id like to see how long you can defend! Lin Huang was determined as he uttered softly with rage. The strength of an attack like this drained him significantly, but it would drain Azas clone, who was defending passively, even more. It was a lose-lose situation for both sides when it came to draining. Lin Huang knew that, which was why he continued with the sword formation attack without hesitation. The 18 sword formations changed according to his thoughts. They were mainly formed of time and spatial-tearing Dao seals. He even began to activate sword force to strengthen the attack, making each of the hits more powerful than the previous one. Suddenly, the 18 sword formations looked like a giant sea that would swallow the sky. One after another, they crashed waves onto Azas clone. The attack was no longer the insane lightning like before. It had been transformed into the crashing of waves. Each wave was bigger and more powerful than the last! Azas clone, who had survived the first round of attack, had just relaxed when He sensed the changes in the second round of attack. The blood-colored sword gleams attack power was continuously strengthening! The number of defense scales torn through by each sword gleam had increased compared to the previous attack. Azas clone merely hesitated for a moment before determination flashed through His eyes. The next second, black sigils began to appear in the core eye in the center of His body. As the sigils swirled, the eye began to release faint black mist. The crimson eye began to turn black slowly. It was not only the eye, even the blood-colored flesh began to turn ink-black gradually. The thing that was transformed following that was the strength of the aura of Azas clone. He, who had been at peak dominator-level rank-5, suddenly had the aura of His combat strength elevated. There were faint signs that He was breaking through. Naturally, Lin Huang sensed the unusualness of the situation instantly. Hes finally using His trump card?! Lin Huang squinted as he looked in the direction where He was covered in endless blood-colored sword gleams. He could clearly sense that His aura was growing at a steady pace. He was not affected by his sword formations attack at all. Within almost two to three breaths of time, His aura had broken through to the limit of dominator-level rank-5, stepping into dominator-level rank-6 officially. As soon as His aura had a breakthrough, a terrifying suppression spread out instantly. Even Lin Huang could feel the suffocation that was directed at him clearly. What made him even more helpless was that, since Azas clones combat strength had broken through, His defense had reached new heights. The sword gleams that could tear through a hundred layers of scales in one hit could barely tear through two to three layers now. Azas clone even ignored the attack from the sword gleams completely and walked out while embracing the attack. Lin Huang noticed that He had turned completely black. He looked like a pile of blood-colored flesh that had been dyed in ink. It was not only the flesh itself, even the tentacles, sarcomas, eyes and mouths All of them had turned black. Didnt you keep asking to see my trump card? Azas clones endless black eyes were staring at Lin Huang. This is my trump card! Using the Primordiums strength to break through to dominator-level rank-6 temporarily Lin Huang nodded lightly. This makes me even more curious about how powerful your Primordium is exactly. Die together with that curiosity then. Countless black tentacles stretched out frantically as soon as He was done speaking. They rushed at Lin Huang like waves. Almost instantly, the endless tentacles covered the dimension. Lin Huang got the 18 sword formations to slice at them madly with his thoughts. At the same time, endless blood-colored electric arcs shot out from his sleeves like lightning. They occupied half of the sky like an insect plague. The entire dimension and world seemed to have been occupied entirely by the colors black and red. The two colors collided in the sky. At that moment, countless living beings saw the strange and dazzling scene in Lin Huangs Kingdom. Even all of the living beings that were on the planets billions of light years away saw the black and red butterfly wings deep in the sky that was infinitely far away. It was like a butterfly dancing in the sky Chapter 1840 - Trump Card Versus Trump Card Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Deep in the sky, the black and red butterfly wings only lasted for a moment. The red butterfly wing disappeared instantly, and darkness was the only thing left. Lin Huang did not manage to defend against that attack in the end. Even with 18 sword formations, he could not fight the endless tentacles of Azas clone. Meanwhile, the God Weapon flying daggers that did not gather into sword formations could not break through the tentacles defense at all. They only obstructed the tentacles for a moment before being eventually thrown out by the tentacles. The tentacles targeted Lin Huang after they broke through the obstruction of the sword formations and flying daggers. Lin Huang tried his best to dodge while gathering more sword formations. However, there was nothing that he could do because the number of tentacles that had broken through his defense was growing. Even though he consolidated two new sword formations within a short period of time, they were just a drop in the bucket when faced with the crazy amount of tentacles. As there were more and more tentacles, he failed to escape despite how hard he was trying to dodge them. After all, Azas clone that had elevated to dominator-level rank-6 had surpassed him in all aspects. No matter whether it was in terms of strength, speed, number of chaotic cosmoses used, Dominator Power or the number of Dao seals, Lin Huang had been suppressed in all aspects. He had nowhere to run after holding on for less than three minutes. The endless ink-black tentacles sealed all of his escape paths. Lin Huang smirked when he saw that. The next moment, he flew into the sky and hid outside the dimension. Naturally, he had learned that trick from Azas clone. Since He had disgusted Lin Huang with this trick from the beginning, he returned the favor to Him now. Azas clone was clearly stunned when He saw Lin Huang flying into the sky. Subsequently, He stretched out His Divine Telekinesis and tried to lock onto Lin Huangs coordinates. Lin Huang thought of a plan while escaping into another dimension. The sky was his Kingdom. It was impossible that he would not return after hiding in another dimension. The reason being was that Azas clone could totally accelerate the contamination of the chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom when he was away. He had to think of a plan quickly. Dominator-level rank-6 and dominator-level rank-5 are on completely different levels. If the battlefield wasnt in my Kingdom, and I lost the upper hand of territory, I might not even be able to trace his attack trajectory at all. Even in my territory, the maximum duration that I can avoid being hit is three minutes. Its impossible to turn the tables around with regular techniques Although Lin Huang was unwilling to use his trump card under such circumstances, as Azas clones Primordium would find out as soon as he did so, he had no other options now. Watching the countless tentacles breaking through the dimension and coming at him, he knew that he could no longer hesitate. Acard appeared in his hand instantly. The next second, the card was crushed in his hand, transforming into golden gleams that penetrated his body. Almost at the same time the gleams penetrated his body, his aura began to skyrocket. Meanwhile, the illusory chaotic cosmoses in the Kingdom in his body began to consolidate quickly. The initial 40,000 chaotic cosmoses grew to 50,000, and then to 60,000 within the blink of an eye. The number did not stop increasing. Within half a breath of time, the number of chaotic cosmoses skyrocketed to 100,000. Following that, Lin Huangs aura elevated to limit dominator-level rank-5. It did not stop at all. The number of chaotic cosmoses continued rising, breaking past 100,000. Lin Huangs aura changed drastically too. It was elevating toward dominator-level rank-6 Within less than half a breath of time, 100,000 chaotic cosmos had been added to the Kingdom in his body, reaching a total of 140,000. It finally stopped increasing. Meanwhile, his aura had reached new heights. Even the particles in his physical body and Gods soul were transforming quickly, as if he had transformed into a more powerful life form. Sensing the changes in his body, Lin Huang had the faint illusion that he was invincible again! As soon as his breakthrough was completed, a tentacle of Azas clone found this dimension. Sensing Lin Huangs existence, the ink-black tentacle shot toward his direction. At the same time, more tentacles rushed toward the dimension. This time, Lin Huang did not run. A red gleam sparkled in his sleeve. It collided with that black python-like tentacle. The next second, the black tentacle was torn into half directly. The blood-colored God Weapon flying dagger sliced through the tentacle over and over again. Within half breath of time, it had crushed the tentacle into a pile of mush. Almost at the same time the God Weapon flying dagger completed the attack, more tentacles rushed into this dimension. There was no change of expression in Lin Huangs eyes when he saw the endless black tentacles arriving like a wave. Countless red gleams shot out of his sleeves, colliding with the tentacles. Amoment later, all of the countless tentacles that rushed in like a wave were crushed into piles of mush. They vanished slowly. Lin Huang scanned through the dimension. After confirming that he did not leave anything behind, he opened the void passage again and left that dimension. The next second, his body consolidated again in the dimension he was initially in earlier. He did not conceal his aura at all. There was a clear expression of doubt and shock in the eye of Azas clone as soon as he appeared. Your combat strength Do you think that youre the only one who has a trump card? Lin Huang smiled faintly. More God Weapon flying daggers came out of his sleeves as he thought. They gathered into more sword formations instantly. At the same time, 20 sword formations and a large amount of God Weapon flying daggers besieged Azas clone. As they had the same combat strength, Azas clone was suppressed again. Although He had borrowed His Primordiums strength, He only had close to 100,000 chaotic cosmoses consolidated in His Kingdom. He was only a beginner dominator-level rank-6. Meanwhile, the Combat Strength Upgrade Card Lin Huang used had increased the number of chaotic cosmoses in the Kingdom in his body by 100,000. The number had surpassed that of the current Azas clone. With Lin Huangs ability, he could fight fairly with Azas clone, who had close to 100,000 chaotic cosmoses, when he only had 40,000 chaotic cosmos. This was even truer now when he had more chaotic cosmoses in the Kingdom in his body. With his current ability, the sword formations aside, even the regular God Weapon flying daggers were enough to destroy the tentacles. Within a few breaths of time, Azas clone began to show signs of being defeated. His tentacles almost could not form an effective defense. Though He had many tentacles, Lin Huang had more God Weapon flying daggers. Not only that, he had over 20 sword formations. Each of them were fatal, and the number was still growing. This drove Him into a predicament. Realizing this, Azas clone only hesitated for a moment before He finally activated His second trump card! Chapter 1841 - Almost Killed Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Azas clones defense was still there. At the same time, the giant black eye in the middle of His flesh began to reveal blood-colored sigils. Lin Huang put his guard up immediately when he noticed this change. The countless sigils merely swirled in His eye for less than a breath of time before ink-black energy began to gather frantically in the eye. Within a second, Lin Huang could already feel the threat coming from the aura released from the eye. Tm afraid Ill be injured terribly or perhaps even killed outright by this attack. Lin Huang frowned lightly. With a thought, countless God Weapon flying daggers turned into a sky full of blood-colored lightning. They began to penetrate the obstruction of the tentacles, attacking that black eye. However, a strange thing soon happened. All of the God Weapon flying daggers seemed to have hit an invisible huge wall when they arrived within a few meters of the eye. Not only could they not penetrate the wall, the blood-colored flying daggers seemed to have mired in mud. Even the Divine Telekinesis that Lin Huang had attached to them had been wiped out. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis with slight confusion. He wanted to know what that layer of invisible membrane was exactly. However, just when his Divine Telekinesis touched it, he sensed a vicious aura contaminating his Divine Telekinesis quickly. It was even coming at him through the Divine Telekinesis. Without hesitation, he disconnected the Divine Telekinesis that was contaminated directly. His expression became a little serious now. Was that Abyssal energy as well? Lin Huang quietly communicated with Eternity Fire in his body. It shares the same source as Abyssal energy, but its more powerful and more vicious, Eternity Fire responded instantly, If Im not mistaken, it might be the Dominator Power of Azas Primordium. In reality, Lin Huang had already guessed it. However, he had hoped that it was not the truth. He could only accept the outcome after getting the confirmation from Eternity Fire. Tm regretting more and more that I didnt kill Him directly before Lin Huang forced a smile. It had to be said that he was paying the price for his greed. Initially, he thought the Kingdom in His body would be an unprecedented reward after killing Him. If he had killed Him together with the sealed dimension, it meant that he would get nothing in return. That moment of greed caused him to choose to let Him go, allowing Him to escape that dimension. Since then, His trump cards had gotten more and more ridiculous. At first, He used the strength of Azas Primordium to elevate his combat strength to dominator-level rank-6. Currently, He had clearly borrowed the strength of Azas Primordium to channel this attack. Judging by His current stance, when He was ready to attack, Lin Huang might be crushed entirely if he was hit. He did not expect to have dug himself such a big hole unintentionally. However, there was nothing that he could do. He could only fight Him forcefully now. With a thought, the 26 sword formations cut through the layers of obstructions and tore through space consecutively, attacking Azas clones black eye. He knew that he had to seize the time he had before He finished charging His attack. Otherwise, he would be faced with intense danger once the attack was launched. The 26 sword formations turned into giant swords and were swung consecutively as he controlled them with his thoughts. One swing, two swings, three swings. Lin Huang stared fixedly at the changes on the layer of invisible obstruction before the eye. He finally saw rippled waves when the first swing was swung. As expected, it was a layer of invisible, undetectable defense. Even with Lin Huangs sword formations attack, it merely caused a light ripple. Meanwhile, the sword formations began to collapse after the first attack. They seemed to have been disintegrated by something. The large amount of God Weapon flying daggers lost control and collapsed as well. Before he had lost control over less than one-third of the God Weapon flying daggers, Lin Huang recalled all of them. If the first swing was resolved so easily, then the second, third and fourth swings would not fare any better. The sword formations encountered the same outcome as they attacked. Once the circles of black ripples appeared on the defense, the sword formations were dissolved and collapsed instantly. Fortunately, Lin Huang had experienced that the first time, so he managed to recall them in time after that. He had recalled more than half of the flying daggers he had. The 26 sword formations slashed a total of 26 swings. However, all of Lin Huangs most powerful attack techniques were completely blocked by the invisible defense. It did not harm the eye of Azas clone at all. Seeing that He was almost ready to attack, Lin Huang gave up on making more sword formations decisively. Black mirrors began to consolidate before him quickly. Within a blink of an eye, over a hundred black mirrors were formed. However, he did not stop just yet. Instead, he continued to make more. He had been staring fixedly at the eye. He did not dare to relax at all. A moment later, he finally saw changes in Azas clones eye. The countless sigils faded entirely, and the black fog on it began to rumble like waves. At the same time, Lin Huang felt a fatal threat hanging over his head. It felt as if death might come anytime. The next second, Azas clones eye released an endless black gleam. It was like a shockwave, but its speed was as fast as lightning. The moment the black gleam lit up on the eye, the countless black mirrors in front of Lin Huang exploded frantically. It only took a second for the thousands of black mirrors that were stacked before him to turn into dust. Lin Huang could not react in time at all. By the time he reacted, he discovered that the flesh from his chest to his abdomen were almost gone. Sticky black liquid began to spread in all directions from his wound. His body began to mutate and deform quickly. Meanwhile, Azas clone, who had launched that successful attack from far away, finally shut His black eye. He used His other eyes to observe the changes going on with Lin Huang. At the same time, He spread out His Divine Telekinesis in Lin Huangs direction. At that moment, a couple of blood-colored electric arcs appeared out of thin air, targeting the body of Azas clone. All of the tentacles that were blocking were turned into dust wherever the blood-colored electric arcs passed through. Though Azas clone was still in a state of shock, His Divine Telekinesis finally saw what those couple of blood-colored gleams were. They were the battle swords shrunken from the sword formations! After releasing the trump card, Azas clone had His Dominator Power drained significantly. The invisible defense faded automatically as the main eye was shut. He was helpless to defend against the sudden attack coming from Lin Huang. Without the obstruction of the tentacles and eye, His giant body was like a fish on the chopping board. Within a blink of an eye, He was crushed into a pile of mush by the sword formations. Only then did Lin Huang step out into the sky. He glanced at the Lin Huang that had been completely mutated not far away. A golden card in his hand had been crushed automatically, turning into sparkles. The Lin Huang who was mutated not far away began to collapse automatically, transforming into nothingness. Tmight have really been killed by you if I didnt have the Substitute Card Lin Huang mumbled softly to himself.. Chapter 1842 - Meeting Death Spring Again Chapter 1842 Meeting Death Spring Again In reality, Lin Huang had made full preparations when he realized that the attack was invincible earlier. While he stacked the black mirrors, he redeemed a couple of Substitute Cards just in case. As for the God Weapon flying dagger sword formations that appeared suddenly, he secretly made them when he was hiding. He had hidden them with him in another dimension. Initially, he planned to use them as soon as he found Azas clones flaw when facing Him and hopefully catch Him off-guard. In the end, the attack he prepared came in handy, and killed Azas clone in an instant. At the same time he sensed His aura vanish, a kill target notification box popped up in front of him. Not far away, the body of Azas clone began to dissolve. The tentacles, sarcomas and eyes all turned into black fog and faded away. The entire process lasted less than three minutes before it ended entirely. All that remained of the gigantic body of Azas clone was an ink-black eyeball hovering in the air. The eyeball even began to shrink quickly after seemingly losing support of its other body parts. Within the blink of an eye, it had shrunk to the size of a regular persons eyeball. Rather than an eyeball, it actually looked more like a black gem the size of a thumb. Lin Huang stretched out his hand and squeezed it between his two fingers. He examined it carefully. Can this be the eye of Azas Primordium? He said, feeling unsure. Its indeed some living beings eye, but Im not sure if it belongs to Azas Primordium. Xiao Hei responded directly. If its really the eye of Azas Primordium, who couldve removed His eye? Can it be that He did it himself in order to make a clone? Lin Huang was even more confused now. This time, Xiao Hei did not provide a response. The Soul-controlling Tablet that was usually quite knowledgeable did not say anything either. Clearly, it did not know the origin of this thing Lin Huang hesitated. Curious, he began to check it out by spreading his Divine Telekinesis over it. He did not expect his consciousness to be dragged into a dark dimension as soon as his Divine Telekinesis touched it. He was more than familiar with this place. The reason being was that it was the third time he had entered a similar dimension. It was just that he did not expect to be dragged into this place unsuspectingly even with this current combat strength. Apart from that, the feeling was almost the same as before. Not only did he lose all of the sensory abilities toward the outside world, he could not sense the Kingdom in his body, his own Divine Telekinesis, the Goldfingers in his body and the God Weapons. One had to know that the effect of the Combat Strength Upgrade Card was still present. His current combat strength was at dominator-level rank-6. However, even at dominator-level rank-6, the feeling he had in this dimension seemed to be no different than when a regular person entered. Just as Lin Huang was quickly thinking about how to escape, a dark-red glow suddenly lit up not far away. However, he was not killed immediately this time. He could sense faintly that it was an eye that was watching him. Azas Primordium?! Just as he thought that, he faintly saw something ink-black squirming behind that dark-red eye. The next second, he saw a black gleam sparkling between his brows. His consciousness was removed directly afterward. When he returned to the material realm, he flicked the eyeball in his hand directly. Subsequently, Xiao Heis voice rang in his ears. Did you go into that dark dimension again? Yes, Lin Huang responded, Did you sense the unusualness this time? No, a Substitute Card was suddenly crushed, Xiao Hei answered. Lin Huang spread out Divine Telekinesis into his body and found out that a Substitute Card that he redeemed earlier had indeed been used. A mirror consolidated before him. He looked between his brows. He sensed a faint, illusory pain where he had been attacked earlier. He could not help but rub the space between his brows. At that moment, a throb rumbled from deep within his Gods soul. He sank his consciousness into his body and found out that the strange fluctuations came from the Nirvana Trees. After a brief moment of hesitation, Lin Huang probed with his Divine Telekinesis. The next second, his consciousness fell into a daze. When he snapped back to his senses, he was on a blood-colored beach. There was a dazzling golden ocean not far from him. He could not see the end of the ocean at all. Is this the death spring?! Lin Huang was familiar with the place that he was currently looking at because it was not his first time here. He was dragged into this dimension when he refined the Nirvana Trees for the first time before elevating to lord-level. As he was about to spread out his Divine Telekinesis to find the source of the unusual fluctuations, he suddenly realized that he could not sense his Divine Telekinesis at all. Not only that, this dimension seemed to be similar to the dark dimension before, blocking everything apart from his five senses. Although he could see the scene before him and hear the sounds of the surrounding environment, he had completely lost the ability to sense his Dominator Power, Kingdom, Gods soul, Goldfingers and God Weapons. Just as Lin Huang was debating on his next course of action, he suddenly saw a golden pupil slowly consolidate in the sky of the borderless death spring. When the pupil was completely formed, it even took a good look at him. An ancient divine voice came in the sky. Dont be afraid, young man. I come in peace. Are you Death Spring?! Lin Huang could not help but ask. Death Spring, Styx, Underworld, Netherworld, Hell Those are my names, and I possess their respective forms as well, the ancient divine voice replied calmly. He was really a senior. Not only that, Lin Huang could feel that he was definitely not a match for this senior even though he was currently at dominator-level rank-6. I wonder if there is a reason behind senior summoning me here? Lin Huang only asked after thinking for a moment. The reason is simple. Its because you escaped from Aza alive, the ancient divine voice replied. Was that eye really the eye of Azas Primordium? Lin Huang could not help but ask immediately. Naturally, the eye belonged to Azas Primordium. A black crystal hovered in front of the golden pupil directly as the ancient divine voice continued, Its just that its just a piece of flesh that He made casually, not His real eye. So it wasnt Azas Primordium who attacked me in the dark dimension? Lin Huang understood now. It was just a thought remnant left behind in the piece of flesh, the ancient divine voice replied while smiling, But its amazing that you managed to escape. Is Aza really that powerful?! Lin Huang was a little shocked now. He initially thought that the dark dimension was set up by Azas Primordium intentionally. Never had he imagined that it was just a thought remnant. Hes at dominator-level rank-9, so what do you think? The ancient divine voice smiled and said. Rank-9?! Lin Huang was completely dumbfounded. He found it hard to snap back to his senses for some time. He had thought of many possibilities before. At first, he thought that Azas Primordium was a powerhouse at dominator-level rank-5 at most. After encountering His clone here, he had even higher expectations of the ability of Azas Primordium. However, he thought He would be at dominator-level rank-7 at most. Never had he thought someone would confirm that He was at rank-9! Chapter 1843 - Virtual Sovereign Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation The information Lin Huang obtained from Death Spring could be said to have been completely beyond his expectations. In the infinite universe, dominator-level rank-5 is already a peak powerhouse. If Azas Primordium is at rank-9, wouldnt that mean that Hes invincible?! You can say that, Death Springs tone was calm, Although Im already at dominator-level rank-9 myself, Im not His match when He wakes up. Is there anyone else who is at dominator-level rank-9? Lin Huang asked immediately. Naturally, he instantly thought of gathering a couple of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses to suppress Aza. There were, but they were either killed or banished by Virtual Sovereign. He even wiped them from history. There are a small number who have been hiding since Virtual Sovereign showed up who have never appeared again, Death Spring explained, The ones that Im sure are still alive are only Aza and myself. Who is this Virtual Sovereign?! Lin Huang said in shock. He could not imagine how powerful an entity was, to be able to kill and banish dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, and suppress them to the point where they no longer dared to show themselves. Virtual Sovereign is an entity that has surpassed all dimensions, realms, time and space. Hes also the creator of the virtual realm. On a certain level, He was the one who created I, Aza and the group of founders of the virtual realm. An entity that surpasses dominator-level rank-9?! Lin Huang continued to ask. He didnt just surpass dominator-level rank-9, but all levels, Death Spring corrected him. Seeing that Lin Huang was still a little confused, Death Spring added, Hes a Transcender, an entity that surpasses everything. If theres a level above dominator-level rank-9, then He would transcend above that level. As long as something exists, He can transcend above it. Just like a novel author, whos always above the world of the novel? Lin Huang grasped the concept somewhat now. No, the novel author exists, so Hes even above the author, Death Spring corrected him once again. Lin Huang finally understood it now. So Hes a Russian Matryoshka doll. As long as theres a setting, He would go beyond it. No wonder Hes called the Transcender Does such a person really exist? Lin Huangs words indicated his suspicion. Can it be that this guy named Virtual Sovereign fooled you guys? Im not exactly sure if its real or not. Death Spring did not provide a confirmed answer this time. No matter what, that was how the Virtual Sovereign explained it to us back then. Moreover, according to Virtual Sovereign, apart from Him, theres another entity like Him called the Originator. The reason Hes called that is because Hes the origin of all things. The virtual realm was created by Virtual Sovereign by borrowing the Originators power. Even the infinite universe you guys are in was created by the Originator on His own after creating the virtual realm. According to Virtual Sovereign, everything came from the Originator, including Himself. It also includes all of the tangibles, intangibles, information, energy, consciousness, will As well as all time, space and all of the authors in all of the dimensions. The authors are so pitiful. Apart from being rushed by editors and readers, there are two bosses above controlling them, Lin Huang teasingly said while smiling. Because they found out about Transcenders, people like Aza who pursued transcendence created chaos in the infinite universe and the virtual realm, Death Spring continued to say. Thats why Virtual Sovereign could no longer hold back and taught those people a lesson? Lin Huang guessed the outcome instantly. Yes. He killed and banished them. Then why is Aza only in a state of deep sleep? Isnt what He did serious? Lin Huang asked further. What he did had the worst consequences, Death Springs tone became a little gloomy now. Hes the one who instigated everyone to pursue transcendence, and He was their leader. Virtual Sovereign said He didnt kill him because He saw Azas future, Death Spring continued, He said that there would be two endings for Aza in the future. In one, He would become a Transcender, while in the other, there would be another Transcender. His existence is crucial to the other Transcender. Alright, then Lin Huang did not know what to say now. Perhaps a powerhouse like Virtual Sovereign could really probe Azas future by standing outside the timeline. I summoned you here because I think you might be the person Virtual Sovereign predicted, Death Spring finally spoke of the real reason why he showed himself to Lin Huang. Do you mean that I might become a Transcender?! Lin Huang widened his eyes. He had not thought of that at all. After all, a Transcenders ability sounded way too fantastical. Although he was currently in a fantasy world, the setting of a Transcender was simply unreal. Moreover, he did not have any idea as to how to break through dominator-level now, let alone become a Transcender. I can only say that I see the possibility within you. However, I cant be sure whether youre the person in the prediction, Death Spring said honestly. Thanks for your honesty and expectations. Lin Huang smiled. ts because youre the only one who survived after encountering Azas fleshly clone after so many years, Death Spring explained further. have another question. Lin Huang suddenly thought of something else. Where did the two Transcenders, Virtual Sovereign and Originator, go? dont know. Since suppressing Aza and the rest, Virtual Sovereign has not been seen. He has mentioned Originator before, but weve never seen Him, nor do we know where He is. Did Virtual Sovereign say anything else before He went missing? Lin Huang asked further. He told me to guard the virtual realm well and not to interfere with the matters of the infinite universe. I dont know if He said anything to the others. Death Spring did not seem to be hiding anything. Didnt He tell you how to become a Transcender? Lin Huang asked while smiling. If He did, would I still be stuck at dominator-level rank-9? Death Spring said angrily. I know what youre thinking. Just give it up. I dont have the ability to help you become a Transcender, nor do I know how to become one. So you brought me here just to chat with you? Lin Huang mumbled softly. Although I dont know how to become a Transcender, I can help you elevate your current ability, Death Spring added shortly after, You killed Azas fleshly clone. That will accelerate His awakening. Ill be frank, you dont have much time. How much time do I have? Lin Huang asked immediately. Three years at the shortest, and ten years at the longest! Death Spring said in a confident manner, His Primordium will definitely wake up within ten years! At that point, it would mean war for the entire infinite universe, and even the virtual realm.. Chapter 1844 - Death Spring’s Plan Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation Three years Lin Huang frowned lightly. Not to mention three years, he did not have the confidence to fight a powerhouse like Aza even if he had ten years. It seems that three years is the earliest His Primordium will awaken, Death Spring proceeded to speak, However, before His Primordium wakes up, countless of His fleshly clones will wake up consecutively. If a significant number of His fleshly clones die, His Primordium might wake up in advance. Lin Huang could not help but frown even harder when he listened up to this point. Which means its possible that he might wake up in one to two years? Thats right, Death Spring said with determination. have a question, Lin Huang asked after falling into a moment of silence, If Aza is pursuing transcendence, then can it be that His goal of starting the war has something to do with Transcenders? only know that He wants to refine the infinite universes Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, Death Spring explained, In order to refine a Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, theres a condition, whereby one would need enough haotic cosmoses from the infinite universe. Theoretically, the more chaotic cosmoses are integrated, the higher the success rate of His refining of the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. Therefore, there wont be any mcontaminated land in the infinite universe once He awakens. All of the chaotic cosmoses will become the target of His integration. All of the dominator-level powerhouses will become His prey. Whether or not He will become a Transcender after refining the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, Im not certain, Death Spring continued to say, In reality, I have my doubts if He can achieve this using this method. Even for dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, theres a limit to the number of chaotic cosmoses we can integrate. Meanwhile, there are endless chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe. There are more added to it each minute and every second. Its impossible to control the unlimited when ones ability is limited. Looking at this from the viewpoint of an outsider, even if He got lucky and refined the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, its uncertain whether hed successfully become a Transcender. Weill talk about that later. Lin Huang shook his head. The key factor is that the method He has chosen is in direct conflict with our means of living. Thats right. Not only that, Hes determined to go all the way. Death Springs tone contained an aura of helplessness. The two of them chatted for a little bit, and Lin Huang had finally shifted the focus to himself. You said you have a method to elevate my ability quickly. Whats the method? Ive removed Azas thought remnant left behind on that piece of flesh, but the connection with Aza hasnt been cut off completely. The ink-black crystal in front Death Spring was spinning slowly. I can transform it into your clone and send it into Azas dreamland. The time in the outside world would stay the same when your clone integrates chaotic cosmoses inside it. Wouldnt Aza find out? Lin Huang raised a doubt. Hes in deep sleep, and His consciousness is in a mess. Given that this is His flesh after all, He wouldnt really care even if He noticed. However, there are risks to everything. I cant guarantee that nothing will happen. Also, although the time in the outside world would remain the same, the fleshly clone has a time limit in maintaining its form. As refining chaotic cosmoses will drain it, this one in front of us can only last for approximately 100,000 years before it is exhausted. Not only that, its different from your nature. This fleshly clones integration can only be via forced integration. Forced integration? Lin Huang frowned again. You dont have to feel mentally burdened. The chaotic cosmoses in Azas dreamland are basically Abyssal cosmoses that have been contaminated completely. Only Abyssal creatures would survive in them, Death Spring explained further. Lin Huang was relieved to hear that. He might really be concerned if they were chaotic cosmoses with humans living inside them. However, it would be much simpler to handle chaotic cosmos with Abyssal creatures everywhere. Even if the Heavenly Dao went berserk, he would not need to care about causing casualties to the locals. All he had to do was to integrate them forcefully. Since they were Abyssal chaotic cosmoses, he could even skip the process of using his clone to assimilate the chaotic cosmoses. Are there any side-effects to such integration? Lin Huang could not help but ask. The side-effect is that youll need some time to cleanse the Abyssal energy, Death Spring responded immediately, It might be something troublesome to others, but it shouldnt be for you. Lin Huang understood that Death Spring had found out that he possessed Eternity Fire in his body when he heard those words. He was not surprised about that. He was at dominator-level rank-9 after all. Moreover, Death Spring was likely in possession of a great amount of origin information. It made sense that he knew about a travelers Goldfinger. Apart from this, I can even provide you with all of the information. You can use any of the origin information in the Death Spring at any time. Do you really believe that Im the person in Virtual Sovereigns prediction? Lin Huang thought Death Spring had given everything he could to support him. Its not that I believe that youre the person in the prediction. Its just that I must try everything I can to stop Aza, Death Spring said honestly. Alright then Lin Huang rubbed his nose awkwardly. It turned out he had flattered himself. If you have no other questions, well begin now. The ink-black crystal floated over to Lin Huang as Death Spring spoke, Insert a sliver of your Gods soul into it. Lin Huang did as He said immediately. He inserted a silver of Gods soul as he held the crystal with two fingers. He then flicked it back to Death Spring, who was in the form of a golden pupil. The next second, the sparkles in Death Spring gathered into a stream. It poured into Azas flesh that was in the form of a black crystal. At the same time, golden sigils lit up on the surface of the crystal. As the sigils swirled, they soon began to penetrate the depths of crystal. Not long after, the entire crystal was filled with sigils from the inside out. At that point, the crystal began to melt slowly, regaining its crimson fleshly appearance. It did not stop squirming. It stretched out countless small tentacles and quickly constructed a human form. Lin Huang, who had been observing the transformation, could not help but raise his brow when he saw that. The reason being was that he saw himself in the human form, whose face had not been formed completely. As expected, within two to three breaths of time, a man was completely formed. It looked exactly the same as Lin Huang, apart from the fact that it was naked. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis over it and could not help but frown lightly. The reason being was that he did not sense its aura at all. Although the person looked exactly like him, its aura was just like a pure Abyssal creature. I merely copied your appearance to show you. Death Spring seemed to see through Lin Huangs doubts and explained, Its nature is still that of an Abyssal creature, but its under your control. It will listen to your command perfectly. Regarding the appearance, you can alter it as you like. You can try it yourself. Lin Huang nodded and tested it out immediately. With a thought, the clones appearance changed right away. At first, it turned into Bai, and then into Tyrant, Kylie and even Charcoal No matter what it changed to, its aura remained that of the aura of an Abyssal creature. Not only that, it was the most ferocious Abyssal creature. I hid the Gods soul you inserted in the deepest part of its soul. Unless He spreads His Divine Telekinesis to dig deep into its soul, even Aza will not discover anything unusual within a short period of time, Death Spring added. Alright. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction. So how does it go into Azas dreamland? Thats simple. As soon as Death Spring was done speaking, the fleshly clone shut its eyes automatically. The next second, Lin Huang instantly sensed a commotion coming from the sliver of Gods soul in the clone. Chapter 1845 - Elevating to Rank-6! Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation With a thought, Lin Huang shared the clones vision. He saw chaotic cosmoses that had been completely contaminated by the Abyss. The aura Azas Primordium left behind had almost spread all over the sky. Lin Huangs fleshly clone had Abyssal Power all over its body. It blended into such an environment. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis and very soon locked onto the first chaotic cosmos. He sent over his will projection directly. This chaotic cosmos was of a similar size as the universe. However, compared to the universe, this chaotic cosmos had transformed into an Abyss entirely. Apart from Abyssal creatures and monsters that had been contaminated with Abyssal energy, there were no normal living beings at all. Lin Huang did not even find the aura of a normal living being at all as he spread out his Divine Telekinesis. His fleshly clone had a combat strength of limit dominator-level rank-5. However, the will projection was only at dominator-level rank-1. The chaotic cosmos that was completely contaminated did not have a Dominator. Therefore, even a dominator-level rank-1 will projection was enough to rule over the entire chaotic cosmos. Meanwhile, this chaotic cosmos had been contaminated by Abyssal energy entirely. The contamination had the same source as Lin Huangs fleshly clone, which resulted in him not needing to spend any time assimilating this chaotic cosmos. As he spread out his Divine Telekinesis, he soon captured signs of this chaotic cosmoss Heavenly Dao. The next second, his will projection arrived in front of the Heavenly Dao directly. Before the Heavenly Dao could react, his will projectionss Kingdom descended directly, enveloping the Heavenly Dao. Later on, the will projection returned to the fleshly clone, while the clone began the forced integration process. Time continued to pass. The fleshly clone spent almost three months integrating with this chaotic cosmos Heavenly Dao completely. This chaotic cosmos finally became a part of the fleshly clones Kingdom. It takes three months? Lin Huang could not help but mumble softly. It had to be said that the integration efficiency of the fleshly clone was much lower than Lin Huang doing it personally. Moreover, he had already skipped the step of assimilating the entire chaotic cosmos. On the other hand, he only needed ten minutes at most when his Primordium integrated with a chaotic cosmos. Most of the time, he would not even need ten minutes. The integration process was finished in seven to eight minutes. The forced integration process was just too slow in comparison. However, no matter how much time was spent on the forced integration process of the chaotic cosmos in here, the time in the outside world was paused. This fact alone made Lin Huang ignore the boring integration process. After completing the integration of the first chaotic cosmos, he soon locked onto the second chaotic cosmos. It was not that he was unwilling to create more will projections, but he only had a sliver of Gods soul in this fleshly clone. It was only enough for him to create one will projection. He could not even consolidate a second will projection. He could only integrate chaotic cosmoses one by one. Death Spring had explained this limitation as well. He had only stored a tiny sliver of Lin Huangs Gods soul to prevent the fleshly clones aura from appearing unusual. This was Azas Primordiums dreamland after all. He was extra sensitive to the aura coming from the outside world. If he inserted slightly more Gods soul, it would increase the possibility of Him finding out by a hundredfold. Therefore, Lin Huang could only give up on the idea of storing more Gods soul energy and creating more will projections. Time passed by in the dreamland. The fleshly clones speed of refinement of a chaotic cosmos was basically fixed. It was approximately three months. Sometimes it took a shorter time, around two months or so, and sometimes it took longer, close to four months. Though it was slow, throughout those 100,000 years, the clone had refined over 400,000 chaotic cosmoses. It possessed over 420,000 chaotic cosmoses now. This was close to ten-fold of the number of chaotic cosmoses Lin Huangs Primordium had integrated. The fleshly clone was finally exhausted after 100,000 years. Just as the clone was disintegrating, Lin Huang recalled it. Although 100,000 years had passed in Azas dreamland, in the Death Spring, time had stopped at the moment the fleshly clone entered the dreamland. As soon as the clone returned, Lin Huang integrated its Kingdom into his own Kingdom. As it was his clone, the integration process was completed quickly. It was done within ten minutes. The chaotic cosmoses Heavenly Daos in the clones Kingdom sensed the Ultimate Heavenly Dao in Lin Huangs body. They began the integration process automatically. Eternity Fire did not stay idle. It had been busy absorbing the Abyssal energy in the hundreds of thousands of chaotic cosmoses. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs aura was increasing along with the number of Kingdoms integrated. It was growing continuously. Within half a day, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had broken through to 100,000. His combat strength had skyrocketed to dominator-level rank-6 directly. However, this was far from the end. Throughout these few days, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom had broken through to 100,000, and this number was still growing. A hundred thousand! Two hundred thousand! Three hundred thousand! Four hundred thousand! It finally stopped after it had reached slightly over 460,000. Lin Huang had merely stayed inside the Death Spring for less than four days, and the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had increased ten-fold, while his combat strength had been elevated by a rank. He was at dominator-level rank-6 now. Naturally, he did not expect such gains. Seems like Azas fleshly clones are great stuff Lin Huang could not help but mumble softly, Ill get to dominator-level rank-7 directly if 1 get my hands on one or two more. At this rate, perhaps Id only need some 20 fleshly clones in order to elevate to dominator-level rank-8. You wish, Death Spring who was beside him could not help but say, If you really killed 20 of Azas fleshly clones, I speculate that He will wake up within a year. Though Hes in a state of deep sleep, He can sense the death of His clones. Itll accelerate His awakening. Im just saying. Lin Huang chuckled awkwardly. Dreams were always beautiful, but reality was cruel. Set the coordinates with the Gate of All Realms. Teleport yourself here directly when you obtain Azas fleshly clone again, Death Spring said generously, Ill help you deal with it. Thanks, senior! Lin Huang thanked him immediately. Ive said and done everything I should. You can leave if you have no more questions. Although you have a shortcut now, you shouldnt neglect the integration of chaotic cosmoses with your Primordium. Every second counts for the grudge we have with Aza! Got it. Lin Huang nodded as he responded. The two chatted for a little bit. Lin Huang got Death Spring to send him back to the material realm after asking a few more questions.. Chapter 1846 - Elevating at Lightning Speed! Chapter 1846 Elevating at Lightning Speed! After returning to the infinite universe, Lin Huang merely spent a few minutes adapting to his newly elevated combat strength, after which he began a new round of chaotic cosmos integration. His Kingdom elevated again since his combat strength had elevated to dominator-level rank-6. It could contain more chaotic cosmoses now. Lin Huang tried to increase the number of will projections from ten to a hundred. Soon, he realized that there was no sense of burden on his Kingdom at all when the 100 will projections integrated the chaotic cosmoses. Therefore, he quickly increased the number of the will projections to 200. He soon found out that there was still no burden on his Kingdom. Their integration speed was not affected at all. Thus, he continued to create more and more will projections. Three hundred! Four hundred! Five hundred! When the number of will projections reached 500, an intense sense of burden was felt on his Kingdom. At the same time, all of the integrations of the will projections with the chaotic cosmoses began to slow down. They had only needed seven to eight minutes to complete each integration initially. Now, their integration efficiency had dropped by at least ten-fold. Lin Huang removed 50 will projections immediately, leaving only 450 will projections behind. The integration speed finally normalized again. He had also sensed that his Kingdom seemed to be full when the 450 will projections were performing the integration at the same time. However, since time was tight now, he wanted to test the limits of his Kingdom. Therefore, he created ten more will projections, bringing the total to 460. At that point, he finally sensed that this should be the limit that his Kingdom could bear. Considering that he needed to spare some strength to handle some unforeseen circumstances, he did not continue to create more will projections. He began to focus all he had on refining the chaotic cosmoses. The 460 will projections performed integration at the same time. Within a day, they had increased the number of chaotic cosmoses in Lin Huangs body by over 80,000. The increased number of chaotic cosmoses were continuing to feed his Kingdom. Lin Huang could clearly sense that the burden on his Kingdom had lightened significantly after a day. On the second day after the integration began, he decisively created more will projections. He increased the number to 500 again. This time, nothing happened to theKingdom. The integration efficiency of the will projections was not affected at all. After the second day, Lin Huang had integrated more chaotic cosmoses again. He had gained over 90,000 chaotic cosmoses in a single day. Sensing the Kingdoms burden lightening, he decisively increased the number of will projections again. He increased the number to 600. His Kingdom remained in a normal state throughout this round of integration. The will projections integration efficiency did not drop at all. Throughout that day, Lin Huang integrated close to 110,000 chaotic cosmoses. He would increase the number of will projections every day after that. The number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated with would increase day by day. By the time the fifth day had almost ended, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had finally broken through to a million. His physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom transformed again. He was elevated to dominator-level rank-7! Lin Huang, who had elevated to dominator-level rank-7, increased the number of will projections to 1,000 and began a new round of integration. On the first day, close to 200,000 chaotic cosmoses were added to his body. On the second day, he increased the number of will projections to 1,200 without hesitation. Throughout that day, 220,000 chaotic cosmoses were added to his body. From then on, he would increase the number of will projections every day. He would create at least 200 more each time. He integrated more and more chaotic cosmoses every day. Within four days, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had doubled. There were two million chaotic cosmoses now. Two days later, Lin Huang finally encountered a second fleshly clone of Aza. This clone was similar to the one that he had encountered previously. It was at the limit of dominator-level rank-5. However, Lin Huang was no longer the same as he was ten days ago. He suppressed the Azas fleshly clone directly with a flip of his hand. He then passed through the Gate of All Realms and returned to the death spring directly. Death Spring was stunned at first when He saw Lin Huang appear there. He could not help but exclaim after seeing him. Its only been less than ten days and youve already elevated to dominator-level rank-7?! Didnt you encounter any plateaus?! In reality, Death Spring had learned about Lin Huangs past. He knew that he had stunning combat strength elevation speed. However, Death Spring still found it incredible when he saw how fast he actually was. It was far beyond his expectations. Lin Huang merely smiled. My body is quite special, thats all. Death Springs golden pupil could not help but roll back. Lin Huang did not bother to delay. He took out Azas fleshly clone that he had just suppressed and got Death Spring to handle it. Death Spring did not go back on his words. He handled it and transformed it into Lin Huangs fleshly clone again. He then put it inside Azas dreamland. This time, the clone helped Lin Huang to obtain close to 500,000 chaotic cosmoses in the dreamland. To others, the number of chaotic cosmoses he obtained would undoubtedly be a massive gain. However, to the current Lin Huang, it had only saved him a day of his time. Nevertheless, it was better than nothing. After saying goodbye to Death Spring, Lin Huang went into integration mode again. Close to a week later, he encountered another of Azas fleshly clones. At that point, he had more than nine million chaotic cosmoses. He was not far from elevating to dominator-level rank-8. Death Spring was shocked again when he returned. He could sense the rough number of chaotic cosmoses Lin Huang had integrated in his body. He really could not understand the reason why Lin Huangs speed of chaotic cosmos integration would increase so rapidly like that. Lin Huang, who had gained another 500,000 chaotic cosmoses, returned to the infinite universe again. After spending less than half a day, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had broken through the ten million mark. His Kingdom, and the particles in his body and Gods soul transformed again. He was elevated to dominator-level rank-8! However, he did not stop just yet. His goal was to get to dominator-level rank-9. In reality, dominator-level rank-9 was not enough. He had to be more powerful! The reason being was that his enemy was not an ordinary dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. As soon as he elevated to dominator-level rank-8, he increased the number of his will projections again. He increased them to 10,000 at once. The new round of integration soon began! Although the process was dull, Lin Huang did not find it boring at all. As he integrated more and more chaotic cosmoses, he could clearly feel that he was becoming stronger almost every minute and second. He even began to forget about Aza. Every day, he was just thinking of exceeding his previous self Chapter 1847 - The Plan Before the War Chapter 1847 The Plan Before the War Please enter the transla Just like that, half a month passed by. On the 15th day, the will projections he released had broken through the 100,000-mark. Within merely a day, the over 100,000 will cosmoses. At that point, the number of chaotic cosmoses he had integrated finally broke through the 100 million-mark. He officially stepped into the ranks of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. Lin Huang finally felt relieved. Achieving dominator-level rank-9 meant that his combat strength had reached the threshold to challenge Aza. However, he knew that it was far from enough. Yes, Aza was also at dominator-level rank-9. However, His real ability definitely surpassed his own, who had just been elevated to dominator-level rank-9. Lin Huang did not stop integrating more chaotic cosmoses just yet. Although he did not know what the limit of his Kingdom was, he would not stop completely, at least not before his Kingdom had reached its limit. However, he diverted some of his attention elsewhere. Considering that Azas clones would initiate their own wars before Aza started the war officially, he thought it was necessary for him to cultivate his combat power to fight Him. At least when that happened, he could spend most of his attention on integrating more chaotic cosmoses instead of wasting time getting rid of Azas miscellaneous underlings. After thinking about it, Lin Huang contacted Bloody and Grimace. He passed all of the related information to them and told them about his idea to cultivate combat power. Bloody was the first to speak after skimming through all of the information. I feel that there is no need for you to restrain the Kingdoms time flow acceleration. A crisis is coming. Azas Primordium might wake up within a year. Given such circumstances, you can absolutely set the time flow acceleration to its maximum limit. Since I was elevated to dominator-level, the time flow acceleration in the Great Heaven Palace would have tripled every time I was elevated to a new rank. Im at dominator-level rank-9 now. The highest it can go is 6.561 billion times. Do you mean I should accelerate the time flow acceleration to 6.561 billion times directly? Lin Huang asked while raising his brows. Do that. We dont have time, Bloody said with determination, What we need the most now is the top combat power at dominator-level. Not everyone can elevate their combat strength as fast as you do. Even for the most talented powerhouses with sufficient potential, they would spend hundreds of billions of years to achieve dominator-level rank-1 at the earliest. There are even people who spend hundreds of billions of years to achieve dao-level. Lin Huang was still worried after listening. Of course I understand what youre getting at. The problem is, over 200 years would pass in the Kingdom when one second passes in the outside world if the time flow acceleration is six billion times. If a minute passes in the outside world, it would be 12,000 years in the Kingdom. If something goes wrong and I fail to notice for a couple of seconds, it might be too late to remedy the situation. Get Heavenly Dao to monitor the Kingdom. Nothing overly major will happen. If youre still worried, leave a clone behind to monitor the situation, Bloody suggested. Alright then, Lin Huang agreed after giving it some thought. Secondly, I think Emperors Hearts modification on the gravel world can be spread to the entire Kingdom, Bloody continued. Are you talking about the world setting of farming?! Lin Huangs eyes lit up when he heard her words. Yes. Even though its crude, it can accelerate the speed of cultivating many cultivators. Increasing the cardinal number of cultivators significantly is the equivalent to increasing the number of dominator-level powerhouses in the future. Thats a great idea indeed, Lin Huang agreed while nodding. He had begun to think about how to modify the rules in the Kingdom. To a dominator-level powerhouse, a modification of rules in the Kingdom was considered an easy task. He just had to be careful with the details. Ill discuss with Grimace on the exact modifications later and send them to you afterward, Bloody picked up the responsibility before waiting for Lin Huang to speak. Sure. Lin Huang initially thought he would have to come up with the outline first before getting Bloody to amend it and fill in the details. Now it seemed that he did not even have to come up with the outline anymore. Thirdly, create an atmosphere of competition. Dont limit it to just the Bug Tribe and Abyssal creatures, make all the tribes compete. Even better, make them all compete internally. Lin Huang was confused when he heard her words. Bloody continued immediately, The competition Im talking about is primarily healthy competition. Organize all sorts of combat competitions, including individual competitions and group competitions. Create rankings for all of the competitions, then give out rewards appropriately. Apart from internal competitions, run inter-tribe competitions, rank them and give out rewards. On one hand, such competitions and rankings can fortify everyones sense of competition. On the other hand, it will also elevate everyones combat ability. Not only that, such healthy competition will reduce the prevalence of vicious competitions. As everyone is focused on the healthy forms of competition, the conflicts of interest between tribes will be reduced. I think thats an amazing idea. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction when he heard that. He had never thought of that. tal In reality, many places had similar competitions and rankings. However, they basically only existed as entertainment. They were never taken seriously. Moreover, real powerhouses did not bother to participate in such competitions. They would only think that it was childish. However, if it was promoted on a large scale, and coupled with the atmosphere and tempting to participate. Not only that, just like what Bloody said, there were no battles to fight among the tribes in his Kingdom. Such competitions could indeed increase everyones real combat ability. No matter what, at that point, there would be individual competitions, team competitions, group competitions and even war simulations on varying scales. It would be a rehearsal for Azas clones invasion. The fourth thing is to focus on cultivating more on geniuses and talents, especially those people that have the potential to get to dominator-level. Apart from resources, give them all sorts of teachings. Grow them at the fastest speed possible and guide them onto the right path, Bloody continued to say. This can be combined with the third point you mentioned earlier. The real talents and geniuses would definitely stand out in the competitions. Its only a matter of time. Lin Huang nodded lightly. The third point you raised can actually be a great filtering system. Bloody gave over ten suggestions consecutively. Lin Huang basically agreed to all of them. Her ideas were much more comprehensive than what he had thought about. When Bloody was done speaking, he turned his head to look at Grimace with a smile. Is there anything that youd like to add? She has basically said everything I want to say, Grimace said angrily, However, I have a few minor suggestions. Do tell. Lin Huang raised his brows lightly. Grimaces intelligence was no lower than Bloodys. Moreover, he sometimes had a strange angle of looking at things, so Lin Huang was excited for what he was going to say. Firstly, I think that, given the presence of a threat like Aza, we can actually make other enemies our friends. Grimace paused slightly and glanced at Lin Huang before continuing, Such as the Bug Tribe, fiends as well as those that have been contaminated by Abyssal energy, but still possess consciousness and have built their own tribes Lin Huang held his chin and thought for a moment after listening, before nodding. It sounds like a great suggestion indeed. I think that its feasible too. The reason being is that, given your current ability, you can totally talk to the highest leader of those tribes directly. Also, they probably wont want to see the infinite universe become Azas private territory, Bloody agreed as well. Secondly, I think we can wake up some of the old geezers who are sleeping in their coffins Grimace grinned. Lin Huang and Bloody were speechless when they heard that. ation Chapter 1848 - The Bug Hordes Will Comes Chapter 1848 The Bug Hordes Will Comes Over the next few days, while continuing to release more will projections to integrate chaotic cosmoses, Lin Huang was modifying the rules of the Kingdom in his body. The first modification would be the time flow acceleration. He increased the initial time flow acceleration of one million times to the limit of the Great Heaven Palace, which was 6.561 billion times. Under that time flow acceleration, a day in the outside world would be close to 18 million years in his Kingdom. The many powerhouses in his Kingdom would obtain a significant boost in their abilities by the time each day passed in the outside world under such an extreme time flow acceleration. After modifying the time flow acceleration, the second thing Lin Huang modified was the elevation rule in his Kingdom. He changed the entire Kingdom to farming mode. Naturally, he would need to use Emperors Hearts initial setting to perform the modification. As Bloody and Grimace worked together, the rule improved significantly. For instance, they initially needed to kill monsters of higher grade than them in order to elevate. Now it was amended so that they could elevate as long as they killed enough monsters of the same grade. There were some other similar modifications, with the primary goal of decreasing the difficulty of combat strength elevation in order to develop more cultivators and cultivate more powerhouses. The third setting was naturally the competitions that Bloody had brought up. Lin Huang got Heavenly Dao to make all sorts of leaderboards, putting levels in the individual and group rankings. There were leaderboards for regular cultivators from transcendent-level to god-level, even all the way up to dominator-level. Not only that, each planet would have their own leaderboards. Beyond that, it was expanded to star zones, mini worlds, great worlds, all the way to the entire chaotic universe. The entire Kingdom had different leaderboards. In order to create an atmosphere of competition, the leaderboards of all sorts were spread to all corners in Lin Huangs Kingdom. Heavenly Dao even did the statistics and crunched the numbers for the leaderboards on its own. It was impossible that there would be anything missing or any mistakes. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs clones would only need to focus on the people who ranked at the top of the leaderboards to find if there were any worthy successors. Apart from the leaderboards, Lin Huang used the Heavenly Dao Power to inform all organizations about the competitions, while also promising handsome rewards. For instance, those ordinary cultivators who ranked at the top would be given annual resources to elevate them to transcendent-level easily. Those who ranked on the transcendence leaderboard would be given sufficient annual resources to elevate them to virtual god-level Not only that, the organizations that cultivated talents and geniuses would be given appropriate resources as a reward. Apart from individual competitions, there were also two, three, five, ten and twenty-person team competitions. There were also war simulation competitions and survival competitions of varying scales. To lower the death rate, Lin Huang even got Yang Ling and Lin Xin to work together. They used their Goldfingers to create a virtual chaotic cosmos. Everyone could participate in all sorts of virtual competitions, as well as all sorts of rankings in the virtual cosmos Those geniuses who stood out on the leaderboards would basically receive a large amount of resources. Lin Huangs clone would even select a few people that he thought were good every now and then and get them to join the Sword Alliance for better resources and training. At that moment, the Kingdom in his body had come to life. Aside from humans, Protoss, Fairies, Dragon Tribe All of the tribes seemed to be stimulated. All the tribes and organizations began to participate and vie for the resources. Lin Huang even invited some of the tribes that had enmity with humans previously. The only ones that were not invited were the Abyssal creatures and the Bug Tribe. Lin Huang stared at the few Bug Tribe Monster Cards in his hand and finally crushed them after thinking for a long time. He unsealed them. The Queen Mothers and Bug Kings were clearly relieved to have been released. They had thought that they might have been sealed forever due to the bug hordes will. Master. They greeted Lin Huang immediately when they saw him standing there. I need to communicate with the bug hordes will. Do you guys have any way to do so? The group of Bug Tribe monsters looked terrible as soon as they heard what Lin Huang said. A moment later, Queen Mother Shasha took the initiative to walk out. I can use our bodies as the medium to summon a clone of the bug hordes will. You dont have sufficient ability to bear the clone of the bug hordes will yet. Lin Huang pointed his finger between Shashas brows as soon as he was done speaking. The next second, her combat strength began to skyrocket. She broke through to lord-level and then stepped into dao-level. Then she broke through to minor dao-level, major dao-level, and heavenly dao-level. In the end, her combat strength halted at the limit of heavenly dao-level rank-9. She was only a step away from elevating to dominator-level. The entire process only took less than one minute. All of the Bug Tribe monsters around were dumbstruck when they saw that. They thought that it was bad news that Lin Huang brought this matter up. Never had they imagined that it was something good. Before Shasha could fully sense the changes in her physical body and Gods soul, Lin Huang mumbled, Omniscience rank-7 might not be enough to attract the bug hordes will to come He pointed his finger again as he spoke. Shashas body began to transform into a cocoon at speed that was visible to the naked eye. After that, time seemed to have been accelerated. The golden giant cocoon cracked open within three minutes, and Shasha stepped out of it. She was already at Aeon rank-8 when she stepped out of the cocoon. Her powerful aura was no weaker than a dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse. At that moment, an aura was roused deep within her Gods soul. Lin Huang smirked. He had covered her with his Divine Telekinesis. The aura seemed to sense how powerful he was and attempted to retreat. However, it was already too late by the time it discovered Lin Huang. Stop running and come over. Theres something that I need to talk to you about, Lin Huang spoke through voice transmission. The will knew that it could not escape, so it could only come over. It took over Shashas body. A deep blue halo appeared in her eyes. After taking a good look at Lin Huang, Shasha finally spoke in shock, A newly elevated dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse?! Her voice was completely different from Shashas. It sounded more like tens of thousands of bug beasts talking at the same time. same I guess. Lin Huang nodded while smiling. Are you the bug hordes will? To be exact, Im just a will clone, Shasha emphasized. He should be able to see that Im talking to you, right? Lin Huang glanced at the air behind Shasha as he spoke. Yes, my Primordium is watching right now. Shasha nodded lightly. Alright. I can see that your Primordium should be like me, a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. I dont like beating around the bush. Since hes watching, Ill be straightforward. Aza is waking up, so I hope that the Bug Tribe will become our ally! Lin Huang said directly. Chapter 1849 - Conversation With the Bug Hordes Will Chapter 1849 Conversation With the Bug Hordes Will Aza is waking up, so I hope that the Bug Tribe will become our ally! As soon as Lin Huang said that, the bug hordes will fell silent for a long time. Seeing that he did not speak, Lin Huang thought that he should keep the momentum going. He continued, As a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse, you should already know about Aza. As soon as He wakes up, the entire infinite universe will be transformed into a battlefield. When that happens, there will be no place left uncontaminated, including your Bug Tribes territories. The bug hordes will spoke slowly after Lin Huang was done speaking, In the infinite universe, all tribes see us as their enemy. To you guys, the Bug Tribe is no different than the Abyssal Tribe under Azas wing. The enmity we receive is no less than that of the Abyssal Tribe under Azas wing. Of course Im aware of Azas ability. I also have a rough idea about your ability too. To be honest, comparing them, I think the odds are better if we work with Aza to fight you guys. Not only that, to us, Aza is undoubtedly a better ally. I would like to know what makes you think that I should give up on making Aza our ally and choose you guys who have smaller odds? Lin Huang could not help but smile when he heard that. What you said is correct indeed. Compared to us, Aza is a much better ally for the Bug Tribe. However, what if you see things from the other side? What do you think Aza thinks of the Bug Tribe? Do you think Hed see the Bug Tribe as a great ally? Frankly speaking, do you think He really needs an ally? What Lin Huang said made the bug hordes will fall into silence again. Azas goal is to refine the entire infinite universe Heavenly Dao. In order to achieve that, He has to integrate enough chaotic cosmoses. Naturally, the effect is the same if He refines dominator-level powerhouses Kingdoms. He could even save more time that way. Therefore, on a certain level, all of the dominator-level powerhouses in the infinite universe are His targets. Especially dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses like you and I. Its impossible that He would let us go! The reason being is that, as soon as He refines one dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses Kingdom, He can save Himself hundreds of millions of years of chaotic cosmos integration. To put it bluntly, apart from a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse like you, you guys have many dominator-level powerhouses that are just food to Aza. Seeing that the bug hordes will did not retort, Lin Huang kept the momentum going. Therefore, the Bug Tribe doesnt even have the option to become Azas ally. Do we even have the option to become your ally, then? The bug hordes will responded in an unfriendly manner after a moment of silence. The low odds aside, even if we got lucky and won, without the presence of Aza and His Abyssal Tribe in the entire infinite universe, the Bug Tribe will end up as the biggest enemy of all the tribes. Lin Huang asked after falling silent momentarily, Since you said that, then let me ask you why do you think all of the tribes hate the Bug Tribe? The bug hordes will fell silent again. It was not that he did not know the answer to Lin Huangs question, but rather that he did not want to answer it. All the tribes hate the Abyssal Tribe under Aza because of the contamination of Abyssal energy. Ones consciousness would descend into a frenzy if they became contaminated carelessly. The existence of Abyssal creatures is a great threat to everyone. The bottom line is that theyre a threat to everyones survival. Meanwhile, one can say that all the tribes hate the Bug Tribe for the same reason. You guys plunder without restraint wherever you go. You expand your territories without restraint as well, which destroys the territories and resources of other tribes. Its also a threat to everyones survival. Are you saying we should go against our natural instinct and not plunder and expand? The bug hordes will scoffed at Lin Huang. I didnt say that. The reason being is that, among all the tribes, almost every single one has plundered and expanded their territories. It could even be said that many tribes are still doing this terrible thing. Lin Huang shook his head. However, I think you guys can exercise control, just like how the other tribes are doing so, Lin Huang continued, You guys should learn how to maintain a long-term perspective on development, instead of devouring all of the resources wherever you go, leaving behind a barren land. The people who arrive after that have no way of dealing with it, so they can only let the land remain barren. If you can restrain the Bug Tribes tendency to plunder and expand, though I dont mean that you guys should stop entirely, with restraint, I think we might not have enmity with the Bug Tribe. Youre just putting things nicely now. After we really become allies and defeat Aza, youll definitely change. Among all the tribes, you humans are the ones who are always going back on your words, the bug hordes will said without hesitation. IS What do you want me to do in order for you to trust me? Draw up a contact? Or take a Heavenly Dao Oath? Lin Huang really did not want to give up on the Bug Tribe as a potential allied force. Its useless no matter how you decide to package it. I want substantial benefits. Shasha, who had been possessed by the bug hordes will, stared at Lin Huang while smiling. What substantial benefits? Lin Huang squinted. Do tell. I know you have a unique technique to elevate the bug beasts grade Clearly, the bug hordes will had come prepared. I want you to increase my grade by one level! Elevate me from rank-9 Eternity to rank-10 Peerless. Lin Huang raised his eyebrows when he heard that. It made sense that the bug hordes will knew about it. The reason being was that he could definitely read Shasha and the other bug beasts memories. Ill have to apologize in advance. I cant do it. I can only elevate my own pets, Lin Huang said honestly. Shasha stared fixedly at Lin Huangs face, seemingly trying to see if he was lying. A moment later, the bug hordes will seemed to realize that he was telling the truth, and spoke again. Sure, elevate all of the bug beasts that have a contract with you to rank-10. As long as you can do that, I promise to make the Bug Tribe your ally and fight Aza together. The bug hordes will finally named His request. Lin Huang fell silent again. He only spoke again a moment later. To be honest, I cant do that as well. Before waiting for the bug hordes will to speak, Lin Huang continued, In order to increase the grade of my imperial monsters, a large amount of Origin Energy is required. The Origin Energy I have left is only enough to elevate two to three imperial monsters to Eternity. Its far from enough to elevate them further, much less more of them. How about this? Ill elevate Shasha to rank-9 first. Treat it as a deposit for our collaboration. You can think of a way to obtain the required Origin Energy later. As long as you provide me with enough Origin Energy, I can elevate all of them to rank-10! The bug hordes will fell silent and thought for a long time, after which he agreed eventually. Sure, Ill try to gather Origin Energy. After I do, youll elevate all of the bug beasts who have a contract with you to rank-10. Then I look forward to working with you. Lin Huang knew that he had agreed to form an alliance with him. Looking forward to working with you! Shasha stretched out her hand to shake Lin Huangs hand. Chapter 1850 - Peerless Rank-10 Chapter 1850 Peerless Rank-10 Lin Huang officially entered into an alliance with the bug hordes will after elevating Shasha to Eternity rank-9. In reality, he knew very well that the alliance was already half-successful once he contacted the bug hordes will. The bug hordes will knew very well that Aza did not need an ally, nor would He share the infinite universe with anyone. He wanted to be the one and only absolute Dominator. Without an alliance, the Bug Tribe would definitely fall when Aza invaded them. It was within Bloodys expectations that the bug hordes will seized the opportunity to seek advantages. His final request was to elevate Shasha and the others to Peerless rank-10. Lin Huang suspected that their elevation might cause the bug hordes will to elevate as well. After all, the bug hordes will admitted himself that he was at Peerless rank-10. Regardless, the bug hordes wills request was completely within the range of Lin Huangs ability. As they were his imperial monsters, naturally, the more powerful their ability was, the better. He did not really care if the bug hordes wills ability would elevate significantly as a result. Azas threat was looming close. Even if the bug hordes wills ability elevated significantly, it was impossible that he would start a war at such a time. The bug hordes will was still trustworthy, at least until war between Aza and him came to an end. Lin Huang was not too worried about what would happen after that. If Aza won the war, he would definitely be dead, so he would not concern himself about the bug hordes will. If he won the war, then his ability would be no less powerful than Azas. Naturally, he would then not have to worry about the bug hordes will betraying him either. Although he had come to an agreement with the bug hordes will, it would definitely take a long time before he elevated Shasha and the others to rank-10. The truth was indeed as he said, whereby a large amount of Origin Energy was required to elevate the imperial monsters under his wing to rank-10. The Origin Energy that he gained earlier was only sufficient for Xiao Hei to elevate one imperial monster to rank-9. After forming an alliance with the bug hordes will, Lin Huang immediately felt much more relieved. It meant that he could summon the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers and Bug Queens under his wing once again. He could also use the Bug Tribe armies again. Not only that, when the war started, all of the Bug Tribe beasts in the infinite universe would become his allies in the fight against Aza. It was undoubtedly an enormous source of help. After all, the number of Bug Tribe beasts was almost equivalent to the total number of all the other tribes members. Currently, the entire infinite universe finally had a common enemy-Aza and the Abyssal creatures under Him. For now, Lin Huang continued to send more and more will projections everyday to integrate more chaotic cosmoses. At the same time, he got the over 200 Nirvana Trees in his body to extract many Origin Energy fragments from Death Spring everyday. The over 200 Nirvana Trees had almost become a part of his Gods soul. They could even be considered his over 200 Gods soul clones. At the same time the large amount of Origin Energy fragments were extracted everyday, he did not stop disintegrating and refining these fragments, obtaining large amounts of information and Origin Energy from them. Naturally, he did not collect Origin Energy to help the bug hordes will to elevate Shasha and the others grades in advance, but rather for his imperial monsters apart from the Bug Tribe. He had almost drained all of the Origin Energy he accumulated when he elevated Shasha all the way to Eternity earlier. In order to elevate his imperial monsters grades now, he could only accumulate Origin Energy once again. Fortunately, the extraction and refinement ability of Origin Energy from the Nirvana Trees in his body was far greater than before. Within a day, he had accumulated enough Origin Energy to elevate all of his imperial monsters to Eternity. As soon as Lin Huang accumulated enough Origin Energy, he got his clone in his Kingdom to gather all of his imperial monsters, after which he got Xiao Hei to elevate all of them to Eternity rank-9. However, he did not accelerate the time flow to hasten their elevation. Instead, he allowed them to form their cocoons and break out of them naturally. Bai and the others who broke out of their cocoons naturally had their combat strength elevated from the limit major dao-level to the limit of heavenly dao-level rank-9. They were only a step away from dominator-level. Apart from his imperial monsters, Lin Xin and the others, the members from the Sword Alliance, as well as his close friends, obtained a large amount of resources too. Given the amendment of the rules in his Kingdom, they were elevating quickly. Soon, a month had passed in the outside world, while some 500 million years had passed inside his Kingdom. Many of his Sword Servants had stepped into heavenly dao-level, including Mr. Fu. He had just stepped into heavenly dao-level rank-1. This was a level that he had never expected to get to before. Meanwhile, Lin Xin, Lin Xuan, Chan Dou and a small number of geniuses had even integrated chaotic cosmos and stepped into heavenly dao-level rank-1. Lin Huang on the other hand had integrated over 100 billion chaotic cosmoses on the 41st day since he stepped into heavenly dao-level rank-9. At the moment, he was increasing the number of his will projections by close to 90 million everyday. Due to the significant surge in the number of his will projections everyday, the number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated everyday was surging too. Approximately a month later, he had integrated more than ten trillion chaotic cosmoses in his body. Though this was the case, he still did not sense any signs of his Kingdom reaching its limit. As he was not sure how powerful Aza was exactly, he did not stop his integration efforts just yet. Everyday, his schedule consisted of sending out more will projections to continue to integrate more chaotic cosmoses. A few days later, the bug hordes will had finally appeared in front of him again through Shasha. This time, he brought along a large amount of Origin Energy. In reality, the Origin Energy was only enough to elevate some ten Queen Mothers or Bug Queens to rank-10. Lin Huang informed him about that directly. Though the bug hordes will felt helpless, he nodded and agreed to gather more Origin Energy. Lin Huang got Xiao Hei to absorb the Origin Energy on the spot and elevated the ten Queen Mothers, including Shasha, to Peerless rank-10. He could clearly sense that the bug hordes wills aura had clearly increased significantly once Shasha elevated to rank-10. Clearly, he had obtained great benefits from that. Later on, the ten Queen Mothers completed their breakthrough one after the other. Each time a Queen Mother completed their elevation, Lin Huang could sense the bug hordes will growing more powerful. Although there was no transformational increase like the first time later on, each elevation would increase the bug hordes wills aura. Lin Huang could even clearly sense that the bug hordes wills current aura was comparable to his, who had integrated trillions of chaotic cosmoses. However, the bug hordes will was still a little weaker compared to him. After sending him off, Lin Huang remembered to check the progress of the Nirvana Trees in his body. From a glance, he found out that the Nirvana Trees had collected Origin Energy far beyond his imagination throughout those two months. Without hesitation, he summoned all of his imperial monsters and then contacted Xiao Hei. He elevated all of the imperial monsters apart from the Bug Tribe to Peerless rank-10! As the elevation to dominator-level was connected to chaotic cosmos integration, although the imperial monsters grade was elevated, nothing happened to their combat strength. Nevertheless, Lin Huang noticed the obvious changes in their Kingdoms. Since they had elevated to Peerless rank-10, the Kingdoms in their bodies seemed to have become full. Their auras were slightly similar to his. Lin Huang was a little suspicious that their Kingdoms might be the same as his, in the sense that they would not reach their limits easily. There might even not be a limit at all. Chapter 1851 - Lin Xin at Dominator-Level Rank-6 Chapter 1851 Lin Xin at Dominator-Level Rank-6 Looking at the Peerless Monster Cards in his hands, Lin Huang thought for a moment before asking Xiao Hei as he could not hold back, Does the Combat Strength Upgrade Card still work on Bai and the others? Of course it does. Xiao Hei gave an affirmative answer without any hesitation. They can elevate their combat strength without having to integrate chaotic cosmoses? Lin Huang was a little surprised by the answer. The Combat Strength Upgrade Card will produce chaotic cosmoses in their Kingdoms. They wont have to integrate them. Can I use it too?! Lin Huang did not expect the Combat Strength Upgrade Cards effect to be so insanely useful. Theoretically, you can. However, judging by the base quantity of chaotic cosmoses in your body, it wont be enough even if you exhaust the Origin Energy in the entire death spring in order to elevate your combat strength. So my suggestion is that you continue to integrate chaotic cosmoses like a good boy. Why didnt you tell me that I could use the Combat Strength Upgrade Card directly after I stepped into dominator-level? I couldve gotten to rank-5 or even rank-6 one to two months in advance. I thought you knew, but were unwilling to elevate using this method. Xiao Heis explanation rendered Lin Huang speechless. However, once he thought about it, Xiao Hei was right. Even if he knew, there was a high chance that he would not elevate using such a shortcut. In reality, he had never used the Combat Strength Upgrade Card to elevate his combat strength throughout his cultivation journey. Naturally, that excluded the times he used the Provisional Combat Strength Upgrade Card. He subconsciously felt that his ability would only be truly his if he elevated his combat strength by cultivating himself. Feeling helpless, he asked again after shaking his head, Which rank will Bai and the others be if I elevate them using the Origin Energy accumulated from the Nirvana Trees? If you want to elevate all of your Monster Cards combat strength, its sufficient to elevate all of them to dominator-level rank-8. You can even elevate three of them to rank-9. If youre not elevating all of them, you can elevate seven Monster Cards to rank-9. Lets go with the first option then. Well elevate the remaining imperial monsters to rank-9 when we accumulate more Origin Energy later on. Lin Huang picked the first option almost without thinking about it. So which three cards would you like to elevate to rank-9? Xiao Hei asked immediately. Bai, Lancelot and Kylie, Lin Huang answered quickly after thinking for a moment. The reason he chose them was because Bai had the most powerful combined ability and had followed him for the longest time. Meanwhile, not only was Lancelot and Kylies combat ability ranked at the top among the imperial monsters under his command, but they also had their own armies. The Sword Servants under Lancelot and the dependents under Kylie would have their ability elevated in tandem with the elevation of their combat strength. Therefore, it would be more cost-effective to elevate the combat strength of these three. For Bloody and Grimace, they were more useful in strategizing. So it would not make too much of a difference as to whether their combat strength was rank-8 or rank-9. Meanwhile, Killer, who had outstanding combat ability; Tyrant, who had stunning defense ability; Charcoal, who had the most powerful group damage ability; and Warlord, who was invincible on battlefields Lin Huang put them on the shortlist for the second round of elevation. After confirming the list of monsters that would be elevated to dominator-level rank-9, he gathered all of his imperial monsters again. He crushed the Combat Strength Upgrade Cards one after the other, turning his imperial monsters into giant cocoons in the Great Heaven Palace. Watching his imperial monsters turning into hibernating giant cocoons, he could sense clearly the increasing aura emanating from the cocoons. He removed his consciousness after observing their conditions for a moment. Now, lets wait for them to come out of the cocoons, and we can participate in the war directly Lin Huang looked at the star zone where Lin Xin and the Sword Servants were. Their combat strength elevation speed is too slow He suddenly contacted Death Spring with his consciousness after giving it a thought. Youve become more powerful again Death Spring said through voice transmission as soon as he responded. He could sense from Lin Huangs consciousness that he had become more powerful since their last interaction. Im far from being your match. Lin Huang was not being humble, but he could sense that, although he had integrated more than ten trillion chaotic cosmoses, Death Spring was still more powerful than him. I spent so much time cultivating to get to where you are now. Judging by your current cultivation speed, you might surpass me within a month, Death Spring could not help exclaim. Then approximately how long would it take for me to surpass Aza? Lin Huang asked immediately. I dont know. I only know that Aza is more powerful than I am, but Ive no idea how much more powerful exactly. Moreover, Hell recall all of His clones once He wakes up entirely. His ability would skyrocket when that happens. Death Spring could not really answer Lin Huangs question. Alright, then In reality, Lin Huang expected that answer, so he did not dwell on the matter. Instead, he got doown to business directly. Can you help me send some of my friends to Azas dreamland so that they can integrate chaotic cosmoses there? Arent you going to do that yourself? Death Spring asked with slight confusion. Given my current state, its quite meaningless for me to enter Azas dreamland to integrate chaotic cosmoses anymore. Id rather give that opportunity to others. At least they can elevate to dominator-level rank-5, or even rank-6, quickly. What Lin Huang said was the truth; as the number of his will projections grew each day, he would integrate more than two billion chaotic cosmoses everyday. Each time he entered Azas dreamland, he could only integrate 300,000 to 400,000 chaotic cosmoses. To the current him, it was undoubtedly a drop in the bucket. Its no wonder that you havent come by for over a month now. I thought you were only going to do that after accumulating a bunch of fleshly clones. Although Death Spring had no idea how Lin Huang elevated so quickly, he had a rough sense of how many chaotic cosmoses Lin Huang had integrated since they last met. It was indeed vastly greater than the amount he could integrate in Azas dreamland. I initially planned to use them myself after accumulating them. However, I thought about it carefully and thought that it would be much better if I gave the opportunity to others. Indeed, Lin Huang had encountered Azas fleshly clones twice throughout the past one month. He did not come to the Death Spring after suppressing them, but merely stored them away. He did not expect that the fleshly clones would come in handy now. After they chatted for a little while longer, Lin Huang quickly sent Lin Xin and Lin Xuan into the death spring, and passed Azas two fleshly clones to Death Spring. While Death Spring was making them the fleshly clones, Lin Huang warned the two of them before entrusting them to Death Spring. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan soon hid a sliver of their Gods soul in the fleshly clone and fell into Azas dreamland. While the two clones were integrating chaotic cosmoses in Azas dreamland, the time in the outside world stopped. Almost the next second after the two fell into the dreamland, they woke up directly. Their aura began to skyrocket. It elevated from dominator-level rank-1 to rank-2, rank-3 It finally stabilized at dominator-level rank-6. Meanwhile, the number of chaotic cosmoses that they had integrated in their bodies was still growing even after they stepped into dominator-level rank-6. It only stopped when it got to over 300,000. They were over the moon. Lin Xin said to Lin Huang with excitement on her face, Brother, it would be great if we can do this everyday. Im sure that Ill get to dominator-level rank-7, or even rank-8, really fast. You wish, haha, Lin Huang chuckled lightly and said, This is Azas fleshly clone. You can only do it once. Moreover, apart from you two, Chan Dou, Sword 1 and the others need these resources as well. However, you guys can go hunt for Azas fleshly clones yourself. Your ability should be sufficient now. Save them for yourself when you hunt them, theres no need to share. How about you, brother? Lin Xuan asked instantly. I dont need it. I can integrate chaotic cosmoses even faster than using this method, Lin Huang said directly. How many can you integrate per day, then? Can it surpass 300,000 to 400,000? Lin Xin asked while pouting. No matter what, its much more than you guys can imagine, Lin Huang said with a smile. Can it be hundreds of millions? Lin Xin made a silly face. She intentionally said a number that she thought was impossible to reach. Ive already said that its much more than you guys can imagine, Lin Huang said while shaking his head. He really did not want to discourage them. Billions?! Lin Xin widened her eyes. Lin Xuan, who was beside her, was clearly a little moved too. They knew that Lin Huang would not joke about such things with them. Stop asking. The real figure will only discourage you guys. Lin Huang pinched Lin Xins cheeks. More than that? Lin Xin said unwillingly. Ill tell you next time. Ask me again when you are integrating a hundred million chaotic cosmoses everyday. Lin Huang did not want to dwell on the topic. He left the death spring directly with a flash. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan, who were left standing where they were, looked at each other. Was he playing around with us on purpose? Lin Xin could not help but ask Lin Xuan, How is it possible that a person can integrate tens of billions of chaotic cosmoses everyday? I dont think brother would joke about such a thing. However, Lin Xuan stood on Lin Huangs side as he said with a smile, He has been accomplishing things that many people couldnt all this time. Chapter 1852 - Aza Has Woken Up?! Chapter 1852 Aza Has Woken Up?! Days continued to pass by in the infinite universe, and Lin Huang was becoming more powerful almost every day. On the 98th day since he was elevated to dominator-level rank-9, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had broken through 100- trillion mark. On the 112th day, that number broke through the quadrillion mark! On the 126th day, it broke through one Jing mark (One Jing is equivalent to ten quadrillion)! At that moment, the number of will projections he sent out had surpassed nine billion. Within four months, although Lin Huang was still at dominator-level rank-9, his ability was many times more powerful than when he had just stepped into dominator-level rank-9. After a few further interactions, Death Spring sensed that Lin Huangs current ability had surpassed his own. However, he was still not too sure whether he was more powerful or weaker than Aza. He chose to continue integrating more chaotic cosmoses without hesitation. At the same time his ability elevated, 2.2 billion years had passed inside his Kingdom. It was not only the Sword Servants, even Mr. Fu had stepped into dominator-level rank-1. With the large amount of resources piling up, there were more than 3,000 dominator-level powerhouses in his Kingdom now. However, this was under the premise that Lin Huang had yet to authorize them to leave his Kingdom. Nobody else could integrate the chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom. Therefore, if they wanted to elevate to dominator-level, they had to leave his Kingdom and enter the infinite universe to integrate ownerless chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang got Bloody to handle authorization process for them to leave his Kingdom. Bloody would run a strict selection among all the tribes and organizations in his Kingdom. As soon as there were any that met the selection criteria, they would be informed of the method to leave his Kingdom. Meanwhile, less than one-tenth of the total number of limit heavenly dao-level rank-9 powerhouses were released throughout those few months. There were millions of people among all the tribes in Lin Huangs Kingdom who had stepped into heavenly dao-level. This number might even be on par with the number of heavenly dao-level powerhouses in the infinite universe. The most Lin Huang could do to help these powerhouses in his Kingdom was to elevate them to the limit of heavenly dao-level. They would have to depend on themselves after that. On the Sword Alliances side, as they possessed Azas dreamland as a cheat code, Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and the few other core members would basically all be elevated to dominator-level rank-6. Lin Xin and Lin Xuan had hunted a few Azas fleshly clones themselves and had been elevated to dominator-level rank-7. Meanwhile, among the Sword Servants, only Sword 1 had entered Azas dreamland for now. He had been elevated to dominator-level rank-6. Very soon, two months had passed. The number of chaotic cosmoses in Lin Huangs body had broken through the astronomical figure of 100 quintillion. At that moment, almost half a year had passed since he had been elevated to dominator-level rank-9. On this day, Lin Huangs Primordium, which was hovering in the air, suddenly opened his eyes. This unusual aura fluctuation He stared into space from the corner of his eye. He could faintly sense that a terrifying aura had emerged from extremely far away. It could be sensed in the infinite universe through the endless dimensions So Azas Primordium has finally woken up He felt a slight twinge in his heart. The reason being was that, through the sliver of aura the person unintentionally released, he could sense that His ability was definitely no weaker than his. In fact, He might be even more powerful. The few days after the aura leaked out for a second, the entire infinite universe welcomed a brand new challenge. Almost all of the Abyssal rifts began to expand in a frenzy. The mystic territories in the entire infinite universe started appearing more frequently and opening much faster. Even the dominator-level mystic territories that had hardly appeared for tens of thousands of years before would appear and open almost everyday. Hundreds to thousands of dao-level mystic territories would appear and open everyday. Not only did they appear, they did not stop expanding, swallowing the star zones around them. Countless cultivators in the entire infinite universe fell into a panicked state. People were making noise on the internet. All sorts of news surfaced; some real, some fake. Many people even believed that the doomsday had arrived. Only a small number of higher-ups of the major organizations and tribes who had dominator-level powerhouses guarding them knew the truth. The reason being was that Lin Huangs clone had informed them through the Ultimate Heavenly Dao. The clone even visited some of the organizations and tribes with dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses, as well as some with dominator-level rank-6 powerhouses hiding within them. Seeing that the entire infinite universe had fallen into chaos within two to three days of the war even starting, Lin Huang could only send a message through Heavenly Dao to get all the organizations and tribes to reassure the cultivators within their territories to avoid unnecessary panic and internal rebellion. Over the next few days, the higher-ups of the organizations and tribes showed up to reassure the cultivators within their respective jurisdictions. Major work was undertaken to refute the rumors on the internet. Although the major organizations and tribes were refuting the rumors, to most people, their words were not 100% credible. However, at least there was no longer anyone spreading rumors. The panic among the people had decreased significantly. Later on, Lin Huang got Bloody to prepare a speech to explain Azas invasion. After that, he came up with some warning information about the war that was about to take place. He sent this document over to the higher-ups of the organizations and tribes. He knew that he could not hide it forever. It would definitely stir up panic among the people but, if he did not tell them, they would not be prepared for the upcoming war. He could only tell them so that they were mentally prepared to prevent them from falling into greater panic when the real war started. Moreover, on a certain level, if he got them to prepare for the war in advance, it would increase everyones survival rate. For the next few days, the organizations and tribes had finally sent out the document Lin Huang provided after making some simple amendments. As soon as the news went out, countless cultivators in the infinite universe were shocked. Hot discussions surfaced on the internet. Many people criticized the fact that the organizations had hidden the news from them, while others pessimistically thought that doomsday was really coming. The reason being was that the document gave a simple description that Aza, the invader, had the combat strength of dominator-level rank-9. Meanwhile, in the infinite universe, the most powerful powerhouse on the surface was only at dominator-level rank-5. They were no different than ants in the presence of the invader. However, Lin Huang ignored that. Apart from continuing to send out more will projections everyday as usual to integrate more chaotic cosmoses, he focused mostly on a particular mystic territory that had suddenly appeared a few days ago. To other dominator-level powerhouses, this mystic territory might not seem any different from other dominator-level mystic territories. However, through the fog, Lin Huang could clearly sense that there was at least one dominator-level rank-7 hidden inside this mystic territory. Chapter 1853 - The Gathering of Powerhouses Chapter 1853 The Gathering of Powerhouses This aura is similar to Azas, but it doesnt feel like His clone Lin Huang raised his brows slightly and gazed across the dimensions. He had his eyes on an ellipsoid dimension that was covered in gray fog. Even he could not see through the fog to see what was happening inside this mystic territory. However, he could sense the aura inside clearly. Seeing that some of the dominator-level powerhouses from the infinite universe had gathered outside the mystic territory, Lin Huang thought for a moment and summoned Bai, who had been integrating chaotic cosmoses. He sent the mystic territorys coordinates to him. Monitor this mystic territory for the time being. If it opens, you can take a stroll inside it. It would be best to capture that dominator-level rank-7 powerhouse alive. If you really cant, itd be great to bring his body back. Bai nodded quickly and left as soon as he received the mission. Lin Huang stopped focusing on the matter after getting Bai to handle it. Instead, he continued focusing on integrating chaotic cosmoses. For the next two days, Bai left a clone to monitor the area outside the mystic territory. The clones real ability was naturally at dominator-level rank-9. However, in order to prevent unwanted attention, he disguised it as a dominator-level rank-3 powerhouse in front of those people at the moment. The clone did not bother about the others who were surrounding the mystic territory. He merely sat with his legs crossed alone in the air, far away from the other people. However, his clone, which was garbed in a black robe and sporting a head of white hair, still somehow managed to get people to talk about him. Which organization is that white-haired guy from? Someone asked him two days ago. He said that hes from the Sword Alliance. There are only 700 to 800 organizations in the entire infinite universe with dominator-level powerhouses guarding them. Among them, perhaps only 200 to 300 of them have powerhouses above dominator-level rank-3. Is the Sword Alliance among them? How come Ive never heard of it? Neither have I. Perhaps its some reclusive sect. After all, since the tribulation is coming, many organizations and tribes that were reclusive can no longer afford to hide themselves. As the people were discussing, a few figures landed nearby at the same time. At that moment, the people looked at them with shock in their eyes. Theyre from Star Palace! I cant believe they sent Star Lord Shilun here! Someone among the crowd could not help but exclaim. The Star Palace was one of the top organizations in the infinite universe. They were led by three dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses; and the three leaders were given the title of Star Lord by Star Palace. Star Lord Shilun was one of the three Star Lords. His dominator-level rank-5 combat strength made him, undoubtedly, on the surface, the most powerful powerhouse among everyone present apart from Bai. There were three other people who arrived with Star Lord Shilun. They were all powerhouses from Star Palace. Their combat strength was at dominator-level rank-3 and dominator-level rank-4 respectively. As soon as they arrived, Star Lord Shilun glanced at everyone who was present. After scanning through the crowd, he cast his gaze on Bai, who was alone in the distance. Star Lord Shilun, who had initially only given him a casual glance, suddenly saw Bai tilt his head to glance at him. The second their eyes locked, Star Lord Shiluns heart jolted. Before he managed to react properly, that strange feeling faded away completely. Was it all in my head? Star Lord Shilun glanced at him again. At this moment, Bai was looking away and had shut his eyes. He did not feel anything unusual now. Sir? A lady in silver armor next to him seemed to sense that something was wrong with him. She could not help but call out to him softly. Her armor was very fitting, displaying the curves of her body completely. Nevertheless, her combat strength was not to be underestimated. She was merely slightly weaker than Star Lord Shilun, and was a powerhouse at dominator-level rank-4. Hmm Star Lord Shilun nodded slightly. Does anyone know who that young man with white hair is? The lady and the other Dominators took a good look at Bai immediately, after which they shook their heads a moment later. I dont. His white hair should be quite an obvious characteristic. In the infinite universe, we only know three to five Dominators who have white hair. Clearly, this guy isnt one of them, the silver-armored lady explained, However, his dominator-level rank-3 combat strength cannot be considered weak. If he was involved in a battle previously, its impossible that there are no records of him on Star Net at all. Therefore, I believe that he might be from one of those reclusive organizations. The Star Net the silver-armored lady mentioned was Star Palaces intelligence department. In reality, Star Palaces intelligence department aside, other top organizations intelligence departments would gather information of dominator-level powerhouses battles. As such, anyone who fought in public would basically have their information recorded. However, Bai had been busy integrating chaotic cosmoses throughout the past half a year. Although he had killed some of Azas fleshly clones throughout that period of time, he had done so secretively. He acted quickly, so no one had ever seen him in combat. Naturally, no recordings of him could be found. Is something wrong with him? The silver-armored lady could not help but ask. After all, it was rare for Star Lord Shilun to take the initiative to ask about someone. One could even say that it had never happened before. Nothing, I just thought this persons demeanor is quite unique. Star Lord Shilun shook his head. He did not tell them about the split-second feeling that now felt like an illusion to him. Meanwhile, Bais clone heard their voice transmissions clearly. This guy is so sharp? Hes worthy of being a dominator-level rank-6 powerhouse. Bai secretly complimented Star Lord Shilun. Star Lord Shilun was known to be a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse, but he could not hide his real ability from Bai at all. He saw through him instantly. This Star Lord Shilun was at dominator-level rank-6. He was also the most powerful powerhouse among everyone who was present, apart from Bai. Star Lord Shilun did not realize that Bai had seen through him from that one glance. After all, dominator-level rank-9 and dominator-level rank-6 powerhouses were on completely different levels. Since Star Lord Shilun arrived, he merely nodded slightly at the people who were standing near him. He considered it ashis greeting. Later on, the few of them from Star Palace occupied an area of their own. They did not stand together with the others. The people did not criticize them for it. Most of the top organizations were like that. They were unwilling to mingle with other organizations. Not long after the people from Star Palace arrived, another door opened in the dimension. One man and two ladies in white robes walked out of it. The people were stirred up again. People from Snow Domain are here too?! The leading person is Snow Domains domain owner, Boundless Snow, right?! Snow Domain was one of the top organizations in the infinite universe. However, compared to other top organizations, the Snow Domain had almost been completely reclusive during this era. They rarely showed themselves in public. Therefore, the arrival of the three people from Snow Domain was something that many did not expect. We just talked about people with white hair, now here comes another one, the silver-armored lady who was next to Star Lord Shilun could not help but mumble softly after glancing at Boundless Snow. However, Star Lord Shilun greeted Boundless Snow while smiling, Domain Owner Snow, how come you decided to come to this mystic territory? I thought Id take a stroll since I was bored, Boundless Snow replied calmly. Chapter 1854 - Heavens Secret Chapter 1854 Heavens Secret Although Snow Domain had always remained partially reclusive, no one could ever shake their position as one of the top organizations. It was primarily because this domain owner, Boundless Snow, was too stunning in his few recorded battles. Other dominator-level powerhouses recorded a battle of him killing a dominator-level rank-5 monster in a mystic territory. The video spread across the entire infinite universe. Almost all powerhouses who had some level of authorization had seen it, including those powerhouses who were basically at heavenly dao-level and dominator-level who were present. Therefore, everyone recognized him as soon as he arrived. Although Bai had no idea who the person was at first, he instantly gathered information about him after hearing the peoples discussion. He had a rough idea of the capabilities of this Boundless Snow. Another person who is disguised as a dominator-level rank-5 Bai saw through his real combat strength from a glance. His real combat strength is close to dominator-level rank-7. This guys real combat strength was at the limit of dominator-level rank-6. He was only a step away from rank-7. His combat strength was more powerful than Star Palaces Star Lord Shilun. Bai could tell that perhaps this guy dared not break through beyond his current combat strength. His innate grade was only rank-7.5, which was pseudo-Aeon. Such an innate grade greatly restricted his combat strength. One could even say that it was amazing that he managed to step into dominator-level rank-6 at all. The risk would be too high if he was to try to break through further. The success rate of doing so might be less than one-ten-thousandth. Clearly, Boundless Snow knew that as well. Thus, he restrained his combat strength at the limit of dominator-level rank-6. He dared not take the next step. Bai learned of Boundless Snows situation from a glance. Boundless Snow soon noticed Bai, who was sitting alone. However, he looked away after merely a glance. He did not seem to notice anything unusual about Bai at all. Bai noticed that, after which he held Star Lord Shilun in higher regard. Seems like it has nothing to do with his combat strength, but rather that his senses are extraordinarily sensitive. The reason being was, at the moment, Boundless Snow who had higher combat strength did not notice anything unusual about Bai. While the people were discussing, Star Lord Shilun took the initiative to greet Boundless Snow. Seemingly wanting to verify something, he shifted the subject to Boundless Snows hair. We just got here as well. We couldnt help but talk about how many powerhouses possess white hair in the infinite universe when we saw that guy with white hair. We didnt expect you guys to show up as soon as we started discussing the topic. Boundless Snow nodded with a faint smile, but he did not have the intention to look at Bai again. Star Lord Shilun instantly realized that Boundless Snow did not have any special feelings about that guy with white hair. Was it really just a figment of my imagination? He was even more doubtful of his senses now. However, since he had broken the ice, he could not just ignore Boundless Snow. He only recalled his Divine Telekinesis after chatting with him for a while. Boundless Snow thought that it was quite ridiculous. He thought to himself, Does this guy get high on socializing? I dont think we know each other that well. As a partially reclusive organization, Snow Domains relationship with almost all of the organizations in the infinite universe was strictly limited to business. They were not close with any of them. Although Star Palace had conducted business with them, he had only met Star Lord Shilun once. It was considered their second time seeing each other this time, so he could not really get used to his friendliness. Fortunately, the awkward situation did not last too long. The reason being was that more powerhouses from another top organization arrived! There were even more discussions when the third top organization arrived. The reason being was that it was Heavens Secret! Heavens Secret was the biggest intelligence organization in the infinite universe. They were the one and only, as well as the oldest organization in the infinite universe. Apart from that, on the surface, Heavens Secret was also the most powerful organization in the infinite universe. The reason being was that, on the surface, they had 12 dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses. They were known as the 12 lieges. In reality, many major organizations in the outside world knew that above the 12 lieges was a chief liege. However, this chief liege had never shown himself to the outside world before. Even though the people in Heavens Secret revealed that they had a chief liege apart from the 12 lieges, nobody had the authorization to meet the chief liege at all. The thing that awed people the most about Heavens Secret was not the mysterious chief liege or the 12 dominator-level rank-5 lieges. Instead, it was because Heavens Secret was an organization that was seemingly omniscient and all-knowing As long as one paid the appropriate price, one could purchase any intel or information they wanted from Heavens Secret. There was even a rumor that said that Heavens Secrets chief liege might know the method to break through past dominator-level. Watching the two people from Heavens Secret arriving, even Boundless Snow from Snow Domain and Star Lord Shilun from Star Palace turned serious. The expression on their faces became more solemn now. The crowd not far away were discussing with each other. Two Heavens Secrets lieges came this time?! They sent two lieges over directly. Does Heavens Secret know something about this mystic territory?! They didnt even bring along a subordinate. I suspect that this mystic territory is extremely dangerous! Fourth Liege, Fifth Liege, Star Lord Shilun took the initiative to greet them with a smile. The 12 lieges of Heavens Secret had no names to the outside world. They were only numbered from first to twelfth. The outside world could only address them based on their number. The 12 people had different looks, so it was easy to tell them apart. For instance, Fourth Liege before them was a handsome gentleman, while Fifth Liege was a muscular, towering hunk. He was close to three meters tall, and he looked tired. Star Lord Shilun. The two lieges nodded slightly at Star Lord Shilun. Then, they looked at Boundless Snow and nodded at him. Domain Owner Xue. Boundless Snow nodded at the two of them. This was considered his way of greeting them. Seeing that they had greeted each other, as Star Lord Shilun was thinking of an excuse to ask something in order to get some information, he saw the two of them appear next to the white-haired man directly in a flash. The two of them bowed almost at the same time. Mr. Bai. Everyone present was dumbstruck to see this. Heavens Secrets lieges bowed to someone?! Even if such a matter were to be publicized, it was likely that nobody would believe it. Bai lifted his gaze and said with slight confusion, Do you guys know me? In reality, he had sensed it when the two of them arrived. They were not at dominator-level rank-5 at all. They were legitimate dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses. Their combat strength was at the limit of dominator-level rank-7. However, he ignored them after merely a glance. Never had he thought that the two of them seemed to have recognized him, and even took the initiative to greet him. We observed one of your battles by accident, Fourth Liege said calmly with asmile. What else do you guys know? Bai asked again. He did not think that it was the reason they recognized him. In reality, what we know is limited. As long as youre here, our trip will be safe this time. Fourth Liege did not provide a direct answer. Seeing that he was unwilling to spill the details, Bai did not persist. Instead, he asked, What do you guys know about this mystic territory? Chapter 1855 - Cthulhus Malice Chapter 1855 Cthulhus Malice What do you guys know about this mystic territory? After Bai asked that, Fourth Liege fell silent for a moment. He only spoke slowly after seemingly sorting out his thoughts. According to our speculations, this mystic territory might be called Rlyeh. Its a hopeless ocean. Meanwhile, the ruler of the ocean is called Cthulhu. Hes a powerhouse at dominator-level rank-6 at least. Fourth Liege did not say that through voice transmission. Instead, he said it out loud. Everyone present heard his words loud and clear. Is this Cthulhu Azas clone? Bai asked curiously. Seeing that he did not speak through voice transmission, he asked out loud this time. No. On a certain level, hes considered Azas descendant. Under Azas command, hes been placed in charge of the water element. Compared to the cultivators who major in the water element, he was innately created as a water element Dominator. Therefore, Hes more powerful than all water element powerhouses even if they are also dominator-level rank-6 powerhouses. Also, although the mystic territory is just Azas dreamland fragment, this Rlyeh isnt just that. Its also Cthulhus Kingdom. As soon as one enters, it means entering his Kingdom. There are only two ways to get out. The first is if Cthulhu releases the person, and the second is if he dies and his Kingdom collapses. Many people present looked terrible when they listened up to this point. Most of them began to hesitate about whether they should go in. Even the people from Star Palace and Snow Domain could not help but have their facial expressions changed. In this Kingdom, the entire ocean is Cthulhus world. Not only is the ocean filled with extremely dense Abyssal energy, but there are many Abyssal monsters everywhere. There are dependents at dominator-level rank-5 among them. Fourth Liege paused as he spoke up to this point. He turned his head to look in the direction where everyone was gathered. My personal advice is that its best for people who have combat strength lower than dominator-level rank-5 to give up on the exploration this time. The frequency of mystic territories opening is high now. There will be many other mystic territories that you guys can explore later on. Theres no need to go through futile trials here. Fourth Liege, this white-haired guy is only at dominator-level rank-3. Are you advising him to leave too? A bald man among the crowd bit the bullet and shouted. His combat strength was the same as what Bai was currently displaying, which was dominator-level rank-3. Fourth Liege was taken aback. He could not help but glance at Bai helplessly. Naturally, he knew that Bai had disguised his combat strength. He did not want people to know his real ability. Therefore, it would be terrible if Fourth Liege exposed him. Bai shook his head helplessly. His aura began to skyrocket. Within a single breath of time, he elevated his combat strength to dominator-level rank-5 and then stopped. The crowd was shocked to see that. Even Star Lord Shilun and Boundless Snow had surprise-filled faces. Star Lord Shilun finally understood why he experienced that illusion earlier, So it wasnt just in my head. This guy hid his combat strength! Also, his real combat strength shouldnt be merely dominator-level rank-5! He spoke again after falling into a daze for a moment. I personally trust Heaven Secrets source. He turned his head to say to the people next to him as soon as he said that, Dont come with me this time. Wait for me outside. But Star Lord If its really as Fourth Liege said, I might not have the strength to spare to take care of you guys later. Instead, I might even end up being distracted, Star Lord Shilun said in all seriousness. Meanwhile, on Snow Domains side not far away, Boundless Snow turned his head to instruct the two ladies around him after a moment of thought, You guys will wait outside too. Seeing the actions of Star Palace and Snow Domain, many of them began to harbor the intention of retreating. Although this was the case, only a small number of people left directly, most of them decided to stay and watch. They wanted to see if these top organizations were tricking them in order to get them to leave, or whether there would really only be dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses going in. Bai ignored their reactions, and he asked Fourth Liege a few more questions. The fourth top organization arrived Later on, the fifth and sixth top organizations arrived one after the other. The six top organizations had dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses with them. There were either one or two of them. Seeing that two lieges from Heavens Secret were here, many came over to greet them. They looked solemn after hearing the rough information about the mystic territory. Naturally, they believed that Heavens Secrets lieges would not lie about such matters. As Bai had disguised his combat strength to dominator-level rank-5, given that he was alone, the few top organizations placed their attention on him. Star Lord Shilun, who was an extrovert, even seized the opportunity to talk to him. Hey, which organization are you from? Sword Alliance. Bai did not hide that information. After all, the Sword Alliances existence was not considered a secret. Moreover, when the war started, the other Sword Alliance members would participate as well. It was only a matter of time before the other organizations would find out. Sword Alliance? Forgive me for being ignorant, but is it a reclusive organization? Star Lord Shilun asked honestly. I guess. Bai nodded and gave an ambiguous answer. He could not tell him that the Sword Alliance had only been established in the infinite universe for less than half a year. Then your ability must be the most powerful in the Sword Alliance, right? Star Lord Shilun continued to try and get Bai to spill more details. No, Bai denied the claim decisively. He instantly thought of Lin Huang, whose ability seemed to be endless. Youre already at dominator-level rank-5, yet youre not the most powerful?! Star Lord Shilun raised his brows. The information that Bai provided was crucial. Chief is more powerful than I am. Bai gave a simple reply and glanced at him. There are a couple of them who have similar abilities to mine. Star Lord Shilun saw the ridicule in Bais eyes. He knew that Bai revealed this information intentionally and knew that he was trying to make him spill more details. He felt a little awkward at the moment. Ah, there are many powerhouses hidden in the Sword Alliance then! After chatting for a little while, Star Lord Shilun gave himself an excuse to leave quickly. Bai did not find it odd. Everyone was curious, so it made sense that he came over to inquire after learning about the Sword Alliance out of nowhere. After all, it was impossible for a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse like him who appeared out of nowhere to not attract any attention. Moreover, the Sword Alliance might soon be famous, so there was no need to hide it. Telling the world that the Sword Alliance was a reclusive organization now was better than appearing out of nowhere later. After Star Lord Shilun, a few representatives of the top organizations soon came over to talk to him one after the other. Bai basically revealed all of the information that Lin Huang told him to tell others before. In reality, the information he revealed was roughly the same as what was happening at the Sword Alliance. It was just that it was summarized a little. The couple of top organizations soon gained a rough understanding of the Sword Alliance. In a nutshell, it was a reclusive, ancient organization. The chief should have already surpassed dominator-level rank-5, and there were three to four dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses, while there were tens of dominator-level powerhouses. Just as the people were busy socializing, the mystic territory suddenly trembled. They instantly fixed their eyes on it. Seeing that the fog began to scatter and release blue light The mystic territory has opened! As a shout emerged from the crowd, and the two lieges from Heavens Secret entered directly without hesitation. The dominator-level rank-5 and dominator-level rank-6 powerhouses from the few top organizations caught up to them instantly, but left their subordinates behind. The crowd who had gathered earlier became a little hesitant when they saw that it was only the dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses from the top organizations that went in. Without hesitation, Bai got up and flew in directly. After he did, a dominator-level rank-4 among the crowd flew in a while later. The members from the top organizations did not stop him. Some of them among the crowd saw that and bit the bullet and went in as well. Just as the people who were left behind were still hesitating, the fog suddenly shrunk, turning into a giant, blue monster face, grinning at the people who were outside. An extremely terrifying aura that exuded an eerie sense of malice, and intense fishy stench, spread out instantly. Everyone present could not move, and even breathing became difficult. Everyone even smelled the scent of death. Fortunately, this terrifying scene only lasted for a moment before it faded automatically. When they snapped back to their senses, the mystic territory had been sealed completely. Its a trap! That guy intentionally opened the entrance to let them in Someone among the crowd could not help but exclaim. At the same time, because of fear, the people outside looked extremely terrible. Chapter 1856 - Dagon Chapter 1856 Dagon Bai raised his brows lightly as soon as he entered the mystic territory. Just like Fourth Liege said, this mystic territory was an ocean world. He was not even teleported to the surface, but rather to the depths of the ocean. There was darkness everywhere. However, to dominator-level powerhouses, such darkness was not an obstacle to their vision. To Bai, there was nothing around him that could hide from his sight. Nevertheless, this ocean seemed to block spatial probing. With Bais ability, it was easy for him to break through this restraint. However, this was Cthulhus kingdom, as well as Azas dreamland fragment. Unless it was the last resort, Bai did not want to reveal his real ability. Since his vision could not penetrate the space to see the surrounding situation, he decisively spread out his Divine Telekinesis. However, he suppressed the strength of his Divine Telekinesis this time. He maintained it at the combat strength he had displayed, which was at dominator-level rank-5. Although his Divine Telekinesis was restricted significantly here, and its probing range was limited, it was much more efficient than probing with his eyes. By scanning with Divine Telekinesis, Bai soon saw how the mystic territory really looked like. Countless sea monsters of all shapes and forms were swimming and hunting in the ocean. Most of their combat strengths were between minor dao-level to heavenly dao-level. However, Bai noticed that the few dominator-level rank-1 and dominator-level rank-2 Abyssal creatures were gigantic. Very soon, he had reached the limits of his Divine Telekinesis probing range. Dominator-level rank-5 Divine Telekinesis can only probe an area the size of a small star zone Just as he was hesitating whether to increase the strength of his Divine Telekinesis by a rank, he suddenly raised his head and looked in a direction far away. He clearly sensed intense energy fluctuations coming from that direction. Judging by the strength of the fluctuations, it was caused by a battle between dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses. He stopped hesitating immediately and increased the strength of his Divine Telekinesis to dominator-level rank-6 and spread it out toward where the battle fluctuations were. A moment later, he finally saw the scene of the battle. On one side was Star Lord Shilun, who he had met outside the mystic territory earlier. On the other side was a giant sea monster. The monster looked like a humongous fish-headed man. It only had one eye on its head. Its body was covered in deep-blue scales, and there was a dorsal fin on its back. Its limbs were as muscular as a bullfrogs, and there was obvious webbing between its fingers. If Lin Huang was here, he would have been able to recognize that it was a Dagon instantly. The Dagon grasped a mountain peak tightly in its right hand. It kept swinging the huge mountain at Star Lord Shilun. Clearly, it was not an ordinary peak. There were strange, black sigils swirling around continuously on it. Although the sea monsters combat strength was only at dominator-level rank-5, which was weaker than Star Lord Shilun, it had immense strength and incredible defensive abilities. Perhaps its strength and defensive abilities were no weaker than some dominator-level rank-6 powerhouses. Bai observed the twos battle with interest. At the moment, it seemed like Star Lord Shilun was being suppressed in battle; he did not appear to have the chance to fight back at all. However, Bai noticed that the expression on Star Lord Shiluns face remained relaxed. Not only that, his teleportation was highly effective. He used the least strength to dodge the monsters full-force attack almost every time. He had almost never been hit throughout the entire battle. Seems like this guy is trying to exhaust the monster. Bai saw through Star Lord Shiluns plan directly. Although his combat strength was higher than this Dagon, he did not plan to kill it in head-on combat. Instead, he was draining it on purpose, while at the same time saving his Dominator Power. One had to say that adopting such a strategy was the correct thing to do in this place, where one was constantly surrounded by danger. He could only keep his guard up against more dangers and enemies if he reserved his Dominator Power. Seeing that Star Lord Shilun had the entire battle under control, Bai did not plan to waste anymore time on them. His Divine Telekinesis passed by them and probed further away. Very soon, he found a second battlefield in another direction. This time, one was a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse from a top organization, while the other was a dominator-level rank-5 Dagon. This Dagons size seemed smaller than the one Star Lord Shilun was fighting. Its strength was clearly slightly weaker than the earlier gigantic fish-head monster, but its speed was much faster. However, its strength and defensive abilities had far surpassed an ordinary dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse. It was close to dominator-level rank-6 in that regard. On a certain level, this Dagon was actually even harder to get rid of compared to the one Star Lord Shilun encountered. Bai observed for a little while and realized that this Dagon had almost completely suppressed that dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse. This dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse seemed to be focused on defense and dodging all this while. He did not have the opportunity to fight back at all. The difference between him and Star Lord Shilun was that he really did not have the extra strength needed to fight back. He had used up all of his strength to simply dodge and defend against the attacks. Moreover, as this Dagon possessed an even faster attack speed, the probability of him being hit was approximately 30%. Were it not for the chaotic supreme treasure armor protecting him, he might have been injured terribly or perhaps even killed. After watching for a while, Bai was sure that this dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse would not be able to last for very long. He would need to drain a great amount of Dominator Power every time he activated the chaotic supreme treasure armors defense. This resulted in his Dominator Power being drained even faster than the Dagons Dominator Power. If this continued on, he would exhaust his Dominator Power soon and become an easy target. Bai hesitated for a moment when he saw this scene. He figured that he should not simply ignore his plight. If he had not seen it, it wouldnt have been a problem, but now that he did, he could not just let him die at the fish-head monsters hands. After all, he was a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse. He would be considered a useful source of combat strength in the upcoming war. With that thought, Bai finally could not help but attack. He appeared above the battlefield where the two were in a flash. Before they could react, a blood-colored gleam shot forth from the tip of his right index finger suddenly. It was extremely fast. In the Dagon and the dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses eyes, they barely saw the electric arc flashing across the sky at high speed. The next second, the blood-colored gleam penetrated the Dagons head directly before it even managed to react. It froze. Within a blink of an eye, it seemed to have been sealed in a dimensional crystal. It stood where it was and froze. A moment later, that huge fish head exploded directly. A blood-colored demonic flower bloomed. The demonic flower sucked out the remaining blood from the head-less Dagons body continuously. The Dagons body dried up at a speed that was visible to naked eye. In the end, it turned into dust and vanished. In reality, the entire thing happened within a single moment. That dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse was dumbstruck as he watched that moment go by. The Dagon, whose defense ability was on par with a dominator-level rank-6 powerhouse, who had been suppressing him the entire time, was killed by the white-haired man before him in a second! At that moment, his head went blank. By the time he wanted to thank him after snapping back to his senses, he realized that the white-haired guy was already gone. Chapter 1857 - Kingdoms Creation Chapter 1857 Kingdoms Creation Bai quickly spread out his Divine Telekinesis again after settling that Dagon. This time, he found more dominator-level monsters. These were tentacle monsters that looked a little like octopus and jellyfish. They came in all sorts of colors, as well as various shapes. Their combat strength spanned from dominator-level rank-1 to rank-5. Bai also noticed that two dominator-level rank-4 powerhouses encountered such monsters in different areas. They were embroiled in tough battles. What made the tentacle monsters difficult to deal with was that their tentacles could transform into various shapes and sizes. These transformations were not just limited to, but the tentacles could also be transformed into shields, flying daggers, arrows Their individual combat power was on par with a small army. Aside from that, they even had powerful regeneration abilities. The tentacles were as powerful as supreme treasures. Even if they were chopped off, they would regenerate instantly. Bai observed for a little bit and found something even more difficult to deal with. These octopus monsters could absorb energy from the ocean rapidly. Thus, no matter how much Dominator Power they used up, they could replenish it instantly. In battle, the Dominator Power they actually drained was less than one-tenth of the amount they exerted. In other words, the Dominator Power they had at their disposal was almost ten-fold that of powerhouses of the same level. If powerhouses of the same level wanted to drain their Dominator Power, they would only drain themselves to death in the end. These octopus monsters auras are very similar to Cthulhus. Not only that, the fact that they can absorb the Dominator Power in this ocean proves that they came from the same source as Cthulhu. Bai thought to himself while frowning lightly. Could they be Cthulhus clones? With that doubt in mind, he appeared at one of the battlefields in a flash. He killed that dominator-level rank-4 octopus monster instantly with a casual attack. Seeing his opponent being killed all of a sudden, the muscular dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse froze directly. Bai ignored him as he examined the monsters body, which was quickly fading, with his Divine Telekinesis. He quickly realized that the monster did not leave behind a physical body after it died. Instead, it was fading quickly. Even all of the energy that made up its body was being fed back to the ocean. It doesnt look like a clone, but more like a Kingdoms creation Bai had a new speculation in mind. Now it seems like it might be a creation that Cthulhu made using his Kingdom. No wonder their highest combat strength is only at dominator-level rank-5. At that moment, the dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse finally snapped back to his senses. Naturally, he recognized Bai. After all, his white hair was just too eye-catching. Apart from that, even Heaven Secrets lieges were respectful to this white-haired young man when they met. Now it seemed that he really deserved their respect. Thanks for helping me, senior, he said quickly while cupping his hands. Bai turned his head to glance at him. He warned him, Dont mess with such octopus monsters. Unless you have the ability to kill it instantly, itll drain you to death. Without waiting for him to respond, Bai disappeared in a flash. His next destination was the other battlefield. It was also a dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse fighting against a dominator-level rank-4 octopus monster. The dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse was a lady in red armor. She held a spear, and was even more courageous than that hunk before. The monsters tentacles were crushed wherever the spear moved toward. However, Bai saw through the situation from a glance that the battle just looked even. In reality, she was in a tougher position. The ladys attack ability was more powerful indeed, but her defense and dodging abilities were weaker. It resulted in her attacking continuously without giving the monster the chance to fight back. This caused her Dominator Power to drain almost twice as fast as the hunk before. If nobody interfered with the battle, she would be defeated faster than the hunk would. Not only that, she might not even be able to escape. Bai pointed his finger again and killed the second octopus monster. As expected, the monster did not leave behind a physical body and Gods soul particle after it was killed. Its body faded directly too, turning into Origin Energy that integrated with the ocean. This time, Bai left directly without waiting for the red-armored lady to speak. A moment later, he found out that Boundless Snow from Snow Domain and Fifth Liege from Heavens Secret encountered the same monster. The two of them had encountered groups of octopus monsters that were led by a dominator-level rank-5 monster. Each group comprised some ten octopus monsters. The leaders were all at dominator-level rank-5, while the remaining monsters were at dominator-level rank-4. If another dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse had encountered such a situation, he would undoubtedly die. However, Boundless Snow was a peak dominator-level rank-6 powerhouse. He was one step away from dominator-level rank-7. Naturally, his ability was not to be underestimated. Initially, Bai was in a hurry to find Cthulhu. However, seeing their encounter, he could not help but stop by to watch. Boundless Snow was unwilling to show his real ability at first. He was only fighting using his dominator-level rank-5 ability. y. He swung the crystal spear in his hand. A giant crystal dragon charged forward. Everything froze wherever the giant crystal dragon passed. The octopus monsters were no exception. Including the leader, all of the monsters were frozen into ice sculptures entirely. Though Boundless Snows combat strength was suppressed, his attack ability was totally at dominator-level rank-6. Seeing that he was going to put away his spear, Bai smirked lightly. Hmm?! Boundless Snow realized something was wrong as he was about to put his spear away. The next second, the ice that froze the dominator-level rank-5 monster exploded directly. Countless dark-purple tentacles swept toward Boundless Snow like blooming petals. No dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse could dodge an attack of that speed. Boundless Snows pupils shrunk when he saw the attack. He finally could not hide his real combat strength anymore. He released his dominator-level rank-6 combat strength. He flew into the air by tapping the tip of his toes. While retreating quickly, he swung the spear in his hand at an even more terrifying speed. A scary white gleam shot from the tip of the spear. White snow that was like an avalanche swallowed the countless tentacles. The attacks momentum was strong. It even swallowed the octopus monster that had just gotten out of the icy seal completely. This time, Bai finally sensed that the monsters aura was destroyed instantly. It was like splashing a tinder that had just been ignited with a basin of iced water. It was dead. His ability is not bad, its just that he underestimated his opponent. Bai gave Boundless Snow such a comment after watching the battle. One should never let their guard down before confirming that their opponent was dead. It was Lin Huang who taught Bai that before he stepped into transcendent-level. Bai had always kept it in mind. He was sure that he would definitely not give the opponent any chance of turning the tables around if he encountered such an opponent. After watching the battle on Boundless Snows side, the battle of Heavens Secrets dominator-level rank-5 liege and the octopus monsters group on the other area had officially begun. Chapter 1858 - Cthulhus Descendants Chapter 1858 Cthulhus Descendants Heavens Secrets Fifth Liege had the combat strength of dominator-level rank-7. Bai saw that through directly. However, he could not really tell what he specialized in. Though he was muscular, he was obviously not a combat cultivator. A combat cultivators aura could be easily recognized. Their qi-blood was much stronger than other cultivators. Although his qi-blood was stronger than regular cultivators of the same level, it was limited. Nevertheless, Bai soon found out what he was specialized in. The group of octopus monsters attacked together as soon as they discovered Fifth Liege. Countless tentacles attacked him from all directions in the ocean. However, Fifth Liege did not panic at all. Instead, his eyes were shut slightly, while his lips moved softly. He was chanting scriptures. At the same time, he put his hands together and began to perform hand seals quickly. The second before the countless tentacles arrived, a golden Buddha landed on Fifth Liege out of nowhere, enveloping him. The next second, Fifth Liege finally opened his eyes. Golden light shone forth from his golden body; a glaring golden gleam radiated from him. The tentacles vanished wherever the light passed. The octopus monsters release devastating screams almost at the same time. After that, the monsters turned into nothingness. The dominator-level rank-3 and rank-4 octopus monsters aside, even the dominator-level rank-5 monster was killed instantly without being able to fight back at all. They were like shadows that were being chased by the sun, or like water vapor evaporated by high temperature. Buddhist cultivator?! Bai raised his brows slightly. This technique is much more powerful than combat cultivators. One had to say that the Buddhist cultivators golden light truly had an amazing suppression effect on Abyssal creatures. However, the instant kill effect was achievable mainly because Fifth Lieges combat strength was higher than the monsters. Clearly, Heavens Secret had picked Fifth Liege to join the exploration this time because he was a Buddhist cultivator. However, what Bai was curious about was why he was not bald. He even had a thick head of hair. He learned from Lin Huang that Buddhist cultivators were usually bald. After Fifth Liege killed the group of monsters, the golden Buddha soon faded away. Bais Divine Telekinesis soon spread out elsewhere. This time, he found a monster that was close to dominator-level rank-7 deep in the ocean. The monster was much bigger than the Dagons and octopus monsters that he had seen before. It was as if it was made of a mountain range. Its body was almost completely made of rocks. There were eyes all over its back, and each of them were underwater volcanoes. Apart from that, it had two long elephant trunks. They were like giant mountains that stretched tens of thousands of kilometers away. This guys aura is similar to Cthulhus as well Bai noticed the unusualness of this monsters aura as soon as he discovered it. However, Hes different from the octopus monsters from before Can it be that its Cthulhus descendant? Bai looked at the two trunks. They indeed looked like Cthulhus nose. While Bai was observing the monster, his Divine Telekinesis suddenly sensed clear energy fluctuations not far away from the monster. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis toward the source of the energy fluctuations immediately. It was Fourth Liegem who was fighting a monster. The monsters size was almost similar to the trunk monster Bai had discovered just now, but its shape was similar to a muscular bullfrog. It had countless thin tentacles on its head like hair. There was only a single eye hidden in the center of the countless tentacles. Its limbs were similar to a bullfrogs in the sense that they were webbed. This monsters aura was very similar to Cthulhus as well. It was also different from the octopus monsters before. Is it one of Cthulhus descendants as well? Bai speculated once more. He also noticed that, although this monsters combat strength was at the limit of dominator-level rank-6, its real ability was no weaker than Fourth Liege. Fourth Liege was a saber cultivator. His attack ability was rather terrifying. However, when his attacks landed on the bullfrog monster, they did not cause any substantial harm to it at all. It was gigantic, and there was a hard rock shell covering its body. Although Fourth Lieges attacks could penetrate the shell, it was hard for his attacks to go deeper and harm its insides. Not only that, this bullfrog monsters explosive agility was powerful, and so was its attack speed. The speed of its attacks were no slower than Fourth Lieges attacks. Although Fourth Liege had the combat strength of dominator-level rank-7, he did not dare to allow the monster to hit him. The battle very soon fell into a stagnant state. Just as Bai was hesitating whether to interfere, suddenly, a low roar came from the trunk monster not far away. Clearly, it had also noticed the battle over here. Are they going to work together to fight Fourth Liege? Bai raised his brows slightly. He suppressed his urge to attack to see what it was going to do exactly. At that moment, the countless tentacles on the bullfrog monsters head were swinging around frantically as if they were boiling. It released a roar too. Compared to the trunk monster, its voice was of higher frequency. Bai soon noticed that after the bullfrog monster roared, Fourth Lieges movements clearly slowed down. Whats happening?! Bai discovered Fourth Lieges situation immediately. Did it attack his Gods soul?! He noticed that something was clearly off about Fourth Liege. No It looks like an illusion As expected, the strength of Fourth Lieges Gods soul did not falter at all, but his battle rhythm had clearly slowed down. As the bullfrog monster continued to roar, the trunk monsters voice was getting more vigorous, while Fourth Lieges movements were obviously becoming slower and slower. The bullfrog monster did not seize the opportunity to attack. Instead, it kept defending and dodging. It seemed to be afraid of interrupting the other monster. Approximately five to six minutes later, Fourth Liege finally froze where he was entirely. The bullfrog monster stopped defending and dodging. It continued to roar in a high frequency. The trunk monster not far away did not stop as well. It continued to roar with the bullfrog monster. Very soon, Bai noticed that although Fourth Liege did not attack, the Dominator Power in his body was being drained continuously. The speed was almost as if it was burning; it was fading intensely as each second passed. As I thought, its an illusion technique! Bai confirmed the twos combined technique as he observed the situation up to this point. He initially thought that the two monsters would have been experts at close combat. He had not expected them to be proficient at illusion techniques, and for them to work together like that. Under the collaboration of the two dominator-level rank-6 monsters, the illusion they casted had easily trapped a dominator-level rank-7 powerhouse! Seems like I really cant underestimate these Abyssal monsters. Its hard to guard against their strange techniques! Bai secretly thought to himself. Watching Fourth Lieges Dominator Power being drained within these few minutes, while his aura plummeted and blood dripped from his mouth and nose, Bai moved and disappeared from where he was. Chapter 1859 - Assemble Chapter 1859 Assemble Bai appeared not far from Fourth Liege directly in a flash. At that moment, Fourth Lieges Dominator Power had almost been completely drained. Even his aura had plummeted drastically. Looking at his condition, Bai speculated that he would only last another three minutes at the very most before he died. Bai had finally heard the sound the two monsters released when he got here. One was high, and the other was low. Their voices had surpassed the limit of sound frequency that humans could hear. Therefore, Bai and Fourth Liege actually could not hear the two enchanting tones. However, Bais Divine Telekinesis captured the changes in the sound waves easily. Its a sound illusory technique, just as I thought! Bai confirmed his speculation immediately. He could clearly sense the pulling force on ones Gods soul. It was just that the strength of Bais Gods soul was already at dominator-level rank-9. Naturally, the two monsters could not do anything to him. Seeing that Bai remained frozen since he arrived, the monsters thought he was affected too, so they roared even louder now. However, Bai lifted his head lightly in the next second. He locked his Divine Telekinesis onto the two monsters directly. Two blood-colored electric arcs shot out from behind him at high speed. They were like two giant blood-colored pythons shooting across the sky. Although Bai had suppressed his ability in the attack, the two monsters could not defend themselves against it. They did not even manage to dodge or defend before the two blood-colored giant pythons penetrated their heads. The shell that was strong enough to defend against a dominator-level rank-7 saber cultivator was like a piece of thin paper in front of the two blood-colored giant pythons. Their defenses were easily penetrated. Almost at the same time as they were hit, the two monsters illusion collapsed directly. Fourth Liege snapped out of the illusion instantly. At this time, he was already at his weakest. He almost had no strength left to fight. Nevertheless, he saw Bai, who was not far away, at a glance. He instantly realized what had happened. Thank you, Mr. Bai. Bai merely nodded lightly and focused on the two monsters that were suspected to be Cthulhus descendants. After the two giant pythons penetrated the two monsters, they began to extract the Dominator Power from their bodies. Their bodies dried up rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye. They seemed to have completely lost the strength to fight. Fourth Liege could not help but feel terrified when he saw that. Within half a minute, the two giant beasts carcasses were dried up entirely. In another ten seconds, they had turned into dust and vanished. Bai then recalled the two blood-colored giant pythons. He turned around to look at Fourth Liege. Cthulhu is nearby. You cant fight in your condition. Leave as soon as you can. Fourth Liege was clearly hesitant, but he still nodded after hesitating for a moment. Ill leave for now then. Ill get No. 5 to help Mr. Bai. Bai did not agree, nor did he disagree. He disappeared in a flash. After sending the two monsters whose aura was similar to Cthulhus deep in the ocean, Bai faintly sensed Cthulhu, who was secretly probing. However, it had hidden its aura. Bai would need time to find out exactly where it was hiding. Bai spread out his Divine Telekinesis again. This time, he adjusted the strength of his Divine Telekinesis to dominator-level rank-7 directly. As the probing range expanded once more, the probing accuracy increased significantly as well. However, he still did not find Cthulhu after scanning his surroundings. Feeling helpless, Bai could only teleport elsewhere and explore further away. Almost half a day later, Heavens Secrets Fifth Liege suddenly appeared. Boundless Snow from Snow Domain was with him. Mr. Bai. Fifth Liege and Boundless Snow had never seen Bai fight. Nevertheless, the aura he exuded was already at dominator-level rank-7. Naturally, they did not dare to underestimate him. However, a subtle confusion flashed through Bais eyes when he saw them. Why are the two of you together? Bai asked curiously. We ran into each other, so we partnered up, Boundless Snow said with a light smile. Fifth Liege, who was standing to the side, nodded lightly. Did you guys find anything? Bai asked further. There are many dominator-level monsters in this ocean, and they possess some strange techniques, Boundless Snow responded quickly, We must deal with them carefully. I ran into some octopus monsters. Theyre tough to kill indeed. Fifth Liege nodded as well. Did you guys sense Cthulhus coordinates? No. The two of them shook their heads. However, Boundless Snow seemed to have recalled something, after which he suddenly spoke, I think something is suspicious. How so? Bai asked immediately. Its a cave. I sensed Cthulhus aura when I passed by, but I did not dare to explore it on my own, Boundless Snow said. There are three of us now. I think we can check it out, Bai instantly suggested. I think we can do that, Fifth Liege agreed immediately. Ill bring you guys over then. You guys can check it out before deciding to go in. Boundless Snow did not hesitate and agreed directly. The three of them arrived at the bottom of the ocean with Boundless Snow leading the way. They saw the cave that Boundless Snow talked about beneath an underwater canyon. In reality, the cave looked more like an underground rift that spread out for some ten kilometers. Indeed, the rift was releasing an obscure aura. To Bai, it felt like Cthulhus aura indeed. The aura is obscure. It seems to be hiding intentionally. Fifth Liege spread out his Divine Telekinesis into the rift. However, he recalled it merely a moment later. Divine Telekinesis cant enter. It might really be Cthulhus hiding place. Bai secretly spread out his dominator-level rank-7 Divine Telekinesis too. He could only extend it tens of meters into the rift. Apart from Cthulhu, there should not be any monsters that are capable of setting up such a powerful restriction on Divine Telekinesis. Should we go in now, or later when we get more people over? Boundless Snow asked the two of them. Lets go in, Bai said directly, Just the three of us will suffice. The others might not be of help even if they came. What Bai said was the truth. In the presence of Cthulhu, who was at dominator-level rank-7, one would be seeking death if they were not at dominator-level rank-7. Apart from Bai, among those who participated in the exploration this time, only the two lieges from Heavens Secret were at dominator-level rank-7. Even Boundless Snow was only at the limit of dominator-level rank-6. His ability was lacking compared to actual dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses. Among the rest, Star Lord Shilun might be able to protect himself, but the rest would be seeking death if they came. Moreover, Fourth Liege who was not here had had his Dominator Power drained. It was impossible that he would be capable of joining a battle of such a level within a short period of time. Naturally, Bai hoped that there were less people so that they would not slow him down. He leapt down into the rift before waiting for the two of them to respond. Boundless Snow and Fifth Liege looked at each before. They leapt in as well. Chapter 1860 - Interesting Ability Chapter 1860 Interesting Ability As they were descending, Bai could sense the faint aura more clearly; there was even a faint fishy stench. After glancing at the two of them who caught up with him from the side of his eye, Bai smirked and accelerated directly. Boundless Snow and Fifth Liege accelerated instantly to catch up to him when they saw this. Very soon, the three of them arrived at the bottom of the rift. It was very spacious, as if they had entered another dimension. Bai spread out his Divine Telekinesis again. His peak dominator-level rank-7 Divine Telekinesis soon scanned through the entire space. However, there was an area that his Divine Telekinesis could not probe. It was a hemispherical space that spanned hundreds of kilometers. His Divine Telekinesis seemed to be blocked by a layer of membrane. It could not probe what was happening inside the hemispherical space. Bai was not confused when he sensed something unusual about this area. Instead, he had his interest piqued. He appeared outside the area directly in a flash. Boundless Snow and Fifth Liege caught up to him immediately when they saw this. What welcomed them was a foggy area that was completely covered in gray fog. This gray fog seems to block the probing of Divine Telekinesis. I wonder whats hiding inside there, Boundless Snow asked Bai, Its not good to invade just like that. Should we think of something else? This might be Cthulhus hiding place. Bai remained indifferent. Were already here. Theres no need to beat around the bush. Thats right! Fifth Liege, who was standing to the side, nodded in agreement. Lets go in first. If we really cant fight it, well just escape and gather the rest. Bai glanced at Fifth Liege with a smile. Thats similar to what I have in mind. Hearing the twos argument, Boundless Snow shut his mouth immediately. Bai said nothing else and stepped into the fog directly. Boundless Snow and Fifth Liege went in after him. After stepping into the foggy area, Bai realized that he seemed to have arrived on land. They were no longer surrounded by ocean water. He raised his brows lightly after realizing that the two did not catch up to him. Those guys seemed to have been teleported somewhere else He looked around. There was darkness surrounding him, but this did not really affect his vision. He could still see everything around clearly. There seemed to be an underground cave here. Although it was many times bigger than a regular underground cave, Bai could still see countless stalactites above his head. The structure of the cave limited his vision. Therefore, he attempted to spread out his Divine Telekinesis, after which he soon realized he could not spread his dominator-level rank-7 Divine Telekinesis out of his body. Although he could increase the strength of his Divine Telekinesis, he did not want to do such a thing by force. Lets see what tricks you have up your sleeves. Bai did not panic even though his Divine Telekinesis could not leave his body. He walked forward slowly. Over an hour had passed as he walked. Throughout the one hour, he did not even encounter one monster. Monsters aside, he did not even see a single plant. Bai was not bothered. He continued walking forward as if he was traveling. Very soon, he heard the sound of running footsteps not far away. He stopped walking and looked in the direction where the footsteps were coming from. A moment later, a figure rushed out. The person was stunned to see Bai. Mr. Bai! Its you. Bai smiled lightly. The person was the muscular Fifth Liege from Heavens Secret. I cant believe I ran into you here. I thought this horrible place was a trap formation that would not allow us to meet easily. Fifth Liege slowed down his steps and walked toward Bai. Im quite surprised too. Bai smiled and asked, How long have you been here? Over an hour I think, Fifth Liege replied. Did you find anything? Bai asked further. No. Fifth Liege shook his head immediately. This place looks like a regular underground cave. I didnt see any signs of life as I ran over. The key issue is that Divine Telekinesis doesnt work here, and my vision is hindered by the walls. So I cant see very far. I thought Id crush the walls instead. Then I found out that the walls, ground and the stalactites above our heads were as powerful as chaotic supreme treasures. I couldnt break them at all. Also, the rocks here look the same. No matter how or where I walk, it feels like Im walking in the same area. I suspect that this has the same effect as trap formations and illusory formations. Naturally, Bai had noticed everything Fifth Liege said. What about you, Mr. Bai? Did you find anything? Fifth Liege asked Bai after telling what he found out. Me too. I didnt see any living creatures as I walked here. Ive no idea what or where this place is at the moment. Bai gave a short response. What should we do then? Fifth Liege asked again. Lets continue to walk around. Bai was calm. What else can we do? Bai walked over to the wall where Fifth Liege had just appeared from, while speaking, You came from the direction Before he was done speaking, he saw Fifth Liege appear behind him secretly. He was enveloped by the golden Buddha and slapped toward Bai. Almost at the same time, a blood-colored python came out of Bais back. Before the Buddhas slap landed, the blood-colored python had penetrated Fifth Lieges heart. Fifth Lieges aura plummeted instantly, and the golden Buddha collapsed directly. H-How did you find out? Fifth Liege asked, feeling unwilling. Bai turned his head slowly. He had a faint smile on his face. Thats a secret. In the next second, his body dried up instantly. Its body regained its original form quickly. It was an octopus monster that was curled up inside a snail shell. It had eight tentacle legs and six tentacle arms. There were sharp pricks at the end of the long arms. Within ten seconds, the octopus monster had turned into a shrunken mummy entirely. Its head had finally emerged from the huge snail shell. A moment later, including its tentacles, its entire body was crushed into dust together with the shell. The aura It seems to be Cthulhus descendant as well. Bai finally sensed its aura when it regained its true form. Its aura was similar to the two monsters that created the illusion earlier, but was also different. It had dominator-level rank-6 combat strength but it copied a dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses ability perfectly. He even copied Fifth Lieges technique exactly Bai smirked. What an interesting ability. Chapter 1861 - Teasing You Chapter 1861 Teasing You After getting rid of the disguised Fifth Liege, Bai continued to walk forward casually. Just like that, he walked for some two more hours calmly. The surroundings did not change too much. It was the same as before; there were no signs of life at all. Bai did not panic. He continued forward calmly. He would choose a random path to turn whenever he came to a fork, and he would walk straight if there was no fork. He did not even bother to run. After half an hour, he finally arrived at a vast space. The style of the space was completely different from the cave before. Bai discovered that he seemed to be standing on a cliff. There was a winding suspension bridge ahead. There was bottomless abyss on both sides of the bridge, and there was a huge, eerie city at the end of the bridge. There were countless strange buildings in the city. The sharp edges of the buildings were similar to the Bug Tribe beasts legs and mouths. There were all sorts of patterns that were similar to scales covering the surface of the buildings. Apart from black and white, there were no other colors on the buildings. The city occupied tens of millions of kilometers of space. If it was on Earth, it would be on par with a large country. However, a city of such a scale was quiet at the moment; it was dead silent. Bai could sense that Cthulhu was hiding in it, but he could not find his exact location. He took a step forward to cross the suspension bridge, but discovered that there was a space barrier here that prohibited him from leaping over. Not only that, flying was prohibited over the space where the bridge was. Bai raised his brows lightly and stepped onto the bridge. He then walked forward calmly. When he got to the middle of the bridge, a strange feeling suddenly emerged from under the bridge. Bai did not even glance at it, nor did he stop at all. A blood-colored python suddenly came out of his back. It penetrated the giant beast that was secretly sneaking up from under the bridge. The beasts huge mouth swallowed the entire bridge almost at the same time the blood-colored python penetrated it. Bai merely tapped the tip of his toes casually and stepped on the giant beasts head. He landed directly on the city gate of the black and white city. At that moment, the blood-colored python on his back had completely faded away. Meanwhile, the giant beast eerily turned into bones and fell into the abyss. Bai did not even turn his head. He had his eyes on the city gate. Suddenly, a voice came from under the big gate. Mr. Bai?! Bai shifted his focus to the source of the voice. In reality, he had already sensed the persons aura when he was crossing the bridge earlier. The person had white hair. He was Boundless Snow from Snow Domain. Wait, how can you prove that youre really Mr. Bai? Boundless Snow suddenly said with his guard up. Bai took a good look at him. I have no proof. Its up to you whether you want to trust me or not. Didnt you encounter anything unusual when you came here? Boundless Snow was stunned at first and he asked further. I ran into something that disguised itself as Fifth Liege. Bai looked at Boundless Snow while smirking. I killed him. I met something that disguised itself as Fifth Lieges too, Boundless Snow said immediately. Did you kill him? Bai asked while raising his brows. Hows that possible?! Boundless Snow was speechless. His ability was more powerful than mine. After sensing that something was wrong, I escaped by using some tricks. Perhaps he went over to you after I escaped. I wonder what happened to the real Fifth Liege, Boundless Snow said, feeling a little worried. He shouldnt be killed so easily. Bai did not seem to be very invested in this topic. He asked directly after giving a simple response. Whats in there? This should be how Cthulhus palace, Rlyeh, really looks like, Boundless Snow explained, If I got it right, Rlyehs nature should be a chaotic supreme treasure. Cthulhu is definitely hiding in there. If we go in, it would mean that were invading its territory, Boundless Snow continued. Weve already been in its territory since we stepped into this mystic territory. Bai glanced at Boundless Snow. Youre right, but this city is even more dangerous than anywhere that weve been to before, Boundless Snow added. You shouldve arrived here for some time, right? Why didnt you go in? Bai asked. Because its too dangerous. I thought wed go in together when you guys got here, Boundless Snow said honestly, feeling helpless. Ill go in first, then. You can go ahead and wait. Bai stretched his hand to open the gate after speaking I wont wait then, Boundless Snow caught up immediately. Bai said nothing. Just as his hand was about to touch the gate, it opened automatically before he even exerted any strength. He merely smiled and walked directly inside. Boundless Snow caught up quickly. The city gate closed automatically after the two walked in. Divine Telekinesis is restricted, and so is teleportation Bai lifted his head to look into the city as he stood at the city gate. There were endless black clouds covering the sun in the sky. Far away, the tip of a tall tower stood high among the clouds. Bai soon had his eyes on the tower. Flight altitude seems to be restricted too He suddenly moved as soon as he was done speaking. He headed straight to where the tower was. After merely a moment, the two arrived below the tower. Standing below the black tower, Bai lifted his head to look at the tip of the tower. The top of the tower was clearly drowned in the clouds. He exerted strength in his feet and leaped high. He did not fly at all, but his body ascended at high speed and arrived in the clouds directly. He finally saw the tip of the tower hiding in the clouds. Bai landed directly on the tip, which was only the size of the sole of a foot. Just as Bai found his footing, Boundless Snow leaped into the clouds too, but he had no space to land. He could only step to the side of the tip. There was some frost beneath his feet that stuck to the tip of the tower. Why did we come all the way up here? Boundless Snow only asked after he managed to find his footing. To see the scenery. Dont you think the scenery is beautiful at this height? Bai said with a smile. See the scenery Boundless Snow was speechless. Is this the correct time to look at the scenery? The wind was strong at the tip of the tower. Bais black robe fluttered, but he remained upright. Where do you think Cthulhu is hiding? Bai glanced across to the endless clouds. The dazzling lightning of various colors faraway was reflected in his eyes. How would I know? Boundless Snow was speechless. How could you not? Bai looked at Boundless Snow with a smile and his head held low. Arent you one of his descendants? At that moment, it was unknown when Bais feet had left the tip of the tower. While he ascended, he pointed a finger while smiling. A red gleam that was like a tiny red snake was shot out like lightning, penetrating the space between Boundless Snows brows. Boundless Snows body was drying up at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. However, he asked unwillingly, When did you find out? From the moment the two of you appeared in front of me, Bai answered honestly. So you Before Boundless Snow was done speaking, his body regained its true form. He was like that thing that disguised itself as Fifth Liege before, an octopus monster hiding in a snail shell. Youre right, Ive actually been teasing the two of you along the way, Bai continued what his unfinished words, Because its boring to kill you off guys immediately. Chapter 1862 - Hide Your Head and Show Your Tail Chapter 1862 Hide Your Head and Show Your Tail Watching the carcass in front of him drying up quickly and turning into dust, which then vanished in the end, Bai recalled the blood-colored snake at the tip of his finger. The tip of his toes landed on the tip of the tower where the frost had melted. He looked into the distance and finally said coldly, Get out, stop hiding. Were the only ones here. Though his voice was cold, it spread out in all directions like an endless wave. It even scattered the black clouds that covered thousands of kilometers. The tip of the black tower that was covered in the clouds finally revealed itself. Bai looked down. Without the clouds covering it, his field of vision extended to almost half of the entire city. As his voice echoed, the doors and windows of the tower suddenly exploded. Black tentacles rushed out of them frantically, stretching toward the tip of the tower where Bai was. Bai merely lowered his head. A blood-colored giant python extended out from his back. The giant python divided itself into hundreds of snake heads at speed that was barely visible to the naked eye. They bit the sticky tentacles. All of the tentacles were quickly broken and swallowed by the blood-colored giant python. However, just as the first round of attack ended, the second round arrived fiercely. The endless black, sticky tentacles rushed out of countless buildings crazily. Almost all of the buildings in the huge city had ambushers hiding inside. Each window, door and even hole became a source of the ambush. At that moment, endless tentacles were sweeping toward the tip of the tower frantically from all directions. Bai was like a target; a target that was being attacked from all directions. Watching the innumerable tentacles coming over like an endless wave, like a butterfly getting out of its cocoon, giant blood-colored wings came out of Bais back maniacally. Within a blink of an eye, 14 gigantic wings covered the entire sky. There seemed to be an endless blood-colored ocean floating above the clouds. The blood-colored ocean contained 14 almost invisible threads. They were connected to Bais back. Bai did not even look at the endless tentacles rising from beneath his feet. Instead, he raised his head to look at the blood-colored sky. He smirked lightly. He felt relaxed, as if he had let go of something. At that moment, the tens of tentacles, which were thinner than hair, beneath Bais feet spiraled up toward the tip of the tower. They blended in with the color of the tip of the tower. They moved completely silently, targeting his ankles. The second when the tentacles reached Bais feet, a blood-colored electric arc suddenly flickered in the blood-colored ocean in the sky. The blood-colored electric arc was so fast that it almost surpassed the limit of space and time. It hit Bais soles directly. The tens of tentacles turned into dust instantly from the attack. A slithering black tentacle that was broken into half beneath the tip of the tower was exposed. Clearly, it could not hide from the attack. After merely retreating for a second, the broken tentacle charged at Bai even more ferociously now. Since the disguise was removed, it did not bother with it anymore. However, a couple of lightning bolts were shot from the blood-colored sky just as it moved. They landed consecutively, crushing it into dust. The tentacle was clearly just an appetizer. Almost at the same time it turned into dust, the endless tentacles beneath Bais feet started coming at him from all directions like a tidal wave. Nevertheless, he remained expressionless. He did not look panicked at all. The reason being was that the moment the tentacles were about to touch his body, blood-colored lightning was brewing in the sky. Countless blood-colored lightning bolts fell like a crazy storm. With Bais body as the center, the lightning continued spreading out into the distance continuously. At the same time, the endless tentacle wave was destroyed instantly, as if it had been burned with fire. The tentacles turned into dust instantly when they were hit by lightning. As the lightning flickered, the tidal wave of tentacles very soon quieted down. Within two to three breaths of time, the seemingly endless tentacles were cleared out entirely. The entire city regained its peace. It was quiet again, just like the time when Bai had just arrived. He stood on the tip of the tower and waited for a few seconds. Seeing that the surroundings were still quiet, he chuckled. Cthulhu, is this all youve got? If you dont have any more tricks up your sleeves, just surrender like a good boy. Im too lazy to waste my strength. One must say that Bai had undoubtedly become much sharper with his words after spending a long time with Grimace. The sound of a huge wave was heard after Bai spoke. The source clearly originated from a distance from the big city. He lifted his head to look into the distance. Very soon, he saw the water beneath the cliff under the suspension bridge rising continuously. Within the blink of an eye, the water flooded the cliff, reaching the gates of the city. Within the span of a single breath of time, the water had flooded most of the buildings in the city. Only the tip of the tower beneath Bais feet and a small number of the citys rooftops were still above the water. Watching the continuously rising water and the wave that was getting angrier, Bai knew what plan the opponent had. Not only was teleportation prohibited in Rlyeh, flying was prohibited as well. If all of the buildings were drowned in the flood, he would only be standing in water. Meanwhile, the opponent controlled the ocean. It would mean that regardless of whether he was on the surface of the water, or deep within it, Bai would be within the opponents territory completely. Youre pulling this trick on me? Bai had a mocking expression on his face when he realized what his opponent was trying to do. The next second, a huge wave suddenly arose. It was heading toward the tip of the tower where Bai was. At that moment, Bai, who was prohibited from flying, stretched out colorless threads on his back. They entered the blood-colored clouds in the sky at high speed. Indeed, the prohibition on flying had restricted Bais flying ability, but it could not hinder the ability to float from all sorts of skills and divine abilities. Therefore, the blood-colored clouds Bai released could float in the sky. Meanwhile, the threads on the blood-colored clouds could pull his body up. Cthulhu, who thought that it had certainly defeated Bai, clearly did not think of that. It finally could not help but roar furiously as it watched Bais body ascend at high speed. The next second, whirlwinds quickly consolidated on the surface of the water. They turned into whips, lashing in the direction where Bai was. Bai watched the approaching whirlwinds calmly. Meanwhile, the blood-colored clouds in the sky had turned into mist. He was ascending quickly thanks to the colorless threads pulling him up. His body was soon covered by the clouds, and he vanished into the blood-colored clouds entirely. The ocean beneath the clouds had flooded the entire city completely. Even the tip of the tower had been swallowed by the ocean. The ocean waves were choppy, just like Cthulhus current mood. Bai had merely disappeared for a moment, when a teasing voice suddenly came out of the blood-colored clouds in the sky. Didnt you like to hide your head and show your tail? I learned this from you. Chapter 1863 - Cthulhus Trump Card Chapter 1863 Cthulhus Trump Card Cthulhu was clearly pissed to have its plan ruined entirely. Whatever it did earlier was to try and limit Bais movements. He had tried to drag Bai into his territory completely. Never had he thought that Bai would manage to pull off something like that by circumventing the prohibition on flying in Rlyeh. Moreover, Bai was hidden in the blood-colored clouds in the sky currently; he had hidden himself from Cthulhu entirely. Under Cthulhus control, the water that had flooded the entire big city was still rising. Countless whirlwinds rushed out of the water like tentacles and attacked the blood-colored clouds in the sky. Facing such a situation, Cthulhu had no other options but to attack. He decisively chose to compete with Bai to see who would have their Dominator Power drained first. Rlyeh was its Kingdom. In ones Kingdom, the draining of its Dominator Power was less than one-tenth compared to in the outside world. Theoretically, as a dominator-level rank-7 powerhouse, it could definitely drain Bai to death. However, what it had no idea about was that Bai was not a dominator-level rank-7 powerhouse. As a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse, the gap between Bai and a dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses Dominator Power like Cthulhu was like a pond and the ocean. Observing what Cthulhu was doing, Bai instantly figured out what it was trying to achieve. Trying to drain me? This guy has made the most foolish decision, Bai thought to himself. In the sky, the blood-colored clouds sent forth blood-colored lightning bolts, crushing the whirlwinds. The battle between the two very soon fell into a stagnant state again. No matter how much effort Cthulhu put in, the whirlwinds would be crushed entirely before they reached the blood-colored clouds. However, Bai noticed that the water levels were still rising slowly. Cthulhu was worried that Bai would notice it, so it controlled the rise at a stable pace. Given that the attacks by the whirlwinds were acting as a distraction, it was really hard for one to notice it with the naked eye within a short period of time. Nevertheless, Bai merely took one glance and immediately figured out what it was planning. Clearly, Cthulhu was still unwilling. Even now, it still clearly wanted to drown the blood-colored clouds altogether. Bai smirked. The blood-colored clouds began to rise higher into the sky at a subtle, stable speed. Soon after Bai did that, Cthulhu noticed that something was off. The reason being was that it realized that the water levels did not close the gap with the blood-colored clouds. Not only that, there were signs of it faintly getting even further away from the blood-colored clouds. Sensing that, it released a raging roar. Bais voice spread out calmly again from above the clouds, Why are you mad? Didnt I learn this from you? Cthulhu could not come up with a retort to his words. Indeed, it had been the first one to increase the level of the water. Bai was just using the same method to fight. Although it could not fight back, its rage did not seem to subside at all. The next second, endless water poured from the sky like a waterfall. It was not only the sky above the blood-colored clouds, there were even waves of water appearing from all directions. It was as if an ocean had been teleported from another dimension, and was pouring into the dimension. At that moment, the blood-colored clouds could not avoid the ocean completely. Bai gave up the futile dodging directly when he saw that. He transformed the blood-colored clouds into blood-colored giant pythons and dove into the ocean. At the same time, he heard Cthulhus hysterical laugh. He snorted, As if youd definitely win after I enter the water. Bai remained hiding within the transformed blood-colored clouds, which were now blood-colored giant pythons, and dove deep into the water. Very soon, they had completely avoided the impact coming from the waves above. Clearly, Cthulhu had set up its trap, waiting for its opponent to enter. As Bai dove down further, he soon saw the big city once more. At that very moment, his pupils shrunk slightly. Is this an illusion? Or He saw the tall tower that he was standing on earlier move faintly. However, the next second, he discovered that it was not an illusion. The reason being was that he saw that the buildings had come alive. To be exact, they did not come alive, but had rather transformed into ocean beasts of various shapes and sizes. There are no signs of life, but their aura is clearly similar to Cthulhus Bai was quickly judging what he was looking at. It should be a puppet technique that utilizes Rlyeh, the chaotic supreme treasure. This should be its trump card. Bai frowned lightly. The puppet monsters that were transformed from the buildings had the combat strength of dominator-level rank-7. Not only that, the monsters bodies were made from a portion of Rlyeh. They were as powerful as chaotic supreme treasures. If he wanted to tear them apart by force, it would be very difficult as they were at dominator-level rank-7. Moreover, there were not only one or two puppets, but rather tens of thousands of them. Bai decided instantly that he could not use force if he wanted to win. Seeing the puppet monsters coming at him, he dodged them repeatedly; this would work for a short period of time. As expected of puppets, their battle mode has been preconfigured. As long as I figure out all of their battle modes, I can defeat almost all of them. Very soon after Bai came to that conclusion, he could not help but frown lightly. The reason being was that when he was dodging a puppet that was attacking him, there were black tentacles of various thicknesses shooting out of the puppets nose and mouth. One of them had even tied itself around the blood-colored pythons tail. Fortunately, a thread stretched out of the blood-colored clouds, transforming it into a sharp blade that sliced it off. However, a few puppets had attacked at the same time. The blood-colored python failed to dodge all of them. Feeling helpless, Bai could only control the blood-colored python to sweep its tail to throw the few puppets out; only then did he get rid of them. Nevertheless, Bai noticed that those puppets did not seem to suffer any substantial damage after being attacked by the blood-colored python. They soon joined the battle again. Such powerful defense Bai frowned lightly. This cant go on. Ill be surrounded if Im not careful, intensifying the draining of Dominator Power. Cthulhu would definitely seize the opportunity to attack my weaknesses There are only two ways to break through this predicament now. Bai calmed himself down. One is to look for its hiding place, and the other is to look for a way to get rid of these puppets. The first option isnt feasible at all. My Divine Telekinesis is greatly restricted here. I cant locate its exact coordinates at all. Not only that, this is its Kingdom. It can hide anywhere. If it wants to avoid fighting me, it can teleport somewhere else instantly. Regarding the second option, killing them by force definitely wont work. It wouldnt be a problem to kill a couple of them with the current combat strength I have revealed, but if I want to kill all of the puppets, I can only do it if I expose my real ability. Seems like this is the only thing I can do Bai soon had a plan in his head. Chapter 1864 - Killing Cthulhu Chapter 1864 Killing Cthulhu The blood-colored giant python suddenly turned around and attacked one of the puppets. It opened its mouth directly and swallowed it. The next second after the blood-colored giant python swallowed the puppet, Bai sent it directly into the Kingdom in his body. The puppet that was initially struggling, as well as attempting to contaminate the enemy by releasing Abyssal energy, could not move at all after it was sent into the Kingdom. After all, it was a puppet. After entering Bais Kingdom, it would mean that it had been disconnected from the outside world completely. Cthulhu could no longer control it. Bai smirked lightly after watching the first puppet cease movement completely as he expected. He controlled the blood-colored giant pythons to rush toward the other puppets. Very soon, the second, third puppets The blood-colored pythons swallowed the puppets one after the other and sent them into the Kingdom in Bais body. Many puppets were just attacking the blood-colored giant pythons from a close distance. They were swallowed by the blood-colored giant pythons mouths that came out of nowhere. Within a few breaths of time, thousands of the puppets that were almost indestructible were swallowed by the blood-colored giant pythons. Feeling helpless, Cthulhu could only change its battle approach. He controlled those puppets to attack from a distance. They no longer dare to get close. Meanwhile, Bai controlled the blood-colored giant pythons to expand continuously. They proceeded to swallow more and more puppets. Cthulhu controlled the puppets to escape in all directions when it saw that the situation was turning bad. However, tentacles stretched out of Bais blood-colored giant pythons and captured and swallowed most of the puppets. As they fought, less than one-fifth of the buildings that were initially in the big city remained after the blood-colored giant pythons swallowed them frantically. Bai swallowed them to the point that Cthulhu dared not use those puppets anymore. He controlled the remaining puppets and sent them to the border of the ocean in different directions. Bai could be considered to have won the battle. Not only that, Bai could clearly sense that the aura of the entire ocean had dropped significantly after Rlyeh lost many of its buildings. The blood-colored giant pythons continued floating in the ocean, but Cthulhu did not attack for some time. Bai waited for a couple of seconds before speaking again, Cthulhu, if you dont attack, I will! Cthulhu had no reaction for a while after Bai said that. Bai guessed roughly that it should not have any good strategies, so it chose to hide for now. However, Bai clearly did not plan to give it any time to come up with a new strategy. The next second, Bais Kingdom descended directly. Endless blood-colored rivers rushed into the ocean. As soon as the crimson river entered the ocean, it began to expand quickly. Very soon, the entire ocean had been dyed red. I found you Bai smirked a moment later. At the same time, he left the blood-colored pythons and appeared in an oceanic trench at the bottom of the ocean in a flash. Bai spoke coldly as he looked at the dark oceanic trench beneath, Get out, its futile to hide. You should know that my Kingdom has covered each corner of your Kingdom. You cant escape me no matter where you hide. Very soon after Bai spoke, the bottom of the ocean began to tremble intensely. The oceanic trench began to crack. A gigantic hand came out from deep within the oceanic trench. Soon, an enormous body rose slowly. Bai had finally seen what the legendary Cthulhu looked like. Its head was like a huge octopus. There were dense and countless tentacles beneath its eyes, almost like a thick beard. Only after it stood up slowly did Bai notice that it had a body similar to humans. Its body was like a plump middle-aged man. It was just that there was a layer of dark-green scales, like dragon scales, covering the surface of its body. There was a layer of green goo lingering on the surface of the scales. What Bai was curious about was that there was a pair of huge bat-like wings on its back. He could not understand what use the pair of wings had. When it had stood up completely, Bai realized that it was so big that it was close to the size of a star. Not only was the aura Ctulhu exuded dark, it was ancient and fairly similar to Azas. He was Azas descendant after all Bai came to that conclusion instantly. At the same time, his face turned solemn. The fact that it could be labeled as Azas descendant alone meant that its ability was definitely powerful. As it showed itself completely, Cthulhus six crimson eyes locked onto Bai. Soul suppressions shot forth from its eyes, attempting to hit Bais Gods soul. However, Bai merely smiled faintly. There was no sign of his Gods soul being impacted at all. He suddenly lifted his hand. Six blood-colored electric arcs consolidated in the blood-colored ocean out of nowhere. They pierced toward Cthulhus six eyes. Cthulhu was stunned to see Bais reaction. It stopped its attack on Bais Gods soul quickly in order to dodge the attack. However, it did not dodge it in time. Two of its eyes were penetrated by the electric arcs. It could not open them at all. Youre seeking death! An obscure syllable came out of Cthulhus mouth, but Bai understood the message crystal clear. Bai merely shook his head. Youre already dead. As soon as Bai was done speaking, Cthulhu suddenly released a devastating shriek. Its gigantic body fell to the ground. It was rolling around frantically on the ground. At the same time, its octopus head began to distort quickly. It looked as if something was creating havoc around inside its head. Didnt Aza teach you guys to not be randomly hit by your enemy? Especially the kind of attack that makes you bleed. Bai began to ascend above the ocean slowly after he spoke. He did not finish his sentence. To me, as soon as my enemy is bleeding from my attack, it means that hes already dead. As Bai ascended, the entire ocean began to collapse. The water levels began to plummet. Bai observed Cthulhu, who was still struggling and rolling on the ground. There was no sympathy in his eyes at all. Very soon, he had left the ocean completely. He looked at Cthulhu, who was at the bottom of the ocean, through the water. Its octopus-like head had expanded by more than ten-fold. Just as the ocean was about to completely dry up, Cthulhus huge head finally exploded with a bang. Endless black blood gushed out of it, as well as its dark-green brain juice and the remaining substances in its brain. They dyed the remaining ocean water black. His body that was struggling finally stopped moving. His vitality faded away quickly. Watching the ground begin to collapse quickly, while the entire mystic territory was going to crumble, a blood-colored wing stretched out of Bais back and covered Cthulhus body. It reeled it into his Kingdom Chapter 1865 - Dominator-Level Rank-9 Mystic Territory Has Arrived! Chapter 1865 Dominator-Level Rank-9 Mystic Territory Has Arrived! The master of this mystic territory was Cthulhu. It was Azas descendent, but it shouldnt be His direct descendant. It might be His grandchild or from an even younger generation. Its combat strength was the limit of dominator-level rank-7. It had a powerful ability. It took me a lot of effort to defeat him with my dominator-level rank-7 combat strength. If it had not been careless in the end, there was only a 40% chance that I would defeat it Bai stood before Lin Huangs clone and gave a simple evaluation of his encounter with Cthulhu in the mystic territory. The clone conveyed the message to Lin Huangs Primordium directly at the same time. The clone only spoke a moment later, Judging by the current situation, there will be even more powerful opponents appearing later on. Dominator-level rank-8, or even dominator-level rank-9 mystic territories might appear. You guys must seize the available time to elevate your ability quickly. Dominator-level rank-9 vanguards? Bai frowned lightly. According to the information I got from Death Spring, Aza has many dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses under his wings. Among them, there are three whose ability is merely second to Death Spring. These three should not appear simply, they should only appear alongside Aza. However, Aza might get the remaining dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses to come in advance to test the waters. If there really are dominator-level rank-9 coming, dont act rashly. Inform me first, and then well decide, Lin Huangs clone reminded Bai. After all, Bai and the rest had only just stepped into dominator-level rank-9. The gap of ability between dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses was great. Just like Lin Huang, he was at dominator-level rank-9 too. However, with his ability, he could suppress all of his imperial monsters with just a finger. If mystic territories below dominator-level rank-9 appear again, theres no need to ask me for instructions. Just handle them directly. Tell me the outcome when youre done. Got it. Bai nodded lightly. Ive brought back Cthulhus carcass. I didnt retrieve its Kingdom. Retrieve and refine its Kingdom and pass the carcass to Bloody. See if she can retrieve anything useful from it. Lin Huang handled it this way because Bloody mentioned that she wanted to run related studies before. Do that from now on. You guys will retrieve the Kingdom and give Bloody the carcasses. I think you should retrieve the Kingdoms. No matter how much our ability elevates, its impossible for us to rise to a level good enough to fight Aza within a short period of time. The elevation of your ability should be our utmost priority at the moment. Bai opposed him after falling into a moment of silence. Lin Huangs clone shook his head after listening. Ten million chaotic cosmoses are a lot to you guys, but its far from the amount Im integrating each second. Bai failed to snap back for a while after hearing that. Each second Refine and integrate them obediently. You guys can only share more of the burden with me when you guys become more powerful. Lin Huang patted Bais shoulder after saying that. When Bai had snapped back to his senses, Lin Huangs clone was already gone. He did not even realize how he vanished. The gap of ability between dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses is so great?! Lin Huangs Primordium continued to do what he had been doing. He sent out more will projections continuously to integrate more ownerless chaotic cosmoses. Less than a month later, he had ten sextillion chaotic cosmoses in his body. At the moment, he could integrate more than 16,000 quintillion chaotic cosmoses per day. It was undoubtedly a terrifying number. Lin Huang had even begun to suspect whether the number of chaotic cosmos he integrated daily might have surpassed the number of chaotic cosmoses that were newly-added to the infinite universe daily. If he had really reached that amount, theoretically, he might be able to integrate all of the ownerless chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe. Although that was the case, he did not stop his integration efforts just yet. He was still not sure whether his current ability had surpassed Aza or not. He dared not stop even for a day due to this uncertainty. The reason being was that as soon as he lost the battle with Aza, all of the effort that he had put in before would become meaningless. The entire infinite universe would become Azas Abyss by then. Time continued to pass by in the infinite universe, and more and more mystic territories were opened. Lin Huangs imperial monsters had broken through to dominator-level rank-9 one after the other through the hunts. Not only that, they were becoming more and more powerful through the hunts. In Lin Huangs Kingdom, the number of heavenly dao-level powerhouses had broken through to ten million. It was at least three-fold more than all of the organizations in the infinite universe added up. Among them were more than 100,000 heavenly dao-level rank-9 powerhouses. Meanwhile, there were more than 10,000 people who had been elevated to dominator-level officially. As there were many mystic territories opening lately, the abilities of the dominator-level powerhouses who had just entered the infinite universe elevated quickly. Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and the rest were the outstanding ones among them. The two of them had broken through to dominator-level rank-8. Chan Dou, Xiao Mo and Huang Wuji had stepped into dominator-level rank-7. Meanwhile, all of the Sword Servants had elevated above dominator-level rank-5 with the help of Azas dreamland acting as the instance dungeon. Sword 1 and Sword 8 had been hunting in the mystic territories enthusiastically. They had been elevated to dominator-level rank-7. The reason they cultivated so quickly was because they retrieved and refined Kingdoms in Lin Huangs Kingdom. Under the time flow acceleration of six billion times, time was almost not even a factor at all when they refined the Kingdoms. Not only that, under the time flow acceleration in Lin Huangs Kingdom, there was no digestion period for their combat strength at all. Others might need to spend up to a million year to digest and stabilize their combat strength when they elevated a level higher. However, all they had to do was to stay in Lin Huangs Kingdom to complete the procedure under six billion times of time flow acceleration. They could continue elevating their combat strength when they got out of Lin Huangs Kingdom the very next second. What shocked Lin Huang was that his old friends Yi Zheng, Yi Yeyu, Leng Yuexin and Li Lang had been elevated to dominator-level as well. Fatty was the only one who was stuck at heavenly dao-level rank-9. Naturally, the person who shocked Lin Huang the most was his disciple, Wu Hao (Great Heavens reincarnation) who came much later on. He had been elevated to dominator-level rank-7. Yang Ling was also another one that Lin Huang found ridiculous. He had no idea what he did to have elevated to dominator-level rank-9. He had even guided Hong Zhuang to elevate to dominator-level rank-7. However, Lin Huang noticed that Yang Ling had contacted Death Spring before his combat strength skyrocketed. He speculated that he and Hong Zhuang got something good from Death Spring for their combat strength elevation. More and more mystic territories opened frantically in the infinite universe. At the beginning, only one or two dominator-level rank-7 mystic territories would appear occasionally. Later on, dominator-level rank-8 mystic territories began to appear. After that, there would be at least one dominator-level rank-8 mystic territory appearing almost every two to three days. There would be two to three dominator-level rank-7 mystic territories daily. On the third day, when Lin Huang had integrated one trillion chaotic cosmoses daily, the first dominator-level rank-9 mystic territory appeared! Chapter 1866 - K’thun Chapter 1866 Kthun Lin Huang sensed it as soon as the mystic territory appeared. The fog covering the mystic territory was no longer an obstacle to him now. His vision pierced through the layers of fog. He saw the sky behind the fog. There was a gigantic tree, whose size was comparable to a chaotic cosmos, standing amidst the sky. Its body was gray, while its tentacles imitated branches and roots, spreading in all directions and covering the sky. At the center of the treetop, a huge, dark-green eye opened slowly. It seemed to have just been awakened. This aura Lin Huang could not help but frown slightly when he sensed the aura it exuded. The reason being was that, although it had Abyssal aura lingering in its body, it was not Azas child or descendant. Lin Huang sensed the Abyssal aura, which somehow felt similar to Death Spring and the bug hordes will. Just as Lin Huang was trying to figure out what had happened exactly, a voice transmission suddenly came from Bai. A mystic territory suspected to be rank-9 has appeared! Ive sensed it, Lin Huang responded immediately, Its not suspected to be rank-9, it is rank-9. The master of this mystic territory is very powerful. Judging by the aura, it might only be slightly weaker than Death Spring. Its not someone that you guys can handle. Ill send a clone in. Slightly weaker than Death Spring, huh Bai frowned lightly. He initially thought that he could test his ability by seizing the opportunity that the opening of this rank-9 mystic territory brought. However, he found out the master of the mystic territory was so much more powerful than himself after hearing what Lin Huang said. He had met Death Spring before. Although he had no idea how powerful Death Spring was exactly, he could sense faintly that Death Springs power was far beyond his imagination. Someone who was only slightly weaker than Death Spring was not at a level he could handle at all. Seemingly aware of Bais emotions, Lin Huang added quickly, However, apart from the master, the other monsters are great prey for you guys Ill gather everyone later. Those who have the time can follow me in. Bai felt slightly better after hearing that. What he cared about was not killing monsters in there, but he really wanted to watch Lin Huang fighting the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. He was also curious about how powerful Lin Huangs ability was exactly. After ending the communication with Bai, Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment and contacted Death Spring. After all, the master of the mystic territory that came this time had a similar aura to Death Springs. A one-eyed monster that looks like a tree? Death Spring fell into deep thought after hearing Lin Huangs description. Lin Huang projected the image directly. Death Spring almost screamed out loud when he saw the projections. Its her! You know her? She changed a lot, but it should be her. Its Kthun! Death Spring called out the monsters name and then said slowly, Just like Aza and I, she was born in the virtual realm. Its just that she was born during the second batch. She had gone missing before Virtual Sovereign appeared. I thought that she was dead. Never had I imagined that Aza contaminated her and modified her to look like this. Whats her level of ability like? Lin Huang asked further. She was merely a level weaker than I was before she went missing. Im not so sure now since shes become like this, Death Spring said rather helplessly. Whats her specialization? Lin Huang continued to ask. She specializes in Life Dao. She can create and birth all types of life forms. In reality, the Nirvana Trees you see now are all her creations. No wonder Lin Huang only realized now why the aura this monster gave off felt unusually familiar. Are you going this time? Death Spring suddenly asked. He knew that if the monster was really Kthun, no one under Lin Huangs wing was her match. Ive no choice. This monsters ability has indeed surpassed what Bai and the others can handle. Itd be similar to seeking death if they challenge her. Lin Huang was rather helpless too. Naturally, he tried his best to train the imperial monsters under him. However, even with sufficient resources, their growth required time. I have a presumptuous request Death Spring hesitated for a moment, before saying anyway, If possible, can you not kill her? Are you guys friends? Lin Huang asked while raising his brows. I guess we are, Death Spring admitted after a moment of hesitation. However, shes already been contaminated into an Abyssal creature completely. If we dont kill her, she will end up becoming a great source of contamination no matter where she goes. Lin Huang frowned lightly. I recall that you have a Goldfinger that can cleanse Abyssal energy. Death Spring was still unwilling to give up. Ill owe you one. Cleanse the Abyssal energy in her body and then capture her alive. Lin Huang fell into silence for a moment before nodding. Alright then. In reality, it was not too difficult to capture her alive. It was just that it was slightly troublesome. Also, dont retrieve Her Kingdom, Death Spring added immediately. Dont tell me she was your lover? Lin Huang could not help but tease. Youre thinking too much. I have no gender at all, nor do I have the same physical needs like you humans do, Death Spring said angrily, I want her to be reincarnated. Help her remove the impact of Azas contamination and make her part of our combat strength. Combining the ability of the bug hordes will and the Queen Mothers under your wing, she can create many dominator-level powerhouses to participate in the war. Why didnt you say so before? Lin Huang finally understood Death Springs plan as he listened up to this point. Dont worry. I guarantee you that Ill capture her alive and cleanse her for you. However, how confident are you that we can remove Azas impact on her mentally? Lin Huang asked again. Death Spring thought for a moment, before speaking again, 50%. What are the consequences if we fail? Lin Huang thought about it and asked again. She might collapse and become insane. Thats the better situation. She might also have Her Gods soul collapse and die Wouldnt she be contaminated again and turn into an Abyssal creature again? Lin Huang said, feeling worried. That wont happen as long as you cleanse her thoroughly, Death Spring said with certainty. Thats great. Lin Huang was completely relieved now. Whether she went insane or died, he did not really care about that. Also, she has turned into an Abyssal monster completely now, so her ability is definitely different from before. Be careful. Dont worry, I got it. Lin Huang waved while smiling. He disappeared from death spring. For the next few days, he continued integrating more chaotic cosmoses while waiting for the mystic territory to open patiently. He dared not relax at all as he knew that the arrival of the rank-9 mystic territory meant Aza was close to waking up. The reason being was that, under Azas wing, there were only three descendants that originated from His Primordium who had dominator-level rank-9 authorization. Meanwhile, the awakening of the three descendants would mean that Aza might wake up anytime. Chapter 1867 - An Aura That Suspected to Be Xue Luos Chapter 1867 An Aura That Suspected to Be Xue Luos Many powerhouses from the infinite universe began to gather outside the rank-9 mystic territory. As everyone had some rough expectations regarding the danger level of this mystic territory, most of them who came this time were from major organizations and the top powerhouses from the tribes. Most of them were powerhouses whose abilities surpassed dominator-level rank-5. There were only approximately ten people in total. They were shocked to see the big shots who were here. Apart from Bloody and Bug Tribe, almost all of the imperial monsters under Lin Huangs command, such as Bai, Lancelot, Kylie, Grimace, Charcoal and Tyrant, were here. All of them had disguised themselves as dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses. Over 20 of them were unfamiliar to the people here. Obviously, they attracted the attention of the people from the organizations and tribes who were present. A small number of them recognized Bai, Lancelot and the others. They took the initiative to greet them, while also trying to get information from them. They were quite shocked by how powerful the Sword Alliance was. In the infinite universe, almost no other organizations had over 20 dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses. Even the few top organizations only had some ten dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses who came. Moreover, some of them had entered mystic territories with them before. They knew that their real ability was not the dominator-level rank-5 strength that they were currently displaying Lin Huang was secretly observing the situation. He was not surprised that some recognized Bai and the others. The reason being was that the imperial monsters under him had been moving around freely over the last few months. They would enter all sorts of mystic territories to hunt. It made sense that they exposed their abilities in front of some people. Suddenly, Lin Huang looked at the air outside the mystic territory. A moment later, the air trembled, and a few powerhouses walked out of the rift. Bai looked in that direction immediately as well. He recognized one of them. The person was Boundless Snow that he had met before. Seems like this guy wasnt killed. Someone disguised himself as him when we were in Cthulhus mystic territory previously, thats all. Bai very soon looked away. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was looking at a black-robed lady. The lady wore a hoodie and her face was covered by a veil. It had covered her appearance and aura completely. However, he could not help but raise his eyebrows lightly. This aura It feels a little bit like Xue Luos?! Although it had been years since they last met, Lin Huang was familiar with her aura. That persons aura was 70% similar to Xue Luos. However, her aura was many times more powerful than Xue Luos back then. Although her aura was hidden, Lin Huang could sense clearly that she was at dominator-level rank-9. Judging by her aura, her level of ability might even be more powerful than Bai and the others. Apart from that, the black robe and the veil on her were chaotic supreme treasures. Not only that, they concealed her aura, as well as her face. If Lin Huang wanted to investigate further, he would have to break her shield by force. The thought merely flashed through his mind, after which he discarded the idea of probing her identity by force. After all, no matter whether she was Xue Luo or not, it was quite rude to do something like that. By the time he had calmed down somewhat, he figured that the possibility of her actually being Xue Luo was quite low. After all, Xue Luo was only at true god-level back then. It was impossible that she would have elevated to dominator-level in such a short period of time. It was even more impossible that she could have been elevated to dominator-level rank-9. After thinking about it carefully, Lin Huang thought the possibility of her being Xue Luos senior was higher. She might even be her direct ancestor. If shes Xue Luos senior, she might know her whereabouts He had been secretly looking for Xue Luo, but his effort had been to no avail. He thought this lady might be able to provide him with some clues. However, this black-robed lady did not attract much attention. Including Boundless Snow, a total of four people had come from Snow Domain this time. They were all wearing black robes. In addition, she had disguised herself as a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse as well. Given that she seemed to have used a unique method, it lowered her sense of existence and presence. Apart from Bai and the others, who noticed something unusual, the rest subconsciously ignored her existence. However, Lin Huang noticed that the lady glanced at Bai and the others for a little bit. He was not sure whether she sensed their real ability or whether it was for other reasons. Naturally, Boundless Snow noticed Bai and the others around him. He could not help but raise his eyebrows when he saw the dominator-level rank-5 combat strength the over 20 of them revealed. He nodded at Bai lightly. It was his way of greeting. Not long after the people from Snow Domain arrived, a few more organizations arrived one after the other. Lin Huang noticed there were two dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses among them. One was an old man with a white beard. Judging by his aura, he was probably a sword cultivator. He was from Sword Palace. The two people who came with him were at dominator-level rank-7 and dominator-level rank-8 respectively. However, the three of them disguised themselves as dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses. There was another dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse who was a young man who only looked like he was in his early 20s. He wore a golden robe and a golden crown. There was a purple-robed middle-aged man and white-robed young man who came with him. They were at dominator-level rank-8. Their aura was rather similar to Charcoals. Lin Huang could tell from a glance that the three of them were from the Dragon Tribe. They were likely from the organization Dragon Island. The three of them disguised themselves as dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses as well. These two dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses had similar auras as Bai and the others. The two sensed their presence as soon as they arrived. Surprise flashed through their eyes, but they concealed it immediately. Lin Huang could hear from the twos voice transmission to their subordinates that they were secretly asking about Bai and the others. Very soon, they found out about the Sword Alliance. Soon after the people from Dragon Island came, Heavens Secret finally arrived. The person who led their group this time was a short, old dwarf. The dwarf was only approximately 1.2 meters tall. He was bald and rather ugly. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate his ability. His real combat strength was at the peak of dominator-level rank-8. He was only a step away from reaching dominator-level rank-9. However, Lin Huang saw the way the few dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses looked at him. They were not arrogant at all. It felt like they were looking at a powerhouse of the same level. Is he Old Man Heavens Secret? Lin Huang found out his identity from the peoples conversations. Old Man Heavens Secret was not the chief liege of Heavens Secret, nor was he a liege of any number. However, to outsiders, his identity was no lower than First Liege. The reason being was that he was the one who managed Heavens Secrets leaderboard! All of the leaderboard information Heavens Secret announced was made public by this old man. Second Liege and Third Liege came with Old Man Heavens Secret this time, although Old Man Heavens Secret was still the one leading the group. The people greeted them after they arrived. Even the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses from Dragon Island and Sword Palace nodded slightly at him too. Old Hou, Lieges After almost everyone had greeted them, the golden-robed young man from Dragon Island finally spoke, Is there any information that Heavens Secret can reveal about the mystic territory that is opening this time? Chapter 1868 - Lin Huang Has Arrived Chapter 1868 Lin Huang Has Arrived As soon as the golden-robed young man spoke, everyone looked at Old Man Heavens Secret. They hoped to get some information from him. Old Man Heavens Secret fell silent momentarily and only spoke after organizing his thoughts. The master of this mystic territory is a legitimate dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. Most of the people present had a slight change of expression when they heard his words. Although most of them had similar speculations before coming here, they could not help but feel a little shocked to hear it directly from Old Man Heavens Secret. After all, the highest combat strength on the surface in the infinite universe was only dominator-level rank-5. That strength was nothing in the presence of a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. On a certain level, this entitys appearance is also Azas test for us, Old Man Heavens Secret continued to say, At the same time, it also means that, from the day this mystic territory opens, Aza could wake up at any time. We must be fully prepared to face the upcoming war! What Old Man Heavens Secret said made everyone look terrible. Almost everyone present had received the warning information from Lin Huang previously. They knew that Azas arrival would be soon. However, they did not expect it to be this soon. How powerful is the legendary Aza exactly? The golden-robed young man asked further. Ive no idea how powerful He is exactly, but Hes definitely more powerful than all of us here combined. What Old Man Heavens Secret said made everyone present fall silent again. Lets talk about the mystic territorys master. At that moment, the old man with a white beard from Saber Palace finally spoke up to change the subject. How is its ability level? More powerful than everyone here, Old Man Heavens Secret spoke another truth that everyone did not want to hear. This time, even the old man with a white beard and the golden-robed young man looked terrible. What are the chances of us winning if we work together? The old man with a white beard asked again. Old Man Heavens Secret glanced at Bai and the others direction subtly before speaking slowly, It shouldnt be a problem to destroy this mystic territory. Everyone was finally relieved when they heard the answer. At this moment, the golden-robed young man from Dragon Island asked further, How many of such entities does Aza have under His command? I dont know the exact number, but there should be 20 to 30 of them. What Old Man Heavens Secret said made everyone present fall silent again. Are their ability levels similar to the master of this mystic territory? The golden-robed young man asked further. Most of them are more or less the same, but some are weaker than this, and some are more powerful. Old Man Heavens Secret did not hide the truth. The war was starting. Moreover, the ones present here were powerhouses who were qualified to join the war. There was no need to hide some of the information anymore. Bai suddenly spoke at that moment. Old Hou, our Sword Alliance would like to do business with Heavens Secret. We want all of the information about Aza and the powerhouses under His command. Deal. Old Hou finally revealed a smile on his face for the first time, though his face was wrinkled and the smile was ugly. Our chief liege happens to want to meet your chief. Ill visit when I have the time. A voice suddenly came from behind the imperial monsters. Lin Huangs will projection had arrived silently. Nobody noticed when he appeared and how he appeared. Apart from the three dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses and the people from the Sword Alliance, everyones pupils shrunk slightly when they saw Lin Huang appear. The old man with a white beard from Saber Palace and the golden-robed young man from Dragon Island spread out their Divine Telekinesis in Lin Huangs direction immediately. However, their Divine Telekinesis discovered nothing. It was almost as if Lin Huang did not exist at all or, rather, there was no materialized projection present. This made them fearful of Lin Huang. Only the beautiful eyes of the black-robed lady from Snow Domain flickered lightly under the veil. She smirked subtly. Chief Lin! Old Man Heavens Secret was stunned for a second as well, after which he cupped his hands to greet him with a smile. The people present were conflicted when they saw that. One had to know that Old Man Heavens Secret merely nodded to greet others, even when he saw the two powerhouses from Dragon Island and Saber Palace. He was being too polite to the chief from the Sword Alliance. Most importantly, most of the people present had never heard of an organization called the Sword Alliance. Is Chief Lin entering personally this time?! Old Man Heavens Secret asked while smiling. Im a little worried, so I thought Id check it out myself. Lin Huang nodded lightly. With Chief Lin here, this old man is relieved. Old Man Heavens Secret seemed to really be relieved. His tensed emotions from before had clearly relaxed now. Hearing what Old Man Heavens Secret said, many people present finally came to a realization. So this chief from the Sword Alliance had abilities more powerful than anyone present. Many caught onto a piece of informationthis chief from the Sword Alliance was a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse! Its no wonder Old Man Heavens Secret is being so polite! The people thought to themselves. The people from Dragon Island and Saber Palace fell silent, especially the old man with a white beard and the golden-robed young man. What Old Man Heavens Secret said also meant that the Sword Alliances chiefs ability was more powerful than the two of them. Although the two dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses had been concealing their real combat strength, they did not think that they could escape from Heavens Secrets eyes. Although Old Man Heavens Secret was a peak dominator-level rank-8 powerhouse, dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses could not escape his detection. Even though they did not think that Old Man Heavens Secret could determine the exact gap of strength between dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, they did not suspect Old Man Heavens Secrets words. The reason being was that Old Man Heavens Secret mentioned that Heavens Secrets chief liege wanted to meet the Sword Alliances chief. It was sufficient proof that this chief of the Sword Alliance had gotten the attention of Heavens Secrets chief liege. The judgment of the Sword Alliances chiefs ability should have been done, not by Old Man Heavens Secret, but by the chief liege. That was probably why Old Man Heavens Secret was so humble toward the Sword Alliances chief. What surprised the two of them even more was that, from what they knew, Heavens Secrets chief liege never wanted to see any outsiders. Even within Heavens Secret, only Old Man Heavens Secret and the 12 Lieges had ever met him. This Sword Alliances chief should be the first outsider in history that Heavens Secrets chief liege had invited over to see him. Naturally, Lin Huang did not know that. He wanted to meet Heavens Secrets chief liege just because he wanted to know how he knew so many secrets. Apart from that, he also wanted to seize the opportunity to ask him about the information that he could not retrieve from other intel channels. He would also conveniently ask about more secrets about Aza. After chatting with Old Man Heavens Secret for a little bit, Lin Huang did not ask anything further. Indeed, some topics were inappropriate to be discussed on such an occasion. After that, it clearly became much quieter outside the mystic territory. Everyone was only using voice transmission for their discussions. After all, they dared not behave atrociously knowing that there was a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse present. Meanwhile, the few organizations that had dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses had also fallen silent. Less than half an hour later, fluctuations finally appeared in the fog in the mystic territory. Everyone knew that the rank-9 mystic territory was finally opening! Chapter 1869 - Dragon and S Chapter 1869 Dragon and Snake As the fog faded completely, the people started entering the mystic territory one after the other. Lin Huang led his imperial monsters and stepped inside. As soon as they entered, he realized that Bai and the others, who were initially following behind him, were all gone. Clearly, this mystic territory operated in the same way as the others, whereby it would teleport the invaders to different, random places, separating everyone. Lin Huang lifted his eyes and looked. He had been teleported to the inside of a hive. As he spread out his Divine Telekinesis, he soon realized that the bug beasts in the hive were mutated and distorted to differing extents. Some had sarcomas all over their bodies, some had tentacles growing on parts of their bodies, some had an unusual number of limbs, some had two to three heads That was a pregnant female bug in the deepest part of the hive. It had the head of a human lady, while the body beneath its neck was of a bug. Its over ten-meter-long abdomen was swollen; the diameter of which was speculated to have surpassed ten meters. Not only that, there were pustules of different sizes all over its swollen abdomen. The bigger ones were the size of a washbasin, while the small ones were the size of a fist. Under the probing of Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis, he saw something that seemed to be squirming within the pustules. Though he did not have trypophobia, he could not help but frown. An Omniscience dominator-level rank-7 bug Lin Huang did not have the intention of attacking when he saw through this bugs grade and combat strength. It was at dominator-level rank-7, while the few guards around it were also at dominator-level rank-7. However, their grade was lower at Pure Spirit. Their abilities did not pique his interest to fight. Moreover, the main objective of his clone coming here was not to hunt, but to capture Kthun alive. Lin Huang concealed his aura and body after thinking to himself for a moment. He got out of the hive in a flash. He appeared in the air after getting out of the hive. He could still see the galactic hive that was floating not far away clearly as well as the Bug Tribe fighters responsible for guarding the hives perimeter. However, the Bug Tribe fighters could not see him, nor could they sense his existence. Lin Huang spread out his Divine Telekinesis after turning away from the hive. With the current strength of his Divine Telekinesis, he could scan the entire mystic territory easily, but he did not do so. His Divine Telekinesis only covered the distance of a few star zones of his surroundings. He was not in a rush to complete the mission this time. After all, the mystic territory would collapse automatically as soon as he captured Kthun. It would mean that the trip into the mystic territory would end for the others. Therefore, he was going to look around and let the others kill monsters so that their trip here was not wasted. After scanning the few star zones surrounding him with Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang very soon found the second outsider besides himself. He was a sword cultivator. He remembered that this person came with that white-bearded old man from Sword Palace. Dominator-level rank-8 His Sword Dao seems pretty powerful, Lin Huang mumbled to himself softly. This sword cultivator looked like he was only in his early 30s. He was handsome and garbed in a blue robe. Judging by his aura, Lin Huang could feel that this guys ability should be close to the top among dominator-level rank-8 powerhouses. His ability might only be second to Bai and the other dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. He would be ranked near the top of the leaderboard. As long as he did not encounter dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses in this mystic territory, he would be invincible. He was also in a hive at the moment. He was killing those distorted bug beasts. The battle was proceedingly one-sidedly. Although he would kill tens to hundreds of bug beasts instantly with a swing of his sword, Lin Huang was quite disappointed. Hes already in this mystic territory, so why didnt he pick more powerful opponents? He was only using the same few tricks in the hive. Not only that, the Dominator Power drain of his abilities was rather significant. Lin Huang thought it was completely unnecessary. He looked away and continued to spread out his Divine Telekinesis further away. A moment later, he saw the golden-robed young man from Dragon Island. In reality, he had noticed this young man even before entering the mystic territory. Although Lin Huang did not know his exact identity in Dragon Island, he piqued his interest as he was at Aeon rank-8, dominator-level rank-9. To be honest, Lin Huang did not know that there were dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses in this infinite universe in this era. He also did not expect to see three of them during this trip to the mystic territory. He could also sense that, although this golden-robed young mans grade was lower than Charcoal, he had integrated more chaotic cosmoses than Charcoal. Judging by his aura, his ability should be more powerful than Charcoals. Nevertheless, it was hard to tell who would win if they really were to fight. After all, Charcoal had the advantage of being two grades higher than he was. To feed his tiny bitof curiosity, Lin Huang began to watch the battle. The golden-robed young man had been teleported to an ocean. There were many monsters in the ocean, perhaps even more than the hive. Not only that, there were many powerful sea monsters above dominator-level rank-7 hiding at the bottom of the ocean. The golden-robed young man did not panic at all after being teleported to such a place. Not only did he not leave the ocean, he even dove deep into the ocean after finding powerful monsters at the bottom of the ocean through his Divine Telekinesis. He did not reveal his true Dragon Tribe body when he encountered sea monsters along the way. Instead, he killed them simply with his fists and legs. He was like a peerless combat cultivator. His fists contained endless power. The gigantic sea monsters had their bodies and heads crushed by him directly. None of them were his match! There were dominator-level rank-7 and dominator-level rank-8 monsters among them. Just like that, the golden-robed young man dove to the deepest part of the ocean smoothly. Finally, he encountered a dominator-level rank-9 sea monster there. It was a gigantic, ferocious, strange-looking snake. It was dark-green, and its body was enveloped in dark-green slime. The golden-robed young man did not attack rashly this time. Clearly, he sensed instantly that the layer of slime covering its body was poisonous. After all, it was also at dominator-level rank-9. Even though its aura was not as powerful as his, he did not dare to be reckless. Sensing the appearance of a threatening aura close by, the giant snake that was lying at the bottom of the ocean lifted its head slowly. The dense, white eyeballs on its head stared at the young man, and its blood-red tongue stretched out. It released the terrifying power of a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. It was a form of suppression, as well as a warning. However, the golden-robed young man was not scared. Instead, he was smirking. An even more terrifying aura shot forth, as if it had materialized. It suppressed the giant snake instantly. At that moment, the entire ocean began to tremble intensely! Chapter 1870 - Amazing! Chapter 1870 Amazing! Its been a long time since I last fought a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. Please let me enjoy it! As soon as he was done speaking, Long Han, who was in a golden robe, suddenly opened his mouth. Endless golden flames shot forth like water from a broken dam. The fire transformed half of the ocean into a golden sea of fire almost instantly. The giant snake was drowned in the fire. Lin Huang who was secretly watching the battle could clearly sense how terrifying the fire was. It was not ordinary fire, but Dragon Flame, which contained tens of thousands of Fire Dao and was empowered by full-force Dominator Power. Anyone below dominator-level rank-9 would almost instantly turn into dust from Long Hans attack. As soon as one was drowned in the fire, there was no way one could possibly survive it. However, Lin Huang sensed that the attack actually caused limited damage to the opposing powerhouse that was also at dominator-level rank-9. Unless it became trapped in the sea of fire for a long time, it would only suffer a skin injury at most. Just when Lin Huang thought the giant snake would escape the situation instantly, a sudden change took place on the battlefield. Before the giant snake managed to escape the sea of fire, a bone shackle suddenly emerged from the bottom of the ocean. It instantly crawled its way over to the giant snakes head. Like a glittering ornament, it wrapped itself around the giant snake and pulled it back to the ground. Do you really think that Id let you escape this sea of fire so easily? Long Han smirked in a mocking manner. Beautiful! Lin Huang, who was watching the battle secretly, could not help but praise. As long as the shackle constrained the giant snake long enough, it would suffer enough damage from the Dragon Flame. However, Lin Huang could not help but raise his eyebrows a moment later. The reason being was that he realized that things were not as simple as he thought. The shackle that had wrapped itself around the giant snake was corroding at a speed visible to the naked eye. Within just three seconds, the shackle that restrained the giant snake shattered completely. The moment the shackle shattered, the giant snake flashed and escaped the sea of fire. Time Dao and Corrosion Dao Lin Huang only discovered the green slimes nature then, as he stared at the giant snake. It was not poison, but rather the superimposition of Time Dao and various Corrosion Dao. Within three seconds, it broke the shackle which was almost as strong as a chaotic supreme treasure. The layer of slime was quite terrifying Long Han had clearly noticed that. The smile he had on his face faded. He could not help but look much more solemn now. As a Dragon Tribe member, he was actually most powerful in close combat. He had not approached the giant snake directly earlier because he was wary of the slime covering its scale. He thought that it was poison previously, but now realized that the truth was even scarier. One had to say that the layer of slime could suppress him completely. Naturally, Lin Huang saw that too. He looked at Long Han while smiling. This will be tough for him. Long Han was thinking up a plan quickly in his head. In the meantime, the giant snake charged directly at him by whipping its tail on the ground. It was clear that it wanted to force Long Han to fight it at a close distance. Long Han dodged quickly. He had seen how terrifying the layer of slime was. He did not dare to touch it recklessly. Watching him retreating, the giant snake released a low hum of joy. Its tail transformed into shadows in the air as it whipped toward Long Han. Long Han kept dodging. He did not even have the chance to fight back, not even once. The giant snake was getting frantic. Its tail began to divide from one to two, two to four, four to eight Soon, there were a hundred tails. The whip shadows enveloped Long Han within. They even began to seal his escape routes slowly. The space in which Long Han had to maneuver and dodge was gradually getting smaller. As there were more and more tails, and the attack frequency was increasing, he finally ran out of ways to dodge all the attacks. He could only use a large amount of Dominator Power to defend against those attacks that he could not dodge. Meanwhile, the giant snakes tails were releasing slime continuously. Every time they hit Long Han, a large amount of Dominator Power would be taken away. This caused Long Han to have to reactivate his Dominator Power for every defense. He looked extremely clumsy at the moment. He looked like he had been suppressed completely. Is he still not fighting back? Lin Huang was quite confused as he continued observing for a while. Long Han gave him the feeling that he had become muddle-headed completely after being hit, almost as if he had forgotten how to fight back. Nevertheless, Lin Huang figured that he had to be planning something secretly instead of really losing his composure and will to fight. As expected, after three minutes of enduring the attacks, Long Han punched the tail. The giant snake retreated immediately. This time, the Dominator Power that enveloped his fist was not weakened at all. The color was even turning into the same dark-green color that was on the giant snakes body. Lin Huang was surprised for a second when he saw that, after which he instantly figured out what happened. Long Han grinned directly. Enduring those three minutes wasnt in vain. A layer of Dominator Power lit up on his body after he said that. It turned dark-green at a speed that was visible to the naked eye, and looked similar to the slime that covered the giant snake. The giant snakes arrogant demeanor from earlier froze when it saw that. It never expected Long Han to copy its expertise directly. One had to know that it had only successfully created the slime on its body by combining Odyl after tens of thousands of attempts. It took at least 100 million years for it to accomplish this. However, Long Han simulated and learned all that in less than three minutes. I have a principle. Whatever people do to me, Ill repay them tenfold. Long Han looked at the giant snake while grinning. He charged forward the next second. He lifted his fist and smashed the giant snakes head. The battle held no suspense after that. Since he no longer had to worry about the slime on the giant snake, Long Hans close combat abilities were unleashed at full force. The giant snake did not have the strength to fight back at all. It was like a punching bag, being thrown around, stretched and pummeled the entire time. Long Han did not kill it right away. Instead, he hit everywhere that was not its vitals. He did not cause any severe injuries to it, but the pain was excruciating nonetheless, causing it to groan continuously. The giant snake was dying after being tortured for half an hour. It had given up on fighting back completely. Its Dominator Power was even drained by Long Han. He checked the time after he was almost done having fun. He realized that half an hour had passed. He grinned as he looked at the giant snake that was as soft and squishy as mud. Times up. Its time to send you off! He leaped and stepped on the giant snakes head after saying that. The next second, the head exploded directly. It transformed into a headless carcass. A moment later, Long Han, who was dyed in black blood, walked out. He cracked his joints and smirked as he said, Todays amazing! Chapter 1871 - Grimace with Terrible Temperament Chapter 1871 Grimace with Terrible Temperament Lin Huang explored other areas with his Divine Telekinesis after moving on from the battle on Long Hans side. As he spread out his Divine Telekinesis, he found many other outsiders one after another. Most of them had encountered the local monsters. Over two hours later, Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis finally located his first imperial monster-Grimace. Grimace had been teleported to an underground snake lair. In the lair, there were all sorts of snake monsters. However, they did not look normal, and were mutated to different extents. Some had rotten scales, some had two or even three heads, while others had multiple tails, and even had wings The number of snake monsters in the lair seemed to be endless. However, it was almost as if they could not see Grimace, as they allowed him to travel deep into their lair. All of the snake monsters even went into a frenzy wherever he passed. They attacked everything in their surroundings, including each other. Just like that, Grimace arrived at the deepest part of the lair without getting hurt at all. It was a huge underground cave with a giant white python lying inside it. However, Lin Huang saw that the upper part of its body was human-like. Somehow, there was both a man and a woman. The two humans were connected to a single white snake tail from the waist down. Tsk, tsk. You guys sure are intimate. Grimace only briefly felt conflicted for a second when he saw the snake monster, after which, his eyes flashed and he teased the monster directly, Or maybe you guys are actually a single entity? The snake monster did not bother to reply and attacked Grimace directly. The male held a spear in one hand. He stabbed it toward Grimace at lightning speed. The tip of the spear transformed into bolts of lightning and struck toward him. Meanwhile, the female held swords in both hands and attacked as well. Sword gleams surrounded Grimace from all directions. They were a spear cultivator and a sword cultivator combo. Facing a dominator-level rank-9 spear cultivator and a sword cultivator, Grimace did not dare to be careless at all. He dodged quickly. Watching the two attacking together, even Lin Huang had surprise flashed through his eyes. The spear cultivator and sword cultivators standards were on par with legitimate spear cultivators and sword cultivators, especially that woman wielding two swords. Lin Huang speculated that she might be on par with Lancelot. Her sword force was ferocious, yet agile. It was extremely quick. Meanwhile, the spear cultivator was powerful and majestic. The two complemented each other well when they fought together. There were almost no flaws at all. Grimace could only dodge forcefully and bear some of the attacks using his substitute skill occasionally. At that moment, it seemed like he had been completely suppressed. As a spectator, Lin Huang did not panic at all. Although the white python was powerful, its ability was still limited by its grade. It was far from enough to truly suppress Grimace completely. Lin Huang knew Grimace pretty well. On a certain level, Grimaces real battle skills were unrivaled against similar-leveled opponents. There was only one possible method of defeating him, which was if the opponent had terrifying abilities that could suppress him entirely! Otherwise, Grimace could always find ways to turn the tables around. Although he looked like he was in a passive defensive mode and had close to no ability to fight back at all, Lin Huang knew that he was waiting for the right opportunity. Hmm? As expected, within five minutes, Lin Huang noticed a change on the battlefield. Grimace suddenly took a step back. He moved out of the battlefield. It was only then that Lin Huang noticed that Grimace unleashed his ocular skill at some point during the battle. Meanwhile, the two top halves of the white python on the other side began to fight each other intensely. They seemed to regard each other as archenemies. Fortunately, its only at Omniscience rank-7. If it was a grade higher, my ocular skill might not have worked. Grimace patted his wrinkled clothes and began to watch the battle in silence. At the same time, it was not limited to just this part of the cave, all of the snake monsters in the entire lair were killing each other. They seemed to have fallen into an endless frenzy. Many snake monsters began to perish in large numbers. Meanwhile, in the deepest part of the lair, the white python with two upper bodies had more and more wounds on its body. The more rage, resentment and negative emotions you have, the more youll drown in the nightmare that I created. Only death will free you from all of your negative emotions and end the nightmare Grimace was indulging in the scene of the two killing each other. Lin Huang saw everything. He shook his head feeling helpless. This guys temperament is still so terrible. He had not been correcting Grimaces temperament recently. It was not that he did not want to, but he found out from Xiao Hei that it was simply Grimaces nature. All of the imperial monsters had their temperaments reset when they were made into cards. Only their original natures remained. Although they could be changed later, their innate temperaments could not be altered. Lin Huang had been observing Grimaces behavior. There would be someone monitoring him every time he went out for missions. Lin Huang had wanted to correct his behavior. He had also thought of altering his nature, but Xiao Hei did not recommend that, as more serious issues might be triggered. Lin Huang did not want an imperial monster that was a puppet, so he gave up on changing Grimaces nature. However, this guy would still display his terrible side when no one was watching. Lin Huang was helpless about that. Grimaces ocular skill went on for over an hour. The white pythons tail was almost split into two, and the male had finally killed the female. After all, she was skilled at dodging, but she was bound to the other. Meanwhile, the male was dying. As he had no one to release his negative emotions on, he finally snapped out of the ocular skill. He saw that he had killed his other half. It was then that he realized that he had been fighting his other half. He was completely drained of the Dominator Power in his body, and his vitality was almost gone. He did not have the strength to fight anymore. He could only stare at Grimace in resentment. His final bits of vitality faded away a few seconds later. At that moment, all of the snake monsters in the lair had already died from killing each other. There was no life in the huge lair. A hum came from the deepest part of the lair. Grimace walked toward the white pythons carcass as he hummed a tune. He squatted down to examine it. Its physiology is quite strange Is this a creation of the mystic territorys master? That master is quite powerful Grimace only put the carcass away a moment later. He then walked out of the lair and put away the dominator-level carcasses while whistling Lin Huang watched the entire battle on Grimaces side without being distracted. He had never doubted his ability before, but he did not expect him to achieve victory so easily. Chapter 1872 - Veiled Lady Chapter 1872 Veiled Lady After watching Grimaces battle, Lin Huang soon redirected his Divine Telekinesis away and explored other locations. Three days passed just like that. He had been watching what the others were doing while slowly searching for Kthun. Throughout the search, he found Bai, Lancelot and Kylie. He observed all of their battles. By the time half of the fourth day had passed, his Divine Telekinesis suddenly discovered that lady from Snow Domain, whose aura he suspected to be Xue Luo. Its her! Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows. He had a feeling this lady should be related to Xue Luo. She was still in a black robe, and her aura and face was covered by a veil. It would be rude for him to use his Divine Telekinesis to break through her veil and robe, so he could only watch her movements in secret. The veiled lady was currently on a planet that was filled with plants. The planet was almost covered entirely in greenery. The plants were so lush that one had nowhere to place their feet. The problem was that these were not ordinary plants, but Abyssal demonic plants. The threat they posed was no lower than monsters. The veiled lady had clearly just arrived. She tried her best to conceal her aura. She seemed to be using a shielding technique to isolate her existence so that these plants would not sense her existence. Even Lin Huang had to admit that her technique was outstanding. If his level of ability did not surpass hers, his Divine Telekinesis might have missed her. The veiled lady flew across the dense forest. She seemed to be looking for something. Lin Huang saw her pass by many Abyssal demonic plants along the way, but none of them noticed her or attacked her. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was curious, What is she looking for? He noticed that, on the planet filled with the Abyssal demonic plants, there was a strong restriction on Divine Telekinesis. The reason why the veiled lady flew around while searching was probably because her Divine Telekinesis was significantly restricted on this planet. However, the restriction did not affect Lin Huang much. He soon scanned the entire planet with his Divine Telekinesis. He was surprised to find two dominator-level rank-9 monsters on this planet. One was a demonic tree, while the other was a demonic vine. Theyve found her Lin Huang could not help but frown. Through the probing of his Divine Telekinesis, he realized that the demonic vines branches were spread out almost everywhere on the entire planet. Meanwhile, the demonic trees roots were connected to all of the plants. The two of them could sense the tiniest of changes on this planet clearly. The veiled lady seemed to have concealed her aura as well as using an illusion-type skill, and she was even careful enough to avoid stirring up air current fluctuations while she was flying However, everything that she did was actually useless. There was nowhere that she could hide in the presence of the two monsters. The reason why the two monsters did not attack her was because they were waiting for her to fall into their trap. Lin Huang fell into deep thought as he watched. Seems like not all of Kthuns creations have lost their senses. These two clearly havent. Almost all of the monsters that he saw throughout the past few days, including the ones at dominator-level rank-8 and dominator-level rank-9, had lost their senses. He thought all of the monsters that were modified by Kthun would become like that. This was clearly not the case now. He could only speculate that the two demonic plants represented cases of successful modification. Those mutated and insane ones were failed products. The veiled lady clearly did not know that. She thought her shielding technique was perfect, and that she had not been noticed at all. Apart from having to fly slower, she could almost probe all areas on this planet with Divine Telekinesis fearlessly. Lin Huang had no idea whether she was looking for dominator-level rank-9 monsters on this planet or something else. After searching for half an hour, she seemed to have finally found something. She began to accelerate and flew toward that direction. A moment later, she appeared in a valley. There was a big tree that was similar to a willow tree there. It was not too tall, and it was only one to two meters taller than the trees around it. However, its leaves were lush and vibrant, and it had many branches that almost covered the entire valley. The big tree was one of the two dominator-level rank-9 trees that Lin Huang had discovered earlier. It suddenly moved as soon as the lady arrived. Its branches swept toward her densely like whips. They blocked the ladys path of retreat instantly. The lady dodged with all of her might. A crystal sword was consolidated in her hand. She swung it to destroy the incoming branches. However, the branches had a terrifying regenerative capacity. They regenerated almost the exact moment they were cut. The branches were endless and attacked like a tidal wave. The veiled lady was still fending off the attack easily at first, but as more and more branches joined the battle, things started to become tenuous. The branches were like maggots chewing on her bones. They were tough to get rid of. After fighting for some ten minutes and realizing that she could not clear them all, the lady suddenly launched an attack. She performed a hand seal with both hands quickly and summoned an endless sea of fire. It drowned the wave of branches. Countless branches turned into dust from the high-temperature flames. Although they regenerated quickly, they were soon burned in the fire again. After that, the cycle of regeneration was halted by the sea of fire. Even Lin Huang who was watching the battle secretly exclaimed, Amazing fire! However, the veiled lady clearly knew that the opponent was a tough one. She had merely stopped one of its tricks. As a fellow dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse, she was not sure what the opponent would do next. However, she found out a moment later. The burnt branches were soon carbonized. They turned into black, fiery branches that swept toward the lady. This time, the branches seemed to ignore the flames completely; they even suppressed the fire wherever they went. It inserted fire element Odyl in its branches and elementalized them?! The veiled lady finally understood what the opponent did. A dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse would have mastered many Dao seals. Naturally, it would not lack fire element Dao seals. In reality, she did not find it strange that it did that. The lady was only confused for a second when she saw that, after which she changed her battle strategy quickly. In the next second, the fire turned into an ocean. Endless columns of water stretched out like tentacles. They collided with the fiery branches. Elemental Transformation! An amazing change in attack method! Lin Huang praised again. One must say that what the lady did proved that she had profound attainments in terms of her elemental Dao seals. Chapter 1873 - One for One Chapter 1873 One for One The big tree instantly fell into a disadvantaged state again. The fire on the branches were put out quickly. Clearly, its attainment in terms of elements was lower than the veiled lady. She had clearly noticed that. Seizing the time before it came up with a plan, she attacked further, riding on the momentum. Endless waves turned into giant beasts, pouncing at the tree. However, the tree was not to be underestimated. It recalled its fire element Dao seals and swapped back to the wood element. Although the branches could not absorb the water made of Odyl, they were moving like fish. They were much more agile now. As the branches were turning the beasts made of the waves into nothingness like threatening wires, the veiled lady smirked at that very moment. The temperature of the ocean water began to plummet. Before the tree could react, it was frozen. It did not notice the water surrounding it before. After all, its ability would not be weakened in water. The veiled lady had undoubtedly come up with this plan when she performed Elemental Transformation the first time. The moment the tree was frozen, the sword in her hand turned into white lightning and shot at the demonic tree that was unable to move. Everywhere the sword passed turned into white crystals. In reality, the ice would not usually be able to trap the demonic tree. The lady did not want to trap it. All she needed was to seize the brief moment while it was frozen to launch her killer attack. The white sword gleam arrived before the demonic tree almost instantly. The second the sword was about to pierce through its body, a purple gleam broke the seal. Subsequently, a purple vine wrapped itself around the demonic tree and pulled it away. It barely dodged the sure-kill attack. He had assistance?! The veiled lady was surprised. Almost at the same time, countless purple vines broke out of the ice beneath her feet. They wrapped around her legs like snakes. The lady tapped the tip of her toes and retreated immediately. The countless purple vines broke out of the ice repeatedly and kept coming at her. By the time the lady was busy dodging, the demonic tree had finally snapped back to its senses. It stretched its branches out and rejoined the battle. The lady had just noticed that there was a thick purple vine wrapped around the demonic tree. It was as if there was a giant snake coiled around it. Two dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses?! The ladys expression turned solemn. In reality, the demonic tree had a similar level of ability as her. She would have to spend a tremendous amount of effort just to handle one of them. Now that two of them had appeared at the same time, it made sense that she found herself in a pickle. She did not have full confidence to defeat even one. Now that another one had come, and given that the demonic vines ability was no weaker than the demonic tree, the difficulty of the battle had just multiplied, and she was forced to fight them both on her own. Nevertheless, the lady clearly did not plan to retreat just like that. Although she had fallen into the sea of branches and vines of the two demonic plants, she tried her best to dodge and defend instead of trying to pull away. Lin Huang saw it even more clearly as an observer. It was wise that the veiled lady had not tried to escape. The entire planet was under the two plants control. If she tried to escape, it would beimpossible for her to get away. The planet had a Space Seal. One could not teleport on the planet. Moreover, the two plants could get all of the demonic plants on the entire planet to join the hunt. At that point, she would be drained to death. Such a predicament might be a little tough even for Lin Huang. Nevertheless, the lady remained calm until now. She was agile as she kept dodging between the branches and vines. She would only swing her sword occasionally to slice off the branches and vines that she could not dodge. Time passed by, and the battle between the three of them seemed to have fallen into a stagnant state. Lin Huang understood that the two demonic plants were hoping to drain the Dominator Power in her body through such high frequency attacks. They must have figured that she might fight back if they changed their attack mode. Meanwhile, the lady was probably buying time to try and come up with a strategy. However, Lin Huang thought her situation was more difficult. She did not have the ability to fight two head-on. It would be fine if she was only focusing on one and leaving the other one aside. However, one of them could interrupt her sure-kill attack at any time, as well as attack her weaknesses. Lin Huang put himself in her shoes and thought of a couple of strategies, but none of them were guaranteed to win the battle. At that moment, the lady suddenly did something new. She dodged continuously and pulled some distance away from the two demonic plants. Subsequently, she performed a hand seal quickly. In the next second, two figures made of ice began to consolidate in the air. The figures very soon transformed into the ladys face. Even their aura was exactly the same. Lin Huang was the only one who could probe the difference in Gods soul fluctuations. However, he figured the two demonic plants should not be able to tell which one was the real body. As soon as the clones were formed, three figures held swords and attacked the two demonic plants at the same time. Lin Huang could not help but raise his eyebrows when he saw that. He did not think that the lady was going to collide head-on with the two demonic plants. As he contemplated, one of them fought the demonic tree, while the other two attacked the purple vine frantically. Her strategy was obvious. She wanted to stall one to kill the other one first. The purple vine soon separated from the demonic tree as it was forced to the side by the two ladies. It began to dodge continuously. The demonic tree wanted to help, but it was stalled by the other lady. Her many tricks forced it to protect itself, and it was helpless to rescue the purple vine. However, Lin Huang soon noticed that something was off after watching for a while. The demonic tree had been watching the situation on the purple vine side. Facing the ladys persistent and frantic attack, all it wanted to do was to get away. It had no interest in fighting. On the other hand, the purple vine was not good at defense after all. It had finally revealed its trump card as its hand was forced by the two ladies. The vines that stretched out began to sprout poisonous thorns. Even its body had turned black. The demonic tree was even more eager to break away from the lady stalling it when it saw that. It even ignored the ladys attack and stretched out a portion of its branches in an attempt to interrupt the two ladies. At that moment, something strange happened! Out of nowhere, the two ladies suddenly changed positions with the lady that was fighting the demonic tree. The next second, the two ladies, one left and one right, shot out white gleams, which were made of the battle swords in their hands, at the tree. On the other side, the lady looked at the vines that had pierced through her body while smiling. She suddenly released the chill in her body, freezing all of the vines that had pierced her body. It was already too late by the time the purple vine noticed something off. At the same time, two peerless sword gleams pierced through the demonic trees body! One for one! It was just that the lady had only lost a clone, while the demonic tree had lost its life Chapter 1874 - Tricky Battle Chapter 1874 Tricky Battle Even Lin Huang had to admit that the veiled ladys attack method was brilliant. Her target had always been the demonic tree from the beginning, and not the purple vine. Her Primordium attacked the purple vine together with a clone. They seemed to have lost their mind, looking as if they were dead-set on killing it. However, it was all an act. Apart from herself, nobody knew that she was acting The reason being was that, logically, it made sense for her to want to kill the purple vine first. The purple vine had weak defensive capabilities and more powerful attack abilities. It was the bigger threat of the two. It should also be comparatively easier to kill, and as such the advantage of killing it first was clear. However, the two demonic plants did not expect that the lady did the opposite. With that in mind, she had set up a trap on purpose and targeted the demonic tree. Even Lin Huang had almost been deceived at first. He only noticed that something was off after observing for a while. The reason being was that he could see her Primordium. He saw that she was controlling her usage of Dominator Power, which was how he came to that conclusion. After killing the demonic tree, the ladys Primordium and the remaining clone turned around and attacked the purple vine without hesitation. However, something happened at that moment. The purple vine stretched out its hundreds of vines and penetrated the demonic trees carcass. It dragged it underground quickly. At the same time, its aura was growing with every second. What a decisive move! Lin Huang could not help but look up to the purple vines intelligence even more now when he witnessed its actions. From that act alone, the modification of this demonic plant was more than a success. The veiled lady was persistent in going after it. She knew that it was not escaping at all, but rather stalling for time. It wanted to absorb the demonic trees carcass as much as possible in order to strengthen itself. After spending quite some effort to kill the demonic tree, she did not expect that it would become a source of energy and growth for her enemy instead. The lady gritted her teeth and continued to dive underground. She struck forth with sword gleams continuously in an attempt to interrupt it. She also tried to freeze the soil, but the purple vine was like a loach. No matter how she tried to hinder it, it would successfully escape no matter what. She knew very well that the longer it stalled, the more powerful it would become. However, she had tried everything as she went, but had minimal success. The underground was the purple vines territory. It was like a fish in water. Though it was carrying a gigantic carcass with it, it was much faster than the veiled lady. The lady chased after it for a while, but it was getting further and further away. After sensing the drain on her Dominator Power, she decisively chose to give up the chase and ran back above ground. Her clone disappeared quickly when she returned above ground. Meanwhile, her Primordium glanced at the hole in the ground that the purple vine left as it escaped with regret, and flew to the sky directly. She seemed to have given up on fighting and left this planet. However, at that moment, countless vines shot out of the hole. It was as if a gigantic mouth had opened and was coming at the lady ferociously. Clearly, the purple vine did not plan to let its enemy leave so easily. The lady smirked from behind her veil. Just as the countless vines were about to touch her body, she released a chilly aura from her body frantically. The gigantic mouth made from the countless vines was frozen into an ice sculpture instantly. The ice even spread downward quickly. It froze the portion of the purple vines body that was exposed on the ground. At the same time, the ladys clone appeared at the hole. It was unknown as to when she had performed another hand seal. A massive wave came pouring into the hole manically. Lin Huang almost cheered out loud when he saw that. In reality, he knew from the beginning that the lady did not plan to leave at all. She seemed to have removed her clone, but it was all just an act. Her clone merely concealed its aura. Lin Huang was observing the battle with his Divine Telekinesis. Moreover, his Divine Telekinesis was much more powerful than the ladys, so she could not deceive him with her actions at all. Therefore, he knew from the start that the lady had been pretending to leave. She wanted to lure the enemy out in order to attack it. However, he did not know how she was going to set up the attack. Now that he finally saw it, he could not help but secretly exclaim at how brilliant it was. No matter how deep the purple vine dove underground, and no matter how complicated its body was, as long as there was a gap, the water could go in. As the lady controlled the rate of freezing, she could totally freeze it underground. Moreover, as the person who released the water, she could control where the water went perfectly, and as a result would know where the enemy was hiding and attack accurately therefrom. Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis saw that even clearer. The second the purple vine sensed that it was ambushed, without hesitation, it chose to sever its limbs to survive. It severed all of the frozen vines and continued to escape by digging holes further and further underground. However, before it could run far, endless water poured in, filling every inch of the space that it dug out. The second when the entire space was almost filled with water, the piercing cold ice arrived. It froze the purple vine and the demonic trees carcass that it had yet to finish absorbing entirely. On the ground, the lady hovered midair. Eighty-one pairs of crystal wings consolidated instantly. They then turned into 162 crystal sabers and attacked maniacally at the targeted location. She clearly did not hold back with her attack. The 162 crystal sabers poured down like a storm, transforming the ground into a bottomless pit She did not stop just yet, because she did not sense the purple vines aura dissipating. The crystal wings on her back poured down like rain over and over again, seemingly trying to turn this area into nothingness. However, Lin Huang slowly looked solemn. The lady was too slow after all. The second the purple vine was frozen, it managed to absorb the demonic tree completely. As the crystal sabers attacked, not only did its aura not disappear, it became unprecedentedly powerful. The strength of its aura had far surpassed the veiled lady. Sensing the unusualness, the lady gave up decisively. She flapped her 81 pairs of crystal wings quickly into the sky. She wanted to seize the opportunity to escape before the purple vines aura had peaked and stabilized completely, and before it could focus on the outside world. It was the only opportunity she could use to escape. However, Lin Huang, who was watching the battle, secretly released a soft sigh. Its too late The second the lady turned around to escape, the purple vines aura peaked. It finally focused on what was happening outside its body and locked its Divine Telekinesis on the veiled lady. Suddenly, countless vines with thorns pierced through the ground from beneath. They were like endless tentacles sweeping toward the lady Chapter 1875 - Hi, My Name is Lin Huang Chapter 1875 Hi, My Name is Lin Huang The veiled ladys 81 wings flapped frantically as her body rose quickly. She tried to escape out of the planet at the fastest speed possible. However, countless vines with thorns came after her at an even higher speed. Feeling helpless, the lady could only turn more wings into sabers to slice the vines that were terrifyingly close to her. However, the vines regenerated almost the exact second they were sliced. They came after her again after merely pausing for a second. Although she tried her best to destroy them, the number of vines that came after her was gradually growing. Some vines even went around her directly and stretched higher in an attempt to block her path of escape. The lady could only turn more wings into sabers to slice them in order to break through. However, she soon found out that everything she did was to no avail. The reason being was that, at an unknown point in time, the maniacal purple vine was not the only one participating in the battle now. Almost all of the dominator-level plants on the entire planet started to join in. They did not besiege the lady, but they were stretching out their countless branches and vines frantically. The vines and branches came from all directions. The entire sky above the ladys head had been covered Watching the dense branches and vines above her head gradually getting thicker, the veiled lady finally realized that the chances of her escaping were slim. Uncertainty only appeared in her eyes for a mere second before she became even more determined She finally unleashed the Dominator Power in her body without holding back. Some tens of her wings were turned into sabers, slicing at the branches and vines in the sky Under her full-force Dominator Power, the sabers got rid of all of the obstacles along the way easily. She did not slow down at all. She was flying even faster than before. However, Lin Huang who was watching in secret shook his head. She gave up a little too soon In reality, she should not have used her Dominator Power like that in such a situation. Instead, she should have continued to run as the purple vine went after her, and only unleashed her power at the appropriate time. However, Lin Huang could understand that she might have felt defeated by having all her plans fail one after the other. Moreover, she might not even be able to find the opportunity to run if this went on. Therefore, she decided to unleash her power directly to charge out immediately. The consequence of doing that was that, if she failed, she would not have any chance of escaping. The reason being was that she would not have enough Dominator Power in her body to continue fighting the purple vine if she failed. Naturally, he could see from her determined expression that she knew the consequences of doing so. Since she had decided that, she did not allow herself to have another back-up plan to fall back on. She ascended quickly as she flapped the tens of pairs of crystal wings. All of the branches and vines were crushed into dust along the way. Although the regeneration speed of those hindering obstacles were slow after being crushed, more branches and vines continued to stretch out from the distance. They continued to stack higher and higher. Meanwhile, the purple vine continued to release more vines everywhere beneath her feet. Lin Huang watched the battle without blinking. His Divine Telekinesis could clearly sense that, although the obstacles were still stacking up, the lady was actually breaking them faster than they formed. It was like an egg shell that was becoming thinner as it was being constantly poked by a needle. Nevertheless, Lin Huang still did not think that she could escape. The battle was still going on in the lush green battlefield. Suddenly, a white gleam lit up amidst the lush green. Subsequently, a figure ran out of it quickly. However, a purple gleam shot up at a higher speed, tying itself around that figures ankle. The next second, the white gleam fell at lightning speed. It was being dragged into the lush green battlefield again. The gap that was torn within the lush green battlefield was fixed the next second. Sigh Lin Huang could not help but let out a soft sigh. He disappeared from where he was the next second. Although the veiled lady sliced off the purple vine that had entangled her ankle as soon as she was dragged back in, more vines came after her. She was quickly drowned in the sea of purple vines. The purple vines giant snake-like body finally revealed itself from its underground hiding place. It had a human-like look of joy on its face as it gazed in the direction where the lady was being drowned by the vines and branches. You can even put on a human expression. You should be considered a creation that Kthun was proud of. A mans voice suddenly came from above the purple vine. The purple vine lifted its head immediately to look at the source of the voice. It was clearly shocked. Not only was it shocked that it had not sensed the person coming, it was even more shocked that it did not sense the persons aura at all even though he was just standing right in front of it. Before it could do anything, the man pointed at the air. The next second, the endless sea of vines turned into a sea of fire. Under the burning of the flames, all of the vines melted like chocolate at a high temperature. They even evaporated entirely. The purple vine tried to use water element Dao seals to change the vines element, but soon realized it was futile. No matter whether they were transformed or not, all of the vines evaporated from the fire. They had no way of resisting at all. The veiled lady panted hard and looked at the man above the purple vine with a glance. She seemed to be relieved. Although she had been drowned by the sea of vines earlier, she had transformed all of her wings into sabers and defended herself against all of the vines attacks. She did not even suffer any skin-level injuries. It was just that she had almost been drained of all the Dominator Power in her body. Lin Huang glanced at the lady. He was relieved to see that she was alright. When he focused on the purple vine again, it had escaped underground directly in a flash. Clearly, it had sensed that Lin Huang was a tough one, so it chose to escape directly. Dont let it escape! The veiled lady could not help but exclaim out loud. Dont worry. It cant escape. Lin Huang smirked. As soon as he was done speaking, the sea of fire poured into the hole where the purple vine ran into. A moment later, a devastating shriek came from underground. The ground shook maniacally too. However, the unusual commotion only lasted for a moment. The shriek stopped abruptly, and the trembling of the ground calmed down completely. Lin Huang moved his finger in the air lightly. A Divine Telekinesis thread wrapped itself around the purple vines carcass and pulled it out of the underground. The purple vine was burnt black entirely. It was like a snake carcass that had been struck by lightning Lin Huang put it away in his storage space simply and turned around to look at the veiled lady with a smile. Hi, my names Lin Huang. Have we met before? Chapter 1876 - My Names Xue Luo Chapter 1876 My Names Xue Luo The veiled lady hesitated for a moment before removing the veil. Lin Huang was stunned the second she revealed her face. It was a face that looked exactly like Xue Luos! On a certain level, weve indeed met before, and weve met more than once too, the veiled lady said while smiling faintly. Whats your relationship with Xue Luo? Lin Huang understood it instantly. She was not Xue Luo, although they looked exactly the same. Xue Luo is my clone, the lady in crap explained. To be exact, shes one of my countless clones. Lin Huang nodded lightly after he heard that. In reality, he had similar guesses before she told him that. You have recalled her, right? Lin Huang asked that because he had not been able to find her. I recalled her after you left that mini world, the veiled lady nodded. You awakened her after she lost her Divine Fire. Something strange happened to her Gods soul. If I didnt recall her in time, other dominator-level powerhouses would easily notice how unusual her Gods soul was. She would then end up becoming a spiritual medicine for the other powerhouses. Lin Huang remained silent. He knew that the world of cultivators was cruel like that. Moreover, it was not rare for a living being to be refined into spiritual medicine. It also made sense for the veiled lady to recall her clone. Aza is coming, so I recalled all of my clones two months ago, the veiled lady added and smiled before she said again, Then I found out that Xue Luo wasnt the only one of my clones who communicated with you. Who else? Lin Huang asked in slight confusion. Theres an organization called Star Cluster in that chaotic cosmos youre in, right? The veiled lady asked. Star Cluster? Lin Huang could not remember. swe Xia Bing. The veiled lady answered directly with a smile. Xia Bing?! Lin Huang did not expect that at all. The reason being was that Xia Bings face was different from the veiled ladys and Xue Luo. There was a significant difference in their auras as well. I have two types of clones. The first type are clones like Xuo Luo that are fleshly clones made from my blood. The other type is like Xia Bing, where I project my will on someone who has just died randomly. Therefore, Xia Bings face and aura are very different from mine. Moreover, I have female and male will projection clones. Some of them are even mutated beasts and Abyssal creatures. Lin Huang finally understood what had happened after hearing the veiled ladys explanation. However, she continued after explaining, In reality, its not only Xia Bing, the master of the Snow Kingdom, Ice Queen, in the chaotic cosmos youre in, is also my clone. Just like Xue Luo, shes also my fleshly clone. Lin Huang suddenly recalled Xia Bing telling him that she would go to Snow Kingdom if she could no longer stay in Star Cluster, as she had a friend there. Now that he thought about it, the friend she mentioned must have been the Ice Queen. However, he had never met the Ice Queen before. Therefore, he had no idea what she looked like, nor what her aura was like. Apart from Xia Bing, youve actually met another of my clones. Its just that you werent aware of it, the veiled lady continued. Who else? Lin Huang really could not recall. Your aura piqued the interest of a dao-level powerhouse when you elevated to lord-level in the virtual realm. A clone I left in the virtual realm sensed that It was your clone who saved me that time?! Lin Huang could not figure out who had attacked that time. He had finally figured out the truth now. I have a couple of clones in the virtual realm. One of them was guarding the Golden Universe. She sensed your aura when you elevated to Lord, the veiled lady explained, looking calm. I didnt know we came across each other so many times. Lin Huang was quite surprised. So how should I address you now? My Primordial is called Xue Ling-er. All of the names of my fleshly clones are also called Xue Ling-er. However, I thought the name Xue Luo was better after recalling her, so I changed my name to Xue Luo. The veiled lady had been observing Lin Huangs expression when she said that name. Xue Luo Its pretty good. Lin Huang raised his brows and smiled faintly while nodding Oh, hows Bing Wang? How is he? He suddenly thought of the yeti that was following Xue Luo back then. Hes pretty great. I found a solution to elevate his combat strength. Hes at dao-level now. Although his ability hasnt reached the required standard to join the war, hes considered a powerhouse in many chaotic cosmoses, Xue Luo responded. Your ability on the other hand, has been elevating at a terrifying rate throughout these years. Xue Luo continued, Although I havent been watching you throughout these years, I can visualize the rough elevation trajectory through the few encounters you had with my clones. Youve elevated to dominator-level rank-9 so quickly. Thats a little scary. Also, your ability is more powerful than mine?! And your imperial monsters, theyve all been elevated to dominator-level rank-9! Im a traveler. Its only natural that I have my ways. Lin Huang did not hide his traveler identity. In reality, it was no longer a secret. One could find out just by requesting it from some intel channels. Xue Luo merely smiled and did not take him seriously. She had lived for countless years in this infinite universe. She had witnessed the growth of at least 10,000 travelers. Although travelers possessed many innate advantages, no matter how powerful their Goldfinger was, it was limited. Most travelers would reach their limit after they surpassed lord-level and got to dao-level. The more powerful ones might be able to get to heavenly dao-level, becoming the most powerful person in a particular chaotic cosmos. However, there were very few who could surpass the chaotic cosmos they were in and step into dominator-level. Perhaps since the beginning, there were only hundreds of them. There were even fewer who could elevate to dominator-level rank-5, not to mention someone like Lin Huang who had elevated to dominator-level rank-9. Compared to Lin Huang elevating to rank-9, what Xue Luo was more shocked about was actually the fact that he could cultivate over 20 dominator-level rank-9 imperial monsters. Although they clearly looked like they had just stepped into dominator-level rank-9, she could sense a faint sense of threat from Bai and the others. This confirmed that their grade was definitely high. It was a little hard for her to imagine how much resources Lin Huang used exactly to cultivate his imperial monsters to this level. How long do you need to rest to recover your combat power? Lin Huang suddenly asked while Xue Luos mind was dominated with various thoughts. Approximately half a day. I should be able to recover 80% of my ability by then, Xue Luo answered honestly. recoV She knew Lin Huang well, so she did not have her guard up against him. Then rest. Ill protect you. Lin Huang took the initiative to protect her. Wouldnt I be delaying your hunt then? Xue Luo asked immediately. Ive been hunting these past few days, but I still cant find Kthun. Lin Huang told her the truth. The suppression of Divine Telekinesis in this mystic territory is quite strong indeed. Xue Luo misunderstood that Lin Huang could not find Kthun because his Divine Telekinesis was restricted. Lin Huang did not bother to explain. Im not in a rush anyway. Ill just look at other peoples battles when Im bored. Xue Luo finally understood as she listened up to this point. It turned out Lin Huang had been secretly watching her battle. That was why he had managed to come so quickly when she was about to be defeated. Seeing him sitting to the side with his legs crossed, she finally calmed herself down and adjusted her breathing with her eyes closed. Meanwhile, Lin Huang fell silent and continued to spread out his Divine Telekinesis to watch other battles. Chapter 1877 Half of a day passed by quickly. By then, Xue Luos ability had pretty much recovered. In reality, she had not suffered severe injuries. She had mainly drained herself of Dominator Power. Seeing that Lin Huang was still sitting there with his legs crossed, she could not help but break the silence. Whats your plan now? Find Kthun and kill her, Lin Huangs answer was simple. How confident are you? Xue Luo asked further. 100% I think, Lin Huang gave her an honest answer. His target enemy had always been Aza. Every creature and being under Azas command was not a threat to him. Xue Luo was stunned when she heard that. She had actually wanted to ask whether he needed her to be his assistant. Since Lin Huang said he had absolute confidence, she could not continue down this path. According to the information we obtained from Heavens Secret, Kthun should be a second-tier powerhouse under Azas command. He has more powerful first-tier powerhouses above that. The three most powerful ones of the first-tier are known as Outer Gods. I heard that the three of them are so powerful that its beyond our imagination. Dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses can master hundreds of millions of chaotic cosmoses, while these three might have mastered trillions of chaotic cosmoses. It has far surpassed the limits we could get to. Trillions, huh? Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. That was nothing to him. He integrated far more chaotic cosmoses on a daily basis. In reality, Im more curious about how Heavens Secret obtained such secrets? Lin Huang changed the subject to the question that he had always had. Xue Luo sorted through her thoughts before speaking up again when she heard that question. Ive only heard a little bit about Heavens Secret, and I dont know if what I heard is completely true, but if youre interested, you can treat it as gossip. From what I know, Heavens Secret was founded very early after the ancient war with Aza. After the war, almost all of the powerhouses above dominator-level rank-7 died. The powerhouses who survived either went into hiding or disappeared. Just as the entire infinite universe calmed down, Heavens Secret suddenly appeared. As soon as they appeared, they announced the news that Aza and His army had been suppressed. They even listed the powerhouses who participated in the war. For a long period of time, they would fill in all sorts of details on the list, such as who died and how they died, those who were suppressed and how it happened, as well as who reincarnated They exposed things that were impossible to be discovered normally. Its almost like they are aware of everything. Some people were suspicious at first. They thought that their news was made up. Later on, many busybodies went to verify them and found out that the news that Heavens Secret announced was legitimate. Since then, Heavens Secrets reputation has spread like wildfire. They gradually become the most powerful intel organization throughout the entire infinite universe. For a period of time, a rumor was spread. They said Heavens Secrets chief liege refined the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. Therefore, he could sense everything in the infinite universe. Lin Huang raised his eyebrows as he listened up to this point. He thought that such a rumor was ridiculous. Since stepping into dominator-level rank-9, he knew that nobody could refine the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. The number of Kingdoms one could contain was limited. Moreover, the infinite universe was ever-expanding, and the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was strengthening with each passing minute and second. It was impossible for someone with a limit to master the limitless. Even he did not think that the number of chaotic cosmos he integrated everyday could surpass the number of chaotic cosmoses added to the infinite universe. He knew very well that even the number of chaotic cosmoses he mastered at the moment might not be one-ten-thousandth of the total number of chaotic cosmoses the infinite universe had. He did not think that anyone was integrating more chaotic cosmoses than he was daily. If he and Aza could not do it, it was impossible for the rest. However, dont take such a rumor seriously. Low level dominator-rank powerhouses might believe it, but we who are at rank-9 know that nobody can refine the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. Xue Luo had the same opinion as Lin Huang did. However, I have a new speculation based on the rumor, Xue Luo said while smiling, I suspect that Heavens Secrets chief liege might have a way to sense some images within the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. Using something like ocular skills? Lin Huang instantly understood what Xue Luo meant. I also think the possibility of it being an ocular skill is the highest. Or maybe he has an unusual Gods soul that can connect with the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao on some level, Xue Luo added. Lin Huang nodded lightly when he heard this. Indeed, the speculations that Xue Luo mentioned had the highest possibility. Didnt Old Man Heavens Secret invite you? You can meet their chief liege when the mystic territory exploration ends. Find out what exactly it is, Xue Luo said with a smile. Yes, I must meet him. Lin Huang nodded lightly. He was eager to meet Heavens Secrets chief liege indeed. It was not to find out his secret, but rather because he wanted to obtain more information about Aza. Although Death Spring had provided him with much information about Aza, he wanted to know even more. Heavens Secrets chief liege was the person who knew the most secrets in the entire infinite universe, and was the most suitable person to ask about this. After all, Death Spring knew about Azas past, but Lin Huang was eager to know more about Azas current situation. How much does Snow Domain know about Aza? Lin Huang asked Xue Luo. He did not want to let go of any opportunities to learn about Aza. I dont know much about Aza. Xue Luo shook her head. He had been sealed for a couple of eras by the time I was born. If not for the fact that the Abyss became active in this era, many mightve forgotten about Azas existence. To be honest, before the mystic territories opened frequently during these past hundred years, Ive always thought that Aza was just an ordinary dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse, and that although His ability was more powerful than mine, it should still be limited to an extent. Then recently I saw some information that Heavens Secret sent out, and combined it with my own experiences in some mystic territories. Only then did I begin to realize that this guy is much more powerful than Ive ever imagined. Were on completely different levels! If you want to know more about Aza, its best you ask Heavens Secrets chief liege directly when you leave this mystic territory, Xue Luo suggested. Lin Huang nodded. It seemed like Xue Luo might know even less than he did. After they chatted for a little while longer, she ended up suggesting that they go their own ways. Ive almost fully recovered now. I can continue hunting now. Go ahead and look for Kthun. Ill seize this opportunity to kill a few more dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses before you kill her. She figured that she might slow him down. Ill go watch and learn when you find Kthun. Lin Huang did not ask her to stay. He merely nodded and watched her leave. Chapter 1878 - I Forgot to Tell Them to Watch the Battle Time flew by, and a couple of days passed. Throughout the almost week-long period, Lin Huang had traveled through half of the mystic territory. He observed almost all of his imperial monsters performances. Overall, he was quite satisfied. Today, he had finally located Kthuns hiding place. She was hiding in a star zone with lush greenery and rich blue water. Her Primordium had disguised herself as a regular tree on one of the planets. However, her disguise could not escape Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis. After all, the strength of their Gods souls were on different levels. Lin Huang could roughly estimate her level of ability after a brief scan. She should have mastered between three to four trillion chaotic cosmoses. That was at least ten-fold of what Xue Luo had mastered. Apart from him, one could almost imagine what the consequences would be if other explorers encountered this monster. Lin Huang appeared above the dense forest directly in a flash. Stop hiding, Kthun. Come with me. The entire dense forest fell silent as soon as he said that. There was not even the sound of wind. The next second, the forest seemed to have come alive. Countless plants stretched their branches toward the direction where Lin Huang was. However, Lin Huang just stood there and allowed the plants to attack him. As all the branches came whipping toward him, they pierced through his body as if he was but a shadow. Sensing the futility of their attacks, countless branches began to tangle together, forming a gigantic tree. To be exact, the entire planet began to transform, dramatically, into a tree. Not only that, after the entire planet transformed, the other planets in the entire star zone gathered quickly, and its size continued to expand. Lin Huang finally saw what Kthun really looked like. Her true form was similar to an enormous tree that was light gray. Her tentacles were copied from branches and roots, and they spread in all directions, covering the sky. A big dark green eye opened in the middle of the tree. It locked onto Lin Huang, who was floating in the air. You look like youd be great material for modification Kthuns voice rang into Lin Huangs ears. Her voice sounded like syllables made from the squirming of countless tentacles. Thank you for your compliment. Lin Huang was not annoyed, after which he said calmly, Ill give you one more chance to attack. Give it your best shot. He knew that if he did not say that, she would definitely want to test him out first. He did not bother to waste his time on her. Kthun took a good look at Lin Huang, seemingly wanting to see through this man. However, she soon realized that she could not see him through at all. His aura was like that of an ordinary person who had never cultivated before. This made her realize quickly that she might have encountered a tough one. Therefore, she did not dare to hold back at all as she adjusted her state and recovered her ability. Her body was expanding at a size that was visible to the naked eye. She was only the size of a planet at first, after which she gradually expanded to the size of a star zone. She then grew to the size of a mini world, and continued to grow even further. She finally stopped growing when her body had expanded to the size of a chaotic cosmos. Throughout the process, Lin Huang did not try to stop her at all. He allowed her to expand, as her aura skyrocketed. He waited for her transformation to stabilize completely. Kthun realized that something was unusual about Lin Huang. She did not dare to underestimate the opponent in front of her at all. She adjusted her state to her peak and gathered strength. Countless tentacles tied themselves together and formed a grayish-green divine spear. Countless Dao seals were swirling on the spear. She inserted over half of the Dominator Power she had in her body into it. After performing this series of preparations, the divine spear turned into a green gleam and disappeared. Almost at the same time, the divine spear arrived less than ten meters in front of Lin Huang. Its edge was pointed directly between his eyebrows. However, Kthun was completely shocked the next second. The reason being was that she saw Lin Huang merely extend a finger and tapped the tip of the spear accurately. After that, the attack that she had gathered almost all of her force began to collapse from the tip onward. Within the blink of an eye, the divine spear had vanished completely. That stunned Kthun as she stood where she was. Her mind went blank. Is this your most powerful attack? Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. It cant be considered weak But its nothing to me. He could sense that not only was that her full-force attack, but that she had been drained of half of the Dominator Power she had in Her body. It also meant that it was impossible for her to launch a more powerful attack. Who exactly are you?! Kthun only snapped back to her senses when she heard his comment. She asked in shock. Im just a regular citizen who doesnt want Aza to destroy the infinite universe, Lin Huang answered calmly. You should know Aza better. Tell me, hows my attack compared to His? Lin Huang asked further. He was really eager to know the answer to the question. Kthun was stunned when she heard the question, after which she failed to hold back and laughed out loud. Your attack earlier might be barely on par with Outer Gods. You might not even be one-ten-thousandth as strong as Master Aza! One-ten-thousandth, is it? Lin Huang was clearly not completely satisfied with this answer. Seems like you dont know His ability very well either. He did not mention that the ability that he had unleashed earlier was actually less than one trillionth of what his clone could do. If it was really as Kthun said, then his clones little finger could kill Aza easily. However, he knew that Kthun probably did not understand how terrifying Aza really was, given her ability. To her, 10,000 times of her ability might be no different than 100 million times and one trillion times. The reason being was that she would be killed with a single finger anyway. Since youre done, come with me. Lin Huang did not ask for Kthuns permission at all. After he was done speaking, he stretched out a Divine Telekinesis thread with a thought. He tied up Kthuns body that was comparable to a chaotic cosmos. The next second, her aura was sealed entirely. Even her Gods soul was sealed, She could not move at all. Her body began to shrink drastically. It finally stopped when she had shrunk to three meters. At the same time, the entire mystic territory began to tremble and collapse. What did you do to me?! Kthun finally snapped back to her senses. She had really been scared by Lin Huangs ability. In her mind, even Outer Gods could not accomplish this. Lin Huang did not bother to talk to her. He tossed her into his Kingdom directly. He lifted his head to look at the mystic territory that was collapsing completely. He raised his eyebrows. Sigh, I forgot to tell Bai, Xue Luo and the others to watch the battle Chapter 1879 - Gold Token Seeing the mystic territory collapsing, Bai and the others instantly realized that Lin Huang must have gotten Kthun under control. It also meant that their trip into the mystic territory had ended. Most of the outsiders looked confused. Most of them had thought nobody could take down this mystic territory after finding out that the master of the mystic territory was a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. After all, even Old Man Heavens Secret and the others only displayed their combat strength at dominator-level rank-5. However, judging by what was happening, someone had clearly killed the master of this mystic territory. Apart from the imperial monsters under Lin Huangs command, and a small number of people like Xue Luo who knew that it was done by Lin Huang, the rest had no clue at all. Though they were clueless, they all retreated out of the mystic territory quickly without hesitation. Before the mystic territory collapsed entirely, all of the outsiders who survived managed to escape without exception. Lin Huang also left among the crowd. Xue Luo also came out not long after Lin Huang did. The two of them locked eyes, and then he heard her voice transmission. Didnt you ask me to watch the battle? I was too excited and forgot about it. Lin Huang sent a voice transmission over rather helplessly. It was already done by the time I remembered. How powerful is Kthun compared to me? Xue Luo asked directly after some hesitation. She should have mastered between three trillion to four trillion chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang did not compare them. Instead, he told her Kthuns ability directly. So powerful! Xue Luo could not help but exclaim, after which she looked at Lin Huang in a strange way. I have a feeling that you won with ease. Its okay. It wasnt that easy. What Lin Huang said was the truth. He had tried his best to retrain his strength in order not to kill her directly. After all, he had promised Death Spring previously that he would try to bring her back alive. As the two chatted, the people from Heavens Secret came out one after the other. Old Man Heavens Secret looked at Lin Huang as soon as he came out. Naturally, he knew that this young man in front of him was the only person who could have possibly killed Kthun. Mr. Lin, I wonder if you could sell Kthuns carcass to us? Old Man Heavens Secrets voice transmission reached Lin Huangs ears suddenly. I cant do that, Lin Huang rejected him directly, Because she isnt dead. She isnt?! Old Man Heavens Secret was stunned to hear that. I captured her alive, Lin Huang explained, I promised someone that Id bring her back alive. Wont there be trouble? Old Man Heavens Secret asked in a concerned manner. Dont worry, Ive sealed her, Lin Huang explained patiently, Also, even if she wasnt sealed, that person has sufficient ability to suppress her. Someone who can suppress Kthun and ask you to capture her alive Search newn0vel.0rg on googleOld Man Heavens Secret fell silent for a moment. Are you talking about Death Spring? Seems like Heavens Secret really knows many things. Lin Huang nodded while smiling. Were relieved that she will be with Senior Death Spring. Old Man Heavens Secret did not dwell on the topic and asked instead, I wonder when will Mr. Lin be free to meet our chief liege? I can do that anytime after Im done dealing with Kthun. Lin Huang was eager to meet Heavens Secrets chief liege as well. Then Ill wait for Mr. Lin to contact me when youre free. Old Man Heavens Secret flicked his fingers as soon as he was done speaking. A golden gleam shot out at a terrifying speed. It arrived before Lin Huang instantly. Lin Huang caught it casually. He found out that it was a golden token that had been thrown to him. Heavens Secret was engraved on it. Heavens Secret Token?! Bloody, who was standing to the side. recognized it from a glance. Is this a communication token? Lin Huang figured out the general function of the token after scanning it with his Divine Telekinesis. Apart from the communication function, he also saw dimensional Dao tattoos on it. It isnt just a communication token, Bloody explained immediately, The Heavens Secret Tokens nature is a symbol of status Heavens Secret gives to its members. Not only does it work as a communication device, it connects one to Heavens Secrets internal network and allows for instant transactions. However, one would not get the Heavens Secret Token even if they purchased intel from Heavens Secret. One would only obtain it if they spent above a certain amount, and that amount is extremely high. Since Heavens Secret was founded, I think theyve only given out over a hundred Heavens Secret Tokens so far. Among them, most of them were bronze tokens. Theyve only given out some ten silver tokens. The people who have them are basically leaders of top organizations. Meanwhile, the gold token is only a legend. They havent seemed to have given out any. This one you have might be the first one. Whats the difference? Lin Huang asked in confusion. The most important thing is that the authorization of information is different, Bloody continued to say, One can obtain most of the secrets in the infinite universe. As long as you pay, you can obtain almost all of the information available. I heard that having the gold token means that youd have the chance to meet Heavens Secrets chief liege once! Apart from that, the possessors of the Heavens Secret Token would enjoy discounts when they make transactions at Heavens Secret. One must know that, although theyre known to trade information, they trade resources too. The scale is so large that they might rank among the top three among all of the organizations in the infinite universe. The possessors of bronze tokens can buy products at Heavens Secret. They only need to pay 20% interest. Meanwhile, possessors of silver tokens would only have to pay 10% of interest. I dont know how much the possessors of gold tokens would have to pay, but youd definitely get a better price. Not only does this token allow you to communicate and connect to Heavens Secrets internal network, it comes with a product delivery service as well. Youll receive the products as soon as you pay. The transaction is done instantly. Also, it teleports. It will teleport the possessors of tokens to the nearest Heavens Secrets store I think our Sword Alliance should do something similar. Lin Huang did not care about the fact that he had obtained this token after hearing all that. Instead, he was thinking about getting Yang Ling to make something similar with similar functions. Not only did Bloody and the others notice that Lin Huang had obtained Heavens Secret Token, many people who stayed behind saw it too. They were shocked by the fact that the Heavens Secret Token Old Man Heavens Secret had given out a gold token. One had to know that it had never happened in history. Before Old Man Heavens Secret gave out the token, even the existence of the Heavens Secret gold token was considered but a legend. The people there became even more curious about who this Sword Alliances chief was. After giving out the token, Old Man Heavens Secret said nothing further and left with the two lieges directly. Naturally, Lin Huang did not care about the people staring at him. He left with his imperial monsters after saying goodbye to Xue Luo. The people who stayed behind were still discussing the Heavens Secret Token. Chapter 1880 - Heaven’s Secret Chief Liege After leaving the mystic territory, Lin Huang went to Death Spring directly and passed the sealed Kthun to him. Even Death Spring could not help but release a long sigh when he saw what Kthun had turned into. I cant believe she became like this Lin Huang did not find it strange. All creatures that are contaminated by Aza will undergo all sorts of strange mutations. Her case isnt considered to be particularly severe. Cleanse her for me, Ill handle the rest. Death Spring did not want to waste time chatting and got straight down to business. Lin Huang nodded lightly and stretched out his hand. He pressed it onto Kthun, and Eternity Fire began to absorb the Abyssal energy in her body and Kingdom quickly. The process only ended after about half an hour. Kthun shrieked in devastation for half an hour. Clearly, the cleansing process brought her great pain. However, she would not have had the strength to resist Lin Huangs at all, even if she had not been sealed. She could only watch the entire thing happen. As the cleansing continued, the mutation on her body gradually started to fade away. Her tentacles began to turn back into branches, while the scales on her body transformed into tree bark again. Slowly, she turned back into a tree. Lin Huang noticed that, as the Abyssal energy was cleared from her body, the aura fluctuations coming from her Gods soul were clearly different from before. He only removed the seal when the cleansing process was completed. However, Kthun was extremely weak at the moment. She had fallen into a state of deep sleep. Death Spring, who had been watching the entire thing from the side, could not help but exclaim, I cant believe the cleansing process could be so thorough. She has returned to how she was before she was contaminated. I can only say that my Goldfinger is powerful, Lin Huang said while smiling, What do we do next? Ill reincarnate her. Ill reincarnate her over and over again to wipe away the psychological influence Aza had on her, Death Spring responded while smiling. Wouldnt that take a lot of time? Lin Huang frowned lightly. We need powerhouses who can participate in the war when Aza comes. Aza might wake up at any time now. No, Ill toss Her into another timeline, Death Spring explained. Lin Huang instantly understood what Death Spring meant. Then youll bring her back to our timeline after that? Thats right. Ill leave it to you then. Ill be waiting for your good news. Lin Huang looked at Kthun, who was still in a state of deep sleep. He knew that she would be in for some torture later. The reason being was that all of her memories would be wiped during each reincarnation. Then, she would have to turn into all sorts of creatures and experience illness, old age and death. This process would repeat itself tens of thousands of times. Only when the psychological influence Aza had on her was completely wiped out would Dearth Spring bring her back. Lin Huang fell into deep thought for a moment after leaving Death Spring. He recorded the memory scenes of the entire battle with Kthun into a document and sent it to Bloody and his imperial monsters. He also spoke to all of them through voice transmission, Kthun is only a second-tier powerhouse under Aza. I hope that your ability can reach the standard Kthun displayed in the video before the war commenced. Bai and the others were indeed stressed when they received the video and the message, but they were also motivated. The reason being was that not only did they see Kthuns ability, they also witnessed the terrifying abilities Lin Huang displayed. It was so powerful that it motivated them to become more powerful. After sending them the video, Lin Huang decided to send it to Xue Luo as well after some hesitation. She replied quickly. You suppressed her completely She sent a terrified emoji. Kthun is only considered a second-tier powerhouse under Azas command after all, Lin Huang responded after thinking about it. I cant even compare to His second-tier underling Xue Luo replied almost immediately. Youre already considered a first-tier powerhouse in the infinite universe. Lin Huang avoided the comparison. He only focused on the serious stuff after the two chatted for a little bit. He took out the gold token Old Man Heavens Secret had given him. He soon sensed the tokens functions after inserting his Divine Telekinesis into it. Just as he was about to contact Old Man Heavens Secret to arrange his meeting with Heavens Secret chief liege, his Divine Telekinesis suddenly discovered that there was a door. He was certain that the door had not been there before. It had just appeared out of thin air. Lin Huang thought for a moment while holding his chin. With a little bit of caution and doubt, he spread out his Divine Telekinesis toward the door. Almost the very second his Divine Telekinesis touched it, Lin Huang felt a fragment of his consciousness taken away. The next second, the consciousness had arrived in a vast sky full of stars. Who is it?! Lin Huangs consciousness spread out his Divine Telekinesis. It radiated through the entire chaotic star zone, but he found nothing. At that moment, a cloud quickly formed not far from where Lin Huang was. It was an irregular-shaped cloud. A gentle voice emanated from it. Hi, Lin Huang. I sensed that you wanted to see me, so I teleported a fragment of your consciousness here through the Heavens Secret Token. Youre Heavens Secret chief liege?! Lin Huang asked in an unsure manner. The reason being was that, no matter what, the cloud in front of him did not look like any kind of living being. Yes, Im Heavens Secret chief liege. I also have another identity The cloud responded quickly. Im also the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao that you guys always talk about. The infinite universes Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao?! Lin Huang widened his eyes. He had all sorts of guesses regarding the Heavens Secret chief lieges identity before, but he had never thought of this possibility. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was only an existence in legends. Nobody had ever verified whether such a thing existed or not. However, many of Lin Huangs doubts were answered when he heard that. No wonder Heavens Secret knows so many secrets in the infinite universe, he could not help but mutter. I founded Heavens Secret. Its used to monitor and handle the unusual organizations in the entire infinite universe, the cloud explained, Trading information is just a cover. So trading information is just a side act Lin Huang had never thought that trading information was not Heavens Secrets main business. We trade information just to accumulate sufficient resources to cultivate powerhouses. A calm voice could be heard from the cloud. However, from what I know, theres only one dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse in Heavens Secret. Theoretically, Heavens Secrets resources should have been enough to cultivate hundreds of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, no? Lin Huang asked with slight confusion. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao laughed when it heard his words. Youre underestimating the resources required to achieve dominator-level rank-9. Apart from the derivatives that came out when the infinite universe was born, its quite impressive that the entire infinite universe produces three to four dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses in a single era. Also, to fight Aza, dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses arent what we lack, but rather dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses that are powerful enough. Heavens Secret only has one dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse, which is First Liege. Apart from him being qualified, hes the only living being who was born at Peerless rank-10 throughout these tens of eras. I poured all of Heavens Secrets resources into him, hoping that he can fight Aza. Chapter 1881 - You’re My Second Choice Lin Huang was a little confused when he heard what the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said. As the Heavenly Dao, cant you make a couple of innate Peerless rank-10 living beings and cultivate them? I cant do that because Im the Heavenly Dao, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said rather helplessly, Heavenly Daos cannot intervene in the operation of the world directly or indirectly. Im already on the verge of breaking this rule by getting First Liege to found Heavens Secret. If I could really take action, I wouldnt have to train First Liege at all. I could just kill Aza myself. The thing is that there is a rule that prohibits me from doing so, which has existed since I was born. Just like computer programming on Earth, I cant bypass this programming rule that has been configured from the beginning. Got it. Lin Huang understood it completely now when he heard that example. Whats First Lieges current ability? He asked instantly. Although hes an innate Peerless rank-10 living being, the number of chaotic cosmoses his Kingdom can contain is limited. Also, weve tried all sorts of ways, but the efficiency of his integration is still limited. Throughout the tens of eras, he could only integrate one septillion chaotic cosmoses forcefully. One septillion is still not enough to fight Aza? Lin Huang was actually comparing his ability at the same time by asking this question. He had reached one septillion chaotic cosmoses ten days ago. Although he was at five septillion now, there was no significant difference in nature. When Aza was sealed, He had only mastered some one septillion chaotic cosmoses. However, during His deep sleep, when He was sealed, He sent out countless clones in His dream. Throughout the tens of eras, some of His clones ability might have even surpassed His Primordial back then. If He integrated all of His clones once again, its difficult to imagine how powerful His ability would elevate to then. How many clones did He make exactly? Lin Huang frowned lightly. I dont know. Although I know most of the things in the infinite universe, I cant probe the information inside the dominator-level powerhouses Kingdoms. He made His clones in His Kingdom and sent them out. I have no idea how many He made exactly. Also, His clones have all sorts of identities when they were projected directly, and their trajectories are on different timelines. I have no way of finding out at all. Since theyre clones, you should be able to find out something from their memories. Lin Huang voiced his opinion after thinking for a moment. Do you mean checking all of the living beings in the entire infinite universe? The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was speechless. Do you know how many living beings there are in the infinite universe? If we were to check like that, we wouldnt be able to complete it even if we had tens of thousands of years. No need for all that trouble, just check the powerhouses at dominator-level. In reality, those that are below dominator-level are not a threat. Lin Huang suggested a new idea. If there are too many dominator-levels, start checking from powerhouses on and above dominator-level rank-5. Even if you include all of the timelines in the entire infinite universe, there should not be too many powerhouses above dominator-level rank-5. Your idea is doable indeed, but I think the success rate might be low. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao voiced its opinion anyway. Aza wouldnt make such a mistake. His clones are probably projected through reincarnations. Those who are projected in this way wouldnt have any memories of Aza at all. Their memories would only be awakened when Aza wakes up and activates them. Even if I probe their memories one by one, itd be useless. The reason being is that even they themselves are not aware that theyre Azas clones. Can you probe the memories of their past lives? Lin Huang asked instantly. Dominator-level powerhouses are more unique. On a certain level, the chaotic cosmoses in their bodies actually exist in the infinite universe semi-independently. There are many levels of dominator-level powerhouses that I cant probe. I cant probe the secrets in their core even in the memories of their current lives, let alone the memories of their past lives, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao explained rather helplessly. Then theres nothing that we can do. If its really as you said that Aza prepared in advance to have projected His clones through reincarnation, we can only wait for Him to wake up. Lin Huang was not aware that dominator-level powerhouses were so unique. However, I still think that you should try it. If Aza overlooked that, it could be a breakthrough point where we could crush Him completely. Hmm, Ill try that on powerhouses above dominator-level rank-5. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not reject the suggestion. So you were thinking of training First Liege to fight Aza? Lin Huang asked further. Thats right, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao replied, Before you showed up, he was the only powerhouse who had sufficient ability to fight head-on with Aza. What if Aza integrated His countless clones? Lin Huang asked, Whats your plan, then? The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao hesitated for a moment before speaking again. Ill get First Liege to try his best to integrate me One can master the entire infinite universe just with one septillion chaotic cosmos and integrate with you?! Lin Huang voiced his doubts. Thats naturally impossible. Otherwise, Aza would have succeeded tens of eras ago. He wouldnt need to start a war now either, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao explained immediately, With my initiation to cooperate, the one septillion chaotic cosmoses would forcefully become the center to activate a small portion of my power and he will be able to borrow a small amount of the infinite universes Infinite Power. However, First Liege would only have one chance to attack as soon as he integrates with me. No matter if he wins or loses, his body would explode after that attack, and he would then die. Does First Liege know that? Lin Huang raised his brows. I told him that, and he has agreed to do it, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao replied. What if he fails to hit the target? Or for some other reason he failed to kill Aza? Lin Huang continued to ask. Thats why I wanted to meet you, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said honestly, Because Youre my second choice. Lin Huang was quite surprised with the answer, but he soon thought it made sense. After all, apart from First Liege, in the entire universe, he was the only one who had the ability to fight Aza at the moment. Moreover, apart from First Liege, he was the only one who could use the Kingdom in his body as the center to activate the infinite universes Infinite Power. Before you appeared, I only had one option, which was First Liege. If he fails, nobody in the entire infinite universe can fight Aza and Hed be the final victor. However, you appeared out of nowhere and rose to a level powerful enough to fight Aza within an extremely short period of time. If First Liege fails, youll become the person who can kill Aza completely! How should I put this However, Lin Huang shook his head. I actually dont really agree with your plan. Chapter 1882 - The Worst Outcome Im not afraid of death, but I dont think integrating with you is the only way to defeat Aza. Lin Huang told it his thoughts directly. Have you ever thought that, since theres an Aza now, there might be a second and third Aza appearing in the future? As long as mastering the entire infinite universe is an option, someone will try to do so sooner or later. Without eradicating the root problem, even if Aza is killed, there will be people who will be on par with, or even more powerful than Aza, showing up. What will you do when that happens? Train another First Liege? After killing the second one, what if the third one shows up? Youll train a third First Liege? Will you descend into the cycle of repetition from now on? What Lin Huang said made the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao fall silent for a long time. Someone must escape the cycle to eradicate the root problem, Lin Huang said, Aza was sealed by Virtual Sovereign in the beginning. If someone could reach Virtual Sovereigns level and become a Transcender, no matter whether it is the current Aza, or the people who come after, they will all be suppressed easily. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao fell silent for a long time after hearing that. It only spoke again slowly a while later. You want to know the way to become a Transcender from me? Do you know the way? Lin Huang asked calmly. To be honest, I dont, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao answered directly. If I did, I would cultivate First Liege into a Transcender directly. Then what do you know about Transcenders? Lin Huang asked further. Ive only seen one, which was Virtual Sovereign. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao thought about it and organized its thoughts. I dont know where He came from, nor could I probe any information from him. He gave off the feeling that Hes a gigantic black hole, into which all probing methods would simply dissipate into nothingness. I couldnt even sense any fluctuations common to living beings from His body. I think the power He has isnt a level that one can reach by relying on cultivation. He shouldve been born as an existence that surpassed the infinite universe. He mightve created the infinite universe. Where did He go? Do you know? Lin Huang asked further. I dont, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao answered instantly, He suddenly vanished after He ended the war. Lin Huang fell into a long period of silence after hearing that. Nobody knew what he was thinking about. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not interrupt him. Lin Huang only spoke after a long time. He did not dwell on Virtual Sovereign. Instead, he asked a strange question, Is there a border to the infinite universe? The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao answered his question directly without even thinking about it. The infinite universe has no border because its a combination of all substances, spirit, time and space. Everything, even if its only the figment of the imagination of a living being, would be projected by the infinite universe. Therefore, its expanding frantically at all times. If thats the case, how do you explain Virtual Sovereigns existence? Since He exists, He shouldnt be able to escape the inclusion of the infinite universe, Lin Huang raised a paradox. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao fell into a moment of silence again before raising a doubt slowly, Can it be that He doesnt exist? A light flashed through Lin Huangs head when he heard that. Its not that He doesnt exist, He must be beyond existence! Therefore, the nature of a Transcender is actually beyond existence Lin Huang suddenly caught onto a crucial point. However, he still could not find any clues to become a Transcender after thinking for a long time. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao seemed to have fallen into deep thought as well. The two of them were silent for a long time. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao could not help but say, Is there anything else that youd like to ask? If not, Ill send you back. I dont, but if you discover Azas clones, please inform me immediately. Lin Huang thought about it and spoke again, Rather than Aza when He has absorbed all of His clones, I think that killing His clones first is the key to win this war. Ill try my best to find them, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao responded quickly. Ill inform you by then whether I found any or not. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao sent Lin Huangs consciousness back as soon as it was done speaking. Lin Huang instantly understood what had just happened when his consciousness returned to his body. He smirked. So my current ability surpassed Azas Primordium. I wonder how many clones He has exactly, and how powerful He will become after absorbing the clones Lin Huang did not slack off at all. Instead, he seized every minute and second to continue integrating more chaotic cosmoses. Time passed by. Almost a week later, the number of chaotic cosmoses in his body had grown to 18 septillion. In terms of quantity, he should be 18 times more powerful than Aza and First Liege. In terms of ability, he should have reached a standard that could suppress Azas Primordium with ease. The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao finally sent him a message on this very day. It sent Lin Huang voice transmission this time, Ive tried using your suggestion over the past few days, but I couldnt find anything. I tried it on all of the timelines on powerhouses above dominator-level rank-5. Then I probed through dominator-level rank-1 to dominator-level rank-5. Turns out nothing is unusual about everyones memories. Therefore, my first speculation was right. Aza has prepared for this in advance. He shouldve projected all of His clones through reincarnation. Oh well, theres nothing we can do then Although Lin Huang had expected that outcome, he could not help but feel helpless when he received the confirmation from the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. It was undoubtedly the worst outcome. It meant that, before Aza woke His clones, they could not locate His clones coordinates in order to kill them in advance. It would also mean that Lin Huang and First Liege might have to face the real and complete form of Aza. An Aza who had absorbed all of His clones would definitely have a level of ability more than one septillion chaotic cosmos, unlike His Primordium. He might end up mastering tens of thousands of septillions of chaotic cosmoses or even more. I still hope that youll accept my suggestion. If First Liege fails, youre the only person who can integrate with me The Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao brought up the preventive solution again. Ill think about it. Lin Huang fell silent momentarily. He did not reject it outright. He was never a person who feared death. If that was really the last resort, he knew that he would definitely show up. However, he did not agree directly because he thought the Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos suggestion was not the only way to solve the issue. Seems like itll really be a tough battle Lin Huang frowned. Chapter 1883 - The War Has Begun! Time flew by. Very soon, over 20 days had passed. During the past 20 days or so, two dominator-level rank-9 mystic territories had opened in the infinite universe one after the other. The masters of those two mystic territories had abilities on par with Kthun. Lin Huang sent his will projections to enter the mystic territories and killed the two masters. Meanwhile, Lin Huangs Primordium had integrated more than 1,000 septillion chaotic cosmoses. The difference between his current ability and that of 20 days ago was like comparing heaven and earth. Though that was the case, he did not think that the current him had sufficient capability to fight Aza when He was in His complete form. He did not halt his cultivation just yet. Instead, he seized every minute and second to integrate more chaotic cosmoses. On this day, the entire infinite universe suddenly trembled intensely. Lin Huangs vision pierced through space. He looked at the source where the tremor had originated. His pupils shrunk the next second. Hes coming?! A mystic territory containing a terrifying aura had arrived. It was hidden within a gray fog. Compared to other mystic territories, there was a gigantic door outside the fog. It was a jet-black door whose size had even surpassed the size of a chaotic cosmos. The black door consolidated quickly at speed that was visible to the naked eye. A moment later, the door seemed to be pushed open by an invisible hand. After that, a massive amount of Abyssal creatures rushed out from within At the same time, tens of thousands of mystic territories opened at the same time in the infinite universe. They released countless Abyssal creatures in all directions Lin Huang had a rough idea regarding the identity of the master of mystic territory behind the black door. There are at least close to a hundred dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, and there are more than 10,000 dominator-level powerhouses in total Although Lin Huang did not sense Azas existence, he was still shocked by the sheer number of dominator-level enemies. Theres an aura whose strength has reached the level of having mastered ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. This aura doesnt seem like it belongs to Azas clone. It should be one of the three Outer Gods. Azas aura isnt present, nor are the two other Outer Gods At the same time Lin Huang noticed the mystic territory, almost all of the dominator-level powerhouses in the infinite universe sensed the unusual fluctuations. Many of them spread out their Divine Telekinesis to probe. However, they could not see what was behind the door. They could only see the Abyssal invaders that were pouring out in waves. The first batch of invaders were basically led by Lords. There were many Heavenly Gods, True Gods and Virtual Gods under their command. There was not even one powerhouse below virtual god-level, not even one demigod. Clearly, to Aza and the others, the entities below virtual god-level were not even worthy of being cannon fodder. The armies led by Lords spread in all directions quickly. They scattered themselves all over the infinite universe. Lin Huang did not stop them when he saw that. The remaining dominator-level powerhouses did not take the initiative to attack them either. The reason being was that this was not their battle. However, all of the dominator-level powerhouses informed the Lords under their command to fight almost instantly! Lin Huang contacted the Sword Alliance under him as well, as well as opening a door that connected the infinite universe in his Kingdom. He released a massive amount of Lords, Heavenly Gods, True Gods and Virtual Gods. As all organizations in the infinite universe rapidly assembled god-level powerhouses to fight, the first battle between the infinite universe and the Abyss had officially begun! After releasing the first round of Abyssal creatures, on and below lord-level, the Abyss fell silent. Lin Huang and all of the dominator-level powerhouses knew that it was not because they were done, but rather because they were observing their response secretly. After all the organizations began implementing the first round of preventive measures, Heavens Secret soon sent out a message. Their Second Liege dragged all of the dominator-level powerhouses leading the infinite universes organizations into a video conference. Naturally, Lin Huang was invited too. Without hesitation, he released a will projection to take his place at the video conference. The meeting room was like a huge meeting hall. There were hundreds of people connected to the video call, and this number was still growing. Lin Huang found out that he, Xue Luo and the others were seated on the first row. There were less than ten people on that row. Apart from Xue Luo, Lin Huang saw the golden-robed young man from the Dragon Tribe and the white-bearded old man from Sword Palace. Their displayed combat strength was basically above dominator-level rank-7. Meanwhile, the people who were seated on the second and third rows basically had combat strength between dominator-level rank-5 to dominator-level rank-7. Those who were seated in the rows behind were below dominator-level rank-5. Heavens Secrets Second Liege and Old Man Heavens Secret faced everyone as they stood on the podium in front. The number of people taking their seats in the hall was still growing. Heavens Secrets Second Liege and Old Man Heavens Secret did not stop them from communicating. Instead, they waited patiently. Not long after Lin Huang took his seat, Xue Luos voice transmission came to his ears. Have you met Heavens Secrets chief liege already? I have. Lin Huang nodded lightly. What did he say about the crisis? Xue Luo asked rather curiously. He suggested a plan. Lin Huangs reply was simple and short. Can you tell me? Xue Luo asked further. He wants me to keep it a secret. Lin Huang shook his head. Alright, then Xue Luo seemed to have expected that answer. Then, do you think that his plan has a high chance of success? The risk is great, while the chance of success is approximately 50%. Lin Huang did not reveal more details. What if it fails? Xue Luo continued asking. Theres no further plan for now, Lin Huang told her the truth. Which means that if the only plan he has fails, well have no chance of turning the situation around at all?! Xue Luo did not expect that outcome. Not necessarily. We still have time. In reality, Lin Huang, who disagreed with the Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos plan, had not given up looking for an alternative plan. He had even told Bloody and Grimace everything in order to come up with another plan, getting them on board with the brainstorming process. However, throughout the past 20 or so days, they did not reach a certain outcome after discussing with his Primordium. Also, his plan might not fail, Lin Huang comforted her. However, Xue Luo had fallen silent. She did not continue asking. Nobody knew if it was because she was disappointed by the news from Lin Huang, or for some other reasons. After they were done chatting, close to 1,000 people had gathered at the meeting around five minutes later. Second Liege, who was in plain white robe, finally spoke when he saw that most of them had arrived. Im sure everyone knows why we gathered you for this video conference. Firstly, the war of invasion has begun. I hope that everyone can put aside your tribes, organizations and personal grudges for now. Lets unite and fight the Abyssal invaders together! Chapter 1884 - Nobody Is a Winner in a War Everyone should have more or less found out about the matter of Aza waking up. However, perhaps most of you dont know much about Him. Weve just compiled the details of Aza and the powerhouses under His command into a document and sent it to everyone. You guys can take a look at it later. Well focus on the preventive strategies and follow-up arrangements for the invasion this time around. Today is the first day of the invasion. Its actually the first test Aza is conducting. Everyone shouldve noticed that this rounds invaders have combat strength below dao-level, and that there are many of them. I know that most of the organizations present shouldve sent their respective members to handle them. To encourage everyone to join the war with enthusiasm, Heavens Secret has decided to open up our treasury with the Heavenly Treasure Trading Company and the Qian family. During the war, you can trade your war contributions with the items in the treasuries. The war contributions are divided into three categories. Youll obtain bronze medal points if you kill powerhouses below dao-level. Youll obtain silver medal points if you kill powerhouses at dao-level, and gold medal points if you kill dominator-level powerhouses. Youll receive different authorization for trading items under these three categories of contributions. The bronze medal has the lowest authorization, while the gold medal has the highest. Check the document we sent over for the exact details of the points youll obtain for the respective hunts. Apart from the three categories, you can take any item you want in the treasuries when you kill any dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse. Theres no limit to the value, and you can do anything you want with the carcasses of those you killed. Countless people could not help but stop breathing when they listened up to this point. Second Liege glanced through everyone present. If anyone kills any of the three Outer Gods, you can take any 100 items from the treasuries. As usual, theres no limit to the value, and you can do anything you want with their carcasses! Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows as he listened up to this point. Naturally, he knew that the Qian family was the well-deserved number one business family in the infinite universe. Meanwhile, the Heavenly Treasure Trading Company was a trading company that gathered a few top organizations like the Star Palace and Sword Palace. It was also undoubtedly the number one trading company in the infinite universe. Also, Heavent Secrets business model was so big that it could be ranked among the top three in the infinite universe of the individual organizations. Not only that, Heavens Secret had always been very mysterious. Many people believed that the Heavent Secrets treasury contained a lot of good stuff, to the point where it might even be more than that of the Qian family. One had to know that, apart from the mysterious Heavens Secret, the Qian family and the Heavenly Treasure Trading Company would not sell their items to outsiders. Updates by VJPN0VEL.C0M The Qian family had many precious treasures that would only be traded with the top organizations that had close business ties with them. Outsiders had no opportunity to get their hands on those precious treasures at all. Meanwhile, the Heavenly Treasure Trading Companys precious items were only for its internal members. They were not sold to outsiders. Now, the three treasuries were being opened up to the public. It undoubtedly stimulated the hearts of everyone present significantly. While the people were still shocked, Xue Luo, who was in a white dress and veil, suddenly spoke up. Were opening up the treasury of our Snow Domains Snow Palace to the public as well. The rules will be the same as Heavens Secrets! Heavens Secrets Second Liege was slightly stunned when he heard that. Snow Domain had been a hidden organization that had hardly connected with the outside world.Search our n?wno?el.?rg They would only contact others occasionally for business. Therefore, Heavens Secret did not shamelessly talk to them about it. Never had they imagined that Xue Luo would participate on the spot when she heard the news. Thank you Palace Master Xue for your kind support! Second Liege and Old Man Heavens Secret bowed toward Xue Luo sincerely. Although my Snow Domains treasures arent as abundant as Heavens Secrets, I thought Id just give whatever I can at times like this. If were defeated in the war, its useless to hoard those treasures. Xue Luo nodded at the two of them and told what she thought. Palace Master Xue is so bold! Then our Dragon Islands Hidden Dragon Palace will be opened to the public too! The golden-robed young man from the Dragon Tribe said loudly, This isnt a private matter regarding a single tribe or organization, but a calamity for everyone in the infinite universe! If we really lose the war, then my Dragon Tribe wont be able to survive as well! Someone could not help but hiss in exclamation among the crowd. Dragon Island was different from Snow Domain. They were known to be wealthy. There had been rumors in the infinite universe that the Dragon Tribe possessed the largest fortune among all of the tribes, and that no one could compare to them. However, the Dragon Tribe did not possess any large-scale business organizations. Their members only ran their own private or family businesses. Therefore, they did not rank among the top of the infinite universe in terms of business. However, nobody doubted whether there were many rare precious treasures in their Hidden Dragon Palace. As Snow Domain and Dragon Island spoke up, some other organizations joined one after the other. Second Liege had to stop the registration temporarily, and asked everyone to contact them via message later. However, Lin Huangs Sword Alliance did not participate. It was not that he was being petty, but the current Sword Alliance was really poor. Most of their funds had basically been used on Lin Xin and others, as well as the Sword Servants cultivations. None of the Abyssal creatures the Sword Servants killed were traded for resources. They basically refined all of them. Meanwhile, there was nothing much inside the Sword Alliances treasury. Lin Huang really could not provide anything, so he was too embarrassed to open the treasury to the public. If someone really went to trade items with their points and saw that there was nothing inside the treasury, they would probably call the Sword Alliance petty, spreading rumors that they hid their treasures. Seeing Old Man Heavens Secret looking at him with a smile, Lin Huang said through voice transmission directly, looking helpless, Our Sword Alliance is really poor. Itd be a joke if we participated. I know. Thats why I find it funny, Old Man Heavens Secret said while smiling. You Lin Huang did not expect this old man to be so annoying. He secretly complained, Tease me all you want. Our Sword Alliance will kill a bunch of dominator-level powerhouses and take everything thats valuable in your treasuries! Old Man Heavens Secret seemed to have seen through what Lin Huang was thinking, after which he said through voice transmission, Just kidding. I think Mr. Lins Sword Alliance might be the biggest winner in the war. Nobody is a winner in this war. No matter what the final outcome is, Aza wont be the winner, and neither would the Sword Alliance and Heavens Secret, Lin Huang said in all seriousness. Indeed. Old Man Heavens Secret put away his smile and nodded. He said nothing else. Second Liege was still giving his speech on the podium. Opening up the treasuries is just an incentive. Our intention and hope is that everyone participates in this war enthusiastically and fights the powerful enemies we are facing together. I hope that there wont be any vicious competitions in order to obtain more points. We should be united at such a time instead of fighting internally! We also hope that everyone can put aside their personal interests and place hunting enemies as their first and foremost priority. We must put the infinite universes future first! Chapter 1885 - A Strategy to Stall! Heavens Secrets meeting lasted for over three hours. Second Lieges main goal of holding the meeting was to get everyone to participate in the war. After all, everyone was selfish. Some organizations might be located further away from the main warzones. They would possibly want to stay away from the trouble and be unwilling to participate in the war. Perhaps some organizations only wanted to participate by putting up a front before taking advantage of the chaos. Heavens Secret speculated that it would happen, which was why they collaborated with so many organizations to open their treasuries to the public as an incentive. As soon as the incentive was revealed, it would encourage organizations to participate in the hunt. The more Abyssal creatures they killed, the more rewards they would obtain. Those organizations that initially wanted to stay away from trouble would naturally not be able to sit still. Those who wanted to take advantage of the chaos would naturally become enthusiastic. Although this initiative would result in a great loss to their treasuries, Heavens Secret and the organizations that participated in the opening of the treasuries understood that they would lose everything if they lost the war. After some encouragement, Heavens Secrets Second Liege very soon briefed them regarding the overall plan for this round of the war. Facing the enemies below dao-level, Heavens Secret suggested not sending powerhouses on and above dao-level as well. They did so to prevent the war from progressing too quickly. On the other hand, they also wanted to prevent the Abyss from probing the number of powerhouses on the infinite universes side. In reality, only Lin Huang knew the real reason for the plan. The reason being wasthat he informed the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, getting it to stall as much as it could. To Lin Huang, each day he was able to cultivate would result in the number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated with skyrocketing. Everyone had no objections to the plan Second Liege suggested. In reality, everyone was not ready for this war, and most of the powerhouses needed time to prepare. For instance, the equipment, elixirs, Odyl crystals and other resources that would be exhausted during the war had yet to be prepared. Some even wanted to seize the available time to break through. After the meeting ended, everyone turned off the video and returned to their positions. A small number of organizations that did not send their members to participate in the war earlier began to send members below dao-level to the closest warzone instantly. Meanwhile, many of those that had already sent their members sent even more. Many organizations sent almost all of their members that were below dao-level. Even Lin Huang hesitated about whether he should send all of the remaining gods in his Kingdom to participate in the war. However, after some careful thinking, he gave up on the idea. If too many of them died, it would be terrible in the sense that it would result in a discontinuity in quantity among dao-level powerhouses for a period of time. The number of dominator-level powerhouses would be affected as well. He had also considered whether to send the Bug Tribe, but he denied that idea instantly. After all, the Bug Tribe was still an unpopular third party to other tribes at the moment. Moreover, judging by the current situation, it was unnecessary. The Bug Tribe could totally appear at a crucial moment as a special force. After giving the Sword Alliances current battle strategy some thought, Lin Huang got Bloody and Sword 1 to take over entirely. Meanwhile, he focused mainly on integrating chaotic cosmoses. War had begun in the infinite universe. Within a day, almost 50% of the entire infinite universe was engulfed in flames of war. At that moment, all of the mystic territories became teleportation portals for the soldiers the Abyss sent. Time flew by, and half a month soon passed. At that moment, war had broken out in over 80% of the entire infinite universe. The major organizations aside, even some of the minor organizations that did not have dominator-level and heavenly dao-level powerhouses participated in the war as well. Although some of them did that completely to earn war contributions to access Heavens Secrets treasury, many of them were very much aware that everyone would be doomed if they were defeated in the war! Throughout the half a month period, although the infinite universe had the upper hand, the mystic territories continued to send more and more Abyssal creatures to join the war everyday. They seemed to be endless. At first, all of the powerhouses were quite happy. After all, the more monsters they killed, the more bronze medal points they would obtain, and the more treasures could be traded from the treasuries. However, as time passed by, everyone suffered differing levels of exhaustion. The chaotic scene of them fighting to kill monsters at the beginning had slowly turned organized now. Many areas even operated in shifts. While one team was fighting, the other team would be resting. Two other teams would replace them on the second day, and they would take over the shift once again on the third day Lin Huang thought that it was quite funny when he saw that. As the rotation system began to spread, everyone became more and more familiar with handling the Abyssal invaders. However, this situation only lasted for a few days. On the 18th day after the war began, the Abyss finally released dao-level monsters. At that moment, Lin Huang had integrated over 20 octillion chaotic cosmoses. Minor dao-level and major dao-level Abyssal monsters joined the war one after the other. When the organizations saw that, they got their god-level armies to retreat from the frontlines instantly and sent minor dao-level and major dao-level powerhouses to join the war effort. As the dao-level powerhouses had been sitting on the bench for 18 days, they had been observing the war this entire time, and were excited that it was finally their turn. They participated in the war enthusiastically. Naturally, the Sword Alliance sent over many dao-level powerhouses as well. However, the Abyss remained the same. The number of dao-level powerhouses that were sent into the war was growing everyday. There would be dao-level powerhouses rushing out of all the mystic territories everyday. Although the number was less than one-hundredth of the god-level powerhouses that were sent before, throughout the half a month period, the number had surpassed the total number of dao-level powerhouses the infinite universe had. Just as the organizations were hesitating about whether to send heavenly dao-level powerhouses to the war, Lin Huang sent one-third of the dao-level powerhouses he had in his Kingdom. It almost doubled the number of the dao-level powerhouses the infinite universe had. This batch of dao-level powerhouses relieved the pressure on the situation significantly. Many dao-level powerhouses were curious about the origins of the dao-level powerhouses coming from Lin Huangs Kingdom. All of them said that they were from the Sword Alliance. Since then, almost all of the dao-level powerhouses found out about the Sword Alliance. Almost half a month after Lin Huang had released the dao-level powerhouses from his Kingdom, the infinite universes dao-level combatants had fallen into a state of exhaustion. Noticing that, Lin Huang released yet another one-third of dao-level powerhouses in his Kingdom. This relieved the pressure on the situation once again. Three days after that, the Abyss finally could not hold back and released heavenly dao-level powerhouses into the war. All of the organizations in the infinite universe reacted instantly. They got the minor dao-level and major dao-level powerhouses to retreat from the frontlines and began to send the heavenly dao-level powerhouses, who had been prepared since the beginning, into the war! Up to this point, Lin Huang had integrated 260 octillion chaotic cosmoses. Compared to over a month ago, he was undoubtedly countless times more powerful now. However, he did not slack off at all. He seized every minute and second before Aza personally came to continue elevating his ability. Chapter 1886 - Nyarlathotep Heavenly dao-level powerhouses were basically the top existences below dominator-level. The level was the final goal most talents and geniuses aspired to get to. Those who were lacking innately could not make up for it no matter how hardworking they were. Those who could achieve dominator-level had to be at least at Aeon rank-8 in terms of life level. This was the main reason why there were many outstanding entities in history who were stuck at heavenly dao-level. Life level decided the strength of ones physical body and Gods soul and, to a certain extent, decided the toughness of ones Kingdom. If one had a lacking life level, they would only be seeking death if they tried to break through forcefully. Therefore, many powerhouses in the infinite universe were stuck at heavenly dao-level. Their number was merely slightly lower compared to the number of major dao-level powerhouses. Since the heavenly dao-level war broke out, it almost seemed one-sided for the first few days. All of the heavenly dao-level powerhouses in the infinite universe had over a month of preparation before joining the war. From the two previous rounds, all the organizations had found a suitable approach. From the beginning, they would get all of the heavenly dao-level powerhouses to fight in two shifts. They would no longer fight alone. Instead, they were divided into groups of three to five. Moreover, they would not wait for those invaders to scatter. They stood by at the entrance of the mystic territories where the invaders were being teleported out of. This resulted in a situation of the Abyssal creatures being killed one-sidedly by the infinite universes powerhouses for the first few days after the third round started. However, the Abyss very soon discovered the problem and began to send over more and more heavenly dao-level powerhouses. Within a week, everyone started to feel the pressure. The reason being was that there were too many heavenly dao-level powerhouses coming from the Abyss. Lin Huang released one-third of heavenly dao-level powerhouses in his Kingdom to join the war when he saw that. It doubled the number of heavenly dao-level powerhouses in the infinite universe again and instantly relieved the pressure on the situation. Meanwhile, the Abyss began to send more heavenly dao-level powerhouses when they realized the unusual situation that was unfolding. Less than ten days later, the number of heavenly dao-level powerhouses from the Abyss suppressed the infinite universe again. Lin Huang released another one-third of the heavenly dao-level powerhouses from his Kingdom into the war. Less than a week later, the heavenly dao-level powerhouses from both sides reached a stalemate. The war fell into a stagnant state. However, the stagnant state did not last even a week. The Abyss finally could not hold back. A commotion broke out again. However, they did not continue to release more heavenly dao-level powerhouses this time, nor did they enter the next phase, which was to send dominator-level powerhouses to the war. This time, the commotion originated from the source of the warthe biggest mystic territory in the entire infinite universe! The moment it happened, Lin Huang looked across space. He looked at the jet-black door that was comparable to the size of a chaotic cosmos. There was thick, black fog behind the door, which shielded it from all kinds of probing techniques from the outside world. A gigantic, skinny figure walked out of the thick fog. The door that was comparable to a chaotic cosmos seemed just right given its height. It wore a luxurious and colorful robe, and there was a tall crown that dazzled with golden light on its head. It looked like a beautiful man, but there were endless squirming tentacles under the robe Sensing the countless Divine Telekinesis that tried to probe him, the skinny mans red lips, that seemed to be dyed with blood, smirked. The next second, countless powerhouses recalled their Divine Telekinesis in fear. Those who failed to recall their Divine Telekinesis in time were smiling like they had been turned into fools. Lin Huang stared at him without blinking. He was not affected at all. However, he sensed the strange technique that the man had used clearly. It was a psychic attack, but it had also combined the Abyssal contamination and some of this mans unique characteristics. Nyarlathotep Lin Huang called out his name softly. He was Nyarlathotep, one of the three Outer Gods! The most powerful one under Azas command! He was also the owner of the aura that Lin Huang had sensed in the large mystic territory. Lin Huang could not help but frown when he saw him appearing. It was not that he was afraid of his ability. After all, Nyarlathoteps ability was similar to what Lin Huang had speculated before, which was having mastered ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang frowned because of what it meant for him to appear. If this guy joined the war directly, it would mean that the war had progressed to the second last stage before Aza came. It also meant that Lin Huang did not have much time left. While he was still thinking what would happen later on, the skinny Nyarlathotep spoke while smiling, Ive been so bored over these two months before my master wakes up, so I thought Id have some fun. Everyone seems to be enjoying the three rounds of games. Im happy because I brought everyone so much joy His voice echoed crystal clear throughout the entire infinite universe. All of the dominator-level powerhouses heard him. Everyone could not help but undergo a slight change of expression when they heard the voice. However, now that my master is waking up, I can only seize this final bit of time to play this last game with you guys. You can treat this game as a warm-up before the war officially begins. A hum came from the door behind Nyarlathotep again as soon as he was done speaking. A gigantic ball slowly squeezed itself out of the door. The ball was totally comparable to the size of a chaotic cosmos. However, it looked like a gigantic sarcoma with an uneven surface. To be exact, it looked more like a sarcoma with countless tentacles. All of the powerhouses who were watching from far away had a bad feeling when they saw the sarcoma appear. It was clearly not a living thing, but it exuded an extremely ominous aura. To a certain extent, everyone even had a faint feeling that this thing was even scarier than Nyarlathotep, who was standing next to it. Ill give everyone a brief explanation before commencing the warm-up game. This is an ootheca. For now onward, it will breed all sorts of dominator-level Abyssal creatures continuously. The rule behind its breeding is simple. On the first day, itd only breed a single dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse. On the second day, it would breed two dominator-level rank-2 powerhouses. On the third day, itd breed four dominator-level rank-3 powerhouses On the ninth day, itd breed 256 dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. On the day after that, the number of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses would be doubled. On the 11th day, there will be a slight change to the rule. Itd breed one dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse, but this dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse would have mastered over one billion chaotic cosmoses. On the 12th day, the breeding number would be doubled. On the 13th day, itd continue to be doubled It will continue like that until the 20th day. On the 21st day, itd breed one dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse again. This dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse will have mastered over ten billion chaotic cosmoses. The number of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses would be doubled on the 22nd day, the 23rd day All the way to the 30th day The breeding rule would then be repeated. Every ten days, the ability of the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse it breeds will become one level higher. Of course, you guys can try to attack the ootheca directly Nyarlathoteps smile was rather eerie when he said that. Lastly, I hope that not all of you will die before my master wakes up. As soon as Nyarlathotep was done speaking, He turned around and stepped back inside the jet-black door. The gigantic sarcoma was the only thing left there. Its tentacles looked like they were squirming slowly. Chapter 1887 - Nyarlathotep’s Overt Plot This is a test! Bloody spoke to Lin Huang through voice transmission instantly. Regular dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses definitely cant destroy the ootheca. He left it here intentionally, most probably as a threat, to test whether we have any powerhouses who can destroy the ootheca. To them, someone who could destroy the ootheca should be viewed as a great threat. If nobody could destroy it from the beginning and resolve this crisis, it would basically mean that nobody in the infinite universe is a threat to them. However, if anyone could destroy it, they would plan a strategy that focused on the powerhouse that destroyed the ootheca. He even told the breeding rule of the ootheca on purpose to let us know that their ootheca would breed more Dominators, and that they would grow more powerful over time. Theyre forcing us to send enough Dominators to fight them. Him using this ootheca is enough to test how many Dominators there are in the infinite universe. They could even find out how many dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses we have exactly and how powerful their abilities are. Because on the ninth day, the ootheca would breed 256 dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. On the tenth day, it would breed 512 dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. The total number of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses we have is less than one-tenth of this number. It means we can only send the more powerful dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses over in order to suppress them. Later on, the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses the ootheca breeds would become more powerful every ten days. Its forcing us to show our trump card over and over again. When theyve seen through our trump cards, itll be time for the Abyssal army to descend completely! So what do we do now? Maybe Ill kill that ootheca directly?! Lin Huang frowned and suggested this idea to resolve the situation. That would only cause the Abyssal army to arrive even sooner, Bloody denied the suggestion directly. What you need most now is time. What else can we do to resolve this situation? Lin Huang asked further. Actually we dont have to resolve it, Bloody aired her thoughts directly, Since they are trying to find out the infinite universes trump cards, then just let them be. We need the buffer time as well. No matter how they test us, as long as you dont attack, youd be our final trump card! Lin Huang fell silent momentarily. Then many people might die If you attacked, Aza would arrive even sooner. When that happens, if you cant defeat Aza, all of the living beings in the entire infinite universe would be contaminated and be transformed into Abyssal creatures. The only thing we can do now is to buy as much time as possible for you. The more powerful you become, the more hope we have to defeat Aza. Bloody was very determined. Even if I dont fight, First Liege will definitely attack. Lin Huang very soon thought of another factor. First Lieges ability was on par with Azas Primordium. With his ability, it was not a big problem to kill this ootheca. He will not appear so soon as well, Bloody said with certainty, Since Heavens Secret treats him as their trump card to fight Aza, theyll definitely hide his real ability until Aza shows up. Because only by doing that can they catch Aza off-guard! Also, those people from Heavens Secret are well aware of what Nyarlathotep is plotting. Lin Huang fell into a long period of silence after hearing what Bloody said. He knew very well what would happen in the end if First Liege and him did not fight. However, he also knew that, in order to secure the final victory, there were some sacrifices that could not be avoided. I suggest that you dont observe the movements of this ootheca for now, Bloody reminded. She worried that Lin Huang would fail to hold back his desire to fight when he saw many powerhouses dying. Dont worry. My will isnt that shaky. Lin Huang shook his head lightly. Bloodys voice transmission ended quickly, while Lin Huang looked toward where the ootheca was again. There were some Dominators gathered there. Since they heard about the oothecas breeding rule from Nyarlathotep, naturally, many of them had the same thought as Lin Huang did, which was to destroy the ootheca before it bred Dominators that were a threat to them! At first, everyone stayed far away. They only dared to observe from a distance. However, some of them soon began to approach it slowly. They were 100 kilometers around the ootheca, yet they had not been attacked. This thing doesnt seem to attack consciously, a dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse who entered the 50-kilometer-radius around the ootheca could not help but yell. You can only say that it doesnt have the intention to initiate attacks, someone faraway corrected, But it definitely has a defensive mechanism. Otherwise, its impossible that Nyarlathotep would leave it here just like that. Isnt it just a big piece of meat? There are no scales, wings or hair. It doesnt even have skin. Its defense should be rather low, someone objected quickly. Hit it and see! Someone faraway yelled while smiling, If you can destroy it directly, youll earn yourself a lot of credit! Watch me! It was a plump and short sword cultivator who said that. His combat strength was at dominator-level rank-2. He was actually considered among the more powerful of those gathered here. After charging the long sword in his hand, he swung it. A golden sword gleam shot at the ootheca like a crescent moon. It hit the ootheca almost immediately. However, it vanished as if the attack had hit something unshakable. Most importantly, they did not see any defensive mechanisms outside the ootheca. The dominator-level rank-2 sword cultivators close to full-force attack did not leave a mark on the ootheca at all. It took the attack just like that?! Someone among the crowd mumbled softly. Right at that moment, something strange happened. A thick tentacle on the ootheca suddenly subdivided itself into a whip that was the size of an arm. It was shot out quickly, slicing the plump man who swung the sword gleam into half cleanly. Almost at the same time, two whips came out from the same tentacle. They turned into two pipes that pierced the mans sliced corpse at blinding speed. The corpse began to dry up at a speed that was visible to the naked eyes. Shortly after, the corpse turned into dust altogether. The Dominators who were closer to the ootheca retreated quickly when they saw that. They retreated hundreds of kilometers away. However, those tentacles did not go after them. They seemed to only have attacked in response to the mans earlier attack. Lin Huang saw everything from faraway. The attack from the whip gave Lin Huang a rough idea of the oothecas level of ability. Judging by the strength of the attack, its at the level of a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse that has mastered close to quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. In order to break through its defense, perhaps only powerhouses who have abilities on par with the Outer Gods are capable of doing so Chapter 1888 - Testing and Watching Seeing the oothecas attack, Lin Huang was even more certain regarding Bloodys speculation about the Abyss testing the threat levels posed by the infinite universe. The reason being was that only powerhouses with abilities at least on par with the three Outer Gods could destroy this ootheca. If anyone could do it, it would mean that this person would be a threat to the Outer Gods. Perhaps we can destroy it if many Dominators form a battle formation. Just when Lin Huang had that thought, the people around the ootheca began a new attempt. If a dominator-level rank-2 powerhouse cant break past its defense, perhaps only powerhouses at dominator-level rank-4 or dominator-level rank-5 can destroy it! The Dominators who had lacking abilities did not realize how terrifying the oothecas attack was earlier. They thought if a dominator-level rank-2 could not break past its defense, dominator-level rank-4 or dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses would be able to do it. Let me try! A saber cultivator walked out of the crowd. He looked like he was in his early 30s. He had a ponytail, and his aura was clearly at dominator-level rank-4. The saber in his hand was clearly a chaotic supreme treasure. After seeing the dominator-level rank-2 being killed earlier, this man with a ponytail did not dare to approach the ootheca again. He held the saber and attacked from hundreds of kilometers away. A purple saber gleam shot out like lightning. It landed directly on the surface of the ootheca. A moment later, there was still no mark left on the ootheca after the saber gleam faded. The crowd that was watching underwent a slight change of expression. At that moment, a tentacle suddenly moved. A thorny whip appeared from the top. When the man saw that, he retreated frantically without hesitation. He retreated tens of thousands of kilometers away. Just when he thought he was safe at that distance and slowed down his speed, turning around to look at the situation, the thorny whip disappeared. However, Lin Huang saw that it did not really disappear. It was just that its speed was too fast; so fast that it exceeded the speed that everyone could capture with their naked eyes. Almost the same instant when the thorny whip disappeared, the man with a ponytail sensed a fatal threat to his life. He swung his saber directly without hesitation, but he was still too slow. Before he managed to swing his saber, a hole that was the thickness of a thumb appeared on his forehead. The thorny whip pierced between his eyebrows accurately and began to suck all of the nutrients out of him. The mans corpse began to dry up quickly at speed that was visible to the naked eye. It was the same as what the plump man had experienced from the beginning to the end, whereby he turned into dust and vanished. Not only did a dominator-level rank-4 saber cultivator fail to break past its defense, he was killed instantly. It was undoubtedly shocking to everyone present. Although they were pretty sure that the ootheca would not initiate attacks, the people who were surrounding it retreated hundreds of thousands of kilometers away on their own. A small number of them even retreated millions of kilometers away. This things defense is invincible, someone spoke through voice transmission, A dominator-level rank-4 saber cultivators full-force attack didnt even leave a mark. It proves that its basically impossible for even a dominator-level rank-5 powerhouse to destroy it. The man with a ponytails attempt finally made the people realize that the ootheca could not be destroyed by people of their level. Although all of the major organizations only have dominator-level rank-5 powerhouses on the surface, many people should know that some of the top organizations have dominator-level rank-6, and even rank-7 powerhouses, among them. If theyre willing to fight, they should be able to destroy this ootheca. It was a white-haired old man who spoke this time. He had still underestimated the oothecas strength. So what do we do now? Inform the few top organizations about the situation? Someone asked. No need. They must be watching now. Im sure that all of our actions are being watched, someone spoke the truth. So what do they mean by not sending anyone here? Theyre trying to hide their abilities? Or do they also think that they cant destroy this thing, so they arent showing themselves? Someone questioned. Lin Huang heard those peoples discussion, but he did not plan to participate. Fortunately, the people were only discussing it. After finding out how powerful the ootheca was, nobody dared to try attacking it as they wished. About half an hour later, Heavens Secret finally sent someone. It was Eleventh Liege. He had shoulder-length hair and, although he was a man, he was so pretty that he looked somewhat androgynous. He spoke to everyone through voice transmission as soon as he arrived. This ootheca is scarier than you guys imagine. Please stop observing it. Even though its only fighting back when its attacked now, we cannot rule out the possibility of it initiating attacks completely. Where are Heavens Secrets First Liege and Second Liege? Cant they come over to kill this thing directly? Someone asked directly. Eleventh Liege turned his head to look at the person who spoke and explained, Were still exploring solutions to handle this ootheca. Before that, we hope that everyone can cooperate to kill the Abyssal creatures that it breeds. Have you guys spoken to the other top organizations? Star Palace, Sword Palace, Dragon Island and Snow Domain Can none of them handle this ootheca?! Someone asked further. Everyone looked at Eleventh Liege as soon as that was said. I can only tell you guys that Heavens Secret has shared the preliminary analysis of this ootheca to all of the top organizations. So what youre saying is that nobody is fighting now because all of the major organizations have no confidence in killing this thing? Someone questioned instantly. We dont know whats the current situation with the other organizations, Eleventh Liege could only give an official answer. However, such an answer undoubtedly caused dissatisfaction to many. The people asked more questions one after the other, and some even said harsh words toward Heavens Secret. Eleventh Liege remained gentle from the beginning, but his answers remained very official. Lin Huang did not know what to say when he saw that. He understood how difficult it was for Eleventh Liege and Heavens Secret, but he also understood the peoples rage and unease. After all, the ootheca was like a guillotine that was dangling above everyones head. What Eleventh Liege said now was akin to telling everyone that there was no way of removing this guillotine for now. They could only allow it to continue dangling above their heads. However, that was the only thing Eleventh Liege could say. The reason being was that he and Heavens Secret knew that everyone was being watched by Nyarlathotep. He could not reveal news that someone could destroy this ootheca. That would make Nyarlathotep and the others make preparations in advance. He also could not let the powerhouses in the infinite universe fall into despair by lying that nobody could handle this thing. After Eleventh Liege explained and reminded them, he closed his eyes and mouth while hovering a million kilometers from the ootheca. The rest could only shut their mouths while feeling a little helpless when they saw that. After all, they knew that they were not Eleventh Lieges match in terms of ability. Although he only gave official answers, he remained gentle all the way. Even though some of them were being harsh, and even mean to him, he never fought back. A small number of them could tell that Eleventh Liege definitely knew something, but he could not say it for some unknown reason. They speculated that it must be tough for him too. After the chaos ended, most of the crowd who were observing left. Apat from Eleventh Liege, only five people stayed where they were in the end. At midnight, a black fog suddenly lingered around the surface of the ootheca. The countless tentacles began dancing. Everyone stared at the oothecas changes without blinking. Naturally, Lin Huang was no exception. He scanned the ootheca over and over again with his Divine Telekinesis, observing all of the changes it was undergoing in detail. So this is it? Lin Huang saw life breeding inside of ootheca quickly. After that, the thing that had just been formed was transferred into one of the tentacles directly. During the transfer, its aura began to skyrocket. By the time it had been transferred from the root of the tentacle to the tip of the tentacle, its aura had been stabilized at dominator-level rank-1. However, the rest could not see the process behind it. They only saw that, at the tip of one of the tentacles, a dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse was suddenly spat out Chapter 1889 - The Ootheca Hatches It was a short and plump red man. It had a human-like form, but in the place of its left hand was a strong, sharp claw, while its right hand was a sword. The people who were observing the situation unfold were stunned when they saw the monster. It was for no other reason than the fact that the monster looked 50% to 60% similar to the short and plump sword cultivator that the ootheca had killed not long ago. It felt as if the monster only looked because the ootheca had absorbed the sword cultivator. Naturally, the one thing that was different from the sword cultivator was that this Abyssal monsters combat strengths aura was clearly only at dominator-level rank-1. When Lin Huang saw the Abyssal creature that was bred, he had some guesses regarding the oothecas function. After the tentacle spat out the short and plump monster, it stood there in a daze for a while. A moment later, it seemed to have recalled its objective and spread out its Divine Telekinesis. It soon locked onto a dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse who was watching. It turned around directly and exerted strength into both its feet. It attacked that observer. Lin Huang raised his eyebrows when he saw that. It didnt attack the target closest to it. Instead, after spreading out its Divine Telekinesis, it targeted someone who was farther away, but had the weakest ability The monster looked ferocious. It arrived before the dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse instantly and swung its sword arm like lightning. The dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse dodged immediately and barely dodged that sword gleam. Just when the people thought that there would be a battle, the monster did not go after the powerhouse any further. Instead, it suddenly turned around and ran far away from the people. Its running away! The Dominator who had been attacked screamed instantly. However, at the same time, the monster froze. A dominator-level rank-2 powerhouse who was close to it attacked without hesitation. He blocked the monsters path with his spear gleams. He might not have intervened if the two had kept fighting. However, now that the monster was running away, he could not just ignore it. Watching the spear gleams closing in on it, the monster was fearless as it swung its sword arm over and over again. In the air, countless sword gleams and spear gleams collided. The sword gleams were not destroyed. Instead, they faded away together with the spear gleams. The dominator-level rank-2 powerhouse had a slight change of expression when he saw this. He was not surprised, but felt a little humiliated. After all, he was a dominator-level rank-2 powerhouse. The strength of his Dominator Power was several times more powerful than the monster, but his attack had been successfully defended against by the monster. However, he also saw through what trick the monster used. The monster clearly knew that its sword gleams could not defeat his spear gleams. Therefore, each of its sword gleams were superimposed with over ten sword swings. It was not only the spear cultivator who noticed this, everyone present saw that through it. At that moment, nobody was making fun of the spear cultivator. They looked rather terrible. The reason being was that it meant that the Abyssal creature the ootheca bred was not a mere mindless puppet who was at dominator-level rank-1. Instead, it was a monster with powerful combat sense and abilities. If all of the Abyssal creatures the ootheca bred were like that, it would mean that the opponents they would have to fight would be tough. After handling the spear cultivators attack, the monster glared viciously at him and then charged at him directly. A ferocious gleam flashed across the dominator-level rank-2 spear cultivators eyes. He charged forward without hesitation. The monster took the lead to attack when it saw that. A sky full of sword gleams appeared, which enveloped the spear cultivator. A gleam was charged from the tip of the spear cultivators spear. The powerful, cold gleam crushed the sky full of sword gleams entirely. However, when the sword gleams were destroyed, he did not see the monster. He spread out his Divine Telekinesis and discovered that the monster had gone around him and ran far away. This guy The spear cultivator was furious that he had been tricked by the monster twice. Just when he was about to go after it, he saw that another dominator-level rank-2 powerhouse had blocked the monster. It was a saber cultivator who attacked this time. He did not stop the monster. Instead, he attacked decisively. Saber gleams enveloped the monster instantly. He did not make the mistake the spear cultivator made. The endless saber gleams only faded away after crushing the monster into a pile of mush. Although the saber cultivator suppressed his opponent without mercy, there was no joy on his face at all. The rest were the same. They all looked quite solemn. It was just a dominator-level rank-1 monster, yet it had been so cunning. Were it not for the fact that there was more than one person guarding this place, it might have really escaped into the infinite universe. It was a dominator-level powerhouse. As soon as it invaded the infinite universe, nobody knew how many chaotic cosmoses would be in trouble. Lin Huang watched the entire first battle. He could not help but frown. What exactly is this ootheca? The monsters it breeds seem to have higher levels of intelligence compared to regular dominator-level Abyssal creatures Most of the dominator-level Abyssal creatures Lin Huang met had crazy and mindless thoughts. Most of them were the same even if they were at dominator-level. As soon as they fought, they would not intentionally pick someone weak as their opponent, nor would they run away. Most of them would only have one battle mode, which was to attack its target maniacally! Lin Huang was not the only one. There were many powerhouses who were secretly watching the whole battle unfold. The people all realized that the next battle might be even tougher. Ever since the ootheca bred the first Abyssal creature, it had fallen into a completely silent state. However, powerhouses in the infinite universe did not feel at ease because of that. Almost all of the dominator-level powerhouses were staring intensely at the ootheca. After observing the first battle, many organizations sent members to guard the million-kilometer radius around the ootheca. The Sword Alliance sent over two sword servants to guard as well. However, nobody tried to attack the ootheca again. The reason being was that all of them realized that it would be simply seeking death to do so. After a day of silence, it was soon midnight, and the next day had arrived. Almost at the same time as the day before, a faint black fog began to linger on the surface of the ootheca again. Countless tentacles began to dance and squirm again. This scene seemed to be an exact replica of the day before. Lin Huang looked across the sky and saw two lifeforms breeding quickly inside the ootheca. Later on, they were transferred to two different tentacles. During the transfer, the auras of the two lifeforms began to skyrocket. During the transfer process, from the root of the tentacle to the tip, the auras were stabilized at dominator-level rank-2. Meanwhile, the rest merely saw the black fog lingering for a while before the ootheca spat out two dominator-level rank-2 Abyssal creatures from its two tentacles Chapter 1890 - All of Them from the Sword Alliance Are Monsters Very soon, the people noticed that there were two dominator-level rank-2 Abyssal monsters that the ootheca spat out this time. One of them looked 60% to 70% similar to that saber cultivator with a ponytail that the ootheca had killed previously. Not only was its body and appearance similar, even the ponytail looked almost exactly the same. The difference was that this Abyssal monsters arms had taken the form of sabers. Meanwhile, its body was covered in a layer of dark-red scales. The other monster was a monster with a human-like form whose body was covered in a layer of dark-gray feathers. It had no arms, which had been replaced by a pair of broad wings. Its head was the thing that caught everyones attention. It was not the head of a bird, but rather a human mans head that was bald. It was so smooth that it was reflective. However, nobody present could recognize that face. The two of them spread out their Divine Telekinesis quickly after they were spat out by the ootheca. They moved almost at the same time the next second. They moved in different directions, each attacking a separate dominator-level rank-1 spectator. Sensing that they had been locked onto by the monsters Divine Telekinesis, the two spectators ran away immediately. After all, they were at dominator-level rank-2. They had the upper hand of suppression when fighting dominator-level rank-1 powerhouses. Seeing its target running, the pony-tailed monster created countless saber gleams from its saber arms as it chased after the target. However, the gleams faded in the next second. A dominator-level rank-3 sword cultivator blocked the monsters way. Meanwhile, the feathered monster on the other side that had yet to attack was stopped by a dominator-level rank-3 golden-robed man. With the experience from the day before, the two dominator-level rank-3 powerhouses who attacked this time did not hold anything back. The two dominator-level rank-2 Abyssal monsters were killed directly. They did not even have the opportunity to try to escape. The ootheca displayed no reaction toward the death of the two dominator-level rank-2 monsters. At midnight on the third day, a commotion arose again at almost the same time as before. After the black fog faded, the ootheca spat out Abyssal monsters from three tentacles this time. The three Abyssal monsters clearly had the combat strength of dominator-level rank-3. After they arrived, they repeated what those other monsters did during those past two days. They locked onto their targets and attacked directly. Meanwhile, the infinite universe already had two experiences of handling the monsters. Very soon, someone attacked directly. The three Abyssal monsters failed in their attacks and were killed on the spot again. On the fourth day, at midnight, black fog lingered over the ootheca at the same time again. It spat out four dominator-level rank-4 Abyssal monsters this time. The four monsters were quickly besieged and killed by the people in the infinite universe. The day passed by peacefully again. On the fifth midnight, the black fog lingered on the surface of the ootheca again. This time, just like the breeding rule Nyarlathotep described, the ootheca spat out five dominator-level rank-5 Abyssal monsters. Sensing the aura emanating from the five monsters, many people present looked extremely solemn. The reason being was that, on the surface, dominator-level rank-5 was already the strongest force in the entire infinite universe. Meanwhile, the ootheca had spat out five at once. What was more terrifying was that, if the oothecas breeding rule was just as Nyarlathotep described, then it would breed even more powerful monsters later on. As soon as the five dominator-level rank-5 Abyssal monsters appeared, the powerhouses from the infinite universe initiated their attacks before the monsters could do anything. There were many people gathered around the ootheca these days. If they allowed the Abyssal monsters to attack first, others might not be able to rescue them in time. The Sword Alliances sword servant, Sword 28, also participated. He was already at dominator-level rank-6. Meanwhile, Sword 3, who was from the same organization, did not fight. He was already at dominator-level rank-7. Sword28 blocked a half-bug, half-dragon monster with his sword in a flash. It looked a little like a giant centipede with countless arthropods. Its back had both the shell of a bug as well as scales. What people found strange was that its head was clearly shaped like a dragon. However, there were sarcomas all over its neck under the head. It looked rather mutated and ghastly. Meanwhile, the powerhouses from the top organizations stopped the remaining four Abyssal monsters. Sword 28 was the only one who looked unfamiliar to everyone. Therefore, his appearance instantly caught the attention of many spectators. He did not look outstanding, nor was he tall. He was approximately 1.78 meters tall. He did not seem to bother about what he wore. He clearly had not combed his messy hair. There was stubble all over his chin. He dressed simply in regular dark-blue samurai attire. He wore a pair of canvas shoes that had no designs on it at all. However, not many people doubted his ability since he dared to show up at such a time. The reason being was that he had been disguising his aura as a dominator-level rank-5 over the past few days. Sword 28 ignored everyones stares and focused on his target. He pressed his right hand on the sword on his waist. The dragon head arthropod monster sensed the threat emanating from him. It raised the front part of its body high. Its body was 100 meters tall and almost looked like a mountain. The next second, the mountain-like body charged directly at Sword 28. Sword 28 pulled out his sword lightly. He only drew it out of its scabbard some ten centimeters or so before putting it back quickly. Later on, he stood upright. He watched the Abyssal monster coming at him as he stood still. Once the gigantic monster was around ten meters away from him, it suddenly froze. Its body froze as if time had stopped. The next second, a smooth cut sliced it from the middle of its forehead, spreading downward. After that, the people saw a terrifying scene. The dragon head arthropod monsters gigantic body was sliced into two directly. It was like a sword slicing it from the middle of its head into a perfect two halves. With merely one attack, Sword 28 instantly completed the kill. Countless people present were shocked by his sword attack. Who is that?! Many people asked. Someone from the Sword Alliance, but I dont know his name, someone who knew answered immediately. However, not many knew more information about Sword 28. After all, Lin Huang had over 300 sword servants under his command. Among the over 300 people, perhaps Sword 1 was the only one who had appeared in public. The rest of them basically spent most of their time in closed-door cultivation. Apart from the people who were present, the higher ups of some of the organizations saw Sword 28s sword attack as they watched secretly. They could no longer hold still. His way of pulling out his sword to kill is quite scary. Given this guys ability, I wonder how he ranks in terms of strength in the Sword Alliance? Dont tell me all of them in the Sword Alliance are monsters like this?! I wonder how loyal these powerhouses from the Sword Alliance are. Is it possible to poach them? Chapter 1891 - The Cruel Sword 3 After Sword 28 killed the dragon-headed monster, four others killed the remaining four Abyssal monsters. After that, the day passed by peacefully. However, almost everyone would remember the powerhouse from the Sword Alliance named Sword 28. Before the sixth day dawned, more powerhouses from the top organizations surrounded the ootheca. Almost all of them were famous people in the infinite universe. Out of nowhere, the entire area seemed to have become a gathering place of famous people. Some dominator-level rank-1 and rank-2 powerhouses were extremely excited. Although they were also at dominator-level, the people who arrived this round were the real bosses. It was hard to see even one of them usually, but now almost all of them were gathered here. However, some looked terrible. These people saw the nature of the matter more clearlythe arrival of these top powerhouses meant that the threat posed by the ootheca was serious. The powerhouses who had arrived this round clearly had no mood to socialize. They only greeted each other and returned to their own camps. They fell into silence. Time flew by, and it was soon midnight. At the same time as before, the black fog appeared on the surface of the ootheca. After the black fog lingered for a moment, the ootheca followed the previous rule and spat out six dominator-level rank-6 powerhouses. As soon as the six monsters appeared, six figures from the infinite universes side went over to them directly. One of them was Sword 3 from the Sword Alliance. Sword 3 looked like his usual self. He was still muscular, and the scar that looked like a mammoth on his head was very conspicuous. Though he had stepped into dominator-level, he still did not fix his left eye that was blinded. Only his right eye could see. He did not even regenerate his right arm that had been severed. He was a single-armed man who only possessed a left arm. Sword 3 caught everyones attention as soon as he showed up. To them, he was a completely unfamiliar face. On the other hand, his appearance was so unique that everyone would remember him after seeing him once. This mammoth-scar man seems to be from the Sword Alliance as well The people were discussing among themselves. At that moment, the jet-black thin sword in Sword 3s hand was swung. His opponent was a swollen, fat, gigantic monster. It was 10,000 meters tall, and its waist was also 10,000 meters wide. A layer of transparent fat secreted out of the fair, fat flesh across its entire body. It was completely enveloped in fat. Its skin even reflected light. There was no hair on its head at all, and its face was chubby. A huge eye seemed to be mounted right in the middle of its forehead. There was no neck under its head. It had been replaced by plump-looking flesh that was similar to a frogs abdomen. Beneath that was two saggy breasts and a large tummy that made it look like it had been pregnant for a couple of years. However, what caught everyones attention was not its fat appearance, but rather the tail that looked like a larva below its waist. Everyone knew that this giant was not to be offended. However, Sword 3 attacked with determination. He appeared above the gigantic monsters head in a flash. The black sword was swung directly at its bald head. One swing! Two swings Three swings! Tens of thousands of sword swings had been completed within a split-second! The giant monster had only just reacted and lifted its head to look at Sword 3. However, the next second, its body turned into a pile of cloudy mush D*mn, it was sliced into mush directly! Im afraid this monster is no different than a piece of meat on the chopping board for him. A cruel man who crushed his opponent into minced meat merely due to a disagreement! Are all of them in the Sword Alliance monsters like this?! Not only the people present were discussing, even those who were secretly watching were stunned. One had to say that Sword 3s technique was cruel indeed. It was not about his fetish for turning his opponent into mincemeat, but rather his onslaught combat style. He used the speed and strength approach. He could not really stop himself once he got riled up. He would accidentally crush his opponents into tiny pieces. Regarding this, Lin Huang had spoken to him several times. The reason being was that he crushed his targets into tiny pieces. Lin Huang could not sell the carcasses of the monsters he killed at all. Later on, he tried his best to control that tendency, but he would still get too excited from time to time. Just like this time. He actually saw that this gigantic monsters defensive abilities and techniques were powerful. The truth was indeed so. Not only did the fat on his body provide a powerful layer of defense, it could heal itself continuously. The layer of fat on the surface of its body also had the extremely powerful effect of dispersing damage. Under usual circumstances, any attacks that landed on it would be dispersed. Sword 3 sensed that powerful dispersing effect when he swung his sword the first time. Given the terrifying defensive capability of the layer of fat on its body, it felt like he had cut into a layer of sticky liquid. Therefore, he continuously adjusted his strength, angle and number of Dao seals used on his second and third swing It got easier as it went. In the end, he adjusted it to the point as if he was cutting a piece of tofu. When he snapped back to his senses, it had turned out like this. Looking like the carcass that was like a pile of mush, there was a rather strange expression on his face. He knew that Lin Huang had been watching the battle. It would mean that what had happened just now had been seen by his Swordmaster from the beginning to the end. Oh, no. Swordmaster is going to give me an earful The people did not see the strange look on his face, but Sword 28 saw it crystal clear. He comforted him through voice transmission directly, Third Brother, Lord Swordmaster wont blame you. This guy is to be blamed because it felt so nice mincing it up, Sword 3 responded through voice transmission. Not long after Sword 3 returned to Sword 28s side, the remaining five battles ended one after the other. The six dominator-level rank-6 Abyssal monsters could be considered to have been killed without suspense. The few dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses had stunning abilities, but the one who left the strongest impression was still Sword 3 from the Sword Alliance. It was hard for him to not be noticed due to his cruel act of turning the enemy into mincemeat. After the battles calmed down, peace soon returned to the area around the ootheca. Before the dawn of the seventh day, the few top organizations sent over new powerhouses consecutively. The powerhouses the organizations sent over this time were basically leaders. Xue Luo from the Snow Domain, the white-bearded palace master from Sword Palace, Dragon Emperor from Dragon Island Meanwhile, the Sword Alliance sent over the siblings Lin Xin and Lin Xuan, as well as the little girl who looked like she had yet to hit pubertySword 8. As the person who had the most talent among the sword servants, her combat strength had been elevated to the limit of dominator-level rank-8. She was only a step away from elevating to rank-9. In terms of comprehensive ability, she might have surpassed Sword 1, who was also at dominator-level rank-8. She had become the most powerful one among the Sword Servants. Meanwhile, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan had just elevated to dominator-level rank-9 not long ago. Lin Xin had only broken through less than a month ago. Meanwhile, Lin Xuan just did so yesterday. The two of them came this time to use the opportunity to train their combat abilities in a real battle. Chapter 1892 - The Naive Sword 8 Time flew by. Soon, it was midnight on the seventh day. Black fog lingered on the oothecas surface at the same time as usual. This time, it bred seven dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses. Sword 8 glanced at each of the seven of them one after the other as she held her chin in her hands. While she was struggling to choose one as an opponent, the other top organizations sent over seven powerhouses. They attacked the monsters directly. What?! I havent even picked one yet, and you guys already took them all Sword 8 panicked a little when she saw that there were no opponents left for her to choose from. Many people who were watching the battle heard her voice. They looked at her in confusion. Many of them revealed expressions of doubt on their faces when they saw that the person who spoke was a petite girl who looked like she had not even hit puberty. A small number of them who were watching were from the Sword Alliance. They had no doubt about Sword 8s ability. You can only wait for tomorrows battle now. Lin Xin, who was next to her, patted her head. Just choose any one tomorrow. Dont let others take your opponent again. Okay. Ill be the first tomorrow! Sword 8 nodded repeatedly. She started to envision the scene of her battle tomorrow. Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and the remaining two sword servants, who were standing to the side, focused on watching the ensuing battle. The infinite universe had sent five dominator-level rank-8 and two dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses to fight the seven dominator-level rank-7 Abyssal monsters. The five dominator-level rank-8 powerhouses suppressed their opponents easily after one to two attacks. The result of their battles were immediately obvious. It was hard to determine who would emerge victorious in the battles between the remaining two dominator-level rank-7 powerhouses and the two dominator-level rank-7 Abyssal monsters. The others did not plan to intervene in these one-on-one battles. The battles lasted for about half an hour. The dominator-level rank-7 sword cultivator from Sword Palace finally managed to kill his opponent. Meanwhile, the battle between the other dominator-level rank-7 powerhouse from Dragon Island and the Abyssal monster had fallen into a stagnant state. The dominator-level rank-7 powerhouse from Dragon Island actually had powerful abilities. The strength of his physical body was even close to that of a dominator-level rank-8. However, he happened to choose a half-spirit opponent. Not only could it turn its physical body into spirit-form, in which any physical attacks on it were futile, it was also skilled in attacking ones God soul. One could say that the powerhouse from Dragon Island had been suppressed completely. Most of the people looked quite terrible when they saw that this powerhouse had encountered a tough battle, especially the few people from Dragon Island. Meanwhile, on the Sword Alliances side, Sword 8 had an excited look on her face. She could not wait for her turn. She hoped that the powerhouse would be defeated, then she would have the opportunity to fight. However, the powerhouse from Dragon Island bit the bullet and was unwilling to retreat. After fighting doggedly for some two hours, Sword 8 could not help but ask Lin Xin who was next to her softly, That big guy cant defeat it anyway. Why isnt he yielding? She did not use voice transmission to say that. Although her voice was extremely soft, everyone present heard her clearly. The people on Dragon Islands side looked even more terrible now. Meanwhile, the veins of the powerhouse from Dragon Island who was fighting could be seen bulging all over his body. Lin Xin noticed that instantly and smiled at the people rather awkwardly as she said, The child is spewing nonsense. She doesnt know what shes saying. Dont mind her. As soon as she said that, she said to Sword 8 through voice transmission, This isnt like sparring, this is war. Its useless to yield. But the situation that guy from Dragon Island is in currently He can actually retreat if he cant defeat it. Perhaps hes not doing so because hes unwilling. Lin Xin guessed what this powerhouse from Dragon Island was thinking. After all, the remaining six people who fought had won. If he lost, not only would he embarrass himself, he would embarrass Dragon Island as well. Another probable reason why he was unwilling was that the opponent that he chose suppressed him completely. He could not fully unleash his ability. His combined abilities were a few times more powerful than this monster, but he was suppressed over and over again. He would have won if he had chosen any of the other six Abyssal monsters. He might even have emerged victorious faster than that sword cultivator from Sword Palace! It shouldnt matter if he loses. He can just strengthen himself and return to try again. Whats so embarrassing about that? Sword 8 clearly thought that yielding was not something embarrassing. When she followed Swordmaster Great Heaven, she would always spar with the other sword servants like Sword 1 and Sword 2. She would always lose, but she had never felt embarrassed about her losses before. Its indeed not embarrassing to lose, but there are people who care about such things. Lin Xin lightly patted Sword 8s head while smiling. The powerhouse from Dragon Island kept fighting for approximately three hours. In the end, the Dragon Emperor finally spoke. Get back here! Although he was unwilling, the powerhouse from Dragon Island retreated anyway. Before anyone from Dragon Island could replace him, a petite figure suddenly appeared before the Abyssal monster. The people were stunned. As they looked closer, they were surprised to find that it was that little girl from the Sword Alliance who spoke earlier. Sword 8 appeared before the half-spirit monster directly in a flash. She did not remove her long sword from the scabbard. Instead, she swung it together with the scabbard. The next second, a gigantic wave-like black sword gleam devoured the Abyssal monster entirely. By the time the sword gleam faded, the monster had turned into dust completely. There was not even a piece of flesh remaining. Countless people were dumbfounded by the sword gleam they saw. So powerful! I dont think her sword left the scabbard. So this is the ability of the Sword Alliances members? The few dominator-level rank-8 powerhouses had fear in their eyes when they looked at Sword 8. They knew very well that, even though they could survive the power of that sword glame, they might have been severely injured by it. Moreover, her sword did not even leave its scabbard. She clearly had not used all of her strength. Even the few dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses pupils shrank slightly when they saw her sword gleam. Although she did not use all of her strength, she had exposed her ability with her sword force. All of the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses present could see that this girl was only a step away from elevating to dominator-level rank-9. Where did the Sword Alliance get all of these monsters exactly? The few top organizations leaders present had that thought almost simultaneously. At that moment, Sword 8 turned around and looked at the powerhouse from Dragon Tribe who had retreated earlier after she killed the Abyssal monster. She said to him while giggling, Its useless to use brute force, dummy. That ugly thing was a spirit. You can kill it easily using Gods soul-type Dao seals. The powerhouse from Dragon Tribe was stunned at first, after which he looked conflicted. Of course he knew he should use Gods soul-type Dao seals, it was just that he was not good at that technique. Dragon Emperor, who was standing to the side, laughed out loud when he heard her words. Thank you for your reminder, little girl. Well take note of it next time. He clearly saw through the fact that, although Sword 8 had powerful abilities, her mentality seemed to still be that of a kid. Sword 8 only returned by Lin Xins side in a flash when she heard his reply. Lin Xin said helplessly while smiling, You even lectured him, you mischievous thing. Sword 8 had pride fill her face when she heard that. I was Lord Swordmasters teacher too! Lin Huang, who had been probing, smiled. Sword 8 was not exaggerating. In order to obtain Great Heavens inheritance back then, he had indeed gotten many sword servants to train with him, and had received many pointers from them. Naturally, that girl Sword 8 was among them. Chapter 1893 - The Siblings Joined the Battle After the seventh midnight, many dominator-level powerhouses now knew Sword 8. This girl, who looked and sounded like a child, possessed shocking abilities. However, she did not care about the attention. She spent most of the time eating snacks, and she would chat with Lin Xin and Lin Xuan who were beside her when she occasionally thought of something. The eighth day passed by peacefully as usual. Black fog appeared on the ootheca again at midnight. At this time, it released its predetermined quota of the day once againeight dominator-level rank-8 Abyssal monsters. Seeing the monsters the ootheca spat out, Sword 8 did not even think this time. She went forward in a flash, and appeared before an eight-armed monster directly. She had not gotten an opponent the day before as she had hesitated for a moment. This time, she did not spend time picking at all, and simply went for the closest opponent. No matter what, she would take one first! Lin Xuan frowned when he saw the opponent that she had chosen. This girl picked the most powerful one. I dont think she did it on purpose. Lin Xin, who was standing to the side, smiled while shaking her head. She knew that although Sword 8 had powerful abilities, she was not very sensitive to the strength of an opponents aura. Regarding this, Lin Huang had even conducted an experiment not long after Sword8 elevated to dominator-level. He got her to try and sense the dominator-level powerhouses strength through their auras. It turned out she could only tell their ranks apart, but not the strength of people within the same rank. Even though she was at dominator-level rank-8 now, she could not differentiate the strength of the eight Abyssal monsters through their auras. Only if one of them was at the same level as her, which was the limit of dominator-level rank-8, would she possibly be able to tell their strength apart forcefully. While they were chatting, the other powerhouses from the few top organizations blocked the remaining seven Abyssal monsters. Meanwhile, Sword 8 attacked directly. She could now tell that this eight-armed monster before her was much more powerful than the one she killed yesterday. Therefore, she removed her battle sword from the scabbard without hesitation this time. The sword gleam turned into a giant wave again, suppressing the eight-armed monster. The monster was almost three meters tall. It had bulging muscles all over its body. The flesh on its bald head was rotten and some exposed bones could be seen on its head. It pressed its eight palms together when it saw Sword 8s sword gleam coming. The second the four pairs of palms were pressed together, a massive shadow that was comparable to a galaxy was instantly formed above its head. The shadow had a human-like form. It sat above a cloud with its legs crossed, while it had thousands of arms on its upper body. The thousands of arms stretched out their huge palms almost at the same time, slamming toward the tsunami-like sword gleam. The second the thousands of arms collided with the sword gleam,, they consolidated into one palm and hit the endless black sword gleam suddenly. Layers of massive waves crashed together as the tsunami-like sword gleam hit the palm. The sword gleams momentum had clearly slowed down. However, that situation only lasted for a moment. The palm print then collapsed entirely. The black sword gleam continued to suppress the eight-armed monster like a tsunami. The monster chanted several secret incantations. The massive shadow above its head slammed countless palm prints against the sword gleam continuously. The palm prints stacked themselves in the air, turning into a huge black wall. This time, the charging sword gleam finally stopped entirely, as if it had fallen into a stagnant state when faced with the black wall. Just as the eight-armed monster was feeling slightly relieved, a sense of fear and dread suddenly appeared again. It lifted its head to look upward. Sword 8, who was standing expressionlessly in the distance, swung her sword again. The resulting massive wave was not only powerful, it was even a few times faster than before. It suppressed and crushed the giant wall that was made from countless palm prints directly. Before the eight-armed monster could even struggle further, it was drowned within With only two swings of her sword, Sword 8 had killed the most powerful one among the eight Abyssal monsters. The people who were watching were dumbfounded. They were shocked. However, Sword 8 was not too happy. She thought that she could kill her opponent with a single swing of her sword, but she ended up using two swings this time. She looked rather upset upon returning to Lin Xin and Lin Xuans side. Some battles were still ongoing elsewhere on the battlefield. Sword 8 had been the first to attack, but she was not the first one to kill the opponent. Three dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses had killed their opponents instantly before she did. Two dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses ended their battles almost at the same time as she did. The remaining two battles were battles between dominator-level rank-8 powerhouses. As the more powerful Abyssal monsters were picked by Sword 8 and the few other dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, the remaining two were the weaker ones. Therefore, the battles themselves did not hold much suspense. The dominator-level rank-8 powerhouse from Star Palace only killed his opponent half an hour later. Meanwhile, the dominator-level rank-8 powerhouse from Snow Domain only managed to kill his opponent a little over an hour later. After that, the battlefield fell silent once again. Until the ninth midnight At midnight, and at the same time, black fog once again lingered on the surface of the ootheca. Many people looked nervous as they watched it spit out nine Dominators slowly. These were bona fide dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. Most of the people present had not even seen powerhouses of such a level until a few days ago. There were even many who were not sure whether there were powerhouses of the same level in the infinite universe who could fight a fair battle with them. Fortunately, the peoples concerns were soon resolved. The reason being was that they saw nine figures standing out one after the other. Dragon Emperor from Dragon Island, Xue Luo from Snow Domain, Sword Palaces palace master On the Sword Alliances side, Lin Xuan and Lin Xin chose to participate. Lin Xuan, who had just broken through to dominator-level rank-9, wisely chose the weakest one among the nine Abyssal monsters. Lin Xin did not act recklessly. She chose the one with the second weakest aura. After all, it had only been a month since she broke through to dominator-level rank-9. Seeing that the Sword Alliance had sent a young man and lady to the battle, many spectators could not help but focus their attention on the two. On the battlefield, the battles between dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses soon broke out. Dragon Emperor from Dragon Island took the lead to attack first. He grabbed his opponent with his palm that seemed like an endless mountain range. His opponent, which was a gigantic Abyssal monster, could not run, so it could only defend forcefully. However, it was crushed into a pile of mush directly in the next second. Dragon Emperor had completed the kill in one hit. He was so powerful that it caused countless spectators to exclaim. Xue Luo was quick too. She merely pointed in the air, and a blue spark started burning between the Abyssal monsters eyebrows. The spark slowly spread. Within a single breath of time, the monster was burned into dust directly. Many spectators had goosebumps when they saw that strange technique. Most of them did not even understand what technique she used exactly. Nevertheless, Lin Huang, who was watching the battle secretly, had seen it crystal clear. She used a technique that was a combination of witchcraft and sorcery. She penetrated the monsters head with fire element Odyl Dominator Power and released it later on. In reality, this technique was more taxing on ones control abilities. Chapter 1894 - Lin Xuan’s Counterattack Xue Luo, Dragon Emperor and a few others completed their instant kills quickly. Although they were also at dominator-level rank-9, they had mastered 100 billion to even trillions of chaotic cosmoses. Naturally, they could not be compared with those Abyssal monsters that had just stepped into the ranks of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. Countless people who were present were dumbfounded when they saw their instant kills. On the battlefield, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan were among those still fighting the remaining dominator-level rank-9 Abyssal monsters. Lin Xins opponent was a gigantic dark-green worm. The worm was thousands of meters long. What made it different from normal worms was that there were eyeballs all over its back. There were long, dark green chunks of hair in the gaps between the eyeballs. It did not squirm like normal worms. Instead, it slithered like a snake. After Xue Luo, Dragon Emperor and the others ended their battles, they paid the most attention to Lin Xins battle. It was not that they were paying attention to the Sword Alliance, but rather the opponent that Lin Xin picked. Although its aura was not powerful, the strength of its Gods soul was the highest. On a certain level, this monsters ability might be the most powerful one among the nine Abyssal Dominators. Watch out for its Gods soul attack! Xue Luo could not help but remind her. As soon as she was done speaking, the monster attacked. The eyeballs opened quickly on its back and they locked onto Lin Xin. When 80% of the total number of the eyeballs had opened, a crimson gleam lit up in the eyeballs. However, Lin Xin did not seem to feel anything off. She only felt that the light was quite glaring, so she blinked twice. She swung the battle sword in her hand without hesitation. One swing, two swings, three swings Realizing that her current opponent was at dominator-level rank-9 just like she was, Lin Xin did not dare to be reckless at all. She used all of her might as soon as she attacked. Her golden sword gleams were like a dazzling sun, covering the dense crimson beams. The golden gleams faded away a moment later. The monster almost seemed like it had been burned by a high temperature. It had turned into a pile of dark green goo The spectators aside, even Xue Luo and the others did not understand what they had just seen. Whats with that girl? Was she not hit? Dragon Emperor mumbled softly. He saw clearly that before Lin Xin swung the sword, the monsters psychic attack had covered her entire body. However, it seemed Lin Xin had not experienced anything unusual, and even killed the monster instantly. Xue Luo, who was standing to the side, was stunned for a second before she reacted. She should have a high grade Gods soul supreme treasure in her body that makes her immune to the Gods soul attack. A few of them who were standing around came to the same realization when they heard that. They really could not think of any other possibilities. In reality, Xue Luo had got it right. When Lin Huang was still at imperial-level, he had given Lin Xin three God Weapons. She consolidated one into a gun, one into battle armor and the last one into a Soul Weapon. The three God Weapons had been elevated beyond chaotic supreme treasures following her elevation. They were comparable to three infinite supreme treasures. Lin Huang then gave her a battle sword that was an infinite supreme treasure and a few Goldfingers when she had been elevated to dominator-level rank-9 last month. One of the Goldfingers had an effect on her Gods soul. Given the Gods soul Goldfinger, a Gods soul treasure that was an infinite supreme treasure, as well as her dominator-level rank-9 Gods soul, the monsters Gods soul attack could not do anything to her Gods soul at all. Never had the monster expected that it would encounter a boss-level opponent like this. By the time it realized something was amiss, Lin Xins endless sword gleams had drowned it entirely. What a great sword. Saber Palaces palace master stroked his beard while staring at the battle sword in Lin Xins hand. She was the fifth one to conclude her battle. Although many of them could not understand what happened, her performance stunned them. After her, two other people ended their battles quickly. Lin Xuan and another bearded man from Dragon Island were the only ones left. The bearded hunk and that Abyssal monster were both combat cultivators. It was hard to decide who would win, so the battle fell into a stagnant state. Meanwhile, Lin Xuan was even clumsier. Although he picked the weakest opponent, he had just broken through to dominator-level rank-9 yesterday. If one were to count the hours, it had not even been a day since he stepped into dominator-level rank-9. His opponent was a red-haired monster that was similar to an ape. It was so big that it was comparable to a mountain. It was covered in a layer of red hair, and its face was as dark as the Abyss. It only had four red gleams that lit up its face. Not only did this monster possess terrifying strength, it had rather stunning speed too. What made Lin Xun speechless was that the red hair all over its body had powerful defense abilities. He tried everything, but he could not break through its defense at all. Therefore, that was how the situation had become like this. He had been beaten up by the red-haired monster. Fortunately, he had great movement skills, and he was not much slower than the monster. Even after half an hour had passed, he had not suffered any substantial damage. However, it was natural that Lin Xuan had become a little panicked as his battle became the only one continuing after that bearded hunk from Dragon Island killed off the other monster. After all, everyone had completed their battles, and he had everyones attention now. Lin Xin was eager to help, but she was afraid that she would hurt his pride. She could only worry as she stood to the side. Sword 8, Sword 3 and the rest did not have sufficient ability to help him, so they could only watch. After over an hour had passed, Lin Xuan had finally reached the brink of snapping. Dragon Emperor and the rest saw through him. Sword Palaces palace master said while chuckling as he stroked his beard, That guy from the Sword Alliance is losing. Hes panicking. Dragon Emperor nodded lightly. If we werent watching, perhaps he wouldnt feel this stressed. Xue Luo did not deny the truth of their opinion. However, a familiar voice came to Lin Xuans ears at that very moment. No matter what kind of enemy youre facing, as soon as you fall apart, youre one step closer to losing. Naturally, it was Lin Huang who spoke. However, apart from Lin Xuan, nobody else could hear his voice transmission. Calm down and think. If the opponent is invincible in physical defense, what should you do to defeat him? Lin Huangs voice soon came again. Lin Xuan understood what he meant instantly, but he still felt a little guilty. He thought to himself, But Ive tried Gods soul-type techniques as well, and they didnt work. It doesnt mean its useless just because you cant see it, Lin Huang read his mind directly. Lin Xuan could not help but feel stunned, after which he instantly realized that Lin Huangs ability had already reached a level that was unimaginable to him. Although this guys Gods soul is slightly more powerful than yours, its cultivation direction is focused on the physical body. Youve learned Gods soul attack techniques, as well as mastering many Gods soul-type Dao seals. You were only attacking its Gods soul in a probing manner earlier. It was like hitting a bone with a knife softly. You thought its useless because the bone didnt break. Have you ever thought about what would happen if you hacked it strongly and hacked it a few times more? Got it. Lin Xuan thought to himself. He knew that Lin Huang could hear what he thought. With his guidance, Lin Xuan calmed down instantly. An expression of determination surfaced when he looked at the red-haired monster now. Suddenly, he gathered all of the Gods soul-type Dao seals he mastered and inserted Dominator Power into them without holding back. At that moment, misty, faint white saber gleams like a cloud floated toward the monster. The moment the saber gleams touched it, the monster released a devastating shriek. It wanted to retreat, but it was too late. Countless saber gleams were shot forth. Like a cloud, they enveloped it entirely. A moment later, the white mist faded completely. The red-haired monster, which had no visible wounds on its body, closed its eyes completely. It fell to the ground Counterattack?! Even Sword Palaces palace master and the rest were stunned when they saw the change of events that had appeared out of nowhere. This guy seemed to have been suddenly enlightened. Dragon Emperor could not help but comment. Xue Luo, on the other hand, had her eyes light up. She seemed to have guessed something. Lin Xin hugged Lin Xuan who had just returned to her side. I thought you were going to lose But you became so brave out of nowhere! Brother sent me voice transmissions secretly, Feeling rather helpless, Lin Xuan revealed the details to Lin Xin through voice transmission. However, you still won relying on your abilities, no? It proves that you possess the ability to win. Lin Xin was not stingy with her compliments. She knew that she should not damage his confidence, especially at times like this. Lin Huang who was secretly watching nodded. He was very satisfied with the abilities Lin Xuan and Lin Xin displayed. At least the results of their cultivation over the past half a year were not in vain. Chapter 1895 - The Tenth Day Lin Xuans counterattack marked the end of the ninth round of breeding from the ootheca completely. Although the infinite universe had never lost throughout those nine days, almost everyone looked worried. The ootheca really did breed dominator-level rank-9 monsters on the ninth day. Many people thought that Nyarlathotep had been completely exaggerating when it came to the rules description. They thought it was completely impossible that the ootheca would breed dominator-level rank-9 monsters. However, the truth had slapped their faces hard. Now, not many of them doubted Nyarlathoteps rule description of what would happen later. Nine monsters on the ninth day, and the number will double on the tenth day Lin Xuan frowned hard. Itll be harder tomorrow. Not only tomorrow, every day from now on will become harder. Lin Xin who was standing next to him frowned too. According to the rule Nyarlathotep revealed, from the 11th day onward, the dominator-level rank-9 monsters the ootheca bred would have mastered a billion chaotic cosmos. From then on, the number of Abyssal monsters it bred would be doubled. Can this thing really breed more powerful dominator-level rank-9 monsters without limits? Sword 3, who was standing to the side, could not help but ask Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. According to brother, theres a limit. The highest combat strength it can breed might be that of the Outer Gods, but the possibility of it breeding monsters weaker than the Outer Gods is higher, Lin Xuan explained through voice transmission instantly. Then how powerful are the Outer Gods exactly? Sword 3 asked rather curiously. Brother said the Outer Gods should have mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. It was Lin Xin who answered the question this time. Which means theres a high chance that this thing will breed batches of dominator-level rank-9 monsters that have mastered a quadrillion chaotic cosmoses, Lin Xuan added. A quadrillion chaotic cosmoses Sword 8 was stunned when she heard that. She knew very well that as long as one mastered over 100 million chaotic cosmoses, they could elevate to dominator-level rank-9. Powerhouses who had mastered a quadrillion chaotic cosmoses could suppress regular dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses like killing an ant. There was one thing that Sword 8 dared not askwas there really someone who could resolve this crisis in the infinite universe?! Did Bai mention when they would come? Seeing that Sword 8 said nothing, Lin Xuan asked Lin Xin. No, but dont worry. Theyll definitely make it in time, Lin Xuan said with determination. As soon as Lin Xin was done speaking, a figure suddenly arrived where the few of them were standing. It was Bai, who was dressed in dark blue casual wear. Lancelot and the rest will come later, Bai said to Lin Xin and Lin Xuan through voice transmission as soon as he showed up. The two of them nodded and did not ask further. Bais appearance instantly caught the attention of the many powerhouses present. Some powerhouses had met Bai and the rest in the mystic territories before. They had a rough idea of his abilities. There were also a small number of powerhouses who could sense from Bais aura that he was at dominator-level rank-9 although they had never met before. Not only that, he had powerful abilities. Most people speculated that this white-haired young mans abilities should be quite powerful, judging by the time Bai chose to arrive. Everything remained peaceful on the tenth day. Then, when midnight arrived, black fog appeared on the surface of the ootheca again. This time, it spat out 18 Abyssal monsters at once! Just like what Nyarlathotep described, all 18 Abyssal monsters were at dominator-level rank-9, which was double the number of those on the ninth day! This time, the Sword Alliance sent out three people directlyBai, Lin Xin and Lin Xuan. As usual, Lin Xuan picked the weakest opponent. The rest had no objections to that. After all, they could tell that he had just been elevated to dominator-level rank-9 not long ago. Lin Xuan had calmed down significantly. He knew that the reason he participated in this war was to train his real combat abilities. He only had two chances to fight. He would not be able to handle the opponents that would arrive later on. The remaining dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses from the major organizations picked out their opponents accordingly. Some picked two, and some picked three. Bai did not show off. He only picked two. Although the two that he picked out did not have the most powerful auras, they might be the most difficult ones. One of them had dragonfly-like wings. It was so fast that it was almost comparable to teleportation. It created shadows in the battlefield when it shook its wings. However, while it was showing off its speed, Bai appeared behind its Primordium directly in a flash. A blood-colored whip penetrated its body directly. The battle had only begun for 0.001 seconds, and Bai had completed a shocking first kill. Subsequently, Bai appeared before a gigantic tortoise beast. A blood-colored whip penetrated its invincible-looking shell. Bai completed a double kill in less than 0.01 seconds! After that, he returned to the Sword Alliances camp and watched the battles in silence. Since the rest of the people had chosen the remaining 16 monsters, naturally, he did not bother to intervene. Everyone was dumbfounded when they saw Bais performance. Even Dragon Emperor and the few who were on the battlefield did not expect Bai to end his fight so quickly. Nevertheless, seeing that he had already killed his opponents, they did not bother to hold back anymore. They killed the opponents they chosen consecutively. In the end, the battlefield was only left with five ongoing battles. Lin Xin went all out this time and used firearms. As an outstanding firearms master, she had actually hardly used firearms since she had been elevated to dominator-level. It was not because her firearms were not powerful enough, but rather because the firearms she had were so powerful that she would not have the opportunity to train if she used them. This time, she thought she would show off and try her best to kill her opponent before the few others did. Never had she imagined that Bai would trigger their pride from his actions, which caused Dragon Emperor and the others to kill their opponents instantly. However, Lin Xin was only slightly slower. Her gunfire drowned out the opponent directly. Within three seconds, the Abyssal monster was crushed into pieces by her firearms, which were infinite supreme treasures. However, she only ranked fifth in terms of killing speed this round. Nevertheless, her performance was stunning enough for most of the people present. After killing her opponent, Lin Xin left the battlefield quickly and went back to the Sword Alliances camp to continue watching the battles. Naturally, she focused on her brother Lin Xuan. He was clearly performing much better in this round than before. Although it did not seem like it, he actually had the upper hand. Lin Xin could see that he obviously had a much better mindset now. Even Bai was nodding to the side. Hes much more stable compared to the battle before. Hearing that, Lin Xin turned her head to look at Bai while smiling. You were spying on us? Not really. My clone has been hiding nearby, Bai replied honestly. This is just your clone? Lin Xin raised her eyebrows. She was quite surprised. Thats right. Bai nodded. My Primordium is still refining the spoils I received in masters Kingdom. Chapter 1896 - You’re Right Apart from Lin Xuan, soon the rest of the powerhouses had ended their battles. The same scene from yesterday was playing out on the battlefield again. Lin Xuan was the only one left fighting with an Abyssal monster. However, none of the spectators were judging him. The fact that he was fighting here at such a time was sufficient proof that his ability was ranked among the first-tier powerhouses in the infinite universe. Not only that, many people could clearly see that his performance in this round was much better than yesterday. Although he did not cause any substantial damage to his opponent throughout the one hour or so period, he was clearly much more stable now. Not only that, he had been gradually taking control of the battle. The wise ones could see that it was only a matter of time before he won, so long as he did not make any mistakes. In reality, Lin Xuans biggest issue was not that he elevated too quickly. Just like the sword servants, he elevated through the accumulation of rich resources, but he actually took some time. It was just that it was completed under the over six billion times of time flow acceleration in Lin Huangs Kingdom. It seemed like he had only used half a year to elevate to dominator-level rank-9. In reality, he had spent at least three billion years. In terms of foundation, he was perfectly fine. It was just that he spent most of his time on cultivation, so his real battle capabilities were slightly weaker. Even when he hunted in the mystic territories, he had never encountered dominator-level rank-9 enemies. Given the psychological burden he had been feeling, it naturally caused his performance in the previous battle to be below par. However, he had put down that burden in this round entirely. Furthermore, thanks to his experience in the previous battle, he could finally unleash his real abilities now. His opponent was a monster with a sword and a shield that possessed both attack and defense capabilities. Not only did it possess attack abilities that were no weaker than Lin Xuan, it had powerful defensive abilities too. Throughout the hour or so period, Lin Xuan did not manage to find an opportunity to break through the situation. However, he did not panic at all. He had even immersed himself in the battle completely. He had forgotten that there were people around him watching. After immersing himself in the battle, he started treating the opponent as a training partner completely, gradually unleashing his talent as a saber cultivator fully. After attacking frantically for over two hours, the defenses of the monster with the sword and shield crumbled for a moment. Lin Xuan caught that moment to decisively pierce the tip of his saber through the gap in its defenses. Hundreds of saber gleams shot out manically, crushing the monsters head. Watching the headless carcass fall on the ground, Lin Xuan released a long sigh of relief. This battle had been unprecedentedly fun! Watching as he returned to the Sword Alliances camp, Sword Palaces palace master nodded with satisfaction as he stroked his beard. I didnt expect that the Sword Alliance would manage to train such an outstanding saber cultivator! Although Lin Xuan took the longest time, his battle had received everyones approval. After returning to Sword Alliances camp, he quickly reviewed the battle and simulated the entire battle in his head. He wanted to know if there was anything that he could improve on. The tenth midnight had passed, and the 11th day remained peaceful. At midnight of the eleventh day, everyone began to look a little nervous when they saw black fog lingering on the ootheca again. A moment later, its tentacle spat out a monster again. All of the pupils of the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses present shrunk the moment they saw the monster. The reason being was that this dominator-level rank-9 monsters aura really was that of a powerhouse who had mastered a billion chaotic cosmoses. This time, before anyone did anything, Sword Palaces palace master swung his sword directly from a distance, killing this gigantic Abyssal monster. Although he killed the Abyssal monster instantly, everyone present looked quite terrible. The appearance of this monster proved that Nyarlathotep had not exaggerated at all. This ootheca could really breed dominator-level rank-9 monsters that had mastered a billion chaotic cosmoses. Lin Xin frowned as she looked at the monster carcass on the ground. She began to worry about the battles later on. Bai, who was standing to the side, seemed to have seen through her concerns. He pressed his hand on her shoulder. You have us. Lin Xin calmed down hearing that. She nodded at Bai. Im okay. The 11th day passed by gloomily. Soon, it was midnight once again. That night, the ootheca bred two dominator-level rank-9 monsters that had mastered a billion chaotic cosmoses. It was still Sword Palaces palace master who attacked. He killed the two monsters instantly. Although that was the case, the gloomy atmosphere did not ease up at all. At midnight on the thirteenth day, the breeding pattern from the ootheca finally changed. This time, the number of the Abyssal monsters it bred doubled directly. There were four of them. The Sword Palaces palace master attacked again. He killed four monsters with a single swing of his sword. At midnight on the fourteenth day, the number of the Abyssal monsters it bred doubled again. There were eight this time. The Sword Palaces palace master attacked again, killing the eight Abyssal monsters instantly. Many of the people present were shocked by his terrifying abilities. On the fifteenth day, the ootheca bred sixteen monsters. The number of monsters had surpassed the number of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses present there. The Sword Palaces palace master still swung his sword and killed the sixteen Abyssal monsters instantly without suspense. On the sixteenth day, the number of monsters the ootheca bred doubled again. There were now thirty-two of them. This time, before the Sword Palaces palace master could attack, Dragon Emperor attacked first. He slapped out with his palm. As if suppressed by a mountain, his slap killed all thirty-two of the Abyssal monsters directly. After winning the battle, he said to the Sword Palaces palace master while smiling, What youve been doing is annoying. Others havent had the chance to fight at all. I havent had my fill of fun killing them yet. The Sword Palaces palace master wore a cold expression. Naturally, he was not upset with Dragon Emperor, but rather the ootheca before them. Since the rule Nyarlathotep revealed had proven right again, he was very upset. Therefore, he vented his anger on those Abyssal monsters. Bai frowned. To him, Dragon Emperor and the Sword Palaces palace master had exposed their abilities too soon. Although they did not use their full force, Nyarlathotep, who was observing everything secretly, would definitely have a rough idea of their abilities judging by their attacks. This was not good news to Bai who was tasked with buying time for Lin Huang. He finally could not hold himself back and spoke after a moment of hesitation. Can you seniors give us young people the opportunity to train? After all, we dont have many chances to meet opponents of such caliber. When the next round comes, when the monsters would have mastered ten billion chaotic cosmoses, most of us present wont even have the opportunity to attack. What Bai said made many look at him in surprise. Although they knew that Bai was also at dominator-level rank-9, none of them present thought he had the abilities to challenge the other two. The Sword Palaces palace master stared at Bai for a moment before nodding. Youre right. You guys will go first tomorrow. Dragon Emperor, who was standing to the side, also nodded with a smile. I think youre right too. We should give young people more opportunities! Chapter 1897 - The Most Powerful Firearms Master in the Infinite Universe On the seventeenth midnight, black fog lingered on the surface of the ootheca again. This time, it spat out 64 Abyssal monsters. These monsters exuded a terrifying aura that made ones heart palpitate. Pick that semi-transparent one. Bai glanced across the Abyssal monsters and said to Lin Xin, who was next to him, instantly through voice transmission, It has a powerful Gods soul. You can suppress it. Its physical strength is the weakest too. Naturally, he took Lin Xins current situation into consideration when picking out the right opponent for her. She had only integrated some 700 million chaotic cosmoses. She was still far from reaching the point of having mastered a billion chaotic cosmoses. Meanwhile, her advantage was that her equipment were infinite supreme treasures. Her equipment was enough to make up the gap in combat strength. Although there was a certain level of challenge involved, Lin Xin decided to attempt it. Hearing Bais voice transmission, without any doubts, she appeared in front of that semi-transparent monster directly in a flash. The semi-transparent monster looked similar to a giant balloon. There were dense aquamarine eyes on the surface of the balloon. In terms of the strength of its aura, this monster was ranked top three among the 64 monsters. Given that it specialized in Gods soul attacks, its level of threat was enough for it to rank within the top three among the 60 or so monsters present. Seeing Lin Xin pick such an opponent, the dominator-level rank-8 and dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses present were quite confused. Only a small number of them did not seem to be surprised by her choice. After Lin Xin picked her opponent, a couple of them from the top organizations stood out to pick their own opponents. On the Sword Alliances side, Lin Xuan did not participate this time. The reason being was that Abyssal monsters of such a level had surpassed his abilities. Given his abilities, he could only watch. Bai did not participate as well. He did not want to expose his ability too much. The old palace master from Sword Palace only attacked when he saw that the rest had picked their opponents, and that no more were participating. As he stretched out all five fingers, tens of sword gleams shot forth. He killed over 50 Abyssal monsters directly. To him, even if there were more Abyssal monsters of such a level, they posed no threat to him. After Sword Palaces palace master attacked and killed the remaining Abyssal monsters, the battles among Lin Xin and the rest with the Abyssal monsters soon began. Lin Xin held almost nothing back this time. Her infinite supreme treasure-grade firearms drowned out her opponent. The balloon monster attacked Lin Xins Gods soul as it dodged and defended against her attacks clumsily. However, its attempts were futile. Not only did she have a supreme treasure-grade Gods soul equipment in her body, she had a Gods soul-type Goldfinger as well. Under the double superimposition of these two factors, the balloon monsters Gods soul attack could not do anything to her Gods soul at all. There were only water-like ripples on the surface of the protective barrier outside her Gods soul. However, its innately powerful Gods soul made it relatively weak in terms of its physical body. No matter whether it was in terms of strength, speed or the Dao seals it had mastered and were being used to fight, it did not seem to have cultivated those properly. From the start to the end, it had been fully suppressed by Lin Xin. It was a one-sided battle. In the end, it was completely crushed by fierce gunfire within half an hour. Lin Xin looked around after the battle ended. Some of them had still yet to complete their battles. Realizing that she was not the last one, she was even happier now. She returned to the Sword Alliances camp in a flash. Her performance undoubtedly stunned the people again. The dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses could actually see that her combat strength was weaker than the balloon monster. However, she won the battle in an imperious manner. She had even suppressed the monster the entire time. Although she indeed relied on her powerful equipment, it was undeniable that she had powerful abilities as well. This girl should be considered the most powerful firearms master in the infinite universe, Dragon Emperor from Dragon Island said while smiling faintly. There are limited firearms masters at dominator-level in the entire infinite universe to begin with. Old Man Heavens Secret from Heavens Secret nodded. But this girl can indeed be considered to be the most powerful one. Even Old Man Heavens Secret gave her his seal of approval. After Lin Xin ended her battle, this round of battle finally ended almost an hour later. On the 18th day, the number of monsters the ootheca bred doubled again. The total number had reached 128 monsters. Lin Xin participated again without hesitation. Given her previous experience, she was confident this time. However, she could not suppress the opponent she picked this time. The battle lasted for some two and a half hours, and she became the last person to kill her opponent. Although she took the longest, it did not damage her confidence at all. She had an amazing mindset. She completely treated these battles as battle training sessions. Not only did the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses not underestimate her, they even admired her more and more. On the nineteenth day, the ootheca bred 256 monsters. It was Sword Palaces palace master who attacked this time as well. He cleared most of the Abyssal monsters, leaving less than ten for the rest to train with. Lin Xin participated again. She was unwilling to miss any opportunities to train her real battle skills. She spent over two hours in this battle again, and she was the last one who ended her battle as well. However, Dragon Emperor and the rest could clearly sense that she was growing rapidly during these battles. That was the method Lin Huang taught Lin Xin and Lin Xuan, which was to review each of their battles. The more difficult the battle was, the more thorough the review had to be. They had to revisit their weaknesses again, see what they could improve on, what they could avoid in terms of areas they could not improve on, as well as figure out better methods that could have been used Each battle was a great learning opportunity for them to improve. Even Dragon Emperor could not help but exclaim, She improves everyday. Humans learning abilities are too scary! On the twentieth midnight, the number of Abyssal monsters the ootheca bred doubled again. There were 512 of them this time. This number was ten-fold the number of infinite universe dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses present. The Sword Palaces palace master stretched out his fingers again and cleared all of the Abyssal monsters that nobody picked directly. Without hesitation, Lin Xin participated in the battle again. She knew that it would be her last battle. After this, the ootheca would breed Abyssal monsters that had mastered ten billion chaotic cosmoses. She could not fight powerhouses of that level simply by relying on her equipment. Apart from her, a few of the dominator-level rank-9 realized that as well. They turned unprecedentedly serious. In this battle, Lin Xin only used about half an hour to kill her opponent. She was the second last one to finish the battle. She was over the moon when she saw that there was one more person who had yet to finish. It was not that the Dominator was weaker than she was, it was just that the opponent he chose happened to suppress him, causing him to only be able to unleash 60% to 70% of his actual abilities. It had also caused him to finish last after some two hours. The people had yet to relax after this round of battles ended. The reason being was that everybody knew that from the 21st day onward, the battles would become even more difficult. Chapter 1898 - Grimace Attacks On the 21st morning, another powerhouse from the Sword Alliance arrived. It was Grimace who came over this time. To be exact, it was Grimaces clone. Its quite lively here. Grimace looked around when he arrived. He then looked at Bai while smiling. You came earlier than I thought. I thought Id be the first one. Bai merely glanced at him. He did not bother to respond to him. Grimace gave up chatting when he saw that. He turned around and looked toward where the ootheca was. So thats the ootheca? It doesnt look special. It bred 512 Abyssal Dominators that had mastered a billion chaotic cosmoses each yesterday at midnight, Bai, who was standing to the side, said expressionlessly. Really? I thought the breeding rule was rather exaggerated. Clearly, Grimace had heard of this oothecas breeding rule before coming here. Did anyone try to destroy it directly? Grimace asked further after falling silent for a moment while holding his chin. A dominator-level rank-2 powerhouse and dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse tried, and they were killed by this thing. It was Sword 3 who spoke up this time. He witnessed the scene 20 days ago. No dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse tried their hand at it? Grimace seemed to want to give it a try. Since those two Dominators were killed, nobody had tried it again. Sword 3 shook his head. Bai, who was standing to the side, frowned. Master asked us not to expose our real abilities as much as possible. Alright then. Grimace could only give up after hearing Bai mention Lin Huang. I should just watch obediently then. Grimace took out a deck chair from his Kingdom as soon as he was done speaking and lay down on it directly. He even changed into beach vacation clothes, while putting on sunglasses and earplugs. He slept right then and there before everyones eyes. What he did made the people watching from the other organizations dumbfounded. Is this guy here for a vacation? How can he sleep at such a time? The guy the Sword Alliance sent over this time doesnt look too reliable. Meanwhile, Dragon Emperor could not help but laugh. Theres such an interesting guy in the Sword Alliance?! On the Sword Alliances side, Bai and the rest were aware of Grimaces behavioral tendencies. Seeing him doing that, they did not bother to stop him. That was the one tiny event that happened during the day, and it remained peaceful until midnight, when black fog once again appeared on the ootheca. A moment later, an Abyssal Dominator was spat out again. As expected, the ootheca bred an Abyssal monster that had mastered ten billion chaotic cosmoses this time. This monster did not conceal its aura at all. It was so powerful that Lin Xin and Lin Xuan felt suffocated. Fortunately, this terrifying feeling of suffocation only lasted for a second before it faded away suddenly. The Sword Palaces palace master attacked again with a cold expression on his face. He crushed its head directly with a swing of his sword. The appearance of this monster confirmed that what Nyarlathotep said was not a lie. This made everyone present feel even more concerned now. On the third round of breeding, an Abyssal Dominator that had mastered ten billion chaotic cosmoses had appeared. In the fourth and fifth rounds, there would be Abyssal Dominators that mastered 100 billion chaotic cosmoses, and even a trillion chaotic cosmoses arriving. The Sword Palaces palace master looked even grimmer as he thought of that. He had only mastered over 900 billion chaotic cosmoses. It was not that he did not want to integrate more, but his Kingdom had reached its limit. It would mean that as soon as the ootheca started breeding the fifth rounds monsters, even he would lose the eligibility to participate in the upcoming battle. The people in the Sword Alliances camp looked terrible too. Bai still remembered Lin Huangs order clearlyHe would stall as much as he could! However, he was not too sure now whether it was actually the correct move to allow this ootheca to breed Abyssal Dominators as it wished. Grimace, who was laying on the nearby deck chair, remained asleep, as if what had just happened had nothing to do with him at all. The 22nd day soon passed by peacefully. At midnight, as usual, the ootheca followed its rule and bred two Abyssal monsters that had mastered 10 billion chaotic cosmoses. It was still the Sword Palaces palace master who attacked this time. He killed them both instantly. The 23rd day and 24th day passed by The Sword Palaces palace master attacked over and over again, while the rest did not bother to intervene. Grimace had been lying on the deck chair, he had never gotten up even once. Apart from adjusting his sleeping posture occasionally, he did not do much. He never even opened his eyes. Time flew by and, soon, it was the 30th day. On that day, the number of Abyssal monsters the ootheca bred reached 512 again. This time, before the Sword Palaces palace master attacked, the Abyssal monsters heads began to explode out of nowhere. Everyone was shocked when they saw that. Even the Sword Palaces palace master, Dragon Emperor, Xue Luo and the others could not help but look shocked. They could tell that someone had used a Gods soul-type technique, but they did not know who attacked. Only Bai looked at Grimace, who was still lying on the deck chair, with a frown. When all of the carcasses fell to the ground, Grimace sat up slowly and stretched himself. I had a dream. I dreamed that I crushed a batch of Abyssal monsters heads That felt amazing! Grimace yawned while speaking vaguely. Everyone was stunned by what he said, but eventually came to a realization that the shocking scene was done by this sleeping god. Seeing that nobody said anything, Grimace got up slowly and walked toward the ootheca. He stretched out his arm fearlessly and picked up the headless carcasses one by one. He then tossed them into his Kingdom. After he was done collecting all of the over 500 carcasses, he seemed to be a little tired. He stretched himself again and lifted his head to look at the ootheca that was less than 100 meters away from him. The spectators present could not help but reveal looks of excitement on their faces when they saw that. The sleeping god before them had just proven his abilities. Many people thought that he should be able to destroy this ootheca, as long as he was willing to. Bai frowned when he saw that. Dont mess around! Grimace turned his head and grinned. What are you thinking about? My back is aching. I just thought Id stretch and rest. He turned around when he was done speaking and leapt back to the Sword Alliances camp in a single step. I only managed to sense that this thing is scarier than I expected when I was close to it, Grimace said to Bai through voice transmission, The amount of threat it poses should be enough to kill my Primordium. You shouldnt have exposed your ability so soon, Bai said directly. But there were over 500 Kingdoms Itd be too wasteful if I missed out on spoils like these. Grimace looked like he did not care. It doesnt matter if I exposed my abilities anyway. Arent you guys around as well? Bai did not retort. In reality, he had been rather moved by the harvest. However, he held back when he thought of Lin Huangs order. Grimaces attack not only made most of the people present admire him, it gained him the attention of the Sword Palaces palace master and the others. The weirdo from before had become so powerful now! Chapter 1899 - The Ootheca’s Counterattack Grimaces attack undoubtedly stunned countless people. Clearly, his ability was no weaker than the Sword Palaces palace master. In fact, it might be even more terrifying. This gave people a new outlook on the Sword Alliance. On the 31st day, most of the people were secretly discussing Grimace and the Sword Alliance. Many people even guessed that Grimace might be the most powerful powerhouse within the Sword Alliance. A small number of them thought that there might be an even more powerful entity in the Sword Alliance. Time flew by as the discussion raged on. At midnight on the 31st day, black fog lingered on the surface of the ootheca again. This time, the breeding cycle was reset. An Abyssal Dominator, whose aura was so powerful that it made most present despair, had arrived. This time, the dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses could basically sense that the monster had mastered 100 billion chaotic cosmoses judging by its aura. Xue Luo and the Sword Palaces palace master looked terrible. The reason being was that they only mastered some 100 billion chaotic cosmoses as well. Xue Luo had a total of 500 billion chaotic cosmoses in her Kingdom, while the palace master only had some 900 billion chaotic cosmoses. The two of them had yet to reach the trillion-level mark in terms of chaotic cosmoses. On a certain level, the Abyssal monster that was bred this round was a powerhouse on the same level as them. Since this monster appeared, Grimace did not attack. Seeing that Grimace had no intention of attacking, Sword Palaces palace master swung his sword with a cold expression on his face. This time, he no longer used the sword fingers like before. He used a sword, but it did not remove it from its scabbard. Though it did not leave the scabbard, Lin Xin and the others could tell from a glance that the sword he was holding was clearly an infinite supreme treasure. Little Lan would love the weapon that hes holding. Grimace stared at the weapon in the palace masters hand with burning desire. Lin Xin and the rest knew that he was talking about Lancelot. Dont act rashly, Bai scolded. He knew Grimaces character. This guy would do whatever he wanted to do. If he did not stop him, Grimace might even snatch the sword away in broad daylight. Got it Grimace could only reply while looking helpless after hearing Bai scold him, I was just joking. Over the following few days, Grimace did not attack again, nor did Bai plan to expose his ability. Sword Palaces palace master attacked over and over again. He still killed his opponents instantly. However, the wise ones like Bai and the others could tell that it only looked easy for him. On the 38th day, the ootheca bred 128 monsters. This time, the sword in the Sword Palaces palace masters hand finally left its scabbard. Xue Luo could no longer hold back either and attacked. The two worked together and completed the instant kill again. On the 39th midnight, the number of monsters the ootheca bred doubled again. It had reached 256 in total. Dragon Emperor finally attacked. The three of them worked together to suppress this round of Abyssal Dominators. On the 40th midnight, Grimace took the lead to attack just after the ootheca completed the breeding. A red gleam appeared in his eyes. He instantly blew up all of the Abyssal monsters heads again. He suppressed 512 Abyssal Dominators that possessed 100 billion chaotic cosmoses on his own. The faces of many of the spectators were filled with admiration as they watched him collect the carcasses casually. Fear flashed through the Sword Palaces palace master and Dragon Emperors eyes. Grimaces ability was beyond their expectations. However, apart from the few people from the Sword Alliance, even Dragon Emperor and the rest had no idea that the Grimace who appeared here was only a clone. After collecting the monster carcasses, Grimace returned to the Sword Alliances camp slowly. From today onward, among them, the golden-robed man is the only one who is eligible to fight. I wonder how many rounds he will be able to last Grimace said to Bai and the others through voice transmission, seemingly in a casual manner. However, he was clearly saying that to Bai. Naturally, Bai knew what he meant. He glanced at him and did not bother to respond. Grimace said this now clearly because he was unwilling to attack since there would not be enough Abyssal monsters for him to loot during the earlier rounds. Bai carried out Lin Huangs order with determination. He would avoid exposing his ability as much as he could. He would only fight if it was the last resort. After Grimace killed this round of Abyssal monsters, Dragon Emperor and the others looked terrible. It was not because of Grimace, but rather because they were thinking about what would happen later on. Xue Luo and the Sword Palaces palace master knew that the next batch of monsters that the ootheca bred would be a scary entity that would have mastered a trillion chaotic cosmoses. That was a powerhouse on the same level as Dragon Emperor. Such a monster would be beyond the range they could handle. The palace master stared at the ootheca with an unwilling look on his face. After hesitating for a moment, the long sword in his hand left the scabbard suddenly. The infinite supreme treasure shot out a stunning sword gleam! The sword gleam contained more than half of the Dominator Power in his body. It charged toward where the ootheca was. It was too late to stop him by the time Dragon Emperor and the others noticed the attack. Even Bai and Grimace were stunned when they saw the sword gleam that tore through the sky. The next second, it hit the ootheca. A moment later, the gleam faded. The spot where the ootheca was hit remained intact. There was no damage left behind. Seeing that, apart from Bai and Grimace, almost everyone was shocked. They saw how powerful the Sword Palaces palace master had been before. However, such a powerhouses full force attack did not even leave a single mark on the ootheca! Even Xue Luos mouth was wide open for a long time, while the Dragon Emperor was stunned as he stood where he was, when they saw that the ootheca remained intact. Bai and Grimace were the only ones who did not find it surprising. They had found out from Lin Huang earlier that they could not touch this thing. While everyone was still in shock, something even more shocking happened! After the ootheca was attacked, a couple of its tentacles suddenly squirmed frantically. The next second, the tentacles started moving so fast that they surpassed the speed that the people present could see with their eyes. The Sword Palaces palace masters pupils shrunk when he saw what was unfolding. He then began to retreat frantically. He wont be able to escape Grimace mumbled softly. Almost at the same time he said that, the Sword Palaces palace master suddenly stopped running. After that, his body was cut into a couple of pieces as the people watched in shock. Pieces of the corpse floated in the air, still spurting out blood. The sword remained intact, releasing a sad hum. Everyone present was shocked by this scene! Throughout the past 40 days, the peerless powerhouse that seemed invincible to the people, the man who had innumerable brilliant battle records had been killed by a couple of tentacles so easily and quickly He did not even have the chance to run! Many of the people who had been initially holding out hope, thinking that someone would definitely destroy this ootheca, fell into despair at the moment. Chapter 1900 - The Fifth Round Bai could understand why the Sword Palaces palace master attempted such an attack. The reason being was that if they allowed the ootheca to continue breeding Abyssal monsters, eventually, nobody in the infinite universe would be able to handle the powerhouses bred by the ootheca. Therefore, he chose to undertake the risk of attacking. He knew that the level of risk was high, but he still disregarded the risk and attacked it before it progressed to the next round of breeding, in which it would breed even stronger Abyssal monsters; he attempted to wipe out the root of the problem. Unfortunately, his ending was undoubtedly tragic. Sword Palaces palace masters death made it obvious to the people that the ootheca could not be destroyed at all. His death made many people realize suddenly that even someone who was as powerful as the palace master, or even the Dragon Emperor, were insignificant and helpless in the presence of certain entities. Many people even felt intense fear now, as they knew very well that their abilities were far from reaching the palace masters. It felt like they had always had a strong man supporting them if the sky fell. However, the strong man was now dead, and the sky was still falling. On the Sword Alliances side, even though they already found out from Lin Huang about how terrifying the ootheca was, Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and the others did not snap back to their senses for a long time. Grimace, on the other hand, had been staring at the Sword Palaces palace masters crushed corpse. To be exact, he was staring at that sword. However, Bai noticed his subtle actions instantly. Dont you even think about it. We cant take that! Grimace stared at Bai angrily. Youre such a party-pooper. People from the Sword Palace went over to collect the corpse while the two of them chatted. Those people conveniently took that infinite supreme treasure-level sword away. After that, a heavy atmosphere seemed to linger over everyone present. At midnight of the 41st day, the ootheca began to breed again. This time, its breeding routine was reset again. It only bred a single Abyssal monster, but that monsters aura had skyrocketed once again. Almost everyone had a terrible expression on their faces when they saw the appearance of this monster. This was especially true for some of the powerful dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. They could clearly sense from its aura that the monsters combat strength had surpassed the Sword Palaces palace master who had just died! A monster that has mastered a trillion chaotic cosmoseses Even Dragon Emperors pupils shrunk. It was a dark purple, 12-headed python beast. Its 12 heads were of dragon origin, and they had various forms. The reason they called it a python beast was because it did not have dragon claws. Beneath its many heads, it had a thick snake-like body. It felt as if the original pythons head had been severed, and 12 heads from different dragon beasts had been sewn onto its body instead. Dragon Emperor looked terrible. Apart from his speculation that he was a powerhouse on the same level as that monster, he looked terrible because of the monsters 12 dragon heads. Before the Abyssal monster even did anything, Dragon Emperor struck first. His right arm turned into a golden dragon claw that tore through the air. The 12 dragon heads on the python beast lifted their gazes at the same time, releasing deafeningly furious roars at the giant claw. The giant golden dragon claw merely paused for a second before continuing to suppress the monster like a mountain. A moment later, the python beasts 12 dragon heads exploded one after the other. By the time the dragon claw had pressed down completely, all 12 of the python beasts heads had exploded. The headless carcass was soon crushed into a pile of mush. This guys ability is not bad, Grimace secretly commented through voice transmission to Lin Xin and the others. He should have mastered some three trillion chaotic cosmoses or so. That python beast had only mastered about one trillion chaotic cosmoses, so it makes sense that this would be the end result. Bai saw through Dragon Emperors combat strength. What level of ability are the both of you at now? More powerful than the Dragon Emperor? Lin Xin could not help but ask. Hearing that question, Lin Xuan and the other few Sword Servants pricked their ears. Slightly more powerful than him, I guess, Bai said honestly. What about your Primordium? Lin Xuan who was standing to the side, asked further. Slightly more powerful than his clone, I guess, Grimace answered. He seemed to be unwilling to expose Bais and his own real abilities. I dont know about the others, but Ive just surpassed 20 trillion chaotic cosmoses recently. Bai glanced at Grimace and answered that question honestly anyway. In reality, the speed of his ability elevation was already fast enough throughout that half a year period. He had seized the opportunity provided by the frequent opening of mystic territories throughout the half a year period, and hunted inside them by creating tens of thousands of clones. His Primordium stayed inside Lin Huangs Kingdom, continuously refining those Abyssal monsters Kingdoms (which had been cleansed by Lin Huang). However, the time provided to him was still too short. One had to know that the combat strength of Bais Primordium had been on par with Xue Luo a couple of months ago. Now that several months had passed, his level of ability had surpassed Dragon Emperors. Nevertheless, there was still a large gap in comparison with the Outer Gods under Azas command. The heaviness in Lin Xins heart did not dissipate at all when she heard that. The reason being was that, even if Bai and the others Primordiums came, they could only take on the monsters bred by the ootheca during the next round. Although Dragon Emperor had emerged victorious in this round brilliantly, and he even gave some of the people present hope, most of them knew that, from this round onward, apart from him, nobody else was eligible to fight with these Abyssal monsters. A small number of them knew that Dragon Emperors ability was only sufficient to handle this round of the oothecas breeding. When the monsters were strengthened during the next round, his ability would no longer be sufficient. Dragon Emperors overwhelming victory in this battle did not improve the atmosphere much. Over the next few days, the atmosphere around the ootheca remained gloomy. Everyone watched Dragon Emperor attack over and over again in silence. They watched him kill the monsters bred by the ootheca. However, on the 44th midnight, everyone finally noticed that the battle was starting to become difficult for him. This time, the ootheca bred eight Abyssal monsters. One of them was a monster that was similar to a worm that had mastered the same number of chaotic cosmoses but, as it kept clinging onto him, Dragon Emperor had no time or chance to take care of the remaining seven monsters at all. If Bai did not initiate his attack in time, the spectators might all have been killed by the other seven Abyssal monsters. The blood-colored wings on Bais back transformed into long whips. They killed the seven Abyssal monsters instantly. After that, only the prolonged battle between the Dragon Emperor and the white worm remained. The spectators retreated far away. Retreat and dont stay too close to watch, Bai said to the people through voice transmission directly, The reason being is that the coming battles will get more and more out of control. Also, as soon as a monster of that level goes out of control, one attack is all that it will take to kill all of the spectators around here. We might not have the time to prevent that from happening. If someone else said that, these people might have resisted. However, the words had been uttered by Bai, who had just killed seven Abyssal monsters instantly. All of the people chose to believe his words. Even if a small number of them were upset and wanted to stay behind, they did not dare to when they saw everyone was leaving. After Bai spoke, almost all of the spectators retreated within ten breaths of time. On the Sword Alliances side, even Lin Xin and Lin Xuan left. Bai and Grimace were the only ones remaining in the vicinity. On the Dragon Islands side, apart from Dragon Emperor, the rest left as well. All of the people from the Sword Palace retreated with the palace masters corpse. On Snow Domains side, Xue Luo left with all of her members. Seeing that these top organizations had retreated, the remaining smaller organizations ran away even faster. Meanwhile, on Heavens Secrets side, Old Man Heavens Secret was the only one left. He watched the battle from afar. Chapter 1901 - Charcoal, Thunder and Little Witch The intense battle between Dragon Emperor and the worm monster finally ended over two hours later. He revealed almost all of his trump cards in this battle in order to finally defeat it. After killing the worm monster, he did not even collect the carcass. He sat where he was with his legs crossed directly to adjust his breathing. Bai warned Grimace again when he saw the latter staring at the carcass in excitement. After almost an hour, Dragon Emperor finally got up and collected the white worms carcass. At that moment, he belatedly realized that all of the spectators had left. Apart from himself and the two people from the Sword Alliance, Old Man Heavens Secret from Heavens Secret was the only one left around the ootheca. Well have to pass the baton to the both of you now, Dragon Emperor said to Bai and Grimace while cupping his hands. He knew that the people before him were the only ones who could fight with the monsters. Bai nodded, while Grimace did not bother to respond to him. He turned his head and shouted at Old Man Heavens Secret, Old man, were not taking the responsibility if youre killed in the crossfire. Old Man Heavens Secrets combat strength was only at dominator-level rank-8, which was even lower than Lin Xin and the rest. However, this old man insisted on staying. I wont blame anyone if Im really killed. You dont have to worry about me. Bai asked after a moment of thought, What does Heavens Secret know about this ootheca? Ive actually sent the related information to your swordmaster. Dragon Emperor and the leaders from the few other top organizations received it as well. I dont know how much information your swordmaster revealed to you guys. Since theres no one else here, Ill give you a rough explanation. Old Man Heavens Secret organized his thoughts before speaking slowly, This ootheca was actually created by one of the three Outer Gods under Aza, whose name is Shub. Shes known as the Lord of All Things under Aza. Apart from breeding Abyssal creatures in Azas dreamland on her own, most of the monsters in the Abyss were actually created by her. This ootheca is known as the Black Goats Egg. Shub can only create 12 such oothecas at most. The ootheca has two breeding rules. One is as Nyarlathotep described, which is the rule that weve been observing so far. Itll reset each round every ten days, and the Abyssal monsters it breeds will grow more and more powerful with every round. The other breeding rule is that the ootheca would breed the Black Goats Offspring directly. However, we dont know the exact details behind this. We only know that the Black Goats Offspring is a terrifying monster whose physical body is even more powerful than the Outer Gods. Its iron hooves can crush everything in the world. It has a bottomless appetite, and it can devour any substance. It will even obtain the strength to devour all living beings. Only one of the 12 oothecas are here, which means there are 11 other oothecas that might breed the Black Goats Offspring. As soon as that happens, the three Outer Gods will not be our only enemies. There will be 11 entities that have the same level of ability as the three Outer Gods. Bai suddenly looked terrible now. Why not surrender now? Suddenly I feel that its not too bad to be converted into Abyssal creatures. It might make us even more powerful Grimace, who was standing to the side, said while pouting. Apart from testing us, the Black Goats Egg is also helping them stall for time, Old Man Heavens Secret continued, They require time in order for the Black Goats Offspring to hatch before Aza is woken up. The information Old Man Heavens Secret revealed made the people there fall into a long period of silence. Time flew by, and it was soon midnight again. This time, the number of monsters the ootheca bred doubled again. There were 16 Abyssal monsters now. Grimace still did not attack. Bai and Dragon Emperor worked together and killed the Abyssal monsters that had mastered trillions of chaotic cosmoses. Over the next few days, Grimace did not bother to attack. As there were more and more Abyssal monsters, and the monsters combat strength continued to grow, Dragon Emperor felt more and more pressured. Fortunately, Bai managed to kill the entities whose combat strength was more powerful than Dragon Emperors, which kept him from dying. On the 50th day, the number of Abyssal monsters the ootheca bred reached 512. It was only then that Grimace took the initiative to kill the monsters. His instantaneous kill speed even surpassed Bais. What? You arent going to wait until tomorrow to fight? Bai teased. Tomorrows battle has nothing to do with us. Grimace smiled. With Grimace joining the battle, these monsters were killed within a minute. He collected the carcasses enthusiastically and said to Dragon Emperor, who was not far away, You can rest from tomorrow onward. Dragon Emperor looked rather depressed. Throughout these ten days, he had quickly come to realize that Bai and Grimaces abilities had surpassed his. Are there entities that are more powerful than the two of you in the Sword Alliance? Of course. Grimace grinned. Were just clones. Our Primordiums are even more powerful. The two of you are just clones?! Dragon Emperor widened his eyes and displayed a look of disbelief. He had never thought the two guys who were much more powerful than him were just clones. Bai glared at Grimace. He knew what this guy was doing. He was revealing that to damage Dragon Emperors confidence intentionally. Can I stay behind to watch the upcoming battle? Dragon Emperor asked after some hesitation. You can stay if you want to. No matter what, just like that guy, we might not have the extra time to take care of the two of you, Grimace said while peeping at Old Man Heavens Secret, who was standing pretty far away. Dragon Emperor nodded. He asked again after a moment of silence, Sorry to ask, how many powerhouses are there in the Sword Alliance who have the same level of abilities as your Primordium? You might see some of them tomorrow. Grimace smiled and did not answer his question. What about Chief Lin? Is he more powerful than your Primordium? Dragon Emperor asked further. Its Grimace dragged his words out on purpose, and only continued a while later, A secret! At that moment, a voice suddenly spoke into their ears. You talk too much, Grimace. A young man in a black robe stepped out from the sky and appeared before them. Dragon Emperor was clearly stunned when he saw that person. He sensed a familiar aura on that person. It was the aura of someone from the same tribe. It was Charcoal who arrived. Little Charcoal, why do you look human now? Grimace teased while snickering. Do you not want your clone anymore? Charcoal looked mean. It hated Grimace addressing it in that way. It could not do anything when Grimaces Primordium called it that. However, this was just his clone. Charcoal was really eager to punish him. You cant defeat my Primordium, so youre going to vent your anger on my clone? Grimace teased. So what if I do! Charcoal said while stretching out its palm. At that moment, a man in a purple robe and golden crown appeared out of thin air. He pressed his hand on Charcoals shoulder. Master said were supposed to focus our attention on the enemy in this mission. Charcoal scoffed and retrieved its hand. Why do you look human too, Little Crow? Grimace said to the man in the purple robe. I Thunder, who was in the purple robe, almost lost itself. Throughout the years, it had hated it the most when Grimace called it by that name. At that moment, a young lady in a red robe appeared out of nowhere. As her fingers moved subtly, Grimaces lips were sealed by a red thread. It was as if there was a needle guiding the thread across his lips, which sewed them together completely in an instant. Him being annoying is nothing new that hes annoying. Lets just sew up his lips. The red-robed young ladys tone was calm. She was Witch, who had always been guarding Lin Xin. Dragon Emperor was completely shocked when he sensed the terrifying auras emanating from these few people. There were so many terrifying powerhouses in the Sword Alliance! Chapter 1902 - Because We’re at Rank Isnt that going too far, Little Witch? Grimace grew another mouth on his face and shouted at Witch. Witch placed her finger on her lips and shushed him softly. It appeared quite threatening. Grimace shut his mouth immediately. He only had a clone here right now. He would end up on the losing side when faced with her Primordium. Perhaps others would not deign to hit him in the presence of outsiders, but Witch had many tricks up her sleeve. It would be easy for her to punish him with all sorts of tricks. Youre the only one who can get him to shut up, Little Witch. Charcoal was smiling happily when he saw that Grimace had met his match. Thunder, who was standing to the side, gave Little Witch a thumbs up too. While they were chatting, Tyrant, Fiend, Scarlet Imp, Herculean King, Bing Wang, and the others arrived one after the other. The imperial monsters did not really conceal their auras. Dragon Emperor was shocked to see that, so much so that he forgot to greet them. After they chatted for a little bit, Charcoal finally noticed that there were two outsiders around. Your aura Youre fromthe Dragon Tribe? It glanced at Old Man Heavens Secret, who was standing far away, and it soon turned its attention back to Dragon Emperor. It sensed the same type of aura on him. Thats right, senior. Dragon Emperor wanted to greet Charcoal when he saw the latter arrive. However, he had been stunned when he saw what Witch did to Grimace. As more powerhouses from the Sword Alliance arrived one after the other, he became even more dazed and totally forgot that he was supposed to come over and greet Charcoal. Please dont call me senior. Call me Charcoal. Charcoal was too shy to be called a senior. It knew that if they really wanted to talk about seniority, this person before it was definitely its ancestor. Dragon Emperor had the legitimate Dragon Tribes bloodline of the Dragon Forefather. Although Charcoal was a legitimate Dragon Tribe member too, it only elevated to rank-10 by relying on its masters Goldfinger. Meanwhile, Dragon Emperor was born at Eternity rank-9, and had been a Dominator as soon as he was born. Charcoal Dragon Emperor was stunned when he heard its name. He had a faint feeling that it sounded similar to the name of a pet. Nevertheless, he did not dare to say that out loud, and opted to greet Charcoal respectfully instead. Senior Charcoal He did not know Charcoals background, but he could sense that it was much more powerful than he was judging by its combat strength. He figured that he should call it senior. Although its bloodline was not as pure as his, it had powerful abilities. Charcoal did not say much more seeing that Dragon Emperor insisted on calling it senior. It could only let him be. Dragon Emperor chatted with Charcoal for a while, as he wanted to learn about its background. However, Charcoal kept avoiding the topic. If Charcoal really told the truth, its sense of seniority would really disappear. In order to prevent Dragon Emperor from dwelling on the topic, Charcoal dragged him over and introduced him to the rest of the imperial monsters passionately. Dragon Emperor chatted with the many seniors, and he slowly forgot about his initial objective. After chatting for a little bit, he found out that, apart from that guy called Grimace, these powerhouses from the Sword Alliance were quite easygoing. It was not that Grimace was difficult to communicate with, he was just a little mean. Time flew by, and soon it was the 51st midnight. The oothecas sixth round of breeding finally began. This time, as everyone expected, the ootheca bred an Abyssal monster that had mastered ten trillion chaotic cosmoses. Herculean King killed the monster directly with a mere slap. Dragon Emperor was quite shocked when he saw that. As Dragon Emperor, his physical strength was sufficiently powerful. However, Herculean Kings attack showed him a level of physical strength that he could not reach. Over the next few days, the number of Abyssal monsters the ootheca bred kept multiplying. Nevertheless, they were killed by those people from the Sword Alliance easily. They basically killed all of the monsters instantly. This made Dragon Emperor, who had thought that he was invincible in the infinite universe for a couple of eras, aware that he had been a frog in the well previously. The few seniors from the Sword Alliance in front of him could kill him instantly with a casual slap. When the 60th day arrived, 512 Abyssal monsters that had mastered ten trillion chaotic cosmoses appeared. Still, the few of them killed the Abyssal monsters instantly. Dragon Emperor could hold back no longer and finally raised the question that he had been nurturing in his heart, throughout these few days, to Charcoal. Senior Charcoal, why can you guys kill these Abyssal monsters so easily when some of their auras are clearly more powerful than yours? Are you all concealing your real combat strength? When Charcoal heard that question, it leaned in close to Dragon Emperors ear and said softly through voice transmission, I can tell you, but you cant tell anyone else. Dragon Emperor kept nodding. Its because weve been elevated to rank-10, Charcoal told him a secret that was not considered a secret. Rank-10?! Dragon Emperor widened his eyes. Rank-10 was the ultimate grade that legends claimed that all living beings could achieve. He had always thought that rank-10 living beings were only a legend, and that it was impossible for such beings to really exist. Since being born until now, which spanned a period of tens of eras, he had never seen a rank-10 living being. Even throughout the few eras he had ruled the Dragon Island, whereby its intelligence network spread through the entire infinite universe, he had never heard anything about a rank-10 living being appearing. Although Ive only mastered some 20 trillion chaotic cosmoses, with my ability, I can fight on equal terms with powerhouses that have mastered 100 trillion chaotic cosmoses, Charcoal said while glancing at the rest, Them too. In the infinite universe, basically all powerhouses that could elevate to dominator-level rank-9 were rank-9 living beings. The Kingdoms of those that were lower than rank-9 could not contain hundreds of millions of chaotic cosmoses. Everyone had the same grade. That was the reason why, among dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, the number of chaotic cosmoses one mastered basically decided which one of them was more powerful. Then, were you guys born at rank-10, senior? Or was it somehow acquired? Dragon Emperor could not help but ask further curiously. Naturally, we only acquired that rank later. Charcoal did not hide the fact. Theres a way to do that?! Dragon Emperor asked rather emotionally. However, he instantly realized that it was very inappropriate to ask Charcoal about such a secret. Is the method for sale? The reason he was so emotional was because Charcoal was also a Dragon Tribe member like he was. It meant that there was a high chance that he could use the same elevation method that Charcoal used. I really cant tell you that. Charcoal waved directly to decline him. They used Xiao Heis Advance Card. Naturally, it could not tell outsiders about such a secret. Lin Huang had been around in the cultivation world for a couple of years. Although many people knew about his identity as a traveler, nobody knew what his Goldfingers function was. Many guessed that it had something to do with his cultivation speed. A small number of them guessed that it had something to do with his imperial monsters. However, nobody guessed that his Goldfinger could elevate his imperial monsters grades. Naturally, they would not reveal such a secret, nor would they dare to. Although Dragon Emperor was sad to hear Charcoals response, he knew that it made sense that it did not reveal such precious information. Such a secret was enough to make everyone in the infinite universe lose their collective minds! Chapter 1903 - I’m Going Back into Closed In the morning of the 61st day, more people from the Sword Alliance came. It was Kylie who arrived this time. When it was almost afternoon, Lancelot became the second to arrive. Killer only arrived when the sky was turning dark. Dragon Emperor could clearly sense that the auras of these three people were even more powerful than Charcoal and the others. At midnight, the ootheca entered a new round of breeding again. This time, it bred a human lady. To be exact, it bred a young lady who looked pretty. She looked like she was only in her early 20s. She did not exude the aura of a cultivator at all, and looked just like a regular person. When they saw the lady, it was not only Dragon Emperor, but even Bai and the others were stunned. The next second, Kylie charged forward in a flash. Her spear pierced through the ladys body directly. Her blood poured out. She still looked human even after she died. Dragon Emperor still looked doubtful. However, Bai and the others were staring at the human corpse expressionlessly at the moment. They had just heard Witchs voice transmission, Its an illusion. Dont fall for its tricks! While sending the voice transmission, she also performed a hand seal to snap them all out of the illusion. As Dragon Emperors Gods soul was too weak, he failed to snap out of it even with Witchs help. To Bai and the others, the corpse of the graceful human lady he was looking at was a tentacled monster. The monster had the head of a butterfly, and its body beneath its head was that of a human lady. However, there were tentacles that were like white snakes from the waist down. They were squirming around continuously After having its chest pierced by Kylies spear, it tried to regenerate its squirming flesh over and over again. However, deep inside the wound, the purple lightning did not stop flickering. As it flickered, not only did its wound not heal at all, it even expanded at a speed that was visible to the naked eye Kylie did not attack again. She watched quietly from the side while clutching her battle spear. Very soon, the lightning had spread to half of its body. The butterfly-faced monsters body seemed to be rotting rapidly. It soon turned into a pile of grayish-white liquid Only then did Dragon Emperor sense the remnant aura exuding from the pile of liquid. It was the devilish Abyssal energy. He had just realized what had happened. An illusion?! Charcoal, who was standing to the side, nodded. It was a rather powerful one. However, it did not admit that it had fallen for its trick as well earlier. Although the monster was killed, Kylie and the rest did not feel any joy from the victory at all. Almost everyone had fallen for its trick earlier. Were it not for Witch, there might have been casualties. They realized that, although they could fight monsters that were more powerful than them, as well as powerful enemies that had mastered hundreds of trillions of chaotic cosmoses, the strength of their Gods souls was still a great weakness. If they encountered enemies that were experts in Gods soul attacks, Witch might only be the only person present who would be able to fight. Grimace, get your Primordium here, Kylie said to Grimace directly. No need. As soon as Grimace was done speaking, his aura began to skyrocket instantly. Very soon, it arrived at a similar level to Kylies. My clone should have 80% of the ability of my Primordium now. It should be enough. Seeing that, Bai, who was standing to the side, also began to adjust his clones ability. His aura quickly increased to a level similar to Grimaces. Their clones had not been eligible to join the battle earlier, but they could now. You guys are so lazy. Charcoal glanced at the two clones. Over the next few days, Kylie was still the primary attacker. She was the fastest, so the rest could not get to the monsters faster than she did. They only picked up the monsters that she missed. On the 64th midnight, the ootheca bred eight Abyssal monsters. Not only that, among them were monsters that had mastered over 800 trillion chaotic cosmoses. Kylie, Bai and the others had to work together to kill them. On the 65th day, Eclipse (Eclipse Boa), Crescent Moon and Dark Moon (the two Dark Crescent Snakes), Death Knight, Fallen Knight, Evil Dominator, Teng Ran (Teng Snake), Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son), Blackscale (Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain), Nine Gloom (Silver-armored Nine Gloom), Bloop (Abyssal King Jellyfish), Old Spear (World-ending Spearfiend) and Shadow (Shadow God) arrived on the battlefield one after the other. Apart from the Bug Tribe, almost all of the imperial monsters under Lin Huang had arrived. All of them were at rank-10. They had each mastered more than ten trillion chaotic cosmoses. Over the next few days, everyone worked together to kill the monsters. Bai and Grimaces clones unleashed their abilities perfectly. Their performance was no less amazing than the other imperial monsters. Everyone enjoyed the fights. However, after the battle on the 70th midnight, Grimaces clone disappeared. Bais clone vanished as well. Charcoal left directly after telling Dragon Emperor, Im going back into closed-door cultivation. Kylie and the others left one after the other, though Kylie left her clone here. What does that mean? Dragon Emperor had confusion fill his face. He could not understand what Charcoal meant by that when he left. One had to know that the new round of breeding would start again on the 71st day. Them leaving looked more like they had ditched their responsibility and passed it to Dragon Emperor. He looked doubtful. Seeing that Kylie left a clone here, he went up to ask her after a moment of hesitation, Where did they all go? They went back to refine some Kingdoms, Kylies clone explained simply. They are refining Kingdoms now? Can they make it in time for the new round of breeding tomorrow? As soon as Dragon Emperor asked that, he suddenly thought of something and let it slip directly, The Sword Alliance has a time flow acceleration supreme treasure?! Kylie only looked at him in silence. She did not nod to admit it, nor did she shake her head to deny it. Dragon Emperor had goosebumps from her stare, so he quickly said, I was just speaking nonsense. I dont know anything. He returned to where he had been standing in a flash. His fluctuating emotions gradually calmed down. After guessing that the Sword Alliance had some time flow acceleration supreme treasure, he finally thought through some things that he had not been able to figure out earlier. No wonder the Sword Alliance could create so many powerhouses in large numbers He knew very well that the Kingdoms in rank-9 living beings could usually contain 100 million to one trillion chaotic cosmoses at most. There were some who were born with unique bodies or physiques, or for other reasons, that could surpass one trillion chaotic cosmoses. It was normal for rank-9.5 living beings to have Kingdoms that could contain more than one trillion chaotic cosmoses. It might even be possible for their Kingdoms to contain quadrillions of chaotic cosmoses. Meanwhile, the limit of chaotic cosmoses that could be contained in the Kingdoms of rank-10 living beings was significantly higher. Dragon Emperor thought one hundred trillion should be the bottomline, and that the limit could possibly be over ten quadrillion. Therefore, theoretically, Charcoal and the others had yet to reach their limits. If they had access to time flow acceleration treasures that could allow them to refine many powerhouses Kingdoms in a short period of time, and increase the number of chaotic cosmoses significantly in their bodies, it would be the equivalent of gaining a significant boost in their abilities within a short period of time. The truth was similar to what Dragon Emperor had guessed. Bai and the others were inside Lin Huangs body refining the Abyssal Kingdoms that he had cleansed with all of their might. Aided by the over six billion fold time flow acceleration in Lin Huangs Kingdom, the imperial monsters abilities were increasing frantically as time slowly passed by in the outside world Chapter 1904 - Best Actress Kylie As the sky slowly turned dark, Dragon Emperor began to worry after seeing that nobody from the Sword Alliance had returned. Then, late at night, a figure appeared next to Kylies clone out of nowhere. It was the Abyssal King Jellyfish, Bloop. She had taken human form completely. She wore a white dress, and her skin was fair and tender. Her purple hair reached her waist, and her face was gentle and warm. She gave out a completely different feeling when standing next to Kylie, who looked heroic. Dragon Emperor tried to gauge Bloops combat strength. He had a faint feeling that she was slightly more powerful than a day before, but he had no idea how much more powerful she was exactly. Nevertheless, her return relieved a significant amount of his worries. Within an hour of Bloop returning, Old Spear (World-ending Spearfiend), Shadow (Shadow God), Teng Ran (Teng Snake), Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son), Blackscale (Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain), Nine Gloom (Silver-armored Nine Gloom) and the others all came back to the battlefield one after the other. When that happened, Dragon Emperor was finally relieved. Over the next few hours, Lancelot, Charcoal, Tyrant and the rest arrived consecutively. An hour before midnight, apart from Bloody, Bai, Grimace, Kylies Primordium and the bunch of Bug Tribe monsters, the remaining imperial monsters under Lin Huangs command had all basically arrived. Seeing that Charcoal had arrived, Dragon Emperor went over to chat immediately. You guys only left for less than a day, and yet your auras have increased significantly. Of course, Charcoal said while smirking. Are you confident enough to handle this round of breeding? Dragon Emperor immediately asked further. I have full confidence in my ability to do so! Charcoal was bursting with confidence. Can you spill the beans? How many chaotic cosmoses have you mastered now? Dragon Emperor seemed to realize something after asking that question, after which he added, Just give me the rough figure. Charcoal did not answer that question directly. Instead, it asked while smiling, Can you calculate how many Abyssal monsters the ootheca will breed this round? Dragon Emperor was stunned when he heard the question, but he responded quickly, One on the first day, two on the second day, then it will double on each subsequent day. Finally, therell be 512 on the tenth day. Therefore, there will be 1,023 monsters in total in this round. Why did you ask that? Then how many chaotic cosmoses do you think those Abyssal monsters during the last round had mastered on average? Charcoal asked further. I cant calculate that exactly. I only know the weakest one had mastered over 100 trillion chaotic cosmoses, while the most powerful one should have mastered over 900 trillion. Dragon Emperor shook his head. I can only take the average number, so lets settle for 500 trillion chaotic cosmoses. So. given that there were over 1,000 monsters with an average of 500 trillion chaotic cosmoses each, how many chaotic cosmoses were there in total? Charcoal asked again with a smile. That would be over 500 quadrillion Dragon Emperor was clearly stunned when he calculated that. He glanced at Charcoal and the remaining imperial monsters present, after which he looked shocked. No way. Do your Kingdoms really contain so many chaotic cosmoses?! Apart from Bai, Kylie and Grimace, who were not here at the moment, there were a total of 25 people from the Sword Alliance present. If those three were included, there would only be a total of 28 people. Dividing 500 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses averagely among each of them, that would come up to close to 20 quadrillion each. Dragon Emperor had often wondered if rank-10 living beings Kingdom could contain more than ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Now, it seemed that it was completely possible. Actually there werent 500 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. There were only some 300 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Charcoal did not answer his question directly, but decisively corrected the figure. In reality, Dragon Emperors calculation was not too far off. For the 25 people who were here at least, they had now mastered more than ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. They were considered to be on the level of the three Outer Gods. As long as any of them was willing, it would be no problem for them to destroy the ootheca in front of them directly. However, Bloody had said something to everyone through voice transmission before they went into closed-door cultivation. This ootheca might be a great threat to others but, to us, its equivalent to a valuable supreme treasure. The reason being is that each of the Abyssal monsters it breeds is a great trove for our Kingdoms. The Abyssal monsters that it bred on the seventh round were enough to elevate us to the level of the Outer Gods. In the eighth round, it can definitely provide us with more resources for our Kingdoms. In my opinion, when you guys return to the battlefield, even if you have the ability to destroy the ootheca, theres no need to do so at all. My suggestion is that everyone should restrain your combat strength and maintain your auras at one hundred trillion chaotic cosmoses so as to obtain the resources from the eighth round forcefully. You guys better put up a good act and not expose your real abilities to prevent Nyarlathotep from recalling the ootheca halfway through. Itd be even better if you guys can deceive him until the ninth round Everyone agreed with what Bloody said. After all, the resources the ootheca provided were hard to come by. As soon as Nyarlathotep and the others under Azas command noticed that something was off, they probably would refrain from using the ootheca to provide the imperial monsters with any further resources. Due to Bloodys reminder, everyone suppressed their aura at one hundred trillion chaotic cosmoses as soon as they left closed-door cultivation. Lin Huang was very satisfied by how the situation was progressing. Initially, he had been worried that they could no longer handle the monsters when the ootheca started breeding monsters that had mastered one quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. If that happened, after testing the limits of the infinite universes side, Nyarlathotep and the others might have sent over their armies soon after. Now though, it looked like it would not be a problem to drag out the situation for another ten days. This meant that he would have ten days extra to integrate more chaotic cosmoses. Time flew by, and it was soon midnight again. A couple of minutes before the ootheca began a new round of breeding, Bai, Grimace and Kylie also returned to the battlefield. Similarly, the three of them had disguised their auras to be at the level of one hundred trillion chaotic cosmoses. Soon after the three of them arrived, a new round of breeding officially began. This time, the Abyssal monster the ootheca bred was a supreme powerhouse that had mastered one quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. As soon as the monster appeared, even before it released its aura, Dragon Emperor clearly felt suffocated by its mere presence. He even had a faint feeling that the time around him had frozen somewhat. However, the next second, he saw Kylie, garbed in silver armor, appearing above the monster out of nowhere. Endless golden lightning shot forth from the tip of her spear. It drowned the monster instantly. The monster released a devastating shriek. However, the monster escaped the lightning web forcefully a moment later and swung its giant palm at Kylie. She fought it while holding her spear. She was thrown out directly as the tip of her spear collided with the giant palm In reality, Dragon Emperor could not see the battle clearly. Meanwhile, Charcoal and the others, who were watching from the side, exclaimed secretly, Tsk, tsk. Kylies acting skills are off the charts! If Master was here, he would say that she deserved all of the award for best actress in all categories Chapter 1905 - You Guys Are Lucky This Round! Kylies battle lasted for close to ten minutes. She had almost unleashed all of her strength to barely kill that Abyssal monster. Bai and the rest watched the entire battle with their jaws on the floor. They were absolutely gobsmacked by how great her acting skills were. If they did not know her current ability, they might have really thought that this was her real ability. Dragon Emperor was completely convinced. He had even forgotten about the number that Charcoal had gotten him to calculate earlier. How did you act so well, Kylie? Charcoal could not help but ask her. Kylie glanced at Charcoal. I suppressed my combat strength to 300 trillion chaotic cosmoses, while also prohibiting myself from using additional strength during the battle. Bai and the others had actually guessed what Kylie had done. To be honest, that was actually quite a dangerous move to pull. After Charcoal heard her reply, almost without hesitation, it sealed its combat strength as well. Everyone did the same for the next few days. Although it was quite risky, at least Nyarlathotep would not find anything strange about the situation that might cause him to retrieve the ootheca in advance. They had tasted the bountiful rewards from killing the Abyssal monsters during the seventh round earlier. In the eighth round now, the Abyssal creatures the ootheca bred had mastered almost tenfold the number of chaotic cosmoses of those from the previous round. Naturally, the imperial monsters were unwilling to give up on such a feast easily. If a little bit of acting would earn them at least 100 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses, as well as a significant boost in their abilities, why would they not do so? Throughout these few days, it was not only Kylie, but Bai and the others also exhibited great acting skills as well. On the 78th day, the number of Abyssal monsters bred by the ootheca surpassed a hundred. A number of them could not help but unseal a small number of chaotic cosmoses. However, they were careful. They maintained their increase in ability at less than 20%. As expected, Nyarlathotep, who had been watching the battles secretly, did not notice anything off. The reason being was that the monsters the ootheca bred earlier were fewer in number, so it made total sense that the imperial monsters had held back their abilities. Although Nyarlathotep guessed that Bai and the others had probably used some time flow acceleration treasure to obtain a boost in their abilities after vanishing for a day, the treasures he knew about had a limit of accelerating time flow by 10,000 times. He would never imagine that the time flow in Lin Huangs Kingdom could be accelerated billions of times faster, resulting in one day inside being equivalent to 18 million years outside. That long period of time was enough for the imperial monsters under Lin Huangs command to fully refine all of the Abyssal Kingdoms. For the 79th and 80th day, the imperial monsters won while making it look difficult for them. In reality, they were secretly over the moon. No matter how high the possibility was of them being exposed in the next round, at least they had already obtained the spoils they desired in this eighth round. When the hunt on the 80th day ended, Bai and the others vanished quickly once again. Yet again, Dragon Emperor and Kylies clone were the only ones left behind. Dragon Emperor watched as Charcoal and the others disappeared. He became worried again. Meanwhile, Kylies clone shut her eyes and rested in silence. She could sense that there was a Divine Telekinesis with ill intentions secretly scanning her. Kylies clone only had the strength of 300 trillion chaotic cosmoses. However, as her clone had the same source in terms of Gods soul, Kylies Primordium could clearly sense Nyarlathotep scanning the clone. Her Primordium merely grinned. You wont find anything off! As a powerhouse of a similar level, she had absolute confidence that he would not be able to find anything unusual. It was Bloody who had asked her to leave the clone behind on purpose. Nyarlathotep was hiding inside the huge mystic territory. After scanning Kylie with Divine Telekinesis a few times, he scoffed and eventually recalled his Divine Telekinesis. You guys were lucky this round! Id like to see how you all are going to handle the next round! Conveniently, Dragon Emperor did not sense that he was being scanned with Divine Telekinesis. Before midnight of the 81st day, Charcoal and the rest returned one after the other. The chaotic cosmoses they had mastered had basically surpassed 100 quadrillion. Some of them had even mastered over 200 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. However, they still adjusted their auras to 800 to 900 trillion chaotic cosmoses this time, while a small number of them adjusted their auras to a little over one quadrillion. The reason why nobody rashly adjusted their aura to above one quadrillion was to prevent Nyarlathotep, who was watching secretly, from becoming skeptical. Regarding how their combat strength at such a level could handle the oothecas new round of breeding, Bloody already had made her arrangements. At midnight, black fog lingered on the surface of the ootheca. It had begun its new round of breeding. It was a giant cow-headed fiend that was bred this time. It was a few times bigger than the ootheca. Judging by the Abyssal monsters aura, it had clearly mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. It was on the same level as the Outer Gods. It wore bronze battle armor, and held a huge battle axe in its hands. It was clearly a tough close-combat-type powerhouse. Nyarlathotep was snickering in the dark. Judging by the strength of your auras, you guys wont even be able to break through its defense! The next second, Kylie, Thunder and Charcoal looked at each other. The three of them appeared above the giant cow-headed fiends head in a flash. Instantly, a battle formation was formed with Kylie as the core. A female battle gods figure, that was holding a spear, was consolidated in the air. The battle god held the spear and pierced it through the middle of the giant cow-headed fiends eyebrows. Endless bolts of lightning and sparks erupted like a light pillar at the tip of the spear. The giant cow-headed fiend quickly blocked it by swinging its ax. The monsters huge body, which was as big as a chaotic cosmos, was thrown out by the spear directly. Nyarlathoteps pupils shrunk when he saw the situation unfold. Never had he thought that they would be able to form a battle formation. Among the three people who formed the battle formation, the lady at the core was the only one who had mastered more than one quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. The other two had only mastered some 800 to 900 trillion chaotic cosmoses. However, when they formed the battle formation, their abilities were enough to fight the giant cow-headed fiend that had mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses! The battle formations humans designed cannot be underestimated at all Nyarlathotep could not help but release a soft sigh. Although they had sealed their real abilities, Kylie and the other two had a level of power that was no weaker than the giant cow-headed fiend. They even had the absolute upper hand in terms of speed. They were suppressing the fiend the entire time. The giant cow-headed fiend could not unleash its strength at all, and it was suppressed in terms of speed. It was soon cornered. This caused the battle to last less than 20 minutes, and the giant cow-headed fiend was killed by the battle formation formed by the three of them. The first battle of the ninth round ended while Nyarlathotep was in disbelief. With three people forming a battle formation, you guys can only form nine battle formations and fight twenty monsters forcefully. I dont believe that you guys can handle fifty to a hundred monsters! Chapter 1906 - Stop Acting Over the next few days, Bai and the others formed battle formations, killing the Abyssal monsters that the ootheca bred. Since then, they soon found out that the battle strength of the monsters the ootheca bred seemed to have reached its limit. All of the Abyssal monsters it bred had only mastered some ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. None of them had mastered over 20 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. This made the imperial monsters combat strength disguise even more successful. Time passed by, and soon it was the 85th day. At midnight, the ootheca bred 16 Abyssal monsters. Meanwhile, Bai and the others had only formed nine battle formations. Feeling helpless, some teams could only fight two monsters on their own. Although they secretly unsealed some chaotic cosmoses, the battle was still very tough and only ended some three hours later. Seeing that Bai and other others began to sit with their legs crossed to adjust their breathing, absorbing chaotic crystals and swallowing the essence of the universe to recover, Nyarlathotep had an excited look in his eyes. Id like to see what you guys are going to do during the next round! On the 86th midnight, the number of Abyssal monsters the ootheca bred doubled again. There were 32 monsters now. While Nyarlathotep was eager to see them being defeated, Kylie and the rest began to create clones. Almost everyone present created two clones. Although their combat strength was lower than their Primordiums, they had 70% to 80% of their Primordiums abilities. The clones then formed battle formations as well. The issue of not having sufficient battle formations was instantly solved. Nyarlathotep was stunned to see the tricks they pulled. Clearly, it was a solution that Bloody had arranged beforehand. As the clones joined in, the battle became much easier than the day before. Within an hour and a half, the 32 Abyssal monsters were killed. Nyarlathotep was enraged. He really had not expected them to pull this kind of trick. For the 87th, 88th and 89th day, their actions remained the same, whereby they would create more clones to form battle formations. However, as more and more clones were created, their combat strength would naturally be lower. This caused the battles throughout those days to become more and more difficult. On the 87th day, they spent close to four hours in battle. On the 88th day, they spent close to over eight hours in battle. On the 89th day, the battle only ended after 20 hours. Throughout those few days, they had lost half of their clones. Nevertheless, they held on. Seeing them slowly being beaten back, Nyarlathotep was anticipating the last day of battle more and more. Judging by their current state, all of them should die on the last day. Soon, it was the 90th midnight. A layer of black fog lingered on the surface of the ootheca again. However, what was different from before was that the fog had enveloped the ootheca entirely. They could only see the lingering fog, and they could no longer see the spherical ootheca anymore. The imperial monsters noticed the unusual situation instantly, and they put their guard up. The breeding time for this round was clearly much longer than before. They could only see the rumbling black fog, and could not probe what was happening deep within the fog at all. Lin Huang, who was watching from far away, was the only one who could see what exactly was happening within the fog. The ootheca was rotting and collapsing at speed visible to the naked eye. The tentacles began to tangle together, forming smaller ink-black spheres. There were a total of 512 spheres formed. The other side of the spheres were connected to the core of the ootheca, which was a ball of extremely thick black fog. However, the ball of fog was shrinking quickly as well. Lin Huangs vision pierced through the surface of the sphere, and he soon saw what was happening inside. The black spheres were actually monster eggs. Inside the eggs, Abyssal monsters were forming quickly. As the ootheca gradually collapsed, the ball of black fog at the core of the ootheca was shrinking as well. Once it had completely faded in the end, the black spheres that were made up of the tangled tentacles would be successfully bred. There were cracks slowly appearing on the small spheres. Only then did Bai and the others see the black fog that was enveloping the ootheca fade away slowly. The Abyssal monsters exuding terrifying auras finally showed themselves slowly. Judging by their auras, they had clearly mastered close to 20 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Not only that, there were 512 of them. What confused them the most was that the 500 or so monsters all looked the same. They were monsters with 12 hooves. Their iron hooves were as thick as giant pillars. Their heads consisted of tens of thousands of goats faces. Above their heads were metal tentacles that were like horns that reached the sky, swaying like kelp in the sea. The Black Goats Offspring?! They instantly recalled what Old Man Heavens Secret had mentioned about the ultimate creature the Black Goats Egg would breed the Black Goats Offspring. Lin Huang, who was watching the battle from afar, frowned. Why do they look different from the information Heavens Secret provided? In the information Heavens Secret provided to Lin Huang, the Black Goats Offspring was the ultimate creature that the Black Goats Egg bred. Their sizes were much bigger than these Abyssal monsters in front of him, and their auras should be that of at least ten quintillion chaotic cosmoses. Their auras alone should have surpassed the three Outer Gods. Old Man Heavens Secret revealed to Bai and the others that the aura of the Black Goats Offspring was only ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses as he was worried that they would feel burdened. He lowered their expectations on purpose. On the other hand, the information they provided Lin Huang was legitimate without holding anything back. However, Heavens Secret did not describe what they were looking at now. Nonetheless, Lin Huang figured out the reason just with a thought. It was because there were many powerhouses in the era when Aza and the others invaded back then. As such, it was impossible that the Black Goats Egg could breed Abyssal monsters up to this point as it would have been killed before reaching this point. This meant that the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had not seen the Black Goats Eggs ultimate breeding mode. Naturally, such a thing was not included in the information Heavens Secret provided. Seems like Bai and the rest will not have to pretend anymore. Lin Huang did not panic at all. Instead, he chuckled. Bai and the others snapped back to their senses after being momentarily stunned. The ootheca is gone, so this should be the last round of breeding, Grimace said to the rest through voice transmission, I think we shouldnt act anymore. If we continue with the act, we might really lose our lives. The rest looked at Bai, seemingly awaiting his order. After all, Bai was Lin Huangs first imperial monster, and his ability had always been ranked within the top three among them. When Lin Huang was not around, everyone basically treated him as the boss. Bai only hesitated for a second before nodding. Alright, stop acting. Lets clear this round directly! Chapter 1907 - The Sword Alliance Was Too Poor Nyarlathotep looked like he was enjoying a good show. The Black Goats Offspring biomimetics had mastered close to 20 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. That was not the only reason that they were powerful. Their physical bodies mimicked the Black Goats Offspring as well. It would be difficult even for a dominator-level rank-9 powerhouse who had mastered 20 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses to break through their defense. Apart from their terrifying physical bodies, their strength had reached a terrifying level. A stomp of their iron hooves would unleash double of the force of their Dominator Power. What confused people was that these biomimetics had no Gods souls in their bodies. They were born to suppress all sorts of Gods soul-type techniques. Nyarlathotep almost laughed out loud when the information of these biomimetics flashed through his head one after the other. However, the smile on his face froze suddenly. The reason being was that he saw a biomimetics head pierced with an electric arc directly. Then it happened to the second one, third one The biomimetics were like lambs awaiting slaughter. They were killed easily without having the ability to fight back. Nyarlathotep failed to snap back to his senses for a while as he watched the scene in front of him unfold. He could not really understand why these biomimetics defenses, which were considered insanely strong, were like a piece of paper before these people. They seemed somehow more fragile than the preceding Abyssal monsters. Even their iron hooves stomps were futile. The opponents defended themselves against their stomps easily. Is there something wrong with the biomimetics?! That was the thought that came to Nyarlathoteps head. He suspected that something had gone wrong with the Black Goats Eggs breeding. However, he had finally realized what was wrong the next second. The figures that were killing off the biomimetics no longer exuded the weak auras that they did before. Instead, they were now so powerful that they could easily suppress these biomimetics. Judging by their auras, each of the powerhouses present had mastered at least one quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. These guys have been concealing their abilities! Nyarlathotep really had not expected them to have disguised their combat strength throughout these past few months. He was even a little regretful that he had not stayed in the infinite universe to watch the battle. Had he done so, he would have sensed even the slightest unusualness instantly. Meanwhile, there was actually a certain amount of resistance when extending ones Divine Telekinesis through the dimensional gateway from the mystic territory to the infinite universe. However, what he did not know was that Bai the others abilities did not start off this powerful. The abilities they revealed when he arrived had indeed been their real abilities at that time. They only concealed their abilities after they were elevated to the same level as the three Outer Gods after their closed-door cultivation sessions. They had sealed a major portion of their combat strength on the battlefield. Killing off those Black Goats Offsprings biomimetics was as easy as killing chickens and dogs. They killed most of them instantly in one hit. There were only a few of them that required a second hit. Within half a minute, the 512 biomimetics were killed off completely. They had turned into carcasses that were scattered all over the ground. As Bai and the rest got busy collecting the carcasses, Nyarlathotep projected a shadow from inside the mystic territory. He looked at them. Ill remember you guys While he was still speaking, Grimace pointed a finger and tore the shadow apart directly. How dare you, a loser, show off! Nyarlathotep was enraged by Grimaces actions. However, he did not dare to show up with his Primordium. After all, these 20 or so people had abilities on par with his. If he really went with his Primordium, he might not be able to return at all. Although the test was a failure, he had at least gotten something in return. He had tested the limits of the infinite universes ability at least. I guess these 20 people are the most powerful ones. However, their abilities are not a threat to Master Aza at all. Nyarlathotep had undoubtedly made an incorrect speculation. He was sure that Bai and the others represented the most powerful combat strength that the infinite universe could offer. However, it actually made sense that he had arrived at that conclusion. After all, the probability of rank-10 living beings appearing in the infinite universe was extremely low. There might not even be one throughout many tens of eras. Having so many rank-10 living beings that were on such a level meant that it was basically impossible that one would have extra Odyl to cultivate more powerful powerhouses. However, what he did not know was that Lin Huang had cultivated them to rank-10 through artificial techniques. In terms of their combat strength elevation, it was all thanks to Nyarlathoteps Black Goats Egg. Watching the mystic territorys door closing slowly, Bai and the others knew that Nyarlathoteps test had completely ended. None of them went after him rashly, as nobody knew what was behind the door. If Aza was awake, they would be seeking death by going in. Once the door was shut and the entire mystic territory disappeared, everyone was relieved. However, they knew that when the Abyss attacked again, it would be the battle that would decide the ultimate victor! Dragon Emperor watched the entire war as a spectator. Although his Divine Telekinesis could not capture their movements in the end, he saw them collecting the carcasses with his own two eyes. Meanwhile, Old Man Heavens Secret, who was watching from even further away, left quietly as soon as the mystic territory disappeared. Charcoal and the rest left soon after speaking to Dragon Emperor. Everyone was eager to go into their next round of closed-door cultivation. They wanted to refine the Kingdoms they had obtained. Lin Huang nodded in satisfaction as he watched them return. Great performance, especially your acting skill. It was amazing. His compliments made them feel shy. Leave a complete carcass of the Black Goats Offspring for me. Ill get Shasha and the rest to analyze it to see if they can make similar Bug Tribe fighters. As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, Bai took out a carcass directly and placed it in front of Lin Huang. Lin Huang nodded and continued, Dont destroy the carcasses after refining the Kingdoms. Shasha can use them as materials. Also, give me a list of the resources you need after your closed-door cultivation sessions. Ill be doing some trading at Heavens Secret. Heavens Secret and the other top organizations had opened their treasuries to the public previously. They would be able to obtain many resources from the treasuries using the hunting points the Sword Alliance members obtained from killing the Abyssal monsters. They became excited when Lin Huang mentioned that. One had to know that, although some of them wielded infinite supreme treasures, they had never actually obtained one that belonged solely to themselves. The Sword Alliance had been too poor previously and could not afford the equipment. Even the few infinite supreme treasures on Lin Huang had been elevated from God Weapons. He had not spent any money on buying new ones. However, the hunting points they obtained throughout the past few months should be sufficient to equip everyone in the Sword Alliance. Chapter 1908 - Looting One by One Throughout those 90 days of the oothecas breeding, the number of chaotic cosmoses Lin Huang had integrated reached new heightshe had integrated 788 decillion chaotic cosmoses now. While this was still less than one ten thousandth of the number of chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe, nevertheless, Lin Huang had a faint feeling that his ability had become so powerful that it reached a terrifying level. If he wanted to, he could kill Nyarlathotep with just a glance. However, he did not stop integrating more chaotic cosmoses. After Bai and the others left closed-door cultivation after a few days, they were now powerhouses who had mastered quintillions of chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang nodded with satisfaction when he saw the results of their hard work. Naturally, they were not the only ones who received benefits over the past few days. Bloody and the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers and Bug Emperors were included too. They refined the remaining Kingdoms obtained by Bai and the others. They had basically mastered quintillions of chaotic cosmoses as well. Lin Huang could clearly feel that, although they were already considered the top powerhouses in the infinite universe, and had mastered quintillions of chaotic cosmoses, he could kill them by just staring at them. While Bai and the others were in closed-door cultivation, Old Man Heavens Secret announced the result of the battle with the ootheca after consulting Lin Huang. Once the news spread, all the powerhouses throughout the entire infinite universe discovered that the Sword Alliance had been the one that had solved the crisis in the end. The Sword Alliance became very popular. They became a hot topic on the internet. Old Man Heavens Secret posted some clips of the final few battles involving Bai and the others after getting Lin Huangs approval. This made the Sword Alliances popularity explode even further. Some gossip-loving Dominators posted the battle videos they had recorded on the internet as well, trying to ride on the popularity of the topic. For the next few days, everyone was discussing the Black Goats Egg. After exiting closed-door cultivation, Bai and the others gave Lin Huang the list of resources they needed. Their first request was basically for infinite supreme treasures. Although the weapons and armors that grew along with them had already become infinite supreme treasures, none of them had a full set. For instance, Bais bloody wings were infinite supreme treasures, but he did not have defensive-type equipment. This time, his first request was gilt sand, which was a special material that could integrate with his vampire particles. This material was the primary material used in making telekinetic infinite supreme treasures. Its specialty was its flexible yet indestructible fluid state. His second request was for an infinite supreme treasure-grade armor. Meanwhile, Tyrant had his battle armor grow with him. It had been elevated to an infinite supreme treasure as well. His first request was for an infinite supreme treasure-grade axe. His second request was for an infinite supreme treasure-grade glove. Kylies battle armor and spear were infinite supreme treasures as well. Her first request was for a Gods soul defensive-type infinite supreme treasure. In reality, most of the imperial monsters requests were made as a direct result of Bloodys suggestions. On one hand, they needed equipment that would strengthen and upgrade their attack techniques. On the other hand, they also needed defensive-type infinite supreme treasures, which would help them resist both physical and Gods soul attacks. As soon as they obtained these items, it would mean that the imperial monsters under Lin Huangs command were fully equipped. Naturally, their combat strength would be elevated to new heights as well. Apart from the imperial monsters, Lin Xin, Lin Xuan, the Sword Servants and the other people from the Sword Alliance also seized the opportunity to upgrade their equipment. After all, if Bai and the others redeemed all of the points they had earned from the hunt this time, they would likely empty the treasuries of those few top organizations. As soon as Lin Huangs will projection received the complete list that Bloody had organized, he visited Heavens Secret. Everyone at Heavens Secret had already figured out his intentions when they saw him arrive. Old Man Heavens Secret brought him over to the treasury. Lin Huang finally finished picking the items after strolling through the treasury for half a day, and asked Old Man Heavens Secret to register the items after exiting the treasury. While Old Man Heavens Secret was still checking the items, Lin Huang suddenly thought of the Black Goats Offspring, so he asked, Oh yeah, what happened with the last round of monsters the Black Goats Egg bred? We never saw the oothecas ultimate breeding mode as it didnt get to the last round of breeding in the past because all the powerhouses destroyed the ootheca. Therefore, we were under the impression that its last round of breeding only involved regular Abyssal monsters that had mastered ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Now it seems that, although those things were not the actual Black Goats Offspring, they had similar characteristics to it. However, the actual Black Goats Offspring is similar to the description we gave you. Its ability is much more powerful. The chief liege has witnessed it personally. Those that the ootheca bred can only be considered imitations at best. Lin Huang nodded after hearing Old Man Heavens Secrets explanation. The reason was basically similar to his own conjecture. It was highly unlikely that Heavens Secret would purposefully give him fake information. As expected, this breeding mode had never been seen before, which resulted in the mistaken information. After Old Man Heavens Secret registered the items and deducted the required points, Lin Huang left happily with the loot in hand. He did not return to the Sword Alliance. Instead, he traveled in the direction of Dragon Island. When he arrived, Dragon Emperor and the Dragon Tribe welcomed him in a friendly manner. After all, Dragon Emperor had seen the level of ability displayed by the people from the Sword Alliance. Naturally, he would not dare to treat the chief of such an organization lightly. With the Dragon Emperor guiding him, Lin Huang soon found his way into the Dragon Tribes treasury. Not only did Dragon Emperor smile throughout the entire process of treasure selection, he even gave Lin Huang a detailed explanation of each treasure. He was so passionate that Lin Huang almost suspected that he liked men. What Lin Huang did not know was that Dragon Emperor had always been a flirty individual. He had had many flings with thousands of female powerhouses previously. After Lin Huang had selected the items he wanted, Dragon Emperor even gave him a 20% discount before deducting the points. Lin Huang headed straight to Sword Palace as soon as he left Dragon Island. Although the palace master was dead, the treasury remained open as promised. As the funeral date had yet to be set, Lin Huang followed one of the vice palace masters into the treasury after offering his unofficial condolences. The vice palace master remained silent throughout the whole process of selection. Lin Huang was happy, as he did not like chatting with strangers anyway. After quickly selecting the items and getting them checked, he left directly. He visited a few more top organizations one after the other after leaving Sword Palace. The person-in-charge from these top organizations clearly looked terrible after Lin Huang finished selecting the items. The reason being was that Lin Huang had almost taken away all of the infinite supreme treasures they had on offer. Although they were unwilling, they did not dare to renege on their agreement. After all, they had all seen the news about the Sword Alliance that was plastered all over the internet. They could only deduct the required points and allow him to take the items. After visiting many places, Lin Huang had finally arrived at the Snow Domain, which was his last stop. Chapter 1909 - Old Friend Xue Luo Snow Domains headquarters was in an isolated chaotic cosmos. They had remained a reclusive organization over the past few eras. The chaotic cosmos where their headquarters was had never been revealed to the outside world either. They only chose to show themselves recently because of Azas crisis. The chaotic cosmos where the headquarters was located then finally became visible to the public. Lin Huang quickly realized that the chaotic cosmos he had stepped into was actually no different from the other chaotic cosmoses. The star zone where Snow Domains headquarters was located was, unsurprisingly, covered in snow. As Lin Huang informed them of his arrival earlier, and had not hidden his aura (he only disguised his aura), many Dominators in Snow Domain sensed his arrival as soon as he arrived. People from Snow Domain appeared before Lin Huang in a flash. We welcome the Sword Alliances Chief Lin to Snow Domain! There was a light smile on Xue Luos face. Were considered old friends now, so theres no need for such pleasantries. Lin Huang nodded with a smile too. The people behind Xue Luo looked confused. They did not know how the Sword Alliances chief knew their master. Xue Luo did not bother to explain. Come and have a seat at the Snow Heavenly Palace. The people behind her were stunned when they heard what she said. Just when an officer that looked like a young lady was about to stop her, a white-robed middle-aged man beside her grabbed the officer and stopped her through voice transmission. The Snow Heavenly Palace was Xue Luos bedroom. It was not a place where one would entertain guests of the Snow Domain. Under normal circumstances, they would organize a grand reception in Snow Domains meeting room for a guest like the Sword Alliances chief. Everyone instantly noticed that the Sword Alliances chief seemed to have a really deep relationship with their master. Naturally, Lin Huang was not aware of all this. He thought that the Snow Heavenly Palace Xue Luo mentioned was the place where they usually entertained their guests. Go back to the headquarters. Ill take care of Chief Lin, Xue Luo turned her head and ordered them. The few people bowed and left quickly. Come with me, Xue Luo said to Lin Huang after those people left. She vanished in an instant as soon as she was done speaking. Lin Huang followed after her. When he caught up to her, he discovered that he was already above the clouds. There was a gigantic white palace before him. Xue Luo stood on a balcony at the top of the palace. Come on up. Lin Huang appeared on the balcony in a flash. Its quite peaceful here. Lin Huang looked down as he stood at the corner of the balcony. Endless white clouds filled his vision. He could also see the mountains, cities and rivers beneath the clouds when he focused. I dont like noisy places. Xue Luo looked down as well, as she stood to the side. Is this your private palace? At that moment, Lin Huang finally noticed that this was not the place where Snow Domain would usually entertain their guests. The reason being was that, apart from a couple of maids, he did not sense the presence of any staff members inside the palace at all. Yes, is something the matter? Xue Luo nodded while smiling. Not really. I originally thought that this was where the Snow Domain usually entertained their guests. Lin Huang smiled too. What? Are you in such a rush to talk business? Xue Luo teased. Not really. Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. After all, it was only his clone that came. As such, any delays during his visit would not cause problems. Moreover, to a certain extent, Xue Luo could be considered an old friend of his. It was understandable that she wanted to talk about something privately with him. Thank you, to all of you. Xue Luo suddenly said that out of nowhere. Why are you thanking us? Lin Huang was stunned. Im thanking you guys for solving the ootheca crisis, Xue Luo explained while smiling, Heavens Secret has revealed everything. They even posted some videos. Now the whole infinite universe knows that it was you guys, the Sword Alliance, who solved the ootheca crisis. Oh, so thats what youre talking about. Lin Huang finally understood why she thanked them. I thought that the infinite universe was doomed when I saw the ootheca. Xue Luo looked away from Lin Huang and stared into the distance. I even started preparing back-up plans when I came back. I hid a couple of reincarnation seeds and sent them into a dimensional turbulence. Lin Huang smiled after he heard her words. Theres no need to be so pessimistic. There will always be solutions to the problems that arise. Arent you worried about being defeated at all? Xue Luo suddenly turned her head to look at Lin Huang. Worrying wont change a thing, so I would rather focus on becoming more powerful. Lin Huang shook his head. Why do I feel like youre confident in your ability to defeat Aza? Xue Luo stared at Lin Huang with doubt on her face. She really could not sense any fear of Aza from his demeanor at all. Well only know for sure once we actually fight, Lin Huang responded calmly. He was not really worried about the current ability of Azas Primordium. However, what he was uncertain about was just how much more He would become after absorbing His clones. Xue Luo gleaned a hint from his response. Cant you tell me something more certain? I really dont know how powerful Aza will become in the end. What he said was indeed the truth. Alright then Xue Luo finally gave up on asking. The two of them chatted for quite some time before Xue Luo finally brought Lin Huang back to Snow Domain. She ordered a white-robed lady to bring him to their treasury. Lin Huang picked out a couple of items according to the list, and then left after saying goodbye. By now, Lin Huang had looted all of the treasuries that were opened to the public. In reality, only one-tenth of the Sword Alliances hunting points had been used up. However, the items he had redeemed those points for were enough to properly equip all of the imperial monsters and Sword Servants. Lin Huang gathered his imperial monsters and Sword Servants as soon as he returned to the Sword Alliance. He distributed all of the equipment and resources to them. If they included the original equipment the imperial monsters had, now, they each almost had a full set of infinite supreme treasure-grade equipment. Meanwhile, the Sword Servants were equipped with full sets of chaotic supreme treasures. Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and the others were fully equipped as well. However, Lin Huang did not get anything for himself. The God Weapons he possessed had been elevated to the point that they were so much more powerful than infinite supreme treasures. Each time he reached a new milestone in his integration of Kingdoms, the God Weapons in his body would be elevated. He had no idea which level they were at now. Apart from that, the Queen Mothers, including Shasha, received many things too. Under the time flow acceleration in Lin Huangs Kingdom, they had finally successfully analyzed the Black Goats Offsprings memetics after ten billion years. As long as they had enough materials, they could recreate similar creatures, which would be no weaker than the mimetics that the ootheca bred. Time flew by and, very soon, over a week had passed. An intense tremor spread throughout the infinite universe on that day. Lin Huangs pupils shrunk. He looked across space. He saw an extremely dark, fog-like door rapidly forming in the middle of the infinite universe Chapter 1910 - First Liege Visits The door that opened this time was at least a hundred times bigger than the one Nyarlathotep opened before. It was comparable to the size of hundreds of chaotic cosmoses. Even before the door opened, Lin Huang could sense the unusualness of this mystic territory. Is Aza finally coming? Lin Huang squinted as he watched the door open slowly. At the same time, his Divine Telekinesis sensed countless mystic territories descending frantically in the infinite universe. They were opening one after the other. When the black door was completely opened, countless mystic territories in the infinite universe seemed to go berserk. An insane amount of Abyssal monsters began to pour out like tidal waves. Numerous Virtual Gods, True Gods, Heavenly Gods, Lords, Dao-level, Heavenly Dao-level powerhouses and Dominators stepped out of the mystic territories They attacked the nearby areas! The war had officially begun! As countless Abyssal monsters began to attack, a commotion soon erupted at the location of the black door. Dominator-level Abyssal monsters stepped out of the black door one after the other. Soon, there were over 1,000 of them. Lin Huang started paying extra attention to the situation. Among the dominator-level Abyssal monsters, none of them were below rank-5. The weakest ones were dominator-level rank-5 Abyssal monsters, while the most powerful ones were rank-9. There were over 20 of these rank-9 Abyssal monsters. After this group of dominator-level Abyssal monsters showed up, four figures appeared above the monsters. These were four human-like figures. The one leading them wore black suit with dark red patterns on it. He was seated on a metal throne. He looked no different from an ordinary human in his early 20s. His face was so beautiful that he even seemed a little androgynous. Not only that, he exuded a strange charm that made people unable to look away. There were three others standing behind the metal throne; two men and one woman. Lin Huang was familiar with the aura of one of them, which was Nyarlathotep. However, he had now appeared in complete human form, and was wearing a black tuxedo and a tall hat. He was even holding a scepter in his hand. The other man had blonde hair and looked to be of the decent sort. He had a monocle on his left eye and was dressed in a pure white suit. Meanwhile, the woman had long black hair that reached her waist. She was wearing a sexy black dress and had an excellent figure that exuded a mature and charismatic charm. After he identified Nyarlathotep, the identities of the other two were obvious. The blonde man should be Yogg. Meanwhile, the mature woman in the black dress was clearly Shub. She was the breeder of the Black Goats Egg from before. As Lin Huang expected, judging by the aura exuded by the three Outer Gods, they had mastered less than one quintillion chaotic cosmoses. Meanwhile, Azas aura was just similar to the information Heavens Secret provided. He had only mastered one septillion chaotic cosmoses. While Lin Huang was still probing, Yogg, who was in the white suit, suddenly spoke. His voice spread throughout every corner of the infinite universe. My master, Aza, has arrived. You all have only two options left before yousurrender, or die! My master is merciful, so he will give all of you three days to make up your mind. Within those three days, those who surrender will come before my master and accept His blessing, becoming part of our Abyssal Tribe. After those three days, all of those who didnt surrender will be killed without mercy! Yoggs voice could only be heard by dominator-level powerhouses. Nobody below dominator-level heard his words; they were deemed unworthy of hearing them. Naturally, Lin Huang also heard what Yogg said, and noticed this as well. Seems like these guys are going to kill all of the living beings below dominator-level Lin Huang came to a realization after thinking it over. The Abyss did not lack creatures below dominator-level, so killing them would not matter. In fact, it would even reduce the drain on the Abyss resources. Dominator-level powerhouses were asked to surrender as they were considered boss-level characters, even in the Abyss. It was only natural that Aza would not reject any underlings of that level. Moreover, if a dominator-level powerhouse surrendered to Aza, it would also mean that there would be one less dominator-level powerhouse in the infinite universes camp. As such, it was at least worth a try. Before long, all of the dominator-level powerhouses in the infinite universe had heard Yoggs voice. While they were indeed furious, they were also shocked by Yoggs ability. So this is the strength of an Outer God under Aza? Thats amazing. I wonder how he managed that. To be able to spread his voice transmission throughout the entire infinite universe. This guys Gods soul is powerful! However, Lin Huang saw through Yoggs technique. He did not activate his Gods soul for the voice transmission at all. Instead, he used the force of Dimension Dao. Lin Huang glanced at Aza through space and recalled his Divine Telekinesis instantly. The very next second, his will projection appeared quietly in the dimension where the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was. Aza has already awoken completely now. You can search for His clones now. Im already doing that. A cloud formed in front of Lin Huang out of nowhere. It spoke while floating around. Approximately how long will it take to find the coordinates of all of His clones? Lin Huang asked further. Not sure. It depends on the speed at which He activates His clones memories, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao explained, Im watching all of the powerhouses above dominator-level rank-5 in all timelines and dimensions. Ill make a mark as soon as I find anything unusual. Can you share the markings with me? Lin Huang immediately asked. I cant do that for now. However, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao declined Lin Huangs request directly. If you start to hunt down His clones now, His Primordium will sense it. At that point, theres a high chance that Hell stop waking up the remaining clones directly. If that happens, even if you killed His Primordium, He can be revived in any timeline He wants. Lin Huang frowned when he heard that. He knew that what the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said was the truth. After thinking for a moment, he helplessly compromised. Please find His clones as soon as you can. Inform me when youre sure that you didnt miss any. Lin Huangs Primordium could not help but frown after he dismissed his will projection. He thought that Aza would wake up all of His clones as soon as He awoke in order to strengthen Himself. However, it now seemed Aza was not in a rush to do so. This resulted in the search for clones on Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos side to become slow. Meanwhile, Lin Huang was stuck in a passive state. Without the coordinates from Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, he could not stop Azas clones and could only wait patiently. Just after he ended his conversation with Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, a voice suddenly rang out. Chief Lin, Heaven Secrets First Liege is here! As soon as the voice was heard, a spatial fluctuation appeared not far from Lin Huang. Subsequently, a figure in a white robe stepped out of it. Chapter 1911 - First Liege’s Obsession First Lieges appearance, who was dressed in a white robe, did not match Lin Huangs imagination. He looked like he was in his 20s at most. He was almost as handsome as Aza, but lacked the feminine vibe. Is there anything that you need from me? Lin Huang asked right after taking a good look at him. I want to borrow some people from you, First Liege informed Lin Huang of his intention directly. Borrow people? Lin Huang raised his eyebrows. The powerhouses from the Sword Alliance who have mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. The ones who participated in the previous battles. First Liege nodded. I want to borrow them. Seeing that Lin Huang was staring at him and said nothing, First Liege continued, I want to challenge Aza, but I need people to help me delay and deal with the three Outer Gods and the Black Goats Offspring that might show up. Lin Huang squinted his eyes as he listened up to this point. Do you have the confidence to challenge Aza? To him, the First Lieges aura was only as strong as Azas Primordium. If they really were to fight, the chances of victory were 50/50. However, Aza also had an endless amount of clones. I dont, but since Aza is already here, I dont think we should delay this matter any further, First Liege said expressionlessly. Lin Huang frowned. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao shouldve told you that Aza has countless clones in other timelines and dimensions, right? I know. This was the only thing First Liege responded with. Lin Huang spoke after seeing that First Liege did not elaborate further, Even if you fought Him and won, what meaning is there in killing His Primordium? His Primordium can project His will into any of His clones. Hell rise up again sooner or later. Then Ill kill him again when He does! Ill keep killing him until He no longer dares to show Himself! First Lieges tone was laced with killing intent. I dont think you understand what Azas ultimate goal is. Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. He wants to become a Transcender and refine the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao! In order to achieve this, He has been plotting for hundreds of eras. I dont think a guy like Him would give up His goal easily just because He lost a couple of battles. Also, even if you do win once or twice, can you guarantee that you will keep winning? As soon as you fight him, youd become Azas primary target. Even if you really defeat Him, from then on, Hell keep finding ways to attack you every time until He defeats and kills you! Hes not the only one who has clones. I have them too. Even if Im killed, I will rise up again! First Liege sounded determined. This guy Lin Huang frowned. Lin Huang gained a rough understanding of the man before him, who was so stubborn that he seemed to be on the verge of being possessed. Perhaps he had been trained by Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, and had been constantly reminded of his objective to defeat Aza, so much so that defeating Aza had become his obsession. Lin Huang did not continue to advise him after witnessing his determination. Alright then. Since youve already decided, Ill send people to delay the Outer Gods for you. How many people do you need? All of them. First Liege had clearly thought it through before coming here. Itll be tough if the legitimate Black Goats Offspring appears. Also, Im not asking the Sword Alliance to help for free this time. I can pay to hire them! Lin Huang raised his eyebrows when he heard that. He was secretly happier now. Sure, Ill tell them, but I dont know how many people will be willing to help. You can discuss the hiring fees with them later. When do you need them? I need some time to prepare. Lets make it three days later. First Liege gave him a timeline directly. Didnt Aza give us three days as well? I want to give Him a surprise then. Sure! Ill get them to empty their schedules for that day. Lin Huang agreed directly. First Liege left after obtaining Lin Huangs phone number. He thought for a moment after watching First Liege leave. He sent over a will projection to the dimension where Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was again. First Liege just came to me, though I suppose you already knew that. Lin Huang said directly. I saw. The cloud-like Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao spoke again. It did not say that it knew, but it said that it had seen it. It had witnessed the entire conversation Lin Huang had with First Liege. Did you instigate him this time or It was his own decision, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao answered before Lin Huang could finish. Why didnt you stop him? Lin Huang asked further. I tried to, but it didnt work. Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos tone sounded rather helpless. Hes the child that I chose, not my puppet. He usually listens to my suggestions, but hes very determined this time. Perhaps his stubbornness has something to do with the fact that Ive been reminding him about his mission. Killing Aza is his reason for existence, so he probably wanted to take action as soon as Azas Primordium showed up. 2 No matter whether he wins or loses, it doesnt matter. Although Lin Huang did not stop First Liege, it did not mean that he agreed with what he was doing. Looking at the result, its meaningless indeed. However, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao clearly held a different perspective. If he takes action, it will force Aza to activate more clones urgently If we look at it from that perspective, its a good thing. So hes just a sacrifice to you? Lin Huang squinted his eyes. Just like Aza, he has many clones too. He wont really die even if his Primordium dies. All he has to do is to change the body he uses, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao explained calmly. It was at this point that Lin Huang suddenly recalled that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was an entity of absolute intelligence. It did not possess any feelings for other living beings. To it, First Liege was just a tool that could be used to fight Aza, and that was about it. In all likelihood, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao probably thought of Lin Huang in the same way. Lin Huang did not dwell on the matter after dismissing his will projection. He informed Bai and the other imperial monsters instantly. Theres a job for you guys. Join the assault on Aza three days from now. Get ready, your mission will be to delay the Outer Gods and the Black Goats Offspring. Kill them off directly if you can. Bloody was the first to respond, Youve located all of Azas clones? Not yet. I wont be the one fighting Aza this time, but rather Heaven Secrets First Liege. He needs your help, Lin Huang replied immediately. I got happy over nothing. I thought that you were going to fight, boss. Can I not go? Im worried that after Aza kills that First Liege, Ill be killed too, Charcoal voiced his objection instantly. This is a paid job. From what I know, First Liege should be quite wealthy. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao spent almost all of its resources on him alone. You guys can negotiate your payments with him directly, Lin Huang offered them a simple explanation. Money doesnt really matter, though I suddenly feel like moving my claws. I want to fight! Charcoal changed its tone quickly. Youre no longer afraid of Aza attacking you after killing that First Liege? There was clearly a teasing tone in Grimaces response. Im not an idiot. Cant I run once I see that the situation is turning bad, even before hes defeated? Charcoal sounded like it was proud of itself. Does that First Liege really have the ability to fight Aza? It was Bai who asked the next question. His level of ability is similar to Azas Primordium, Lin Huang responded quickly, If they really were to fight, Im guessing the odds are 50/50. The imperial monsters were relieved when they heard Lin Huangs evaluation of First Liege. They were initially worried that First Liege did not know his limits. Now it seemed like that was not the case. Those who are willing to go, its best that you can confirm with me today so that I can figure out the headcount. Also, remember to make yourself available three days from now. Chapter 1912 - Challenge Coming from First Liege Time flew by and, soon, three days had passed. The three-day deadline that Yogg announced officially ended. Only a couple of people prostrated themselves before Azas throne at the door of the borderless mystic territory. Nobody could tell whether He was happy or sad from His facial expression. However, Yogg, Nyarlathotep and Shub looked terrible at the moment. Aza opened His eyes slowly, glancing across the couple of people who were prostrating themselves to surrender to Him. The most powerful one was only a dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse, while the remaining few people were basically at rank-2 and rank-3. There was also one dominator-level rank-1 powerhouse. They were shaking as Aza glanced at them. They could clearly sense His glance, and it felt like He had seen through everything about them and that they could not hide any secrets before this man. Without Aza doing anything at all, the dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse suddenly floated up. The latter was unable to control his own body and flew slowly toward Aza. He was secretly panicking inside but, at that moment, a gentle voice rang out. No need to be afraid. Since youve chosen to yield to me, were family from now on. The bald dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse seemed to feel comforted by that voice. He appeared relaxed now. Not only had his fear disappeared entirely, he even felt joyful now. The couple of people who were prostrated on the ground felt the same as well. Aza stretched out a slender finger as the dominator-level rank-4 powerhouse hovered before Him. He tapped it softly between the bald mans eyebrows. When Azas fingertip touched him, a layer of black fog began to linger on the bald mans body. At the same time, his body and Gods soul began to mutate quickly, while his aura began to skyrocket. The remaining people faintly saw that the bald man seemed to have countless strands of hair growing frantically on his head. However, the next second, the rumbling black fog swallowed him whole. Not only did the black fog block everyones vision and probing techniques, it even blocked the sound from within. This caused the entire process to proceed silently. Only Lin Huang could see what was happening inside the black fog. As the fog lingered, the bald Dominators body began to mutate quickly. He released an extremely devastating shriek, and countless strands of hair sprung up on his smooth scalp. From beneath his neck, countless dense metal-like scales appeared. Arthropod-like limbs, similar to Bug Tribes, sprang forth from his torso In the end, he mutated into a bug monster with countless arthropod-like limbs entirely. His aura had skyrocketed. He was now a dominator-level rank-9 that had mastered trillions of chaotic cosmoses. What confused Lin Huang the most was that his Gods soul had mutated completely. Compared to the bald mains previous aura, it seemed that it was a completely different person now. This doesnt seem like a simple mutation. It looks more like hes been replaced by something else By the time the black fog covering his body finally faded, the bald Dominator had turned into a bug monster with many legs and countless strands of hairs on his head. Everyone could finally see what it looked like to be blessed by Aza. The few people who were prostrated on the ground did not show much of a response when they saw his transformation. They remained in a state of strange joy. Clearly, Azas voice from earlier had caused them to fall into such a state. Only after converting the bald Dominator entirely did Aza look at the remaining people. This time, He did not pull them to Him. Instead, He stretched out a finger and pointed it at them. A couple of black gleams shot forth and penetrated them, entering their bodies from between their eyebrows directly. The six of them were covered in black fog almost at the same time, and started undergoing the mutation process. Lin Huang watched the scene unfold from afar. He clearly saw the entire process of those six people being mutated. So its not limited to just replacement, theyre being mutated by having their will distorted forcefully He had finally understood Azas technique. Aza seemed to be able to plant a seed with His own imprint into another living beings body. Such a seed would corrode the hosts Gods soul and physical body, turning the person into a new species under Azas command. Although the creatures that were transformed this way retained the memories from before, they would no longer be the same living beings as before. Instead, they would become brand new individuals. One had to say that this technique suited Azas style indeed. As soon as the six monsters reincarnation was completed, the black fog that lingered on their bodies began to fade away. At that moment, a terrifying golden saber gleam shot forth from the sky. It appeared less than three meters in front of Aza without warning. The attack was aimed at the space between Azas eyebrows. However, the saber gleam began to slow down rapidly when it arrived three meters away from Aza. When it was less than a meter in front of Him, He flicked away the saber gleam with his finger calmly. The saber gleam faded away instantly! Enemy attack! The blond-haired Yogg finally reacted at this moment, after which He screamed. The remaining people readied themselves for battle and put their guard up. At that moment, a voice echoed from the sky above. Seems like you already sensed my arrival and even lured me to attack on purpose. the white-robed First Liege showed himself. Aza revealed a faint smile. You can only blame your own terrible hiding skills. Indeed, as First Liege said, Aza had pulled the bald Dominator closer the first time to hint to First Liege, who was hiding, that He had His guard down, thus luring him to initiate an attack. It doesnt matter if my hiding skills are terrible. Its sufficient as long as I have the ability to kill you. First Lieges killing intent surged. Stop thinking so highly of yourself. You dont have the ability to do so. Azas tone was cold. It seemed like He did not take First Liege seriously. Well only find out if I have that ability after trying. First Liege swung his saber as soon as he was done speaking. The saber gleams were like golden bolts that tore the sky. They were like countless tentacles charging forward, covering the entire sky instantly. He expanded the range in his attack intentionally, enveloping the three Outer Gods and all of the Abyssal monsters within the attack. He was not trying to hit everyone there, but wanted to use them as a way to distract Aza. Aza clearly understood First Lieges intentions instantly, but He merely scoffed. He then floated up from His throne. He flung His sleeves and sent the three Outer Gods and all of the Abyssal monsters out of the range of the attack. He moved His fingers the next second, shooting out black electric arcs at the golden saber gleams. First Liege chuckled when the black and golden gleams collided. Do you think your underlings can escape? Aza spread out His Divine Telekinesis to where He had teleported the three Outer Gods to earlier. He saw over 20 figures appearing around Yogg and the rest. The auras emitted by those figures had even surpassed that of the three Outer Gods Chapter 1913 - You Know What I Mean, Aunty Its you guys Nyarlathotep recognized Bai and the others as soon as he saw them arrive. After all, it was not their first time seeing each other. He had been hiding inside the mystic territory when the Black Goats Egg was breeding monsters, and had observed everything that had happened outside. Bai and the others had suppressed their combat strength intentionally back then and successfully deceived Nyarlathotep. They got the Black Goats Egg to complete the last breeding round and obtained many Kingdoms and resources in return. As such, when Nyarlathotep saw them again, he was furious. They must be those people that you were talking about before. Yogg, who was standing to the side, guessed. Naturally, the failed plan with the Black Goats Egg could not be hidden from Yogg and Shub. Nyarlathotep had told them the truth. Of course, he had exaggerated stories about how cunning and despicable they were. Given that they were not disguising their combat strength at the moment, it was only natural that Yogg and Shub could guess who they were. Hey, we meet again, Grimace greeted them from the other side in an annoying manner. He focused his eyes on Nyarlathotep after taking a glance at the others. We really want to thank you for the big gift from earlier. It was such a great harvest for us. Nyarlathotep, who already looked terrible, looked even worse now that Grimace was poking his wound. So, are you going to give us more gifts today? Grimace teased further while smiling after seeing the terrible look on Nyarlathoteps face. Im not sure if you can receive this gift! Nyarlathotep replied while gnashing his teeth. Just come at me, lets see if I can receive it. Grimace kept smiling. Nyarlathotep scoffed and said nothing further. He realized that he would not gain the upper hand in terms of words while Grimace was present. However, Grimace clearly did not plan to let things go just like that. If youre not going to give me anything, I can only attack you Before Grimace was even done speaking, Nyarlathoteps pupils shrunk suddenly. He flew to the side quickly, as he sensed a fatal threat coming from behind him. When did you get here?! Nyarlathotep had shock fill his face. He had not sensed Grimace moving at all, but the latter had appeared behind him out of nowhere. Be careful, this guy is an expert in illusions! Yogg, who was not far away, yelled. Oh, no. Ive been busted so quickly Although Grimace said that, there was no worry evident in his tone of voice at all. At the same time, an illusory shadow appeared next to Yoggs ear. It said softly, I suddenly think that youre more interesting than he is. Maybe I should kill you first Before the shadow was even done speaking, Yogg had turned into a shadow himself and faded away. Grimaces shadow stuck to Shubs back directly when he saw Yogg running away. He played with her hair. Aunty, if Im not wrong, you were the one who created the ootheca, right? Give me a few more. Shubs hair was squirming frantically as if they were alive. Grimaces shadow snickered before fading away. Within the blink of an eye, Grimace had messed around with the three Outer Gods all on his own. The many Abyssal monsters were stunned as they watched this scene. One had to know that the three Outer Gods were terrifying powerhouses that were only second in power to Aza. They possessed absolute power. However, they were still tricked. Not only that, it seemed like they could not do anything to Grimace at all. Youre courting death! Nyarlathotep stared furiously at Grimace. At this point, he now treated Grimace as his mortal enemy. Its useless for you to keep saying that. You have to back up your talk with actions. Grimace clearly did not take his threat seriously. Nyarlathotep! Just as Nyarlathotep was about to attack out of rage, Yoggs voice could be heard. Weve been tricked. Nyarlathotep was stunned at first, after which he calmed down instantly. His pupils shrunk at that moment, and his body began to transform quickly. He turned into a pharaoh wearing a triangular golden crown. A golden staff appeared in his hand. There were complicated dark purple sigils engraved on it. He held it with his eyes closed and began to chant. A moment later, the surroundings collapsed like shattering glass and faded away. When Nyarlathotep opened his eyes again, he realized that the Abyssal army behind the three of them had mostly been killed. The few that were still alive were dying. Abhoth, who was in the form of a meatball, had been crushed into mincemeat entirely. Ghroth, who was like a giant eyeball, had exploded. There was only a pile of goo remaining where its body once was. Tulzscha, which was like a green pillar of fire, was weakly emitting a few sparks Although these supreme powerhouses had mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses they were severely injured. They had lost their ability to fight completely. Yikes, I didnt expect you guys to see through this. Grimaces spoke softly. He looked at the transformed version of Nyarlathotep with great interest. Youre pretty capable. Grimace! Bai frowned. He suspected that Grimace had let them out in advance on purpose. After all, this guy was known for his distasteful behavior. According to their initial plan, they were supposed to trap the three Outer Gods in the illusion, and only let them out after they had killed all of the Abyssal monsters. However, Grimace clearly had not trapped them for long enough. This resulted in them escaping the illusion before Bai and the others had finished killing the final few Abyssal monsters that had mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. You really cant blame me for this. Grimace shrugged. I didnt know that he could shatter my illusion. Bai did not dwell on the matter. Although those few were still alive due to their strong will to live, they had already lost the ability to fight and no longer posed a threat. Little Witch! Bai turned his head and yelled. Witch attacked instantly. A shadow enveloped and swallowed all of the dying Abyssal monsters. Nyarlathotep wanted to save them, but it was too late. The Outer Gods looked at Bai and the rest with anger. They really had not expected Grimaces illusion to be so terrifying. They were tricked without them realizing, resulting in them being the only survivors. Any opportunity to form battle formations with the army of Abyssal monsters was completely gone now. I think that you guys can still struggle a little more. Grimace suddenly said while smiling. Subsequently, he looked at Shub and gestured at her. You should know what I mean, aunty. Chapter 1914 - Shub’s Trump Card Shub frowned. She undoubtedly knew what Grimace was hinting at. Let them out. Yogg, who was standing to the side, suddenly spoke up while Shub was still hesitating. Theres no way we can win if we dont release them now. Then the war later on According to the initial plan, the Black Goats Offspring would only be used in the final war. After all, they were weapons solely created for that purpose. Not only did they innately possess the Outer Gods abilities, they could be strengthened continuously as they devoured more Kingdoms. Although they had already been cultivated for a couple of months and fed many Kingdoms, they were far from reaching their peak state at the moment. We have to handle the crisis in front of us first, Yogg interrupted Shub. Nyarlathotep, who was standing to the side, spoke up too, I agree with Yoggs opinion. An annoying voice rang out immediately after, I agree too! The voice belonged to Grimace. Right after that, Nyarlathotep waved his staff. Yogg and Shub then saw the tiny glass-like illusion fragments shatter quickly around them. Its useless. I can see through all of your illusion techniques when Im in this form. Nyarlathotep looked at Grimace expressionlessly. Grimace had initiated his illusion secretly again while they were talking. However, the illusion was no longer a threat to the three of them. I must say youve piqued my interest even more. Grimace was not discouraged by the fact that his technique had been rendered ineffective. In fact, he became even more excited. There was burning desire in his eyes when he stared at Nyarlathotep. He glanced at Yogg after saying that. Im sorry, my dear handsome man with the glasses, I can only push your rank on my hunting list down to second place now. You change so easily. Such a douchebag! Charcoal, who was not far away, teased him. Clearly, the atmosphere on Bai and the others side was quite relaxed. On the other hand, Shub had no choice but to use her trump card. She did not make this decision due to the instigation of her two partners, but rather due to her own concerns. The three of them might not be able to defeat these people from the Sword Alliance even if they were to fight with them one on one. Now there were 20 of them on the opposite side, which meant that their enemies had the upper hand in terms of numbers. If she did not use the Black Goats Offspring now, the three of them would most probably die here. If that happened, she would not be able to summon the Black Goats Offspring to participate in the final war later on. Shub performed the hand seals quickly, while Bai and the others watched expressionlessly. None of them stopped her because they hoped that she would summon the Black Goats Offspring. They knew that each of the Black Goats Offsprings Kingdoms were as powerful as the Outer Gods. Shub had 11 oothecas now, which meant that she would be able to breed 11 Black Goats Offsprings. To Bai and the others, this was equivalent to gifting them 11 Kingdoms on the same level as the three Outer Gods. Shub and the others were unaware of their covetous thoughts. They only believed that Bai and the others wanted to kill off the Black Goats Offspring and the three of them to prevent future troubles. Very soon, she completed the hand seals. Her body then regained her original form, which was that of a gigantic black cloud. There were organs of various living beings floating around inside the cloud. There were heads, limbs, eyes and mouths Naturally, there were also countless tentacles. Aunty, your Primordium is so ugly! Youre scaring me! Grimaces voice could be heard once again. Nyarlathotep and Yogg stared furiously at him, but Shub made no effort to respond at all. Her body began to squirm even faster now, and it did not stop expanding. Her body, which was initially as big as a chaotic cosmos, expanded at least a hundred times bigger within the blink of an eye. The expansion finally slowed down when the size of her body was close to the size of the door of the mystic territory that had opened this time. A moment later, a giant hoof slowly stepped out of the black fog The Black Goats Offspring! Bai and the others stared fixedly at the monster that the black fog had bred. It was a gigantic monster with hooves. It had three elephant-like thick hooves. There were huge black blobs of flesh on its hooves. There were irregular goat mouths and eyes all over those blobs. On top of the flesh, there were thick tentacles standing erect like horns This monster was similar to the Black Goats Offspring the ootheca bred in the final round of breeding, but it had slight differences in terms of form. The strength of its aura was also higher. The aura of the Black Goats Offspring before them had clearly surpassed the Outer Gods. It was no weaker than Bai and the others. It was definitely a supreme powerhouse that had mastered quintillions of chaotic cosmoses. After the Black Goats Offspring emerged, they very soon saw a second giant hoof step out of the black fog. The second Black Goats Offspring emerged. Its form looked exactly the same as the first one. It was just that there was a slight difference in terms of the strength of their aura. Nevertheless, it had also mastered quintillions of chaotic cosmoses. Subsequently, the third and the fourth ones emerged The Black Goats Offspring spawned one after the other. After the 11th one emerged, the gigantic black fog finally started to shrink. However, Bai and the others were no longer focused on her. Instead, they were staring at the Black Goats Offsprings. We dont know what their abilities are yet, so lets separate them first and fight them individually! Bai ordered immediately. He was the first one to charge at one of the Black Goats Offsprings. Lancelot, Kylie and the others soon followed after him quickly. Grimace was the only one who chose not to, instead only taking a brief glance at the Black Goats Offsprings before turning to look at the three Outer Gods. The very next second, Shubs expression changed; she had just regained her human form. The reason being was that she suddenly realized that she had lost track of the Black Goats Offsprings. She turned and looked around. She noticed that Nyarlathotep and Yogg were the only ones left around her. The eleven Black Goats Offsprings she had bred were not the only ones that had disappeared. The people from the opposite side were gone too. Id like to welcome the three of you to my Kingdom! The three Outer Gods could not help but frown when they heard that voice. It was the same annoying voice that they hated from the bottom of their hearts. Grimaces illusory large face appeared above their heads. He looked at the three of them with a smile. Didnt you want me to breed the Black Goats Offsprings? What? You dare not challenge them now that they have been bred? Shubs voice took on a mocking tone as well. Theres no rush. Those things with thick and rough hides arent easy to kill. Grimaces other large face appeared not far away. Ill kill you guys first. Wouldnt I easily obtain three Kingdoms that way? Chapter 1915 - Grimace’s Kingdom One had to say that Grimace had planned well. He had already mastered quintillions of chaotic cosmoses. Meanwhile, the three Outer Gods before him had clearly mastered less than a hundred quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. In terms of strength alone, it would be easy for Grimace to kill three of them instantly. However, since they were the Outer Gods under Aza, it would only be natural for them to have some tricks up their sleeves. Just like how Nyarlathotep broke Grimaces illusion technique multiple times. Although Grimace had not been using all of his strength, it was sufficient proof of the stunning capability of Nyarlathoteps technique. Nevertheless, now that they were dragged into his Kingdom unknowingly, even Nyarlathotep would not be able to escape now. Now that youre in my Kingdom, youll have to play by my rules When the three Outer Gods heard what Grimace said, they had a bad feeling. Let me think what sort of game should we play? Grimaces illusory shadow held his chin and fell into a state of deep thought. At that moment, Yogg attacked. He waved and a spatial rift instantly appeared where Grimaces illusory shadow was. However, Yoggs pupils shrunk the very next second, and his expression looked even more terrible now. The reason being was that the attack did not do anything to Grimace at all. It was as if his attack had landed on a different dimensional layer than the one the shadow was in. Stop wasting your time. Inside my Kingdom, all of your attacks on me are futile until the game officially begins, Grimaces projection explained while smiling, The players can only fight once the game has begun. After hearing that, the three Outer Gods instantly understood the characteristics of Grimaces Kingdom. Most of the Kingdoms would either elevate ones combat strength directly, indirectly or restrict their opponents in certain aspects. However, a small number of peoples Kingdoms were more unique. Their Kingdoms belonged to the category of rule-type Kingdoms. Those who entered their Kingdom had to follow the rules of the Kingdom in order to fight. Grimaces Kingdom clearly belonged to this category. This type of Kingdom was also the most difficult to deal with. After realizing that, the three Outer Gods activated their Kingdoms almost at the same time. They wanted to use their own Kingdoms to circumvent a portion of the rules in Grimaces Kingdom. However, they realized the very next second that they could not activate their Kingdoms at all. Grimace obviously sensed what they were doing, after which he smiled again. Ive already told you to stop wasting your time, but you just wont believe me. Their three expressions looked extremely terrible now. Alright, Ive made up my mind. At that moment, Grimace appeared to have made his decision. Lets play Statue. The three of them were stunned when they heard the name of the game. Grimace ignored their reactions and began to describe the rules of the game. These are the rules of the game. Ill count to three, after which you guys must dodge all of the statues attacks. If any of you are touched, even if its just a strand of hair thats touched, that person will turn into a statue directly, and thereafter join in on the attacks on the remaining players How was this Statue?! It had no similarities to the actual game at all! The three Outer Gods secretly complained in their hearts. What would happen to the people turned into statues after the game ends? Yogg was the first to calm down and ask a crucial question. Theyll become part of my personal belongings, Grimace answered while smiling, To be exact, theyll become a toy in my Kingdom. Yoggs pupils shrunk, after which he asked, What if we win? Ha Grimace chuckled softly, but he responded anyway, If any player really wins, that player can leave my Kingdom in one piece. Id like to add to that. The players who lost cant leave even if someone wins. What is the combat strength of the statue? Yogg asked further. Similar to the three of you, Grimace explained patiently, If I used one stronger than you guys, that would make for an unfair game. Asie from dodging, we can attack too, right? It was Nyarlathotep who asked the next question. Of course you can. Grimace smiled even brighter now. As long as you can guarantee that your physical body wont touch the statue, you can use any of your techniques. Whats the duration of the game? There must be a limit, right? Nyarlathotep asked while squinting. Ten rounds! Grimaces huge face above their heads replied while smiling, Oncethe ten rounds end, and if any of the three of you win, that person can leave in one piece. In addition, that person wont be added to my list of hunting targets for a brief period of time. I have one more question. Since its a fair game, then you should be a player too, right? Yogg made it seem like he was asking a question, but he was actually trying to drag Grimace into the battle. Of course! Ill be the player fighting against you guysthe statue! Grimaces tone clearly became even more excited now. Id like to confirm something before the game begins. At that moment, Nyarlathotep spoke up again, During the game, the attacks we launch on the statue are valid, right? Of course they are, Grimace gave him an affirmative answer directly, If you guys have the ability, you can try to kill me. This is another way to win this game. Perfect, I like this method of victory. Shub, who was standing to the side, felt her killing intent rising. Aunty, your killing intent is leaking out Grimace teased her inappropriately. Shubs killing intent grew even more intense. Nyarlathotep and Yogg remained calm. They asked a couple more questions regarding the rules of the game. If thats all, then let the game officially begin. Grimaces few large illusory faces finally faded away slowly. His real face formed not far away from the three of them. Although they saw the face consolidating, they did not act rashly. The reason being was that they knew that attacking would be completely a waste of time until the game officially began. They would only waste their Dominator Power by doing so. As the three of them watched, Grimaces body distorted rapidly. Within a few breaths of time, he had transformed into a gigantic tree. It was tens of thousands of meters tall with countless branches spread in all directions. There were at least millions of branches on the tree. The three Outer Gods clearly looked terrible when they saw his transformation. He dared to call that a statue?! That looked more like the statues ancestor! Fortunately, the three of them clearly sensed that the strength of the trees aura was similar to theirs. They were at the very least relieved about that. If Grimace did not adjust the aura and used his own combat strength after transforming into this statue, the three of them would most likely lose during the first round. Once the statue consolidated completely, a ladys voice that sounded somewhat machine-like suddenly echoed in the sky. One, two, three, statue! Chapter 1916 - One, Two, Three, Statue As soon as the machine-like female voice rang out, Grimace, who had transformed into a gigantic tree, stretched out hundreds of millions of his branches, which charged toward the three Outer Gods like a net. The Outer Gods dodged immediately, but the branches pursued them, making it difficult for them to shake the attack off. The three of them moved as fast as they could, dodging frantically along the way. Very soon, the branches from the gigantic tree had almost spread across the entire space. The Outer Gods soon realized that the space in which they could maneuver had rapidly shrunk. They shifted their strategy instantly and began to fight back, clearing out the branches that were coming at them. However, the tree that Grimace had transformed into was not to be underestimated either. His recovery ability was rather terrifying. All of the branches seemed to regenerate quickly the moment they were chopped off. Although that was the case, the brief period of respite after chopping off the branches greatly relieved the pressure on the three. The first round of attack lasted for a whole day before it finally stopped. The Outer Gods could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Throughout that day, the three of them had, several times, actually tried to take the initiative to attack Grimace. However, he had pretty stunning defensive ability after being transformed into a gigantic tree. They only managed to chop off the branches after using almost all of their might, so one could imagine how helpless they were against Grimaces extremely thick trunk. Among the three of them, even Yogg, who possessed the most powerful attack ability, only left a scratch that was less than ten centimeters deep on the tree trunk. Meanwhile, Nyarlathotep and Shubs attacks only left scratches that were less than five centimeters deep. The tree that Grimace had transformed into had a trunk that measured thousands of meters in diameter. Even if he did not obstruct them with the branches and allowed them to attack him, it would take tens of thousands of their attacks to break the tree. Not to mention that, apart from the branches, the trunk also had powerful regeneration abilities. He used less than 0.01 seconds to restore the scratch that Yogg had left behind. After trying several times, the three of them belatedly realized why Grimace said fearlessly, If you guys have the ability, you can try to kill me. This is another way to win this game. The reason being was that they would never be able to win in this way. After confirming this fact, they could only try to clear the game normally by holding on for ten rounds! Fortunately, although they were a little clumsy in the beginning during the first round, they very soon adapted to Grimaces attack patterns. If the level of difficulty remained the same, they would be able to hold on for ten rounds. Just as they were thinking that, Grimaces voice suddenly rang out. The first round can be considered a warm-up. I wanted you guys to become familiar with the rules of the game. After all, its boring to have the game end so soon. The three of them felt their hearts sink when they heard that. Clearly, the game would only become more difficult from now on! As soon as Grimace was done speaking, the machine-like female voice suddenly rang out again. One, two, three, statue! The second round of the game had officially begun! The gigantic tree Grimace had transformed into suddenly shook as soon as the machine-like voice faded. It only took a moment when the tree split into two at speed that was visible to the naked eye. The three of them raised their brows when they saw that. As expected, the difficulty level had increased in the second round! The very next second after the tree had completed the split, the branches of the two gigantic trees seemed to come alive like snakes. So fast! Shock flashed in Nyarlathoteps eyes. He was stunned to discover that not only had the number of branches been doubled in this round, but even their attack speed had been increased almost tenfold. They had spent a day adapting to the rhythm of the battle, and now it had changed completely! Be careful, only one trees attack speed has increased! This had caused the three of them to fall into a dangerous state again. It was even more dangerous than when the first round had begun. Yogg quickly told the other two the result of his observation through voice transmission. However, things did not look much better for them. In reality, they could handle the two trees easier if both possessed the same attack speed. The reason being was that, if the trees attack speed was consistent, there would only be one battle rhythm to adapt to, which would make it easier for them to adapt. However, the two trees attack had two different attack speeds now. This meant that they would have to adapt to two different battle rhythms. Not only that, as there were too many branches, they could not tell which tree the branches were from. They could only adjust themselves according to the attack they faced at that moment. It would mean that they had to adjust their speed continuously in order to respond to two different battle rhythms. Things would be even more difficult this way! The two battle rhythms were torturous to them. However, after half a day, they finally adapted to the battle rhythms and successfullysurvived the second day, feeling a little exhausted. Grimace finally stopped his attack, after which the three of them felt significantly relieved. However, they soon felt uneasy. The reason being was that they could foresee that the third round of attack would be even more difficult. Once the machine-likevoice said one, two, three, statue! again, the gigantic trees that Grimace had transformed into split themselves again. The two trees split at the same time. It only took a moment for them to split into four different trees. The three Outer Gods looked even more terrible when they saw the scene unfold before them. I must admit that you sort of inspired this game. Grimaces faces appeared on the four gigantic trees at the same time. All four faces looked at Shub. There was obvious mockery in his tone. The Outer Gods said nothing. From his words, and the scene unfolding in front of them right now, they had already guessed the direction the game would take over the next few rounds. There were four trees in this round. There would be eight trees in the next round, and then 16 in the next Grimaces game setting was clearly inspired by the oothecas breeding rule from before. The three Outer Gods hearts sank. They were already exhausted from having to deal with two trees. As the number of the trees multiplied, the difficulty level would continue to increase. What the three of them were the most afraid of was that all the trees attack speeds would be different. They had taken half a day to adapt to the two trees. The more trees there were, the longer they would need to adapt. Once they failed to adapt, their battle rhythm would be thrown into total chaos. At that point, leaving being touched by the branches aside, they might even be crushed into mush by the countless branches. They became nervous as they looked at the four trees in front of them. It had merely taken a moment for those trees to be split and formed. The next second, an intense sense of crisis arose from behind them. Without hesitation, Nyarlathotep moved away in a flash. Yogg was even faster than him, and disappeared directly. However, Shub was a little too late A dark green branch quietly tangled itself around her ankle. Her body began to assimilate with that branch at speed that was visible to the naked eye. Her body transformed quickly, as tree bark and branches sprung from her body continuously Within a second, she had turned into a gigantic tree completely! The fifth tree started besieging the remaining two Outer Gods immediately! Chapter 1917 - All the Best The 4v3 situation had now turned into a 5v2 situation. 1 What made Nyarlathotep and Yogg feel even more despair was that, apart from the first gigantic tree, which had behaved normally since the beginning, the remaining four trees were all different. The trees battle rhythm was no longer the only issue. The second trees branches attacked extremely quickly. Its attack speed had almost reached the limits at which Nyarlathotep and Yoggs physical bodies could react. The third tree was even tougher. The aura of its branches could be concealed, which allowed it to avoid the probing of the two Outer Gods Divine Telekinesis. This was the tree that had gotten to Shub just now. The fourth trees branches would split when broken, shooting out two to ten branch splinters randomly. The random manner in which the branches split made it difficult for them to guard against. The fifth tree that Shub had turned into was pretty tough too. The branches that were broken would instantly grow into big trees that were slightly smaller than the original tree. Although their abilities were nothing compared to the five gigantic trees, these smaller trees had mastered over ten quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Fortunately, those newly-grown trees would only hinder them slightly. Their defensive and regeneration abilities were not as insane as the gigantic trees. With Nyarlathotep and Yoggs abilities, they could destroy them. Not only that, they would not be assimilated and kicked out of the game even if they were touched by those smaller trees. Nyarlathotep only came to that conclusion after experiencing it himself. Though the threat they posed was small, their branches were identical to the branches of the gigantic trees. The two of them could only determine the owner of the branches based on the strength of their aura when the branches got closer. Nevertheless, they did not dare to be hit by the branches from the smaller trees easily. The reason being was that, as soon as the branches got to them, even if they were delayed a slight moment, it might result in them being touched by the gigantic trees branches. The third round of attack almost completely exhausted Nyarlathotep and Yogg. The two of them had been running around clumsily for the entire day. Yoggs situation was better, as running was his expertise. However, it was tough for Nyarlathotep. The countless branches from the five gigantic trees and the hundreds of smaller trees seemed like an endless web that covered the sky. He was experiencing countless life or death situations every minute and every second. He even endured the attacks of the smaller trees in order to avoid being touched by the branches of the gigantic trees. Fortunately, this round had finally ended. The two of them finally experienced a brief moment of respite after seeing the five gigantic trees recalling their branches, and the smaller trees disappearing. However, their relief did not last very long, as the pressure would only continue to mount with each subsequent round. This was only the third round. The fourth and fifth round would only get tougher. Will I be able to last until the tenth round? Nyarlathotep was doubtful of his chances. He looked at Yogg. The latter did not look relaxed at all. Nobody knew what Yogg was thinking about. He was in a deep state of contemplation to the point that he did not even notice Nyarlathoteps gaze. As the machine-like voice said One, two, three, statue! again, the five gigantic trees began to split at the same time. This included the gigantic tree that Shub had transformed into; it was splitting as well. Nyarlathotep looked even more terrible when he saw this. Grimaces voice could be heard at this very moment. I forgot to tell you guys. If one of you ends up being transformed into a statue, that person will be like the other statues in each round, splitting and participating in the hunt of the remaining players. Ten gigantic trees had completed the splitting process by the time Grimace was done speaking. The fourth round of battle had officially begun! Sensing the invisible threat that was coming from beside him, Nyarlathotep dodged without hesitation. As usual, Yogg was faster than he was. The five new gigantic trees had completely different abilities compared to the five trees from before. One could perform space flickering and was no less powerful than Yogg. Another could slow time, causing all movements within a certain range of its branches to slow to a crawl. Yet another could accelerate attack speed. It could adjust the attack speed of its branches, ranging from onefold to tenfold, as it wished, which constantly changed the rhythm of the battle. One could target their auras, which made all of Yogg and Nyarlathoteps concealment techniques invalid. The final new gigantic trees branches would shoot out countless leaves as soon as it was attacked. The fourth round was undoubtedly many times more difficult than the last round. Nyarlathotep was almost touched a couple of times, but Yogg came to his rescue. Nyarlathotep was almost completely exhausted by the end of the round. He had used up all of his techniques in this round. If Yogg had not rescued him, he would have been turned into a gigantic tree. The two of them finally got a chance to breathe when the ten gigantic trees halted their attacks. However, Nyarlathotep knew that it was impossible for him to last until the tenth round. As he watched the ten gigantic trees begin to split again, Nyarlathotep said to Yogg through voice transmission, Ive become a burden now, so just ignore me. Save your Dominator Power and try your best to last until the tenth round. Seeing that Yogg was staring at him without saying a word, Nyarlathotep continued, Master Aza needs you. A sparkle flashed through Yoggs eyes when those words were said. He nodded. Got it. One, two, three, statue! The machine-like voice soon echoed across the sky. The fifth round had begun! Nyarlathotep moved to dodge in a flash without hesitation. However, a green vine quickly crept up behind him the next second, strangling him. His body was assimilated and transformed instantly 20v2 had become 21v1. There was no change in the expression on Yoggs face as he watched Nyarlathotep transform into a gigantic tree. His eyes only dimmed momentarily. He kept dodging as he faced off against the 21 gigantic trees pursuing him. His body left countless afterimages in the air. His body did not stop moving for one second. Although the branches of the 21 gigantic trees almost covered the entire sky, they did not manage to even touch the corner of his clothes and, just like that, the fifth round of the game came to an end. Subsequently, the sixth, seventh and eighth rounds commenced The number of gigantic trees multiplied over and over again. Twenty-one trees! Forty-two trees! Eighty-four trees! A hundred and sixty-eight trees! Each and every one of them had different special abilities. However, they could not do anything to Yogg, who was like an illusory specter. His comprehension of Dimensional Dao was terrifying. Not only could he teleport instantly, but the Time Dao he had mastered could even influence the movements of the branches of the gigantic trees around him. This was why he seemed like a specter, wandering in and out of the material plane throughout those few days. He could not be touched at all. Nevertheless, the consecutive days of intense dodging drained his Dominator Power significantly. He finally released a long sigh of relief when the eighth round ended. Grimaces teasing voice could be heard whispering softly again while the gigantic trees were splitting. There are two more rounds. All the best. Chapter 1918 - An Army of One?! Grimace saw the exhausted expression on Yoggs face, and noticed dwindling Dominator Power reserves Though the latter was like a specter, no matter how great his mastery of Dimensional Dao and Time Dao was, without Dominator Power, he would be a sitting duck. As Grimace expected, Yogg could not last until the tenth day. Within an hour of the ninth round starting, a branch had tangled itself around his wrist. He was assimilated and transformed into a gigantic tree as Grimace watched. Once the transformation process was completed, the statue game officially came to an end. All of the Outer Gods had been killed! In reality, the ending was set in stone the moment the three had come under the confines of the rules of Grimaces Kingdom. Unless the powerhouse possessed a level of ability that could tear his Kingdom apart, that powerhouse would have no way of winning at all as soon as they entered his Kingdom. The reason being was that, inside Grimaces Kingdom, Grimace would be the one deciding the game to play, as well as the rules of the game. Although he announced the rules at the outset, nobody knew that he could add in new rules as and when he wished. Moreover, he could also choose to only tell the players the core rules of the game and hide the other rules that might influence and determine who won the game. To put it simply, he was invincible inside his Kingdom. Grimace returned to the battlefield after withdrawing his Kingdom with a smile on his face. Almost nine days had passed, but Bai and the others were still fighting the Black Goats Offsprings. As he expected, the Black Goats Offsprings had a terrifyingly strong physical defense. Their defensive ability was almost on par with Tyrant. Apart from that, they were completely immune to Gods soul-type techniques. Although the 11 Black Goats Offsprings had lost the strength to fight back and were just being thrown around by Bai and the others, none of them had died throughout the nine days. Even Lin Huang, who was watching the battle secretly, exclaimed as he watched. These things are definitely the perfect weapons of war! Apart from possessing terrifyingly high levels of defense and strength, Lin Huang learned from the information Heavens Secret provided that the Black Goats Offsprings could elevate their abilities by devouring other living beings. If they were allowed to eat those powerhouses bodies on the battlefield as they wished, their combat strength could totally breakthrough past the thousands of quadrillion chaotic cosmoses that they had mastered now. It was definitely possible for them to master hundreds of quintillions of chaotic cosmoses. The current Black Goats Offsprings could be considered half-matured at best, which was why Bai and others were beating them up. Seeing that none of them had activated their Kingdoms, Grimace appeared next to a Black Goats Offspring and pulled it into his Kingdom while nobody was watching. As the Black Goats Offspring started looking around blankly, Grimaces huge face appeared in the sky again. Lets play a game, big guy Grimace, that b*stard! Charcoal was gritting its teeth. They had initially tacitly agreed to fight together, and share the Kingdoms equally later on. In the end, not only did Grimace take the three Outer Gods for himself, he even secretly took a Black Goats Offspring away Dont worry. Ill make him spit it out. Bai glanced at where Grimace had disappeared from and spoke in a heroic manner. While Bai and the others were still besieging the Black Goats Offsprings, Azas Primordium and Heaven Secrets First Liege were in an intense battle on a battlefield on the other side. The two of them had similar levels of combat strength. However, in terms of abilities, Aza was slightly more powerful. Nevertheless, First Liege was equipped with a set of infinite supreme treasures, so he was able to fight on equal footing throughout those nine days. In fact, because he was a saber cultivator with powerful attack abilities, to outsiders, it almost looked like he had the upper hand and was suppressing Aza. However, Lin Huang, who was watching the battle secretly, saw through the matter clearly. Although First Liege was powerful, it was almost impossible for him to kill Aza given his level of ability. Aza was almost invincible among powerhouses of the same level. Even Lin Huang did not think that he could kill Aza easily if he fought Aza at the same level of strength, let alone First Liege! On the other hand, Aza felt that First Liege, who was equipped with countless infinite supreme treasures, was like a hardened tortoise shell. He did not know where to begin or target with His attack. This caused the battle to fall into a stagnant state throughout those nine days. Nevertheless, Lin Huang could clearly see that, as the battle dragged on, it was only a matter of time before First Liege would be defeated. The reason being was that the rate at which First Liege drained his Dominator Power was greater than Azas, due the the fact that he was covered in infinite supreme treasures. In comparison, Aza did not face such an issue. His body was as strong as an infinite supreme treasure to begin with. One had to know that First Liege was a saber cultivator with powerful attack capability. Excluding Lin Huang, First Lieges attack capability should be considered to be the highest in the entire infinite universe. Not only that, the saber in his hand was an infinite supreme treasure. However, Aza had been fending First Liege off with His bare hands from the very beginning of the battle. His fists had even collided face-on with First Lieges infinite supreme treasure saber a couple of times. The impact from the battle between the two was quite terrifying. Almost half of the infinite universes central zone had been destroyed by their countless attacks. Living beings aside, the stars in the sky were all gone from the impact of their attacks. Half of the area had become a void. As the intense battle went on, the range of destruction continued to expand. Meanwhile, Bai and the others battle with the Black Goats Offsprings finally came to an end a few days later. They did not use their trump cards, as they were in no rush to end the battle. They simply drained the Dominator Power in the Black Goats Offsprings slowly and killed them off easily afterward. The Black Goats Offsprings happened to be great sandbags for them to train themselves in many aspects as well. However, the Dominator Power in the Black Goats Offsprings bodies was limited. After being tossed around by Bai and the others for some ten days, the Dominator Power in their bodies was finally exhausted. Although that was the case, it still took a significant amount of effort for Bai and the others to get their attacks to cut into the Black Goats Offsprings flesh. It took them a little more time to kill the ten Black Goats Offsprings. As for the Black Goats Offspring that Grimace had pulled into his Kingdom, it had died inside as it lost the game on the second day it stepped inside the Kingdom. It was only after Bai spoke to Grimace that the latter submitted the carcass unwillingly. However, they did not ask Grimace to give up the bodies of the three Outer Gods. Lin Huang saw through Grimaces intention. He compromised in order to advance. He gave up the carcass of the Black Goats Offspring on purpose so that he could keep the Kingdoms of the three Outer Gods. Lin Huang said nothing about the matter. In reality, Bai and Kylie had seen through Grimace too, but they did not dwell on the matter. After killing off the Black Goats Offsprings, the Outer Gods and the dominator-level powerhouses under Aza, Bai and the rest left the battlefield without hesitation and returned to Lin Huangs side to avoid the possibility of Aza seeking them out for revenge. At this point, Aza had basically become an army of one. What confused Lin Huang was that, even up to the point Bai and the others left the battlefield, Aza displayed no reaction at all. His face did not even exhibit the slightestchange of emotions. Clearly, it was impossible for Him to not have noticed what had taken place. Does this guy not care about His underlings lives at all? Or does He think that He can defeat the entire infinite universe on His own?! Lin Huang felt a sense of doubt rising in his heart. Chapter 1919 - I’m Not Powerful Enough Yet! Lin Huang was a little suspicious of Azas reaction, but he did not dwell on the matter. All of His underlings with high combat strength had been killed by Bai and others. Regarding the dominator-level powerhouses that were rushing into the infinite universe from the various mystic territories, those were only dominator-level rank-5at best. They basically did not pose a substantial threat to the infinite universe. There was only one threat remainingAza! However, Lin Huang did not plan to interfere in the battle between Aza and First Liege. The reason being was that it really did not matter who won or lost. Even if they both died, it would just be their bodies that died. The two of them would simply be reincarnated through one of their clones. Therefore, for the next few days, apart from continuing to integrate chaotic cosmoses, Lin Huang only arranged for Bai and the others to distribute the loot they obtained from the battle. Apart from the 11 Black Goats Offsprings, regarding the remaining dominator-level powerhouses, whoever killed them would take their Kingdoms. Lin Huang only briefly chided Grimace for snatching away the three Outer Gods. He did not get him to spit out their Kingdoms. The reason why they did not apply the same rule to the Black Goats Offsprings was mainly because everyone participated in the kill. Furthermore, there were too many chaotic Kingdoms in the Black Goats Offsprings Kingdoms. Therefore, Lin Huang got the imperial monsters to share them equally. This included Bloody and the couple of Queen Mothers and Bug Emperors that did not participate in the battle; they got their share of the benefits as well. Meanwhile, the dominator-level powerhouses carcasses, including the Black Goats Offsprings carcasses, were all given to the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers. Grimace was the only one who requested special permission to keep a Black Goats Offspring carcass. His reason was that he could turn the Black Goats Offspring into a puppet since he was an expert in the Puppetry Skill. He also guaranteed that the combat strength would not be any weaker than the modifications on the creatures the Queen Mothers bred. Lin Huang did not reject Grimaces request. After all, the main reason he gave the carcasses to Bug Tribe Queen Mothers was also to make weapons of war that were on par with the Black Goats Offsprings. Although Azas underlings did not look like much of a threat now, since Lin Huangs side now had the resources, they would still go ahead and create these weapons first no matter whether or not these weapons would come in handy later. On the second day after getting their hands on the resources, Lin Huang suddenly received a telepathic voice transmission from Grimace. The three Outer Gods Gods souls have faded, and their memories have been wiped. Aza did that to them? Lin Huang asked that instinctually. Thats possible, but theres also another possibility. Grimace paused. Perhaps the three Outer Gods that I killed werent their Primordiums! What about the other Abyssal Dominators? Did a similar situation happen? Lin Huang quickly asked. I examined a couple of carcasses and found that they were all normal, Grimace replied. Lin Huang fell into a brief period of silence. Bring the bodies of the three Outer Gods to me. Grimace appeared in front of Lin Huang a moment later. He said nothing and took out the three bodies directly. Lin Huang nodded after scanning the bodies with his Divine Telekinesis. Your guess was right. These bodies are just clones. There are no signs of their Gods souls being attacked. Their Primordiums mustve recalled them. If it was done by Aza, He wouldnt be able to hide it from me no matter how thorough He was. So those three guys are still alive? A ferocious gleam flashed through Grimaces eyes. They mustve used a clone technique similar to the one Aza uses. Lin Huang frowned. If that was the case, Aza aside, it was rather hard to kill the three Outer Gods. The reason being was that their clones could hide in any dimension. If they were like Aza in the sense that they used reincarnation to form their clones, as long as they did not expose themselves, even Heavenly Dao would not be able to locate them. Just let it go. Go back and refine the Kingdoms. Lin Huang finally understood why Aza did not care about the three Outer Gods deaths. The simple reason was that His three warriors had not died at all! Cant you do something to locate their Primordiums? Grimace was a little confused. I wouldve killed Aza if I could do that. Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. Theres no solution to the technique. Even Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao cant find their clones. Theres something that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao doesnt know in this world?! Grimace was shocked. He was, of course, aware of what the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was. Theoretically, as long as it was something that happened in the infinite universe, it was impossible that it would be unaware. The reason being was that it was watching everything from every aspect. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao isnt all-knowing. Lin Huang shook his head. So theres no way that we can kill Aza and the three Outer Gods completely? Grimace asked further. Theres no solution at the moment. Lin Huang could only reply honestly. Alright then Grimace did not say anything further. Just as he was about to put away the bodies and leave, Lin Huang suddenly heard Grimaces telepathic voice transmission, I think Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao might be hiding something from you. He left in a flash without waiting for Lin Huang to respond. Lin Huang squinted and thought about what Grimace had said. He had never suspected Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. The reason being was that, as the Heavenly Dao, it had no emotions, nor did it have desires. It was impossible for it to have any ulterior motive. He had never suspected anything it said. However, he realized that there was something that he had overlooked after hearing what Grimace said. Theoretically, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was all-knowing in the infinite universe. There was nothing that could hide from it. Perhaps there were things that could bypass its observation under special circumstances. For instance, the telepathic voice transmission he had with Grimace. This was due to his Goldfinger, Xiao Hei. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao could not probe that. Perhaps there were other special circumstances as well. Lin Huang was not too sure whether Aza creating His clones belong to that category of special circumstances. Nevertheless, Lin Huang had also thought about another possibilityGrimace, who had a terrible character in the first place, was stirring up trouble! It was possible that Grimace made Lin Huang suspect Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao on purpose just for fun. He did not dwell on the matter for too long after giving it some thought. No matter whether it was Grimaces bad taste in jokes, or Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos intentionally concealing things from him, he did not plan to investigate. At the very least, Aza and the three Outer Gods were not a threat to him at the moment. 1 Therefore, he decided to focus all of his attention on continuing to integrate more chaotic cosmoses. No matter who his opponent was and how powerful the opponent was, as long as he was powerful enough to suppress everything, he would not have to worry about any scheming or plotting. Ive only mastered 95 undecillion chaotic cosmoses now. I havent even reached 100 undecillion. Thats far from being powerful enough to suppress everything. I must continue to strengthen myself! After notifying his imperial monsters about the news that the three Outer Gods were still alive, Lin Huangs Primordium shut his eyes to continue creating more will projections to integrate chaotic cosmoses. He was unwilling to delay this for even a second. At that moment, in the central zone of the infinite universe far away, the battle between Aza and First Liege, which had lasted for over half a month, went on Chapter 1920 - New Crisis The battle between Aza and First Liege finally ended after going on for over a month. First Liege was defeated and killed by Aza on the spot. Although Aza was weakened after the battle, Lin Huang did not attack. The reason being was that he knew very well that it was rather meaningless to kill Azas Primordium. He also knew that although First Liege was defeated, he did not truly die. He had a technique similar to Azas. As long as his clones were alive, he could not actually be killed. Unfortunately, his equipment was taken by Aza. After He won the battle, Grimaces speculation was verified. The reason being was that Lin Huang saw the three Outer Gods stepping out of the mystic territorys entrance and appearing before Aza. The Outer Gods that appeared this time looked exactly the same as the three Grimace had killed earlier, but their combat strength was clearly much more powerful. Judging by the strength of their auras, they had mastered thousands of quadrillions of chaotic cosmoses. Over the next few days, Aza soon began to make new arrangements. Shub recovered her original form. The ink-like black fog was rumbling and squirming continuously. One could occasionally see slippery, black tentacles slithering around like snakes inside Judging by the aura fluctuations, Lin Huang could sense that she seemed to have entered a state of deep sleep. However, the aura emanating from her did not stop growing. Shes breeding Abyssal creatures in her body! Lin Huang came to that conclusion instantly. Just as he concluded, there would be a giant mouth appearing on Shubs black fog-like body every now and then which would spit out an Abyssal creature. This continued over the next few days. Each of these Abyssal creatures had combat strength of dominator-level rank-9! She would breed some ten or so of these Abyssal creatures everyday. These Abyssal creatures had basically mastered hundreds of billions to trillions of chaotic cosmoses. They were considered rather powerful among dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses. Updated by VipNovel /Com Lin Huang finally understood why Aza did not care about His underlings deaths now. The reason being was that, as long as Shub was around, she could create an endless amount of those powerhouses. Although they were not as powerful as the three Outer Gods and the Black Goats Offsprings, they had mastered hundreds of billions to trillions of chaotic cosmoses, which represented the peak of combat strength in the infinite universe. After Shub bred those monsters, Yogg would teleport them to different places. Lin Huang could clearly see that these monsters would destroy the places in the infinite universethat they were randomly teleported to, devouring everything there to their hearts desire. They even had abilities similar to Shub, in the sense that the living beings they devoured would turn into their offsprings that could be bred. However, compared to Shub, they could only breed offspring once each day, and could only breed a number of offspring based on how many lives they devoured. Moreover, the combat strength of the offspring they bred was equivalent to the lives they devoured. Although that was the case, the damage they caused to the infinite universe was significant. This was mainly because they had a stunning level of combat strength. In the entire infinite universe, only Dragon Emperor and a small number of other powers could fight against them. They hardly encountered anyone capable of fighting them. Almost all of the living beings present where they appeared would be devoured and turned into Abyssal monsters. Lin Huang locked onto the Abyssal monsters coordinates and shared the information to his imperial monsters. In the entire infinite universe, perhaps only Bai and the others had sufficient ability to easily kill those monsters. They created clones and teleported them to where the Abyssal monsters were in order to attack them. This was the only way Lin Huang could handle these Abyssal creatures at the moment. Theoretically, they could eradicate the problem by killing Shub. However, Aza was seated right next to her at the moment. Even if Bai and the others formed battle formations, with their abilities, they would not be able to defeat Aza. Lin Huang could not go over and kill Aza himself either. As soon as he attacked, Azas clones might go into hiding entirely. Since He had the patience to only attack after waiting for hundreds of eras, He definitely had the patience to wait another hundred eras. 1 However, Lin Huang could not wait that long, so he could only restrain his urge to attack until the opportunity to kill Aza completely came. As such, Shub continued breeding everyday. Bai and the others would send their clones over to attack the monsters. Throughout the next few days, they managed to get the chaos under control completely. On this day, Shub suddenly extended a part of her body into a blob of black fog. Within that fog, the images of Bai and the others killing the Abyssal monsters were projected. The monsters she had bred had sent those images back after they were killed. She did all this to probe how many high-level combatants there were exactly in the infinite universe. Its them again?! Nyarlathoteps tone was clearly somewhat furious when he saw Bai and the rest. Seems like they are using their clones to attack the offspring Shub bred. Yogg, who was standing to the side, frowned. At that moment, Aza, who was sitting on the throne, finally opened His eyes slowly. As He continued to recall His clones from the different dimensions, His ability kept skyrocketing everyday. He had initially only mastered a septillion chaotic cosmoses, but that number had multiplied a hundred-fold throughout those few days. He had now mastered over 100 septillion chaotic cosmoses. He merely glanced at the projection before saying to Shub, who was still breeding Abyssal monsters, Increase the number of monsters. Just breed beginner dominator-level rank-9 monsters for now. Naturally, Lin Huang heard what Aza said clearly. He instantly understood what He meant. Although this would decrease the offsprings combat strength, which would allow more powerhouses in the infinite universe to participate in the battle against them, the number of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses in the infinite universe was limited. Moreover, no matter how powerful Bai and the others were, they had a limited number of clones too. As long as the number of offspring Shub bred surpassed what the infinite universe could handle, the entire infinite universe would suffer and Abyssal contamination would grow even worse. Shub decisively changed Her breeding method after receiving Azas order. In the squirming black fog, giant mouths opened one after another. They began to spit out dominator-level rank-9 Abyssal monsters frantically. Although these monsters combat strength was also at dominator-level rank-9, the strength of their auras was clearly much weaker than the monsters Shub bred previously. They had basically only mastered hundreds of million to a billion chaotic cosmoses. After modifying her breeding method, Shubs breeding efficiency rose at the speed that was visible to the naked eye. She could only breed some ten offspring within a day previously, but now that number had skyrocketed to tens of thousands of offspring a day. Yogg quickly teleported the tens of thousands of dominator-level rank-9 Abyssal monsters to every corner of the infinite universe. Although these offspring had mastered fewer chaotic cosmoses, their characteristic of breeding through devouring did not change at all. Within a day, the balance in the infinite universe was broken again Chapter 1921 - Showing All Trump Cards Lin Huang frowned as he watched the Abyssal creatures that were contaminating the various areas like a tidal wave. The tens of thousands of dominator-level rank-9 monsters Shub bred did not encounter any effective resistance in most of the areas they were teleported to. These Abyssal monsters devoured all of the lives around them easily and then converted these lives into their own offspring. The converted offspring also greatly increased the rate of contamination. Those they attacked and killed would be contaminated by Abyssal energy. Their prey would then be transformed into Abyssal monsters at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Each of Shubs offspring were massive sources of contamination. The number of Abyssal monsters skyrocketed wherever they passed by. Dragon Island, Snow Domain, and the other top organizations with dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses all participated in the battle enthusiastically. Even with Bai and the others fighting alongside them, the situation grew tenuous thanks to the ever-increasing number of invaders. Lin Huang observed the situation for three days. Bai and others failed to contain the round of invasion after all. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang could only get the Bug Tribe under his command to participate in the battle. The Bug Emperors joined the imperial monsters team as well. They began to create clones to participate in the war. Shasha and the other Queen Mothers made thousands of dominator-level rank-9 bug beasts using the various resources they obtained earlier in an effort to resolve the situation. It was only then that the crisis Shubs offspring brought about was finally averted. However, Shub soon noticed that something had gone wrong. She projected the scenes from before her offspring died. The Bug Tribe?! Nyarlathotep was a little confused. Why are they here? They mustve come to an agreement with the other tribes. Yogg stared fixedly at the dominator-level rank-9 Bug Emperors that the Queen Mothers had modified. These Bug Tribe monsters that joined the battle have clearly been modified based on Shubs offspring. Nyarlathotep, who was standing to the side, only noticed this when Yogg mentioned that. The reason being was that although Shasha and the others modified the Abyssal creatures carcasses to look like Bug Tribe monsters, some of their original characteristics still remained. After looking carefully, it was easy to tell that they were originally Shubs Black Goats Offsprings. Aza, who was seated on the throne, opened His eyes once again. He merely stared at the projection for a moment and suddenly spoke into the empty void, Explain this to me, Bug Tribe. A voice soon echoed across the sky in reply a moment later. It sounded like the low hum of countless bug beasts. Its a collaboration Aza chuckled. Youve become quite gutsy now. He did not take the Bug Center seriously. That guy was the epitome of cowardice hundreds of eras ago. It had managed to survive by relying on its cowardice. Aza had never thought that it would suddenly dare to go up against Him like now. Its for self-protection, Bug Centers voice soon echoed again. Aza scoffed. If thats the case, you should know the consequences. You wouldnt let go of me and my tribe even if I didnt participate in the battle anyway, the Bug Center replied again. This makes me a little curious about the reason behind your gutsy attitude. Aza squinted his eyes. Is it because of that First Liege? This time, the Bug Center did not say anything. After a moment, Nyarlathotep asked Aza, seeing that the Bug Center had gone silent, The Bug Tribes participation is greatly influencing the war this time round. Should we use that? I think we should. Seeing that Aza said nothing, Yogg, who was standing to the side, spoke after a moment of silence. Use it then. Lets see what other trump cards they have, Aza said absent-mindedly while supporting His chin with one hand. He seemed to not care about the proceedings. Lets give them a taste of that! A grin appeared on Nyarlathoteps face. A moment later, Yogg opened a dimensional gate and pulled out a gigantic egg from it. It looked similar to the Black Goats Egg, but the tentacles on it were drooping. It was not as plump as the Black Goats Egg either. Lin Huang recognized it immediately. Thats the Black Goats dead ootheca? While he was in doubt, Shub stretched out her black, fog-like tentacles from her body and pierced them into the dead ootheca. After that, her rate of breeding accelerated tens of times faster. She was able to breed 20,000 to 30,000 dominator-level rank-9 offspring initially. Now, this number had been increased to over a million. Lin Huang also noticed that the dead ootheca was shrinking slowly. Shes absorbing the dead oothecas nutrients in order to increase the speed and number of offspring shes making! It did not stop there. After Shub bred those offspring, Yogg did not send those Abyssal monsters away immediately. Instead, Nyarlathotep participated in the next step of the process while smiling. Thorns emerged from his back. They pierced into the Abyssal monsters bodies one after the other. He only removed them a while later. Outwardly, the Abyssal monsters did not seem to have undergone any changes at all after being pierced. However, Lin Huang had his guesses. Although he did not know what Nyarlathotep had injected into the monsters, he could probe what was happening inside the monsters bodies. There were spheres of high-level Abyssal energy inside their bodies. Is that something similar to a bomb? Or is it a technique that will boost the monsters strength? Lin Huang could not pinpoint exactly what it was. After thinking about it, he informed the group of imperial monsters under his command so that they could prepare beforehand. For the next few days, Shub would breed over a million offspring per day. Not only that, all of them were at dominator-level rank-9, and they had mastered between a hundred million to a billion chaotic cosmoses. The ootheca had clearly dried up significantly after three days of having its nutrients absorbed. Lin Huang guessed by looking that the ootheca would only last for ten days at most. It was just that he did not know if Aza and the others had the second or third ootheca that could provide Shub with more nutrients to maintain her high production rate. Her breeding throughout those few days had indeed applied a significant amount of pressure to everyone in the infinite universe. After all, the number of Abyssal monsters that joined the battlefield everyday was increasing every day. Nevertheless, Lin Huang finally discovered what Nyarlathotep did to those monsters. As he guessed, Nyarlathotep had made them into bombs. To be exact, they were not just bombs, but also a highly effective source of contamination. As soon as the monsters that had been injected were killed, their carcasses would explode. The impact of the explosion was not the most important factor. Rather, the dense Abyssal energy that would be released from the explosion was the most dangerous element. If one was not careful and got too close, the Abyssal energy would contaminate them immediately as soon as they were touched. Only supreme powerhouses who had mastered over trillions of chaotic cosmoses were immune to the contamination from these bombs. In that case, excluding the people from the Sword Alliance, Dragon Emperor was the only person in the entire infinite universe who was immune to such contamination. One had to say that Nyarlathoteps trick was quite cunning. What Aza and the others did had gotten the infinite universe into a pickle again. Chapter 1922 - The Second Challenge The battle on the infinite universes side gradually became much more difficult over the next few days. This was due in part to Shubs increased rate of breeding, which stretched Bai and the others clones thin. Another reason was Nyarlathoteps technique, which caused the contamination by the offspring to become even worse. The Abyssal army grew at a rate that was tens of times faster now. Feeling helpless, Lin Huang was forced to attack after all. He created tens of thousands of clones and disguised them as Bai and the rest. These clones then participated in the war as well. The tens of thousands of clones could retrieve the coordinates of the enemies from Lin Huangs head directly and perform teleportation over and over again, accurately attacking the Abyssal monsters that Yogg had teleported randomly. After Lin Huangs clones powerful attacks were launched, the situation that Aza and the others had set up was finally resolved once again. Shub noticed that something had gone wrong, so she projected the images from the deaths of her offspring again. Nyarlathotep and Yoggs expressions looked terrible as they watched the unusually brave people from the Sword Alliance, who arrived in an accurate and timely manner to attack Shubs offspring. Aza stared at the images for a while, but did not seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He merely said to Yogg softly, Seems like theyve found a way to lock onto the coordinates of your random teleportation. Otherwise, they wouldnt be able to attack so quickly. Clearly, Aza could not recognize, from the images, that the clones were disguised versions of Lin Huang. In that case Nyarlathotep spoke softly. Breed the Black Goats Offspring directly and prepare for war! Aza looked at Yogg and Nyarlathotep after saying that. You guys should get things ready for the next few days as well. Shubs breeding mode changed again after Aza gave His order. Later on, Lin Huang saw the ootheca that she was absorbing dry up quickly. Within an hour, the ootheca had been sucked dry entirely and turned into dust. At the same time, a big mouth was opened on Shubs body. It spat out a Black Goats Offspring. The Black Goats Offspring was clearly not an imitation of the ootheca before. Judging by the strength of its aura, it had clearly mastered 1,000 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the Black Goats Offspring. He initially thought that Shub would not have the ability to breed more Black Goats Offspring after initially breeding them from the 12 oothecas previously. Clearly, this did not seem to be the case now. Not long after, something that surprised him even more occurred. Yogg took out a second dead ootheca. Shub stretched out another tentacle and pierced it again. She then started a new round of breeding. Clearly, this ootheca was being absorbed at a rate that was similar to the one before. It dried up at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. Within an hour, the ootheca was sucked dry completely. Shub spat out the second Black Goats Offspring. The aura of this Black Goats Offspring was clearly more powerful than the one before. It had mastered close to 2,000 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. Throughout that day, Yogg continuously took out over 20 dead oothecas, which Shub then bred into Black Goat Offspring. For the next few days, this breeding rate was more or less maintained. However, Yogg did not teleport the Black Goats Offspring into the battlefield. As Shubs breeding strategy changed, the number of Abyssal monsters that joined the battlefield dropped significantly, and so did the pressure on Bai and the others. Throughout the next few days, Shubs offspring aside, even most of the monsters that were converted and contaminated by the offspring were killed. Lin Huang recalled his clones once he saw that the situation was under control. On the third day, when Shub was about to start a new round of breeding, Aza suddenly opened His eyes and looked somewhere into the distant sky. Before Yogg and the others could react, Aza spoke directly, Why are you hiding like that? Are you trying to launch a sneak attack on me? A figure walked slowly out of the shadows as soon as those words were said. Seems like youre much more powerful now. It was of course First Liege, who had been defeated previously. Seems like youve gotten many good things from Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. There was mockery in Azas tone. Clearly, First Liege in front of Him now possessed a level of ability that was incomparable to the time when he had been defeated previously. Lin Huang observed the scene from afar with interest. The number of chaotic cosmoses Aza had mastered had increased to over 500 septillion now, as He kep recalling his clones throughout the past few days. Meanwhile, judging by the strength of his aura, First Liege had mastered over 300 septillion chaotic cosmoses now. Clearly, he had used some special techniques to increase his ability after being defeated. Lin Huang did not think too much about it in the beginning. He only thought First Liege might have used a trick similar to Azas since he also had many clones scattered all over the infinite universe. However, after hearing what Aza said, Lin Huang realized that his combat strength boost might really have something to do with the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. It doesnt matter where I got this power from as long as I can kill you. First Lieges killing intent began to rise. Youve no chance of winning at all. Did you forget how I killed you last time? How dare you boast in front of me? Azas tone was filled with disdain. After the two trash talked each other for a little bit, the three Outer Gods and the tens of Black Goats Offsprings vanished as Aza flung His sleeve. First Liege frowned subtly. Indeed, he had been thinking about killing the Outer Gods and the Black Goats Offsprings together. He would kill as many as he could. However, Aza clearly sensed his intentions, so He teleported the rest of them away without hesitation. Yogg and the others were sent some tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses away from that one fling of Azas sleeve. Lin Huang divided a portion of his Divine Telekinesis instantly to continue watching Yogg and the other two. However, he placed his primary focus on the battlefield where Aza and First Liege were located. Seeing that Aza had sent the three Outer Gods away, First Liege finally began his attack. He held a saber in his hand. It was obviously an infinite supreme treasure. He swung the saber around repeatedly. The saber gleams charged, turning into threads that almost seemed like they were able to tear heaven and earth apart. The dense threads clung onto Aza. However, Aza did not panic at all. He was still mocking First Liege while dodging. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao sure has many treasures. Still, its quite a pity to leave you with this saber. I should add it to my collection since it happens to be a pair with the one I got from you before. Although First Liege did not retort, his killing intent had clearly magnified. His killing intent was so thick that it almost felt like it could be materialized. As First Liege kept swinging his saber, Lin Huang soon sensed something unusual. First Lieges combat strength was strangely elevating! As he swung his saber, his aura, which initially indicated that he had mastered over 300 septillion chaotic cosmoses, had increased to over 400 septillion now. It was still increasing Chapter 1923 - Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao’s Interference Lin Huangs expression turned strange as he watched the intense battle between Aza and First Liege. Their combat strength continued to elevate as the fight went on. Within a day, Azas aura had elevated to having mastered close to 1,000 septillion chaotic cosmoses. The speed of their combat strength elevation was many times faster now. First Lieges combat strength elevation efficiency was almost on par with Azas, which was surprising. He had also increased his combat strength to having mastered over 900 septillion chaotic cosmoses within the span of a day. The strength of their auras were almost identical. What had Lin Huang confused was not Azas combat strength elevation, but rather First Lieges. He could clearly sense the process of Aza recalling His clones from various dimensions continuously, as He integrated them into His Primordiums body. However, First Lieges elevation was unfathomable. Lin Huang could not detect the source of his elevation. It totally felt like First Liege was growing stronger out of thin air. Is this being done by Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao? That was the only reasonable explanation that Lin Huang could think of. However, there was something that he could not understand about this situation. Even a rank-10 living being would have a limited physical body and Gods soul. Wouldnt First Lieges physical body and Gods soul collapse if he kept being strengthened like that? He knew that the Kingdom of a rank-10 living being could usually contain approximately a septillion chaotic cosmoses at most. Even if one could go beyond that limit, it would not exceed it by too much. The reason why Aza could absorb clones to strengthen Himself was because He was born as a chaotic lifeform. The strength of His physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom far surpassed other rank-10 living beings. Naturally, His limit was also much higher than other rank-10 living beings. However, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had said that First Liege was also a rank-10 living being. First Liege had already reached his limit when he had mastered a septillion chaotic cosmoses previously, but he had clearly gone beyond this limit now. Lin Huang thought for a moment while frowning, and he soon came to a conclusionGreat Chaotic Heavenly Dao had modified First Lieges physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom! This modification was the only reason why First Liege did not have his physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom collapse despite having integrated close to 1,000 septillion chaotic cosmoses. Clearly, Lin Huang was not the only one who saw through this matter. Aza noticed that too. Seems like Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao has spent a lot of effort on you, Aza mocked First Liege directly. He even said, while looking at the sky above, What? Didnt you say that you wouldnt interfere with the world? Youve been hard at work on this guy, havent you? Aza was clearly talking to Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. In reality, even Lin Huang thought that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had interfered this time. Training First Liege and founding Heavens Secret was still within its limits. After all, the resources used to cultivate First Liege had not been given to him directly. Heavens Secret had earned them. However, modifying First Lieges physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom, as well as providing him with chaotic cosmoses to integrate with, were evidence of it interfering outrightly. It could be considered as having crossed the line. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did respond to Azas words. Nevertheless, Azas suspicion did not stop at that. Heavenly Dao shouldnt have any desires, biases and emotions. No matter what happens to the infinite universe, youve no right to interfere. Your interference only shows that theres a problem. Youve no right to be Heavenly Dao at all! First Liege attempted to get Aza to shut up, but it was futile. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not respond to Aza at all. It indeed did not have anything to say anyway. The reason being was that what Aza said was the truth. Theoretically, Heavenly Daos could only follow the rule if they did not accept anyone as their owner. They could only watch from the sidelines. They could only kill those people who broke the Heavenly Dao rule. Moreover, Azas invasion into the infinite universe complied with the rule that governed how the infinite universe operated. It was the infinite universes calamity. When Lin Huang heard Aza voice His suspicions, he suddenly recalled what Grimace said before. Something might really be wrong with Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao! Come and read on our website wuxia worldsite. Thanks In the air, the intense battle between Aza and First Liege was still going on. Their auras continued to skyrocket as each day passed. One thousand septillion! Two thousand septillion! Three thousand septillion! On the other hand, under Yogg and Nyarlathoteps protection, Shubs breeding had gone very well. Yogg kept taking out dead oothecas for Shub to absorb. She could produce over 20 Black Goats Offsprings every day, and each one had mastered thousands of quadrillions of chaotic cosmoses. Only a few days had passed, but there were already over a hundred Black Goats Offsprings. Still, Shubs breeding continued. Yogg would take out dead oothecas everyday for her to absorb. Even Lin Huang was surprised. How many dead oothecas has this guy stored up exactly?! As Shub was busy breeding the Black Goats Offsprings, she did not have time to breed more Abyssal offspring to participate in the battle. Bai and the others very soon achieved a temporary victory. They had cleared out all of Shubs Abyssal offspring. The small remaining amount of Abyssal creatures that were contaminated were struggling hard. The top organizations of the infinite universe were hunting them down enthusiastically. Basically, the infinite universe had achieved a temporary victory. Seeing that Shub and the others did not seem to display the intention to release more Black Goats Offspring for the time being, Lin Huang focused on the battlefield between Aza and First Liege again. The battle went on, and it got even more intense as days went by. Their combat strength kept skyrocketing every day, and showed no signs of stopping at all. It was as if their Kingdoms had broken through the limit of chaotic cosmoses that they could contain. Three thousand septillion! Five thousand septillion! Eight thousand septillion! Ten octillion! The number of chaotic cosmoses in their bodies continued to skyrocket even after it broke through the ten octillion mark! Even Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows. Dont tell me theyre actually going to catch up to me? Lin Huang could not help but check the number of chaotic cosmoses he had integrated with in his body. 3,650 undecillion He was slightly relieved when he saw this number. Judging by His elevation efficiency, Aza shouldnt be able to catch up so soon. However, His performance applied pressure to Lin Huang. I cant be reckless. I must accelerate my integration efforts to break through to ten duodecillion chaotic cosmoses as soon as I can! After that, Lin Huang focused all of his attention on integrating chaotic cosmoses. He officially broke through the ten duodecillion mark in terms of integrated chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom approximately a week later! Read latest Chapters at Wuxia World . Site Only He then refocused his attention on the battlefield. The battle between Aza and First Liege was still goin on. The chaotic cosmoses in their Kingdoms had broken through to the hundred octillion mark. Although they were still quite a distance away compared to Lin Huang, the figure was quite terrifying nonetheless. They could turn an entire chaotic cosmos into nothingness with just a wave of their hands. The impact from their battle spread to thousands of chaotic cosmoses away, turning everything there into base particles Chapter 1924 - : Talking to Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao Again Ten octillion! A hundred octillion! A thousand octillion! Throughout those short ten days, Aza and First Lieges combat strength rose incredibly fast. The number of chaotic cosmoses in their bodies received an exponential boost as each day passed. Although the number of chaotic cosmoses in Lin Huangs body had officially broken through to ten duodecillion earlier, the speed of the increase in the number of chaotic cosmoses integrated by those twos Kingdoms was rather stunning. What will their limit be? Lin Huang was quite curious. Azas Primordium was a chaotic lifeform. The limit of His Kingdom was very high, of that there was no doubt. However, it was impossible for it not to have a limit. Meanwhile, for First Liege, although Heavenly Dao had modified his physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom, he was just a rank-10 living being after all. Lin Huang guessed that his limit was most probably lower than Azas. However, that was not the only thing to consider. Apart from that upper limit, the number of Azas clones was definitely not infinite. Even Lin Huang could only create some three undecillion will projections at the moment. The number of clones Aza had had definitely not reached that figure. Time continued passing by in the infinite universe. The battle between Aza and First Liege went on for a few months. The number of chaotic cosmos in their Kingdoms continued to rise after surpassing the 1,000 octillion mark. They soon broke through past the 10,000 octillion mark, and arrived at the hundred nonillion mark! However, the elevation speed of their auras significantly slowed down when they reached that number. Seems like a hundred nonillion chaotic cosmoses is close to their limit. Judging by how things are progressing, they shouldnt be able to make it to 200 nonillion chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang could clearly tell that First Lieges aura was a little unstable when they had reached a hundred nonillion chaotic cosmoses. His physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom seemed to have reached their limits. Meanwhile, Aza had obviously slowed down His own speed of elevation. However, this should be related to the number of His remaining clones rather than His limit. He had likely recalled most of the clones He had scattered throughout the infinite universe. Excitement shone in Lin Huangs eyes as he stared at Aza. He did not think that the current Aza was his match, but the thought of Aza being close to recalling all of His clones meant that he could soon kill Aza off completely. He patiently waited for that moment to arrive. Tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses away, Shub was still breeding. Throughout these few months, the number of Black Goats Offspring she bred had surpassed 1,000. However, Yogg kept taking out dead oothecas for her to absorb every day. Lin Huang figured that, if he did not interfere, the Black Goats Offspring army would be enough to destroy the entire infinite universe. Even Bai and the others would die of exhaustion in the end if they had to fight such a large horde. After all, the enemy had the upper hand when it came to the number of powerhouses they had with similar combat strength. Moreover, there were no signs that Shubs breeding would stop anytime soon. Nobody knew how many more dead oothecas Yogg could provide. Nevertheless, the Outer Gods did not send any more Abyssal monsters into the infinite universe. This gave the infinite universe the opportunity to kill off all of the Abyssal creatures that had invaded. The entire infinite universe finally obtained close to a month of peace. Come and read on our website wuxia worldsite. Thanks However, all of the organizations knew that this peace was only temporary. Almost all of the Dominators could clearly sense that a terrifying battle was still going on in the central zone of the infinite universe. Many people also found out that it was Heaven Secrets First Liege who was fighting Aza. They secretly hoped that First Liege would win the battle. After witnessing how powerful the ootheca was, nobody was arrogant enough to think that they could fight Aza themselves. After all, a person who was as powerful as Sword Palaces palace master, who was a dominator-level rank-9 supreme powerhouse, was killed by an ootheca like a chicken on a chopping block. Meanwhile, the ootheca was merely a product of one of the three Outer Gods. From that, one could already imagine how powerful the Outer Gods were, let alone Aza whom they respected. Before First Liege challenged Aza, most people thought that no one would be His match in the entire infinite universe. These people saw hope when First Liege showed up. Naturally, this was not the case for Lin Huang. Lin Huang even thought First Lege was wasting his time by doing something so futile from the get-go. The reason being was that it was meaningless even if Azas Primordium was killed here. However, seeing that First Liege had forced Aza to recall almost all of His clones, Lin Huang suddenly realized that First Lieges hard work was not entirely useless. At least his appearance gave Aza pressure, which resulted in Him having an unprecedented enthusiasm to recall His clones. If First Liege had not stepped up and challenged Him, Aza would definitely have chosen to fight at a more stable pace. He would not have recalled so many clones in such a rush. Lin Huang was feeling a little sleepy as he watched the ongoing battle. To others, it was an earth-shattering battle that could tear the world apart. However, to the current Lin Huang, it was like watching kids fight. The gap between their level and his was too great. This did not just refer to a gap in their combat strength, but also the gap in scope. The more chaotic cosmoses Lin Huang mastered, the more he comprehended the dao. His knowledge of Dominator Power had completely surpassed the scope of Aza and First Lieges comprehension. To Lin Huang, their usage of dao and Dominator Power could not even be called simple and rough. If he had to use a word to describe it, it was barbaric. It was like a person armed with nuclear weapons watching two primitive humans duking it out with Stone Age weaponry. Suddenly, Lin Huang faintly sensed Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos existence. It was secretly watching the twos battle as well. What would you do if First Liege loses this battle? Lin Huang asked, Will you modify him a second time? His voice pierced through the sky and reached Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. If youre asking me that, do you have no intention of fighting? Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao asked in response. Would you trust me if I fight? Lin Huang chuckled. Read latest Chapters at Wuxia World . Site Only Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao fell silent for a moment. I cant be sure of whether youre one of Azas clones, so I cant bet on you! Are you sure that First Liege isnt? Lin Huang responded. He was chosen by me from birth. Not only that, hes been under my surveillance every single minute and second since then, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao explained, I cant be 100% certain, but compared to other people, the possibility of him being Azas clone is the lowest. Lin Huang could not help but shake his head when he heard that. Aza is indeed right about something Heavenly Dao shouldnt be biased. I dont think that my speculation is biased at all. It is the result of my rational analysis. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao insisted that its speculation was right. Chapter 1925 - Lin Huang Takes Action The battle between First Liege and Aza was still ongoing. However, the rate at which their auras elevated slowed down when they reached the100 nonillion chaotic cosmoses mark. It even stopped rising half a month later. It was just as Lin Huang thought. It stopped when they got to 120 nonillion to 130 nonillion chaotic cosmoses I had thought they would at least get to 200 to 300 nonillion. Lin Huang could tell that First Liege had reached his limit. Even though Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had modified him, 120 nonillion chaotic cosmoses was the limit that his Kingdom could contain. Even his physical body and Gods soul had reached their limits and could collapse at any time. Meanwhile, Aza had recalled most of the clones that He had scattered all over the infinite universe. After all, His combat strength had only been at one septillion chaotic cosmoses when He had made His clones back then, so He had very limited clones. It was rather impressive that He managed to elevate His combat strength to this extent after recalling His clones. The battle between the two became more and more intense when their combat strength elevations came to a halt. Each one of their attacks was aimed to kill as their combat strengths were similar. They were eager to kill the other party. The radius of the battles impact continued to expand. From the initial tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses, the impact had spread to millions of chaotic cosmoses. Even the three Outer Gods ran further away as soon as they realized that something was wrong to prevent Shubs breeding from being affected. In the infinite universe, all of the organizations whose chaotic cosmoses were affected retreated one after the other. The top organizations such as Dragon Island, Sword Palace, Snow Domain, and even the Sword Alliance, retreated as well. After all, the battle between the two of them was beyond what any organization could handle. All of the formations and barriers they had set up were useless in the face of such power. If they did not want to be affected, their only solution was to leave. Compared to the uneasiness and panic that everyone in the infinite universe was feeling, Lin Huang felt completely relieved now. He had finally confirmed one thing, which was that his ability had far surpassed Aza. Even if He recalled all of His clones, Aza in his peak state would not be Lin Huangs match. He could see Azas limits now, and Aza was still like an ant in his presence. It was unfortunate that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not trust him enough. Otherwise, he could kill Aza and all of His clones at any time and eradicate any future troubles completely. Read The Latest Chapter at In the infinite universes central zone, the intense battle between Aza and First Liege continued on. Their attacks went back and forth, and the situation had turned stagnant. The impact from the collisions of Dominator Power destroyed everything around them over and over again. The infinite universes central zone had become an empty void thanks to their battle. It was no longer a chaotic cosmos. Even the base particles, energies, and everything else It had all been transformed into nothingness. In the presence of these two supreme powerhouses who had mastered over 100 nonillion chaotic cosmoses, nothing was indestructible. Just like that, the battle went on for another half a month. As First Liege was shouldering a triple burden this entire time, in terms of his physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom, given the prolonged high-intensity battle, his physical body finally could no longer hold on and began to collapse. The first part of his body that collapsed was the heart. Come and read on our website wuxia worldsite. Thanks In reality, nobody could sense this from the outside. He had been hiding it with all of his might. Nevertheless, Aza noticed his unusual state quickly and seized the opportunity to go on the offensive. Although He did not understand what exactly had happened to First Liege, the subtle differences in the latters fighting prowess did not escape His senses. Azas offensive undoubtedly accelerated the collapse of First Lieges physical body. This collapse was initially caused by his high-intensity Dominator Power usage. If he gave up fighting immediately, he might be able to recover. However, as Aza continued to pressure him, First Liege did not get the chance to breathe at all. Furthermore, First Liege clearly did not plan to leave just like that. Instead, he chose to collide with Aza again and again with all of his might. His situation worsened even faster due to this. It was only his heart that was affected at the beginning, but it soon spread to his other organs. In the end, it finally reached his skin Aza merely scoffed when He saw that First Lieges arms, legs, and even neck, were beginning to collapse. Seems like Ive won again. You can only blame yourself for having terrible innate abilities. Even with Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos modification, theres only so much you cando given your bodys foundation. No matter how you modify it, you cant raise your bodys innate limits, Aza teased him again, but what He said was the truth. Take for example a person who was 1.6 meters tall. Given the size of his frame, reaching 130 kilograms in weight would be his limit. Meanwhile, a person who was over 2 meters tall would not reach their limit until they weighed over 270 kilograms. First Liege was just a rank-10 living being. He could not compare to a chaotic lifeform. No matter what modifications Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao performed on him, due to his innate foundation as a rank-10 living being, it could not change his bodys upper limits. Naturally, First Liege knew that Aza was telling the truth. However, since things had already gotten to this point, he did not plan to give up just like that. I mightve lost, but that doesnt mean that youve won either! As soon as First Liege said that, he detonated his physical body, Gods soul and Kingdom Endless scorching white light quickly devoured Aza, who was not far away. It then spread in all directions. The impact of First Lieges detonation was undoubtedly terrifying. Noticing the terrifying impact that was about to spread out to millions of chaotic cosmoses, Lin Huang had to finally take action. He stretched out his hand and grabbed at empty air. Like a gigantic barrier, he contained the impact within a million chaotic cosmoses. The destruction from impact finally faded away after a few days. Lin Huang frowned as he sensed the energy released by First Lieges self-detonation. He speculated that if he had allowed the impact to spread out, it would have easily encompassed over a hundred million chaotic cosmoses. There would have been countless casualties in the entire infinite universe! Apart from himself, nobody could contain that level of impact Lin Huang suddenly raised his eyebrows as he thought to himself. He looked at the direction where Aza had been standing His aura, which had almost dissipated entirely throughout those few days, was recovering rapidly Read latest Chapters at Wuxia World . Site Only Aza had not died! When First Liege self-detonated, Aza did not manage to dodge the explosion at all. He was the first one who was devoured by the impact. Even Lin Huang thought that He had probably died with First Liege. The reason being was that His aura had become so weak that it was almost indiscernible. Lin Huang had not expected to Aza hold on and sruvive First Lieges suicidal attack! This guy has such a strong will to live. Even Lin Huang could not help but exclaim. Chapter 1926 - Aza’s Counterattack As he watched the black fog linger around Azas body, and His physical body begin to recover at speed that was visible to the naked eye, Lin Huang did not seize the opportunity to end Him. Perhaps to outsiders, this was the perfect chance to kill Aza. However, to Lin Huang, it did not actually make much of a difference as to whether Aza was weak or not. If he really wanted to kill Him, Lin Huang could do so at any time. There was no need to wait until Aza was weakened. He sensed Aza gradually recovering energy. From this, Lin Huang knew that He was recalling His clones in order to accelerate the recovery speed of His body. It proved that the final trick First Liege pulled had indeed hurt Him. Within half a day, Aza recovered entirely. His aura had recovered its peak state like when He was fighting First Liege. He almost killed me Aza snickered as He looked toward where First Liege had self-detonated. He stared at the sky above and snickered in mockery. This First Liege must be your last trump card. Its too bad that he has a terrible foundation. Hes still rather lacking compared to me even after exhausting his talent and ability. Even if he resurrects himself with a clone, its impossible there will be another breakthrough in his ability. Regardless, since youve used up your trump card. Its my turn to fight back now! He was clearly speaking to Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. He knew that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao could definitely hear Him. Aza sent over a voice transmission as soon as he was done speaking. Get ready to attack! As soon as He said that, the three Outer Gods, who were hundreds of millions of chaotic cosmoses away, were stunned. Subsequently, the three of them responded almost at the same time. We obey the Masters will! The next second, thorns emerged from Nyarlathoteps back again. They stabbed into the Black Goats Offspring, injecting something into their bodies. After that was done, Yogg, who was standing to the side, flung his sleeves and randomly teleported the over 2,000 or so Black Goats Offspring to different areas in the infinite universe. Lin Huang could not help but frown when he saw this scene unfold. The Black Goats Offspring had powerful abilities and were almost on par with Bai and the others. They had the upper hand in terms of numbers alone. One could say that they could sweep through the entire infinite universe. In addition, Nyarlathotep had once again done something to their bodies. If what he did was the same as before, as soon as these Black Goats Offspring died, the explosion would be countless times worse than when the offspring that Shub had created before died. Lin Huang did some slight calculations. As soon as these Black Goats Offspring exploded, the blast radius would encompass millions of chaotic cosmoses. As for the resulting contamination effect of the explosion, perhaps only Bai and the others could defend against it by force. Even Dragon Emperor could not escape the fate of being contaminated by Abyssal energy as soon as he was within the blast radius. Lin Huang shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind and focused his attention on Aza again. Black fog was lingering behind Azas back. He could sense that auras were consolidating quickly within the black fog. There were 20 to 30 of them that were at dominator-level rank-9; these had clearly mastered over 1,000 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses. What Lin Huangs pupils shrunk. Figures soon appeared from the black fog. These were the batch of Abyssal monsters that Bai and the rest had killed together with the three Outer Gods back then. However, only the dominator-level rank-9 monsters had been revived. Those that were below dominator-level rank-9 had clearly been given up on. Nevertheless, Lin Huang saw through Azas technique. He created those in his dream?! Lin Huang speculated that this should be the ability of Azas Kingdom. The war has begun. Kill! As Aza issued his orders, the 30 or so dominator-level rank-9 Abyssal monsters, that each had mastered around 1,000 quadrillion chaotic cosmoses, rushed out in various directions quickly. Come and read on our website wuxia worldsite. Thanks Lin Huang soon saw how terrifying these revived Abyssal monsters were. Abhoth, who was a greenish-gray blob, disseminated countless flesh particles in the air. These particles were invisible to naked eye and spread to the surrounding chaotic cosmoses quickly. Very soon, they penetrated the bodies of the powerhouses in those chaotic cosmoses. The powerhouses physical bodies and Gods soul began to deform, and their ability began to elevate. It was not only their physical bodies and Gods souls that were deformed, they had also lost their mind. They began to attack the living beings around them maniacally. The lives that were contaminated by their attacks were deformed as well Later on, the powerhouses that were deformed went into a frenzy and began to contaminate a third batch of living beings Within half a day, Lin Huang saw tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses entering a state of war. From beginning to end, Abhoth did not have to fight at all. Meanwhile, Ghroth, which looked like a giant eyeball, was like a dead star floating in the air. His body merely shook slightly, and a shriek that all lives in the world could not hear would reverberate. Although nobody could hear it, all of the living beings would lose their minds and go insane wherever the shriek passed by. All of the living beings, including animals, plants, microorganisms, and even viruses, began to kill each other! Dominator-level powerhouses could not escape that fate either. Tulzscha was like a pillar of fire that gave off tinder-like sparks. As those sparks fell, the chaotic cosmoses nearby would be ignited. However, these chaotic cosmoses were not burnt by high temperatures. Instead, it felt as if their vitality had been devoured. The lands began to wilt, all of the lives in those chaotic cosmoses were drained of their vital force quickly. They were wilting and rotting All of the living beings seemed to have their death clocks brought forward. Living beings that could initially live for tens of years to hundreds of years had their lives shortened to a brief moment. This included the cultivators as well. The dominator-level cultivators combat strength began to deteriorate until they finally degenerated to the level of ordinary people and died. There was also a dark purple giant wolf called Mhithrha. It was gigantic, and its shadow alone covered tens of thousands of chaotic cosmoses. Its shadow transformed into canines as black as smoke, which snuck into the chaotic cosmoses, killing everything inside frantically. All of the living beings were the canines prey. The hundreds of millions of canines had the combat strength of dominator-level rank-9 powerhouses, while the strength of their auras had surpassed tens of billions of chaotic cosmoses. As they killed and ate, their aura kept growing The damage caused by those 30 or so Abyssal monsters that Aza had revived exceeded what the over 2,000 Black Goats Offspring could accomplish. That made Lin Huang frown as he watched. The infinite universe that had been at peace for over a month fell into a state of chaos again within the blink of an eye. Not only that, the situation was countless times more severe compared to before. Read latest Chapters at Wuxia World . Site Only Seems like I have to intervene. Lin Huang sent the coordinates of the 30 or so Abyssal monsters to Bai and the others. He sent them a message as well. Make killing these 33 Abyssal monsters your highest priority! After that, Lin Huang turned his attention to the Black Goats Offspring. Ill handle these injected Abyssal monsters myself Chapter 1927 - Unexpected Calamity After locking his Divine Telekinesis onto the over 2,000 Black Goats Offspring, Lin Huang sent his will projections over to their locations directly. However, they were still disguised as Bai. Even the strength of their auras was completely identical to Bais. However, their abilities were more powerful than Bais. After all, Lin Huang was totally on another level, whether it was in terms ofthe usage of Dominator Power or the comprehension of dao. The will projections that were disguised as Bai had bloody wings created with blood-red Dominator Power, which spread out from their backs. They flapped and flew at lightning speed. They arrived before the Black Goats Offspring almost instantly. They then pointed at their enemies chests. Blood-red Dominator Power condensed at the tip of their fingers, vibrating hundreds of million of times within a single second. This power penetrated the Black Goats Offsprings defenses easily and burrowed deep into their flesh-like tentacles, restraining their huge bodies. Support our Vipnovel(com) After that, the Dominator Power traveled up to their brains, cutting off all of their nerves. The Black Goats Offspring fell helplessly onto the ground. All of them had not only lost their ability to move, they had also been deprived of all their senses. However, they did not die. As such, the mass of energy Nyarlathotep injected into their bodies was not triggered. Lin Huang did not stop just there either. A moment later, the blood-red Dominator Power located a mass of dark-green energy. They penetrated it and began to suck it all up. The Abyssal energy that Nyarlathotep injected was highly contagious. Had it been Bai or any of the others, they definitely would not have dared to touch it. However, to Lin Huang, it was just a form of mutated energy that was a little bit special. Even if the mass of mutated energy had originated from Aza, Lin Huang could absorb it easily. He did not even need to use Eternity Fire to purify it. The reason being was that the level of the Dominator Power in his body had far surpassed Azas. If the situation was reversed, his Dominator Power could easily assimilate Azas. After absorbing the mutated energy Nyarlathotep injected into the Black Goats Offspring, Lin Huangs will projections sent the Black Goats Offsprings into his Kingdom. He disguised himself as Bai primarily because the techniques available to Bai were the most convenient. If he disguised himself as Tyrant, he would have crushed those Black Goats Offspring violently. If he had disguised himself as Kylie, Killer or Lancelot, he might have torn the Black Goats Offspring apart There was one more reason behind his choice. Even with the disguise, the Outer Gods would definitely sense that something was amiss. Instead of disguising himself as many imperial monsters, he would rather disguise himself as Bai. That way, the Outer Gods would only notice something unusual about Bai. They would only suspect that Bai had concealed his abilities before. The thought of someone being disguised as Bai would not cross their minds. If he disguised himself as many other imperial monsters and accidentally revealed a flaw, that would make the Outer Gods suspicious. As for whether it would cause trouble for Bai, Lin Huang was not worried about that at all. Bai had powerful abilities himself. Among powerhouses at the same level, his speed was only second to Kylie and Thunder. Apart from that, Lin Huang had a revival technique in his Kingdom. All of the living beings that had a contract bond with his Kingdom would return to the Kingdom when they died. With merely a thought, Lin Huang could revive them at any time. After handling the 2,000 or so Black Goats Offspring, Lin Huang retrieved their Kingdoms one after the other and gave all of them to Shasha and the other Bug Tribe Queen Mothers. To them, these Black Goats Offspring were the perfect materials for research and modification. Bai did not notice that Lin Huang was disguised as him at all. However, on the Outer Gods side, Nyarlathotep and Shub reacted one after the other. Someone removed the energy I left in the Black Goats Offsprings bodies?! Nyarlathotep sensed something wrong immediately. A moment later, Shub sent a will projection over. Someone has cut my connection with all of the Black Goats Offspring! As soon as she said that, she projected the scenes of Bai attacking the Black Goats Offspring. This guy Hes from the Sword Alliance! Nyarlathotep and Yogg were shocked when they saw the Black Goats Offspring in the images being suppressed and failing to fight back. How did he do it exactly? He was able to render the Black Goats Offspring immobile and toy with them so easily. Nyarlathotep had a confused look on his face. He has concealed his ability. Yogg, who was standing next to him, frowned and guessed. As they watched the scenes being cut off one after the other, Yogg asked immediately, Have all of the Black Goats Offspring been killed? Shub soon responded by sending over a will projection, They havent been killed, but their auras have been blocked by something somewhere. Theres a high possibility that theyve been captured alive in his Kingdom. Although she had lost her connection with the Black Goats Offspring, Shub was still much aware of whether the Black Goats Offspring were dead or alive. He managed to create over 2,000 clones and captured all of the Black Goats Offspring alive so easily. This guys ability has surpassed the level that we can handle Yogg frowned deeply. If he managed to find the Black Goats Offspring, he is likely able to find us Nyarlathotep was worried. I think that we should meet up with Master as soon as possible. Yogg nodded after thinking for a while. We should report this to Master as well. The three Outer Gods very soon teleported the few Black Goats Offspring that Shub had just bred to where Aza was. Aza was stunned to see them, but did not find it strange. He asked as soon as He saw the few Black Goats Offspring that had been teleported along with them, Have the rest of the Black Goats Offspring been teleported elsewhere? They have, but they have been killed, Nyarlathotep said, biting the bullet. Then he gave a simple explanation on how Bai killed the Black Goats Offspring. After that, Shub projected the battle scenes. Aza frowned after watching. Although this guys clones combat strength is similar to you guys, his technique is far beyond what you all are capable of. His mastery of the usage of Dominator Power and comprehension of the dao is extremely high. If you guys really ran into him, you would probably be killed off directly. Aza clearly saw through Lin Huangs trick, but did not see through his disguise. I cant believe theres someone like this in the infinite universe. Aza sent out a voice transmission together with Bais image as soon as He was done speaking, Find this guy and send me his coordinates! Youre going after him personally, Master?! The three Outer Gods were shocked. This guy will be troublesome to deal with if we leave him be. Im going to kill him before he develops to that point! A Cold gleam was sparkling in Azas eyes. Chapter 1928 - You’re Too Weak In the air, the 108 pairs of bloody tentacles on Bais back had turned into whips. They were slicing apart the greenish-gray figure before him frantically. The figure was instantly turned into mush. However, the figure slowly began to condense again, looking like something else completely. Bais expression was cold. He charged forward and continued to tear it apart. The battle had lasted for a whole day. Bais opponent was Abhoth, who was one of the monsters under Azas command. However, compared to a few months ago, Abhoth could no longer be killed so easily. The current Abhoth had combat strength that was on par with Bais. Support our Vipnovel(com) Although it had been beaten up by Bai all day, it did not suffer any substantial damage at all. Its greenish-gray blob-like body kept transforming into powerhouses that it had devoured before. Not only that, it had been strengthened to the point that its combat strength was technically on par with Bais. However, this was meaningless to Bai, as it could not harm Bai in the slightest. The shortest it had lasted was over an hour, and two to three hours at most, before being killed by Bai. Nevertheless, every time it was killed, it would turn into another powerhouse that it had devoured before. Throughout the day, it had changed its form ten times, yet the only thing it exhausted was a portion of its Dominator Power. Bai had tried all sorts of ways to kill it, but it was futile. No matter how he killed it, it would always be reborn into a different form. He finally gave up on all fancy techniques and used the attack technique he was most skilled with, killing Abhoth as quickly and efficiently as he could over and over again. Just after he crushed Abhoth into mush for the umpteenth time, before it condensed into a new form once again, Bais pupils suddenly shrank. He looked into the distance not far away from Abhoth. There was danger! An extremely high level of danger! He had never felt such a threat before! The source of the threat had yet to show up, yet Bai already had goosebumps all over his body. He had a strong urge to run away. Who is it?! A terrifying thought suddenly flashed through his mind. Aza?! The strength of the incoming aura surpassed the three Outer Gods. Aza was the only possibility! The very next second, the person showed Himself directly. So clumsy. That person glanced at Abhoth, whose body was slowly reforming. He then turned his gaze from Abhoth and looked at Bai. Bai suddenly froze. Aza!!! Aza squinted as He took a good look at Bai. He only spoke a moment later, You dont look like youre disguising your abilities If Im not mistaken, youre not the one who stole the Black Goats Offsprings, right? Bai was confused. He did not understand what Aza was talking about at all. It has to be someone who was disguised as you. Aza came to that conclusion instantly when He saw the expression on Bais face. Can you tell me who it is? Aza looked at Bai as he smiled. Bai failed to control his own body, which flew over as soon as Aza spoke those words. He felt as if his body had been constrained by something. He could not move at all. He could only watch as his body drew closer and closer to Aza. Will I be killed now?! It was only then that Bai realized how weak he was before Aza. He was no different than an ant! However, just as Aza stretched His finger to point between Bais eyebrows, a stunned expression appeared on Azas face. Almost at the same time, His outstretched right hand cracked from His shoulder downward. At the same time, Bai, who had just been right in front of Him, completely vanished. Are you looking for me? A gentle voice could be heard from not far away. Aza lifted His head and looked toward the direction of the voice. It was only then that He realized there was a figure standing there. You Aza revealed a trace of fear on His face because He could not sense the existence of the other figure at all. Suddenly, He felt like He had returned to that time hundreds of eras ago when He saw Virtual Sovereign for the first time. This feeling seemed almost identical. So powerful! This person was so powerful that He did not have the ability to resist him whatsoever! I didnt want to reveal myself initially, Lin Huangs voice remained gentle, But you stirred up trouble with my buddy, so I could no longer sit back and watch. Also, its my fault that he suffered this calamity anyway. Who are you exactly?! Aza asked, while trying his best to calm Himself down. Ah, I forgot to introduce myself Lin Huang introduced himself fearlessly, My names Lin Huang. My identity Well, Im the Sword Alliances chief. Sword Alliance Aza had just recalled Bai and the others were indeed from the Sword Alliance. Although He had obtained this piece of information from Yogg, He had not taken it seriously at all. He had always thought that First Liege from Heavens Secret was the only one who posed somewhat of a threat to him in the entire infinite universe. After all, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had trained him specially to fight Him. However, He had never imagined that there would be such a terrifying existence hiding behind the Sword Alliance. Are you a Transcender?! Aza suddenly looked a little excited now. He asked Lin Huang with anticipation. At that very moment, His surging curiosity had far surpassed His fear for death. He was eager to know whether Lin Huang was a Transcender like Virtual Sovereign. Transcender? Lin Huang was confused as to why He suddenly asked such a question. Nevertheless, he shook his head and replied honestly, Im not. Aza looked clearly disappointed when He heard that answer. However, He felt unwilling and asked further, Then how far away are you from achieving the status of Transcender?! Im far from reaching that state. Lin Huang was telling the truth. Im not even sure whether I can get there in the first place. How is that possible?! Disbelief filled Azas face. He thought Lin Huang was lying. The oppressive feeling you gave me is close to what I felt from Virtual Sovereign. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that. He chuckled. Perhaps thats because youre too weak. Just like an ant that believes that the planet it lives on is the entire universe. If we really were to compare, I think Virtual Sovereign can kill me with a single finger. You are too weak Too weak Weak Aza had never imagined that He would hear a comment like Youre so weak from someone during His lifetime. Even Virtual Sovereign did not say that back then. Of course, this was probably because Virtual Sovereign did not bother to talk to him. The latter had merely used a single finger to kill Him. After Aza was suppressed, He understood that the gap between Him and Virtual Sovereign was almost immeasurable. However, it was not until He met Lin Huang that he truly knew that Virtual Sovereigns strength had far surpassed the limits of His imagination. The gap is so great? Chapter 1929 - Immeasurable Power Lin Huang had more than a quattuordecillion chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom now. Meanwhile, Aza, who had recalled almost all of His clones, only had some 120 nonillion chaotic cosmoses in His Kingdom. The gap between the two of them was close to ten trillion times. Aza was really no different from an ant in front of Lin Huang. However, Lin Huang knew he was far from achieving the status of a Transcender. Nevertheless, to Aza, Lin Huangs almost immeasurable power gave Him a similar feeling like when He had faced Virtual Sovereign back then. This was an illusion that caused Him to think that their levels of ability were similar. Support our Vipnovel(com) Aza could not believe His ears when He heard the truth from Lin Huang. He had finally realized the unimaginable gap between Himself and a Transcender. This gap could not be bridged no matter how many more chaotic cosmoses He refined. He might not even get any closer even if He had reached His own limits. I initially wanted to save you for First Liege. After all, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao spent a great deal of effort on that man. Although First Liege has lost twice, it should have some sort of back-up plan. Lin Huang ignored Azas mental state and continued to say, But you wont have the chance to see what that will be. As soon as Lin Huang was done speaking, Aza suddenly realized that He could no longer move. It was as if He was constrained by something. It was then that He realized that there were invisible Divine Telekinesis threadsthat tied Him up without Him knowing. What was more terrifying was the fact that the Dominator Power and Gods soul energy in His body seemed to have been sealed by something. He could not use them at all. The very next second, He saw Lin Huang appear less than half a meter before him. Lin Huang stretched out his hand toward Him Lin Huang pressed his hand on top of Azas head directly. Subsequently, a great amount of Dominator Power poured into Aza. What Is this assimilation?! Aza suddenly panicked. He had never thought that He would someday be assimilated by someones Dominator Power. Throughout the hundreds of eras, He had always been the one who used Dominator Power to assimilate others, modifying them into Abyssal creatures under His command. You definitely have clones hiding out there somewhere. If I kill you, your consciousness would be transferred to your clone and you would then be reborn. If your clone hides deliberately, even Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao might not recognize you. After giving it some thought, to prevent future problems, Ive decided to assimilate you directly. Then, Ill get you to recall all of your clones after youve been assimilated. And then Ill kill you properly. In reality, Lin Huang had not come up with this idea himself. It had been Bloodys idea. Aza fell into a state of despair when He heard that. He could only watch as Lin Huangs Dominator Power contaminated His physical body, Gods soul and even Kingdom The Abyssal Power that He was so proud of, which could contaminate all of the living beings in the infinite universe, was like snow in the scorching sun before Lin Huangs Dominator Power. He did not have any way of fighting back at all. His body was constrained. He could not even move His fingers, let alone run away. Abhoth, who was watching this scene from not far away, was shaking in fear. It did not even dare to run away, worried that this man would target it if it tried to do so. Within half a minute, Lin Huang had contaminated Aza completely, turning Him into one of his underlings. After unsealing Him, Aza kneeled before Lin Huang directly. He had completely lost the will to fight back. Master! At this moment, the respect He had for Lin Huang had surpassed the respect the Outer Gods had for Him. Get up, Lin Huang issued Aza his first order quickly, Recall all of your clones now. Leave none behind! Yes, master! Aza could only obey Lin Huangs orders. The control Lin Huang had over Him had even surpassed the control he had over Xiao Hei and his imperial monsters. The next second, Aza shut his eyes and began to recall His remaining clones. Lin Huang could clearly feel that His Divine Telekinesis was stretching toward various corners of unknown dimensions continuously. After that, a large amount of Dominator Power began to return to Azas body. Lin Huang could even feel the number of chaotic cosmoses in Azas Kingdom had skyrocketed once again. Just like that, many days passed by. The number of chaotic cosmoses in Azas Kingdom very soon skyrocketed from 120 nonillion to 130 nonillion, 140 nonillion The entire process lasted some 20 days. In the end, it finally stopped when it had reached approximately 180 nonillion. Lin Huang had not expected Aza to have hidden so many clones. Clearly, He was still holding back when He was fighting First Liege back then. He might even have elevated His own strength in tandem with First Lieges rhythm intentionally, while reserving a portion of his strength as a trump card. Lin Huang asked as soon as he saw Aza opening His eyes, Youve recalled all of them? Yes, I have. Aza nodded. Lin Huang was relieved after hearing that. Although Aza was no longer a threat to him, he wished to weed out any potential threats. Its time to end this war completely. Lin Huang nodded. Throughout those 20 days, the Outer Gods had been breeding more Black Goats Offspring. The battle between Lancelot and the others and the dominator-level rank-9 creatures that were created in Azas dream raged on. The Abyssal creatures that were contaminated by Abyssal energy were fighting with all the organizations in the infinite universe as well as the Bug Tribe. Now that Aza, the source of the problem, had been dealt with, it was time to end the war completely. Aza, recall the Outer Gods, all of the Black Goats Offsprings and the dominator-level rank-9 creatures that you created in your dream. Aza executed the second order as soon as it was given. The very next second, the three Outer Gods and the Black Goats Offspring, that were billions of chaotic cosmoses away, began to fade quickly. The dominator-level rank-9 creatures that were scattered all over the infinite universe, which were fighting intense battles with Lancelot and the others, began to fade quickly as well. Naturally, that included Abhoth, which was standing nearby. Kylie and the others looked confused when they saw their opponents suddenly vanish. However, they soon realized that Aza had to have done something. Bloody reported the odd situation to Lin Huang instantly. Lin Huang only gave her a short reply, Aza is one of us now. Bloody instantly understood that Lin Huang must have listened to her suggestion and assimilated Aza. She could not help but exclaim, The war is finally ending! Apart from the Outer Gods, Black Goats Offspring and the dominator-level rank-9 creatures, the monsters the dominator-level rank-9 creatures converted were recalled into Azas Abyssal Kingdom. However, He could not recall the living beings in the infinite universe that were assimilated by the Abyssal energy. The infinite universe had to clear those up themselves. Those were basically the finishing touches of the war. Nevertheless, the Sword Alliance participated enthusiastically. The organizations participated in the final cleansing with excitement Chapter 1930 - : Traitor Deep inside a dimension in the infinite universe, a voice came out of a misty cloud. First Liege, you can stop integrating chaotic cosmoses now. Aza is no longer a threat. However, First Liege, who was integrating chaotic cosmoses in a greedy manner, ignored what Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said. He did not look like he was going to stop at all. First Liege, if you dont stop, Ill cut off your connection with the infinite universe! Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said. Can you do that? At that moment, First Liege finally lifted his head to look at that cloud. He smirked. He no longer had any fear in his eyes. Support our Vipnovel(com) In order to fight Aza, you shared the infinite universes Heavenly Dao authorization with me. Thats how I managed to break through my innate limitations to integrate chaotic cosmoses beyond my limit. Youre now trying to take the authorization back after Aza has been killed. Do you think thats fair to me? Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was rendered speechless by that. Indeed, it had always treated First Liege as a tool to fight Aza. Now that Lin Huang had assimilated Aza, this tool was naturally no longer of use to it. It thought that First Liege, who had always been fearful of it, would execute whatever orders it gave without hesitation. However, that did not seem to be the case at all. Ive checked all of the related rules thoroughly as soon as I obtained the authorization. The infinite universes Heavenly Dao authorization is unique. It allows me to break through my innate limitations by sharing a portion of authorization with me, so the current situation is that we both share the same authorization. Theres no difference in the levels of authorization, its just that you possess a little more.: If Im unwilling to give up the authorization, theres nothing that you can do to me. Im like you now. Were both Heavenly Daos will by nature. You can try to kill me, but as the infinite universes Heavenly Daos will, as long as the infinite universes Heavenly Dao exists, its impossible for me to die. As for chasing me out by force, you cant do that either. Youd have to give up on the authorization that I possess altogether. However, the price is great for you to even consider doing that. The authorization that was initially complete has been shared. Youd encounter a terrifying backlash as the culprit. A light backlash would injure you severely enough to the point that you might not recover even after tens to hundreds of eras. A severe backlash will result in you losing your will entirely, and the entire Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao would return to being a chaotic mass without consciousness. Will you coexist with me or pay the price to kill me? If you think logically, theres only one correct answer. Am I right? Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao fell silent immediately. What First Liege said was completely true. Ever since it promised to give First Liege a portion of its authority to fight Aza, it had lost control of this matter. Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos authorization was unique. Sharing a portion of it would be the equivalent of giving First Liege equal footing as the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. It initially thought that First Liege whom it brought up; First Liege who always listened to it, would definitely not go against it even after obtaining the portion of its authorization. However, it had underestimated this human. How was it possible for First Liege to give up such a precious thing after witnessing its endless powerful possibilities?! What was loyalty to him? What was credibility to him? Was it important to have that, or power? Was being grateful for his upbringing more important? Or was possessing endless strength more important?! Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao fell silent. As Heavenly Daos will, even though it was betrayed, it did not feel angry or upset. It fell silent because it was still weighing the consequences of the two options. If it removed First Liege forcefully, just like what he said, it would mean that it was removing part of the Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos authorization itself. It would result in a severe backlash. If it did not do that and chose to coexist with First Liege, First Liege would integrate all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe sooner or later. The reason being was that he longer had a limit to his Kingdoms integration. It was only a matter of time before he would achieve that. When First Liege integrated all of the Kingdoms in the entire infinite inverse, he would have mastered the authorization entirely. By then, the Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos original will would become a useless ornament. Should it fight for its life, or compromise and coexist? Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao weighed the options over and over again, but it just could not decide between the two. After hesitating for a moment, it chose the third option decisively! The day after he dealt with Aza, Lin Huangs expression suddenly froze while he was arranging the finishing touches. The reason being was that he heard a voice transmission. Lin Huang, I need your help! He was familiar with this voice, as it came from Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. Lin Huangs Divine Telekinesis pierced through the layers of dimension and he responded quickly. Ive dealt with Aza. What else is there? To be honest, he was quite doubtful. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had asked for his help last time to deal with Aza. However, he had assimilated Aza now. The Abyss plan of invading the infinite universe had basically been resolved now. It made sense that Lin Huang found it strange that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao came to ask for his help at such a time. Its about First Liege Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao quickly told him about the entire matter. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard it. He had never thought that First Liege, who looked honest, would turn traitor. However, he thought it made sense after giving it some more thought. After all, not many could resist the temptation of obtaining the Heavenly Daos authorization of the entire infinite universe, Do you think a regular person would be willing to have all of his fortune taken away out of nowhere after he experienced life as the worlds richest man for a few days? The answer was clearly no! Lin Huang fell into a long period of silence after listening to Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos story carefully. He finally spoke a moment later. So, what do you need me to do? I hope that you can integrate all of the chaotic cosmoses before First Liege does! Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao finally said. Do you think I can do that? He has Heavenly Daos authorization. The number of chaotic cosmoses he integrates is growing exponentially every day. Although the number of chaotic cosmoses I integrate is high, in the long run, its only a matter of time before he will surpass me, Lin Huang said honestly. First Liege possessed Heavenly Daos authorization, which was the equivalent of having an invincible cheat code in a game. Even if Lin Huang was a boss at the highest level in a game, he could not fight an invincible cheat code. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao only spoke again after a moment of hesitation, I can share a portion of my authorization with you! Lin Huang raised his eyebrows when he heard that. He thought for a moment with his head lowered, after which he replied, I refuse to accept that. Chapter 1931 - Duovigintillion! Hearing Lin Huangs rejection, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not know what to say. Ive no interest in taking over the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, Lin Huang continued while shaking his head, You should already know that I have the Ultimate Heavenly Dao in my Kingdom thats just like the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. The only reason why my Ultimate Heavenly Dao isnt as powerful as the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao is becauseI havent integrated enough chaotic cosmoses. Lin Huang really had no interest in the infinite universes Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. To put it simply, it was similar to how the worlds second richest man had no interest in taking over the worlds richest mans fortune. First Liege was occupying someones nest. That was something too lowly for Lin Huang to do. After all, he had his own nest, so why would he take someone elses? Now that he had reached this level, rather than inheriting someones mantle, he hoped to surpass them. Moreover, he had a faint feeling that if he inherited Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos authorization, he might not be able to take that last step to become a Transcender. That was the reason why he refused Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos offer to share the Heavenly Dao authorization. Support our Vipnovel(com) Do you know how fast First Liege can integrate chaotic cosmoses now? Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said after a moment of silence. Before Lin Huang could answer the question, it gave him the answer directly. After he was defeated the second time, I struggled for a week and finally decided to share my authorization with him. Its been 14 days since then. On the first day the authorization was shared, the number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated was only a hundred nonillion (10^32). Since then, it has multiplied every day. 14 days have passed since then. He can integrate 819.2 decillion chaotic cosmoses per day. Thats close to one undecillion (10^36). Judging by the speed hes progressing, he only needs another 13 days before his daily chaotic cosmos integration rate surpasses ten duodecillion (10^40). Lin Huang made some rough estimates. Although the number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated was increasing every day, the rate of his daily increase could not reach First Lieges, whereby the number was doubled every day. He added close to five quattuordecillion chaotic cosmoses to his Kingdom daily. 13 days later, this number would only reach 45 quattuordecillion chaotic cosmoses daily. If both their integration efficiency remained the same, 29 days after the 13 days, Lin Huang would have 5.46 quindecillion (10^48) chaotic cosmoses added daily, while First Liege would have 5.37 quindecillion added daily. They would be almost evenly matched. However, on the 30th day, his daily increase would be 6.45 quindecillion, while First Lieges daily increase would surpass his, reaching 10.74 quindecillion chaotic cosmoses daily. After that, First Lieges daily increase would become more and more insane every day, leaving Lin Huang far behind. Later on, he would only need three days to surpass Lin Huangs 600 days worth of accumulation. First Liege would have more chaotic cosmoses than Lin Huang by then. In other words, counting from this point onward, First Liege would only need 46 days to surpass him entirely. If youre unwilling to accept the Heavenly Dao authorization, its only a matter of time before First Lieges integration speed surpasses yours. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said. I know that. Lin Huang had already estimated the result before Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos reminder. However, accelerating the integration speed isnt the only way to obtain Heavenly Dao authorization. Moreover, he might not be able to double his efficiency every day Lin Huang revealed a grin on his face as he spoke. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao left in relief after the conversation. Meanwhile, Lin Huang took out the Great Heaven Palace instantly. When he was elevated to dominator-level rank-9, the Great Heaven Palaces time flow acceleration had reached 6.5 billion times. As it was sufficient, and that it was the Great Heaven Palaces current limit, Lin Huang did not adjust it further. However, it now seemed that this time flow acceleration rate was slightly insufficient. Moreover, as a supreme powerhouse who had mastered close to 30 quattuordecillion chaotic cosmoses, Great Heaven Palace had a lot of room for improvement. Lin Huang spat out Divine Fire directly to refine and modify Great Heaven Palace all over again. He tossed his spoils like chaotic supreme treasures and Goldfingers in as the materials to refine it. The Great Heaven Palaces aura was skyrocketing quickly. The refinement process took close to three days to complete. Great Heaven Palace looked brand new when it was completed. The time flow acceleration rate had increased from the initial 6.5 billion times to ten quadrillion (10^16) times. As Lin Huang was limited by the quality of materials, that was the best he could do for the time being. However, the increased time flow acceleration was not the only thing about Great Heaven Palace that was strengthened. There was a new special function added, which was that this time flow acceleration applied outside of Lin Huangs Kingdom as well. He added this function this time specially to deal with the crisis that First Liege brought about. The suggestion Bloody secretly gave him was pretty crude and rough. Since First Liege would catch up to him 46 days later, then he would accelerate the speed of integration through Great Heaven Palace! He had discussed this with Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao so that the latter would release a great deal of time management authorization to Great Heaven Palace. The authorization was merely a single authorization under the Heavenly Dao authority. It would not affect the Heavenly Dao authority. That was why Lin Huang was willing to spend three days to modify Great Heaven Palace. As soon as the modification was completed, he used it without hesitation. The Great Heaven Palaces time flow acceleration connected to Lin Huangs will projections quickly, taking over the time flow in the chaotic cosmoses where the will projections were. After making those preparations, Lin Huang spent half a day testing it out. Ten thousand times acceleration! A million times acceleration! One hundred million times acceleration! Ten billion times acceleration! In the end, Lin Huang went all out. He maximized the time flow acceleration in Great Heaven Palace! Ten quadrillion times! The speed of his integration skyrocketed as soon as the acceleration kicked in. From the 86 quattuordecillion (10^48) daily before, it skyrocketed to 8.6 duovigintillion (10^68) per day. After that, the number kept skyrocketing further every day. 10.1 duovigintillion! 12 duovigintillion! 14.1 duovigintillion! Lin Huang could even sense faintly that the number of chaotic cosmoses added to his Kingdom daily had surpassed the number of chaotic cosmoses that were produced in the infinite universe daily. He had an unprecedented thought. Perhaps he could really integrate all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe into his Kingdom! First Liege did not notice Lin Huangs little trick at all. The conversation he had with Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was left hanging. Since Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not make a decision, he thought that it had chosen to coexist with him. However, he had no idea that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had secretly contacted Lin Huang, and that Lin Huang had agreed to help. Time passed by. The crisis Aza brought about soon subsided entirely. The infinite universe regained its peace. Many tribes and organizations began the rebuilding process. They immersed themselves in development and rebuilding. They did not have time to fight with each other at all. However, what people did not know was that there was a secret competition going on Chapter 1932 - I Want to Tell You a Secret Time flew by and, soon, over a month had passed. After obtaining the Heavenly Dao authorization, First Lieges ability increased at a terrifying rate within the one month or so period. In one day, he could integrate over 1.3 quindecillion (10^48) chaotic cosmoses. Although he secretly witnessed the scene where Lin Huang assimilated Aza, he had enough confidence now. He believed that his ability should not be any lower than Lin Huangs. My current self should have surpassed that Lin Huang person, right? First Liege spoke to Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao in a casual manner. In reality, he constantly spoke to Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao throughout that period of time. However, most of the time, it did not bother to respond to him. Ha. However, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said something this time. Support our Vipnovel(com) First Liege did not think too much about its teasing response, as he continued to speak, Lin Huang is no longer a threat to me now anyway, so I want to tell you a secret. Although Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was quite confused, it remained silent. First Liege merely waited for a brief moment. Noticing that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not intend to respond to him, he continued, Actually Im Azas clone. Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was stunned as soon it heard those words. It snapped back to its senses a moment later and asked, Are you pulling my leg?! No, Im telling the truth, First Liege said slowly, Theres no need for me to hide this fact from you now. To tell you the truth, I only found out when Azas Primordium was assimilated by Lin Huang. After Virtual Sovereign sealed my Primordium, to avoid encountering an entity as terrifying as Virtual Sovereign again, He prepared a back-up plan. That back-up plan was me. As soon as something went wrong with my Primordium, whether it died or was sealed, or if it encountered some sort of unique circumstance where He could no longer fight back, the memories that my Primordium stored deep in my Gods soul would be activated entirely. Meanwhile, my Primordium would remove all of the information about me being his back-up from His Gods soul as soon as the memories were activated. That was why I wasnt affected at all when Lin Huang ordered Him to recall His clones. The reason being was that, in my Primordiums memories, Ive already been forgotten. Although Im First Liege, I had no way of rejecting when you requested me to return the Heavenly Dao authorization. As First Liege, Im indeed grateful for your upbringing and years of training, though your goal of training me was just to fight Aza. However, after my memories were activated, I discovered that I was also Aza. My ultimate goal has always been thisintegrating all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe, taking Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos Heavenly Dao authorization, and becoming a Transcender in the end! So I invited the enemy in myself Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao thought that life was truly cruel. It really had never considered the possibility that First Liege was Azas clone. It even suspected Lin Huang instead of First Liege. It could not believe that it had cultivated Azas clone, giving him all of the resources necessary to strengthen him. My Primordium clearly didnt expect things to develop like this The expression on First Lieges face was rather complicated. He initially created a back-up plan in order to avoid powerhouses like Virtual Sovereign and to avoid being sealed again or being killed off entirely. He would never have thought that things would play out so cruelly. You found me, cultivated me, and intended to rely on me to fight my Primordium I only dared to tell this secret today. I was worried that youd ask Lin Huang for help, sharing a portion of your authority with him. After all, the number of chaotic cosmoses he had mastered surpassed mine significantly. If he really obtained the Heavenly Dao authorization, his integration speed would be faster than mine. However, this problem is no longer relevant. I should have integrated more chaotic cosmoses than he has now. Even if you look for him now and share the Heavenly Dao authorization with him, its too late. I want to tell you a secret as well Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao finally could not help but interrupt when it listened to his spiel up to this point, Actually, I looked for Lin Huang 40 days ago. First Lieges heart jolted when he heard that. From your earlier actions, I felt that you were not suitable to be the master of Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. Therefore, I went to Lin Huang and requested to share a portion of Heavenly Dao authorization with him so that he could fight for the authorization with you. However, he rejected my suggestion. First Liege was stunned when he heard this. He looked even more confused now. He had a faint feeling that this matter was not as simple as he thought. He said he wants to become a Transcender. He also said that he had a faint feeling that inheriting the Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao isnt sufficient to make him a Transcender. He has found the way to become a Transcender?! First Liege asked immediately. I dont know about that. What else did you guys talk about? First Liege was eager to find out the answer to that question. We talked about how to fight you, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao said honestly. First Liege was stunned for a second, after which he scoffed. Ive easily surpassed him since he rejected your offer to share the authorization. Hes probably even way behind me, and the gap between us will only get bigger over time. I can only tell you that your sweet dream will be crushed soon. Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos voice was calm. Just when First Liege was about to retort, he suddenly sensed something amiss. Not only that, the feeling was getting stronger. He extended his Divine Telekinesis through the chaotic cosmoses that he had integrated. Suddenly, he realized that they were being assimilated by a strange Dominator Power. He was familiar with this Dominator Power, Lin Huang?! First Liege was completely stunned. Although the aura of the Dominator Power belonged to Lin Huang, it was so powerful that it was beyond his imagination. What did you guys do?! First Liege quickly reacted and shouted furiously at Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. I just sent all of the coordinates of the chaotic cosmoses you integrated to Lin Huang. Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos tone remained calm, but it sounded proud. Why is he so powerful? Thats impossible! He didnt get the Heavenly Dao authorization from you If Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao shared a portion of Heavenly Dao authorization, First Liege would have sensed it, because he was also the partial owner of the authorization. Therefore, he could clearly sense that Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao had not shared the Heavenly Dao authorization with Lin Huang. At that moment, a voice could be heard from not far away. I dont need the Heavenly Dao authorization. I have other ways to strengthen myself. Lin Huangs figure revealed itself slowly. He looked at First Liege, who had almost collapsed, with a smile. Chapter 1933 - Save Your Effort First Liege was stunned when he saw Lin Huang appear. He sensed clearly that Lin Huangs aura was so powerful that it was suffocating. He even realized clearly that Lin Huang could kill him with merely a finger! However, he was unwilling to believe what he was seeing. Impossible! Ive obtained the Heavenly Dao authorization. Its impossible for your integration speed to surpass mine! This must be an illusion that you created, right?! First Liege turned to look toward where Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was. Hes not the real Lin Huang! At that very moment, an intense sense of danger suddenly rose in his heart. The next second, he saw a bloody gleam devour his body. Support our Vipnovel(com) After losing consciousness for a moment, First Liege revived. He saw Lin Huang, who was not far away, retracting his outstretched finger. Do you believe Im real now? Lin Huang looked at First Liege while smiling. However, he also secretly thought to himself, As I thought, I cant kill him. After obtaining the Heavenly Dao authorization, First Liege had turned into the Heavenly Daos will. Just like Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, he could not be killed. Unless someone was so powerful that he was beyond all of the rules of the infinite universe, and more powerful than Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao, it was not possible for him to kill the infinite universes Heavenly Daos will. No matter how powerful Lin Huang was, he had not become a Transcender after all. Naturally, he could accomplish such a feat. What he did just now was a test. The result was as he expected. How did your ability elevate so quickly?! First Liege finally snapped back to his senses after being killed. He had secretly watched the battle between Lin Huang and Aza back then, so he had a rough idea of Lin Huangs previous strength. However, the current Lin Huang standing before him had a level of ability that had completely eclipsed his previous strength. He had become many times more powerful compared to his previous self from 40 or so days ago! This greatly confused First Liege. Perhaps its because of my extraordinary gift? Lin Huang teasingly said with a smile. In reality, even he himself thought the speed of elevation of his ability was too terrifying throughout this period of time. Before using the time flow acceleration in the Great Heaven Palace, his daily integration speed was already considered fast. He had over a quattuordecillion chaotic cosmoses (10^40), while he had over 90 quattuordecillion of chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom. It had been 40 or so days since he used the time flow acceleration in the Great Heaven Palace. The number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated had reached 6.4 trevigintillion (10^72) now. Meanwhile, he had 42 trevigintillion chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom. This number continued to grow daily. He had a strong feeling that integrating all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire universe seemed to be entirely possible now. Seeing that Lin Huang did not answer his question, First Liege continued asking, Why isnt there a limit to your Kingdom? Why can your physical body and Gods soul contain Dominator Power of such strength?! This time, Lin Huang finally responded after thinking about it. Perhaps my body was born special? Lin Huang teased First Liege again. Only he knew that he had a unique Kingdom. The reason being was that when he built his Life Palace, it was extraordinarily compact, which caused it to be much more powerful than powerhouses of the same level later on. It was not until he was elevated to a dominator-level that the unusualness of his Kingdom displayed itself entirelyThere was no limit to his Kingdom at all. As there was no limit, his cultivation did not meet any obstacles after arriving at dominator-level. He could integrate chaotic cosmoses endlessly and strengthen himself continuously. This fortified his physical body and Gods soul over and over again. Therefore, no matter how powerful his Dominator Power grew, his physical body and Gods soul never felt any pressure. First Lieges aura was plummeting as they chatted. As Lin Huang targeted the chaotic cosmoses that First Liege had integrated, the number of chaotic cosmoses in First Lieges Kingdom was dropping at a speed that was visible to the naked eye as Lin Huang forcefully assimilated the other partys chaotic cosmoses. First Liege could not stop the assimilation from happening at all. Although his current self was countless times more powerful than his Primordium, to Lin Huang, he was just like Aza from over 40 days ago. In the presence of Lin Huang, he could only watch as his chaotic cosmoses were assimilated, without any avenue to fight back at all. You cant do that, Lin Huang! These are the chaotic cosmoses that I spent great effort to integrate. Youre robbing my possessions! Youre a bandit! First Liege exclaimed as he sensed the unusual sensations coming from the Kingdom in his body. Lets get something straight. Were enemies now. Isnt it normal to rob your enemy? Lin Huang looked as if what he did made complete sense. However, he was thinking about something else entirely. I wouldve killed you if I could. Do you think Id waste my time doing this otherwise? Fight a fair battle with me when Ive integrated enough chaotic cosmoses if you dare! Do you think that what youre doing now is fair? First Liege continued screaming. Do you take me for a fool? Why would I fight a fair battle with you? Isnt prevention better than cure? Lin Huang looked at First Liege like he was looking at a fool. In reality, the plan that Bloody provided could be achieved even if Lin Huang did not have the time flow acceleration in the Great Heaven Palace. The nature of the plan was that Lin Huang would plunder the chaotic cosmoses in First Lieges Kingdom by force before his integration speed caught up to Lin Huangs. As long as the plundering speed was fast enough, he could decrease First Lieges integration efficiency so that the number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated would not be doubled daily, and even make that number a negative one. Naturally, if Lin Huang did not have the time flow acceleration speed from the Great Heaven Palace, he would have had to do this to First Liege earlier. He had to do it to First Lieges chaotic cosmoses before the latters Dominator Power could assimilate them fast enough. Just like what was happening now, First Liege could not fight back when Lin Huang started assimilating the chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom. Initially, he could integrate 1.3 quindecillion (10^48) chaotic cosmoses daily. However, Lin Huangs assimilation efficiency was quite stunning. Barely a few minutes had passed, yet the chaotic cosmoses First Liege integrated today had already dropped close to zero. Seeing that Lin Huang did not intend to stop, First Liege finally lost his patience and attacked him. Although he knew that he was far from being Lin Huangs match, he attacked anyway. He used almost all of the Dominator Power that he had mastered in this saber attack. Even the saber weapon that was an infinite supreme treasure could not bear the Dominator Power that had been infused into the attack; it was crushed directly. First Liege retrieved the remaining saber spirit after the weapon was crushed and integrated it into his attack. The attack that contained a quindecillion of Dominator Power shot into the sky in a destructive and domineering fashion. Its target was the space between Lin Huangs brows. As soon as the saber was swung, the entire dimension shook as if it was experiencing a major earthquake. The saber gleam that was as bright as billions of exploding stars arrived before Lin Huang immediately. Before the endless energy penetrated his head, it was suddenly extinguished ten centimeters away from his head The terrifying attack that was powerful enough to crush hundreds of millions of chaotic cosmoses seemed to have been wiped away by an unknown power instantly. It disappeared without a trace! Save your effort. Your attack cant break through my defense at all, Lin Huang spoke slowly. First Liege was in utter shock. Chapter 1934 - Living Death First Liege had mastered over a quindecillion chaotic cosmoses at this moment. He had swung his saber without holding anything back. This destructive attack would crush anyone in the infinite universe into mush. Whether it was Aza who was at His peak before or Aza whom Lin Huang assimilated over 40 days ago, it was impossible for anyone to survive this attack. However, when the attack encountered the man in front of him, he found that it could not even break through his defense. The most terrifying thing was that Lin Huang had not used any defensive techniques at all. Impossible Disbelief filled First Lieges face. Soon after, he swung his saber second and third time maniacally Support our Vipnovel(com) Dazzling saber gleams were flung out without holding back. He unleashed all of his strength with each attack. He slashed hundreds of millions of times, sending out countless saber gleams almost instantly. The glaring gleams made it seem like the universe had exploded as they charged toward Lin Huang. However, no matter how much saber gleams there were, no matter how dazzling they were, they would dim automatically and disappear entirely when they reached a certain distance from Lin Huang. None of them could get within ten centimeters of him. There seemed to be an invisible wall around him, blocking any interference from the outside world. Lin Huang who was on the other side of the wall seemed untouchable. In reality, that was not even a defensive technique. Lin Huang did not even activate his Dominator Power. It was just that there was so much Dominator Power in his body that some of it leaked out. The leaked energy alone was enough to crush all of First Lieges attacks easily. Essentially, the gap between them was just too big. First Lieges attacks on Lin Huang was like a regular man swinging his saber before a giant beast that could stir up a tsunami. Disregarding whether he could harm the giant beast, his attacks were not even strong enough to defend himself against the tsunami that the beast stirred up by breathing. Although First Lieges attacks were no threat to him at all, Lin Huang was quite annoyed. Annoying. Before the endless saber gleams dimmed entirely, Lin Huang lifted his arm. A blood-colored gleam shot forth from the tip of his finger. The blood-colored gleam looked like it was only as thick as a thumb, but it penetrated the space between First Lieges eyebrows instantly. First Liege looked shocked, and his body began to fade away quickly. His Gods soul collapsed as well. After killing First Liege again, the endless saber gleams disappeared entirely. However, it only took a moment for First Lieges body to consolidate again from thin air. The scene from a few minutes ago, where Lin Huang killed First Liege, appeared again. He was revived once again thanks to the Heavenly Dao authorization. After obtaining the Heavenly Dao authorization, First Lieges will had been imprinted on Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao. The will could not be removed. As long as the will existed, First Liege could be revived an endless number of times. It basically meant that he was immortal. After being revived the second time, First Liege soon noticed this fact. He suddenly laughed hysterically when he saw his reconstructed body that was as good as before, Hahahaha Lin Huang frowned when he saw the latters reaction. First Lege laughed for quite a while before he said to Lin Huang with a grin, I almost forgot. You cant kill me at all! You can kill me 1,000 times, or even 10,000 times, but as long as you cant remove my Heavenly Daos will, you cant kill me for real! Lin Huang merely raised his eyebrows when he heard that, after which he responded slowly, Have you heard of the term living death? First Liege was stunned when he heard that. He suddenly felt chills all over his body. He only remembered the fact that Lin Huang could not kill him, but he forgot that the current Lin Huang had abilities that far surpassed his own. Even if he could not kill him, the man had many ways to torture him Just as he was feeling a little lost, he suddenly felt a strong binding force on his limbs. Soon, his body was hung in a humiliating position against his will. This is called the tortoise shell bondage Lin Huang explained patiently, I didnt do it properly. Let me try again First Liege felt the force momentarily loosen, but he was quickly tied up again the very next second. The movements in his limbs were even more limited now. Hmm, as I thought. Its always better to test things out on a real person. Lin Huang finally nodded in satisfaction. Ive got the hang of the tortoise shell bondage now, which one should I try next? Lin Huang, you First Liege could not fight back and could only watch himself being tied up in a humiliating manner. He could only verbally attack Lin Huang. However, before he managed to say what he wanted to say, he suddenly realized that he could not make a sound. Although it was just a mere silence spell, First Liege did not have the means to defend himself against it when it was cast by Lin Huang. Verbal attacks aside, he could not even moan. Meanwhile, Lin Huang ignored First Lieges reaction and continued to experiment with the bondage styles that he had just learned. Cross-legged bondage Shrimp bondage Reverse shrimp bondage Diamond pattern bondage M-shaped bondage Lin Huang put First Liege into all sorts of humiliating positions over and over again. First Liege, who could not fight back and not even make a sound, could only let Lin Huang do whatever he wanted with him. 1 Half an hour passed by just like that. Lin Huang suddenly loosened First Lieges bindings and removed the silence spell on him. However, First Liege had lost all hope. He fell weakly to the ground; he did not even want to talk now. Throughout the past half an hour, he clearly sensed that Lin Huang had assimilated almost all of the chaotic cosmoses in his Kingdom. He had only left one for him. His combat strength had dropped from dominator-level rank-9 to dominator-level rank-1. Lin Huang only spoke while smiling after waiting for a while and realizing that First Liege did not intend to speak. Ill give you a month to rest. Ill look for you again in a month. It wont be bondage then. Well play something else. Lin Huang paused. He approached First Liege and lifted his chin. You can suggest something too if you have any good ideas. First Liege stared furiously at Lin Huang, but did not bother to respond to him. Seems not. Ill think about it myself. I have one month anyway. Lin Huang stood up while smiling. He then vanished from where he was slowly. First Liege looked at the spot where Lin Huang had vanished. His teeth were bleeding from all the clenching. You cant kill me anyway! Ill just entertain you! Chapter 1935End - A Grade-S Foothold with 1010 Streets Lin Huang was quite happy when he returned to the Sword Alliance. He was initially worried that something would go wrong on First Lieges side. After all, the other party possessed Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos Heavenly Dao authorization. It was entirely possible for him to use the authorization to do something unexpected. Clearly, Lin Huang had been overthinking things. First Liege had merely used the Heavenly Dao authorization to integrate chaotic cosmoses maniacally. He did not pull any other tricks. The mission to take care of him went unusually well. Although Lin Huang could not kill him due to his Heavenly Dao authorization, he had assimilated almost all of First Lieges over two quindecillion chaotic cosmoses that he had integrated throughout the 40 days or so day period into his own Kingdom. Support our Vipnovel(com) He specially left First Liege with one chaotic cosmos. He did not do that out of kindness, but rather because he acted in accordance with Bloodys suggestion. According to what she said, doing that would prevent First Liege from using some special techniques to overtake Lin Huang if he dropped below dominator-level. If he had one chaotic cosmos left, there was a high possibility that he would not find another way to come up with other tricks. He would only follow what he did before, which was to continue integrating more chaotic cosmoses to elevate his combat strength. It could be said that Bloody was viciously not giving the other party any chance to make a comeback. In reality, Lin Huang did not think much of those things at all, but he followed Bloodys suggestion anyway. Clearly, First Liege had not realized he had fallen into the trap that Bloody set. He only thought Lin Huang left one chaotic cosmos for him so that he would harvest the chaotic cosmoses that he would integrate a month later. After all, it would take time for him to elevate to dominator-level again if he dropped down to heavenly dao-level. By then, he would have to spend a couple of days to elevate to dominator-level. The number of chaotic cosmoses he integrated would not be as many if Lin Huang did not leave one chaotic cosmos for him. Lin Huang, as long as you havent become a Transcender, Ill still have a chance to turn the tables! First Liege began to integrate chaotic cosmoses all over again while cursing Lin Huang. Although he possessed Great Chaotic Heavenly Daos Heavenly Dao authorization, he was only left with one chaotic cosmos in his body. His integration efficiency had significantly dropped. A Dominators integration efficiency was affected by their combat strength and the strength of their Gods soul. When he had a hundred nonillion chaotic cosmoses in his body, he could only integrate a hundred nonillion chaotic cosmoses on the first day. Now that he was only left with one chaotic cosmos in his body, he could only integrate one chaotic cosmos on the first day. Although this number still multiplied everyday, the rate of integration had undoubtedly dropped like a rock. With one chaotic cosmos as the base number, even if the integration efficiency was multiplied over the next 30 days, he would only have integrated some 500 million chaotic cosmoses at most by the end of the month. That was why Lin Huang allowed him to grow for a month peacefully. After all, it would not take much effort to harvest what First Liege had integrated with. Naturally, First Liege knew this very well as well. It was impossible that he could turn the tables around even if he was given three to five months. He thought hard, seeking a solution to break through this conundrum as he continued integrating chaotic cosmoses. To Lin Huang, the current First Liege was no longer a worry. For the next one month, he remained immersed in integrating chaotic cosmoses. His current goal was no longer to defeat Aza or First Liege. Instead, it was to integrate all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe, master them, and become a Transcender! Naturally, apart from cultivation, Lin Huangs clones did not stay idle either. As the war ended, the entire infinite universe had entered a period of high-speed development. Lin Huang got Aza to open His entire Kingdom. Mystic territories of all levels were opened accordingly. They had completely become the new instance dungeons for cultivators of all levels in the infinite universe. No matter what, due to Azas abilities and the characteristics of His Kingdom, the Abyssal creatures in His dream could be produced endlessly. The opening and adjusting of Azas dream became the three Outer Gods new job. Meanwhile, the dominator-level Abyssal powerhouses became the mystic territories bosses. Among them, most of the mystic territories were situated around the Sword Alliance. From lord-level, dao-level to dominator-level, there were mystic territories here of all levels. Given that most of the Sword Alliance members came from Lin Huangs Kingdom, and that they had the characteristics of leveling up by grinding, they grinded away happily in these mystic territories every day; their abilities were skyrocketing rapidly. This caused the top organizations like Snow Domain, Sword Palace and Dragon Island to come to the Sword Alliance, getting them to help with the opening of the exclusive mystic territories. They had also signed an agreement with Sword Alliance to pay an annual rental fee to access these mystic territories. Only Snow Domain was exempted from the rental fee due to the friendship Lin Huang had with Xue Luo before. The Abyssal Tribe slowly became an emerging tribe in the infinite universe. The mentally disabled members had their Abyssal aura hidden. They would appear in public occasionally. The Bug Tribe was disliked by all tribes in the infinite universe all this while mainly because they would destroy wherever they go. However, as they had become part of the allied army in fighting against the Abyssal Tribe, everyone began to change their perspective regarding them. Given that Lin Huang had an agreement with the bug hordes will, and most of the powerful rank-10 Queen Mothers and Bug Emperors were imperial monsters under his command, he gave the Bug Tribe a portion of land for them to maintain their ecosystem, so that they would not need to obtain resources in a destructive manner. This allowed the other tribes to start trading with the Bug Tribe. Not only that, Lin Huang got Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and his disciple Wu Hao to lead a human talent cultivation program for humans, which was still one of the weaker tribes. Not only would they train humans who were gifted in cultivation, they would train talents who were gifted in other aspects too. Meanwhile, the Sword Alliance would take in talents and geniuses from all tribes. It did not matter what their combat strength was. They would be accepted as long as they had the requisite talent and right mindset. This included the Bug Tribe and Abyssal Tribe as well. Time flew by and, very soon, two months had passed. The number of chaotic cosmoses in Lin Huangs body had surpassed 100 quinvigintillion. The figure had reached 120 quinvigintillion now. He had only found out throughout the past ten days that there was actually a limit to the number of chaotic cosmoses in the infinite universe. As for the chaotic cosmoses that he had mastered, it was close to one-third of the total number of chaotic cosmoses there were in the entire infinite universe. He was almost certain that he could integrate all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe within the next six days or so. As promised, Lin Huang projected a clone into the dimension where Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was. First Liege did not pull any new tricks. He merely said horrible things. After Lin Huang tortured him and assimilated the chaotic cosmoses in his body and left behind one for him again, he recalled his clone. However, when his clone arrived again later, he could not help but frown. Where is he?! First Liege was gone. To be exact, it was not only First Liege, Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was gone as well! Hes hiding? Lin Huang squinted. Why is Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao gone as well?! Lin Huangs clone extended his Divine Telekinesis and scanned the entire dimension and the places nearby tens of times. However, he did not find anything. Feeling helpless, his Primordium finally took action. At that moment, his Divine Telekinesis spread through the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe, the concealed dimensions, the time gaps However, he found nothing despite scanning hundreds of times. So he pulled a trick after all! Lin Huang frowned. He had not expected First Liege to have done something like that. Not only did he hide himself, even Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao was gone as well. Clearly, he had done something to Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao to prevent it from revealing his whereabouts. Id like to see where you can hide six days from now! Lin Huang did not waste time dwelling on where First Liege had gone exactly. Apart from searching by extending his Divine Telekinesis a few times throughout the entire infinite universe every day, he focused all of his attention on integrating the remaining chaotic cosmoses. 147 quinvigintillion! 173 quinvigintillion! 205 quinvigintillion! Time flew by. Another five days had passed. The total number of chaotic cosmoses Lin Huang integrated had reached 285 quinvigintillion. Until now, the number of chaotic cosmoses he had integrated with was close to 87% of the total number of chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe. Throughout these five days, he had not found any signs of First Liege at all, and Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao did not show up either. Nevertheless, Lin Huang did not panic at all. He looked into the air with burning desire. One more day, and Ill have mastered all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe. By then, no matter where youre hiding, you wont be able to escape my eyes! On the sixth day, Lin Huang continued to integrate the remaining chaotic cosmoses calmly. At midnight on the sixth day, he had integrated all of the 328 quinvigintillion chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe. Suddenly, Lin Huangs Gods soul and physical body began to transform crazily. His consciousness seemed to have been detached from the infinite universe. It had reached a height that was endlessly far away. When he arrived there, he finally saw what the entire infinite universe really looked like. It was a sphere that was exuding a glaring white light With a thought, he could see everything in the entire sphere easily. It was made of a great amount of chaotic cosmoses, and it almost seemed like lights of various colors made up the entire sphere. He could even clearly see the internal structure of each chaotic cosmos. The great worlds, mini worlds and the gravel worlds. Within each of them, he could see the stars, clouds, whether they were cold or hot, whether there were living beings in them The planets had tribes living on them, there were people who were either busy or relaxing. The night where lights were lit, during the day when pedestrians filled the streets, small towns where the cicadas chirped, the mountain ranges where snow accumulated, the rushing rivers, the peaceful and beautiful red desert that got its color from the sunset Lin Huang saw all of these details. He even saw First Liege who was hiding deep in the Heavenly Dao, as well as Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao that had fallen into a state of deep sleep. He did not mind that at all. He had immersed himself in this special feeling completely. Lin Huang only sighed emotionally when he suddenly snapped back to his senses after a long time. Ive become a Transcender He realized that he had become a Transcender. At that moment, a voice spoke up from behind him. Congratulations on becoming a Transcender. Lin Huang was stunned when he heard that voice. He had not sensed that there was someone behind him at all. When he turned around, he saw a young man with short, black hair looking at him while smirking. The young man looked to be the same age as he was. He had a sincere and warm smile on his face. Lin Huang suddenly recalled something, after which he asked immediately, Youre Virtual Sovereign?! Yes, and no, the young man said with a smile, Let me introduce myself. My names Gu Ding, Im also a Transcender. Virtual Sovereign is just one of my clones. Senior Gu Ding! Lin Huang nodded at him. He could feel that the other party had no ill intentions. Dont call me senior. Call me Gu Ding, or captain. Gu Ding clasped Lin Huangs shoulder while speaking. He was very easy-going and friendly. The very next second, they appeared in a quaint-looking pavilion. Tea was boiling on the stone table. The fragrance of the tea lingered in the air. Lin Huang sat on the stone stool across from Gu Ding. Captain? He could not get used to Gu Dings over-friendliness. I was an interstellar pirate before, so this form of address has stayed with me, Gu Ding explained while smiling. He picked up the teacup and took a sip. Well talk about that later. Let me tell you about this infinite universe first. Where do I start Gu Ding only put down the teacup after thinking for a while. Ill start from the beginning. I actually planted this infinite universe with a universe seed hundreds of eras ago. I used nine seeds in total. Only this one remains though. Now that youve become a Transcender and have successfully mastered the infinite universe, I know my efforts didnt go to waste. So I inherited the captains legacy Lin Huang really had not imagined that the infinite universe had been planted. You dont have to be so polite. Its your destiny. Gu Ding waved while smiling. Are there many Transcenders like us? Lin Huang could not help but ask. Were the only ones. Gu Ding shook his head with a smile. So few?! Lin Huang did not expect that there were so few Transcenders. Do you know about the second law of thermodynamics? Gu Ding picked up the teapot and poured himself another cup of tea. He asked this question with a smile while drinking it. Ive heard of it. Lin Huang nodded. He picked up the teacup too and took a sip. During the natural process, an isolated system would always have an entropy increase. The chaos would grow continuously, and the disorder would grow as well. As Lin Huang explained, he felt his bond with the infinite universe strengthened by an invisible force when he swallowed the tea. He could now understand some of the rules that were hidden deep in the infinite universe. Even a universe would be doomed in an entropy increase. What more the mini worlds, great worlds and chaotic cosmoses? What about the infinite universes that are even more complicated? Gu Ding asked while looking at Lin Huang. So those infinite universes were destroyed due to the entropy increase? Lin Huang instantly came to a realization. Gu Ding nodded lightly and corrected him, In reality, only the one that were in can be called the infinite universe. Those that were destroyed arent considered infinite universes. Among the nine seeds I planted, six of them were destroyed when they achieved one trevigintillion chaotic cosmoses. If we were to compare that with the law of biogrowth, it can be considered that they were destroyed during the embryonic stage. There were two that had more than one trevigintillion chaotic cosmoses. They were considered to have entered the infancy stage. However, one of them was destroyed when they had one quinvigintillion chaotic cosmoses, while the other one was destroyed when it was going to break through the 100 quinvigintillion chaotic cosmoses mark. The one that you mastered is the only one that successfully surpassed 100 quinvigintillion chaotic cosmoses. It even has 300 quinvigintillion chaotic cosmoses. However, were it not for you, it would have been destroyed already. Before you really mastered this universe, it actually wasnt considered a legitimate infinite universe. Only when it has a master, forms an order, and when entropy reduction happens and is no longer chaotic and messy, can it be considered an infinite universe. Cant the outside world trigger the entropy reduction? Just like the time when you suppressed the chaos as Virtual Sovereign previously? Lin Huang could not help but ask. I thought I could in the beginning, as long as I got the universe into order. Gu Ding nodded. But later on, reality proved that such a method would not work. The more I interfered, the more chaotic it became. Among the nine seeds, seven of them descended into out-of-control chaos in the end due to my interference and were destroyed, Gu Ding explained, That was why I didnt kill all of those people who created the chaos when I was Virtual Sovereign back then. Apart from the few of them who were too terrible, I merely suppressed most of them. Not only that, I didnt interfere with the universe you guys were in over the next hundreds of eras. The result of my interference was If you hadnt shown up in an overbearing way, the second Transcender who would be standing before me the day after tomorrow would be Aza, the person that I suppressed back then, Gu Ding explained in all seriousness. Lin Huang peeped at Aza, who was hiding deep in the Heavenly Dao in distress. He said with a smile, Unfortunately, I stopped him from doing so. Thats right. He found the two unique mechanisms of the Heavenly Dao authorization. Not only did he make the original Heavenly Daos will fall into a state of deep sleep, He accelerated the integration efficiency to the extent that there was a billion times boost in the number of chaotic cosmoses He integrates with every day. Gu Ding took another sip of tea while smiling. Unfortunately, He was two days too late. I did not expect Him to pull off such a feat. Lin Huang drank all of the tea in the cup and put it down. If I didnt integrate all of the chaotic cosmoses, given His current integration efficiency, He could integrate one trevigintillion chaotic cosmoses a day today, and 100 quinvigintillion tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, he would have integrated all of the chaotic cosmoses in the entire infinite universe within half a day. The next second, Lin Huang waved, and a figure appeared before them. It was First Liege, who had been hiding deep in the Heavenly Dao. First Liege was startled to find himself in a different place all of a sudden. He saw Lin Huang as he focused, as well as the man who was sitting across from Lin Huang. He could not help but exclaim directly, Virtual Sovereign?! Thats right. You were too late after all. Lin Huang nodded and smiled. If you gave me two more days no, a day and a half, I would have been the one to become a Transcender! First Liege had an unwilling expression on his face. Its too bad that you dont have that opportunity anymore. Lin Huang waved his hand as soon as he was done speaking. He put First Liege away into his Kingdom directly. Inside Lin Huangs Kingdom, First Lieges physical body and Gods soul began to collapse at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. In the end, only a massive Kingdom remained. It integrated itself into Lin Huangs Kingdom gradually, becoming a part of his Kingdom. First Liege, whom he had not been able to kill before, finally turned into dust. After killing First Liege, Lin Huang chatted with Gu Ding for a long time. He learned many secrets about the infinite universe. Only then did he bid farewell to him and return to the infinite universe. As soon as he returned to his infinite universe, Lin Huang woke Great Chaotic Heavenly Dao up. He then allowed it to retain its will and integrated it into his Kingdom. Now, Lin Huang was considered to be the legitimate master of the infinite universe. He finally felt completely confident now. An infinite universe that has 300 quinvigintillion chaotic cosmoses is only considered a budding seed? Lin Huang looked far into the sky. He mumbled softly with a smile, Seems like Ill be busy cultivating this bud. You have your crew, and I have my friends and family Xin Er, Xiaoxuan, lets visit the gravel world. Its been a long time since we last visited Lin Huang suddenly said to Lin Xin, Lin Xuan and Mr. Fu through voice transmission. Have you settled that First Liege? Lin Xin quickly asked. I have! I knew it! Youre the best, brother! Lin Xin appeared before Lin Huang in a flash as soon as she was done speaking. She grabbed his arm and looked at him with a bright smile. Shall we depart now? At that moment, Lin Xuan walked into the courtyard as well. Its been a long time since we visited the gravel world indeed. Ive been thinking of going back. Lets get Boss Chan and the rest, pick up Master, and then well go. Lin Huang smiled while nodding. I wonder if Wulin Town is still around Lin Xin suddenly felt sad. If its no longer around, well build another one! Lin Huang patted her head with a smile. Well make Wulin Town a grade-A foothold with 101 streets! No, well make it a grade-S foothold with 1010 streets! Lin Xin shouted in excitement. Sure, lets make it a grade-S foothold with 1010 streets! Lin Huang agreed while smiling.